RL Attendee Helen Santiz and “Lemonade: Detroit”

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

RL Attendee Helen Santiz and “Lemonade: Detroit”

Post by johnkarls »

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---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: RL Attendee Helen Santiz and “Lemonade: Detroit”
From: readingliberally-saltlake@johnkarls.com
Date: Tue, October 18, 2016 1:43 pm
To: ReadingLiberallyEmailList@johnkarls.com
Bcc: Our 8 RSVP’s for Tomorrow Evening
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To:

George Kunath
Victoria Norton-Strong
June Taylor
Leslie Urry
Yours Truly

Cc:

Ted Gurney
Tucker Gurney
Helen Santiz

Dear Friends,

We are the 8 RSVP’s for TOMORROW evening.

And I would highly recommend that each of you view beforehand a 17-minute documentary entitled “Lemonade: Detroit.”

The title obviously referencing the famous saying – “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” (coined by Christian anarchist Elbert Hubbard in a 1915 obituary he wrote for dwarf actor Marshall P. Wilder who was noted for his irrepressible optimism) -- and widely popularized as “If you have a lemon, make lemonade” by Dale Carnegie in 1948.

The full 17-minute documentary can be viewed currently at https://vimeo.com/28279409.

According to http://www.imdb.com/name/nm5007294/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cr1385, the Producer of “Lemonade: Detroit” is Helen Santiz who will be attending our meeting this Wednesday evening.

[NB: http://www.imdb.com says the 17-minute documentary was produced by Helen in 2013, while the website on which the 17-minute documentary can be viewed says that it was produced 2 years earlier and the closing credits list 2 executive producers and 4 producers, none of whom is Helen, though there follows at the end a list of 1,812 financial contributors in chronological order of their contributions of whom a Marcel Santiz is second on the list.]

I hope Helen does not mind my Googling her background!!!

She is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Michigan’s Dearborn Campus.

And a close friend, since growing up together in Detroit, of one of our long-time regulars, Elizabeth (Tucker) Gurney, a retired U/Utah Biology Professor.

[Tucker, however, attended the University of Chicago and, upon graduation, was a Social Worker on the South Side of Chicago for a year before starting her PhD at the University of Chicago.]

I’m sure that Helen will be able to provide quite a bit of insight re Detroit. (NB: Quite a bit of both Short Quizzes for tomorrow evening’s meeting and the Suggested Discussion Outline focus on The “I Have A Dream”® Foundation’s 178 projects in 51 American inner-cities during the 1990’s -- however, none of the 178 were in Michigan.)

BTW, we focused on Detroit for our 5/8/2013 meeting on “Federal Bailouts of Illinois and Detroit, etc., etc., etc.” and searching http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org for “Detroit” produces 39 matches, many of which lead to quite-interesting information.

In addition, the fate of Saginaw MI is a microcosm of what happened to Detroit.

The reason for mentioning this is that as the home town of Yours Truly, Saginaw MI featured prominently in “The Silver Spoon In His Mouth With Which John Karls Was Born” posted on http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org under “Participant Comments” for our 9/14/2016 meeting on “Hillbilly Elegy.”

So why is Saginaw so similar to Detroit???

Yes, “Silver Spoon In His Mouth” and Q&A-13 of the First Short Quiz for our 9/14/2016 meeting described Saginaw as --

“the northern-most General Motors town featuring a couple dozen GM plants (a zillion GM Steering Gear plants which also manufactured all the pollution-control equipment, Chevrolet Transmission, half a dozen foundries where worked all the African-Americans (and ONLY African-Americans) hired under GM’s so-called “equal opportunity employment” policy, and the GM Parts Plant where all the old tools/dies were sent so that additional obsolete parts could be manufactured periodically for old models that GM still supported.”

When Yours Truly was growing up in Saginaw 1942-1960, there were two public high schools in all of Saginaw COUNTY = Arthur Hill High School named after the famous Saginaw lumber baron and Saginaw High School.

All of the African-Americans hired under GM”s so-called “equal opportunity employment” policy lived on the East Side of the Saginaw River and their children, together with quite a few poor non-African-American children, attended Saginaw High.

I was surprised to learn at my 55th Arthur Hill HS reunion 15 months ago that our class of 711 students contained ONLY ONE African-American and ONLY ONE Jewish student.

Just like both “Lemonade: Detroit” and our previous studies of Detroit have focused on (1) “white flight” to the suburbs, and (2) the destruction of Detroit itself as a result of the destruction of the auto industry -- the same things happened to Saginaw.

In contrast to the AHHS Class of 1960 featuring 709 upper-class whites, 1 upper-class African-American student and 1 upper-class Jewish student, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Hill_High_School) describes modern AHHS as --

• One of 3 high schools INSIDE the CITY of Saginaw (virtually all of the affluent children in Saginaw COUNTY attend, as a result of “white flight,” high schools OUTSIDE the city limits).
• AHHS is now a “magnet school” (for non-educators, “magnet schools” refer to an attempt over the last 50 years or so to provide superior educational opportunities as a means of attracting the best students regardless of where they live).
• For the 2013-2014 academic year, AHHS had only 1,012 students total!!!
• Even more distressing is the breakdown of the student body!!!
• 9th graders = 405
• 10th graders = 278 (68.6% of 405)
• 11th graders = 181 (44.7% of 405)
• 12th graders = 148 (36.5% of 405)

Observations???

• The rapidly-declining enrollment by grade level presumably reflects a high drop-out rate (rather than an expanding class size)!!!

• And the dismal 36.5% rate does NOT even reflect district-wide conditions, vs. solely the BEST SCHOOL in the district!!!

• And the dismal 36.5% rate does NOT even reflect how many total Saginaw students were killed, incarcerated, or dropped out for some other reason BEFORE 9TH GRADE!!!

• HOWEVER, AHHS could claim a 100% high-school graduation/college matriculation rate through the simple expedient of EITHER (1) expelling any senior who is not accepted by a college, OR (2) flunking any senior who is not accepted by a college.

• For the cynics, the relative class sizes set forth above seem to suggest there is AT LEAST SOME flunking of seniors.

Other factoids???

White flight --

Item 1 = Saginaw COUNTY census 1960 = 190,752 and census 2010 = 200,169.
Item 2 = Saginaw CITY census 1960 = 98,265 and census 2010 = 51,508.

Other Saginaw CITY public high schools --

Saginaw High School (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saginaw_High_School) class enrollments for the same 2013-2014 academic year as provided for AHHS above =

• 9th graders = 214
• 10th graders = 155
• 11th graders = 126
• 12th graders = 98

And Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saginaw_A ... es_Academy) class enrollments for the 2012-2013 academic year =

• 9th graders = 97
• 10th graders = 74
• 11th graders = 63
• 12th graders = 51

Just like Arthur Hill High School’s distressingly-large class-by-class enrollment fall offs set forth quite a bit above, the other 2 Saginaw CITY public high schools also had distressingly-large class-by-class enrollment fall offs.

Enough already!!! Sorry to “run off at the mouth” about Saginaw.

Looking forward to our discussion (and meeting Helen) tomorrow evening,

Your friend,

John K.

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