Como se dice, como se llama
Category: News and Politics

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My newest harmonica partner
Current mood: cheerful
Category: Music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpYGWu6pCM4

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Learn history from reading graphic novels

Greetings, all.  Decided to post one of my assignments from the Fall.  If you click on the links, it should take you straight to Ocean County Library's catalogue. :)

Reader's Advisory: Learning History through Graphic Novels

(Presented Chronologically)

Shanower, Eric. Age of Bronze: A Thousand Ships. Orange: Image Comics, 2001.  Eric Shanower provides a detailed and visually stunning look at the Trojan War of the ancient Greeks.  His in-depth focus on the political motivation for this war may make this book more appropriate for older teenagers.

Gonick, Larry. The Cartoon History of the United States. New York: HarperPerennial, 1991.  Larry Gonick has written and illustrated a definitely left-leaning, multicultural perspective on American History.  These cartoons begin with European colonization of the Americas and take the reader up to the present Bush administration.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus: a survivor's tale. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.  Spiegelman, Art. Maus: a survivor's tale II: and here my troubles began. New York: Pantheon Books, 1991.  These powerful novels are the culmination of a series of lengthy interviews that Art Spiegelman had with his father, trying to make sense of how the Holocaust continued to shape the lives of his parents long after World War II.  Through these interviews, Spiegelman's father paints a vivid picture of the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, detailing life in the ghetto and his subsequent capture, confinement and survival at Auschwitz.  The subjection of the Jews to Nazi domination is visually represented by Spiegelman's choosing to portray the Jews as mice and the Germans as cats.

Ottaviani, Jim. Fallout: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and the political science of the atomic bomb. Ann Arbor: G.T. Labs, 2001.  Jim Ottaviani takes readers inside the Manhattan Project through the eyes of scientists J. Robert Oppenheimer and Leo Slizard.  Ottaviani's experience as both a nuclear engineer and librarian provide richness and depth, revealing the science of atomic energy in a way that is understandable to people who don't already know much about this subject.

Cruse, Howard. Stuck Rubber Baby. New York: Paradox Press, 1995.  This is an outstanding look into both the civil rights movement and southern gay culture in the mid-nineteen sixties.  Although this is a fictional story, Howard Cruse draws a full and nuanced picture of the time period, looking through the eyes of a gay, white, young man as he encounters black culture when working for the civil rights movement.  The sexual themes explored by this book limit its appropriateness to older teenagers.

Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis:The Story of a Childhood. New York: Pantheon, 2003.  Marjane Satrapi grew up in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution of the 1970's.  Persepolis details the conflict between her desire to be a normal teenager who wears hip clothing while listening to pop music and the need to hide these desires if she wants to survive under the dangerous repression of the new Iranian government.

Sacco, Joe and Edward W. Said. Palestine. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2001.  Palestine offers a first hand look at life in a Palestinian refugee camp.  From the open sewers that flood into houses when it rains, to the corruption of Palestinian authorities, Joe Sacco's detailed pictures and interviews show us what fuels the anger of the Palestinian people.

Sacco, Joe. Safe Area Gorazde. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2001.  Joe Sacco lived with a Muslim family in Gorazde to report first hand on the Bosnian conflict in 1995 and 1996.  His carefully detailed pictures, combined with first hand interviews of survivors, provide a vivid portrait of the brutality and horror of the Serbian attempt to carve out more territory from a divided Yugoslavia.

 
Rall, Ted. To Afghanistan and Back. New York: Nantier, Beall, Minoustchine, 2002.  Ted Rall is known for his political cartoons and commentary on the war torn Middle East.  To Afghanistan and Back is a diary of his time in Afghanistan during the first months of the United States' War on Terror.

Vaughan, Brian K., Niko Henrichon, and Todd Klein. Pride of Baghdad. New York: DC Comics, 2006. This graphic novel is based on a true story.  It describes the current Iraq war from the point of view of the lions who escaped from the Baghdad zoo in the early days of the US invasion.

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Scooby do's creator, Iwao Takamoto
Category: News and Politics

The world of animation mourns the death of animator, character designer and director Iwao Takamoto, who passed away on January 8th, at the age of 81. Mr. Takamoto was still working in the field of animation, as Vice President of creative Design at Hanna-Barbera, the animation firm where he had worked since leaving Disney in 1961.

