So, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, we’re currently reading a play called The Crucible, by Arthur Miller.
We’ve had to do a series of posts thematically related to this play, but so far I haven’t done any posts that talk much about it directly. Let me give you a quick rundown of what it’s about.
The Crucible is set in Salem during the 1690s, when the Salem Witch Trials took place. It follows the events of the town accusing each other of witchcraft, due mostly to a girl called Abigail Williams lying and manipulating others into lying in order to cover up an affair she had with a farmer named John Proctor. A few dozen innocent people are accused of witchcraft and tried, jailed, or killed. Abigail and her followers pretend to be bewitched in order to support their case. Meanwhile, John Proctor, with the encouragement of his wife Elizabeth, attempts to confess to the court that he had an affair with Abigail, and to tell them that the witchcraft is made up and the people on trial are innocent.
Although the play was based on historical events, it would probably be more accurate to say that it historically reflects the time period in which it was written: the 1950s. During this time, America was on the verge of war with the Soviet Union, and many citizens were suspicious or afraid of the possibility of communist spies among them. Many people, especially those involved with Hollywood, were brought to court and had trials to determine whether they were communists or had ever been communists. Anyone who did something to upset the smooth workings of American society had their name put on the blacklist, and wouldn’t be able to find work.
1950s anti-blacklist protesters
Of course, much like the “witches” in The Crucible, many of the people whose names were put on the blacklist were actually innocent victims who got caught in the crossfire of society’s fear. Some accusations ended up being false or misguided, and some of these innocent people ended up getting their lives ruined anyway.
This is all leading me to the point of this post: the actual prompt I’m completing this week. For my final post of three, I decided to use this prompt:
Think of an image from the play and use that image to create a spatial poem or something similar (an image? a photo essay?).
While a lot of the play doesn’t involve strong images, there was one that stuck with me– a scene in which Abigail, quickly joined by her lackeys, pretends to be seeing and interacting with a small bird in an attempt to condemn Mary Warren. I decided to create a visual representation of this bird out of quotes from the text– and more specifically, lies, since that’s what the bird is made out of in the play.
I colour coded the quotes in order to make it easier to separate them by character. Everything written in black is a lie told by Abby (or a quote from the scene where she is pretending to speak to the bird, which are less lies and more just false actions). Everything written in purple is a lie from Tituba, largely from the scene in which she is describing having allegedly spoken with the devil. Everything in green is a lie from Mary Warren, mostly about being “bewitched” in a court session, which she later admits is a lie Abigail made her tell.
In the center of the bird is one quote in yellow– the single and ultimately damning lie told by Elizabeth Proctor in an attempt to save her husband. I wanted his quote at the center of the bird for a couple reasons– firstly, because the moment it’s pulled from is one of the most important in the story; the climactic ending of act three. Secondly, I wanted it around the “heart” of the bird, because while almost every other lie in this play is spoken in some form of self preservation, Elizabeth lies selflessly, in an attempt to save the man she loves.
All in all, I thought creating a visual representation of the fabricated bird out of all the layers of other fabrications throughout The Crucible would be a nice way to summarize the play, and to wrap up this series of blog posts.
This is another one of those. Today I’ve chosen the prompt “Read “How to Spot a Witch”. Write a paper or create something similar to this essay on how to spot a _________. You fill in the blank: example: How to Spot a Liar. How to Spot a Surfer. Etc. ”.
I knew from the beginning of this assignment that this was a prompt I was interested in completing, but it took me a while to come up with an idea for what I wanted to write about how to spot. I knew I wanted it to be something integral to my own life– something that was a part of my own identity.
The thing I eventually decided to write about was How to Spot a Canadian.
Now, you hear a lot of stereotypes about what Canadians are like, and as a real live Canadian citizen I am here to tell you that almost all of them are, at least in my neck of the woods, pretty much 100% accurate. So, without further ado, here is how to spot a Canadian (with evidence from my own experiences).
