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jeannereames · 1 year

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Cut the Old Queers Some Slack

This post brought to you by a review of Sandra Boehringer’s Female Homosexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome, which recent translation I posted about earlier with no little excitement. The BMCR review annoyed me for a couple reasons.

First was an assumption that when a book is translated, the author should retool it to modern terminology.* In the end, the reviewer said maybe just the forward from Boehringer should have addressed trans issues—which isn’t an invalid point—but other parts of the review seem to slam Boehringer for not doing more revisions for the new English translation (from a French original published in 2007). This leads me to….

Second issue: this assumes a uniquely Angliphone understanding, and even more, a British one (the reviewer teaches at Leeds), where the issue of TERFs is more pressing than in the US. Here, transphobia and transmisogyny is rooted more in religious objections than a subsect of radical feminists (who may not be religious at all). It’s not that the US has no TERFs, but it's not nearly the issue (ime) as in the UK.

Every country has its own quirks of bias. And the author is French. If I’ve learned anything about Queer culture in my almost 60 years on this planet, it’s that the pressing issues in one country are manifestly not the pressing issues in another—particularly across language lines. To assume they are (or should be) centers Angliphone culture in a way that annoys me.

OTOH, yes, especially US English-speakers have poor linguistic skills to read non-Anglophone scholarship as a result of bad public-school language education. But access to good language education is a matter of MONEY, which gets us into issues of social class, et al. That’s a different kettle of fish (which deserves its own post about wealth gate-keeping in academia).

But I do my best to remain cognizant that the ways we talk about queer culture and concerns differ even in Anglophone countries, never mind those of non-English speakers.

So that was my second big issue with this review.

The reviewer acknowledges that the original came out in 2007, and queer scholarship about the ancient world has moved on, particularly as regards recognition of non-binary ancient figures. But she can’t seem to keep from knocking Boehringer for not magically keeping up.

Folks, grant the Old Queers some slack here? When I was young, it was just LGB. Then LGBT. Now it’s an alphabet soup. I’m quite sure young queers who read “An Atypical Affair: Alexander the Great, Hephaistion Amyntoros, and the Nature of Their Relationship,” could take exception to my phrasing in places. Hell, I’ll revise portions of it for my bio on Hephaistion and Krateros.

But it was published in 1999! And I actually wrote the thing in 1996 as a class assignment, then revised it in 1998 for that 1999 publication date.

Remember, some of us have been in this fight a while. I do my best to keep up with current terminology—and do genuinely want to do so—but it’s kinda gauche to slam authors for material previously published, especially in such a rapidly changing field.

To expect an author to substantially retool a prior publication for a translation is uncool. Real revision takes a lot of time. Not something I think many people fully understand. It’s not a matter of a couple weeks’ tweaks. If she were to produce a revised/second edition, that might take years. I’d rather have the book translated than wait five years for Boehringer to revise it. I can take it in the spirit of its original publication date: 2007. Could she have been more straightforward in her new forward? Perhaps. But French concerns aren’t British ones.

——

*Let me also say—as someone whose work is currently being translated—we may not have as much control as readers assume. I sent a letter to the Italian publisher, all but begging them to PLEASE keep the Greek transliterations of names and Greek words with Dancing with the Lion. They said they would, but I can’t force them to do so. For all I know, the Italian translation could be a dumpster fire. I hope not, I trust not, but translations are dicey. And if academic translations are quite different from fiction, be aware of the limits original authors face with translations.

#Female homosexuality in antiquity #The problem with reviews #Classics #BMCR #ancient history #ancient sexuality

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manmetaphysical · 20 days

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'All the Lives We Never Lived' by Anuradha Roy: Book Review

This is quite a readable novel but that does not equate to a really satisfactory one. The writing is beautiful, if a bit too intricate and flowery where the tone and style does not change much despite the shifts in viewpoint either of character or in time. It is littered with comma splice sentences which lend a certain rhythm to the phrasing. But that can be overused.

What becomes troubling is that it suffers from poor realisation of character and confused sequencing. Much of the main action between Gayatri and her husband is told through the eyes of her son Myshkin who does not really understand what is happening. These are sidelong glances by the son, or recollections by his older self. By nature they are partial. So if this is a device- the unreliable narrator- it allows for teasing glimpses, but never the full picture.

This indirectness accumulates and the effect is we don’t reall get to sympathise with Gayatri’s situation. It’s not enough to say she is a new type of woman in Indian literature as other reviewers have said, that Gayatri breaks the mould in some way. We still need to know what motivates her, and for two thirds of it, we have no idea.

It’s not until the end when the son Myshkin reads his mother’s letters do we get Gayatri’s reasoning laid bare. The tone becomes thankfully more direct. But her insights from Bali delivered in numerous letters all seems rationalised in hindsight. We rarely get the feelings unfiltered in present tense. It’s hard to feel exactly what made her take off so impulsively.

Incidentally, if you are wondering what are my credentials for writing book reviews like this of a major novel? I used to write for the 'Village Voice' and 'Publisher’s Weekly'. So, I would not wish to spoil your enjoyment. I confess I was well prepared to like it and enjoy it, but I have to say I struggled with it on several levels.

In this review I’m going to layer in some astrological analysis too which would never have been allowed in a trade publication like PW. So it can be read on two levels.

The character Gayatri seems naïve, possibly even bipolar, she throws tantrums, and is unable to clearly perceive the impact that leaving her son and husband would have. This might be a different take than intended. She had even promised to take Myshkin with her to Bali. Yet she leaves him behind because he was held up at school? She did not go back for him. There are several other things quite odd about Gayatri.

But at least Roy allows us to see how there is a lot of ‘othering’ of other nationalities, and this goes on all the time. She shows that many Indians have a casual sort of inverse racism, where characters think all ‘white’ people are British who are posed as the 'oppressors' even when they are German in the case of Spies and Dutch in the case of Beryl de Coete. Even the Balinese are strange and opaque to Gayatri. The sea is not ‘boiling’ there, it’s just the normal temperature. And, even when Myshkin thinks someone is the prison camp is German, he says causally this man would enjoy killing, as if all Germans are psychotic sadists. This is meant to be the real life Heinrich Harrer, the mountaineer and author of ‘Seven Years in Tibet’ but he was Austrian, not German.

I can accept that Gayatri is the independent type and not suited for motherhood or being the ideal wife, and that she wants to be an artist. But it is hard to understand why she seems so blind to the fact that Walter Spies homosexual. The implications of his sexuality and its effect on repelling her husband is not explored. Yet, surely they might have suspected his tastes, even though the terminology for it was different in the 1930s?

That Spies was in India and made a point of coming to get her is where fact and fiction are woven together- and all that can make for a good novel. But it can also not ring true. The real life Spies did not go to India in this way, but he had a taste for boys, especially Balinese, but his real ‘crime’ if any, was he was German in WWII. He did not change his passport. He just happened to be on the wrong side of the fence as the world divided up its loyalties.

She does acknowledge his sexuality but in such a matter of fact way that it does not do justice to the interactions that must have occurred. India sent troops to Asia to help defend the allied forces, but Indonesia was under Dutch control until 1942 when the Japanese took over.

Spies was arrested and imprisoned, but Gayatri was not thanks to her nationality. In the story, she was allowed to live on in Spies’ house at Champuhan near Ubud. The charges against Spies may have been trumped up to create more of a vilification of him. He actually contributed a great deal to Bali as he was the curator of the first art Museum and he cultivated a love and appreciation of dance, music, art with the local painters and artisans. But that was the politics of the time.

The earlier part of the novel tells of Walter Spies’ arrival in India where he befriends the grown up Gayatri but he brings another ‘friend’ in tow. This was Beryl de Coete who was effectively his confidente. She married a man but they both arranged for it to be sexless until the man ran off with another woman and Beryl moved on. So while it is never stated, a lot can be inferred. And the writing glosses over these issues, even being coy at times via through Gaytri’s eyes. These are writer’s choices - often difficult to make.

Perhaps there are women who have no gaydar but her name is shortened to ‘Gay’ in her letters. So is that by choice or just accidental? Love between women is never broached but there’s a hint that Beryl might be fond of that in her admiration of the female body. Gayatri is okay with that. This could have been another reason why Gayatri leaves her marriage and her son, not just so she feels restricted and her vocation is to paint which her husband allowed her to do anyway.

But all this is avoided as if it is too 'real' to mention. So there could be another novel that grounds a clearer perception of shifting sexualities where Gayatri has a relationship with Beryl even if that is a romantic freindship? But that’s not the direction Roy takes. She has something else up her sleeve which is the adultery with Brijen Gayatri's neighbour. This is all kept hidden from her son and husband -and the reader- for a long time. So for some readers this can be frustrating and even feels misleading. Gayatri becomes instant friends with people she barely knows and we are expected to believe she abandons her whole life for them.

And the son, Myshkin the narrator of all this in arch, elegant prose is hard to fathom too. Who exactly is he? He is an unreliable narrator for sure as he seems to be always outside the main action that goes on. Consequently, he understands little, indulges in what appear to be controlled imagination sessions, similar to an OBE, where he imagines himself in Bali brought to life by vivid sensory detail, yet he is also capable of holding a nasty grudge.

He is more like his father who follows rigid political beliefs than his mother. If that is true, the whole underpinning of the story is unreliable, seen through shifting lenses. He never seems to come to any real insight about himself unless that is to be a mirror to his mother and become a painter himself? This is shown when he sees a photography of his mother. What does he believe in besides saving a few trees as a horticulturalist. He shows more feeling about the trees than he does about his mother. Why as a boy does he hate everyone around him, yet never blame himself for being late to meet his mother as promised? Why did he not think about it that way? Why does he never have any relationships himself? So, he is less well developed than Gayatri remaining unknowable.

Now for a bit of astrological speculation and it is only theorising until the facts are established. Anurahda Roy was born in 1967. No other birth data seems available for her, (unless someone can supply it?). Roy pushes these characters into shape in order to convey her point that women are suppressed in Indian society and that they should break free from their marriages which tie them down. The theme is that traditions are oppressive and cause a lot of needless suffering and limitation of people’s lives and this much is true in any society, hence universal.

But freedom is not absolute and still requires discipline, courage and responsibility to fully enjoy, surely? It’s not freedom at any cost. She this makes me suspect that Roy might be an Aquarian, perhaps ruled by Uranus who wishes for freedom at all costs? It is more complex, but the theme of the novel is one of breakfing free, so it could also be Sagittarius, the adventurer taking off to foreign climes. The birthdate of Gayatri is revealed in the letters to be the 13th September, year uknown. That would make her a Virgo. Virgos are not known to be flighty but to become an obsessive painter not much interested in sex except to learn its technical skills, yes, that makes more sense- at least to me.

Interesting also that this birthdate of Gayatri’s aligns to Walter Spies’ birth date which is who was 15th September. So they were both Virgos, just two days apart, just not in the same year. That they would have similar traits goes without saying as the solar traits of a sun sign are all pervasive, but I’m not sure that Roy had that this strand of thinking in mind when she wrote the novel. But it does make me think that Anhurada Roy could also be a Virgo?

The other famous ‘Bolter’ in literature is Fanny’s mother in ‘The Pursuit of Love’ by Nancy Mitford who was a Sagittarius. ‘The Bolter’ is not given any other name but takes off with a new lover and engages in serial monogamy in a series of affairs regardless of what her daughter thinks of her. But it was the real life Idina Sackville who could have been the model for Mitford’s ‘the bolter’ as she scandalised people in England by running off Kenya. She was a Piscean with Venus in Aquarius.

