AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL HONORS JOAN BAEZ FOR A LIFETIME OF HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCACY

Amnesty International turns 50 this year, and closely linked to Amnesty’s legacy of championing human rights is that of folk legend Joan Baez. Baez was an active supporter of Amnesty from the start, stuffing envelopes at their first home office in San Francisco– not coincidentally, where this year’s Annual General Meeting is being held. This Friday, as part of their anniversary AGM, Joan Baez will be honored for a lifetime of human rights solidarity and advocacy. Her receiving the award also marks an exciting beginning, as it will establish the Amnesty International Joan Baez Award for Outstanding, Inspirational Service in the Global Fight for Human Rights. The award will be given to artists – working in music, film, fine arts or other media – who similarly contribute to the advancement of human rights. Baez will be presented with the first award in recognition of her historic, ground-breaking and courageous human rights work with Amnesty International and beyond, and the [Read More]

published March 15, 2011 at 2:04pm CDT

WRITE A POST FOR WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH

The month of March marks a global celebration of women’s talents, achievements and contributions to society. Every year, since the United Nations proclaimed March 8th International Women’s Day in 1977, organizations around the world host a variety of events honoring those  with a double x chromosome. Women should be recognized for their strengths and accomplishments and we don’t do it enough so this month provides  a really great an opportunity to turn the spotlight on the roles that women play as leaders, policy-makers, athletes, caregivers, educators, and peacemakers from the past to present day. From the New York Times Learning Blog comes this great, thought-provoking assignment: What makes an athlete ‘great’? Choose your own “most memorable female athlete of the the year” and write a newspaper profile or blog post, or make your own video, about her. How does she compare with her predecessors? Are girls’ sports popular at your school? Why or why not? Conside [Read More]

published March 2, 2011 at 1:48am CST

WRITE A POST FOR WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH

The month of March marks a global celebration of women’s talents, achievements and contributions to society. Every year, since the United Nations proclaimed March 8th International Women’s Day in 1977, organizations around the world host a variety of events honoring those  with a double x chromosome. Women should be recognized for their strengths and accomplishments and we don’t do it enough so this month provides  a really great an opportunity to turn the spotlight on the roles that women play as leaders, policy-makers, athletes, caregivers, educators, and peacemakers from the past to present day. From the New York Times Learning Blog comes this great, thought-provoking assignment: What makes an athlete ‘great’? Choose your own “most memorable female athlete of the the year” and write a newspaper profile or blog post, or make your own video, about her. How does she compare with her predecessors? Are girls’ sports popular at your school? Why or why not? Conside [Read More]

published March 1, 2011 at 11:57am CST

THE BEST OF THE 90’S CHICKS

The 1990s were a great decade. Between the fashion trends - The Rachel, anyone? - and the dope tunes, you could say the 90s were all that and a bag of chips and#40;if you so chose to keep circulating that lingo, that isand#41;. And there was one nineties staple that will never get dated - the chicks who took charge of the music. Here are a few chicks who made their name and shook up the scene: The Spice Girls Few acts can boast that they’ve fronted a sold out tour. Even fewer can boast that they sold out not just arenas, but countries across the world. Only one act can proudly state they did so in a baffling 38 seconds - The Spice Girls. Hitting number one in over thirty countries with their debut single, “Wannabe,” the Spice Girls cemented the movement that was girl-power pop in the 1990s, laying the foundation for the Britney Spearses and Christina Aguileras that came years later. Selling 23 million copies of their first album, Spice, the Spice Girls quickly became the best sel [Read More]

published August 13, 2010 at 12:45pm CDT

MOUNTAINS AND MOUNDS

After the Easter trip to Mississippi, I ended up first in Sarasota, FL, at the Hermitage, then home to NYC for a minute, then back to Montalvo to retrieve my car and kayak and bike, and then I drove to northeastern Wyoming, where I am spending May at an artist’s colony at Ucross. I was here once a long time ago, and since then, they have built the most perfect composer’s studio ever. I really really love it here. Wow. On Saturday I took a hike up to some teepee circles that are on a hill overlooking the tiny intersection that forms the town of Ucross and#40;population 25.and#41; It turns out that the name teepee circle is misleading: archaeologists do not find evidence of encampments or any domestic life at these sites, and seem to think the circles have something to do with religion or vision quests. And they are very old, at least 1000 – 2000 years old, maybe more. What I found deeply striking, and the reason I am writing about it on this RiverBlog, was that the location of thi [Read More]

published May 17, 2010 at 5:52pm CDT

HONORING MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. DAY - AND CONSIDERING "DRIVING WHILE BLACK"

