HW 37: Eid vs. Thanksgiving

http://www.gabcast.com/index.php?a=episodes&query=&b=play&id=8538&cast=51175&castPage=&autoplay=true

My podcast is podcast number 42

HW 35: Ta Ta For Now!

Well bloggers, this is almost my last post for Thinking and Writing 101 A Blog of One’s Own: Women and Authorship in the Digital Revolution. At this point in time I am sure you will continue hearing from me in the near future. However things will be a little different. You will most likely be reading posts that consist of me ranting and raving about the horrible classes that I am having next semester and about all of the great times I have at home on the weekends and on holidays. Keeping a blog has really taught me who I really am as a person and has shown me how to express myself in different ways and by using different writing techniques. I truly enjoyed the times that I spent writing my blogs and even laughed quite a bit. Hopefully by reading my blogs you have felt inspired to write what you feel no matter how random it is. Remember my post about women being able to fake it pretty well? Well I do, I was careless about what people might think of me and wrote about it because it showed me for who I really am. Well I will be going for now but I will be back posting again someday. Keep your eyes peeled for new posts to be coming and thank you for reading Kim’s Sick Blog.

HW 34: Tea Anyone?!?!

After reading the selection in Baghdad Burning by Riverbend dated October 9th through the 29th I learned about tea traditions. Tea is served in many ways depending on the family but mainly consists of a three-step process. The water is boiled then tealeaves are added and lastly it is all put in to a different kettle and heated until the leaves rise to the surface of the kettle and allowed to settle again (Riverbend 108-109). Tea would never be served in a bag in Iraq such as we do in the United States. The Iraqi’s would consider this an insult due to their expertise in serving and drinking tea. The purpose of tea in the evenings between families is purely to relax and have conversations relating to politics as well as many other subjects. Conversations in Iraq “Unlike the typical family conversation around the world ‘How was your day dear?’ doesn’t get at typical answer in Iraq. Depending on who is being asked, the answer varies from stories of abductions to hijackings, to demonstrations, to empty gas cylinders and burned out water pumps” (Riverbend 109). I found that interesting to think about the horrible experiences that people in Iraq go through and have to share amongst the family.

HW 36: First Podcast

Gabcast! A Blog of One's Own #21 - Kim's First Podcast

HW 32: School Supplies

After reading through Riverbend's posts in the book Baghdad Burning, I stumbled across where she talks about going with her cousin, his wife S, and E to go shop for school supplies for her cousins daughters. In the past it wouldn’t have been a problem for the younger girls to go and get their own school supplies however, with the conditions today in Iraq, S feels that it is unsafe to send her daughters by themselves. Riverbend tells us about the stores in Iraq while explaining that there are no malls there, just stores. The group of them went to the stationary store in order to get the supplies for the girls. The group took quite some time picking out supplies to abide with the ages of the girls and once purchased they group returned home to the girls. This post was heartbreaking for me. I cannot imagine not being able to send a 10 year old right down the street to go get school supplies. It upsets me to see how much the world has changed and how unsafe of an area Iraq has become.

HW 33: Podcast

The Podcast I watched was called “Challenges at a Girls School in Baghdad”. This Podcast is from Alive in Baghdad. This podcast was published on May 21, 2007 and can be found at http://aliveinbaghdad.org/2007/05/21/challenges-at-a-girls-school-in-baghdad/. This podcast is about the unfortunate schoolgirls that must attend schools in Baghdad. The story tells us about the difficulties for girls to even get to school with all of the shootings and bombings that are going on due to the war. There is one girl who appears in the podcast and speaks about how she herself has not much difficulty getting to school because she gets driven there. However, she says that there are often a lot of accidents, which sometimes prevent her from getting to school and force her and her uncle to take different roads. The girl tells us that she isn’t afraid of the shootings and such because she is used to them. I think she is an extremely brave person because if that were me I would freak out. In the background of the podcast is a rundown looking school and paint looks to be peeling off the walls. A viewer could learn a great deal about what is going on in Iraq after watching this Podcast. They could also learn that the war is affecting the educations of young minds in need of good education. Viewers may also discover a new found respect for the 15-year-old girl who is not afraid of bombings.

HW 30: Citizenship Symposium II

The Citizenship Symposium is an event that was happening all of last week here at Keene State College. After attending one of the sessions titled “Voting Theory and the Questions of Fairness”. The speaker at the session was Vincent Ferlini who is an associate professor of mathematics here at Keene State College. The topic of the lecture was about voting, the different methods of voting, and which types were the best to use in different situations. The other topic touched upon was about fair voting, and the question of fairness. Ferlini discussed sample voting methods, fairness, and Kenneth Arrow’s mathematical theorem, which consists of different methods that produce different results. Although I was upset with my feelings after the presentation because I felt like I hadn’t acquired any knowledge, I did learn a couple of interesting things. I learned that voting was instituted in Greece in 509BCE, people originally voted for people they liked the least, and that the politician that won went into exile for 10 years. My sentence of proof that I attended is that Ferlini’s first choice for exile would be Brittany Spears, then Paris Hilton, then Lindsey Lohan, then finally Kevin Federline. Also a quote from Ferlini:

“We tend to vote majority rules, but sometimes it doesn’t always work that way”.

