Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Great American Road Trip ~ Day #1


Shortly after returning from our extended Europe trip in 2012, it was decided that the next big trip would be a road trip across the USA. Up to that point, a large part of our history-learning through homeschooling had been focused on the art, literature, and humanities of Europe and the Old World. In 2013, we shifted focus to the Americas. Rebecca does a nice job chronicling some of our pre-work in a few posts that I found and saved up until now (below.)

Consequently, what enveloped in our study of the Americas was much broader than we originally envisioned, as we continually grappled with the question of, “What does it mean to be an American?” Ironically, Patrick was 15 when we began this course of study, which was the exact age that I was when I moved to Europe, spending the bulk of my adolescent years in Germany and England, and traveling more in that continent than I had in my own. These are impressionable ages for adolescents, so described by Erikson as Identity vs. Role Confusion. I realize now that what started as a way to teach my kids American history became a larger pursuit for all of us to answer many questions; such as, “What does it mean to be a citizen?” “What is my purpose here?” and “Who am I?”

I speak often about how I didn’t really homeschool my kids, but somehow, we got to this point where they’re holding two college degrees each at age 19 and 21. I think homeschooling is more of a state of mind than anything else that it should be called. It is the most certifiable verb for ‘lifelong-learning’ that I have ever encountered.

So here we are now, six years later, many trips have come and gone, and Mike and I are driving down the I-40 without the kids, embarking on a 6,000-mile journey that was originally supposed to be another homeschooling field trip. Because our kids could only negotiate three weeks of vacation at each of their brand-new jobs, they will be flying in and out of points along our way, so they can finally see the places that they studied as part of their education.

I will do my best to highlight places, history, and culture because sharing those things are important to me, but I’ll be honest – Mama’s tired. Rebecca tells me that my Erikson conflict is now Generativity vs. Stagnation, and that is the truth! Stagnating sounds really nice right now. It’s still surreal to me that I go to work and people call me Professor, and I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility not only to my students, but also to the patients that they care for or will care for in the future.

Intel has the right idea offering a sabbatical every seven years for employees, and I do think it makes better workers. Already, in the last three weeks, I have gotten a new backyard gate, a garden bench, and countless fix-its around the house from their employee! 😉 Like all good journey narratives, often the seeker does not even know what they are searching for, and henceforth, that is where the adventure begins.


Excerpts from Rebecca's Pre-trip Journal:

Friday, March 15, 2013
1 year until departure
Pre-Trip Entry #1
Planning and Research has Begun
By Rebecca

