#jake larson

[grits-gal-raised-in-the-south]

Why Is June 6th Called D-Day?

An alignment of the Moon (bright) + Tide (low) + Weather

Utah Beach - D-Day

"At 0630 the first assault waves from the 4th Infantry Division would hit the beach at the Uncle Red Sector of Utah Beach. Today we remember their sacrifice and that of all those who fought here in Normandy Utah Beach - D-Day"

"Every year, on the anniversary of D-Day, French citizens take sand from Omaha Beach and spread it over the graves of the fallen soldiers who gave their lives to liberate Europe. This gives the lettering a golden glow. They do this for the 9,386 American soldiers buried there."

"I was the 1st 1 into the landing craft & this boy, I don't think he was say 17 years old yet...he got a little scared, he let us off early. We were right up to our neck in ocean that is loaded with landmines! We'd be crossing about 1 million landmines that they had planted. We received a lot of small arms fire from the shore, it didn't bother me one bit! I was afraid of stepping on a landmine! I went through six (6) battles---I never got a scratch---- so I could get a Purple Heart, that's extra time off!!!!!!"-Papa Jake Larson, age 102 World War 2 Veteran

"I've got happy tears."-SGT Jake Larson, Author of The Luckiest Man in the World

Joined National Guard at age 15yo for money, paid $12 every 3 months "but it was like money from Heaven"

Every year on the anniversary of DDay, French citizens take sand from Omaha Beach and rub it onto the gravestones of fallen soldiers who gave their lives to liberate Europe. It gives the letters a golden shine. They do this for all 9,386 American soldiers buried there.

This AVC Compilation brings together three incredible perspectives from paratroopers of the famed 101st Airborne and what each of them experienced jumping into Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Featured veterans: Colonel Edward "Ed" Shames, the last surviving officer of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. A unit that would be made famous by the miniseries Band of Brothers.

Private Thomas M. Rice, after 18 months of training, he joined the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) of the legendary 101st Airborne Division and was shipped overseas to participate in the D-Day invasion. Tom Rice would spend a total of 336 days in combat participating in Operation Overlord, Operation Market Garden, The Battle of the Bulge, and helping to capture Hitler's Eagle's Nest in Berchtesgaden.

PFC Jim "Pee Wee" Martin, One of Colonel Sink's original "Toccoa Men", James Martin joined the now famous 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment at Camp Toccoa in July, 1942. Martin parachuted into Normandy (landing near Saint-Côme-du-Mont behind Utah Beach) at 12:30 AM on June 6, 1944. "Pee Wee" Martin fought in the Normandy campaign for thirty-three days until the 101st Airborne was relieved and returned to England in July.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States

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[nori-kot]

He's so silly 😭

Actually Jake didn't do ✨something bad✨ with an axe

[nori-kot]

Nobody knows..

[nori-kot]

Ok, ok

It's Jake. He hates everyone (most genius description)

[mygrowingcollection]

Jake Lason

[diamonddeposits]

Sweeping post-rock from Minneapolis three piece Apollos. From their latest EP titled Violet we have Drift, in which a soaring ambient landscape with soul-ful vocals make it a unforgettable and epic listen. Check the tune out above via Bandcamp and download the EP! On the 3rd of December this trio will have a launch at the Amsterdam Bar in St Paul. If you are in the proximity of that area you need to make it down and check them out in real life!

[gender-race-empire]

Said and His Life as a Metaphor

3/4 - Jake Larson

In writing about the relationship between his mothers, his sisters, and himself, Said, in Out of Place, uses a metaphor that seems to stick out from the rest of the dialogue about family. He says that “…there were bilateral relationships with my mother, as colony to metropole, a constellation only she could see as whole” (Said, 60) [Emphasis mine]. Although this anomaly can seem to come out of nowhere, this deliberate use of colonial metaphor is a part of a literary strategy that forces the reader to focus on themes of colonization in Said’s life. These themes- specifically those of control and policing of the body through internal (through prescribes masculinity and sexuality), and external, visually noticeable factors, and well as created norms- can be seen throughout Said’s interactions with his parents, and represent a small scale replication of colonial power structures under the British Empire.

