Thursday, September 30, 2021

Have Beach Towel will...Zoom

Quarterly Meeting gear:  exunberant beach towel, computer, Water bottles and uder the desk exerciser
Take me to your virtual
Quarterly Meeting.
Try, try, try to catch up on sleep


RantWoman celebrates last weekend's 2021 PNQM virtual gathering: The Schedule, preparatory material and.. .

Think Joanna Macy


RantWoman has good intentions about harvesting some resources from the chat streams she has dumped into draft email. That may or may not happen. RantWoman has no idea whether the event links above will linger and is at peace, SORT OF, with the ephemeral nature of much on the internet.


RantWoman is missing the drive out of the city and over the mountains to fresher air and more natural exercise than her new under-the-desk exerciser. RantWoman is pondering whether the planet is asking that we do less travel and more Zoom, what would be the gifts of hybrid gathering, whether we should offer to help grace our beloved gathering site with some tech to support better internet access and / or some electric car charging options. In the latter case, RantWoman wonders whether charging infrastructure is getting ubiquitous enough that Friends might be able to count on charging vehicles in one of the towns on the way to the site. 


RantWoman celebrates the creation of an ad-hoc disabilities committee. RantWoman celebrates the Light and energy of the young Friend called to convene the committee. That is enough for a fast snapshot. Stay tuned for more.


For readers wondering what the beach towel is doing here, RantWoman takes the beach towel to Quarterly Meeting as part of her bring your own bedding practice.

Saturday, September 25, 2021

For Fourth Saturday Worship: among other things, is ADON OLAM ad drinking song? - Hampton Synagogue - Thanksgiving Concert 2017

Fourth Saturday worship is not exactly on hiatus for September. It has been swallowed up by virtual Pacific Northwest Quarterly Meeting, with a format shaken up and Friends invited to participate in the whole weekend. So Friends who might want to worship at this time are invited to do so without RantWoman's help. RantWoman is pretty sure you can do it.

The first evening program closed with an invitation to think of living life in a permanent state of gratitude. RantWoman was not quite ready to go all the sort of sarcastic, (sarcastic but true) Bad Friend directions that came to her. Luckily, instead of more videos by Joanna Macy, YouTube served up several variations of the Adon Olom. RantWoman permitted herself not even to try to untangle all the threads of the Wikipedia entry but just to enjoy the music and repeat her occasional musing about gender identity: RantWoman would only ever consider transitioning if she thought she might emerge with a halfway decent low range singing voice.




Thursday, September 23, 2021

Two Items about the file "The Eyes of Tammy Faye." Jessica Chastain: Tammy Faye Wrapped Her Arms Around The LGBTQ Audience






There is a new film out which paints Tammy Faye Bakker, wife of the televangelist Jim Bakker, in a sympathetic light.

Note that Bakker, (pronounced Baker) has two k's.

 

Tammy Faye Bakker helped give a face to the AIDS epidemic. A new biopic honors that legacy.



 

How televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker became an unlikely ally in the AIDS crisis

In the new Jessica Chastain-led film, "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," Bakker's groundbreaking 1985 interview with a gay Christian pastor living with AIDS takes center stage.

Tammy Faye Messner (formerly Bakker). Burton McNeely / Getty Images file

Sept. 17, 2021, 3:30 AM CDT / Updated Sept. 17, 2021, 5:39 AM CDT

By Alexander Kacala

On Nov. 15, 1985, just two months after President Ronald Reagan finally uttered the word "AIDS" publicly, the televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker did something considered bold and fearless at the time: She interviewed a gay man living with HIV on live television and treated him with compassion. 

"How sad that we as Christians - who are to be the salt of the earth, we who are supposed to be able to love everyone - are afraid so badly of an AIDS patient that we will not go up and put our arm around them and tell them that we care," Bakker said tearfully during her 24-minute interview with Steve Pieters (pronounced Peters). 

The conversation aired during "Tammy's House Party" on the Praise the Lord network, a channel that reached 20 million viewers across dozens of countries at the height of its popularity. It is thought to be the first time a televangelist ever talked to someone living with AIDS or HIV on television, and the in-depth interview (too in-depth for some viewers) became an important milestone in AIDS and LGBTQ history 

While Bakker, who died of cancer in 2007 at age 65, has a complicated legacy, muddied by her first husband Jim Bakker's fraud conviction, her record on gay rights, particularly the empathy she showed those living with
HIV and AIDS, has remained clear and was radical for its time.

