Reflection to Wednesday, the 7th

I have never been the greatest fan of giving presentations. I always get nervous, no matter how well I know the material. My voice shakes and I hardly realize I'm speaking too fast, or too quiet. I feel like I'm getting more and more experienced though, and that's another good thing about this clas; it's preparing me for college. The only other class I have had presentations in this year is English. The powerpoint I presented was on Surrealism and works of art by the famous painters Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir. I had heard of these painters before, but only their names. I have always been interested in art, not painting myself, but observing and analyzing. The paintings I studied were absolutely beautiful, especially Renoir's. The colors were very rich, and I love bright colors and seeing how they blend together. I liked the idea of Pissarro's, of painting what he saw, not what he knew. I honestly cannot stand those paintings that are unrealistic, especially if they don't even give a message. Pissarro, Monet and Renoir all painted realistic scenes. I really liked Renoir's "Dance at Moulin de la Galette." All of the people in it seem lively and content, and the colors make me drowsy. I was glad I got to teach the class on art; I learned a lot myself as I was standing up there, making observations and noticing inertesting things I never thought I would in paintings.

Reflection to Monday, the 5th

I am very glad our class had the opportunity to read the article on Omar Hammami, because I find these types of issues and stories really interesting. Looking at that young, innocent looking boy in a tux with his prom date on the front page of the article, I never would have expected, if I had went to school with him, that he would become what he is today. It makes me wonder what is going to happen to some of the people in my high school. Having parents with different religious beliefs, he began as a boy who abhored violence and the idea of killing. When he was around 8 years old, he had written something in his journal for class along the lines of,"I wish peace could just take over the world." Like for many other Muslims, his life changed after 9/11. But his changed radically. "It's difficult to believe a Muslim could have done this," he said. He told newspapers that he was shocked at the thought of a Muslim doing such a thing, and that there would be retaliation against Islam. He didn't understand why Muslims were getting all the blame in the first place. Eventually, it made him so angry, it got to the point that he started to support bin Laden, the Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Sharia Law. He became what is known as a fundamentalist, and practiced Islam rigorously to the point that his family, who had great dreams for him, had to throw him out. Today, he is is professing to launch attacks himself, and calling on others to join the fight. I find this whole thing extremely depressing. Religion is not meant to turn people into monsters, who live for killing. Unfortunately the idea of islam had changed so drastically, no one understands the whole idea behind is truly is peace; people have just ruined it. Being a Muslim myself, I know that our morals do not reflect on anything he is doing. We are seeing more and more evidence that Islam can turn some people into radical extremists.

Henry Matisse ~ Woman with a Hat

Matisse, along with Picasso and a few others, was one of the most famous artists during the 20th century. He is best known for using a lot of color in his paintings, and watercolors. He was introduced to Impressionism by Peter Russell, which was completely different from his original style, which was the "Flemish style"; those were real life depictions of landscapes. From Russell, he learned the color theory. He was influenced by many other artists, such as Poussin, Watteau, Chardin, Manet and van Gogh. A lot of his paintings used the pointillist technique, which was painting a bunch of dots in bright colors to make an image. He stuck with the bright colors later but grew out of the specific technique. This painting, "Woman with a Hat," clearly shows Matiise's love for using a lot of bright colors, with no regard to how unnatural it would look. You can see there are broad strokes involved, and thick, controlled lines; it's also very flat, not 3d at all. The expression of the image is dominant over the detail; you can't really make out her specific facial features, or what the dress(if that's what it is) she's wearing looks like. The critic Camille Mauclair commented Matisse's work by saying it was like,"A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public!" which was a praising comment. This painting gave him a lot of recognition, and it was liked so much that eventually it was bought by painters Gertrude Stein and Leo Stein.

Pablo Picasso ~ Guernica

Picasso is best known for his own unique style of painting: Cubism. Cubism is a technique in which broken objects are used, along with random angles to give a powerful message in an abstract way. This painting, "Guernica," is known as one of his most famous works, mostly because of how explicitly it shows details, but still in cubism. It depicts the bombing of the city Guernica, which was done by the Germans and Italians during the Cold War. Picasso was asked to paint this by the Spanish government, so everyone could see what the tragedies of war were like. In this painting, the first thing that caught my eye were the innocent people involved. In the left, there is a woman crying over her baby. Under the horse, there is a soldier that appears to have lost some body parts, but he seems to be grabbing a roken sword. The sword has a flower growing from it, which I think symbolizes hopelessness. The whole scene is dark, because of the miserable mood it gives. There are human skulls, and I noticed that there are knives in place of tongues for the people and some horses and bulls. I think this reflects them screaming or crying for help. There is overall pain and chaos reflected by the people and objects. Overall, this painting shows Picasso was anti-war and he was calling for peace.

WWI~ a Connection Across Time

Because everything in history has some sort of impact on people and the world today, many people study history so they can learn to not make the same mistakes. The biggest mistake of WWI was, in my opinion, the Treaty of Versailles. From that, it can learned that a peace treaty to end a dispute should always involve everyone it addresses, no matter what. If WWI had never happened, Hitler would probably never have gained power of Germany, and thusly WWII would never have happened.
I think one big thing we can relate from the war to today is oppression. For example, a person with lack of education could think that it's okay to kill someone for a cause, and that sets off bigger chains of events. WWI started with one assassination. USA sent military forces into the extremely poor country Afghanistan. People take advantage of the less fortunate. The world has been hoping that the least educated and most oppressed people on the planet will be able to stop the extremism that is controlling their countries, but history shows that this is not very likely to happen anytime soon.

Thursday, the 25th

Venn iagrams have always helped me understand the differences and similarities between things, people, or events; I didn't know there was so much in common between the two wars. I learned that both were triggered by either an assassination(s) or "shots." Both had political reaspns/ backgrounds as well, and the main dispute in the wars were over territory. I also had to research on my own on each battle to put information in each circle, so I felt independent in putting my own facts down. For example, the reason for the assassination of Franz Ferdinand was because of tensions between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. I learned the names of significant generals/colonels in Lexington & Concord, such as Smith, who led 700 British Army regulars to destroy the opposing side's military supplies ( he was obviously evil). Both triggers of the war also had secret supporting groups, or orders. I would love it if we had a venn diagram to do for every unit we do.

Reflection to Friday, the 26th

During this unit I felt elated because I confirmed the fact that I was glad I had taken this class. Last year, since I took Mod World, I studied this unit then too, but this year we went more indepth of the material and that made me happy. I felt like I got a lot more insight. A lot more was involved, such as the venn diagram, more powerpoints and in class discussions, plus the splash list where we had to put the events in order from what happened to first to last. That was my favorite. It helped me A LOT, because I'm usually horrible at putting events in order of their occurence. I was surprised to see how much I already knew! I actually ended up mixing up 2 events but I felt prepared for the test already. Plus, we had it written down, rather than hearing it, and I learn better from visuals. Like I said before, because I learned most of this stuff last year, I had most of it clogged up in my memory. But a lot of the details were new. For example, I didn't know that Germany was willing to go to any extent to win the war, such as break the Sussex pledge. It's kind of amusing because in the end it was Germany who was humiliated.

image from www.pbs.org