"hahaha"
Gladys Villanueva
My Inner Child**
Everyone has an inner child. Some are hurt others betrayed, disappointed, or neglected. Commonly everybody’s inner child needs healing and support. Being able to move on and forgive those whom did us wrong definitely can play a big role in the healing process. Personally my inner child feels disappointed and is under stress.
There are many disappointments that eat away at my inner child everyday, some I’d rather not say. My inner child is begging for forgiveness and healing. Sometimes trusting the wrong people made my inner child weak. Many indwelling problems and wrong choices were hurtful in ways I can’t even explain. Because my inner child is one in the same, I must let go of all hurt and disappointment.
My inner child needs to find strength and peace. She will do this by using many strategies. First off, she will accept the fact that she is hurt and disappointed. Second she has to let go of all remorse and forgive those who did her wrong. Healing my inner child will be a great step to a positive future. As of today my inner child will slowly heal.
My Inner Child**
Everyone has an inner child. Some are hurt others betrayed, disappointed, or neglected. Commonly everybody’s inner child needs healing and support. Being able to move on and forgive those whom did us wrong definitely can play a big role in the healing process. Personally my inner child feels disappointed and is under stress.
There are many disappointments that eat away at my inner child everyday, some I’d rather not say. My inner child is begging for forgiveness and healing. Sometimes trusting the wrong people made my inner child weak. Many indwelling problems and wrong choices were hurtful in ways I can’t even explain. Because my inner child is one in the same, I must let go of all hurt and disappointment.
My inner child needs to find strength and peace. She will do this by using many strategies. First off, she will accept the fact that she is hurt and disappointed. Second she has to let go of all remorse and forgive those who did her wrong. Healing my inner child will be a great step to a positive future. As of today my inner child will slowly heal.
**Last Will & Testament**
On the unlikely event that I should die, I request many things. As I leave this life I want my baby girl, Isabella Rose Morris to know that I love her very much and I need her to be strong through whatever life throws at her. I also want to say that it is very hard for me to write this, but I mean everything that I am writing from the deepest part of me. I want my mother, Agripina Mora to be legally responsible for Isabella Rose Morris. The reason I chose my mom is because I know she will love and take care of my baby girl and she will offer her the best life, full of happiness, and joy. I expect Isabella to have everything she needs; I never want her to need for anything. I have a lot of expectations for you Isabella. I want you to go to school, and study very hard, so you could have the life that I wanted to give you. I also never want you to fall into bad influences; life can be very hard and full of bad people, but always keep your head up and never listen to anyone who says you can’t. I love you so much Isabella! Everything I did was for you and only you. Just remember every time you feel sad or afraid you’re not alone. I will always be with you holding your hand. I recognize I had a lot of help from my dear family, and I thank my mother, sister, uncle, and auntie so much and I couldn’t done it without you. Many apologies are owed to my mother. I am so sorry I disappointed you in many ways. I just want to let you know that I always knew you wanted to be the best for me. I thank you with all my heart, you were the best mother I could of ever had. Thank you. There are so many things I want to let my beautiful sister know. I loved u so much and I believe you can definitely accomplish whatever you start. I had always believed in you so much. You were the best role model I could of ever had. I appreciate everything you did for me. You will always be my one and only sissy! Now to my wonderful uncle I owe you so many hugs for always helping me when I needed help. I hope you get where you want to in life. I will be looking forward to seeing your work in magazines! Last but definitely not least my dear aunty Luz you are an amazing person. I just want to say thank you for always trying to protect me from bad choices and people. Thank you for being there for me and helping me with Isabella. I believe you will do well in this life because you were one of the greatest influences in my life. I love you all and I hope you take good care of my baby girl and of course yourselves too. I will always be watching over you Isabella I will never stop loving you.
*Welcome
Isabella*
*BirthStory*
*Gladys Mora*
I found out I was pregnant a few days before October in high school. I was scared and I didn’t know what to do. I was going to tell my mom I was pregnant but I couldn’t do it. As a result of that, i took my mom to the restaurant and tell her I was pregnant. She started crying and by the look on her face I could tell she was very disappointed in me. She was mad for a long time. But to this day I am very thankful she helped me and she still is.
