History project

Here's a little something I've been working on in Ben's class:




I also have the video on YouTube with audio if you wish to hear it as well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiTkNss4QIo

Now you may be asking yourselves why I did what I did. I wanted to show what life was like for many Americans back in the dust bowls in the 1930s. I wanted to capture the sense of poverty and economic despair that was sweeping the nation at that time in a simple compilation of pictures of poverty from that particular time period. I chose the particular song for the YouTube version from the audioswap option on YouTube for its length, its evident lack of lyrics and because I liked the way it flowed. I tried to avoid songs with lyrics, mainly because I wanted something that was more ambiguous, that I could more freely use to describe what I wanted to say. In a sense, I wanted to allow the viewer to see the video and draw there own conclusions from it, based off the pictures and the audio track and sort of judge for themselves. If nothing else, I wanted the viewer to come away seeing how much simpler life was for these poverty-stricken people back then.

Literature Essay 2

Jordan Ackerman
04-18-09
Literature 223
Essay 2
Memorialization is something that has been a part of society for a very long time, even since before the times of Christ. Memorials have taken many forms over the centuries and have been used by just about every culture and people in existence. Many of these memorials have lasted for centuries, some purposefully hidden away and kept safe within tombs or under lock and key in museums and observatories and the like. Some memorials became memorials naturally, preserved by accident because of some natural disaster or because of man-made disasters such as war. Some memorials [tomb stones] are placed in the ground at the head of a grave to mark it and distinguish it from other graves nearby. Memorials have taken many other forms besides graves and tombs, though. As we discuss the importance and significance of memorials in the last hundred years and in today’s culture, we will see how memorialization has evolved over time to encompass multiple forms of media as well, immortalizing people and events in words, pictures, music and in motion pictures, multiple times in some cases.
In the twenty first century, the current generation of teens and twenty-somethings has been blessed with such a broad range of ever-changing technology to change the world and enough technology savvy to keep that change on its toes in an ever-evolving online virtual world. With this tech-savvy generation came the creation of the ever popular MySpace.com, an online networking site allowing users to customize their profiles to express themselves online. In this way, users create something of a self-memorial through the customization of their profiles. This is made more abundantly clear through the creation of MyDeathSpace.com, a site that displays the profiles of dead MySpace users and hosts a discussion forum on which users can discuss death and other related topics, as well as utilizing their ability on the site to leave their condolences and comments to pay their last respects to the deceased. Informal as it may be, it can be posted and almost immortalized for all to see on the internet, even if it doesn’t stay on that particular site for long. That’s the thing a about the internet, once it’s out there, it’s hard to take it back and erase it for good. It’s not necessarily set in stone, but words, once they are said, cannot be taken back, for better or for worse. That, perhaps, is what is meant by the old saying that “the pen is mightier than the sword”. If what can be read on a person’s profile is written with words, could the text of the profile, then, be considered literature?
By definition, literature is “writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays.” In other words, just about anything in print could potentially be considered literature, depending on the tastes of the critic who happens to be determining what they think literature is. Literature, it would seem, is in the eye of the beholder, to reuse the old saying. There is more than one way to define literature outside of something in print. In the same way, memorialization can vary in appearance, depending on what the person or persons deem appropriate for the person, persons or event being remembered. Soldiers, for instance, are remembered by the uniformity of the design and arrangement of their graves and that of their comrades. Sometimes, however, family and loved ones want to specialize and customize the design of the tomb stone to make it special to that particular person. This can lead to conflict, then, with the federal government over how to memorialize a veteran of that family and eventually become an issue of national identity as a result.
National identity plays a big role in an argument over how a military veteran should be recognized because they not only represent their family, but their country as well through their marshal duties to the nation they served. It can also be argued that since they took an oath to serve their country in uniform alongside their comrades, that they should be buried with honor in uniform alongside their comrades in the same fashion so as to identify them by their service to that country, much like we do here in America. On the other hand, however, the family raised and lived with that individual and genuinely loved them for years. It can also be argued that it would be a breach of constitutional rights for the government and or military to decide the design and layout of the family’s loved one who served as it leaves the family little choice as to how the body and grave are displayed and what goes on the epitaph. In that sense, it is still a matter of what’s right and what’s honorable, not just a matter of national identity.
But, what would happen, say, of there were no uniformity of graves and memorials to recognize and remember fallen servicemen for everyone in the country? It could be seen as a good thing for the families of said veterans because it would allow them to completely customize their loved one’s grave and tomb stone to specially cater to the kind of person that particular serviceman of woman was, to honor them with a unique memorial that defined who they were as a person. On the flipside, however, it would make it harder to identify which graves were those of soldiers and which were those of civilians. It would make them more individually unique, but it would be more difficult to find a universal representation of national identity among them. In some ways, this form of customized memorialization already exists, thriving on this freedom of creativity and imagination which can be blatantly seen on a plethora of MySpace profiles. Many newspapers, on the other hand, like the now discontinued Seattle Post Intelligencer represent a more uniform type of memorialization. Whatever the source, though, memorialization appears to be a very important part of society, now just as much as any other time in history.
Memorialization is ultimately one of the most integral parts of just about any society as it holds and preserves their histories in something, whether it be a statue, a tomb stone, a video clip, a song, or even a MySpace page. Today we can memorialize just about anything and anyone in more ways than you can shake a mouse cord at. It doesn’t really matter what approach you use or what you write in it, you’re recording a piece of history, a piece of literature, and a piece of you into it. You have to pour your heart and effort into it, make it your own, and write it in your own words to make it special, to customize and personalize it. This is so important a thing to remember about memorialization so that it does not lose its authenticity. If we remember that, making and honoring memorials will live on as a way of honoring and remembering the past and memorialization, itself, will have done its job well and not be counted as a lost cause. May it live on forever in our hearts and help us learn from our past, that we may push forward to a better future.

