Telling Brooklyn Stories

This article talks about two guys. Bran merlis and jhon man beck. two of these men are Brooklyn natives. they are also book writers ,article writers , photographer sand john a publisher . they specially  seek to gather information on Brooklyn and really  share its rich history with others. and try encapsulate  the life and  life style of the people in Brooklyn then and now. these are freelancer there passion is what drives them.  trying  to create genuine images of Brooklyn. neither are trained historians .man beck thought journalism at kings borough community college and  merlis was  a former high school social studies teacher . in this article that both share hatred  for each other . both discrediting each others work.for lack sincerity,information and credibility. both believing they are truly experts in the field.

Ben McGrath’s Who Knows Brooklyn is a short article about two feuding authors Brian Merlis and John Manbeck. Both authors Merlis and Manbeck believe they have superior expertise when it comes to knowledge about Brooklyn. The origination of their feud began as Merlis felt inclined to send in a very critical and negative review about Manbecks book “Historic Photos of Brooklyn”. Merlis leads one to believe that Manbecks book is flawed as he says the book is “enumerating a host of mistakes”. Merlis is a recognized author in Brooklyn as he has written 18 book and 15 of those books are about Brooklyn. In retaliation to the criticism from Merlis, Manbeck fires back questioning the credibility of Merlis as an author. In addition to this he insinuates that Merlis is rather jealous of him as he says “I think he might have felt upstaged, because I was amassing this huge photo collection and he wasn’t doing that much”. The author of the article goes on to mention how neither of these authors are trained historians but rather self-proclaimed experts on Brooklyn. Along with this both are teachers Manbeck is a professor for journalism at Kingsborough community college and also Merlis teaches social studies in Queens, NY. From this reading I learned that some feuds are unbelievably pointless. This article serves as a great example of how ignorant people can be. I think that people should take into account criticism but there isn’t any reason to feel offended about a comment unless it is totally condemning.

this story that we read in class was about a two authors that were basically always criticizing each others work. they were both pretty old. one was 54 years old. there were some vocabulary words that were in the story that i did not understand. this story is about two authors. they write about brooklyn and the area around it. they also talk about the press and how many people just use the vanity press just to see their book published. they don’t care about the quality of the work. they just wanna see it published and out there in the public. they both criticized each other. one of them even called the other an amateur. he said that the man never had an official position. he wrote about east flatbush because he was interested in it. he didnt want to do it for the money he just did it for the heck of it. they also took many pictures because he said he requires three thousand square feet of space in order to keep the photographs. that is a lot of photographs. merlis lives on the south shore of long island but his focus is on brooklyn which is quite interesting. why does he not have that much interest in long island. maybe brooklyn has a better history. merlis has a lot of confidence in him self because he always talks about how people ask him for help. he believes he is superior in his work.

where im from, you would find many different cultures all mixed together. cultures ranging form pakisani, indian, bengali, asian, to african amercan, we all live peacefully together in harmony.

where im from, if you woke up late at night you would see yellow cans for miles parked on coney island. most of the people in my area are cab drivers. that is how they make their living and feed their kids.

where im from,  if you walked down the street you would smell delicious food being cooked by an anxious mother waiting to see her keds after a lond day of school. you would smell all the flat breads, kebabs, curry, and briyani. the aroma would just exhilarate your senses.

where im from, asian uncles and aunties bargain for every single penny to get the product cheaper. we do drive a hard bargain; iguess we’re know for that.

where im from, everyones playing basketball trying to become the next kobe bryant or lebron james and take over the nba by storm. the parks are always full with athletes from all around the neighborhood. where im from is glenwood and thats what i call home.

dear fellow students, on Wednesday in professor Davis class, we discussed about the midterm that will be coming up for both speech and English 1101 before class began. the midterm for professor Davis is next Wednesday the 17th. we are having a review n class, but  professor Davis also said that we shouldn’t only depend on the review because we wont be able to cover everything from the book. we have to also study. an it is based on chapters 1-6 only, even though we started talking about chapter seven it wont be on it. for professor Rosen , the midterm  will be held on the 22nd of October  it will be a double section for her class. we will be asked to read, write  a summary , and an essay. during class on Wednesday we stated talking about our next speech. which is an impromptu  it will have to be 4-6 minutes. you pick a topic and talk about it  the intro , three bodies and conclution all have to be a minute each

On Wednesday, our class went to the ctiy tech library and on the second floor they had a room with computers and the desktop was touch screen. We were put in to a groups of threes and we the envelop was given to us. Inside the envelop had strips of sentences and we were to put them in order to see what event comes first. We also learned how to researched and to siting properly. We researched about the Brooklyn waterfront and as a class we put took some of the information that we searched up and put it together. We also learned that what is a creditable site for researching and whats not a creditable site. For example, Wikipedia is not a creditable site for researching before the information is base on other people’s knowledge and assumptions. The site can be edited by any people.  The librarian taught us how to broaden and narrow our search results so it will be easier for us to find the information that we need.

what we learned in the library on wednesday was VERY helpful. we learned how to do research. yes this might sound like its quite simple. You might think that; maybe i just have to google it and ill get my answers. no sir, the librarian was kind enough to share with us various ways we can search articles, books, magazines, newspapers, websites and many more resources that can help us with what ever we need. we also learned how to find out if the books that we found helpful are available in the city tech library. i found this information very helpful because there are hundreds and thousands of books in the library. how in the world are you suppose to find the right one with the right text and the right information that will help you on your project or you paper. to find a book that will help you, you just simple put the topic in the search bar on the website and it points you in the direction to go. I also learned the order of how information is released. we had to do an exercise where we put everything in the correct order. this exercise was very interesting and fun. all in all i had a great time experiencing new things in the library and learning new ways to become a better researcher. i hope this information helps me on in the future when i have to write very long and meaningful research papers.