The Problem We All Live With

The Problem We All Live With, was painted by artist Norman Rockwell in the year 1964. It is an oil canvas that depicts Ruby Bridges, a six-year-old African American girl, on her way to a white school in New Orleans on November 14. Ruby is surrounded by four National Guard in crisp uniforms, who are protecting the young innocent girl from the outraged parents of the white kids.

Though you can’t actually see the enraged parents cursing at her and threatening her, by looking at the details you can feel it. Rockwell depicts the hatred through the words “Nigger” and “KKK” written on the yellow wall behind her that is stained with smashed tomatoes and spray paint. Ruby is walking proud, and acting oblivious to the racial hate aimed towards her. Her clothes appear fresh and clean, and she has her new school supplies in her hands. By the looks she appears ready to learn and she doesn’t want to care about race at that time. The National Guards are all white, but you can tell that they are not what are meant to be important in this piece, by the fact that their heads aren’t shown in the painting.

My first impression of the painting was that Ruby Bridges is a little girl who wants to move past the issue of race and is just eager to learn. Ruby doesn’t appear fierce, or determined, she doesn’t even appear scared. Ruby appears to be in a calm demeanor. Obviously she isn’t clueless to hatred white people feel towards her. I’d imagine that even if she wasn’t showing it on the outside, on the inside she must be horrified, depressed, and uncertain of what will happen. I know that I and probably everyone else who sees this painting is struck in awe at just how extremely cruel and mean hearted humans could be to one another just because of the color of their skin. For adults to be threatening and cursing at an innocent little girl for a fault that isn’t even hers, is just so horrific and it shows how out of context humans can become.

I think the artist found this moment in history so important that it could never be forgotten. The fact that the schools were finally being forced to become segregated in the south wasn’t the important message that the artist was trying to portray in this piece. What Norman Rockwell’s intentions were in this piece, I think were to make sure that this dark moment in history would never be forgotten. And what better way is there to show what happened than to paint it. They do say picture is worth a thousand words. This piece is now on display in the hallway in front of the Oval Office in the White House. One cursory glance at this painting and you feel like you know the whole story. I think that Norman Rockwell has solidified this moment in history forever.

This painting is made to look realistic. There is nothing abstract about it. For the most part the colors he chose are kind of dull. The walls are a peach color, the side walk is gray, and the marshals are all in light or dark grey uniforms and shiny black leather shoes. Ruby is in all white which I think he did because it makes the darkness of her skin stand out above all else. Ruby is the main focus of this picture and it is evident because she is in the center of the painting. She stands out because nothing else in the painting is even close to being the same color as her skin. Norman Rockwell has done a great service solidifying this moment in history and he will forever be remembered for it.

The Days After Christmas

    After Christmas things really settled down and sort of became boring. On the 26 my cousins Danny and Maggie came over to go shopping at the mall with my sisters. Now you better understand why I wouldn't want to go to the mall with them. 1. They're all girls and will be at girls stores the whole time. 2. They could stay there for 7 hours and still feel an urge to keep shopping. 3. What person in their right mind would want to spend their vacation shopping with them!

    Unfortunately staying home wasn't much better. I thought I'd just relax and take it easy for a day. Instead my dad comes and asks me to help him and my uncle with some wood. I agree to what i thought was a quick and easy project since I had nothing better to do. I put on a hoodie, a big jacket, and my gloves before heading out to the freezing garage. Little did I know that this would become a three day project. For 6 hours straight I hauled endless amounts of extremely heavy 15 foot long planks of precious wood that my Grandpa had collected for more than 20 years from the garage to the yard. In the yard my uncle Dan was there labeling them, and every ten seconds exclaiming "Oh my God! No way! it's the Brazilian Rosewood that's amazing!" To me it was all just wood, there was the dark brown one, the light brown one, the reddish brown one, and the yellowish brown one. No difference.

    After 3 hours we had moved all the boards to the yard. My feet were numb and I couldn't feel my hands except where sharp splinters had embedded themselves in my skin. I offered to make hot chocolate just so I could sneak inside and warm up. I felt like some starving kid from Somalia, so I searched my grandparents pantry and found a Hershey's raspberry dark chocolate bar and boy did I devour that thing. One second it was in the pantry, the next it was in my stomach. Nothing in my life has ever tasted so delicious. I purposefully took a good thirty minutes to make the hot chocolate, that ironically on the box claims only takes 1 minute to make.

I went outside to give them their hot chocolate, and then I realized that we weren't done yet, we were just beginning. Next we measured the length, height, and width of each and every board that he had taken out and wrote it down in Excel. After that we still weren't done. Next we had to put all of the boards we had taken out, back in the garage. And you still haven't heard the worst part yet. That ludicrous went on for THREE DAYS STRAIGHT!

