Days’d and Confused

The first day of the year, when most of us are sleeping off a long night of too much food and probably a few drinks too many, has been declared Global Family Day.  Hey, sounds like a good idea.  The family is a complex yet fundamental institution in our society.  January 1 has also been the World Day of Peace since 1967.  You may have missed this most important event due to that same hangover that kept you from lovey-dovey cuddling on, oh yeah, New Year’s Day.

Let’s jump forward to International Customs Day (January 26). I wonder if that is “customs” like the agency responsible for collecting duties at the airport.  OK, probably not, but what exactly is this day for?  I think we need to clarify this day, after all there are plenty of customs that we may be better off without. Anyway, we have to get ourselves emotionally prepared for the next day - International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust.  No matter how you cut it, the systematic murder of millions of people in the middle of Europe just 70 years ago cannot be brushed aside.

Just think about all those poor kids in the world living on the streets trying to survive from one day to the next, but save it for January 31: Street Children’s Day.  World Wetlands Day (February 2) is not merely a crazy environmental call for duck lovers.  Our wetlands are crucial for biodiversity and therefore for our own well-being.  February 3 seems to be free for the moment, but World Cancer Day rushes in on February 4.  We all have lost loved ones taken from us too soon by this relentless disease.  We have to do something about it.

International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation – February 6.  World Day of the Sick – February 11.  Both extremely worthy causes.  Are you writing this all down?  Schedule in World Radio Day on February 13.  What?  World Day of Social Justice is on February 20.  Few issues have a greater impact than social justice, even though I have to say I am getting a little weary at this point and it is still the middle of February.  Deep breath.  Get a good night’s sleep and re-energize.

International Mother Language Day is celebrated on the following day.  I can probably manage to go to some kind of demonstration if I skip dinner with my family.  After all, it isn’t Global Family Day anyway.   At last we’ve made it to March which starts off with International Day for Ear and Hearing on the 3^rd. Are you ready for the International Women’s Day public reading event on March 8?   In your free time you can prepare a text to read between work, family, cooking, cleaning, shopping, studying, getting exercise and preparing for World Day of Muslim Culture, Peace, Dialogue and Film, which is a short three days away.  March 14 is a double whammy: International Day of Action for Rivers and, my favorite, Pi Day.  Before your mouth starts watering, no, it’s not Pie Day, but Pi Day.  Don’t ask.

I could go on. Heck, in October there are 34 International or World “Days”.  On March 20 alone there are five “days”.  I can’t take it.  I’m physically fatigued, emotionally emaciated, mentally muddled, spiritually spent.  I’m plumb tuckered out.  I am failing miserably as a citizen of our global village. I haven’t observed the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade since, uh, never.   I have a hard enough time getting from Monday to Tuesday, much less from World Hemophilia Day to International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression.

The last thing I wish to do here is belittle any of these causes, concerns or commemorations.  I really believe that we have to remember our past and try, albeit imperfectly, to learn from it.  We must not forget the weak, the disabled, the less fortunate, the needy.  However, I ask you, sincerely, how can I dedicate the necessary time and energy to all these meaningful “days”?  Do I pick and choose?  Genital mutilation, yes.  Cancer, no.  Please, don’t make me do that.

If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll sit this one out.

International Women's Day

Our next project is to organize a public reading which will take place on March 8, International Women's Day.  Below I have posted a short text about what this day means along with some quotes about women.  After that, there is a poem about becoming a woman.  You can read the poem and watch the author recite it if you want.  Remember, all comments are welcome.

International Women's Day

By Simran Khurana

International Women's Day is not about asserting the superiority of one gender over the other. It is not about petty quarrels about who gets to do the dishes after dinner. The United Nations instituted International Women's Day to commemorate the contribution of women in the socio-political sphere as well as in global peace and security.

Historically, women have been suppressed and treated unfairly. Even in the West, women were not given equal opportunities for work. Women were not given voting powers and they could not participate in political activity. Relegated to the hearth and household, women had little else to do other than raise children.

International Women's Day can be traced back to the women's suffrage movement in the late nineteenth century. Over two centuries, women achieved tremendous progress in every walk of life. Women's emancipation took new meaning when women traveled to space, and fought alongside men at battlefields. 

Yet we find many pockets in the world, where women are suppressed and demeaned. Gender bias exists at every social stratum, even in the most developed societies. In some regions, patriarchal societies diminish the role of women in important matters. This masochist thinking has brought about a serious economic and social downfall.

