By Jan S. Gephardt We rarely think to ask a fundamental question: what should police do? What part should they play in a multicultural, representational democracy? The ubiquity of police forces around the world argues that many societies believe police do have a role in civilized life. But what – exactly – should it be? As a novelist whose primary characters are science fictional detectives, I am in an unusual position, both to ask and to answer this question. But…
What kind of environment would enable all of my students to reach their full potential? In last week’s post I explained that I built my fictional Rana Station’s system on ideas garnered from decades of teaching, studying history, and observing our contemporary society. I first studied this question in grad school. Many of my projects centered on the question of what kind of environment students needed to support their success. How can students succeed? Schools traditionally have been held solely…
The Artdog Quote(s) of the Week We celebrated Human Rights Day last week, but human rights should be part of our values every day, all year long. As noted in last week’s quote, housing is listed in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as one of the fundamentals. Yet homelessness is a widespread phenomenon, both in the USA and around the world. IMAGES: Many thanks to Nyamnyam via Pinterest, for the quote-image from Bryan Stevenson. Unfortunately, Nyamnyam.mobi doesn’t seem to exist anymore. I did find a Nyamnyam.net that appears to come from…
The Artdog Quote(s) of the Week I recently realized that I’ve talked about habitat loss several times this year on this blog, but always in the context of plants and animals in the environment, never about humans losing their homes, except in the context of natural disasters. But there’s an ongoing, not-too-dramatic-looking but heartbreaking and needless disaster unfolding in our country. Not the addiction epidemic, although it’s related. It’s a crisis of homelessness. I’ll focus mainly on the US for my thoughts about homelessness in my December Quotes of the Week, because that’s…
The Artdog Image of Interest Do you know what a food desert is? What about a food swamp? Do you live near one? They exist in all kinds of places, including rural areas, where you really wouldn’t expect them–but viewing an area in terms of food deserts and food swamps is a way to key in on some root causes of food insecurity. We can join in the effort to fight this trend. First, support community gardens, and efforts to bring farmers markets to low-income areas near you. A quick…
The Artdog Images of Interest In a perfect world, everyone would work at jobs they love, reach their full potential, and have a good life. If that sounds like socialist pie-in-the-sky to you, double-check your Kool-Aide. I’m paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. Unfortunately, we’re not perfect yet. We weren’t in 2001 when Mike Konopacki drew the cartoon above, and we’re not perfect now, either. We still have people who work hard at one or more jobs (if…
Artdog Quote of the Week: In case you were wondering, John F. Kennedy said this in his Inaugural Address on January 20, 1961. He was speaking to the world, during the Cold War with the then-Soviet Union, and he had human rights all over the world–particularly in impoverished countries elsewhere–on his mind when he said it. I’m not sure he gave as much thought to the poor of the United States when he addressed “those people in the huts and…