Archives for July 2019

Del. Marcus Simon on Your Need to Know

(July 31, 2019) Catherine Read sits down with Del. Marcus Simon (D-53) to talk about how citizens can get involved in affecting policy change at the state and local level of governments.

Simon was introduced to state politics in his first job out of college, as an aid with his predecessor, Del. Jim Scott. Without much knowledge about the inner workings of state government, he got a quick lesson on both how things work, and how quickly things can move in Richmond. While he embraces the concept of citizen legislators, it also means that there is a very short time frame to get things done during their abbreviated legislative session each winter.

One of the aspects of state government that really appeals to Del. Simon is the fact that legislators are very accessible to their constituents. Representatives are able to hear directly from them about their ideas and concerns. There are not a lot of “layers” in state government, meaning there are very few staff people who serve as buffers. When you want to speak to your representative, it is easy to do so. He has personally enjoyed getting to know his constituents, learning about new issues, and advocating on their behalf.

He encourages everyone to participate in the legislative process. One way people can engage is to step forward and take a leadership role in a professional association. When it comes to professional licensing and regulations, the state plays a big role. This is a great way to get involved if they have suggestions for improving things within their industry.

He also recommends scheduling a time to meet with him here in Falls Church, or coming to his office in Richmond during session. He always has time for constituents, and wants to hear about issues that are important to them. Legislators also often attend community meetings such as civic associations, neighborhood community groups or local advocacy groups. If you are interested in having him, or any of his colleagues, speak at a local meeting, simply contact their office to arrange the details. You can find your local representatives at this website, simply plug in your address.

In addition to stepping forward and getting involved, Simon has some advice for younger constituents who are interested in civics. The Virginia General Assembly has a page program geared towards students age 13-14. Teens can apply starting August 1^st for these coveted spots. The students who are selected will move to Richmond during the legislative session. They work in the House and Senate chambers, while also doing schoolwork under the supervision of tutors.

It is a wonderful hands-on learning experience. Del. Simon is always impressed with the young people who come to Richmond, and very much enjoys having them as part of the legislative session. He is continuously impressed at their mock legislative session that they run at the end of each season. It shows just how much they absorb by being present and working in the chamber every day.

Simon encourages all citizens to take action in our democracy. There are elections this fall for every seat in both the House and the Senate, and a lot of work to be done. As a member of the minority party since his election in 2013, Simon is looking toward a future when the Democrats can take back the majority. He knows that if they are able to accomplish this, then there will be real policy change on big issues like gun violence prevention, protecting Medicaid expansion, and criminal justice reform.

As a citizen, if you have an idea for legislation, he encourages you to reach out to your representatives today. They are working on crafting agendas and bills, and need time to gain an understanding of the issue, as well as come up with the most effective wording for the bill itself. Come fall, they will be filing bills with the legislative services office, and want to ensure that they have plenty of time to ensure that the bill is written with the most effective language.

by Rachel Simon

Racism in America with Shirley Ginwright

(July 29, 2019) Catherine Read sits down with civil rights activist Shirley Ginwright for a candid conversation about racism in America. Ginwright is a long-time community activist, serving as the President of the Fairfax NAACP and as the chair of the Communities of Trust in Fairfax from 2014 to present.

On the heels of inappropriate and racist comments by the President of the United States, Trump is set to visit Virginia to mark both the 400^th anniversary of the Virginia legislature and the arrival of African slaves to its shores. After fighting racism for six decades, Ginwright is discouraged about the current state of public discourse. She feels as if we are taking steps backward, as opposed to moving forward, in our acceptance and understanding of our checkered past.

Ginwright acknowledges the importance of teaching children about our nation’s history, and not whitewashing our past. White people primarily write history books, from a white person’s perspective. She proposes having students read books written by black authors so that they get a full understanding of our history.

She recently had a conversation with a white college professor of history, who acknowledges that by reading books written by African American authors, she is able to open her mind to the breath and depth of our past. This helps her understand things from a different perspective, which enables her to relate better to her students.

In the second segment of the show Ginwright discusses how issues are framed differently in public discourse when it comes to race. She uses the example of drug epidemics in two different circumstances. Back in the 1980’s, there was a crack cocaine epidemic that primarily impacted African American communities in the inner cities. At the time, the answer from politicians was to crack down on the “thugs” who suffered from addiction, and treat them as criminals. This led to a ballooning prison population,with a disproportionate impact on communities of color.

Fast-forward to recent years, and we now have an opiod epidemic afflicting mostly white communities across the nation. Today, politicians are taking the stance that this is a public health crisis that deserves both money and attention. Instead of treating these people as criminals, as they did in the past, the conversation has shifted to trying to help these victims survive and recover.

