Stay In Touch -Have I not proven to you that I Am in the saving sinners business? -Jesus
Monday, December 31, 2012
We Are One: Getting emotional
We Are One: Getting emotional
Excerpt: ...telling me how I should feel in every situation...
Excerpt: ...telling me how I should feel in every situation...
Emotional abuse is like brain washing i........................What is Emotional Abuse?
Abuse is any behavior that is designed to control and subjugate another human being through the use of fear, humiliation, and verbal or physical assaults. Emotional abuse is any kind of abuse that is emotional rather than physical in nature. It can include anything from verbal abuse and constant criticism to more subtle tactics, such as intimidation, manipulation, and refusal to ever be pleased.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Intrinsic Worth
Look at yourself in the mirror. Look at your neighbor. Now look at them without their ‘star power’.
You can’t earn anyone’s love. You might think you can ‘temporarily’ but it
never lasts. The narcissistic ‘star’
syndrome has been soaring to thousands of rpms these past few years. I noticed it reaching new peaks in the ‘90’s
with drama classes and drama club added to the ‘star’ funding packages. So,
what’s it all about?
For at least three generations the insidious false belief is
perpetrated that unless you are a societal ‘star’ even in a family you
have no worth. Personally I call it
prestige power inherited from the feudal (futile) king-queen/royalty syndrome—a
ridiculous idea that wealth, whoredom power, talents, intelligence, genealogy
or seer-ship somehow makes a person ‘worthier’—which of course is bullshit.
Only God is worthy of Love.
And it is only God who loves each one of us ‘as is’.
I love Lundy my backyard squirrel. He brings great joy to me and others. We are
created to love each other that way.
Just ‘as is’—nakedly—no crowns, stars, badges, stripes...etc.
The people who ‘get that’ are the really content, happy ones
and they are truly grateful for the least cup of coffee.
I don’t care if you don’t have money, are ‘attractive’ (it
will go away quickly), have Einstein’s IQ, are popular, are in dance with the
stars. I am called to loved each one as
God loves me—unconditionally. In others
words, I must dispense with the egoistic, selfish trait of “I will love you
forever [IF].... The ‘if’ for a
Christian has to go.
Used to be that is what ‘family’ was for...to provide a
nurturing, safe, loving unconditional place for each member.
Envision the reality that is meant to be...family...not the
one touted today.
If it really existed today we would not have mass murderers,
mental illness, etc.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Friday, December 28, 2012
SHIRT OF FLAME: IT'S EASY TO REMEMBER
SHIRT OF FLAME: IT'S EASY TO REMEMBER
My note: It would be futile for me to explain how this article really brought me a strange 'hope'.
My note: It would be futile for me to explain how this article really brought me a strange 'hope'.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Monday, December 24, 2012
Normal at Christmas
Christmas is not about presents and "have to", it's about spending 'real' time with family and friends who accept, love, support and respect us.
===========
==========
===========
Can't you just be 'normal' for just one day?
Now the answer is . . . “Yes.”
“That’s just the way it is. We are different.’
Trauma survivors pay a price for
what they have suffered. This price is not
rescinded just because it is a
holiday.
Now the answer is... "No."
The answer is “I went through hell,
and holidays bring up a lot of pain. No. I cannot
be normal, as you call it. I am
normal for what I have been through.”
Part of the pain induced by the
request to be normal is the unspoken assumption
that you could be normal for a day if you just tried hard enough. Suzette Hadin
Elgin in her book, The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense (Dorsett, 1980)
h/t Patience H. C. Mason, www.patiencepress.com==========
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Miklos Radnoti: The Poetry of Witness and Prophesy | Pony Express(ions)
Miklos Radnoti: The Poetry of Witness and Prophesy | Pony Express(ions)
Excerpt:
The Third Partner, The Translators
Scores of translators have introduced Radnoti’s poetry to audiences around the world who are unable to read his poetry in the original Hungarian. There have been a dozen or more translations of significant collections of Radnoti’s poetry published in English, on both sides of the Atlantic. One reviewer of a collection of Radnoti’s poetry published in England correctly observed: “The question [with respect to any new publication of Radnoti's poetry] is how does this volume compare with other published translations of Radnoti?” [viii] Hungarian is like no other language spoken in the modern world except, in some respects, Finnish; it belongs to no known language family like Romance or Germanic or Indo-European. [ix] In addition to this singularity, Hungary has a unique and centuries old poetic tradition, mostly unknown in the West. The use of both melody and rhyme schemes is central to that tradition. In Hungarian grammar, prepositions having numerous vowel sounds occur at the end of sentences, facilitating the use of end and internal rhyming schemes for poets writing in that language. Furthermore, there is a strong tradition of singing centuries old folk ballads, the melodies of which are known to most Hungarians, thus creating what Dr. Ozvath calls “incredible musicality” in the Hungarian poetic tradition. Radnoti’s poetry, regardless of subject matter, is strongly centered in that Hungarian poetic tradition, and accordingly strongly based on meter, melody and rhyme scheme.
...
Although Radnoti did write free verse early in his career as a poet, he was a master of the many classic forms of poetry. Turner refers to Radnoti’s “virtuosity with meter,” comparing him as a poet to Mozart as a composer. (Foamy Sky, xliii) Turner confesses that to translate metrically “one must be prepared to give up everything, to sacrifice everything to the meter.” He freely admits that his translations omit and rearrange phrases within each poem, create ambiguity in metaphor, and in some cases strain the use of the English language in order to be faithful to the meter of the original. (Foamy Sky, xliv-xlv) “The chief superstition that we found we must give up was the superstition that ‘free verse’ is an adequate or acceptable way of translating a metered original. And our experience with translation confirmed our growing suspicion that by abandoning metered verse the modernists were abandoning the very heart of poetry itself.” (Foamy Sky, xlvii)
Each approach to translation has its champions...
