This bronze and gold figure from around 1300 B.C., came from a shipwreck.

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is the sole spot for Beyond Babylon exhibition. Some 300 artifacts from royal palaces, temples, tombs, and even shipwrecks were recovered and brought out for us to see. These objects provide insight into the movements of people, artworks and luxury goods across the ancient Near East and Mediterranean during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages (2000-1200 B.C.). At the MET, these adventures begin in Babylon, the melting pot city made powerful by Hammurabi in the second millennium B.C. Because many of these works have either only recently been excavated or have never been shown abroad, “Beyond Babylon” is a remarkable opportunity for the public to experience the rich artistic and cultural traditions of this period.

As one walks into the exhibit, it can immediately be noticed the wall texts and the maps all around the displays. The walls are a blue color, with dense explanations and histories of the people. It even gave the feel of a comic book, with so many unusual objects, drawings and writings on all walls.

There is enough materials in this one exhibit to see and read about. Many objects are delicate and have to be handled with precise care. Many pieces are small and made to be worn-pieces like jewelry, writing tablets, and objects made out of glass. Some of the objects are especially made to be worn and transported (for sale or exchange) across seas, and passed from hand to hand, into distant markets. From Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt in the south to Thrace, Anatolia, and the Caucasus in the north, and from regions as far west as mainland Greece all the way east to Iran, the royal houses built international relationships through the exchange of traded raw materials and goods as well as letters and other gifts.

The objects on display did not only include the practical everyday objects, but also a lot of objects with religious meaning. To the people of that time, God and religion was sacred very powerful and influential. In the exhibit I noticed a particular wand that came from Egypt. It was intended to protect children at night with carvings of mythical creatures and deities.

Other objects which caught my attention were the writing tablets. Some of these contained letters that were exchanged, other contained different writings. It really amazed me how much time one probably had to spend even writing a small tablet. The symbols are all so precisely carved in and so minuscule that I had to strain my eyes to see. Not only that, it contained writing all around the tablet. No wonder not all people could write.     Furthermore, I really enjoyed this exhibition and would recommend everyone to see it. It is truly fascinating to learn more about the people that inhibited Earth before us, and how they lived. Every artifact was truly a jewel and a wonder to look at.

My collage project is entitled Best on Earth and it focuses on the life advice I go by, and just the philosophies I would say everyone should go by. I took magazines like “National Geographic,” “National Adventure,” “Cosmopolitan”and looked through the pages. I cut out the phrases/pictures I really liked and put them on an oak tag to create my collage.

I believe that a person has to be the best he can be, and do the best he can do. A person should strive to achieve the highest, and “dream out loud.” I think we should all aspire to our dreams and never let anything bring us down. As one of my pictures says, “the world can’t weigh you down when you’re standing on top of it. “

There are many chances that life gives you, and it is my belief that we should take a shot at the opportunities that come our way. We should all take risks, and learn from our mistakes. Live life to the fullest, as is represented by the pulse in the middle of my collage.  We need to explore, and sometimes even takes risks along the road.

The shape of a person in the middle of my collage represents that anyone could be there, any person and every person has those opportunities.  The box on the right, with a question inside, represents the uncertainties in life, and also shows that we all have to think ‘outside of the box.’ And another very important thing is that we need to learn to balance ourselves, balance work and fun, good and bad, and even sweet and salty. Smile, dream, achieve, and imagine!

Mantras

Egyptian Feline

“Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.” Claude Monet was a fine artist, actually a good bit better than fine and he could barely come to grips with unbridled possibility of color. It’s overwhelming, so much so that we tend to dismiss it. Photography is a terrific way to capture some of the inquisitiveness which makes us human. There are a few instances in which photography can show us little more than what we can view, but often photography reveals to us how little our eyes permit us to see.  Normally we don’t see things as they are; the familiar is forced into the background of our focus. The couch we are sitting on is no longer a collection of darks and lights, patterns and textures; it is simply a couch.  Even though we live in a world full of color, we often don’t appreciate how powerful colors are. We blend it into our minds and don’t notice the beauty of its affect. This project focuses solely on colors, not in one specific area, but in our environment.

