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Elizabeth McMaster

Elizabeth McMaster lived a short life that was filled with music and art, and she brought two beautiful daughters into the world. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia cc. 1897 and died there in October, 1931. At the time of her death, her daughter Betty was 12 and her daughter Catherine was 10.

Elizabeth was a talented singer. Among her favorites were “Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life” and “Charmaine.” She also painted in oils (see first photo below).

In 1917(?), she married Charles Whitfield Holloway in Atlanta. He was two years younger. Betty was born while they lived there. The family then moved to Chattanooga, where Catherine was born. Charles’s sister Pauline and her mother lived with the family there after her father died. They then moved to Lakeland, Florida, and later to Richmond, Virginia, then back to Atlanta, where they first lived in an apartment on Ponce de Leon street. These moves were due to Charles’s work as a salesman for the B. F. Goodrich Rubber Co.

Elizabeth’s mother felt that Charles was too young and wouldn’t amount to much. Because of this, Charles and Elizabeth had eloped. Despite the estrangement of Charles and her mother, Elizabeth and her daughters kept in close touch with her. However, they didn’t hear from her again after Elizabeth’s funeral.

Elizabeth suffered from nocturnal epilepsy. It was her daughters who discovered her death. Catherine was asked to go outside while others removed the body. After her death, Betty and Catherine went to live with Charles’s brother Emmett and his wife in an apartment in Decatur, Georgia. After a few months they all moved to a house in Atlanta.

Charles then married Eva Lassiter (aka Sugy) and was chosen to manage a Goodrich store in Augusta, where the family moved next. Betty and Catherine were then in high school. He later proved his mother-in-law wrong with the building of the very successful Holloway Tire Co., which sold tires and recapped truck tires. He was also a partner with Ralph Snow in Southeastern Rubber Manufacturing Co. Near the end of the War or possibly shortly afterwards, they went to Washington and received an allotment of rubber and started a company to make camelback for tire recapping (or retreading). Eventually the Holloways built a house at 2727 Hillcrest Avenue and moved there for the remainder of the lives of Charles and Eva.

See more on the Hall and Holloway families.

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A new beginning against extremism

300px-CairoUnivObama’s speech yesterday at Cairo University (photo at left) was beautiful. It represents a new beginning against extremism both in the US and abroad. Even Osama Bin Laden recognized that it challenges a linchpin of al-Qaida’s message.

I don’t agree with many of the current Administration’s foreign policies (escalation of the Afghanistan-Pakistan war, inadequate engagement with the Caribbean, especially with respect to Cuba, and not doing more for Haiti, failure to close Guantanamo and re-establish justice following years of officially sanctioned torture and renditions, etc.), but opening dialogue is a first step towards a rational, humane, and effective foreign policy.

The ending of the speech is classic Obama:

89px-A_Boat_in_the_Nile_RiverIt’s easier to start wars than to end them. It’s easier to blame others than to look inward. It’s easier to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There’s one rule that lies at the heart of every religion — that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples — a belief that isn’t new; that isn’t black or white or brown; that isn’t Christian or Muslim or Jew. It’s a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the hearts of billions around the world. It’s a faith in other people, and it’s what brought me here today.

We have the power to make the world we seek, but only if we have the courage to make a new beginning, keeping in mind what has been written.

The Holy Koran tells us: “O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.”

The Talmud tells us: “The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace.”72px-Barack_Obama_at_Cairo_University_cropped

The Holy Bible tells us: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

The people of the world can live together in peace. We know that is God’s vision. Now that must be our work here on Earth.

Thank you. And may God’s peace be upon you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

See Obama hits a home run, by Robert Dreyfuss.

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Community as Intellectual Space, 2009

CI_2008The fifth annual Community as Intellectual Space Symposium will be held on June 12-14 at La Estancia on 2753 W. Division Street, Paseo Boricua, Chicago, Illinois.

The theme of the symposium is Critical Pedagogy: Community Building as Curriculum. As professionals and institutions are engaging with communities to enhance the life chances and well-being of residents, the conference examines how community-building and critical pedagogy can offer effective and sustainable change, locally and among collaborators as well.

BateyThe keynote speaker this year is Antonia Darder, a Professor at the University of Illinois in Educational Policy Studies and Latino/a Studies. There will be presentations and workshops on

The conference also offers Batey Urbano‘s production of Crime against Humanity, screenings of original documentaries filmed on Paseo Boricua, community tours, and art exhibits.

Community as Intellectual Space is co-organized by the Juan Antonio Corretjer Puerto Rican Cultural Center (Chicago) and the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Continuing Professional Development Units (CDPUs), academic course credit for those who enroll in UI’s LIS590 CIO, and registration scholarships available.

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WIllow Lake, Fort Worth

WIllow Lake in Fort Worth is an artificial lake in an urban setting, which nevertheless boasts a wide variety of wildlife. I spent a week near there and saw fish, turtles with foot-long shells, scaups, coots, ducks, grey herons, nutrias, and more.

