In our Backyard

The campus hike that we went on was very beneficial to me. Every day I pass by all these trees and never think to myself what kind are they or how did they get here or how they are kept so maintained?  But after visiting the nature trail it defiantly gave me a new perspective on things at FGCU.

Realizing that more than half of our land on Florida Gulf Coast is preserved and that we can never take it the trees away is a really interesting and neat fact. Not every school is like FGCU. I have been to other colleges and they look like little downtown areas. With the buildings so high and the concrete all around there is no trees in sight but at Florida Gulf Coast that is not the case.

We actually thrive on the fact that we do  have all this land and we have this special feature that can be offered to the students here. I have been at FGCU for 3 years now and never once have gone on the nature trail. I really was missing out. Seeing all the cypress trees and learning how they live and grow is something that was interesting to me.

Canopy fires was something new I have never heard of before. It is actually an uncontrolled fire that hops from tree to tree and burns everything in its way. It can’t be controlled because it spreads to fast because it can “hop” over from the top of  every tree. Millions of acres can be destroyed by this kind of fire.

Living next to the everglades where I use to live in Fort Lauderdale when there was a fire I didn’t think much of it. I thought of smoke and how smoking it would be in the morning or how all the bugs would be stuck to my car but I never really thought about the devastation that a fire can produce. If I can recall correctly we had a fire at FGCU  couple of years ago and it burnt down a lot of trees. Imagine FGCU without trees I really would not think of it has FGCU anymore because I feel FGCU is so eco-friendly if we did not have it we would lose our character.

I never realized how much I took the trees and the nature trail for granted. It is a beautiful trail and you can see some amazing things. Yes you might get a little muddy but what’s not fun about that? Anyways, just after taking that trail that was in our backyard it made me see how nice and pretty our campus really is.

Colloquium Run Down!!!

When first starting Colloquium in January I thought it was a “tree hugger” class. I figured I would read the information but wouldn’t learn anything. But as the weeks went on and I read more and more articles about different problems with the world it made me think a lot different. I found out that I was blind to what was going on and did not know much about our planet earth.

I had always heard of global warming but never paid any attention to it. But after watching the inconvenient  truth and reading articles I have learned that it is a big issue and if we don’t start changing our ways we will set ourselves up for disaster. Al Gore who was the one who narrated it, gave great detail about how we are so oil obsessed  we would kill and do anything of it. It is sad that within the past 100 years or so we have done more damage to our earth than any one else that has been here before us.

Taking a stand and teaching what you believe is something that more and more people need to do. For instance when watching Food inc. it showed where our food came from chickens and cows. It was disgusting how the living conditions were for these animals. They were all close together stepping in each other’s feces not being able to move and just living a terrible life. Before watching this I use to love Purdue chicken that you just pop in the oven and it would be ready in 10 minutes. However, after watching this I have not picked up any Purdue chicken. I find it ironic how some people say that the natural way of raising and killing these animals is inhuman but they are all for corporation plants that treat their animals like crap. I do not know about you but I rather have the chicken I eat come from a sanitary open farm not a closed dark warehouse.

One thing that I would have never learned unless I took this class is about how oil hungry we are. There are so many other resources we can use but we still keep coming back to fossil fuel. Burning fossil fuel is the big culprit for a lot of things that are going wrong. If we would get rid of the coal and focus on wind and solar power we could really make a difference. Solar and wind is unlimited we would never have to worry about running out. In addition, it would create thousands of thousands of jobs. I have realized that American’s don’t like change and that they rather dig themselves into a hole than change their way of living. Well congratulations we have!

The world is defiantly taking a turn for the worst and after reading all these articles and seeing all these documentary it defiantly has made me think what I have contributed to this downfall. I have a v6 engine, I do not even have a bike and I keep my television on 24/7. I know I am only one person but if I can realize that I am part of the problem why can’t anyone else. American in my opinion needs to stop being so hungry for oil and really focus on the important aspects of the world.  If we don’t we will not have a world to live on. This course has really taught me the value of energy and how wasting it is not only harming our generation but generations to come.

