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Hi all!

Last week we had some electrical trouble (bad wiring, as determined by the fire dept.--yeah, we called them around 2 a.m. Wednesday morning because lights were flickering on & off, and well, we just wanted to be SAFE). So they had to turn half our electric power off so as not to overload the circuits. Finally, this past Monday & Tuesday, an electrician came out & installed a new fuse box & fixed the wiring outside our house. And all is back to normal--my computer is up!

So with this post I just wanted to offer my belated birthday wishes to the memory and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I found these AWESOME quotes from Dr. King over on Tee Brown's blog, PEN TO PAGE. Like his wisdom, his DREAM is timeless and continues on in our generation . . .

Public Domain Photo of MLK, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

• Born January 15, 1929
• Graduated high school at age 15
• Received a BA from Morehouse College in Atlanta in 1948
• Received a BD in Theology from Crozer Theological Seminary in 1951
• Received a PhD from Boston University in 1955
• Married Coretta Scott and had 2 sons and 2 daughters
• Awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 at age 35 – youngest man to ever receive the award
• Assassinated April 4, 1968 in Memphis, TN

My favorite Martin Luther King Quotes:

“Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.”

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically… Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”

“Man was born into barbarism when killing his fellow man was a normal condition of existence. He became endowed with a conscience. And he has now reached the day when violence toward another human being must become as abhorrent as eating another’s flesh.”

“We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

“If a man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”

Guest blogger Tina Chovanec is the director of Reading Rockets.org: the authoritative online source for comprehensive and accessible information about teaching young children to read and helping those who struggle. Reading Rockets is one of four multimedia educational websites created by Learning Media, a division of WETA, the PBS affiliate in the Washington DC area.

“Everybody can be great because anybody can serve…You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” [Martin Luther King, Jr.]

Hearts and hands will join together across the country on January 18^th, a day transformed from a “day off” to a national Day of Service to honor the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr.

January 18^th is rolling in quickly. It’s not too late to help out on one of the projects your community has planned for that day. You can find an opportunity close to home by visiting Serve.gov, an online resource managed by the Corporation for National and Community Service. Some ideas are included after the jump. And it’s not too early to start planning a service project for next year: the site also has resources for individuals and organizations, including tips on fundraising, building partnerships, organizing the day, and how to be an effective team leader, as well as a planning toolkit, project examples, and more. Follow MLKDay on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook!

Get Ur Good On? Our partner, Youth Service America, sponsors a lively online network of blogs, photos, and videos that showcase the diverse voices of youth who are “doing good” in their communities. Jump in and join the conversation.

At Reading Rockets, we’ve come up with some reading-writing-and-book-inspired ideas for the Day of Service or for a year-round community project. Here’s our Top 12. Add your ideas to the list!

1. Volunteer to tutor a struggling reader (check out our Tips for Reading Tutors)
2. Help organize and refresh your local school library
3. Teach kids how to safely use the Internet
4. Paint a book-inspired mural at your local child care center
5. Become a pen pal with a young learner
6. Collect gently used books or games like Scrabble for a community center
7. Organize a community oral history project
8. Lead a story hour for young kids (try these Hints on How to Read Aloud to a Group)
9. Plan a read-a-thon for students where number of minutes read equals number of cans of food for your local food bank
10. Take a group of kids and a field guide on a naturalist walk at a local park: teach some map reading and do a clean-up along the way!
11. Host a community cooking demonstration that engages families in recipe reading and cooking healthy meals
12. Organize a penny drive to make grants to local libraries or community organizations that support literacy projects

Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream, but he was also a doer. Kids can find models for action in life and in books. In this lovely co

Earlier this week the LA Times printed a story about four Martin Luther King Jr. books which are slated to be brought back into print in time for the celebration of what would have been King's 80th birthday (Jan. 18th, 2010). 

This sort of thing happens all the time, books that have been all but forgotten are rejuvenated with a new print run allowing new generations to enjoy them.  Most of the time I hardly give this a second thought since it happens so often however this week I have been spending a lot of time looking at books on the verge of the in/out-of print boarder line.

