EDUCATION AND HEALTH Some things to consider
In-person classes, Internet snafus, melancholy hallways: This is what teaching in a pandemic is like: Read one teacher’s 30-day diary, plus responses from readers around the world
The coronavirus pandemic has reshaped everyone’s lives. For teachers, that has meant a new school year full of unknowns and readjustments: As some schools remain 100 percent remote, others are conducting classes in-person or doing a hybrid of both. That’s the case for Nikkina McKnight, who is a teacher of technology career education at Andrew Jackson High School, a public school in Kershaw, S.C.
We asked McKnight, 41, to keep a 30-day diary of what the first month of the school year has been like for her. This is McKnight’s 14th year teaching — but it’s like none other, as she manages partly online and partly in-person teaching. McKnight is also the president of the Palmetto State Teachers Association, as well as the mother of a 5-year-old son, Grayson, and a 10-month-old daughter, Logan. CLICK FOR MORE>
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Do you know of a Health Professional (practicing or retired) or Health Care Organization?
in Citizens Climate Lobby
The pandemic has brought into focus the importance of medical professionals. There must be thousands of CCL’ers who are health professionals, and we need to encourage them to raise their collective voice. While the climate crisis is becoming more widely accepted as a human health crisis among medical professionals, few are aware of the effectiveness of placing a steadily increasing fee on emissions. Our hope is that by building strong support among the medical community, we can leverage that support with medical associations, healthcare systems, and ultimately our legislators.
We currently have about 1000 health professionals who’ve signed on to the Health Professionals’ Climate Declaration with a goal of about 5000 by the November election and we need your help in encouraging health professionals or organizations to sign below.
- Health Professionals’ Climate & Carbon Pricing Declaration
- Health Care Organizations’ Climate & Carbon Pricing Declaration
To learn more:
- Watch this Grasstops Action Team webinar on the Health Outreach effort
- Use this short simple email to send along to volunteers, colleagues, friends or family you think would be interested in joining on. It links to a one-pager handout that gives over all the talking points.
- Have Questions? Contact [email protected]
citizensclimatelobby.org
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Boomers And Other Retirees Are Handling The Pandemic Best; Gen X And Millennials, Not So Much
in Scary Mommy Minute
The other day I was home alone with my three children. All three of them were learning from home, as I was working from home, and I swear to you — it was everything I could do not to run out into the street, abandon my family, and live a Biblical life.
My 13-year-old son was on a break from homework, and watching some YouTuber. I told him that the dude on the video had an irritating voice, and I kid you not, he said “Okay, boomer.” I got pretty offended, but ultimately, it was just an insult to injury, considering how stressed out I was. CLICK FOR MORE>
A DAY TO REFLECT ON STOLEN LANDS
This Indigenous Peoples’ Day Couldn’t Be More Important in Native Organizers Alliance
WHAT’S UP: Women’s Lives and Education
WOMANSONG PRESENTS TWO NEW VIDEOS: “MY VOTE, MY VOICE, MY RIGHT” AND “59 CENTS”
This spring, Womansong had planned a concert entitled “Ain’t I A Woman? – Celebrating Women’s Lives and the Right to Vote!” The concert theme highlighted the facets of a woman’s life, including advocating for equal rights in the workplace and in the voting booth. A pandemic may have prevented the performance but it cannot stop our choir from sharing this important message. So to our fans and our village around the country we offer two new recordings: 59 Cents and My Vote, My Voice, My Right. You can watch them both below!
CREATED 150 YEARS AGO, the Justice Department’s First Mission Was to Protect Black Rights
By Bryan Greene in SMITHSONIANMAGAZINE.COM
Amos T. Akerman was an unlikely figure to head the newly formed Department of Justice. In 1870, the United States was still working to bind up the nation’s wounds torn open by the Civil War. During this period of Reconstruction, the federal government committed itself to guaranteeing full citizenship rights to all Americans, regardless of race. At the forefront of that effort was Akerman, a former Democrat and enslaver from Georgia, and a former officer in the Confederate Army.
HISTORY STORIES: Vote-by-Mail Programs Date Back to the Civil War
by JESSICA PEARCE ROTONDI in HISTORY
Voting by mail can trace its roots to soldiers voting far from home during the Civil War and World War II. By the late 1800s, some states were extending absentee ballots to civilian voters under certain conditions, but it wasn’t until 2000 that Oregon became the first state to move to an all-mail voting system. Here is everything you need to know about the history of absentee voting and vote by mail.
Letter: Mission nurses’ victory will ripple across the South
by Jim Stokely in Mountain Xpress, Asheville, N C
As a former labor negotiator for Sylvania, I would like to share my thoughts regarding the recent union vote by Mission nurses. Ever since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which defined the playing field for collective bargaining, the conventional wisdom for corporate management has been to do whatever can be done to stretch out the time between (a) the date many of the workers petition for a union and (b) the date all workers vote for or against a union. The thinking is that the initial burst of energy from workers will dissipate and that management has more time to hire anti-union consultants, plan anti-union communications and control the message throughout the union campaign. CLICK TO CONTINUE
How do we think about the land we live on?
This week we hosted a webinar, “Learning and Teaching about Indigenous Cultures, Languages, and Territories,” with Christine McRae from Native Land Digital. We were excited to learn that close to 900 people registered!
Asheville nurses union vote unprecedented in NC
Carolina Public Press by
In what the union hailed as a “landslide vote,” nurses at Mission Hospital in Asheville voted this week to approve a union — the first in North Carolina to do so and the largest hospital union win in the South since 1975.
