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Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
...this has been on my mind...
12-28-08 Sunday
Finished The Oxford Book of French-Canadian Short Stories, introduced by Marie-Claire Blais, Cover painting, La Visite by Jean-Paul Lemieux. All of this information is relevant. One, the writers in the book span several, a couple of centuries, and two, the book is in translation--by that, I mean, I did not get the full force of the stories like I would have if I had read the book in French. Also, the history of the French-Canadian “canon” is almost a mystery to me. Timelines, etc., Who’s Who & so forth. What I recognize is how dark the stories are, and I wonder what causes this shade? Is it the culture of the landscape on which the culture exists? By culture, I mean the oppressed position, chosen or not, under which the French language and culture exists, and with the presence of the Spanish in many modern places, and let’s not forget the Native Americans, the French downplayed, then I would say: ¡¿que pasa?
The landscape is one that ties down the stories via the hardships, la misère--la moudgit misère, of the land and gaining a life, gagné une vie, from that land.
I return to the question, not an answer, of authenticity, or maybe authenticities. Not that I want to prove the authenticities like a theorem, but to understand the movement of the story tectonic plates upon which we are all standing. The story plates are shifting and, I believe, or think, maybe even feel, story captured in a certain moment of time, like photographs, reflect an authenticity incomparable to facsimiles of story captured in times and places later and reflected on by the forces outside of a story which come to bear upon its being told. Authenticity a matter of telling story from within rather than from without. Telling story in minutiae rather than in broad, brush strokes of retrospect.
First, I have to say to you that this book comes to me while I am in a state of starvation* for such stories to which I freely admit despite criticisms about starving Franco-Americans. At least I know what I am hungry for…Franco-Americans are starving…sounds like blaming the poor…JMJ. Second, the voice, tone, subject, intonations, etc. are so close, so recognizable, that I can only read the book periodically in order to ingest the material written. Like a continent long lost, I found my Atlantis. Very difficult to explain.
And this reminds me of those who do not have a lost Atlantis, how can you miss something you never had? (…which takes us way beyond the starving metaphor…still shaking my head on that on…) And then also, learn to care about this non-possession? This is a puzzle added onto the question of authenticity. Stories, written and told, never read, kept distant via borders and boundaries; stories never written, maybe or maybe not told--kept distant forever; stories whispered or forbidden; kept distant by shame, sexism, racism, fear, ignorance, internalized oppressions, assimilations, or as I’ve been reading in the papers--mass culture over-take, or take over. Now there is a mouthful.
The competition for stories to be told and heard is fierce. The awareness about the varieties and diversities of stories lacks the platform to make a difference in the competitions.
I came to the conclusion listening to conversations in the airport recently that people care more about Sponge Bob Square Pants than they do about their own possible, authentic story.
What I liked about the anthology of French-Canadian writers was that there was no shying away from the dark side of the story. The harshness of human nature was not suppressed to acquiesce the squeamish. Not that one wants to exist or dwell forever in these places, but one needs to tell these stories, I believe, to achieve authenticity. Otherwise, we practice a form of assimilation and gentrification that removes the story from its roots. I also believe that lived culture expresses a story different than imagined or observed, reported on, story.
Levels of interactions--a photograph in an art exhibit of a worker’s strike broken by Chinese “scabs”* is different than the starvation wages paid to the workers to make the Lords of the Reigning Story richer…subsuming the story, or stories, of the workers and their angst and their lives of miserable poverty, against the mill owners. You want to talk about starvation? How is that for story starvation? Have I made my point yet that I don’t buy into the “starvation” diet explanation of a culture hungry for stories of their own? You can say what you want, but the gentrification of the suffering, an art exhibit, somehow resembles tectonic plate shifts.
A written story lays closer to the land of authenticity by its nature of accessibility; art museums reside outside the daily purview or perimeters. Put the art on the grocery bags, on TV, on the box selling Sponge Bob, beside the highway. Do something kitsch with the histronics: At the freaking mall--on the walls…into the everyday of every body. Somehow, to learn to care, to make known the stories on the earth, ground, land, geography, that make our lives meaningful. Screw Sponge Bob, as cute as he is…
Art
Culture
Kitsch Levels of access for authenticity
As I said: A question--if not even a puzzle.
When is there inclusion of the levels of varieties and diversities, I am amazed. When I should only be thinking, “of course,” instead. My amazement at the inclusion tells us how much farther we have to go to achieve equality at many levels. And then I think to myself where we are on this continuum: The polar ice is not the only thing melting--global warming takes its toll on more than just the endangered species. Given the globalization wipeout of local stories--we are all endangered species at one level or another.
That is when a kind of desperation grabs a hold of me and I become a kaleidoscope of emotions going from red hot to ice blue to purple. I have to remind myself that I am not the “norm,” and would be seen as maybe a tad “crazy,” or even worse, God forbid, “angry”--while everyone was poolside enjoying their long tall cool ones chatting up the latest mass culture invasion. I love that term, “mass culture,” which really says it like it is--massives bearing down upon us, undoing localizations--because the real outcome of global warming is about undoing the local. Even with this bit, people are saying, “what in hell is she talking about.”
We’ve been taught to forget. But forget what? Who? How? The most dramatic changes are those that happen over the course of time--slowly, or so said the art prof. I tend to agree.
Reminds me of the film, The Forgotten, where the mother refused to forget her child--she was the only one, until she convinced one other guy to remember as well. Some alien force was earthside to over power the human race. Sound familiar? Insert globalization in the alien slot and recognize the wave of the future. We are being taught to forget. Or else.
O.K. So I read The Oxford Book of French-Canadian Short Stories, introduced by Marie-Claire Blais, Cover painting, La Visite by Jean-Paul Lemieux, which I only recently found out about being “stateside,” which really says it all. Too hard to explain, and I am not really interested in your opinion of me if I were to explain why: Crazy/Angry +/-…and to read this book, for one thing, not ever having been told of the book makes me very upset. Having gone through a major university system several times and the literature of the French Canadians absent from the curriculum…but not English Canada, by the jumpin’…
Well, reading this book is like telling the aliens trying to take over my brain to fuck off. I didn’t forget and I do remember, so go away and let me OD on these short stories, show circuit my brain with recognition and jump start my heart on verbs and adjectives as defibrillators. Reading the stories in French would probably send me into a coma straight away.
Deprivation.
But you cannot understand unless you’ve been forced marched by the aliens to their stories, the only stories allowed, the “official” stories, the history book written by the winners--otherwise known as the mass culture manuals.
I am Julianne Moore in The Forgotten refusing to believe the aliens and their line of bullshit. I will remember me. I will read me--stateside, despite the real crazies, or the real angry globalization policies with tricked up name tags.
That is until I receive an email like the one I received from a young woman about her wanting ties to her culture, or the phone call from the man who could hardly speak from being choked up in relation to the editorial in the newspaper--then I know I am not alone.
I may be crazy as a fox, or as pissed off as Jesus, but I know I am not wrong. Starvation in any form creates hunger incomparable. No best seller lists, mass culture, etc. can match the appetite. Starvation, if one is to accept that mission--not as a criticism, but as a definition of a reality imposed--not chosen, depravation makes for crazy and angry. I wonder: Am I stuck on the dial at angry and crazy?
If my dial is stuck at angry and crazy, so aren’t many others as well. The idea or imposition of identity from sectors other than myself does not take into consideration the co-occurring oppressive factors of silencings mostly, or not telling the truth--version of a truth to hide certain truths. Mostly about the rock that keeps the fat from floating to the top.
Or, can I get beyond the obvious and do story on the road to forgiveness--as I teach my students: There are many roads in, but there is only one road out: Forgiveness. And that goes a long, long way to telling story.
*I say this tongue-in-cheek as this was a criticism given for the Franco-Americans in Waterville, Lewiston, etc. via 2nd party repeat of _______. Franco-Americans in southern Maine are starving for connection to real culture compared to the Northern Maine Franco-Americans, who have more and real access to the culture. The Civil War is NOT dead, ladies and gentlemen. Real access…how ridiculous can someone be…this sounds so much like a whine from some creepy notion of false superiority, using cheap shots to take down compatriots. Get a hobby…
*http://fanset8.blogspot.com/2008/12/mass-moca-presents-ambitious-new.html
MASS MoCA Presents an Ambitious New Installation by Simon Starling
http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=404
Exhibition catalogue - MASS MoCA will publish an illustrated catalogue featuring an essay by exhibition curator Susan Cross as well as a contribution from Mount Holyoke College Professor of Art History Anthony W. Lee, the leading expert on the photographs, which act as the exhibition's foundation and the author of A Shoemaker's Story: Being Chiefly about French Canadian Immigrants, Enterprising Photographers, Rascal Yankees, and Chinese Cobblers in a Nineteenth-Century Factory Town (published by Princeton University Press, 2008). The exhibition catalogue will also include photographs of the new installations as well as archival photographs and documentation of the works' fabrication.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
International Women's Day--Recognizing Franco-American Women!
International Women's Day--Recognizing Franco-American Women!
March 8th
I have been thinking about what to say in relation to International Women's Day in reference to Franco-American women and this is what I came up with.
This is a day to recognize the women who have come before other Franco-American women--past and present--who have improved the living conditions of other Franco-American women by various means. Regardless of the rewards and punishments that followed the action on behalf of--past and present.
Recognizing those who made life better for even just one, or many, Franco-American women in her life, and their hard-won efforts to attain and sustain that better life.
Recognizing those who fought the elements of dominance from all sectors to achieve recognition of Franco-American women and their contributions. Ignorance and prejudice remain and the fight continues.
Recognizing those who made gains in the world of information in regard to Franco-American women.
Recognizing those who continue to improve the lives of Franco-American women through their sustained measures of insisting on a voice for the Franco-American women.
Recognizing those who repeatedly repeat the message of the worth of the Franco-American women and her works as viable and important without any reference to any other point of definition. In her own right, Franco-American women are fierce and famous and fabulous!
I'm sure there is more to add, but brief is best.
Merci,
Rhea Côté Robbins
Recognizing the women who have helped build and sustain the
Franco-American Women's Institute
http://www.fawi.net/
March 8th
I have been thinking about what to say in relation to International Women's Day in reference to Franco-American women and this is what I came up with.
This is a day to recognize the women who have come before other Franco-American women--past and present--who have improved the living conditions of other Franco-American women by various means. Regardless of the rewards and punishments that followed the action on behalf of--past and present.
Recognizing those who made life better for even just one, or many, Franco-American women in her life, and their hard-won efforts to attain and sustain that better life.
Recognizing those who fought the elements of dominance from all sectors to achieve recognition of Franco-American women and their contributions. Ignorance and prejudice remain and the fight continues.
Recognizing those who made gains in the world of information in regard to Franco-American women.
Recognizing those who continue to improve the lives of Franco-American women through their sustained measures of insisting on a voice for the Franco-American women.
Recognizing those who repeatedly repeat the message of the worth of the Franco-American women and her works as viable and important without any reference to any other point of definition. In her own right, Franco-American women are fierce and famous and fabulous!
I'm sure there is more to add, but brief is best.
Merci,
Rhea Côté Robbins
Recognizing the women who have helped build and sustain the
Franco-American Women's Institute
http://www.fawi.net/
Sunday, March 1, 2009
down on So. Main St., Brewer, ME
Eagles hunting and hanging out...
Posted these pictures I took on Facebook, and then someone took them from my photos and re-posted them in their photo album...not sure what the re-posting of my photos in their album means, other than some form of appropriation...took them without asking...and then garnered commentary unto themselves...so, that may be my LAST posting of photos where the boundaries are loose...not understood by me that is for sure...
Like I said, I don't understand why they re-posted the pics in their album...when, as another did, they could have created a link to my photos...I think there must be some Facebook netiquette, but taking another's pics and posting them into your album...almost instantly borders on bad manners in my estimation.
I don't really want to ask...either...because the obvious is don't do that to a "friend"...ironic, really.
And needy. Way too needy.
Reminds me of the academics who rip off people's work...but that is another subject for another day...
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
...not your country club franco...state of the franco
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
...not your country club franco...state of the franco
...excerpt from my hand-written journal:
I'll tell you what, it takes nerves of steel to withstand the blasts I've just described about my life as it stands right now in this FA culture. Given the body count, both the alive and the dead, those who have dropped out of the race, or the game, due to injuries to mind, body and spirit, I would guess the numbers to be in the thousands, given those who do not even begin to participate, or address, their heritage--my estimates are probably low. Body count: those present & accounted for, and those absent--ALL BELONG, no matter what shape their psyche is in--invited, or not invited [by the country club francos][...who gives a flying tutu...I mean, truly, that is no measure of existence...] this is not a rehearsal, this is Life--one time around and out you go! And, even then, the grave stones, like the Biblical rock, talk.
--Brought to you by your friendly, local cemetery dweller--future and forever, plus now. Have a nice day. Sense of humor is back...thankyoujesus, I'm laughing all the way to eternity. [...am I scaring you? are you chicken-shit scared? good. boo! ahahahaha! Now try this: In order to understand the living, you got to commune wid de dead.]
P.S.:
I used to make a differentiation between celebrity franco and advocacy franco, but it is even more simple: I am just being franco. Just like the second coming of Jesus, the event is visible to all. You do not even have to get out of your chair to enjoy the show. Like Jung's sign over his door: Bidden or unbidden, God [franco] is present. And, in case someone tries to erase you, they can't erase what just is. That power does not exist. But, still, you have some with their head buried so far up their ass that they actually start believing what they are seeing and smelling as the real thing. So they think you are gone, poof!, because they decide to play ostrich. My point being this: Je suis franco-américaine et je suis fière d'être. Plain and simple.
I don't have to answer
Any of these questions
Don't have no guide to
Teach me no lessons
I come home in the evening
Sit in my chair
One night they called me for supper
But I never got up
I stayed right there
In my chair
There's a whole lot of singing
That ain't gonna be heard
Disappearing every day
Without so much as a word
Somehow
I think I broke the wings
Off a little songbird
And she's never gonna fly
To the top of the world
--Patty Griffin
Top Of The World
Full song:
I wished I was smarter
Wished I was stronger
I wished I loved jesus
The way the my wife does
I wished it'd been easier
Instead of any longer
I wished I could've stood
Where you would've been proud
That won't happen now
That won't happen now
There's a whole lot of sinners
That ain't gonna be heard
Disppearing every day
Without so much as a word
Somehow
I'm afraid I broke the wings
Off that little songbird
And she's never gonna fly
To the top of the world How
To the top of the world
I don't have to answer
Any of these questions
Don't have no guide to
Teach me no lessons
I come home in the evening
Sit in my chair
One night they called me for supper
But I never got up
I stayed right there
In my chair
There's a whole lot of singing
That ain't gonna be heard
Disappearing every day
Without so much as a word
Somehow
I think I broke the wings
Off a little songbird
And she's never gonna fly
To the top of the world
How
To the top of the world
I wished I'd had known you
Wished I had shown you
All of the things I
Was all these are
But I'd pretend to be sleeping
When you'd come in in the morning
To whisper goodbye
Go work at the rain
I don't know why
Don't know why
Cause everyone's singing
We just wanna be heard
Disappearing every day
Without so much as a word
So how?
Gonna grab a hold
Of that little songbird
And take her for a ride
To the top of the world
Right now
To the top of the world
...not your country club franco...state of the franco
...excerpt from my hand-written journal:
I'll tell you what, it takes nerves of steel to withstand the blasts I've just described about my life as it stands right now in this FA culture. Given the body count, both the alive and the dead, those who have dropped out of the race, or the game, due to injuries to mind, body and spirit, I would guess the numbers to be in the thousands, given those who do not even begin to participate, or address, their heritage--my estimates are probably low. Body count: those present & accounted for, and those absent--ALL BELONG, no matter what shape their psyche is in--invited, or not invited [by the country club francos][...who gives a flying tutu...I mean, truly, that is no measure of existence...] this is not a rehearsal, this is Life--one time around and out you go! And, even then, the grave stones, like the Biblical rock, talk.
--Brought to you by your friendly, local cemetery dweller--future and forever, plus now. Have a nice day. Sense of humor is back...thankyoujesus, I'm laughing all the way to eternity. [...am I scaring you? are you chicken-shit scared? good. boo! ahahahaha! Now try this: In order to understand the living, you got to commune wid de dead.]
P.S.:
I used to make a differentiation between celebrity franco and advocacy franco, but it is even more simple: I am just being franco. Just like the second coming of Jesus, the event is visible to all. You do not even have to get out of your chair to enjoy the show. Like Jung's sign over his door: Bidden or unbidden, God [franco] is present. And, in case someone tries to erase you, they can't erase what just is. That power does not exist. But, still, you have some with their head buried so far up their ass that they actually start believing what they are seeing and smelling as the real thing. So they think you are gone, poof!, because they decide to play ostrich. My point being this: Je suis franco-américaine et je suis fière d'être. Plain and simple.
I don't have to answer
Any of these questions
Don't have no guide to
Teach me no lessons
I come home in the evening
Sit in my chair
One night they called me for supper
But I never got up
I stayed right there
In my chair
There's a whole lot of singing
That ain't gonna be heard
Disappearing every day
Without so much as a word
Somehow
I think I broke the wings
Off a little songbird
And she's never gonna fly
To the top of the world
--Patty Griffin
Top Of The World
Full song:
I wished I was smarter
Wished I was stronger
I wished I loved jesus
The way the my wife does
I wished it'd been easier
Instead of any longer
I wished I could've stood
Where you would've been proud
That won't happen now
That won't happen now
There's a whole lot of sinners
That ain't gonna be heard
Disppearing every day
Without so much as a word
Somehow
I'm afraid I broke the wings
Off that little songbird
And she's never gonna fly
To the top of the world How
To the top of the world
I don't have to answer
Any of these questions
Don't have no guide to
Teach me no lessons
I come home in the evening
Sit in my chair
One night they called me for supper
But I never got up
I stayed right there
In my chair
There's a whole lot of singing
That ain't gonna be heard
Disappearing every day
Without so much as a word
Somehow
I think I broke the wings
Off a little songbird
And she's never gonna fly
To the top of the world
How
To the top of the world
I wished I'd had known you
Wished I had shown you
All of the things I
Was all these are
But I'd pretend to be sleeping
When you'd come in in the morning
To whisper goodbye
Go work at the rain
I don't know why
Don't know why
Cause everyone's singing
We just wanna be heard
Disappearing every day
Without so much as a word
So how?
Gonna grab a hold
Of that little songbird
And take her for a ride
To the top of the world
Right now
To the top of the world
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Traverser la Frontière: Events and Activities
Voyages: The Maine Franco-American Experience
A Book Discussion Series
Tuesdays, February 10 and February 24, 2009 ▪ 10:30 am - 12 noon
PCA Great Performances collaborates with the Portland Public Library to present an in-depth book discussion series with Dr. Barry Rodrigue, associate professor of arts & humanities at the University of Southern Maine, and others with strong ties to Canada and the Franco-American experience. The discussion groups will use the text Voyages: A Maine Franco-American Reader, co-edited by Dr. Rodrigue.
Participants in the discussion series include the following:
February 10:
Grėgoire Chabot, playwright Raymond Luc Levasseur, activist Pat LaMarche, author and educator Michael Parent, storyteller, singer, and actor
February 24: Normand Beaupré, retired professor and author Rhea Côtė Robbins, professor and founder of the Franco-American Women’s Institute Kristin M. Langellier, professor and author Juliana L‘Heureux, journalist Cindy Larock, dance educator and Maine Arts Commission master artist.
To download a PDF with complete details of this book discussion series and biographies of the participants, click here.
http://pcagreatperformances.org/files/pca_offstage/traverser_book_discussion.pdf
http://pcagreatperformances.org/pca_offstage/upcoming/community_outreach/
Canceled. Kaput.
...other testimonies on the incident of being French in Maine
As for my essays below...if you don't want to take my word for it...read on:
A celebration of French culture
BY MATTHEW STONE
Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 01/28/2009
Reawakening: People listen to a discussion about Franco American culture in Maine Tuesday at the University of Maine at Augusta. The conversation took place after a showing of the documentary film "Réveil."
Lewis Pelletier remembers a boarding school teacher punishing him and a classmate for speaking in French.
Pearl Bolduc recalls it "being difficult" growing up French-Canadian in Augusta.
Despite the adversity, Pelletier and Bolduc have done their part to keep French culture alive among their friends and family.
More than 80 people showed up at the University of Maine at Augusta Tuesday for a showing of the film "Réveil: Waking Up French." The documentary, by Rockland filmmaker Ben Levine, spotlights the repression of French-Canadian culture in New England and what some families have lost as a result.
About 60 percent of those in the audience Tuesday said they grew up speaking French at home. But not all transmitted their language and culture to the next generation.
Monique Longtin, of Fayette, said she never taught her children French.
"To make up for my sins, I'm teaching my grandchildren French," Longtin said during a discussion following the film.
After decades of active repression by Ku Klux Klan members and passive repression by a culture that estranged those who did not speak English, Levine's film shows the makings of a revival of French-Canadian culture.
Pelletier, of Winslow, has always wanted to take part in such a revival.
"It lit a fire in me and it still burns," he said of being punished for speaking French. "It burns me up."
Pelletier speaks French socially whenever he can and visits Quebec twice a year.
"I love it there," he said during the film discussion. "I feel at home. I feel like I belong there."
In Augusta, Blackie Bechard was among those who founded Le Festival de la Bastille, a regular Franco-American celebration. The festival was an attempt to spotlight Franco-American heritage in the Augusta area.
"I think if we all got our hands together, we can keep our French," Bechard said. "It's a team effort."
Bolduc, of Augusta, began feeling at home last year when she moved to an area of Augusta where her neighbors are French-speaking. Finally, she said, she can be openly proud of her French-Canadian heritage.
"We look out for one another," Bolduc said. "I don't have to hide my accent."
But, as Levine's film shows, worries persist among an older generation of French-Canadians in New England that their families' connection to French culture will end with them.
Hannah Coleman, however, is determined to connect with her family's French-language tradition. By learning French, the UMA student said, she is learning more than a language.
"It's really awakening something in me that I didn't realize was there," said Coleman, of Augusta. "We young'uns, we need the encouragement. We're determined. We don't want to let it die."
Tyler Brown, a UMA student from Vassalboro, agrees.
"I'm sick and tired of losing my culture," he said.
http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/5877962.html
------
Film explores repression of French heritage
BY SADA REED
Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 01/25/2009
AUGUSTA -- Whether someone has eaten tourtire pie or said "bonjour" lately isn't the point. A documentary to be shown Tuesday at University of Maine at Augusta is about cultural survival.
"Réveil: Waking Up French" is a documentary about the repression and renaissance of French culture in New England and will be shown from noon to 3 p.m. in the fireside lounge at the Richard J. Randall Student Center.
The film, created by Ben Levine of Rockland, will be part of an afternoon dedicated to Franco-American culture. The event includes a potluck lunch and French cuisine provided by Aramark Food Service, along with a discussion with Levine about issues of language and cultural identity. The public is invited.
"The film came out in 2003 and, prior to that time, most people would agree that you would see signs and names and references (of French), but almost never heard people speaking French in public, unless they were speaking in a supermarket in a hushed conversation," Levine said. "The film explores the question, 'Why would that be?' "
The film traces New England's French heritage, beginning with the immigration from the Canadian provinces through efforts by the Ku Klux Klan, mob violence and exclusionary school laws to suppers the French language and the Catholic religion. This stigmatization resulted in invisibility and language loss.
"There was a wariness of French in public, and all of those things are documented," Levine said. "So there was kind of a renaissance about the time when the film came out. There is a lot that has happened in the state."
The documentary also shows how people of French descent in New England continue to discover ways to renew cultural diversity through language reacquisition. The film shows instances of individuals making choices to live their cultures even as family members let it go. The documentary isn't just for Franco-Americans, Levine said; it reaches out to all ethnic groups who struggle to maintain their cultural identities.
Chelsea Ray, an assistant professor of French and comparative literature at UMA, said she saw the documentary a year ago and it opened her eyes not only to the history, but also to the cultural heritage that Franco-Americans are trying to preserve.
"I really thought it would be important to invite Ben Levine to campus and to highlight his work and contribution to the Franco-American community," Ray said. "I designed the event to occur in the fireside lounge of the Randall student center because I'm hoping to not only attract people interested in the Franco-American community, but also students who may be passing by and see there's music, food and a festive atmosphere."
