Her name is Victoria Priester. Her message is GreenPeace. But what is GreenPeace you ask? Let’s break it down.
Green is a color. Trees are green. Money is green. Kermit is green.
Peace is safety, a quality, a way of life.
The first time I heard the word “peace” was probably in a John Lennon song. I remember sitting on my living room floor, helping my father clean underneath the TV stand as we listened to something that, to me, probably didn’t satisfy his working needs. He reached for one of his albums (to this day, I still don’t know what album it was). What he played was a song that I hadn’t heard but I recognized the voice of the singer. My father is a Beatles fan; therefore I knew a Beatle voice when I heard it.
I started to hear the lines “Every bodies talking about Bagism, Shagism.”
Honestly, I don’t know what most of the words in the song mean but I do understand the chorus. “All we are saying is give peace a chance.”
It’s sort of hard to misinterpret that.
The first time I remembering seeing peace, however, was in the Disney film “Pocahontas”. We all remember Pocahontas. An Indian and a soldier bring peace to a war between two different cultures.
Or at least as the Disney story goes.
The peace that Pocahontas showed was immeasurable. All she did was for her home and from her heart. Pocahontas is friends with a raccoon and a giant tree named ‘Grandmother Willow”. She risks her life to protect not just these two but her whole land, the land that she loves.
I’m not at all saying Victoria is Pocahontas or John Lennon. However, her successful efforts of bringing a club that support such action resemble these peaceful leaders.
“Ultimately our goal is to educate and organize. We hope to educate our peers about current environmental atrocities and organize people into a coherent movement who can make the changes needed to help the planet” Priester said about the club. “We were hoping to establish a proactive club that was more centered on a grassroots effort to change the current political climate.”
GreenPeace isn’t just here at Flagler College.
“Today, we have grown from a small group of dedicated activists to an international organization with offices in more than 30 countries” said a spokesperson on the GreenPeace website. “But our spirit and our mission remain the same. Our fight to save the planet has grown more serious – the threat of global warming, destruction of ancient forests, deterioration of our oceans, and the threat of a nuclear disaster loom large.”
As I talked to Priester about GreenPeace, I saw the passion in her eyes. Through the long hours planning meetings and activities; passed the massive amount of patience she put up with during the long struggle to get the GreenPeace club SGA approved, Priester has shown her deep love for not just the club, but for the planet. She has proved that GreenPeace isn’t just a club, it is a job and something that she is willing to fight for.
Priesters actions in the fight to start GreenPeace have not gone unnoticed. The club currently holds meetings weekly, attended by students with similar beliefs to Priester.
“One discontent person may be small and quiet, but when people assemble and come together as one voice, it is hard to ignore” said Priester.
After such success in setting up a meaningful and important club, I don’t think Victoria or GreenPeace will be ignored again.
Work Cited.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/about
Victoria Priester interview
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocahontas_(1995_film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_Peace_a_Chance
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
a tiger belongs on the course, not in a cage.
at certain times of the year, there some things you can expect to hear/see/read/talk about in sports that you are just tired of hearing about.
will brett favre retire or not?
was conseco/sosa/mcguire/bonds/celemns/rameriz/ortiz/etc (wow, there are a lot of guys who cheat huh?) on steriods?
how many games will the Knicks lose before they fire their coach?
Federer or Nadal?
every year it is the same shit but now, we finally got something new to stick our noses in and quite frankly, i was over it before it even started.
Tiger "pants around his ankles" Woods made his way to the tabloids late last year with allegations of him whoring around with waitresses, models and even a porn star. I hate that i know all that because honestly, its none of my business. it isn't anyones business but the Woods family.
i know I'm not the first person to rant about how i don't care what Tiger does off the course but after his "first official interview since the car accident" on ESPN, i just needed to say, Tiger needs to play some damn golf and fast. People are so quick to write off an athlete for what he did off the field but someone who KNOWINGLY injects them self with illegal substances can still be allowed in the Hall of Fame (for God sake let Pete Rose in!!!! I'm glad i got that off my chest). someone please explain this.
either way, Tiger, if you're reading this, i hope things work out for you but get back to what makes you happy and makes me happy. play some freaking golf.
will brett favre retire or not?
was conseco/sosa/mcguire/bonds/celemns/rameriz/ortiz/etc (wow, there are a lot of guys who cheat huh?) on steriods?
how many games will the Knicks lose before they fire their coach?
