For my colleagues

Well, don' t we all need heros once in a while? Here is mine. Bear with him for the first couple of minutes, it's well worth it. I'd love to start a supply shop for the working buccaneer with a writing center on the side on Plöck...

Presidential Elections Quiz

Take this quiz to find out which candidate you have most in common with. Make sure you know what you are voting on - so look up any words or ideas that you are not familiar with. Type in any zip code (or use my former one: 94306). Sum up your results and findings in your note book.

Book Report Grade 12

Here is a list of books you can choose from for your book report. Of course, this is just a very small selection, and a very lopsided one - books that I've read and liked. I'm open to any suggestion from you! Have fun browsing!

Homework 11

Read the following passages:

Passage 1

The stench of the hold while we were on the coast was so intolerably loathsome, that it was dangerous to remain there for any time, and some of us had been permitted to stay on the deck for the fresh air; but now that the whole ship’s cargo were confined together, it became absolutely pestilential (i.e. awful). The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced  copious (i.e. a lot of) perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration (= breathing), from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves. . . . —First-person account of conditions on a slave ship during the Middle Passage, from Olaudah Equiano, The Life of Gustavus Vassa

Passage 2

The pungent aroma of backed-up toilets, unwashed bodies, decaying food, mold and who knows what else. Sweltering heat. An awful din. Rumors of unspeakable crimes. . . . “I can’t stand to even look at pictures of that time,” said Terrie Green, 41, who went to the Superdome with her three children and infant granddaughter on Tuesday, August 30, after being rescued from their flooded Ninth Ward home. "By the time we got out of there we were all sick. Sick from the heat, sick from that stink that was there. Just worn out.” Because of the heat—outside temperatures soared into the high 90s, and it reached an estimated 125 degrees inside the Superdome—the family, including little Alea, only 2 days old when the storm hit, moved to the concourse that runs around the exterior. The heat took a toll on the baby, who developed a rash and became dehydrated. After they evacuated to Houston, the infant was hospitalized for a week. “She’s still kind of sickly,” said Green, who remains in Houston looking for work. “There was the fear, the heat, the misery, but most of all—the smell,” —Description of conditions in the New Orleans, Superdome during Hurricane Katrina, from Mary Foster,  Associated Press, August 27, 2006

Tasks: 1) Look up all the words you don't know. If you do not know what the Middle Passage was, google that, too. 2) Answer in writing in your notebook: What situation does each passage describe? What similarities can you identify between the two descriptions? Do you think this is a valid comparison?

Language of Campaign Ads

TV ads have played an important role in US presidential elections since the fifties. They areoften carefully crafted mini-movies created by the best talent from the advertisement world. A big chunk of the money the candidates raise is spent on buying expensive time on TV channels. 

Probably the most famous one is the 'Daisy Girl' ad, which LB. Johnson used in his campaign against Barry Goldwater in 1964. You can watch it here. 

Please watch Obama's portrait in this ad and compare it to McCain's portrait in American Values

Both campaigns use negative ads as well: How is Obama portrayed in this one from the McCain campaign? How about McCain in this one from the Obama campaign? 

Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike made landfall on the Texas coast early morning Saturday.  Here are a few impressions of what happened

New York Memorials- Pictures taken April 2002

In April 2002, New York was still full of make-shift memorials, not just around Ground Zero, but also in SoHo, Greenwich Village and in Central Park.

Memories of 9/11

Seven years ago I was tooling around in our sunny little kitchen on MacKay Court in Palo Alto, California, while preventing my two-year-old from ripping apart the entire newspaper and singing lullabies to my baby,   when the phone rang. My dad called from Germany and told me to turn on the TV - well, and from then on I did what most of the country, and millions of people around the world did. Mesmerized I sat in front of the screen forever, watching the planes fly into the skyscrapers again and again and again. 

Within hours people were lining up in front of hospitals to donate blood. Within days the neighborhood was awash in flags. Within weeks people donated more than 800 million dollars for the WTC survivor fund. Within a month bombs were dropped on Kabul. 

