Category: Humanities

Waco and the Branch Davidians

Recently in our final months as PLP 12 students we have been working on our zettlekasten. We have officially gone through the Turning Points, Terrorism, and Music units. Our final unit before we begin our exhibition is Extreme belief’s, mainly looking at New Religious Movement’s (NRM) formally known as cults. I have been tasked with doing some background research into a certain cult to share in this post, and I have chosen Branch Davidians.

Branch Davidians are a offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventists, which is a recognized autonomous branch of the Protestant Christian church which believe in a second coming (return of Jesus after his ascent to heaven). The Branch Davidians also believe in a second coming, though they also believe in a more apocalyptic end to society. The Davidian movement was founded in 1930, and passed through 3 people’s leadership before David Koresh became leader in the 1980’s. He joined the group in 1981, and quickly climbed the ranks, through a sexual relationship with the leader at the time, as well as the fact he claimed he prophesied the group’s future. He also claimed he was the Messiah as part of his New Light doctrine which declared all women as his wife, including underage girls, and women who were already married. Also any child of the Messiah is a sacred child, and so he went on to have 13 children with many of his  illegitimate wives within the commune. The Branch Davidians lived in Mount Carmel, a large piece of land in Waco, Texas, turned into a commune. There were many things that brought the commune to the attention of the law enforcement, such as sexual abuse, child molesting and possession of illegal firearms. Though the last one caused the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) to invade the compound on February 28th 1993. In the unsuccessful invasion of the compound 5 Branch Davidians, and 5 AFT agents were killed. This began the 51-day standoff between the FBI and the Branch Davidians. During the standoff Malcolm Glawell, from the New Yorker said this of the operation:

“the F.B.I. assembled what has been called probably the largest military force ever gathered against a civilian suspect in American history: ten Bradley tanks, two Abrams tanks, four combat-engineering vehicles, six hundred and sixty-eight agents in addition to six U.S. Customs officers, fifteen U.S. Army personnel, thirteen members of the Texas National Guard, thirty-one Texas Rangers, a hundred and thirty-one officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety, seventeen from the McLennan County sheriff’s office, and eighteen Waco police, for a total of eight hundred and ninety-nine people.” Link

The 51-day standoff ended in a siege of the compound by the FBI which ended up killing 76 Branch Davidians.

This group was determined to be a cult because of their charismatic leader, the brainwashing of members, the disruption of normal life through seclusion, and offered an answer to the apocalyptic ending people had been looking for. David Koresh also had an incredibly strong hold on the members of the group, to the point that people would give up their children if they misbehaved. They were also told to beat thier children at as young as 8 months old to teach obedience. They wanted the kids to listen so that when the day came (as they were a doomsday cult they prophesied the end of the world) the kids would listen to the adults and follow orders. Children who grew up in the cult said, “You were raised with just fear, everywhere is fear” (Kiery Jewel). Inciting fear into the children gave Koresh more power, and demonstrated further the development of the Branch Davidians as a cult.

The apocalyptic ending of the cult also enticed members to join People had been attracted initially to the group because it branched away from the traditional Seventh-Day Adventists, and brought more light upon the second coming (return of Jesus after his acent to heaven). Most members though had been first or second generation members, or had been involved before Koresh became a leader. Though what enticed many people to join Branch Davidians was David Koresh’s claim that he was a messiah, had spoken to god, and knew the end of the world was coming. He spoke so powerfully, people just believed him. The answers he had gained from being a Messiah made people want to join the cult, really demonstrating that people in vulnerable states, or at a crossroads in life, will listen if you give them answers.

I highly suggest you visit this website if you would like to learn more about the cult (The Waco tragedy, explained)

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Welcome Back!!

Man, it’s been a while since I sat down to write a blog post. I honestly can’t believe that everyone in PLP 12 has survived so long without seeing each other every day (that includes the teachers). I wonder if the dynamic in class will have changed when we switch back into class next Wednesday. To be honest, I’m a bit worried. I have had it way way way too easy for way way way to long. Having a spare and physics is terrible preparation for PLP and precalc. I wonder if my entire work ethic will have changed, or if I will have forgotten yet again the proper use of their, there, and they’re.  What I’m really trying to get at is that I am petrified but at the same time I am exhilarated. I am so excited to be reunited with my PLP family. I miss the class debates, and the crazy high standards of work, the high level of thinking and the absolutely no BS policy. Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to talk about this in this email, but it does feel good to have an outlet for these emotions. What I was supposed to talk about was what I have learned.