Dining-service coordinator Kevin Michaud said guests will be able to enjoy traditional salmon pie, quiche and tourtire pie, or French meat pie, which "is probably the most common Franco-American dish you'll find in this state," Michaud said.
The event is made possible by a grant from the Maine Humanities Council and help from the university's Diversity Committee. People can bring a dish of their own, but they are not required to do so.
For more information about the film, go to www.wakingupfrench.com/index.html. For more information about the event, call 621-3487 or e-mail chelsea.d.ray@maine.edu.
http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/5864175.html
A celebration of French culture
BY MATTHEW STONE
Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 01/28/2009
Reawakening: People listen to a discussion about Franco American culture in Maine Tuesday at the University of Maine at Augusta. The conversation took place after a showing of the documentary film "Réveil."
Lewis Pelletier remembers a boarding school teacher punishing him and a classmate for speaking in French.
Pearl Bolduc recalls it "being difficult" growing up French-Canadian in Augusta.
Despite the adversity, Pelletier and Bolduc have done their part to keep French culture alive among their friends and family.
More than 80 people showed up at the University of Maine at Augusta Tuesday for a showing of the film "Réveil: Waking Up French." The documentary, by Rockland filmmaker Ben Levine, spotlights the repression of French-Canadian culture in New England and what some families have lost as a result.
About 60 percent of those in the audience Tuesday said they grew up speaking French at home. But not all transmitted their language and culture to the next generation.
Monique Longtin, of Fayette, said she never taught her children French.
"To make up for my sins, I'm teaching my grandchildren French," Longtin said during a discussion following the film.
After decades of active repression by Ku Klux Klan members and passive repression by a culture that estranged those who did not speak English, Levine's film shows the makings of a revival of French-Canadian culture.
Pelletier, of Winslow, has always wanted to take part in such a revival.
"It lit a fire in me and it still burns," he said of being punished for speaking French. "It burns me up."
Pelletier speaks French socially whenever he can and visits Quebec twice a year.
"I love it there," he said during the film discussion. "I feel at home. I feel like I belong there."
In Augusta, Blackie Bechard was among those who founded Le Festival de la Bastille, a regular Franco-American celebration. The festival was an attempt to spotlight Franco-American heritage in the Augusta area.
"I think if we all got our hands together, we can keep our French," Bechard said. "It's a team effort."
Bolduc, of Augusta, began feeling at home last year when she moved to an area of Augusta where her neighbors are French-speaking. Finally, she said, she can be openly proud of her French-Canadian heritage.
"We look out for one another," Bolduc said. "I don't have to hide my accent."
But, as Levine's film shows, worries persist among an older generation of French-Canadians in New England that their families' connection to French culture will end with them.
Hannah Coleman, however, is determined to connect with her family's French-language tradition. By learning French, the UMA student said, she is learning more than a language.
"It's really awakening something in me that I didn't realize was there," said Coleman, of Augusta. "We young'uns, we need the encouragement. We're determined. We don't want to let it die."
Tyler Brown, a UMA student from Vassalboro, agrees.
"I'm sick and tired of losing my culture," he said.
http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/5877962.html
------
Film explores repression of French heritage
BY SADA REED
Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 01/25/2009
AUGUSTA -- Whether someone has eaten tourtire pie or said "bonjour" lately isn't the point. A documentary to be shown Tuesday at University of Maine at Augusta is about cultural survival.
"Réveil: Waking Up French" is a documentary about the repression and renaissance of French culture in New England and will be shown from noon to 3 p.m. in the fireside lounge at the Richard J. Randall Student Center.
The film, created by Ben Levine of Rockland, will be part of an afternoon dedicated to Franco-American culture. The event includes a potluck lunch and French cuisine provided by Aramark Food Service, along with a discussion with Levine about issues of language and cultural identity. The public is invited.
"The film came out in 2003 and, prior to that time, most people would agree that you would see signs and names and references (of French), but almost never heard people speaking French in public, unless they were speaking in a supermarket in a hushed conversation," Levine said. "The film explores the question, 'Why would that be?' "
The film traces New England's French heritage, beginning with the immigration from the Canadian provinces through efforts by the Ku Klux Klan, mob violence and exclusionary school laws to suppers the French language and the Catholic religion. This stigmatization resulted in invisibility and language loss.
"There was a wariness of French in public, and all of those things are documented," Levine said. "So there was kind of a renaissance about the time when the film came out. There is a lot that has happened in the state."
The documentary also shows how people of French descent in New England continue to discover ways to renew cultural diversity through language reacquisition. The film shows instances of individuals making choices to live their cultures even as family members let it go. The documentary isn't just for Franco-Americans, Levine said; it reaches out to all ethnic groups who struggle to maintain their cultural identities.
Chelsea Ray, an assistant professor of French and comparative literature at UMA, said she saw the documentary a year ago and it opened her eyes not only to the history, but also to the cultural heritage that Franco-Americans are trying to preserve.
"I really thought it would be important to invite Ben Levine to campus and to highlight his work and contribution to the Franco-American community," Ray said. "I designed the event to occur in the fireside lounge of the Randall student center because I'm hoping to not only attract people interested in the Franco-American community, but also students who may be passing by and see there's music, food and a festive atmosphere."
Dining-service coordinator Kevin Michaud said guests will be able to enjoy traditional salmon pie, quiche and tourtire pie, or French meat pie, which "is probably the most common Franco-American dish you'll find in this state," Michaud said.
The event is made possible by a grant from the Maine Humanities Council and help from the university's Diversity Committee. People can bring a dish of their own, but they are not required to do so.
For more information about the film, go to www.wakingupfrench.com/index.html. For more information about the event, call 621-3487 or e-mail chelsea.d.ray@maine.edu.
http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/5864175.html
Monday, December 8, 2008
(H)EART to EART(H)
...from gogratitude.com:
Gratitude is a gift of Love,
flowing from our sacred heart space ~
a timely reflection of our heavenly presence on earth.
So let's consider a (k)new view,
that perhaps the heart of the earth is YOU.
here we GO ...
simply move the first to last, like this:
(H)EART to EART(H)
worlds within worlds,
micro to macro ~ AlphaOmega ~
begining to end
~ we are connected as ONE.
Gratitude is a gift of Love,
flowing from our sacred heart space ~
a timely reflection of our heavenly presence on earth.
So let's consider a (k)new view,
that perhaps the heart of the earth is YOU.
here we GO ...
simply move the first to last, like this:
(H)EART to EART(H)
worlds within worlds,
micro to macro ~ AlphaOmega ~
begining to end
~ we are connected as ONE.
ok...here we go...tis the season...
Study Finds Joy To Be Contagious
[...this is what I want for Christmas...and all year round too...]
Published On Monday, December 08, 2008 3:18 AM
By NIHA S JAIN
Contributing Writer
It’s long been said that laughter is contagious, and now, it turns out, so is happiness.
Happiness is not an individual but a collective phenomenon, according to a new study released online Thursday in the British Medical Journal.
The study, which followed almost 5,000 people over 20 years, found that happiness can spread through three degrees of separation within social networks, meaning that the happiness of your friend, your friend’s friend, and even your friend’s friend’s friend can infect you with a good mood.
“Happiness not only spreads from person to person but also from person to person to person,” said political scientist James H. Fowler ’92, a professor at the University of California, San Diego and one of the paper’s authors.
The study suggests that the happiest people are those at the center of a social network, Fowler said, comparing this contagion of emotions to catching a sexually transmitted infection.
“For example, in a network of sexual partners, if you have many partners and your partners have many partners, you are more susceptible to catching an STD.” Similarly, Fowler said the most connected people have a greater likelihood of “catching happiness.”
Happily, the study suggests that sadness is not as easily transferred through social networks.
“Unhappiness spreads, but it doesn’t spread quite as much nor does it spread quite as consistently as happiness,” said Harvard Medical School professor Nicholas A. Christakis, who is a co-author of the paper.
Harvard psychology professor Daniel T. Gilbert, a expert on happiness, called the new paper “stunning” in an e-mailed statement.
“We’ve known for some time that social relationships are the best predictor of human happiness, and this paper shows that the effect is much more powerful than anyone realized,” Gilbert said. “It is truly amazing to discover that when you replace the word ‘child’ with ‘best friend’s neighbor’s uncle,’ the sentence is still true.”
[here is where the scrooges come in...]
But some scholars remain skeptical about whether the new findings are accurate. Another recent study in the BMJ cautions that Christakis and Fowler’s happiness study may be skewed.
“Our study certainly does not refute their happiness paper, but it just suggests some caution that if you don’t take care to control for other factors, that you might be finding contagion where none exists,” said Jason M. Fletcher, a professor of public health at Yale.
[contagion?...]
Fletcher co-authored a study suggesting that perceived network effects could be erroneous. Using the same statistical methods as the happiness study, his study found that characteristics like acne, headaches, and height are contagious among adolescents, indicating that the methods used in the happiness study can produce spurious results.
“There’s no such thing as a social contagion in height,” Fletcher said.
Fletcher and his co-author, B. Cohen-Cole ’95, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, suggested that the happiness study could be biased because happy people are often friends and that their good moods are not necessarily influenced by each other.
“Friends select people to be their friends based on similar characteristics,” said Fletcher, “and potentially happy people choose to be friends with other happy people.”
He added that friends are often exposed to the same environment, including similar levels of crime, risk, and weather, and that those external variables could influence happiness more than a friend’s mood.
In light of these criticisms, both research groups plan to continue probing into the field of happiness with future studies.
“The whole point of science is that you want to capture a great idea but then retain healthy skepticism,” Fowler said.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=525793
[...this is what I want for Christmas...and all year round too...]
Published On Monday, December 08, 2008 3:18 AM
By NIHA S JAIN
Contributing Writer
It’s long been said that laughter is contagious, and now, it turns out, so is happiness.
Happiness is not an individual but a collective phenomenon, according to a new study released online Thursday in the British Medical Journal.
The study, which followed almost 5,000 people over 20 years, found that happiness can spread through three degrees of separation within social networks, meaning that the happiness of your friend, your friend’s friend, and even your friend’s friend’s friend can infect you with a good mood.
“Happiness not only spreads from person to person but also from person to person to person,” said political scientist James H. Fowler ’92, a professor at the University of California, San Diego and one of the paper’s authors.
The study suggests that the happiest people are those at the center of a social network, Fowler said, comparing this contagion of emotions to catching a sexually transmitted infection.
“For example, in a network of sexual partners, if you have many partners and your partners have many partners, you are more susceptible to catching an STD.” Similarly, Fowler said the most connected people have a greater likelihood of “catching happiness.”
Happily, the study suggests that sadness is not as easily transferred through social networks.
“Unhappiness spreads, but it doesn’t spread quite as much nor does it spread quite as consistently as happiness,” said Harvard Medical School professor Nicholas A. Christakis, who is a co-author of the paper.
Harvard psychology professor Daniel T. Gilbert, a expert on happiness, called the new paper “stunning” in an e-mailed statement.
“We’ve known for some time that social relationships are the best predictor of human happiness, and this paper shows that the effect is much more powerful than anyone realized,” Gilbert said. “It is truly amazing to discover that when you replace the word ‘child’ with ‘best friend’s neighbor’s uncle,’ the sentence is still true.”
[here is where the scrooges come in...]
But some scholars remain skeptical about whether the new findings are accurate. Another recent study in the BMJ cautions that Christakis and Fowler’s happiness study may be skewed.
“Our study certainly does not refute their happiness paper, but it just suggests some caution that if you don’t take care to control for other factors, that you might be finding contagion where none exists,” said Jason M. Fletcher, a professor of public health at Yale.
[contagion?...]
Fletcher co-authored a study suggesting that perceived network effects could be erroneous. Using the same statistical methods as the happiness study, his study found that characteristics like acne, headaches, and height are contagious among adolescents, indicating that the methods used in the happiness study can produce spurious results.
“There’s no such thing as a social contagion in height,” Fletcher said.
Fletcher and his co-author, B. Cohen-Cole ’95, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, suggested that the happiness study could be biased because happy people are often friends and that their good moods are not necessarily influenced by each other.
“Friends select people to be their friends based on similar characteristics,” said Fletcher, “and potentially happy people choose to be friends with other happy people.”
He added that friends are often exposed to the same environment, including similar levels of crime, risk, and weather, and that those external variables could influence happiness more than a friend’s mood.
In light of these criticisms, both research groups plan to continue probing into the field of happiness with future studies.
“The whole point of science is that you want to capture a great idea but then retain healthy skepticism,” Fowler said.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=525793
Saturday, November 29, 2008
The world's most heinous crime
The world's most heinous crime
November 28, 2008
# Story Highlights
# December marks the 60th anniversary of the U.N.'s Genocide Convention
# A few strong voices have since tried to focus the world's attention on genocide
# Each time they were shunned, ignored or told it was someone else's problem
# CNN's Christiane Amanpour traveled to the world's killing fields to understand why
(CNN) -- They share a deep sorrow: an idealistic American who tried to protect the Kurds of Iraq, a Canadian general who refused to follow orders in Rwanda, a French priest who fought for the soul of Cambodia.
CNN's Christiane Amanpour traveled to the killing fields of Europe, Africa and Asia for "Scream Bloody Murder."
Each one tried to focus the world's attention on the world's most heinous crime: genocide. Each time, they were shunned, ignored or told it was someone else's problem.
To understand why, CNN's Christiane Amanpour traveled to the killing fields of Europe, Africa and Asia for a two-hour documentary, "Scream Bloody Murder."
Having reported on mass atrocities around the world, this time Amanpour traced the personal accounts of those who tried to stop the slaughter.
The yearlong CNN investigation found that instead of using a U.N. treaty outlawing genocide as a springboard to action, political leaders have invoked reason after reason to make intervention seem unnecessary, pointless and even counter-productive. Map: See the locations featured in the documentary »
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/11/20/sbm.overview/index.html#cnnSTCOther1
December marks the 60th anniversary of the U.N.'s Genocide Convention, when -- in the aftermath of the Holocaust -- the nations of the world pledged to prevent and punish future attempts to eliminate ethnic, religious and national groups. Read the 1948 Genocide Convention (pdf)
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/11/13/genocide.convention.pdf
"The Genocide Convention should have stopped genocide, but it didn't," said Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. Intervention is a daunting challenge, he believes, because of a tendency to minimize accounts from refugees and victims. "It's better not to believe, because if you believe, you don't sleep nights. And how can you eat? How can you drink a glass of wine when you know?"
1970s: Cambodia
Father François Ponchaud was a Catholic missionary in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge guerillas -- communist revolutionaries -- seized power in 1975. They expelled all foreigners from the country.
But working from France, Ponchaud gathered refugee accounts and monitored radio broadcasts to document the slave labor, torture and executions the Khmer Rouge were using to kill one-fourth of Cambodia's population.
He published his findings in a major French newspaper and wrote a book, "Year Zero." But even so, Ponchaud tells Amanpour, "No one believed us."
1980s: Iraq
CNN found that intervention is often weighed against political and economic costs.
Declassified U.S. government documents show that while Saddam Hussein was gassing Iraqi Kurds, the U.S. opposed punishing Iraq with a trade embargo because it was cultivating Iraq as an ally against Iran and as a market for U.S. farm exports.
According to Peter Galbraith, then an idealistic Senate staffer determined to stop Hussein from committing genocide, the Reagan administration "got carried away with their own propaganda. They began to believe that Saddam Hussein could be a reliable partner." Read once-secret U.S. documents
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/11/20/sbm.documents/index.html
1990s: Bosnia
Even extensive news coverage may not lead to intervention.
Scream Bloody Murder
Christiane Amanpour introduces you to heroes who protested evil and lived to tell their stories.
December 4, 9 p.m. ET
In Depth »
During the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the media reported on the Bosnian Serbs' ethnic cleansing of Muslims: the siege of Sarajevo, the concentration camps, the use of rape as a weapon of war.
It was like watching "a color remake of the black-and-white scenes we'd seen in World War II," said U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, whose Jewish grandfather fled Germany when Adolf Hitler came to power.
Holbrooke was an early advocate for a U.S.-led military operation against the Bosnian Serbs.
"I took a stand that I believed was correct," he told Amanpour. "I didn't think it was so controversial."
But it would take three years -- and the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica -- for Holbrooke to make his case within the Clinton administration.
1994: Rwanda
In Rwanda, where Hutu soldiers and militias massacred their Tutsi countrymen, the Clinton administration tried to avoid characterizing the ethnic slaughter as genocide.
According to an internal memo, the State Department worried that under the 1948 Genocide Convention, using the term "genocide" could force the U.S. "to actually 'do something.'"
The head of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda, Canadian Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, begged for additional troops. Instead of reinforcements, Dallaire got an order to withdraw completely. He would not leave Rwanda.
"I refused a legal order," he told Amanpour, "but it was immoral." His tiny U.N. force was not enough to stop the slaughter of more than 800,000 people.
2003: Darfur
Some human rights advocates consider Darfur, the western region of Sudan, to be the scene of the first genocide of the 21st century.
The atrocities in Darfur grow out of a civil war between rebels from Sudan's African tribes and the country's Arab-led government.
In 2003, when the rebels attacked government outposts in Darfur, a U.N. human rights monitor warned that in the "escalating conflict," Sudan's government may be "engaged in ... ethnic cleansing aimed at eliminating African tribes from Darfur."
At the time, world attention was on Iraq, where the United States was fighting to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The early warning on Darfur "disappeared into a big hole," according to Mukesh Kapila, then the U.N.'s top official in Sudan.
Even when the U.N. Security Council put Darfur on its agenda, it took more than three years to authorize a robust peacekeeping force.
"There was no lack of information," says activist Eric Reeves. "There was a lack of will to stop genocide."
In July, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court accused Sudan's president of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, charges Sudan denies. Read the ICC prosecutor's charges (pdf)
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/11/22/icc.summary.pdf
How will history judge the world's response to Darfur?
"It will applaud the young people ... who believe in solidarity," says Wiesel. "It will certainly criticize the leaders of the world."
And the next time somebody screams bloody murder to stop a genocide, will anyone listen?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/11/20/sbm.overview/index.html#cnnSTCText
November 28, 2008
# Story Highlights
# December marks the 60th anniversary of the U.N.'s Genocide Convention
# A few strong voices have since tried to focus the world's attention on genocide
# Each time they were shunned, ignored or told it was someone else's problem
# CNN's Christiane Amanpour traveled to the world's killing fields to understand why
(CNN) -- They share a deep sorrow: an idealistic American who tried to protect the Kurds of Iraq, a Canadian general who refused to follow orders in Rwanda, a French priest who fought for the soul of Cambodia.
CNN's Christiane Amanpour traveled to the killing fields of Europe, Africa and Asia for "Scream Bloody Murder."
Each one tried to focus the world's attention on the world's most heinous crime: genocide. Each time, they were shunned, ignored or told it was someone else's problem.
To understand why, CNN's Christiane Amanpour traveled to the killing fields of Europe, Africa and Asia for a two-hour documentary, "Scream Bloody Murder."
Having reported on mass atrocities around the world, this time Amanpour traced the personal accounts of those who tried to stop the slaughter.
The yearlong CNN investigation found that instead of using a U.N. treaty outlawing genocide as a springboard to action, political leaders have invoked reason after reason to make intervention seem unnecessary, pointless and even counter-productive. Map: See the locations featured in the documentary »
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/11/20/sbm.overview/index.html#cnnSTCOther1
December marks the 60th anniversary of the U.N.'s Genocide Convention, when -- in the aftermath of the Holocaust -- the nations of the world pledged to prevent and punish future attempts to eliminate ethnic, religious and national groups. Read the 1948 Genocide Convention (pdf)
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/11/13/genocide.convention.pdf
"The Genocide Convention should have stopped genocide, but it didn't," said Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. Intervention is a daunting challenge, he believes, because of a tendency to minimize accounts from refugees and victims. "It's better not to believe, because if you believe, you don't sleep nights. And how can you eat? How can you drink a glass of wine when you know?"
1970s: Cambodia
Father François Ponchaud was a Catholic missionary in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge guerillas -- communist revolutionaries -- seized power in 1975. They expelled all foreigners from the country.
But working from France, Ponchaud gathered refugee accounts and monitored radio broadcasts to document the slave labor, torture and executions the Khmer Rouge were using to kill one-fourth of Cambodia's population.
He published his findings in a major French newspaper and wrote a book, "Year Zero." But even so, Ponchaud tells Amanpour, "No one believed us."
1980s: Iraq
CNN found that intervention is often weighed against political and economic costs.
Declassified U.S. government documents show that while Saddam Hussein was gassing Iraqi Kurds, the U.S. opposed punishing Iraq with a trade embargo because it was cultivating Iraq as an ally against Iran and as a market for U.S. farm exports.
According to Peter Galbraith, then an idealistic Senate staffer determined to stop Hussein from committing genocide, the Reagan administration "got carried away with their own propaganda. They began to believe that Saddam Hussein could be a reliable partner." Read once-secret U.S. documents
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/11/20/sbm.documents/index.html
1990s: Bosnia
Even extensive news coverage may not lead to intervention.
Scream Bloody Murder
Christiane Amanpour introduces you to heroes who protested evil and lived to tell their stories.
December 4, 9 p.m. ET
In Depth »
During the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the media reported on the Bosnian Serbs' ethnic cleansing of Muslims: the siege of Sarajevo, the concentration camps, the use of rape as a weapon of war.
It was like watching "a color remake of the black-and-white scenes we'd seen in World War II," said U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, whose Jewish grandfather fled Germany when Adolf Hitler came to power.
Holbrooke was an early advocate for a U.S.-led military operation against the Bosnian Serbs.
"I took a stand that I believed was correct," he told Amanpour. "I didn't think it was so controversial."
But it would take three years -- and the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica -- for Holbrooke to make his case within the Clinton administration.
1994: Rwanda
In Rwanda, where Hutu soldiers and militias massacred their Tutsi countrymen, the Clinton administration tried to avoid characterizing the ethnic slaughter as genocide.
According to an internal memo, the State Department worried that under the 1948 Genocide Convention, using the term "genocide" could force the U.S. "to actually 'do something.'"
The head of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda, Canadian Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, begged for additional troops. Instead of reinforcements, Dallaire got an order to withdraw completely. He would not leave Rwanda.
"I refused a legal order," he told Amanpour, "but it was immoral." His tiny U.N. force was not enough to stop the slaughter of more than 800,000 people.
2003: Darfur
Some human rights advocates consider Darfur, the western region of Sudan, to be the scene of the first genocide of the 21st century.
The atrocities in Darfur grow out of a civil war between rebels from Sudan's African tribes and the country's Arab-led government.
In 2003, when the rebels attacked government outposts in Darfur, a U.N. human rights monitor warned that in the "escalating conflict," Sudan's government may be "engaged in ... ethnic cleansing aimed at eliminating African tribes from Darfur."
At the time, world attention was on Iraq, where the United States was fighting to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The early warning on Darfur "disappeared into a big hole," according to Mukesh Kapila, then the U.N.'s top official in Sudan.
Even when the U.N. Security Council put Darfur on its agenda, it took more than three years to authorize a robust peacekeeping force.
"There was no lack of information," says activist Eric Reeves. "There was a lack of will to stop genocide."
In July, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court accused Sudan's president of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, charges Sudan denies. Read the ICC prosecutor's charges (pdf)
http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/images/11/22/icc.summary.pdf
How will history judge the world's response to Darfur?
"It will applaud the young people ... who believe in solidarity," says Wiesel. "It will certainly criticize the leaders of the world."
And the next time somebody screams bloody murder to stop a genocide, will anyone listen?
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/11/20/sbm.overview/index.html#cnnSTCText
in case you wonder...
...what I was ranting about on T-day, ground zero below, the following is what I was thinking about...Dallaire says he has shaken hands with the devil...I question why evil was created to begin with...
Scream Bloody Murder
http://topics.cnn.com/topics/rwanda
As genocide raged, general's pleas for help ignored
November 28, 2008
# Story Highlights
# In 1994, Romeo Dallaire was leading a U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda
# The Canadian lieutenant general warned his bosses that a slaughter was imminent
# Instead of sending reinforcements, the U.N. eventually ordered Dallaire to withdraw
# He refused what he calls an "immoral" order and ultimately left Africa a broken man
By Ken Shiffman
CNN Senior Producer
(CNN) -- In 1993, Romeo Dallaire was full of hope for the future of Rwanda.