I made a doctor’s appointment and I was given the due date of June 1, 2010. I never had morning sickness during the beginning of my pregnancy so it was going very smoothly. I didn’t gain a lot of weight, even though medically everything was going well. As time passed by I told my closest friends and my sister. Being pregnant was hard to swallow because I was only 16 and I wanted to be a model. Part of me wished it would be a dream that I’d wake up from.
It wasn’t until I was 6 months pregnant that I started showing. When the rumors at school started I just held my head high and kept focused to finish the school year with passing grades. The next couple of months passed and I continued to try and finish the school year. I had to talk to my teachers and counselor about leaving school in the middle of May, so I had to catch up and finish most of my work. I accomplished that goal.
I had an ultra sound when I was 25 weeks pregnant and the technician said that I was going to have a boy! I called everyone and I even went shopping for a lot of boy stuff. Time passed and when I was 33 weeks pregnant I got another ultra sound and this time the tech told me I was having a girl! I freaked out because I had already bought a lot of blue stuff and I couldn’t return like half of it.
As I was getting close to my due date I stopped going to school on a Friday, May 14th 2010. The next day around 10:30 pm my water broke while I was eating enchiladas on my couch. My sister’s friend drove me to the hospital because my mom wasn't home. When I arrived at the hospital I was 37 weeks pregnant. The contractions were very small at first and not so painful, but when they started me with Pitocin (a medicine to help jump start labor) they were very painful. The stream of never ending family and friends kept visiting me and I secretly felt like kicking everyone out of my room. The nurse told me to wait until I start dilating so I slept until Sunday morning. I was so stressed and tired and I was stuck at 3 centimeters. Time went by and the contractions got stronger but I just didn’t dilate. The midwife decided I needed a c-section because my water had already broken and I was at risk for infection. So on Sunday May 16th at 9:22 pm I was blessed with Isabella Rose.
When I first saw her I poked her on her cheek to make sure she was real. She weighed 5 pounds, 9.7 ounces and she was perfect. I felt a bond with my baby girl and I didn’t put her down for the whole night even though I was in pain. I will never forget that special day that I got to welcome Isabella Rose into my life. Now I am determined to be a wonderful mom and I will work very hard at it.
<3 My Senior Paper
Villanueva 1
Gladys Villanueva
Kilton
Senior Paper
April 5, 2013
The Environmental Evolution of Pollution:
Pollution is a problem that everyone growing up in our current environment understands. When we walk outside our front doors or even inside our own homes we can find sources and traces of general pollution including trash. Pollution is a global problem that has existed since the time of the Paleolithic man. As the human species pushes on further into the future we will need to analyze our human environmental history to understand the evolving pollution issues, to bring it out from behind our closed eyes and into the light. Hopefully by understanding the history of civilization and pollution we can develop a solution to this constantly mutating virus, which we are living with.
In our civilization pollution manifests its self in several forms such as air, water, sewage and other forms of general waste. Before the industrial revolution, air pollution was trivial. For the majority of human history heavily polluted air did not exist. With the discovery of fire, McNeil tells us “We torched landscapes, releasing carbon dioxide and other gasses into the air, but despite our devotion to fire, the atmospheric impact was minimal,”(McNeil 55). When our ancestors moved the use of fire indoors for heat and cooking, indoor air pollution was born. This contained exposure to smoke no doubt caused eye irritation, lung problems, and possibly other health concerns (McNeil). Air pollution was probably one of the earliest forms of human caused pollution.
Villanueva 2
The issue that developed out of this early form of air pollution, which is also causing other forms of pollution, is that the chemicals and potency of the contaminates has increased with time and technology. When more advanced civilizations started to pop up, especially in the west and on the Asian continent, the forms or air pollution started to become more devastating than simple smoke inhalation. Cities started to suffer from their own offensive smells, from decaying flesh, food and human feces. One of the characteristics of air pollution, which makes it unique, is that there is no physical way to export the source of smells or remove the contaminants from the air once they are there ( McNeil). From ancient Egyptian literature dated from 734 B.C. we find stories of cities who surrender to enemies because they would rather be at the mercy of foreigners than breath their own air. “Urban Smoke darkened marble in ancient cities,smoke and soot, not trace gases, dominated air pollution in early times“ (McNeil 55).