...
Excerpt:
The Third Partner, The Translators
Scores of translators have introduced Radnoti’s poetry to audiences around the world who are unable to read his poetry in the original Hungarian. There have been a dozen or more translations of significant collections of Radnoti’s poetry published in English, on both sides of the Atlantic. One reviewer of a collection of Radnoti’s poetry published in England correctly observed: “The question [with respect to any new publication of Radnoti's poetry] is how does this volume compare with other published translations of Radnoti?” [viii] Hungarian is like no other language spoken in the modern world except, in some respects, Finnish; it belongs to no known language family like Romance or Germanic or Indo-European. [ix] In addition to this singularity, Hungary has a unique and centuries old poetic tradition, mostly unknown in the West. The use of both melody and rhyme schemes is central to that tradition. In Hungarian grammar, prepositions having numerous vowel sounds occur at the end of sentences, facilitating the use of end and internal rhyming schemes for poets writing in that language. Furthermore, there is a strong tradition of singing centuries old folk ballads, the melodies of which are known to most Hungarians, thus creating what Dr. Ozvath calls “incredible musicality” in the Hungarian poetic tradition. Radnoti’s poetry, regardless of subject matter, is strongly centered in that Hungarian poetic tradition, and accordingly strongly based on meter, melody and rhyme scheme.
...
Although Radnoti did write free verse early in his career as a poet, he was a master of the many classic forms of poetry. Turner refers to Radnoti’s “virtuosity with meter,” comparing him as a poet to Mozart as a composer. (Foamy Sky, xliii) Turner confesses that to translate metrically “one must be prepared to give up everything, to sacrifice everything to the meter.” He freely admits that his translations omit and rearrange phrases within each poem, create ambiguity in metaphor, and in some cases strain the use of the English language in order to be faithful to the meter of the original. (Foamy Sky, xliv-xlv) “The chief superstition that we found we must give up was the superstition that ‘free verse’ is an adequate or acceptable way of translating a metered original. And our experience with translation confirmed our growing suspicion that by abandoning metered verse the modernists were abandoning the very heart of poetry itself.” (Foamy Sky, xlvii)
Each approach to translation has its champions...
...
“...that measured breath...”
Throughout these poems one encounters a cultured sensibility increasingly forced into what the translators define as the position of a “Christian Stoic,” seeing “his own survival as of secondary importance: he had been called ‘As witness to the truth’.” “I’ve grown so used to this terrible world / That sometimes I am not hurt by it – merely disgusted,” comments the Poet in ‘First Eclogue.’
... Radnoti’s poetry by the anti-traditional bias of one reviewer.
The “measured breath” of formal meter by which the poet teaches us how to know cannot be extirpated. . .by the hostility of a modernist cultural establishment. The lessons we can draw from Radnoti’s life and work suggest a radical transformation in the ways in which poetry is taught today.
We need to abandon the modernist picture of progress as the replacement of outmoded forms by more up-to-date ones better fitted to the spirit of the age.
It was Radnoti’s faithfulness to the old quixotic poetic standards that brought his writings to us out of the grave. [xiv]
......
"There's is a good deal to live for, but a man has to go through hell really to find it out." ~Edwin Arlington Robinson
Friday, December 21, 2012
Poetry 180 - The End and the Beginning
Poetry 180 - The End and the Beginning
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
We'll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.
From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
The End and the Beginning
Wislawa Szymborska
After every warsomeone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
We'll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.
From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
from Miracle Fair: Selected Poems of Wislawa Szymborska, 2001
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY
Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY
Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak
Copyright 2001 by Wislawa Szymborska.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information).
All rights reserved.
Reproduced with permission (click for permissions information).
Wuthering Expectations: A little spare the night I loved, \ And hold it solemn to the past. - Christmas and context
Wuthering Expectations: A little spare the night I loved, \ And hold it solemn to the past. - Christmas and context
Excerpt:
Well, from the road, the lanes or the common,
In came the flock: the fat weary woman,
Panting and bewildered, down-clapping
Her umbrella with a mighty report,
Grounded it by me, wry and flapping,
A wreck of whalebones (47-52)
Pretty good, but not really very Christmasy, is it? And most of the poem is not descriptive but argumentative.
I was surprised to find so much about Christmas in Tennyson's In Memoram (also 1850). Three Christmas scenes provide one of the few concrete structural devices in a mostly abstractly structured poem. From the third Christmas:
The time draws near the birth of Christ;
The moon is hid, the night is still;
A single church below the hill
Is pealing, folded in the mist (Stanza 104).
Which is nice enough, I guess, but treating a chunk of this poem about grief and loss as Christmas decoration seems misguided. This particular Christmas is the third since the loss of Tennyson's best friend, so the theme is acceptance:
Let cares that petty shadows cast,
By which our lives are chiefly proved,
A little spare the night I loved,
And hold it solemn to the past. (105)
Excerpt:
Well, from the road, the lanes or the common,
In came the flock: the fat weary woman,
Panting and bewildered, down-clapping
Her umbrella with a mighty report,
Grounded it by me, wry and flapping,
A wreck of whalebones (47-52)
Pretty good, but not really very Christmasy, is it? And most of the poem is not descriptive but argumentative.
