3b Beaches, Seal Beach and Bodega Bay

Contains a title using the format listed above .25 points

3B Beaches, Seal Beach and Bodega Bay

Contains a web link to your locations. (eg you can use the tools in your blog where you paste your work; there is a little icon that looks like a link) .25 points

http://www.wikipedia.org/search-redirect.php?search=bodega+bay&language=en&go=++%E2%86%92++&go=Go

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=seal+beach&go=Go

http://www.ci.seal-beach.ca.us/

http://www.bodegabay.com/

Contains an explanation regarding how this component (any aspect of it; eg content of videos, content of websites) connects to your study of humanities. .25 point

The reason these two locations connect to humanities is that California is very much defined by its beach culture. When people think of California, they think of the ocean. These small towns offer us a glimpse of what California was before it became huge and commercialized. In this sense it can give us, culturally, a sense of our roots. These two locations also, because of their beauty, tend to be favorite spots of artists. Both towns have also been used for film making.

Contains the following elements that will be used in upcoming projects for analytical purposes:
What are some assumptions/stereotypes you think people have of each location: 1 point

Honestly, I don’t know the answer to this question. I had never heard of Seal Beach before doing this project. People have stereotypes about Southern Californian beaches in general. They tend to think of palm trees and movie stars. Now that I know about Seal Beach, those are the types of stereotypes I would associate with that town.

From what I gather from my relatives, the stereotypes that people have of Bodega Bay tend to be related to the fact that Bodega Bay is in Sonoma County which is in the wine country. When my relatives think of Bodega Bay, they think of an upscale, ritzy food and wine Mecca on the ocean.

List 3 things that make each location similar: 1 point

1. Both towns are small, Bodega Bay being much smaller than Seal Beach.
2. Both towns are beach towns.
3. Both towns are reliant on tourism.

List 3 things that make each location so different: 1 point

1. Seal Beach is a Southern California beach community, whereas Bodega Bay is a Northern California beach community which means a difference in climate and culture.
2. Seal Beach built up around a Naval air station and munitions development, whereas Bodega Bay built up around fishing and vacationing.
3. Seal Beach is much closer to a metropolitan area than Bodega Bay is.

Questioning: What else would you like to know about these places? When completing the question section, lead your audience into the question by stating a fact you do know, yet you still have the related question. This way, both your audience and you will have an educational experience. .5 point

One of the things that I learned about Seal Beach is that it has managed to maintain its integrity as a small town despite the fact that it is adjacent to one of the largest cities in the world. What kind of advice for maintaining cultural integrity would the residents of Seal Beach offer to the residents of Bodega Bay as tourism and development in the twenty first century begin to strain the small town?

5. Using your classmates work from last week, tell us one thing you learned from 1 student. Is this one thing some common experience you share or some experience that is completely different than what you experienced? Is this one thing related to our class theoretical foundation and if so, how? Is that one thing related to historical or cultural context of this country or a different one? Link that persons blog to this entry (eg cut paste that blog entry here) . .5 point

I checked out Katy’s blog from last week and found that Seattle was a gold rush town. I didn’t realize that. I mostly just have the stereotypes of Seattle as a grunge and coffee kind of town. I think that this is related to our foundation because we are focusing on California and what makes California unique. I'm familiar with just San Francisco because I grew up here, but it was interesting to see the development of another very similar city with a similar past in juxtaposition to what I'm familiar with.

3a World Cities Los Angeles and San Francisco

Contains a title using the format listed above .25 points

“3a World Cities Los Angeles and San Francisco”

Contains a web link to your locations. (eg you can use the tools in your blog where you paste your work; there is a little icon that looks like a link) .25 points

http://www.lastories.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=los+angeles&go=Go
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=san+francisco&go=Go

Contains an explanation regarding how this component (any aspect of it; eg content of videos, content of websites) connects to your study of humanities. .25 point

One of the very big things about both of these cities is that they are iconic. They are constantly in the news, many times because there is something either scandalous or innovative or both happening in one of the cities. There is a huge arts scene in both cities. While Los Angeles boasts a much larger film industry, the San Francisco Bay Area has also been home to influential and innovative filmmakers. The work that comes out of these areas affects how people see the world. Both are incredible melting pots of culture, political ideologies, and religions. Different social, political, and artistic movements arise organically from constant influence from all these diverse sources.

