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what would make you care about aleppo?  - cnn

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There are a thousand reasons why you may not care about Aleppo. The question is, what's the one reason why you would?

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Social Issues Book Clubs

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Kwame Alexander: Take a Knee - ESPN Video

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The Newbery Medal winning poet delivers a new piece for The Undefeated

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What the Dead Know by Heart by Dante Collins 

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What the Dead Know by Heart by Dante Collins 

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Social Issues Book Clubs

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Donte Collins - "What the Dead Know by Heart"

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Get Donte's incredible book here: http://bit.ly/donteautopsy Donte Collins, performing at the book release for "Autopsy". Subscribe to Button! New video daily: http://bit.ly/buttonpoetry Button Facebook: http://facebook.com/buttonpoetry Button Twitter: http://twitter.com/buttonpoetry Button Instagram: http://instagram.com/buttonpoetry Button tumblr: http://buttonpoetry.tumblr.com About Button: Button Poetry is committed to developing a coherent and effective system of production, distribution, promotion and fundraising for spoken word and performance poetry.

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Pair with Take a Knee, Kwame Alexander

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Fans were much more attentive in the minutes before the game, at least in the seating areas. On a large, wide walkway at the open end of the New England Patriots' Gillette Stadium directly overlooking the field, several dozen fans ambled around during the anthem, indifferent to the song or the presentation of the flag by a color guard on the field.

At MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., a steady flow of men entered and exited the restroom during the anthem, though it was audible through the concourse. Of the hundreds who passed near the aisle leading to Sections 103 and 104, a tiny percentage stopped, removed their hats and held their hands on their hearts. People in concession lines continued their transactions.

At AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Tex., where the Dallas Cowboys were playing the Los Angeles Rams, many fans raised their arms during the anthem - some in a fist as a sign of protest, perhaps, but far more holding a cellphone high to better record what the players were doing.

Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers wryly noted the contradictions inherent in the anthem-respect debate when he posted a photograph on Instagram last week, showing photographers crouched at the feet of Rodgers and his teammates, aiming cameras at them.

"I can't imagine what kind of social media attacks these cameramen must be enduring after taking a knee during the anthem and wearing a hat," Rodgers wrote.

If nothing else, an air of anticipation surrounds the anthem now, whether borne of patriotism or of curiosity.

But as part of the game-day experience, the anthem has always meant different things to different people. For some, it is something to cherish; for others, something to endure. For most, it is the biggest signal that the game is about to start.

Until the past couple of weeks, the anthem was rarely seen by television viewers; it was a time for broadcasters to show commercials. At stadiums, seats are usually not yet full.

The anthem itself is a two-minute pause amid the anticipation of a violent game, and guidelines for decorum are mostly unwritten and local. Many fans use the lyrics to express home-team allegiances. Kansas City fans shout that theirs is the home of the "Chiefs!" rather than "the brave" at the end of the song. It is not uncommon for individuals to pierce the pauses between lines to express love for the home team or disdain for the visitors. Imagine a player doing that.

The United States Code, in Title 4, Chapter 1, provides standards for presenting and respecting the American flag. They are not enforceable. After all, in Texas v. Johnson in 1989, the Supreme Court upheld the First-Amendment right to burn the flag.

The code states that military personnel should stand at attention and salute when the flag is raised, lowered, or when it passes, and others "should face the flag and stand at attention with their right hand over the heart, or if applicable, remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart."

If you have been to an N.F.L. stadium, you have probably noticed many in the crowd doing that. You have probably noticed plenty of others not.

The current controversy began last year when one of the N.F.L's roughly 1,700 players sat for the national anthem. The player, quarterback Colin Kaepernick, soon shifted to kneeling instead of sitting, and he was clear about his motivation: To call attention to racial injustice, including a string of killings of unarmed African-Americans by the police.

His position - the physical one, at least - angered many Americans. Critics said his mere posture was the ultimate sign of disrespect.

Yet as he knelt, Kaepernick faced the flag and solemnly kept his gaze ahead. He appeared to pay attention to the proceedings. He was not on his phone, he was not in a beer line, he was not chewing on nachos - all things that occur countless times during an anthem at just about any sporting event in this country.

