With just a touch of catalyst

Adlih Britton: 24825358                                                                                                        Dec 15, 2023

Welcome to Just a Touch of Catalyst! I am excited to embark on this weeks article where we will be discussing some important inorganic chemistry reactions. Excitingly, some of this week’s work was published by Dr. Laurel Schafer, a professor at UBC1! I highly recommend you take a look at some of her impactful work.
As always get comfortable, make yourself a tea and we’ll get into the nitty gritty of two very important inorganic reaction mechanisms.

When baking I often find myself shocked with the time certain recipes take. I can’t be the only one who sits down to make something and takes one look at the recipes and is gobsmacked! 3 hours? I don’t have that kind of time! Especially if I am not confident that the recipe will produce anything that tastes very good! What if I mess up? What if the food I make just doesn’t taste very good? Well then what a waste of time and ingredients. It would be nice to have a recipe that could guarantee a delicious food item, in a short amount of time. This conundrum sets the stage for what our chemistry will be attempting to combat today.

As always, our list of terms. Make sure to revisit these if the metaphors become confusing!

Chemistry Term What is it? (Chemistry) Cooking Equivalent
Catalysis A mechanism for making a molecule, that uses something and regenerates that thing7 Using an ingredient to accelerate the process, but not to use in the food
Hydroamination A catalytic reaction that can react a nitrogen with a double bond or triple bond6 A recipe for a more complex meal, which reacts a carbon with a nitrogen
Hydroaminoalkylation A catalytic reaction that can react the carbon next to a nitrogen with a double bond or triple bond8 A recipe for a more complex meal, that involves a reaction beside the nitrogen

Now that we’ve gotten the terms out of the way, lets get started with these wonderful reactions!
You may be wondering why I ranted to you about long cooking times and yucky tasting meals above. Aside from this being a regular occurrence, these issues are the premise of using the reactions mentioned above. In chemistry, alike cooking, some reactions can be challenging and as such can invoke long waiting periods. These long periods can be upsetting to a researcher if they are trying to make an important molecule. Just like how you might be upset if you have pulled up a meringue recipe for a dinner party and realize they are going to take you 3 hours to make, you might not be able to finish them in time! Without adequate preparation this meringue cook may miss the dinner party which would mean the efforts were (in essence) wasted. Like cooks heading to a dinner party, chemists would like reactions to occur in a timely manor such that they can create important molecules efficiently. The reactions we will be discussing today provide efficient routes to many important molecules, because they provide creative ways to react a nitrogen. Roughly 40% of pharmaceutical drugs and pharmaceutical drug candidates have carbon-nitrogen bonds2 meaning they are extremely important in pharmaceutical drug design and synthesis. As a reader you may be wondering why should I care about how many pharmaceutical drugs have nitrogens? Well to that I might say that pharmaceutical drugs are extremely important in todays society and most people will interact with them tons throughout their lifetime! Take for example a bacterial infection, prescribed antibiotics such as Penicillin3 or Cefalexin4 will ensure a speedy recovery. Both of these drugs have carbon-nitrogen bonds that can be challenging to make, requiring some creative syntheses which is where the reactions we will be discussing come into play!

Pictured below are both the chemical structures for Penicillin or Cefalexin. If these structures are confusing or too complicated, pay little attention to them! They are merely here to provide the reader with evidence of the carbon nitrogen bonds found in pharmaceutical drugs.

Without pharmaceutical drugs, a small infection may lead to serious longterm health impacts5, which goes to highlight the important role they play in our lives. People require pharmaceutical drugs for a myriad of reasons, though without adequate avenues to make these pharmaceutical drugs we wouldn’t be able to rely on them. Therefore it becomes extremely important to develop synthesis to make these important molecules as efficiently as possible which is where hydroamination and hydroaminoalkylation, the reactions we are discussing today, come in. Though pharmaceutical drug synthesis is an expansive topic I believe it is essential to understand why these reactions are so important to us, and you can’t get that without getting the role they play in pharmaceutical drug synthesis! For the duration of this article we will leave pharmaceutical applications behind and get into the nitty gritty of the reactions mechanisms!

Hydroamination and hydroaminoalkylation provide efficient reaction pathways to important molecules! Switching back to our baking analogy, say we wanted to make meringues but the recipes were going to take too long, and we still had that dinner party to attend. We’d be looking for an efficient, delicious, recipe for meringues, this is how we can think of the aforementioned reactions. Lets begin by discussing the hydroamination reaction!

