Sam's Thoughts on the World Around Us

                                        My main uses of media technology involve watching videos on YouTube and checking my emails. I use YouTube as a distraction when I’ve worked for a long period of time, as a tool to keep my brain occupied when I’m mentally having a low-functioning day, or as amusement. Otherwise, more recently, I have been going on Pandora, which is a music website that lets people listen to music for free. It also tailors your music to what you choose as a “station” first song and which songs you thumb up to indicate you like it, thumb down to indicate you don’t like it, or don’t thumb and therefore are neutral about. I was not at all surprised that YouTube and Gmail take up so much of my time, although I’m upset that I go to YouTube so much. I’ve used it a ton for years rather than reading and I’ve ventured into the dark and weird corners ...

              In class, we've recently been discussing body techniques, and we always relate our discussions to the concept of habit. These two concepts vary throughout the world, and Mauss comments on such in his reading about body technique. In our society, there are specific techniques and habits created by musicians that create the cohesiveness of the group and the music they produce. In order to study these more in-depth, I went to a live music performance in Knox's very own CFA.           I attended and participated in a choir practice session. It was an all-female group, with fourteen people including myself. There were about four soprano ones, six soprano twos, and four altos, and the director of course, who is a tenor. We were in a room with tiered desks, which is where we sat at for the majority of the practice. We warmed up first with Tom, the director, playing scales and chords on the piano and singing along to ...

This week’s post regards two incredibly influential female anthropologists: Zora Neale Hurston and Katherine Dunham. Zora was an anthropologist as well as an author of multiple literary forms. Despite a difficult upbringing due to her mother dying when she was very young and the money being tight, Zora still fought for her education and her writing. Due to her hard work, she managed to get into college despite not finishing high school, and then moved to using her literary talent to try to help others understand African Americans’ struggles in the South. Katherine, on the other hand, used her dancing abilities to keep Caribbean dance styles alive, created a dance program (only one?), and counselled kids.                                                                        ...