Contains the following elements that will be used in upcoming projects for analytical purposes:
What are some assumptions/stereotypes you think people have of each location: 1 point

One of the things that people hold as a stereotype about Los Angeles is that it is all glitz and glamour and surfing. I don’t think people who haven’t been to Los Angeles realize how incredibly huge it is and how many different kinds of people and life styles there are. One of my favorite movies of all time is LA Story, which plays on all these stereotypes, but also celebrates the quirkiness off it all.

Some of the stereotypes that people harbor about San Francisco is that it has a lot of hippies because of the Summer of Love. I think a lot of people also see San Francisco as being a “gay” city. Recently South Park did a show about people who drive Priuses and they all move to San Francisco to be smug together and the city becomes covered in a thick “layer of smug.” From that I would guess that there is a sense that people in San Francisco are very environmentally conscientious, but may also be a bit pretentious.

List 3 things that make each location similar: 1 point

1. Both cities contribute heavily to the country’s artistic heritage.

2. Both cities are very diverse.

3. Both cities were originally sites of missions.

List 3 things that make each location so different: 1 point

1. Los Angeles is very sprawled out and huge whereas San Francisco is very compact and dense.

2. Los Angeles is notorious for having sunny, beautiful warm weather, while San Francisco is cold and foggy.

3. While Los Angeles derives a large portion of its economy from the movie industry, San Francisco derives a majority of its income from the high tech industry.

Questioning: What else would you like to know about these places? When completing the question section, lead your audience into the question by stating a fact you do know; yet you still have the related question. This way, both your audience and you will have an educational experience. .5 point

My father was a child in Los Angeles during WWII. There are so many stories about L.A. that made it seem like it was a magical mysterious place, full of excitement and intrigue. Other people who are roughly the same age as my father in L.A. during that time speak of their experience the same way. Similarly, San Francisco was one of the major ports on the West Coast for soldiers to ship out during the war. Great ships were built in the bay. That said, what are the stories of the people in San Francisco during WWII? Was there the same kind of electricity, fear, hope, and nostalgia?

5. Using your classmate’s work from last week, tell us one thing you learned from 1 student. Is this one thing some common experience you share or some experience that is completely different than what you experienced? Is this one thing related to our class theoretical foundation and if so, how? Is that one thing related to historical or cultural context of this country or a different one? Link that persons blog to this entry (eg cut paste that blog entry here) . .5 point

Katy’s Blog

I decided to respond to Katy’s blog entry from last week. She wrote about Yosemite. One of the things that I found out from her blog is that John Muir traveled there in the 1870’s. I thought he was in the Sierras closer to the turn of the century. That was interesting to learn. I actually work at Muir Woods during the summers, but embarrassingly, I have never actually read any of John Muir’s writing. I do know that the writings and work of John Muir are one of the main reasons we have a national parks system. One of the things that Katy pointed out in her blog is that people from all over the world enjoy Yosemite. That is something that is true of many of our national parks. The treasures that we have preserved are gifts that we share with the rest of the world. I think that it shapes how we are perceived by other nations, while at the same time reminding us of the political and cultural responsibility that we have to continue to strive to preserve these lands as well as our other natural resources.

Assignment 1c

The two people I chose to write about are Sierra and Frank.

From Sierra's blog, I found that she loves her family and friends very much and that she not only uses a Mac, but she is very enthusiastic about that. She's also very excited about Obama.

I found out that Frank is a native Californian. He has an impressive vocabulary. He also seems excited about Obama.

Sierra has taken a class where she studied Paulo before. She seemed to have a lot of insight into what he's all about. She had brought up how he had gone hungry during the depression and that was the impetus for his lifelong fight against hunger and poverty. I knew he had lived through the depression, but I didn't ever put two and two together. Sierra also talked about how he was really interested in languages and how languages may be misconstrued. The issue of poverty is very interesting because so much of the world does live in poverty and that is going to be the prevailing basis from which they interact with the world. In addition, the issue of language is of utmost importance. Language affects how we perceive the world. We are affected by symbolism of all kinds, language included. One example of this is in Japan. The Japanese word for husband is shujin, which means master. That term hasn't been used as much during the latter half of the twentieth century. The word that is now commonly used is a Japaneseified version of an English word, patonaa (partner). If I were a little girl growing up in Japan and I was to understand that someday I would be marrying my master, I would have a very different perception of marriage and my place in the world than if I grew up knowing that I would someday be marrying my partner. There are examples of this sort all throughout the world and as students of the humanities we have to realize that our understanding is limited by our experiences and the connotations that certain words and symbols have in our culture.

