Looking Like Me
Picture book
"I'm a writer
Spinning dramas
That dance across the stage,
A poet weaving mysteries
That live upon the page."
Jeremy, the child portrayed in lively verse in Walter Dean
Myers' Looking Like Me is on a voyage of identity discovery. As he
goes through his day the people he interacts with clue him in on
facets of his complex personality: brother, son, writer, city child,
artist...
Child readers are invited to discover all the things they are.
Classes and groups like scouts could give members a chance to share
their own unique Looking Like Me stories. Words and collage would
make a fun combination. Kids could learn how complex and nuanced
their peers are. What a great way to combat stereotypes and help shy
kids express themselves!
The Juvie Three
Juvenile/YA fiction
"Right now he's not thinking about the fact that he's too young
to hold a license--that he's still got two years to go before he even
qualifies for a learner's permit. He's not even thinking about what
his brother, Reuben, meant when he said that he needed to 'pick
something up' at an electronics game store that closed two hours ago.
Mostly, he's not thinking about the bald guy in the rearview
mirror, sprinting up behind him, waving his arms and yelling 'Hey,
that's my car!'"
Reading these paragraphs from the first page of Gordon Korman's
The Juvie Three, I'm sure you'll be able to predict the scenario won't
end well. It doesn't. Gecko is driving the get away car for Reuben
and his chums who are robbing the games store. Fleeing the cops ends
up in a crash. Gecko ends up in juvie.
But Gecko and two other juvenile convicts are about to catch a
major break. Douglas Healy, a former juvenile delinquint who was able
to turn his life around, has scored a grant to run an experimental
half way house. If Gecko, Arjay, and Terence are able to succeed on a
strict schedule of school and volunteering and follow the rules
they'll earn a fresh start.
You know complications are going to arise. The major one is
Healy developing amnesia as the result of a bad fall. If you guess
the boys will take advantage of this opportunity to take off...
...you couldn't be more wrong. Read the book to see what
happens. You'll be glad you did.
One conversation between Healy and a prison counselor,
Kellerman, really caught my eye. Heally says, "If anyone had paid
this much attention to the kid before he got into trouble, he probably
wouldn't have gotten into trouble." Kellerman agrees, "Nobody ever
lifts a finger to help them until they're in so deep that they can't
be helped." Every day I'd guess tens of thousands of kids end up in
the juvenile justice system because of accumulated unmet needs--food,
shelter, safety, someone to care... Preventing this is not only the
humane thing to do, but cost effective. Keeping a kid behind bars can
cost as much as sending him/her/them to a private university. That
isn't counting the cost to family and community.
Think about that. Even one life is a terrible thing to waste.
On a personal note, I'm on the last day of Thanksgiving break.
Here's how it went. Thanksgiving was a little bit of a let down. My
kids had legit reasons why they couldn't make it to their
grandmother's house. I'd gotten up at 4:00 in the morning and let my
husband drop me off at an ungodly hour with the intention of studying
til they arrived. The in-laws differ widely from me on any issue
controversial enough to be interesting and have no interest in what
I'm working my butt off to achieve. Thank goodness my niece arrived
and I finally had someone to safely talk to! And I reminded myself I
have a lot to be thankful for. The silver lining was 11 hours of
homework with no breaks. Combining that with what I achieved other
days and I'm actually a bit ahead. Keep this up and I may get in a
little bit of social life...if I can remember what it is.
Disappointment, I could find nothing I wanted at Goodwill when I went
to reward myself for being an industrious student. Positive note, I
had a coupon to get a bottle of twisted peppermint lotion free from
Bath & Body Works. The best parts are I got in a lot of play and
cuddle time with my best little buddy Joey cat, I was able to afford
the ingredients to bake snowball cookies and peanut butter cookies for
my work family, and today I have a big old turkey cooking in the
oven. It will provide a feast tonight, meals for Eugene nights I'm on
campus late, and yummy sandwiches to carry in.
