G is for George

 

George Washington Carver

Year lived before 1921: Fifty-seven

Years lived after 1921: Twenty-two

George Washington Carver was born into slavery in Missouri in 1864. He was an educator , a  life long learner, a man of faith and science,   an accomplished artist and musician and a great humanitarian. He did not invent peanut butter as is often attributed to him. However, his work at The Tuskegee institute did not only help the African American students there it helped poor southern farmers, black and white, to be less dependent on farming one crop (generally cotton) and diversifying to crops such as but not limited to sweet potatoes and peanuts.

In 1894 Carver became  the first African American to earn a Bachelor's degree in science. He followed that up prior to the turn of the century  by earning his Masters of Agricultural degree at what was then called Iowa State Agricultural School.

In his almost 50 years at Tuskegee put all that science to practical use.  He would explain to his students and to local farmers that crops like peanuts and sweet potatoes would revitalize the soil ravaged by years of growing cotton.  Another problem with growing only cotton is that is not a food crop, so the farmers would need to borrow money for sustenance.  By switching to food crops, the farmer could sustain themselves with plenty remaining to sell at market.

When I decided on people who lived in 1921 for my theme for this years A to Z Challenge, George Washington Carver was the person I wanted to include most on the list.  When I was homeschooling my children I bought them a number of biographies written by janet & Geoff Benge.  

My kids enjoyed reading them and I enjoyed reading them as well.  Last year I found that the George Washington Carver biography was available at my library as a downloadable audio book.  I listened to it and rediscovered why I appreciated Carver when I learned about him in grade school.  

That does it for today's edition.  I'm just nutty about George Washington Carver. As you can tell by that horrible pun, I am also just nutty. Click here to return to the A to Z challenge.

F is for Fisher

Aileen Fisher

Years lived before 1921: Fifteen

Years Lived after 1921: Eighty-one

I never try out my ideas on children, except on the child that I used to know...and that -- was me! Fortunately, I remember pretty well what I used to like to read, think about, and do. I find, even today, that if I write something I like children are apt to like it too.  I guess what it amounts too is I never grew up.  Over the years I  have discovered you really don't have to grow up. - Aileen Fisher

Aileen Fisher is one of my daughter's favorite poets and she quickly became mine.   There are many excellent posts dedicated to Aileen in the blogosphere.  One of the best is from the blog Poetry for Children on the occasion of what would have been her hundredth birthday.

Not only was Miss Fisher a great poet she also wrote non fiction and fiction for children. In 1978, she was the 2nd recipient of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) award for Excellence in Poetry for Children.  

Here are two poems of hers with the illustrations to give an idea of a bit of her style.

 

A To Z Easter Eggs

 A to Z Archives: Poems at Alice's Bunny Blog. Alice is my oldest daughter's build-a-bear (full disclosure she's a bunny) Alice was quite the blogger back in the day and she wrote this nifty post about 2 of her favorite poems both about bunnies with one being the best poem I think Aileen Fisher ever did write.  Check it out!

 Inaugural Holiday Poetry Reading at Dave Out Loud. This past Christmas I read several of my own poems and then ended with Aileen Fisher's Do Rabbits Have Christmas. 

After you've looked at the additional content from my other blogs head back to the challenge and  continue exploring.

E is for Eric

 

                                                     Eric Liddell

                                                    Years lived before 1921: Nineteen

                                                    Years lived after 1921: Twenty-four

 Eric Liddell was an Olympic champion, and  a Christian Missionary who died in a Japanese internment camp. He is one of the two main characters of the 1981 film, Chariots of Fire.

Eric was born in and died in China.  In between he went to boarding school in London and college in Scotland.  He was a gifted athlete a 2 sport star (Rugby and Track) and played on Scotland's national Rugby team.  He made the 1924 Olympic team in track and field and was supposed to run in the 100m 200 m and 400m for the U.K.

It is some times hard to look at the past through the lens of the present and get the full meaning of the time period.  This is certainly the case for Liddell, who refused to run in the heats for the 100m (his strongest event) in Paris as they were on S said of hisunday.  Christians play sports on the Sabbath with regularity 97 years after Liddell's stand.  This in no way demeans his achievement or integrity.  He ended up winning the gold in 00m and the bronze in the 200m neither of which had heats scheduled on Sundays.  