              We’re still a year out from our next trip, a driving trip around the United States (similar to our loop around Europe), but the usual in-depth, multi-media, seemingly-endless, homeschool history lesson has begun to prepare us for the places we’re visiting. Just this Wednesday, my mom and I went and spent almost one hundred dollars on US History books. But that’s not all that we’ve been doing. Remember how I said “multi-media?”
A little more than a week ago, my dad, brother, and I went into our local library with a list of over twenty different movies involving the south, the first place we’ll be visiting on our drive-through. Out of those twenty, we found seven. Out of those seven, we watched two. But we get point for trying, right?
              Either way, the two movies we watched really opened up our eyes to the south during its most notable era; the Civil War era. The movies were “Gone with the Wind” and “The Color Purple.” I know, “The Color Purple” isn’t technically set during the Civil War, but its theme is related close enough that I put them in the same bracket. We also included “Lincoln” and “Roots” in our list of movies to prepare us for the south since we watched them within the fall of 2012 and now, and because we remember them very vividly. Each of these movies includes at least one of these similar themes; slavery, the Civil War, and racism that many associate with the south.
              I’ll start in chronological order, for both our viewing and for history, with “Roots.” From our last month-long “field trip” to Europe, we learned much about the Dutch Golden Age and its shipping companies. One of the two major shipping companies was WIC (West India Company). WIC has a triangular trade route that starts in Europe and then goes to Africa to trade European-made guns, ammunition, and other factory-made goods for slaves. Then they sail to America and the Bahamas to trade their slaves for cotton, sugar, tobacco, molasses, and rum. Lastly, they take these goods to Europe to trade for the factory-made things, and then start their circuit again. Our protagonist of the earlier episodes of “Roots,” Kunta Kinte, is taken into this triangle from Africa to America.
During the first part of “Roots,” we often hear the slave owners talking about “breaking in” a new slave. This means to beat them until they think of the slave owners with fear and agree to obey their every command. Kunta is very often whipped. To start off, Kunta is sold and renamed as Toby, but problems arise when he doesn’t accept his new name because he is too proud of his heritage. He does not like being renamed, he doesn’t like the demanding white people, and he doesn’t like being beaten, so many times, he runs away, only to be found again and beaten. Eventually, he accepts the name Toby, but the only time he doesn’t think about running away is when his daughter, Kizzy is born. He is given the opportunity to leave with a drummer man, but he decides to stay because of his family. Later on, Kizzy is sold to another plantation for trying to help one of her friends escape. After this, Toby never stops thinking about running away again until the day he dies. That’s what stood out to me from the movie; how they could never break Toby’s spirit. No matter how hard they tried. I loved how this movie told just the story of the slaves, starting right from when they came over from Africa to the time of their freedom.
The next movie we hatched focused much less on the slaves and their story, but more on the behind-the-scenes of the Civil War. “Lincoln” showed the interior workings of political problems, including the still-used lobbyist.   One thing that stuck out to me about the movie was how political power has always been used sometimes less tactfully, to put it gently. One example of this form “Lincoln” is when the lobbyists are bribing the Democrats with jobs for their votes to pass the bill that would grant the black’s their freedom. Another is when Lincoln told his Secretary of State, William Seward, that they had to hold the vote for the bill before the end of the war so the Democrats would be pressured to pass it. Their side was losing quickly and they wouldn’t want to lose any more lives. It was sort of like a much less intense blackmailing, though they weren’t completely forced to do something. These tactics weren’t exactly very fair, but they were in support of a good cause which won the black’s their freedom and ended the Civil War.
More recently, we watched “Gone with the Wind.” Again, its story has much less to do with the slaves, but it does a great job of shining a light on the white, southern people. Through this movie, we indirectly see how some of the Confederates felt about their slaves and why    they feel justified owning them, though the story is mostly a drama about a young woman’s messed up love life. I was mostly interested by how, even after the war ended and the blacks were free, Scarlett’s slaves, Mammy, Paul, and Prissy, didn’t leave. When drawing a comparison with “Roots,” you can see how much better Scarlett treated her slaves, even though she still wasn’t treating them nicely. But, to be fair, I don’t think Scarlett treated much of anyone nicely. In one of the later scenes, her father actually told her that she should be easier on the slaves. We see that the O’Hara’s think more of their slaves than the slave owners in “Roots.” The O’Hara’s don’t necessarily respect their slaves (except maybe Mammy a little), but they still think of them as people, something the slave owners in “Roots” weren’t as prone to as I saw it. But I don’t believe the people in “Roots” or “Gone with the Wind” were just owning slaves to be mean and nasty (at least not all of them), but they felt justified by the fact that they would starve without the free labor the slaves provided to pick their crops to sell. So, mostly the southern white people were just very desperate.
The latest movie we watched was “The Color Purple.” This movie was very interesting to me because it was one of the first movies I’ve seen about blacks living on their own right after the Civil War. One of the major things shown was how their past slavery affected how they treated each other. By then, almost all of the black people had raised on being beaten and that’s how they started treating their peers. Mostly how the black men treated the black women. It is true that, at the time, women were much less respected than men, but the white men hardly ever treated the white women as brutally and forcefully as the black men did to the black women. A good analogy is that the black women stay like slaves while the black men became like the slave owners. The black men probably became like this because they spent a good deal of time watching and experiencing how the white people treated the blacks, and it rubbed off on them. They were accustomed to the more powerful person having a less powerful person to order around and beat on. Unfortunately for the black women, all women were less respected at the time, so they were automatically chosen to play the role of slaves again.
So, as you can see, we’ve learned a lot from just watching (at least partially) fictitious movies. It’s been getting a little busier around here lately as we’ve started up our history of the America (and since we’ve been trying to prepare for a play that’s being performed in May), but it’s good to know that it will only get busier! I wonder what we’ll be learning next…