YAY physics. I have learned physics. I think it’s too complex to write here, and I think it requires too much brain power to figure out how to write the formulas on a laptop, but I have learned that I really enjoy it. I don’t want to jinx it because I have my final test tomorrow, but I feel that once you’ve got the concept everything falls into place. I have just dedicated my spare to working through physics problems, and I honestly don’t even notice the time slip by. It’s been really fun mixing math and science concepts and having to think logically every day. But with all this extra time I have picked up other things to fill my time such as backcountry snowboarding. That’s kind of what I wanted to talk about in this blog post.

I started backcountry snowboarding pretty late in the season, but I’ve defiantly made up for the lost time by heading up the minute the opportunity to is present. I’ve struggled in the past with sticking to activities, but I feel that with backcountry snowboarding I won’t have this problem because, 1. I sunk a down payment on a house on that gear, and 2. I really love it. I’m hoping to join the mountaineering and backcountry clubs at university where I will be able to meet a bunch of likeminded people. So, I’m pretty excited. Aside from that I haven’t been doing much, scared and excited to get back into trickier classes. And a bit in shock that I will be graduating Seycove in less than 3 months. Crazy.

Anyway thank you for reading my spiel and I’ll definitely be writing more commonly in here now as well.

Adlih

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To wrap it up, after only 5 weeks


PLP 12 took on Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” for our first quarter, boy was that a wake up call. Reading and watching, we slowly moved through the play in our 2.5 hour classes every day.

I had previously watched “The Taming of the Shrew” in the summer last year when COVID was not a thing, and really enjoyed it, but I hadn’t truly been paying attention, as my dad reminded me (it was during sunset and there was a ray of really bright light that was falling on the audience across from us and we could not stop laughing as they threw up their brochures and pamphlets to block the sun resulting in a complete block from the play) and was interested in what I could learn from a play I hadn’t thought twice of.

We began our work this project with the term slut, and how it has been portrayed in culture from the 80’s to now. We watched a series of videos where the term slut was tossed around, including the “Jane you ignorant slut” video.

These videos gave the class and I an idea of how acceptable talking about a women’s sexual life has been and was a bit of a shocker. While we were watching these videos in class, we were also reading the common lit assignments in our spare time. These common lit assignments gave us insight into the same things, the position that women held historically (the earliest being 1800’s). Now taking this new found insight into a women’s place we began to read “The Taming of the Shrew”. Obviously the first thing to catch the classes eye was Bianca and Kate, and their differences.

Bianca when introduced was depicted as this proper, good woman, who compared to Kate seems like an angel. Kate is portrayed as a aggressive and witty character. After we had read a little bit we were told to figure out where the line is between “good” and shrew. This line as a common theme became increasingly hard to find (read this for more info). Shakespeare obviously created Bianca to represent the good, or pure or angelic version of women, and Kate to show the version of women who deserve to be tamed. Drawing the first metaphorical line between angelic and aggressive, there was a lot of work to do. The idea of taming Kate came back into play when I did my November 1st reflection post talking about specific songs that promote rape, sexism and submissive women.

One song “Blurred lines” had this lyric, “Okay, now he was close. Tried to domesticate ya. But you’re an animal. Baby, it’s in your nature.” When Thicke was asked about this lyric he said “Even very good girls have a little bad side. You just have to know how to pull it out of them.” This quote from an artist creating a song to be heard by millions is a connection to “The Taming of the Shrew.” Kate becomes this woman who needs a mans help removing a piece of her not suitable to his standards. The idea that maybe a woman wanted to have a permanent bad side hasn’t seemed to cross the mind of many men. Around this time we also began our presentations of our designated era in the. These presentations were about how women were treated, their roles, and any other major events that happened with the time period. My group, (Emily, Kai, and Alex) were given the 1940’s and 1950’s. We divided the research and got to work. During this time obviously our major event was World War II, and so we shaped our presentation around this. We had to represent how some had stayed the same and changed throughout the time period, and so we decided that our representation of this would be how women were introduced to the work force because of World War II (change), yet when the war ended they had to return to their role within the home. One of the requirements for this project was that we had to show this continuity and change with a single slide keynote.

Our image that we decided to use is this one. The cycle shows the change for women throughout the period as they cycle in a full circle, they center of the image shows the continuity throughout this time. 

