GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION

The country’s future depends on keeping the holy river alive.

Source: www.newsweek.com

This article touches on very serious religious and environmental issues connected to the Ganges River.  The Ganges is the sacred river of Hinduism and in part because the river valley is the most heavily populated region of India.  Simultaneously, this holy river is an incredibly polluted river as it’s the watershed for a industrial region that with significant sanitation struggles; this is a great article of the environmental and cultural issues.

Tags: religion, South Asia, culture, Hinduism, pollution, industry, economic,  environment, environment modify, unit 3 culture.

The Spanish region of Catalonia adopts a resolution supporting independence from Spain, but Spain’s PM says his government will challenge it.

Tags: Catalonia, Spain, political, devolution, autonomy, Europe, culture.

Source: www.bbc.com

DEMOGRAPHICS OF HOMELESS VETERANS

12% of the homeless adult population are veterans
20% of the male homeless population are veterans
68% reside in principal cities
51% of individual homeless veterans have disabilities
50% have serious mental illness
70% have substance abuse problems

Source: nchv.org

Things to remember on Veteran’s Day…homelessness is a major problem for the urban geography of most American cities and veterans are disproportionately affected.  Let’s remember them on the 364 other days of the year too. 

Tags: urban, poverty, military.

In India, one of the most significant festivals is Diwali, or the Festival of Lights. It’s a five-day celebration that includes good food, fireworks, colored sand, and special candles and lamps.

Source: video.nationalgeographic.com

This 3 minute video from National Geographic is a nice introduction to the cultural practices of Diwali, the fall festival which symbolizes the triumph of light over darkness.  With some analogies to Christmas for Christians, Diwali is also perceived by some to be overly commercialized in recent years.  

Tags: religion, South Asia, culture, Hinduism.

“From 1936 to 1966, the ‘Green Book’ was a travel guide that provided black motorists with peace of mind while they drove through a country where racial segregation was the norm and sundown towns — where African-Americans had to leave after dark — were not uncommon.”

Source: www.dnainfo.com

The effects of globalization and technologies are uneven; this is a very clear example of how mobility and access to other places can be limited based on various segments of the population. It is repugnant to think that such a book was ever necessary in this country, but it is heartening to see the evidence of an organized network that worked to lessen the pain of those oppressed by it.    

This year’s Geography Awareness Week‘s theme is “Explore! The Power of Maps.”  Geographer Derek Alderman complied these resources for teachers wanting to use the example of the Green Book in their classrooms.  

Tags: mobility, transportation, race, class, culture, historical, USA, ethnicity.

“In Northeast India just north of Bangladesh is the province of Meghalaya.”

Source: www.youtube.com

“The National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) continues to both promote and celebrate geographic teaching and learning. Our activities include conducting and gathering research, producing journals and other geography publications, developing curricular resources at the K-12 and University levels, providing professional development opportunities, and organizing an annual conference.”

Source: www.ncge.org

The NCGE promotes geographic education, which we need now more than ever–here are the labor statistics about the future need for geographers supporting the statements in the image above. 

Tags: NCGE, geography education, labor.

“Dear Subway, I really wish you would have talked to a farmer. I really wish you would have done so before your big announcement saying you would, as of 2016, be sourcing all of your turkey and chicken as being raised without antibiotics.”

Source: hewittfarmsinc.wordpress.com

This is not a typical source, but it captures an important perspective on our food production systems.  Some policies (like this one from Subway) are designed to increase customer confidence in the quality of the product, but they don’t reflect some of the practical issues that farmers have to face on the farm.  

Tags: food, economic, food production, agribusiness.

When you learned about The Periodic Table of Elements in high school, it probably didn’t look like this. Above, we have a different way of visualizing the elements. Created by Professor William F. Sheehan at Santa Clara University in 1970, this chart takes the elements (usually shown like this) and scales them relative to their abundance on the Earth’s surface.

Source: www.openculture.com

The Periodic Table of Elements shows each element as a box, but that doesn’t help us understand which elements are the most scarce and abundant.  The “rare earths” are crucial ingredients in cell phones, laptops and magnets that create clean energy; China controls 95% of the rare earths production and are no longer exporting these materials to other countries (some consider the availability of rare earths a risk to U.S. national security). 

Tags:  pollution, industry, economic, energy, resources, environment, environment modify, sustainability.