A great big shout out goes out to those beings, human and feline, who
give me so much to be thankful for every day of the year.
jules hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Sunday, November 25, 2018
Friday, November 23, 2018
The Fire This Time
The Fire This Time
Adult nonfiction
"After George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin on
February 26, 2012, I took to Twitter. I didn't have anywhere else to
go. I wanted to hear what others, black writers and activists, were
thinking about in Sanford, Florida..."
Jesmyn Ward, editor of and contributer to The Fire This Time,
was pregnant then and writing about five men she'd grown up with who
were lost young to violence. She suspected Zimmerman would be
acquitted. Many people were seeing Trayvon as a thug, a hoodlum who
somehow deserved to die. They did not see him as Ward did.
"...Trayvon Martin was a seventeen-year-old child, legally and
biologically, Zimmerman was an adult. An adult shot and killed a child
while the child was walking home from a convenience store where he'd
purchased Skittles and a cold drink. Everything, from Zimmerman
stalking and killing Trayvon to the way Trayvon was tried in the court
of public opinion after his death, seemed insane. How could anyone
look at Trayvon's baby face and not see a child? And not feel an
innate desire to protect, to cherish? How?"
We all benefit from what Ward was inspired to do. She put
together a collection of thought and feeling provoking essays and
poems by contemporary writers on the past, present, and future of race
in America. Among them you'll find:
*Edwidge Danticat providing the epiphany that if third world country
citizens had the collective trauma of African Americans, US law would
give them assylum protection;
*Carol Anderson describing white rage, a resentment that flares up in
retaliation any time blacks make progress. Think the rise of the KKK
in the post Civil War South. With power and privilege unfairly
concentrated in white hands, these outbursts can be cloaked in law and
order respectability like the voter suppression laws enacted after
Obama's election;
and *Garnet Cadogan's revelations about the perils of walking in New
York while being black.
The piece that will stick with me the most was Emily Raboteau's
Know Your Rights! Raboteau starts with a description of a trip to a
bridge she took with her husband and their two chldren. At one point
her hot, thirsty, tired four-year-old threw himself to the ground.
She said that if his defiance continued as he grew it could get him
killed.
Think about it! Overwhelmed little people act out. When one of
mine (back in the day) refused to go further my concern (as a
nondriver) was how to get us home. Other whites worry about being
judged by bystanders. But none of us had/have to link this
developmentally normal behavior with being killed young. Nobody
should have to.
At the end of her introduction Ward wrote, "I hope this book
makes each one of you, dear readers, feel as if we and Baldwin and
Trethewey and Wilkerson and Jeffers and Walters and all the serious,
clear sighted writers here--and that we are composing our story
together. That we are writing an epic wherein black lives carry
worth, wherein black boys can walk to the store and buy candy without
thinking they will die, wherein black girls can have a bad day and be
mouthy without being physically assaulted by a police officer, wherein
cops see twelve-year-old black boys playing with fake guns as silly
kids and not homicidal maniacs, wherein black women can stop to ask
directions without being shot in the face by paranoid white homeowners.
I burn and I hope."
AMEN!
On a personal note, I am at the in-laws' studying through those
long, something like 10, hours before the kids arrive. I can't do
something fun or useful for study breaks or raid the fridge or play
with Joey cat. The only comfy chairs are in the tv room. And the in-
laws call me Emily even though I've asked them not to. I am quite
lonely but looking forward to Amber and Brian getting here and the big
meal.
I had a great experience Tuesday that reinforced my respect for dining
services. The van had collected food from the UMaine dining commons
and delivered it to Black Bear Exchange's food pantry. Lisa needed
people to repackage it and store it in the two huge freezers. I went
over and volunteered after work. I was so happy thinking of the
people and families who will enjoy the pizzas, ham, chicken,
strombolis, fresh veggies, cheese and all the other good stuff. And
the freezers are jam packed.
I hope you, my readers, have a great Thanksgiving with much to be
thankful for.