Now the goal of this entire unit, along with learning about women’s rights, was to write an essay connecting taming of the shrew to the women’s rights movements we’d done presentations about, looping in the readings we had done and conversations we had in class about other media. This essay also had to show the continuity and change between both the Shakespearean woman, and women today. We created research docs that were a collection of all the research we had done throughout the half term, including taming of the shrew, in class discussions, our readings, common lit work, the presentations on a certain era and more. This research document then guided our essays in the fact that it had all of our references within it (all cited as well). Once we had gotten to this point, we had to begin our thesis statements. I decided my thesis would be “Although men get called out for being sexist, a woman can be equally discriminatory. A woman who upholds sexist ideals propels this discrimination.” Which I didn’t realize would go so heavily against my own opinion but I decided to stick with it. When writing the essay and throughout the entire project we were graded on our abilities to Identify continuity, and to comprehend texts. I felt I expressed my ability to identify continuity by making creative connections from Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” to women in the 1900’s with more focus on a character that doesn’t have much of a story and weaving that into a more proficient argument. Taking this argument and connecting it to women in the 1900’s also identifies my ability to comprehend texts. By taking a common theme I begin digest and understand texts better, resulting in the understanding of both competencies. 

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Weekly Reflection November 1st

I learned that I can sing “rapey” (Kai) lyrics with knowing. Am I normal?

“She say she won’t, but I bet she will, timber,” is a lyric in “Timber”,

by Pitbull and Ke$ha. This lyric has a very clear hint at sexual assault, and/or rape. Its weird that when you actually listen, just how many songs have this same theme.

“In The Summertime”, a song written in 1970, by a British songwriter, highlights drinking and driving, and sexual assault. In the second verse, a lyric rings out, “If her daddy’s rich take her out for a meal, If her daddy’s poor just do what you feel.” Sure like Mr. Hughes, I agree the song is catchy, and I have a hard time condemning it, but that lyric when sung clear from my speaker shocked me. It opened my eyes to how many songs have inappropriate lyrics but continue in circulation. One song I have listened to countless times, sung every lyric, and never caught just how sexist it is. The song is “Blurred Lines,” by Robin Thicke Feat. T.I. and Pharrell.

Throughout this song while reading the lyrics many stand out as sexist, take “Okay, now he was close. Tried to domesticate ya. But you’re an animal. Baby, it’s in your nature.” When Thicke was asked about this lyric he said, “Even very good girls have a little bad side. You just have to know how to pull it out of them.” This answer angers me highly because WHO EVER SAID IT NEEDED TO LEAVE? A woman is allowed to have an aggressive personality. How would we be able to play sports? Get to university? Or even maintain a job with all these men trying to silence us? This reaction reminds me a little to much of Taming Of The Shrew, with the treatment of Kate. Everyones goal is to “tame” Kate, exactly what this comment is telling men today to do. Another song with the same sort of lyrics is Back To Sleep, by Chris Brown.

Where the lyrics read, “Just let me rock, I’mma f*ck you back to sleep, girl. Oh don’t talk to me, girl, right now.” This song is filled with horrible lyrics and a horrible beat, so I have less of a problem condemning it, but I’m still lost as to how songs like these can become part of our culture without us even seeing the issues. If you wonder what songs I’m talking about I’ve created a playlist.

An article by The Standard that I found about just this said, “Some of the most well-known, top-selling artists are unknowingly raising the expectations for men to act and women to be submissive,” which I couldn’t agree with more. These lyrics become what young people look up to. The lyrics are basically woman being submissive. Each of the songs in the playlist I created have had their time on top charts, or are known. Which means that people have listened and are now susceptible to their flawed meaning. Personally I feel that we can’t escape these songs, instead we have to learn as a culture that woman being submissive is not ok, and that it doesn’t have to shape who you become. Because once at that point, sexist songs will not hold such a strong hold on woman, because people will understand that sexism shouldn’t sell.

I highly recommend you visit Bustle, which had a lot of good insight into this topic.

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Weekly Reflection October 24th

After a refresher this week on what this post is supposed to be about, I am still lost, but I’ll try my best.

This week I learned that the line between shrew and “good” is very vague.

I can speak, have been able too since I was young, my first word was “dadda” when I was 1. Since then I have been spewing words as I learn then. Also known as speaking or talking. Only recently did I realize that because of my gender I would have been punished for spewing words, had I been born earlier. The lottery of birth protected me but it did not shield me from it entirely. I was really shocked that men would actually prefer it if women, or their wife, didn’t have any opinions, and didn’t partake speaking on any subjects other then the house. Thats like having a conversation with a wall. Wouldn’t it be more fun to argue a point? To see each others sides? To express both of your thoughts, not just make the woman stomach them, and the man speak for both of you?

