Weeks, Languages, Loans, Aladdin, and Elisha?

As we come up to the holiday of שָׁבוּעוֹת Shavuot, for the seven weeks, or 50 days counted down between Passover and Shavuot, we naturally think of the pleasures of staying up all night long to study languages, er, em, that is, to study Torah, in our Biblical languages of Hebrew and sometimes also Aramaic, with the occasional reference to another Semitic language like old Arabic, or Ugaritic, etc, for difficult words.

Great, so where do the loans come in, and what could the thief Aladdin and the prophet Elisha possibly have in common, apart from having spoken sister languages, you say.

Thank you! I am so glad you asked. It turns out that Aladdin and Elisha had quite a bit in common, being literary figures, young men of action, and you could even say financiers: they both gave Free Financial Assistance in their communities!

We know who and how Aladdin helped in stealing to survive, and in solidarity with other poor souls living in the streets. We also know how the prophet Elisha helped the widow by multiplying her oil and telling her to sell it, saving her and her sons from enslavement by their creditors. But how much better could it have been for both Aladdin, Elisha, and their communities , if crushing long-term debt didn’t exist in the first place? Isn’t that why we were commanded to release debts (and slaves) every seven years, and return property to original owners every 50 years?

This is where the Pro-bono legal aid, free debt and financial consumer education piece of our #PublicDomainInfrastructure is crucial. Knowing your rights and obligations is the first step toward taking responsibility for your own house, and then toward contributing to your community. Our financial and economic infrastructure must help create ways to rectify the structural biases inherent in our system, and encourage both individuals and communities to do the same. One tool for accomplishing this is debt-forgiveness, in circumstances of structural or personal inequity. Another tool is locally created currencies, such as Ithaca Hours or Time Banks. These are most effective when encouraged by local government as a supplement, or a means of complementing the existing federal currency. While local or community issued currencies are useful, they can be more useful in a society that has more fully included all of the population in the economic life of the community. For this reason, local currencies are more fully discussed in conjunction with Phase III of the #fourfreedomsmovement. These tools provide some short and long term solutions to problems that inhibit our democracy from building to full potential. Such solutions can further our ability to encourage every human being to live, contribute, and create to the fullest potential possible.

Let’s #EndPoverty , #EndHomelessness, & #EndMoneyBail starting by improving these four parts of our good #PublicDomainInfrastructure:

1. #libraries,

2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,

3. #UniversalHealthCare, and

4. good #publictransport

Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19 ShiraDest

May, 12020 HE

Language learning, local education, and lots of ideas

Spanish has always been my favorite language, especially after moving to the bilingual South West. Technically, I was hired for my experience in Unix which led to my MAT in mathematics, but on the ground, my love of learning languages proved to be more important in the classroom. As an adult education instructor at the Continuing Education division of the San Diego Community College District, my fluency proved helpful for many of my students, and also, of course, the ESL classes help our students from many nations contribute in the USA.

Every local educational institution has room for improvement, particularly when seen from both faculty and student perspectives. I posed some questions recently about ideas for implementing low-cost projects that would have been helpful to our students when I taught in North campus involving

1.) a small library or study area,
2.) workshops by CA Promise Program graduates, 
3.) an on-site nurse paid for by medi-Cal, and
4.) access to public transportation:

1.) Many of my students told me they didn’t have a quiet place to study.  While I know that space is in very short supply on the North campus, I wonder if a small area, possibly in the multipurpose room when it’s not being used, could be set aside with cubicles or movable small desks and a small movable lending library like the tiny libraries?

