(no subject)

Words that I agree with from my friend laureth on this September 11th. The mood in the air on this day makes me uncomfortable, and this is a lot of why.

It has been 12 years since the planes flew into the buildings.

If you're one of the many who lost a wife or husband, sister or brother, parent, child, friend, beloved co-worker - someone you loved - my heart grieves with you. The pain may lessen with time, but you can never really forget.

If the collapsing buildings and collapsing economy took away your job and your home, if they ended life as you knew it, if it's never been the same, I hear you. My heart goes out to you, and I understand how you can never really forget.

If the fallout from the politics dragged you along with it, if there are things you can't talk about, if you or your family were drawn into the military, if you are the walking wounded, if you still deal with the effect of that day 12 years ago, you cannot forget either.

But to the rest of you:

To the people who didn't know anyone, not even a friend of a friend, who was affected,

To the people that cheered on the wars and watched them on 24-hour cable but didn't fight in them,

To the people whose biggest involvement is sharing a red, white 'n blue flag-wavin' meme,

To the people that still use 9/11 as an excuse to hate,

You should know:

We toppled the regime that sheltered the terrorists.

We killed the mastermind and threw his body in the sea.

We avenged those deaths, many times over, not just on their operatives and fighters, but on civilians - women and children and elders.

Why do you keep picking at that wound and letting it fester?

Why can't you accept that we won?

(no subject)

Tomorrow, I'm running my first Supplemental Instruction session. I hope it goes well!

Today, I started on the online training courses in responsible conduct of research. I need to complete that in order to do further interviewing with local producers who sell at the farmers markets in southeastern Wisconsin.

I'm halfway through reading The Life of Olaudah Equiano, an autobiography of a man who was enslaved in Africa as a child. He became the legal property of an officer in the English navy and traveled the world. Eventually he purchased his freedom and, having become literate in English, wrote his life story. The book will be the subject of my first short paper for my African-American history class. The professor has a good selection of material for the course. The other books include Arn't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (by Deborah Gray White), To Tell the Truth Freely (a book about Ida B. Wells, written by Mia Bay), and Nigger: an Autobiography (Gregory Peck).

In the first two days, I learned more about African history than I have in possibly all my other time in school put together. We talked about Africa before the arrival of the Portugese traders: the kindoms of Kush, Aksum, Shana, Mali, and Songhai. I was embarrassed to realize that, despite him having been a selectable leader in many versions of the Civilization computer game, I really hadn't known where Mansa Musa ruled or anything about his kingdom. Just as history classes up through college don't have a lot to say about African heritage people in pre-independance American, or things like the delicate balance of senatorial power between free states and slave states in pre-Civil War America that led to incidents like Bleeding Kansas, the world history I've been exposed to doesn't have much to say about Africa. The neglect on the part of world history is probably even more pervasive; after all, you can't really talk seriously about American history without at least touching on the experience of Africans and African-Americans. I also didn't understand the connection between Islam and African tradition that, I now assume, made Islam a part of the Black Power movement here in the '60s. But I'm sure we'll talk about that more.

Anyway, just before school started, I started reading Lefebvre's The Production of Space, but now that school's started, I don't have much time. Maybe once I get this farmers' market thing further down the path toward completion....

In my environmental anthropology class today, we finished watching Food, Inc. It's a one-sided presentation, but raises important issues. The fact that a man who operated a seed-washing business (he prepares seeds for farmers to store through the winter to use the next year) could be sued by Monsanto for supposedly inciting growers to break the law by storing seeds is ridiculous and enraging. I feel like the jury is out on safety of GMO foods. But the GMOs or not, rampant neoliberalization in agriculture is ethically abhorrent.

At the end of the film, as a cover of Wood Guthrie's "This Land is Our Land" played over closing credits, a comment was made about how stale some pieces of music get, with endless reuse. I commented that the most interesting thing to me about that song is what verses don't ever seem to get played. The professor agreed, noting that, though you wouldn't know it hearing his songs today, he was a serious radical!

I've always liked this verse myself:

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

This one, written as it was at the tail end of the Great Depression, and prior to the economic recovery fostered by ramping up national production for World War II, hits pretty hard as well. This verse came to mind on the way home as I listened to a bit of news on NPR about how the modern day United States has the greatest wealth disparity between rich and poor in a century.

In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;
By the relief office, I'd seen my people.
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,
Is this land made for you and me?

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Well. On a lighter note!

I caught up on my bank account today. Yay!

And here's a picture of me with my dinner, displaying most of the culinary skills at my disposal.


Chef Stormdog - Pic-a-day 11 September 2013

Copyright Stormdog 2013