We took a shrew test this week, to see how shrew’d we were, (I highly suggest you take the quiz, linked here). The woman who wrote the quiz was writing it to show women what they need to do to change, she wanted your score to be as low as possible. I took the quiz and was proud of my high score until I saw the objective. I was sort of confused. Obviously there are areas where I found myself placing low numbers, but I finished the quiz and got the score, “your man is probably immobilized, comatose and cached underground.” Hmmm. My man is dead? He couldn’t keep up? What did I “disrespect him to death?” Thats new. I found myself questioning where the male equivalent was. Where is the matching him and her shrew quiz? Huh? But that was the extent of the quiz. I also realized that it didn’t matter what the man had said, each of the categories (disrespecting, criticizing, nagging, lecturing, opposing, and punishing) were just never allowed for a woman to express. Basically a submissive woman is ideal. The woman who wrote this is obsessed with demoing homes, and finds herself happiest “when she has a power tool in her hand.” So how does she get to do a “male” job, but is not allowed to have her own opinions? Where is the line?

This question of where is the line is something that just continues to reoccur, with the suffragettes, there were “feminists” who were against the movement and found it was working against their efforts. When I did research for my Academic Conclusion this week I found countless STEM women who had had their discoveries usurped from them. Are they supposed to be happy that people realized? Next time they’ll get the nobel prize, right? Would it be inappropriate to fight? And when we read taming of the shrew this week, and had to draw the line between good and shrew, this line, the same line I have been talking about the entire time, is very very hard to find. 

This is when I wish I was in math, so I could just find the equation to the line. So I could find what the maximum amount of effort I could put in before I cross the line.

This line is exponentially hard to differentiate between, and I look forward to slowly placing it.

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Weekly Reflection October 18th

Welcome to my weekly recap! I will be creating one of these every week to just cover what I have learned each week, so sit back an relax and let me wrap up an old project and uncover a new one.

This week began with a lovely and much needed pro-d day. I was in Tofino, obviously respecting COVID guidelines, we barley ever went into town, and surfed the entire weekend, which made me feel much better after a stressful 5 weeks. Monday we headed home, realizing that missing one day of school was the equivalent of missing a day 2 week. So I was back and ready on Tuesday. On Tuesday I was in class and we just wrapped up our google map, and made sure that everyone had their information in. The google map was almost completely fined by the end of class, Jesse just had to finish putting the numbers on each stop, and we had to double check and make sure everyones info was in. Here is our final product, and here is the Wolves (class b’s) final product the pamphlet. On Thursday we officially hit 5 weeks and switched cohorts, english becoming an everyday class, and math becoming an every other day class, which also meant that we switched to Ms. Willemse as our teacher and switched projects. The new project we have begun Ms. Willemse has not released to us the driving questions but I have reason to believe that it has something to woman’s suffrage and The Taming Of The Shrew, a Shakespeare comedy, actually one of my favourite plays I have ever seen. So let me rehash this weeks learning.

“So they basically steal Dom’s wallet, and someone straps a bomb to themselves outside, but my bare legs are the big issue? Got it.” Joey a character on the Netflix show “Grand Army”,  a newly released and super interesting TV show based on “Slut: The Play,” says to her teacher, during a lockdown in the first 20 minutes of the show. Joey had just come from gym, and didn’t have time to change. Her friend attacking her with a rude comment on the way out of the gym, “you’ve had an abortion haven’t you?” Joey feels unfairly treated which is the basis of the work we’ve been doing in class this week. We’ve been covering an intro to the treatment of woman in the past and present, mostly relating to the word slut. To be called a slut is basically someone saying you sleep around, and regarding you as less then. Its a really detrimental term, and it sucks that ever since entering high school it has entered the lingo for many young woman, including Seycove students. In class we watched 4 clips where the word slut is thrown around, clips that were part of major on air tv shows. The first of them being the notorious, “Jane you ignorant slut.” Our class had a big discussion about this one, how all she had done was stand up for another woman, an all of a sudden her sexual life became what she was defined as, honestly this one sickens me. The way Jane immediately is quiet, and how she must shake his hand at the end, makes me green. I see reciprocal versions of this all the time, and I’m tired of girls feeling like they need to stomach the way they feel to make the man happy. Just the other day a girl (no exposing over here) was reading off of a card in a game. She was reading slowly and none of us had a problem with this, just reading, we were in no rush, until a boy at the table said “Just shut up and give me the card. Your stuttering and its taking to long. Nobody wants to hear you read this card.” My mouth fell open. I knew this boy, he was my friend, and I was so infuriated. I told him it was wrong, and that he had been incredibly rude, and so did another girl at the table, but the girl that he was rude too just looked like she had been stabbed. He answered with the line older then time itself, “it was a joke. I was only kidding, cant you take a joke.” If my mouth wasn’t already falling to the floor, then it had just hit the core of the earth. The other girl who had spoken up made him apologize, though he laughed through the whole thing, and said “I’m sorry”. I had expected the girl who was targeted to not say anything, or tell him how he had wronged her, and tell him how an apology doesn’t fix the fact she may be self conscious about reading out loud now.

But she said “its ok.”

