2013-03-14 16:14:00 sign up to take Free Greek Folk dance lessons in 6 short sessions soon! I will be teaching this short spring class iff enough students sign up: so come on down to Takoma Park! Peace, Shira 2010-01-22 17:28:00 Free form spiritual dance proposal becoming Mediterranean Folk Dance proposalJustification for dance classes in general: Dance in many cultures is a powerful form of prayer which evokes both the divine and the divinity within each of us. Objective of classes: Accomplishing these objectives should be spiritually uplifting for students and instructor, as dance is a mixture of movement and meditation, and also often a form of prayer.  In this spirit, these classes are proposed as a way of bringing the quality of mindfulness to our movement and bringing movement to our prayers. Justification for classes (Israeli, Greek and Bulgarian dances): The traditional folk dances of the Greek Islands, the Peloponnese, and the mainland have long been a means of enduring the hardships of occupation and loss, as well as celebrating the joys of life. The folk dances of Israel come out of the Jewish tradition which celebrates the bitter-sweet taste of life in both the exile from a beloved homeland and the struggles to build a sense of home in an unstable world.   Both of these traditions can be heard and felt in the sad and then unstoppable strains of traditional Bulgarian music, mingling the melodies of eastern Europe with the weaving steps of the Mediterranean Sea in a union of spiritual movement which recalls both the heartbreak and the excitement of living in a turbulent world. Folk dance classes will demonstrate the shared spiritual connection via traditional dance among these three areas, illustrated through dance postures and leadership roles. Classes will also provide both exercise for the body and exercise for the mind as we stretch, move, and discuss the meaning of each dance. Students beginning with no background in Mediterranean folk dance will learn the essential basic steps of all Mediterranean dances, common hand holds, and variations on common basic steps, and specific individual dances including Zemer Atik, Misirlou, and the Tsamiko and for advanced students, Kalamatianos. The first four classes will cover basics and Kalamatianos will be taught beginning the second month of classes after review of each basic dance. Students should all be able to follow and eventually lead each dance. Opportunities to attend Greek festivals and Klezmer events will be shared on an ad-hoc basis to encourage practice of dance skills and enjoyment with groups of experienced dancers in social settings. In this spirit, these classes are proposed as a way of bringing the quality of mindfulness to our playful times, and awareness of the spiritual in our celebration of joy and even the celebration of our sorrows, as the Rabbis say that all joyful events must also recall a touch of sorrow as well.
Yassou and LChaim Shira Destinie Jones –  
2011-03-29 10:13:00  
Handout from my March 27th Talk on Community Empowerment Through TimeBanks
Marriage Coop
 Each single person would meet with the volunteer Matchmaker, describing the kind of person he or she is looking to marry. The Matchmaker then picks several potential matches and shows them to the single person and that person’s Marriage Panel, who agree on a person to meet for a date.  The Marriage panel then meets with the Marriage panel of the other single, and if both Panels and the Matchmaker agree, then the two singles should meet, then talk to their panels, and see if they want to continue getting to know one another.  After a certain period of time, they get married, and there are automatically at least 8 people who have agreed to take on the role of close community members in supporting this couple. That way both the single person and the community get voice and committment in the process of creating healthy sustainable marriages, which strengthen both the individual and the community.     This is meant to be fully inclusive of the entire community, as even the Village Idiot has an important role in every community.  Even people who were formerly abusive, or formerly abused, can and should form part of the Cooperative, given strong supervision and support from their Marriage Panel members.  Some singles will have to be vetted and supervised, taught and coached, perhaps monitored, to ensure compliance with non-abusive norms, so that they learn to both give and ask for their needs to be met in healthy ways.  This strengthens both them and the community, and forms a more inclusive and reslient society which can channel and help the flowering of each person´s gifts and potential, through fostering healthy contributive cooperative relationships both personal and communal.  This is what community is all about. 2013-03-21 11:02:00 
 DC ecotourism cooperative still forming -cyclists still needed Dear strong cyclists, I have been seeking, for some months now, about 20 to 25 cyclists strong  enough to pull two rotund tourists up the hills of Georgetown, so that we can form a workers cooperative, tentatively entitled the DC Eco Tourism Cooperative. The idea is that rather than using the large 55 person motor coaches that tourists frequently take through the city, we can build or string together a multiple person bicycle, similar to the PediCabs, but bigger, or a group of pedi-cabs, with one or more Licensed Tour guides, such as myself, to narrate. I am happy to teach willing cyclists and collaborate under my license in order to maximize the potential of this collaborative endeavor. As a cooperative, we will all decide on schedules, routes, tours, and fees, and share equally in the profits. Please see my current list of available walking tours, and particularly my Underground Railroads Tour, which covers alot of ground, and typically has to use both bus and metro. I would like for thta to become a Pedi-cab tour. 
(None of these worked out as planned, but I did get some interesting comments…) Read, Write, Dream, Teach !
 ShiraDest
23 February, 12016 HE