#1: Check what they’re wearing. This one is pretty straightforward, so I won’t spend too much time on it. Canadians are known for wearing three things in particular: toques, flannels, and double denim (or, as it’s been dubbed, the Canadian Tuxedo).
Now, I’ve always figured the reasoning behind Canadians wearing toques is pretty obvious– it’s cold here –and I associate flannels largely with the iconography of lumberjacks, which were a big part of Canada’s early history, but I had to do a little bit of research to find out what was so Canadian about double denim.
As it turns out, it’s an interesting story, and it centres around a non-Canadian: Bing Crosby. Way back in the 1950s, Bing Crosby attempted to stay in a hotel in Vancouver. However, they denied him a room. The reason why? He was wearing denim, specifically, a pair of Levi’s jeans, which didn’t meet the hotel dress code. When Levi’s heard about the incident, they decided to create something that would meet the dress code: a tuxedo made out of denim, or a “Canadian Tuxedo”.
As a Canadian, I have of course repped various Canadian looks, although flannels are my favourite.
#2: Find our their favourite coffee chain. Whenever I travel to the states and end up telling someone I’m Canadian, no matter the context, I almost always end up getting asked one question: do you miss Tim Hortons?
As much as a small piece of my soul dies every time I hear this joke, I am a fan of Tim Hortons. I would happily eat Timbits for every meal, not to mention I’m pretty much dependent on coffee to make me a (soft of) functional human being, and Tim Hortons can provide a solid cup of joe.
Tim Hortons is, of course, a piece of Canadian iconography all on its own, but it also ties into another very Canadian thing: hockey. See, Tim Horton (or Miles, as he was actually named), the founder of Tim Horton’s, was a hockey player. Not just any hockey player, either– he was actually considered one of the 100 greatest NHL players in history. He played for twenty four seasons, and might have played more if he wasn’t killed in a car chase at the age of 44.
#3: Find out their favourite sport. To continue from above, another thing Canada is well known for is hockey. While our national sport is actually lacrosse, hockey (or specifically ice hockey) is sort of the unofficial national sport of Canada. Hockey was invented in Windsor, Nova Scotia, and has since become a beloved part of Canada’s culture.
I play hockey, and have from the age of seven, although I have fond memories of playing family hockey games from an even earlier age. If you’ve read about my love of potatoes, you may also know that I spent a lot of time as a child hanging out in hockey rinks while my family members played hockey– one of my sisters and both of my parents are hockey players, and my mum actually played her first hockey game the day I turned one.
I love playing hockey, and consider myself incredibly lucky that I have the opportunity to play. This week, I get to play hockey seven times, and I can think of no more enjoyable way to spend my time.
However, a lot of people prefer not playing hockey but instead watching it, whether on TV or live in a stadium. In elementary school, we were regularly bribed to read more books with the lure of tickets to see the next Giants game. It’s not uncommon to see people wearing jerseys bearing the name and number of their favourite hockey player. In 2011, Vancouverites started riots, which did 5 million dollars worth of property damage, following the defeat of our hockey team, the Canucks, in the Stanley Cup– one example of various similar incidents across Canada.
One person who perhaps should have gotten a nod in the Canadian fashion section is Don Cherry, longtime announcer for Hockey Night in Canada, and the owner of many a unique and eye catching suit.
#4: Listen for Canadian vocabulary when they speak. Canadians are known for using a couple of specific words: “sorry” and “eh”.
I say sorry a lot– in fact, I almost didn’t register that this comic was making fun of Canadians until the punchline, considering that this is an interaction I could reasonably have (probably in a Tim Hortons).
That being said, I don’t apologize quite as much as the folks over in Toronto, where they actually had to pass a law to protect people who say sorry too much. This law, called the Apology Act, essentially states that saying sorry isn’t a direct admission of guilt, the way it might be considered in a court of law other places, because people in Canada frequently apologize for things that were not actually their fault.
There’s also, interestingly enough, a song called Sorry by Canadian singer Justin Bieber.
