Meanwhile.....on the West Bank

In case you haven't had time to think about Israel and Palestine in all of the hubbub here, Juan Cole's post today describes Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank.

http://www.juancole.com/2013/01/children-palestinian-colonialism.html

Surely, there must be something the US can do about this.  Netanyahu won another election, although not by much.  Still the US pours money into Israel's pockets so they can defend themselves.  Can we hope they can stop acting like thugs?

It's All Good....

When you've been a bad girl and kept on going rather than returning to the fold....

When you've done things no one else in your family has ever done or thought of doing--or approves of--and kept on going....

When you've broken all the rules you were taught about, and when everyone else you know thinks you are nuts...and kept on going.

You eventually wind up knowing that it's all been good, even if loathsome.

You realize you've learned something from every person, every experience....

And you realize who has been in charge, and who has been directing you, and what it means

in the Bible when it says, "The thoughts of men are not the thoughts of god"....

You realize that

It's not all about you.

It's about the human race.

Rise up!

One of my favorite bloggers, Emilie Johnson, has this post today.  I agree that this is heartening.  Bless the women in pink saris!!  (Image borrowed from the article.)

Gold from the Junk Mail File.....

NO, I didn't win the PCH Sweepstakes, but one of my alma maters is inviting me

to return next summer for their 100th anniversary.  The good woman who wrote out the invite also included this poem by John O'Donoghue:

"A Blessing for the New Year"

On the day when

The weight deadens

On your shoulders

And you stumble,

May the clay dance

To balance you.

And when your eyes

Freeze behind

The gray window

And the ghost of loss

Gets into you,

May a flock of colors,

Indigo, red, green

And azure blue,

Come to awaken in you

A meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays

In the curragh of thought

And a stain of ocean

Blackens beneath you,

May there come across the waters

A path of yellow moonlight

To bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

May the clarity of light be yours,

May the fluency of the ocean be yours,

May the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow

Wind work these words

Of love around you,

An invisible cloak

To mind your life.

 

 

It's from his book To Bless This Space Between Us.  I think I want to paint it.

 

Something Else to Think About: The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery

An excellent article!  The second amendment had nothing to do with arming the whole country.  It was set up so that states with large slave-owning populations could create armed patrols to keep slaves from running away or staging uprisings.

The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery

And just fyi....even now black men are still shot and killed at 8x the rate of white men. 

Let's get over the Second Amendment nonsense and ban the guns, especially the automatics and high-capacity magazines!

Ai Weiwei in DC - Update, More Photos

"Cube Light," Ai Weiwei, 2003

I wish the USA had an artist like Ai Weiwei.  (The only person who comes close is Michael Moore, but he works mostly in video and motion pictures.)  Weiwei drives the Chinese government crazy with his popularity and brave challenges to the Chinese status quo.  Even so, he was one of the collaborators on the "Bird's Nest" Olympic Stadium, constructed in 2008.  The Hirshhorn Museum in DC is showing Weiwei's "According to What?" show until February 24, 2013.  With some 50 pieces of his art, the exhibit includes video, audio, photography, sculpture, graphic design, and architecture.  He also has his thoughts posted in the gallery, too.  

Ai Weiwei's show is unlike anything I've ever seen at the Hirshhorn before.  Weiwei helped conduct an investigation, begun by another artist, into the number of students who died in the Sichuan earthquake in 2008.  Schools collapsed in the earthquake because of shoddy, cheap construction (referred to as "tofu" construction), and more than 5,000 children were lost.  Weiwei and a large number of volunteers tracked down their names.  In his studio in China, he has papered the walls with the lists.  One wall of the exhibit here also has a copy of this listing, accompanied by audio of volunteers reading each name aloud.  Linda Delk, photographer extraordinaire, lent the following photos of the "Quake Names" wall and "Snake Ceiling," made of student backpacks of various sizes (representing the various ages) to me for this post!  Thanks, Linda.

Copyright Linda Delk 2013

Copyright Linda Delk 2013

This kind of exposure has irritated the Chinese government no end, and Weiwei has been beaten (requiring brain surgery in Germany) and jailed and placed under house arrest in China with no access to the internet.  Before this, he spent 12 years in the USA--Brooklyn and the Lower East Side, mostly.  (A couple of the photos in the exhibit show him with Brooklynite Allen Ginsberg.)  Ai Weiwei--talented, funny, humane, brave, conscientious--is a saint for the modern age.

I thought of some of the new construction going up here in DC, and I remember being horrified to see that the initial stage of one entire development, building after building, was made of wood 2x4s.  Not steel, not poured concrete...wood.  I think there's a DC law that says all housing must be made of brick.  Anyway, DC's old structures are being demolished daily here.  Photos of new developments in China are also part of the exhibit, and remarkably, the scene is almost the same.  The Chinese are demolishing the old and replacing it with tall buildings housing many, not just one or two families.  The bowls of freshwater pearls represent China's natural wealth, which is fast disappearing in a profit-driven age.  Are we, too, becoming China?

