Research Plan

Me and my groups research topic is the State of Dental Health care in Rural Alaska. A few questions that we will ask and attempt to answer in our Wikipedia entry will be 

1. How are programs covering dentistry in rural Alaska funded?
2. What is the history of dental health care in rural Alaska?
3. Were do rural dentists practice their trade exactly?
4. Who exactly provides this care? And who exactly is covered by such care?

I think such questions concerning health care in rural Alaska have been largely overlooked on wikipedia in general, and its high time someone answered them. Such information will benefit anyone interested in dentistry in rural Alaska, whether they're students, professional health care providers or just any who's curious about rural health care.
My responsibilities in this project are, as of now, to find out just who's involved in the whole affair; dentists, patients, health care corporations, or branches of state government- and finding out what parts they all play in rural dentistry. Then, I'll organize my findings and craft a section of our wikipedia article concerning the people involved in rural Alaska health care. For my sources, I'll be scouring the university's library for sources concerning rural health care in Alaska. I'll probably look on the Internet as well- having looked very briefly at the library's sources, I can't say I'm too impressed with the quantity of information provided concerning Alaskan Dentistry, and I think a google search might be a more powerful research tool in this case. I might even talk to my dad or grandpa about he subject- they've both had careers that have been very closely connected to an Alaska Native Corporation that probably plays a big part in rural health care.
As for a time-table I might use for this project, lets just say that I'll try my best to get everything done by the time everything is due- as you can tell, judging by the lateness of this post, that might be a challenge for me.
Other than that, though, everything is beginning to get up to pace, and I've got a good feeling about his project. I think its cool that we are both doing a research paper for an English class and expanding the public's source of information concerning Alaskan issues.
Sorry this post was so late :s

Man of War

I enjoyed reading Benito Musoliini's speech "Man of War". Speeches by
any bloodthirsty, maniacal despot worth his boots are almost always
entertaining, and Musollini, master of bombast, was by no means an
exception to this rule. In this speech, given to his loyal blackshirts
on February 23, 1941, he extolls the greatness of Italy; it's military
prowess, it's leisurely vanquishing of it's enemies, it's general
superiority above all other nations, and of course, of it's inevitable
victory over the allies. The type of rhetoric here is loud, bombastic,
and angry. One can only imagine what it must have been like to be
there listening, among the fanatical blackshirts, to this silver
tounged mass murderer. And, if you imagine hard enough, you might even
to able to gain some small sense of understanding as to why so many
were swayed into such terrible action by such a maniac.
A few things I found interesting/amusing about this speech, were, to
start with, the aformentiond fiery rhetoric. You can positively feel
the burning hatred expressed here -- "we will continue the struggle
until the last drop of blood!" Yikes. One gets the impression of
absolute unshakability; of "we will not back down" , and "we will not
retreat." "It's us against the world, and the world is weak. Victory
is absolutely inevitable." This heated rhetoric of unshakability is
expressed through his bombastic language, something else that I found
quite amusing/interesting. Language that speaks of history "taking one
by the throat and forcing a decision". Or of the " the great italian
people", who "fight with the courage of lions." And of course, of all
those Masonic lodges, who "will be crushed how and when we(the regime)
want." Such language is a trademark of crackpot and murderous regimes
everywhere even in this day and age.
It's obvious in what manner this speech was given, and how the
audience must have reacted. We can be darn sure our friend the Deuce
wasn't siting in a folding chair, quietly and calmly reciting his
tirade. You can imagine him up on a wooden platform with all his
blackshirts at his feet, and you can imagine him shrieking and waving
and saluting madly, his voice getting louder and louder. And we can
also be darn sure his audience wasn't the quiet, reserved type,
either. It must have been an undeniably shaking experience, shoulder
to shoulder with your like-minded brothers, at the feet of a man you
consider to be above god. Massed together, cheering and saluting
as a single unit, united in mind and soul. The obnoxiously democratic
freedom of individual thought and choice given up...
I think this speech demonstrates the enormous power of writing and
language, how it can propagate an ideology, however crazy, powerful
enough to sway millions of perfectly reasonable people into drafting
into power a madman, and following him to destruction. It's scary when
you think about it, just how destructive the words and rhetoric cooked
up in Mussolini's craw turned out to be. Regardless of this, I can
still find his rhetoric and language to be fun to read. It's silly,
scary, and fascinating stuff.