Back to the structure of the novel. It jumps around from viewpoint to viewpoint. Nothing wrong with that, but it does it in a way not strengthen its core message. The title also strikes me as odd ‘All the Lives We Never Lived.’ Unless, it is a warning to us all to live our lives to the full – follow your bliss as Campbell said- even if it means leaving a marriage, as Gayatri does indeed live out her ideal life. She goes off to Bali, so that is not a life spent unlived as we find it Chekhov’s short stories. She achieves her goal.

The husband also lives his life to the full by going off to be a Buddhist monk and then finding a young wife to marry with his first one gone there is no mention of anything like a divorce? He is a member of the Society for Indian Patriots and is willing to go to prison for his beliefs, just like Ghandi who is heroised. Yet, by implication he is meant to be the ‘bad’ character, way too rigid to understand Gayatri. So, whose life exactly is unlived I wonder? These are some of the thoughts that occur while reading as the psychology is puzzling.

For a much better appreciation of the life of WalterSpies at Iseh and Champuhan, Nigel Barley’s novel ‘Island of Demons’ (2010) delivers the full story much more explicitly without coyness or any veil of middle class beliefs. It may not be obvious but his coterie of friends Vicky Baum, Noel Coward, charlie Chaplin, Margaret Mead, Rudolph Bonnet could be the clues?

The only time where I felt finally it is getting somewhere is the voice of Gayatri in the letters from Bali. Gayatri is able to reflect more honestly. She talks about a lover she had back in India -not her husband- so this is the real transgression. But is it the only one? This is Brijen the lover in the local neighbourhood who she had an affair with. He is given as one of the reasons she felt she had to leave:

“I was still in love with him yet I wanted to be free of him. I did not love him, I have come to understand, I merely loved his addiction to me. I am not made for love, I need to be absolutely free. I am repelled by my indifference.”

She admits she is ‘contradictory’ and there’s a ‘civil war’ going on inside her. She wants to be lovable, a different person, yet she is not. She is sees the self love people have for themselves and is disgusted by it.

This is pure Uranus speaking so now it begins to make more sense- only through astrological understanding of this archetype the power of which intensifies at this moment as it stations retrograde in Taurus. This suggests a strong Uranus in the chart of Gayatri, the Virgo, perhaps where it is placed in Sagittarius? Or she may have a Moon in Aquarius? Or a stellium of planets in the 11th House? This feeling makes sense to those who have ever had a flashlight of alien insight into human affairs.

They most likely have experienced all the twisted ironies of human relationships- how something honorable and sacred can turn quickly into farce. Love as a tragi-comedy is only seen in this very illuminating distant and coldly objective light. Uranus photographed by Voyager II probe is an ice giant but the coldness could also be from the traditional ruler of Aquarius-Saturn. These are both literal and symbolic qualities.

So Roy’s 'All the Lives' is a very interesting read. I certainly was not bored reading it, and I daresay it fits all the specifications of the Overton window and of what Western liberals are meant to think, and Roy is the darling of all Guardian readers and perfect fodder for the BBC.

I hoped for a lot, especially with Walter Spies as a character, but it is full of unsettling questions. Perhaps others will love it, the style is charming, even lyrical in a subuded way, but these issues that I’ve mentioned make it as puzzling as a jigsaw where the pieces are scattered on the table, but don’t ever quite merge together to make the image whole.

#novel #bookreview #astrology #AnhuradaRoy #allthelivesweneverlived #bali #walterspies #literature #sexuality #writing #India #independence #uranus

#anurdharoy #astrology #literature #novel #bali #walterspies #sexuality #reading #writing #virgo sun #uranus

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ahnnamatthews · 3 years

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Identity Crisis

In a 1998 study, people were asked why people are interested in the past. Many answers varied stating that it can help us grapple with questions on how to live, history can help us interpret who we are and why we do things, and finally it can help shape our identities. I think all are true yes, but the latter is usually what brings people to want to understand history, their history. How I would shape the process of being interested in history is this: there is an immediate liking to an historical event, time period, or social movement that has a close identification with you. A light bulb turns on if you will. This ultimately leads to how we can use this information to help us interpret who we are and why partake in the things we do. Lastly, we are able to engage in questions on how to live. However, what happens when the history you were taught does not send a shocking wave of joy that causes that light bulb to go off?

In Thomas Cauvin’s Public History: A Textbook, Cauvin argues that people are interested in the past but have an immediate distrust in professional historians. (1-3) He further states that the public often makes their own histories rather than digest the history curated for them. Outside of historical academia, historians may think they are representing and interpreting the past for the public but oftentimes these representations and interpretations come from non-academic historians or citizen historians as Lara Kelland calls them. I one hundred percent agree with Cauvin, there is a distrust between professional historians and the public in which they are “writing” to. When you ponder on the historiography of the practice of history in America, historians of the 19th and early 20th centuries were primarily cis (often straight) white males. They had organizations in place like the American Historical Association where up until World War I they presented research to each other and rarely even debated with one another. The giant narrative was that of the white male victor. When the branch of public historians emerged wanting to bring history to the community in various creative ways, there is still this lingering distrust of the public because of the alienation of subjugated groups as well as a lack of knowledge on what public historians do. History was always for white men, it was immensely difficult to appease the public. Lara Kelland’s Clio’s Foot Soldiers, gives a macro outline of social movements that were occuring in between the 60s and early 90s. Kelland argues that historical academia fails to include the identities of marginalized groups. This causes groups to create their own identities and histories to share. “Usually working with minimal resources, often with little or no formal training in history or education, they researched, archived, authored, and presented their community histories in a variety of formats…Additionally, they performed historical interpretation in public forms before any professional field focused on such existed, serving as part of what one historian has called the “genealogy of public history.” Indeed, they were proto- public historians."(2) The public began their own historical practices normally without having historical degrees. The Black Power Leadership activities had initiated and curated their own post-secondary institutions and pushed for an academic change in the way black history was taught in schools (29). Women’s activists were less formal, however, women pushed for “women’s history” courses and to include women in conversations institutionally and worked for community engagement and educational work (96-99). LGBT community activists pushed for higher education reform as well as community resource centers. Many LGBT activists worked outside of academia to promote their histories within the community. (101-103) Lastly, Native American reclaimed their history, pushed for higher education tribal institutions, and pushed to reclaim their heritage and sacred traditions. (156). The point in adding these communities and their achievements is to argue that the public was doing much of what public historians and historians were claiming to do but had failed. BAD. Historians do not benefit from moving against social movements but moving with them. The failure with objectivity and trying to produce a neutral history while there are social movements going on does not engage the public as they think it should. These communities of people who do not feel heard. While traditional historians may think they are making their histories heard, they are failing. These communities take it into their own hands to be heard and seen. This also raises the very real possibility that you may not need to go to school to know about public history and engage in the community and to educate, reform, and produce lasting change. The public was already engaging in public history before it was a certified field, and Kelland's book is also an attempt to fix the relationship between historians and the public. Cavin

states that historians need to get away from trying to convince and teach people what public historians are and get to what we do. (16) I want us to get back to the definition of people's history. Public history is about how memory influences the past. How can we engage with the memory of the public? How do we produce stories the public genuinely wants to hear?

From Cavin's introduction to his Public History: A Textbook, he teeters with the idea that historians should be the captures of the public’s history and interpret it to make it digestible for the public in conjunction with the people. He shows how the public took it upon themselves to tell their own stories, with the water rights linking non-academic and academic historians together. (9) As well as British historians going into their working-class communities to tell their stories also created this link between professional historians and the public (11). These examples produce a reasonable resolution. If not a complete resolution then the start of a conversation. Historians should work with the public starting with the changing of historical literature as well as who is in the boardrooms when discussing public history, museums, and cultural heritage sites. Lara Kelland’s Clio’s Foot Soldiers does link professional historians and the public simply just by the content presented in the book. The problem with historians reaching the public is the antiquated terminology, stroking of the ego writing style, and major issues with assuming the public a vague understanding of the information they are trying to interpret. Kelland’s Clio’s Foot Soldiers, gives a macro-outline of social movements beginning in the 60s until about 1980-early 90s. There is enough information to get a well rounded understanding of the social movements of the 60s and its direct correlation to public history while not being so sparse where the audience is scratching their heads confused. Kelland’s language is clear, precise, and accessible to the public. The inclusion of pictures and posters almost gives the book a written museum feel. The problem with producing accurate details of the public’s history, discussing public history, museums, heritage sites, etc. is the lack of marginalized groups in the boardrooms and behind the scenes of public history. It is not enough to be the face of an exhibit or the preservation of a heritage site but to be a part of the decision making behind said exhibits and sites. In Clio’s Foot Soldiers we see an array of “proto public historians” who many did not have degrees in public history produce the most community outreach and education reform that the world of history had ever seen. We can get the public to be interested in history and historians by telling the stories that they want to hear and not the stories we think the public wants to hear.

#public history #museums #thoughts thoughts thoughts #class assignment #historia

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misssophiachase · 4 years

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Blame Taylor Swift for distracting me from my other stories (which are still being updated I promise). Eleven parts - eleven songs. Hope you like it.

Invisible String

Famous singer Caroline Forbes returns to her hometown for a funeral and to face demons from her past, not expecting someone familiar to return and throw the confected world she's created upside down. Based off songs and lyrics from Taylor Swift's Folklore. On FF and AO3

Chapter one: the 1

Mystic Falls, VA

The large, antique mirror was always one of her favourite pieces of furniture in the house. Her mother had been an avid collector of rare, antique pieces and this was one of her most treasured finds.

Liz told her as a child that mirrors possess magical powers.

They don't lie.

Looking at herself today, Caroline knew that much was true. She barely recognised the woman staring back at her.

Her knee length, black, Chanel dress was modest but stylish and her blonde tresses were pulled back into a low chignon at the nape of her neck with a pair of simple, pearl earrings her only accessories.

She looked every bit the grieving ex-girlfriend, her publicist had made sure of it. The problem was, only half of that statement was true. Ex-girlfriend, yes, but grieving she wasn't quite sure.

Caroline walked to the nearby bay window, looking down at the beach below.

Her large mansion sitting atop the cliffs overlooking the sea had been an impulse purchase five years earlier. She'd bought it for her mother initially. But Liz always maintained that she preferred the small house on Mulberry Drive where she'd raised Caroline and it had remained vacant ever since.

She couldn't bring herself to sell it, if anything it was a veiled reminder to the residents of Mystic Falls who she'd become and just how much some had underestimated her worth. Petty, yes, but Caroline felt it was justified all the same.

She faltered, seeing the long stretch of sand below. It always reminded her of him. The lazy summer days that passed while they played in the surf and built a myriad of sandcastles, some even taller than Caroline. He was like that, always had to be the most competitive. The best.

But also so loving and kind, his unconditional support like a warm hug that she'd craved for too long before he arrived in town. He was everything she needed and that feeling had never abated, even after all this time.

She looked away and shook her head, determined to push those particular memories deeper inside. This trip was about her ex-boyfriend, not the boy with the dimples who rescued her and what they could have had, what they could have been. Caroline repeatedly told herself that their story was destined to be captured like a snapshot in time, nothing more.

After all, some of the greatest movies of all time were never made.

He'd gone on to become one of the hottest and most sought after actors in Hollywood, his recent nomination for an Academy Award his latest accomplishment.

Sure, she liked to pretend she didn't keep tabs on his life but that would be lying. Every time she saw him photographed in magazines and at movie premieres, his arm around the latest girlfriend, Caroline couldn't help but wish it was her.

