Segregation In Medical Facilities

Despite of what segregationists, like George Wallace and protesters on the image below, believe, many of us cannot deny that The Jim Crow  system caused more harm to society than good.

Video 1: Jan. 14, 1963: Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, calling for Segregation forever. Source: ABC News Videos.

Fig. 1: Protesters rally against integration at the State Capitol, Little Rock,
             Arkansas, 1959. By John T. Bledsoe

The legitimized discrimination of African Americans created a widespread neglect of many citizens caused especially by segregation within hospitals and medical facilities. Rebecca Skloot implies in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks that the John Hopkins Hospitals had wards for “colored” people and wards for white people during the Jim Crow, and staff were instructed “to send people away, even it meant they might die in the parking lot” (Skloot 15).

Fig. 2: Sign suggesting segregated facilities. Photo from wcny.org by unknown author.

Fig. 3: Segregation in medical facilities remained even after it had been outlawed. This picture shows an overcrowded maternity ward at the Memphis' John Gaston Hospital in 1970. Photo by the Commercial Appeal Files.

The medical experience was drastically different for Blacks and Whites, as the picture above suggests. In Raleigh, North Carolina, at one point the St. Agnes Hospital was the only facility that accepted African Americans, and it was also the location where sad events have taken place. In the 50s, Chales Drew, the man who discovered a way to store blood, had an accident and needed blood plasma. He was taken to the St. Agnes Hospital because he was a n African American. However, the technology he invented was not available there, even though is was already a common practice at hospitals that served Whites. He died as a result of this cruel irony.

Fig. 4: St Agnes Hospital, the once only medical care facility for African Americans in Raleigh, North Carolina. Photo by John Morris.

African Americans were also in many case victims of unethical human experimentation. Among the victims of those Nazi inspired projects are 7 male infants who were secretly fed radioactive iodine at the University of Tennessee Memphis; 17 newborn infants received intramuscular radioiodine at the University of Iowa; many pregnant women who were secretly injected radioisotope phosphorus-32 before and after delivery at the AC Berkeley; and some 600 poor African American -200 of which were healthy at before they entered the program- from rural Alabama who participated in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment- they were never told they had syphilis and were never treated, even though treatment was already available.

Fig. 5: Tuskegee "test subject" having his blood drawn. Photo by Jstaloriv.

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Fig. 6: Birth anomalies due to radioactive material experimentation on humans. Photo by Christofer Brusby.

Even though the Jim Crow system is long gone and segregation has been made illegal, statistics suggests that medicare might still be not equal for Blacks and Whites.

Fig. 5: Statistics shows that life expectancy for Blacks is lower than that for Whites.

I hope one day Martin Luther King's dream will come true, and the United States of America will be a true progressive nation that provides equality, freedom, justice and prosperity to all citizens.

Video 2: Matin Luther King's addressing civil rights protester in Washington, August 28 1963. Source: Youtube.com, posted by sullentoys.

“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore...” 

- Cesar Chavez

The Real Wonder Woman

According to Joseph Campbell’s, we are all heroes. I understand that this discussion is either about Rebecca and/or Deborah - and I am in no way shape or form denying their heroism - , but as they crossed the threshold into the unknown world, they resurrected an unwitting hero: Henrietta Lacks. In my opinion, Henrietta is the real wonder woman.

Henrietta Lacks, a descendant of slaves and slaveholders, grew up in Clover, VA farming tobacco on her family land, the same land her relative still farm today. Aspiring a dream of becoming middle class, she left her childhood home and migrated to Baltimore. She was on the mildest of her journey when her life was cut short. However, her cells lived on to realize society’s dreams of health and knowledge.

When alive, Henrietta was known for being a giver and always willing to help others. She was constantly smiling and it was very pleasant to be around her, as reported by many of her friends and family members. She helped on the farm until she moved to Baltimore. Henrietta helped in many more ways than she ever imagined.

