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Pink Time #3

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Pecha Kucha photos

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After meeting with Professor Kaplan, I changed the transitions between each clip. I think they flow more smoothly now. She also helped me to create a little break between my mom’s portion and my own so that it wasn’t so abrupt. 

One thing I wish I could’ve changed was that the footage of my mom and the footage of myself was shot in the same location. I think it would have just added another layer of uniformity and cohesion. 

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Memory Video Link and Artist Statement

https://vimeo.com/372626201 

The purpose of this video project was to understand how two people can have different memories of the same occasion. In this case, both my mother and I speak about how we remember the day that my brother came home from the hospital. There is something keenly special about having your memories and thoughts reflected through actual footage of the experience. This video is a reflection of just that. Having not watched the home videos from that day in quite some time, both my mother and I reflected on what we remember and how we felt on that day. When paired with the footage, both sides to the same story work in tandem and provide a new shared memory. I chose to make the footage from that day in black and white to provide a sharp contrast between the present day and the film from the day we brought him home. Memory is acquired and stored much differently in children than in fully developed adults. While we share many similarities between how we remember that day, the differences in memory reflect the fact that I was 5 when he was brought home, and my mother was 33.

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Pink Time #2

For my pink time, I decided to spend a great deal of the time listening to interviews and videos of survivors and first responders from 9/11 and the Holocaust. The reason I started to do this was partly because I had been working on my memory video and was thinking about how powerful this type of media would be for events as important as 9/11 and the Holocaust and I figured there had to be videos out there already. I then began to connect this to my education class where we have been talking about oral traditions and storytelling as a means of learning. It got me thinking about how I became educated about these events and how future generations will learn about them. I started to look into one of the educational sites that I turn to often when I need a concept explained, Kahn Academy. I discovered that they don’t have a unit about 9/11 and saw this as the perfect opportunity to incorporate my education classes storytelling concepts with the memory concepts from our FSEM. I decided to write a letter to Kahn Academy, suggesting that they partner with the 9/11 Memorial Oral History Archive to create a curriculum that is accessible to everyone on their website that is almost entirely made up of personal interviews and survivor testimonials.

I think this was a far more interesting use of my time than the yoga that I did last time. I think I drew a lot of connections between my classes and real world applications. I would give myself a 100 on this assignment because I actually put a ton of thought into this assignment and am very passionate about what I did to the point where I really did put my letter in the mail and am hoping for a response back. 

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Letter to Khan Academy

To whom it may concern, I am writing to propose a unit on your website that informs your users about 9/11. I am

currently a student at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and am enrolled in an Education 100 class where one of our primary focuses is understanding how people learn. Our latest unit centers around Oral Traditions. Orality allows people to retain information through repetition and patters. Especially for young learners, learning through stories that involve relatable characters and tangible emotions often increases their ability to remember. Many classrooms have begun to incorporate oral history into their curriculum and in fact, your website does a fantastic job of using videos as a form of teaching. However, I think your website could take a step further in creating a unit that tells the story of September 11, 2001 through the personal experiences of first responders, survivors, and family members of those who were lost on that day.

Your website has become a well-known platform for credible information and learning resources. With this leverage, I believe you have the perfect opportunity to join forces with the 9/11 memorial online oral history archive in creating a curriculum that can inform young learners about this tragic event through oral storytelling. I believe oral storytelling, as it has traditionally, is the most effective mechanism for remembering history and is the future of teaching future generations about such a monumental event in history.

Sincerely, Liza Diffley

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Interview with holocaust survivor

Holocaust Interview with Mrs. Altman

On April 18, 2014 I interviewed Judith Altman, a Holocaust survivor. We talked over the phone for several minutes. Her story is unbelievable and I am so glad that I had the opportunity to speak with her. She now lives in Stamford, CT and speaks at schools about her story because she wants kids to learn about all these stories while we still can. She has a very thick accent, which I had never heard before, and it was interesting to hear her speak.

Q. Where did you grow up, and can you describe your childhood (your town and family) before the war started?

A. “My name is Judith Altman, born ‘Bohoro Chaneroba’ (that was just interpretive spelling) which means where God was born; the Czech name of it. Czechoslovakia was a wonderful, wonderful democratic country, no discrimination whatsoever. It was like in the United States, very democratic. Free schooling, free education, no problems at all being Jewish or Black, and no nationality was different of any kind. I went to Czech schools. We had a very good education, private schooling, whatever the family could afford. I was one of six, I was the youngest; eleven years younger than my next brother in line. My father had a big business and you could buy anything in the stores. From a horse to a needle, literally. It was just wonderful, until unfortunately 1939.”

