The "Pursuit" in the Pursuit of Happiness

We have paid too much attention only on the "happiness" part of the "pursuit of happiness"but ignored the importance of the act of pursuing. Petra and Evan brought up the interesting point that being happy is making the decision to reach the top goals, having the opportunity to pursue anything. I cannot agree more on this as I think of what I have right now and what I want to have and who I want to be in the future. The idea of not having the chance to make one's own decision to even think about a dream haunts me. The pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of property, and the pursuit of anything wil not realize if no one is pursuing. After reading the chapter about happiness a history, I found that  there could be an opposite argument. Lockean view, according to the chapter, sees desire without limit as dangerous, as with desire focused only on self. Tocqueville also asserts the harm of the restlessness of the American life and human desire. Is the act of pursuing happiness human desire? The desire of becoming happy, in this sense could be destructive because desire, a private pleasure, corrupts civic virtue, which is essentially the foundation of individuals and societies. Do I want to work for something that is impossible for me to reach really hard? Should I just focus on what I have right now and stop dreaming but instead make the best of right now? Mill would probably say the latter. I found his idea of indirectly getting to the ultimate happiness very interesting. He claims that happiness is an end and there are lots of means to achieve it. Aiming at something else and find happiness on the way fascinates me because the something else here could mean anything, anything I already am and have right this second, and I will be able to find happiness along the way without consciously making any decision. 

There were students from China back in the twenties?

I was browsing through the St. Olaf Catalog from 1926 and found that there were two Chinese students! There were also one from Japan and a 2 from Canada. It was a surprise for me since who would think that international students would come to a small liberal arts college in Northfield. However, Elma Thorson does not sound Chinese to me, So I wonder if she was a second generation Chinese? Or even third? Or an American studied in China? So I went to the yearbook, curious about what she looks like. Here's a description and a picture.

I think that "American school" really solve the confusion. It was just a cool discovery.   

Liberal arts at St. Olaf

What I learn from the reading today is that an liberal art education is not just the education that make you more well-rounded. A liberal arts college is a "freedom school". I think it still depends on the students in the school to make the institution free. We need to know "our own minds in order to be good citizens of a free society", and know how to make what we've learn in the school "free" in terms of make them our own. St.Olaf has been a co-ed school since the beginning, contributing a egalitarian system for both women and men to pursue this freedom. I think this freedom is a different from the freedom we talked about first semester last year. Freedom in this context means the complexity and fluidity of intelligence that can be used to different disciplines. Sometimes I wonder if an liberal arts education is necessary or beneficial. It is a great thing to do in college, studying different areas, integrating passions yet to be explored. However, what can you do with a liberal arts degree later in life? I probably have to go to grad school if i want to be a biomedical engineer. But what if I only studied biomedical sciences and had already become an expert in during my college. Now we have college graduates with liberal degrees but not specialized in anything areas. Others would argue that liberal arts education teach us how to be a leader, how to learn, and how to deal with life later. I feel like it is not very clear to say it teaches me to learn how to learn. what does it mean? I don't feel any difference. It would be so much easier if I could just get out of college with a D.O degree, taking out fewer loans and start making a career i love.

Boe

Boe seems to emphasize on his identity of being a Lutheran more than on his Norwegian ethnicity. I find this also true when I was doing my research about St. Olaf in the twenties. In Rolvaag chapter, he reiterates  that the great Norwegian heritage is somewhat superior than the rest of the American, and before Boe became president of St. Olaf, Norwegian pride was definitely more dominent in the school. Boe, on the other hand, not an immigrant himself, focused more on the church affiliation to try to unite the student body. He claimed in his letter to Ditmanson that St. Olaf stands for cultural continuity. I find him really pushing the idea of an American identity, which for St. Olaf, a liberal art college, is the mixing of Norwegian and other ethnicity and culture. This question is still pertinent nowadays, particularly to the diversity that has been talked a lot today.      

Ladies and Norwegian

In class Wednesday DeAne told us about the shack dances in the woman dorms in the 1880s. "Although dancing was supposedly forbidden at St. Olaf, evidence of a grand ball in the attic of Ladies' Hall in 1894 has come to light. And the outdoor platform built in 1888 provided a pleasant place and prospects." - Lady's Hall. I think it is interesting that women in the old times were not rule followers- much like college students today. It is not to say obeying the roles is a bad thing to do, but I feel that having this piece of information is crucial to the understand a Ole more than 200 years ago. When I thought about women in that period of time, I thought about women dressing in modest clothing and staying in their room all the time, and the description of the Ladies' Hall pull me closer to the women then. Along with DeAne's essay, on Norwegian religious, political policy and identity, I feel that student life was not just academic itself but with many other important parts to it.

