From the Film: Photography by Cory Carpenter and Jake Shelley
I like to learn speeches, documents, and poems by heart to “pull out of my hat” while teaching American history. A couple of days ago I talked about and “channeled for” Patrick Henry and his “Liberty or Death” speech, delivered on the eve of the American Revolution. (See previous post.)
I first memorized the speech way back in 1976 as part of a Bicentennial TV documentary done by historians of the Revolution in Washington State. I’ve delivered it from memory in class and for friends many times, but I’ve grown a bit rusty, and this fall I “cheated” and used notes for some of the speech. That afternoon after class while taking a walk through the rolling wheat fields outside of Cheney I practiced the speech in my mind over and over. And that is when the theme of this little film came to mind.
Yesterday, I ventured out onto a wheat field road with two students, Cory Carpenter and Jake Shelley, to make this little film about the trials and triumphs of putting the memory to work on a famous speech.
Click below to see the film.
Go ahead. Click on it.
It only runs for three minutes, and it’s free!