My Heritage: An Anecdote by Aulora Petrie

I remember my dad telling me stories about our heritage and what our last name means. My dad has a Scottish heritage and he adores everything to do with Scotland. My dad went on a vacation to Scotland a couple years ago and when he was there he saw our family crest. The McGregor clan has a family crest, as do the Petries. Many people in Scotland share the last name Petrie, Brown and many other names that were originally McGregor.

The Petries’ involvement in Scotland’s war for freedom is legendary. When my dad came back to the U.S. he told me about his trip and brought back souvenirs. Being Scottish is something I am proud of; Scotland is such a beautiful place. My heritage goes back to the early 1500’s and most likely earlier than that. My father told me the story about the Petrie’s fighting in Scotland’s war for freedom.

Apparently the MacGregor clan was a group of loyal Scottish people, and when Scotland was at war with the British they played a major role. In order to avoid detection or capture by the British, members of this clan changed their last names; one of these last names was Petrie. The Petrie’s were a mystery during this war, showing up for battle then disappearing into the night. Many people in the war would switch sides when offered land or when the other side was winning, but the Petries were known for their loyalty. They never betrayed Scotland.

Thanks to the loyalty of people like the Petries and others who lost their lives defending Scotland, this great land is now free. It makes me proud to be apart of such an amazing clan, a loyal bunch that are famous and loved by the Scottish people. Being Scottish is very important to me, and I love having this culture and history of my heritage. Our motto seems to always tie in with being loyal, so I’ll always keep that in mind

The Disastrous Landslide of M. Night Shyamalan

By Robert Semelsberger

Every movie season there is one director that makes a movie that will make him/her a house hold name and be remarked in the industry as a “heavy hitter,” or “the next big thing.” One single movie can express a director’s passion, creativity, and ability to convey a story. The year 1975 introduced the world to future Oscar-winner Steven Spielberg when he scared the living daylights out of the movie going audience with his first feature film, Jaws. In a similar fashion the world became familiar with director James Cameron in 1986 when he stunned audiences and movie execs with his low-budget Terminator movie, which would later spawn a long running franchise. The 90s brought a swarm of new innovative directors such as Quentin Tarantino and The Coen Brothers, but it was one director that captivated the hearts and souls of audience members around the globe: M. Night Shyamalan.

                The year was 1999; the movie was The Sixth Sense. What made the film such a success? The movie held elements of fear, suspense and all around shock. The twist ending to the movie caught almost every viewer off guard and for the most part put the icing on an already fulfilling cake. Since the film was written, produced, and directed by Shyamalan every part of the story and creativity can be credited to him. Critics were taken by this film. Felix Vasquez Jr. from Cinema Crazed called the film “an excellent premiere for new director M. Night Shyamalan as he packs a punch with a great story, excellent directing, a great cast, great performances, and a surprise ending that will leave you breathless for days on end.” Lisa Alspector of the Chicago Reader called the film “M. Night Shyamalan neutralizes Willis’s star presence with impressive plotting that’s a fine excuse for the powerful atmosphere.” Soon Shyamalan would be the go to man in Hollywood if a complex and thrilling film was wanted. Some professionals named Shyamalan “the new Spielberg.” However, a director shouldn’t be judged solely on one movie.

                As the years continued on, Shyamalan kept churning out movies, but the “creativity” he once expressed started shifting from complex and innovative to goofy and over-the- top. The main problem is that Shyamalan attempted to capture the thrills and twists he had with The Sixth Sense, but instead was one step closer to a living example that lightning only strikes once. In the movie Signs, aliens terrorize a small family on a farm. Towards the end of the movie the Shyamalan twist is revealed: The aliens’ only weakness is water. This could be one of the weakly thought out plot twists in current movie making. Why would the aliens invade a planet that is 70 percent their only weakness? Even if they killed all of mankind on earth they still wouldn’t be able to leave the continent their on. According to Shyamalan’s twist the only thing the planet needs to conquer extra-terrestrials is an arsenal of super soaker. Plus the aliens are weaklings who can easily be defeated by young man with a baseball bat. This lame twist to an already mediocre movie is just the beginning of a steady decline that is Shyamalan’s movie career.

                Shyamalan’s next movie was a little film called The Village. It wasn’t a terrible concept for a movie a small Amish village is terrorized on random nights by a swarm of evil monsters in long red robes that resemble strange prehistoric hogs. Unfortunately, the movie didn’t live up to its concept. The movie is a mess and as things attempt to get more complex it just manages to become more and more ridiculous. As Shyamalan attempts to put his signature “twist” in the movie, which reveals that the whole village isn’t really an old Amish village but instead a the middle of a huge wildlife preserve that lies in the middle of a city. The second “twist” is that the monsters mentioned before don’t really exist but are instead the elderly villagers dressed up to give the impression they are monsters to try and keep their people from leaving the village. The twists lead to asking more questions than answering them.  Once again it looks like Shyamalan’s signature plot twists had destroyed his movie, but it wasn’t until long for his next set of films to show problems much more than just their plot twists.