“its ok.”

its ok. I almost can’t even type this because it aggravates me so much. She just stomached everything she was feeling, keep in mind she looked like she as going to cry, and made sure that the boy didn’t hurt. AGHHHHHH, its the same thing as, “Jane you ignorant slut.” Boys don’t think these things hurt, but they do hurt, and woman need to stop telling them don’t. I obviously realize that there is a lot of difference between what I saw and the notorious line, and how minimal this seems as well. I also realize that as a white woman I have it easy compared to many other people, but it hurt me to watch this, and I can’t stand the girl thinking that it was her bad for reacting. This sort of stuff has happened to me in the past before and I know how to react now. I know how to stand up for myself, which often makes men feel inferior, or attacked. I am sick of letting their opinion rule me. I am a loud, outspoken, and opinionated person for a reason. I am also sick of when girls come back and respond in an appropriate manner, boys almost always get threatened and attack physical looks, and personal attributes. But anyways I need to get back to my week, I could talk about this stuff for years.

The “Jane you ignorant slut,” quote also relates to a reading we had to do in english. The reading was about the role of a woman in marriage. Since I handed mine in I don’t have access to the actual reading, but I remember the just of it. Quotes from the reading read like “the woman has no-one other then her man,” even though earlier in the paragraph the reading had said that the man has friends and events and sports and an unlimited list of things to keep his company. It also mentioned how woman were the inferior species, and men were merely taking their god given right by being the more powerful person, and getting to make all decisions. (vomit). The sickening thing about that reading was that the author thought they were writing the truth. That that was sold or given to woman to religiously follow. Which boggles me. Anyway I need to get on with my day, and probably do some sort of exercise to get all this pent up anger out.

So I’ll see you guy next week.   

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A revamped historical tour of Deep Cove

PLP has begun and I can’t believe this is only my first post. Mr. Hughes told me during the normal year we would be somewhere in January now, so having to do one post is incredible, they will be much more frequent now. In english we have created a pamphlet and a google map as part of our historical walking tour of deep cove.

Pamphlet FINAL

The premise for the project was to answer the driving question “How can we as historians uncover and share stories about our community?” The final product was planned to be a historical walking tour, with plaques and a livestream of us taking the tour. COVID set up many barriers in this project which ended up altering our final project, causing us to add the map and remove the plaques. So let me explain this project.

Firstly, our teacher Ms. Maxwell took a shot in the dark and reached out to the Deep Cove Heritage Society (DCHS), and got a response from a man named Jim. Ms. Maxwell ended up being the first person to contact the DCHS from Seycove ever, and they were so excited to share their resources with us. We had previously done some research about the history of the cove and the Seymour area with help from the DCHS published books, “Echoes Across The Inlet,” and “Echoes Across Seymour,”

 

which helped us grasp an understanding of the historical past of each of our locations. We used this information to make a timeline highlighting certain events and dates the struck us as important from each chapter of both books (class A did one book and class B did another). When creating this timeline we also added national, and major world events to understand some of the influences that may have altered our history, and played a role in the way people made decisions. Take for instance my location which was the Corfield’s Dance Hall, located right on the water at the bottom of Gallant Ave. Corfeild’s went through many owners, but the reason the second owners sold was because of WW2. They fell into debt and ended up closing and selling the hall. Including the major world event, WW2, I was able to see why the hall closed abruptly and begin to realize that history is not just a set of loose dates, everything leads to something else, which was key to understanding in this project.

Once the entire class had delved into the readings and done some research, we all made a list of stops on the existing walking tour we would like to make “our” stop. What I mean by “our” stop is that we would be focusing on one stop for the project which would become “our”stop. My three proposed stops were, Corfield’s Dance Hall/DCK, Covecliff Elementary School, and the Moore Family Store. I ended up with Corfield’s Dance Hall, and Deep Cove Kayak which was perfect. To start research on the past of both locations (I thought they were in the same place, which was a hard truth to learn later on down the road) I dug a bit into “Echoes Across Seymour,” in which there was a whole blurb about the past of the kayak shop, including dates and names, which was incredibly helpful. The only hitch was there was nothing about Corfield’s. I mustered on, and ended up just talking about the land by the water in the cove, making sure not to step on the yacht club’s toes. Our first proper assignment which would carry into our final project was the draft of the blurb for the pamphlet. 100 words max, and it had to include two historical perspectives, as well as all your history, of the best of it. (Mine is on stop #7 on the pamphlet) I struggled a bit with this being fluent in writing larger amounts of text, I was bit daunted to write less. My first draft sucked, I made revisions following that (ex. completely cutting out Deep Cove Kayak Shop from the pamphlet) and my second draft looked much better. Once our pamphlet blurbs were in we could then return to beefing up the words since the new blurb would go on the google map that my group (the eagles) were creating. We also assigned roles for our group to fall into to help smooth out any confusion. I became a communicator between The Eagles, and The Wolves, just making sure that everyone had handed there info in to the right place and was on time. I also was supposed to help Jesse with the route, but it was cut so that job disappeared. While the map and pamphlet were being made we also had to finish up our individual stops, things like digital enhancement and our audio recording, were necessary to completing the stop. For my digital enhancement I scored a phone interview with Erian Baxter, the co-owner of the Deep Cove Kayak Shop (DCK), her mom started up the business in 1983, and Erian continues on her legacy today. In the interview I asked her questions about the past present and future of the DCK, here is the interview if you would like to listen. After the interview one of the last hurdles was the on scene video, the camera was a bit shaky, but I was happy with the video.

