Maiko

• Maiko are young women training in arts such as Japanese dance, shamisen (a Japanese instrument), and a traditional way of singing to become geisha, whose profession is to entertain guests at traditional Japanese-style restaurants.

• Their hairstyle varies slightly depending on how many years they've been training. However, their unique appearance with the red collar peeking from underneath a long-sleeved kimono and long dangling obi belt is exactly the same as girls who lived in the towns at the end of the Edo period (1603-1867).
  
• Because their dance was performed in dim candle-lit rooms at the time, they colored their skin white to make it look beautiful. Makeup techniques of spreading hair oil on the face and applying special face powder remain the same today.

Japanese Language

There is only one official language spoken in Japan, which is of course Japanese. However, many Japanese are able to understand English to a certain extent since English is the foreign language that everyone must learn as part of their education.
Following are a few phrases that we can all practice together.


Useful Japanese Phrases:
Japanese to English
Ohayou gozaimasu - Good morning
Kon'nichiwa - Good afternoon
Kon'banwa - Good evening
Oyasumi nasai - Good night
Sayounara - Good-bye
Sumimasen - Excuse me
Gomen nasai - I am sorry
Wakarimasen - I don't understand
Arigatou - Thank you
Hai - Yes
Iie - No

Tequila, Lemon & Salt Review

my favorite story so far is an undocumented wedding because it exposes the differences between white and Mexican families . . . when one enters a Mexican home, there is often a happy spirit in the air and you are always welcome - there are rarely times of silence during meals also . . . i liked the protagonist because he figures out a way to integrate his family into the wedding, even though they refused to cross the border . . the story also exposes the ridulculousness of the border and how love knows no borders (theme)

polleverywhere

Make your own poll voting question with Poll Everywhere

scribd practice

Dia de Los Muertos Project

Publish at Scribd or explore others: literature

Shelfari !

Shelfari Objectives:
- create Shelfari account
- add at least 5 - 10 books to shelf
- add at least 5 lindsay friends to your account
- edit your profile : personal message
- write a review of Push and one other Words Alive book (ex: Night, Persepolis, A Child Called It)
- upload a picture
_add Shelfari widget to your blog

sex class - STDs

1. What does it mean if an STD is asymptomatic?
2. List four things that put teens at a higher risk for catching STDs.
3. Why do you think the rate of chlamydial infection in people who are 15 to 19 years old is highter than the rate in people who are 30 to 34 years old?
4. Why do females catch STDs at a higher rate than males?
5. List four things you can do, besides abstinence, to protect yourself from STDs.

Click Here to take survey

The Culture of Tonga

Tongan archipelago has been inhabited for more than 3,000 years

Europeans arrived in the late 1600's

Indigenous Tongan culture changed significantly with the arrival of more Europeans (traders and missionaries) in the 1800's

• Today, Tongans have spread to many parts of the world, usually to find work: United States, Australia and New Zealand = Tongan diaspora
• diaspora = a spreading out of a people from their original homeland
  
• Many Tongans operate in two different contexts: 1) the traditional Tongan way = anga fakatonga and 2) the western/modern Tongan way = anga fakapalangi


• Tongans learn both sets of rules and when it is appropriate to switch between them

NO on Proposition 4

Prop 4 requires that a teenage girl obtain parental consent before obtaining an abortion

I strongly disagree with Prop 4 because I believe that a woman, no matter what her age, has the right to make decisions about her body and her health. Of course, is pro-abortion, but the government should not have the right to control a woman's body and what she does with her body. If we increased the education of birth control in our schools and educated our young women about their bodies and their options, we wouldn't have so many of them faced with this decision in the first place. Also, making it illegal for young women to have abortions will only push them into unsafe and unsanitary situations where they will be putting themselves in grave danger for botched procedures.

Life as an Egyptian - Lost Lives

• Most of what the Egyptians made is lost forever because it was made of wodd, wax, clay, cloth, bone or leather - it has broken, burned or rotted away


• Things that did survive were made of stone or metal - like tools, weapons or jewelry


• Egypt's dry & hot climate preserved things better than if it had been a damp area


• Mummification also preserved things well as people were buried with their possessions


• Unfortunately, we know much more about the rich than the poor because the rich owned more possessions and could afford elaborate burials

Life as an Egyptian - 5000 BC to 31 BC

* Minimum five points of interest from your reading - remember, you're the expert

* Minimum one picture illustrating your specific topic

* How does the life of the Egyptians compare to your own? How does it compare to the lives of ancient Mexicas?

