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Cirocco Jones
Don't ask me why, but I wanted to know where the word "Maya" came from (as in, the Mezoamerican culture). Google led me directly to:
I’ve surfed the web abit about the origin of the word maya, she was Mahamaya, the great Maya, of the hindus in India, but in Mexico, it seems the word origin is unknown to mainstream scholars, because they refuse to acknowledge what is really obvious when analyzed, she came from Atlan, the ancient mexican homeland “across the eastern ocean,” which clearly is not the u.s. southwest, but ancient Atlantis, across the Atlantic, in the shadow of the Atlas moutains, Atlantis which actually succumbed to the sea when all the other oceanports around the world went under too, when the Ice Age ended, not circa 9600 b.c., Plato had the date wrong, because the cities and naval warfare described in his story were clearly bronze age, trying to aggrandize the greek and egyptian histories.
With the ancient navigation method simply explained in article #2 at http://IceAgeCivilizations.com, the father of Maya, Atlas, made quite a name for himself, and his daughter apparently helped found the first culture across what Plato called the Western Ocean, in Mesoamerica, what today is known as the Olmec culture, greatly influenced later by orientals of the Shang dynasty who began to arrive in a big way when the Ice Age had ended, the evidence in much olmec statuary of many “races” of mariners who traded there, the clay bricks at Comacalco having many ancient languages etched into them, perhaps just practice for young students, confirming global navigation long before the darwinists will admit, even as the evidence for it is overwhelming.
Am I being obtuse, or is this really, really hard to parse? Apparently it's supposed to be about Young Earth creationism. IMHO it reads more like a stream-of-consciousness peyote revelation :/
Current mood:
confused.
...that I can't wait for the week to begin, so I can relax.
- Thursday Justin was sick at home so none of my regular Thursday stuff got done and Friday Daniel was home with a PA Day, and I drove around town to meet with a criminal lawyer (mentoring), picking up our tickets to see the Dalai Lama (got the wrong directions so went to three different places), and picking up beets (?) because Chris had read that consuming beets before a race helps speed you up. Sure, OK, I picked up beets. Got home and made dinner, beet salad, and munchies for Sunday's choir concert, and wished Chris was home to help out, in view of the super-busy weekend we were about to experience. Would've felt hard done by about this except that Chris wasn't there because he was at the visitation for the wife of a colleague, who just died. In her mid-fifties. Kinda puts it all in perspective :/
- Saturday got up and went to see the Dalai Lama at the Civic Centre. Um. Wow.
- Then Chris's black belt mock physical. Six minutes of skipping, 250 push-ups in ten minutes, 250 sit-ups in ten minutes. Followed by a 3.2K run, in less than 18 minutes. He does it all, except for the full set of push-ups because he recently injured his shoulder. It also looked like he'd gone slightly over the 18 minute time, until we realized he'd actually run 9 laps, not 8.
Also: I am so, so, so glad it's not my black belt test this time. - Straight from Chris's physical to choir rehearsal, for Sunday's Carmina Burana concert.
Lovely, lovely lovely parenting moment: I had not expected any of my family to go to the concert. Then Daniel said something like, "So I cancelled my D & D game on Sunday--"
"What? Why?"
::blink:: "Um. Because it's right at the same time as your concert?"
"Oh. Did you want to go? I didn't think any of you would be interested."
::baffled look:: "Well of course! It's Carmina Burana!"
Justin chimes in. "I want to go too!" - Drove Chris to black belt tutorial, then Kanata to drop off the last of Chris's tax stuff, then concert. Discover Youth tickets are half as expensive as I thought they were.
- Concert time. The place is actually sold out, almost standing-room only. The performance is a bit of a marvellous Peak Experience blur, and we get an enthusiastic standing ovation. Kids declare it Awesome.
- Back home. Collapse.
- Pick self up from collapse and make dinner.
- There's a house under all this mess, I'm sure. Must find, tomorrow.
Current mood:
accomplished.
Don't ask me why, but I'm (rather morbidly) re-reading Passage, a book about Near Death Experiences by Connie Willis. Brilliant book, loved it, decided upon finishing it that I would treasure the reading experience but never, never read it again.