Still, the cause has remained at the forefront of the national discourse, as President Trump again trumpeted the issue through the weekend, beginning with a tweet on Saturday evening.

"Very important that NFL players STAND tomorrow, and always, for the playing of our National Anthem," he wrote. "Respect our Flag and our Country!"

So what counts as appropriate, and who decides? What if your hands are full because you do not have a place to set your hot dogs? What if your hat is part of the costume and cannot be removed easily? One man in at the Atlanta Falcons' game on Sunday wore a red, white and blue mask over his face during the anthem, raising the question of whether a wrong can ever be a right.

Can you scratch an itch? Take a sip? Look at a text? Can you nod at the beer vendor so that he'll sell you a drink when the song is over?

What if you are on the concourse, out of view of the field? Can you keep walking? Can you continue to use the urinal if you hear the anthem through the bathroom doors?

Is the most important part to "stand," or to be "at attention?" Because Kaepernick, and most who have knelt since, broke only one of these quasi-rules.

Many - including the president, most pointedly - have criticized the N.F.L. for creating the debate by not requiring players to stand at attention. Others suggest that the flap would not have arisen had the N.F.L. not required teams to be on the field for the anthem, a mandate that began in 2009.

The sports world's trend toward big productions often overwhelms out the nobility and solemnity of the anthem. For example, the code also says that the flag "should never be carried flat or horizontally." The code does not specify if it is appropriate for a flag 100 yards long to be held parallel to the ground, or shaken by the people holding it when the anthem gets to lyric "that star-spangled banner yet wave," and then wadded up hastily to make way for a game about to start.

The code states that the flag should not be worn as a costume, but "a flag patch may be affixed to the uniform of military personnel, fire fighters, police officers, and members of patriotic organizations." The N.F.L., apparently, has deemed itself one of those, as U.S. flag decals adorning the back of player helmets.

It can be hard to know what counts as right anymore, and opinions are about as numerous as fans themselves. Some Jets fans at MetLife Stadium Stadium wore green T-shirts reading "I stand for the national anthem." Plenty of others around the nation wore replicas of Kaepernick's No. 7 with the 49ers.

In Baltimore, fans and players mostly stood in solemn respect during the anthem. Before it started, however, the Ravens knelt together to pray for "kindness, unity, equality and justice for all Americans."

The players were booed by fans - those who were not making a last-minute stop for the bathroom or a beer, at least, before kickoff.

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united states national anthem protests (2016- )

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Please Rise for Our National Anthem - if You're Not Too Busy

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Fans were much more attentive in the minutes before the game, at least in the seating areas. On a large, wide walkway at the open end of the New England Patriots' Gillette Stadium directly overlooking the field, several dozen fans ambled around during the anthem, indifferent to the song or the presentation of the flag by a color guard on the field.

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Many-Storied House, George Ella Lyon- for specific poems see p. 142
Do you Love me? Robert Wrigley
"Indian Education" Sherman Alexie
Magonia, Maria Dahvana Headley
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
The Glass Castle, Jeanette Wall (ch 1)
The War that Saved my Life, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

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A Letter to the Girl I Used to Be, Ethan Smith 

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A Letter to the Girl I Used to Be, Ethan Smith 

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The letter form leads to a close, confidential voice in storytelling. We might model a letter to our younger selves.

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Ethan Smith - A Letter to the Girl I Used to Be

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An Original Story by Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye

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An Original Story by Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye

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We list key moments we've spent with best friends and the lessons learned in those moments.

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We write quick memories connected to being ten, and develop one ideas into a scene.

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We write memories of grandparents using dialogue ti reveal their voices.

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To the Boys Who May One Day Date My Daughter by Jesse Parent 

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To the Boys Who May One Day Date My Daughter by Jesse Parent 

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We might model the voice we use as parents of older children.

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Jesse Parent - "To the Boys Who May One Day Date My Daughter"

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We might model a shift in point of view by writing from the voice of a pet or sibling.

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We might respond with an imitation of this poem, using the line, "You tell me you know what it's like to be..."

