2006-05-31 12:20:00 A speech on the need for change, and yes, poverty does lead to terrorism… “With those kinds of numbers, it doesn´t take a nuclear scientist to figure out a smarter approach to improving our security situation. To quote President Eisenhower, speaking with far-sighted vision in 1953: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies… a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”” Read, Write, Dream, Teach ! ShiraDest 19 February, 12016 HE

2006-03-27 23:48:00 An interesting argument took place at the Vigil, with an elderly gentleman asking the Quaker gentleman if he would refuse to fight even if invaded. The Quaker asked the following. Did England fight the Angles, the Romans, the Normans? Yes, yes and yes. Did England win? No, no, and no. So people simply died, and lost anyway. He pointed out that there are other ways to resist, which can be even more effective than using violence. That brings up the question -what if every single person in a country/region/area refused to bear arms against invaders, but then also sat down right in the spot they were in, refused to obey any orders, and refused to cooperate in any way with those invaders. What would happen? My obvious first reply is -they’d all be killed. But my second thought is, well, is it actually possible to slaughter an entire population? Certainly not in India, and even (despite their best efforts) not in Latin America. Even many tribes in North America have survived, albeit in very small numbers. Of course the Souix, Cheyenne, Nez Peirce, Apache, etc. were all doomed no matter what they did, so fighting was the logical choice. We see that the Cherokkee suffered the same fate after being force-marched 1500 miles. Had they refused the march they would simply have been shot in the East. The full force of federal troops was brought to bear against the tribes. Yet, many Native Americans are now Christian, due to the Indian Schools and the brutal techniques employed by the Spaniards. Had every single person said ‘I willl not -speak Spanish or English, eat your food, wear your cross, accept your rations, nor buy your fire-water and guns, what then? And even Einstein, after his famous ‘2% Speech’ agreed that Hitler had to be fought using warefare. Hmmm…
Still an interesting question today:
 Read, Write, Dream, Teach !
ShiraDest
19 February, 12016 HE

2006-02-03 20:15:00
First draft of 1st Work Package -Hist. of Econ. (5 pages)
Paper and Gold: A Summary of the History of Economic Systems
Shira D. Jones (WP1)
 My father is fond of saying that he believes firmly in the Golden Rule: “He Who Has the Gold Makes the Rulesâ€�. The truth is closer to this: he who issues the paper makes the rules. Many types of different economic systems have existed over the years, some of which use currency and others of which do not. Nearly all involve the use of some scarce resource for transacting trades, such as gold or cacao beans (Polanyi, Arensberg et al. 1957). Currency is any item used to physically represent money. Hume defined money as an agreed upon instrument of exchange (Cutler 1977), while others (Rowbotham 1998; Zarlenga 2002) argue that money has always been any legal tender defined by law. Aristotle describes how the Greek city-states, the Roman Republic and Carthage used copper, iron, or even sealed leather pouches for internal trade (Tustain 2004), and silver or gold as the basis for barter in external trade (Zarlenga 2002). In the ancient world, money was generally centrally controlled and issued. In Europe production was based first on the oikos, or household, with surplus being traded in the markets (Polanyi, Arensberg et al. 1957). Problems arose when small states moved to the scale of empire, and found it impossible to resist using gold or a bimetallic standard of silver and gold due to pressure placed upon the internal currencies by foreign trade leading to preference for gold and silver over other forms of money. Some states tried to outlaw the internal use of precious metals, while others defined fixed exchange rates with gold and silver. Eastern empires tended to value silver more highly, and show fewer marketplaces. Due to the different ratios of gold to silver between the Far East and the West, draining of gold was a continual problem which led to cyclical monetary crises over time(Zarlenga 2002). Counterfeiting money and over-circulation were both naturally occurring problems as well as a form of attack used at many times in history to damage an enemy’s money supply, weakening the ability to wage wars. After Rome became an empire and switched from its copper coinage to gold currency, the drain continued, necessitating the conquest of the Parthian empire to the East, to recover Rome’s lost gold(Zarlenga 2002). The fall of the western Roman empire saw the development of feudalism in Europe, with restricted trade and social relationships based on sovereignty superseding economic relationships (Polanyi 1944). Barter and in kind trade was frequent, with money being issued and devalued by Kings as a means of financing wars and expansion (Bison 1991), as guilds and local brotherhoods in towns and cities formed networks of artisans which frequently restricted employment and set prices and working conditions. Trade led to the birth of a powerful merchant middle class (Pirenne 1969) in Europe, while the need for gold to sustain this trade, which was controlled by Constantinople, led indirectly to the sack of that great city by the Crusaders (Zarlenga 2002). As trade continued apace in Europe, exploration led to colonization, bringing about the next innovation in the institution of money: mercantilism. Mercantile colonialism and later mercantile trade consisted of the fine art of extracting raw materials as cheaply as possible from colonies, sending them to the mother country, using them to manufacture finished goods, and then selling the finished goods back to colonies at the highest possible prices, while prohibiting colonies from trading with any but the mother country(Bulmer-Thomas 2003). In North America, this practice by England led to the American Revolution, while in the Spanish colonies, the mother strangled her children. The wealth that poured into Western Europe as a result of mercantilism financed the Industrial Revolution, which produced the most spectacular economic output and suffering the world had seen to that point. This innovation was put into place through the evolution of a still earlier innovation, also set in western Europe, beginning in Amsterdam, known as capitalism. The Medieval period was one in which the First Estate, the nobility, owned property, and controlled the economic system, sharing power with the Church, the Second Estate (Painter 1998). As trade increased, gold flowed into Europe from the colonies, and with it came new trading companies and financial instruments. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange formed to allow trading of stocks of companies like the East India Company, and modern capitalism was born. Production increased, machines were used to increase production even further, while at the same time the profits of that production went to a class of men wealthy enough to have the capital to build factories, pay labor, and ship products to market. At the same time banking, which had existed initially to lend money between distant branches of related trading operations, as well as obligatory loans to monarchs, now began to issue notes backed by gold to customers. Overissuing of the notes led to inflation, and since the banks employed fractional reserve banking, runs on banks caused panics and depressions exacerbated by differential interest rates for lending and borrowing. Capitalists were able to press for limited liability from losses, while keeping wages low and conditions abysmal (Marx 1867) with governments sometimes stepping in to suppress violence when conditions became unbearable. Locke, Smith, Hume, and other philosophers working at the very start of the Industrial Revolution, which was an explosion of production built on the backs of slaves and working class poor using resources taken from colonies making capital owners wealthier, analysed the creation of this wealth in the light of competition and crises (Cutler, Hindess et al. 1977), developing the classical laws of economics. Foremost among these laws is that of the “invisible handâ€� of the free market which Adam Smith argued in his famous “Wealth of Nationsâ€� would lead directly to the aggregate good from the enlightened self-interest of individual effort (Thomas 1997). Around the same time of the classical economic theorists, led by Adam Smith, sometimes called “Father of Political Economy” who favored a Laissez Faire unregulated free market approach (for the most part), and small government with taxes as low as possible (Napoleoni 1975), others, including Thomas Jefferson were leading the fight against the banking establishment on the grounds that the usury and fractional reserve banking schemes employed by that institution would result in the accumulation of all assets in private hands unchecked by government or public offices(Rowbotham 1998). As the Industrial Revolution came into full force, beginning in England, the downside of prosperity became apparent. Unemployment as a result of the Enclosure of the Commons was terrible. During Medieval times, though tied to the lord’s land, serfs were free to use common lands for grazing and vegetable plots, allowing a subsistence living. With the removal of these rights, many poor were thrown off of land they had lived on for generations, creating a surplus labor force subsequently taken up by industry at shockingly low rates of pay under miserable conditions (Polanyi 1944). Lack of regulation led to abuses of children and adults as laborers were literally worked to death. Reactions varied from Robert Owen, called the Father of English Socialism, who founded utopian villages on a communistic model, to Proudhon, who set up barter banks, which failed, (Gesell 1906) to the Luddites, who tried to destroy the factories and machines responsible for the “Satanic Mill.