“Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil.”
Times of desolation. This describes so much of what is going on in the Middle East right now. The extremists may think their cause justifies what they do but it does not and never will. There can never be a justification for all their atrocities. Kayla Mueller was working with aid organizations to help Syrian refugees in Turkey when she was captured by ISIS.
President Assad has dropped bombs and poison gas on his own people. Now there is talk to let him remain in power in order to “stabilize” Syria. Russia is sending in troops and weapons to try to prop him up as well.
It seems the forces of evil are very strong. I hope the forces of good can prevail in the end.
A Syrian woman posted on Facebook recently, “Under the Mediterranean, on the bottom of the sea, another Syria exists, one that’s full of life: children kicking soccer balls, teens doing their homework, women cooking, men working, and the elderly sipping coffee. If you visit the bottom of the sea, you will discover another Syria.”
In Daily Beast today “Drowning Syria to Keep Iran Deal Afloat,” (where I found the above quote) Lina Attar asks if it is worth it and just to have turned away from confronting Assad because Iran is supporting him.
The US has been the major donor to the UN for Syrian refugee relief. Other countries have shrugged off the UN request for funds. But the US has been absent in coming forth with assistance with resettlement and the silence of the President has been deafening on the recent refugee crisis. US refugee organizations are asking our government to take 100,000 refugees. From the Huffington Post:
If the U.S. wanted to admit that many people again, it could, said Erol Kekic, executive director of Church World Service’s immigration and refugee program. [ referring to the much larger numbers we have taken in in the past ] He said the U.S. has “been absent from this crisis from the very beginning — at least on the resettlement side — and that’s embarrassing, to put it mildly.”
Today John Kerry spoke with congress and stated the US will take in more Syrian refugees. No numbers were mentioned in the news report.
Mr. Hattam said he hoped his journey ends not in Europe but in the United States, where, he said, “even the dogs live well.”
He explained what he meant by telling a story an Iraqi friend living in the United States had recently told him. The friend, he said, had gone to the supermarket and left his dog in his car with the windows up on a hot day. A police officer, seeing this, scolded him, and told him he was putting the dog at risk.
“That means they even respect the dogs,” he said. “Even the dogs have rights in America.”
Secretary of State John Kerry plans to brief members of the House and Senate Judiciary committees on Wednesday about how many Syrian refugees the U.S. is willing to take in.
….a spokesman for the National Security Council said Monday the U.S. was “actively considering” steps to alleviate the situation in Europe, where more than 340,000 people from the Middle East, Africa and Asia now have arrived. Beyond Syria, many are also fleeing parts of Iraq that are under the Islamic State group’s control. (AP)
Finally, there may be a glimmer of light at the end of this very long tunnel.
Mike Barnacle in his post on the Daily Beast, “As Thousands Die Trying to Reach Freedom, Where is the US?,” brings up a good point. He says, “The US used to be beacon for those looking for a better life. Right now the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world is just a news clip.” In the post he goes on to talk about the people is his neighborhood, when he was growing up, being from countries all over the world. Those people had escaped from the ravages of war to make a new life here.
“America provided things that form the foundation of who we used to be: the prospect and potential of hope, mercy and freedom for strangers who came carrying not much more than a determination to survive in a big country with a bigger heart. The question is: Who are we now?”
And I have been thinking the same thing. Why are our leaders so quiet about this crisis?
I could not write about something all light and airy. I did not feel like writing at all. The world has been too heavy and dark this week. I hope there can be light after seeing the images of the continuing humanitarian crisis from the Middle East into Europe. People desperate to escape, with their families, from all the war and terrible oppression. The terrible image of a dead child washed up on a beach in Turkey. Scenes of people trapped in a Hungarian train station blocked from traveling on into Europe. The hope is that maybe now the world will start to work on better solutions. A glimmer of light is that Germany and Austria have opened their boarders. Hungary has allowed the refugees to take the bus out of their country. I don’t get the distinction from taking a train but it is better than the refugees being held in some camp or prison. I noticed that Huffington Post Canada has a list of organizations that people can donate to for the refugees. I looked for a similar list for the US and found one on Today.com . Hillary Clinton, during a recent interview, called this a global crisis and “the entire world now sees doesn’t just affect the Syrian people; it affects all of us.”
It does affect all of us and we can not close our eyes. The Washington Post has several articles on this topic. One is a story about a Syrian family making their way to Austria with the help of smugglers, called The Black Route.
