Legacy of a Fashionista.

My legacy cannot ever be defined until I'm gone.
Thought 1: Being in the major of fashion design I'm really intimidated because the fashion world is a cruel place. You need to get your name to come out of the mouths of wanting customers, but it's a tough road to that goal. Being so intimidated by what my future holds simply makes me strive to be even more determined and more unique in my designs. I am an 18 year old girl with a head full of ideas and thoughts that are individual and different from anyone else's.
Thought 2: I believe that everyone leaves behind some sort of legacy. That legacy might be that of a famous basketball player for the Miami Heat, or maybe you're a crazy scientist like Albert Einstein, or maybe you desinged the wedding dress of Carrie Underwood, or maybe you touched hearts through music like Aretha Franklin. Whatever your contribution is to the world at large you're leaving behind a memory of yourself so that after you are dead and gone you are remembered. Maybe you won't be remembered forever but someone somewhere will know of your legacy.
Thought 3 and 4: Pertaining to my legacy I think I will leave behind a designer's leagacy. I will leave all my wedding dresses, cocktail dresses, ruffled blouses, flared floral skirts, the original t-shirt with a touch of class, and any other design I might think up. Historical legacy? Not quite. I will never be known as General Tasse of the Armed Forces; I'll never defeat Lord Voldemort; I will never find the cure for cancer. I won't be historically known per se but I will have my place in history. Everything anyone does is history right? History is the branch of knowledge dealing with past events according to dictionary.com. So to answer my question, yes. History is everything anyone does at any given time. If it's in the past it's history. I am history now, and I always will be. So in a way I am leaving behind a historical leagcy.
Think about it.

1970-1989.

While there is much history that is known fact of the seventies and eighties, I like to learn the stuff that no one really knows. I looked up some events that happened in the 1970’s and 80’s. I thought it was interesting to look at history from a different approach. I mean floppy discs and Pac-Man is still a part of a history, just not the war and presidents part. 

1970's-

The Beatles break up, Elvis Presely dies, ESPN began broadcasting, the ultrasound was first used, The Star Wars movie was released, the Alaskan pipeline was completed, the Tangshan earthquake killed over 240,000 people, Microsoft was founded, abortion became legal, Richard Nixon is president, Disney World opened, floppy discs were invented, bar codes were introduced, Paul Getty was kidnapped, Kent State Shootings, first Earth Day, cigarette ads are banned from T.V., E-mail is invented, Watergate Scandal, Bicentennial, MRI is used, Jonestown Massacre, first test tube baby, and 11 people are trampled outside The Who concert.

1980's- 

Ronald Reagan is president, post-it notes are introduced, CNN and MTV hit television, John Lennon is assassinated, the Pope is shot by a crazy Turkish man, Pac-Man is introduced, Spain allows divorce, "cause this is thriller", liposuction is introduced, Tylenol scare, first artificial heart transplant, cabbage patch kids are released, CD's are released, AIDS is discovered, infomercials, crack cocaine starts to appear, Nintendo is introduced, Challenger explodes, Bruce Willis marries Demi Moore, world population reaches 5 billion, condom commercials start to appear on T.V., the first plutonium pacemaker is made, McDonald’s appears in the U.S.S.R., Human Genome project begins, fall of the Berlin Wall, and there's a worldwide ban on ivory. 

Scary thing, that is.

May 4, 1970 was a very historical day in the history of Kent State. Students held an anti-war protest against the Vietnam war. It took place at Taylor Hall near the liberty bell on campus. According to dept.kent.edu there were about 500 actual "core demonstraters", about 1000 people acing as a cheering squad so to speak, who weren't quite participating in the demonstrations but definately urged them on. To make a grand total of approximately 3000 people at this rally, about 1500 were simply spectators. Also present at twelve noon, were about 100 Ohio National Guardsmen. Students and instructors alike as well as others present at or around the liberty bell were told to disperse by a police man with a bullhorn. After the bullhorn didn't work he got into a jeep and drove into the crowd, only to be met with rocks and nasty words being thrown his way, so he retreated. After this General Canterbury (general of the national guard) ordered his men to lock and load. Then all hell broke loose and shots were fired by the National Guard. Among the shootings between 61 and 67 shots were fired in a 13 second period. Four Kent State students died in the mayhem and nine were injured. After the shootings the Natoinal Guard retreated and ambulances and parents were called and the school shut down until the summer.

If I had been a student at Kent during the rally, shootings, Vietnam War, and the 70's, I would've probably been somwhere within view of the rally at the bell. It's a really scary thing that the National Guard was called to a school in Ohio, where nothing significant ever happens. I feel as though I would've been an unlucky spectator who might've gotten shot in the throat. And that is a scary thing.

  

"...whatever the sacrifices, however long the struggle...until Vietnam is fully independent and reunified," - Ho Chi Minh. 


Since I'm not all into the historical value of this war like I should be... I plan on telling you, my readers, about the hippies, and the new era of music, and the changing times because of the war. 