Here is the whole classes video!

Once everything was handed in it was just a matter of putting all the pieces together, making sure that everything worked. Here is the final product in length and I highly recommend you try visiting the stops if your local to North Van. The tour itself would be a very cool fair weather walk of scenic Deep Cove! Also if your in the cove check out Deep Cover Heritage Society, and pic up one of our pamphlets. I believe thats the end, this project was really fun and I enjoyed the class time we got to share ideas and brainstorm together.

  Competencies

The competencies being assessed in the duration of this project was “writing and designing text and using resources.” I felt I demonstrated this strongly by my many edits and recreations of my blurb, as well as making sure that I always held a good grasp of the Historical Thinking Concepts from historicalthinking.ca.  I also made sure to cite my resources, and keep track of the websites and books I referenced, sadly there wasn’t much about the history of the Deep Cove Kayak Shop and Corfield’s Dance Hall, but I did find enough resources. All in all I felt this was a strong project for me, and am excited to start the next project.

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TPOL 2020

Why do I feel I am ready to advance to the next grade? Why did I feel I was ready to advance to the next grade last year? Or the year before? Definitely not my spelling, or my grammar. My writing has become better, but that isn’t the only reason I should advance to the next grade, is it?

Hopefully this video makes it clear what it is.

If you chose not to watch the video, saving me some humiliation, I would like to talk about something I came upon when creating a time capsule video for this TPOL. Which I am keeping tucked away safe, because this TPOL has already been too humiliating. This concept that I strolled across, is the concept of school being fun. We all “hate” school. Who wants to do work? No one, thats who. But recently I have been receiving a lot of  recognition for my work, and it made me think, why have I all of a sudden found this sweet spot of work, where I work hard, but homework doesn’t control me, and where I get recognized. I pondered this, and I realized that the only answer that I could come up with was that school is enjoyable, so any work load isn’t something that makes me uncomfortable, and this also explains why I can put my best work forwards.

“Its just…. It’s fun. Learning is fun, and I think that thats the biggest thing I should always remember. Is that, if learnings not fun, I’m doing it wrong. And that I just need to stay realizing that growing the understanding and the education that I already have is a pleasure, and its a privilege. And I think thats what I’ve been able to see this year, and I think thats why I should advance to grade 12.” – Quote from me. from my time capsule for this 2020 TPOL.

 

via GIPHY

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The Scottish Play

I barley remember that we were even in school at one point anymore. Though things are clearing up, and things are beginning to go back to normal, I still cant believes that we’ve been learning from home for 3 months. Time travels fast when your not doing anything, I guess. Anyway Macbeth, thats what I’m here to talk about. So if anyone has ever told you about Macbeth, theres this curse that should also be mentioned. Now to preface this, I don’t know if I believe in curses personally, but there is definitely something I believe in about this play. The previous grade to attempt this jaw dropping stunt, that is recreating Macbeth but in a different era, incorporating history from the era into the play, was the now second year university students when they were in grade 11. Simpler to say 3 years a ago. As part of our class we watched their final product, and to be blatant, it grew our ego’s. It was a work in progress to put it nicely. Apparently they had lost the camera chip that everything had been filmed on, and I believed that more and more as the project went on. Here’s the backstage clip I could find of it.

Now after watching it we knew our grade, jam packed full of hard working individuals, could do better. And in the preliminary rounds, we did. But all of a sudden we weren’t doing so good. Our final product ended up looking like the previous attempt, just instead of the war, it was the dramatic and twisted 50’s. So this long and elaborate blog post will take you through the ups and downs to how we ended up with a video with blank title screens reading “In the classroom.” Too start I would like to let you guys watch the video, give it a good watch and realize our potential to make the movie great.