  2.)   I wonder, on the assumption of course that having graduated and started a new career as a professional with a bachelor’s degree anyone can be found who will have time, if any students having graduated with a bachelor’s degree after getting their first two years of community college paid for through the California promise program or with the San Diego promise program, could be persuaded to come back either as tutors, mentors, or even just to give workshops in the areas in which they got their educations?  Particularly accounting majors or paralegal/pre-law majors who could give small workshops on dealing with debt in California including, California statutes of limitations, or financial planning workshops or how to do your own taxes if you only need to do the 1040EZ, etc?  One-on-one tutoring, and also mentoring,  that supportive help, especially for our high school equivalency students, could be both useful and inspiring.  Seeing successfully graduated professionals with a bachelor’s degree who came through the community college system and are willing to spend individual time with them, even if only a couple of hours a week, could make a difference.  Could interns or SCORE volunteers put a program like this together?  Do we track or stay in touch with students who finish the California or San Diego promise program once they finish their bachelor’s degrees?

3.) Many of my students worked two jobs or for other reasons never had time to see a doctor even when they were ill. I wonder if it is possible to pay, through the Medi-Cal system, for a nurse to be on-site, perhaps based out of the office  of each campus, a couple of days/evenings a week?

4.)  One of the biggest problem areas that I saw for my car-free students was that neither the Continuing Education division, nor the CE faculty Union was able to get the transit authority to enforce acceptance of CE student IDs for the monthly bus and rail pass discount.  In planning for post-#Covid-19 classes, will we have any resources to address public transportation discount and access issues?

I imagine that some of these ideas may be a little overwhelming, because I understand that time and resources are extremely limited, but once in a while, as Dr. Rivera-Lacey noted: we do have to dream.

Please share your ideas for improving local education, or for supporting any other parts of our critical Public Domain Social Infrastructure!

Let’s #EndPoverty , #EndHomelessness, & #EndMoneyBail starting by improving these four parts of our good #PublicDomainInfrastructure 4:
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19
ShiraDest

May, 12020 HE

Beat the odds by learning a language? These ancient Literate Ladies did…

Ask Tamar, Ruth, and Scheherazade.
רֶגַע… Rega… Wait, you say:
Scheherazade is not in the Bible, she is from the Thousand and One Nights, originally in Arabic, or maybe partly in Persian, but certainly not in Hebrew;
This, you remember!

Ok, point taken, her book was not in Hebrew, but Arabic is a sister language.   More on this shortly…

Tamar was a Canaanite woman, and so had to learn Hebrew, or Judah’s dialect of Hebrew at the very least.
Ruth, a native of Moab, had to learn the Hebrew of the time of Naomi.
Scheherazade, at the palace, had to learn the hardest languages of all: the languages of heartbreak, of story, and of love.

So, you see, Scheherazade’s story is the same as that of her Biblical sisters: she was a clever woman faced with a survival situation in a man’s world. And she, like her sisters, had to learn a language in order to survive.

Each lady had to live by her wits in difficult times, and to use the tools available to her at that time. Nowadays, they would surely go together to the Public Library to learn to use the power of modern tools like computers and smartphones, especially using Unix to navigate this new world. And as they succeeded then, so would succeed again, using adaptability, daring, and hope.

Hope for us all.

Let’s #EndPoverty , #EndHomelessness ,& #EndMoneyBail starting by improving these four parts of our good #PublicDomainInfrastructure:
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare , and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19
ShiraDest

April, 12020 HE

image: By Wikimedia – Wikimedia commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55282489

Learning languages to read EMdT fanfic, or to get a better job (with health care): both are long-term good things, verdad?

Link and artwork used here by permission.

The image above of Alonso de Entrerríos, 16th century Spanish soldier and 21st century secret agent, is from a wonderful piece of fan fiction, written in Spanish, which is based on the series El Ministerio del Tiempo.   Learning a language gives one access not only to the joy of seeing historical settings come to life in the hands of skilled writers like the author of this serial work of fan fiction, Omar R. La Rosa, who continues to inspire “Ministericos” as dedicated followers of the series are called, but also gives one another advantage.

