Spring-Like Winter

Over the MLK weekend, I went upstate for my brother’s last weekend off. When we went up, I was prepared for freezing cold weather, but as we got up, it felt like spring. It was 60 degrees outside and all the snow was gone, except for some ice on a pond. The grass was still soaked from the snow and the last bits of snow were visibly melting away. It was weird, seeing as a week ago it was below freezing there, and in the city it was pretty cold, but just two hours away it was spring.

My Essay Writing

In Humanities we are focusing on Social Justice and part of that is racism against minorities in our country. We have read two books about them, one of which was about a kid of Chinese descent who lived in America and went to an american school. Even though he spoke perfect English and always lived in America he was treated different from everyone else. Something that I think I did well was my conclusion, I think I did a good job of connecting his story to everyone else. Something I could work on are my analyses.

Ice Skating on a Frozen Pond

Over the break, I went upstate with my family. After Christmas it started to snow and get colder until finally a pond near our house froze over. A few days later we went over and shoveled off all the snow on a part of the pond to ice skate on. It turns out that it’s hard to skate on a random pond because it was super rough and bumpy. It was still a lot of fun though and I got a lot better at skating.

New York City Problems

In science class, we had to think about something we would like to improve about NYC. Hudson and I chose that we wanted to improve the subway. We decided that we wanted to figure out a way to stop littering in the subway tracks which causes fires and delays. Our idea was to build a wall with a sensor on the subway platform instead of just being able to walk onto the tracks.

This is our video.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kbgr09ezxu71rhk/Video%20Dec%2021%2C%2010%2018%2009%20AM.mov?dl=0

The Middle School Play

Every year in middle school we do a play, and every year I do it. I’ve been in the plays since 6th grade, and two out of the three times I’ve done it it’s been Shakespeare. This year it’s Twelfth Night and I’ve been having a blast. We take it pretty seriously, it goes until 5:00 at first, then 6:00, then 6:30 and finally even 7:00. I always have trouble balancing other work and even my hobbies like playing bass and guitar with it, but it’s always worth it.

French Commercial

In French, we made commercials for certain places or hotels that we wanted to or have stayed at. We had to learn a lot in order to do this, such as verbs and vocabulary. We had no limit on where to write about or what to say, we were free to do whatever we wanted with it, as long as it still seemed like a commercial. I chose a mountain in the French Alps called Valloire.

Africans in NY Humanities Assignment

In humanities class, we had to write about a person assigned to us that lived in the colonial period. We all got different people with different amounts of information on them. We were required to write a paragraph showing the information we knew about, with implementing creative elements of our own. I was assigned someone with very little information named Peggy Gwynn. We then had to write a second paragraph that was more detailed but was about their backstory, and we could do it very creatively. Throughout the entire story, we had to incorporate seven key terms that we decided previously.

Bold-True Facts

Unfair Advantages

Before I moved to New York, I was stolen from my life and put into a burning fire. I was enslaved by a cruel man by the name of Bernard Frye, a man who forced us to care for his cotton and tobacco through anything. I worked through pouring rain, brutal sun and even freezing cold. This is why I ran to New York when I was given the chance, even if I wouldn’t be equal to the white men who enslaved us, it was the only freedom I was offered, and I couldn’t stand working for a man who gave me nothing in return for growing his crops except pain. Once I moved to New York, I became a cook, but I wasn’t supplied with healthy ingredients, they gave me the bare minimum to keep people alive. Our resources were dwindling and people were frightened to go outside of the city walls, worried that the Patriots would attack at any time. The British soldiers came back to New York on occasion, many were injured, some dead, none unscathed by the wrath and terror of war. They needed food, but sometimes the cooks didn’t have enough to supply their needs, and they would starve. It wasn’t all bad though, when I wasn’t busy cooking for soldiers I went to the tavern and danced and even made friends, just like the privileged white people. One day when I was handing out rations for the soldiers, I saw a man caring for his friends and helping them survive through the hard times. I felt for him, and wanted to help him. He said his name was George Card and that he was the only one in his artillery squadron that got out of battle physically undamaged, but still not mentally. He said he’ll never forget the hellfire of the cannons raining down on his comrades. I helped him care for his friends, giving them extra rations and helping patching up their wounds. Before he had time to leave, I said how I felt and we got married three weeks later and I will never forget that day.