When asked what his success was attributed to Liddell he responded ...

"The secret of my success over the 400m is that I run the first 200m as fast as I can. Then for the second 200m, with God's help I run faster."

This quote is actually very descriptive of how he lived his life.  After the Olympics he returned to China as a missionary, met and married a Canadian missionary and began raising his family and continued doing the work of a missionary.  The work of a missionary became more and more dangerous in China in the 1940's and Eric was sent to a Japanese internment camp.  He was able to send his wife pregnant with their third child and his first 2 daughters to Canada before that occurred.  His youngest daughter never met her father.

Though his life was short it was exemplary. Throughout his life people took notice of his moral excellence.  The headmaster of his boarding school described him as "entirely witout vanity". In the internment camp he was described by one internee  as "the finest Christian gentleman I ever had the pleasure to meet." and another went into long detail of how Liddell poured himself ito the lives of the young people at the camp to make their time less difficult.  Considering that Liddell died in the camp from a brain tumor and  that his life there was even more difficult because of his medical condition underscores his selfless behavior even more.

Liddell has been a role model and hero for me most of my life. I have been a runner and a missionary an educator and a father just like him.  In a pivotal scene in Chariots of Fire, Liddell falls down in a 400m race gets back up and ends up winning the race.  The biggest way I try to emulate Eric Liddell is that when I fall, I get back on my feet and with God's help I get right back in the race. 

A To Z Easter Eggs

 A to Z Archives: My Top 10 Favorite Movies of All Time.  at HSD. Not surprisingly Chariots of Fire is on this list.  

After you've looked at the additional content from my other blogs head back to the challenge and explore continue exploring.

D is for Doctor

In the original version of  You're A Good Man Charlie Brown, in between production numbers they would run a series of vignettes that were generally taken directly from Peanut's cartoons.  In one such vignette Linus and Charlie Brown are discussing an information form they had to fill out for school.  Linus says to Charlie Brown when they asked for family physician I wasn't sure, so I just wrote down Dr. Seuss.

The bit speaks for multiple generations of children that Theodore  Seuss Geisel delivered the best medicine to through his auspicious career as a children's author and illustrator. 

Who does the Dr. look like?

That's what I thought.

That's more like it.

Years lived before 1921: Seventeen

Years lived after 1921: Seventy

"It's fun to have fun you just have to know how" - The Cat in the Hat. 

Using a combination of poetry, linguistic calisthenics, an out of this world imagination and the artistic talent to match Dr. Seuss knew how to have fun and share it with the world. Geisel  shared this fun with his readers writing over 60  books over 50 years while employing various pseudonyms.  His work lent itself quite nicely to the television as well as the movies. Everyone seems to have a favorite Dr. Seuss story.  For me. it's Green Eggs and Ham.  I loved reading it as a kid and that joy was only surpassed by the joy I had of reading it to my own kids.  

When I think of Dr. Seuss I think of Beginner Books which has the slogan "I can read it all by myself". So I think it is very appropriate to show a video of a child doing just that with the book In a People house. 

A To Z Easter Eggs

 A to Z Archives: Dr, Seuss and More at HSD. Written in March of 2011 for Dr Seuss' birthday, this post is more about people with common ties with Geissel, such as the nickname Ted, the title Dr. being born on March 2nd or in 1904. 

Born on March 2nd and 10 Songs at Random Acts of Roller.  When I wrote Born on March 2nd, I did not realize I had done pretty much the same thing 10 years ago in one of the sections pf Dr. Seuss and more. 10 songs contains a song featuring  Allen Sherman voicing the Cat in the Hat in the original television special. 

 After you've looked at the additional content from my other blogs head back to the challenge and explore continue exploring.

1921 A Tale of 13 Presidents

 Happy Easter!

