45

It is really true, at least for me, that one's perception of time speeds up the older one gets.  In many ways, this is still true for me.  The months and years speed by, ever faster, slipping through my fingers.  This was true of my past year, also, as much as any other recent year, even a little more so as it seems more so each year.  However...in other ways, this year has been time out of time.  I feel like I have been 44 forever, for my whole life, always.  Like 44 is all there ever really was and the rest is a dream.  So it is strange to be turning 45 today.  I wonder if I will always feel 44.

Some parts of life are just not linear.

Wednesdays with The Subversive Children's Book Club: Autumn

In honor of the recent Autumn Equinox, the balancing point of night and day before the darkness creeps in, and all things pumpkin, this edition of Wednesdays with The Subversive Children's Book Club features children's books with fall themes.  Enjoy!

• Child of Faerie, Child of Earth by Jane Yolen 
• Alice and Greta by Steven J. Simmons
• The Autumn Equinox: Celebrating The Harvest by Ellen Jackson
• Apple Picking Time by Michele Benoit
• The Pumpkin Blanket by Deborah Turney Zagwyn
• Pumpkin Fiesta by Caryn Slawson Yacowitz
• Pumpkin Circle by George Levenson 
• The Apple Pip Princess by Jane Ray.

National Voter Registration Day!

Today is National Voter Registration Day!  

Are you registered to vote? If not, you must hurry! The deadline to register and still be able to vote in the Presidential election is October 11th!

 Go to www.VoteTexas.gov for more information.


The future of America depends on you!  Register to vote today!

Debate Night 2016

It was completely evident last night that Hillary Clinton is prepared to be President and the Donald is prepared to be a disaster who must be kept far away from our nuclear codes.  

He continued to insult people of color and faith.

He was sued by the Justice Department for not renting to African Americans and he settled.

He bragged about being endorsed by ICE, the folks who are illegally imprisoning refugee infants.

He showed, for the nth time, that he is a rude hothead, by constantly interrupting and talking over Hillary and the moderator.

Meanwhile, Madame President handled it all with grace and substance.  She's #PreparedToBePresident.

SDG Mondays: Combat Climate Change

Today's installment of SDG Mondays will focus on the 13th of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) :  Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.

This goal has five associated targets:

• "Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate-related hazards and natural disasters in all countries
• Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning
• Improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning
• Implement the commitment undertaken by developed-country parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to a goal of mobilizing jointly $100 billion annually by 2020 from all sources to address the needs of developing countries in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation and fully operationalize the Green Climate Fund through its capitalization as soon as possible
• Promote mechanisms for raising capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing States, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities."

What do you think of this goal and its targets?  What can you to to help meet the targets?

Gulf Coast Grocery Musings/Corpus Christi Water Worries

H-E-B was so crowded today that I found myself checking people's carts for unusual amounts of water bottles to make sure I had not missed a boil water alert or a hurricane warning.  Just normal amounts of water, though; I guess it was just a busy Sunday.

Speaking of water, I am a little freaked by the recent news reports that there are such high levels of chromium-6 in the water supply.  I don't know what to do about that - everyone says the bottled water (which I am pretty sure I will go to hell for anyways) just comes from the tap anyways and those reverse-osmosis systems are way expensive and we have been saving to try to re-do our one bathroom which is about to fall through the floor, plus medical bills.

I really wish we could stop electing real estate types who are more concerned about the ever-Southward growth of the City than about things like safe drinking water.

Grf.

Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week, usually the last week of September, is from September 25th - October 1st this year.

Celebrate and defend your freedom to read!

The theme of this year's Banned Books Week is Celebrate Diversity. 

Far too often, we define what is "classic" or worthy of being deemed "literature" by what is old and what we have always thought of in those categories, but America's history has been largely written by white males who have chosen to suppress the voices of women, people of color, people of non Judeo-Christian faiths and people who are LGBTQ.  

Young people, and older people, too,  need to see themselves in literature.  An old canon is not good literature if it does not represent us all. 

Find and support new voices!  Read about the beautiful diversity that is all around you!  This Banned Books Week and always, let us fight for everyone's voice to be heard through the literature that touches and teaches us.

#BlackLivesMatter

The tragedies just keep happening and some people keep closing their eyes to them.  It's real.  It has to stop.

