Friday, March 16, 2007
Memoirs of a boy soldier
As I read A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a boy soldier I couldn't’t get my own experiences as well as my juvies’ experiences out of my head. It was fortunate for Ishmael, the spirited author, that his post traumatic stress syndrome was patiently treated by the people who separated him from his dysfunction, UNICEF. He deserved better than to be thrown into not so voluntary service, inspired by brown-brown, cocaine and marijuana given to these children in heavy doses, after his village was torn apart by rebellious soldiers. His courageousness throughout the war trials as well as his exodus out of Sierra Leone was cillingly nerve racking.
Post traumatic stress syndrome appears to be a cultural legacy that this species chooses to leave to our children. Ishmael’s story was told, but the thousands of others have yet to be heard. The world is covered in people who just want to get out of the insanity. Some of them succeed, but are not transitioned like the author of this remarkable book, and the result is that they become a burden to society, and often are repeatedly imprisoned where “reform” is, at best, a joke.
There is a way to discontinue the irrational upbringing of our future. In the juvenile detention centers I worked in it became so evident that I was surprised that no one else could see it – perhaps others have, but when they speak, because they hold no paper from some crazy wizard behind a curtain, they are ignored or ridiculed. – However, the path is there if we would just take the first step. Our future will not change until we change the methods we implement to raise our young. – THINK! – Please. For all of us.
Post traumatic stress syndrome appears to be a cultural legacy that this species chooses to leave to our children. Ishmael’s story was told, but the thousands of others have yet to be heard. The world is covered in people who just want to get out of the insanity. Some of them succeed, but are not transitioned like the author of this remarkable book, and the result is that they become a burden to society, and often are repeatedly imprisoned where “reform” is, at best, a joke.
There is a way to discontinue the irrational upbringing of our future. In the juvenile detention centers I worked in it became so evident that I was surprised that no one else could see it – perhaps others have, but when they speak, because they hold no paper from some crazy wizard behind a curtain, they are ignored or ridiculed. – However, the path is there if we would just take the first step. Our future will not change until we change the methods we implement to raise our young. – THINK! – Please. For all of us.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a boy soldier
You'll have to excuse me. Ishmael Beah has been courageous enough to allow me to crawl into a tiny portion of his mind and the experience has taken me away for some time. The book is outstanding and should NEVER...are you listening teachers & administrators?...NEVER be used in a classroom setting because it will be bastardized and ruined. This book should be read much like Sebastian read his book The Never Ending Story; alone, in order to experience every emotion written by this unique author who has painfully shared his life through what must have been excruciating eternities of cathartic scripting. As I devoured the pages I was often reminded of my gang kids in the juvenile detention centers who came in still at war with the gang members they were taught to cut, maim or kill. War is hell whether it's "over there" or here in our own backyards.
Thank Mr. Ishmael Beah for bleeding so many times in order to make your readers a part of your history. No other book says more about the horrors of war than yours and I am grateful for your willingness to share your candor through the agony of prose. Sublime is you!
Thank Mr. Ishmael Beah for bleeding so many times in order to make your readers a part of your history. No other book says more about the horrors of war than yours and I am grateful for your willingness to share your candor through the agony of prose. Sublime is you!
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Jon Stewart and Al Sharpton
Dear Mr. Stewart;
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for saving my sanity when I lived in Key West in the mid 90s, and then Gainesville, Florida. The past 10 plus F@^$#%% years have stirred hope, for unlike “That Was the Week That Was” and “The Smothers Brothers” you, for a reason that yet confounds my thinking have stayed and have made a difference for the unheard of population. You are a vital voice. Such a responsibility you have caused yourself. I am grateful, hence the motivation for this letter.
Please take into consideration that as over a decade has passed and I have yet to formally respond to anything you say and do, although this contrary to my persona. Mr. Sharpton’s appearance on your show this week (March 2 2007- perhaps) prompts me to inquire if it is The White House that you seek, or are you becoming like those other news stations that flood the sheep with sensationalism? The cause of this blunt inquiry is generated from what I gather of your intellect that you demonstrate through your nightly appearances. Either you are well rehearsed, or you are well-informed, and I have chosen the later on which to base my inquiry.
