Susan Boyle - More than Mere Words

47 Year old Susan Boyle wows the judges with her performance in the auditions for Britains Got Talent, singing I dreamed a dream from Les Miserables.

Click on Title to Listen. Truly this is beyond mere words.

After a 74-year delay, Wiley and SMU debate

Editor's Note from Faith Chatham: This story might not be as spectacular, but having personally grown up in segregated Marshall, a product of a farm-family transplanted to the county seat by World War II in time for my birth 13 years after the first events recently dramatized surperbly in "The Great Debate", this AP Account catches a glimmer of reality which is beyond mere words.
Associated Press - Friday, February 27, 2009

DALLAS -- Seventy-four years after their meet was canceled, teams from Wiley College and Southern Methodist University finally got their chance to debate.

The two schools met on the SMU campus in Dallas on Wednesday night and debated whether the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay should be shut down. SMU won, 3-0, but people who participated in the debate say that didn't matter.

"Just in having this debate we are all winners because we have overcome a history of racism and divisiveness," SMU debate coach Ben Voth said in Wednesday's online edition of The Dallas Morning News. "We consider this a meeting of an unfulfilled promise."

The two schools were supposed to debate in 1935, but that was called off, possibly amid negative publicity surrounding Melvin B. Tolson, who led the all-black college's elite debate team. From 1929 to 1939, the Wiley College team debated 75 times and lost only once. The small, historically black college in Marshall went on to beat the national champion University of Southern California in 1935.

Wiley College had to figure out what to do when students from across the country wanted to join its team -- which ceased to exist around World War II -- after the success of Denzel Washington's 2007 film The Great Debaters. The school used a $1 million gift from Washington to restart the team under new coach Shannon LaBove.

"It has been a whirlwind with all the media attention," LaBove said. "I'm proud of my students for handling it so well."

LaBove has said she expects the team to be nationally competitive within a couple of years.

The new Wiley College team did an exhibition debate at Oklahoma City University in October to commemorate the 1931 meeting between the two teams, believed to have been the first interracial debate in the South.

Marshall is a city of about 24,000, located 140 miles east of Dallas.
read more

National Press Club Address - Religion in the Public Square

This month's More than Mere Words Award goes to The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA for her Dec. 16, 2008 address to the National Press Club. Usually we only hear about controversy, disputes over church property and schism when we read of the Episcopal Church. I urge you to examine her words as delivered to the National Press Club -- Faith Chatham


ECUSA - 12/16/2008

Well, is there anxiety in this town as the machinery of government shifts gears? I’ll warrant that there will continue to be a lot of anxiety until the new administration settles in, probably several months from now. Who’s going to sit in which seat at the table? Who’s going to be – or feel – excluded? What last-minute actions will the retiring administration make?

Perhaps the first role of religion in such times is to be a messenger, like each one of those biblical angels, who starts out by saying, “fear not.” Don’t be afraid, because this whole thing is bigger than you are. Yes, change is coming, and it will drive some people crazy, and at the same time not go far enough for others. In more secular language, we might say, “don’t sweat the small stuff.” And more of it is small stuff than you might expect. At the same time, the religious voice will remind you that how you deal with the small stuff doesn’t affect you alone – your actions may have consequences beyond your wildest imagining.

That brief introduction might be a helpful framework for what I’m going to assert is the proper role of religion in the public square: diagnosis, linked with both challenge and encouragement. Walter Brueggemann calls it “prophetic critique and energizing.” It grows out of a particular world view, a weltanschauung if you will, that has an idea or ideal of what the world is supposed to look like. That world view is rooted in divine revelation – both in a scriptural tradition and in later encounters with the divine. The prophetic role is to point out the discrepancy between that sacred vision and what the world around us actually looks like, and then go on to challenge the status quo and encourage movement toward that dream.

This is a framework that is probably most familiar in Judaeo-Christian terms, but it is by extension applicable to the third Abrahamic faith and to others of the world’s great religions traditions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Bahai. Not all variations of the great traditions put much emphasis on the prophetic strand, and may choose instead to develop a separatist or sectarian vision of the “holy real.” But every faith tradition has a vision of how the world is meant to be and a diagnosis of separation from that reality.

The psychic energy that underlies that vision is what might be said to distinguish a religious from a philosophical tradition. A religious tradition asserts that divine warrant and/or transcendent reality trumps any merely earthly philosophy. It’s the difference between saying that the dream of God is for a world where all live together in peace and harmony, with justice, and a philosophy that asserts that every person should seek to maximize his assets or resources.

We live in a nation that appeals to both. Our founders had some sense of a utopian dream and a desire to encourage “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Yet it was abundantly clear at the start that some had the full rights of citizens and others did not. It has taken several centuries, countless lives, and the prophetic witness of many, appealing to sacred tradition and a dream based in scripture, to open those rights to others, among them men who are not landowners, slaves, and women. A transcendent trajectory that continues to challenge the status quo comes from a religious foundation, and I would assert that that is the most essential role of religion in the public square.

In my tradition, that trajectory is based on the twin beliefs that every human being is a reflection of the divine, of ultimate worth in him or herself, and that human beings only reach their full meaning in relationship with others in community. That tension is not easily held in this land, particularly in its political system. It may lie at the root of our persistent affection for a two-party political system. Even though the basic platforms of those two parties have changed over the decades – sometimes radically – we haven’t let go of the dichotomy. We have a schizophrenic relationship with the caricatures of “America as a Christian Nation” and the “land of the free” – free to exploit and accumulate whatever we can.

