Final Blog of the Year

My favorite topic of the year for blogging was the Having Our Say blog, it allowed us to do what we wanted while actually getting to express ourselves. My least favorite blog topic was the Harlem one; it was very tidious for me to sift through the blinking links. I was not the most motivated person to do these blogs. In fact I forgot to do my blogs for a solid like almost three months. I don't think that blogging is the best out of the classroom way to learn some of the backstories of the in class topics. In all honesty with my habit of forgetting these blogs, I will probably stop doing my blogging. Finally, I would not recommend doing the blogs for next year's juniors for the learning. However the cynical side of me hopes that you don't take my advise and make them do it.

It has been a good year and I hope that everyone has as well and will have a good summer.

Great Gatsby Music

Love Nest performed by Joseph C. Smith's Orchestra
Sweet Sugar Babe performed by the Paul Biese Trio

These 2 songs I chose, because in The Great Gatsby one of the overlying themes is the love and loss of hope. Gatsby loved a woman that he could not rekindle a relationship with. He lose hope in the failed relationship when he realized all she wanted was money.

A Young Man's Fancy performed by Joseph C. Smith's Orchestra

A young man's fancy is basically a sum of all of Gatsby's parties. Although they were not for his personal enjoyment; just to attract Daisy.

Stephen Crane Poem

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
This poem struck me as very vague. If my interpretation is close I believe this poem is about the creation vs intelligent design theory. The man is saying that he is real; whereas the universe is replying with the fact that he is not required to do anything.

Mark Twain Quote

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.-Mark Twain

This could honestly be the most accurate statement that I have ever read. Someone may consider him/herself a truthful person but until they can admit that they are not; they are a hypocrit and a liar. This could possibly be one of the best quotes I have ever read.

Civil Rights Action

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0809176.html

Brown Vs. the Board of Education is one of the most memorable and well known civil rights Supreme Court case. Linda Brown was not allowed admittance into a school solely based on race. When she was denied admittance, she must have travelled a long way down the road to the next school that would allow her to attend. In the end, the Supreme Court ruled that all schools must be desegregated "with all deliberate speed."

Harlem reflection

Seeing Harlem in the time of Sadie and Bessie helps me understand exactly what the sisters could have experienced. They both metioned many times the different churches and schools they visited while teaching. Once they moved to Harlem they needed to start over and one of them became a dentist. Thinking of New York now-a-days you would not expect to see the same people very much every day but back during Sadie and Bessie's lives the town seems very small and not very private.

Thomas Feeling picture reflection

This is a Thomas Feeling picture displaying an American man beating an African-American man. The Delaney sisters felt things similar but not in the same physical sense as this. They were excluded, often in danger of being killed just for looking at someone the wrong way. For example: when one of the Delaney sisters (exact name escapes me) perhaps Sadie told a drunk white man to shut up; her life was in peril for a meaningless encounter.

Having my say

At times I have to stop and think to myself while reading a book or story for a class. Teachers generally say there is symbolism in every book and sometimes multiple times on a single page. Has anyone ever stopped to think that maybe we are overanalysing things? Perhaps they wrote a book just to write a book. Maybe they just put a specific word there because no other words had the same effect that it did. This is nothing personal to anyone but I believe that most stories are just that, A STORY.

Whitman Poem

One of the first lines of Whitman's poem said a child becomes what it sees. In my case one of the first sights I must have had was of my father. Everyone says that I look like my older brother, Andrew. They also say that Andrew looks a fair amount like my father. Indirectly they also say that I look like my father. My mom once said that I even sound like my father. So in a sense, this short exerpt from Whitman's poem is half true. Not everyone becomes what they see, some like to stand out and be individuals.

