Wow.  After reading an article named “Hillary Supporters are not Bitter, they are Concerned” ( http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0830lettersbriefs0aug30,0,990252.story) and all of it’s posts,  after taking in all of the ignorance and intelligence at the same time,  all I can say is wow. 

First, I would like to say that I admire and respect Senator John McCain for his courage and willingness to serve the United States of America. Regardless of the way in which he was shot and taken by the enemy (making him a Prisoner Of War), he was serving our country and to belittle that in any form or fashion is not only disrespectful to him, but to all who have served the USA in any capacity.  His service deserves nothing but the utmost honor.  Anything else is detestable.

Secondly, the writer of this article as well as any supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton should be ashamed to say that because of their “concern” (dislike, distrust, whatever fits you specific feeling) about Senator Barack Obama they will vote for Sen. McCain.  You should place your vote for a candidate based on their policies, beliefs, and the direction that they want to take this Country in.  If you voted for Sen. Clinton because of those things(policies, beliefs, etc.),the thought of voting for Senator McCain should be so far away from your mind that you couldn’t see it with a telescope.  Not because you hate Senator McCain or love Senator Obama, but because Senator McCain’s beliefs and policies (Mainly President Bush’s) are so far off from those of which Senator Clinton spent her political career making a stand for.  To swap sides to someone so far away from where Sen. Clinton stands says the one doesn’t fully comprehend the ground on which they are standing.

Thirdly, this race is not about race. It’s not about black or white, male or female, Democrat or Republican, it is about America; the place in which we all live.  This is why so many people who never voted before came out in masses, not only to support Senator Obama, but Senator Clinton as well.  This fact does not mean that you neglect history when it is being made, to do so is ignorance.  Senator Obama made history that not only African Americans should be proud of, but all Americans, regardless of race. WE should all be proud because it shows just how far America has come, and while we still have work to do, it shows that we are turning the curve. Senator Clinton has made an historic run for the nomination, not just for women, but for America, for it shows that we are learning that the only body part that matters in leadership is the brain.  I can be proud of that and every other male and female of the USA can and should be proud of it also.  Senator Palin has also made history by being nominated the first female Republican Vice Presidential candidate and although to many of us Americans her selection by Sen. McCain reeks with classic politcal tatic, which labels the American people and ignorant, her nomination is still…History. Whether you like any of these candidates is completely irrelevant. They made history, respect it. For in doing so we respect ourselves. Again I say this election is not about voting for Sen. Obama because he’s black (or McCain cause he’s not) ; to do so would offensively imply that all African Americans (or non African Americans) are unlearned, ignorant racists . It’s not about backing Sen. Clinton because she’s a woman (or Obama because he’s not); to do so would offensively imply that all women (or males) are unlearned and ignorant feminist (or chauvinist). It’s not about voting McCain/Palin because he has a woman on the ticket (and Obama/Biden does not); that would offensively imply that Democratic Clinton voters are ignorant, unlearned, and that Palin is Clinton’s Republican equivalent.  It’s about voting for who you believe in, based on the research you conducted, it’s about the growth and prosperity of America. To make it anything else would be to make it politics as usual.

Finally, to say that Senator Obama has not explained the way he plans to bring about change and keep the promises he makes is unlearned and lazy. He has (like mentioned in previous posts) a detailed, in-depth desciption of his stance on, and plan for every area in which he has promised change. It can be found clearly and nicely presented…on his website (www.barackobama.com)! It is our job to go and read it, just like we read this article, just like we read the negative and sometimes foolish things on the internet, we owe it to ourselves to know what every candidate stands for based on what HE presents, not based on what a friend or common stranger says.   This goes for every other candidate as well!  We can’t expect them in 30 minutes tell us everything we want to know about their beliefs and stances.  The goal during their speeches is to gain our interest, provoking us to look deeper into their campaign, pushing us to look for what we want to know for ourselves.  Their responsibility while running is to make sure that the information we are seeking is available for us when we look.  It’s unfair to say that Sen. Obama just makes promise with no premise when one truthfully haven’t looked to see for one’s self.

