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January, 2013

  1. Matt & Kim

    January 29, 2013 by Sam Lebold

    “Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” –  Berthold Auerbach

    In all honesty, I have no idea who Berthold Auerbach is. Should I? Anyways, I really like this quote, and I searched for a while for it, and you’ll see why later in the post.

    So this week’s passion blog was not prompted by anyone’s suggestions, and I promise I will return to the suggestions next week! There was just some music that I was really dying to listen to.

    Instead, this week, I decided to explore a group that I had barely scratched the surface on, but would like to listen to a lot more: Matt & Kim.

    1cc511fc

    They’re a pretty quirky duo (who are rumored to be getting married soon?!), and what I had heard of their music before I listened to them this week I really liked. The songs I have on my iPod are: Daylight, Good Ol’ Fashion Nightmare, Let’s Go and Block After Block. These songs feature Matt singing and playing the keyboard usually, with Kim playing percussion. Usually, that’s about it for their music. They don’t usually have guitars or other traditional “band” instruments. Occasionally, they use some violin.

    Matt & Kim are sort of, from what I’ve read online, known for their really bizarre lyrics that are all over the place and their really unique indie-pop / alternative vibe. I’m sure that the lyrics have some sort of meaning or significance for either Matt or Kim, but to the general listener, they’re just really bizarre. Not bizarre in a disturbing way, but rather bizarre in an eccentric and idiosyncratic way. One can immediately pick out one of their songs on the radio for the upbeat background music and interesting lyrics. They’ll be performing in Passion Pit 2013, for anyone interested in going.

    For anyone who is interested, my favorite of the old Matt & Kim music that I had on my iPod is the song “Let’s Go”. It’s such a fun song to listen to while you’re just boppin’ around downtown or on campus.

    So, onto the new stuff. This week, I listened to songs from three of their albums: Grand, Sidewalks and Lightning. I guess they have a thing for one worded albums. And funky album artwork. Anyway, about the songs… The song Cameras from Sidewalks was interesting. Not my favorite because it seemed a bit slower to me, but it was still fun to listen to. I like It’s Alright from Lightning, and I really liked Good For Great from Sidewalks, because I felt like it was a little different from some of their other stuff, especially because I could semi-understand what was going on with the lyrics. Others that I particularly enjoyed: Overexposed (funny lyrics that made me smile), Tonight and Where You’re Coming From. My favorite, however, remains as Let’s Go. It’s a really quality track, and if you’re going to listen to anything by them, listen to that song.

    The most important thing to realize about Matt & Kim’s music, to me, is that it sort of sounds like joy. Or bliss. Or just straight up fun. There isn’t a lot of pain, boredom or repetition in their music, even though they talk about the everyday experiences of life, just like every other artists. I feel like they really do wash the soul of all the dust that accumulates in our everyday life, and turn that very concept of every day live into something so unique and fun to be with. They’re not looking at life through rose-colored glasses, but rather rainbow glasses with sparkles, or something along those lines. It’s great.

    In general, I see their music as a really fun background track for a lot of hipster, Indie-type movies or such. In my life soundtrack, their music would work really well in the happy, good scenes where I was going going going at something, and having a blast while at it. Maybe while I’m road-tripping! Because let’s be honest, all good movies have a road trip (not really, but we’ll just pretend).

    I would highly recommend Matt & Kim to anyone looking for music that’s fast-paced and silly, but still in an adult, mature type way, if that makes any sort of sense at all. I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re looking for music to really listen to or connect to the lyrics with, that’s just really not the type of music that it is. Other than that, take a listen! Overall grade: A-

    🙂

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  2. Online Deliberation: Fracking?

    January 28, 2013 by Sam Lebold

    For the upcoming project involving online deliberation, I think I want to switch it up. I’ve been enjoying looking into the topic of women in the military, but I don’t think that I want to exhaust that topic too much.

    I’ve been mulling around a few other ideas that also peak my interest. In my first CI blog where I was discussing potential topics for that blog, I was torn between writing about women in the military and drilling for natural gas. I decided to go with women in the military for my CI blog because I felt like I had a more personal connection to the topic, so maybe this assignment would be a good time to explore something I didn’t have as much of an emotional connection to, so that I can keep my deliberations unbiased. So, I’m thinking about doing hydraulic fracturing. This issue affects pretty much everyone who is living in Pennsylvania at the moment, because of our proximity to the Marcellus Shale Region, where there is a huge quantity of natural gas waiting to be tapped into. However, hydraulic fracturing (aka “fracking”) can be very harmful to the environment, and deadly chemicals can leak into water supplies. The problem is that a lot of politicians have a lot of money tied up in fracking, and so there is a lot of red tape around the issue that is stopping the government from taking action to protect the environment and it’s citizens.

