LoveHuman Book

LoveHuman is a book about you; where you come from, where you are going, and why you are here. It offers valuable guidance regarding how to find comfort in a world where uncomfortable things happen.

Betsy Thompson will be our special guest on the Living Your Souls Journey with Dr Vikke.

Donaldo Macedo is a professor of English and a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston. A critical theorist, linguist, and expert on literacy and education studies, Macedo is the founder and former chair of the Applied Linguistics Master of Arts Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

In 2014, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in the Republic of Cape Verde. In 2015, he was also inducted into the Academy of Letters in the Republic of Cape Verde. In 2003, Macedo was named a member of the Laureate Chapter of Kappa Delta Pi—International Society in Education, one of the world’s most prestigious awards in education. Past recipients of this award include Albert Einstein (1950), Walter Lippman (1960), Margaret Mead (1962), Charles E. Skinner (1966), and Jean Piaget (1974). The award recognizes Macedo’s scholarly contributions over the years and the influence his work has had both in the United States and abroad.

I have received numerous accolades over the years, but my proudest accomplishment is the more than 30 million dollars I have secured in grants ( this includes grants I wrote for various school districts that serve large numbers of linguistic minority students), which have enabled me to award an average of 75 scholarships annually since 1981. These scholarships support students who would not be able to pursue their university studies without such assistance. My reward has been the gratitude of these students, many of whom are immigrants and who say that their lives were transformed by Macedo’s efforts, as they are now university professors, authors, doctors, lawyers, educators, and policymakers in the United States and abroad.

Macedo has been a central figure in the field of critical pedagogy for more than 30 years. His work with Paulo Freire broke new theoretical ground, as it helped to develop a critical understanding of the ways in which language, power, and culture contribute to the positioning and formation of human experience and learning. Macedo was Freire’s chief translator and English language interpreter. His published dialogues with Paulo Freire are considered classic works not only for their elucidation of Freire’s theories of literacy but also for adding a more critical and theoretically advanced dimension to the study of literacy and critical pedagogy. Macedo’s and Freire’s coauthored book, Literacy: Reading the World and the Word, is central to critical literacy in that it redefines the very nature and terrain of literacy and critical pedagogy.

In addition to his seminal work with Freire, Macedo has played a central role in constructing a literacy of power for use in critical pedagogy. Contrary to popular belief and the dominant ideology, schools do not always serve the best interests of their students. Both the schools and the cultural pedagogies of the media and other social institutions often perpetuate ignorance or, as Macedo puts it, stupidification. As schools and other institutions fragment knowledge and deny contextual understanding, students find it increasingly difficult to make connections between school information, their lived worlds, and relations of power and privilege. Macedo’s work directly challenges the educational experts who attempt to keep issues of power and social struggle outside the purview of education. Macedo argues that questions of power vis-à-vis socioeconomic class relations, gender dynamics, and racial discrimination are suppressed by many mainstream political and educational leaders. Their position, Macedo asserts, conveniently ignores questions of ethics. As long as such questions are suppressed and a literacy of power isignored, schools will remain tools of the status quo.

Macedo ties this literacy of power directly to what he describes as emancipatory literacy, which is characterized by students becoming knowledgeable about their own histories, experiences, and the culture of their everyday environments. They also learn to discern the dominant culture’s codes and signifiers in order to deal with them in their own environments. In an educational context shaped by emancipatory literacy, therefore, teachers must teach a dual curriculum. Macedo argues that a language of possibility permeates a two-tier curriculum, which both empowers students to make sense of their everyday life and gives them the tools that are valued in the dominant culture, which they need to achieve upward mobility. Macedo writes that students in this context celebrate who they are while learning to deal with ways of seeing and being that are not their own. In this way, students from marginalized backgrounds can create their own histories (see below, Freire & Macedo, 1987; Macedo, 1994; Macedo& Bartolomé, 2001). For more information on Macedo’s work in this area, go to www.freireproject.org/content/donaldo-macedo.

Donaldo Macedo has published more than one hundred articles, books, and book chapters in the areas of linguistics, critical literacy, and multicultural education. His publications include Literacy: Reading the Word and the World (with Paulo Freire, 1987), Literacies of Power: What Americans Are Not Allowed to Know (1994), Dancing with Bigotry (with Lilia Bartolomé, 1999), Critical Education in the New Information Age (with Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, and Paul Willis, 1999), Chomsky on Miseducation (with Noam Chomsky, 2000), Howard Zinn on Democratic Education (with Howard Zinn, 2005), and Imposed Democracy: Dialogues with Noam Chomsky and Paulo Freire (2012).

Dr. Joao J. Rosa is the Executive Director of the Pedro Pires Cape Verdean Studies Institute at Bridgewater State University. He is an Associate Professor of Education and former chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth. He is the author of three books: Pedagogy in the Age of Media Control. Language Deception and Digital Democracy; Capitalism's Educational Catastrophe and the Advancing Endgame Revolt; Language Discourses and the Realities of the Classroom. Winning the Battle for Control. He is an international curriculum advisor for the University of Cape Verde and a community activist.

LORENZO GRASSI

Lorenzo Grassi was born and raised in Rome Italy were he started his musical career as composer, singer and guitar player. He has been part of several successful projects ,mostly original Italian pop music and progressive rock/crossover. In his twenties he got into the Jazz idiom and began a road of serious studies of theory and harmony. He was a student at the Scuola Popolare di Musica di Testaccio in Rome for a few years and participated in two summer programs of the Berklee College of Music during the festival called Umbria Jazz. Here he was lucky enough to play and study with such musicians as Jim Kelly, Winton Marsalis and many others.

