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With a background in government and public affairs, Tom Robins is putting his political knowledge to help Oklahoma grow as a Top 10 place for IT. In the fall of 2019, Robins started the OITA, the Oklahoma Innovative Technology Alliance, to give Oklahoma IT companies a voice in the public policy process. As part of his presentation for the Oklahoma Venture Forum Power Lunch, Robins will highlight the gist of their mission statement and how they educate policy members, members of the legislature, and others, the best way to create an environment for IT and technology in Oklahoma.“We got organized at the end of this last year, and we’re really kicking things off in January,” said Robins. “We’re going to be doing a coffee and conversation with the Oklahoma legislators, with Oklahoma IT leaders. So I think that’ll be a great thing for investment, the investment community in Oklahoma, for OVF members, for people that are involved with businesses that have an IT innovative component that are either just starting or that are established, that want to network with other companies, but also want to start talking to policymakers about that.”Robins’ main topic of his presentation will be on the autonomous vehicle side. As president of the consulting company, Solid Foundation Consulting, Robins helps build projects and coalitions around different issues. One of those he got tapped to lead was on behalf of the secretary of transportation, was to head the Oklahoma autonomous vehicle working group. The purpose of the group is to signal to the markets, signal to investments, and signal to people who are interested that Oklahoma is open for business when it comes to autonomous vehicle technology.An example of the group’s earliest win they had was the issue on truck platooning. Similar to how flocks of birds drift off of each other to converse energy, the state of Oklahoma passed a bill that allowed for that technology with trucks.Tom Robins, along with Jim Grimsley, will be speaking at the Oklahoma Venture Forum Power Lunch on Wednesday, January 13, 2021. Be sure to register for the online ZOOM event to learn more about how technology is shifting in Oklahoma, ask your questions, and network with entrepreneurs in Oklahoma.https://ovf.org/
THR returns from summer hiatus with Jim Grimsley. He's the LAMBDA Literary Award-winning author of "Dream Boy" and "Comfort & Joy." The group discusses the tragic and ambiguous endings Grimsley is known for, the history of publishing's attitude toward queer fiction, and everything from the North Carolina bathroom bill to how your family lies to you. Be sure to listen to the bonus content after the credits!
Kathryn interviews award-winning novelist Jim Grimsley, author of “How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning the Racist Lessons of a Southern Childhood”. In his memoir Grimsley chronicles his own coming of age as a boy in a small eastern North Carolina when federally mandated integration of schools went into effect in 1966. Grimsley looks back at that school and those times, remembering his own first real encounters with black children and their culture. The result is a deeply moving narrative, and an honest discussion of racism and its roots. Kathryn also interviews Lori Haas, Virginia State Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. After her daughter Emily was shot twice and survived the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, Haas became personally involved in gun violence prevention efforts. Haas has lobbied on Capitol Hill in Washington and before the Virginia General Assembly for responsible gun laws numerous times.
Kathryn interviews award-winning novelist Jim Grimsley, author of “How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning the Racist Lessons of a Southern Childhood”. In his memoir Grimsley chronicles his own coming of age as a boy in a small eastern North Carolina when federally mandated integration of schools went into effect in 1966. Grimsley looks back at that school and those times, remembering his own first real encounters with black children and their culture. The result is a deeply moving narrative, and an honest discussion of racism and its roots. Kathryn also interviews Lori Haas, Virginia State Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. After her daughter Emily was shot twice and survived the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, Haas became personally involved in gun violence prevention efforts. Haas has lobbied on Capitol Hill in Washington and before the Virginia General Assembly for responsible gun laws numerous times.
