Memory lies at the heart of many academic disciplines. [6 min read]

Nearly every living thing on the planet has memory. Beyond the reach of our individual memories, fossils remember long-ago landscapes, while groups of people use folklore to pass down a collective memory dating back centuries or even millennia. But for all its utility, memory can be misused, too. Even today, wars are fought over conflicting accounts of the true versions of historical events dating back thousands of years. Whatever its function, memory is everywhere. Here, four USC Dornsife scholars discuss how it is expressed in diverse disciplines, from Earth sciences to history and from anthropology to American studies and ethnicity.

EARTH SCIENCES: Memories Preserved in Leaf Wax

Sarah Feakins, associate professor of Earth sciences,and her team study changing water availability and plant life, key components of the habitability of our environment. By studying ecosystems past and present, they advance knowledge of how the climate system works and how plants respond and interact with climate.

In her Leaf Wax Lab at USC Dornsife, Feakinsstudies climate and plant life through the waxycoating on plant leaves. Not only do these remarkable molecules have important functions for living plants, they are preserved over geological time. As Feakins says, Leaf wax is the molecular legacy of past forests and grasslands. This waxy memory paints pictures of the landscapes in which our human ancestors evolved.

Her work is not a historical curiosity. The past illuminates what we can expect as we dial up the planetary thermostat, she says. It helps us to wrap our heads around the transformative change of ecosystem disruption ahead.

Feakins and her team reconstruct evidence for how climate patterns and plant life have changed over tens of millions of years by studying the material that has been eroded from land and preserved in sediments offshore. To access these sea-floor sediments, she participates in the International Ocean Discovery Program.

My research is driven by a need to understand environments in which we evolved and warm times of the past thatare relevant to our future trajectory, she says. Warmperiods of the past provide lessons for future climate states, beyond the range of historical witness.

ANTHROPOLOGY: Shaping Our Cultural Memory

Our cultural and collective memory is shaped through folk stories like mythology and legends, notesTok Thompson, professor (teaching) ofanthropology.

Myths, for example, are universal. They are found in biblical passages, Greek epics and creation tales. They provide a road map for those seeking order in the world or a guideto daily self-conduct. But this aura of universality can be inherently dangerous, leading people to believe their culturally inscribed behaviors are natural rather than habitual, Thompson argues.

Mythology is not about history, but it uses history. It uses the idea of the past to make sense of our current condition, Thompson says. Not all myths are problematic some are simple entertainment, some provide a record of ecological events from hundreds or thousands of years ago, some convey general knowledge but we also need to be aware of their potential for exploitation.

Mythology naturalizes culture, Thompson says. Usually when people say something is natural, they mean it is mythologically set in stone, which is very different from saying that something occurs in nature.

But while myths are often shaped by those in power, legends can be a more organic way of passing on information, one that often presents stories of those who have been left out of official accounts, Thompson says.He cites ghost stories as one example. Many such tales concern injustice the ghost was wronged in life and returns for a reason.

Often folk memories will remember what official memories dont want to, he says.

Folklore may or may not be factual, Thompson notes, but itprovides an important counterbalance to some of the more dominant political mythologies and narratives put forth by different groups.

History is written by the victors. Folklore is written by everybody, he concludes.

HISTORY: Remembering Rome

If history is about preserving, understanding and interpreting our memories, then Rome is a singular touchstone of memory, says Assistant Professor ofHistoryMaya Maskarinec.

What fascinates me is the way there have always been competing claims to Rome, which has fed into the citys prestige and mystique, she says. And Rome is malleable; it can be remembered and misremembered in different ways.

The legacy of Rome as a city, an ideal, an empire has been forged, forgotten, rediscovered and repurposed by people in a nearly ceaseless cycle for centuries.

To Christians of the Middle Ages, it was a testament to the endurance of their faith. To Renaissance artists and Enlightenment thinkers, it was the ideal model for aesthetics and rational thought. To many countries, past and present, it has symbolized the rule of law.

All of these different constellations make up what we imagine Rome to be, Maskarinec says.

But these competing claims were not always compatible, she notes. The idea of having rediscovered the ideas of Rome was central to the foundational concepts of the Holy Roman Empire, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and many other groups or people that claimed to be rescuing Roman ideals from the darkness of the preceding era. But for Rome to be rediscovered, it first had to be forgotten. After the sack of Rome in 410 A.D., the memory of theeternal city and all its glories was supposed to have faded, only to be recovered centuries later.

Part of why we have these narratives of loss is this desire to claim an authentic rediscovery of Rome, Maskarinec says. Central to claiming this authority was the argument that those who came before never truly understood Rome or what it stood for.

But as Rome is conceived, so is it misremembered, Maskarinec argues. The city of marvels was also a place of cramped tenement blocks, high infant mortality rates and disease for its poor inhabitants.

As historians, we must tread very carefully on the topic of Rome and keep in mind how it has been misused and misremembered when we study the process of memory, she says.

