Tunes

To begin our readings and discussion on dark romanticism, I played some music I felt was particularly atmospheric. I selected a tune from the ambient, Canadian collective, Godspeed You Black Emperor: "East Hastings." Actually, it's a piece from a much longer "movement." Anyways, here it is in case you are interested in hearing it again.

The other video showcased a performance by John Williams, arguably the greatest film composer of all time. In the video, he performed a Nikita Koshkin piece inspired by Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher": "Usher Waltz, Op. 29."

To me, music and literature go hand-in-hand: both are expressive forms of art that are capable of creating atmosphere, changing the mood of a listener or a reader, and even broadening or radically altering one's understanding of the world. 

To borrow a notion from Thoreau and other practitioners of civil disobedience, tension can promote positive change. 

King subscribed to this belief. What more do you need to know?

Thoreau was angered by slavery, consumerism, and greed, and he focused his energies in his writings and his own temporary retreat from society. His entire being came to represent a core of beliefs that can be generally described as transcendentalism.

Where are the Henry David Thoreau's now? In my opinion, they still exist, and they still use art to attract like-minded individuals.

The man holding the guitar is Ian Mackaye. He was the front-man for the influential D.C. hardcore band, Minor Threat. He later went on to form, Fugazi, a post-hardcore band known for their unflinching devotion to independence and DIY culture. 

Ian, the son of a preacher, always subscribed to a set of strong beliefs. As a teenager, he and his band-mates in Minor Threat spread the ideals of Straight Edge, a movement that arose in reaction to the overly self-indulgent and self-destructive aspects of punk rock and rock and roll. Practitioners of Straight Edge focus on clean living and avoid drugs and alcohol completely.

Ian's political mindset also influenced the music that he made with Fugazi in the late 1980's up until the early 2000's. Here's one of my favorite Fugazi tunes, "Merchandise." Listen to the song and its lyrics. Is this transcendentalism for a new era?

 

When we have nothing left to give 

There will be no reason for us to live 

But when we have nothing left to lose 

You will have nothing left to use 

We owe you nothing you have no control 

Merchandise keeps us in line 

Common sense says it's by design 

What could a businessman ever want more 

than to have us sucking in his store 

We owe you nothing 

You have no control 

You are not what you own

The Allegory of the Cave

In approximately 380 BC, Greek philosopher Plato wrote The Republic, a Socratic dialogue concerning justice and the role of man. The book contains Plato's theory of "forms," an idea based on the belief that "forms" or "ideas" possess a higher reality than the realm of physical sensation.

The "Allegory of the Cave" consists of a conversation between Plato's student, Socrates, and Plato's brother, Glaucon. In the conversation, Socrates describes a cave in which men are imprisoned and fooled by a false reality. Socrates uses the allegory to define the role of the philosopher in society. To Socrates and Plato, philosophers can perceive the true nature of reality.

The false reality in the cave consists of "shadows."

The "shadows" are manipulated by men in power.

Men are kept like prisoners in the "dark," a state of false reality and deception. True reality exists above the cave, a land illuminated by the "sun," which represents the light of truth and higher reality.

To free one's self from the "cave," one must rely upon one's intuition and spiritiuality and free one's self from a reliance on the senses, as physical reality can be manipulated and used to enslave one in state of perpetual ignorance.

Your Task: Imagine that Thoreau attempted to create his own version of the cave allegory to reflect the society and times in which he lived (mid-19th century America). Describe the cave of deception that Thoreau would imagine and post your explanation as a comment on this post. 

• Due by midnight, Wed. 10/30. 

Arthur Miller: Were You Now or Were You Ever...

Pictured is Arthur Miller. The beautiful girl on his arm: Marilyn Monroe. This is the man who wrote The Crucible, and the very same man who refused to give up his friends while under investigation by the HUAC in the 1950's. However, Arthur Miller also "edited" his son, Daniel Miller, out of his life. Read the following article from The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/arts/30iht-miller.1.7317269.html?_r=0

Respond to the following questions in a thoughtful response to this post by midnight, Friday 10/18.

• Having read The Crucible and his essay from 2000 describing his experiences during the 1950's, who was Arthur Miller, i.e. what kind of man was he?
• Does the article from The New York Times change your perception in any way? Explain.

2 Things

1

This Friday, October 11th, you will be taking the Unit 4 vocabulary quiz. Also anticipate a section on the quiz dedicated to prepositions. Specifically this: you will have to list 50 prepositions! Get to memorizing.
 Here is some help.

2

Our time with The Crucible is nearing an end, and we will soon begin discussing its other implications: mainly its role as a political allegory reflecting the turmoil of the 1950's. I'd like you all to create your own blogs. They will be used for publishing and collecting the writing and research you will complete for the remainder of this school year. 

