“Men and women, young and old, regardless of creeds, political parties, or nationalities, all the Vietnamese must stand up to fight the French colonialists and save the fatherland. Those
Ho Chi Minh, Proclamation, 19 Dec. 1946 (translation by Peter Wiles)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Russo-Japanese War. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and three comprehension questions. Once again, for its brevity, this is a surprisingly thorough summary of this conflict from the editors of The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Bharhut sculpture: (mid-2nd century BC) Indian sculpture that decorated the great stupa, or relic mound, of Bharhut, in Madhya Pradesh. It is now mostly destroyed; the railings and gateways that remain are in Calcutta’s Indian Museum. The ornamental medallions depicting legends of the of the Buddha’s previous births and event in his life are labeled, and so are indispensable for an understanding of Buddhist iconography. The Bharhut style marked the beginning of Buddhist narrative relief and decoration of sacred buildings that continued for several centuries.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Zhou En-Lai. This is a half-page document with a reading of three sentences ranging from simple to relatively simple, and three comprehension questions. It is, therefore, the sparest of biographies on a founder of the Chinese Communist Party and ally of Mao Zedong.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Joryu Bungaku: Japanese term for ‘women’s writing.’ Although women played a significant literary role in the Heian era (794-1185), female writers all but disappeared in the succeeding periods of military turmoil. After struggling to reassert themselves in the late 19th century, women writers emerged in such numbers that by the 1920s, the term joryu bungaku, or ‘writing of the women’s school,’ was uniformly applied to any female-authored work. While protecting women from obliteration from the dominant male mainstream, the classification nevertheless restricted female literary expression to one prescribed by gender, and relegated all women writers, regardless of their artistic diversity, to a single ‘school.’ Disparate examples of joryo bungaku are Miyamoto Yuriko and Nogami Yaeko.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Today begins Asian American Pacific Island Heritage Month 2024, and hence the observance of it on this blog. The first Text for this month is this reading on Taoism along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. Like all Weekly Texts this month, this material is drawn and adapted from the Intellectual Devotional series of books.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
Posted in Announcement, New York City
“Aspen Institute: A supermarket of conventional wisdom for middle-level executives. Corporate life, particularly for those not on the fast track, has all the bureaucratic pitfalls of directionless boredom. To distract these confused but loyal servants from what Thoreau called their ‘lives of quiet desperation,’ they are periodically shipped off to rest camps where, over the period of a few days, they are taught important things which can change their lives, their company, the world. Failing that, the experience may help them hold on a bit longer.”
Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
Posted in Quotes, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion
Here is a context clues worksheet on the noun truce. It means, of course, “a suspension of fighting, especially of considerable duration by agreement of opposing forces” as well as “a respite, especially from a disagreeable or painful state or action.” This document’s sentences are keyed to both meanings.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“If hypocrisy were gold, the Capitol would be Fort Knox.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Mark's Text Terminal 
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