Category Archives: books

SoL Saturdays Update, Context, PTSD, Homelessness & Debt: Project Do Better

What we still need our children to prove, for recognition of Service Adulthood (Phase II of Project Do Better…), is not their prowess in battle or the hunt, not their virility, not their adeptness at social maneuvering, but their ability to contribute meaningfully to society by teaching another person, from level 0, how to do something that is both difficult and absolutely necessary in our society today. By requiring our pre-adults to teach some other person a needed life skill, over the course of at least a year, that pre-adult shows persistence, perseverance, discernment, and of course, the skill in question.

Thus we provide an esteem building exercise and respect building accomplishment which we then reward with full adult status, whatever the age of the pre-adult in question. This obviously assumes that the person has had opportunity to prove his or her good judgement in other ways as well, prior to seeking adulthood recognition. This might help as one step of a series of steps implemented by and through local communities which could lead to more long-term thinking in society at large, given a critical mass and good faith in the ability of humankind to rise above our instincts, and learn to cooperate.  Certain pre-requisites should apply: knowledge of emotional, financial and physical self-defense.

Tying into emotional challenges like PTSD, pre-adults must learn how to communicate non-violently, manage their own emotions and prevent emotional manipulation, which eases the recognition and treatment of difficult past traumatic disorders.   Homelessness and debt both relate to issues of financial self-defense, by which I mean the ability not only to balance a check book and write up a home budget, but also to avoid falling victim to scams of all sorts, as well as the ability to plan for long-range problems like job-loss, or illness, etc.
Hence the post I mentioned developing the idea of an Adulthood Rite of Passage:

 

Then the prerequisites which are essentially being able to defend oneself physically, financially, and emotionally:

 

(A useful side effect of this idea is that it would effectively increase the number of available tutors, and also lead to every adult in our society coming away with an understanding of the challenges involved in teaching anyone anything non-trivial.)

ShiraDest
May 7th, 12017 HE  cropped-dobettercover.jpg  

1.1.12018 update:  and scans of my long-term project (The Adulthood Challenge project) to build a movement in 4 parts toward Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms…) replaced with above link to Project Do Better book (free downloads in multiple formats).   Here is some of how I conceptualized Phase II, the Service Adulthood Challenge:    ConceptualizingAdulthoodChlg  

 

 

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Click here to read about:

Learning Empathy Through Film and TV Reviews,

Independent or Classroom Learning via Holistic High School and College Algebra Lesson Plans,

           or Learning With Long Range Plans, & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BsCs

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Updated Adult Goals and SoL Saturdays: Bring back the Civilian Conservation Corps

I still have a vision, for which many have called me a hopeless dreamer, of one possible way our society could look, maybe in 70 years, or maybe even sooner, DoBetterCover  if we all wanted it to happen.  It involves four main phases, broken down into smaller goals, with the ultimate hope being to build a world as safe and free for creative human endeavor as possible.  For every human being on this planet.  This post is mostly about a small part of Phase I, but other posts have begun, and will continue, to explain the remaining phases and the overall idea.  (

We begin our Statues of Limitations Saturdays with this early post outlining the idea of ‘Financial Self-Defense’ here, which became part of #ProjectDoBetter’s Phase I section: Public Financial Knowledge Infrastructure  statutes-of-limitations
S. Destinie

)

The first phase involves building empathy, and bringing each one of us to see each one of our fellow human beings as … a human being.  Each one meriting humane treatment, and human dignity.

That empathy building phase was Phase 0 (yes, I’m a computer scientist by first training, so I start with 0…).  Phase I is meant to go from the years 2015 to 2030, building a movement to strengthen some of our most crucial and obviously key pieces of our social infrastructure, which are in the public domain.  During this period, one of the ways that we can both build conceptual support and also literally build our physical infrastructure that needs support, is by borrowing an idea from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which worked during the Great Depression to create jobs while educating young (white) men at the same time.  What we want to do now, is to educate, facilitate service, and build a community-service frame of reference, while also upgrading our public infrastructure, just as FDR did in the 1930’s via his program.