Hydroamination is just a fancy word for a reaction that adds a carbon, previously in a double or triple bond, to a nitrogen6. This reaction falls into the category of organometallic reactions, which means it involves carbons as well as metals6. The metals that contribute to this reaction contribute in the form of catalysts, which means they increase the reaction rate, but don’t end up in the product7. Funny concept, isn’t it! If you’re trying to conceptualize a catalyst, try thinking about it as a spoon in a cooking sense. If your attempting to mix ingredients in a bowl it would be faster to use a spoon then to just stare at the bowl and wait for gravity and diffusion to do the mixing for you! In chemistry when reactions are slow or will not proceed often a catalyst is used to expedite the process and guide the molecules to the product. Though importantly, the catalyst doesn’t end up in the product, its is regenerated, similar to a spoon in cooking, it is used and then can be reused again once washed! In the case of the hydroamination reaction, the metals increase the reaction rate for the process of adding the carbon to the nitrogen.

An example of the hydroamination reaction is provided below. Let’s break it down!

On the far left in pink, you can see the double bonded carbons. This is what we are going to add to the nitrogen. Beside the carbon double bond we can see the nitrogen that we are going to bind to the carbon from the double bond. Over the arrow we can see our catalyst, or our “spoon.” Lastly we can see the product where we have nitrogen added to the carbon. The hydroamination reaction allows for the reaction of a nitrogen at a relatively un-reactive carbon6. A reaction accomplishing this is highly sought after because many important molecules require reacting nitrogens at relatively complex and un-reactive carbon centres, like the pharmaceutical drugs we discussed earlier!

If we return to our cooking analogy briefly, lets set the hydroamination reaction aside as our meringue recipe. We’ve found a terrific recipe to making meringues, a complex dessert item,  easier! Though what if we wanted to add a topping to our meringues, or cover them in whipped cream. How might we consider this added challenge, and what recipe should we use?

Breaking down our new problem into bite sized pieces, we need to find a new recipe that will add some flair and flavour to our original meringues, while also ensuring that the flavour profiles match. We might be inclined to find a similar recipe, that will alter things just so, that our final product is different.

 

This (though confusing) is my attempt at an analogy for the the hydroaminoalkylation reaction, which is a tad trickier to describe. The hydroaminoalkylation reaction differs from the hydroamination reaction because instead of reacting off the nitrogen, it reacts off the carbon right beside the nitrogen7, this gives the product some new flair! The hydroaminoalkylation reaction then opens the doors further to challenging syntheses that invoke carbon-nitrogen containing compounds7.

The hydroaminoalkylation reaction, pictured below, reacts at the carbon beside the nitrogen, instead of the nitrogen itself, so let’s go through it!

As you can see this reaction adds the carbon beside the nitrogen which differs from hydroamination where the carbon was added to the nitrogen! Within the hydroaminoalkylation reaction a catalyst is used to increase the reaction rate. Between the hyrdoamination reaction and the hydroaminoalkylation reaction the catalysts will differ, though overarching aspects of the catalyst will remain constant. Both reactions will have catalysts made out of metals that have been found to have high activity, meaning they are active in the reaction and wield their electrons in a way that complements the substrate7! In addition, both hydroamination and hydroaminoalkylation make use of molecules on the catalyst. These molecules job is to help direct movement and ensure the product formation. Between these two reactions the differences in the catalyst appear when looking at the metal chosen as well as the molecules chosen to compliment it. Many research groups have found unique catalysts that preform specific hydroamination and hydroaminoalkylation reactions1,8 and continued research on catalytic design is a very important aspect of inorganic chemistry!

If we return to our baking analogy we could say that, with  the hydroaminoalkylation reaction, we have found a recipe that will add that extra flair to the meringues. The recipe provides the requred differences from our standard recipe efficiently! This means we have now come up with a rather complex recipe for very important meringues with a topping for our dinner party.

With both of these reactions in our back pockets the process of making these complex substances can be easier! If we transition back to the chemistry we have discussed, looking at the importance of the reactions we can see that both hydroamination and hydroaminoalkylation provide reaction pathways that focus on reacting nitrogens (whether that be on or beside!). Revisiting what we discussed at the beginning, nitrogen containing molecules are extremely important in pharmaceutical drug design, and so these reactions can provide efficient reaction pathways to important molecules. Therefore the reactions we have discussed today are assets for drug discovery!

Now that we’ve gotten through all that chemistry you deserve some meringues! You might want to try out this recipe! (Nudge-nudge, look at the time required!)

