Histeria! and the CommuNuts!

Kid Week, Installment #1. HISTERIA!

Oh yes, this is a week to bring out the capitals, the big booming voices, the lack of inhibitions! (How many four year-old's do you know who have already gotten strangled by nit-picky social mores? That's what I thought!) We'll bring along our love of simply running around, screaming inanities at the top of our lungs, giggling, innocently kidding (half-intentional pun) around with our friends, throwing our bodies at the ground, with gigantic smiles crawling across our mouths, apple juice running down our chins!

[Heads up!: The Theme Song of Histeria, below, is flanked by some quick but annoying AOL-produced fluff. I don't know how else to describe it.]



Today, the Histeria! "histerians" tackle Marxist and Stalinist communism both. Now if only my Russian grandparents could understand the beauty of these cartoons! It really is amazing that the WB ever aired this nuanced, almost subversive (as in ridiculously tongue-in-cheek and quite clamorous), kids' show. It seems almost better cut out for an adult audience, but as you may have noted in my profile, I loved this short-lived show as a kid. Of course, I wasn't your typical ten year-old.

...Anyway, they (my grandparents) can no longer distinguish between what's written in The Communist Manifesto and the frightening government bureaucracies they grew up with. And who can really blame them? My Great-Aunt Isa, after all, never left the mental institution after making a feisty remark about Khrushchev in her young adult years. I believe it was Khrushchev. It might've been Bulganin or Breschev, though. Sometime in the 50's probably, when she was probably a twenty-something. (How I adore Wikipedia's interactive political tables!) The brazen-ness of the women in my family could not exactly be considered an asset in Soviet Russia.

If I had grown up in that era, I'd probably have already been flung in a jail cell and shipped off to Siberia by now. Very sobering. Yay freedom! ...!? ...Right? (Side note: Do you realize the vast quantity of things in relation to which we use the verb "to ship" these days, things that have nothing to do with sea-faring vessels? Every form of package transport is considered "shipping." But just imagine the end result if we sent kiwis to the Midwest on ships and steamboats? It's really fascinating to me, as I only recently, as in the last week or so, started paying such close attention to the language behind the now-predominant, fossil-fueled, industry-powered lifestyle.)

Okay, moving on. What I love about these clips/my reasons to watch 'em: Marx, for the menacing look on his face and for the absolutely hysterical finale. Stalin, for the look on Miss Information's (great name, eh?) face when she describes the legacy of torture "Iron Joe" left behind, for the contradictory and anachronistic Fifties Housewife mom (like a deranged Grace Kelly, actually), the handful of gems she spits out (literally, at least one of those times!), the depiction of Joe's rise to power, the WB sit-com, and the little girl who asks why people didn't do anything to stop him.

With no further ado, some "edutainment"--history presented by the unlikely means of comedy.





Hope that put a smile (partly composed of horror, of course) on your face!

Keep reading: Histeria! and the CommuNuts!...

Mini Introduction to Wolof, as well as Orientation to Senegalese Politics

Nanga def? - How are you?

Mangi fii rek. - I`m fine.

Many thanks to Living Routes/GENSEN, Maman, Mama Aiita, Pape Mamadou Samb, Marcel, Fatou C., Thier (pronounced "Chair"; yes, really), El Hadji, Pape Babacar Samb, and many others for their short and helpful lessons, their spontaneous laughter, and their patience with my halting and pathetic pronunciations, bad hearing, and bad memory! I have learned and lost so much, like grasping at water, and if I can remember even a small portion of what I`ve learned here, I will be immensely joyous. This is my attempt at such retention, and perhaps if this format gets me to help others with vocalization of these phrases, the constant repetition will help me to remember these tidbits forever. Finally, these might seem a strang assortment of phrases, but this is mostly due to the fact that when people ask me what I`d like to learn, what I`d like to be able to say, what I want to know, I draw a blank, and can`t think up a starting point. Thank goodness (or "Thanks be to God!"/"Alhamdoulilahi" - heh) that the lovely people mentioned above have worked with me and offered me gems of their lovely language anyway.

What`s your name? - No todou?

I miss you - Nama nala. (Pronounced almost as "Namba nala")

I miss you, too - Mala raw. (Pronounced almost as if in Portuguese - "Malarão")

I`m going to miss you - Di nala nama. (I just realized I`ve been saying this completely wrong as "Di namba nala" - woops!)

Me, too - Manta mit

I`m tired - Sona nàa (I couldn`t find the other accent mark on this French "clavier"; it's actually written "Sona náa")

You`re my friend. - Sama harit nga. (I REALLY like this one! Nga pronounced mostly as "Ga," with silent "n." Harit means friend, if I recall correctly.)

Dimbalema (johma casundaw) = Please (give me a cup of water)

Dieure djieuf = Thank You

You`re welcome. - Noko bok. (The "n" pronounced almost as if with a tilde - Ñoko; bok meaning "you are")

I need to sleep. - Deman bug nelaw. ("Aw" pronounced as "o")

What are your wives` names? - Sa djebar nomou todou?

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. - Ben. Nyar. Nyet. Nyent. Djouron. (I love how this sounds a bit like Russian!)

How is your morning? - Naka su bese?

How is your evening? - Naka ngonsi?

You are so clever. - Dgenga mous.

I`m tired? - Dema son.

You`re tired - Danga son!

Come eat. - Kai lek.

Come here right now. - Kai legui.

