Speakers in C-U, Mar. 15 – 21
You live near a major university and a community college. There are smart people that come here every week to talk to the general public about interesting topics. Perhaps you were not aware of this fact, or were overwhelmed by the sheer number of opportunities for possible enlightenment. If that's the case, Smile Politely understands and is here to help. Here are several events going on in town this week. Check out one or more of them if you have time. Get your learn on, as they say, and join the cognoscenti. It's free, you know. Plus, sometimes there's free food, too!
If you have a community event, speaker, or film event that you'd like to see featured on Listen Up!, send the event information to joelgillespie [at] smilepolitely [dot] com by Friday the week prior to the event. Listen Up! runs on Mondays.
WHAT: "Yue Minjun Talks About His Work," a talk by Yue Minjun, contemporary Chinese painter
WHEN: Monday, March 15 @ 5:30 p.m.
WHERE: Krannert Art Museum Auditorium, 500 E. Peabody Dr., Champaign
Minjun's piece Execution is pictured above.
From the event announcement: "Yue Minjun, resident of Beijing, has emerged as one of the preeminent artists of the Cynical Realism movement in contemporary Chinese painting. His works are instantly recognizable by the characteristic laughing man, each a self-portrait of Yue Minjun, depicted in a variety of guises and in virtually all of his works. Immediately humorous and sympathetic, Yue Minjun's paintings offer a light-hearted approach to philosophical inquiry and contemplation of existence."
| Cutting through the hype
Regardless of your political orientation, whether you have children or not, the state of the local school district is an exceedingly important part of any community. And for a city the size of Champaign, the school system's operations can be complex enough to befuddle most unschooled observers. That's where Charles Schultz comes in.
Schultz, author of the outstanding website A citizen's blog about Champaign Unit 4, wasn't always interested in the machinations of his local school district. "I was happy to live my life, and I didn't really care too much [about how Unit 4 worked]," Schultz said. "I didn't read the newspapers, I voted no on all the tax increases out of principle, out of hand, and I wasn't even aware that there was a bigger picture going on."
However, that apathy had an expiration date. His point of entry into local school issues was when he started looking into the Consent Decree. "That's when I learned about John Lee Johnson, and I learned about all the racial inequities that are happening in Champaign," Schultz explained. "Especially with bussing and how the schools are deteriorating physically but also [how] they're having a problem getting good teachers and good staff in the quote-unquote inner-city schools."
Schultz, who works in database management for the University of Illinois, started his Unit 4 blog in November 2008 in order to, as he put it, "get it down to share with other people in case they had the same kind of questions or were going down the same path."
I'm not going to pretend like this whole thing is easy. I don't want to fall into a trap here of trying to gloss things over or to make them pretty for public consumption. This is intended to be a true documentation of my journey during The Yoga Experiment. And this week I fell off the wagon. I didn't just fall off, I jumped off and went flying into oblivion. It isn't the yoga, really. Yoga is awesome, and I …
You live near a major university and a community college. There are smart people that come here every week to talk to the general public about interesting topics. Perhaps you were not aware of this fact, or were overwhelmed by the sheer number of opportunities for possible enlightenment. If that's the case, Smile Politely understands and is here to help. Here are several events going on in town this week. Check out one or more of them if you have …
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You live near a major university and a community college. There are smart people that come here every week to talk to the general public about interesting topics. Perhaps you were not aware of this fact, or were overwhelmed by the sheer number of opportunities for possible enlightenment. If that's the case, Smile Politely understands and is here to help. Here are several events going on in town this week. Check out one or more of them if you have …
After rounding out the fifth week of The Yoga Experiment, I feel like I am finally beginning to relax into my practice. I am getting to know the teachers and the other students, and I have proven my dedication to myself and others. Five weeks is huge for me, now I can say that this is the longest and most consistently I have ever "worked out" in my life (or at least since high school), and it has by far …
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