American Colonies?

This week, we focused on trade and International business. What do you suppose that Americans thought about the idea of making colonies in the Philippines? Do you think that any were against the idea due to being British colonies before the Revolutionary war? I feel that many people would have been against the idea of colonizing the Philippines because of that event. We read about the argument that Mr. Beveridge shared with the President. He mostly claimed that the Philippines could not govern themselves and I quote, "They are not capable of self-government" (2) in the section, The Filipinos Are Children. I think that he was being very racist in this comment to get the President to agree with him. I believe that most of his argument was geared towards things that would benefit him the most. Although he did include many things that would benefit the country as a whole. He used things like trading and military bases to convince the President that he should choose to colonize the Philippines. I think that after helping free the Philippines it was very odd to try to control them. I personally think that an alliance by choice would have been better. Just literally ask to form a treaty, and perhaps they would have agreed considering that America helped them. Although I do suppose that since their was a chance that they could have disagreed, they went for total control... 

NINA Loan

This week and the past week, we talked about the speculations bubbles and housing prices. I specifically want to talk about the NINA loan. From what I learned, the NINA stood for no income no asset. It was a degraded version of the original type of loan that only people with enough money could get. The original loan was made so that the people who could actually pay it off and get the bank more money along the way would get it. Over time however, The original loan was decreased in value until it became easy for anyone to get a loan. My question was, why would you need to decrease the value that much? Wouldn't they know that the people who but the NINA can't actually afford it and will fault? If you think that they do know, why do you think that there would even be a speculation bubble? Wouldn't it pop before it even started? My thoughts on this are that if they stuck with the original amount of money with the original loan, the NINA crisis in 2007 wouldn't have happened. The crisis could have definately been averted. It just needed to be stopped by not having greed. The no income no asset loan, was a child of greed from the Speculation bubble. The Morgages went up without a need and suddenly crashed in 2007. When the bubble popped, a lot of people lost their jobs and some of the houses being built were never completed. NINA Loans were the downfall in economy, hopefully they won't show up again in the future.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Do you believe in the dark faeries? Percy Bysshe Shelley was a well known poet who wrote in the romantic style. In American Lit for the past few weeks, we have been researching romantic poets. Something I found interesting about Shelley, was that his first important poem, had been about Queen Mab. In general, she is a well known dark being. The use of her name as the title,made me wonder: Why her? When I analyzed the poem more closly, I found some connections to his life. Shelley had two wives. The first one committed suicide, after he traveled to France with another woman. In his poem, he personifies Death and Sleep as if they were actually people. I found that you could easily replace the two names with his wives names because the characteristics describes them each induvidually. One of the questions that I had was: Do you think that he wrote the poem Queen Mab with inspiration of his own life, mainly his wives? When I looked up Queen Mab, the most common pop-up said that she was commonly defined as a depiction of the plague or even herpes. This was because she was mainly drawn over a body, whose lips were covered in boils. Do you think that had anything to do with Shelley's choice to use her as his title?

Post Civil War... Reconstruction

This week, we took our test... Of Course, but we briefly talked about the reconstruction era that came after the Civil War. In this era, it was mostly about what should happen with the freed slaves. Should they have had equal rights or not? That was the big question that was asked. What do you think? Should the equal rights movement have come faster? And if so, what do you think the effect would have been? I think that if the equal rights movement came earlier, it would have been easier to go through the Great Depression that cam later, with a bigger and more equal work force. We also talked about the Freedman's Bureau which was supposed to reform the South. The ratio was really lopsided though. 2000/4million freed slaves. How do you think that they were able to reconnect all of the families and help find everyone? I'm pretty sure it would be hard to do so without internet. I personally think that it was a good idea to have people specialized in finding people who were seperated. It's kind of like a compensation. I feel like this would have been more effective id their were more people. What do you think? 