    Since we live in an area so affected by fracking, I think it would be interesting to do this assignment on that topic. I’ve started searching for some potential sites that I could use as the forum for deliberation, but I haven’t had much luck. I’m a little concerned about finding a site that is professional and has real deliberation occurring, because that tends to not really be the case on the internet. But we’ll see how it goes!

    Part of me also wants to look into forums that discuss budget cuts in the arts in education, because that has always been of concern to me. I haven’t started searching for any forums yet, so I’m not sure if it is even a legitimate potential topic.

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  3. CI- Sexual Assault in the Military

    January 23, 2013 by Sam Lebold

    For my CI blog, I decided to go with the topic of women in the military, because the more I looked into it, the more I realized there was to write about on the topic.

    For my inaugural CI blog, I’m going to be addressing the issue of sexual assault in the military, because I think that it is a really important issue that needs attention and isn’t always handled in the best way. This brings up a lot of topics based on women in the military that I might touch on this week and elaborate on in the future.

    I found this really neat video on the NYTimes website from a couple years ago called Women At Arms: Assault in the Ranks. It is a short documentary that depicts one woman, Cpt. Margaret White’s encounter with stalking and sexual assault while she was deployed in Iraq. She did not report the incident, and later came forward and gave a statement when her assailant was charged with 19 other cases of assault.

    http://www.nytimes.com/video/2009/12/27/us/1247466272631/women-at-arms.html?ref=womenatarms

    (I would highly suggest checking this video out – it’s only about 6 minutes long, and it’s a great description of real problems that women face in the military)

    A report from the Pentagon states cases like Cpt. Whites are not uncommon, and that somewhere around 10% of all cases of sexual assault and rape are reported in the military. In 2008, approximately 3,000 sexual assault cases were reported, which means that the actual number of assaults is probably around 30,000 per year. To me, this statistic is startling and needs attention.

    One of the issues that leads to sexual assault being common in the military is that the military is still a male-centered institution. The ratio of male to female soldiers is always skewed towards the males, and women often struggle as a minority. This is heightened by the nature of the job, especially in exceedingly physical or difficult situations such as deployment. Women in the military often feel like they have to overcompensate for their gender and appear just as “tough” or “strong” as their male counterparts. Personally, it would seem to be that “tough” and “strong” are labels that could be done away with, because women are made to feel like they have to work harder than men to attain the status of “tough” or “strong”.

    Cpt. White also says that she felt as if she could not speak up because what she was facing was far less important or significant than the day to day tragedies of being stationed in Iraq. She stated in the video that there’s the mentality that because you’re in the army, you need to be strong, tough and “able to get past this” on your own. This is a common mindset in the overwhelmingly male-dominated military, even if it is unspoken.

    This is where I think the root of the problem is. Recently, the military has implemented a campaign called “I Am Strong” that urges men and women to report cases of sexual assault instead of covering them up. While it is important to urge people to report cases, I think the Army needs to do this as well as  get to the source of the problem, which is the concept that if you are a victim of sexual assault, you are not being tough or strong. Sexual assault is a serious thing, and it can happen to anyone regardless of their moral, physical or mental strength. The Army should continue to promote the idea that sexual assault is something that will be handled just as seriously as it would be outside of the military. I also personally think that reporting a case like this makes the victim even more strong, because they are speaking out against everything that happened to them. However, this doesn’t seem to be the mindset in the military.

    It is my personal opinion that women should be allowed to serve in the military, and they should not have to feel unsafe while they are serving just because of their gender. They should also not be made to feel like they have to conform to certain labels, because the truth is that women and men ARE different. Those differences should not, however, impact the ability of women to serve our country.

    No woman should ever have to feel unsafe anywhere. I know that sometimes simply walking around campus at night can be a frightening thing for a woman to do–  I frequently ask for someone to walk me back to my dorm. Thus, I imagine being stationed in a foreign country where you’re surrounded pretty much exclusively by males would be of concern to any woman. I think that this is an issue that the Army needs to be more open about, and something that they are work proactively against.

     

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  4. Finishing up my TIB

    January 23, 2013 by Sam Lebold

    In terms of my This I Believe, I’m all done! I need to run over to a Mac at some point to upload the garage band file, but my podcast is recorded and done! All I need to do is update my draft so that it matches the words, and I’ll be ready to go.

    My least favorite part about this assignment was simply that we had to work with a Mac. About an hour into my playing around and recording in the library, Garage Band stopped working– even the tech support couldn’t figure out what had happened. I ended up losing what I was working on, and I had to re-record everything. This was frustrating to me, and I wish that it wasn’t required that we use a Mac, because I’m not the most Mac-literate.