Citations

  1. Hao, H.; Schafer, L. L. Metal–Ligand Cooperativity in Titanium-Catalyzed Anti-Markovnikov Hydroamination. ACS Catalysis 2020, 10 (13), 7100–7111. https://doi.org/10.1021/acscatal.0c00491
  2. Research could enable assembly line synthesis of prevalent amine-containing drugs | Chemistry at Illinois. chemistry.illinois.edu. https://chemistry.illinois.edu/news/2022-04-15/research-could-enable-assembly-line-synthesis-prevalent-amine-containing-drugs.
  3. Yip, D. W.; Gerriets, V. Penicillin. PubMed. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK554560/#:~:text=Penicillin%20is%20a%20medication%20used.
  4.  Australia, H. Cefalexin (Cephalexin). www.healthdirect.gov.au. https://www.healthdirect.gov.au/cephalexin#:~:text=Cefalexin%20(also%20known%20as%20cephalexin (accessed 2023-12-15).
  5.  What Would Our World Be Like Without Medicines? | Twist Bioscience. www.twistbioscience.com. https://www.twistbioscience.com/blog/perspectives/what-would-our-world-be-without-medicines.
  6.  Chemistry LibreTexts. https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Inorganic_Chemistry/Supplemental_Modules_and_Websites_(Inorganic_Chemistry)/Catalysis/Catalyst_Examples/Hydroamination#:~:text=Hydroamination%20is%20a%20reaction%20that (accessed 2023-11-05).
  7. Catalysts. Chemistry LibreTexts. https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Inorganic_Chemistry/Supplemental_Modules_and_Websites_(Inorganic_Chemistry)/Catalysis/Catalysts.
  8.  DiPucchio, R. C.; Rosca, S.-C.; Schafer, L. L. Hydroaminoalkylation for the Catalytic Addition of Amines to Alkenes or Alkynes: Diverse Mechanisms Enable Diverse Substrate Scope. Journal of the American Chemical Society 2022, 144 (26), 11459–11481. https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.1c10397.

     

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Waco and the Branch Davidians

Recently in our final months as PLP 12 students we have been working on our zettlekasten. We have officially gone through the Turning Points, Terrorism, and Music units. Our final unit before we begin our exhibition is Extreme belief’s, mainly looking at New Religious Movement’s (NRM) formally known as cults. I have been tasked with doing some background research into a certain cult to share in this post, and I have chosen Branch Davidians.

Branch Davidians are a offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventists, which is a recognized autonomous branch of the Protestant Christian church which believe in a second coming (return of Jesus after his ascent to heaven). The Branch Davidians also believe in a second coming, though they also believe in a more apocalyptic end to society. The Davidian movement was founded in 1930, and passed through 3 people’s leadership before David Koresh became leader in the 1980’s. He joined the group in 1981, and quickly climbed the ranks, through a sexual relationship with the leader at the time, as well as the fact he claimed he prophesied the group’s future. He also claimed he was the Messiah as part of his New Light doctrine which declared all women as his wife, including underage girls, and women who were already married. Also any child of the Messiah is a sacred child, and so he went on to have 13 children with many of his  illegitimate wives within the commune. The Branch Davidians lived in Mount Carmel, a large piece of land in Waco, Texas, turned into a commune. There were many things that brought the commune to the attention of the law enforcement, such as sexual abuse, child molesting and possession of illegal firearms. Though the last one caused the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) to invade the compound on February 28th 1993. In the unsuccessful invasion of the compound 5 Branch Davidians, and 5 AFT agents were killed. This began the 51-day standoff between the FBI and the Branch Davidians. During the standoff Malcolm Glawell, from the New Yorker said this of the operation:

“the F.B.I. assembled what has been called probably the largest military force ever gathered against a civilian suspect in American history: ten Bradley tanks, two Abrams tanks, four combat-engineering vehicles, six hundred and sixty-eight agents in addition to six U.S. Customs officers, fifteen U.S. Army personnel, thirteen members of the Texas National Guard, thirty-one Texas Rangers, a hundred and thirty-one officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety, seventeen from the McLennan County sheriff’s office, and eighteen Waco police, for a total of eight hundred and ninety-nine people.” Link

The 51-day standoff ended in a siege of the compound by the FBI which ended up killing 76 Branch Davidians.

This group was determined to be a cult because of their charismatic leader, the brainwashing of members, the disruption of normal life through seclusion, and offered an answer to the apocalyptic ending people had been looking for. David Koresh also had an incredibly strong hold on the members of the group, to the point that people would give up their children if they misbehaved. They were also told to beat thier children at as young as 8 months old to teach obedience. They wanted the kids to listen so that when the day came (as they were a doomsday cult they prophesied the end of the world) the kids would listen to the adults and follow orders. Children who grew up in the cult said, “You were raised with just fear, everywhere is fear” (Kiery Jewel). Inciting fear into the children gave Koresh more power, and demonstrated further the development of the Branch Davidians as a cult.

