Half-broke horses

Convictions versus Compromise

     Lily Casey Smith’s storms came in different forms and circumstances: a flash flood at ten, tornadoes, a fraudulent first marriage in her twenties, droughts and the Great Depression, among others. As I read the novel Half Broke Horse by Jeannette Walls, I thought of bamboos. Lily Casey Smith, the main character in the novel, was like a bamboo left standing all alone in the aftermath of a storm.

     Lily’s mother tried hard to impose on Lily expected gender roles that, up to this day, are still the mindsets of many women, even the whole American society. Lily’s role model, however, was her father. Lily learned to break horses at such an early age.  While her father was teaching her to break horses, her mother was more concerned of finding Lily a suitable husband; she usually frowned on Lily’s unladylike behavior.  It was the father who encouraged and recognized Lily’s potentials.  As I read into the story, I realized that Lily’s innate strength and moral convictions of doing what she thought was right started early on as a child. Her strong convictions were usually reinforced by  her father.

     Lily’s encounter with Deputy Johnson when she told him that she ran her own classroom and she would discipline wayward kids the way she saw it fit demonstrated a strength that arose as a result of unconventional tasks she did while growing up; like breaking horses. Lily’s response to Jim when she told him what happened was also

 

characteristic of Lily breaking gender stereotypes. “’It would either be a pattern of me standing up for myself or a pattern of me getting pushed around’” (Walls 180).

      I commend Lily for refusing to back down during the confrontation.  Lily had once defended her father on a court trial in front of a judge and the situation  wat nothing new to her.  Lily was reprimanding Johnny Johnson for his behavior in treating Rosita, a Mexican girl.   Lily standing up for Rosita could have been a situation where another teacher would just have looked the other way. Compromising in this manner was accepting the consequences of standing up for one’s convictions. Lily compromised her job as a teacher.

      My moral convictions may not be as intense as those of Lily Casey Smith; however, I believe everyone is entitled to justice, even for someone who was accused of a crime.

     Five years ago, James, my brother in Burbank called me at midnight.

     “Fatima was found dead in her apartment yesterday,” James breathlessly rattled over the phone.

      Fatima was my oldest sister who was working as a nurse in London. My brother posted a video clip on Facebook later that day. The video showed my sister’s remains which was   covered in an orange sheet. My sister’s remains was being loaded on a van and the video clip was in the local news in London.

     “I am crying for justice over the death of my sister,” my little sister Jennifer posted on her Facebook status later that day.

    

 

      There were hundreds of outpouring of sympathies and condolences from Jennifer’s friends at Facebook.  Meanwhile, I could not believe Fatima was dead. I browsed at every online newspaper based in London. Two weeks after, a news article reported that my sister was killed by her boyfriend. The news report alleged that Michael was the jilted lover.

      “I hope Michael rots in jail,” one posted on Jennifer’s status at Facebook. Similar others comments thanked God that the killer was found. Jennifer agreed with her Facebook sympathizers that Michael should rot in jail.

     “Now Fatima can rest in peace,” commented one of Jennifer’s friends at Facebook.  I flinched as I read the comment.

    Fatima died on the last day of June.  I visited her at her apartment in East End of London in November the year before. I have actually met Michael, a coworker who was also a nurse, currently married at that time to another nurse.  I also did meet Harvey, a divorced man from Brighton,   who, I thought was Fatima’s boyfriend.

     My parents, James, Jennifer, and friends of James and Jennifer at Facebook believed that the case was solved with Michael in jail.  But up to this day, I never stopped doubting whether Michael really killed Fatima. To me, it is easier to compromise and believe like everyone that what was being told is the truth.

     I thought about the case surrounding the death of Fatima about two weeks ago when I first heard that an undocumented immigrant from Mexico admitted shooting a woman by accident at the San Francisco pier. I could not believe how easily the San Francisco Police Department could have solved the case.

 

     As I reflect upon compromise versus convictions, I could only think of Lily Casey Smith who stood firm for what she believed in.  The situation surrounding her sister Helen’s death might have been different to the death of Fatima but the process of moving on in life is the same.  All her life, Lily Casey Smith weathered storms like  the  proverbial bamboo  by swaying with the wind and by bouncing back even from very difficult circumstances, with dignity and without falter. Should we not?

