Roxie's Ramblings

@roxies-ramblings

I've traveled the world and seen many different cultures and creations, but the one thing that will always escape my comprehension is the human mind. This space is a place of reflection, therapy and even memorization for me.. for all the world to see. Ask me anything and tell me about yourself :) *UPDATE* Over 6,000 views?!?! I think I could cry ^_^

136 posts

I haven't been on this site in ages, but so many wonderful and beautiful new things have come into my life. I've been dating the sweetest and most compassionate man in the world for the past year and a half and I'm also working on my first semester in graduate school for clinical counseling (one grade away from having straight A's too!). There are ups and downs of course, but things are moving forward and ever changing. It's all I could have dreamed of and more :)

#love #happiness #moving #forward #new #horizons #praise #god #God

Maus: A Survivor's Tale, Book II

A Review on Chapter Five

Vledek is now in Sweden and working hard to earn money to find Anja and have a comfortable life together. After much dedication and searching, he and Anja are reunited at long last.

The interview ends and Vladek is tired and very, very weak. He accidentally calls Art by his first son's name and drifts off to sleep.

The last image in the book is that of his father and mother's joint grave, where they can now finally rest in peace.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale, Book II

A Review on Chapter Four

Vladek and a friend, Shivek, finally escape the Germans (most have retreated at this point anyway). They take refuge in a barn and eat chickens and milk, some of the first real food they've had in months. Their stomachs are so unused to it that they get sick for awhile.

The American soliders arrive and the two ask them to stay with them if they earn their keep. They gladly stay with them for a bit.

Vladek then pulls out photographs for Art to see. It's of old family members, all dead. The old man then starts to have a bit of heart trouble and lays down, ending that day's interview.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale, Book II

A Review on Chapter Three

The next morning, Art and Francoise drive Vladek to the grocery store. On the way, he recalls more of Auschwitz. The war was coming to an end and the Germans were retreating and bringing the Jews with them. They were forced to march for days, many collapsed from exhaustion and were trampled. Those who ran away were shot for trying.

They are then packed up in carts to Dachau, after the red cross gives them each a small package of food. The carts are filled with straw and contain lice, some of the prisoners contract typhus and many die. Vladek injures his hand drastically so that he can go to the hospital and conditions get better for him.

He befriends a french man because they both speak English and they help each other with rations.

The interview comes to an abrupt halt when Francoise allows a hitch hiker in the car. He's a pleasant man but Vladek gets angry because he's black and will therefore "steal something" of theirs. Art and Francoise don't understand how he can be so racist after going through what he did.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale, Book II

A Review on Chapter Two

Vladek dies of heart failure on August 18th, 1982. Art is surrounded by publishers who enjoyed his work and interviewers hassle him constantly. It's now 1987 and he and his wife are expecting a child, a blessing but another cause of stress. He visits with his therapist, a Czech Jew who also escaped the holocaust alive.

He makes Art feel much better about his work and it inspires him to go back to his old recorded interviews with his father. The second book continues.

In Auschwitz, Vladek stays on the good side of officers and barters his way with food. A Hungarian prisoner, Mancie, helps him reach his wife and he bribes his way for her to have better conditions as well. Finally they are reunited due to many bribes yet the war starts to escalate as the Russians move in.

One day Vladek notices a large pit, he discovers it is a mass grave.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale, Book II

A Review on Chapter One

Art and his wife, Francoise, are vacationing in Vermont with friends. He tries to decide how to draw his wife since she is French. Yet Francoise tells him to draw her as a mouse also, since she converted to Judaism to please his father. Their vacation is short lived however, when Art receives a call from his father claiming he had had a serious heart attack.

They arrive to find that Vladek lied, his true crisis being that Mala left him and took some money as well. Art, frustrated with his father, decides to interview him some more so that the trip is not a waste.

At this point in the story, they have arrived at Auschwitz and Vladek has been separated from his wife, Anja.They are given numbers on their skin and prison uniforms. He is so depressed he thinks about ending it all, but then a priest, a prisoner as well, looks at the number on his arm.

