Islam is at the heart of an emerging global anti-hegemonic culture that combines diasporic and local cultural elements, and blends Arab, Islamic, black and Hispanic factors to generate "a revolutionary black, Asian and Hispanic globalization, with its own dynamic counter-modernity constructed in order to fight global imperialism. (say what!)
I'm at an age where I have been thinking alot about the "road not taken". What would my life be like if I had zigged instead of zagged? So while we are on the subject of Scientology and mental health, I feel like mentioning that in another life I might have been some flavor of shrink. (I've been facinated with psychology as far back as 8th grade when I had to do a huge school project about Sigmund Freud. And my interest continued enough that I majored in psychology in college).
Honestly, if I had had a vocation in mental health, I would probably be some kind of "anti-psychiatrist". To be clear, I'm definitely NOT an advocate for the extreme beliefs of Scientology which are categorically opposed to pretty much all forms of psychological or psychiatric treatment. But many of the thinkers who appealed to me tended to be critical of the mental health field and were trying to push it in a new direction.
I was intrigued by Thomas Szasz and his ideas about The Myth of Mental Illness ("mental illness" is less a disease and more a metaphor for people who have some kinds of problems with living). For the record I do NOT believe mental illness is just a metaphor. There are certainly people with chemical imbalances in the brain or people who are neurodivergent. But I'd still think it is worth exploring other counter-points (like R.D. Laing's approach to schizophrenia or the implications of the Rosenhan Experiment).
Another influence / source for me would be Frantz Fanon and his ideas about how racism and colonialism lead to certain neuroses, and how poltical resistance can lead to healing (along with the publication The Radical Therapist which looked at the social dimension of mental health, as opposed to just the individual component).
I'm also a fan of Na'im Akbar and the way he fused Afrocentricity in a natural way with Quranic ideas (In contrast to how other Afrocentrists framed Islam as an anti-African religon). I also liked Laleh Bakhtiar and the idea of moral healing. And in general I'd think Sufism has some valuable insights in terms of mental states and personal development.
For another chunk of my teenage years I was really into existentialism. And was really drawn to Existential Therapy along with Viktor Frankl and Logotherapy. I was especially impressed with Frankl's ideas about the need for meaning, and the capacity to find it, even in the most extreme of circumstances.
And while it might seem contradictory to the above, I've also tended to like B.F. Skinner. While I would not follow the extremes of his radical behaviorism, I think he offered a valuable corrective to the way some psychologists tended to invent and multiply concepts, structures, diseases, etc. There is something useful in trying to focus on visible behaviors and minimizing the assumptions that we make.
So I'm starting to watch "Shrill" and it is reminding me of the brilliant and hilarious graphic novel, "Why I Hate Saturn" by Kyle Baker. Both are about a white woman who writes for some kind of magazine / periodical and goes on zany adventures. Both have black friends who are not just the sidekick but have their own independent voices and perspectives. Both are full of social and political commentary.
I wonder if Netflix / Hulu / Amazon would turn "Why I Hate Saturn" into a movie or series? It is over 30 years old at this point so it might have to be updated.
This is actually an older link but I'm honestly a bit late thinking about this so I'm going to post it anyway. This is actually about a scene from the first season of The Handmaid's Tale. So apparently other people out there are are drawing connections between the content of the show and the faith and practice of Scientology.
At the end of season 3 episode 2 there is an odd sequence. Emily is an ex-Handmaid who has spent years trapped in Gilead while her Canadian wife and son managed to escape across the border. At the end of season 2 she manages to escape across the border but she is still too traumatized to reconnect with family so she's living with June's husband and her friend Moira. At the end of the episode in question, the show spends several minutes showing us Emily going to an optometrist.
We don't really see her have any particular emotional breakthrough except after she is fitted with glasses she finally summons the courage to call her wife.
What possible connection might there be between Scientology and eyesight? Is correcting one's eyesight symbolically connected to being "spiritually" clear? Perhaps.
