| Daily Buddhist Wisdom | |||
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E-NOTES: WHEN THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH. E. Ethelbert Miller's view of the world. Visit: http://www.eethelbertmiller.com
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
DOUGLASS
Today (11AM) is the congressional dedication of the statue of Frederick Douglass in Emancipation Hall, United States Capitol Visitor Center.
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| FREDERICK DOUGLASS |
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News and views for progressive change in education
A project of the Institute for America's Future, in partnership with the Opportunity to Learn Campaign
JEFF BRYANT, Editor |
| June 18, 2013 | Special Edition |
TOP STORY
Thousands Sign New Education Declaration Calling For New School Policies
Jeff Bryant
Sign the Education Declaration
and you will continue to receive the EON e-newsletter with the latest developments in progressive education reform. If you have not signed the Declaration or subscribed to EON, or if you unsubscribe below, this will be the last issue of EON you will receive.
and you will continue to receive the EON e-newsletter with the latest developments in progressive education reform. If you have not signed the Declaration or subscribed to EON, or if you unsubscribe below, this will be the last issue of EON you will receive.
As a populist wave of discontent with top-down education mandates continues to sweep the country, more than 25,000 concerned citizens have coalesced behind an Education Declaration to Rebuild America.
If you haven’t already, show your support for the Declaration here. And be sure to keep up with the progressive movement for public education by subscribing to the EON weekly e-newsletter here.
A Declaration With Broad Support
Released last week by the Education Opportunity Network, in conjunction with the Opportunity to Learn Campaign and the Institute for America’s Future, the Declaration received widespread attention from national and local outlets.
Reporting from her blog at The Washington Post, Valerie Strauss wrote, “The document offers a progressive approach to school reform that includes ensuring that teachers are properly trained and respected, that opportunities to learn for all students are paramount and that learning must be ‘engaging and relevant.’”
The Chicago grassroots parent activist group PURE said the Declaration “demonstrates that the message of true education progressives is becoming clearer and more unified.”
At the progressive blog site Daily Kos,
long-time classroom teacher Kenneth Bernstein wrote, “Increasingly
people are coming together to oppose what has been the thrust of
educational policy, and to try to reclaim and reinvigorate public
education.” Bernstein called the Declaration “an important step in that
direction.”
From the website of the Tucson Citizen,
local blogger called the Declaration “an answer to the conservative
‘education reform’ movement,” and the document “signals the growing
strength of progressive educators at a time when the public is growing
skeptical of the endless high-stakes testing.”
At The Huffington Post,
Richard Eskow said the Declaration was an answer to “the Wall Street
crowd” that “wants us to think of education in terms of means – which
usually means finding ways to spend less – rather than ends. But when it comes to education, the ‘ends’ are our children.”
Eskow,
who is affiliated with one of the sponsors of the Declaration, noted,
“A lot of well-intentioned people get taken in by cynical agendas like
this, especially when the other side isn’t being heard. That’s where the
“Declaration” comes in. It says that ‘Education is a public good.’ A public good
is something that is, or should be, available to all without exception,
like clean air, drinkable water, and the national defense.”
Eskow’s words resonated throughout the progressive blogosphere as his post was quickly picked up by the websites Nation of Change and Truthout.
Despite the waning of the school year, the Declaration comes at an opportune time.
America’s Education Spring Rolls On
As The Nation’s John Nichols recently said on MSNBC, what is transpiring in the nation’s public schools “is a mess.”
Huge rallies protesting governance of public schools have taken place in the state capitals of New York and North Carolina.
In Michigan,
supporters of public education will rally on June 19 to “reject the
corporate, profit-motivated takeover of public schools, massive school
closures, and meaningless high-stakes testing.”
In Pennsylvania, a rally is in the works at that state’s capital to protest massive education cuts, including a “Doomsday Budget” in Philadelphia that prompted layoffs of nearly 4,000 school staff.
The fight for public education is flaring in rural areas as well – at least in Tennessee, where families and students are fighting school cuts and consolidations.
And in Texas, a parent-led movement against out-of-control standardized testing came to a head last week when governor Rick Perry signed a bill reducing the amount of testing.
