Required Reading for Singletrack High: Chasing AllieCat

http://www.tennesseemtb.org/singletrack-high-premiere/

So....I'm hoping if we want kids to RIDE--which we DO--maybe we want kids to READ as well. Wouldn't everybody in this documentary love to read about mountain biking kids as well?

Chasing AllieCat!
http://www.fluxnow.com/product.php?ean=9780738721309
and
http://www.amazon.com/Chasing-AllieCat-Rebecca-Fjelland-Davis/dp/0738721301

In My Country

I previewed the Movie In My Country last night with Tom. I'll be showing it in class on Tuesday. I am now carrying the story around like guilt--like the pain of awareness.

It's well-done. It's powerful. It's based on the book (which I'm embarrassed that I haven't read yet, but it's top on my pile to read), Country of My Skull.

I'm happy about the movie selections we've watched in my Culture and History of South Africa class. The most powerful ones have blown us out of the water.

The three most powerful are:

Dry White Season
Cry Freedom
and now
In My Country

The first two show apartheid in all its reality. BOTH were released while apartheid was still the law. Cry Freedom is about Steve Biko.  
In My Country shows the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings and aftermath.
Juliette Binoche is spectacular (I have never seen her in anything that I didn't love. I think she's brilliant. First memory of her: Unbearable Lightness of Being), and Samuel L. Jackson is always powerful. Always.

If you haven't seen them, and you are the least bit interested, watch them.
Other movies we've watched, which are also powerful include
Invictus
and
Tsotsi
Both of these are also set in post-apartheid South Africa, the one concentrating on Nelson Mandela and his relationship with the South African rugby team The Springboks.
Tsotsi shows what poverty can do in the townships that endure as a legacy of apartheid. I should have put both of those in the most powerful category, too.

Still to watch are
Cry, the Beloved Country (James Earl Jones, Richard Harris...can't go wrong with that, unless we should have watched it earlier)
District 9 
(Did you know that it's based on District 6 in Cape Town?)
and
 Disgrace (Based on the book we're watching now, starring John Malkovich).

We're also acting out/conveying/telling South African Folk Tales, taken from the book Nelson Mandela's Favorite African Folk Tales.

Our reading list included:
The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
Africans and Americans by Joseph Mbele
Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
and
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

Other books I still need to read are
Country of My Skull (The Movie In My Country  is based on this book; I might substitute it for Disgrace  if I get to teach this class again)
BIKO 
Cry, My Beloved Country

And many, many more. But these are at the top of my list.

Why South Africa? Why does this country matter in our study of Humanities?

Bill Clinton summed it up well. He said this after Mandela's marriage at age 80, and on the occasion of Mandela's retirement from the South African Presidency:

"In every gnarly, knotted, distorted situation in the world where people are kept from becoming the best they can be, there is an apartheid of the heart. And if we really honor this stunning sacrifice of twenty-seven year, if we really rejoice in the infinite justice of seeing this man happily married in the autumn of his life, if we really are seeking some driven wisdom from the poser of his example, it will be to do whatever we can, however we can, wherever we can, to take the apartheid out of our own and others' hearts."

April 10? What? And St. Peter 8th Grade

Had a terrific visit last week with the St. Peter 8th grade English classes. The students were wonderful listeners and had great questions. They had all read Chasing AllieCat, so it was much, much fun to get to talk with them! Thanks, Ms. Hughes!

Time is flying past!
It's April 10 already! And look at the ground! Freya's happy--she was crazy this morning, playing "Grab Mom's warm stuff and run." (Question of the day: How many exclamation marks can one writer use in one short blog post?)

 Time is flying! I'm not keeping up with my days...I put out fires at school, work on the details we need to iron out for our trip to South Africa, try to keep up grading and reading ahead of the students, and try to squeeze in a little writing and a little cycling.

South Africa approaches, and it's getting more and more exciting as it does. Will keep you posted...might have more news by the end of the week! (There--I had to end with another exclamation point, of course).