Ántonia, childhood, and land

        Jim’s enduring love for Ántonia represents his nostalgia for the Nebraskan countryside and his childhood. This sentimental longing for the past, confused with affection for Ántonia, guides him to the path of finding his identity. Ántonia epitomizes a fraction of Jim’s identity, signifying “the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of … childhood” (5).  Years spent with her have comforted him in his new life in college and New York with a wealth of memories about the past. For Jim, Ántonia embodies the landscape and Jim’s childhood that he wants to last forever.

        The relationship between Ántonia and is reminiscent of the precious past that colors Jim’s adult life with melancholy. The old days spent in the prairies reflect a concern with his identity and self. To keep the past alive, Jim must romanticize it. He is attracted to her not based on desire but nostalgia towards the Great Plains and his younger self who used to lean his back against a pumpkin, feeling “entirely happy” with his best friend Ántonia (20). Ántonia perceives the childlike aspects in Jim’s adult body that he longs to obtain. His final words in the memoir, “Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past”, implies the memory of the old times they share together. He loves her for what she symbolizes: his childhood that he will never have again.

       Jim also sees Ántonia as the cultivated land. Ántonia belongs to the farm, is the trees, the land, and the wheat she plants. In Jim’s mind, Ántonia appears in the reoccurring image of the prairies and land, where Ántonia works “like a man” (87) Cather employs masculine features to depict Ántonia’s hard work in the fields: “She kept her sleeves rolled up all day, and her arms and throat were burned as brown as a sailor’s.” (87). Jim, the introverted boy who likes to spend time alone and with girls like Ántonia, does not have the same masculinity. Therefore, Jim has to find his masculinity through her.

          Jim searches for safety in the Nebraska plains because Ántonia’s presence reminds him of the memory in the land. His ambivalence towards growth and maturity makes him feel unsafe and empty when interacting with other women. He then returns to be obsessed with Ántonia, the familiar emotion of home. For example, his encounter with Lena reassures him of his feeling towards Ántonia: “I wish I could have this flattering dream about Ántonia” (169). A beautiful girl with a sheer femininity that is opposite to Ántonia, Lena confronts his sexual desire. Jim describes in his dream:  “I was in a harvest fields full of shocks, and I was lying against one of them. Lena Lingard came across the stubble barefoot, in short skirt, with a curved reaping-hook in her hand...”(168). Lena’s sexual appeal, glowing in her rosy bare flesh, short skirt, and soft kiss, contradicts with the “shocks” and “stubbles” in the barren land that is harvested by the reaping-hook. Ántonia represents the barren land, the background of Lena’s luscious figure, and the land on which Jim always finds a piece of himself. Jim never has a dream like this about Ántonia. He never will be kissing her like Lena, for Ántonia is already in his dream, and always with him as the everlasting farmland in Black Hawk.

          Jim’s childhood replays itself on Cuzak’s boys. Ántonia’s children, they thrive on the land, similar to Jim when he was young. Jim is finally back to Ántonia again after twenty year. Ántonia remains the same old Ántonia, the personified countryside that lures him back. Cather reinforces Ántonia’s fruitful nature as land by delineating the fruit cave:
 
         We turned to leave the cave; Ántonia and I went up the stairs first, and the children waited. We were standing outside talking, when they all came running up the steps together, big and little, tow heads and gold heads and brown, and flashing little naked legs; a veritable explosion of life out of the dark cave into the sunlight. It made me dizzy for a moment. (249)

Cather uses fruit to symbolize Ántonia’s children, reiterating the analogy between the bounty land and Ántonia herself. A nurturing womb, the fruit cave is brimming with vibrant colors; a fertile woman, Ántonia gave birth to Cuzak’s boys, who have the “veritable explosion of life” that is the rebirth of Ántonia’s spirit. Jim cannot distinguish between Ántonia and her children, for they all are products of the cultivated land.  

           Cather shares Jim’s nostalgia for the mood of the past. My Ántonia represents America in its country, materials, and history. For Jim and Cather, the purpose of time is to return to the beginning. Jim’s stories end in the last paragraph as he finds the first road he traveled with Ántonia “on that night when [they] got off the train at Black Hawk” (272). This road, both literally and metaphorically, returns him to Ántonia, to the country land and his childhood.    
                                   
                                                    Work Cited
Cather, Willa. My Ántonia. Germany: GGP Media GmbH, Possneck, 1996. Print.
 

