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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year ago

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'If activists are hiding books from you, the best thing you can do is seek them out and read them!'

One of the strangest developments of the culture war has been the rise of authoritarian librarians. It sounds ridiculous doesn't it? Surely librarians are there to support education and to enable the dissemination of literature and knowledge.

But this week it was reported that the library service in Calderdale Council has been hiding books by feminists such as Helen Joyce and Kathleen Stock. The Labor-run council confirmed that although these books would still be in the catalog and they could be requested, they were quote, "not visible on the library shelves." This is very odd.

Now, I've read the books in question by both Helen Joyce and Kathleen Stock, and they are rigorous, intelligent and important studies concerning one of the key issues of our time. And yet these librarians are treating them as though they are toxic, as if members of the public who happen upon them while browsing might somehow be instantly corrupted.

And yet we shouldn't really be surprised at all. The rise of Woke Librarians, however ludicrous that sounds, is a real thing. Now, I should say from the outset that I've nothing against librarians. Some of my best friends are librarians. But there is something about the profession that seems to attract the kind of paternalistic pharisee who believes that it's their job to protect others from wrongthink.

Let me give you some other examples. So a few years ago, it was reported that the former poet laureate Ted Hughes was included on a watch list created by the British Library because of a family connection with a slave owner. Turns out the connection was false and the Library issued an apology. But why was the foremost library in the UK creating this kind of watch list in the first place? Well, it was because in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, the library had commissioned what they called a "decolonizing working group" which decided that they should review the collections and draw up a list of any authors with problematic pasts. This same group also claimed that the library's main building was a monument to imperialism, because it looked a bit like a battleship. I'm not even joking.

And in 2021 the Waterloo Region District School Board in Canada identified and removed books that were considered quote, "harmful to staff and students."

At the same time, other school libraries in Canada were disposing of copies of Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale following complaints about quote, "racist, homophobic or misogynistic language and themes."

And then there was the Ottawa Carlton District School Board which removed copies of William Golding's Lord of the Flies on the grounds that the themes of the book were quote, "outdated and too focused on white male power structures." Had they even read the book? If Lord of the Flies really is a comment on white male power structures, it can hardly be said to be an advertisement.

And then of course there's the whole trigger warning phenomenon. When archivists at Homerton College in Cambridge were engaged in a project to upload their collection of children's literature to the internet, they decided to flag a number of books with trigger warnings. Books such as Little House on the Prairie, and The Water Babies, and various books by Dr Seuss. And the archivists said they wanted to make their digital collection quote, "less harmful in the context of a canonical literary heritage that is shaped by, and continues a history of, oppression."

But books by Dr Seuss aren't oppressive or harmful, even if they do contain outdated racial stereotypes. They were written a long time ago, and readers understand that. Of course, that hasn't stopped the estate of Dr Seuss from withdrawing a number of titles from sale altogether. You can't even buy them anymore.

But the most revealing aspect of this story from Cambridge is a statement that the archivists at Homerton College put out. They said it would be a quote, "dereliction of our duty as gatekeepers to allow such casual racism to go unchecked." Gatekeepers. Now I thought they were meant to be custodians not gatekeepers.

And this is what is known as saying the quiet part out loud. Because really all of this behavior is edging towards censorship. For librarians and archivists to apply warnings to books or to hide them from the public, it's for them to say, "we don't think these books are good for you, we don't trust you to read these books and not to pick up some bad ideas, we must protect you from their influence." In other words, they're treating the public like a parent treats a small child.

And we shouldn't stand for it. Even the application of trigger warnings is a problem in and of itself. True, the books aren't being censored, but a trigger warning buys into the false belief that words and violence are the same thing. It implies that these books are dangerous, and in the wrong hands could cause trouble.

And it's not just libraries. Increasingly we're seeing museum staff attempting to protect the public from artifacts that they're meant to display. So last November, the Wellcome Collection in London shut down its key exhibit, one which dated from the 17th century, because it perpetuated quote, "a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language."

Now we all know that ethical standards change over time and that people from the past held different views from us. Often views that we would consider objectionable. So why don't museum curators understand this too? Why is a museum preventing us from seeing artifacts from the past, when they should be facilitating access? Why is it that so many art galleries now insist on adding little labels next to paintings by great masters to say how much they disapprove of their values, as though the writers of these little sermons would have thought any differently if they had been born hundreds of years ago?

I don't care whether you disapprove of Hogarth's attitudes towards minorities, I just want to appreciate his work without having these soft-witted puritans breathing down my neck.

What we're seeing here is ideological capture. it's the same reason why the Catholic Church created an index of forbidden books which it had kept updated for 400 years right up until 1948. it's the same reason why Mary Whitehouse wanted certain TV shows banned back in the 1960s. It's the same reason why the BBC has censored scenes of old comedy shows such as Faulty Towers on the BBC streaming service. It's the same reason why staff at publishing houses revolt when there's a new book coming out by Jordan Peterson or JK Rowling or some other problematic author. And when the authors aren't as well known as Peterson or Rowling, the staff often get their way.

And if you don't think any of this is authoritarian, what about the time when the body in charge of elementary and secondary schools in Southwestern Ontario authorized the ritualistic burning of books if they contained outdated stereotypes, in what they described as a "flame purification ceremony." Almost 5000 books, including copies of Tintin and Asterix, were removed from shelves and were destroyed or recycled because of course, only the most [rogressive people in history have ever burned books.

[ Source: The Times, via archive.today ]

It sounds preposterous, but the proliferation of activists in libraries, museums, schools, publishing houses, the arts and the media, makes complete sense when one considers that the devotees of this new woke religion have a vested interest in controlling the limits of acceptable thought. To use their own words, they are the gatekeepers.

But as adults in a civilized and liberal society, we don't need to be coddled, particularly by people whose capacity for critical thinking has been stunted by ideology. They say it's for our own good, but what tyrant in history hasn't made a similar claim?

So enough with the woke librarians. If activists are hiding books from you, the very best thing you can do is seek those books out and read them. These petty little authoritarians will do anything to control your speech and your thoughts. Don't let them get away with it.

We are reliably informed that it's only right-wing conservative Xians who want to ban or burn books. But it isn't true. There is a mirror image of the same Puritan authoritarianism on the woke left.