In 2000 he finally moved to Los Angeles to attend the L.A. Music Academy, were he graduated successfully in 2001. That year he won the award of Promising artist of the 21st century, was invited by the North American Cultural Center of San Jose Costa Rica to play several shows and teach a few clinics.

Since then Lorenzo Grassi has always been very active in the music world as a Session Musician, Performer, Composer, Producer and Educator here in the U.S. and abroad.

JASMINE TOMMASO

Jasmine Akahlia Tommaso was born in Rome, Italy into a musical family. Her father, jazz bassist Giovanni Tommaso, always found ways to share his passion and love for music with his children.

Jasmine’s first studies in music took place at home, where she started with the piano at a very young age. She continued with voice lessons and was classically trained, studying privately with Catia Di Stefano. Catia was the first to introduce Jasmine to standards and vocal jazz. As she furthered her interest in music, Jasmine graduated class Valedictorian from the South Orange County School of the Arts. She studied with Donna McElroy at the Umbria Jazz Clinics, where she received a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music’s Summer program in Boston. She graduated with Honors in Theatre Arts from The University of California, Santa Cruz. As she furthered her jazz studies with Tierney Sutton, she was on the President’s Honor Roll when she received her Diploma in Vocal Performance from the Los Angeles College of Music.

Jasmine has performed in jazz festivals worldwide including the Umbria Jazz Festival (Italy), The Lucca Jazz and Selinunte Jazz Festival (Italy), and The Watts Towers Jazz Festival (Los Angeles), to name a few, accompanied by some of the greatest jazz musicians such as Stefano Bollani, Danilo Rea, Giovanni Tommaso, Tia Fuller, Kim Thompson, and Fabrizio Bosso. She is also an educator, teaching alongside Berklee Faculty Dennis Montgomery III at the Umbria Jazz Clinics in Perugia.

Since her move to Los Angeles in 2011, she has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and has made quite an impact on L.A.’s music scene, performing regularly in the city’s greatest jazz venues.

Her latest album “Nelle Mie Corde” (2015) has received great praise in Italy and was recently awarded “record of the week” on the Italian jazz station “Rai3 Fahrenheit.”

KIMBER KABELL

Kimber is a best-selling author, visionary and speaker with more than 25 years of experience in sales, marketing, finance, training, entrepreneurship and corporate management. She has touched the lives of over 100,000 people with her speaking, coaching and books. The Founder of Zentarra, Transformational Business and the global on line community for women: GetYourWomanOn.com; Kimber guides and inspires visionary women, entrepreneurs, corporations and organizations to true success and ultimate freedom. She provides the resources, systems, and tools to deliver results. Her life and business models are all based on connectivity and the courage to live and thrive with Beauty, Grace, Power and Financial Freedom.

The Governor’s Office selected her as one of California’s top women business leaders. She was nominated by the LA Business Journal for “2010 Woman of the Year.” She was a professor and facilitator for University of San Francisco and Stanford Graduate School of Business, and is a licensed clinical hypnotherapist. She has created and managed over 10 billion dollars in sales, contracts and intellectual property. In 2010, she was nominated and selected as a delegate for the 55th session of the United Nations Council on the Status of Women.

Kimber has collaborated and spoken on stages with powerhouse leaders like Lisa Nichols, Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen, Deepak Chopra, Michael Beckwith, T. Harv Eker, Mari Smith and Paul Zane Pilzer, to name a few. She is a co-author of the bestselling book, The Law of Business and Attraction – Secrets of Cooperative Success. She is currently producing a collaborative book of 40 visionary women, Get Your Woman On: Beauty, Grace Power and Financial Freedom, which will be released in Spring 2011. To find out more, call 877-71-CHANGE (877-712-4264) or e-mail media@GetYourWomanOn.com.

Specialties:Some of the recent results of her firm: generated over a billion $ in sales for public traded firm. assisted entrepreneur creating a start up company with no cash, built it out and sold it in 4 years for $52 million. Start up company with an idea, took to market, sold out on HSN, negotiated large licensing contract and sold $10M in second/third year of launch. ….

Multi-platinum selling, Grammy nominated singer/songwriter Geoff Tate is regarded as one of the most skilled vocalists in the rock genre with hundreds of modern, popular artists citing him and his band as a major influence. Combining social consciousness and expertly crafted lyrics with high-energy, melodically complex music, Geoff and his band have become internationally recognized as the thinking man’s rock band.

In all, Geoff has recorded 12 studio albums; several live albums and will release his 2nd solo album in 2013. Queensrÿche has been nominated for a Grammy four times and has had their music featured in three feature films.

Since their inception, the band has sold over 25 million albums worldwide and has performed in over 46 countries.

The band received worldwide acclaim after the release of their 1988 album Operation: Mindcrime, which is often considered one of the greatest concept albums of all time.

Their follow-up release, Empire, included the hit single "Silent Lucidity". The song was the biggest hit for the band, it peaked at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 and at #1 on the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart.

Queensrÿche is world renowned for their innovative and trend-setting sound.

While changing the band name to Operation Mindcrime, Geoff began working on one of his most ambitious project, a three part concept album with the first album recorded early 2015. Geoff says …“The songs on these records tell a story, and each song is a scene or chapter — every scene is different,” he added. “The words tell the story, the musical bed, the chord progressions and melodies, they set the pace. That’s how I envisioned this album in total, very theatrical and definitely cinematic.”

The Key: By Operation Mindcrime is available to purchase now at amazon.com



It’s my great pleasure to welcome the legendary voice of Queensrÿche and Operation Mindcrime Geoff Tate to the Show.