Blog # 19: Journey from Cotton Crop to T- Shirt.

• To start the journey we should know, there is a globally production of 25 million tons of cotton that are being produced in different countries as: Benin and Burkina Faso in Africa, China, Uzbekistan, Australia, India and U.S           

        

             

Cotton crop around the world.

• Due to our T-Shirt obsession and because of the nature of the cotton crop which need very much water to grow, some communities aren't getting enough water to drink.

Hunting water in Burkina Faso.

        

• Besides of the water shortage, some of these countries have been facing pollution, due to pesticides utilization in cotton crops. This kind of crop is using 25% of world's insecticides.

Cotton Crop workers

• Increasing the negative facts, excessive use of pesticides is harming workers who frequently suffer vision problems and nerve diseases among others in the long list.

                                                                          

• To continue on trail,  tons and tons of energy which is fueled by oil drilling or coal or even something else nasty,  are going to be used  to get to thread the raw cotton.

Carding Machine Used to comb and brush the raw cotton.

• Next step, Bleaching the cotton, Chlorine is usually used, not mattering it can become a neurotoxin or even worst a carcinogen, cotton industries are still using this kind of chemicals to bleach the cotton even if they are going to dye it

Chlorine in powder

Bleaching the cotton

• To get it worse, even if Formaldehyde causes respiratory problems, burning eyes, cancer and allergic skin reactions, it is necessarily used to make cotton, soft, wrinkle-stain and odor resistant, fireproof, moth-proof and anti-static.

Another chemical used in Cotton Industry

• Finally fabric gets shipped to a factory anywhere in the third world, where once again will be a source of work at same time is going to become a human rights violation (considering dismal working conditions and terrible wages in some of the countries a day).

In some countries, the legal minimum wage is still only $3.75 a day.

• When finished, T-shirts are shipped everywhere in the US, to find its way to Us for under $20.

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After reading; Story of Stuff: True cost of Cotton t-shirt, I'm pretty sure there is no money that can pay the True Cost of this item, because the environmental and health deterioration caused by the different stages of the Materials Economy (Extraction-production-distribution-consumption and disposal) will never be recovered by money now neither in the future.

Blog # 18: $2 dollar Camisole

In 2 dollars Camisole, Marie Williams says about  how high the cost of cheap things could be, she also states that our society has been acostume of buying stuff at very low, low prices just because we got crazy every time we got reduced prices and it does not matter if the stuff we buy won't last longer because the good thing is that we got it for a cheap price.

After reading Marie Elizabeth Williams article, I have to agree because:

Reason 1: The most of the times Cheaper stuff will become expensivier.
Once, years ago, I bought a very nice Bra in a bargain store, it was really really nice, but the they I needed to wear it, the straps broke down, so I have to run buy a different one what makes me to spend more money to get to the store and buy the right one for the dress I should wear this day.

Reason 2: Because buying cheap stuff makes us part of the wrong economy system.
Promoting child exploitation, as in the case of some famous brands as Nike, everybody knows about what they do offering jobs to children in third world countries.

Blog # 16: The New Industrial Migrants

Part I:
In the first part of the article: Fast Food Nation, the author Erick Schlosser explains of  actual meatpacking and slaughterhouses industry's  turnover strategy that far from being a Liability,  in a high  rate in the meatpacking industry - as in the fast food industry - also helps maintain a workforce that is harder to unionize and much easier to control. This is one of the advantages the meat market industry owners are taking of , to primarily be employing young men and woman from Mexico, Central America and Southeast Asia people. Doing this way they don't have to provide benefits as health insurance, or even payed vacations to the workers.

Part II:

The Inmigration and Naturalization Service estimates that about one-quarter of all meatpacking workers in Iowa and Nebraska are illegal immigrants. Even so Big Companies as IBP or ConAgra Beef Company, insistently deny that they in any way seek to enploy illegal immigrants. Nevertheless To sustain the flow of new workers into IBP slaughterhouses, they had been recruiting as well as refugees and asylum-seekers from Laos and Bosnia, homeless people living in shelters in New York, New Jersey, California, North Carolina and Rhode Island.

Nowadays as we usually watch in newscasts, due to massive immigration the streets are plentiful of potential candidates for this kind of jobs, people in such as need, looking for jobs. These people will take almost any kind of job, even those with wretched salaries or those extremely dangerous; kind of  slaughterhouses or meatpacking companies offer to newcomers, to fearfully people that because of their desperation,should be arranged to take any job opportunity,what become very convinient for this kind of contractors.


I didn't ever realize before reading this article how pitiful is the situation poor  immigrant people are dealing with, because of  unscrupulous company policies; these companies don't even consider the well-being of their workers, they are just taking as much as they can from the workers, without any responsibility, there is no possibility of success guarantee, on the contrary  after a couple of months when  they got what they want ,they could be fairing people, throwing them away as disposable articles.