I have been a fan of The Handmaid's Tale for a while. I read the novel when I was in high school. I saw the film a few years after that. And I have been really excited and intrigued by the way the Hulu series expands and fleshes out, and also slightly modifies, the world Margaret Atwood created. (I haven't yet read the sequel novel called The Testaments)
The Hulu series' first season covers roughly the same ground as the novel and film, supplemented by flashbacks and more detailed characterizations. The subsequent seasons move into uncharted territory. One of the most welcome changes: in the novel and the film, the Republic of Gilead was blatantly racist and essentially sends all Black people off to labor in the colonies as the cursed Children of Ham. On the show, on the other hand, the regime is not so exclusive, and so we see people of color at multiple levels of society, as Commanders, Marthas, Handmaids, Wives, Econopeople (which means more jobs for black actors, more representation, etc.) This also creates space for interesting kinds of intersectional analysis of June's character and the world of Gilead.
More recently, I've started to explore another way in which the show seems distinct based on the fact that its star, Elisabeth Moss (also producer, executive producer and occasional director) is a Scientologist. This season especially I've started to wonder if Scientology is influencing the way the story is told.
In this current season (Season 4), after serving many years as a Handmaid in Gilead, the main character June Osborne (played by Elisabeth Moss) finally manages to escape and reunite with her husband in Canada. As a result, instead of being focused on really basic needs like survival, escape and not getting mutilated or raped (which is basically what the first three seasons were about), June finally has time to focus on less basic issues like dealing with severe psychological trauma and her relationship with her husband. June has some clear symptoms of PTSD. The catch is that is that the Church of Scientology is famous for its stances against psychology and psychiatry. So its not likely that any show run by a Scientologist would ever depict characters benefitting from conventional therapy. And, Lo and Behold, that's pretty much what we see on the show.
It would be really interesting if someone more familiar with Scientology could thoroughly unpack what is going on this season (and in earlier seasons) . We see numerous traumatized Gilead refugees in Canada, but they don't seem to be getting any professional mental health help. There is a kind of peer support / group therapy (?) lead by June's friend Moira (who is a computer programmer, not an actual therapist). But even so, June doesn't seem to quite fit into, or get much benefit from the group. In fact, June seems to subvert the norms of the group. Instead of being interested in healing she seems to be all about promoting angry confrontations.
For example, in episode seven of season four (called "Home") June spends most of the episode in a kind of trance, but does manage get noticeably "better" after she has a scene angrily confronting Serena:
In a similar way, we see another ex-Handmaid named Emily also confront Aunt Irene (a character we've never seen before but who turns out to be primarily responsible for much of the trauma Emily experienced in Gilead) and she is also reduced to a sobbing kneeling mess on the floor.
In Scientology there is a whole course called "How to Confront and Shatter Suppression". (A "suppressive person" is a Scientology term for the ultimate anti-social type) and I wonder if this "shattering" is what we are seeing in how June and Emily treat their opponents.
Another basic Scientology concept is the Silent Birth
Silent birth, sometimes known as quiet birth, is a birthing procedure advised by L. Ron Hubbard and advocated by Scientologists in which "everyone attending the birth should refrain from spoken words as much as possible" and where "... chatty doctors and nurses, shouts to 'PUSH, PUSH' and loud or laughing remarks to 'encourage' are avoided". According to Scientology doctrine, this is because "any words spoken are recorded in the reactive mind and can have an aberrative effect on the mother and the child." Hubbard believed that breaking the silence during childbirth with words could adversely affect the child later in life
I mentioned it here because it occurs to me that on the show when June has her second baby she managed to run off and have the baby alone. And then in the eighth episode of season three "Unfit" I noticed that there are two main childbirth scenes, and in both of them we see all the other handmaids telling the expectant mother to "push" and "breathe" while Moss' character stands noticeably apart from the group, silent (except for a voiceover) with her arms crossed (pictured above). Almost as if she were silently protesting the non-silent birth.
One last possible connection between the show and Scientology (even if only tangential) which I'd like to consider is the notion of the Scientology stare.
A large chunk of Scientology training is apparently related to staring and maintaining eye-contact. I imagine that some of the skills developed in their courses is probably legitimately good for actors. And apparently Elisabeth Moss gets a lot of mileage out of this training since many episodes, especially the first and last scenes tend to feature intense close-ups of Moss staring into the camera.
