2
April
2007
After reading those two articles about the Trojan War my understanding of the war and the reason for the war became more clear. I am still confused though, about all of the names; they are so complicated and long and don’t make sense. I know the main people from the war and also most of the gods, but the little people are a bit more confusing to memorize. I realized that growing up I had heard most of these stories, but have never known that they all fit together as the story of the Trojan War or the story of Odyseus. For example the story of the Trojan horse, or of the cyclopse, growing up i knew theses stories, but I had no idea that they had somehting to do with Homer’s Odyseus, or that they were “real”. I’m still not sure I beleive them, but they are interesting to listen too!
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31
January
2007
Hmm…..what can i say about the first semester. I think that overall it has been good. I think that it started off a little more on task than it has become in the past couple of weeks. I think in the beginning of the year we all wanted to make good impressions so we worked really hard and were really focused. But now that the year is half over we have started to get a little off topic and slack off a lot more…..which is still fun because we get to talk about importiant things like….SNOW, but sometime i dont think that we get a lot of work done that maybe should get done. But after getting the midterm grades back and seeing that no one really did bad on them, i guess we did learn what we were supposed to learn, so I think that its really good how we can just sometimes chill out and have discussions in class instead of designated lesson plans and the same boring thing every day. I really like the new satire project, overall this year has been a fun half of a year….so i hope next semester is just as fun!
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2
January
2007
After reading some of the Isaac Mason narrative I was shown some things about slavery that I had figured happened, but this gave a graphic look into them. When reading about how his mistress’s brother treated his slaves even on the hour of his death.
“His tyrannical passion was so great that on the day of his death he called in the men from their work and with a stick in his dying hand struck each one across their hands. As each one received the parting gift he had to file out and another take his place. This ceremony continued to within two hours of his death, when from exhaustion he had to cease”
This shocked me so much. I had known that masters were awful and beat their slaves many times and very hard, but I could not get over that on his death bed, the DAY he was dying, that he still had so much hatred for his slaves that he made sure that the last thing he did was beat his slaves senseless. This was what he wanted to do; it was his dying wish. And I can’t get over that that is just so heartless.
I was also surprised to read that a mistress whose husband died owned Isaac. I didn’t know that women could have all of the responsibility on a plantation. I thought that women had no power and only survived because of their husbands, in those times. But it was different to see a woman running the show. It was also nice to hear that this woman had some heart when it came to owning and treating her slaves.
I’ve only read the beginning of this but in this part Isaac has already had to escape from one of his masters because he was found coming in after curfew and was beaten but then tried to save himself by wrestling the masters wife (who was beating him) to the floor. He is now a fugitive and is on the run, from what I have read so far. Him and his grandfather are trying to escape, which reminded me of Jim. I guess many slaves ran away from their masters.
Well I am going to keep on reading, but this is what I have gotten for now. Reading a first hand account is much different from learning statistics in a textbook. Reading about a real persons life makes you really see through their eyes and think. It’s a totally different experience.
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2
January
2007
In my past years of school we have learned a lot about slavery, every time we take American History there is always a portion devoted to slaves and slave trade and the lives of slaves. The teachers would give us small amounts of information depending on how old we are, as we got older the information got more graphic because we could handle it. What I know already is that slaves were bought by masters and forced to work for the master however they saw it fit. Most of the times this labor was our in the fields, and they would get paid barely enough to survive. They were given barely enough food to live and barely enough clothes to be able to survive the weather. They were treated like non-humans, and had no rights. The slaves were also not allowed to learn how to read and write for fear that they would learn too much and want to rebel. If they ever did rebel they were beaten very brutally. I always hate learning about slavery because I always feel so bad for the slaves. They are people just like you and me and I disagree with how they were treated. It is dreadful that they were taken from the peaceful land and forced to work for us. I just don’t understand how people could do that to another person. In reading the slaver narratives I expect to find out more about the everyday lives of slaves that you don’t always get to read about. It will be a graphic but truthful look into their lives.
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19
December
2006
While watching that section of the Colbert Report I was sort of confused as to what was going on. I didn’t really understand some of the jokes, but I got most of them. I was kind of in awe that someone could be so brutally satirical and straightforward, not caring what other people will think of him. Stephen Colbert promoted the draft for the war in the clip. But I think that the real message of this segment was to show how stupid and frustrated Americans are with the war and how there is really no need for the draft and that it would be stupid to use one. What makes it satirical is that he takes the opposite position and then in trying to prove that we needed the draft actually used stupid and ridiculous reasons, and then on the other side of the screen it would say something funny that would make people see how ridiculous his ideas were. It was satirical because it poked fun at an issue that is huge right now in America. I guess it was sort of funny, but it was also kind of mean, I wasn’t offended by it but I’m sure some people were.
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13
December
2006
Today in American History class we read an article about solutions to the War in Iraq. I agree with the two most important recommendations which were that we need to build national relations for Iraq with the countries that surround Iraq. Iraq needs to not be thought of as a threat to its surrounding nations, they need to build friendly relations with them just like the US has friendly relations with England or Canada or Australia. This will ensure that even after we have left Iraq, there will still be peace. Another recommendation is that we slowly need to remove the US troops out of Iraq, and make them less dependant on us. I think that we should treat Iraq’s building nation like that of a young child growing up. In the beginning we can be there to be the parents but soon we will need to let it grow and become independent on its own, just like a child who grows into a teenager and then into a completely independent adult. We cant always be there for them, they need to learn how to work on their own. I personally think that we really need to get out of Iraq, they need to be able to fend for themselves, I agree that we should help them set up a useful and working nation, but after that is done, we really need to let them be.
