Vast amusement all around. After a few more tries he gets the hang of it. Bouncing on his seat, down to the far end of the yard, then slowly coming around, back past his family, broadly beaming. Progress is good.
– The Light-Green Society
Just as the semester began, it has now come to a close. I cannot believe how quickly time has gone by and I cannot even begin to describe how grateful I am to have had this experience. I remember when I was first coming up with a theme:
When thinking about what I would like for my theme to be, I decided it would be a good idea to make a list of my interests. The first one was music, then photography, then writing, and it went on and on… After spending a lot of time reflecting on my passions, I decided that music was indeed my favorite. Then came the question, “How on earth do I connect music and environmental science?” After reading and asking around, a few ideas came to mind. The first one being that music is indeed a result of its environment.
So much has happened since then and I can sense the change that we have all gone through. It’s interesting how music can somehow be found in every aspect of our lives. Everything down to our very heartbeats can be associated with the art. Everything has a rhythm, a pattern (or lack thereof), and that’s all music is – an amalgamation of happenings.
Music is a huge part of all of our lives. According to data collected by Spotify, I listened to 19,000 minutes of music this year (319 hours, 13 days). On top of that, I listened to 815 different artists (145 more than last year). If you use Spotify, you can check your 2015 analysis here. It’s kind of scary how much information we see and absorb over time. If someone had asked me how many artists I had listened to all year, I would have probably said a hundred, max. The same mentality can be 
translated into our treatment of the environment. We do so much from day to day and don’t even realize the effects half of the time. Before this semester, if someone had asked me what parts of my life contributed to things like global warming and other environmental issues, I would have said driving too much, not recycling as much as I should, or taking showers for too long. I never once considered attending a concert as something that could be so harmful. There are so many things in life that we take for granted, and I’m definitely guilty of doing just that. Having this time set aside to think about my theme in a really reflective and investigative context has really opened my eyes up to so much information that I would have otherwise overlooked.
Stress + Fitbit
This month has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. From having to cancel plans with my boyfriend to having to say goodbye to the great people I’ve met on this trip to the numerous attacks to going on some amazing last excursions, I’ve been just about everywhere on the stress scale.
I’d say that overall, I’ve been at a 5. Half of me is on vacation already without a care in the world, and the other half of me is thinking about deadlines, goodbyes, and more deadlines.
I’d definitely say that I’ve slowed down during November and December. While, yes, I’ve definitely done a good amount of walking, it’s not as much as I did in September and October. I walked an 
average of 5003 steps a day in November, and 4833 so far in December. On the days of our excursions or days that I was out and about in Angers, my steps went anywhere from 10,000 – 15,000. This isn’t nearly as much as the other months where I would easily hit 25,000. I’m thankful for the walking I’ve done while here in France. While it has forced me to be outside and get some endorphins pumping by being active, it has also helped curb my weight gain. I have definitely packed on some pounds, but I can definitely say that the walking helped it not be as crazy as it could have been. I blame the bread.
While I feel that this past couple of months has been the most stressful as far as schoolwork goes, I don’t feel like this period of time has been the one where I have felt the most affected by stress. I think September takes the cake on that one. So yeah, I’m pretty happy with the end of the semester.
—
This month has been a bittersweet one for many reasons. On the 13th of November, there were terrorist attacks in the city of Paris. One of the places attacked was Le Bataclan, a popular music venue. The place is well known for being a rock music venue. It was built in 1864 and designed by Charles Duval. (2) I couldn’t find a website besides Wikipedia with history on the venue, so hopefully this is accurate information. Thinking about everything that has been going on lately, I’ve wondered what the environmental impacts of terrorism are, if any. While I couldn’t find anything on gunfire, I found that the 9/11 attacks caused a huge amount of air pollution. Pollutants such as asbestos, chromium, and Freon were released into the air and people are still feeling the effects (3). While not every terrorist attack is on the scale that 9/11 was, it’s easy to imagine the effects that other attacks could have. Not only do the attacks have an impact, but the cleaning up as well as the potential retaliation are just as likely to as well.
I was looking forward to going to see Lianne La Havas in concert; however, with the recent events, my parents were hesitant to let me travel to Lille alone to attend. I was supposed to attend with my boyfriend, but his parents were also a little uneasy, thus leaving me to attend alone. I am glad the concert went on without a hitch; but I’m also very sad I was unable to attend, and unable to have something to say about it for the blog.
I will say that the events make me think of a song by one of my favorite artists, John Mayer. The song is called “Belief” and it talks about how sometimes blind faith can cause us to do horrible things to one another. Our deeply rooted beliefs have to be set aside if we want to move forward as a people; and this can be applied to world peace, the environment, and basically anything pertaining to society. (4)
Belief is a beautiful armor but makes for the heaviest sword. Like punching underwater, you never can hit who you’re trying for. Some need the exhibition; some have to know they tried. It’s the chemical weapon for the war that’s raging on inside.
The excursions we took were so rich in history and culture. There were a lot of parallels with the recent events and the history of Normandy – using fear to create hate, and an overall societal lack of compassion. It’s funny how history always repeats itself no matter how impossible we feel it is that certain things will happen again. However, there are always people that rise up against the negativity and create good, and I feel that that will happen.
During WWII, nuclear bombs, gunfire, the protests of people, and more contributed to the song of the times. As I saw in Italy, the songs different cities, time periods, etc sing can have certain effects on the environment. The nuclear bombs used release radioactivity into the environment, which is extremely harmful to living things. The testing phase alone produced 16-18 million curies of cesium-137, 400,000 curies of plutonium-329, and 10 million curies of carbon-14. This is in the States alone as we don’t have too much information about other countries as far as radiation releases go. The war had an extremely detrimental impact on urban infrastructure, forests, irrigation systems, and more. (5)
I can definitely say that I will be more aware of my choices and how they impact the world around me. Maybe on the way to a concert, I’ll take public transportation and keep my eyes peeled for recycle bins once I’m there. This class has helped me see that we really do have a say in what happens to our environment, and all we need to do is take specific steps to help.
Sources
1. https://yearinmusic.spotify.com/
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataclan_(theatre)
3. http://www.pollutionissues.com/Te-Un/Terrorism.html
4. http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3530822107858621361/
5. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC80251/