I am an African-American man who loves all races, respects both male and female with the same intensity, and I will be voting for Senator Barack Obama in the 2008 General Election, not because he’s a man (as am I), not because he’s BLACK (although I’m extremely proud of that fact), but because I have looked he and Sen. McCain up, listen to them speak, and checked their track record, and I have come to the conclusion that he is BETTER, not perfect, but BETTER.  I urge everyone to do the same. (Do the research that is……and….vote for Sen. Obama

Thanks For Your Time.

Respectively,

Jeremiah

I make music to communicate.  I make music to bridge gaps. I make music in order to release feelings.  I make music because music listens. I make music because it never disrespects me.  I make music to influence.  I make music to praise God.  I make music to pray.  I make music to worship.  I make music to enlighten.  I make music to learn.  I make music to love.  I make music to correct.  I make music to help.  I make music to press beyond the borders of race and experience. I make music to reach the hearts of people.  I make music because I love music. I make music because it paints pictures.  I make music because it improves me.  I make music because it improves others.  I make music because it is diverse. I make music because it is red. I make music because it is blue.  I make music because it is like a rainbow, it has many different shades of styles.  I make music to grow.  I make music to change.  I make music for kids.  I make music for teenagers.  I make music for young adults. I make music for adults.  I make music for Christ.  I make music for the future.  I make music for music.  I make music for the sunrise.  I make music for the blades of grass.  I make music for the soul. I make music from the spirit. I make music advance. I make music to shift. I make music to make a difference.  I make music to taste sound. I make music in order see through blind eyes.  I make music in order to hear through deaf ears.  I make music to speak for aborted children.  I make music to speak for the murdered.  I make music to speak out against injustice. I make music to take a stand.  I make music to preach. I make music to teach. I make music to challenge myself and others. I make music to answer the challenges of life. I make music to communicate.  I make music to bridge gaps. I make music for God.

After reading “Understand?” by Will Okun (an English teacher in a Chicago school with many students from low-income and minority homes), I began to think about my own experience as a student and how race has played a part in learning in my life.  After years of encountering many different teachers with diverse backgrounds, I can speak from my own experience when I say that when it comes to learning, the race of a teacher neither qualifies nor disqualifies them from teaching effectively.  In other words, a teacher of any race can teach a student of any race.  Whether it be white students, Asian students, black students or anyone else who needs to be taught. I believe that if a teacher can relate to the current situations of the students it would help, but I cannot and will not say that teacher who can’t relate to the personal life of a student can’t effectively teach.  At the end of the day, the only thing the teacher absolutely needs to 100% relate to is the subject that they are teaching.  I wouldn’t dare say or imply that children who are from low-income families can’t learn unless they have a teacher that can relate to certain personal experiences that they have.  I do agree that it helps and would make it BETTER for some students to have someone in whom they can identify with, but this is not something that is needed.  All teachers should make it an issue to care about all of their students and to communicate to the students that they care about them succeeding in life, not just in their class so that they can receive a good percentage in students passing standardized tests.  I believe that this can help the student not feel like their teacher is out to get them, but that they are out for them which tells them its not Them VS Me, but us against the curriculum.

There are four different motives for writing, according to the essay “Why I Write” by George Orwell.  After reading this essay I decided to take a look at my motives for writing.  The identification of my writing motive didn’t take very long, in fact, it almost happened instantly while reading Orwell’s essay.  Sheer egoism, Aesthetic enthusiasm, Historical impulse, and Political purpose; out of these four motives given by Orwell I must say that I find myself more often than not falling under the political purpose category.  Orwell describes the political purpose motive as the desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.  I often find myself voicing my opinions on things in the world that I believe are out of place and when given the opportunity, I try to push others in the direction that I believe is right.  I believe that this is the case for myself and many others because whenever one feels passionate about something, they want to communicate that passion with everyone, believing that what they have to say could possibly change the mind of their audience. Although this is not the case in every instance, most of the time I write my motive is what George Orwell would call “Political” purpose.

“Students can’t write clean English sentences because they are not being taught what sentences are.” At least, according to Stanley Fish, dean emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago they can’t. In Fish’s column in the New York Times, he clearly communicates his belief that in writing, “Content is a lure and a delusion, and it should be banished from the classroom.” Fish seems to believe that during the process of being taught writing structure and sentence makeup, students are distracted by content instead of being taught that “Form is the way” and that turning a random list of words into a sentence is done by putting “words into a relationship with one another.” During his long career in teaching, Fish has developed his own method of teaching form. Fish believes that by requiring his students to come up with their own language, he is teaching them the ins and outs of sentence structure, not forcing their focus to zoom in on interesting content.

