Snowed In? Reading Material to Pass the Time

There's always a lot of down time during Ohio's wintry months which presents a perfect time to print out some articles, dust off those bookmarked links, cuddle up with your Kindle (or Nook if you prefer) and catch up on some reading. Here's a list of what I've been looking at lately...

• Planet War: A photo essay from Foreign Policy highlighting the current conflicts around the globe
• An Attack on the Soul of the Nation: A piece from Jim Wallis (a self described Christian leader for social change and an all around interesting man) about the Arizona shooting
• Hellhole: A very good article about solitary confinement from the New Yorker (March of 2009)  
• Female Marines in Afghanistan: A photoblog from MSNBC 
• The 50 Most Powerful People in D.C:  It's always good to put faces to the names that are often heard on nightly news outlets- from GQ
•  The Women of Troy:  This is something I first came across while walking my sister's dog and listening to NPR. It's a project called "Upstate Girls" started by artist Brenda Ann Kenneally and explores the how and why of class inequity in America. Amazing. 
• Alone Together: A book about how technology has changed our social interactions. Sure it's a subject that has been a little overexposed but this book was 20 years in the making and will make you rethink your next text message
• unSpun: We all know message manipulation is part of the political game but this book dissects the deception and illuminates the tactics that can sway votes and change election outcomes.
• You Are Not a Gadget: A technology insider lays out how Web 2.0 projects are leading us to sell out our individuality and creativity- and reasons why we shouldn't.  

What have you been reading lately? 

New Year Resolutions: In a Wordle

Hello Lorain, It's Me Again (!)

Don't worry, this blog is on my list of New Year's resolutions. Now for a short PSA:

I know it might be against company policy to socially network during office hours but I think this might be an exception: Facebook for a cause. 

As part of Walmart's $2 billion commitment to fight against hunger the chain has initiated a Facebook campaign inviting the 100 metropolitan areas with the highest rates of food hardship to compete for $1.5 million.  Each metro area has a community page. The community page with the most support will win and the next five highest pages will each be awarded $100,000. 

So... with just two clicks  (Click this link, Click "like")  you can support the Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor community page and support the local fight against hunger. Your minimal effort can have a big impact. Two clicks. 

Support the Cleveland-Elyria-Mentor community page!

Voices of hunger after the jump.

Potholes and Seagulls 2.0

I can't believe it has been a month since my last post. Fine. It's been over a month. It's really no wonder I only have four followers- even my uncle has stopped checking for updates. Well I'm still here, dear reader and I am still trying! In order to start fresh let's look at the posts I thought about writing in the past month but never did:  

•  The Tea Party Puppeteers: my reaction to this article featured in a recent New Yorker
• A Sesame Street Spoof
• My Birthday: only four more years until I will start feeling bad for relating to this
• When Minor Celebrities Write Books, Somewhere a  Librarian Cries
• Halloween 2010: Is Lorain Too Dangerous for Trick-or-Treating After Dark?
• Get out the Vote! (Glad I didn't waste my time on that one...)

Reading List

                              

I'm a Seed Wondering Why it Grows

I don't have any answers. For anything, really. And I think that is a good thing. People want answers because answers are swift, simple and let you off the hook for any further critical thought; if a problem's solved you don't have to think about the problem anymore. "And so it goes. " 


Lorain City School District has many problems including, but not limited to: a student poverty rate exceeding 80%; ill prepared kindergartners; overstocked classrooms with overworked teachers; no field trip opportunities for students; a projected budget deficit the size of an exorbitant Wall-Street salary;  a collective body of parents whose lack of involvement has caused PTOs to disappear throughout the district; students with poor nutrition/a lack of fresh foods; a lack of male teachers and mentors; a school board that inspires no confidence; an administration that has no confidence to inspire; and an unimproved state assessment status. These are the things that people tend to focus on when they think they've got the answers and the answers tend to be things like "Give up! Nothing's ever going to change!" or "We have to get back to the nuclear family!" both of which are not very helpful and are not very answer-like.  


The thing is there are lots of good things happening here too. Teachers still care; kids are still engaged; preschoolers are going to learn on I-pods; and community members are finally rallying to confront the multifaceted problems that face our city and our district. 

Two unrelated organizations are spearheading education issues this fall: Citizens for Lorain City Schools is a group that is organizing behind Issue #8- a levy for Lorain City Schools- and the Community Action Agency's Coalition for Excellence in Education (CEE) is bringing together a whole host of community agencies, parents, teachers and activists in order to establish a community wide education reform initiative. CEE came up with a questionnaire to gauge opinions about the state of education in Lorain- I've embedded it below. Please take the time to answer the questions and send the form back to me (s.flores84@gmail.com), I will forward it along to LCCAA. 


LCS Questionnaire

Reading List

Back in the Saddle Again

Hello readers (all six of you) I wish I could say that my close to month long hiatus was due to a vacation in South Dakota spent looking at clouds and grooming prairie dogs but.... I was here the whole time. I thought I posted last week. Apparently last week was three weeks ago.  Oh well. Stay tuned for my Summer 2010 wrap up as well as unsolicited opinions on the always engaging local political scene. 

Motivation Mondays (Tuesday Edition)

Along with the KFC Double Down the daily American diet consists of roughly 34 gigabytes of information. And that number is from a 2009 NYTimes story so let's just assume the figure is a little higher by now. Now I don't know about you, but my Google Reader hits 1000+ about an hour after I mark-all-as-read (thanks, BBC news feed) and between NPR on the ride home and a chapter of Twilight before bed my mind is buzzing and I end up dreaming about a Cullen-Totenberg rendezvous in northern Afghanistan. Well something like that. 

My point is: there's a lot of sh*t out there and sometimes it drives me crazy. Because a lot of times the shit is good. And my ability to retain information is not so good. So I recommend: a post-it/scrap paper wall of inspiration (mine is pictured at the left).  I don't have the time to memorize my favorite passages of essays, novels or Facebook memos so I tack them to my wall. I can muster up some minutes to glance at the quotes and slowly I begin to incorporate them into my long-term memory. It helps. Some quotes below.

•  "The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream." - Didion
• "The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty 'yes' to your adventure."- J. Campbell
•  "Give me enough time in this place and I will surely make a beautiful thing."- Dillard
• "At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph or paint or even remember it. It is enough." - Morrison 
• "Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies — God damn it, you've got to be kind." - Vonnegut