MEMBERS & VISITORS
WHY I STILL CHERISH MY TEACHER
If you were fortunate enough to be born into an intact functional family where everybody loves and respects each other, don’t underestimate the power of those circumstances to carry you on to do just about anything your heart desires, if you’re willing to work hard. If you add in to this glorious mix teachers with golden hearts, then you should have no trouble aspiring to and becoming President of the World or Master of the Universe. Well, I had such a family and such a teacher. Although my parents have passed away I still have my teacher. I spoke of her in the video available HERE. Her name is Mrs. Lois Richard. She was my sixth grade teacher in Altadena, California.
After weeks of searching I was finally able to find her. It was no surprise to find her just as plucky as ever as we spoke on the telephone. Looking back, none of her students would dare to have their lessons or homework unprepared in her classroom. If any of her students were brave enough to throw an impromptu sassy answer into the ether, as she was testing our observations or understanding, she would lovingly and gently incarcerate that response in a five-worded retort from which nobody could escape. Then, she’d take us back to the laboratory of the mind until a suitable answer issued forth from one of her cubs. Clearly, in her view there was a time to play and a time to work. She was chanting the equivalent of “Yes We Can” to her students long before the 2008 Obama presidential campaign.
She took it upon herself to regularly sit and talk individually with each of her students. She recounted counseling my best buddy, classmate, and neighbor Nathaniel Rosen to not be intimidated by any adult. She knew that because he was likely smarter than most of the adults he would encounter, many of those adults would try to block his development and success. She told him not to ever be afraid or intimidated. She counseled me to just have an absolutely fantastic time doing whatever it was that I loved and that appeared to her to be some sort of engineering because I was so quick at math and at discerning causal relationships in physical phenomena. (She frequently used those kinds of words with us. If we didn’t know the word we would find out)
Anyway, there we sat in the sanctity of her home on this recent visit, recounting dreams that came true as well as heartaches, setback, and reflections on the ravages of time. More than once she reminded me that she was now “seriously old” and that because of her health history she had to write down everything important so that she wouldn’t forget. Her husband Rodney, a prominent pediatrician, was now living in a nursing home and this clearly weighed heavily upon her heart. More than once she reminded me that my presence and kind words and visit not only made her day but “made my month”. In spite of these challenges similar to the ones many, if not most of us will face, she remained ever upbeat and anxious to know as much as she could about what “young people” think is important.
Mrs. Richard reminisced about more of her former students who, over the years, telephoned or dropped by to express their love and gratitude for all that she had done for them. She admitted that during her working years she had other careers in which she had made more money. In a low whisper she confided that none of them had given her as much soul satisfaction as working with young minds and helping to cultivate the seeds of a civil, just, and humane society.
Oh dear, where would we be without the Lois Richards of the world? Does this background affect my current attitudes about teaching and learning? What do you think?
LIFE CELEBRATION OF LOIS RICHARD
Mrs. Lois Richard passed away on February 4, 2018. Download and view the PDF pamphlet of this joyous event celebrating the Life, Love, and Legacy of Lois Catherine Banks Richard HERE. (5.13 Mb)
Prof. Oku Singer, Mechanical/Solar Engineer
INVENTION SCHOOL’S SIGNATURE SERIES
The technological progress of Africa and its diasporans was dramatically broken beginning with slavery and later through its colonization by European powers. With the arrival of the 21st century, a new era of an awakened Africa has dawned. In the graphic novel series “Invention School”, curious young African students explore their creative potential for solving everyday problems through a subset of engineering skills under the watchful and loving guidance of an expatriate African American engineering professor. Watch this uplifting graphic novel series. If you find the series and its content useful, please share widely.
GORGING YOUR LEARNING APPETITE
Powerful media giants continue feeding us steady diets of stories, games, music, and images of exploitation, mayhem, helplessness, victimization, sexism, murder, adultery, preposterous wealth, torture, drugs, deceit, vampires, zombies, thuggery, glorified gangsterism, demonic spirits, horror, war, despair, brutality, crime, vengeance, sex, addiction, psychic disorders, occultism, savagery, lust, hate, prejudicial beauty/virtue standards, and stale mind-numbing escapism. Never underestimate the power of the subliminal messaging in this media content to accustom your subconscious to your further takeover and control. The groundwork is being laid and we are being deliberately manipulated for easier subjugation. The “collusion” between Hollywood and complicit agencies like the CIA is clear. Hollywood has played a little known role as a propaganda machine for the US national security apparatus for many years. Carefully look at the proportion (you’ll be shocked) of currently available movie fare that embodies these themes rather than embodying themes that uplift, transform, and inspire. “Just coincidence”, you say? After a steady diet of this psychic fare (garbage in, garbage out), what normal person would ever be in a position or mindset to connect and collaboratively formulate creative solutions and healing to man-made problems that beset humanity, earth lifeforms, and Mother Earth herself? These incapacitating but profitable offerings by these media giants stifle any visions of progress and action we might otherwise take to deliver ourselves out of the quagmires our modern societies have created that affect the entire world. Why do these companies market and sell so much of this awful, depraved content?? Could it be:
- Predictive Programming is aimed at creating “world culture” and has been assigned to Hollywood to carry out. “Predictive Programming” refers to the use of entertainment and other cultural artifacts to introduce us to planned societal changes. As we come to see these potential changes as familiar, we also have an easier time imagining them to be normal, acceptable, and inevitable, no matter how heinous.
- Social engineering by an elite few? (neutralization and control)
- Prophecy?
- Conspiratorial takeover and mind-control through strategically embedded thought police?
- Greed? (whatever sells)
- Cultivated apathy?
- Cloaked suppression of liberating technologies through powerful diversions?
- Rampaging decadence?
- Modern “ divide and conquer” algorithms for fun and profit?
- Conditioned acceptance of streams of manufactured crises?
- Non-disruption of the current order (disorder)?
- Karma?
- Improperly tuned/authored “New World Order”?
- Stupidity?????
BUILD A BETTER DREAM
- Speak your truth or somebody will speak it for you.
- Vote with your feet and/or pocketbook
- Contribute your uplifting stories and discoveries to the global pool
- Never believe that mainstream media corporations will deliver the full truth to you as they have their own agendas
- As a free enlightened agent, regain control/understanding of the narratives affecting your well-being
- Spread awareness (articles, blogs, email, texts, advertisements, social media, art forms, workshops)
- Activist collaborations
- Dump or carefully scrutinize cable/satellite television’s agenda-packed (often subliminal) content
- Values-ladened family time stories and sharing
- Notify content creators & distributors saying what you DO want. Money is sharper than a sword.
- Dinner table/classroom discussions and viewing vetted movies like this one above.
Enjoy!
Prof. Oku Singer, Mechanical/Solar Engineer
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