If you take the time,”about a year,” to learn a language that may or may not come in handy later, like Cmdr Ivanova, you too could end up commanding an elite force of future paladins dedicated to protecting the vulnerable and saving the galaxy!!  Maybe also saving the entire planet earth from COVID-19 by explaining to them in their own languages that smoking makes it worse, and why everyone needs #UniversalHealthCare! 🙂

“¡Por Santiago y por España!”
“We live for the One, we die for the One”

Let’s #EndPoverty , #EndHomelessness, & #EndMoneyBail starting by improving these four parts of our good #PublicDomainInfrastructure:
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare , and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure
ShiraDest

April, 12020 HE

Hermione Granger y Amelia Folch, que harîan ellas con el COVID-19

…sin duda, ir a la biblioteca!!
…clearly, they would go to the library!!

 

Where else can you learn how to help your fellow citizens combat the spread of this global pandemic, and also be a part of supporting a public institution stretching back to the earliest days of our Republic, and before?  Not only do public libraries feed our need for public knowledge, but they also feed our need for communal spaces where all can gather freely in community.   From disseminating key public health information to serving as polling places, census and social worker placements and entertainment/story telling locales, the public library is a crucial social institution that supports many facets of our democratic life.  From details on local and state level consumer rights information, from where to find current statutes of limitations to where we got the Statue of Liberty,  libraries serve many needs, and need more support.

Today, more than ever before, libraries need multiple language speakers, and we all need to learn multiple languages, to see how libraries in other places and how health care in other places work.

Aprendemos leyendo…

We learn by reading…

 

Let’s #EndPoverty , #EndHomelessness ,& #EndMoneyBail starting by improving these four parts of our #PublicDomainInfrastructure 4: (
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare , and
4. good #publictransport )
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure, ‪#‎stopsmoking and #languagelearn,
ShiraDest

March, 12020 HE

COVID-19: What would Astérix do? (Learn a language to find out!)

Que ferait-il #Astérix le Galois dans ce periode de cris ? What would Asterix the Gaul do during this time of crisis?

Undoubtedly, he would call upon the esteemed local Druid, Panoramix, to teach
the villagers what to do. And certainly, Panoramix would say:

“Il faut absolument pas fumer, parce que ça agrave beaucoup les maladies respiratoires !”
“‪Absolutely #‎stopsmoking‬, because smoke makes respiratory illnesses much worse!”

Then, the renowned Druid would undoubtedly mix up a batch of his famous Potion Magique as a universal cure for the entire village, to assure the health of all. Of course, the villagers have the forest to hunt sangliers and grow their local organic food, so they don’t need a Universal Basic Income to continue to stay healthy, but we do.

Don’t believe me? Just watch Astérix et Obélix : Mission Cléopâtre -it is worth learning #Français (#French) to watch!

Let’s #EndPoverty , #EndHomelessness ,& #EndMoneyBail starting by improving these four parts of our #PublicDomainInfrastructure 4: (
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare , and
4. good #publictransport )
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure and #languagelearn,
ShiraDest

March, 12020 HE

The Goal: protecting children, protecting us All

Adulthood Challenge Vision

The Adulthood Challenge Vision: A program of Equality and Health for All

The Goals (allowing each person to contribute fully):

1. Each person, as a child, must learn to swim
2. Each child must learn self-defense (emotional and physical)
3. Each child, at birth, receives half a hectare of land, non-

alienable. He or she may rent, lend or swap the land, but

always remains the owner. Where ever the location, it should

have a well and be arable.
4. Fresh water for ever person (free!)
5. Each family should have a book in the local public library,

containing the autobiography of every person in the family

(which means that each person needs free time and the means

to write his or her autobiography).

—-
Un programa de Igualdad y Salud para Todos

Las Metas (para que todos pueden contribuir lo mejor):

1. Cada quien, de niño, debe aprender nadar
2. Que cada quien de niño aprende defenderse
3. Que cada bebe, al nacer, recibe .5 hectarios de terreno, que

nunca se puede desprender. Se lo puede alquilar o prestar,

pero siempre sigue esta persona como dueño o dueña del

terreno. Que sea donde sea, será con un poso de agua y

capaz de agricolar.
4. Agua potable para cada persona
5. Que cada familia tenga un libro en la biblioteca publica,

con resumen del autobiografía de cada persona de la familia

(eso quiere decir que cada quien tenga el tiempo libre y los

recursos para escribir su autobiografia)

MEOW Date: 9 September 12014 H.E. (Holocene/Human Era)
see: THe MEOW CC Blog: https://network23.org/communitycoop/

And: Everyone should write:

CFoFNovellaBk1

#languagelearn

Read, Write, Run, Teach !