It was at the Trinity Church, but it was only a week before he had to fight again. I was left with only the memory of him and the hope that he would come out unscathed again. I missed him dearly, but I had to push on, if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have a place to live, and I might get sent back to a slaveholder, just to be sold once again.

After a few weeks, the war ended and George came back to New York, and I, instead of having to go back to my previous owner, could stay. Seeing the opportunity to leave New York and the New World as a whole, many of my friends left for Nova Scotia, and I eventually started to miss their company. A few weeks later, I sent a request to my husband’s commander, Sir Guy Carleton, for permission to sail with my husband to Nova Scotia. I also included how I came to New York, but I forgot to write one thing. One word worth a thousand sentences. I forgot to include the time I came to New York. The law was that if any of my kind came to New York before the end of the war, they could stay, but if they came after the war then they would be given up to the cruel art of slavery. Soon after I sent this letter, I overheard that a very wealthy man, Mr. Crammon, wanted to detain me and take away me from my liberty. George and I begged General Carleton for help, looking for anyone who could show that I had the right of freedom. Mr. Crammon argued with Carleton, he believed that I came after the war, and eventually, I was given up. My life in New York was demolished, and I was put back into the hands of a puppeteer, just playing my part every day without breaking. George sailed for Nova Scotia without me, and here I am, six weeks later, writing about this story in the little free times I have. I will never forget the times I had in New York, and I will never forgive the ones who took them away from me.

Now here I am, writing about my stories, from back in Angola where I was stuck onto a ship and chained to hundreds of others, to my adventures in New York, to where I am now, back where I started in the New World, struggling through life and warding off pain. That’s what my life has been, and may always be. It all started when I was back in Angola, cooking for myself and occasionally making pottery at the seaside. One day, while I was out on the beach, a trading ship arrived, I was always curious about what was on board these mysterious ships, but as I moved in to see, a bunch of white men rushed out and started grabbing people, putting them in chains and then throwing them onto the ground, then tying them together, I had seen people been taken away before, but it never was this messy. The ones that resisted, they were given broken arms, the ones that fought were killed. I watched as the slaughter went on, mesmerized by horror, unable to move my body. The ship was about 70 feet away, and I was sitting in plain sight. But they just kept advancing on the dock, throwing people onto the dock floor and killing the rest. In less than five minutes of their arrival, the dock was littered with bodies, bathing in a pool of their own blood, even the alive ones. They seemed to notice that the reinforcements wouldn’t stop coming, as they shouted something to their ship and then looked around for others. Then they saw me. My heart stopped, his feet started, I tried to move, nothing. I tried to scream, nothing, my world was frozen in time, but theirs were moving. I just sat there, watching the man advance on me. He was about 50 feet away, then, the entire beach seemed to move. The ship fired its cannons straight into the city, demolishing houses and killing anyone in the blast. Just like that, as if the cannon was a reminder that I was alive, I jumped onto my feet and ran, but he already had a head start. I sprinted like the wind, and dared not look back, but out of nowhere, my ankle started bleeding profusely and I let out a scream. I fell into the sand and gripped my wound. The man had shot at me, and skimmed my ankle. I started tearing at it, hoping for my new pain to ease the old one, but the man was already on me, he gripped me by the hair, pulled me up, then smashed me into the sand, my nose obliterated, he picked me up by the hair one more time and pulled up his gun, just above my head, that was the last thing I remember. When I woke up, I was drowning inside of a sea of people, injured, bloody people. I asked around for what was happening and only one man responded.

