War, roar, and a little more!

Happily changed out of my 1920s attire, I am sitting in Maude's (coffee!!!!!) giggling as I look at pictures from the prohibition era (although Ms. Wright and the woman with the sniffling problem are both contributing to my giggling). How could I not laugh? Remember those scary looking women from the slide show today? Look up prohibition images. You'll laugh with me. The men in this picture, for instance, were pretty serious about their beer. They look so professional, like they were used to getting what they wanted, but they didn't get beer. And though these men would eventually get beer again, those who fought for prohibition may have felt that it backfired on them in a major way. Sure, they got alcohol outlawed, but instead of family values and pure society, they got the mob - maybe not what they were aiming for!

You see, those who supported prohibition insisted that alcohol consumption led to all sorts of evils, namely prostitution. They were pretty sure that if the country went "dry" then the youth of America would respect the traditional beliefs of their parents, practice sexual abstinence, and live all around wholesome lives. Little did the Women's Temperance Society know that Sigmund Freud was lurking in the proverbial shadows to shake loose all of those bonds. Where Darwin changed people's views on religion and God and Marx changed their views on social conscience and politics, Freud changed their views on SEX. While Freud's view on women has since been questioned and even highly criticized for limiting rather than freeing them, the "flappers"of the 1920s who cut of their hair and shortened their hems felt free indeed. They embraced the idea that sexual expression was available to women as well as men. Boy did they embrace it!

And there was Modernism in a slightly complicated nut shell: abandon tradition, mistrust institutions (like government and religion), embrace individuality, and question anything that claims to be absolute. After all, what use is black and white when gray is such a lovely shade. Sociologist Georg Simmel said, "The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture." To put it simply, "modern" men (and women) should be primarily concerned with doing whatever the heck they wanted to do, regardless of what tradition of heritage, or culture said. Selfishness was the order of the day!

This seems an odd contrast to the fact that so many of the modernists were happily influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx who was more of a "unite and support each other" kind of guy. But their personal leanings seemed easily separable from their political ones. Perhaps so many modern writers found Marx's ideas cloying out of a general rejection of all the traditions they knew, which clearly included the political. His ideas were new and controversial and, well, that just worked. WWI proved to people all over the world that the old ways and the old government systems did not speak for the people. If the Russian Revolution of 1917 asked the question, "What will we do for change?" then Communism was the very vocal answer.

Change would come: Communism vs Fascism, 20s excess vs 30s depression, two World Wars and two others (by the 60s we engaged in Korea and Vietnam) that many fought against with fiery passion and sometimes with blood. That is only the beginning. By the time we finish looking at Modernism, we will have witnessed The Harlem Renaissance and celebration of the "black" culture juxtaposed against the rise of the KKK and the violent oppression and persecution of that same culture. We will see matriarchs of the 50s give way to bra-burning hippies in the 60s. We will see oppressed people find their voices, and together, we will discover the soundtrack to it all. Because we can't forget the music!

Three more books and countless lessons to go as we close our year with THE MODERNS!

EC: Read and take notes on pages 825-833 in the textbook. Make sure to use highlighted subtitles. :) 40 pts!!!1

Part Deux: A little lighter

This is the second of two posts this week. This is your extra credit only. The other is your assignment. Make sure that you read both. :)

Extra Credit: While I clearly have issues with Social Darwinists and the Naturalist movement, I am humored by another response to Charles Darwin - The Darwin Awards!

In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival. Accidental self-sterilization also qualifies. However, the site notes: "Of necessity, the award is usually bestowed posthumously." But the candidate is disqualified if "innocent bystanders", who might have contributed positively to the gene pool, are killed in the process.


Visit the Darwin Awards site and start reading. Do this when you have time, because you will have a blast reading about the stupid things people do. Maybe eugenicists were right after all. I kid, I kid. For extra credit, tell me about one of the winners of the award and what they did to earn it. Include your information as a reply to this post. Read the other replies first, because you have to be the first to tell about that award winner to get the EC.

Run the Good Race

RACE. What a loaded word that means absolutely nothing. As a nation, we are all bound up in the question of race. Every application you will ever see, every time you are called to jury duty, EVERYWHERE, there is the question of race. My best friend, Rachel, got a jury summons last week and was told she had to answer the race question. She didn't know how. By all appearances, she looks "white," but her father is from Armenia - a country often assigned to Europe, but formerly referred to as Asia Minor. She said, "What do I put? Asian?" We laughed about the options - White and Black (colors), Hispanic (a language classification), and Asian (an area of the world). I told her she simply had to decide if she wanted to be a color, a language, or a land mass that day! Laughable for sure.