Well, those are my thoughts for now. I really do think it would be fruitful for others better versed in Scientology to further explore ways that Scientology concepts might percolate through the Hulu series. Are there other examples of Silent Birth? Are there other ways in which Scientology perspectives on mental health show up? Are the forces of Gilead not just generically "evil" but do they exemplify specific Scientology claims about "suppressive persons" ? Does character development on the show make sense in terms of the heroes overcoming the reactive mind and going clear? Anything else?
ADDENDUM: Another possibility which came to me after posting: I have not yet read the sequel novel The Testaments, but I've read some summaries. One of the interesting developments is that the character of Aunt Lydia in the books is revealed to have been a secret dissident opposed to the regime from the beginning. She lost her job as a judge when Gilead was created and quietly did what she could to destroy the regime from within. From what I remember of the first novel, that revelation is surprising but not inconsistent with the character. She did her job and mouthed platitudes but I didn't have the impression that she was extremely cruel.
On the other hand, the tv show's version of Aunt Lydia (played by the amazing actress Ann Dowd) is pretty clearly a dyed-in-the-wool Gilead loyalist. She's not just maintaining a cover. She sadistically enjoys using her cattle prod to punish the disobedient Handmaids and gleefully supports punishing dissidents. Now it would be interesting if the show had gone in a direction more like the book where Aunt Lydia's loyalties were more ambiguous; where she cared for the Handmaids while serving the regime, but without being so sadistic. (In Harry Potter terms, More Severus Snape, less Dolores Umbridge).
Now, where could Scientology come into this? Well, it seems to me that the Scientology view is somewhat dualistic and unforgiving, especially when it comes to what is called a suppressive person. And if Gilead is supposed to represent a regime of SPs, then perhaps Moss would be less inclined to have Aunt Lydia show as much moral complexity as suggested by the books.
Ok, I'd like to reiterate, I'm not claiming that the above examples are evidence that Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale is some kind of Scientology-propaganda. But I would say that there are some interesting points of contact between Scientology doctrines and what we see on the show (especially when it comes to those elements where the show differs from the novels). And is intriguing to think about how Moss' personal views are being reflected in the show.
For a while I've been aware that Christian missionaries have targeted Jews and have put in great effort towards presenting "the gospel" in a way which is targeted towards disarming Jews by making the Christian message seem more "Jewish". (Using Hebrew, emphasizing cultural practices like yarmulkes, Hanukah, Passover, keeping kosher, etc.) Jews for Jesus is well known for this.
More recently, I've become more aware of Christian attempts to engage in similar strategies against Muslims.
But now, missionaries are engaging in something called The Camel Method. The method involves selectively emphasizing all of the positive things the Quran has to say about Jesus (as), the Injeel, the Torah, Christianity, Judaism and the Biblical prophets (while ignoring all of the negative and critical things the Quran has to say about the mistakes of Christians and Jews) and somehow leveraging that in an attempt to lead Muslims to becoming Christian.
The term CAMEL is ostensibly an acronym which stands for Chosen (Mary was chosen by God for a special purpose), Announced by angels, Miracles (Jesus’ power is revealed in his miracles), and Eternal Life (Jesus is and knows the way to heaven). It is also supposedly a reference to a so-called Islamic parable about how only the camel knows the secret 100th name of Allah. Both explanations seem implausible to me. And I can't help thinking about a different Arab parable warning against letting a camel get its nose in your tent.
For a while now, I've witnessed a number of odd interactions online with a particular Christian missionary who seems to come from a Seventh Day Adventist background, but has started to adopt all sorts of "Muslim" mannerisms, even to the point of claiming to be Muslim at times (but denying it at other times), going to the masjid, claiming to believe in Muhammad (saaws) and the Quran, all with the intention of doing Christian missionary work.
When I first encountered him I was intrigued. He seemed like he was on a sincere and principled personal religious exploration, trying to read the Bible and the Quran, while trying to reconcile both. He made me think of people in a "grey area" between Islam and Christianity whom I've looked at before:
He also seemed very different from the Perenialists (like James Cutsinger), Integral Thinkers, Bahais, Universal Sufis, Theosophists, inclusivists (like Hans Kung for instance) or assorted syncretists whom I've had at least some exposure to and who give some mixture of acknowledgement to both Christianity and Islam.
