9/11: Remembering the Past, Looking Towards the Future--a decade later

The events that took place 10 years ago on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, ignited unity among Americans as the country turned its eyes and its hearts toward the Twin Towers, The Pentagon, and the crash site of Flight 93.

Upon reflection, every American will remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news that their country was under attack. That overwhelming concern for family members and fellow countrymen that each American felt as the citizens of this nation became one united front against terrorism should never be forgotten.

James Kramer, the Pueblo, Colo., coroner and responder to the clean-up efforts in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, said in a Pueblo Chieftain interview, “Everyone gave something on 9/11, but there were about 3,000 that gave all.”

Every passing year brings a day that causes Americans to gather in remembrance for the lives lost that day. On this 10th anniversary of the attacks, we together reach a milestone on our promise to never forget.

Following each year’s remembrance events that take place in communities across the nation, American citizens are looking to the future as the final plans are in place to allow for the opening of the 9/11 memorial and museum to occur exactly 10 years after the attacks. The opening of both the 9/11 memorial and the museum that are built on Ground Zero in New York City are scheduled to open on the morning of Sept. 11, 2011, as a grand commemoration of the events.

As described on the 9/11 memorial website, www.national911memorial.org, the eight-acre memorial plaza covers the entire Ground Zero area and includes a memorial, a museum, and nearly 400 swamp white oak trees to create one of the greenest, most sustainable plazas ever built.

The trees provide separation from the hectic city atmosphere to create a reflective and serene environment. The website emphasizes the most important design aspect of the swamp white oaks being their color, which ranges from pink to amber to golden brown. “The trees will never be identical, neither to each other nor from year to year, a clear reminder that they are living individuals.”

Two massive pools featuring the largest manmade waterfalls in the country are placed in the footsteps of the former World Trade Center to serve as the memorial structure. The memorial will bear the inscriptions of 3,000 names to honor and remember those who lost their lives on that day 10 years ago in NYC, in Pennsylvania, in the Pentagon, and the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Victims’ names will be inscribed around the heart of the pools allowing visitors to look through the inscription into the water by day. By night, the light will shine through each letter of the inscriptions to illuminate the cascading waterfalls of the memorial reflecting the structure of the buildings.

The memorial museum will encapsulate memorabilia collections, tributes, historic exhibits and witness testimony to honor victims and to display the consequences of terrorism on individual lives, communities and nations. Anyone can become a part of history by donating financial support to the preservation of the memorial or by submitting personal accounts and memorabilia. The museum accepts materials such as photographs, recordings, personal affects and testimonies for the permanent collections.

The museum symbolizes human virtue prevailing over human depravity. As a looking glass into the past, this museum will serve as a reminder to future generations for years to come. The distinctive learning environment produced by this museum solidifies the promise made by the American people in the aftermath of 9/11 to commemorate the events.

As we arrive at a decade of being in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, our country is reflecting on an action of human evil, and the human compassion that responded. The rise in unity and compassion that swarmed through every American community in the immediate aftermath of the attacks is still felt as citizens take action to commemorate history. The public in every community stretching across the nation has personal connections to 9/11. Involvement in 9/11 commemorative community events and supporting the memorial plaza that aims to educate and forever reflect on the 9/11 terrorist attacks ensures that we will never forget.

Concentration Camps--noone can be prepared

On July 9, 2010 we all stood before the gates of Dachau Concentration Camp. This was the very first camp that served as a model for all others. None of us had been in a concentration camp before this moment, so as we stood at the gates Dr. Souder, Professor VanWinkle, and Thomas—our tour guide—did their best to prepare us. We all expected to feel intense emotions ranging from shock and amazement to overwhelming confusion. We quickly learned that no one could prepare us to stand on the ground where tens of thousands of innocent people had been unjustly executed not that long ago.

Standing at the gates of Auschwitz we all expected to be hit with emotions potentially more severe then those we faced in Dachau; for Auswitch was the most brutal of all concentration and execution camps. It was here where the most victims of the Holocaust lost their lives. We all expected to see shoes, hair, and gas chambers. What we did not expect was to see such a magnitude of each. We did not expect to walk into a 20 ft corridor and see piles of shoes and hair stacked taller than we stood along the entire length of that corridor. We did not expect to walk through a gas chamber where thousands of people took their last breath each day between 1933 and 1945.