I was surprised to find so much about Christmas in Tennyson's In Memoram (also 1850). Three Christmas scenes provide one of the few concrete structural devices in a mostly abstractly structured poem. From the third Christmas:
The time draws near the birth of Christ;
The moon is hid, the night is still;
A single church below the hill
Is pealing, folded in the mist (Stanza 104).
Which is nice enough, I guess, but treating a chunk of this poem about grief and loss as Christmas decoration seems misguided. This particular Christmas is the third since the loss of Tennyson's best friend, so the theme is acceptance:
Let cares that petty shadows cast,
By which our lives are chiefly proved,
A little spare the night I loved,
And hold it solemn to the past. (105)
What’s up, Doc, or should I ask Shakespeare? - Telegraph
What’s up, Doc, or should I ask Shakespeare? - Telegraph
“Is there no pity sitting in the clouds
That sees into the bottom of my grief?—
O sweet my mother .. ~Romeo and Juliet
“Is there no pity sitting in the clouds
That sees into the bottom of my grief?—
O sweet my mother .. ~Romeo and Juliet
Obituary: Dr Murray Cox - People - News - The Independent
Obituary: Dr Murray Cox - People - News - The Independent
Excerpt:
Murray Newell Cox, psychotherapist: born Birmingham 22 July 1931; married 1959 Caroline McNeill Love (two sons, one daughter); died 28 June 1997.
.....I have met people who walk off the edge of language - and then they DO THINGS."
They point to the astonishing simplicity at the heart of Cox's practice: he listened, took patients at their word, and really noticed what they said - not just in words, but in emphasis, expression and gesture. Perhaps the most distinctive thing about him was his respect for the dignity of patients who had been doubly written off as "mad and bad". He risked disappointment again and again and had said once about his Broadmoor work: "There is nobody I can't have hope about".
Excerpt:
Murray Newell Cox, psychotherapist: born Birmingham 22 July 1931; married 1959 Caroline McNeill Love (two sons, one daughter); died 28 June 1997.
.....I have met people who walk off the edge of language - and then they DO THINGS."
They point to the astonishing simplicity at the heart of Cox's practice: he listened, took patients at their word, and really noticed what they said - not just in words, but in emphasis, expression and gesture. Perhaps the most distinctive thing about him was his respect for the dignity of patients who had been doubly written off as "mad and bad". He risked disappointment again and again and had said once about his Broadmoor work: "There is nobody I can't have hope about".
Among the last things he wrote was an article called "A Good Enough God? Some Psychology-Theology Crossing Places", and when he died he was working on a collaborative book on "the secret self" in theology, psychology and psychotherapy.
"What seest thou else?" was a favourite quotation, and he excelled at seeing more, deeper, wider, from new angles...co-author of two books on therapy, Mutative Metaphors in Psychotherapy (1987) and Shakespeare as Prompter (1994)...
Living with postnatal depression: ‘I felt terrified of motherhood and had no love for my baby’ | Liz Wise | Independent Editor's choice Blogs
Living with postnatal depression: ‘I felt terrified of motherhood and had no love for my baby’ | Liz Wise | Independent Editor's choice Blogs
Excerpt:
....was terrified of telling her how I was really feeling as I thought not only would she tell me that I had something far worse than PND but that she would also want to put me in hospital, which was my worst fear.
Instead she became my lifeline, she changed my medication and every time I saw her she would constantly reassure me that I would recover although I never believed her. She explained to me that the reasons I couldn’t feel my love for Emma was due the severity of my depression, my feelings were suppressed and as I started to get better and the depression started to lift, my feelings would come through.
Excerpt:
....was terrified of telling her how I was really feeling as I thought not only would she tell me that I had something far worse than PND but that she would also want to put me in hospital, which was my worst fear.
Instead she became my lifeline, she changed my medication and every time I saw her she would constantly reassure me that I would recover although I never believed her. She explained to me that the reasons I couldn’t feel my love for Emma was due the severity of my depression, my feelings were suppressed and as I started to get better and the depression started to lift, my feelings would come through.
Cain Strategy and ‘Fast and Furious’
Cain Strategy and ‘Fast and Furious’
“We’ll never waste a good crisis...” Rahm Emmanuel
Alinsky Rule: Polarization...left vs right, Republicans vs
Democrats, guns vs no guns, conservative vs liberal, union vs non-union,
straight vs gay...etc...God vs...?
or..The ‘Cain’ Strategy from the Biblical ‘Cain and Abel’
So, while the ‘poles’ are fighting, destroying each
other...who is it that moves in and takes over?
In the meantime nothing...except ‘power grabbing’...
For the record: I hate guns.
Twice a bullet from an ‘unloaded’ gun narrowly missed
my head.
What I hate more than guns: predatory, selective memory and hypocrisy
I guess everyone has forgotten the ‘Fast and Furious’ gun
sales debacle?
But, as Chesterton warns us, those ‘shadows’ we so
carelessly discard stare ‘hard’ at us without smiling.
from After Every War
I
remember that when my parents left the room, and
there was no need to learn or be polite, they spoke to each
other in...
Even
their voices began to return. What was it I had heard? Gossip
and anecdote?
Or was I hearing distant towns, in their harsh
moment
of reckoning—and wider tragedies of nationhood and
inhumanity—creeping
through their words like fog under a
windowsill?
The truth is I couldn’t know: not then, not now... ~ Eavan
Bolan
Offering a Handful of
Birdsong
Antigone takes place in the
aftermath of a great war, when the dead are piled upon each other just outside the gates of the city-state.