Federer or Nadal?
every year it is the same shit but now, we finally got something new to stick our noses in and quite frankly, i was over it before it even started.
Tiger "pants around his ankles" Woods made his way to the tabloids late last year with allegations of him whoring around with waitresses, models and even a porn star. I hate that i know all that because honestly, its none of my business. it isn't anyones business but the Woods family.
i know I'm not the first person to rant about how i don't care what Tiger does off the course but after his "first official interview since the car accident" on ESPN, i just needed to say, Tiger needs to play some damn golf and fast. People are so quick to write off an athlete for what he did off the field but someone who KNOWINGLY injects them self with illegal substances can still be allowed in the Hall of Fame (for God sake let Pete Rose in!!!! I'm glad i got that off my chest). someone please explain this.
either way, Tiger, if you're reading this, i hope things work out for you but get back to what makes you happy and makes me happy. play some freaking golf.
I love Glee
Yes, that's right. I love the hit TV show Glee.
Glee is a show about a high school Glee club that has recently been shunned by the rest of the school body, including most faculty. The club started out with just outcast kids including a stutterer, a handicap, an obvious in the closet, a large black girl and a brown noser. The club is headed for disaster in the beginning until a few football players and cheerleaders decide to join Glee.
this makes for an abundance of conflict between the members of the group, the "haters" and anyone else against the club.
the show is filled with life lessons, reality checks and some unforgettable one-liners and rants. my personal favorites are those made by the cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester, played by Jane Lynch and Kurt Hummel,played by Chris Colfer. these two bring the humor for sure. Whether its Kurt throwing in his two cents about fashion and boys or Sylvester rant to the Glee coach (Will Schuester played by Matthew Morrison) about how he and Glee club will never amount to her and her success.
Most of the actors are what they call in showbiz, a "triple threat", meaning they can act, sing and dance. and when they do what they do, they kill at it. it really is a great show filled with comedy, romance and drama.
pretty much the perfect chic show and dammit, i love it.
Glee is a show about a high school Glee club that has recently been shunned by the rest of the school body, including most faculty. The club started out with just outcast kids including a stutterer, a handicap, an obvious in the closet, a large black girl and a brown noser. The club is headed for disaster in the beginning until a few football players and cheerleaders decide to join Glee.
this makes for an abundance of conflict between the members of the group, the "haters" and anyone else against the club.
the show is filled with life lessons, reality checks and some unforgettable one-liners and rants. my personal favorites are those made by the cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester, played by Jane Lynch and Kurt Hummel,played by Chris Colfer. these two bring the humor for sure. Whether its Kurt throwing in his two cents about fashion and boys or Sylvester rant to the Glee coach (Will Schuester played by Matthew Morrison) about how he and Glee club will never amount to her and her success.
Most of the actors are what they call in showbiz, a "triple threat", meaning they can act, sing and dance. and when they do what they do, they kill at it. it really is a great show filled with comedy, romance and drama.
pretty much the perfect chic show and dammit, i love it.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Corn is made for eating, not for jokes (get it? I’m so funny.)
Working at a restaurant is easy. If anyone tells you otherwise, they must have been working at Chuck E. Cheese.
The job is simple: greet the customer, take the order, run the food, drop the bill and bus the table. There really is nothing else to get into about that. However, not taking away from the easy task of serving tables, there are some odd customers. Most customers I get are relatively nice and relaxed when they come to eat at the restaurant I work at. I get the occasional rude person who makes the meal worse for everyone, including me.
But there is something that never fails, no matter what type of customer I’m waiting on. At some point in the exchange of words between myself and the people at the table, an awful, pointless, corny joke is said and I am stuck in an awkward, uncomfortable silence with a very important decision to make; to laugh or not to laugh, that is the question.
Never, at anytime should a waiter, under any circumstances make a customer feel stupid. If I insult this customer by not laughing when he asks me for the winning lottery tickets it will poorly affect the tip this customer leaves. I’m a broke college student so I put on my best smile and with a fake laugh I reply, “If I knew those, I wouldn’t be here.”
