Obama Speech/MLK Jr Letter

Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from inside Birmingham jail provided a great insight to what injustices non-white Americans faced on a day to day basis. The struggles that MLK Jr. describes are heart wrenching, like trying to explain to your children why all the white people are treating them so cruelly. Something that I found very intereasting was that he believed that the white churches would do the right thing and support his movement, but turned out that many of the churches were either against him outright, or even if they did agree with his views, they didn't do anything about it and just kept quiet.
Barack Obama's "More Perfect Union" speech has given me a much better idea on where he comes from and what he is all about. Obama has stated that he has relatives of many different races and colors, and says that the United States is the only place that this could have ever been possible. At the same time, he is says that Dr. King's dream is not yet completed because there is still racial discrimination in America. Another part that I found intereasting in his speech was his conclusion, where he told a story about a woman named Ashley who had a very inspiring story on why she was supporting Barack, and when she went around the room asking everyone else why they were there supporting, she got to a man who said that he was there because of Ashley. That story really proves that if you have great faith, and are willing to do something truley good to benefit someone else, people will see through to that and follow your greatness.
There are many things that MLK and Obama have in common, but one of the biggest similarities between the two is their Christian faith. That faith has done wonders for MLK, by helping him take a nonviolent approach to ending segregation. It helped him not fight back when the police would imprison him for bogus charges, and when people would criticize and even physically hurt him. That faith has also been great for Obama by helping him gain the strength to take a stand and keep him on track.
Another stance that they both shared was trying to totally equalize the black and white communities. Obviously, MLK Jr's equality was much harder to gain, because he was at the center of the civil rights movement, and at the time America was much more narrow minded than it is today. Obama stated that even though we have made great strides since MLK, we still are not done yet, being that still to this day, some formerly segregated schools that relmain predominately black/white and the black schools have been, and will continue to be infirior to the facilities in the white schools.

Spring Break

Over spring break Reese and the club baseball team went to Tampa, FL for the Spring Training Showcase. They flew into St. Petersburg on Sunday and stayed the week at their hotel until Friday. On Sunday, they all got situated in their rooms and had a team cookout. On Monday, they played two games, the first game was against Buffalo, New York. MNSU got rocked the first couple innings and fell way behind, in the 3rd inning Reese came in and threw for two innings and struck out 5 batters while only allowing one run. The second game went much better, but MNSU still lost to the 8th ranked team in the nation 6-4. The team was not too down, because this was the first time that they had been outside and were just trying to get a feel on how their team was going to be this year.
Monday night, the team partied really hard and kept partying on Tuesday on the beach in Clearwater, FL. Wednesday, they played two more games and won the first, but lost the second. That night they partied really hard and went to a world famous gentleman's club, which was a really good time. On Thursday, they won their final game which put their record to 2-3 on the year so far. The team was pretty happy on how they did, especially for this being the first time being outside all year, but still did not want to go back home to cold Minnesota. Friday night Reese got back to Mankato around 1:30 AM and slept for the next couple days because he was exhausted from his great week.

Paper

So far I have not really even started the new paper yet, because I have had a ton of work due and four tests to study for this week. I will probably actually pick out my topic for sure and start finding some research on it next Sunday when I get back from Tampa. I want to be done with the rough draft by the weekend after spring break, because then that week I should be able to have some time to work on it. But other than that, I don't really have much else.

A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift was a very abstract way to solve Ireland's problem of famine, poverty, and everything else that was wrong. His proposal was to have as many children as they could, but to keep only 1/4 of the little boys for a year. The other 3/4 of the boys would be sold for cannibalism after one year of being fattened up by their parents. His proposition would end hunger because they would have all the extra meat that they would need, and would end their problem of poverty because then they could sell the kids for around 8 shillings per child.
I thought that this idea was ridiculous and I think that he was not entirely serious about carrying out his plan because at the very end of the reading he said that his wife was barren and all his kids were legitimate and couldn't be sold. I don't even think the plan would truly work because I don't honestly think that people would actually sell their children for others to eat like animals.