Lee Mun Wah and the Courage to Walk One Another Home

What it takes to change the world...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp5SNpCtiWk

I have been thinking lately about my own identity. Each moment we are encouraged to let pieces of ourselves go. What does it take to learn who we are again?

Documentary: Beyond the Shadows

Beyond the Shadows. n.p.: Gryphon Productions, 1992. - Available at kanopystreaming.com

This is a twenty-eight-minute documentary packed with heartfelt testimony by First Nation peoples in Canada who suffered "multi-generational rape" in boarding schools. The quote from the documentary is literal and figurative: children were often abused culturally, physically, emotionally, and sexually over decades. Multi-generational trauma continues to reverberate through First Nation communities. 

In addition to testimony, the documentary demonstrates First Nation peoples healing themselves through workshops with trained professionals. The healing shown is in small and larger groups--affirming one another, telling their stories, and developing creative ways of expressing the pain through theater.

This documentary is a reminder that the legacy of abuses against First Nation peoples has a long way to go before being acknowledged and addressed, and much longer before being redressed.

Looking up old Spanish Words

In case you need to know what the difference between "comensal" and "convidado" was in 1841, this is a great site:

http://buscon.rae.es/ntlle/SrvltGUISalirNtlle

In case that doesn't work, Google NTTLE.

In case you are interested in my interpretation, comensal is like a table companion, where convidado is a guest. And in today's Spanish, I believe convidado would sound formal (however, it is common in Portuguese), whereas invitado or visita would be more common. Your commentary is welcome in case you have thoughts on the matter.

Nationalism

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities. New York: Verso, 1991, 5.

"Tom Nairn can nonetheless write that: '"Nationalism" is the pathology of modern developmental history, as inescapable as "neurosis" in the individual, with much the same essential ambiguity attaching to it, a similar built-in capacity for descent into dementia, rooted in the dilemmas of helplessness thrust upon most of the world (the equivalent of infantilism for societies) and largely incurable."" (Quoted from The Break-up of Britain, p. 359)

Writing an MA thesis

The other day I spent five hours on one paragraph.

I am not sure it is any good.

A mentor of mine recently said "Sometimes it takes you all day to write a sentence."

I now believe it.

If I could cut off an appendage and turn the blood-soaked pages into a few paragraphs of coherent writing, I might have to consider it. Are we talking just one digit? First knuckle? Tempting...

Documentary: Food, Inc.

An empowering look at an industrial food industry that only in recent history seems to have gone awry. One of the most depressing realizations was that getting sick from the distribution of food is now becoming more common. The upside? Each act of purchasing and consuming food is a political act that large producers, distributors, and retailers look at closely.

Documentary: Discover Latino History & The Latino Influence On the United States (2005). TMW Media

A 17-minute history of Latino influence on the U.S.

This is the sort of video that I might have seen in middle school or early high school in the 1980s with a bubble test afterward. It bullet points historical points on Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba. It brings up the Monroe Doctrine, but does not explain it. In the Cuba portion, it describes the Bay of Pigs but doesn't mention it by name.

The Latino perspective and influences on the U.S. are limited to a mention of some cultural and political players such as Desi Arnaz and César Chavez. In essence, it is what you might expect from a 17-minute documentary.