Saturday, March 23, 2013
1 year until departure
Pre-Trip Entry #2
Black Women Walking
By Rebecca

              Last week, my mother, brother, and I went to see the play “Black Women Walking” at the Phoenix Center for the Arts. The purpose of the play was to inform the public (admission was free, so it really was very public) about the African-American women who impacted the country (whether majorly or not) throughout history. Each woman came onto the stage and told their story, one after the other. These historical women were, in order of appearance; Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Mary McLeod Bethune, Zora Neale Hurston, Bessie Coleman, Marian Anderson, Willie Mae Ford Smith, Sister Elizabeth, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Wilma Rudolph.
              In 1843, Isabella Baumfree changed her name to Sojourner Truth. She was a slave born in 1797, but earned her freedom in 1826, a year before New York (her home state) abolished slavery, in a deal with her slave owner. She had to leave most of her children behind, though, because, at the time Truth was leaving, the bill had not been fully passed yet, and a slave had to work as a bound servant into their twenties to legally be freed under the emancipation order. She is well-known for being one of the first black women to have gone to court against a white man and won the case when her son, Peter, was illegally sold by her former slave owner to a plantation in Alabama. She’s also even more famous for the many speeches she made to civil rights groups; her most famous being called “Ain’t I a Woman?” This speech was performed in “Black Women Walking” as the very first story. I believe this speech was a great way to start off the night because it applied, at least in some way, to every one of the women presented. It was a great speech; very straight-forward, fiery, and, at many points, very witty. Which I think is also a good way to describe Sojourner Truth.
              Harriet Tubman (born Araminta “Minty” Harriet Ross in 1820) is best known for helping more than 70 slaves escape to northern anti-slavery states and Canada through the “Underground Railroad” and for being the first woman to lead an armed expedition in the Civil War. She led the Combahee River Raid which freed hundreds of slaves in South Carolina. After the war, she retired to New York to take care of her parents. Later on, she founded the “Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged,” and resided there until she died. Tubman was a truly influential figure in history because of the great risk she took in saving all of those slaves and then leading an expedition in the Civil War. He will always be remembered for how tough and driven she was through all of her life.
              Best known for creating a school for African-American children, Mary McLeod Bethune was born in 1875 to two former slaves. As a child, she had a high interest in her own education. She attended college in hopes of becoming a missionary in Africa, but instead she started a school for African-American girls in a little house in Florida in 1904. She chose Daytona, Florida because it was a becoming an avid tourist destination, which could come in handy for donations. The school was called the Literary and Industrial Training School for Nero Girls. In six years, the enrollment of the school went from six to 102, and by 1920, 351 students were enrolled. In 1923, the school was merged with the Cookman Institute for Men and became the Bethune-Cookman School. It rivaled the segregated Daytona High School in education. As well as being a part of many other important political groups, one of the most important was her forming the Black Cabinet. The Black Cabinet was an organization created under President Franklin D. Roosevelt as an advisory board for his administration concerning issues for the black’s in America. Bethune was an important figure in history because she was an educator, and educators are the people who shape the future. She provided hundreds of African-American kids with just as good of an education as the white kids got; which was rare in those days. Not only was she an educator and a strong, black woman, but also an advisor to the president. Mary McLeod Bethune affected America greatly.
              Zora Neale Hurston was born in 1891. She is best known for being an author, a folklorist, and an anthropologist. Her most notable work is Their Eyes Were Watching God, which was written in 1937 about a young, African-American woman as she passes through life. She also wrote four other books and many essays, plays, and short-stories. She was also a very political person. She was often called “America’s favorite black Conservative” and supported Robert Taft in his 1952 presidential campaign. She was always strongly against Franklin D. Roosevelt as president. She was also against desegregating the schools. She felt that physical proximity to white students would not help further the black children’s education (especially since most colored schools were equal with the white ones) and that the children wouldn’t be taught the cultural traditions that the black teachers would have. I feel that Hurston is an interesting character mostly because of her political ideas. I find it interesting that a black woman would be so strongly against Roosevelt; what with the Black Cabinet being created under his term and all the things he did to benefit African-Americans. Overall, I found Zora Neale Hurston incredibly interesting because of her strong point of view.