Bringing back an updated version of FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), or Roosevelt’s Tree Army, as it was popularly known, could provide a stepping stone between the empathy-building work that must always be on-going, and the support-building work of bringing our society to a consensus on the needed support for the most basic of our public social infrastructure institutions, like Public Libraries, Public Transportation, Public Education (especially in the financial and legal areas, where so many consumers fall prey to financial predators, and end up in debt due to lack of knowledge), and Public Health.  These four systems under gird our entire societal structure, and need support perhaps the most urgently, in return for which we potentially get the most payback for all members of society.  While we do the difficult work of building the necessary consensus to get there from here, a simpler step might be to bring back some form of the CCC, updated to be far more inclusive, and used as both a means of providing employment to young people, and also to educate them, much like the Gap Year in Europe.  But instead of having our new high school graduates backpack around the country, they could be sent to work in urban public library branches, light-rail and subway/Metro stations, local urban public schools, or inner city health clinics.  As they rotate from one part of the country to another, say, monthly, they learn first-hand of the conditions in places they are not from and have not lived, while serving communities they have never met, working alongside peers from different walks of life, and seeing a side of their native land that they did not grow up with.  In short, learning the realities, and different perspectives, of this large and diverse nation of ours.

The rest of the ideas are here, with a warning that they will be rearranged and better explained in future posts: (My hope, in 2014, was that the precautions/programs described below, particularly the TinyHouse/Bedsit on an acre/person, would prevent child abuse, by giving all human beings at any age once capable of reaching the stove and cooking an egg, permission and power to get the hell out of Dodge if necessary…)

The Adulthood Challenge  is Phase II of a four phase program of Equality and Health for All, which I’ve been modifying since 2014.

Action Items:

1.)   Share your findings after you look up the CCC, preferably finding two different sources;

2.)    Find your Senator’s local office address;

3.)    Write a letter to your Senator, email it, and then snail-mail it to the local office;

Gratefully,

Let’s #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness, & #EndMoneyBail and support these four key parts of our #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

ShiraDest

September, 12020 HE

…  More:

The Goals (allowing each person to contribute fully)for Pre-Adulthood, Adults, and a new Rite of Passage to bridge the two:

2. Each person, as a Pre-Adult, must learn to swim, or to find water, if in the desert,
3. Each Pre-Adult must learn self-defense (emotional, physical, and financial self-defense),

4.  Map and compass-based navigation, and thus reading, writing, and mathematics up to trigonometry, should be taught, in spite of GPS, so that each person is at least familiar with them.

1. Every infant, world-wide, at birth receives half a hectare of land, non-alienable. He or she may rent, lend or swap the land, but always remains the owner. Where ever the location, it should have a well or a spring on the parcel of land, and be arable (to grow luxury fruits to supplement the free basic beans, rice & greens rations).
4. Fresh water for ever person (free!)
5. Each family should have a book in the local public library, containing the autobiography of every person in the family (which means that each person needs free time and the means to write his or her autobiography).

—-

A New Rite of Passage

We need a new rite of passage in which every teenager must voluntarily teach someone, from start to finish, a usable and important skill. It must be a skill which the person has to use in the real world, such as moving from the alphabet to reading chapter books, or from counting numbers up to multiplication tables, or from writing a sentence to writing an essay, or from no English to conversational or passable workplace English in the United States.

This needs to be a project which requires a serious investment of time (preferably meeting for two or three hours each weekday) for about one year. That way the young person can look back with pride on a serious accomplishment and justifiably claim his or her status as an adult. Along the way, several problems in our modern society can be solved at the same time :

-The increasing lack of self-discipline, civility and respect for learning among the young.

-The shortage of teachers combined with the budgetary shortfalls in most states would be somewhat mitigated by adding the numbers of teenage students needing to finish their “Adulthood Project” to the number of classroom aides and volunteers.

-The need for challenges and self-testing during the adolescent stage of life which is left unfulfilled by modern society´s unsatisfyingly arbirary definition of adulthood.