And yet here I am, re-reading it. ::sigh::
Anyway, one of the cool things about this books is that each Part and each chapter opens with a Last Words quote. It's not always somebody's final words; it can be a postcard written right before someone set off on their final cruise, or a quote about someone laughing off a warning they should have listened to, or whatever, but it always has to do with death.
So of course I decided to collect the quotes. For light-hearted re-reading or... something.
INTRO
- I will remember it forever, the darkness and the cold.
- Edith Haisman, a Titanic survivor - "What is it like down there, Charides?"
"Very dark."
"And what of return?"
"All lies."
- Callimachus
PART 1
- "Shut up, shut up, I am working Cape Race."
- Wireless message from the Titanic, cutting off an ice warning the Californian was trying to send
CHAPTERS
- "More light!"
- Goethe's last words - "Over Forked River. Course Lakehurst."
- Last wireless message of the Hindenburg - "Oh, shit."
- Last words on majority of flight recorders recovered after a plane crashes - "I beg your pardon, monsieur. I did not mean to do it."
- Marie Antoinette, after she had accidentally stepped on the executioner's foot while mounting to the guillotine - "CQD CQD SOS SOS CQD SOS. Come at once. We have struck a berg. CQD OM. Position 41° 40'N, 50° 14' W. CQD SOS."
- Wireless message sent by the Titanic to the Carpathia - "Hey, where the hell are the parachutes?"
- Question asked by Glenn Miller as he boarded the plane to Paris, to which Colonel Baesell replied, "What's the matter, Miller, do you want to live forever?" - "On board the Pacific from Liverpool to N.Y. - Confusion on board - Icebergs around us on every side. I know I cannot escape. I write the cause of our loss that friends may not live in suspense. The finder will please get it published. Wm. Graham."
- Message found in a bottle, 1856 - "To die would be an awfully big adventure."
- Last words of Broadway producer Charles Frohman, quoting from his close friend James Barrie's Peter Pan just before he went down on the Lusitania - "Mildred, why aren't my clothes laid out? I've got a seven o'clock call."
- Last words of Bert Lahr - "Water! Water!"
- Last words of Captain Lehmann, Captain of the Hindenburg, dying of burns - "Jesus... Jesus... Jesus..."
- Joan of Arc's last words, in the flames - "Why, man, they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist-"
- American Civil War general John Sedgwick's last words, at the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse - "This is funny."
- Doc Holliday's last words - "Mother never reached me. If... anything happens... you must be prepared. Remember the message: Rosabelle, believe. When you hear those words... know it is Houdini speaking..."
- Harry Houdini's words to his wife on his deathbed, promising to communicate with her from the afterlife - "Adieu, my friends! I go to glory!"
- Isadora Duncan's last words, spoken as she got into a roadster and flung her long scarf around her neck in a dramatic gesture. When the car pulled away, the scarf caught in the spokes of the wheel and strangled her. - "Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six."
- Word of Leo Tolstoy on his deathbed, upon being asked to return to the fold of the Russian Orthodox Church - "And in my dream an angel with white wings came to me, smiling."
- From Paul Gaugin's last notes, published after his death - "I dread the journey greatly."
- Mary Todd Lincoln, in a letter written shortly before her death
Current mood:
contemplative.
Here's the thing: I don't like Arabs and Muslims. And I don't think that makes me a bad person.
Bear with me, because this is not an anti-Arab/Muslim post. At all.
I don't like them because when I was a little kid (ages 6-8), we lived in Morocco for a couple of years, and it was not a good place to be. We were very much foreigners, because of how we were treated and because of how we acted. Foreigners kept to themselves, mostly, and had few positive things to say about the natives. General consensus was that Moroccans were lazy, dirty, stupid, ignorant, dishonest, and rude. And they did not welcome us to their country; as far as I could tell, most of them resented us and were looking for any chance to cheat us. So even though I lived there for two years, the only Arabic words I learned were La' (no), Inch'Allah (if God wills it), Shukran (thank you), and Makeinsh Fulus (I have no money). Oh, and Sidi Harazem, which was the brand of bottled water we drank. I made no Moroccan friends. I felt no sense of belonging to Morocco.1
And I came away from the experience with a visceral negative reaction to people who looked or sounded Arab. The reaction has lessened over the years, especially as Ottawa has become increasingly Arabicized2, but it's still there if I pay attention: the sight or sound of an Arab person or Arabic-sounding language still makes me a bit uneasy to this day. I feel just a little less comfortable when speaking to a Muslim.
