American Culture

I make an effort not to swear in the presence of older ladies, minor children, and evangelical clergy. I reviewed Jesse Sheidlower's The F Word without using English's most versatile verb/noun/adjective/adverb/interjection. But over the past week I watched American journalism contort itself attempting to write about the Russian band Pussy Riot without actually naming it, and I thought, "Enough. " Today I am reviewing a book about a vulgar word and how it reflects American culture, and, damme, I am going to use it. So if your sensibilities are delicate, STOP READING NOW. Let's take a moment to allow the audience to clear the exits.

You know you are entering a different world when you see the heavy cordless iron that requires a fire to heat it sitting atop a wooden ironing board covered with a bed sheet used as an ironing pad at the Howard County Center of African American Culture. For those who can remember manual eggbeaters and other hand-held tools hanging from the wall, this is a step back in time. For some, emotion comes with seeing the white wooden kitchen cabinet that held someone's dishes in the early 20th century.

One of our greatest, and often untaught, heritages is the culture of the Native Americans who explored and inhabited this land long before the European explorers arrived.On March 1 and 2, the students of Running Brook Elementary School will explore Native American culture. Thanks to funding from the school PTA and a grant from the Howard County Arts Council, the school will hold an in-school residency featuring two Native American artists.M. Chochise Anderson is of Chickasaw/Mississippi Choctaw descent.

I make an effort not to swear in the presence of older ladies, minor children, and evangelical clergy. I reviewed Jesse Sheidlower's The F Word without using English's most versatile verb/noun/adjective/adverb/interjection. But over the past week I watched American journalism contort itself attempting to write about the Russian band Pussy Riot without actually naming it, and I thought, "Enough. " Today I am reviewing a book about a vulgar word and how it reflects American culture, and, damme, I am going to use it. So if your sensibilities are delicate, STOP READING NOW. Let's take a moment to allow the audience to clear the exits.

Baltimore's lone participant in the effort to rebuild Lower Manhattan is still in the running. Roland Park resident Janet Marie Smith is a member of one of the two design teams that were named finalists this week in the international competition held to produce a master plan to guide reconstruction of the 16-acre World Trade Center site destroyed by terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Smith is the vice president of planning and development for Baltimore's Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse and previously held the same title with the Baltimore Orioles.

THE CANOE DANCE of the Haliwa-Saponi began a program of Native American songs, dances and games at Spring Garden Elementary School in Hampstead last week.The festive program was performed by the fifth-graders and culminated a lengthy classroom study and research project on Native American culture.Music instructor Idalea Rubin taught the students the songs and steps. The 147 fifth-graders were divided into six clans, wearing costumes stitched by parents and painted with animal motifs. The students made shell and feather necklaces and rattles from gourds.

John Higham, a retired Johns Hopkins University history professor and nationally known authority on American culture, immigration and the historical aspects of ethnicity, died of a cerebral aneurysm Saturday at his North Baltimore apartment. He was 83. Dr. Higham, who was born and raised in Jamaica, N.Y., earned his bachelor's degree in history from the Johns Hopkins University in 1941. During World War II, he served with the Historical Division of the 12th Army Air Forces in Italy. After his 1945 discharge, he served for a year as assistant editor of American Mercury, an intellectual review that had been founded by H.L. Mencken in 1925.

JUBILANTLY, Steven Cameron Newsome thumps his fist on the padded pew where he sits in the Banneker-Douglass Museum in Annapolis.For the first time, he says, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra lists in its calendar of events the annual "Let Freedom Ring" concert honoring the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.For Newsome, whose life is committed to promoting and preserving African American culture and history, official recognition by the BSO is a significant revision...

Holding a thin piece of deerskin stretched tightly over a small brown painted coffee can, Alex Genuario concentrated on threading a piece of hemp through the small holes poked in the hide. Standing next to him, his younger brother, Dominic, threaded beads onto his piece of hemp and attached a wild turkey feather as a finishing touch. The Genuario brothers, 11 and 9, were making Native American drums as part of a program at the nature center in Piney Run Park in Sykesville. More than 15 elementary school-aged children participated in the event that was designed to teach them about Native American culture and make use of real animal hide donated to the nature center.

The sounds of a flute playing Native American songs filled Kathy Plitt's classroom at Park Elementary School on Friday as her third-graders celebrated the cultures of the Pueblos, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Sioux they have been studying for the last six weeks."