I would propose that implementing such an idea should begin with involving the local community by having the adolescent (or if still in his/her 20´s, the “pre-adult”) bring a person to meet with the community to show the starting point of the teaching process. After the learning objective has been attained, the pre-adult and the learner would return to meet again with the community to assess the effectiveness of teaching and to award the pre-adult his or her status as an Adult, with the full rights and responsibilities expected of an adult, including such cultural norms as civility, courtesy, and even graciousness.

In this way we may move from a society where rudeness is the norm to one in which graciousness is valued. For example, a friend tells of an incident where a lady´s dog snarled at her, and the lady apologized, which was the civil thing to do, and then even offered to call a cab for her, which was the gracious thing to do. A society in which graciousness is valued will be both a more compassionate society and a more creative one. I leave these thoughts for contemplation, debate, and action.

Perhaps these precautions would prevent child sexual abuse?

Partial translation, to be re-written, my apologies, time is lacking:

Un programa de Igualdad y Salud para Todos

Las Metas (para que todos pueden contribuir lo mejor):

1. Cada quien, de niño, debe aprender nadar
2. Que cada quien de niño aprende defenderse
3. Que cada bebe, al nacer, recibe .5 hectarios de terreno, que

nunca se puede desprender. Se lo puede alquilar o prestar,

pero siempre sigue esta persona como dueño o dueña del

terreno. Que sea donde sea, será con un poso de agua y

capaz de agricolar.
4. Agua potable para cada persona
5. Que cada familia tenga un libro en la biblioteca publica,

con resumen del autobiografía de cada persona de la familia

(eso quiere decir que cada quien tenga el tiempo libre y los

recursos para escribir su autobiografia)

#languagelearn

Read, Write, Run, Teach !

Un programa de Igualdad y Salud para Todos

Perhaps these precautions would prevent child sexual abuse?

New book on Community Cooperation to Share
Mar. 24th, 2014 03:57 pm
“At the turn of the century, both communities developed similar ways of evading White discrimination. Both communities built their own institutions, … ” which “… deepens the connection between them. Cooperation in other areas built ties that would eventually lead to the well-known actions of the later Civil Rights era in the 1960´s.”

–Excerpt : (p. 17, 18) of “Stayed on Freedom’s Call: Cooperation Between Jewish And African-American Communities In Washington, DC” is a contribution to the shared history of Black and Jewish Washington, DC that should be shared among all communities, in every city. This story of cooperation is the story of humanity, which shows that Dr. King’s Dream, Gandhi’s ideals, and our potential, indeed can overcome.

La Coopération pour la guerre à la guerre avec Le Corps Civil de Protection de l’Environnement
Mar. 17th, 2014 03:59 pm
meowdate: (Default)
Pourquoi nous avons besoin, aux États-Unis, de reconstituer le Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC, Corps Civil de Protection de l’Environnement) ?

Parce que nous avons besoin de défis. Bien-sûr, notre société a beaucoup de défis. La guerre semble être le plus grand pourvoyeur de défis. Mais la guerre est évitable si nous choisissons trouver les moyens de coopérer les uns avec les autres.
William James a dit, dans son essai de 1910 L’équivalent Moral de la Guerre que : « La guerre à la guerre ne sera pas une partie de plaisir. »

Il avait raison bien-sûr. Albert Einstein était d’accord. Son « Plan de deux pour-cents » admet que ce n’est pas facile à convaincre ne serait-ce que deux pour-cents de militaires à jeter les armes. Mais un ersatz pour ce besoin de défis pour notre société pourrait venir d’ailleurs, comme nous l’avons vu au cours de la Grande Dépression : que des gens ordinaires travaillant ensemble aient une discipline militaire.

« Nous devons créer de nouvelles énergies pour canaliser la virilité à laquelle l’esprit militaire s’accroche si fidèlement. Les vertus martiales doivent être le ciment durable, l’intrépidité, la faculté de vivre de manière spartiate, l’abandon de l’intérêt privé, l’obéissance à … »

Une nouvelle conscription pour le CCC permettrait de d’offrir un tel débouché. Le défi, la discipline, la coopération et l’infrastructure pour résoudre les problèmes profonds et de division qui conduisent à la guerre.

