Jessica Riley
ARTICLES I'VE WRITTEN
Throughout my life I have always been an avid lover of animals. There has never been a point in my life where I didn’t have at least three pets in my house. All of my pets have been rescued and adopted from animal shelters in various different states. I’ve adopted dogs of all different ages and gave them the loving and caring home they deserved. There are many ethical places in which pet owners can adopt animals from, yet they aren’t paid much attention to. So, why should we adopt these beautiful creatures instead of shop for them?
Dogs and cats are some of the greatest animals to have as house pets. They are good for the soul and bring an immense amount of joy into any home. Just by hugging a dog your blood pressure can decrease. They bring a sense of warmth and happiness into any setting. First and foremost, by adopting a pet, you are not only saving a helpless animal, but you’re saving yourself in a way that no money amount of money can buy.
Animal shelters are home to some of the most lovable animals. You can find dogs and cats of all different sizes. Most of these animals have been abused, abandoned, and left to fend for themselves. The generous people at animal shelters help save these poor innocent creatures until they find their forever home.
One of the best reasons to adopt instead of shop is simple: when you adopt from a shelter, you become part of the solution to the overpopulation crisis. Not only that, but you get to give a sweet, loving animal a brand new happy home where it can live for the remainder of its life.
Some new pet owners may be hesitant and nervous when adopting a new pet. Behold, animal shelters provide educational information regarding all aspects of pet ownership. They also support the adopter even after they have adopted and give advice on training the adopted animal. Many of the animals seem to sense what they were once up against and become among the most devoted companions.
Because animals at shelters are kept there until their adoption, many of the volunteers and staff get to know the animals personally. With this personal connection, they are able to carefully select animals for the appropriate family.
Some people don’t like to adopt from shelters because the dogs are already old and they want a puppy or kitten. However, many older dogs are in shelters because their owners couldn’t handle them as puppies and gave them up to the shelter. The dogs in shelters are often already house trained. You don’t have to deal with the puppy or kitten phase, which involves the animals to be taken care of like new born babies. You will be able to see the personality of the dog or cat before adopting, that way you will know that you’re ready to make the lifelong commitment of keeping your furry pet.
Purchasing from puppy and kitten mills is one of the worst things a new pet owner can do. These mills are places where dogs and cats are forced to have as many babies as possible to be sold, and once they cannot reproduce any longer, they are sentenced to death. Horrible enough, these mothers are forced to live in a cage for their entire lives with no human companionship. The money that is generated through the purchasing of the puppies goes to the breeder, who is then encouraged to breed more puppies. The puppies end up having multiple health issues due to birth defects from overbearing mothers. If the dogs are not adopted in a certain amount of time, they are also sentenced to death because there is no other place to keep them. Adopting from a shelter means you don’t support these cruel practices.
Many people may argue that they want purebred cats or dogs and they cannot find these types of animals at shelters. Prior to contrary belief, purebred animals have many more health issues than animals found at shelters. Shelter animals may have a cold or be slightly sick when you first adopt them, but they will eventually get better and live longer and happier lives. Purebred animals contract lifelong illnesses such as heart disease, hormonal and endocrine system diseases, skin disease, and seizure disorders from the horrible tactics of breeding animals that should not be bred together. By supporting these over-bred purebreds, you will be supporting the creation of sickly animals.
These are just a few reasons why I feel strongly about adopting over shopping. Adopting animals has changed my life for the better and I hope the population will one day realize how impacting it is to rescue a furry best friend. It’s up to pet owners to make the choice: Will you support saving a sweet, innocent life or will you support the breeding of sickly animals?
ADOPT, DON'T SHOP
If money can’t buy you happiness, then why are celebrities often looked up to?
Picture this: a woman, who is presumably just a so-called “regular person”, gets the lead role in an upcoming movie. Before shooting she is able to walk outside of her home and partake in normal everyday activities such as food shopping and picking up her children from school. Let's fast-forward a couple of months. Her new movie comes out and suddenly she cannot complete a simple task without someone coming up to her on the street begging her for a picture or an autograph. This is her job, just like a school nurse or even a mailman. Why do we treat celebrities like gods?
The word celebrity comes from an old French word celebrite, which translates to ‘frequented or honored’. So you’re telling me that celebrities are people that we honor? Honor for what? Singing a song containing 95% curse words? Showing their face on camera in movies like 50 Shades of Grey? There seems to be a problem in today’s world regarding how celebrities are treated compared to us ‘regular’ folks.
