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Grasso, Ralph W., Jr. 1999. “An Oral Narrative Recorded by Mary Ann Cardillo Fitzgerald.” West Side Oral Narrative Project: Transcribing Discourse and Diversity, Annotated Transcript No.1, November 9, 2020
Get PDFRalph W. Grasso Jr. (1933- ) was born and raised in Saratoga Springs, New York to Italian immigrant parents. He enlisted in the United States Air Force and served in Korea and Japan. After the military, he returned to Saratoga Springs and settled with his family. The interview includes his memories of West Side childhood activities, such as playing pranks, sledding injuries, serving as an altar boy at St. Peter’s Catholic Church, shining shoes on Broadway, and assisting his father at the family’s store on Beekman Street. He also tells of adult activities, such as playing card games and bocce ball with other residents from Italian immigrant families. The narrative highlights Grasso’s Italian Ice business and the St. Michael’s Festival, and the conversation topics include gardening, wine making, wedding receptions, close neighborly relations, and raising a family. Overall, the narrative provides insight into the humor and tenderness of West Side life. [Interview duration: 1:12:08
Wake up in Moloch: Modernity, Howl, and the Beats\u27 Spiritual Quest
Get PDFThis capstone seeks to shed light on the spiritual nature of the Beat Generation\u27s philosophy, using Ginsberg\u27s poem Howl as a primary text. By first comparing Beat spirituality to the transcendental poetry of Whitman and then comparing their belief to Kierkegaard\u27s idea of Faith, I demonstrate that Beat spirituality is a reaction to and protest against the ethics of secular, American Modernity
Embracing Every Ability
No full textWith time continuing, American education has progressively improved. Though there still remains much-needed improvement and some of that stands in the way of equality within the education system. Special education and special needs students experience inequality with accessibility, funding, and educational quality, on top of daily barriers due to personal limitations. Data from the 2006 General Social Survey (N=652), asked individuals to identify whether they had a mental/emotional disability. They were asked to assess federal spending on education. This study focuses on the factors encouraging individuals to support or not support increased spending on the education system. Mental/emotional ability, affiliated political party, and race are all potential factors taken into consideration. Other aspects that are taken into consideration involved how the current reality may or may not have an impact on support. Increased spending consequently tightens the unequal gap between special education and mainstream education. Analysis indicates differently-abled individuals are actually NOT more likely to favor increased spending than fully-abled individuals. The most significant finding shows conservative respondents are less likely to support spending toward education. Results were mainly not statistically significant, though advanced general understanding regarding some key problems within education today. Improving the education system with increased spending requires more support from the public. Currently, there’s a lot of support for increased spending, though the federal government accounts for a small fraction of the money spent on education. Expressing more support to conservative officials could progress the situation in the right direction
Stereochemical Investigation of a Novel Tandem Intramolecular Diels-Alder Reaction
Get PDFThe Diels-Alder reaction has become a prominent synthetic tool due to the effectiveness for which it facilitates the construction of new carbon-carbon bonds to form six-membered rings. Since first reported in 1952, Intramolecular Diels-Alder (IMDA) reactions have been widely employed for complex synthesis, especially for natural products. Our lab was the first to report a Tandem Intramolecular Diels-Alder (TIMDA) reaction, and TIMDA reactions have similarly proved powerful in the synthesis of natural products. Predicting the absolute stereochemistry of the major products of such intramolecular reactions is complicated by the competition between steric factors imposed by the necessary distortion of the tether between diene and dienophile. This logic competes with the prediction established by the “endo addition rule,” which suggests the thermodynamically favored product is that yielded by an endo approach where secondary orbital interactions between the electron withdrawing group and the diene can stabilize the transition state. Herein a step-wise approach is engaged, enabling an isolated study of the first intramolecular Diels-Alder product. The seven-step synthesis was optimized, and NMR experiments as well as derivatization strategies were explored in attempts to absolutely assign the stereochemistry of the TIMDA major product. Additionally, a computational approach was applied to evaluate the thermodynamic stability of the possible TIMDA products. All work supported the working hypothesis that the major product is the result of an endo approach, meaning thermodynamic drivers outcompete any steric limitations imposed by the tandem intramolecular reaction. Further work, however, is required to confirm this conclusion