    That night my dad took me do go see Sherlock Holmes for helping with the wood. The movie was good and very interesting, but the first was still better. The next two days went pretty much the same. I work for hours with the wood, my sisters do absolutely nothing, and we go to the mall at night to get stuff that we couldn't find in Panama. Though I didn't get much out of it, it felt good helping with the wood, and it made me very proud when the adults thanked me. The biggest surprise was on the third day I found out that those old boards of wood were worth more than 12 thousand dollars! I can't wait to go skiing tomorrow and finally get a break.

Christmas

    I woke up super early this morning for no apparent reason. I was ready to begin opening gifts at 6:30. So I waited for my sisters to wake up, and waited, and waited. Finally at 8:30 I went down to their beds and started kicking them to wake up. My sister got real pissed at me and started yelling. Finally I was able to convince them to come up stairs by telling them lies and making false promises.

    My family sat around in my grandparents living room and one by one opened gifts. My little sister gave me her old digital camera because she was getting a professional camera from my parents. My older sister gave me a shirt and my parents gave me an android tablet.

    Even though it's not an iPad I'm content with it. Actually I find it just as good if not better than an iPad. What I liked about it was that it had flash player which the ipad doesn't, and that allows me to watch shows online and things like that. I'm not exactly sure if I will use it as my primary computer at school but I will try.

    We went to my grandparent's church around 10 for Christmas mass. It was a very elegant church beautifully decorated for Christmas. Stain glass windows filled the walls, spreading a warm rainbow of light over everyone who was present. After church we saw a mother and child who were asking for money outside the church, the woman had a sign saying that she had been layed off and they needed money for a Christmas meal. My family and I felt really bad for them, so we went to a store and got the kid some small gifts and we gave the woman money for a dinner. This, more than our gifts and feast, made me most happy and reminded me of the true meaning of Christmas.

    Around noon we went over to my cousins house for a lunch. We feasted on delicious ham and scallop wrapped in bacon. We hung out with our cousins for the rest of the day. Marry Christmas!

Day 3

    This morning we woke up at 4 am and set out in a rental car for Rochester New York. There was virtually no one on the road the whole time since we had beaten all the traffic. After about 3 hours of driving we stopped at a Perkins to have some breakfast. After that short stop we continued on the road until we finally arrived at our grandparents house around 12pm. They were excited to see us and greeted us with lots of hugs and kisses. Slowly, one by one, relatives started to trickle in for our Christmas eve dinner.

    My grandparents have an amazing house in the woods of New York. Its oak wood and stone walls, soft carpet, and fire place in the living room leave it with the perfect Christmas setting. The woods behind the house are full of bare trees with the occasional ever green. My grandparents own half of the forest, including the pond that is usually frozen over by this time of the year. This winter is different, when we got to their house there was no snow on the ground, the pond was still completely liquid, and it was around 40 degrees outside. It still hasn't snowed yet and we  are beginning to worry that it may cancel our skiing plans.

    We had a huge meal of steak, potato salad, and much more. At the end of the dinner grandma brought out the rice pudding. The rice pudding is a Swedish tradition that we have done for as long as I can remember. Grandma makes rice pudding and drops an almond into one of the dishes, the person who gets the one with the almond puts baby Jesus in the cradle and gets good luck for the next year.

    When dinner was over we all went to the living room to open gifts. My older cousin Kevin and I made a fire in the fire place. When everyone settled down we all started giving gifts to each other, we saved the gifts from our family for the next morning.  Got my grandparents gave me $100 and my aunt and uncle also gave me money. I can't wait until tomorrow, I could really use some snow.

Day 2 of Vacation

    Ok I've gone a while without writing, but right now my sisters have forced my family to watch this romantic movie (It's like the 100th this week) I think it's called Midnight in Paris. So hopefully I'll have enough time to recall all the days up until now.
    So on day 2 of our vacation my little cousin Joey who's 7 woke me up at around 6:00am, after I had fallen asleep around one, and asked me to play Nerf swords with him. Instead I began talking to him, falling half asleep when he was talking, and then just ask some dumb question to keep him talking. After about 30 minutes I finally got up and went down stairs to play Nerf swords. I'll tell you, I never have as much fun as when I'm with my cousins. All of them are younger than me but that's what makes it fun. After slashing and hitting each other for a good hour with Nerf swords and watching some kid show about dog detectives, all my other cousins finally arrived. The oldest one is Ellie, she's about my age, then comes Ian he's almost Carolina's age, then comes Sophia who is 9, and finally the youngest cousin Kiko who is a little younger than Joey. They all live a street away from Joey so they just walked over. We played outside for hours clad in heavy coats hats and pants.
    Around 10 we decided to go ice skating at the park since the rest of the kids were still in school. The rink was practically empty except for a few younger kids. Most of my cousins didn't know how to skate so we taught them for the first half hour and then had fun for the next. We played tag until the ice patrol caught us and warned us that they would kick us out if they caught us again. We spent the rest of the day playing football and soccer. Tomorrow I will be leaving on a eight hour car trip to New York.