Random, day-to-day reflections of what it means to live as a member of the human race on a planet which has become as vulnerable as a human body. Cecile Pineda's books are available from Independent Publishers Group.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
NO CATHARSIS: MICHAEL MOORE’S TRAGIMENTARY
Scheduled appearances
March 8 at 4 PM. International Women’s Day. Omega Salvage, 2403
San Pablo between Channing & Dwight in Berkeley.
I will be sharing reflections about women’s role “saving the
world.” connected with Apology to a
Whale: Words to Mend a World.
April 5 at 7 PM. City of Berkeley Temporary Council Chambers, 1222 University Ave. . The City
of Berkeley will honor Cecile Pineda for a life-time achievement as a literary artist.
April 7 at 3:30 PM
Doubletree Hilton, Denver Colorado: NACCs panel
Colonialism, Environmental Justice, Land
Politics within Chicana/o Studies
discusses Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World.
April 20 at 5:30 PM Ethnic
Studies Library, 30 Stephens Hall, UC
Berkeley
"WHERE TO INVADE NEXT"
With “Where to Invade Next” Michael Moore may have created a
new form, the tragimentary. From the point of view of an outsider, viewing this film struck
me as deeply tragic. Coming from a world where there seems to be perpetual
sunshine, where the best learning curve can be found where kids start out with
fewer school hours per day, and no homework but score #1 of the world best
educated children, (Finland—the US ranks 29th); where university is
free, with 100 different programs conducted in English, (Ljubljana, Slovenia);
where bankers whose hands are caught reaching into the till are sentenced to 21
years (because that’s the maximum sentence in Iceland); where prisoners are
free to govern themselves as a preparation for civic participation on release
(Norway); where women’s health is constitutionally guaranteed (Tunisia); and
where workers enjoy 5 months paid family leave and at least 6 weeks annual vacation
(Italy), viewing clips of a darkened place where the lights have gone out for
decades, where prisoners are beaten and gang raped, where men are hanged and
set on fire while crowds rejoice, where bank robbers run the banks, and where
people are too “bought” to protest what is done to them, the only possible
reaction is pity and terror. And that is the definition of what tragedy is
supposed to evoke.
With the demise of George Carlin, Michael Moore has
inherited the mantle of America’s last jester, but unlike the angry clown
Carlin was, Moore is the tragic clown, the fat, ungainly, unkempt flatfooted
fellow who braves the wind and the waves to bring the tattered American frag to
where it is least needed: countries which are getting it right and making it
work. But, as he makes clear, he’s coming to invade, and like good invasions
everywhere, to steal that country’s resources (in this case their good ideas)
and bring their policies back home.
And where did the ideas come from in this sunny world that
gets it right? Ah, that may be the most tragic truth of all: from the country
which now has more people of color incarcerated in the new plantation where
they work for corporations like Victoria Secret, for as little as 21 cents an
hour.
Most of the spokespersons in this one-man “invasion” are
women. We watch their faces, we watch them fight back tears. Vigdís
Finnbogadóttir, Iceland’s first woman president, states without qualification
that if the world can be saved at all, it will be women saving it. One
Icelandic woman CEO stares into the camera. She measures her words carefully
before she speaks. We notice her visibly swallowing, we see the deep distress
in her eyes. Her observation however is not measured. It explodes out of her: “I
would never want to live in America. I would never want to live where people don’t
care about their neighbors. I couldn’t live in a place where the sense of neighborliness
is gone.”
We come to see Michael Moore because we know he will make us laugh. And he does at first: his vision of the joint chiefs sitting around the war room, is pure theater, the costumes, the mise en scene, the marks of the State’s heavy hand. All are clutching their crotches. It is a no-fly zone but soon our laughter catches in our throats as the self-portrait is held up to our denying faces. We are number one at home and abroad: in cruelty and unusual punishments. And Michael Moore suggests it’s time to notice.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
I CAN’T BREATHE
 |
| Allegory of Good and Bad Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti |
 |
| Peace |
Is domestic United States in 2016 a war zone as that
expression is normally understood?
