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Personal Narrative Essay

 

Old age, the disease that every living thing perishes from, took yet another from my heart today.

I lost a truly beloved family member and friend…

 

            Wake up, Wake up! My brain kicked into action, snapping my arm back in one quick motion turning off the alarm. That is how my mornings always started. Not in the best mood already, I mumble to myself a reminder that I have a paper due in 3rd period English that I was just too tired to complete the night before. After the rest of my morning routine was complete, I ventured downstairs to grab a bit to eat. This was was the usual time Tank would greet me with the new day. His large frail body, a small resemblance of his earlier muscular and youthful self, vibrating and shaking with the same amount of joy that from day one reverberated throughout his soul.

            Today was different though, as I slugged through the downstairs looking for something to eat. After finding a leftover sandwich from the day before I finally realized that my morning was missing something. Without the ever loving, and joyous emitting hound at my side, my stress level of the morning just grew. A couple of attempted whistles, no sound though due to dry morning lips, and he still was not responding. Throwing the cold sandwich, that I had decided was not up to par, into the garbage, I went to find Tank. Noticing him sleeping on his side taking in long slow gasps of air, I made my way towards him.

“Nate we are leaving for school. Get out here!”

My mother’s yell muffled by the clatter of my brothers and sisters all getting into the car. Thinking nothing of it, I turned around and ran to the car.

            Classes went on as they usually do, never helping an already grouchy teenager. First period history was a drag I fell asleep fifteen minutes in, the bell waking me up, telling me it was time to go to my next class. Second period trigonometry was no different. By the end of third period I was really thinking about going to the nurse and calling in sick. That's when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. This was not unusual because my friends usually text me during class, but never this early in the morning. After the school bell rang signifying the end of the class, I took my phone out of my pocket and read the message. “Call me as soon as you get this message” from my mother. This was odd? Phones were not allowed out in my school so what mother would want their child to call in the middle of school hours? Curious and slightly scared that I had done something wrong, I dialed the number and called my mother.

            The news struck me like a sledgehammer to the stomach. I began to feel a lump forming in my throat that escalated to my eyes tearing up, I began to cry. The school seemed alive at this very moment, students bustling around me going on with their live not knowing what had just been taken away from me. I did not even notice them. I lost it. Dropping my book bag in the middle of the hallway just as my knees gave out i slumped to the floor. I sat on that floor for what seemed like hours unable to contemplate the news I was given.

            That was the last time I saw my dog. The last time I heard his course breathing. It was the last day of his existence, the clock of life had run out, and I was not even there for his last moments. Just as he was gone, I felt gone.

 

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Triptych Poem

Again.

The frisbee,

with a flick of the wrist,

slices through the air.

Its bright red color resonating against the blue sky.

Tongue flopping to the side,

slobber flying from the mouth,

this ball of fur jumps to the sky

like a bird taking flight.

Mouth open wide with eagerness,

the frisbee flies through.

Down the dog falls toward the earth;

the disk falling to side.

Again!

With the flick of the wrist,

the frisbee takes flight.

With a leap the animal takes to the sky,

glancing off those shiny teeth

they land apart.

Again! Again!

The wrist snaps into action.

This feels right.

Through the air the frisbee flies.

Tracking down the object, he takes to the sky,

connection…

Again! Again! Again!

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Journal Entry      

 Eureka, the moment when you unconsciously find a conclusion or solve the missing piece to a problem. An involuntary phenomena that the human brain can accomplish. Some would call it the "Ah Ha" moment or even the "light bulb moment." It happens to all of us, whether we are scientists or just college students, we have all experienced this even.  It does not have to be something that benefits mankind either. It can happen while simply trying to find the right word for an essay, or a quick shortcut to a long and complicated math problem.

 

 

Some people have a certain techniques  such as going to sleep, walking, or watching action packed movies, to help stimulate that unconscious part of the mind. Ideas are swimming around in the back of the human brain that are sometime unreachable until the unconscious mind can make sense of things. These techniques are what help those ideas string out into theories which then can be tested.  I have experienced this moment of glory first hand.

 

While working on the college essay in highschool, my teacher emphasized the utter importance of using the correct words, choosing words that held the most meaning to what you were trying to say. This is one of the hardest things to do for someone who does not have a thesaurus in their head ( I certainly do not but some students do). I was walking home from school one day and a word  popped into my head. Exactly the word that would compliment my essay in a special way. But unfortunately being the ignorant senior who has no cares, I never took the time with that moment of brilliance to write down that word. I then when on home to forget that word leaving my essay to be normal instead of great. I did not change the world. I did not create a new way to find the volume of certain metals, but I did experience that unconscious brain activity that produced such a wonderful word.

 

 

I've experienced it; you have experienced it. It is that same feeling and moment of “Eureka” that many world renown scientist have used to help benefit mankind. The unknown depths of this awesome and bewildering brain power will forever astonish me.

