NEW ORLEANS -- When 4-year-old Cortez Stewart was reunited with her mother and five siblings in Texas last week, it brought a happy ending to a long journey that began with the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Cortez represented the last of 5,192 Gulf Coast children listed as missing or displaced after the storms struck more than six months ago...
[...snip...]
Of the more than 5,000 children from both storms, all but 12 were found alive. Most were found living with other relatives, family friends or other adults...
At first glance, the regular Saturday morning gatherings of friends over coffee, bagels and books could be any gaggle of intellectuals at any one of San Francisco's arty coffeehouses.
But look closer and the dozen friends sitting at a round, wooden table in the corner of the Morning Due Cafe are teenagers from Mission High and their young social studies teacher. They're studying Dante's "The Divine Comedy" together, and they do it for two hours every weekend.
Not for credits. Not for resume building. Just for fun.
Mission High is composed of mostly low-income, minority students, many of them new immigrants learning English. The school's curriculum concentrates largely on modern, multicultural literature as a way to engage students in reading. While Mission students do read a couple of Shakespeare's plays and a smattering of other classics before graduation, much of the Western canon never crosses their desks.
Callen Taylor, 30, teaches social studies at Mission and said many of her students lack "cultural currency." They have no knowledge of Greek mythology or Renaissance artists or ancient Rome.
She was made especially aware of their gap in knowledge when they returned to Mission last fall after having participated in a variety of summer programs along with wealthier students from other schools. They told her they'd felt intimidated.
"They felt like why are all the kids smarter than us?" Taylor recalled. "Why does everybody seem to know Greek mythology? How do they know Jupiter is the same as Zeus? A lot of people would take that for granted."
Her solution? The Dante Club...
My official “hospital experiment” would come two months later. I deliberately chose the one that scared me the most, perhaps because I’d learned so much from overcoming my fear of accompanying the terminally ill in their final days. This would be a new kind of challenge—The Father Purcell Memorial Center for Exceptional Children in Montgomery, AL. For two months I would work with severely handicapped children, only two of whom could speak, and only a few of whom could walk. I worked mainly in physical therapy. Each day groups of children would come down, we would lift them out of their wheelchairs and exercises their limbs, something that they could not do for themselves. They ranged in age from babies to teenagers. It didn’t take long to see what a gift these children were, as surprising as that might seem. Despite their limitations, they had a capacity to love and to be loved that brought out the best in people, even if at times they could be inexplicably difficult. Still, it was hard work, sometimes made harder by the harsh reality of the fact that some of these children were born handicapped because of a parents’ drug abuse or rendered handicapped because of physical abuse. And several had been left at the hospital by family members who never returned. There I learned the importance of allowing your heart to be broken by another’s suffering, and also the importance of loving, even if the person loved cannot acknowledge or return that love in a familiar way...
A NEW institute is to be established at Edinburgh University to promote Chinese language, culture and business, it was announced today.
The decision to set up the Scottish Confucius Institute followed talks in Beijing between First Minister Jack McConnell and the Chinese Education Minister, Professor Zhou Ji.
Staff from one of China's top three universities will be seconded to staff the institute, which is expected to be up and running later this year.
Its first task will be to initiate language teaching, but it promises increased language teaching and the establishment of a programme of cultural activities next year.
The Ministry of Education in China intends to open around 100 Confucius Institutes across the globe by 2010. The network is intended to spearhead the teaching of Chinese language and culture worldwide and to strengthen economic and business ties.
[...]
Pundita has a short, heartbreaking excerpt from Two Birthdays in Baghdad: Finding the Heart of Iraq by Anna Prouse (Howells House, September 2005), focusing on the high incidence of serious deformities due to marrying within clans. From that, I expected a downbeat book, but then I looked at Barnes & Noble, and read:
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Back in Italy after 14 months in wartime Iraq, this Italian journalist felt the international news coverage of bombs, rockets, and insurgency lacked the optimism she witnessed there every day, and writing an account of her own impressions became an effort to set the record straight. Trained as an emergency medical responder, Anna Prouse arrived in Baghdad in June 2003 to work at the Italian Red Cross Hospital, where she found the Iraqis she worked with to be full of aspirations for the future despite danger and provision shortages. She was subsequently hired to work in public affairs for the Coalition Provisional Authority inside the Green Zone (or the International Zone), where occupation authorities live and work. There in the foreign community, as elsewhere in Baghdad, she discovered a spirit of energy, dedication, and comradeship in the mission of rebuilding a devastated country.
FROM OUR EDITORS
Charles "Pete" Conrad (1930-99) seemed to be the last person destined to make history. The dyslexic son of debt-ridden parents, the Philadelphia-born future astronaut took odd jobs at an airfield before landing a Navy scholarship to Princeton, where he majored in aeronautical engineering. A born risk taker, he became one of the nation's elite test pilots, then joined the Mercury Space Program, only to drop out. Some people thought that he was too free-spirited or too short in stature to become an astronaut. Conrad proved them wrong. On his four Gemini flights, he spent nearly 1,200 hours in space, but he is best known as the commander of the second lunar landing in November 1969. His first words on the moon were not exactly tailored for history: "Whoopie!" he shouted, "That may have been one small step for Neil, but it's a long one for me!" In Rocketman, Conrad's widow joins with Space Cowboys screenplay writer Howard A. Klausner to capture the life and achievements of a high-flying hero.
