Steinbeck on language

March 18, 2010

This excerpt from John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley: in Search of America” started me wondering about the impact of media and technology on our speech, especially given the vast changes we’ve witnessed since this was written in 1962. “It seemed to me that regional speech is in the process of disappearing, not gone but going. […]


Book clubs are hot

March 18, 2010

I ran across a short article in the Trib Business section this week on the popularity of book clubs and the value of hosting club meetings right at the store. It’s nice to hear about the growing population of book clubbers, and it’s nice to think that many of them might be frugal types who pop in to the […]


Libros Lege Spring 2010 3rd Annual Read-Aloud Contest

March 17, 2010

PANGEA Alliance Dear Libros Lege Participant: Another Libros Lege Contest is upon us. The signup for the Third Annual Libros Lege Read-Aloud Contest opens on today, Monday, March 1st and closes Wednesday, March 31st. The first day of readings will be on Saturday, April 10th. As usual, the entire contest will take place at Eisenhower […]


African-American High School Grads

March 16, 2010

  The entire senior class at Chicago’s only public all-male, all-African-American high school has been accepted to four-year colleges. At last count, the 107 seniors had earned spots at 72 schools across the nation. Mayor Richard Daley and Chicago Public Schools chief Ron Huberman surprised students at an all-school assembly at Urban Prep Academy for […]


Britain’s Brainiest Family is Black and Has 9-Year-Old High School-Bound Twins

March 16, 2010

By Ruth Manuel-Logan on Mar 2nd 2010 12:09PM Paula and Peter Imafidon are just like any other 9-year-olds. They love laughing, playing on the computer and fighting with each other. What sets these twins apart from their peers, though, is that they are, hands down, prodigies who are about to enter high school and make […]


Congratulations to Natalie Randolph!

March 14, 2010

Coolidge Senior High School in Washington, DC  has just named Natalie Randolph as their head football coach. A biology and environmental sciences teacher, and former receiver for the DC Divas of the National Women’s Football Association, Ms. Randolph is only the nation’s second female head coach of a boys’ varsity high school football team. You […]


Tina Brown’s Blast-off for Women in the World Summit

March 12, 2010

Tina Brown, founder and editor-in-chief of popular news website The Daily Beast, is hosting an historic three day summit of 300 “impressive, brave, pioneering” women leaders to address women’s issues. Brava! (SR) Read all about it


Write This Woman Back into History!

March 12, 2010

Who are the first people that come to mind when you think of the Montgomery bus boycotts of the 1950s? Rosa Parks played a pivotal role, to be sure. But nine months before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, a 15-year-old girl named Claudette Colvin did the same. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZOpqtdd8nw&hl=en_US&fs=1&] […]


Women’s History Month: Baseball Been Very, Very Bad to Her…But It’s Made Amends

March 11, 2010

In another instance of a woman belatedly getting  due credit for her work, the Society for American Baseball Research (SARB) decided to acknowledge Dorothy Jane Mills, right, as co-author with her late husband, Harold Seymour, for a highly influential three-volume history of baseball that she co-wrote and for which he took sole credit. This New York Times feature tells how Mills, 81, fumed […]


DVD Review: Every Little Step

March 10, 2010

In 2005, three thousand dancers, actors, and singers attended an open call in New York City for the first Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, one of the most successful and beloved musicals ever created. They came from all over the world, drawn by the chance to show off their talents to a room of […]


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