Daily Archives: January 16, 2023

Here’s how people in Mass. honored legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

WCVB Channel 5 Boston Jan 16, 2023

The Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra‘s Intensive Community Program performed a tribute concert while hundreds of volunteers packed up clothes and other essentials at Cradles to Crayons.

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New book ‘Myth America’ examines misinformation in U.S. history

PBS NewsHour Jan 16, 2023

In a new book, Kevin Kruse and Julian Zelizer assemble a team of fellow historians to push back on what they see as the biggest myths and rampant misinformation about major issues facing this country and some of its most defining moments. They sat down with Geoff Bennett to talk about their new edited collection, “Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past.”

How we’re doing on the path to zero emissions

Bill Gates Oct 18, 2022

This year, I’m starting a new tradition: Each fall I’ll share my thoughts on where the world is—and isn’t—making progress in the effort to reach net-zero carbon emissions. In this video I give an overview of the work to avoid a climate disaster. Learn more at https://gatesnot.es/3MkWj4R

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Bill Gates and Warren Buffett pick up a shift at Dairy Queen

Bill Gates Jun 3, 2019

During my visit to Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting in Omaha, Warren Buffett and I broke away from the meetings to visit a Dairy Queen for some lunch and to get some restaurant training. We learned how to work the cash register, greet guests, and make a Blizzard (including the proper way to serve it, “Always upside down with a smile.”). Learn more at https://b-gat.es/2KdA96E

The state of the energy transition | Bill Gates

When I first started learning about climate change 15 years ago, I came to three conclusions. First, avoiding a climate disaster would be the hardest challenge people had ever faced. Second, the only way to do it was to invest aggressively in clean-energy innovation and deployment. And third, we needed to get going.

…(read more).

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Oxfam: World’s Richest 1% ‘Grab Two-Thirds of Global Wealth

Voice of America Jan 16, 2023

Charity calls for fairer taxation as super-rich descend on Davos for World Economic Forum Originally published at – https://www.voanews.com/a/oxfam-world…

Mehdi Hasan – MSNBC – Martin Luther King, Jr. Tribute

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MLK Day Special: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words


Democracy Now! Jan 17, 2022

Today is the federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was born January 15, 1929. He was assassinated April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just 39 years old. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War. We play his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, which he delivered at New York City’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, as well as his last speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” that he gave on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated.

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MLK Day Special: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words


Democracy Now! Jan 17, 2022

Today is the federal holiday that honors Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was born January 15, 1929. He was assassinated April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just 39 years old. While Dr. King is primarily remembered as a civil rights leader, he also championed the cause of the poor and organized the Poor People’s Campaign to address issues of economic justice. Dr. King was also a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War. We play his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, which he delivered at New York City’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, as well as his last speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” that he gave on April 3, 1968, the night before he was assassinated.

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MLK Day Special: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words + Article by Gus Speth & Phil Thompson, The Nation (2016)


Democracy Now! Jan 17, 2022

The following is from Gus Speth and Phil Thompson,

“A Radical Alliance of Black and Green Could Save the World,” The Nation, April 14, 2016

The modern civil-rights movement had its origins in black advocacy before the Civil War, when radical activists called for a fundamental reordering of American society, beginning with its values. Martin Luther King Jr. turned increasingly to these broader issues in his later years. In his last presidential address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967, King called upon his followers to “honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are 40 million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there 40 million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s marketplace. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.” Shortly after this address, King launched the Poor People’s Campaign.

Recently, Cornel West has brought together a remarkable collection of King’s speeches and writings. In his book The Radical King, West notes that later in his career, “King’s dream of a more free and democratic America and world had morphed into, in his words, ‘a nightmare.’… He called America a ‘sick society.’ At one point, King cried out in despair, ‘I have found out that all that I have been doing in trying to correct this system in America has been in vain. I am trying to get at the roots of it to see just what ought to be done. The whole thing will have to be done away with…. Are we integrating into a burning house?’” The last years of King’s life were devoted to reviving the radical roots of the civil-rights movement—and his own.

There is something profoundly hopeful in these calls to rediscover the civil-rights movement’s radical roots. Though they’re important in their own right, they are also important for environmentalists and the future of the environmental movement, and for progressivism generally.

Of course, the black struggle in America includes many strong currents of radical thought and action, more than in the environmental movement. Still, their shared roots are apparent, and the best traditions of both movements are very much aligned. Both see the origin of our country’s problems in the system as a whole: in capitalism and the values and institutions that support it. As King said, the whole edifice needs restructuring. The operating system by which we live and work is programmed for the wrong results, and it needs to be reprogrammed so that it genuinely sustains and restores human and natural communities. This task is daunting, but it is also rich with opportunity as a powerful basis for dialogue and collaboration between two of our country’s greatest social movements—one that holds the potential for a common language, a common critique, and a common agenda.

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“The Collector’s Corner” – The Ticknor Society

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Review some of the membership activities of the Society:Ticknor-show-tell

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The Ticknor Society

“The Collector’s Corner”

A New Initiative for Extended Conversations with
Ticknor Members and Friends about their
Book Interests & Collections

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One of the most enjoyable experiences of being a member of The Ticknor Society is to learn about special book collections in the Boston area – and of course, by extension, everywhere else in the world. Beginning locally, our members visit special libraries and hear from experts in book conservation and preservation as well as learn from other members about their own book collecting interests through events like the annual members’ “show and tell” sessions either through in-person meetings or online Zoom events for the occasion. This experience of our members in Boston opens them to the possibilities of other similar explorations of book collections across the world.

In addition, each year since 2019 the Ticknor Society has awarded an annual George and Anna Eliot Ticknor Book and Book Culture Collecting Prize to recognize and inspire personal book collecting. The award is given in the spirit of George Ticknor and his daughter, Anna Eliot, who were scholars, teachers, and avid book collectors.

The purpose of this competition is to encourage New England-based book collectors to understand more deeply what their collection means to them, what they have collected, how it might be helpful to other collectors and researchers, and how they want their collection to develop in the future.

In the coming months the Ticknor Society intends to initiate a series called “The Collector’s Corner,” to expand and capture conversation with Society members about their collections.  In the past, the annual “Show and Tell” sessions have allowed member volunteers to talk about their collections for ten minutes each.  These sessions have proved to be very stimulating and the have often engendered further conversations between members and friends after they occur.  In the future “The Collector’s Corner” will enlarge and enhance this opportunity.   It will afford the chance for individuals to expand the description of their collections and answer in-depth questions that other members may wish to pose in learning about these collections.

The format will differ from the live-presentation mode undertaken in the past for the “show-and-tell” sessions.  Instead, those who wish to participate in “The Collector’s Corner” will be expected to develop a contribution well beforehand as a slide show or audio/video presentation. A link to this material will be circulated to members several weeks in advance of a subsequently scheduled “Collector’s Corner” Zoom session. Since members will already have had access to view materials about the collection ahead of time, the scheduled “Collector’s Corner” Zoom session will focus upon an inter-active conversation with the featured member enabling the opportunity for extended conversation about the collection itself and how the collector came to develop their interest in their chosen material.

As an extension and amplification of both the “show-and-tell” sessions and the annual Ticknor Book and Book Culture Collecting Prize, this new initiative will help members get to know one another more fully and enable them to communicate their own interests on an expanded scale to both current members and, in the future, to all those who view the “The Collector’s Corner” archived videos linked to the Ticknor Society’s online member’s page

Over time this online archive will preserve and present personal stories from members about those who have learned from and come to love the books they collect.

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