And this is my problem.
Not the problem of Arabs and Muslims. It is not their job to educate me, make me see that really, they're just regular folks, show me examples of good Arabs and Muslims, make sure they don't do anything to confirm my instinctive dislike - any of it. It's my problem. The onus is on me to educate myself, to be aware of my own irrational feelings, to make damn sure my problem doesn't become their problem. The onus is on me to make sure that when I have a conflict with a rude Somalian taxi driver, when I don't like my kid's Muslim friend, when I get pissed off at the obnoxious headscarfed lady in line ahead of me at the grocery store, that it's because they are being rude or bratty or obnoxious, and not because they're being Arabs.
It's on me.
It's also on me to not get defensive when it's pointed out to me that I've been racist. Or classist, or sexist, or homophobic. It's my responsibility to listen to the charge, and try to be objective and search my subconsious for motivations and prejudices. Sometimes I really think the charge is unfounded, but I have been shown up several times and I don't think it makes me a bad person - any more than I'm a bad person for not always being kind to my children, for being careless and losing important things, for having an often messy house. I'm human, and humans make mistakes, and I developed my self-esteem before leaving childhood and it can take a few hits. Finding out that I've unfairly prejudged someone, because of race, creed, gender, etc is just another example that I'm human and fallible. It's unpleasant as hell, and I hate it, but I try to see the positive in it.
Obviously I try hard not to be racist, but when I screw up, I'd really like to know. It's an opportunity for learning. More importantly, it's an opportunity to try to make things right, if I can.
Eg, that Muslim witness in court last year (not one of our clients), who said something I assumed was a lie because part of my subconscious equated Muslim with dishonest, and then it turned out he was telling the truth all along? I can't really apologize to him; I never even caught his name, and it wasn't my case so I had no influence on his life and did him no harm with my assumption. But I can make sure the next time a Muslim witness speaks, I remember my previous failure and this time decide trustworthiness based on something more than, "He feels dishonest to me." Because really what happened that time was that the guy felt Muslim to me. Because next time, my bias may matter. Because bias and prejudice, voluntary or not, matters.
And yeah, this rambling post is partly about Trayvon Martin.
It doesn't matter to me what was going on in Zimmerman's gated community, it doesn't matter if a lot of "unsavory" characters really had moved in recently because of real estate upsets, it doesn't matter if some of Zimmerman's 40 calls to 911 in the last year actually had resulted in thwarted crimes. It doesn't matter if Trayvon Martin was a perfect kid wearing a hoodie or a kid who'd been suspended a few times wearing a hoodie. It doesn't matter if Zimmerman thought he wasn't actually racist, and was friendly to blacks he knew to be neighbours, it doesn't even matter if he felt that he was out there protecting them too. It only matters that he felt justified in running down a kid who was on the phone with his girlfriend, wearing a hoodie and carrying snacks. Because the kid was black.
Oh and no, it doesn't matter that Zimmerman is half Hispanic. That does not mean he can't be racist.
I mean, ffs. Of course he can be racist. Jesse Jackson has said in the past that when he's out walking at night, if he sees a black man, he also tenses up a bit. Barack Obama's grandmother was sometimes uncomfortable with strange black men, despite being devoted to her black grandson. And I bet Obama himself reacts differently to an unknown young black man than an unknown white, because he also grew up in a culture where black means danger and violence and crime. It's out there. We're all steeped in it. Show me a single North American, black, white, rainbow-coloured, whatever, who hasn't internalized at least some kind of anti-black prejudice, and I'll show you a five-leaf clover, 'cause it's just as rare.
Seriously, show me one3. I'd love to pick their brains and discover their secret. Ditto for anti-Arab, anti-Asian, anti-any random marginalized group.
Anyway, I know a lot of people who don't normally care about racism are all up in arms about what happened to Trayvon Martin. I think that's good. But some of the reactions to this have been pissing me off, because it's all been said and done to death before now, and the highest office in America is held by a black man and yet black kids still get harrassed and arrested and gunned down for the crime of being black, and I'm tired of hearing the same things said over and over about all of this crap, from other whites. It comes up every single time there's an issue of racism, and it's bloody annoying.
