A welcoming carnival

Most people have posted their responses to the Initial blog assignment, so let's take a spin through it all and see what we find! The intent here is to replicate the idea of "blog carnivals", where different people take turns generating posts that pull together some of the cool stuff that people are writing on their blogs. I'll start this week, and then you folks get to start up next week.

I would point out that almost no one has actually posted anything to their blog other than this one assigned posting (and not everyone's done that yet). (Big thanks to the few people that have made an effort and used the tools a bit!) I can assign more work if you want me too, but I'd rather leave you to find your own way. If people don't post or discuss, though, I'm happy to start handing out writing assignments instead...

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me in your initial posts was a whole raft of important questions the national anthem question raised that, honestly, I hadn't really thought of when I asked it. A lot of people were pretty stumped by the question, but those that did dig into it some raised some really interesting questions about what the role and function of an anthem is. Lots of people used the word "patriotic" in their discussion without trying to define the term or explain what it meant in the context of an anthem. Other people saw the anthem as a chance to make a point about what American was or could be; from Kat: "mine would have to be on how we, as a society, have become disillusioned by what we are, and not turning thoughts towards what we could be.". Others focused on the idea of the anthem as representing the people in some sense. Me thinks that there's much more to be said on this subject :-), maybe in class, maybe in the comments to this point, or maybe back on people's individual blogs.

I could also lay a lot about things like layout and formatting. For the moment, though, I'll simply suggest that you check out some of the other blogs and think about what you find readable and helpful...

Why did you sign up for a roots music FYS section?

Most people signed up for this section because of some general interest in
music ("I love music"). A few were quite specifically interested in roots music. Magic Flying Toad (what a great name!) had a cool story:

Hmm... at my high school senior prom they played a polka as a joke. Only two people danced to it- me and my date. Oh yeah, I'm that big of a nerd. 'Nuff said.

Several other people mentioned some sort of family connection like this from Adr:

When I was younger, my family danced to waltz and polka music at gatherings. That connection to music most likely fueled my interest in roots music, particularily bluegrass

Culture Jammer's grandpa "plays accordian and the saw"! That's rockin', and I'd love to see that going down.

Dano felt that the material was important because "I think music in America is the boiling water that helps mix our melting pot.". Setting aside for the moment the complex debates about "melting pot" versus "salad bowl", I thought this was a really cool analogy.

Perhaps my all-time favorite answer to this question was from Laura: "I've been told it was one of the least tacky FYS classes, and I really like music." I may just have to add that to the syllabus somewhere :-).

If you could take 5 pieces of music with you to a desert isle, what would they be?

Our desert island disco is definitely going to be a wonderfully odd place. Smatterings of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead, Led Zepplin, Nickleback and Nickle Creek (two very different bands whose names I constantly mix up), Beatles, and Dave Matthews, plus lots of acts that were only mentioned once (or maybe twice). I was slightly surprised by the amount of "classic rock". I didn't expect that much Simon and Garfunkel, for example, and there were also (a few) more mentions of Bob Dylan than I would have expected, which was cool.

Some people listed some roots music but not much, but that's not surprising or a bad thing in any way. Several people included some music related to faith in some fashion. Classical pieces showed up quite a few times.

Most people simply listed five songs without any discussion or context, while a few of you provided some really nice insight into your choices. I am cool Dooner got into some interesting questions of whether he was just picking for himself, or saving the only pieces of (human) music that would survive (his blog also plays music at you, which was slightly surprising). Some people found it easy, but many did not. To quote I've got nothing to do today but smile: "This was difficult. I need to stop thinking about it now." :-)

What's a piece of music you associate with a parent, grandparent, or someone you know well that's at least a generation older than you.

I really enjoyed the responses to the question about music that you associate with parents or grandparents, and there were some great little stories. Adr, for example, said "My grandma used to play 'On Top of Old Smoky' on the concertina.", and Megan shared "One song that reminds me of my grandpa is Fishing in the Dark. He loved that song and whenever it would come on he would get up and dance!". Both really great images. Many people had strong associations of music with various relatives; Adam J chose a song that "really hits home now especially because my dad is currently in Iraq serving with the National Guard".

Keli's response was a nice example of coming to appreciate something through both exposure and other people's interest:

I was never really a fan of country music until I spent a summer with my grandmother and had no other choice but to listen to it. My grandparents' interest in country music has helped develop my newly found respect and love for it.

I would encourage everyone to be this open to new experiences (and not just in music!). Fancy Feet has a similar, but longer story - go check it out.

Sorting out music for road trips in Liz's house must be fun :-). "My dad enjoys listening [to] Led Zeppelin. My mom listens to a lot of modern Christian music."

