New Turkish Tuesdays Show: Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mother)

I have been waiting a long time to start reviewing a series that I know Violet will like, as will all who enjoy hopeful family shows, with fun, meaning, and magic! 

This show has been my all time favorite family show, and maybe even my all time favorite show ever, since I first saw and fell in love with it when I lived in Izmir in 2005.

The show features a fairy mother, Betüş, who marries a ‘normal’ human man, Sadık, who does not know that she and her family are fairies.  Humans are not allowed to see them doing magic, so this makes life interesting for all concerned.  Sadık has two children, who are not so sure about this new step-mother of theirs, at first.  The red-head in the featured image is a little kid we will learn more about later!   🙂      As a language-learning side comment, I love the name Sadık, which literally means “loyal” in Turkish.  And loyal he is, as we will find out in time.

It also features the late Defne Joy Foster, an American-Turkish actress who was well loved, as Eda, the sister of Betüş, who is the star of the show.   I love Eda’s character arc in the series, as she goes from following their mother’s lead, to learning to stand up for herself as an independent thinker.

So, next week I hope to start reviewing this series, at last!

Action Items:

1.) Share two different sources related to the Sihirli Annem series, and to the Harry Potter tie ins to this series.

2.) Share your thoughts on how a TV show might help, or hinder, inclusive thinking,

3.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses it.

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Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/Protector,  Lupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

Hoşça Kalın!

ShiraDest

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

Turkish Tuesdays (in English), TV, and Time Banks for Building Empathy, and Homes?

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, TV 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 consider starting one in your community now

Read, Write, Dream, Walk !
ShiraDest

orig. posted: October 18th, 12017 HE

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Click here to read, if you like:

B5, La Casa De Papel/Money Heist, & Lupin & Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector Reviews

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Range Plans, & Historical Fiction Serial Stories

Thoughtful Readers, if you are on Twitter, please consider following   #Project Do Better  on Twitter.

Shira

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

Turkish Tuesdays and language learning for empathy building as part of Adulting education?

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  (Updating this post, but need to find the episode again, as the video link is dead…)

My favorite family TV show of all time, a modern Turkish equivalent of Bewitched meets Harry Potter, was crucial to me in learning Turkish while I lived there, and to helping me (some years less than more) keep from entirely forgetting my Turkish in the 15 years since. 

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#SihirliAnnem 116. Bölüm   sihirli-annem-4-sezon/sihirli-annem-116-bolum

7:03 

Episode 116

“Savasa Hayir” NE GUZEL!!!

“No to War” WONDERFUL!!

#peace

@ShiraDest

–

 

So, it turns out that using Twitter for tracking my language learning was less helpful than I’d expected.  The tweets get lost in a sea of other tweets, nearly never to be seen again (yes, like Nearly Headless Nick’s neck…), and then the links to the show disappear as it is bought by other networks or moved to other servers.  I did manage to find and download some episodes using a proxy set to Europe.  I was then quite diligent to leave favorable comments on the show’s feed.

  Görüşürüz! 

Action Items in support of empathy and continuing education that you can take right now:

1.) Search for two different resources to translate the word “hope” into Turkish.

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

3.) Share your thoughts on how you like each of the resources you found,  perhaps as an update on your GoodReads reading,

4.) Write a blog post or tweet that uses a Turkish word, tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy.   Once published, please donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

***************** 

Click here to read, if you like:

Science Fiction/Fantasy Shows, or Lupin

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Range Plans, & Historical Fiction Serial Stories

 

Thoughtful Readers, if you are on Twitter, please consider following   #Project Do Better  on Twitter.

Shira

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

 

Black Women, Leadership, and Adulting, Turkish Tuesday Style

Shirley Chisholm was a role model for many Black women, and the first black person, male or female, to run for president of the United States.

Legal & Financial Pro-Bono and continuing education (aka Adulting Education) is easier when there are strong role models for all of us, and helping to build those new role models is also part of Project Do Better, like Eda, played by Defne Joy Foster,

from my favorite family show of all time, the Turkish show Sihirli Annem (from 2003…)!

  On this popular family show that updates ‘Bewitched‘ meets Harry Potter, Foster played Eda, a strong woman who demanded her right to live as she felt correct, learning to love others who were different from herself in spite of tremendous opposition.  She thus made space for other women, especially Black women, to lead, as other shows continued to do later:

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I’m still emotionally buzzing from the end of episode 21 of El Ministerio del Tiempo and Amelia’s incredible courage, and character arc !!

More than just one protagonist, though, she stands in a line of female main characters (not always lead or protag, actually) who start off as just intelligent, and develop into both intelligent and strong female characters, a bit like Hermione Granger from the HP series:  these ladies began with some kind of growing to do, and did that growing through painful events, but grew, emotionally and personally (courage, commitment, etc) to become much stronger than they started off the books or series, like:

Susan Ivanova from Babylon 5, or  Eda from Sihirli Annem,  or Nazli from Yabanci Damat all began as less than fully confident, but all very promising, intelligent, and self-directed young ladies, who had to learn to be more assertive, culminating in either marrying the person whom they chose (rather than their families chose), or by snatching victory from the jaws of death, or in the case of Amelia, deliberately walking into the possibility of the worst death known (an Auto-da-Fe) in history, for the purpose of making her point.  (ok, yes, you could argue that Delenn does this in B5’s Circle of Fire, but watch the Ministerio del Tiempo episode, and you will see that it is rather different, and also Delenn arrived on B5 as a mature leader, where Amelia began as a novice leader).

