I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation and is but a reflection of human frailty.Albert Einstein
Showing posts with label TRUTH. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TRUTH. Show all posts
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Quote of the Week
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Quote of the Week
Monday, July 4, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
I have a dream that one day, all women will realize that their worth does not fluctuate along with their weight.
They're trained doctors whose parents are distinguished writers - yet for 20 years these identical twins have competed with each other in the most disturbing way imaginable
By Jill Foster
Last updated at 12:49 PM on 16th June 2011
Twins Maria and Katy Campbell were only 11 when they overheard a snippet of conversation between their parents which, they claim, was to change their lives for ever.
Maria recalls: ‘We were standing at the top of the stairs and heard our Dad remark: “Gosh, those girls are becoming young women, aren’t they? They’re getting hips.” ’
To most people, it’s the kind of harmless remark that an observant father might make about his pre-teen daughters. But for Maria and Katy, who are the identical daughters of distinguished writers, it triggered a sinister pact that would haunt the family for more than two decades.
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‘We were incensed by Dad’s remark,’ says Katy, now 33 and, like her twin, a qualified doctor. ‘I remember screaming at him: “I’m never going to start my periods!”
‘We decided that day that if we stopped eating, we would lose our “hips”. I wanted to punish him and Mum — and I suppose that’s what we’ve both been doing ever since.’
Who can really tell what goes on in the muddled and duplicitous minds of anorexics? But the awful reality is that, thanks to their desire to ‘punish’ their parents, Maria and Katy have destroyed the past 20 years of their lives — and may never recover.
‘It’s like having a ball and chain around my ankle that I can’t throw off,’ says Maria. ‘I’m so consumed by what I’m eating, how many calories I’m burning, what I’ll weigh tomorrow and what I weigh today. It’s an obsession.’An obsession that could kill them both.
Even now, with preternaturally childish bodies and voices, the young women admit they struggle to make sense of what has happened to their lives.
To the utter despair of their parents — 58-year-old Christy and his wife Clare, 56 — the twins have spent most of their teenage and adult life in and out of various recovery clinics.
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Today, the twins will be hospitalised again for several months — only this time, they say, they are determined to beat the disease.
‘It’s got to the point where Katy and I are absolutely sick of the situation,’ says Maria, who is 5ft 5in and weighs just under 6st.
‘I’ve lost everything due to this illness. I’ve lost my life, my house, my hair, my job, everything … and I’m absolutely sick of it.’
Katy, who is the same height but whose weight teeters dangerously under 5st, agrees. ‘I can’t walk any more. My back hurts, my heartbeat is irregular, I’ve got osteoporosis, chronic gastric pain and pancreatitis. I’m on diuretics because my kidneys don’t work.
‘The recovery clinic is the worst place possible, and I feel like I’ve been sentenced to Holloway Prison. I’ve got so much fear in my belly that I’ve stopped sleeping for the past two weeks.
‘But this is going to be the last time. I have to get better.’
In Britain, one in 100 women aged between 15 and 30 suffers from anorexia and it is most likely to strike in the mid-teens.
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The causes are unknown, but experts believe it could be a result of genetic predisposition and a chemical imbalance in the brain, as well as emotional and psychological issues.
The strange thing is that both women maintain that their childhood in a lovely detached family home in Wandsworth, South London, was idyllic.
‘We were very happy little children and got on brilliantly with Mum and Dad,’ says Katy. ‘Our brother Joe, now 14, came along after we’d left home. But while we were there, we had lots of friends and lots of fun.’
But as the girls approached puberty, they became introspective and depressed, and the transition from state primary to a private secondary school in Streatham, South London, proved problematic. The girls felt intimidated by the other girls and their teachers, who they felt looked down on them for coming from a state school.
‘At secondary school, at 11, we were all weighed in PE class,’ recalls Katy. ‘There was another set of identical twins who weighed less than us. They were prettier and popular, and Maria and I felt insecure.’
‘Katy and I also began to resent Mum because she was so slim,’ says Maria. ‘We looked up to her as a role model and felt we came up short.’