â€� The British parliament also passed laws intended to deal with the problems of the poor, and subsequent amendments such as the Speenhamland Law and later Poor Law Amendments, both of which effectively punished the poor. All of these events took place surrounded by the context of most nations adopting the gold standard, Latin American independence and use of the gold standard in fits and starts, as well as the odd country using silver and being forced onto gold, while following export-led models of economic growth which were still to a large extent being controlled by mercantile trade relations since many Latin American countries had very narrow exports with ties to one of the European powers but insufficiently wide ranges of trade relations to develop their own economies (Bulmer-Thomas 2003). The start of capitalism was not an auspicious one. Perhaps the most noticed reaction to capitalism and the Industrial Revolution was that of Karl Marx and his theories on Capital, History, and his Communist Manifesto. In his treatise on Capital, Marx traces the history of banking from that of the ancient temples which functioned as banks and the function of hoarding of money to the effects of the Industrial Revolution on Europes working classes, and criticized the theories of Adam Smith, disagreeing with him on division of labor and labor value, unemployment, and the free market, instead arguing on the basis of an immensely wide range of ancient and contemporary sources that capitalism, while needed to bring a certain level of prosperity (Cohen 1978), must eventually burn itself out in a frenzy of overworked labourers and greedy capital owners leading to a political revolution(Marx 1867). His work and correspondence with Engels led to the experiments in Soviet Russia and Maoist China, as well as the Cuban revolution later. In Europe many espouse Marxism to this day, and socialism of often seen as an offshoot of Marx’s ideas, tied closely to communal living and communist ideas. The effect of these ideas upon capitalism itself, particularly as a reaction in the United States, may in fact have been to harden capitalism into a more free market stance. Up until The Great War, or World War I, the gold standard was seen as the ideal for matching exchange rates and currencies of different nations, facilitating trade. Polany describes key elements that kept the global economy in balance up to that point, but which failed after the war. With the interwar period prosperity in the United States, it was thought that capitalism was proving itself capable of bringing prosperity to all, until the Great Depression. Many innovations occurred, and were subsequently suppressed, during the Depression years that have been shown to have substantial benefit. One such experiment was in the town of Worgle, Germany, where the town issued debt-free time limited currency designed to encourage trade without hoarding of the currency. Economic activity boomed, before it was banned by the German central government. Likewise YES employment and stamp scrip were forms of currency using demurrage, in which a penalty is added to the currency periodically payable by the holder of the currency. The currencies did in fact circulate, and economic activity picked up substantially, to the benefit of the communities using those currencies. The US government likewise banned such currencies and scrip at the time of the New Deal(Rowbotham 1998). The success of such experiments proves that there are workable alternatives to conventional ideas of capitalism and even socialism. Other reactions to capitalism included C.H. Douglas and the Social Credit movement, which gained enough support in Alberta, Canada to elect a party on the platform of implementing Social Credit in that territory. The ideas of issuing a basic citizen’s income to every citizen as a right was derived from the principles of free enterprise, tempered with redistribution of wealth by the government(Party; Rowbotham 1998). Another reaction to capitalism was the philosophy of Mahatma Ghandi, who advocated an economic structure based on the village level unit of cooperation with a less hierarchical structure and a requirement for “bread sweatâ€� that assumed each person to have a duty to contribute to the common good. His strict teaching on non-violence stand in some contrast to Marx’s ideas that violence will eventually become necessary for the revolution of the workers to succeed. Toward the end of World War II, with the Allied powers assured of their victory, the next stage in capitalism was launched with the Bretton Woods agreement which created many of the modern institutions of capital we know today, such as