Hasenclever's Antigone (1917) shows that it was impossible to bury the
dead to commemorate Germany's
mass casualties in a therapeutic fashion. The commemoration that takes place on
stage is in implicit dialogue with discourses of
memorialization during and after World War I, converting the stage into a space of memory.
Gertrud Kolmar (1894-1943) Wir
Juden ... called to me, Yearning:
Redeem me, destined one— — —Who are you, that your command should be heard?
Yearning
I think of you,
I think of you always.
People spoke to me, but I didn’t take heed.
I looked into the deep Chinese blue of the evening sky
from which
the moon hung as a round yellow lantern,
And mused upon another moon, yours...
The Street Sweeper: As the novel
progresses, and more characters – from the past and present – are introduced,
the connections and links between people multiply, rather like a Dickensian
novel. There is, though, a point to these connections. Early in the novel,
Perlman writes that
you
never know the connections between things, people, places, ideas. But there are
connections.
And these connections, whether we know it or not, can direct
the trajectory of our lives – as they do for the characters in The street
sweeper. There is also a central ideological connection in the book, and
this is that there are “parallels
between...
==========
Us. Gertrud Kolmar reminds me again of the great
danger in ‘deleting’ people, erasing them nonchalantly from my inside list as
of no connection or interest to me.
I call then with a thin, ethereal cry.
You hear me speak. But do you hear me feel? - Gertrud Kolmar
She died in
Auschwitz.
Da ich zittrig
noch hingestellt
Was ich war: ein
wächsernes Licht
Für das Wachen
zur zweiten Welt.
(Because I tremblingly still set down
What I was: a waxen light
For the awakening to the second world.)
The Woman Poet
You hold me now completely in your hands.
My heart beats like a frightened little bird's
Against your palm. Take heed! You do not think
A person lives within the page you thumb.
To you this book is paper, cloth, and ink,
Some binding thread and glue, and thus is dumb,
And cannot touch you (though the gaze be great
That seeks you from the printed marks inside),
And is an object with an object's fate.
And yet it has been veiled like a bride,
Adorned with gems, made ready to be loved,
Who asks you bashfully to change your mind,
To wake yourself, and feel, and to be moved.
But still she trembles, whispering to the wind:
"This shall not be." And smiles as if she knew.
Yet she must hope. A woman always tries,
Her very life is but a single "You . . ."
[...]
So then, to tell my story, here I stand.
The dress's tint, though bleached in bitter lye,
Has not all washed away. It still is real.
I call then with a thin, ethereal cry.
You hear me speak. But do you hear me feel? - Gertrud Kolmar
(trans. Henry A. Smith)
I'm always amazed about these stories about children being
abused in the proximity of so many "good citizens". We have the
usual reports
from neighbors, who interacted with the family on a daily basis:
Wien - Als
"freundlich und ganz nett", als "sympathisch und
unauffällig" beschreiben die Anwohner in der Ybbsstraße von Amstetten
ihren Nachbarn Josef F. (Residents of the Ybbstrasse in Amstetten described
their neighbor Josef F. as "friendly and really nice" "there was
nothing unusual at all")
And more:
Wie in solchen Fällen üblich sagen die Nachbarn, dass sie sich „das nicht vorstellen konnten“. Die Familie F. war „sehr nett “, Josef F., der bis zu seiner Pensionierung Elektriker war, „hat immer gerne geholfen, wenn es wo Probleme gab“, und er ist „sehr lieb mit Kindern umgegangen“. Dass er zu so einem Verbrechen fähig ist, nein, das will in Amstetten niemand glauben. (As is customary in such cases the neighbors claim "they could never imagine such a thing". The family was "very nice", Josef F., a retired electrician, "was always there to help out when there were problems" and was "always very sweet to the children.")
Wie in solchen Fällen üblich sagen die Nachbarn, dass sie sich „das nicht vorstellen konnten“. Die Familie F. war „sehr nett “, Josef F., der bis zu seiner Pensionierung Elektriker war, „hat immer gerne geholfen, wenn es wo Probleme gab“, und er ist „sehr lieb mit Kindern umgegangen“. Dass er zu so einem Verbrechen fähig ist, nein, das will in Amstetten niemand glauben. (As is customary in such cases the neighbors claim "they could never imagine such a thing". The family was "very nice", Josef F., a retired electrician, "was always there to help out when there were problems" and was "always very sweet to the children.")
A few days ago I
wrote about the the lyric poet Gertrud Kolmar who was virtually unknown in her short life, and even today does not receive
the recognition she deserves for her powerful poems. But she did have some
influential fans early in her writing career. One was the bestselling
author Ina Seidel, who
achieved celebrity status in Germany
with the publication of her novel Das Wunschkind (The
Wanted Child) in 1930. Ina Seidel became acquainted with Gertrud in Berlin
and wanted to use her considerable influence to promote her poetry.
Together with Elisabeth Langgässer she published an anthology of poetry by
women - Herz zum Hafen. Frauengedichte der Gegenwart - which included
four key poems by Gertrud Kolmar and brought her to the attention of the broad
reading public. Unfortunately Herz zum Hafen was released in 1933,
just after the Nazi seizure of power in Berlin.
Ina Seidel threw her lot in with Hitler, and broke off all contact with Kolmar
(as well as with the half-Jewish Langgässer). [As did Heidegger and Wittgenstein, by the way...] Gertrud Kolmar was
devastated by the turn of events and the attitude of her erstwhile
"friend". She complained bitterly to her friend Karl Josef
Keller, who recalled in his recollections of Gertrud Kolmar:
"G.K.beklagte
sich auch bei mir über den plötzlichen Gesinnungswechsel ihrer 'arischen'
Bekannten, die zuvor für ihre Arbeiten eingetreten waren. In diesem
Zusammenhang nannte sie u.a. eine der bekanntesten deutschen
Schriftstellerinnen, die m.E.in Berlin wohnhaft war."