To get started, visit blogger.com, and use the existing Google accounts you created to comment on this blog. 

If you are stumped, the site also contains a helpful tutorial that covers all of the basics of posting.

Due Date/Requirements

• You are responsible for creating a blog. Please give it a school appropriate title.
• Compose an initial post and publish it to your blog. 
• The post must contain at least one link, one embedded video, and one embedded image. 
• Post a link to your blog in the comment section of this post by Friday, October 18.

Less Versus Fewer

Howdy, all. Time for a quick grammar review. 

Let us quickly review the difference between "less" and "fewer."

Simply put, less is used with mass nouns, and fewer is used with count nouns.

The cute, Scottish Fold is baffled. 

 

A count noun refers to something that can be definitively counted; mass nouns are things that cannot be counted individually.

For example let us consider two of my absolute favorite things: guitars and coffee.

&

Guitars, which are distinct, solid objects of wooden wonderfulness, can be counted; coffee, the delicious, caffeinated beverage, is something that cannot be counted individually;

• "I need to own fewer guitars," is a grammatically correct statement; "I need to own less guitars," is grammatically incorrect.

• "I really need to drink less coffee," is a grammatically correct statement; "I really need to drink fewer coffee," is grammatically incorrect.

Your task: Write a two sample sentences in which you properly use less and another in which you properly use fewer. Please compose your sentences in the comment section of this post. 

Your responses are due by midnight, Sunday October 6th.

Are Women Less Corrupt Than Men?

NPR's "13.7: Cosmos & Culture" blog is devoted to exploring the relationship between society and science. It is a mixture of physics and metaphysics if you will.

Today's article explores the scientific basis of the perception that women are somehow more virtuous and less corrupt than men: "Are Women Less Corrupt Than Men?"

It is an interesting thought, especially when the theory is applied to The Crucible. Is Abigail somehow more virtuous than the corrupt, greedy, and power-hungry men that have created the stifiling patriarchy, rife with hypocrisy and systematic oppression, the very society that she rebels against?

Read the article and respond to the following questions in the comment section of this post:

• What is the relationship between gender, government, and the perception of corruption?
• How does this article affect your perception of The Crucible? Is Abigail absolved of any of her guilt? Explain.

Your responses are due by midnight, October 3rd. Late responses will not count! 

Names and Their Meanings

Comedians Key and Peele created the following video for their recent appearance on Conan O'Brien:



The video makes light of the names of some professional athletes, and while it is intended to be humorous, it is far from being politically correct. To better put this in perspective, it is relevant to note that 20th century American culture does not have a monopoly on unusual names.

Slate Magazine just recently posted a humorous and telling article concerning some of the most unsual and occasionally downright spiteful Puritan names of yesteryear: "A Boy Named Humiliation". If this article sparks your interest, feel free to check out Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature, a comprehensive study of Puritan naming practices published in 1888.

What about your name? What does it mean? What does it reveal about you and your relationship to your family?

Please research the meaning of your own name using the Behind the Name website. If your first name does not deliver any results, try your last name, or ask your family members what the name means to them.

In the comment section of this post, respond to the following:

• Do you find Key and Peele's sketch offensive? Is it racist? Explain.
• Select what you feel is the most memorable Puritan name from the article from Slate Magazine and explain what the name reveals about the Puritan culture.
• Finally, explain the significance of your own first or last name. Please include information you find from Behind the Name or from your own research.

Responses are due by  midnight, this Friday (9/20). Also, I have emailed invites for you all to join the blog. Please create blogger accounts. If this is an issue, post an anonymous comment with your full name and see me in person on Monday.

The Shining City: The Idea of America

Salve, discipuli.

Eventually I will add your email addresses and make you all official members of my blog, but I have not yet done this. In truth, I am waiting to get my EPA.

Lazy, yes; dishonest, no, I am not.

Tomorrow I am giving you 9 questions on the overture from act 1 of The Crucible. You will have time to work on this on class, but if you do not finish tomorrow, I wanted you to have access to the text. It is available online: http://teacher.bsd405.org/murphybr/files/2011/11/the-crucible-act-1-and-intro.pdf. Your responses to these questions will be due Tuesday, September 10th. I am giving you a bit of time, so I am expecting some thoughtful responses supplemented with specific responses to the text itself.

Question #10 asks you to interpret an excerpt from John Winthrop's "A Model of Christian Charity." In the speech, Winthrop expresses his hope that the Massachusetts Bay Colony will serve as a "city upon a hill." This phrase, which itself is a biblical allusion, was mentioned by John F. Kennedy in a speech made in Boston prior to his inauguration  and by President Ronald Reagan in his farewell presidential address.