AMERICAN STUDIES AND ETHNICITY: Memory and Race

For scholars of American studies and ethnicity, memory whether individual or collective occupies a central role.

Natalia Molina, professor of American studies and ethnicity and a 2020 MacArthur Fellow, researches how historical narratives of racial difference shape modern views of race.

Race is not made in just one moment or by just one powerful person or group, she notes.

Molina studies the concept of racial scripts, socialconstructions of racialized groups that cross time and space as well as groups. A kind of shorthand composed of attitudes, practices, customs, policies and laws she says that once racial scripts are directed at one group, they can be easily repurposed and applied to others.

By looking at connections between the scripts in the arc of history, we can see that they are always available for use in new rounds of dehumanization and demonizationdown the road, Molina says.

Racial scripts work in large part because they arenotnew, she notes. Their familiarity generates credibility, making racist ideas seem normal.

For example, weve seen renewed anti-Asian and anti-Asian American sentiments and even hate crimes since the onset of the pandemic.

We can trace these stereotypes back 150 years to see how the Chinese were discriminated against when working in the gold rush, or on the railroad, Molina says. These racialscripts were also redirected and perpetuated against Latinx immigrants today, and widened the possibilities for mistreatment of other racialized groups.

The powerful reality about race and racism, she argues, is that it succeeds by repetition.

Read more stories fromUSC Dornsife Magazines Fall 2020/Winter 2021 issue >>

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Why Is It Important to Remember What Came Before? > News > USC Dornsife - USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Public Goods December 3, 2020 Ingo Schmidt

Well, we busted out of class, had to get away from those fools. We learned more from a three-minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school.

Bruce Springsteen

Who built Thebes of the seven gates? In the books you will find the names of kings. Every page a victory. Who cooked the feast for the victors? Every ten years a great man? Who paid the bill? So many reports. So many questions.

Bertolt Brecht

Post-secondary education is marketed, and widely seen, as human capital investment. Obtaining a college or university degree today will yield a skill-premium tomorrow. And a possible gain in social status or, if coming from the educated classes, at least retention of the status of ones parents. Marketing and expectations of pecuniary and status gains are sometimes complemented by hints at post-secondary education as a pathway to becoming a good citizen. At its most emphatic, such as invoked by Kants definition of enlightenment, suggesting that post-secondary education is the indispensable guide to emerge from (..) self-incurred immaturity.

HR departments, without going so far as to invoke dead philosophers, echo the marketing of post-secondary education as being about more than naked self-interest by portraying their well-educated and equally well-motivated employees as their most valuable assets. Its unlikely that they mean that they only hire people who produce surplus value for the company, even though producing surplus value is the sine qua non for hiring any worker in a capitalist company. HR departments wrap commitments to shareholder value into the idea that stakeholders of a company all share the same values that surely transcend callous cash payments.

Some students buy into the marketing efforts of post-secondary executives and HR departments. However, those who have to work all kinds of jobs to make it through college or university may second guess HR-talk about highly valuing their employees. For most jobs it doesnt translate into high, or at least decent, pay. Of course, most students would prefer high-paying over low-paying jobs. But they might be ok with low pay while studying toward their degrees as long as they still expect skill premia coming in once they start degree-requiring jobs. The only problem is that the supply of degree-holding job applicants is far greater than the number of openings of these well-paying jobs. Employers can hire workers with degrees even in jobs where the degrees arent required and pay is low. At the same time, the cost of post-secondary education is increasing. As a result, the rate of return on human capital investments decreases. Even students who dont care about anything other than the cost and benefits of their education investments have reasons to be disturbed.

There are also other students, of course, who value learning as an end in itself as much, or even more, than the formal degree they will eventually obtain. They might be puzzled by the contradiction between education as investment in skill premia and as contribution to some greater good. Wouldnt that include, they might wonder, economic equality, a goal at odds with wanting more money than others who also work as hard, if not harder, than post-secondary graduates? Unequal access to post-secondary education and unequal conditions of study can only add to such puzzlement. Yet, finding courses that provide the space to turn puzzlement into more specified questions and possibly find some, if only tentative, answers are hard to find. Most course offerings focus on subjects allegedly boosting students future employability, regardless of diminishing returns on human capital investments.

Whether it is concerns about these diminishing returns, puzzlement about the contradictions between education as investment and as contribution to something beyond personal career development, or some twisted mix between these two, unease about going to college or university seems to be unavoidable. Cognitive dissonance permeates campuses. Not just amongst students. Compared to the janitors, kitchen and administrative staff who provide essential services on campus, educators have for a long time earned the skill premia that post-secondary executives are still promising students today. However, over the last decades, numbers of well-paying jobs in teaching and research have gone down, numbers of low-paid, mostly temporary jobs have gone up. The increasing polarization of jobs that marks the outside world prevails on campuses, too. Increasing gaps in terms of incomes and job security are complemented with increased top-down control, standardization, and automation of work. Fears of teaching bots and massive open online courses replacing face-to-face teaching entirely may be exaggerated but still shape todays work experiences in post-secondary as much as fears about job prospects shape students learning experiences. Cognitive dissonance prevails on both sides.