A great big shout out goes out to my dining services family whom I am
deeply grateful to be a member of and Lisa and the students who run
(and totally rock) Black Bear Exchange.
jules (NOT EMILY) hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Adult nonfiction
"After George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin on
February 26, 2012, I took to Twitter. I didn't have anywhere else to
go. I wanted to hear what others, black writers and activists, were
thinking about in Sanford, Florida..."
Jesmyn Ward, editor of and contributer to The Fire This Time,
was pregnant then and writing about five men she'd grown up with who
were lost young to violence. She suspected Zimmerman would be
acquitted. Many people were seeing Trayvon as a thug, a hoodlum who
somehow deserved to die. They did not see him as Ward did.
"...Trayvon Martin was a seventeen-year-old child, legally and
biologically, Zimmerman was an adult. An adult shot and killed a child
while the child was walking home from a convenience store where he'd
purchased Skittles and a cold drink. Everything, from Zimmerman
stalking and killing Trayvon to the way Trayvon was tried in the court
of public opinion after his death, seemed insane. How could anyone
look at Trayvon's baby face and not see a child? And not feel an
innate desire to protect, to cherish? How?"
We all benefit from what Ward was inspired to do. She put
together a collection of thought and feeling provoking essays and
poems by contemporary writers on the past, present, and future of race
in America. Among them you'll find:
*Edwidge Danticat providing the epiphany that if third world country
citizens had the collective trauma of African Americans, US law would
give them assylum protection;
*Carol Anderson describing white rage, a resentment that flares up in
retaliation any time blacks make progress. Think the rise of the KKK
in the post Civil War South. With power and privilege unfairly
concentrated in white hands, these outbursts can be cloaked in law and
order respectability like the voter suppression laws enacted after
Obama's election;
and *Garnet Cadogan's revelations about the perils of walking in New
York while being black.
The piece that will stick with me the most was Emily Raboteau's
Know Your Rights! Raboteau starts with a description of a trip to a
bridge she took with her husband and their two chldren. At one point
her hot, thirsty, tired four-year-old threw himself to the ground.
She said that if his defiance continued as he grew it could get him
killed.
Think about it! Overwhelmed little people act out. When one of
mine (back in the day) refused to go further my concern (as a
nondriver) was how to get us home. Other whites worry about being
judged by bystanders. But none of us had/have to link this
developmentally normal behavior with being killed young. Nobody
should have to.
At the end of her introduction Ward wrote, "I hope this book
makes each one of you, dear readers, feel as if we and Baldwin and
Trethewey and Wilkerson and Jeffers and Walters and all the serious,
clear sighted writers here--and that we are composing our story
together. That we are writing an epic wherein black lives carry
worth, wherein black boys can walk to the store and buy candy without
thinking they will die, wherein black girls can have a bad day and be
mouthy without being physically assaulted by a police officer, wherein
cops see twelve-year-old black boys playing with fake guns as silly
kids and not homicidal maniacs, wherein black women can stop to ask
directions without being shot in the face by paranoid white homeowners.
I burn and I hope."
AMEN!
On a personal note, I am at the in-laws' studying through those
long, something like 10, hours before the kids arrive. I can't do
something fun or useful for study breaks or raid the fridge or play
with Joey cat. The only comfy chairs are in the tv room. And the in-
laws call me Emily even though I've asked them not to. I am quite
lonely but looking forward to Amber and Brian getting here and the big
meal.
I had a great experience Tuesday that reinforced my respect for dining
services. The van had collected food from the UMaine dining commons
and delivered it to Black Bear Exchange's food pantry. Lisa needed
people to repackage it and store it in the two huge freezers. I went
over and volunteered after work. I was so happy thinking of the
people and families who will enjoy the pizzas, ham, chicken,
strombolis, fresh veggies, cheese and all the other good stuff. And
the freezers are jam packed.
I hope you, my readers, have a great Thanksgiving with much to be
thankful for.