National Nurses United, the labor group that now represents about 1,800 nurses at two addresses in Asheville, said in a statement Thursday morning it believes this is “the largest union election win in the South in a dozen years” for a union of any type. CLICK TO CONTINUE
How many yogas are there really? from Prama Institute and Wellness Center
(The topics in this blog are the kind of philosophical ideas the author will discuss in the online course Yoga to Live By, starting October 14 to November 11. For more information, click here)
In the West, yoga is often synonymous with posture practice, with various forms of Hatha Yoga. In its homeland India, a yogi can be anyone from a meditating swami to a ganja smoking sadhu, anyone from an ochre-clad Tantric to a Bhakti-singing ecstatic to someone practicing yoga in an upper-class studio in New Delhi.
In its essential purity, yoga is rooted in its body practices, in its transcendent mental outlook, and in its inclusive spirituality. Yoga is body-centered, mind-expanding, and spiritually uplifting. Yoga is not either/or—yoga is yes/and.
IDEA OF THE DAY: Libraries for democracy
The sociologist Eric Klinenberg published a book in 2018 called “Palaces for the People,” about the importance of shared public spaces in American life. Libraries, child care centers, churches and parks had all been crucial to the country’s historical success, he wrote, and he argued that they remained crucial to helping the country function better and overcome its deep divisions today.
SUSTAINABILITY: Climate Justice, Citizen Climate Lobby and One Very Hard Read
City of Asheville committee to hold climate justice public input session
The Sustainability Advisory Committee on Energy and the Environment (SACEE) will hold a virtual public meeting at 6 p.m. Oct. 28. The City of Asheville declared a climate emergency when City Council approved and adopted Resolution 20-25 on Jan. 29, as endorsed by SACEE. In declaring this emergency, the City has recognized not only the importance of taking action to reduce the impacts of climate change but also the importance of incorporating social justice into those actions.
As stated by the NAACP: “Environmental injustice, including the proliferation of climate change, has a disproportionate impact on communities of color and low-income communities in the United States and around the world.” CLICK FOR MORE>
WOMEN’S WORK: Louise Gluck, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna
by Ron Charles in the Washington Post BOOK Club
Poetic justice: Louise Glück won the Nobel Prize in literature yesterday (story and video). The Swedish Academy cited the “austere beauty” of her poetry. Glück, already one of the most celebrated writers in America, is the 16th woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature since it was first awarded in 1901. The chair of the prize committee, Anders Olsson, said, “Glück’s voice is unmistakable. It is candid and uncompromising, and it signals that this poet wants to be understood — but it is also a voice full of humor and biting wit.”
GUIDE: How to repair a family rift
by Pam Weintraub In PSYCHE
Healing an estrangement can be deeply rewarding. Acknowledge your role in what happened, then look ahead to brighter days.
Family estrangements are fundamental to the human story, starting the day that God tossed Adam and Eve from the garden. Likewise, in Greek mythology, there’s Electra, who murdered her mother to avenge her father, and Tantalus, who cooked his son and fed him to Olympian gods. The trope continues: just look at the brutal enemies Tywin and Tyrion Lannister, father and son power players in the TV series Game of Thrones. CLICK TO CONTINUE
EMBRACING THE WILD BEASTS OF THE MIND excerpt from A Brief History of Yoga, by Ramesh Bjonnes
Offered by the Prama Institute
During my monastic training in India the 1980s, I became intimately familiar with Pashupati—the Lord of the Beasts. It happened while I spent time alone as a sadhu, meditating and begging for my food near Pashupatinat, a Shiva temple located in the small town of Deopatan, to the east of Kathmandu.
What the Greek classics tell us about grief and the importance of mourning the dead
in THE CONVERSATION
Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Brandeis University
As the coronavirus pandemic hit New York in March, the death toll quickly went up with few chances for families and communities to perform traditional rites for their loved ones.
IN MEMORY of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) from the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court justice who first rose to national prominence as an ACLU lawyer fighting for equal rights for women, has died at 87 years old.
She began Harvard Law School as a young mother and one of only nine women in her class, and became the architect of a legal strategy to eradicate gender discrimination in the United States. She modeled her approach after that of Thurgood Marshall on race discrimination, planning for a series of cases at the Supreme Court, each precedent paving the way for the next that would further expand rights and protections. In 1993, she joined the court as an associate justice, and over the decades became a cultural icon beloved for her vision and passion in defending the rights of women.
Teaching kids to read during the coronavirus pandemic: 5 questions answered
in THE CONVERSATION
Keisha McIntosh Allen and Kindel Turner Nash research how kids learn to read and prepare future teachers at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. They are also raising children of their own. Here, they answer five questions many families and teachers may have about what they are seeing with virtual learning for early childhood education.
1. How do most kids learn to read?
Nash: Long before they enter kindergarten, most kids can “read” the words they encounter in their favorite books or around their home, on street signs and anywhere else they go.
Allen: Establishing routines that involve reading can help, such as reading them books – whether they are printed on paper or accessed through digital devices – and letting them watch others read. For example, my 1-year-old pretends that she can read because she often sees her 6-year-old brother reading. CLICK TO CONTINUE
State-by-state: Network’s Women of the Century marks 100 years since the 19th Amendment
Philana Patterson, USA TODAY
How do you narrow down all the innovative, courageous, creative, trailblazing American women from a state or Washington, D.C. to a list of 10?
The Legendary Language of the Appalachian “Holler”
Is the unique Appalachian dialect the preserved language of Elizabethan England? Left over from Scots-Irish immigrants? Or something else altogether?
NEW PHOTO ESSAY: Dark Skies by Bear Guerra
This week, the sky in the Bay Area near my home turned to shades of orange due to the wildfires impacting the state of California. At midday, I looked up to a heavy blanket of smoke and fog, a bewildering and unfamiliar darkness, a metaphor apt for this time.