You had as one of your guest booksellers, one Michael Oren who was advertising through your interview Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present. Clearly you never read it, nor have you read any other "truths" about the histories of being human. Slavery is not exclusive to Blacks in the United States, no indeed, for without the Chinese slaves the railroad would have been very expensive. At the same time the United States must remember, in order to justify this enslavement, that it was the Chinese who sold its own people into slavery. There were and are White slaves, and Asian slaves, and North and South Native American slaves. We are a species that adores ownership. What is the cry? “Shop ‘til you drop?” (You will recognize sarcasm, n’est pas?)
When Mr. Sharpton was before you why did you refrain from asking questions about white slaves in Africa? Why have you never beaten your tambourine for the North Native Americans? Indeed, it appears you find irritation in their ownerships of casinos, yet you cannot seem to find compassion for their genocide experience or their sale to Europeans who paid a marvelous price to be the first owner of a real live savage from the New World! Clearly there was nothing “new” or improved about the New World.
Sharpton made a good point about his name, but at the same time he failed to explain why it is he has done nothing to attempt to reclaim his true identity. Are those "of the cloth" the elite that should not be questioned for their motives? That can’t be true for priests are open game on The Daily Show. Did Mr. Sharpton volunteer the truth about the final history of the slave from the Amistad trial? Upon his release that slave went back to Africa to sell slaves. Truly a glorious ironic conundrum that Twain could have truly revered, but Dumas would have been blind to; for although he felt the racial discrimination, he did not fail to use it against those of darker pigmentation. What a world! What a world!
This is not a letter to justify slavery or Strom Thurmond, although you should not be so judgmental of Thurmond when you take the words of a slave owner, and slave abuser to forward your book America. No indeed. The species, of which I am a member, is undeniably strange and has the ability to enslave, torture and genocide at will. After a great deal of independent reading of our species’ histories one can only conclude what Egoyan stated in his film Ararat “we do not realize what we are really doing, even when it has been done.” Humans are proficient in denial – we get an “A” for as long as idolized leaders such as your self avoid the truth.
Tell the truth Mr. Stewart and continue your tongue-in-cheek rips, but do not neglect the truth in its entirety. You are too brilliant for that. Bring Mr. Thurmond to task, even if he is dead, but when you do, remind your audience of your admiration for another slave owner, Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps had you admired Franklin you might have saved your self from this particular embarrassment.
Please ask Winona LaDuke, a Native North America, how her last name came to be French? Ah, the French, they have conquered as well. Laugh Mr. Stewart, and bring to your listeners the truth about the Native North Americans and how thousands of tribes were extinguished in genocide attacks, and how those that remained we forced to adjust to losing their entire means of support, the buffalo, as well as their centuries of traditions over a brief 10 years. Bring to light, as only you can, how the conquerors raped, stripped, tortured and murdered the natural inhabitants; whether by the use of firearm or small pox infected blankets. (That’s why Amherst Massachusetts is so renowned for it was Mr. Amherst himself that was able to kill so many of natives in this merry method.) Jump next to the Chinese and their brutality in conquering Tibet. As you jump from land mass to land mass, perhaps you, if not your audience, will have a more robust understanding of our species for we tend to forget who we are. It would be comforting if the enemy was GW or Dick, but you and I know better than that. Remind us of the reality when you can.
I know that more than you will hear what you have to say, in only the way Jon Stewart “and his band of no goods” can do it. You are indeed a phenomenon. Do not trash it with cheap parlor tricks, unless of course you are running for office, in which case I can only say I’m pleased that I never gave in to buying television.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for saving my sanity when I lived in Key West in the mid 90s, and then Gainesville, Florida. The past 10 plus F@^$#%% years have stirred hope, for unlike “That Was the Week That Was” and “The Smothers Brothers” you, for a reason that yet confounds my thinking have stayed and have made a difference for the unheard of population. You are a vital voice. Such a responsibility you have caused yourself. I am grateful, hence the motivation for this letter.
