Importance of Tea

      Towards the end of Macfarlane's article "From Empire of Tea" the author gives a good summary of the impact of tea on the world:
"Tea transformed Britain as it had done China and Japan. 'In no instance has a greater revolution taken place in the habits of a people than that which tea has effected within the last hundred years among the English,' wrote John Davis, the historian of China, in the middle of the nineteenth century. Alongside that transformation there emerged the most powerful capitalist and imperial nation in world history.  The anthropologist Sidney Mints described how the 'first sweetened cup of hot tea to be drunk by an English worker was a significant historical event, because it prefigured the transformation of an entire society, a total remaking of its economic and social basis.' Tea changed everything" (96-97).

     Tea began to show one's wealth and began to be another defining feature of an upperclass European.  Tea changed the day to day patterns of a European.  The fact that the tea came from China added the international trading factor.  China, who had never had a hugh role in the trading industry, now became a very big deal to Europeans especially.  Had the tea epidemic not happened, European history and culture would be completely different and therefore Europeans would not have affected America in the same way.
As the author said, "Tea changed everything."

Tea Party Thoughts

This article from the New York Times that was printed yesterday can maybe help for brainstorming ideas for friday:

http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/105829608.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU

The part that strikes me as the most ridiculous is this:

"A $500 reward in Minnesota

In Minnesota, organizers from the Tea Party and related groups announced this week that they were offering a $500 reward for anyone who turned in someone who was successfully prosecuted for voter fraud. The group -- the Minnesota Majority and North Star Tea Party Patriot -- has launched a $50,000 radio and billboard campaign and is organizing volunteer "surveillance squads" to photograph and videotape what it suspects are irregularities, and in some cases to follow buses that take voters to the polls."

Why people need to challenge voter registration and suspect people who probably aren't guilty does not make sense to me.  It is surprising that the police authority are letting this happen -- a reward for a "criminal" when they have no real authority over public crime.  

Franklin's Autobiography

        It is notable that in his autobiography, Franklin spends most of the book talking about politics and other topics that pertain to society -- topics that are not intimately personal.  Except for one small, short paragraph that does not go into detail and is never brought up again.  Franklin writes,
"In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the smallpox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation.  This i mention for the sake of parents who omit that operation, on the supposition that they should never forgive themselves if a child died under it; my example showing that the regret may be the same either way, and that, therefore, the safer should be chosen" (Franklin 79).
Perhaps Franklin does not spend much time on this because of his hurt from the incident, or perhaps it just does not affect him that much anymore because he has moved on with his life.

        On a different note, Franklin's Autobiography as a whole really stands out as an example of the idealism of that time period.  Men were trying to become "perfect" -- make inventions, become politically famous, become strongly intellectual.  Franklin let's his audience know that he is proud of the work he accomplished throughout his life.  His text is an example of a man who achieved the "American Dream" -- a goal of many Americans in both the past and present.

Rationalization, Values, and Pride

In reading Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, these three quotes really stood out to me:
"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has in mind to do" (Franklin 27).
    Part of the idea of "American freedom" is that people can do anything they want (within the law) and even if it is unreasonable to some people, they can rationalize it as much as they want to make it seem reasonable.  This has allowed a lot of inventions and discoveries to be made -- people made fun of the Wilbur brothers for trying to fly -- they said it would be impossible.  Yet they kept on trying and here we are today with airplanes (an idea that started with the Wilbur brothers).  America gives citizens the opportunity to rationalize any idea or action into one that makes sense or is useful.

"I grew convinc'd that truth, sincerity, and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance to the felicity of life;...but I entertain'd an opinion that, though certain actions might not be bad because they were forbidden by it, or good because it commanded them, yet probably those actions might be forbidden because they were bad for us, or commanded because they were beneficial to us, in their own natures, all the circumstances of things considered" (Franklin 43-44).
    This pertains to the American democracy--things that are forbidden to us are our laws. Things that are beneficial to us, such as voting and working for pay, are allowed to us.  Some people may think that it is wrong to limit everyone by having laws.  I think Franklin's words "...truth, sincerity, and integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance..." really hold true to how our society needs to be run.  If our government can stick to the three values of truth, sincerity, and integrity, our nation can keep developing into a better one.

