Monday, August 27, 2018
A Memory, Remembering
The Unused Portion (in case you haven't guessed) is on vacation, so I'm reposting this oldie-but-goodie because it was written about the place I'm going to be tomorrow.
https://theunusedportion.blogspot.com/2011/10/rememberance.html
see you all soon, when I'm back state-side!
Monday, August 20, 2018
On the Road Again!
"You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” - Miriam Adeney
"I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” - Mary Anne Radmacher
"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." - Lao Tzu
"Traveling carries with it the curse of being at home everywhere and yet nowhere, for wherever one is, some part of oneself remains on another continent.” -Margot Fonteyn
"We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls." - Anais Nin
"One's destination is never a place, but always a new way of seeing things." - Henry Miller
"The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
"Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” -Maya Angelou
"Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves." - Henry David Thoreau
"Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time.” -Hannah Arendt
"A nomad I will remain for life, in love with distant and uncharted places.” -Isabelle Eberhardt
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." - Mark Twain
"As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.” - Margaret Mead
"Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” - Mary Ritter Beard
"For the born traveler, traveling is a besetting vice. Like other vices, it is imperious, demanding its victim's time, money, energy and the sacrifice of comfort." - Aldous Huxley
“As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.” - Virginia Woolf
"The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page." - Saint Augustine
"Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home." - Matsuo Basho
"The best education I have ever received was through travel." - Lisa Ling
"Travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world." - Gustave Flaubert
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
The Ghost of Poems Past
Snake Awakening
after (how many?) caresses
when our lips (finally) brushed
playing on the edge
of tension,
I tasted tobacco, beer, and stubble
went back for more
for his fingertips, and my longing
like an old lover, like how my
fingertips
remembered the curve of his back
like the taste of my fear, shaking
low, like a snake awakening
an earthquake
opening
with his breath in my ear
lips on the back of my neck
a bite on my shoulder
his hand in my hair, pulling
a sigh from my throat
hands sliding
through moans
Dionysus
I called him, have called him
it was Solstice, he emerged
fully grown from his cave
to receive the goddess
and interrupt my dreams
in my bed
with offerings and ablutions
knocking me clean
into the next ecstasy, days
of weak knees, staring eyes, whimpering
sighs
weeks to forget the way my womb
vibrated
to his touch
tobacco and beer
and stubble
on my tongue
my pleasure on his
these gods of summer,
these shadow plays!
ripen to bittersweet
while dancing thankful
across my skin.
Tuesday, August 7, 2018
Tuesday Afternoon
I didn't write a blog post this week, as in, I didn't have a running theme that I engaged with on the page for several days in a row, that I polished up and edited to post on Monday. I have a big event coming up, and most of my time and energy has been taken up by planning and prepping for that One Thing, and the weather has been hot and humid, which exhausts me, so I've been pretty wrapped up inside myself and my daily to-do's to get everything done on time, or at least demonstrably close. one thing I DID do this week was write a letter to a local person who is the administrator for a facebook group that I was blocked from for standing up for my people, my family, and myself. so, I decided I would post that letter here, and call it a day (night). feel free to contact me if you want your name added to the signature line, or if you find any typos or anything. thanks, and enjoy ~
Letter to: Jim Dougherty
Email:
jdoughertybroker@aol.com
website:
http://www.lenderassetsolutions.com
and: Ulster Publishing –
Woodstock Times
PO Box 3329
322 Wall Street
Kingston, NY 12402
845-334-8200
(Fax) 845-334-8202
Brian Hollander, Editor: wtedit@gmail.com
322 Wall Street
Kingston, NY 12402
845-334-8200
(Fax) 845-334-8202
Daily Freeman
79 Hurley Ave.,
Kingston, NY 12401
845-331-5000
fax: 845-331-3557
Kingston, NY 12401
845-331-5000
fax: 845-331-3557
Tony Adamis:
Managing Editor, ext. 01095
Chronogram
Lower Hudson Valley
Chapter - NYCLU
297 Knollwood Road,
Suite 217
White Plains, NY 10607
Telephone: 914-997-7479White Plains, NY 10607
Fax: 914-997-2936
E-mail: lowerhudsonvalley@nyclu.org
Following is a letter to Mr. Jim
Dougherty, the administrator for the online Facebook group 'Woodstock
Bulletin Board'.
