Late Pride Month continues: August quotes

I can totally see how this might not seem like a continuation, since the only post previous was almost a month ago:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/09/late-pride-month-augusts-daily-songs.html 

There has just been a lot going on.

As it is, I have mostly read the books that I intended to this time around. I just requested one that I had not previously known about. Matt Herron, the photographer from yesterday's post... I was trying to find more information on him. It turns out he was the photographer for a book on the AIDS quilt, which inspired a documentary I already watched, that was connected to another book... anyway, this is a good time to go over quotes.

I have a lot of affection for many of the people here. Audre Lorde, who has the first and last quotes, is such a good writer, with so much courage... it was easy to quote her twice.

However, the quote that speaks most to my heart is from August 6th, but Nathan Lane:

"I have to accept the fact that, no matter what I do, it's going to annoy someone." 

Being annoying has been a deep fear of mine for a long time.

There are reasons for that and I have come a long way, but there is still an underlying concern. Now when I worry about it, it is mostly because there is something that people won't want to hear that still needs to be said.

I found this quote because I am trying so hard this year to lift up marginalized voices. Now, the people I quote generally have some fame, perhaps making them seem less marginalized, but no amount of celebrity erases homophobia or racism or sexism, even if it does provide some shielding.

And I am very privileged in some ways, being white, straight, and cis, even if my gender, economic class, and body size hit on other prejudices.

Remembering others -- especially in the realm of diversity, equity, and inclusion -- may indeed be annoying to others.

I can accept that.

Thanks Nathan! 

Quotes

8/1 "When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak." -- Audre Lorde

8/2 "Change is not a threat to your life, but an invitation to live." -- Adrienne Rich

8/3 "Let us be enraged about injustice, but let us not be destroyed by it." -- Bayard Rustin

8/4 “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” -- James Baldwin

8/5 "Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot." -- Truman Capote

8/6 "I have to accept the fact that, no matter what I do, it's going to annoy someone." -- Nathan Lane

8/7 "I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I'm dead. I cannot live on tomorrow's bread." -- Langston Hughes

8/8 "Be yourself; everyone else is taken." -- Oscar Wilde

8/9 "Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you." -- Walt Whitman

8/10 "Whatever one loves most is beautiful." -- Sappho

8/11 "The Moral Majority supports legislators who oppose abortions but also oppose child nutrition and day care. From their perspective, life begins at conception and ends at birth." -- Barney Frank

8/12 "All the miles of a hard road are worth a moment of true happiness." -- Arnold Lobel

8/13 "Inside all of us is... hope. Inside all of us is... fear. Inside all of us is... adventure. Inside all of us is a wild thing." -- Maurice Sendak

8/14 "Life is so much bigger, grander, higher, and wider than we allow ourselves to think." -- Queen Latifah

8/15 "You will know you're old when you cease to be amazed." -- Noel Coward

8/16 "The only thing worse than human ignorance is human pride in that ignorance." -- George Takei

8/17 "It is my intention to live an authentic life of compassion and integrity and action." -- Zachary Quinto

8/18 "Be honest about what you see, get out of the way and let the story reveal itself." -- Anderson Cooper

8/19 "I really believe in trying to increase the amount of useful information in the world and in being accurate in the sense that you can take what I say to the bank, even if you disagree with me." -- Rachel Maddow

8/20 "You have no control over other people's taste, so focus on staying true to your own." -- Tim Gunn

8/21 "You can't please everybody. There's that old saying that there's no sure formula for success, but the only sure fire formula for failure is to try to please everyone. You're not going to do that." -- Matt Bomer

8/22 "I believe that acting in any medium is the same thing, it's discovering the truth in where you are." -- Victor Garber

8/23 "We don't deliberately set out to offend. Unless we feel it's justified." -- Graham Chapman

8/24 "Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense." -- Gertrude Stein

8/25 "But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself." -- Rachel Carson

8/26 "There is nothing that is comparable to it, as satisfactory or as thrilling, as gathering the vegetables one has grown." -- Alice B. Toklas

8/27 "Black women have had to develop a larger vision of our society than perhaps any other group. They have had to understand white men, white women, and black men. And they have had to understand themselves. When black women win victories, it is a boost for virtually every segment of society." -- Angela Davis

8/28 "We are your daughters, your sisters, your sons, your nurses, your mechanics, your athletes, your police, your politicians, your fathers, your doctors, your soldiers, your mothers. We live with you, care for you, help you, protect you, teach you, love you, and need you. All we ask is that you let us. We are no different. We want to serve, like you. Need love, like you. Feel pain, like you. And we deserve justice, like you." -- Margarethe Cammermeyer

8/29 "Maybe if people started to listen, history would stop repeating itself." -- Lily Tomlin

8/30 "I love the fact that I can make people happy, in any form. Even if it’s just an hour of their lives, if I can make them feel lucky or make them feel good, or bring a smile to a sour face, that to me is worthwhile." -- Freddie Mercury

8/31 "Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy." -- Audre Lorde

 

Where it leads

Our final stop in Cincinnati was the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

It was last because it was inside on the rain day and because they are open until 5; the other places closed at 4. (All of this will be covered on the travel blog, over several posts.)

