Blog Feed

I designed my Exhibit to show how my neighborhood has changed over time. In my opinion making an exhibit was a better way to engage an audience without boring them. I wanted to portray the idea and physical representations of the way the streets were many years ago. So I tired to resemble with the floor map the main idea of what South Philadelphia would be 60 years ago. But before that I went back in time further to when it all began in 1638. 

    Time Line: My time line for South Philadelphia starts back to about 300 years ago when most of the information started to be documented. In 1638 the first Swedish colonists arrived in Wilmington, Delaware. Following them the Europeans settled. The Dutch and English colonists were spread all over the Delaware Valley. The second group of Swedish colonists made a colony that consisted of immigrants in 1642.

Weccace was the name of that province and the Lenni Lenape named it. The meaning of it meant “peaceful place”. This “peaceful place” only was extended between the boundaries of the Delaware River at Trenton down to the Delaware Bay. In 1654 the Swedish and the Lenape both signed a Compact that bounded them to friendship. It was made to reinforce fair and respectful relations when it came time to trade but this compact only involved them.

Before the British came, in 1650 the Dutch were the only people that took a brief ownership of Weccacoe. Year 1677 the Swedish lead their first Christian worship in a blockhouse. To reach the destination they had to sail up the Delaware River every week.

Then in 1682 William Penn was able to establish this land only after making a negotiation of a treaty with the Lenni Lenape. Weccaoe became known as Southwark; this area was divided in to communities. The east side was named Passyunk, which meant “in the valley”. As for the west side it was named Moyamensing which meant “pigeon droppings’ and the first shipment of African slaves arrived on the Isabella in Philadelphia in 1684.

The Pennsylvania assembly aiming for the freedom of African Americans passed “The Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery” in 1780 and runaway slaves. In 1787 Richard Allen became the attraction for African American settlement. He then founded The Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was located between South and Lombard 5th to 7th street. Which is now known as the “Cedar Street Corridor”. Philadelphia then became the most important seaport on the American continent. In 1793 about 10,000 plus Philadelphia plus were forced to evacuate the city, due to the first American yellow fever epidemic that made its why through.

19th Century

During the 1800’s some Southern Italians began to migrate to the Bella Vista, which is near, happens to be near the 9th Street Market. As a resulted to that the West side of 6th to11th Street became full of Italians. Until 1910 when most of the Italian immigrants started to go to New York City then took the train to Philadelphia.

In 1801 the Navy Yard at Federal Street along the Delaware River was established but the U.S government. It was to build the U.S naval fleet and the Federal Navy Yard continued to build more ships at that location. Until 1875 when the Navy yard relocated itself, to Broad Street at the League Island. Assembling ships until it closed down in 1996. Today about eighty companies now reside in the 1,200-acre yard; has been remade into a retail, entertainment complex. In 1842 a lot of riots started to occur on Lombard Street and more than 1,000 African Americas partook in a parade that was to pay tribute to the 8th anniversary of the abolition of the slavery in the West Indies. Due to that parade with the American Americans an Irish mob attacked them and burned down the Second African Presbyterian Church on Lombard Street. As a result a Quaker philanthropist established the Institution for the Colored on 915 Bainbridge Street. This noble institute taught classical languages, literature, philosophy and mathematics. Eventually the school moved in 1902 to Chester Country, PA and then became the Cheney University. Which made it the oldest legendary African American college in America. In 1845 as a result of the riots, the districts of spring, Moyamensing and Northern Liberties were all obligated to assemble a police enterprise.

          In 1871 the first professional Philadelphia Fire Department was organized and replaced the city’s volunteer fire companies, which started back in the 18th century. The companies of the Irish Democrats or Nativist Republican often worked as if they were street gangs, challenging one another for turf.

