Clock Strikes 27

Dear Mr. Net,

Greetings.

I'm pleased to inform you that the clock of my lifespan striked twenty-seven yesterday, and I'd like to tell you how I spent my birthday.

Around noon Mom woke me up and asked if I want to have lunch with her and Aunt Fanny at City One Plaza. I went. At the "Purple Ivy Garden," a Chinese restaurant, we had melon & rice in soup, stir-fried vegetables, Shanghai-style steamed pork dumplings, steamed rice-rolls, and "Baiyun"("White Cloud") chicken feet.

At a quarter to one, I took the 62R bus to Kowloon Tong MTR (the subway in Hong Kong) station. Sitting right opposite to a nice-looking teenage girl, who stared at me in quite an unfriendly way for more than a few times as if she's wondering why on earth a guy in his late twenties, wearing sandals and dressed up in a blue polo shirt and white shorts, is listening to the radio on a walkman on a bus on a weekday afternoon, I tried my best to avoid eye-contacting her and looked to the left over my shoulder, spotting the other five remaining passengers. A little girl sitting alone. On the opposite side sat her little toddler sister and their mom. In front of the toddler sat a middle-age woman, and in front of her sat a thirtyish man.

Then I took the subway to Cheung Sha Wan, while I was reading Neil Simon's "The Gingerbread Lady". Right when I was about to exit at the gates, a short, cheerful, white-haired, old woman came up to me asking for directions to the C1 exit, which happened to be my exit as well. While I was leading her and her grumpy-looking friend, an old woman wearing a strawhat and treading slowly far behind us with a wooden cane, out the station, the smiley, old woman explained,"We could've hired somebody to take us to our destination, but we don't have the money, so I guess we might as well go by ourselves." The minibus station they were looking for appeared right in front of us when we came out of the station. I stayed with them while they were waiting for the 45M minibus that goes to the Caritas Hospital where they'd have their eye-examinations. The grumpy one was rather impatient, so they eventually got on a taxi and left. The cheerful one and I waved to each other and said our goodbyes.

The time's almost ten to two now, and I had an engagement at two at an elderly community centre nearby where I was supposed to coach a group of elderly in preparation for their road safety skit contest, held later in October, so I picked up my feet and looked for it in quite a hurry. Past the market. Across the street. Up the stairs. There. There's the entrance.

Door's locked.

Tried to force it open. Still it's locked. Then when I looked through the glass window of the door, there's a lady pointing. "The other side," her finger said.

Still to come...

The coaching session till four.

A walk with Aunt Ling plus a dial to home.

Subway to Tsim Sha Tsui while finishing "The Gingerbread Lady".

Pool closed.

A long wait for a vanilla-turned-strawberry shake at McDonald's.

Train to Shatin.

Walk to the pool.

Swim. Swim. Swim.

Dial to home.

National Geographic's special Africa edition at the library till 1930.

Chiuchow-style dinner.

Another walk with Aunt Ling.

Solitude plus last call at the UA Shatin cinema.

Surprise Cantonese opera at a Chinese Ghost Fest Fair till 2340.

Back to solitude by the Shing Mun River.

The two guys sitting and the two guys biking.

Lemon Coke light at home.

The call from Corinna.

The blog.

Till later.

Yours sincerely,
B. H.

Hard Time, Happy Time (ESL 82 Spring 1998)

Originally, I was a little bit disappointed for I was not assigned to read Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, but was assigned to read Angela's Ashes. When I got the book and saw its cover, that was a brownish photograph of a kid leaning on a wall on the sidewalk, having a pair of dirty feet and smiling, I did not feel anything significant. Well, it made sense, since I had not read it. Now, after I finished reading this book, I can tell you that the book cover did reveal something, something happened during that little kid's poor childhood, something that was not much about misery, but was the joy of being naive during a hard time.

Angela's Ashes, a memoir written by Frank McCourt, was about the hard time that he and his family went through, the poor living for which they struggled and, most importantly, how his and his brothers' "miserable Irish Catholic childhood" (p.11) looked and sounded like a joyful time in an amusement park. McCourt's story began in America. Then, he and his family went to Ireland, the motherland of his parents, and lived a poor life. Though there were so many terrible things happened to him and his family, for instance, having an alcoholic father, being looked down on by others and the loss of very close relatives, McCourt and his brothers filled the hard time with much fun, excitement, and joy.

