The principal had a problem with some girls who were starting to use lipstick. When applying it in the school restroom, they would blot their lips on the mirrors, leaving lip prints.

Before it got out of hand, the principal thought of a way to stop it. One day he gathered together all the girls who wore lipstick. He then took them into the restroom and lectured about how hard it was to clean the lipstick off the mirrors. The principal then asked the custodian, who was present, to demonstrate.

The custodian took a long handled brush, dipped it into the toilet, and vigorously rubbed the lipstick off the mirror.

From that day forward, the mirrors stayed lipstick free.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

These words, the opening to “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats, are the source of the title of Chinua Achebe’s first and best-known novel, Things Fall Apart. The novel tells the story of Okonkwo, a Nigerian man in the late 1800s, driven by his humble beginnings to become a leader in his village. Exiled by tribal law for seven years as the result of an accidental shooting, Okonkwo returns to find his community — and the status he has worked so hard to attain — altered by the arrival of Christian missionaries and British government. His inability to cope with the change ends tragically.

Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God form a kind of trilogy, though they do not share a common plot. Other novels and collections of fiction and nonfiction followed throughout Achebe’s career. The famous essay “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,” provoked re-examination of Conrad’s novella and is now often taught along with it. His most recent work is Collected Poems.

Described as “the father of modern African literature,” Achebe was born in 1930 in the Nigerian village of Ogidi. His life and career have been steeped as much in service to the Ibo people as to literature. He has even been forced into exile during periods of political turmoil. However, this evening in a ceremony in Christ Church in Oxford, Achebe will receive the second Man Booker International Award, a biennial award to a living writer for his or her body of work.

GOLD! It was a California siren song to fortune-seekers from around the world. Pictured here with his pickaxe, gun, and pan is one Joseph Sharp. This picture comes from the Calisphere collection of primary sources related to the California Gold Rush Era, 1848-1865. This collection can help students understand the historical background to two writers who fictionalized the Gold Rush Era, Bret Harte and Mark Twain.

Local color writer Bret Harte, today remembered mostly for his stories, “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” moved to California in 1853. When mining didn’t pan out for him, he moved into other lines of work, including writing. His poem “Dickens in Camp” commemorates the death of Charles Dickens, whose influence Harte acknowledged. In 1871 he moved his family to the East Coast. As his popularity as a writer declined, he accepted a position as a consul and moved to Europe. He died in 1902 in England.

A young Sam Clemens also tried his hand at mining (in Nevada), found it equally unprofitable, and turned to writing instead. He worked as a journalist in San Francisco, where “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” helped establish his career and put Calaveras County on the map. (The Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubliee is held in May of each year.)

The photographs of the Calisphere collection will help students better understand the setting Harte and Twain drew upon for their stories. Though the lawlessness of the mining camps could approach the Mos Eisley level (”wretched hive of scum and villainy”), eventually civilization prevailed.

Possibly the most famous photograph of the Dust Bowl Era is “Migrant Mother” by Dorothea Lange. Taken in 1936 in Nipomo, California, the photograph illustrates the hopelessness many migrants experienced as they tried to care for their families in increasingly difficult times. Lange wrote that this mother had just sold the tires from the family’s car in order to buy food for her children.

This photograph is one of several included in Calisphere’s collection on The Dust Bowl era. Calisphere’s collection of primary sources and commentary can help students better comprehend literature such as The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck or Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse.

Calisphere’s resources would make a great WebQuest to develop visual literacy skills. Any WebQuest designers out there?

In the days immediately following the attacks of 9/11, many American Muslims were afraid to go out in public. Acts of violence and vandalism against Muslims were unfortunately not uncommon. A few Muslim women even considered doing the family shopping without wearing the traditional hijab that covers the head and shoulders, in order to avoid antagonism.

In that context perhaps students can understand why a Japanese-American business owner in Oakland, California, posted a large sign proclaiming “I am an American” on his store the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.

A few weeks later, despite opposition from many (including his own wife), President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This order targeted Americans who had “Foreign Enemy Ancestry.” The order affected some German-Americans and Italian-Americans, but it had its greatest impact on Japanese-Americans. More than 110,000 were forced to leave their homes and businesses and live in internment camps.

The California Digital Library has launched Calisphere, a collection of more than 150,000 primary sources available without charge online. Teachers who work with Farewell to Manzanar may find Calisphere’s collection on Japanese American internment useful in helping students understand the book’s historical background. The collection includes an overview, discussion questions, several photographs, and paintings produced by Japanese American artists who were interned. Graphic organizers available onsite help students analyze the works.

This unit is part of several World War II units available at the site. Photos and art like these help students see the people and the stories in history, bringing to life a subject they all too often see as a dry collection of dates. These connections also help students understand the circumstances that inform our stories.

The University of California has done a great service to teachers everywhere.

CORROBORATIVE LEARNING—When all the students in a class agree to stick to the same excuse for why their work is not done.

DIGITAL DISORGANIZERS—Fascinating electronic organizers that distract students from paying attention to assignments, instructions, and due dates.

HANDDOUBT—To wonder if the students even looked at the important papers you just passed them.

HYDROPEDANT—A student who requests permission to get a drink of water every ten minutes.

TELESUBBIES—Substitute teachers who only show videos.