Q. Can you tell me about your experiences during the war? How did it affect your family?

A. “In 1939 Czechoslovakia was occupied by the Germans. It was divided in three parts. The part that I came from, before 1918, belonged to the Austria-Hungarian Empire. After 1939, that part was given back to Hungary and Hungary was an Ally to the Germans. They were a Nazi as well. Our lives had changed drastically. After 1939, every man from the age of 18 to 45 was drafted to slave labor camps. Most of them never returned. They left their wives, their children, and they were not dressed in uniforms, they went in their civilian clothes. They were working very hard. Most of them died under when the head was the German army. They built roads, they built bridges, they had no warm place to sleep. It was a terrible, terrible way.”

           Q. So that was predominantly for men, where were you at this time?

A. “Any man or woman after the occupation, any professional doctor, lawyer, dentist, teacher, could no longer work. They lost their job, unless they were employed by a Jewish family. We no longer could go to school. Jewish children could no longer go to school. So they had to be educated privately. Which if a family could afford a private teacher, then we got a very meager education. My father was able to hire a teacher and a few of the children in my area, came to our house and we got a very, very few hours a week just to learn whatever he was teaching. But it was very horrible. We could not go to a then movie, we could not go to a theater, we could not walk on the sidewalks, we had to walk in the gutter. Every Jewish person had to wear the Star of David. It was sewn onto the sleeve and the back of the jacket so that wherever you walked, everybody knew that you were a Jew.”

           Q. How old were you at this time?

“I was 14 at the time of the occupation. But we were still at home, unlike other parts of Europe [where] Jewish people gather in ghettos. A ghetto is, they gather all the Jews in every town into one area. They have to leave their homes and their possessions, all they can take is a little of their money and jewels. And they gathered and lived in about 20-30 families in a house in a ghetto. From there, they were taken to work, the younger people, and whatever had to get done in that town. Then that changed later on as I go into another story.”

