Posted on June 2nd, 2011 by rstewartahf
The Alabama Humanities Foundation will sponsor a traveling exhibition called “Journey Stories” in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution beginning June 25 in Jasper. This post is the first in a series that will highlight our own personal journey stories. Our stories may include how our ancestors traveled from far away lands to come to America, or it could be about a memorable family trip to anywhere in the world, or perhaps it’s a story about our first car or train ride. Anything that includes travel and transportation can be considered our own journey story. If you would like to submit your own journey story, please email Jennifer Dome at: jdome@ahf.net.
By Bob Stewart, AHF executive director
Compared to railroads, riverboats and covered wagons, hitchhiking doesn’t hold a lofty place in America’s transportation history. But there’s no doubt of its place in popular culture. Think of Jack Kerouac (On the Road), John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath), and Kurt Vonnegut (Breakfast of Champions), to name just three writers who have included hitchhiking in their classic works. Science fiction writers have even described interstellar hitchhiking (Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) and inter-dimensional hitchhiking (Robert Heinlein, Job: A Comedy of Justice). Add to these literary works the many references to hitchhiking in music and film, and it’s safe to say that the lone traveler thumbing a ride on an interstate ramp or a dusty two-lane highway will remain an icon of the American imagination. Read more »
Filed under: Alabamians, Bob S., Conversation, Culture, Education, History, Mission, Nationwide | No Comments »
Posted on May 31st, 2011 by guest
The Alabama Humanities Foundation will sponsor a traveling exhibition called “Journey Stories” in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution beginning June 25 in Jasper. This post is the first in a series that will highlight our own personal journey stories. Our stories may include how our ancestors traveled from far away lands to come to America, or it could be about a memorable family trip to anywhere in the world, or perhaps it’s a story about our first car or train ride. Anything that includes travel and transportation can be considered our own journey story. If you would like to submit your own journey story, please email Jennifer Dome at: jdome@ahf.net.
By Amelia Barton Trowbridge, born in Birmingham, Ala., July 24, 1945
As a young child, I always had what some of my family referred to as a wanderlust. One of my favorite cousins told me when I came back to Union Chapel, Alabama, in this new millennium that when I started walking, I starting running and would sometimes just run down the dirt road. I loved reading biographies growing up such as The Life of Madame Curie, Babe Ruth, Babe Diedrickson and Amelia Earhart with dreams that I would be able to experience many areas of the world in both travel and work. Read more »
Filed under: Alabamians, Conversation, Hometown, Mission | No Comments »
Posted on May 26th, 2011 by guest
The Alabama Humanities Foundation will sponsor a traveling exhibition called “Journey Stories” in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution beginning June 25 in Jasper. This post is the first in a series that will highlight our own personal journey stories. Our stories may include how our ancestors traveled from far away lands to come to America, or it could be about a memorable family trip to anywhere in the world, or perhaps it’s a story about our first car or train ride. Anything that includes travel and transportation can be considered our own journey story. If you would like to submit your own journey story, please email Jennifer Dome at: jdome@ahf.net.
By Billie Jean Young, AHF Board member
When I started school in Pennington, Alabama, in the late fifties, we rode to school in a pickup truck every morning with Mr. Tom Bryant. He would drop us off at the elementary school and go on to deliver older kids to the high school a few miles farther up in the hills in the Indian Springs community. Our pickup truck had a body built over the back with a doorway for us to enter by stepping over the tailgate. It had a few chairs and seats back there as well. Mr. Tom Bryant could be sure we wouldn’t fall off the back and spill out on the road. We might get tossed around a bit back there, but it would mostly consist of being tossed into and against the person seated next to you. Mr. Tom Bryant knew that, at the very least, we would all be there when he arrived at the school. He would drive us to Miss Kate’s at Thompkinsville Elementary and speed on off to Indian Springs to get those high school students there on time. Read more »
Filed under: Alabamians, Conversation, Culture, Education, Folk life, History, Hometown, Mission | No Comments »
Posted on May 25th, 2011 by Jennifer Dome
The Alabama Humanities Foundation (AHF) will now accept Jenice Riley Memorial Scholarship applications through June 17. The scholarship benefits kindergarten through sixth-grade teachers and serves as a professional development opportunity for teachers to receive a $1,000 scholarship to enhance their teaching about Alabama/American History and citizenship and to encourage civic involvement by students in their community.