Emory CMBC Conference: The Foundations of Emotions in Mind, Brain, and Culture
The phenomenon of trigger warnings, intended to help guide students in dealing with the emotions raised by difficult or provocative works of art, indicates the ability of artistic works to raise powerful and even cathartic feelings in members of the audience. The author will discuss the use and abuse of these warnings in relation to works of fiction. (February 12, 2016)
Professor Jim Grimsley visits The Context of White Supremacy. Grimsley is a White man and an Admitted Racist. He's a Professor of Practice in the English Department at Emory University in Georgia. He's a prolific and award-winning writer. We'll deconstruct his 2015 publication, How I Shed My Skin: Understanding the Racist Lessons of a Southern Childhood. He describes his childhood in rural North Carolina during the 1960's. His White family and friends swapped nigger jokes, talked bad about black people while attending church, and incessantly emphasized the ignorance and vileness of niggras. Grimsley suspects that his father may have practiced direct acts of violence against black citizens. Ostensibly, his book examines his journey away from the White Supremacist identity that was expected of him. Mr. Grimsley insists that being a gay man helped him reject the White Supremacy culture that reared him. #BlackSelfRespect INVEST in The COWS - http://paypal.me/GusTRenegade CALL IN NUMBER: 641.715.3640 CODE 564943# The C.O.W.S. archives: http://tiny.cc/76f6p
On Friday, state’s attorney for Baltimore, Marilyn J. Mosby, announced that six officers would be charged in the death of Freddie Gray. Mosby made the announcement soon after the medical examiner's report classified Gray's death as a homicide. This week, hip hop artist Born Divine (@borndivine) brings us a local perspective on this week's protesting in Baltimore, and a sense of how people are feeling in the middle of it. He says over-aggressive policing is a long-time issue there, and that only full-scale reform will solve it. "We're looking for justice from a system that was never created with us in mind to begin with," he says. "When the foundation is cracked on a house, what happens to the house? It falls apart. And until you fix that crack in the foundation, it's not going to get any better. It going to get worse." He says poverty and joblessness are to blame for some of the violence in Baltimore this week, and that despite some media reports, the vast majority of protesters have peaceful aims. "We're just trying to get justice," Divine says. "We don't want to tear the city down. We don't want a war with nobody. We don't want to beef with the officers. We just want justice." This week, we also spoke with author Jim Grimsley about his memoir, "How I Shed My Skin: Unlearning the Lessons of a Racist Childhood." Grimsely grew up in a small town in North Carolina, and was in sixth grade in 1966, the year federally-mandated integration of the schools went into effect. "I didn't really understand anything about the prejudice built into me until in the sixth grade, when three black girls came to my all white classroom," he says. He reacted by calling one of the girls a name, not expecting her to respond. She called him the same name back. "Then she looked at me and said you didn't think I'd say that did you?" His book recounts how those personal interactions challenged, and eventually overcame, the racist ideas he'd been raised with. "By encountering them, I came to understand that I had all kinds of racist programming in myself," he says. Many activists' attention was divided this week between the Supreme Court hearing on gay marriage, in Washington, and the unrest in Baltimore. Grimsley, himself a gay man, helps us parse out how black people and gay people are sometimes pitted against each other in what he calls a divide and conquer strategy. "You want to set them against each other and get them to quarrel against each other," he says, "because that way they're less effective at working to better themselves and to better their position, and to help one another out in their strategies to move toward equal rights with the white majority." We also shared with Grimsley some frustrations about this week's events. "It breaks my heart to see people misreading what's happening in Baltimore so deliberately," he says. "We've gone through this set of steps so may times just in the last two years [...] white people don't chime in until they see the anger and the violence, and then they start talking about the issue." And here at home, it's Derby Week! In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we learn about the history of black jockeys in the Derby, and how their contributions to the sport are honored—or not—by racing fans today.
Jim Grimsley is the author of How I Shed My Skin and four previous novels, among them Winter Birds, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award; Dream Boy, winner of the GLBTF Book Award for literature; My Drowning, a Lila-Wallace-Readerâ??s Digest Writerâ??s Award winner; and Comfort and Joy. He lives in Atlanta and teaches at Emory University.
Jim Grimsley (Creative Writing Program)