Greek Study Notes, Page 19 Getting There On Mass Transit, Omer Day 26

     Now, we’re finally getting somewhere.  It takes a bit of perseverance, when learning a language, to get to a point where it begins to pay off.   This page finally gets to the last of the verbal groups, and to the future tense in modern Greek!  At last.  Now, the world is your Greek oyster, fellow language learners.  I’m kind of surprised that the book waited so long to introduce the various propositions that go along with the accusative (objects) case, even if I can see how many learners might find the number of prepositions in modern Greek to be a little challenging, they all make perfect sense in the context of a sentence.  It does become a lot to remember, but that is where story comes in.  And it is the preposition that gets us there!  🙂

  Pretty cool, huh?  I think so, at least.

This Greek language learning post, which started out because I wanted to learn Ancient Greek in order to read the Septuagint, but then switched to learning modern Greek due to my involvement with the Greek community, dove-tails nicely with today, the 26th Day of the Omer, which focuses in on the ideas of how language learning inspires hope for the world, and also for the person learning a new language, and as learning a language collides with public transportation!  🙂  Craig/Channon, ZL’B (may his memory continue to be a blessing) of The Hav (aka Chavurat Shalom, or Havurat Shalom, in Somerville, MA, aka the little yellow house on college avenue”) forced me, twenty years ago, now, almost, in 2005, to expand my learning of Turkish as I lived in Izmir, by challenging me to translate his (clean!) travel limerick into Turkish!  Since we were on a city bus at the time, I asked a neighbor for help, as one does in Turkey, and within a few minutes, nearly everyone on the entire bus was helping us translate this set of verses from English into Turkish!

Hope, of course, is generated for our entire world as people learn new languages and reach out to talk with and understand one another, connecting with each other, and with the rest of the world simultaneously.  This is easily done by using public transportation and either getting lost, telling stories, or asking for help translating bad poetry!  Thanks again, Channon!  He also reported back to other Havniks about his stay in Izmir (both times), calling  us ‘The Hav, East!’ in his messages! Thus, day 26 of the Omer, 5784,

 this year, is dedicated to his memory.  Language learning does promote hope, and so does efficient, clean, accessible public transportation.

Shavuah Tov,

Shira

*****************

Click on the ShiraDest menu above for:

Learning through story:

                                                   Babylon5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem,  Lupin,  La Casa de Papel/Money Heist, or El Ministerio del Tiempo Reviews,

or

Learning via Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or

 Learning from Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing (including Ann & Anna…)

     Thoughtful Readers, please consider sharing with the #ProjectDoBetter  about how you most enjoy learning languages, or other subjects, and how that learning helps you to become more compassionate, and maybe even more empathetic, over time.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

aka Shira, or:

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Book Review: Smith’s Washington At Home, and Adulting Education

Today, adulting education, part of Project Do Better, comes as a short post on financial self-defense in DC history, which is one of the pre-requisite bits of knowledge to be proven before one can show that one is a true Serving Adult, in the proposed Service Adulthood Challenge. This part of the three parts of self-defense (physical, financial and emotional self-defense), involves knowing your rights and responsibilities in your state or region, as well as in your nation of residence (and origin, if that nation, as often happens, has a claim on you, still). It also involves understanding our shared histories. This book, happily, has a good bit of DC history, even Black history, and a bit of Jewish DC as well.

—

Before I delve into DC history, please remember to “Adult” for yourself, and find out what your legal financial rights are, for instance regarding statutes of limitations on debt, which is is your responsibility to know and defend…

     Here is why I am using an old photo taken of me with a fellow anti-war peaceful protester at the weekly silent Stop The War vigil    in Bath, England, back in 2007 (yes, the same year that I stood in that gap to stop a beating…):  it reminds me of where I personally have been, just as the research I did on DC history reminded me where my family and those around them, from DC and the MD, VA, but mostly DC area, since well before the Civil War, in varying states of free-ness, but all either MU (mulatto) or Black, and thus subject to the Black Codes in whichever of the three states they live in or passed through.  So they really had to be Adults, and know the laws of every area they were in or from.  Part of that “adulting,” as some people like to call it these days, included protecting themselves and their family members whenever possible by owning property  (Note: updated in 2023…).  So, here is the review.

