43rd War Absolute Location

The absolute location that the book the 43^rd War takes place in is El Salvador. One piece of evidence to show this is the fact that the country had major civil war problems in the 90s (wikipedia). It also said that the climate is hot and it is as well in the book. And at the fortress the soldiers drink coffee with their meals and in El Salvador coffee is farmed a lot (Moeri, 82). I also found out that the Atlacatl was the name of a ruler in El Salvador may years ago, and maybe that is the reason that the author named the volcano in the book the Atlacatl volcano(Moeri, 60). My third piece of the evidence is that in the Chapter 4 the family goes to a Catholic cathedral and the main religion of El Salvador is Roman Catholic (Wikipedia).

Moeri probably did not mention the name of the country because she didn't want to be confined to curtain historic details and wanted to be able to add a little bit of fiction. When she talks about the war she probably had different examples from different Central American countries put together, so even though she put different experiences together it was all true.

Citations:

moeri, louis. the 43rd war. NY: Hougton miflin, 1989.

"Atlacatl." Wkipedia. 2007. Wikipedia. 28 Jan 2008 .

My Summarization of the Decleration of Independence

When it becomes necessary for a country to be separated from another, they should give their reasons why. The reasons being all men are equal and those men have rights, those rights being life, freedom and the pursuit of happiness. The government gets their power from the people, and if the government makes wrong decisions the people can change or get rid of the government. Even though people are allowed to change a government if bad, if people change the government it can only be done for the better. And if the government is bad it is the people’s duty to change and replace it. King George has done some bad things to the colonies, and these are some of them.

He taxed the colonists without representation. He kept many troops in the colonies without our opinion. He also brought on the quartering act. Then He cut off trades from colonies to all parts of the world. He also wouldn’t let the government pass laws that would help the colonies. And he sometimes sent us over seas to be trilled for crimes that we did not commit. And that is only a short list of his mistakes.

In the times of hardships in the colonies we have asked time and time again for free government of a change in it, but every time we have been met with more and more hardships. We tried to remind them the reason we came to the new world, but they ignored it. Those of us that are gathered here are saying that we are and want to be free! We pledge to work together to make sure this happens!

Franklin Cartoon

The main visual elements for this cartoon are the sliced up snake for one, and the bold letters on the bottom of the page saying “join, or die.” This political cartoon’s issue is about joining Benjamin Franklin political party and to convince (or rather threaten) people to vote for him. The cartoonist thought that Franklin was using threatening tactics to get peoples votes. The cut up snake supports what I said about using threatening tactics and the words join or die are also saying that if you don’t join, there will be consequences. To make this cartoon more persuasive the cartoon could have made the snake look like it was in more pain to bring out fear in the publics eye.

TBAS posting

What we read in TBAS can be trusted for more than one reason. The first reason being that the author (Julius Lester) is a credible source and can be trusted, an example of this is a quotation I took from the back of the book in the “about the author” section:

“Mr. Lester is a professor of black studies at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst…” (Lester, pg. 158)

My second reason being that the quotes Lester took for his book were from slaves that had been there and experienced the lives of a slave, and therefore they know how it feels to be a slave.

“I was here in slavery days. I was here. When I come here, colored people didn’t have their ages. The boss man had it.”

Anonymous

Library of Congress

My final reason is the fact that many of these quotes come from the Library of Congress, and that is a reliable source. This quote is from the others note in the beginning of the book.

“These are the narrative material taken from the Fisk University collection of slave narratives, the Library of Congress…”

Lester, Julius. To Be a Slave. 1968. NY: scholastic inc, 1968.

Great Power Game

For this game I was the USA and at first a few teams had an advantage over the others including the USA, the reason this was so was because the more powerful areas (USA, Great Britain, and France) in that time had more power so therefore we started out with more power in the beginning of the game. In the long run industries and colonies were by far the most important things to buy because nearing the end of the game you wouldn't be able to stock up on army if u didn't have the right amount of industries. That being said, industries and colonies are the the foundation of the countries success. The two things I did well in this game were from the beginning picking strong allies (even if they didn't end up to be trustworthy) so the competition was out of the way. The second thing I did well was buying lots of industry when war hadn't started yet.

My alliances at first were well picked but not too well thought trough, I picked the biggest powers, not necessarily the most trustworthy ones. One of my alliances (with France) was probably the reason our three powers didn't come out on top because he broke our treaty leaving Great Britain and I vulnerable for future attacks from countries who needed revenge but didn't have enough power.

The three most important things I learned in this game were:

1. Treaties are made to be broken.

2. You can't always trust people.

3. A country's wealth and power comes from its industries.

Quarter 3 Goals

1. Become a better reader (more than 30 pages a night if reading for an hour)

2. Stop procrastinating (do all my homework before doing anything else)

3. Organization of my schoolwork (have a plan before randomly doing work)

Quarter 2 Goal Feedback

Only one of my three goals were met, and it was working to my full potential. Last quarter I did my work as best as I could unlike quarter one, but the two goals bellow were the two goals that I failed to succeed at. Evidence to show that I didn't succeed at my first goal was that I only read about 30-45mins a night so I didn't get to read 30 pages a night, evidence to show that I failed at following through with my first goal was that I always did my homework later than I should have because I was either watching T.V. or on the internet.

1. Become a better reader (more than 30 pages a night if reading for an hour)

2. Stop procrastinating (do all my homework before doing anything else)