ShiraDest
18 jan, 12016 èH
12016 HE

The MEOW Vision: A bit like Herland, but more equal
Posted on 09/09/2014 by ShiraHoloceneEraDest

The ground-breaking novella Herland was a good start, but lacked a vision of fully inclusive equality. The MEOW Vision builds on Gilman’s ideas, with the aim of Fully Inclusive Equality.

The Goals (allowing each person to contribute fully):

1. Each person, as a child, must learn to swim
2. Each child must learn self-defense (emotional and physical)
3. Each child, at birth, receives half a hectare of land, non-alienable. He or she may rent, lend or swap the land, but always remains the owner. Where ever the location, it should have a well and be arable.
4. Fresh water for ever person (free!)
5. Each family should have a book in the local public library, containing the autobiography of every adult in the family (which means that each person needs free time and the means to write his or her autobiography).

(the same Goals in Spanish:)
—-
Un programa de Igualdad y Salud para Todos

Las Metas (para que todos pueden contribuir lo mejor):

1. Cada quien, de niño, debe aprender nadar
2. Que cada quien de niño aprende defenderse
3. Que cada bebe, al nacer, recibe .5 hectarios de terreno, que nunca se puede desprender. Se lo puede alquilar o prestar, pero siempre sigue esta persona como dueño o dueña del terreno. Que sea donde sea, será con un poso de agua y capaz de agricolar.
4. Agua potable para cada persona
5. Que cada familia tenga un libro en la biblioteca publica, con resumen del autobiografía de cada persona de la familia (eso quiere decir que cada quien tenga el tiempo libre y los recursos para escribir su autobiografia)

Peace,

Gregorian Date: Tuesday, 9 September 2014
MEOW Date : Saturday, 9 September, 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era, aka Human Era)
About ShiraHoloceneEraDest
Shira Destinie Jones is a published poet and academic author, former Washington DC Tour Guide, founder of SHIR Tours Community Cooperation Tours, and freelance writer and educator. She has organized community events such as film discussions, multi-ethnic song events, and cooperative presentations. She now lives in France, and continues to work for community cooperation and health for all. She is on LinkedIn and on Academia.edu LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/univhealthcareshirad and Academia.Edu: http://bath.academia.edu/ShiraDest
View all posts by ShiraHoloceneEraDest →
This entry was posted in Continuous Shared Learning, Economic Democracy, General and tagged AdultRiteOfPassage, Cooperation, LaCooperación, MEOWvision, multiplelearningstyles. Bookmark the permalink.
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1 Response to The MEOW Vision: A bit like Herland, but more equal

A Survivor says:
11/09/2014 at 20:48

Perhaps these precautions would prevent child sexual abuse?
A Survivor
post Title: fight to help humanity, even if we may not win

Pre-Adulthood, Adults, and Rites of Passage…
Apr. 17th, 2014 03:54 pm
meowdate: (Default)
français

Dear Friends, here is another idea for your perusal.
A New Rite of Passage

We need a new rite of passage in which every teenager must voluntarily teach someone, from start to finish, a usable and important skill. It must be a skill which the person has to use in the real world, such as moving from the alphabet to reading chapter books, or from counting numbers up to multiplication tables, or from writing a sentence to writing an essay, or from no English to conversational or passable workplace English in the United States.

This needs to be a project which requires a serious investment of time (preferably meeting for two or three hours each weekday) for about one year. That way the young person can look back with pride on a serious accomplishment and justifiably claim his or her status as an adult. Along the way, several problems in our modern society can be solved at the same time :

-The increasing lack of self-discipline, civility and respect for learning among the young.