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vitamin-zeeth · 10 months ago

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hey zeeth how BETRAYED💔⛓️🔪 going. inform the public

I COMPLETELY FORGOT TO KEEP UPDATING ON HERE!! I haven't had time to read it the past like 2-3 days but currently I'm on page 146 and like 13 hours have passed. It's the same day but the pacing is so wack that it feels like a week should have gone past lmao

Update on Her Boyfriends (Yes: Plural) so far we have the guy she's dating whose name is Erik Night, an 18 year old vampyre who is currently away participating in the Inter-school Shakespeare Monologue Competition, her Ex, Heath Luck, a human the same age as her who imprinted on her after she tasted his blood and is an ex-alcoholic (he's a month sober now that hes imprinted on her) and who she doesn't want anything to do with and finds annoying, and Loren Blake, the ADULT PART-TIME TEACHER AT THE SCHOOL and also the vampyre poet laureate?? They're not dating but they keep having incredibly sexually charged meetings.

Zoey and the gang are currently about to call in a bomb threat on a bridge cause they couldn't think of any other way to clear it (a girl they hate had a vision it was gonna get crashed into and the people on it were gonna die and they believed her immediately) and they don't wanna talk to an adult for some reason. Also they have horse class at vampyre school did I mention they have horse class.

In other news, a kid Zoey used to know pre-vampyre has been found dead in a river and his cousin is missing. The FBI came to talk to her about this for some reason despite her having met this guy like twice at parties.

I will try and remember to keep updating on BETRAYED 💔 ⛓️ 🔪 when I have time to read the book lmao but that's the main things rn.

#thanks for the reminder raine #asks #zeeth reads BETRAYED 💔⛓️🔪

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justforbooks · 1 year ago

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Having long been tipped as the next Nobel laureate, the Norwegian writer has this year been awarded the prize. For those new to the acclaimed playwright and novelist, here are some good ways in.

The novelist, playwright, essayist and poet Jon Fosse, 64, is this year’s winner of the Nobel prize in Literature. He is now set to become the world’s best-known Norwegian writer of contemporary fiction, perhaps even overtaking his former student, Karl Ove Knausgård. In his career as a playwright, Fosse has been hailed as “the new Ibsen” – borne out by the fact that his plays are the most widely performed in Norway after Ibsen’s own. Despite years of international acclaim, however, it is only relatively recently that Fosse’s books have begun to reach the mainstream of English translation publishing – so here’s where to begin.

The entry point

Fosse’s powerful (and frequently very short) stories in the collection Scenes from a Childhood span Fosse’s literary career from 1983 to 2013. They serve as an introduction to the central themes of his work – childhood, memory, family, faith – coupled with a strong sense of duality and of fatalism. Fragmentary, elliptical, at times deliberately simplistic, they mark life’s journey from extreme youth to old age. Standouts include Red Kiss Mark of a Letter, And Then My Dog Will Come Back to Me.

If you only read one

In Fosse’s 2023 novella Aliss at the Fire, an old woman, Signe, lies by the fire at her house next to a fjord, dreaming of herself 20 years earlier and her husband, Asle, who rowed out one day on the water in a storm and never came back. It is typical of Fosse – bleak, with a grand use of a repeated central image, that of blackness, and structured around the grip of ancestral history (the Aliss of the title is Asle’s great-great-great-grandmother), doubles and repeated actions: Asle’s grandfather had the same name as him and met the same fate by drowning. Hypnotic and mysterious.

If you’re in a rush

Published in 1989, The Boathouse is the closest thing Fosse has written to a crime novel. The 30-year-old narrator seems to have failed at everything in life – he lives with his mother, is a virtual recluse, doesn’t seem able to do basic things for himself. His most important achievement lies in his past – the rock band he had with his childhood friend Knut, with whom he has lost contact. Yet one summer a chance encounter with Knut, now married and relatively successful, will lead to a devastating denouement. Parallel to this, the narrator is also writing a novel that is an acute observation of every instance of his “restless” existence: a perfect example of the “write, don’t think” maxim as Fosse instructed his students in the late 80s in Bergen, when this book was in the making.

The play

“I can’t help wondering if the cultural gulf between Fosse’s world and our own is too wide,” wrote the Guardian critic when his 1999 play Dream of Autumn had its English language premiere in Dublin in 2006. Much has changed in Europe and the rest of the world in the intervening 17 years, however. The drama’s premise is simple, the undercurrents are not: a man and a woman meet in a graveyard and begin an affair – perhaps they knew one another in a past life. As they leave the graveyard the man’s parents arrive for a funeral and, as is common with Fosse, time leaps forward by years, in a lingering, longing dance of intergenerational circularity.

The one worth persevering with

In Melancholy I and II, Fosse takes us deep into the tortured mind of the 19th-century landscape artist Lars Hertervig, who died impoverished in 1902 in his early 70s, and whose life was blighted by the hallucinations and delusions that made his paintings appear so dreamlike, so sublime. Hertervig first became psychotic as a student at art school in Düsseldorf and, as well as an often terrifying examination of mental illness, the novels (originally published separately but now as one volume) are most significantly about what it means to be an artist. Melancholy I details the young Hertervig’s obsessions, anxieties, and eventual breakdown during one terrible day; Melancholy II acts as a coda, with different narrative perspectives – including that of a would-be fictional biographer – many years after Hertervig’s death.

The masterpiece

The seven books of Fosse’s Septology I-VII (helpfully compressed into three volumes comprising The Other Name, I Is Another and A New Name) centre on Asle, an ageing artist living in remote south-west Norway. A Catholic convert, like Fosse himself, Asle is grappling with time, art and identity. It is an extraordinary work of existential crisis, of memory loss, and persistent doppelgangers, either real or imaginary – the life lived, and the life that might have been lived, in the person of the shadowy other. It’s a frightening and intense read, which is rendered without a sentence break, so that the reader is essentially living Asle’s life with him. Septology is also a work of deep religious faith in which a man, an artist, and a human being, above all, in the end comes full circle: “It’s definitely true that it’s just when things are darkest, blackest, that you see the light.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #Jon Fosse

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xplrvibes · 9 months ago

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i swear if amber, shea or stas would have posted that pic the stans would have reacted way different and cheered them on. Same with how natural they are compared to malia or how it's only bad how m has no job and just hangs at colby's but when stas just chilled in vegas for months on end while the boys were editing it's something total different. And of course shea is way superior cause she writes poems (mainly about colby but she of course is not a clout chaser and never used colby)

To be fair, Amber and Stas did receive a lot of the same type of hate and bullshit back when they first hit the Colby Brock airwaves.