Review: Ma Bible des Huiles Essentielles, by Danièle Festy

Ma Bible Des Huiles EssentiellesMa Bible Des Huiles Essentielles by Danièle Festy

My rating and review was initially on WorldCat: 5 of 5 stars, because this book shows the important knowledge gathered by women, often ignored by the male establishment, yet essential for human development, like what Project Do Better works to help us all learn, in various stages, both for public health, and for that public store of knowledge held in libraries of all kinds, in various languages.

Huiles Essentielles, huiles végétales qui viennent avec et même les voies d’administration pour chaque maladie ! On ne peut pas terminer de lire ce livre, cars c’est trop bon, trop plein et trop utile !  (p. 448: sinusit, mais pas de EU. radie…)

(Sorry, not sure if this book has been translated in to English, but I certainly hope that it has, by now!)

Essential oils, vegetable oils that go with them, and even the best ways to take each oil for every illness! One can never finish reading this book because it is too good, packed full, and useful! (good for sinus infections…)

Read, Write, Run, Teach !

ShiraDest
originally posted 12 February, 12016 HE

Dear Readers, do you have ideas to share on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness, & achieve full potential for All HumanKind?

*****************

Click here to read about:

Learning Empathy Through Film and TV Reviews,

Independent or Classroom Learning via Holistic High School and College Algebra Lesson Plans,

           or Learning With Long Range Plans, & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BsCs

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Review: John Brown, by W. E. Du Bois

    “The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.”

web_dubois_1918

     This was the refrain that Du Bois repeated,  particularly in the last chapter of this surprising biography. I listened to it, and upon finishing, immediately had the urge to read much of it over again at once, in print, especially the beautiful citations of poetry from the Hebrew scriptures, and the last sections in which Du Bois points up the legacy left by Brown which continued into his day, and indeed, even into our own day. Du Bois shows how the collusion of industrial interests and the racial interpretation of social relations, applied to Darwin’s work as a means of using the power developed during Brown’s time, the same power that drove him, a good and principled man, out of business, to prevent the existing hegemony from being changed, actually works to the detriment of all humanity. He ties up the implications of John Brown’s life’s work versus that interpretation of Darwin as a negation of the eugenics programs and all that led to those programs. Brown, much to my surprise, was described as a thoughtful man, initially stern, but eventually becoming a kind man, one who abhorred the shedding of blood, and believed deeply in the mutual obligations and respect due to every human being. Du Bois shows how the beginnings of Brown’s plan were intended to be as non-violent as possible, and only reluctantly evolved into the raid on the federal arsenal, while remaining a project of killing only when absolutely necessary. Witnesses describe a community with by-laws drawn up to run much as the first century Christians are described as living in the book of Acts, and of Brown’s insistence upon gentlemanly and respectful conduct, even to captured prisoners. This made him, it seems, a man well ahead of his times. But, also a bit of a dreamer. Du Bois describes Brown as attempting to convince other leaders, but finding them more skeptical of his plans. I was very impressed with Du Bois delving into military science to show that, had every member of Brown’s group acted in strict accordance with his plan, the raid on the Armory would very likely have succeeded. Yet, a plan that depends on each man acting selflessly is, it seems, the plan of a dreamer. By the time I had finished Du Bois’ devastating final chapter, I felt not only moved for the dream and strongly felt duty of Brown, but also for the life of honest and courageous integrity that was laid down as a willing martyr for the cause of Abolition. He used his trial as a means of putting the very South herself, and her Peculiar Institution in particular, on trial, quite successfully. Why are we not taught about the details of this trial, and his words at that trial, in school? This biography should be required reading in every High School history classroom in the United States.

Please, please, please, read this book, perhaps starting with the final chapter.

