Teresa’s HUM 455 Journal

I’m a week behind. This post should have been written last week. So, two post this week.

I’ve been spending a lot of mental energy thinking about and planning my final project for this class. It’s going to be a fiber project. I’ve know that since the first day of class. I thought I was going to do a small quilt but that idea has changed into something else that I’m not ready to give too many details about yet. There’s a kind of supersition for me about talking too much about a project before I really get into it. I think it’s got something to do with energy…that if I talk too much about it I release the internal energy I need to make it a reality.

 I do have a picture though of one piece of the process:

When my current project idea came to me, I was excited about the challenge of making my idea into reality. But our assigned reading for last week - Chapter 7 - Argentina and Chile: Resisting Repression from  A Force More Powerful provided the extra bit of inspiration I needed to know I’m on the right track. Each movment we have read about so far has touched me, but none has touched me as deeply as the movement of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

My project will be grounded in what I have learned about these very brave women.

Tomorrow will be our 4th class. I have to miss it because my neice is getting married at 6:30 pm. I’m really unhappy about missing class. I love this class. Our class discussions and the video and the book we’re using - A Force More Powerful - are so thought provoking.

Last week, Kelley did his "report" from the other text we are using Hope’s Edge. The chapter contained information about mirco-lending - making very small loans to entrepreneurs and to others living in poverty who are not able to get loans from traditional lenders. A couple of years ago I learned about Kiva, which bills itself as "the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website." Since then I’ve told myself that I need to become a lender but I’ve never followed through. 

As I drove home from class I came up with the idea of our class ‘passing the hat’ and becoming a Kiva lender. The idea wouldn’t leave me alone so Wednesday I sent an email to each of my classmates and asked them to consider the idea. So far three of my classmates have responded. Saul - my instructor has also embraced the idea so next Saturday (5/3) we’ll see where it goes.

This week the assigned chapter from A Force More Powerful was about Poland and the Solidarity movement. As I read I was nagged by the fact that I knew so little about the Solidarity movement - espeically through the 1980’s. In 1980 I was 22, an adult. We had a television. I remember hearing little bits and pieces on the evening news here and there, but for the most part I was oblivious of what was happening in Poland. I find this a little ironic because, throughout the 1980’s I worked in a factory and belonged to a union. I can’t help but wonder who my Polish counterparts were and I feel a little ashamed that their struggles didn’t register on my personal radar at the time.

This weeks reading introduced me to another woman of Non-Violent Resistance -

Anna Walentynowicz.

Anna was one of the instigators of the strike at the Lenin Shipyard in 1970. She remained active in the worker’s fight for independent trade unions playing a prominent role throughout the 1980’s.

Anna is still alive. One of the sites I read, said she eventually left Solidarity criticizing Lech Wałęsa’s policies. In January 2005 she received the Truman Reagan Medal of Freedom in Washington on behalf of Solidarity from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Tibetians in India protested the Olympic torch’s arrival in India. They started their protest at the grave of Mahatma Gandhi.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/17/asia/17torch.php

  Our first class started the day after the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther Kings assassination and Saul talked a little about that as he walked us through the syllabus and talked about what we could expect from the class. Saul told us that he was at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, DC, on August 28, 1963, when King delivered his "I Have a Dream Speech."

Saul said that he was at the other end of the Reflecting Pool and that it was hard to hear every word of the speech because of the size of the crowd, but he said, everytime King said "I have a dream…" it seemed like a jolt of electricity when through the entire crowd.  When Saul told us this, I felt like I was being touched by that same electricity, coming through Saul after all those years. I wonder if other people in the class felt the same thing?

All week I’ve thought about the fact that I’ve never met anyone who was actually, physically present at that march and heard that speech with their very own ears. Not through television. Not through film clips. They were there. They made the effort to be at the march - for the cause of not because they new history was going to be made that day. They heard the speech with their very own ears.

I’ve been thinking this week how that kind of makes Saul unique…that maybe he should record his story of that day at Story Corps so his experience isn’t lost and so that maybe my grand-daughter might be touched by a bit of the electricity that Martin Luther King sent radiating through that massive crowd that day.