It was interesting that Frank Sinatra came up quite a few times. Sometimes this was a concrete way, but often it seemed that Frank was standing in as sort of generic "old music guy".

If we all decided to replace the national anthem with a new song, and everyone agreed that you got to choose, what would you recommend?

It's probably a good thing you're not responsible for a new national anthem, 'cause a lot of you were pretty baffled by this ("I seriously have no idea for a replacement for the national anthem."). In fairness, though, it was a tough question (as Ashley correctly put it "Oh boy, that's kind of a loaded question!").

There were, however, several thought provoking responses, including this from Steph:

I would choose, "Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy" just because I have to choose a song, and everybody calls us western and that we are "cowboys".

I'd never really thought about using a western/cowboy song for the national anthem, but whole frontier mythos is pretty key to a lot of our national identity. Could be pretty unpopular with some segments of the population (the Native Americans come to mind), which raises the point made nicely by Laura about the difficulty of finding any song that meaningfully represents the diversity of the U.S; she dealt with this by suggesting using "themes from several different songs about, for or written by the people of our nation". Nonsensical Ramblings independently suggested John Lennon's "Imagine", which has a wonderful inclusiveness to it.

I'm not sure where to do with FYS Blog Dog's suggestion of the theme from "Team America: World Police" :-).

The only songs with multiple votes were (I think) Woody Guthrie's "This land is your land" (which has been seriously suggested as an alternative over the years, and also received the only negative vote), Radiohead's "National anthem", and "American idiot" by Green Day. The last two are obviously quite pointed statements, but what may be less clear is that Guthrie's song was intended as a pointed statement (and an angry response to "God bless America"). It's been so edited and re-/over-/mis-used that most of that edge has been completely washed out for most of us.

Several people wanted to leave the current anthem alone, including I am cool Dooner:

You can't argue with a old English bar song put together with the first verse to a peom written about the war of 1812 and not established as the National Anthem untill the early 1900's.

What kinds of music related performance stuff (if any) do you do? I interpret this pretty broadly so it can be playing one or more instruments, singing, dance, DJing (dance or radio), etc.

While many people play instruments and/or sing, there are many who don't or haven't done so in quite a while (there are lots of shower singers), and that's all cool. Keli nicely sums up all you really need for this class: "I play my radio. And I know how to work Itunes."

I liked Kat's creative take on the question:

Also, I was a painter for 13 theatre shows at anoka. that could be perceived as non musical, but once your surrounded by music for one month and at least two of those weeks are 18 hour days of painting, then everyone is singing.

We often downplay the value of informal community singing like this, but it's much closer to the kinds of experiences that people like the Carter Family grew up with than playing in a school orchestra or singing along to the radio on a road trip. As Bucky said quite nicely "I play guitar, drums, and sing. I create music. You dont need an instrument."

Another creative take was from Brady who writes "(CD reviews and features) on Minnesota music for both a website and a magazine". Cool.

Given the readings and what (little) you know about Governor Blanco, if you had a chance to ask her one question, what would it be?

There were some pretty predictable questions for Governor Blanco (lots of the "What did you learn from all this?" variety), but there were some nicely thought provoking ones in there as well. A pretty vital one (from Magic Flying Toad again) was

Why is it important to rebuild New Orleans, especially if it is only to be rebuilt in a place that is also open to future disasters? I believe that there must be good reasons, but I don't think I've really heard a definitive answer for this one.

Another that got me thinking was from The Little Rabbit:

Knowing what you know now, if you could go back in time to a month before Katrina, what would you do differently?

I thought the idea of stepping back a month and thinking about what would be different at that time was interesting.

I quite liked Nieve Bloggin's preface: "I would confess to being unfamiliar with her background...". Being honest about what you don't know is often crucial to learning new things.

Jacknife's Jottings had a question that has a lot of important issues tucked inside it: "When will New Orleans be 'New Orleans' again?". In particular, this raises what I consider the really important issue of what makes New Orleans special, and whether that being preserved in the rebuilding process.

There were lots of questions regarding the Governor's role as the first female governor of Louisiana; one I particularly liked was from Brady: "Being the first female governor of Louisiana, do you feel your approach to the office is (or should be) radically different from your predecessors?".

Some lost blogs

There are a few blogs where I don't actually know how to connect the blog to a person on my class list. If any of these blogs is yours, please get in touch to claim your blog!

• Random nonsense - There's a first name on the blog, but there are at least two people that name could attach to.
• Hockey44
  

There are probably others that I overlooked while I was trying to get through them all.

Oh, and people really like the polka dots theme...