This project made me ask myself: what color would define New York? If its sobriquet holds any weight the big apple should be red. Yet that doesn’t seem to do the city any justice. So I went to the place by which the rest of the world defines New York City: Times Square. I took a series of photos, and when I got home I realized that no single color could define this city. It is made up of the dark gray concrete, the peach-white-black-brown-olive skin, the canary yellow taxis, and the dim green waters of the Hudson and east rivers. It is made of an immense palette created by wistful men and women.

This past weekend I went to a cranberry farm in New Jersey and now I know a sea of cranberries makes for a gorgeous picture. It is at once light and heavy, similar to red, which is at once radiant and dire. The top of a cranberry ocean is a papery red-the red of Valentine’s Day, while just below the surface is ox blood and heartbreak. This photo is an exercise in the texture of red, the depth of the trees, and the lightness of the cranberries, made it a beautiful summary.

Graffiti is usually an exercise in futility. It is often of dimwitted design and message. I found an exception not 6 blocks from my house. I was walking toward the bus stop when a vagrant I passed said, “Enjoy your life miss.” I muttered “thanks” and as I looked at him I noticed this piece behind him. When I returned with my camera later that day, the man was nowhere to be found. But the colorful wall painting remained. The airy blues and yellows allowed for the message to shine through.

Gray is my favorite color. It is the only color that can attribute itself to a majority of events, where the world of vibrancy lays no claim. Feelings are usually gray. When I saw the cat outside my window climbing a roof, I thought the whole image felt lonely and curious. It was a reflection of sorts.

Some writers seem to write with magma, nature paints with it.  I was fiddling with my camera’s color accents at my kitchen table when suddenly I saw only reds and oranges. This cup which held both my tea and my reflection was colored a rich orange. The cup became irrelevant, and only the contents mattered. The other glasses became envious, and there was a revolution in the dishwasher.

Pink balloons regularly bring comfort. In the absence of other color they look isolated. The way talent is often isolated. This poses the question if any color or uniqueness is real when there is no comparison.

White and green are simply natural. A pure color scheme that is downright angelic. My mother brought these flowers home to add some ethereal beauty, the way mothers do. Only it looked so pure that it was deathly. It reminded me of pale faces and cold bodies on Sunday mornings.

I suppose this project made me more observant. I walk by the same church every day, and I just noticed the golden fountain fastened to the side of the building. It depicted a swan and a child dancing. The statue was a combination of liberty and freedom; it felt inherently American. And in no other color is American freedom more perfectly displayed than gold.

Winter is rearing its blustery head once again, and the trees go last and they go quietly. When a tree dies, its bark becomes faded and the leaves get blown away. But every so often there is a warm spell in the middle of October and the tree makes a final stand and leaves sprout right from the trunk and this time I got a snapshot. This green is a rebellion against the seasons and a hopeful stand for life.

When dealing with the colors of New York, one must take into account flags. We have over twenty ethnic parades, each of which has its own flag with its own myriad of colors. So at Washington, D.C., I took a picture of all the flags that hung there. The predominant color is red; the universal color of independence and sovereignty.

It is only fitting that at a park where children play under sprinklers would be the perfect place to find rainbows. The rainbow is an object of lore for kids and adults alike. It is the possibility of unending color, and perhaps a pot of gold. The rainbow here lies on the ground underneath jets of water. The picture is almost too perfect, children will step on this red-orange-yellow-green-blue-indigo-violet floor, and they’ll be happy.

I found a man and his mother who both wore fairly interesting shirts. Both mother and son wore Barack Obama shirts. Color became a paradox on November 4^th, 2008. It is now both irrelevant and progressive.

The performance opens up with a group of men and women who start to move in slow motion. As they move forward, one woman starts to announce the name of her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. The others behind her begin to speak as well, stating their family names in their own language. One voice became many, and the chaos of layered declarations, filled the background of the stage with memories, like scales. “Les Ecailles de la Memoire” (The Scales of Memory) is a dance performance that seizes the imagination, leaves you on the edge of your seat, and thrills you in the moment.

Urban Bush Women’s performance is dedicated to the exploration of cultural expressions, social change, and history. It incorporates the use of music, dance, and text into every single performance. The collaboration between the Urban Bush Women and the Senegalese male company, and the collaborative choreography made the work complex and at the same time remarkable.

