Earth Day '09

Being a student of the sciences, I feel compelled to comment on today's auspicious date: Earth Day, of course. I'm going to start off by saying something that I hope will be very clear. The media always talks about climate change, and everyone else argues about whether or not it is caused by humans. The sad thing about this debate is that with all this arguing, nothing is ever going to get done. If the earth starts to "cool" for 2 or 3 years, it will be all over, and the media (and likewise, the majority of the American populace) will stop caring about recycling and watch Youtube videos of 47 year old Scottish women singing.

Regardless of who you think is causing climate change, one thing is true: We are killing the planet.

Think about all the ways humans have negatively impacted the environment: from shoddy agricultural practices that overfished the seas and sucked the nutrients out of millions of acres of land to a dependence on disgustingly dirty fossil fuels that have contaminated the skies.

Sure, you may not believe that the greenhouse effect is all it's cracked up to be. But what do you think happens to all the chemicals release by the millions of cars and thousands of factories on this planet?

Sure, you may not think vegetarianism is the right thing for you. But considering that one pound of beef requires 4 gallons of petroleum to consume, is eating meat a sustainable lifestyle?

Look around you, world. We're destroying natural forests to build homes and then wondering why there are coyotes and deer on our lawns. We're clearing thousands of acres of the jungle to make farms for plants for biofuels and wondering why the rainforest is disappearing. We tell our kids to eat 5 servings of fruit and vegetables and three servings of meat a day, forcefeed it to them, throw the rest we know they won't eat in the garbage, and then throw the trash in a landfill where it will never decompose because landfills are anaerobic environments (the result of tons of garbage piled on more garbage).

What can we do to fix it, you ask. EVERYTHING. You can't just build a few windmills here and recycle a bit in one city there and actually expect anything to be accomplished. In order to really put the world back on track, there needs to be a unified approach that attacks environmental problems of all sorts from all directions: energy use, food consumption, sustainable building practices, clean water and efficient sanitation, correct demolition and disposal practices. All of this and more has to be done and has to be done well. Otherwise, no real change will have occurred.

That's all for now, look out for more posts in the future.

PS: In writing this post, I realized that I could not express all my ideas into something you could read in one setting, so look out for my next post on environmentalism.

Scenery

Pictures of beautiful scenery, both edited and unedited. Not just me gloating, but also to give an idea of what El Salvador looks like.

La Libertad, a seaport town
The mist hovering above the city of Santa Tecla.

Awesome pictures from a trip to the Pacific coast.

A building in San Salvador

Lake Ilopango, west of San Salvador; we went to a coffee cooperative and had lunch prepared by the mother of one of the cooperative's board members

Election day: a quick but hopefully comprehensive run-through

So here is the long-waited photographic and video account of Election Day 2009, Santa Tecla.

Before I get into a narrative, here's a breakdown of the terms I will use:

Voting table: actually consists of a table staffed by 4 people, the ballot box, and a cardboard booth, the anaquel; there is also a Padron de Exhibicion nearby, which has the names of everyone who votes at that table

DUI card: the national ID card. everyone who votes needs one, and the entire adult population is eligible for one automatically

People at the table: There are four of them: the president, secretary, Primer Vocal, and Segundo Vocal. There are two from each party, and they can't wear party colors.

The President: checks people in and stamps their name on a list, inspects DUIS, and checks fingers for ink (see below); Sits second from the left

Secretary: signs and stamps the ballots; rips off the perforated corner of the ballot and gives voters a crayon - the person then votes

Primer Vocal: rightmost person; gets the crayon back; asks the voter to sign his/her name on yet another list of voters (or stamp if they can't write)

Segundo Vocal: degreases the thumb of the voter so there is no dirt on it, gives them a piece of toilet paper to wipe it off, and then makes the person dip their thumb in indelible ink

Vigilantes, Supervisor, and the Jefes de Centro: there are a certain amount of each of them from each party. I listed them in order of authority. Vigilantes are concerned with assisting voters, but they also watch out for corruption or suspicious activity, especially by members of the opposite party. Supervisors and the Jefe also do the same. They are decked out in obnoxiously obvious party gear.

