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

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
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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
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“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/
Tags:

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.

Why #Libraries are so important for all of us, middle and upper classes included, as part of our #PublicDomainInfrastructure.

Comment: especially numbers 5 and 6: reading fiction helps re-wire the brain to build both empathy and compassion…

Right from childhood, many of us have been taught about that reading is very important, and perhaps one of the best hobbies we could have. That said, you may often wonder- how exactly does reading help, and precisely how it helps change the brain. Well, here are some ways reading changes your brain. 7 Ways […]

via 7 Ways Reading Changes Your Brain — Everyday Gyaan

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

Review of a book worth buying: Separate and Unequal

Separate and Unequal: The Kerner Commission and the Unraveling of American Liberalism by Steven M. Gillon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

How sad that the contents and conclusions of this report are still relevant, and still ignored, today, 50 years after it was released in response to the riots in Newark and Detroit of the “long hot” summer of 1967. I found this book after seeing Dr. King’s response to the question, during the Memphis garbage workers’ strike, of what it would take to prevent or call off his Poor People’s March on Washington: the answer was to implement the recommendations in this report.

The report was commissioned to find out what caused the rioting, not how to prevent further riots. The clearest distinctions between those who actively participated in the rioting and their neighbors who did not, at least at the start of each riot, was the trigger of having witnessed or experienced police brutality. But what primed that trigger for action was the underlying anger, poverty, constant discrimination, and despair to which the Black community in particular was subjected over a very long period of time.

The report called for various measures to be taken which would have improved the lives not only of members of the Black community, but also everyone else in the nation. Measures like the elimination of sub-standard housing in inner-cities, building new schools, health centers, and community facilities, and introducing a guaranteed minimum income would help all citizens, not only those bereft of resources and hope when they were freed with only the clothing on their backs, unable to melt into White American society. From the disrespect by police, to the lack of garbage collection in inner-city neighborhoods, Black Americans were fed up with White America’s deliberate disregard for “the realities of life for many poor blacks” in the United States. This anger, combined with the criminalization of poverty (which was just beginning to kick off the era of Mass Incarceration), the lack of Black faces in [the media, police, highly paid professions and other areas of potential] power, led to a sense of hopelessness and fear that non-violent resistance would never break down a system which was inherently designed to break down the Black community. Ideas like the War on Drugs, brought back by Reagan after the Carter years, and Law and Order, parroted by both right and left, muddied the discourse around solving the problems that led to the riots, instead creating a cloud of convenient reasons to blame inner-city Black communities for their problems while ignoring the structural issues that had created and perpetuated the problems since the slavery era.

The conclusion drawn by the report, above all, was that the entire nation needed education and “a richer portrait of life in urban areas” and to hire many many more Black police officers.

I think that many of the issues of perspective mentioned in the book by the author in his analysis of the report and its time are now beginning to be looked at again, as the discussion around White Privilege becomes louder and more mainstream. That discussion is a necessary but insufficient part of the solution to our current problems, which go back to pre-existing problems pointed out by the report. Please read this book on the Commission report (and also see Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin), and then, write your reps!

Pages I found especially relevant included:

P. 6: 1966 result of creation of ghettos by the 1930s-50s urban renewal aka Negro Removal all across the USA
** P. 12: What a contrast: only 1/100 white people thought that blacks were poorly treated in the USA…
***Ribicoff P. 37: recos…
P. 100: “in the ghetto” last garbage collection (if at all), police disrespectful, school & housing dilapidated
P. 228 (and the answer to that boot-straps baloney:) discrimination and segregation prevented many blacks from following the same patterns which had been followed by immigrant groups, and limited blacks to all but the lowest … jobs

Let’s #EndPoverty & #EndMoneyBail 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 for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure
ShiraDest

March, 12019 HE

View all my reviews

Acre per, Adulthood, Languages: was Gatekeepers, Quipus and land for all

Given the crying need for global cooperation we see sorely lacking during this current pandemic, I am adding #languagelearn to my list of tags related to my proposal for a new rite of passage and set of prerequisites for Adulthood. To manage even an acre of one’s own land, and to manage the responsibilities and rights of citizenship as an Adult in our modern worldwide society, each person needs to be able to learn independently, and to teach some needed life skill to another person, in short: to #cooperate.