the GATT, which later became the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The key nations involved were the United States, and Great Britain, whose delegation was led by the leading economist of his time, Maynard Keynes. Keynes had already launched the next innovation in capitalism, which is known as “the Keynesian Revolutionâ€� with the publication of his work “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” in 1936. Keynes ideas being countered by monetarism, the opposing school of thought led by Milton Friedman, were that inflation was “taxation by currency depreciation” and that classical theory of economics was wrong because it was based on a barter free market, rather than on a money free market, thus losing sight of the fact that money when used as a store of value is different from barter with money that is used as nothing more than a medium of exchange. Based on this Keynes went on to emphasize that even if a market is at equilibrium, there could still be unemployment. The monetarists hate this idea because it contradicts precisely what the classical economic theorists tell us (that a market at equilibrium will deliver full employment, and that this equilibrium requires a hands-off approach by regulatory institutions, as advocated by Friedman). Keynes further described what later became acknowledged and known as cost-push inflation (Rayman 1975), coming to Bretton Woods to bargain on behalf of debtor nations attempting to counter the economic dominance of the United States. He failed. A more recent innovation in capitalism has been the rise of the neo-liberal school of thought, centered at the Chicago School of Economics, perhaps best personified by recent chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board Alan Greenspan. The neo-liberals advocate an extreme approach to free markets in which regulation is minimal and taxes are low, hearkening back to Adam Smith’s laissez faire leanings. The oil and inflation crises of the 1970’s and the Latin American debt crises of the 1980’s, followed by the banking crises of the 1980’s prompted some changes in the regulatory stances of creditor nations like the US, but not in principle or attitude toward free markets. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, many have said that there is no alternative to capitalism, but others, such as analysts who have lived under both systems and observe warnings about the high debt being carried by the US and other wealthy nations, argue that there are in fact alternatives to capitalism which must be explored (Orlov 2005). Some alternative which continue to use currency in altered or interest-free forms include Local Exchange and Trade Systems (LETS), which is a form of local currency (Croall 1997). Local currencies are issued by a local body without reference to a national currency or gold standard, interest free, for use in trading between members of the locality. Local currencies have most enthusiastically been used in Latin America (Croall 1997). They are also known as mutual credit schemes, in which money for a transaction is created at the time of the transaction, as a means of barter exchange. Initially created by Michael Linton, groups like the New Economics Foundation have been promoting the idea on the basis of building community within a market framework. Other small group based ideas have come from global institutions pledged to reduce poverty (UN 2005), such as the use of micro-credit for poor families and individuals being administered through UN and local agencies (TVE/ITDG 2005). More radical ideas based on distributed systems that do not use currency at all include Dr. Robin Upton’s Altruistic Economics (Upton 2006), which advocates a gift-economy based system. We end with the suggestions of various new international currencies, based on the consensus that all national currencies use a debt-based monetary system which is unsustainable over the long term (Madron and Jopling 2003). The EBCU and the Terra(staff 2004) hold out the possibility for further innovations in capitalism that could prove more beneficial for all. Given the fact that those with the paper make the rules, it seems that in the interest of all, if Orlov’s warnings, and UN promises are to be believed, it is time for those who issue the paper, to start making new rules. Bison, T. N. (1991). The medieval crown of Aragon: A short history. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Bulmer-Thomas, V. (2003). The Economic History of Latin America. Cohen, G. A. (1978). Karl Marx’s Theory of History A Defence. