Month: June 2020

It was a few years since my father died, and my sweetheart had just deserted me. I just wanted to stay home, to get everything back. To have all my loved ones together with me again, but, I supposed, that is not possible anymore.

I haven’t left the house in months, but it is the only thing I have left, the only thing that keeps me connected to my family. Even if I went outside, there won’t be anyone there for me anyways; I was never close to my cousins or relatives, or anyone outside.

The scent in my house was becoming quite bad, why didn’t the Nergo man clean it properly? Now people outside are complaining about the smell that developed around my house. I knew that they were upset, but why should I care about them? In the end, they will find a solution to it; they had four men cross my lawn and sprinkle lime in all the outbuildings. After a week, the scent was gone, and more people started talking behind my back.

After a while, I got sick. I knew this would happen at one point, but it unexpectedly lasted for a long time. It was painful just to get up in the morning, and it was hard to fall asleep. I decided to cut my hair after the sickness; it grew too long.

When I saw the town again, a construction company came to pave the sidewalks. There I saw a big dark man, with a big voice and light eyes. His name was Homer Barron. He seemed like a nice person, and so I began to talk to him. We would drive in the yellow-wheeled buggy every Sunday. Those were the good days, before I visited the druggist, before they started disapproving my relationship with Homer.

When I did, I asked for some poison, the best the druggist had. I got some arsenic; it would kill anything up to an elephant. However, he asked me what I would do with the poison. I didn’t answer, but I was sure they already could guess what I was going to use it for. They thought I would kill myself.

I knew everyone was gossiping about me, talking about me behind my back. They were probably thinking I would kill myself, but, they were wrong. I just wanted to make sure that no one would leave me anymore. I didn’t want to be deserted again, like I was long ago.

After a while, when Homer came back, I used the arsenic. I kept him with me, and stayed with him, every day.

Being defensive may not be a bad thing, but when we become too defensive, it may cause lots arguments and may also trigger defensiveness in other people. Jim Tamm compares humans to chickens. There is the easy going batch of chickens, or the green zone chickens, and there is the mean and evil looking red zone chicken.

The green zone chickens were nice to each other. They also did not have a “star performer chicken”. A star perfomer is basically the chicken that produces the most eggs and makes a big deal out of it. The star performers also tend to be more aggressive. This makes a healthy environment for the chickens to thrive and produce eggs. At the end of one year, these chickens were healthy looking and productive.

On the other hand, there were the red zone chickens. They were aggressive and there was a star performer, only the star performer was good because it broke all the other chickens’ eggs. At the end of the year, these violent chickens had dramatically less eggs, and less chicken. These chickens ended up murdering each other because of the hostile environment.

This just shows even being aggressive or thin-skinned can even cause conflicts within chickens. Being defensive in people can cause other people to become defensive as well, like a chain reaction. One key of being less defensive is recognizing the signs before it happens. Jim Tamm suggests that people come up with a counter plan to stop it before it even shows.

The short story, “Rose for Emily,” by William Faulkner is about a lady named Emily. She was a very lonely and sad person. The narrator described her as a fallen monument. Colonel Sartoris(old mayor) said that she didn’t need to pay taxes, but some years later when a new mayor took over, he gave he a tax bill.

She did not respond, so the mayor sent some people to her house. The smell around her house was very stinky, so they used lemons to make it smell better. Homer Barron, a yankee, arrives in summer. He and Emily took rides together.

A little more than a year later, Homer Barron went to Emily’s house and was never seen again. Some people saw Emily buying a poison and thought she was going to kill herself. But she actually killed Homer Barron with it. She did this because she loved him, but he did not want to marry her. So she poisoned him and locked him in her room so he will always be with her.

I think the theme of the story is the difference between past and present. The first time the author shows this theme through is how Emily’s Old South house has turned into one of the last.

