“Who knows when some slight shock, disturbing the delicate balance between social order and thirsty aspiration, shall send the skyscrapers in our cities toppling.”
Native Son, bk. 1 (1940)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
“The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: A fantasy (1950) for children by C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), the first of seven books about the mythical land of Narnia. The lion, known as Aslan, is a Christ-like figure. The witch has held Narnia in thrall for a hundred years. The wardrobe is the means through which four children from our world enter Narnia. A televised version was made in 1963, followed by a re-creation in the series Chronicles of Narnia (1988-90).”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Since they are clearly popular, here is another lesson plan from the pages of Crime and Puzzlement, this on on the case “Tread Lightly.”
I open this lesson on this Cultural Literacy worksheet on Josephine Baker–an exemplary American, by the way. The illustration and questions drive the lesson. Finally, here is the answer key to solve the case.
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.
“Progress celebrates Pyrrhic victories over nature and makes purses out of human skin.”
Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged humor, literary oddities, philosophy/religion, readings/research
“Romanesque Art: Art of the period ca. 1000 to ca. 1150 in the Ile-de-France, until the early 13th century elsewhere in Europe. Its chief creations were massive monastic churches built with stone vaults reminiscent of Roman architecture.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“North * South * East * West
East and West have always been known to mankind as the places where the sun rises and where the sun sets. Indeed our very word ‘east’ is derived from the proto Indo-Aryan ‘aus-to,’ which means ‘towards the sunrise.’ Our obedience to the primacy of north (such as the arrow on the compass and the orientation of our maps) is a more recent shift. It is derived from ’ner’ (‘down’). All the earliest maps, as drawn by the Chinese and Muslim cartographers, are orientated with south as ‘up,’ just as the Emperor of China always sat on his throne facing south, towards harmony and prosperity.
The mystical writer John Mitchell examined how the sense of belonging to a point of the compass has brought out different natures in humanity. The north is the traditional land of warriors and iron-hard men, the east is the land of merchants and financiers, the south is the place for music, dance, and emotional activity, and the west is the home of history, poetry and scholarship as well as the direction of enlightenment. It is curious how often this applies.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
Posted in Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
“I too, Sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes.,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.”
“I, Too” l. 16 (1925)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
“Who is the hero of Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940)? Bigger Thomas, a black man from Chicago who murders a white woman and is executed for it.”
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
“Causative: Indicating causation by the sentence subject, e.g., ‘He sets them down,”’ ‘They felled two trees,’ The suffix ‘-en’ in ‘widen.’”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
[Over the years a number of colleagues, and a couple of students, have asked me what I know about copyright. Here’s a post that gives a history of copyright as a concept, as well as its legal dimensions.]
“copyright: The exclusive right by statute to reproduce, publish, and sell works of literature, music, art, drama, choreographic work, motion pictures, and other audiovisual works and sound recordings. The first copyright act in England was that of 1709, subsequently subjected to various modifications and additions. In 1842, a new act was passed, granting copyright for forty-two years after publication or until seven years after the author’s death, whichever should be the longer period. This act was superseded by the copyright act of 1911, under which the period of protection was extended to fifty years after the death of the author, irrespective of date of publication. The act deals also with copyright in photographs, engravings, architectural designs, musical compositions, and phonograph records.
The first copyright act in the U.S. was enacted by the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts in 1783, following vigorous agitation by Noah Webster. The first national statute, passed in 1790, was modeled upon the then-existing British law. Additional acts were passed in 1846, 1856, 1859, 1865, and 1909. U.S. copyrights may be secured under a copyright act effective January 1, 1978, for a period of seventy-five years from publication or one hundred years from creation, whichever is shorter. The term for works created on or after January 1, 1978, lasts for the author’s life plus an additional fifty years. Under the law, all visually perceptible copies of a work were required to bear the symbol ©, the word copyright, or its abbreviation, the name of the owner of the copyright, and the date of publication. Copyright protection has been extended to original works of authorship fixed in any tangible means of expression, known now or later developed. The Copyright Act of 1989 brought U.S. practice into agreement with the Berne Convention, and a copyright notice is no longer necessary to secure protection.
Influenced by lobbyists for book manufacturers reluctant to extend U.S. copyright to books manufactured abroad, the U.S. did not sign the Berne International Copyright Convention, under the auspices of UNESCO, a certain confusion existed in the field of U.S. international copyright. The U.S., most other Western countries, the former Soviet Union, which signed in 1973, and many Asian countries have signed the Universal Copyright Convention, but a worldwide international copyright does not yet exist.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged professional development, term of art
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