An Easter with Fibonnaci, CRT, Florida’s Lost Math Textbooks and the Ghosts of Rosewood
lost Easter Eggs of every color must be found…
Let
these
lost eggs
multiply
and they will soon start
to dominate the lawn, the life,
Proliferating contentiously colorized hopes -
These recreation myths and renaissances glorified as Spring’s enduring gambit.
April is U.S. National Poetry Month and also, U.S. Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month. What an intersection!
This poem is a “fib” — a poetic form I just learned about that applies a number of syllables derived from the Fibonacci sequence. In honor of the strange intersections…and yet today, I feel a creeping sort of despair, and struggle to push it aside. To play in spite of that feeling.
In 2022, this month united Jewish Passover, Easter (for Roman Catholics and most Protestants), and Ramadan. Hope, rebirth, community!
On Good Friday 2022, Florida announced bans on math text books which they alleged to contain unacceptable expressions of Critical Race Theory. What an odd form of commemoration.
Seeking incidence of CRT buried in math textbooks…is an odd Easter Egg hunt. There were 34 mass shootings in Florida in 2020. The number “34” is on the Fibonacci sequence. A much more troubling hunt!
Is there some link to Florida’s history of violence, say, the massacre and destruction of the town of Rosewood, Florida 100 years ago…
In 1921, Florida, Oklahoma, and Tennessee banned teaching the Theory of Evolution. Each was also a locus of extreme racial violence (Rosewood, Florida; Greenwood/Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Knoxville, Tennessee). In 1929, Florida and Oklahoma played central roles in the Great Depression. What strange intersections?
Has each state been reborn from 100 years ago? Contentious renaissances…
Yet Spring sprouts. Colored eggs proliferate. We lay them, collectively, because despite brutalities past and present, our silly little eggs defy despair, hatching something…new.