A great big shout out goes out to my dining services family whom I am
deeply grateful to be a member of and Lisa and the students who run
(and totally rock) Black Bear Exchange.
jules (NOT EMILY) hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Sunday, November 18, 2018
When They Call You A Terrorist
When They Call You A Terrorist
Adult nonfiction
"Like many of the people who embody our movement, I have lived
my life between the twin terrors of poverty and the police. Coming of
age in the drug war climate that was ratcheted up by Ronald Reagan and
then Bill Clinton, the neighborhood where I lived and loved and the
neighborhoods where many of the members of Black Lives Matter have
lived and loved were designated were designated war zones and the
enemy was us."
If I can get you to read one more book in 2018, make it When
They Call You A Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Aisha Bandele.
It introduced me to a nightmare world I've never entered or even
really imagined. It is so WRONG that even today in the 21st century
legions of our fellow human beings are being born into this world and
crippled or killed by it.
I remember how innocuous Nixon's war on drugs was made to sound
when it was accelerated by Reagan. Drugs are killing our children,
our families, and our communities. If we lock up the pushers of these
poisons and the remorseless tide of (black) superpredators, our kids
will be cleaner and safer. To a lot of people this all seemed
eminently reasonable and benign...
...except that it wasn't. Racism in America and American
leadership hasn't gone away. It's just become more covert, evolved to
not offend modern sensibilities. If you can't use the N word, make
blacks seem threateningly different.
At least some of the people at the top knew what they were
doing. One of Tricky Dick Nixon's top advisors, quoted in the book,
said, "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be...black, but by
getting the public to associate the...blacks with heroin...and then
criminalizing [them] heavily, we could disrupt [their] communities.
Did we know we were lying? Of course we did."
Of course we did. And we're finding new ways to embody this
prejudice by preying on people's fears. Take the rising number of
school shootings. The shooters are usually from financially well off
families as white as me. But the reaction has been to turn low-income
black schools into militarized zones patrolled by armed (often with
military calibar weapons) officers. These officers, whose funding
often siphons money from already inadequately funded educational and
community services, end up treating growing children as potential
suspects and arresting many for normal kid behaviors. Can we say
school to jail pipeline?
Patrisse grew up in ground zero in the wars on drugs and gangs.
Her mother patched together as many as three jobs, working sixteen
hours a day, to afford the basics. The only local grocery store was a
7-Eleven. There were no after school programs, basketball courts,
playgrounds, or even green spaces. Streets and alleys were the only
places for kids to congregate and spend time together.
These streets and alleys were where the police (ever present in
cars and helicopters) violently harassed kids who often were doing
nothing to warrant suspicion. Patrisse was still a child when she saw
her preteen and just teen older brothers thrown around and half
stripped by those allegedly there to serve and protect.
Ironically Patrisse encountered drugs and their users and
sellers when she was sent to a white middle school without police or
metal detectors. Kids came to school high and smoked on campus. A
friend's brother could have garbage bags of weed without fearing arrest.
And that's just the first couple of chapters. Make sure you
read the book. If you know people who are trying to dilute Black
Lives Matter into All Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter, recommend it
to them.
On a personal note, Penobscot County had our first sticking snow. We
had two wonderful events at Wells Dining Commons. Thursday we gave
our students an early Thanksgiving feast of turkey, salmon, and all
the trimmings. They sure were ready to celebrate. I had so much fun
serving them and seeing their excitement. Saturday brunch had a big
turn out thanks to an open house and a major home football game. I
served and then cleaned tables. I saw how our Wells team really came
together, especially the folks in the dishroom who were hampered by
machine break downs. People really enjoyed their dining experience.
Just about everybody on the UMaine campus is looking forward to our
five day Thanksgiving break.
Great big shout outs go out to my husband and all the others who
pulled all nighters plowing to make streets safe for commuters, my
awesome dining services family, our UMaine Black Bears football who
won the big game, and my fellow students to whom I wish safe travel
and much to be thankful for.