I do not mean to offend anybody, but McCourt's father was a terrrible father. How terrible was he? Well, he was obsessed with something.

B-E-E-R.

It was the father's all-time favourite. He was drunk when he and Angela, his wife, went to register McCourt's birth and gave their son an extraordinary name--Male. When Male was baptized, his father then went to have a drink. Throughout the story, he drank and drank and drank, being faithful to his old bad habit. Even after three of his children were dead, which I think that the insensitivity of the father was part of the cause, the father was still not "awake." As a faithful beer addict, he gave in to his costly temptations again and again which made him almost donate all his money to the bar and merely left some shillings and pennies to his dearest family. He lost his jobs for so many times because he was drunk and was late for work next morning. He deserved it, but his wife and children did not deserve having him as the husband and the father. Besides, he did not deserve to have this family, since he paid not much attention to their needs and showed not much affection to them. That was it, the father was a terrible man.

I am amazed about the author's astonishing ability to remember clearly what had happened to him and his family in those days. I believe that it must have taken him so much time to recollect all those incidents and to write them down. I guess that the author's experience of writing Angela's Ashes would be really fascinating, as he had to go through all the things he and his family experienced again. He had to think about all those days he spent with his parents, his brothers, his relatives, and his friends in the old houses, the streets, and the school. Nowadays, the new scientific technology enables us to record things and to have things "remained." We have camera, video camera and recorder, and cassette tape recorder. Also, the ease of life seems to make people become forgetful. Unlike McCourt, I can only remember some pictures of my childhood. They are not in sequences, but separated. They are not in motion, but still. Maybe it is too difficult for a person to erase the memory of such hard times, such overwhelming times.

The most essential thing that I have learned from this memoir is the importance of transforming hard time into happy time. Of course, we cannot expect to have perfect lives in which hard times do not exist. However, we should bear in mind that we can still make a difference when we are having hard times. It is all right for us to feel sad or depressed during hard times. No one is Superman and no one should be, except the God. However, it is always better to fight on and to go straight ahead to meet the storm rather than just sighing and doing nothing but letting the so-called fate to take over us. Happiness does not just come in between us and does not necessarily come with wealth, fame, and power. It comes when people learn to feel contented about what they have, to cherish the love of their parents and friends, and to have artless, but not foolish, minds and kind hearts. Yes, it is always easy to say it than to actually do it, but Angela, who was McCourt's mother, did it. She did it. She was certainly one of the most miserable persons in the memoir, having not just one but three of her children died. They were her dearest babies. However, she did not give up. She struggled to survive and to raise her children, even though her husband was insensitive to her and the family's needs and she was looked down by others. Angela showed us what strength can human beings have, what will-power can enable a person to struggle through hard times, to fight back, and to challenge one's destiny and what love means in a woman's heart.

No More Trash TV Please (ESL 82 Spring 1998)

"I WON'T LET YOU SELL YOUR BODY," "PREGNANT BAD GIRLS" and "GUESS WHAT... I'M A MAN"--these are just a few "exemplary" themes found in The Jerry Springer Show, one of the most controversial and criticized television programmes in America, in which the audience witness the eye-catching fights and hear the "ear-catching" beeping sound which is a fine substitute for foul language. From my point of view, the talk show should not aim at entertaining television audience, exploiting the guests and discussing serious and controversial issues insensibly and inappropriately.

First, it is improper to use the discussion of controversial issues as a means of entertainment. The Jerry Springer Show talks about Ku Klux Klan members, transsexuals, strippers, premarital and extramarital relationships and other controversial phenomena. What the Jerry Springer Show does is to let all the guests express their feelings using abusive language and acts. In James Collins's article "Talking Trash" of the Time magazine, it writes,"Springer says the show is 'silly' and 'outrageous' and a 'cultural cartoon' and so shouldn't be taken too seriously." Springer showed the same kind of no-big-deal attitude in other magazine articles, including Joe Schlosser's article from Broadcasting & Cable and Jim Impoco's article "Trash TV gets the message--sort of" from U.S. News and World Report. Unfortunately, what The Jerry Springer Show presents is not a form of entertainment, but vulgarity.