The apocalyptic ending of the cult also enticed members to join People had been attracted initially to the group because it branched away from the traditional Seventh-Day Adventists, and brought more light upon the second coming (return of Jesus after his acent to heaven). Most members though had been first or second generation members, or had been involved before Koresh became a leader. Though what enticed many people to join Branch Davidians was David Koresh’s claim that he was a messiah, had spoken to god, and knew the end of the world was coming. He spoke so powerfully, people just believed him. The answers he had gained from being a Messiah made people want to join the cult, really demonstrating that people in vulnerable states, or at a crossroads in life, will listen if you give them answers.

I highly suggest you visit this website if you would like to learn more about the cult (The Waco tragedy, explained)

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What is “original”

Recently I was talking with someone about a interesting question someone had proposed them. The question was, “Say you built a ship, and it was the first of its kind. We’ll say its a pirate ship. Now say every year you take one plank of wood off the pirate ship and replace it with a new plank of wood. With the plank that you took off the ship, you begin to build a new ship. Say 1000 years passes and you’ve successfully removed all the planks and built complete other ship out of the planks of wood you removed from the pirate ship. Which ship is the original?”

The idea of an original event starting something, just seems absurd. The more I learn, the more I realize that history tends to repeat itself quite a bit. I was just thinking about this because today I was discussing the current stock market with someone today. We were talking about how much wood costs right now, an absurd amount. The housing market is in a bubble, its just like everything that I learned back in our first unit about turning points and stock market crash are flashing back to me.

Though this analogy might fit more comfortably with terrorism. Acts of terrorism have tended (I am not a professional, so this is all coming from the research I did) to be built on top of one another. Each act has to outdo the previous to maintain the amount of attention needed for people to respond to their cause. Mr. Hughes brought up a point about the mass shootings (defined by the Gun Violence Archive as: 4 or more people shot or killed not including the shooter LINK) in the US. The news tends to pick up larger events, and so larger shootings tend to end up on the news, but not all of them. From January 1st to May 28th this year there have been 225 mass shootings in the United States alone. As of April 30th 206 people died from mass shootings in the States. Now the pandemic has heightened shootings, as 2020 and 2021 have been really bad. Even now as I google “mass shootings in the United States” articles pop up published 17 hours ago, about shootings that happened today. Theres a fine line between not wanting to hear any more bad news, like choosing to ignore or avoid information like this, but theres also the side that news broadcasters are choosing not to display this 24/7. There has been (on average) more then 1 shooting a day in 2021, so why haven’t we heard about them all? Many news broadcasting companies have only chosen to mention the largest shootings, and  to recognize them. The United States Government will fly its flag at half mast when a large shooting has been committed to memorialize those lost. But it doesn’t fly its flag at half mast every day, or for every shooting. These things that I’ve found are interesting, because at the end of the day the recognition of a shooting only comes when its larger then average, and when the average is increasing at a steady pace, it just looks like exponential growth.

So I guess bringing it back to “what is original”, my conclusion is that if something was original you would never be able to find it because it would become buried under the exponential amount of people doing the same thing. For the ship analogy it means that the original ship must be the one that wasn’t made last.

 

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The more you fight, the less people see.

***Quick sand. Hint, hint

As I’ve been working through these past 2 units in PLP, Turning Points, and School of Rock, I’ve noticed something. Human beings have extremely low attentions spans. This is a fact for so much more than just these past 2 units though, it’s a common factor that each individual displays every day. I can connect this factor even further to my recent kayak guide training.

I was in charge of teaching a few lessons, and to prepare I had practiced my lessons with another guide. This other guide taught me a lot, and gave me a lot to think about, but one thing he couldn’t stress enough was that people have incredibly low attention spans. I really let this one sit with me. He went on to tell me about how you basically shape every lesson around the fact that peoples attention spans are so low so everything has to be short, sweet, and engaging. Obviously I know that my own personal attention span is low, but it was interesting to learn about general peoples attention spans.

Ok, I took myself off course there but I felt that it was important to include that this is a common occurrence. I had also come up with another example. I’m guessing everyone has seen a missing animal poster, (look right).

These posters are a good metaphor for how well people can retain interest in something. I know personally when I see a missing animal poster I’ll take a photo, and make sure I keep my eye out. As time goes by though I don’t actively look anymore. I thought this was an insensitive problem of mine, so the second I notice myself doing this I tend to look harder. Which ends up just faltering out. I used this analogy because as we are faced with an issue, or another persons problem for too long (I am not sure how long, I would absolutely love to do research about this!!!) we loose interest, not because we become uninterested per say, but rather we’ve seen it, and now we are done. Naomi Klein talked a lot about this in her book “On Fire” as well as “The Shock Doctrine,” where she argues that for an event to change the publics perspective, it needs to shock them, and I mean really shock them.