Tomorrow my class has a field trip to a nearby college. I surely hope
it includes a peek at their dining services.
jules hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Adult nonfiction
"Like many of the people who embody our movement, I have lived
my life between the twin terrors of poverty and the police. Coming of
age in the drug war climate that was ratcheted up by Ronald Reagan and
then Bill Clinton, the neighborhood where I lived and loved and the
neighborhoods where many of the members of Black Lives Matter have
lived and loved were designated were designated war zones and the
enemy was us."
If I can get you to read one more book in 2018, make it When
They Call You A Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Aisha Bandele.
It introduced me to a nightmare world I've never entered or even
really imagined. It is so WRONG that even today in the 21st century
legions of our fellow human beings are being born into this world and
crippled or killed by it.
I remember how innocuous Nixon's war on drugs was made to sound
when it was accelerated by Reagan. Drugs are killing our children,
our families, and our communities. If we lock up the pushers of these
poisons and the remorseless tide of (black) superpredators, our kids
will be cleaner and safer. To a lot of people this all seemed
eminently reasonable and benign...
...except that it wasn't. Racism in America and American
leadership hasn't gone away. It's just become more covert, evolved to
not offend modern sensibilities. If you can't use the N word, make
blacks seem threateningly different.
At least some of the people at the top knew what they were
doing. One of Tricky Dick Nixon's top advisors, quoted in the book,
said, "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be...black, but by
getting the public to associate the...blacks with heroin...and then
criminalizing [them] heavily, we could disrupt [their] communities.
Did we know we were lying? Of course we did."
Of course we did. And we're finding new ways to embody this
prejudice by preying on people's fears. Take the rising number of
school shootings. The shooters are usually from financially well off
families as white as me. But the reaction has been to turn low-income
black schools into militarized zones patrolled by armed (often with
military calibar weapons) officers. These officers, whose funding
often siphons money from already inadequately funded educational and
community services, end up treating growing children as potential
suspects and arresting many for normal kid behaviors. Can we say
school to jail pipeline?
Patrisse grew up in ground zero in the wars on drugs and gangs.
Her mother patched together as many as three jobs, working sixteen
hours a day, to afford the basics. The only local grocery store was a
7-Eleven. There were no after school programs, basketball courts,
playgrounds, or even green spaces. Streets and alleys were the only
places for kids to congregate and spend time together.
These streets and alleys were where the police (ever present in
cars and helicopters) violently harassed kids who often were doing
nothing to warrant suspicion. Patrisse was still a child when she saw
her preteen and just teen older brothers thrown around and half
stripped by those allegedly there to serve and protect.
Ironically Patrisse encountered drugs and their users and
sellers when she was sent to a white middle school without police or
metal detectors. Kids came to school high and smoked on campus. A
friend's brother could have garbage bags of weed without fearing arrest.
And that's just the first couple of chapters. Make sure you
read the book. If you know people who are trying to dilute Black
Lives Matter into All Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter, recommend it
to them.
On a personal note, Penobscot County had our first sticking snow. We
had two wonderful events at Wells Dining Commons. Thursday we gave
our students an early Thanksgiving feast of turkey, salmon, and all
the trimmings. They sure were ready to celebrate. I had so much fun
serving them and seeing their excitement. Saturday brunch had a big
turn out thanks to an open house and a major home football game. I
served and then cleaned tables. I saw how our Wells team really came
together, especially the folks in the dishroom who were hampered by
machine break downs. People really enjoyed their dining experience.
Just about everybody on the UMaine campus is looking forward to our
five day Thanksgiving break.
Great big shout outs go out to my husband and all the others who
pulled all nighters plowing to make streets safe for commuters, my
awesome dining services family, our UMaine Black Bears football who
won the big game, and my fellow students to whom I wish safe travel
and much to be thankful for.
Tomorrow my class has a field trip to a nearby college. I surely hope
it includes a peek at their dining services.
jules hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Sunday, November 11, 2018
Clay Water Brick
Clay Water Brick
Adult nonfiction
"Patrick didn't have much. As a boy, he lost most of his family
when a militant rebel group attacked his village in northern Uganda.