Secondly, the guests are exploited by The Jerry Springer Show, as a means of entertainment rather than human beings who have dignity. The talk show is really disrespectful to its guests by presenting a shallow discussion that solves no problems and helps no one. In the opposite, it subjects its guests to the audience's immediate humiliation, irrational criticism and emotional molestation. Under such unstable and provocative atmosphere that is created by the surprise-oriented talk show, the host easily disorients the guests, even the audience. The guests are induced to reveal their private matters and personal problems, leading to more surprises. Collins also writes that "Springer says that... it is unlikely that someone who is vulnerable will appear" and "Richard Dominick, Springer's executive producer, says the show protects the guests by giving them a standard list of twenty-five secrets that could be revealed." Though the guests themselves may not be vulnerable people, they are definitely put into a vulnerable, inferior and exploitative position on the show. Imagine, you are now on a national television talk show, and in front of you is a large crowd of non-supportive audience to whom you are just an object of ridicule and contempt, as Collins's article says. What do you think your speech and behaviour will be like? Also, the list of secrets that could be revealed is merely a piece of general information that does not help the guests a lot. People will still be overwhelmed by the appalling facts that are going to be revealed.

Last but not least, continual production of this kind of talk shows leads to two potential risks. The first one is the deterioration of the quality of television programmes, which will surely undermine the audience. The second one is the deterioration of social norm, ethical and moral standard. According to Nielson ratings, one million children watch the Jerry Springer Show each week. Impoco writes,"[former] Education Secretary William Bennett, Senator Joseph Lieberman and others have decried trash TV as a form of cultural pollution and consider The Jerry Springer Show to be one of the more toxic smokestacks." Besides, I believe that the talk show has a negative influence on the young audience, since it consists of quite a lot of fights and insults and shows no seriousness. Springer says to Schlosser,"[there] is no seriousness to it." The show merely exposes the dark side of human relationships and human weaknesses. Even the guests are sometimes dehumanized by the narrow and biased views of the host and the audience, which are often contradicting and misleading. Though the talk show says that its objective is to provide pure entertainment, the show ends with a several minutes long conclusion segment called "The Final Thoughts" in which the host gives superficial comments and opinions. Furthermore, we must consider whether the young audience can distinguish between true and fake, right and wrong.

To conclude, the current objective and presentation method of The Jerry Springer Show are socially irresponsible. I am sure that there are other bad examples of television talk shows that do not intend to improve their quality. The best things we can do are to boycott watching them and to educate our next generation to maintain their own critical and independent thinking while they are watching these talk shows.

The Diary of a Young Girl (ESL 82 Spring 1998)

As a nineteen-year-old man who is raised in a caring family in a tiny part of the earth--Hong Kong, a relatively much more peaceful place if compared to some war-worn lands, the word W-A-R sounds so distant for me. I have not heard any gunfire or explosions of bombs before except in the news and movies, especially the Hollywood action blockbusters. People were killed and lost their love ones during wars, but we people go to the theatres, paying money, to watch violent films or what they called "crisis" films like the Die Hard series, Alien series, Starship Troopers and the international acclaimed Jurassic Park. People will even become bored if there are not enough gunfire, blasts and bloodshed scenes. Is that strange or not?

When I finished reading Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl, that is about her life in the secret annexe with her family and four other people hiding from the Germans during World War II, it was like that I had experienced part of her life during the war, a time of brutality, pathos and fear. However, this diary is not merely about horror or frightful experience of a young girl, but also the joyful romantic days, warmth in the family, struggles to acquire recognition by people having different values and characters and, most importantly, the personal views and feelings about the environment, the events happened to her and herself. The extraordinary journey began on Frank's thirteenth birthday and ended abruptly less than two months after her fifteenth birthday.

Though it was a little better than those who were in the concentration camps, living in the secret annexe was by no means an easeful experience. Frank and other members of the house could celebrate festivals and birthdays in the house, but they were not allowed to go out, just like prisoners. What is more, they had to be alert at all the time, to be prepared for sudden raid and lived under tremendous pressure and fear of being discovered. Living under such tense atmosphere, people are inclined to lose their temper and tolerance. There are many pages of the diary describing the argument and quarrels happened in the house, as everybody had his or her opinions and wanted others to support them. The diary was just like a documentary showing us about how difficult to learn cooperating, communicating with others and to be tolerant with others' weaknesses.