This problem slowly changed. As ancient technology developed, new pollutants were added to the atmosphere. The two main pollutants to arrive during this time was copper and lead. Mining and melting of these minerals played an essential role in ancient economics and these new fumes added a new form of air pollution to human health issues. Greenland showed that, “emissions of copper into the atmosphere surged twice before the industrial Revolution; once after the introduction of coinage in the ancient Mediterranean and once with the intense marketization of the Chinese economy,” (McNeil 56). These early emissions date back to 960 A.D.
Villanueva 3
Technology at the time admitted 15% of melted copper into the air. Chemists have even found traces of metallurgy in bird feathers, fish bones, deer antlers and even human hair; reinforcing the claim that this is the first wide reaching form of human pollution(McNeil).
Urban air pollution mainly varied with the size and density of cities. Those cities in close proximity to their industry and fuels experienced higher levels of air contamination. Port cities, which could cheaply import fuels for industry, experienced the highest pollution levels(McNeil). Limited ability to transport fuels kept the most dangerous chemicals out of the cities and air for a short period of time, however large portions of human populations still lived among soot and smoke making the surrounding air, thick, and misty. Philosopher and physician Maimonides, who lived around 1190 found this poor air created dullness of understanding, failure of intelligence, and defects of the memory. Health issues and significant ones were developing in humans even before the modern times(McNeil).
The scary realization is that the effect that air pollutants were having on human health were being felt so early and human civilization was still relatively young. These negative realizations would only continue as history progressed. One can’t help but wonder have we started to welcome poor air quality because we have lived with it for so long or have we just accepted that it comes with our cities and civilization? Continuing along the time line of air pollution we reach the time of coal. Although it would be developed in the 11th century, the impact that it had on air pollution became very apparent in 17th century England. Coal could be considered the father of the industrial revolution, providing large amounts of energy. Even though it began in the 17th century it still maintains a strong hold on our current civilization and continues to cause sever air pollution around the world.
Villanueva 4
Industry combined with population growth led to more chimneys, which all spit out smoke and sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere and the lungs of city inhabitants. This toxic air quality lead to numerous lung diseases, and human deaths that numbered in the millions(McNeil). Sulphur dioxide is a chemical with devastating side effects, one being the creation of acid rain which destroys crops and forests.
After tracing air pollution through some of its ancient origins we must ask ourselves, how has the world responded to this threat, or have we even responded at all? The 20th century brought on the second industrial revolution, still fueled by coal, industries focused on steel, iron, and chemicals that spewed sulphur dioxide and smoke, among others, out of their smoke stacks and into the atmosphere. What makes this period different from the rest of history is the creation of the automobile. By the year 1900 road traffic had become the single largest source of air pollution in the world (McNeil 58).
So how have humans responded? Until this point there has been documentation that pollution has caused adverse health affects but not much mentioned on the human answer to these affects. It is possible that we don’t have the documentation to back it up, but now recently we do start to find a human response. “Many people objected…but the prosperity that came with smoke seemed to be well worth the price,” (McNeil 59). A Chicago businessman in 1892 said, “Smoke is the incense burning on the altars of industry. It is beautiful to me. It shows that men are changing the merely potential forces of nature into articles of comfort for humanity,” (McNeil 59). Back in the time people were not concerned with health issues, as a matter of fact they viewed the belching smokestacks as signs of progress,
Villanueva 5
prosperity, and power. The evaluation of these historical beliefs shows us a different side. “In 1911 the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that smoke damage cost the American economy $500 million annually, equal to the total amount paid in property taxes,” (McNeil 59). It turns out that what was believed as progress secretly turned on the economy. So now the case builds. Air pollution not only causes health problems but it also hurt the modern economy.
Coal-based industry however did not decrease it actually increased as it passed through the 1920’s. Coal had become the main domestic and industrial fuel source and caused cities like London and Pittsburg to become very polluted. The poor air quality that this coal use caused was supplemented by the automobile industry. There were less than a million cars in 1900 world wide and that number increased to 177 million cars by 1995, (McNeil 60).
As bad as this all seems there is always some light to all this. Between 1940 and 1980 cities began to improve their air quality, driven by economic, political, and geographic motives(McNeil). Oil emerged as a new power source and cut into the massive coal empire. There were people who opposed reckless polluting, but until the 1940’s there was little effect on changing it.