2013-03-01 15:14:00 Sunday afternoon movie and community discussion -Babylon 5 Come join me and the community this Sunday, March 3rd, sometime in the afternoon, to watch and then discuss the Community Activist Values in the first movie (whichever one we decide that is!) of Babylon 5?! 🙂 « The Gathering » has been recommended first, as a pre-quel to the series, although it does not get into the social justice themes, it is good as SF, I see B5 as a strong proponent, in tv media form, of socialist constructs, ala the Dock Workers’Strike episode, and of social justice, as it explores social class disparities, as well as religious freedoms, via the Ivanova Shiva episode, and episodes like « And the Rock Cried Out », as well as the Free Byron episodes.  Explorations of social  justice and loyalty, when duty demands revolt and why, are covered through out the series, and I like to use that to discuss ways in which we can structure our society in a more just and egalitarian fashion. Please rsvp via FaceBook if you are on FB, here: https://www.facebook.com/events/143292759172007/ otherwise reply to this post or LJ message me, please, to rsvp. Peace, and Shabbat Shalom, ShiraDest
(This event generated interesting comments on leyning via Klingon…)
Read, Write, Dream, Teach !
ShiraDest
23 February, 12016 HE

People certainly should respect the difficult work that teachers do. This would probably be made easier if our children and adults understood what it takes to teach a person a useful and neccesary skill, from start to finish. Hence my proposal for a modern universal Rite of Passage. What we need our children to prove, upon recognition of adulthood, is not their prowess in battle or the hunt, not their virility, not their adeptness at social maneuvering, but their ability to contribute meaningfully to society by teaching another member of the community, from level 0, how to do something that is both difficult and absolutely neccessary in our society today. By requiring our children to teach some other person, child or adult, a needed life skill, over the course of about a year, this pre-adult shows persistence, perseverence, discernment, and of course, the key skill in question.  A useful side effect of this is also that it would effectively increase (dramatically) the number of available tutors, and also lead to every adult in our society coming away with an understanding of the challenges involved in teaching anyone anything non-trivial. Thus we provide an esteem building excercise and respect building accomplishmen all in one go, which we then reward with full adult status, whatever the age of the adolescent in question.  This obviously assumes that the kid has had opportunity to prove his or her good judgement in other ways as well, prior to seeking said recognition. This might help as one step of a series of steps implemented by and through local communities which could lead to more long-term thinking in society at large, given a critical mass and good faith in the ability of human kind to rise above our instincts, and learn to cooperate.
Peace, Read, Write, Dream, Teach !
ShiraDest
23 February, 12016 HE

Loved giving Spanish speaking tour last night, looking for Shabbat Minchah minyan committments So to update, I have been chanting, love that and loved the step-on tour I gave to Spanish-speakers last night, had fun, and am looking,at Rabbi Seidel’s request, for folks to help us make a minyan on Shabatot at Tifereth Israel to daven (pray) Mincha (the afternoon service). 
Shira  
2012-12-14 07:15:00
 Looking forward to reading Torah tomorrow morning at the Women’s Rosh Chodesh service 2012-12-15 07:16:00 Chanting this morning in support of women of the wall was fantastic.
(Glad to have used my love of languages to teach and to support other women)
  Read, Write, Dream, Teach !
 ShiraDest
23 February, 12016 HE

… when I started writing my first NaNo novel
2012-11-06 16:46:00  
2,005 words written today, working cooperation into this novel …  
Yes, writing is addictive, but I also need to be getting my other work done.
 Like my 
1. marathon training (just starting my first couple of miles all over again), 
2. gettting to services every morning and then checking my horrifically overwhelming email,  8am 
3. continuing to work through all of the Psalms in Psukei D'Zimrah (the prelude to the morning prayers) so that I understand them all completely, 9am 4.  polishing my Turkish for the exam 10am 
5. leyning (Chanting Torah) practice for the week (my goal is to learn one new verse each day and read every 1st portion or Aliyah Rishon this year) 11am 
6. Take my one hour relaxing walk daily or combine it with an errand run 
7. my book on Black-Jewish cooperation in DC from the founding of the Federal City up to today 
8. NaNoWriMo 
9. Voice practice and warm ups and excersice (espe. before this audition) somehow, I am finding myself exhausted by 5pm each day.