Sundays are traditionally days off for the A to Z challenge and while this Sunday is no exception, I have decided to include an A to Z Easter egg today by listing all the presidents of the U.S. who were alive in 1921 either before, during or after their presidency. I have the two presidents who were in office in 1921 in bold.  

1921 President Chart

#. President (date of birth-date of death)	Time in office	Years lived prior to 1921	Years lived after 1921
26. William Howard Taft (9/15/1857-3/18/1930)	1909-1913	64	9
27. Woodrow Wilson (12/28/1856-2/3/1924)	1913-1921	65	3
28. Warren G. Harding (11/2/1865-8/2/1923	1921-1923	56	2
29 Calvin Coolidge (7/4/1873 - 9/5/1933	1923-1929	48	12
30. Herbert Hoover (8/10/1874-10/20/1964)	1929-1933	47	43
31. Franklin Roosevelt (1/30/1882 - 4/12/1945)	1933-1945	39	24
32. Harry S Truman (5/8/1884 -12/6/1972)	1945-1953	37	51
33. Dwight D. Eisenhower  (10/14/1890 -3/28/1969)	1953-1961	31	48
34. John F. Kennedy (5/29/1917 -11/22/1963)	1961-1963	4	42
35. Lyndon B Johnson (8/27/1908 -1/22/1973)	1963-1969	13	52
36. Richard M. Nixon (1/9/1913 -4/22/1994)	1969-1974	8	73
37. Gerald R. Ford (7/14/1913 -12/26/2006)	1974=1977	8	85
39. Ronald Reagan (2/6/1911 - 6/5/2004)	1981-1989	10	83

The A to Z challenge will resume on Monday with the letter D.  Before I go, speaking of Monday, Easter Eggs and the U.S. Presidency, traditionally the Monday after Easter is the Egg Roll on the lawn of the Whitehouse.  It has been cancelled this year but the White House Historic Association is hosting virtual online egg roll activities including this Easter Egg Roll Bingo sheet.

Enjoy your Easter Sunday. Remember that it was a stone not an Easter Egg that was rolled away That Jesus was risen, He was risen in deed,

C is for C.S.

 

                                            C.S. Lewis

                                            Years lived before 1921: Twenty-three

                                            Years lived after 1921: Forty-Two

 

Clive Staples(C.S.) Lewis was a professor, author, apologist and theologian.  Lewis was born in 1898 in Ireland, but he is best known as being from Oxford, England where he essentially lived from 1917 to his death in 1963.

The two most influential women in Lewis's life was his mother who died when he was 9 and his wife Joy Davidman Gresham who came to faith in Christ through reading Lewis's books. Both women died of cancer.

Lewis, who is certainly my favorite author, who may be best known for his children book series , The Chronicles of Narnia was a gifted author of many genre's running the gamut from poetry and science fiction to literary criticism and Christian apologetics.  

Lewis passed away on November 22, 1963.  If that day seems somewhat familiar to you it is because that is the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Also dying on the same day along with  Kennedy and Lewis was Brave New World author Aldous Huxley.  

This coincidence prompted author and professor  Peter Kreeft to write the book Between Heaven and Hell which is a fictionalized conversation between Lewis, Kennedy and Huxley that took place immediately after their death. Kreeft uses the conversation as an opportunity to examine both the claims of Christ and the theistic, humanistic and pantheistic world views that the 3 people represented.  It is a quick and thought provoking read.

     

    

                                                             
                                                                                                  

John Fitzgerald Kennedy                                                        Aldous Huxley

35th Presdient of the U.S.                                            

Years Lived before 1921: Four                                                Years lived before 1921: Twenty-eight

Years lived after 1921: Forty-two                                            Years lived after 1921: Forty-two

A To Z Easter Eggs

 A to Z Archives: The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis at Random Acts of Roller. A review of the aforementioned last book in the Chronicles of Narnia. 

Voyage of the Dawn Treader and An Open Letter to My Narnia Classes at HSD.  The first post is a review I wrote of the film adaptation of Dawn Treader.  The 2nd are reflections on some Narnia books from a class I taught at a home school co-op 10 years ago.

After you've looked at the additional content from my other blogs head back to the challenge and explore continue exploring.