Whether you are a woman or man, you must know that International Women's Day celebrates your emancipation. Had it not been for women's emancipation, free thinking would be impossible. An educated woman can raise intelligent children, which in turn creates a self-reliant society. Celebrate the spirit of womanhood with insightful International Women's Day quotes. 

· Gandhi
Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity.

· Farrah Fawcett
God gave women intuition and femininity. Used properly, the combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I've ever met.

· Harriet Beecher Stowe
Women are the real architects of society.

· Barbara Bush
Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the President's spouse. I wish him well!

· Virginia Woolf
Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size.

· Timothy Leary
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

· Nancy Pelosi
Women are leaders everywhere you look -- from the CEO who runs a Fortune 500 company to the housewife who raises her children and heads her household. Our country was built by strong women and we will continue to break down walls and defy stereotypes.

· Eleanor Roosevelt
Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.

· Robert Elliott Gonzales, Poems and Paragraphs
All the world's a stage, and it's a dead easy guess which sex has all the speaking parts.

· Margaret Sanger
A free race cannot be born of slave mothers.

· Mel Gibson
I love women. They're the best thing ever created. If they want to be like men and come down to our level, that's fine.

· Ellen DeGeneres
I really don't think I need buns of steel. I'd be happy with buns of cinnamon.

· Joseph Conrad
Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men.

· Margaret Thatcher
If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.

"Sound Advice"

by Hope Anita Smith

"Get your hands off your imagination,"
my grandma said to me.
And then she and my momma laughed
long and loud
as they hugged me to them.
"You got to earn the right to
plant your arms akimbo.
You got to work a little harder.
You got to live a little longer.
You got to finish becoming a woman,
and then you can stand and
place your hands
upon your hips,
and your hips will hold them up."

Bringing it all together

Well, here we all are with a post-Valentine's Day, literary bash hangover.  Yesterday we celebrated our first public reading event and I think it went pretty well.  We did some different activities related to reading out loud (which is harder than it would seem) and we also did a haiku poem writing exercise.  I would like to express my gratitude to those who took part and I hope that you will feel inspired to participate in our next event which is coming up fast - March 8! - to celebrate International Women's Day.

You can read more about what we did yesterday (Feb. 14) at EOIOU Reading to Write which you can find a link to on the right of this page.

Whiteout

 Thanks so much for sending this text.  Hope you all enjoy reading it.

The place was dimly lit by a night light next to the camp bed where Tom lay. Craig looked closely at the boy, wondering whether to wake him. He seemed to have recovered from Sophie’s vodka, and was sleeping peacefully in his Spiderman pyjamas.

Craig’s eye was caught by something on the floor beside the pillow. It was a photograph. Craig picked it up and held it in the light. It appeared to have been taken at his mother’s birthday party, and showed Tom with Sophie, her arm around his shoulders. Craig smiled to himself. I’m not the only who was captivated by her that afternoon, he thought. He put the picture back, saying nothing to Sophie.

Whiteout by Kent Follet (pg 305)

Pearls of Wisdom

My steady reader writes, "I thought it would be great to make a 'totum revolutum' of our favourites languages. Most of all I'd love to share it with our beloved bloggers." So here it is.

Die Slowly

by Marta Medeiros

He who does not travel,
who does not read,
who does not listen to music,
who does not find grace in himself, dies slowly.


He who slowly destroys his own self-esteem,
who does not allow himself to be helped,
who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck,
about the rain that never stops, dies slowly.

He who becomes the slave of habit,
who follows the same routes every day,
who never changes pace,
who does not risk and change the colour of his clothes,
who does not speak and does not experience, dies slowly.

He or she who shuns passion,
who prefers black on white,
dotting ones rather than a bundle of emotions,
the kind that make your eyes glimmer,
that turn a yawn into a smile,
that make the heart pound in the face of mistakes and feelings, dies slowly.

He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy,
who is unhappy at work,
who does not risk certainty for uncertainty,
to thus follow a dream,
those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives, die slowly.

He or she who abandon a project before starting it,
who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn’t know,
he or she who don’t reply when they are asked something they do know, die slowly.

Let’s try and avoid death in small doses,
always reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort by far
greater than the simple fact of breathing.

Only a burning patience will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness.

Thank You for the Contribution

A beloved blogger so kindly wrote, "In keeping with the theme of slightly 'warped love' I submit Sinead O' Connor's deliciously beautiful but cutting 'Thank you for hearing me'."

You know who you are!

