The trouble with Mel Gibson`s film "The Passion" that opens in more than 2000 movie theaters on Ash Wednesday (Feb. 25) is not the film itself, but the gospel story on which it's based. The gospel story, which has generated more anti-Semitism than the sum total of all the other anti-Semitic writings ever written, created the climate in Christian Europe that led to the Holocaust. Long before the rise of Adolf Hitler the gospel story about the life and death of Jesus had poisoned the bloodstream of European civilization.But read the whole thing. It makes a lot of sense to me. I've never (or at least, not since I grew up) believed that "Jesus" as talked about in the Protestant churches I knew, or the Catholic ones I knew of, had really existed. I supposed him to have been a folkloric composite of possibly several wandering magicians of Palestine in those days. Maybe, though, Patterson is right: It could have originally been one guy, but a very different guy and with a very different story from what is portrayed in the Gospels.
2004/02/21
The Gospel of hatred
My union brother (National Writers Union) Charles Patterson has written a fascinating and, to my mind, persuasive article about how and why the stories we have received about Jesus were horribly distorted. In A Whiff Of Auschwitz: Mel Gibson and the Gospel of Anti-Semitism, Patterson writes,
2004/02/20
First, you've got to destroy it
For some mysterious reason, I've been put on the mailing list of a lot well-stuffed suits (just look at the pictures!) circling the moneybags of Halliburton, in an operation called Rebuilding Iraq. Lots of luck, guys.
WTC Memorial: my candidate
You can now see Susana Torre's submission (along with the 5,200 other ones) just as she presented it: Loss, Remembrance, Renewal . Here is another view, just the images and text. For my earlier comment describing Torre's proposal, see the December 10 entry in this blog (scroll down from 2003/12/13 to 2003/12/10). And just above that, on December 12, you'll find a reference to Torre's article on memorial designs around the world.
The end of the Earth as a habitable planet
A couple of days ago I was worried because scientists were saying the sun would "swell up and destroy the Earth in about five billion years." Now Al Gore tells me that we're in much more imminent danger: "Scientists project that within another 50 years, we may well see the complete disappearance in summertime of the Artic ice cap," which will bring huge disturbances in weather patterns. In fact, the disturbances have already begun, as Gore notes: "Skyrocketing losses from extreme weather events; and more frequent record heat waves, as in Western Europe last summer, when 15,000 people died."
Gore says that with "bold moral and political leadership from the United States of America… there is no doubt whatsoever that we could solve the world's climate crisis." I'm glad he's so confident. I'd like to think he's right, but -- bold moral and political leadership? From the American plutocracy that sees the rest of the world as theirs to plunder? Either we throw the bums out SOON, or we may see that the Maya were right: by their Long Count calendar, the end of the world as we know it is scheduled for 3 Eb 5 Kankin (21 December 2012).
Gore's statement is condensed in a full page ad in today's New York Times. For a fuller presentation, see his January 15 speech on Global Warming and the Environment. That same site has some ideas of what we can do to keep the Maya prophecy and the Bush plan for world disaster from being fulfilled.
Gore says that with "bold moral and political leadership from the United States of America… there is no doubt whatsoever that we could solve the world's climate crisis." I'm glad he's so confident. I'd like to think he's right, but -- bold moral and political leadership? From the American plutocracy that sees the rest of the world as theirs to plunder? Either we throw the bums out SOON, or we may see that the Maya were right: by their Long Count calendar, the end of the world as we know it is scheduled for 3 Eb 5 Kankin (21 December 2012).
Gore's statement is condensed in a full page ad in today's New York Times. For a fuller presentation, see his January 15 speech on Global Warming and the Environment. That same site has some ideas of what we can do to keep the Maya prophecy and the Bush plan for world disaster from being fulfilled.
Progress report
I've just spent the past few hours chasing translation job leads and remaking my AbraPalabra Translations page. I'm going to push this business -- it's been a lot more lucrative to me, dollar-per-hour, that the writing, though not half so satisfying. So, if you're in the market for a translator, or know someone who is, please keep me in mind.
In writing, meanwhile, I've also been busy. Monday I sent off a little essay that was really fun. It will be the introduction to the inaugural issue of a new English-language journal devoted to Turkish literature. Now why am I, a specialist in Latin American society and culture, writing about Turkish literature? Funny you should ask.
