"Milk" and the Tea Party

One of Karin's posts on the Tea Party concerned the suicide of Tyler Clementi and the bullying of homosexuals. This made me think of the movie, Milk, which follows the story of the politician, Harvey Milk, and being elected as California's first openly gay elected official.
The bullying that Harvey Milk must have gone through in the 70's must have been much similar to what the Tea Party wants to put homosexuals through today. While Tyler Clementi committed suicide and Harvey Milk was murdered, I would think that the struggles they both endured would have been very similar.
It's appalling how little we've come in forty years.

Mike Stralka's Moment of Genius

Not that he isn't brilliant as he is already, but, he had a moment of particularly genius-ness.

"The Tea-Party is founded on fear." - Mike Stralka

During our small group discussion in class on Friday, we talked about dense facts and the Tea Party. We were looking at the article "Climate Change Doubt is Tea Party Article of Faith". As you can guess by the article title, one of the key beliefs of the Tea Party is that the argument of anthropogenic climate change is a lie, and that what is happening to the earth is the work of God.

Personally, I think this is just silly.

The Tea-Party sees only what they wish to see. They are conformist - afraid of differences. They take a strong stand against immigrants, homosexuals, and anyone that doesn't belong to their faith. Differences are the unknown - and are a bit scary. 

As Dumbledore said, "It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more." I'm not saying differences mean death or darkness, but that the unknown is what we really fear above all.

They do not respect the differences of the human race. They are afraid of fear.

I'd like to end with the famous quote from FDR's inaugural address: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

I think this quote sums up my ideas about the Tea Party. They are pretty scary.

No Creo en el Jamas

This doesn't really have to do with American freedom, exactly, but it's still pretty cool.

So, I love music. Recently, I've had a more of a taste for Latin music (besides the constant soundtracks). Last year, my Spanish teacher introduced me to a Colombian musician, Juanes. And, other than writing great music and winning three Latin Grammy Awards, he is also a humanitarian and a peace activist.

He established a foundation to help victims of anti-personnel mines, called Mi Sangre (Also the name of one of his albums, which means my blood). He is involved in Paul McCartney's Adopt-A-Minefield organization, which focuses on the awareness of the land mines within Cuba. He also held a concert for peace in Cuba, despite threats from some extremists, which shows real dedication to his cause, and that he is using Freedom of Speech to express a noble cause.

Anyway, I was just listening to one of his songs - No Creo en el Jamas (I Don't Believe in 'Never') - and thought about AmCon. It's about facing your fears, not giving up, and being a better person today than you were yesterday.
Here's a link to the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ8q5QsYuj4
And here's a link to the translation of the lyrics: http://lyricstranslate.com/en/No-Creo-En-El-Jamas-I-dont-believe-never.html

Also - La Vida...  es un Ratico (Life is a moment)
Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC42aqr7KW8
Lyrics: http://lyricstranslate.com/en/La-Vida-es-un-Ratico-La-Vida-es-un-Ratico.html

Inventory and Photography

A while ago in high school, we did a small project on a photographer.
Well, anyway, what he did was he would travel all over the world and find families in all sorts of different social positions and ask them to place all of their belongings together in one place, and he would take a picture with the family. Some of them were really astonishing - they ranged from an extremely poor family with barely anything to royalty somewhere in the world, and the sheer amount of belongings was just incredible.
Then, we chose two students, one male and one female, and did the same thing - we emptied out all of their possessions in their dorm room and laid them out on the grass. Even for a small dorm room, it was a lot of stuff.

It really made me think twice about all of the material possessions we have, especially in our culture, when there are so many people who don't have anything.

Thank you DeAne for helping me find a link! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/worldbalance/material.html


Also: 11 days left until November

Room Inventory

Oh dear... I have a lot of stuff.

 

1 Refrigerator

3 Blankets

2 Sets of sheets

1 Guitar

1 Helmet

Laundry Detergent

Granola Bars

Fruit Leather

Annie’s Mac and Cheese

Strawberry Frosted Mini Wheats

Saltine Crackers

Invisible Tape

Alarm Clock

Clothing

Shoes

2 Laundry Baskets

18 Piano Books

Shower Caddy

Toiletries

Scarves

Hats

Winter Coat

Rain Coat

Jewelry

2 Tissues

2 Power Strips

Laptop

Cell Phone

Cell Phone Charger

Laptop charger

Movies

4 Strands Decorative Lights

Backpack

Tote

3 Chapstick

Pens

Pencils

Markers

Crayons

Notebooks

Folders

Assorted Papers

Giant Clothes Pin

Mini Fan

Bigger Fan

5 Cups

4 Plates

2 Bamboo Plants

Halloween Candy

Storage box

Storage drawers

Garbage Bin

Books

Bed

Hangers

Chocolate

Textbooks

Rug

Desk Chair

Other Chair

Stool

Notecards

Desk Lamp

Pushpins

2 Stuffed Animals

External Harddrive

Permanent Markers

Erasers

Padlock

Passport

Ribbon

Glue

Duct Tape

Calculator

Towels

Step Ladder

Desk

Curtains

1 Phone

Canvas Print

Other Wall Décor

Dresser

Closet

Post-It Notes

2 Cushions

Stephen Schwartz! (Again)

So, I think Stephen Schwartz is kind of amazing. He's my favorite modern Theatre composer. I've already blogged about him - see "The Great Textbook Wars and Musical Theatre."

