(If on mobile device: To activate the soundcloud pod below, pls click “Listen in browser”, then the play button, to hear the free streaming music embedded for this post. Happy reading and listening!)
CODE
FIRST DAY (Ethics)
FIRST DAY OF CLASSES: PLS SUBMIT AVATAR & PUBLIC PROFILE ELECTRONICALLY: Use nicknames only, or pseudonyms, or “aliases”, do not use your full names.
Welcome to the first semester!
This is your first assignment and it’s easy, but it’s also a ticket to a seat to the first day of classes and succeeding meetings. Please submit your avatar and public profile electronically during the first meeting or during the first 30 minutes of the first meeting – failing which, you will be excused so you can submit the requirement. PLEASE USE YOUR NICKNAMES ONLY, OR PSEUDONYMS, OR PET NAMES, OR “ALIASES” (hopefully, they are not aliases from a criminal record:) ).
This is a public site and you are advised not to use your full names.
FOR THE FIRST DAY OF CLASSES: In order to have an organized flow of class discussion: Everyone is required to attend the orientation on the first day of classes – even those who have not completed their enrolment. Experience shows that those who fail to attend the orientation fail to be aware of the requirements and class policies, fail to get their topics for reporting (for 30 points) and end up DISRUPTING THE CLASS with their noisy cellphones, noisy inquiries, and abrupt behavior in trying to get out of the classroom to comply with the requirements. Students who show inability to comprehend words will be asked to drop the class before wreaking more havoc.
Students will always be held responsible for whatever they miss as a consequence of their being late or absent, and are requested not to harangue the handling faculty to be given special treatment by way of a “personalized briefing”, or update, or to get topics. Students who persist in refusing to comprehend words will be asked to drop the class.
The class record and class scorecards of this class are electronic (with one print copy as final backup).
My avatar and public profile are in this site, in the “About” widget, in the widgets section at the footer of this page.
ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS, FIRST DAY OF CLASSES: As stated, the class records are electronic and will be based on scores arising from compliance with the requirements, to be centralized electronically in the department file. For the first day of classes, in the first 30 minutes of class hours, or earlier, pls submit electronically your avatar and public profile by embedding them or linking them in this site, in this post, in the comments section (you may post them earlier, before classes). You may use the computers in the department, or the computers in the classrooms, or the free and public computers in the corridors and lobby, or the free and public computers in the library, or your own devices (the college has a free, public wifi). Those who fail to comply with this requirement up to the first 30 minutes of classes, or when the roll is called, will lose their seat in class, will be requested to leave the room in order to comply with the requirement, and will be marked as absent.
The avatar is your digital public photo. For this class, do not submit an image of a cartoon character or a computer-generated image unless you want to be considered a winged creature in class. Do not submit a microscopic, dot-size photo unless you want a dot score for all the requirements. Pls make your avatar at least the usual 1” x 1”. Thank you.
The public profile is the public description of yourself, the profile that you use in your public sites. Use your nicknames only, do not submit your full names in this site. Pls include the following in your “description”: 1.your course; 2.your favorite book or novel of all time (and state why); 3.your favorite film of all time (and state why); 4.your favorite media practitioner of all time (any medium: newspaper, broadcast, multimedia, film, social media, etc), (and state why); 5.your favorite song/ music/ band/ songwriter of all time (and state why); 6.Your favorite internet site (specify the name of the site and give its description: do not just state a generic platform “FB” or “Youtube”) 7.your favorite meal of all time (and state why). 8.”hobbies”, if any (optional). Those who do not have these will be asked to show or perform their own original composition in class as a description of themselves.
(photo, android-shot last week) There are several ways of producing your public profile: 1.Thru your own public site (thru free sites such as FB, Twitter, tumblr, wordpress, blogspot, etc) 2.or thru Gravatar (a free app/site), 3.or thru about.com (another free site/app) (although there is nothing absolutely free in the internet: advertisers buy your info, so just use your nicknames, not your full names.) If you’re using Gravatar or about.com, the app automatically shows your avatar anywhere you post in the net, and in the comments section of this site, so you won’t have to embed, separately, your photo. There are two ways of submitting them in the comments section of this post: 1.By embedding, as in-line text; or 2.by linking the url of your own site (pasting the url of your site in the comments section). Simply click the comments box at the end of this post, then type: you may embed your public profile and avatar, or paste the link to your site where your public profile and avatar appear. SECOND PART OF THIS ASSIGNMENT: Preliminary trigger warning: This course involves viewing of media reports on disaster, wars, tragedies, epidemics, crimes, etc. with dead bodies, children in crime reports or war reports suffering the consequences of violence, etc.; language used in media programs that may be graphic; review of programs that show the occult and the supernatural; review of documentaries and films that explicit/ graphic/ horror/ risque scenes. It also includes a required weekly media monitor and difficult exams, strict rules on classroom etiquette such as putting mobile devices on silent mode, no talking during exams, etc. In order to collectively formulate and write the full trigger warning for this course, please submit ten examples of trigger warnings used by universities, colleges, professors, and media organizations, news and film outfits (for details, please view the post by clicking the link below)
This exercise is worth ten points, and the deadline is extended to next meeting, Aug. 23 at 1:00 pm. Please post your results in a window in this site entitled “Review of media content, ethics course: Trigger warnings“, that will be opened 48 hours from now or on Friday, August 18. FINALLY If you are a recluse, or have zero presence in the internet, you may submit all these requirement to the department assistant. You will need to FOLLOW UP the department assistant to submit it to the handling faculty – the disadvantage of this procedure is — as experience shows – this takes more administrative steps; any delay will be counted against the student for failure to follow up efficiently. A one-pager confidential directory will be routed manually (print) in class where the student will be asked to write their email address and “name of person to contact in case of emergency” and that person’s contact info. This document is confidential and no one is allowed to borrow or to photocopy it. Those who fail to submit an avatar and public profile will not be allotted an electronic classcard and will not appear in the electronic class record. Those who are not allotted a classcard and do not appear in the class record will be considered a fictitious character. Their grade will be posted by Appa, the sky bison/ sea cow (nickname: “Appapo”) — who has to be triggered by a jubilant “Appa-po! Yip-yip!” before posting.