Please take into consideration that as over a decade has passed and I have yet to formally respond to anything you say and do, although this contrary to my persona. Mr. Sharpton’s appearance on your show this week (March 2 2007- perhaps) prompts me to inquire if it is The White House that you seek, or are you becoming like those other news stations that flood the sheep with sensationalism? The cause of this blunt inquiry is generated from what I gather of your intellect that you demonstrate through your nightly appearances. Either you are well rehearsed, or you are well-informed, and I have chosen the later on which to base my inquiry.
You had as one of your guest booksellers, one Michael Oren who was advertising through your interview Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present. Clearly you never read it, nor have you read any other "truths" about the histories of being human. Slavery is not exclusive to Blacks in the United States, no indeed, for without the Chinese slaves the railroad would have been very expensive. At the same time the United States must remember, in order to justify this enslavement, that it was the Chinese who sold its own people into slavery. There were and are White slaves, and Asian slaves, and North and South Native American slaves. We are a species that adores ownership. What is the cry? “Shop ‘til you drop?” (You will recognize sarcasm, n’est pas?)
When Mr. Sharpton was before you why did you refrain from asking questions about white slaves in Africa? Why have you never beaten your tambourine for the North Native Americans? Indeed, it appears you find irritation in their ownerships of casinos, yet you cannot seem to find compassion for their genocide experience or their sale to Europeans who paid a marvelous price to be the first owner of a real live savage from the New World! Clearly there was nothing “new” or improved about the New World.
Sharpton made a good point about his name, but at the same time he failed to explain why it is he has done nothing to attempt to reclaim his true identity. Are those "of the cloth" the elite that should not be questioned for their motives? That can’t be true for priests are open game on The Daily Show. Did Mr. Sharpton volunteer the truth about the final history of the slave from the Amistad trial? Upon his release that slave went back to Africa to sell slaves. Truly a glorious ironic conundrum that Twain could have truly revered, but Dumas would have been blind to; for although he felt the racial discrimination, he did not fail to use it against those of darker pigmentation. What a world! What a world!
This is not a letter to justify slavery or Strom Thurmond, although you should not be so judgmental of Thurmond when you take the words of a slave owner, and slave abuser to forward your book America. No indeed. The species, of which I am a member, is undeniably strange and has the ability to enslave, torture and genocide at will. After a great deal of independent reading of our species’ histories one can only conclude what Egoyan stated in his film Ararat “we do not realize what we are really doing, even when it has been done.” Humans are proficient in denial – we get an “A” for as long as idolized leaders such as your self avoid the truth.
Tell the truth Mr. Stewart and continue your tongue-in-cheek rips, but do not neglect the truth in its entirety. You are too brilliant for that. Bring Mr. Thurmond to task, even if he is dead, but when you do, remind your audience of your admiration for another slave owner, Thomas Jefferson. Perhaps had you admired Franklin you might have saved your self from this particular embarrassment.
Please ask Winona LaDuke, a Native North America, how her last name came to be French? Ah, the French, they have conquered as well. Laugh Mr. Stewart, and bring to your listeners the truth about the Native North Americans and how thousands of tribes were extinguished in genocide attacks, and how those that remained we forced to adjust to losing their entire means of support, the buffalo, as well as their centuries of traditions over a brief 10 years. Bring to light, as only you can, how the conquerors raped, stripped, tortured and murdered the natural inhabitants; whether by the use of firearm or small pox infected blankets. (That’s why Amherst Massachusetts is so renowned for it was Mr. Amherst himself that was able to kill so many of natives in this merry method.) Jump next to the Chinese and their brutality in conquering Tibet. As you jump from land mass to land mass, perhaps you, if not your audience, will have a more robust understanding of our species for we tend to forget who we are. It would be comforting if the enemy was GW or Dick, but you and I know better than that. Remind us of the reality when you can.
I know that more than you will hear what you have to say, in only the way Jon Stewart “and his band of no goods” can do it. You are indeed a phenomenon. Do not trash it with cheap parlor tricks, unless of course you are running for office, in which case I can only say I’m pleased that I never gave in to buying television.
