Nature Is Misrepresented In Disney Films

For this week's blog assignment, our professor asked us to observe nature for twenty minutes. At first I was slightly horrified by the idea of having to sit somewhere for 20 minutes and just observe nature. I really enjoy nature and I love mediating, but this assignment required me to do different things. I had to pay keen attention to the little critters in the area around me. As much as I do enjoy animals, I find myself less interested in insects.\

 To conduct my observation I decided to go to the park nearby my house. Unfortunately for the little critters, this park is right next to an elementary school and the park was littered with unruly little children. I chose to sit under a tree which gave me a good view of the rest of the park. I could see children playing soccer and shouting in Spanish at each other. There was a women with two little children playing on a slide. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind of all thoughts. When I opened them, I looked around and felt extremely disappointed. Having grow up on Disney movies, I expected all forms of nature to slowly but surely crawl their way up to me. Seeing how sweet and peaceful I seemed, I thought surely something might be around for me to observe. To my great dismay, I saw nothing!

Nothing was what I saw for majority of the time I sat there. Children shouted,an ice cream truck went by, a few joggers, some people and their dogs.

I went home comtemplating how I'd explain that little critters just don't seem to want to appear in front of me. I walked into the backyard to take the trash out. Dropping the bag of trash, I chased our Siamese flame point cat, Vaska, into our small and humble herb garden.

Nature came alive.

I shrieked random phrases in Chinese at him(Vaska), and he climbed up our stonewall and jumped into the neighbor's yard.

In our garden, tucked deeply in the dirt were earthworms like the one found in this picture below.

There was some cute little ladybugs on the petals of some small little rose looking plant that we have behind our garden.

In that same area with the rose little flowers there is a huge bush that has strong branches. A small red looking berry grows on it and inside the huge bush are tons of SPIDERS! Sometimes if I am chopping away the branches the spiders come crawling out!EWK! In our other smaller bushes against our stonewall are temporary homes to large grasshoppers. Tan and green colored ones sometimes hop/fly from bush to bush.

I was very sad not to have seen much while I was in the park for twenty minutes, but I felt like my garden/backyard was a better environment to observe nature. I'm glad I was able to see a few critters here and there.

My Environmental Footprint

I originally had to calculate my environmental footprint in an English 1AH class at RCC in Fall of 2010. When I realized how much I consumed I was horrified, because I always thought I was much "greener" than others. The second time around, I am not so surprised because I realize even though I try very hard, I would have to change my whole lifestyle to really make any sort of a difference. I can cut out many things, but there are some things I just can't and won't give up. Like the gas I use to get to school. Cutting out that gas would mean I couldn't get an education, and I'm not willing to give up this. Calculating my environmental footprint this time around I found that

-If everyone lived like me we'd need 3.4 planet Earths to support my activity.
-My footprint breaks down into mostly services I use.
-To support my lifestyle it takes 15.2 global acres of Earth's productive area or 13.9tons of carbon dioxide. These global acres are broken down into mainly energy land.

The good thing about the environmental footprint calculator is that it doesn't leave you feeling guilty. Instead you have options to look at how you can reduce your footprint by going back to different question from the quiz. Also you can look at the "explore scenarios" which shows you how you can change your life to live more "green".

For me, personally, I have actually increased my environmental footprint after I started college.  When I was in high school, I did most of the cooking for my family because I just loved to cook and wanted to practice. Since I went to a charter school, I did most of my homework online and had more time to stay at home since I didn't have seven hours of classes per day. I tried to use no canned goods or products without preservatives. Instead of using canned kidney beans, I'd buy dry kidney beans from the health market/store and cook them for hours. I made many things from scratch like bread.  This was actually for the most part so much cheaper or at least the same price for many things like the kidney beans. It of course took much more time to cook, but I had the time so this lifestyle was possible. We never really ate out. I even became a vegetarian and then a vegan.
When I started RCC, I think I really started living the "life". My life suddenly became so competitive(getting classes) and I had to spend all my time studying. Because of this I ate out more, used pre-made food, and too many preservatives. The grocery bill went up and so did my weight. After I started dating my boyfriend, I started eating meat again. I really miss being able to cook the way I used to and I miss having the time to exercise and gym like I used to(in high school I used to work out like crazy). Due to this great change my impact has increased greatly, but there isn't really anything I can do about it. I just can't find the time. My family doesn't really have the time either, so we are all sort of stuck.

I looked the many options of reducing my global footprint, but the lifestyle I live is pretty much already reduced as far as I think I can go. I took less classes this semester, and have more time to cook and I am trying to reduce my Starbucks consumption. I don't really go out because I'm always studying and I even take short showers. I want to continue to try and consume less.

Biography

My name is Faye G and I was born in Loma Linda, but  have grown up in Riverside. I am an English major and want to become a teacher. I love reading but am not so keen on creative writing which is why I think I'll be more suited to teaching then becoming an author. Besides English, I really enjoy history and would love to teach a history class. I prefer the 16th century to the present over ancient civilization which bores me.

I am unmarried with no children, but I live at home with my family's four satanic cats (two males and two females). Their names are Chekhov, Rosemary, Vaska, and Flower. I would really love to have a male cream  and black colored pug. My interests include reading, watching movies, listening to music, cooking, trying new foods, and cleaning other people's houses.

I am intersted in environmental science because I really love the earth. It is my home and I derive so much pleasure from being in nature and interacting with the creatures which live here. I am greatly saddned by the negative impact that I and the rest of humanity have on the earth.  From this course I hope to learn more about how I can harm the Earth less and instead improve the quality of living for both myself and the everyone and thing who lives here.