Self Evalutation

Over all this year, I think I've done better this year in A.P. than I thought I was going to. The class has a reputation for being difficult, like all AP classes do. But this class wasn't filled with really hard work like I thought it was going to be, just filled with a lot of work, with some of it being difficult (something you usually can't escape in any class). In some ways I think I've done well for some parts of this project and not so well on other parts. The times when I did do my posts on time they usually turned out okay, although they were often rather short. I was never sure how long each post was supposed to be. But at one point where a particular post was hard to write about, so I put it off, and while I kept up with my following posts, I saved them as drafts and only just actually posted them. It was sometimes also difficult to think of what to do a blog on, especially during the weeks we did presentations. I did enjoy looking up other "extra" stuff to put on here, like the articles from Discovery.com. The worst part was probably the art discussions and connections across time.

Hitler Watercolors Draw Big Bid at Auction

What a British auction house claims are a set of paintings and sketches by a young Adolf Hitler sold at auction Thursday for 97,672 pounds ($143,358).
Among the 15 pictures is a portrait of solitary figure dressed in brown peering into wine-colored waters. The date is 1910, the signature reads "A. Hitler" and scribbled just over the mysterious figure are the letters: "A.H."
So is this a portrait of the Fuehrer as a young man?
"I don't think they're fakes," said Richard Westwood-Brookes, historical documents expert at auction house Mullocks that carried out the sale. He said he did not believe anyone would have the nerve to fake the pictures, given the global publicity they have received.

Meeting of the Minds: Henry VIII Part 2

Many of the things that Henry VIII did in his lifetime sound like a cliche, fairytale, spoiled rotten prince. It probably wasn't complete his fault that he acted like that for most of his life. First of all, he was royal. He was entitled to have nearly everything he could ask for. Second, Henry wasn't raised to be prince, his older brother was. Henry was supposed to go into the clergy, but when his brother Arthur died Henry then got a crash course in being a king instead of the real thing. Third, his father Henry VII was a tightwad, and when Henry VIII inherited the throne he was left with a ton of money that he nearly instantly began to waste. But all of that doesn't excuse all of the ridiculous things he did during his reign (not that he was the first or last ruler to do anything crazy).

Meeting of the Minds: Henry VIII Part 1

In preparation for this assignment I signed three books out of the James V. Brown Library about a month ago, one of which I've read front to back and another of which I skimmed through. Having previously read Antonia Fraser's book The Wives of Henry VIII for our summer reading project, reading just about Henry VIII was quite a different experience than I thought it would be. The Henry portrayed in Fraser's book had little to do with state, but in Monarch and Conspirators: the Wives and Woes of Henry VIII, more of his attempts at war and in peace were talked about. Although I'm sure it came up, I don't remember reading about the Field of the Cloth of Gold before, but in the books not about Henry VIII's wives, it comes up quite often in in great detail.
One thing I thought would be different between the books was the way Henry VIII's personality and demeanor was portrayed. Fraser's book made him seem like a selfish, stubborn, sometimes passionate man who was prone to temper tantrums. This is how he's portrayed in most other books about him as well. I thought perhaps books about him specifically would be more kind.
I've also checked out of the school library a copy of Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons. I've seen the movie before, so I can recall somethings from that, but otherwise so far I haven't read far enough for many things to sound familiar from reading other reference books.

Presentation #4

Presentations from 5/6: Bosnia, Darfur, 9/11 and Al-Qaeda.
For someone like me who has done little to no research on either the human rights issues in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur, it’s somewhat difficult to keep any of the details straight. Without looking at the notes I took I’d never be able to tell you if the Janjaweed were in Darfur or Rwanda, or which country the Hutu and the Tutsi were fighting in. It all gets mashed together into one big human rights issue.

Presentations #3

Presentations from 5/5: International Monetary Fund/ World Bank, Human Rights and Genocide, Promoting Human Rights, and Rwanda.
Due to the presentations from that day being similar in nature (with the exception of the World Bank) some of the topics seem like they could have been combined into one instead of multiple presentations. The Human Rights section doesn’t really give any major information that isn’t common knowledge, and it seems to me as though that and Promoting Human Rights could be one report.