Starting with Taft and ending with the Freedom Center was not planned, but I think it worked well to give a frame to our trip.

On to the Freedom Center!

It is a very good museum, but it can be heavy. 

They recommend that you watch a brief introductory film, then start at the top and work your way down. At the top, the first exhibit I looked at was Witness to the Journey: Matt Herron and the Deep South, 1965.

The first picture you see is one Herron did not take, where he is being chased by a cop. Herron is white, but he was documenting things that the white power structure did not want shown. I was not familiar with him, but I did start thinking about Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, Viola Liuzzo, and James Reeb. (Many of the photos were from Selma.) What Herron did was dangerous and it was important.

Of course there were pictures of Martin and Coretta King, but there was also Ralph Abernathy and John Lewis, who hold places in my heart, and James Bevel who was an abuser but was there and is immediately recognizable. 

There is a lot of reading and watching that has embedded it into my memory; all of the memories were flowing there.

Then there were other exhibits on modern slavery and on the Underground Railroad and slavery of that time. 

There were thoughts and memories regarding the Underground Railroad, but there was less knowledge on my part of the modern slavery.

I want to say there is more urgency on it, with people needing help now. I hesitate to say that, because one problem with the current state of things is that so few people are willing to learn the lessons of the past. If there was more connection to not just the wrongness of American chattel slavery, but also connecting of how and why it happened, maybe we would have gotten better by now.

I will obviously be writing more about that. For now I will just reiterate that for all of the undercurrent of greed, with people who already have resources wanting to exploit the labor of others so they can have more, while all the time they will insist that they are doing the exploited a favor, and that when the exploited resist it is because they are lazy and the real hard workers are the exploiters... for all of that...

It only works because there are so many people who will be satisfied with feelings of superiority and hate.

They are being exploited too. Not as badly, but way more stupidly. 

Related posts: 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/02/black-history-month-2011.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2022/02/black-history-month-sharing-week-3.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/02/selma-emotional-impact.html 

What they didn't tell us

We started our first full day in Cincinnati at the Taft National Historic site. 

That was the family home purchased by Taft's father, then added on to while the family was still there, becoming rented as apartments, and after many twists and turns becoming part of the National Park Service.

It wasn't our big priority; just something we thought we should do while we were there. A schedule that was initially based solely on proximity and efficiency had to be adjusted for weather; that's how we ended up there first. 

Still, it inspired a lot of thoughts. 

In AP History, in addition to the regular textbook there were some printouts with anecdotes about each president up to that time (1989). Anecdotes being what they are, a lot of what I remember most strongly comes from there.

I am mad about those stories, which is really only possible because of additional reading. 

Mainly what I recall from then about Taft was him being fat (what is most commonly remembered about him) and that he tried to compete with Teddy Roosevelt's bull moose (and maybe the teddy bear) with a Wally Possum. 

Also, I believe I remember from then that he was much happier as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court than as president. 

Some interesting facts I learned at the site were that he was offered a Supreme Court position earlier. He turned that down, along with other good career moves, because it would have meant not finishing things that he started. He was known for integrity and responsibility.

In addition, although they did mention the people of the Philippines growing to love the "gentle giant" when he was serving there, there was also this tidbit that he would start each morning with a four mile walk to his office. Yes, he was a big dude, but the prevailing memory lacks some nuance.

What really got to me was how the information there interacted with a book I read ten years ago:

1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft and Debs -- The Election that Changed the Country by James Chace (2004)

Books about elections are often really interesting because they go over the forces working in the country at the time and how the people process them. 

I did not come away from it learning a lot about Taft; just the basic conflicts. Then, time passes and experience accrues. I found myself here, on vacation, getting really angry with Roosevelt.

Okay, Taft is governing as his own person, not the sequel to you. You don't like that so you become a primary challenger and lose. Instead of just accepting that, then you form a third party and split the Republican vote, handing the country over to that racist Democrat Woodrow Wilson. 

