Website URL

http://sites.google.com/site/southwesternillusion/

Wild Website Project

For our website project Pasha and I decided to focus on illegal immigration, using Pat Mora's poem, "La Migra". Pasha explained perfectly in his blog why he chose the this topic. My reason is just that I found it interesting, a very highly debated topic. Pasha made a clear outline for us which made it much easier. We have a home page, the poem itself, the analazation of the 2 parts of the poem (we are not taking a side, so we thought it would be important to focus on both). Pasha did the side of the patrol officer, and I the Mexican woman. Then we have a Biography of Pat Mora, then 4 different pages of information using a couple books and articles as references, and of course a bibliography and about us page. The book I'm using as one of my references is called Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives, By Peter Orner. It has stories about real immigrants. I've only read a few of the stories but it is really good!
Pasha had a really good idea on how not to make it look like we're taking a side, alternate the information from the border patrol and the immigrants, something he learned in his psychology class. If you read his blog he explains it. Since we're all giving presentations there's no point in giving too much away, so I'll stop here. I'm meeting Pasha one more time today to go over the website and make sure we have everything, so I'll post the URL later.

Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight In Heaven

Out of all of the readings we've done in class The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight In Heaven by Sherman Alexie was definitely my favorite. Maybe part of it was that the way it was written was easier to read, but I really liked that it was broken down into short stories but had a lot of the same characters throughout the whole book. I enjoyed the style of writing, all the unique characters, the setting, and most of all the symbolism.
One of my favorites was "Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star Spangled Banner' at Woodstock". It seems like it uses the playing of that song as a recurring symbol of Victors attachment to his father. As I said in my last post it's hard for me to decipher the symbolism sometimes, but it definitely makes it more fun to read, it'll be interesting in class tomorrow to hear what people made of all the symbols.
"2. When I heard my fathers pickup, I would run upstairs and throw Jimi's tape into the stereo... 4. My father would weep, attempt to hum along with Jimi, and then pass out with his head on the kitchen table. 5. I would fall asleep under the table with my head near his feet. 6. We'd dream together until the sun came up." I read that part so many times, maybe because I was trying to read further into it, or I just found it interesting and somewhat humorous and sad at the same time.
Well since Peter Ray and I are doing our presentation about some of these stories tomorrow, I'll save the rest for then. Especially since this website is driving me crazy, something always goes wrong when I try to post, so no picture this time. It looks so plain:(

How Far Would You Go?

Since I’ve never watched the show I did some reading about it online, here are a few of the things I found. In its first five seasons there were nearly 70 scenes of torture, more than any other show on television, Melissa Caldwell, the Parents Television Council's Senior Director of Programs, said, "24 is the worst offender on television: the most frequent, most graphic, and the leader in the trend of showing the protagonists using torture."
The illustrations of torture as effective and necessary have brought quite some criticism from human rights activists, military officials, experts in questioning and interrogation, and even from fans of the TV show. Stephan King, an admitted fan of 24, wrote, "There's also a queasily gleeful subtext to 24 that suggests, 'If things are this bad, why, I guess we can torture anybody we want! In fact, we have an obligation to torture in order to protect the country! Hooray! Yet Jack Bauer's face — increasingly lined, increasingly haggard — suggests that extreme measures eventually catch up with the human soul."
One of the FBI's best experts in questioning techniques, Joe Navarro, also attended the meeting. He told The New Yorker, "Only a psychopath can torture and be unaffected. You don’t want people like that in your organization. They are untrustworthy, and tend to have grotesque other problems."
I’ve been thinking long and hard about where I stand on this issue, but I just don’t know. I’ve never been the kind of person to enjoy watching violent movies, but this is different. It’s about protecting our country. If someone took your family for instance, and was going to hurt them, and you had a hunch who that person was, to what extent would you go to get them to talk? To save your family? What if it was hundreds or thousands of people in danger? I wish there were another alternative but unfortunately its effectiveness would probably be minimal in comparison
On the second page of the reading “What Would Jack Bauer Do?” there is a quote by General Patrick Finnegan, dean of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he said “The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.” The patriotic thing to do? That just sounds horrible, although swaying on the whole subject of torture, I can’t bring myself to agree with that statement. To me it just makes the whole idea of patriotism sound unethical. I can see why in some cases it may be absolutely necessary, but to say it’s the patriotic thing to do is going a little too far for me.
I was talking to Kathleen in the library about all this, and I’ve come to the decision that I just don’t want to know, maybe I can convince myself that it’s for the best if I don’t see or hear about it. That might sound ignorant, but it’s all I can handle right now. Oh, here's a funny little comic I found-

http://www.rall.com/uploaded_images/2-16-08-739618.jpg

Exploring The Great Gatsby

I wasn’t sure exactly what direction to take for writing this blog post, so hopefully it’s not too all over the place. While my mom and I were making dinner yesterday I mentioned I had to get my homework done (obviously that didn’t happen until today haha) and she asked me what it was about, so I started to tell her about The Great Gatsby. She got so exited, when the movie came out in 1974 she was a teenager and she went to see it with a friend. Apparently they fell absolutely in love with the actor Robert Redford (who played Jay Gatsby). That got my attention, it’s always interesting when parents tell you about childhood crushes. So anyway, I printed out a picture and layed it on her pillow this morning, just to be funny: ) I also watched a trailer for the movie, here's the link-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_aAt6kFius
It won quite a few awards and became pretty famous, I’m thinking about trying to find it on netflix so I can watch it with my mom. If you want to know more about the movie, go here.