When it comes to post-secondary executives putting administrative and fiscal pressures on students and teachers, the latter two groups are on the same side. At the same time, teaching staff have to deal with students grade expectations that only get higher as the marketing of higher education as a good investment in ones own future departs further and further from actual returns on these investments. Straddling the grade-expectations-performance-gap easily strains the relations between students and teachers. More precisely, it reveals that, when it comes to student evaluation, teachers are in a position of power over their students. This power is more limited than that which employers have over their employees, but still, the teacher-student relationship bears some resemblance with employment-relationships. The contradictory relations between students and teachers, facing similar pressures from post-secondary executives while at the same time teachers exert some power over students, is another source of cognitive dissonance, as it belies the idea of the university, not so much the more down-to-earth colleges, as a community of scholars committed to critical inquiry and truth. Any such commitments have to reckon with contradictions, hierarchies, and power-relations within the institutions of post-secondary education and between those institutions and their outside world that produces various forms of alienation and cognitive dissonance. This is structural; denial only makes it worse.

This being the case, teaching should aim at helping students to cope with cognitive dissonance. Being able to do so can only help them to find out how to make their way in the off-campus world that also is full of contradictions, and marked by power-relations and alienation. One of the first teaching goals should be the deconstruction of the idyllic images that post-secondary marketing and HR departments paint about the value of higher education and well-paying, fulfilling jobs. Awareness of not so nice realities is actually a good starting point for students charting their own paths to learning and life more generally. On the first parts of students learning journeys, teachers can offer a bit of guidance, not by showing students the way, or telling them whats wrong and whats right, but by encouraging them to figure out for themselves where they want to go and whats wrong and right.

A first signpost on that path would point out that there is more to the picture than meets the eye. This should be obvious from the discrepancy between the images that marketers paint of post-secondary education and the jobs it helps to get, and the realities of austerity on campuses and beyond. However, cutting through such images is difficult in societies where the culture industry has co-opted the idea of enlightenment and turned it into a vehicle of mass deception. The reach of this industry is so wide that anyone challenging its messages, if only by confronting them with empirical data, easily comes across as a crank. Not the most inviting prospect for aspiring students. Moreover, an age of diminished expectations creates its own incentives to avoid inconvenient realities. Why confront oneself with reality if there is little hope for improvement? Cognitive dissonance is prevalent. But so are attempts to escape it. Making clear to students that learning happens outside of ones comfort zone, that cognitive dissonance is a starting point to explore reality, and that such explorations are actually exciting because they dont deliver comforting truths, is a real teaching challenge.

The attraction of comforting truths constitutes another challenge that leads to signpost two: Beware the pretense of knowledge. Knowledge can draw on observations and critical reflection that allows learners, students, and teachers alike, to position themselves in the world in such a way that they can pursue their interests and happiness. However, if one doesnt expect this to be possible, knowledge can also be used, or, from the perspective of enlightenment philosophy, misused, to escape the real world and seek refuge in reassuring certainties, in the most extreme eternal truths protected against critical inquiries by alternative facts. By making their own history, humans change already existing circumstances. Whether they, or only some of them, are aware of their history-making and circumstance-changing doesnt matter. Looking back, it is rather obvious that an interplay of actions and reactions changed the world, and there is no reason to assume that this will stop. If it doesnt, ongoing changes challenge received wisdoms over and over again. What might have been persuasive under one set of circumstances could be less than persuasive under different circumstances.

Changing circumstances are one reason to be wary of anyone pretending to know eternal truths. Differences of perspective are another. People looking at the same thing from different angles see it differently. Therefore, signpost three on the learning path suggests putting oneself in somebody elses boots. Look at a bunch of soccer players, for example. Even if everybody plays by the same rules, playing on an unequal field distributes the chances of winning unevenly. Therefore, players with high chances of winning want to keep the field unequal and, if necessary, change the rules in such a way that this goal can be achieved. Most likely, they are the rule-makers who can actually do this. Players with lower chances of winning, on the other hand, are more likely rule-takers who may not like to run around the most difficult parts of the field but see little chance of imposing rules that would either level the playing field or at least give some of them the chance to make it to greener pastures some of the time. That rule-makers and rule-takers see the same field differently shouldnt be a surprise. The point is not that one side is right and the other wrong. In their own ways, both may be right but only partially. As realities are multi-faceted, the truth is in the whole. Which does not mean that it is eternal. After all, as signpost two said, realities change and so does the truth about them.