NOPIL! = HUSH!

Nyaw = Ugly

Baye = Father

Yaye = Mother

Jiguen = Female/Sister

Goor = Male/Brother

Rakh = Younger than me

Mak = Older than me

My name is not "toubab"! -Toudou-ma toubab.

Do not tell me/call me "toubab"! - Bourma wakh toubab!

That`s a good enough transition into an over-simplified political orientation:

Current President: Abdou Laye Wade

Current Prime Minister: Hadji Bou Soumaré

Current President of the Congress: Mamadou Seck

Current President of the Senate: Pape Diop

Old Prime Minister (who went on to be the President of the Congress, in which he was impeached): Macky Samb

Old Prime Minister (before Macky; corrupt, accused of embezzling and thrown out of office): Idrissa Seck

Head of the Family Ministry (accused of involvement in the "disappearance" -heh- of 76 mil. CFA; it was all over the paper on January 10th on our way back from Lac Rose!): Awa Ndiaye

Macky Samb left and set up his own party, "Yakar," which means "hopes."

Idrissa Seck also left and set up his own party, "Rewmi," "the State."

Thoughts?

Keep reading: Mini Introduction to Wolof, as well as Orientation to Senegalese Politics...

Theology For Our Time

Here's my hodge podge for April:

Today, I attended a couple of talks by a Sister of Mercy, Kathleen Erikson, who works with immigrants on the border at the Women's Intercultural Center, at the detention center, and in other settings. The Center is in Anthony, New Mexico, which isn't far from El Paso and Ciudad Juárez in Chihuahua, Mexico. She gave a talk in the early afternoon entitled, "Voices from the U.S. - Mexico Border," and one in the evening called "No Human Being is Illegal: Spiritual Activism and Immigration."

This past weekend, Horizons of Faith presented four spectacular lectures by Rita Nakashima Brock, a scholar whose work focuses on the destructive nature of the crucifixion obsession to Christianity. Her lectures centered around the idea of paradise, thoroughly informed by the research she and co-writer Rebecca Ann Parker worked on for their forthcoming book, Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire. Their 2001 release, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us was a stunning exploration that blended their theology of the cross with their personal histories in connection with violence and suffering. Their cooperative endeavors and presentation style, as well as a handful of others, have already infused academia with new forms of scholarly writing, forms that I believe must become the favored approaches to academic work. An obsession with objectivity neglects the role that personal history plays in the shaping of theories and ideologies.

Throughout the weekend, Rita made mentions of the ev08 (or Envision '08) conference that she's been organizing. Though I'm still trying to figure out the distinctions in the word "evangelical" (How differently fundamentalists use is from the way ELCA Lutherans claim it! For those who don't know, perhaps many, ELCA stands for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America...) and pin down the purview of the Emergent Church movement and it's cross-sections with Jim Wallis, author of God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It and The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America, and his contingent of Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne, Diana Butler Bass (her? really?), and others, I think it's really cool that Rita and her people at Faith Voices for the Common Good are working to ensure that the young evangelicals with the left-leaning activist-y political sentiment don't feel silenced. The inroads they're making to connect progressive Christians with these young evangelicals, who in turn, will connect progressive impulses with conservative Christianity, are really fascinating. Keep the youth and their impulses from feeling silenced, and they won't break off into a faction and refuse to dialogue with mainstream Protestants and other progressive Christians. Sounds logical enough, right?

Also this month, I gave my "Images of God" presentation in theology class (we were all assigned this presentation). Everyone else had their paper from which they read, detailing their spiritual histories and responses to the course and the images of God examined so far. I instead went and looked for my own, as I had written plenty in my journals for the class about my spiritual journey so far--about my happenstance introduction to the American Baptist Church (distinct from the Southern Baptists as slightly less virulent conservative theology), the mild exposure throughout my childhood to Russian Orthodox icons brought by various relatives from Saint Petersburg, my break with Christianity as a young adolescent, my dabbling in Buddhism, then atheism, then agnosticism, until my experiences with the earth slowly brought me back to some sense of the "sacred," and brought me to an ecumenical bookstore, where I not only broadened my knowledge of theology but also renewed by faith in Nebraskans as a not entirely closed-minded population.

My images of god presentation (if I had any say in it, we would have been examining images of gods, but that would have only been a subject for a secular school exploring theology and religion)

• showed the feminine face of god,
• spoke to my need for silence, solitude, serenity, and simplicity,
• explored Marian images co-opted by indigenous and marginalized communities (in Japan, Korea, Australia, Indonesia, and the United States, many of which I found at this amazing repository of Marian images), especially the Black Madonna as portrayed by both black and white artists (I even found a remarkable Adam image of a contemporary black youth, holding his iPod, against Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel background),
• discussed the concept of hospitality and openness through an attitude of welcoming all (but I also discussed how viewing God as all-encompassing, of both good and bad, everything, is problematic because of the problem of evil),
• covered dance as a spiritual image and experience, before
• discussing animism in contrast to the debate about dominion versus stewardship, and
• considering earth images, earth-based spirituality, permaculture and the design of welcoming, inviting, spiritually-nourishing spaces (not to mention the appreciation of such spaces that exist without human tampering), community, and images of people embracing the planet-globe.

I covered all of the images most poignant and meaningful to me at this point in my life and detailed why they seemed to fill fill such a void, a void that had been left by Christianity up 'til now.

Keep reading: Theology For Our Time...