Sometimes I don’t think things can’t get any worse.
Like so many others I am heartbroken by the photos of the dead toddler, Alan Kurdi. I am determining which charity I will contribute to that aids refugees. I read a quote in the New York Times, Exodus of Syrians Highlights Political Failure of the West, this morning and I totally agree:
“If they can’t work together to save these children,” Adnan Hadad, an activist from the Syrian city of Aleppo, wrote on Twitter as the image of the boy went viral, “the world leaders better find another planet to rule.”
And from my local newspaper the LA Times calling for a moral policy on refugees:
“These refugees and migrants are mostly innocent victims of political failures, from the war in Syria and the rise of the Islamic State to incessant insurgencies and political oppression in Africa. The world should not compound those failures with a moral one.”
I am not so pessimistic or cynical as this title, or the song it is based on, suggests. But reading the news lately about Ashley Madison ( and I hate that name and it does sound like it should be the name of a porn site), almost made me feel that way. Even more disillusioned with the state of humanity. Now I read that most of the women on the site either never used it or were faked. Then I thought some more about it and realized that the men who signed up for it could have done it because of…well I am not sure why they signed up for it…loneliness, sex addiction, pornography? I don’t want to make assumptions. Are they living evidence that confirms that “love is just a four letter word ?”
The angel voice of Joan Baez via CARLSFOLKCLUB:
But I do know that love means more than just a four letter word to many men. The men in my family and the husbands and partners of my friends for a start. So I want to put the other stuff out of my mind. I think I like the lyrics of this song better via countvonferson:
The American University of Nigeria is offering full scholarships to some of the girls who escaped from the Boko Haram. This is a very inspiring article from Smithsonian. Margee Ensign is the President of the university and a very courageous woman and native of my state of California. My heart breaks and I am sickened reading about the suffering of these women. I am in awe of their spirit. We can not forget them.
Spotted this on Yahoo Movies. The cast of Star Trek Beyond is mounting this campaign to raise funds for worthy causes in memory of Leonard Nemoy. This week the donations are to St. Jude Children’s Hospital. Nice idea. If you contribute you can be eligible to be in the new Star Trek movie coming out next Summer.
Many women artists have been ignored but, while the world was looking away, they went on creating their art. There is a change in attitude lately, to pay attention to some of these women and give recognition to their work. They are being discovered or re-discovered now when they are in their elder years. There is such a diversity of styles and the materials they use. Their creative spark has not diminished.
I want to write about some of the women artists who I have become of aware of through a blog I subscribe to here in LA. It is the Engage blog which often posts about elder artists and provides links to articles.
Here is a group of artists from a New York Times T Magazinearticle called Works in Progress which, quote, is ” a very small sampling of the female artists now in their 70s, 80s and 90s we should have known about decades ago.” This piece includes some videos, of two of the artists, Judith Bernstein and Rosalyn Drexler.
This is a post from artfilemagazine.com on Jean Betancourt. The post has several images of her artwork which I found very interesting and whimsical. One more from the Tate on artist Geta Bratescu.
by Geta Bratescu
I have done a post on Carmen Herrera in the past which includes some nice videos of her work, including an interview of her, and more discussion of overlooked women artists through a link to a Hyperallergic essay. Carmen Herrera just had a retrospective show. She recently turned 100. The videos I found on some of the artists adds a depth over viewing 2-dimensional images. In many videos the artist is interviewed and able to speak for their own perspective and the videos include some art that is not available freely online.
Dorothea Rockburne via Netropolitan Artsconversations:
In the video below, the artist Joan Semmel speaks about how she wants her paintings of her older self to express that there should not be shame about being older for women or men. From the T Magazinepost: Semmel,…………. is encouraged by the current interest in her — and other older female artists’ work — because, as she puts it, women “are usually buried after about 45 years of age and just disappear completely.” Moreover, she adds, she isn’t just getting older, she is getting better: “I really feel that some of my most powerful work has come in these late years.”
The continued work of these women artists says that creativity does not have an age limit or expiration date. In my research I found this article from The Guardian by Emine Saner. She interviewed a group of women artists who were over 60 years old. She writes, “I spoke to a number of well-established women artists, and found that age certainly does not seem to have had a detrimental effect on their creativity – indeed, for many, their later years have been among their most productive.”
These women artists embody the essence of creativity and the inextinguishable flame of the human spirit.
Notes Tied On The Sagebrush 