From 1800-1920 is when all the different nationalities started to settle closer to and or within my neighborhood. The Eastern European immigrants and Jewish began to settle along Lombard and South Streets. 1887 the Lebanese immigrants started to settle around 10th and Ellsworth Street. The Polish immigrants began settling between Catharine and Christian, on Front and Second Street in 1890. In 1910 along 9th Street was where many of the Italian immigrants sold many goods such as meat, fruits and vegetables. The first Vietnamese immigrants arrived in 1975. They began to establish community organizations and businesses along Washington Ave and 8th Street.

Then in 1992 more Southeast Asian immigrants such as Cambodians arrived and started to cluster around 7th and Wolf, which was considered to be mainly a Jewish neighborhood. In the 2000’s some more immigrants that where mainly from Mexico and Asia began to settle more. The more people Philly received the more the living became lively, with rising real estate and lowering -income residents pushing the immigrants away from Center City an into the neighborhoods South of Washington and Snyder avenue, which is my neighborhood region.

The Interviews

            The way I conducted my interview was first by telling what my project was about then asking questions and writing down the answer. The two people chosen knew more information than I expected them to. So during the interview it was only necessary of me to ask a few questions. As the interviews when on a lot of other information was giving. When one questions was asked around the topic was giving. In other words unasked question were answered too. But I did some questions as the interviews went on, to clarify or to gain specific detail.

Starter Questions Q: Did any major events have an affect on you in the South Philadelphia neighborhood?Q: Did you visit to the area as a child and do you now as an adult visit the area?Q: Did you or did you have family and friends who lived in the neighborhood?

·       ·               Twenty to thirty years ago most of this area was filled with the Italian, polish and Jewish people.

·       ·               All of Darien street at from 9 and Oregon to 9th and Shunk where Greenwich homes for the mentally ill.

·       ·               What seem to bring all the people together was drugs.

·       ·               On the side of Oregon where Darien and Shunk is was built over a swamp.

·       ·               The area on Oregon where the School D. Newlin Fell is and Thomas was built over a cemetery.

·       ·               Certain parts belonged to different races.

·       ·               Board and South to front and south was all housing, nothing compared to the way it is today.

·       2^nd Street and Front Street were the Irish.

·       10^th and Carpenter were the Italians

·       9^th and Darien were the Jewish.

·       ·               Broad Street was a place you needed money to be on, it was where the movies and entertainment use to be and that was mainly Italian.  

·       ·               Patterson Ave. was where the cars would drag race before the stadiums were built.

·       ·               Her best friend was an African American girl named Linda and it was not always easy to play with her because when ever she would go to see her. Some of the people from Linda’s neighborhood would want and try to fight Lorraine.

·       ·               People knew who didn’t belong in their neighborhood and if they didn’t know you or knew you didn’t know someone that would fight you until you left.

·       “As little as we had, everybody was happy”. - Lorraine Tartaglio
Date of the second interview 10/22/11

·       ·               Second I interviewed was with DennisTerico he was one who also lived in South Philly all of his life.

·       ·               1963 he went to Thomas high school and there were mainly Italian and Irish people.

·       ·               All African American people were considered to be colored people.

·       Front to 4^th street were mostly the Irish and Polish

·       4^th to 6^th were the Puerto Ricans

·       8^th to 12^th, Broad were the Italians.

·       ·               As young teens if they stood on the corner the cops would pick them up take all their wallets and money. Drop them off at Delaware ave. so when they walked back to where they were. Having to walk through all the other different neighborhoods and fight their way through.

·       ·               At 8th an wolf that was a African American school with only 6 white people attended one of which was Dennis and the other 5 where his brothers.

·       ·               1964 he and his friends use to dress as rag time people and paint their faces black but then there were riots because they were not allowed in the parade with the black faces.

·       ·               9th street with Bok and 10th and Biglar would have riots.

·       ·               10^th and Packer ave. use to be horse stables it was there for about 20 years then it burnt down in 1967 and people could hear the animals cry from 9 an wolf.

Civic Association

The closet Civic Association near me is Passyunk Square Civic Association  (PSCA) Is the closet one I have in my neighborhood, it was founded since 2004. I sent them an e-mail but I never received a reply. So I did the next best thing a teen could do, FACEBOOK! After doing that I received some information about their projects.