The sacred voice continues to challenge both unfettered individualism and the idea that any present reality can be identified with the sacred ideal. That sacred ideal in the Abrahamic faiths looks like a peaceful society where no one is in dire want, where all have equal access to justice, and each is truly free to seek her or his highest purpose in this life.

The religious role in public life is to continue to challenge the larger society on behalf of all who don’t yet live in a world like that. And because there are some who don’t have access to that world, none of us can be assured of living in peace. The illusion of peace and comfort that some may have is just that – an illusion – because until all live in peace with justice, none of us will. The role of the religious voice is to advocate for the left-out, the voiceless, the marginalized, and all who do not yet have access to the goods of life. It includes a significant part of what government deals with: healthcare, poverty, homelessness, returning veterans, the mentally and physically disabled, access to decent education, and meaningful employment. It also has to do with our relationships with the rest of creation, for as the systems of this planet sicken and die, we surely shall become moribund as well – some already are.

That prophetic voice thinks in the long as well as the short-term, for it holds up a vision of what the ideal looks like and the discrepancy between that and what obtains in the present. It is willing to put limits on individual license for the benefit of the larger community. None of those stances is particularly popular in a system that lives from election to election or from lobbyist to lobbyist. But that religious voice lives in hope – eternal and sometimes foolish hope – that change toward that vision is possible. As M.L. King, Jr. said, the arc of the moral universe is long, and it bends toward justice.

I would assert that the global interest in our election just past is based on that kind of hope for a different future. So much so that President-elect Obama is sometimes referenced with quasi-messianic epithets. He is not our ultimate deliverer, but his ability to gather the people of this nation and this government around a larger vision and longer-term future reinforces the hope for which people around the globe yearn, and in a real way makes that hope more effective. The religious vision, whether fully conscious or not, has helped the world to diagnose present social reality as sorely lacking in transcendent values. That hunger and yearning is binding people together in ways we haven’t seen for some time. That binding together with hope for a different future is the basic meaning of religion. The challenge for any government or administration is to do that in a way that does not pander to limited and sectarian interests – which lies at the root of the doctrine of separation of church and state.

I would argue that there are appropriate and inappropriate roles for religion in the public square, based on exactly that. When the religious voice argues only for a narrowly sectarian view, it belies its identity and its transcendent origin, and becomes no different from the dairy lobby or an earmark request for a new bridge. They may be important causes, and they may be concerned for some of the least and lost and left out, but they don’t challenge the whole society to a more transcendently compassionate future.

The proper role for religious diagnosis, challenge, and encouragement has something essential to do with offering a larger view of reality, with challenging a politics of the individual to consider and care for the needs and rights of other individuals and groups, or, in other words, understanding the well-being of the whole as having some higher call on public consideration than a narrowly individual concern. We’re talking about a public policy that pays attention to the well-being of the whole community.

Why is this important? Our national experience with terrorism has a great deal to do with social disruption in other parts of the world, with the lack of hope among young people, and the lack of equitable distribution of the world’s resources. Our immigration challenges have the same bases in reality. So do violence in our inner cities and the suicide rates on Native American reservations. Each of these immensely challenging realities needs responses that address the grim hopelessness underlying them, rather than bandaid responses to symptoms. The disease, not the symptom, needs healing. And neither this nation nor the world will find healing until we begin to address the interconnections between violence and hopelessness.

The blessing buried in our current economic crisis is connected to that reality. When one part of this nation or world suffers, we all do. We no longer live in a hermetically sealed nation or economic system – if we ever did. Protectionist and isolationist policies are not going to heal us. We are all going to be impacted by massive layoffs in the manufacturing sector, and in the financial sector. The same maxim applies to us in this country as is often quoted in the developing world, that “when the U.S. sneezes, Haiti or Honduras gets a cold.”

Our national policies have given Cuba something more like terminal pneumonia. The talents and gifts of both nations have something to offer each other, if we could get past el bloqueo. Our policy toward Israel-Palestine has not managed to achieve much in many years, despite the significant energy expended there by the outgoing Secretary of State. The world will be a much safer and saner place when all parts of the world have more open borders, when Cubans, Israelis, Palestinians, and ordinary Americans understand and experience their interconnectedness.

The same reality must inform how this nation begins to deal with ecological realities. We really can’t fool Mother Nature, and her ire keeps rising along with her temperature. We’re all in this together, and the sooner we acknowledge that reality and begin to live corporately, the sooner we will be able to address the ongoing damage. In spite of what Lynn White had to say in 1967 about the origins of ecological crisis in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, there are other strands in that tradition that value the non-human creation for what it can show us of the divine. It is not just human beings who image God, and some of those who claim Genesis as sacred scripture can see that human beings are meant to tend this earthly garden, not destroy it. The religious community is increasingly mobilized to challenge the larger society to care for this earth and all its inhabitants, and you will continue to hear that prophetic voice in coming years.

The larger role for the religious voice will be to continue to remind us all of our interconnections. This is one serendipitous opportunity for religion and science to walk as partners – each form of wisdom or knowing teaches about interconnection, and the reality that an action in one place has consequences – often unforeseen – in other places and times. Science and religion can even use the same words: Reality is one, or Ultimate Reality is One, or Reality is ultimately One.