But they'd had their chance and there was too much history between them to ever salvage what could have been.

"Caroline, you ready?" she turned to face her publicist and best friend from the doorway. "Are you sure you're going to be okay?" She nodded, her invisible mask now firmly in place, determined to hopefully get through this day unscathed and as quickly as possible.

Then she could get the hell out of Mystic Falls and never come back again.

1 week earlier...Empire Field Mile High, Denver CO

"Thanks everyone, you've been amazing, good night!" Caroline yelled into the microphone, waving at the heaving crowd for the last time.

Whether it was a small dive bar at the beginning of her career or the giant stadiums she'd graduated to, Caroline didn't think she'd ever tire of the feelings it evoked. Caroline didn't think she'd be here, let alone doing something that she loved. She'd been singing since she was a little girl sitting on her mother's lap but never thought she'd be singing her own songs for the masses.

She was discovered in one of those very dive bars at the age of nineteen. It was her first regular gig and although the clientele were either non-existent or questionable, Caroline was just grateful to have a steady job for three months.

When the handsome and immaculately dressed brunette (although she wouldn't admit that to him now) had entered the bar, looking completely out of place, she was mid-song. She could remember the cover song like it was yesterday, Breathe by Sia.

Just after her set, he'd produced one of those impressive-looking business cards before approaching her on stage. Enzo St John was his name. His demeanour was poised, his manner and unexpected British accent extremely polished.

"I'm going to make you a star."

If she wasn't so starving, desperate and facing eviction from her Santa Monica studio, Caroline probably would have scoffed at his cliched terminology. But she wasn't that much of an idiot.

And he did make her a star. As evidenced by her steady climb up the music charts, sold out concerts and complete make-over from small town girl to multiple grammy award winner and current 'it' girl if nights like this playing in Denver were anything to go by.

"You knocked it out of the park!" Enzo yelled, trying to be heard over the loud cheers from the manic crowd in Denver as she walked off stage.

"You do realise this is a football stadium, right?" She asked, taking the towel one of the stage hands had kindly provided.

"I don't understand." The way his forehead creased in utter confusion was enough to prove that very point.

"Of course he doesn't," her agent interrupted their conversation. "Enzo doesn't realise he's used a baseball metaphor because all he cares about is his beloved soccer."

"I'll pretend you didn't just commit blasphemy by calling football that dreaded word, Bennett," he huffed. "Bloody Americans."

"We love you too, Lorenzo," Caroline teased, throwing the towel she'd just used at him teasingly. "Now, what's next?"

Bonnie and Enzo looked at her mouths agape. Only Caroline Forbes, America's sweetheart, would be this hardworking. Her schedule was hectic enough but Caroline always took it in her stride and strived to do more and be better. Her mother had taught her that from a young age and she hadn't forgotten since.

"Ah, I don't know, maybe go back to the hotel and sleep, darling," Enzo responded, finally finding his voice. "This tour is only going to get crazier and you need to rest."

"Even Kat would recommend that and we all know how much she loves a good after party," Bonnie joked.

She was an agent at premiere talent company CAA and had recently come on the road for a few weeks. Caroline had met her and publicist Katherine Pierce not long after Enzo. The three were a packaged deal even if they did fight like siblings. Being an only child, Caroline actually relished in their incessant bickering.

Caroline weaved her way backstage and into her makeshift dressing room. Her finale outfit was meant to not only sparkle but also to stand out. Which was great but comfort definitely wasn't an overall factor in its design.

After an obligatory swig of Evian, she began to change. A knock at the door wasn't wholly unexpected, hence the screen she was standing behind. Usually, it was one of her personal staff needing to discuss various matters. Caroline was someone who didn't like to be alone, especially with her thoughts, so would never discourage company.

"Care," she heard her publicist call out. "You decent?"

"Come in, Kat," she said, albeit muffled by the top she was removing.

"Amazing show, as usual," she smiled, closing the door behind her. "How are you feeling?"

"Invigorated," she grinned. "Performing live is the best high anyone could ask for."

"Well, I'm glad," she began slowly,"because I have some news that I thought you should know." Caroline didn't like the sound of that, it was just like when she'd been informed her mother had passed away in the line of duty three years ago. She suddenly felt sick, holding onto the screen for some much- needed balance.

"News?"

"From your hometown," she added. "I wasn't sure if you already know but given your response I assume not."

"Just tell me," she snapped. Caroline knew it was uncalled for given she was just the messenger but there was something about the mention of Mystic Falls that had the tendency to throw her into a spin.

"I'm sorry," Kat soothed. "Your, uh, I mean, uh, Damon Salvatore has passed away."

Caroline felt the precarious sense of balance she had slowly slipping away, all the way onto the floor. It was only when Kat scooped her up and led her towards the couch that she finally processed her words.

Damon.

Dead.

"How?" She managed to bite out as Katherine force fed her some water.

"Motorcycle accident," she offered, brushing the hair from her forehead. "He collided with a vehicle on the interstate. It was instant."

Caroline closed her eyes. She'd always wondered what it would feel like to hear those words but it didn't register like she'd imagined. She'd wished so many bad things on him too many times. She thought there'd be a sense of relief or freedom.

But all she felt was nothing. Not sad, not angry, not shock or disbelief. Just nothing.

Besides Kat telling her she was "so sorry" and continuing to rub her back, the silence in the room was deafening.

"How do you, of all people, know that?" She croaked, sitting up and looking at her friend imploringly. They'd never met. Damon was nothing but a revised memory she'd concocted for her public image.

The typical small town girl with the high school sweetheart angle and her management team had eaten it up. If only it was true.

"Those rabid vultures at TMZ somehow got a hold of it, want to know if Caroline Forbes is attending his funeral in Mystic Falls."

"Well, given you just told me…"

"I know, like I said vultures," she hissed. "I'm not even going to justify their heartless request with a response. Can I get you anything, sweetie? Tissues, water, a really big bowl of chilli fries with extra ketchup?"

Caroline snuggled back into Katherine's embrace knowing exactly what she wanted. She wanted to forget, even if it was just for one night. "I need a really big bottle of tequila."

Caroline winced from the memory, thinking that tequila truly was evil and that she wouldn't be touching it again anytime soon.

Fast forward a couple of days and Caroline was here preparing for Damon's funeral. They'd only arrived late the night before so as to avoid the welcome circus. Her team had accompanied her to Mystic Falls in a show of support and she appreciated it, even if they didn't know the full story.

Given every media outlet knew about his death via TMZ, Caroline figured if she didn't go along with it then they'd know her backstory wasn't exactly what she'd sold them and that couldn't happen.

She'd worked too hard to get where she was and her past wasn't going to return and ruin that.

#klaroline fanfiction #klaroline fanfic #folklore inspired #klaroline #invisible string #misssophiachase #chapter 1 #the 1

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spanishschoolinbarcelona-blog · 5 years

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Learning to speak spanish In Barcelona - Impact And Burn Or Take a flight And Learn

spanish school in Barcelona What are generally your needs? The reason why perform you want to find out Spanish?

Exactly why do anyone want to learn Spanish language? Casually or for true? Does one just want for you to learn the basics on the language just for entertaining? Until now want to study to speak, learn along with write Spanish fluently therefore that you can are living and work in some sort of Speaking spanish speaking country? This kind of is important on the method you approach your own personal The spanish language classes and to which often classes you choose.

spanish school in Barcelona

Typically the "just for fun" college students

Whether or not it's just for enjoyment - things i call "travel Spanish, very well then We would not recommend demanding classes at all. Often the intense classes are made for people, seeking to understand a great deal within a very short while associated with time. These classes usually are not even close to fun. Try alternatively in order to find a Spanish study course that is certainly six to eight time a week. Along with start by enlisting intended for a couple of months. That should be plenty of to get a experience for the Romance language terminology and learn the fundamental sentence structure.

Then when you actually have done your personal research, I would arm myself personally with a good vacationer key phrase book and a new wide have fun and scalp out into the pavements of Barcelona. You will certainly easily learn a couple of basics, useful for exploring and getting together with people, in addition to have a fun time period.

The "serious" students

If you want to learn to talk Spanish language more fluently, normally because you wish to live as well as work in Spain or even another Speaking spanish speaking state, then you have to acquire a far more really serious method to your Spanish instructional classes. Strategies for getting typically the most of rigorous The spanish language classes, so that a person will grow and discover and not crash and also burn.

Don't look to get simple route!

Many men and women, who arrive at Spain to help live and job, carry out not really learn Romance language because they "want" in order to. That they learn because these people "need" to be able to. So by natural means they look for any simple way to learn. An easy way. A painless approach. Sorry to disappoint an individual. There is no effortless way. Basically - Zero pain zero Spain. (Ouch... bad juga, but I actually could not reject the idea!: -) Here are the few methods for the "serious" Spanish pupils.

Do the item now!

If you tend to be learning Spanish since you also require to, then it may by no means be much enjoyable, so make an effort to to receive the hard part using and learn as very much Spanish that you can at often the beginning of your continue to be in Spain. Thoughts is broken paid out in, working nearly always along with have an active public lifestyle, then you can not have time or perhaps inclination to take a lot of extensive Spanish courses. Almost all Spanish language schools in Barcelona present 4 hours any day demanding courses possibly in the morning or maybe afternoon. Just sign upwards for some or 6 weeks.

Be prepared with regard to efforts.

Do not ignore the effort essential. The actual pace is gruelling in addition to you will need for you to show up each day to help keep up. Almost most Spanish universities in Barcelona and France use the actual immersion technique, which means every little thing in the classroom is usually in Speaking spanish, all the particular time, even for starters, actually on the initial day! There are actually not also explanations in British inside the text books. Therefore lots of concentration as well as house study every moment!

Don't neglect the grammar.

Conversing a words without applying grammar is like constructing a house without a groundwork. A substantial foundation of syntax will ensure, that you may preserve adding more quantities in order to your "Spanish" building. Nevertheless a bad foundation helps make a property of business and one morning your own building will topple. Sentence structure is kind of monotonous and also hard work. Although a "I don't will need grammar" perspective is some sort of short term, lazy answer. Grammar is half typically the language and you will probably end up conversing "half" Spanish, if you no longer find out it from often the first time.

Prepare regarding your Spanish training.

Until you have some expertise of dialect similar to be able to Spanish, (Portuguese, First-rate, French) or have a fine expertise in your own vocabulary and its sentence structure after that I would recommend implementing a little for a intensive The spanish language course throughout Spain.

You could look at having a few Romance language instructions in your residence country. The teacher's information and instructions being with your own language, only like within primary institution. I would likewise highly recommend that you buy a new Spanish language study book inside The english language (or your individual language) which explains Speaking spanish grammar and carry out a very little bit of self-study ahead of your current start your category.

Once you begin your Spanish training course throughout Barcelona, you may well invest in a number of extra private lessons which has a Spanish teacher, who echoes English and who could make clear a few simple things with English, in case you are having problems following a course. The The spanish language classes in Barcelona, that will you have decided on need to be able to support you with this.

Day-to-day study tips for much better results.

-Show up intended for all classes! Create a aim.

-Do your groundwork. Each day. An effective concept is definitely half the time frame at home since you expend at the Spanish college.

-Compete with yourself, not really with your own personal classmates. In the event that you are in difficulty as well as falling behind within your Romance language classes and then talk to your trainer.

-Clear your head along with date. Barcelona is the party village and your personal friends from home will certainly undoubtedly announce their entrance for fun filled bash breaks. Try and put off most functions until anyone have finished your own Spanish language course. There will not be period for it if you actually want to carry on.