“We’re going to hell, that’s what.” He said, “Straight into the lion’s den,” he snickered, “and we thought what we had before was bad.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, confused by his response.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he said with a grim look on his face, “we’re going to the ‘New World.’”

I still didn’t know what he meant, but as if he read my mind, he said, “I’ve heard stories about them, the white men. They steal people’s lives and make them do their work for them. They take people as slaves and treat them as cattle, do you not see?” He paused, “We’re going to be enslaved, we’re going to die as slaves!” he was screaming, but no one noticed, everyone had the same look on their face, the look of pain, of unease, of death. The rest of the trip was blurred out by pain and sorrow. Every day, trapped in a cage with hundreds of others. Occasionally I even heard a child crying, sobbing for a reason lost in time. Maybe because of a lost mother, or maybe crying just for the sake of crying. Countless days later, full of death and fear, we arrived at what the man called the “New World.” It was so bright I thought I was blind, I heard people speaking in English, a language I have learned vaguely throughout my life.  I remember being dragged through the streets, chained to everyone else on the ship. If one person fell, everyone fell, if one person stopped, everyone stopped, if one person fought back, everyone dies. We walked through the streets, full of shame and humiliation. We had given up trying, it only ever led to pain. I remember being thrown onto the stage, up for auction, full of a room with men yelling at us and discussing with others.

“Name?” asked the man in front, staring at a paper, waiting for my reply, pen and quill ready.

“Gwynn.” I replied,

“First name?”

“Peggy.”

“Peggy Gwynn,” he mumbled as he wrote, “please step on the stage.” he said as he looked up at me for the first time. His face showed pain, and every wrinkle seemed to lead to a different story of sorrow. He obviously didn’t like his job, and everyone was a burden to send away.

I remember being taken away to a farm by a man named Bernard Frye, and then being used as a cook. They gave me ingredients that I had never seen before, and I was unfamiliar with their foods, but I soon learned some dishes and made them to a large extent, barely ever experimenting with other foods as I did back in Angola, when I tried something and did it wrong, I would get whipped thirty times across the back. Eventually, they grew tired of me and hired another cook, and I was sent outside to their plantation, growing their crops for them through all conditions. Then eventually, a messenger came bearing a message that would change my life. He said that any slaves to go to New York would be freed on account that they help the Loyalists fight off the Patriots. I, along with many others from Frye’s plantation, ran the next day at dawn, and made it to New York in a week. The messenger did not say where we were, but he pointed out the direction that New York was, and that was the way we went. Once we made it to New York, we all went our own ways, I went to become a cook, the men became soldiers, and a few others became cooks and laundresses as well. I was finally done being a runaway, and although I wasn’t treated the same way as the more privileged whites, I lived like one for a year, until I was taken back into slavery by a lying scoundrel by the name of Mr. Crammon, which is where I now reside, Crammon plantation, in the small, cramped slave house behind the hill, and is where I write and cook on my own with whatever herbs I can find.

In Humanities, we read a book called The Crucible, by Arthur Miller. We then read a portion of a book about McCarthyism, and then we related the two to each other and current day. We made connections between the three and eventually wrote an essay about it. We chose a subject that related to it, such as power or reputation or a few others. I chose reputation. My essay was mostly about how people fight for power by gaining influence, and lot’s of times that ends up in getting a bad reputation.

 

Blinded by Bias

 

It’s impossible to see someone without bias. Throughout history, people have strived to gain a good reputation, while some others gain a bad one. Reputation is how someone is seen and thought of. No matter what, someone has a reputation, good, bad, or something else, you can have a reputation for something that isn’t either good or bad, but something in between. A person’s reputation changes how others see them, either for the better or worse, that is the case in multiple scenarios, back in 1692, when the Salem witch trials were happening, to the McCarthy Era in the 1950s, and also modern day. Having a good reputation can save someone’s life, but a bad one could end it.