Fort Myers Cemetary

I mapped out the Fort Myers Cemetery for my service learning project. At first, I just thought of it as an easy assignment but soon I found out that I was wrong. I found out a lot about myself when doing this project. At the first entrance to the cemetery I was thinking about why I chose this particular place for my service learning.  The graveyard was not very pretty and it was located right behind public housing!  There were ant piles everywhere and in some spots the ground sunk in. The above ground caskets had cracks in them which made them very creepy. I finally realized, after time, that uniqueness of this cemetery gave it character.

The cemeteries I have been to have been maintained and well groomed.  Most of the plots had nice potted flowers and the grounds looked neat and tidy. The Fort Myers Cemetery was the opposite.  The ant hills, the disarray of the entire cemetery made me feel sad for the people buried there.   The Fort Myers Cemetery did have all different types of people that were laid to rest there. The tombstones were dated from the 1800’s to just a couple of years ago. Every single one of those people had a story to tell and somehow you could see it on the tombstone. As I walked up and down the cemetery roads taking pictures of all the tombstones and seeing a little piece of each person it got me thinking how they all ended up here. We look at life with such hate and discrimination and judgment but once we are put to rest you never know who will be laid to rest in front of you, next to you or across from you.

I saw people that were laid to rest with their whole families from their great great grandfather to their aunt. I also saw people that were laid to rest with no family member in sight. There were tombstones with a cross on it as well as tombstones with KKK engraved on it. I saw graves of people who were WW1 veterans and of teenagers that fought in WW2 and died for their country. Two brothers were both killed in the service and they were buried next to each other knowing what they did was right. There is such a diversity of people that are there it is really cool to see all the culture that was around Fort Myers 200 years ago and what is still their today.

I saw a tombstone that reflected a birthday two years after the civil war started. It got me thinking on how their life was and what they went through. I saw a lot of tombstones that were in the 1800’s that the children died before the parents. I kept asking Rebecca isn’t this weird how a lot of the younger children are dead before their parents. She then reminded me what you (Dr. Wilkinson) said on your trip to downtown Fort Myers. Children in that time died because of the flu and small pox. It was so weird to see in person, what you were talking about.

I saw all different types of tombstones some relating to religion, some relating to the personal characteristic of that person, but the one thing that really stood out to me was that some didn’t have dates of their death. The tombstone was there with the name and birth date but the death date wasn’t there. It wasn’t like they were still alive for the fact that it was in the 1800’s. What could of happen? Did they forget to get buried there? Was their body lost? My mind keeps racing with all of these questions on why the death date was not on the tombstone. I don’t think it would have been a big deal if it was only on one or two of the tombstones but at least 30 tombstones didn’t have death dates on it! I have never heard of that in my life. I still can’t understand why they don’t have one.

Another thing that I found was interesting was people that already had their plot and tombstone picked out but they were still alive. There was one in particular that had a picture of a woman on it born in 1964 with no date of death and apparently she is still living, and it was right next to her husband who had died.  I understand that she wanted to be next to her husband but why would you want your face on a tombstone that says “loving mother” when you’re not dead yet. There were a lot of things that I saw that I would never do.  However, to each their own, who am I to judge how they want to live their eternal life or the rest of their existing life.

The major thing that really made me realize that I really cared for children was the fact that some of the infants that died within the same day as their birth date didn’t have names. This really got to me.  Why in the world would a mother not want to name their child? They nurtured and carried that baby for 9 months and they couldn’t even name it? It just blew me away how some people could do that. This got me thinking and talking to Rebecca that was there with me. Her viewpoint was different.  She did not see the big deal that the baby didn’t have a name.  But I was really disturbed by this. Looking at a tombstone so small and knowing when going up to “heaven” that the baby would not have a name really unsettle me.