(Gertrud Kolmar complained to me about the sudden change of heart of her "Aryan" friends who had championed her work. In this connection she mentioned a very famous German woman author who was living in Berlin (Ina Seidel)).
(Gertrud Kolmar complained to me about the sudden change of heart of her "Aryan" friends who had championed her work. In this connection she mentioned a very famous German woman author who was living in Berlin (Ina Seidel)).
Seidel became the most popular woman author in the Third
Reich. In her works she depicted the Nazi ideal of the feminine: the
stoic mother of the German front soldier. But she also wrote ecstatic
poems and hymns to fuel the Nazi Führerkult...
A short time after this celebration, Ina Seidel's friend
Gertrud Kolmar was sent to work as a slave laborer in a Nazi munitions
plant. Two years later she and the other Jewish workers were rounded up
at the plant and sent to Auschwitz where they were
murdered. There is no record that Ina Seidel ever inquired about her
friend or tried to intervene on her behalf.
After the war, Seidel's fame only grew. Streets,
Gymnasiums, elementary schools were named after her in West
Germany. Many bear her name still
today. And, in recognition of the new postwar order, Ina Seidel
reminisced often about her "Jewish friend, Gertrud Kolmar" up
until her death in 1974. Posted by David Vickrey on’Dialog
International...’
Forche, Carolyn [Forché];
Against Forgetting: Twentieth-century Poetry of Witness,
W.W. Norton, 1993, 812 pages ISBN 0393033724, 9780393033724
The resulting situation for Jews who had gone through the
process of
assimilation was a perpetual state of ‘inbetweenness’.
Perceived as inalienably other,
yet in many ways representative of gentile society that
projects this otherness, Jews
were subject to contradictory and conflicting societal
expectations so that it was
impossible to fit in with established constructs. In Gertrud
Kolmar’s prose and
dramatic works, textual devices denote the continuous
inbetween status of the
characters...
I
...Proficient
in English and German, Kolmar worked as a teacher and an
interpreter for a brief period in 1918... When Kolmar’s
mother became ill, she returned to the family home to care for her, leading a
life withdrawn from social activities and the literary circles of Berlin.
Following the death of her mother in 1930, Kolmar
remained at the family home to care for her father, whose health was
deteriorating. Kolmar was to remain by her father’s side
until his deportation to Theresienstadt in 1942, which was followed by Kolmar’s
deportation to Ausschwitz in February 1943. Kolmar’s
writing career dates from 1917, when her first cycle of poetry, Gedichte, was
published. The prose and dramatic works were written in the years immediately
preceding and during the Nazi regime in Germany.
These works are available today because Kolmar sent them
to her sister in Switzerland
for safekeeping.
A
number of works, including a collection of poetry written in Hebrew, remained
with the author and were consequently destroyed.
Kolmar
has been appreciated mainly as a gifted poet... the epistolary autobiography
presents women writers with the opportunity to “emphasize the inner realm, the
private sanctuary of emotions that is often shared with the partner in the
epistolary dialogue” (Shafi 2000: 106). Shafi’s analysis explores the
representation of this ‘inner realm’ in Kolmar’s
letters, seeing in the letters the forging of a “self that would be
able
to resist the onslaught on her subjectivity” (Shafi 2000: 105).
...
the struggles of the protagonists, as the aporetic nature of asserting a sense
of self in a hostile environment that oppresses the individual was the
marker...
Silence, Self and Sacrifice in Gertrud Kolmar’s
Prose and Dramatic Works Suzanne
O’Connor, Dept. of German, The National University of Ireland Maynooth. June 2010
But
tomorrow, dawn will come the way I picture her,
barefoot and disheveled, standing outside my window
in one of the fragile cotton dresses of the poor.
She will look in at me with her thin arms extended,
offering a handful of birdsong and a small cup of light.
~ Billy Collins, The Art of Drowning (1995). Tuesday, June 4, 1991
barefoot and disheveled, standing outside my window
in one of the fragile cotton dresses of the poor.
She will look in at me with her thin arms extended,
offering a handful of birdsong and a small cup of light.
~ Billy Collins, The Art of Drowning (1995). Tuesday, June 4, 1991
‘Sin is nothing but the refusal to recognize human misery.’ -Simone Weil
Memory, what does it mean to be clear? To be ice? To be twice? To be more? We are gasping with asking since infancy, answerless— What is the name of the cure? ~ Blaga Dimitrova, a Bulgarian anti-communist writer
who served as her country’s vice president...
"Silence prevails; it is an awful
silence. The voice of Mary is heard no
longer in the valley..”
Few memorials to forgotten victim: Gunman's mother - Yahoo! News
Few memorials to forgotten victim: Gunman's mother - Yahoo! News
"Others now share pain for choices you faced alone; May the blameless among us throw the first stone," it reads in part.
"Others now share pain for choices you faced alone; May the blameless among us throw the first stone," it reads in part.
NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — When people here speak of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, they use the number 26: the ones killed after Adam Lanza stormed his way into the school.
When the bells of Newtown toll mournfully Friday morning to honor the victims of last week's shooting rampage, they'll do so 26 times, for each child and staff member killed.
