Jan 28
This is what Kansas Day is all about! Via Facebook.
Happy Kansas Day Eve! Sleep tight and just maybe if you have been a good Kansan, Amelia Earhart will bring you Russell-Stover chocolates. And if you have been a bad Missourian, John Brown will shoot you and your family while you slumber.Tommy Bobo
Raconteur
Kansas Day is January 29th. This will be the 149th anniversary of Kansas’ statehood.
From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than ‘objectivity’; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble.Howard Zinn
Historian, Activist
I, too, teach this way, in large part because of role models like Howard Zinn. I can only hope to have a modicum of the influence this great man imparted on his students. RIP, Dr. Zinn.
Howard Zinn (1922-2010): A Tribute to the Legendary Historian with Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove
[Ed. 1/29/2010 Added a tribute to Dr. Zinn from Democracy Now!]
Jan 25
Protect Your Education by Nick Bygon
I cannot believe this is my first post of 2010! Sorry for the prolonged absence, but my life has been undergoing some drastic changes. I accepted a full time position as an Assistant Professor of Interactive Media at Johnson County Community College just after the new year and have been rushing around trying to get ready for the start of the semester. That fateful day finally came and went last week and I’m happy to say that the students and I both found the new position suited us just fine.
I have a very crappy blog up right now at the school. Nothing to see there now, but note the address and I assure you it will improve as the semester progresses. I’m still hammering out some HR and IT bugs. It is still veeeeeery new.
That’s enough chit-chat: what the hell has happened in this country since I last wrote? Health care is falling out of vogue because democrats are too tired to keep working? Corporations had their imaginary inalienable rights reaffirmed by what can only be described as an activist decision from the Robert’s court? I’ll have more to say about that in a post to follow, but in the meantime, just go to your windows, open them and keep screaming mantra #2 at the top of your lungs. Repeat as necessary. Goldman Sachs is ONLY paying out $16 billion in bonuses, or a $498,000 average per employee. I doubt the janitor is getting 500 large. Finally, a nude model was elected to the United States Senate. I’ve got no problem with nude models in public service, but I am leery of our politics getting any closer to our friends in Italy. In short, its alot like 2009.
Yet, for some reason, I feel strangely hopeful. I don’t know if it is because I’m back in a classroom again, but I’ve got a feeling that we can get something done this year. Case in point: the poster that you see here from the talented Nick Bygon. It is a rally poster (released under a Creative Commons Attribution license) for the upcoming day of strike for the California tuition hikes on March 4, 2010. Stay tuned for more on that. It was passed on to me by my cousin and fellow educational activist Kat Williams. Thanks to Kat and Nick, this beauty now adorns the wall of my office and serves as a reminder to all of my students and co-workers of just why we are there. For 3+ weeks into the new year, that feels like an acceptable start. Now, about those goddamn, non-human corporations…