They eventually were able to win over the fanbase somehow and now people are a lot nicer to them, but it was rough for a while. Amber received death threats and Stas had to private her instagram.

It's really just sad how this cycle repeats every time this man comes out of the gilded cage the fans put him in.

Anyway, the double standards in general really are something to behold. Maybe Malia can eventually win them over and theyll eventually forget that they ever treated her like this...or maybe she'll just fade away and all these people who bullied and harassed this girl relentlessly will celebrate as if they did something to save the planet.

Either/or.

Also, doesn't she own a boutique or something? I swear I saw her mention a boutique at one point...

No comment on the poet laureate 🤣

#asks

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coochiequeens · 2 years ago

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Today for Women History Month we honor the birthdays of two women in the arts, Janet Collins and Amanda Gorman

Janet Collins (March 7, 1917 – May 28, 2003) was an African American ballet dancer, choreographer, and teacher. She performed on Broadway, in films, and appeared frequently on television.[1] She was among the pioneers of black ballet dancing, one of the few classically trained Black dancers of her generation.

Janet Faye[2] Collins was born in New Orleans, and at the age of four moved with her family to Los Angeles, California, where Collins received her first dance training at a Catholic community center. She studied primarily with Carmelita Maracci, Lester Horton, and Adolph Bolm, who were among the few ballet teachers who accepted black students. She also had fond memories of studying with Los Angeles dance teacher Dorothy Lyndall.

Amanda S. C. Gorman[1] (born March 7, 1998)[2] is an American poet and activist. Her work focuses on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora. Gorman was the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate. She published the poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough in 2015. In 2021, she delivered her poem "The Hill We Climb" at the inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden.

Her inauguration poem generated international acclaim, and shortly thereafter, two of her books achieved best-seller status, and she obtained a professional management contract. In February 2021, Gorman was highlighted in Time magazine's 100 Next list under the category of "Phenoms", with a profile written by Lin-Manuel Miranda.[3] That same month, Gorman became the first poet to perform at the Super Bowl, when she delivered her poem "Chorus of the Captains" at Super Bowl LV.

Born in Los Angeles, California,[5][6] Gorman was raised by her single mother, Joan Wicks, a 6th-grade English teacher in Watts,[7] with her two siblings.[5][8] Her twin sister, Gabrielle, is an activist[9] and filmmaker.[10]Gorman has said she grew up in an environment with limited television access.[11] She has described her young self as a "weird child" who enjoyed reading and writing and was encouraged by her mother.[5]

Gorman has an auditory processing disorder and is hypersensitive to sound.[5] She also had a speech impediment during childhood.[12][13]Gorman participated in speech therapy during her childhood and Elida Kocharian of The Harvard Crimson wrote in 2018, "Gorman doesn't view her speech impediment as a crutch—rather, she sees it as a gift and a strength."[14] Gorman told The Harvard Gazette in 2018, "I always saw it as a strength because since I was experiencing these obstacles in terms of my auditory and vocal skills, I became really good at reading and writing. I realized that at a young age when I was reciting the Marianne Deborah Williamson quote that 'Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure' to my mom."[1] In 2021, Gorman told CBS This Morning co-host Anthony Mason that she used songs as a form of speech therapy, and explained, "My favorite thing to practice was the song 'Aaron Burr, Sir,' from Hamilton because it is jam-packed with R's. And I said, 'if I can keep up with Leslie in this track, then I am on my way to being able to say this R in a poem."

#Women’s History Month #Janey Collins #March 7 #women in the arts #African American women in ballet #Amanda Gorman #African American women poets #The Hill We Climb #Best selling books by women #Call Us What We Carry

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razorsadness · 1 year ago

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In the grand tradition of me, I started this journal entry ages ago, but then more stuff kept happening before I could finish it. Let’s see if I can get it all down—

I’ll start with the hard things.

There's my perpetual broke-ness; trying to prepare for the impending holidays while not having a lot of money to buy gifts. And that's fine for my friends and most of my family members—they appreciate handmade gifts. But for my kids? Well, I'm hustling every day to have enough money to buy them some gifts. (It's especially difficult because C.’s birthday is four days before Xmas, so we have to buy gifts for that, too.)

There's a struggle I'm having in regards to my mom; I've written about that extensively in my private journal and don't feel like rehashing it here right now, because it makes me too upset.

And D.'s been struggling again, with anger, and with (lack of) focus. I’m not sure if we need to increase the dosage of his meds or what. I hope that he gets into equine therapy soon (he’s on a waitlist), because my cousin S.’s daughter M. tried years of different meds and talk therapy for her depression and anxiety and PTSD, and none of that has helped her as much as equine therapy has. In the meantime, we’re trying to limit his video game time, because even though gaming is his favorite thing, it also brings out his rage like nothing else.

There are my own mental illnesses and disabilities, which can make even good days turn pretty shit.

And there have been some writing rejections, which have sucked on two levels. One being that these were paying publications, and I fucking need the money. The other being that getting rejected just fucking sucks. (At least rejections no longer send me into a I'm never writing again spiral like they used to; though they do occasionally send me into an I’m never submitting again, fuck traditional publishing, I’ll self-publish everything from now on spiral.)

But then there’s so much good (or at least happysad) stuff, too. I’ve been writing a lot; mostly poetry but also some prose. I’ve been working on my Rimbaud translations again, and now I finally know what I’m going to do with them. I’ve been reading a lot—new and new-to-me stuff, plus rereading some of my perennial favorites. Same with music and television/movies—I’m spending about equal amounts of time on discovering new things and rediscovering old favorites. I’ve been doing as much as I can both dayjob-wise and side hustle-wise and activism-wise, but also trying to take it easy on myself when I need to rest. Speaking of rest and self-care, I’ve been drinking less coffee and more tea. (Even caffeinated tea is better for me than coffee; too much coffee makes me jittery and anxious, whereas caffeinated tea does not do that, no matter how much I drink. Also, I’ve been having a lot of stomachaches lately, and coffee makes them worse whereas tea actually helps.) And speaking of dayjobs, P. has started actively applying for work again. I’ve been spending a lot of time in my favorite places here in Racine, and thinking about how much I love it. It’s funny, for a lot of years I thought I’d rather live anywhere other than here. Even when I did move back, I thought it was only temporary. But sometime in the past eight years (around the time I became Poet Laureate) it started to feel like home, and I will be sad when I do leave it.