But read it.  Twice!!
w.e.b._dubois_mary_white_ovington
My reading updates follow:
listening via https://librivox.org/john-brown-by-w-…

British wool tariffs nearly brought the US to consider invading, around 1830?? Wow. I’ve never heard of that, nor of the fact that Oberlin college was given land in Virginia.

John Brown as a bank director? Who would have thought of this? Ruined, like many, by the Panic of 1837

“Organized economic aggression” by business highwaymen literally forced a good man, John Brown, out of business because he refused to abandon his good principles!

and incredible, of all the poetic language Du Bois uses: “…a great Black phalanx” of escaped slaves and Free People of Color welcoming them into the “cities of refuge” up north and organizing Colored resistance. And John Brown’s family sheltering …

The reverend Lovejoy, from The Simpsons, is named for the murdered Abolitionist preacher Rev. Lovejoy? Who knew!

This murder, and being kicked out of their church for giving their nice seats to the Negro family attending the meeting, catalyzed Brown’s 1839 knowledge and support of the Abolitionist movement. In fact, white brutality even against white people planted the seeds.

Section 7: So, Brooks caned Sumner over Missouri’s lie about Kansas Territory, and the Civil War actually began in Lawrence, KA.

Shameless forcing of a faux election by Missourians of Kansas lawmakers, and the US Army helping the Southerners with guns and Bowie knives, and canon!? But despite the free-state majority, KA, nearly became a slave-state.

Ch. 7, The Swamp of the Swan, end of Section 8:

This militia formed by Captain John Brown is like David, as he says, but not a band of thugs, as that of David was: no profanity, no corporal punishment, no unkind or ungentlemanly behavior. Wow. Feeling themselves like a family, said his men. These were the Anla’Shok. “All great reforms…based on generous…”

Incredible.
How his image has been distorted.

… and why not admit women?

He wrote and had adopted an actual Constitution for his followers down South.

Preamble here: https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/td

Postponement of action, weeping to Schubert…

An indictment on the system of slavery, Brown’s speech on the stand ends with
“Farewell. Farewell.”

Du Bois calls his trial “the mightiest Abolition document that America has known” is right, and a beautiful one, by his last words to his family.

“The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.” Clearly, Du Bois wanted this phrase to stay with the reader, and he uses it to devastating effect, particularly in the last section, “The Legacy of John Brown.”

Absolutely stunning look at both a deliberately misrepresented man, and a legacy that remains with us, to this very sad day.

Incredible.
Simply incredible.

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Share your thoughts, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli AnnemLupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  This work is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Black Women Writers at Work: Remembering Audre Lorde

I am so glad I happened to see this book Black Women Writers at Work by Claudia Tate at the public library. My rating: 4 of 5 stars I was moved with both recognition, and with fear, at Audre Lorde’s comment that “it’s scary because we’ve been through that before. It was called the fifties.” […]

Black Women Writers at Work: A Neglected Book — Inspiring Critical Thinking and Community via Books, Lessons, and Story

Review: The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, by Annette Gordon-Reed

     I was certain that I had reviewed this book around 2010, but that may have been on some other platform from before I was on Goodreads. I remember losing quite a few book reviews on some reading platform that predated it,  almost 20 years ago I think back around then. In any case this is an excellent book. Worth buying if you have any interest in the families of Virginia even free families of color from Virginia because so many of Sally’s children apparently passed into the white community and disappeared, like some of my own family members. The abuse from the press that poor Sally was subjected to at the time by Jefferson’s enemies is terrible to read about, but the empathy and the sympathy the author uses in reconstructing Thomas Jefferson’s life, and his inevitable dilemma around this relationship, really moved me. Coming from a family that revered the possible connection with Sally Hemings, I’ve always been skeptical about the relationship between Sally and Jefferson, because she was a slave and I would always have to tell my mother that ‘Mom this was no romance: Sally was a slave, remember?’  But after reading  Gordon Reed’s book, I have to wonder whether Sally indeed felt more than an obligation in this relationship. Because she had a choice, as the author shows, while she lived in France, even if it did mean leaving her family at the mercy of people across the ocean, she still had an impossible, gut-wrenching choice.  The Hemings family was treated very well at Monticello, but that could have changed, had Sally decided to stay in France, no?