-Buy the books when possible thus that you can help make your own notices inside them and keep these people to get future reference.

-Buy a fantastic dictionary, but certainly not too big in addition to major. A small, but high-quality pocket dictionary is far better expense, because you may be carrying this any lot!

Be realistic as well as you will not disappointed.

The idea will feel as when you will be hardly learning everything at the beginning weeks no subject how hard a person analysis. This is because Speaking spanish is often spoken at gentle speed and your added ear for the terminology and also weak conversation knowledge are merely not up for you to the challenge. No longer be anxious. It will come.

However don't overestimate the final results of any few weeks regarding intensive The spanish language classes both. Many people think they will will be able to help speak progressive Spanish some sort of matter of weeks. Many of them book a 4 full week Spanish course. Sorry in order to burst that bubble way too. In 1 month an individual can genuinely learn a new lot, especially if anyone make the work and present up every single day. At the actual end of that interval it will be easy to have limited conversations along with understand the lot. But to communicate really fluent Spanish? six months time to a year is actually more sensible, and only two months could be the minimum with regard to a really good start off!

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vntcniv · 6 years

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{ H S H Q T A S K 0 2 1 }

1. COLD HARD FACTS

population: 54,8M area: 130,279 km2 / 50,301 sq mi offical language: english currency: pound sterling ( GBP / £ )

2. SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS

This is what everything boils down to. Doesn’t matter what kind of a person you make out of yourself, you are what you were born as. Usually, if a person isn’t hellbent on rising through ranks, they are proud to be what they are. If you come from a slightly poorer family? Oh you won’t hide the accent, you like footie --- the posh kids can have their rugby, Sainsbury’s all good, Poundland too. Rich and happy? Horses, rugby, sailing... that good received pronunciation aka “english accent”. Middle-class will divide between the two extremes, middle-class people also are more concerned about their image than the two other groups. Perhaps it’s the notion that perhaps, just perhaps, if they are lucky they could become something better, nicer. But like I mentioned before, you are what you were born as, the harsh truth remains. Self-made men, nouveau riche... they are try-hards, or they don’t know their place. Depends on whom you ask. The English tend to categorize people and then decide how to treat them. Where is their accent from? Which part of the town/county are they from? What school did they go/do their children go? The more facts you know about a person, the better guess you can make about their family. England is obsessed with its socioeconomic hierarchy.

3. VOCABULARY

Oh the confusion! Tea doesn’t always refer to the drink. Tea can also mean supper, lunch, in some cases even some snack. Pants mean underwear, trousers is a more appropriate word. Chips = french fries; crisps = potato chips. Trainers = sneakers, rubber = eraser. There’s of course more words that are mainly used in Britain but listing them all would be unnecessary.

4. EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

First of all, to simplify it, there are two types of schools: state-funded & private. State-funded schools are free of charge. Private schools, for day students, cost around 10K per annum, and for boarders 20K. Getting into a private school isn’t just about the money. The schools handpick their students and you may need to “prove your worth” to get in. So having connections helps a lot. The connection doesn’t even need to have anything to do with the school board --- if you know someone with a nice name or even better, someone with a title, and you get them to write a letter on your behalf, your chances of getting accepted are once again higher than some random chap’s. Most famous private school ( more specifically, public school ) is Eton. Alumni include William & Harry. Eton has produced a good number of prime ministers. It’s an all-boys school.

You know... the houses in Hogwarts, it’s not a made up concept. In more traditional schools, in majority of boarding schools, the students belong to houses. The houses are sometimes named after a founder or a person who has supported the school in some manner ( £££ ).

Kids start school around the time they turn five. Some go to nursery before that. Primary school is the years 1-6. Nothing that important happens through years 1-11. At the end of year 11, students take GCSEs. There’s a lot of subjects to choose from, but it really depends on what subjects your school even offers. The GCSE grades are important and cause a lot of stress for students. After GCSEs students start college / sixth form that lasts for two years. At the end of college / sixth form, are the A-levels. A-levels are the hardcore version of GCSEs. Once you finish college / sixth form, you go to uni. There’s more terminology and it’s possible to get very specific but that would be a waste of time.

5. DRINKING

Legal drinking age is 18. You can usually enter most pubs even when you aren’t of age; they are just places to hang out at. Some places are stricter than others. If you’re with an adult, you’ll get in. After 16 it’s legal to have mild alcoholic drinks with dinner if you’re accompanied by an adult. Most parents aren’t that chill though. You can’t buy alcohol from stores after 11pm. Most pubs / clubs have to stop serving around 3-4am. Most places close around that time for that reason.

6. FOOD & DRINKS

Yes, fish and chips is a thing and so is tea, but they aren’t all people eat and drink. Being a tea person is playing into a stereotype, which some people do happily. There are people who have a cuppa every two hours. The palate is pretty bland. Steamed vegetables, fish or meat, and maybe some gravy to go with it. Every day food isn’t special. Beans on toast is an acquired taste.

Beer is pretty popular and main reason for it is pub culture. Beer is cheap and there’s plenty to choose from, and when you spend a lot of time at pubs you kind of learn to appreciate those facts.

Fast food? America has more chains, that’s for sure. You can find the most popular ones in the UK. Chains such as McDonald’s, Subway, Burger King, Taco Bell & KFC. But you won’t find Denny’s, Wendy’s or Applebee’s in the UK. Five Guys is the most popular one according to a survey ( and I am not surprised ;) )

7. TV

What’s on the telly? Most people are familiar with BBC hit shows such as Doctor Who, Sherlock and... I don’t know what’s good, you get my point. That stuff is easy to like, it’s so universal. But then there’s that famous British humour. Monty Python is pretty famous, most people find it funny. But then there are other cult classics like Fawlty Towers and Blackadder. They are old but they are gold ( perhaps not my personal opinion but that’s beside the point ). You can never forget shows like EastEnders and Emmerdale. They just keep producing the shows, it’s crazy. They are the Brits’ The Bold and the Beautiful.

8. LONDON

London is, well, huge. The underground zones go up to 9, though zones 7-9 aren’t that relevant. Most people use this thing called an Oyster card to move around the city, it’s basically just a London version of MetroCard or whatever you have in your city. The city center of London isn’t that big though, you can see the main attractions in a day --- and you can walk! But the minute you venture away from zones 1 and 2, you realize just how big it is. The area of London is roughly two times NYC’s. Locals avoid Oxford Street --- sure it’s cool to have all of the shops in one place but... you can just take the tube to Westfield and enjoy a less hectic atmosphere. East London has a slightly bad reputation while West London is rather posh: nice houses with big gardens, private schools, that sweet life. Each borough has its own stereotype if you want to get even more specific. London is also expensive as heck! Hell, England is expensive. The prices for apartments within zones 1 and 2 start at a million --- and they go up up up. It’s one of the reason why people who work in London might actually commute from a bit further away. There are a lot of smaller towns surrounding London and even though they aren’t part of the City of London, they are said to be part of Greater London. For example towns in northeast of Surrey are a good example for commuter towns. Real estate prices are lower in these towns but I wouldn’t call them cheap.

9. MISCELLANEOUS

People don’t wear shoes inside the house. Nope. Most detached houses have carpeted floors upstairs. Most detached houses have three floors and fucking narrow staircases. English love reading up on royals. HELLO! is a daily magazine that centers around royals. They do articles on fashion, other celebrities and etc. but it’s mainly just about royals. Football is life.

#hshqtask021 #( task. )

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memecucker · 7 years

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thanks for the submission anon! not sure why the entire article was pasted but i’ll put it under a cut. i dont endorse everything said here but i think its a worthwhile read

The question remains as to whether Canadian polemicists know what they are talking about when they denounce “cultural appropriation”. I don’t think they do. I think they are misrepresenting the phenomenon and bloating it to useless dimensions, sloppily borrowing American terminology, and bending the reality of Canadian history out of shape. I also detect a familiar narrowing of the dominant vocabulary that is authorized for use by the media in public discourse, so that one term or phrase is used to do the work that previously several different concepts handled. Confusion is the inevitable result—and that is by design. It is intended that we should be confused, since that spawns endless circular debates, irresolvable conflict, parties speaking past each other—all of which works against sharing, against acculturation, and against building a stronger national society. It also works against the indigenization of Canadian society, the cultural side of the economic citizenship that I defended here. Instead we are turned into mutually hostile bands of litigants, constantly parsing each other’s statements for even the smallest sign of something which we might find offensive. We are constantly feigning fainting spells, our delicate selves being so overwhelmed by the daily outrages against our reputation (brand).

Some well-placed Canadians do not know the difference between cultural appropriation and assimilation, and the errors that ensue lead to a falsification of Canadian history. To begin with, assimilation in its most basic historical sense involves a dominant group (typically colonizers) absorbing or incorporating the dominated group (the colonized) into the social and cultural norms of the dominant group. The indigenous culture is thus meant to be extinguished, and those who once belonged to that culture now acquire a new culture—they are converted to the culture of the dominant group. The indigenous culture is in no sense “valued” by the colonizer—it has no value, it can be held in contempt, and was usually targeted for erasure. Not to be mistaken with the unidirectional process that is assimilation, acculturation involves “those phenomena which result when groups of individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact, with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both groups” (Redfield, Linton, & Herskovits, 1936, pp.149–150; see also Herskovits, 1937, p. 259). Both assimilation and acculturation are examples of culture contact, culture change, and more broadly, “diffusion”. Cultural appropriation, which is not as well defined as the previous terms and does not enjoy as long a history in North American anthropology, is muddled because it could mean taking over or taking from or simply borrowing. The corollary is that when a culture has been subjected to appropriation, that culture continues to exist intact: I can claim that your culture is now mine, but that does not mean you cease to have your culture; I can acquire select values, practices, and motifs, and make them my own, and again that does not mean you lose those elements; I can borrow an item, inspired by you, and you lose nothing as a result. Where cultural appropriation seems to rise to a condition of conflict, is when commerce and formal ownership are involved—but then that takes us to cultural exploitation, which is far removed from simple acts of sharing and borrowing.

Focusing just on the pair—assimilation vs. appropriation—recent evidence in Canada shows the monumental errors that are made when appropriation is used to handle the meanings of several very different concepts, all at once. Here, for example, is Jesse Wente, a Canadian Aboriginal, not a chief of a nation but a self-described “Ojibwe dude” who, not to be falsely modest, is a figure in the Canadian mass media, a self-appointed gatekeeper and culture broker, and a purported specialist on “diversity” and “inclusion”. Wente recently vented the following:

“It’s easy to say you don’t believe in cultural appropriation when it’s your culture that has been forced on many, while erasing there’s [sic]”.

He is right: it would be easy to say that, because it’s wrong. What Wente describes in that quote has nothing at all to do with “cultural appropriation” (it’s the opposite), and everything to do with assimilation. At no point does he describe the dominant culture taking from the dominated culture. This shows that Wente does not even know the meaning of appropriation. However, by accident, especially in making us correct his mistake, he points to the actual reality of Canadian history, which has been one of assimilation, rooted in utter disdain for Aboriginal cultures, expressed in a desire to beat the living crap out of those cultures and turning Aboriginals into clones of white people. Aboriginals did not “appropriate” modern, Western, Christian, individualist and capitalist lifeways: these were forced on them. There is no such thing as an involuntary appropriation. It’s the same history of assimilation that made it possible for Wente to write in English. Canadian policy was never about making Canadian settlers more like Aboriginals, to encourage appropriation—to even suggest that is a terrible perversion of Canadian history.