Katy continues: ‘At primary school, we’d had a friend who had lost a lot of weight. She was anorexic at nine, so we knew a little about the illness.
‘For some reason, instead of feeling repulsed by the illness, it held a weird attraction for us — and when we saw those thinner twins, we wanted to be like them and our mother.
‘Maria started keeping a food diary and would jot down everything we ate, our weight and how much exercise we’d done. We started skipping breakfast and exercising fanatically, doing 50 lengths of the pool in the morning and gymnastics after school.
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‘We weren’t vomiting, just exercising a lot, but we never even felt faint. In fact, when we were losing weight so quickly, we got an incredible adrenaline high that made us want to lose even more.’
This pact saw the girls’ weight drop by more than a stone in 12 months.
‘We had a system where we’d starve ourselves for six days, only eating 400 calories precisely a day — ten pieces of pic ’n’ mix, an orange, a banana and a diet cola,’ says Katy. ‘Then, on the final day, we’d eat anything and everything we could get our hands on — bread, pasta, crisps, cakes.’
Maria adds: ‘At home, we would hide what was happening from Mum and Dad by putting our food behind radiators, in drawers, in our piano. Then, when we weren’t being watched, we’d simply throw it in the bin.
‘When we were 15, Mum noticed we were losing weight, but we brushed her off. She began to sit with us during supper — but one of us would distract her while the other put food up their sleeves.’
Katy says: ‘Mum’s admitted she feels guilty for not doing more to help us — but there was nothing she could have done. We were obsessed with being thin.
‘Now, of course, we both feel dreadful for all the suffering that we’ve put our family through. It’s just that this pernicious illness affects everything, and when you’re obsessed, you don’t care what other people think.’
By 16, the twins’ periods still hadn’t started. Maria says: ‘Even now, neither of us has ever had a period. Doctors said we had to put on weight if we were not going to damage our fertility — but it went in one ear and out the other.’
Despite the illness, both girls gained excellent grades at GCSE and A-level and were accepted into medical school at the Royal Free Hospital in London.
‘Our parents never put any pressure on us to succeed academically, but I think the fact that Daddy had been to Oxford meant that, subconsciously, we felt that pressure anyway,’ says Katy.
Six months into the courses, their tutors realised something was wrong.
Maria explains: ‘We were having just one cup of coffee and a packet of chocolate buttons a day, and Katy had lost a lot of weight. So we were called in and told that she would have to go to hospital to recover.
‘I remember one of the doctors saying they had noticed I had lost weight, too, but that my weight loss wasn’t quite as bad as Katy’s.
‘Rather than be relieved, I thought: “No one is going to say that Katy is better than me at something.” It was a trigger for me losing another 2st.’
Because of this deadly competitive streak, the girls were sent to different hospitals in London in the hope they would not be able to encourage each other’s weight loss.
‘We were force-fed 3,000 calories a day through tubes,’ says Maria. ‘We were not allowed any contact with each other, but we got around that by writing letters under pseudonyms and getting friends to pass them on. We also managed to get hold of mobile phones and hid them in cupboards.
‘It was the first time I had been apart from Katy and we were both in pieces. It’s hard enough being forced to eat, but I hated being without my sister.
‘I felt as though I was betraying her by eating. I worried that she wasn’t eating and was getting worse, but equally worried that she was eating and I was going to be left behind.
‘I vomited in secret and hid food from staff. After three months, when I discharged myself, I’d actually lost weight.’
Meanwhile, Katy had put on half a stone, but once out of the clinic, she reverted to her old eating habits.
Incredibly, they both graduated from medical school in 2009 and are now qualified doctors.
While Katy has never had a job — a fact that she describes as ‘mortifying’ — Maria left her first job as a doctor in a care home after six months.
They now share a flat in Finchley, North London, and their parents support them — though it is clear from their sparse living arrangements that money is tight.
So what of their future? And of relationships with men?
‘Neither of us has ever had a boyfriend,’ says Maria. ‘The illness has always got in the way.