"But I'm not racist!" "So help me understand racism!" "If I didn't mean to be racist, I didn't do anything wrong!" "How can blacks assume all whites are racist? Isn't that reverse racism, and just as bad a regular racism?"
You know what?
Yes, you are racist.
No, it is not a black person's job to be your personal Black 101 tutor. Learn on your own time, or with black people who have volunteered for the job.
If you acted on your racist thoughts and feelings, you probably did do something wrong. What you meant to do doesn't matter. Eg that black woman you just condescended to doesn't have the privilege of seeing into your motivations; she just got dumped on by your behaviour.
Blacks can prejudge whites because they're human too.
Reverse racism as bad as regular racism? In a perfect world, anti-white racism would be as bad as anti-black. Because it would leave white people just as vulnerable to not being hired, not being promoted, being arbitrarily detained by the authorities, being gunned down by a random racist black guy, as black people are.
Until whites are just as vulnerable to damage from anti-white racism as blacks are to anti-black, I'm going to assume reverse racism isn't as bad. Theoretically, yes it is. In the real world, no it's not. If this black guy doesn't hire you because you're white, you almost certainly have far more job options available to you than the black guy who isn't hired because he's black.
And yes, I've been on the other side of reverse-ism. I've been condemned for my whiteness, I've been condescended to by gays, I have felt excluded and unfairly judged by other minorities. It's not pleasant, but the fact is that I can almost always leave the unpleasant situation and be right back within a culture where I am the norm and the people who treated me like crap are the outsiders. They usually don't have that privilege.
For example, I spent a lot of time among gays and bis in university, and I can think of a few situations in which I felt uncomfortable because I was the only straight person there. Because I didn't feel I could openly talk about my boyfriend among all these women who dated women, and because it was unfairly assumed that I was clueless about issues of homophobia. But I could leave, and be right back in Staightland, where the tables were turned.
It's just not the same. I'm not justifying the snide little put-downs I suffered through, or defending the snotty gay guy who got his jollies out of trying to embarrass me, but it's not the same as knowing that if you hold your boyfriend's hand in public someone might decide to punish your brazen perversion with a baseball bat.
Normally I'm more diplomatic than this. Normally I try to Feel the Pain of whatever white/staight/male person is currently feeling unfairly prejudged, or defensive, or whatever. But the gunning down of this kid has me feeling nauseated and angry, and I can't seem to take the blunt off what I want to tell some of my fellow whites. Namely:
- Yes, you are racist. We all are. Get over yourself and work on your own racism.
- Educate yourself. Stop asking blacks to do it for you.
- Yes, blacks can be racist and whites can get hurt by that racism. Stop trying to make our pain equivalent to theirs. It's not.
- That's not the same as saying anti-white prejudice is harmless, or acceptable. It's no more acceptable than being punched in the gut is acceptable. I'm just saying it's not as harmful as getting the crap kicked out of you.
- Trayvon Martin's death is horrifying. The only way to make it less horrifying is to take a good hard look at ourselves and try to do something about the society in which his death happened. If that means demanding the police do something about his death, if it means taking a look at Stand Your Ground laws, if it means looking into ourselves and trying to be aware of our own frailties so we don't victimize more kids like Martin, that's what we have to do.
- And by "we", I mean whites. Blacks shouldn't have to do a damn thing about it. IMHO.
::re-reading what I've written::
OK. Anger down to manageable levels again. Time to stop writing.
1: Which didn't bother me at all at the time, but which today I see as a horrible waste. An entire country and its people, entirely dismissed as too primitive to bother getting to know.
2: Realized once, upon landing in Ottawa after being away, that much to my surprise the sight of women wearing hijabs was coming to mean home to me, because where we'd been (Florida, I think) they were a very rare sight, and in Ottawa they're everywhere.
3: Non-racist North American, that is. Not five-leaf clover. Though seeing a five-leaf clover would be pretty cool.
Current mood:
pissed off.
The Hunger Games. Actually, the movie - what I saw of it - was awesome. Unfortunately the handheld cam on Imax at the front of the theatre nauseated me to the point that I had to close my eyes for about a third of it, and ended up puking halfway through :(
Current mood:
nauseated.
Chris, reading our grocery list: We don't need beef stock. Nor do we need menopause. ::pause:: ::squint:: Mayonnaise.
Current mood:
amused.