Yet, at the same time, African Americans are still serving outrageous sentences for drug crimes from decades past. Additionally, minorities are disproportionally sentenced to jail for marijuana possession today. There are still true inequities in the system that deserve attention.

Another timely topic that we have debated in recent years is whether or not schools, roads and buildings should be named after Confederate soldiers. With Virginia being the capital of the confederacy, we still have a number of these throughout the commonwealth.

Most recently, JEB Stuart High School in Fairfax was renamed Justice High School. It is especially ironic that the population of this school is majority minority. Ginwright believes that the names should be changed because we should not be honoring the memory of people who stood for the inequities of the past.

As we grapple with the hard questions about our history, and attempt move the needle forward, Ginwright encourages everyone to consider equity and encourage representation. She uses the example of jury duty. She has never been called for jury duty, which begs the question – is there equal representation on juries in communities throughout the country? In the classroom, are there enough minority teachers for children to look up to? These are all important questions, and she urges us all to think about these issues.

Ginwright emphasizes that the only way things can change is if we elect people who accurately represent our values. Local politicians have great sway over policies in everything from the classroom to the police force. Virginia has elections for virtually all local offices this November. She encourages all Virginians to make a plan to vote and ensure that their voice is heard.

by Rachel Simon

Class Act Players with Alex Bulova and Alex Poirier

(July 24, 2019) Catherine Read interviews Alex Bulova and Alex Poirier about their local Fairfax based theater company, Class Act Players. In 2015, a group of young artists dreamt of a place where they could come together and hone their artistic skills as all-around theater makers. They joined forces to found Class Act Players, and worked together that summer to produce their first original musical.

The troupe is comprised of university students, who come together over the summer to put on original shows. They have a mission to support and showcase the work of budding playwrights. This summer’s production is called Air Mail Par Avion, and is the 4^th original production that they have embarked on making. The very unique thing about this show is that a portion of it is improvisational, so each and every show is slightly different. Improv is not often used in musical productions, so they are excited to bring a new concept to the stage to create a different type of experience for audience members.

Previous productions include the Complete History of Fairfax: The Musical. No other groups have ever offered to produce their shows, but Catherine suggests that perhaps the high school theater programs might be interested in putting this show on as a part of a civics course. There are many possibilities.

For the first time this year, the group is accepting submissions of original scripts. The creative team will come together to decide which show they will select to produce. Both Bulova and Poirier are excited about the prospect collaborating with a local playwright to put together an original production. Their mission is to support and bolster local artists.

The Class Act players are currently operating out of the Lorton Arts Center, and the shows are very affordable to attend. Bulova and Poirer are thankful for their sponsors, both individual and corporate, who help keep them afloat and allow the theater to be accessible to all who want to attend. Having a place for new artists to test their work and try new things is very important. Their shows tend to be an outgrowth of their mission, posing the question of: what is art and who gets to make it? The production team shares a passion for producing quality theater productions, and they hope to continue to do that into the future.

by Rachel Simon

Kimberly Boateng FCPS Student Representative 2019-2020

(July 17, 2019) Catherine Read interviews Kimberly Boateng, the new student representative to the FCPS School Board for the 2019-2020 school year. Kimberly is an incoming junior at Robert E. Lee High School, and was elected this past spring by the Student Advisory Council (SAC). She serve a one-year term starting in July, and will participate in School Board meetings as a non-voting member. Kimberly is the 49^th student representative to serve in this capacity.

Over the course of her academic career, Kimberly has attended seven different schools, six of them being within the FCPS system. Through this unique lens, Kimberly has gained a good snapshot of the county and has a lot of ideas based on her experiences. She understands the diversity, both from a racial and socioeconomic standpoint, and is able to use that understanding to help advance the issues that are most important to her.

Among the pressing issues at hand, Boateng believes that mental health, implicit bias awareness, the dress code, assistance for at-risk students, drug use, and punishment reform are most important.

Some of these issues dovetail with one another. Punishment reform merges in with the issue of implicit bias and at-risk students. She points out that the policy of suspending or expelling students is not working. If the goal is to reform the students and help them, then keeping them in school and making them aware of their mistakes, as well as teaching them how to avoid making the same mistakes in the future is the most important thing.

“The worst thing that a school can do” she says, “is give up on a child”.

Since she has been in so many different schools, Boateng has had the opportunity to see things that have worked well, and things that have not worked out the way that they were intended. She would like to highlight the creative, out of the box ideas that she has seen to be successful.