He and his younger brother fled the only home that they had ever known
and fled south. Patrick was unsure where they would end up, but after
weeks of traveling they settled in a village near the Uganda-Kenya
border, where they came across some distant cousins. They wanted to
be as close as they could to family--any family at all.
Patrick and his brother had no home, no money, not even shoes on
their feet. They were young, orphaned, uneducated, homeless, and
hungry."
Growing up, Jessica Jackley, author of Clay Water Brick,
believed that Jesus wanted her to help the poor. She began raising
money and sending it to charities. After awhile she became daunted by
the size of the task and disconnected from the people she wanted to
help by layers of bureaucracy.
As a college graduate, Jackley wanted to become a high ranking
officer in a non profit. She had no clue how to get there. Then she
attendee a lecture by Dr. Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and
a microfinance pioneer who would win the Nobel Peace Prize. He
changed the course of her life.
"This turned my understanding of poverty on its head. The
people Yunus spoke of were not just sad faces on a brochure,
synonymous with the issue of poverty itself...The environments into
which these individuals had been born were the problem, environments
that denied them access to the proper tools to thrive. These were not
weak, helpless people. These were people who were capable, tenacious,
and resourceful...These were entrepreneurs."
Clay Water Brick weaves two fascinating narrative threads
together seamlessly. One is the quite intimate (warts and all) story
of Jackley and her organization. The other is the colorful lives of
third world entrepreneurs including:
*Patrick who, with no other resources than the ground beneath his
feet, became a brick maker,
*Katherine, who switched from selling vegetables to selling fish when
she discovered a big demand in her village,
and *Zica, a hairdresser who, when she discovered that the products
available didn't do much for people with tightly curled or frizzy
hair, set out to concoct better ones in her kitchen.
Whether or not you have any desire to become a microfinancier or
entropreneur, I believe you'll enjoy and be inspired by Clay Water
Brick. Jackley concludes the book with these powerful words:
"...Dream--and then choose to believe in your own potential and help
create the future you're dreaming of."
That's why I'm in graduate school.
On a personal note, school, work, home, sleep, and commuting make up
my days. We're less than two weeks from Thanksgiving break which I
hope to use to get well ahead on my rest of the semester work. I also
plan to bake a huge batch of snowball cookies for my work family. We
saw snow yesterday.
Saturday at work I was assigned to do deli. The problem: at brunch
almost nobody wants sandwiches. I hate standing still while everyone
else works. So how could I get the person who assigned me to change
and think it was his idea? I started asking "Is it 2:00 (when deli
shuts down) yet?" when he walked by. It only took 45 minutes. Can I
help it that my work ethic is hyperactive?
A great big shout out goes out to the LGBTQ community for putting on
Gay Thanksgiving, my beloved husband for not having a heart attack,
and my work family for being totally awesome.
jules hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Adult nonfiction
"Patrick didn't have much. As a boy, he lost most of his family
when a militant rebel group attacked his village in northern Uganda.
He and his younger brother fled the only home that they had ever known
and fled south. Patrick was unsure where they would end up, but after
weeks of traveling they settled in a village near the Uganda-Kenya
border, where they came across some distant cousins. They wanted to
be as close as they could to family--any family at all.
Patrick and his brother had no home, no money, not even shoes on
their feet. They were young, orphaned, uneducated, homeless, and
hungry."
Growing up, Jessica Jackley, author of Clay Water Brick,
believed that Jesus wanted her to help the poor. She began raising
money and sending it to charities. After awhile she became daunted by
the size of the task and disconnected from the people she wanted to
help by layers of bureaucracy.
As a college graduate, Jackley wanted to become a high ranking
officer in a non profit. She had no clue how to get there. Then she
attendee a lecture by Dr. Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank and
a microfinance pioneer who would win the Nobel Peace Prize. He
changed the course of her life.
"This turned my understanding of poverty on its head. The
people Yunus spoke of were not just sad faces on a brochure,
synonymous with the issue of poverty itself...The environments into
which these individuals had been born were the problem, environments
that denied them access to the proper tools to thrive. These were not
weak, helpless people. These were people who were capable, tenacious,
and resourceful...These were entrepreneurs."