Bakker's watershed conversation with Pieters took place more than 35 years ago, but it has been thrust back in the spotlight thanks to the new film "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," starring the Oscar-nominated actor Jessica Chastain in the titular role. Based on the RuPaul-narrated 2000 cult
documentary of the same name, the film, which debuts in theaters Friday, prominently features this groundbreaking interview.

"When I saw the documentary and I saw that scene - that incredible moment between Steve Pieters and Tammy Faye - I knew how important it was, because my knowledge of Tammy was just what the media had fed me, this sensationalized version that focused on the drama," Chastain, who also was executive producer of the film, told NBC News from the Toronto International Film Festival. "That is not really the true story of who she was, and that blew me away." 

Chastain acquired the rights to Bakker's story nearly a decade ago and has been working to bring the film to the big screen ever since. 

Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye Bakker in "The Eyes of Tammy Faye."SearchLight Pictures

"For me, that interview was the reason I had to make the film; it was the
most important scene," she said. "Steve Pieters is phenomenal, al  of his
answers were so loving and beautiful, and Tammy Faye, she had all these little naive questions. I'm convinced they saved lives with that interview, because many in the conservative evangelical world were disowning their
children who are coming out to them.

When Bakker learned, during that interview, that Pieters' parents accepted him when he came out to them, she got visibly emotional. 

"Thank God for a mom and dad who will stand with a young person," she said. "They're still your boy, they're still your girl, no matter what happens in their life, and I think it's so important that we as mom and dads love
through anything, and that's the way with Jesus, you know. Jesus loves us through anything."

To which Pieters responded: "Jesus loves me just the way I am, I really believe. Jesus loves the way I love."

The empathy of a survivor

While Bakker won't get to see herself portrayed on the big screen, Pieters - who was given eight months to live in 1984 - is still alive today. A Los Angeles resident and now 69, Pieters said he is happy to see his interview
with Bakker portrayed in the film and reaching a new generation that may not be aware of the horror and stigma those living with HIV and AIDS faced in the early years of the epidemic. 

"I don't really know why I've survived what killed so many other people,"Pieters told NBC News. "I was legally blind for a time, I was paralyzed on the left side of my body and my adrenal glands blew out. It very nearly killed me a couple of times, but they pulled me back from the brink, and I am here to tell the tale. Is it a miracle? Is it an anomaly? I don't know."

"The Eyes Of Tammy Faye" New York Premiere

Jessica Chastain and Steve Pieters attend the New York premiere of "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" at SVA Theater in New York on Sept. 14, 2021. Taylor Hill / WireImage

Pieters came "roaring out of the closet" in the 1970s and became an activist and pastor in a gay-affirming church, he said. In 1982, he got sick with what was then known as GRID, or gay-related immunodeficiency.  It would later be renamed AIDS, or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. 

"I was terribly sick over the next few years, finally diagnosed with stage four lymphoma and Kaposi's sarcoma in April of '84 ," he said. "And I managed to survive that prognosis." 

"My doctor, God bless her, told me when I was first diagnosed terminal that not everybody was going to die from AIDS. She said, 'If there is one in a million survivors, why not believe you're that one in a million?'"

In 1985, Pieters said, he was the first patient to be given one of the first drugs scientists ever tried against HIV, an antiviral agent called suramin. About six weeks into the treatment, he said the cancers ignited by the virus
were in complete remission and disappeared. The drug, however, was extremely toxic, making him sick. Every other person in the trial died but one, he said.

Tammy Faye Bakker Messner signs her book "I Will Survive... And You Can Too." Mark Sullivan / WireImage file

Like Pieters, Bakker considered herself a survivor, and that survivor status is what connected her to so many people, according to those who knew her. She even wrote a book titled "I Will Survive . And You Will, Too" in 2003 that recounted her various struggles, including her divorce, her first bout with cancer and how she coped with addiction and depression. 

And like many people who survived the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, Pieters said he has had to reconcile complex feelings about being a survivor. 

"What I discovered about that over the years is that I can't be fully alive if I allow the survivor's guilt to rule my life," he said. "I have to find the joy in life, each and every day."