Now taking this analogy to political movements we can apply this to the Climate Crisis firstly. The Climate Justice movement started in the 1980’s. So we have had 40 years, an entire generation of time to figure something out, and yet we are worse off then we were in the 1980’s. Why? Because like quick sand and missing dog posters, the more you promote it, the less people want to see it. And we know that it is almost impossible to make people want to see something when they don’t want to. (Now I am talking mostly about people who live in countries that reside in the Global North). The more people force climate activism, the less and less attention seem to have.

This can be applied too many political movements, though I will preface my next paragraph by saying that I believe that there is much more going on then peoples lack of interest when it comes to the Black Live Matter movement and the Civil Rights movement. I do believe though that this plays a role in peoples lack of change.

 

The Civil Rights movement (officially) started in the 1950’s. A really long time ago. Think 2 generations, and 13 different presidents. And yet black people are still being treated as less. Take Hurricane Katerina as an example. After the hurricane hit New Orleans, a predominantly black city, in 2005, it took the national guard 5 days to get there and help the people. When people tried to escape the city by crossing a bridge to another town they were forced back into New Orleans by people with guns on the other side of the bridge, sending them back into a figurative hell.

The conclusion is that the longer you protest something, and the longer you fight for your rights it seems, the less people will pay attention. Going back to what I said earlier about kayaking, it looks like more than just my lesson plans have to be “short, sweet and engaging.”

Additional connection: Free Palestine Movement (more reading here), and how it started in 2003.

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Let them fight for themselves

The event that started the Cuban missile crisis was the Cuban revolution. The US got involved when JFK proposed that Cubans fight, and the revolution themselves after the US had already gotten involved. 

JFK decided to make an army of Cuban people who were against the revolution. So he sent this army of American/Cuban people to take down the the Cuban revolution. This was thought of as a very strong idea, JFK believed this was the solution. The battle is called The Bay of Pigs, and when it failed miserably it humiliated the US government.

You’d think that people (the US government to be specific) would have learned from this experience, that they wouldn’t make army’s of people to fight their own people in a proxy war. Well your wrong if you thought they wouldn’t do it again. If theres one thing I learned it’s that the states loves a good proxy war.

This same idea of proxy warfare, and making people fight your wars, was used at the end of the Vietnam war.

Before Nixon was elected he campaigned saying he knew how to end the Vietnam war. He didn’t. He used this same idea. He called his idea Vietnamization. To make the people in Vietnam fight for themselves. This looked like getting all the American troops (the support in Siagon) and people out of Saigon before the fall, and leaving the few non-communist people to fight the war the US had waged. What this did was deprive the Vietnam people who were in favour of Saigon of safety and leave them to die. 

Now you might think that maybe after this has happened twice the US might take a hint. Leaving/leading other people to fight your war is not the way to go. But yet, you’re wrong again.

This same concept is being used for the removal of US troops from Afghanistan by July 4th this year. Biden said that Afghan troops have been trained to hold up the country to avoid collapse. Obviously we don’t know how this will end, maybe Biden really has developed a sound foundation, but with the way things have gone in the past, I have doubts. I would love to believe that things will be sound in Afghanistan once the troops leave, but history tends to repeat itself. I guess only time will tell. 

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Does a turning point have to be a crisis?

So we have been doing quite a bit of research lately about turning points, and I have found quite a few interesting connections between topics. One that I would like to start off with is the association of a crisis to a turning point. I understand this is a broad idea but I would like to walk you through my thinking.

I first came across this idea when we were looking into the assassination of JFK. I had been playing with the idea of a turning point requiring a crisis for a bit, it had popped into my head when we talked about The New Deal and The Great Depression, and I had also had the same thought when we discussed The Cuban Missile Crisis. When we started to talk about the JFK assassination I quickly started to draw connections to the crisis of it all, how America’s sweetheart, their young, beautiful president was killed. How he was visiting Dallas with his wife, who had just birthed a still born child, and was still grieving. How he was so close to making it to lunch when he was shot. The crisis of his assassination rings clear from every history book, and article you read on this event. Though the idea of it being a turning point is very much based on the crisis.

Like I mentioned earlier I felt this same way about the other turning points such as the cuban missile crisis. This turning point came after the crisis that almost demolished the US and Russia. This crisis came about when Russia started to move nuclear weapons to Cuba during the Cuban revolution. The US was getting panicked. The enemy having nuclear weapons is one thing, but them having them so close to your country pointed right at you is something else entirely. The US was loosing control quickly, and one wrong move could have led to a completely different present day. This was a turning point because the world got so close to total elimination, but turned back. This traumatic experience led to the US and Russia installing a telephone line directly to each other to communicate more efficiently, and before things were to escalate too far.

