What I’ve been reading at nytimes.com this week

I can’t wait to read the Vena Cava blog.

I love Brussels sprouts.

The more I think about it, the more upset I am about this.

I’m so glad this is not my life.

The achievement gap is even wider between high-income high-achieving whites and high-income high-achieving blacks.

Let’s get more in-depth about how the stimulus will help schools that serve low-income students.  This is a start.

The sketchy 7-5 keeping another innocent man behind bars.  Justice is a joke. 

These kids can really O____o!

This has been an obsession around ARL this week:

Check out the link here

You’re going to have to take my word for it and click on the link since I can’t embed it.

O___o

Thoughts On Civil Rights

As you’ve noticed, MLK Day and President Obama’s inauguration have given me pause to reflect on the state of civil rights in our country.  Today I heard an interesting perspective and some disturbing facts regarding the subprime mortgage market crash and the affects it has had on black homeowners.  The report comes from commentator Amelia Tyagi on American Public Media’s Marketplace:

 

Amid hope, black homeowners struggle

As African Americans celebrate President Obama’s inauguration, a disproportionate number of them are struggling to avoid foreclosures on their homes. Commentator Amelia Tyagi says we should examine the practices that led many of them into this situation.

 

Listen to the January 20, 2009 Marketplace here or subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.  Tyagi’s piece appears at approximately the 14:42 mark.  

African Americans are two and a half times more likely to be in foreclosure than their white counterparts.  

—

Early in the 2008 race for the presidency, prior to Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Obama’s speeches on race, I was very concerned that we would have a popular black leader who only wanted everyone to forget that he is black.  My fears were in error.  Yet I don’t expect President Obama to be a civil rights leader.  I expect him to support a fight for expanded civil rights, I expect him to facilitate the movement, but not to lead it.  President Obama, a popularly elected executive of a democratic republic must unite.  Like he has said, his task is diplomacy, and appropriately so.

Now, as the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King urged us in “A Realistic Look at the Question of Progress in the Area of Race Relations,” we must celebrate our progress, but we must also never be satisfied with less than the total equality that we all share in God’s eyes.  

We need leaders to lead this fight; a fight that must take place in order for true equality to be achieved.  To fuel our mission we need writers to write these stories.  We need people to talk about the fight for civil rights that is happening now.  We need take the issue of civil rights out of history books (as if it were some static era that sprang up and then disappeared)  and put it back where it belongs–in 2009.

President Obama, will you help us?  

Let’s take the responsibility, let’s do our part.  We have a president who’ll support us if we make this our issue.  Let’s take this opportunity.

—

“…nobody thinks of [the foreclosures on black homeowners] as a civil rights issue, but maybe they should.”

Post-its to Obama

I was proud to be part of a project conceived by Brian McMullen that ran in the special Inauguration section of Sunday’s SF Chronicle.  

Post-its to the President-Elect

Forty messages from Bay Area people, collected over seven days by San Francisco resident Brian McMullen

I think the ones about teaching are especially thoughtful.

I Never Thought I Could Love an Economist

Talk about love at first sight.  

Listen to Mr. Fryer’s words.  

The achievement gap is the number one civil rights issue in this country.  

AND the man is funny–he schools Colbert!  Beautiful.  Please watch this.  

Roland Fryer on The Colbert Report

I’m in love.

More links to learn more about Fryer and his project to address the achievement gap through paying Black students for high grades:

Click here for his contact information at Harvard.

Click here to view the project website: Edlabs.

Click here to read a Wall Street Journal article.

Click here to read an article in the London Times. 

I’m Rarely Jealous

But Mrs. Blandings Flair Annual find has me a little on the green side.

I was lucky enough to be given several original issues of Flair back in 1999 when I was working the desk at Hollyhock.  A kind client thought it was darling that a teenager shop girl thought Flair was “it” and brought in a couple watermarked copies from her attic for me. 

But this Flair Annual has my vintage copies beat.

Here’s an image of the open book:

Some amazing garden illustrations:

and an owl with a butterfly for a face:

I just love that owl.  It’s like kitsch crossed with fashion crossed with botanicals.  LOVE IT.

In Case You Haven’t Seen This

I. did a rendition of this on our 4th date.  I was so confused.  It was months before I saw the show.

Chris Rocks King

This is worth watching.  We love ya Flava Flav, but we don’t want you as our president.  And McCain, you’ve got enough houses to lose a few.  

His answer to viewer Anton’s question was AMAZING.

Kirala

Last week, when I was on an over-worked over-socialized blog hiatus, I. and I took R. and A. out to dinner to celebrate R.’s first published news article in a national newspaper. Not to mention the front section!

We all went and had a feast at Kirala, arguably the East Bay’s foremost Japanese restaurant.  For a non-urban, mid-level sushi place, Kirala really puts effort in, and I respect that.

I love their dishware: 

 

and the classic sake presentation in a bamboo carafe:

The seaweed salad is amazing here:

I. and I fought over some shrimp heads:

Crunchy!

And of course great sushi

The hamachi was amazing that night.

It was one week ago tonight, and now I’m re-living it in celebration of R.’s THIRD article published in the Tribune!!! Go Rimpletide! So prolific I can’t even keep up.  

Here’s the second…

More On Whiteness

Check out Tim Wise on You Tube.  Interesting stuff.  

Tim Wise On White Privilege