The music and text echoed not only the revelations of their African identities, but also self-reflecting explorations of the past and the concepts of each one of us as individuals. It also aimed at showing the audience that Africa and the African culture is more than primitive and unchanging. It explored the themes of Africa’s past and its present. Not only African history, but also individuality and distinctiveness.

The dancers of men and women at first dance separately, and then towards the end blend into one. The music is of powerful African ancestry, there is a lot of drumming, and it is very vivid. There is much African dancing, feet stomping, and highly charged energy present on stage and in the audience. The powerful music beats are thrilling.  Whether a scene was about love or hardships, there was a story in each act. The choreographers incorporated a few scenes of individual dances, or rather monologues, conveying the dancer’s story. The dancers contributing hisses, grunts, and foot stumps provide a complex atmosphere.

The work ends with scenes of love and courtship. As men advance, women stare and reject.  This collaboration between the Urban Bush Women and Compagnie Jant-Bi came out just in time as the nation elected an African-American president of African descent. It couldn’t be timed any more perfectly.

On November 25^th, our IDC class had the honor of meeting a famous writer and journalist, Samuel G. Freedman. From the start, he approached the class in a comfortable and caring way. He had a newspaper deadline and was running late, but “decided to risk it” just to visit our class.

Possibly the most interesting thing about Freedman’s most recent book, Who She Was is that he did not omit any details, however personal or uncomfortable they might be. He wanted to recover her past and her life as a young woman.  “I knew who she became, but I didn’t know how she became.” Writing this book became an act of penance, making up for not being a better son while she was alive.

Freedman told us his major belief about life. He believes there is a periodic table of human nature and that everything in the material world can be broken down in a finite number of elements. No matter what happens in the human world, everything in human existence breaks down into love, hate, disappointments, and ambitions. Those things don’t go out of style. It is a part of the human experience.

His advice is to try to find out everything you can about the person you want to write about, and use all the sources you can. Primary documents, secondary documents, everything. True to his advice, Freedman, before interviews said there’s nothing that will shock him, nothing he can’t handle. And this is how he found his mother’s candid portrait. Even her sexuality, and the important role it played until the end of her life, when even on her death bed she refused to get a vasectomy because it was part of her life force. “To omit that would be rendering her truthfully.” That is something very personal, to his mother and only her family, but he felt that if he didn’t mention such an important detail of her life, he wouldn’t be painting an accurate picture.  In other words, he approached this book and the research it asked for, as a true journalist, making it objective. This is not something many writers can do.

“The arrogance of being a writer is to feel like its important enough to put it out to the world”-is the reason he decided to publish such a personal book. She would’ve felt proud that her life was worthy of a book. She would’ve felt satisfaction that her son would want to spend 3,4 years of his life devoted to her.

Samuel G. Freedman is an interesting fellow, while doing his job as a writer and publishing books, he attempts to, in a way, bring her back to life. Matching up to his persona, his books are as interesting as he is.

Klementei Rybak was just like any other farmer in the Russian Empire. After the Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks overthrew Czar Nicholas II of Russia and attempted a complete redistribution of wealth. In 1920, he received free land in Moldova, a country in the Soviet Union.  It was distributed to him for the purpose of him making money and growing crops.

For five years, he worked from sunrise to sunset. He toiled on his land, and made it quite productive. Others in his towns were too lazy to plant anything on their government-funded plots.  He fought to support his family.

When the Bolsheviks came to power, they also started to collectivize the nation’s farmlands. They formed  kolkhozy, whose purpose was to control and collect the crops that the farmer planted. Farmers had a choice whether or not to join these kolkhozy.  Klementei Rybak rejected the offer. He enjoyed his success and did not want the communists to take that away from him. Since the majority joined these farms, Klementei became one of the outcasts in society and people started calling him kylak (in English, the literal translation is ‘fist’), suggesting that he was criminally elitist. He was not the only one; there were millions across the country just like him. It did not only happen in Moldova, it also happened in Ukraine, and Novgorod.