And that’s where I would like to leave you, members of the press and other media, with a challenge and an invitation. Your vocation is to tell the world what’s what and what reality looks like today. Keep looking for those interconnections, keep backing up to see a larger picture, show us how small actions have larger consequences.

I would also challenge you to consider the possibility of a prophetic role for the media. You know what investigative journalism can achieve – Watergate comes to mind, and so does the photo of a child alight with burning napalm that galvanized a nation in the midst of the Viet Nam war. Your ability to offer not just scandal, but real critique of unjust systems and policies, can change the world. You are pretty good at digging out corruption scandals, but how often do you look deeper at the network that permits and encourages selling the public legacy? The noble tradition of your profession would challenge you to keep digging – your work is a vocation of service to the larger society, not just to your advertisers.

Finally, I would remind you that the other side of prophetic critique is encouragement and hope. It says that a different world is possible, and it offers examples – those small and seemingly mundane stories of human courage in the face of adversity, of the power of the community in the face of greed, of lives transformed by the intervention of strangers. You have the ability to encourage a hurting and despairing world.

I offer a highly parochial example. On two occasions in the last few days, leaders in my own church have said to me that the church only makes the front page if it’s about schism or sex – and in the current era, preferably both. The reality experienced by most Episcopalians, and indeed most faithful people, is of their congregations gathering for weekly worship, saying their prayers, and serving their neighbors, nearby and far away. That service happens in remarkable and profound ways, building schools in Africa, clinics in Haiti, digging wells in the Philippines, as well as prodding our legislators to attend to issues of climate change, access to health care, and funding AIDS work in Africa. It is the rare few who are consumed with conflict, and they tend not to last, for intense and prolonged conflict is not life-giving. Help us tell the stories of transformation, of moving toward that hopeful future, for which the world hungers. Help us tell the world that fear is not the answer.

Read more

Romanian Jazz Pianist Ion Baciu Jr. with friends

I've been a "fan" of composer and jazz pianist Ion Baciu, Jr. for about 20 years. Well known throughout Europe, Baciu and his trio or quintet, tour annually performing at jazz concerts and festivals in Italy, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Romania and Russia.

He's well known in Europe and has performed in the USA and CANADA, but his music is difficult to acquire "on this side of the pond." Thanks to U-TUBE and the internet, we are able to share a window into a live Romanian jazz jam session.

Classically trained in the conservatory in Isia, Romania under the mentoring eye of his world renown symphony conductor father, Ion Baciu, Sr., Ion, Jr. gravitated toward jazz at an early age. He began performing in international jazz festivals during his late teens and early twenties.

Harry Tavitian & Ion Baciu Jr.

Armenian/Romanian musician Harry Tavitian (left foreground) and Romanian jazz pianist Ion Baciu, Jr (right).
Tavitian (vocal) and Baciu (piano) perform "Cry Me A River" (below)

Hearing Harry Tavitian's rich deep soulful vocals to "Cry Me A River" reminded me so much of the "greats" who sprung from the banks  of the Mississippi River that I looked him up, expecting to find he was another international musician Ion encountered on some exchange program. How wrong I was. Harry was born of in Constanta, Romania of Armenian parents and graduated from the Academy of Music in Bucharest in 1970.

Ion Baciu Jr. with Pedro Negrescu:





TWO KEYBOARD JAM SESSION - Ion Baciu, Jr. with Petrica Andrei:


Although he he spent a couple of years in England, composing and recording with soft rock groups and about a decade in Sweden with the Norrbotten Big Band, Ion really thrives in improvosional jazz circles. He seems to always return to his roots in Romania.

Dan Johansson & Krister Andersson Live in Petrozavodsk, Russia with Ion Baciu, Jr. at piano (2000):

Dan Johansson Trumpet/Flugelhorn, Krister Andersson Tenorsax, Ion Baciu, Jr. Piano, Harri Ihanus Guitar, Sebastian Vogler Drums, Peter Janson Bass.




NORRBOTTEN BIG BAND IN NY (2000) WITH ION BACIU, Jr. AT PIANO:




ELECTRIC BROTHER LIVE at MNAC 2005 with Ion Baciu Jr at keyboard:



A few years ago he toured Europe and recorded with Americian saxophonist Rick Condit, but few copies of the recording are available in the USA.

Our "More than Mere Words" recognition this month goes to Ion Baciu, Jr. and his associates whose music, for decades, is contained neither by political ideology or geographic boundary.

I doubt than any of these clips are "the best of Ion Baciu, Jr." Hopefully, however, they will allow you a glimpse and alert you in case you encounter other opportunities to experience music with him.

More than Mere Words

Sex, Stilleto's, "Symbolic Victories" and Men Who Can't Add

By Faith Chatham - June 2, 2008
I don't nominate many sites for a MORE THAN MERE WORDS AWARD. Unless I find something that really inspires me or hits a chord, I do not nominate. Tonight I stumbled on a website which I can sink a stilleto into with glee! Hillary creamed Obama in Puerto Rico and pundits called it a merely a "symbolic victory!" Many of this nation's women are ready to show them some "symbolic punches". Maybe they'll enjoy some only symbolic "sex" or comfort their growling stomachs with "symbolic" breakfast or dinner!