(Yes, this was back when it still made sense to call the Republicans "the party of Lincoln." That time is long gone.)

I don't know how proud Roosevelt was of inviting Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House; the pushback he got caused him to be much more discreet about his racial progressivism after that. I don't doubt that he still harbored some racist beliefs, and there are ways in which that would have made it to work with Washington than some other potential figures of the time. However, Roosevelt did seem to want to improve things for Black Americans, at least in the South, and what did he do?

He handed things to Woodrow Wilson who resegregated the federal workforce:

https://www.govexec.com/federal-news/2015/11/when-woodrow-wilson-segregated-federal-workforce/123913/  

Equality, always a struggle, lost ground. 

One of the other anecdotes I remember from that collection was about Wilson, where he was so excited about the film The Birth of a Nation that he called it history written with lightning.

Now, I have seen an article debunking that:

https://blogs.lib.unc.edu/ncm/2014/07/01/woodrow-wilsons-unintentional-rave-for-the-birth-of-a-nation/

The author of that may be right, but there are enough other signs of racism that it doesn't do much to help Wilson's image.

Here's the other thing; I remember that line sticking with me, and wondering if maybe -- with film still being a relatively new medium -- maybe that just meant he was amazed by the motion picture or if Wilson was specifically applauding the racism. As I learned more about his presidential "achievements" I felt pretty certain he was applauding the racism.

What I don't remember is getting any context for the quote. 

If we are supposed to be getting to know the presidents better, the whole thing was kind of lacking, as I remember it, but they sure could have mentioned a lot more about the racism and not just with Wilson.

I say this as someone who really liked the teacher, whom I know did not set the curriculum so this is not blaming him. Still, I see how much the Lost Cause crept in, and how things that were unjustifiable were glossed over, and we were studying at the accelerated rate!

I knew that we were not getting everything because there was not enough time for that, but we missed so much of the core foundation. That lack of understanding about the greed and racism and all of those factors interacting is still causing destruction today, and in very similar ways.

Sure, any time you try and correct that, there is a lot of pushback and misusing of terms and outright lies, but it's important and we need to do better.

Which is pretty crucial for the last place we visited in Cincinnati.  

HallZooween at the Cincinnati Zoo

I just got back from vacation.  

There is some catching up to do, but I thought I should incorporate some of my time on vacation, separate from the travel blog.

This is partly because there were some deep thoughts that relate, but also for fun.

The Cincinnati Zoo had great Halloween decorations, but the travel blog post will probably focus on the animals and terrain.

So, why not have a post about that?

Here we are at the start of October, a month I love largely, but not solely, because of Halloween.

I was a little surprised at the title; "Howloween" or "ZooBoo" are a lot more common in my experience.

Well, variety is the spice of life.

One that note, not everything was pumpkins. There were also spiders, ghosts, candy corn, and ghostly jellyfish.

However, a key focus was on pumpkins, with local artists being invited to decorate over 5000 of them.

I actually saw a few carvers are work, so the process appears to be ongoing. As it is, there was also some painting and some very creative ways of making the art.

 Sometimes there were themes, like snakes and turtles outside the reptile house.

 My personal favorite was this homage to Over the Garden Wall and that captivating scene from episode 2, "Hard Times at the Huskin' Bee."

There were definitely over places with Halloween decorations on our trip, but this was easily the most impressive and memorable.

(And we went to Holiday World.)

I do have a tendency to be more serious, and with good reason, but you have to share the good times too.

Statistics Reading List

These were not books that I came to through school; they have been on my to-read list for some time. 

However, as I approached graduation and realized there would be some data analysis with the final project, it occurred to me that this could be a good time to go over that reading.

It was not that I thought that I was going to be doing anything too complicated with my analysis; I didn't end up having the numbers for that anyway.

However, I did think that maybe reading a lot of diverse material related to statistics might help me think differently about it, and notice different themes.

Going over the books in order, there were three really great ones, and another good one that is only tangentially related but I will mention it, all at the start. They got mentioned in other posts, which are linked at the bottom.

Then it ended on a low note, including me giving up on one.

The order was deliberate in starting and ending with books that were more about the basics, with books more about using statistics in the middle. How the quality went was not planned. I never plan to read irritating books. I just happens sometimes.

Statistics in Plain English by Timothy C. Urdan, (2001)

Part of thinking the last book was terrible was having read this one first. The examples were better, with more clarity and better reminders. I'm not saying that I retained any of the math, but if that were my goal this would have been a reasonable help. 