-The shortage of teachers combined with the budgetary shortfalls in most states would be somewhat mitigated by adding the numbers of teenage students needing to finish their “Adulthood Project” to the number of classroom aides and volunteers.

-The need for challenges and self-testing during the adolescent stage of life which is left unfulfilled by modern society´s unsatisfyingly arbirary definition of adulthood.

I would propose that implementing such an idea should begin with involving the local community by having the adolescent (or if still in his/her 20´s, the “pre-adult”) bring a person to meet with the community to show the starting point of the teaching process. After the learning objective has been attained, the pre-adult and the learner would return to meet again with the community to assess the effectiveness of teaching and to award the pre-adult his or her status as an Adult, with the full rights and responsibilities expected of an adult, including such cultural norms as civility, courtesy, and even graciousness.

In this way we may move from a society where rudeness is the norm to one in which graciousness is valued. For example, a friend tells of an incident where a lady´s dog snarled at her, and the lady apologized, which was the civil thing to do, and then even offered to call a cab for her, which was the gracious thing to do. A society in which graciousness is valued will be both a more compassionate society and a more creative one. I leave these thoughts for contemplation, debate, and action.

Love, Peace, and … Community Cooperation !!!
Shira Destinie
Gregorian dt.: Thursday, Apr 17, 2014
Meow Date : Monday, April 16, 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era)

https://network23.org/communitycoop/2014/04/17/pre-adulthood-adults-and-rites-of-passage/
Tags:

adultriteofpassage, continuous shared learning, meowdate, meowvision

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More Inclusive Calendars and Eras
Apr. 13th, 2014 03:55 pm
meowdate: (Default)
Posted on Meow Date Thursday, 12 April of the year 12,014 H.E.

At its inception, the United Nations proposed a more logical, easy to memorize and universal calendar which all the world could use. It was to be called The World Calendar. They did not then suggest it, but others did suggest moving the Epoch, or start date (year Zero), to a more inclusive time period.

The MEOW Community Cooperation Blog’s ‘MEOW Date‘ uses a dating system which combines The World Calendar and The Holocene Calendar:

The World Calendar Association

On the Hololcene Era:
A very complete page via The WayBack Machine on HE
and MMeade on HE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_calendar
Gregorian (and other) calendar to The World Calendar converters:

Well-explained with the daily date in JavaScript

Many Calendars Converted for any day you give…
Perl converter

https://network23.org/communitycoop/2014/04/13/more-inclusive-calendars-and-eras/
Tags:

continuous shared learning, holoceneera, humanera, meowdate, theworldcalendar

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New book on Community Cooperation to Share
Mar. 24th, 2014 03:57 pm
meowdate: (Default)
“At the turn of the century, both communities developed similar ways of evading White discrimination. Both communities built their own institutions, … ” which “… deepens the connection between them. Cooperation in other areas built ties that would eventually lead to the well-known actions of the later Civil Rights era in the 1960´s.”

–Excerpt : (p. 17, 18) of “Stayed on Freedom’s Call: Cooperation Between Jewish And African-American Communities In Washington, DC” is a contribution to the shared history of Black and Jewish Washington, DC that should be shared among all communities, in every city. This story of cooperation is the story of humanity, which shows that Dr. King’s Dream, Gandhi’s ideals, and our potential, indeed can overcome.

Check the book out -read it online for free at The Open Library:

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25439796M/Stayed_on_Freedom%27s_Call

Posted on Meow Date 22 March, 12014 H.E.

https://network23.org/communitycoop/2014/03/24/new-book-on-community-cooperation-to-share/
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continuous shared learning, cooperation, gandhi, gruniversalcalendarcommunitycoop, martinlutherking, stayedonfreedomscall, the open library project of internet arc, walkingtours

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La Coopération pour la guerre à la guerre avec Le Corps Civil de Protection de l’Environnement
Mar. 17th, 2014 03:59 pm
meowdate: (Default)
Pourquoi nous avons besoin, aux États-Unis, de reconstituer le Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC, Corps Civil de Protection de l’Environnement) ?