     I found my old notes, from 2010, in my research notebook, and realized that I had never written them up after creating the tours for SHIRtour, my DC community cooperation walking tour company.  What strikes me most immediately about these notes is page 200, where Smith notes that the 1874 DC disenfranchisement “was definitely influenced by ” the fact that more than a quarter of the District’s population was Black, suggesting further reading in Brown, 1978, The Negro In Washington.  In my review of the Guide to Black Washington/ (reviewed back on Feb3rd…), we saw mention of John F. Cook, Sr., and Smith mentions him here, also, as setting up the 15th St. Presb. Church, the first Colored Preb. church (in DC, I presume).  The famous paper of the DC Negro Press, The Washington Bee, is mentioned alongside The People’s  Advocate, and on to Black Broadway on U St, NW, from the 1920s -1950s, and the Howard Theater in DC, which opened at the same time as many other places, in 1910, but Ben’s Chili Bowl doesn’t open until 1958!  🙂  (made famous by President Obama, but we local native Washingtonians all have parents who’ve eaten there for their entire lives…)      And most astoundingly of all, that we were never taught in school, was the fact that on 23 July, 1919, at 7th & U, NW, over two thousand armed Black residents defended their neighborhood White attacks, provoked by the mainstream (white) press!   Who knew about this, and why did we never learn about it?

     More notes about Mt. Pleasant as an early integration neighborhood, cooperation instead of White Flight in Adams Morgan, and Moses Liverpool, George Bell, & Nicholas Franklin opening a school, and Pres. George Washington’s letters to the Touro Synagogue, in Newport, RI as precedent for shuls in DC, cooperation in the Deanwood neighborhood, and Shepherd Park against Block Busters (& Boss Shepherd pbbl turning in his grave!!)…

–

2011-08-08 16:52:00
gender-diffs among Black landowners in Wash. County, 1855… Curious…
I do not have time now, but I am dying to look into why (on p. 127 of Washington at home: An illustrated history of neighborhoods in the nation’s capital; second edition, 2010, JHU Press, Kathryn Schneider Smith, ed.)

4 of the 5 black landowners in what is now roughly the Brightwood neighborhood (via the 1855 Washington County assessment listing 31 landowners along the 7th St. Turnpike, opened in 1822, from Rock Creek Church Rd to the District Line

(presumably meaning to what was then Boundary Street, now FL ave., marking the border of the Federal City, aka City of Washington)  Line, were women.

No time to delve, must check this wonderful book out again in a few weeks!

–

So, it turns out that many of the former slaves who owned property were light-skinned women, manumitted by their owners, as has happened in at least two cases in my family.  This may or many not partially explain the lack of Black male property owners in DC at the time vis-a-vis Black Women owners.  More research is needed, but it holds with commentary down the family line about women being differently positioned in the DC black community.  As for the Jewish community in DC,   Washington Hebrew Congregation starts without a building, much of the community living along on 7th Street, NW, which was also known as Market str if I recall correctly, as it leads down to the Wharf, back in 1852.  The YMHA, on 11th and Penn. was also an important center of the community.  Several families came down from Baltimore around and especially after the Civil War.  For more details on the synagogues, see pages 62, 91, & 94.

    More on my continuing striving with family history and financial self-defense next week, friends:

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of literacy and hope that you can take right now:

1.) Share  two different resources on your ideas of financial self-defense.

2.) Share your thoughts on how you found and like each of the resources you found.

 

ShiraDest

based on a post  originally drafted in September of  12020 HE

Ann and Anna, (serial short story, Part 2): Hope

    Part 1 was last Sunday

      … lightly, but firm enough to stay my hand against my own intent.  I raised my eyes from the scissor blade, and glimpsed a knowing face, which had a finger to lips shaped the same as mine.  That slender hand, covered in mud and ash, it seemed, belonged to a young boy with high cheekbones, almond eyes, skin almost as light as mine, and freckles.

                 Was it my imagination, or did I see a twinkle in his eyes?

                  We both ducked our heads again, keeping as low and as still as we could.  No hair showed beneath the driving cap, which was pulled down tightly over his face.  This must be the Conductor we were told to wait for, just out of sight around the side of the President’s House.  He turned to lead me, still holding my hand, which still held my scissors, taking care not to make any noise.

            The boy stepped over the stick he must have snapped underfoot earlier, deliberately, I now understood.  Looking under the wagon the whole time, he waved me over and helped me up and quietly over the side, tucking my dress and me under a thick shield of dried tobacco leaves and green corn going to market.

                        “Keep still and stay down.”   

