My American Song

I sing out, trying to harmonize with a greater American voice,
but my tone doesn't meld;
my pitch is off by only fractions of a half step,
yet it rings out deconstructively, creating an unpleasent sound.

I try to correct, yet everytime I do,
it seems as if the greater voice
has shifted again:
one step down,
one step up.

I try every pitch I know to fit this cacophony
It sounds so beautiful without me
but with my voice added
Harmony is broken,
tension is created.

One day I finally sing out a pitch that fits the
Harmony.

But I don't like the sound of my own voice.
It doesn't sound like my own
I hear the greater unity of our voices
But now it is no longer beautiful to my ear.

So I sing out my own pitch,
still hearing the overall voice,
knowing it doesn't quite meld,
but confident in my own.

Somehow it is still a cacophony
there is still tension,
but finally,

It's beautiful.

1. In my maps, I noticed most clearly the drawings on the map, both inland and on the sea. This is something that clearly stuck out to me. I picked two maps of North America, one from 1640, one from 1715. On the map from 1640, there are drawings of ships scouting the coast of North America and angels on the sides of the maps. The land masses have been named, but there aren't many specific colonies or names of outposts. Also, one can notice a lot of drawings of wild life inland. There are pictures of horses, rabbits, and deer. On the map of 1715, the main focus is the clear distinct borders carved into the map, and the names and descriptions of settlements rivers. Also, there is a rather large drawing of a town or settlement, obviously one that existed at the time or was being planned.

2. These maps tell a story of a developing part of the world and imperialism. The first map of America in 1640 shows that although America is still an unknown and wild, rugged land, the Europeans have their eyes on it, expressed by the ships sailing its coasts. One could also decipher an idea of divine right by the appearance of angels in the bottom right corner of the map. I think the drawing of the angels was very deliberate by the cartographer and was used to express his own idea of the right of the Europeans to conquer this land in the name of God.
In the next map, however, the images of angels and ideas of God are gone and replaced by imperialistic details. America is not the promised land bestowed upon the European race any longer. It is, instead, a place to carve up and take for conquest. Gone are the pictures of animals and native Americans, replaced instead by names of settlements and navigable rivers and plains. The most important detail of this map I found, however, is the picture in the bottom left hand corner of a sprawling European settlement. This clearly displays the "Europe-ization" of the New World. It has transitioned from a wild land to one they can call their own, well planned out and used to acquire new resources and riches.

3. This relates quite well to the ideas Babb presented in her book, Whiteness Visible. I feel that the picture in the bottom left corner, as Babb puts it, "characterizes North America as an environment fit not just for settlements by specifically for English settlement." Although the map does not give an indication towards what country drew the map or whose settlement it is in the picture, it does show that this land displayed in the map is fit for settlement by the whatever country had the map drawn. And, once again, though I'm not sure if this map was drawn for English uses, Babb describes very well that, "no indigenous elements are present. The names on the map are mostly English, detailing various 'discoveries.' The English presence here is augmented, shown as one that has both conquered and renamed the New World." These quotes relate specifically the map drawn in 1715.

http://dlgcsm.galib.uga.edu/StyleServer/calcrgn?browser=ns&cat=hmap&wid=1000&hei=800&style=hmap/hmap.xsl&item=hmap1640h6.sid

http://dlgcsm.galib.uga.edu/StyleServer/calcrgn?browser=ns&cat=hmap&wid=1000&hei=800&style=hmap/hmap.xsl&item=hmap1715m66.sid

Presidential Inaugurations

When I was looking through the words used in the inaugural addresses, I decided to look for instances where certain words coincided. Before I did this, though, I noticed an interesting phenomena. I decided to look at uses of the word "world" in speeches. I found that this word was not used heavily at all until around 1917, when America entered the First World War. Up until this time, America had been an isolationist country that focused on its own integrity and uprising, so this makes sense. However, the use of this word also coincided with the word "America". Presidents really didn't use the word "America" until the time we entered the First World War. This I found very interesting. Although we as a country decided that we would begin to help the world in 1917 and come out of our isolationist rut, presidents began to talk more about our country as we began to talk about the world. This, to me, tells of how America began during this period to expand our ideals unto the world. However, during times that presidents spoke of the world, they spoke more heavily of war and peace, using these specific words more often. Even stranger, presidents who mentioned the word "world" more often used the term "war" more than they used the word "peace". Strikingly, this phenomena does not necessarily coincide with the time periods of the first and second world wars. What can this then tell us about America's vision about the world? Although these instances can not be used to definitively make any real conclusions, it is an interesting idea to ponder that when our presidents, representing us as a country, begin to talk about the world more, they talk less about peace than war, and more about the name of our country. And finally let us consider one more coinciding instance. As the use of the words "world", "America", "war", and "peace" began to rise with the start of the First World War, the use of the words "great", "right", and "duty" began to fall. In fact, the use of these words almost seemed to vanish as soon as 1917. Is this truly telling of the American foreign agenda? I can not say conclusively, but it is, nevertheless, and interesting idea to ponder.

Strategies in Apocalypse Now

Many strategies are jam-packed into the first three minutes of this film. Just by this fact, we can tell that the director was trying to portray an important message.
One of the strategies at play was the way that different images were shown on screen at the same time, using a faded, layered look. This was very apparent when the face of a man was layered with an image of a jungle. A few seconds later the image of a rotating helicopter blade is layered along with the other images already shown. At this point it becomes difficult to know which of the images is the foreground or which is supposed to be the image we should fix our eyes to, which we should focus on. This, I believe, is what is important and profound about the strategy. The Vietnam War did make the general populace question which aspect of the war to focus on: the soldiers, the people and land of Vietnam, or the honor of war. Of course, this is just three aspects of a multi-layered subject, but this aspect of the film makes us as viewers question what is important: what really is the focus of this reality?
Another strategy that I believe was profound was the use of sound in this clip. Throughout the clip, we can hear the rotation of the helicopter blade incessantly droning over the music playing in the background. Towards the end, the sound of the blade chopping morphs into the sound of the ceiling fan. This morphing of two sounds somewhat makes the audience question their reality. What was the noise all along? Not only this, but the ceiling fan was positioned in the soldier's (or atleast who we can presume is a soldier) room. The noise of the fan is the first thing that he wakes up to, the first thing he sees as we wakes up is the fan. This represents that the war is always with him. He can always here the chopping blades of helicopters. No matter if you're in Saigon, America, or the battle field, the war will always be with this man.