But then the more I listened to him, the more I realized that he didn't seem to take the Quran or Islam seriously (For example, he argues that neither fasting in the month of Ramadan nor making salat facing the Kaaba nor Hajj is obligatory. He actually was even willing to give some credence to the whole The original qiblah was Petra nonsense which seems to be going around in evangelical Islamophobe circles). He didn't want to admit that any new binding commandments could come through Muhammad (saaws) and didn't accept Muhammad as a new messenger to humanity. Instead he seems to imagine that Muhammad was basically some sort of Torah-observant Christian pastor who was just sent to the Arabs. He wasn't "exploring" and "learning" as much as blatantly coopting and distorting.
Inshallah, I'll unpack more of my thoughts over time.
I realize I haven't been posting with any kind of regularity. InshaAllah, I'll try to change that up, at least a little. Especially with COVID lockdowns, police shootings, now trouble in Palestine and other more personal stuff I'm way too stuck in my own head. I need some kind of healthy self-expression. And Facebook has been getting toxic and addictive lately.
I have some novel / novella / graphic novel ideas I want to work on. Also I've been too caught up in religious arguments on other people's pages lately. I feel like I might benefit from just putting together my own thoughts on my own terms and sharing them. Even if it is only to get them out and let them go.
I heard this on the radio today while driving... I was tempted to call-in but now I realize it wasn't a live show.
WLRN: Afro-Latinos Say Miami Blackface Play Is Part Of Bigger Problem With Racism In Latino Communities
The point about invisibility was really interesting to me. When I first moved to Miami I wanted to do a study on whether people(cashiers mostly) spoke to me in Spanish when they first saw me or English. Are people just assuming I don't speak Spanish? Statistically is that a reasonable assumption or not? How does it change with the race of the cashier?
I've been away from the blog for a while. I'll try to post with a little more frequency. An odd observation.... I was just checking out some of the statistics for the blog and for some strange reason I'm getting alot of page views from Russia, Poland and the Ukraine.... way more than from the US... at least recently... What's up with that?
6. Dr. Farrokh Sekaleshfar was a cleric who came to Orlando to give an academic talk on homosexuality in Islam. A snippet of his talk was quoted repeatedly in the news. But here is a broader sample of Dr. Sekaleshfar's comments.
I haven't been blogging for a while, but I feel like putting this out there. One of the interesting details which have emerged from the horrifically intersectional onion-like complexity of the recent Orlando shooting are accounts of Imran Yousuf, an ex-marine and bouncer at the nightclub who saved dozens of lives during the attack:
What was really weird to me is that the initial reports identified Yousuf as a Hindu when he clearly had a Muslim name (both Imran and Yusuf are in the Quran). It also raised questions in terms of who gets included or excluded in what "Muslim" means in the popular consciousness. The church-going black president who repeatedly claims to be Christian? Muslim. The mass-murdering, Grindr-using, alcohol-drinking, gay-club regular? Muslim. The hero who saved at least 60 people during the Orlando shooting with a Muslim name? Hindu.
I finally found an article which unpacks a bit more info regarding Imran Yousuf's background in India West:
The Yousufs emigrated from India to Guyana four generations ago. Imran Yousuf’s paternal grandfather is Muslim, and his grandmother is Hindu, so his father Rasheed is a mix of both ethnicities. Yousuf’s mother Norma is Hindu, and Imran Yousuf identifies as a Hindu, said Christina Yousuf.
So its not clear how exactly his father identified, but loosely speaking, Imran is "one quarter" Muslim. .. which should be at least one half Muslim by birther standards, right?
I first heard this song on the radio last year a few days after a relative was shot. I didn't know the name of the song then, but I finally managed to put together enough clues to track the song down.
Anarchist Traditionalism: Hakim Bey is an old blog piece, but new to me. It makes me wonder about what other ways Traditionalism can be reconciled with leftist thought.
For a while I've been fascinated by the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis. The basic idea is that St. Elsewhere, an 80's hospital drama/comedy is television's version of Kevin Bacon, in other words, if you keep track of the various cameos, crossovers, spinoffs, and fictional allusions, it turns out that hundreds of tv shows arguably exist in the same fictional universe as St. Elsewhere. Furthermore, based on St. Elsewhere's final episode, it turns out that the show (and all the shows linked to it) are happening inside of the mind of an autistic boy named Tommy Westphall who spends his days staring at a snowglobe.