Interestingly, my sister and I have been quarrelling a lot since I come to San Francisco in mid-July of 1997. We have so much difference in values and personality. What intrigues me so much is that she can recognize my different point of view, but not vice versa. So many times I have scolded her as if she was my daughter, although I am, in fact, the youngest one in the family. My parents always ask me not to criticize my sister, but to be tolerant, forgiving and to recognize her strengths and weaknesses, since they have been doing the same thing. Well, I hope that I can train my tolerance, communication skills through time and, hopefully, live with my sister in reconciliation eventually. If Anne can have the courage to write and to talk to Margot, her sister, even she thought that her parents loved Margot more, I believe that the problem I mentioned can also be overcome. I hope so. After all, I only have one sister. If I do not love her, there will not be another brother loving her.

Since it usually takes a lifetime for a person to know another person well, it will have to take decades, even centuries, of time for a race to understand more about another race having a different cultural background. Unfortunately, it is easier, in some way, for a race to lose control, but not so easy for an individual relatively. In World War II, the Nazi party lost their self-control. Consequently, most of the Europeans became poor victims under the terror of Hitler. Frank, who was one of them, wrote on May 3rd in 1944, "what is the use of the war... [why] should millions be spent daily on the war... while there are surpluses rotting in other parts of the world... why are people so crazy?" Owing to a ridiculous belief of the Aryan race as the "master race" and Jews as an inferior race, an estimated six million Jews and millions of non-Jews were murdered. At that time, "life" was a mute word, while "death" was crying out loud. The war was like a tornado, sweeping away our homes, our families, our friends, and, eventually, ourselves. What were left behind are millions of broken hearts and wounded souls.

Nevertheless, Frank "[regarded]... hiding as a dangerous adventure, romantic and interesting at the same time... I have to laugh at the humourous side of the most dangerous moments... [why]... should I be in despair?" Hope is undoubtedly the thing keeping people survive and keeping Frank survive for at least two years in the secret annexe. Every time when Frank heard anything about the invasion of the allies, she wrote them in the diary. She also wrote about what the first thing each of the house members wished to do right after the war ended. Though Frank was unhappy about others' criticism and was troubled because of the unknown cause of people killing each other, not one sentence she had written saying that she want to give up her hopes. Even though she mentioned on May 26th in 1944 that she had asked herself again and again whether it "would... have been better for us all... if we were dead now and not going through all this misery," the answer was crystal clear--"we still love life... we still hope... about everything."

Through reading Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl, I see the light of humanity and hear the sound of sympathy from her artless expression and words. If Miss Anne Frank were still alive, she now would be 68 years old. Tragically, she died of typhoid about seven months after the last entry of her diary, which will actually become a long-lived memorandum in human history, always reminding us never set our destination in hatred but love.

On Tamagotchi (ESL 72 Fall 1997)

If I decide to have a pet, I will have a real pet, but not an electronic toy. Tamagotchi is just a tiny machine, though the main character in this game is like a baby chick that eats, sleeps, and wants the Tamagotchi-owner's attention. I agree with Mr. Yokoi (I think he's the guy who invented the game) that people should love and take good care of their pets, but playing an electronic gadget, that has a higher recreational value than the educational value, will not really reach that goal.
It will be too naive to think that we can feed, teach, cure, and play with a pet simply by pressing a few buttons.

Also, if a real pet die, we cannot just push the "reset" button and start all over. What is more, there is no communication of love when we play Tamagotchi, but a flow of electricity or entering and executing a computer's command. In fact, the life, the behaviour and the response of the Tamagotchi, the little chick, were planned by a computer programme long before we buy it, even its surprising habit and movement were fixed.

Imagine, how can we learn to love and take good care of our pets if the pets and ourselves are separated by a liquid crystal display. Will you sympathize the little chick that it cannot come out of the screen, but stay in the tiny screen forever? Will you sympathize yourself buying this little chick that moves strangely and screeches like a robot (BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!)?

If I have a real pet, I can take it for a walk in the beach, in the countryside and embrace it. What I want to say is love and care cannot be expressed to a pet not until you take the first step by looking after them, touching them, and living with them.

Seeing the Real World (Sociology Critical Essay Spring 1999)

The variety of ways of perceiving things like images, nature and reality is one of the common themes I found in Jamake Highwater's book The Primal Mind, John Berger and Jean Mohr's book Another Way of Telling and jacques Lusseyran's article "The Blind in Society & Blindness, a New Seeing of the World." The writers also think that people are prone to believe that there is only one way of seeing the real world.

