Alright then, so when I started this blog I wrote that I would be documenting my departure from the harbor that has been my life in Winnemucca. Well, finally, here is a post about that. For those of you who don't know, I am going to graduate next Thursday, and tomorrow is my last day of school. I haven't honestly been that excited about it. It's not that I'm dreading it or anything, just the opposite in fact. I am looking forward to it more than any single date in my entire life thus far. The gravity of it all just hasn't hit me yet. I still feel like it's ages away. I really can't believe that I won't walk through the doors into the glass hallway at Lowry next August. I can't believe I won't have soccer practice all fall. For that matter, I can't believe I'm done with high school sports. For four years my life has been dominated by Albert M. Lowry High School and I can't imagine it no longer being so.
The weight of it all is hitting me even as a write this. Suddenly everything just seems so dark and cold. I'm scared. As much as all my friends and family, relatives and mentors tell me how proud they are, I feel as if I have wasted so many opportunities. So many things I could have done have slipped through my fingers. And now I crouch in the starting blocks, awaiting the signal to start running into my own life, the life I will create for myself. And I'm even more scared. What if I'm not making the right choices? What if I cannot handle college? What if my course load is too heavy? What if I fail, what happens then? Where do I go after college? I have scattered ideas about graduate school, the Peace Corps, high ranking jobs. What if I can't do any of those? What if I am aiming too high? Should I just be content with a family and a good job in a nice town? But there has to be more than that. I want to travel, live in a city, write articles that change people's lives, help people who would normally never even knew I existed. But can I do all of these things? Should I? I feel like all of these things are going to rush up on me just as fast as graduation has, and again I won't be ready.
This morning my mom (oh God, what am I going to do without her? I can't do this...) warned me that things were sneaking up on me. She meant I needed to start writing thank you cards and letters, but she was right on such a higher level. You're right Mom, things are sneaking up on me, and I feel like I need to hide from them just a little longer...
So there that is...
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
You would think that with them working at a school they could read...
In the latest edition of Just Outside the Harbor I would like to embark with my readers on a relentless tirade into the idiocy that I encountered while filling out a survey on my high school's website. The survey, titled "Lowry Educational Mission and Beliefs Survey" sounded quite important, so being the highly opinionated individual that I am, I decided to fill it out. With the first few questions I knew my insanely sarcastic psyche was in for a real treat. The second question, for example, listed literacy as one of the 9 goals of high school education I was to rank in importance. Now, perhaps I am mistaken, but I was under the impression that literacy was one of the implied goals of any educational program. And shouldn't students be able to read before even entering high school? Just to be safe, I ranked it number two after "Job readiness", a choice I was soon to regret.
Later on in the survey, I was asked the same question twice ("7. Albert Lowry High School provides a safe environment for the students and faculty," and "9. I feel safe at Lowry High School,"), posed with a question asking what the overall purpose of the high school setting should be (strangely, "learning" and "education" were absent as choices, replaced instead by "safety", "respect", and "discipline"), and confronted with misspellings ("12. Albert Lowry High School provides adequate programs for giftd and talented students," [emphasis mine] to which I only wish "apparently not" was a choice I could choose to reply with).
Now, to be fair, I really have no idea who wrote this survey. It could have very well been a student who in all actuality really didn't know how to read very well, and was therefore bitter over the system having failed him. This student may then have composed this survey and purposely added "Literacy" as a goal of high school education to mock that which he hated most in the world. He also may have intentionally chosen to ignore the spell check button. Somehow I doubt all of this though. Somehow, deep in my cynical mind, I have a feeling that someone working for our school district, someone being paid with our tax dollars to educate our children, wrote this and published it on the school's website. And the powers that be approved it. This probably really isn't that big of a deal at all, or even as funny as I feel it is, but honestly, I'm tired and can't sleep and it sounded like a good idea for a blog to me.
So there that is...
Later on in the survey, I was asked the same question twice ("7. Albert Lowry High School provides a safe environment for the students and faculty," and "9. I feel safe at Lowry High School,"), posed with a question asking what the overall purpose of the high school setting should be (strangely, "learning" and "education" were absent as choices, replaced instead by "safety", "respect", and "discipline"), and confronted with misspellings ("12. Albert Lowry High School provides adequate programs for giftd and talented students," [emphasis mine] to which I only wish "apparently not" was a choice I could choose to reply with).
Now, to be fair, I really have no idea who wrote this survey. It could have very well been a student who in all actuality really didn't know how to read very well, and was therefore bitter over the system having failed him. This student may then have composed this survey and purposely added "Literacy" as a goal of high school education to mock that which he hated most in the world. He also may have intentionally chosen to ignore the spell check button. Somehow I doubt all of this though. Somehow, deep in my cynical mind, I have a feeling that someone working for our school district, someone being paid with our tax dollars to educate our children, wrote this and published it on the school's website. And the powers that be approved it. This probably really isn't that big of a deal at all, or even as funny as I feel it is, but honestly, I'm tired and can't sleep and it sounded like a good idea for a blog to me.