Henrietta entered the John Hopkins University clinic seeking help with her bleeding cervical. It was later discovered that Henrietta suffered from a cancerous cervical tumor. Without her consent, doctors removed sample of her tissue which not only survived outside of Henrietta’s body, but they thrived. They continued growing to become the HeLa cells. Without HeLa, scientists could not’t have tested for diseases such as polio, hepatitis, rabies, smallpox, measles, leukemia, HIV, and several other types of cancer without the sacrifice of human lives. Furthermore, HeLa cells sped up the research process and saved researchers billions of dollars.

In a way, Henrietta signed a pact with the devil when she entered the Johns Hopkins clinic. On October 4, 1951, Mrs. Lacks passed away after great sorrow and agony. She died in a racially segregated ward of the Johns Hopkins hospital. But the saga of this unwitting hero does not end with her death or with her contributions to science. Her story has shed light on the continued racist exploitation of the powerless and the poor civilians without the resources to provide for their medical care who often fall victims of the many Nazi like experiments performed by the government.

Authorities seemed to believe, in those days, that they had the right to experiment on the unfortunate poor because they could not pay for medical fees. Because their bills were paid by our tax money, they felt that the millions of powerless and poor citizens had the moral obligation to give something in return to society.

Our unsung hero was betrayed by the nation she trusted. Her body, like those of many others unfortunate patients, was intentionally turned into a test tube for the US government. Henrietta did not die of cancer. She was killed by radium radiation because she was part of a covert cold-war program that was experimenting on radium to discover its affects on the human body. Henrietta’s journey sheds light on the wrongdoing and crimes against humanity committed by projects, generally sponsored by the CIA, involving unsuspected civilians used as human guinea pigs.

Among the victims of those Nazi inspired projects are 7 male infants who were secretly fed radioactive iodine at the University of Tennessee Memphis; 17 newborn infants received intramuscular radioiodine at the University of Iowa; many pregnant women who were secretly injected radioisotope phosphorus-32 before and after delivery at the AC Berkeley; the Rongelap people from the Marshall Islands who were deliberately exposed to radiation after the explosion of 67 atomic and hydrogen bombs.

As part of her therapy for cervical cancer, Dr. Lawrence Wharton, a Johns Hopkins surgeon, stitched a tube containing 4800 mg-h of radium capsules to the wall of Henrietta’s cervix. The radium and x-ray therapy were presumed to slow down mitosis of the cancerous cells, but in fact it killed Mrs. Lacks. The radium was provided as a “courtesy” of the US Atomic Energy Commission. The same sponsor of the many experiments performed on the victims mentioned above.

At the time of Henrietta’s admission, the Johns Hopkins was a major covert CIA covert human guinea pig institution. Aside experiment with radiation, they performed research and experimented with drugs for mind control. The CIA project was part of the agency effort to develop a brainwashing technology and drug to affect large populations.

In light of this, with the help of Deborah and Rebecca, Henrietta is my chosen hero. She is my chosen hero not because of her accomplishments. She is my chosen hero because of her personal misfortune. She is the real wonder woman who has paid the ultimate price. She may have never returned home, but her cells are still alive to this day. They will live for the great benefit of humanity in both scientific and moral ways

To Clone or Not to Clone?

He snapped back, “ Who cares what his name is? He always telling people my mother name Helen Lane!” Zakariyya stood, towering over me, yelling, “What he did was wrong! Dead wrong. You leave that stuff up to God. People say maybe them taking her cells and makin them live forever to create medicines was what God wanted. But I don’t think so. If He wants to provide a disease cure, He’d provide a cure of his own, it’s not for man to tamper with. And you don’t lie and clone people behind their backs. That’s so wrong- it’s one of the most violating parts of this whole thing. It’s like me walking up to your bathroom while you in there with your pants down. It’s the highest degree of disrespect. That’s why I say I hope he burns in hell. If he were here right now, I’d kill him dead (Skloot 246).

I like this paragraph because it raises the question about the controversy around cloning. In Zakariyya’s opinion, man should not be tempering with God’s will. I am not so sure about that. Make no mistake, I am not sure about cloning a whole person, but the benefits of cloning tissues and organs are unimaginable. One that stands out in my mind is that people that need transplant will be able to live the rest of their life with more normalcy that they the ones who have transplanted organs do now – they need to take many different drugs so their bodies don’t reject the new organ. My own personal opinion is that more good than harm will come from cloning and stem cell researches. What do you think?

