It seems as if everything is hardy and won't die easily. Back when I went to Alaska on vacation quite a few years ago, I got some free rings which will turn color in the sunlight because of the ultra violet rays. It's kind of like solar energy but used as decoration and not electricity. It was from a store called Del Sol, which can be found in Hawaii as well, not just Alaska. And I think there might have been one in Las Vegas or some other place. You can get t-shirts, bags, and other things which will become colorful under the sun's rays. Anyhow, those rings still work even all those years later. I thought this was surprising. Batteries decay over time but apparently these are still top notch.

I've been reading a book called The People of Sparks. I picked it out for an activity we're going to do in language arts, actually, but that doesn't mean it's not a good book. It's the sequel to a book called The City of Ember. Though some writers have a more sophisticated style than Jeanne DuPrau, that doesn't mean her books aren't meaningful. I'm not sure which book of the series I prefer. (There are actually four books in the series but I haven't read the other two yet.)

In the books, there is something called the Disaster that happened to mankind. People kept fighting over things like religion, food, and land, and there were billions of people and dangerous weapons like bombs and guns and tanks. It got out of control and a lot of people died. Then three epidemics of diseases came and decimated the population further. Only a few were left and some of them went underground to make a city called Ember, which was powered by electric lights. Other people tried to scratch a living on the Earth's surface. One of the settlements was called Sparks. The reason why Ember was started was to make sure there would always be people on Earth. They were given instructions on how to reach the surface, but it got lost over the years until the main characters of the City of Ember found it.

The Ember people and Sparks people joined together since the Ember people had no idea what things were on the surface. (Seriously! They thought "sun" was a word for a floodlight since they'd never seen it before.) They were all weak and pale-skinned and small because they'd lived underground so long. The people of Ember and the people of Sparks didn't get along since the people of Sparks were angry about having to share their food (it's hard to feed your own population, let alone double) and the people of Ember were angry because they weren't getting enough food. Eventually other problems arose, but of course, like most books, it was resolved.

What made me think was how the humans destroyed themselves in the end. I wonder if this could happen to us. Right now we have all these amazing things - air planes, computers, cars, air conditioning, machines to do our work in factories instead of people (well, in China it's mostly people, but that's because of the necessity of providing jobs for so many human beings). But we can't forget what was here before we came while we invent new technology. As said in The People of Sparks, "People find it easier to be bad than to be good. One bad thing leads to another, and worse things happen until a Disaster arises." (Not the exact words, but that's the gist of it.) I wonder if life would go on without us if humans were exterminated, or perhaps it would make a new start again, just like it always does. But what if it didn't? Dinosaurs never showed up after they all died of cancer from the huge meteor that hit Mexico. I guess it's all yet to be determined.

I know this was an awfully long and rambling post about one basic subject. Sorry if this bored you.

Labels: alaska, choice, del sol, future, humans, sunlight, survival, the city of ember, the people of sparks, war

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