Hw 25: Responding to Riverbend

Baghdad Burning is a collection of blogs written by an Iraqi girl living in Iraq today who goes by the name of "Riverbend." This collection of blogs is first forwarded by Adhaf Souief. Souief explains how Riverbend's blogs, that are all English, are written to show the voice of an "ordinary" Iraqi resident, and to show the people the perspective of a family who is living through these traumatic invasions going on today in Iraq. Riverbend wanted to blog in order to reach out to the people to show her account of war. She also has some help from her brother "E" who shares his thoughts on their situation. The forward also explains how Riverbend is not anti-America just because of the war that is going on, and she speaks for many of her people as well. "In fact, far from being anti anything, this book is firmly on the side of humanity and the side of life"(Soueif viii). I think this is a good perspective for a book like this to be at, and I think it makes it more of an acurate view point. The introduction, written by James Ridgeway, briefly overviews Riverbend's day-by-day living experience of war as well as the background history of Iraq since the beginning of the twentieth century when the issues with natural resources began. It backgrounds many brief wars that happened in the 1900's and explains the change relation with the U.S and Iraq after they invaded Kuwait in 1990. After that, in 1991, the Persian Gulf War took place which greatly effected the economy in Iraq as well as the people for the next twelve years. The war to follow this,was the 2003 war. The way that both of the authors explained the war in Iraq are pretty accurate to the memories that I know and have heard throughout the years from hearing it from people and in the news, but it will be interesting to hear what Riverbend has to go though.

Hw 24: A Room of My Own

When I first started reading "A Room of One's Own," Woolf explained her thesis and she said that "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction"(Woolf 4). At first that means to the reader exactly what it says, but by the end of the book, you realize that it is more than that. "-give her a room of her own and a five hundred a year, let her speak her mind and leave out half that she now puts in, and she will write a better book one of these day"(Woolf 93). What Woolf is trying to say here is that although Mary Carmichael, in her opinion, was not a very good writer, if she had an atmosphere she was comfortable in both physically and emotionally, she would fill in the missing gaps to the literature she wrote.
I would say that I do have a room of my own. Not in my dorm room, but in my room at home. It is a place where I am perfectly comfortable and has a peaceful and relaxing atmosphere. Like the name of our course, our blogs are a small piece of ourselves that we can be ourselves and show our opinions in every way possible.Woolf concludes the book by restating with what a women needs to write fiction in a room of her own. "The whole of the mind must lie wide open if we are to get the sense that the writer is communicating his experience with perfect fullness. There must be freedom and there must be peace. Not a wheel must grate, not a light glimmer"(Woolf 106).

Hw 23: Virginia Woolf and Feminist Blogging

"With Apologies to Virginia Woolf"

As I was looking through all of the different "blogs" I came across some feminist weblogs which I was very happy about. I was appalled that there are websites that involve people writing journal entries about all different kinds of feminist issues. It is an honor to see women writing and getting their voices out there. Other than that, i feel there are other ways for women to get there opinions heard. I think that for one to spend hours on the computer commenting on journal entries is a waste of time while you could be doing other things more productive. The time I did spend browsing however, I did indeed come across some blogs on the feminist site http://www.winnocotte.com/ that I felt were rubbish. The women talked about this one particular article that was talking about politics in the United States but it was more gossip than politics. "Whatever the reason, all these blogs, are worthless for my purposes"(Woolf 32). It is, indeed, outstanding that there are feminist sites, but for the most part they are not to my liking.

Hw 22: Patriarchy then and now

One of the main themes in chapter two of Virginia Woolfs "A Room of One's Own," is patriarchy. Patriarchy is a social system where the male of the family is in charge over the women and children.Woolf discusses the issues that have been bothering her about her visit to the two colleges that involved patriarchy. There were many questions that she asked herself such as "Why do women drink water and men wine? Why was one sex so prosperous and the other so poor?-a thousand questions at once suggested themselves"(Woolf 25). Woolf proves that England is a patriarchy with all of the questions about how men dominate over women that she continues to ask herself. Even when she goes to look up book "M" in the library of the museum, and there are no books written about males. All of these things that Woolf is questioning over and over shows the male dominance of the time. She stresses this fact when she states, " The most transient visitor to this planet, I thought, who picked up this paper could not fail to be aware, even from the scattered testimony, that England is under rule of patriarchy"(Woolf 33).
When I looked on the front cover of "The Boston Globe" the article was about the win of the Boston Red Sox. This shows that today in the US there is still some sense of patriarchy, because the sports these days are usually only popular if men are the ones participating in them.

Hw:21 Responding to Virginia Woolf

Dear cousin,

In chapter one of Virgina Woolfs "A Room of One's Own," Woolf first makes the introduction talking about what she will address in the book. She explains how she was asked to speak about women and fiction, and she makes a small point of saying, "A woman must have money and a room of her own is she is to write fiction, that is, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman ad the true nature of fiction unsolved. " She then beings to explain how the book will be about the past two days that proceeded her ending up where she was at that moment. Woolf also stresses the point that "I" has little importance to it. The narrative part of the book begins, and the narrator is sitting on a river bank of Oxbridge ,a university, and is thinking of women and fiction. She gets interrupted in thought by "the Beadle"(a security guard)telling her than women aren't allowed on the grass. She then wants to go to the library of the university but later finds out that women are not allowed in the library if they are not accompanied by a man of the University. She then gets angry and feels excluded from her surroundings. The narrator then talks about how she has dinner at Fernham. She describes the setting of the meal and the conversations amongst the people she is with. She then goes on thinking about the poverty of women and questions why women don't have never had that much money. She concludes the chapter with these thoughts.
The chapters point, is to show how different it was for women back then and how much more difficult their lives were.It shows how different it was than it is today for females. Setting the chapter on a college campus really gives the reader a feel for how different it was because we can compair with how it is today.Your teacher may find this book important to read because it is not only an educational book, but it is a classic piece of literature than can be learned and discussed a lot from. I found the reading actually more interesting that I expected. Although is was difficult to understand at parts, I learned a lot from how it was back then and how women were treated.