A few days later, ten months after our first conversation, Deborah called me. When I answered the phone, she yelled, “Fine, I’ll talk to you!” She didn’t say who she was and didn’t need to. “If I’m gonna do this, you got to promise me some things,” she said. “First, if my mother is so famous in science history, you got to tell everybody to get her name right. She ain’t no Helen Lane. And second, everybody always say Henrietta Lacks had four children. That ain’t right, she had five children. My sister died and there’s no leavin her out of the book. I know you gotta tell all the Lacks story and there’ll be good and bad in that cause of my brothers. You gonna learn all that, I don’t care. The thing I care about is, you gotta find out what happened to my mother and my sister, cause I need to know (Skloot 233).

This passage is very important because it is milestone. From this point on, Deborah helps Skloot with her research about Henrietta. She starts to have detailed information and unprecedented access to Henrietta’s medical records. She also has access to Elsie’s records. Furthermore, Deborah starts to introduce Skloot to other family members. This is also a milestone because it reveals the motives why Deborah wants to help Skloot. I especially like the fact that Deborah helped Skloot not because of money, but because she wanted to make sure that the world got the story right. She was especially concerned about the world knowing that her mother’s name was Henrietta Lacks and the she had five children instead of four as many believed. The sense of pride I get out of Deborah is inspirational.

Chapter Twenty-One: Night Doctors

“But night doctors weren’t just fictions conjured as scare tactics. Many doctors tested drug on slaves and operated on them to develop new surgical techniques, often without using anesthesia. Fear of night doctors only increased in the early 1900s, as black people migrated north to Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, and news spread that medical schools there were offering money in exchange for bodies. Black corpses were routinely being exhumed from graves for research and an underground shipping industry kept schools in the North supplied with black bodies from the South for anatomy courses. The bodies sometimes arrived, a dozen or so at a time, in barrels labeled turpentine” (Skloot 166).

I like this passage because not only it shows that there is some truth behind the myth of the night doctors, but also because it illustrates Rebecca’s writing style. She successfully engaged me as a reader and caught my attention. Every time I pick up the book for a reading session I some across some passage that I think to myself “I have to tell everyone I know about this!”  Her meticulous research brings this real story to life, and the way she developed her characters makes me fell like I am watching a movie in 3-D. She successfully combines scientific research with personal perspective. As I am approaching the end of the book I often find myself asking how come I haven’t read this book before. This is definitely a must read for everyone who enjoys good writing about facts with a flavor of fiction.

Chapter Twenty: The HeLa Bomb

“Gartler’s findings did not go over well. In fifteen years since George Gey had first grown HeLa, the number of published articles involving cell culture had more than tripled each year. Scientist had spent millions of dollars conducting research on those cells to study the behavior of each tissue type, comparing one to another, testing the unique response of different cell types to specific drugs, chemicals, or environment. If all those cells were in fact HeLa, it would mean that millions of dollars had been wasted, and researchers who’d found that various cells behaved differently in culture could have some explaining to do” (Skloot 153).

This passage refers to the commotion Gartler’s announcement created when he suggested that HeLa was contaminating every single lab in the world and their cell cultures. I like this passage because it reminds how slow scientific advancement moves and how much effort is put into researches. It made me think about the big dispute between Darwin and Lamarck over how life evolved. Even though they both agreed that life changes gradually over time to a better suited form and become more adapted to their environments, they disagreed on how and if changes were passed to following generations.

On the one hand Lamarck believed that changes made by what and organism want or needs were passed down to offspring. He also believed that evolution happens according to a predetermined plan and that results have already been decided. On the other hand Darwin believed that changes in an organism during his life do no affect evolution. He suggested that the variation within the same species is what helps them to thrive or to disappear from the face or the Earth according to natural selection. The individuals with helpful traits thrive, while the ones not so well adapted die off. Eventually, over time, all of the individuals from that species will have the good trait. Although Darwin’s theory is accepted today, during his days he was humiliated in many different occasion for his revolutionary ideas. I imagine this was a similar situation as that of the HeLa cell bomb theory.