Thank You for Hearing Me

By Sinéad O'Connor

Thank you for hearing me
Thank you for hearing me
Thank you for hearing me
Thank you for hearing me

Thank you for loving me
Thank you for loving me
Thank you for loving me
Thank you for loving me

Thank you for seeing me
Thank you for seeing me
Thank you for seeing me
Thank you for seeing me

And for not leaving me
And for not leaving me
And for not leaving me
And for not leaving me

Thank you for staying with me
Thank you for staying with me
Thank you for staying with me
Thank you for staying with me

Thanks for not hurting me
Thanks for not hurting me
Thanks for not hurting me
Thanks for not hurting me

You are gentle with me
You are gentle with me
You are gentle with me
You are gentle with me

Thanks for silence with me
Thanks for silence with me
Thanks for silence with me
Thanks for silence with me

Thank you for holding me
And saying "I could be"
Thank you for saying "Baby"
Thank you for holding me

Thank you for helping me
Thank you for helping me
Thank you for helping me
Thank you, thank you for helping me

Thank you for breaking my heart
Thank you for tearing me apart
Now I've a strong, strong heart
Thank you for breaking my heart 

Click here to listen to the song

Public Reading Ideas

If you are interested in reading a text on Thursday but are having a hard time coming up with something, I have some ideas that you might find worth taking a look at.

Songs:

Freewill by Rush

That Was Your Mother by Paul Simon

Excerpt from book:

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

He sat the boy on the footlocker under the gaslamp and with a plastic comb and a pair of scissors he set about cutting his hair. He tried to do a good job and it took some time. When he was done he took the towel from around the boy's shoulders and he scooped the golden hair from the floor and wiped the boy's face and shoulders with a damp cloth and held a mirror for him to see.

[The Boy:] You did a good job, Papa.

[The Man:] Good.

[The Boy:] I look really skinny.

[The Man:] You are really skinny.

He cut his own hair but it didn't come out so good. He trimmed his beard with the scissors while a pan of water heated and then he shaved himself with a plastic safety razor. The boy watched. When he was done he regarded himself in the mirror. He seemed to have no chin. He turned to the boy. How do I look? The boy cocked his head. I don't know, he said. Will you be cold? (225.1-225.6)



Poem

How many slams in an old screen door? Depends how loud you shut it.
How many slices in a bread? Depends how thin you cut it.
How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live 'em.
How much love inside a friend? Depends how much you give 'em.

― Shel Silverstein

Short Story

The Giving Tree (video presentation)

The Giving Tree (text only)

A Love Song?

There isn't much time left before our public reading event on Thursday, February 14.  We are going to get together from 9-10 in the morning and then again starting around 7 in the evening.  I hope you can come!

Below I have posted the lyrics to a Springsteen song from his Devils & Dust album.  It is a beautifully sad story of ... well, I'll let you decide.

Black Cowboys

by Bruce Sprinsteen

Rainey Williams' playground was the Mott Haven streets where he ran past melted candles and flower wreaths, names and photos of young black faces, whose death and blood consecrated these places. Rainey's mother said, "Rainey stay at my side, for you are my blessing you are my pride. It's your love here that keeps my soul alive. I want you to come home from school and stay inside."

Rainey'd do his work and put his books away. There was a channel showed a western movie every day. Lynette brought him home books on the black cowboys of the Oklahoma range and the Seminole scouts who fought the tribes of the Great Plains. Summer come and the days grew long. Rainey always had his mother's smile to depend on. Along a street of stray bullets he made his way, to the warmth of her arms at the end of each day.

Come the fall the rain flooded these homes, here in Ezekiel's valley of dry bones, it fell hard and dark to the ground. It fell without a sound. Lynette took up with a man whose business was the boulevard, whose smile was fixed in a face that was never off guard. In the pipes 'neath the kitchen sink his secrets he kept. In the day, behind drawn curtains, in Lynette's bedroom he slept.

Then she got lost in the days. The smile Rainey depended on dusted away, the arms that held him were no more his home. He lay at night his head pressed to her chest listening to the ghost in her bones.

In the kitchen Rainey slipped his hand between the pipes. From a brown bag pulled five hundred dollar bills and stuck it in his coat side, stood in the dark at his mother's bed, brushed her hair and kissed her eyes.

In the twilight Rainey walked to the station along streets of stone. Through Pennsylvania and Ohio his train drifted on. Through the small towns of Indiana the big train crept, as he lay his head back on the seat and slept. He awoke and the towns gave way to muddy fields of green, corn and cotton and an endless nothin' in between. Over the rutted hills of Oklahoma the red sun slipped and was gone. The moon rose and stripped the earth to its bone.