Welcome...and initial guidelines...

This blog will be used in the spring of 2008 by 80+ students at Drexel University to investigate the effects of Iraq on culture and the reverse. Our goal will be to better understand why the US is in Iraq, and to question whether literature can help us on this journey.

Weekly plans and other materials will always be posted in Vista, not this blog. So go to Bb Vista to get the discussion prompts and other instructions.

I intend this blog to manage our discussions and track our collective investigation.

You should have received an email from me inviting you to become a contributor to this blog. The email was sent Monday afternoon to your official Drexel email address.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Albanian Memorial Day

In my country there’s a memorial day too. It is celebrated on May 6-th every year. When I think of this, it always comes to my mind the patriotic songs they made us study in school. They were made in war time (when my country was fighting for independency against fascists and Nazis). They were made to encourage Albanian soldiers (a.k.a Partisans) who weren’t in fact proper soldiers but normal people fighting for their own country, for their own families.
That is the relationship I can make to myself and Memorial Day. Even when I forgot about it, I just had to turn on the TV and see that every channel was broadcasting war songs. This way I could tell that it was Memorial Day.

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