Holocaust Study Abroad Reflection

Ashes, Ashes They All Fell Down:
Expressing Through Pictures What Can Not Be Expressed In Words

We have all heard it a thousand times to justify dull, monotonous history classes: “If you do not know your history then you are bound to repeat it.” Study Abroad has shown that one can never truly appreciate why the mistakes of history should not be repeated until he or she has stood on the ground on which history occurred. The pictures displayed aim to communicate the significance and importance of The Holocaust victims and what they endured before they were murdered on the ground where the 2010 Study Abroad group stood on not long ago.

Experiencing the history of The Holocaust so forcefully has sparked a heightened awareness and interest in preserving the memory of The Holocaust in all of us. Many of us purchased souvenirs in the various cities we visited, but many of us also purchased literature specific to The Holocaust at the most significant sights. Still Alive: A Holocaust Girl Remembered is one book I purchased which tells a firsthand account of Ruth Kluger, a woman who survived Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Christianstadt concentration camps. In the forward, written by Lore Segal, Segal expresses Kluger’s worry that the “act of literature betrays what was experienced in The Holocaust: don’t words make ‘speakable’ what is not?” Thus the theme of this essay emerges. Words cannot express the severity of The Holocaust. Kluger, a survivor of the largest extermination camp—Birkenau, can only describe the fear she felt as “the psychological equivalent of epileptic fits.” Survivors can tell us their stories with the most potent language imaginable, but we can only make associations between things we know and things we can never imagine, in order to respond with shocks of muffled recognition.

All of us attempt to express to our own audiences what we saw and felt on this trip. We are well aware that this is impossible. For nothing we say, combined with any multitude of displayed pictures or souvenirs will ever translate our experience to an outside party. We have all gained knowledge of The Holocaust affairs that can only be gained from raw emotions evoked from first had exposure to the physical locations and remaining structures where the most brutal crime against humanity took place. How are we to express to family, friends, and colleagues what we felt as we walked in and out of concentration gates where not long ago the only route of escape for inmates was through the chimneys of gas chambers? We cannot. Kluger’s book asks what one is to do with knowledge that is “like a bullet lodged in the soul where no surgery can reach it.” This experience has given us this type of knowledge. Each returning study abroad student feels a personal responsibility to never settle, or allow our audience to settle, in whatever watered down attitude towards The Holocaust that we have created for ourselves. Today I challenge our audience to be discomforted—to revisit and rethink their understanding of The Holocaust—in order to help fulfill the responsibility we each have to knowing the history of The Holocaust, so these mistakes will never be repeated.

-Meagan Clark

Jenna Six Article in Formal Prose

The following letter was written in response to the Jenna Six case that occurred in 2007. It is written and addressed to the residing judge of the case and is therefore written accordingly in a very formal and professional manner:

Honorable Pete. V. Domenici:

This letter is being written concerning the "Jena Six" case in Jena, Louisiana. Many Americans feel that segregation and civil rights protests among African Americans and Whites is a thing of the past; unfortunately, this is not so. In Jena, Louisiana after asking their high school principal permission, two African American students sat under the "white" tree in the center of campus. White students then responded by hanging nooses from the tree, which can clearly be consider as a hate crime: any intimidation action to a group/class of people. For this blatant display of racism the White students underwent minor punishment of one month alternative school supervision and two weeks in school suspension for an action that was clearly illegal and morally corrupt. Why was no legal action taken against these students? When the African American students protested the lack of substantial punishment the District Attorney Reed Walters threatened the students with the remark [he could] "take their lives away with the stroke of a pen." There is undoubtedly an unreasonable amount of racial tension in Jena, racial tension that should not be tolerated in a "free" country.

Subsequent to the District Attorneys statement, a white student voiced his support of the nooses, taunting several African American students by calling them "niggers." The African American students that were relentlessly tormented fought back, beating those students displaying violent racial remarks. These six African American students, ranging from ages 14 to 18 were charged with second degree attempted murder and conspiracy. Mychal Bell, the first convinced faces up to 22 years in prison for a school fight.