    Other than that, I loved this project. Sometimes I get a little annoyed at English writing assignments, because I feel like I lose a lot of my creative voice and personal choices. However, this assignment was broad enough that we could run in any direction that we chose to, and I really loved that. My final draft is something that I’m really proud of. I feel like it reflects my beliefs, and I think that’s because I was able to pour a lot of passion and personal experience into the piece. I hope we do more things like this in the future!

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  5. Weezer – A Big Thanks to Sam B!

    January 23, 2013 by Sam Lebold

    A big thanks to Sam Baskin for the band of the week for my blog: Weezer!

    I actually had heard a few songs by Weezer before I endeavored on this week’s listening spree, namely the songs Pork and Beans and Island in the Sun. I really like the sound of those two: they’re pretty silly and fun, yet not a joke. So, I was really excited to listen to a few others of theirs.

    A little background on Weezer, for those like me who know them as a name only. Weezer is categorized as solidly “alternative”, which to me sort of means that they fit into no other category, which in and of itself has become a category. They were formed in 1992 in Los Angeles, and just from listening to a few of their songs, a lot of their older stuff has a definite “90’s vibe”; that is to say, I could tell that a lot of their stuff was produced in the 90’s even before looking up the dates. However, being a child of the 90’s, this is the kind of stuff that I grew up hearing on the radio, so it’s a wonderfully nostalgic sound for me.

    Aside from bringing up some good childhood memories, their songs are great fun to listen to. There are a lot of upbeat songs – the ones I already mentioned (Pork and Beans, Island in the Sun), but also their big hits Buddy Holly, My Name is Jonas and Beverly Hills. Some of their other songs are a bit slower, such as Undone – The Sweater Song, and Say It Aint So. However, even these songs had pretty light messages and themes, so they didn’t bring you down at all.

    One thing I really admired about Weezer was the way that their songs laid it all out there. Often, the lyrics were straightforward and said what needed to be said. There weren’t a lot of innuendos or metaphors, which is kind of refreshing, and added a light and comedic touch to their music.

    In the soundtrack of my life (see my post about the Black Keys to read all about how I like to listen to music and see where it would fit into my life), I think that Weezer would be playing as I was having a blast with friends and just living life. I’m having an excellent time here at PSU just learning how to live and I feel like a lot of that mindset is reflected in the music Weezer.

    Overall, I would give them a pretty high rating: maybe a B+ or an A-. I probably won’t listen to them constantly over the next few weeks, but whenever I’m in the mood for some upbeat, naturalistic and relatable sounds, I know where to turn. I can definitely see why you like them so much Sam! Thanks for the topic 🙂

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  6. This I Believe Rough Draft

    January 16, 2013 by Sam Lebold

    Here’s a preliminary rough draft of my This I Believe, entitled “On Appreciating Gifts”: I’ll give the first rough draft, then at the end I’ll list some areas that I struggled with or some problems that I see with it. Thanks guys!

    On Appreciating Gifts

    On July 7th, 2012, it was well over 100° in my hometown of West Chester, PA. It happened to be the day of my graduation party, about a month after I had graduated from high school. I had been sent to pick up the party platters from a small neighboring town, donning a bright sun dress and fresh updo. Riding shotgun in my car was my boyfriend, and he played with the radio  as we drove. It was just one more day of the summer for the quiet little borough of West Chester, but for me, it was an exciting and extremely memorable moment in time.

    It was also the day that I learned in a very hard way the importance of life; because of that day, I now believe in the importance of recognizing that  each human on this earth has one life to live, and what a fleeting life it is.

    Later in the day, as I returned from running errands for the party, at approximately 4:00 pm, I attempted to make a U-turn on the highway in a dangerous spot. I went around the turn too fast, lost control of my car, and collided with the guard rail on the opposite side of the highway. The severity of the accident was apparent immediately- my car was totaled. I turned to my right as the shock of the impact wore off, horrified to see Nick’s empty seat obscured by the twisted frame of the car. I knew my car was old enough that only the driver side had an airbag, and that he had not had one. My heart leapt into my throat and not a sound escaped me. Time slowed as my thoughts stopped, my body frozen. He was gone.

    A furious and urgent banging on my window drew me back to the present moment, and I turned to see Nick knocking on my window and yelling at me to get out of the car. Without thinking I exited the car as he explained how he had gotten out of the car mere seconds after impact to make sure that I was ok. I was speechless as I held him.

