The Night Before Notecards are Due!!

Today we talked about MLK’s speech. Ben kicked off the conversation by noting that Dr. King’s speech moved from broad and general ideas to more concrete ones (such as investing in ‘black’ institutions). We pretty much all agreed that this was a very effective way to structure his speech. Ian noticed that even though there had been many atrocities against African Americans, Dr. King’s speech contains no snarl words. Mr. Laz confirmed that it is extremely impressive that he was able to stay so far to the ‘peaceful’ side of the spectrum.

We drew parallels between the situation that is currently going on with Tibet, China, and the Olympics. Amy said that violent protests take away from the injustices that were originally committed against those who are protesting (an idea that MLK tried to address in his speech).

Mr. Laz also let us know that the New York Comic Convention is going on soon, and that Douglas Ruschkoff will be ‘among the crazy’. (I don’t know about you guys but I already started my crazy costume held together by safety pins…just kidding.)

After that lovely digression we addressed last minute research related questions (which I don’t feel the need to address since it is 12:25 on the day that they are due) and then we briefly began to discuss Gatsby and Death of a Salesman.

We were instructed by our fearless leader NOT TO MAKE REFERENCE TO FICTIONAL THINGS ON THE AP TEST! We are allowed to talk about the authors etc. Allison started talking about Salesman, and she said that it was the American nightmare because Biff had all of these opportunities in front of him, but he wasted them. Paige thought that the American nightmare was more prevalent than the American dream (a sad thought) but Arka ended the period by citing that he thought that in reality most people fall somewhere in-between the American nightmare and the American dream. (Should ‘nightmare’ and ‘dream’ capitalized? Time to sleep…)

Have a great evening everyone!