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30 September, 2015

 

                                           GMO’s and the Food War

 

Farming with GMO practices has sparked a war in the food industry. We are the civilians caught in the midst  of a total war scenario. Deception plays a key role in why this is still a problem. GMO food organizations can hide beneath their lies and fake

accomplishments. Small organic farmers who practice earth-friendly farming techniques are driven out of business because they can't compete economically against the GMO industry. Our health as a whole is at risk due to the fact that we know nothing about what we are putting in our bodies, because no one has successfully passes an appropriate labelling law. The large food corporations have an arsenalof legal and public relations tools that they use to keep the food market in their favor. They have the weapon of mass destruction: the ability to genetically modify plants and other organisms. They also have another ally, a strong but undetectable force; a plague of ignorance. This illness is sweeping through and overpowering knowledge. Knowing the truth is our greatest defense against the influx of GMO foods. GMO farming is destroying the relationship between the producers and consumers. This approach to food production is eliminating small, private farms all over the worldproducing food that is not healthy, and deceiving a willing public that is looking for affordable food.

 

       One of the most adverse effects of GMO farming is the negative effect it has on farmers who are not in the GMO business. One of the most astonishing things is that almost eighty percent of the world’s food is created with GMO ingredients, according to nongmoproject.org. The competition is hard to beat. Farmers who use don’t use human tinkered organisms are the ones who are at the bottom of the pit. GMO is a corporate enterprise with the power of huge corporations behind it. A small individual farmer of any kind, using whatever product, has none of the resources compared to a corporation like Monsanto. Theyhave less money to work with. They ride thin lines when it comes to cross pollination between GMO created plants and their own. Corn, for example, crosses very easily over long distances. As soon as GMO created pollen comes in contact with the organic corn that organic corn’s genes are contaminated. Even though the GMO company seems to blame, the small organic farmer gets hauled to court on charges of patent infringement. They can face legal consequences as seen with the court case with Percy Schmeiser.  Plus, once GMO-created pollen contaminates the gene pool of the regular organic seed, it is forever polluted with those genes.

Alternatively, if a farmer chooses to use GMO seeds or is compelled to by state financial incentives/aid (yet another problem, wherein farmers are forced to use GMO in order to participate in certain subsidies[UN9] ) When farmers go into bankruptcy or need a bail out, they start to buy genetically modified seeds. from larger farms that use GMO me Whatever the short term savings or advantages might be with these seed, the problem is that they these seeds do not have the ability to reproduce more seeds that are fertile. Thus, every year the small farmers have to buy new seed every year. This forces them to spend the little money that they have on seeds, which had originally been grown and saved.

 

        Yet another danger that has lethal effects on our entire population – and I am not overstating this given the number of agricultural researchers who are concerned. What happens if we continue to create GMOs? One of the unfortunate circumstances that comes with using GMOs and pesticide resistant plants is that we are creating  “super bugs”. According to Iowa State university entomologist Aaron Gassmann, Asuper bug is one that is genetically immune to the pesticides that are used on the plants. Natural selection will then keep that bug alive, and it will then reproduce, spreading the trait of immunity to the next generations. A domino effect will then occur. Crop yields will lower due to a bug that is immune to the pesticides that had originally kept the plants safe. Many plants may become extinct unless further, more powerful pesticides are applied, with the good chance that these might be even more toxic to the environment and to the humans eating the produce.

     

        There is a chance that we will limit our foods by only eating those farmed for us. For instance, corn can not grow naturally in this world without the help of humans. There are many other foods only able to grow through human cultivation. What do we do if something goes wrong with the genes of the plants? If we continue to alter plants and organisms, there will be negative effects. “‘Doesn't make sense in the long run for the human species,’ says Bill Duesing, an organic farmer in Oxford, Conn.” ("Global Hunger"). In reality, he is completely correct. If we disrupt the species of plants too much, they will never be the same again. Farming in the future will forever be tainted by what we are doing now, and we just don’t know what the consequences will be.

Now, all this aside, many people claim that as world populations grow we need GMO’s to feed the people and that space is forever diminishing. Space: something we humans have forever fought to gain control of; not the vast outer space of nothingness but the limited land outcrops on earth. Mankind has been fighting over land ever since they took their first steps. We are now fighting a war; not necessarily a bloody one, but one that has just as many risks that could affect our lives. Asthe population grows, one of the most valuable resources is space. A common myth is that with the GMOs ability to create larger crop yields, there will have to be less land cultivated; this is, in fact, false. The more food that is grown means more money is being made. The agricultural industry is motivated not by health of consumers, not by the wanting to better the earth, but by making money. Larger yields mean more crops are being produced and sold as a way to create even more money with an everlasting demand for food. Large GMO companies use even more land to produce foods. The more space used for farming means less space for the rest of the earth to inhabit. This includes humans as well as the forests and the creatures that live there.