There are numerous sites/blogs maintained by folks keeping track of which shows are part of the universe, but I'm not sure how complete or up-to-date any of them are.
An idea that has been on my literary bucket list is to write stories (something in the ballpark of the League of the Extraordinary Gentlemen) which thoroughly broke down the boundaries between shows in the Tommy Westphall universe
Some more specific notions:
1. A major protagonist would be Det. Munch (who has appeared in several different series, most recently, the Law & Order franchise).
2. A major antagonist would be a Conspiracy which uses Morley Cigarettes Inc. as one of its fronts. (Morley is a fictional brand which connects many shows: The Twilight Zone, Buffy, X-Files The Walking Dead)
3. One of the conspiracies objectives is to find /exploit both Tommy Westphall and the snowglobe as a way of gaining power.
4. Organized criminals / serial killers also connected to the Conspiracy might be a good way to connect different police procedural / legal type shows.
5. The Conspiracy also releases a series of infections which culminates in a Walking Dead style zombie apocalypse. This might be a good way to connect the hospital / medical type shows.
6. UPS Drivers, Postal Carriers, Baristas, DMV workers, might provide an interesting perspective to connect any of the shows, especially the more mundane ones.
It would also be fun to imagine how to combine various genre shows into a coherent pastiche. although doing it consistently would probably be difficult.
7. Supernatural Shows
Addams Family, American Horror Story, Angel, Bewitched, Buffy, Early Edition, I Dream of Jeannie, Milenium, Reaper, Sabrina the Teenage Witch (Is the Conspiracy connected to the Millenium Group or the League of the Black Thorn? Is the snowglobe related to the newspaper in Early Edition?)
8: Sci-Fi (present)
Alias, Alphas, Dr. Who, Eerie, Indiana, Eureka, Flashforward, Heroes, Journeyman, The Lone Gunman, Lost, Mork and Mindy, Quantum Leap, The Sarah Jane Adventures, Special Unit 2, Torchwood, Warehouse 13, X-Files (John Doggett and Monica Reyes from the X-Files might be a good duo to help Munch. Perhaps after Samuel Beckett disappears and Project Leap is mostly boxed-up, a happily married Al Calavicci is appointed to a Cabinet-level position overseeing the X-Files /Warehouse 13 / Special Unit 2 / CONTROL / Dharma Initiative / Department of Special Research)
9: Sci-Fi (future)
Battlestar Galactica (reboot), Caprica, Firefly, Red Dwarf, Space: 1999, Space: Above & Beyond, Star Trek (Star Trek is too totalizing to reconcile with some of these other shows, but perhaps elements can be combined in reasonable ways. There is a Federation/Alliance but there are also Maquis/Brownshirts who want to secede. There is also a part of space where they send Space Marine types to fight a secret war against the Chigs? The Conspiracy, in this period might use Weyland-Yutani / Blue Sun / The ORion Syndicate as their main front.)
10. It would be fun to explain the multiple roles played by the same actors through some kind of Orphan Black- style project.
Just some thoughts. Who knows? Maybe this will become a sub-genre of fan fiction, in its own right?
The recording has long been understood to be a deeply spiritual, even devotional, piece. Its four phases - "Acknowledgement", "Resolution", "Pursuance" and "Psalms" - reflect what Coltrane described as a "spiritual awakening" in his overcoming of drug and alcohol problems.
Yet, what was the nature of that "spiritual awakening"? The conventional view is that by 1964, Coltrane had moved away from his Methodist upbringing, adopting a "pan-religious" outlook with a particular interest in Eastern mysticism. In spite of that, "A Love Supreme" is still described as laden with Biblical symbolism: the title "Psalm", and the rising cadences, reminiscent of black preachers' style, are offered as evidence that Coltrane was still rooted in Christianity. But ask one of the jazzmen or Muslim elders who knew Coltrane, and you get a different answer.