Did Henrietta Know?

“’I’ll never forget’, Aurelian said. ‘George told me he leaned over Henrietta’s bed and said ‘Your cells will make you immortal.’ He told Henrietta her cells would help save the lives of countless people, and she smiled. She told him she glad her pain would come to some good for someone” (Skloot 66).

This passage is special because it suggests that Henrietta was told her cells were taken and were being used for medical experiments. It also implies that she was in peace, before she died, with her cells being taken from her and that they would live forever. One can have a slight idea of what wonderful person Henrietta must have been by reading her words that she is glad that her pain would come to some good for someone. My opinion is that Henrietta was a giver and a selfless person who was always thinking about doing good deeds to others.

Why Are HeLa Cells Important?

“The reason Henrietta’s cell were so precious was because they allowed scientists to perform experiments that would have been impossible with a living human. They cut HeLa cells and exposed them to endless toxins, radiation and infection. They bombarded them with drugs, hoping to find one that would kill malignant cells without destroying normal ones. They studied immune suppression and cancer growth by injecting HeLa cells into immune-compromised rats, which developed malignant tumors like much like Henrietta’s. If cells died in the process, it didn’t matter – scientists could go back to their eternally growing HeLa stock and start all over again“ (Skloot 58).

I like this passage because it explains the importance of HeLa cells to science and how scientists can performs experiments without any concern if cells are going to die or not. They could not perform the same experiments on a person who is alive because they, scientists, were not sure what the results of such experiments were going to be, as it is the case in most experiments. Without HeLa cells, such experiments would have been impossible to perform. Hence, HeLa cells were, and still are, crucial to medical development.

Segregation

“On January 29, 1951, David Lacks sat behind the wheel of his Buick, watching the rain fall. He was parked under a towering oak tree outside John’s Hopkins Hospital with three of his children - two still in diapers – waiting for their mother, Henrietta. A few minutes earlier, she’d jumped out of her car, pulled her jacket over her head, and scurried into the hospital, past the “colored” bathroom, the only one she was allowed to use”. (Skloot 13)

I chose this passage because it makes reference to a time when segregation was a real problem in the U.S. The assigned facilities to white and “colored” people, as referenced to in this passage, were clear examples of how divided society was in those days. What shocks me the most is that this happened not too long ago. Even though some white Americans welcomed African Americans as full and equal citizens, many others used ignorance, racism and self interest to maintain and spread racial division. It is specially embarrassing that the government created laws that condemned non-white Americans to second-class citizenship.

I hope that this book will address the racial division because this is a subject that draws my attention. I am originally from Brazil, and even though we also had slavery and racial discrimination is still a problem they face there, it was never institutionalized as it was here in the U.S. How can a nation who trusts in God, as it is mentioned in many American symbols, and who is a global leader in many ways sponsor such a retrograde mentality? I just don not understand.

Deborah's Voice

“But I always have thought it was strange , if our mother cells done so much for medicine, how come her family can’t afford to see no doctors? Don’t make no sense. People got rich off my mother without us even knowin about them takin her cells, now we don’t get a dime. I used to get so mad about that to where it made me sick and I had to take pills. But I don’t got it in me no more to fight. I just want to know who my mother was”. (Skloot 9)

I like this passage because it raises a few questions about Henrietta’s case. The first one is the irony that the family who has involuntarily contributed so much to the advance of medicine and science in general not be able to afford medical coverage? The second question it raises is if the patients or their family deserves any credit in medical research they happen to have participated in. These are question with no easy answers.

Of course Henrietta’s family deserve medical coverage, but don’t any other family? It definitely sounds unfair that so many people have benefited from HeLa cells and that Henrietta’s family has not seen a dime from it, and they can’t even afford to go see a doctor. However, people who participate in medical research are usually volunteers. Furthermore, Henrietta didn’t even know that an extra sample was taken from her cancer.