Winning glory on today’s battlefield: The Modern Mind

Aug. 30th, 2014 02:56 pm
WilliamJamesMEOWdate: (see link to his MEOW below…)

Renault’s excellent book The Persian Boy shows the difficulty of learning, and of teaching. Both would probably be easier if our society understood what it takes to teach a person a useful and necessary skill from start to finish. Hence my proposal for a modern universal
Adult 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 accomplishment all in one go. We then reward that accomplishment with full adult status, whatever the age of the pre-adult in question. This obviously assumes that the pre-adult 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. In other words (from Lenier in Bablylon 5): to be better than we are.

Community Cooperation Shira,
Gregorian Date: Saturday, August 30, 2014
MEOW Date : Wednesday, August 29, 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era, aka Human Era)
William James: The Moral Equivalent of War

(ShiraD.livejournal.com Subject was: “Generating more respect for teachers requires cultural change” … )

https://network23.org/communitycoop/2014/08/30/winning-glory-on-todays-battlefield-the-modern-mind/
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adultriteofpassage, b5, babylon5, continuous shared learning, cooperation, saraho

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Do gatekeepers enslave human potential?
Aug. 28th, 2014 03:28 pm
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In Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation 1838-1839 Frances Ann Kemble points to the reactions of slave owners and overseers in the capacity of gatekeepers, preventing the voices of slaves from being heard.

More generally and in the same vein, Voices of Dissent’s C. Heifetz and Sarah Ariste (magazine article from abt. 2006 now unfindable…), ask in “Voices Without Authority” whether our gatekeepers are preventing us from living up to our values as a society.

I further that question:
Are our gatekeepers, and particularly, those who choose the gatekeepers, preventing humanity from reaching its full potential? For, if we fail to live up to the values we profess as a society, such as freedom for all, or equality before the law, then are we not also limiting the potential contributions of some, and thus failing to achieve all that we could, as a whole?

I realize the need, in certain situations, for gatekeepers. However, when the gatekeepers act on the basis of priviledge or perception, rather than on the actual needs of the given situation, they can be counter-productive. They can artificially prevent access, resulting in uneven or misleading outcomes, or in simple outright injustice. This reduces our effectiveness as a society in providing each person the opportunity to contribute fully to the creativity and productivity of the human race, and that, is a shame for all of us.

Gregorian Date: Thursday, August 28, 2014
MEOW Date : Monday, August 27, 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era, aka Human Era)

https://network23.org/communitycoop/2014/08/28/do-gatekeepers-enslave-human-potential/
Tags:

economic democracy, gatekeepers

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Gatekeepers and Quipu (Khipu) Democracy; Los guardias y la Democracia del os quipus
Aug. 28th, 2014 03:25 pm
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In Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad, Tobin and Dobard point to what is essentially a Quipu made of fabric. The question is whether the gatekeepers of today will allow our modern quipus, ‘memoriathon’ quilts and oral histories to make a difference.

Quipu for Peru’s dead; Un Quipu por los muertos de Peru

A quipu made from stories collected and added as a knot for each story representing a victim in the ‘memoriathon’ to prevent the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from August 2003.

from PeacebyPeace magazine, p. 16-17 published by Fr

As an aside, which was posted back in 2007 on LiveJournal, I wonder (given that we know trade routes existed before the Spanish Conquest) if the art of making or interpreting the quipu was known up in north america, outside of the Incan

empire?
—
No pude encontrar traduccion de este articulo, pero se describe mas sobre el Khipu aqui:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu

Me pregunto si se puede saber (ya que sabemos que habia rutas de intercambio entre el sur y el norte de America antes del conquista de los espanyoles) si el arte del quipu fue conocido al norte del emperio Inca?

Paz
“Cancion para Pablo Neruda” – Atahualpa Yupanqi.

Shira Destinie Jones Landrac

Gregorian Date: Thursday, August 28, 2014
MEOW Date : Monday, August 27, 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era, aka Human Era
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quipu

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Harry Quebert: friend, liar, or both?
Aug. 27th, 2014 03:32 pm
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Love and friendship are entwined with community.