              As the first female pilot in the entire world of African-American descent and the first American (of any ethnicity or gender) to get an international pilot’s license, Bessie Coleman lived a very notable, short life. Born in 1892 as the tenth of thirteen children, Coleman spent most of her life living in Texas and trying for an education. At the age of 23, she moved to Chicago with her brothers and worked as a manicurist. Here is where her want to fly came from. Returning pilots from World War I were always telling stories about flying during the war. The only problem was that no U.S. flight school would admit her for being black and a woman and she couldn’t find any black aviators that were willing to train her. So she chose to study abroad. With some financial help from a banker and the magazine the Chicago Defender, she took a French language class from Berlitz School in Chicago and then was off to Paris to learn how to fly. In 1926, Coleman was flying passenger with her mechanic when a wrench fell into the gearbox and jammed it. Coleman, who did not have her seatbelt on so that she could look out the windows, fell 2,000 feet and died. She was a very influential person because, not only was she a “first” for black woman, but also a “first” for Americans with her international flying license. And Bessie Coleman taught us the importance of a seatbelt.
              Marian Anderson was a highly talented contralto (the lowest of the female classical singing ranges) who was born in 1897. She is highly respected for her patience and determination during a time of racial prejudice in America. She was brought fully into the public eye when the organization “Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR)” refused to permit Anderson from singing at Constitution Hall. I find Marian Anderson to be an incredible person because of that patience and determination, but also because of her incredible talent.
              One of the most famous African-American Gospel singers, Willie Mae Ford Smith (born in 1904) has been well respected since 1922, when her and her sisters sang at the National Baptist Convention. This convention widened their popularity considerably, especially Willie Mae’s. She was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame in 1990. Willie Mae Ford Smith was the founding mother of Gospel music as we know it today and is a person who will be remembered.
              The most well-known black woman in U.S. history is, without a doubt, Rosa Parks. Born in 1913, she is considered both the mother of the freedom movement and the first lady of civil rights. She became known in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat to a white person and was arrested for it. She worked in collaboration with Martin Luther King Jr. and quickly became the face of the civil rights movement, where she remains this day. For this act of civil disobedience, she was arrested and fired from her job. But she still did not give up. And that is why Rosa Parks is the “poster child” (if I may) of a strong, black woman.
              One of the most enduring of black women, Fannie Lou Hamer was born in 1917 as the youngest of 20 children in a poor Mississippi family. She is well known in her activism in getting blacks to vote. For this, she was taken to jail and savagely beaten. She was also an avid Democrat. She participated in the Democratic National Convention for many years. She also helped create a grass-roots level Head Start program and supported Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Poor People’s” campaign. She also spoke out many times against the Vietnam War. When she died in 1977, one of her most famous quotes was engraved on her tombstone; “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
              “The Tornado,” “La Gazzella Negra” (Italian for “The Black Gazelle”), and “La Perle Noir” (French for “The Black Pearl”) are just a few of the names that Wilma Rudolph earned after leaving the 1960 Rome Olympics with three gold and one bronze medals in track and field. She was born in 1940 as the 20th of 22 kids. As a child, she got infantile paralysis from the polio virus. After she recovered, she had to wear a brace until she was nine, but still had to wear an orthopedic shoe for another two years. When she was twelve, she was finally able to be like other children. After the Olympics, she was considered the fastest woman in the world. She’s respected by me for not only that, but also because, even after all her bouts of sickness and physical handicap, Wilma Rudolph still pulled through and followed her dreams.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013
1 year until departure
Pre-Trip Entry #3
“Glory”
By Rebecca

