Outside Reading Post 4

I told you about Richie Kohler from the last chapter but Chapter 6 is dedicated to him growing up to who he is today. His dad was German and mother was Italian. He grew up in New York to embrace being German and Italian. Kohler's father, Richard Kohler, was a glass maker but also a hard working man that Richie looked up. Richie's father on the weekends spent time with Richie and his brother, they would go sailing and do many things on the ocean. At the age of 7 Richie knew more about sailing and scuba diving than any teenagers did. Richie also was taught how to make glass by his father and was natural. He was proud of his German heritage and as a kid followed in his father's philosophy that said, "If you want more, you have to be more" (Kurson, 122). Richie was a force to be reckoned with and nothing was going to stop him from doing what he wanted.

Richie does encounter some problems in his lifetime though. At a young age his parents argued and separated. His mother woke him and his brother in the night and told them to pack up, they were going to Florida to live with his grandmother. Richie didn't see his father for a very long time. He went to school down there a made a friend that was in his Algebra class, he was also German and loved things like German U-Boats. It then skips ahead to Richie moving back in with his dad. He worked with his father for awhile before he learned that his dad was going out with his ex-girlfriend. (creeper) His father then gave him the option of staying and living with it, or leaving. Richie thought about it for a few seconds then said to his father, "I'll take the door" (137). He then found his own place and joined another glass making company and his skills quickly earned him recognition by the owner and became a parter of the company. During that time Richie picked up diving again, on his first wreck dive he went to the USS San Diego, an easier 110 feet, but it was there that he became obsessed with artifacts and other historical things. Richie started diving every weekend and more difficult wrecks that would scare instructors. He started diving with 6 guys that the book refers to a "Thugs" they dived collected as many artifacts as they could carry then celebrate by drinking as much beer as they could consume, Richie fit right in. For the first time in three years he comes in contact with his father again, by this time Richie had married and was expecting a child, his father had been disconnected for so long, he had no idea. They decide to start their own glass company and Richie feels part of him has returned. Richie and his new 6 diving friends start the Atlantic Wreck Divers, they did what they wanted where they wanted. Life was good for Richie Kohler.

Outside Reading Post 3

A new character has emerged, a well known diver named Richie Kohler. Kohler loves diving and is even part of the Atlantic Wreck Divers. Most of the men in this group were well known and were obsessed with artifacts, they would take anything and everything they could get their hands on, which tells you something about their personalities. On one occasion he was invited to join the Belinda on a dive to the wreck of the Doria; because late in the previous season John Chatterton had made it to the third class of the wreck, something nobody else had ever done. John then used a Broco torch to cut through a steel bar that stopped people from gaining entrance to the third class. A video was made of the bar being cut and it leaked out into the web, and it showed all of the mounds of china in third class. The crew of the Belinda tried to get to third class to take all of the china they could before the Seeker returned two days later. Kohler was on the crew of the Belinda which stirred up bad blood between him and Chatterton. John and another man they constructed a 300-pound steel door to block the entrance to third class from other divers. The steel door was successful and the crew of the Belinda gawked at the sign Chatterton had left behind, it read, "CLOSED FOR INVENTORY, PLEASE USE ALTERNATE ENTRANCE, THANK YOU -CREW AND PATRONS OF SEEKER" (Kurson, 112).

Going back to the story, the crew of the Seeker had earlier found a sunken U-Boat or so they thought. They tried to keep it a secret from other crews but eventually other divers found out; though nobody but Chatterton and Nagle knew the coordinates. On their second dive all of the crew members were the same but on the way back up one of the divers died, Steve Feldman. Nagle was obligated to report the death to the Coast Guard but he didn't want to give the coordinates away so he waited until he was a few miles from the real site. This is where Kohler comes in, they needed another diver, and Kohler was the one for the job. Brennan, a diver from the previous dives asked Nagle about Kohler joining them for the next dive, and Nagle didn't know what he should do. Chatterton had a certain dislike for Kohler, but Kohler had qualities Nagle thought he could use, Nagle considers it, thinking to himself, "The idea seemed perfect. Kohler was smart, tough, and relentless, one of the best wreck divers on the eastern seaboard... And he would not go and get himself killed--the last thing Nagle needed after the Feldman accident" (108-109).