On the 9th, I drove down to DeKoven (a place I have written about a lot over the years, including in one of the pieces in my most recent zine), to the art gallery there, to set up for our art and poetry event. It was a perfect fall day; leaves wet from recent rain, a chill wind off the lake. I helped hang the art and set up the sculptures; I also hung my poems on the wall next to the pieces which inspired them, and added relevant decorative embellishments with oil pastels. I remembered how much I like being involved in the actual set-up of an art show. And I got to see some folks I hadn’t seen in a while, and also met a few new people, including a gorgeous woman named K. It was her birthday; she was wearing a gold glitter jacket, shedding sparkles everywhere, and she brought cupcakes and sparkling grape juice to share with everyone. By the time I left, it was full dark, and there, over the lake to the south, was the skyline of Kenosha, glittering gold in the blue-black.

Two nights later was the art and poetry event, so it was back to DeKoven, hat on my head and boots on my feet, jazz on the radio. It turned out to be one of the best nights I’ve had in a few months. I drank a La Fin du Monde; one of my favorite beers since I first tried it in Montreal twenty goddamn years ago. All the art was amazing; all the poets writing in response to it wrote amazing stuff. I love poetry readings like that, where everyone has very different styles but they are all so fucking good.

I got to see two more old friends for the first time in quite a while—J.E. and N.R. N.R. is one of my favorite people ever, like he is just the type of person who makes friends with everyone and is chill with everything. We were both drinking beer, and laughing about how back in the day we would’ve been smoking weed, too, but how now we can’t do both at the same time anymore or we just get sleepy. During the intermission, J.E. and I stood outside smoking cigarettes, and we talked about everything. I asked how he was, and he said, “Well, I don’t want to die most days anymore, so I’d say I’m doing alright.” And then he said: “I hope that’s okay to say, it’s just, you’re this person I trust that when you ask me how I’m doing, I can be honest about it, no bullshit.” And I said: “You’re absolutely right.” And then I went on to talk about how sometimes I still think ‘I wanna die,’ but it’s not really that I want to die, it’s that I want my life and/or the world to be completely different, and he totally understood what I was saying. Then we talked about parenting, the great parts and the hard parts, and we talked about living in poverty, and I just. I know I’ve mentioned it before but I’m so glad that we are friends now. As fucked up as we both were when we first met back in 2008, I’m so glad that after years of not talking to one another, over the past almost four years we’ve become close and now I consider him not just a casual acquaintance but a good goddamn friend.

I got a bunch of compliments on my poems/performance, including people saying my stuff reminded them of the Beats but that I’d surpassed them, and the poet who was set to perform after me saying “how am I supposed to follow that?!” I met a bunch of new amazing people that night, too. Like P.W., a Romanian man who was one of the artists that had work as part of the event; he had the sexiest accent and looked super sexy, too. I’m pretty sure he’s a bit younger than I am, but he’s fully silver-haired, and gorgeous. Like T., who was one of the artists and one of the poets, and he was wearing an amazing shirt—a button-down with a print of ink pots, fountain pens, and notebooks. And K. was there, too, because she was one of the poets, and her words were fire, and she was gorgeous in a tight dress and tall boots and a beret. After the performance part of the night was over, I hung out for a while, finishing my beer, talking with people. T. and I talked about God, and the mycellium network, and mycellium-as-God; we talked about Beat poets and bisexuality. He has such an interesting story. He’s in his 60s. He married a woman in his early 20s, and always knew he was also into men, but they were monogamous and he loved his wife very much. She died about five years ago, and he still loves her (I could tell just by the way he talked about her), but now he’s dating a man for the first time ever in his life, and loves his current partner very much, too. He also told me he found me fascinating, and wanted to write a poem about me. I talked with P.W. again for a bit, he said he’d like to paint me sometime if I’d be interested in modeling for him, and uh, well. I didn’t commit to anything, because I felt a spark of attraction and though I wasn’t sure if he felt one, too, I knew if he did it could turn into a complicated situation.

Then I went outside to have a cigarette. J.E. was already outside smoking, and P.W. and K. joined us, as well as K.’s friend that had come with her to the event. K. was out of cigarettes, so I rolled one for her. J.E. said: “I’m not gonna lie, your ‘Blue’ poem was kinda long, and I started getting a little sleepy while you read it.” P.W. said: “I didn’t think it was too long. I liked listening to you read it. If it did make me feel sleepy, it was in a good way. Like a beautiful lullaby.” Which, well, wow. We all stood quiet for a minute, smoking; smelling the shit smell wafting from the wastewater treatment plant. K. and her friend left.

Then this very drunk young woman walked up to us. She was swaying slightly on her feet, holding a plastic cup of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Turned out she was there for her sister’s wedding reception, which was being held in the great hall part of DeKoven. “Most of the people there other than my girlfriend are super boring and straight, but I didn’t want to stand alone while I smoked, and I saw your hat,” she pointed at me, “and decided to come over here. You’re not straight, are you?” she asked me. “No, no I’m not,” I said. “I knew it!” she said. “No straight person could pull a hat like that off so well!” Then: “Anyway. I’m L., I’m gay, and I have a useless English degree.” J.E. and I laughed, and said: “Join the club! We have useless English degrees too!” She said: “No, you don’t understand, mine is with a concentration in creative writing, so it’s extra useless.” “Us too!” we said. She went on to talk about how she’d tried to write fiction but her stories sucked so she gave up and now just worked in customer service. J.E. said: “Have you tried writing poetry?” But he said it in this sort of creepy, Waits-y growl, like he was some criminal or pervert in a trenchcoat, lurking in a dark alley, like: “Hey, kid, you wanna try poetry?” So I just fucking lost it at that. When I’d stopped laughing, J.E. and I both tried telling her in all seriousness that well, of course most writers, including ourselves, do non-creative writing work to pay the bills, but that we still write. We told her that, in fact, that’s why we were there that night; we’d just done a poetry reading. Then the topic moved on to where we were from/lived. L. said she was from San Diego originally but now lived with her girlfriend in Brooklyn: “But not the cool part. The part that sucks.” Soon after, a very dapper, short butch woman came running over: “There you are!” she said to L. “Oh, hey everyone,” L. said, “this is my girlfriend.” Then, to her girlfriend: “I came over here because of her hat,” she said, pointing to me again. “It is a great hat,” said her girlfriend. “Thank you for taking care of my lost puppy,” she said. “I was in the bathroom when she disappeared and I got worried.” “We should probably get back to the reception,” L. said, rolling her eyes. “You guys should come crash it! There’s plenty of free beer and wine!” And they walked away. I considered it for a split second; that’s the kind of thing I would’ve done in a heartbeat in my younger days, and it has been a very long time since I’ve done anything that spontaneous and wild—but it was already 9:30 and I had to get home to put C. to bed.