The tombstones would read baby and then the last name. The first one that I saw and really stuck with me was “baby funk”. That is what was on the baby’s tombstone. Another one read infant son of. I just feel that is not right. A baby should have a name and it should have its own identity. Now as these tombstones came around it really made me wonder why didn’t the mother name her child? Was it that she didn’t want to get close to it? I couldn’t tell you the answer. However, as I was walking around and really thinking about this it showed me that I have a passionate side for this and do not think it is right.

As I was talking to other people about this situation, I got all different types of answers. The usual answer was - why do you even care.  Other answers were: I don’t know, it was her decision, but then one person said well some of the baby’s are wards of the state. Now, I knew none of the tombstones of the babies that I came around were wards of the state for the fact that they all had last names or were buried next to their parents. But that very next day when I went back to the graveyard I found a baby that was a ward of the state. The tombstone read Infant 1938. It broke my heart. No one buried next to it just lying peacefully in the ground without a mother or a father or even a name. How could a mother or father throw a child away and not even care to name it.

As I walked and saw more and more it unsettled me more and more. I felt that it would help me deal with it if I gave them names. Obviously this will have no effect on anything but in my mind they should be buried with names. So I all gave them names from Frank, Tom, Brain they all had a name and a place in my heart.

Overall the service learning really made me think in ways that I have never before. Seeing people’s tombstone really makes you question what did they do in life? Where they a good person? Going back, I am very happy that I did this as my project as it opened my eyes and let me into a whole another world that I was not aware of. But just in case you are wondering after spending time in the Fort Myers Cemetery I will be happily buried in a mausoleum where no bugs, ants, rust or dirt can get on me. J

We're not in Kansas anymore...

When going to downtown Fort Myers I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had seen plenty of downtown areas before so I was trying to see what would be so different about Fort Myers. Well let me tell you, Downtown Fort Myers is not like any other downtown areas.

Of course there were a couple of skyscrapers but nothing like Miami or New York City. There were hotels and bars but it was a lot more intimate than any other downtown area I have ever been to. There wasn’t lot of traffic and the river flowed right through it all. It was very peaceful. Peaceful would not be a word I would use to describe any downtown areas that I have been to.

Our first stop downtown was to the railroad museum. It was old but had a lot of artifacts and a lot of history was in there. Starting off with a huge skeleton of a sloth. The sloth had to have been at lest 9 feet tall with big paws. When I think of a sloth I think of Sid on the Ice Age movie. The little sloth that was dumb. But obviously that was a movie and this was real life.

The next skeleton we saw was of the saber tooth tiger. It is the newest cat to die off. It is crazy about what kind of animals lived in Fort Myers thousands of years ago. It was crazy to see how big the animals were. They were all larger than life and I definitely wouldn’t want to see one of those animals walking down the street now.

The next section that we went into was the history about the Caloosa Indians. They would make hunting instruments out of sticks and put a seashell on the end and sharpen it so they could kill with it. They also used it them to dig out canoes and rivers. I definitely got the sense that these Indians were very driven people and fought for what they got.

The next stop was the history of Fort Myers. We saw a miniature model of how Fort Myers looked when the fort was right on the water. Now there are two streets in front of the fort. It was cool to see all the different phases Fort Myers has gone through and see how it has grown and has its own characteristics.

Once we got done with the museum it was time to park at Centennial Park and walk around. I enjoyed this a lot seeing the brick roads and the little restaurants and bar. It made me feel like I was in a little town not in downtown Fort Myers. There was that much traffic and the road were very clean. But seeing downtown from sky view had to be the best. Being on top of indigo’s roof at the restaurant and pool was such a lovely sight.

Looking over I could see everything and it made me think what was here before me. Was a saber tooth tiger walking this same ground that I was, or a dinosaur. Looking over and seeing so many small buildings and then just seeing forest isn’t what you usually see.

Downtown is a place that I will never forget mainly because out bus broke down and I had so much homework to do. But over seeing all the sights and really seeing what Fort Myers was about was a lot of fun.