Author Archives: Vaidehi B.

Movie Review: Les Miserables

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Les Misérables (2012 film) - Wikipedia

So, I finally got around to watching arguably one of the most iconic films of all time- Les Miserables, about France in the 1800s. The film opens with Jean Valjean, a prisoner, being released from prison after a nearly 20-year long imprisonment simply for stealing bread. As a former convict, he cannot find a job or a place to stay, but a generous Bishop offers to take him in. However, Valjean tries to steal the Bishop’s silverware and run away, but is caught by the police- still, the Bishop stands up for him, saying that he himself gave Valjean the silver so he could start a new life in the world. Valjean is stunned and ashamed- to honor the Bishop, he makes himself a new persona to save other people.

Almost ten years later, Valjean is a rich factory owner- but he is shocked when a man named Javert (formerly a prison guard at the prison where Valjean was held) comes to meet Valjean as the new police chief. Javert begins to suspect Valjean’s real identity. Concurrently, one of the factory workers named Fantine is fired for having a daughter out of wedlock, named Cosette. Cosette is revealed to be living with a greedy family named the Thenardiers, who demand money from Fantine. Fantine, desperate, becomes a prostitute to pay her debts. After she attacks an abusive customer, Javert arrests her, but Valjean remembers her as a factory worker and takes her to a doctor. However, the unrest in Paris has festered for too long- things are about to get, for lack of a better term, heated.

Les Miserables takes place during the French Revolution. The movie is set amongst many historical landmarks in Paris- such as Notre Dame. The time period shines through- the deep social divides and political unrest of the Revolution bleed through and impact all the characters in different ways. 

A big social issue in the film was the issue of poverty and criminality. Deep social and class divides between the rich and poor were very common at this time, leading to deep feelings of unrest in the country. In addition, even stealing was treated as a serious offense- leading to decade-long prison sentences and sometimes even execution. In turn, the imprisoned people were unable to provide for their families- which just reinforced the cycle of poverty and forced their children into stealing in order to survive.

A big social issue mentioned in the film was Cosette living with the Thenardiers. One might ask, why would Fantine send Cosette away? The truth is, it was very common in this time period for working-class women to send their daughters away to live with slightly better-off individuals who could provide the child with some education (for a fee).

There were many cultural differences shown in this movie I wasn’t aware of- for example, the practice of sending daughters away. In addition, I was unaware of the practice of the police dealing with the revolters in those days- I had no idea it was so brutal. I was also surprised by the truly horrible living conditions of the poor shown in the movie- I really had no clue they were that bad. 

The issues this film deals with- poverty, criminality, and doing anything to survive- are definitely universal, and prominent even today, and even in the United States- with the wage gap and class gap that we are currently experiencing in our society. It was heartwarming, though, to see the sense of community, love, and kindness shown by Valjean, even in this brutal situation.

-Vaidehi B.

Les Miserables is available for checkout at the Mission Viejo Library.

Volunteering From Home for Teens: Letter Writing

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Here, I’ve included organizations for teenagers to volunteer from home with- this time, letter writing. Enjoy!

1. Letters Against Isolation

Letters Against Isolation aims to ease loneliness among self-isolating seniors through letters! Volunteers write creative, fun letters or cards, and then mail the cards and letters to addresses they are given. Even though you may have to make a small investment to buy envelopes and stamps, it’s an easy, self-paced way to volunteer! You can find them at https://www.lettersagainstisolation.com/

Volunteering | South Florida Water Management District

2. Cards for a Cause

Cards for a Cause aims to ease sadness and loneliness among children hospitalized for a serious or terminal illness through card-writing. There are instructions for writing cards on their website, along with an email address to mail pictures of you working on the cards, so they can verify your hours. When finished, you mail the cards in one package to a given address, from which they are distributed out to individual children. Because the cards are mailed en masse to a single address, your investment for stamps and envelopes will be minimal, making this a great and easy way to volunteer! You can find them at https://cardsforacause.org/make-cards/

3. Soldiers’ Angels

Soldiers’ Angels is a massive volunteer organization, with many different virtual and in-person opportunities, so take a look at their other campaigns! They currently have two letter and card writing campaigns. However, to participate in their variety of opportunities, they do require a $1 per month donation. You can find them at https://soldiersangels.org/

-Vaidehi B.

Ways to Increase Productivity

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Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

As the school year continues in earnest, many of us may find ourselves struggling to keep up with workloads and stay productive, especially after online school for the last year and a half. So here are five tips to help you boost your productivity and keep accomplishing great things!

1. Write It Down

No, you will not ‘remember it.’ Write every task you have to do down somewhere, like a calendar or daily list, and check it often so you don’t forget anything!

2. Habits and Patience

Start creating productive daily habits for yourself. This way, you won’t have to consciously think about doing tasks- your brain will go on autopilot and get things done. For example, you could get into the habit of studying for two hours every day after school by setting a timer while studying for at least one month. Stay patient- habits take time to develop, but they’re great tools to keep you productive!

3. Take Care of Yourself

You can only be productive if your body is physically equipped to work. Eat well, hydrate all day, and get the recommended amount of sleep every night. This will do wonders for helping you feel more ready to tackle the day!

