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Last Day – One Baby Crane

Today was the last day of our class and the last day of the month…and we folded paper cranes.

Why would we do something so silly?

We folded these paper cranes so that we could send some to the Oklahoma City National Museum, where many similar cranes are featured or stored in their archives.. These paper cranes are a symbol of hope and peace.

So we all learned how to fold them and wrote a brief message inside.

Dr. Woodworth is sending these to the museum’s archives, a token of our thanks and promise.

I made three paper cranes that day, a big one, a medium, and a tiny one. Per Dr. Woodworth’s advice, the tiny one of mine was sent. I had remarked originally that my cranes made a family: a mommy, a daddy, and a baby! The baby crane is being sent to Oklahoma City, without his mommy and daddy.

And I would like to dedicate the baby crane to the parents whose children were taken away from them on that day, 17 years ago. Never forget.

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Oklahoman Hospitality

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Dr. Hessler –

Thank you for allowing your class to work with us this year; they are all good writers and their comments were appreciated.

Thank you for being such good friends with Dr. Woodworth, allowing that friendship to overflow into our lives.

Thank you for your ideas, which together with Dr. Woodworth’s, made this class a success.

Thank you for the class time we had together: laughs, discussions, photos.

Thank you for your students, whose kindness in class and on our tour made us feel welcome.

Thank you for coming with us to the Archives, and helping us to see beyond.

Thank you the brilliant, funny, lovely, insightful, creative maps your students made; they were a joy to peruse, to explore, to take home, and to write about.

Thank you for welcoming us to the lovely campus of Oklahoma City University; I enjoyed coming to class, eating in the cafeteria, and exploring the whole place.

Thank you for the opportunity to learn from OKalahoma City, from the things you have learned.

Thank you for helping us to see the beauty and the sorrow.

Thank you for the people we met, your students and people at the memorial.

Thank you for helping us to remember; I know I won’t forget.

Thank you, thank you.

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What a Trip, What a Class

A THANK YOU NOTE

This was a very different sort of class when compared with others I took. Greater flexibility, different assignment standards…always fun…

Yet amidst these oddities, one thing is for sure: I thought, I wrote, and I learned.

Whether I was reading some of How to Lie with Maps, writing a post, commenting on a post from an OCU student…I thought, I wrote, I learned.

But let’s be serious. The best part was the trip to Oklahoma City. And while this class is a benefit from and a creation for the University Honors Program, for the trip I am especially grateful to Mr. Nobles.

So thank you Mr. Nobles for letting us have this class. More broadly, thank you for working tirelessly to better the University Honors Program. It is an honor to be a part of it. Thank you for allowing us to go on this trip.

It was great in so many ways. Never stayed in a Hilton before. The food we ate was fantastic. I”d never been to Oklahoma City before, but it was a beautiful city. It was wonderful to connect with students at another school — and then to be able to meet them. The Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum were amazing; I cannot say how amazing that was.

What a class, what a trip.

But not without you, Mr. Nobles.

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Exploring OCU’s Library

The map I received from OCU was the Oklahoma City University Library Map by Something, Someone. To see some images of this map, and read the mapmaker’s own words, see the following links: OCU Library Map and Invisible Map.

While the maps that I and my fellow AUM students created were all made on an original, paper map of Montgomery, the OCU students chose where to maps of and used their own creative designs. Their maps were therefore quite different from ours, as is this delightful map of the OCU Library.

As I’m an English and History major, libraries mean a lot to me. I was overjoyed to receive the map of OCU’s library.

Yet this map is not just a map; it tells a story.

First, the format of this map is very creative. Originally, it looks like a book. How clever! It is titled “Oklahoma City University Library Map.” The subtitle reads, “Enjoy your exploration! ;) ” which is of course very appropriate, seeing as our class has been doing a lot of explorations. When you open up this map, it shows a color coded sketch of the five floors of the library tower. Green shaded areas reference study areas, while the purple points out book shelves. Little stars, 1-7, mark special areas. To see what these numbers refer to, you need only flip over the plastic cover page. It lays atop the inside of the map, and each number has a picture and a description of the thing. They all point out special — secret — things to see and find in the library. A place to get hot chocolate, where to learn about Native American culture, and the perfect place to study.

Due to the multi-layering of this map, it is very creative and very fun to examine. Since we got to spend sometime in the OCU library, I had a chance to visit a few of these places, if only briefly. And it was a helpful map.

I feel that this map would be especially helpful to new OCU students, to give them an insider perspective of how to get around and best utilize the library.

Because this map tells the map maker’s story, it has to lie simply in what it emphasizes. In what it emphasizes, I think it tells a lot about the map creator. For example, three of the 7 pictures show a place to see a great view! This makes me think that OCU has a great library: plenty of books, plenty of study area, and plenty of places to gaze out into the world while working.

