“Marriage is really tough because you have to deal with feelings and lawyers.”
Richard Pryor, quoted in Robert Byrne, The Third and Possibly the Best 637 Things Anybody Ever Said (1986)
Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged black history, humor, literary oddities, united states history
“Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Brazilian, and Afro-American Religions: Religions among persons of African ancestry in the Caribbean, Brazil, and the United States. These include Haitian vodun, the Jamaican Rastafarian movement, Santeria, and Candomble and other Macumba sects in Brazil. Similarly syncretistic religions appeared in the United States during the era of slavery. The Nation of Islam combines black nationalism with an unorthodox version of Islam. Black Protestant churches (especially Baptist and Pentecostal) have imported some forms of lively worship from Africa.”
Excerpted/Adapted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“Apollo Theater: Center of African-American popular culture on 125th Street in New York’s Harlem district. Built in 1914, it hosted musical performers such as Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, and others in the 1930s and 1940s; such stars as Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughn, and James Brown were discovered on Wednesday amateur nights. In the 1960s the Apollo featured soul artists such as the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, and Marvin Gaye. Converted into a movie theater in 1975, it reopened as a performance venue in 1983.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“de facto segregation: Racial separation that occurs in a school or other public institution ‘in fact’ or ‘in practice,’ as a result of such factors as housing patterns or school enrollment and not because of legal requirements. See also de jure segregation
de jure segregation: Racial separation that occurs in a school or other public institution as a result of laws that require separate facilities for people of different races. De jure segregation was declared unconstitutional by the U.S Supreme Court in 1954, in the Brown v. Board of Education decision.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
This week’s Text is a lesson plan on cooking conversions from The Order of Things. This worksheet with a list as a reading and several comprehension questions (with room to add several more in this Microsoft Word-formatted open source, easily manipulable document) is the principal reading and writing work of the lesson.
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.
“One noon hour at the Round Table, a lady author was congratulating herself on here marital success and extolling the virtues of her mate. ‘I’ve kept him for seven years,” she concluded with pride. The Round Table group did not share the wife’s opinion of her spouse, however, considering him an extremely dull fellow. Mrs. Parker answered the lady’s remark: ‘Don’t worry, if you keep him long enough he’ll come back in style.”
Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, humor, literary oddities
“Tower of Babel: A structure erected after the Flood by the descendants of Noah when they reached Babylonia. According to Gen. 11, the plan was to build a tower that would reach to heaven, but Jehovah, displeased by the arrogance and presumption of the builders, “confounded their speech” so they could not understand one another and “scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth.” The story provides a biblical explanation for the diversity of languages around the world. Tower of Babel has come to signify an ambitious or visionary scheme; the word babel has become associated with a confused uproar in which nothing can be heard but the hubbub.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
“Illumination: Ornamental initial, pattern, or illustration painted on the vellum or parchment leaves of a manuscript as an adornment of the text. The paint is water soluble, with an egg base. See MINIATURE PAINTING.”
Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.
“The five-pointed star, the Pentagram, was a symbol of absolute authority to the Sumerian civilization of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), as early as the third millennium BC. It represented an additional axis or the royal authority reaching out to the four corners of the earth. Later, in classical Greece, it was used as a mystic symbol by Pythagoreans and in early Jewish lore it was associated with Solomon’s Seal, a magical signet ring of King Solomon which gave him the power to command demons and speak to animals. (Confusingly, Solomon’s Seal can also be depicted as a hexagon.)
This Seal of Solomon was revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims. Indeed an interlinked ribbon version—known as the Seal of Solomon—is used on the Moroccan national flag. Medieval astrologers interpreted the pentagram as a symbol of the five wounds of Christ. However, the symbol dropped out of Christian use, having been co-opted by medieval necromancers and modern witchcraft.
Renaissance occultists made a distinction in the star’s orientation. When pointed upwards the star was good, symbolizing spirit presiding over the four elements of matter. Pointing down it was evil—the sign of the goat of black magic (whose face could be drawn in the star or its beard and horn suggested by the points). Wiccans have adopted the symbol (in its good form) as their emblem, and it is widely used by neo-Pagans, often as a pentacle, within an enclosed circle.”
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.
“High Renaissance Art: Climax of Renaissance art, ca. 1495-1520. In the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo, Italian art attained the High Renaissance ideal of harmony and balance within the framework of classical realism.”
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
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