"None of us have any guarantees about tomorrow," he added. "So I'm here now feeling joy in spite of whatever may be going on in my life or in the world, and that to me is what's really important. Joy, I've discovered, is not the absence of suffering, but the presence of faith and hope and love, and I
have tried to live that."

'The fearlessness of a drag queen'

It was during that deadly drug trial that Pieters sat down for an interview with Bakker via satellite from California. Bakker was broadcasting from the Praise the Lord studios in Charlotte, North Carolina. She claimed during their interview the reason Pieters wasn't able to travel to the studio was because of his chemotherapy treatments, but Pieters said there was more to the story. 

"I later found out that  - while Jim and Tammy would have been very hospitable towards me  - they were afraid that [their employes] might not treat me well, and that indeed the camera crew might not work if I was in
the studio," he said. "So I think it was a combination of them wanting to be careful for my health, but also to make sure that I wasn't treated badly by other employees."

Some critics of the interview have pointed to the invasiveness and even offensiveness of Bakker's questions - which included queries about Pieters' sex life, if gays could turn their kids straight and why Pieters had "nohope . to be straight"  - but Pieters said even though some of her questions left him speechless, he was happy she asked them.

"I've had a number of people who've seen the interview tell me over theyears, 'Well, she asked a lot of really kind of silly questions, especially about being gay,'" Pieters said. "But they were the right questions for the audience, and I knew that at the time - even though I was kind of flabbergasted when she asked me if I've ever had a sexual experience with a woman. But, you know, they were the right questions for her audience, and  took it as an opportunity to educate them."

Pieters also said he believes her questions about his sexuality had a more personal reason as well. "It has been said that in questioning me so closely about why I had to be gay, she was grappling with issues of her own
marriage," he said. 

In the late 1980s, fellow televangelist Jerry Falwell accused Jim Bakker of having sexual relationships with other men, including a Praise the Lord official, who revealed his alleged relationship with Bakker to a federal
grand jury convened to determine if ministry money was paid for sexual favors. Jim Bakker denied those allegations but was convicted of 28 counts of fraud and conspiracy in 1989 and sentenced to 45 years in prison. He was paroled in 1994 after serving just under five years. He has been married to his second wife for over two decades.

Whatever Bakker's intentions may have been, her interview with Pieters shook the Christian world and was seen as an act of defiance against the church and conservative political values. 

"It was powerful and it was radical, and she got in a lot of trouble for it," Pieters said of the backlash.

Tammy Sue Bakker at a taping of "The Sally Jesse Raphael Show" at Sea World
in San Diego, California, in 1990.Jim Smeal / Ron Galella Collection via
Getty Images file

Bakker's daughter, Tammy Sue Bakker, also uses the word "radical" when describing her mother, particularly the acceptance she said her mother showed to people who were ostracized by other high-profile Christians at the time. 

"I was not raised with judgment; that just was not in our house," she told NBC News in her first interview in 17 years. "It was always a beautiful thing, and it was always meaningful as far as that goes and just accepting. My best friend in high school was gay and that was the school we had at Heritage. Everybody was kind and loving to him, even at our church."

Tammy Sue Bakker was 15 when her mother interviewed Pieters, but she said she remembers it clearly. 

"I knew that when mother did the interview, that it was groundbreaking and that people were going to be angry, because Christians didn't understand it," she said. "I was proud of her for doing it."

"Her love was on display that day, and she was not ashamed of it," she added. "She didn't have that fear of what people were going to think. She wore makeup, she wore her wigs, she had her big boobs, she wore her crazy clothes and her big earrings and sang the way she sang. She had a book called 'I Gotta Be Me,' and that's her. That's the way she was."

In the 2000 documentary - which premiered when federally recognized same-sex marriage was just a pipe dream and gay sex was still criminalized in many states across the country - Tammy Faye Bakker was asked about her attitude toward gay rights. She notably replied, "We're all just people made out of the same old dirt, and God didn't make any junk." It's also a line used in the Chastain film.

Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, center, speaks with drag queens Jolene Sugarbaker, right, and Lady Bunny, left, before a Tammy Faye look alike contest in Cobalt, Washington, on June 8, 2002.Marvin Joseph / The
Washington Post via Getty Images file

Bakker's boldness and her refusal to conform was something that struck Chastain - and inspired her to draw a perhaps fitting comparison, as Bakker evolved into a gay icon of sorts and even served as inspiration for
gender-bending performers. 