* Present as la profesora to the class

My life as a Taino . . .

Dear Journal,

What, to the slave, is the fourth of july?

FREDERICK DOUGLASS was born a slave in Maryland in 1818. As a child, Douglass secretly learned to read and write. After escaping to freedom in 1838, he devoted himself to the cause of abolition. In 1845, he published his autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. He founded the abolitionist newspaper, the North Star.

In a speech delivered before the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society on July 5, 1852, Douglass powerfully exposes the hypocrisy of asking a slave to celebrate the Fourth of July. As an antidote to flag-waving patriotism of July 4, I've provided a portion of Douglass' speech here.

This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?

WHAT TO the American slave is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy--a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Fellow citizens! The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretence, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad; it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing, and a byword to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement, the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet, you cling to it, as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes.

Oh be warned! Be warned! A horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation's bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!

congrats

Seedfolks

Seedfolks is our latest and last novel for the Words Alive season this year! It was a huge success and the girls loved it, especially because the girls authored their own additions to the book by writing their own chapters. Copies of each of the girls stories can be found posted on their individual blogs. Happy reading! Leer es poder!

38th Annual Chicanco Park Day this Saturday!!!

38th Annual Chicano Park Day Celebration
Saturday, April 19, 2008 - 10am-5pm
Organized by the Chicano Park Steering Co"Our Lives, Culture and History Are Seen Through Our Murals" will be the theme of this year’s 38th annual Chicano Park Day, which will be held on Saturday, April 19, 2007, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, in historic Chicano Park. Chicano Park is located in the Barrio Logan community of San Diego, south of downtown San Diego. This family celebration is free and open to the public.
Established by Chicano activists on April 22, 1970, Chicano Park has received national and international acclaim as a major outdoor public art site known for its powerful mural paintings depicting the past and present struggle of Mexican and Chicano history.
This year’s Chicano Park Day will feature events for the whole family, including traditional music and dance, and an extraordinary performance of indigenous Aztec danza.
Contemporary music, ballet folklorico and danza Azteca will be performed by several local and regional groups. Also featured will be poetry readings and guest speakers In addition, there will be a classic low rider car display, food, arts and craft vendors, and children’s arts and craft workshops led by noted Chicano artist/muralist Victor Ochoa.
This family celebration is free and open to the public. Established by Chicano activists on April 22, 1970, Chicano Park has received international acclaim as a major outdoor public art site for its commanding mural paintings of the past and present struggle of Mexican and Chicano history.
Chicano Park is located off Interstate 5 --Cesar Chavez Parkway exit-- under the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge.

celebrate radical anti-racists!

March 30, 1870- Fifteenth Amendment ratified !

On this day in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, declaring that the right to vote cannot be denied because of the race or previous condition of servitude, granting African-American men the right to vote.

Tomorrow, Barack Obama will speak at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology.

Thaddeus Stevens, for whom the school was named, was the most ardent leader of the abolition movement in Congress. In fact, he was so outspoken in his opposition to slavery that the Confederate Northern Army of Virginia went out its way to target his property and burned it to the ground during the Gettysburg campaign.

Stevens is widely credited as the father of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. His original version of the Fourteenth Amendment granted all citizens, including women, full civil rights. After the Civil War, he proposed giving African-Americans the right to vote immediately and offered reparations of 40 acres and a mule to all former slaves.

Stevens, a Radical Republican, also led the battle against bankers over control of the issuance of money. Stevens believed that government, not the banks, should control the currency.

Stevens was born in Vermont to a poor father who died when he was 12. He was raised by his mother Sarah (Morrill) Stevens who worked hard to provide him an education, which she believed was the only way to escape poverty.

Stevens believed that a more egalitarian world was not just a utopian dream. His own life showed that hard work and a good education could bring people out of poverty. But he also believed that diversity was something to be celebrated.