Rarely do residents mention the first person police said Lanza killed that morning: his mother, Nancy, who was shot in the head four times while she lay in bed.
That makes 27.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Toronto police identify mystery woman 'Linda' | CTV Toronto News
Toronto police identify mystery woman 'Linda' | CTV Toronto News
Excerpt:
he mystery surrounding a woman going by the name of “Linda” who showed up at a Toronto homeless shelter in September with no memory of who she was appears to be over.
After an intensive three-month investigation, Toronto police confirmed Tuesday that the woman is in fact Linda Hegg, a 56-year-old from Newark, Delaware, who was reported missing in early November.
Excerpt:
he mystery surrounding a woman going by the name of “Linda” who showed up at a Toronto homeless shelter in September with no memory of who she was appears to be over.
After an intensive three-month investigation, Toronto police confirmed Tuesday that the woman is in fact Linda Hegg, a 56-year-old from Newark, Delaware, who was reported missing in early November.
First Known When Lost: Christmas, Part Five: "I Should Go With Him In The Gloom, Hoping It Might Be So"
First Known When Lost: Christmas, Part Five: "I Should Go With Him In The Gloom, Hoping It Might Be So"
Excerpt:
'Now they are all on their knees,'
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
'Come; see the oxen kneel
'In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,'
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so. 1915 Thomas Hardy, Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (1917)
Excerpt:
'Now they are all on their knees,'
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
'Come; see the oxen kneel
'In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,'
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so. 1915 Thomas Hardy, Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (1917)
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Martyr of Charity
Jesus heals the lepers in the following verses:
Luke 17:11-19 says, "Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, 'Jesus, Master, have pity on us!' When he saw them, he said, 'Go, show yourselves to the priests.' And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him - and he was a Samaritan.
Jesus asked, 'Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?' Then he said to him, 'Rise and go; your faith has made you well.'"
One man was very obviously showing his appreciation to Jesus for healing him, while the others left. I believe they were so excited by their new found healing that they simply got caught up in the moment and forgot to thank Jesus. That seems to be human nature sometimes when we receive a supreme blessing. It is so easy to get caught up in what has just happened that we may forget at first to thank the One who gave us that blessing.
Psalm 107:8-9 says, "Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things."
===
Saint Damien de Veuster [pictured above on his deathbed] was a Roman Catholic missionary who ministered to lepers on the Hawaiian island of Molokai...Jozef De Veuster, was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary,[2] a missionary religious institute...After sixteen years caring for the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of those in the leper colony, he eventually contracted and died of the disease, and is considered a "martyr of charity".
Like Ezekiel he went and 'sat with the captives by the river even though he was not a captive'... Six months after his arrival at Kalawao he wrote his brother, Pamphile, in Europe:
...I make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ.
Mahatma Gandhi Answers the Challenge of Leprosy, as saying,
The political and journalistic world can boast of very few heroes who compare with Father Damien of Molokai. The Catholic Church, on the contrary, counts by the thousands those who after the example of Fr. Damien have devoted themselves to the victims of leprosy. It is worthwhile to look for the sources of such heroism.
Our Lady of the Forsaken:
In 1409, a Valencian priest confronted a mob who were preparing to lynch a mentally-ill homeless man near Santa Catalina. Father Jofre exhorted the mob to take pity on the poor soul, instead of stoning him to death. He would later base an important sermon on this and, as a result, Valencia would become the first city in the world to open an asylum for the mentally ill.
he asylum was run by a group of nuns, whose symbol was Our Lady of the Forsaken (Mare de Déu dels Desamparats). Over time, this symbol grew in importance and today Our Lady Valencia’s most well-loved and famous icon. It’s important to remember that she embodies Valencia’s historically unique role in caring for society’s most down-trodden members.
Luke 17:11-19 says, "Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, 'Jesus, Master, have pity on us!' When he saw them, he said, 'Go, show yourselves to the priests.' And as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him - and he was a Samaritan.
Jesus asked, 'Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?' Then he said to him, 'Rise and go; your faith has made you well.'"
One man was very obviously showing his appreciation to Jesus for healing him, while the others left. I believe they were so excited by their new found healing that they simply got caught up in the moment and forgot to thank Jesus. That seems to be human nature sometimes when we receive a supreme blessing. It is so easy to get caught up in what has just happened that we may forget at first to thank the One who gave us that blessing.
Psalm 107:8-9 says, "Let them give thanks to the LORD for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for men, for he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things."
===
Saint Damien de Veuster [pictured above on his deathbed] was a Roman Catholic missionary who ministered to lepers on the Hawaiian island of Molokai...Jozef De Veuster, was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary,[2] a missionary religious institute...After sixteen years caring for the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of those in the leper colony, he eventually contracted and died of the disease, and is considered a "martyr of charity".
Like Ezekiel he went and 'sat with the captives by the river even though he was not a captive'... Six months after his arrival at Kalawao he wrote his brother, Pamphile, in Europe:
...I make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ.
Mahatma Gandhi Answers the Challenge of Leprosy, as saying,
The political and journalistic world can boast of very few heroes who compare with Father Damien of Molokai. The Catholic Church, on the contrary, counts by the thousands those who after the example of Fr. Damien have devoted themselves to the victims of leprosy. It is worthwhile to look for the sources of such heroism.
