Peace Radio Interim Edition: May 24, 2020
So...Memorial Day.
Please commemorate wisely and from a distance.
Jill W typing this up and trying to link the links
Sally sent this link to local legend Jeanne McHale's contribution to covid parody songs!
https://youtu.be/CqL6CbXW5Bg
Let's start with in depth bummer news and some history education:
Jill M sends this to us from the bowels of South Dakota:
In May 2020 the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Coalition is sponsoring a series of webinars to commemorate those killed on the 2010 Gaza Freedom flotilla and the thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel that have been killed by the Israeli military and the inhumane policies of the Israeli government.
This is a 90 minute webinar recorded with social distancing well worth a listen.
May 17, 2020
Two songs from Melissa Etheridge recording at home and sharing during the pandemic. Melissa lost a son this month to addiction:
Sally shares this from the top end of Potlatch:
An explanation of why the food supply chain is so messed up right now...or rather how it always has been and why we are noticing it right now. You'll understand why farmers are plowing vegetables into fields and dumping milk. We don't have a flexible system and farmers and farm workers are not valued in our system. Many of the producers are not valued in a consumer society.
https://fair.org/home/our-food-system-is-very-much-modeled-on-plantation-economics/?fbclid=IwAR3OqsYw6nZLItO9eWH5GkwXCzCUsBpJBsAzzEH9fehJ6-ljtR2qt-Au-iA
I was excited to see this because I KNOW HIM! Do listen via the link, or read if you prefer.
Ricardo Salvador worked at Iowa State University while I was there in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He is a wonderful brilliant human and I'm glad to see he is still working on food justice, including food production. (I have never seen him with that sort of serious expression though, he was always thoughtful but smiling.)
An excerpt:
“the structure of agriculture”—is a system that looks very much like a social hierarchy that many of us will remember from grade school, where we had slaves at the bottom of the pyramid and the pharaoh or king up at the top of the pyramid, fewer and fewer people benefiting as you go up the pyramid. In agriculture, we still have pretty much that system.
So, read it, listen to it, become a fan of Dr. Salvador.
If you want more from him, this is a brutally depressing and true write up he did for Medium
https://heated.medium.com/agribusiness-is-using-covid-19-crisis-to-slash-food-worker-wages-1024552fc1df
How about a Michael Franti break?
7) Find & Read "The Popcorn Book"
And lastly (but not leastly) 8) Read Miriam's True But Sad Popcorn Tale
When I was a kid, my mom bought a jar of rainbow popcorn. The kernels were different colors. I, of course, anticipated
popcorn!
But, not so. Alas, the popcorn was white, as usual, with barely a speck of color left.
I'm still disappointed today.
--ENHANCED FAMILY TIME
Art for Gifts
1) Peter Basoa's (Recycled) "Magnet Art"
For refrigerators: collect those magnets on advertisements and get little pictures that fit the magnets, like the pictures on the back of an old calendar. Use good glue and you can clamp the corners with clothes pins while they dry.
2) Homemade Wrapping Paper! Newspaper, stamped plain bags, bingo daubers to decorate plain paper. Stickers! Be creative.
Word Game:
What is a PALINDROME?
I know 3...answers next blog!
To Hug or Not To Hug, That Is the Question.
Hug when we can and who we can. At this time, we only hug people we live with:
Find ways to hug people you can't hug in person!
Even alone, give yourself a yoga hug.
Cross your arms over your chest and reach your fingers to the backs of your shoulders.
Find Creative Ways to Show Love to People You Can't Hug Right Now.
Short Hug Rhymes:
Bugs:
I am very
fond of bugs.
I kiss them
and give them hugs.
Snug as a bug
in a rug
(Say that 10 times fast!)
MK PICKS:
Book: (for olders)
Girls Who Rocked the World: Heroines from Sacagawea to Sheryl Swoopes. By Amelie Welden. (from Scholastic Books)
These are girls who achieved something extraordinary before they were 20.
Song: Puff the Magic Dragon
by Peter Yarrow, and Lenny Lipton
https://youtu.be/Y7lmAc3LKWM
Author:
Margaret Wise Brown.
She speaks respectfully and lovingly to very young children. Her stuff is fabulous.
She has many books. I especially like Good Night Moon. The Friendly Book (poems).
Old Movie (for olders): Steel Magnolias (Friends to the end).
