http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQRRnAhmB58
Event Screenings & Alternate Releasing « New Breed Ordinarily, I don’t like speculative posts. At times I find them even counter-productive, because they can often wind people up with pie-in-the-sky “what-ifs,” but provide no real actionable items. So that’s not my intent here. Here I just wanted to throw out some ideas for viewing/releasing a film, and see what others think about them. from Citizen: “You are in the dark, in the car...” by Claudia Rankine You are in the dark, in the car, watching the black-tarred street being swallowed by speed; he tells you his dean is making him hire a person of color when there are so many great writers out there. You think maybe this is an experiment and you are being tested or retroactively insulted or you have done something that communicates this is an okay conversation to be having. Why do you feel okay saying this to me? You wish the light would turn red or a police siren would go off so you could slam on the brakes, slam into the car ahead of you, be propelled forward so quickly both your faces would suddenly be exposed to the wind. As usual you drive straight through the moment with the expected backing off of what was previously said.
Why Junot Diaz urges you to read more promiscuously - Home In a rich and wide-ranging interview, Pulitzer Prize winning writer Junot Diaz joins Shad to discuss his ongoing push for real diversity in the largely-white worlds of Western academia and literature. The Dominican-American author also comments on the importance of idealism in young people, why there's always a struggle when you come from the margins, and why — in a world packed with advice for writers — he offers his advice to readers. "Drop down out of Instagram time, out of Facebook time. Drop down into a much more human rhythm," says Diaz, adding that, for the sake of our culture and our future, we all have to learn to slow down.
Cornel West's Rise and Fall by Michael Eric Dyson Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned” is the best-known line from William Congreve’s The Mourning Bride. But I’m concerned with the phrase preceding it, which captures wrath in more universal terms: “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned.” Even an angry Almighty can’t compete with mortals whose love turns to hate. Cornel West’s rage against President Barack Obama evokes that kind of venom. This foreigner's guide to Irish accents will give you a good laugh Ear-gasmic sounds here. With St Patrick's Day fast approaching, we're certain that a huge amount of tourists will be flooding into the 32 counties as Irish people welcome them with open arms. We always did wonder what it would be like though if we placed a foreigner into a bar in West Cork, Derry or Dublin? Would they be able to understand what the hell was being said?
How a book club is helping to keep ex-offenders from going back to jail Robert Barksdale steps in front of the students in an English class at Eastern High School, searching for some semblance of redemption. “For me, school is a treat because I never got to be in school, for real,” he begins. He always envisioned visiting a school to speak to students but was beginning to realize the pressures of standing in front of the classroom. He scans the room and says: “Y’all are a little intimidating.” Barksdale was around their age when he chose the streets over school.
The Wrong Way to Teach Grammar A century of research shows that traditional grammar lessons—those hours spent diagramming sentences and memorizing parts of speech—don’t help and may even hinder students’ efforts to become better writers. Yes, they need to learn grammar, but the old-fashioned way does not work. There is a real cost to ignoring such findings. In my work with adults who dropped out of school before earning a college degree, I have found over and over again that they over-edit themselves from the moment they sit down to write. They report thoughts like “Is this right? Is that right?”
A Picture Of Language: The Fading Art Of Diagramming Sentences : NPR Ed The design firm Pop Chart Lab has taken the first lines of famous novels and diagrammed those sentences. This one shows the opening of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis. Pop Chart Lab When you think about a sentence, you usually think about words — not lines. But sentence diagramming brings geometry into grammar. If you weren't taught to diagram a sentence, this might sound a little zany.
How to Talk Like a San Franciscan This article originally appeared on February 26, 1984. If you have spent any time in bookstores lately, you must have noticed that there are books on San Francisco's past, present and future; books that tell you where to eat, where to drink, where to drive, where to take a bus, where to stay, what to look at and even how to cook in the San Francisco style, whatever that is. But no book tells you how to act like a native San Franciscan, because it is widely assumed that the breed, if it ever existed, is extinct. How not to say the wrong thing - LA Times When Susan had breast cancer, we heard a lot of lame remarks, but our favorite came from one of Susan's colleagues. She wanted, she needed, to visit Susan after the surgery, but Susan didn't feel like having visitors, and she said so. Her colleague's response? "This isn't just about you."
Voices from the Days of Slavery - Faces and Voices from the Presentation (American Memory from the Library of Congress) Approximately four million Americans enslaved in the United States were freed at the conclusion of the American Civil War. The stories of a few thousand have been passed on to future generations through word of mouth, diaries, letters, records, or written transcripts of interviews. Only twenty-six audio-recorded interviews of ex-slaves have been found. This collection captures the stories of former slaves in their own words and voices. Little biographical information about them is available. Apart from their voices, photographs have been found only for the seven individuals below.