Legal Representatives and Human Rights Ombusdmen: they are more directly involved in preventing corruption. and making sure people can vote

JEM: Junta Electoral Municipal, the local elections authority.

JED: the departmental elections authority

Now that that's done, here's a little summary of what I did. I won't put specifics as to violations and things like that because of legal reasons, but ask me personally if you want to no more about something. This is somewhat copied from my journal that day, hence the style of writing.

05:20 We arrive at the city of Santa Tecla. Four of us from CIS go into this one big school (whose name I am currently forgetting). The other two are in a second school. I randomly pick a table to observe very closely throughout the day, though I will also walk around.

06:30ish: My table is very efficient and very friendly. I introduce myself and explain that I don't speak Spanish well. This sometimes becomes an issue throughout the day, but I understand enough to do my job well.

10:00ish: Avila, one of the candidates, votes at the table behind me. The press goes crazy. He is surrounded by a huge posse of people.

That's the side of his bald head in the picture, which is all I ever saw of him.

10:30 I eat breakfast.

11:30 We're back in the voting center. This is the busiest time of day for voting, as the following picture shows. The building on the right is one voting center. Behind the trees on the left is another. Down the street and around the corner is the third. I am standing on a pedestrian bridge, the right end of which is a street that is the fourth voting area. The tents are various vendors selling all sorts of greasy foods and cold beverages. It's like a carnival without the rides.

During the afternoon, I went to the other two voting areas. The one in the street was very compact. Basically, it was a row of tents all behind this one:

People were basically walking on the sidewalk until they found their voting station and then walked in. The legal representatives' tent is the one with the green roof off to the right. This is part of the voting area in another school. You can see a voting booth on the left and a side vew of the tables.

Below, I narrate the close of voting. The last hour was relatively uneventful and calm, so I was getting bored at this point.

I took more notes of the ballot counting that I did of any other point in the process, so I'm going to elaborate on almost none of that here. However, I will say that my voting table remained in very good spirits, even as the votes were being counted. In fact, they got yelled at by a supervisor for being too loud. Of course, everything got loud in due time. As each table finished, the vigilantes from each party that one the table would give a little cheer. Eventually, as the other 76 tables finished counting, the cheering collected to one big mass of yelling people as they waited in line with the results and ballots to be check in by the JEM.

The last thing that happened was the passing of the ballots from the stairwell at the end of the building to the truck outside. The time: just past 19:30.

Disclaimer

For those of you wondering why some of the dates, times, and orders of my posts don't make sense, I have absolutely no idea why that is happening.

How I edit

Some people have been wondering how and why I edit pictures. There are a couple reasons for this. For one thing, I am a bad photographer. I've never taken a photography class, and no one has ever taught me anything. I only started when, two summers ago, I was asked to make a photographic guidebook to wildflowers. Thus, I got pretty good at taking pictures of things that don't move, and the kind of pictures I took were mostly informative and not really artistic.

This is a picture I took of a group of students, probably high school, in front of a wall painted with the name of the FMLN, the main left-wing party. It's a pretty decent picture, but it was hard to take because it was taken from a moving vehicle (and my camera isn't very good when it comes to photographing moving things). As a result, it comes out a bit blurry.

When editing or enhancing pictures, I think about what it is I want to enhance. One of the things I really loved about El Salvador is that, while some people who saw me would give the "Oh, it those Americans" look or simply ignore us, there were random bouts of extreme friendliness, and this was one of them. The sign in the background accents the presence of the kids, but it's not really the subject of the picture. This is how I edited it:
In contrast, here's a different presentation for the same picture. This one has a really dark and ominous tone to it. You can't see the faces really well, which makes it look even more creepy and emphasizes the presence of the figures, but not necessarily their identities.

To end this on a happy tone, here is cheerful picture of a flower that I can't fit anywhere else.

As someone who started out documenting and photographing flowers, I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get much of a chance to see the nature and that we went there during the dry season. All the more reason to come back in the future.