Boateng takes her role seriously, and hopes that the FCPS student body will reach out to her with their thoughts, ideas and observations. The school system is very large, and she believes the only way to be an effective representative is to be open and responsive to the student body that she represents. Her email is effective on July 1^st, and she hopes to start hearing from them with ideas and feedback for the new school year.

by Catherine Read

Inclusive Sex Education – Hunter Wagenaar

(July 11, 2019) Making Change Radio host Catherine Read talks with activist Hunter Wagenaar, a student at the University of Virginia, who is advocating for more inclusive sex education. Sex education curriculum needs to be fact based, medically accurate and science based and it needs to include the LGBTQ community. This is the mission of Hoos for Inclusive Sex Education Now (HISEN) the organization that Wagenaar founded at UVA.

Making Change Radio can be heard every Thursday night at 9 pm (EST) online at Radio Fairfax or on Ch. 37 locally.

by Catherine Read

Caldecott & Company – Maurice Sendak

(July 2019) I love this book so much! I was led to it from a footnote in Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordsrom which was published in 1998. Maurice Sendak dedicated Caldecott & Co: Notes on Books & Pictures to his beloved editor Ursula Nordstrom, who died in 1988, the year this book was published.

By 1971, Sendak had illustrated 70 books in twenty years. Most of his illustrations in the 1950s were for the works of other authors. In 1964, he wrote and illustrated Where the Wild Things Are which won the Caldecott Medal that year. His acceptance speech for that award, the Hans Christian Andersen Award, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award make up the last part of this book of essays.

Where the Wild Things Are was not universally embraced by librarians and the adult buyers of children’s books, and In the Night Kitchen even less so. In one of Sendak’s essays published in 1964, he quotes Nordstrom about the difficulties in publishing quality children’s books:

It is always the adults we have to contend with — most children under the age of ten will react creatively to the best work of a truly creative person. But too often adults sift their reactions to creative picture books through their own adult experiences. And as an editor who stands between the creative artist and the creative child I am constantly terrified that I will react as a dull adult. But at least I must try to remember it every minute!

In a separate essay from 1964 he talks about Nordstrom’s support for Where the Wild Things Are despite her “squeamishness” on seeing the first pictures for the book.

This admission of misgivings and her realization that she was reacting in a stereotyped adult fashion was a confession of utmost truth, and only she could have made it. This is how she put it recently: “And so we remembered once again, as so many times in the past, that the children are new and we are not.” Her support and unflagging enthusiasm helped bring the book to a happy conclusion.

These essays written by Sendak are from 1955 to 1987 and are not in chronological order, but rather arranged topically about the history of children’s books and the artists who illustrated them.

One of the essays is the preface to Pictures by Sendak published in 1971. It’s a selection of 19 illustrations from eight of the 70 books he illustrated – all of them after the 1950s. I went searching for the portfolio at my “go to” website for out-of-print books www.abebooks.com and they do indeed have sellers in their network who have the portfolio for sale from a low of $750 to a high of $16,000. I’m guessing it was a small print production.

One fact that emerged in these essays is his love for music and he refers to some of his drawings as “a kind of pen-and-ink ballet.” He drew his illustrations to classical music and had a fondness for Mozart. In addition to picture books, he also designed sets for operas and ballets, including The Magic Flute. The Morgan Library in New York City has a special exhibit of his theatrical designs from June to October 2019, Drawing the Curtain: Maurice Sendak’s Designs for Opera and Ballet, which I’m hoping to see this month.

Woven throughout the essays are stories of his childhood growing up in Brooklyn in the 1930s- the impact of Mickey Mouse, comics and the movies. From his acceptance speech for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1970:

Mine was a childhood colored with memories of village life in Poland, never actually experienced but passed on to me as persuasive reality by my immigrant parents. On the one hand, I lived snugly in their Old Country world, a world far from urban society, where the laws and customs of a small Jewish village were scrupulously and lovingly obeyed. And on the other hand, I was bombarded with the intoxicating gush of America in that convulsed decade, the thirties. Two emblems represent that era for me: a photograph of my severe, bearded grandfather (I never actually saw him), which haunts me to this day and which, as a child, I believed to be the exact image of God; and Mickey Mouse. These two lived side by side in a bizarre togetherness that I accepted as natural. For me, childhood was shtetl life transplanted, Brooklyn colored by Old World reverberations and Walt Disney and the occasional trip to the incredibly windowed “uptown” that was New York – America. All in all, what with loving parents and sister and brother, it was a satisfying childhood. Was it American? Everybody’s America is different.