As for the word “eh”, it tends to be true of less Canadians than the whole overapologizing thing, and you mostly hear it used ironically to make fun of Canadian stereotypes. However, I personally use it unironically, albeit somewhat infrequently, and I do hear it used by other people, so the Canadians-saying-eh stereotype might not be completely untrue.
#5: Offer them maple syrup. Earlier this year, we went on a class trip to California. While there, we worked with buddies from a school called High Tech High. We were encouraged to bring a small gift of some kind for our buddies– I brought a coffee crisp, a chocolate bar available in Canada but not in the United States.
When I gave this gift to my California buddy, he politely thanked me, and then said, “I got you something, too,” before proceeding to pull an entire jug of maple syrup out of his backpack and handing it to me. I didn’t actually get to keep the maple syrup, seeing as it’s ridiculously expensive, but it was an interesting nod to just how much much maple syrup is associated with Canada.
Maple trees are actually such an important part of Canada’s iconography that our flag features a maple leaf. We also have a hockey team called the Maple Leafs. Even our pennies, back when we had them, featured maple leaves.
The most important part of the maple tree, however, is not the leaves. It’s actually the sap, which is what’s used to make maple syrup.
Back in 2011, and ongoing through part of 2012, a heist took place in Quebec. This heist lasted months, and involved the theft of the equivalent of almost 9 million dollars, a value higher than that of any other Canadian heist.
The thing that was being stolen, as you’ve probably guessed by now, was maple syrup.
There’s a Canadian tradition of pouring strips of maple syrup onto snow and letting it freeze into a semi-hard candy, known as snow candy, which is then eaten on a stick. This can be a difficult thing to eat, seeing as despite being frozen, the candy is still incredibly sticky and wont to get stuck in the hair of the person eating it.
Even our money smells like maple syrup. We also have maple flavoured bacon, and maple bacon doughnuts, which are perhaps the epitome of stereotypical Canadian food. In general, we have a larger supply of maple syrup than anyone could ever need.
#6: Try one of these miscellaneous ways to spot a Canadian.
Attempt to pay them in Canadian tire money.
Find out if they, much like my grandpa, ever attempted to keep a pet moose during their childhood.
Ask them about their country’s economy and see if they burst into tears.
Offer them poutine.
In order to supplement my understanding of Canadian stereotypes and how they apply to real people living in Canada, I asked three Canadians some questions.
This has been a lengthy blog post, eh? I’m sorry about that.
So, we’re currently reading The Crucible, a play written in the fifties by Arthur Miller, and set in 1690s Salem– right at the time of the Salem Witch Trials. To support our comprehension of the themes of this play, we were given a series of related prompts of which to choose three to make blog posts about:
1. A major theme in “The Crucible” deals with guilt. Recall a time when you felt guilty about something you had done or said. It may not be as serious as the characters in the play, but it was probably just as real. It can be some recent experience or one that took place in childhood. How did you deal with those feelings? As you look back now were your fears justified, or were you being too hard on yourself?
2. Think of an image from the play and use that image to create a spatial poem or something similar (an image? a photo essay?).
3. Abigail was a strong, domineering influence on Mary Warren. When did the power or control of someone else influence you?
4. Recall a time when you were wrongly accused of something, or of a time when you wrongly accused someone of something. What was it and how did you feel?
5. Abigail took revenge for Proctor’s dismissal of her. Describe a time when you sought revenge or someone sought revenge on you.
6. Describe your concept of heaven or describe your concept of hell.
7. Describe a time when you have felt isolated.
8. What do you feel remorse for?
9. Read “How to Spot a Witch”. Write a paper or create something similar to this essay on how to spot a _________. You fill in the blank: example: How to Spot a Liar. How to Spot a Surfer. Etc.
10. This play is consider universal and enduring because of its themes, despite being written over 50 years ago. What media (movie, book, music, TV) will be universal and enduring that was created in your generation’s time (so far!)? Argue for it.
