Sharada's Podcast!: Recent Episodes
Sharada A.
Welcome back! On the last episode of our beloved podcast, "A SANDparate Peace with Sharada, Averi, Nicole, and Drew", we discussed the themes of Reality vs. Perception, Optimism and Denial, and Aging and Change! The questions we asked today were:
“Gene describes war as being made by something ignorant in the human heart, do you think war and conflict is an inevitable part of human nature?”
"As our characters grow up, do you think there is a responsibility to these boys to fight for their country, should they feel obligated?"
Thank you for listening!
Hello Listeners! On this week's episode of "A SANDparate Peace with Sharada, Averi, Nicole, and Drew", we discussed the themes of Jealousy and Loyalty! The questions we asked today were:
“How do you define the relationship of Gene and Phineas?”
“Did Gene mean to hurt Phineas when he shook the branch?”
“Phineas is described as loyal on many different levels to what he is participating in, do you think that if these loyalties clash , it ceases to be any real loyalty at all?”
Thank you for listening!
cc:
"(heavy breathing) I- I made it out. I made it out of the picnic. Hello, this is T130, or Sharada, and I escaped the picnic. It all started at the T School of Forplantningsland. I was walking back to the Homestation until these other kids stopped me. They started pushing me around and telling me to go against the chip. I just wanted to run away and tell my Homestation progenitress that they were going against the laws, but I was cornered with nowhere to go. (more heavy breathing) When I tried to walk away from them, they just started laughing and calling me horrible things. I felt like a coward. Fear rushing through my brain, I decided to do what they told me to. To try to escape the chip. When I agreed to doing so, they took me to an alleyway behind an empty school and sat me down. I took a few deep breaths and started calming down. I closed my eyes and focused. Oh how I wanted to get out of that alleyway. I was almost going to be sent to my new household, they even gave me a name. But nonetheless, I did what they told me to. I tried to forget whatever I knew, forget the land I knew was in front of me. After what seemed like hours of concentration, I opened my eyes. It was barren. The air was foggy. There was a dead body on the ground. Internally I heard an alarm, a voice rather, telling me to get back to my given vision. But I couldn't. I was already in too deep. Tears flew down from my eyes as I looked at the world around me. There were ripped up clothes on the ground, the reminder to stay with the chip was just a blank piece of paper. Even the school I knew looked as if it was from the mythical tale of the creation of Toxopia. Everything was different. Everything had changed. I broke down onto the floor sobbing, wanting to go back to what I knew, wishing I had never seen what I just witnessed. I felt something grab my arms. I thought it was just my conscious tricking me once again, until I heard a voice. 'This girl has broken the law, I repeat this girl has broken the law.' They scanned me and found out my number. I was knocked out and pushed into a vehicle. When I woke up, I found myself tied up next to hundreds of others. My vision was restored. There were racks of food in front of us. When we were untied we were forced to stuff ourselves with as much food as we could, in fear of getting knocked into the large fire in front of us. As I stuffed myself with food I felt as if I was sinking. I looked down and saw a hole covered by layers of cloth. I looked to make sure no one saw me and I used my dinner knife to cut through the cloth, revealing an underground tunnel. I pushed myself in and crawled as far as I could get. Five minutes in, I could hear the guards questioning my disappearance. I could hear guards attempting to crawl into the hole I was travelling through. Once I saw a little bit of sunlight, I crawled upwards and started bolting. The only sight of the picnic I could see was the fire that once stood right before me. I stopped at a green sight with an odd name on it. Something I never saw in my usual vision, meaning I had gone far enough to where the chip doesn't work anymore. But of course, in a world like this, I can never be certain. I know the dictator is coming for me and I know I may only have a few moments left but if so, wish me luck. This is T130, or Sharada. The first escapee of Toxopia. For now."
cc:
Slavery in America began when the British colonists came to colonize land. They wanted labor forces, so they took the Native Americans as their labor forces. However, since the British brought disease from their homeland, they passed it onto the Native Americans and they died. Their second labor forces were the indentured servants. They were Englishmen and women who had a contract to be the servant of another for a certain amount of time. However, once their contract was over, many did not want to work again as they were already living happily with their 50 acres, so that labor force ended. The third labor force were African Americans. Unlike indentured servants, African Americans didn’t have a choice to work for the Europeans, and many of them didn’t have any contract, so the owners could keep them for as long or short of time as they wanted. For these reasons, African American slaves soon became a constant with all of the British colonies. In today’s world, we don’t use African Americans or people of color as unpaid servants, but we do have a lot of discrimination and racial injustice in the world. For example, “practices such as ‘redlining,’” or how “banks once drew red lines on maps to mark off neighborhoods where they wouldn’t lend money to,” is a prime example of the social injustices in America.
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In the colonial period, representative government was created when people who wanted to move for certain reasons came to America and established their own colony. In the 1620’s the Pilgrims, wanting religious freedom from the Church of England, came to America and established Plymouth with the Mayflower Compact, which was a document establishing the rules and guidelines of the Plymouth colony. In 1619, the Virginia House of Burgesses was established, which was a group of 22 representatives for 11 settlements that made and executed laws and taxes. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, like the Mayflower Compact, was a document establishing the colony and setting the rules and guidelines. This reminds me of the US Government today. We have 3 branches of government that each deal with certain important matters. The legislative branch makes laws and is “made up of 435 members and is divided among the 50 states in proportion to their total population,” with the congress, senate, and house of representatives. The executive branch executes laws and includes the president, vice president, and cabinet. The judicial branch interprets laws, or enforces the law, and consists of the supreme court and other federal courts.