                     That whisper was not the sound of a young boy, but of a girl!   

                     “We do this right, we both get free.”

                      I thought it might take a miracle for us to get past those Constables.  I could still hear poor Mary putting up such a racket that the entire Federal City must be able to hear her.  The cart moved a little ways, and then slowed and picked up again, as the voice of an elderly sounding gentleman called out, telling the coachman to drive on.  I thanked both of our guardian angels, who must have remembered to be on duty tonight.  Even more, the work of those good souls at Mount Zion church, for arranging all this, at great personal hazard.

                           We drove for what seemed to be hours, not being stopped by anyone, I do not know why.  I felt surely someone would have questioned us, by this time, but drive on we did, until I felt safe enough at last to breathe again.  By the time my stomach began to growl, we slowed to a halt, and unshucked corn and dried tobacco began to part, freeing me to sit up and look around.  And, of course, to thank my young benefactor.  I’d not even had time to tend to my arm, but the bleeding had stopped long ago, as I lay still in the wagon.  I smelled the fresh air of pine trees, and wondered just how far we had managed to come in the hours since leaving Washington City.

                       “Try to stay down,” the whisper came from just beside me, as a hand holding a cloth with some corn bread reached over the side of the wagon toward me.

                      “I have a travel pass, but we might have a hard time explaining why you are not a cob of corn.”  The girl smiled, and I saw a flash of small white teeth, before we both ducked again, me to settle on the floor of the wagon, and her crouched down beside the wheel of our wagon.  Our horse sounded like it was eating, too, and I was grateful for the calm.  I wanted to at least thank this brave girl before we had to move on.

                             “Thank you for, you know…”

               I didn’t know what to say.  I’d clearly doubted that she would come as planned.  I hoped she didn’t feel insulted by my lack of faith.

                  An apple appeared, held in that slender hand, reaching over the side of the wagon like an olive branch.  Another whisper floated up to me from over the side of the wagon.

                    “My name is Anna.    Anna Marie Weems.    What do they call you, besides Fancy?”

                    “The white folks call me Ann, but every body else calls me Willow.”

                      “Willow, why’s that?”

               I got that pain in my belly again, and had to clamp my mouth shut tight to be sure something unpleasant didn’t rush out.  When Anna saw that I didn’t respond, she merely handed me a small ladle of water, dripping some of it on me as she reached over the side of the wagon.  I was just starting to hope she’d forgotten her question, when I heard a sigh.  I’ve hurt her, too, and she has just saved me. Must I harm everyone I know?   I was searching for something to say, to smooth over my insult, when the sound of hooves reached my ears.  

Someone was riding hard down the road.

Toward us.

—

 

       This is the second scene in my new series  Ann&Anna.  I  hope that this series will move you to learn more ways to help use our history to build new tools.

Part 1, linked above, was last Sunday, and Part 3 will be next Sunday.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Shira

Action Items:

1.) What are your thoughts on using history, even painful history, to “build back better” as we say, now?

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how continuing empathy-building cooperation might help, or hinder, inclusive thinking.

4.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to EndPoverty, EndHomelessness, & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key PublicDomainInfrastructure  & StopSmoking at least for CCOVID-19:
1. PublicLibraries,
2. ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good publictransport
Read, Write

-we can learn from the past Stayed on Freedom’s Call for free,

     by Teaching and Learning (Lesson Plans)

in the present, to

           help build a kinder future: Project Do Better, fka Baby Acres: a Vision of a Better World

 

Peace     ! שָׁלוֹם

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

the year, 2021 CE = year 12021 HE

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

 

Shira 

(update comment:  the full prequel, with all of these parts edited together as Act I of a new novel in progress, are now available upon request -ShiraDest, April, 12024 HE…)

Shira Destinie Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Baby Floors, Chapter 5: Introduction to Baby Bonds and Baby Acres, now Floors

This post starts the rough draft of (the now published Project Do Better man.) Chapter 5, the y section, for my non-fiction WiP, Baby Floors.

It was Baby Acres, for an Acre per baby, but may now become A floor per baby, and Baby Bonds… 

Once again, by way of disclaimer, the overall goal is now to explain why we need both equ. + justice, & why in 4 phases.  This chapter is part of showing what Phases I-IV could look like as potential roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us.  This vision is laid out in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met, without taking anything from anyone, and without violence, intimidation, nor coercion of any kind. 

