Dance for me
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Dance for me. Dance, and I will post the video on YouTube. I will post it on my blog. Dance so that others can see how vibrant and beautiful you are. Dance so that we can prove that. I will record it. I will write the history of your happy childhood. I will say to myself, “Happy Mother’s Day.” I will do it for my ego because I want visits and views and comments. I am conscious of my motives. They are easy to discern; I give myself away every time.
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Related Posts (I know they are related because I hand-picked them):
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What’s up with that, Ms. DiFranco?
These are images of t-shirts for sale in the Righteous Babe Records on-line store. That line, “Capitalism is the Devil’s wet dream,” was bad enough as a song lyric, but now it’s on a t-shirt? A t-shirt that’s for sale in the RBR store. A store that sells merchandise that promotes the RBR bands that play at the concerts that people pay to attend. Is that supposed to be ironic or just retarded?
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Oh, and my “stupid blog” with its small circle of influence? Do you really think that my goal is fooling people, or is the real issue here that you don’t want bloggers to be critical of Righteous Babe Records? I didn’t choose a blog theme called “The Journalist” for nothing.
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Or was the Fox News Embeds blog what the t-shirt was referring to? Anyhow, I don’t get the messages on the t-shirts. What’s up with that, Ms. DiFranco?
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Fluff Five Meme
Things in my handbag:
- a 4 oz bottle of Bath and Body Works lotion
- sunglasses that my husband gave me for Christmas 2004
- fingernail clippers (mostly because we all get a lot of hangnails)
- a pack of tissue (My son sneezed in the Wal-Mart checkout lane and I grabbed this. Well-placed!)
- a Japanese comb with a case that I was given as a farewell gift when my teaching contract ended
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Favorite things in my bedroom:
- Framed Japanese prints over our headboard
- pillows for display on the bed
- neko figurines
- artwork made for me by a calligrapher
- Our furniture set (bed, dresser, mirror and one nightstand)
Things I have always wanted to do:
- volunteer at elementary schools in Lima, Peru
- visit Chicago, Seattle, and Los Angeles
- own a home and be in charge of painting the walls
- grow vegetables and flowers
- take classes in subjects like photography or cooking or design
Things I am currently into:
- Blogging
- Ron Paul
- Photography
- The music of Newton Faulkner, Aimee Allen, and as always Ani DiFranco
- Trying to be a good mom
I got tagged by CuriousC for this meme. If you are reading this and would like to participate, please feel free to link back here and let me know when your post is up. I appreciate your friendship and love getting to know you!
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Letter Z for Zaire
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This post is written by my mom, who worked as her graduate school’s ambassador in Zaire. I know the country is not called Zaire anymore, but when my mom was telling me about her time there and showing me things she brought back, she always called it Zaire.
You asked me to write about Zaire for your blog. When I went there as a young adult it was called the Democratic Republic of the Congo (its present name again now that Mobutu is gone). It was only five years after independence. I was asked to work there as a one-year intern representing my grad school and come back and enlarge the student body’s horizons.
The first Sunday I was there I was with an old missionary friend of my family (who had worked with my grandfather before going there). She left me outside a church to attend to something and suddenly I was surrounded by a hundred children, all speaking to me at once. Of course, I had no language training other than French and they were speaking Tshiluba, one of the 250 languages of that country. I wasn’t exactly afraid, but I was terribly frustrated because all I could do was smile and try sign language. I didn’t even know how to tell them “I don’t speak Tshiluba!”
Later I began to pick up individual words and phrases, many of which I still retain today, more than 40 years later! I taught you and your brother some of them, one of which “Tuasakidila wa bungi” [Thank you] came in handy when you had to say thank you in a different language from anyone who had spoken before you.
I lived for a year out in the countryside, traveling mainly by Cessna 250 planes since the roads were so bad. Mail was very important and the plane brought letters and messages once a week or so.
I did make some friends in the village: one was a fellow teacher who wanted to learn English. He and I (using French as a medium of conversation) took walks, pointing out things and naming them in our native languages. On one of these walks, a mother grabbed up her child and scolded, “If you don’t behave correctly, I’ll give you to that white witch!” Ntambwe did not want to translate that for me, but I knew she was talking about me and I persuaded him that my skin was not too thin to understand her words.
Another friend was a young pastor who at my request took me to meet his father, the 92 year old village chief. He had seven wives when the missionaries came, and while he believed in God, the missionaries would not let him join the church unless he sent six of them away. He said he knew if he sent them away their only means of support would be prostitution, and he knew that was wrong. When one-by-one they died and he only had one wife left, he was baptized. He said, “I think I was a better Christian [not to send them away] than the missionaries!” I had to agree with him.
The violence that has occurred in Congo and is still occurring breaks my heart. The exploitation of natural resources (diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt, etc.) by the Europeans is wrong. The people of the country and the miners who daily risk their lives to recover them should get at least some of the profit! Just because the Europeans supply the technology does not give them the right to rape the land.
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Letter Y for Yummy
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Two of the best fragrances of late April are lilacs that grow in my parents’ yard and southern-style iced tea, sweetened with sugar. Sure, you can get sweet tea from Bojangles or McDonald’s year-round, but when you brew it at home you can enjoy the smell of steeping tea bags and you can sweeten it to your taste. The fast food restaurants must use corn syrup as their sweetener because it just isn’t the same as homemade. Plus, if you drink iced tea “out of season” it just isn’t right. We’ve already had our first day of 80 degree weather, so my husband and I decided to declare the official Iced Tea Season in our home. These are some of the photos I wish were scratch and sniff so that I would be able to share how yummy the fragrances of lilacs and iced tea are.
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