Salvation

I loved the flow of the story in this piece. In the first few paragraphs, the reader is led to believe that we are witnessing the experience of the religious conversion of the author. As the essay moves on, we come to realize that Langston Hughes never did see Jesus that day, as he believed he would. I can really relate to the disappoint and dillusionment and guilt felt by Hughes in this piece, as he comes to realize that the Jesus described by his peers might not exist, and that to be accepted by his family, he would have to lie. I'm left feeling sad for Hughes, who, because of the ridiculous expectations he received from his church, may have never got a chance to experience something that would have been important to him.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

I loved David Sedaris's piece of writing, "Me Talk Pretty One Day". His writing is descriptive and vivid, and the situation he describes is one I could  relate to.You can almost physically feel that familiar nervous anxiety about school, and we can really empathize with his fear of this nameless, monstrous teacher. I think at some point we've all had a teacher from h*ll, and his colorful description of his whole experience makes it seem like you're sitting in a desk  right next to him.  

I love the authors expressive writing about his first day; we can really feel his anxiety and intimidation when he meets his future classmates. They are well dressed, appear to speak excellent French, and are young -- causing David to feel, in his own words, “Like Pa Kettle trapped backstage after a fashion show.” I haven't the foggiest clue who “Pa Kettle” is, or why his being trapped behind the scenes of a fashion show would be an awkward situation, but I get the feeling that my lack of knowledge might very well be a calculated and intentional phenomenon. I doubt David’s fellow students would have understood the analogy, either... I think this painfully outdated funny is used by the author as a humorous reminder to the audience of his age, and I love the “interactive nature” of this writing trick -- I’m left confused by this (clearly) “old guy” and his apparently meaningless joke, but an older reader may understand it completely, and may experience a mutual understanding with the author, knowing how it feels to make references that fly right over a younger persons head.

David Sedaris’s humor goes to good use in this piece, but his writing still retains, up until the last couple of paragraphs, an anxious, miserable, almost dark feeling. We can feel, along with David, an increasing hopelessness and sense of insecurity as the class goes on. This miserableness not only exists in his class, but pervades in everyday aspects of his life as mundane as buying coffee and answering the telephone. And it gets even darker. He compares class with his teacher to “spending time with a wild animal”, and it isn't long before we are informed of an incident of her committing actual violence against one of her students (albeit accidentally). 

In one scene as sad as it is humorous, (and from which this piece derives its name), David and his fellow students converse in the hallway using their barely intelligible French, and the author doesn't bother offering a polished translation. “Sometimes me cry alone at night.” Geez. Rough stuff. “That be common for I, also, but be more strong, you. Much work and someday you talk pretty.” This broken, engrish interpretation of bad French, plus his use of nonsense words for some of the teachers words not understood, is fantastic. It makes it possible to get inside the ears of the author -- an essential effect in this story. David Sedaris’s entire work is an exercise in transporting the reader to his experience and his place, and he does this masterfully.

At the end of this passage, David finally begins to understand what his brutal teacher is saying, and is triumphant -- this means he can finally begin to truly learn, and his teacher's curses become like music to his ears. I don't know how the story ends, but I think its pretty safe to assume that he does eventually learn French, and I also think that today, far from hating his old teacher, he feels nothing but gratitude towards her. After all, in my experience anyway, the teachers who I have most feared very often turned out to be the ones through whom I ended up learning the most.

Ravens

Ravens Are One Of The Few Bird Species That Do Not Migrate South In The Winter, by Michio Hoshino

When we went to the Museum of the North, it took a while for me to find something I felt like writing about. The Place to Go Listen was interesting, but I don't think I could have really been able to appreciate its atmosphere with it being as crowded as it was that day. And I felt that the natural history exhibits didn't quite lend themselves to this particular assignment. 