This man knows about Jewish culture and points out that the numbers on his arm are lucky and that God has blessed him. It gives Vladek strength. He makes sure to get on the good side of officers in charge and even becomes a tin specialist through sheer luck.

The interview is cut short when Vladek wants to play bingo.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale

A Review on Chapter Six

Art visits his father once again but runs into Mala first. She is miserable with his father and complains about how stingy he is. He cheers them both up by showing them what he's sketched so far of the story.

The interview begins once again and now it is 1944. A polish woman, Mrs. Kawka, takes them in. She hooks them up with some smugglers who offer to take them to Hungary and out of Poland for good. All seems well with the smugglers until one of them leaves to make a phone call.

An hour later the Germans take Anja and Vladek as prisoners and they are sent to Auschwitz. The smugglers betrayed them. They are separated into men's and women's camps.

Art asks his father if any of Anja's diaries of this time remain. His father confesses that he burned them all after her suicide and Art storms out, furious at the loss of his mother's memories.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale

A Review on Chapter Five

Art's father becomes increasingly antsy, and even tries to change his house's drainpipes at seven in the morning. His frustration with his father abounds and things become worse when his father discovers the comic he wrote about his mother, Anja's, suicide.

He needs a moment to himself, but eventually Vladek is okay to talk about those difficult times again. It is now 1943 and the jews are moved to another village. Things become worse and worse and eventually Anja agrees that Richieu should be sent to live somewhere else. Unfortunately the boy is killed later by his caretaker. The woman poisons him rather than let him go off to the camps.

At the end of 1943, almost all the Jews had been taken off to Auschwitz. Anja and Vladek hide and escape many close calls. The blend in with the Polish people as much as possible.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale

A Review on Chapter Four

Vladek is exercising when his son arrives and the next interview begins. Even in old age he wishes to stay alert.

Due to the war, rations are scare and things are having to be bought on the black market. Luckily, his family is rich, but the money wont last them forever and Vladek becomes resourceful. He sells surplus cloth and also makes sure to stay friendly with the Polish people and fellow Jews.

Jews are now being beaten and Vladek wonders if he should send his son away, yet Anja refuses. Some of his father-in-law's friends are hanged for selling items on the black market. Yet despite this, Vladek still sells items there.

The elderly are then gathered by the German officers. They claimed that it was for health and safety, yet Vladek did not trust them. Grandparents are hidden for as long as possible, but eventually they are sent away. They were never seen again.

Art's father is now tired and leaves the interview to rest. His stepmother, Mala, tells him of how she too witnessed the elderly being taken away.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale

A Review on Chapter Three

The next time Art visits his father he witnesses Vladek and his second wife, Mala, in a fight. After things cool down, the interview continues from where it left off. During the war with the Germans, Vladek kills one man and is captured as a prisoner of war. The Jewish prisoners are treated far worse and he decides to volunteer in the labor camps to get better treatment.

Conditions are a bit better for him, but he is still treated cruelly. One night, he has a dream that his grandfather is telling him he will escape on the Jewish Holiday of Parshas Truma. And, miraculously, he does!

He makes his way to his father's house and discovers that some Germans had forced him to shave off his beard, a dishonor in Jewish culture. His mother is sick with cancer and dies one month after his visiting them. Somehow he finally arrives to Anja and their little boy, who is now two years old.

The interview ends and Art leaves his fathers house in a bad mood since his father has had his jacket replaced without his knowledge. Vladek seems to always "know what's best" for him

Maus: A Survivor's Tale

A Review on Chapter Two

Art once again visits his elderly father and asks to record more of his story. Vladek is counting pills and complaining of his health, yet eventually they discuss his past further. Vladek was married happily to Anja when a local seamstress was arrested for holding Anja's communist documents. Her father bribed the seamstress to take the fall and the woman is released from prison after three months.

Things seem like they'll be alright and Vladek is now running a textile factory given to him by his father-in-law. They are still financially secure and happy when they welcome their first son into the world. Little Richieu was born October 1937 and the parents are thrilled. Everything seems to be going well until Anja suffers from postpartum depression, causing her to have to rest in a sanitarium. Vladek accompanies his wife and after three months she is better than ever.

