Metaphors:
1. Her heart was a deep ocean that drowned all her sorrows and failed attempts at love.
2. The man at the bar was a lion attacking every beautiful woman that walked in.
Similes:
1. When she looked into his eyes she saw all the passion, as fiery as the sun itself, and they couldn’t resist the urge to embrace each other any longer.
2. As everything got dark around her, her memories flashed through her mind like a movie of her life playing in a matter of seconds.
Imagine living a normal life in the United States, being 2nd or 3rd generation, and feeling like that was your home. Then, soon after a disaster occurred that was committed by the country you are originally from, you were confined in an interment camp just because you are of the same ethnicity as the people who committed this horrendous act. People you believe are just like you telling you that you’re a potential threat to the country you have called home your entire life. This is what most Japanese Americans had to go through after the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan in December of 1941.
On February 19, 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued executive order 9066, which allowed local military commanders to designate military areas to hold citizens that were deemed threats to national security. Japanese American citizens were considered threats and were removed from their homes and forced to relocate into these internment camps. These Japanese Americans were only allowed to bring one suitcase and anything they could carry or wear. One of the images on the internment memorial located in front of the Robert F. Peckham federal courthouse in San Jose, Calif. illustrated this.
The image showed a family burning some of their belongings before leaving with one of the soldiers to the interment camp. Japanese American families burned the things they could not bring with them to the camps because they wanted to destroy anything that represented their cultural heritage so the military had no further reason to believe they were threats to the country. They wanted to bring their necessities and burn everything that would define them as being Japanese.
Many of the Japanese Americans that were relocated owned farms and would use barbed wire to protect the farm and to keep animals from escaping. The internment camps where the Japanese Americans were relocated largely resembled the farms they used to own. The living spaces were small and unclean, many people were stuffed into those small places and most of all the camps were surrounded by barbed wire. The memorial has barbed wire on both sides of it, but it is illustrated differently on each side and has two different meanings. On one side, the barbed wire is curled to symbolize the curled barbed wire that surrounded the Japanese American’s farms, and straight on the other side to symbolize the barbed wire that entrapped them in the camps.
This part of history involves San Jose State University more than most students realize. The University building was used as a processing center for the relocated Japanese Americans that reported to the camps. The building was later named after SJSU judo coach, Yoshihiro Uchida. Uchida enrolled at SJSU studying chemical engineering and became a student coach of the physical education’s judo program. While Uchida’s family was sent to the internment camps after the bombing of Perl Harbor, he served in the U.S. army where he worked in the medical corps as a lab technician. When he finished serving in the Army, Uchida’s hardships continued because his heritage made it difficult for him to find work. The history of this event and the horrible discrimination that occurred will forever remain with SJSU and will continue to honor those who suffered with Yoshihiro Uchida Hall.
Ana, Paulina and Liz are my best friends and sisters, they just belong to different parents. Together we can go anywhere or do anything and feel comfortable and safe because we know we have each other. Ana and Paulina are sisters and their family is from a little town in Jalisco, Mexico called Pegueros. It’s a tiny Catholic town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. The summer after Ana and I graduated, the four of us went to that town for a month. Because it is such a small town, not many people know English. It was a challenge for Liz and I to communicate with the friends we made there, but somehow we used the few words we knew and Ana and Paulina’s help to get by.
I felt reassured knowing I had my best friends with me, and being with Liz made me feel more comfortable saying “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish,” because I knew we would both be using that phrase a lot during the trip. The first day we were there, we went with Ana and Paulina’s family to their ranch. The weather was beautiful, The ranch was huge, and Ana’s uncle, Tio Arturo, even brought his horses so we could ride them all throughout their land. It was an amazing welcome, and her family was so patient and kind. But I knew that that evening would be much more difficult because we were going to meet with Ana and Paulina’s long time friends, and I was nervous that they wouldn’t accept us.
