Miles, Miles, Miles

Friday was a pretty relaxed and laid-back day. We all started our first day of arts. We went to either film, theater, or photography. My art for this semester is photography and it started off pretty well. We got our first assignment which is to create a photo journalism kind of video with voiceovers (like the kind of videos in the New York Times). The photographers in each of the tribes will be gathering photos for this assignment during our "missions" on Tuesday and Wednesday next week. Before we could get started on that assignment, we were sent of to snap photos around the school, create a slideshow movie on iMovie, and then do a voiceover for practice. I don't think any of us finished in class but I feel like everyone gets the idea of what we have to do next week. Oh yeah, before I forget, we all got to go to our normal advisories which was super nice! :D

After everyone we had our math and free periods, we enjoyed a very spoiling pizza lunch...but their were OPTIONS this time. Usually at school when they say that there's gonna be pizza (legit pizza, not pizza friday) the only option is plain. But, that day, we had plain, sausage, pepperoni, and chicken...WHAAAT?! There was even salad for the people that don't even eat pizza aka Lena. During lunch, we got a special surprise: boxes that made our tribe missions even more confusing and disoriented! Joy! I don't know if any of the other tribes had things inside of their boxes that made them go "huh?" but I know for sure that when I looked inside of Dale Squad's, my tribe's, box and saw The Scarlet Letter, I definitely said "huh?" and heard the sound that plays whenever a fight is about to happen in Kill Bill. Hopefully, everything will have deeper meaning to us when we get more research done.

Lastly, we had our first Music in the City class. The first half of class we spoke mainly about jazz and tried to decipher it by listening to "So What" by Miles Davis and then to Mr. Christensen and our own Bessie doing a little improv to that song. Personally, I loved it because I'm a jazz freak! The second half, we tried answering the questions basically asking: why was (and why is) so much music drawn out of New York and why did so many musicians come to New York to perform and record? We couldn't find a concrete answer but we were definitely able to find many key reasons. And, once again, we ended our day with more question marks floating in the air than the day before! -_-''
Definition of the day in 16 seconds: Click this please!

Here are some pictures Lena took from the Music Class:

The most incredible photo in the world!

I commend you, Lena!

Alright, I know I wasn't assigned to be a photographer but I had photography that day! So here are some pictures that Hannah and I took for the class:

THE COMMONS

(Hannah is that figure in beige in the upper left)

A view of the quad from one of the windows in the 500's

Jeremy and I leaving the middle school town meeting magic show!

Dis-Orientation Continues: Maybe Even More Confused?

Before I begin the post, I must apologize for anything I will precede to write that may come off as bias. I must admit, I do have quite a prejudice against the other tribes and in favor of The City Semestarz (considering it is quite clear who the best tribe and the leader of the streets is). I may now continue.

The day began for me with a wonderful sleep in until 8:40. Sorry for all of you who were in Math. Then, Kate, Jeremy, Jennie, Charlie, Jacob H. and I began our Physics Independent Study during Assembly and Funny Time. Although I never thought Physics could be remotely interesting, Mr. Wearn found a way to tie Physics into the theme of City Semester, as we studied the forces and physical aspects of bridges and given an option to present a timeline of all the main bridges built in Manhattan.

After that, the second day of our tribal wars began. That's when things heated up. Each tribe was asked to present their rap, logo and costume. There were three groups that gave it a nice shot, but in the end were beaten out by the surprising, superb and stupendous City Semestarz. The Concrete Kings did have a very artistic logo and quite an intimidating presentation (their group rap included tiger claws at the end and some hissing), and Shadows and Dale Squad both kept it simple with catchy and brief raps. Shadows also had quite an impressive graffiti logo that was most definitely not computer generated. However, I think the clear winner of the raps was the City Semestarz. Not to float my boat or anything, but after my tribe laid down a wonderful beat, I delivered a City Semestarz original rap that left both the teachers and the other tribes in awe. However, I commend each and every group on their performances.

Danny and The Shadows introducing their logo. 

J-Hoch deep in his rap 

Following the introductions of the tribes, we actually got down to work. We were introduced to our spirit guides. Now, this may seem like some voodoo magic and that's probably because it is, especially with the help of the Voodoo Doctor, Ms. Banks. Each tribe was assigned three people important in the history of New York to research, and, on Tuesday, we will begin our two day Vision Quest across the city at Woodlawn Cemetary, where we will bring offerings of different sorts to the graves of our spirit guides. My group was assigned to George M. Cohan, Alva and August Belmont and Robert Moses. Each group must create one offering for each of their spirit guides. There are three types of offerings: a theatrical offering, where the group uses song, dance or acting as a representation of something from the spirit guide's life, a visual representation of the spirit guide's life also incorporating the words of the spirit guide, and bring a food that represents some aspect of the spirit guide. Now you are definitely thinking this is some sort of voodoo.

