Thursday, January 31, 2013

My Dungeon Shook Cyber-Assignment Homework

Homework due Tuesday, Feb. 5, is to in Big James voice, 2013, write a letter in response to Uncle James. Post it here. 250 words or so is fine. Site a few of his arguments in the letter.

Bring a copy of the letter to class electronically or on paper. I got a chance to look at Writing Logically, 7th edition. If you want to rent it, it will work (smile).

Reading homework is to read the Emancipation Proclamation. http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/


Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, September 22, 1862

A Transcription
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the United States, and each of the States, and the people thereof, in which States that relation is, or may be, suspended or disturbed.
That it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all slave States, so called, the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the United States and which States may then have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective limits; and that the effort to colonize persons of African descent, with their consent, upon this continent, or elsewhere, with the previously obtained consent of the Governments existing there, will be continued.
That on the first day of January in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.
That the executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the States, and part of States, if any, in which the people thereof respectively, shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State, or the people thereof shall, on that day be, in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States, by members chosen thereto, at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof, are not then in rebellion against the United States.
That attention is hereby called to an Act of Congress entitled "An Act to make an additional Article of War" approved March 13, 1862, and which act is in the words and figure following:
"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That hereafter the following shall be promulgated as an additional article of war for the government of the army of the United States, and shall be obeyed and observed as such:
"Article-All officers or persons in the military or naval service of the United States are prohibited from employing any of the forces under their respective commands for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor, who may have escaped from any persons to whom such service or labor is claimed to be due, and any officer who shall be found guilty by a court martial of violating this article shall be dismissed from the service.
"Sec.2. And be it further enacted, That this act shall take effect from and after its passage."
Also to the ninth and tenth sections of an act entitled "An Act to suppress Insurrection, to punish Treason and Rebellion, to seize and confiscate property of rebels, and for other purposes," approved July 17, 1862, and which sections are in the words and figures following:
"Sec.9. And be it further enacted, That all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the government of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army; and all slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them and coming under the control of the government of the United States; and all slaves of such persons found on (or) being within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude and not again held as slaves.
"Sec.10. And be it further enacted, That no slave escaping into any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia, from any other State, shall be delivered up, or in any way impeded or hindered of his liberty, except for crime, or some offence against the laws, unless the person claiming said fugitive shall first make oath that the person to whom the labor or service of such fugitive is alleged to be due is his lawful owner, and has not borne arms against the United States in the present rebellion, nor in any way given aid and comfort thereto; and no person engaged in the military or naval service of the United States shall, under any pretence whatever, assume to decide on the validity of the claim of any person to the service or labor of any other person, or surrender up any such person to the claimant, on pain of being dismissed from the service."
And I do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons engaged in the military and naval service of the United States to observe, obey, and enforce, within their respective spheres of service, the act, and sections above recited.
And the executive will in due time recommend that all citizens of the United States who shall have remained loyal thereto throughout the rebellion, shall (upon the restoration of the constitutional relation between the United States, and their respective States, and people, if that relation shall have been suspended or disturbed) be compensated for all losses by acts of the United States, including the loss of slaves.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the City of Washington this twenty-second day of September, in the year of our Lord, one thousand, eight hundred and sixty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty seventh.
[Signed:] Abraham Lincoln

By the President

[Signed:] William H. Seward

Secretary of State


Freewrite

I had students think about the relationship between thinking and writing and how thinking is "writing made visible."

I forgot to put a link on the blog for you to post your reflections (oops). Here is is now (smile).

It has been a long week, today is my Friday. The plan for the semester is to run though the textbook quickly. I went by the bookstore and the manager told me he could not get the sixth edition.

I found these used copies on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0072YO8MS/ref=sr_1_4_up_1_main_olp?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1359658590&sr=1-4&condition=used

Use expedited shipping.

Today we will look at Baldwin and how he uses the personal to shape the present. We will also note how he brings in history to support his argument and show a pattern he would like to interrupt.

How does Baldwin's essay illustrate a positive use for anger?

We will read the essay and then in groups identify arguments and their support. How many do you find? Where is the eveidence placed? Is it easy or hard to find Baldwin's reasoning for his claims? Do you agree or disagree? Are there questions you'd like to ask him? What would you think if you were his nephew?