The truly troubling events in this case were obviously the questionable proceedings of the trial. For example, the boys were convicted by an entirely white jury. Jena six is a racial/civil rights case, an all white jury is in no way diverse enough to make a fair ruling. To amplify this already unethical and quite malodorous situation, light has been shed on the fact that one of the jurors was in fact a close friend of the "victims" father. This is a distinct conflict of interest. Finally, the boys Mychale Bell 16, Robery Bailey Jr. 17, Carwin Jones 18, Bryant Purois 17, and Theo Shaw 17 were all charged as adults. Jesse Ray Beard, 14 at the time, was the only one charged as a minor. All Americans have the right to a fair trial. It is noticeably apparent that these boys did not receive one.

Segregation in American has been settled long ago with the blood of many Americans. Americana's freedom came at a great price ans should therefore be enforced across the land. It is essential that not one city, state, or region be overlooked or pardoned from the laws of equal opportunity and freedom. With out our nation working as one, answering to constitution based laws in their entirety, the land of the free may crumble. We must ensure this war within our borders is well settled before we can attempt to fix societies across oceans.

Thousands of American protesters, myself included, object to the proceedings of this trial and feel justice was not served. We plead with you to hear and consider our cause by supporting a close review of events by the Civil Rights Division of the United States Justice Department.

Memory as the Most Important Cannon

Exordium/Introduction:

In every Rhetoric class the Five Cannons--Invention, Arrangement, Style, Memory, Delivery--make up a essential part of the curriculum. While each cannon is interrelated and dependant on one another Memory holds a important place in our society that the other cannons do not. Due to technological advances the issue of memory is considered in a entirely new light in modern society compared to that of ancient Greece where the cannons were born.

Narrative:

In ancient Greece, memory was a essential skill utilized by society on a daily basis to a extent that modern society can barley imagine. The lack a printing press and even general means of record (paper and pen) were not common utensils of the time. Scholars expanded their knowledge base and practiced their rhetoric through progymnasmatas, most of which were practiced souly through repetition and memorization. For example, a progymnasmata that requires the student to persuade an audience, that student must not only remember his previous encounters with both the subject and the audience but remember in coherent detail his prepared method of delivery.

In modern times, with the invention of limitless resources and ever evolving technology any given person may only remember one telephone number, their social security number, and their address. Technology has created a society that relies almost entirely on artificial memory. In fact, we trust a great deal of our lives to this technology. We do not need to remember phone numbers, contact details, or even details of a presentation. All of these things are at our finger tips ready to be displayed at our beck and call in precise detail. It is the development of technology that has caused our society to replace the ancient concept of memory with that of a artificial one.

Partition:

The development of computers that aid in scheduling out lives is one of the best examples of this modern artificial memory. College students, for example, have a class schedule, work schedule, athletic schedule, and homework due dates to adhear to on a daily basis. To help the common college student remain punctual to every task required of them they have several instruments of technology to keep them on track through out the day.

Allow me to offer myself up as an example: at 9:50 am my alarm clock rang to remind me that I had to wake up and get ready. The alarm on my phone went off shortly after telling me that I had tutoring and then a presentation to complete that morning. During the presentation I used a power point with numerous notes to keep myself and my group on track during the discussion. Soon after I received a text telling me to come to practice at the indoor stadium at 3:00 pm. Later this afternoon I checked my email which reminded me that I had this homework due. All of these things on the computer also require log in's and passwords that the computer memorizes for me. If not for the several instruments of technology I used on a basic day, I would have fell short in many areas of my life because my modern world has shaped me not to remember these daily tasks on my own. I know I am not alone in this occurrence. I share the same memory dependence as everyone else in the modern, first world society.

Peroration:

Society is entirely dependant on technology to help us retain mundane information necessary in everyday life. Memory is the most important cannon because it is a live, evolving element of Rhetoric that brings an ancient rhetorical method into the 21st century.

