Flapper Culture and Style
Louise Brooks and the Jazz Age
http://www.pandorasbox.com/flapper.html

This website is sponsored by a private organization, the Louise Brooks Society which is a "virtual fan club" in cyber space. Its archives are particularly devoted to the silent movies and dedicated to film star Louise Brooks. She epitomized the flapper era, and the main home page offers a variety of links to such things as films on video, individual accounts, the Jazz Age and all that pertained to the emerging popular culture of the 1920s. It was originally created in 1995, with a copyright for the content dated 1999 and a note that material is added on an ongoing basis. I only found one link which appeared to be outdated ("F. Scott Fitzgerald homepage") and all of the other information appeared to current.

The textbook makes only cursory mention of the Jazz Age, portraying it as just another dimension of the 1920s. The website, on the other hand, gives the impression that jazz was an integral element of revolutionary change in the popular culture, which was also embodied by silent films, speakeasies, automobiles, and other "glamorous" novelties. It makes information available about a particular segment of urban culture, with the apparent bias that it was embraced by the conservative and rural populace as well.

The article, "Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation," presents a perhaps clearer picture than the text of the resistance and opposition to jazz that existed in society at that time. Despite its emphases, the information on this website seems to be accurate.  The article itself was printed in segments and its earlier segments present relatively cogent arguments. The point is made that immoral conditions existed among young people and, in contrast to traditional morals, that is a true, if narrow-minded,  statement. The author regarded the dances to jazz music as outrageous and I'm sure they seemed so at the time. She then discusses the opinions of certain dancing teachers and country clubs who disapproved of jazz because they felt that immoral dancing, the corset check room, and patrons ability to leave dance halls invited evil.

As opinions, naturally, these were true enough, though no space was given to other dance masters and country clubs who approved of jazz. The descriptions of ragtime and jazz were accurate and fair. As to whether the author's, final conclusions are true, it is difficult for me to say. I am personally biased because jazz is one of my favorite forms of music, and it's difficult for me to see that it evokes "brutality, " yet the f act that it promotes "sensuality" is hard to deny. I agree also that "that human organism responds to musical vibrations," and music invokes certain emotions; I believe that is scientifically documented. To some, jazz certainly does sound irritating and ugly, but others perceive it as fantastically rhythmic and musical; this is as true today as it was then. Jazz represented a threat to traditional mores and this article argues that point well. Whether behavior falling outside those mores is evil, however, is something the article does not address. Consequently, the argument as a whole, fails in my opinion.  

I viewed "The Camel's Back," a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald which was published by the "Ladies Home Journal." Its style and content reminded me of "The Great Gatsby" and did promote popular ideas of a racy lifestyle. Another link, "A Flapper's Appeal to Parents," was a little article written by  a young women who felt that the youth of her day were well-educated and in a position to make positive contributions to the world if only they would be understood and supported by their parents rather than condemned. She (Ellen Welles Page), I felt that youth could come under the sway of negative influences otherwise. 

Overall, I enjoyed the design of the website. The graphics and text are balanced and the graphics have a nice variety of sepia and black-and-white photographs, colorful prints, and original drawings. The font used throughout, though, is the same a rather boring one typically found in textbooks. The size of type shows very little variation and the text is not particularly easy to scan for !important points. Navigation was especially easy in this website, where options were offered to view the article linearly or nonlinearly and to return to more than one primary page. This was an interesting site which did give the impression of the excitement of the era. I would recommend it to those who are interested in history or jazz.

Nikki Dohn
History 175
Your Email address:__________
Professor Wrobel
Week 11

The Library of Congress: American Memory
Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
http://memory.loc-gov/ammem

This website contained very attractively designed pages, despite the fact that most were primarily textual. There was a general color scheme of blue, deep red and yellow/gold which was employed differently from page to page. They were frequently used as background colors for the page or for title segments. Fonts and print size varied appealingly. Actual manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project were plainly presented as black text on a white background with no variation in font or type size. Related images were made available by links. A wealth of maps, motion pictures, photos and sound recordings were available as well- those pages likely made use of more graphics, but I did not view any of them. 

Navigation within this website was masterfully planned. Data was made available by time period, collection, or title. It was possible to locate items by viewing a list or browsing subject headings, as well -- a feature I found especially useful. A search feature and help menu were available to further facilitate navigation, and it was possible to click on links returning one to a collection, a subject, or the homepage. The Library of Congress is the source of authority for the website. Its primary intent seems to be making information publicly available via this online format, particularly information which may not be available elsewhere. Whether, the collections within the Library of Congress itself and those chosen to be represented here are biased, is impossible to immediately determine. Because so much information is available, one would probably have to conduct an extensive study to answer that question. However, from a brief perusal of the website, it seems that this data is presented in the spirit of   freedom of information. The homepage for the Federal 'Writers' Project was dated October, 1998 and the homepage for "American Memory" is dated December, 1999. 1 did not find any outdated links, so the site appears to be relatively current. 