50 years later, has much changed in this country for the better or worse re: the Big James's? If so, what?

Here are the essays: http://ww2.valdosta.edu/~cawalker/baldwin.htm

I didn't find The Fire Next Time.

Friday, January 25, 2013

Take this Hammer Assignment



http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Hunters_Point_Riot (Sept. 27, 1966)
Greetings Students:

We got off to an auspicious start with the Aptitude Test (smile) and a lively discussion on the meaning of Critical Thinking and what constitutes language and whether or not one can think if one has no way to communicate these thoughts.

There are too many students and not enough seats. The Wait List is too short and the number or compelling stories as to why I should admit this student over that student is too much to contemplate presently, suffice it to say, for those who prudently got into the class before the cut-off, count your blessings and don't miss any classes these first two weeks (smile). I cannot drop anyone, but. . . .

We walked over to A-205 to watch a film Take This Hammer (PBS), which chronicles James Baldwin's  tour of San Francisco's Bayview Hunter's Point 40 years ago. What makes this film compelling and why I wanted you to see it, was to give you a feel for Baldwin, whose letter to his nephew is one of two essays we will read his classic, The Fire Next Time. I think Baldwin is one of America's prized scholars and the master of the essay. The breath of his knowledge and his ability to link his scholarship to the personal issues he was most compassionate about like justice and peace is brilliant.

I had the opportunity to interview a few of the men who were children, teens at the time of Baldwin's visit on my radio show last year as well as a filmmaker who made a new film looking at Bayview 2012. Both the films were shown in a program at The Luggage Store Gallery in San Francisco.

Birmingham, AL, 1963 (Google Images)
4 Little Girls killed in a church
bombing in Birmingham, AL
What I would like you to do is consider 1-3 arguments raised in the film by the youth and how Baldwin agrees or disagrees, yet always acknowledges their point before taking the claim one step further. Take the point for example made that there will never be a black president. What does Baldwin say to the youth?

The claim "there will never be a black president in America" is an argument. It is a debatable claim. When we add the word "because" behind the claim we often find evidence supporting the conclusion, that is, so and so is true because. . .  or this is true and that is true therefore this has to be true or valid.

In argument we often do not have certainty, just validity. Sometimes the evidence just points to a probability.

Within your 2 page response give the context and feel free to use your own experiences to reflect on this brief and edited version of Baldwin's visit to Hunter's Point in San Francisco. Use the film for citations which can take the form of free paraphrases and direct quotes.

Baldwin is not easy. One needs to know one's American history. In the opening narrative the filmmaker gives us an overview of the film. If you do not know what was happening in America in 1963 refresh your memory of what was going on re: The Civil Rights Movement. What happened in Birmingham? See http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/randall/birmingham.htm

http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Hunters_Point_Riot (Sept. 27, 1966)

http://vimeo.com/13175192

"KQED's mobile film unit follows author and activist James Baldwin in the spring of 1963, as he's driven around San Francisco to meet with members of the local African-American community. He is escorted by Youth For Service's Executive Director Orville Luster and intent on discovering: "The real situation of Negroes in the city, as opposed to the image San Francisco would like to present." He declares: "There is no moral distance ... between the facts of life in San Francisco and the facts of life in Birmingham. Someone's got to tell it like it is. And that's where it's at." Includes frank exchanges with local people on the street, meetings with community leaders and extended point-of-view sequences shot from a moving vehicle, featuring the Bayview and Western Addition neighborhoods. Baldwin reflects on the racial inequality that African-Americans are forced to confront and at one point tries to lift the morale of a young man by expressing his conviction that: "There will be a Negro president of this country but it will not be the country that we are sitting in now." The TV Archive would like to thank Darryl Cox for championing the merits of this film and for his determination that it be preserved and remastered for posterity."

We also discussed textbooks, a few students purchased books. We will start reading The Fire Next Time first and then Tim Wise's book, Dear White America: A Letter to a New Minority. These should be fast reads. As we read these books we will run through the text book, Writing Logically, Thinking Critically. Students will work in groups on the exercises which will be homework.