Celebrities consume our world more than ever before. America has never been so obsessed with the ‘celebrity’ concept. This uproar in collective obsession has reached a point that is extremely unhealthy for the fabric of our society and generation.
Celebrity fame is fueled by one thing and one thing only: how much attention we give to them. Our outlets to the world of celebrity have increased immeasurably over the years. We can open a book, read a magazine, watch a television show, or simply log on to Facebook to see what celebrities are doing throughout the day. Websites like Elite Daily and Buzzfeed can’t even go one single day without posting an article regarding a breaking news article regarding who Justin Bieber is dating. Why do we care so much? Instead of engaging in personal interactions with one another, it’s much easier to ask the girl sitting next to you in math class, “Did you see what Zac Efron looked like at the awards show last night, he looked sooo dreamy…” rather than asking her about her day or how’s she’s feeling.
Sometimes we need to step back and reevaluate our lives. Do we need to follow every celebrity on twitter? Does Kim Kardashian’s tweet that reads, “What if we spelled ‘people’ like this: peephole. That would be funny I think” really need to be re-tweeted thousands of times? This obsession has gone beyond our capacity. Celebrities settle themselves inside of our minds and suddenly they are the best things since sliced bread. We look up to these people as role models, when we have amazing role models around us who go seemingly unrecognized. For example, this past August Kylie Jenner has turned 18. There were news stories covering her extravagant birthday party and her new Ferrari purchased by her rapper boyfriend for weeks on end. In the same month Malala Yousafzai turned 18. She is a Pakistani activist for female education and the youngest person ever to win a Nobel Prize. I’m sure the majority have probably never heard of Yousafzai, but can definitely tell you the color of Jenner’s new $320,000 car and the color wig she was sporting that night. We need to stop making these people famous for nothing besides exposing their everyday lives to the public.
Although celebrities are extremely influential in adult lives, they are even more prominent in the lives of children. This can be a good thing, but it can also be a very bad thing. Because celebrities are such a hot commodity for media outlets, we see pictures of them everywhere at all times. Children see Victoria’s Secret models on the cover of magazines and think, “Why don’t I look like that?” This leads to them growing up before they’ve even experienced childhood. I remember trying on my first tube of mascara when I was a freshman in high school. Now whenever I’m out, I almost always see a young girl with a full face of makeup on. This is definitely contributed to the media outlets. Any child is smart enough to go on to their parent’s iPad and make an Instagram account and see how photo shopped their favorite celebrities are. The thing is, they don’t think it’s photo shopped. They think this is what they NEED to look like. This is why we need to start flooding the media with people like Malala Yousafzai. Children will grow up thinking, “That’s who I want to be when I grow up” and not “I need to have perfect eyebrows in order to be cool.”
I believe the obsession with celebrity derives from one thing: desire. We want what celebrities have. We want their good looks, their lip fillers, their billion dollar mansions, their Rolls Royce’s. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that money cannot buy you happiness. Why do you think so many celebrities go nuts? It’s because they lack something they can never buy: true happiness. They are too busy being criticized by the public to reach their eternal happiness. If the media stopped flooding our minds with these celebrities with their perfect hair and their perfect skin and started promoting people who make an actual difference in our world, then future generations will grow up to be healthy and powerful adults.
FAME IS LAME: WHY WE SHOULDN'T GIVE CELEBS SPECIAL TREATMENT
An Interview With Thomas
Thomas Mustacchia, 21, is an affectionate son, a younger brother, and a role model for his nephew. He is a high school graduate and is a current employee of the Department of Transportation. Thomas loves to partake in outdoor activities like hiking, going to the beach, and taking spontaneous road trips throughout the New Jersey and Pennsylvania regions in his 2015 Volkswagen Jetta. Residing in Staten Island, New York, Thomas lives with his mother, Fran, in a two family house. Upstairs lives his sister, Jessica, his brother-in-law, Jorge, and 1 and ½ year old nephew, Peter. Thomas has lived on the South side of Staten Island his whole life. However, there was one particular year where he didn’t live in his familiar home. Although it may seem like he has it all: a successful career, devoted friends and family, and a place to call home, Thomas hasn’t always taken advantage of this picturesque lifestyle. Life hasn’t always been easy for the twenty-one year old. There was once a time in his life where he questioned whether or not he would even be alive to see his 21st birthday.