Contact: mnlogreco@gmail.com

Some projects they had:

·              “Event: Columbus Square Park Fall Flea Market

Date: Saturday, October 29, 2011

Time: 7am to 1pm

Location: 12th and Wharton

Details: Reserve a space for your table for $20 or get two spaces for $30. You can also donate your stuff to sell at the Columbus Square Park table. They are also seeking volunteers to help out during that time with set up and clean-up AND donations of baked goods for the bake sale.”

·            “Event: Halloween Pumpkin Fest

Date: Saturday, October 29, 2011

Time: 10am to 12pm

Location: 12th between Wharton and Reed

Details: Event will include pumpkin decorating for kids (pumpkins and paint provided), a children’s costume parade, candy and treats.”

·      “The Friends of the South Philly Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia presents a FREE Pumpkin Painting event on Saturday, October 22 at 11am.

·      Paint your own pumpkin at the South Philly Branch Library. Pumpkins, paint and treats will be provided. Unfortunately, large groups cannot be accommodated. Pumpkins will be available on a first-come, first-served basis so arrive as close to 11am as you can.”

Volunteer w/ buildOn

I asked Crystal a few questions about buildOn. What major projects does buildOn have? What did she consider to be a major project? Did she mind telling me about Halloween Festival, because I know that is something that is does annually? Also, what did you enjoy about the specific UnLitter us on 10/15/11? That was the event I attended myself so I wanted another perspective not just my own.

Here was here response:

“We have two regional service projects every year (one in the fall and one in the spring). Those are our biggest projects and they are not always the same kind of project.  We also have some service projects that continue to be very popular every year:  definitely the Halloween festival, the Autism Walk, the AIDS Walk, the Beach Sweep in New Jersey. A major project is a project that we do consistently every year and brings a lot of students out. I thought the UnLitter Us project was awesome for a couple of reasons. I think it was wonderful for the guest speakers at the beginning of the event took notice of all of the buildOn students that had come out ready to help out.  It was also a great project because there was a clear need.  The volunteers got a lot done and really helped to clean up the area.  People in the neighborhoods took notice of the volunteers and thanked them for their hard work.  Lastly, I love when 50 teenagers from all across the city and from almost a dozen different schools can work together to make an impact.”  - Crystal Collins, PA Program & Service Coordinator

I chose to present my findings on  a website. I was originally going to make a movie, but I realized that this would have taken more work and time to produce. I chose to use create a website instead because I can manipulate and modify it more easily and can still incorporate the visual element by embedding videos on   it. I feel like a website is as fun and engaging as a movie, but it is easier to make.

During the course of this benchmark, I had a lot of other projects due for my other classes. Since my website was not due for a while, compared to my other assignments, I tended to push it back. I would get some things done, but would focus more on the other assignments. I feel like the other work that I had on the side took some of my work time for the website away. I overcame this, however, by completing small parts of the website at a time. I would assign myself to create, for example, the summary of the bill on day, and then the timeline another. I divided the task in bits, and finished it gradually. 

If I could do this project a second time, I would try to complete this website earlier. I would have also tried to be more creative with the website. I would have added more hyperlinks to the text of the website so that people could have easy referral to the meanings or history of the some of the words that I incorporate in these passages. I would try to make the website more interactive and “clickable”.

The research that I did on my bill showed me a lot about the creation process of this bill. Abortion is a pretty touchy subject in America. Some people believe in pro-choice and some in pro-life. Some don’t know how they feel towards abortion. The process of this bill’s transformation into a law was a rocky one. The first time it was introduced to the house, there was  an objection by a group of people because of “discrepancies” In the language of the bill. My thinking is that the people who objected to the bill let their personal bias towards abortion get in the way of their voting of the legislation-because they did not agree with abortion, they did not vote for the bill. The bill went through the house, to senate, and finally to the president the second time it was introduced to the house. The language was changed and the majority of the representatives voted yes to the bill. This time, however, the House consisted of different representatives. The research I did taught me that process of turning a bill to a law can sometimes be a rocky one because of the bias that representatives and senate members have towards the subject of the bill. 