“I should probably get going,” I told J.E. and P.W. “Yeah, we’re gonna leave soon, too,” J.E. said. “I’m crashing at P.W.’s place because he only lives a few blocks from here, and I’m too drunk to drive all the way back to Kenosha.” “You could stay there, too,” P.W. said to me, “I mean, if you don’t feel safe driving far.” The smile on his face told me everything I needed to know: Yep, he felt something, too, and may not have been offering his house as a crashpad for wholly gentlemanly reasons. Again, I considered it for a split second. Again, something I would have done in a heartbeat in my younger days… “Thanks for the offer, but I’m fine. I’ve only had one beer and I don’t live that far away.” I waved goodbye and walked to my car. A little sad that I wasn’t crashing a wedding or crashing at a relative stranger’s house, but mostly just buzzed from the great night, the art and poetry and all the beautiful people I met. I remembered, for the one millionth time, how much happier I am when I can get out in the world and be among other people.

Two days later, C. and I went to the library. Everything was beautiful, the lake and the wind and the golden light. They were having craft day in the kids’ department, doing a Diwali craft, so we stayed for that. They showed a short video about Diwali and then had the kids do a modified version of Diwali sand art—glued onto plates, rather than just free-form. C. had a lot of fun with it. That day was also D.’s birthday, my first baby is twelve now, which is wild to me. We celebrated at my parents’ house. D. really loved his disco ball piñata; I’m so glad we were able to make that happen. Two days after that, C. and I met my mom downtown. It was another gorgeous day, sunny, warm for the time of year; we walked around, went into some shops, I took photos of jukeboxes and cigarette machines sitting in the window of a closed-down store. And another two days after that, P. and I took the kids to Mound Cemetery, to visit the Native American burial mounds, as well as to see some of the old graves. The next week and a bit was work, activism, the dailinesses of life, taking food to my favorite neighbor. Then Thanksgiving, which was less stressful than holidays with my parents often are, though not without some hiccups because I don’t think there can be a holiday without some kind of stress.

Two days after that, I drove to DeKoven again; I was meeting some of my poetry friends there so we could record our videos for next year’s Woodland Pattern Poetry Marathon. I had to run a couple errands first, and on my drive through downtown, I saw a group of young (late-teen or early-20s, I couldn’t tell) punks, and they reminded me so much of myself and my friends at that age, and it made me so happy that there are still punk kids stalking the streets of midsized midwest cities, looking simultaneously tough and awkward. N.R. and J.E. were at DeKoven for the recording session, along with S.K. and J.P. N.R. had brought a small cooler full of beer, and so he and J.E. and I each drank one. In between recording, the five of us talked about relationships and food and publishing and poetry and various other topics. After I’d recorded my poems, both of which mentioned ghosts, we talked about ghosts. J.E. asked me if I believed in ghosts. He said he’d had weird experiences that could’ve been ghostly, but he wasn’t sure if he wholly believed or not. I said I’m kind of the same way—I’ve had experiences that I can’t explain away with a more ‘rational’ explanation, but I can’t say with 100% certainty that they were paranormal experiences, either. “I guess you could say I’m a ghost agnostic,” I said. Then I mentioned that DeKoven and the area surrounding it is supposedly one of the most haunted places in Racine; I said I’d had weird experiences on the grounds in the past but never any in that particular building. Less than thirty seconds after I said that, we all heard a noise in the room above us, like footsteps walking across the room, and then a door opening and shutting, softly. There was no one else in the building at the time. It was really as though a ghost heard our conversation and was like: “Oh, you’ve never had an experience in this building before? Oh, you’re not sure you believe in ghosts? How about now???” After we’d finished recording, we all hung out for a bit, and then I got ready to leave. N.R. said: “I’d like to hug you, if that’s okay,” and it was, and I was pleased because I love hugging my friends, but there are times when I’m not in the mood, and it’s nice when people check. When I left, it was dark, and I saw the waxing moon and Saturn, both rising over the lake. My parents were watching the kids for the afternoon/evening, so P. and I got to have an at-home date night. We had good sex and then cooked a great dinner.

The next day it got a lot colder, and snowed, and we had a cozy-at-home day; I spent most of the day drinking tea and reading, and also made some cookies. The day after that I felt under the weather—not an illness, just a flare-up of my recurrent issues—but I took it easy, with more tea and reading. The day after that, my period started, much earlier than I was expecting it. Over the past couple years, when my cycle changes due to stress or illness, my period now starts early; when I was younger, stress or illness always made it late. I don’t miss the pregnancy scares, but I do hate that I have to bleed even more frequently now. But it wasn’t so bad, no cramps this time. And that evening, P. and I got to have a delicious holiday stout at the pub where we went to pick up dinner for us, the kids, and my parents. The night after that, I got the news of Henry Kissinger’s death, and said good fucking riddance, it was nice to hear about a death that in no way made me sad.

And then, within five minutes of waking up on Thursday morning, I saw the news that Shane MacGowan had died. And I just…I don’t know how to explain all the things this has brought up for me. I’m working on a longer piece for my newsletter, about Shane and The Pogues, but in the meantime, I’ll just say… I mean, I already had a bunch of Pogues songs saved as drafts on my blog, and I’d already been listening to them a lot, starting in mid-November. November and December are Pogues months for me. Because of the weather, but also because of certain November/December memories which are attached to Pogues songs. And Filia and I were texting about it, because she gets it, understands why this is so devastating, was just as devastated, and I miss her, I will always miss her. And of course it got me thinking about Joe Strummer’s death, twenty-one fucking years ago, how she was the one that broke the news to me, over the phone, after I’d just gotten home from visiting her, and somehow Shane’s death feels close to Joe’s death. I don’t mean time-wise, obviously; I mean, in terms of how sad it makes me. Or something. Fuck. And I said on my main blog that Filia is the only person I know IRL who gets it, but of course that’s a lie. Because there’s also fucking Derry. He fucking knew Shane, like, personally (not super well, but still), and the night he first kissed me is one of the November nights attached to a Pogues song (see: A Foggy Night in Lakeview, the lyric essay/mini-zine I wrote about that night and “A Rainy Night in Soho.”), and. Well. We’ve already opened up the lines of communication between us again in the past year and a bit and I knew that if I didn’t email him he was going to email me anyway, so I sent him a message. He responded later that day, and I miss him, I will always miss him.