Sincerely,
Hannah

Hw 19: Web of Influence

The paragraph that I decided to write about was the last paragraph on page 91 of the chapter. The text explores how bloggers make people more aware of the causes and issues, and how it is portrayed different in the media. The paragraph first addresses how "bloggers purposefully harness the medium to promote wide awareness of their causes." Two experts Kenneth Roth, Human rights director, and Samantha Power, author and winner of Pulitzer Prize both set up a blog and Website called "Passion of the Present." The blogsite was to collect news and info about the genocide going on in Sudan. They both sought out well known bloggers to spread the knowledge. To put it in another way, eventually the whole blogosphere was informed on the issue since the "elite bloggers" spread the word. They also explained how Blogs let us tell offline media when we want. My conclusion, then, is that I felt that this paragraph had interesting and important information in how an issue as large as the the genocide going on in Sudan is being spread in throughout the blogosphere so that everyone is educated about this serious issue going on today in the world.

hw 18: least favorite post of the week

My least favorite blog of the week was on the blogsite "Women In the Media and News Voices"http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/?p=829. The blog that I disliked, was not because I disagreed with the opinion or because of the writing, but it was because the topic bothered me. The women that respond to the news I completely agreed with, but the topic is a bit of a shock. The Blog was about the latest news about Warner Bros. Productions. According to three different producers, The WB is no longer going to cast women as lead roles in any of their upcoming films. They blamed movies that the WB had recently done that were not successful on the female actresses that took part in the films. The response from a female on the article explained how "If that studio confirms that their policy is to now exclude women as leads, then my policy would be to boycott films made by Warner Bros.” -journalist Nikki Finke. Although there were many blogs that I came across with that I disagreed with, this one bothered me more than any other of the blogs that I read that were written within the past week.

hw 17b:Daily Kos

I thought that Markos Moulitsas Zuniga's Daily Kos was much more politically influential than Ana Marie Cox's blog Wonkette. If I were to choose a blog that was going to influence my vote on a coming election, I would choose Daily Kos because it a blog that gets thousands of views a day and it has all sorts of controversy on liberal and democratic views. The blog is also filled with up to date news stories that involves potitics. Marie Cox's blog, on the other hand is more of a gossip blogsite with different types of political views. I feel that the Daily Kos is not only has a more accurate viewpoint on politics, but it a more serious blog that is focused on the news. I found the Wonkette blog more entertaining because she talked more than just politics, but she talks about what she finds funny in politics, and the gossip around it. If I were reading a blog that I found interesting, I would choose, Wonkette, but if I wanted to read a blog that would influence my vote, I would choose The Daily Kos.

Hw 17: favorite blog of the week

My favorite blog of this week was on http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMsVOicesBlogs by a woman named Jennifer L Ponzer. This was a very interesting website because of how different it is compared to other ones that i have looked at. All of the blogs are by females and their opinions from everything from the what they think about the blogosphere to all kinds of current news in the media. Jennifer L. Ponzer is probably one of the more committed bloggers to this website she writes everyday about all kinds of issues and ideas. The blog that i liked of hers this week was "WIMN at JAWS - Journalism & Women Symposium." In her blog, she talks about a new group of women journalists in Wisconsin. "JAWS," which is Journalism & Women Symposium, is a conference being held about the issues of women getting heard in journalism. She is very interested and supportive about women getting their voices out there in the media and news, so she leads discussion groups about the issues. I don't only find this blog interesting, but all of her blogs have a lot of interesting thoughts to them which I will like to read in the future.

Hw 16b:5 pillars

In the interview with Robert Scoble "Blogs: Humanizing The Face OF Corporate America," Scoble explains the five things that he thinks made blogging as hot as it became. One of the "5 pillars" as he calls it, was "ease of publishing." This pillar means that no matter who you are your voice is easily able to be heard. Anyone is able to get their opinion out there and you don't have to be a journalist or on the news, it is so easy to publish something of your own. The second pillar was "discoverablitiy." This means that no matter who you are, if you have a blog that is worth something, it is not hard at all for you to become discovered. The 3rd pillar was "cross site conversation." This is so anyone can see who was linking you with track backs. The 4th was "permalinking." Permalinking is "where you can isolate a URL that will take you directly to a post" (Scoble 130). Making little things like this so easy for blog writers, it makes it more available for everyone including the reader. The last of the 5 pillars was "syndication." This is basically a group of people who run the blogosphere, and have websites that link many different blogs together.

Hw 14:Ito interview

As a result of reading Joi Ito's interview the "Japanses Blogger Champions Internet Democracy," i learned about blogging in a different perspective. Also, i got a good understanding of Ito's thoughts on blogs and how he believes the result of blogging and how it will change everything from music to media for the better. In the same way, the interview also gave me a better understanding about the changes blogs may lead to and what may happen with them. Along the same lines, Ito believes that there are no negative side effects to blogging and everything that may be bad is "easy to ignore, and the interesting blogs are easy to find"(Kline and Burstein 150). In conclusion, i found the interview with Ito not only interesting but full of different information about blogging that i wasn't aware of before.