A day of life as an ole idea

Today I was researching ideas for this paper and accidentally stubbled upon a list of books with colleges  their major characters have either mentioned or attended. Jay Gasby in Fitzgerald's masterpiece novel the great Gasby stayed briefly at St. Olaf and then dropped out. It sparks my interest about creating Jay Gasby, or James Gatz ( I have not yet decided which name) as my character. He is a English major, bright and poetic, however is kicked out of school because of plagiarism. The date is set on March 10th, 1928, when the economy is suffering. This day could also include a visit from Fitzgerald as a guest speaker/writer and Gasby tries to impress him with an essay he plagiarizes but has no conscious realization of his dishonesty. 

Transition

My author focuses his chapter on the assimilation and the Indians during the turn of the century. Dawes Act was passed in 1887, when private land property was allocated to individual Native American. However, the government was also authorized to sell any surplus and eventually break up the Indian tribes and assimilate them into the mainstream US culture. It was surprising for me that one of the reason they are pushing this act to pass was that some government officials like Dawes himself was to grant Indians the right and possibility to become US citizens. So citizenship = private land ownership? The process of accessing private property and be able to sell the lands off was the starting point of capitalism and was in the US culture of becoming a US citizen with full rights, which is not true in the Indian cultures where people advocate group cooperation, public property, and tribal union. A lot of them were not able to produce anything from their own land and was force to sell the land, having nothing at the end and no one to turn to. The natives are not technically immigrants since they were the native people on this land. It is interesting to see that they were treated as immigrants when it comes to issues like this. Yet the attitudes towards them were somewhat different from the rest of the immigrant groups such as the Chinese and Italians. Even though an act like the Dawes Act did not really benefit the Indians, at least the Americans passed an act to grant possible rights to them, whereas for the other groups, acts like the Chinese exclusion act was passed. 

the mother

 Abortions will not let you forget.

You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
 children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
 and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

The author starts this poem by asserting  “Abortions will not let you forgot,” and continues to talk about the aborted life. I find the title “the mother” somewhat intriguing because this is the story of a woman who went through abortion, who is not a mother. The detailed description of the mother’s feeling towards the unborn child shows the suffering the mother has. “singers and workers who never handles the air” “you will never scuttle off ghost that come” “dim killed children.” What I get out of this poem is that she tries to convey that even though it was the mother’s own choice to not to give birth, she still attempt to revivify her dead child and by telling the children “I loved you all” and “even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.” Abortion is always a difficult subject and writing a poem with such emotions has to be hard for her. For someone who is prochoice like myself, this poem gives me an image of the difficulties and an enlightening view of the other opinion.  

Chicago and Vaudeville

Beth, Enich, Paige, Mike and I are working hard on our skit for the Tuesday vaudeville performance. We were hesitated to choose this piece from the musical Chicago since it came out much later after vaudeville shows were popular. To our surprise that after some research we found that the original name of Chicago the musical is called, Chicago, a musical Vaudeville. I watched parts of the movies and listened to the whole soundtrack of the broadway version one more time this weekend. The story of Chicago to me, is told in the form and language of vaudeville. Every songs and scene is in the style of a vaudeville act. The main theme of Chicago is that in our country and culture, crime and other dangers could be glamorized into entertainment. Yet the most popular entertainment during the period, is vaudeville, through which this theme is played. Two main characters, Velma and Roxie, became famous vaudeville stars because they had committed crimes of murder. This satirical approach shows that anyone  who was famous for any reason could become a famous vaudeville star.  

Jobs and Ford

Steve Jobs was said to be the technology maketing genius in the 21st century while Henry Ford contributed  greatly to the automobile industry that made us the "nation of motorist". As I was googling Steve Jobs, it was interesting to see that people are not only comparing Steve Jobs to Henry Ford, but also to a great number of other pioneers in the history such as Thomas Edison and Walt Disney. The success Jobs achieved made personal computers and other personal electronic devices easier and more fun to use. Both Ford and Jobs hailed from middle class family and essentially reach the American dream that we have been talking about constantly Amcon. It is not the wealth they made that constituted the American dream but rather the innovations that improve daily life. Jobs, in my personal opinion, has great insights on market advertising and artistic vision, but was still less social effect than Ford. Jobs was smart on what people want. We always want new gadgets with sleek looks and multiple functions. So he made the ipods, iphones, and ipads. And there is multiple generations of these products. Customers were  still super excited to buy the first generation ipad two years ago, even they still felt a little disappointed that a camera was not built in it. Apple had already had products like iphones with camera, why was it so hard to build a camera in the ipads? Of course the next generation of ipads came out, with cameras and 3G. Jobs was a better market strategist and he created products he knew we will buy. Ford, even though not the first one to invent cars with engines, made better models of automobile that we cannot live with out that substantially makes transportation easier.  