Applications and application guidelines can be found here.
Read more »
Filed under: Alabamians, Education, Mission | No Comments »
Posted on May 20th, 2011 by Jennifer Dome
For a minimum donation of $35 to the Alabama Humanities Foundation, you can request a limited, special edition copy of Cotton Mary, numbered and signed by AHF Board member and author Bob Whetstone. Send a personal check made out to “Alabama Humanities Foundation” and indicate in a letter, along with your mailing address, that you would like to receive a copy of Cotton Mary.
All proceeds will benefit the Alabama Humanities Foundation and its programs.
Send letter and payment to:
Alabama Humanities Foundation
c/o Paul Lawson
1100 Ireland Way, Ste. 101
Birmingham, AL 35205
Read more »
Filed under: Alabamians, Bob W., History, Literature, Support | No Comments »
Posted on May 17th, 2011 by plawsonahf
The Alabama Humanities Foundation will sponsor a traveling exhibition called “Journey Stories” in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution beginning June 25 in Jasper. This post is the first in a series that will highlight our own personal journey stories. Our stories may include how our ancestors traveled from far away lands to come to America, or it could be about a memorable family trip to anywhere in the world, or perhaps it’s a story about our first car or train ride. Anything that includes travel and transportation can be considered our own journey story. If you would like to submit your own journey story, please email Jennifer Dome at: jdome@ahf.net.
By Paul Lawson, AHF director of development and public relations
Singer Ricky Nelson was slightly before my time but not by much. Gee, he would be 71 if he were alive today. He died tragically in a New Year’s Eve airplane crash headed to a concert in Texas. I vividly remember Ricky closing most of the old Ozzie and Harriet shows with one of his hit songs. Screaming teenage girls, of course, were included in the sound track. Looking back, I think ole Oz helped his youngest son out by using the TV series to promote Ricky’s music. Record sales shot up the next day. Mucho presto! The music video was born 25 years prior to MTV.
One of Ricky Nelson’s most popular songs, “Travelin’ Man,” fits nicely with an exciting new AHF project—“Journey Stories,” premiering in Alabama this summer. The song was written in about 20 minutes by little known writer, Jerry Fuller. His first choice was to offer it to Sam Cooke, but Sam turned it down. Ricky’s bass player, Joe Osborne, had been in the next room of the record company and heard it. He asked Cooke’s manager if he could hear it again, and the man said: “Here, you can have it.” It was one of Ricky’s biggest hits and stayed on the Billboard music charts for more than four months, including two weeks at number one. Read more »
Filed under: Alabamians, Art history, Conversation, Culture, Education, History, Mission, Paul L., Support | No Comments »
Posted on May 11th, 2011 by Jennifer Dome
The Alabama Humanities Foundation will sponsor a traveling exhibition called “Journey Stories” in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution beginning June 25 in Jasper. This post is the first in a series that will highlight our own personal journey stories. Our stories may include how our ancestors traveled from far away lands to come to America, or it could be about a memorable family trip to anywhere in the world, or perhaps it’s a story about our first car or train ride. Anything that includes travel and transportation can be considered our own journey story. If you would like to submit your own journey story, please email Jennifer Dome at: jdome@ahf.net.
By Jennifer Dome, AHF public relations and publications manager
One of my earliest memories is traveling in the back seat of my parents’ station wagon from North Carolina to South Dakota where we were going to live while my father attended Air Force Officer Training School in Illinois. I always seemed to be in the back seat of a station wagon, or mini van, or some vehicle while growing up. As the daughter of an Air Force captain, such was my lot in life from age 1 through 16 when we finally made our last trek, from California to New Jersey, where my father retired.
It was on those trips, though, that I got to see a vast majority of our amazing country. From the plains of Kansas, to the mountains of Grand Teton National Park, to the snowy peaks of the Rockies, there are very few states that I haven’t at least driven through. And along the way I’ve learned a lot about our country’s history. Read more »
Filed under: Conversation, Culture, Education, History, Mission, Nationwide, Support | 2 Comments »
Posted on May 9th, 2011 by Jennifer Dome
On April 27, our state was ravaged by numerous tornadoes, damaging homes, destroying businesses, and, worst of all, taking lives.
Our executive director, Bob Stewart, recently offered his thoughts on the tragedies of that day in an editorial published in The Birmingham News on Sunday, May 8, 2011.
