Today's Thoughtful Thursday brings poetry of hope, strength, and a mother's love. It's (still) National Women's Month, and these three powerful women poets give us some much needed optimism, inspiration, and mothering "realness" to help us cope in these bewildering times. Poet, teacher, saxophonist and vocalist Joy Harjo (b.1951), a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, offers a hopeful [...]
Welp, here we are. Facing the surreality of coping with the domestic outbreak of this coronavirus, with news of more positive cases and more closures and cancellations daily. The World Health Organization has just declared that the spread of COVID-19 across more than 100 countries now qualifies as a global pandemic. In a couple of days I will be heading to [...]
March is Woman's History Month, and in celebration today's Thoughtful Thursday features two powerful poems by two artistic powerhouses: Toni Morrison and June Jordan. Toni Morrison (1931–2019), while best known for her critically acclaimed and prize winning novels, wrote one volume of poetry, Five Poems (Rainmaker Editions, 2002), which features poems alongside illustrations by Kara Walker. The first of these poems, [...]
The Inside Guide to NYC Parenting is coming to back to Hunter College in April 2020--next month!! If you live in or around NYC, you can join us again this year to discover answers to some of the important parenting questions I've been focusing on for years in this blog. I'll be offering resources, tips and advice on key academic [...]
Today's Thoughtful Thursday is dedicated to the award winning poet Kevin Young (b.1970). Kevin, whose work has been featured in many Thoughtful Thursdays, is the poetry editor of the New Yorker and the director of New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Prior to that he was the Atticus Haygood Professor of Creative Writing and [...]
Alexander Twilight, Middlebury College, Class of 1823 Today, in honor of the last few days of Black History Month, we celebrate the earliest Black graduates from U.S. white colleges. Imagine, almost 200 years ago, young Alexander Twilight was poised to graduate from Middlebury College in 1823, making him the first Black college graduate from a White institution. To [...]
To all you new moms (and friends of new moms ): did you know that 80% of a child's brain growth happens in the first three years of its life? And that there are a few everyday activities that you can do with a child in those first three years to make a big impact on it's learning? You [...]
In today's Thoughtful Thursday we will hear from two wise women poets: Anne Spencer and Audre Lorde. Anne Spencer(1882-1975) was a Harlem Renaissance poet and civil rights activist. Though she lived in Lynchburg Virginia her whole life, she maintained close friendships with many Harlem Renaissance writers, including James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, and W.E.B. Du Bois, and her home [...]
Today is Presidents' Day, (which happened to land this year on George Washington's actual birthday), and Friday was Valentine's Day, so we are offering a two-for-one Thoughtful Thursday this Monday. Yep. You're welcome! For our Presidents' Day offering, here are two wonderful poems composed for Presidential inaugurations: "On the Pulse of Morning" which Maya Angelou (1928-2014) delivered at President [...]
As we continue the celebration of poetry during Black History month, for today's Thoughtful Thursday we offer selections from four of our great poets. First we have "Frederick Douglass" by the renowned Robert Hayden (1913-1980), the first African American poet to hold the position of Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, which later came to be known [...]