Romeo Dallaire, now a Canadian senator, says that in Rwanda, he "shook hands with the devil."
Romeo Dallaire, now a Canadian senator, says that in Rwanda, he "shook hands with the devil."
The Canadian lieutenant general and son of a soldier was about to take up the biggest command of his career -- leading United Nations peacekeepers in the central African nation.
A year later he left Rwanda a broken man, having watched helplessly as more than 800,000 people perished in Rwanda's genocide despite his pleas for more troops to stop the massacre.
"We could have actually saved hundreds of thousands," Dallaire told CNN's Christiane Amanpour for "Scream Bloody Murder."
"Nobody was interested."
Dallaire's mission was to monitor a peace deal between two warring ethnic groups, the Hutus and the Tutsis. But the agreement was just a façade. Hutu extremists within the government were stockpiling weapons, and Tutsi refugees had formed a rebel army.
The Tutsis were a minority in Rwanda, and their plight was personal for Dallaire. His Dutch mother had watched friends die in the Holocaust, and he had been raised on stories of heroic Canadian soldiers who brought hope to war-torn Europe.
Scream Bloody Murder
Christiane Amanpour introduces you to heroes who protested evil and lived to tell their stories.
December 4, 9 p.m. ET
In Depth »
http://topics.cnn.com/topics/rwanda
A French Canadian raised in Montreal, Dallaire had experienced discrimination first-hand and was determined to protect the Tutsi minority. But he soon found his was a lone voice.
On January 20, 1994, Dallaire made a chilling discovery: An informant warned him that Hutu government agents were planning bloodshed.
"They were going to conduct an outright slaughter and elimination of the opposition," Dallaire said.
Dallaire cabled his bosses in New York, warning that his informant "has been ordered to register all Tutsi in Kigali. He suspects it is for their extermination."
The informant described a major weapons cache, which Dallaire said he planned to raid in the next 36 hours.
Kofi Annan, then head of the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations, was concerned about the safety of Dallaire's limited U.N. force. Annan's office told Dallaire: "We cannot agree to the operation contemplated ... as it clearly goes beyond the mandate."
Dallaire tried to change Annan's mind, repeatedly exchanging faxes with New York through the rest of January and into February.
"Ultimately I got authority. It took two months, and by then it was far too late," Dallaire said.
"When you're operating in that sort of context with limited troops and facilities, you have to be careful what sort of risks they take, where everybody may even have to leave, and place a people at greater risk. And in a way, this is what happened," Annan said.
"Dallaire as a soldier, he's a very good man, he's a friend, and I respect his professional acumen. One had to take all these factors into consideration before you take a decision. Do the troops take this risk? Do they have the mandate? Do they have the resources?
"Dallaire himself said, 'If I had had a brigade, which is 5,000, I could have done a lot.' He had a fraction that number."
Asked why a brigade wasn't sent, Annan said: "The brigade was not available. The [Security] Council did not augment the troops. In fact, they went the other way.
"We would have liked to see a larger force in. I had had situations where I called 82 member states together, trying to get troops. I got zilch."
On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and neighboring Burundi was shot down. It was the moment the Hutu plotters had been waiting for -- the spark that ignited the genocide.
Col. Theoneste Bagosora, a Hutu extremist, immediately declared the army was in charge. Within hours, government troops and civilian death squads began slaughtering Tutsis.
"We saw the extremists, the presidential guard and militias, going to specific houses ... and killing people or hauling people off," Dallaire said.
He described the horror of getting phone calls from people he knew while they were under attack.
"As they were busting down the door and opening fire," he said, "we would literally hear people dying at the end of the phone as they were trying to get through to us and we had literally nothing to send them."
Dallaire also heard the Hutu government-run radio tell listeners that Tutsis were "nothing but cockroaches," broadcasting names of people to be murdered and instructions on how to mutilate and kill them.
It was an echo of past genocides. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge called their victims "worms." To the Nazis, Jews were "vermin."
Dallaire says he and his troops moved through entire villages of dead, sometimes clearing paths through corpses with their bare hands.
"With my own hands I carried them," he said. "We carried them in our arms, we carried kids in our arms, and adults. We were picking the bodies and moving them aside. ...There would be piles of bodies."
Dallaire's troops were also targets: 10 were killed in the first days of the genocide. He was desperate for help, on the phone with New York several times a day, asking when reinforcements were coming.
Five days into the killing, some U.S. officials began to fear the worst. A top Pentagon official wrote about the potential for "hundreds of thousands of deaths." A day later, a State Department memo warned of "a bloodbath."
But instead of reinforcements, the United States joined a chorus of countries calling for withdrawal. Washington's taste for foreign intervention had soured.
Just months earlier in Somalia, two dozen Pakistani peacekeepers had been murdered. United States commandos on the hunt for the killers had their Black Hawk helicopter shot down. Eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed.
Americans were anxious to extricate themselves from Africa -- just as they had been in Southeast Asia decades before.
"The U.S. troops had been killed and dragged through the streets and humiliated," Annan said. "The governments were not prepared to take another risk and go into Rwanda."
After two weeks of debate, Washington compromised and agreed to a token U.N. presence. The result: The U.N. Security Council voted to reduce Dallaire's already small force by 90 percent.
"In essence, they voted to allow the killers to continue," said Michael Barnett, a professor who was on a fellowship at the U.N. at the time and studied its response to the genocide.
"The moment that the U.N. votes to withdraw, that's when we see a real spike in the violence," Barnett said. "Because at that point it's clear to the Rwandans ... that there will not be any cavalry over the horizon."
In the fourth week of the killing, then U.N. Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Gali concluded that the mission was hopeless. He ordered a pullout of all U.N. troops. Dallaire refused.
"I refused a legal order," Dallaire said. "But it was immoral."
Dallaire and his few hundred peacekeepers could do little except help humanitarian efforts and protect a small number of people, while he repeatedly and futilely attempted to negotiate a cease-fire.
As the United States and the United Nations stood by, the rebel Tutsi army fought back against the Hutu government. In mid-July, 100 days of hell came to an end when Tutsi forces declared victory.
Weeks later, Dallaire asked to be relieved of his command. The horrors of the genocide had taken its toll. He was guilt-ridden, believing he should have done more to prevent the genocide.
In his book, "Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda," Dallaire wrote: "Death became a desired option. I hoped I would hit a mine or run into an ambush and just end it all. I think some part of me wanted to join the legions of the dead, whom I had failed."
Those thoughts of suicide followed him home to Canada.
In the preface of his book, Dallaire summed up his Rwanda experience, writing, "I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists, and therefore I know there is a God."
Today Dallaire is a senator in the Canadian parliament and dedicates much of his time to an initiative to eradicate the use of child soldiers.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/11/13/sbm.dallaire.profile/
Scream Bloody Murder
http://topics.cnn.com/topics/rwanda
As genocide raged, general's pleas for help ignored
November 28, 2008
# Story Highlights
# In 1994, Romeo Dallaire was leading a U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda
# The Canadian lieutenant general warned his bosses that a slaughter was imminent
# Instead of sending reinforcements, the U.N. eventually ordered Dallaire to withdraw
# He refused what he calls an "immoral" order and ultimately left Africa a broken man
By Ken Shiffman
CNN Senior Producer
(CNN) -- In 1993, Romeo Dallaire was full of hope for the future of Rwanda.
Romeo Dallaire, now a Canadian senator, says that in Rwanda, he "shook hands with the devil."
Romeo Dallaire, now a Canadian senator, says that in Rwanda, he "shook hands with the devil."
The Canadian lieutenant general and son of a soldier was about to take up the biggest command of his career -- leading United Nations peacekeepers in the central African nation.
A year later he left Rwanda a broken man, having watched helplessly as more than 800,000 people perished in Rwanda's genocide despite his pleas for more troops to stop the massacre.
"We could have actually saved hundreds of thousands," Dallaire told CNN's Christiane Amanpour for "Scream Bloody Murder."
"Nobody was interested."
Dallaire's mission was to monitor a peace deal between two warring ethnic groups, the Hutus and the Tutsis. But the agreement was just a façade. Hutu extremists within the government were stockpiling weapons, and Tutsi refugees had formed a rebel army.
The Tutsis were a minority in Rwanda, and their plight was personal for Dallaire. His Dutch mother had watched friends die in the Holocaust, and he had been raised on stories of heroic Canadian soldiers who brought hope to war-torn Europe.
Scream Bloody Murder
Christiane Amanpour introduces you to heroes who protested evil and lived to tell their stories.
December 4, 9 p.m. ET
In Depth »
http://topics.cnn.com/topics/rwanda
A French Canadian raised in Montreal, Dallaire had experienced discrimination first-hand and was determined to protect the Tutsi minority. But he soon found his was a lone voice.
On January 20, 1994, Dallaire made a chilling discovery: An informant warned him that Hutu government agents were planning bloodshed.
"They were going to conduct an outright slaughter and elimination of the opposition," Dallaire said.
Dallaire cabled his bosses in New York, warning that his informant "has been ordered to register all Tutsi in Kigali. He suspects it is for their extermination."
The informant described a major weapons cache, which Dallaire said he planned to raid in the next 36 hours.
Kofi Annan, then head of the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations, was concerned about the safety of Dallaire's limited U.N. force. Annan's office told Dallaire: "We cannot agree to the operation contemplated ... as it clearly goes beyond the mandate."
Dallaire tried to change Annan's mind, repeatedly exchanging faxes with New York through the rest of January and into February.
"Ultimately I got authority. It took two months, and by then it was far too late," Dallaire said.
"When you're operating in that sort of context with limited troops and facilities, you have to be careful what sort of risks they take, where everybody may even have to leave, and place a people at greater risk. And in a way, this is what happened," Annan said.
"Dallaire as a soldier, he's a very good man, he's a friend, and I respect his professional acumen. One had to take all these factors into consideration before you take a decision. Do the troops take this risk? Do they have the mandate? Do they have the resources?
"Dallaire himself said, 'If I had had a brigade, which is 5,000, I could have done a lot.' He had a fraction that number."
Asked why a brigade wasn't sent, Annan said: "The brigade was not available. The [Security] Council did not augment the troops. In fact, they went the other way.
"We would have liked to see a larger force in. I had had situations where I called 82 member states together, trying to get troops. I got zilch."
On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and neighboring Burundi was shot down. It was the moment the Hutu plotters had been waiting for -- the spark that ignited the genocide.
Col. Theoneste Bagosora, a Hutu extremist, immediately declared the army was in charge. Within hours, government troops and civilian death squads began slaughtering Tutsis.
"We saw the extremists, the presidential guard and militias, going to specific houses ... and killing people or hauling people off," Dallaire said.
He described the horror of getting phone calls from people he knew while they were under attack.
"As they were busting down the door and opening fire," he said, "we would literally hear people dying at the end of the phone as they were trying to get through to us and we had literally nothing to send them."
Dallaire also heard the Hutu government-run radio tell listeners that Tutsis were "nothing but cockroaches," broadcasting names of people to be murdered and instructions on how to mutilate and kill them.
It was an echo of past genocides. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge called their victims "worms." To the Nazis, Jews were "vermin."
Dallaire says he and his troops moved through entire villages of dead, sometimes clearing paths through corpses with their bare hands.
"With my own hands I carried them," he said. "We carried them in our arms, we carried kids in our arms, and adults. We were picking the bodies and moving them aside. ...There would be piles of bodies."
Dallaire's troops were also targets: 10 were killed in the first days of the genocide. He was desperate for help, on the phone with New York several times a day, asking when reinforcements were coming.
Five days into the killing, some U.S. officials began to fear the worst. A top Pentagon official wrote about the potential for "hundreds of thousands of deaths." A day later, a State Department memo warned of "a bloodbath."
But instead of reinforcements, the United States joined a chorus of countries calling for withdrawal. Washington's taste for foreign intervention had soured.
Just months earlier in Somalia, two dozen Pakistani peacekeepers had been murdered. United States commandos on the hunt for the killers had their Black Hawk helicopter shot down. Eighteen U.S. soldiers were killed.
Americans were anxious to extricate themselves from Africa -- just as they had been in Southeast Asia decades before.
"The U.S. troops had been killed and dragged through the streets and humiliated," Annan said. "The governments were not prepared to take another risk and go into Rwanda."
After two weeks of debate, Washington compromised and agreed to a token U.N. presence. The result: The U.N. Security Council voted to reduce Dallaire's already small force by 90 percent.
"In essence, they voted to allow the killers to continue," said Michael Barnett, a professor who was on a fellowship at the U.N. at the time and studied its response to the genocide.
"The moment that the U.N. votes to withdraw, that's when we see a real spike in the violence," Barnett said. "Because at that point it's clear to the Rwandans ... that there will not be any cavalry over the horizon."
In the fourth week of the killing, then U.N. Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Gali concluded that the mission was hopeless. He ordered a pullout of all U.N. troops. Dallaire refused.
"I refused a legal order," Dallaire said. "But it was immoral."
Dallaire and his few hundred peacekeepers could do little except help humanitarian efforts and protect a small number of people, while he repeatedly and futilely attempted to negotiate a cease-fire.
As the United States and the United Nations stood by, the rebel Tutsi army fought back against the Hutu government. In mid-July, 100 days of hell came to an end when Tutsi forces declared victory.
Weeks later, Dallaire asked to be relieved of his command. The horrors of the genocide had taken its toll. He was guilt-ridden, believing he should have done more to prevent the genocide.
In his book, "Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda," Dallaire wrote: "Death became a desired option. I hoped I would hit a mine or run into an ambush and just end it all. I think some part of me wanted to join the legions of the dead, whom I had failed."
Those thoughts of suicide followed him home to Canada.
In the preface of his book, Dallaire summed up his Rwanda experience, writing, "I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists, and therefore I know there is a God."
Today Dallaire is a senator in the Canadian parliament and dedicates much of his time to an initiative to eradicate the use of child soldiers.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/11/13/sbm.dallaire.profile/
...you know you have "arrived"...when
...your book is for sale on ebay...and this time for a good cause...
Books Beyond Borders
Maintained by: booksbeyondborders( 8200Feedback score is 5,000 to 9,999) Member is a PowerSellerMember has an eBay Store
Books Beyond Borders donates all net profits from sales to Project Schoolhouse to help build schools in Developing Countries. We operate solely from donated books, cds, dvds, electronics, tools etc.
Books Beyond Borders
Maintained by: booksbeyondborders( 8200Feedback score is 5,000 to 9,999) Member is a PowerSellerMember has an eBay Store
Books Beyond Borders donates all net profits from sales to Project Schoolhouse to help build schools in Developing Countries. We operate solely from donated books, cds, dvds, electronics, tools etc.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Happy Thanksgiving...yeah, right...
from the ironic skeptic...a short scenario I play in my head...and if you are the type that scares easily...maybe you best be moving along...
The gift, or problem, depending on how you look at it, that I've been given, if we are talking about those who speak in tongues variety of gifts, is that I've always been able to see the future--to some extent--or, at least, feel the consequences very close at hand. In my moments of lucidity, of which I am experiencing one at the moment, but I must also say I don't always pay attention to my "gift," again, depending on how "strong" I am in the moment...but at any rate, I have the other "gift" of almost instant response when I step out of line. Which I credit to what keeps me on the straight and narrow, relatively speaking. Usually, I am grabbed by the front of my shirt and put up agains the wall, cosmically, upon my committing "error," let's just call my brand of sinning that for the time being...so, below is a random page from my written journal in my moment of lucidity about Thanksgiving...
Bien à vous !
The choice to break out of the "assigned roles" (...no mistake that that word begins with "ass...") is a strong one, but the bitterness of the memory of being assigned a role does not go away. I suppose what matters is what ones does with the bitterness. Remembering the events that caused the bitterness is not the same as overcoming them in the same memory. Not addressing the moments of bitterness, at any given moment, would again be another story. The lack of opportunity, or opportunities, either given or made, falls somewhere in the category of sit there and feel sorry for yourself, or buck up and do something about this miserable, fucking situation, life, at hand. Despite the crack lords and 'hos--gatekeepers of one variety or another.
Age old problem. Nasty, uneven distribution of goods, and in some parts of this shit pile, aka, world, that means food, clothing, shelter, medicine...dignity--the list goes on and on.
As an avid reader of NDEs...http://www.near-death.com/, my choice of "religion" these days, eye-witness accounts...encounters of the 3rd kind, doubting Thomas, be damned...news bulletins from the other side...and yet one more lie to be put to rest...nobody ever comes back from the dead...so what was Lazarus doing, taking an extra long nap? The whole thing about this set-up...the perfect disguise...is where everything is hidden--in plain sight.
Anyway, I wonder about the whole deal in general--the way things are set up to begin with. And I am at the point in my life where I see all around me weaknesses manifested in so much logo-isms--yeah, that hood ornament will get you there faster, cooler, sleeker, bad-ass, meaner,--a better human being all around proof--cough, choke, snort--spit; jockeying for positions Cain/Abel-like; who's who lists (guilty as charged)--even to be recorded for the eternal; and my response is this: What's going on here is a fucking illusion--something to fill in the cracks till our number comes up and they, the death angels--what a dark lot they all must be I think to myself reading the headlines of how awful yet another death has come about "accidentally"--fashion an "exit" of one sort or another only to take you "topside" to yet another group of self-important, self-appointeds, or better still, teacher's pets, classroom monitors, tattletales--christ, they are everywhere, and they ask you how did you make others feel? And I'm gonna say to them the same thing I see going on down here: Are you fucking kidding me? You set up a system, weighted dice to be exact, and you dare ask me what the fuck I did to make others feel +/-/=? And then I think, might I ask you the same?
Boils down to choice: You either do or you don't as much and as far as one can...and into the mix you add gallons and gallons of insecurities and then light a match just to watch them burn.
Like this life is set up fair? No one promised you a rose garden...goddamned good thing...
No culpability there; no ethics--throw ethical right out the window with impunity. That, right there, is the fine print. And, in the final end, you ask me, personal-like, what did I do to others? I will say under the circumstances, best that I could. Even normal living condition is aggression, and if you don't, you're fucked. Says so right in the bible in the part about the talents...bury them in the ground and see how appreciated you are.
So there. A stance of "we're not gonna take it" gets you a session under the interrogation lamp, swinging back and forth, interrogator with the green visor on, all film noir, asking in faux innocence: So what did you choose to do? One word response: Survive. Make that a two-word response: Fuckface.
...and maybe that is where the gratitude comes in, given the distribution system called Life, Living--being grateful at any level for what one is given...despite the unevenness for many...and do what you can for the rest who don't have as much as you...in some kind of catch-as-you-can style of donations...
...so when they ask you the question again, because obviously the first smart ass answer is not the answer at all...how did you make others feel?...You can say: the best I could, brother, the best I could given the tools you gave me at the time. How's that? Is that the answer you are looking for? Because you know what...that light in my face is bothering me, and it's hot besides...so why don't you just cool it and take a powder? I did not design that system, and nobody asked me what I thought it should be, or look like. I don't smoke, but do you happen to have a cigarette handy because right now you're making me feel like I need a smoke. Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch bitch...that's all you do...is bitch.
Forget the holiday greeting, have a nice life. As best you can.
P.S. I really have to agree with Jewel, "In the end, only kindness matters," and if you are not doing that...well, you know, it just ain't happening...because perhaps the ONLY things recorded in the book of life...are the acts of kindness and the rest, well, that isn't real. It's only an illusion...
"In the end, only kindness matters." Hands, Jewel
The gift, or problem, depending on how you look at it, that I've been given, if we are talking about those who speak in tongues variety of gifts, is that I've always been able to see the future--to some extent--or, at least, feel the consequences very close at hand. In my moments of lucidity, of which I am experiencing one at the moment, but I must also say I don't always pay attention to my "gift," again, depending on how "strong" I am in the moment...but at any rate, I have the other "gift" of almost instant response when I step out of line. Which I credit to what keeps me on the straight and narrow, relatively speaking. Usually, I am grabbed by the front of my shirt and put up agains the wall, cosmically, upon my committing "error," let's just call my brand of sinning that for the time being...so, below is a random page from my written journal in my moment of lucidity about Thanksgiving...
Bien à vous !
The choice to break out of the "assigned roles" (...no mistake that that word begins with "ass...") is a strong one, but the bitterness of the memory of being assigned a role does not go away. I suppose what matters is what ones does with the bitterness. Remembering the events that caused the bitterness is not the same as overcoming them in the same memory. Not addressing the moments of bitterness, at any given moment, would again be another story. The lack of opportunity, or opportunities, either given or made, falls somewhere in the category of sit there and feel sorry for yourself, or buck up and do something about this miserable, fucking situation, life, at hand. Despite the crack lords and 'hos--gatekeepers of one variety or another.
Age old problem. Nasty, uneven distribution of goods, and in some parts of this shit pile, aka, world, that means food, clothing, shelter, medicine...dignity--the list goes on and on.
As an avid reader of NDEs...http://www.near-death.com/, my choice of "religion" these days, eye-witness accounts...encounters of the 3rd kind, doubting Thomas, be damned...news bulletins from the other side...and yet one more lie to be put to rest...nobody ever comes back from the dead...so what was Lazarus doing, taking an extra long nap? The whole thing about this set-up...the perfect disguise...is where everything is hidden--in plain sight.
Anyway, I wonder about the whole deal in general--the way things are set up to begin with. And I am at the point in my life where I see all around me weaknesses manifested in so much logo-isms--yeah, that hood ornament will get you there faster, cooler, sleeker, bad-ass, meaner,--a better human being all around proof--cough, choke, snort--spit; jockeying for positions Cain/Abel-like; who's who lists (guilty as charged)--even to be recorded for the eternal; and my response is this: What's going on here is a fucking illusion--something to fill in the cracks till our number comes up and they, the death angels--what a dark lot they all must be I think to myself reading the headlines of how awful yet another death has come about "accidentally"--fashion an "exit" of one sort or another only to take you "topside" to yet another group of self-important, self-appointeds, or better still, teacher's pets, classroom monitors, tattletales--christ, they are everywhere, and they ask you how did you make others feel? And I'm gonna say to them the same thing I see going on down here: Are you fucking kidding me? You set up a system, weighted dice to be exact, and you dare ask me what the fuck I did to make others feel +/-/=? And then I think, might I ask you the same?
Boils down to choice: You either do or you don't as much and as far as one can...and into the mix you add gallons and gallons of insecurities and then light a match just to watch them burn.
Like this life is set up fair? No one promised you a rose garden...goddamned good thing...
No culpability there; no ethics--throw ethical right out the window with impunity. That, right there, is the fine print. And, in the final end, you ask me, personal-like, what did I do to others? I will say under the circumstances, best that I could. Even normal living condition is aggression, and if you don't, you're fucked. Says so right in the bible in the part about the talents...bury them in the ground and see how appreciated you are.
So there. A stance of "we're not gonna take it" gets you a session under the interrogation lamp, swinging back and forth, interrogator with the green visor on, all film noir, asking in faux innocence: So what did you choose to do? One word response: Survive. Make that a two-word response: Fuckface.
...and maybe that is where the gratitude comes in, given the distribution system called Life, Living--being grateful at any level for what one is given...despite the unevenness for many...and do what you can for the rest who don't have as much as you...in some kind of catch-as-you-can style of donations...
...so when they ask you the question again, because obviously the first smart ass answer is not the answer at all...how did you make others feel?...You can say: the best I could, brother, the best I could given the tools you gave me at the time. How's that? Is that the answer you are looking for? Because you know what...that light in my face is bothering me, and it's hot besides...so why don't you just cool it and take a powder? I did not design that system, and nobody asked me what I thought it should be, or look like. I don't smoke, but do you happen to have a cigarette handy because right now you're making me feel like I need a smoke. Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch bitch...that's all you do...is bitch.
Forget the holiday greeting, have a nice life. As best you can.
P.S. I really have to agree with Jewel, "In the end, only kindness matters," and if you are not doing that...well, you know, it just ain't happening...because perhaps the ONLY things recorded in the book of life...are the acts of kindness and the rest, well, that isn't real. It's only an illusion...
"In the end, only kindness matters." Hands, Jewel
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Attitude with Gratitude...
@ http://www.gogratitude.com/
check it!
"Intentions For
Aligning With Your Heartwork."