20 people with box cutters and determination had ended an era that started 1989, when the wall came down in Germany, when the Cold War ended.  For the twelve years between the birth of my first and last child there had been a sense of possibility, an attitude of  'let's go ahead and tackle the important issues together', a chance of using reason as the guiding light in politics. Sadly, I think we're all still at Ground Zero in rebuilding the case for reason today. 

Here is a slideshow of how the Twin Towers are still a part of the cultural landscape.

Hurricane Katrina - Kanye West Benefit Concert

New Orleans is a city that means a lot to musicians all over the world. So many of them felt compelled to do something when the levees broke. One of them is the rapper  Kanye West who made the news with his very emotional statement while the city was still flooded. Well, he didn't back off a year later. Green Day and U2 performed at the benefit concert he organized.  The Saints are the New Orleans Football Team - they returned to the Superdome a year after Katrina hit. It felt like a rebirth for the city. This clip contains a lot of original footage from the days after the levees broke - but also some not so subtly manipulated one.  What's real and what is not? Describe in at least two paragraphs.

Here is the live version of the song - a little different in the beginning.

.....and for extra credit, check out what Brad Pitt has to contribute....

9/11 and its consequences - EN 12

Here is New York is very unusual, but then again very typically New York gallery of photos. It started in SoHo, a very trendy neighborhood of designer stores, artist's lofts and fine restaurants, in a small storefront right after 9/11. They presented the pictures as simple prints on clotheslines  - pictures taken by amateurs mostly, ordinary New Yorkers who walked the streets of their city in the aftermath of the collapse of the Twin Towers. These prints were for sale for 25 $ each. Net proceeds went to benefit children affected by the tragedy. 

Check out the pictures! Many might be familiar, but many will also show you a new perspective on this event. 

Hurricane Katrina - Homework 11b and c

Watch the movie trailer of 'Trouble the Water'. Answer the following questions:

- What is this movie about?

- What do you see in the trailer? Which picture stays in your mind?

- Do you find it hard to understand the people talking? Why?

- Is this a movie you'd be interested in watching? If yes, why? If not, why not?

Please write about half a page in your Heft and be prepared to share it.

Choice of Novels for Englischkurs 12/1

During the Herbstferien, you'll have to read a novel. These are your choices:

Jumpha Lahiri, The Namesake (Indian-American)
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior (Chinese-American)
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye (African-American)
T.C. Boyle, Tortilla Curtain ( illegal Mexican immigrant and white Californian)
Anne Tyler, Digging to America (Iranian-American)

Take your pick by end of September and let me know by October 10th!

US-Elections 2008 on the Net

http://www.nytimes.com
The New York Times covers the elections extensively. I recommend it highly, it is still one of the best papers in the world, the online version is excellent. The internal search engine will help you to research any and all aspects of the campaign.

http://www.barackobama.com
Barack Obama’s campaign website offers information on his platform organized by issues, transcripts of all his speeches and some fun, short behind-the-scenes video clips.

http://www.johnmccain.com
John McCain’s website is similarly organized. Again, this is a great start-off point for research.

Bloggers are an ever-growing phenomenon in the media world. It takes a little while to find your way around the blogs, but it’s time well spent. You’ll get a lot of interesting perspectives. http://www.dailykos.com is a very well-known blog on the left side of the spectrum. The Drudge Report http://www.drudgereport.com/ is the oldest conservative blog – Drudge was the one to break the news on Monica Lewinsky, the intern who had an affair with Bill Clinton.

The three national networks ABC http://abcnews.go.com/politics, NBC www.nbc.com
and CBS www.cbs.com offer all their newscasts on video. Check out their respective late-night shows – it’s often very funny (e.g. the top ten pick-up lines at the Democratic National Convention on David Letterman, August 27th). I like Jon Stewart the best. You can watch his Daily Show in full length on http://www.thedailyshow.com/.

The only national public station, PBS, offers a podcast of ‘The News Hour with Jim Lehrer’ , probably the most thorough, balanced and sober newscast you’ll find on American TV. http://www.pbs.org/

For a break after listening to Jim Lehrer, google ‘Obama girl’.