Raskylachivanie means to take everything away from a person-house, animals, land, make him poor, and also send him to prison. In 1925, this happened to my great-grandfather. His family was left with absolutely nothing. On top of that, they sent him to a Gulag in Siberia. Gulags were government-controlled camps that were for criminals. His family was forced to move in with relatives who joined one of these kolkhozy. He was now a political prisoner. Millions of people ended up in Stalin’s gulags.

Klementei was exiled to Siberia. The Government needed people to work in Siberian mines and to build roads, and cut down forests, and penal servitude began to replace long prison terms. When Communists came to power, most of the Siberian prisoners were political prisoners who were accused of treason, espionage, sabotage, or anti-Soviet propaganda. Ninety nine percent of them were innocent. Whoever didn’t work, they killed.

The prisoners served their ten or twenty-five-year sentences in Siberian camps for nothing. The purpose of these camps was to destroy not only the opposition, but the idea of the rebellion itself. Everyone was arrested, even communists who helped expose “enemies of the Soviet people”, and soon the majority of prisoners were guilty of no ‘crime.’

Gulag prisoners constructed what are currently known as the White Sea-Baltic Canal, the Moscow-Volga canal, the Baikal-Amur main railroad line, numerous hydroelectric stations, and military roads in remote regions. Three types of camps were developed: factory and agricultural colonies for work like lumbering and mining, and “punitive” compounds for special punishment of prisoners from other camps.

Due to its remoteness and severe weather conditions ‘Russian Australia’ was one huge prison, escape from which was almost impossible and very dangerous not only because of the chase, but because of the Siberian killing frosts, unbelievably long distances, bounty-hunting natives, deep forests and wild animals. In jails, inmates were poorly fed. People died from the exhaustion, starvation, cold winters, and disease in Siberia. Inmates were often physically abused by the guards or by fellow prisoners. People froze to death as they were transported to the camps or died from hunger, severe beating or various diseases. For fifteen years Klementei served in Serbia.

In 1940-he came back to his hometown, a year before World War II began. A year later, after the war began, he was arrested again. Some of the neighbors reported him to the government as a conspirator–he was reportedly plotting with the ‘enemy.” In reality, all he had done was keep his light on in the dark. He was sent to Siberia once again. He spent another 19 years there, and came back in 1959, fragile and exhausted. He lived two more years and then he died, in 1961, at the age of 82.

It is a tremendous irony that his grandson, Andrey Rybak, is now the director of the remaining collectivized farms, which his grandfather opposed and for which his grandfather sacrificed his life.

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.”  – Anon

“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” – Aristotle

“Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.”  – Anon

“If you have one true friend, you have more than your share.” – Thomas Fuller

“When it hurts to look back, and you’re scared to look ahead, you can look beside you and your best friend will be there.”

“A true friend is someone who knows there’s something wrong even when you have the biggest smile on your face.”

Having a best friend is one of the defining experiences of childhood. My best friend and I have proven to the world that friendship can survive through distance, arguments, and relationships. I met Maria in the lunchroom of Cavallaro Junior High School.  It was 2001 and Maria had been struggling with understanding the new language.  I came up to her, said “Hi” and reached out to shake hands.  She responded in Russian, greeting me and explaining to me that she just came to America and didn’t understand the language. We were in the same class, and had all the same classes. I was assigned to sit with her and help her to understand the learning material. It certainly wasn’t effortless to open up to someone new, to make friends with someone so different. But as time went on, as we became closer, I realized what a great person she is. Throughout junior high school, we were always in the same homeroom class and always had the same classes. We volunteered helping in different offices, and all the teachers became used to seeing us always together. If one of us wasn’t there, we were questioned as to why the other half was missing.
Unfortunately high school separated us, but only physically. We went to different schools, made new friends, and took different classes. Throughout high school we talked almost every single day and saw each other at least once a week. After high school we chose different intended majors and now attend different colleges, she’s in Hunter and I’m in Baruch, and every time we see each other we have a short battle of the Lexingtons, arguing whose school is better. (I think Baruch definitely wins this one.)
She is one of the very few people who can make me happy, or also disturbed. With her, I can be open and be myself; I can tell her anything and everything because I know she will listen, advising rather than judging. I can share my thoughts, secrets, and problems. I can trust her, one of the most important qualities in a friend. Not every person can consider themselves lucky. I know I can. As the saying goes, “If you have one true friend, you have more than your share.”
My best friend believes in me even when I find it difficult to believe in myself.  She tells me what I need to hear instead of what I want to hear. She opens up to me and trusts me with her biggest dreams and worst disappointments. She puts so much thought into our friendship. With her, I share so many good times and so many special memories. She is always kind to me, patient, there when I need her.
Future might throw us farther and farther apart but true friendship can surpass every obstacle and test through time. However different our careers, our lives will be, I know that there is a person in this world who will bring me comfort, put me at ease, cheer me up like no one can. True friends are those who inspire you to become the best you can ever be. They have full confidence in you and won’t rest until you achieve your goal. A saying goes, “Who finds a faithful friend, finds a treasure,” and I found mine.