The nutrias are South American water rodents that were introduced recently into Louisiana and have been spreading in the southern US. In many places they’re considered pests, because they eat all the desirable water plants. I suspect them of eating the duck eggs at Willow Lake, but don’t have proof so I won’t say that.

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Single-payer health care: Why not?

180px-Roma_-_FatebenefratelliI’ve been fortunate to have traveled many places, and to have lived for extended periods in China, Australia, France, and Ireland. During those travels, my family has received health care on many occasions, including for our small children in China and Asutralia, my wife in Scotland, and my 87-year-old mother in Ireland.

This health care has come in a variety of forms, including treatment for my ten-year-old daughter’s eyes at the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God or Fatebenefratelli (see left), located on San Bartolomeo, the only island in the Tiber River in Rome. That hospital was built in 1584 on the site of the Aesculapius temple.

clontarfWe also faced emergency surgery for my mother’s hip at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, Ireland and subsequent rehab at the Orthopaedic Hospital of Ireland in Clontarf (right). In China, we were served in medical facilities with separate queues for Western medicine (our choice) and traditional Chinese medicine (below left). I donated blood many times at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, founded in 651 on the Ile de la Cité (below right). I’ve also observed, though not had to depend upon, health care in Russia and even in economically oppressed places such as Haiti.

beida_hospitalOn the whole, I’ve received excellent care in a variety of conditions. Individual health providers have been courteous, knowledgeable, and dedicated to their professions. For myself and my family, the experience of care did not depend on the setting or language, but rather on the ailment or the specific people providing care.

And yet, one thing stands out: Among the industrialized nations, the United States is the only one without universal health care. All of the others provide health care for all. They also do it primarily through single-payer systems.

The United States operates instead through a complex bureaucracy of insurance policies, doughnut hole prescription drug coverage, forms and regulations galore, massive administration, unnecessary and excessive procedures, complex and confusing tax codes, leading to escalating costs and unfair coverage. The inequity of care actually costs all of us more in the end, because of lack of preventative care, inefficient delivery (e.g., emergency rooms), and lost productivity. Our system costs much more, even double that found in other countries.

hotel_dieuIf we were to find that spending a few dollars more gave us better care, there might be little room for argument. But in comparable economies, people spend much less, yet have longer, healthier lives (American Health Care: A System to Die For: Health Care for All). Why then, is the system that works in Canada, Japan, Europe, Australia, etc., not even under consideration here?

The answer is unfortunately all too obvious: Americans, unlike citizens in other countries, have ceded control of their own health care to profit-making insurance companies, hospitals, clinics, laboratories, pharmaceutical companies, and other entities. The best we can do is an occasional feeble cheer when someone asks why our government can’t even consider a single-payer system. Then we listen to an answer that mostly obfuscates and lays the blame for it back on our own timidity:

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Minority youngsters dying weekly on Chicago’s streets

So far this school year, 36 children and teens have been murdered–more than one a week–and [Rev. Michael] Pfleger at St. Sabina Church] is among a chorus of weary Chicagoans who say the slayings aren’t getting the attention they deserve.

Had 36 kids died of swine flu this year, “there would be this great influx of resources that say, ‘Let’s stop this, lets deal with this,'” Pfleger said.

via Minority youngsters dying weekly on Chicago’s streets – CNN.com.

As Bob Herbert says,

why overlook the humanity of so many others because of their ethnic background or economic circumstances? Surely the slaughter of dozens of Chicago schoolchildren is worthy of wide national coverage. CNN has covered the story, but there has been precious little coverage elsewhere.

via ‘What Color Is That Baby?’, The New York Times, May 11, 2009.

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Blue sea, wilt thou welcome me?

Emily Dickinson’s “My River” tells the comforting tale of the river running to the gracious sea:

My river runs to thee.
Blue sea, wilt thou welcome me?
My river awaits reply.
Oh! sea, look graciously.

I’ll fetch thee brooks
from spotted nooks.
Say, sea, Take me!

But as a recent article in The Economist (Sin aqua non, April 11-17, 2009, pp. 59-61) points out, many rivers no longer reach those welcoming waters:indus

An alarming number of the world’s great rivers no longer reach the sea. They include the Indus [at right], Rio Grande, Colorado, Murray-Darling and Yellow rivers. These are the arteries of the world’s main grain-growing areas.

Along with the rivers being depleted, the Aral Sea drying up. 

Fish stocks in lakes and rivers have fallen roughly 30% since 1970. This is a bigger population fall than that suffered by animals in jungles, temperate forests, savannahs and any other large ecosystem. [Moreover,] half the world’s wetlands…were drained, damaged or destroyed in the 20th century, mainly because, as the volume of fresh water in rivers falls, salt water invades the delta, changing the balance between fresh and salt water.