"She had the fearlessness of a drag queen," Chastain said. "There was something about her, people talk about drag like a mask or her makeup is a mask, and for me, I saw it as a way that she was expressing how she felt
inside. It wasn't a mask; she wasn't hiding - it was truthful. She was being creative, she was being artistic. It was a beautiful thing about her."

Monday, September 20, 2021

Principles of Disability Justice

Stash a Resource right off the bat

The CIV Perspective: Understanding Cortical Visual Impairment from the inside out



RantWoman talks to herself

RantWoman, you SHOULD allow your readers to form their own opinions.


They can still form their own opinions. RantWoman is just called to HELP them.


RantWoman, you complain all the time about help that is not help. 


Yes. And anyone who thinks there is an oversupply here is invited to speak up.  


RantWoman are you SURE this isn't some weird personal thing or allergy to someone who is too smiley. 


Wanting dialogue is not MEANT to be the same thing as scary, but no. I'm not sure. Canwe please just give that problem to God for now?


God? Huh?


Disability hypervigilance? Allyship? Antagonism? Spiritual Accompaniment. Pure Argumentativeness

RantWoman is muddling about which strands of disability hypervigilance are most on point as an introduction to parts 2 and 3 of a piece on Principles of Disability Justice.


Several points are getting in the way of RantWoman fully appreciating this piece.


Who says I gotta hate capitalism to have disability justice?  RantWoman can bitch about corporate logos all over the T-shirts for a national convention. OR RantWoman can talk about equality in the workplace, equality in the marketplace, when we mean equality and when we mean equity and the world of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion


But RantWoman, maybe the problem is you're just allergic to people who are too smiley?


Yep, sure. Maybe the problem IS RantWoman. Maybe, but the POINT of disability Justice, like all kinds of other aspirational frameworks is that no person is intrinsically a problem and there are many paths past difficulties.


Plus, on Planet RantWoman, SOMETIMES RantWoman interprets the ability to crank out large volumes of text implies either ability or willingness to have further dialogue. RantWoman has come to wonder what she is perhaps misinterpreting.


Now please enjoy the actual articles.


The Principles of Disability Justice (Part 2 of 3)

Mackenzie Barton-Rowledge

In June’s Gleamings I wrote about the first four principles of Disability Justice: Intersectionality, Leadership of Those Most Impacted, Anti-Capitalism and Cross-Movement Solidarity.

These principles were first articulated in 2005 by queer disabled women of color: Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, and Stacey Milburn, who were soon joined by Leroy Moore, Eli Clare and Sebastian Margaret. Disability Justice work now happens all over, and it’s analogous to environmental justice and reproductive justice movements with its holistic and anti-racist approach.

This month I’ll talk about the next five principles, leaving the final principle for the September issue of Gleamings.

white supremacy culture. Friends’ practices fit well into this understanding of transformation.

7. Commitment to cross-disability solidarity: We value and honor the insights and participation of all of our community members, even and especially those who are most often left out of political conversations. We are building a movement that breaks down isolation between people with physical impairments, people who are sick or chronically ill, psych[iatric] survivors and people with mental health disabilities, neurodiverse people, people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, Deaf people, Blind people, people with environmental injuries and chemical sensitivities, and all others who experience ableism and isolation that undermines our collective liberation.

Disability is so diverse, and many of us have internalized ableism that gets in the way of being in solidarity with one another. How many non-developmentally-disabled folks have tried to convince people to see our humanity by saying, “I’m disabled, not stupid!”? But creating a hierarchy of disability is ableist and ultimately hurts us all.

8. Interdependence: Before the massive colonial project of Western European expansion, we understood the nature of interdependence within our communities. We see the liberation of all living systems and the land as integral to the liberation of our own communities, as we all share one planet. We work to meet each other’s needs as we build toward liberation, without always reaching for state solutions which inevitably extend state control further into our lives.

Caring for one another is part of being human, as is needing care. We don’t make all our own food, clothes, shelter, or medicine. We know too intimately how much we crave

5. Recognizing wholeness: Each person is full of history and life experience. Each person has an internal experience composed of our own thoughts, sensations, emotions, sexual fantasies, perceptions, and quirks. Disabled people are whole people.

I don’t know if I can communicate how meaningful this principle is to me. Disabled people are not fundamentally broken or incomplete or lacking.