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Darius Simpson & Scout Bostley - Lost Voices

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We might ask students how authors create pivots to surprise the reader.

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The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor

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She's stopped to shop for groceries.
Her snow boots sloshing
up and down the aisles, the store
deserted: couple stock boys
droning through cases of canned goods,
one sleepy checker at the till.

In the parking lot, an elderly man
stands mumbling outside his sedan,
all four doors wide to gusting sleet
and ice. She asks him, Are you okay?
He's wearing pajama pants, torn slippers,
rumpled sport coat, knit wool hat.

Says he's waiting for his wife.
I just talked to her on the payphone
over there. He's pointing at
the Coke machine. What payphone?
she says. That one, he says.
It's cold, she says, and escorts him inside.

Don't come with lights
and sirens, she tells the 9-1-1
dispatcher. You'll scare him.

They stand together. The checker
brings him a cup of coffee.
They talk about the snow.
So much snow.

They watch for the cop.
This night, black as any night,
or a bit less so.

"After Second Shift" by Lowell Jaeger from Or Maybe I Drift Off Alone. © Shabda Press, 2016. Reprinted with permission. ( buy now)

Today is the birthday of poet and memoirist ( books by this author), born in Groves, Texas (1955). Her parents were both heavy drinkers, and her mother was emotionally unstable and sometimes violent. Once, in the middle of a psychotic break, she tried to kill Mary with a butcher knife. But she was also a voracious reader, so the Karr household was always full of books. Poetry helped Mary cope with her tumultuous childhood: "From a very early age, when I read a poem, it was as if the poet's burning taper touched some charred filament in my rib cage to set me alight," she wrote. She published four poetry collections: Abacus (1987); The Devil's Tour (1993); Viper Rum (2001); and Sinners Welcome (2006).

Around the time her second poetry collection came out, she began work on the book that would put her on the New York Times best-seller list: her first memoir, The Liars' Club (1995). The book is about her childhood, and it took two years to write, because she could only work on it on the weekends when her son was with her ex-husband. A second memoir, Cherry, followed in 2000; and a third, Lit, in 2009. She threw away 1,200 pages of Lit because it felt untrue, and actually wore out the "delete" key on her computer. "I spent about four days in my pajamas, she said later. "I saw nobody but the curry guy. And I was just sobbing." But she picked herself back up and started over at page one. The book is about her recovery from alcoholism and her conversion to Catholicism.

Her success helped pave the way for memoir as a genre in its own right. "I think as fiction has become more hyperintellectual or dystopic or unreal, I think people hungry for the real - for real, lived experience - have been forced to migrate to memoir," Karr told NPR in 2015. Her most recent book is a memoir about writing memoirs, called The Art of Memoir (2015).

Today is the birthday of the English-born Canadian poet Robert Service ( books by this author), born in Preston, England (1874).

From "The Shooting of Dan McGrew":

Were you ever out in the Great Alone, when the moon was awful clear,
And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear;
With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold,
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold;
While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars? -
Then you've a hunch what the music meant ... hunger and night and the stars.

It's the birthday of the man who didn't give up his shot: Broadway composer, actor, and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda ( books by this author) was born on this day (1980) in New York City.

Miranda is best known for penning the blockbuster Broadway musical Hamilton (2015), about the life and times of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who wrote most of the Federalist Papers and was famously killed in a duel with then-Vice President Aaron Burr. Miranda was born in Washington Heights, but grew up in the mostly Latino neighborhood of Inwood, 13 miles and 28 stops north on the A train from where Alexander Hamilton is buried in the Trinity Church Graveyard.

Miranda's father was a political advisor to New York City mayor Ed Koch. His parents were big musical buffs and the first Broadway musical Miranda ever saw was Les Misérables. He says, "I know that show like I know my family tree." He grew up listening to Broadway cast albums, but also soaking up rap music by Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. At Wesleyan University, he cofounded a hip-hop comedy troupe called "Freestyle Love Supreme." After graduation, he worked as an English teacher at his former high school, wrote campaign jingles for his father's clients, and acted on the television shows House and The Sopranos.