Civil War -> Gettysburg

Last week, we talked about the Civil war. To go more in depth, the Battle of Gettysburg and the Battle of Cold harbor. Today I will write about the battle of Gettysburg. We talked about how Gettysburg was probably one of the most decisive battles in the Civil War. I was wondering, why they would continue the war for months after? Wouldn't it only deplete supplies until the South would be left wit nothing? The most decisive battles took place on Little and Big round top, and Culp's, and Cemetery Hill. The battle between Little and Big round top, took place in the area between, the Devil's Den, also the valley of death. This battle , protected the Union army, from being destroyed by the sides. The leader of the Union army part, was Colonel Joshua Chamberlain. Wouldn't he get more recognition than that which was given? It seemed like his part in the battle was a bit underestimated. The battle on Culp's Hill took place on the last day. The tactics were important, to make sure that the Union Army won. I was wondering, why would General Lee keep trying to send troops through an open field even when his forces were depleted? Wouldn't it be better to recognize the failure and change the strategy to match the situation?  

Middle Passage

This week, we read the "Middle Passage" by, Robert Hayden in American Literature. In the "Middle Passage", it said that the crew was infected with Ophthalmia, a disease that makes the infected go blind in about tree weeks. Near the end, when all of the crew is either dead or blind, The African slaves, rebel, taking control of the slave ship. After they get control, they kill the rest of the crew except for two and enslave them so that they can go back to Africa. The two say that it was the worst thing ever. My question is, They enslaved more than 3 thousand people on that boat and made them sit crowded under the deck laying in their own feces and dead bodies. How can they say that what they went through, was the worst? Even then, because of the language barrier they were able trick the Africans into the colonies. They did this by going east at day time and west at night time. Is that even possible? wouldn't they just be staying in the same spot? Or were they able to decrease how much they traveled during the day to give them an advantage during the day? The fact that the two captured crewmen thought that they had the worst situation ever bothered me, considering what they did to slaves on the ship. They were much better off than the slaves, taking into account all variables, like: Food, living space, hygiene, and etc. Did they ever realize that right in their line of sight, were people who had it worse than them?

Lowell Mill Liberty?

This week, we read about the Lowell Mill girls for homework. In both of the letters, the girls seemed to have a similar ideal liberty. The right to work and earn money. Even in the short story, a week at the mill, the girls seemed happy to work at the mill even though it would have been hard to work that long with under wage. According to, a week at the mill, most of the girls were from the country, which was the reason why they wanted to work. It said that they wanted to work for more clothes and things of that area. I was wondering, why didn't they work for money instead? wouldn't it be better, so they could help their families more? Another question that I have is, did they get compensation for injuries? Did their families get compensation if they died working at the mill? In any case, were injuries even common while working with the machines? like with hands and fingers in the sewing machines probably. The girls probably went there because they wanted to also break social norms. Like how girls are supposed to not work in that time, at least not that much. My last question is, did they also work on Saturdays, cause it only talked about having Sunday off.
~Keerthana 

Jefferson Readings (Notes on the State of Virginia)

Hi Guys!
So in class, we went over "Notes on The State of Virginia" in which Jefferson writes about his view on slaves. It really surprised me that he would think of executing the experiments that he wrote about. One of them was lighting both an African and a English man on fire. The idea itself seemed horrendous, especially the fact that he wanted to burn them alive and observe it as well. This would have been to see if they would burn differently. Perhaps if he wanted to watch that happen, wouldn't it have been better to watch a cremation of two dead people instead of killing people? That in itself seemed off to me. The words that he used describe slaves insinuated that he thought them sub-human or non-human. Maybe the Deist part of his mind only thought scientifically but, he only spoke about slaves as if they were his personal scientific experiment. He talked about how, when playing music, slaves tended to have a better ear for it. They could play instruments almost perfectly after being taught. Most of the time, according to Jefferson, they would even play better than English people.  Did that mean that he believed that they were intelligent? If so, why did he propose so many horrible experiments to find out if one race was superior to the other? Did it have to do with an inferiority complex rooting from the beginning of slavery and the original Puritan values?
~Keerthana Akella

Hi! first post :)