Let’s now consider if she had been asked if they could take an extra sample of her cancer. She could have said no and many people would have died from cancer, polio among other diseases whose cure came research done on HeLa cells. She could also have said, yes and would have been the right thing to do. Should people really get rewarded for doing the right thing? If so, I want a dime for every time I stop at a red light.

As I read this book, I hope that Rebecca will address these questions. I want to see what experts, doctors, philosophers among others, have to say about this ethical issues

Hydraulic Fracturing: Bringing Facts to Light

If you are like most people in the U.S., all you know about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking as it is popularly known, is perhaps the fracking song or the documentary Gasland which suggest that fracking is contaminating water supplies to the point that water can be lit on fire. Fracking is a fast-growing practice used to recover natural gas which burns more cleanly than coal and oil. Natural gas is an abundant energy resource in the U.S., and it is mainly used today to create electricity, heat homes and heavily used in factories. Environmentalist say that natural gas will help slow down global warming due to its low carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. The controversy is that the only way that natural gas exploration and production can be economically viable is by combining hydraulic fracture and horizontal drilling. Whereas environmentalists claim that this new technology poses major threats to our environment, experts claim that it is safe if done responsibly and competently. Considering that natural gas is our cleanest readily available energy option as we move towards clean, sustainable energy sources, we can not afford to sacrifice the potential benefits from natural gas if fracking is banned altogether. As the technology evolves, the government needs to develop sound regulation on hydraulic fracturing in order to hold oil companies accountable to higher drilling standards.

          The new technology used to explore and produce natural gas consists of drilling vertically until a target rock formation is reached. Once in the target zone, six to eight horizontal wells are drilled from a single vertical well. The fracking is then performed in those horizontal wells. Hydraulic Fracturing is the pumping of a hydraulic fluid under extreme pressure into a target geological formation to create fractures or cracks in the rock. These fissures allow the natural gas to flow more freely out of the aggregate into the well in economic quantities. The fracture fluid is made primarily of water. The water is mixed with sand and other additives that help with the fracturing process. Water and sand make up over 98% of the fracture fluid (1). The amount of water needed to drill a well and fracture the rock usually ranges from 2 to 4 million gallons, depending on unique characteristics of each basin and formation. These numbers may sound large, but it is relatively small when compared to other water uses such as agriculture. Ground water reservoirs and the environment in general are protected by a combination of casing, steel pipes, and cement that is installed when the well is drilled. Furthermore, there are thousands of feet of strata separating the fractured horizontal wells and any fresh or treatable aquifers. Although natural gas offers a number of environmental advantages over other sources of energy, it still not perfect, and its exploration commonly damages the environment.

One environmental consideration associated with natural gas development is surface disturbance. Roads and well pads are needed to access the well site. These are constructed to safely move and relocate the drilling rig and other equipments associated with the drilling process. Pits are excavated to contain the drilling fluids. As production sites move closer and closer to more populated areas, people are also disturbed by noisy equipments and a drastically increase in traffic of heavy vehicles and machinery. This increased traffic frequently exceeds the weight load of public roadways that were not originally designed to withstand the high traffic volume of heavy equipment, drastically accelerating pavement weathering caused by extensive damages to the road structure. Consequently, tax payers who live close to active well sites are adversely affected by the gas production operations given that a larger portion of the local government resource is allocated to roadway maintenance. Furthermore, activities associated with gas development can affect wildlife. As more and more wells, roads and pipelines are built, wildlife habitat becomes fragmented, and vast wooded areas are cleared. Reclamation of such disturbed includes land contouring and re-vegetation measures. These measures occur over a long period of time which endangers the very existence of many species.

The Search for a Subject

Local: 

Toll roads: unfair or democratic?

Overpass construction: Is it really necessary? Is it worth it the cost?

College Tuition: Can I afford its rising costs?

State:

Gay Marriage: Is the law going to pass in MN?

Vikings new stadium: why should I pay for it when I don't even like football. Besides, why should they get anything when they can't even win a game?

National:

Oil Drilling: Problem or solution?