HW 31: Moja Moves Me

After reading the post “Turning Tables” by Riverbend in Baghdad Burning, I was interested in finding out more about the blog written by “Moja” a soldier fighting in Iraq. I finished reading and went online to see what I could find. The URL address for the blog “Turning Tables” is http://turningtables.blogspot.com. The blog is written by a soldier that is fighting in Iraq which kind of hit home for me. I have a good friend of mine who is actually in Iraq right now. It made me emotional since I never get to see him and actually missed my only chance to say goodbye to him before he left. After reading the blog entries by “Moja” I realized how hard life is for the soldiers over there and I felt horrible for my friend Kiowa. After reading the blog I was actually persuaded into finding an address for him and sending him out a letter te;ling him how much I care. It made me wonder if he is happy doing what he is doing or if he desperately wants to come home. Reading this blog gave me the idea that I could try and get Kiowa to keep a blog in order to keep all of his family and friends back here in the U.S. informed on how he is doing. I am hoping to hear back from him soon but will continue reading “Turning Tables” For quite some time.

HW 28: Open Letter to Riverbend

Dear Riverbend,
It saddens me to hear the tragedies you are going through and cannot imagine going through it myself. Your home is longer what it used to be and is much different from the life you would like to have. As I am sure you know, Americans don’t get told about everything that goes on in Iraq. All we know is what they tell us on television and what the government actually decides to share with the country. I am please with reading your entries because they supply the real information about what is gong on and not the phony stuff the government likes to tell us. In my eyes people have mixed feelings about the war. While some want our country to fight they don’t want to risk the lives of many Americans to do so. I personally could never go through what the soldier who are in Iraq do whether it is Iraqi or American soldiers. The traumatizing events that occur and that these soldiers witness get embedded in their brains forever. After coming back from Iraq these soldiers may not sleep for days or even weeks and may not have normal habits forever. I feel terribly for all of the safety precautions you and your family have been forced to use throughout the war. I can imagine how scary it is for you to have to be in those kinds of positions. I understand how hard it must be for you to understand why families are getting split up and people are losing there jobs at the drop of a hat. Overall I think it is very helpful for Americans to read Baghdad Burning in order to get a better understanding of what life is like in war-thriving Iraq.

HW:30 Citizenship Symposium II

After attending the lectures of Jiwan Ahn, Sander Lee and Mark Timney’s “Animations as Political and Social Constructions” a lecture from the Citizenship Symposium done by Keene State College I learned a great deal of information. Each of the three speakers are faculty here at Keene State College and gave presentations which were developed to educate the audience on the role of animation in society today. Ahn spoke about the role of Anime in society. She described many different ways that Anime is done and provided an explanation for each of the different styles. The purpose of flat style in Anime is designed so that the female body they so often use is not portrayed in an overly sexual manner. This form of Anime is designed to portray the woman’s body as a symbol and not as an arousing sexual object; the body is often accompanied with violence, nature and in provocative clothing if clothed at all. Lee used WWII cartoons to show how animation is used in our society for political and informative information. Lee presented cartoons of Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny working in Nazi Germany for Hitler during the war. In both of the cartoons it was showed that Hitler could be overpowered but other unions such as the United States and the Soviet Union. The cartoons exploited what was happening in the war and what could potentially come out of it. Lee stated the following that I found to be very interesting: “I feel that Bugs identity is an interesting one in terms of the situation. I maintain Bugs has an ethnic identity, an American accent or an image of Brooklyn which is street smart, tough and ethic and his accent and the way he operates identifies him as a representative for the American Melting Pot to the German government.” Timney used South Park and it’s effects on society to speak about at the lecture. He pointed out several ideas about how it is exploitive of our country, our religions, how the show is obscenely vulgar and displays a great deal of sexual content and it also is “satire at its finest.” Overall the lecture was a great way to speak to people about different ways of looking at different types of animation and in different ways while doing it more appropriately.

HW 27: Just Browsing

Riverbend, “Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog From Iraq”. New York, NY: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2005.

In the book “Baghdad Burning: A Girl Blog From Iraq, the writer speaks about political issues, what daily life consists of during the war, as well as things that Americans do not know about what is going on in Iraq. The female writing these blogs goes by the name Riverbend while never revealing her real name. After skimming the introduction and the book I was able to get an idea of what I would learn through the book. By reading the book I feel that I will learn a great deal about what every day life is like on the war front. Not just the normal statistics and updates that the government gives us, but exactly what it is like first hand in Iraq. A woman in Riverbend’s position could really get into a lot of trouble. If the government in Iraq were to find out who she was releasing the types of information that she does, there could be serious harm done. Overall I am excited to read the book and try and put myself in the same position that Riverbend is.