Sadly, the dumbest thing I did this week was not lock myself into a room by mistake because I was doing home repairs and changing all our door handles and I took the doorknob off without taking the bolt out, and required twenty minutes and Justin's help to take the door off its hinges, and we were darn close to giving up and just kicking the damn thing open before it finally opened on its own.
No, the dumbest thing I did this week... was accidentally lock myself into a room in this same manner twice.
Current mood:
ditzy.
Daylight Savings Time caught us off-guard, can't get Skype up to call my cousin, can't call her either, one-year anniversary of the Japan tsunami on the news, cat pooped on couch again, Justin's Chinese Cooking For Kids class for Monday has been cancelled, and my mom would've been sixty-eight today.
Oh well. Think I'll take on our bathroom closet to make the day get better. Nothing lifts the spirit like a well-organized storage space.
Scratch that. Many things lift the spirit much higher. But few are within easy reach right now.
Current mood:
determined.
(From the Comments section on a story about the anniversary of the Japan earthquake and tsunami)
Joey: There is nothing scary or wrong with earthquakes. It is all beautiful as well as the destruction just like creation is beautiful. Opening up to every aspect of life is the key to happiness.
Robert: your stupid
Joey: Please explain why I am stupid. Fear of the unknown is not my weakness nor should it be anyone elses. I have lived in Japan for a long time and have experienced earthquakes on a weekly basis and have learned to love them in their awesome and natural power. It is part of nature and how the earth is making mountains and new terrain. Mother nature is just amazing.
Robert: You said there is nothing scary about earthquakes explains it right there- i live in the san francisco bay area where earthquakes happen all the time, when a mild one hits and the tv news is on callers call in and they are allways afraid= where are you located and i will ask for a earthquake to be sent to you
Joey: I lived in the Bay Area a lot too and was there when they had the big one in 1986. I was actually in Santa Cruz and just loved it. Everyone slept outside and developed good friendship. I am in Thailand now so if you can manage to send one to me that would be cool but I do not wish this on anyone else. You folks in the Bay Area do not get earthquakes all the time. Those people are afraid because they are afraid of death. I am eagerly waiting for that to happen since it is the best thing in the world.
Joey: Oh and btw, most Japanese are not afraid of earthquakes. It is like second nature. California earthquakes are not on the same scale at all to Japan. When they do happen then they can be pretty big there. I have actually developed a second sense for feeling when earthquakes will hit but it does not work all the time. I then send out a message to my friends to be careful.
Robert: Asking for an earthquake in thailand- what's that old saying about going to war in old time china- those afraid to die will die and those not afraid to die will live- or maybe it was from the old KUNG FU tv show, or LAO TZU, or bruce lee- same thinking as martial artists
Current mood:
amused.
Overheard from a fellow home schooling mom: "So I signed Johnny up for the class, but partway through the second session he said, 'Mom, can we leave? This is really boring.' So I took him home. I mean, I felt kinda bad for the teacher, because he was really loud, but what could I do? He was bored."
What could you do?
What could you do?
OK, how's this. You could understand that he's a child, and that it's perfectly natural for him to get easily bored, and to express his boredom loudly. He's seven and by that age I expect kids to have a bit more of an internal sensor, but every child is different and your child is not defective just because he doesn't get, yet, the fact that loudly proclaiming your boredom can hurt the feelings of the person who is speaking. You can be understanding, respect his feelings and his right to have his time wasted, and take him home.
Or you can respectfully but firmly insist that he stay in the class, because you are the parent and he is the child and presumably you know better than he what level of boredom he should be able to stand, and what knowledge he needs to learn. And because even the most charmed life contains necessary parts of boredom, and learning to put up and shut up and make the best of it is an important life skill to learn.
But whether you keep him in the class or take him home, you can bloody well insist that he apologize to the teacher for being rude. Most probably he had no intention of being rude, and if the teacher knows children (and this one does), she will understand and not hold it against him. You don't even have to be angry at him, any more than you need to be angry at him if he's still not perfect at tying his shoes. Politeness is a skill to be learned.
But he won't learn it if you're so bloody respectful of his feelings that you teach him that his are the only feelings that matter. There is a right way and a wrong way to deal with boredom. Your kid got it wrong. Don't abdicate your responsibility to help him get it right next time.
Current mood:
annoyed.