I chose a woman from Vermont, Elizabeth E. Miller, to review. In 1938 she was 90 years old; she had moved from Scotland with her husband and children when she was 42. The writer's description of her was somewhat more enlightening than Mrs. Miller's own verbatim accounts. She was described as set, purposeful and stubborn; built more for utility than grace. Her creed was "work hard, work well, save something out of everything you earn," and she had been a hard, merciless woman. Time and sorrow, however, had mellowed her so that she now had a rich understanding and sense of humor. She was determined, vigorous, and intensely interested in current affairs rather than discussing the past.

This woman had a hard life, beginning when she was ten and had to take over the care of the household and her five siblings for her invalid mother. Her mother taught her to work hard and meticulously and they lived in conditions of poverty. She walked barefoot for three miles to church and for groceries, and washed all the family's clothing, spun the wool from their sheep, and knit everyone's "footins and mittens." Despite this hardship, she had fond memories of her family and the early years of her marriage, when she had her children in Scotland. One time, Elizabeth Miller remembered cutting up and bringing in a 550 pound hog by herself in the middle of the night so that it wouldn't freeze; necessity had forced this because her husband could not return on time. I noticed that her recollections did not include any of the time she had spent in Vermont for the previous 48 years. She briefly mentioned that their house had burned down twelve years before, and the bio( graphical questions showed her husband died in 1890, In this way, it became clear that her husband had died the same year they moved to America and settled in Vermont. She lived in a lovely location at Miller Bros., Mountain and Lake View Farm, so I deduced that she had  finished raising her four boys alone and had established Ex home and farm without her husband's help. She never let herself think about the hardships though, because there was too much that needed to be done. Her experiences and attitude seem to express vividly those of New England natives, as well as of many people from Scotland.

In contrast to Elizabeth Miller's life, I read the story of a Vermont man who was a drunken stonecutter originally from Turin, Italy. This man was barely fifty, but claimed that drinking and stonecutting, both, would kill a man. She had been unable to stay married and care for his wife and children in America, primarily because he was more interested in enjoyment. Another man and woman from Vermont, both in their 40s, discussed their lives as single adults. Both had lived their youths drinking and "partying" rather hard. He went off to war and she was jilted by the lover she had wanted to marry. Years later, they were disillusioned and lonely.

I viewed a textual presentation on the WPA Federal Writers' Project. It mentioned that only those poor enough to qualify were recipients of funding and they received a subsistence salary of $20 per week. Both beginning and experienced writers were hired, and some well known authors (e.g., Saul Bellow and Zora Neale Hurston) were involved. In the early 1930s, they produced state guidebooks with samples of writing. However, 10,000 life stories were produced in the late 1930s and were meant to be published in series of anthologies. They were never published, but were simply stored until recently in the Library of Congress. Reading about these individuals' lives was fascinating and I will visit the site again myself as well as recommend it to anyone interested in people or history.

Darian Aistrich 
History 175
Your Email address:__________
Professor Wrobel
Week 16

Clinton Impeachment Trial. If you had been a member of the U.S. Senate, how would you have voted? Why?

            For my eighth and final critique I viewed the website which can be found at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/impeachment/hearings.html. The authority for this website is PBS which is a non-profit media enterprise owned and operated by the nation's 349 public television stations. Through the use of noncommercial television, the Internet and other media they try to bring content and quality programs and educational services to the American public. The viewing audience of PBS reaches 99 percent of the homes in America. The sub-site within PBS that I viewed and critiqued for this paper is an Online Newshour Special Report about the impeachment trial of William Jefferson Clinton. 
            The site is laid out in reverse chronological order having the start of the trial, January 7, 1999, at the bottom of the page and the votes of the U.S. Senate on each count for acquittal at the top of the page, dated February 12, 1999. Between the starting and ending point of the order of events in the impeachment trial there is detailed information such as; establishing the case, trial documents, the prosecutions caise, depositions, legal arguments, closing arguments, defense of the President, and voting amongst the U.S. Senate. Contained in each of these very descriptive sections are pictures of the people involved, including quotes and opinions that they presented during the impeachment trial. The website does a great job in presenting the information and documenting the events that happened during the impeachment trial.
            The website does a great job in presenting the information and documenting the events that happened during the impeachment trial. There is some similarity with the textbook in that they both talk about the impeachment trial. The website is more specific in its cause in just discussing the information relevant to those events. The textbook on the other hand does a good job in painting the whole picture about President Clinton and the times leading up to the impeachment trial and after it. In comparison the website gives more specifics, including quotes, pictures of people involved, cast of votes within the U.S. Senate and many other things. Both do a good job in maintaining accuracy with the other to not get readers and other people interested confused. 
            If I was a member of the U.S. Senate I think that I would have voted against William Jefferson Clinton being innocent. All of the evidence and the false testimonies that were given really showed me that he was guilty. If you are not guilty then you should have nothing to hide.  President Clinton did in fact have secrets to hide, and he attempted to conceal them, but only to have them surface later on in the impeachment trial. All of the events surrounding the trial where funny smelling and turn out to be just that. I don't see how any of the other U.S. Senators could have voted any other way that guilty. Things may have turned out differently if President Clinton had confessed to his wrongdoings up front instead of lying under oath, then recanting his testimony to admit his wrong later on. This did not look good on his part, especially with the state and situation that he was in at the time.