When they return they discover that their factory has been robbed. It is the first occurrence of antisemitism they experience. Antisemitic riots begin downtown and the police even refuse to stop it. And then, in August 1939, Vladek is called from the reserves to war.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale

A Review on Chapter One

Art, the son of two holocaust survivors, is wanting to write a story about his father and mother and the ordeals they faced when the germans took over Poland and forced them into concentration camps. His style of writing, however, is quite unique. Instead of a written novel he conveys his family’s story in the form of a comic. The jews are portrayed as mice, the polish people as pigs, americans as dogs, and germans as cats. He wants his story to put the holocaust in a new perspective, as mice fleeing from cats. He visits his father and notices how ill he looks, Art’s mother committed suicide in the late sixties and his dad had suffered two heart attacks since. Although Vladek is now married to another holocaust survivor, he still misses Anja, Art’s mother. The two talk and after convincing his father, the story begins. Vladek was a young man in Czestochowa, Poland. He meets Art’s mother while visiting family in another town. Anja, a fellow jew, was nothing like his former lover Lucy. They fell in love and Vladek started helping Anja’s father with his business. Life was good and they were wealthy. They were married on February 14th, 1937.

Dana Priest

Not many journalists are willingly blacklisted.

Ever since Priest was a young girl, she wondered "What's behind that door?" or "Why am I not allowed?" It was this curiosity that made her delve into certain stories that other journalists would have backed down from.

Priest unveiled CIA interrogation sites at the risk of her own career and security. Often having to use disposable phones or convincing contacts to still give her information. Some thought her a traitor to the United States, others were scared to answer her call because they thought the government was trying to spy on her.

Yet hard work and a stubborn patience paid off later when Priest revealed what was going on at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. She revealed neglect and refused to back down, having her story published in the Washington Post.

Spring Sing. It's a musical parody, theater crash course, and insane experience unique to Harding University. Different social clubs compete for the best show of the night, and for the charity they sponsor. It's time consuming just for the dancers in the show, but for the directors it's damn near impossible.

This year I was honored with the nomination of Spring Sing director for my social club, Shantih. I'd been in the show two years back as a freshman so I thought I knew what to expect. Needless to say I was seriously misled... I took the job.

Each show is made up of several social clubs and each club has two directors. I knew a few of the others I'd be working with, but they weren't even half of the overall group. In January the whole show begins their choreography lessons, a year before that directors meet and begin to plan. A year of your life is dedicated to this show and it begins with meeting people you've never even heard of.

I remember sitting in my campus' student center and watching as one by one they arrived. Two by two they came while I waited with my fellow Shantih director. I was apprehensive.. Spring Sing is known for two types of drama. The theatrical kind, and the oh-my-god-I-want-to-murder-you-with-a-pickaxe kind.

I loved them. They were funny, kind of shy, and confident in what they could bring to the show. We agreed on a theme, The Roaring 20's.

A few months passed and music was selected, lyrics decided on, costumes sketched. It was beautiful how well we all worked together. Each director oversaw a field and mine was costumes and makeup. I met with a seamstress who was an angel in disguise and helped me design a flapper dress that would light up the stage. Everything was going so well..

And then the moment of truth. January. Who would join our show? Which of our new pledges or old members would sign up and actually pay dues and take the time out of their busy schedules to dance in an old building on weekends and nights they could be using to study?

86 signed up.

EIGHTY. SIX.

The men and women of Shantih, Chi Kappa Rho, GATA, Omega Lambda Chi, Alpha Tau Epsilon, and friends of the clubs pulled their weight and had faith in us eight.

Eight people in charge of 86... good Lord.

For some reason they actually listened to us that first day. And they listened the next day, and the day after... They actually liked us. A month went by and I made many new friends.

Then, the day before Valentine's Day, I was queened by Alpha Tau Epsilon. For those of you unfamiliar with this term, it's when a guy's social club elects an honorary member of the opposite sex to be in their club. She's then called a "queen." Women's social clubs do the same thing, but the guy is called a "beau."

I was grinning for a straight week.

Months passed and work intensified for us directors. There was so much to be done! It's so difficult clothing 86 people.. As things became more difficult to achieve other directors started helping each other with their jobs and even some of the people in our show helped us out. And then, the big day was upon us.