 

Works Cited

Walls, Jeannette. Half Broke Horses. New York: Scribner, 2009

 

The Omnivore's Dilemma

  Michael Pollan,  in his book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, notes  that the farming industry’s role in global warming has  never even thought about  (Pollan, 198).  Pollan suggests  that the farming industry through some human activity has also contributed to the greenhouses gases effect that increases atmospheric temperature by less than a dozen digit degrees in centigrade or more  year after year. In my understanding, humans are not the only creatures that have carbon dioxide as a metabolism by-product. The carbon dioxide that is trapped in the atmosphere and bounces back to the earth’s surface because of some kind of a glass ceiling makes me think earth as big greenhouse. The truth, I can’t imagine a greenhouse as a big as a country, how much more for a greenhouse as a big as a whole planet. With the earth as a big as greenhouse, I wonder where the ecological balance comes in. I thought I learned in my science classes in high school that there were some mutual symbiosis between plants and animals, like Joel Salatin’s Polyface farm, for example.

Google came up with pages and pages of references in answer to my keyword search question.  The San Diego Public Library gave me ninety pages of search results and found over a thousand of books when I typed “global warming” as a search keyword. Typing “climate change” on the search keyword even found me more books: 1,508 total. I typed “Kyoto Protocol” on the search keyword and the library catalog found 25 items that contained my search keyword. Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement to limit global warming. Acknowledging that global exists, signatories of the agreement would limit emissions that would be trapped in the glass ceiling of the imaginary greenhouse that the world is made of. The trapped carbon dioxide emissions bounces back to the earth surface as heat and melts all the polar ice in Antarctica.

            The Grossmont Gateway to Research Library provided me the most substantial reference materials I never thought I could have accessed online through Google searches. I have saved on my desktop interesting studies about the Kyoto Protocol and how countries are. It is interesting to note that developed countries like Japan, Canada and European Union countries, except for the United States, have initially ratified the Kyoto Protocol (Freedman and Jaggi, 46). It was American scientists Roger Revelle and Han Suess, then both based in La Jolla’s Scripps Institute of Oceanography, who revived an article written by Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish, in 1986.  The article that speculated on the measurement of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide against the earth’s average temperature was published in a philosophical magazine (Bailey, 348).

With the array of databases available for my topic, I find it a bit limiting at first to be allowed to use only ten of the reference materials I have gathered. But the ten databases I have chosen promise answers to the questions I have always asked about global warming. Why does the US government refuse to ratify the Kyoto Protocol? Why did Canada withdraw from being a signatory to the international agreement? What are the impacts of the Kyoto Protocol across countries? What is the 97% consensus? Why did Al Gore, a student of Roger Revelle ignore his former professor’s statement? Just before Revelle in 1991, he coauthored an article with another scientist and declared: “The scientific base for greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.”

 

Works  Cited:

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: New York Penguin Group, 2006. Print.

Gerlach et al. “US Rejection of the Kyoto Protocol: the Impact of Compliance and Cost of CO2  of CO2 Emissions” This paper was initially presented at the Stanford University Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) Meeting on Burden Sharing and the Costs of Mitigation, Snowmass, Colorado, August 6, 2001.

 

Sauquet, Alexandre. “Exploring the Nature of Inter-country Interactions in the Process of Ratifying Environmental Agreements” Public Choice April 2014 Volume 159 Issue 1/2, page 141-148. Pdf file.

 

Kumazawa, Riza et al. “The Effect of Kyoto Protocol on Carbon Dioxide Emissions”, Journal of Economics and Finance January 2012, Vol. 36 Issue 1, p201-210. Pdf file.

 

Urs Steiner Brandt et al. “Hot Air in Kyoto, Cold Air in the Hague—the Failures of Global Warming Negotiations. Energy Policy Volume 30, 2002, page 1191-1199

 

Friedman, Martin and Jaggi, Bikki.  “Global Warming Disclosures: The Impact of of Kyoto Protocol Across Countries”, Journal of International Finance and Management, Volume 22, Issue 1, 2011,  page 110-120

 

Munk, Walter H. “Tribute to Roger Revelle and his Contribution to Studies of Carbon Dioxide and Climate Change” The National Academy of Sciences  0027-8424/97 page 8247

 

Skuce, Andy. “Why the 97% Still Gets Challenge?” Corporate Knights Magazine Volume 13, Issue 3, page 70-71

 

Menchken, H. L. “Bill and Al’s Global Warming Circus”, The Forbes Magazine, November 3 1997,  page 246

 

Weart, Spencer. “Global Warming: How Skeptism Became Denial” Bulletin of Atomic Science, Volume 67, Issue 1, 2011, page 41-50