I have before me a smattering of paper scraps with an odd accumulation of notes, which will, one hopes, render up a readable column. Also in front of me is the remnants of a very delicious barbecued chicken dinner offered up by King City Young Farmers for those of us who acted as Farm Day guides. More on that a bit later; first a couple of musings from the paper scraps.
The following information comes from an article in the latest edition of the Monterey County Weekly (“Free Speech,” Jan. 18-24 issue). There is an assemblymember out of Palo Alto by the name of Marc Berman who authored a bill that he, and many others, hopes will advance from local to statewide. Assembly Bill 873 was necessary, according to the author, to show “that media literacy instruction is essential to keeping our students safer online and to safekeeping the future of our democracy.”
The need for such legislation is starkly evident in today’s high-tech world where students of all ages are subjected to so much information that may or may not be valid that young people often cannot determine what is fact and what is fiction. And I think we can all agree one’s ability to discern and absorb facts must be an integral part of human thinking or one can easily get led down a Primrose Lane that is all thorns and no blossoms.
Using the strength of this new legislation, a group by the name of Media Literacy Coalition seeks to both inform local students to the ins and outs, ups and downs, and overs and unders of the massive number of informational sources found on social media and the information they provide to audiences. The list of those entities that comprise the Media Literacy Coalition is impressive, starting with the Monterey County Office of Education and involving Cal State Monterey Bay, Fresno State and UC Santa Cruz; an outreach to a large number of very diverse students with one commonality: social media access.
This is something I do hope spreads to young people throughout the state and beyond California’s borders. (I added that sentence because I know others like me have grandkids in other states whose media intake we worry about.) In the next few years, this coalition of educators and librarians and journalists will have established sound education for our youth so they can navigate the wide world of communication with confidence they can analyze the words they read and images they see.
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How would you react if you received an email from New York City, borough of Manhattan, inviting you to be interviewed in Los Angeles for the Arts and Entertainment Network? I can tell you how I reacted. It started with just a little bit of excitement — my mind whirring at what could merit such interest; was it something I wrote? — and was followed by the quick thought that they must have the wrong guy. The latter was the correct assumption.
Kathie, the writer of the email, is the casting director for A+E Factual Studios in NYC, who are doing a segment on the hidden treasures of Jesse James, and an Oklahoman named Steve Wilson wrote a book germane to the subject; that is where we parted ways. In my reply to Kathie explaining she had the wrong fella, I asked how she got my email. In her reply she sent a link that led to my column of Aug. 21, 2021, where I wrote about hearty immune systems of way back and used Jesse James as one reference. Those A+E folks do a lot of research to come up with one paragraph from one weekly column appearing clear across the country from East 45th Street in Manhattan.
A little side note: I sent the original email to my daughter who is employed in the legal department of the University of Oklahoma (Go, Sooners!) and because all Oklahoma authors are in the university database, she got back to me in three minutes with this: “Oklahoma Treasures and Treasure Tails,” Steve Wilson, Oklahoma University Press, 1989. Maybe someday I’ll fetch me a copy and give it a read.
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“Open, sesame!” For those of you too young to have been exposed to much literature in elementary school and beyond, those words are found in the story “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.” That story came from the French translation of “One Thousand and One Nights,” which were ancient folktales from, if memory serves, Persia and the Middle East.
But even if one has never heard or read the words, most of us know the word sesame from sesame seeds. We all know on some hamburger and cheeseburger buns we can find sesame seeds. Sesame seeds are used in many Asian dishes, you can see them in the food, and sesame seed oil is commonly used for cooking.
Today, as mentioned above, was Farm Day (I’m sure you’ll read all about Farm Day in today’s issue), and as one of the presenters exhibited a variety of plant seeds, he held up a small vial of sesame seeds and it struck me I knew nothing about where they came from. So, I asked. He didn’t know. I asked savvy plant and seed people and I asked just us regular folks and not one person had ever heard of nor seen a sesame plant or a photo of one. But surely a sesame seed grows a sesame plant.
No one knew where they are native to or if a sesame plant is used for any other purpose than for its seeds. All good questions; all unanswered. When faced with such lack of knowledge, the first course of action is research. I’ve done a fair amount of research over the years, but assume a bit more would do no harm so I set about finding out all about the source of sesame seeds. So, I did. And now I know.
Take care. Peace.