Merriam Webster's Dictionary defines race as a family tribe or nation belonging to the same stock. This same term is used for animals belonging to the same stock. Simply said, race refers to animals or people who come from the same ancestry. This seems a rather limited definition. "Race" is more broadly seen as any grouping of humans which shares the same inheritable phenotypical (visible) characteristics or geographical ancestry. So we group people by how they look? This is a bit archaic of an idea and yet we talk every day about race.

We use terms like African-American to refer to those would otherwise be called "black," even though many South African immigrants are "white." Aren't they still African-American? And what about my college roommate, who was black but became quite upset at me referring to her as African-American since she was, in fact, from Jamaica? Is a student who is from Germany anything at all like a rancher from Texas simply because their skin color is similar? Do students living in East Gainesville have anything in common with students living in East Uganda? These are questions that must be asked. We MUST challenge a system that groups us into "races" of people without regard for culture and regionalities.

In his 1175 text "The Natural Varieties of Mankind," Johann Friedrich Blumenbach established five major divisions of humans (Caucasoid race, Mongoloid race, Ethiopian/Negroid race, American Indian race, and Malayan race). In layman's terms, this reads like a box of crayons. Are we really all distinguishable into simply white, yellow, black, red, and brown? Apparently so. Blumenbach believed that these were the identifiable groupings of humans, an anthropological observation based on phenotypic traits; eugenicists of the early 1900s would take this a step further, noting that the heritable traits within each of these groups would either elevate or limit their fitness to exist within society, thus creating a "science of racism."

Natural selection, after all, showed us that some within a species were less valuable to the gene pool and, therefore, they would die out over time and all would be as it should be. So, said Social Dawinists, was it within society (Biologists clearly believe that Darwin was misinterpreted). Those who were less "valuable" to the gene pool would naturally die out due to both their heredity and their social environment. So should they. It was not the job of society to try to help them or change that. In fact, some eugenicists believed that they should help the process along with forced sterilization and euthanasia. Sound creepy? I think that it is. I am a little taken aback by the fact that 65,000 Americans were sterilized through forced sterilization projects during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I am also a little bothered by the fact that early efforts at birth control were not about women's rights but about stopping births in minority and immigrant communities so that they might reproduce less offspring who fell into the "unfit" category. I suppose, however, that it is reassuring to know how inspirational these "scientists" were; after all, they inspired Hitler and that must speak for something.

Sarcasm aside, we must acknowledge that the issue of race has been pivotal for generations in American society. This 4-letter word, which means so little, has meant so much. I have learned in my life that Americans are experts at division. We are a diverse society. We are a society of many peoples from many places with many voices to be heard. Does it follow, however, that those voices must be singular to be heard? Should they be segregated and sometimes silenced? The beauty of a symphony is not a single instrument, it is all of them intersecting and dancing around each other. Why can people not be the same?

When we discussed this in class, one of my students asked, "What should I put, then, when they ask the race question?" My reply: "The question is not, 'What should I put?' it is 'Why should I be asked to put anything?'" What will it take for us to become the human race?

This topic is so interesting and sometimes so infuriating. Rachel, who teaches at Lincoln, and I often rant about it in private, and now, I am giving a little public rant. I think we should shout from the rooftops (sometimes in the form of a blog) when we want to be heard. I think we need to not be afraid to speak what we see as truth even if it might offend. I admit that I am intimidated by the great race debate. I am intimidated by other teachers who have told me that I can't understand my students because I am white. I am intimidated by people who get angry because I don't teach "black history" during February and by those who think that teaching it at all is keeping the division between us present. I embrace the concept of teaching history and literature as HUMAN history and literature, but when the argument over the greatness or inferiority of an author is purely based on race, it cannot be ignored. I want to scream at the top of my lungs that the failure of students in East Gainesville is about parental involvement and social pressures and financial strain, not about skin color! I want people to see with my eyes because I want to stop fighting and because I want to have unity and, well, because I want to be right.

Now, I want to hear your voices. You deserve to be heard as well.

A World of Words

He was born poor and, despite writing success, he died poor, but his life was rich with laughter and his writing ripe with controversy. Mark Twain, the most famous of all regionalists was a genius at capturing the language, attitudes, and customs of the people about whom he wrote. One hundred years after writing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain is still in the news and his novel is the one of the most banned books in the country - all because of one little word. That one little word, common in his time and, arguably, more widely used today, has angered generations and sparked water-cooler debates all across America. This is the power of words. They shape our culture and change our thinking.