To read the full article, please click here.
We at the Alabama Humanities Foundation hope you and your loved ones are safe, healthy, and beginning to heal after this natural disaster.
Filed under: Alabamians, Bob S., Hometown | No Comments »
Posted on May 4th, 2011 by bwhetstoneahf
In November of 2010 when the sixth-grader asks for our email addresses, we all, his grandparents, aunts and uncles, comply with this harmless request. This incident is forgotten until a few weeks later when we suddenly begin receiving frequent email updates of the impending snowstorm threat headed toward central Alabama. A check with local TV news and the weather channel verifies this is no playful tinkering; this young fledgling meteorologist has morphed into an authentic weather reporter. Daniel has been fascinated with maps and symbols since he was able to grasp a crayon in his toddler hand. During his preschool years, he spent hours drawing neighborhood streets and houses, arranged in a grid of city blocks. With ease, he taught himself to read by observing street markers, road signs, and billboards, using these words to correctly label locations on his maps. Then in kindergarten, with magic markers he outlines a variety of routes from his home to school, grandparents’ houses and any place else of interest. Moving to a different neighborhood the summer before first grade requires a good deal of reconfiguring of his collection of hand-drawn maps, but he masters it in a short time. While other kids his age are watching TV cartoons or playing games on their computers, Daniel is probably the youngest consistent Mapquest user. By age eight, he volunteers to become the backseat navigator for his traveling grandparents. Eventually, we have to purchase a GPS for trips we make without Daniel in the car. After his grandmother takes him to visit a professional cartographer, nine-year-old Daniel opens his own “custom map-making business,” offering his services via email and snail-mail. Read more »
Filed under: Alabamians, Bob W., Conversation, Education, Nationwide | 1 Comment »
Posted on April 11th, 2011 by Jennifer Dome
The SUPER Emerging Scholars (SES) program is an expansion of AHF’s mission to serve the public. This program directly fosters opportunities for high-school students to examine the significance of their own cultural values and meanings through in-depth studies of literature, history and the arts. By equipping participants, called Emerging Scholars, with necessary critical thinking and writing skills in the humanities, they will be inspired to explore human values and meanings through academic scholarship.
SES institutes are weeklong residential workshops that offer specialized academic enrichment in the humanities. The institutes will assist upper-level high-school students in the development of writing and critical thinking skills necessary for success in secondary and post-secondary education.
2011 SES Institutes
SUPER Emerging Scholars @ Auburn University • Auburn • July 17-23
Kevin Roozen, Ph.D., associate professor of English at Auburn University, will serve as the institute’s lead scholar. This institute will develop students’ writing, reading, and critical thinking abilities by investigating the rhetoric of public discussions addressing the purposes and functions of education. Students will learn the rhetorical principles of effective persuasion and employ those principles to examine a series of readings from ancient Greece to contemporary America that describe the multiple and often competing objectives of teaching and learning. Drawing from those readings and video accounts of their own experiences with formal education, institute participants will draft, revise and publish philosophies of learning that articulate the attitudes toward learning and schooling that will shape their futures as students and public citizens.
In partnership with Auburn University Outreach Office
SUPER Emerging Scholars @ Alabama State University • Montgomery • June 12-18
Bertis English, Ph.D., associate professor of History at Alabama State University, will serve as the institute’s lead scholar. This institute will offer students the opportunity to examine in real time the impact economic injustice has had on marginalized groups. This is a unique opportunity as students will be able to investigate the current economic injustices that are occurring due to the recession in contrast to other periods such as the Great Depression. Students then will be assigned a community to investigate how economic injustice still permeates today. Students will be asked to incorporate any findings into a final presentation.
In partnership with Alabama State University
SUPER Emerging Scholars @ the University of South Alabama • Mobile • June 19–25
Kern Jackson, Ph.D., assistant professor of English and folklorist and oral narrative data collector, will serve as the institute’s lead scholar. This institute will offer students the opportunity to examine the survival stories of the communities affected by the recent oil drilling disaster and Hurricane Katrina. Students will learn about how these two major historical events have defined the Gulf Coast community. Students will engage with persons impacted by each of these events from the Grand Bay and the Bayou La Batre communities. From these lessons, students will collect narratives of survival.
In partnership with the Academic Affairs Office of the University of South Alabama
For application forms and guidelines, please click here.
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