The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century by David Salzburg (2001)

Modern statistics is a relatively young pursuit and this book goes over some of the problems that have led to current techniques and formulas. How do you account for all of the different factors in agriculture so that you know which ones matter? How do you establish that something is a real difference and not just chance?

And if you think math is boring, there are some surprisingly colorful characters. 

Presimetrics: What the Facts Tell Us About How the Presidents Measure Up on the Issues We Care About by Mike Kimel and Michael E. Kannell, with illustrations by Nigel Holmes (2010)

One of the interesting problems here is that to compare different presidents to each other, there are many different factors that affect their time in office. As the authors go over what measurements they used and how they determined data, I think it is an excellent lesson on allowing for confounding variables. 

The Perfect Swarm: The Science of Complexity in Everyday Life by Len Fisher (2009)

This was actually part of a different list on complexity, but I am glad I read it when I did, because some of tracking swarms and the answers that people give and many other things is analyzed statistically. I think the book is better for complexity than for statistics, and when I get those other two read it will come up more, but it still gets an honorable mention here. 

Moneyball by Michael Lewis (2003)

I think someone with a better head for statistics could write a really interesting book on this. Instead it was written by someone who seems to love the drama but isn't really that deep, so he picks up points and drops them, but then at one point he calls this group he doesn't like the "ladies auxiliary" sticks with it because sexism is a fun insult, and I can't remember whom he applied it to now, whether it was journalists or office workers. Look, it's the guy who wrote The Blind Side and missed the exploitation.

It was a frustrating book, but at least I finished it, unlike... 

Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics, 7th Edition by Neil J. Salkind and Bruce B. Frey (2020)

They start off repeating a lot that they are not condescending, but they kind of are. That seems to mainly be a way of differentiating themselves from the For Dummies series, but while that title might be unfortunate, the books are actually really respectful and helpful. 

Isn't it kind of condescending to imply that your students only think they hate statistics? How do you know the hatred isn't real?  

I still might have been able to put up with it if I had not recently read Statistics in Plain English. Being so aware of its shortcomings and not really needing to know more, I could not make myself go on.

At some point, I do want to delve more into statistics mathematically. It will probably involve reviewing other math first. I have forgotten a lot of Algebra and Geometry and frankly I was always catching up in Algebra/Trig and lost in Pre-Calculus.  

When I feel I am ready to do it, I may revisit Urdan and I will very likely look at Statistics for Dummies, but I know I will not go back to this book!

Related posts: 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/06/personality-differences.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/07/better-than-wed-hope.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/07/good-governance.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/07/tending-to-do-better.html 

Trying to bring it on home

The good news is, my first of the three assignments passed.

I have a solid draft for the second one and will finish and turn it in tonight.

(I am going to be out for a few days, so this is non-negotiable.)

For the record, the first assignment was writing up the research methodology, the second is writing up the results, and then the third is putting all of them together. 

I've had enough unexpected things go horribly wrong that I am almost scared to say it, but I think I should have everything submitted and graded by October 10th.

Before then -- in anticipation of losing access to the course materials and online library -- I have three side quests:

• Writing up notes from the classes I took for a ready reference document. 
• Writing up the competencies that were learned in anticipation of creating an updated resume.
• Checking to see what other research papers I might want to read that this library has. (Some things can be very hard to find.)

You will note that this is separate from the interviews and portfolio materials that I wrote about last week. I am probably not going to find any more books from the class material, but I can't rule that out. The last book I read was from a previous class that I didn't realize I wanted to read until I was reviewing the material. 

For these three, I am mostly done with the first one. 

I am holding off on some of the notes for the final class until I have completed the work. Knowledge looks different when you have to apply it.

For the resume, I have competencies sorted by the class, but I need to sort them again to reduce duplication, get them down to their essence, and figure out which ones I am best at and where I could use some work. 

Job interviews have moved away from asking about your greatest strengths and weaknesses because people do not answer honestly, but it's still good to know what the real answers are.

The last one is at the earliest stage, which is a shame because I think the library access might be the first thing to go. I just have a list of names and topics that I need to spend some time messing around with, That's not a particularly organized activity, which is probably why I haven't gotten far. Having a clear pathway is very important for me. 

Is that a strength or a weakness?

In addition (and this will probably help with other things), I have this journal session I need to do that's going to be a post-mortem on my college experience.

I have had a lot of things go wrong that were not my fault, but I am sure I could have handled some of them better. 

I want to put that all into perspective. Then when there are things that indicate processes that the university should improve, I want to give feedback.

That's for those who come after me.

And maybe for the importance of self-expression; it's okay to have more than one goal. 

Overachiever: 18 books for school!