 

Lastly, the New Deal was a perfect example of the turning point arising after a crisis. The New Deal was a product of the Great Depression. It was created to ease the American economy back into safety, and though some argue it did not help and that actually WW11 healed the American economy, it was a major help. The New Deal, and I’m siding with Ms. Willemse, pulled the American economy back together, and deals since then have been based off of the New Deal (such as the Green New Deal but thats for another day). But the New Deal and the turning point of it came as a product of a crisis.

I’m excited to see if this idea holds up for the entire unit of “Turning Points” and if it doesn’t I’d be happy to figure out more on that side as well!

Thanks for reading!

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Welcome Back!!

Man, it’s been a while since I sat down to write a blog post. I honestly can’t believe that everyone in PLP 12 has survived so long without seeing each other every day (that includes the teachers). I wonder if the dynamic in class will have changed when we switch back into class next Wednesday. To be honest, I’m a bit worried. I have had it way way way too easy for way way way to long. Having a spare and physics is terrible preparation for PLP and precalc. I wonder if my entire work ethic will have changed, or if I will have forgotten yet again the proper use of their, there, and they’re.  What I’m really trying to get at is that I am petrified but at the same time I am exhilarated. I am so excited to be reunited with my PLP family. I miss the class debates, and the crazy high standards of work, the high level of thinking and the absolutely no BS policy. Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to talk about this in this email, but it does feel good to have an outlet for these emotions. What I was supposed to talk about was what I have learned.

YAY physics. I have learned physics. I think it’s too complex to write here, and I think it requires too much brain power to figure out how to write the formulas on a laptop, but I have learned that I really enjoy it. I don’t want to jinx it because I have my final test tomorrow, but I feel that once you’ve got the concept everything falls into place. I have just dedicated my spare to working through physics problems, and I honestly don’t even notice the time slip by. It’s been really fun mixing math and science concepts and having to think logically every day. But with all this extra time I have picked up other things to fill my time such as backcountry snowboarding. That’s kind of what I wanted to talk about in this blog post.

I started backcountry snowboarding pretty late in the season, but I’ve defiantly made up for the lost time by heading up the minute the opportunity to is present. I’ve struggled in the past with sticking to activities, but I feel that with backcountry snowboarding I won’t have this problem because, 1. I sunk a down payment on a house on that gear, and 2. I really love it. I’m hoping to join the mountaineering and backcountry clubs at university where I will be able to meet a bunch of likeminded people. So, I’m pretty excited. Aside from that I haven’t been doing much, scared and excited to get back into trickier classes. And a bit in shock that I will be graduating Seycove in less than 3 months. Crazy.

Anyway thank you for reading my spiel and I’ll definitely be writing more commonly in here now as well.

Adlih

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To wrap it up, after only 5 weeks


PLP 12 took on Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” for our first quarter, boy was that a wake up call. Reading and watching, we slowly moved through the play in our 2.5 hour classes every day.

I had previously watched “The Taming of the Shrew” in the summer last year when COVID was not a thing, and really enjoyed it, but I hadn’t truly been paying attention, as my dad reminded me (it was during sunset and there was a ray of really bright light that was falling on the audience across from us and we could not stop laughing as they threw up their brochures and pamphlets to block the sun resulting in a complete block from the play) and was interested in what I could learn from a play I hadn’t thought twice of.

We began our work this project with the term slut, and how it has been portrayed in culture from the 80’s to now. We watched a series of videos where the term slut was tossed around, including the “Jane you ignorant slut” video.

These videos gave the class and I an idea of how acceptable talking about a women’s sexual life has been and was a bit of a shocker. While we were watching these videos in class, we were also reading the common lit assignments in our spare time. These common lit assignments gave us insight into the same things, the position that women held historically (the earliest being 1800’s). Now taking this new found insight into a women’s place we began to read “The Taming of the Shrew”. Obviously the first thing to catch the classes eye was Bianca and Kate, and their differences.

Bianca when introduced was depicted as this proper, good woman, who compared to Kate seems like an angel. Kate is portrayed as a aggressive and witty character. After we had read a little bit we were told to figure out where the line is between “good” and shrew. This line as a common theme became increasingly hard to find (read this for more info). Shakespeare obviously created Bianca to represent the good, or pure or angelic version of women, and Kate to show the version of women who deserve to be tamed. Drawing the first metaphorical line between angelic and aggressive, there was a lot of work to do. The idea of taming Kate came back into play when I did my November 1st reflection post talking about specific songs that promote rape, sexism and submissive women.