Intentions For Aligning with Your Heartwork - Oct 1
After registering for the Online Community at:
www.worldgratitude.com/gforum, we'd like to invite you
to post a message on the board entitled, "Intentions For
Aligning With Your Heartwork."
This will enable us all to be calibrated with eachother's
intentions so that we can hold that space for eachother
as we begin the 42 Days Aligning with Our Heartwork
Gratitude series.
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=6Gnx3&m=1ZQDP5RXMZwr6L&b=nJMN6GSfdNHp29eAMwp3HA
Mine: Attitude with gratitude.
check it!
"Intentions For
Aligning With Your Heartwork."
Intentions For Aligning with Your Heartwork - Oct 1
After registering for the Online Community at:
www.worldgratitude.com/gforum, we'd like to invite you
to post a message on the board entitled, "Intentions For
Aligning With Your Heartwork."
This will enable us all to be calibrated with eachother's
intentions so that we can hold that space for eachother
as we begin the 42 Days Aligning with Our Heartwork
Gratitude series.
http://clicks.aweber.com/y/ct/?l=6Gnx3&m=1ZQDP5RXMZwr6L&b=nJMN6GSfdNHp29eAMwp3HA
Mine: Attitude with gratitude.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Hélène de Champlain
Nicole Fyfe-Martel dédicacera son roman historique :
Hélène de Champlain
http://www.buridan.fr/
Dans le cadre du 400e anniversaire de la fondation de la ville de Québec, Nicole Fyfe-Martel et les éditions Hurtubise présenteront exceptionnellement à Paris, le grand roman historique, Hélène de Champlain, l'épouse du célèbre fondateur de la capitale de la Belle Province.
Ce roman, vendu à plus de 60 000 exemplaire, est au Québec un véritable succès de librairie. Le tome 2 a reçu le pris du public la Presse, au salon du livre de Montréal en 2005.
Cette signature est réalisée en partenariat avec la librairie du Québec et les diffusions du Nouveau Monde; nous remercions également Pascale Cosse de la Délégation générale du Québec.
Hélène de Champlain
http://www.buridan.fr/
Dans le cadre du 400e anniversaire de la fondation de la ville de Québec, Nicole Fyfe-Martel et les éditions Hurtubise présenteront exceptionnellement à Paris, le grand roman historique, Hélène de Champlain, l'épouse du célèbre fondateur de la capitale de la Belle Province.
Ce roman, vendu à plus de 60 000 exemplaire, est au Québec un véritable succès de librairie. Le tome 2 a reçu le pris du public la Presse, au salon du livre de Montréal en 2005.
Cette signature est réalisée en partenariat avec la librairie du Québec et les diffusions du Nouveau Monde; nous remercions également Pascale Cosse de la Délégation générale du Québec.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Fiction by Rhea Cote Robbins, Portland Magazine
Portland Magazine, April Issue, 2008
Portland Magazine, April Issue
Fiction, page 103
”The Spirits of the Lake–Golden Pond Revisited”
By Rhea Côté Robbins
"You have a strong, original main character, and you let the reader beautifully into her thoughts. The perspective dares to be different, and very quickly readers will feel they share a stake in the outcome. It also dips a toe into a world bigger than we are."
Best wishes,
Colin Sargent, Editor
http://www.portlandmagazine.com/
Wednesday's Child in its 5th publishing!
Rhea Côté (Cote) Robbins' Wednesday's Child is beautiful stuff, a defiant and poignant memoir that transcends the personal. It is an important book not only for its immediate content, for the experience of life within its covers, but because it gives us a glimpse of the almost unmined Golconda of literary source material in Franco-American lives.--E. Annie Proulx
Wednesday's Child is a dark, dream-like meditation on fragility and survival, of the body from cancer and of the Franco-American community from its inheritance of paroissial piety, social marginality, and relentless poverty. If your roots are in that community, there is much to recognize and confirm; if not, there is much to learn and remember. --Clark Blaise
Against the more familiar observations of the small-town lifer and the urban refugee, Rhea Côté (Cote) Robbins' syncopations stood out, at once unique and connected to a vibrant and hardscrabble culture. This is a sensuous recollection made urgent by a pending medical diagnosis, and the result is an energetic, poignant, and revelatory memoir. ...Wednesday's Child is astir in every sentence.--Sven Birkerts
Courses that read Wednesday's Child:
French Identity in Maine
Culture and Identity in Contemporary American Writing, English, Orono
Social Work, Orono, ME
Maine Studies, Orono, ME
Women's Studies, Orono
Seminar on Women's Narratives, Colby College
Autobiography, Education, and Human Development, Colby College
Gender, Race and Class, Bangor Theological Seminary
Great Issues Course, Unity College
Universities which teach Wednesday's Child:
Smith College, Northampton, MA
University of Maine, Orono, ME
Bangor Theological Seminary, Bangor, ME
University of Southern Maine, Portland/Gorham, ME
University of So. Me. @ Lewiston/Auburn, Lewiston, ME
Colby College, Waterville, ME
Keene State College, Keene, NH
Bates College, Lewiston, ME
more info:
http://www.rhetapress.com/
Tenir le blogue Franco-American News & Events et en faire la promotion
Blogs--wave of Franco-American future!, best, Rhea
--------------------
Chronique "Sur le ContiNet": un blogue franco/anglo de “News Aggregation”
Le Canard est ravi d'avoir appris une belle histoire et de vous en faire part!
[Soumise par gaulois]
par Réjean Beaulieu, Le Canard Réincarné/Le Gaboteur
Vancouver, Colombie-Britannique
le 1er avril 2008
visite:
http://lecanardreincarne.freesoul.ca/comment.php?comment.news.1397
Tenir le blogue Franco-American News & Events et en faire la promotion
Le blogue associé au FAWI est publié assidûment depuis 2005. Il reprend ces mois-ci les festivités du 400ième Québec, la redécouverte du grand écrivain franco-américain Jack Kerouac, ainsi que la scène culturelle franco-américaine du Nord-Est. Jacques Boudreau de la Gatineau et Nicole Ouellette, une concitoyenne du Maine, assistent Mme Rhéa Côté Robbins pour alimenter le blogue.
Note: La chronique "Sur Le ContiNet" du journal terreneuvien Le Gaboteur vous propose la découverte de territoires virtuels occupés par les francophones de milieu minoritaire dispersés sur tout le continent nord-américain.
Rhea Cote Robbins, M.A.
641 South Main St.
Brewer, Maine 04412-2516
Telephone: 207-989-7059
Fax: 207-989-7059
Email:
Rhea_Cote@umit.maine.edu
RJCR@aol.com
Web Sites:
Author of Wednesday's Child
http://www.rhetapress.com/
New book, just published:
Canuck and Other Stories
Rhea Côté Robbins, Editor
Canuck, by Camille Lessard Bissonnette, (1883-1970),
translated by Sue Huseman and Sylvie Charron
La Jeune Franco-Américaine, The Young Franco-American
by Alberte Gastonguay, (1906-1978),
translated by Madeleine C. Paré Roy
Françaises d'Amérique, Frenchwomen of North America
by Corinne Rocheleau Rouleau, (1881-1963),
translated by Jeannine Bacon Roy
Franco-American Women's Institute
online since 1996
http://www.fawi.net/
"The artist is always beginning," Ezra Pound once wrote. "Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth. The very name Troubadour means a 'finder,' one who discovers."...his central imperative: "Make it new."
--------------------
Chronique "Sur le ContiNet": un blogue franco/anglo de “News Aggregation”
Le Canard est ravi d'avoir appris une belle histoire et de vous en faire part!
[Soumise par gaulois]
par Réjean Beaulieu, Le Canard Réincarné/Le Gaboteur
Vancouver, Colombie-Britannique
le 1er avril 2008
visite:
http://lecanardreincarne.freesoul.ca/comment.php?comment.news.1397
Tenir le blogue Franco-American News & Events et en faire la promotion
Le blogue associé au FAWI est publié assidûment depuis 2005. Il reprend ces mois-ci les festivités du 400ième Québec, la redécouverte du grand écrivain franco-américain Jack Kerouac, ainsi que la scène culturelle franco-américaine du Nord-Est. Jacques Boudreau de la Gatineau et Nicole Ouellette, une concitoyenne du Maine, assistent Mme Rhéa Côté Robbins pour alimenter le blogue.
Note: La chronique "Sur Le ContiNet" du journal terreneuvien Le Gaboteur vous propose la découverte de territoires virtuels occupés par les francophones de milieu minoritaire dispersés sur tout le continent nord-américain.
Rhea Cote Robbins, M.A.
641 South Main St.
Brewer, Maine 04412-2516
Telephone: 207-989-7059
Fax: 207-989-7059
Email:
Rhea_Cote@umit.maine.edu
RJCR@aol.com
Web Sites:
Author of Wednesday's Child
http://www.rhetapress.com/
New book, just published:
Canuck and Other Stories
Rhea Côté Robbins, Editor
Canuck, by Camille Lessard Bissonnette, (1883-1970),
translated by Sue Huseman and Sylvie Charron
La Jeune Franco-Américaine, The Young Franco-American
by Alberte Gastonguay, (1906-1978),
translated by Madeleine C. Paré Roy
Françaises d'Amérique, Frenchwomen of North America
by Corinne Rocheleau Rouleau, (1881-1963),
translated by Jeannine Bacon Roy
Franco-American Women's Institute
online since 1996
http://www.fawi.net/
"The artist is always beginning," Ezra Pound once wrote. "Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth. The very name Troubadour means a 'finder,' one who discovers."...his central imperative: "Make it new."
Saturday, March 8, 2008
White-on-White Prejudices: A Critique
3/8/08 Saturday
International Women’s Day
White-on-White Prejudices: A Critique
In my head there is a conversation about the Franco-American women’s literature, lit, and the effect of this white-on-white prejudice still going on in this state at so many levels in regard to their written word. Right now, I am thinking directly on the prejudice, discrimination, the “spirit of the KKK” that lives again, or still, down through the decades with the public permission given for the white-on-white discrimination.
When I marketed Canuck and Other Stories recently to Downeast Books, the person in charge told me: “We don’t carry books we don’t print anymore, but even if we did, that book would not have broad enough appeal.”
Not broad enough appeal? The Franco-American women’s immigration experience written first person, which reads as fresh today as when it was written, or even better, for the bridge that it builds between the generations to read, firsthand experience, historical and rich with imagery, this volume, Canuck, which also includes two bonus books, translations done by leading, Maine scholars--not broad enough appeal?
Where do people get such goofball ideas? And then, the permission to say them out loud.
I wrote that one down on a post-it and stuck it up on my computer screen to remind myself why I do the advocacy work I do on behalf of Franco-American women, and the continued need for such work.
Do these marketing geniuses actually know anything about the demographics of the population they purport to represent and/or the buyers who frequent their stores? Whose to say--someone might enjoy reading a book about the Franco-American women’s immigration experience, and/or what happened to them over the generations once they arrived?
[Perhaps the industry standard should be that those in charge of marketing literature in the state should sign up for Maine lit, Franco-American lit, and Native American women’s lit courses. Maybe they should get out more and take a pulse of the populations in the state?]
The issue, to my mind, comes down to two categories, possibly more, but for my purposes of discussion, I’ll say two root causes of the situation for lack of representation of Franco-American women’s lit in the market place:
1) People say there is no diversity in the state of Maine, i.e., “the whitest of states.”
2) The notion that there is no diversity in being “white.”
Let’s look at the statement that there is no diversity in the state of Maine. This basically is a white-on-white prejudice.
There was, and remains, such a need to control the French population in the state of Maine, and beyond, that as a population, we became a “color” on the wheel of prejudice:
We became known as, labeled as and were the targets of editorials, marches, epithets in the following examples:
--“White Niggers of the North”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Niggers_of_America
Minority Women of North America:
A Comparison of French-Canadian and Afro-American Women
By Jill M. Bystydzienski
Taken from American Review of Canadian Studies, 1985, XV, 4
http://www.fawi.net/ezine/vol3no4/FAAAFemmes.html
--“Chinese of the East”
"The Chinese of the East" was used in a government report: Carroll Wright, Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor Annual Report for 1881.computer [Bangor, Me.] : Maine Public Broadcasting, [1993?].
See also: “VOICING IDENTITY: THE CASE OF FRANCO-AMERICAN WOMEN IN MAINE”
By Kristin M. Langellier, Ph.D., and Eric E. Peterson, Ph.D., Orono
Presented at the International Communication Colloquium, July 30, 1998, Budapest, Hungary
http://www.fawi.net/ezine/pastezines/Volume2Number2and3.html#Langellier
--NY Times editorial
EDITORIAL
“THE FRENCH CANADIANS IN NEW-ENGLAND”
THE NEW YORK TIMES,
page 4, column 4 June 6, 1892
http://www.fawi.net/ezine/vol3no2/FCinNE.html
--KKK, largest membership of all the states, with representation in many Maine towns and marches carried out on the Main St., unchecked, and this following in regard to the women and the Klan
library.usm.maine.edu/pdfs/griot/sum03.pdf
www.mainememory.net/bin/Features?fn=217&fmt=list&n=1&supst=FK&mr=all
--Told to “speak white”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_White
--Language laws, 1920s to 1960s, forbidding the speaking of French at school other than in a classroom of instruction
--Many jobs not available to the French
--French family names being changed to accommodate the prejudice in order to “rise through the ranks”
http://homepages.roadrunner.com/frenchcx/angname.htm
--Jokes about the French
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE5D71F3AF937A25751C0A965958260
--Loss of language and culture due to the prejudices, generations deep
--Loss of body language due to comments such as “you talk with your hands.”
For a comprehensive essay on the above, see:
Franco-American Identity
by Yvon Labbé
For the Lewiston Sun Journal
September 29, 1999
www.francoamerican.org/academic/Yvon_Labbe_Lewiston_Sun.pdf
--Loss of color in people’s lives, clothing, houses, interiors, etc.
All The Colors Bleed Into One*
By Rhea Côté Robbins
http://www.fawi.net/PoemsandEssays/Colors/Colors.html
see also:
Self-Esteem and the Kitchen Stove
By Rhea Côté Robbins
http://www.fawi.net/ezine/vol3no3/Stove.html
If you think the spirit of the above overt prejudices has gone away, think again.
To treat the Franco-American women’s story on the geography as a second-class citizen is a serious mistake. I have attempted to have my writing published at some noted presses and the misconception and the attitude toward the Franco-American women’s lit is revealing of the prejudices that are allowed to continue to exist.
I say the above because of the type of response, and the manner of the response, I have received to my writings. The refusal is simply not a refusal, but a refusal with prejudicial comments included. And I wonder how such white-on-white prejudice can still exist.
Before we go deeper into this globalization, big box existence, we might want to think about the loss of local story, and how we play a part, or not, in the erasure of the unique diversity that is Maine.
We could list other heritages, cultures, races as well, but I will limit my comments to the Franco-American women’s lit because, I believe, I have a right to speak about the condition of neglect in regard to the representation of that voice in the market place that is “Maine.”
After having said that, I will say this, as I go around conducting my market surveys, I look for published works of other cultures that exist in the state of Maine, and their women’s writings, for example the Native American women of this state--and I find none. You might want to think about this if you do your own market survey.
As for my second point: No diversity in being “white.” As the term connotes, it is somehow understood that all shades of white are equal. I do not agree with that at all. Whites, as a race, get away with, if they so choose, not having to identify their backgrounds and they can “pass” or melt into corporate America’s classifications of logos, someone else’s initials all over your person (LV, CC, etc.), or labels pronouncing your pedigree. Mosey on down to Freeport or Kittery and get yourself some “heritage.”
There is a constant pull between modern interpretations of culture, usually corporate based, vs. historical heritage. I ask this: Why can’t both be carried forward at the same time as definitions of identity? People would argue that historical heritage causes divisions. I would argue that someone walking around all logo-ed, labeled and faux initialed, i.e., those not your own, creates a classed society, equally divisive.
Being White is not an excuse from having to, or being able to, identify one’s cultural heritage. One thing I can say for certain: This is no denying the ancestors! Think of the insult to the ancestors when someone “white” is in constant denial of the ancestors and where they came from. As for those who say they are Heinz 57, I will respond: More varieties to choose from!
The real issue arises with the forced march of Others by Some to erase, ignore, or drop their culture in order for them to participate in the market driven, economy culture.
I’m sure if I wrote an ethnically cleansed story, without any reference to historical, and therefore, uncomfortable white-on-white prejudice as evidenced in the state of Maine, I, too, might have a chance of being published mainstream without the commentary that my book is:
“…controversial”
“You can’t say that in a book.”
“Your book caused quite a stir at our editorial board!”
“…not broad enough appeal.”
etc., etc., etc.
So, I’m just here to say that I will not for a moment buy the line that the Franco-American women’s story belongs to a second class citizen and is not of broad enough appeal. Also, that I provide, as much as my time will allow, a place for Franco-American women to publish their work on the Franco-American Women’s Institute site’s ezine, moé pi toé, me and you, http://www.fawi.net/Links.html#contemporary
as well as I help as many Franco-American women who ask, achieve self-publishing. In this atmosphere of neglect, self-publishing is a noble act of correcting a serious wrong and equalizing the balance of story about the diversity that exists in Maine.
So my final critique is this: Franco-American women’s written voices have a place in the literary landscape of this state and the accumulation of multiple voices only adds to the rich diversity of Maine women’s stories.
Happy International Women’s Day…because with women such as Franco-American women, you have an instant international connection to many parts of the world.
Testimony on Wednesday’s Child:
Thursday's Child: A reaction to Wednesday's Child by Rhea Cote Robbins
By Monique L. Reno
Franco-American Women's Voices
Taught by Margaret Langford
Keene State College, Keene, NH
http://www.fawi.net/ezine/vol3no4/Thursdayschild.html
Based on the film Crash: The Migration and Settlement of Franco-Americans
in New England: "Survivance" of the Crash
By Lisa D. Helstrom
Colby College
Les Enfants du Mercredi
par COLLINS, Justin
Université du Maine, Orono
FRE 440
Final Paper
http://www.rhetapress.com/mercredi.html
and more
http://www.rhetapress.com/reviews.html
International Women’s Day
White-on-White Prejudices: A Critique
In my head there is a conversation about the Franco-American women’s literature, lit, and the effect of this white-on-white prejudice still going on in this state at so many levels in regard to their written word. Right now, I am thinking directly on the prejudice, discrimination, the “spirit of the KKK” that lives again, or still, down through the decades with the public permission given for the white-on-white discrimination.
When I marketed Canuck and Other Stories recently to Downeast Books, the person in charge told me: “We don’t carry books we don’t print anymore, but even if we did, that book would not have broad enough appeal.”
Not broad enough appeal? The Franco-American women’s immigration experience written first person, which reads as fresh today as when it was written, or even better, for the bridge that it builds between the generations to read, firsthand experience, historical and rich with imagery, this volume, Canuck, which also includes two bonus books, translations done by leading, Maine scholars--not broad enough appeal?
Where do people get such goofball ideas? And then, the permission to say them out loud.
I wrote that one down on a post-it and stuck it up on my computer screen to remind myself why I do the advocacy work I do on behalf of Franco-American women, and the continued need for such work.
Do these marketing geniuses actually know anything about the demographics of the population they purport to represent and/or the buyers who frequent their stores? Whose to say--someone might enjoy reading a book about the Franco-American women’s immigration experience, and/or what happened to them over the generations once they arrived?
[Perhaps the industry standard should be that those in charge of marketing literature in the state should sign up for Maine lit, Franco-American lit, and Native American women’s lit courses. Maybe they should get out more and take a pulse of the populations in the state?]
The issue, to my mind, comes down to two categories, possibly more, but for my purposes of discussion, I’ll say two root causes of the situation for lack of representation of Franco-American women’s lit in the market place:
1) People say there is no diversity in the state of Maine, i.e., “the whitest of states.”
2) The notion that there is no diversity in being “white.”
Let’s look at the statement that there is no diversity in the state of Maine. This basically is a white-on-white prejudice.
There was, and remains, such a need to control the French population in the state of Maine, and beyond, that as a population, we became a “color” on the wheel of prejudice:
We became known as, labeled as and were the targets of editorials, marches, epithets in the following examples:
--“White Niggers of the North”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Niggers_of_America
Minority Women of North America:
A Comparison of French-Canadian and Afro-American Women
By Jill M. Bystydzienski
Taken from American Review of Canadian Studies, 1985, XV, 4
http://www.fawi.net/ezine/vol3no4/FAAAFemmes.html
--“Chinese of the East”
"The Chinese of the East" was used in a government report: Carroll Wright, Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor Annual Report for 1881.computer [Bangor, Me.] : Maine Public Broadcasting, [1993?].
See also: “VOICING IDENTITY: THE CASE OF FRANCO-AMERICAN WOMEN IN MAINE”
By Kristin M. Langellier, Ph.D., and Eric E. Peterson, Ph.D., Orono
Presented at the International Communication Colloquium, July 30, 1998, Budapest, Hungary
http://www.fawi.net/ezine/pastezines/Volume2Number2and3.html#Langellier
--NY Times editorial
EDITORIAL
“THE FRENCH CANADIANS IN NEW-ENGLAND”
THE NEW YORK TIMES,
page 4, column 4 June 6, 1892
http://www.fawi.net/ezine/vol3no2/FCinNE.html
--KKK, largest membership of all the states, with representation in many Maine towns and marches carried out on the Main St., unchecked, and this following in regard to the women and the Klan
library.usm.maine.edu/pdfs/griot/sum03.pdf
www.mainememory.net/bin/Features?fn=217&fmt=list&n=1&supst=FK&mr=all
--Told to “speak white”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_White
--Language laws, 1920s to 1960s, forbidding the speaking of French at school other than in a classroom of instruction
--Many jobs not available to the French
--French family names being changed to accommodate the prejudice in order to “rise through the ranks”
http://homepages.roadrunner.com/frenchcx/angname.htm
--Jokes about the French
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE5D71F3AF937A25751C0A965958260
--Loss of language and culture due to the prejudices, generations deep
--Loss of body language due to comments such as “you talk with your hands.”
For a comprehensive essay on the above, see:
Franco-American Identity
by Yvon Labbé
For the Lewiston Sun Journal
September 29, 1999
www.francoamerican.org/academic/Yvon_Labbe_Lewiston_Sun.pdf
--Loss of color in people’s lives, clothing, houses, interiors, etc.
All The Colors Bleed Into One*
By Rhea Côté Robbins
http://www.fawi.net/PoemsandEssays/Colors/Colors.html
see also:
Self-Esteem and the Kitchen Stove
By Rhea Côté Robbins
http://www.fawi.net/ezine/vol3no3/Stove.html
If you think the spirit of the above overt prejudices has gone away, think again.
To treat the Franco-American women’s story on the geography as a second-class citizen is a serious mistake. I have attempted to have my writing published at some noted presses and the misconception and the attitude toward the Franco-American women’s lit is revealing of the prejudices that are allowed to continue to exist.
I say the above because of the type of response, and the manner of the response, I have received to my writings. The refusal is simply not a refusal, but a refusal with prejudicial comments included. And I wonder how such white-on-white prejudice can still exist.
Before we go deeper into this globalization, big box existence, we might want to think about the loss of local story, and how we play a part, or not, in the erasure of the unique diversity that is Maine.
We could list other heritages, cultures, races as well, but I will limit my comments to the Franco-American women’s lit because, I believe, I have a right to speak about the condition of neglect in regard to the representation of that voice in the market place that is “Maine.”
After having said that, I will say this, as I go around conducting my market surveys, I look for published works of other cultures that exist in the state of Maine, and their women’s writings, for example the Native American women of this state--and I find none. You might want to think about this if you do your own market survey.
As for my second point: No diversity in being “white.” As the term connotes, it is somehow understood that all shades of white are equal. I do not agree with that at all. Whites, as a race, get away with, if they so choose, not having to identify their backgrounds and they can “pass” or melt into corporate America’s classifications of logos, someone else’s initials all over your person (LV, CC, etc.), or labels pronouncing your pedigree. Mosey on down to Freeport or Kittery and get yourself some “heritage.”
There is a constant pull between modern interpretations of culture, usually corporate based, vs. historical heritage. I ask this: Why can’t both be carried forward at the same time as definitions of identity? People would argue that historical heritage causes divisions. I would argue that someone walking around all logo-ed, labeled and faux initialed, i.e., those not your own, creates a classed society, equally divisive.