This one also did not go exactly as planned; some classes led to multiple books, and some didn't really have any.

Sometimes those multiple books were because I was looking up one thing and found some other things with it. 

Also, a few of these are not so much whole books as reports or some kind of shorter work, but they were still significant.

If I also read several extra academic papers, I did not track those.

Honestly, many of them were not that great. 

One huge exception was Adult Learning Basics by William Rothwell. I just finished it less than a week ago and I know I am going to want to read it again. 

Usually, though, once we had read the section that was required for the class, we really did have the most important part of the book already.

That might mean I should just trust the curriculum, but there is also something to be said for looking at the early thoughts as part of the foundation.

There were two where this was most notable:

Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, 1980.

The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty by Simon Baron-Cohen, 2011.

Metaphors had a revised afterword referring to later works. For some of the areas where I disagreed, I think they got there too, eventually. Those ideas that seem to be my own could easily have been influenced by people who were influenced by them.

Simon Baron-Cohen's (Sacha's cousin) book also goes by Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty and Kindness. A lot of it focuses on "theory of mind", especially as relating to neurodivergence. 

It does seem pretty questionable, especially considering how relatively recent it is. It still gets referenced, and now those references make more sense. 

In Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning, these books could go under Foundational Knowledge.

Notably, I have not always fount that the most enjoyable area, but I acknowledge its importance.

Looking over the entire list, you will see many more titles referencing design. That is an area that I knew less about (I might be stronger on the instruction side).

The absolute best one that they mentioned was The Non-Designer’s Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice (Fourth Edition) by Robin Williams. (I am not aware of any relation to the other Robin Williams.)

From her opening anecdote about never noticing all the Joshua trees around her until one book introduced her, it is an important reminder that we don't notice everything. We are surrounded by design -- some great, some not so much -- and we can notice it by just thinking a little about it. If you need to design a poster or choose advertising options for your business or understand the impact that what seems like background noise can have on you, it's worth reading.

That is not true of all of these. Playing with Type is probably only good if you are going to do the exercises, and that won't appeal to everyone. 

I don't think Playing with Type had been in the assigned reading, but came up when I was looking for other things. (That is also why I remembered that the Helvetica documentary existed and watched it.)

That is probably also true of Color Theory for Dummies, but it was fantastic, and referenced a lot of work that is hard to find now.  

It may not be something you are interested in, but the Handbook of Usability Testing was surprisingly readable.  

There are two others I want to mention...

The Forum Guide to Data Ethics had really interesting examples that I would not thought of as matters of ethics, and yet it does make sense to think of them that way.  

A lot of the motivation behind the extra reading was to think better.

With The Belmont Report, a report with guidelines for ethical research with human subjects, it was more clear that ethics was going to come up. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belmont_Report 

It was part of a section on ethics in research, but did not have to read the whole thing.

I am really glad I did. While some of the stories were familiar, there was more that I didn't know, and that is important. 

Nothing I am doing right now requires that level of knowledge, but there is an entire world around me that is sometimes really not right. Having a historical background on that may be very frustrating at times, but I still want to know. 

Which is why I keep reading. 

Books, roughly in the order in which they were read: 

Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, 1980

The Forum Guide to Data Ethics, National Forum on Education Statistics, February 2010.

Learning Analytics in Higher Education, Educause Center for Analysis and Research, 2016.

Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice by Anne Meyer, David Rose, and David Gordon, 2014.

The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design, IDEO, 2015.

Design Thinking Meets ADDIE, Glynn, Kathie and Tolsma, Debra, Association for Talent Development, 8/23/2014.

The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty by Simon Baron-Cohen, 2011.

Visual Design Solutions: Principles and Creative Inspirations for Learning Professionals by Connie Malamed, 2015.

Helvetica (film) (2007)

Playing With Type: 50 graphic experiments for exploring typographic design principles by Lara McCormick (2013)

Color Theory for Dummies by Eric Hilbit (2022)

Color - Messages & Meanings: A Pantone Color Resource by Leatrice Eiseman (2006)

The New Graphic Design School: The Principles and Practice of Graphic Design by David Dabner, Sandra Stewart, and Abbie Vickress (2006)

The Non-Designer’s Design Book: Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice (Fourth Edition) by Robin Williams (2011)

Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests (Second Edition) by Jeffrey Rubin and Dana Chisnell (2008)

The Belmont Report by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1978)

Ensuring Adult and Non-Traditional Learners’ Success with Technology, Design, and Structure by Charity L B Jennings (2021) 

Adult Learning Basics by William Rothwell