Well, you get the drift of where my head is these days. In that mood, as I hear the Junior Senator from Illinois who rarely showed up to vote since taking office tell ABC that he "has won twice the states as Senator Clinton" and "has gotten more votes" and I hear folks actually calling him the "inevitable Democratic Nominee" for President. Oh well, George can't add either. He didn't win more of the populat vote yet he got inaugurated. I wonder if our budget would be as red if he's been slightly more academic?

Somehow this nation doesn't seem to learn that much. George wasn't that keen on showing up when in the National Guard. He didn't consistently show up to class in college. He was rarely in the office when Governor (except when using it as a launching pad for the Presidency). Does job performance and/or a legislative / administrative track record translate into a reliable predictor of presidential performance? Maybe yes. Maybe no. However, the one we currently have in the White House exhibited job non-performance before he was his party's nominee for President. Democrats and Republicans both bemoan where he's taken us. Karl Rove spun George W as "change agent" and "unifier" too! And yep! He definitely was a change from what we had.

How short is our national memory? Won't we ever learn that "change" doesn't automatically mean the improvements we need. We got "change" with George W.

With change we also need competence.

Senator Obama's spin machine can cast him as a unifier, but when he is unnecessarily abrasive to one of the most competent skilled politial leaders of this generation, he repels millions of Americans who hold her in high esteem. There are reasons why Hillary Clinton continues to score higher and higher percentages of voters in all economic, age and educational levels in late term primaries. Instead of crowing and beating his chest and tallying the votes as he wishes they had been cast instead of how Americans have actually voted, Senator Obama would be wiser to examine what it is that truly inspires the loyalty many feel for his opponent.

Yes, I'd love to see a Democrat as President of the United States. It concerns me that Senator Obama appears to be a candidate who is determined to discount, insult and repel away from him half of the registered voters in his own party which are crucial for a November victory by any Democratic Presidential Nominee.

One of my failings is that I actually tend to add up columns of statistics instead of trusting candidates to tell me how they are doing. Barak doesn't seem to consider the Democrats in Florida or Michigan as "real" voters. He's glad enough to walk off with some of the delegates from those "non-voters" but refuses to attribute the votes cast as "real votes." Ofcourse, if he hadn't LOST, if the voters' had actually chosen him instead of Senator Clinton, he'd be counting their votes even if the delegates were not seated, (instead of just half seated!) I still haven't figured how they'll half those seats in Denver. Wonder which half of the rear end will get the right two legs and who will get split off on the left. Won't matter to Barak because he seems to think that half of this nation will fall in line, shift our loyalty to him automatically if Senator Clinton disappears, and relish his smart mouthed flippant remarks while rushing to give him the key to our pocketbooks, social policy, children's future, and trust him to grant us some "unifying" career path. He smiles while he insults us as he demeans the first serious female candidate for president in this nation's history!

Therefore, I'm nominating www.hireheels.com for this month's MORE THAN MERE WORDS AWARD. It's not a sweet, gooey site. It is biased and that is perfectly all right, now, because it shares my wise, world view!

The closer we get to the National Democratic Convention, the more frequently Senator Obama shows us, with his remarks and consistent self-appreciative, inflated mathematical distorted self-appraisal and reckless comments, that he does more damage to his candidacy than a whole slate of opponents could do to him!

I didn't think to express it this way, but www.hireheels.com resonates: Obama Suffers from Premature Ejaculation!

HIREHEELS is definitely not the site for you if you've drank the Obama Kool-aide and believe that he is the UNIFIER. Spin it how they may, the reality is that Obama is more of a detriment to his own candidancy that Hillary Clinton. He reduces his chances of winning daily by his arrogancy, rudeness, an self-admiration.

He is his own liability, yet seems to be trying to make Hillary his scapegoat.

He could have pulled me toward him. I was a Jesse Jackson delegate. It is definitely not a "race-thing" with me. Before the primary I thought that either candidate would be a vast improvement. Now I am convinced that only one candidate is a reliable improvement. She shows up to work. She has does her homework. She stands up and is counted. She doesn't blame him for making her too tired to be coherent on the campaign trail. She is able to add. She's never once called foul because the media picks on her spouse!

Despite the Party and most of the media "counting her out", she's recently won in EVERY COUNTY IN West Virginia, a state that no Democratic nominee has won the General Election without carrying since 1916! Her margin of victory continues to increase in late term primaries despite the nation being told repeatedly that "She can't win."

Anderson Cooper published an op-ed by Lanny J. Davis on May 31, 2008 which points out:

According to Gallup’s May 12-25 tracking polling of 11,000 registered voters in all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., Sen. Clinton is running stronger against Sen. McCain in the 20 states where she can claim popular-vote victory in the primaries and caucuses. In contrast, Sen. Obama runs no better against Sen. McCain than does Sen. Clinton in the 28 states plus D.C. where he has prevailed. “On this basis,” Gallup concludes: “Clinton appears to have the stronger chance of capitalizing on her primary strengths in the general election.”

The 20 states, Gallup points out, not only encompass more than 60% of the nation’s voters, but “represent more than 300 Electoral College votes while Obama’s 28 states and the District of Columbia represent only 224 Electoral College votes.” Sen. Clinton leads Sen. McCain in these 20 states by seven points (50%-43%), while Sens. Obama and McCain are pretty much tied. But in the 26 states plus D.C. that Sen. Obama carried in the primaries/caucuses, he and Sen. Clinton are both statistically tied with Sen. McCain (Clinton 45%-McCain 47%; Obama 45%-McCain 46%).