These
protests against education mandates are not going away. At the website
for The National Center for Fair and Open Testing, there is a running timeline with the latest news on the movement, and new links are added every week.
A Positive Way Forward
The
Education Declaration to Rebuild America comes at a time when lawmakers
in Washington, D.C. continue to fret over education legislation – the
rewriting of No Child Left Behind – that will likely go nowhere and please no one.
Writing at The National Journal, Kevin Welner
– the director of the National Education Policy Center and a signatory
of the Declaration, wrote, “Perhaps our senators haven’t yet noticed,
but their constituents don’t much care for No Child Left Behind. Perhaps
they haven’t noticed all the protests against excessive testing and
school closings.”
Noting
that the Declaration he signed had “in just one day … garnered more
than 10,000 signatures,” Welner concluded, “Let’s hope that during the
summer recess [the senators] have a chance to speak with parents,
students and teachers – people who will ask the fundamental question:
Why continue failed policies?”
There is a more positive way forward. Sign the Education Declaration to Rebuild America and help advance that.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Health
According to the Home Safety Council, nearly 20,000 deaths and an average of 21 million medical visits result each year from unintentional home injuries.
| BREAKING NEWS | Tuesday, June 18, 2013 10:31 AM EDT |
| In a potentially groundbreaking move, the Taliban announced on Tuesday they were prepared to take the first step towards peace negotiations with the Afghanistan government after 12 years of war. |
| The announcement came in Doha, the capital of Qatar, where negotiations have been underway for more than two years with a range of international participants to attempt start peace talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government. |
| It would be the first time that the antagonists in the Afghanistan war have undertaken peace negotiations to end a conflict that has encumbered the United States since 2001, when American forces entered the country to rout Al Qaeda. |
READ MORE »http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/world/asia/taliban-ready-for-peace-talks-to-end-afghan-war.html?emc=edit_na_20130618 |
SPORTS
It was painful to watch the Nationals last night. How can they keep giving the ball to Haren?? The guy is pitching batting practice to the other team. You know he is going to give up three runs by the second or third inning. Oh, and Bernadina is neither a shark or a Moby Dick. The guy is having a serious problem getting the ball out of the infield. He might have the Espinoza flu. Oh and Kobernus will be sent down to the minors after the All-Star game. This team won't have a chance to win anything unless Harper returns and returns with some Nat-tude.
Tricycle Daily Dharma June 17, 2013 | |||
The Greater Joy
- Sayadaw U Pandita, "A
Perfect
Balance"
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Monday, June 17, 2013
SPREADING THE GOSPEL
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| JOSEPH ROSS |
GOSPEL OF DUST by Joseph Ross has just been published. I received my copy in the mail a few days ago.
This is what I said about his new collection of poems:
Not too many people are residing on the same floor with Joe Ross when it comes to writing about race. His poetry is what we should place in the window of the World House that King spoke about in his last book. The words of Ross demand a sacred place. His poems honor the dead and instruct the living. There is an amazing grace to be found in Gospel of Dust. This book is a rosary of pages for all believers.
You can obtain your copy from Main Street Rag: www.mainstreetrag.com
Sunday, June 16, 2013
RAIN IN BENNINGTON
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| JIA OAK BAKER & Ethelbert |
Jia Oak Baker just sent me a note. The Miller Classic was not played today because of rain. :-(
The rescheduled date is Saturday right before graduation.
Hey - I'll be there! Baseball Fever in Vermont. I get to see Jia run the bases.
HONORING OUR LITERARY FATHERS
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| Martin Espada and E. Ethelbert Miller |
The picture above was taken at a march in Washington several years ago. I like how Espada is holding Neruda and I'm with Langston. Literary Solidarity Forever!
DADDY, TELL ME ANOTHER STORY...
I decided this morning to take a moment to send text messages to the men I know who are fathers.
Well that didn't take long. In my phone directory there wasn't even enough names to fill out a roster.
