Today we started a project that you’ll work on over the next month.

You are to pick a topic in African American history in the time period between the founding of the American colonies (~1600) and 1980. You should research that topic and create a museum exhibit to display what you think are the most important parts of that topic.

Refer to the assignment sheet for more specific instructions and a list of suggested topics.

The final project is due in class on Wednesday, 02/26/2009.

Resources:

• Museum Exhibit Project

As we’ve discussed, the culminating project for Chapter 11 will be to create a character that witnessed the Civil War and write a memoir from his or her perspective.

This memoir should address two basic issues:

• What was the war like?
• How did you feel about the war?

It should also meet the following criteria:

• Typed, double spaced, 12 pt font, Times New Roman
• 2-3 pages, or approx. 500-750 words

Read the rest of this post for the introductory assignment to help you begin writing your memoir.

Before you can write the memoir, you need to create your character. In your notebook, answer the following questions. Then, think of two or three anecdotes (very brief stories/situations) that help describe something about your character.

Is your character…

• Male or Female?
• A soldier, a nurse, a journalist, or something else?
• From the North or the South?
• Young or Old?
• A veteran of a previous war?
• A farmer, a factory worker, a slave? What did your character do before the war?
• Part of a large family, or an only child?
• For the war, against the war, or indifferent?
• Fighting by choice, or drafted into the army?
• Part of a specific unit?

Now, think of two or three anecdotes (really short stories) that help describe your character. For example, your character may have done something very brave in battle, he may have tried to run away, or he may have witnessed a good friend die.

Once everyone has had a chance to do this, we will discuss it briefly. If you finish before everyone else, go on to the next step.

Based on the information that you’ve written in your notebook, you should have a general idea of who your character is. The next step is to decide how you want to tell this person’s story and begin outlining your memoir.

Think about the memoirs that we read in class (Baghdad Bureau and “Hell Sucks!”). Do you want to tell one story about a single battle or event? Do you want to tell the story through a series of random pictures or vignettes? Do you want to tell the story as if it were being written in a journal, as the war went on?

If you want to tell the story of a single battle or event, choose a specific battle and sketch out some of the details. You may want to refer to the resources used in the “Nation Divided” web quest. Then decide how your character fits into that story.

If you want to tell the story through a bunch of random pictures or vignettes, brainstorm a bunch of different memories that your character experienced.

If you want to tell the story through a journal, think about when it will start and end and what events will be described in the journal.

You have the rest of the period to work on this outline. By Friday, you should have developed this outline into a rough draft of your memoir. We will use Friday to peer edit our memoirs and revise them.

Thursday, May 1 and Friday, May 2 you will be working in pairs or small groups on a webquest about the Civil War.

Complete instructions and resources can be found at the webquest – A Nation Divided.

Your assignment (as outlined on the webquest page) is to read about life during the Civil War and then write a letter to a friend describing the conditions that you face as a soldier. Your letter should be several paragraphs in length (3+).

The research and writing you complete for this assignment are also intended to help you with the project for this chapter. Keep in mind the ultimate goal – to write a memoir as a person who lived through the Civil War.

The New York Times reported today that AOL would buy out Bebo, the third most popular social networking site on the internet.

Bebo is a social networking site, similar to Myspace and Facebook. Myspace was recently purchased by the News Corporation, and Facebook was recently bought out by Microsoft. AOL is trying to enhance it’s main application – Instant Messenger – so that it can remain competitive with Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. If AOL can successfully integrate Bebo with AIM, it can potentially profit from millions of new users.

This acquisition by AOL is another example of a double-edged trend. Recently, many internet companies have been acquired by larger corporations – like Google, AOL, and Yahoo. The big companies are competing with each other and purchasing smaller companies to do so. This can be good for the smaller entrepreneurs – the founders of Facebook and MySpace are very wealthy. However, it also suggests that start-ups cannot survive on their own. Sooner or later, a successful application or community will be swallowed up by one of the larger corporations.

The New York Times reported today that Governor Corzine offered to raise money for new Democratic primaries in Michigan and Florida.

Currently, neither Michigan nor Florida will be allowed to send delegates to the Democratic National Convention to vote for the party’s presidential nominee. Each state chose to hold its primary early in the year – in January – despite the Democratic National Committee’s clear opposition.

Now, with the race for the Democratic nominee so close, some Democratic leaders are looking for compromises that would allow each of these states to send delegates to the convention. Some people suggested that the delegates be sent according to the primaries that were held in January. Others have suggested that new primaries would need to be held, but that would cost millions of dollars.

In order to make a new primary more affordable, Governor Corzine has offered to help raise about half of the necessary funds – $15 million dollars.