Parce que nous avons besoin de défis. Bien-sûr, notre société a beaucoup de défis. La guerre semble être le plus grand pourvoyeur de défis. Mais la guerre est évitable si nous choisissons trouver les moyens de coopérer les uns avec les autres.
William James a dit, dans son essai de 1910 L’équivalent Moral de la Guerre que : « La guerre à la guerre ne sera pas une partie de plaisir. »

Il avait raison bien-sûr. Albert Einstein était d’accord. Son « Plan de deux pour-cents » admet que ce n’est pas facile à convaincre ne serait-ce que deux pour-cents de militaires à jeter les armes. Mais un ersatz pour ce besoin de défis pour notre société pourrait venir d’ailleurs, comme nous l’avons vu au cours de la Grande Dépression : que des gens ordinaires travaillant ensemble aient une discipline militaire.

« Nous devons créer de nouvelles énergies pour canaliser la virilité à laquelle l’esprit militaire s’accroche si fidèlement. Les vertus martiales doivent être le ciment durable, l’intrépidité, la faculté de vivre de manière spartiate, l’abandon de l’intérêt privé, l’obéissance à … »

Une nouvelle conscription pour le CCC permettrait de d’offrir un tel débouché. Le défi, la discipline, la coopération et l’infrastructure pour résoudre les problèmes profonds et de division qui conduisent à la guerre.

Learn and teach Languages, survival, and cooperation, was: Generating more respect for teachers requires cultural change

(now including explicit need for #languagelearn ing, as we see world-wide disparities in handling of COVID-19…)

People certainly should respect the difficult work that teachers do. This would probably be made easier if our children and adults understood what it takes to teach a person a useful and neccesary skill, from start to finish. Hence my proposal for a modern universal Rite of Passage. What we need our children to prove, upon recognition of adulthood, is not their prowess in battle or the hunt, not their virility, not their adeptness at social maneuvering, but their ability to contribute meaningfully to society by teaching another member of the community, from level 0, how to do something that is both difficult and absolutely neccessary in our society today. By requiring our children to teach some other person, child or adult, a needed life skill, over the course of about a year, this pre-adult shows persistence, perseverence, discernment, and of course, the key skill in question. A useful side effect of this is also that it would effectively increase (dramatically) the number of available tutors, and also lead to every adult in our society coming away with an understanding of the challenges involved in teaching anyone anything non-trivial. Thus we provide an esteem building excercise and respect building accomplishmen all in one go, which we then reward with full adult status, whatever the age of the adolescent in question. This obviously assumes that the kid has had opportunity to prove his or her good judgement in other ways as well, prior to seeking said recognition. This might help as one step of a series of steps implemented by and through local communities which could lead to more long-term thinking in society at large, given a critical mass and good faith in the ability of human kind to rise above our instincts, and learn to cooperate.
Peace, Read, Write, Dream, Teach !
ShiraDest
23 February, 12016 HE

updated during self-isolation:
Let’s #EndPoverty , #EndHomelessness ,& #EndMoneyBail starting by improving these four parts of our #PublicDomainInfrastructure 4: (
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare , and
4. good #publictransport )
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure
ShiraDest

March, 12020 HE

Smoking: a public health Menace and a private Inferno

In an earlier blog article related to this global pandemic, the #coronavirus, also known as covid-19, I pointed out that allowing accurate news coverage of public health information is vital for public safety. This point is illustrated by season 2, episode 13 of Spanish Public Television series El Ministerio del Tiempo. But what is not mentioned in the episode is the danger posed by smokers to those who are either ill or recovering from a virus, particularly one like the current malady, which attacks the lungs, much like SARS. For anyone who has allergies, asthma, any sort of lung-based or respiratory illness, or even merely a common cold, cigar or cigarette smoke, or even marijuana for those who are also sensitive to it, creates further breathing difficulty, hampering recovery. Thus, a public health problem is aggravated by smoking anywhere within at least a 20 ft. But that does not take into account the other side of smoking: the personal side.