    Life moved on after that moment, but I was looking at it through a very different lens. That day, I learned how much of a blessing life is, and how to never take it for granted. In the accident report, the police officer who arrived at the scene told us that he had never seen an accident like this where the passenger had survived impact without an airbag. He wasn’t sure how it had happened, or why.

    I believe that life is fleeting, but precious. I believe that we are where we are for a reason, and that no one should take life for granted. I believe that you get one chance at life, and it is a gift. Gifts are not things we deserve or things we have worked towards, they are simply things that we have been given, to do with what we please. In this way, gifts are blessings, and I believe in appreciating the gift of life.

     

    Some of my thoughts:

    • Do I have too many details in the beginning? Do they distract from what I’m trying to say? Is this too contextual for the universal message that I’m trying to get across?
    • Do I need to state what I believe earlier? (deductive v. inductive)
    • Is there something a little off about the first sentence? I was trying to go with something that would catch the attention of the reader.
    • Can you state multiple different beliefs from one thing? I’m sort of struggling with this at the end a bit. Is it too much?

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  7. The Black Keys

    January 16, 2013 by Sam Lebold

    First and foremost, a big thank you to everyone who commented on my first blog post, it was really helpful to me! Now I won’t need to pretend like I have friends when it comes time to blog each week.

    While it was super helpful to have everyone put up their suggestions (and I will look into every single one of them in the future, I promise!) I’m starting off with a group that I have really been meaning to get more into: The Black Keys.

    black keys

    I was introduced to The Black Keys by my alternative-fanatic boyfriend, Nick. He has a mildly sick obsession with The Black Keys, and frequently modifies their songs so he can play them on acoustic guitar. While I had heard him play their stuff here and there, I had never heard any of their songs all the way through.

    Spotify to the rescue!

    Let’s just take a moment to appreciate how I had to add the word “Spotify” to my dictionary in Microsoft Word. I just can’t stand those little red squiggles.

    But anyway, I seriously enjoyed listening to The Black Keys this week. The funny thing was that I actually already knew a lot of the songs that I listened to, but not from my boyfriend.  I feel like a lot of their songs are used in commercials and ads, and I actually recognize the songs Tighten Up and Lonely Boy as ones that we play on the four hour loop at the Old Navy where I work. I’m really glad that I now know the names of a couple of these songs, because they were awesome.

    The Black Keys are an American rock group that got their start in 2001. That’s another thing that I was surprised about. For some reason in my mind, I had decided that The Black Keys were a recently emerging group. In terms of categorizing their music, they initially signed with an Indie record label, but they’re considered to be part of the second wave of garage rock revival, with hints of blues rock. The label they’re currently signed with, Fat Possum Records, tends to sign independent groups with a bluesy feel, so it fits. Kind of an odd way to define a group, but hey, it’s not really about the label, but the music itself, right?

    So, about the music. As I stated earlier, I LOVED a lot of their stuff. For someone who is about the farthest thing from a musical connoisseur, they definitely fell into the “rock” genre, but without being too heavy, loud or electric. A lot of their songs are pretty upbeat with fun lyrics and a really interesting sound. My favorites by them were Gold On The Ceiling, Lonely Boy, Tighten Up, Howlin’ For You, Everlasting Light and I’ll Be Your Man. I’m well aware that a lot of musical snobs might look down on me for that list, because those are  definitely their most popular songs. However, they’re popular for a reason: they’re all really good and a blast to listen to.

    I say so because when I listen to music, I sometimes do this odd thing where I decide where that song would fit into the soundtrack of my life if my life were one day a movie (which, if we’re being honest, WILL happen when I reach stardom and become fabulously rich and famous and have changed the world). If my life were such, I have decided that The Black Keys’ fast paced song Howlin’ For You would be the track playing when I’m doing the token stupid, fun and illegal thing that I look back fondly on, Lonely Boy would play during the opening scene when all my friends and partners in crime were being introduced, the song All You Ever Wanted would be playing during the credits after the happy and spunky end to the movie, and Gold On The Ceiling would be playing after I’ve set some brilliant or hilarious plan in motion and am working on carrying it out.

    For me, it is a blast to think this way, and I would highly encourage others to as well, because I think that however silly it might be, it can give the listener a personal connection to a song where otherwise one might not exist.

    In summary: The Black Keys: A+, good soundtrack music from a bluesy-indie garage band that I would highly suggest to anyone.

    Happy listening, all 🙂

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  8. Switching gears, from the Creamery to Spotify

    January 9, 2013 by Sam Lebold

    I have to admit, I’m at a bit of a loss when it comes to finding a topic for this semesters passion blog. Last semester, as some of my new classmates already know, I blogged about trying different flavors of ice cream at the Penn State Berkley Creamery, because I had only ever consumed one in the past. It was a really great blog that I ended up enjoying a lot, and I was never at a loss for what to write about, because there was always a new flavor out there (they change seasonally)!

