Local
Reading the fascinating, apparently counter-intuitive report “Parched Peru is restoring pre-Incan dikes to solve its water problem” (Simeon Tegel, Washington Post, Dec. 12, 2022) helped me to crystalize and partially redirect more than 50 years of critical thinking as a scholar.
As a comparative historian, I taught, lecture, and write about the centrality of contradictions across many topics, in particular, the past and present of literacy, children and youth, cities, and interdisciplinarity. Among my books on those subjects are, for example, The Literacy Myth (1979 and 1991), The Legacies of Literacy (1987), and Searching for Literacy (2022); Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America (1995); The Dallas Myth, 2008); Undisciplining Knowledge: Interdisciplinarity in the Twentieth Century (2015).
Wednesday, July 19, 2023, 7:00 PM
In its starred review of War Made Invisible, Kirkus Reviews called the book “a powerful, necessary indictment of efforts to disguise the human toll of American foreign policy” and “an incisive and provocative overview of the consequences of the media’s appalling failures in making important truths known.”
The review summarized War Made Invisible this way: “With formidable clarity, Solomon, the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and author of War Made Easy, documents how the so-called war on terror has spawned an endless and secretive program of foreign interventions. The author is particularly eloquent in explaining how the media’s exclusive focus on past and potential ‘American suffering’ in framing such activities has meant that ‘there [isn’t] much room to see or care about the suffering of others, even if—or especially if—it was caused by the United States.’
Are you struggling to pay rent in Columbus? Are those creeping student loan payments causing you anxiety? Is healthcare forcing you to pick up extra hours at work?
Well, good news! Your tax dollars are about to be going to work for you by going to an international developer with $1 trillion in assets to build less than 600 apartment rooms that have no guarantee to be affordable to anyone who doesn’t work downtown.
Blackstone, an international investment group owning more than 150 companies, was approved yesterday by Columbus City Council for re-zoning changes as a first step towards tax abatements. According to the Guardian, “Over the past two decades, (Blackstone) has quietly taken control of apartment blocks, care homes, student housing, railway arches, film studios, offices, hotels, logistics warehouses and datacentres.” They are the largest commercial landlord in world history.
"Barbie" is a clever, colorful comedy that expertly balances contemporary women's issues, social satire, and personal discovery. It smartly critiques societal norms in today's changing social landscape. We are currently in a time where we are gifted a Barbie movie that is both profoundly moving and insightful.
Directed by Greta Gerwig and co-written with Noah Baumbach, the film showcases their knack for addressing important issues and presenting them in a tangible yet thought-provoking way. Gerwig keeps cinephiles in mind as she wisely includes jokes about the red pill from "The Matrix," the snow globe from "Citizen Kane," and the male definition of Coppola's "The Godfather."
In recent years, and again this year, to my knowledge, only a single member of either house of the U.S. Congress has said publicly, prior to voting No on a military spending bill, that he or she planned to vote No because the spending was too high. The same individual has done this more than once, and nobody else has done it at all. That individual is Senator Bernie Sanders. He says he will vote no on his website and in The Guardian. He does not say “I encourage my colleagues to join me in committing to vote No unless military spending is reduced rather than increased,” and I wish he would say that. But, of 535 or so members of Congress, 534 have not done what Sanders has, not this year, and not at any point in recent memory. It’s possible that some Libertarian has done it, advocating for tax cuts for gazillionaires rather than — as Sanders advocates — moving the funding to human and environmental needs, but I’ve publicly asked innumerable times for everyone’s help finding such an example and have yet to find one.
Tuesday, July 25, 2023, 8:00 – 9:30 PM
Across the country and right here in Central Ohio, the far right is using schools for steppingstones to power, scapegoating and endangering LGBTQ kids and enforcing curriculums that teach lies about our country. And they rely on the support of white parents and white voters.
In deep partnership with SURJ national, the Central Ohio SURJ Chapter is building a program to out-organize the far right in majority white communities in Central Ohio and to work for school systems that serve all students. Whether it's campaigning for local school board candidates, pressuring your local school board to pass a resolution to not comply with the far right's agenda, or joining a national remote team to support the local work, we need you.
Sunday, July 22, 6pm
Old Town East Community Gardens, 775 Oak St, Columbus
Pack up a picnic and join OTENA for Music in the Garden. The free concerts will feature local bands and musicians playing jazz, blues, pop and/or soul music at the Community Garden on Oak Street.
Saturday, July 22, 7:30pm
Old First Presbyterian Church, 1101 Bryden Rd.
Free concert - People's Jazz Quartet led by Kevin Cox on saxophone.
Part Three
Very real debates continue about appropriate expectations for children of different ages and for variations especially by social, physical, and intellectual conditions at each age. Astonishingly, human differences play no role in Reading Recovery. In fact, in their response to dyslexia educator, Reading Recovery actually attempted to deny that well-established, not uncommon human condition. Read their statements and especially the International Literacy Association’s ignorant and failing effort to defend them from well-documented criticism from the dyslexic community. (See International Literacy Association, Dykstra)
For at least two decades and especially since 2017, the most sustained criticism of Reading Recovery comes from dyslexia experts including teachers and parents. The most detailed and documented critiques come from Pamela Cook and her colleagues, especially their peer reviewed “The Reading Wars and Reading Recovery: What Educators, Families, and Taxpayers Should Know” (2017), “Effective Early Literacy Practices: What We’ve Learned and How to Replicate in Your District” (2017), and “Response to ‘The Truth about Reading Recovery” (2020).