Hippies: long hair, colorful ensembles of clothing, abundant in jewelry, and playing their guitars. Hippies were a culture within the 1960's. They wore loose t shirts, headbands to hold back their long braided hair, woven belts, jeans fashioned with patches of all sorts. Hippies were a people of peace and tie-dye. They ate organic food and lots of them were vegetarians. They were of the earth and in tune with Mother Nature. Hippies were often high from smoking weed, and they let themselves go basically. They were full of free spirit and were all about the love and peace. They hated war and were definitely anti-vietnam. 


Music during this era changed; rock 'n roll sprung forth. Bands like The Beatles, and The Rolling Stones and The Doors became popular. These artists simply fed the hippies their drugs. The Beatles were almost always stoned, or "on something" when they wrote their songs which are still popular today. One of their songs, "Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds" is an acronym for LSD- the drug the 4 Beatles were likely taking at the time of writing their music. One of my favorites by The Beatles is the classic "Yellow Submarine". [: 

History in Action.

The world is a cruel and hateful place... unless you can learn to embrace change and diversity. All they wanted was the same rights. All they wanted was to be accepted. Africa American peoples were discriminated against because of their skin color. Naturally, the African American people fought back. They didn't go and bomb the White House, they didn't shoot and stab whites, instead they organized small acts to stand up for themselves through a peaceful fight. They did things such as: the Greensboro sit-ins where black skinned college students sat at the lunch bar in a local diner, in 1961, they went on 'freedom rides' through the black-hating south, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I have a dream..." speech during the march on Washington. People such as Rosa Parks, the African American woman who wouldn't give up her seat to a white man, Ella Baker, who helped to organize sit-ins and protests, and Dr. King, who gave faith adn hope to the African American people are the people our history needs to look up to. They found a way to fight back and stand up for themselves and their own rights without causing destruction to any other race or peoples. People in history like the people listed above are a large factor in the all embracing United States.
Personally, I would like to think I would be the same in this regard; standing up for what i believe in at all costs. But I guess you'd never really know for sure until you were put directly into the situation. I mean, I'd stand up for what i believe in, sure. But would I ride a bus through a community that hates me knowing that I'd get attacked... I don't know. I'm not stupid, but if I thought it'd be worth it I just might.

My beloved June; reunion.

Dear my darling June,
The war is now over and I am finally coming home to you. I know you are probably hiding in one of those nuclear bomb shelters you wrote me about but I still worry about your safety, my dear. Many of us in the war force are concerned that there are communists traitors living and breathing in the United States government. It is a very scary thing, but for now we are safe; HUAC has begun to pick out the traitors and accuse them. Our favorite senator is backing up all these accusations as well. I couldn't be happier to come home to my beloved June, start a life with her, live the american dream. We can get a car, have those strong little men you've been yearning to mother. We can even move to the city! Sweetheart, white picket fences and homemade cookies are in our future. Our children will be well fed, nurtured, and taught in the new desegregated schools. I'd love to name our first-born after your father. We will talk more about this after our reunion. My darling June, I've never loved until I loved you as such. We shall be wed first thing, and upon marriage we will buy our house to start living our life together. Dearest June, when I lay eyes upon you I will be as happy as a small child on Christmas morning! I'll be seeing you soon my love.
Yours always,
Kenneth

(This is fake.)

Bring them home.

The reading for this week really moved me. Each letter was from a soldier at war. The soldier wrote the letter during the fighting, shooting, killing to tell whomever of life at war. The first letter was from a sergeant and he told about how he was justwaiting for the fighting to start and then suddenly it begins. AS this sergeant is amongst the "shelling" and dead men who are piling into a tunnel he is tired and waiting for guys of enemy lines to come along and finish him off. As he waits he simply eats a treat of canned pineapple. He finishes the letter saying to get this to his mother... This is my opinion is so very heart breaking. Here is a soldier, a sergeant nonetheless, who is just waiting to be shot and killed. From the letter I've gathered that he wasn't even fighting back. I don't know why but it's a sad thing to be waiting for death in a small hole eating pineapple as your last dinner.
On December 24, 1942, Christmas Eve, a man writes home to his mother and dad with sad news. This man, John, has been hospitalized with many other men because of war injuries. He lacks memory and has injury to his back which makes further serving his country impossible. He's been living a life of Hell, if I may be so bold; 4 hours of sleep out of 72, little food, little hope, fighting every day and seeing men from his platoon die next to him in battle. He writes to his parents about being immobilized and having nightmares and numerous flashbacks but ends his letter saying "Ah, well, let's not think, but just be happy that we'll all be together soon." Even through complete hopelessness he continues to look forward. I admire this man, John.
Basically all the letters were so so sad. One told of seeing firsthand the concentration camps in Germany... another told of his life day by day...moving here, fighting there, killing here, being shipped there...one man tells of his best buddy...these stories of soldiers are just so terribly heart wrenching and sad. I've always supported our troops but thsi makes me love them all the more.