4. Inspire Yourself

Be cautious about what you choose to fill your mind with. Take some time off from your phone and hang out with your friends, read a book, or go for a walk. This will help recharge you and inspire you to get work done!

5. Reward Yourself

Don’t be too harsh on yourself! Make sure to give yourself a little reward, or mental pat on the back, after each successful day. This will help you keep your momentum going throughout the year!

-Vaidehi B.

Online Volunteering For Teens Part 2

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Below, I’ve included three more organizations with which teens can volunteer online! Good luck!

Volunteer Opportunities | Cardinal at Work

1. DoSomething.org

DoSomething.org is another great virtual volunteering platform. The idea here is that you can volunteer from home, on your own schedule, and participate in mini ‘projects’- for example, one project could be collecting a number of nonperishable items for your local food pantry. You must track the hours you spent on the project, and upload pictures of your results- and DoSomething.org will send you a signed certificate confirming your hours! You can find them at https://www.dosomething.org/us

2. Points of Light

Another great platform to check out is Points of Light. Points of Light serves as a database, like VolunteerMatch, for volunteering opportunities in your area, and can also direct you to online opportunities- just toggle the Presence setting to “Remote.” You can find them at https://engage.pointsoflight.org/

3. TED Talk Translator

Do you know a language other than English? Then translating TED Talks might be the perfect volunteer task for you! You are assigned TED Talks in a secondary language, and then write subtitles for them in English, or vice versa- for example, you may have to write English translation captions for a Portuguese TED Talk, or write Portuguese captions for an English one. Even if you only know English, you can transcript subtitles for English TED Talks and review others’ work. The application process to become a translator is a bit tedious, but the work is rewarding! You can find them at https://www.ted.com/participate/translate/transcribe

-Vaidehi B.

Poem of the Day: Dulce Et Decorum Est

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Content Warning: This poem contains violent descriptions.

I recently read the poem “Dulce Et Decorum Est” by Wilfred Owen, and found it a heartbreaking but realistic message of what war is like, especially the World Wars. Read it below!

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
– My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen was a soldier during World War I, and later in his life, he suffered from severe PTSD. This poem details the horrors of chemical agents used in the war- such as sulfur and mustard gas. Owen speaks in gruesome detail of how he watched one of his fellow soldiers die from breathing in this gas. At the end, he also rebukes the supporters of the war (and all wars), saying that they know nothing of what war is really like, and simply send young men off to their horrible deaths. He mocks the saying dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. This is a patriotic Latin saying, meaning it is sweet and honorable to die for your country.

-Vaidehi B.

Online Volunteering Opportunities for Teens

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Whether you need to complete a school requirement or are just looking to spice up your college applications and resumes, volunteering is a huge part of the middle and high school experience. However, in COVID-19 times, finding in-person volunteering opportunities has become very difficult. A reasonable alternative? Virtual volunteering! You can complete your hours anytime, anywhere, according to your own schedule. Below are three great virtual volunteering opportunities for teenagers!

New Jersey Department of State - Volunteer and National Service - Volunteering in NJ

1. Zooniverse

Zooniverse is an online platform, specializing in science-based volunteering through transcription and editing. For example, you could be assigned to a project digitizing marine organism classification cards, or transcripting research vessel records from the 19th century. There’s no shortage of projects available! You can find them at https://www.zooniverse.org/

2. Amnesty Decoders

Amnesty Decoders is an offshoot branch of Amnesty International. The platform utilizes citizen volunteers (like you!) to analyze images, scan text blocks, or sift through documents to find, track, and report occurrences, like harassment, that impinge on people’s human rights. You may also be assigned a research or categorizing role. For example, you could examine pictures of New York City intersections and flag all the cameras you see, so Amnesty can better understand how new facial recognition and camera technology impacts marginalized communities. Amnesty Decoders does not currently have any projects open to volunteers, but you can subscribe to their mailing list to be notified of upcoming projects. You can find them at https://decoders.amnesty.org/

3. Smithsonian Transcription Center

The Smithsonian Transcription Center is another great volunteer option. It also utilizes citizen volunteers to make transcriptions of otherwise illegible documents and recordings in the Smithsonian Archive, in order to make them easier for people with disabilities and impairments to access. For example, you could be in charge of transcripting letters from Charles Perrault to Anne Tapissier, discussing an upcoming art exhibition at the Château de Nemours. To ensure all transcriptions are as accurate as possible, multiple volunteers can work at once on the same page or item, and all transcriptions must be reviewed by a peer. The documents are very interesting to read through! You can find the center at https://transcription.si.edu/

-Vaidehi B.

Book Review: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is a classic of American literature, dealing with the silent and prevalent plague of racism in the Great-Depression-era Deep South. Told through the eyes of young Scout and Jem, the novel created one of America’s most respectable fictional heroes- Atticus Finch, the upstanding, intelligent, and determined lawyer, dedicated to righting the wrongs of the South.