‘We’ve never had the opportunity to go out and meet men, let alone date them. It’s something that both Katy and I are very sad about.’
Katy adds: ‘I’d really like to have a baby, but I’ve no idea if it’s possible. Some doctors say it might be possible if I get to a healthy weight; others say I may have ruined my fertility.’
Her sister shares the same hope: ‘I want children. The doctors say that if I can get my BMI (body mass index) up to 20, then it may be possible — but I’m only at 12 at the moment.
‘I want a husband. I want fertility. I want my bones and my hair — and it’s not too late. I know people who are still ill with this horrible disease in their 50s, and I’m determined that will not be me. I am 100 per cent ready to change this time.’
One can only hope that this time they succeed.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Quote of the Week
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The colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white or black.
--Thomas Paine
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
An Inheritance of Anger: The Oppressed Becomes the Oppressor
Turkey: Kurdish Youth Losing Faith in Peaceful Protests
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Amed cannot recall the day 19 years ago when the Turkish army drove his family from their burning village, but the Kurdish teenager has many other memories to explain his anger.
He particularly remembers, as a small boy, asking about a row of faces hanging on the wall in his grandmother’s home. “She said they were my uncles and relatives. She told me they were killed by soldiers or disappeared or were tortured. How else could I have grown up, other than wanting to break heads with stones?”
Accused by prosecutors of throwing a Molotov cocktail at a demonstration in his hometown of Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s primarily Kurdish southeast, Amed is one of the so-called “stone-throwing kids,” a generation of angry youths whose clashes with riot police have become a symbol of the simmering unrest gripping the country’s 15-million-strong Kurdish minority.
Last month, Kurdish leaders announced a campaign of civil disobedience in the hope of winning from the Turkish government their long-sought goals of greater autonomy and cultural rights. Meanwhile, Kurdish nationalists are already enacting a program of “democratic autonomy,” forging institutions of self-government without the approval of Ankara.
But a growing number of analysts fear that the younger generation of Kurds, radicalized by a cocktail of violence and urban poverty, may be losing faith in peaceful activism.
If reform does not come soon, some believe, the growing disillusionment of these young people could herald a dangerous new phase in a conflict that started 26 years ago when the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas first took up arms against the Turkish government.
“If there’s not much effort to solve Kurdish demands, then things can potentially become really nasty,” said Henri Barkey, a specialist on Kurdish issues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. The current young generation grew up following the early 1990s, when the army burnt some 3,500 villages, triggering a massive demographic shift in which more than a million Kurds fled or were driven to Turkey’s big cities.
“Their parents had always lived in Kurdish villages by themselves, distant from the streets and distant from the Turks,” said Barkey. “They have been transplanted into cities where there’s a massive police presence. They’re the ones who are most violent and the most politicized in a negative sense -- almost anarchical.”
Barkey believes the situation in the cities, where angry young Kurds are living at close quarters with far-right Turkish nationalists, could ignite a new kind of “inter-ethnic conflict.”
Politicians from the main Kurdish political grouping, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), blame the Turkish government for the growing radicalism among Kurdish youth.
While the government has eased restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language, Kurdish politicians, journalists, lawyers, and activists are still routinely prosecuted for what are often little more than “thought crimes.”
Currently, 151 prominent Kurds, including eight mayors, are being prosecuted for alleged links to the civilian wing of the PKK in a high-profile trial that critics claim is an assault on peaceful political activism.
“Because of the arrest and punishment of politicians, hopelessness is spreading and young people that are getting more radical are refusing our proposals for a solution,” said Abdullah Demirbas, the BDP mayor of Sur district in Diyarbakir.
Demirbas has firsthand experience of the struggle to hold on to the younger generation of Kurds. Two years ago, his own son, then 16 years old, took to the mountains to join the PKK after being sickened by a string of prosecutions launched against his father.
“I was trying to tell him that the democratic policies would work,” Demirbas told EurasiaNet.org. “But he said to me: ‘You haven’t killed anybody, you haven’t stolen anything. You’ve just made policies and they’ve punished you. The system only understands weapons.’”
