quinns western civ blog

In western civ today we had a pop quiz. The entire class was not too happy about this and  I  actually wanted to cry a little. But  it's fine I'm fine everything fine!!  After this we learned about democracy and cleisthenes.  Cleisthenes was very rich a member of the elite and he was a crafty politician. Also he was i nsulated from the “hoi polloi”.  He  saw the value of tapping into the talents, intelligence, and energies in the rest of the citizens. However he  didn't see the value of women. Cleisthenes had a huge input and influence on getting the regular people into the government. You could only be a part of this is you were considered a citizen. Years later Athens started to follow a direct democracy as their government. 

Today in Western Civ class we continued more on our notes on the Ancient Greece politics and government. The political group in Ancient Greece was very exclusive because you could only be part of it if you were a citizen, and wealthy. You aren't considered a citizen if you were a woman, born in Athens, a slave, or even if you were part of the middle class. We learned about tyrants which were people that seized power but with help.  Some of the rules in Ancient Greece  were Draco which was 621 BCE. The rule was that all Athenian’s no matter if they were rich or poor are equal under the law. However  death is the punishment for many crimes. There was Solon’s reforms was 594 BCE outlaws debt slavery. And all the Athenian citizens can speak at the assembly and can press changes against wrongdoers.

Today in Western Civ we continued going over the powerpoint on the different topics for ancient greece. We learned more about the Odyssey and Homer and talked about how people were thinking and still aren't sure if he was a fictional person or not. This was called the Homeric question. After we went over the different notes in class we started to listen to a part of the book the Odyssey until the end of class. The part of the audio that we listened to was about how  Odysseus and his men were on the island with a giant and they were stuck in his cave until he thought of the plan to stab the giant in the eye with a burning stick. They managed to escape and steal some of the giant’s sheep.

Today in Western Civilization we learned about Odyssey that a man named Homer would tell people about. Apparently he was blind so I'm not really sure how he got around. Anyway this story was about a man named Odysseus and how he was trying to make it back to his family from the trojan war.  He had been away from them for almost ten years.  We was set back from getting home many times. we got in fights with different gods and was challenged by eating things that made him hallucinate. After he woke up from that he finally made it home.

I have been sick over the weekend so I didn't go to school today.

Today was the first day of Western Civ class in the third quarter. The only thing we did in the class was set up our new blogs and talk about what is required for the blogs. Most people in our class already had a blog set up because they already had Mr. Schick for last semester in human geography. Some of the students that are new to this class had trouble with setting up the blog accounts. In this case, we took up most of the class time helping each other and figuring out the blogs. We also went of the expectations and requirements for the blogs that we have to do for each day we have class.

Today in class we went over the slide that had notes on all of  the different countries we had to study. There were some very interesting facts on the different countries leaders and their lives.   A few of  the people who were in charge had a brother who had been killed. Some of the leaders had jobs that had to do with the government and others had nothing at all involving the  government. A few of the countries population are afraid of what they would do so they feel like they have to vote for them. One guy literally bomb hospitals. HOSPITALS. You could think that a hospital would be so safe... nope. A good amount of the leaders have had affairs and multiple marriages. And there even was a cheating incident yet the people still vote for them .