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Croall, J. (1997). LETS Act Locally The Growth of Local Exchange Trading Systems. London, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Cutler (1977). Marx’s Capital and Capitalism Today Vol.II. Cutler, Hindess, et al. (1977). Marx’s Capital and Capitalism Today Vol.I. Gesell, S. (1906). The NATURAL ECONOMIC ORDER: Online scanned edition of book. Madron, R. and J. Jopling (2003). Gaian Democracies -Redefining Globalisation & People-Power, Green Books. Marx, K. (1867). “Capital.” I. Napoleoni, C. (1975). Smith Ricardo Marx. Oxford, Basil Blackwell. Orlov, D. (2005). ‘Unwelcome Guests’: LJ entry of notes on radio show, quote of Paula; oxfam ad -“I’m In” and radio show on economic problems. Painter, B. T. S. (1998). Western Europe in the Middle ages 300-1475, McGraw-Hill Education. Party, A. S. C. The Alberta Social Credit Party. Calgary, AB Canada, Alberta Social Credit Party: Wb site for the Alberta Social Credit Party. Pirenne, H. (1969). Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade. Princeton, Princeton University Press. Polanyi, K. (1944). The Great Transformation. Polanyi, K., C. Arensberg, et al., Eds. (1957). Trade and Markets in the Early Empires -Economies in History and Theory. Glencoe, Illinois, The free Press. Rayman, R. A. (1975). Price Stability and Full Employment: A neo-Keynesian policy for growth without inflation. Rowbotham, M. (1998). The Grip of Death: A Study of Modern Money, Debt Slavery and Destructive Economics, Jon Carpenter Publishing. staff (2004). The three crises: oil prices, climate change and international debt, The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability (feasta). EBCU and Bernard Lietaer’s ‘Terra’ -Proposals for sustainable international currencies. Thomas, K., Ed. (1997). Three Great Economists Smith Malthus Keynes. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Tustain, P. (2004). “Monetary Episodes From History”. Gibson, TN, John Lynn & Company: History of Money citing Alexander del Mar. TVE/ITDG (2005). HANDS ON programme, TVE. UN (2005). Agenda 21 Homepage: UN projects: Agenda 21. Upton, D. R. (2006). Altruistic Economics -An Unselfish Economic System, Altruists International. 2006: The Economics of Altruism – A System to Reward Generosity, not Selfishness. Zarlenga, S. (2002). The Lost Science of Money : The Mythology of money -the story of power, American Monetary Institute.
(The response was: you’ve been reading too much polemic, now learn to be an Academic… )
Read, Write, Run, Teach !
 ShiraDest
 16 February, 12016 HE

was fun! I was surprised to see men there, as I had assumed it was only going to be an informal event with us putting henna on the bride in decorations. Nothing of the sort -it was a big hall with everyone quite well dressed and all of the friends and relatives were there. First I arrived (about 40 minutes late, but many people arrived later than that, and things didn’t get started until about half an hour later or so), greeted the bride, who is one of my coworkers, and kissed her aunt’s and mother’s hands (here, elders are very respected and greted with a kiss to the hand right hand which is then touched to the forehead -the the Rabbi here ususually gives a quick blessing while I am doing this, just as an aside). After sitting and talking for a while with coworkers, the band played a mix of popular Turkish tunes and oriental style tunes (Arabesque), while the ladies danced in bellydance style as the men encouraged us (by clapping, telling those of us who were sitting to get up and dance, and occassionally throwing money at dancers, which was promply collected off of the floor by what looked like the band manager). After dancing, came the henna. First we all went to a table to get headscarves in different colors, which we put around our necks, and colored sequined handkerchiefs, which we danced with Mediterranean style in our hands as we lined up to crowd around the bride while the older women put henna on the bride’s right hand, with the mother coming through the crowd to check and put a red sock around the henna and bride’s hand to let it stay there to dry while she danced with us some more. Then we put henna on our hands, but we didn’t make any patterns. We did have lots of oriental dancing (the men sat and watched as ladies danced, generally. They did play a slow set where some couples danced, but mostly women danced oriental styple as men watched, except for just after the bride had her hand hennaed, when we all wore scarves and handkerchiefs and did a circle dance (using the pinky hold) that was basically a hora. To put the henna on our own hands (the men put henna on one of thier pinky’s while ladies plop the henna on both palms) there were what i had initially thought looked like strange chocolate cake with candles in it -the chocolate cake turned out to be henna ready for scooping and dying our palms! 🙂 Some of us left a bit early to wait for the bus together, but i expect that things went on (just more oriental dancing, as i wanted to be sure not to miss anything) quite late. This evening they will get married in a different part of town so i have to figure out what to wear. I did not see the groom at all, and I in fact do not know who he is! Then, I finally learned how to thread my lip!