Boom, nailed it.
Now he is honestly laughing and I am 100% fake laughing just to make sure this customer thinks he should be doing stand up comedy shows. But he shouldn’t and I shouldn’t give him the satisfaction of thinking that. But damnit, I need a huge tip and I’ll do whatever it takes, I’ll sink to the lowest of the lows to make my money.
(Insert dirty joke here)
I don’t know what it is with customers who think that I haven’t heard it all before and that the “joke” they are telling me is original. Maybe it’s to impress whoever is at the table. Or maybe they think that my life must suck because I’m a waiter and the only thing that will make me smile is when they say after I drop off the bill, “Oh, I thought you were paying for us.”
I’m not and I never will.
I’m not bitter towards my customers either, there are some really sweet, kind folks that I have waited on and they have honestly made me laugh just by being their selves. I try to be that way when I go out to eat but unfortunately, I have found I am who I despise.
An annoying, corny joke telling customer. Dun Dun Dun
Just the other day, my girlfriend Brittany and I went out to eat. When the waiter greeted us I responded, “No habla inglse.” The waiter looked at me with a look I made so often. The look of, “You have got to be kidding me. Out of all the customers to sit in my section, I get the foreign couple. What did I do to deserve this? There goes my tip.”
After I let him know that was the only Spanish I knew, he did what every server is trained to do in this situation, fake laugh your ass off (flyao if you’re texting). And I must say, he fake laughed like an Academy Award winner. He even threw in a few tears of laughter. I felt great about it too. I left him a nice, fat tip and continued making corny jokes.
After dinner, Brittany and walked over to Starbucks for some coffee. After we ordered and the lady behind the counter was handing me my change, I threw in what I thought was a belly buster.
“Thanks a latte.”
Unlike my excellent audience at the restaurant, the cashier looked at me, smirked and walked away. I was heart broken. That was one of my best coffee jokes ever and it was the most appropriate time to use it and I got totally denied.
WTF coffee lady?
As I looked at Brittany for some support on my awesome sense of humor, she looked at me dead in the eyes and said something that may have changed my life forever.
She said, “You’re stupid.”
WTF girlfriend?
That’s when I realized I’m no better than my customers who drive me crazy with corny jokes. I’m just as bad as them and I need to change. No more “thanks a latte” or “I’m sorry, I left my wallet in my other mocha jean-o’s.” No more asking the waiter “Is the cook killing the cow back there” or “Can you get me a wheel barrel? I’m too full to walk.”
The job is simple: greet the customer, take the order, run the food, drop the bill and bus the table. There really is nothing else to get into about that. However, not taking away from the easy task of serving tables, there are some odd customers. Most customers I get are relatively nice and relaxed when they come to eat at the restaurant I work at. I get the occasional rude person who makes the meal worse for everyone, including me.
But there is something that never fails, no matter what type of customer I’m waiting on. At some point in the exchange of words between myself and the people at the table, an awful, pointless, corny joke is said and I am stuck in an awkward, uncomfortable silence with a very important decision to make; to laugh or not to laugh, that is the question.
Never, at anytime should a waiter, under any circumstances make a customer feel stupid. If I insult this customer by not laughing when he asks me for the winning lottery tickets it will poorly affect the tip this customer leaves. I’m a broke college student so I put on my best smile and with a fake laugh I reply, “If I knew those, I wouldn’t be here.”
Boom, nailed it.
Now he is honestly laughing and I am 100% fake laughing just to make sure this customer thinks he should be doing stand up comedy shows. But he shouldn’t and I shouldn’t give him the satisfaction of thinking that. But damnit, I need a huge tip and I’ll do whatever it takes, I’ll sink to the lowest of the lows to make my money.
(Insert dirty joke here)
I don’t know what it is with customers who think that I haven’t heard it all before and that the “joke” they are telling me is original. Maybe it’s to impress whoever is at the table. Or maybe they think that my life must suck because I’m a waiter and the only thing that will make me smile is when they say after I drop off the bill, “Oh, I thought you were paying for us.”
I’m not and I never will.
