“How to Make a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich”At some point in your life, you may have experienced real hunger. Not just “nibble on this or that” until dinner is ready, but genuine gut-puckering starvation. You enter your house thinking, “Gosh! drinking my own blood could in fact be a solution to my problem!” Before beginning any acts of self- cannibalism, you head into the kitchen with hope that there will something to eat that actually tastes good.
Upon opening the cabinet doors, you spot the one food that you know never goes bad, satisfies hunger, nourishes small children, and might survive a nuclear blast on its sheer caloric content alone: peanut butter! Anyone who has ever spent time with kids knows that if you combine basic ingredients with a few simple steps, you too can make a delightful peanut butter and jelly sandwich.Obviously, peanut butter will play an important role in this process. Choosing good quality peanut butter used to be a relatively mindless activity. Either your grind the nuts yourself (and honestly, who has time for that?) or you go to a supermarket and buy a jar.
“Jif” and “Skippy” used to be the standards, and they typically come in two varieties: “creamy” and “chunky.” Please note: sometimes “creamy” tastes a little like peanut-flavored Vaseline, which will almost always result in a substandard sandwich. “Chunky” has the advantage of tasting somewhat like nuts. There are now lots of health food varieties available for purchase, but think carefully before you buy organic peanut butter.
The actual nut solid has usually separated from the nut oil, and you will need the arm muscles of Hercules to stir them back together into a usable paste. But once you have a jar of peanut butter, you are ready to move on.Peanut butter is an incredibly lonely food without its lovely, sweet sister, jelly. Some people are confused by “jelly” and “jam,” or preserves.
For our purposes here, there isn’t enough of a difference to waste more verbiage (unless you are struggling to lengthen an expository essay, in which case, knock yourself out). Jellies and jams used to be made to take highlyperishable fruit, add sugar and pectin, and render them edible all throughout cold, dark winters. Now jams and jellies taste great by themselves on scones, and of course, on bread with peanut butter. Pick any flavor you like: strawberry will never let you down, but cherry is also nice.
With your peanut butter in hand and your jelly, all you need now is bread.For some, the only bread that completes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is either white or wheat sandwich bread. Like everything else, bread is a matter of choice, but if you are serious about making a fabulous sandwich, get someone (not me) to make you a fresh loaf of bread. A hurricane could be getting ready to land on your back door, your favorite pet might run away, your girlfriend might tell you that you are scum, but you will never be let down by the healing powers of fresh bread; it truly is the staff of life.
One caveat: try to avoid savory flavors when making a sweet sandwich. Peanut butter and jelly on rosemary olive focaccia bread might make you vomit. There you have it: the three key ingredients within your grasp, and you are ready for wildly simple process of assembling your masterpiece.If you are clever enough with a knife and a spoon and also have opposable thumbs, you can put together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
First, lay one slice of bread on your palm. Some people make sandwiches on the kitchen counter, but peanut butter has a tendency to tear the bread, so you really are better off holding it in your hand. Next, take your knife and dip it in the peanut butter, taking out as much as you think you want to eat. Some people really like a thick sandwich; others hate that “tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth” feeling that unfortunately, can result if you eat too much.
Spread the peanut butter smoothly on the bread, then lay the bread on the counter and pick up the clean slice. Put your knife down and pick up your spoon. Dip the spoon in the jelly, again, taking as much as you want to eat. If you take too much, it will dribble out of the sandwich down the front of your shirt.
Don’t be a pig; go easy on the jelly. Using the back of the spoon, spread the jelly gently around the bread. When you have covered the bread, pick up the peanut butter smeared half, and put the twotogether. You can get a plate, cut the sandwich in two, and eat it at the table with a glass of milk.
Or, if you must, wolf it down in the kitchen when no one is looking.Obviously, it doesn’t require any great skill or talent to make a simple sandwich, but think about this: you may have knowledge or an ability that other people don’t have. My grandmother made up a recipe for potato cake that is so indescribably delicious that it quickly became a family tradition. She taught my mother how to make it, which was really good thinking on my old grandma’s part, because when she died, my mother was the only person who knew how to make this cake.
