African-American
sastyk | February 10, 2016In one of my last posts, I argued that White children need to read Black children's books as much or more than Black children, and more importantly, need to read lots of good children's books with Black language, culture and heroes. They also need to read about other non-White cultures, but given the beginning of Black History month, I'm going to stick with Black books for today. Note, this is not a fully comprehensive list, merely a list of our family's favorites. I'm going to do this in two parts, the first covering picture books for younger kids, the second "read aloud" or "read…
sastyk | March 15, 2010Reaching the hellacious end-of-book period where I do nothing but merge endlessly with my computer. Thus, low on new content. So you can read this stuff instead.
First, check out "Little House in the Ghetto" which will be going on my blogroll just as soon as I figure out how to change my blogroll.
Waking up from this entrancement and becoming aware that options exist has given me opportunity and motivation in my own life. As hobo poet Vachel Lindsay remarked, "I am further from slavery than most men." This has been an unexpected gift from downshifting (dropping out) from mainstream…
sastyk | February 2, 2010At first glance, swept yards, derived from Africa, at one time traditional in the south and now mostly the province of a few, aging African-American southerners; and Cottage Gardens, invented in Britain under the feudal system and now evolved into a trendy " flower garden style" meaning mostly a mix of abundant plants and mulched paths as seen in any supermarket magazine, have nothing to do with one another.
But looking past the obvious, the two of them have a great deal in common indeed. Both emerged from the need to make good use of a comparatively smaller piece of land for a family with…
sciencewoman | February 19, 2009Dr. Ashanti Pyrtle is an assistant professor in the College of Marine Science at the University of South Florida. She's a chemical oceanographer who studies the fate, transport and retention of radionuclides in aquatic ecosystems. Her PhD work investigated the marine distribution of radioisotopes from the Chernobyl accident, and she's currently doing work in Puerto Rico, off the Florida coast, and in the Savannah River. She's one of the first female African-American chemical oceanographers, and the first African-American to earn an oceanography Ph.D. from Texas A&M University.
Dr. Pyrtle…