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Where we live heavily impacts how we live. For example, the New England colonies were all close to the Atlantic ocean, which is why their major economies include trading, fishing, and shipbuilding. The Middle colonies had pretty good soil, so they grew cash crops such as corn, wheat, indigo, tobacco, etc. The Southern colonies had very rich soil, so they built plantations and made their money that way. Today, with the struggle of COVID-19, many “indigenous communities face severe challenges.” Many live in “remote locations and rely on under resourced health systems.” So where they live impacts their health because that area cannot get the resources it needs to help patients with coronavirus.
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People move for many different reasons based on their circumstances. Many move to a different place because they want the right to believe in what religion they believe in, also known as religious freedom. In the 1600s the Pilgrims came to Massachusetts because they were persecuted, or judged, for having opinions against the Church of England. The French came to America to escape, but not mainly religious persecution like the Pilgrims. They came to America to escape the Potato Famine so that they could farm again and restart their economy. Today, people move to America for some of the same reasons, one of them being persecution in certain people’s homeland. The Uighur Muslims in China are facing just that. Because China has suspected Uighurs of doing things against China’s law, they have been plopped in concentration camp-like environments. Many also move for economical reasons. In fact about half of individuals relocate “for career advancement and/or more money.”
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The colonies of the New England regions were, and still are Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire. Two of the most significant cities are Plymouth, Massachusetts, which is the first self-governing colony from England, and Boston, Massachusetts, which is where trading, fishing, and whaling occurred, since it was the main port city of the New England colonies.
The Economic activity in the New England colonies consisted of trading, fishing, whaling, and building ships. When the settlers arrived, they attempted to farm, however the soil was too rocky, so they used their forests, the sea and their ports to make profit.
One of the leaders of the New England colonies was Thomas Hooker, who founded the Connecticut colony for religious and economic reasons. Rhode Island was founded by Roger WIlliams for religious freedom. Massachusetts bay colony was founded by a group of Puritans, the Pilgrims, seeking religious freedom. New Hampshire was founded by John Mason for religious freedom.
The climate of geography of the New England colony includes moderate summers and cold, long winters, and it has the Appalachian Highlands like other colonies. However, unlike other regions with rich soil, the New England colonies have very hilly lands, rocky soils, and jagged coastlines.
The natural resources of the New England colonies included fish, whales, trees, etc., which were more important than agricultural colonists because of the rocky soil, as I stated earlier.
Religious ideas of the New England colonies included the occurrence of when a slave from the West Indies told the girls in Salem about witches. The girls then falsely accused others of witchcraft, and the clergy saw the witch hunts/trials as God’s sign to return to a stricter Puritan lifestyle.
The government of the New England colonies were all self-governing, as they all came to the US for religious freedom.
cc: Hello everyone and welcome to the first and most likely last episode of US History with Sharada. I’m your host Sharada, and today we are going to be talking about Jamestown vs. Plymouth. Which colony was better?
Let’s begin with the date of each colonization. Plymouth was colonized in 1620, however Jamestown was colonized in 1607. This doesn’t technically mean anything, considering they weren’t that many years apart, so no colony is better than the other in this category.
Let’s look at location and climate. Jamestown is located in Virginia, and Plymouth is located in Massachusetts. There are pros and cons to each location, but if you think about the location of each state, Massachusetts is north of Virginia, so the temperature is cooler, which means colder winters. This means that Jamestown’s location was better than Plymouth’s, although the Pilgrims didn’t really mean to land at Plymouth.
As for the motives of the Virginia Company and the Pilgrims, the Virginia Company came to Jamestown for economic reasons. They wanted gold so that they could live a better life than they did in England. The Pilgrims came to Plymouth for religious freedom, or basically wanting to live a freer life. Both the Virginia Company and the Pilgrims came for living a better life, but I feel that the Pilgrims came for a better reason, freedom, which is what we like to believe is the basis of America.
The main and most significant leader of the Virginia Company was John Smith. He saved the people of Jamestown from Native American attacks and helped establish Jamestown. The main leader of the Pilgrims was John Carver. He wrote the Mayflower Compact and was the first governor of Plymouth. I believe that John Carver was the better leader because he wrote Plymouth’s self-government document, which is what built the government.
The problems they faced were very similar. The Virginia Company faced famine, disease, and neighboring native american attacks, which were dealt with by John Smith. The Pilgrims faced difficulties aboard the mayflower, for example rough seas that made it difficult to reach their destination, and when they were settling, an epidemic of disease that struck over half of the settlers that led them to their death that winter. These problems are very similar, so none of them are better.
The importance of the Virginia Company in US History is the fact that they were the first permanent English settlers. Other than that, they didn’t do anything that hadn’t already happened. The Pilgrims, however, came to America without a charter, due to their wishes for religious freedom, so they started their own government. The Mayflower Compact was the first self-government document on Cape Cod. In this case, the Pilgrims are better because they started their own government whereas the Virginia Company was led by King James I.
In conclusion, you can’t really tell which colony was better, but in my opinion, Plymouth was the best out of the two. Their reason for coming to America was better in my opinion because it involved activism in choosing to go to America, and it reflects what our nation is today, a diverse, mostly accepting, mostly free country.