Snack: Dried apricot and an almond!
out!
Bye for now,
Miriam
Please commemorate wisely and from a distance.
Jill W typing this up and trying to link the links
Sally sent this link to local legend Jeanne McHale's contribution to covid parody songs!
https://youtu.be/CqL6CbXW5Bg
Let's start with in depth bummer news and some history education:
Jill M sends this to us from the bowels of South Dakota:
In May 2020 the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Coalition is sponsoring a series of webinars to commemorate those killed on the 2010 Gaza Freedom flotilla and the thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel that have been killed by the Israeli military and the inhumane policies of the Israeli government.
This is a 90 minute webinar recorded with social distancing well worth a listen.
Free Gaza Movement: Breaking the Israeli Naval Blockade of Gaza--Organizing the first Boats to Gaza
Two songs from Melissa Etheridge recording at home and sharing during the pandemic. Melissa lost a son this month to addiction:
Sally shares this from the top end of Potlatch:
An explanation of why the food supply chain is so messed up right now...or rather how it always has been and why we are noticing it right now. You'll understand why farmers are plowing vegetables into fields and dumping milk. We don't have a flexible system and farmers and farm workers are not valued in our system. Many of the producers are not valued in a consumer society.
‘Our Food System Is Very Much Modeled on Plantation Economics’
CounterSpin interview with Ricardo Salvador on the coronavirus food crisis
https://fair.org/home/our-food-system-is-very-much-modeled-on-plantation-economics/?fbclid=IwAR3OqsYw6nZLItO9eWH5GkwXCzCUsBpJBsAzzEH9fehJ6-ljtR2qt-Au-iA
I was excited to see this because I KNOW HIM! Do listen via the link, or read if you prefer.
Ricardo Salvador worked at Iowa State University while I was there in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He is a wonderful brilliant human and I'm glad to see he is still working on food justice, including food production. (I have never seen him with that sort of serious expression though, he was always thoughtful but smiling.)
An excerpt:
“the structure of agriculture”—is a system that looks very much like a social hierarchy that many of us will remember from grade school, where we had slaves at the bottom of the pyramid and the pharaoh or king up at the top of the pyramid, fewer and fewer people benefiting as you go up the pyramid. In agriculture, we still have pretty much that system.
So, read it, listen to it, become a fan of Dr. Salvador.
If you want more from him, this is a brutally depressing and true write up he did for Medium
Agribusiness Is Using the COVID-19 Crisis to Slash Food-Worker Wages
Three ways you can stop it now
How about a Michael Franti break?
That helped! He's just so damn happy!
Just a bit more farm news....from Sherry Dodson (Hi Sherry) I think:
Farmers are growing more fruits and vegetables! Yay! Commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat, etc) are great, but not transferable to the local market as easily as fruit and veg:
Most Farmers in the Great Plains Don’t Grow Fruits and Vegetables. The Pandemic is Changing That.
Amid massive tracts of wheat and corn destined for global markets, some farmers are planting cover crop mixes designed to be harvested by their communities.
This also makes me (Jill W) happy: Katie Porter.
She calls BS when it needs to be called. There are MAJOR SWEARS in the video. You've been warned.
and the video interview only:
She swears like Sally and I do. We like her. And she does the interview from the minivan because her kids were being too loud in the house.
The car is the new "happy place" or at least private place.
Sally sends this Amy Sedaris bit with Stephen Colbert as a "palate cleanser" after all the bummer news so far:
I'm going to sew random crooked rows of rickrack and wonky cheap black lace to my tops too!
Sally is on a ROLL this week:
This episode of This American Life won the Pulitzer Prize – the very first Pulitzer ever awarded to a radio show. It's about the situation along our southern border, what the Trump Administration's “Remain in Mexico” really means. The original was aired in November, and was re-presented after the Pulitzer award – with updates throughout.
Steel yourselves. This is hard to listen to – but you must. We must. We're sending people back home to be raped or murdered. And it's official government policy. Much worse now, of course, since the pandemic.
Here's another palate/brain cleans....
Boujee Natives by Snotty Nosed Rez Kids
(sorry it won't embed...youtube is cranky)
and from the WTF Files...Sally sends:
Senate Committee slips through $38 billion package to Israel ALISON WEIR
It hasn't gone to the full senate yet...but good lord! The working class ADULTS in the US each get 1200$ and given the Israeli population of just under 9million...that means the US senate committe just voted to send enough to pay every individual Israeli $ 4222.22!!!!
