New York!!

Hey Guys!
Wow so i guess you wait a life time for a post, and two come along in one week, what a surprise. Now I was going to wait till Friday to write this but I just got too excited and couldn't wait!!!
So, here goes nothing....

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be able to go to New York City. Manhattan, The City that never sleeps. Call it what you will, I can only say, it is truly a once in a life time trip, and an amazing experience for a 17 year old to be able to experience.
My Passion for photography and capturing the simple moments made me walk around this great city wide eyed and amazed, the culture, the people and the architecture, was almost all to much to be able to capture within my tiny in comparison Nikon DSLR!

Back in 2001, something monumental to history happened, this was the falling of the Twin Towers (also known as 9/11), I was only 4 years old and can barely remember it happening, but it will go down as one of the greatest tragedies of our generation.When I was in New York I visited the memorial to the victims of this tragedy where nearly 3,000 names circle the twin pools, set within the footprints of the original towers. being there humanised the entire catastrophe. You can learn about it as much as anyone else in history classes or in documentaries but being there and visiting the tribute centre brought home the reality of what happened and it had me in tears. Right up until now I have kept this photo (seen below) to myself because it just didn't feel right to share it with anyone. When someone has placed a white rose in a name it is to commemorate that persons birthday, This is a truly touching sight to see.

While I was in NYC I tried to do as much as possible, in order to do this, my family and I did a hop-on-hop-off  bus tour, sadly our tour guides seemed to be a bit hit and miss, sometimes we would get really good ones other times we would get terrible ones. Despite this we experienced as much of New York as possible, so much so by our last day there we could barely move our legs were so sore from walking nearly the length of the island.
Such experiences include eating Ray's pizza, now you will probably never believe me, but one slice was the size of my face (I'm not sharing images because I'm afraid they are just too embarrassing).

When you go to New York one of the recommended things to do is to go up The Empire State Building at night, while this was certainly an experience with spectacular views, I wouldn't recommend it because it is an over crowded building with no organisation, that has not banned selfie sticks! The view from The Top of the Rock is a much better experience because it is less crowded and you get a view that includes The Empire State Building. That being said, below is one of my favourite images I captured at night from the top of such a magnificent building.

 If you go to New York I recommend more than anything that you go into Central Park and just sit for a while, watch the world pass by while you do this. because its the only place you will get piece and quite away from the sounds of sirens and Taxis honking their horns. You could even visit such monuments as Strawberry Fields, The Hans Christian- Anderson Statue and The Alice in Wonderland Statue. These pieces are great arts of work and well worth the walk to visit them.

There is so much more I could write about however I cannot do it as  much justice as actually experiencing it in person, I experienced so much while I was there and yet there is still so much I have left to experience, I will leave you now with some more images I captured while I was               

    

Feel free to leave your own experiences of New York in the comments I would love to read them! :)

Thank you so much for reading this post!

Lots of Love,

Rebecca 

Disclaimer: All photos used in this post were taken by me, I have not sourced them from anywhere else on the internet.

Women's Rights

Hey Guys!

So it has been a while but life got in the way, started working full time and had a holiday and I found I didn't really have time to sit down and write (As Usual!!!!) but hey ho time for another blog post!

Recently I read an article in the guardian Titled: "Harper Lee: the 'great lie' she didn't write Mockingbird rears its head again". Now To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favourite books and one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, highlighting civil rights in the United States for what it truly was. 

Harper Lee has been discredited a number of times because it was thought she had help writing the novel, just because she is a woman. You don't see men getting the same treatment do you? No and that is because as tradition goes, Men hold a higher standing in society to Women. This has to change, just recently in the news, they have reported a ban on discrimination against women in the work place, with many having a poor working environment or not being paid as much as they should, The law now states that a woman with children will get a better quality work environment and be treated as fairly as anyone else! I see this as a win for women's rights in the UK. 

The only problem with that is, it shouldn't have taken this long to gain these rights for women. Why should we be forced to suffer, just because we are the ones to give up our last names when we marry and bare children for the men of this world, We go through the pain, not men, and our generation have finally seen a change that women's rights activists set in motion 143 years ago, IT'S ABOUT TIME RIGHT! This is not a patriarchal society any more, I am proud to say I am a woman of the 21st Century and we are making a change for the better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_the_United_Kingdom

 Th article I read the other day called in to question another great author of the 20th Century, Truman Capote, known for such works as Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood. because he was a childhood friend of Lee it was called in to question whether he helped Harper Lee write To Kill a Mockingbird however when compared to others in Capote's work there was found to be no similarities, instead it is a well known fact that it was in fact Lee who helped Capote write In Cold Blood. She was there when he conducted the interviews and Capote combined both hers and his own notes to form a spectacular true account of the Clutter Murders. 

I think I have shared enough feminist views to last a life time! 

Thank you for reading! 

Love,

Rebecca 

article: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/20/harper-lee-to-kill-a-mockingbird-authorship-women-writers