We are whole.

We are enough.

6. Sustainability: We learn to pace ourselves, individually and collectively, to be sustained long-term. We value the teachings of our bodies and experiences, and use them as a critica/guide and reference point to help us move away from urgency and into a deep, slow, transformative, unstoppable wave of justice and liberation.

This principle is essential—and challenging. Urgency surrounds us all, both based on material circumstances and as a part of 3


connection with others. Wealthy, abled people’s needs are almost always met immediately and without a fuss, whereas poor and disabled folks’ needs are often stigmatized. Stigmatized needs usually only get met with strings attached: shame, control, surveillance, enforced poverty, etc.

9. Collective Access: As Black and brown and queer crips, we bring flexibility and creative nuance to our engagement with each other. We create and explore ways of doing things that go beyond able-bodied and neurotypical norms. Access needs aren’t shameful — we all function differently depending on context and environment. Access needs can be articulated and met privately, through a collective, or in community, depending upon an individual’s needs, desires, and the capacity of the group. We can share responsibility for our access needs, we can ask that our needs be met without compromising our integrity, we can balance autonomy while being in community, we can be unafraid of our vulnerabilities, knowing our strengths are respected. [Note: “crip” is a reclaimed slur that should not be used to describe others without their permission.]

I’m still learning to ask for what I need. Watching disabled friends assert their rights has been so powerful for me to watch; I want to be that inspiration for another disabled person. The process of making access requests always feels tender, but little by little, we create a culture where we all work to shamelessly meet everyone’s access needs.

Full text of the 10 principles: https://tinyurl.com/ DJ10Principles

 


The Principles of Disability Justice

Part 3 of 3

Mackenzie Barton-Rowledge

In June, I wrote about the first four principles of Disability Justice: Intersectionality, Leadership of Those Most Impacted, Anti-Capitalism and Cross-Movement Solidarity. Last month I wrote about the next five principles: Wholeness, Sustainability, Cross-Disability Solidarity, Interdependence and Collective Access. This article is about the tenth and final principle: Collective Liberation.

Collective liberation is so much bigger and broader than rights-based discourse. It’s not about the bare minimum that is required for surviving and participating in this society—it’s about creating a new and different society without systemic oppression.

Aurora Levins Morales, in her book Kindling, explains: “There is no neutral body from which our bodies deviate. Society has written deep into each strand of tissue of every living person on earth. What it writes into the heart muscles of five star generals is distinct from what it writes in the pancreatic tissue and intestinal tracts of Black single mothers in Detroit, of Mexicana migrants in Fresno, but no body stands outside the consequences of injustice and inequality […] What our bodies require in order to thrive, is what the world requires. If there is a map to get there, it can be found in the atlas of our skin and bone and blood, in the tracks of neurotransmitters and antibodies.”

Thinking about disability calls us into our bodies. Disability is profoundly practical, physical, emotional and messy in the most human sense. Being kind to our disabled selves requires humility and grace—and it also should be grounded in an analysis that reaches beyond any one body.

Patty Berne, one of the founders of Disability Justice, continues: “Disability Justice activists, organizers, cultural workers understand that able-bodied supremacy has been formed in relation to intersecting systems of domination and exploitation. The histories of white supremacy and ableism are inextricably entwined, both forged in the crucible of colonial conquest and capitalist domination. We cannot comprehend ableism without grasping its interrelations with heteropatriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism and capitalism, each system co-creating an ideal bodymind built upon the exclusion and elimination of a subjugated ‘other’ from whom profits and status are extracted. 500+ years of violence against black and brown communities includes 500+ years of bodies and minds deemed dangerous by being non-normative— again, not simply within able-bodied normativity, but within the violence of heteronormativity, white supremacy, gender normativity, within which our various bodies and multiple communities have been deemed ‘deviant,’ ‘unproductive,’ ‘invalid.’”

Transphobia is, among other things, colonial: colonizers attempted to erase the many non-cis genders that have existed for thousands of years outside of Europe. Similarly, colonialism is misogynist, misogyny is fatphobic, fatphobia is racist, racism is classist, and on and on. These major forms of oppression are deeply interwoven, and to completely undo any one, we must undo all of them. This is the beginning of the final principle of Disability Justice:

10. Collective Liberation: We move together as people with mixed abilities, multiracial, multi-gendered, mixed class, across the sexual spectrum, with a vision that leaves no bodymind behind. This is disability justice. We honor the longstanding legacies of resilience and resistance which are the inheritance of all of us whose bodies and minds will not conform. Disability justice is not yet a broad based popular movement. Disability justice is a vision and practice of what is yet-to-be, a map that we create with our ancestors and our great-grandchildren onward, in the width and depth of our multiplicities and histories, a movement towards a world in which every body and mind is known as beautiful.