I use charcoal and pastel because that was the tool recommended. Also, in the Figure Drawing I want to make the drawing as big as I can read because I want it to look realistic. I want to make the colors in the back lighter and then darker. I want to make it that way because I want to be able to see the changes as I outline more of the body. In the Clear Object Drawing, I want to make the drawing have the effects of the light as in the model. So, I want to make outline of the model and then, the lighter parts compared to the darker parts. 

I would say that I do a lot of smudging, but I also do keep some of the lines. I want to compare the new lines to the old lines because I want to make sure that I get it as close as I can get it. I am exploring different materials and the different effects they have on the drawing. It is very challenging in the Figure Drawing to get the drawing to look like the model as much as possible. 

My role in the larger food system as of now is the consumer I would like to become an active consumer. And what I mean by active consumer I that to get more involved in knows in about what I’m eating as well as was it came from. I see the biggest problem in the food system to be the food testing companies. Because after watching Food Inc I noticed that if the food testing companies start testing food correctly less people would get sick and harmful food products wont even make it to the shelves of stores.

After watching Food Inc. and reading several items would like to change my diet but it would be extremely hard because I’m’ already used to process unhealthy foods. But if I were to change my diet I’d try eating thing that didn’t have a lot of corn or products in them as well as try to buy the mostly organic food. 

Jazzy Jambalaya

Ingredients

2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil

2 Tbsp Flour

1 Green Pepper (chopped)

1 Medium Onion (chopped)

1 Garlic Clove (miced)

1 ½ Cup of Vegetable Juice

1Pkg 14 oz Smoked Turkey Sausage (Thinly sliced)

1 Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast (one inch chunks)

¼ Tsp Ground Black Pepper

¼ Tsp Salt

1/8 Tsp Ground Red Pepper

Hot Cooked Rice

Directions

Cook and stir oil and flour in large skillet on medium-high heat for 2 minutes until golden brown. Add green pepper, onion, and garlic. Cook and stir for 2 minutes until vegetables start to soften. Stir in juice, turkey sausage, chicken and spices. Bring to boil; cover. Reduce heat; simmer for 10 minutes until chicken is cooker through, stirring occasionally. Serve over rice. (Makes 4 servings)

The ingredients I used in my dish were green peppers, onion, garlic, vegetable juice, turkey sausage, and chicken breast. The percentage of my ingredients was processed was 40% which was the chicken breast and the turkey sausage. The other 60% was whole foods. There was 12 grams total fain the chicken breast and 4 grams of fat in the turkey sausage. As fro the vegetable juice there was 0 grams of fat. There were also o grams of fat for the green pepper, onion as well as the garlic. The vegetables and vegetable juice would probably sit best with the stomach and are the healthiest of the six ingredients.

The meal itself is a great nutrious meal its something that everyone can eat. And doest has a lot of processed ingriendtss. But the cost of the ingriends to prepare the meal would scare some families away because it cost about 25 dollars for the indriens and it only makes 4 servings. As far was the food actually cam from I’m not sure. I pretty sure the vegetables came from a farm close by because I bought them from a produce junction. But as far as the meats are concerned I think they were raised in one of the farms we see in the Food Inc. movie.

·       The beginning of this assignment started off fairly easily. We were tasked with explaining the history behind a bill of our choice. Any bill. But of course, Lauf suggested it would be easier on us to choose one linked to our lobbying topic. Knowing gay rights were a high profile topic and that they wouldn't hide any information I thought it was in my best interest to link my two topics. The first bill I found when I did research on gay rights was the Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA.

The process wasn’t as hard as I seemed to make it in the bginning. Because of the other benchmarks I had been assigned I got a late start on the bill project but when we had to meet our first deadline (initial research) I found out quickly just how easy it was to find information about my bill. It was controversial, so there was no lack of info to be found.

