Brian’s Prospective

I would like in this post to write about the subject matter of constructing the hero or villan figure in history and in popular culture.  Nicholas’ presentation of General George Armstrong Custer’s cult of personality as a hero was terrific.  He addressed the need of celebrity figures in popular culture as a reflection of cultural values during a period of time.  Custer during the Civil War and Frontier Wars was a large celebrity figure due to his own construction and with help from national newspapers and magazines.  Al Capone during the 1920’s was indeed a celebrity in his time but not to the way Al wanted so.  Capone himself at first refused to be photograph and there are accounts where he would assault the press for trying to capture images of him, but his approach to the press completely changed later on as he would smile for photographers and captured the limelight when he could.  Capone after December of 1927 did not have the luxury of political backing and he strove to win the hearts and minds of poor Chicagoians.  He painted himself as a leader of a workingman’s movement against the “bankrupt establishment” by opening a soup kitchen two months removed from the October 1929 stock market crash.  The media demonized him for his criminal acts and Capone despised them for it.  The Chicago Crime Commission labeled Al Capone as “Public Enemy #1″ and the media helped to propagate that point.

As I have addressed in my previous post, meeting with David from the UMW Speaking Center was a pleasant experience and helped to relieve a little of my outrageous amount of speech anxiety I have as I currently have beads of sweat dripping from my face just thinking about it.  As I think of it now, I feel confident in performing my speech tomorrow because I know that my fellow classmates are feeling in a similar way before their presentations and encouragement from them.  I would like to praise the three presentations from Wednesday’s meeting.  All of them were very fluid in their presentation, clear, and hints of passion in all three of them.

The tips that David gave to me in speech construction was to organize your speech in to diffferent subtopics and go into each of them with enough detail required instead of reading a paper or trying to remember everything.  He insisted that my speech would be great if I know the data by heart, and give an impromptu speech with using notecards as a guide because what is spoken does not have to be identical to whats on the paper or on your notes for that matter.  He also recommended a powerpoint technique known as “reveal and conceal.”  You would start off the powerpoint by using a blank slide and when you are ready to use the aid, flip to the next slide which would have your visual aid (picture, map, or little bit of text).  After you have mentioned the significant data relating to your visual aid, go to the next slide which would be blank and do this throughout your speech.  I am going to implement this method in my speech tomorrow, hopefully I will not choke during the speech.

I am writing about the speech I am giving tomorrow for History 299.  I feel confident in the fact that I can give a good speech courtesy from your comments about my Literary Review Presentation.  The UMW Speaking Center has also been of a great assistance as well.  David who was my speaking consultant, gave me plenty of helpful tips on speech construction and what could be effective visual aids.  My experience in H299 has been a rough but a pleasant experience and personally should count for four credits instead of three due to the level of research required in a similar fashion as most labs.  I am still anxious in giving my speech but I am confident that I will deliever a good one.

I am now currently putting the paper together and I feel confident on its construction.  I personally feel that doing a literature review was most helpful towards constructing the rough draft because I would rather go off my own critical analysis of secondary sources versus a pile of notes and an outline.  I would like to ask anyone if you have a similar outlook on paper construction or a different one?  Please comment.

As you can see with my title, I am very optimistic on my Capone project and I have found five sources very useful.  I collected seven new sources for my quest towards finding the generous and compassionate nature of Al Capone and I have found one being very useful towards getting to know Al Capone without the yellow journalism and culture of fear attached to his name.  The source that I am talking about is Capone by Laurence Bergreen published by Simon & Schuster.  Many of his chapters contain narratives and quotes from contemporaries of Capone that know him better than any of us or most journalists do.  When I read the selections that relate to Capone’s generosity, it brings to mind of a rich and compassionate uncle figure that likes to see happiness in people and reminds me that everyone is human.  He told children not to get in his business and said jokingly that he would kill them himself if they did.  I am going to enjoy portraying Alphonse Capone the philanthropist and the generous uncle figure that helped out many impoverished people in Chicago especially for recent immigrants than the traditional “Scarface” legend we are all aware of.  Perhaps we are all researching that what makes all of us human.

We will be learning more about the tragic face of humankind through acts of war, aggression, and dissimulation but we will also be hearing stories of philanthropy and hope.  Common humanity is what brings me to studying history and analyzing why events happen and what must be going through the minds of people in these times.  History is a soap opera at times and researching history brings us back stage passes for the show and in a way, lets us become producers in a sense of bringing a story that we feel is important enough for the rest of us to pay attention to and gain a lesson in not only in history, but also in life.