The history of residential schools in Canada is not a history of “cultural appropriation”: it is a history of assimilation. In 1883, Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, explained the residential schools policy to the House of Commons:

“Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence, and the only way to do that would be to put them in central training industrial schools where they will acquire the habits and modes of thought of white men”.

(That will take us to the next section and how genocide has been conceptually mangled by deliberately and confusingly rephrasing it as “cultural genocide”). The policy of residential schooling was explicitly an assimilationist one—as expressed in the famous words of Duncan Campbell Scott, the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs from 1913 to 1932:

“I want to get rid of the Indian problem….Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic, and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department.”

It was a policy of “taking the Indian out of the child,” and abolishing the Indian altogether. The idea was not to create a tabula rasa as an end in itself, but to erase and replace, by forcibly converting the child to the dominant, British Canadian culture. It is closer to being cultural imperialism than it is to cultural appropriation. However, since the authorized discourse in the elite-controlled media has successfully narrowed the vocabulary of Canadians, no such mention of imperialism ever surfaces, in any context.

We can conclude that the problem with the “cultural appropriation” idea, as deployed by gatekeepers, is that it either does not actually describe and explain the phenomenon to which it is assigned (and thus does not exist), or it does exist in other contexts but we are not told why that is anything other than the normal course of cultural diffusion. We also know that cultural appropriation is not a prominent part of Canadian history, which instead emphasized assimilation of indigenous peoples. Finally, in some cases, what is being marked as cultural appropriation is instead actually cultural exploitation, which is more than just borrowing. Do you get the sense then we are being told there is a cultural appropriation “problem,” when none actually exists?

As for cultural exploitation, that is not an easy issue to settle. Numerous Aboriginal hip-hop musicians in Canada borrow from US sources without apology, just as in central Australia there are Aboriginal reggae bands, playing their music without sending shiploads of tribute over to Jamaica. This is not to mention the many dozens of zombie films made over the past century, all done without paying royalties to Haiti. (Perhaps the producers of The Walking Dead were very clever in avoiding use of the Z-word.) The problem lies with the intentional spread of rules of “intellectual property” by governments and international bodies working in the service of a neoliberal political economy. An expert class of managers arrogates to itself the right to instruct and aribitrate over how we can learn from and be inspired by other cultures. So much for “market freedoms” then, and so much for “globalization,” when the very upholders of both of these are revealed to be little more than rent-seeking racketeers.

Enter the lawyer: Olufunmilayo Arewa is a professor of Law, at the University of California, Irvine, writing in The Conversation US, an online publication made possible by many of the usual giant capitalist US foundations and expeditionary philanthropists such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and so forth. The “funders” vary by country, but are usually an assemblage of banks and foundations. The Conversation is part of a growing trend that Pierre Bourdieu warned about decades ago in Homo Academicus (pp. 112, 119, 120, 267, 268, 297): the blurring of the lines between academia and journalism which reduces the autonomy of universities, makes them answerable to market audiences, and introduces journalistic standards of renown into a field previously dominated by standards of scholarship.

Thus it is not surprising to see Arewa’s piece in The Conversation—it is not so much predictable as it is almost mandatory that it would appear there. A lawyer, writing as a journalist, based in a major US university, backed by powerful foundations, all of which gives us a glimpse into the dense cluster of special interests that have been vested in the manufactured debates around cultural appropriation. This is a field dominated by elites—academics, journalists, bankers, lawyers—not an organic outgrowth of some popular outcry existing at the “grass roots” of indigenous communities.

Not to keep the phenomenon safely out of the reach of such special interests, Arewa (in loose language uncharacteristic of careful lawyers) blurs the lines between cultural appropriation and cultural exploitation. The accent is on exploitation, an arena fraught with danger, with loud claims for compensation, restitution, reparations, profit sharing, royalties, etc. An example of this deliberate slippage is where she writes, “borrowing may become appropriation when it reinforces historically exploitative relationships” which she quickly follows with a mention of opportunities to “control or benefit” from cultural “material”. I do not mean to suggest that Arewa is careless, sloppy, or lazy—I think that the language that bleeds from one concept to another is deliberate, intentional, and vested with special interests. The aim is to produce a “problem,” a problem that can only be solved in the legal arena and the marketplace. It is a neoliberal problem of diversity management, that demands neoliberal technologies of control and capital accumulation. Culture is turned into “material” that can be “controlled” by someone. (Who? You can guess.)

There is nothing ambiguous about this: if you read Arewa’s piece you will see the words above immediately followed by a section devoted to artifacts, museums, and a bunch of dollar figures—translation: culture as property, held by institutions, sold in the marketplace. It is the finale of her piece that gives away the motive in writing it:

“An understanding of both borrowing and appropriation should be incorporated into legal, business and other institutional frameworks. In fields such as intellectual property law, greater recognition of the power structures underlying borrowing in different contexts is important. This can be an important starting point for blocking future exploitative cultural flows. And it can help prevent extraction of more cultural booty”.

This squarely places the discussion of cultural appropriation in the neoliberal zone, where everything is commodified and then privatized and thus subject to the “rule of law”. Culture—whatever that was—becomes a matter of “intellectual property law”. Luckily, being a lawyer herself, Arewa is one of those who presumably stands to benefit. And that is the trick behind all of these attempts to regulate our speech and social interactions: subject them to regulations, censure and censor violators, and create capital for specialists who appear, as if by magic, to expertly mediate the whole problem…a problem they conceptually manufactured in the first place. The final gift is that the rules and norms of capitalism can be used to heal the rifts caused by capitalism—this really is magic.

There is one more area, a critically important one, where the conceptual wizardry produces benefits for elites, and losses for those who are supposedly meant to be protected, and that is the Canadian invention of “cultural genocide”.

It was shocking to see Canadians accepting the notion that the history of residential schooling—where children were forcibly taken away from their Aboriginal parents, to school them out of their Aboriginal heritage—has been officially defined in Canada as “cultural genocide”. Conveniently, there is no such concept under international law, and it thus whitewashes Canada’s reputation for what it really is: a state guilty of genocide.

Of course, no state guilty of genocide has the political capital needed to lecture and threaten target states of the periphery. “Cultural genocide” avoids that problem, and is useful for evading any talk of UN sanctions and Security Council resolutions.

There was no conceptual need to speak in terms of “cultural” genocide—everything that is essential to the history of residential schooling is already covered by the existing UN charter on the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” and has been since 1948. The key text comes under Article II, particularly point (e):

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; © Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

A lawyer quoted by the CBC, reportedly made the following points: “Schabas compares the use of the term genocide to a very hot spice that ‘transforms something from being rather old news into something that gets the headlines’. Sometimes, he says, it also makes it harder for victims to reconcile with the perpetrator groups”. That is one remarkable statement. Not only is the history of residential schooling in Canada not “old news” (it only ended in 1996), the nature of the term being like “hot spice” never stops Canada or other Western nations from liberally applying it whenever convenient, against target nations abroad. Wholesale fictions of “genocide” were invented about Libya in 2011, to justify NATO’s intervention—few, let alone in the CBC, were ever heard to say, “Hold on now, that’s a hot spice term, and if we use it then that might prevent the victims from reconciling with the Gaddafi government”. Instead, much of this CBC article, in the ample tradition of liberal hypocrisy, casts about for the appropriate legal scholar to lament about how, aw shucks, it’s too bad we do not have “cultural genocide” in international law…when the current convention against genocide already covers exactly what happened with Canadian residential schools. Such blindness is not incompetence, it is wilful. It was sad to see indigenous leaders abide by all this, as if they had won something significant, instead of acknowledging the political fraud for which their experience was hijacked. How ironic then that this indigenous “leader” should declare: “If you can’t identify what the issue is, then you really don’t know what you’re working with”.

In my book, Ruins of Absence, Presence of Caribs, the central concept and argument focused on the “reengineering of indigeneity,” where indigenous identity became vested with the interests of specialists emanating from several arenas surrounding the Caribs in Trinidad & Tobago: the national state, the Catholic church, the mass media, local businesses enterprises, local government, academia, tourism, NGOs, and international governmental organizations. We see a similar vesting of special interests in the fabrication of the “cultural appropriation crisis” and the story is not one of mendacious leftists (there are those too), but should instead be seen as reflecting neoliberal capitalist patterns.

Lawyers, professors, journalists, and other self-appointed gatekeepers: these are some of the specialists, sanctioned by the media and governments, who litigate and adjudicate the neoliberal commerce in culture, that is, culture turned into property and removed far beyond sharing, parody, mutual insults, and all the interactions that make up everyday social life. To be clear, never once have we heard any sort of popular indigenous outcry over “appropriation”—what we are made to hear instead are the voices of lawyers, academics, media pundits, and diversity consultants who show up with business cards, courtesy of the new cultural policing. We are therefore dealing with interests vested in reengineering culture into a series of specialist turfs, accompanied by calls for recognition, rewards, and fees. Regulation of culture by the rule of the marketplace generates bureaucracies, and these bureaucracies create capital for the culture brokers that arise to take advantage of the opportunity. Even better, the manufacture of conflict over “appropriation” produces the space for appointed experts to intervene, and to inevitably acquire capital. This is the path of culture that is instrumentalized, or even weaponized.

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fragmented-logic · 7 years

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Wind, Water and Fire

A little background about this post: Every once and a while I get swept up by current events and want to know more. This week, with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and impending Hurricane Irma, the local news has been focused on these. This left me wondering, what news is not being covered? Where else are people in danger from “natural” disasters that isn’t being talked about enough? This post is unintentionally depressing but instead meant to shed light on the current “natural” events.

Why is natural in quotes? Some of these events may be from human cause (ie. some wildfires) and others from naturally occurring processes of nature. Some suggest the terminology “slow disasters”. There is also the arguable impact of global climate change.

About my information: I only did preliminary research and may have left out some events. If you know of more information, feel free to comment. I cited my sources as clickable links throughout my writing.

Order: Current to August 1, 2017

Wildfires across Washington, Idaho and Montana ongoing National Interagency Fire Center reports 76 large active fires in the northeast over 1, 483, 343 acres.

See fire maps here and here.

Image:

Wildland Firefighters battle the Bridge Coulee Fire, part of the Lodgepole Complex, east of the Musselshell River, north of Mosby, Montana, U.S. July 21, 2017. Bureau of Land Management/Jonathan Moor/Handout via REUTERS

Hurricane Irma September 6, 2017-current

Made landfall in the Caribbean as a category 5 hurricane on Sept. 6. Puerto Rico recorded sustained winds of 185mph. This hurricane has already affected parts of the Caribbean such as the US and British Virgin Islands, and is moving toward Florida.

Sources are claiming, [Hurricane Irma is] “one of the strongest Atlantic storms ever recorded.”

Image: source

Wildfire in Greenland early August-current?

“The fire is burning roughly 90 miles northeast of Sisimiut, a town of about 5,500 that rests on the island's west coast, according to NASA. Citing local reports, the publication Climate Central reports the fire observed by the agency consists of a series of blazes — the largest of which is about 3,000 acres.”

Image: The fire in Greenland, as seen last week by the ESA's Copernicus Sentinel-2 and processed by researcher Pierre Markuse

Hurricane Harvey

August 25, 2017- September 2, 2017

In addition to Texas, Hurricane Harvey has also affected Louisiana, the Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guyana, Suriname and the Windward Islands.

The hurricane made landfall as a category 5 near Rockport, Texas. It is now the wettest tropical cyclone on record in the contiguous United States as it dropped over 40 inches of rain in four days. It is also the unofficial 3rd costliest tropical cyclone in US history.

