Lackey's Class Links

Who are the most influential figures in American history? The Atlantic recently asked ten eminent historians. The result was The Atlantic’s Top 100—and some insight into the nature of influence and the contingency of history. Was Walt Disney really more influential than Elizabeth Cady Stanton? Benjamin Spock than Richard Nixon? Elvis Presley than Lewis and Clark? John D. Rockefeller than Bill Gates? Babe Ruth than Frank Lloyd Wright? - From Atlantic''s Top 100 Most Influential Americans (PDF file)

1. Read the Emerson and Thoreau selections in your anthology.
2. Your task is to investigate a contemporary individual whose life demonstrates either Emerson or Thoreau's definition of the self-reliant individual. This person's life should show their response to a particular social or political issue which challenges conventional beliefs or practice.
3. Choose a contemporary (living) individual from Atlantic Magazine's Top 100 Most Influential Americans or Time Magazine's 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century
4. Search for quotations by Ralph Waldo Emerson or Henry David Thoreau.
5. Write a 350 word persuasive essay explaining how this contemporary individual embodies Emerson or Thoreau's definition of self-reliance.
6. Essays must be typed, use MLA format and include a correct MLA citation of sources, including Works Cited.
7. Submit final draft to TurnItIn.com

Use the following outline:

I - Introduction
A. First quotation by Emerson or Thoreau
B. Explain quotation
C. How does the quotation describe your individual?
II - Descibe their life's accomplishments - How does this individual demonstrate their beliefs?

III - Why is this person a self-reliant individual - How does he or she reflect the beliefs of Emerson or Thoreau?

IV - What is this person's philosophy of life?

V - Conclusion
A. Second quotation by Emerson or Thoreau
B. Explain quotation
C. How does the quotation describe your individual?

Further quotations by Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

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StoryCorps is declaring November 28, 2008 the first annual National Day of Listening. This holiday season, ask the people around you about their lives — it could be your grandmother, a teacher, or someone from the neighborhood. By listening to their stories, you will be telling them that they matter and they won’t ever be forgotten. It may be the most meaningful time you spend this year.

StoryCorps Great Questions List

National Day of Listening Sound and Audio Clips on Entertonement

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I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives.
From Walden - Chapter I: Economy at Wikisource
Our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed by them.
- Henry David Thoreau
The Thoreau Reader
The works of Henry David Thoreau, 1817-1862
Site of Thoreau's Cabin
"Earth's Eye" - Online Exhibition of Walden Pond Images
Thoreau Quotations
Walden Pond Photographs
The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau
"Why Thoreau Matters"
The Walden Express - an abbreviated tour of Thoreau's Walden
Thoreau's Birthday at the Library of Congress

"The Thoreau Problem"
BY REBECCA SOLNIT
Orion, May/June 2007

Henry Hikes to Fitchburg and other stories about Thoreau by D. B. Johnson

Transcendental Readings on Delicious

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CHICARA ART

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Singing for Justice - Arlo Guthrie and other musicians look back at the cultural impact of protest music that began during President Kennedy's administration and continues in America today on WGBH.
- May 15, 2006
JFK Library and Museum

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Memorial Day
By MATT MENDELSOHN
NYTimes November 6, 2008
On Tuesday night, a small crowd gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, listening to Barack Obama’s acceptance speech on a lone transistor radio.

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The Measure of Democracy
By JOHN ASHBERY, AUGUST KLEINZAHLER, JOSHUA MEHIGAN, MARY JO BANG and J. D. McCLATCHY
NYTimes November 5, 2008
What’s left to say after this seemingly endless campaign? The Op-Ed editors asked five poets to answer that question in writing and on audio.

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We saw Bruce Springsteen with Barack Obama downtown yesterday - we were two of 80,000. After waiting most of the afternoon Bruce came on around 5:00 pm to do an acoustic set:
“The Promised Land”
“Youngstown”
“Thunder Road”
“Change Is Gonna Come”
“This Land is Your Land”
“The Rising”

And Bruce had this to say:

It's great to be here today among friends. I'd like to thank Senator Obama and his folks for inviting me. I've been here many times since 1973, but never on a day as glorious as this one. We are at the crossroads.

I've spent 35 years writing about America and its people. What does it mean to be an American? What are our duties, our responsibilities, our reasonable expectations when we live in a free society? I saw myself less as a partisan for any particular political party, than as an advocate for a set of ideas. Economic and social justice, America as a positive influence around the world. Truth, transparency and integrity in government. The right of every American to a job, a living wage, to be educated in a decent school, to a life filled with the dignity of work, promise, and the sanctity of home. These are the things that make a life, that build and define a society. These are the things we think of on the deepest level, when we refer to our freedoms. Today those freedoms have been damaged, and curtailed by eight years of a thoughtless, reckless, and morally adrift administration.

Continue reading "Bruce and Barack" »

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Thinking about Curtis Mayfield's People Get Ready':

People Get Ready
By Curtis Mayfield

People get ready, there's a train a comin'
You don't need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin'
Don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord

People get ready for the train to Jordan
It's picking up passengers from coast to coast
Faith is the key, open the doors and board 'em
There's hope for all among those loved the most.

There ain't no room for the hopeless sinner
Who would hurt all mankind just to save his own
Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner
For there's no hiding place against the Kingdom's throne

So people get ready, there's a train a comin'
You don't need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin'
Don't need no ticket, you just thank the Lord

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"How to Read Like a President"
By JON MEACHAM
NYTimes November 2, 2008
You can tell a lot about a presidential candidate by the books he reads, or says he reads.

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TIM BURTON'S VINCENT Featuring Edgar Alan Poe's The Raven - Watch the best video clips here

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Sherman Alexie on Colbert Nation

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Digital Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Planning Sheet

Bloom's Taxonomy with Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences Chart

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Les Paul was recently featured on the PBS American Masters series. His creativity and inventiveness reminds me of Steve Jobs, and their ability to synthesize talent and technology in creative ways. (See Howard Gardner link below.) In addition to being a virtuoso guitarist, Les Paul pioneered multitrack recording and is the namesake of the Gibson Les Paul electric guitar. Les Paul has won five Grammy's and is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Les Paul continues to perform on Monday nights in NYC at the Iridium Jazz Club.

The guitar techniques perfected during his playing prime introduced stunning innovations still copied today, while his contributions to audio recording technology and the electronic processing of sound blazed new trails that have since become super highways. Through it all, what Les Paul has always done is take every resource available and integrate it with his own ideas to produce unique innovations. Taken together, the enduring influence of his unique contributions to recording technology, instrument design and American popular music are unsurpassed by any other single individual. He is the man who changed the music, and truly the godfather of modern electric guitar. From Les Paul Interview, by Michael Cochran, Modern Guitars, June 9, 2005.

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