WOKE RACISM

How good intentions may be hurting Black America

John McWhorter, linguist

1619

?Beginning 

First wave anti-racism

Civil rights act 1964

Voting rights act 1965

Desegregation, battling disenfranchisement

Second wave anti-racism

1970

Unconscious racism

Not all problems were solved post desegregation

Third wave anti-racism

2020 post George Floyd

Reparations

Is it logical or is a sermon? If it’s not logical, it may a religion

“Passion play” “Minuet” “Virtue signaling”

“Hyperwoke”- internally focused, betrays black communities with gestures, not action

Based on a suspension of disbelief (on extremes, a faith, an ideology, akin to)

Defund the police, Black Lives Matters

”Soft Bigatry of low expections”, if black students do poorly at the test, get rid of it instead of reflecting and changing the underlying reasons for it

Marginalizes people for trying not to be racist but without perfect result

Being fired for saying something judged to be racist because it was about a person of colour

“That’s exotic” (new, novel, we haven’t see this before)

Not for those exploited by racism, but a thing in itself

???meta

If you are not centrally commit battling power difference, you are part of the problem, you are immoral, and you are marginalized and shamed mercilessly. 

SUGGESTIONS:

Phonics is better for kids without books at home

Social injustice of not being able to read impacts all further schooling

Distrust your impulse to suppose that people who think like you don’t think like you are either naive or evil. 

With any debate, disagreement is not just about facts nor moralities. It’s usually about differing priorities about which you might argue but that’s different from decreeing that people are stupid or bad. And that’s what a diverse and large society is all about. That’s what diversity of opinion is.

From 72. Leaving Black People in the Lurch

April 22.2022

People I (Mostly)Admire

WELLNESS REFLECTION NUMBER ONE

 In an attempt to cope better with Friday nights alone, I have started to schedule time for wellness, or some will call it, well-being. 

Today this is easy to do because I spent the day hiking in the outdoors on a cool spring day with a good friend that lets me say and be who I am, and likes me because of it. She is a rare gem! 

I have spent the week with certain necessary deprivations, and have made a few exceptions. I gave up sugar, coffee, and wine, but it was a tough week to start a new 60 day habit, what with Easter candy, and leftover bird’s nests from my kid’s generous giveaway at school. I did have a tea with condensed milk (should have used that up before starting!) and tonight I ate both cocoa oatmeal coconut haystacks with Easter eggs instead of saving one for later. Still, I ate late at night only once, and the overall balance of eating was NOT bingeing. Win win!

I like to breakdown personality traits (we too often throw around traits like pathologies) and we are both introverts, so that’s fun too. But there is no breakdown of what makes a person happy, and we both recognized the need for a person (especially in an institution) to be in the sunshine, and feel the wind, and smell the grass, and taste food. I may not be energized by people, and I may not be energized alone, but I am recharged by a walk in the woods, with running water, and wind gusts. I am recharged by sunshine and exercise in the fresh air. I am recharged by the company of a good friend. I am renewed by the sacred crossing with a red fox (who dislikes walking on squishy mud as much as any human!) and a herd of eight grazing deer. 

THESE LEGS

 My mom was always hiding her legs. She had varicose veins, especially on one side, and I only remember her wearing shorts a couple of times.  It always seemed that she was embarrassed. She was probably the one who started me shaving my legs. I don't really remember a time when I didn't. I remember a few nicks around my ankles (the razors got so much better, thanks to Gillette's Venus design) and an early attempt with the sulphorous smelling nair. I missed the waxing until I was in Montreal. An expensive way, but lasted longer. I might have continued if the local esthetician wasn't hairless and gave me the impression that she couldn't related to my hairy body in any way and made it her mission to eliminate any hairs, at least in the area I paid for that day. 

The reality is that I had good legs for a while. Sure, when I was a teen, I wished they didn't taper like chicken legs that I inherited from my dad. I only had one kid, so the varicosities I had were not as bad as if I had carried three. I never shaved above my knees, so there came a day that it just didn't make any sense to me why society didn't care about some parts of my body being hairy while others were frowned upon. I am a furry person. I have arm hair and facial hair and belly hair. If I removed every one of them, it would be a fulltime job! It would also look weird to me. When I stopped running and hit my 40s, my legs started to look worn. 