Gallup’s state-by-state polling in seven key battleground “purple” states also shows Sen. Clinton winning cumulatively in these states by a six-point margin (49%-43%) over Sen. McCain, while Sen. Obama loses to Sen. McCain by three points—a net advantage of 9% for Sen. Clinton. These key seven states—constituting 105 electoral votes—are Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico, Arkansas, Florida and Michigan.

Meanwhile, Sen. Obama holds about an equal advantage over Sen. McCain in six important swing states that he carried in the primaries and caucuses—Colorado, Oregon, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri. But these constitute less than half—54—of the electoral votes of the larger states in which Sen. Clinton is leading.

I'm not recommending that Democratic voters abandon the party's nominee in 2008. However, I have read comments on ipetition.com from a cross-section of folks who are not enarmoured with the media spin, with the Obama campaign rhetoric or the Democratic Party leadership's bias and marginalization of Senator Clinton. "Symbolic victory my ass!" No victory in any state is merely symbolic.

For months we've seen delegates reported as "done deals" when any political scientist knows that in the American electoral process, superdelegate's endorsements change with the direction of the wind and are historically unreliable as predectors of delegate count until they actually show up and sign-in at the National Convention. Pledged delegates are also difficult to tally accurately until after the State Conventions. There really are no PLEDGED DELEGATES until (1.) delegates show up at state conventions and (2.) elect National Delegates and (3.) those national delegates show-up at the National Democratic Convention and (4) actually sign-in at National Democratic Conventions.

There can be no inevitable nominee as long as these delegates can change their minds and switch presidential preferences up until they sign the permanent roll at the National Democratic Convention. When a political party has a Vice-Presidental incumbent or first-term incumbent President, it is easier to predict the party's nominee, but even such prediction have proven inaccurate from time to time.

This year neither party has an incumbent in the race. Despite the Obama campaign's repeated assertion that the nomination is in the "bag", it's still a photo finish kind of "horse race."

Super Delegates, despite endorsement, are always a wild card which can shift sides up until the final hour. Just this week, Texas Democratic Party Vice Chair Roy LaVerne Brooks, an African American Obama endorser, told the Fort Worth Star Telegram that if the Obama campaign continues to try to force her out of the Texas Democratic Chair's race, "perhaps I should switch to Senator Clinton!" It is highly possible that if Roy LaVerne Brooks switches, other women superdelegates may switch with her. Should delegates doubt the "Obama is the inevitable nominee" rhetoric, others may leave his fold. If Obama delegates decide it is a done deal, they may not show up at state conventions and the delegate count may shift just enough in key areas.

The reality is that nothing is a done deal until the National Democratic Convention is closed.

I hope that Super Delegates will visit www.ipetitions.com and under "sign a petition" search for "Hillary" and read the comments of some of the thousands of people who have signed several petitions.

The "Urgent Petition to Democratic Super Delegates" has 6883 signatures and comments as of June 2, 2008 1:07 A.M. CST. (Click on signatures to read the comments and see the number of signatures). (It was started April 11th!)

A newer petition "To Convention and Beyond" and "Quiet Riot" have thousands of signatures. Senator Obama would be wise to read some of these comments. I think they would bring reality back into clearer focus for him. He seems to be as insulated by folks who tell him what he wants to believe as many Presidents become once elected. That's dangerous in the White House and that's dangerous out of the White House. It becomes especially hard to win an election "to serve all of the people" when you are enwrapped in the glow of your supporter's admiration and out of touch with the concerns and perceptions of your opponent's constituency.

MORE THAN MERE WORDS: Argentina's Guarani see benefits in isolation

We're giving the More Than Mere Word Award to Daniel Schweimler of BBC News this month for his coverage of the Argentina's Guarani. Daniel's words transport us to the homes of hte indigenous people who live near the Brazilian border. His words break through the political rhetoric of the U.S. electoral process and our commutes to work, showing us different stuggles for survival in the Americans.

Argentina's Guarani see benefits in isolation
By Daniel Schweimler - BBC News, Fort Mborore, Argentina - Friday, Feb. 7, 2008
There is a dark shadow hanging over Fort Mborore, a Guarani indigenous community in north-eastern Argentina, near its border with Brazil.

Last year, two of its youngsters killed themselves in the same week. There have been other suicides.

Guarani who simply could not see a future for themselves or their community in a fast-changing modern world.


But the village chief, Silvino Moreyra, decided there was one last drastic step he could suggest to save his people: a 60-day quarantine that would protect Guarani youth from what he saw as the corruption of modern society.

It proved such a popular move, that when the first 60 days were up, the community signed up for another 60 days, due to expire sometime in the middle of this month.

Sitting outside his wooden shack surrounded by lush green vegetation, Mr Moreyra explained what the community was trying to do.

"It's very difficult to contain youngsters in the community," he said. "But they've given us their help, their support. One-hundred per cent signed up to the measure."

Volunteers patrol the perimeter of the community, armed with sticks.

Two that I saw were reluctant to talk, but admitted that sometimes their sticks had to be used.

Potent symbol

Under the quarantine, no alcohol comes in and the youngsters, aged from their teens into their 20s, can only leave the community with special permission.

Silvino Moreyra is himself a former alcoholic. He now rides around the village's dirt roads on his motorbike, his long black hair flowing in the wind, organising, cajoling and talking to his people.

