I was very surprised!

Beautiful plate the Trinity and Milwaukee people gave me tonight.
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Posted via email from 10936 Western Avenue

Quality Education is a Constitutional Right

It’s time for quality education as a constitutional right. Time to cut away all the rhetoric about failing schools, failing teachers, union dominations, myths of creations, Christian nations, vouchers, charters, texts, contexts, atheism, fundamentalism, Catholicism, discipline or lack of such, morality or lack of much, droopy drawers and cutaway tops, fashion plates and sorority slouches, negativity, and exclusivity, dichotomies and academies. Time to shed the shibboleths about “those” blacks, “those” whites, “those” Latinos, those dummies, those nerds, the rich kids and poor kids, and never the twain should meet, flight to the suburbs on three hundred dollar feet.

It’s time for quality education as a constitutional right. Time to amend the U.S. constitution to reflect the promise of the preamble to create a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for a common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity—that is, our kids and their kids—by passing a Twenty-eighth Amendment that all in this country have a right until—let’s pick an age—oh, maybe twenty six, maybe sixty-six, never too late—have a right to be educated as far as he or she can go.

It’s time for quality education as a constitutional right. Unofficially, under the radar, we permit failing schools then use strategies to “rescue” some kids with a private brand of corporate indoctrination. We spend twice the money we should have spent on the public school on some buzz word schools with names like new tech, high tech, math tech, science tech, med tech, instead of making public schools with all these “techs” and a few others that never should have been left behind, like shop tech. We used to have the finest lathe machinery made right here in South Bend. Must we wait for a trade war with China to force us to learn how to make our own stuff again? Anybody learning to set timing on valves? Hone cylinders? Make the cars we have to hold onto (‘cause we can’t afford new ones) last even longer—like mine with 192,000 miles that gets 38 miles per gallon? How are we going to attract good manufacturing jobs that require both math skills and lathe skills if we don’t combine all these “techs” in a good public school available to all?

It’s time for quality education as a constitutional right. If, as the constitution asserts, all are created equal, it’s time to equal-ize the per-pupil allocations from district to district, rich to poor local, rich state to poor state. But that’s not all. While we consider strategies of economic equality we have to take the wrappings off race and put it on the table.

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There it is. Let’s look at it. If we don’t acknowledge that that’s why us white folks are running for the ‘burbs we’re lying to ourselves, our neighbors, and our posterity. The town that accepts race, that celebrates diversity of race and income in its public schools creates a climate where employers can locate and promise to their employees they won’t have to spend huge chunks of their income to get good education for their kids—it’s right there in the good, public, schools.

It’s time for quality education as a constitutional right. Teachers are just as disempowered as the students. They have no time for teaching about their own heroes and sheroes, no time to take history and civics out of their glass cases and use them to create uneasy yearnings in students for a more perfect society. Kids and teachers have no time for art, music, and drama; football, yes, but what about curling, jai alai, handball, and racquetball, all sports that value skill before size; dance and ballet—there grace, strength, art, and music find their highest expression; what about agriculture, high culture, horticulture, viniculture, cooking and eating.

The Twenty-eighth Amendment reads simply this: “all in America have a right to a free, quality, public, education.” We have a birthright to be all we can be. This is the beacon we can shine once more for all the world to see.

David James and Lesson Factory Chicago in the April Irish American News

via irishamericannews.com

With the blessing of the former World Music Company, the spirit of the beloved neighborhood music school lives on at the new Lesson Factory Chicago, 10936 S. Western Ave. A core group of teachers, who enriched WMC for 13 years and built a large and devoted following of students before the school closed last November, is now teaching at Lesson Factory (773-779-7059).
Acclaimed Irish musician, David James, is one of those teachers, teaching violin, Irish fiddle, tin whistle, hammered dulcimer and bodhran.

David James was the 2002 All-Ireland Champion, the only American to win solo senior All-Ireland Championships in the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann (Festival of Irish Traditional Music) on the hammered dulcimer. That was his third championship (Listowel, Co. Kerry, Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, 2002). The first was in Sligo in 1989, the second at Listowel in 1995, where he also performed in the International Concert and was featured in the official Fleadh video. He is the 1996 Winfield (KS) Walnut Valley Festival National Hammered Dulcimer Champion. He received a Master Folk Fellowship award from the Indiana Arts Commission in 1990, and another Individual Artist Award in 2000. He has won many US Midwest Fleadh titles on the dulcimer, fiddle, in trio competitions, in traditional singing and newly composed song categories. He was included among 100 Fascinating People of the Century in Michiana (northern Indiana, southern Michigan) by the South Bend Tribune newspaper.David was also the Saturday night headliner at the first dulcimer festival ever held in Ireland, the Cork Dulcimer Festival.

David has performed and conducted workshops from California to Maine. He performs on the hammered dulcimer, fiddle, guitar and Irish bouzouki, concertina, bodhrán, and harmonicas. He sings and plays Irish tunes and songs, liberally laced with American old-time music and his own compositions. He appears as a soloist, also with Midwestern Fleadh tin whistle and singing winner Kim Hoffmann. They have joined others to create larger ceili bands for Irish social dancing at places like Milwaukee Irish Fest, Chicago’s Gaelic Park and the Irish American Heritage Center.

David is available as a solo Feis musician on the fiddle, or hammered dulcimer, if you’re adventurous!
He frequently co-hosts Irish Music Sessions at the Fiddler’s Hearth, 127 N. Main St. in South Bend, IN, with Kim Hoffmann.
www.tiompanalley.com/index_files/Appear.htm
www.tiompanalley.com/index_files/AboutDJ.htm

Posted via web from River City Review

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April 3, 2010, 5:18AM CDT. 7lb 14oz Clara Weir James! Perfect!
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Posted via email from 10936 Western Avenue