Anyway, he wrote the music for Wicked, and the lyrics for Pocahontas.
I'd like to take a closer look at the song, "Savages." 
Here's a link to it, in case you haven't seen the movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSu4hOLYrXk. Unfortunately, the lyrics aren't in their original form, but that's only on one line. Near the beginning, Ratcliff says "Here's what you get when races are diverse," but the original words for that line were "There whole disgusting race is like a curse."

Anyway - I think the lines below sum up the prejudices many settlers and Native Americans might have had about each other.
"They're not like you an me, which means they must be evil!"
and later:
"They're different from us, which means they can't be trusted!"
They were afraid of each other because they didn't know anything about the other race. They weren't used to their customs or language or anything. I think that a lot of the problems between the English settlers and Native Americans stemmed from fear.

Also, 15 days left until NaNoWriMo.

Prospies and St. Olaf

Oh noes! I wasn't able to blog last week! Ahhh!

So, my friend Kevin had a prospie earlier this week (Tuesday). He was at Viking Choir when he was supposed to pick him up, though, so Mike Stralka and I helped him out. We gave him a quick ~half hour tour, and took him to see the building around the center of campus.

When giving him a really quick tour, I realized that what I was saying would be perfect for my St. Olaf project. Later that night I went back to the drawing board and redid my entire essay, using the things I said and things he asked. It was a very helpful experience for this project.

Primary Sources

"But knowing my owne innocency and godly fervor, in the whole prosecution hereof, I doubt not of your benigne acceptance, and clement construction" 
Rolfe, "The Letter of John Rolfe." pp240

It's probably not important, but I think it's a little odd that in all of the documents, the authors think so highly of themselves. They are right. What they're doing is the only way to do things, and they are following God's way better than anyone else. They all seem very pompous.
That, and the horrendous spelling. Which is really distracting.

Conflicting Images

"To be sure, gawky, volatile Uncle Sam and serenely regal Columbia appear both aligned and mismatched."

Groseclose, The Early Nineteenth Century: Democratic Models. p. 61

America is complex. The American Dream cannot be pinned to one specific thing. For example, our readings for Monday's class depict the fact that the Pueblo's dream was to be connected to nature in their own way, and the Puritan's dream was for order. Almost all visions, however, generally included peace between the citizens of America.

I think the two symbols of Uncle Sam and Columbia are perfect for America precisely because they conflict with each other.  
The reading asks on page 62, "Why these particular symbols?" It then goes on to mention two versions of one particular symbol: the princess. The original image was of a "hefty Indian Queen" (63), but then evolved into a "slender white princess" (63).
I think these two, in particular, show the conflict of different societies within their own vision of the American Dream. This is why peace between societies is never entirely possible. This society thinks their better than another because they're orderly, that society thinks it's better because of their connection with nature. No two dreams are ever alike. These symbols embody this fact.

NaNoWriMo

So, I know there are still 27 days left until November, but... I'm excited.

For two years now, I have participated in an event called NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month. The idea is that you write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. It's kind of crazy. And by kind of, I mean very.
1,667 words a day is daunting, but rewarding. There are no real prizes (except a pdf of a certificate that you can print out), but at the end, if you finish, you get to say that you wrote a novel in a month. (By the way guys, I wrote a novel in 19 days last year)

Needless to say, I'm definitely excited about this year.
I'm not sure how I'm going to manage what with being in college and keeping up with homework, and choir, and everything else that I'm involved in. I'll figure it out, though.

A little history about NaNoWriMo:
NaNoWriMo was founded by Chris Baty in 1999. There were only 21 participants - all in the San Francisco Bay area. By 2008, there were more than 170,000 participants all over the world, and the collective word count was... wait for it. Almost 2.5 billion.

As a two year veteran, I was excited to hear that a few of my friends are attempting insanity for the first time this year.



I think NaNoWriMo embodies the American Dream. It's a positive freedom - Anyone can write a novel. About anything they want. Everyone can do the (nearly) impossible.
27 days left!

Pueblo Native Americans -

 This is going to be a short post - It's late and I want to sleep.

"Pueblo people believe that the primary and most important relationship for humans is with the land."
Rina Swentzell, "Conflicting Landscape Values: The Santa Clara Pueblo and Day School."

The Pueblo people had similar ideas about landscape as the view I expressed in my post titled "Home". I'm really just reiterating my point. I feel like humans have the most connection to who they are when they're among nature.
It's really unfortunate that the schools they had to go to were so rigid and intent on changing them. I do not agree with this idea at all.

That's all I really have time for now. Sorry it's so short.
Goodnight and harmonic dreams.