It was after seeing the musical Rent that Manuel became serious about trying his hand at composing. He wrote early drafts of a musical called In the Heights while still in college. It featured a character named "Usnavi," whose parents named him after the first thing they say when the came to America: a U.S. Navy ship. Miranda played the lead when the play premiered on Broadway in 2008. It ended up winning a Tony for Best Musical and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Miranda first got the idea for a musical about Alexander Hamilton when he picked up Ron Chernow's biography Alexander Hamilton (2004) in an airport bookstore. He was so intrigued by the possibilities that he began writing songs while on his honeymoon. Miranda would write at the piano until he found a melody he liked, then loop it into his headphones and go for a walk. "I kind of need to be ambulatory to write lyrics," he says. Miranda's musical style is a combination of hip-hop, rap, salsa, rock and roll, and propulsive couplets and triplets. He says, "It's 12 art forms smashed together."

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The Writer's Almanac for January 16, 2017

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She's stopped to shop for groceries. Her snow boots sloshing up and down the aisles, the store deserted: couple stock boys droning through cases of canned goods, one sleepy checker at the till. In the parking lot, an elderly man stands mumbling outside his sedan, all four doors wide to gusting sleet and ice.

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We

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story | TED

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2018: The Year in Visual Stories and Graphics

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Selected Times graphics, visualizations and multimedia stories from 2018.

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Left, Right, and Center features three ambitious high school students. We discuss topics that we are passionate about, and we hope our ideas and opinions rea...

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1. THERE'S A LOT OF PRESSURE.
"Playing a real person gave me a tremendous sense of responsibility. Ernie Davis, the first black Heisman winner, died in 1963 from leukemia at age 23. I felt I owed it to Ernie, his family and Syracuse to read or watch everything there is about him. I also spoke to Jim Brown on the phone, but I didn't really want to bother him. I mean, he's Jim Brown."

2. THE WEIGHTING IS THE HARDEST PART.
"I am 6'2'', 215, which was about Ernie's size, but the camera adds 15 pounds. So to avoid looking like a meathead onscreen I had to lose 30. It took some discipline, but the least I could do was give up red meat and sugar for a couple of months."

3. WE GO TO TRAINING CAMP TOO.
"We had two weeks of camp to get the look of the game right and to learn the plays. It was tricky because they played differently, so we watched crazy amounts of film, mostly archival video from Syracuse. I tried to nail Ernie's style, which was more finesse than power, and by the end we were running the exact offense Syracuse ran. Probably not as well, though."

4. YOU GOTTA HAVE SOME GAME.
"If an actor can play, it makes the director's job easier because he doesn't have to rely on stunt doubles for everything. I played in high school and for Amherst. Besides, if you can't play, you're gonna hear all sorts of trash on the set. We used some guys from major D1 programs."

5. THEY REALLY MEAN "ACTION."
"Game shoots were like two-a-days. They started us with rehearsals until we nailed it. Then, during actual filming, we did 15 takes. It's tough on the stunt doubles. They had banged-up knees, groin injuries and muscle tears. I had it easy-on the first day, they said straight up: 'You're not getting hit.' An injury to me would stall production and be costly. Plus, I was playing the best back ever; if I flinched, people had to miss."

6. THE PROPS ARE KEEPERS.
"I couldn't keep the Heisman, but I jacked a Syracuse letter jacket-blue with cream sleeves. I wanted the black jacket Dennis Quaid wears, but knowing Dennis, he probably snaked it for himself."

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6 things you should know about acting in a sports movie

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1. THERE'S A LOT OF PRESSURE. "Playing a real person gave me a tremendous sense of responsibility. Ernie Davis, the first black Heisman winner, died in 1963 from leukemia at age 23. I felt I owed it to Ernie, his family and Syracuse to read or watch everything there is about him.

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This is one novel. There are many others.

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To Kill a Mockingbird - Thug Notes Summary and Analysis

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John Greene's Crash Course in Literature 

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John Greene's Crash Course in Literature 

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Here is one sample.. there are many others for classic books

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Language, Voice, and Holden Caulfield - The Catcher in the Rye Part 1: CC English Literature #6