    However, I simply don’t think I can continue the blog for multiple reasons. Firstly, my waistband will simply not allow me to consume anymore Creamery ice cream in massive quanities. Secondly, it gets old after a little while. A lot of flavors are similar, and I really feel like I’ve explored as much as I needed to. Lastly, I simply don’t want to. I want to try something else.

    However much I know that I don’t plan on continuing my old blog, I don’t really know what to do for this next passion blog. As I began writing this post, and idea popped in my head that I’m starting to mull around. Like Kyle, I will be honest about the fact that I have atrocious taste in music, and I don’t even know that much of this atrocious stuff. I listen to a few songs on repeat until they get old, and then move on to some other similar ones and repeat the process.

    Over winter break, a friend of mine convinced me to join Spotify. How it works, I still struggle comprehending. How on earth can all this music be free to listen to, even if there is commercials  And let’s be honest, I’m pretty bad at technology, and I can just barely find my way around the app. I’m getting there though, and listening to the music has helped me broaden my horizons. I found that I really like alternative music, which makes me sound like a hipster. The problem is I don’t really know a whole lot of alternative music, and I don’t even know where to begin on Spotify.

    So the thought occurred to me to write a blog where each week, I asked a friend about one of their favorite alternative groups, and then listened to a few of their songs. I suppose I would write about my opinions on the group, compare them to other groups, or other things like that. I like my blog last semester because it made me try things I don’t normally, and I liked that, so I wanted some element of that in this blog.

    Nothing is set in stone yet, but I kind of like it so far, and I think I could definitely go with it for an entire semester.

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  9. Some potential CI blog ideas…

    January 9, 2013 by Sam Lebold

    As I was perusing the course website and looking at the potential topics for CI blogs in the future, two very different topics caught my eye.

    The first fell under the category of Gender, Sexuality, and Rights. For the most part, I thought I was going to steer clear of this category, because it has, in the past few years, become a central player in the news and in politics, and people tend to get really fired up about it in general. I don’t tend to have any views that are extremely strong one way or the other, and I hate getting caught up in arguments, because I tend not to have a lot to say. I just sort of think that people should be allowed to do what they want.

    However, as soon as I saw the topic “Women in the Military”, I knew that this was something that I could potentially write about, because I have thought about it a lot. I come from a military family, particularly navy. Most of my mom’s family has served, and while no one in my nuclear family has, I still feel the impact of the military lifestyle though extended members of my family. That being said I support our troops and respect them to no end for how they serve our country. I think that it is really honorable to be in the military. Thus, my initial response to this topic was that I would be very angry if the government started to regulate how I could participate in the military simply because I’m a woman. However, the more I began to think of it, the more I wasn’t so sure. I started to put myself in certain military situations, and I started to come across times where the differences between men and woman (not necessarily the fact that women are serving at all) could potentially impact the way our military functions in both good and bad ways. So in summary, I’m not really sure my stance on this issue either, but I know I would have a lot to say at least, and it is an issue that I can relate to on a personal level. My only concern would be that I would probably have to dig to find examples of this in the media. It would in no way be impossible, it just might be a more of a stretch than the next topic.

    Switching gears, the energy topic under “Environment” really caught my attention. Last year in high school, we focused a lot on fracking in my government class, and even went so far as to have a mock congress session based around a bill that dealt with fracking. We watched documentaries and read articles and talked about how it had impacted our own lives. Fortunately, I live near Philadelphia, which is pretty far from where fracking is occurring. However, upon research I found that the water that runs into my house is from a water shed that covers areas highly impacted by fracking, and thus at some point in the future, I’ll deal with this as well. The issue also caught my eye not only because of the environmental issues, but because of the political ones imbedded in it. There is so much corruption embedded with the issue of fracking that it’s really become a mess, especially here in central PA, where the Marcellus Shale line runs. As opposed to the first topic I discussed, I definitely have an opinion on fracking, and am ready and willing to share it. It would be simple, especially here in central PA to find articles, newscasts and publications on the topic, so that’s really of no concern for me.

    So I guess it comes down not to the topics themselves, but about how I want to approach the blog in general. I know I could pound out some really solid blogs for either topic, and enjoy it all the while. But do I want to explore something and make a decision as I go, or use this blog as a forum to strengthen and share previously made and very strong opinions? That’s what I’m not sure of at this moment, and I guess I’ll peruse some news sites the next few days and see if either topic jumps out.

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