What a sad reality to find out  that  a lot of people come to this country with the hope to forge a better future for their families, on the contrary  life may become the most of the time due to ones excessive ambition a complete failure, and for some of them the end of  life. As I understand, ambition turns the self-seekers, in merciless, lier, cruel and immoral  beings, capable of make up the American dream stories which promises steady work, good salaries and even a place to live just to get to attract more and more workers to such as great job opportunities. What a big lie!  What a cruelty!!!!

Blog # 17: Reflection on Blogging

 After reviewing all my entries, I can't believe that I did it, it have been very hard and difficult for me to complete my assignments, the very first time I did write I was so scare because of my lack of  vocabulary and  lack of self-confidence ,cannot deny it.

Definitively, there is a big difference among the first entry: HYPE and the entry number 16: THE NEW INDUSTRIAL MIGRANTS, even if I haven't finish and post the last mentioned. I believe that to keep writing have helped me to improve, because by now I can expand much more than  before, Even though I still need to improve my vocabulary, gramma and to apply correctly transition words, I feel I improve my  english language understanding.

Blogger is a very useful instrument and helped me to acquire confidence, now I'm sure I can do it!!!
I also notice that I get much more enthusiastic speaking about Social topics, I wish to learn more every day.

Blog #14: Ideas for improving my performance in the CATW

After reading the examples of annotations and sample response,  I can see that it is very important to write down the annotations to be sure of put in all the important words and ideas; also while developing the response it is a good method to first pick an idea, second write my own thesis and last write the examples, and  I must use the transition words between the pharagraphs to help the reader to understand my work.
Transition words I could be using in my  CATW response:
Because ,In fact, Definitely, In other words, In conclusion, Therefore... 



After doing this excersice, I did notice how important is to don't forget that it is a very good strategy to use transition words, we must not forget refer back to reading  and the most important thing is that it is very necessary to anotate  to be sure  we are not going to miss the  trail of the reading. So I should be sure of picking up a significant idea.

After reading the comment from the Dr. Kristen Gallagher's  student, I learned that I need to be more specific, give more examples, especially personal examples and definitively use transition words to connect  the paragraphs.     Thank's very much to the Reader for the advices.!!!!

With Keith's help I did notice that my CATW # 5, needs to be expanded, and the main idea needs to be  better explained.    Thanks to Keith.!!!

BLOG # 13: HOW TO DO ONE THING AT A TIME

Nancy Jones, Women's Health Magazine, May 2010: "By now, we all know that multitasking can be a losing proposition."  There is some evidence and a sort of tests and experiments that verify the brain does better when it is performing tasks in sequences rather than all at once, and it is due to brain's cognitive limits. As Clifford Nass, PH. D., says: "We still don't know the long-term effects of chronic multitasking, but there's no question we're bad at it, and it is bad for us."

I personally agree with Nancy Jones article because there is no way a human being can be cappable of doing two or three things that require to be focused on. Not even a simple thing as talking by phone while driving or even trying to fix the exterior mirrors in your car while driving, both of the activities require a high level of coordination and you should be careful because on the contrary you could be cuasing a tragedy in a blink.
Even when you try to speak when eating some times it happen you bite your inside cheek yourself; or when you try to rubb your belly when rubbing your head, the same thing happen, our brain can not coordinate a hand in a kind of movement and the other hand in another movement.

If our brain was not maid to work in all at once, why don't we try to enjoy one activity at a time?

BLOG # 12:" Response to Michael Pollan's advice on how to eat healthier"

After reading this interesting and educational article from Mr. Michael Polland's book: In defense of food.  I can totally agree with each one of the statements because, at my opinion all of the items are very objectives. Mr. Polland  explained each one of the recommendations in a very gracious way that makes me think every advice is very easy to follow, I can easily imagine my grand mother giving me very similar advices.

"Shop in the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle", Mr. Polland advice; I did never realize the real motive of organization in the supermarket and as he explained this point "Most supermarkets are laid out the same way:processed foods in the center, fresh food on the walls. If you keep to the edges of the store you will be more likely to end up with real food in your shoping cart", is definitively the most urgent but not the only for me to implement right away, I think that some times I got Captivated by the attractive photographies on the front of the box as(according to) the sellers is how the food will look when ready to eat, some times I don't even take the time to read the ingredients lists.  I have to admit  That so neglectful conduct!. Once again I found this article very interesting and educational because I do realize that there is nothing as good for health than organic food, chemicals free,color full and highly flavored food.
On the other hand unfortunately due to space and time factors  I can not follow all of the advices, for the fact that living in this city makes hard to neither  have enough space to plant a garden, nor to have enough time to some times eat at a table or even do it on time.  I really wish I could cook every day and eat very fresh and healthier food in an authentic Salvadoran style.