Being White is not an excuse from having to, or being able to, identify one’s cultural heritage. One thing I can say for certain: This is no denying the ancestors! Think of the insult to the ancestors when someone “white” is in constant denial of the ancestors and where they came from. As for those who say they are Heinz 57, I will respond: More varieties to choose from!
The real issue arises with the forced march of Others by Some to erase, ignore, or drop their culture in order for them to participate in the market driven, economy culture.
I’m sure if I wrote an ethnically cleansed story, without any reference to historical, and therefore, uncomfortable white-on-white prejudice as evidenced in the state of Maine, I, too, might have a chance of being published mainstream without the commentary that my book is:
“…controversial”
“You can’t say that in a book.”
“Your book caused quite a stir at our editorial board!”
“…not broad enough appeal.”
etc., etc., etc.
So, I’m just here to say that I will not for a moment buy the line that the Franco-American women’s story belongs to a second class citizen and is not of broad enough appeal. Also, that I provide, as much as my time will allow, a place for Franco-American women to publish their work on the Franco-American Women’s Institute site’s ezine, moé pi toé, me and you, http://www.fawi.net/Links.html#contemporary
as well as I help as many Franco-American women who ask, achieve self-publishing. In this atmosphere of neglect, self-publishing is a noble act of correcting a serious wrong and equalizing the balance of story about the diversity that exists in Maine.
So my final critique is this: Franco-American women’s written voices have a place in the literary landscape of this state and the accumulation of multiple voices only adds to the rich diversity of Maine women’s stories.
Happy International Women’s Day…because with women such as Franco-American women, you have an instant international connection to many parts of the world.
Testimony on Wednesday’s Child:
Thursday's Child: A reaction to Wednesday's Child by Rhea Cote Robbins
By Monique L. Reno
Franco-American Women's Voices
Taught by Margaret Langford
Keene State College, Keene, NH
http://www.fawi.net/ezine/vol3no4/Thursdayschild.html
Based on the film Crash: The Migration and Settlement of Franco-Americans
in New England: "Survivance" of the Crash
By Lisa D. Helstrom
Colby College
Les Enfants du Mercredi
par COLLINS, Justin
Université du Maine, Orono
FRE 440
Final Paper
http://www.rhetapress.com/mercredi.html
and more
http://www.rhetapress.com/reviews.html
Sunday, February 3, 2008
...the day bigotry will die in the state of Maine
...the day bigotry will die in the state of Maine is the day the leading state emporiums call to help market Franco-American women's literature:
I watched a documentary on Billie Jean King and what she accomplished, at a young age, to further the cause of women’s sports as a result of her work to raise the level of awareness about women’s tennis as an equal player in the sports world in the 1970s.
What about the equal importance of presenting diversity in the sales arena of Maine literature? Inspired by Billie Jean King, this is my manifesto in regard to that sales arena of Maine literature.
Let’s talk about the issue of subtle bigotries. The bigotry of book sales and publication in the state of Maine. If you are one of those enlightened venues who have come into the 21st century and include Franco-American literature, written by both women and men, as well as writings and stories in your publications, or publishing house, please read on. If you carry one Franco-American book, male-voiced, or publish, on occasion, once or twice, over the course of your publishing history, a feature, article, or book pertaining to this culture, please read on. If you even allow an untranslated French word or two, accents correct or not, into your works, please read on. Because no matter how much you are doing, it is not enough. We need your help, still.
I address this manifesto to the leading sales proprietors who promote and sell the image of the state of Maine, as if it were truth, along the lines of “The Maine That Never Was: The Construction of Popular Myth in Regional Culture” by George H. Lewis.
http://dll.umaine.edu/welcome/wom/lewis.htm
This manifesto goes even deeper than the above-mentioned essay and dares to demand that the definition of Maine go beyond the myth-building to include the actual, diverse populations in your offerings of literature, both for sale or publication.
There is a claim in the state of Maine to participate in the global economy, globalization on the move, with trade missions and conferences talking about the far-reaching corners of the world and the marketing of wares. One of the leading characteristics of globalization is the erasure of local stories. A one size fits all approach to team sales while unquestioningly accepting the bigger is better vs. the home grown, or local.
What plays nicely into the globalization is the bigotry residue from eras previous when the world was on the move and colonizing was the globalization of the day. Some issues in relation to that colonizing have been eradicated, but some remain.
The outreach of the Maine globalization ignores in large part the inherent populations of the diverse ethnicities that have, and still, exist in the state of Maine. Not to mention the tribes present previous to all others who came here and their Native, rich heritage.
For example, as a Maine, award-winning author, if there was truth in advertising, or something less bigoted in action, I would be able to capitalize, across the board, to all marketing emporiums in the state who purport to say they represent the image of the state of Maine. The reality, marketing wise, is not so rosy as the myth, because my story, as a Franco-American woman author, does not fit the myth.
Perhaps, the viewing of the Billie Jean King documentary reminds me of certain events, or things said to me while trying to market my book in this state to certain leading businesses, that have lain dormant, although fermenting, and prompted in me the need to say: The reality of marketing Maine’s image is based on bigotry at some levels. You can call it whitewashing, neo-colonialism, or crazy making as others have pointed out, but for all intents and purposes, I call it bigotry.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t enjoy doing this. I’m not in charge of defining marketing of the image of Maine, nor is it my responsibility to fix the bigotry, I’m simply stating my individual protest against such practices. And I don’t want it to be said to me: she’s angry, or bitter, etc. Mostly, what can be said is that I am frustrated. I’m frustrated at the publicly sanctioned bigotry that is supported and under written by a buying power, purchasing public who accepts the lies as a stand-in for the truth of the real background story of the state of Maine. The real story not on sale in many leading, Maine focused businesses due to bigoted sales decisions made on what is decided that represents the “real” Maine--the one with many parts of the story edited out by prejudices that exist still.
Also, given the targeted audiences for the packaging image of the state of Maine, the visitors and tourists, I see such lies told about the state and its literature with the lack of inclusion from “absent voices” in the books for sale not represented, as an insult to the intelligence of the visitors and tourists. The marketing philosophy being that they don’t want to challenge the views, thinking, choices of the visitors and tourists with stories that do something other than present a “pretty” picture of the state.
Truth: Was there prejudice shown towards the French in the state of Maine? You bet. And there still is prejudice carried out in the guise of whitewashing, or erasing ethnicity via the lack of their literature not being carried or sold in many venues. Many excuses are given, and I’ve been on the other side of those excuses why a business would not carry my book, Wednesday’s Child. I also have been on the other side of some remarkable, open-mindedness, note bravery, on the part of some businesses taking a chance, being inclusive and accepting my book for sale in their shops.
Ironically in relation to global economy, ask me why I do business with Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Baker and Taylor--no gatekeepers with hang-ups about Franco-Americans. I need a bar code, an ISBN and a bank account and I’m talking to the world. My book is in its fifth printing and is taught at several colleges and universities in a variety of courses. So, guess what, some Maine businesses who have responded that “this book is seen as controversial and caused quite a stir at our editorial board,” or, “we don’t carry that type of book, “ or, in response to an anthology of earlier Franco-American women writers of the state of Maine which I edited and many others took the time to translate, titled, Canuck and Other Stories, one noted, prominent, publisher/bookseller, stated, “we don’t carry books we don’t publish anymore, but even if we did, such a book as that one does not have broad enough appeal to our readership.”
Quoi? Their readership is the crème de la crème of consumers of the image of Maine. Who is she, that gatekeeper, that arbiter of “taste” to decide what is of appeal or not? Sounds like bigotry to me. Franco-American, historical, women writers deep into the culture of Maine, not broad enough in appeal? That is precious. You don’t get to hear a direct hit like that everyday. I wrote that bigoted statement on a post-it and stuck it to my computer screen to remind me why I am doing the advocacy work I am doing on behalf of Franco-American women in the state of Maine and beyond. And in regard to my own book, if the book is good enough to be taught at Maine’s college campuses, it might be good enough to be on your shelves to sell as well.
The point of this manifesto is not about self-promotion, it is to address the levels of bigotry that exists still in the marketing and publishing philosophies of organizations that purport to represent the image of the state of Maine. I speak from experience. Several of the businesses over the course of the last decade, or more, have responded cavalierly, with impunity, that they do not carry “such books,” to my queries of whether they would sell my book in their stores. It is from that experience that I am bothering to speak out. I do not relish the response to this piece. Basically, if you have made it thus far in this piece, and you are still reading, and you are not convinced, I have a proposition to make.
Since it really is not my sole responsibility to address this issue, but one of human ecology of the entire population of the state of Maine, if we are to eradicate prejudice in our lifetime, I invite you to conduct your own market survey/analysis of the illustrious emporiums such as L.L.Bean, DeLorme Map Store, Downeast Books, Maine State Museum Store, Kittery Trading Post, and independent bookshops throughout the state as well as other gift shops in your town, and for the purpose of focus, examine how much Franco-American literature, female and male voiced, you can find for sale. To go from there, how much other culture-based, gender balanced, literature can you find for sale as well. I dare you.
I will tell you that my own book has been refused at most of these listed with commentary that would curl your hair, or straighten it if already curly. The bigotry still allowed in places of business and presented as “normal” is a cause for what Victor Lewis states: “That we should come together with moral outrage in solidarity” and speak out against the bigotry.
In my mind, I think to myself after such refusals to carry my book in certain businesses how can the unique story of the French-Canadian woman’s immigrant story not be of interest to the population of the state of Maine and our visitors? Ask yourself how much you know about these women’s literatures? How many such books can you name the author and title? I’ll tell you why and how such a shut-out happens in the literature world in Maine: because bigotry stands as the marketing model of the state.
On the other hand, if the story is “cleaned up,” about the truth of the prejudices practiced against the French, the book whitewashed--it is on the shelf, or accepted for publication. If the story challenges the dominant view of bigotry, it is deemed “controversial.” Token representation by a single book is not acceptable. Another example, some list of books of the century of the state of Maine lists no Franco-American women writers on the list. I let the record speak for itself. How can that be said to represent the state of Maine? Never mind the other cultures and tribes not listed.
Even the latest volume, Voyages A Maine Franco-American Reader, edited by Nelson Madore and Barry Rodrigue does not cover the full story. As a culture, in order to undo the prejudices and the silencing that have happened, we need several such volumes. One book on the shelf does not speak for all Franco-Americans. And, male voices do not speak for females, that would be practicing sexism as well as bigotry.
I will tell you this much, that some of the marketing venues of the state need to catch up with the bravery, committing a political act on the behalf of a silenced culture, of some college and university professors across the state that teach the so-called “controversial” literature of the state of Maine. I also believe, along with Gloria Anzaldua, and many others, that authors coming out and from their cultures and heritages should speak for themselves, to be their own agents of interpretation, rather than to be informants, or being spoken for by others who “add Franco-American to their stories and stir.”
Given the title of my book, Wednesday’s Child, is also interpreted as a movement representing orphaned children; the Franco-American story in this state is an orphaned child; a story without a home, if one is to be honest as to what is allowed, or seen as Maine’s story and literature for sale in many venues.
Best sellers, lists of the century, celebrity has sum zero to do with this game--this game is learning to value story on the geography which transforms lives. I witness this in the courses, which I teach at the University of Maine. When women of the Franco-American culture and beyond the culture read books by Franco-American women writers, long dormant for the lack of a publishing home, or sales outlet, their lives are transformed. They are changed women. I have testimony, upon testimony to prove this. To see oneself reflected in print is nothing short of empowering and transformational. So, I ask the question in regard to the ignorance posing as sophistication with commentary such as the ones I have received from businesses who say they do not carry this type of book: What do they know about their potential customers’ background, history, culture and the need of that customer to see themselves reflected in the books sold?
I ask you as a responsible, literature savvy, Maine citizen to request that such ethnic-based literature be available for sale at all businesses that promote themselves as representing the image of the state of Maine. It is time for the subtle, but deadly, bigotry and silencing of the ethnic voices of the state of Maine end, and equality of story presented be the measure by which the story of this state is told. I challenge all the readers of the state of Maine to commit a political act on behalf of the ethnic writers of this state and demand that leading businesses discontinue their practice of bigotry and offer diverse voices of Maine’s writers for sale. Let the buyer be the judge of the “broad enough appeal.” With a little enlightened, educated sales promotion, who knows what the buying public will pay attention to and read?
I don’t want this job of bringing up the issue(s) of prejudice against Franco-Americans, and others, because the problem is much larger than the one that I state, there are systemic maladies that support the bigotries, but I am compelled to speak as an educator and as a writer about the literature. I would much rather focus on my aesthetics, solving artistic problems of creativity rather than address the marketing blockades, gate keeping, shut-outs based on bigotries which I have experienced in marketing my own book, as well as seeking a publisher. No bigotry you respond? I challenge you to find me ONE book by a Franco-American at most of the businesses I mentioned. You won’t find a one. What is that a manifestation of, marketing oversight? That, to me, is the proof in the pudding.
A book was brought to my attention recently published by the Kennebec Journal, circa 1928, by a Maine writer, all full of bigotry on parade and I think to myself the times have not changed much when there still exists a shut-out of Franco-American writers’ voices in the sales arena, boards of organizations that addresses literary issues, conferences, literary hierarchies, editors, publishers of leading magazines that participate in the silencing.
I am talking about Franco-Americans talking and writing, not simply being written about, or presented back to ourselves through a limited lens, mispronounced French names, accents askew, conferences that limit voice. Bigotry and sexism are ugly subjects, and as a result I have to ask: Why have so many excellent Franco-American writers disappeared over the past 20 years or more leaving a few to carry the story forward? I will tell you why, in part, is due to the difficulty of marketing, or publishing the Franco-American story in this state--the FULL story, not just your “do a little gigue,” the good old days story. I mean a story with a full complement of subject--conflict AND resolution.
Again, I urge you all to act on behalf of the literary life of the state of Maine and become a human ecological aware consumer and demand businesses, and libraries as well, to conscientiously represent all facets of Maine’s literature and diversity. Leave no business to its own bigotry-defined practices and assume their desire to move into the 21st century of credibility and non-prejudicial business practices.
Afterward, I also urge you to buy and read the books of the ethnically diverse populations of the state and be transformed. Forget the lists that tell you what to read. As for the editors, or columnists out there who ignore the Franco-Americans and others, I suggest the editorial policies be examined to end the bigotry of silencing by erasing voices. (Q.: How can you write a history of the city of Bangor and not include Franco-Americans? A.: Bigotry unchecked.)
Thank you. Now I can return to my writing. If this has made you uncomfortable, I offer no apologies. I have had to sit in isolation in response to comments in regard to my writing from some that created havoc in me that I cannot express. I hope you decide to confront this issue because as a participant and player in the global economy, putting forward a bigoted image is hardly a strong suit. And if you think you are already addressing this issue, you are not doing enough.
Rhea Côté Robbins
RJCR@aol.com
writeme@rheacoterobbins.com
Rhea Cote Robbins, M.A.
641 South Main St.
Brewer, Maine 04412-2516
Telephone: 207-989-7059
Fax: 207-989-7059
Email:
Rhea_Cote@umit.maine.edu
RJCR@aol.com
Web Sites:
Author of Wednesday's Child
http://www.rhetapress.com/
Franco-American Women's Institute
http://www.fawi.net/
I watched a documentary on Billie Jean King and what she accomplished, at a young age, to further the cause of women’s sports as a result of her work to raise the level of awareness about women’s tennis as an equal player in the sports world in the 1970s.
What about the equal importance of presenting diversity in the sales arena of Maine literature? Inspired by Billie Jean King, this is my manifesto in regard to that sales arena of Maine literature.
Let’s talk about the issue of subtle bigotries. The bigotry of book sales and publication in the state of Maine. If you are one of those enlightened venues who have come into the 21st century and include Franco-American literature, written by both women and men, as well as writings and stories in your publications, or publishing house, please read on. If you carry one Franco-American book, male-voiced, or publish, on occasion, once or twice, over the course of your publishing history, a feature, article, or book pertaining to this culture, please read on. If you even allow an untranslated French word or two, accents correct or not, into your works, please read on. Because no matter how much you are doing, it is not enough. We need your help, still.
I address this manifesto to the leading sales proprietors who promote and sell the image of the state of Maine, as if it were truth, along the lines of “The Maine That Never Was: The Construction of Popular Myth in Regional Culture” by George H. Lewis.
http://dll.umaine.edu/welcome/wom/lewis.htm
This manifesto goes even deeper than the above-mentioned essay and dares to demand that the definition of Maine go beyond the myth-building to include the actual, diverse populations in your offerings of literature, both for sale or publication.
There is a claim in the state of Maine to participate in the global economy, globalization on the move, with trade missions and conferences talking about the far-reaching corners of the world and the marketing of wares. One of the leading characteristics of globalization is the erasure of local stories. A one size fits all approach to team sales while unquestioningly accepting the bigger is better vs. the home grown, or local.
What plays nicely into the globalization is the bigotry residue from eras previous when the world was on the move and colonizing was the globalization of the day. Some issues in relation to that colonizing have been eradicated, but some remain.
The outreach of the Maine globalization ignores in large part the inherent populations of the diverse ethnicities that have, and still, exist in the state of Maine. Not to mention the tribes present previous to all others who came here and their Native, rich heritage.
For example, as a Maine, award-winning author, if there was truth in advertising, or something less bigoted in action, I would be able to capitalize, across the board, to all marketing emporiums in the state who purport to say they represent the image of the state of Maine. The reality, marketing wise, is not so rosy as the myth, because my story, as a Franco-American woman author, does not fit the myth.
Perhaps, the viewing of the Billie Jean King documentary reminds me of certain events, or things said to me while trying to market my book in this state to certain leading businesses, that have lain dormant, although fermenting, and prompted in me the need to say: The reality of marketing Maine’s image is based on bigotry at some levels. You can call it whitewashing, neo-colonialism, or crazy making as others have pointed out, but for all intents and purposes, I call it bigotry.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t enjoy doing this. I’m not in charge of defining marketing of the image of Maine, nor is it my responsibility to fix the bigotry, I’m simply stating my individual protest against such practices. And I don’t want it to be said to me: she’s angry, or bitter, etc. Mostly, what can be said is that I am frustrated. I’m frustrated at the publicly sanctioned bigotry that is supported and under written by a buying power, purchasing public who accepts the lies as a stand-in for the truth of the real background story of the state of Maine. The real story not on sale in many leading, Maine focused businesses due to bigoted sales decisions made on what is decided that represents the “real” Maine--the one with many parts of the story edited out by prejudices that exist still.
Also, given the targeted audiences for the packaging image of the state of Maine, the visitors and tourists, I see such lies told about the state and its literature with the lack of inclusion from “absent voices” in the books for sale not represented, as an insult to the intelligence of the visitors and tourists. The marketing philosophy being that they don’t want to challenge the views, thinking, choices of the visitors and tourists with stories that do something other than present a “pretty” picture of the state.
Truth: Was there prejudice shown towards the French in the state of Maine? You bet. And there still is prejudice carried out in the guise of whitewashing, or erasing ethnicity via the lack of their literature not being carried or sold in many venues. Many excuses are given, and I’ve been on the other side of those excuses why a business would not carry my book, Wednesday’s Child. I also have been on the other side of some remarkable, open-mindedness, note bravery, on the part of some businesses taking a chance, being inclusive and accepting my book for sale in their shops.
Ironically in relation to global economy, ask me why I do business with Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Baker and Taylor--no gatekeepers with hang-ups about Franco-Americans. I need a bar code, an ISBN and a bank account and I’m talking to the world. My book is in its fifth printing and is taught at several colleges and universities in a variety of courses. So, guess what, some Maine businesses who have responded that “this book is seen as controversial and caused quite a stir at our editorial board,” or, “we don’t carry that type of book, “ or, in response to an anthology of earlier Franco-American women writers of the state of Maine which I edited and many others took the time to translate, titled, Canuck and Other Stories, one noted, prominent, publisher/bookseller, stated, “we don’t carry books we don’t publish anymore, but even if we did, such a book as that one does not have broad enough appeal to our readership.”
Quoi? Their readership is the crème de la crème of consumers of the image of Maine. Who is she, that gatekeeper, that arbiter of “taste” to decide what is of appeal or not? Sounds like bigotry to me. Franco-American, historical, women writers deep into the culture of Maine, not broad enough in appeal? That is precious. You don’t get to hear a direct hit like that everyday. I wrote that bigoted statement on a post-it and stuck it to my computer screen to remind me why I am doing the advocacy work I am doing on behalf of Franco-American women in the state of Maine and beyond. And in regard to my own book, if the book is good enough to be taught at Maine’s college campuses, it might be good enough to be on your shelves to sell as well.
The point of this manifesto is not about self-promotion, it is to address the levels of bigotry that exists still in the marketing and publishing philosophies of organizations that purport to represent the image of the state of Maine. I speak from experience. Several of the businesses over the course of the last decade, or more, have responded cavalierly, with impunity, that they do not carry “such books,” to my queries of whether they would sell my book in their stores. It is from that experience that I am bothering to speak out. I do not relish the response to this piece. Basically, if you have made it thus far in this piece, and you are still reading, and you are not convinced, I have a proposition to make.
Since it really is not my sole responsibility to address this issue, but one of human ecology of the entire population of the state of Maine, if we are to eradicate prejudice in our lifetime, I invite you to conduct your own market survey/analysis of the illustrious emporiums such as L.L.Bean, DeLorme Map Store, Downeast Books, Maine State Museum Store, Kittery Trading Post, and independent bookshops throughout the state as well as other gift shops in your town, and for the purpose of focus, examine how much Franco-American literature, female and male voiced, you can find for sale. To go from there, how much other culture-based, gender balanced, literature can you find for sale as well. I dare you.
I will tell you that my own book has been refused at most of these listed with commentary that would curl your hair, or straighten it if already curly. The bigotry still allowed in places of business and presented as “normal” is a cause for what Victor Lewis states: “That we should come together with moral outrage in solidarity” and speak out against the bigotry.
In my mind, I think to myself after such refusals to carry my book in certain businesses how can the unique story of the French-Canadian woman’s immigrant story not be of interest to the population of the state of Maine and our visitors? Ask yourself how much you know about these women’s literatures? How many such books can you name the author and title? I’ll tell you why and how such a shut-out happens in the literature world in Maine: because bigotry stands as the marketing model of the state.
On the other hand, if the story is “cleaned up,” about the truth of the prejudices practiced against the French, the book whitewashed--it is on the shelf, or accepted for publication. If the story challenges the dominant view of bigotry, it is deemed “controversial.” Token representation by a single book is not acceptable. Another example, some list of books of the century of the state of Maine lists no Franco-American women writers on the list. I let the record speak for itself. How can that be said to represent the state of Maine? Never mind the other cultures and tribes not listed.
Even the latest volume, Voyages A Maine Franco-American Reader, edited by Nelson Madore and Barry Rodrigue does not cover the full story. As a culture, in order to undo the prejudices and the silencing that have happened, we need several such volumes. One book on the shelf does not speak for all Franco-Americans. And, male voices do not speak for females, that would be practicing sexism as well as bigotry.
I will tell you this much, that some of the marketing venues of the state need to catch up with the bravery, committing a political act on the behalf of a silenced culture, of some college and university professors across the state that teach the so-called “controversial” literature of the state of Maine. I also believe, along with Gloria Anzaldua, and many others, that authors coming out and from their cultures and heritages should speak for themselves, to be their own agents of interpretation, rather than to be informants, or being spoken for by others who “add Franco-American to their stories and stir.”
Given the title of my book, Wednesday’s Child, is also interpreted as a movement representing orphaned children; the Franco-American story in this state is an orphaned child; a story without a home, if one is to be honest as to what is allowed, or seen as Maine’s story and literature for sale in many venues.
Best sellers, lists of the century, celebrity has sum zero to do with this game--this game is learning to value story on the geography which transforms lives. I witness this in the courses, which I teach at the University of Maine. When women of the Franco-American culture and beyond the culture read books by Franco-American women writers, long dormant for the lack of a publishing home, or sales outlet, their lives are transformed. They are changed women. I have testimony, upon testimony to prove this. To see oneself reflected in print is nothing short of empowering and transformational. So, I ask the question in regard to the ignorance posing as sophistication with commentary such as the ones I have received from businesses who say they do not carry this type of book: What do they know about their potential customers’ background, history, culture and the need of that customer to see themselves reflected in the books sold?