Learners also change. Reason enough to amend the idea of putting oneself into somebody elses boots to signpost four: Take a look at yourself. After a few steps on your learning path, you may see things differently. Equipped with some new ideas, you may also look at experiences outside the classroom and beyond campus. A fresh look at experiences slumbering somewhere in your memory can bring them to life so that they can contribute to whats learned in the classroom. Reflection about your learning and life experiences is part of the journey. A few basic principles will help you to chart your own course beyond the signposted path set up by a teacher: Analyse, synthesize, and contextualize. These very general principles are adjustable to all junctures and cross-roads that you will encounter during your journey. While you chart your own course, you should not forget that there are always paths not taken, insights not found. At least not yet. There is always something new to discover. That is why a learning journey is unending, may sometimes wear you out but is always interesting.

Excerpt from:
The Not So Negative Dialectics of Post-Secondary Education - The Bullet - Socialist Project

By Sandra L. Strauss

There is a widely held view that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and that our laws and policies should be shaped by Christian values. Not all Christians agree that our nation was founded as a Christian nation and will defend that viewpoint by citing the Founding Fathers, Enlightenment theory, and theological arguments.

However, lets go with the view that we were founded as a Christian nation, and therefore should be shaped by Christian values.

But what are Christian values? Its obvious that there is significant disagreement among Christians over just what that means. It strikes me that as Christians, we should go to the source Jesus. What did Jesus say? Or what would Jesus do? What were the rules that guided the early Christian community that rose in the wake of Jesus life, death, and resurrection?

First, it should be noted that Jesus was born, lived his life, and died as a Jewish person living in a Jewish society under the oppressive rule of the Roman Empire, so what he said and did is not exclusive to Christians but it did shape those who became our early Christian forebears.

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And where do we find what we need to know about the man we choose to follow as Christians living 2000 plus years later? While there are lesser known writings by historians of that timelike Josephusour primary source as Christians is the Bible, and in particular, the New Testament, which documents the life of Jesus and the early church.

What did Jesus say? Heres just a few things: (1) Love your neighbor as yourself; (2) Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; (3) Whatever you didfor one of theleast of thesebrothers and sisters of mine, you did for me; (4) The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve; (5) In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; (6) From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded. Theres more, but what did Jesus do? Did his actions back up his words?

Jesus healed those who suffered from lifelong ailments. He fed hungry throngs when they didnt have access to food in the wilderness. He broke bread with the least desirable elements of his society when no one else would do so.

He lifted up and protected women, challenging those who were about to stone a woman accused of adultery, and interacting with the woman at the well. He touched and hugged lepersconsidered unclean in the Jewish society in which he lived.

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His followers obviously took his words and actions to heart, and they lived accordingly, as we learn from these words in Acts 2: All who believed were together and had all things in common;they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceedsto all, as any had need. They lived in a mindset of abundance, rather than scarcity, based on all the promises that God has made to us, and that Jesus modeled.

We live in strange times, and its hard to know what lies ahead. Fear can provoke a scarcity mindset, leading us to circle the wagons and act to protect ourselves.

However, trusting in God, and following the Christ who showed us how to live, we can overcome the fear and understand that there is more than enough for everyoneand that when all have what they need, we are all healthier, happier, and safer.

Whether or not you believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, this might be a good time to consider and work toward a system that reflects the Christian values illustrated above many of which are shared across a range of traditions and among people of good will. Too many people have been left behind, and we have it within our power to end preventable suffering.

There is more than enough to provide food, housing, healthcare, education, and so many other essentials for everyone to live with dignity if we are willing to share and willing to work to create the political will to make it happen. We can do this, even in a time of pandemic and in fact, maybe this is the perfect time to begin.

The Rev. Sandra L. Strauss is the director of Advocacy & Ecumenical Outreach for the Pennsylvania Council of Churches. For more information regarding the Council, pleaseCLICK HERE. Her work appears occasionally on the Capital-Stars Commentary Page.

More here:
We say America is a 'Christian nation.' Here's what that would look like if we really meant it | Opinion - Pennsylvania Capital-Star

opinion

GEORGE BALL | Amarillo Globe-News

Home gardening occupies a serene corner of the clamorous, go-go American business landscape. Youre unlikely to find the gardening sector grabbing headlines and leading off news broadcasts. Usually, the loudest buzz in gardening comes from bees gathering pollen.

The year 2020 is a whole other story. Within six months, the home garden industry saw a quantum leap in sales and new customers, with revenues magically levitating 60%, a seismic event in a tranquil nonindustrial industry.

Magic has been in short supply this year. For nine months, the COVID-19 virus has upturned our lives. Our viral foeinvisible, intangible, indifferenthas caused dire levels of illness and lives disrupted and lost. Looming winter lockdowns darken our world. Its all bad.

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Gaze meditatively and you will soon see a kaleidoscope of vivid colors, natural beauty and ripe produce. Freshly perfumed air wafts through the cold. How can you bring this dreamscape to life? Ask one of our countrys 50 million devoted and dedicated gardenerswho will lead you to the Beulah Land in your own backyard.

Indeed, just when everything seems to be contracting, the garden is expanding. The 2020 gardening boom will reshape not just the horticulture crowd but American society at largea natural counterforce to the light speed technological web that ensnares us, as we surrender two-thirds of our time to staring at glowing screens where nothing grows.