He has words for everyone, in both Spanish and Guarani, and his popularity is obvious.

He took me on a precarious ride on the back of his bike from his wooden house, dodging pigs, chickens and potholes, to the top of town where meat was being distributed.

A government agency comes every 15-20 days to hand out meat to the families - 5kg (11lbs) a family.

But Silvino said it was not enough and that many children in the community were malnourished.

But he does not want the Guarani to live from handouts. He wants tools and seeds.

"I want the community to feed itself from its own production," he said.

Alcohol is the most potent symbol of the negative influence of modern society, but the quarantine was not simply a quest to fight the drink that has devastated indigenous communities across the Americas.

It is about the community finding its way in a world in which many indigenous people feel they do not have a place.

Isolated

Silvino explained: "We've lost the Guarani customs, to cultivate our own food, to be self-sufficient.

"We started to fail because if one is just taking food and not working, you can... end up taking up vices. You stop being a real person, stop being Guarani."

The community is now looking to its past to try to rediscover what Silvino calls its spiritual roots, rediscovering traditional music and dance.

Most of the community are bilingual in Guarani and Spanish, and the village school is now attempting to consolidate that by teaching both.

We have to work like the whites but always maintaining pride in our culture

Silvino Moreyra

But many are still illiterate and have few skills of use in the outside world.

They are poor and rates of child mortality and alcoholism are some of the worst in Argentina. Many in Argentina believe there is no indigenous Argentine community, that most died out in the 19th Century battles to conquer territory.

Those that remain are usually on isolated, small strips of infertile land wedged between more productive territory.

Crispin is one of the young people banned from leaving the community.

"I think in the future the community will get better," he said.

"I'm thinking about my kids, my mother. The youngsters - I'd like to help them get off alcohol and cigarettes."

Graciela, aged 24, said the youngsters had changed a great deal.

"They've started thinking about their future," she said. "We're moving slowly, getting better a little at a time. We're also recovering a part of our culture. We're moving forward - we say 'opu'. That's very important to us. It's like a rescue operation."

Positive pastimes

The Guarani people arrived in what is now north-eastern Argentina from the Amazon jungle 700 years ago, looking for what they called The Land Without Evil.

They found lush green forests and dark red soil.

But the first Spanish explorers arrived shortly afterwards in search of their own dreams.

Jesuit missions were set up to impose a different kind of civilization, and indigenous communities were decimated by European diseases against which they had no defence.

The main attraction to this region, then and now, are the mighty Iguazu waterfalls, with close to two million litres of water a second spilling over the edge.


What the Spanish explorers would have made of it one can only guess.

The foreign visitors are still coming, but now as tourists, while the indigenous people are reduced to selling trinkets in the entrance to the falls.

With the alcohol gone, Mr Moreyra wants to fill Guarani youngsters' lives with more positive pastimes.

As well as the traditional dancing and music, he is organising football matches for boys and girls.

They're building traditional wooden houses and producing crafts for sale to tourists brought by bus to their community twice a day.

Mr Moreyra explained: "What I always say to the youngsters is that you have to understand who you are. You've got to have pride deep down to know 'I am an indigenous person', and then to say 'I am proud of what I am'."

He added: "The white community is growing rapidly so we have to adapt. We have to work like the whites but always maintaining pride in our culture, always saying we're proud to be indigenous and not thinking that we're white, because we never will be."

The community will vote again at the end of this quarantine on whether it should be extended.

Its benefits have been so apparent that it seems likely that it will. Other indigenous communities around Argentina are showing an interest as they too battle to find their place in a modern society that has not only excluded and exploited them, but sometimes corrupted them.

The Guarani of Fort Mborore are saying they should be heard but that drastic measures are needed to make that happen.

Read more in BBC News

More than Mere Words award goes to the Ackerman's of Texas

Click on title to view video. Use your back arrow to return to this site.

I have several of their CDs and enjoy them enormously. Links to some of their songs are on their website.

This truly American / Texas couple performs annually in Europe. They pull large crowds with their "Americana" performances. Horse lovers, they are passionate about keeping horsemeat off of dinner plates. Among their passions is the SAVE THE HORSES movement where they have donated their services in Europoe in the battle to to insure horses the dignity and protection which they deserve.

Pooka update

Pookahview continues to offer insightful political commentary from a refreshing view! This site was designated with a "More Than Mere Words" award earlier this year. As the November 6th election date approaches, and Dallas citizens will be given opportunity to vote on whether they want a toll road through the Trinity Park or not, Pooka continues observing human antics from a more "furry" perspective.

If you haven't visited Pooka recently, it's worth a visit.

Timelapse Flowers Unfolding

Deer for Breakfast

Nick Brandt NAILED IT

By Faith Chatham - Aug. 12, 2007
Photographer Nick Brandt earns this months MORE THAN MERE WORDS You Nailed It Award.

Brandt, a Topanga, California resident transplanted from London, began photographing wildlife in East Africa in 2000. His incredible body of work was published in Oct. 2005 with a foreword by Jane Goodall and Alice Sebold. Excerpts from Brandt's first book of photography, "On This Earth", are presented on the YOUNG GALLERY website and his website.

Nick Brandt, who studied Film and Painting at St. Martins School of Art, has exihbited in
London, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, Hamburg, Santa Fe, Sydney, Melbourne and San Francisco.