Emily Dickinson Nature Poem

MAY-FLOWER. Pink, small, and punctual,
Aromatic, low,
Covert in April,
Candid in May,
Dear to the moss,
Known by the knoll,
Next to the robin
In every human soul.
Bold little beauty,
Bedecked with thee,
Nature forswears
Antiquity.
http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Emily-Dickinson/emily-dickinson-poems-nature-2.htm
If I read this correctly Emily Dickinson is writing a poem about her love for the natural beauty of a mayflower. She describes the appearance, general location, and how it appears during the months of spring.

Transcendental vs Anti Trans.

Personally I perfer the writing of the antitranscendental for the sole fact that their beliefs are correct. Nature is not always good, people are not always good ect. Obviously the transcendentalists were either not smart enough to recognize when someone was being bad or when nature had turned against them. Also the antitranscendentalist writings are easier for me to interpret and less annoying to read.

Romantic Poem Reflection

The "Snowbound" poem was one of the most vague poems I have ever read. At first, I could not understand most of the symbolism. But after the in class discussion, I understood the more blatant symbols of the boys digging the tunnels. However I still for the life of me cannot find an example of smell and in the poem.

Nature Connection

Out of the entirety of nature I would choose the "circle of life" to relate to my outlook on school. You start school and you go through phases such as in pre-k when you don't have any worries then when it shift to middle school and you wish you could reuse all of those naps that you didnt want to take. Then it virtually reverses for high school, you begin nervous and gradually relax until you finally get "senioritis."

H.U.A.C.

HUAC stands for the House Un-American Act Committee. What they did was investigate and judge if the actions of anyone accused were unAmerican or Communitst. If you were found to be a Communist or tied to Communism they would make you list names of other Communists that you know or hold you in contempt of Congress.The names that were given could then be blacklisted. http://www.nps.gov/archive/elro/glossary/huac.htm.

My first impression upon hearing this was: I did not know there was this much detail to the hearings. Upon reading this I began to wonder if people could honestly think like this. How could people honestly rat out their friends and collegues? Similarly to Arthur Miller getting called Communist. Could people honestly just call someone a Communist like that and live with themselves knowing that they had ruined their friends' lives?

Mayflower Voyage: William Bradford

Apparently, William Bradford's parents died and he was passed through his relatives, almost like a real life game of hot potato. He first experienced religion at the age of 12 in the town of Scrooby. King James 1 wanted to force all of the congregation out of the country; they fled to the Netherlands. His journal became the story "Of Plymouth Plantation." The Mayflower was 90ft long and 26ft accross. They had to cram 102 passengers on this ship. About as close you can get to literally being "packed like a can of sardines."

The Crucible

Not gonna lie, I absolutely hated the first like 25 pages of the first act. The ending of the first act however; was pretty interesting. After being told about the connection to the McCarthy Hearings, I can see how this play could be linked in numerous ways. I still can't believe that these witch hunts actually occured. It is just outstanding that people could actually think that people were performing witchcraft. The only thing that has ever come close to witchcraft was the alchemists with their converting half of a metal coin into gold.

Witch Trials

The worksheet that we did about the witch trials today made me wonder how many alleged witches were killed. I found a sight that said that anywhere from 50,000-200,000 alleged witches were executed. Surprisingly, about half or less than half of witch trials ended in execution. Also, apparently the burning of witches at the stake is grossly overexaggerated too. This sight also says that burning at the stake was illegal in the English colonies. There were many other gruesome means of execution but it would probably be frowned upon to go into detail.
http://departments.kings.edu/womens_history/witch/werror.html#Millions

John Smith

This is pretty much just a very short version of the John Smith story we read. However as with all videos it does leave out many important facts and generally focuses on the easy to grasp concepts like starvation and trading with the Powhatan.

Cherokee Beliefs

As I was looking on the internet and other sections of the literature book I noticed that the Cherokee are monotheistic. Makes you wonder if Europeans had contact with the Native Americans prior to the founding of select religions such as Buddhism. Now to my knowledge there is no documentation of these encounters.

When the Europeans encountered the Native Americans did the religions that the colonists bring with them effect the Native Americans' religions. For example did the Cherokee take the idea of monotheism from Christianity or Catholicism.