I ask you as a responsible, literature savvy, Maine citizen to request that such ethnic-based literature be available for sale at all businesses that promote themselves as representing the image of the state of Maine. It is time for the subtle, but deadly, bigotry and silencing of the ethnic voices of the state of Maine end, and equality of story presented be the measure by which the story of this state is told. I challenge all the readers of the state of Maine to commit a political act on behalf of the ethnic writers of this state and demand that leading businesses discontinue their practice of bigotry and offer diverse voices of Maine’s writers for sale. Let the buyer be the judge of the “broad enough appeal.” With a little enlightened, educated sales promotion, who knows what the buying public will pay attention to and read?
I don’t want this job of bringing up the issue(s) of prejudice against Franco-Americans, and others, because the problem is much larger than the one that I state, there are systemic maladies that support the bigotries, but I am compelled to speak as an educator and as a writer about the literature. I would much rather focus on my aesthetics, solving artistic problems of creativity rather than address the marketing blockades, gate keeping, shut-outs based on bigotries which I have experienced in marketing my own book, as well as seeking a publisher. No bigotry you respond? I challenge you to find me ONE book by a Franco-American at most of the businesses I mentioned. You won’t find a one. What is that a manifestation of, marketing oversight? That, to me, is the proof in the pudding.
A book was brought to my attention recently published by the Kennebec Journal, circa 1928, by a Maine writer, all full of bigotry on parade and I think to myself the times have not changed much when there still exists a shut-out of Franco-American writers’ voices in the sales arena, boards of organizations that addresses literary issues, conferences, literary hierarchies, editors, publishers of leading magazines that participate in the silencing.
I am talking about Franco-Americans talking and writing, not simply being written about, or presented back to ourselves through a limited lens, mispronounced French names, accents askew, conferences that limit voice. Bigotry and sexism are ugly subjects, and as a result I have to ask: Why have so many excellent Franco-American writers disappeared over the past 20 years or more leaving a few to carry the story forward? I will tell you why, in part, is due to the difficulty of marketing, or publishing the Franco-American story in this state--the FULL story, not just your “do a little gigue,” the good old days story. I mean a story with a full complement of subject--conflict AND resolution.
Again, I urge you all to act on behalf of the literary life of the state of Maine and become a human ecological aware consumer and demand businesses, and libraries as well, to conscientiously represent all facets of Maine’s literature and diversity. Leave no business to its own bigotry-defined practices and assume their desire to move into the 21st century of credibility and non-prejudicial business practices.
Afterward, I also urge you to buy and read the books of the ethnically diverse populations of the state and be transformed. Forget the lists that tell you what to read. As for the editors, or columnists out there who ignore the Franco-Americans and others, I suggest the editorial policies be examined to end the bigotry of silencing by erasing voices. (Q.: How can you write a history of the city of Bangor and not include Franco-Americans? A.: Bigotry unchecked.)
Thank you. Now I can return to my writing. If this has made you uncomfortable, I offer no apologies. I have had to sit in isolation in response to comments in regard to my writing from some that created havoc in me that I cannot express. I hope you decide to confront this issue because as a participant and player in the global economy, putting forward a bigoted image is hardly a strong suit. And if you think you are already addressing this issue, you are not doing enough.
Rhea Côté Robbins
RJCR@aol.com
writeme@rheacoterobbins.com
Rhea Cote Robbins, M.A.
641 South Main St.
Brewer, Maine 04412-2516
Telephone: 207-989-7059
Fax: 207-989-7059
Email:
Rhea_Cote@umit.maine.edu
RJCR@aol.com
Web Sites:
Author of Wednesday's Child
http://www.rhetapress.com/
Franco-American Women's Institute
http://www.fawi.net/
Sunday, December 30, 2007
how we doin'?...educating Rhea...w/o the f-up prof...in tow...thankyoujesus.
...how should I know...
gettin' back to basics, via Japan, that's one thing...
Rufus Wainwright?
christ, if I know...but then again, there's momma and poppa...or should I say sistahs and kids in tow...because daddy sounds like a "loner"...and that is being polite...and we don't mean a weekly rental...
I learned from this about them...
Thursday, Dec. 27, 2007
RE:VIEW MUSIC
RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
Always thinking big
By WAYNE GABEL
Special to The Japan Times
The Japan Times, Japan - Dec 26, 2007
...Kate McGarrigle and her sister Anna are even less well-known than Kate's ex-husband, though many critics have named their eponymous debut and "Dancer With Bruised Knees" as two of the best albums of the 1970s. Humorous and homey where Loudon is humorous and vulgar, the sisters came from a more settled folk tradition that's rooted in their French-Canadian upbringing.
Since Kate virtually raised Rufus and Martha alone, their music is more beholden to her eclecticism than it is to Loudon's folk-rock, and both children have talked about the heady atmosphere of musicality that permeated their Montreal home. This atmosphere is re-created on "The McGarrigle Hour" (1998), a rally-round-the-fireplace collection of folk tunes, pop standards and originals that includes input from the whole extended family, including Loudon...
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fm20071227r1.html
------
Like I said previous...you can "play at this" shit...faux/gentrification culture of the "french"...or you can live it, life it, and have it come back to you in spits and spots...
It's all a toss up, really...
pissed off boyz
pussy ranch bloggers blog their way to fame with their personal, pan-sized genius, that's a "g" not a "p", and "i-u-s"
academic streams/screams edvardmunchlike
healing gen-erated optical illusions
on the ground profiles
all the way to the big white beard of santa or god, whichever you prefer...(I have the touch of a pussy rancher in me...see Diablo Cody...twerps.)
one thing I am not and that is a goddamned retiree..."waitin' on old people/waitin' to die/and so I was"--p. griffin
a matter of choice(s)
and you have some revelations and some hidden secrets of solitude and you can all go right up the road to hell-0 jell-0...mell-0 yell-0...
Credence Clearwater...in my brain as I'm working on this new "course" for the women of this FA-culture...
who is really ready for Plotte as the plot?
i chuckle...certainly NOT the retirees...and their old ladies...snort.
well, anyway...
You want to find your way back? Go find your own path.
hear, listen to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_and_Anna_McGarrigle
Kate and Anna McGarrigle
http://www.latribu.ca/mcgarrigle/index_1024.html
official site
gettin' back to basics, via Japan, that's one thing...
Rufus Wainwright?
christ, if I know...but then again, there's momma and poppa...or should I say sistahs and kids in tow...because daddy sounds like a "loner"...and that is being polite...and we don't mean a weekly rental...
I learned from this about them...
Thursday, Dec. 27, 2007
RE:VIEW MUSIC
RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
Always thinking big
By WAYNE GABEL
Special to The Japan Times
The Japan Times, Japan - Dec 26, 2007
...Kate McGarrigle and her sister Anna are even less well-known than Kate's ex-husband, though many critics have named their eponymous debut and "Dancer With Bruised Knees" as two of the best albums of the 1970s. Humorous and homey where Loudon is humorous and vulgar, the sisters came from a more settled folk tradition that's rooted in their French-Canadian upbringing.
Since Kate virtually raised Rufus and Martha alone, their music is more beholden to her eclecticism than it is to Loudon's folk-rock, and both children have talked about the heady atmosphere of musicality that permeated their Montreal home. This atmosphere is re-created on "The McGarrigle Hour" (1998), a rally-round-the-fireplace collection of folk tunes, pop standards and originals that includes input from the whole extended family, including Loudon...
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fm20071227r1.html
------
Like I said previous...you can "play at this" shit...faux/gentrification culture of the "french"...or you can live it, life it, and have it come back to you in spits and spots...
It's all a toss up, really...
pissed off boyz
pussy ranch bloggers blog their way to fame with their personal, pan-sized genius, that's a "g" not a "p", and "i-u-s"
academic streams/screams edvardmunchlike
healing gen-erated optical illusions
on the ground profiles
all the way to the big white beard of santa or god, whichever you prefer...(I have the touch of a pussy rancher in me...see Diablo Cody...twerps.)
one thing I am not and that is a goddamned retiree..."waitin' on old people/waitin' to die/and so I was"--p. griffin
a matter of choice(s)
and you have some revelations and some hidden secrets of solitude and you can all go right up the road to hell-0 jell-0...mell-0 yell-0...
Credence Clearwater...in my brain as I'm working on this new "course" for the women of this FA-culture...
who is really ready for Plotte as the plot?
i chuckle...certainly NOT the retirees...and their old ladies...snort.
well, anyway...
You want to find your way back? Go find your own path.
hear, listen to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_and_Anna_McGarrigle
Kate and Anna McGarrigle
http://www.latribu.ca/mcgarrigle/index_1024.html
official site
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Possibilities or Success?
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Possibilities-Lighthouse-Posters_i328602_.htm
or
The secret of success in life, is to be ready for opportunity when it comes.
http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Success-Lighthouse-Posters_i308304_.htm
...urban legend, I guess...but still, aren't we all that...
My "french lesson" for today and then what follows I could not resist...sounds like our current admin down in DC, whose on board that ship!
Si vous parvenez à faire des efforts sur vous-même, et notamment à dominer votre impétuosité naturelle, vous ferez de grands pas en avant dans la connaissance que vous avez de vous-même, Rhea. Considérez cette journée comme si vous vouliez monter sur un phare pour admirer la côte ! Et bien la côte c'est vous et le phare c'est l'acuité de votre esprit quand vous prendrez un peu de distance avec les événements. Songez-y et faites de votre mieux !
If you do manage to make efforts about yourself, including your impetuosity to dominate nature, you will make great strides forward in the knowledge that you have of yourself, Rhea. Consider this day as if you wanted to climb a lighthouse on the coast to admire! Well, the coast is you and the lighthouse is the sharpness of your mind when you take a short distance to the events. Think about it and do your best!
------
C'est la transcription d'une communication radio entre un bateau de la
US Navy et les autorités canadiennes au large des cotes de Terre-Neuve
en octobre 1995.
Américains : Veuillez vous dérouter de 15 degrés
Nord pour éviter une collision. A vous.
Canadiens : Veuillez plutôt VOUS dérouter de 15 degrés
sud pour éviter une collision. A vous.
Américains : Ici le capitaine d'un navire des forces
navales américaines. Je répète : Veuillez modifier
VOTRE course. A vous.
Canadiens : Non, veuillez VOUS dérouter je vous prie.
A vous.
Américains : ICI C'EST LE PORTE AVIONS USS LINCOLN, LE
SECOND NAVIRE EN IMPORTANCE DE LA FLOTTE NAVALE DES ETATS UNIS D'AMERIQUE.
NOUS SOMMES ACCOMPAGNES PAR 3 DESTROYERS, 3 CROISEURS ET UN NOMBRE IMPORTANT
DE NAVIRES D'ESCORTE. JE VOUS DEMANDE DE DEVIER DE VOTRE ROUTE DE 15 DEGRES
NORD OU DES MESURES CONTRAIGNANTES VONT ETRE PRISES POUR ASSURER LA SECURITE
DE NOTRE NAVIRE. A VOUS
Canadiens : Ici, c'est un phare. A vous.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Rhea St. Germain Gray
Rhea, Victoire, Rita--the "cookies" and the camp cook, Pinkham Lumber, Allagash, ME
She fell out of a chair
into heaven
and the arms
of strangers
put her
into the
embrace of her loves.
All gone in
an
instant.
Rhea St. Germain Gray
March 10, 1919-December 12, 2008
--------
The last of 17 children of Victoire Gagnon St. Germain Daigle and Hypolite St. Germain
Friday, October 19, 2007
Get your own dog.
The dog is dying, like all of us are dying, eventually, I realize, but the dog's time has been accelerated by cancer. Cancer and complications. The cancerous lump has been removed, but the cancer is on the move. We don't know how much, or how far advanced the cancer is besides it is some place in stage 2, 2nd out of 3 stages, somewhere in the middle.
The other dog, a Beagle statue, my father's favorite type of dog when he was alive, was stolen from my father's grave recently. I put a statue of a Beagle on his grave to mark the man's life as a sportsman--hunting, fishing, trapping, live bait salesman. He would hunt with his brothers, his three sons and was at one with his version of nature. He was shot twice, accidentally, on hunting trips, and lived to tell of the events with bullets still lodged in his body. The Beagle statue, life size, cement cast, told the story of what kind of man rested for eternity here. A mill worker all his life and a sportsman during his leisure time.
But, like I said, the dog, our Lab, is dying from cancer. That is profound because, you see, my father taught us how to love and appreciate dogs. We had dogs all our lives growing up and in our adult lives: Collie, German Shepherd, Beagles, Husky, mixed breeds, Cocker Spaniel, Sheep Dogs, and now the Yellow Labrador Retriever, Belle, who's dying.
So, whoever took the Beagle statue off my father's grave, that dog does not belong to you--put the damn dog back where it belongs--back on my father's grave. Or, drop it off, like you took it, in cowardly fashion, at the Pine Grove/St. Francis Cemetery office. Get your own dog.
More:
The Virgin and Her Familiar
Their Enterprise On The Plains
http://www.fawi.net/ezine/vol3no2/virginandfamiliar.html
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Stealth Blogging
Yeah! My idea of blogging...the fact that I can write here and barely hardly anyone reads this...so I can flap out there in the breeze, bare as a naked baby, with noone in sight...hiding in plain view. No better freedom than that. I can say what I damn well please, do what I want...and SNAFU...situation normal, all Free u-write. Put a period on that and call it a day in the neighborhood...and as the grandson says: Have a snappy day!
Friday, August 24, 2007
pays to be a post Vatican II kid
...they gave us a bible to read...[see below: Women left for dead—and the man who’s saving them in the Congo, where tens of thousands of women are brutally raped every year...but first, read what Mark has to say...end times are with us always, I say.]
Mark 13
Signs of the End of the Age
1As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!"
2"Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."
3As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, 4"Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?"
5Jesus said to them: "Watch out that no one deceives you. 6Many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am he,' and will deceive many. 7When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.
9"You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. 10And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. 11Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.
12"Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. 13All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.
14"When you see 'the abomination that causes desolation'[a]standing where it[b] does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 15Let no one on the roof of his house go down or enter the house to take anything out. 16Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. 17How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 18Pray that this will not take place in winter, 19because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again. 20If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them. 21At that time if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ[c]!' or, 'Look, there he is!' do not believe it. 22For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect—if that were possible. 23So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.
24"But in those days, following that distress,
" 'the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
25the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.'[d]
26"At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.
28"Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 29Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door. 30I tell you the truth, this generation[e] will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 31Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
The Day and Hour Unknown
32"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33Be on guard! Be alert[f]! You do not know when that time will come. 34It's like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with his assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch.
35"Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. 36If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. 37What I say to you, I say to everyone: 'Watch!' "
-----------
Women left for dead—and the man who’s saving them
In the Congo, where tens of thousands of women are brutally raped every year, Dr. Denis Mukwege repairs their broken bodies and souls. Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, visits him and finds hope amid the horror.
By Eve Ensler
September 2007, Glamour
p. 289
Dr. Mukwege with some of his patients at Panzi Hospital
I have just returned from hell. I am trying for the life of me to figure out how to communicate what I have seen and heard in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. How do I convey these stories of atrocities without your shutting down, quickly turning the page or feeling too disturbed?
How do I tell you of girls as young as nine raped by gangs of soldiers, of women whose insides were blown apart by rifle blasts and whose bodies now leak uncontrollable streams of urine and feces?
---------
How you can help
The women of Eastern Congo, V-Day and UNICEF—the latter acting on behalf of United Nations Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict—are launching a new campaign to urge an end to the femicide and raise money for women’s groups in the Congo. You can…
* Write a letter addressed to His Excellency, the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Joseph Kabila Kabange; demand that he take action to stop the attacks on women. Send it to U.N. Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict, P.O. Box 3862, New York, NY 10163, and it will be delivered to Kabila.
* Donate directly to Panzi Hospital through vday.org.
Money donated to Panzi also goes to establish a City of Joy, a safe haven for the healed women, where they’ll learn to become political leaders.
------------
This journey was a departure for me. It began with a man, Dr. Denis Mukwege, and a conversation we had in New York City in December 2006, when he came to speak about his work helping women at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu. It began with my rusty French and his limited English. It began with the quiet anguish in his bloodshot eyes, eyes that seemed to me to be bleeding from the horrors he’d witnessed.
Something happened in this conversation that compelled me to go halfway around the world to visit the doctor, this holy man who was sewing up women as fast as the mad militiamen could rip them apart.
I am going to tell the stories of the patients he saves so that the faceless, generic, raped women of war become Alfonsine and Nadine—women with names and memories and dreams. I am going to ask you to stay with me, to open your hearts, to be as outraged and nauseated as I felt sitting in Panzi Hospital in faraway Bukavu.
Before I went to the Congo, I’d spent the past 10 years working on V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls. I’d traveled to the rape mines of the world, places like Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti, where rape has been used as a tool of war. But nothing I ever experienced felt as ghastly, terrifying and complete as the sexual torture and attempted destruction of the female species here. It is not too strong to call this a femicide, to say that the future of the Congo’s women is in serious jeopardy.
I learned from my trip that there are men who take their sorrow and helplessness and destroy women’s bodies—and there are others with the same feelings who devote their lives to healing and serving. I do not know all the reasons men end up in one or the other of these groups, but I do know that one good man can create many more. One good man can inspire other men to ache for women, to fight for them and protect them. One good man can win the trust of a community of raped women—and in doing so, keep their faith in humanity alive.
Dr. Mukwege picks me up at 6:30 A.M. It is a lush, clean morning. Eastern Congo, where Panzi Hospital is located, is wildly fertile. You can almost hear the vegetation growing. There are banana trees and cartoon-colored birds. And there is Lake Kivu, a vast body of water that contains enough methane to power a good portion of the sub-Sahara—yet the city of Bukavu on its banks has only sporadic electricity. This is a theme in the Congo. There are more natural resources than almost anywhere else on the planet, yet 80 percent of the people make less than a dollar a day. More rain falls than one can imagine, but for millions, clean drinking water is scarce. The earth is gorgeously abundant, and yet almost one third of the population is starving.
As we drive along the semblance of road, the doctor tells me how different things were when he was a child. “In the sixties 50,000 people lived here in Bukavu. It was a relaxed place. There were rich people who had speedy boats in the lakes. There were gorillas in the mountains.” Now there are at least a million displaced Congolese, many of whom arrive in the city daily, fleeing the numerous armed groups that have ravaged the countryside since fighting erupted in 1996. What started as a civil war to overthrow dictator Mobutu Sese Seko soon became “Africa’s first world war,” as observers have called it, with soldiers from neighboring countries joining in the mayhem. The troops have various agendas: Many are fighting for control of the region’s extraordinary mineral wealth. Others are out to grab whatever they can get.
But you have to go back further than 1996 to understand what is going on in the Congo today. This country has been tortured for more than 120 years, beginning with King Leopold II of Belgium, who “acquired” the Congo and, between 1885 and 1908, exterminated an estimated 10 million people, about half the population. The violent consequences of genocide and colonialism have had a profound impact on the psyche of the Congolese. Despite a 2003 peace agreement and recent elections, armed groups continue to terrorize the eastern half of the country. Overall the war has left nearly 4 million people dead—more than in any other conflict since World War II—and resulted in the rape of hundreds of thousands of women and girls.
In Bukavu, the people escaping the fighting walk from early morning to late at night. They walk and walk, searching for a way to buy or sell a tomato, or for a banana for their baby. It is a relentless river of humans, anxious and hungry. “People used to eat three meals a day,” says Dr. Mukwege. “Now they are lucky to eat one.”
Everyone knows the doctor, an ob-gyn. He waves and stops to inquire about this person’s health, that person’s mother. Most doctors, teachers and lawyers fled the Congo after the wars started. It never occurred to Dr. Mukwege to leave his people at their most desperate hour.
He first became aware of the epidemic of rape in 1996. “I saw women who had been raped in an extremely barbaric way,” he recalls. “First, the women were raped in front of their children, their husbands and neighbors. Second, the rapes were done by many men at the same time. Third, not only were the women raped, but their vaginas were mutilated with guns and sticks. These situations show that sex was being used as a weapon that is cheap.
“When rape is done in front of your family,” he continues, “it destroys everyone. I have seen men suffer who watched their wives raped; they are not mentally stable anymore. The children are in even worse condition. Most of the time, when a woman suffers this much violence, she is not able to bear children afterward. Clearly these rapes are not done to satisfy any sexual desire but to destroy the soul. The whole family and community are broken.”
We arrive at Panzi Hospital, a spread-out complex of about a dozen buildings. Eight years ago Dr. Mukwege created a special maternity ward here with an operating room. Panzi as a whole has 334 beds, 250 of which now hold female victims of sexual violence. The hospital and its surrounding property have become, essentially, a village of raped women. The grounds are overwhelmed with children and hunger and need. Every day at least two children here die from malnutrition. Then there are the many problems that result from severe trauma: women with nightmares and insomnia, women rejected by their husbands, women who have no interest in nurturing the babies of their rapists, women and children with nowhere to go.
It is early morning, and the hospital courtyard has been transformed into a temporary church. Women dressed in their most colorful, or perhaps only, pagne (a six-yard piece of brightly patterned cloth that can be wrapped into a dress or skirt) sit waiting for the doctor to arrive and lead the prayer service that begins each day. A dedicated staff of female nurses and social workers are there as well, dressed in their starched white jackets. There is singing, a combination of Pentecostal calls and Swahili rhythms, Sunday-morning voices calling up Jesus.
This morning service is a kind of daily gathering of strength and unity. When the women sing, everything else seems to disappear. They are with the sun, the sky, the drums, each other. They are alive in their bodies, momentarily safe and free.
As they sing, Dr. Mukwege tells me stories about the women in the chorus. Many were naked when they arrived, or starving. Many were so badly damaged he is amazed they are singing at all. He takes enormous pride in their recovery. “I will never be ashamed,” the women sing. “God gave me a new heart that I can be very strong.”
“At the beginning I used to hear patients’ stories,” Dr. Mukwege tells me. “Now I abstain.” I soon understand why. I meet Nadine (like others in this story, she agreed to be photographed, but asked that her name be changed, as she could be subject to reprisals for speaking out), who tells me a tale so horrendous it will haunt me for years to come.
When we begin talking, Nadine seems utterly disassociated from her surroundings—far away. “I’m 29,” she begins. “I am from the village of Nindja. Normally there was insecurity in our area. We would hide many nights in the bush. The soldiers found us there. They killed our village chief and his children. We were 50 women. I was with my three children and my older brother; they told him to have sex with me. He refused, so they cut his head and he died.”
Nadine’s body is trembling. It is hard to believe these words are coming out of a woman who is still alive and breathing. She tells me how one of the soldiers forced her to drink his urine and eat his feces, how the soldiers killed 10 of her friends and then murdered her children: her four-year-old and two-year-old boys and her one-year-old girl. “They flung my baby’s body on the ground like she was garbage,” Nadine says. “One after another they raped me. From that my vagina and anus were ripped apart.”
Nadine holds onto my hand as if she were drowning in a tsunami of memory. As devastated as she is, it is clear that she needs to be telling this story, needs me to listen to what she is saying. She closes her eyes and says something I cannot believe I’m hearing. “One of the soldiers cut open a pregnant woman,” she says. “It was a mature baby and they killed it. They cooked it and forced us to eat it.”
Incredibly, Nadine was the only one of the 50 women to escape. “When I got away from the soldiers, there was a man passing. He said, ‘What is that bad smell?’ It was me; because of my wounds, I couldn’t control my urine or feces. I explained what had happened. The man wept right there. He and some others brought me to the Panzi Hospital.”
She stops. Neither of us has breathed. Nadine looks at me, longing for me to make sense of what she’s related. She says, “When I got here I had no hope. But this hospital helped me so much. Whenever I thought about what happened, I became mad. I believed I would lose my mind. I asked God to kill me. Dr. Mukwege told me: Maybe God didn’t want me to lose my life.”
Nadine later tells me that the doctor was right. As she fled the slaughter, she says, she saw an infant lying on the ground next to her slain parents. Nadine rescued the girl; now having a child to care for gives her reason to keep going. “I can’t go back to my village. It’s too dangerous. But if I had a place to live I could go to school. I lost my children but I’m raising this child as my own. This girl is my future.”