We began our research on our spirit guides, with an incentive in place. The first group to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon successfully with their three spirit guides would get first choice on the Moleskine's purchased for the group. The City Semestarz, being the stars we are, completed the task in record time (well actually, we created the record) and connected our three guides with just one extra person, August Belmont's son, August Belmont Jr. Shout out to Bessy especially, she had a major breakthrough that led to our success. The Starz, as I call us for short, were very pleased with their Moleskines.

The next big group meeting was our first Culture Class, led by Ms. Furfey, 程老师 and 伍老师. In the vein of spirit guides and offerings, we discussed how different cultures, specifically Mexico and China, give offerings to their ancestors and the recently deceased. A common theme between Mexico and China was the celebration of the person's life rather than the mourning of their death, for death is seen in both cultures as merely passing into the afterlife, or even in China, as a form of rebirth. We then broke up into our specific languages and the day came to a close.

Sincerely,

Jacob "Moleskine" Koffler

First Day! Can You Dig It (the disorientation or the kwaaaa?!)

The day started off with a little overview of what our time together will entail, overall-Mr. Meyers suggests we "Dis-Orient" ourselves, for there was(perhaps, still is) some orienting to be done. Turning the focus on the science we will study in the city Mr. Waldman brought up a few maps on the board. Giving a visual of where we are, he has us identify our homes orientation in relationship to its neighborhood, neighboring neighborhoods, the region it is in with boarders recognized by the city, the city in relation to the rest of New York state, and where New York state is in relation to the world. Going back to our where we were oriented at this point, we were in class. And it was before 9:30. And our entire career as a student completely changed within an hour. At least, that's how I felt. So, the term "Dis-Orientation" definitely fit.

Parading through the halls, we made our way to our new "Morning Coffee Clubhouse" ...thinking about it now, I feel like that name for our room just completed our little time travel back to the '70s- (it'll all make sense in a bit, I promise) There we went over logistics, started realizing how crazy we are for signing up to do work, saw technology fuddle our teachers, got over our first awkward club meeting, and receive our colorful schedules.

A lovely young advisee of Mr. Krakowsky, I believe her name was Izzie(?), designed this beautiful logo/poster for us- it has our standard Grecian cup, some people kayaking in coffee, and the New York City skyline as our backdrop! Yay!

Again, we sort of get herded through the halls to Mr. Meyers' room. Now, the caffeine was hitting us(or maybe just me, I don't know about the rest of my classmates) and our first "Apple Core" was to take place. Mr. Krakowsky starts off by explaining how he views the world. That history isn't linear, and life doesn't work in such an organized way, but that he sees things in layers and webs. Layers are large identifiers, location, time period, etc. In these layers are webs of lives, groups, organizations and their contacts, their family members, tragedies, who they probably encountered or opposed. Jumping off of this, Dr. Banks tell us that we are going to travel back in time to the 70's and try to picture New York during the chaos of economic downfall, counterculture remnants, commercial boom, and these "tribes" that form just as they always have. We are brought to our 90 minute, 1979 time warp- The Warriors.

Thus, we are given the task to form our own tribe. Find a name, create a logo, an outfit for the tribe, rap or slogan, and a secret handshake. Tribe members only.

Warriors, come out to plaaayy~

Embrace the crazy and get comfortable with the disorient,

-Hannah

PS. Did I spell kwaaa correctly?

Arthur Ave pics

Some pictures from our Arthur Avenue Scavenger hunt.

View from Van Cortlandt

A picture from my walk today through Van Cortlandt park (click on picture to expand).  A beautiful day for a walk, right?

The Greatest Grid

The Greatest Grid exhibit on the 1811 Commissioner's Plan for NYC 

runs through April at the Museum of the City of NY on Fifth Avenue and 104th Street. 

I loved it and highly recommend it. There is something vaguely magical and inexplicable in the fact that such a vibrant city grew from the vision of three commissioners who were mostly concerned with merely creating a pragmatic system for selling land and constructing buildings. The simple 1811 Grid became a framework for sustaining not only economic growth but diversity, opportunity, creativity and, yes, liberty. Not bad for three guys who are otherwise pretty obscure (OK, Morris wrote the Preamble, but who knows it?). Go and enjoy this well-designed exhibit and leave yourself time to pore over some of the most engaging maps I have seen (see if you can find where your house/apartment would be amidst the 19th century rocks, hills and trees).

Reading List

Hey everyone, just to let you know, this semester we'll be reading Pete Hamill's Forever, E.L. Doctorow's World's Fair, Joseph O'Neill's Netherland and Collum McCann's Let The Great World Spin.