All posts by admin

Access America

Is Serial Over? A New Phenomenon on Public Radio

By Christiane Steckenbiller

If you read beyond news sto­ries about the after­math of Fer­gu­son, the killing of two NYPD police offi­cers, and con­jec­tures about the 2016 pres­i­den­tial race, some­thing excit­ing and refresh­ing­ly dif­fer­ent has been grip­ping the Unit­ed States since Octo­ber last year: pub­lic radio. Ser­i­al, a new pod­cast pro­duced by the team behind Nation­al Pub­lic Radio’s This Amer­i­can Life, just fin­ished air­ing its first sea­son. The show sheds new light on a mys­te­ri­ous mur­der case 15 years ago in Mary­land. On serialpodcast.org, this is how the pro­duc­ers adver­tised the first episode:

It’s Bal­ti­more, 1999. Hae Min Lee, a pop­u­lar high school senior, dis­ap­pears after school one day. Six weeks lat­er, detec­tives arrest her class­mate and ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, for her mur­der. He says he’s inno­cent – though he can’t exact­ly remem­ber what he was doing on that Jan­u­ary after­noon. But some­one can. A class­mate at Wood­lawn High School says she knows where Adnan was. The trou­ble is, she’s nowhere to be found.

Read more »

Access America

A Supporting Role for Tom Hanks and Community Colleges

By Shana Kennedy-Salchow

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has pro­posed to make the first two years of com­mu­ni­ty col­leges (CC) free, and Tom Han­ks thinks it’s a good idea. His New York Times op-ed takes us back to his Chabot Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege days when he joined “vet­er­ans back from Viet­nam, women of every mar­i­tal and mater­nal sta­tus return­ing to school, mid­dle-aged men want­i­ng to improve their employ­ment prospects and pay­checks.” Back then edu­ca­tion at a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege was free, but since then tuition has gone through the roof, mak­ing it out of reach for mil­lions of Americans.

College

Although we have yet to see the details of Pres­i­dent Obama’s pro­pos­al and are already start­ing to won­der if it has any chance with Con­gress giv­en its esti­mat­ed $60 bil­lion price tag, we should cel­e­brate the thought and the impact it could have. We should also pay spe­cial atten­tion to how this pro­pos­al or state-lev­el imi­ta­tions of it can be used to bet­ter sup­port the mil­lions of stu­dents who strug­gle aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in com­mu­ni­ty col­leges and nev­er graduate.

After grad­u­at­ing from Chabot Col­lege, Han­ks went on to attend the State Uni­ver­si­ty in Sacra­men­to – a four-year col­lege – but did not fin­ish. Read more »

Creativity Corner

Apples Having a Ball

By Nina Eliasson Sejrsen

Last Sat­ur­day, I stood in a long line to buy apples. Bored as I was, I looked at the apples on dis­play: Graven­stein, Elstar, Brae­burn, Pink Lady, Hol­stein­er Cox, Cox Orange, Jon­agold. “They sound like straight out of a Jane Austen nov­el,” I thought. And sud­den­ly I saw the apples arriv­ing at an old, yet strange­ly mod­est cas­tle in their finest clothes, dressed up for a ball host­ed by Lord and Lady Gravenstein.

© Copyright A. Dolman

© Copy­right A. Dolman

The Graven­stein Ball was the event of the sea­son which all the invit­ed had looked for­ward to for months. Gowns had been ordered from famous hous­es in Paris, and all the fam­i­ly jew­els appeared on the ladies’ bosoms.

Lord Graven­stein was a tall, stout man. Look­ing into his eyes, the echo of the hard­ships and sor­rows he had expe­ri­enced in his life­time appeared. So did all the joy and hap­pi­ness when he smiled. Secret­ly, he hat­ed the ball, but as his father would have said: ”Tra­di­tion is tra­di­tion.” Lady Graven­stein was a del­i­cate woman. Being in the autumn of her life, her past beau­ty had not fad­ed. Every­one would agree that Lord and Lady Graven­stein were still a very hand­some couple.

It was the young Lord Graven­stein who greet­ed the guests. He was ever so hand­some-look­ing in his red uni­form. The young lord was a tall gen­tle­man with ten­der and atten­tive blue eyes. He had a friend­ly, yet sad appear­ance that made every heart go out to him.

Read more »

Teaching Tools

Marketing and Performing History

By Sabrina Völz

As far as I can tell, his­to­ry has a bit of an image prob­lem among future Eng­lish teach­ers. It does not seem to be one of those top­ics that receives much atten­tion in Eng­lish class­rooms across Ger­many. I mean, real­ly, who is inter­est­ed in a bunch of dead peo­ple, dates, bat­tles, and maps? Well, to be hon­est, I’m not and prob­a­bly you aren’t either. But luck­i­ly for us, his­to­ry is much more than a col­lec­tion of dull facts and arti­facts. His­to­ry is about peo­ple, places, and events. It is about greed, pas­sion, pow­er, lead­er­ship, and betray­al. It is about achiev­ing suc­cess and admit­ting fail­ure as well as mak­ing good and bad deci­sions. In essence, it is about life. In fact, I am so bold as to sug­gest that his­to­ry can be as fas­ci­nat­ing as any good nov­el. In Joyce Car­ol Oates’ mas­ter­ful short sto­ry, “Death Watch,” the nar­ra­tor writes: “Truth must be mar­ket­ed like any oth­er prod­uct.”[1] Okay, so let’s mar­ket history.

Read more »

Access America

Don Quixote Saving America

By Michael Lederer

DQYou know what tribe I belong to? Put your hand on a table. Now hit it with a rock. If it hurts, then you and I belong to the same tribe. The Hit-my-hand-with-a-rock-and-it-hurts tribe.

Ide­al­ism 101.

Want­i­ng to believe a thing is the first and biggest step. From that to believ­ing is as easy as land­ing in the water after you’ve already jumped.

I want to believe, and there­fore I do believe, that – as politi­cians like to tell us – America’s best days are ahead. Roman­ti­cized peri­ods of our past – the Old West, the 1950s – still saw whole swaths of Amer­i­cans denied their shot at the dream. Lib­er­ty for some! But in this still-dawn of a new mil­len­ni­um we have the chance, as Oprah put it, to “turn our wounds into wisdom.”

Read more »