So there that is...
Friday, May 23, 2008
txt msg spk (Or, if you can't read this you must be old)
k so i dsided i rly h8 wen ppl use txt msg spk in evryday sentences or evn in txt msgs. i mean, u hve 160 ltrs y cant u put in vwls? & propr pnctuation! & cptlize ltrs! & jst cuz a # snds lk a wrd dsnt mn u cn use it as 1. it mks me :(...
so thrs tht...
so thrs tht...
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Primary Season Finally Coming To An End
As those of you who haven't been living under a rock for the past few months may have noticed, the primary season for the presidential election of 2008 is still going strong, at least for the Democrats. The Republicans united behind John McCain fairly quickly, as is common in presidential politics. The Democrats, on the other hand, are still in the midst of the longest primary season in memory, and every indication from both candidates points towards a contested convention in August.
Now, before I go any further, I'm going to briefly outline my political standing, so any underlying bias is easier to spot. Not saying there will be bias, I will try to write from an impartial point of view, but I believe that when dealing with political editorial type pieces, it is important to know the beliefs of the writer in order to more completely understand his thought processes. Anyways, I am a young college student who has just recently turned 18 and registered to vote. I consider myself fairly well informed on the various issues of the campaign, however I will admit I am very weak on knowledge concerning the economy. I mainly vote on domestic social issues and foreign policy. That being said, I am also a registered Democrat and have supported Barack Obama since the announcement of his candidacy in February 2007. But I digress.
Many have said that the long primary season has hurt the DNC, dividing it terribly. These people say that such division has hurt the party so much, that the Democrats risk losing an election that a year ago was all but handed to them no matter who they chose to run. They say that despite early misgivings among many Republicans over their party's choice of John McCain, these doubts have largely been set aside and the party united, and that the Democrats will be unable to unite so broadly behind their eventual nominee. The schism created by such a lengthy and intense primary season is just to great to heal in such a short time. I plainly and flatly disagree. Despite my unwaivering and longstanding support for Mr. Obama, if Hillary Clinton were to emerge with the DNC's nomination for President, I would wholeheartedly support her, and I believe that despite what many people think, the overwhelming majority would join me. I am equally sure that Senator Clinton's supporters would fall behind Obama if he is chosen. This is because, as much as we believe in the candidate we have chosen to support, we are all Democrats and support the issues and positions that the party stands for.
The capacity of the American populace to vote on substantial issues rather than superficial characteristics has been hugely underestimated by the mainstream media. Now anyone who knows me knows my incredible reluctance to blame the media for anything (I see it as a cowardly cop-out) but there really is no way around it here. The American people are smarter than they are given credit for, plain and simple.
With that being said, if I am right and Democrats unite behind whoever the eventual nominee is, then the lengthy primary season holds only good things. Turn on any political news show, and you will see that the overwhelming majority of coverage is devoted to either Hillary Clinton of Barack Obama, while Senator McCain is merely a side note. It takes outrageous comments for the Republican to gain any sizable coverage at all, and for the most part, such outrageous comments have not served his image well. If the Democratic Convention in Denver is contested, that means another three months of the same lopsided coverage in favor of the Democrats. That means only three months total that the GOP can hope for equal airtime before the general election. The more the Democratic candidates are kept in the minds of voters, the better off the Deomcratic party will be. It really is a win.
Now of course this entire scenario hinges on my assumption that issues are more important to the Democratic voters than grudges, so we will see how right I am in November.
So there that is...
Now, before I go any further, I'm going to briefly outline my political standing, so any underlying bias is easier to spot. Not saying there will be bias, I will try to write from an impartial point of view, but I believe that when dealing with political editorial type pieces, it is important to know the beliefs of the writer in order to more completely understand his thought processes. Anyways, I am a young college student who has just recently turned 18 and registered to vote. I consider myself fairly well informed on the various issues of the campaign, however I will admit I am very weak on knowledge concerning the economy. I mainly vote on domestic social issues and foreign policy. That being said, I am also a registered Democrat and have supported Barack Obama since the announcement of his candidacy in February 2007. But I digress.