You have the option of keeping a notebook g for the exercises and writing in the book. Essays are to be typed along with cyber-assignments. Students will turn in essays electronically where indicated. More in the syllabus.

Here is a link to the exhibit at The Luggage Story Gallery:
http://www.examiner.com/article/james-baldwin-rare-film-and-new-documentary


Here are links to the two shows where I interviewed the director the men then boys in the first documentary:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2012/06/19/take-this-hammer-james-baldwin-in-san-francisco

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/wandas-picks/2012/06/15/wandas-picks-radio-show

Here are all the images from Google:
https://www.google.com/search?q=birmingham+1963&hl=en&tbo=u&tbm=isch&source=univ&sa=X&ei=tQcDUcjYLejKigK-44DYBQ&sqi=2&ved=0CDsQsAQ&biw=986&bih=611

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Welcome Letter Revised


January  8, 2013 (sent January 20, 2013; revised January 23, 2013)

Dear Students:

This semester is pretty auspicious, so I hesitate to veer from the norm and not capitalize on the historic events of the day, yet I shall.  Why would the framers of our Constitution include the words in the same breath as “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men (and women and girls and boys of course) are created equal— It took a minute well really centuries for the fairer sex to get equal consideration as people equal to men. Did you know that the question was raised when President Johnson signed the Equal Rights Amendment?

But back to the line in question: “That all are endowed with inalienable rights, among them: life, liberty and the pursuit of ‘happyness’” (a la Will Smith (smile).

What is it about happiness that makes it a worthy pursuit, which means one should consciously strive to achieve it? If one is unhappy, what does that do to the collective or society?

Is happiness something one can share or is it a selfish pursuit that inherently just benefits its seeker? Can one be too happy? How does one balance this happiness thing with the potential for doldrums or routine?

Well, on my way to the funeral of the matriarch in my family last November, I picked up a book at the San Francisco airport called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I thought immediately that perhaps we could spend Spring Semester pursuing our inalienable right while getting paid for it (smile).
Grades are the paycheck, right?

Rubin spent a year on her Happiness Project, so we are just going to fast forward her project with the hopes that students might continue on their own for the rest of the year into January 2014.

Since I am waiting to start my Happiness Project with you, I am not sure how mine will look either, but we will have Rubin’s as a model, along with others students will research “happiness”, interview “happy people” and draw inferences from the research to support arguments and hypothesis on this elusive yet important phenomenon, HAPPINESS.

All five classes will read The Happiness Project, what we do with the book will vary though. In English 5 the query will look at defining Happiness; and writing multiple arguments using happiness as the topic: Rogerian, Aristotelian, and Toulmin. Out textbook: Writing Logically, Thinking Critically, will give us the terms so that we can become more conversant around the topic of argument or critical thinking.

In English 5 we will also read James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and Tim Wise’s Dear White America. A lot of work for 3 units (smile).

If everything we do is connected in some way to this “alienable right,” then what would Baldwin say to this happiness question? What would the white America Wise addresses say?

What would Martin King say or our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln?

According to the film, Lincoln, perhaps the president would say, passing the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution which ended the war, would make and did make him happy.

Similarly, Martin King, the great Civil Rights leader might say that passing legislation that ensured that citizens would not be treated differently based on the color of their skin, would make him happy.

As we look at great people and lesser known persons this semester, perhaps people closest to us, we might find that the path to happiness, while varied and uneven and often difficult to tread , the result for at least Martin King and Abraham Lincoln,  the Dali Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi,  Harriet Tubman, Josephine Baker and Frederick Douglass, and Huey P. Newton, Kwami Ture or Kathleen Cleaver.

How does your pursuit of happiness overlap or cover similar territory?  At the end of the first quarter of this year long journey we shall see.

The persons (2-3) we chose to investigate regarding this thing called “happiness,” can be both historic and contemporary, which means that one subject can be dead the other alive. One of these people has to have written a book about their “pursuit” or journey.

In English 1A students will read selected essays from Models for Writers (Hybrid English 1A), 50 Essays: A Portable Anthology (all other English 1As) and from Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence 1818-1913 edited by Alice Moore Dunbar.  Again students will be responsible for researching 2-3 persons who exemplify happy people (smile).