Patty Berne expands on this principle: “Disability Justice holds a vision born out of collective struggle, drawing upon the legacies of cultural and spiritual resistance within a thousand underground paths, igniting small persistent fires of rebellion in everyday life. Disabled people of the global majority—black and brown people—share common ground confronting and subverting colonial powers in our struggle for life and justice. There has always been resistance to all forms of oppression, 4


as we know through our bones that there have simultaneously been disabled people visioning a world where we flourish, that values and celebrates us in all our myriad beauty.”

Disability Justice is always inherent anti-racist, anti-colonial and opposed to all forms of oppression. Because we get free together, or not at all.


 Full Text of 10 Principles of disability Justice (PDF)

Patty Berne quotes


Sunday, September 19, 2021

Compline

RantWoman needed this, not all the words of course but definitely the music 

Compline on the 17th Sunday after Pentecost | September 19, 2021 | Saint Mark's Cathedral, Seattle from Saint Mark's Cathedral Seattle on Vimeo.


Compline Liturgy for the 17th Sunday After Pentecost

‘All Of Them Have Names’: 10 Civilians Killed In Kabul Drone Strike


Very colorful flowers in a glass vase
Bouquet in glass vase

Really, RantWoman? Really? You are going to grab an image from and extremely joyful occasion and make a virtual memorial for all the thousands of Afghan civilians killed over the last two decades by US drone strikes/  'Cause, ya know, you yourself could have agitated harder.

No question. It's hard to keep the faith.

Plus think of the vase as a memorial if you like, but maybe also grab outrageous joy about the US government admitting in at least one case, OOPS.




This peculiar framing of this photo should not at diminish the sheer joyfulness of a couple sharing their love publicly at a wedding AND dancing! People wore masks except when eating or drinking. People danced. Well, other people danced because RantWoman and Ambassador Thwack are lousy dance partners. RantWoman was VERY happy to appreciate live music. 

Humbly, RantWoman DEEPLY appreciates the couple sharing their joy. Plus, full disclosure, the  bride appreciates RantWoman's messages in worship


For readers who need one more take on framing stories.

Friday, September 17, 2021

Climate action at a state level: two upcoming events

 Two upcoming events on September 21  for Climate Week. The first will be on the oceans/climate nexus, and the second will profile state action on climate generally. Sen. Carlyle will be talking about Washington's SB 5126. Feel free to register and share with your networks if you're interested!


Tuesday, September 21: 11:00 - 12:00 ET

In concert with federal partners, U.S. states are demonstrating the kinds of local actions, policy integration and regional cooperation that are needed at a global scale to mobilize ambitious and urgent actions for reducing GHG emissions and helping communities and industries build resilience to climate-ocean change. As drivers of local and regional strategies, U.S. states are helping to integrate and operationalize the climate-ocean nexus across federal and state policy landscapes. This event is hosted by NCEL, OA Alliance, Ocean Conservancy, and the Seattle Aquarium.



Tuesday, September 21: 12:00 - 1:00 ET

States have significant power to direct their own climate action. Join the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators for a panel on how US states are taking bold actions to meet Paris Agreement goals while addressing systemic inequities. State legislators from Colorado, North Carolina, Oregon, and Washington will discuss how they are leading the transition to a clean energy economy, and what lessons there may be for other states and the federal government.


Thursday, September 16, 2021

Purple Chicken Presente Crying but not because of the music Paquito D'Rivera - Two Pieces for Bassoon and Piano

Left over from RantWoman's Zoom Summer

The short version: RantWoman is VERY grateful to have fallen in with two rather different writing groups. This post is dedicated to continuation from the one referenced here. The other meets more often and is so far not obsessed with craft, more about a worshipful space for what comes up from the exercises. Again, RantWoman is VERY grateful for both though tonight she fusses with this one in order not to explode about ABLEISM AGAIN. Who knows: RantWoman may time this to post after she herds the right words together about Ableism.