(if on mobile device, to activate the soundcloud pod below, pls click “Listen in browser”, then the play button, to hear the free streaming music embedded for this post. Happy reading and listening!)
Looking for America: The Navajo Nation
of Fighters and Healers
Beneath a pile of woven authentic Native American baskets which i set aside one by one, resting in a dark portion of the cabinet, in an outlet of vintage handcrafted items by Native Americans here in San Diego county, home of the largest number of Native American reservations, a geometric rendition that seemed to be a symbol of a deity symmetrically drawn on what seemed to be very old, sand paper, was safely ensconced on the wall but hidden from anyone. It looked so solitary – for lack of a better term – that i picked it up. Here it is (android-shot nine days ago)
We drove all the way here from Los Angeles because we could not find authentic Native American stores with handmade Native American items in Los Angeles county — except big malls with mass-produced dreamcatchers made in China. From the Valley to Escondido to Old Town San Diego, we examined each store, and found “Native American” products made in Indonesia or made in Honduras: the store keepers were honest enough to say where they originated, and we also checked their labels. We picked up a couple of items (dreamcatcher and wallet) just as a backup because I was nearing the end of my stay here. Crossing an ocean 7,300 miles, I felt almost resigned after one storekeeper said: “If you’re looking for indigenous items, this area was once part of Mexico, so these … (she points to some multicolored ponchos and chalecos) are the native American products.” And a maracas or two. One storekeeper who overheard that we wanted to buy authentic so the proceeds could go to the artisans, said “Well, I’m 43% native American …” Witty. Looking at our sweaty faces, she was kind enough to write down for us the areas where the Native American reservation areas were located, where there are outlets of their products. She was very generous with the information, jotting down names and marking them on our map. Maybe she was half-native American. In general, sales associates and storekeepers we’ve encountered, from Sherman Oaks to Hollywood, from Topanga to San Diego, are helpful, friendly, and courteous. Myra used old-fashioned research in the internet to verify the information… And now we are here. i turned over the sand art to see the reverse side: Handwritten on what seemed to be very old paper, I could make the words “ceremonies” and “to help” or “to heal”. Signed as “Emma Yazzie”. Because it looked very old, I thought this might be something, and brought it to the proprietor of the store for a description. Here it is (android-shot nine days ago) The proprietor looked at it closely and said: “This is part of a collection from the 1960s or 1970s, a resident, Martha Murdoch, brought it here a decade ago with other souvenir items she kept in her basement, to help the Navajo residents, she had bought from them and kept their in her basement and forgot all about them, until she decided to clear out her basement. This is sand art by the Navajo native Americans, it represents the ceremony they perform on certain occasions and whenever they wanted to heal a member of their clan. They would gather on the sand and, by using colored sand, they would carefully arrange the colored grains of sand to draw lines and make a figure. The actual sand painting that they made on the sand was never preserved. But their artists made representations such as this one.” i asked where the collector was, and the proprietor said the collector/ original owner had died recently at the ripe old age of 95. I asked who the Navajo artist was, “Emma Yazzie” and he said that “Yazzie” was a common name among the Native Americans like “Smith” among Americans. He asked me where I got this and I pointed at the corner. We walked to the cabinet and he found pictures of the collector/ original owner. Here they are (android-shot nine days ago) Based on the fashion and hairstyle in these photos, this seems to be from the 1970s. On the spot, we searched the artist in the internet, and slowly, I saw the store proprietor’s face getting more and more astonished as we read who the Navajo sand artist was. But he could no longer change the tag price on the sticker pasted on the reverse side of the sand art. The work was the “Yei Bei Chai” by famed Navajo artist Emma Yazzie, an original with a handwritten note signed by the artist herself.
The Yei Bei Chai, according to navajopeople.org, is a nine-day ritual of healing involving chants, songs, meals, ceremonies performed by representatives of deities, use of symbolic figures made of prayer sticks, kethawn of yucca fibers and twigs, and others. Here is Emma Yazzie, image by rfgartphotography used here non-commercially for academic purposes: Here is how she was described by the Chicago Tribune (1976) and the New York Times (1979), excerpts from the archives:
And more, from book chapters written about her: i sensed that this piece must be important so I bought another piece, which turned out to be another sand painting, “Little Star Form” by well-established Navajo jeweler Harry Begay. Here it is (android-shot nine days ago)
And here is its inscription at the back, handwritten and signed by the artist (android-shot nine days ago)
The Yei Bei Chai was the last Emma Yazzie piece in the store. (i’m giving the Emma Yazzie work to a friend, a scholar and an advocate of indigenous peoples.) (the Harry Begay work, i’m keeping for myself) My sister and I were looking for memorabilia — and we found a priceless part of the story of America.