Clay Water Brick weaves two fascinating narrative threads
together seamlessly. One is the quite intimate (warts and all) story
of Jackley and her organization. The other is the colorful lives of
third world entrepreneurs including:
*Patrick who, with no other resources than the ground beneath his
feet, became a brick maker,
*Katherine, who switched from selling vegetables to selling fish when
she discovered a big demand in her village,
and *Zica, a hairdresser who, when she discovered that the products
available didn't do much for people with tightly curled or frizzy
hair, set out to concoct better ones in her kitchen.
Whether or not you have any desire to become a microfinancier or
entropreneur, I believe you'll enjoy and be inspired by Clay Water
Brick. Jackley concludes the book with these powerful words:
"...Dream--and then choose to believe in your own potential and help
create the future you're dreaming of."
That's why I'm in graduate school.
On a personal note, school, work, home, sleep, and commuting make up
my days. We're less than two weeks from Thanksgiving break which I
hope to use to get well ahead on my rest of the semester work. I also
plan to bake a huge batch of snowball cookies for my work family. We
saw snow yesterday.
Saturday at work I was assigned to do deli. The problem: at brunch
almost nobody wants sandwiches. I hate standing still while everyone
else works. So how could I get the person who assigned me to change
and think it was his idea? I started asking "Is it 2:00 (when deli
shuts down) yet?" when he walked by. It only took 45 minutes. Can I
help it that my work ethic is hyperactive?
A great big shout out goes out to the LGBTQ community for putting on
Gay Thanksgiving, my beloved husband for not having a heart attack,
and my work family for being totally awesome.
jules hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Sunday, November 4, 2018
And Still I Rise
And Still I Rise
Adult nonfiction
A lot of people see black history in neat little files with tabs
like slavery days and the civil rights era. That's why Henry Louis
Gates Jr. and Kevin M. Burke's And Still I Stand should be in every
public library and many homes in this nation.
The written companion to a PBS series, And Still I rise delivers
fifty years of black history falling between the waning years of the
civil rights movement and the second term of Obama's presidency:
1965-2015. It's a year by year who's who and what's what of important
events and personalities in politics, scholarship, music, sports,
literature, and the arts. Plenty of amazing photographs should bring
back memories. This in itself should be more than enough
justification for buying and enjoying the book.
"Put another way, it is a book that illuminates the world that
the Civil Rights Movement birthed and enabled, and that its legacy
sustained--from affirmative action to the integration of our nation's
universities, from the ascent of numerous black mayors in numerous
cities to the development of black capitalism and the phenominal rise
of the black middle class, from the domination of popular culture by
black artists and performers to the rise of black access to and
leadership in any number of fields once closed to the many millions of
descendents of slaves."
But if you read it more deeply than a casual skim it also raises
disturbing questions:
*Why do the police still harass and shoot so many unarmed blacks?
*Why are blacks so overrepeesented in our nation's schools?
*Why are America's schools regressing back to separate and anything
but equal?
*Why, while some blacks make amazing progress, are others stuck in
depressed neighborhoods that are devoid of meaningful jobs and hope
and too often the dumping grounds for toxic substances?
*Why are some whites so determined to undermine any progress that
blacks make?
They all build up to the most central question: what can we be
doing now that someone writing a similar book fifty years from now
won't have to balance amazing strides forward with so many setbacks?
On a personal note, Halloween was bittersweet. It was mostly great.
I had a wonderful costume: Tinkerbelle Gone Bad complete with black
wings with skulls and crossbones. I even had a song:
The name is Tink.
I know what you think
That I'm a sweet and innocent fairy.
Oh, what the Hell?
I ditched the Belle
So let's get down and get scary.
Homework? Too much work.
Classes? I passes.
The campus police?
I'm who they want to bust
For my franchise in fairy dust."