I stay for a week at Panzi. Women line up to tell me their stories. They come into the interview numb, distant, glazed over, dead. They leave alive, grateful, empowered. I begin to understand that the deepest wound for them is the sense that they have been forgotten, that they are invisible and that their suffering has no meaning. The simple act of listening to them has enormous impact. The slightest touch or kindness restores their faith and energy. The strength of these women is remarkable, as is their unparalleled resiliency. Dr. Mukwege tells me I need to meet Alfonsine (her name also has been changed). “Her story really touched me,” he says. “Her body, her case is the worst I have ever seen, but she has given us all courage.”
Alfonsine is thin and poised, profoundly calm. She tells me she was walking through the forest when she encountered a lone soldier. “He followed me and then forced me to lie down. He said he would kill me. I struggled with him hard; it went on for a long time. Then he went for his rifle, pressed it on the outside of my vagina and shot his entire cartridge into me. I just heard the voice of bullets. My clothes were glued to me with blood. I passed out.”
Dr. Mukwege tells me, “I never saw such destruction. Her colon, bladder, vagina and rectum were basically gone. She had lost her mind. I was sure she wouldn’t make it. I rebuilt her bladder. Sometimes you don’t even know where you are going. There’s no map. I operated on her six times, and then I sent her to Ethiopia so they could heal the incontinence problem, and they did.”
“I was in bed when I first met Dr. Mukwege,” Alfonsine says. “He caressed my face. I lived at Panzi for six months. He helped me spiritually. He showed me how many times God makes miracles. He built me up morally.”
I look at Alfonsine’s petite body and imagine the scars beneath her humble white clothes. I imagine the reconstructed flesh, the agony she experienced after being shot. I listen carefully. I cannot detect a drop of bitterness or any desire for revenge. Instead, her attention is fixed on transforming the future. She tells me with great pride, “I am now studying to be a nurse. My first choice is to work at Panzi. It was the nurses who nurtured me day after day, who loved me back into living.”
Alfonsine has ambitions that go beyond Panzi: “I feel like a big person in my community; I can do something for my people. Women must lead our country. They know the way.”
Every day about a dozen new women arrive at Panzi Hospital. Most come for surgery to repair a fistula, a rip in their internal tissue. There are two types of fistulas seen here: One is the aftermath of brutal rape, the other the result of birth complications, something that could be prevented if there were adequate maternity health care. These obstetric fistulas are the result of abnormal tearing during the birth process. Many occur when women flee the militias while they are in labor; there is no time to give birth, and the baby dies inside. The women who make it here are the lucky ones. They limp on homemade canes made from tree branches; they trudge slowly in deep pain. Some have walked 40 miles. Because it takes so long to get to the hospital, women have no chance to receive the anti-HIV medications that must be taken within 48 hours after rape. Health experts fear that in a few years, there will be an explosion of AIDS in the Congo.
Dr. Mukwege was once the only doctor at Panzi Hospital able to perform fistula surgery; now he has trained four others. The hospital does 1,000 such operations a year.
I sit in on a typical operation in a clean, safe, but seriously underequipped operating room (nurses use torn pieces of a green dressing gown to tie the woman’s ankles to the stirrups). I am able to see the fistula—a hole in the tissue between the woman’s vaginal wall and bladder. A hole in her body. A hole in her soul. A hole where her confidence, her esteem, her spirit, her light, her urine leak out.
Because of the prevalence of fistulas, the Panzi complex is soaked in urine. The smell pervades everything. Pee spills out of women in a huge, dirt-floored hangarlike space where hundreds sit all day. Pee spills out in classrooms, leaving puddles on the floor. The women are always wet. Their legs chafe and their skin burns. There are many little girls in pee-stained dresses roaming around Panzi; shy and ashamed, they, too, are victims of rape. The week of my visit, a state agency had turned off the water for the hospital after billing Panzi $70,000 (an insane amount by Congolese standards) because it heard that the hospital, which is private, was receiving money from the West. Staff had to bring in buckets of water from the surrounding neighborhood. To have hundreds of women with fistula-caused incontinence and no water seemed like a crime upon a crime.
I can’t help wondering what happened in Dr. Mukwege’s life that compelled him to work here, sometimes 14 hours a day. “I was born in Bukavu on March 1, 1955,” he tells me. “During my young age my mother was suffering with asthma. In the night when she became ill, I was the one who would go and look for a nurse or bring her medication. We all thought she would die. Even now, each birthday she celebrates, I am so happy to see her alive.
“My father was a pastor. He was very gentle, very human. From him I got the caring to treat patients. When we would go and visit sick people together, he would pray. I would ask, ‘Why can’t you give them tablets or prescriptions?’ He said, ‘I am not a doctor.’ I decided then that prayer is not enough. People must take things into their own hands. Asking God does not change anything. He gives us the ability to say yes or no. You must use your hands, your mind. When I receive women here who are hungry, I can’t say, ‘God bless you.’ I have to give them something to eat. When someone is suffering, I can’t tell her about God, I have to treat her pain. You can’t hide yourself in religion. Not a solution.”
Dr. Mukwege began as a general practitioner, focusing on pediatrics. When he worked in a clinic in Lemera, a village south of Bukavu, he saw dreadful things happening in maternity. “Women were coming in bleeding day after day, many with severe infections. A woman had a baby and carried it dead in her vagina for a week. It was terrible. This helped me make a total engagement in a new career.”
He went back to school to study gynecology in Angers, France, and then returned to Lemera to train the staff in obstetrics and gynecology. After he moved to Bukavu he created a special maternity ward at Panzi. Women who were victims of extreme sexual violence began to arrive. The number grew every day.
Who was—and is—raping the women? The better question might be, who isn’t?
The perpetrators include the Interahamwe, the Hutu fighters who fled neighboring Rwanda in 1994 after committing genocide there; the Congolese army; a loose assortment of armed civilians; even U.N. peacekeepers. Christine Schuler Deschryver, who works for a German aid organization and is a fierce advocate for Panzi Hospital and Congolese women, says, “All of them are raping women. It is a country sport. Any person in uniform is an enemy to women.”
Many women do not even report the violations, because they are afraid of rejection by their husbands and families. Although there are laws against rape in the Congo, if a woman reports her rape and her rapist is arrested, he can pay his way out and come back and rape her again. Or murder her.
Dr. Mukwege, in contrast, is motivating a different kind of healing army. I speak with a hospital employee named Bonane. “I was in Uganda,” he says. “I saw the doctor on TV. He was explaining the atrocities. I realized these are my mothers and sisters. I was so inspired, I came here to work with him.”
Dr. Mukwege is married with five children, but his brother, Herman, tells me his family doesn’t see him much because his devotion to the women has consumed his life. Although the doctor’s energy never flags, I notice an underlying exhaustion in his face and his being, a sleepless despair that comes from dwelling constantly amid violence and cruelty. He says to me, “When you rape a woman, you destroy life and you destroy your own life. Animals don’t do this. When a pigeon has sex with another pigeon, it is kind. I am wondering how man has the power of such destruction.”
And yet, the status of women in the Congo was dismal long before the wars started. The women work all day in the field and market, carrying the Congo on their backs (sometimes up to 200 pounds in bags strapped to their foreheads). They prepare the dinner, wash the clothes, clean the house, take care of the children, have mandatory sex with their husbands. They have no power, no rights and no value. Many women I talk to ask why I am “wasting my time” with them.
I interview a man who is the keeper of a gorilla preserve. He tells me that when dangerous militias began staking out territory in the park, he went to their commanders and asked if their soldiers would work with him to protect the gorillas. In the end they all agreed. I ask him why he didn’t feel compelled to do the same for the women. The question surprised him. He had no answer.
I ask the doctor about the Congo’s leader, Joseph Kabila, who in November 2006 became the country’s first democratically elected president in 46 years and promised to be the “craftsman of peace.” Are things getting better?
Dr. Mukwege sighs. “Kabila,” he says, “has done nothing. The fighting here in the east has not stopped. During 2004 my life was threatened; I got phone calls warning me to stop my work or die. The calls have ceased, but it is still very dangerous.
“Visitors come from the international community,” he continues. “They eat sandwiches and cry, but they do not come back with help. Even President Kabila has never put his foot here. His wife was here. She wept, but she has done nothing.”
UNICEF, ECHO (the humanitarian aid office of the European Commission) and PMU (a Swedish humanitarian organization) are the major supporters of Panzi. Although the hospital can always use more money, the real need is for a political response to the violence. Barring that, Dr. Mukwege would at least like to get real protection for the women once they leave the hospital. “I patch them up and send them back home,” he says, “but there is no guarantee they will not be raped again. There have been several cases where women have come back a second time, more destroyed than the first.”
On my last day, the doctor asks me if I will lead some exercises for the women that will help alleviate their trauma. We go to the hangarlike building where 250 depressed and sick women are waiting. We begin with breathing. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Then we attach a noise to the breath. Other noises follow. One after another, noise after noise. Then we attach a movement. There is stomping. There is punching. There is mad waving of arms. The women are up on their feet, screaming, releasing guttural sounds of sorrow, rage, terror. In a matter of minutes, I watch them go from broken, mute women to wild, laughing, ferocious beings.
In the midst of this energy, Dr. Mukwege challenges the women to a dance contest. Celebration and power explode from their bodies. A part of each woman is fierce, unbreakable. No one has killed their spirits. The doctor whispers to me, “When I see this joy, this life in the women, I know why I must come back here every day.”
The women’s frenzy builds and builds. They dance in the hot African sun. They dance in the open road. They literally dance us up a steep hill, hundreds of women and children moving in a single, radiant feminine mass.
If 250 women who have been raped, torn, starved and tortured can find the strength to dance us up a mountain, surely the rest of us can find the resources and will to guarantee their future.
Eve Ensler is a playwright, an activist and the founder of V-Day. Her latest book is Insecure at Last.
http://www.glamour.com/news/articles/2007/08/reallifedrama
Mark 13
Signs of the End of the Age
1As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!"
2"Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."
3As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately, 4"Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?"
5Jesus said to them: "Watch out that no one deceives you. 6Many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am he,' and will deceive many. 7When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 8Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.
9"You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them. 10And the gospel must first be preached to all nations. 11Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.
12"Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. 13All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.
14"When you see 'the abomination that causes desolation'[a]standing where it[b] does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 15Let no one on the roof of his house go down or enter the house to take anything out. 16Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. 17How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 18Pray that this will not take place in winter, 19because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again. 20If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them. 21At that time if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ[c]!' or, 'Look, there he is!' do not believe it. 22For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect—if that were possible. 23So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.
24"But in those days, following that distress,
" 'the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
25the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.'[d]
26"At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. 27And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.
28"Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 29Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door. 30I tell you the truth, this generation[e] will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 31Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
The Day and Hour Unknown
32"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33Be on guard! Be alert[f]! You do not know when that time will come. 34It's like a man going away: He leaves his house and puts his servants in charge, each with his assigned task, and tells the one at the door to keep watch.
35"Therefore keep watch because you do not know when the owner of the house will come back—whether in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or at dawn. 36If he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. 37What I say to you, I say to everyone: 'Watch!' "
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Women left for dead—and the man who’s saving them
In the Congo, where tens of thousands of women are brutally raped every year, Dr. Denis Mukwege repairs their broken bodies and souls. Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, visits him and finds hope amid the horror.
By Eve Ensler
September 2007, Glamour
p. 289
Dr. Mukwege with some of his patients at Panzi Hospital
I have just returned from hell. I am trying for the life of me to figure out how to communicate what I have seen and heard in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. How do I convey these stories of atrocities without your shutting down, quickly turning the page or feeling too disturbed?
How do I tell you of girls as young as nine raped by gangs of soldiers, of women whose insides were blown apart by rifle blasts and whose bodies now leak uncontrollable streams of urine and feces?
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How you can help
The women of Eastern Congo, V-Day and UNICEF—the latter acting on behalf of United Nations Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict—are launching a new campaign to urge an end to the femicide and raise money for women’s groups in the Congo. You can…
* Write a letter addressed to His Excellency, the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Joseph Kabila Kabange; demand that he take action to stop the attacks on women. Send it to U.N. Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict, P.O. Box 3862, New York, NY 10163, and it will be delivered to Kabila.
* Donate directly to Panzi Hospital through vday.org.
Money donated to Panzi also goes to establish a City of Joy, a safe haven for the healed women, where they’ll learn to become political leaders.
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This journey was a departure for me. It began with a man, Dr. Denis Mukwege, and a conversation we had in New York City in December 2006, when he came to speak about his work helping women at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu. It began with my rusty French and his limited English. It began with the quiet anguish in his bloodshot eyes, eyes that seemed to me to be bleeding from the horrors he’d witnessed.
Something happened in this conversation that compelled me to go halfway around the world to visit the doctor, this holy man who was sewing up women as fast as the mad militiamen could rip them apart.
I am going to tell the stories of the patients he saves so that the faceless, generic, raped women of war become Alfonsine and Nadine—women with names and memories and dreams. I am going to ask you to stay with me, to open your hearts, to be as outraged and nauseated as I felt sitting in Panzi Hospital in faraway Bukavu.
Before I went to the Congo, I’d spent the past 10 years working on V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls. I’d traveled to the rape mines of the world, places like Bosnia, Afghanistan and Haiti, where rape has been used as a tool of war. But nothing I ever experienced felt as ghastly, terrifying and complete as the sexual torture and attempted destruction of the female species here. It is not too strong to call this a femicide, to say that the future of the Congo’s women is in serious jeopardy.
I learned from my trip that there are men who take their sorrow and helplessness and destroy women’s bodies—and there are others with the same feelings who devote their lives to healing and serving. I do not know all the reasons men end up in one or the other of these groups, but I do know that one good man can create many more. One good man can inspire other men to ache for women, to fight for them and protect them. One good man can win the trust of a community of raped women—and in doing so, keep their faith in humanity alive.
Dr. Mukwege picks me up at 6:30 A.M. It is a lush, clean morning. Eastern Congo, where Panzi Hospital is located, is wildly fertile. You can almost hear the vegetation growing. There are banana trees and cartoon-colored birds. And there is Lake Kivu, a vast body of water that contains enough methane to power a good portion of the sub-Sahara—yet the city of Bukavu on its banks has only sporadic electricity. This is a theme in the Congo. There are more natural resources than almost anywhere else on the planet, yet 80 percent of the people make less than a dollar a day. More rain falls than one can imagine, but for millions, clean drinking water is scarce. The earth is gorgeously abundant, and yet almost one third of the population is starving.
As we drive along the semblance of road, the doctor tells me how different things were when he was a child. “In the sixties 50,000 people lived here in Bukavu. It was a relaxed place. There were rich people who had speedy boats in the lakes. There were gorillas in the mountains.” Now there are at least a million displaced Congolese, many of whom arrive in the city daily, fleeing the numerous armed groups that have ravaged the countryside since fighting erupted in 1996. What started as a civil war to overthrow dictator Mobutu Sese Seko soon became “Africa’s first world war,” as observers have called it, with soldiers from neighboring countries joining in the mayhem. The troops have various agendas: Many are fighting for control of the region’s extraordinary mineral wealth. Others are out to grab whatever they can get.
But you have to go back further than 1996 to understand what is going on in the Congo today. This country has been tortured for more than 120 years, beginning with King Leopold II of Belgium, who “acquired” the Congo and, between 1885 and 1908, exterminated an estimated 10 million people, about half the population. The violent consequences of genocide and colonialism have had a profound impact on the psyche of the Congolese. Despite a 2003 peace agreement and recent elections, armed groups continue to terrorize the eastern half of the country. Overall the war has left nearly 4 million people dead—more than in any other conflict since World War II—and resulted in the rape of hundreds of thousands of women and girls.
In Bukavu, the people escaping the fighting walk from early morning to late at night. They walk and walk, searching for a way to buy or sell a tomato, or for a banana for their baby. It is a relentless river of humans, anxious and hungry. “People used to eat three meals a day,” says Dr. Mukwege. “Now they are lucky to eat one.”
Everyone knows the doctor, an ob-gyn. He waves and stops to inquire about this person’s health, that person’s mother. Most doctors, teachers and lawyers fled the Congo after the wars started. It never occurred to Dr. Mukwege to leave his people at their most desperate hour.
He first became aware of the epidemic of rape in 1996. “I saw women who had been raped in an extremely barbaric way,” he recalls. “First, the women were raped in front of their children, their husbands and neighbors. Second, the rapes were done by many men at the same time. Third, not only were the women raped, but their vaginas were mutilated with guns and sticks. These situations show that sex was being used as a weapon that is cheap.
“When rape is done in front of your family,” he continues, “it destroys everyone. I have seen men suffer who watched their wives raped; they are not mentally stable anymore. The children are in even worse condition. Most of the time, when a woman suffers this much violence, she is not able to bear children afterward. Clearly these rapes are not done to satisfy any sexual desire but to destroy the soul. The whole family and community are broken.”
We arrive at Panzi Hospital, a spread-out complex of about a dozen buildings. Eight years ago Dr. Mukwege created a special maternity ward here with an operating room. Panzi as a whole has 334 beds, 250 of which now hold female victims of sexual violence. The hospital and its surrounding property have become, essentially, a village of raped women. The grounds are overwhelmed with children and hunger and need. Every day at least two children here die from malnutrition. Then there are the many problems that result from severe trauma: women with nightmares and insomnia, women rejected by their husbands, women who have no interest in nurturing the babies of their rapists, women and children with nowhere to go.
It is early morning, and the hospital courtyard has been transformed into a temporary church. Women dressed in their most colorful, or perhaps only, pagne (a six-yard piece of brightly patterned cloth that can be wrapped into a dress or skirt) sit waiting for the doctor to arrive and lead the prayer service that begins each day. A dedicated staff of female nurses and social workers are there as well, dressed in their starched white jackets. There is singing, a combination of Pentecostal calls and Swahili rhythms, Sunday-morning voices calling up Jesus.
This morning service is a kind of daily gathering of strength and unity. When the women sing, everything else seems to disappear. They are with the sun, the sky, the drums, each other. They are alive in their bodies, momentarily safe and free.
As they sing, Dr. Mukwege tells me stories about the women in the chorus. Many were naked when they arrived, or starving. Many were so badly damaged he is amazed they are singing at all. He takes enormous pride in their recovery. “I will never be ashamed,” the women sing. “God gave me a new heart that I can be very strong.”
“At the beginning I used to hear patients’ stories,” Dr. Mukwege tells me. “Now I abstain.” I soon understand why. I meet Nadine (like others in this story, she agreed to be photographed, but asked that her name be changed, as she could be subject to reprisals for speaking out), who tells me a tale so horrendous it will haunt me for years to come.
When we begin talking, Nadine seems utterly disassociated from her surroundings—far away. “I’m 29,” she begins. “I am from the village of Nindja. Normally there was insecurity in our area. We would hide many nights in the bush. The soldiers found us there. They killed our village chief and his children. We were 50 women. I was with my three children and my older brother; they told him to have sex with me. He refused, so they cut his head and he died.”
Nadine’s body is trembling. It is hard to believe these words are coming out of a woman who is still alive and breathing. She tells me how one of the soldiers forced her to drink his urine and eat his feces, how the soldiers killed 10 of her friends and then murdered her children: her four-year-old and two-year-old boys and her one-year-old girl. “They flung my baby’s body on the ground like she was garbage,” Nadine says. “One after another they raped me. From that my vagina and anus were ripped apart.”
Nadine holds onto my hand as if she were drowning in a tsunami of memory. As devastated as she is, it is clear that she needs to be telling this story, needs me to listen to what she is saying. She closes her eyes and says something I cannot believe I’m hearing. “One of the soldiers cut open a pregnant woman,” she says. “It was a mature baby and they killed it. They cooked it and forced us to eat it.”
Incredibly, Nadine was the only one of the 50 women to escape. “When I got away from the soldiers, there was a man passing. He said, ‘What is that bad smell?’ It was me; because of my wounds, I couldn’t control my urine or feces. I explained what had happened. The man wept right there. He and some others brought me to the Panzi Hospital.”
She stops. Neither of us has breathed. Nadine looks at me, longing for me to make sense of what she’s related. She says, “When I got here I had no hope. But this hospital helped me so much. Whenever I thought about what happened, I became mad. I believed I would lose my mind. I asked God to kill me. Dr. Mukwege told me: Maybe God didn’t want me to lose my life.”
Nadine later tells me that the doctor was right. As she fled the slaughter, she says, she saw an infant lying on the ground next to her slain parents. Nadine rescued the girl; now having a child to care for gives her reason to keep going. “I can’t go back to my village. It’s too dangerous. But if I had a place to live I could go to school. I lost my children but I’m raising this child as my own. This girl is my future.”
I stay for a week at Panzi. Women line up to tell me their stories. They come into the interview numb, distant, glazed over, dead. They leave alive, grateful, empowered. I begin to understand that the deepest wound for them is the sense that they have been forgotten, that they are invisible and that their suffering has no meaning. The simple act of listening to them has enormous impact. The slightest touch or kindness restores their faith and energy. The strength of these women is remarkable, as is their unparalleled resiliency. Dr. Mukwege tells me I need to meet Alfonsine (her name also has been changed). “Her story really touched me,” he says. “Her body, her case is the worst I have ever seen, but she has given us all courage.”
Alfonsine is thin and poised, profoundly calm. She tells me she was walking through the forest when she encountered a lone soldier. “He followed me and then forced me to lie down. He said he would kill me. I struggled with him hard; it went on for a long time. Then he went for his rifle, pressed it on the outside of my vagina and shot his entire cartridge into me. I just heard the voice of bullets. My clothes were glued to me with blood. I passed out.”
Dr. Mukwege tells me, “I never saw such destruction. Her colon, bladder, vagina and rectum were basically gone. She had lost her mind. I was sure she wouldn’t make it. I rebuilt her bladder. Sometimes you don’t even know where you are going. There’s no map. I operated on her six times, and then I sent her to Ethiopia so they could heal the incontinence problem, and they did.”
“I was in bed when I first met Dr. Mukwege,” Alfonsine says. “He caressed my face. I lived at Panzi for six months. He helped me spiritually. He showed me how many times God makes miracles. He built me up morally.”
I look at Alfonsine’s petite body and imagine the scars beneath her humble white clothes. I imagine the reconstructed flesh, the agony she experienced after being shot. I listen carefully. I cannot detect a drop of bitterness or any desire for revenge. Instead, her attention is fixed on transforming the future. She tells me with great pride, “I am now studying to be a nurse. My first choice is to work at Panzi. It was the nurses who nurtured me day after day, who loved me back into living.”
Alfonsine has ambitions that go beyond Panzi: “I feel like a big person in my community; I can do something for my people. Women must lead our country. They know the way.”
Every day about a dozen new women arrive at Panzi Hospital. Most come for surgery to repair a fistula, a rip in their internal tissue. There are two types of fistulas seen here: One is the aftermath of brutal rape, the other the result of birth complications, something that could be prevented if there were adequate maternity health care. These obstetric fistulas are the result of abnormal tearing during the birth process. Many occur when women flee the militias while they are in labor; there is no time to give birth, and the baby dies inside. The women who make it here are the lucky ones. They limp on homemade canes made from tree branches; they trudge slowly in deep pain. Some have walked 40 miles. Because it takes so long to get to the hospital, women have no chance to receive the anti-HIV medications that must be taken within 48 hours after rape. Health experts fear that in a few years, there will be an explosion of AIDS in the Congo.
Dr. Mukwege was once the only doctor at Panzi Hospital able to perform fistula surgery; now he has trained four others. The hospital does 1,000 such operations a year.
I sit in on a typical operation in a clean, safe, but seriously underequipped operating room (nurses use torn pieces of a green dressing gown to tie the woman’s ankles to the stirrups). I am able to see the fistula—a hole in the tissue between the woman’s vaginal wall and bladder. A hole in her body. A hole in her soul. A hole where her confidence, her esteem, her spirit, her light, her urine leak out.
Because of the prevalence of fistulas, the Panzi complex is soaked in urine. The smell pervades everything. Pee spills out of women in a huge, dirt-floored hangarlike space where hundreds sit all day. Pee spills out in classrooms, leaving puddles on the floor. The women are always wet. Their legs chafe and their skin burns. There are many little girls in pee-stained dresses roaming around Panzi; shy and ashamed, they, too, are victims of rape. The week of my visit, a state agency had turned off the water for the hospital after billing Panzi $70,000 (an insane amount by Congolese standards) because it heard that the hospital, which is private, was receiving money from the West. Staff had to bring in buckets of water from the surrounding neighborhood. To have hundreds of women with fistula-caused incontinence and no water seemed like a crime upon a crime.