Our Lady of the Forsaken:
In 1409, a Valencian priest confronted a mob who were preparing to lynch a mentally-ill homeless man near Santa Catalina. Father Jofre exhorted the mob to take pity on the poor soul, instead of stoning him to death. He would later base an important sermon on this and, as a result, Valencia would become the first city in the world to open an asylum for the mentally ill.
he asylum was run by a group of nuns, whose symbol was Our Lady of the Forsaken (Mare de Déu dels Desamparats). Over time, this symbol grew in importance and today Our Lady Valencia’s most well-loved and famous icon. It’s important to remember that she embodies Valencia’s historically unique role in caring for society’s most down-trodden members.
Monday, December 17, 2012
I am Adam Lanza's Mother - The Blue Review | The Blue Review
I am Adam Lanza's Mother - The Blue Review | The Blue Review
Excerpt:
No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, “Something must be done.”
I agree that something must be done. It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal.
God help me. God help Michael. God help us all.
~Liza Long is an author, musician, and erstwhile classicist. She is also a single mother of four bright, loved children, one of whom has special needs.
================
My Response: Thank God! A woman with guts. As anyone who reads my blog knows I am all for ending the ignorant stigmatization [which is just LAZINESS and INDIFFERENCE---until something bad happens...then out of every hole comes the big mouth rats who know everything...]
In the meantime, while the rats play mothers and other family members weep and plead for help. The problem?
'It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health.' [Not gun control!!!!]
It's time to really provide meaningful help for parents and sufferers of mental illness.
How there is no meaningful place for families to get help. There is no major push to end the crappy ignorance by the public and the way ill people are portrayed in the media, treated in schools, churches and businesses.
Every text book, every school, every professor....ad nauseum...has a different 'definition' and 'technique'...and most don't even come close to being an answer to the suffering of those who have been stricken by the disease of mental illness. Because you can't SEE it or TOUCH it then most people who just don't want to be bothered just want you to 'get over it'. Fortunately there is growing evidence of many of the types of mental illness have biological bases...there is still much unknown about the chemistry of the brain, the endocrine system, and even the chemistry of nerves themselves. Long standing abuse reaps psychological, emotional and physical problems--ALWAYS.
Until realistic means of treatment come around the responsibility for helping our neighbors, shouldering their burdens, rests with every individual.
It is tragic and exasperating that Nancy Lanza was terrified, worried but couldn't even find someone to talk to about her concerns. This scenario plays over and over but then everyone acts S-O-O-O shocked. Oh, how could this happen? Ad nauseum--again. And mothers are getting tired of being blamed for everything by husbands and children. Get with the program--men. Take care of your families. At this moment I can count over a hundred men that I know who have chickened out because they didn't want to help care for their own children who were sick, disabled, etc.Often there was no other reason than just sheer cold selfishness. It might get in the way of 'play time'...games, golf, TV, football, fishing...etc.
If one is lucky in the big cities there might be a bona fide place to go 24-7[sic] when things really go down. Good luck. Most mentally ill people are presently put in prison. [Over 1/3 of the entire prison population!]
Shame on any society of which that is true. There is no city of the well and city of the sick. We all live in the same city of man. It's just too damn bad that one doesn't want to be bothered because when things like this go down each person who has refused to take responsibility for family, friends or neighbor helped pull that trigger.
What is the worst part of this negligence? The deadly sin of prestige. What would people think? Who cares--big deal. It's time we got over our false selves and became real. Try it. Love your family, friends, neighbors...Help take care of each other...now...at this moment.
=================
Liza Long, God bless you.
=================
Update: Since there is ice on my roads I turned on the TV this morning to check the conditions. On turning the channel I glossed past HLN...just as...the announcer stated: ...critics say she is just doing it for attention...again the 'usual' ignorant bias and re-focus to what the political stompers want us to focus on and believe...We see how that is working out...
Well, DUH!...the whole point is to FOCUS THE ATTENTION on what is real...what is desperately needed....If Nancy Lanza and Adam had really found support and help...like a million others out there...we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Excerpt:
No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, “Something must be done.”
I agree that something must be done. It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal.
God help me. God help Michael. God help us all.
~Liza Long is an author, musician, and erstwhile classicist. She is also a single mother of four bright, loved children, one of whom has special needs.
================
My Response: Thank God! A woman with guts. As anyone who reads my blog knows I am all for ending the ignorant stigmatization [which is just LAZINESS and INDIFFERENCE---until something bad happens...then out of every hole comes the big mouth rats who know everything...]
In the meantime, while the rats play mothers and other family members weep and plead for help. The problem?
'It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health.' [Not gun control!!!!]
It's time to really provide meaningful help for parents and sufferers of mental illness.
How there is no meaningful place for families to get help. There is no major push to end the crappy ignorance by the public and the way ill people are portrayed in the media, treated in schools, churches and businesses.
Every text book, every school, every professor....ad nauseum...has a different 'definition' and 'technique'...and most don't even come close to being an answer to the suffering of those who have been stricken by the disease of mental illness. Because you can't SEE it or TOUCH it then most people who just don't want to be bothered just want you to 'get over it'. Fortunately there is growing evidence of many of the types of mental illness have biological bases...there is still much unknown about the chemistry of the brain, the endocrine system, and even the chemistry of nerves themselves. Long standing abuse reaps psychological, emotional and physical problems--ALWAYS.
Until realistic means of treatment come around the responsibility for helping our neighbors, shouldering their burdens, rests with every individual.
It is tragic and exasperating that Nancy Lanza was terrified, worried but couldn't even find someone to talk to about her concerns. This scenario plays over and over but then everyone acts S-O-O-O shocked. Oh, how could this happen? Ad nauseum--again. And mothers are getting tired of being blamed for everything by husbands and children. Get with the program--men. Take care of your families. At this moment I can count over a hundred men that I know who have chickened out because they didn't want to help care for their own children who were sick, disabled, etc.Often there was no other reason than just sheer cold selfishness. It might get in the way of 'play time'...games, golf, TV, football, fishing...etc.