Image: AP EXCLUSIVE: Toxic waste sites flooded; EPA not on scene

Monsoon and Flooding in South Asia August 29, 2017

Areas such as, but not limited to, India, Bangladesh and Nepal.“Worst floods in years.” “More than 1,200 people have died across India, Bangladesh and Nepal as a result of flooding.”

18,000 schools have been damaged or destroyed which means about 1.8 million children cannot go to school

Image: Commuters walk through water-logged roads after rains in Mumbai, India, August 29, 2017. REUTERS/Shailesh Andrade

Landslide in Swiss Alps August 23, 2017

“Around 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday, mud and debris cascaded into the village of Bondo in the Graubünden region of southeastern Switzerland, damaging buildings and wiping out parts of the main road through the area.Video captured the initial moment that debris broke off the mountain face and tumbled into the valley below, creating an shock so severe that it had a magnitude of 3.”

Image and text source

Typhoon Hato in Macau and South China August 23, 2017

“Hato triggered Hong Kong’s most severe typhoon 10 warning, only the third time a storm of such power has hit the financial hub in the past 20 years.”

Image: Typhoon Hato leaves a wooden wall collapsed Wednesday on a street in Hong Kong.

Earthquake in Ischia (Bay of Naples) August 22, 2017

“The strength of Monday night’s quake under the Bay of Naples was revised up to magnitude 4.0 by the INGV, Italy’s seismic observatory, after initially being reported at 3.6. More than 2,500 people were reported to be homeless or displaced and about 1,500 have fled the island.”

Image

Landslide in Sierra Leone August 14, 2017

“One of Africa's worst flooding-related disasters in years occurred when the side of Mount Sugar Loaf collapsed on Monday after heavy rain, burying parts of Regent town on the outskirts of the capital, Freetown.”

Image

Earthquake in Sichuan, China August 8, 2017

“The US Geological Survey reported a magnitude-6.5 quake 35 kilometers (22 miles) west-southwest of Yongle, Xinhua reported it was 7.0-magnitude, citing the China Earthquake Networks Center.”

Text and image

Ongoing Wildfires in Portugal

In 2017 there have been about 10,000 wildfires in Portugal, 2,500 more than 2016.

Image: A wildfire is reflected in a river in Penela Photograph: Patrícia de Melo Moreira/AFP/Getty Images

Ongoing Wildfires in Europe

Image: Firefighters tackle a serious blaze that has spread over 350 hectares north-west of Aix-en-Provence, France Photograph: Auffret/Sipa/Rex/Shutterstock

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fitnesshealthyoga-blog · 5 years

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New Post has been published on https://fitnesshealthyoga.com/difference-between-yoga-cultural-appropriation-and-cultural-appreciation/

Difference Between Yoga Cultural Appropriation and Cultural Appreciation

Unsure of the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation? Read on to find out.

When I began contributing to yoga research five years ago, I was invited to a meeting to discuss how to bring yoga and mindfulness practices to university campuses as wellness initiatives. Thirteen out of 15 American administrators and researchers at the conference table happened to be white, the only exceptions being me and another Indian-American woman. The person in charge had thoughtfully invited both of us; though newer to research, we were experienced in yoga teachings because of our South Asian culture and decade-long practices. Entering the room was both moving and intimidating. On one hand, I was honored to share my cultural and personal understandings of yoga. On the other hand, I was one of only two nonwhite people in a group gathering to talk about a practice that originated in India.

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Conscious of my identity, I used yogic principles to set aside my conditioned fears and preconceptions and opened my mind to discussing yoga—the practice of self-realization that has transformed my life.

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See also The First Book of Yoga: The Enduring Influence of the Bhagavad Gita

I soon found myself in respectful conversation with everyone at the table: Yoga and mindfulness-based practices can provide what we call “healing” in Eastern tradition, and what we call psychological and physiological “benefits” in Western research. Although we used different words, we were saying similar things.

Until the middle of the meeting.

One of the administrators said, “We’ll need to create a set of guidelines to ensure absolutely no Eastern symbols, bells, or words are used in yoga classes. We can’t make anyone uncomfortable or offend them by suggesting spirituality.”

I don’t believe that Indian words or symbols are required for people to benefit from yoga, but this leader, who was in favor of creating an inclusive yoga experience “for all,” wanted to remove any sign of the land where the practice originated. She overlooked the fact that two yoga teachers with Indian heritage sitting right across from her were the ones left to nurse our exclusion and offense.

See also The Debate: Teach With English or Sanskrit Pose Names?

Invisible oppression is something many Indians have been forced to endure in quiet pain for centuries. Like when you learn about a popular yoga movement and book jarringly titled No Om Zone: A No-Chanting, No-Granola, No-Sanskrit Practical Guide to Yoga. The title itself normalizes ethnocentric views of yoga, India, and people who chant. The irony of a movement like this is that it renders fear of foreign words while allowing itself to brand and use the Indian practice of yoga, a Sanskrit word signifying “unity” or “yoke.”

Those without access to an in-depth history education might lighten this to a question of political correctness or cries by minorities for cultural recognition. But it goes so much deeper.

Yoga is an ancient spiritual practice of self-realization that originated in India, but, in addition to Indian devotional practices such as sacred dance, it was perceived as threatening, ridiculed, and banned among its own people in its own land under British colonization, beginning in the 1700s and lasting until the mid-1900s. Today, yoga is often marketed by affluent Westerners to affluent Westerners—and Indians, ironically, are marginally represented, if at all. While this multibillion-dollar industry is offering much-needed well-being to Western practitioners, it’s re-inflicting the same violation on India and Indians: invisibility and misrepresentation.

See also A Beginner’s Guide to the History of Yoga

Cultural appropriation is the taking, marketing, and exotification of cultural practices from historically oppressed populations.

What is Cultural Appropriation?

In recent years, conversation has begun around the “cultural appropriation” of yoga. Cultural appropriation is the taking, marketing, and exotification of cultural practices from historically oppressed populations. The problem is incredibly complex and involves two extremes: The first is the sterilization of yoga by removing evidence of its Eastern roots so that it doesn’t “offend” Westerner practitioners. The opposite extreme is the glamorization of yoga and India through commercialism, such as Om tattoos, T-shirts sporting Hindu deities or Sanskrit scriptures that are often conflated with yoga, or the choosing of Indian names.

Yoga teachers and students are starting to ask the questions, “What is the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation?” and “How can I still practice yoga without being offensive?”

See also Do You Really Know the True Meaning of Yoga?

According to Rumya S. Putcha, PhD, a scholar of postcolonial, critical race, and gender studies, we’re still asking the wrong questions. “The terminology ‘cultural appropriation,’ in and of itself, is a way of diluting the fact that we’re talking about racism and European colonialism,” she says. “It undermines what is happening as only ‘culturally inappropriate’ so as not to disrupt mass yoga marketing, leading us to ask surface-level questions like ‘I don’t want to be culturally inappropriate, so how can I show cultural appreciation appropriately?’ It’s not about appreciation versus appropriation. It’s about understanding the role of power and the legacies of imperialism.”

Shreena Gandhi, PhD, a religious studies professor at Michigan State University, and Lillie Wolff, an advocate with Crossroads Antiracism, emphasized in their 2017 article “Yoga and the Roots of Cultural Appropriation” that the goal of these conversations should not be for white practitioners to stop practicing yoga, but rather for them “to please take a moment to look outside of yourself and understand how the history of yoga practice in the United States is intimately linked to larger forces”—such as colonization, oppression, and the fact that a devotional practice that was free of cost for thousands of years is now being marketed and sold.

See also The Timeline and History of Yoga in America

As an Indian-American teacher, practitioner, and writer, I often ponder why this means so much to me and why I can’t offer simple bullet points for what makes something “appreciative” versus “appropriative” of yoga. I just know when I start to feel sick or hurt—like at a conference table when an administrator suggests that Eastern elements, such as bells used to train the mind to focus on the present (dhyana), will threaten the comfort of white American practitioners. Or when the young CEO of a new yoga organization asks me where she can get her 300-hour yoga certification done the fastest, missing that yoga is a lifelong process of balanced living. Or when I see social media celebrities and yoga advertisements promoting athletic, model-like bodies in sexy apparel, potentially encouraging more attachment to items and creating insecurities rather than relieving people of suffering. Or when I’m walking by a shop with my parents, only to see their confusion over why holy Hindu scriptures—which my father can read, being literate in Sanskrit—were printed on a hoodie and tossed into a sale pile.

“I think they don’t realize that these are not just designs. They are words that carry deep meaning for people,” my father says.

See also Sanskrit 101: 4 Reasons Why Studying This Ancient Language Is Worth Your Time

Ask these questions to deeper your understanding around cultural appropriation.

Questions to Ask about Cultural Appropriation

His sentiments make me realize that many Western yoga companies and consumers are unaware of what they are branding and buying. And that’s what we need to change together, by asking deeper questions such as:

“Do I really understand the history of the yoga practice I’m so freely allowed to practice today that was once ridiculed and prohibited by colonists in India?”

“As I continue to learn, am I comfortable with the practices and purchases I’m choosing to make, or should I make some changes?”

“Does the practice I live promote peace and integrity for all?”

Educating ourselves, like the practice of yoga, can be seen as an evolutionary process. Start where you are. You may have already developed a lot of awareness that is becoming more finely tuned. And for some—Indian or not Indian, experienced yoga practitioners or not—this article is a first-time exposure to something you never realized.

See also The Wake-Up Call Yogis Need to Bring ‘Real Yoga’ Back Into Their Practice

Rina Deshpande is a teacher, writer, and researcher of yoga and mindfulness practices.

Christopher Dougherty

About our author

Rina Deshpande is a teacher, writer, and researcher of yoga and mindfulness practices. Having grown up with Indian yoga philosophy, she rediscovered its profound value as a New York City public school teacher. For the past 15 years, she has practiced and shared the benefits of yoga across the globe. After studying yoga and mindfulness as self-regulation at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she designs curriculum for science research and K–12 education. She is the author of Jars of Space, a new book of handwritten and illustrated yogic poetry. Learn more at @rinathepoet or rinadeshpande.com.

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mshoji-blog · 4 years

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A lesser known, yet uniquely compelling candidate for the real Satoshi Nakamoto is Japanese mathematician and number theorist Shinichi Mochizuki. With a long history of mathematical innovation, and purportedly proving conjectures thought to be near impossible to verify, he seems to almost come from an alien world. Mochizuki further painstakingly avoids the spotlight. Some, like American computer scientist and co-inventor of hypertext, Ted Nelson, go so far as to call him Satoshi.

Also Read: “I Designed Bitcoi… Gold” – The Many Facts Pointing to Nick Being Satoshi

The Coolness Outside

As Paul Rosenberg states in his blog post “Be the Outsider,” everything that ultimately innovates comes from a private space, on the fringes of society: “Please believe me that the coolest things happen outside, and not within the hierarchies of the status quo … Outside is where personal computers came from. It’s where the Internet came from. It’s where Bitcoin came from … Nearly everything cool comes from outside.”

Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki fits this unorthodox form as well. Attempting to solve “impossible” problems, focused only on his work and hiding from the spotlight, the 50-year-old professor Mochizuki has chosen not to submit his most revolutionary ideas for formal review. He has instead — much like Satoshi Nakamoto — surreptitiously placed them on the internet, and walked away.