You see, in the course of writing my novel about 15th century Constantinople and the Ottomans who were besieging it, I came across a manuscript in pencil titled "Mihri Khatun, A Turkish Poetess of the 15th Century," by the Russian scholar Nicholas N. Martinovitch (1883-1954) in the Special Collections Office of the New York Public Library, along with other papers and glass slides of this multilingual cultural historian. It was such a charming and erudite little book, and Martinovitch had struggled for so long, and so unsuccessfully, to get it published, that I thought it should not remain ignored. I had a copy made and offered it to historians of Turkey, and now it is coming out in the new Journal of Turkish Literature, edited by the distinguished professor of Turkish literature Talat Sait Halman in Bilkent University in Ankara. And Prof. Halman asked me to write the introduction. I am delighted, and so would be Martinovitch, though it has been half a century since his death and about 400 years since the death of his subject, the "Turkish, Moslem, beautiful woman of a good, religious family, who remained unmarried, was highly educated, unusually for the time, took part openly in serious discussions with her countrymen, was the author of scientific works and, moreover, was a famous, prominent, distinguished poetess."
Other little projects include my articles for Monster.com, for Hispanics/Latinos looking to improve their careers. I just sent in my fourth one on Tuesday, but the only one up so far is the 1st, about dealing with the psychological stresses of immigration. And of course I'm still working away on that big book on Latin American architecture and urbanism, right now focusing on the Classic Maya of the 8th-10th centuries AD. It's fascinating. I'll tell you more soon.
In writing, meanwhile, I've also been busy. Monday I sent off a little essay that was really fun. It will be the introduction to the inaugural issue of a new English-language journal devoted to Turkish literature. Now why am I, a specialist in Latin American society and culture, writing about Turkish literature? Funny you should ask.
You see, in the course of writing my novel about 15th century Constantinople and the Ottomans who were besieging it, I came across a manuscript in pencil titled "Mihri Khatun, A Turkish Poetess of the 15th Century," by the Russian scholar Nicholas N. Martinovitch (1883-1954) in the Special Collections Office of the New York Public Library, along with other papers and glass slides of this multilingual cultural historian. It was such a charming and erudite little book, and Martinovitch had struggled for so long, and so unsuccessfully, to get it published, that I thought it should not remain ignored. I had a copy made and offered it to historians of Turkey, and now it is coming out in the new Journal of Turkish Literature, edited by the distinguished professor of Turkish literature Talat Sait Halman in Bilkent University in Ankara. And Prof. Halman asked me to write the introduction. I am delighted, and so would be Martinovitch, though it has been half a century since his death and about 400 years since the death of his subject, the "Turkish, Moslem, beautiful woman of a good, religious family, who remained unmarried, was highly educated, unusually for the time, took part openly in serious discussions with her countrymen, was the author of scientific works and, moreover, was a famous, prominent, distinguished poetess."
Other little projects include my articles for Monster.com, for Hispanics/Latinos looking to improve their careers. I just sent in my fourth one on Tuesday, but the only one up so far is the 1st, about dealing with the psychological stresses of immigration. And of course I'm still working away on that big book on Latin American architecture and urbanism, right now focusing on the Classic Maya of the 8th-10th centuries AD. It's fascinating. I'll tell you more soon.
2004/02/17
Deadlines of the universe
I am always a little disturbed by news of the end of the universe, especially when the scientists themselves can't agree whether it will come in 35 billion, or 56 billion, or 69 billion years -- depending on just what's up with "dark energy," as reported today in a NYT article on the coming "Big Rip" by Dennis Overbye. With such huge discrepancies in the calculations, how can one possibly plan for such an event? I have enough trouble just planning to the end of the year, when I'm supposed to have my novel sold and most of the draft of the book on Latin American architecture and urbanism completed. But, if the universe is going to end anyway, what's the point?
Actually, though the end of time may be tens of billions of years off, the end of our world, and presumably of anybody interested in reading the books I'm working on, is scheduled for much sooner. "A more immediate problem," according to the illustration with the article: "The Sun swells up and destroys the Earth in about five billion years, well before the Big Rip." So much for phrases like "The immortal works of Shakespeare," or of anybody.
Not worried about an event five billion years away? OK, how's this? According to the sages of the Maya, the present Creation Cycle -- that is, everything we know -- which began some time in August (by our present calendar), 3114 B.C., is set to end on December 21, 2012. So, if there's anything you want to get done in our current universe, get busy!
Maya calendar
Actually, though the end of time may be tens of billions of years off, the end of our world, and presumably of anybody interested in reading the books I'm working on, is scheduled for much sooner. "A more immediate problem," according to the illustration with the article: "The Sun swells up and destroys the Earth in about five billion years, well before the Big Rip." So much for phrases like "The immortal works of Shakespeare," or of anybody.
Not worried about an event five billion years away? OK, how's this? According to the sages of the Maya, the present Creation Cycle -- that is, everything we know -- which began some time in August (by our present calendar), 3114 B.C., is set to end on December 21, 2012. So, if there's anything you want to get done in our current universe, get busy!