If progress does not come soon, some believe Turkey may miss its best ever chance to settle the so-called “Kurdish Problem.”
“Right now, everything would be perfect for Turkey,” said Aliza Marcus, a Washington-based expert on the Kurdish issue. “You’ve got an experienced Kurdish leadership, and a PKK movement that wants a solution and wants to do it within the Turkish national borders.”
But she fears this will not remain the case for long. “There’s a real danger that when the original generation of the PKK and Kurdish politicians leave the scene, you will have a more radical and a more fractured movement and a generation less able to speak to the Turkish politicians and less able to control their followers . . . It’s not easy to make peace with people who have only known war.”
The Justice and Development Party government has promised to overhaul Turkey’s constitution following the June 12 general election, which it is tipped to win comfortably. Some view this as a last chance for the country’s leaders to deliver on nearly six years of rhetoric about addressing Kurdish grievances.
But the prosecution of their politicians has left Amed and his friends deeply pessimistic about the prospects of accommodation with the Turkish state. They nonetheless acknowledge that violence cannot lead to lasting peace.
“It’s easy to pick up weapons, and if they want it to get worse, we can make it worse,” said 18-year-old Rohat. “But there’s no solution that way. Civil disobedience is the only chance we have.”
He particularly remembers, as a small boy, asking about a row of faces hanging on the wall in his grandmother’s home. “She said they were my uncles and relatives. She told me they were killed by soldiers or disappeared or were tortured. How else could I have grown up, other than wanting to break heads with stones?”
Accused by prosecutors of throwing a Molotov cocktail at a demonstration in his hometown of Diyarbakir, the largest city in Turkey’s primarily Kurdish southeast, Amed is one of the so-called “stone-throwing kids,” a generation of angry youths whose clashes with riot police have become a symbol of the simmering unrest gripping the country’s 15-million-strong Kurdish minority.
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But a growing number of analysts fear that the younger generation of Kurds, radicalized by a cocktail of violence and urban poverty, may be losing faith in peaceful activism.
If reform does not come soon, some believe, the growing disillusionment of these young people could herald a dangerous new phase in a conflict that started 26 years ago when the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas first took up arms against the Turkish government.
“If there’s not much effort to solve Kurdish demands, then things can potentially become really nasty,” said Henri Barkey, a specialist on Kurdish issues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. The current young generation grew up following the early 1990s, when the army burnt some 3,500 villages, triggering a massive demographic shift in which more than a million Kurds fled or were driven to Turkey’s big cities.
“Their parents had always lived in Kurdish villages by themselves, distant from the streets and distant from the Turks,” said Barkey. “They have been transplanted into cities where there’s a massive police presence. They’re the ones who are most violent and the most politicized in a negative sense -- almost anarchical.”
Barkey believes the situation in the cities, where angry young Kurds are living at close quarters with far-right Turkish nationalists, could ignite a new kind of “inter-ethnic conflict.”
Politicians from the main Kurdish political grouping, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), blame the Turkish government for the growing radicalism among Kurdish youth.
While the government has eased restrictions on the use of the Kurdish language, Kurdish politicians, journalists, lawyers, and activists are still routinely prosecuted for what are often little more than “thought crimes.”
Currently, 151 prominent Kurds, including eight mayors, are being prosecuted for alleged links to the civilian wing of the PKK in a high-profile trial that critics claim is an assault on peaceful political activism.
“Because of the arrest and punishment of politicians, hopelessness is spreading and young people that are getting more radical are refusing our proposals for a solution,” said Abdullah Demirbas, the BDP mayor of Sur district in Diyarbakir.
Demirbas has firsthand experience of the struggle to hold on to the younger generation of Kurds. Two years ago, his own son, then 16 years old, took to the mountains to join the PKK after being sickened by a string of prosecutions launched against his father.