(Duh!  Now, it is obvious, but back then it was not…)
Read, Write, Dream, Teach !
 ShiraDest
19 February, 12016 HE

so here is what I was advertising…

2012-09-05 09:55:00 Christian-Jewish Deut.4:24 views via shared struggle, and FB Autobiog? Well, I woke up this morning with my mind…   pondering the question a good friend called me with the other night, regarding the strange story of how Ziporah rescues either Moses or their son on the way to see Pharoah in Egypt.  She asked my point of view on this "Bridegroom of Blood" story, and I happened to have an Etz Chaim handy, which agrees on the strangeness of this story, so I pulled it out and agreed -it is odd!  Looking at those three verses that tell this story, I was struck by how differently her commentary (a Christian commentator whose name I do not recall at the moment) approached this question.  While the Etz Chaim commentary (a commentary by committee, I believe) focused on analyzing the words which connect this story to others, and the symbolism of blood in various Ancient Near Eastern societies, her commentator focused on symbolisms leading to a more other-worldly set of focii.  Not surprising, but rather different from other conversations she and I have had, where we both brought our own personal perspectives to the story more strongly.  Both of us were members of the Jr. ROTC at Dunbar, an inner city DC high school famous for many reasons, historically and in the 80´s, when we attended, and both of us have fought through struggles in our lives.  How interesting that now, while we are both strongly committed to our respective faiths, we are able to enjoy discussing our common books from the different perspectives of those two faiths, yet perhaps due to our shared backgrounds, we understand these books in ways that most other people seem not to be able to do.  I have had only one other good friend, my mentor Rosamund Stock, in London, who was such a devout Christian and yet able to share so intently (this time the medium was my favorite SF show, Babylon 5, to which Ros introduced me, ok, after Rich did, but she re-introduced the show to me from a faith-based perspective that simply blew me away with the difference that that new perspective made…).  Ros too has fought through stunning adversity, and presents another example of committment and cooperation with other points of view.  We love discussing the differences in our faiths, but seen through the lens of a shared core perspective, Community Cooperation, that allows us to find the meaningful interlocking peices which bring beauty to those differences. Since so many of these conversations find their way onto FaceBook, I wonder if one day FB will be used to aggregate and publish as autobiographies, the lives of ordinary people? Peace, (I find this ironic, now that I am back to being an atheist, and less in touch with my religious friends…) Read, Write, Dream, Teach !
 ShiraDest 
19 February, 12016 HE

Cooperative Community is, as Tim Miller points out in his article “A Communitarian Conundrum

Why a World That Wants and Needs Community Doesn’t Get It

” a difficult, and possibly even a lost cause in our moder society. Nevertheles, we must fight for it. Whether it is currently practical or not, and whether it can be implemented in ways that are statistically significant or not, now or ever, we must continue to strive to set the example of fighting for the seemingly impossible, for at least two reasons. First, many ethical codes require this stiving, against the odds, as the Talmud points out: “”You are not required to complete the work, yet you are not allowed to desist from it.” – Pirkei Avot, 2:21 ” and second, perhaps more importantly, the historical record.

Whether we succeed or not, in the long run, it is important that there have been an effort made to counter the individualistic trend toward which our society is now headed.

to this endeavor, we continue to pledge our lives, our fortunes and our Sacred Honor.

2012-08-23 09:57:00 unf*ing believable. men. (except for you nice ones) So much for an honorary adoptive brother, or even friend. 3 months of talking about Octavia Butler and telling him to stop commenting on women’s thongs (that started about 1-2 months ago) and he says I am too attractive to be friends. what is it with people? 
2012-08-24 08:25:00 Marriage Cooperative: not religious -Emotional Health and Safety I need to start a « Wait until marriage for sex, but be affectionate and caring now » movement. People do not seem to have any comittment these days. Neither to friends nor to principles. No wonder there are so many walking wounded in our increasingly uncivil society. and I am starting a Marriage Cooperative.
 The idea is that single people looking for spouses form a group and take turns being the match-maker for each other.  Each single person would find 4 trusted long-term friends/family to form his/her  marriage panel.  That panel of 4 persons would be empowered to look over the match-maker’s possibile matches for the single person, and then meet with the marriage panels of the possible dating candidates.  The match-maker and both marriage panels then meet and discuss the match before the two singles are introduced to each other.  That way at least 8 people who know the two singles have a chance to agree on whether those two could form a healthy happy marriage, and there are 9 people guarranteed to support the marriage. Thoughts? 

 (Well, the thoughts I got on this were interesting: I appear to be devoid of understanding for human weakness, and “No 4 people can agree on pizza toppings, let alone who a friend should marry.” hmmm…
 Read, Write, Dream, Teach ! 
 ShiraDest 
23 February, 12016 HE