Essay 1 Revised

Jordan Ackerman
03-25-09
Literature 223
Craig McKenney, Instructor
Essay 1
What is literature? Maybe it’s just a novel on the New York Times best seller list. Maybe it’s an old book you find on grandma’s shelf in the attic. Maybe it’s a collection of stories with fictitious characters and made-up lands which were created to give us something to do on rainy days. Perhaps it is the stories of lives lived by real people in real times and places, meant to show us what happened hundreds of years ago. Or, perhaps literature is more than words on a page. I’ve read my fair share of books in middle and high school and seen multiple genres on multiple levels of grammatical creativity that I’ve both liked and disliked. I like reading a good book just as much as the next guy. But is literature based solely in books and novels alone, or does it go deeper than that? Perhaps, just perhaps, literature has more to offer than just another Tom Clancy series best seller. If one is to study it, they must study it in its’ entirety to fully understand it.
First off, literature should be defined to better understand what we are getting into. Literature (noun), pronounced [lit-er-uh-cher, -choo r, li-truh-], as described on dictionary.com, is “writings in which expression and form, in connection with ideas of permanent and universal interest, are characteristic or essential features, as poetry, novels, history, biography, and essays.” Another definition describes it as “the body of artistic writings of a country or period that are characterized by beauty of expression and form and by universality of intellectual and emotional appeal”, or more simply put, “artistic writings worthy of being remembered.” So, literature is basically anything artistically or emotionally motivated in print. So, yes, books are definitely included in this definition. So, why learn about literature?
For starters, it tells us about ourselves and each other. We can learn a lot about a person from the way they act, but you can learn a lot more about them personally just by reading their writing. People usually pour their heart and soul into what they love doing so, when you read a book or poem you’re getting a taste of their heart and soul. It also allows us the possibility of immersing ourselves in a world of our own creation, a realm or reality formed in our imagination by the words written upon the pages we read. In other words, reading is like watching a movie inside your head. It’s really fun and it’s more than just a good way to pass the time on a rainy day. There’s also a variety to literature, it’s more than just books. As its definition suggests, literature is made up of a “artistic writings” [1], like poetry.
Poetry, in and of itself is a very artistic and almost always emotional in the way it is written. It can tell a story in many different ways, through rhyme or another sort of verse structure. It can be found all over the world in many different cultures, both ancient and still fairly young. Some nations have birthed their own artistic verse structures to which they have held somewhat traditionally, if not religiously. A prime example of such traditional structuring is that of the Japanese haiku. It is a strictly simple poetic structure, made up of three unrhymed lines of five, seven and five syllables, in that order. Haiku can be about just about anything, something like love or something as simple as another day at the office. Anything is game. Poets usually write about something they feel passionately about, putting their very heart and soul into each sentence or verse to show how they feel. Poetry is also a popular way of creating vivid mental pictures in the mind of the read through the use of creative grammar and well placed metaphors and similes. Books, themselves, can be poetic in the way they make the story come alive to the reader or in the messages they hold within the pages. If literature is, indeed, an art, then I would venture a guess to say that poetry is, perhaps, one of its more beautiful and popular forms.
However, there’s more to literature than books and poems, alone, you know. You like watching movies and television shows, don’t you? You know, the kind they play on the boob tube all day, making money for every couch potato that turns it on and watches one of their shows? The shows themselves are not really literature as we would normally think of literature, but the scripts and screen plays from which they are created and directed are. It is a form of writing, much like the scripts of plays and musicals from which they originated and that still continue to exist to this day in schools, small time theaters and, ultimately, on Broadway. Whatever it’s being used for, the script and or story board on which the actors and animators base their actions, lines and animations on is all in a descriptive writing that doesn’t just tell them what to do, but tells a story. It is a story the cast and crew help recreate on a visual scale to be viewed and enjoyed upon the stage, the big screen and, ultimately, the television set. It’s a kind of interactive literature of sorts and is just another example of its many forms.
So, now that we know that literature is more than just old dusty books at the library that only high school teachers and old college professors read, a new question arises: how the heck are we suppose to study it?! Is there one way to study literature as a whole? Well, you can’t really go wrong with reading the material and then discussing it afterward. That has been my general experience in English class in my early high school years and I thought it worked rather well in helping me understand what I was reading. Something I found about myself is that if I don’t understand something, I ask questions. Discussing the reading allows those questions to be answered and perhaps gain insights from my instructor and fellow classmates as well. Without discussion of the reading, the questions may go unanswered. When that happens, I may get frustrated and move on to something else and lose interest in what I’m reading.
Sometimes reading aloud a book or some other bit of literature in class can be a good way to learn about it because it gives you a chance to figure out the way it actually sounds, they way it’s meant to be read. It’s interactive and surprisingly fun if you do it right. It helps you connect with the heart and soul of the author in a vague sense. It also helps with pinpointing and remembering the main points of the reading and ultimately makes reading the material more fun to learn. The way literature is taught should be fun and interesting, or at least amusing if nothing else. The more fun a student has while involved in the class, the more interested they’ll be and, therefore, the more they will likely learn from it.
In the end, literature is the broad range of written media that comes in many forms. From books and poetry, to play scripts and story boards, literature has somewhat evolved over time and can be read more than one way. Studying that literature can be done simply by reading, analyzing and discussing it with others to understand it and fully grasp the author’s heart and mind, to get to know the author in a roundabout way through what they’ve written. That’s literature. What’s on your shelf?