The movie starts out with one of the characters being pursued by ravaging dogs racing down empty streets and alleys. As the dogs run, mothers cling to their children and people jump out of their way.  This is the recurring dream of a man who has been through war; he is pursued by every dog he shot at the entrances to the Lebanon villages.
“Waltz with Bashir” is a stunning exploration of war, memory, and the disturbingly subjective nature of truth. It is an animated documentary about a man who tries to remember his experiences and what he witnessed during a massacre in the Lebanon war. This man is bothered by the recurring nightmare and tries to figure out what it means. He visits his friend who is a filmmaker to talk to him about it, but the filmmaker himself surprises him by saying that he cannot remember anything from those times.  The filmmaker, Ari, goes on a journey to collect as many memories as possible from the Lebanon war, images and experiences he can’t remember. Ari tries to fill in this black hole in his memory as he tries to remember the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, in which Israeli soldiers allowed Lebanese Christian Phalangist militiamen to go into two Palestinian refugee camps, where they then slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children.
Even though the movie is in an animated format, we witness a shocking ending of fifty seconds of real pictures and videos of the massacre. The director, Ari Folman said that those fifty seconds of brutal visuals are so touching to people that they seem like fifty minutes.
Folman said this documentary is animated because he couldn’t make it anything else.  He thought making such a controversial topic into an animated film was the best way to depict everything that he experienced and all the events that led up to massacre of so many innocent people. I found the movie interesting and very unique. Because the movie is animated, it enables the director to doing things that a Steven Spielberg film can’t do.  It opens more doors and more opportunities because most of what he remembers is very dream-like and unrealistic. Animation allows Folman to control the image while keeping everything one step away from reality.
This movie is definitely anti-war.  It is made so that it shows some of the downsides of being involved in war and what sometimes happens to innocent civilians. As the main character goes on his journey, we learn interesting things about life, people and war.  We learn that sometimes people ignore those in need of help and protection because they themselves don’t want to get hurt. We also learn that there are people who don’t care what they do/who they kill. At a point in the movie, Ari, and the other soldiers get attacked by the enemy; they start firing back and Ari gets up and goes in the midst of all the fighting and bullets and starts to dance/shoot all around. This part I found a bit odd because when soldiers are being attacked I wouldn’t expect anyone to go in the middle of it with almost no chance of survival. I would expect everyone to lay low and protect themselves.
One of my favorite parts of the movie was when Ari gets back from war and wanders through the streets of the punk Israeli youth.  Their attempts at being “tough” sharply contrast the images of war, bullets, and bloodshed. I think this was intended to show us how war is a part of our life, and yet something very distant to us, something that doesn’t affect us.  The horrors of our nightmares (like the nightmare with which the movie opened up) are nothing compared to the real-life horror and brutality of war.
Overall I think this film was interesting but disquieting. It took a different approach to an autobiographical documentary than other real-life stories of war.  “Waltz with Bashir” is in original form. The use of animation enables the director to explore the imagination of memory, incorporating the dream like montage of the scenes from the Lebanon war from several peoples’ perspectives.  It also gives the director a creative and evocative freedom to take this film in any direction and do with it anything he wants.  This story begs the question of responsibility for this massacre and the involvement of Israel while remaining cautiously close to what was happening.  A must-see for all.