            After Shyamalan’s first break out of the thriller/horror genre was his “epic bed time story” titled Lady in the Water. Considered to be Shyamalan’s first real flop, the movie was neither welcomed by critics or audiences. Film critic, Jamie Gillies, for the Apollo Guide wrote “the film is a mess, a ramshackle affair. Its silliness cannot sustain itself”. One of its problems was the difficulty Warner Bros. would have marketing the film. Lady in the Water was supposed to appeal to a wider audience than Shyamalan’s previous features, but the film was a little too dark and scary to solely market to Disney Channel loving tweens. It seems M. Night Shyamalan would try to over compensate with his next film, spinning in a complete 180 degree turn, switching from magical fantasy to suspense-filled, disaster flick. His next film was the film that could hopefully rekindle the flame that was Shyamalan’s credibility in the movie industry as well as deliver his most emotional and fear-inducing film since The Sixth Sense. Those hopes managed to be completely false when The Happening hit theaters in summer 2008. Almost everything in this “movie” is stupid and beyond ridiculous. The movie centers around “killer air” that sweeps around the world and causes its victims to drop dead instantly. Not only does the storyline lack any depth, but it also lacks any basic sense. How can air sweep through a city and only kill certain people not everyone? Secondly, throughout the movie Mark Walberg leads a band of survivors to try and escape the air. How can people run from air? Shyamalan must not understand that air is every way and if one were to “escape it” they would still die from suffocation. It is this type of laziness that has been attributed to Shyamalan in recent years.

                Shyamalan was coming off a series of box office and critical bombs so he decided there was only one logical option: Adapt a Nickelodeon cartoon into a live action franchise. Like he had done once before, Shyamalan broke out of the dark, thriller genre into a more family friendly story. He wanted to take an already popular cartoon (Avatar: The Last Airbender) and basically destroy all the charm and creativity that the show conveyed. Maybe that wasn’t his intention, but that’s how it turned out when audiences got a wiff of the stink bomb that was The Last Airbender in 2010. Not only was the movie a terrible excuse for a movie, but it was a terrible excuse for an adaptation of the much beloved TV show. Shyamalan changed a number of things from the original cartoon that it would make fans of the series cringe; this included the incorrect pronunciation of almost all the characters names. Shyamalan even got mass criticism before the movie was even released when he cast white actors to play characters of Native American decent. Shyamalan tried to argue that he overlooked the ethnicity issues because the actors were “right for the part,” but in the movies it is clear that the kids in the movie can’t act very well. It was later revealed that the lead actor, Noah Ringer, was only cast because he had a martial arts background and in reality he had never even acted in a film before.  Maybe Mr. Ringer’s acting wouldn’t have suffered so much if the lines he was reading were any good, but the script (written in part by Shyamalan) lacked any substance or critical thinking. At points certain characters give long monologues that summarize what just happened in a scene along just in case the audience didn’t understand.  Furthermore, Shyamalan adds an unnecessary narrative that summarizes subplots that are barely shown on screen. The narration acts as a way for Shyamalan to condense 20 episodes of a season into one, short 90-minute movie. With a narration he can explain every little thing that is presented in the show, but here it only leaves the audience with nauseating confusion.

                What’s next in store for M. Night Shyamalan, the man who was once labeled “the new Spielberg”? That is yet to be determined. Maybe he’ll try his hand at a comedy now that he realized that most people laughed their way out of the theater when they saw The Happening. Maybe Shyamalan will adapt a Shakespearean play such as Hamlet or Romeo & Juliet. Maybe Shyamalan will do the scariest thing of all and create a second part to The Last Airbender Saga.  Whatever Shyamalan’s next film happens to be, if it’s on par with his latest series of flops then the American public should prepare themselves for an apocalyptic result at their local theater.

The Relationship Between Economic and Social Issues and the Length of WWI

By Rachel Rhoades

Due to economic and social issues, contemporaries perceived WWI as a costly and lengthy war. The fluctuating war tactics and strategies made the war longer and the need to out build other countries made this war very expensive. The new technology of aerial and naval warfare forced these countries to create new destructive war machines to compete in WWI. The social aspects of the war such as tactics, propaganda and strategies affected the length of the war. The length and cost of WWI were influenced by economic and social occurrences of the time.