A Rose for Emily

She married and unmarried, but never had love,

She wanted to buy arsenic

To decimate the rats

She married another man

Whom she actually pretty loved

But in the end, the man died smiling

With her strand of hair besides

She died a mysterious death, but there was no rats in her house

She probably used the arsenic to try to end HER LIFE

But that ain’t the case, since the villagers proved it

So instead we worship Emily because she died a great death.

On the Ted talk, I think what the person was trying to say, was that the most productive ‘green’ chickens did it by laying the most eggs, and the most productive ‘red’ chickens laid the most eggs by sabotaging other hens so they wouldn’t lay as many eggs. I think this kind of relates to what businesses do to their opponents. For example, some businesses try to make their business so good, that the other business can’t compete with their’s, (green chickens) and some businesses that try to sabotage the other businesses so they seem bad. Also, I think that when defensiveness is triggered, like if someone is insulting you or is blaming you, you just try to defend yourself, with not really any other thoughts in mind, so you might not think about the consequences of what you say, and you might say mean things. I also agree about the ‘green’ workspace and the ‘red’ workspace. For example, if you and another person are both trying to get the same promotion, the ‘red’ way is to try to sabotage them to make sure they won’t get it, and the more ‘green’ way is to work hard and prove that you should get it. Another thing about the ‘green’ workspace and the ‘red’ workspace, he is right that it is more productive in a green workspace than a red workspace, but he said that a ‘green’ workspace can change to a ‘red’ workspace in seconds, but I think it has to happen over time, and it doesn’t happen that fast. For example, it you and a friend are trying to get the same promotion, you don’t immediately become enemies and try to sabotage each other,but it might happen over time, in the conversations that you and the friend have, when you are both trying to get the promotion.

A lot of people now have a lot of free time doing things because of quarantine. Some use it for beneficial purposes to improve the situation right now, some use it to create fake information and use it to create harm. Fake information can really harm people because you either make them overestimate the situation or make them underestimate it. 

Especially in this scenario right now, the Covid-19 is really something you need to care about. During this time, people are really bored and don’t know what to do. First, one can do something very productive. For example, let’s say you’re very bored at home and don’t know what to do. You came up with an idea that you can read and get better at things. With this knowledge, you can teach someone else, such as your parents, your friends, or your family. Then, they’ll learn this knowledge and be more careful.

On the other hand, you can do something very harmful. For instance, you can create fake information that makes people believe something that doesn’t really exist. Creating information that is not true can cause people to overestimate or underestimate something like I said before. If you create something that makes people overestimate something, they’ll do something that is excessive and doesn’t have to be done. One example will be they’ll buy things to prepare for the Covid-19 but they aren’t really necessary. 

Creating fake knowledge can really be bad for people. They can really think something that they really don’t need to. If you have time to create something harmful, why don’t you actually do something beneficial for humankind.

Being cooperative and not complaining will help one be more productive. When one is complaining or defending oneself, they will become uncontrollable. For example, when I say that I am not going to eat eggs for breakfast and we are going to eat them, I may just become so annoyed and will become angry or grumpy at everyone. Also, complaining makes some situations a lot harder to control. For instance, when one complains that their puppy is too brown or too large, one may end up getting in a fight with their parents, causing one to feel irritated and making them harder to come to an agreement. Lastly, defensiveness is caused by one being accused or being opposed by another. When one is defensive, they do not want to do something another way, or they are afraid to do so. To conclude, I think not complaining will help one greatly to focus and be on track.

Although many people may believe that using technology can help cure the coronavirus, it may actually be harming more people instead. According to Scientific American’s article about tech hurting the fight against this virus, they give several questions that creators need to ask themselves before using machinery to help our battle toward this disease. Being able to read these questions and answer them can help people when trying to create positive impacts on coronavirus through technology. 

