“Walkers cap off pilgrimage at Earthworks - Newark Advocate” plus 4 more |
- Walkers cap off pilgrimage at Earthworks - Newark Advocate
- Finalists for 2009 National Book Awards are Announced - Paste Magazine
- Latest Articles - Dissident Voice
- Friday night fun: Teen changes name to- (too long to put in title) - Democratic Underground.com
- Hindu celebration Diwali sheds light on goodness - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
| Walkers cap off pilgrimage at Earthworks - Newark Advocate Posted: 16 Oct 2009 07:53 PM PDT NEWARK — Led by memories of loved ones, tokens from far away places and offerings in the form of feathers, ribbons and pieces of a prayer flag tied to a staff, members of the group traveling from Chillicothe to Newark entered the Octagon Earthworks on Friday. The steps into the mounds marked the final ones of a weeklong journey for the group, following what was thought to have once been the Great Hopewell Road between the two ceremonial sites. "I am sure the ancestors walked it with us. I can feel God bless us," Mark Welsh, a walker who is an American Indian, told the group. Friday, the group celebrated the end of its journey and the beginning of a new one with song, first walking through what is thought to be a purification circle just outside the octagon, according to walker Sandra Garner, and then entering the octagon itself chanting American Indian songs to the beat of a drum. In honor of the ancient rituals, the group also honored the four directions and stopped four times through the ceremony. "We've done something not just to honor (the ancestors) but to honor future generations," Garner said. And while the walk itself challenged the individuals, most said it was the history of the mounds and of the ancient culture that brought them together. "I gained some stuff I didn't even think about gaining," said Mike Ranalli, an anthropology student at Ohio State University-Newark. "What you really had time to do is learn about yourself. The first night I thought, 'God, am I really going to be able to do this?' but by the second day there was no way I wasn't doing it." He compared his experience to the experience of going back to school at 34 years old with four children. "I learned a valuable lesson in perseverance," he said. "If I can complete this thing, I can handle anything school throws my way." But even Ranalli admired Bob Neinast's perseverance. He hiked the nearly the entire walk barefoot. "This was billed as a pilgrimage and pilgrimages were traditionally done barefoot," said Neinast, of Pickerington. Neinast said although he has done hikes barefoot before he has never gone that far. He only had to wear flip-flops one day, after it rained and his skin got too soft, causing his soles to get thin. "I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid," he said with a laugh. But like Ranalli, while Neinast said he came mostly for the hike and expected the spirituality to play a smaller part, at the end of the journey his experience was in reality, flipped, and it was the closeness of the group that made such a solid impression. "I've been interested in the history of the mounds, but I didn't come close to anticipating the immersion we all got," Neinast said. To celebrate the final mile of the journey, the walkers were joined by residents from throughout the area. Most said they were lured by the history. "Ever since we moved to the area we've been interested in the history," said Susan Haas from Hopewell. "It looked like such a neat pilgrimage." Amy Hollon can be reached at (740) 328-8543 or ahollon@newarkadvocate.com. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Finalists for 2009 National Book Awards are Announced - Paste Magazine Posted: 16 Oct 2009 08:07 PM PDT  The 60th annual National Book Award Finalists have been announced for 2009. The prize is awarded to one work out of five nominees in each of four genres (fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature). This year, 193 publishers submitted a total of 1,129 books for consideration. Among the nominees are Colum McCann's novel, Let the Great World Spin, David M. Carroll's nonfiction book, Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook, and Deborah Heiligman's biography, Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith, for young adults. Special awards will also be presented at the ceremony. Gore Vidal will receive the Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which comes with $10,000 and is awarded for a life of literary service and a corpus of work. Dave Eggers will receive the Literarian Award, for individuals whose work has expanded the audience for literature and enhanced the cultural value of literature in America. The benefit dinner and award ceremony will take place on Nov. 18 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York City. Master of ceremonies will be satirist, author and actor Andy Borowitz. Borowitz writes a popular website-turned-syndicated fake news column The Borowitz Report, and was the inaugural winner of the National Press Club's award for humor in 2004. Got news tips for Paste? Email news@pastemagazine.com. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Latest Articles - Dissident Voice Posted: 16 Oct 2009 07:03 PM PDT On October 13, Tulane University, a bastion of privilege in the South, hosted war criminal Ehud Olmert as a featured speaker. In response, more than 70 demonstrators engaged in protests and direct actions both inside and outside the event, and were interviewed by local media. Despite much hostility, they also found a lot of support, and have found their organizing now has even more momentum. Below is one person's perspective on the event. We were students, teachers, activists, and community members. We were Muslims, Jews, Christians, Palestinians, and allies. We were many, many more than the war criminal and his Mossad protectors. And we were powerful, more powerful than his security checkpoints and his electronically amplified lies. We strapped red tape to our bodies and stashed fake-bloodied clothes in our packs. Those of us who had the required documents, who had student IDs from New Orleans' universities, passed through the checkpoints while our barred friends and allies gathered outside, armed with truths painted on posterboard and voices amplified by our growing numbers. With less than two weeks' notice, we had formed a broad coalition that planned a multi-phased action to reclaim the same campus that is home to TIPAC (the Tulane-Israel Public Affairs Committee), that hosted Ann Coulter for "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" in 2007, and that was now inviting Ehud Olmert for a brief respite during his flight from international and Israeli courts. As Tulane University constructed a safe-haven and solicited interviews and meetings on behalf of its delinquent guest, dozens of our neighbors began to organize. And scores more responded to the call for action. Tulane has long been an unwelcoming environment to our broader community, as well as to Muslim and Arab students. The culture of the white Northeastern American upper class dominates the campus, creating a space that vehemently reinforces a racist and elitist status quo and virulently quells dissent. Olmert's strategists and local friends had chosen the city's most Zionist and "secure" nonreligious institution for his visit, and many activists questioned the wisdom of challenging a hostile student body and a sometimes even more hostile private police force. Tulane voices have been almost entirely absent in a great many community dialogues and meetings about Palestine solidarity work, and the prospect of initiating a campaign for boycott, divestment, and sanctions on Tulane's campus has always seemed laughable. But New Orleans is a city where so many feel linked to the Palestinian struggle through shared themes like the experience of diaspora, the right of return, and near-daily racist violence and oppression by police and military authorities. There is no space in our city where Israeli war criminals will not be challenged. Tulane was as hostile an environment as we expected. Hundreds of Tulane students showed up to hear Olmert speak, and many laughed and applauded when he made jokes about the comments of overwhelmed Palestinians who threw up their hands in exasperation at his lies and walked out of the building. Many of our own group were only kept silent by the red tape we'd hidden on our bodies and then used to cover our mouths when Olmert first walked onto the stage. Scrawled on the tape were words that enumerated some of Olmert's administration's crimes, such as "human shields," "illegal settlements," "white phosphorous," and "occupation." We breathed deep and sat through an onslaught of racist lies about our Palestinian friends and family, until Olmert began to talk about the mistake Israel had made in "withdrawing" from Gaza. Then, one by one, our jaws aching from biting down on our testimonials of what we have seen with our own eyes and what our families and friends continue to suffer, we rose from our seats throughout the auditorium, slowly made our way to the aisle, and walked out. Olmert's audience, which for a moment became our own, gasped and whispered as more than twenty people stood, staring daggers at Olmert and his Mossad agents speaking into their sleeves, and then trailed down the aisles to the auditorium's exit. Some of us cried, others shook with rage, but we all celebrated our action, small but fluid, and impenetrable by Olmert's snide remarks and Mossad's hidden weapons. As we left the auditorium we heard the chants of our friends, and breathed freely for what felt like the first time in over an hour. The hostility had been palpable inside the auditorium, but our friends cried out to us and embraced us, and their numbers had easily tripled since we'd last seen them. They'd been shouting for two hours now, competing with calls of "Heil Hitler" and "Palestinians are Nazis" from students passing by. A Muslim woman in hijab had been hit with plates of food thrown from an adjacent third floor balcony while campus police looked on. Within twenty minutes we'd set up the next phase of our action: Four people dressed in bloodied clothes laid down on the ground in front of the auditorium, and we placed cardboard grave markers with the numbers of massacred Palestinians and Lebanese around them. As students began to flow out of the auditorium, we handed out fliers detailing Olmert's war crimes and tried to prevent passers by from spitting on our friends on the ground. We were mostly successful, and managed to keep a student from urinating on one of the participants. We were not at all surprised by the hostility we faced, but we were surprised by the positive responses of far more Tulane students than we expected. Members of Tulane Amnesty International, Tulane American Socialist Students United, and individual undergraduate and graduate students printed fliers, spread the word, and were an unmistakable presence in every phase of the actions. A day that we had dreaded and actions we had hated having to plan had resulted in a broadening of our local Palestine solidarity network into