For many individuals, suffering from anything from emphysema to asthma, the hazards of smoking, both first and second-hand, are clear. But there is another side, which is not as often seen. For survivors of long term very early childhood abuse, cigarette or marijuana smoke can often trigger unwanted memories, flight/flight/freeze reactions, or even panic attacks. And to confuse the matter further, the very survivors may not even realize the source or the connection between smoke and their anxiety or panic reactions.

One survivor of very early and long-lasting childhood abuse explained it this way, when asked why the mere smell of cigarette smoke could make anyone panic:

“As long as I can remember, I have always flinched, or had the urge to run and hide (which we now call the fight, flight, or panic response), at the slightest smells of cigarette or marijuana smoke. As I sat in a place where there was strictly prohibited smoking, having been reassuring by a manager on the property that someone would find the source of the cigarette smoke right way, I relaxed for a moment and closed my eyes.

I suddenly found myself a 4-year old back in a place I never want to live again in a dark room sitting on the floor, hoping that the person with the cigarette would keep walking past the door. As the door opens can I come back to a memory of being asked for forgiveness many years later. Reasons for never given, but in my gut, I knew immediately.

What my gut knew, when I was in my late 20s, took me until I was 51 years old to come up to my conscious mind. It happened at 3 in the morning on a day when I finally feel reassured by someone that I would be protected. Not from the cigarette smoke, but from the person carrying the cigarette.”

So, please, for the good of those suffering with the novel Coronavirus, and also for the good of those suffering with buried memories triggered by smoke, please help all of us to be healthy, and stop smoking.

Let’s #EndPoverty , #EndHomelessness ,& #EndMoneyBail starting by improving these four parts of our good #PublicDomainInfrastructure 4: (
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare , and
4. good #publictransport )
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure
ShiraDest

March, 12020 HE

Black Women Writers at Work: Review of an older but very persistently worthwhile book

I am so glad I happened to see this book Black Women Writers at Work by Claudia Tate
at the public library.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was moved with both recognition, and with fear, at Audre Lorde’s comment that “it’s scary because we’ve been through that before. It was called the fifties.” Then I was moved with that stirring to act, upon reading in print what I have known and been told in different words since Dunbar (High School): “My responsibility is to speak the truth… with as much precision and beauty as possible. … We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.”
And we must not remain silent while the blood of our sisters/brothers/neighbors/communities/fellow human beings is shed.

Sherley Anne Williams reiterates this responsibility of a writer to write as well as one can and to “say as much of the truth as I can see at any given time.”

Although this book is dated, and does not include my favorite author (Octavia Butler), I am so glad that I read this book in spite of my initial misgivings. From Bambara’s hope that “We care too much … to negotiate a bogus peace,” to DeVeaux’s “responsibility to see,” I find my own compulsion to write validated by the responsibility of a writer to render individual expression into a universal expression, and to give voice to the voiceless/unseen/erased. To show the unspoken and to “empathize with the general human condition.”

Society needs all perspectives because without those perspectives, we are missing vast parts of what our society actually looks like, which leads to deep problems. Writing, as was pointed out, must transcend individual experience, but it also comes from and is filtered through individual experience, so we desperately, as leaders from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr to Octavia Butler have pointed out, need every point of view.

Last note (not in my GR review): I think that this book has helped me to see that my intended audience has two possibly conflicting sections –
I. those who have endured traumas in early childhood or also in adulthood, particularly due to structural racism, and
II: those who can change that situation.

View all my reviews

Let’s #EndPoverty , #EndHomelessness ,& #EndMoneyBail starting by improving these four parts of our good #PublicDomainInfrastructure 4: (
1. #libraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare , and
4. good #publictransport )
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure
ShiraDest

April, 12019 HE