When I look down on the legs I took a picture of in my 49th year, I know they are no longer great legs, but they are good legs. They work, get me where I need to go, and they are probably the best they are going to be for the foreseeable future. So I embrace the veins, the hair, the scars, and the wrinkles. Today, I celebrate these legs. These legs are my legs, and I am proud of them!

A PROMISED LAND

Barack Obama's memoir was the third similar book I had read, beginning the Michelle Obama's Becoming and Hillary Clinton's What Happened.  

His style of writing reminded of a recent read (the best book of the year to date) called The Sky Is Not the Limit, by celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. They both seem to write capsules of information. In the latter's case, some were essays published on their own. I think this is a smart way to write.

I found it interesting to see how the three authors linked together in time, and how they referred to each other, or didn't. I wondered what I missing from not reading their previous books, in the case of Hillary and Barack. At some points in all their stories, I felt angry, which I found hard to explain. 

"You show me someone okay with losing, and I'll show you a loser."

Gates: "something short of friends"

MINE: FROM PODCAST TO BOOKCLUB

BOREDOM KILLING YOUR CREATIVITY? TRY OBLIQUE STATEGIES

 Listening to the podcast #7 Bowie, Jazz and the Unplayable Piano, I was introduced to the character called Eno. He is British musician that was described as working with David Bowie in Berlin, and he had a pack of cards that motivated inspiration (mostly about making music, but many can be used for any creative process). The cards were used with two simple rules: Pick one. Do it. (No exchanges).

Tim Harford makes the argument that limits inspire creativity. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention!

Here is a list from Carine L'Allemand.

Abandon normal instruments 

Accept advice 

Accretion 

A line has two sides 

Allow an easement (an easement is the abandonment of a stricture) 

Are there sections? Consider transitions

Ask people to work against their better judgement

Ask your body

Assemble some of the instruments in a group and treat the group 

Balance the consistency principle with the inconsistency principle 

Be dirty 

Breathe more deeply 

Bridges -build -burn 

Cascades 

Change instrument roles 

Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency

Children's voices -speaking -singing 

Cluster analysis 

Consider different fading systems 

Consult other sources -promising -unpromising 

Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element 

Courage! 

Cut a vital connection 

Decorate, decorate 

Define an area as `safe' and use it as an anchor 

Destroy -nothing -the most important thing 

Discard an axiom 

Disconnect from desire 

Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them 

Distorting time 

Do nothing for as long as possible 

Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do 

Don't be frightened of cliches 

Don't be frightened to display your talents 

Don't break the silence 

Don't stress one thing more than another 

Do something boring 

Do the washing up 

Do the words need changing? 

Do we need holes? 

Emphasize differences 

Emphasize repetitions 

Emphasize the flaws 

Faced with a choice, do both (given by Dieter Rot) 

Feedback recordings into an acoustic situation 

Fill every beat with something 

Get your neck massaged 

Ghost echoes 

Give the game away 

Give way to your worst impulse 

Go slowly all the way round the outside 

Honor thy error as a hidden intention 

How would you have done it? 

Humanize something free of error 

Imagine the music as a moving chain or caterpillar 

Imagine the music as a set of disconnected events 

Infinitesimal gradations 

Intentions -credibility of -nobility of -humility of

Into the impossible

Is it finished?

Is there something missing?

Is the tuning appropriate?

Just carry on
Left channel, right channel, centre channel
Listen in total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly
Listen to the quiet voice
Look at a very small object, look at its centre
Look at the order in which you do things
Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them Lowest common denominator check -single beat -single note -single riff
Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame
Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list
Make a sudden, destructive unpredictable action; incorporate Mechanicalize something idiosyncratic
Mute and continue
Only one element of each kind
(Organic) machinery
Overtly resist change
Put in earplugs
Remember those quiet evenings
Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics
Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities
Repetition is a form of change
Reverse
Short circuit (example: a man eating peas with the idea that they will improve his virility shovels them straight into his lap)
Shut the door and listen from outside
Simple subtraction
Spectrum analysis
Take a break
Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance
Tape your mouth (given by Ritva Saarikko)
The inconsistency principle
The tape is now the music
Think of the radio
Tidy up
Trust in the you of now
Turn it upside down
Twist the spine
Use an old idea
Use an unacceptable color
Use fewer notes
Use filters
Use `unqualified' people
Water
What are you really thinking about just now? Incorporate
What is the reality of the situation?
What mistakes did you make last time?
What would your closest friend do?
What wouldn't you do?
Work at a different speed
You are an engineer
You can only make one dot at a time
You don't have to be ashamed of using your own ideas
[blank white card]

OBLIQUE STRATEGIES © 1975, 1978, and 1979 Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt (Formatted from Gregory Taylor’s web site. Composers please note: individual results may vary.)