Refutability of the Proximate Witness in Modern Rhetoric

Argumentation based on witness testimony of first hand experience carries a good deal of weight in matters of modern rhetoric. The most obvious and widespread example of this lyes with in out judicial system. Every trial consists of attorneys questioning witnesses they have gathered that have first hand experience or expertise in a matter of the case at hand.

According to Sharon Crowley, author of Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students, the validity of testimony given by a proximate witness must stand several tests. First: " a witness must be in position to over see the events in question." Second: "conditions must be such that a witness can adequately perceive an event." Third: "the witness's state of mind at the time must be conductive to her accurate observation and reporting."

As long as these testimonies by proximate witnesses pass the previously mentioned tests than in modern rhetoric first hand experiences are nearly irrefutable. The only plausible event that could derail the testimony of a proximate witness is one of a community authority that both disagrees with the proximate witness's testimony as a possible event and is a expert in the subject. For example: A proximate witness testifies that he heard his neighbor shoot his wife. Normally, this testimony would secure the prosecution of the husband. However, if a local doctor n testifies that the husband was not physically able to shoot a gun (lets say the husband had arthuritis and could not grasp the gun tight enough to pull the trigger) than the testimony of the proximate authority would be refuted.

Survive or Surrender

My steadfast ideology concerning gun control is this: there should be no gun control. The second amendment guarantees every citizen of the United States of America the right to bear arms. That is, the right to protect yourself and your family from harm. The right to bear arms is a privilege that was paid for with the blood of our founding fathers. It is safe to say that a right which cost the lives of many to secure, was not done so with out reason. It is because of these reasons that the rejection of gun control is one of my unwavering ideologies.



I was raised in a republican family, lived not ten miles from the National Rifle Association, and was taught to shoot at a young age. It is for these reasons that I am not afraid of guns, as many people tend to be, and I feel that owning a gun for recreation and protection--that is, owning a gun as a instrument of survival--is a constitutional right that should not be discarded.



The main arguments I have encountered against my stance are these:

-the person/people are afraid of guns and could never use one for self protection or any other purpose

-the person/people feel that it is dangerous to have a fire arm in the house because of children living on the premises

-the person/people fear a intruder finding a gun in their home and using it against them

-the person/people feel that their is no reason to have self protection methods because if they are meant to die...than it is simply their time.



I have be involved in many rhetorical situations focusing on the topic of gun control both in oral conversation and through prose. After personal experiences and research I have developed several arguments to persuade others to accept, or at least consider, my stance on the issue. Rhetorical strategies involving appeals of ethos and logos tend to work nicely, since their is a multitude of statistics that favor gun control as being unconstitutional and dangerous. For example, if people can not get guns citizens will be left with no means of protection while criminals will revert back to using more base, brutal, and violent means of weaponry. These types of arguments make a person consider you point of view but it is when you bring in the pathos appeal the necessity for self protection becomes real. After all, emotions are one of the strongest influencing factors of persuasion in our society.



The most effective pathetic proofs I have employed in the topic of gun control is deploying the power of enargeia. Painting a picture for the audience, in which the audience's loved ones are put in a horrific, life endangering event makes the opposition see the relevance and necessity of preserving their right of protection. People often have opinions on self preservation/protections, but when their loved ones are in jeopardy. . . no sound person would just stand by and watch a loved one die when they have the power to save them. The following is a pathetic appeal in which enargeia is deployed to persuade a audience to abolish the idea of gun control:

*** It is two o'clock in the morning on a snowy February night. Your daughter is sound asleep in her bed having been dreaming pleasant dreams for hours. You are up late browsing the Internet and drinking a glass of wine to wind down from a long day. Through your front window a man has seen a valuable big screen TV. Thinking everyone is asleep, he picks a random window to a room he believes to be vacant. He takes the blunt end of a large army knife and breaks the window, unlocks it and enters the room. The intruder has entered your daughters room. You hear this, knowing what is going on you run towards your daughters room, baseball bat in hand--ready to fight for the protection of your family. You open the door and see that just before your daughter was able to let out a scream the intruder covers her mouth and cuts her throat knowing that you will be unable to harm him from where you stand.***

If the parent had been able to grab a gun instead of a bat, then the intruder may have been the person who died that night.