Q. Can you tell me about your experiences during the war? How did it affect your family? (Continued)

A. “In 1940, we were able to stay home. Under terrible scrutiny, they took away our business. They took our big house away. They had Germans living in our house. We were called half human. They just considered us sub-human. Every day there were different rumors. They would take mothers away, they take children away, today they take fathers, all the men that were already older than 45. There were constant terrible rumors of what was going to happen. My oldest sister lived in my town and she had two children. My nephew was two years older than me and my niece was the same age as myself. My next brother in line was drafted and he was able to escape, got himself to England and was fighting against the Germans. My next brother in line was fortunate. He left in 1939 to the United States. My next brother was a dentist at a slave labor camp. And one of my sisters was married and she lived in Poland, a neighboring country that was boarding Czechoslovakia. Until one morning, it was in early ’44 and it was six in the morning, they knocked on our window. There were two German soldiers and two Hungarian soldiers. And they said, you have a half hour, take all your money, and take all your jewels, and a little food for the day. Then we started marching. We marched down to town, which was four miles. We were told to go up to the cemetery. My father said, how convenient! They are going to shoot us dead they don’t even need to bring us up to be buried. But that did not happen. We stayed there for one week. Within that one week, one person could go home and bring more money and more jewels. My mother didn’t want to go so I went. I had everything of our possessions taken away already. I had a beautiful German Sheppard. I said to the woman that works for us, where is holly? And she said she died. She stopped eating and she died. We still had some jewelry, I asked her to bake a bread and put the gold into the jewelry and the dough and bring it to the cemetery. She did not do it, we did it just as good. Hopefully she was able to keep it. After a week at the cemetery, we were told to go to the railroad. We were taken to a town in Hungary where we lived in a ghetto for four weeks. After four weeks in that ghetto, which was very meager amount of food, but still we were together with my parents, and my sister, and my niece and nephew. After four weeks, we were told to go to the railroad. But this time, we were put into cattle cars, about 60-70 people in one car. We were like sardines. They gave us an empty bowl for using the bathroom, and they gave us one bowl full of water, which the children used up immediately. It took them until the following morning to load all the people from the ghetto. Then they closed the cattle cars, with iron bars. And they moved, it took four and a half days for our destination. The first night, a man died and we said where do we put the body? There in the corner? But there was no corner.  A woman was giving birth. The children were screaming that they want water. There was no water. But the first part, people went crazy. And they were hitting one another and they were screaming. The Germans said, if you don’t stop screaming, then we will take all of you out and we will shoot you. Well after four and a half days, we finally arrived to our destination. The doors opened and they were screaming. Grout, out, out! Line up in row of five. Women separate and men. In our line it was my mother, my sister, my aunt, my niece, myself and three little children. In my father’s row were my father, my brother-in-law, my nephew, my uncle, and another man. You dropped your satchel and whatever you had. There was nothing left because all we were taking along was a little food for the day. For the four and a half days, which we ate on the first day. Anyway, the men they are coming out and it takes a long time before the whole wagons are emptied out. Out comes this tall man in the uniform. They are all German SS men. The SS men were the elite of the German army. The men in the striped uniform, they are prisoners; they are Jews that have been there already. But they are the ones who tried to keep order. So they said, they looked at us young girls and boys and they said fourteen in every language. But we didn’t know, we were completely bewildered. What does he mean by fourteen? We found out soon enough. He saw a woman with a baby in her arms and he said give that baby to your mother, give the baby to grandma. But we didn’t know that either. Anyways, out comes this man. A tall man with the shiny boots and the rubber stick. He was doctor Joseph Mengeler. He was called the angel of death. By right so, because he determined who shall live and who shall die. So he came to our row. And he pointed to my niece to go to the left, to me to go to the left, and the rest of them are marching on. As I passed my fathers row he put his hand on my head and he said Judy you will live. We came to an enormous building, we walked up three steps. We were all young girls with beautiful hair. We were told to get undressed, completely naked. We were never undressed in front of men and there were chairs lined up. Behind each chair there was a man in striped uniform with a machine to cut the hair. They cut our hair completely bald. We were so embarrassed to sit there in front of men naked. Even the clothes we were supposed to put in the corner, they utilized every little thing to take away from us. We were given a little piece of soap and we stood in front of a door that it had gas. In our case, it was water coming down in the shower. In our parents case it was gas. After we were through with showering we were given a grey dress. No underwear, just a grey sheet dress. Short sleeve, nothing on our heads. We were waiting until all the girls came through and I took one look at my niece and I said Iga you don’t look so good. And she says neither do you. No hair, we looked terrible. We were given grey wooden clogs. And we started walking. We walked a long time, the whole camp was surrounded by barbed wire; if you touch it you get electrocuted. We came to block fourteen. There