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My Line

I am from “T-I-double-guh-err”, and the best sing-alongs-ever. I’m from the tri-state, from thistles, debtors prisons, an indian princess, and “Alis volat Propriis”.

Tigger ~ snipped from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc_b-qE9gl8&feature=related, originally from Walt Disney

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Overwhelmed

Let me be brief (because I have little time and because I don’t know what to say).

This was an overwhelming day…

Breakfast was great. Though I had the feeling (anyone with me on this?) that we were sitting in steats that “belonged” to regulars. Oops.

Then we were off to visit Oklahoma City University. What a beautiful place. Green grass, lovely buildings, and what fun students! I really enjoyed the class time, discussing/exchaninging maps, and looking around thier campsu. What a cafeteria!

And then off to the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum. This is where I have very few words. I know many of is wept, and for good reason.

Where we are staying... The Skirvin Hilton.

This doesn’t even touch on that crazy day yesterday: late flights…fancy dinner…freezing cold…

More posts to come. And pictures.

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Oklahoma City Bombing by the Numbers

Let’s look at the numbers. Here’s a compilation of vital facts about the Oklahoma City bombing and what happened before and after, all just by looking at the numbers.

4.19.1775 date of the Battles of Lexington and Concord
1977 Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building built
1983 Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was targeted by The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord
1988 McVey and Nichols, co-conspirators, meet at Fort Benning
4.19.1993 conclusion of the Waco Siege, the poor handling of which inspired McVeigh
51 days of the Waco Siege
84 dead at the Waco Siege
1994 Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building visited by McVeigh and Fortier
9 stories in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
14 federal agencies housed in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
4.16.1995 parking of getaway car
4.17-18.1995 building of the bomb
5,000 dollars, McVeigh’s approximated cost for the bombing
7,000 pound bomb
4.19.1995 Oklahoma City bombing

Events by Time
8:50 AM McVeigh enters Oklahoma City
9:02 AM Time of bombing
90 minutes later McVeigh was arrested on other charges
7:00 PM last survivor, fifteen year old girl, rescued

Deaths and Injuries
169 total deaths
168 confirmed deaths
1 unconfirmed death
163 dead in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
1 dead in the Athenia Building
1 dead in a nearby parking lot
2 dead in the Oklahoma Water Resources building
1 dead, a rescue worker killed by debris
99 dead were federal government employees
19 children killed
680+ injuries
5 percent of deaths caused by glass
69 percent of injuries outside the building caused by glass

Other
55 miles away, the bomb could be felt
1,800 9-1-1 calls
665 rescue workers
12,000 people participated in relief and rescue
16 blocks damaged
324 buildings damaged
652,000,000 dollars in damage
4.21.1995 Terry Nichols, coconspirator turns himself in
4.24.1995 McVeigh’s trial begins
5.23.1995 Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building demolished
6.2.1997 McVeigh found guilty
6.11.1997 McVeigh executed

What did I learn from this? Wow. While it’s clear McVeigh was thinking and planning for a long time…it took such a short time to happen. 169 lives in a matter of minutes.

I’m very excited to attend see the memorial and museum. How exciting to the able to be there on the anniversary of the bombing.

See you then: 4.19.2012.

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Finished!

So thankful to have this finished… Paper and pictures all posted on my new page! About 2,800 words and fifteen pictures. Not to mention my slideshow and Works Cited and Consulted. I was going to keep my citations for the photos with the photos themselves…however… formatting everything, getting the pictures and words to come together correctly… For some reason I was having some strange problems with paragraph spacing. After wrestling it with some fifteen minutes or so…I finally got everything to work out okay. I chose to keep the side panel off in order to let this feel like more of a paper…but it is so different without the indentation and line spacing… 

Anyway, the whole thing was a bunch of fun. The pictures especially were so much fun to work on. It wasn’t easy to get most any of them square…but the colors turned out nicely. 

As to the paper itself…at first, I had a hard time, or thought I would have a hard time, making the word limit. Don’t know why I thought that. I mean I never have a problem with reaching word limits…I normally surpass them. But for a while on Saturday when I was finally getting a chance to work on more than a parcel rough draft, I was a whole thousand words short.

Yet when I got to analyzing, everything came together. My thoughts all made a but more sense.

And while this is a very strange thing to note…the only thing I dislike about this whole thing is that maps I am using in my discussion don’t really match my blog’s color theme. Too bad. The maps I have later in my paper, maps from my personalized map, match my blog very well. 

And now that this step of the project is over, I’m looking forward to what is coming next…the rest of class…our next project…and especially the trip to Oklahoma City.