Mr. Dougherty -
I was distressed to learn that I was
blocked from the Woodstock Bulletin Board facebook group because as
an educated Romani woman, I chose to bring attention to the fact that
a White woman was appropriating my culture, and using an ethnic slur
for my people as the name of her business. I learned of this
'blocking' on August 2 - the 74th anniversary of the liquidation of
the 'Gypsy Camp' at Auschwitz-Birkenau, adding further insult to
injury. There were two businesses in the town of Woodstock who also
used this slur in their names, both closed, now, and while I didn't
patronize either establishment, I did make it clear to others how it
made me feel to see those hurtful words every day, and used them as
examples to explain the ignorance of others to my young son. While
there are many businesses who use the word “Gypsy” as their name,
as we evolve as a society and culture, there are quite a few business
owners who have realized that this is an inappropriate practice, and
have changed their business names out of respect for who we are, and
what we have faced, as a people. We have a right to live with the
same dignity that is afforded to every individual in this country,
this state, this county, and this community, and by blocking me from
a community group, it is made it clear that there are those who don't
think my family is entitled to the same rights as others, that my son
doesn't deserve to be treated with the same respect as other students
in our schools, and that we don't have the right to know when events
are happening in and around the community in which my family makes
its home. This thoughtless act clearly states that I either agree to
being demeaned, degraded, and silenced, or I can’t be in the group,
so I feel I need to speak up for both my family, and my people,
before this misinformation disseminates any further, and is allowed
to spread its hateful poison throughout the beautiful Hudson Valley,
which has long been home to many cultures and religions, as well as
minorities and refugees.
It is infuriating for us when non-Roma
choose to impersonate our culture with their swirly-skirts and
tinkly-bell jewelry to be seen as mysterious and exotic, while we
suffer the slings and arrows of “dirty gyppo, go back where you
came from thief/beggar/liar – Hitler should have finished the job!”
We have been accused of kidnapping little White children while it is
our youths who are systematically removed from their
families/culture/language, as with the recent case of 'Maria', a
blond girl 'found' among darker people, and taken from her foster
family, later found to be of Roma decent. The news story prompted a
rash of officials across several countries to go out and conduct a
witch-hunt against dark-skinned people with light-skinned
children...of which I am one. Given the recent horrific events
endured by immigrant families that have been savagely ripped apart by
Draconian government policies, it seems we are slipping farther and
farther into allowing the kinds of hate-speech and prejudicial
attitudes that brought about the Holocaust, and there are a great
many people who are willing to stand up and demand that it Not be
allow to happen Ever again.
Would the town of Woodstock, the
all-inclusive hippie-love-fest, peace and understanding art colony of
years past not gasp openly if a shop
using an ethnic slur for Jews,
African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, or Native Americans opened
its doors for business? Or would it be tolerated? What if it was
insulting the Whites? The slur to which I am referring is one you
may not even know is a slur. The word is Gypsy (please note the
capital 'G' – a lower case 'g' perpetuates disrespect for the
exonym). The word is highly controversial, and some of us use it
among ourselves with pride, though the preferred term – for those
of us who grew up having epithets hurled at us – is Roma, or the
more specific names of our subgroups (known as vitsas),
some of which include Kale, Manoush, Romanichal, Dom, Lovari,
Kalderash, and Sinti.
In all fairness, I'm sure the owner of
said business is probably a lovely individual, and my intent is not
to cause them any harm or embarrassment, but to give them the chance
to openly acknowledge their mistake, make the proper apologies, and
perhaps even do their small part to make sure their customers are
informed as to the truth about our people, rather than just taking
our name and using it for the benefit of their own finances. Another
business owner in a similar situation some time back agreed to keep
books about Roma and some printed materials with information in the
store, and on their website – would these local folks perhaps agree
to sell products or disseminate information in the same manner?
Would they consider sponsoring an essay contest, donating books about
the Romani people to the library, or sponsoring a forum?
They are creative people, and I'm sure they can come up with a
way to use their success to open a dialogue and engage positively
with those who find offense with the slur under which they chose to
do business.
The term 'Gypsy' comes from the
erroneous belief that our ancestors originated from Egypt. Our
language, customs, and DNA kits tell the true story – we originated
in India, before being spread in a Diaspora across Europe and the
Americas as slaves and servants, without rights, who have been
systematically oppressed and slaughtered to this very day. In many
countries we are still barred from schools, ensuring that our
children will not be educated, and therefore perpetuating the cycle
of poverty we have been held in for centuries. On the other hand,
many of us have managed to overcome great odds to become educators,
doctors, lawyers, artists, musicians, and bastions of cultural
literacy. We bristle at the Halloween costumes cultural
appropriators don every year. Our children are confused and shamed
by those who dress up as caricatures of our grandmothers, while we
ourselves fear to don our own cultural dress as it gives us away to a
society that has made it clear they only want us as models for their
own romanticized version of what being Gypsy means, which is usually
so far from the truth, it hurts.
Several Roma recently wrote in to
Hudson Valley One about an article written about a performance of
Macbeth performed at Opus 40 in which the director of the Dzieci
Theater Group misrepresented our culture, and we were treated to
dignified response stating that they were 'misquoted', and would be
changing the way they presented the performance in the future out of
respect for us, and our cultural heritage. That is how to “be a
good neighbor, and work to make things better daily”, a quote taken
directly from Mr. Dougherty's facebook page – not by blocking
community members from community groups. We call upon the business
owners, the town, the community, and activists of all stripe to
choose to do the same, and be on the right side of history with this
issue. Racism, xenophobia, antiziganism, and any kind of racial
intolerance is on its way to oblivion – let us use this as an
opportunity to advance together, and move into a more inclusive
future where the town of Woodstock can reengage with the statement
made on the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce and Arts website, “...where
the individual is always welcome and new and creative beginnings are
always possible.”
Sincerely,
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