I can’t help wondering what happened in Dr. Mukwege’s life that compelled him to work here, sometimes 14 hours a day. “I was born in Bukavu on March 1, 1955,” he tells me. “During my young age my mother was suffering with asthma. In the night when she became ill, I was the one who would go and look for a nurse or bring her medication. We all thought she would die. Even now, each birthday she celebrates, I am so happy to see her alive.
“My father was a pastor. He was very gentle, very human. From him I got the caring to treat patients. When we would go and visit sick people together, he would pray. I would ask, ‘Why can’t you give them tablets or prescriptions?’ He said, ‘I am not a doctor.’ I decided then that prayer is not enough. People must take things into their own hands. Asking God does not change anything. He gives us the ability to say yes or no. You must use your hands, your mind. When I receive women here who are hungry, I can’t say, ‘God bless you.’ I have to give them something to eat. When someone is suffering, I can’t tell her about God, I have to treat her pain. You can’t hide yourself in religion. Not a solution.”
Dr. Mukwege began as a general practitioner, focusing on pediatrics. When he worked in a clinic in Lemera, a village south of Bukavu, he saw dreadful things happening in maternity. “Women were coming in bleeding day after day, many with severe infections. A woman had a baby and carried it dead in her vagina for a week. It was terrible. This helped me make a total engagement in a new career.”
He went back to school to study gynecology in Angers, France, and then returned to Lemera to train the staff in obstetrics and gynecology. After he moved to Bukavu he created a special maternity ward at Panzi. Women who were victims of extreme sexual violence began to arrive. The number grew every day.
Who was—and is—raping the women? The better question might be, who isn’t?
The perpetrators include the Interahamwe, the Hutu fighters who fled neighboring Rwanda in 1994 after committing genocide there; the Congolese army; a loose assortment of armed civilians; even U.N. peacekeepers. Christine Schuler Deschryver, who works for a German aid organization and is a fierce advocate for Panzi Hospital and Congolese women, says, “All of them are raping women. It is a country sport. Any person in uniform is an enemy to women.”
Many women do not even report the violations, because they are afraid of rejection by their husbands and families. Although there are laws against rape in the Congo, if a woman reports her rape and her rapist is arrested, he can pay his way out and come back and rape her again. Or murder her.
Dr. Mukwege, in contrast, is motivating a different kind of healing army. I speak with a hospital employee named Bonane. “I was in Uganda,” he says. “I saw the doctor on TV. He was explaining the atrocities. I realized these are my mothers and sisters. I was so inspired, I came here to work with him.”
Dr. Mukwege is married with five children, but his brother, Herman, tells me his family doesn’t see him much because his devotion to the women has consumed his life. Although the doctor’s energy never flags, I notice an underlying exhaustion in his face and his being, a sleepless despair that comes from dwelling constantly amid violence and cruelty. He says to me, “When you rape a woman, you destroy life and you destroy your own life. Animals don’t do this. When a pigeon has sex with another pigeon, it is kind. I am wondering how man has the power of such destruction.”
And yet, the status of women in the Congo was dismal long before the wars started. The women work all day in the field and market, carrying the Congo on their backs (sometimes up to 200 pounds in bags strapped to their foreheads). They prepare the dinner, wash the clothes, clean the house, take care of the children, have mandatory sex with their husbands. They have no power, no rights and no value. Many women I talk to ask why I am “wasting my time” with them.
I interview a man who is the keeper of a gorilla preserve. He tells me that when dangerous militias began staking out territory in the park, he went to their commanders and asked if their soldiers would work with him to protect the gorillas. In the end they all agreed. I ask him why he didn’t feel compelled to do the same for the women. The question surprised him. He had no answer.
I ask the doctor about the Congo’s leader, Joseph Kabila, who in November 2006 became the country’s first democratically elected president in 46 years and promised to be the “craftsman of peace.” Are things getting better?
Dr. Mukwege sighs. “Kabila,” he says, “has done nothing. The fighting here in the east has not stopped. During 2004 my life was threatened; I got phone calls warning me to stop my work or die. The calls have ceased, but it is still very dangerous.
“Visitors come from the international community,” he continues. “They eat sandwiches and cry, but they do not come back with help. Even President Kabila has never put his foot here. His wife was here. She wept, but she has done nothing.”
UNICEF, ECHO (the humanitarian aid office of the European Commission) and PMU (a Swedish humanitarian organization) are the major supporters of Panzi. Although the hospital can always use more money, the real need is for a political response to the violence. Barring that, Dr. Mukwege would at least like to get real protection for the women once they leave the hospital. “I patch them up and send them back home,” he says, “but there is no guarantee they will not be raped again. There have been several cases where women have come back a second time, more destroyed than the first.”
On my last day, the doctor asks me if I will lead some exercises for the women that will help alleviate their trauma. We go to the hangarlike building where 250 depressed and sick women are waiting. We begin with breathing. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Then we attach a noise to the breath. Other noises follow. One after another, noise after noise. Then we attach a movement. There is stomping. There is punching. There is mad waving of arms. The women are up on their feet, screaming, releasing guttural sounds of sorrow, rage, terror. In a matter of minutes, I watch them go from broken, mute women to wild, laughing, ferocious beings.
In the midst of this energy, Dr. Mukwege challenges the women to a dance contest. Celebration and power explode from their bodies. A part of each woman is fierce, unbreakable. No one has killed their spirits. The doctor whispers to me, “When I see this joy, this life in the women, I know why I must come back here every day.”
The women’s frenzy builds and builds. They dance in the hot African sun. They dance in the open road. They literally dance us up a steep hill, hundreds of women and children moving in a single, radiant feminine mass.
If 250 women who have been raped, torn, starved and tortured can find the strength to dance us up a mountain, surely the rest of us can find the resources and will to guarantee their future.
Eve Ensler is a playwright, an activist and the founder of V-Day. Her latest book is Insecure at Last.
http://www.glamour.com/news/articles/2007/08/reallifedrama
untitled
all the words in my mind...slipped away...looking for a list of old words and wound up at the urban dictionary...that will take your mind off anything normal...
I could write response to many things, or just something new, but to what end purpose?
Someone sent me an article on the cases of rape...and I'm thinking what if this were men being attacked at the rate that this article speaks about what happens to women...disgusting...I think of something rad to write like take the rapist out and let the law use 'em for target practice instead of them paper people they practice on...
People would get upset about just my writing that. But the actual violences committed...just a flyover state kind of talk...like nothing really happened?
My solution to the peds who won't cease and desist...tattoo them right on the face.
I get a little nasty...tit for tat, I think.
That is not where I started out today, but someone sent me that piece from NOW...and here I am. Ex-prison worker...knowing the basis of their lives...their sad beginnings...
...and then I read Mother Teresa doubted God. Sounds healthy. The Silent Colluder to all the misery and someone from the old school, with their head buried up their butt, telling me/us, not to question. humph. I personally don't like the smell of my own ass, so I won't be joining you on that burying my head trick...I prefer to question. It's comforting to know that Terry down in India followed the lead of the crucified at the moment of release...why have you abandoned me? I don't see why one cannot just ask.
Where the hell are you?
Or as Patty says: "I talk to the mother of God." Time to make the wine, I say.
[In the story of the wedding at Cana, Jesus is a reluctant miracle worker. In fact, he outright refuses to act after his mother has informed him that the hosts have run out of wine. Mary does not argue, nor does she prod or plead. She turns away from her son and speaks to the servants, “Do what he tells you to do.” And contained within that simple instruction to the servants, is a command for her son to get off his butt and act.]...let that be a lesson to you on how to talk to recalcitrant God-boys...
from: http://journals.aol.com/mdiv94/DoireMusings/entries/2007/06/17/dismantling-the-
castle-and-the-cathedral-part-ii/2143
Well, you know, change is the key...not just talking about it, but actually doing it...change that is.
Points of intersection where change happens. Where has that happened? Think about it.
That is how I assess the chasing of the tail talk where the story never changes because the story is not enough? Not sure, but somewhere in there...is a truth or two.
Point being, if anyone thinks anyone is not vital...at any point, in living, well...we'll see. In the end..."when there will be more than ocean water broken when God's last put out the light is spoken."--Once by the Pacific -- Robert Frost
[and personally, given this f-ing setup...i could give a flying f, what kind of genitals you were born with...don't mean jack...] Have a nice day.
p.s. I'll just share that article with you:
Misogyny: A Public Health Crisis
Below the Belt: A Biweekly Column by NOW President Kim Gandy
August 20, 2007
A 20-year-old woman reported being raped by the bouncer outside a bar in Cincinnati. A disabled woman in Everett, Wash., says she was raped in her home by a man she knew, while her young children slept nearby. In Washington, D.C., police say a woman was forced to withdraw money for the assailant after he raped her. A man was arrested in Cheyenne, Wyo., for raping and murdering a woman. Chicago police say a 25-year-old woman was stabbed and strangled in a "domestic dispute."
And that was just yesterday.
Rarely a day goes by without multiple headlines announcing that a woman or young girl is missing, or has been sexually assaulted, raped or murdered, or some combination thereof. It is no secret that violence against women and girls pervades this country and the world, and yet for some reason, neither the statistics nor the headlines shock society into collective, sustained action. The fact that one in six women in the U.S. is the victim of sexual assault raises few eyebrows.
Certain instances of sexual assault, rape and other violent acts against women get a lot of media coverage, but the reports are rarely framed as evidence of a serious public health crisis and a society still struggling with misogyny. More often, incidents make news because of the alleged perpetrator's celebrity status or the salaciousness of the crime, a trend that has fostered a frightening trivialization of violence against women. Rape has become the stuff of gossip — and even humor.
Ask any young woman who has been involved in anti-violence and rape crisis work on a college campus, and you will learn (or perhaps you already know) the undeniable impact of the media's and society's treatment of gender-based violence. At student-organized Take Back the Night marches, when the campus community walks in protest of violence against women, it's expected that the march will be interrupted by streakers. Young feminists at NOW have told stories about male peers who joked about starting "Rape Clubs," and that even wearing a t-shirt saying something like "Rock Against Rape" can prompt snickering from peers.
With attitudes like this so common, I guess it's not surprising to learn that one in five high school girls had been physically or sexually abused by a dating partner, according to a 2001 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The lead author of the study said the findings suggest that many adolescent boys "have adopted attitudes that men are entitled to control their girlfriends through violence." This control can have both immediate and far-reaching effects. For instance, girls who had been victimized were eight to nine times more likely to have attempted suicide in the previous year.
With such sobering findings at hand, you might think we'd hear about large-scale policy or publicly-funded education initiatives to address gender-based violence. You'd think that maybe, six years later, the federal government would have stopped funding abstinence-only programs to the tune of $1.5 billion over the last 10 years — programs that have been widely shown to promote archaic gender stereotypes and hostile gender relations. Take a look at this excerpt from a student workbook used in an abstinence-only curriculum in Ohio, a state which in 2005 ranked fourth in the nation in tax dollars expended for abstinence-only education:
"Deep down, you know that your friend's plunging necklines and short skirts are getting the guys to talk about her. Is that what you want? To see girls drive guys hormones when a guy is trying to see her as a friend. A guy who wants to respect girls is distracted by sexy clothes and remembers her for one thing. Is it fair that guys are turned on by their senses and women by their hearts?"
(The full report on programs in Ohio linked at the SIECUS web site.)
Unbelievable, right? And yet, at the end of June, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to extend the Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage program. On the up side, subcommittees of the Senate Appropriations Committee did approve an additional $39 million in funding for domestic violence-related services, including $2 million in services to address teen dating violence, sexual assault and stalking. But $2 million in services pales in comparison to the $176 million allocated this year for abstinence-only "education" that actively fosters sexist attitudes, which then contribute to violence against women, which then necessitate those responsive services. Where is the sense—or morality—in that? Where is the real "values" discussion?
So while the government is running in circles, wouldn't it be nice if the media were attempting in a serious, credible way to shed a light on violence against women and girls in a way that wasn't obscured by a market-driven and celebrity-obsessed lens?
When CNN feels compelled to run a headline like "Spector rant: 'All women should be shot in the head,'" concerning music producer Phil Spector's alleged murder of actor Lana Clarkson, couldn't the news provider include some information about just how many women are murdered annually by someone they know?
When we hear about violence against women, as in June's stories about the murder of pregnant Jessie Davis by her boyfriend and the murders of Nancy Benoit and her son by professional wrestler Chris Benoit, don't we deserve better than a "she asked for it" response? Said FOX pundit Bill O'Reilly of these murders: "In both of these terrible situations, the men involved were troubled and chaotic. And the women involved had to know that. Now I'm not blaming the victims here, but I am saying that every one of us has to make smart decisions especially when children are involved." Of course, he's not blaming the victims, but he goes on to say, "The women should be alive today, but those ladies made big mistakes."
There's so much more that could be covered in these two cases, and yet the take-away message is that these are isolated, unusual events. That's simply not so. For example, Jessie Davis' boyfriend was a police officer, a fact most media outlets mentioned. But did any news report mention that domestic violence is experienced by at least 40% of police families -- a rate two to four times higher than in the average family?
The same is true in the military, where there is an increased incidence of domestic violence, as well as increased likelihood of sexual assault. A 2003 University of Iowa study found that "79 percent of participants reported experiences of sexual harassment during their military service; 30 percent of the women reported an attempted or completed rape."
Yet, there is no mainstream media coverage of the young enlisted woman who is being court martialed after she reported a gang rape, apparently because she refused to testify against one of the men after being forced to spend two days alone being questioned by the defendant's military lawyer. Why was he allowed to question her alone, much less for two days? Why wasn't her sexual assault advocate allowed to be with her, when she requested it? Why hasn't the media reported on this story?
Finally, would it hurt to have at least one national news outlet cover the story of the three female college soccer players in California who helped a 17-year-old girl to a hospital, saying that they had seen her being gang raped at a party? Two of the young women, April Grolle and Lauren Chief Elk, went public with their experience after the county district attorney decided not to press charges against the accused men, which included members of the De Anza Community College baseball team. The girls lost friends and have been harassed for speaking out, but they told local news media, "We knew what we were doing was right."
No, it wouldn't hurt at all for a few more people to hear that message.
(http://www.now.org/news/note/082207.html)
I could write response to many things, or just something new, but to what end purpose?
Someone sent me an article on the cases of rape...and I'm thinking what if this were men being attacked at the rate that this article speaks about what happens to women...disgusting...I think of something rad to write like take the rapist out and let the law use 'em for target practice instead of them paper people they practice on...
People would get upset about just my writing that. But the actual violences committed...just a flyover state kind of talk...like nothing really happened?
My solution to the peds who won't cease and desist...tattoo them right on the face.
I get a little nasty...tit for tat, I think.
That is not where I started out today, but someone sent me that piece from NOW...and here I am. Ex-prison worker...knowing the basis of their lives...their sad beginnings...
...and then I read Mother Teresa doubted God. Sounds healthy. The Silent Colluder to all the misery and someone from the old school, with their head buried up their butt, telling me/us, not to question. humph. I personally don't like the smell of my own ass, so I won't be joining you on that burying my head trick...I prefer to question. It's comforting to know that Terry down in India followed the lead of the crucified at the moment of release...why have you abandoned me? I don't see why one cannot just ask.
Where the hell are you?
Or as Patty says: "I talk to the mother of God." Time to make the wine, I say.
[In the story of the wedding at Cana, Jesus is a reluctant miracle worker. In fact, he outright refuses to act after his mother has informed him that the hosts have run out of wine. Mary does not argue, nor does she prod or plead. She turns away from her son and speaks to the servants, “Do what he tells you to do.” And contained within that simple instruction to the servants, is a command for her son to get off his butt and act.]...let that be a lesson to you on how to talk to recalcitrant God-boys...
from: http://journals.aol.com/mdiv94/DoireMusings/entries/2007/06/17/dismantling-the-
castle-and-the-cathedral-part-ii/2143
Well, you know, change is the key...not just talking about it, but actually doing it...change that is.
Points of intersection where change happens. Where has that happened? Think about it.
That is how I assess the chasing of the tail talk where the story never changes because the story is not enough? Not sure, but somewhere in there...is a truth or two.
Point being, if anyone thinks anyone is not vital...at any point, in living, well...we'll see. In the end..."when there will be more than ocean water broken when God's last put out the light is spoken."--Once by the Pacific -- Robert Frost
[and personally, given this f-ing setup...i could give a flying f, what kind of genitals you were born with...don't mean jack...] Have a nice day.
p.s. I'll just share that article with you:
Misogyny: A Public Health Crisis
Below the Belt: A Biweekly Column by NOW President Kim Gandy
August 20, 2007
A 20-year-old woman reported being raped by the bouncer outside a bar in Cincinnati. A disabled woman in Everett, Wash., says she was raped in her home by a man she knew, while her young children slept nearby. In Washington, D.C., police say a woman was forced to withdraw money for the assailant after he raped her. A man was arrested in Cheyenne, Wyo., for raping and murdering a woman. Chicago police say a 25-year-old woman was stabbed and strangled in a "domestic dispute."
And that was just yesterday.
Rarely a day goes by without multiple headlines announcing that a woman or young girl is missing, or has been sexually assaulted, raped or murdered, or some combination thereof. It is no secret that violence against women and girls pervades this country and the world, and yet for some reason, neither the statistics nor the headlines shock society into collective, sustained action. The fact that one in six women in the U.S. is the victim of sexual assault raises few eyebrows.
Certain instances of sexual assault, rape and other violent acts against women get a lot of media coverage, but the reports are rarely framed as evidence of a serious public health crisis and a society still struggling with misogyny. More often, incidents make news because of the alleged perpetrator's celebrity status or the salaciousness of the crime, a trend that has fostered a frightening trivialization of violence against women. Rape has become the stuff of gossip — and even humor.
Ask any young woman who has been involved in anti-violence and rape crisis work on a college campus, and you will learn (or perhaps you already know) the undeniable impact of the media's and society's treatment of gender-based violence. At student-organized Take Back the Night marches, when the campus community walks in protest of violence against women, it's expected that the march will be interrupted by streakers. Young feminists at NOW have told stories about male peers who joked about starting "Rape Clubs," and that even wearing a t-shirt saying something like "Rock Against Rape" can prompt snickering from peers.
With attitudes like this so common, I guess it's not surprising to learn that one in five high school girls had been physically or sexually abused by a dating partner, according to a 2001 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The lead author of the study said the findings suggest that many adolescent boys "have adopted attitudes that men are entitled to control their girlfriends through violence." This control can have both immediate and far-reaching effects. For instance, girls who had been victimized were eight to nine times more likely to have attempted suicide in the previous year.
With such sobering findings at hand, you might think we'd hear about large-scale policy or publicly-funded education initiatives to address gender-based violence. You'd think that maybe, six years later, the federal government would have stopped funding abstinence-only programs to the tune of $1.5 billion over the last 10 years — programs that have been widely shown to promote archaic gender stereotypes and hostile gender relations. Take a look at this excerpt from a student workbook used in an abstinence-only curriculum in Ohio, a state which in 2005 ranked fourth in the nation in tax dollars expended for abstinence-only education:
"Deep down, you know that your friend's plunging necklines and short skirts are getting the guys to talk about her. Is that what you want? To see girls drive guys hormones when a guy is trying to see her as a friend. A guy who wants to respect girls is distracted by sexy clothes and remembers her for one thing. Is it fair that guys are turned on by their senses and women by their hearts?"
(The full report on programs in Ohio linked at the SIECUS web site.)
Unbelievable, right? And yet, at the end of June, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to extend the Title V abstinence-only-until-marriage program. On the up side, subcommittees of the Senate Appropriations Committee did approve an additional $39 million in funding for domestic violence-related services, including $2 million in services to address teen dating violence, sexual assault and stalking. But $2 million in services pales in comparison to the $176 million allocated this year for abstinence-only "education" that actively fosters sexist attitudes, which then contribute to violence against women, which then necessitate those responsive services. Where is the sense—or morality—in that? Where is the real "values" discussion?
So while the government is running in circles, wouldn't it be nice if the media were attempting in a serious, credible way to shed a light on violence against women and girls in a way that wasn't obscured by a market-driven and celebrity-obsessed lens?
When CNN feels compelled to run a headline like "Spector rant: 'All women should be shot in the head,'" concerning music producer Phil Spector's alleged murder of actor Lana Clarkson, couldn't the news provider include some information about just how many women are murdered annually by someone they know?
When we hear about violence against women, as in June's stories about the murder of pregnant Jessie Davis by her boyfriend and the murders of Nancy Benoit and her son by professional wrestler Chris Benoit, don't we deserve better than a "she asked for it" response? Said FOX pundit Bill O'Reilly of these murders: "In both of these terrible situations, the men involved were troubled and chaotic. And the women involved had to know that. Now I'm not blaming the victims here, but I am saying that every one of us has to make smart decisions especially when children are involved." Of course, he's not blaming the victims, but he goes on to say, "The women should be alive today, but those ladies made big mistakes."
There's so much more that could be covered in these two cases, and yet the take-away message is that these are isolated, unusual events. That's simply not so. For example, Jessie Davis' boyfriend was a police officer, a fact most media outlets mentioned. But did any news report mention that domestic violence is experienced by at least 40% of police families -- a rate two to four times higher than in the average family?
The same is true in the military, where there is an increased incidence of domestic violence, as well as increased likelihood of sexual assault. A 2003 University of Iowa study found that "79 percent of participants reported experiences of sexual harassment during their military service; 30 percent of the women reported an attempted or completed rape."
Yet, there is no mainstream media coverage of the young enlisted woman who is being court martialed after she reported a gang rape, apparently because she refused to testify against one of the men after being forced to spend two days alone being questioned by the defendant's military lawyer. Why was he allowed to question her alone, much less for two days? Why wasn't her sexual assault advocate allowed to be with her, when she requested it? Why hasn't the media reported on this story?
Finally, would it hurt to have at least one national news outlet cover the story of the three female college soccer players in California who helped a 17-year-old girl to a hospital, saying that they had seen her being gang raped at a party? Two of the young women, April Grolle and Lauren Chief Elk, went public with their experience after the county district attorney decided not to press charges against the accused men, which included members of the De Anza Community College baseball team. The girls lost friends and have been harassed for speaking out, but they told local news media, "We knew what we were doing was right."
No, it wouldn't hurt at all for a few more people to hear that message.
(http://www.now.org/news/note/082207.html)
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Community
"A community that excludes even one of its members is no community at all"
- Dan Wilkins
Dan Wilkins – www.thenthdegree.com
Picked up the poster above from some bulletin board because I wanted to own those words...sooooo much without knowing their origins. Wilkins is an advocate about folks who are challenged in the world due to circumstances the world creates in its behaviors of exclusion.
For me, having just found out the origin of the message and its intent by visiting Dan's website, I can still find message in the message of how I understood the poster...
Inclusion. A society of INclusion, rather than EXclusion.
Anyone who EXcludes another is not of the community, as well.
Human ecology:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_ecology
If one professes the tenets of human ecology and excludes...I question the ethics at work.
Following the Gratitude mailings, http://www.gogratitude.com/
given our final destinations, see NDEs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience
who can afford to be in the position of exclusion?
And as for competition...see below.
competition
Stencil courtesy of: http://www.spraypaintstencils.com/index.html
[case in point: F-16s flying overhead...flying maneuvers, I should imagine.]
If anyone thinks this work of promo-ing the culture operates at the competition level...that, to my mind, denigrates the work...
Plays into the hand of the dom-cult[ure].
Which is a sorry-derrière (fesses) situation when there is so much to be accomplished...
I make a distinction between celebrity and advocacy in the work of promo-ing the work.
Probably, because it is actually about my life and beyond a nice conversation about the culture, some of us had to actually live this stuff--even better, as women/girls. Chew on that for a spell.
I see the lack of collaboration between entities, some entities, let me add, I receive help, assistance, collaboration everyday from many, many places, but for those lost in their own little wrapped up in cellophane worlds...it's not about the shrink wrap of competition. Lose the retro.
Competition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition
my op.
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