Almost all of my close friends are women. I never had a platoon or frat friends; no beer buddies. Guy writers in my inner circle are few. Oh, and nothing upsets me more than when an older male friend (with kids) talks to me like I'm Alicia Keys and they are doing an Alice Walker imitation. I talk about fatherhood often but not with men. Not men my own age. Maybe the only person who I can share poppa stuff with is Andy - when he is not opening another Busboys. I need to talk with a guy who understands the pitch count. Both of us have been married more than once. This can change the fatherhood portrait in interesting ways. This June only two people sent me Father's Days cards. They are sitting together on a table downstairs as I compose this E-Note. The cards are from the two women I married. One I never had children with. How might a child have changed our lives? Not even my two memoirs could imagine. If I had become a father in my early twenties I know I wouldn't have become a successful writer. I doubt if I would have stayed at Howard. I would have left and gone where the money was. How much milk can one place on a table with a small paycheck? Yep, I would probably have been stuck in some office building somewhere bringing home the bacon. Can you see me with a pork pie hat singing the blues? No, I became a father in another place in time. My first wife morphing into the shores of Africa -a motherland without me.
A good day is a good day with a good friend. I spent yesterday evening with my Beloved Bev; a friend for more years than I have fingers and toes. A few of my poems are dedicated to her.
We walked around Silver Spring, Maryland laughing about the past and looking over our shoulder at what I guess will be the future before too long. We had Thai food while sitting outside and watching America on a Saturday night. Does it get any better than this?
We walked around Silver Spring, Maryland laughing about the past and looking over our shoulder at what I guess will be the future before too long. We had Thai food while sitting outside and watching America on a Saturday night. Does it get any better than this?
.JPG) |
| BEV photo by Ethelbert |
Saturday, June 15, 2013
EAR -UP! WITH JOHN PARKS
John sent me these 2 links to the music of Buika.
The first is a live performance. The second is a studio recording.
http://youtu.be/icd1c3FpnC4
http://youtu.be/HmGRydKGkVE
The first is a live performance. The second is a studio recording.
http://youtu.be/icd1c3FpnC4
http://youtu.be/HmGRydKGkVE
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| BUIKA |
YOGA MUSIC
My friend Joanna sent me this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwzek1Dau78
Good music to also work with. Thanks J.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwzek1Dau78
Good music to also work with. Thanks J.
Thursday, June 13, 2013
A POEM FROM HIND SHOUFANI
The boy who sold flowers
Beirut, 6/05/2013
For the children of Syria, whom my mother and father loved.
This is the problem with Beirut, this
this smattering
puddle of sadness
scurries along your feet like new cockroaches in spring,
that hint of humid arm fat now heavy,
insects on the rise like sweat inching up my temples.
With the cockroaches arriving, our new neighbors in the
south
have droned their hatred all over our skies
back and forth
all night
sounds of hate filled the sea
hate filled the land
me
I wasn’t planning on crying, Beirut,
really, I wasn’t.
But people, other old neighbors, have been
rummaging in trash-cans just up the
street from my temporary home, sleeping
on abandoned street corners where once was all Jacaranda.
And this is not china town nor crown
heights nor bed stuy. Today I tied the trash
extra tight so my
tissues and tampons and teabags don’t
splay themselves but
my father would have said, who cares
who cares,habouba,
people, our neighbors, have died frozen on tiny sidewalks
(decades ago, we complained about
uneven Beirut streets, but no one slept on them then)
where will they hide from ferocious august heat, the new
ones here?
Children streak around traffic to sell roses,
one tells me he only has half the rent for that month
his mother and sister await in other districts, ones
hidden from my eye-lined
glittery uptown eyes,
I ask them questions, you know,
sometimes drunk,
sometimes not
these children who sell gum
roses
futures in bars in Beirut
I ask them kindly, usually…
Where is your father? Hmm??
Does anyone beat you?
Your mother, is she with you?
Go to sleep, its midnight.
I try.
They tend to not hear me, watching for
fingers to un-clutch purse,
waiting for change
waiting for change
I wait with them, for
change
for fathers
for mothers
for sleep, sometimes.
Tonight
one of them was doubled up,
sobbing by electricity boxes
right under the HSBC sign- as if the world was not ironic
enough-
other lost boys had trampled his last few midnight
flowers, he has no idea of the
poetry that they are,
strewn on the next street.
Go see them he orders me
I do
I ask him to go
home, it’s midnight.
I think, home? Not much comes after that thought.
Not for my Palestinian eyes, nor his Syrian feet.