The saxophonist Yusef Lateef, who died at the age of 93 earlier this year, worked closely with Coltrane between 1963 and 1966. In his autobiography , "A Gentle Giant", Lateef says: "The prayer that John wrote in 'A Love Supreme' repeats the phrase 'All praise belongs to God no matter what' several times. This phrase has the semantics of the al-Fatiha, which is the first chapter or sura of the Holy Quran. The Arabic transliteration is 'al-Humdulilah…' Since all faithful Muslims say the al-Fatiha five times a day or more, it is reasonable to assume that John heard this phrase from [his Muslim wife] Sister Naima many times."
Lateef is referring to the poem Coltrane wrote and included in the liner notes of the album. Coltrane wrote: "No matter what … It is with God. He is gracious and merciful" and ends with "All praise to God..."
What Lateef and others have noted is that "gracious and merciful" is a translation of "rahman raheem", the opening lines of the Fatiha. Moreover, say the elders, when Coltrane begins chanting the album's title for half a minute it sounds like a Sufi breathily repeating "Allah supreme".
The relationship between Islam and jazz is almost a century-old. It was in the 1920s that the Ahmadiyya movement, a heterodox Islamic movement that emerged in 19th century India, began sending missionaries to US cities, building a substantial following among African Americans in the decades to come. In a trend that still intrigues historians and music critics, after World War II, scores of jazz musicians embraced Ahmadi Islam.
When Coltrane arrived in Philadelphia in 1943, the Muslim presence in the "city of brotherly love" would rattle the young man. As he told an interviewer in 1958: "This Muslim thing came up. I got introduced to that. And that kind of shook me."
The saxophonist was surrounded by Muslims: his drummer Rashied Ali was Muslim, as was his pianist McCoy Tyner (Suleiman Saud), and saxophonist Lateef. Coltrane then married Naima Grubbs, an observant Muslim. Even Coltrane's band members have pondered his relationship to Islam. If Lateef suspected that Coltrane's art was influenced by the Quran, the drummer Rashied Ali thought that the saxophonist was "a real country boy" and that "he was into being a Muslim and everything like that".
One also hears the argument that Coltrane wanted to title his composition Allah Supreme - instead of A Love Supreme - but was worried about a political backlash, given the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
"Back then jazz and Islam were intertwined - the first time I heard the adhan on Temple University radio, I thought it was a Nina Simone song," says Imam Nadim Ali, a celebrated jazz deejay and community leader who spent his youth in Philadelphia. "Artists were deeply influenced by Islam - sometimes publicly in their art, sometimes privately."
It's not inconceivable that "A Love Supreme" could have been inspired by the Quran. After all, as the elders will observe, "Celebration", that great funk hit by Kool & the Gang, was inspired by a Quranic sura.
"The initial idea came from the Quran," says Ronald Bell (Khalis Bayyan), the group's saxophonist and musical arranger. "I was reading the passage, where God was creating Adam, and the angels were celebrating and singing praises. That inspired me to write the basic chords, the line, 'Everyone around the world, come on, celebration'."
This song inspired by Islam - and released in 1980 - would become an international hit heard at ball games and political rallies in the US, and ironically was played by the Reagan administration on February 7, 1981, to welcome home the hostages held by students in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
For a long time I've actually thought that once gay marriage was legal, laws against polygamy would probably declared unconstitutional as well, based on similar legal reasoning.
Even Chief Justice John Roberts basically said as much in his dissenting opinion to Friday's Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage:
It is striking how much of the majority’s reasoning would apply with equal force to the claim of a fundamental right to plural marriage. If “[t]here is dignity in the bond between two men or two women who seek to marry and in their autonomy to make such profound choices,” why would there be any less dignity in the bond between three people who, in exercising their autonomy, seek to make the profound choice to marry? If a same-sex couple has the constitutional right to marry because their children would otherwise “suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser,” why wouldn’t the same reasoning apply to a family of three or more persons raising children? If not having the opportunity to marry “serves to disrespect and subordinate” gay and lesbian couples, why wouldn’t the same “imposition of this disability,” serve to disrespect and subordinate people who find fulfillment in polyamorous relationships?
Here are a range of other voices weighing in on the relationship between gay marriage and polygamy.
Ello, the so-called anti-Facebook is actually on the interesting side. Ad-free. Nice design. Original content. It is still in its beta phase so they are still gradually rolling out its features. And the community is still growing. Nevertheless, It should be a nice alternative to Facebook.