From the NY Times where they are still doing obituaries they should have included in the past, but the folks weren't white males...posted the obituary of
June Almeida, who first identified a corona virus (there are many...30% of your colds are corona viruses)
I've been avoiding too much covid news because so much of it is BS. This is NOT BS, this is for real:
Cuba Has Sent 2,000 Doctors and Nurses Overseas to Fight Covid-19
The Trump administration describes Cuba’s medical response teams as “slaves”—we asked the doctors for their take.
This is a fascinating read and well worth your time and effort. Cuba has sent more doctors around the world to fight covid and other diseases and crises than anywhere else. It isn't well reported on in the US, but everyone else seems to know about it.
Let's close out the bummer and other news with a brain cleanse!
Books and Movies!!
Sally and her siblings are reading or thinking about reading and she shares this with us:
Book reviews from Sally's family.
Well, actually just my brother Pete.....but this might be an on-going series: The Perrine siblings
Here are a few thoughts from my brother, Pete.
Just finished Practical Demonkeeping (by Christopher Moore). OK, I did like it. I still prefer Terry Pratchett’s Disc World series, with its weird characters. They touched my heart – when werewolves (she limited it to chickens when the moon was full, and always paid in full the next day) and humans can fall in love, or when a female dwarf with a beard can break free of her rock-breaking, tunnel-making masculine culture, or a cowardly wizard who seems to make it all work despite himself, or the head of a Wizard’s University who is actually an orangutan – it strikes a chord with me. I will read them all again. But I will also read more Christopher Moore. He’s a good story teller!
I read them in order, or tried to (the library did not have a few of them), so I don’t remember the specific books that I preferred. I do remember that the first one (The Colour of Magic) was not my favorite (Rincewind, the cowardly wizard is the main character, and never my favorite), but it did introduce various characters that would show up later. Any of the books stand alone. My favorite characters were the City Watch cops, and Guards! Guards! was the first one to feature them as main characters, but I did love the Witches too (start with Equal Rites).
And from me (Sally): My daughter-in-law asked about recommendations for inspirational reads. Here's my list:
It was fun to see what I could pull up re inspirational reads - and wanted to remember books also that I found funny.
Trevor Noah's Born a Crime is both - and he's such a wonderful engaging human being that it was fun to spend time with him. S
ame with Tina Fey. Her book, Bossypants was both.
Ask Alex (my son/her husband) about My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durrell. It's an oldie but goodie, travel writing, humor, family (not dysfunctional ..... much) and lots of natural history stuff.
Also loved Caitlin Moran's book How to Be a Woman. Raunchy, smart, and funny.
W Kamau Bell's The Awkward thoughts of W Kamau Bell is fun as well. And a good description of what it feels like to be a black man in America. He's married to a white woman, so the biracial stuff in interesting. Did I also mention funny?
And before I stop, I'm not as big a fan of Christopher Moore as Chuck (other brother) is, but I loved Lamb - Jesus' missing years told through the eyes of his best friend, Biff. It was actually a very moving story of a friendship, if I remember accurately. I read it years ago.
Movies:
Jill W back again:
I watched a few, some from the Jill M moving pile and a few on the youtube.
Frankenstein from the National Theatre series on youtube with Benedict Cumberbatch as Frankenstein.
LOVELY! (not just Ben, the whole thing). I got a bit leary when the cast burst into song because I LOATHE musicals as a genre. LOATHE. But, they stopped and the acting was fab and true to the story. It is no longer available, but you can catch "A Streetcar Named Desire" starring Gillian Anderson.
The TV Set. 2006
Directed: Jake Kasdan
Written: Jake Kasdan
Starring David Duchovny and Sigourney Weaver. It's cute and all. I don't regret watching it. But SUPER PREDICTABLE. It is from the Jill M collection. David plays a writer who manages to get a TV pilot shot. But at what personal cost?
Robot & Frank 2012
Directed: Jake Schrier
Written: Christopher Ford
A nice film starring Frank Langella and Peter Sarsgaard. Frank (played by Frank) is starting to lose some of this memory and not taking such great care of himself in his small town house. His son, a busy man in this near-future-very-digital-tech-dependent world, gets Frank a robot servant. Hijinx ensue. It's cute without getting smarmy and there are a few plot twist that add rather than detract from the plot. Also from the Jill M collection.