The Happiness Project will consist of journals and reflections and short essays, plus a self-reflection on your plan for happiness over the coming year or 12 months, similar to Gretchen Rubin’s. All of these writings will be pulled together in a class portfolio which students will share toward the end of the semester at a poster presentation. We will invite the Alameda citizenry and the Peralta college community to join us.

All the classes, both English 1A and English 5 will present together that evening.

Other texts are our trusty grammar style book, Diana Hacker’s Rules for Writers, English 1A, and They Say, I Say for non-Hybrid English 1A as well. A college dictionary is also required for English 1A and English 5. Again, English 5 will use Writing Logically, Thinking Critically, Sixth Edition, Sheila Cooper and Rosemary Patton. (Do not purchase earlier or later versions.) Hacker is recommended for English 5. However, any other grammar style book a student owns with updated MLA guidelines is fine for use.

One complaint I get regarding my teaching style is that students are asked to juggle multiple balls simultaneously – at certain times during the semester, students will be reading more than one text and working on more than one piece of writing—not due at the same time, but overlapping. Unfortunately, this is the nature of the beast—while we work on developing our writing muscles with nutritional reading such as the essays and books I have already mentioned, students will be thinking about their own happiness (smile) and how they plan to shape their literature study for the 2-3 essays profiling happy people this semester. Again for English 1A, students need to read a book connected to the topic as well. Rubin has a great glossary, but it is not exhaustive.

When one thinks about Django, Tarantino’s block buster, the protagonist’s happiness is linked to that of his wife. As long as Hildy is enslaved, he is not free nor happy. Doc’s happiness is linked to Django, whom he freed, but more so, Doc comes to realize that when one deals in flesh, whether that is as a bounty hunter or as a slave master, one’s hands are dirty, the type of dirt one cannot wash off. His commitment to Django is a way to cleanse his soul.

Is the hero’s journey or quest to attain happiness or is happiness bound to the journey not the destination? Martin King said in his last speech before he was killed, that he might not get to the Promised Land with us, but the absence of a milk honey payoff was fine for him.

When one’s soul is satisfied, is that happiness? Is this how people who are terminally ill, give us hope? Think about Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom.

As with all great academic plans, success is measured by how engaged students are by the process. I hope everyone finds the idea of researching how one pursues his or her bliss in an academic forum intriguing and fun. Granted you will be writing papers and reading books and essays to learn more about the subject, but Rubin’s year long journey has met rave reviews and she even has a website which we will visit for support (smile).

Each class has a blog where I post summaries of the class, along with assignments. Last semesters we spent quite a bit of time in groups and students seemed to really enjoy this process of peer to peer work. Also towards the end of the first quarter we start to spend time in a classroom with technology. Students who have laptops are encouraged to bring them to class.

English 5
http://sabirscoaenglish5.blogspot.com/

English 5 Class code: 20134
11-12:15 TTh in A-202 Texts:

Writing Logically, Thinking Critically, 6th Edition. There is a 7th edition, get the older one. Here is a link to used copies: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Logically-Thinking-Critically-Edition/dp/B0058GX0SA

A Grammar Style Book. I recommend Hacker: Rules for Writers: Seventh Edition by Diana Hacker, Nancy Sommers

Tim Wise's Dear White America

James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time

Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project

All English classes for Week beginning January 21, 2013


We will read selected essays to review basic writing concepts and forms (handouts and links to on-line sources).
If students are technically challenged or impaired, he or she can get help in the Writing Center and in the Open Lab, both located on the second floor of the Learning Resource Center (LRC). The library is on the first floor. There is a Student Meet and Greet this Friday afternoon, January 18, 2013.

I will return to Alameda, Tuesday evening, so my MTWTh English 1A and TTh English 5 classes will meet me Thursday. I have a call out to a faulty person to stand in for me, but all they will do is give you a copy of this letter, tell you to check the blog for the first assignment, which is a reading assignment.  (No one responded to my request last week, so there will be no one to meet you and give you this letter. Do not come to class Tuesday.)

They will also have paper copies of the essay I’d like students to read and reflect on. Books are coming in late, I was told, so if students like you can order the books on your own. Models has an e-format, which seems perfect for a Hybrid class.

Peace and Blessings,

Professor Wanda Sabir