Researching Your Family History: First Steps

After you decide to do your family history the first step is to decide which side of your family you want to start with and what you want to find out . When you fill out a chart you usually start with your self and go backwards with the information you have. You can either create your own chart or use a family tree program or a web site. 2  Web Sites that offer free charts: http://www.ancestry.com/trees/charts/researchcal.aspx http://www.familysearch.org (At Family Search, look on the left hand side and you will see “Pedigree Charts,” click on the link.) Once you put down the information you already know it’s time to start with relatives and continue to fill in the chart with information they have. You may also find these books and e-resources at Snell useful, as well as Genealogy Basics Online.

Tokyo Story

 Tokyo Story (1953) is a film from Japan by one of the country’s master filmmakers, Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963), who, in the last fifteen years of his career, made some of the most simplistic and quiet films you will encounter in a medium so accustomed to movement and action. It is the story of two aging parents who make a trip to visit their children, who live in and around Tokyo, and a daughter-in-law, who was married to a fourth son, now deceased. The children each have various agendas in their lives and grow tired of their parent’s presence; they send their parents to a spa outside Tokyo, in a clear attempt to simply get them off their hands. Ironically, it appears to be the daughter-in-law who is the most devoted to her in-laws. But then the mother falls ill, and the entire family is forced to draw themselves back together. Ozu’s films firmly introduced domestic situations in to cinema; though of course there had been domestic dramas in cinema before, no filmmaker had realized that such a genre worked best when it was static, straightforward and as unsentimental as possible. Ozus’ films are famous for their camera angles placed low to the floor, similar to the way the Japanese regularly sit on the floor rather than chairs. In his films, shots are repeated again and again, though often without any change or further decoration;  they serve a more metaphysical purpose. His actors perform their parts with intense understatement. These are not common techniques in film, and Ozu’s films have never been as popular as the films of his contemporary, Akira Kurosawa precisely because of their stylistic opposition; Kurosawa’s actors were bombastic, Ozu’s were not; Kurosawa’s camera was constantly moving, Ozu’s was not; Kurosawa worked in a variety of genres that called for more sensationalism and brio; Ozu was an artist of domesticity. Despite this, Ozu has had something of an influence, even on some contemporary directors. Jim Jarmusch’s deadpan compositions recall Ozu’s, and a variety of contmporary Asian filmmakers, such as Hsaio-Hsien Hou are deeply indebted to his films. Even the German filmmakers Wim Wenders has acknowledged Ozu’s profound influence and once made a documentary called Tokyo-Ga, which was an homage to his films. Ozu is a more rigorous director than any of these directors, but watching his best films– also including Late Spring and A Story of the Floating Weeds— are reflective, even relaxing experiences that movies should give us more often.

Campus Sustainability Week

Next week, October 19th through 23rd will be NU’s first ever Sustainability Week. There will be all sorts of informative and entertaining programs throughout the week. You can see the full event list here. Highlights include a screening of the film Blue Gold: World Water Wars, a performance by the musical group Recycled Percussion (who recently took third place on America’s Got Talent), a green business networking event, and a panel presentation about how you can reduce toxic exposures in your daily life. It looks like this is going to be a very interesting, exciting week!

The Best Poem Christianity produced?

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a poem you all may know either as a piece of trivia– one of the oldest poems in english!– or from childhood retellings of the stories of King Arthur. It is one of the more famous Arthurian poems; an epic that is simultaneously a christmas story on how to be a good christian and an adventure story that has doubtlessly influenced all grand entertainment of the action-adventure ilk.

In terms of artistic classification, it is a romantic poem. A romantic poem is not a ‘romance’ in the modern sense of the word; it is a poem that has spectacular, unbelievable content; it waxes over the exceptionality of the hero or heroes of the story and is spinkled with flights of fantasy. Sir Gawain contains trolls, a stunningly brave and strong knight (Sir Gawain), and a mysterious knight from afar who is colored entirely green (The Green Knight). The Green Knight loses his head to Sir Gawain when he trots in to Camelot on his horse one Christmas and challenges any knight to take one strike at him. Sir Gawain complies, but no sooner has the knight lost his head than he picks it back up, puts it back in it’s place, and challenges Gawain to come to his chapel a year later so he may have his chance to strike Gawain down. The remainder of the story follows Gawain’s adventures throughout the land of old England, until he comes to a Castle shortly before the Green Knight’s chapel, where he is taken in by the prince and his men who reside there for some time, and finds himself being tempted by a beautiful woman who is staying on the castle grounds.

The Christian aspect of the story comes in to play here: Gawain must resist the charm of this lady, while still honoring her. Giving in to lust would be a great sin, especially for a Knight, and especially at Christmastime. Gawain is careful not to let himself be wooed and this will ultimately influence the outcome of the story. For the real dilemma that runs as an undercurrent in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is whether or not Sir Gawain can remain a moral, dignified person. In other words, a good Christian. The setting of the poem suggests a time when everybody was striving to be a good and moral Christian; people constantly bless one another and evoke the name of Jesus. The equivelants we have of Romantic stories today can be found in Hollywood. All superhero movies are romatic, as are the James Bond movies. But none of these stories evokes the same kind of entertainment Sir Gawain and the Green Knight evokes; superheroes and James Bond are more concerned with cynicism and occasional self parody, as if everybody involved in the story, both the characters and the creators, know that the sentiments being expressed are compeltely unfeasible. In these films, individualism trumps everything else. The conflicting emotions Batman feels, and the extravagent evil of the Joker are more important than how they relate to one another, or how people respect one another. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight stresses individualism, yet not as a trump to the rest of society; Sir Gawain is a respectful person who is helped along the way by numerous decent people. At the same time, delving in to Gawain’s personality is not important; his actions are. This is because Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a classically romantic and very Christian poem. It managed to convince me that there was such a thing as Noble Entertainment, so to speak, and makes all the romantic stories Hollywood pours out seem positively godless.

The Lorax

Jacket.aspxRecently, my Environment and Society class watched The Lorax. I know what you’re thinking, why is a college class watching Dr. Seuss videos? For those who don’t remember the story from childhood the Lorax is a small fuzzy creature who lives in the truffula tree forest and speaks “for the trees.” He’s an environmentalist who stands up to the Onceler, an industrial tycoon who’s chopping down all the truffula trees to make thneeds, “which everyone needs.” The story goes on to show the results of unchecked, greed-driven production. The skies turn black. The rivers fill with waste. The animals run out of food and are forced to leave their home. Finally, the very last truffula tree is cut down. Then there’s nothing left but polluted, lifeless wasteland. It’s a very powerful story. So much so, in fact, that it’s been banned from schools in some logging communities. Dr. Seuss argued that the story wasn’t anti-logging, just anti-greed. Can you think of other “children’s” stories with similarly powerful messages?