For my first prompt, I chose to write about a media from my generation I thought would have a lasting impact or still be considered relevant way into the future.
A media that I think will last a long time, as you may have guessed from the title, is Stranger Things. Stranger Things echoes the style and setting of a show from the eighties, a feeling which is supported by its also taking place in the eighties. There’s a sci fi aspect that makes it seem almost a bit like a fairy tale, while also giving it a vibe that harkens back to things like Star Wars, DoctorWho, or StarTrek.
And yet, it’s not geeky or unfamiliar. The cinematography is amazing. The characters are all incredible and very layered, and they feel much like real people. While some of them are built from familiar archetypes, almost none of them are actually cut and dry. The show also puts a lot of focus on developing the relationships between these characters, even in dynamics that seem a little bit odd couple at first; for instance, Dustin and Steve teaming up in season two after being unable to locate anyone else.
The show introduces a type of monster that we haven’t already seen in a hundred pieces of media before this: the demogorgon. Because it hasn’t already been overdone in varying levels of campiness, the demogorgon is a lot more effective than just using a classic monster, while still clearly providing a foil for the human villains in the show. While the demogorgon probably won’t be used directly in other media, it could inspire the designs of new monsters, or new versions of monsters, in other shows or movies in the coming years.
In fact, a lot of things about the show are iconic symbols of specifically this show; the wall with the Christmas lights, for instance. Despite literally being a wall, that part of the show has inspired sweaters, artwork, even Halloween costumes. It’s become an immediately recognizable icon of the show. StrangerThings is chock full of this sort of iconography; it has a large supernatural component, but it also has taken completely ordinary things, such as Eggos, and turned them into a part of the show’s branding. This sort of thing is really effective in making the show long lasting, because small things remind you of it even when you’re not watching it.
Another thing StrangerThings does well is that the show seems to operate within the genre that would appeal to each of its characters, while also being cohesive. The sci fi element I discussed previously mostly centres around the group of middle school kids, who are all big fans of StarWars, frequently referencing it throughout the show. For the teenage characters, the plot alludes to eighties slasher films– Nancy is set up to be the “final girl”, the one who has to learn how to fight the bad guy that’s killed her best friend. Her boyfriend, Steve, even seems to fit the terrible-boyfriend slasher archetype to a tee. However, while Nancy does end up taking on the villain, both of them have character development that sees them subverting and inverting the roles they would normally play in a horror film, and becoming much more fleshed out characters. As for the adults in the show, while they don’t fit quite as neatly into one genre, they still seem to be in a separate thread than the younger characters. We start out seeing them as kind of burnouts– Hopper, the chief of police with a substance abuse problem, and Joyce, the single mum who suddenly has to deal with her biggest fear: losing her son. However, they both prove to be much more than meets the eye.
There’s a solid chance that the special effects will start to lose their effectiveness with time, but currently there’s nothing in the show to make it look or sound less than first rate. There’s just a new type of movie monster, a character that’s inspired endless Halloween costumes, an incredible score, and some less than subtle product placement.
So, we recently went on a trip to Oregon and Washington. Our purpose there? To learn about the Manhattan Project, and specifically the Hanford Site.
Our final project was to create a video talking about five things about Hanford, based on the format of this video:
We worked in small groups to create our videos, although one of my group members was unfortunately unable to go on the trip.
While we were in Oregon and Washington, we got the chance to have some really edifying firsthand experiences with what we were learning about. Although we weren’t allowed to take pictures, we got to visit the Reed Reactor, a nuclear reactor run by Reed College, and see it almost be powered up– and then not quite work, known as a Scram.
Then we got to a place where could take pictures, not to mention videos and interviews: the actual Hanford Site, now a national park. We got to take a tour about the history of the site pre-Manhattan Project, and we visited the B-Reactor, a full sized nuclear reactor used during the Project.
We got some good footage and some informative interviews with our tour guides, which we were then able to incorporate into our video.