In contrast, towns, civic life, technology, and cultureall the features of our lives we hold deararose from the cultivation of plants. The way we garden today is scarcely different from how the first gardeners went about their work about 12,000 years ago. Nothing is new under the sun.

Consider the so-called Coming Singularity." Technocrats envision a near-future in which human brains, merging with cybertechnology, develop superintelligences. Machines, however, will concurrently possess super-super intelligences that will get more super by the second.

Some believe this mega paradigm shift will result in the extinction of humanity. I see it as a rebirth, a renaissance when we obsolete homo sapiens will have new free time and space to super-evolve our creative aptitudes and capacities for a Second Enlightenment. Gardens will flourish and nourish lives. Home at last.

Moreover, living in a deep green world brought us here. We co-evolved with the garden, and the garden with usa singular super-hybrid. Plants are the essence of life on earth: the prime resource for animal life, food, shelter and clothingand the key to survival for all eight billion of us. For all our cybernetic and digital intelligence, the coming Singularity has been here a long time. How so?

This proto-Singularity is powered by the super-genius of plants. Scientists in various disciplines are continually studying plants myriad technologies to understand their intricate genes, self-propagation and uncanny communications.

Using only air, sunlight, water, and soil, plants have been relentlessly creating, recreating and varying themselves ad infinitum. Unlike even the most powerful cyborg army, cultivated plants and gardens are altogether both simple and complex, as well as ancient and modern. Happily, you cant turn them off.

Thus, 2020s expansion of new gardeners20 million strongwill fundamentally transform Americas landscape and society. This grassroots movement will be a harmonious and relaxed affair, with participants of every race, ethnicity, income, age, gender, and political slant. Call it the Plural Singularity.

As we wrap up this hapless past year, our gardens are a beacon of new hope. No other place is so many places. Even the simplest garden plot extends home and family life. A garden is a refuge, an outdoor schoolroom, a Shangri-La of bliss, joy and revelation. Its all good.

In your garden, you partner with plants to create a private Eden of color, flavor, scent, nutrition, ineffable beauty, and deep satisfaction. True magic is available at any time, right at homeand you are the magician.

George Ball is chairman of W. Atlee Burpee Company and past president of The American Horticultural Society. herrlueffle@gmail.com

See the rest here:
Ball: The garden at the end of the tunnel - Amarillo.com

2020 was the year the statues came down. Throughout the summer, as demonstrations erupted over the senseless murder of George Floyd and the racist structures that define our social and justice systems, protestors across the world tore down the racist monuments that line our streets, from Confederate soldiers in the Southern United States to imperialist leaders across Europe. As each statue came down, the history behind it made loud and visible, the pervasive ways in which our cityscapes are constructed by and around racism was thrown into sharp relief.

For Lisa Williams, founder of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association and creator of its Black History Walking Tours, recognising the often unspoken histories contained within these monuments is a crucial step towards acknowledging and reckoning with the legacies of colonialism and racial capitalism that continue to this day. There was a man who had been on one of my tours who said, I cannot look at Edinburgh in the same way now. Because when Im walking around The Royal Mile Im now thinking about those young people who were held as enslaved people, Williams considers. People are really shocked by how many Edinburgh men were involved in heading up massacres and genocide: not just Scottish men who were head of the military but actually from Edinburgh itself. Scotlands over-represented on the compensation and list of former enslavers not massively but significantly. Edinburghs over-represented on that list, and the New Town is over-represented on that list.

For Williams, the Black History Walking Tours are a way of unpicking the deliberate erasure not only Scotlands participation in the slave trade and colonialism but also the lives and legacies of the Black and Asian people who were caught in its wake. I dont like it when people turn around and call my tours the slavery tour, Williams says firmly. Theyre not slavery tours.

Instead, the tours and talks that Williams gives work just as much to highlight the construction of historical biases as they do the racist construction of the city-scape. I did a talk about race and the Scottish Enlightenment for the National Library, because when I went into their Enlightenment exhibition earlier on the year, there was barely any mention of the intellectual construction of these pseudo-scientific ideas of race, Williams explains. So I gave a talk, and it shocked the people in the National Library. Because they dont know necessarily about Black intellectual critique, or Black Enlightenment scholars, [or]the significance of, lets say, Islamic scholars coming from somewhere like Timbuktu, extremely well-read and well-respected being enslaved.

In this way, Williams offers a reconfiguration of historical race relations that challenges the very ways in which our understanding of race has been received. If were talking the last 250 or 300 years, people [] just made up these mad ideas, because they decided that they wanted to classify people into brown, yellow, red and white, Williams says. And then that became the standard book that was been built on by another scholar. But people [need to] understand that these ideas were interrogated at the time. Were not putting the present lens on the past. All of these things were highly controversial at the time depending on who and where and what your interests were.