"In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.  Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility" (Franklin 72).
     Part of the American Dream is working hard and wanting to prove oneself to others.  People want to prove that they are worth your time and money.  Once one attains this the they are entitled to pride.  Pride is what our country runs on -- pride of being American, the pride of big business owners for being successful, etc.  Pride is also what helps keep the competitive market flowing -- if businesses did not care about being the best and having that pride, there would be no competitive market.  But they do care, so we have this system of perfect competition and monopolistic competition that works to the advantages of our businesses.

Interpretations of the American Dream

In Cullen's The American Dream, he writes,
        "And like other American Dreams, the power of this one lay in a sense of collective ownership: anyone can get ahead.  An assertion of universal enfranchisement is routinely reaffirmed by this dream's boosters (the obsessive quality of their reaffirmations never quite leading them to raise troubling questions about the ongoing need for regular reassurance).  Occasionally it has been roundly condemned as an opiate of the people, usually by critics of American society who are dismissed as disgruntled, foreign, or both.  Only rarely have the contours of this dream been seriously explored and tested in a sympathetic, but probing, way.  But that could not happen until those contours had clearly emerged.  It took a couple hundred years for the realities of American life to shape the Dream of Upward Mobility" (Cullen 60).
           "Anyone can get ahead." That is what the job market and basically all of America is founded upon.  People try to get ahead of others by any means possible.  What I interpret to be the basic idea of Cullen's writings of the American Dream is that America gives people the possibility to get ahead -- the possibility to succeed and make a life for oneself if they so choose to.  People who achieve this dream feel as though they are on top of the world -- to me, the American Dream is equivalent to the Pursuit of Happiness, and if someone fulfills their pursuit of happiness, they have fulfilled their American Dream.

Functionality vs. Monetary Value

As I looked around my room to take an inventory of all the stuff, I realized that a typical college kid's everyday stuff is evaluated on function.  Food, clothes, books...the necessities of a college student.  In contrast, everyday stuff of the Colonial English people in America was evaluated for monetary value.  In her article, "Everyday American", Sarah Green writes,

           "When a person died in the 18th century, it was necessary for the government to figure out what they owned so that the items could be passed on to the appropriate heirs and all the people who were owed money, the creditors.

This was a society that was run on credit—bookkeeping credit and debts. So it was very likely at any given time that any one person had loaned money or goods to someone and was owed money or goods. The creditors would have to be paid off, and only then could the heirs receive what was owed to them.

The county court would appoint some officials who would go to the person’s home and make a list of what was in each room and assign a valuation to it and submit it to the court.

I think there was a lot of subjectivity because you were judging the condition of things, the quality of goods. You were judging their market value."

          The differences in needs and in cultures allows for this difference in "everyday stuff".  When we finish college, we're not going to be so focused on how much our stuff is worth, as we are going to be focused on how much our stuff helped us to attain the degree and the education that we did.  In colonial America, those citizens would be focused on how much money one would be able to get for a certain possession, and what they could buy with that money.  This is a large contrast that made me think about why I have what I have in my room -- I decided that it was mostly function based.

What Did Pocahontas Have to Regret?

In Carl Sandburg's poem, "Cool Tombs", he compares Pocahontas' life to those of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses Grant.  He writes, 


     "When Abraham Lincoln was shoveled into the tombs he forgot

…the copperheads and the assassin . . . in the dust, in the… cool tombs.

And Ulysses Grant lost all thought of con men and Wall Street,… cash and collateral turned ashes . . . in the dust, in the… cool tombs.

Pocahontas’ body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in… November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she… remember? . . . in the dust, in the cool tombs?"

 I see this as Sandburg talking about what regrets and worries that Lincoln and Grant had when they died, and how they got to leave these things behind.  The issue with Pocahontas though, is that we do not know what she worried about, or what she regretted from her life when she died.   The part "...did she wonder? does she remember?"  makes the reader wonder what Pocahontas regretted in her life.  Did she want to go back to life as a Native American once she was settled in the European way of life?  Is that really what she wanted?  I think that this is a big mystery that many people seem to overlook when they think of Pocahontas. Since she gave no real written account of her life, historians and other people are not able to figure out if Pocahontas was happy.  We do not know what she regretted in her life, if anything.