Back in 1692, when civilization in America was just starting to withstand what the New World could throw at them, the people of Salem, Massachusetts started fighting amongst themselves. People were accusing each other of witchcraft, and people were dying left and right, just because someone said they were a witch. Although their lives were at risk, people still had things to lose. “PROCTOR: I have made a bell of my honor! I have rung the doom of my good name! (Miller, p.95)” Proctor was desperate to keep his reputation. He kept his secrets from everyone, his friends, family, the church and the government. He did so because he knew it would ruin his reputation if he shared. He committed adultery, and wanted to hide it from everyone. He didn’t admit that he had an affair until his wife, Elizabeth, was on trial for witchcraft and was accused by Abigail, whom Proctor had an affair with. Proctor threw all his work to hide from what he did all away to save his wife in exchange for his good name, his reputation. Proctor’s reputation was extremely important to him, but he wasn’t the only one that wanted to keep his pride. Still, in the 1950s, things like this were still happening.

In the McCarthy era, aging from February 1950 to December 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy was hungry for power. He was desperate to come back into office, so he used a list of people in government that he said were communists, when really it was a list of people applying for a job. He sent America into hysteria, and people were accusing one another all over the country. He also told lies to influence people to follow him. “McCarthy often exaggerated his war record to help his political career. For example, he was photographed in the rear seat, or a tail gun position, of a dive bomber and called himself ‘Tailgunner Joe,’ which led voters to believe he had fought bravely in combat… Most of his work had been behind a desk.” (Fitzgerald p. 41). In this situation, McCarthy lied about his war experiences in order to get respect from others to become more influential. They thought that he was tough and had fought through wars when in reality he had spent most of his time doing work at a desk. He also claimed that his broken foot was a wound from the war, when in reality it was broken from when he fell off a ladder at a party. McCarthy’s influence got smaller and smaller as he kept avoiding people that asked to see the list by saying things like, it’s in my other suit, or I forgot it on the plane, when in reality, he didn’t have it. He also, whenever questioned, reduced the number of suspected communists and then accused someone with a large role in the government to distract them while he thought of a way to avoid their suspicion. His reign finally ended after he accused the army of going soft on communists. The army then sent Joseph N. Welch, a soft-spoken lawyer to represent them. He caught and destroyed every one of McCarthy’s accusations, and McCarthy progressively got angrier and angrier, accusing and insulting many people with high positions in the government. Finally, he accused someone in Welch’s law firm, Frederick G. Fisher, of being a long time member of a legal arm of the Communist Party. Welch then famously replied, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” The hearings in the Army came to a close a week later and McCarthy was put as a reckless bully, his reputation dropped from someone with so much power and influence that he could send the entire country into hysteria, to a bully. He died three years later in 1957, still in office. The strife for reputation and power didn’t end there though, even in modern day, 60 years after McCarthy and 325 years after the Salem witch trials, people still are desperate for power.

The current president of the U.S, Donald Trump, had a campaign for presidency that was completely based on lies and fear of terrorism, much like McCarthy’s fight against Communism. Much like before, people were hysteric, confused and angry. People were blocking others out and gaining a bad reputation for it. “If you are a superb businessman with a sterling reputation, you’ll see the value of reputation in higher prices you can demand, higher volume of sales, less turnover by employees, better terms from vendors and easier credit terms. People want to be in business with you. If, however, your reputation is that of an incompetent blowhard and sleazy guy, you’re not going to be able to charge as much for hotel rooms (or fill them up), keep good employees and get favorable terms from vendors and creditors. You may even get harsher treatment from regulators and juries/judges who view you with suspicion.” (Rubin, Washington Post Journalist, published on October 18, 2016 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/10/18/brands-come-and-go-but-damage-to-trumps-reputation-will-last/?utm_term=.29c24064ebd4). In this article by Jennifer Rubin, a journalist in the Washington Post, she was talking about how reputation affects people, specifically Trump, and how it can damage how people view someone. Someone who is known for scamming people or something along those lines is less likely to be treated as well as someone who is known for something good in most people’s eyes. As the quote says, people will treat you differently depending on how they see you. Someone’s good reputation can be bad in someone else’s eyes, and it can change on a dime. One wrong move and it can go right down the drain. “Unfortunately, once your reputation goes down the drain, your reputational value often goes to “zero — fast,” It’s binary, as we saw with Tiger Woods; you’re either worth a lot of people don’t want you at all.” (Kossovsky,  President and chief executive of Steel City Re https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/10/18/brands-come-and-go-but-damage-to-trumps-reputation-will-last/?utm_term=.29c24064ebd4 October 18, 2017) This shows how, generally, people either have a good reputation, or a bad one, there really isn’t a middle point.