According to Collin Brooke, to imply that professors are incapable of teaching form in the context of actual writing is not only an incorrect assessment, but it is “colossally insulting”. Professor Brooke made this statement as a reply to Professor Stanley Fish’s article Devoid of Content, in which Fish claims that using or making content relevant while teaching sentence form and structure is not only distracting, but ineffective. Although Brooke disagrees with the claim made by Fish that “Most” of the millions of students graduating from high school and college are “utterly unable to write a clear and coherent English sentence.”, he goes on to show respect for Fish’s method of teaching by stating that he doesn’t “doubt that Fish’s students leave his class fully capable of crafting logically coherent sentences”. This lets us know that it isn’t Fish’s method of teaching that Brooke disagrees with, but the position that Professor Fish seemingly takes, a position that makes his way the only way.

I find myself agreeing with both Professors, but more with Professor Brooke. I agree with him more simply because I believe that for anyone to pretend or even hint that there is only one way to get to a goal is absurd. I do agree that taking a bit of the focus off of content and placing it into form would help me as a student understand sentence structure a bit more, but requiring me to create a different language is even more distracting than having focus placed on good content. I believe that everyone has a unique learning and teaching style, and because of that, we all can benefit from the differences amongst us. There is not just one way to reach the mark, but many routes that can get you to a common place. It is very important that we remember that although the route we took got us to where we need to be, it is not the only way to get there. I believe that Professor Stanley Fish forgot this; this is why I agree that there is a Fish in a Barrel.

“Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down.” At least that is what 77 year old former Yale University Professor Harold Bloom believes. In what one might call a passionate, expressive and opinionated column in the Los Angeles Times, Professor Bloom explains his firm position when it comes to today’s literature, writers, and readers. Fueled by the belief that most of the world’s not only greatest, but tolerable writers are dead, Bloom goes on to what some may say disrespect and dishonor modern day writers such as J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter), claiming that her “writing was dreadful”, and her “book was terrible”. Bloom even went as far as discrediting the National Book Foundation’s Annual Award Winner for “Distinguished Contribution” Stephen King, calling him “an immensely inadequate writer”. Bloom seems to believe that good writing is writing that provokes readers to better themselves for the sake of Humanity, and that anything else is simply poor, and due to the poor condition of today’s literature, America is being dumbing down.

40 year old Steve Almond of Syracuse University believes that Harold Bloom “should be excoriating the true opponents of creative enlightenment.”, “Rather than attacking writers, or those who bestow accolades onto them “. In a blog entry seemingly just as long as Bloom’s Newspaper column, and just as cruel (to Bloom), Almond suggests that Bloom is “off the mark”. Almond agrees with many of Blooms beliefs, but he also believes the way to help is not to trash other writers, but by attacking bigger entities such as “the deification of consumerism, the decline in funding for public education, the economic inequality that has become the hallmark of late–model capitalism.”

I am led to believe that Professor Bloom thinks that American readers choose to read what they read because they are too ignorant to see what “good” writing really is. I tend to believe that just as sure as those who lived in Shakespeare’s time did not see the value in his writing, there will be those who don’t see the quality in many of today’s writers until years after they are gone. I believe this simply because there are times when we as human beings get stuck into a specific setting of what is “good” and what is “bad”, instead of realizing that there are many different ways to get to quality, and many different attributes that qualify a piece of work to be deemed “good”. I am not saying that every writer is a good writer, or vice-versa, (that would be a lie)but I am saying that it is unfair to deem one person’s work “bad” because it isn’t relatively equal to what was considered past greatness. I do agree that there should be more substance in today’s books that push readers to better themselves, but attacking writers isn’t the way to help the situation. (If in fact your purpose is to help solve the problem and not just identify it.) All in all I do believe that America’s culture, literature and society is being dumbed down, but not due to the lack of “quality” in literature, but due to a whole community of issues. The most important issue in my opinion is the fact that America has allowed reading to become less important, while making money and reality TV shows more important.