A media ride and drive event in Memphis left me with some free time in the afternoon before heading to the airport to return home. My colleague and I were wondering how to pass a few hours, when he suggested we visit the Lorraine Motel, the assassination site of Martin Luther King, Jr. which now houses the National Civil Rights Museum. It was an eye-opening afternoon for me: I was raised in Hawthorne, California, in the 1970s, and grew up with the understanding that all us kids were the same -- even though I was a white girl and I was the minority among my own diverse peer group.  Forty-two years ago, on April 4, 1968, The Lorraine Motel was a small minority-owned business in the south end of downtown Memphis. The motel's owner, Walter Lane Bailey preserved two rooms of his hotel as a shrine to Dr. King as well as to his wife, Lorraine, who died of a brain hemorrhage several hours after King was shot. Ultimately, the hotel closed down, and group of prominent Memphians, concerned th [Read More]

published January 18, 2010 at 7:32pm CST

ARBEIT MACHT FREI

When the sign Arbeit Macht Frei was stolen last week from the gates of the Auschwitz in Poland, millions of people all over the world realized that we had lost something much more.  We had lost one of the most recognized icons of injustice and cruelty ever forged by man.  A symbol that until it was taken we had taken for granted.  Everyone says the sign is a reminder of the million plus Jews and other undesirables who were killed in the gas chambers.  But when the sign was stolen, I was reminded that the prisoners were forced to make it themselves, and it became clear to me that it represents those who marched through those iron gates alive, not on the way to the gas, but on their way to the camps.  The lucky ones. Rena Kornreich was 22 when she looked up overhead and saw the lie: WORK SETS YOU FREE. “We are young. We can work. We will see what happens,” she remembers.  An hour later, she was tattooed 1716 and the next three years of her life were determined. “Work did not [Read More]

published December 21, 2009 at 5:39pm CST

MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROJECT: KNOWING IT WHEN YOU SEE IT

The ferry at New Roads was closed, so I had to drive down to the bridge at Baton Rouge and then back up to St. Francisville, where I found an RV Park right next to the Audubon History Site and talked Bill the owner into letting me set up my hammock in the back. Bill introduced me to Luke, a delightful man, a biker and#40;of both kindsand#41; who turned out to be the ideal host and companion for exploring St. Francisville. He shares my affection for history and churches of both the natural and man-made kinds, and because he has biked all the roads around here, he really knows where all the good stuff is. He also took me out for really excellent meals: you can taste the Cajun influence already, that’s for sure! This RV park is a whole different experience than staying in a state park. Most of the people here are contract workers building bridges and roads nearby, so no-one is on vacation. Luke is the exception: he is retired, lives in Baton Rouge, and his trailer here functions as his h [Read More]

published December 5, 2009 at 2:02pm CST

MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROJECT: DARKNESS IN VICKSBURG

It was a rainy and gray weekend, and I spent most of it at Poverty Point Reservoir State Park, doing some much needed housekeeping and#40;my computer was misbehaving, laundry needed doingand#41; at this quite wonderful spot that has free wifi and laundry and good showers. I did take a drive up to the town of Lake Providence, looking for a cafe that turned out to be closed on Saturday, and ended up having an excellent oyster po’ boy at a little place overlooking the lake. The town felt oddly exposed somehow: I could feel almost viscerally what high water must be like for a town like this, on a promontory almost completely surrounded by lakes and rivers, and miles from any other town. The fields surrounding the town don’t really feel like they count as actual dry land, somehow: you know that if the water breaches the levees it will just pour down and across however many miles of farmland there are. Five miles, fifty miles, once those levees are breached, the water will be everywhere. [Read More]

published November 30, 2009 at 7:53pm CST

MISSISSIPPI RIVER PROJECT: ONLY A PAWN IN THEIR GAME

It’s been a sort of strange and unfocused few days these days: I left the river to go to Jackson to meet up with a new fellow-traveler who got laid low with asthma at the last minute and had to cancel. Somehow the combination of being far from the river, needing to re-calibrate my plans, and being in an actual city again, has put me a bit off balance. I spent an excellent evening reading stories by Eudora Welty in the Jackson library, which has been named after her. I was given a tour of her house the next day by two lovely ladies, I stayed in a pleasant state park right in town, I hung out at an excellent cafe in a house, so there are many rooms to choose from to sit and drink your coffee and read or write, I bought some books at Lemuria Bookstore and#40;”capitalism at its most transcendent”, David correctly describes itand#41;, I stood in Medgar Evers’ driveway where he was shot and killed in 1963. One of the docents at the Welty House reminded me of a Southern version of my [Read More]

published November 22, 2009 at 12:18pm CST