I had last worked on this over two years ago (Thursday April 18, 2013) and left it as a draft, but given recent events, I thought I should probably dust this off and publish it.... and think about a part three....
Another element of the popular culture which has gotten me thinking about Game of Thrones vs. Brave New World is the show Switched at Birth. The show is a drama on ABC Family which (as the title implies) involves two girls who, as babies, were switched at the hospital and went home to the wrong family. One grew up as Daphne Vasquez and was raised by a Puerto Rican Latina single mother. (The mother's Italian-French-Arab boyfriend had been in the picture but then left when a paternity test confirmed that Daphne was not his daughter). Also a childhood bout with meningitis has left Daphne deaf. The other girl grew up as Bay Kennish, who was given a fairly comfortable upbringing, raised with a younger "brother" by a retired major league baseball player and a stay-at-home mom.
The show has gotten a bit melodramatic lately, but it is surprisingly thought-provoking for a teenage drama; raising issues of nature vs. nurture, class, race, ethnicity, privilege, deaf culture, and the nature of family obligation.
The reason why I bring it up in the context of Game of Thrones vs. Brave New World is because of the surprising way the show seems to deal with issues of custody. Even after the hospital's mistake is discovered by the two families, the girls don't simply go back to their natural families but instead the two families move in together (the wealthy Kennishes happen to have an empty guest house) and form a complex blended arrangement.
For a different look at the relationship between Blackness and Jewishness, we can consider Rabbi Capers Funnye, a long time leader in the Black Jewish community, and a cousin of Michelle Obama.
Weird day, virtually speaking. I will try to find the silver lining... e.g. more time to read Quran, work on myself, work on the novel, more time to get my thoughts down here.
Amandla Stenberg, who played Rue in the film Hunger Games, shares some incisive thoughts on cultural appropriation and hip-hop.
Amandla, we salute you.
The voice of Robin on the Super-friends, Norville "Shaggy" Rogers in the Scooby-Doo franchise, and most famously the long-time host of American Top 40 and related/similar shows. (see Wikipedia)
From the video:
"Back in March 2014, Maiko went to Iraq as a Volunteer to help Syrian refugees.
She thought it would be wonderful and powerful if she could make a Happy song with syrian refugees living in the camp.
The life in the camp is of course, not easy, everyone has lots of burdens and have lost many things back home in Syria
But they are not only grieving
They celebrate their birthdays, or new born babies, or someone's wedding in the community
They always try to have something to have fun with. they are really living their lives.
She told them about this idea of a Happy clip,
They were so thrilled that they made one.. ;o)
I helped them remotely by doing the editing.
You can see that they are happy even though they are living a tough situation.
Thanks Maiko for your volunteering and your great help.
Good luck to all those Syrian refugees !!!!
Stay happy, whatever the circumstances."
In the first link I was surprised at the appearance of Hmong, Vietnamese and Navajo on the map. While on the second I was surprised by the number of states where the second largest religion was either Islam or Buddhism (I suppose I just expected Jews to appear as the number two religion in more states... I mean, even in Florida, the second largest religion was Islam) I was also surprised that the Bahai Faith was actually the second largest religion in any of the states (they got South Carolina).
Published on May 26, 2014
Despite the heavy toll of the ongoing Syrian conflict on the lives of Syria's most vulnerable population, its children remain resilient. (RESTORE)Happy contains footage from Zaatari refugee camp and a Syrian refugee school inside Jordan. We traveled to Jordan in April of 2014 equipped with coloring books, crayons, soccer balls, hula hops, jump ropes, and toys and "Happy" by Pharrell Williams blaring on portable speakers...
We made this video with hopes to encourage people to support Education and Mental Health programs that work with Syrian refugees and internally displaced Syrian children.
Please visit: www.love4syria.com to find an organization to support.
Produced by:
Hazami Barmada
Omar Al-Chaar
Rameen Aminzadeh
A project of: Beats, Rhymes & Relief: www.beatsrhymesandrelief.org
Join us in the Fall of 2014 One World Syria, A Celebrity Benefit Concert for Syria. Learn more: www.oneworldsyria.com