a large, large building and we were put into like shelves. Only the head sticks out, only the people on top got some fresh air. Within minutes, after we were settled, about five or six or seven, depends how big the block, there was an alarm. It’s called “block sped” (not sure if that’s what she said) and it means nobody can get out of the building. Within minutes, there was the most horrific smell of burning hair. We asked the people, who were also Jewish slaves, we said what is that horrible smell! They said these are your parents burning, I’m sorry to tell you that. As we went to the shower, our parents went to the gas chambers and right away into the crematorium. Because they did such efficient jobs there were four or five transports a day. And if they came in they killed them and burned them. Auschwitz is loaded with ashes of our parents. We were there for six weeks there in Auschwitz. What is there to do? The food is very meager. You’re being counted twice a day. There is no way to escape, so either she dies over night and you have to drag out the body to be counted. Very little food and you had no spoon or no dish. You get a pot of soup, which is made up of turnips and brain. One piece of bread a week. You can eat it up in a minute. Occasionally you were taken to work, but most often you stayed and were counted twice a day, in the morning and at night. Occasionally we were taken to work to the railroad at the new transport from France, from Holland, from Austria, came in and we assorted the clothes. It was good because if you found a morsel of bread, we ate it if the Germans didn’t see it. Otherwise you could get shot for that too. After six weeks, we are taken to take a bath, a shower. The hygiene was good. But you were always under fear are you going into the place where water is coming down or the gas. After six weeks we were taken to West Germany and we did very hard labor. We built houses, we built roads, we built bunkers, and it was very, very horribly intense. Only on the floor, cold, our shoes have broken down. We literally walked bare-foot. If we found some newspaper we wrapped it around our feet. We worked there extremely hard. After several months in West Germany, we were watched not only by SS men, but by the German army as well. We got a little better; we got a bowl of soup. WE already had a bowl and we had a spoon. We got a bowl of soup every day. Sometimes a piece of bread every day and sometimes every other day. [We were] very, very hungry. After many, many months of being beaten at all times, terrible, terrible conditions, cold. Still wearing that one dirty dress we had. We were given a blanket when we left Auschwitz. After many months in [she gives a name of a town in Germany] West Germany, we moved to another town. This town was Essen.  There we worked again extremely hard in an ammunition factory where we had to lift very heavy iron, put it in the oven and take it out. What happened to me, a piece of that iron fell onto my left wrist. If you could no longer work, you were taken away back to Auschwitz. I said goodbye to all my friends and my niece and at the following morning a lot of girls who could no longer work they were supposed to take the train to Auschwitz again. In the middle of the night somebody taps me on the shoulder. It was an Essen woman, Erica. She said come to (cleinay?) she called me little one. She took me to the hospital to put on a cast and I said to her, I spoke fluent German, how come you put a cast on? I am going to Auschwitz. I don’t ask questions. On the way back from there she stopped off at the factory and she asked the foreman to give her a certificate that he needs me because I spoke six languages. And if ever he needed to work down somewhere they spoke those languages, I told let’s say the Hungarian girl or the Russian girl what to do. He told them, if she is being taken away your work is going to be suffering. She handed over the letter to the head of the SS. And I was there. We were still many, many months there. When the British kept coming closer, we went on the death march. It was literally a death march because there was a mother and daughter and one could no longer walk. The one that could walk didn’t want to leave her daughter to die along the way. That took about three weeks on the death march. It was terrible. By the time we reached our destination, which was called Belgan the camp.  Anybody that survived the camp of Belgan will live forever. There was no hygiene. There was no crematorium. Mountains and mountains of dead bodies. An epidemic of typhoid. Your body is covered with black spots and a fever. People were dying in front of your eyes. We were there for many weeks. I think three months, yes. Three or four every day. My niece was already completely (jaunder?) She said to me Judy, if I could only have one small morsel of food I wouldn’t mind dying. So the SS women announced, if anybody is willing to carry dead bodies into the mass grave is going to earn a bowl of soup. I got another girl to help me and that’s what we did.  I got a bowl of soup and we shared it with the three of us. After that I didn’t see my niece, she disappeared. I said oh my god she didn’t want to die in front of me. After another week or two, one morning we wake up and there are soldiers with different uniforms; they were the British. They said you are free. We could not believe it because we thought we would never be free. Well, they told us you are free. They gave us food; they gave us too much food and most people died after that because our stomachs had shrunk. Anyway, they gave us a choice, you could stay in Germany or you could go back home to your country or origin. I chose to go to Sweden because there was a Swedish town. A man invited thousands of survivors to go there. I went to school in Sweden and I learned another language. Subsequently, I came to the United States, I married my husband, we have two sons and two grand daughters. And what I advise you, learn all you can because nobody can take the education from you. That will remain with you forever. And I hope to god nothing like that ever happens anywhere in the world again. And you will build a better world.”