What we write about the subjects of his work and the dance between photographer, the wild of Africa and the incredible animals which inhabit this earth is inconsequential. Brandt's photography is more than a mere picture of a lion or elephant. View them. They take us beyond descriptive phrases and city places and urban realities to lands and realities of East Africa.

More than Mere Words Honoree of the month - Pooka's View

By Faith Chatham - July 14, 2007
I don't know who writes it. The posts are signed by "HARVEY", a Pooka (from old Celtic mytholoogy - a fairy spirit in animal form which appears here and there.) His address is listed as "TRINITY RIVER, US." From the graphics on the site I suspect he's appeared in hit shows on and off of Broadway! He's smarter in black and white than most critters are in livin' color!


I "stumbled upon" Pooka's View today and was throughly delighted at the wisdom of "HARVEY." Though New York/Hollywood inspired, Harvey appears to be a native son (or native rabbit) with ties to both sided of the Trinity River. His commentary on Dallas (Our Town)is superior to the "stump speeches" of many local candidates. He reminds me of John F. Kennedy urging America to build rockets to the moon!

Our town has great potential but it is up to everyone to decide that it will live up to that potential. The city's ability to stay healthy as it grows is a measure of sustainability. New heroes must stand up and be counted and lead the city to better goals and to inspire its people to achievements they never thought possible. The few must be brave and courageous to stand the rigors of fighting the good fight of protecting the interests of the people. The people must take an interest in what affects their neighbors as well as what affects themselves. Sustainability is not just doing the everyday things as they are now. It takes changing mindsets and opinions of how people will live here not only for today but for generations to come. We must look to the future. All of us....now and tomorrow.

Look beyond yourself and help your neighbor. This is what a citizen does

.

In Dallas IS Green - But Not in the Friendly Way
Harvey writes:

One of the most wonderful facets of Dallas that I love so much is its rich, and yet relatively short, history. There are so many characters that have come and gone. Good and evil. Poor and rich. The flavor of Dallas entices me back time and again.

He acknowledges crime and with great insight writes:

But some 'crimes' are not the visible physical injuries or thefts that our society fights to stamp out. The 'crimes' that are more diabolical are done in the back rooms of municipal and state offices, the attorney's palaces, and the development consultant's workshops. In fact, these 'crimes' are not even considered 'crimes' under a court of law. In fact, it's considered economic progress. These 'crimes' are tedious and methodical and altered by additions, revisions and interpretations of laws. They can only be understood in fullness by those trained to understand them. Even then, they might yet again be altered by a system where dollars rate higher than a human's soul in order to help the economic engine. They are made legal by the societal actions of the masses that are ignorant to these slow-as-molasses changes that allow them to continue.

I hope Harvey will join us at the NCTCOG meetings as DFW Regional Concerned Citizens sits through RTC and Air Quality meetings monitoring and scratching our heads at the reasoning and methodology of some decision-makers. I hope he pops into the Texas Legislature (and visits with Senators and Legislators while they are out-of-session). Maybe a 6'3.5" Pookha will make a deeper impression on them than mere mortals seem to be making. Harvey really "gets it!"

Crime can have several meanings, but in the end, be it violation of written law or a violation of human ethics, they all have the same result. They are damaging to a person, or persons, in an act of violating a written or moral code. A crime will always have negative effects to someone. The problems I discuss lie in the root of 'crimes' that are allowed by the societal courts as being legal and yet they violate the civil moral code that protects society and allows for people to stand together in one community. You can legally violate a persons property rights in the act of upholding your own right to profit from your own property. It's a great irony in our society that a person can legally be injured by the acts of the neighbor and the state will support them. Am I the only one who sees this as a rather defeating process?

Oh Harvey, what you write is so true!
I which we'd have you with us when we spoke with Mayor Cluck of Arlington earlier this month. We urged him to help save property near Brown Trail which delvelopers are trying to preserve as a nature habitat following the Aububon Societies guideline. TxDOT plans of taking most of the land for one of those infernal "three bridges" which are supposed to help speed sports fans to Jerry Jones' new tax supported monster Stadium! Mayor Cluck says the bridges are a "done deal." So sad, Harvey, Mayor Cluck has signed the Sierra Club's Cool Ciities pact. Maybe you could have impressed him more than we did about the advantage of grass and flora over concrete! I hope you sit in and have voice on planning and zoning meetings. We need members who really "get it! like you do.

A builder can buy a property. He can remove the house and vegetation that was standing there before that brought value to the neighborhood. He can then build a much larger and 'valuable' structure on the property. This mysteriously changes the property value, not only for this one lot, but for all of the lots nearby. The nearby owners property values go up and the taxes skyrocket. The folks who lived in their comfortable homes and were just getting by are now forced to make critical decisions. In many cases, they move out unable to continue to pay the county who appraised them to exile. The cycle continues as the speculative buyer spans out further into the neighborhood, accelerating the cancer of the Prince Prospero's that are fed by the divine system of wealth over moral duty. Nobody is responsible. Nobody is guilty.

I've for change. Lots of change needs to happen. We have a lot that needs to be changed! We need to stop thsese government authorized (and inflicted) changes!