Pondering this question, I was reminded from my college days
of the Allegory of Good and Bad Government painted in the Council Chambers of
the Town Hall of the City of Siena in Italy by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, in the year
1338-1339. Three room-sized frescoes depict not only the allegory of good
Government, but very methodically address the Effects of Bad Government in the
City; the Effects of Bad government in the Country; and the Effects of Good
Government in the City and the Effects of Good Government in the Country. They
were commissioned by the townspeople of Siena in order to remind the town
council to exercise the responsibility of their office by promoting the
wellbeing not only of its citizens, but of the entire environment, cultural,
social, political, and agricultural, obeying the natural order of the seasons
in alignment with the planets.
 |
| Justice |
The buzz is bad
I am reminded as well of the 1980 documentary film “From Mao to Mozart” where Isaac Stern is seen concertizing with musicians all over China. He encounters performers ranging from 5 years of age through old age. Midway through the age groups, we actually hear a band-in-time in which musicians display even more amazing technical pyrotechnics, but whose musicality (i.e. emotional range of expression) is entirely absent. Even before the film announces what we are meant to hear, it becomes clear that this band of time coincides with the period of Chinese history we call the Cultural Revolution.
The important “take-away” here is that the manifestations of
bad government include the actual sound
track of a society. Recently social scientists have reported that a whole
cohort of white men exists in the age range of 40-50 years, people who have not
attended college, who are killing themselves variously by tobacco, drink, or suicide. And we have a whole
band of murdered children. As more men are released from prison, the numbers of women incarcerated has gone up. The growing intensity of anti-abortion regulation by state legislatures has increased exponentially starting
in 2005 and peaking in 2011. Eventually social scientists will report on the
increase of domestic violence in and outside the home as it affects its most defenseless
victims: women, children and—yes—animals.
These are the significant barometers of a society which has
lost its way. And these symptoms indicate what happens to people in an economic
war zone, where the downward pressures on a society are such that its most
marginalized people cry out in the words of Eric Gardner, who to survive
economically was trying to sell loose cigarettes on the streets of Staten
Island: “I Can’t Breathe.”
 |
Tyrrany |
Monday, February 8, 2016
GETTING IT RIGHT- MAKING IT WORK
Cecile Pineda will be talking about the Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World project and signing books during the month of February:
SCHEDULE OF FEBRUARY APPEARANCES
PLEASE NOTE CANCELATION BELOW
February 13 - PEN WEST at 3 PM
home of
Margret Schaefer
1 Quail Avenue, Berkeley
RSVP & directions:
NOTE:
space is limited. Call for
reservations
reservations
February 25 – Ethnic Studies
Postponed till further notice
because of staffing problems at the library.
February 1 – S.F. Occupy Forum at
6 PM
Global Exchange
2017 Mission St. at 16th Street 2nd floor
San Francisco
A link to this talk will be
posted on this newsletter as soon as it becomes available thanks to a team of
WILPF-Disarm/End Wars women who joined S.F. Occupy Forum. The WILPF team is on a West Coast speaking tour ranging
from Southern California to Bremerton, WA, home of the trident submarine, where
a great part of the US arsenal is stored.
GETTING IT RIGHT- MAKING IT WORK
Apology to a Whale:
Words to Mend a World makes the case that the sameold sameold doesn’t work.
“Civilization” has resorted to it repeatedly, in disregard of Einstein’s dictum
that repeating the same behavior hoping to achieve different results is a form
of dementia, but unfortunately there’s no locked facility big enough to hold 7.4
billions of us and counting.
Western European civilization
is the technologically dominant civilization or our time. Global technological
culture is its ultimate articulation. All seven billions of us are now in
thrall to its totalitarianism and technology. Its overarching power
arrangements—economic, geopolitical, and technological—are destroying our planet.
The good news is that pockets
exist in the world, small enclaves where new ways of thinking are being
implemented. None of them are entirely radical because none are entirely free of the taint of the old culture. This
week, a number of such projects modeling significant change have caught my eye.
•A landmark settlement in the federal
class action Ashker v. Governor of California will effectively end indeterminate, long-term
solitary confinement in all California state prisons.
•Obama announced a
ban on solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prison.
As such, neither development
signifies a radical re-thinking of incarceration itself. Both initiatives still
carry the taint of old ways of thinking.
Michael Moore talks about
Norway’s radical approach to incarceration here at 20:29.
•In response to growing
popular outrage against the militarization of law enforcement, exemplified by
police lynchings of people of color, and police violence accompanying arrest of
demonstrators practicing civil disobedience, some police forces are rethinking use of force practices.
•Last
year for the first time, New York City allocated a line item in its budget to develop
worker-owned cooperatives. And the number of worker cooperatives in the city has tripled since
2014. Foundation grants have been made available to owners who may be thinking
of transforming entrepreneurial businesses into such cooperatives.