[P.S.  I apologize for the scarcity of photos. I plan to go back with my real camera and take some more.  I really want a good photo of the "Tea House"...which is made of compressed tea.  The scent is lovely, although we don't have smell-o-vision yet......

More Fun--A New Blog Find!!

Fishs Eddy has a blog!!  This is wonderful.  The blogger is Julie, who, with her husband Dave,  founded Fishs Eddy in 1986.  Fishs Eddy is the fabulous dish/glassware/flatware/t-shirt/lots else store on Broadway between 23rd St. & Union Square.  Most of what I've bought there in the past 20 years since I moved to these parts has been t-shirts, and I think I may still have one or two of those.  Yup...the photo on the left is from a short-sleeved, V neck Fishs Eddy t-shirt, although in real life it's not quite as toast-colored....it's more charcoal brown.  The rest of my FE finds got broken, as crockery often does, or moved away with former housemates, ditto.


Except this cup with Democratic party stars.

Anyway, Julie the blogger of Fishs Eddy has a wacky sense of humor, and she has photos and everything.  What a thrill to find this at the beginning of 2013, the year I've resolved to have more fun.  Fishs Eddy the blog, like the store, is fun! 

The High Co$t of Fun!

OK....My new year's resolution, made after a couple days of hemming & hawing (see "New Year's Resolution?" January 3, 2013), is to have more fun.  No problem with having fun--except I don't, much.

Now I know why.  I used to have this book by Sister Karol Jackowski, a nun (rhymes with fun), called Ten Fun Things to Do Before You Die.  Except I don't have it any more.  I gave it away, thinking (?!) to myself "Who needs this?"  The answer, especially now, is "I do."

Amazon offers used copies of just about every title they sell.  There's a nice bookseller in MN (I used to live there, so I picked them) that carries it for $1.50 plus $3.99 postage.  Sold!

Amazon is very helpful in listing other books by the same author, and two caught my eye right away:


1) Good Cooking Habits: Food for Your Body, Your Soul, and Your Funnybone by Nun Other Than Fr. Karol Jackowski.  (I don't know what the "Fr." is all about.  Did she ordain herself?)  What appeals to me is that Karol Jackowski belongs to a modern community of women who have left all the nunny Catholic stuff behind (the habits, the convent, the chapter of faults, the discipline).  They live in regular housing and support themselves.  Jackowski, for example, used to run the fabulously wacky Alphabets shop in NYC's East Village.  These women get together once a month for a meeting, which Jackowski calls "Margaritaville," and they serve drinks (frozen margaritas are especially valued), chopped liver,  pizza.  This sounds like a lot of fun!!  The book excerpt in Amazon reads like a lot of fun, too.  Jackowski is sort of hatched on a branch.  

2) Sister Karol's Book of Spells and Blessings.  This book also sounds like a lot of fun.  I like the idea of spells, and I can think of some I'd like to cast.  (Nothing mean or nasty, but there's one orange fellow in the House of Representatives who could use some spelling.)   Sold, also.  

So now the exchequer is down almost $25 bucks just because of this obsession with having fun.  This is probably why I've felt fun deprived.  
Well, it's all in a good cause.  Nuns, even ex-nuns, are very good at finding good causes.

More on 350.org

This time, from Amy Goodman &Democracy Now:




Special thanks to Guapo from Democracy for Bell!

New Year's Resolution?

Or...."What more can a poor woman do."  There's the question around here.  I've never made New Year's resolutions, for the most part.

But maybe this year I shall:  I resolve to have more fun.

This doesn't seem like much, but "fun" has mostly been beyond my capacity.  Yet, having enjoyment in simple, silly things might improve my somber disposition. Not that it needs improving:  that's what I was given.

But still....It might be nice to have more fun.  It might add to the human race's overall positive state.

So....the next question is "what's fun?"  (Or, as I often say, "Wot ees thees FUN of which you speak?")

What I envision is a table with a lace tablecloth and a deck of cards and a bottle of something...ice water, perhaps, or schnapps?  And a friendly card partner waiting to shuffle and deal.  (This isn't original...Lidia Bastianich has a picture of her and her mother, perhaps, in such a setting on one of her books.)

I might as well be picturing me flying through the air....that might be fun, too.  But I'd rather be sitting down.

New Year's Resolutions are not easily made by some of us.  Me, especially.

Join 350.org in 2013!

As Louise Erdrich, National Book Award winner, bookseller, and blogger urges us: JOIN 350.org!  XE is joining.  She feels she owes it to her two little great-grandchildren who will join us in a few months.