One song “Blurred lines” had this lyric, “Okay, now he was close. Tried to domesticate ya. But you’re an animal. Baby, it’s in your nature.” When Thicke was asked about this lyric he said “Even very good girls have a little bad side. You just have to know how to pull it out of them.” This quote from an artist creating a song to be heard by millions is a connection to “The Taming of the Shrew.” Kate becomes this woman who needs a mans help removing a piece of her not suitable to his standards. The idea that maybe a woman wanted to have a permanent bad side hasn’t seemed to cross the mind of many men. Around this time we also began our presentations of our designated era in the. These presentations were about how women were treated, their roles, and any other major events that happened with the time period. My group, (Emily, Kai, and Alex) were given the 1940’s and 1950’s. We divided the research and got to work. During this time obviously our major event was World War II, and so we shaped our presentation around this. We had to represent how some had stayed the same and changed throughout the time period, and so we decided that our representation of this would be how women were introduced to the work force because of World War II (change), yet when the war ended they had to return to their role within the home. One of the requirements for this project was that we had to show this continuity and change with a single slide keynote.

Our image that we decided to use is this one. The cycle shows the change for women throughout the period as they cycle in a full circle, they center of the image shows the continuity throughout this time. 

Now the goal of this entire unit, along with learning about women’s rights, was to write an essay connecting taming of the shrew to the women’s rights movements we’d done presentations about, looping in the readings we had done and conversations we had in class about other media. This essay also had to show the continuity and change between both the Shakespearean woman, and women today. We created research docs that were a collection of all the research we had done throughout the half term, including taming of the shrew, in class discussions, our readings, common lit work, the presentations on a certain era and more. This research document then guided our essays in the fact that it had all of our references within it (all cited as well). Once we had gotten to this point, we had to begin our thesis statements. I decided my thesis would be “Although men get called out for being sexist, a woman can be equally discriminatory. A woman who upholds sexist ideals propels this discrimination.” Which I didn’t realize would go so heavily against my own opinion but I decided to stick with it. When writing the essay and throughout the entire project we were graded on our abilities to Identify continuity, and to comprehend texts. I felt I expressed my ability to identify continuity by making creative connections from Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” to women in the 1900’s with more focus on a character that doesn’t have much of a story and weaving that into a more proficient argument. Taking this argument and connecting it to women in the 1900’s also identifies my ability to comprehend texts. By taking a common theme I begin digest and understand texts better, resulting in the understanding of both competencies. 

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Weekly Reflection November 8th

Woman want to be accepted so much they will silence areas of their life wants and needs to submit.

“Perrault’s moral is that curiosity only causes problems because it either leads to discovering something we wish we didn’t know, or at best, we lose our sense of wonder as soon as the reality is revealed to us.” – (https://study.com/academy/lesson/charles-perraults-blue-beard-themes-morals.html)

I have been reading “Women Who Run With The Wolves,” (Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés) for about a year now. Picking it up when I feel like it, and then switching back to a simpler book when things get chaotic. I picked up “Women Who Run With The Wolves,” last week and was reminded of the morals throughout the book. One of the stories that struck me immediately was when I opened the pages was the tale of “Bluebeard.” Now the Bluebeard tale went a bit like this: three sisters find themselves courted by a man named Bluebeard, he had an image in the town for courting women, and so the sisters were suspicious. In an effort to become closer to the sisters, bluebeard invited them and their mother out for a picnic in the forest. He charmed them with his stories and food, and by the time they were headed home each of the sisters believed he was not so bad. Though when they arrived home again the 2 older sisters had returned to their suspicions of bluebeard and vowed to never see him again. The youngest sister thought, “ if a man could be that charming, then perhaps he was not so bad”, and she decided to see him again. When he proposed she accepted, convincing herself there was nothing to be suspicious of, and that he was the one for her. A little while later he came to his new bride and told her he had to go for a time, and that she was welcome to invite her sisters to the castle to keep her company. He told her to ask the cook to make a large meal for all of them and to ride their horses in the forests surrounding the castle. He told her, “ you may do