PARENTING STRATEGY FROM THE MEDICAL AND BUSINESS WORLD

 Tim Harford is an amazing storyteller, and his podcast called Cautionary Tales is full of half-hour story arches that teaches lessons, like fairy tales to adults!

Episode 20 speaks to the idea of masterly inactivity being the opposite of micro-managing, and it rang a bell for me from the basic logic laws that all doctors follow: First, do no harm. *For some people this is easier than others. It's sometimes taught to students "just sit on your hands". It is easy for some people to want to jump into action, in an emergency, and when you child is struggling with something. If it is not truly an emergency, it is important to know that, more often than not, things will resolve themselves. In those cases, doing something might mean doing something harmful. 

Take for example that someone has fainted. I have seen it over and over an instinct to act, sitting the person up, and thus stopping the natural reestablishment of the circulation that would happen if they had been left supine, and sometimes resulting in seizure like body tremors from the brain's lack of oxygen circulation. Even in health care's hands, some nurses don't lay them flat, but use a stretcher to lower their head in a positional called Trendelenberg. This, unfortunately, decreases the ability of the heart to pump because it shunts blood away from the atrial chambers. Just leave things alone! 

I think it's important as a parent, especially with teens, but at any age, to practice masterly inactivity. When they are young, you help them establish the limits of their own body by respecting their individuality, and it sets up the boundaries they need to understand the need to grant and receive consent. When they are teens, you allow the parts of them unlike yourself to be put forward and what they want to do with it. I don't mean ignore those who have no sense of their own boundaries. You need to step in when that boisterous relative wants to kiss everyone on the mouth, or hug your shy kid when they clearly don't want it. There is a difference between politeness in greeting and non-consentual physical contact. 

CRETE/PARIS 2018

 I visited the island of Crete with two adventurous wonderful women, and we stayed on the coast on a beautiful property called Villa Le Reve, near Skepasti (google says Milopotamos). It was managed by Kostas and the Tour Company Etouri (271 Arkadiou St) in nearby Rethymno. We stayed there Saturday to Saturday, October 13-20, arriving after 15h and leaving by 11h.

We took Aegean air from CDG-HER AT566 from Charles de Gaulle, Paris at 12:05 to Heraklion arriving 16:10 and returned to Paris AT111.

We were terrible uninformed about where we were, and learned in pieces that Crete was the start of Greek civilization with the Minoan era centered at the Knossos Palace nearest Heraklion, which we never had a chance to see! We also tried to find the center of the Greek mythology, Mount Olympus, but due to difficult navigating and roads littered with rockfall, we never saw that either!

In fact, the whole trip was based on a geographical error. In her desire to see the island of Corfu (or was it Cyprus), my friend convinced us to go with her, and she found the villa, and we ended up in Crete!

What we did see was amazing, with harrowing adventures of incredible driving (not me, Tina!), swelling tides with brave naked swimmers, thorny rocky fields with noisy grazing goats, construction of incredible roadways and fortresses, and the ever-changing Aegean sea and sky. 

The pool was extravagant, and bracing! The electricity was solar, until it was a noisy generator when that ran out. The place locked up like a fortress, but it would take a determined person just to find it, winding up terrible roads and twisting turns to get there and back. 

The driving was difficult, but we bought the insurance that covered everything, including the undercarriage, and had no regrets. The drivers were very respectful, and we saw evidence of a bus route along the major roads, but would have a long walk down to them and back.

In Paris, we stayed at Hotel Marcel Ayme, where I discovered that this author had inspired street art that I remembered from a previous trip to Montmartre (in the steps of Amelie Poulin) with his book le Passe-Muraille (The Man Who Walked Through Walls) .

DU COLLEGE METRO

It was a long, harrowing, nausea-inducing, unwelcome ride to work last week, but it did get me to a metro I didn't remember visiting before.

It turns out the 202 East comes to the same bus stop as the 485 East, and leaves 1 minute before.

Classic colours from the 60s with clever design.

End of the benches of Du College and more floor detail

It wetted my appetite for a systematic visit for the Montreal metro system.