Now alike the group that attempted this feat before us, we failed, but due to something that was out of our control. Covid 19 hit, and it hit us hard. All of a sudden its a week before the end of school (for spring break) and everyone is sooooo excited to get some sun, or to escape the classroom, when word starts traveling about how so-and-so’s trip was just cancelled, and how you realize that that sucks, but it won’t happen to you, you think.

So the teachers were in Vietnam and Cambodia. Yup. Thats right. In the height of the pandemic, my teachers were in Asia. So we had a sub, and we were puttering along in our work, we hit a few bumps with certain actors/actresses not being able to attend certain filming days, but we got through that. We even had a plan to film a whole bunch of scenes after spring break because Macbeth got sick,(which in the lead up to a pandemic its a good idea to stay home.) So we banked on the week after spring break to shoot all the shots we were missing. Little did we know that there wouldn’t be a “week after spring break” that we could film in. That maybe there wouldn’t be a week like that for a long time. After spring break, and we all realized that we wouldn’t be able to finish the movie, we gave what we had to the editors and they crafted the video linked above up for everyones viewing, which I have to admit is pretty incredible. (Also check out this video that Luca Jacoe made because its awesome.)

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They took some very random shots, and turned it into something better. I felt like the whole story about Covid interrupting our filming is a good image of the Macbeth curse. The Macbeth curse was something felt by many members of theatre as well as people of the audience. Things like fires in theatres, or strange lighting incidents, more major (though I dont quite know if true) include deaths from actors attempting to act in Macbeth, and so I think its funny that the past 2 times a PLP group has tried to recreate Macbeth, we have failed.

Now enough chat about failure, lets talk about what happened before we torpedoed. Right from the beginning.

Too start this unit we were tasked with answering in our own way, “Why Shakespeare?”

I honestly did a lot of research for this question, and I remember my theory being ripped to shreds in class, so obviously I didn’t quite know why shakespeare. What I left with is that Shakespeare alone created 1700 words in the english dictionary. And his plays help us to figure out what life was like back in the 1500-1600’s. After we had a understanding about what Ms. Willemse wanted us to take from the book, we began to read the book/play. We read the book through this app that made it so we were reading the acts, but we could also watch a video depicting what the scene would look like in play form, which really helped to digest the information. While we were reading the play we were also learning about the 1950’s, and to prove that we were actually absorbing information we were tasked with writing TWIL’s. TWIL stands for This Week I Learned, and when writing your TWIL you had to connect Macbeth, with the 1950’s. Here are my 3 posts I made about my connections to both topics.

Post 1 – http://www.blog44.ca/adlihb/2020/01/25/this-week-i-learned/

Post 2 – http://www.blog44.ca/adlihb/2020/02/03/this-week-i-learned-week-2/

Post 3 – http://www.blog44.ca/adlihb/2020/02/10/1740/

As well as posts we also wrote quests, (quiz and test combined). Our quests sort of forced us to look deeper in the book and realize what other meaning lay hidden within all the most important quotes. So in our quests we were given 3 quotes from the text we had read following that quest, and we had to tell Ms. Willemse, who said the quote, where in the plot the quote happened, and connect it to a theme. It sounded simpler then it was, because the second I got in there, I personally forgot everything to do with theme which sucked a lot.   

After we had accomplished all the preliminary tasks, we began the actual film. The first task was to apply for a position in the film, which did not include acting. Roles like Editor, Production Manager, and Costume Design, all fell into line. In the end Alivia was the Producer, Jesse was the Screenwriter, and Giorgia was the Director. These roles were at the top of the pyramid, so I mentioned them here, but I think it goes without saying that everyone else who worked on the film was equally important. Once roles had been assigned (Ahm Ahm Line Producer) we began the actual journey to the film. My role in the film production was very background. I made call sheets, and a lot of them. This is an example of a call sheet.

Basically all a Line Producer does is remind people of what scenes are being filmed where, and what needs to be there, and who needs to be there. So I personally think I was a very boss line producer, making sure that everyone could be where they needed to be at all times. I even sent out email’s to everyone reminding them of their filming days, like this one.

 

After all of this, spring break arrived, and I already tried to sell you on the curse, so I think my work here is done. All in all this project was fun. I enjoyed the freedom of having the leaders for the project be students and I think we benefitted immensely from that. I know that the teachers will always nag us about how we never finished Macbeth, but I think personally that we did all the heavy lifting. We learned so much from that project, with or without the final product. 

Thanks for reading guys!

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Are we doomed to repeat history? (The climate crisis and the Civil Rights movement, week 2)

https://soundcloud.com/user-335030245/the-climate-movement-and-the-1

I cannot stop thinking about this question. That’s for sure. Are we doomed to repeat history, is a meaningful question that I feel like I will never, no matter how much work I put in, be able to answer which intrigues me even more. I feel like no one could ever have a fully formed answer to this question because there is so much unknown lurking within it. As Daniel (a fellow PLP 11 student) said “aren’t we still in history?” How are you supposed to answer a question when you haven’t even understood its foundation. Its all these little tripwires that make it so very interesting. 

