True Expression

— by Karen Sheahan

Tim McCarthy's talk on the subject of "The Perils and the Pride of Patriotism" awakened Karen Sheahan's spirit and renewed her beautiful poem "True Expression".

True Expression  

A Phoenix is rising.

A Phoenix is rising in the the flames of the candles 

I’ve lit, through the silent retreats of my life.

It’s growing, 

Growing a deepening spirit, a new sense of myself.

The two-winged bird is here, 

Its quiet center truth,

Its balanced wings balancing courage, 

Balancing the ups and the downs, 

The good and the bad,

The judge, the protector, 

Joy and sadness,

Creating dreams of a true life,

Expressed truthfully.

Written by Karen Sheahan

October 1989 and I am still dreaming.

Keep dreaming, Karen!  And keep writing.

Comments:

This in turn reminded me of Dorianne Low's dreams of a utopia the previous week.  "Dreams of a true life" echos some of the ideas we are looking at for the Spring 2021 lecture series.         Susan

Please add your comments below.

Fall 2020: Democracy in Crisis! Week 6

Week 6 15th October  

THE VITAL ROLE OF THE MEDIA: DEMOCRACY & THE FOURTH ESTATE

Focus talk: Dorianne Low —

Click here to play (30 m).

Main lecture and discussion:

— Lylah Alphonse:

Lylah Alphonse is a former Managing Editor at U.S. News & World Report, where she revamped their Special Reports section, coordinated news coverage of national issues ranging from politics and policy to higher education and health care, and led a diverse team of journalists in measuring government performance at the international, national, state and community levels.

Before joining U.S. News, she worked as a senior editor and writer at ‪Yahoo.com‬, where she wrote about politics, health, career, and parenting trends, created and curated the “Women in Politics” section of Yahoo News. While there, she covered the First Lady's office, interviewing First Lady Michelle Obama, Dr. Jill Biden, Dr. Tina Chen, Valerie Jarrett, and other administration leaders multiple times.

Before joining Yahoo!, Lylah spent 16 years as an editor and writer at The Boston Globe, editing in the National News, Living/Arts and Sunday Magazine departments and writing book reviews, news features, and other content, including a parenting column for ‪Boston.com‬. Next week, she returns to The Boston Globe as the editor of their Rhode Island initiative, expanding the Globe's top-notch coverage into other parts of New England.

She wrote a twice-weekly column about work-life balance for Workitmom.com from 2007 to 2011, and is the author of “Triumph Over Discrimination: The Life Story of Dr. Farhang Mehr” (2000), a biography of the first non-Muslim deputy prime minister of Iran. She is a frequent guest on GBH-TV’s “Beat the Press” and "Greater Boston," has taught at Northeastern University, and speaks at conferences and in classrooms around the country. She earned her Bachelors of Science in Journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and was inducted into their alumni hall of fame in 2000. She lives outside of Boston with her husband and teenage children.

Click here to play main lecture and discussion (1 hr 30 m).

Lylah's slides  Try looking at the slides as the audio plays.

Links from Lylah:

http://www.LylahMAlphonse.com

• ●  For fact checking:

  • ○  Snopes.com

  • ○  Propublica.org

  • ○  Factcheck.org

  • ○  poynter.org/news/fact-checking/

  • ○  politifact.com

• ●  Media Bias Chart:

○ https://www.adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/

● Wesley Lowery’s article on newsroom bias:
○ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/opinion/objectivity-black-journalists-coronavirus.html

Australian Magpie Song

Click here for magpie song (12s). Warning: It is very loud so you might want to turn down your volume first!

Fall 2020: Democracy in Crisis! Weeks 7 to 10

Week 7,  22nd October:  The Perils and Pride of Patriotism                  Timothy Patrick McCarthy

Fall 2020: Democracy in Crisis! Weeks 1 to 5

Week 5,  8th October:  The Death of Democracy                                              Jane Mansbridge

Week 4,  1st October: When Do Women Buy In To Misogynist Ideologies      Elizabeth Rucker

               Some links:  https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/women-far-right-movements-why-are-we-surprised/

               https://www.mic.com/articles/187223/why-women-have-always-been-essential-to-white-supremacist-movements

Week 3,  24th September: The State of Hate in Massachusetts                          Melissa Kraus

Week 2,  17th September:  How Would Plants & Animals Vote?                      True Story Theater

Week 1,  10th September:  Invisibled & Excluded: What Can We Learn from the Suffragettes?

                                                                                                                             Fredie Kay