Brian Bruderlin 
History 175
Your Email address:__________
Professor Wrobel

The Role of the USSR in the Opening of the Berlin Wall 

http://www.wall-berlin.org/gb/berlin.htm

In the late 1990's I had the opportunity to have a private meeting with the spiritual leader Sai Baba at his home in India. There I learned that Gorbachev had come to India to consult with Sai Baba in 1989 and that two weeks later he ordered the opening of the Berlin wall. Two months after my visit. President Clinton came India to meet with Sai Baba as have many world leaders before and since. Whatever influence Sai Baba had on Gorbachev's decision I do not know, but I believe this element is worth considering. In any event, the fall of Berlin Wall was certainly related to serious economic instabilities within the Soviet Union. The budgetary demands of the military escalation of the Cold War certainly contributed to Russia's fiscal crisis, as the Soviet Union over-extended itself in reaction to America's military build up as well as the assumed threat of the vaporous Star Wars anti-missile system. Perhaps Reagan's 1987 Berlin speech heard around the world where he stated, "Mr. Gorbachev. tear down this wall' contributed some effect to the Russian leader. The opening of the Berlin Wall was also expedited by a philosophical change in the classic Soviet ideology. Mikhail Gorbachev envisioned a more open society and began implementation of a new policy directed towards the restructure of the Soviet Union. He decided to move away from the forceful blockage of democratic expansion as Brezhnev and this predecessors had advocated for so long.

The German Chancellor Kohl was notified in May of 1989 during Gorbachev first visit to West Germany that the wall would be opened. By November, the borders that had divided Germany for so long were officially removed. Over the next several months, a quarter of a million East Germans moved into West Berlin. My brother telephoned me from Berlin at this time where he was working on a film project. He said that enormous crowds of East Germans were pouring into the city. When I told him how lucky he was to be there to witness such an historic event he replied that he couldn't wait to leave. The East Germans were wandering like lost sheep waiting for direction. They seemed devoid of self-determination, as if they were waiting for further orders. Their behavior was in stark contrast to that of the West Germans. Generations had operated under the, communist system and seemed baffled by simple things that the West Germans took for granted. One example was the hordes of East Germans endlessly crowded around store windows just to see color television. The opening of the Berlin wall began the nose dive of the German economy as West Germany struggled to reabsorb a relatively dysfunctional population. To this day. the recovery has not been completed. The physical destruction of the Berlin wall began in June of 1990.

Web Page Critique

The page is owned by DHM, the German Historical Museum. The author and creator of the site is Cyril Buffet who also authored the following websites., France and Germany. The History of Berlin, The Caen Memorial, and The Life History of General Eisenhower, Creator Cyril Buffet, who has a Phd in history, is also the exhibition curator. He may be contacted at the following email-memorial@unicaen.fr.  This web site was created in September 1999. No revision date was posted. The copyright notice refers to photographs owned by three individual parties: the German History Museum, Otan/NATO. and Cyril Buffet. This web page represents an informational site hosted under the wall-berlin.org domain. The page was created for the purpose of presenting information on German and European history including the Berlin Wall. The home page design is impressive using solid black to simulate night with a section of the Berlin wall ominously illuminated with bright floodlights behind uniformed guards. There are six main Berlin Wall related topics on the home page. Each destination topic contains text links to further sub-topics. The site is well organized. The layout retains the visitor's interest as it contains over one hundred photographs and nearly all of the many destinations contain one or more illustrations. drawings, and other visuals. Those pages accessed via the home page topic links deliver the viewer to attractive text pages with interesting bordered effects. The text links the reader to fairly mundane black and white photographs that would have presented better in color and through a better selection process. The history of the wall is thoroughly written and easily understood. The English translation from the original German contained no grammatical errors that I could observe. I viewed a great many link destinations and all were functional. Each viewed destination was tightly relevant to the corresponding link description as well as the overall theme of the web site. The site is a useful resource for scholars, researchers, college, university, and graduate students, and anyone else interested in the history of the Berlin Wall. The extensive content of the site did not delve into areas that could be constru0d to show bias or tilting of issues. Much of the content was gleaned from the German Historical Museum library and appeared to be accurate information.