Just in time to end Black History Month

So here we are at the end of February again and we have a paid homage to the upstanding (and sometimes, not so upstanding) members of the Black diaspora. And now what? On collge campuses (which is my immediate frame of reference) we will quickly move onto Woman's History month where we will expound the achievements of the women who shaped this country. And then what? Asian Heritage month for most people. And then Memorial Day hits and the great eraser known to us in the Northeast as SUMMER will come along and no-one pays attention to any of the lessons learned in the previous months: there will be racial tensions and women will struggle to be treated as equals. Then in mid-September, Latino Heritage month rolls around and we start the cycle all over again.

Why are we still locked into these constructs of knowledge and celebrations of the people that contributed to making this country great? Carter G. Woodson's wish was that there would someday no longer be a need for what was then Negro History Week. The opposite has actually happened. The week became a month and soon everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that we should not remember the many diverse facets of our history. My point is, isn't it time that the youth of our nation be taught a COMPLETE history to begin with on a constant basis, not just in bunches depending on the month of the year? Why haven't we made more strides in having a more inclusive curriculum for our education system instead of having to augment an admittedly deficient set of knowledge. This seems stupid to me.

But what do I know? I'm just an immigrant here and I probably don't get it. Oh wait...we're mostly all immigrants to some degree in this country, aren't we? Maybe I DO know what I'm talking about.

These are my thoughts....what are yours?

Complete Knowledge

I just finished hosting my school's trivia bowl and I had a great time. If you know me for more than 5 minutes, you know that I am a walking vessel of abstract and for the most part, disconnected bits of information. That is to say, I know a little bit about a bunch of stuff as opposed to having every bit of knowledge there is to have about one topic. Now I have extensive knowledge about a few things but I am by no means the world authority on anything.

When building trivia questions, I try to reference topics that are familiar to most people and then delve a bit deeper which brings me to my point. It is always interesting to me to see that people generally know one or two things about something but not the whole body of information surrounding it. For instance, in one of the questions I showed a picture of the Taj Mahal. People immediately go excited because, I think, they thought I was just going to ask them to name it. The actual question was what city was the monument in which resulted in groans from the crowd! Most of us know the Taj Mahal when we see it but how many of us know that it is in Agra, India or the name Emperor Shah Jahan,the man who built it, or Mumtaz Mahal, the woman for whom it is an extreme gesture of love?

I'm a nerd so delve into anything that interests me but even I have tons of subject matters that I only have one bit of information for. Don't ask me anything else about it though!! LOL So then aside from the issue of time, why don't we drill down deeper into things that interest us. Our brains have the capacity for it and we live in an era where information is more readily available than ever. Or is time truly only reasons that we don't have a more complete body of knowledge?

These are my thoughts...what are yours?

Micro Blog#4 - Inspiration

When I write poetry or when I was writing my book, I took inspiration from things that I saw around me: the looks on people's faces, loving embraces, buildings, etc. It was with that in mind that I can definitely see where some sci fi writers get THEIR inspirations from as well. Today, I sat next to an elf, a hobbit, an ogre, and a garden gnome all in human form!! Do you ever ride the train and see your favorite 'creatures' sitting next to you on your commute into work? 

I do...or maybe I'm just mean....

Mini blog #3 Loyalty

This country was built on ideal closely related to loyalty, brotherhood, and honor. There is no place that those three maxims are ever present than in Greek organizations, alias fraternities. The interesting things about loyalty is that if you are loyal to one thing, you cannot, by DEFINITION, be loyal its opposite. In any group of humans, there will be differing beliefs and affiliations and there is a fine line that gets drawn when you decide which ones you ascribe to. The trick of it all is to be able to respect loyalty as a stand alone quality as opposed to judging the thing that a person is being loyal to. Try not to take people to task simply because they are not being loyal to that thing that YOU believe in.

Micro Blog #2 - Was I that Stoopid?

As I work with the younger generation, they do things that amaze and trouble me. Even so, I try to be objective. A long time ago, I promised that I would never be one of the older guys always complaining about how unappreciative the young bucks are and they did really know "what struggling was"! You know, the guys who walk 10 miles to school every day, in a snow storm, uphill.....both ways!

I know that the generation before me probably looked at me like I wasn't up to snuff, even though I thought I was. Now that I AM the "generation before" I try really hard to understand this generation and how their actions are relative to the situations that they are in right now. But I increasing I keep asking myself if I were in their shoes RIGHT NOW would I be making these mistakes? I ask myself constantly, "was I that stoopid" and have I romanticized my youth? I feel like today's young people aren't thinking things through most of the times! Help me with this y'all.