Books read in February. And a song.

• Me: Actually re-picked up James Michener's Poland. Am slogging through a bit at a time.
  
  Re-reading The Martian Race, by Gregory Benford a pun-title book where NASA has pulled out of the human race to Mars and the governments of the world have decided to basically privatize the space race by offering a huge prize to whoever can get humans to Mars first. Endorsements, reality shows, product placement, Mars Bars, cutting safety corners, capitalism at its glorious best and mercenary worst. It's quite cool.
  
  Biko, by Donald Woods. Daniel and I watched Cry Freedom (based on Biko) while he was studying Africa, and I remembered that I bought Woods' book back in the dawn of prehistory but never finished reading it. I'm doing so now. It also fit in quite nicely with my choir activities during February, as we prepared for our Black History Month concert.
  
  Very good book. I've learned lots. Ask me about the Boer Wars, or Apartheid, or Black Consciousness.
  
  Go on, ask me.
  
  Left off reading Tesseracts⁷. Will probably pick it up sometime in the future.
  
  
• Chris: Read The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, by the Dalai Lama.
  Excerpt (regarding GMOs): We must rise to the ethical challenge as members of one human family, not as a Buddhist, a Jew, a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim. Nor is it adequate to address these ethical challenges from the perspective of the purely secular, liberal political ideals, such as individual freedom, choice, and fairness. We need to examine the questions from the perspective of global ethics that is grounded in the recognition of fundamental human values that trascend religion and science.
  
  I think I'll read this one next.
  
  
• Daniel: Read a few Bionicle books that he got for his birthday. Well... not so much "read" as "inhaled."
  
  
• Justin: Read, all by himself, two of his SpongeBob phonics books ("In a Fix" and "Rub-a-Dub-Dub", teaching short i and short u sounds) for English for his first week of home school. He's suitably proud of himself :)
  
  
• Chris and the Boys: Are about 1/3 of the way through Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, Chapter 8, "Flight of the Fat Lady."

***
Because I'm link-happy and because February was Black History Month and we got to sing two concerts with an absolutely amazing high school choir, here's a link to one of their songs, Follow The Drinking Gourd, a song slaves used to sing about the Underground Railroad. A singing road map to the Northern States/Canada.


Edit: Arg! Carp! That's actually a link to Nkosi Sikelel'i Afrika, the pan-African anthem. Still appropriate link for Black History Month, but not the song I thought I was linking to. I'll post the other link later.

Lyrics & songs

Right, so I had a bit of an issue with misposting a link in an earlier post today, but now I've sorted it out. These are two songs from the Black History Month concerts that happened this month, both by the World Voices Choir from Brookfield High School. The first is Nkosi Sikelel'i Afrika (God Bless Africa), the "pan-African anthem" often sung in South Africa before Apartheid. The second is Follow the Drinking Gourd, an American slave song. Both are from their CD, Ubunti, which they released earlier this month.

Nkosi Sikelel'i Afrika
( Lyrics )

Follow the Drinking Gourd
( Lyrics )

The Drinking Gourd, in case it's not obvious, is the Big Dipper, which can be used to easily identify the North Star, which points, by a staggering coincidence, straight North ;)