Shinichi Stats

A Mathematics Prodigy

Child of an international marriage, Mochizuki moved with his family from Japan to the United States at age five, and would go on to graduate Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire at age 16. From there it was Princeton University for a bachelor’s degree and Ph.D in mathematics, lecturing at Harvard for two years, and then a return to Japan in 1994. Mochizuki is currently a full professor at Japan’s prestigious Kyoto University.

In spite of impressive accomplishments and accolades such as proving Grothendieck’s conjecture on anabelian geometry in 1996, and being invited to speak at the International Congress of Mathematicians, nothing would cause such a stir as his alleged proof of the ABC Conjecture in 2012. The conjecture is described as a “beguilingly simple number theory problem that had stumped mathematicians for decades.”

What math experts found in reviewing the proof, however, was that they couldn’t even understand it, and Mochizuki couldn’t be bothered to explain. Caroline Chen notes in her article The Paradox of the Proof:

Usually, they said, mathematicians discuss their findings with their colleagues. Normally, they publish pre-prints to widely respected online forums. Then they submit their papers to the Annals of Mathematics, where papers are refereed by eminent mathematicians before publication. Mochizuki was bucking the trend. He was, according to his peers, “unorthodox.” But what roused their ire most was Mochizuki’s refusal to lecture.

Much like Bitcoin had been carefully dropped off as an alien creation on obscure corners of the internet at its inception, Mochizuki had dropped off a supposed bombshell in the field of mathematics and stepped back. He had even created his own terminology over a decade of isolated research which other mathematicians couldn’t parse.

Chen explains: “Then Mochizuki walked away. He did not send his work to the Annals of Mathematics. Nor did he leave a message on any of the online forums frequented by mathematicians around the world. He just posted the papers, and waited.”

An American Background in British English

Critics of Satoshi theories placing a Japanese as Nakamoto often cite Satoshi’s impeccable command of the English language and grammar in correspondence, and the cleanliness of his writing style. As a native speaker, this would have been a non-issue for Princeton salutatorian Mochizuki.

Also frequently cited is Satoshi’s use of typically British English expressions and spellings such as “bloody” and “colour.” Interestingly, Mochizuki’s mentor and doctoral advisor from Princeton, Gerd Faltings, is a German national. The two would have presumably communicated in English at Princeton in an academic setting, and the English formally taught in Germany is typically British English. Mochizuki would have also undoubtedly been exposed to the British usages at his prestigious boarding school, Philips Exeter Academy.

Hyper-Endorsement from Ted Nelson

The inventor of hypertext, computer scientist and philosopher Ted Nelson feverishly rushed to produce an entertaining and insightful video on Mochizuki in 2013 after reading an article about him and deciding that Shinichi Mochizuki was indeed “the one.”

Lack of Explanation and Evasion of the Spotlight

Sorry to be a wet blanket. Writing a description for this thing for general audiences is bloody hard. There’s nothing to relate it to.

So read the words of Satoshi Nakamoto from a July 5, 2010 post to Bitcointalk.org, in attempting to define Bitcoin for a wider audience. Like Bitcoin, Mochizuki’s purported proof of the ABC Conjecture was a novel contribution not readily grasped by the public, or even experts. With a stated goal of establishing “an arithmetic version of Teichmüller theory for number fields equipped with an elliptic curve … by applying the theory of semi-graphs of anabelioids, Frobenioids, the etale theta function, and log-shells,” even the world’s premier mathematicians were stumped, and Mochizuki couldn’t be bothered to explain.

When asked by a well-known university to visit and expound on the proof, Mochizuki reportedly stated “I couldn’t possibly do that in one talk.” He then refused even when offered more time. Friend and colleague of Mochizuki, Oxford professor Minhyong Kim, states that Shinichi is a “slightly shy character,” noting:

He’s a very hard working guy and he just doesn’t want to spend time on airplanes and hotels and so on.

Japanese Background

Japanese culture is quiet, reserved, and hardworking, generally speaking. Humility and politeness go hand-in-hand with and an almost painful aversion to being the center of attention. In Japan it is viewed as graceful and appropriate to do one’s work quietly, complete the task, and not make much of a fuss about it. This can be very different from the general Western individualist ethos, which often calls for flashy attention or a prize in the face of groundbreaking accomplishment.

On a linguistic aside, the name Shinichi means “new one” in Japanese, and interestingly shares a syllable count with Satoshi. The surnames line up syllabically as well, but this could be nothing more than mere coincidence.

Skepticism and Summary

The most obvious argument against Shinichi Mochizuki being Satoshi Nakamoto is a glaring lack of known background in computers, coding, and cypherpunk ethos and knowledge. It’s hard to imagine though, that a scholar of his caliber in the field of mathematics would not have at least some working familiarity with these fields. Critics have pulled no punches in attempting to put the Mochizuki as Satoshi theory into the cultural paper shredder, even leveraging insult to do so. Still, like the other candidates in this series so far, Mochizuki merits examination on a variety of counts, and further adds to the mystery of the hunt for Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator.

Who do you think is Satoshi? One person? Many? Let us know in the comments section below.

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misssophiachase · 6 years

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Thanks for reviewing part 1 on FF HERE So, I do have a question. Not that we want to see Jodice with anyone else but I need some ideas for potential love interests (not their current spouses). Some that would make for an interesting and possibly humorous, jealous scenario, let me know.

Give Me Love

Actors Candice Accola and Joseph Morgan don't like each other at first but being forced to act together means they can't avoid the simmering attraction developing behind the scenes. Fast forward 8 years and they're due to appear in two fan conventions but given all the baggage and unresolved issues things aren't going to run as smoothly as organisers would hope.

Part 2: All of the Stars

June - 2019 – London, UK

It's just another night and I'm staring at the moon...I saw a shooting star and thought of you.

Joseph wasn't sure how long he'd been staring out the window. One minute the sun was setting in brilliant streaks of bright pink and orange on the horizon and the next it was dark and the sky filled with a shower of stars.

He was due to fly out the next morning but no amount of cocoa or sleeping pills were going to help him relax knowing what the next day held in store.

Candice Accola.

Two words that had the ability to mess with his composure.

Two words that stirred up more memories than any other.

Two words that meant more to him than anything and anyone.

A shooting star emerged moving through the sky breaking him from his thoughts and filling Joseph with a familiar warmth. She loved astronomy so much so that she'd researched the best place to observe it in its full glory. Like Caroline Forbes, Candice Accola had researching down to a fine, but only slightly neurotic, art.

They were camping in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. As promised the heavens were putting on a brilliant show as they lay on the ground his arm securely around her. She'd squealed excitedly when the shooting star appeared unexpectedly and Joseph would never forget the way she berated him for not wishing on it when he had the chance.

Maybe if he had things would be different. Tonight, he wasn't taking any chances and quickly made his wish. Not that he was holding out much hope but the fact it had appeared within days of their reunion seemed almost fitting.

Although they weren't together anymore and hadn't seen each other in eighteen months, he still thought about her incessantly. What she was doing, who she was with and if she ever thought about him like he did her. It just about drove him crazy.

He read the tabloids trying to find out anything he could and every time a new 'love interest' was mentioned Joseph found himself more and more worked up about it. Of course he usually didn't take stock in media reports because they had been wrong about him so many times but it didn't stop him from obsessing and devising strategies on how to break them apart.

Of course Joseph never acted on it, he had a reputation to protect after all, but he kind of wished he could. His mother had told him as a young boy warring with the girl next door that one day he might find someone that he didn't just see as an adversary. Of course he'd asked what that meant and she'd said he'd fall madly in love when he was older and not expecting it. Being eight and extremely scared of 'girl germs' Joseph didn't think that was remotely possible.

Until he ran into Candice at the craft services table with rice stuck to her cheek. Of course he wanted to tell her, in fact his first instinct was to rub it away just to check that her creamy skin was as soft to touch as it looked. But he didn't. Joseph prided himself on being the gentleman his mother raised.

Turns out not telling her about the rice was actually ungentlemanly. Go figure. But that's what he liked about Candice. The fact she had no qualms in telling him just what she thought. Joseph knew then that he was in trouble. Beauty and brains was a tough combination to beat.

It didn't help that just as his attraction grew so did the number of scenes they shared together. It seemed like the viewing public could sense the chemistry between them that Joseph had felt since that first day. Not that he was complaining about spending more time with Candice and hopefully getting to know her better.

The cast and crew raved about her, apparently there was no one she didn't share chemistry with but Joseph hoped he could change that and be the only one. He'd always been competitive so saw it as a professional challenge. Nothing else.

Famous last words.

March - 2012 - Atlanta, GA

Joseph found himself missing home for the first time in a while. Although he'd been working in the States for close to a year now it didn't stop him wanting all of the familiarities from home. He'd spoken to his mother and thoughts of her amazing cooking had infiltrated his brain which he carried with him onto set.

This was the day he saved Caroline from Alaric's clutches at the high school and Joseph was excited about reminding her just how many times he'd saved her now. He could just imagine the cute, exasperated look she got when she was attempting to argue back. Social media had erupted as Candice had predicted after their first scene together and fans were delirious about their onscreen and offscreen characters giving into their feelings. Joseph would have laughed if it wasn't so true.

The scene at the school went off without a hitch which was becoming the norm between them. Even Julie Plec had pulled him aside a few episodes ago and mentioned just how explosive the chemistry between them was. He wasn't going to argue given his ever growing feelings for his beautiful, blonde co-star.

"What's wrong?" She asked, approaching him at the lunch table.

"Excuse me?"

"You haven't boasted about the fact you saved me yet again," she drawled. "I know you were thinking it, Morgan."

"I was," he admitted. "But I'll admit, I was kind of distracted by a bad dose of homesickness." Joseph couldn't believe he was admitting it to her of all people.

"Missing the Queen and Prince Harry?"

"I'll assume that Prince Harry reference was just for you, Accola," he joked. "While her Majesty certainly holds a dear place in my heart I was thinking of my family, if you must know."

"It must be difficult to be this far from home." She murmured. "My family may be in Florida but at least the flight doesn't take that long."

"And without the jet lag," he joked. "I guess I just miss my family and the food."

"I was actually thinking of having a dinner party to celebrate the wrap of season three next week. I can't promise you England but hopefully a pretty good time at least?" Joseph knew declining was madness. He knew this was her way of trying to welcome him and spending time together off set was something he'd been craving for a while.

What Joseph wasn't expecting was the array of English delicacies on her dining room table that night and as he helped himself greedily to the Beef Wellington, he couldn't help but send her a smile of gratitude. The fact she'd thought of him was only making him like her that little bit more.

"Don't ever let my mother taste this," he said pointing to the Yorkshire pudding on his plate.

"Why" She squeaked, self consciously.

"She might not like the competition," he shared. "I can't believe you did all of this."

"I know better than anyone else how difficult homesickness can be, Joseph." His heart almost stopped beating as she uttered his name for the first time since they'd met. "But I couldn't imagine having my family that far away so it was really the least I could do."

"Well, thank you, love," he smiled. The fans seemed to think that was a Klaus term but Joseph had been the one to suggest it to the writers. He was starting to realise he only wanted to use it on one person though, acting or in real life. "You have no idea what this means." He noticed her blush slightly as he said it. If Zach hadn't interrupted their conversation right then who knows what she might have replied?

September - 2012 - Covington, GA

"Now, you both know what you're supposed to do this episode?"

"He's supposed to shamelessly chase me as usual?" Joseph sent her a sideways glance. Ever since her impromptu dinner in March, their relationship had elevated to an extremely flirty friendship. Not that he could recall when they'd ever really been friends. She delighted in teasing him but Joseph would be lying if he didn't delight in exactly the same thing.

"Last time I checked Caroline was the one who suggested a date?"

