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My Newfound Obsession With Cards

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My Newfound Obsession With Cards Recently, I’ve been really into playing cards. Just a typical deck with 52 cards: 2-10, Jack-Ace, and 4 suits. I don’t know exactly how it started, but I do know a few things made me want to start using them more. Over the summer, I went to a church camp where, during the day, my friends and I did a whole lot of nothing, and in the evenings we had services and events and things like that. So to fill our time, we played a lot of card games. To my great embarrassment, up until this summer I haven’t been able to shuffle a deck of cards, and for a good reason: I’ve never had to. My ideology made perfect sense. For most of my life, as long as there was one friend who knew how to shuffle, we were fine. Just let them shuffle; it was as easy as that. After all, we hardly played with cards. Now, imagine this. It’s 90 degrees outside in the middle of Indiana on a sleepy Wednesday afternoon. Nothing is really going on during that specific afternoon at the annual...
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The Classical Guitar (NFW first post)

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The Classical Guitar, with Mateo I was recently reminded that not everyone knows what my instrument is, so I thought that I’d give a brief overview of it here. I think everyone knows what a “normal” acoustic guitar is. Steel-stringed? People often like to experiment with it because it seems relatively simple at first. There’s the electric guitar, the one that everyone wants to play because it’s always in every pop song and is the one that famous guitarists like to “shred” on. And then, there’s the classical guitar. Almost every time I bring it up, people are confused, so what is it? It’s a guitar with 6 nylon strings and typically a larger body than your average acoustic guitar. It’s very delicate and is known for having a softer sound because it’s not played with a pick, but with fingers. Now would be a wonderful time to pull up YouTube and look up “Classical guitar pieces”, and just listen to any of them. Francisco Tárrega is by far one of the greatest classical guitar composers of a...
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Gun Violence and Sag Harbor

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Gun Violence and Sag Harbor (Children playing war games in Libya) By Mateo Hernandez      Throughout Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor , there has been an underlying theme of toxic masculinity. This theme is present throughout the chapter, The Gangsters, where essentially Benji and his friends play with BB guns and end up harming each other. Society promotes the use of toy firearms, and alongside issues rooted deep into our country, this dangerous concoction develops into something much worse, which may be a cause of increasing gun violence across America.  To begin with, I think that we should look at some ‘Fast Facts’ from the CDC about gun violence. The article's key point is: “Firearm injuries and deaths continue to be a significant public health problem in the United States. While firearm violence and injury affects people in all communities, some groups have higher rates of firearm injury than others.” The article was written on July 5th, 2024, and claims that (b...
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To Deceive, or not to Deceive

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To Deceive, or not to Deceive David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green was a bit of a change of pace from Fun Home . Featuring the youngest protagonist that we’ve seen, Jason is finally a character who has less life experience than all of us. Unfortunately for him, that means that he’s living through arguably one of the most challenging parts of his life, one where he is repressed and attacked at almost every corner. I’d like to specifically focus on one common theme that is presented throughout the novel, the theme of deception. Throughout the story (even confession?), Jason suggests that he feels repressed with secrets and false truths at school and even at home, with a social hierarchy that dominates him at school, and the stress of knowing that something is amiss with his parents.  Right off the bat, Jason is shown breaking the number 1 rule in his house, to not enter his father's office, but immediately, a mindset of keeping secrets is established. It starts with: “Do not set fo...
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Thoughts on Bruce and Alison

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Thoughts on Bruce and Alison By Mateo Hernandez            Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home was, in a sense, a change of pace and perspective, compared to novels like The Catcher in the Rye and The Bell Jar. It featured hand-drawn art by Bechdel herself, and was a memoir of sorts, a story about discovering things about her father, Bruce, that she’d never known. It’s an extremely complex novel that dives deeply into touchy subjects about sexuality and identity, and the pain of not being able to ever know the truth. Throughout the novel, Bechdel attempts to create a reality in which her coming out as a lesbian is related to her father's death, and she suggests that her father may have taken his own life because of this event. But in reality, Bechdel is creating a false truth, as the evidence for a suicide is simply not substantial, and her interpretation may reflect her search for reconciliation and meaning.  To begin with, the evidence for a suicide is...
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Did The Bell Jar Win?

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  Did The Bell Jar Win? Throughout literature, movies, and stories, a happy ending is one that readers look for. No matter the struggle that the characters go through, in the end, good has to come. Right? Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, at a glance, seems to suggest this, but when the entire story is revealed, the truth ultimately comes out.  As we all know, The Bell Jar is a semi-autobiography of sorts where Plath draws on her experiences of battling with mental illness, societal expectations/stereotypes, and, in general, knowing what to do with her life. The coming-of-age novel begins in New York City, with the protagonist Esther Greenwood away from the safety of home, and exploring the wonders of being a magazine guest editor for a month. At first, she seems to be optimistic and enthusiastic. She tells herself that she’s good at getting scholarships and job opportunities. But as the novel progresses, quickly the reader is able to tell that Esther is in an unfocused mental...
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The Pure Trinity

The Pure Trinity Mateo Hernandez           J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is, by far, one of the most interesting books that I’ve ever read. Salinger’s novel follows Holden Caulfield, a young boy searching for meaning in a world that is seemingly “phony” all around. Told in the unique perspective of a conversation between you and Caulfield, he speaks about his crazy winter break, after he is kicked out of Pencey prep, and wanders around New York City. Throughout the novel, he appears to criticize nearly everything that he encounters. He especially likes to criticize the people around him. Nobody seems to get him, and from his perspective, he is always in the right. Although Caulfield does have respect for a few people. The  ‘Holy trinity’ in a sense. His mysterious childhood friend, Jane, never encounters Holden during his wild adventure. Phoebe, his bright younger sister. And Allie, his redheaded younger brother, who died years ago. Reading th...
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