When we met everyone that evening, they seemed curious. They were all very friendly and inviting, but after a few hours Liz and I began to notice that they seemed uncomfortable. They felt bad because they couldn’t communicate with us. I’ve had friends come to America that came not speaking English and I always felt badly for them because I couldn’t communicate. I never realized how uncomfortable it would feel being on the other end. The next few days that passed, Liz and I picked up a lot of phrases and words and by the end of the month, we were able to communicate with the friends we had made. Maybe not in perfect sentences, but they understood us.
Two years later, I returned to Pegueros with Ana and Paulina and was pleasantly surprised. All the friends I had made the last time we had visited remembered my name and told me how much they missed me. The experience was hard and nerve racking at times, but I wouldn’t trade the adventures, memories and friends I made there for the world.
And in case you were wondering, I’m going again this summer in June. I hope they’re ready for me!
On day 3 of Coachella 2012, audience members saw an extremely talented rapper perform. Coachella is filled with amazing performers, but this one rapper stood out among the rest because he was the late Tupac Shakur. The young rapper died at a young age but created meaningful music that has touched so many people and will continue to do so. His death was a tragedy and the thought of never seeing him perform again saddens all of his fans, including myself. Someone thought of the idea to “resurrect” the young rapper in a hologram performance with Snoop Dogg performing live alongside him. During the performance, hologram Tupac gave a shout out to Coachella as well, which made the performance a bit more shocking to those who don’t know much about technology and the things it is capable of. The shout out was created by taking the likeness of Tupac’s voice and basically make him say things he hasn’t before, such as “What’s up Coachella?!”
Now, as amazing as the performance was, it also raises a controversial question: who is getting paid for Tupac’s hologram performance? This might not seem like a big deal, but it’s an unanswered question that can potentially cause conflict. Dr. Dre was the mastermind behind the hologram idea and hired the effects company Digital Domain Media Group inc. and a visual projection company called AV Concepts who were responsible for putting the performance together. But Dr. Dre isn’t commenting on the question of where the money is going. He did however donate a generous amount of money to The Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation, but is that enough?
In my humble opinion, it is not. Although it was an amazing idea that honors the late rapper, there is still the question of whether or not the performance is exploiting Tupac Shakur or just honoring his memory. I believe that the portion of the revenue that would go to Tupac should be given entirely to the foundation or to his family and left to their discretion. If Dr. Dre benefits financially from the performance, more performers will have ideas to resurrect other talented performers that have passed and make a profit off of them. Dr. Dre did the right thing by donating a generous amount of money to Tupac’s foundation, but I don’t think he should be able to profit from the performance at all. He should make his profit from his own live performances.
Great idea though Dre! The performance gave me chills.
http://www.vh1.com/music/tuner/2012-04-17/whos-getting-paid-from-tupacs-hologram-resurrection/
1. despot
2. Noun. A ruler or other person who holds absolute power, typically exercising it cruelly.
3. He and producer Fred Friendly focused the SCBS eye on Senator Joseph McCarthy, exposing McCarthy as a despot and a bully.
4. The instructor was a despot and decided she would make us write 5 essays for our final.
1. egregious
2. “If they are violating the law, then it’s a very egregious violation of the law.”
3. Adjective. Outstandingly bad; shocking
4. The boy was shocked by the egregious score he received on his exam.
1. don
2. Students were to don hoodies, which was what Martin was wearing when he was killed.
3. Verb. Put on (an item of clothing)
4. The women chose to don all black dresses for the funeral.
1. chaste
2. If a woman is not chaste, she is unworthy of marriage.
3. Adjective. Not having any sexual nature or intention.
4. The young girl admitted was was not chaste and hadn’t been for quite some time now.
1. Permissive
2. Even as it turned away the needy, Arizona spent most of its federal welfare dollars on other programs, using permissive rules to plug state budget gaps.
3. Adjective. Allowed but not obligatory; optional.
4. Although her parents said she couldn’t attend the party, she took their words more as permissive statements and decided to go.
1. lam
2. Nicolaysen has been on the lam since two foot chases Wednesday and a dragnet that included a police dog tracking him through a Port Angeles neighborhood.
3. Verb. Escape; flee
4. But he knew he wouldn’t be able to return home and realized he would forever be on the lam.