Chapter 5:

( Chapter 4’s  ending section, section II,  was last week…)

 Chapter 5,  Intro.:

Chapter 5Introduction (600/500 wds): How Phase IV helps complete the 4 Freedoms

A (342/250 wds).

In the first year of Phase IV, the final stage of this project, 45 years will have gone before, of preparation for this moment.  The previous three phases, lasting 15 years each, have had time, by this point, to educate and build support for three necessary sets of conditions to be achieved before this stage.  First, the rebuilding and expansion of a connected network of safe, clean, accessible and widely used mass transit and railway systems, which now give full transportation coverage to all across the entire country.  With that system, a robust library system connecting university and public libraries fully and freely open to the public has been expanded into a safe set of community education and gathering hubs, offering space for daily ongoing educational updates of local legal and financial information to all residents, on a pro-bono basis.  Interlocking with this is a now robust and fully accessible public health service, which has become universally available to all, thanks to the work done in a later stage.   Second, a cultural shift has begun which began to move us all closer to a cooperatively problem solving mindset, which then, during the third phase, opened access to both the health care, and the formal as well as informal sets of education needed by all of society to continue progressing.  Third, during the prior phase, a universal basic income has been installed which provides the needed relief from fear of want which allows us to move into the current and last stage of our project, this year.  We now have the breathing room, both physical space and emotional and critical thinking tools with which to solve the remaining problems that might beset our societies as a country, and as a planet.  The freedom of speech and association which the first three phases opened up are now joined by the freedom from fear and freedom from want, which by necesity imply a basic level of housing, food, water, and emotional security.  The final stages of this phase are designed to get us to that point.

B (292/250).

An earlier image of this phase comes first, then to evolve as needed.

First cut idea:

1. Each child, at birth, receives half a hectare of land, non-alienable. The person may rent, lend or swap the land, but always remains the owner of the land or the swapped parcel. Where ever the location, it should have a well and be arable. (This way, at a minimum, every person on the planet will own at least 1/2hectare of land, free and clear, withno way tolose it…)

2. Beans, Rice, local Greens, and enough fresh drinking/cooking water, and fresh or filtered salt water for bathing for every individual person;

3. Free Bedsit or Tiny House for each individual person, accessible from the time a child can safely (independently) cook an egg;

4. 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).

5. Each ADULT is both:

1. trained to serve in the national protection forces (police or military), and
2. prepared to rotate, if called upon, into a limited time term of either Jury Duty, city, state, or federal level government duty as a local/state or federal Representative or Senator, Governor, or cabinet member. A system o fsortition could gradually replace elections for the House of Representatives and state assembly lower chambers, followed by the upper chambers and executive level elected positions via IRV/Ranked Choice Voting, as the national educational system evens up in quality across the country.

These initial ideas of what this phase could eventually look like will be subject to much negotiation, at all levels, across the entire country, and undoubtedly, beyond, in the early years of this phase.

(Note: 1. and 3. have now been swapped…)

 

 

— (Next Wednesday: Chapter 5, section I, on the early stages.  )

I’m considering this Rough Draft as the block of clay from which my book will eventually emerge, obviously, and some ideas for phases III and IV are still becoming more  fixed in my mind as I write, so the final version will likely look pretty different from this Rough Draft, and will need updating once I get to the very end.

And once again, yeayyy( !!)with regard to audience, I may have at least a couple of comps:  Walden Two meets The War on Poverty: A Civilian Perspective (by Dr.s Jean and Edgar Cahn, 1964).  I know that lots of people consider Skinner’s writing to be stilted, but I like the tilt of most reviewers, in that the idea is that a community should keep trying policies that members agree upon until they find what works for all of them.

As for genre, I’m still wondering:  clearly part of  Non-fiction.

  Many thanks to Dr. Garland for suggesting Philosophy! 

Maybe also: System Change, Causes, maybe even Inspirational, but I doubt it.

Last week’s installment of this series…

Action Items:

1.) Consider some ideas you may have on how our society can solve homelessness and child abuse, starting right now,

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please, and

3.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind?

