Twinkle

The song that I chose was Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. I chose this song because, as a child, this song inspired me a lot. I think that this song was was an inspiration of hope. When it says Up above the world so high it inspires me to do my best. It reminds me that the sky is the limit. This line helps me to push myself and to do my best. Whenever I am doing a project or a homework, I push myself to do my best. This blog is an example. I could have gone and chosen a random song that meant nothing to me. But instead, I chose this deep and meaningful song.

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star is a little kid's song. Most little kids, when they hear this song, like it just because of the feel of it and the rhyming. Also, it grabs their attention. It calms them down, almost like it tells them to go to sleep. This is why I like this song. It calms people down and it is child-friendly. It rhymes and, at the same time, is slow and calming.

Most people don't stop and notice the small things in life. They are always in a rush and trying to get somewhere. Especially in New York City. In New York City, every hour is rush hour. I feel like the song I chose kind of slows things down and gives you the time to notice small things. Maybe, if everyone wasn't always in a rush, they would be able to notice the little things in life. They would, most likely, be happier and less frantic. But this will never happen in NYC. I mean, after all, it is the city that never sleeps.

The Street Lawyer

The book "The Street Lawyer" by John Grisham is about a lawyer named Michael Brock who worked for a large firm in D.C. One day, Michael and several other lawyers were taken hostage by a homeless man with a gun. The man did not kill anyone, but he did something worse. Before he was killed by the S.W.A.T. team, he reminded them how selfish they had been. Together, they made over three million dollars, and yet none of it had been given to help poor people, such as the attacker himself. The homeless man didn't kill anyone, but he scarred them.

John Grisham wrote his story in a unique way. First, he started writing as if the attack was just starting. But then, he writes as if it had already happened. Then he goes back again. He just keeps switching back and forth. I think John Grisham did this for a reason. I think he did it to emphasize his message. It really makes his story more interesting.

Grisham has a good message in his story. He shows how some people even make millions of dollars each year yet they don't give to those who make a lot less than that. He reveals a big social injustice in the world around us: greediness. If no person in the world was greedy and everybody shared what they had, the world would be a lot better place.

I think that Grisham did an amazing job with his story. He really made it interesting while he introduced a big issue in the world. He empowers people to give and not to be greedy. He showed people how they should help and what to do. He really changed my way of thinking.

An Eye For an Eye

The article "Is 'an Eye for an Eye' Ethical?" by Ariel Kaminer, published in the New York Times Upfront on November 5th, 2012, Kaminer explains a story about a man in New York named Anthony B. who chained his bike to a pole. Then, a delivery food person chains his bike to Anthony's bike. When Anthony comes back, he can't take his bike so he chains both of them to the pole. Later, after Anthony ate lunch, the delivery food person is angry.

What Anthony did to the delivery food person was like a small punishment for doing wrong things to the people around him. In the article, Kaminer wrote "The guy was asking for it. He knowingly inconvenienced a stranger, so he couldn't have been all that shocked when someone returned the favor." Ariel Kaminer wants you to think about the question in the title: Is an eye for an eye ethical? Although it might seem like the right thing to do, is it?

I completely agree with Kaminer. In his article, he wrote "Your solution seems so elegant: Use the very tools of this man's discourtesy to teach him a lesson about respect. But as satisfying as eye-for-an-eye justice can be, it's unlikely to cause him to reflect on how he wronged you. It will probably just make him hate you and therefore care that much less about inconveniencing you or anyone else he might proceed to lock up." Now that he has pointed out to me that not everyone agrees with the saying "an eye for an eye", I might have second thoughts about what I do.