“I was trying to tell him that the democratic policies would work,” Demirbas told EurasiaNet.org. “But he said to me: ‘You haven’t killed anybody, you haven’t stolen anything. You’ve just made policies and they’ve punished you. The system only understands weapons.’”
If progress does not come soon, some believe Turkey may miss its best ever chance to settle the so-called “Kurdish Problem.”
“Right now, everything would be perfect for Turkey,” said Aliza Marcus, a Washington-based expert on the Kurdish issue. “You’ve got an experienced Kurdish leadership, and a PKK movement that wants a solution and wants to do it within the Turkish national borders.”
But she fears this will not remain the case for long. “There’s a real danger that when the original generation of the PKK and Kurdish politicians leave the scene, you will have a more radical and a more fractured movement and a generation less able to speak to the Turkish politicians and less able to control their followers . . . It’s not easy to make peace with people who have only known war.”
The Justice and Development Party government has promised to overhaul Turkey’s constitution following the June 12 general election, which it is tipped to win comfortably. Some view this as a last chance for the country’s leaders to deliver on nearly six years of rhetoric about addressing Kurdish grievances.
But the prosecution of their politicians has left Amed and his friends deeply pessimistic about the prospects of accommodation with the Turkish state. They nonetheless acknowledge that violence cannot lead to lasting peace.
“It’s easy to pick up weapons, and if they want it to get worse, we can make it worse,” said 18-year-old Rohat. “But there’s no solution that way. Civil disobedience is the only chance we have.”
Friday, March 4, 2011
Home (I No Longer Recognize)
***NB: This post was originally an E-mail I wrote to one of my friends after going back home and finding myself a stranger. Despite the melancholic, frustrated, and defeatist tone in the E-mail, I have now thankfully come to a sense of peace...and empowerment. Yes, hope may fade fast, but it can never truly be gone so long as the last person who gives a damn about changing the status quo still stands.
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The Hawai'i I left behind was a paradise. In my memory, at least. It was one of innocence and joy, despite it being where my da died. How naive. Everything is so different now. Or is it that I was blind before and now my eyes are wide open? Were some people I used to know always that concerned about image and class distinction? Has my friend [redacted] always believed that all Muslims are terrorists or terrorists-in-training? Is it an exaggeration to feel upset when I see my Hawaiians--people who look like me--serve me at the country club, where most of the members are White? Is it weird to feel a lump in my throat to see my Native people languishing in poverty while the people with whom I (used to) belong are driving around in expensive cars or have haircuts that are the equivalent of a whole week's paycheck for minimum wage workers? Is it foolish to care so much about the pain of others, their hardships, and the injustices they've experienced? Is it better to be selfish, avert my eyes, and stand up only for my own well-being? Is it possible to turn off the compassion in your heart when it is so much a part of you?
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My Hawai'i may be a salad, but it certainly has its rotten parts. The income disparity is so jarring. In Kahala, houses cost millions of dollars and have climate-controlled pools, manicured lawns, and winding driveways. On the other side of the island, broken pavements and ramshackle houses crookedly line the horizon. This is the other side of my island paradise, past the plastic glamour of Waikiki and beyond Maui's exclusive gold courses. It's an all-too-real Hawai'i, where impoverished men take out their anger on the haoles--they who stole Hawaiian lands--by beating their wives and children or resorting to an all-too-common escape--drugs and alcohol. The cycle continues. Sometimes this anger and violence become an inheritance of sorts, a tradition passed down through the generations like a quilt your tutu made lovingly. I see it in the rage of unemployed men who feel emasculated by a society that judges masculinity in proportion to bank account balances. I feel it in their wives' resignation to their fate. I hear it in their children's silent shame. A similar truth is screamed at AmerIndian reservations, Pinoy shanties, or Brazilian favelas. Perhaps it's not one culture's or one people's truth: it is a universal truth, one that the world dares not speak of, but inwardly scream. It is our collective cross to bear.
