Week of April 6

I know that many of you had religious duties over the last weekend, and perhaps went home to celebrate with your families. Consequently, I'm not going to require any significant reading before Monday's class. I would like it, however, if you would look through the table of contents for the Studs Terkel book, Working. Find it by clicking on the title, or find it among my resources on Bridges. Print off a copy, check off about 10-12 that seem to have special interest for you, and bring it with you today. We'll see if we can eliminate duplicates by showing our choices to each other, round-robin fashion.

Whatever is left of the period we'll spend looking at some of the resources on homelessness in places around America, which you and I have posted in the resource folder entitled 01. Homelessness on Bridges. I do want to have you work on Rachel and Her Children. I'd like to have the rest of the book concluded by Thursday, the 9th.

Read, in Rachel and Her Children,

Part III.

1. Seasonal Concerns p. 185

2. The Long March p. 195

3. Untouchables p. 211

4. One Childhood: No Second Chance p. 230

Epilogue: Economies of Scale

Catherine St. Location of the lead-poisoned homeless shelter about which Kozol writes in the chapter Seasonal Concerns. I believe the shelter is no longer there. The tall, x-shaped buildings are public housing. The low building ironically, is an elementary school named after Jacob Riis, who wrote the famous book, How the Other Half Lives. Click on the image for a larger view of the area, and click on the book title to find it free, on line.

Some of these last chapters are going to make you sad; some of them may also make you furious. Chapter 3 made me both. When you read the section about what certain college students in Boston said, you may know why. Kozol was only half right about the Martinique Hotel. It is now the Radisson Martinique. Rooms are available for as little as $145.00 a night. Or you can splurge and pay $220 a night for the Club Martinique Level. The poor are not gone, and homelessness has not gone. As I type this, The Coalition for the Homeless in New York City states there were 60,670 persons sleeping in homeless shelters there in January of this year. This is more than double the number when Kozol wrote Rachel's Children.

April 13 at 10 PM

The Homestretch

by Anne de Mare and Kirsten Kelly

Three homeless teens brave Chicago winters, high school pressures, and life on the streets to build a brighter future. Against the odds, they recover from a life of abandonment to create new, surprising definitions of home.

I'm not suggesting we all meet someplace on campus at 10: p.m. to watch this program on the PBS program, Independent Lens. The series is usually available on-line shortly after broadcast, though they haven't announced the dates yet.