Nagle accepts Kohler onto the Seeker for the third dive to the U-Boat. They still needed proof that the sub was indeed a U-Boat. Chatterton and Kohler descended within minutes of each other but they both went their separate ways in the boat. Chatterton after studying up on U-Boats in between dives relentlessly knew exactly what he was looking for. Chatterton discovers two bowls in the room he was searching for, Chatterton describes them, "The fronts were white with green rims. On the backs, engraved in black, was the year 1942. Above that marking were the eagle and swastika, the symbols of Hitler's Third Reich" (117). Since both Chatterton and Kohler descended at the same time they both ascended together, but for awhile they could not even see each other. At about 30 feet, Kohler spotted Chatterton and saw that his goodie bag had something in it. He descended to Chatterton's depth and eyed the bag and reached for the bag. Chatterton pulled away but then stated,

"Their eyes locked. No one moved for what seemed like minutes. The men did not like each other. They did not like what the other represented. And you don't touch a guy's shit. But as Chatterton searched Kohler's eyes he could not find anything sinister in them; the man was just flat-out excited to see the china. Chatterton opened his shoulder, slowly at first, and pushed the bag forward" (118).

This is an important step for them because it was like a new start for them. You could tell that they were going to put their pasts behind them. After all while they were in the water, they were the only two people that knew for sure that it was a U-Boat. And Chatterton understood what Kohler meant, he were no longer talking about diving, he was talking about life. At that point Chatterton decided that it would be worth his while to get to know Kohler.

Outside Reading Post 2

Chapter four focuses on John Chatterton and his life. When John was growing up he was always searching for something to define himself. So he goes around looking for jobs that he feels he can keep working at and they will challenge him. He wants to do things that other people don't do, or can't do. His brother Jack had been successful, and their father wanted John to go work for Jack. On the phone John argued with his father that, that was his fathers plan, not his. At his high school he noticed the Vietnam protesters and then it hit him, the military! He didn't want to be in the Navy because he would be given special provisions because of his grandfather. He then realized that to be a medic would be perfect, John stated, "No matter how ugly things got, as a medic he could help people instead of killing people" (Kurson, 73). John had finally found his calling.

When John lands in Vietnam there is no warm welcome, nobody to shake his hand, just war hardened soldiers. John could tell that immediately the men took dislike to him. John showed this when he thought, "You don't know [crap], You won't be around long. If we need help, you probably won't deliver" (77). Not exactly what you would call a warm welcome. There was nobody there to really show him the ropes, he was there for less than a day when he was all of a sudden assigned to a platoon. While everybody was running around doing things, he stood there not knowing where he should be. Eventually another medic nicknamed Mouse took him under his arm. Mouse told him his philosophy about how to do this job and what it meant to him, John understood Mouse and related to him because he too thought that the medic's job was like none other. John proves himself to everybody when he constantly risks his life in the direct line of fire to save other soldiers. John is given the nickname Doc, and he was starting to learn what life was about. After a couple weeks, he learns that Mouse had been shot repeatedly by an enemy sniper, who had mistaken him for a higher ranked soldier because all he carried was a pistol on his waist.

When John returns after his 12-month tour he is silent. He goes home and his mother wants to know how he is. John breaks down, he just cries and cries and tells her about all of the things he saw and all the people he saw die. After awhile John needs another job but cannot find out that suited him as the military had. John goes from job to job but comes up empty handed. His G.I. benefits bill expired in a year so it was now or never for school. He refuses to become a computer programmer sitting under florescent lights for the rest of his life. He finally discovers his life's calling, commercial diving. His wife wants him to do what will make him happy, so that gave John the green light. John did jobs all over the place in cold zero visibility waters. He hears stories of Bill Nagle and signs up on ever diving trip the seeker was going on. John had been struggling his whole life to find what would challenge him yet bring him somewhere where nobody else had gone. Just as other people such as Richard in Black Boy had struggled to find what they could do with their life. John is able to do what he enjoys with people who understand him. John is surely to become one of the most remembered divers of all time.