One of many interesting things about Ursula Nordstrom and Maurice Sendak is their choice of life partner. In her letters to writers over the decades, Nordstrom refers to her partner Mary Griffith – their homes, their travels, their parties. In 1988 Nordstrom predeceased Mary Griffith, who is credited in Dear Genius with providing some of the letters that appear there.

Maurice Sendak’s longtime partner, Eugene Glynn, predeceased him in 2007 and in Glynn’s obituary Sendak was mentioned as his partner of 50 years. The following year, in an interview with the New York Times, he said never told his parents. “All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.”

I’m struck by how two such talented people impacted children’s literature, had wonderfully rewarding lives and loving partners, and were part of an LGBTQ community that wasn’t itself “out” in the workplace from the 1930s through the 1980s in New York City. When we talk about the need to teach LGBTQ History, we need to teach about the amazing accomplishments of people like Ursula Nordstrom and Maurice Sendak who persevered and gave so much to this country and to our culture. There are a number of well known authors long deceased who were less well known members of the LGBTQ community. Let’s put these role models out there for students.

I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve spent with both Dear Genius and Caldecott & Co. and I’m awestruck by seeing how some of my favorite childhood books were made. I would highly recommend these books to anyone of any age who loves books.

by Rachel Simon

Speak* with Rhonda Eldrige and Erin Villaronga

(July 10, 2019) Catherine Read sits down with Executive Director Rhonda Eldrige and Program Facilitator Erin Villaronga, of the nonprofit Speak*. Their summertime interdisciplinary arts program for girls aged 12-18 encompasses all aspects of creative performance. From writing to dance to direction, the girls work together to create a performance that culminates in a show for the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, DC.

Modeled after a sister program that has been running in Nashville for the past 10 years, Eldrige brought Speak* to Northern Virginia as a way to empower young women. Her arts retreat is an opportunity for these young women to author their own life, as well as write and tell their own story. This program offers a safe space for young women to explore and express their feelings.

Speak* takes place over a two-week period. In the first week the girls focus on process. Each day, they have a writing prompt which helps them to build a collection of stories. During the second week, the participants figure out how all of the pieces can work together. They incorporate music and movement to bring the entire performance to fruition.

In an example of how this program works, a writing prompt asked the participants to write a letter to one of their parents. One of the girls wrote a letter of appreciation to her Dad where she was able to express her gratitude and love for him. Another participant wrote to her Dad about the pain she felt after he left their family, and how sad she was that he was absent for most of her life. The juxtaposition of these two pieces highlights how each one of us goes through life by looking at the world through our own lens.

These two young women then presented their pieces side by side for the final performance. There was not a dry eye in the theater. This is just one example of how this program gives the girls an opportunity to explore their feelings, be validated for speaking their truth, and be empowered by their own thoughts and words.

The program culminates in three final performances at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC during the Capital Fringe Festival. To learn more about the program, or to purchase tickets, visit their website.

by Rachel Simon

She Believes in Me with Renee Gorman

(July 3, 2019) Catherine Read sits down with She Believes in Me founder Renee Gorman to talk about her work in supporting young, vulnerable girls in her community. Lori Barnes, a volunteer who has been with the program since inception, also joins the show to talk about the importance of being a mentor, and giving these girls positive experiences and valuable skills.

Gorman is a school counselor in a community with many vulnerable children. Over the years, she became increasingly frustrated because she did not have the bandwidth during school hours to help support the young girls who were coming into her office with profound challenges. She wanted to do more, but needed to find a different approach to helping them work through their obstacles. She believed in these girls, and wanted to show them that they had a fan rooting for them.

The first step involved planning some positive programming to bring the girls together. Gorman put together a group of volunteers by reaching out to her professional and community connections. Her goal was show these young girls that there were people in their corner who wanted to help them. These workshops take place at her elementary school on Saturday mornings, and are always framed with a theme so that the girls have a valuable skill to bring home with them.

A few examples of topics include building self-esteem, developing healthy coping skills, recognizing inner beauty, and the importance of friendships. The workshops are free of charge, and Gorman simply advertises by word of mouth. They have become so popular that they attract approximately 160 girls a month, and are staffed with over 30 volunteers. These girls are looking for positive role models, and are thirsty for programs that speak to them.

Most importantly, the environment is warm and welcoming, and girls are made to feel special and important. Having enough volunteers to staff the program means that the girls who really need help, have an opportunity to share their struggles and reach out for support The girls come from diverse backgrounds and varied socioeconomic environments, and many have experienced trauma. Gorman’s goal is to ensure that they have an outlet to find support when they need it.

The She Believes in Me model has been so successful that Gorman would love to grow the program to additional schools. If you are interested in setting up a similar program in your neighborhood, you can reach out to them to find out about how to get started at [email protected]