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking at LEAST for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport

Vote, Teach and Learn (PDF Lesson Plans Offline),

and

my Babylon 5 review posts, if you like Science Fiction,

and

a proposed Vision on Wondering Wednesdays: for a kinder world…

   

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil

our year 2021 CE =  12021 HE

 

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please leave a review, if you can, on the post related to the book, and please do let us know here that you’ve reviewed it there!  🙂

Shira Destinie Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Wondering Wednesdays, Baby Acres, Chapter 1, part 1B: Cultural Change

This post continues the rough draft of  Chapter 1 of my  now published long term community plan book that started life under the working title of  Baby Acres.  This is the next outline section, chapter 1, section IB.

I am posting the 392 words, which was meant to be 250 words, for this section along with some thoughts on the overall chapter outlining process for the book as a whole.

Again, as previously stated, the overall goal is now to explain why we need both equ. + justice, & why in 4 phases.  This chapter will transition to a chapter (2-5) for each phase, showing what Phases I-IV could look like as part of a possible roadmap for a fully inclusive society for all of us.  This vision is laid out in the hope that All HumanKind  will eventually have each person’s basic needs  met, without taking anything from anyone, and without violence, intimidation, nor coercion of any kind. 

Chapter One, section IB:

Phase II with respect to Phase I and to the entire project:

(section IA was last week…)

IB:

Phase II will be about moving our societal culture from one of corrosively assigning blame to cooperatively solving problems. Phase I must set the stage for such cultural change by putting enough of the shared infrastructure in place to allow the breathing room for that  cultural change to begin. Then, those cultural changes can make the space needed to allow  further progress in our society that will facilitate and drive the desperately needed increasing global cooperation moving forward.

First, the building up of our PublicDomainInfrastrcture leads to a growing Each One Teach One mindset, through on-going adult learning. Normalization of constant adult learning will inevitably show the gaps in public education, and thus the need for better educational foundations in several areas. In particular, the pre-requisite knowledge requirements for the Adulthood Rite of Passage Challenge already point up the lack that many adults face in legal, financial, and emotional, not to mention physical, self defense techniques. Those needs, in an environment of increasing access to free community safe spaces and on-going legal and financial education, can in turn help push for better access to the Commons for all, and a growing sense  of public service and solidarity. Better libraries, health care, transit and education across all communities in the United States could then also begin to build, as Phase II progresses and more adults step up to the Each One Teach One challenge, an increasing thirst to help improve other communities outside of our country as well. Yet, we have much to do first, to clean up our own house.

As the infrastructure building work of Phase I begins to solidify into solid educational benefits during Phase II, both freedom of speech and freedom of association begin to widen, as fear of lack of accessibility starts to loosen its grip. As learning spreads, for instance, regarding state Statutes of Limitations on medical debt, for instance, fewer people will suffer the fear of harassment or default judgments from predatory debt collectors. As more upper and middle class citizens use public transportation, greater safety and reliability of access to places of learning and public gathering can encourage curiosity and cooperative ventures. Chapter 3 will show what Phase II’s increasingly cooperative learning could look like in greater detail, while Chapter 8 will lay out some steps for how we might get there from Phase I.

.

— (Next section: Chapter 1, IC…)

I’m continuing to update the outline for chapter 6, and finally figured out what was nagging me about that chapter, and the 4 chapters to follow it: Metrics!!  I need metrics, some way to measure progress, to mark the goal for each phase, and to figure out how to answer the question “Are We There, Yet?” -and I’ll clearly have to do a better, more cooperative job than I did when I created the metrics (methodology) for my thesis…

Last week was the eighth installment of this series…

Action Items:

1.) Consider some ideas you may have on how having really good shared infrastructure (Libraries, Mass Transit, free legal and financial workshops, and Health Care) could help society move forward in 15 years,

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please, and

3.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those sources and your thoughts.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to EndPoverty, EndHomelessness & achieve freedom for All HumanKind?

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking at LEAST for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport

Vote, Teach and Learn (PDF Lesson Plans available via the main ShiraDest website menu)! 

and

my Babylon 5 review posts, if you like Science Fiction,

and

a proposed Vision on Wondering Wednesdays: for a kinder world…

   

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil

our year 2020 CE =  12020 HE

 

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please leave a review, if you can.

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Teaching Greek folk dance on Great Greek Wednesdays, and Health Care

Both connection, interpersonal and inter-generational, as well as movement, from a strictly health related point of view, are necessary for our well-being.  How about doing that connecting and moving in a cultural context that helps us appreciate our neighbors, and our wider connection to the rest of the human race?

