Helping Out By: Jeff Goodemote

When i was about ten years old i helped build homes for a poor community. People that could not afford homes for themselves, so i got involved in an organization that does this for people. I would spend days and days doing this. In doing this i felt great doing something for others that actually meant something and doing something that was not for myself. Something that i was not forced to do. So for this Service learning project i decided to pickup trash in the flower mound area in a location that I have not seen and this is something i wanted to do in my own steam this was not something that a group forced me to do i wanted to contribute on my own and make a difference in the area i live in.

As far as the experience well after i did this i felt very good about giving back to a community that quite frankly has given so much to me. Also though at first i did not enjoy doing the act at first just because when i was doing picking up trash i felt like i wasnt doing much. Then i realized after looking down one full trash bag that i was doing alot just in picking up trash. I was miserable thourgh the experience to because i have very bad allergies and the out doors usually does not sit to well with my allergies and of course i had misquetos eating me alive and on top of that my clothes were muddy. Also in my mind when i dont know where i am for a long period of time i get very uncomfortable. As i said before at the end of it all I felt good about what I did I felt that i played a part in protecting the enviornment and helping with the up keep of the earth. That in my opionion that is more than just picking up trash that is caring for the very place in which we live.

I think the this relates two the readings because its shows that we need to preserve the very land we live on. To do that we need to take of it and, we need to not pollute all the time. We take advantage of nature often by constantly abusing it just because we think that nature will heal itself well guess what? It won't. I think our mindset is that if technology keeps getting better then we can just depend on that to cleanup after our pollutions. In the plumwood reading he gets attacked by a crocodile and then has whole different interpretation of why he got attacked. Which relates to how we look at animals because we think that we are above nature and animals and that we can just trash a land that they live on and not think twice about it. Well thats incorrect because the more we keep thinking that we are above nature the worse of the earth will be which ties in with pollution. If we keep polluting than we kill animals and the nature around us then what will have left? At first i think plumwood thinks he is above the crocdile and does'nt think twice about trust passing into his home. Its the same concept of when i went into the woods to clean up trash i could have been invading an animals home and not even realized it. At the end of the plumwood reading he has a change of heart and realizes why he was attacked.
"As i began my 13-hour journey to Darwin Hospital, my rescuers discussed going upriver the next day to shoot a crocodile." (plumwood)

How this relates to the other reading Biocultural diversity is if we destroy the very planet we live on than not only do tradtions go away but our culture as we know it would change in a big way. We cant just keep taking the world for granted anymore we need to be active in protecting our world. Because if we don't then things could change and not for the better. "This Phenomenom has been called the extinction of experience the radical loss of the direct contact and hands on interaction that comes with the sourrounding envriornement that traditionally comes through subsistenace and other daily life activities."(maffi pg.7) So if we let technology take over and then we could lose the very thing we call nature.

In Class we defined polliton as something toxic thats where its not supposed to be. Well according to that defintion we as a community have a lot of cleaning up to do and protecting to do if we want to keep nature pure and existant. All in all i really enjoyed doing this project. At the end of it all i felt really good doing something that actually helps the earth and the community and it feels good to give back Also i think more people should take an active role in cleaning our community because with everyones help we could make this a less polluted earth. In all this I learned that everyone has the potential they just need to go out and do it. As far as I go I learned that even though at first you dont want to do something that if you end up doing it, Its all worth it in the end.