Last week I argued that what Naomi Klein said in “On Fire: the burning case for a green new deal” was equal to what Rev Martin Luther King said after his house was bombed around the time of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and how that proved the 2 movements were alike. Now abruptly after (or even during) that post (link here if you want to read into the similarities that I focused on) I was stricken with the idea that maybe what they said was just explaining the basis of movement.

That maybe they weren’t as similar as I previously thought. Which confused and intrigued me. Was I wrong to jump so quickly to a connection? To figure this out I delved into a 3 hour “power hour” just inhaling information about movements (The 3 hours, I think, is in part due to the fact I finished the tv show I was watching yesterday!) and boy did I ever find enough information to answer my question. 

Ok so no. That’s the answer. I was wrong to make such an abrupt connection to the climate movement. I still agree that what I found was identical, but thats is like saying the Merriam-Webster definition of movement is the same as the Oxford dictionary definition.

If you see what I mean. Obviously they are going to be the same, because they are describing the exact same thing. Now I was not completely wrong in my conviction from last week, I say this because the power of a movement relies in the numbers, that is true, and the statements I used exemplify that, its just not a usable example of a connection. For example I could draw a connection between the Climate movement with the Civil Rights movement because they are both movements, but nobody wants to hear that crap. It’s not a strong connection. This is where my 3 hours of movement investigation comes in. Be prepared, I am hoped up on candy and I am going to butcher my connections I made last week. (Read last weeks connections here). 

Firstly the Civil Rights movement was a force to be reckoned with. It had a firm belief to abolish the Jim Crowe laws and to supply African Americans with equal rights, and on paper it succeeded. (It was successful per-say, the movement did not account for bigoted people of power who could refuse to listen to the federal authority due to personal bias, but the movement mostly surpassed those people.) Now the focus for the Civil Rights success should be on the movement’s concrete and pinpointed objective, which I mentioned above. Every person who partook in the Civil Rights movement knew what they were fighting for. This fact makes it seem cruel to compare the Civil Rights movement, and the Climate movement, for what is the concrete and pin-pointed objective of the climate movement? Every organization has a different answer, sure they may all be variations of keeping the planets warming below 2 degrees, and making up for the poor treatment of low and middle income countries, but thats not direct. Its what has to happen yes, but in little steps. The only goal should never be the end goal. It needs to be thought out in bite sized pieces. In terms of movement: bite off more then you can chew, and its forgotten forever.

Example: Occupy Wall Street, (I feel like I don’t need to say any more, though I will) failed because they didn’t have a consensus about what they were fighting for. They had a catchy slogan, I’ll give you that, but they lacked the direction needed to turn their protest into a movement that would catch the attention of others. Now this is an excellent segway into my second point which is described perfectly by Greg Satell in this quote. “Until your movement is able to attract the support of those who don’t immediately agree with you, its noting more then a protest.” Let that settle for a second. 

The Civil Rights movement is riddled with examples of attracting support from white people who, as Satell stated, “didn’t immediately agree with (them).” Take the Freedom Rides for example, the support was bi-racial.

The Riders did not only consist of African American students, it also consisted of white students who saw the inequality because the Civil Rights movement was able to catch their attention. I know we haven’t fully diverged, in class, into the peaceful protests of Selma, but this is another excellent example. By supporting the belief of non-violence, Selma attracted many people who were seen as villains. This switch from minority to majority takes the movement from only those affected by it, to a wider scale. Every movement must undergo this phase, but yet again I feel like I was cruel to place the Climate movement beside the Civil Rights movement. I feel this way because the climate movement has yet to exit the chasm. (Image below to reference). Take Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign for example, (please feel free to @ me in the comments, I know this is a risky statement to make)

Sanders actions made him look like he felt that if you didn’t share his exact same opinion, then he would target you as corrupt, or against the Climate movement, even though in many cases the person he was targeting was, in theory, on his side. (The side would be socialist, and well as climate activist in this case democratic). This caused people to resent what he stood for, because he was forcing people who fought for him, to fight against him if they stood for something even miniscully different. Though Bernie Sanders may have gained a strong, loyal following, he lost the ticket to change when he lost the majority. He took the Climate movement and made it a hierarchal thing, instead of what it is, a “current” – who said this. The power comes from everybody believing in the same thing, not one person edging his way to fame and fortune in the name of climate, by pushing others down. 

And so I hope these 2 points help you to see the incorrectness of my connections from last week. 

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