Many have said that the long primary season has hurt the DNC, dividing it terribly. These people say that such division has hurt the party so much, that the Democrats risk losing an election that a year ago was all but handed to them no matter who they chose to run. They say that despite early misgivings among many Republicans over their party's choice of John McCain, these doubts have largely been set aside and the party united, and that the Democrats will be unable to unite so broadly behind their eventual nominee. The schism created by such a lengthy and intense primary season is just to great to heal in such a short time. I plainly and flatly disagree. Despite my unwaivering and longstanding support for Mr. Obama, if Hillary Clinton were to emerge with the DNC's nomination for President, I would wholeheartedly support her, and I believe that despite what many people think, the overwhelming majority would join me. I am equally sure that Senator Clinton's supporters would fall behind Obama if he is chosen. This is because, as much as we believe in the candidate we have chosen to support, we are all Democrats and support the issues and positions that the party stands for.
The capacity of the American populace to vote on substantial issues rather than superficial characteristics has been hugely underestimated by the mainstream media. Now anyone who knows me knows my incredible reluctance to blame the media for anything (I see it as a cowardly cop-out) but there really is no way around it here. The American people are smarter than they are given credit for, plain and simple.
With that being said, if I am right and Democrats unite behind whoever the eventual nominee is, then the lengthy primary season holds only good things. Turn on any political news show, and you will see that the overwhelming majority of coverage is devoted to either Hillary Clinton of Barack Obama, while Senator McCain is merely a side note. It takes outrageous comments for the Republican to gain any sizable coverage at all, and for the most part, such outrageous comments have not served his image well. If the Democratic Convention in Denver is contested, that means another three months of the same lopsided coverage in favor of the Democrats. That means only three months total that the GOP can hope for equal airtime before the general election. The more the Democratic candidates are kept in the minds of voters, the better off the Deomcratic party will be. It really is a win.
Now of course this entire scenario hinges on my assumption that issues are more important to the Democratic voters than grudges, so we will see how right I am in November.
So there that is...
Monday, May 12, 2008
A bit of a useless tirade...
Alright, sorry it took so long for me to post a new blog, but I have been extremely busy as of late. Just getting school stuff done, all that stuff, I'm sure you know the drill. By the way, thanks to my Aunt Dodi for posting the link to my blog on her page, I promise I'll return the favor when the opportunity arises. So anyways, this post is going to be a bit of a tirade against something that has been bothering me lately.
Anyways, if you live here, you may know it, but for those who don't, Winnemucca has an extremely bad hard drug problem among people my age. Far disparate of its population. Some people say this is because we are at the junction of two major highways, some blame it on the size of the town. I don't know the cause, and I'm not going to pretend to. Perhaps later on I will research that a little bit more and post, but for now we will just cover my observations. Anyways, I'm a senior in high school, I would consider myself fairly social, and I will often find myself in places where quite honestly I shouldn't be. Now I don't mean stupid high school parties where bored teenagers drink and act stupid or even the comparably less serious problem of tobacco and marijuana. While that may be a problem, it is a separate problem. I'm talking about the places where the minute you walk in you wonder why you're there. The kind of places where you just don't go in any other rooms except the one you're already in, out of sheer fear of what you will find. The kind of places you stay for ten minutes and that's way too long. Now I know what some of you are thinking, "Of course you're going to think the drug problem is going to be bad if you go to shady places like that, you're observations are skewed," or at least you're thinking that if you think in complete sentences like I do. Anyways, that's what I thought too at first, but oh how wrong we are!
It's not just the shady people who abuse pain killers, eat 'shrooms, smoke meth, pop ecstasy, shoot heroin and do God knows what else (those are just the ones I've seen). It's also the athletes, the normal kids, the smart ones. You know what I mean, the kind of golden kids that everyone likes, that all the junior high kids emulate, that win scholarships and are the pride of the community. These aren't just the high school dropouts, but the graduates too, the ones going on to bright futures. Those of you young enough to remember going through DARE or whatever similar program was in your area might remember how much they stressed not to believe the excuse that "everyone is doing it." But that's just it, in Winnemucca everyone does it. I honestly feel that by not being addicted to anything (with the exception of maybe caffeine but that doesn't count) I am in the minority at my high school.
People chew in class, trip on "e" at dances, and hotbox cars all while I and a few others watch in dazed confusion. It's not that I feel super pressured to do all of these things, I mean, I've held off on constant drug use/experimentation this far, so I'll be alright, and people seem to respect the decisions of people like myself who don't do these things. I just feel like it's all kind of pathetic that people need to take little blue pills to have fun at prom and chew up vicodin to be able to sit through an English class. I dunno, maybe I'm wrong and I'm missing out on some kind of fun, but I think my life is hard enough through the prism I see it through now, without anymore confusing lights and sounds, so to speak. There will probably be more on this later, but for now I'm done.
So there that is...