 Read, Write, Run, Teach !
 ShiraDest
16 February, 12016 HE

From a friend’s visit when I lived in Izmir, summer of 2005: At Ersan Pansyon, just off of Kibris Sehitler caddesi, near my apartment, there is a nice young man who works there, who yesterday offered us breakfast and the opportunity to talk. My guest Chanan does not speak Turkish, so I served as both translator and breakfast guest with him. This has been wonderful. I have forgotten the young man’s name, but he asked many questions about the US, which I translated for Chanon from a Boston/NY perspective, and occasionally threw in my own prespective on growing up in the south. One thing that particularly struck me, which I have hear from religious Turks before, is that they are anxious for Americans and Europeans to know that Turkey is different from the other muslim countries, and *is not Arab* -and also is not a bed for fanatical Islam. The current president, as our friend told us, comes from a religious background, as does the family that runs this pansyon, and none of them are fanatics. All do however believe strongly in hospitality and friendship. He told us that all of the people in the world are relatives, all descending from Adam and Eve. This was a wonderful conversation. (partial translation: En el otel donde mi invitado esta viviendo, hay un joven con quien hablemos ayer. Fue una conversasion muy linda. El nos invite’ a comer el desayuno y tenia muchas preguntas. El nos decia que Turquia es muy diferente -no es como los otros paises islamicos. No es fanatico. El decia que todo la gente del mundo son hermanos.) -Glad to recall this event: Read, Write, Dream, Teach ! ShiraDest 22 February, 12016 HE

Monday i discovered that my Turkish lang. and cultural understanding works pretty well. I needed a taxi but could have waited for a bus. i asked a taxi driver how much to home, and he said 10, which was double to going price (I happened to know from experience and also asking around) -so I indignantly demanded 5, he sheepishly said 10, I said i was taking the bus, he said i would wait a long time, i said 10 was way too expensive, and marched off. About 3 steps later a different taxi driver who had been standing around by his taxi listening to this exchange drove up, beeped, said ‘i’ll take you for 5’ and as i got in told me that the other guy, and other fellow drivers, always try to get more money than they deserve. we talke about that a little on the ride home and i thanked him and added that he was a very good person, which he genially thanked me for, and commented a bit more on the world being all about money and what a shame it is nowadays. Very interesting exchange because 1. my language is almost good enough to start getting subtleties and bantering a bit 2. my cultural understanding is now almost good enough to react appropriately and get things done and 3. here is another case of working class people showing differences of opinion and action (taxi drivers are famous, along with carpet sellers, for ripping tourists off, as well as even Turks if they can manage it) -many working class people are religious and take pride in being honest, while others simple cheat as much as possible. My religious friends are all honest, bar none, yet I recall a religous store clerk in Istanbul who surprised me by not giving me all of my change back (he held back quite a large chunk of my change until i demanded the rest of it, and threw it down on the counter at me). So not all religious people are trustworthy, of course. I had a good day -i met my Azeri coworker Nazile and we went to our coworker Fazil’s house (it took us from 12:30 until 3pm!), where we all ate lunch, went swimming (the Aegean sea is very very very salty!!), walked around Foca (Phocia) and saw a Greek-Turkish political discussion at a large table outdoors on a stage (I wanted to stay and listen but no one else was interested -frustrating as they were speaking in Greek and then translating into Turkish and people were applauding wildly), then saw the last few dances of a show of a Greek folk dance trouppe (their last dance was Romvini in Turkish, a tsifteteli I believe, and everyone clapped but no one danced), then we went home -at 10m, and I arrived home about midnight, but then joined my farther away neighbors on their balcony for some nuts and karpus, and we talked until 1am. Then i came home and showered and went to bed. Tomorrow (ok, later today) I am invited to the pre-wedding stuff of my neighbors relative, upstairs! Well tell later.. 2005-08-07 13:30:00 ageism in Turkey, and new (English version) resume People in Turkey, as my coworker pointed out, are very age conscious. My office mate told me that i clearly do not like teaching and that i need to hurry up and think seriously about my career path because i am 36 and too old to change careers here in Turkey. She said that unfortunately (all of this was in English for emphasis) people here think that after you are 35 you cannot start anything new. I am still blown away by this concept. My 35 or 36 year old neighbor also cited her age as a reason she cannot find a job. Others have also said that everyone prefers to hire young people, and i saw one job melt away when they learned my age. I wonder how this will play out in the long run -all across the middle east populations are very young, as opposed to the developed nations older populations… which brings me back to the question of whether i should list my age on my CV. and my nationality -both of which can be a liability to me or an asset, depending on who is looking (people generally assume that a 36 year old American will be an arrogant old snot, but if they see me first they think i am 25 years old and ask me what my native language is!) Of course being older is an asset in teaching, as is being a native speaker of English, but in almost every other endeavor those two things are actually handicaps.