RantWoman's first point: the visual is not architecture. It's germane to the music; it's not architecture.

It took RantWoman who knows such things a few minutes of staring obliquely to realize...

Read on to see whether RantWoman is kind enough to offer further pointers and not just drag people off to Planet RantWoman and strand them there.



Point #2 RantWoman signed up for Cai Quirk's Restoryation writing workshop at the FGC Gathering. RantWoman came home very well-nourished spiritually and still not reliably capable of getting eir pronouns correct in conversation. Maybe the other blessing: the workshop wound up being many people from different places RantWoman has worshipped with in different Zoom spaces and in other ways including connections in common to important Quaker activity. 


It also mattered that the whole room was not full of, please excuse RantWoman's malfunction in the excessively plain English to Quakerese filter, fragile elders RantWoman would be afraid of knocking over in a puff of wind. There were younger faces. There were access needs stated in advance and the first day of the workshop.


The workshop had a short reading each day and time in breakouts and then in the larger group. One day the group read a story called Twilight from a forthcoming book. RantWoman has not worked very hard at following up on a request just to use the whole story so readers get to figure out how to read the book when it comes out and then cope with RantWoman's meditations unencumbered by details that would only get in the way of what RantWoman is struggling to say.


The story is about Twilight and a world suddenly split into light and dark. Then there are comets and a star child with energy so bright it blinds everyone else. Then there is a healer who is willing to shut their own eyes while trying to help the star child fly.


Rereading the story now, RantWoman has no idea what in the story made her need to cry so badly that she couldn't eve n interact with the story. Or maybe more accurately RantWoman got stuck at the twilight and split into light and dark and could not get to the star child. Now RantWoman finds it curious to have gotten stuck at the twilight: RantWoman's visual experiences are a lot messier than just twilight. RantWoman is glad now to reread the story and to be able to work more with the rest of the story about the star child. 


Like the star child, RantWoman knows of many ouches around her. RantWoman is STILL trying to get a handle on her own inner blowtorch. RantWoman also thinks she has been TRYING to tell people, 'put on your dang sunglasses." Or try something analogous to any of the methods of safely looking at an eclipse. RantWoman thinks this message has not necessarily come through and RantWoman is disappointed and embarrassed on others' behalf. RantWoman has also alas figured out that Planet RantWoman includes many strands of language and experience foreign to many around her. No wonder the sight dependent are frustrated when RantWoman cannot do things everyone else is hard-wired to expect. 

RantWoman has also been thinking disability pride and disability justice.

One version of disability pride around RantWoman is that RantWoman (STILL) refuses to stop asking for what she needs in the realm of continuing to talk about disability.

Another is knowing some good times for "Thank you."


A child once, when RantWoman needed to ask him to move for safety reasons said "you should get your eyes fixed." Thank you. RantWoman had not noticed. Thank you for the best acknowledgement all week.


But the, during RantWoman's foray last summer into the world of Those Other Blind People, RantWoman heard one of the outspoken survivors from their #MeToo imbroglio say "I want to hear thank you from the NFB." RantWoman also would not pass up a Thank You and will happily provide a list of things she hopes to be thanked for.



And here again faithfully:

Just can't get enough of the fluffy purple chicken as elder motif
Chicken,
Mocha mug



Wednesday, September 15, 2021

"It's Up To The High School Students" - Justice Breyer On The Future Of ...

Posted in full awareness that today is Yom Kippur. Although one should be very cautious about spiritual counsel from Twitter, not all of what emerged from Twitter as seasonal counsel needs to get posted as a blog item. Also, this is one of three interview segments that are both VERY funny and very inspiring.

Any really bright student trying to figure out what to do with themselves could also reflect on the Wikipedia entry.



Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Shameless Reprint of Reverse the Trend email.

 RantWoman these days has WAY more ideas and concerns than she can possibly tend by herself and is always terribly excited when some email arrives full of information about young people doing very inspiring things.

Yes, and learn some of the tech behind nice looking posts--or figure out how to pay someone who knows what they are doing--is also on RantWoman's "mean to do" list. In the meantime, the email. Use the scroll bars to find the text and if you need you t-shirt, hoodie, bag, mu, or mask, check out the Bonfire link for cool swag.