I was cleaning/organizing my desktop and found this interview I did in middle school which gave me inspiration for my Pink Time #2

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Made appointment with Writing Fellow

For part to of my final research paper I made an appointment for Friday the 8th so that I have time to revise once I get feedback and before I have to submit my draft!

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Today in class I finished my mom’s portion of the video! My next step is to film myself talking about what I remember from the day my parents brought my little brother home. Feeling accomplished! #inprogresswork

Comments Professor Kaplan made that I changed: 

Old videos aren’t in the “old times” effect anymore - just in black and white

Have audio describe what we are watching - added more old video as opposed to watching my mom talk as much

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Chapter 4 Thoughts

I think I have been doing a good job of organizing my writing through outlines and brainstorming before even beginning to write. This helps to collect my thoughts. I also think I am very good about not procrastinating and starting my writing early so I leave time to revise at the end. 

I can definitely improve on revising my work to be more concise. This chapter talks a lot about how first years tend to submit rough drafts as final drafts due to time constraints and busy schedules. I don’t think I have been doing this necessarily, but I definitely want to spend more time revising for repetitive sentences/ideas because that is the biggest piece of feedback I’ve received from professor kaplan. 

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Journal Reflection #2

1a. Today I am planning to work on my pre-lab assignment for Biology. The assignment involves reading a scientific article and mapping out the methods section in pictures. The objective is to simplify the article into a way that is more understandable and easier to follow. Then we have to analyze one of the figures in the article. This includes rewriting the title of the figure in my own words and comparing each piece of data. This assignment is due Wednesday at 1:30 and it is currently Tuesday afternoon. I am in the third floor of the library in one of the cubicles. I’ve found that this is where I am most productive because it is quiet and there are very few distractions. This type of assignment usually takes me a little over an hour and I’ve learned that the best way for me to complete this assignment is to work independently and get as far as I can and then go to teaching fellows to have them look over my work and answer any questions. Usually I have trouble understanding dense scientific articles so I always give myself a lot of time to work through it.

1b. It is now Tuesday evening and I am finishing up my work at the biology teaching fellows. It took me a little longer than I expected because I ended up changing my entire diagram of the methods section once I conversed with the teaching fellow. That was definitely frustrating and I think in the future I may just start the assignment while I am surrounded by teaching fellows so that at each step I can check in and make sure I am on the right track. That way I don’t waste time doing it wrong and having to redo it over again. I definitely feel like I am feeling more confident in completing assignments like this. I don’t get as stressed out because I know generally how much time it will take me and what steps I need to take to complete a pre-lab. I also have gotten feedback on pre-labs from my professor which has helped guide me in the right direction.

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I’ve finally started to get used to waking up for my early morning lifts with the hockey team. My favorite part is watching the sun rise

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First Meeting With Writing Fellow

During my meeting with the writing fellow, Olivia, the most constructive feedback she gave me was that I didn’t mention memory at all. I had been so caught up in learning about my artist that I had neglected the fact that I needed to connect my ideas back to the prompt. I added the equivalent of a thesis statement to the end of the first paragraph to solve this issue. I think the biggest concern she had was that there was no direction and she wasn’t entirely sure what the rest of the paper would be about. She also pointed out to me that the guidelines we were following appeared to be more suited for scientific papers or thesis papers. Overall, she thought the organization and content of the proposal was sound. She suggested that as I continue my research I should keep an eye out for connections to memory.

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Final Paper Bibliography

Priya, Lakshmi. "Cultural barrier through communication--as explained in Amy Tan's the Joy Luck Club." Language In India, Jan. 2012, p. 70+. Gale Academic Onefile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A277602497/AONE?u=nysl_ro_hobart&sid=AONE&xid=05960f37. Accessed 20 Oct. 2019.

Tan, Amy. Amy Tan; The Official Website. Website copyright: Amy Tan. http://www.amytan.net/about.html

Walsh, Katie. “Storytelling in Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter: belonging and the transnationality of home in older age”. 2017.

Wood, Michelle Gaffner. "Negotiating the Geography of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan's the Joy Luck Club." The Midwest Quarterly 54.1 (2012). Web. 20 Oct. 2019.

Xu, Wenying. Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater. Scarecrow Press, 2012.

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Final Paper Proposal

Title: Amy Tan and the Chinese-American Experience

           Amy Tan is a renowned author who has spent her professional career articulating her experiences as a Chinese-American woman and the compelling relationship with her mother and later, with her daughter. Tan grew up in the San Francisco Bay area with her mother, father, and two brothers. When tragedy struck and both her brother and father passed of brain tumors, Tan’s mother spontaneously decided to take the two remaining children to Europe. While in Europe, Tan finished high school a year early and fell in love. With a B.A. in English and Linguistics, Tan took her passion for language and began writing fiction. Some of Tan’s most famous pieces include, The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter’s Daughter. She also has done children’s books and short stories. Many of her books tackle the common theme of mother-daughter relationships and the struggle between immigrant parents and Americanized children. Today, Tan spends her time nature journal sketching which encompasses her early childhood love of doodling and her interest in science. Amy Tan’s collective cultural memory informs the writing that she produces.

           The most effective source I encountered while researching was Amy Tan’s website. Here I was able to explore her early childhood and the journey she took to becoming such a prolific writer. This is also where she posts an updated blog that is called, “Things I do when I am not writing”. The subsequent sources I used provided more detail about specific pieces she wrote, specifically her most famous novel, The Joy Luck Club. I found many brief sources like the Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater. However, this was primarily used as a jumping off point and background information. It was very surface-level information. The final three sources each analyzed one of Tan’s novels, but each used a different themed lens. For example, Michelle Wood’s article, "Negotiating the Geography of Mother-Daughter Relationships in Amy Tan's the Joy Luck Club" talked specifically about immigrant mother and American child relationships. While Tan’s novel was fictional, her insight as the daughter of a Chinese certainly guided her interest.

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Artist Statement for Collage Assignment

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Final collages! (physical and photoshop version)