I was recommended beforehand to look for pieces by Hoshino, and when I finally found them I wasn't disappointed. All of his photographs were wonderful, but one in particular that caught my eye was the piece entitled "Ravens Are One Of The Few Bird Species That Do Not Migrate South In The Winter". I liked this photograph, appreciating the soft, quiet, contemplative atmosphere of the ravens patiently sitting out a snowfall. I like to think there is something like a narrative embedded in this image. But I wouldn't use the term "embedded narrative" to describe the meaning this image might have. Rather, I think the artist responsible understood that any unaltered image of nature will take on different meaning, depending on who views it. I believe this is why he chose such an odd name for this piece - it's an invitation for the viewer to contemplate it freely, and appreciate it as one would appreciate any one of nature's sights. That, I think, might be one of the major themes in all of Hoshino's work: an invitation to the audience to experience the beauty and power of nature, as he did on his many excursions into the wilds of Alaska. 

When I look at this photograph, I see a group of ravens hanging out on some broken trees, and I don't know about anyone else, but whenever I see a raven, I get the impression of a bird with a very lofty opinion of itself, an opinion perhaps not entirely unwarranted. These ravens in the picture are no different; they exhibit an air of indifference to the winter cold, and are proud of their toughness and their cleverness required to survive in the winter. They've been through many winters before, and this one's no different. They seem to be very pragmatic about their situation - uncomplaining, their crafty scavengers minds are confident that there will always be freebies to be had, even though they may be few and far between during this time of year, and they are willing to sit around and wait -  always confident that their fabled intelligence and ingenuity will see them through again and again.

Place

What is place? Why does it affect some people so powerfully? Why might
we sometimes grow attached to a certain place, as though it were a
friend? Here are a few of my recent experiences with "place".

"The exterior world"
When the class went outside to visit the first place on the list, I
decided to split off from the group, and search for a place of my own.
It took a few days to find someplace I felt was worth writing about,
but it was worth the wait. The place I chose was the loop out in front
of the Riechardt building, overlooking Fairbanks. It was early
afternoon, maybe one-thirty or two, and I just finished class and was
walking back to the dorms, when I decided to stop for a bit and enjoy
the view. It was perfectly clear and brilliantly sunny out, with that
kind of afternoon sun whose painful intensity makes your eyes water if
you don't squint. The brightness was complemented by the coldness of
the air, producing that special kind of bright, crispness so unique to
the Alaskan spring. And of course, there was the view. The Alaskan
range could be seen very clearly that day through the haze given off
by the city, and, as always, it's scale and vastness gave the
impression of an inpenatratable wall separating the crush of
industrial civilazation from the wilderness. Another interesting thing
to see from the overlooking hill were the dozens, maybe hundreds of
small, puffy white pillars of steam and smoke drifting up from the
city below. It was as though the machinery and industry of Fairbanks
could just barely cope with the intensity of the environment, and
gasping for life, coughed up great clouds of steam into the icy air.
I like this place. I've been there a couple times before, and each
time the view has been new, and different, and beautiful. It's one of
the best places in Fairbanks to see the Alaskan range, and it's just a
quick walk away from the dorms. A nice place to stare and think about
things. Of course, it's not the most comfortable place to take in a
view; the benches there are caked with snow, and standing still in the
cold gets old fast, no matter how pretty the vista. Still, it's a
place that people can go to and take in a great view of Fairbanks.

"The interior world"
For our observation of an interior place, we went to the wood center.
The wood center is a big place, with a freakishly high ceiling. You
can do pretty much anything here - get food or coffee, play pool, ping
pong, go bowling, or play the arcade. Or you might take part in those
public events or lectures that always seem to be happening. And, of
course, you can take advantage, as we all have, of it's most useful
feature- it's convenient location between the dorms and the Gruening
building. On cold mornings, the wood center becomes a blessedly
warm sanctuary, and provides a mercifull short break from the cold
when your going to your morning classes. For me, the wood center feels
like the social center of the campus - everyone comes here to do some
thing or another on a pretty regular basis.