sallyhemings1804

     This image from 1804, apparently the only surviving image from her lifetime, does not show her remarkable beauty.  It also seems not to reflect her son’s description of her as an “Octoroon,” nearly able to pass for white.   My mother has always insisted that we are descended from  Sally Hemings, although with no actual proof, that I have been able to find.  She has also always found the old story of Sally to be a romantic one, while I have always contested her point of view, reminding her that Sally was a slave, and therefore had no choice in the matter of whether to submit to such a relationship.  What I did not realize was that Sally was also both a young and impressionable girl who may indeed have fallen in love with the sensitive and kindly Jefferson, and also a vulnerable girl whose family was at the mercy not only of the master, her master, but also of every overseer and White person, man or woman, at Monticello.  So, yes, it could have been a romance, as mom insisted, but also, still, it would have been one that was born of coercion and backed by the threat of violence to her loved ones, as I reminded her (in not so many words).  This is the tragedy of The Old Dominion’s ‘Peculiar Institution’ which led, in no small part, to my writing both Ann & Anna, and my ongoing historical fantasy WiP Who By Fire, as well as my nonfiction works.

  whobyfireiwilltmpcover  The story demands to be told not only of the families who were forced to make choices, but also of the Fancies who had no choice.  And of the fathers who lived in anguish because of it, not to mention the mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers, both of blood and of adoption, who tried to care for children wounded by an inhuman system.

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Share your thoughts, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli AnnemLupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  This work is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Review: The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870, by W. E. B. Du Bois,  

  The 1969 introduction by Norman Klein gives an interesting overview of the strengths, weaknesses, and unique contributions, particularly by raising awareness of then-to-fore undiscussed issues, in DuBois’ original thesis.

DuBois’ own Apologia to his work, written in 1954 (some 60 years after initial publication of his thesis?), is a fascinating read, given his insights into his own early work as a young man, and thoughts on that work, viewed from the distance of those years. Very nice read.

The work itself, because the research is now both dated and superseded by other work, I did not read in detail, but skimmed for correlation if needed later, with the Slavery sub-project on Wikitree, of which I am no longer part.
Shira
originally posted on 27 Feb. 12017 HE
(the Holocene Calendar)

 web_dubois_1918

   I’ve just finished listening to Du Bois’  w.e.b._dubois_mary_white_ovington  biography of John Brown, thanks to Neatnik’s recommendation, and am still digesting it in order to write a decent review.  Wow, what a story, what a legacy, and what an incredibly sad mistreatment and twisting of a good and thinking man’s reputation by men twisted by an evil system.  This slave system which they upheld, and which in turn further corrupted them.

Shira

Action Item:

 Share your thoughts on this work, and the continuing relevance of it, today, please.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli AnnemLupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist, and El Ministerio del Tiempo Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  This review is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Review: The Talented Tenth, by W. E. B. Du Bois, on GED Lesson Plan Set Day 49/67  

     This essay came as a bit of a shock, given how much my Pre-Engineering classmates and I were told that we had a responsibility, as part of the talented tenth, to give back to the community. The phrase was also part of my grandparents’ generational idea of Black uplift, and being “a credit to the race.” So, seeing just how men-only and elite focused this work is should never have shocked me, but it did. Every school assembly started/ended with a reminder of the Dunbar legacy, in DC, and Lift Every Voice and Sing, as a reminder that we had a duty to give back, and to lead. But it was never this strikingly clear just how elitist that idea could be, until I finally read the essay that popularized the phrase, but which I was again shocked to learn that Du Bois did not originate. Nevertheless, much of what he said remains valid, even to this day, sadly.  Especially what he says about the need for rigorous education, but I would extend that need to all citizens, more especially in the area of local financial debt laws, which Day 49 aims at in part.

