Growing pains

My parents are divorced. Yet instead of acting like adults they ignore each other like 5 year-olds mad at each other. This creates a confusing conflict for me because they both have different views about what I should do. I really want to drive a car. I got my permit in ninth grade but I cannot get my license because my mother wants to wait. Her reasoning is that since Liz and Ellie both got their driving privileges at 17. I have been valiantly trying to fight this yet it gets me no where. She decided that I could get my license earlier if I got an A for the semester in Math. She knew that math was my weakest subject and I got very few A's on my tests and quizzes. Despite my efforts Mr. Margrum's class proved too difficult and I got a B in his class. So the likelihood of my getting my license has dropped. I am to inherit the 2003 Ford Focus station wagon which I detest. Two windows don't work and a third is on its way out. The locks are faulty and the engine is on its last leg.

Then I visit my Dad and the car situation is a different story. He wanted me to get my license as soon as possible. He said that every child is different so the fact that LIZ and Ellie got their licenses at 17 means nothing. He said it was even more absurd because there is such an age gap between me and Ellie. He also saw the Ford Focus as useless car. Together we went on ebay motors and looked at almost every single car that existed. So my Dad installed this sense of false hope in me because I really had no say in the design at all. So when I reconfrount my mom about this issue it erupts in to this gargantuan brawl discussing every trouble that has plagued our family.

My growing pain is living in a split world of false hope and reality. My father is the false hope because I would really enjoy living with him yet I am brought back to reality when I go back to my mother's. I can understand both parents yet they are trying to raise two children in one person. It will be really awful my junior and senior year as ideas on what I should do for college arise. I am already trying to counter act this in every possible way.

start from the end

These two American men sitting next to each other in the small Bolivian town of San Vicente seem out of place. Of course it is because they are dead. One shot the other and then killed himself. The questions arise: who are they? Why did they go to Bolivia? Why did the Bolivian Army dispatch soldiers to kill them? Well The last question is an easy question because a messenger carrying 15,000 pesos was attack by two Masked Americans. Two Americans then appeared in and after a gunfight killing a Bolivian soldier two shots were fired and the Americans were found dead. Yet the Bolivian military could not identify the two. Who are they? Well if one likes to speculate there were two Americans traveling with a woman to Buenos Aires. Most people knew them as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They were criminals terrorizing trains, banks, and ranches.

Butch was the leader of a gang known as the Wild Bunch. It's funny how Butch Cassidy whose real name is Robert LeRoy Parker ended up as a criminal because his first criminal offence was a theft of a pair of jeans and a pie. He moved to Telluride, Colorado where he started work as a cowboy. He may also have done illegal horse trading as well. Butch bought a ranch in 1890 in Wyoming but it fell through the roof. Four years later he was charged with horse theft. After a 18 month service on a two year detention He was released on the condition that he would never steal horses in Wyoming again. Courting with another outlaw Ann Bassett Butch Formed a gang of three members and robbed a bank in Idaho cashing in 7,000 dollars. Here is where Butch Cassidy met Harry Longabaugh known as the Sundance Kid. Their next robbery was in the mining town of Castle Gate, Utah where they made off with gold. Then finally their most infamous heist was on the union pacific railroad. The pursuing manhunt proved to be ineffective in catching them.

That heist however was a turning point for the Wild Bunch. In two more heists they killed five men two of which were Sheriffs. This led to Butch's best friend Elzy Lay's arrest and life time imprisonment in jail. Not only that but the Wild Bunch had the famous Pinkerton Agency after them. In the continuing heist and shootouts the Wild Bunch lost two members and the Pinkerton Agency lost three men. In september of 1900 the gang robbed the First National Bank of Winnemucca, Nevada taking over 30,000 dollars and then posing for a famous picture (above Sundance on bottom left Cassidy on bottom right). After this the Gang pulled one more heist totaling 60,000 dollars and then split up. Two more members were killed leaving three and the last lived out the rest of his life in Montana. Butch and Sundance fled to Buenos Aires with Sundance's girl friend Etta Place. However, even escaping to Argentina would stop the Pinkerton Agency which followed them there. After robbing a bank in Argentina (12,000 pesos) they fled to Chile. In 1906 Etta returns to America with Sundance, who eventually returns. And that was their story. Hollywood believes that they went out with a bang, some say Cassidy returned to America under a new name. Who knows?

My area of expertise

My area of expertise is in art. There are many key elements to making a good piece of art whether it is a landscape or it is a portrait. Art has many medians with which to use and all of which are unique and special. Chalk has this rough tone to it because it can be hard to get fine details. Graphite allows the artist to produce a beautiful image using different shades of darks and lights. Oil painting is by far the most prestigious of all the art medians for it has been used for centuries in thousands of different styles. There is also the water color median which can also produce very similar art to oil painting. These styles can create a limitless amount of artwork and creative ideas because all art is, is the expression of the mind and what it perceives.

I prefer drawing over most art forms because when I have an idea i do not have time to paint it with oils or water colors. Most of my artwork is crude because I do not know how to express the idea the way I want to. Over time the drawing develops and it becomes presentable. Sometimes, in fact most of the time the art never devolpes and I leave the idea. Occasionally I try to paint but my mind is always distracted with so many ideas. I need a purpose to draw artwork. I often as people what I should draw or I will find one of my deeper passions. For example I draw a picture of Robert Redford when he played in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid because the Sundance Kid is one of my heroes. Often I draw things relating to space but I can never get the artwork the way I would like it.

Famous artists do inspire me. I really like the art of Salvidor Dali because it transports me to another world. My favorite painting by him is the one of a rock in the center up the reflection looks like a hand. I try to do work like that where I can transport the viewer in the couple of seconds they look at the piece into a world very different from the world today. I am very passionate about art some days I wish I could skip the rest of my classes to stay in the art room and work. There is something about drawing and painting that really grabs me but I cannot figure out what that might be. Art is a valuable part of society mostly because of the artists. There have been several artist rebellions in European most of which are ineffective to change politics but they do change the society.

My trip to New York

Living in Gainesville practically all of my life I grew accustomed to suburbia. The only way to truly move around is by car, everyone has a high picket fence, people do not have to interact with one another. Also I understood that Gainesville was a company town. People come here to work at Shands or to attend the University of Florida. Almost every family I know has at least one parent with affiliation with the University of Florida. Recently I took a visit with my Dad in New York City. I noticed many things at once. First, the time it took to go from Brooklyn to the upper end of Manhattan took over an hour. Second, I noticed that "American" could not be applied here because there were so many different ethnicities with in the city where a person could find a Ghinese market next to a German restaurant and a Russian cafe.

I thought my commute to school took too long but when I took a trip from Brooklyn to Manhattan I realized that comutes in suburbia are nothing. The most confusing thing about the subway system however was the design. Looking at a map it took me ten minutes to figure out the quickest route to my destination. This required getting on and off the subway two or three times. I got lost at least four times on one trip switching trains. This was cause by the complexity of New York's subway stations. I walked up and down left and right in the Atlantic Avenue subway station unable to find the train. I quickly realized that living in New York might not be the most pleasant idea.

In Brooklyn I was walking down a street having just gotten off the metro and I look to my left and right. Store after store had a different country associated with it. I felt like I was walking through a condensed version of Disney's Epcot. The next day I get on the Q heading toward Manhattan. The subway was full of chatter and I was suprised because I could hardly understand any of the conversations. The passengers were all speaking in German, Russian, Chinese, French, or some other dialect. It was like being in many countries at once. I realized that New York was such a blending place because of this. People from around the world traveled here to find a new life which made New York the most unique place in the world.