Confronting Scotlands specific history is also crucial in order to complicate the easy, preconceived narratives we have been handed down. Scotland has a very peculiar, unusual context, in that it has been I dont say colonised because I dont agree that it has been colonised, Williams considers. But Scotland has suffered: people knowing that their grandmother was beaten at school for speaking Gaelic, or the loss and banning of certain important cultural symbols like tartan and bagpipes. I encourage people to develop empathy for those who have been through similar experiences at a much more extreme version.

It is this empathy, this rejection of individualistic perspectives, that is central to seeing and coming to terms with the past for what it really was. I think that were lacking in skills of nonviolent communication and dialogue, Williams sighs. I think we are trained by our education system to have debates that we feel we have got to win, and it means were not listening to the other side. All that has got to shift, we need to have empathetic dialogue, and we [need to] move away from even using words like pride and shame.

This is where its difficult in Scotland because people are holding onto their identity, and it is tied up with independence and having to have pride in a nation, Williams continues. I think we need to unpick all that and maybe even do away with it. Its not helpful, and it stops people from investigating and having mature conversations.

Yet for all that is left to do, Williams remains deeply hopeful about the future. Having talked to certain curators and certain institutions over the years, there have been people inside who have been wanting to make change but as an institution, they havent been able to do it. I think the bolder these organizations are, other people will follow, because it gives them permission. This fear about potentially alienating their core audiences is starting to shift quite a bit. And Ive been really pleased by the response, she adds enthusiastically. At the beginning when I set it up, I said, this is about healing. We can only really have healing if we can tell the truth.

Details of the Black History Walks can be found here.

The rest is here:
Interview with Lisa Williams, founder of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association and creator of its Black History Walking Tours - bellacaledonia.org.uk

Fri., Nov. 27, 2020

For those of you who dont know, in real life, Im a nutritionist. Which means I spend most of my days justifying the consumption of spinach with campaigns not dissimilar to Popeyes.

Patients often have this charming assumption that I do not suffer the same afflictions of donut lust or question the sanity of putting kale in a smoothie. More than once, I have been asked if I make my own mayonnaise, as if I moonlight as some backwoods version of Julia Child with pet chickens.

And probably, they say, I dont eat sugar or consume alcohol or have any of those sorts of vices because I know better. We all know better. Which is what makes times like these so hard.

On the eve of Thanksgiving I have come to realize that my response to not spending it with family is to make just as much food and eat it myself. In fact, I have been systematically preparing for this by stress-eating my way to the combined weight of myself, a toddler nephew, and one frail but voracious great-aunt.

Oddly, I have been intentionally washing these meals down with red wine, which has caused a kind of teetotalers short circuit in my brain because I dont drink. Or at least I didnt, but then a pandemic and an election and Zoom meetings broke me.

My sustained optimism and commitment to cultivating happiness in my life has been replaced with pie and Buddhist literature on the weakness of attachment. Buddhism is particularly supportive of my inclination to indulge, as enlightenment should happen when I stop feeling so attached to my pant size. At this rate, Ill stop being attached to pants at all because only a toga made from a king-size sheet is going to fit me.

The downward spiral is not unfamiliar to me. I just wish we didnt have to hit rock bottom as a nation before climbing back out. I dont know how you are all faring, but if you are elbows deep in pastries and bad habits, I want you to know you are not alone.

As I bear witness to the painful unraveling of my expectations for this year, I cling to the few healthy survival tools I have left: self-compassion and hope. The former I have learned through years of self-abuse. The latter I read about in Mans Search for Meaning, a title that simultaneously destroys and restores my faith in humanity.

It is OK for us to feel loss and sadness, overwhelm and even despair. For the introverts out there, or those whose therapists recommend they avoid dysfunctional family gatherings anyway, your sense of quiet relief at having a pandemic to blame is also OK.

Some days, we might find we are kinder to ourselves about those less than healthy coping strategies. The pie and eggnog may be serving a unique purpose this year, a kind of emotional triage. And something tells me your New Years resolution will have much momentum behind it come January. I have been drafting mine for weeks.

Some glimmers of hope for the future are already visible. While that could be sequins from the latest home crafting project (not surprisingly, all my new hobbies involve a lot of glue), if Viktor Frankl was even an iota of right in his observations: Any distant sparkle, however faint, is enough to keep our hearts beating.

Of all that I will find to be thankful for today, it is the hope that most fills me with gratitude. It is for the people who give me this hope, the communities, the teachers, the readers, the doctors and nurses, the journalists. It is for the families with fresh babies and the grandparents who remind me.

I might not be able to have you around my dinner table tonight, but I can feel you out there, a collective spirit of hope for brighter days. They will come.

In the meantime, eat all the pie. Next year, youll have to share it again.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammimarie@gmail.com

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Off the Grid: Maladaptive coping and quarantine pie - The Spokesman-Review

Global Critical Care Products Market Research report 2020 provides information regarding market size, share, trends, growth, competition landscape, challenges and opportunity, revenue, and forecast to 2027. A comprehensive overview of the Critical Care Products Market is recently added by Stratagem Market Insights to its humongous database. The Critical Care Products Market report has been aggregated by collecting informative data of various dynamics such as market drivers, restraints, and opportunities.