Spring? Biking

So...Bicycling Magazine is hosting a contest: submit 100 words about your favorite ride  (I take that quite loosely) and a photo. I submitted a couple weeks ago, and TODAY (two days before contest ends), I read that I can submit ONE entry EACH day! Holy buckets.
So here's today's entry:

 

I ride to breathe in the seasons: I watch snow melting, mud emerging, the grass and tiny corn plants sprouting, and foals standing on toothpick legs. Geese honk, winging north, and the baby calves bawl. I smell rain coming, lilacs blooming, mown grass, baled hay, and grain drying in bins. I’m in my upper 50s. I ride so I only have one chin and so my thighs don't rub together. It doesn't hurt if I can beat some people 30 years younger than I am either.  Somebody asked me what I use on my face. I said, "Sweat."

: )

Photo by Steve Pottenger

Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University News

Big News at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University--what a time to be going to South Africa!

For the first time, a degree will be offered in Human Settlement Development at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.
Big News at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University: Human Settlement Degree launched

Amazing that we will be visiting NMMU this spring. Amazing that we can visit this school named for Nelson Mandela when we are in Port Elizabeth in May.


Whenever I teach literature that brings such conditions to light--like Apartheid and its legacy--like the Rwandan genocide--like the conditions in diamond mines--like the children forced to be soldiers and turn against their parents in Uganda and Sierra Leone, the students and I always come to an impass: so now what? Now what can we do, now that we know about this injustice? We can keep it, in every way possible,  from happening in our corner of the worlld, but what else can we do?

Maybe this is our answer.
Scott Fee from Construction Management--how ironic is that--and I are partnering with Chris Black-Hughes in Social Work to travel with students to South Africa in May and early June. Now it feels as if there is another purpose besides understanding the culture. When we read about the atrocities during Apartheid--and its enduring legacy in South Africa, all roads lead to the Townships and the Homelands, where poverty controls life. We will be visiting Townships.
The word "Apartheid" means apartness or separation--which is what the Nationalist Party incorporated. Black Africans were separated into their tribe of origin, and forced to live in the appropriate "Homeland," or in urban areas, in townships. In one instance, 500,000 people lived in five square miles. Both situations provided atrocious squalor and threat of imprisonment, violence, or death. Their vestiges still pervade life in South Africa.

So now, the stories, the knowledge we've been accumulating to understand what has happened in South Africa leads us here.

With this new degree, with a plan to groom young people to change these living conditions, where do we fit in? What can we do to be part of the change instead of--if you remember the film Hotel Rwanda--the reporters said to Paul Rusesabagina, "Oh, [Americans] will watch the news and say, 'isn't that too bad,' but they won't do anything." We are coming to South Africa at a crucial time. I am proposing some books to Capstone about Apartheid and its legacy in South Africa, but that in itself isn't enough, either. We can join this movement and maybe, maybe, maybe we can be supportive in a way that makes a difference.

Info about Homelands and a bit of history

The rewards of teaching...yes, they are there

Sometimes...sometimes I get frustrated because I never, ever have enough time to write. School takes so many hours a week between grading papers and preparing for class that writing gets squeezed into flat spaces that never materialize.

Spring break was a gift. I got hours of writing done.

And then days happen like today. Good discussions, fun stuff happening in all my classes. We talked about understanding people from vastly different backgrounds, within the context of Apartheid in South Africa.

In Humanities, we talked about the French Revolution and the oppressive aristocracy and need for revolt and change. We had a great time watching and laughing with Sister Wendy as she looked at art born from that Revolution.

Tonight, my Comp class read and analyzed Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from the Birmingham Jail (a longish excerpt), and everybody  got it. They understood that an absence of equality and justice within a calm segregated society may be peaceful but  is what MLK called a negative peace.  They understood that tension had to be created in order for justice to come to fruition. They worked hard to understand all of MLK's analogies, and the UNDERSTOOD that MLK was happy to be called an extremist, considering the company it put him with: Socrates, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus, Amos, Martin Luther, and Thomas Jefferson. Days  like this make me glad I'm a teacher, make me glad I get to do what I do. I am grateful.