However, not all our preparation for our video happened on our trip. Before we left, we did a couple of minor assignments to acquaint ourselves with what the Manhattan Project actually was.
First of all, we created a newsreel set in the 1940s, talking about the first bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. This newsreel emulated actual newsreels of the day, and was told from a 1940s American perspective.
Second of all, we created a “character card” for a person who was involved with the Manhattan Project. I chose to create mine about Edward Teller, a physicist known as the “father of the Hydrogen Bomb”.
(In case you are unable to read it due to the low image quality, this is what the text on the card says:
Edward Teller was a American nuclear physicist, originally from Hungary, best known for his work on the Hydrogen Bomb. In fact, he has been nicknamed the “father of the Hydrogen Bomb”. Teller worked on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, starting in 1943. He was present at the Trinity test, where, despite being ordered to lie down with his face away from the bomb site, he and a few other scientists turned to watch the first atomic bomb drop. Years later, Teller got permission from Truman to work on a thermonuclear bomb. He returned to Los Alamos, and he and a mathematician called Stanislaw Ulam developed a Hydrogen Bomb.)
Once we had done that, it was time to start doing work for our actual videos. We were sorted into our groups, and we started brainstorming ideas. My group’s original script, giving an overview of the Manhattan Project, looked like this:
“August2nd, 1939:
Sir–
Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Sailard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into an important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. … This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable– though much less certain –that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed.”
– Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd to President Franklin Roosevelt, 1939.
In August of 1939, early on in World War II, a group of scientists, most famously Leó Szilárd, approached Albert Einstein and asked him to sign a letter to the then-president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt. With this letter, they intended to warn Roosevelt of the technological process of Nazi Germany, and to prompt him to attempt to develop the same technology in the US. The technology they were warning him of was nuclear fission– the ability to release energy by splitting a single atom of uranium, discovered by Enrico Fermi –and potentially, although they didn’t exist at the time, nuclear bombs.
Despite the US trying to stay out of the war as much as they could, Roosevelt took the advice of Szilárd and Einstein, and started an operation to build a nuclear weapon. This operation, kept almost entirely secret, was known as the “Manhattan Project”. Although it started with one office in– unsurprisingly –Manhattan, New York, the project would grow into a big enough operation to employ hundreds of thousands of people. Literal entire cities of people, in fact; in the interest of keeping the project secret, the US government actually created new cities in remote locations where their employees, and their respective families if needed, would live. These cities– Los Alamos, Oakridge, and Hanford– are known as the “secret cities of the Manhattan Project”.
Secret cities is a rather apt name considering that even the people living in the cities to work on the Manhattan Project didn’t really know what they were doing. All they knew was that they were working on a confidential military operation, and doing their part to contribute to scientific progress, as well as the war effort. For a lot of people, helping the war effort was motivation enough– especially post-1941, the year in which Japan launched its attacks on Pearl Harbour and the US, now two years into the Manhattan Project, officially joined the war.
Aside from wanting to do their part, people were motivated by the offer of a steady job with good pay. The entire budget for the project was about 2.2 billion dollars– or, in today’s US dollar, $33,575,000,000,000 (33 billion, five hundred seventy five thousand million dollars). While some of the jobs on the Manhattan Project required a lot of scientific knowhow and prior education, many jobs did not, and people were sometimes recruited as early as directly out of high school.
The people were motivated to join, work and innovate all in the name of scientific advancement. The only problem was they didn’t know what they were doing, they didn’t know the end goal, product or idea. Until it was too late. All that scientists knew was there small piece of the puzzle, they didn’t see the whole picture until the news broke of the dropping of the bombs on Japan. Some scientists felt victorious, others felt proud, but some felt the strongest and most painful emotion. Regret. The most famous case is Robert Oppenheimer, who was famously quoted saying: ‘I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ This is the most famous example of regret, but he wasn’t the only one– this feeling was felt amongst scientists and the public.
This script is a far cry, however, from what we actually ended up with. After some brainstorming, rethinking, and reconfiguring, we had a new idea, and a new thesis: Many people worked on or were affected by the Hanford Site, whether directly or in a roundabout way, without understanding what was happening or why.