•Movement Rights, a new
organization, formed just over a year ago which focuses on the Rights of Mother
Earth, is working with indigenous people in California and nationwide in efforts
to ban fracking, oil trains, and other unnatural disasters, modeled on a study
of Cultural Survival’s New Zealand Project among the Moari, “I am the River,
the River is Me, giving the rights of a person to the Whanganai River.
•As
of now the EPA joins the Surgeon General’s early warning system, a reflection that
health of the body is metaphor for health of the planet. Modeled on gas pump
labels in some provinces of Canada, and in response to the threat of climate
change, the San Francisco City Attorney’s office drafted a proposed label to be
displayed on city gas pumps. But when we give up driving altogether for public
transportation and walking, we’ll be lots farther along the road to stemming
some of global warming’s impacts.
Sunday, January 31, 2016
FOUR EYES, TWO WAYS OF SEEING
Cecile Pineda will be talking about the Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World project and signing books
during the month of February:
SCHEDULE OF FEBRUARY APPEARANCES
February 1 – S.F.
Occupy Forum at 6 PM
Global
Exchange
2017
Mission St. at 16th Street 2nd floor
San
Francisco
February 13 - PEN WEST at 3 PM
home
of Margret Schaefer
1 Quail Avenue, Berkeley
RSVP
& directions: margretschaefer@mac.com
February 25 – Ethnic
Studies Library at 5:30 PM
30
Stephens Hall (downstairs)
University of California
info:
642-3947
FOUR EYES, TWO WAYS OF SEEING
There’s nothing like writing a book to allow you to see the
world with fresh eyes. Two images: two civilizations. Both have cultures which
speak languages derived from Proto-Indo-European, a language not unlike ancient
Sanskrit.
One civilization moves eastward, the other charges westward
on swift horses, herding cattle, ever on the move looking for new grazing
lands. The other culture keeps to vegetarian ways.
Those riding the swift horse, in a hurry to appropriate
territory, scatter all who came before them, arming themselves with weapons,
governing through hierarchical structures, imposing implacable patriarchy,
replacing the rebirthing cycles of the Earth goddess with a male sky god who ends
the cycle with death, and reigns in His heaven to this day.
Those living eastward ponder existence. Not in a hurry, they
consider the mysticism born of astronomy and mathematics. They write poetry.
Those sweeping westward drive more peaceful people ever
closer to lands end where escape is no longer possible. Those who can’t run
fast enough they exterminate.
Those living eastward worship a pantheon of gods, male,
female, and elephant for good measure.
What do you see? Two images, two ways of seeing, both deriving
from one language. Long before writing Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World on my two-month-long, 3,000-mile passage through India, I came across a temple, perhaps as far south as Madurai, where in the forecourt (an architectural splendor which in the West might be called a cloister) I came upon 46 side shrines (we might call them side chapels) adorned with exquisite frescoes, each housing the identical sculpture—having about the dimensions of a street hydrant—of the lingam and yoni. It was early morning, and yet long before my arrival, the devout had sprinkled each of the 46 icons with a cascade of warm, liquefied butter, and adorned it with flowers.
Although appearances talking about my previous book, Devil’s Tango: How I Learned the Fukushima
Step by Step took me to the Great Lakes States where thousands of Minutemen
silos are still kept on hair-trigger alert, and where recently a major accident
damaged one of these to the tune of millions of dollars, and resulted in the
demotion of several military personnel, I had never visited such an
installation in real life.
Over the past many years, many activists have demonstrated
against the use of these weapons of mass destruction—one of the first being
Carl Kabat (still at it in his 80s, still risking arrest) with whom I occasionally
corresponded during his long months in jail—none of them have thought to adorn any
Minutemen with warm, soothing liquefied butter prior to adorning them with
petals.
Sunday, January 24, 2016
WORDS TO MEND A WORLD
SCHEDULE OF FEBRUARY APPEARANCES
February 1 – S.F. Occupy Forum at 6 PM
Global
Exchange
2017
Mission St. at 16th Street 2nd floor
San
Francisco
February 13 - PEN WEST at 3 PM
home
of Margret Schaefer
1 Quail Avenue, Berkeley
RSVP
& directions: margretschaefer@mac.com
February 25 – Ethnic
Studies Library at 5:30 PM
30
Stephens Hall (downstairs)
University of California
info: 642-3947
To create peace in the
world, how radically would we have to change our thinking?
info: 642-3947
Whenever I talk about Apology
to a Whale: Words to Mend a World, I find new ways of approaching a complex
subject, and new approaches to my audiences. January 24 addressing an audience
of peace activists, I asked for a show of hands: how many folks have
volunteered for various kinds of peace activism? And of those folks, how many
are convinced that by nature, humans are irredeemably warlike, making conflict a
“done deal?”