It was an interesting story to tell, from inception to creation, but there was more to it than just the history. Originally I wanted to do a documentary but as I gathered more and more information, I kept imagining things that I wanted my presentation to include that I simply couldn’t show in a documentary. I settled on a prezi because it’s a program I work well with and can make even the simplest statements engaging to the viewer.

In the end I think my project turned out fairly well. Its far from boring and I put into the story than just the history. I would only change the outcome of it if I had more time. Given the right amount of time I would do something like a cross between prezi and documentary which is what I had planned in the beginning. 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/06/29/lgbt-pride-month-white-house

http://www.metroweekly.com/poliglot/2010/07/federal-court-rules-doma-viola.html 

http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3=&id=107807

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/03/04/boehner-launches-effort-defend-gay-marriage-ban/ 

http://whitehouse.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/23/attorney-general-declares-doma-unconstitutional/

http://web.archive.org/web/20050208184130/http://www.advocate.com/html/stories/824/824_clinton_710.asp 

http://www.aegis.com/News/WB/2004/WB040631.html

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1996/roll316.xml 

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/02/gay-marriage.html

http://www.ncsl.org/default.aspx?tabid=16430 

http://www.lectlaw.com/files/leg23.htm

http://www.domawatch.org/about/federaldoma.html 

http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/how-doma-was-born-a-history/

http://www.glad.org/uploads/docs/publications/doma-short-history.pdf 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_XqMIY-dy0

• Explain your decision making for choosing the bill.
  While choosing a bill for the project, I thought about doing something that actually affected me or my family in a way. Since my parents are immigrants, I chose to do this project on immigration. Not only it affects my family but it affects a good amount of U.S population. 
• Why did you choose the particular presentation format?
  In my opinion I think choosing Keynote as a format is a reliable way to teach anyone about something you want to teach them. 
• What challenges did you overcome in completing the project?
  At first I chose the Chinese Exclusion Act, since it's a old law I couldn't find the legislation process. Therefore I chose a recent law and did my project on both of them. 
• How would you do the project differently if you had to do it over again?
  I would pick a different law that affects teenagers and also make a movie type of presentation. 
• What did the research and investigation tell you about the creation process... from idea to bill to law?
  One thing I learned is that ideas can become law in a heart beat but at the same time some ideas can take a long time just to go through that process and not all makes it. 
• Was the process easier or harder than you imagined based on your particular bill/law research?
  I think it's a hard process because it involves a lot of debate and movement at different places. 

• Explain your decision making for choosing the bill.
  -I chose the DOMA bill because I knew that there was always a lot of controversy involving this law. A mass population is effected by what they can and can't do to show love for their partner. I also wanted to see what major names put the bill into law and their perspectives on it then and now.   
  
  
• Why did you choose the particular presentation format?
  -I picked a video format because Keynote Slide Shows and certain forms of presentation were already made. So I wanted to try a sort of News/ Documentary video. Instead of keeping it boring with 5 minutes of me talking in one video, I tried to change the frames for each sentence to keep the viewers attention while I move around the screen and keeping a verbal flow. 
  
   
• What challenges did you overcome in completing the project?
  -Other than other people doing the same bill as me the only challenge was to make something different than the others. 
  
  
• How would you do the project differently if you had to do it over again?
  -I would have a different set up for my scenes, different location, better camera/ audio, and to become more fluent with my speech. 
  
  
• What did the research and investigation tell you about the creation process... from idea to bill to law?
  -As I researched I couldn't find legit websites for DOMA but I slightly referenced Wikipedia and their resources for finding my information. There was not much clarification about this act but I managed to complete the essential details for the history of the bill.  
  
  
• Was the process easier or harder than you imagined based on your particular bill/law research?
  -It was a little challenging at first but I came up with the idea of how I was gonna present this. Then it flowed together into my final production of The History of DOMA.