In WWI, the central powers competed constantly with the axis powers to obtain the best and most efficient technology for combat. In the British Royal Navy, Fischer introduced the HMS Dreadnought in 1906. The Dreadnought made all other battleships seem obsolete because of its enhanced speed and its ability to hold twice as much firepower. After the British released this revolutionary naval machine, Germany was compelled to level the playing field and create their own dreadnought ships. They continuously attempted to out build each other. Later, when Britain rolled out the battlecruiser (which has less armor, making it fast and difficult to catch), Germany responded by making their own battlecruisers. The out building trend affected the war economically, by increasing war costs. This repeated trend of attempting to out build each other was finally settled in 1916 in the battle of Jutland between Britain and Germany. Although Britain suffered heavy casualties in the battle, they won because Germany fled the battle.

A vast majority of WWI was fought on the trenches in the Eastern and Western Fronts of the war. After the battle of Marne, a war of mobility turned into a war of complete immobility in the trenches. Opposing sides experienced a long stalemate, which contributed to the length of the war. This war strategy consisted of deep trenches facing each other and an area in between,called “no man’s land.” In trench warfare, tanks, barbed wire, grenades, poisonous gas, and stationary machine guns were utilized. The war of attrition became another war strategy that contributed to the lengthiness of the war. In the war of attrition, one country would attack and harass their opponents so much that the opponent would become very weak. This was done in the battle of Verdun when Germany attempted to “bleed France white.”

The sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 actually sped up the war, as it assisted America in making the decision to enter WWI. The sinking of the Lusitania did make the war more costly due to the need for supplies and equipment for America, and future convoys and blockades to protect the merchant and passenger ships. Another economic impact on the war was the strategy of reconnaissance. Reconnaissance is scouting out the opposing side which was most efficiently done through an air force. After reconnaissance was widely used, there was an economic demand for better planes for use in aerial reconnaissance. New tactics, strategies and the trend to out build increased the cost of the war, while trench warfare and the war of attrition contributed to the length of WWI.

The Effects of the Russian Revolution on World War I

By Sean Linley

Both the Allies and the Central Powers felt the repercussions of the Russian Revolution and the resulting treaty of Brest-Litovsk in the political and strategic spheres, but those occurrences also foreshadowed extremely significant events that all of Europe would soon experience. Politically, the events in Russia emphasized an alternative to the autocracies (constitutional or otherwise) and imperialism still heavily entrenched in Europe, while echoing the revolutionary ideals of President Woodrow Wilson, and easing U.S. entry into the War. The effects on the war itself included the closing of the Eastern Front and the diversion of small amounts of Allied forces to excite unrest in Russia. Perhaps most importantly, the treaty of Brest-Litovsk provided an intensely similar precursor to the Treaty of Versailles, and even hinted toward the political and ideological landscape of the world in the distant future.

Important though the future may be, the political implications of Russia’s withdrawal may have been the most pressing to the leaders of the Allies. The philosophical ideas espoused by the Bolsheviks were also prevalent in the United States, and generally condemned imperialism, one of the main factors in the start of the War. Just as many battles were waged with outdated tactics, they were waged for a traditional purpose: to conquer territory for the empire. However, two extremely large and (potentially) powerful nations had begun to detract from the old policies in powerful ways. England and France had little choice but to pay lip service to the Wilsonian ideals. This significantly eased the qualms of U.S. citizens had over joining a war based on imperialism, with one ally being absolutist (Tsarist Russia).

Those events played an important, if indirect, role in the strategy of WWI also, but the direct influences may have been similarly important. Most obviously, the German military was allowed to transfer a significant portion of its Eastern forces to the Western Front, allowing a slew of new German offensives later in 1918. Even so, the Russian Army was a spectre of its former strength by the time of its surrender due to frequent and resounding defeats by the better trained and equipped German forces, so many wonder as to the actual effect the Russian Revolution had on German force density on the Western Front. Interestingly, as the German war effort became slightly more focused, the Allied effort became less so, as England, the U.S., and France committed small amounts of troops to ensure that Russia remained weak. This caused the entrance of Japan into the war as to control the power of Russia in the Far East. Japan’s entrance then led to an increase in her territorial holdings and strength. These effects were relatively immediate and readily observed, but others caused much more intangible ripples to flow throughout history.

The events of, and following, the Russian Revolution either foreshadowed or set the stage for the future climate of Europe. The brutal terms of the treaty of Brest-Litovsk imposed on Russia by Germany ended up being remarkably similar to those of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. However, the Treaty of Versailles proved difficult to enforce and eventually ineffectual, while the second long-term result lasted for decades: the rise of a resource-rich and idealistic nation. The Russian Revolution led to Russia’s significant role in WWII and the Cold War. The new idea of Communism drove many peoples and countries in the post-WWII world of the Superpowers.

For the reasons in the above paragraph alone, one could easily state that the Russian Revolution was significant, but the combined effects catapult the events to extreme importance in not only WWI, but also modern history in general.