In Joel Dicker’s book , Harry makes one think about all three:

Common committment to the idea of community: open communication, positive action, pro-active,consensus-oriented. That is the type of community I have hoped to help build.

I used to believe that, despite my own personal feelings about a given person, the fact that that person is a member of my community entitles that person to something from me: my acceptance, my patience, my invitation to a community event; some acknowlegement that we are in the same boat, and that like him or not, as long as he accepts my personal boundaries, I cannot exclude him simply on the basis of arbitrary personal dislike or taste.

Now, I no longer know.

In Service to Community,
Shira

Gregorian Date: Wednesday, August 27, 2014
MEOW Date : Sunday, August 26, 12014 H.E. (Holocene Era, aka Human Era)

https://network23.org/communitycoop/2014/08/27/harry-quebert-friend-liar-or-both/

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

My life mission… to be edited…

the aim: Fully Inclusive Equality.

The Goals (allowing each person to contribute fully):

1. Each person, as a child, must learn to swim (or at least float).
2. Each child must learn emotional/psychological self-defense and physical self-defense to the greatest extent possible, in a Gandhian context.
(1 and 2 are part of the pre-Adulthood criteria: http://meowdate.dreamwidth.org/6177.html …)

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)

https://network23.org/communitycoop/2014/09/09/the-meow-vision-a-bit-like-herland-but-more-equal/

Resisting Unjust Laws Then and Now, Stayed on the Call of Freedom and Cooperation

(Image: ValuableGangOfYoungNegroes1840.jpeg from wikimedia commons…)

Many laws in our history have been resisted as unjust, from the Enclosure of the Commons, to the Cherokee Removal which was litigated successfully by the Cherokee nation, to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, to the recent Muslim ban.

In the 17th century, from whence this popular folk song comes, litigation was not an option for most people, so they resisted in rhyme:

They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
Yet let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose

And then as now, community cooperation on a very wide scale was key to winning the freedoms promised in our foundational documents like the Magna Carta, the Constitution, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  So we continue to walk, rhyme, and support court and non-violent community-based actions to cooperate in making this a safer and kinder world for all of us, and to non-cooperate with injustice.

Read, Write, Dream, Walk !
ShiraDest

October 22nd, 12017 HE

How the Arts/Media and Public Policy influence one another, and how Time Banks can help!

When I lived in Izmir, a Turkish TV spot shocked me: it showed an image of an elderly Black man, evidently homeless, sleeping in a stairwell directly beneath a sign that pointed up the stairs and read “White House” followed by the caption “Yorum Yok” or “No Comment.” This was about the same time that a major Turkish newspaper criticized the Erdoğan government over the death by hypothermia of an elderly homeless man up in Istanbul, sparking outrage among my Turkish coworkers. These two media pieces, taken together, led me to wonder about the links between the media and public policy.

When I was a kid, PBS School House Rock spots taught me things like the Preamble to the US Constitution, and how bills become law.  These and other PBS shows like Sesame Street demonstrated the concept of cooperation and taught a generation of kids ideas of fairness, social justice, and may have helped pave the way for later laws passed once we became adults on issues ranging from birth control and same-sex marriage to the Affordable Care Act.

In like manner, shows like El Ministerio del Tiempo, in Spain, provide social commentary and critique, while framing various often opposing views on social justice, cooperation, and the policy elements that can encourage those values. Similarly, the Turkish family show Sihirli Annem also showed a generation of kids in Turkey respect for women, social justice and cooperation. That generation is now part of the push-back against radicalism in Turkey today.

All of these shows are examples of how the Arts and Media can influence Public Policy, and vice-versa. Time Banks, when encouraged by local government and community-based organizations, can help in facilitating access to the arts through Open Access Cable, local arts organizations, and extending Time Bank credit to local artists through mural projects and other local culture projects, for the benefit of both local and extended communities.

Join or start one in your community now!

Read, Write, Dream, Walk !
ShiraDest

October 18th, 12017 HE