He blurts out sob stories, women
prance by,beautiful Hamra
girls, in short summer dresses,
unperturbed by our conversation,
as alien as the rest of us here.
I could not find any change
for that little boy, walked on. Cockroaches
sidled by, anda veiled woman
sat on the steps- of another bank- begging.
Why must you mention she is veiled, I can see
some people asking. No reason I think. The veil, meant to
mask
her, hide her from the eyes of predators, but
here she is at one am, on the
street alone, begging.
All the unleashed braids in the world could not save us,
now, I think, I think of the
warrior women of Palestine. My mother’s curls,
and how she always had change.
This is what war does, this. Not
just the bleeding of skin, but the deprecation of soul.
The blunting of pride.
This is also Beirut, this. This wanting at midnight,
to call my father, and complain to him of this
world. To tell him how my heart stinks at
every trashcan, every light intersection, every brain
damaged child wheeled in traffic by a younger sibling,
to beg.To beg, to beg. How it feels to watch a nation
begging.
He would listen my father, tell me
it could be worse. He would understand, soften
the world a little for his baby girl, remind
her of love, good food, health, her sister.
But like petals of flowers our
little friend lost,
my father’s words
fluttered away, taken
by time, and distance, and time, and distance.
If you fly transatlantic, and no one waits
to hear of a plane
crash on the news, are you then
really loved? And by whom? Those who made you, in love,
have gone,what is left to tell
of your tears? And to whom?
And who will wait,
and not sleep?
Like the cockroaches arriving
today, I never
intended to walk Beirut streets in tears.
Scattered petals like the faces of old children,
and I, in shambles, and
this reminder of having no
father to call and weep.
Bury cities.
Bury flowers like my face splintered in thorns.
Bury fathers.
Oaks cracked.
Bury tears that find no change.
Bury mothers.
Jasmines wilted.
Bury the questions you should not ask.
Bury sleep.
This is the problem with Beirut,
this bringing of war kisses to your bed,
like trash decaying in sticky heat,
like children crying to pay rent in lands that hate them,
like crushed red petals,
bleeding.
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| HIND SHOUFANI |
Hind Shoufani is a Palestinian writer and filmmaker. She resides in
different cities in the Middle East but is not always on earth. She runs
the Poeticians collective, which performs spoken word in Dubai and
Beirut. This poem is related to the passing of her father, recently in
Syria and the desperate refugees in Lebanon, who have changed the
landscape of Beirut into a terrified overcrowded city, buzzing with the
sadness of hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have fled the war in
their country.
Miller Connects with Audience Through Emotion Poetry
Southern Maryland News Net
The College of Southern Maryland hosted writer E. Ethelbert Miller to read from several of his literary works as part of its Spring Connections Readings .
Southern Maryland News Net
The College of Southern Maryland hosted writer E. Ethelbert Miller to read from several of his literary works as part of its Spring Connections Readings .
JAZZ TIMES IN DC
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| NASAR ABADEY |
I want to hear the mistakes.
- Nasar Abadey
Last night I was at the Hill Center. I interviewed the jazz musician Nasar Abadey. I wonderful opportunity to discuss the work drummers do. Here are a few of the questions I asked him:
- How much has your wife Baiyina influenced your musical career?
- What should one listen for in a solo by a drummer?
- Discuss the playing of Max Roach, Art Blakey and Elvin Jones.
- What qualities are necessary to be a good band leader?
It was nice to see James King again. He has been playing bass with Nasar Abadey for many years.
Prior to the interview and performance last night, we all sat in the Hill Center's Green Room joined by photographer Roy Lewis. Black men talking about life - a good feeling.
James gave me a copy of his new CD - ALLEN'S ODYSSEY.
I'm listening to it right now. Try and obtain this recording. You will not be disappointed.
James is joined by Nasar Abadey on drums, Larry Willis, piano, and Gary Bartz playing alto and soprano saxophones.
Visit James King's website: www.jameskingbass.com
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| ROB OKUN |
Rob Okun's Voice Male magazine is out. The Summer 2013 issue features my essay "Why Every Black Man Should Wear Number 42." I joined Rob's National Advisory Board a couple of years ago.
Much male work to be done.
www.voicemalemagazine.org
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
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