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| The Benjamin Hooks Library, Memphis. |
Forgive me, readers, for I have slacked – it has been over a
week since my last post, but it’s been some week. By the end of tomorrow I will
have travelled, by Google’s estimation although the real number will be higher,
4,443 miles or 40.8 Nottingham to Londons. Also, this number doesn’t include
the flight from Manchester, this is all buses, trains, taxis and lifts in the
USA. I feel I owe you two blogs and I probably will split my progress up to now
into two portions, so first up: Memphis and Dallas – a tale of two cities.
Memphis, I arrived into at about 3am where I’d be staying
with AirBnB host and Air Force Veteran CC, who very accommodatingly allowed me
to arrive at her place at such an ungodly hour of the morning and get some
sleep. CC’s was a little way outside of downtown Memphis and as I discovered
the public transport around the area were pretty poor on the weekend, so I
resolved to have some chill out time, explore the neighbourhood rather than the
city and walk the 2 miles or so on Sunday to the Benjamin
Hooks Library in Binghampton which is the city’s main hub branch, named
after the Civil Rights lawyer from Memphis Benjamin Hooks. Orange Mound, where I
was staying, was a very diverse neighbourhood but was close to the university
campus (it reminded me of Radford quite a bit) and boasted some great places to
eat including Brother Juniper’s where I went for breakfast and the incredible Malia's
Wings, where I really didn’t need to go and eat as I’d eaten fairly recently
already but I was so glad I did! Malia’s was a trailer and BBQ smoker on a
vacant lot by a bus stop with a few overhanging trees that hat been cut into
for wood for the fire. The smell, the feel of the place and queue of locals
(you knew they were local as they hadn’t driven so must have only lived in a
few blocks radius!) marked this out as a must and the rib tips and slaw I had
were sublime – some of the best food I’ve had on the trip! I was so full after my
day of walking, exploring and eating, that I went back to CC’s and fell asleep!
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| Malia's. I'm getting hungry just looking at it... |
Sunday, as I had mentioned, was my day to walk to the
Library and I was impressed. The space was a four-storey glass building was
some really cool sculptures outside, which looked like giant rollers, that had
impressed into the concrete floor famous quotations, images and depictions of
world cultures – including the first verse of Lewis Carroll’s Jaberwocky (a
personal favourite). Inside the children’s library was easy to find and had
much of the stuff I’d come to expect now from the fantastic library spaces in
the US – including tree cloud beds for stuffed animals and another theatre/education
space. I had a great wander round but then decided to hole up upstairs, use the
wifi and browse their extensive history section. I read a chapter of a biography
of Lyndon Johnson ahead of my trip to Texas!
The next day was my meeting with Knox, the director of Literacy Mid-South. LMS works
across both adult and youth literacy and we had a great chat about the work
they do, the data sharing arrangements they have with the city and the school
board and the way that they broker partnership working with the voluntary
sector, both when this works well and when it doesn’t – especially partners
working unilaterally. This was probably one of the less exciting meetings to
read about in this sort of a context but it was invaluable to talk with Knox about
the issues in Memphis, which felt all too familiar for Nottingham, and the way
that they coordinate delivery. Most of the other organisations I’ve met have
been much more hands-on, delivery focused and doing that delivery themselves,
but LMS in their children’s work are much more a coordinator and it was great
to get this perspective.
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| The National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, Memphis. |
After meeting with Knox and another hat handover, I headed
into Downtown Memphis to visit the National Civil Rights Museum at the former
Lorraine Motel, the site where in 1968 Dr Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated.
The motel has been kept looking as it did in the late 1960s and that I found to
be the most moving part of the memorial and the museum. The outside also had
very good and informative mini-video screens which gave some context Dr King, why
he was in Memphis supporting the striking sanitation workers and the movement
he had become the leader of. There was time for a last serving of Memphis style
ribs and then I had to get the bus to the Megabus depot for my overnight trip
to Dallas.
Dallas was again a tale of opposites – opposite sides of the
massive metroplex that is the greater Dallas conurbation as I was working in
projects on the East and West sides of the city. I arrived, bleary eyed, at
around 6am and had to break my rule – I went to Starbucks, as nowhere else was
open, it was cold and I was in serious need of a cup of coffee. I had until 3pm
to check out downtown Dallas before I could check into my AirBnB so after my
coffee and some napping in the corner of the coffee shop, like any enterprising
literacy scholar would, I headed to the public library to see what their offer
was. Dallas’ J. Erik Jonsson Central Library in Downtown is a
very busy space as it acts as an informal day shelter for the city’s huge
homeless population. When I was in the main areas the place was packed with
people but usefully there seemed to be an accepted rule that these day users
wouldn’t go onto the second floor where the children’s library was. It wasn’t
as exciting as the other spaces, which admittedly had been recommended to me –
it felt a little tired and the staff were understandably wary. There were no
children in the place when I was there either, it made it feel very weird when
compared to the bustle of the downstairs. After my browse in the library, I had
a quick stop off at the grassy knoll and Dealey Plaza where JFK was assassinated
in 1963 (this post is becoming a bit of a who’s who of assassinations of the
1960s).
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| Me and Cordaro at Readers 2 Leaders. |
My first proper stop in Dallas was at the project
Readers 2 Leaders, where I met with
Audrey, their development associate. This again was another interesting
conversation and one which focused mostly on data and accounting for progress
of the children in the program. R2L’s program operates after-school in West
Dallas and serves
After talking about the organisational structures with Audrey, I
met with Lisa and Cordaro. Lisa was one of the senior tutors and runs the
after-school program, which was on whilst I was there, and Cordaro was one of
the students. Lisa and I chatted for a while about the history of the
organisation and their structure, which was more regimented than some of the
others I’d seen but was delivering results. Cordaro and I were then buddied up to
do his reading assignment and he read Diary of a Wimpy Kid to me and we learnt
the word “founder”. Usefully, Readers 2 Leaders have photo permissions for
their young people too, so I was able to get a snap with Codaro and he got to
wear the Robin Hood hat!
The next day saw me visit the Aberg Centre for Literacy in East
Dallas, about an hour from where I was staying. Aberg is a program for the Hispanic
community where pre-K children and their parents receive English tuition
concurrently in adult and child classes. After meeting Shana, the program’s Executive
Director, I was partnered with Miss Grace and her small class of 6-year olds and
we spent the morning reading stories, talked about what their plans for
thanksgiving might be, dressed up and did jigsaws. We even went to the sports
hall and had a kick about. Aberg’s style I liked, especially the importance of
play in the way that they worked and involvement of the parents in both the
early play sessions, from 9-9:30 the parents are with some of the children
before the parents’ English classes start, and the fact the parents get support
in their literacy too.
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| Sunset over Fort Worth as I head out of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex for New Mexico... |