We begged her to write the steps down in all of their ridiculously awful, finicky detail. But at least now the recipe isn’t lost, which is, in a nutshell, why we write “how to” essays. Bon appetite!
Racism In Shakespeare
Racism in Shakespeare’s OthelloRacism and discrimination against Africans has existed long before the times of anti- miscegenation laws and lynching in the Deep South. In William Shakespeare’s Othello, we can see that racism against those of color existed even in the 17th century.
“Shakespeare’s play is the text that will at once unsettle and fill in, substantiate and resolve what the audience suspects it already knows about the essence of blackness as the savage and libidinous Other” (Little 305). Shakespeare wields the prejudice that he knows the audience has come with, by making Othello the victim of Iago’s malicious plan. “The weight of critical tradition… presents a Shakespeare who finds racial and cultural difference insignificant and who assimilates his Moor into the ‘human’ condition” (Berry 316). Shakespeare uses the preconceived notions about “Moors” and turns them into a grand twist in the play.
Though it is never explicitly said, the evidence that the protagonist Othello is, in fact, black, is overwhelming. For example, Iago says “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping your white ewe” (Shakespeare 2921), referring to Othello and Desdemona’s elopement in both a racist and vulgar way, as well as referring to Othello as a Barbary horse (Shakespeare 2921) which is lowering him to an inhumane level. Another example is when the Duke of Venice tells Brabanzio “And, noble signor, If virtue no delighted beauty lack, your son-in-law is far more fair than black” (Shakespeare 2933). Even Othello himself regards his own blackness “My name, that was as fresh as Dian’s visage, is now begrimed and black as mine own face” (Shakespeare 2961).
Some might consider these as vague examples, and would much rather interpret Othello’s “blackness” metaphorically or allegorically as the savageness of his character. Shakespeare tends to name his plays after its main character(s), for instance, Hamlet, The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, and Othello. In both Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, the most thoroughly developed characters are namely, Hamlet, Juliet, and Romeo. They are the most round characters and the audience hears their thoughts and connects with them the most throughout the plays.
On the other hand, in Othello, Othello is a comparatively weak, flat character that the audience has little interaction with. Othello has a limited vocabulary and very shallow thought process.Why then does Shakespeare choose to make Othello the main character of the play? Why does Shakespeare glorify a black character by making him a courageous and honorable General, when in most Elizabethan literature, black is viewed in a negative light? “Shakespeare invokes the negative Elizabethan stereotypes of Africans only to discredit them” (Berry 316). Shakespeare uses Othello as a sort of statement in which he points out the inconsistencies in society.
“It depends, finally, upon the ability to accuse Othello the man rather than the culture that damns him from the start, thereby making personal the definition of Othello as savage” (Little 310). The thought of committing miscegenation is so repulsive to the Venetians that they even consider it as going against nature. For instance when Brabanzio heard of his daughter’s marriage to the “moor”, he says “And she in spite of nature, of years of country, credit, everything, to fall in love with what she feared look on!” (Shakespeare 2928) Othello is respected and prized as a skilled warrior by the Venetians, but when he decides he wants to marry the fair Desdemona, a can of worms is opened and all of a sudden his race becomes an issue. Racial prejudice is a crucial issue in the play, because it isolates Othello, making him feel like some sort of an outcast.
In the play, he is very rarely referred to as “Othello”, but rather as the “moor”. Some examples of others referring to Othello as the moor include “Look to her, Moor if thou hast eyes to see” said by Brabanzio (Shakespeare 2933), “Adieu brave Moor. Use Desdemona well” said by the Senator (Shakespeare 2933), and “Were I the Moor I would not be Iago” said by Iago (Shakespeare 2920). Some argue that it is this feeling of isolation that is the root of all Othello’s troubles.