This internal process can be seen in the incident with wet dreams- when there was no emission found on his pyjama bottoms, his parents disciplined him for having masturbated instead of having nighttime emissions. According to them, masturbation lead to several possible ailments, including blindness. This should be seen as essentially analogous to British control of colonial subjects. Said’s parents, in their delineation between a wet dream and masturbation set up a clear dichotomy of proper masculinity and sexuality on one hand, and perversion on the other. This demonstration of control creates a very easy black and white style of control using shame as a motivator.  The pseudo-scientific claims about masturbation casing blindness or some other ailment also mirror the 19th century British scientific punitive measures placed on colonial subjects. The high anxiety about the body reflects Levine’s ideas about policing colonized bodies in the British empire as far as VD was concerned.

Physical body policing was a large part of Said’s early life. His father’s issue with Said’s posture play into a prescribed masculinity, but one almost unique to Said’s father, picked up and amalgamated from external influences. This constantly reinforced rigid posture reinforced the performance of masculinity that must be constant in order to maintain identity. This constant performance due to outside pressure leads to an eventual internalization where the body becomes self-policing and the power structures behind the action or identity becomes a priori knowledge that is by essence, not reflected upon, but accepted. In Said’s life this manifests itself as the event before his college graduation  when he allows his father to force him into a back brace for his posture. The internalization is clear and, honestly, frightening- “What distresses me about the experience is that at age 21 I uncomplainingly let my father feel entitled to truss me up like a naughty child whose bad posture symbolized some objectionable character trait that required scientific punishment” (Said, 64).

Through these processes of policing and discipline, both Said’s parents and the British colonizers set up a constructed system of norms unique to individual situations- the nuclear family in the case of Said and the discrete colonies in the other. This system is inherently oppressive and shapes a person intimately both mentally and physically. We can see that the system completes itself with internalization; the body, after a certain point, begins to police itself. This is how underlying power structures come into being: the internalization of prescribed norms.     

[gender-race-empire]

Untitled

1/28 - Jake Larson

Woo first post here we go:

SO. Yesterday we talked briefly about the role of white women in colonial British societies roundabouts the 1880s, and I didn’t get the chance to throw in this quote from the end of the “Abolition Declawed” chapter in Levine. The point here is the imposition or the insertion of a “Women’s Sphere”, or the westernized, especially British and American view of what women’s role was in society, which specifically includes the home and excludes politics. The quote from Levine is as follows: “White women’s presence in the colonies continued to be a grudging one, their main role that of civilizing and domesticating both their own menfolk and the obdurate locals.” (Levine, Phillipa. Prostitution, Race & Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire. Routledge, New York. 2003. p. 142). We can see here that it’s shitty for colonial white women in a two pronged way (realizing of course, that white women had it far easier than colonized/native women - more on that later), one being that colonizing was rhetorically a man’s role, one that showed the rugged masculinity of the Anglo male, and became ingrained with Anglo-maleness, and the British identity, which was inherently male, leaving British women somewhat identity-less and therefore more easily construed as lesser or inferior (again, more on this in a minute). However women were necessary for an Imperial ideology to be actualized through the propagation of the race, a prevention against “race suicide” and mixed race offspring which would signal a loss of control for the British. So women ended up tagging along in this very male conquest, in which their role was, essentially, and here is the second prong, stewardesses of Britishness, or civility in a British context. Women, being expected to keep everyone in line, actually became somewhat of a dis-empowered instrument of Imperial power.

NOW- one the stuff I kind of left out- Where do the colonized peoples fall in to this whole scheme? Like we talked about in class, putting white women in roles of power (however oppressed they may actually be) not accessible by non-white men feminizes the non-white men further than just in comparison to the rugged British ideology. And as for non-white women? Levine explains just after the quote given here that they were both “…labelled as likely sex workers..” and in the case of those who were, their occupation was not seen as labor (Levine, 142). 

SO. Where can we go from here? Can anyone expand on how non-white people fall under white women in the racist imperial hierarchy?