Luv, my Hawaiians and my AmerIndians are on the verge of becoming caricatures. Some are forced to sell out and exoticize our culture for money. Some of my brothers and sisters dress up in our ancestral garb, then dance and perform for tourists. Sometimes it is not the truth of our culture or traditions that they share. Grass shirts have become cheap, dyed straw skirts and hula chants have given way to the easily understood "Tiny Bubbles." Of course, tourists don't know differently. And because of this economic crises, my people allow these tourists to keep believing this image. Lies become truths as long as the money flows.
I do not judge my people for doing what they have to do in order to survive. Nor do I pity them--not really--because that would imply that I am better than them, which I am not. What I feel is a loss. Loss and loneliness. And fear. I fear that perhaps one day, my cultures and traditions will be lost.
And with it, our pride as a people who have already endured so much.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
On Friday, the almighty king rose from his throne to bow down to his people
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Source"The gunfire us makes it hard to hear. But the human voice is different from other sounds. It can be heard over noises that bury everything else. Even when it's not shouting. Even when it's just a whisper. Even the lowest whisper can be heard - -over armies... when it's telling the truth. " --"The Interpreter" |
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
TEN THINGS MEN CAN DO TO PREVENT GENDER VIOLENCE
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Copyright 1999, Jackson Katz. www.jacksonkatz.com
Reprint freely with credit.
Reprint freely with credit.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
The True Story Of Thanksgiving
Originally written by Richard Greener for The Huffington Post.
The idea of the American Thanksgiving feast is a fairly recent fiction. The idyllic partnership of 17th Century European Pilgrims and New England Indians sharing a celebratory meal appears to be less than 120 years-old. And it was only after the First World War that a version of such a Puritan-Indian partnership took hold in elementary schools across the American landscape. We can thank the invention of textbooks and their mass purchase by public schools for embedding this "Thanksgiving" image in our modern minds. It was, of course, a complete invention, a cleverly created slice of cultural propaganda, just another in a long line of inspired nationalistic myths.
The first Thanksgiving Day did occur in the year 1637, but it was nothing like our Thanksgiving today. On that day the Massachusetts Colony Governor, John Winthrop, proclaimed such a "Thanksgiving" to celebrate the safe return of a band of heavily armed hunters, all colonial volunteers. They had just returned from their journey to what is now Mystic, Connecticut where they massacred 700 Pequot Indians. Seven hundred Indians - men, women and children - all murdered.
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This day is still remembered today, 373 years later. No, it's been long forgotten by white people, by European Christians. But it is still fresh in the mind of many Indians. A group calling themselves the United American Indians of New England meet each year at Plymouth Rock on Cole's Hill for what they say is a Day of Mourning. They gather at the feet of a stature of Chief Massasoit of the Wampanoag to remember the long gone Pequot. They do not call it Thanksgiving. There is no football game afterward.
How then did our modern, festive Thanksgiving come to be? It began with the greatest of misunderstandings, a true clash of cultural values and fundamental principles. What are we thankful for if not - being here, living on this land, surviving and prospering? But in our thankfulness might we have overlooked something? Look what happened to the original residents who lived in the area of New York we have come to call Brooklyn. A group of them called Canarsees obligingly, perhaps even eagerly, accepted various pieces of pretty colored junk from the Dutchman Peter Minuet in 1626. These trinkets have long since been estimated to be worth no more than 60 Dutch guilders at the time - $24 dollars in modern American money. In exchange, the Canarsees "gave" Peter Minuet the island of Manhattan. What did they care? They were living in Brooklyn.
Of course, all things - especially commercial transactions - need to be viewed in perspective. The nearly two-dozen tribes of Native Americans living in the New York area in those days had a distinctly non-European concept of territorial rights. They were strangers to the idea of "real property." It was common for one tribe to grant permission to another to hunt and fish nearby themselves on a regular basis. Fences, real and imagined, were not a part of their culture. Naturally, it was polite to ask before setting up operations too close to where others lived, but refusal in matters of this sort was considered rude. As a sign of gratitude, small trinkets were usually offered by the tribe seeking temporary admission and cheerfully accepted by those already there. It was clearly understood to be a sort of short-term rental arrangement. Sad to say, the unfortunate Canarsees apparently had no idea the Dutch meant to settle in. Worse yet for them, it must have been unthinkable that they would also be unwelcome in Manhattan after their deal. One thing we can be sure of. Their equivalent of today's buyer's remorse brought the Canarsees nothing but grief, humiliation and violence.