These are the examples of critical thinking, emotional growth, and self-confidence that young girls need to see as early and as often as possible to grow into leaders able and willing to stand alongside men and make this world a more just and humane place for all.

ShiraDest
3rd of June, 2016

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Action Items for role models:

1.) Think of your favorite role model(s).

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

3.) Share your thoughts on how they helped you to stretch as a person,

4.) Write a book, blog post or tweet that illustrates that person’s influence, like that of Shirley Chisholm, tells a good story, and makes a difference.   Once published, please consider donating to your local public library.

***************** 

Click here to read, if you like:

Science Fiction/Fantasy Shows, Lupin, or $…

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Range Plans, & Historical Fiction Serial Stories

 

Thoughtful Readers, if you are on Twitter, please consider following   #Project Do Better  on Twitter.

Shira

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

Fun with Languages Fridays: New Years Wishes

 

                 Fun with Languages Friday:  This week we go back in time a few years, and a couple of continents, to Turkey.  I learned much of my spoken Turkish over meals with neighbors, and  by watching this delightful family show in the evenings after work.  It has been described as a Turkish version of the 70s show Bewitched, but I’d call it more of a Bewitched meets Harry Potter ala modern Turkey. 

   Minute 17:09 of this Sihirli Annem video episode clip: A beautiful wish for world peace

Sihirli Annem, Eda, Toprak, Perihan Teyze Peri

     I also have a short story series going,  called   Ann&Anna, the story of an escape.  I  hope that this series will move you to learn more ways to help use our history to build new tools.

Part 13 was last Sunday, if you enjoy historical fiction.

I look forward to your thoughts.

Shira

Action Prompts:

1.) Share your thoughts on how language learning may encourage empathy-building cooperation, and might help, or hinder, inclusive thinking.

2.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those thoughts.

Dear Readers, what  ideas do you have 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

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

Click here to read, if you like:

Science Fiction/Fantasy Shows,  Lupin, or Money Heist(soon…)

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction

Thoughtful Readers, if you are on Twitter, please consider following   #Project Do Better  on Twitter.

Shira

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

 

The Bright side of PTSD: understanding Firuze, Amelia, and Harry?

Smells, noises or lights can suddenly awaken some of us, and refuse to let us sleep until identified. Long-lasting childhood traumas can leave your Inner Child reluctant to come out from under the coffee table. Some ideas, illustrated by examples from historical and fictional sages, may help your Inner Parent to teach safety and trust to that Frightened Inner Child so that your Inner Adult, your competent and ambitious self who’d rather ignore both Child and Parent, can get on with succeeding in life.

First, one possible intrepretation of Hillel’s famous pair of questions:
A. אם אין אני לי, מי לי (Im ein ani li, mi li: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me,”) is that each of us must parent and protect his or her own inner child, and

B. ? וכשאני לעצמי, מה אני ; (Vekesh’ani le’atzmi, mah ani ? “And if I am only for myself, what am I?”), also stand with others who have been wounded.

Second, if, like Harry Potter, you’ve sustained significant losses in your life, even very early on, is there someone you can recall, or as Harry uses to conjure his first #Patronus, even some imaginary memory, showing love or kindness, even if from or to a stranger just for a moment? Your Inner Parent can use that image to show your Inner Child that there is hope for this world, and that is worth holding on to and fighting for, to motivate your ambitious Inner Adult to keep going. This is being for yourself in the most crucial way: parenting yourself through the panic and soothing those constantly jangled nerves until you learn to trust life. Then your ambitious and centered Inner Adult can take it from there to build the life you want to live.

Third, if, like Amelia, you see that it would be safer to give up than to fight, perhaps your Inner Adult can take the lead, having learned by watching your Inner Parent defend your own Inner Child, that sometimes an adult must sacrifice to create a better world for all Human Children. And like Feruze Hatun, healing all those around you may come at a high personal cost, but honesty and love, even shown to our enemies, as Gandhi and Dr. King proved, can indeed defeat hate, and bring you greater self-confidence and feelings of security.

So, warrior like Amelia or Intergenerational Community Parent to all, like Feruze Hatun, or just competent, capable, and knitting lots of hats for House Elves like Hermione, parenting yourself can lead to parenting others , for the good of All Humankind. Or you could still become a Body Guard.

Some more of my thoughts on how local government Policy such as accepting part of local taxes in local currencies/Time Dollars can help stimulate local community employment and inclusion for PTSD survivors are found in my related paper on Building Community and the crucial role of Intergenerational Participation in Community : Shavuot (Pentacost) as one of four Biblical pillars of building community.

