North Padre Island Moon
February 1, 2008
The Moon made it 3500 feet up the Jamaican Mountainside into the hands of legendary Bob Marley’s 83 year old mother’s hands. For some reason she is hiding what is in her left hand, and we will leave it at that. Captain Crazy, Ethiopian Orthodox and Bob Marley’s Mother Reads the Moon
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A Travelogue by Mary Craft The tour began at Bob Marley’s grandparents’ house where he was born. We then took a paved stone path up to the very small 2 room house where he lived and slept in the same small bed with his 18 year old mother. His father was a 50 year old British officer who married his mother, Cedella Booker, but whom he rarely saw. They divorced after 5 years and when her son was 8 she took him to Trenchtown in Kingston to live. Bob married one of his back up singers, Rita, when they were both 26 and living in Kingston. The song that made him capture Rita’s heart is the one he wrote for her “I wanna love you, every day and every night”. Bob had 13 children, 3 with Rita and 2 of hers that he adopted and the rest with several other women. I learned from Captain Crazy that it is a Rastafarian thing to spread one’s seed. Many of the children are involved in the music industry. Next door to this home was a small one-room house where his mausoleum is. He is interred with his red Fender Stratocaster guitar, soccer ball and a spleef. There is a space set aside for his mother who is now 83 and living in Miami. After the tour the other 25 passengers went down the lane to the Gift Shop while my son and I stayed to chat with the Captain. My son wanted him to know how knowledgeable he was about Marley and reggae. His uncle, my brother, lived in Jamaica for a year during his hippie years. My son and nephew grew up listening to reggae since they were toddlers. In fact, my nephew is now a reggae radio deejay in Chicago where I was born and raised.
Captain Crazy asked if we wanted to see something and he took us around the corner to where an elderly woman was sitting on a bench. My son knew immediately it was Cedella Marley. We spent about half an hour talking to her during which time I took a picture of her with my son. I complimented her sunglasses and asked where she had gotten them. She said “I found them on the kitchen table”. I asked her to remove her glasses for the photo, “So we can see your pretty eyes”. That brought up the cataract surgery she had a few months before. When I told her I was an optometrist she leaned forward and opened her eyes real wide so she could show me. It was Christmas day so I said “So, this is what you do on Christmas, come here from Miami”. “This is not Christmas for me”. Then I remembered she is Ethiopian Orthodox that celebrates the holiday on January 7th which I, as a Serbian Orthodox, also do. That gave us another topic to discuss. The village of Nine Mile only has about 500 inhabitants and is so difficult to get to that I asked her where they get their groceries. She furrowed her brow at the question and answered that they go to the grocery store. I did not bother to explain my question that comes from living on an island community of 7000 without one. It did not hit us until we were heading back to the bus just what we had experienced. My son’s hands started shaking while he tried to check out the pictures we took with her. I was so glad I still had the Moon in my purse with which she was cheerfully willing to pose. Bob Marley died of cancer in 1981 at the age of 36. In 1978 he was awarded the International Peace Medal by the United Nations. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.
ELECT EVY COPPOLA
A5
The Moon brings down the Berlin Wall, delivers peace in our time. Ronald Reagan suggested they tear down the Berlin Wall in 1989 in anticipation of the arrival of the North Padre Moon. That was far sighted of him since the Moon didn’t exist at the time. It finally made it though when Island Residents Bill and Rosanne Milroy recently went on a tour of Eastern Europe and took the Moon along. Way to go guys! Thanks to Dianne Colosi for helping to make it happen and in the process bring peace to the Western world. Keep the traveling Moon pictures coming. It makes us Moon Monkeys feel like we’re traveling without having to go OTB.
Hands on learning the theme for Seashore Middle Academy Creating solar ovens, building biomes, and using a microscope to compare plant and animal cells are all in a week’s work for students at Seashore Middle Academy. The charter school, which opened its doors in August, provides a college preparatory curriculum for students in 5th through 8th grade. Establishing a premier technological school, one with especially strong science and math programs, was a goal from the school’s inception, according to Island Foundation school board director President Colleen McIntyre. “The key to learning science is the hands-on, lab-based approach, and that was our goal,” McIntyre said. “We learn math by doing math, we learn to read by reading, and so on. You don’t learn to play saxophone by reading about a saxophone. Likewise, you don’t learn science just by reading about it. You have to touch and feel and do.” The school’s philosophy is especially timely given recent reports that America’s students lag behind other world powers academically, especially in math and science. With a goal of better preparing a more globally competitive student, SMA used its “startup grant” money to create a school filled with technology, from a set of laptops in each room to a science laboratory equipped like an undergraduate college lab. A TI navigator system enriches the math classroom, as well. “We’re fortunate enough to have a class set of computers, stereoscopes, compound microscopes, and other equipment and supplies that most schools don’t have,” science teacher Katie Sikes said. The maximum class size of 20 students also allows for the kind of teacher-student interaction that handson learning demands, she said. Each Wednesday, students participate in a hands-on science lab, followed by a formal lab report. Labs this year have included everything from exploding film canisters with Alka-Seltzer to building model biomes with food. Parents and students alike love the hands-on approach. “As a parent, I love the small class sizes at Seashore and the emphasis on science and technology,” Debbie Noble, parent of sixth grader Sophie, said. Noble said her daughter is thriving at the new school. “Whenever we drive by Seashore, Sophie exclaims, ‘There’s my school. I love my school!’ Sophie and her friend, who is also new to Seashore, said they had never had labs like this in any other school and they liked them because ‘we learn better by doing than by reading or listening.’” Fifth grade science and math teacher Raymond Kanipe explains the firm foundation his students must have as they move forward in their academic career at SMA and beyond. While the campus fifth graders rotate through fewer teachers in a day than the older students, the expectations are no less high. As for math, students took a Saxon math test to place them in the correct course. We have a more involved science program--more
hands-on, more in-depth--than at other schools,” he said. “In teaching the process skills, we teach the TAKS, but we don’t teach to the TAKS test.” With 31 years of education and 12 years of administration at Highland Park I.S.D. under her belt, SMA Director Barbara Beeler jumped at the chance two years ago to build an entirely different type of school, literally from the ground up. “I wouldn’t have ‘un-retired’ for just any opportunity,” she said. Even schedule-building on the small campus was a unique experience for Beeler because the schedule was built around students’ math placement. According to Beeler, 48 percent of the sixth through eighth grade students are enrolled in a math course above grade level. Students don’t just receive accelerated academics in class, though. They also select from a wide variety of elective courses, including academic electives such as Challenge Math and Engineering Applications. “Engineering Applications introduces interested students to the various engineering disciplines and the types of projects those specialists are involved in,” instructor John Sacchetti said. “The course will emphasize the qualitative components of engineering such as imagination, common sense, and ‘thinking outside the box.’” Students will work individually and in teams to design, build, and test various engineering devices such as catapults and CO2 powered boats, he said. Despite all of this happening on campus, SMA instructors still look for opportunities to learn beyond the school. Spring plans include trips such as an “Explore UT” weekend, a geology field experience, and a trip to San Antonio to visit the “Our Body: The Universe Within” exhibit at the Witte Museum. “We’re building a school that prepares students for the future, not for the world of their parents and grandparents,” Beeler said. “Technology is a tool, not just as entertainment, but for productivity.”
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