The geographic change in pollution has an interesting place in environmental history. Previous energy intense industries concentrated in areas with vital natural resources such as the Ruhr region in Germany dispersed after the 1960’s leaving their places in the city(McNeil). The removal of these industries out of the cities meant that the concentration of pollution was no longer just in the cities. The relocation may have moved the direct pollution out of large populations but it did not decrease pollution levels in the atmosphere and possibly it was
Villanueva 6
more devastating because smog became the new trendy form of air pollution after coal began to decrease do to the existence of cleaner and alternative technologies. Smog is mainly from automobile emissions, but industry and biomass emissions helped contribute to the poor quality of air as well(McNeil).
Geography takes a large roll when talking about smog formation. It usually forms in areas with large amounts of sunlight, as well as places that have topography and winds that keep chemicals from dispersing. Places such as Denver and Mexico City have mountains that help keep smog above the city. Smog causes eye irritation and lung problems in humans, but it also damages and stunts growth in plants as well. Smog made its smashing debut in the early 1940’s Los Angeles where citizens mistook it for Japanese gas attacks.
The City of Los Angeles, which developed around the automobile, was the first city to really experience mass amounts of smog. The smog was so bad It effected up wards of 10 million people and stunted the growth of plants nearly 50 miles away (McNeil 73). The city attempted to battle back in the late 1940’s attempting to regulate the sources of pollution and again in the 1970’s with more regulations with positive effects, even removing up to half the smog in the Los Angeles basin, still smog remains a regular health problem and one of the most serious air pollution problems in the Unite States (McNeil 74). “Particulates alone in the early 1990’s killed about half as many people in southern California as did auto accidents,” (McNeil 74). A surprising statistic was 20 years after the clean air act of 1970 was established. Air quality has a direct link to our health, it doesn’t seem that it has fully sunk into our mainstream consciousness.
Villanueva 7
The city of Los Angeles and its population are not alone hiding in the clouds of smog, the city of Athens, Greece also has a massive air quality issues. Similar geography creates a climate for the development of smog, and by the early 1990’s the smog in Athens was two to six times as thick as the city of Los Angeles. Emission checks during the 1990’s and other preventative measures did little in making it better. This is a country, which hosted the 2004 Olympic games, and had the best athletes in the world breathing its bad air. Even after the world saw smog hanging over the country it didn’t seem to have an effect because four years latter in Beijing the Olympics were held again in a city with even worse air quality than Athens.
A tale is that air quality still hasn’t seen the proper attention or at least quality attention. When poor air standards are shown in the mainstream media they appear to draw large public attention but since the Beijing Olympics global warming has made all the smaller more important issues disappear. Currently China has 20 of the worlds 30 most polluted cities (World Bank). Many countries adopted stricter air quality controls in the 1990’s but progress towards clean air has been very slow. Some cities under regulations, fines and new technologies have reduced their pollution levels but this has not proven so in many of the world’s larger cities such as Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Beijing. In 1995 an estimated 1.1 billion people breathed air that is considered unhealthy (McNeil 83).
Economically it hasn’t reached appoint especially in America where governments see the long-term benefits of reducing pollution in their countries and around the world. “The World Bank (1997) estimated that air pollution cost China's
Villanueva 8
economy more than 7 percent of GDP in 1995, and 8 percent in 1997 (McNeil 107), largely in health damage, (Peng 1).
The economic cost of health can only increase with continued pollution and population growth, and its not small costs were talking about. The US currently is looking at reforming the health care system but I can guarantee that they have not mentioned air quality or pollution in their talks. 70,000 people die in the U.S. each year from air pollution, more than breast and prostate cancer combined, (HSPH, 2000). Remember that even though the United States has higher air quality than many other countries, this air doesn’t stop and poor air quality in china or other countries, means poorer air quality for everyone on the planet. In 1997 the WHO estimated that 400,000 people world wide were killed from the effects of air pollution and probably 25 to 40 million people total in the twentieth century (McNeil 103).
Air Pollution doesn’t just affect people it affects the natural environment as well. Trees are killed by acid rain, and plants were practically removed from coal burning areas. Animals in zoos were dying of lung disease, and it can be safe to say that if animals in zoos were dying the ones in the wild were suffering too.
