As far as I've read in Zeituon the levees have only been mentioned briefly, but when mentioned you can feel the sudden urgency, fear and concern in the text. Before knowing that the levees had been overcome Zeitoun mentioned to his wife Kathy that the winds and rain had caused damage but the minumal street floods had drained and that the storm was likely over (p. 76, 77). Once new flood water (or river water) had reached Zeituon he knew the levees had been overtopped and things had become much more serious, and knowing that these floods certainly overtook New Orleans his area would soon be entrenched (p. 85, 86).

Anyone who knows about Hurricane Katrina knows about the vast amount of damage the city of New Orleans and the surroundings areas took. Though the high winds and rains would cause flood and damage on its own, much of the damage came from a flawed levee system. A system that would not be prepared to hold the amount of water that would infiltrate its system. In fact, the damage Hurricane Katrina caused would be significantly less had the levee system be able to hold, let alone the lives that would have been spared.

Clearly New Orleans was not prepared for such an event and after years of clean up and rebuilding, construction for a new levee system is currently underway. I actually have a friend who is working on this levee. A monstrosity of a system (and extremely expensive) it should save New Orleans from another catastrophic event such as Hurricane Katrina, though the residents of New Orleans are still skeptical and rightfully so. The people of New Orleans endured something I can't even wrap my head around, and I can understand how it would be hard to trust another levee, especially after the levee prior failed to do it's job and ruined their lives, homes, and community as a whole. This project will be one of the biggest pump/levee systems in the world, if not the biggest. One can hope that it lives up to its duty and protects those citizens from another potentially brutal storm if there should be one. As I said I understand the concern from the people of New Orleans about trusting another levee system, but you almost have to just trust it, trust that it will work if its need to. Really, there aren't many options than to reconstruct a hopefully superior levee. Let's just hope they have taken every consideration, every possibility when rebuilding a levee to protect New Orleans, unlike they had done previously.

Before reading Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers, I had no idea the trouble people had leaving their homes and the psychological impact of that. After the flooding of the city, Zeitoun rides through his neighborhood in a second hand canoe just to check things out. He soon realizes that many of his neighbors have stayed behind. Zeitoun helps many of the older residents of his neighborhood to safety. Surprisingly many have stayed behind. I did not understand why they did so at first. But when I realized that many of these people have lived here for years, even decades. If they left, they knew there was a big chance they would never see their houses again and all of their belonging may have been lost. For the elder residence in their 70s and 80s, the chance of never seeing their house again. You can tell many of them are thinking this in the way that they pause and stare at their house before departing on the boat taking them to rescue; trying to soak in as many details and memories as they can before they never see that house again. Knowing that rebuild could take years and they may not have had that many years left, seniors leaving their homes would have gone through great distress.

Likewise, those who already left their homes and were waiting at freeway passes and designated rescue areas were feeling the psychological impacts of the storm. Leaving your home with your most prized possessions on your back and waiting for rescue from a government that seems more concerned with looters and restoring order than safely getting people out of danger can be a very damaging event. Your trust in your government suffers, as does your mental health. It may be hard for us to understand how some of the “refugees” stayed behind when there was a threat of a category 5 storm, but this threat of storms/hurricanes is a yearly event. Also, most of us have not had to pack u all we could carry and leave everything behind. Which sentimental items do we take along and which do we leave behind? Just think about that. Think about the 10 most important things in your life, now think about how many of those would things would fit into a suitcase. Most of us pack more for a vacation than the evacuees of hurricane Katrina did when they left their houses for good.

Reversely, Zeitoun leaving would have a worse psychological effect than if he were stay. While staying after the storm, Zeitoun helped many people, animals and homes that may have been destroyed by the rising waters if he had not helped. Zeitoun believes it was Allah that had him stay; Allah had a purpose for Zeitoun in the city and it was helping people. Zeitoun knows that had he not stayed behind, some of his neighbors may be dead and the dogs that he fed in neighboring houses would have been dead for sure.

I'm only up to about p. 104 of Zeitoun so far and there hasn't been much reference to major themes that I felt would make a strong post. I imagine what was mentioned on our cheat sheet will come up later on in the book, but there is one factor that I felt has played a surprisingly low role in the book: race. The mention of the difficulties facing Muslim members of the community is highlighted, but I think in a city where African Americans make up over 67% of the population, their community would be mentioned a bit more.

