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Archives for April 2017

by Catherine Read

A Cup of Water Under My Bed – Daisy Hernandez

A Cup of Water Under My Bed (April 2017) I loved this book for so many reasons. Daisy Hernandez is an American, born here to a Columbian mother and Cuban father. This book is called a memoir, but it’s so much more than that. It’s the chance to see the arc of a life in this country through a different lens. Hernandez is a gifted writer and above all else, the book is beautifully written.

Her book is somewhat chronological starting with her remembered first impressions as a 5 year old child who speaks only Spanish being sent to a Catholic school in Union City, New Jersey. Her coming of age story has many things we consider common experiences, but it’s unfamiliar to those of us who do not understand the culture of her parents and their particular immigrant experience. I marked so many passages that jumped out at me as beautifully articulated thoughts intended to resonate with readers like me – those who want to understand how other people experience the world and how that feels.

“If white people do not get rid of you, it is because they intend to get all of you.

They will only keep you if they can have your mouth, your dreams, your intentions. In the military, they call this a winning hearts-and-minds campaign. In school, they call it ESL. English as a second language.”

Daisy Hernandez works hard in school and has an interest early in her life to be a writer. She earns a scholarship and attends college where she is introduced to feminist studies and meets a diverse group of young people including the first lesbians she has ever met. She is awakened to her own bi-sexuality. This is an important part of her story, but it’s only a part of it. This is an interesting observation about coming to terms with our sexuality:

“Generally speaking, gay people come out of the closet, straight people walk around the closet, and bisexuals have to be told to look for the closet. We are too preoccupied with shifting.”

She has relationships with men, with women and with transmen. This is in the late 1990s when such lifestyles are hardly mainstream. It’s important to know that this community has been there for a long time. Her relationships are important in how she sees the world. It causes her mother great pain and upsets her close relationships with her three aunties. They cannot understand this.

The chapters in her book are shaped by addressing different aspects of her life – she is a Latina, she is bi-sexual, the first in her family to go to college. When she gets a summer internship at The New York Times on the editorial board, a colleague remarks she is probably the first person to ever work on that board whose parents don’t speak English. She notices how little diversity there is at the Times, not just racially, ethnically and gender-wise but people who are of a different socio-economic status from the one her family is in. “We belong to a community based in part on the fact that we are all doing somewhat badly.”

She talks about learning of a concept in high school her teacher calls “Keeping up with the Joneses.”

“It takes years for me to understand that the Joneses happen in houses where people cook in one room and eat in another. The Joneses do not happen in places where people are called white trash and spics, welfare queens and illegals, and no one asks the Joneses if they are collecting.”Read More

Filed Under: Blogging, Good Books, Women Tagged With: Daisy Hernandez, Feminism, Latina, LGBT, Memoir, Writers

by Catherine Read

Child Care: Safety, Quality, Affordability with Grace Reef – Inside Scoop

(Apr 3, 2017) Catherine Read talks with Grace Reef, President of the Early Learning Policy Group, about child care policy in Virginia. This show was live broadcast 2 days before the only child care bill that survived the 2017 Virginia Legislative Session (SB 1239) was voted on by the Veto Session convened on April 5, 2017. Governor Terry McAuliffe amended the bill passed by both chambers re-inserting language that better protects the safety of children. Grace works with Child Care Aware Virginia, an organization that maintains a Virginia Education and Action Center online, which is the best place to find reliable information on the state of child care in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Grace ReefGrace Reef started her career in the U.S. Senate where she worked on policy development around issues of early childhood education and development, some specific to the child care setting. As a consultant, she works with a number of agencies in states throughout the country, sorting through data and research studies that show the impact of early childhood experience on long term health, achievement and life outcomes. She acknowledges that we often separate child care into separate issues of safety and quality, as if they are distinct from one another. Safety builds the floor to quality care and Virginia has not made sufficient progress in addressing public policy that provides oversight to those providing care – whether it’s in a child care center or in a home based setting.

One of the perplexing aspects of moving the needle forward on better quality child care in Virginia is the lack of connection between economic development agencies, elected leaders, Chambers and business owners with the need to provide quality child care for a workforce made up of working families with children. Grace talks about her work with The Committee for Economic Development (CED), a non-profit based in DC, that is the voice of business leadership working in states around the nation to advocate for better public policy to support working families with children.

Virginia has a shocking track record of child care deaths – over 60 deaths in the last ten years – that place us at the top of a list we don’t want to be on. Here in Northern Virginia, we have had a child care permitting process in Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax County. Fairfax County’s Office for Children was established in 1975. Virginia has 95 counties and 38 independent cities and in a majority of the Commonwealth, the only “regulation” is Virginia’s state policy around what is a “licensed” child care program. A requirement of licensing for home based daycare was changed last year, making the license a requirement for the care of 5 children (instead of 6 children.)

Also in 2016, operating an unlicensed child care home/center was changed from a misdemeanor to a felony. This was in the aftermath of a tragic death in Chesterfield County, VA, where 1 year old Joseph Allen died as a result of a house fire in an unlicensed child care home with no fire extinguisher, no working smoke detectors, no evacuation plan and no list of what children were in the home that day.

Safe, affordable, quality child care is integral to the health and well being of every community in Virginia. It’s not just a concern for parents with children, it’s the foundation of healthy school systems and a workforce that needs child care in order to be able to work. Employers, small business owners and Chambers of Commerce need to connect investment in better child care to strengthening economic growth and development in every community in Virginia. The National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine has done the research on Financing Early Care and Education with a Highly Qualified Workforce.  There is no shortage of compelling data, we are jut not connecting the dots at this point. That needs to change, and it’s going to take a lot of voices to change it.

For further information on the research being done on early childhood development check out Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, specifically Harvard’s Brain Research (Birth to Age 3)
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Filed Under: Blogging, Inside Scoop, Political, Virginia Tagged With: Catherine Read, child care, early childhood education, early learning, Grace Reef, licensed child care, SB 1239

Catherine S. Read
I believe in the power of community and the ability of one person to make a difference.

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