Although he was born in the United States, a teenage Mr. Takamoto was sent to the Manzanar internment camp, along with thousands of other AMERICAN CITIZENS of Japanese descent. In spite of the fact that most of his possessions were gone, having to be sold hastily at cut rate prices, and the fact that he was locked up without having committed a crime, not to mention the fact that he would not have been able to bring the family pet to Manzanar, Mr. Takamoto's spirit was not broken. It was here in Manzanar that Mr. Takamoto learned the skill of illustration from other AMERICAN CITIZENS who were corralled behind barbed wire.

Impressed by his skill, work ethic, and eagerness to learn, Disney hired Mr. Takamoto after he was released from Manzanar. Here he worked under the great Milt Kahl on movies like Cinderella, One Hundred and One Dalmations, and Lady and the Tramp.

Mr. Takamoto will probably be most remembered for his creation of Scooby Doo, intentionally drawn, after consulting with a Great Dane breeder, to be the exact opposite of what a championship Great Dane would look like. He also produced Jabber Jaw and Hong Kong Phoo-ey.

Who could forget Hong Kong Phoo-ey?

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FBI program COINTELPRO's efforts in the late 1960s to sabotage the Black Power Movement
Category: News and Politics

    Inspired by Sabbit and Kevin, henceforth I will be describing events that I wish I had known about when I was still teaching. 
   
    My first rant is about the FBI program COINTELPRO's efforts in the late 1960s to sabotage the Black Power Movement.  I learned about this from reading the December issue of Harper's Magazine.  Writer Scott Saul reviewed several new books on the Black Power Movement (Waiting 'till the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America by Peniel E. Joseph and The Black Panthers, a book of stunning photographs by Stephen Shames).  My interest was piqued with the description of how the Black Panthers began fragmenting after Panther Huey Newton, proven innocent of shooting a policeman and finally released from jail after having spent three years waiting for his trial, called for the inclusion of feminist ideology into the Panther movement, and for the Panthers to form an alliance with the emerging Gay Power movement.  Saul then writes that Newton also began purging the ranks of the Panthers, a move "so self-destructive destructive it might as well have been designed by the FBI.  (As, in part, it was: the FBI's COINTELPRO, driven by a directive to head off the emergence of a "black messiah," ran 360 [did you catch that number--three hundred and sixty] different operations focused on undermining black nationalist organizations.)"

    That fact is why I wrote this blog.  I was infuriated by the fact that our tax dollars were being spent to undermine urban programs run by private citizens, programs that focused on improving life for impoverished people.  The Black Panthers ran several programs which included free health clinics, youth institutes and nutrition programs.  How could the FBI be threatened by a free breakfast program?  Indeed, it was not the food, but the ideology with which it was served--the FBI was very worried about the socialist politics of the Black Panther party. 

    I thought that I should include a link or two, so you could read more about this on your own.  In searching for such links, I came upon an outstanding website put up by Paul Wolf, a lawyer who specializes in international law and human rights.  He has posted several documents from our National Archives that I found very interesting.  (Too bad I'm no longer sitting at the reference desk with the time to read all of them...)

    From reading the "FBIs Covert Action Program to Destroy the Black Panther Party" a final report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (Done for the Senate in 1976) I gathered several facts I didn't know:

1.  The Black Panthers were embroiled in a bitter ideological and turf battle with another black nationalist group, the United Slaves.

2.  Interestingly enough, the United Slaves were led by Ron Karenga, who created the holiday "Kwanzaa". 

3.  The FBI basically tried to stir up trouble between the Black Panther Party and the United Slaves, hoping to discredit both in the eyes of the public.  Most of this work centered around sending insulting cartoons to one group "signed" by the other.  (Yeah, that one sounds pretty lame, but it definitely served to fan the flames when members of each group were at the point of shooting each other.)

 4.  More sinister, however, was the pressure the FBI put on landlords to evict the Black Panther Party offices from their buildings, even going so far as to get one Black Panther Party member kicked out of public housing.  (I realize that some of you reading this won't have much sympathy for that last one, but take a minute and think--do you really think that receiving government aid should be contingent on political ideology?  Oh yeah, I forgot tax breaks and corporate welfare...never mind.)

You could read more for yourself by clicking on the link above.

If you're still reading this...

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/archivesindex.htm

The link above will take you to all the documents that Paul Wolf has gathered.  The documents range from reports on Afghanistan and Pakistan to the civil war raging in Columbia.  But we were talking about the FBI's efforts to undermine the Black Panthers (with our tax money).  Here's the direct link to the program ideas of COINTELPRO in the late 1960s.

http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpro/blacknationalist.htm

    I'm angry all over again...and ready to call it a night.

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