Bloom, Harold. “Dumbing down the American Reader”.  LA Times. 2003. <http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/24/dumbing_down_american_readers/>Almond, Steve. “The Bloom is Off The Mark”.   MobyLives.com. 29 September 2003. <http://www.mobylives.com/Almond_Bloom.html> 

I write simply because I like to speak.  I like to speak because I feel that I have something to say. I believe that when one writes he or she is literally communicating their emotions and feelings through whatever tools they are using to print.  Whether it is metaphorically, directly, poetically or a combination of either, the writer is communicating apart of themselves.  I write so that I can practice the way I speak without physically saying a word.  It allows me to express myself in a way that can be heard by millions, it creates a way for other people to hear my voice with listening to me talk.  When I write, I am not bound by the vanity of appearance or the fierce emotion of anxiety. I am free to be who I am, to say what it is I have to say to whomever is willing to listen.  When I write, I can rest assured that everyone who reads what I write is paying attention, because without attention reading doesn’t exist.  I write simply because I like to speak, and I like to speak, simply because I feel that I have something to say. Why do you write? Think about it.

I would like to take this time to brief talk about my hometown, John’s Island, South Carolina. It is a place filled with African American history and customs. I can recall growing up on John’s Island as a boy playing in the dirt roads after school for fun, and fighting with the dirt roads before school in order to keep my fresh new school shoes clean. With fields all around, the Sun beaming down, and the tall, almost scary oak trees providing shade for my sun burnt skin, I ran out of the house every afternoon to enjoy the years of my childhood. Needless to say I lived in the country, but it that is exactly what is was, MY Country. We didn’t have hours of traffic during lunchtime or several Elementary, Middle, and High Schools. We had 2 Elementary, 1 Middle and 1 High school, no traffic EVER, and most importantly, we had a community of people who looked out for each other. It is this place I once called come that has been utterly destroyed. Not only because of the constant buying of land for pennies and selling it for thousands, or the increased amount of traffic that is now experienced, but it is in the lack of concern when it comes to the community. No one cares anymore. Everyone is for themselves and no one else. While businessmen and entrepreneurs gain wealth through the riches of land, the place that I called home is continuously losing its wealth. The wealth of working together, the wealth of concern and care, the wealth of love. Okay, Okay, maybe I’m being a bit dramatic here but sorry, I can’t help it. I can go to the coordinates on a map that would take me to the location where I grew up, but somehow it can’t take me to the place where I grew up. I have come to face the sometimes hurtful truth that things have changed, and most of the things that changed weren’t necessarily for the good. After sometime thinking I can clearly see that I too have changed. I am no longer the little boy playing in the dirt or protecting my sneakers from mud. I have grown. I have allowed many principles and beliefs to be built on the fields of my heart, I have allowed faith to transform my dirty past into a smooth beautiful future, but most importantly, I have not allowed the trials and challenges in life to steal the wealth of working together, the wealth of concern and care, and the wealth of love away from me. Although John’s Island has changed drastically and lost some of it’s true identity, apart of what it was is apart of who I am and I will never lose that. I am Home.

In the eyes of the beholder, the name of something has major significance.  For example, whenever one hears a name that (for whatever reason) is more commonly used as a female name, it is immediately assumed that the person the name belongs to is a Female.  Even if in fact the person was a male, because of what we have already experienced when it comes to that specific name, we will in an instant have a pre-conceived thought of how a person with that name should look and sound, where they grew up, and even what race they are.

As a result, I included both time and thought when selecting the name of my weblog.   After thinking over a period of time, I chose to name my Weblog MyPlace.  I selected this name because through this Weblog, I will not only invite others to read my opinions and beliefs on many different topics, but I will also etch myself a place in everyone’s heart and mind. I will use MyPlace to communicate to both my English class and to the world who is it that I am.  Through interesting and thought provoking topics MyPlace will challenge every reader to go deeper than what is on the surface of things, to look beyond what is said, to see life through a different pair of lens, and smile while they are doing it.

In conclusion, I look forward to a semester full of sharing my opinions and reading the thoughts of others. Through this awesome creation known as the weblog, we can communicate what we do, what we think, how we behave, and even who we are.  It allows us to reveal ourselves to others, instead of it leaving open to another person’s imagination.  With all of that said…..Come on over to MyPlace!

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