Each of the three readings presents the common themes in its own way, acting as a very good example of perceiving things differently. As an Indian, Highwater presents a fairly comprehensive discussion on the difference between the western and the Indian ways of seeing things. Taking the making of animal images as an example, Highwater (1981) quotes from Herbert Read, an art historian, that a primal artist " is able to select just those features which best denotes [the animal's] vitality, and by exaggerating these and distorting them..., he produces a representation which conveys to us the very essence of the animal (p.58)," while the western artists merely imitate animals' appearances until the twentieth century came (p.59). I know that there was a period when western artists tried to imitate reality and to create a "second nature" in their paintings by perfecting their eye-hand coordination. They make their paintings as realistic as possible, including an object's size, shadows, colours and texture. Today when we look at many old paintings, we are still amazed by the painters' skills that enabled them to draw such paintings that resemble today's photographs. As for human sculptures, they are made according to anatomical proportion of various body parts. Interestingly, if the western sculptors did not pursue in imitating the real human body in their sculptures, today we would not see any people standing still in the streets and imitating as sculptures.

Now lets take a look at the relationship between humans and the nature. Highwater (1981) explains that "Indians do not address nature as underlings nor do they command (p.74)."He also quotes from Dorothy Lee that "[the western] attitude towards nature is colored by a desire to control and exploit" and the "Wintu (Indian) relationship with nature is one of intimacy and mutual courtesy..., [one] kills a deer only when he needs it for his livelihood, and utilizes every part of it... because the deer had died for him"(Highwater 1981, p.74). It is quite right that humans create immense impact on the nature everyday. We remove mountains, reclaim lands, build tunnels, dams and reservoirs, extract fossil fuel and collect timber from the tropical rain forests. What is more, we release pollutants into the air from our incinerators, factories and vehicles, dump the nuclear waste and test our nuclear bombs in the lands and oceans. Are we treating our Mother Nature with intimacy and mutual courtesy like the Indians? I doubt it. Is it really that harsh for people to maintain the balance between advancing technology, enhancing living standard and keeping the well-being of our Mother Nature? Perhaps it is. It truly indicates how different our attitude towards the Mother Nature if compared with the Indian's.

For Lusseyran, his way of seeing is, indeed, distinctly different from others, as he cannot see the light with his eyes. "Yet the light was still there" (Lusseyran 1973, p.9). He speaks of something blind people had developed which nearly all other people forget how to use: attention, which enables him to feel the world by its pressure ( Lusseyran 1973, p.12). As a seeing person, it is quite hard for me to understand how the "attention" works, since I have got used to rely on my eyes to tell me about the reality. When I was studying in high school, a teacher told us that sometimes students are physically present and mentally absent during classes. Here in this case paying attention is to listen carefully what the teacher says to you, but the "attention" developed by the blind is much more powerful. They do not actually see the appearances of the surroundings, but by being attentive they know how the surroundings look like. "Every single tree projected its form, its weights, its movement... in my direction" (Lusseyran 1973, p.12). I think that the attention is another sense, another way of seeing the world, which is rarely used by the seeing people. It is really a gift for blind people in order to substitute for what they have lost.

In Another Way of Telling, the variety of ways of perceiving things is shown in the "ambiguity of a photograph's meaning" (Berger and Mohr 1995, p.128). It talks about how different meaning each of us can receive from the same photograph. There is not just one meaning for one photograph. This is because different people relate themselves with the photograph in different ways. "When we find a photograph meaningful, we are lending it a past and a future" (Berger and Mohr 1995, p.89). Each time when we look at a photograph, we do not merely receive the image of the photograph. It triggers us to relate the photograph with other images, as "[appearances] both distinguish and join events... and... [the] sight of any single thing or event entrains the sight of other things and events' (Berger and Mohr 1995, p.113). Therefore, each of us gives a different meaning to a photograph and sees different things from a photograph.

Nowadays, it is not uncommon to hear people say that there are different ways of interpreting and analysing things and it is always important not to be subjective, but to be objective, especially in a scientific and technological world and in the western culture. However, who defines objectivity? Though people try to be objective and to achieve something, it seems to me that the outcomes often lie beyond our expectation.

Actually, the writers of the three readings reveal some of the problems they have discovered or encountered. In Highwater's (1981) book, he claims that "Western mentality... has meticulously built an entire system of values and judgements upon the assumption that the people of the West are superior to everyone else; and... has been supported by something called objectivity" (p.21). He even suggests that "most groups believe their view of things to be an exclusive kind of reality, [so] we are all prone to make evaluations without employing any of the ideas and visions of the things we are attempting to evaluate" (Highwater 1981, p. 20). As for the dominant society's children, they seldom have the chance to know how others see the world, so they are prone to dismiss other worlds, other realities and other truth (Highwater 1981, p.6).

