Notations on Our World (Special Quarter-End Edition): In America

 As a new quarter draws to a close, our team chose a closing thought on America as we look forward to the privilege to serve with the relaunch of our weekly "Route 66" during the 2nd Quarter:

Notations From the Grid (Weekly Edition): Honoring Coach Wooden

 

COACH'S
FAVORITE POETRY
AND PROSE

 

COACHES NEVER LOSE

 

A team can lose. Any team can lose.

But in a sense, a very real sense a coach never loses.

For the job of a coach is over and finished once the starting whistle blows. They know they've won or lost before play starts.

For a coach has two tasks. The minor one is to teach skills: to teach a child how to run faster, hit harder, block better, kick farther, jump higher.

The second task: the major task is to make grown-ups out of children.

It’s to teach an attitude of mind. It’s to implant character and not simply impart skills.

It’s to teach children to play fair. This goes without saying. It's to teach them to be humble in victory and proud in defeat. This goes without saying.

But more importantly it’s to teach them to live up to their potential no matter what their potential is.

It’s to teach them to do their best and never be satisfied with what they are. But to strive to be as good as they can be if they tried harder.

A coach can never make a great player out of a child who isn’t potentially great. But they can make a great competitor out of anyone. And miraculously they can make a grown-up out of a child.

For a coach, the final score doesn’t read so many points for my team, so many points for theirs. Instead it reads: so many grown-ups out of so many children.

And this is the score that is never published. And this is the score that they read to themselves and in which they find their real joy when the last game is over.

Notations On Our World (Special Edition): On America Re The Six Star Rank

Notations On Our World (Special W-End Edition): On the Eve of Nowruz..The Persian New Year: Persian Poetry & Supplication Compilation - مجموعه اشعار و مناجات فارسی

Notations On Our World (Special Edition): In America

 

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded more than $171 million to nearly 3,000 projects exploring the history of Black Americans. Pick up one of these NEH-supported books below. Or browse our Black History Month virtual bookshelf for the most up-to-date collection of NEH-funded projects—from traveling exhibitions and award-winning documentaries to K–12 lesson plans and the papers of Martin Luther King Jr.—for celebrating this, and every, month. Game of Privilege: An African American History of Golf Lane Demas’ comprehensive work re-examines the story of golf in America, from George F. Grant’s invention of the golf tee in 1899 to the fight to desegregate courses and to today’s PGA tour. This book is available as an open access e-book as part of the NEH Fellowships Open Book Program.  All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake Tiya Miles’s 2021 National Book Award winner traces the human history behind an artifact, an embroidered mid-1800s cotton sack, through the lives of three generations of Black women. Read an excerpt in Humanities magazine. African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song This Library of America anthology, edited by Kevin Young, includes writings from 250 Black poets from the colonial period to the present, featuring lyrical, formal, and protest verse, among others. Read an interview with Young about the project in Humanities magazine. Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America In her NEH Public Scholar book, Candacy Taylor examines the historical role and enduring impact of the Green Book, a travel guide for Black motorists published from 1936 to 1966, while celebrating the businesses who bravely put their names in the book.

Since the early twentieth century, people have tuned into the radio for news, entertainment, and a connection to the larger world. As the medium has evolved in the internet age, NEH grants have supported the preservation of historical broadcasts and supported the development of innovative programming that explores humanities topics. Learn about some of the projects NEH has supported to safeguard radio’s legacy and bring humanities content to the public in the latest story in the NEH Newsroom and stream NEH-funded podcasts on your favorite service or at the links below. Innate: How Science Invented the Myth of Race This ten-episode series from the Science History Institute investigates the historical roots of racism in American science and medicine, tracing the stories of the past to the realities of today. New episodes released weekly. Audio History Project Radio Diaries’ Audio History Project explores America’s complex past through audio documentaries, created with oral histories and archival footage. Episodes include “My Iron Lung,” “The End of Smallpox,” and “The Almost Astronaut.” The Keepers The Kitchen Sisters Present’s series “The Keepers” tells the story of the archivists, librarians, historians, and curators who do the daily work of caring for our cultural heritage and the collections they maintain. Listen to the second season of “The Keepers,” supported by NEH, on the podcast The Kitchen Sisters Present.

The Summer Day

 

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?



Mary Oliver 

 

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