"My place"
For my place, after lots of thought and no stunning ideas, I chose the
red route shuttle. It's pretty mundane, I guess, but it was a special
place for me on the day I settled on choosing it for my personal place
subject. We've probably all been on the shuttle, and we all know what
a great alternative it is to freezing your face off. And if you've
ever gone inside one on an especially cold day, you know how warm
they're kept. Well, that day was especially cold, and the day had been
especially long, and that bus was SO warm... I could have ridden it
forever. It was such a relief after a hard day to just sit there in
the back seat, going home, finally free to just sit in the warm and
let my mind rest. It's  not exactly a grand ocean view or a sweeping
mountain vista, but it was a nice, restful place, and at that moment,
I don't think I would have preferred to be anywhere else.

"What is home?"
For me, home can be anywhere In the world, just so long as you're
surrounded by people that care about you.

Reading Response: Look at Your Fish

In the short essay "Look At Your Fish", the author, a young, aspiring scientist named Samuel Hubbard Scudder, is given by his professor the at first perplexing task of examining a preserved specimen of a Haemulon fish using only his hands and his eyes. At first, Samuel is disappointed- he stares for hours at the stinking, ugly fish, believing that, after looking at it for a few minutes, he had seen all that he could possibly see. It would be many more hours of staring before he gets the idea to draw the fish, whereupon he begins to notice features on the fish that he hadn't before. Soon after what he must have thought was a major breakthrough, his professor finally returned, and, though he praised his use of drawing in making his observations, he told his disappointed student that he "had not even seen one of the most conspicuous features of the animal", and told Samuel to "look again, look again!" Its safe to assume that a little piece of our friend died inside after hearing these words, but he set about his task with a new eagerness anyway, and ended up discovering even more things about the fish. It still wasn't enough to satisfy his professor, who told him to go home for the night and ponder the fish even more. Miserable at the seeming impossibility of his teachers demands, he stays awake for much of the night, and does end up noticing the "most conspicuous feature" of the specimen- symmetrical sides with paired organs. The professor was delighted at this observation, and Samuel, surely equally happy that this assignment was over, asked what he should do next. Guess what the professor told him to do. For three long days Samuel examined the fish, looking at nothing else, always making new observations. And he began to realize that there was so much more to be seen on the fish, with the use of only his two eyes and his two hands, than he could have possibly imagined a few days ago. He would remember and apply the lessons learned from this stinking, preserved fish for the rest of his life, and would later describe his examination of the Haemulon as the most valuable and important experience in his scientific career.

I think what we can carry away from Samuel Scudders experience with the fish is that sometimes, before we can hope to understand something completely, we must look upon it, experience it again and again and again and again- until it seems that there is nothing more we can possiblly see in it, and then keep on looking. If we do, we will always keep on discovering new things, and keep on making new observations. "Facts are stupid things" Samuels teacher said, "until brought into connection with some general law". How can we hope to truly understand anything if we know only it's most basic features? A greater understanding must be attained, a view of a bigger picture. Through close observation comes greater understanding, and it's through this attained understanding that we can come to truly appreciate something.

Intro Post

Hi!

My name is Nathan Andrew-you can call me Nate. I'm a freshman, and my major so far is chemistry. I grew up in Dillingham, Alaska, and came to Fairbanks and UAF in search of an education. Why Fairbanks? Several reasons, really. It's "competitive" tuition prices, it's closeness to home, it's familiar "Alaska-ness"... but yeah, mostly it's price.

When I have time to get away from my schoolwork, I enjoy reading Wired, the Economist, hanging out with my friends, reading tech and news blogs, and, on the rare occasions when I have more than 2 consecutive hours of free time on my hands, I like reading actual books-right now I'm working on "Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

Favorite things? Drinking decent coffee, sleeping in, enjoying the pretty things in life...

A piece of writing or a book that has had an impact on me? "The Great Gatsby", for sure. With each consecutive reading, I get something new out of it-wether it's new understandings of the characters' thoughts, or different feelings about Fitzgerald's conclusions about the nature of life and desire (as seen through Gatsby). And of course, theres always that sense of awe of the authors masterful prose-his ability to so flawlessly and beautifully put into english the deepest and most subtle emotions, thoughts and desires of his characters. Every time I read it, my appreciation of writing and reading grow.

Will update soon!