Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/author/julie-landsman/page/5/)
My friends know that I read constantly, obsessively perhaps. A book is in my purse in case I have five minutes free before my friend arrives for lunch, or the dental assistant calls me back to her chair. Books are hidden in nooks, occupy the fourteen foot high wall space along the length of my living, dining, kitchen space in our condo. Continue Reading
Recently, in a conversation with a man about my age, sixty- eight, he said he was feeling a sense of urgency now. This feeling had to do with the limit of years left and the desire to see change happen: real, concrete progress. His comment reminded me of a conversation that another friend had with a man who was interviewing her last year for work in a city school. Continue Reading
“Harbor of Hope” is a seventy-three minute film about thirty thousand refugees from the concentration camps in Europe who arrived in Malmo Sweden in 1945. Red Cross boats brought them to the harbor and the citizens of Malmo found beds, in school buildings, in museums, in any public spaces that could be turned into hospitals. Continue Reading
On our way home from the library in Champaign, Illinois where I was helping to care for my grandson, Harry began to make up a song. Continue Reading
There is a rush to teach children subjects that will enable them to pass standardized tests, study with rigor and do well in the world. The emphasis on success has been to add more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) courses. Many of us in education are reading and hearing that the sciences and mathematics are where jobs lie, where wealth and upward mobility are to be found. Continue Reading
Much has been made of Rush Limbaugh’s use of the terms “slut’ and “prostitute” to degrade Ms. Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law student who testified in favor of affordable contraception for all women. I too, felt outrage at his remarks. What he said next, however, reached even deeper than anger or outrage to me. He suggested that women who support Ms. Continue Reading
My friend Stacy, who lives in Massachusetts, recently awoke in the middle of the night to a loud pounding. She went downstairs to see a light coming through a hole where a man had taken a hammer and had already burst a hole in her door. She yelled that she was going to call the police. He ran. Continue Reading
Recently, after I gave a talk to a group of white, concerned adults about the gap between white children and children of color in their school achievement a man asked me, “Why are our numbers so dismal in Minnesota? Is there something unique about our state that cannot connect to students of color?”
Emily Dickinson opens the last stanzas of her poem, with these words about Hope: “I’ve heard it in the chillest land/ and on the strangest Sea”. Given our times I find that I have to listen hard to hear the rustle of hope’s feathers in the opening lines of this same poem, especially in what feels like a chill and strange climate in our country. Continue Reading