Take a look at this excerpt from the article, "Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan: Three Speeches, One Nation" (via http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/01/19/eisenhower-kennedy-reagan-three-speeches-one-nation/):

Finally, in a passage that differentiates Reagan from many modern Republicans who invoke his name, The Gipper painted a poignant picture of what he had in mind when speaking of his metaphorical "shining city" on a hill.

"The past few days when I've been at that window upstairs, I've thought a bit of the 'shining city upon a hill.' The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. . . . He journeyed here on what today we'd call a little wooden boat; and like the other Pilgrims, he was looking for a home that would be free. I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still."

John F. Kennedy invoked John Winthrop, too. In fact, he spoke of the shining city in a speech in Boston two weeks before his inauguration. That is fitting, for Winthrop was a Massachusetts man like Kennedy; or, rather, the Rev. Winthrop was on his way to Massachusetts when he wrote his own "city on a hill" speech. The imagery is orginally from the bible, and Winthrop's speech was actually a sermon exhorting his followers to be a light to the rest of the world.

The most striking thing about Winthrop is that he had yet to make landfall when he wrote those words, underscoring Reagan's point that America was -- quite literally -- an idea before it was a country. At the heart of that idea is a notion that America implies opportunity for all its pilgrims, along with the chance for self-betterment. 

MLA Formatting and Intro

Click on the following link to view a video detailing how to properly set up an MLA formatted Word document:

http://screencast.com/t/Rb3yGJyPVx

Also, here is a sample intro:

  “There was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air.” Bob Dylan, a seminal figure of the 1960’s, succinctly describes the decade: it was a period of great change socially and culturally in the United States. Popular music, professional sports, and the Civil Rights Movement all underwent dramatic changes during the 1960’s. Bob Dylan revolutionized folk and popular music alike by writing topical  protest songs and using electric instrumentation; Muhammad Ali revolutionized professional boxing by dominating the sport and using his religious views to protest the Vietnam War; and Malcolm X revolutionized the Civil Rights Movement by urging his followers to seek freedom through self-determination and even violence.

Malcolm X Sources

Here are the Works Cited entries for the two Malcolm X articles I distributed. This way you do not have to retype them.

You're welcome.

The Biographical Dictionary of African Americans:

Kranz, Rachel C. "Malcolm X." In Kranz, Rachel C., and Philip J. Koslow. The Biographical Dictionary of African Americans. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 1999.African-American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?
ItemID=WE01&iPin=afbio0336&SingleRecord=True (accessed April 23, 2013).

Encyclopedia of African-American Politics:

Smith, Robert C. "Malcolm X." Encyclopedia of African-American Politics. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2003. African-American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?
ItemID=WE01&iPin=EAAP0245&SingleRecord=True (accessed April 23, 2013).

Malcolm X: Sample First Body Paragraph

Malcolm X “expressed the anger that lay deep within the souls of African American people” (Smith). Through his adult life he was a key contributor to the Civil Rights Movement, and he represented a more militant, combative, and aggressive approach to African American equality.­­ He transformed the leadership of the Nation of Islam, a group of African Americans who viewed white Christian Americans as evil people, and he urged his followers to separate themselves from white America. He revolutionized the Civil Rights Movement in America in the 1960’s (Kranz). In his book, Malcolm: The Life of the Man Who Changed Black America, Bruce Perry writes:

Malcolm X fathered no legislation. He engineered no stunning Supreme Court Victories or political campaigns. He scored no electoral triumphs. Yet, because of the way he articulated his followers’ grievances and anger, the impact he had on the body politic was enormous (Smith).

Writing Your Body Paragraphs

Let me begin with a general observation about your thesis statements:

• If you are having trouble composing a thesis statement, you need to refer to your sources. You cannot write a valid thesis statement without knowledge about your three topics. Otherwise, you are simply guessing or making something up, and this will result in a weak or vague thesis that will not connect to the information presented in the body of your paper.

Here is a sample body section I composed on Dylan. I hope this helps.

I began by using two sources I found on Facts on File. Here is their citation information:

1. Morrison, Craig. "Dylan, Bob." Carlin, Richard, gen. ed. Rock and Roll, American Popular Music. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?
   ItemID=WE52&iPin=APMRR0033&SingleRecord=True (accessed April 9, 2013).
2. Schwartz, Richard A. "Dylan, Bob." Cold War Culture: Media and the Arts, 1945–1990. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2000. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?
   ItemID=WE52&iPin=CWC214&SingleRecord=True (accessed April 9, 2013).