This thesis became the backbone of our video, now centred around the people of Hanford, split into five groups: those who were evicted in order for the Hanford Site to be built, workers who didn’t know the true purpose of the project, workers who did know the true purpose of the project, children and families who ended up living on the Hanford Site, and the general public. Our video talks about each of these groups, both generally and with some specific stories we learned about in our research and our travels.
This was a project that I feel I could have done a lot better on. The final product we came up with was not up to the standards I would like to uphold, and I personally feel that my time management on this project should have been significantly better than it was, and that had it been so our end product could have been improved. If I could do this project again in the future, I think I would try and be more prepared before leaving for the trip, to have helped contribute to the editing more, and to make sure we had multiple copies of our footage saved (especially things like interviews that are irreplaceable) so that we didn’t lose anything.
However, I learned a lot about the Manhattan Project, and I found it a lot more interesting than I had initially expected, especially when we got to actually see th remnants of the town, and the preserved Hanford Site. I’m glad that I went on this trip and did this project, because it encouraged me to have a more open mindset and take an interest in something I would have otherwise written off, and to hear about the lives and perspectives of people that I didn’t really know about before this. As much as there are things that I would change about the way I did this project, I’m still happy with what I’ve taken away from it.
So, you might remember we visited Oregon a few years ago for our very first ever unit of PLP.
Well, we went back.
We took a field school to Oregon and Washington in an effort to learn about the Manhattan Project, specifically the Hanford Site. The Hanford Site is now a national park, so we got to take a tour of the actual buildings and reactors, and interview some people who actually worked there. All this contributed to the “Manhattan Project Project”– our current history assignment, centred around making a video about Hanford.
However, as much work as we got done there, we also took the opportunity to do some off topic learning, sightseeing, and lollipop eating .
One of my favourite places that we visited was Powell’s Books, the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world. While we were there, we were given an assignment: find a book with a weird title and recreate it, and find a weird book related to something we actually liked or cared about and take a picture with it.
The first book that I chose was called Where’s My F**king Unicorn?, and I took this picture looking confused over having somehow misplaced said unicorn.
I had some trouble finding a weird book related to something I liked, but I eventually settled for this book about hating Trump:
The bookstore itself was pretty amazing. It had a coffee shop, multiple gift shops, and an incredible amount of books. I would have liked to have had more time to explore or buy something, but it was a great place to get a chance to see.
Another interesting place we went was an art museum in Washington, known as the Maryhill Museum of Art. Some of their displays included essentially a displayed storage room for mismatched or broken pieces, a display of chess sets from around the world, and a collection of miniature clothes made by famous designers.
However, the exhibit I found most interesting was a collection of pieces created over several decades, which had been sparked when the artist had a nervous breakdown. Of that series, my favourite painting was this one:
Other than our main project, there was one stop on our trip that we devoted multiple classes to preparing for– this entailed watching instructional videos, looking at websites online, answering questions, and receiving detailed instructions on what to do when we got there.
As you may have guessed, the thing we were preparing to do was eat shrimp.
Now, I don’t eat seafood, so I can’t say for sure, but this seemed like a lot of preparation for one meal. However, as we were informed, this was no ordinary shrimp– this was endless shrimp, and those who participated in eating it would go forth like warriors and soldier through as many plates as they could stand.
Actual footage of Hughes teaching
As prepared as we were, however, we still had to wait to get into the restaurant. Naturally, we took this time to enjoy one of the only things the States has better than Canada: the continued existence of Target. It was early October at the time, so there was a plethora of Halloween decorations available. I love Halloween, so I decided to get a decoration while I was there, as did my friend Parker.
After a lot of work, some new experiences, and as many lollipops as we could steal from our hotel, it was time to turn around and come home. I enjoyed this trip, and although we didn’t go to the same places, it was interesting to visit Oregon with this class again after all this time.