View this email in your browser

An Incredible Summer

Reverse The Trend is committed to raising public awareness about the relationship between nuclear weapons and climate change. RTT is also focused on empowering the youth and encouraging the youth to tackle the twin existential threats facing humanity. During its first summer, RTT focused on developing its global youth advocacy network and laid the cornerstones for its regional chapters.
Trip to Springdale, Arkansas 
In the beginning of the summer, RTT traveled to Springdale, AR to spend time with our partner, the Marshallese Educational Initiative. We delivered a presentation about nuclear disarmament and youth activism to a group of Marshallese youth and further participated in MEI's powerful events for the 75th Anniversary of the First Nuclear Test in the Marshall Islands. 

Additionally, our youth activists contributed to a video project with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons about the first nuclear test in the Marshall Islands. You can view the video here.

RTT Francophone: Les essais nucléaires français en Algérie: 

On July 27, Mathilde Haas and Donatella Metro Savelli helped convene our first Francophone event with leading experts. Léa Gaudillière will continue the work in establishing RTT Francophone. Mathilde will continue to provide assistance.

RTT Korea:
Korea Peace Advocacy Week

We are proud that two of our youth activists, Andrew Kim and E. Isaac Lee participated in the sixth annual Korea Peace Advocacy Week, a week where advocates from across the country met with members of Congress to discuss their views on peace in the Korean peninsula. The activists advocated for three House Resolutions: the Divided Families Reunification Act, the Enhancing North Korea Humanitarian Assistance Act, and the Peace on the Korean Peninsula Act. Despite the event’s virtual nature, the passion of its participants could easily be felt from dozens of Zoom meetings. 

Andrew Kim and E. Isaac Lee shared that "for youth activists like us who recently entered the field, it was an eye-opening experience that starkly contrasted from its tragic history. It led us to the front of the United Nations, where we gave speeches and demonstrated our support for peace on the Korean Peninsula." 

You can view Andrew Kim's speech here. In the Fall, he will continue his endeavor of establishing RTT Korea. 

RTT Japan
On August 14, Karuna Khemaney, our activist from Japan, organized an exchange between Japanese youth activists and RTT youth activists. This event helped to lay the foundation of RTT Japan. 

Additionally, at the Mayors for Peace Youth Webinar for Peace Action, Jack Moses, another youth activist, explained how Japanese youth activists can join our movement.

RTT Pacific Youth Committee: The Crisis of Nuclear Dumping in the Blue Pacific

On August 26, representatives of RTT’s Pacific Youth Committee, activists, elders, and leaders of the Blue Pacific engaged in an open, transparent and intergenerational dialogue on the Crisis of Nuclear Dumping in the Blue Pacific. At the event, representatives of the Pacific Community underscored the Blue Pacific Ocean's integral role in uniting the sea of islands and its people. The diverse cultures, identities and livelihoods are shaped by and dependent on the Blue Pacific Ocean. Therefore, we must protect our ocean from contaminated wastewater to protect the full enjoyment of our human rights. The recording of this event can be found here.

Following the event, members of RTT's Pacific Youth Committee created the Declaration on the Crisis of Nuclear Dumping in the Blue Pacific.
Dialogue with the Ambassador of Kiribati
In addition to our work with Pacific Youth, we will continue to engage with Pacific missions. In this regard, we were thrilled that H.E. Ambassador Tito of Kiribati visited our office. Our youth activists had an amazing dialogue with him.
Upcoming Sessions on Our Youth Community Forum and Information about Partnerships
On Monday, September 13, we will be hosting general sessions for youth about our community forum and how to join us as partners. The first session about our community forum will be held at 10am EST. The zoom registration link can be found here. The second session about partnerships will be held at 11am EST. The zoom registration link can be found here.
Fall Preview:
RTT Canada and RTT Journal
We are excited to be formalizing RTT Canada, which will be spearheaded by Andrew Kim, Rooj Ali, Sarah Rohleder, and Alexandra Andratis.

We are also working with our amazing advisors and partners to launch our Journal that will examine the relationship between nuclear disarmament, racial justice, environmental justice, and tackling the patriarchy. Stay tuned for more information!
Global Giving Little x Little Campaign 

Next week from September 13 to September 17, we will be participating in Global Giving's Little x Little Campaign. 
If you are interested in supporting this global youth movement, please consider the possibility of participating in our Bonfire Campaign. Information can be found here
Bonfire Store
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