Opening night.

You perform in front of over 11,000 people in total. Seven shows. One week to show what you've worked on for one year. Families come in, past social club members visit, chaos ensues.

They did fantastic.

We didn't win a single award.

Despite that crushing realization here's how I know we did a wonderful job: Five girls in my social club want to be future directors now. Last year, no one besides me wanted the job. Four girls in another club want it, and even four guys want to be directors.

Last year no one wanted it.

We inspired them. We gave them hope.

Spring Sing is now over and we're getting ready to vote on two new girls to represent us all over again. Life goes on. I know have 70 more friends on my facebook page and am now a member of two wonderful clubs.

How has it affected my Harding Experience? It's made it richer, brighter, and far more fun. Spring Sing is worth it.

"We did think about the impact such a picture might have on the family and friends of the victim," Hawpe said. "And we also thought about the need to confront readers in our community with the full consequences of gun violence."

Is it ever okay to publish an image of someone recently deceased in a newspaper, despite the family declining it? The journalists claim that they had only hoped it would raise awareness of extreme gun violence. The family believes that this was only to sell more newspapers with blood and gore. Does anyone own an image? Cases like these are difficult.. on one hand you can see where the family is coming from. Someone you loved and was violently taken from you is now shown in their weakest moment to the whole world. Yet the newspaper has a point, perhaps this can shock people into seeing just how awful guns can be.. Personally I believe the newspaper should have waited a bit before publishing that image. People need time to grieve.

To say that the media is completely unbiased and neutral is, if anything, a complete lie. Yet how skewed are they truly? Yes, there are many conspiracies out there about corporations being backed by different people and different agencies being closer to other political parties. However, beyond these bias' there is another one that is a bit odd. It's called the Availability Heuristic. Julian Sanchez, author of this linked article, calls it "a rule of thumb that says the frequency of an event should correspond to how quickly you can think of examples of it." So when the Treyvon Martin shooting occurred CNN covered it 41 time as opposed to Fox New's reporting it once. Sanchez believes that the availability heuristic can account for this, as conservatives tend to not focus on racism as much as liberals and do not consider it as big as a problem. So in a nutshell, it's not that they're racist, it's that they don't focus on the issue of racism often.

"In itself, that's a matter of news judgment that could probably be defended. But I want to suggest that the disparity here may have something to do with whether one thinks institutional racism remains a serious problem in the United States. Conservatives often seem to think it isn't, and that if anything, the real problem is how often spurious charges of white racism are deployed by their political opponents, while liberals more often tend toward the opposite view. Maybe both groups are drawing justified inferences from the data they're seeing."

It's interesting to see how often one media source will recall an event as opposed to another, and it does bring up some hard hitting questions. Just how ethical is this? If every story is reported but some given more attention than others.. can't that alter a viewer's mind on what is truly important in the world?

The celebrities of Hollywood divorce and elope constantly, with millions of dollars thrown towards greedy lawyers. We see them on the news always. Millions die daily due to starvation and war and nothing is hardly said. It's worrisome that the audiences of the world are being conditioned this way but perhaps if we look at all sources of media as a whole and piece the puzzle together things may get better.

#media #bias #the #reality #of #it #psychology #treyvon #martin

Parapsychology is defined as a study of mental phenomena excluded from or inexplicable by orthodox scientific psychology. As WiseGeek puts it, most tend to associate this form of psychology with hauntings or poltergeists. While some may follow that path, it is furthest away from being parapsychology's key focus.

This form of science actually focuses on hypnosis, lucid dreaming, out of body experiences, and what the mind perceives to be paranormal entities. The researchers in this field aim to understand why we are so fascinated with the unknown and exactly what part of the mind accounts for perceptions of ghosts.

They are by no means "ghost busters" as this blog puts it, but rather scientists with open minds. Every major culture has a history of the paranormal. From the belief in the afterlife to the things that go bump in the night, society has always included them willingly or otherwise. The paranormal is ingrained in our psyche, so who better than psychologists to investigate?

#parapsychology #wise #geek #article #not #ghost #busters #respected #science #facts

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