The rest of the day wasn’t terrible. I made that Saint MacGowan art piece. It was a warmer day, so C. and I took a long walk around the neighborhood. We picked up nature treasures, and saw the silliest doggo, who barked at us and then kept bringing toys up to the window and shaking them, as though it wanted us to come inside and play—and when we of course did not, he’d go get another toy and bring it over, as though it was the toy that was the problem and not the fact that he was inside and we were out. Later, I made a delicious tikka masala for dinner. Then, I rearranged my altar, lit some candles, turned on The Pogues, and said a slainté for Shane. I was having this conflicting feeling about drinking that night, given Shane’s lifelong struggles with addiction, and my own past struggles with it. Part of me thought about never touching a drop of alcohol again; part of me wanted to get shitfaced. Ultimately, I did neither. I drank one Guinness, and the shot of Jameson I’d been saving for some unspecified occasion—Thursday night was that occasion.

The next day, I got double-vaxxed. CoViD and flu. The pharmacist that administered the vaccines was cute and kinda punky looking, and the vaccines themselves didn’t feel too bad. But I started feeling woozy within in an hour of receiving the vaccines, and felt like death warmed over for about 48 hours afterward. Sweats, chills, body aches, fatigue, brain fog, painful swollen lymph node in my armpit, the whole bit. I took it super easy Saturday; just laid around in bed drinking tea, reading, watching documentaries, and crying a lot. P. made stir fry for dinner. Yesterday I still took it pretty easy, and I felt mostly better by late afternoon. We roasted a chicken and some potatoes and asparagus for dinner; a simple comfort meal that was perfect for a chill-damp Sunday night.

I have jury duty this week (which is the reason I got double-vaxxed), and I’m hoping I don’t have to go in. I called in last night about today, and there are no new cases going to trial, so I’m off the hook for today at least. Today is National Cookie Day, and the kids want to make gingerbread cookies, so that’s my main plan for the day. Next Saturday is the last BONK! ever, and I’m so fucking sad about that, you have no idea. It has been going on for fifteen years. I have been a performer and an attendee so many times. I have given some of my best performances there, and seen so many other amazing poets and musicians. It makes me want to start my own performance series, just to keep something like that going in this town, but I have no idea how to go about it.

Other things from these past weeks: Intense, vivid dreams. Some hot ones—I’ve recently had sex dreams about both [redacted] and [redacted]. Others that wreck me when I wake up and realize they’re just dreams—like the one I had last week, in which Jack Terricloth was still alive, and Maggie and I were still friends. Memories of old friends and lovers—those gone from the world or just gone from my life, and those still alive and in my life (but the memories of how we were, back when). Moments of intense, unbidden nostalgia; of slipping in and out of times past. A certain hat or pair of boots, a certain smell or taste, a certain song, and suddenly it’s 1999, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2015, 2019. Moments of the DJs on my favorite radio station playing songs that are deeply relevant to either my mood or what I’m thinking about, as though they’re reading my mind. Watching possums in the yard. Melancholy weather—when it got colder and snowed, everything was beautiful for a few days, but then it warmed up slightly, and now it’s that late November/early December season. “Locking,” Kurt Vonnegut called it. Or, to misquote Sylvia Plath: the best of autumn gone, the new winter not yet born. Cold, but not cold enough to snow. Mist and fog and rising damp.

And my heart breaks every goddamn day. From the pain of life and the world, but also from the beauty.

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ecopoetry4teachers · 1 year ago

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Teaching Current Events in the Classroom Through Ecopoetry

Last week, my students spent time viewing weather reports, watching projections and talking about Hurricane Lee. After gauging their interest in the hurricane, I decided to use short lessons that allowed them to steer the conversation. They used their experience with post tropical storm Fiona in 2022 to engage in the daily lessons. Most of my students are not yet 10, but their conversations and insights told me it is an area of interest, or perhaps concern, for them. What can Adora Svitak teach us?

I have always felt it was important to teach current issues in an age appropriate manner. I believe students are curious about their world and want to know more about it. As a parent, I want to shelter my children from some of the harsh realities, but I also know the importance of teaching them the truth. Young educational activist Adora Svitak said:

"By bringing current events into the classroom, everyday discussion, and social media, maybe we don't need to wait for our grandchildren's questions to remind us we should have paid more attention to current events."

Adora Svitak https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/adora_svitak_594720

Adora Svitak and Paulo Freire: What is the connection?

This young activist reminds me of Paulo Freire. Freire believed that teaching adult learners to read would help them see their own oppression. This knowledge could then transform their lives through action. Teaching current events in the classroom, can do the same. Elizabeth Lange, in her 2023 book Transformative Sustainability Education, stated that Freire’s:

"literacy process was called conscientization as adult learners become conscious of the root causes of their oppression and then took collective action to improve their lives" (Lange, 2023, pg. 76).

This is similar to Svitak's belief that children need to understand current events, so they can begin their work toward change. To learn more about Paulo Freire’s theory of education, watch the following video.

youtube

An informative academic article regarding Freire's transformative learning theory can be found here:

The Ecopoetry Connection

One major current issue that faces children globally is climate change. Extreme weather events, loss of ecosystems, endangered species and species at risk, pollution, environmental disasters or social system failures are all partly the result of climate change. We need look no further than Great Thunberg to see how these issues are affecting children and young adults. Her global climate strike has mobilized millions of students throughout the world. My own students have hosted small rallies outside our school as a way to tell adults they want change. Youth do have the intelligence, willingness and creativity to take action against climate change. Young spoken word poet, Amanda Gorman, gives us a glimpse as to what youth can do:

Black eco-poets, such as Frank X Walter use their experience with oppression and resilience in his poems. Contemporary eco-poets are using their word to teach about environmental impacts to our natural world. Below is Walter's poem Love Letter to the World.

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/8-black-eco-poets-who-inspire-us#:~:text=%E2%80%9CEco%2Dpoetics%E2%80%9D%20%20may%20be,finding%20home%20away%20from%20home.

