Category: misc

I’d like to recommend a new book, “Learning America: one woman’s fight for educational justice for refugee children“, by Luma Mufleh. So many anecdotes ring true to what my wife has experienced just trying to help a few african bahá’í families who’ve been resettled in Tucson. Not that she started her own school like Luma did, although I make a few jokes about doing that.

Luma also did a TED talk, “Don’t be sorry for refugees, believe in them“.

The son of one of the Tucson bahá’ís I know helped resettle a few Ukrainian refugees in Prague, who I’m sure never expected to find themselves leaving their home, until they had to. A quick google returns “According to the UNHCR, over 84 million people around the world have been forced to flee their homes” (random search result). As the pace of global destructive and constructive changes picks up, or if Tucson gets any hotter or drier, some of us might join the ranks.

I discovered via twitter (@OEWordhord) a new book on Old English, “The word hord: daily life in Old English” by Hana Videen. Naturally I was tempted to buy it, but it would sit in a pile of previous temptations I haven’t gotten around to actually reading, so I’m resisting. But even reading the preface via Amazon preview is interesting. On p. 15 is “ūht-cearu” (pronounced ‘oot-key-are-oo‘ I think), “pre-dawn anxiety”. This seems to me a very contemporary syndrome, how could this have fallen into disuse?

There’s an app too, @OEWordhordApp, with the word of the day.

I ran across this on Alan Jacobs’ blog Snakes and Ladders:

The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. Its proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or “accessing” what we now call “information” – which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first.

— Wendell Berry (2005)

I would replace “politically” with “spiritually”, where the healing begins. To me the meaning of “political” has shifted a lot even in the last 15 years, so I don’t mean to disagree really.

I’m retiring at the end of the year after a very long time at one place, and predictably, our well-organized and project-based team has created an Offboarding project for my departure; efficient, logical, and documented. But it’s not how I feel– if I could, I’d like a process like the Cheshire Cat’s in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

“… I wish you wouldn’t keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly: you make one quite giddy.”
“All right,” said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.
“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice; “but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!”

According to an article in the Washington Post, the Australian government is planning to make cash payments that actually amount to something (ca. $55,000 per person) to some of the native peoples who were/are mistreated by the dominant white culture. This idea has been discussed, with no action that I know of, in the US (“The case for reparations”, by Ta-Nehisi Coates), and there have been commissions set up by the Canadian government too; I think they took some action.
The reason this is significant is not because these payments are really a fair compensation at all, but because doing something that takes more than a token effort is a necessary step to heal the culture which did the damage. America is carrying the burden of two original sins: genocide and slavery, and both are historical sources of our material success and spiritual challenges. The “land acknowledgement” statements now being used are a good step, because knowing our history is important, but at the same time they are token, too easy.
(If you go to https://land.codeforanchorage.org and put in your zip code, or text 855-917-5263 with it, you can find out what your acknowledgement should say)
After World War 2, Germany paid reparations to the new state of Israel for its genocidal actions. But it seems some members of the Israeli government didn’t want to accept them because mere money is so token, or they wanted revenge instead, according to the Coates article linked above. But we can’t undo the past, nor hide it. Faulkner is often quoted — “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
(When I read Faulkner in college, I completely couldn’t understand his novels — maybe I’d have a better chance if I reread them now, time permitting)
This is a preachy post, but I wanted to say that I don’t think America is terrible or wonderful, it’s both (just like the current internet, actually) — we have to replace either/or with both/and and move forward from there, all together. I think we have a lot to learn from the indigenous cultures among us once we get through this. One little-known book I come back to on this topic is “Faith, physics, and psychology: rethinking society and the human spirit” by John Fitzgerald Medina.
One other link — an angry song from the sixties by Buffy Sainte Marie, “My country ‘Tis Of Thy People You’re Dying”.