I had fun rocking my costume. I even got to wear it to work. I had
people take pictures of me with the decorations at the union. And i
got lots of goodies at the campus trick or treat. The sad part was
Eugene had made up lovely bags of candy and, for the first time in 28
years, no kids came trick or treating. I had me an adventure last
night. I worked brunch at Wells and then studied at Fogler Library.
When I left to catch the bus the wind was roaring like an oncoming
freight train. It knocked me down a short flight of stairs and I weigh
114. When I got to Veazie there were no street or houselights. I
thought I'd stumble home in pitch black. But an eerie yellow light
lit the woods path and trailer park. It was like right before the
alien space ship appears. At home I did homework by lantern light.
Today I learned nearly 80,000 homes lost power.
A great big shout out goes out to my Wells colleagues who worked in
costume, all who made Halloween at the Union a real treat, my
wonderful husband who is off at camp for vaca, and the dearest little
cat in the world,
Joey aka Senor Fuzzygato.
jules hathaway
Sent from my iPod
Adult nonfiction
A lot of people see black history in neat little files with tabs
like slavery days and the civil rights era. That's why Henry Louis
Gates Jr. and Kevin M. Burke's And Still I Stand should be in every
public library and many homes in this nation.
The written companion to a PBS series, And Still I rise delivers
fifty years of black history falling between the waning years of the
civil rights movement and the second term of Obama's presidency:
1965-2015. It's a year by year who's who and what's what of important
events and personalities in politics, scholarship, music, sports,
literature, and the arts. Plenty of amazing photographs should bring
back memories. This in itself should be more than enough
justification for buying and enjoying the book.
"Put another way, it is a book that illuminates the world that
the Civil Rights Movement birthed and enabled, and that its legacy
sustained--from affirmative action to the integration of our nation's
universities, from the ascent of numerous black mayors in numerous
cities to the development of black capitalism and the phenominal rise
of the black middle class, from the domination of popular culture by
black artists and performers to the rise of black access to and
leadership in any number of fields once closed to the many millions of
descendents of slaves."
But if you read it more deeply than a casual skim it also raises
disturbing questions:
*Why do the police still harass and shoot so many unarmed blacks?
*Why are blacks so overrepeesented in our nation's schools?
*Why are America's schools regressing back to separate and anything
but equal?
*Why, while some blacks make amazing progress, are others stuck in
depressed neighborhoods that are devoid of meaningful jobs and hope
and too often the dumping grounds for toxic substances?
*Why are some whites so determined to undermine any progress that
blacks make?
They all build up to the most central question: what can we be
doing now that someone writing a similar book fifty years from now
won't have to balance amazing strides forward with so many setbacks?
On a personal note, Halloween was bittersweet. It was mostly great.
I had a wonderful costume: Tinkerbelle Gone Bad complete with black
wings with skulls and crossbones. I even had a song:
The name is Tink.
I know what you think
That I'm a sweet and innocent fairy.
Oh, what the Hell?
I ditched the Belle
So let's get down and get scary.
Homework? Too much work.
Classes? I passes.
The campus police?
I'm who they want to bust
For my franchise in fairy dust."
I had fun rocking my costume. I even got to wear it to work. I had
people take pictures of me with the decorations at the union. And i
got lots of goodies at the campus trick or treat. The sad part was
Eugene had made up lovely bags of candy and, for the first time in 28
years, no kids came trick or treating. I had me an adventure last
night. I worked brunch at Wells and then studied at Fogler Library.
When I left to catch the bus the wind was roaring like an oncoming
freight train. It knocked me down a short flight of stairs and I weigh
114. When I got to Veazie there were no street or houselights. I
thought I'd stumble home in pitch black. But an eerie yellow light
lit the woods path and trailer park. It was like right before the
alien space ship appears. At home I did homework by lantern light.
Today I learned nearly 80,000 homes lost power.
A great big shout out goes out to my Wells colleagues who worked in
costume, all who made Halloween at the Union a real treat, my
wonderful husband who is off at camp for vaca, and the dearest little
cat in the world,
Joey aka Senor Fuzzygato.
jules hathaway
Sent from my iPod
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