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Though I’d like to (and I will) get into the actual content of the book, Zone One by Colson Whitehead soon (seriously, I’m really liking it so far),  I’d like to briefly discuss something that caught my eye in the first few pages of the novel.

“He was their typical, he was their most, he was their average.” “He staked out the B or the B chose him: it was his native land, and in high school and college he did not stray over the county line…” “… He was not made team captain, nor was he the last one picked. He sidestepped detention and honor rolls with equal aplomb.” “His aptitude lay in the well-execute muddle, never shining, never flunking…” (Page 11)

Continue reading “Who Would Survive a Zombie Apocalypse?”

Hey so I, and maybe some of you guys too, did not know much about the Challenger explosion that Dr. McCoy talked about on Friday. So I figured I may as well get a blog post out of it and learn a bit at the same time. In 1986 the NASA space shuttle program was still growing strong, long past the space race and the moon landing. Instead of the Apollo spacecrafts though, NASA had shifted to using space shuttles. The Challenger spacecraft itself had gone on nine missions ahead of its last on January 28, 1986. When it blasted off it was only in the air for 73 seconds before it exploded (History.com Staff).

 

Like Dr. McCoy said, everyone on board was killed including the teacher Christa McAuliffe. What’s actually super interesting is that she was going to teach lessons to kids all around the country from space (History.com Staff). Losing a family member who is an astronaut is hard. Losing anyone is hard, in any way. But I cannot imagine being a family member of Christa McAuliffe’s family after that explosion. It makes my heart hurt thinking about it. I always liked the idea of the space race, and space travel growing up. Seeking to learn more by leaving Earth is such a beautiful dream. Learning it all was about trying to be be better than the Soviet Union put a bit of a damper on that thought, but none the less it’s still beautiful for those who dream.

 

NASA ended up learning that the explosion was caused by the freezing of two O-rings that were designed to keep sections of the rocket booster separated. They had frozen because of the cold weather in the days leading up, and the day of, the launch. Engineers actually wanted to delay the launch so they could check to make sure there wouldn’t be any failure, but they were denied by superiors. President Reagan reacted like a president should, he appointed a special commission to investigate what went wrong and prevent future catastrophes from happening (History.com Staff).  

 

My first thought when Dr. McCoy explained this tragedy to me was to compare it to 9/11. They’re both an event that is visually and emotionally etched forever in the minds of those who witnessed it, whether in person or on TV. A landmark tragedy in the eyes of America that unfortunately will survive forever.

 

Works Cited:

History.com Staff. “Challenger Disaster.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2010, www.history.com/topics/challenger-disaster.

 

**Fair warning- I wrote this post on 10/05/2017 and forgot to publish it. So please keep in mind that this blog post was written prior to Professor Muench and Professor Kennison’s visit**

This blog post is a response to my classmate Rachel Katz blog post “Our “Good” Deed“. In her blog post she discusses “medical voluntourism” and our classes reaction to the idea of individuals going to third world countries and medically assisting natives without any prior medical experience with the intention of wanting to put it on a resume or college application. One of the parts of Rachel’s blog post was her line “In class we used words like “them”, that how weird it is that “they” would do something so wild without thinking of the repercussions”. Well I am here to put myself in a vulnerable position and speak of my experience as a previous member of this “they” and “them”.  Continue reading “The Path to Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions”

Something that really stood out to me in the podcast we listened to on Friday was the phrase “too fair.” It’s something I’ve been thinking about the past six days because how can anything or anyone be too fair. Too fair is what we should aim for, or least should be the goal on the horizon.  

I really liked how the people on the podcast kind of explained being “too fair.” To them Harold Washington was too fair as the mayor because, as the first African-American mayor of Chicago, he didn’t use his power baisley like literally all mayors beforehand did. Instead of giving projects to workers in the African-American community simply because he was apart of his community, he would give jobs to those he saw best fit for them. To me it’s funny that people get angry over situations like that because it’s what we’re, or at least I was, taught in school. The person who does the best should get the job. People’s bias amazes me that way, the fact people decide things based on anything other than that fact.  

I wish I had learned about Harold Washington before college. I feel like he should be someone we learn about in high school because for one I had no idea Chicago didn’t have an African-American mayor until the 80’s. The first time they mentioned that it really blew my mind. Thinking about it now after the fact it makes total sense. Seeing as how the civil rights movement took place through the 60’s, and change happens so goddamn slow in this country, that unfortunately it really makes sense that Chicago did not have an African-American mayor till the 80’s. And I hate that it makes sense to me, my least favorite thing about this country is the underlying racism that is always present and always has been present.  

Honestly, I think if I had learned about Harold Washington he would have been one of my hero’s. The more I learn about him the more he stands out and this is why admire him so much. In the simplest of terms he didn’t take any bullshit and really did what was right. He was “too fair” and was ridiculed for it but stuck to his guns anyway.  We could use more Harold Washington’s in the world, it’s men like him that inspire me to be better and be “too fair.”

Character development is a critical component of writing a novel. Character development is a tricky task for an author because while they know and understand their character, choosing when and how to reveal information to the reader is a meticulous task. For this blog post I will be analyzing Toni Morrison’s character development of Frank Money in Home. The thought to make this blog post came to mind when my classmate, Maddy, raised the question why did Morrison wait until the very end of the novel to reveal Frank’s killing of the young North Korean girl?  Continue reading “Frank Money A Murderer”