Pullman

After reading this chapter I started to wonder if college could be an utopia, or at least could we make a college community into an utopian society? According to Pullman maybe if we only accept middle class while kids we probably would. But I think here at St. Olaf I don't feel there exist any social class, ethnics, and race issues and tension..It could be an utopian in some respect. However we all know that college like St. Olaf are trying really hard to bring up the diversity on their campus, which is one the most important aspect of choosing a college for most seniors. Pullman, in this case, lacks a fundamental diversity that balances the town, eventually resulting in the break down of the company and the town. Pullman had all the money to build his town and constructed it in his will to eliminate poverty and make all the residents middle classed. Like Gilbert suggests that the purpose of Pullman establishing his town was not to create a democratic society but a uniform culture as a model for Chicago. Does utopian and perfect = uniform? No.

Ferris Wheel

The world's first Ferris Wheel was built in the center of the Midway  by George W. Ferris, a bridge builder from Pittsburgh. The ride was the fair's most prominent attraction. 264 feet, it offers a breathtaking view of the fair and the city. If the other villages were there for educational purposes, the Ferris wheel, belly dancers, and the amusement park are definitely for entertainment. Being the most profitable amusement in the park, the Ferris Wheel is also the symbol, or in Gilbert's word, the centerpiece of the Midway. " Even the Fair, was the Ferris Wheel", says Gilbert. People would come to the fair just for a ride on it. It was a comfortable ride for the whole family. This crucial characteristic is probably why the Ferris Wheel was so overwhelmingly popular. It moved slow, outlooking a great view of Chicago. Another interesting point Gilbert mentions is the relationship between railroad and Ferris Wheel. They both carry people, in different ways and for different purpose, but have the same idea.  “The Ferris wheel epitomized the triumph of popular culture freed from the moderating controls of classic architecture and censorship." (115)   

How the other half lives

Liza and I talked about this photo in class today. We thought the caption for what Riis was trying to show was exactly the caption in the book: Bunks in a seven-cent lodging-house. We also added "crammed, dark, primitive condition". For the critics caption we said "the repetitive and continuous bunks and ceiling show the hopeless condition." The photo Steph and Marissa talked in class had many people crammed in a room full of stuff, while this picture has no one in it. Yet it is still terrible to imagine when these bunks are all filled with people.  I actually think it is more powerful to show an empty room than a full room to show the horrible condition.

Riis

Riis saw the tenements in the Lower East Side NY as central to the problems of poverty, crime, disease in the biggest city in the United States. In the pictures he took there are lots of back alleys and stairways, crowded apartments, people sleeping in the street. This is not what I think of when I think of New York city, yet the situation is inevitable in any big cities, where immigrants crowd the city for there first settlement. In genesis of the tenement Riis describes the transformation from the old days when the dutch controlled the city to Washington in the 19th century. The poor lives in slums and over populated tenements behind the grand houses the upper class owns. “Neatness, order, cleanliness, were never dreamed of in connection with the tenant-house system, as it spread its localities from year to year.” During the gilded age when economy was boosting and people were celebrating America's rapid industrial progress, the conditions of the poor is often overlooked. Reading this book feels like reading a newspaper, where usually has stories about how capitalists lure the poor to contract them into bad conditioned labor jobs.

Perfect Chicago

I spent my fall break in Chicago, visiting my sister who goes to DePaul University. This was my second visit to Chicago. I now notice how different my two visit are. Last Easter my sister and I went to Chicago to visit Depaul, and of course we went to all the touristy places: Millennium Park, The Art Institute, Navy Pier, Michigan Ave. I came to the conclusion that I love this city and I would definitely go back again. However this time I realized that Chicago was not my favorite city after all. As I was reading Gilbert on the bus back to Minneapolis, I wondered what has changed. Being a tourist and living in a city are different. Like Gilbert says in his book, the dreams of the leaders in Chicago are the generation of a uniform middle-class culture that is surround by different ethnic and religions diversity. Chicago is America's "second city". Leaders envisioned a uniform city that guides the new middle class professionals and businessmen. The connection I found between the chapter we read on Chicago and the previous work we have done is the connection to Ragtime. Ragtime, the novel of American social activism and reform in the Progressive Era, is the result of what was going on the cities in America. Unlike New York, Chicago is more diverse in terms of ethnicity and religion, and it is also more middle class oriented and more cosmopolitan. I found it interesting that Gilbert writes society is the frozen culture and culture is liquid society. I always thought society and culture are interchangeable. Now I find a relationship between the two. Culture is more versatile and society is more definite.    