 

originally posted September 10th, 12017 HE
Community4BiblicalPillarsShavuot

Action Items:

1.)  Sourcing information: What sources might help you find the relationship between exponents and radicals?  Any primary sources, and from where?

2.) Share your  ideas with us, and why you think that way,

3.) Write a book, story, blog post or tweet that uses one of the ideas, and then, please tell us about it! If you write a book, once it is published please consider donating a copy to your local public library.

Action Prompts:

1.) Share your thoughts on how we can build empathy in our society today

2.) Write a story, post or tweet that uses those thoughts.

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

Click here to read, if you like:

Science Fiction/Fantasy Shows,  Lupin, or Money Heist

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction

Thoughtful Readers, if you are on Twitter, please consider following   #Project Do Better  on Twitter.

Shira

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

Turkish Tuesdays, New Year, New cultural Frame, Adulting self-education, and a calendar

Some ideas, like our calendar, or like women being business leaders, need repeating:

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The previous year, 2016, has shown us that the entire world is in need of change, in particular in the ways that we see, or do not see, one another.  Cultural dominance, as  shown by the use of the Gregorian Calendar, is something that frames the world-view of all of us who grow up within Western/European culture.  To build a more inclusive and kinder world, we must learn to reframe our ways of thinking, change our perspectives.

One way of doing this is by watching and creating more shows which show women and other traditionally marginalized groups in positions of authority, such as Turkish businesswoman Güler Sabancı  on Sihirli Annem (2003).

Another way of doing this is to begin using a calendar that is inclusive of all humanity: The Holocene Calendar (El calendario Holoceno.)

Read, Write, Dream, Teach !
ShiraDest
January 20th (updated 7 February), 12017 HE

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Action Items:

1.) Think of some ways that you believe we could change our cultural ways of thinking.

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

3.) Write a book, blog post or tweet that uses those ideas, tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. If you write a book, once published, please consider donating to your local public library.

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 for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GR button:

, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

 

  Görüşürüz!   

ShiraDest

December, 2020 CE = December 12020 HE

(The previous lesson 2/67 published since this post, and the most recent lesson 3/67…)

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

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, 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, & #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

post  originally scheduled September, 12020 HE

Turkish Tuesdays and language learning by tracking words in TV shows via Twitter

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Here is where I am in my study of spoken Turkish this week, reviewing a bit of the first TV show I became addicted to in Turkish: Sihirli Annem (My Magical Mother).  The original, not the new version from 2011, mind you.  I often write down the words I need to look up, either on paper or on an account I created on Twitter to save dictionary links, in both the target language and in a language I’m already comfortable in, if I need to use it as scaffolding.

My old notations from episodes past, give an example:

–

28 janv. 2016

Ben de mutlu oldum (moi aussi, je suis contente): #orphelins #kimsesiz

#SihirliAnnem 116. Bölüm 7:03 (P.6) “Savasa Hayir” NE GUZEL!!! “No to War” WONDERFUL!!

–

I also generally start every new language, for reading at least, with Harry Potter, since I know it by heart: –On page 7 of 314 of Harry Potter ve Sırlar, by J.K. Rowling: “Harry haykirmamayi basardi”

All of these and more are on an old Twitter account, which a couple of years ago, I found useful to cut and paste dictionary entries or website links, but now I see that it is not as easy as I had imagined, back then, to find the tweets on a particular word. Searching through my old tweets is really annoying, so I’m now back to writing the words by hand in my vocabulary notebook, beside the same word in my other languages, in order to give my brain the hook to connect and recall the new word. The other issue is that links often go away, so that the shows I thought I was saving the links to often can lo longer be seen via that tweet, anyway.

  More on my continuing striving with Turkish next week, friends:

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

Action Items in support of language learning and empathy that you can take right now:

1.) Search for two different sources to translate the word “magic” into Turkish.

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

3.) Share your thoughts on how you like each of the rources you found,  perhaps as an update on your GoodReads reading,

4.) Write a blog post or tweet that uses a Turkish word, tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m 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,  #EndMoneyBail & 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

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

Click here to read, if you like:

Science Fiction/Fantasy Shows,  Lupin, or Money Heist(soon…)

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction

Thoughtful Readers, if you are on Twitter, please consider following   #Project Do Better  on Twitter.

Shira

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

Learn a language, lose yourself in someone’s love, like little Çilek

A lack of affection in our lives can be both an emotional and physical health risk, especially for people who come from traumatic families of origin. But, until that adoptive family or “intentional family” comes along, maybe even a bit of imaginary parental love can help. Watching shows that show love from characters who become family, like the love of Betüş for little orphan Çilek when they adopt her, can help.

The love and safe affection of close friends can also help heal the wounds left by childhood abuse. Family can be created. You don’t even have to be a Fairy to navigate the landmines: real love is enough (although public transportation also helps for navigating the roadways!).

If you know someone without family, please try to show some love and affection: it could make a big difference.

For all of us.

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