 Interesting.
 Read, Write, Run, Teach !
 ShiraDest
16 February, 12016 HE

(11 years later, I still appreciate her letter as among the first to make me realize that I could potentially help others.
 Read, Write, Run, Teach !
 ShiraDest
16 February, 12016 HE  )

2005-08-07 17:44:00
I just came back from visiting my neighbor for what i thought was today’s pre-wedding festivities (henna, etc), expecting the bride to show up sometime later tonight. Well, er, actually, it turns out that the “duÄŸun” is tomorrow, but there are no pre-wedding festivities becuase it will not be a wedding. I have been invited to a circumcision!!!
 :-0 
Apparently the word is the same? They all laughed upstairs (not too much, but i could see everyone waiting to roll on the floor after i left) and explained when i asked that there was no bride or groom, pointing to their son (who looks about 9 years old) and saying they cut off the p… Boy was I surprised (and that necklace I brought to ask if it would fit her was completely out of the question! No her to fit!) -my Turkish skills suck!

(I still remember Silmaril and other friends rotfl about this!  🙂  And I still laugh too, as my Tukish has improved over the years, thanks to Sihirli Annem and Yabanci Damat…
Read, Write, Run, Teach !
 ShiraDest 
16 February, 12016 HE)

2005-06-27 19:30:00 A friend just asked me (she is experiencing racist reactions -not sure where…) what I have seen and think. A question always to be avoided. It has kept me up nights as I avoid the rush of memories meant to be buried such a long time ago. Humiliation of being called a half-breed and asked if I was black white or half and half, of being called a niger after black kids called me whitey and jew and a wild indian. the pain and despair of never being accepted anywhere and being looked down upon by members of my own family for being born lighter than them or darker than them. Asking too many questions and being aloof -which is it, or both? Too soft or devil”s child? Ask a different person get a different answer (sometimes diff. from the same person!) Where do I belong -evidently nowhere. All seemed to agree that my birth was a definite mistake. I have seen moments of kindness, like the girl in GA giving me a jar o water, the old woman in VA/WV teaching me to make apple sauce, different races, same spirit. But the white woman asking if i was a monkey and the black woman calling me high yellow also share a spirit -a malicious one. A Chasid in Baltimore joking that Spanish Harlem and Black Harlem do not intermarry because the PuertoRicans do not want their kids growing up too lazy to steal -a slap in the face to me, and I said nothing. My own Rav joking that no one should want to be both black and Jewish. Is my ancestry marked on my forehead, or do I wear a sign? Those from whom I wanted to learn, my mother’s people the Cherokee, wanted nothing to do with a mixed blood, even less receptive than the Rav. But at least they have their pride. My (great?) great grandfather, a full blood Cherokee, died for his pride rather than enter “a white man’s hospital” -but he lived among white men apparently. Where did he belong, how did he fit in/feel/live? We do know that he had a long affair with the white man’s fire water. And was apparently more crazy than myself. It is late -I will try to go to sleeep… again… Read, Write, Run, Teach ! ShiraDest 16 February, 12016 HE