Summer Wisdom from Uncle Walt

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As the school year comes to and end and summer break begins for most of you, the words of “Uncle” Walt Whitman seem especially appropriate:

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

Have a wonderful summer. Experience dirt between your toes, sunlight on your faces, and wisdom in your minds.

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AP Test Tomorrow!

You’re all absolutely prepared for the exam tomorrow. Get some rest and be refreshed tomorrow. You should all feel well-deserved and totally earned confidence as you approach the test tomorrow morning.

As it often the case, our friend from the woods of Massachusetts said it best. Feel like a rooster in the morning tomorrow when you wake. 🙂

[pextestim name=”Henry David Thoreau” img=”https://quixoticpedagogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Thoreau.jpg”]”The present was my next experiment of this kind, which I purpose to describe more at length, for convenience putting the experience of two years into one. As I have said, I do not propose to write anode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.”[/pextestim]

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AP Language Test Review

As we enter the Three Weeks of Doom, we’ll be focused primarily on testimages (1) preparation, essay writing, and review. All of the materials you’ll need to use are located on this post.

Three Small Changes to the Calendar:

  • The essay due on May 2nd is the Wilson essay you’ve already submitted. You may do the Berry essay for additional practice.
  • The “full essay” practice is on Sunday, May 5th at 2:00 p.m.
  • There will be a multiple choice review on Saturday, May 4, at 1:30 p.m.
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50th Anniversary of Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Today was the 50th anniversary of the writing of Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail:

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s letter from Birmingham jail. Dr. King penned this letter as a response to white clergymen who called his campaign of non-violent protests, quote, “unwise and untimely,” unquote, and had urged him not to intervene in Alabama’s segregationist policies.

The full text of that letter was published in a number of news outlets, including the New York Post Sunday magazine and The Atlantic Monthly. It was controversial at the time, but it’s now recognized as an iconic statement of the principles underlying the civil rights movement.

We thought this was a good time to take a closer look at that letter, so we’ve called upon, once again, Clayborne Carson. He is the director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. He’s a professor of history at Stanford University and he’s with us once again.

The entire report from NPR is definitely worth listening to here.

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Martin Luther King for Friday

[pextestim name=”Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” img=”https://quixoticpedagogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-9365086-2-402.jpg”]But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.[/pextestim]

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