anything you like, anything your heart desires.” He handed her his ring of keys, and told her each door she could open except one. The smallest key she could not use. She agreed to these terms and he left. When the sisters arrived they were curious as to what was planned for them, and the sister told them that they could do anything, except open the door that required the smallest key. Now the bride didn’t know what door opened with the smallest key, so the sisters, being curious in nature, decided to make a game out of finding what door the key fit in. Each floor had 100 doors and there were 3 floors, when they came to the final door the little key hadn’t been used. They opened the last door, and inside was another door, a smaller cellar door. Without thinking one of the sisters put the little key into the door and opened it. Once opened it was too dark to see and so one of the sisters lit a candle, once lit, the sisters saw that the room was full of dead bodies and blood. Each sister screamed and ran out of the room, locking it on the way out. They believed the experience was behind them until they noticed that the little key, the one they were not supposed to touch, was bleeding. They tried everything to stop it from bleeding, and in the end decided to hide it. When Bluebeard returned he asked about the sisters time, they all agreed they had a lovely time, and handed him his key ring. He noticed immediately that the little key was missing and it didn’t take long for him to find it, as it was bleeding through the wardrobe where it was hidden. When he realized this fact he dragged his wife to the little room, and told her she was next. She begged for 15 minutes to make good with god before she died and he granted her this. In the 15 minutes her brothers came and when Bluebeard returned to execute her, her brothers killed him. Which brings a close to the story.

This story I find so compelling, how the morals are written in bold. Basically, a curious woman is  killed by society. Someone who questions her placement and her rules becomes ‘next’ in the context of this story. The sisters being curious in nature do not have husbands, though the sister who decides to submit to the man, and not listen to her instincts, is killed by her inevitable interest in the key. This story is repeated countless times throughout, and could propose a second ending for Taming Of The Shrew. Had Kate not submitted to Petrutio, she would have ended up as one of the women in the cellar. Had she expressed curiosity in why the sun become the moon, why at 2 it was 7, she would have become a skeleton waiting for the next woman. Not only can we connect this with “Taming Of The Shrew,” we can connect this with happenings today. I watched “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” this weekend and was shocked when they interviewed the social media influencer, Macy Chanel. Chanel told Tutar (Borat’s daughter in the film) that she needed to be weak, and submit to her man. As this movie was released this year its the most recent evidence that people (who have many followers) still believe in submission. That curiosity, and creativity for a woman, is shamed and that these themes have continued from the beginning of time.

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Weekly Reflection November 1st

I learned that I can sing “rapey” (Kai) lyrics with knowing. Am I normal?

“She say she won’t, but I bet she will, timber,” is a lyric in “Timber”,

by Pitbull and Ke$ha. This lyric has a very clear hint at sexual assault, and/or rape. Its weird that when you actually listen, just how many songs have this same theme.

“In The Summertime”, a song written in 1970, by a British songwriter, highlights drinking and driving, and sexual assault. In the second verse, a lyric rings out, “If her daddy’s rich take her out for a meal, If her daddy’s poor just do what you feel.” Sure like Mr. Hughes, I agree the song is catchy, and I have a hard time condemning it, but that lyric when sung clear from my speaker shocked me. It opened my eyes to how many songs have inappropriate lyrics but continue in circulation. One song I have listened to countless times, sung every lyric, and never caught just how sexist it is. The song is “Blurred Lines,” by Robin Thicke Feat. T.I. and Pharrell.

Throughout this song while reading the lyrics many stand out as sexist, take “Okay, now he was close. Tried to domesticate ya. But you’re an animal. Baby, it’s in your nature.” When Thicke was asked about this lyric he said, “Even very good girls have a little bad side. You just have to know how to pull it out of them.” This answer angers me highly because WHO EVER SAID IT NEEDED TO LEAVE? A woman is allowed to have an aggressive personality. How would we be able to play sports? Get to university? Or even maintain a job with all these men trying to silence us? This reaction reminds me a little to much of Taming Of The Shrew, with the treatment of Kate. Everyones goal is to “tame” Kate, exactly what this comment is telling men today to do. Another song with the same sort of lyrics is Back To Sleep, by Chris Brown.

Where the lyrics read, “Just let me rock, I’mma f*ck you back to sleep, girl. Oh don’t talk to me, girl, right now.” This song is filled with horrible lyrics and a horrible beat, so I have less of a problem condemning it, but I’m still lost as to how songs like these can become part of our culture without us even seeing the issues. If you wonder what songs I’m talking about I’ve created a playlist.

An article by The Standard that I found about just this said, “Some of the most well-known, top-selling artists are unknowingly raising the expectations for men to act and women to be submissive,” which I couldn’t agree with more. These lyrics become what young people look up to. The lyrics are basically woman being submissive. Each of the songs in the playlist I created have had their time on top charts, or are known. Which means that people have listened and are now susceptible to their flawed meaning. Personally I feel that we can’t escape these songs, instead we have to learn as a culture that woman being submissive is not ok, and that it doesn’t have to shape who you become. Because once at that point, sexist songs will not hold such a strong hold on woman, because people will understand that sexism shouldn’t sell.

I highly recommend you visit Bustle, which had a lot of good insight into this topic.

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