“The tragedy of Othello is that finally he fails to love his own body, to love himself, and it is this despairing self-hatred that spawns the enormous savagery, degradation, and destructiveness of his jealousy” (Little 309). It is because of this psychological complex that has formed that leads him to wonder if he is even worthy of Desdemona.Othello is understood to have at his core an essential absence, to have as his essence a lost and unlovable blackamoor self’- savage, degraded, and destructive-that always already exists as a subject within quotation marks. He has no literal self that is not already metaphorically lost or missing.
(Little 309) Othello’s incredibly low self-esteem and loss of “self” makes him more susceptible to Iago’smalevolent suggestions. Othello’s tragedy is his susceptibility to Iago, his fury at Desdemona, and his final attempts at self-justification. This is his anxiety about his blackness (Little 305). Iago takes advantage of Othello’s weakness in character in order to make him believe that Desdemona has turned her attentions toward a younger, white man, Cassio.
The true tragedy of the story is the death of Desdemona. Desdemona loved Othello regardless of his race or age. Even when her father disapproved of their marriage, she stayed by his side, disowning her duties as a daughter. The play reaches its climax after the death of Desdemona.
The question of why Othello takes his own life after her death is puzzling though. It can be argued that while Othello possessed all that he did, he realized that his life was not worth living without Desdemona. In the end, Othello realizes that his actions have destroyed the one being that did not limit him or judge him by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character (Martin Luther King Jr. 1963).
This realization leads Othello to take his own life. Othello’s very lack of a cultural identity becomes a powerful ingredient in his tragedy (Orkin 323). At the end of the play, he is left with literally nothing. The respect he once had is tarnished by the murder he has committed, the wife that loved him regardless to his race is dead by his own doing, and he has even lost his life to his misery.
It is at this point that Shakespeare alters any ideas the audience might have had going into to see the play. It is impossible to not sympathize with Othello, the black “moor”, after seeing such evil be committed by the white Iago.By stripping Othello of everything, Shakespeare brings him back to the forefront of the play and the audience’s attention. Racism has existed for centuries.
Its effects can not only be read about in history books, but in famous literary works as well. In Shakespeare’s Othello, a major theme of the play is the effect that racial prejudice and discrimination have on the main character, Othello. By victimizing Othello, and showing that true “blackness” is more than skin deep, Shakespeare turns the audience’s negativity towards a white character, Iago. This jump in philosophies represents the distinction that one should make between shallow surface judgments and a deeper evaluation of an individual’s character.
The fact that racism was prevailing in the 17th century led Shakespeare to write a play that would remove preconceived notions and replace them with the ideathat judging by the quality of one’s actions is the way to judge an individual. Work CitedBerry, Edward, Othello’s Alienation, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 Vol. 30, No. 2, Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (Spring, 1990), pp.
315-333 Published by: Rice University King, Martin Luther “I Have a Dream” August 28, 1963.Little, Arthur L, An Essence that’s Not Seen: The Primal Scene of Racism in Othello Shakespeare Quarterly Vol. 44, No. 3 (Autumn, 1993), pp.
304-324 Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University. Orkin, Martin, Othello and the “plain face” Of Racism, Shakespeare Quarterly Vol. 38, No. 2 (Summer, 1987), pp.
166-188 Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington University.Shakespeare, William, The Norton Anthology of World Literature 1500-1650 Vol. C Published by: W.W.
Norton and Company New York
Oka Crisis: Arguments Of Native People Of North America And The Europeans
Land disputes between the Native people of North America and Europeans have been ongoing throughout history, with no resolution in sight. Unfortunately, these conflicts persist. One particularly violent and intense land dispute started twenty years ago in present-day Canada.
The Oka Crisis took place in Oka, Quebec and involved a clash between the Mohawk people, Quebec provincial police, and Canadian armed forces. It had a major impact on indigenous rights in Canada, emphasizing the importance of recognizing and respecting aboriginal rights. To offer a more thorough comprehension, this paper is divided into four sections.