I’m not bitter towards my customers either, there are some really sweet, kind folks that I have waited on and they have honestly made me laugh just by being their selves. I try to be that way when I go out to eat but unfortunately, I have found I am who I despise.
An annoying, corny joke telling customer. Dun Dun Dun
Just the other day, my girlfriend Brittany and I went out to eat. When the waiter greeted us I responded, “No habla inglse.” The waiter looked at me with a look I made so often. The look of, “You have got to be kidding me. Out of all the customers to sit in my section, I get the foreign couple. What did I do to deserve this? There goes my tip.”
After I let him know that was the only Spanish I knew, he did what every server is trained to do in this situation, fake laugh your ass off (flyao if you’re texting). And I must say, he fake laughed like an Academy Award winner. He even threw in a few tears of laughter. I felt great about it too. I left him a nice, fat tip and continued making corny jokes.
After dinner, Brittany and walked over to Starbucks for some coffee. After we ordered and the lady behind the counter was handing me my change, I threw in what I thought was a belly buster.
“Thanks a latte.”
Unlike my excellent audience at the restaurant, the cashier looked at me, smirked and walked away. I was heart broken. That was one of my best coffee jokes ever and it was the most appropriate time to use it and I got totally denied.
WTF coffee lady?
As I looked at Brittany for some support on my awesome sense of humor, she looked at me dead in the eyes and said something that may have changed my life forever.
She said, “You’re stupid.”
WTF girlfriend?
That’s when I realized I’m no better than my customers who drive me crazy with corny jokes. I’m just as bad as them and I need to change. No more “thanks a latte” or “I’m sorry, I left my wallet in my other mocha jean-o’s.” No more asking the waiter “Is the cook killing the cow back there” or “Can you get me a wheel barrel? I’m too full to walk.”
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
what's that smell? oh, it's my lip.
It happened about ten months ago. I remember it very clearly. My older sister was at work and my mom was out running errands. I volunteered to baby-sit my two and a half year old nephew, Riley, for the time being. He had been going through a Lion King phase so we watched the movie one full time and we were on our second viewing when things started to get interesting. Riley was sitting on my lap, nestled around my arms. I remember watching Simba try to out run to a stampede when I felt a warm liquid on my hands. I thought it must be sweat because it was summer and there’s nothing else it could possibly be, right?
Wrong.
I took a closer look at what had made my hand so damp and as I pulled my palm closer to my face I began to smell what it was. It unfortunately was not sweat. Both of my hands were covered in baby poop and I had no idea what to do. So I did what any inexperienced guy with a baby who just pooped everywhere would do.
I cussed. Not at Riley, just said bad words out loud because I didn’t know what else to say or do.
I decided that I had to take this mess out of the living room, away from leather couches and an innocent dog nose. As I carried Riley into my sister’s bedroom where the changing table is, I was exposed to the malodorous bag of baby waste around my nephew. I could literally see the steam seeping out of the diaper.
Now, I had never changed a baby’s diaper before so performing that act was going to be an adventure in itself. Riley is a great kid and I think he knew that I was having trouble with the whole situation, so instead of playing it cool and trying to help me, he was kicking and screaming and crying because he wanted to watch “Simba!”
I’m strong though and I don’t give into tears, even if they are coming from a child who can’t put a two-word sentence together. I laid Riley down on the changing table and prepared myself for one of the biggest challenges in any adult’s life.
I was going to change that dirty diaper.
I don’t want you to think that this was your normal diaper with baby poop in it. I’m talking Taco Bell bean burrito worthy coming out the sides of this kids onesie. I thought back to cartoons where the characters put a cloths pin over their nose when they smell something bad and that’s exactly what I felt like doing. This bomb that was dropped was nuclear.
As the clueless uncle that I am, I start to examine this onesie and contemplate a plan to disarm this stink bomb without getting anymore baby poop on me. I carefully tried to undress Riley by detaching on of the bottom snaps of the onesie.
Well, apparently I am not cut out for the bomb squad because that thing literally detonated in my face. As I yanked one of the snaps off, little pieces of baby poop flew towards my face. I remember it happening in slow motion. I tried to dodge the particles of feces Matrix style but my efforts unfortunately fell short as a flying piece of turd landed on my upper lip.