For the blind people, Lusseyran (1973) thinks that people do not trust the blind (p.17). People should judge them by their value, not by what was believed to be their value (Lusseyran 1973, p. 18). Blindness is just another "state of perception, another realm of experience" (Lusseyran 1973, p.20).

As for photography, it brought the problem of "the subordination of all other values to those of a world market which treats everything as a commodity" (Berger and Mohr 1995, p.99) and the problem of "the suppression of the social function of subjectivity, ...meaningful democracy..., ...social conscience..., ...history..., (and)... hope" (Berger and Mohr 1995, p.100).

In conclusion, as there are so many ways of perceiving the world, the reality and the truth, we should now recognize others' point of view by giving others opportunities to prove their values. It is extremely essential for the people living in the "global village" to maintain a concord, positive and constructive relationship with each other in order to have a bright future society.

List of References

Berger, John and Jean Mohr. 1982. Another Way of Telling. New York: Pantheon.

Highwater, Jamake. 1981. The Primal Mind: Vision and Reality in Indian America. New York: Harper & Row.

Lusseyran, Jacques. 1973. "The Blind in Society & Blindness, a New Seeing of the World".

History 344: Graded Assignment Four: Position Paper

As a general from Georgia, I am most concerned about safeguarding our state from any possible attacks initiated by the Indians or the Spaniards. I strongly believe that ratifying the Constitution is an essential step we should and ought to take in order to enable the Union to establish a standing army financed by the federal government so that, for the sake of the safety of the lives and the properties of our people of Georgia, we shall have permanent military force to be on guard at our garrisons against any foreign attacks.

As one should remember that when Georgia was first chartered as a colony in 1732, it was specifically designed as a garrison province, one can understand that security has always been one of our primary concerns. It is necessary to keep these indispensable garrisons on the Union's western frontier by furnishing them with either infrequent militia detachments or permanent corps that is equal to a standing army financed by the federal government. Using militia detachments to guard against our enemies is not to be done, since it is not only harmful to our maintenance of security, but it is also costly to have frequent rotation of service and loss of labour.

People may argue that it is our state's problem, and it is our state's responsibility to arrange finance for a permanent armed force to guard against the Indians and the Spaniards. However, I should remind them that Georgia is not the only state sharing the border with our possible foreign enemies namely the British, the Spaniards, and the Indians; the whole Union from Maine to Georgia is surrounded by them. Therefore, it is a collective effort to protect the people of Georgia and, most importantly, the people of the United States of America.

History 344: Graded Assignment Three-Evaluating Evidence: The Chickasaws' Revolution

After the Revolution, not only the British soldiers were called away, but also the King's representative who maintained the communication between the Chickasaws and the British Government and transported goods such as clothes from Britain to the Indian Nation were called away. Consequently, the Chickasaws suddenly became lost in coping with a whole new situation in which they not only needed guidance in corresponding with the new independent American Government, but they were also in need of necessities like ammunition. The Chickasaw chiefs wrote to Congress in 1783 to show the Indian Nation's willingness to negotiate with Americans, to ask for advice of with whom the Chickasaws should correspond, to ask if Americans could supply them with necessities in the same manner as the British Government did before the Revolution, and, specifically, to request for stopping all the land encroachments and all the inflammatory and exasperating talks.

The message not only shows that necessities were scarce in the Chickasaw Nation, but it also indicates that both Spaniards and Americans wanted to conduct trade with the Chickasaws. It also somewhat reveals the cultural significance of chiefs and warriors, women and children, and the belief of the existence of the "good Spirit" in the Chickasaw society. In addition, the diplomatic relationship between the Chickasaw Nation and the new American states was quite constructive, as the people of Virginia could witness the Chickasaws' "good intentions," and an American was sent to inform Congress of the Chickasaws' concerns.