The text will start by introducing the group that fought for what they believed was their land and explaining its importance. It will also provide information about the historical background of the land. Additionally, it will discuss the main factors that contributed to the crisis, with a particular emphasis on how the expansion of a golf course affected the Mohawk people and increased tensions. Finally, it will present a chronological summary of the events during the Oka Crisis.
Starting with the importance of the main events, I will go through them in order of time. Later on, in the fourth section, we will explore what happened after this tragic event and analyze its impact on present-day Canada. The Mohawk Indians, or Kaniengehaga, are a tribe situated at the eastern end of the Iroquois confederation.
The Mohawk tribe consists of three clans: the Bear, the Wolf, and the Turtle. Each clan has its own chief. The Mohawk tribe had a strong reputation among early Europeans and interestingly, their Algonquian adversaries referred to them as “Mohawk,” meaning “man-eater”.
Throughout history, the Mohawk people have continuously fought for their land. In the past, this land was used by the Mohawk for hunting. Today, present-day Mohawk Indians are tired from their ongoing efforts to safeguard their ancestral land. Kanesatake is a significant settlement for the Mohawk, located in a beautiful location where the Ottawa River meets the St.
In the 16th century, the Mohawk used the Lawrence River region for hunting. But in the early 1700s, the French colonial government proposed that they move to a particular nine square mile piece of land which they thought was intended for them.
In 1961, the government took control of the land that the Mohawks believed was rightfully theirs. This ownership dispute became apparent in 1990 when the government planned to construct a 9-hole golf course on a portion of the land that included a burial ground and pine grove. However, not all residents of Oka, particularly the Mohawk Indians, were in favor of this project.
The decision to initiate legal action was prompted by the dissatisfaction with the plans, which had already resulted in the majority of the land being cleared. In 1986, despite being initially asserted in 1961, the First Nation community’s assertion of ownership over the golf course land was dismissed, despite its valued historical importance and serving as a serene resting place for their forebears.
The Mohawks’ anger towards non-native people in Canada grew due to conflicts over land usage, which ultimately played a part in the Oka Crisis. This crisis unfolded in Kanesatake, a sparsely populated municipality situated near Oka. Commencing in early 1990, the crisis persisted until September 26, 1990.
11 The crisis began when the mayor of Oka, Jean Ouellette, proposed and got approval for a plan to expand the golf course to eighteen holes.
12 This decision sparked a highly publicized dispute between the first nations and the Canadian government.
13 The government did not object to the development, as the Mohawks’ land claim had been rejected a few years earlier.
13 In March of 1990, members of the Mohawk society expressed their anger by setting up a protest in Oka specifically against the expansion of the golf course.
14 The Mohawk people were particularly angry about the expansion taking place on their ancestral burial ground and on land they believed had been granted to them in the 1700’s. This land had also been subject to a disputed lawsuit in 1961. As a form of protest, certain members of the Mohawk community constructed a barricade to prevent construction crews from entering what they considered to be their rightful land.
The barricades were placed on major highways, including the Mercier Bridge, resulting in increased tension on July 11. The Mohawks requested negotiations which were declined by the Quebec provincial government, leading to the involvement of the police and the escalation of the conflict into an armed one.
Bullet exchanges resulted in the shooting and subsequent fatality of a Quebec officer. Following an extended confrontation, tear gas canisters were utilized by the Quebec police. The occurrence quickly gained attention, prompting Aboriginal individuals from different regions of North America to unite with the Mohawk community. Even though the RCMP arrived, they were unsuccessful in reinstating peace.
The presence of the Canadian army was necessary due to the crisis in Oka, which lasted for seventy eight days and resulted in three blocked routes. These barricades caused significant inconvenience and frustration for the residents of Oka, Quebec, as they made it extremely challenging to enter or exit the town.