In my opinion, neither state should be allowed to vote. They clearly violated the Democratic National Committee’s rules and moved their primaries to January. If the states had left their primaries alone instead of breaking the rules, they would have been allowed to vote in the convention like normal.

The primary season is already packed and front-loaded enough with so many elections taking place on or before Super Tuesday. These need to be more spaced out so that candidates have a chance to campaign in the states – otherwise they’ll focus on only the big states. If the committee holds firm in its decision to not allow these states to vote, it could help deter other states from moving their primaries next year – otherwise, more states could move up their primaries and further frontload the election calendar.

The New York Times today reported a study that showed the number of Americans in prison had reached an all-time high.

According to the study, about 1 in 100 American adults – 1% – is currently in prison. This proportion is much higher in certain populations. For example, almost 10% of Black men between the ages of 20 and 34 are in prison.

These high incarceration rates are increasingly expensive for states. Last year, the states spent roughly $50 billion on the prison system and this is predicted to increase by another $25 billion in the next few years. To help bring the incarceration rate down, some states are looking into alternative methods of corrections for non-violent offenders.

This is the inevitable result of the 1980’s “War on Drugs” and “War on Crime.” Government officials wanted to look tough on crime, so they instituted mandatory sentences – sometimes up to life in prison – for non-violent crimes like drug possession.

Although prisons are necessary to keep some violent offenders out of the population, the vast majority of people incarcerated in the United States are guilty of nonviolent crimes. Prosecution of these crimes also disproportionately impacts certain sub-populations – i.e. urban, Black, and Hispanic.

Maybe this record high incarceration rate and the quickly increasing expense of the prison system will encourage politicians to rethink their “War on Crime” and “War on Drugs.” However, the prison system is big business – and big profits for some businesses – so the government will have its hands full if it tries to cut back on the number of incarcerations.

The New York Times reported today that the Democratic nomination will probably be decided with the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4.

After Super Tuesday, Clinton had a slight lead in the race for the Democratic nomination. This past weekend, Obama won four states and eliminated that Clinton lead. Many analysts now think that if Obama can maintain that momentum – and win the primaries in Ohio and Texas – he will ultimately win the nomination.

A major reason for this is that unpledged delegates, also called “superdelegates,” may decide who wins the nomination. Many of these superdelegates are beginning to lose faith in Clinton, and some have suggested that they might switch their support from Clinton to Obama if the current trend continues.

Although Obama has lost momentum in earlier contests, I think this is a pretty good prediction. In fact, I think the odds are good that Obama could win Ohio. He has done well in other Mid-western states, like Kansas, Nebraska, and Indiana.

Texas is less clear. Obama hasn’t done as well in the deep south as he has in the midwest. Clinton has also attracted a much larger portion of Hispanic voters – who make up quite a large bit of the Texas population.

It should be an interesting day. If Obama can pull out a win in Ohio and stay competitive in Texas, he should be pretty confident of winning the eventual nomination.

The front page article of the New York Times online today was At Least 48 Dead In Storms Across 4 States.

According to the article, a series of tornadoes and heavy rainstorms hit some southern states today. The area hit by the tornados was in the southeast – Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Arkansas. The storms destroyed a lot of property, and as well as killing 48 people and injuring about 100 more. An Tennessee police chief said it looked like a “war zone.”

These stories of natural disasters – like the forest fires in the western states, and Hurricane Katrina a few years ago – seem to be increasingly common. It’s a scary reminder that no matter how developed our country becomes, we still live here at the mercy of mother nature. On the other hand, you can compare the death tolls here to those from the tsunami in Southeast Asia and earthquakes in South Asia.

We’re lucky that we can use technology to reduce the impact of these disasters, but we still can’t eliminate them altogether.

As you know, your third cycle project is to create a personal blog which you use to comment on news and current events.

First, you should go to the Project Assignment and Instructions page. This has specific instructions for what you should do.

Once you have created your website, you should go to the appropriate page (Period 1 Blogs, Period 2 Blogs, Period 5 Blogs, or Period 8 Blogs) and leave a comment. In this comment, leave your name and a link to your blog. This is how I will check your project and grade you!

You can go back to those pages to find a list of your classmates’ blogs. You should read them for ideas about what news stories to read and how to react to them.

On the right hand side of this page, you’ll find a few resources.

“News Sites” is a list of reputable news sites that you could use to find stories to comment on.

“Free Blog Sites” is a list of websites you can go to in order to create your project blog/website.

The “New York Times” list is an RSS feed of the New York Times – an up to the minute list of the latest news stories on the front page of the New York Times. You can check here first for stories to comment on.

Good luck! Leave a comment if you have any questions, or ask me in class.