              Last night, my family and I watched the movie “Glory” (over a dinner of Food City marinated steak – yum!). “Glory” is about the first colored regiment (as defined by Dictionary.com; “a unit of ground forces, consisting of two or more battalions or battle groups, a headquarters unit, and certain supporting units.”), specifically the 54 Massachusetts regiment that was created during, of course, the Civil War (very surprising, right?!). I can officially say that we have not watched two movies for this lesson that deals with the same general point of view even though they all take place around the same time period in the same half of the country. This story was a little different because most of the people were from the North, which had already abolished slavery, so the only black person who knew what it was like being a slave was Trip (played by Denzel Washington), who had escaped from Tennessee when he was twelve.
              Judging from the fact that after seeing “Black Women Walking,” I started talking like some sassy, black lady, it shouldn’t be very surprising that one of the major things that stood out to me was how the colored regiment acted (especially compared with the other regiments). From the very beginning, they all had some sort of brotherly bond (though I do personally believe that being in any army would force some sort of bond). But their bond was strong from the very beginning, and it mirrored the bonding of the slaves in some ways. Now, this probably shouldn’t be too strange considering that they’re all black guys with recent ancestry as slaves, but most of them never worked in a field. They were from the north. So my question is; why do the black people act so connected with each other? Most of them had the same experiences as many white men, so why did they all have that same “togetherness” as was shown by the slaves to one another? Is there something that’s been engraved into their DNA? Or does it come from much farther back; their roots in Africa?
              I will continue to ponder this question as we watch more Southern U.S. History movies and read more Southern U.S. history books (as I’m more than positive we will). Even though there were many other things in this movie that could have perked my interest, I chose the topic of “cultures and peoples” again. Naturally.

Friday, April 5, 2013
1 year until departure
Pre-Trip Entry #4
Mexicans in America
By Rebecca