Police conducted stops and road blocks, resulting in significant delays for travelers. Moreover, Mohawk individuals faced additional hurdles as they were subject to thorough searches before being allowed to proceed. In contrast, non-native individuals experienced relatively easier passage, as they were perceived as being less threatening compared to the Mohawks.
Despite the constant struggle, donations made by people from Montreal provided some relief in bringing food and supplies to the Mohawk people. However, there still remained a shortage of food to feed everyone during those few months. Furthermore, the scarcity of clothing posed an issue for a large number of people.
Despite the ongoing crisis, the majority of Mohawk people persisted in wearing their traditional attire. However, acquiring essential supplies proved to be a daunting task due to strict restrictions imposed by the police. The limited number of items allowed to be brought in exacerbated the difficulty of obtaining necessary resources. Moreover, the delivery of food was heavily impeded by road blocks, necessitating thorough inspections of every package. As a result, most parcels were either returned or stored at a farm in a neighboring community.
23 The Oka crisis held a deeper significance for the Mohawk people than what was portrayed in the media. The media primarily emphasized the barricades, viewing it as a mere police story. Their perspective was that the police and soldiers were present to establish law and order, returning everything to its previous state.
According to one Mohawk Indian who experienced the crisis, many of the individuals present at the barricades were their family, friends, and relatives. Throughout the summer of 1990, Oka dominated the Canadian TV and print media as a top story. The repercussions of the Oka crisis stretched beyond the town itself, as it gained global attention and attracted supporters who joined in the escalated situation.
25 The issue of land and equal rights is a delicate matter for First Nations individuals, often resulting in tense altercations. This significant event sparked fanaticism and violent eruptions, as Mohawks sought to demonstrate the possibility of resolution.
The Mohawks received support from Quebec’s Minister for Native Affairs, John Ciaccia, who expressed his belief that it was unfair and unjust for the Mohawks to have their lands taken without consultation or compensation, especially for the construction of a golf course. Eventually, the Canadian government agreed to purchase the disputed land to halt construction. However, the Mohawk felt that their fundamental concerns were not being addressed. Their claims now extended beyond land ownership and included a demand for recognition of Native independence.
The Mohawk people were engaged in a struggle to protect their land, while the Canadian government aimed to establish peace. As the police lost control, the mayor of Oka requested the intervention of the RCMP. However, both the Mohawks and the mobs proved too much for the RCMP to handle, leading to the involvement of the army. After a duration of seventy eight days, the Mohawks dismantled their blockade and departed from the area.
On August 29th, 1990, the Mohawks reached a settlement agreement with the Quebec government. This marked the end of a major dispute known as the Oka crisis, which had a negative impact on the people of Kanesatake. During this crisis, many Mohawk individuals were arrested and it was announced that the construction of a golf course was cancelled on September 26. This day holds significant importance in history.
Despite not much changing, the relationship between aboriginal and non-aboriginal Canadians was perceived negatively, causing division within the community and problems within the council. Racism significantly plagued the Oka community during the crisis period.
However, non-natives showed their support for the Mohawks during the crisis as they perceived it to be unjust. Additionally, both sides did not gain any positive outcomes from the dispute except for the preservation of their land and the prevention of a golf-course construction. Since then, advancements have been made, including the negotiation of new treaties in various provinces.
The Oka crisis, which occurred in 1990, led to a series of protests by Native people demanding more land and rights. This fight for land and equal rights significantly influenced Canadian perspectives on aboriginal people. The impact of the Oka crisis extended beyond North America, affecting numerous individuals. Despite the Mohawk having to resort to drastic measures to gain recognition, they did so with the aim of achieving larger objectives.
After the Oka crisis, there have been multiple settlements between provincial and federal governments and indigenous peoples concerning land and treaty entitlement claims. The Mohawk people’s defense of their land has garnered attention. Despite ongoing disputes over land ownership, the treatment of indigenous communities has improved significantly. Negotiation strategies and subsequent agreements were greatly influenced by the Oka crisis, which demonstrated the extreme measures both sides were willing to take.
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