Revision

Little Boy develops an increased sense of manhood after witnessing the transformation of Father and Mother’s gender roles. Doctorow describes his growth in self-awareness by writing that “He discovered the mirror as a means of self-duplication. He would gaze at himself until there were two selves facing one another, neither of which could claim to be the real one. He was no longer anything exact as a person”(117). The undergoing physical and emotional transition into maturity puzzles him, and he struggles in the mist of gender identities he perceives from his parents. He realizes the dysfunctional gender role Father plays in the family after Father’s return from the Arctic. Father finds it difficult to accept that “momentous change was coming over the United States”, while Mother represents this  “momentous change” (82). For example, Mother acquires knowledge of the family business during the patriarch’s absence, which sounds astonishing to Father that a woman can take responsibility outside of her indoor chores. Moreover, Mother generates a growing consciousness of her sexually and “she was in some way not as vigorously modest as she’d been. She took his gaze”(111). The drastic change Mother obtains annoys Father and confuses Little Boy. Little Boy’s confusion lies between Father and Mother’s converging gender roles. With the progress of shifting gender roles, he matures into the beginning stage of manhood, understanding the importance of coming to terms with a continuously changing environment.

These people yapped loudly of race, of race consciousness, of race pride, and yet suppressed its most delightful manifestations, love of color, joy of rhythmic motion, naive, spontaneous laughter. Harmony, radiance, and simplicity, all the essentials of spiritual beauty in the race they had marked for destruction（39).

Helga, under Larsen's depiction, exclaims such disagreement to the so-call advocates in racial issues. This is especially common in the black communities, where people fight for anti-discrimination and African American suffrage and rights detest the fact of them being black. "These people" in the passage above could refer to those people mentioned above, or it could also be applied to some of the white leader at the moment. It is the "love of color", the" joy of rhythmic motion" that's the most important for embracing one's race, not merely privileges. This topic relates to Gay NY we just finished last week: How people struggle within regulations and laws but forget to celebrate themselves. 

US Media

Public media in America is one of a kind in this world. When Mary asked the question about why mainstream America pop culture has such big influence not only in America but also across the world, along with Liza bringing up Lady gaga and her iconic gay rights' campaigns, the first thing that popped to my mind was what we see, read, and hear all the time. The discussion of American media and its impact on society has been addressed by many people, including concerning parents and educators. It is unquestionable that we have lots of sex and violence in the media we constantly receive, and also inaccurate portrayal and stereotypes of the minorities, especially the LGBT communities. On the other hand the advocating from a celebrity like lady gaga can be a big influence on dissolving the stereotypes the media has trapped us into. Can the media be somewhat campy?We usually find something as attractive and appealing because it is bad and ironic. The media grabbed our interests in continually viewing the extreme, on whatever ends, a good thing. 

DADT

Now that don't ask don't tell is gone, it is inevitable that unequal treatment is still present.  How does one soldier's sexual identity deviate from the military? Why is the topic of homosexuality within the military a taboo subject? What are people so afraid of when it comes to the homosexual lifestyle? Chauncey summarizes that "the anti-gay laws of the 1920s and 1930s were enacted in response to the growing visibility of the gay world and to the challenge it seemed to pose to fragile gender and social arrangements" (356).  Don't ask don't tell was issued to "stabilized a fragile gender and social arrangements" in the army if what Chauncey said was right about anti-gay laws. There wasn't much of a gender issue and social disable here to be discussed. The repeal of DADT took too long. For 17 years, gays and lesbians were required to remain neutral on their sexual preferences, all the while ignoring who they really were. Also, there's still the issues concerning transgenders and women in the military. In Gay New York, Chauncey reiterates again and again that gay men did not have to choose a "gay identity". They could be engaged in homosexual activities and still be consider straight. The situations are way different now. You can't be engaged unless you have a label.