Whoever first quipped, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me," clearly never removed his earplugs. Words hurt. They enflame dormant fires of anger. They remind us of deeply held hurt and deeply hidden regrets. Perhaps that is why Twain strove to write the people as they were, because he knew that their own words would reveal the most about who they were and what they believed. Perhaps that is why he is the standard for regionalist writing. Perhaps we are offended because Twain wanted us to feel that way and to search for the reasons why. Introspection forced upon us by a few well-chosen words.

Twain said, "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightening and the lightening bug." What a powerful idea! The reason that there is a debate at all about Twain's book is that he wanted to accurately represent the people and places, customs and prejudices of people along the Mississippi using all of their colloquialisms, and that included the n-word. Twain simply believed that he was using the "right" word, but was he? And does it even matter?

Huckleberry Finn provides powerful social commentary that clearly demonstrates Twain's distaste for slavery and other social mores (pronounced more-A-s) of the time. Yet, in it, he repeatedly uses a word that we now see as taboo. Just because a word was regionally accepted in the late 1800s, should we accept it today as simply a "representation" of the time, or should we require a higher standard, free of inflammatory language? Does his social commentary work if we take out the word? And if we are trying to banish it from our language, then shouldn't we banish it from music and television as well? I have no answers to these questions (although I do have some opinions), but they do give us some "food for thought." While Twain would be angry to know that any words were taken from his book, maybe you agree with those who say it is simply too controversial and hurtful to leave. Then again, you might stand on the side of those who believe that censorship is a slippery slope that you'd rather stay far from. Wherever you stand in this debate, I would love to hear your thoughts.

And in your free time :) . . . This weekend's extra credit is to research the life of Mark Twain a little more. We only got a small biography in our textbook, so dig a little deeper. For 25 EC points, provide me a list of 15 REALLY interesting facts about Twain's life. Last day for this one is Monday, February 14th!! And since it is due on Valentine's day, I leave you with a little thought about love from Twain himself. "Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."

Have a great weekend!

Freedom Train

Let me start by saying that I am SO glad I don't live in Chicago. I am sitting in my warm, comfy home and it is 71 degrees outside. In January. While the rest of the country is covered in snow. Yup, glad I live in Florida. Some of my Alaska friends are now in Chicago and I feel for them. This morning there were 17 inches of snow on the ground there with 2-6 more expected today! In fact, it is warmer in Skagway, Alaska than it is in Chicago. Ouch.

The lack of cold makes me feel only slightly guilty about my return to coffee. Not enough to stop me from drinking it though. So today, I write to you warm and full of caffeine, my mind full of ideas of revolution. I love when the events of the world correspond with the teachings of class, and this week they certainly do. Egypt is in turmoil. If you haven't read about it, you should. What started out 10 days ago as peaceful protest (think Thoreau and King) has turned violent and I am saddened by that turn of events. And yet, I think I understand it. While I never advocate violence, I am stricken by the Egyptian people's cry for change. They have been held down for too long. They are longing for rights and freedoms that their government has long denied. They are desperate to believe that their voices will be the catalyst for that change, and they are not willing to back down. They seem unafraid of death. Martyrs for a cause? I guess that remains to be seen, but how similar they seem to me today to the voices of the past.

The Transcendentalists spoke about the value of being true to yourself. They called for personal growth and those like Thoreau called for governmental change. Their voices echoed in the ears of people like Whitman who wrote of equality. Slowly, the match lit the paper and the paper lit the sticks and the sticks set the nation on fire. The words of a few men became the voice of a people who spoke against the institution of slavery. Escaped slaves added their own voices and the power of the abolitionist movement drove the nation toward change. Change came. In the form of a war. And while perhaps Emerson had a point when he quipped, "Sometimes gunpowder smells good," let us hope that the seeds of grow at a lesser cost in Egypt.

Today, I encourage you to think about what it means to be a revolutionary. Not a rebel. Any punk can be a rebel. Anyone can yell about an "unfair" rule or whine about what they didn't get or break the law just because it can be broken. None of that is revolution. Revolution is seeded somewhere else. It grows out of desperation. It grows from the soul. And when it is sparked, it cannot be killed. It's leaders might be slaughtered. It's people might go into hiding. But true revolution is built on the power of an unsilenceable voice.

EC. Write a one page summary (all in your own words) of the events in Egypt over the last 10 days. Follow the events through Friday (a lot might change by then) and submit your summary on Monday.