Immigration: Close borders? Persecute illegal immigrants in the country?

Military benefits: Why are we not taking care of our heroes?

I am taking Statics and Comp this semester, and we have not really got into any continued, heated debate. I think this is one of the down side of taking online classes. We lose some of the human element. I sort of miss being in a regular lecture class that involves debates and idea exchange. I have been taking technical classes only for a while and we do not have the opportunity to have such heated debates. There is only so much people can disagree on when it comes to Chemistry, Physics and Math.

A gullible person is one who is too ready to believe what other people say. Therefore, he/she is easily tricked. I thought I was not naive, but after taking the test at museum of hoaxes web cite I learn that I am not that critical of what smart when it comes to evaluating what I see. I miserably failed on the first test (only had 3 right), but improved some on the second test (six right answers). Some of those pictures look very real, but some others are very hard to believe. I thought that the picture of the deer accident was a hoax because I would never imagined that the deer had jumped off an overpass. Another picture that stands out in my mind is the one of the super tall woman not only because she reminded me of the movie “Dude Where Is My Car?”, but also because she was way out of proportion compared to the rest of the picture. She would not’t even fit in one of those cars on the background.

I believe Wikipedia is a good quick source of information, but not very reliable if one is doing an in depth research. The reason why Wikipedia is not a reliable source for a serious research is because it is collaboratively written. In other words, anyone around the world can post or edit an article making it very difficult to verify the writer’s credential. Furthermore, when evaluating a source's credibility, it is a good idea to check if it's a personal page. If so, it may be a good idea to inspect the person behind the article a little more suspiciously. Be especially aware of articles which no one claims liability for its content. Common sense seems to indicate that anybody can place anything on the World Wide Web in no time at all. When evaluating my resources, I try to ask questions such as "is the source a mere personal opinion of the author?" or "Is there a reason I should believe its content more than any other page?" If I don't come across high-quality credentials for a piece of writing, I watch very suspiciously for the documentation of sources.

Picture Source: cryptomundo.com / Posted by: Craig Woolheater on September 1st, 2006

Ethnography Self-Reflection

1.

I conducted an interview with Abdul on our lunch break. I work with several Muslims from different countries and backgrounds, but, despite their differences they're hanging always together. It is an often scene to see them gathering to pray together. They're always facing the same direction, which I later learned they're facing Mecca. They bring some mats which they lay down on the floor where they bow, sit and prostrate. I am not very religious, but I come from a Christian background, and I could not help noticing that they pray very differently than Christians. First of, they read the Qur'an in Arabic. They pray several times through out our shift, which makes me a little mad. I see smokers taking smoke breaks. I see Muslims taking prayer breaks. I should be entitled to taking fresh air breaks or studying sessions breaks. I suggested this to my boss and he told me to get back to work.

2.

I used three sources for my paper. The main one was an interview I conducted with Abdul Muhammad. This is where I got most of my information from. My secondary sources were an article from BBC news by Roger Hardy (Middle East Analyst for BBC news) and a book (Anthology of World Scriptures) by Robert Voorst (a Professor of New Testament Studies at Western Theological Seminary, in Holland, Michigan). I am confident that all my sources are relevant and reliable.

3.

Before a prayer, I noticed that Muslims are wash their hands, arms, face, neck, and feet with water as a ritual of purification. I later learned that where water is not available, the ritual can be performed with sand. All of them were praying facing the same direction. This is because Muslims must pray facing Mecca. I learned that the direction towards Mecca is called quiblah. When several people are praying together, one person acts as the leader. Memorized passages from the Qur’an are recited as Muslims bow, prostrate and sit. 

4.

I was trying to be open minded, but I need to confess that in light of Jihad and negligence to human rights, I had an apprehensive attitude. I am not sure why because I have some good friends that are Muslims, including Abdul. I guess it is a consequence of being bombarded with reports on TV about extremist Muslims that carry out Jihad through out the world. They never report on moderate Muslims that are the vast majority in the world.

5.