Suddenly, in Britain, of attenuated interest, the Queen's English Society. The organization of crotchet collectors was forty. After the failure of the society's much-ridiculed project for an Academy of English , will waned quickly. The Independent reports that at the society's annual meeting, with an attendance of twenty-two, its chairman, Rhea Williams, announced, "Despite the sending out of a request for nominations for chairman, vice-chairman, administrator, web master, and membership secretary no one came forward to fill any role.

You might call this a requiem for reverence. It seems that one Jeffrey Darnell Paul, a graphic artist from Miami Beach, had been tasked with creating a poster for a strip club's so-called "I Have a Dream Bash" last week in apparent "honor" of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. So this genius concocts an image of the nation's greatest human rights leader holding up a fan of $100 dollar bills like some low-rent "playa" while a scantily clad woman looks on. Mr. Paul, let the record show as African-Americans duck their heads in mortification, is black.

Marni loves her sparkly pink flip-flops and the daily school lessons with her host family. Soon after he arrived on a flight from Ethiopia, Sammy switched his dress shoes for a pair of trendy Nikes that he wears everywhere. Isaac has accessorized with cool sunglasses and is teaching his hosts dance moves. After dental and eye check-ups, Betty is sporting a brighter smile and a new pair of glasses. Five young children, ages 6 to 9, are the first visitors to participate in Welcoming Angels, a new international orphan hosting program, organized by America World Adoption to assist Ethiopian children.

Paul Lindsay introduced himself to an audience of students and staff at Roye-Williams Elementary School in Havre de Grace. But only his own son, Skylar understood the unfamiliar syllables. So Lindsay translated his name from the Mohawk language into English. Among American Indians, Lindsay is known as Eagle Owl Warrior. Skylar is He Who Flies with Hawks. Lindsay, 47, organized the school assembly, complete with some knowledgeable friends and lots of show-and-tell, in celebration of Native American Month.

When retired teacher Wylene Burch started the Howard County Center of African American Culture in 1987, her vision was to preserve the stories of black county residents from the past and present. Now Burch, along with a team of staff members and volunteers, will continue to fulfill that mission with the renovation and reopening of the Columbia museum, which is made up of a library and thousands of donated artifacts from black families around the county. "Our main purpose is preserving the history of Howard County," said Burch, the museum's executive director.

Two by two, they danced into a tent wearing elaborate feather headdresses, leather moccasins and bells tied to their ankles or knees. A circle of drummers played and chanted in the corner. Native Americans from Baltimore and across the country gathered in Patterson Park yesterday for the 34th Annual Powwow put on by the Baltimore American Indian Center. Participants included members of the Haliwa-Saponi tribe from North Carolina, Kiowa from Oklahoma and Lumbee from Baltimore. The three-day event, which ended yesterday, was designed to spotlight Native American culture.

They arrived here expecting to find precocious little American children -- loud children with braces on their teeth -- being raised by workaholic parents obsessed with junk food.America, Howard County-style, didn't match those images, much to the relief of the four youngBritish women. They are among 15 European "au pairs" working in Howard County who provide 45 hours of live-in child care a week for host families in exchange for room, board and $100 a week."People kept saying all American men go around in lumberjack shirts and that the women are glamorous and have their nails done," said Tracy Doyle, 20, of the descriptions she heard before leaving England.

Louis Campbell stood beside his Dodge Neon in the parking lot of the Howard County Fairgrounds yesterday, adjusting a round, bushy headdress made of hawks' feathers. Nearby, other people reached into their sedans, trucks and SUVs and pulled out colorful shirts, skirts adorned with bells and fringe, beaded moccasins and feather bustles. They were preparing to take part in Native American dancing at the 11th annual Howard County Pow-Wow, a two-day festival in West Friendship that ended yesterday.

Have you heard what Milwaukee Bucks center Andrew Bogut said about his fellow NBA players? If you regularly soak up every newspaper, magazine and major sports Web site you can get your hands on ... you probably have no idea what he said. Too bad for those news outlets, and too bad for us. What Bogut told a paper in his native Australia two weeks ago (yes, two weeks ago) about the American league in which he plays and the players, most of whom are black, populating it ought to open up another good avenue to discuss the issue most desperately in need of sane discussion: race in American culture.

The catch-22 of American culture is that, no matter how far you go, you can never totally escape it. It is, as rapper Jay-Z once opined, a gift and a curse. Yesterday in the media room, I was sitting next to a very pleasant, very polite Japanese reporter who spoke almost no English. We exchanged a few grunts and hand motions, but for the most part, we were unable to communicate. And then her cell phone rang. I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I realized she had Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady" as her ring tone.