Here's the reading list again if you still don't understand:

• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander
• Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
•  This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, by Cherríe L. Moraga
• Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty‐First Century, by Monique W. Morris 
• Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, by Ian Haney‐Lopez   
• Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, by Monique W. Morris
• For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education, by Christopher Emdin
• The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, by Ta‐Nehisi Coates 
• Towards the "Other America": Anti-Racist Resources for White People Taking Action for Black Lives Matter, by Chris Crass 
  
  
  
   
  

More Bluebell Listeria

I don't know about y'all but Bluebell just doesn't seem like a safe bet to me anymore.

Happy Autumn!

It is still more like summer in these parts but the day/night ratio says autumn, so perhaps it is approaching!

Wednesdays with The Subversive Children's Book Club: Honoring Hispanic Heritage

To honor Hispanic Heritage Month, this edition of the Subversive Children's Book Club features books about people and events in Latino history and culture.  Enjoy!

• Harvest of Hope:  The Story of Cesar Chavez by Kathleen Krull
• Dolores Huerta:  A Hero To Migrant Workers by Sarah Warren
• Side by Side/Lado a Lado: The Story of Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez by Monica Brown
• Si, Se Puede!/Yes, We Can!: Janitor Strike in L.A. by Diana Cohn 
• Separate is Never Equal:  Sylvia Mendez and her family's fight for desegregation by Duncan Tonatiuh
• Tomas and The Library Lady by Pat Mora
• Frida by Jonah Winter
• Diego by Jonah Winter
• Sonia Sotomayor:  A Judge Grows in The Bronx by Jonah Winter.

SDG Mondays: Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns

Happy Monday!  Today we are focusing on the twelfth of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.

This goal has eleven targets:

• "Implement the 10-year framework of programmes on sustainable consumption and production, all countries taking action, with developed countries taking the lead, taking into account the development and capabilities of developing countries

• By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources

• By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses

• By 2020, achieve the environmentally sound management of chemicals and all wastes throughout their life cycle, in accordance with agreed international frameworks, and significantly reduce their release to air, water and soil in order to minimize their adverse impacts on human health and the environment

• By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse

• Encourage companies, especially large and transnational companies, to adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their reporting cycle

• Promote public procurement practices that are sustainable, in accordance with national policies and priorities

• By 2030, ensure that people everywhere have the relevant information and awareness for sustainable development and lifestyles in harmony with nature

• Support developing countries to strengthen their scientific and technological capacity to move towards more sustainable patterns of consumption and production

• Develop and implement tools to monitor sustainable development impacts for sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products

• Rationalize inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption by removing market distortions, in accordance with national circumstances, including by restructuring taxation and phasing out those harmful subsidies, where they exist, to reflect their environmental impacts, taking fully into account the specific needs and conditions of developing countries and minimizing the possible adverse impacts on their development in a manner that protects the poor and the affected communities."

 
What do you think of this goal and its targets?  

What can you do to help reach those targets?

Sandra Cisneros Receiving National Medal of Arts

Sandra Cisneros will receive a National Medal of Arts from President Obama on September 22nd.

I love Sandra Cisneros so much.  I wish I was brave enough to be as fierce as she is.  My very favorite poem by Sandra Cisneros is Las Girlfriends from her collection, Loose Woman.

Do you have a favorite poem by Sandra Cisneros? What is it?

Wednesdays with The Subversive Children's Book Club: Hispanic Heritage Month

In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, this installment of the Subversive Children's Book Club spotlights books about Hispanic characters for older kids and teens.  Enjoy!

Upper Elementary and YA:

• Confetti Girl by Diana Lopez
• The Tequila Worm by Viola Canales
• Taking Sides by Gary Soto
• Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan
• Ask My Mood Ring by Diana Lopez
• Trino's Choice by Diane Gonzales Bertrand
• Finding Miracles by Julia Alvarez
• The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
• Aristotle and Dante Discover The Secrets of The Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz

Fireflies of September

I took an evening walk last night and started a bit late so it got darkish and I saw....lightning bugs!  I don't think I have ever, in almost 45 years, seen any lightning bugs in Corpus other than the ones my dad brought me back in a jar from some place in the country when I was like four.  

This has got to be a sign of things changing for the better.