Air pollution is not the only effect humans have historically had upon this earth. Sure we have polluted the vital air we breathe, the thing that separates us from the rest of space but we have polluted water as well, the second essential element of life. Water pollution like air pollution is not a product of modern society but dates back to ancient times as well. However water has become even more vital as time has continued on, once water was used only to drink and then to irrigate crops, but now we use water to carry off wastes, wash our bodies/possessions, for industrial and
Villanueva 9
other personal uses (McNeil 119). The health, wealth, and security of civilizations are built on adequate water supplies.
For the sake of analysis, water can be looked at in three categories, irrigation, industrial use, and municipal uses. Over time water use for these categories has only increased with population, we are using more water now that we have in any previous period in history. Using our drinking water for flushing away or diluting caused diseases such as cholera and typhoid. Urban cities actually polluted their vital rivers till the point that the liquid could no longer be called water. It is here that knowledge of environmental history could lead our civilizations in a new, positive direction.
Chicago polluted their river and lake Michigan only modestly before the American Civil War but when the population boomed in the post war period water quality took a drastic negative down turn (McNeil 126). Municipal waste was dumped directly into the lake and to combat their own growing problem they built longer drinking intake pipes into the great lake, but the population surpassed the ability of the pipes and Chicago became typhoid city (McNeil 126). 90,000 people in 1886 died of water borne diseases, resulting in the largest engineering project pre Panama Canal, Chicago actually reversed the flow of the river so that it no longer emptied into the drinking supply but instead ran flowed into the Mississippi river. This worked, however it added pathologies, moving the problem down river, allowed river pollution to only be a memory in the minds of Chicagoans, it did not solve the problem but only passed it on.
Villanueva 10
Rivers and water bodies in general throughout the last century have suffered due to the lack of human concern. It took the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, which caught on fire a reported 13 times. Pollution still threatens our vital water sources; the only liquid water in our known universe yet we treat it as if it doesn’t matter at all.
The Aztec cities sought to incorporate nature where as European cities and our modern cities wall out nature (Miller 27). These people whom where just like us saw the world and the earth as sacred, something to be taken care of and cherished. “By recycling human waste back to the soil the Aztecs avoided the intractable scourge of sewage. The Spanish, only after a few decades, turned Lake Texcoco into a cesspool. Environmental history teaches us that cities can be sustainable and beneficial to the environment. There is a clear-cut lesson in the story of the Aztecs and the Spanish, we can choose which way we want to live and how we want our urban centers to look. We don’t want our kids to have to clean up the mess we leave in our time. Sure the Aztecs didn’t have the chaos that was created by the industrial revolution and they didn’t start with already polluted rivers and air but maybe if we look at their example we can create a model with which to plan our future cities and clean up the existing ones. We now have the benefits of technology and history on our side. We need to look past global warming and focus on the smaller issues, the tributaries that feed into the bigger stream. Issues that we have been living with for far too long, and enough is enough. If we clean them up one by one maybe we can leave our children in sustainable cities and a cleaner environment. Hopefully then global warming and pollution will just be a flicker in a dark past.
***Works Cited***
“Air Pollution Deadlier Than Previously Thought - March 02, 2010 -2011 Releases - Press Release Archives - Press Releases - Harvard School of Public Health." Harvard School of Public Health - HSPH. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Mar. 2013. <http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/archives/2010-releases/press03022000.html>.
Alder, Jonathan. "FABLES OF THE CUYAHOGA RECONSTRUCTING A HISTORY OF ENVIRONMENTAL." Docstoc. Documents, Templates, Forms, Ebooks, Papers & Presentations. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Feb. 2013. <http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187974/FABLES-OF-THE-CUYAHOGA-RECONSTRUCTING-A-HISTORY-OF-ENVIRONMENTAL>.
"China - China Quick Facts." The World Bank. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Mar. 2013. <http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/EASTASIAPACIFICEXT/CHINAEXTN/0,contentMDK:20680895~isCURL:Y~menuPK:318976~pagePK:141137~piPK:141127~theSitePK:318950,00.html>.
McNeill, J.R. Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century W. First edition. Ed. New York: Norton, 2000. Print.
Miller, Shawn William. An Environmental History of Latin America (New Approaches to the Americas). New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Print.
Peng, Chaoyang. "URBAN AIR QUALITY AND HUMAN HEALTH IN CHINA." University of North Carolina. N.p., n.d. Web. 6 Mar. 2013. <http://www.unc.edu/~wux/air-health.pdf>.