I also though that it was a strong point that we need to solve the Arab-Islam religion problem. There two groups of people have been fighting for many many years and will never stop, which means that even after we leave Iraq they may be susceptible to the never ending battle between those two religious groups. This may and most likely will disturb the peace that we have worked so hard to ensure. If we try to end the fighting or at least find a way to satisfy both groups then it will ensure peace in the future, at least for a while.
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12
December
2006
When I was looking for an article for racism I was amazed and excited that on my first try I found one. All I had to do was go to cnn.com and the top article was titled this “Most Americans see lingering racism — in others” This article was fascinating to me. I had an inkling that racism still existed in the United States, but when put in certain situations it is clear that racism is definitely still existent. A situation that stood out to me was found in this quote.
“A three-year undercover investigation by the National Fair Housing Alliance found that real estate agents steered whites away from integrated neighborhoods and steered blacks toward predominantly black neighborhoods.”
This was at first shocking to me but then thinking about it; it seems to me that that happens a lot. We have plenty of neighborhoods consisting of mostly white people and then we also have many that consist mostly of African Americans. This is just the way it has been for a long time and the way people are comfortable with. It may not be racism, but it may also be subconscious racism.
“On the other hand, black Americans need to stop devaluing themselves and their people,” he added. “Another race can only respect you if you respect yourself and currently, I find that blacks still devalue and disgrace each other and themselves.”
This quote also stood out to me because everything is on how you present yourself. Even when it isn’t about racism, if u present yourself badly people will think of you poorly. You need to have confidence in yourself for others to have confidence in you. This article just had a lot of very interesting points that I think everyone should read. It was really fascinating to read. It was funny to find that many Americans think that racism is a huge problem in America, but those same Americans don’t consider themselves racist.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/12/12/racism.poll/index.html
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7
December
2006
Satire is so popular because people like to be shown what is really wrong with the world in a funny way. Everyone knows what is wrong with the world, but when you put it in a funny way, that sort of makes fun of our problems people enjoy watching it more. Movies like Borat or essays like the one we read in class by Jonathan Swift are considered satires because they are so descriptive and so out there that they make people uncomfortable They blatantly and hurtfully poke fun at the world in a way that will get people to listen and react. Movies like Scary Movie are not satires because they make fun of other movies not actual problems in the world. They are very funny but they don’t even begin to poke at real world issues. In order to be considered a satire it actually needs to evoke some feeling in you or someone else that would make them mad, and uncomfortable when watching or reading. For example the “eating babies” was not an actually solution to the problem, but it was a way to get people to realize that there was an actual problem going on, and that someone needed to do something about it. Borat also does that by making America realize how prejudice they really still are. Satires get things accomplished.
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4
December
2006
After reading this excerpt I was deeply disgusted with how life was like back then for them. The fact that they only got $ 7 worth of clothes to last them a year, amazed me. I wasn’t really sure why they weren’t given more clothes that were made of better quality, but then after we had that discussion in class it became evident to me. The reason why they gave them such bad clothes was to put them in their place and make them feel bad about themselves and feel uncomfortable. The reason behind the madness was that the slave masters thought that if their slaves were spending more time thinking about their clothes and how to fix and preserve them, then they would be less focused on trying to escape. This thought was also the same in terms of food and shelter. The slaves were given just enough food to survive but not enough to make them have enough energy to escape. And their beds were just enough so that they could get the proper amount of sleep to function, but not enough to make them rest well enough to have the energy to escape. In their spare times slaves had to grow their own food because they were not given enough, and they had to wash and mend their clothes, they didn’t have any “me” time and that is exactly how the slave owners wanted it. It was much like how Hitler and his Nazi’s though about and treated the Jews during the Holocaust. I was just blown away after reading this, I could not believe it.
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17
November
2006
“My elementary school was a one-room school with all grades, one through eight. There were about thirty students. We would walk two and a half miles to school by cutting through the woods. On rainy days, my father would load us up in the wagon and carry us to school. Elementary school was split up during the year due to sharecropping, and it took two years to complete one grade. The county was so poor that our parents would have to pay the teacher to teach straight through cotton-picking time. “-Annie Zachery
I think that this quote relates to both Jefferson and the children at the school where Grant teaches, in the novel A Lesson Before Dying. The conditions for school in the south seem to be harsh and it makes it easier for me to understand why not everyone went to school back then. I had no idea that they had to walk about 2 and a half miles there and back to school every single day! I would certianly not want to walk that far. Also most of the classes took place in a one room school house, or a chaple, like in the book. All of the grades were put in the same room. This would be frustrating to me because i would be learning on a much higher level then the children below me, and still need to go at their pace. I can understand why students would get frustrated to the point where they didnt want to go to school again. In some cases there is not the option to go to school because the children need to work, in order to get paid. In other cases children do go to school but it takes them longer to complete the years because they need to split up their time with work and school. After seeing the conditons that children in the south had to deal with, I can see why Jefferson had never really gotten an education, and why the children in the school were always dirty and not motivated. I give the students a lot of credit for enduring such difficult conditions in order to get an education. 
:) 
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