Snapshot Day was a chance to reflect on our future aspirations. We had to find a place, a neighborhood, that could best describe who we are now and who we hope to become. I had a difficult time while brainstorming locations for my future vicinity. The only thing that I knew I wanted, without a doubt, was for the area to be urban.

This past week I attended a seminar at John Jay college that was titled "A Hip Hop Theory of Justice". The discussion was lead by a former african american federal prosecutor and scholar. During his tenure as a prosecutor he witnessed, and took part in, a variety of practices which he found to disproportionately target minorities, and subsequently ensnare them in a viscious cycle of inequality. His response was to delve into the world of hip hop music and culture to find the answer from within.

Snapshot NYC for me was a great experience, being able to go to a neighborhood I really liked, take some photos, which I don't normally do, and finally manipulating them to get the right effect. (I won't be saying what I did to leave it a surprise until I present my photos.) This exercise/assignment made me look very closely at the city we live in, and I noticed things I woudn't normally notice such as the kinds of stores, restaurants, and small bits of street art and stickers on street lights that are spread throughout the neighborhood.

Created thousands of year ago, Chinese calligraphy has been viewed as the art of fine handwriting. Unlike the western calligraphy, ink blots and some dissimilarties in Chinese calligraphy are natural and many times show meaning and expression of the writer.