a community we had dismissed for too long. Our new friends and allies at Tulane know first-hand how much they are up against in an institution that is between one-quarter and one-third Jewish and regularly equates Zionism with Judaism, but they are aching to take up the challenge. They are Muslims, Palestinians, Jews, and allies. They are freshman, upperclassmen, and graduate students. On October 13th, they joined students from the General Union of Palestine Students and Amnesty International of University of New Orleans, as well as students from Loyola University, in standing up to hundreds of aggressive classmates, taping their mouths shut to announce their presence and their intentions. Suddenly the challenges we face in our local solidarity work seem more surmountable. The despicable war criminal inadvertently gave one gift to New Orleans during his visit: He gave the beginnings of Tulane's Palestine solidarity movement an unforgettable debut. This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Friday night fun: Teen changes name to- (too long to put in title) - Democratic Underground.com Posted: 16 Oct 2009 07:39 PM PDT Teen's 'Fantastic' new name 'Super' long GLASTONBURY, England, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- A British 19-year-old has officially changed his name to "Captain Fantastic Faster Than Superman Spiderman Batman Wolverine Hulk And The Flash Combined." The Glastonbury, England, teenager -- originally named George Garratt -- said his new name, which is thought to be the world's longest, has so outraged his grandmother that she is no longer speaking to him, The Telegraph reported Monday. The teen said he used an online service to officially change his name for a $20 fee. "I wanted to be unique," Captain Fantastic said of his name choice. "I decided upon a theme of superheroes." This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
| Hindu celebration Diwali sheds light on goodness - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Posted: 16 Oct 2009 08:22 PM PDT
Fireworks will brighten the night sky over the Hindu Temple in Pewaukee on Saturday night, its interior ablaze in light, as more than a thousand people gather for Diwali, the annual celebration of light over darkness, of goodness over evil. "It's meant to arouse the light within," said Lakshmi Bharadwaj, who teaches sociology and religion at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and serves as education and outreach director for the Hindu Temple of Wisconsin. "It's not merely the external light that is important," said Bharadwaj, "but the spiritual light within." The most auspicious and festive of Hindu religious holidays, this "festival of lights" also is celebrated by Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists, most of whom are likely to be represented at the temple Saturday. In India, Diwali is akin to American Christmas, its celebration so widespread as to become almost a secular holiday. "I took my children to India last year because I wanted them to see it - the fireworks, the decorations," said Town of Erin attorney Shailaja Reddy, a native-born Indian and Hindu drawn more by its cultural than religious significance. "It's in the air there, and you have to be there to experience it." It's not clear how many Hindus are in Wisconsin; there are more than 1 million adherents in the United States, according to the Pluralism Project at Harvard University. Many Indian immigrants and their American-born children keep to the traditions. They light their homes with candles or diyas, small clay lamps; wear new clothes symbolic of new beginnings; share sweets with family friends; and offer puja, or prayers, to deities, all of which are incarnations of a single Hindu God. Like Hinduism - the world's oldest and third-largest religion - Diwali defies simple explanation. Beyond the primacy of goodness over evil, what one derives from it, even the epic narratives that underlie it, differ depending on one's faith, region of origin within India, even their job. In the north, for example, Hindus recount the homecoming of Lord Rama after his victory over the demon-King Ravana. Reddy, who lived in the south of India, grew up hearing the story of Vishnu incarnated as Krishna come to life to slay the evil King Narakasura. The gods and goddesses, the incarnations that populate the stories, represent Indian ideals, of womanhood, of righteous living, of morality. They are meant to inspire soul-searching, a quest for knowledge over ignorance and pursuit of one's own goodness over evil. "It's that inner struggle, getting to the point where we're doing what we're supposed to be doing," said Venkat Kodali of Milwaukee, a devout Hindu, who works to impart the religious meanings of Diwali to his 14-year-old twin daughters. "But they're American, they want presents on Christmas, too," he said laughing. During Diwali, many Hindus pray to the Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, a veneration that may hold special meaning for some in these difficult economic times. In its ideal it is not so much a prayer for wealth - one might as well pray to the stock market if it were, said Bharadwaj - but the acknowledgment that even economic pursuit must have a spiritual significance. "A purely economic pursuit has little concern for spirituality or religion," said Bharadwaj. "But you are asking for God's grace in that pursuit - that it not only be properly obtained, but properly used for the well-being of the community." This content has passed through fivefilters.org. |
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