Week 14 Blog Post

 We are now in the 14th week of the semester and are nearing the end of our course, wrapping up with projects and research. This week in our journalism class felt a lot less heavy on the work side since we got to use most of our time for this class spent on working on our op/ed unit project. Aside from our unit project, we also had our news analysis assignment, where we got to choose any op/ed writing piece that we wanted to use for this week. The op/ed piece I chose was called “Minimum Wage Should Not Be Living Wage”. This journal discussed how low the minimum wage is in Hawaii and why the wage is set this low. I chose to use this article for the news analysis assignment because it is similar to the topic that I chose to discuss in my op/ed unit assignment. I chose to write about how there is no law in place that designates a break time on a work shift, causing many workers to go entire shifts without any sort of break. These topics are very related because they both talk about unfair conditions in the workplace. I wanted to write about these topics because I have encountered both of these problems in the workplace working here in Hawaii, and many of my friends have as well. I liked working on this unit assignment and I like the topic that I chose. I found that there were a lot of credible resources to back the facts on this issue as well. I liked reading my other classmates' drafts for their ideas for the unit assignment. I definitely gained more awareness on a handful of issues that are happening locally.

Now let’s talk about this blog’s other theme, which is art. This past week I was able to attend an art show with live music on Oahu. This art show was featuring a friend of mine’s art, while another friend of mine played the piano. The show was titled “In Your Dreams” and featured mixed media collage art by Kano Watanabe. The gallery was held at “Plantoem”, a plant shop and art gallery in Honolulu. The show lasted about 4 hours, where viewers were welcome to view the art, buy prints, and listen to live classical music while being surrounded by plants. I really enjoyed the event, and thought that the art was incredible. The series had a very nostalgic and dream-like vibe, and I could tell the artist had put a lot of time, energy, and thought into the collection. The pianist was also incredibly talented, and freestyle different classical music renditions throughout the entire event. The artist of the gallery used to work in a gallery here on Maui called the PAU, or Pacific Artists Union. I actually had covered a story on the Pacific Artists Union Gallery in our previous unit assignment of making a video journal. Altogether the show was incredible and the artists did an amazing job.