Looking at the implications of being non-White (diverse) in a post-Katrina New Orleans seems like something that should be given a fair amount of the spotlight. Similar to our own professor's experiences with Piedmont within Oakland, The Nation has an article about Algiers Point, which contains "a small cluster of ornate, immaculately maintained 150-year-old houses" and a primarily White community. Residents here were able to avoid most of the damage from the levees but took it upon themselves "to seal off the area, blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood" and "stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and SUVs." I hope that was where those fan-boats were headed!

I guess I'm wondering if the African American people are going to be making up a chunk of the discussion about race inequities, or will it remain around the White community's perception of Zeitoun and his family. I have to assume that he's going to be doing something crazy if he has a book written about him, but I would just love to see a book that has garnered this much respect touch on such a heated topic. I think it sounds like I'm upset with the author's choice of person to chronicle. Maybe I am. I should probably just keep on reading...


love matty!

Zeitoun-First Blog

For my first blog post I want to discuss the confusion about the "armed man". Throughout the novel we have seen Zeitoun come across many armed men and they always leave the reader confused. The first time we saw these men they were in fan boats and were completely ignoring Zeitouns waves and pleas. We have also saw them when he went to find help for the neighbors at the Claibourne house and had a very strange interaction with the first set of men and then was let down by the second set of men. Finally in the last passage we read the reader is left with a cliffhanger as Zeitoun and Nasser are held at gunpoint by these "armed men".
I really don’t understand who they are, if they are good or bad, and what their intentions are. It’s frustrating to me that they are mysterious and unexplained thus far in the novel. The interactions Zeitoun has with them don’t make sense and seemed to have a much deeper meaning. I gues that Dave Eggers is trying to keep the reader confused just like Zeitoun was when it was happeneing. I have my own thoughts about what is going on but who knows if I am remotely close. I am not sure how deep to go about thinking about this difficulty because I don’t want make up a ton of conspiracy theories and then find out it was a simple explanation to why things were so strange. I am assuming by the end of this book my difficulty in understanding what is going on with these armed men will be explained.
The reason why I feel that these interactions are so strange is that in a disaster such as this that these “armed men”, if they are soldiers or police man should trying to do everything in their power to help others. If they are not trying to help people then what are they doing? There can only be so many officers trying to take control over the looters so I feel that most of the officers should go to helping the victims. With the first incident of the fan boats I assumed that the officers just couldn’t hear Zeitoun and his friends because the boats could be loud or they were on a mission but then the second incident was just plain strange. I don’t understand why the officer in the second incident was so verbally hostile, what was he hiding? What is he afraid of? Then there was the third incident where the police officer didn’t really seem to care about what was going on. Like I said there is a possibility that all of these situations could have a reasonable excuse but to me it seem like Eggers is foreshadowing something deeper.
I am curious to see how this all turns out and I am sure that with Part 2 ending on such a cliffhanger that the next part will talk about these incidents substantially.

Difficulty paper

While reading pages 105-170 of Zeitoun, I was left wondering why there are so many flashbacks. I feel as these flashbacks take away from the story. I think they are hard to read and don’t enhance the story at all. I thought that the flashback about the captain and the stars was especially distracting. It was brought up many times in class, but the story continues to have many flashbacks. The flashback that Kathy has about Zeitoun’s family in Syria had very little to do with the story, I felt, because while Kathy was considering moving to Arizona with Yuko, the flashback may have been an attempt to hint at moving to Syria but it was very vague.
I think that the flashbacks Zeitoun has about his brother bringing him to New Orleans should have been maybe in the beginning of the book where the reader learns about Zeitoun in the first place. Basically, the flashbacks seem to be at inopportune times, and could have been put somewhere else.
I also was confused as to why Nasser would say that the men were wondering if they needed water. Could he not see that the men were armed? I find it hard to think that Nasser would be a part of this group, but how can a man miss guns on many men. Maybe it was the other man who was in the house? Also, the men knew that there was looting going on, why were they not as active to prevent it? Maybe they should have stuck together more instead of separating, and found some way to defend themselves. I find it unfortunate that the looters decided to pick Zeitoun who was only trying to help people, and I hope reading the story will show that the men are safe, but they must have known that sticking around would hae led to such a situation.
I know that these are two difficulties, where as I should have probably focused on one. Hopefully both will be resolved during the rest of the book.