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Novartis, GE Healthcare, Abbott, Plunketts Health Care, Sproxil, Safaricom, Dexcom, Piramal, Mylan, Convatec.

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Critical Care Products Market Enlightenment on Future Scenario by 2027 - The Market Feed

Her debut novel, Stones in my Bra the search for love, enlightenment and the perfect flapjack, is out now.

Set in Sheffield, it features many of the things she loves about her hometown.

Sheffields writing scene

Writing was something I took up as my children got older and I had more free time.

I wrote to amuse myself and my friends and didnt really understand there were skills to be learnt in terms of narrative arcs and plot development.

Then, thanks to an article in the Telegraph, I discovered Joanne Burn, a great writing coach based in Grindleford, and later I found the Sheffield writing scene and joined The Virtual Writers Caff run by local actor and creative, Letty Butler.

Im amazed at how much home-grown talent Sheffield has!

In the current climate, local press has taken a hit in readership. This is such a shame as its vital to have professionally trained journalists to report on issues that affect us.

I always pick up the Sheffield Telegraph on a Thursday to find out whats happening and appreciate that, even in lock-down, theres been a balance between publishing the facts and keeping a positive outlook.

Local radio also keeps us up-to-date and entertained. I love the phone-ins and interactions with the listeners so wanted to incorporate an element of that into my story line.

Sheffields alternative therapies

Im used to being considered alternative by my family!

Whats nice is that in recent years, many of the practices, such as yoga, mindfulness and reflexology that were once considered strange, have now become mainstream.

My novel introduces the reader to several therapies in a light-hearted way and, should they be inspired to try out a gong bath, clear their clutter, or cherish their chakras, then groups such as the Reiki Shining Light Circle here in Sheffield can offer them all.

Sheffields running community

I got into running a few years ago and pre-Covid was a regular at the Endcliffe park run. Im a member of the Millhouses Beginners Group which meets every Thursday at 9.30 am and runs through Ecclesall Woods.

Ive learnt such a lot I never knew there were so many techniques to improve your form.

The sessions are free, fun and open to all ages.

In fact, Im so inspired by them that I had my narrator join a similar club in her quest for self-improvement.

Lockdown has been made bearable by still being able to get a curry from the Bilash on Sharrowvale Road, a pie from the Broadfield on Abbeydale Road and a drink and a meal in our excellent neighbourhood pubs. Theres also no shortage of superb cafes in Nether Edge. But nothing can beat my narrators award-winning flapjack.

Ive had a long career in teaching English as a foreign language and my students always say how theyve been made to feel at home here.

I love the fact Sheffield embraces different cultures and has such a vibrant international community at both universities. Id also like to mention the Migration Matters festival and the charity ASSIST which do so much to raise our awareness of asylum seekers and refugees. And lets not forget neighbourhood groups, like NENG, who organize events such as our quarterly market. In my novel the narrator worries her father is suffering from dementia.

So, reading of the Sheffield care workers who locked down with their vulnerable residents made me feel really proud. Its why I chose to give my Bridget Jones meets Eat, Pray, Love story its unique Sheffield flavour and also why profits from my sales will be going to Alzheimers UK.

Stones in my Bra is rated 4.9 and can be purchased on Amazon.co.uk. or at Wickwire, in Nether Edge.

Link:
MY FAVOURITE THINGS: Amazed at the amount of home-grown talent in Sheffield - Sheffield Telegraph

November 27, 2020 00:00 ET | Source: Archway Publishing

photo-release

NEW YORK, Nov. 27, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Follow one womans mystical journey into the unknown as she pursues personal growth through fear, faith, and courage in Juana Vasquezs new novel, Naked: A Journey to the Unknown (published by Archway Publishing).

Gigi is a woman seeking enlightenment. She realizes that her current state of mind may be her greatest obstacle. She wants to break through old patterns that are holding her back. To understand how she came to be ruled by her routines, she embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Her quest is to find peace. She believes that a small town called Callicoon, has the quietness that she is looking forward. To get there she must overcome her fears and insecurities as they are connected to her limited way of thinking, there she believes she will meet her true self.

I want readers to understand that changing the way we perceive life can be challenging, but, with determination, is possible, Vasquez states. Many of us are afraid of changes. Gigi, the main character, is no different. She is afraid, however, she embarks on a journey into the unknown, overcomes herself, and lands in a safe place.

Naked is also available for purchase on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/Naked-Journey-Juana-Vasquez-ebook/dp/B084RDNBBS.