Like I said earlier, this was no ordinary turd. My sister must have been feeding this kid nothing but hot pockets and raisins. I was no longer cussing for fear that if I opened my mouth, the poop would go into ninja mode and at first chance, attack my taste buds. I could feel the warmth of the liquidy discharge inching closer and closer to my closed mouth.
I suddenly felt my stomach race to my throat and I began to dry heave for what seemed to be a lifetime. With my arms straight out, I carried Riley into the bathroom so I could disinfect my face and wait for my mom to get home and take care of the now TWO infants in the house.
As I pathetically and dramatically tried to handle the situation, Riley had the nerve to continue to scream for Simba. It took all of me to not wipe some of his poop on his face and see how he liked it. However, that would mean getting poop on my fingers and that just isn’t going to fly.
I am upset and a little embarrassed that I couldn’t change my nephews diaper and I’m a disappointed in myself for not being able to help him out when he needed me. I guess it isn’t completely his fault that his poop damaged all feeling I had in my upper lip. But I can say, that I would never say ‘no’ to babysitting that little guy even if it meant taking a bullet of poop to the face.
Wrong.
I took a closer look at what had made my hand so damp and as I pulled my palm closer to my face I began to smell what it was. It unfortunately was not sweat. Both of my hands were covered in baby poop and I had no idea what to do. So I did what any inexperienced guy with a baby who just pooped everywhere would do.
I cussed. Not at Riley, just said bad words out loud because I didn’t know what else to say or do.
I decided that I had to take this mess out of the living room, away from leather couches and an innocent dog nose. As I carried Riley into my sister’s bedroom where the changing table is, I was exposed to the malodorous bag of baby waste around my nephew. I could literally see the steam seeping out of the diaper.
Now, I had never changed a baby’s diaper before so performing that act was going to be an adventure in itself. Riley is a great kid and I think he knew that I was having trouble with the whole situation, so instead of playing it cool and trying to help me, he was kicking and screaming and crying because he wanted to watch “Simba!”
I’m strong though and I don’t give into tears, even if they are coming from a child who can’t put a two-word sentence together. I laid Riley down on the changing table and prepared myself for one of the biggest challenges in any adult’s life.
I was going to change that dirty diaper.
I don’t want you to think that this was your normal diaper with baby poop in it. I’m talking Taco Bell bean burrito worthy coming out the sides of this kids onesie. I thought back to cartoons where the characters put a cloths pin over their nose when they smell something bad and that’s exactly what I felt like doing. This bomb that was dropped was nuclear.
As the clueless uncle that I am, I start to examine this onesie and contemplate a plan to disarm this stink bomb without getting anymore baby poop on me. I carefully tried to undress Riley by detaching on of the bottom snaps of the onesie.
Well, apparently I am not cut out for the bomb squad because that thing literally detonated in my face. As I yanked one of the snaps off, little pieces of baby poop flew towards my face. I remember it happening in slow motion. I tried to dodge the particles of feces Matrix style but my efforts unfortunately fell short as a flying piece of turd landed on my upper lip.
Like I said earlier, this was no ordinary turd. My sister must have been feeding this kid nothing but hot pockets and raisins. I was no longer cussing for fear that if I opened my mouth, the poop would go into ninja mode and at first chance, attack my taste buds. I could feel the warmth of the liquidy discharge inching closer and closer to my closed mouth.
I suddenly felt my stomach race to my throat and I began to dry heave for what seemed to be a lifetime. With my arms straight out, I carried Riley into the bathroom so I could disinfect my face and wait for my mom to get home and take care of the now TWO infants in the house.
As I pathetically and dramatically tried to handle the situation, Riley had the nerve to continue to scream for Simba. It took all of me to not wipe some of his poop on his face and see how he liked it. However, that would mean getting poop on my fingers and that just isn’t going to fly.
I am upset and a little embarrassed that I couldn’t change my nephews diaper and I’m a disappointed in myself for not being able to help him out when he needed me. I guess it isn’t completely his fault that his poop damaged all feeling I had in my upper lip. But I can say, that I would never say ‘no’ to babysitting that little guy even if it meant taking a bullet of poop to the face.
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