Dismantling Thanksgiving Myths: A Native American Story
Originally published by NDN News in November 2008, but the topic at hand is a timeless TRUTH of the history of our country.
Dismantling Thanksgiving Myths: A Native American Story
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by Aisha Ali, D.C. Youth Issues Examiner
In less than two weeks, Thanksgiving will arrive. The need for celebration may not come as easily for those who have lost their homes and have suffered many misfortunes throughout the year. However, one should be thankful for just being alive, shouldn’t they?
Nonetheless, I view Thanksgiving differently from others, even before this current economic crisis. While I always have expressed "thanks" for the many blessings God has bestowed upon me, with underserved communities experiencing destitution, living in substandard housing, being unable to properly care for their children; to afford health care; or to just overall survive, how could I be happy? To know many people would be homeless or starving on Thanksgiving certainly does evoke a "warm, light-hearted feeling".
The lives many Americans have experienced within the past few years, especially within the past year, have been the “ordinary” lives of many individuals for quite some time. Yes, the desolate life of others does intensify my gratefulness; however, as is the case with many middle-class Americans, my family has always been two or three paychecks away from homelessness. Still, this suffering of which I think on Thanksgiving does not discriminate me from others, as I am quite certain other Americans share the same sentiment. My view of Thanksgiving differs given my ethnic background as an individual of both African- and Native American descent. It is for this reason I always have held a jaded view concerning Thanksgiving, knowing its true history— or the true Native American story-- has yet to be published in many American history books.
In my eyes, Thanksgiving has never been about the Pilgrims-- and to many Americans, I question if this is their sole source of celebration, as many people blindly celebrate holidays and have no clue of their history. Although I am sure many people celebrate Thanksgiving as a way to express “thanks,” for me, Thanksgiving serves as another remembrance of how my Native American ancestors were maltreated; annihilated; ousted from their land; and consigned to reservations, eradicating every trace of their pre-existing life.
Thanksgiving rehashes memories of how the hospital staff, in its refusal to treat my great-great grandfather, sent him home to die from pneumonia because he was Native American. Thanksgiving reminds me of how my great-grandmother had “to pass” as a light-skinned black person to avoid being forced on a reservation. When thinking of Thanksgiving, I recall how my Nation, the Cherokees, was forced from its land in Georgia, leaving a “Trail of Tears.” As I sit around with my family and share thoughts while eating on Thanksgiving, I think of how the very ingredients with which my food was prepared, had been once picked by the hands of my Native American ancestors who served as slaves in North Carolina and the Caribbean. Needless to say, I also think of my African ancestors who toiled away in the fields to pick the very foods with which my food was prepared. America, to me, is not the “Land of Pilgrim’s pride," but should be and is to me, the "Land of Native American pride".
The national holiday, “Thanksgiving,” was not initially created in the way most Americans have come to know it.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Red is still the colour of a soldier's blood
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The way I see it, red is always the colour of soldiers' blood, no matter their sexual preference. Does homosexuality diminish one's heroism or taint one's sacrifice? Of course it doesn't.
Those who serve our country deserve to hold their heads up high, the way they uphold our flag and constitution in times of peace and war.
Soldiers fight for us, and we should fight for them.
That's all.
Those who serve our country deserve to hold their heads up high, the way they uphold our flag and constitution in times of peace and war.
Soldiers fight for us, and we should fight for them.
That's all.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Quote of the Day
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Faith is not simply a patience that passively suffers until the storm is past. Rather, it is a spirit that bears things--with resignation, yes, but above all, with blazing, serene hope.
--President Cory C. Aquino
Monday, August 23, 2010
Quote of the Day
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I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.
--Hafiz of Persia
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