Edinburgh Napier University Professor Sam Illingworth states that ecopoet Elise Paschen, uses her poem The Tree Agreement, to

"promote the idea of the agency people possess in protecting and preserving their local environment. These poems discuss neighborhood resistance to tree felling and challenge our need to make a mark on the world."

Eco-poetry is more than poetry about the environment. It tells a story that is meant to expand the reader's thinking and make connections between humankind and the litany of social issues that surround their lives. As Eleanor Flowerday (2021) states,

“Eco-poetry roots you in your environment both physically but also in the way we tell stories to one another. It provides that line of connection to your surroundings that is so necessary in founding a relationship with the natural world: that feeling that you actually belong there.”

As an educator, I believe eco-poetry has a role to play in helping to transform the global climate crisis. Eco-poetry has a place in every language arts curriculum because the climate crisis effects everyone. The poets, educators and activists discussed in this blog are just a few in the every growing list of climate change activists.

Reference List

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ImsBe97u3DMtBAbB4hj3N9Rt8ASKcpEYfYP6JJPUhZQ/edit

#ecofriendly #eco conscious #poetry #eco-poetry #environmental #teaching #eco-poetryin theclassroom #radical poetry #paulo freire #adora svatik #naturalistweekly #poetryfoundation #sierraclub #worlwildlife #Youtube

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unfoldingmoments · 2 years ago

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Negative Capability

A theory first articulated by John Keats about the artist’s access to truth without the pressure and framework of logic or science. Contemplating his own craft and the art of others, especially William Shakespeare, in one of his famous letters to relatives Keats supposed that a great thinker is “capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” A poet, then, has the power to bury self-consciousness, dwell in a state of openness to all experience, and identify with the object contemplated.

See Keats’s “To Autumn.” The inspirational power of beauty, according to Keats, is more important than the quest for objective fact; as he writes in his “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Keats’s notion of negative capability has been influential for those working outside of aesthetics, including scholars such as Roberto Unger who adopted and modified the term for his own work on social theory. Ref: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/negative-capability

Negative here is not pejorative. Instead, it implies the ability to resist explaining away what we do not understand.

Rather than coming to an immediate conclusion about an event, idea or person, Keats advises resting in doubt and continuing to pay attention and probe in order to understand it more completely.

Negative capability also testifies to the importance of humility, which Keats described as a “capability of submission.” As Socrates indicates in Plato’s “Apology,” the people least likely to learn anything new are the ones who think they already know it all. By contrast, those who are willing to question their own assumptions and adopt new perspectives are in the best position to arrive at new insights.

Keats believed that the world could never be fully understood, let alone controlled. In his view, pride and arrogance must be avoided at all costs, an especially apt warning as the world confronts challenges such as climate change and COVID-19.

At the same time, information technology seems to give everyone instant access to all human knowledge. To be sure, the internet is one gateway to knowledge. But it also indiscriminately spreads misinformation and propaganda, often fueled by algorithms that profit off division.

This, it goes without saying, can cloud understanding with false certainty.

And so our age is often described as polarized: women versus men, Blacks versus whites, liberals versus conservatives, religion versus science – and it’s easy to automatically lapse into the facile assumption that all human beings can be divided into two camps. The underlying view seems to be that if only it can be determined which side of an issue a person lines up on, there’s no need to look any further.

Against this tendency, Keats suggests that human beings are always more complex than any demographic category or party affiliation. He anticipates another Nobel laureate, writer and philosopher Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote that instead of good guys and bad guys, the world is made up of wonderfully complex and sometimes even self-contradictory people, each capable of both good and bad:

Uncertainty can be uncomfortable. It is often quite tempting to stop pondering complex questions and jump to conclusions. But Keats counsels otherwise. By resisting the temptation to dismiss and despise others, it’s possible to open the door to discovering traits in people that are worthy of sympathy or admiration.

They may, with time, even come to be regarded as friends. Ref: https://theconversation.com/john-keats-concept-of-negative-capability-or-sitting-in-uncertainty-is-needed-now-more-than-ever-153617

Examples of Negative Capability In Literature

Negative capability can exist due to a willful omittance of specific details, or because there is no right answer available for a particular situation.

Ref: https://www.masterclass.com/articles/john-keats-theory-of-negative-capability-in-writing

Robert Greene on Q everything you believe

Continually questioning yourself your ideas your values where you come from is actually the highest form of human thinking is actually the most creative form of thinking you must not be afraid of it is extremely powerful

The stupidest people are the ones who think they have the right answers who are so certain that they know the truth that actually is a very deep form of human stupidity because our knowledge is always limited and those who think that they know for certain what is true are actually operating out of deep levels of fear and insecurity. Ref: https://youtu.be/Rj4JuA3RDEQ

Last but not least, you may agree to disagree for this =D Ref: https://www.instagram.com/p/CmmahnMsLdm/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Be great by Tuesday folks!

#johnkeates #negativecapability #robertgreene #theory #book #life #questions #Youtube

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miasmablog · 2 months ago

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Origins & Interpretation

The poem Scottish Fiction was written by poet laureate Edwin Morgan (1920–2010) in response to a letter from Roddy Woomble, lead vocalist of the Scottish rock band Idlewild.

A long-time admirer of Morgan's work, Woomble made contact during the production of what would become the band's third studio album The Remote Part. In his letter to the poet, Woomble spoke about identity and belonging and Morgan's response ended with a poem addressing these topics.

This poem was incorporated into the closing (title) track of The Remote Part. The album was released in July 2002.

Interpretation

In this poem, Morgan examines the idea of national identity: how culture and society inform our perception of ourselves, and how we in turn represent ourselves to the world. While this can apply to any group or nation, Morgan focuses on Scottish national identity and uses specific examples of cultural relevance (e.g. the Red Road flats) to ensure that the work resonates with its intended audience.

I feel Morgan is arguing that at the core of human identity there is a duality or dichotomy: the fiction versus the friction; the polished image we present to the world versus the visceral, messy reality beneath.

I will now analyse the lyrics of the poem and give my own interpretation of their meaning:

It isn't in the mirror, it isn't on the page

Fundamentally, human nature / identity cannot be understood through introspection (the mirror) or reflection (writing/reading) ...

It's a red hearted vibration Pushing through the walls of dark imagination Finding no equation

... it is something more primal, a base instinct incompatible (finding no equation) with higher consciousness or logical thought.