Naked

By Juana Vasquez

Hardcover | 5.5 x 8.5 in | 116 pages | ISBN 9781480886919

Softcover | 5.5 x 8.5 in | 116 pages | ISBN 9781480886926

E-Book | 116 pages | ISBN 9781480886933

Available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Juana Vasquez was born in the Dominican Republic in 1971 and immigrated to the United States in 1990. In 1993 she was introduced to metaphysics by an acquaintance she met at a local library in Paterson, New Jersey. Her interest in human behavior and in challenging herself led her to study the science of religion and metaphysics over the course of 20 years. She currently lives in New York City. Her book is also available in Spanish, titled Al Desnudo.

Simon & Schuster, a company with nearly ninety years of publishing experience, has teamed up with Author Solutions, LLC, the worldwide leader in self-publishing, to create Archway Publishing. With unique resources to support books of all kind, Archway Publishing offers a specialized approach to help every author reach his or her desired audience. For more information, visit http://www.archwaypublishing.com or call 844-669-3957.

Bloomington, Indiana, UNITED STATES

https://www.archwaypublishing.com/

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New book about change and transformation follows woman's journey to find herself - GlobeNewswire

Donovan, the singer/songwriter once called the next Dylan, who Bob Dylan ridiculed on one of his European tours, has a song that goes:

First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.

Its a reference to a Buddhist text and refers to enlightenment. Something you believe in is present, then its not, then it is. Everything changes. Some changes are unavoidable and some are unpleasant.

Changes in my neighborhood directly effect the way I live my life.

And its really hard for me to accept change. But this time, I had no choice. The proof was right in front of my eyes, even though I wanted to ignore it.

A for sale sign hanging in the right hand window. Vida was gone.

A valued asset of the Stapleton community since 2003, Vida served up fine food in a wonderfully cozy atmosphere, while Cesare Evora played on the sound system. Local art decorated the walls and many a joyful night was spent there with family and friends. Our friend Silva owned and operated the restaurant. Joan and I celebrated our 10th anniversary within its walls.

Vida opened around the same time as The Muddy Cup, signaling a revival to the area that eventually led to three years of Van Duzer Days. The Cups owners, Jim and Rob, were directly responsible for my family moving into the neighborhood. Jim knew our landlord, Joe, and arranged for us to see the apartment that has now been our home for the past 17 years.

Close proximity to both the Cup and Vida helped in our decision.

One night, Jim, Rob, Joan, Silva and I stood in the vacant restaurant, way past closing time. Silva brought out a bottle of wine and proposed a toast to us all. As we drank, a light patina of snow fell. We gazed upon it wistfully. Aint nobody going to work tomorrow, Rob declared. In fact, nobody did.

Through the years, Vida had its ups and down. Severely limited parking outside the restaurant didnt help. Though the area buzzed with activity from the restaurant, the Cup and Martini Reds (which is now the Hop Shoppe), people didnt come much to the neighborhood. To each their own. And, their loss.

Silva sometimes complained that she wanted to leave, that it was too much running the restaurant, cooking and handling its financial affairs. Then, she would change her mind and tough it out for another year. We thought she always would.

This year, we were wrong. This was the year Silva made good on her promise and disappeared, leaving the shell of a storefront behind her.

Then again, this year, nobodys been right about anything. All bets are off. The only sure thing is uncertainty, and that can destroy a local business faster than you can say pita bread.

Times have been tough for Stapleton. The former Cup is now a tattoo parlor. The former Duzer Local looks to be re-opening under the name Amiras Cafe. So many new enterprises were set to begin before the virus came to town. Now, its mostly wait and see.

But, my mind is on Vida, its promise and what it meant to this neighborhood. It absolutely increases the quality of life in a community if you can walk down the block to a decent restaurant. Staten Island has no shortage of great places to eat, but when its your neighborhood, your community, when you see your friends gathering at a local spot to eat or hear music or just hang out, it means a lot more.

That sense of community gets you through pandemics and catastrophes, good times and bad, hustle and hollowness. Each venue is a brick upon which other venues are built. And, when one brick disappears, the rest topple and sometimes fall away.

What will happen now is anybodys guess. The Coop, which is a bar next door, might expand. The storefront might stay vacant for awhile, as did the Cup. Whatever happens, the memories of good times within Vidas walls will not fade. They, too, are bricks in a chain of memories.

I have faith in Stapleton, otherwise I wouldnt live here. On first glance, it might seem unimpressive and maybe even, to some folks, threatening. Stapleton does have a reputation, and a lot of it for unsavory things. But the people are what make a community, and the people that have made their home here like Donna, Frankie and Dave, who have set up businesses like Joe and Ira and the hundreds of musicians who have come to play at the Cup, Martinis, the Hop Shoppe and Duzer Local have made this a place of warmth and solace. Mountains may come and go, but memories are forever.

Hold those grey heads high!

Comments about this and ally columns may be addressed to Talk To The Old Guy on Facebook. My deep appreciation to all who have left lovely thank you notes. You are sincerely welcome!

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The Old Guy: Remembering a beloved Staten Island restaurant that did not survive 2020 - SILive.com