If one is lucky in the big cities there might be a bona fide place to go 24-7[sic] when things really go down. Good luck. Most mentally ill people are presently put in prison. [Over 1/3 of the entire prison population!]
Shame on any society of which that is true. There is no city of the well and city of the sick. We all live in the same city of man. It's just too damn bad that one doesn't want to be bothered because when things like this go down each person who has refused to take responsibility for family, friends or neighbor helped pull that trigger.
What is the worst part of this negligence? The deadly sin of prestige. What would people think? Who cares--big deal. It's time we got over our false selves and became real. Try it. Love your family, friends, neighbors...Help take care of each other...now...at this moment.
=================
Liza Long, God bless you.
=================
Update: Since there is ice on my roads I turned on the TV this morning to check the conditions. On turning the channel I glossed past HLN...just as...the announcer stated: ...critics say she is just doing it for attention...again the 'usual' ignorant bias and re-focus to what the political stompers want us to focus on and believe...We see how that is working out...
Well, DUH!...the whole point is to FOCUS THE ATTENTION on what is real...what is desperately needed....If Nancy Lanza and Adam had really found support and help...like a million others out there...we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Friday, December 14, 2012
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Monday, December 10, 2012
St. Juan Diego - Saints & Angels - Catholic Online
St. Juan Diego - Saints & Angels - Catholic Online
Pope John Paul II praised Juan Diego for his simple faith nourished by catechesis and pictured him (who said to the Blessed Virgin Mary: “I am a nobody, I am a small rope, a tiny ladder, the tail end, a leaf”) as a model of humility for all of us.
Excerpt:
Why did God look upon him? The Book of Sirach, as we have heard, teaches us that God alone "is mighty; he is glorified by the humble" (cf. Sir 3:20). Saint Paul's words, also proclaimed at this celebration, shed light on the divine way of bringing about salvation: "God chose what is low and despised in the world ... so that no human being might boast in the presence of God" (1 Cor 1:28,29).
It is moving to read the accounts of Guadalupe, sensitively written and steeped in tenderness. In them the Virgin Mary, the handmaid "who glorified the Lord" (Lk 1:46), reveals herself to Juan Diego as the Mother of the true God.
Pope John Paul II praised Juan Diego for his simple faith nourished by catechesis and pictured him (who said to the Blessed Virgin Mary: “I am a nobody, I am a small rope, a tiny ladder, the tail end, a leaf”) as a model of humility for all of us.
Excerpt:
Why did God look upon him? The Book of Sirach, as we have heard, teaches us that God alone "is mighty; he is glorified by the humble" (cf. Sir 3:20). Saint Paul's words, also proclaimed at this celebration, shed light on the divine way of bringing about salvation: "God chose what is low and despised in the world ... so that no human being might boast in the presence of God" (1 Cor 1:28,29).
It is moving to read the accounts of Guadalupe, sensitively written and steeped in tenderness. In them the Virgin Mary, the handmaid "who glorified the Lord" (Lk 1:46), reveals herself to Juan Diego as the Mother of the true God.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Monday, December 3, 2012
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Peregrina: Caryll Houselander
Peregrina: Caryll Houselander
Excerpt:
In the 1940s and 50s Caryll Houselander enjoyed enormous success in the English-speaking world. Her books of that period include The Reed of God, The Flowering Tree, The Passion of the Infant Christ, A Rocking Horse Catholic, The Risen Christ, and many others, all published by Sheed and Ward. Frank Sheed had discovered her in the early 1940s on one of his numerous trips to England and the publication in 1941 of This War is the Passion established her reputation as a Christian writer of great profundity and sensitivity.
On the face of it, Caryll Houselander would seem an unlikely candidate for worldly success. She was neither a scholar nor even particularly well-educated. Her chosen profession was that of an artist and she thought of herself, above all, as a wood-carver. Had it not been for the mysterious workings of providence in her early childhood, she would probably have blended imperceptibly with those who inhabit the fringes of the artistic world. She was certainly talented and loved the artist’s craft, but it was Yvonne Bosch van Drakestein, the Dutch founder of the Grail Society in England, who first recognized her unique gifts and who encouraged her to pursue her vocation in the field of writing after Caryll had appeared at her door and offered to help in any way she could to further their apostolate...
Excerpt:
In the 1940s and 50s Caryll Houselander enjoyed enormous success in the English-speaking world. Her books of that period include The Reed of God, The Flowering Tree, The Passion of the Infant Christ, A Rocking Horse Catholic, The Risen Christ, and many others, all published by Sheed and Ward. Frank Sheed had discovered her in the early 1940s on one of his numerous trips to England and the publication in 1941 of This War is the Passion established her reputation as a Christian writer of great profundity and sensitivity.
On the face of it, Caryll Houselander would seem an unlikely candidate for worldly success. She was neither a scholar nor even particularly well-educated. Her chosen profession was that of an artist and she thought of herself, above all, as a wood-carver. Had it not been for the mysterious workings of providence in her early childhood, she would probably have blended imperceptibly with those who inhabit the fringes of the artistic world. She was certainly talented and loved the artist’s craft, but it was Yvonne Bosch van Drakestein, the Dutch founder of the Grail Society in England, who first recognized her unique gifts and who encouraged her to pursue her vocation in the field of writing after Caryll had appeared at her door and offered to help in any way she could to further their apostolate...
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