"Yeah to a movie where I can put at least three seats between us," she quipped.

"Glad to see you two know your lines," the director drawled. "How about we get this show on the road?"

"Happy to buy you a drink later, you know tell you all about being the bad guy," he whispered in her ear tauntingly. "Only the best Moet too. None of these cheap, alcohol props."

"Easy tiger," she joked using British terminology he'd bestowed upon her in the make-up trailer earlier while moving away to her starting point in front of camera.

After the director called cut for the day, Joseph made his way towards the porch where the cast would relax between scenes. It was extremely peaceful overlooking the lake at the fictional Lockwood Mansion at the end of the day. The other actors were filming elsewhere and he found it quite relaxing sitting there and drinking in the Fall afternoon.

"It's days like this which make the job a little more bearable."

"Oh come on, you love it, Accola," he teased. "In fact, I have a souvenir just for you." She cocked her left eyebrow curiously, he obviously had her attention as he placed it on the table between them. She picked it up and read it briefly, a sly smile tugging at her lips.

"I think you should keep this," she announced, placing it back on the table and rocking back in her chair. "I wouldn't want you to forget me or anything."

"How could I with the mention of perspiration? You realise I could write a much better Miss Mystic Falls application? As much as I love Caroline, I don't think everything needs to rhyme."

"Hey," she growled, slapping him from her chair. "We can't all come from the birthplace of William bloody Shakespeare."

"First easy tiger and now the emphatic use of bloody as a makeshift middle name, I'll make a Brit of you yet, love."

"We'll see, Morgan," she muttered. "So, apparently you promised me a really expensive drink." Joseph wasn't sure whether to mention it, he didn't want to come across too eager or anything. But the fact she brought it up was a good sign.

"Well, of course. It's the least I owe you after having to put up with me all day."

"Not sure your thousands of twitter followers would agree, they seem extremely excited about you sharing so many scenes with 'you know who'."

"I didn't realise you followed me on twitter, love?"

"Call it professional courtesy," she shot back, her left eyebrow cocked lazily. "And you really didn't know?"

"Fine, you got me. I've been following you since the beginning for exactly the same reason," he lied. "Dana?" Her face broke into a gorgeous smile as he recited her cheeky reply to one of his tweets.

One drink had led to more at Red Phone Booth whiskey bar in Atlanta. Joseph said the establishment's name was part of her British transition. He was trying to ignore just how gorgeous she looked as they talked across the bar and felt himself slowly losing all his inhibitions. He remembered brushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear and placing a chaste kiss on her cheek before escorting her to her accommodation. Who knew he had such impeccable manners? His mother would be proud even if he did have to take a cold shower when he returned to his hotel.

January - 2013 - Atlanta, GA

"There's been two massacres. Pastor Young's farm is here, and the old Lockwood cellar, where you spitefully slaughtered 12 of your own hybrids, is here. According to the book, the expression triangle is equilateral, putting it here."

"Somebody's been skipping their geometry classes. There are actually two places where the third massacre could be." He drew the extra lines on the map as she watched him curiously.

"Well, you didn't let me finish." They held each other's gaze because the scene called for it but Joseph knew it was the built up tension between the two co-stars who couldn't resist each other any longer. He could sense it in her eyes, her demeanour and the fact that her breathing had quickened slightly.

He could barely wait until they called cut and once they finally did he silently signalled her to his trailer with his eyes. They'd missed each other over the holidays, their acting reunion had more than conveyed that, and he couldn't wait to embrace her after all the time apart. Joseph couldn't quite recall whose clothes came off first but before he knew it the beautiful blonde was straddling him naked and he was sucking on her nipples hungrily.

She was moaning now given the pressure he was placing on her left nipple while his other hand found its way south to her wet centre. This was the moment he'd been waiting for and, given the whimper she emitted, so too Candice. He looked into her eyes silently asking for permission but her blue eyes were begging him to continue and before Joseph knew it they were one. It felt effortless as their bodies writhed together, their intermingling cries sounding out as she rode him to climax.

Joseph held her for a long time afterwards, he wasn't one to get attached to anyone but he couldn't let her go. He could feel her heart beating rapidly against his chest as they laid together and decided it was the single best sound he'd probably ever heard. His hand found its way through her golden waves as he placed butterfly kisses across her jaw and onto her collarbone.

"I'm usually more of a gentleman, I promise," he mumbled against her bare skin.

"Like you keep saying, Morgan." She joked. "I'd usually reprimand you but for once I'm not entirely annoyed by your behaviour. Well, as long as this stays just between us."

And suddenly he snapped out of his dream, looks like they were back to professional reality. Joseph had made his fair share of escapes in the middle of the night and it seemed like Candice was giving him a free pass. But did he really want one?

"Of course, we certainly can't risk this coming out." He didn't mean a word of it of course, but this was Hollywood afterall.

#klaroline fan fiction #give me love #misssophiachase #klaroline #all of the stars

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cedarrrun · 5 years

Link

A first-generation Indian-American yoga and mindfulness researcher and teacher reflects on what feels misrepresented and appropriative to her in modern yoga.

Unsure of the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation? Read on to find out.

See also The First Book of Yoga: The Enduring Influence of the Bhagavad Gita

Until the middle of the meeting.

See also The Debate: Teach With English or Sanskrit Pose Names?

Those without access to an in-depth history education might lighten this to a question of political correctness or cries by minorities for cultural recognition. But it goes so much deeper.

See also A Beginner's Guide to the History of Yoga

Cultural appropriation is the taking, marketing, and exotification of cultural practices from historically oppressed populations.

What is Cultural Appropriation?

See also Do You Really Know the True Meaning of Yoga?

See also The Timeline and History of Yoga in America

“I think they don’t realize that these are not just designs. They are words that carry deep meaning for people,” my father says.

See also Sanskrit 101: 4 Reasons Why Studying This Ancient Language Is Worth Your Time

Ask these questions to deeper your understanding around cultural appropriation.

Questions to Ask about Cultural Appropriation

“Do I really understand the history of the yoga practice I’m so freely allowed to practice today that was once ridiculed and prohibited by colonists in India?”

“As I continue to learn, am I comfortable with the practices and purchases I’m choosing to make, or should I make some changes?”

“Does the practice I live promote peace and integrity for all?”

See also The Wake-Up Call Yogis Need to Bring 'Real Yoga' Back Into Their Practice

Rina Deshpande is a teacher, writer, and researcher of yoga and mindfulness practices.

About our author

#sleep sounds #sleep music #white noise app #nature sounds #relaxing sounds #rain sounds for sleeping

0 notes

krisiunicornio · 5 years

Link

A first-generation Indian-American yoga and mindfulness researcher and teacher reflects on what feels misrepresented and appropriative to her in modern yoga.

Unsure of the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation? Read on to find out.

See also The First Book of Yoga: The Enduring Influence of the Bhagavad Gita

Until the middle of the meeting.

See also The Debate: Teach With English or Sanskrit Pose Names?

Those without access to an in-depth history education might lighten this to a question of political correctness or cries by minorities for cultural recognition. But it goes so much deeper.

See also A Beginner's Guide to the History of Yoga

Cultural appropriation is the taking, marketing, and exotification of cultural practices from historically oppressed populations.

What is Cultural Appropriation?

See also Do You Really Know the True Meaning of Yoga?

See also The Timeline and History of Yoga in America

“I think they don’t realize that these are not just designs. They are words that carry deep meaning for people,” my father says.

See also Sanskrit 101: 4 Reasons Why Studying This Ancient Language Is Worth Your Time

Ask these questions to deeper your understanding around cultural appropriation.

Questions to Ask about Cultural Appropriation

“Do I really understand the history of the yoga practice I’m so freely allowed to practice today that was once ridiculed and prohibited by colonists in India?”

“As I continue to learn, am I comfortable with the practices and purchases I’m choosing to make, or should I make some changes?”

“Does the practice I live promote peace and integrity for all?”

See also The Wake-Up Call Yogis Need to Bring 'Real Yoga' Back Into Their Practice

Rina Deshpande is a teacher, writer, and researcher of yoga and mindfulness practices.

About our author

#sleep sounds #sleep music #white noise app #nature sounds #relaxing sounds #rain sounds for sleeping

0 notes

amyddaniels · 5 years

Text

What's the Difference Between Cultural Appropriation and Cultural Appreciation?

A first-generation Indian-American yoga and mindfulness researcher and teacher reflects on what feels misrepresented and appropriative to her in modern yoga.

Unsure of the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation? Read on to find out.

See also The First Book of Yoga: The Enduring Influence of the Bhagavad Gita

Until the middle of the meeting.

See also The Debate: Teach With English or Sanskrit Pose Names?

Those without access to an in-depth history education might lighten this to a question of political correctness or cries by minorities for cultural recognition. But it goes so much deeper.

See also A Beginner's Guide to the History of Yoga

Cultural appropriation is the taking, marketing, and exotification of cultural practices from historically oppressed populations.

What is Cultural Appropriation?

See also Do You Really Know the True Meaning of Yoga?

See also The Timeline and History of Yoga in America

“I think they don’t realize that these are not just designs. They are words that carry deep meaning for people,” my father says.

See also Sanskrit 101: 4 Reasons Why Studying This Ancient Language Is Worth Your Time

Ask these questions to deeper your understanding around cultural appropriation.

Questions to Ask about Cultural Appropriation

“Do I really understand the history of the yoga practice I’m so freely allowed to practice today that was once ridiculed and prohibited by colonists in India?”

“As I continue to learn, am I comfortable with the practices and purchases I’m choosing to make, or should I make some changes?”

“Does the practice I live promote peace and integrity for all?”

See also The Wake-Up Call Yogis Need to Bring 'Real Yoga' Back Into Their Practice

Rina Deshpande is a teacher, writer, and researcher of yoga and mindfulness practices.

About our author

1 note · View note

remedialmassage · 5 years

Text

What's the Difference Between Cultural Appropriation and Cultural Appreciation?

A first-generation Indian-American yoga and mindfulness researcher and teacher reflects on what feels misrepresented and appropriative to her in modern yoga.

Unsure of the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation? Read on to find out.

See also The First Book of Yoga: The Enduring Influence of the Bhagavad Gita

Until the middle of the meeting.

See also The Debate: Teach With English or Sanskrit Pose Names?

Those without access to an in-depth history education might lighten this to a question of political correctness or cries by minorities for cultural recognition. But it goes so much deeper.

See also A Beginner's Guide to the History of Yoga

Cultural appropriation is the taking, marketing, and exotification of cultural practices from historically oppressed populations.

What is Cultural Appropriation?

See also Do You Really Know the True Meaning of Yoga?

See also The Timeline and History of Yoga in America

“I think they don’t realize that these are not just designs. They are words that carry deep meaning for people,” my father says.

See also Sanskrit 101: 4 Reasons Why Studying This Ancient Language Is Worth Your Time

Ask these questions to deeper your understanding around cultural appropriation.

Questions to Ask about Cultural Appropriation

“Do I really understand the history of the yoga practice I’m so freely allowed to practice today that was once ridiculed and prohibited by colonists in India?”

“As I continue to learn, am I comfortable with the practices and purchases I’m choosing to make, or should I make some changes?”

“Does the practice I live promote peace and integrity for all?”

See also The Wake-Up Call Yogis Need to Bring 'Real Yoga' Back Into Their Practice

Rina Deshpande is a teacher, writer, and researcher of yoga and mindfulness practices.

About our author

from Yoga Journal http://bit.ly/2GQHYf9

#Yoga Journal

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