Cuesta del plomo, hillside outside Managua-a well known site of many assassinations carried out by the National Guard

Susan Meiselas is a photographer best known for her committed coverage of political conflicts in Central America during the 1970s and 80s.  She was very concerned with issues of nationalism and identity.  Three of her most famous projects are Carnival Strippers (1972-1976), Nicaragua (1978-2004), and Kurdistan (1991-present).  Currently, her works from these projects are exhibited in New York’s International Center of Photography, to which we took a class trip. 
The project that got most of my attention was Nicaragua. Susan Meiselas took pictures of the violence that went on in that nation. It was a nation in turmoil and she was one of the very few photographers who was brave enough to go there and take pictures of the brutality and the murders.  Two photographs in the exhibit really caught my eye, “Car of a Samoza informer burning in Managua, Nicaragua” (1978), and “Cuesta del plomo, hillside outside Managua-a well known site of many assassinations carried out by the National Guard.” These images contained something we don’t witness often: violence and murder. Although we hear about them quite often, we never actually witness how terrible violence gets. In one of these pictures there is a car on its side, burning, with clouds of smoke rising for everyone to see. A woman casually walks by.  The contrast between the fire orange and the clouds of smoke seems unreal, yet fascinating.  The second image stunned me; it was a picture of half a man, only his legs and the spinal cord sticking out in the middle of green mountains. A hand lies within a few feet of the legs.  It just seems like these mountains are so beautiful and peaceful, and in the middle of it all such a gruesome image.  There was a picture with children lying on the floor, dead, with blood all around them.  Other photographs showed bandits with guns and masks over their faces running through a street while all the neighbors are outside on their doorsteps, observing, and it seems so casual for them, so natural.
A thing that I found really interesting about her is that she goes back to her subjects. Meiselas finds the people she once photographed and returns the pictures to them. For Meiselas, it is somewhat of a quest. She believes that photographers have to form connections with their subjects, revisit and return the photos. The International Center of Photography made videos of Susan Meisalas’s trip back to Nicaragua and showed us the people in her photos. These people told Meiselas about their role at the time she took those photos, and talked about the past and the present.
I really enjoyed our class trip to the ICP, and especially enjoyed the photographs of Susan Meiselas. She is an incredible photographer, who is one the few brave enough to photograph during times in which nations are in turmoil. Now these pictures are not only art, they are a part of a nation’s history.

Lincoln Center Theater’s Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific is the first “Broadway” revival of the show since its opening nearly 60 years ago. As one enters the theater, there is a script spread across the stage, upon which are projected the first few sentences of James Michener’s “Tales of the South Pacific,” the book upon which the show was based: “I wish I could tell you about the South Pacific. The way it actually was. The endless ocean. The infinite specks of coral we called islands. Coconut palms nodding gracefully toward the ocean. Reefs upon which waves broke into spray, and inner lagoons, lovely beyond description. I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes, and the waiting. The waiting. The timeless, repetitive waiting.”
The story takes place in the South Pacific, during World War II. Seabees and nurses are stationed there, and they live their lives. The Island of Bali-Hai was the metaphor for their existence, wonderful, mysterious, and unpredictable. The performances of the Seabees, their dances, and the songs, kept me on the edge of my seat. Every song was catchy and every Seabee was exciting to watch.
From the moment the glorious music of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein was delivered from the 30-piece orchestra, I was stunned. The haunting and beautiful melodies sung by the Seabees and the nurses got stuck in my head, waiting impatiently to be sung. After seeing the show, I quietly hummed them in my head.  The beautiful scenic design makes the story even more enchanting and wonderful.
We, as the audience, witness how Nellie Forbush is transformed into a confident woman. I thought she performed with utmost ease and really fit into the role of her character. Her romance with Emile de Beque, the French plantation owner, redefines her view of the world and of herself. Emile de Beque’s performance was outstanding, the deep and stunning voice brought goose bumps to my skin. I even felt as if her were singing to me.
The other love story, between Lieutenant Joe Cable and Liat, Bloody Mary’s daughter, went on even through society’s racial prejudice (most of the society didn’t approve the relationships between whites and Tonks). I thought Liat’s performance was too brief, she didn’t really show enough of her character. The handsome Lieutenant Cable subtly acted his character and showed us what it is like to go against society and follow your heart.
Even though it lasted for more than three hours, its sweet ending left me speechless and gasping for more. It was more than the typical Broadway show, it was a show every one of us deserves to see and experience.