Next, I read the shorter source of the two, the entry composed by Richard Schwartz. I find it is helpful to begin with a shorter source. I took approximately 8 notes from this source. Then, I read the second longer source composed by Craig Morrison. I gathered approximately 7 notes from this source.

Then, I arranged the notes chronologically and produced the following outline:

Outline

I.    Early life/introduction

     A. Birth/Brief Bio

     B. Anti-Semitism

II.  1960-1964: The Folk Years

     A. Woody Guthrie

     B. The Freewheelin’ album and   Suze Rotolo

     C. Joan Baez

III. 1965-1966

     A. Newport Folk Festival

     B. Albums

IV.  Evaluation: How did Dylan revolutionize the 60’s

     A. Sound

     B. Lyrics

     C. Politics

Then, I simply began writing, making sure to use an in-text citation whenever I used a fact from my notes. 

• Note: A properly formatted Works Cited page will help with in-text citations tremendously. With MLA, an in-text citation consists of either the last name of the author or, if an author is not listed, the title of the article in quotation marks, placed in parenthesis: (Last) or ("Title"). 
• Punctuation is placed after each citation.
• When in doubt, cite! It is better to have too many citations than not enough.

Here is three paragraphs of my sample essay:

Robert Allen Zimmerman was born in 1941 in Hibbing, Minnesota (Schwartz). The boy who would become the iconic folksinger, Bob Dylan, experienced anti-Semitism growing up (Schwartz). As a result, he felt alienated from mainstream America and society, and later in his career, he would use this feeling to write songs communicating the growing sense of alienation in the 1960’s (Schwartz). He became the voice of a generation during a period in which the counterculture and the mainstream were intersecting.

An avid music fan, Dylan decided to become a folksinger after reading the autobiography of Woody Guthrie, Bound for Glory (Schwartz). In 1961, he moved to New York City for two reasons: (1) to be involved with the Greenwich Village folk scene; and (2) to be near his idol, Woody Guthrie (Morrison). It was also in New York that he met another influential individual: his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo. She encouraged Bob to begin writing about the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963, Bob released his second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. The album contained songs about the Civil Rights Movement (“Blowing in the Wind”) and the Cold War (“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”) (Schwartz). By 1964, Bob Dylan and his then girlfriend, Joan Baez (a folksinger herself), were known as the “King and Queen of Folk Music” (Schwartz).

In 1965, Dylan’s career as folksinger began to change. In that same year, Dylan played the Newport Folk Festival backed by members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The short, loud, electrified set did not go over well with folk music fans, and many felt that Bob had “betrayed the purity of acoustic folk and its ideals” (Morrison). Dylan had gone electric, and there was no turning back. In 1965, he released Bringing It All Back Home, a half acoustic, half electric album. It was followed by Highway 61 Revisited, an all-electric album. In 1966, he released Blonde on Blonde, an album marked by its rock and roll and rhythm and blues influences (Morrison).

Updated Calendar

How To Use Quizlet: Visual Instructions

Quizlet visual instructions from drewradlack

Easier, 3 Step Intro

Research paper intro from drewradlack

Thesis/Opening Paragraph

For your convenience and to guide the research process, I am going to post a template that you may use to compose your opening paragraph and complex thesis statement. The thesis statement is underlined. If you do decide to use this template, simply insert the relevant information according to the bracketed phrases (each is bolded).

"There was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air." Bob Dylan, a seminal figure of the 1960's, succinctly describes the decade of the 1960's: it was a period of great change socially and culturally in the United States. [Topic 1: List the area of life your first topic affected. So, for example, if your first topic is Muhammad Ali, he changed boxing and professional sports.], [Topic 2], and [topic 3]  all underwent dramatic changes during the 1960's. [Topic 1] revolutionized [explain what aspect of life was affected] by [explain the revolutionary nature of topic 1]; [topic 2] revolutionized [explain what aspect of life was affected] by [explain the revolutionary nature of topic 2]; and [topic 3] revolutionized [explain what aspect of life was affected] by [explain the revolutionary aspect of topic 3].

Here is a sample introductory paragraph using Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali, and Malcolm X:

"There was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air." Bob Dylan, a seminal figure of the 1960's, succinctly describes the decade of the 1960's: it was a period of great change socially and culturally in the United States. Popular music, professional sports, and the Civil Rights Movement all underwent dramatic changes during the 1960's. Bob Dylan revolutionized folk music and popular music alike by writing topical protest songs and using electric instruments to create folk rock; Muhammad Ali revolutionized professional boxing by dominating the sport and using his religious views to communicate his anti-war sentiments; and Malcolm X revolutionized the Civil Rights Movement by urging his followers to seek freedom through self-determination and, if necessary, even violence.