Of course, the seas won’t disappear. In fact they’re actually rising due to the melting of the Greenland and polar ice caps. Thus, the world will survive, but it may not be one with blue seas and “brooks from spotted nooks.” People may survive, too, but in what kind of world? What will our poetry become when we’ve destroyed the brooks, the rivers, the forests, the fish and other animals,  the plants, and the beauty of the planet?

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Friends don’t let friends suffer: The US must step up for Haiti

haiti-childrenHaiti is experiencing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. The US must not ignore one of its closest neighbors in a time of need.

Here are some grim facts behind the crisis, reflecting both long-term problems and recent natural catastrophes:

  • Last year, during a one-month period, hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike devastated the country. Over 1000 people were killed; countless others were reported missing and injured.
  • The hurricane damage was equivalent to 15 percent of Haiti’s gross domestic product (GDP). A recent international donors’ conference raised $324 million in emergency and long-term assistance for Haiti. That was better than nothing, but it’s only a third of what Haiti needs to rebuild.
  • Meanwhile, over 30,000 undocumented Haitians face deportation orders from the US. If carried out, these orders would return Haitians to a country struggling to rebuild and not able to provide the critical social safety nets needed for people to survive. Their return would also diminish remittances, which mean the difference between life and death for Haitians.
  • There is high maternal and infant mortality, as well as unwelcome high rankings on most other indicators of poverty.

haiti_rel99Despite these problems, organizations such as La Fondation Connaissance et Liberté (FOKAL) have made major strides toward sustainable development. External aid now can make the difference between compounding the suffering and building an independent, prosperous, and democratic nation.

What can be done?

  • The World Bank and International Monetary Fund should include Haiti in their Highly Indebted Poor Country initiative, a program to lower debt to manageable levels. Better yet, cancel Haiti’s crippling external debts until the economy can be self-sufficient.
  • US and other international aid to Haiti should be doubled immediately. Foreign aid should be structured as grants, not as loans, which may offer short-term help, but long-term shackles.
  • International aid should be focused on development, not military and police support. Haiti has enough guns already. Aid programs should work with NGO’s as well as government agencies.
  • Stop the deportations. Haitians should be granted Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and the Department of Homeland Security should conduct a thorough review of US policy towards Haiti. Individuals should call the DHS at 202-282-8495 [if unable to get through, call the White House Comment line at 202-456-1111] and urge these actions.
  • The US should extend the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act (HOPE), which allows Haitian textile manufacturers to export duty-free to the United States. This could generate much-needed jobs in Haiti’s labor-intensive garment industry. The average Haitian garment worker earns $4 a day, while 77 percent of Haitians live on less than $2 a day. As Rep. Charles Rangel, said of the US textile industry concerns, “God should be so good to the people in Haiti that their exports should be a threat to the United States of America. That’s not going to happen.”
  • All Americans need to learn more about our neighbor in need. Explore the resources provided by organizations such as the Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC) – Haiti, the Haiti Information Project, the Haiti Action Committee, and Oxfam, as well as the many books about Haiti, especially those that consider its history.

References

UNICEF (2009). The state of the world’s children: Maternal and newborn health.

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Visual literacy in the information age

ching-chiu1Ching-Chiu Lin is a founding member of the Youth Community Informatics project. Her work with Timnah, Lisa, and Karen at the Urbana Middle School integrated art, music, story-telling, cultural heritage, and multimedia in an after-school program. That’s one of the models for our current work.

michoacanChing-Chiu’s dissertation, A qualitative study of three secondary art teachers’ conceptualizations of visual literacy as manifested through their teaching with electronic technologies, analyzed similar arts and new media projects in three schools. I’ve learned a little while ago that it was awarded second place for the 2008 Eisner Doctoral Research award. This was officially announced at the National Art Education Association (NAEA) convention in Minneapolis this month.

Congratulations, Ching-Chiu!

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Creating opportunity through new media

clay_animationOne of the most impressive set of projects I saw while in Dublin, Ireland last year was the Community Links Programme out of Dublin Institute of Technology. It was established in 1996 by DIT lecturer Dr. Tommy Cooke to help individuals and communities reach their full educational potential. Programs include psychotherapy, music, and courses for mature students.

One important component is the DISC Programme, which operates in 38 inner-city disadvantaged primary and secondary schools. DISC installs computer resources in schools and community centers, and trains teachers to integrate the use of computers into the teaching/learning process in all curricular areas. Projects include the use of comic creation, clay animation, video production, class blogs, podcasting, video game making, 3d design, and robotic Lego.

Staff such as
Ian Roller and Riona Fitzgerald bring knowledge of pedagogy together with skills in video and computers to help teachers and youth leaders do amazing projects. More importantly, they do it in a way that empowers teachers as creative agents in the education process.

You can see DISC publications, including their very useful monthly newsletter online. Here’s the April edition.