Editor’s Notebook: Status of Women commission swearing-in, a book gathering

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Patrick B. McGuigan, The Metropolis Sentinel —

OKLAHOMA CITY – On Thursday, June 24, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt will formally swear-in The Oklahoma Fee on the Standing of Girls’s elected 2023-2023 officers on Thursday on the Fee’s common month-to-month assembly that’s open to the general public. The brand new officers start their official duties on July 1, the start of the state’s Fiscal 12 months.

The assembly is ready for the Oklahoma Judicial Heart, 2100 N. Lincoln Blvd., Grand Room, in Oklahoma Metropolis. The assembly is at 1:30 p.m.

Collaborating within the swearing-in shall be Governor Kevin Stitt, Victoria Woods, Incoming Chair 2023-2022, Molly Wehrenberg, Vice Chair, Shondra McCage, Finance Officer, Dr. Nyla Khan, Advisory Council Chair and Delores Runnels, Speedy Previous Chair.

Concerning the Oklahoma Fee on the Standing of Girls: The Oklahoma Fee on the Standing of Girls is a state fee that serves because the voice for ladies in Oklahoma. It strengthens and empowers ladies in Oklahoma by informing and educating the legislature and govt branches about points to enhance alternatives and high quality of life for ladies.

Commissioners are appointed by the Governor, Senate President Professional Tem and Speaker of the Home. The fee oversees the Oklahoma Girls’s Corridor of Fame and presents the Guardian and Kate Barnard Awards. To study extra about OCSW, go to okay.gov/ocsw.  

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Talking of Dr. Khan, I cherish our exchanges, relationship again to our first encounter at a June 2019 occasion hosted by the Dialogue Institute of Oklahoma Metropolis.

I’ve usually talked about her new ebook.

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One in all my U.S. historical past professors at Oklahoma State College, again within the day, was a white man named Jim Smallwood. We weren’t shut, however he taught me some historical past. I loved his educating and writing.

I as soon as requested Dr. Smallwood why he had centered on Black Historical past. He stated it at all times him – and there was a necessity for academics acquainted with the Black American expertise, so he gravitated towards that work. Type of an entrepreneurial motivation.

With private curiosity in and data of Cherokee and African-American historical past,

Dr. Smallwood centered a lot of his scholarly work on the Reconstruction period in Texas. …

I got here throughout this biographical notice whereas looking for him on-line just lately: Texas State Historic Affiliation, “Smallwood, James Milton (1944-2013)”

I used to be lucky to have a white man from Texas who, again within the day, taught me quite a lot of the reality about historical past, together with Black Historical past.

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Columnist Neil Patel just lately sketched one of many nice ethical challenges for Americans within the fashionable age: “As a society, we’re rising more and more self-interested. Citizenship brings accountability past self-interest. … The social and cultural segregation in our nation is instantly contributing to the coarseness of our nationwide tradition and politics. We now not simply disagree in America; we vilify those that don’t share our views. … When you will have little interplay with those that don’t share your background or beliefs, it’s simple to view them as caricatures. It turns into simpler to demonize or marginalize them. This ends in the kind of fissures we now have in America in the present day and the normalization of abstract political violence; we’ve all seen it. Left to fester, these dynamics result in the downfall of societies.”

I couldn’t have stated it higher myself, though I’ve tried.

Cindy Evans Ruffel and Lance Ruffel holding Dr. Nyla Ali Khan’s new ebook, “Instructional Methods for Youth Empowerment in Battle Zones: Remodeling, not Transmitting, Trauma” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). File photograph