Even still, people work through hell to get a good reputation, but many people end up getting a bad one either way. It matters so much to some people that they will even kill one another to try for a reputation. History really does repeat itself, people throughout history all over the world have strived for reputation and power, many of the time by throwing down others and expressing what people are scared of to show that they are tough enough to face their fears. From back in the Salem Witch Trials, where people were striving to get a good reputation to avoid getting hanged, to the McCarthy period, where people who people thought were “different” sometimes got accused of being communist. All the way to modern day, where people are being pushed out of America for being different, usually by being Muslim, mostly because of Trump’s lies, where he said all Muslims were terrorists. No matter what, people have bias, if no one did, no one would have opinions. If no one had a reputation, no one would ever have any power and everyone would be equal, would the world be better without the thought of reputations?

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Notecards

In Humanities, we were assigned to research our colonial topics (mine being pirates) and write a noodle tools note card about it. We have wrote ten note cards, each about different, smaller topics inside of one big topic. I learned how much someone can write about a small topic, and how much information there is in each topic. I was focusing on privateering and what it meant to be a privateer, such as the letter of Marque and Reprisal. Although it is fairly short, it has a good description of what privateering is, and it analyzes the quote well.

Armant L’Heureux

11/3/16

The Letter of Marque and Reprisal

Source:

“Privateering.” United States History , www.u-s-history.com/pages/h629.html. Accessed 3 Nov. 2016.

URL:

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h629.html

Quote:

“Privateering was a wartime practice in which a belligerent power would authorize its citizens to operate privately owned ships in campaigns against enemy shipping. Motivation for participating in these ventures was partly patriotism, but most of the allure came from converting the prizes (captured ships and cargo) into money. Privateers were distinguished from pirates in that the former were issued “letters of marque and reprisal,” official government papers authorizing these campaigns.

Privateering was especially important to nations with small navies, whose activities were thus supplemented. America benefited from this practice in both the  War of Independence  and the  War of 1812 .

Numerous abuses occurred over the years, however. It was often an easy step to turn from preying on belligerent ships to non-belligerent ones. Many privateers found it to be financially rewarding to become pirates.

The practice of privateering was outlawed by the international community in the Declaration of Paris in 1856.”

Paraphrase:

  • Privateers’ ships and crew are owned and paid for by themselves, unlike the navy
  • Letters of marque and reprisal was license for plundering without punishment
  • Privateering was very important for small navies
  • Privateers were in both the War of Independence and the War of 1812
  • Many privateers ended up being pirates such as William Kidd
  • In 1856 privateering was outlawed by Paris

My Ideas:

Privateers would have to buy their own ships, weapons, supplies and crew. They were required to sign the letter of marque and reprisal, which was essentially a contract that allowed for privateers to plunder without punishment, but they had to give some of their spoils to their government. Privateers were used extensively in small navies such as America’s during the revolutionary war, where most of the naval American ships were privateers and merchants. Many successful privateers resorted to piracy such as William Kidd. In 1856, Paris declared it illegal to hire privateers.