The literary review for any course is very challenging in many ways and this one is not an exception.  I currently have five secondary resources that are books for my project and the challenge of finding sources grows daunting.  I am going to look for sources that are indirectly involved with my topic to help tie in the whole picture of the Capone syndicate.  This will prove to be very useful toward my thesis that Al Capone and his syndicate may have participated in many immoral activities, however, his syndicate provided much good to the community and the preservation of peace.  I currently have biographies, and narratives about the man himself.  I suppose that I can search for books that relate to the economic hardships of the urban impoverished and how the mafia and the syndicate helped them.  I have heard on the History Channel that Al Capone’s group ran soup kitchens in Chicago.  If anyone have any suggestions, please do not be afraid to engage with me in this investigation.  I believe that doing this literary review will help me bring my project to a more clear focus with the broader search of sources and moderating a discussion between the sources which is the task of the literary review. 

-BM

I have found some sources over this weekend which I can describe with one word, unbelieveable.  As I am reading some of these sources, it reminds me of modern organized crime involving the distribution of marijuana and cocaine.  One source that I have reached was titled “Is it right to break unjust laws?” by Benjamin F. Sager in the Feb. 27 issue of Forum.  He argued that the citizen is above the law and many great things in history, especially in western civilization, have resulted from going against the law.  Such instances that were referenced was Martin Luther’s nailing of the 95 Theses on the Wittenburg Church, the foundation of America from the tyrannical British Empire.  He concluded that to be American.

“We have a right to exclude a Chinese piety that commands our children to worship the ancestral tablets of a literal Genesis.  We have a right to refuse the Mohammedan dogma on intoxicating liquor.  We have a right to keep free from entangling alliances with Sabbatarian orthodoxy and smokeless theocracy.” 

This brings to me an insight toward the thought of opposing this kind of law and would believe that the suppliment of alcohol, legal or not, would be justified.  Sager said that unjust laws and moral based laws were made to protect society from evil-doers but they hurt the innocent people who come home from work and have a beer or a glass of wine.  I would not believe that he would condone the murderous acts of Al Capone such as the St. Valentine’s day Massacre and the ousting of police officers, but I believe that he would say that people like Capone are a natural reaction to bad laws and bad laws only give profits to those like Capone who would or would not use evil means of organizing the black market of illegal alcohol.

This is a question that I ask myself from time to time as I progress through my life here at the University of Mary Washington.  For as long as I can remember, I was always interested in learning about different cultures and people of the world.  I used to read an atlas when I was 5 because it had pictures in it and I was learning to read and it was fun trying to pronounce some of the countries to which some are still difficult to pronounce.  Throughout my life as a schoolboy, I excelled in three subjects; Geography, Mathematics, and History.  Mathematics soon became difficult as I went from statistics to math analysis and I realized that math is not a passion.  Geography, politics, and history are deep interests of mine or perhaps all play into the same passion. 

I realized that I want to become a history major when I took an advanced placement world history class in high school.  My teacher’s name is Mr. Meyer and he taught a different version of history from the “world history course” I took in 9th grade.  His class was really world history while world history in 9th grade focused only on Western Europe and the United States.  Mr. Meyer had a particular interest in China and half of the class was spent learning about Chinese history, we even learned the Chinese dynasties in a short catchy tune.  However, my favorite part of the class was when we were assigned document based questions (DBQ’s).  Each DBQ had us to read eight to ten primary source documents or excerpts from primary source documents and answer the question based from those documents.  This was very exciting because I get to read and interpret the meaning of these documents, and for me, bring the figures of study to life versus in a traditional high school history class where most teachers would simply read a textbook’s interpretation.  I learned in AP history the beauty of debate and intelligent conversation through frequent discussions that our class engaged into. 

After Mr. Meyer’s AP history class, I was destined to major in History and work in a career as an historian or in investigative journalism.  I love searching for the truth and learning many things along the way.  Perhaps it is my curiosity that I love history.  When I am asked by professors or fellow students what is my favorite history; I seldom have an answer because it is my curiosity that keeps me from being limited to wanting to study one region or time period.  Ok, I do have preferences on what I enjoy learning.  I enjoy learning about the Middle East especially the history of Iran and I also enjoy learning about the history and culture of Korea.  History in general is fascinating and I hope someday I can use my love-affair of history as an essential tool toward earning a living.  This is why I am a history major.

I would like to greet all readers to my UMW blog.  This is the first blog I have ever done so I am going to experiment a little with this system by introducing myself.  I am not doing this entry for the mandatory entry that is due by the end of the week.  First of all, my name is Brian Miller and I am a twenty-one year old Junior at the University of Mary Washington.  I am currently a history major and looking to possibly major in geography.  My hobbies are hanging out with friends, reading the newspaper, learning new things, and collecting militaria.  I am looking to graduate in 2010.  My favorite regions of study when it comes to studying history are the Middle East and Korea (Choson), especially relating to Korean identity and reunification.  I am looking forward to working with all of you in our History 299 class.  -B Miller

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