I'm giving Harvey (and any human friend who helps him with the typing on Pookha's View) the "MORE THAN MERE WORDS AWARD" this week. Every article on this site deserves the award. These final two paragraphs are true enough to merit it:

This is all done under the mottoes of 'Change Happens' and 'Me First', and the blood red flag of a once proud capitalist dogma that has gone terribly wrong. Capitalism and Industry once served the People of this nation in a past age. Now in our 'service' society, the people are the servants to those who can control and manipulate Capitalism and Industry to their favor - under the careful and watchful arms of the state. It's so sad that so few can see this path that will lead America toward ruin. We are willing to continue as long as we have our own little piece of the pie.

Dallas fields run a fervent green as money flows to potentially build an North American 'Rio' where the economic polarity of class societies will one day merge and clash and the wealthy few will continue to suckle from the tit of the vaulted taxes of the masses which they forced to falsely escalate.

Let's not forget where we are today and the injuries laid upon our citizens.

A GREAT SITE TO BOOKMARK IS: POOKAHSVIEW

Scroll down and check out Harvey's insight into tollroads through a floodplane:

Here's a teaser:

BOONDOGGLE, FRAUD OR GRANDEUR
I just can't figure out where this tollway along the river idea found the momentum to carry forward as an idea that could actually take physical form.
...Help me figure this out. I figure this is either a grand idea of learned minds who have no sense of the living realities around them, or a boondoggle that came together and no one can seem to figure out how to get out from under it, or it's a deliberate path to lead people down a road (so to speak) to reap personal gains for a few entrepeneurs through some death-defying leap of logic that it would actually benefit someone.
..
I won't even get into the big suspenders about to span the man-made open-aired storm sewer called the Trinity River. A city must look to its people first. All I can see is a big expensive toy (a billion dollars plus BIG) to help (through some witchcraft I'm unaware of) some well-to-do folks become even more well-to-doer. How does a billion dollars (or even a fraction of a billion) aimed at a pointless roadway - in a floodway - help common every day people? The only purpose for any road in the floodway would be to get the good people to their play areas they promised themselves years ago. Perhaps the good people who thought this was a good use of money forgot the first interest of a government administration. It is to serve ALL of the people it represents - not just the ones with the big wallets. I see very few people being aided by this money that could be better spent for affordable housing initiatives and giving aid to the growing population of 'lower' class citizens who have trouble just getting by day to day. We're looking at the same mindsets of rather aggressive folk, or even profiteers, that closes affordable housing in a growing city to build a mega-retail center because its highly profitable to them to do so.

Herding cats

I't simple and difficult. It's a game. Herding cats.

HERDING CATS

Click on title to get started.

Awesome links from NASA

Click on title! Then click on the photo to navigate to second shot!

How to Make Roses from Maple Leaves

Texas Wildflowers and Nesting Least Grebes

Photos taken on an April 2007 visit to Texas' Big Thicket by You Tube film maker "milmascaras66". It starts with pitcher plants and sundews filmed in the Big Thicket.


Least Grebe nesting pair were filmed with chicks at the Sabal Palm Sanctuary near Brownsville, TX.

Cambry plays Chopin Scherzo No. 1

We are honored to select pianist, teacher and historian Jonathan Cambry of Chicago as our BEYOND MERE WORDS honoree of the week. The Chicago pianist recorded Chopin Scerzo No. 1 at Ganz Hall, Roosevelt University, He wrote that he had only had 2 hours to record 10 pieces! More than Mere Words is honored to introduce you to Chicago pianist Jonathan Paul Cambry.
After visiting the links on this page to listen to his music, please use your back button to return to this page. The ten recordings are on-line on Jonathan Cambry's You Tube OFFICIAL CAMBRY PIANO CHANNEL site.

Jonathan started playing piano at age 3 and studied with David Andrews for 15 years, a teacher at the Suzuki School. He studied at the Interlochen Camp in Michgan. He continued to study, play and compete throughout high school (University of Chicago Laboratory Schools). He has won numerous national and international competitions and following immediately graduation from high school, he studied (by invitation) in Milan, Italy under Sedmara Xakarian Rulstein of Oberlin Conservatory of Music and with pianist Mario Deli Poni, Josephn Schwartz and Sanford Margolis.

He earned a B.M. degree in music performance and a B.S. in computer science from Northern Illinois University while studying under Dr. William Goldenberg and Martin Canin of the Julliard School of Music.

Currently he is studying jazz piano. A music historian, Jonathan searches for works by Black classical composers who have been overlooked in history, such as s R. Nathaniel Dett and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. He documents and records their works for future generations. Currently he teasches students of all levels from beginner to advanced in his studio in downtown Chicago. For fun he designs websites, plays basketball, table tennis, online video games.

He will be invited to introduce our readers to artists of his choice.

For more videos of Jonathan playing classical piano: Visit his MEDIA PAGE
There you'll find videos of Cambry playing:
Sergei Rachmaninoff's Moment Musicaus No. 4, Frederic Chopin's Nocturne in F Major and Scherzo No. 2in B-flat Minor , and Trancendental Etude No. 10. I especially enjoy hearing him play Sciabin's Etude Op. 8 No. 12

By April 28th, nearly 34,000 viewers had watched his You-tube Chopin Scherzo No. Video. He's site on You Tube is among the top thirty most viewed musical videos on You Tube.

Visit his website:

Add to Technorati Favorites

guitar played by funtwo

Canon composed by Johann Pachelbel - posted on YouTube Dec. 20, 2005. One of the most viewed videos in You Tube history.

This space is ready for what inspires you