Week 8 readings.

In the fourth grade I had to memorize the Gettysburg Address. I remember that assignment being so hard. I would memorize little bits of it each day until I could remember the whole thing. I spent so much time just memorizing it never crossed my mind to think about what Abraham Lincoln meant when he wrote the Gettysburg Address or why it's significant. Listening to the Gettysburg Address today I was stunned how short it was. I think that's one of the reasons it was so powerful when it was first delivered. I thought the power point presentation was amusing just because out of all the documents and speeches given in our nation's history I think the Gettysburg Address is the least appropriate speech for a power point presentation. Though I would really like it if President Obama used a power point presentation for the State of the Union Address.
As far as the Declaration of Independence goes, I can sympathize with Thomas Jefferson. It must of been hard to watch a document that you've work so hard on and that's so important be subjected to other ideas and torn apart. My favorite part of the reading was the very end where it mentions that the calligrapher made mistakes and had to make a few unattractive corrections. I would love to see one of the Dunlap prints with the "haphazard" capitalization. I'm curious to know which version King George III received. The Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address are both very significant to the history of the United States so I think it's really interesting how one was distributed like propaganda and the other was written on the back of an envelope. It's a good reminder that a message doesn't need to be formal to be important.