There's a Red Road rage But it's not road rage It's asylum seekers engulfed by a grudge

The Red Road flats were constructed in Glasgow in the 1960s. Initially a successful example of low-cost urban housing, the complex gradually deteriorated due to neglect, lack of amenities and limited resources. Rife with crime and violence, and latterly used to house international refugees, the flats were eventually demolished in 2015.

I think Morgan is using the flats as a way of contrasting the justifiable anger of citizens towards those in charge with the inexcusable and thoughtless anger exemplified by so-called road rage. Perhaps both forms of anger have the same underlying cause (a feeling of hopelessness or loss of control) but it is the way they manifest and are directed that is at odds.

We also encounter another dichotomy: the optimistic vision of the flats versus the eventual grim reality. The victims of this violence, left with no recourse, turn their anger back on themselves / their own community, and therefore it is the asylum seekers that bear the brunt of their animosity.

Scottish friction, Scottish fiction

This line encapsulates the theme of the poem: the surface versus what lies beneath.

It isn't in the castle, it isn't in the mist

The stereotypical image of Scotland as represented by majestic castles shrouded in mist is negated. This echoes the structure and sentiment of the first line of the poem (the mirror ... the page) and asks us again to consider the fundamental origins of our identity.

It's a calling of the waters As they break to show the new black death With reactors aglow

Mirroring the second stanza, the poet refers to something primal: the oceans from which life arose; Nature itself sounding an alarm. Reactors aglow seems to reference nuclear power plants, humankind's meddling with the basic particles of existence, but there is also a sense of menace in the phrasing, like the great glowing eyes of some abomination from the deep.

You think your security Can keep you in purity You will not shake us off, above or below

Morgan now turns the focus of the poem onto the reader, stating that one's privilege (be it of wealth, class, gender, etc.) does not make one exempt from responsibility. We all have blood on our hands; nobody is pure. There is a degree of threat in the final line: you will reap what you sow, be it in this life (above) or the next (below).

Scottish friction, Scottish fiction

This line is repeated; the dichotomy is maintained. We are simultaneously the creators of, and products of, our own identities.

#digital media design #moving image and sound #edwin morgan #music #poetry #poem #scotland #idlewild #identity #culture #sociology

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thebookofnehemiah · 2 months ago

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"The Dynasty." From the Book of Nehemiah, "the Exploration of the Mysteries of the Lions that Lay," 3: 18.

We continue to discuss the rebuilding of Jerusalem incrementally in districts and half districts.

Districts are 485, דחה, dha, "rejected" because it is too formal.

Half Districts are 520, הך , hach, "you, hurray!"

Herein lies the challenge with the creation of the Nsh. He must be more formal and also less than other human beings and still pull it off. We've explained how this is done, he must be artful in the making of his mistakes. For this he and we need what are called Levites, "free thinking people to whom we are joined."

For Districting to work we must have Levites. And guess what, we don't have any...so now we must discuss the role of the Nsh in their gathering as we cannot make repairs to our present conditions without them. This is called "Binnui" or "the building of the dynasty":

18 Next to him, the repairs were made by their fellow Levites under Binnui[f] son of Henadad, ruler of the other half-district of Keilah.

Binnui son of Henadad means "to build with grace."

"The verb בנה (bana) means to build, mostly of stone buildings and thus of houses and thus of families and dynasties: hence the association between this verb and the nouns אבן ('eben), stone, and בן (ben), son.

Noun בניה (binya) means a building in the sense of a structure. Noun מבנה (mibneh) means building in the sense of place of building. Noun תבנית (tabnit) means building in the sense of the act of building: a construction, pattern or image.

Noun תבן (teben) means straw (the stems of grains), which was inserted into clay to enhance the structural integrity of the building. We do the same today with carbon fibers.

The verb חנן (hanan) means to be gracious or to favor. Nouns חן (hen), חנינה (hanina), תחנה (tehinna) and תחנון (tahanun) mean favor or grace. Adverb חנם (hinnam) means freely or gratis, and adjective חנון (hannun) means gracious.

The unused verb הדד (hadad) probably meant to thunder or make a loud noise (it does so in cognate languages). Nouns הידד (hedad) and הד (hed) describe a shout or shouted cheer."

The verse further says "half in Keilah" or "through eating" and "a crown of laurel."

In ancient times, very few young men got to wear a crown of laurel.

"The laurel wreath is used as a symbol of the master's degree. The wreath is given to young masters at the university graduation ceremony. The word "laureate" in 'poet laureate' refers to the laurel wreath.

In Ancient Rome, it was worn on the head as a symbol of triumph. The symbol of the laurel wreath is from Greek mythology. The Romans adopted the symbol because they admired Greek culture. In Rome, they were symbols of military victory. Laurel also represented a "natural antipathy for anything of a fiery nature."

The conquering hero in the Book of Revelation also wore a laurel crown, a warning all moral victories are temporary:

6:2 And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

The message here is our Nsh might be young and cute and interesting to us now and the world will kneel at his feet but we need more than one Nsh and one moral victory over the forces of darkness and much more than our traditions which have lasted, we need a dynasty, as the text idicates; a cherished and proper way of life that is transmitted from father to son peer to peer, academy to student until God draws the curtain of time closed.

But first...the Nsh.

The Number is 6914, ו‎טיד‎, "and TID." "a weed."

One weed can spoil the whole field:

"The weed of choice would have been darnel, which looks a lot like wheat but when consumed causes a potentially fatal nausea. The Latin name of this plant is lolium temulentum, with lolium relating to the word latrine and temulentum meaning drunken.

Besides bankrupting the owner of the contaminated lot, this crime could also result in the death of innocent consumers, or even incapacitate an entire local population. This means that it could be used as an act of war, or a first assault of an ensuing battle. The act of sowing tares in someone else's field reminds of salting the battlefield, which is what Abimelech did to the town of Shechem (Judges 9:45). This in turn reminds the much earlier circumcision of the men of Shechem, which Levi and Simeon insisted on so that they could kill them all, while they were inconvenienced (Genesis 34:24-25)."

To repair the District of Jerusalem, the place and also the spirit of the people, we need to clear the field of weeds and sow the Nsh, the one upon whose head belongs the laurel who will seed the rest.

This crappy shit that is being caused by democracies has to be stopped. They are planting poisonous weeds all over the planet, pretending to act in the defense of man when they are verily only planning to be its enemies. America is a good example of this. We will continue to explore remedies to this as the repairs continue.

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