I believe the most important question is, “Are you listening to experts and vulnerable communities?” If one does not listen to the requirements and learn the basics about the thing they are trying to solve, they may try to invent a device that is already made or something that, in reality, does not fight the battle against this situation at all. For example, if one is trying to help the coronavirus, they may try to start a company that creates masks when there are many other non-profit organizations that have spent years doing this. These novice creators may use the wrong fabrics, and the masks would just be useful. On the other hand, many people may think that technology will hugely impact the coronavirus in a positive way. Even though this can be true, if these questions are not answered, it can also be extremely harmful. This information may seem only useful to engineers, but everyone who knows any people in the tech industry should try to spread this information so that no one is harmed from poor communication. 

Miss Emily died, alone and friendless,

after a life that seemed hollow and endless.

Now she lays in the cemetery graves,

with Union and Confederate soldiers from Civil war days.

She had been a tradition, a duty, a care, a hereditary obligation,

before this whole situation.

She was a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist,

her voice was hard cold and dry, not a bit of sympathy to be traced.

This is really what happened, there really

and that’s it for the poem, based on “A Rose for Miss Emily.

The Poison Woman (Emily) is really, really, not awesome in the story “A Rose For Emily.” Here are three reasons why:

First of all, before the story even starts, her father dies (And her “sweetheart”). She is left really really sad and doesn’t want to go outside: “After her father’s death she went out very little; after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all” (Pg 2). If I were her, I’d be like the lady in the Ted Talk and get over it. It’s been so long that the Negro servant who had once been a young person became a very old guy. Also, I wouldn’t just never go outside ever again. There’s so many things you can do outside of your house. You can hang out with your friends (assuming you have any), you can travel to some landmarks and take photos to your heart’s content, and you can even go surfing!! You can’t order your Negro servant to go and hang out with your friends for you! You can’t order him to go and have fun surfing and taking photos for you! Emily’s kind of trying to freaking make a quarantine just for herself in the story and in my opinion, that’s not that cool.

Secondly, she seriously needs to lose some fat. “She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand” (Pg 2). From the way the story describes her, she is a very, very, fat, round, chubby, and obese woman. But I’ve never seen her actually do anything about it. This is probably because she has an attitude problem and won’t even go out of her own house, but still, nobody likes being fat, right? She could tell her Negro servant to start cooking more healthy meals. She could be like the guy in the same Ted Talk as I mentioned earlier and plant a bike in front of the television. She could start exercising by jogging around in her backyard while listening to music or doing squats while scrolling around on her phone, looking at the news and chatting with her friends (Again, assuming that she has any)! She could even do those awkward weight-loss dances that weight-loss people post on YouTube because they don’t have anything better to do (Not saying that losing weight is a bad thing, I just think those diet-dances are a little bit weird)!

Lastly, this girl is seriously violent. At some point in the story, she buys a container of poison: “‘I want some poison,’ she said” (Pg 4). At first, I thought she was going to kill herself to stop all the pain and all that nonsense (I wouldn’t put it past her, though). The people in her town thought so too and story said they said things like “‘She will kill herself’; and we said it would be the best thing” (Pg 5). But, at the end of the story, this idea gets destroyed because when they discover the Homer guy’s corpse in the upstairs room, they find a gray hair (Emily’s hair) next to it on a pillow with a head dent on it. It reveals that Emily might have poisoned Homer instead of herself because Homer wouldn’t marry her. I think this act is very violent and unnecessary. If Homer doesn’t like you, so what? There are plenty of other things to do like going on a vacation or trying to hit some golf balls into that teeny hole thing in the grass with a flag on it instead of trying to court an old dude who doesn’t even like you. I think this might be because of her poor attitude towards life again. You can’t just murder to have someone in your house forever. You just can’t! It’s wrong and very selfish too and if anyone found out, this time they probably wouldn’t buy your frantic screams to ask some dead colonel about the act of violence and wrongdoing.

All in all, I think this Emily woman is not being a good neighbor and not even being that awesome in this story by William Faulkner. Surely, I don’t think anybody would, considering that she’s quarantining herself and not socializing with anyone, she’s really fat, and that she literally murdered Homer in order to keep him in her house.