Oustide Reading Post 1

My book is called "Shadow Divers" by Robert Kurson. One of the two main characters is the legendary diver Bill Nagle. He is an alcoholic who runs his own diving business. He had his own diving boat named Seeker, which he takes tourists out to famous ship wrecks. As a diver, Nagle always feels the need to do what nobody elves before him has done. For example, when he recovers the bell from the ship Andrea Doria. This was an amazing thing for a diver of his time to do, having to dive to over 200 feet to recover it. John Chatterton is the second character worth mentioning. His father was a Yale-graduate and mother was a newly retired fashion model. The ideal pair of the time. John grows up to admire his mother's father, who was a retired naval Admiral. John becomes more and more attached to the ocean and farther away from his father. The narrator explains, "At home, he would push his T-shirts against his face and smell the salt water, and that also gave John his feeling" (Kurson, 68). Eventually he meets Nagle, he had heard stories of Nagle and wanted to see him in action. After awhile they became great friends and always dove together.

John has his own conflict because he doesn't want to grow up to be like his father. He idolizes his grandfather and wishes he could be more like him. As a child John was different from other kids in his own way, for instance when John was a child he was in the school play, he was Brave Prince. Though he didn't mind that he wasn't Prince Charming even though Prince Charming got the girls and the Brave Prince died in the end. He still prefered the Brave Prince, at the time John says, "Being the Brave Prince is better than being Prince Charming because I get to have courage" (69). The book doesn't descirbe Nagle's childhood though I would imagine it could not have been the best. He struggles with his inner self wanting to explore the rest of the ocean for great wrecks so that he could go down in history. The book describes how he loathes the tourists that come onto the Seeker with their neon green flippers only wanting to go to the boring wrecks that had already been scavenged by previous divers. This eventually fueled him into becoming an alcoholic which in turn deteriorated his health.

I feel that his is only slightly similar to other books we have studied or read in class. This book does not have to do with racism or WWII or anything like that. This is about a group of men diving for places that no man has ever been before. They have the common theme of struggle and conflict. But i still feel that this struggle/ conflict is different form previous ones we have studied. Shadow Divers is about struggle from a life or death perspective. Books like Black Boy have struggle but that is from things like racism and getting a better life for yourself. Shadow Divers is about making a better life for youself but in a different way, by doing what no other man has done, going where no man has gone. The things in life that make life worth living.

Memior: Blog Topic #3

Question: Why do people write memoirs? What power is there in telling our own stories?

I believe that people write memoirs because they feel that they have important stories or events that are worth telling to other people. Memoirs that we read in school usually has an important lesson behind it or some important event in history that is worth noting. But memoirs go deeper than just a story they tell more about the characters and their lives. They describe what life was like there and then, and it kind of makes you think of how good or bad you have it. Do you read memoirs about some rock in the middle of the Amazon and how it has bird droppings all over it, NO, you read about some story with an important life lesson in it. Like stealing is bad, or racism is bad, or things of that nature.

But memoirs also have a lot of power. They can even change the way we think. When we read books for school like Black Boy or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, did you feel that they had an significant points that you wrote about? Yes they did, and the curriculum pounds in the rights and wrongs. We also learn about the power of past events from different perspectives, like from WW2 there are many memoirs written by people who served or who were a jew in Europe at that time. It gives us a sense of accomplishment, what we have done, and what we hope to be able to do. This also gives people hope for the future, memoirs influence our lives more than we think.

What types of things does Richard "hunger" for and what are the effects (positive and negative) of hunger?

I think that Richard "hungers" for many things like attention, freedom, knowledge, to be save and unharmed and other things. They are things that he seldom gets and that causes him to "hunger" them even more. He will do many things to satisfy his "hunger". He "borrows" Ella's books because he "hungers" to read them, even though he doesn't 100% understand them. In one instance when Granny is bathing him, he utters something that infuriates her and he does not even know what he said. Eventually Granny assumes he learned it from one of Ella's books and Ella leaves in a complete mess.

Though Richards "hunger" to read also leads him to excel in school and he jumps up the 6th grade. This makes him incredibly happy and shares his joy with everybody around him. Then Richard gets the idea that he could become a medical doctor, but he still has no idea of all the money and insane education needed. Plus since he is black it makes his situation even more complicated. Good things can some from Richards "hunger" but he still has a long way to go before he can differ between right and wrong.