Now, remember, you may change this template however you see fit, but the last sentence of your opening paragraph  must consist of a complex thesis statement. The thesis statement identifies the points your paper will prove and support with cited facts.

Your intro paragraph complete with a proper MLA heading and formatting is due Friday, April 5.

Sample Quizlet Note Cards

The text at the top of the note card refer to the author of the article. If there is no author, use the title of the piece.

Notetaking

Please go to the following website and sign up for a free account. Please make your username your full name. For example, my username is Mister Clark. Do not use a nickname that I will not recognize!

• www.quizlet.com

Once registered, click on the following link to sign up for my class:

• http://quizlet.com/join/g72TQjZzM

Simply title your set of note cards "Research Paper - topic 1, topic 2, topic 3."
For each notecard, type the name of the author of the source (or the title of the article or website if no author is listed) in the left box and the note itself in the right box. It is my experience that direct quotes are most helpful. Use quotation marks for each direct quote to help you avoid accidental plagiarism.

Please upload 15 notecards to my class, "ENG III Clark," by midnight Wednesday, March 27th. Note cards submitted late will result in a loss of points.

Danke, Amanda.

Works Cited: Let the Tedium Commence

This Friday, March 22nd, you will all need to submit a typed and properly formatted Works Cited page. Today (3/18) and tomorrow (3/19) I will do my best to guide you through the formatting process.

To get you started, here are two helpful links:

• The OWL at Purdue University

This site is comprehensive and best of all, free. Never pay for MLA help. Never.

• Easybib.com

Easybib will guide you through the citation process, and, like the OWL, it is also free.

Refining Searches and Research

On Monday and Tuesday Mrs. Bouchard and I observed that many of you were having trouble finding information on some of the topics using the databases (Facts on File, Ebsco, etc.). Twiggy was particularly problematic.

This issue can be remedied with a refined Google search.

The research process depends heavily upon finding legitimate scholarly sources, and when used properly, Google can help greatly with this process. Here is a simple trick. When searching for something on Google, simply follow the search terms with the following:

site:.edu

This simple command will limit Google's search results to university and college-hosted sites only.

*     *     *

At this point all of you are researching people, events, substances, or ideas that revolutionized an aspect of America life in the 1960's. If someone or something is revolutionary, it has undergone and caused some sort of dramatic change. As you peruse your sources and begin the note-taking process, you need to zero in on change.

For the sake of an example, let's imagine that you are researching my musical hero, Bob Dylan. In your paper, it would be necessary to analyze how Dylan himself changed and how he transformed popular music and art in the 1960's.

This is what Bob Dylan looked like in 1962:

And this is what he looked like in 1966:

In four short years he transformed from a Dust Bowl-esque, acoustic-guitar-wielding folky into an electric guitar playing, polka-dotted besotted, psychedelic rocker.

Bob went from writing protest sings inspired by the civil rights movement to abstract, impressionistic, nasally sung rock and roll tunes.

Your analysis of Bob's career would need to focus on this change.

Hope this helps.

Peace and love,
Clark

Research Calendar

Greetings!

I have decided to begin reusing an old blog from my student teacher days to disseminate information regarding the upcoming research paper focusing on the 1960's and revolution.

"There was music in the cafes at night, and revolution in the air."

My man Bobby D. knows what's up--the 60's was a period of great change in the United States.

Your task for today, Tuesday, March 12th, is pretty easy. Now, if you remember yesterday, you researched 10 topics from a comprehensive list of 40. You then narrowed your list of 10 down to the 3 you found most interesting. Today, you will be responsible for finding legitimate sources. 

Wikipedia cannot be used.

I repeat: you cannot cite Wikipedia in an MLA formatted research paper. "Why?" you may ask. Well, it's simple. Despite the efforts of diligent fact checkers, Wikipedia is open source, and its less than scholarly editors may insert false or unsubstantiated info into a page. Case in point: here is what The Rolling Stones page on Wikipedia looked like yesterday (3/11/13):

Despite their rather infamous recreational activities, The Rollings Stones have never gone by "The Rolling Stoners."

Anyways, where ought an ambitious Oakcrest student go to find legitimate scholarly sources?

The Oakcrest library is a good place to begin.

Scroll down to the bottom lefthand side of the main Oakcrest library page, and click on the "Facts on File" link. This is a good database for simple historical materials. "Ebsco" is another good database to use.

You need to find and print 3 scholarly sources for each of your 3 topics. This means that you need to find a total of 9, legit, scholarly sources by the end of the period. You can do it.

Peace and love,

Clark