History 344: Graded Assignment Two-Approaching an Artifact

Produced between 1760 and 1790, the American easy chair tells us about the living standards of the eighteenth-century America. Probably produced in Massachusetts, the chair, which is made of mahogany and maple with red maple and cotton damask, has a slightly tilted back, large curved side wings, and padded upholstery. It also has knees with carvings and ball-and-claw feet. The joineries are well-made, and the wooden legs are finely-polished. The chair, which is made to be comfortable and to ease pain, was primarily for the use of the elderly and infirm, but it was also used by women in labor or nursing mothers. Its specialized use demonstrates that the furniture-making industry was thriving in the eighteenth-century America. Also, its appearances and craftsmanship not only indicate that the furniture-maker was skillful, but they also reveal that people like the colonial elite were able to pursue amenities and to afford such fashionable luxuries.

History 344: Graded Assignment One

Select any one of the assigned chapters from Liberty's Daughters by Mary Beth Norton, and summarize her argument for that chapter in one sentence. Your sentence should not exceed 50 words and it should successfully capture her entire argument for the chapter, not just one part of it.

Chapter One:

White women, whether they lived in cities, farms, or southern plantations, contributed to the success and survival of their households in the eighteenth-century America by managing domestic affairs efficiently, although it did not give them a sense of pride and satisfaction.

History 344: Week Two Assignment

To facilitate discussion of Kenneth Silverman's The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, bring with you to class one question concerning the contents of a particular passage.

As a printer, Benjamin Franklin printed newspapers, votes, Laws, and even paper money. Was printing an estimable business in the Colonial era (p.13)?

Yes, and the most lucrative part of the trade was public business like printing the votes and newspaper.

History 344: Midterm Exam

I thought it would be fun to post some of my answers from my exam book. It's a twenty-four-page booklet manufactured by Henry S. Wolkins Co. with a reorder number W2024. It has a light blue cover and pages with a red vertical line on the left and nineteen blue horizontal lines.

What can you tell from a teapot?

"The decorative flowery patterns and the delicate shape of the teaport indicates that tea-drinking was a leisure activity in the Colonial America, and the tea-trading industry was thriving at that time. The standard of living is also enhanced by the thriving economy, and some people like the elites could afford this kind of extravagant consumer goods in the era of consumer revolution."

What's "feme covert"?

"It refers to females who were married and, as a result, their property belong to their husbands. Married women did not have any political rights, and, in other words, they are "legally dead" in terms of their identity."

What's up with the Radical Whigs?

"They believed that power is evil, and liberty is feminine and vulnerable. The liberty desired by the populace could easily be destroyed by the power of the Government."

History 344

During the fall semester in 1999 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the courses I took is History 344, entitled The Era of the American Revolution. It was taught by Professor Jean B. Lee, a spectacled and knowledgeable lady wearing her silver hair(I almost unconsciously typed out "silverware") in a bob in her 50s, possibly 60s. Standing at the centre on the podium of a quiet, stuffy lecture hall, numbered 1121 within a gigantic, oddly-looking piece of concrete named Humanities Building, from 9:30 to 10:45 every Tuesday and Thursday morning, she spoke softly and tenderly to a sleepy crowd of undergraduates. For more than a few moments, she was one of those old grannies retelling her great great great grandsons and granddaughters about those epoch-making moments she had been through--"the moments when the spirits of the American people soared."

In the Beginning

Dear Mr. Net,

Greetings.

First of all, I wish to thank you for introducing me to the vast opportunities here online. I have eventually summoned up my courage and energy to set up this little "blog," a tiny platform on which I can stand up and stand tall. I can think my thoughts. Think them. Type them out. See them. Look at them. Have them right in front of me. For this, I thank you.

Setting this up has been a slow process with a bit of fear, some self-censorship, lots of expectations, and tons of excitement. Fear. Because I don't know what to say, especially for the very first time, but I realize that it helps just to spill it out. Perhaps that's why we scream when we're frightened. We frighten away the fright by freaking out, and I believe that the reason why I want to set up this blog has a lot to do with the fear I'm feeling inside me. I hope that by writing out about that fear I will somehow regain my courage, my sense, and my own self. It almost sounds like prayer.

I heard that praying doesn't change God. Praying actually changes the person praying. Perhaps posting a piece of writing here on this little blog doesn't necessarily change anything, but maybe it does change something. Maybe it changes how I see myself. Maybe that's the most fundamental change I need, i.e. how I see myself, in order to grow up as a man. To reach manhood. Yeah. I think that's it. Thanks. Thanks for telling me that.

Well, it's almost six in the morning here in Hong Kong, and I've been "working" on this blog of mine throughout the night. I suppose I should call it a "day."

Thanks.

Yours sincerely,
B. H.