This novel deals with many complex themes- especially the theme of morality. Atticus Finch, the single father of Scout and Jem, is an upstanding, respectable, and almost irritatingly moral figure in his community. He is seen as a lone beacon of justice and light in his community because of his values. Another theme in the novel is that of humanity’s base instinct of right and wrong- beyond what is outlined in the law. This is clearly shown when Atticus chooses to defend Tom, the black man accused of raping a white woman.

Even though this book is highly lauded on many different platforms, I would not give it an incredible rating. First of all, I was not a big fan of Atticus- even though every single townsperson in the novel gushed about how Scout and Jem were so incredibly lucky to have such a moral, upstanding, and intelligent father, I did not concur. Sure, Atticus was most definitely all of those things- but he seemed more like the idea of a father rather than a real father: he was a personality before he was a person, so to speak. He was cold and aloof towards his children- he did not seem to provide Scout or Jem any real love or guidance through the novel outside of faux-profound moral platitudes. In addition, the book overall had an undertone of condescension and white saviorism that I really did not appreciate. However, this book was written in the 1960s- so it is understandably less progressive than what we would expect today. Even though I didn’t much enjoy this book, I would definitely recommend that you read it- it is still a window to not-so-past times, and can help us better understand what we need to do to confront racism in our world today.

-Vaidehi B.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is available for checkout at Mission Viejo Library. It can also be downloaded for free on Overdrive.

Book Review: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

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Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is an incredibly interesting and, at times, deeply unsettling novel on just how far humanity will go to suppress what it doesn’t understand.

The book is set in a dystopian future- the United States has become a massively powerful republic, and all news coverage and media are centered around a single event: the “War,” which the Republic is winning. It centers around a seemingly ordinary firefighter named Montag- but in this universe, firefighters do not put out fires. They light them, burning down houses which contain contraband items, usually books.

On one such night, Montag witnesses one woman refuse to leave her house, choosing to burn with her books- and is unsettled. How important must books be if she is willing to die with them? From the smoldering wreckage of the house, Montag takes a single book home with him. On his way home, he meets a teenager named Clarisse, who is out alone, walking in the night. Clarisse expresses the beauty of the night, and how the fallen autumn leaves “smell like cinnamon.” Montag is again deeply uncomfortable- primarily because he himself never thought to look up at the night sky or focus on the smell of fallen leaves. Soon, wracked with guilt about his crime of taking a book, Montag decides he will simply read a few pages to satisfy his curiosity, and then burn the book. But what he finds will change his life forever….

I, personally, have a love-hate relationship with this book. The dialogue is clumsy, the expositions are vague, and the setup and lead-ins for the plot are often simply nonexistent. However, what makes Fahrenheit 451 so memorable is the ideology rather than the imagery. There are indeed some beautifully-written passages where Bradbury fully lives up to the term “author” and beyond- but the idea that the slow eradication of culture and eccentricity is the individual citizen’s fault as much as it is the government’s really rings true in today’s society especially.

-Vaidehi B.

Fahrenheit 451 is available for checkout at Mission Viejo Library. It is can also be downloaded for free on Overdrive.

Authors We Love: Rupi Kaur

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Rupi Kaur Has Been Accused of Plagiarism: Did She Steal ...

Rupi Kaur is a Canadian-Indian poet known for her prose publications Milk and Honey, The Sun and her Flowers, and most recently, Home Body.

Born in Punjab, India, on 5th October 1992, Kaur immigrated to Canada with her family when she was very young. She grew up poor- her father was a truck driver who was on the road for long periods of time, and her mother was often busy taking care of Kaur’s three younger siblings. However, poetry and art were a large part of her upbringing- her father would write prose poems for her mother, and her mother loved to paint. When she was still a university student, she began posting her short prose poems onto Instagram, and gained a modest following on her social media platforms. In 2009, she began performing her poems for small events, under the simple stage name of “Kaur.” After dozens of failed submissions to publishing houses, journals, and magazines, Kaur self-published her first book of poetry, Milk and Honey, in 2014. The book was a massive success, and later re-published by Andrews McMeel- one of the leading poetry publishers in America. Three years later, in 2017, Kaur released The Sun and her Flowers. It was an even greater success than Milk and Honey, garnering Kaur millions of dollars in book sales and millions of new followers across her social media platforms. In November 2020, Kaur released her third book- Home Body. The book became one of the bestselling books of the year.

Kaur’s work deeply resonated with me personally. In her writing, she discusses prominent themes in today’s world. She succinctly and beautifully captures the niche feelings of growing up an immigrant in a new country, in a new world- especially as a young girl. She also masterfully dissects sensitive topics such as those of sexual violence, and the politicization/sexualization of women’s bodies in today’s society. Her writing is simple, beautiful, and therapeutic to read. They are truly incredible dissertations on everything from the fallacies of love to the difficulties of family to the oscillating pendulum of self-love and self-hate that people often have with their bodies. I would recommend her work to everyone!

-Vaidehi B.

All three books mentioned above contain some sexual themes that may not be suitable for all audiences.

Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur is available for checkout from Mission Viejo Library. Milk and Honey and Home Body can both be downloaded for free on Overdrive.