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MIRIAM'S STUFF
-popcorn, hugs and not hugs, etc
-home learning
Simple Kitchen Science:
1) ICE & HOT AND COLD WATER and Melting Times
2) Sink or Float- Bowl of H2O and items like corks, bread tabs, bottle caps, little plastic cups (like from apple sauce)
3) Magnetic and NonMagnetic-Strongest Magnets you can get, & assorted metal and nonmetal items.
Science DVD
Check out DVD at pbs.org, "Bill Nye, the Science Guy" (more on Bill in the next blog!)
--POPCORN THEME!! (why? for fun, of course)
1) Make a bunch of popcorn.
2) See the popcorn popping! Jump every time one pops!!
3) Add nutritional yeast, cayenne, cinnamon, or ...
4) Everyone has their own bowl of popcorn (and napkin)
THEN...5) Share the poem from "A Popcorn Song" by Nancy Byrd Turner
Sing a song of pop corn
When the snowstorms rage;
Fifty little round men
Put into a cage.
Shake them till they laugh and leap
Crowding to the top;
Watch them burst their little coats
Pop!! Pop!! Pop!!
When the snowstorms rage;
Fifty little round men
Put into a cage.
Shake them till they laugh and leap
Crowding to the top;
Watch them burst their little coats
Pop!! Pop!! Pop!!
Sing a song of pop corn
In the firelight;
Fifty little fairies
Robed in fleecy white.
Through the shining wires see
How they skip and prance
To the music of the flames;
Dance!! Dance!! Dance!!
In the firelight;
Fifty little fairies
Robed in fleecy white.
Through the shining wires see
How they skip and prance
To the music of the flames;
Dance!! Dance!! Dance!!
Sing a song of pop corn
Done the frolicking;
Fifty little fairies
Strung upon a string.
Cool and happy, hand in hand,
Sugar-spangled, fair;
Isn’t that a necklace fit
For any child to wear?
Done the frolicking;
Fifty little fairies
Strung upon a string.
Cool and happy, hand in hand,
Sugar-spangled, fair;
Isn’t that a necklace fit
For any child to wear?
6) Play, Sing & Act Out
"I Looked Out the Window" (author unknown)
7) Find & Read "The Popcorn Book"
And lastly (but not leastly) 8) Read Miriam's True But Sad Popcorn Tale
When I was a kid, my mom bought a jar of rainbow popcorn. The kernels were different colors. I, of course, anticipated
popcorn!But, not so. Alas, the popcorn was white, as usual, with barely a speck of color left.
I'm still disappointed today.
--ENHANCED FAMILY TIME
Art for Gifts
1) Peter Basoa's (Recycled) "Magnet Art"
For refrigerators: collect those magnets on advertisements and get little pictures that fit the magnets, like the pictures on the back of an old calendar. Use good glue and you can clamp the corners with clothes pins while they dry.
2) Homemade Wrapping Paper! Newspaper, stamped plain bags, bingo daubers to decorate plain paper. Stickers! Be creative.
Word Game:
What is a PALINDROME?
I know 3...answers next blog!
To Hug or Not To Hug, That Is the Question.
Hug when we can and who we can. At this time, we only hug people we live with:
Find ways to hug people you can't hug in person!
Even alone, give yourself a yoga hug.
Cross your arms over your chest and reach your fingers to the backs of your shoulders.
Find Creative Ways to Show Love to People You Can't Hug Right Now.
Short Hug Rhymes:
Bugs:
I am very
fond of bugs.
I kiss them
and give them hugs.
Snug as a bug
in a rug
(Say that 10 times fast!)
MK PICKS:
Book: (for olders)
Girls Who Rocked the World: Heroines from Sacagawea to Sheryl Swoopes. By Amelie Welden. (from Scholastic Books)
These are girls who achieved something extraordinary before they were 20.
Song: Puff the Magic Dragon
by Peter Yarrow, and Lenny Lipton
https://youtu.be/Y7lmAc3LKWM
Margaret Wise Brown.
She speaks respectfully and lovingly to very young children. Her stuff is fabulous.
She has many books. I especially like Good Night Moon. The Friendly Book (poems).
Old Movie (for olders): Steel Magnolias (Friends to the end).
Snack: Dried apricot and an almond!
out!Bye for now,
Miriam
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