Happy Thanksgiving

President Franklin Roosevelt proclaims a National Day of Thanksgiving:


Charlie Brown Thanksgiving:

Kermit the Frog Helps Write "Yankee Doodle"

The Declaration of Indepence from the Mini-Series "John Adams"

Ben Franklin on the Continental Congress

An actor portraying Benjamin Franklin shares some of Franklin's thoughts on the Continental Congress:

No More Kings

Sit Down John

As we complete our Declaration of Independence, Illustrated Children's Version we are viewing my favorite movie: 1776. Here is one of my favorite scenes/songs from the film:

From Picking Cotton to Picking Presidents

Overlaid:


The images above and the text below were copied from the site http://strangemaps.wordpress.com.
Both these maps show the same segment of the southern United States, and demonstrate a similar pattern. Yet each describes a wholly other era and a completely different process.

The bottom map dates from 1860 (i.e. the eve of the Civil War), and indicates where cotton was produced at that time, each dot representing 2,000 bales of the stuff. Cotton was King back then, and mainly so in the densely cultivated border area between Louisiana and Mississippi, and in an equally dense band of cotton cultivation starting west of the Mississippi-Alabama line, tapering out across Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. Other cotton centres are the areas around Memphis and what appears to be Lawrenceburg in southern Tennessee.

The top map dates from 2008, and shows the results of the recent presidential election, on county level. Blue counties voted for Obama, red ones for McCain (darker hues representing larger majorities). In spite of Obama’s national victory, and barring Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, all Southern states (i.e. all states formerly belonging to the Confederacy) went for McCain. The pattern of pro-Obama counties in those southern states corresponds strikingly with the cotton-picking areas of the 1860s, especially along the Louisiana-Mississippi and Mississippi-Alabama borders (the pattern corresponds less strikingly and deviates significantly elsewhere).

The link between these two maps is not causal, but correlational, and the correlation is African-Americans. Once they were the slaves on whom the cotton economy had to rely for harvesting. Despite an outward migration towards the Northern cities, their settlement pattern now still closely corresponds to that of those days.

During the Democratic primary, many African-American voters supported Hillary Clinton, thinking it unlikely Barack Obama would win the nomination, let alone the presidency. When it became apparent that Obama had a good shot at the nomination (and thereafter at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue itself), their support for Obama became near monolithic. As it turns out, president-elect Obama won with the an overall support of 53%, but that includes over 90% of black voters (1).

And while their votes did not swing their states towards ‘their’ (2) candidate, the measure in which black residents of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina voted for Obama is remarkable in that this particular voting pattern still corresponds with settlement patterns of almost a century and a half ago.

Declaration of Independance Children's Book

Students are currently working on their "Illustrated Children's Version" of the Declaration of Independence. They have rephrased key excerpts from the document into words that an elementary school student could understand and now they are putting the words and images together to make a book.

Interactive Whiteboard Fun!

Recently we have been using our new interactive whiteboard in class. Usually this type of technology costs a few thousand dollars to outfit one classroom, however the school district did some research online and learned how to configure a similar setup using only a Wii controller and an infra-red pen-light.

The interactive whiteboard works like a touchscreen, allowing students to digitially draw, write, or annotate on anything projected by the computer. So far we have used this technology to examine and annotate historical images, to better understand the electoral process, and to model assignments.

Students shared the images they drew in response to Preview 6 ("Describe a situation in which you could have used the words: 'It was the last straw'"):

Before begininning Activity Notes 6 (repharsing excerpts from the Declaration of Independance), we did a couple of examples together as a class:

In the days before the presidential election, students made predictions about how they thought each state would vote. By simply touching the states on the screen they could turn them red or blue (just like on CNN!):

Sesame Street Does the American Revolution

Here are some classic Sesame Street videos about the American Revolution. The first is about Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence. The second video reenacts the choosing of a national bird.

Springfield Trip

There is still lots of room for the Springfield Trip, May 22-23. You can get a registration form from the office or Mr. McCarthy.

The Declaration of Independence

A very good dramatic reading of the Declaration:



And here is the video "Fireworks" from Schoolhouse Rocks

Pop vs. Soda

I found this on one of my favorite sites: http://strangemaps.wordpress.com. You may want to click on the map to view it better.



Here is some of part of the text that accompanied the map:
"When on a hot summer’s day you buy a carbonated beverage to quench your thirst, how do you order it? Do you ask for a soda, a pop or something else? That question lay at the basis of an article in the Journal of English Linguistics (Soda or Pop?, #24, 1996) and of a map, showing the regional variation in American English of the names given to that type of drink.

The article was written by Luanne von Schneidemesser, PhD in German linguistics and philology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and senior editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English. And although there might be weightier issues in life (or even in linguistics) than the preferred terminology for a can of soft drink, there’s nothing trivial about this part of the beverage industry.

“According to an article last year in the Isthmus, Madison’s weekly newspaper, Americans drink so much of the carbonated beverages sold under such brand names as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Sprite, Mountain Dew, and 7-Up that consumption averages 43 gallons per year for every man, woman, and child in the United States,” Von Schneidemesser begins her article. “The Statistical Abstract of the United States (1994) confirms this: 44.1 gallons per person in 1992, compared to the next most consumed beverages: beer (32.7 gallons), coffee (27.8 gallons), and milk (25.3 gallons).”

-coke: this generic term for soft drinks predominates throughout the South, New Mexico, central Indiana and in a few other single counties in Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. ‘Coke’ obviously derives from Coca-Cola, the brand-name of the soft drink originally manufactured in Atlanta (which explains its use as a generic term for all soft drinks in the South).

-pop: dominates the Northwest, Great Plains and Midwest. The world ‘pop’ was introduced by Robert Southey, the British Poet Laureate (1774-1843), to whom we also owe the word ‘autobiography’, among others. In 1812, he wrote: A new manufactory of a nectar, between soda-water and ginger-beer, and called pop, because ‘pop goes the cork’ when it is drawn. Even though it was introduced by a Poet Laureate, the term ‘pop’ is considered unsophisticated by some, because it is onomatopaeic.

-soda: prevalent in the Northeast, greater Miami, the area in Missouri and Illinois surrounding St Louis and parts of northern California. ‘Soda’ derives from ‘soda-water’ (also called club soda, carbonated or sparkling water or seltzer). It’s produced by dissolving carbon dioxide gas in plain water, a procedure developed by Joseph Priestly in the latter half of the 18th century. The fizziness of soda-water caused the term ‘soda’ to be associated with later, similarly carbonated soft drinks.

-Other, lesser-used terms include ‘dope’ in the Carolinas and ‘tonic’ in and around Boston, both fading in popularity. Other generic terms for soft drinks outside the US include ‘pop’ (Canada), ‘mineral’ (Ireland), ‘soft drink’ (New Zealand and Australia). The term ‘soft drink’, finally, arose to contrast said beverages with hard (i.e. alcoholic) drinks.

2008 Election by County

The two maps below compare the national election results when viewed by county versus when viewed by state.

Sidebar Fun

Check out the new additions on the sidebar, including the class survey application. Comment to this post about the additions for extra credit!

Kermit the Frog and George Washington

Cute video but NOT based on a true story.

Election Results by Illinois County

Election Results

The Electoral College