I have been allocating all my spare time to research for the annual BookFinder.com Report - which lists the most sought after out-of-print books in the US, and more often than not these are the books that are right on this line.  Last year a number of books on our list were brought back into print due to the surge in popularity and I think we might see a few more this year.

When finished list is always interesting to read but for every book that makes it onto the list there are a number of books which just fail to meet our criteria because they are brought back from the out-of-print abyss just as interest in its out-of-print counterpart starts to increase.

One such book is the autobiography of moonshiner Popcorn Sutton titled Me and my Likker.  A local legend in Tennessee as a distiller he wrote the book in 1999 only to have it fall out-of-print for ten years until this past March when Bent Corner Books, a Knoxville bookstore, republished the work after Mr. Sutton's passing.  It is still amazingly hard to find, but it is back in print.

If I get the time I might try and compile a blog post with a few more of these near-misses but in the mean time I have to get back to the report.

[Now reading: Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre]

Just finished a set of portraits for Black History Month... go check out the whole gang over at my blog.

Community organizing has been big news lately. Building and rebuilding the interwoven connections that serve as social capital binding us all has never been more important, and we stand poised on the very brink of resurgence.

Back in 2000, Robert Putnam, author of the seminal book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, reported that activities we attended together had fallen off dramatically for 25 years: we were experiencing 43% fewer family dinners and attended club meetings 58% less. The lack of shared experiences in our worlds had reduced our connections with each other.

Now, connecting to each other and our causes is on the rise and the notion of service to others has returned as a national conversation. On Tuesday, President Obama spoke to all of us, saying, “ What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”

At First Book, the children we serve don’t have a vote or a choice about their financial circumstance. We provide books to children in need knowing that reading opens worlds of possibilities for them. When kids hold books and experience the joy a story brings, they begin to walk the path of education. Developing a passion for reading in them delivers the promise of a better life through literacy.

In the words of a great community leader, Martin Luther King, Jr., “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

When we give a child a book, we offer them the tools they need to find their own paths, making them a part of the greater community of educated, thoughtful citizen participants builds our communities child by child. There is no greater service.

Get involved with First Book to help make all children readers. Find out how you can help at www.firstbook.org.

Schools are usually closed on Martin Luther King, Jr. day. February is Black History Month but many kids are off for a whole week. Luckily there are some well-written books and related resources to take up the slack. One book can easily lead to another; read about the people who took a stand, scan the photos and artwork to get a feel for what it was like to be there and try to understand the culture of the time.

To more fully understand the Civil Rights movement, it helps to know your rights.

There are an overwhelming number of books on MLK,Jr. Where to start? A handful do a terrific job of giving an overview of the significance and impact of his his life.

Recognize his strength of character as a regular person who relied on a strong set of beliefs and those he admired to guide him in his philosophy of nonviolence.

He was not a lone voice. There were many who came before him
who had fought against discrimination and in support of equal rights for black Americans. And there were many, many others who fought along with him. People you might have heard of, like Rosa Parks, and others whose stories are still being told. Among those who did their part to fight for equality were singers, postmen, baseball players, schoolteachers and future Supreme Court Justices.


Dr. King's path was not an easy one to follow. Those who later practiced nonviolence on Freedom Rides got beaten and bloodied for their efforts.

The struggle was taken up on many fronts, including in the public schools. Read some first person accounts and histories of what it was like for kids who dreamed of freedom and fought to be allowed to go to a decent school.

Part of the difficulty came in simply making their voices heard. Most Americans were just living their ordinary lives. The culture of the 1950s and 60s was alive with people writing books, painting and a new kind of music called rock and roll.

Read the books, look at the art, and listen to the music of the time period. They are an important part of history.


Hear the beauty of Dr. King's oratory and the power of his words.

Whimsy is starting a new blog, Deliciously Clean Reads, and is looking for contributors to review books.

What I like about this brand new blog:

* It's about finding books to read and recommend, rather than finding books to keep away from people. It's a positive review source, not a negative review source.

* Whimsy acknowledges that different people have different definitions of what is clean; so she sets forth her criteria and a sample book list.

* It includes a lot of new books, but it's also looking at older titles.

* The sidebar links to a variety of booklists from many sources.