wk 12 blog

The crandall printing mueseum was a pretty cool place. I think it's quite odd that it took about 400 years for major improvements to be made to the printing press, especially considering how far other technology advanced in the same period. It also makes it much more amazing that it was developed so early though. I suppose that the reason for this was probably that there was not as much demand for printed materials, as there was for modern weapons, or new forms of transportation, or new farming technology, etc. I did really like the linotype machine though, it was really cool. I also think that it's amazing that they were able to print how much they did, it seemed to take a whole bunch of work, and I imagine that it wasn't all that profitable. Oh and that little model of the gold plates looked really cool. All in all the trip to the Crandall mueseum was worth it, even though I was really tired that day.

week 11

There are many reasons why the women's rights movement was slow in getting started. One of the major reasons was that the women, especially in the U.S, were spread out. This was because the U.S. was primarily agricultural. One should note that it was not until the first industrial revolution in america that any large organizations started to have an effect on policy, simply because they did not have enough people to organize effectively before. Organizations also formed due to the expansion of the vote, more voters meant more people who cared about issues, and more people that would try to adress them. However the majority of groups excluded women, because they felt that the women's place was at home raising children, and because women were not enfranchised, and thus should not be involved in politics outside of the home. So initially women could not organize because there were not enough of them in a given area to have a serious effect, and then they were excluded from political organizations, denyng them another chance to organize. However population density, especially in the north was increasing, as were economic oppurtunities for women, as well as oppurtunities to join societies such as benevolent societies which allowed women to meet together and work for the benifit of others. Most societies were formwed in the north, because the south remained very agricultural based, and the women were spread out that meetings were, for the most part impractical. Women's societies in the north, however, expanded increasing in size and purpose. Some women began temperance societeies, to prevent alcohol comsuption, others joined abolitionists. By joining these societies women gained expierience in organizing to accomplish a goal. Despite this the prevailing attitudes of the day were that women should remain at home, raising children to be good citizens, not campaigning for abolition, or temperance, and certainly not for their own rights. But many women had realized that they were in a state similar to that of the slaves, and began to campaign for their own rights. But this was not enough, in the U.S. the prevalent attitude was that women did not need the vote, because their husbands would vote as they would. The early societies for women's rights also lacked support because many of their members were considered abnormal, and eccentric, and because of this label other women were reluctant to join with them. I believe another reason that women were slow to organize for their own rights is that they were busy "campaigning" for other things, such as abolition, temperance, etc. While this would prove valuable later as women began to organize even more, I imagine that it was incredibly time consuming, and while women may have wished for their rights, I think they saw that it would be easier to win at abolition, and chose to devote their resources there, to help further a cause they knew was good, and which did not carry the stigmas of the women's rights movement. Of course another major obstacle to women's rights was that the majority of women were, in fact, raising children, as society believed they should be. This is undoubtedly an immense task, and very time consuming. Families were generally large, and women would therefore have many children to look after, and would be thus occupied for many years. It is likely that some women who occupied themselves raising children were hostile to those in the women's right movement, because they believed that they had not fulfilled their duties of raising and caring for their children. Hostility from other women no doubt slowed the growth of the women's rights movement. It is safe to say that in general women were slow to organize into women's rights groups because of societal ideas about the role of women. However, earlier on the concerns were more logistical, it was simply to hard to get enough like-minded women together. On a completely unrelated note, I was just walking outside the moon had a nice bright wide halo, but noone else looked up, so no one else saw it. I thought, wow what a waste, what's the point of the moon having a halo if noone looks up to see it, then I thought about how nobody reads this blog, so why do I bother writing it? please post any answers as comments, oh and if you bothered to read this, then please "bother" to look up when you go outside, the sky is much cooler than this boring old blog. (note: this was added hours after I posted this for the first time)

blog 8

Amistad was a great movie, I really liked it, but I wonder how historically accurate it is. I suspect that a great amount of the scenes involving the Africans in prison were fabricated, seeing as noone at the prison spoke... eh... whatever language the African's spoke, and thus would have no Idea what they were saying, and therefore couldn't have reported it. This is a shame because my favorite seen of the movie was the scene where the African with the Bible was talking to Cinque, about the pictures in the bible. It was cool that even he could recognize that Jesus was a great man, and without being able to read he managed to get the story pretty right. It was a good movie seen, but it's historical validity is highly circumspect. Another scene I liked a lot was the case set before the supreme court, which could be more accurately portrayed since most court cases have records. Of course, I doubt the presentation was really so dramatic. Being a history major I would like to look in to this case further, but seeing as I have school I don't have that much time. Anyways the movie was great, I just don't know how much of the story I believe.

blog #6

Well the thing that intrigued me most about "a more perfect union" was the fact that the people at the convention couldn't seem to compromise. I mean really after months of debate you think they would have realized that neither side was going to accept the full proposal of the other side. and the larger states not keeping their part of the deal with the smaller states at first, that was just retarded. I'm pretty sure there was more going on at the convention then a stupid repetitive argument. I felt like the first five minutes of the movie were just stuck on replay, until the last five minutes of the movie when the states finally did compromise. I understand the issue of proportional representation, and I agree with it, but when the large states failed to allow for a house with equal representation I was very angry (mostly because the movie was already getting boring, especially since I've seen it before). anyways since this blog doesn't have a word limit I'm going to stop repeating myself (like the movie did).