–

 

This is my lesson plan from the All-Church camp held in June, 1-3rd, up in the mountain camp called DeBenneville Pines, north of San Diego, CA.  I wanted to teach Greek Folk Dance, and I also responded to a request for someone to teach on Family History, thus also fulfilling my duty via a free online tool to connect others to our Human Family Tree.

Shira

–

 Misirlou, it turns out, was really a tsiftiteli that someone decided to choreograph as a line/circle dance, and in the Greek community, that dance is actually not well liked.  I also later learned more about the famous “over the cliff dance,” which I was told had been a Tsamiko, but no one actually knows what dance was used, as it is more likely that there was no dance at all, but the story of self sacrifice in order to prevent one’s own violation remains a moving one, rather similar, from a woman’s point of view, to that of the end of the siege of Masada.

Yassas,   γεια σας!   

Action Items in support of connection that you can take right now:

1.) Think of a context in which you have taught, or would like to teach, something for free in your local community.

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your reasons, if you would like to, for teaching for free.

4.) Write a blog post or comment here that discusses those reasons, tells a good story, and makes a difference. I was, but no longer am working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. Once published, donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

Dear Readers, any additional ideas toward learning, especially multiple LanguageLearning as part of on-going education and empathy-building, to EndPoverty, EndHomelessness, & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. PublicLibraries,
2. ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good Publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, and  Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

ShiraDest

NaNoWriMo 2020 CE

November, 2020 CE = 12020 HE

Turkish Tuesday, orphans, and magical stories, like the 1001 Nights: which were NOT Turkish…

Orphans like Çilek still deserve protection, especially if they cannot do magic to protect themselves the way Harry Potter does!  But sometimes, a good story can save your life, if you live in a land where stories are currency, and can buy many things.  Turkey, by the way, is not one of the lands where these stories originated.  Persia, and Arabia and parts of India, apparently, were the lands of these stories, before a few stories were added by the French…

But, telling the stories of survivors can often save lives, as in this free book Invisible Children, by KARA.org.

   “In your Child Protection System is there a volunteer program from a local law school that assigns a volunteer attorney to an abused child?  If not, are there adequate public legal representation for abandoned children?”

Kids who grow up ‘invisible,’ especially those without stable and functional families who protect and give them middle class cultural capital, like dinner table discussion of financial laws and mutual funds, are especially vulnerable to predatory lenders and debt collectors.

Until there are enough pro bono lawyers giving free legal and financial clinics, the rest of us can help in these ways:

1.)  ask local community colleges to offer free legal and financial clinics on your state’s statutes of limitations, contract and debt related laws, and consumer protection laws.

2.)  ask your law-makers to prohibit law suits on expired (aka Time Barred) debts.

3.)   ask your law-makers to lower the Statutes of Limitations on verbal and written contracts, which are often how kids unknowingly get into debt and end up in collections.

4.)  Write your own story (or novel) showing a world where kids get the protection they need, in multiple ways…

Please share your ideas for increasing Legal and Financial Literacy and opportunity for ALL of us!

This post is dedicated to my Great Great grandparents Wayne Anthony Manzilla, murdered for succeeding, and his wife Maude Eleanor West Manzilla, who never gave up her legal suit to clear his name of the suicide charge by the life insurance company, and worked valiantly to keep her family together. Their descendants continue their work.

Quotes for a related post came from a recent ProPublica article co-published with The New Yorker.

Let’s #EndPoverty , #EndHomelessness, &  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

post  originally scheduled September, 12020 HE

Thoughtful Thursdays: learning, teaching, and adulthood?

Winning glory on today’s battlefield: The Modern Mind

  Here is the rational behind my proposal for a modern universal
Service Adulthood Rite of Passage.

Basically, we must learn, (from Lenier during the Rumors, Bargains and Lies episode of Bablylon 5): to be better than we are.

Action Items:

1.)   Think of how you, personally, showed that you were an adult: did you go through any sort of ritual, rite of passage, or testing period?  How did you feel about that process?

2.)  Do you know of others who went through rites of passage, and how did that seem, to you?  Did you get to see the process from the other person’s point of view?

3.)  What do you know of any currently used rites of passage (Bar/Bat Mitzvah, the cutting of the T-Shirt for soloing student pilots, etc)?

4.)  What do you think the above suggested Modern Adult Rite of Passage would accomplish for our society, and why? 

Let’s #EndPoverty , #EndHomelessness, starting by improving these four key parts of our #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 !

In Service to Human Community,
ShiraDest

September, 12020 HE