NYHS museum trip

The trip to the NEW YORK HISTORIAL SOCIETY MUSEUM greatly differed from that of the MET experience. At the MET, all the exhibits seemed to be uniquely focused on and organized. At the NYHS, the exhibits were more of made into like a collage type. The exhibits were vibrant and interesting to read. There were recordings available to listen to, there were prop jet planes in the air above our heads, and there were bright lights and signs taken from the 42^nd street area where most soliders back then would spend their time if they were in New York before going off to the war. The people in the museum were people of all ages. There were defiantly an older crowd as well as a few young people checking out the exhibit. Some things that caught my eye were the newspaper of “Hitler dead in chancellery, Nazis say: Doenitz successor, orders war to go on: berlin almost won; U.S armies sweep on”. I Found it interested how the main heading in the newspaper of that time had multiple titles or messages as oppose to the headings newspapers use today are different. I read in one exhibit, out of all the armed forces the army had the most people, at 10,420,000 men alone. The navy came second with 3,546,179, the marines was third and lastly was the coast guard. There were statistics of the casualties in WW2 which saddened me as well as caught my attention, 60 million people died which included 400,000 americans and 18,000 new Yorkers. Another sad statistic I read in the last exhibit, “the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed 135,000 and 50,000 people respectively. Some perished instantly while others died from the after effects of radiation.” 

Met trip

                In the exhibit there were artifacts almost everywhere you looked as well in the corners above your head. As I moved through the exhibits I noticed each room had a quote to look up at and read. I recall one basically said that no matter how many photos were taken and no matter what books or evidence was recorded from the war, no body will ever know the true harsh realities of that war unless you were living in those times. I found this to be pretty interesting and scary at the same time because it makes me wonder what else may have went on that the public doesn’t know of.  One artifact that caught my attention most out of all, were one of the last ones which was the “100,000 dollar reward for the murderer of Lincoln” poster. The poster had 3 suspects , John wilkes booth, john Surratt, and david herold. Within 24 hours of Lincolns assassination, the secret service went to work by posting these poster. I found this interesting because I did not think the Secret Service was around that far back. One of my favorite areas of the exhibition were the medicine exhibition. Here they had many photos and artifacts of those injured in battle and how they were tooken care of, as well as amputations and more. There was a photo of a young man with his elbow blown off, and the caption next to the photo basically reads that the man was 20 years old and admitted to Harewood Hospital April 2^nd 1865 wounded by a minie ball gunshot in the right forearm and elbow.” The bullet entered at anterior surface, upper third, making its exit from inner aspect of elbow joint, facturing condyle of humerus in its course.”

The trip to the MET to observe the civil war exhibit was a new experience for me. Ive been to the MET before however the space and atmosphere within the civil war exhibit was different than that of any other exhibition in the entire museum. It was extremely quiet, the walls were painted a dull color, mostly greys and whites, and you got this sorta sad vibe once you stepped in. I noticed the vast majority of people there were elders, though there were some younger crowds. The people in the exhibit seemed to be very knowledgable on the artifacts in the exhibit as I heard them giving facts as I walked past them.

4/12/13 assignment

In the short story the Lynching of Jube benson, main character, Jube, was accused at the end of the story of murdering the daughter Annie which the doctor had a thing for. When Annie was asked who the culprit was, her final words before death were, "that black...", judging off of what she said, everyone persued Jube. When captured, Jube pleaded not guilty to this crime but was hung regardless so that everyone can see. Immediately following his death, Jubes brother entered the scene and yelled that he was not the true murderer but a white man who had covered himself in dirt/mud to disguise himself as a black man, had murdered Annie. In Sport of the Gods is about a family that was ruined. The father in this short story, Berry, spent some years as a slave and then as a family butler, was accused of stealing money from Frank and was arrested and found guilty of the crime, but afterall we do find out that Berry is in fact falsely accused. Both stories are extremely similar that both include slaves that are actually trusted, and given acceptance, and when something goes wrong or out of place, all fingers are automatically pointed toward them without any real evidence because in that time, blacks were thought of as automatically being the one who "did it". I would not have guessed that both stories were written by the same author either especially being that they were written in the same time period you would think that Paul Dunbar would have used similar tone or language in both texts, but in my opinion the tone and language used in the short story 'the lynching of jube benson' was much more stronger and complex than that in The sport of the Gods.