Chip’s journey

The 4th Annual Community as Intellectual Space symposium is being held this week at Paseo Boricua in Chicago, June 13-15. Events will start at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC), 2739/41 W. Division (near corner of Division and California).

This year, the focus is on Aesthetics as Resistance: The Act of Community Building. There will be artist-led tours of the beautiful murals found throughout the neighborhood, the annual People’s Parade, a delicious Puerto Rican dinner, workshops on community-education activities as diverse as urban agriculture and computer programming for children using Squeak, meetings with local Humboldt Park/Paseo Boricua community and government leaders, including Rep. Luis Gutierrez and Rep. Cynthia Soto, and panels on liberatory education. [Click to enlarge the poster or follow the link above for more details.]

Aesthetics as Resistance promises an active dialogue on art, identity, and cross-cultural community building with community leaders, artists, educators, librarians, activists, students, and residents. It expresses the PRCC’s vision to build community grounded in cultural practice, including murals, poetry, music, and the People’s Parade. These practices are both creative and political acts to develop community out of local funds of knowledge.

Paseo Boricua has a motto: ‘Live and help others to live.’ It is known for its multigenerational and holistic community activism around human rights and social change. Education is structured around the belief that ‘the community is the curriculum,’ reflecting the ideas of Paulo Freire and providing a contemporary version of Hull House.

With its many academic partnerships, Paseo Boricua also provides an outstanding example of university-community collaboration in research, teaching and public engagement. For example, last year the community hosted a tour and visit for the John Dewey Society. This furthered dialogue around how the community answers Dewey’s call for critical, socially-engaged citizens, for an active public, and for education as lived experience.

[This announcement is also posted on the John Dewey Society Social Issues blog.]

May 25 was Africa Day, the commemoration of the founding in 1963 of the Organisation of African Unity, which later became the African Union. In honor of that, the Irish Aid organized a wonderful set of Africa Day events, held at the Irish Film Institute, the National Botanical Gardens, and other venues. We went to those at Dublin Castle and the Chester Beatty Library.

There were musical performances and dance, lectures, storytelling sessions, photography exhibits, arts and crafts, and food from many regions and cultures of Africa.

A notice prior to the event advised bringing suncreen and umbrellas for the rain, which was a good indication of the variability in the weather this time of year in Dublin. But the weather turned out to be friendly and helped make it a worthwhile day all around. By mid-afternoon there was a line to get in to the Dublin Castle grounds. I hope this becomes an annual event.

The Youth, Media and Democracy conference concluded yesterday at Dublin Institute of Technology. There was an excellent program, with presentations from youth groups using a variety of media–film (documentaries, personal stories, what-ifs), comics, hip hop, remix (VJ-ing, web video mashups), object animation, radio, and more. There were also interesting talks about the Fresh Film Festival, media policy, the 5th World Summit on Media for Children held in Johannesburg, the Story of Movies, Digital Hub FM, and much more.

I was also impressed with the Dáil na nÓg campaign to encourage mainstream media to provide more balanced coverage of youth, especially to show the diversity of youth activities and not just negative images. A small group of Dáil na nÓg representatives has conducted this campaign, called Fairsay. They’ve had multiple meetings with media and policy makers, assisted by Anne O’Donnell from the Office of the Minister for Children.

Dáil na nÓg means “youth parliament”. Young people come as representatives of their local area to tell decision makers in Government what they think of issues that affect their daily lives.

The young Dáil na nÓg representatives gave excellent presentations and participated fully in panel discussions, demonstrating by their presence how young people can learn social responsibility, communication skills, and connected understanding through active civic participation.

So, it’s ironic that the Fairsay work is only partly sanctioned by the schools. For example, when they were waiting for a media callback they had to have their mobile phones on vibrate during class. When a call came it had to be taken down the hall in the study room. The classroom might be a place to teach about government or media, but not to actively engage with it.

Any teacher knows the many distractions available today for young people, mobile phones being near the top of the list. Still, it’s unfortunate that we can’t find better ways (this applies to US schools even more) to make actually participating in democracy take precedence over just talking about it. The young people at the conference showed how they could use media in diverse ways to move beyond the spectator role to become active participants.

Last Saturday, Stephen appeared on WTNH TV (New Haven, Connecticut) representing the Yale Russian Chorus. You can see the story and video online . This was to promote a benefit concert called “Songs of Hope”, on January 29, for the Connecticut Bridge of Hope Summer Program for Russian Orphans.

The program brings older Russian Orphans to Connecticut in the summer in hopes of finding their “forever families”. The children spend about one month with a host family learning about family life, attending local day camps, and participating in a typical American summer experience.

We spent a sabbatical year in Paris in 2004-05. This included a Fulbright Senior Specialist trip to Tampere, Finland, two trips to Germany, the Kaleidoscope conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Learning in Lausanne, and the ProLearn workshop on learning objects in Leuven.

While in Paris, I worked on the Libr@ries: Changing Information Space and Practice book with Cushla Kapitzke, who came from Brisbane, Australia to finish the editing. Read the rest of this entry »

Bertram Bruce, Sr. opened Bruce Piano Company in the old Binyon O’Keefe warehouse on Fifth Avenue in Fort Worth. The store later became the authorized Steinway dealer for Fort Worth and provided pianos for performers visiting the Fort Worth Symphony and Opera.

The original location was on Calhoun St., in the Binyon O’Keefe Moving Company building. Later it moved to 8th Avenue near Massey’s, then the Westchester House where it doubled the space. Later it moved to West Lancaster near Farrington Field; Bertram then invited his brother Don to merge his business. I worked in the West Lancaster store in the summer of 1966. I remember several robberies which were a great hardship on a small business.

A second store was opened on Pipeline Road in Hurst. Harvey MacDougall became the manager. The final location was on Inwood, off of Camp Bowie Boulevard. After Bertram and Don had both died, Ken Nance managed the Hurst store.

My father played a role in bringing Beverly Sills to sing in the Fort Worth Opera in the late 1950’s. Two of his friends then were assistant director Bill Massad and director Rudolf Kruger. Mrs. Kruger and my mother used to visit whenever they attended the performances.