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The film Skylark is a wonderful continuation of the previous movie Sarah, Plain and Tall. The events take place in 1912 and are an accurate portrayal of history.

The story revolves around the Witting family who face new challenges of a drought and the possibility of fire looming over their farm. With these threats, the bonds of love and commitment between the family members (Sarah, Jacob, Anna, and Caleb) are tested. Cast members include Glenn Close as Sarah, Christopher Walker as Jacob, Lexi Randall as Anna, and Christopher Bell as Caleb. While Joseph Sargent and Glenn Jordan directed the film, David Shire served as the composer, Michael Brown as the editor, Mike Fash as director of photography, and Joseph Sargent again as the movie’s producer. Skylark is the second movie of a trilogy with Sarah, Plain and Tall and Winter’s End preceding and following it.

The story is based upon a novel written by Patricia MacLachlan who originally did not believe in sequels but then realized the characters of Sarah, Plain and Tall should be explored and expanded. With the second movie, many people, both in front and behind the camera, returned from the first. The cast stayed in a town called Emporia which was twenty five miles from the farm in which they filmed the movie. This farm which served as the location of production, was a real 240 acre Kansas farm owned by John and Ada Bryan. During the two-year time gap between the first and second movie, the owners of the farm decided to modernize their kitchen by replacing their wood stove and ice box refrigerator with state of the art appliances, new cupboards, sinks, and countertops. This presented a problem since many of the scenes in Skylark take place within the kitchen. In order to solve this dilemma, a construction crew worked round clock for four days replacing the 1992 kitchen with an 80-year-earlier Kansas farm house kitchen. After the film was completed, (more…)

By definition classical means the standard of something, and the Greeks’ new ideas of politics, literature, philosophy and science, set the standard for the civilizations to follow. The influence that Greece had on civilization can be seen even in today’s society.

Greece was set up in city-states, or the polis. City-states were small regions that surrounded land used for agriculture. Because the city-states were small, each citizen had a political relationship with the government. Early Greece was governed by aristocrats, then in the 5th century, the idea of democracy, and political participation by the citizens took over. Most cities strongly believed in the participation, and loyalty of (more…)

During the early 1930’s the United States was amidst the abyss of the Great Depression and right on into the early stages of World War II, unprecedented support from the Federal government was allocated to the world of the arts. For eleven years, between 1933 and 1943, artists, actors, writers, musicians, dancers and photographers were employed through federal tax dollars. Never before in the history of our great nation had the United States government been such an advocate and a sponsor of the arts. The recently inaugurated president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was at the head of this great undertaking and it was obvious that during his first one-hundred days of the New Deal he felt the urgency to put Americans back to work.

By the end of 1932, almost thirteen million Americans were out of work and the soup lines and homelessness were a direct result. Artists from al fields were not immune to the effects the Great Depression had placed upon society. The inability to procure the necessary material with which to work would immediately force the painter, the writer, the musician, and the actor into a world of joblessness. Through the New Deal Roosevelt had put into action, arts projects provided work for these unemployed artists. The scope of this New Deal for the arts would go even farther concentrating itself somewhat on the promotion of American art and culture. Through this President Roosevelt hoped to give more Americans access to what he described as “an abundant life.” For many Americans the projects enabled them to see an original painting for the first time, attend their first professional theater, or take their first music or drawing class.

As with all plans or projects one must expect that along with the positive aspects there will surface some negative. From the beginning there did exist some controversy concerning the arts projects. Believing them to be wasteful propaganda some politicians wanted them ended while others wanted them expanded. This controversy, along with issues associated with the United States’ entry in World War II would eventually end the projects. But much of what was accomplished during those eleven years still exists for our learning experience and enjoyment.

Embedded within much New Deal art was the aspect of Artistic Nationalism. Many forms in which things American existed had an interest taken in them. State and Regional histories were produced by writers, daily life during the Depression was documented by photographers, American heroes (more…)

The Americas are what they are today because of what happened before, during, and after the exploration and colonization of the Americas. Many things contributed to the beginning interest in the Americas, like the crusades of the 11th – 13th centuries and the travels of Marco Polo. The culture of the Americas is due to the protestant reformation, the renaissance, and the defeat of the Spanish armada.

The crusades marked the beginning of exploration and adventure. The European people started to obsess for Asian products, such as silk, drugs, perfumes and spices. There were many other goods the European people needed and wanted. They also sought cheaper prices on merchandise that weren’t from the Mediterranean. The Europeans experimented with new ways to sail to the Asian countries so they (more…)

I. Western Philosophy

Western philosophy first came about when a philosopher named Thales, who was born in approximately 585 B.C., became the first man to think outside the box and sway away from using myths and gods as the answer for all intellectual questions. Known as the first Greek philosopher, Thales initiated a way of understanding the world that was based on reason and nature. Once he revealed this whole new way of philosophizing, Western philosophy was born. There are many different subjects that Western philosophy covers, including logic, natural philosophy, ethics, poetics, and metaphysics. Philosophy can be described as the certain knowledge of things through their ultimate causes seen in the light of the principles of reason.

Western philosophy consists of expanding the mind and exercising the intellect. It differs from other types of philosophy because it is the only type that analyzes things to such a certain extreme. For example, under Western philosophy, the very question of what is beauty? Is brought up under the subject of poetics. While a normal human being living today would not really think twice about what is beautiful, Western philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas suggest that the beautiful can be reduced to the good, nevertheless it differs from it in concept. It is a special kind of good that which pleases on being the continues to go on and discuss the concept of both good and beauty.

Not only are things such as beauty philosophized about, but also things such as truth, what it is, and if we as people can actually know truth. The study of truth is what makes up epistemology, a category of the subject Metaphysics. Philosophers known as skeptics argue that humans can never know truth, while those in opposition believe that evidence is the decisive factor in determining truth. Questions such as these (more…)