Maya calendar
2004/02/14
Just in time for Black History Month! Rent-a-Negro
Check out this web performance piece by conceptual artist Damali Ayo: Rent-a-Negro. As she points out, since it is no longer legal to buy one in this country, renting is the next best option. Impress your friends! Rent a Negro and take her to lunch at your club, for example. Many other examples of services are offered here. And be sure to check out other works by this sassy young artist, Damali Ayo. (Hey! It's a joke guys, but one that punches hard, right in our flabby consciences. Thanks to my friend Sylvia H-J for sending the link.)Clarification
Since I put up the note yesterday about Jubie Henderson and Fulton, KY, I've heard more from the Henderson family. The Jubie I knew is alive and well and living outside Memphis, TN. His father, also Jubie, was the artist who died some years ago. From the e-mails (from Jubie Jr.'s son and one of his brothers), they all seem like very friendly people.
2004/02/13
Remembering a little incident in a big struggle
I got a surprise phone call yesterday from John O. Jones, editor of the Fulton Leader in Fulton, Kentucky. He'd found a reminiscence on my web site, about a tense time I'd spent in his town in 1966, and about some young town fellows who behaved very honorably and helped us out. Jones wanted permission to print my essay for Black History month. Sure! I'm glad people there are interested. Meanwhile, in case you don't subscribe to the paper, you can click to read Freedom Drivers, or, a Busy Day in Fulton, KY - a civil rights memoir.
Jones told me that Jubie Henderson had been a highly regarded artist in Kentucky and Tennessee, and that he had died, all of which was a big surprise to me. His son wrote me a year ago to say he was living outside of Memphis TN.
Jones told me that Jubie Henderson had been a highly regarded artist in Kentucky and Tennessee, and that he had died, all of which was a big surprise to me. His son wrote me a year ago to say he was living outside of Memphis TN.
2004/02/12
Not all equality is equal
A couple of days ago Laurence Monroe, who is French and a woman despite what you might think from the name, interviewed me for a book she is writing about Catholicism in the U.S. for a publisher in France. I told her I didn't know anything (or almost anything) about Catholicism, but she wanted to know about "Hispanics." She obviously had read my book Hispanic Nation very thoroughly, but knew that her French audience would be deeply puzzled by the ethnic dynamic I describe. They do ethnicity differently in France, as you know if you been following the big headscarf flap over there.
She got me thinking about some of these differences. America (I mean here that small part of America that is the U.S.) has had to accept wave after wave of immigrants, each group demanding its rights to its own interpretation of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and each changing and enlarging the culture. The Americans already here have tried to force them into the older Dutch-English-German mold that this country started with, but instead the Poles, the Irish, the Italians, the newer German Catholics and German Protestants and German Jews, then the Russian and other East European Jews, and now millions of Latin Americans and Asians and some smaller numbers of Africans break and reshape the mold.
The French try to make everybody who immigrates French, and they have a pretty clear idea what that means, from the most ironic intellectuals down to the reader of the police pages of Le Matin. Among other things, it includes speaking the language à la Académie Française, thinking with the logic of Descartes, and not wearing headscarves. Religion is optional. We Americans don't even have a consensus of what it means to be American, and those fundamentalist Christians who think they do have almost no influence over the American educated classes.
L'égalité à la française really isn't the same thing at all as "equality" in the American lexicon. The French version means that everybody should be equally subjected to the same laws. The American version means everybody has the equal right to "pursue happiness" even if there is a law that gets in the way. Here, people can be equal but different. Remember the legal principle that justified (rationalized) school segregation in the days before Brown v. Board of Education? In France, "separate but equal" sounded simply illogical, another example of the bizarre irrationality of Anglo-Saxons. They had a point.
She got me thinking about some of these differences. America (I mean here that small part of America that is the U.S.) has had to accept wave after wave of immigrants, each group demanding its rights to its own interpretation of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and each changing and enlarging the culture. The Americans already here have tried to force them into the older Dutch-English-German mold that this country started with, but instead the Poles, the Irish, the Italians, the newer German Catholics and German Protestants and German Jews, then the Russian and other East European Jews, and now millions of Latin Americans and Asians and some smaller numbers of Africans break and reshape the mold.
The French try to make everybody who immigrates French, and they have a pretty clear idea what that means, from the most ironic intellectuals down to the reader of the police pages of Le Matin. Among other things, it includes speaking the language à la Académie Française, thinking with the logic of Descartes, and not wearing headscarves. Religion is optional. We Americans don't even have a consensus of what it means to be American, and those fundamentalist Christians who think they do have almost no influence over the American educated classes.
L'égalité à la française really isn't the same thing at all as "equality" in the American lexicon. The French version means that everybody should be equally subjected to the same laws. The American version means everybody has the equal right to "pursue happiness" even if there is a law that gets in the way. Here, people can be equal but different. Remember the legal principle that justified (rationalized) school segregation in the days before Brown v. Board of Education? In France, "separate but equal" sounded simply illogical, another example of the bizarre irrationality of Anglo-Saxons. They had a point.
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