Frank talked about how he found that Pauolo was influenced by Marxist and Anti-Colonial thought. Secondly, he talked about how when he was forming his educational theories, he based it on eight basic principles. These two concepts are interlinked because the educational theories that he has ask questions about things like who is to present the material, what kind of material should be presented...etc. The colonial approach to ruling the indigenous people of the lands that took over was to lord over them, demean them, subject them to poverty and exploit their labor. The educational systems introduced by colonialists mirrored that social structure, so the students became the marginalized subjects. This is important because the remnants of this kind of rule and education are still alive and well in many developing countries and continue to reinforce a way of thinking continues to keep people impoverished.

What I learned the most from this assignment is that everyone has a little bit of information that he or she brings to the discussion and that information is going to be different from what other people got. It's going to be interesting to see how we all weave our thoughts together as the semester goes on.

Assignment 1b

Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire was first and foremost, an educator. According to the Paulo Freire Institute on their website, www.paulofreireinstituts.org, the teaching methods of Paulo Freire have been used to promote democratic change especially through improving adult literacy. His methods, which promote equality in the classroom, have been used in much of the developing world to empower the poor. According to Wikipedia, these methods were proven, “…when 300 sugarcane workers were taught to read and write in just 45 days.”
Paulo’s most famous piece of writing is Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which outlines the principals of his teaching methods. Freire’s goal in the class room was to reverse the way that education is conducted from the banking method, where information is thrown at students in order to fill up their piggy banks, to an educational ideal where the teacher is on equal standing with the students and encourages the students to not just memorize information, but to become complete humans.
Aside from the fact that literacy greatly facilitates democracy, the brilliance in Freire’s method of teaching is that the classroom itself becomes a microcosm of the society that he was encouraging the peasants to build for themselves. The traditional form of education introduced to native people of the developing world was one based on the system of European Colonialism. The traditional classroom structure is hierarchical and reinforces the idea that the students (peasants) are lower than the teacher and are not encouraged to participate in the educational process, but merely to be subservient to it.
What’s important about this today is that we live in a world where globalization runs rampant. Colonialism for the most part doesn’t exist anymore, but the remnants of these old institutions are built into the fabric of society. Developing countries no longer are colonies, but rather are domain of dictators or are driven by the policies of corporations that do dealings with their governments. According to Freire, one way for the poor and working class people (i.e. the indigenous people) to learn how to feel comfortable with self-empowerment and to give them the tools they need to be successful in their struggle for improved lives is through his educational methods.

Assignment 1a

1. What is your first name only?
Jen

2. Why are you taking this class and what do you hope to learn?
I'm taking the class because I'm a Religious Studies major and I'm about to graduate. I wanted to take what I've learned in Religious Studies, along with my other classes like Political Science and Psychology and tie them all together. I hope to learn how all these different pieces are woven together throughout history.

3. How far do you live from SRJC main campus (go to google, maps to get the SPECIFIC answer; for this you type in your address and 1501 Mendocino Ave, Santa Rosa, CA to find the exact mileage. EXAMPLE: 2.6 miles from campus. The goal here is to use new tools available to us. You can always come back to edit this)
According to Google Maps, I live 5.6 miles from campus. It says that I live 12 minutes from campus, but I do ride the bus, so it's more like 20 minutes.

4. What do you think of when you think "California"? Does this differ from what non-Californians think and if so, how?
I think that a lot of people have all kinds of ideas about California. I think people who haven't been here think of California as crazy or foreign. My parents are native Californian and from the time when I was a small child, I have always heard all these stories about how wonderful California is, so it's been pounded into my head. When I think of California, I think of diversity. You can go snowboarding or surfing in the same day. We have massive industrialized areas and we lead the world in agriculture. We have farmers and movie stars. We have rich cultural diversity that has made California a place where pretty much anything goes and we're free to follow our bliss whether our bliss is hugging a tree or four wheeling. Even though recently, it doesn't seem like it, California has been a land of opportunity for a lot of people.

5. Have you created a blog or webpage in the past?
I have created a webpage. I have a myspace and a facebook, but also I've built several webpages.

6. Regarding computers, are you on a mac or a pc?
I'm using a PC.

7. What was your January 20th, 2009 like, or what do you remember of this day?
Well, I'm working on this on January 20th. I watched the inauguration at the gym. I wasn't a big fan of George Bush, so I'm really excited. I think what I'll come away from this experience with is seeing Americans excited about their president. That's wonderful. We'll see how Obama fares, but one thing is for sure, he has inspired a lot of people in a way that we haven't seen in a long time, if ever. Hopefully his inspiration will continue to bring people together and excite the people of our nation and the rest of the world in a way that will bring about a brighter, greater future.