I included a lot of language and rituals on my paper, but not so much on artifacts. Perhaps I should mention the kabah, a cube at the center of the great mosque of Mecca. Islam has made a huge contribution to architecture. Islam has also made contribution in other fields such as calligraphy, paintings, glass and ceramics. However, Islamic arts does not focus on the depiction of human figures because the Qur'an considers it a form of idolatry which is a sin against Allah and forbidden.

6.

I learned that the Islam is growing fast though out the world and that not all Muslims are extremest. Many of them are engaged in modernizing Islam so it is more acceptable in western cultures. This is a sensitive issue because puritan Muslims think that this movement violates the commandments of Muhammad. These extremest want to carry out the Jihad and fight for a pure Muslim world.

Islam: Friend of Foe?

Islam originated when Muhammad became convinced that he had received a true message from God. These revelations took place in a time span of about 20 years. They became the Qur'an, believed to be the purest revelation from God.

Muhammad went from being a persecuted prophet to a successful military and political leader. He extended Islam beyond Mecca. After his death Islam continued to to spread. In less then 300 years, Muslims ruled an area about 2 to 3 times the size of the Roman empire.

Muslims call for surrender and submission to the one powerful God who control every aspect of life. The five pillars of Islam define the core religious practices.

A dispute over Muhammad successor led to the split between Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam. The Sunnis form about 85% of all Muslims.

The Sufis embody Islam's mystical elements. Sufis seek a direct experience with God in this life.

Islamic Architecture produced great mosques with their tall towers and huge domes.

Islamic civilization began to to collapse about 500 years ago to in the west, but has experienced a resurgence in more recent times. Conflicting values and social ideals have led to conflicts between Islam and Western Cultures that shape many geopolitical issues today.

The Greatest Adventure of My Life

The Greatest Adventure of My Life

          My whole life has been a great adventure for the last nine months. Everyday I live new experiences and emotions. The reason being is that my beautiful wife has been carrying our first babe for nine months now, and he could be born at any time now. It’s hard to describe this experience because of the wide range of emotions I have been through. From being surprise when we first learned about the new addition to our family, to being scared and nervous once the news sunk in to being excited and happy when I first heard his heart beat and his moving inside my wife’s belly, to being anxious in these last few weeks. It has been the longest and most gratifying nine months of my life, and because it takes place over a long period of time and involves many different experiences and emotions, please allow me to write about the highlights of this great adventure.

          Let us begin from the beginning. One cold February evening, my wife calls me a work and asks me to go have dinner at home (I work second shift), and I knew right away that she was up to something (she only cooks when either she wants something). I was already expecting her classic question “how much do you love me?” and I already knew my reply: “what do you want to ask me?” That is a very dangerous question because she usually has a to-do list for me (she is a to-do list maniac). However, I knew that it had to be something bigger than a to-do list in order for her to cook dinner on a weeknight. So I come home not knowing what she was up to. I kept trying to remember if I had done something that made her mad because I have heard about wives that will cook with all kinds of unusual ingredients, such as dog food, and feed it to their husbands when they have been bad. So I come home, and she as happy as she can be, which made me even more suspicious. She had made the table as if we were expecting Prince Williams and Princess Kate for dinner. I grew even more suspicious and I had to exchange plates with her just in case she was trying to punish me for some reason. That’s when she sowed me the pregnancy test with the two lines showing that it came back positive. I wish she had waited until I did not have any food in my mouth because I almost choked. Millions of thousands of thoughts rushed through my head, but one that stood out was that we had to do a second test to confirm it. We decided to wait until the next day and try it again the first thing in the morning. So we did and it again came back positive. These two lines changed our lives forever.