VISTAMIZED—A student so fascinated with the view from the classroom window that he has completely lost touch with what’s going on inside the classroom.

Approximately 310,000 digitized newspaper pages dating from 1900 to 1910 are now accessible through the Chronicling America Web site. The site is a project of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

NDNP is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with select digitization of historic pages, as well as information about newspapers from 1690 to the present. Supported by NEH’s “We the People” program and Digital Humanities Initiative, this rich digital resource will continue to be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress.

Over about 20 years NDNP will create a national digital resource of historically significant newspapers published between 1836 and 1922 from all the states and U.S. territories. Also on the Web site, an accompanying national newspaper directory of bibliographic and holdings information directs users to newspaper titles in all types of formats. The information in the directory was created through an earlier NEH initiative: the United States Newspaper Program. The Library of Congress is also digitizing and contributing to the NDNP database a significant number of newspaper pages drawn from its own collections during the course of this partnership.

New features in Chronicling America include:

• 80,000 pages have been added (including 11 new titles).
• The page display has been revised. Adobe Flash Player is no longer needed for viewing.
• Persistent links are now displayed for every title record and page view. The persistent link enables a user to always return to the same place on the site, and it can be used for citations and hyperlinking to specific newspaper pages or newspaper title information.
• Searches can be saved.

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world. Its more than 132 analog million items—books, newspapers, periodicals, manuscripts, maps, photographs, films, sound recordings and digital materials—are accessible through its 22 reading rooms on Capitol Hill. The Library’s newspaper collections have grown to comprise more than 1 million current issues, more than 30,000 bound historical volumes and more than 600,000 microfilm reels. The Library also makes more than 22 million digital items available on its various Web sites at www.loc.gov.

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports learning in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of the humanities. NEH grants enrich classroom learning, create and preserve knowledge and bring ideas to life through public television, radio, new technologies, museum exhibitions and programs in libraries and other community places. Information about applying for NDNP awards is available at
www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/ndnp.html.

For further information, please contact the project team at www.loc.gov/ndnp/contact/.

From the Press release: www.loc.gov/today/pr/2007/07-132.html

I just spent an hour browsing Shakespeare in American Life, a Web companion to the radio documentary on National Public Radio. This outstanding site should be sipped and savored.

Movie buffs, politicians, businesspeople, actors, and teachers—in short, all of us—will find something interesting here. Audio and video files, portraits, posters, advertisements, and a timeline document the impact of Shakespeare in America. (Trivia: first recorded performance of Shakespeare in the New World, 1730, Romeo and Juliet.)

The layout is simple, and the site is rich. Click on one link, and you will find both your target and two related links that you didn’t see before. All of them invite attention.

The education section generously offers lesson ideas for many grade levels. My personal favorite is “Occupation Romeo”. (Romeo as WWF wrestler? You be the judge!)

To say that the Bard’s work has endured because he speaks to timeless issues and creates universal characters has become clichéd, and I apologize for even mentioning it. This site lets that understanding run like white noise as it shows Shakespeare in advertising, in asylums, in music, at school, and at war until it would seem that in fact “all the world’s a stage.”

The site is a project of the Folger Shakespeare Library and is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund; and The Mosaic Foundation of Rita & Peter Heydon.

Life Every Voice and Sing
by James Weldon Johnson

Lift ev’ry voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

“Juneteenth” has been celebrated since June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger read aloud the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston, Texas. This public proclamation came more than two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect elsewhere in the United States. It had little demonstrable effect on people’s lives, but it was a clear sign of what was to come. Slavery was abolished by law December 18, 1865, after the end of the Civil War.

Today the holiday is officially recognized in 14 states and unofficially recognized throughout the United States and internationally with parades, parties, food, and music.

James Weldon Johnson’s poem, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” was set to music by his brother, the composer and singer J. Rosamond Johnson. It was first performed as part of a celebration of President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. The song became so popular that eventually it was entered into the Congressional Record as “The African American National Anthem.” The singing of this song is a traditional part of Juneteenth celebrations and a great example for our students of the convergence of poetry, history, and life.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
‘Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

1970 — I was in my brother’s car, listening to an 8-track of Creedence Clearwater Revival. In the middle of my favorite song, the tape jumped tracks, making it impossible to sing along. Why couldn’t they organize the songs so that wouldn’t happen?

Someone did. By the time I bought my own car, 8-tracks had been replaced by cassette players. The car after that had a cassette player that automatically played Side B when Side A finished. I invested heavily in cassettes, thinking I was all set now that that problem with 8-tracks had been resolved.

CDs caught me by surprise.

But they shouldn’t have: technology is not about finding one thing that works and sticking with it. Tinkering with a perfectly good system is a fact of life. History suggests that we just can’t help ourselves. “Good enough” for most of us is never good enough for someone out there, who will find an improvement, possibly creating a new technology.

That’s what we have to help our students understand sooner rather than later. Those MP3 players they cherish are the 8-tracks of the future. In order to be nimble members of the work force, employees who can land on their feet when a market collapses, our students need to be able to develop new skills and invest in themselves. Literacy and problem-solving are fundamental to their long-term economic and social survival.

I mention this because today marks an important event. On this date in 1948, Columbia Records launched its new product, a long-playing, 33 1/2 rpm phonograph record.