Anyways, if you live here, you may know it, but for those who don't, Winnemucca has an extremely bad hard drug problem among people my age. Far disparate of its population. Some people say this is because we are at the junction of two major highways, some blame it on the size of the town. I don't know the cause, and I'm not going to pretend to. Perhaps later on I will research that a little bit more and post, but for now we will just cover my observations. Anyways, I'm a senior in high school, I would consider myself fairly social, and I will often find myself in places where quite honestly I shouldn't be. Now I don't mean stupid high school parties where bored teenagers drink and act stupid or even the comparably less serious problem of tobacco and marijuana. While that may be a problem, it is a separate problem. I'm talking about the places where the minute you walk in you wonder why you're there. The kind of places where you just don't go in any other rooms except the one you're already in, out of sheer fear of what you will find. The kind of places you stay for ten minutes and that's way too long. Now I know what some of you are thinking, "Of course you're going to think the drug problem is going to be bad if you go to shady places like that, you're observations are skewed," or at least you're thinking that if you think in complete sentences like I do. Anyways, that's what I thought too at first, but oh how wrong we are!
It's not just the shady people who abuse pain killers, eat 'shrooms, smoke meth, pop ecstasy, shoot heroin and do God knows what else (those are just the ones I've seen). It's also the athletes, the normal kids, the smart ones. You know what I mean, the kind of golden kids that everyone likes, that all the junior high kids emulate, that win scholarships and are the pride of the community. These aren't just the high school dropouts, but the graduates too, the ones going on to bright futures. Those of you young enough to remember going through DARE or whatever similar program was in your area might remember how much they stressed not to believe the excuse that "everyone is doing it." But that's just it, in Winnemucca everyone does it. I honestly feel that by not being addicted to anything (with the exception of maybe caffeine but that doesn't count) I am in the minority at my high school.
People chew in class, trip on "e" at dances, and hotbox cars all while I and a few others watch in dazed confusion. It's not that I feel super pressured to do all of these things, I mean, I've held off on constant drug use/experimentation this far, so I'll be alright, and people seem to respect the decisions of people like myself who don't do these things. I just feel like it's all kind of pathetic that people need to take little blue pills to have fun at prom and chew up vicodin to be able to sit through an English class. I dunno, maybe I'm wrong and I'm missing out on some kind of fun, but I think my life is hard enough through the prism I see it through now, without anymore confusing lights and sounds, so to speak. There will probably be more on this later, but for now I'm done.
So there that is...
Monday, May 5, 2008
I'll miss you Ammie...
Okay, so this is about a week old, and I know most of you won't even care about it, but my grandmother passed away last week and I feel like this needs to be posted. This was kind of a short group collaboration by all of my cousins, so I'm not claiming credit for all of it, I just feel like I want it on this blog.
To you, she was Aunt Helen, Hoolie, Mom. To her, we were Angels, Treasures, Peaches, Beesaws, and even Dickens. To us she is, and always will be, Ammie. These are the moments with her we will always remember, and that’s the last and greatest gift we could give to her.So there that is...
From ballet recitals to classical music concerts, Baptisms, First Communions, graduations and a wedding you have been there for us. While learning to ride a blue tricycle in the driveway, fishing at the reservoir when not big enough to be one of the guys, making applesalad and playing “Lady, I’m lost,” you taught us the lessons of life.
Sleepovers, movie nights, easter egg hunts to make us laugh. Angel night lights, Ammie’s Lambies, and Buddy Dolls, Christmas stockings and the ever faithful Valentine’s Day cards always showed us you cared. With these and more you left a lasting impression on all of us and taught us lessons we will pass on to our families.
On the most important days of my life she always said, “Don’t worry Treasure, it won’t rain on your day--Ammie won’t let it.” Well Ammie, no matter what the weather, we know you love us and won’t let it rain on our important days. We love you Ammie and will always be your Angels, Treasures, Peaches, Beesaws, and even your Dickens’. Rest well.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
The Beginning
Alright, so for some reason I have decided to start my own blog. Eventually I'm sure it will be full of incredible, intelligent posts, but right now I have nothing to write about and am still trying to figure this all out. For those of you who don't know who I am, my name is Jay Balagna and I am an 18 year old high school senior. I know some of you are probably cringing that I just gave away my real name on the internet, but honestly, if you search it on MySpace or Facebook, you'll get way more than that, so I really don't see the point of hiding it. With that lovely intro, I guess I will explain my title choice. It comes from my favorite quote, "Boats are perfectly safe in the harbor, but that's not what boats are built for." I guess I feel that now that I'm about to embark on my own journey, my own life, that I'm kind of leaving the harbor so to speak. So parts of this blog will document that, my adventure out of the safety that has been my childhood. I'm not saying that's all it will be about, because that would be really boring, but that will be a big part of it. The rest will probably be little tirades following no particular pattern until I get the hang of this blogging thing down. So there that is...
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