Sitting at his oval dinner table I am greeted by Tom along with his nephew Peter, screaming and crying and clinging onto his uncle. As he sits down to talk with me, a scent of cigarettes and Hermes cologne engulfs me. He is indisputably charming, standing at 5’6” with thick black hair, enticing dark brown eyes and a statuesque build. He’s wearing a $15 shirt from H&M with long sleeves, which he begins to roll up as he sits down and places his nephew on his lap. As he let’s out a sigh following with a charming smile, he says, “Let’s get started,” and we begin the interview.
Q: So Thomas, to begin, what would you say are some of the best memories you can remember from any point in your life?
A: Just simply being on my old block in my neighborhood I used to live in with nothing but the whole summer ahead of me and every night to stay out and just be kids.
Q: I can say the same for myself. Can you tell me about a hardship that you’ve faced in your life?
A: Once I moved I got into substance abuse while I was twelve years old. It took me until I was seventeen to enter a therapeutic community in upstate New York that would last a little over three years, but had different parts of the program. Throughout that time I remained sober.
Q: Was there anything specific that caused you to fall into substance use?
A: I had a lot of issues growing up. Most of them were normal problems that a lot of kids feel but that’s just the way I handled them. I ended up dependent on heroine and painkillers, different hallucinogens and other control substances. I knew I needed to do something or really suffer for the rest of my short life or just die.
Q: As for the people you hung out with during this period in your life, the people you did the drugs with, do you still remain in contact with them? What’s your relationship like with them today?
A: Some actually ended up in the program so I still have contact with them. Some were in the program and left before they completed so I haven’t spoken to them and some didn’t really get any help at all and still struggle. I have spoken to them through Facebook but keep it at that and some I just don’t speak with simply because I don’t want to, even if they’re clean.
Q: So what is this program that you mentioned? Can you talk a little bit about it for those who aren’t familiar with situations like this?
A: It’s a three-year therapeutic community called Dynamite Youth Center that has different steps. The first step is one year long and you all live together upstate with staff that also live in a house on the grounds that guide you through it. After one year you transfer down to a Brooklyn house and the first step there is six months back and forth with no job. The second phase in Brooklyn is three days a week and you work part time at your job in between. The third is full time work and going to the Brooklyn house on Friday’s. We have groups and different meetings. We had a lot of fun too. We would have New Years parties together and for all the holidays we would have parties and have full basketball and football and baseball games, watch movies on a projector screen with all eighty-five people in the house in the gym with blankets on the floor and pillows… it was like a huge family. We ate our meals together, wash our dishes together, clean our house and rooms. We held our functions on the grounds. Some people cut grass… did maintenance… took care of the pool…paper work…cooked…there as different levels of workers. I ran the maintenance crew and we built a dorm from the ground up.
Q: And what is the range of ages of the members?
A: Anywhere from thirteen to twenty-five. Usually sixteen to twenty-one.
Q: How old were you when you entered Dynamite? Do you remember the day that you decided you needed help?
A: I was seventeen and I was at my sister’s wedding and I was really drunk and I ended up telling one of my cousins I was shooting heroine so within a week I was upstate.
Q: Are there certain rules you have to follow if you enter Dynamite?
A: So many. It’s strict but it was also really fun at the same time. So many rules I don’t even want to name them all, but it went as far as you have to wait three months to touch the remote control without permission.
Q: Are you finished with the program? Do you still remain in contact with the people at Dynamite?
A: Yeah I stop by every now and then. I should probably go more often. They offer a group once a month for people who complete the program.
Q: During your time, did you ever wish you could leave?
A: Yeah, plenty of times…but after a couple of months, I grew a good connection with the place and couldn’t bring myself to leave.
Q: How different is your life now from when you first started off at Dynamite?
A: It’s a completely different thing in a lot of ways. I hold more responsibilities now, I have a girlfriend…I have a nephew. My dad passed away while I was in the program and even my best friend died a couple of weeks ago from relapse. I just became more responsible and able to function in the world and be way more trust worthy and hold up morals and values and have future goals.
Q: Is there one thing that you’ve learned in Dynamite that helps you everyday?
A: To just continue to be me and learn from it.
Q: And is there anything that you’ve learned that you would give as advice to a new Dynamite member?
A: You can really only give so much… you don’t want their head to explode. I guess I would say take it day by day and do less talking, because you don’t even really know what you’re talking about.
Q: That seems like it would be helpful. Finally, I know sometimes you probably feel like people judge you based on this past experience. Is there anything you would like people from outside of the spectrum to know?
A: I don’t feel judged about that at all. There’s no one in this world who doesn’t have some sort of problem. If you want to be a judge then go to school.
Q: Great advice, thank you Thomas.