 

        Now, according to some GMO public relations material including those at Monsanto, humans have traditionally been modifying seeds from the beginning of agriculture. Indeed, the process of cross pollinating and selecting for desirable traits is how we have gained the variety of vegetables we now enjoy.  However, this is not the same at all. A scary idea to understand about GMOs is that we are quite literally exchanging desirable traits between organisms. To make it simple, though this could never happen, imagine a giraffe; giraffes have long necks, which we characterize them by. If someone wanted to created a long necked horse, they would extract the gene from a giraffe’s DNA and then insert that code gene into that of a baby horse, sometimes by means of a virus. (The United States National Human Genome Institute conducted a study showing how GMO plants become resistant to pesticides. They use a bacteria or a virus to artificially insert an entire foreign DNA into the pants genes.) The horse would then grow to have the long neck that was desired. Then, what would happen if someone tried to mate the mutated horse with a normal one? The same thing is happening with these plants. What the food industry desires is plants that have quadrupled shelf lives, be resistant to pesticides, as well as have nice aesthetics and a great taste. You won’t find many organic farmers agreeing that taste has been improved. Mort Mather a former president of Main Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, agrees that organic foods do tend to taste better compared to conventional non organic, GMO vegetables.  The biggest problem in the words of Jason McLure, however, is that  “GM foods — made from crops that have had genetic material inserted or deleted in a laboratory to give them specific advantages, such as resistance to herbicides — may pose health or environmental risks” ("Genetically Modified Food"). All of these characteristics can not be done without the help of human tinkering. We may (or may not) be making desirable food, but we are also destroying our world.

Even if all of the above were not matters of serious concern, perhaps what is most scary of all is that we just do not know what the health impact is, and we do not have the transparency that allows us to make our own choices.

 

        Lastly, maybe one of the main causes for opposition of GMO foods is that people have no idea the impact they have on mankind’s health. As one GMO opposition puts it, “[Thomas O. McGarity] blames the agricultural industry for trying to force a new and potentially dangerous technology onto unknowing American consumers. ‘Why the hell are we making these foods?’ he asks. ‘I really get burned when the industry forces consumers to do something they don't want’”  ("Genetically Modified Food").  Some people are almost forced into consuming GMO foods because they are generally cheaper and labels are not required. Surplus food limits people’s choice in the marketplace, as well. Less choices for families because the many low income families see organic food as out of the picture when it comes to meals.  GMO foods have not yet been been linked higher cancer rates, but according to the American Cancer Society, that this is not certain because these foods have not been around very long. Lack of proof that they cause cancer does not mean that they won’t ever be involved in producing higher risks for cancer. GMOs are also linked to having viruses embedded in the plants themselves.[UN17]  There is a trickle down effect as well. Even if we are not consuming GMO plants, we are consuming whatever fed on the GMO plants. Eggs, pork, ham, chicken, and almost all other meats could possible carry deadly viruses that resided in the GMO plants they were fed.

 

        There is also a health issue due to the fact that we are altering the nutritional values of many organisms. Empty calories, which are just sugars and fats that give no energy are starting to show more and more in foods. There is no distinguishing characteristic between an empty calorie and a regular calorie. This is why it is so undetectable and one of the reasons why GMO farmers can get away with this sneaky tactic. This then decreases the nutritional value of many foods that are GMO certified. There are also links to these empty calories with the growing weight problem many people have, this research done by the Obesity Action Coalition. They eat these foods that have very little substance to them, then eat again in an hour, wondering why they are still hungry. Overeating has a link to empty calories, which is linked to weight gain. This is a main problem for third world countries due to the fact that they have no choice in what foods they can eat. They can either eat the GMO-created foods that developed countries give them, or they can starve. Obviously, they eat the foods, but so do we. And why is that?

 

        We are being deceived by the companies. The foods that are created are less quality, less filling, and less appealing. We eat them simply because of the appetizing effect that sugar has. The foods we eat are cheaper to make and easier to sell, which gives the GMO companies incentive to keep all this information hidden.

 

        The GMO industry is a sneaky one; one that will hide behind a shroud of lies. The importance of knowledge is so great. We must understand the consequences on our world, our farmers, and our bodies due to genetically modified foods. Our future is one that only we can create and envision. With the creation of GMOs that future is clouded. It may be a short-term plan for creating a world without hunger, but in the long run will we be struggling to survive due to our inability to farm or reproduce substantive crops? Cross pollination and contamination is placing small farmers at risk for bankruptcy as well as legal problems with copyrighted gene creations. The health problems will soon outweigh the chance to feed the world fake foods. On a larger scale, we may be looking at a world being fed only by empty calories causing multiple problems from weight gain to the epidemic of cancers. In the end, it all boils down to the choices that we make. We chose ignorance. Most people have the resources to figure out what we are consuming. We continue to pick these dangerous foods out of deception. GMOs are dangerous, and they should be put on check. Food industries are deceiving us. We have a right to fight this war, and fight back we will.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.