The musical-play “Quarter Rican” divulges into what it means to have a cultural identity and what are the limitations of claiming a cultural identity. Daniel, the child of an interracial marriage, with a Puerto Rican father and Jewish mother, is married to a white woman, and ponders about that with another parent, and if his child will be able to claim his Puerto Rican identity, despite being only a quarter. With his alter ego, MC Platano and the beatboxer, Daniel has moments of self reflection and introspection, that force him to raise a critical eye to the world around him and the preconceived notions of race and culture, and how those ideas have their own influences on him, and how they develop into innate biases. The play is able to incorporate humor, music and special effects to meld into a beautiful note to reconciling with cultural identity.

Claiming Latinidad, means different things for different people, and those who may not fit what the preconceived idea of what “looking” Latinx is, may find themselves defending their cultural identity. The play attempts to reinterpret and redefine aligning with culture, and being able to do so without immediately jumping to the experience of shared trauma, but rather having it come from a sense of pride, being proud of where you come and recognizing beauty in community, not collective pain. I thought it was an interesting point out that Daniel jumps to anecdotes of microaggressions to solidify his confidence in being Puerto Rican, and that the musical calls out that before we have pride, we may sometimes tokenize ourselves to defend our identities. The musical ends on the question, that when met with pushback, claiming an identity, will be able to defend it with pride and joy? Will we able to recognize when we should only be a listening ear to hard conversations?

Silent Springs opening is that of a fairy tale. A utopian world filled with all sorts of in depth descriptions elaborating on its beauty, from its wild wife creatures to its beautiful plant life. It’s a pristine image of a perfect world, that Carson very purposely leaves unidentified as to fully immerse the readers. However this perfect world is short lived as we see a darkness cloud over, killing everything beautiful. Animals disappearing, the voices of birds being sucked away along with the color of this world by an almost cartoonish evil. This evil later reveled to be humans. See Carson goes to such “extremes” to show us to a certain extent what the world was and what it can possibly turn into, and how maybe those disturbing apocalyptic images aren’t as farfetched as you think. Carson honed in on pesticides being one of the main factors doing so much damage. She believes that we have entered into a new era in the history of the world, one in which man now has the power to change the environment on a scale never seen before. Arguing life has always been connected in even the slightest forms, and pesticides possibly having effects we haven’t fully realized yet, which pose a threat through ripple effects that could cause serious danger to the planet and by extension humans. Carson talks about chemicals being used on animals during World War 2 for experiments, further showing that man has been creating these substances of which at their very core are deadly chemicals that don’t just kill insects but to some degree kill everything they interact with. She also Argues that nature is a complex system that has developed and sustained throughout millions of years that shouldn’t be trifled with by man as we can’t create or enhance a better system than nature does itself.

Question 1, What role does selfishness play in the fight against climate change and other environmental issues?

A major factor in this fight is time.  Humans are very much creatures that dwell on the present. You see all these get Rich quick schemes and how to lose this much weight or get this big as fast as possible. Very few understand the signifinece of the long game, so imagine these same people caring about effects from climate change and other issues they won’t fully feel in their own lifetime. These same effects probably won’t even affect their kids or grandkids but best believe they will be felt eventually. You could say it’s selfish to put away these problems for another day or in this case generations but very few will find the selflessness inside themselves to look out for people and a world they will never experience.

Question 2, Considering all that humanity has done does the good outweigh the evil?

Looking at this question from the perseppctive of “Silent Spring” I see that humanity has the tendency to step on its toes somewhat. Whatever good we create very often has been manipulated either on purpose or by accident to bad. These cases range from all different topics in history but focusing specifically on silent springs Carson Brought up the great point that natures complex system was one that had been refined through years of evolution, and once again mankind has tried to tamper with this system with ground breaking science.

Question 3, What are some good tactics that can be used to raise awareness to such issues?

In class Amy brought up the Climate Clock which I had never heard of. I looked it up to see images of how it looks on buildings and found it a little intimidating and eerie. It gave me the feeling of impending doom that you would get when you see similar situations in films. So it’s safe to say they were successful in raising awareness to climate change and striking a cord with me. This leads me to wonder if there are any other tactics that can be as successful or maybe even more successful.

Carty Caruso

ENG 3025

05/01/2023

Blog Post Sam Pollard

From seeing this talk, or interview, I was left with one main theme.  That theme was courage.  Sam clearly did not know what would come of any of the choices he made, and how that would lead to his success in film.  What struck me about the choices and the way he fell into the industry was that he just gave it a try.  He didn’t shy away from thinking that it wasn’t for him, or that the industry would only accept him once he was “good enough.”  The way that he was able to become an editor was by showing up every day and getting better.  It is inspiring to me, although times are different now.  The way that he could just start editing, get told that he isn’t very good, and then become a full time editor in the span what he described as months.  That was both very impressive, and feels like it would be impossible today.  He also didn’t know everything that he didn’t know, which I believe was an advantage.  Since he wasn’t comparing himself to someone else, he just focused on the work and getting better.  Sam Pollard’s story is a great example of courage.

An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo

One of the pictures I took from the Museum of the City of New York is of a Young Lords party poster. I found the Young Lords very interesting as they were originally a Puerto Rican gang from Chicago before forming into a national political and civil rights movement group. There were three New York based branches which lead to a lot of Puerto Ricans using these branches to get involved in the movement. The goal being to educate and bring awareness of the history and struggle of Puerto Ricans.Being Puerto Rican myself and living in New York all my life it was surprising to me that I had never heard of them before. Although it was a Puerto Rican Based group there were still members of all sorts of races, as the main goal was to bring attention to the shared terrible living conditions and experiences of all groups of people. There were inspired by the Black Panther party and were also controversial as our tour guide explained to us giving an example of when the Young Lords staged an occupation of Lincoln Hospital in The Bronx as a protest for better health care and better service by the hospitals staff.

Whenever I go to museums I usually tend to wander around by myself and have never really gone on a tour with a guide. However, I really enjoyed this tour and found it very informative. One part that stuck out to me was when the guide explained the story behind a pair of shackles they had on display. The shackles had been placed on an African American woman and when she was finally liberated from them, she kept them and gave them to an activist to hold up at rallies and use them as a symbol of strength and resistance. I found that very surprising but was also amazed at how the meaning of an object that caused so much pain could be flipped and used as a symbol of strength and empowerment. I also learned a lot about the tragic triangle shirtwaist factory incident. The tour guide explained that mostly women worked in this factory and the working conditions were extremely tough. Women would work for multiple hours straight without breaks and in order to ensure that they didn’t take any breaks, the factory owners would lock the doors so that they couldn’t escape unless they had the key. One day one of the managers was careless with the cigarette he was smoking and ended up starting a fire in the factory. Because the doors were locked and the women couldn’t find anyone with the key, many of them jumped to their deaths and a lot of them died in the fire. As the guide was telling us about this, I was reminded of the harsh working conditions depicted in the Jungle and how a lot of these tragedies could have been avoided had the factory owner been less greedy and more humane. It’s good to see that improvements have been made in workplaces however, although we still have a long way to go to completely eliminate labor injustice.