RantWoman urges everyone to pray for an immediate end to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a safe return home to all the poorly trained and tragically underequipped troops, many people of color, from Russia and peace and healing among all sides. RantWoman also wishes this vision did not seem far off and with a lot more destroyed country and various flavors of military fearmongering ahead.
All of that said, lately RantWoman has had a few different reasons to think back to a long ago visit to Kiev as part of a spring break trip while RantWoman was studying abroad in Leningrad / St. Petersburg. The dual name is intentional. Glasnost (openness) and perestroika (reconstruction) were on many people's lips.The Soviet Union had not yet fallen apart. Spring break still meant stay in designated hotels and have a guide with a choice of not always fascinating tours and opportunities to be Americans among the locals.
RantWoman remembers one such international relations occasion. RantWoman does not remember the name of the youth organization who invited our tour group to an evening game of "What? Where? When?" (basically Trivial Pursuit) RantWoman remembers tables in some kind of poorly lit venue, a fairly typical offering of either tea or kompot, a hot sugary drink involving reconstituted dried fruit and nationally favorite nondescript sugar cookies not destined for any Michelin stars. The hosts had prepared a set of questions. There was a USSR team and a US team. The game was basically rigged with questions that the US team would probably know the answers to before the USSR team could guess.
RantWoman has no memory of most of the questions. RantWoman does remember others in the US contingent answering some of the questions. Then it was RantWoman's turn. RantWoman was handed some blue ribbon, a string of really cheap beads and something else and asked to identify the significance of these items. Ugh. Uncomfortable moment. Readers familiar with how the island of Manhattan was purchased from indigenous people may recognize the items as the sale price of Manhattan. There was much cheering and clapping when RantWoman pronounced the correct answer.
RantWoman, perhaps uncharacteristically, opted to skip a lecture in the middle of the party: Soviet education of the time taught students that the US is place of rampant crime and racism, in contrast to, well..., in the USSR. RantWoman has always been fine discussing struggles in the US. RantWoman has not taken up every opportunity which came along to say "OK, now look at your own country." In any case, as expected the US team won and RantWoman still has a round wooden container with the occasion engraved on the lid. RantWoman does not think she has the ribbon and beads and other trinkets.
This episode came to mind recently when an email discussion arose of the Zoom cabaret at the 2023 virtual FLGBTQC midwinter gathering. Zoom cabaret is somehow a richer trove of do it ourselves entertainment. There is the standard poetry, literary reading, and one Zoom box music. But guests also bring out objects tell their stories. RantWoman loves the stories; RantWoman does not think others should be deprived of the visual experience just because that is usually less than satisfying for RantWoman.
RantWoman had to skip the cabaret so these comments are reflections from a couple streams of email.
One Friend told the story of a ceremonial robe he received in appreciation for co-teaching a class in Cameroon. The Friend was made an honorary member of the royal family and there was mention of a string of venetian glass beads, the kind of beads that were traded for Africans sold into slavery.
Ugh. Artifacts. Artifacts of honor as well as the kind of artifacts one sometimes holds onto specifically in awareness and reminder of problematic circumstances.
Stop the party something yucky has come up? RantWoman was not there and has only a secondhand sense of how that played.
RantWoman holds the Friend severely bothered by the artifacts in the Light.
And if RantWoman stopped the party EVERY time something disturbing occurred in her presence, RantWoman would never do anything.
One email commented, RantWoman paraphrasing, about how talking about Africans selling their neighbors into slavery, just talking about it, fuels racist narrative. But if people don't know or choose not to remember the narrative, isn't that worse than making a point of remembering?
RantWoman is going to stop here and invites readers into more conversation.
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