To respond a little bit to one of Dr. Kulbaga’s prompts, I decided to go with “Is The Great Gatsby a comedy or tragedy?” I haven’t decided yet, I’d like to hear all your opinions in class first. But here are some thoughts on the subject.
Here's one literary definition of Tragedy: A tragedy is a literary work which tells the events surrounding the main character's fall from greatness. This downfall is normally brought about by some defect or weakness in the hero's character.
Comedy: A play, movie, etc., of light and humorous character with a happy or cheerful ending; a dramatic work in which the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion.
Upon first glance, The Great Gatsby appears to be a tragedy. Gatsby is exposed as a pitiable fraud and his carefully constructed life falls apart, ending in murder. Yet, maybe there is a possibility to read this novel as a comedy. There are certainly many comedic episodes throughout the novel, such as the scene in which Owl Eyes goes to the library because he believes books will sober him up. Here I go again changing the subject, but that got me thinking about something else, symbolism.
I’m really not too great at deciphering symbolism in books, but it seems like the eyes must mean something, I would just like to know everyone else’s ideas on that.
When I was looking into that I came across a website that talks about twenty-five symbols in The Great Gatsby, take a look if you want, it’s pretty interesting.

"Little Sure Shot"

"Aim at a high mark and you will hit it. No, not the first time, not the second time and maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting for only practice will make you perfect. Finally you’ll hit the bull’s-eye of success." -Annie Oakley

Phoebe Ann Mozee (Annie Oakley) was born on Aug. 13, 1860 in a cabin in Darke County Ohio. She was named Phoebe Ann by her mother, but called Annie by her sisters. Though When i searched I saw her name spelled many different ways, it seems Annie promoted the Mozee spelling of the family name. While it has been variously recorded as Mauzy and Moses, Mosey is the version most commonly found. As well as the spelling of her last name it was also confusing trying to find out how many brothers and sisters she had, all the reputable sites say she was the sixth of nine children, but I also saw other claims such as that she had 7 brothers and 7 sisters, hmm. Doing research on this woman got a little frusterating because of that, so hopefully all the information I'm giving is correct.

Annie Oakley is known for preforming with William Frederick Cody "Buffalo Bill", and being one of or possibly the first woman sharp shooter. I could hardly believe it when i read that she could shoot the head off a running quail when she was twelve years old! And later she could shoot a dime tossed in midair at 90 feet. In one day with a .22 rifle she shot 4,472 of 5,000 glass balls tossed in midair. wow.

Her Father died in 1866 at age 67, from pnuemonia, soon after Annie was sent to the county poor farm. In March 1884 the Indian called Sitting Bull adopted her, he nicknamed her watanya cicilla, whick means "Little Sure Shot". And she really was little, I read that she was only five foot and looked very young for her age, just like me! Sounds silly but i think that what finally made me decide I would write my blog about her. It's also really interesting to read all the debates about whether or not she was a feminist, I haven't yet decided that myself. What are everyone's thoughts on that?

La Migra Mi Favorito

Out of all this weeks reading assignments the poem “La Migra” was my favorite, so to start off with here’s a little of what I learned about the author Pat Mora.
Pat Mora was born on January 19th 1942 in El Paso, Texas, her family came to America during the Mexican Revolution. She is married to an Anthropologist and has 3 grown children. Mrs. Mora received two degrees, a BA from Texas Western College in 1963 and an MA from the University of Texas in 1967. She writes about topics such as poetry, children’s books, and nonfiction writing and taught at the university of New Mexico. Her stories seem to show the admiration she has for the Southwest and her herritage.
I also learned that la Migra is a Mexican slang word for the U.S. border cops, and if yelled in out, it can be used to strike fear into the hearts of Mexicans, often causing them to run for the border.
I decided not to decorate the blog with any pictures this time because a lot of the ones I found were somewhat offensive, or in Spanish (and I hardly know any Spanish at all so I thought I’d better not). But here is an interview with Pat Mora.
I thought that “La Migra” was a sad poem, but at the same time it shows strength coming from the Mexican woman in the second part. I like how the poem is divided into two stanzas, because it is expressing point of view of two characters in the poem. in Stanza 1, la Migra expresses how he is going to deal with the Mexican woman, and in stanza 2, the woman replies with how she will beat him at his own game.
“I can touch you wherever I want but don‘t complain too much because I‘ve got boots and kick--if I have to, and I have handcuffs.” Either my head is in the gutter or that was meant to be considered sexual. Which I found especially strange when I read on a few websites that the poem conveys a children’s role playing game.
I liked that a line in the second stanza was left in Spanish, I think that really added to the poem. “Agua dulce brota aqua” which I learned means, "sweet water springs here, here, here"
I’m interested and uncomfortable at the same time thinking about what kind of discussion this topic might bring up in class on Saturday haha. See you all then.