Just a few of his comments, and mine, as I read the essay (via The Internet Archive):
web_dubois_1918
“There can be but one answer : The best and most capable of their youth
must be schooled in the colleges and universities of the land. ”

No, this is not current popular grass-roots ideology, but is it true that anyone can do quantum physics? Every person capable of grasping higher concepts must be encouraged to do so, for the benefit of all human potential.

47.62% ” …it placed before the eyes of almost every Negro child an attainable ideal. ”

On the importance of teachers as role models…

59.52% ” Negro teachers have
been discouraged by starvation wages and the
idea that any training will do for a black
teacher.”

This includes the still low expectations for us by most white people.
Even to this day.

Pretty abrupt end to the essay, and it makes a devastating point.
Please read it.

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Share your thoughts, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli AnnemLupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist, and El Ministerio del Tiempo Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  This review is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

BookReview: Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation 1838-1839, by Fanny Kemble

    Important reading.

How on earth could the slave owners and overseers not realize that in listening to the complaints of the slaves, this woman was actually doing the owners themselves a favor -rather than increasing discontent, listening gave an outlet to those slaves who confided in her, thus actually decreasing their discontent by making them feel heard, and actually adding years to the lives of the masters and overseers. Had the slaves not felt listened to, they might have slit the throats of all the white men on the plantation, despite (or because of) the repressive conditions. How on earth could they not realize that their very deafness and blindness to their cruelty increased the risk of revolt? Discontent penned up boils over, as the Great Depression showed (which was why we got Social Security, Medica* and Welfare -that, and the fact that FDR did not want the Japanese using segregation and Bread Lines as bad P.R. against US…).

Courage, and hope against hope.

This is what #ProjectDoBetter hopes to help change.  (see link below for how you can help…)  DoBetterCover
In Service to Community,
original review Date: 27 August 12,014 H.E. (Holocene/Human Era)

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Share your thoughts, please.

2.) Create a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

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Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli AnnemLupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist, El Ministerio del Tiempo Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  This book review is part of my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

French Fridays Review: The Corsican Brothers (Les Frères Corses), by Alexandre Dumas, Pere

    Wow, this is a book worth listening to and then reading, several times!  I love this comment from the summary on a site called Fabula, an org that appears to promote public domain books in French:
“Ce roman est destiné à deux catégories de lecteurs : les Corses, et les autres. / This novel is for two types of readers: Corsicans, and everyone else.”

    Still waiting on pins and needles, argh!

 as I schedule this post, for Lupin Part 3 Lupin10  to start up again, with Omar Sy (whose revenge takes a slightly more dapper and modern turn than that of the Spartan style brother from Napoleon’s home island…)!!! 

I listened to this one via litteratureaudio, a free Public Domain ebook service not unlike Librivox.org, but I still do not know why it is a dot com rather than a dot org.  It seems to have many more of Dumas’ books, and the readers seem to be far better, but it is more difficult to listen to the books, at least so far, even logged in as a Follower of several readers.  

(Just ask if I forget any translations from my reading updates…):
J’ai écoutée, gratuitement, bien sur, la version de littératureaudio lu par Juliette. C’est très intrigant ce livre, avec les jeaumeaux identiques, les visites des morts qui ne mens pas, et surtout la vendetta. Très intéressant comment histoire et aussi pour connaitre les habitudes des Corses. Et la dernierre ligne ! Incroyable !!

/
I listened to the litaudio version read by Juliette. It was a very intriguing book, with identical twins, visits from the dead who do not lie, and above all, The Vendetta. Very interesting as a story and also to see the customs of the Coriscans. And the last line of the story! Incredible!!

and La guerre entre deux familles durant 4 siecles !  /  and a 4 century long family feud!

End of chapter 12 -excellent suspense, as always, with Mr. Dumas, pere.

   Once again, Mr. Dumas does not disappoint.  Interesting how he manages to insert himself, the author, as a character in this frame story.
   dumas_by_nadar2c_1855
Many thanks to all of the volunteers who read these books in the public domain.
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Shira

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Click here to read, if you like:

Shira

Creative Commons License
Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.