          After the first moment of excitement and celebration, we schedule our first doctor visit for an ultrasound and the official confirmation that a divine gift has been placed in our lives. It is very hard to describe what I felt the first time I saw his little heart beating on the computer monitor. I was trying to focus on the happiness of the moment, but the ultrasound technician kept talking about her own experience and how it was hard to raise a child with autism (her youngest daughter is autistic). I did not know if I should listen to her and show my sympathy or if I should ignore her because that was our (my wife’s and mine) moment. I kept looking at my wife and she had a smile that almost could not fit on her face. She was so beautiful and she was glowing. Her eyes were shinning in a way that I will never forget. But I still could hear the technician going on and on and on…

         

So it was official that we were expecting a babe. I could not help to come home and do some research about pregnancy and find out what to expect when you are expecting. One of the first things I learned was that, at that time, Alex (that’s our son’s name) was only the size of a blue berry. So we started calling him blue berry. I must confess that, even though it was official, I still did not feel it as being real, that it was really happening. I am not sure why, but I believe that it is natural for people to be in denial when they experience something new and of such magnitude.

          So months go by and blue berry is now big enough so I can feel him moving inside my wife’s belly. It was a magical moment the first time I felt him kicking, pushing and moving around. From that moment on I was hooked. Every night I rush home so I can lie next to my wife and feel him doing his own thing. I feel like I am missing out when I am not around them. I believe that these are precious moments, and they will not last forever. So I try to be with them as much as I can, and this is distracting me and keeping me from working on my responsibilities. I have not been paying my bills on time and definitely not keeping up with my school assignments.

          I am sure that every parent out there understands what I am going through. These magical moments of being a parent to be are part of a great adventure that not only has changed my life forever, but also it has changed my perspective of life. I now realize more than ever how fast life goes by, and I don’t want to miss any single second of it. Only if I could add twelve hours to my days and three days to my weeks I would be able to give my family all the attention I can, work full time and still turn in my school assignments on time. But this is not the case, and I have to deal with it. So I continue trying the best to make the best of this adventurous journey called life.

School Writing

  When it comes to school writing, I am not sure if  I can recall a most or least successful paper I have ever written. I have always been that mediocre school writer. Perhaps due to the fact that I do take school very seriously, but do not enjoy writing under rules and restrictions. I have forced myself to be disciplined and work on the assignments whether it was fun or boring. However, one experience as a school writer that out stands in my mind was a play that I had to write when I was a freshman in High School. It was a modified version of the "Little Red Riding Hood" and it turned to be so funny that we were asked to perform the play to the whole school. I know that it was not a writing assignment, but I did have to write the play. Does this one count?

Daily Writing

    Writing is part of my daily routine. I wake up and check what is going on with  my family and friends on Facebook and other social websites. I also check my emails to see if I have any important messages. I also check my cell phone for text messages. Furthermore, email is my primary mean of communication at work. I am an export agent and I have to communicate with people all over the globe. Needless to say that writing emails comes very handy in this occasion. Not only it eliminates most of the communication barriers (anyone who has ever tried to call Microsoft, customer service, for instance, knows what I am talking about), but it also documented for records purposes. In light of these, I can tell that writing is almost everywhere in my everyday life in this new digital era.

The Turning Point

I can not recall an experience in my school writing that out stand from the others. I guess that this is due to the fact that I do not enjoy writing academic papers. I believe that all the rules and formats that teachers expect to see in academic papers take away a lot of my inspiration and creativity, and the writing process, all of a sudden, becomes boring and unpleasant.  I should mention that it is not the whole process that do not excite me. I love doing research and leaning new things. I just don't enjoy all the restrictions imposed on how to write a research paper or an academic essay. I hope that this class is it. The turning point. The point where I start enjoying and having fun writing for school purposes.

EARLIEST MEMORY OF WRITING

I am not sure if I recall my first experience writing, but I definitely recall when writing became important to me. It was back in 1991 when I lived in Michigan for 1 year as an exchange student. You may be asking yourselves: Michigan? Exchange student? I guess I should have mentioned that I am from Brazil. Really what I should mention is that in the early 90's, email and the Internet was not readily available to the public and phone calls were very expensive. Hence the viable alternative to communicate with my friends and family was the old practice of writing letters. I grew very passionate about writing my family and friends. I am sure that this was the first time that I felt the need to write and wrote for hours without the agony of having to write. It was actually very pleasant. I loved when I receive letters to and I would go right back to my desk and write many many pages.Writing gave the impression that I was not very far from home....only a few paragraphs away and about 7 days until my words arrived at their destination.