Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope you read this after having expressed love and gratitude for the people you hold dear in your life. Maybe you show love by stuffing them up to the gills with food, by having loud arguments in which you're sure you've won, or by staring at your respective mobile devices with the TV blaring in the background. Maybe you spend some time with them, and then you go somewhere else to make sure others have a warm and safe holiday. However you celebrate the holiday. I hope it's a good one for you and yours.

MLK Day: Teach your children...

At first I thought this Martin Luther King Jr. holiday would come and go for our family like it usually does: I... um... don't do much to teach my kids about The Struggle. (Bad black person. Go to your room and repent your thoughtless, privileged ways.)

Page colored by TwoBoo. Design credit: abcteach.com

But then I remembered... I'm actually helping a bit to educate TwoBoo and his kindergarten class about the 1960s-era civil rights movement. They're reading our family copy of the Ruby Bridges story. Ruby was the first African American child to integrate an all-white elementary school in the South -- she was only six years old at the time.

Credit: Amazon.com, Bettman/CORBIS, Lerner Publishing

I also loaned the teacher two other books by the same publisher. Some of the kids are learning about Matthew Henson (first black man to reach the North Pole, with Robert Peary). Others are reading the story of Nat Love (African American cowboy and rodeo performer, also known as "Deadwood Dick"). 

If I'm brave enough (or foolhardy enough... same thing, really) maybe I'll volunteer to present some of my own historical work to one of The Boy's classes. I don't know, though... he enters middle school, and kids that age are a tough crowd. Wish me luck... 

Happy New Year!

What's stopping you? Get offline and make something with your hands already!