Blog Discussion

For this class I think I will do a mix between the first and second blog. I think adding in photos and videos can enhance your readers interest and support your claims in a more comprehensive and creative way but they can be distracted if not well used. In this case, hyperlinks could also be used to support your ideas without causing chaos in your writing.

In my freetime I read things that are more along the lines of the second blog. I read blogs that are more focused on personal experiences, travels, and ideas. I lost interest in the other blogs we looked at because they were very specific to fields of studies I don't find intriguing. I loved the pictures that were created to go along with the story in the second blog so I would read something like that on a regular basis. In my blog I will probably use photos and/or videos to show support for my claims and hyperlinks to let the reader learn more about the source I used.

In most of the blogs the hyperlinks were used to support their data by taking you to the source but with the first one it was to bring you to something completely random. I clicked on the hyperlinks that were in the middle of something that I was interested in but would skip the ones in the middle of something boring.

I would not call myself a "bloger" but I do follow a lot of them on a regular basis and write my own as well. I started when I was backpacking through Europe and wanted an easy way to tell everyone of my travels and then just never stopped.

So here are mine and some of my friends unprofessional but fun blogs:

http://ladynoma.wordpress.com/

http://ashleymanderson.wordpress.com/

http://kateliveslaughsloves.wordpress.com/

http://foureyedescapade.blogspot.com/

Then there a few from singers, Kate Voegele and Bethany Joy Galeotti:

http://blog.katevoegele.com/

http://www.bjgofficial.com/

Also this one is good for random celebrity trash:

http://radioalice.radio.com/?s=blog

This last one is Stephanie Nielson, she and her husband were involved in a tragic plane crash, killing one man, and leaving her with 80% of her body burned, her husband with 30% of his body burned. She’s still in the midst of a long recovery process, in a lot of pain, and hardly recognizable from her former appearance. She writes pretty much every day and is an absolute inspiration!
http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/

Blog Response

1. There are a couple of blogs that I would consider emulating their style for this class. The Wired Science blog is nice because it is a very simple, clean approach. Here's the title, a picture of what I'm going to talk about, and then the words. I also like the activism blog for similar reasons. Nothing to click, a lot of embeds instead. And lastly, the Hyperbole blog is nice too. I like the idea of using humor within posts. Especially considering a lot of my time is spent finding silly images on the internets anyway.

2. I think the pedagogical blog would lend well to my own field of study. Especially if it is currently run by students in an English Masters program. From an aesthetic point, I can't find anything particularly noteworthy. I would be interested on a more content based level. I am, however, new to blogs and hyperlinks, so I think I would like to incorporate that into my postings as well.

3. I think hyperlinks are used to further a lot of points by using humor or more information. It is also a way to allow readers to get in the same mindset as the author. I tend to open up hyperlinks that I come across in new tabs and just continue reading. If I feel that the content provided by the hyperlinks is essential to my understanding of the topic, then I may stop to look at the hyperlink first.

4. I'm kind of a Disney nerd, so I am currently reading a couple of those. I think one of them is written by a couple of ex Imagineers(term used to describe the artists behind the work of the company), another one is a general parks update, and the last is one that focuses on the shift in design that the company has gone through over the years. In my mini obsession, I've come across a lot of common knowledge about a lot of different facets of the parks and the company. I mainly visit these to gain a different and more extensive insight, as well as to find a way to feel like I'm back in the parks. I have actually never followed a blog before just a few weeks ago when I stumbled upon some of these.

Blog questions from Vincent Perez

1. I am going to use blogger as a model for this particular class. I think it will be a more interesting way to contribute and get my thoughts across, that and I feel that ilearn is waaaaaay over used.

2. I really like reading gadget blogs and random ariticles. like gizmodo and endgadget. Wired appealed to me the most since it closely resembles what i already read. It is also in print form so that gives me the opportunity to get away from the net but also stay connected in a way?

3. It seems that hyperlinks are used to relate certain articles or things that interest the writer in some way. I guess you only decide to click on a hyperlink if it interests you or if you would like to further analyze said topic.

4. I think video blogs are great. I mean anyone can do it and you do not have to be a writer to do so. For example, videos that are sooooo stupid but are funny at the same time like "charlie teh unicorn".

:D?