              Over the past week or so, we’ve taken a step back from the Civil War and have started looking into Hispanics in the U.S. We started off by attending the annual Latino Film Festival at the Arizona Latino Arts and Cultural Center. On the night that we attended, they showed two short films, “Ballad of an Unsung Hero” and “A Mexican Sound.”
              “Ballad of an Unsung Hero” is a 28 minute documentary that tells the story of a popular radio personality in Los Angeles during the 1930s, Pedro J. Gonzalez. When he was younger, he fought during the Mexican Revolution in 1910 alongside Pancho Villa. After the war, he became one of the most popular Mexican-American recording artists of the 1930s. In 1934, he was sentenced to between 1-50 years in San Quentin prison on charges of rape. The woman who had accused him later admitted that she had been forced to lie about the rape, but this was not considered as new evidence and Gonzalez ended up staying in prison for six years. He was very active in promoting for Hispanic-American rights and social justice, and it is believed that this caused political motivation behind the case. Even after he was freed, he was deported to Mexico. This movie showed how Hispanics in America have been very wrongly and unfairly treated. They are stuck doing hard labor, having their every move questioned, and being wrongfully deported back to Mexico, where many of them have never even been before. Gonzalez’s started this fight for social acceptance in America nearly a century ago, but we are still unable to treat Latinos equally to this day.
              The next movie we watched was only 15 minutes long and was called “A Mexican Sound.” This movie captured the history and cultural impact of the Hispanic music style called el son huasteco, a style of folk music that is characterized by fast violin solos, falsetto singing, and, probably most importantly, the sound of rhythmic dancing and stomping on a tarima (a wooden platform). This music is very important to the people of eastern, northeastern Mexico where this music originated, so important that the people if the villages get together and dance on the tarima to at least a few songs of el son huasteco music every weekend. I liked the style of music; it has a nice energy to it. It reminded me a bit of a mix of your typical mariachi music with a touch of an Irish jig-y feel from the exciting violin. It was very fun to listen to.
              While still at the Arizona Latino Arts and Cultural Center (ALAC), we also looked through their Cesar Chavez exhibit, and a couple days later, when we were at home, we watched “A Fight in the Fields,” which is a documentary about Chavez. We learned about how he started the movement of equal rights for all farm workers and his help in founding the National Farm Workers Association (now the United Farm Workers union). This year, his birthday (March 31st) fell on Easter, and there was a large amount of outrage directed towards Google for using a Google Doodle celebrating his birthday rather than Easter. It’s sad to know that, with all that Chavez did to influence Latino communities and, mainly, labor workers, people get this upset about someone’s choice to appreciate him. It shows that, no matter what they do or how hard they try, Latinos are never fully respected in our society.
              Taking a quick little trip back through history, the next thing we learned about was the Mexican-American War. Officially started on April 25, 1846 under the presidency of James Polk, the war lasted until February of 1848 when the two countries signed The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This treaty gave America California and the Southwest in trade for $15,000,000 to Mexico. It was decided that the border was the Rio Grande. There was a lot of controversy over this war. It was believed by many that the point of the war was only to create more slave states, but the supporters of the war felt their cause was justified by their “manifest destiny;” the words of newspaper editor John O’Sullivan who thought that we should expand as much as we could because it was our God given right. This war is a fundamental factor to remember while we deal with many of the arguments about Hispanic “immigrants” these days. A large number of Mexicans we see walking the streets today have never even seen Mexico, or have at least never lived there. A common slogan among Latino communities is “we didn’t cross the border; the border crossed us.” Which is completely true. Most of the western U.S belonged to Mexico until the war started. We now call these people “illegal” and “aliens,” when a large number of them actually aren’t.
              Just to put all these dates into perspective with all of our other studies so far (*cough, cough* Civil War *cough, cough*), I thought I’d take a break to include the dates all together. First is the Mexican War, from April of 1846 to February of 1848, quickly followed in 1849 by the California Gold Rush.  Next was the Civil War, which started on April 12, 1861 and ended in May, 1865. Then, we had the Spanish-American War start in 1898. Next was the Mexican Revolution that lasted about a decade, starting in 1910, that Pedro J. Gonzalez fought in. And in 1966, Cesar Chavez led his first grape strike in California to demand better pay for farm workers.
              As just mentioned in my little timeline-like review, we also learned a little about the Spanish-American War. It was actually started in 1895, when the Cubans rebelled against the Spanish rule of the island, but the Americans got involved in 1898. At first, it seemed unlikely that America would participate in the war, but after the American battleship, the Maine, was destroyed in an explosion in the port of Havana, President McKinley and Congress declared war and sent troops to Cuba. America won the war in three months, but the rebels who started the revolution against Spain were never even mentioned by the American military. No Cuban was even allowed to sign the treaty made with Spain. They were told, after they were “freed,” that they would be able to make their own constitution and government, as long as they agreed to include the American-made Platt Agreement into their constitution. This agreement basically allowed the American government to become involved in Cuban affairs whenever the heck they wanted. Pretty much, the Cubans were no longer ruled by Spain, but instead were taken over by America. We joined the fight under the justification of helping them to become a free nation; like we were doing during the Revolutionary war. But then we just take over their government, don’t acknowledge their input, and ultimately become the biggest group of hypocrites ever.
              The latest movie we’ve seen for our American History was “Harvest of Empire.” It told the stories of the major countries that Latinos are immigrating from over the past couple decades. These seven countries are Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, El Salvador, The Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. It was a very deep and involved movie, so I will not try to summarize it at all, but the overall message was very easy to grasp; the Latinos should be welcome here. They didn’t just decide to come here; they had to. Nobody wants to leave their home and their families. They fled from horrible social and political problems happening in their countries, many of which were caused by America. We have no right to shin these people out of our society with all that they had to suffer through to get here. And even more unjustly, we have no right to deport them to a place that we’ve messed up.
              Many times we’ve come back to study more about Latinos in America and someone are able to learn something new every time. I strongly believe that there is no reason to deport the Latinos back to Mexico when there is nothing for them there. What happened to the Great American Melting Pot? We are one of the very few first world countries (maybe even the one) of the world to make people to be a citizen to stay here. We should be questioning each every one of the Latinos, either, because many of them are from America, but not when it was America. They did not cross the border; the border crossed them. We need to learn to respect the greatly increasing number of Latinos that are living alongside us. And why shouldn’t we; they bring many neat cultural traditions that should be appreciated as any other culture. I know I like the Latinos; they brought me fajitas and enchiladas!
 











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