The good news is that humans have not always been warlike,
but to support that view we have to search before history, before HIS story, to a time before patriarchy
overtook the world.
I love talking about this book, how I started with a
question, and an intuition, and how more and more my research took on the
character of a detective story, an investigation of a crime which took place
some six thousand years ago, and whose consequences are still being felt throughout
the entire world today.
Links to some of the
interviews I have given so far include:
Kate Raphael on
“Women’s Magazine” on KPFA: starts at 12:00 minutes in
Lisa Savage
interviews Cecile Pineda for Went 2 the Bridge:
https://went2thebridge.blogspot.com/2016/01/interview-cecile-pineda-author-of.html
Pineda talks to Tom
Klammer at KKHI: http://tellsomebody.libsyn.com/apology-to-a-whale-words-to-mend-a-world
MAKING IT WORK
This month, I’ve happened on three places in the world where
people have allowed themselves new (and very old) ways of thinking:
Kalamazoo, Michigan:
In 2005, anonymous donors initiated a program called Promise, that guarantees any high school student with acceptable
grades free college tuition at a public, in-state school. Of Kalamazoos
students, 44% are African American, one in three falls beneath the national
poverty level, and one in twelve is
homeless. The program has re-vitalized a hollowed out community where most of
the large business have shut down, been outsources, or acquired by larger
corporations. But since its inception, the program has changed the spirit of
Kalamazoo. It has motivated students, teachers, and families. It has prompted
teachers to revise their teaching schedules to provide students with remedial
work in math and reading, increasing grade proficiency by at least one grade.
But most impressive is the systemic change it has brought to
the entire city, extending to the nearby suburbs. From the long-range returns
to the community by an educated, innovative work force, a higher tax base and a
more energized business environment. Fringe
benefits have included better nutrition for children, better housing, medical
care, and universal pre-kindergarten programs.
It has stopped urban flights, and
fostered the construction of new schools both in Kalamazoo itself and in
surrounding suburbs. It has attracted more students, and with each new student,
guaranteed another $7,250 a year from the state. New teachers can be hired for
every additional 25 students, and hundreds have been hired so far. The district
has been able to upgrade existing facilities, and passed bond issues to finance
the construction of new schools.
A high dropout rate persists despite these changes. One-third
of students failed to graduate, and a disproportionate number of them are Black
males, a phenomenon which suggests that such students still find school
programs irrelevant to their lives. But the good news is that Kalamazoo’s
Promise program has spread to at least 25 American cities, among them
Pittsburgh, Denver, Peoria, and Ventura to name a few. For more background go to
Albuquerque, New
Mexico: In 2015 the City of Albuquerque initiated There’s a Better Way,
a program to reduce homelessness. The homeless policy of many other cities, San Francisco and
Berkeley among them, seeks to penalize poverty, an archaic holdover from
Plymouth Rock, and of the Puritan legacy in American culture that upholds the
belief that if folks are poor, it must be because they deserve it; and if
people are rich, they don’t need to share. But a few cities, Albuquerque among
them, has a mayor, Richard Berry, who thinks that housing people makes more sense than citing and jailing them, and sending
them to the ER in health emergencies.
What’s interesting about Albuquerque’s program is that the city partners with a
program already in place, St. Martin’s Hospitality Center, the non-profit that
connects folks with housing, employment and mental health services. It pays the
salary of Will Cole, a van driver, who trolls the city’s streets once a week,
looking for homeless folks who may prefer working for a day tidying up the city
at $9.00 an hour to panhandling on the streets. But most remarkably, a video
shows Cole, who is Black, shaking hands with all the folks he meets and
treating them with consummate courtesy
and respect.
Blue and white signs have been posted at major intersections listing a 311
number and website where panhandlers can connect with services, Not only:
motorists can visit the website, too, and donate to local shelter, food bank,
or the employment fund that pays for the day-workers’ wages!
Bayt Ghazy, Yemen: “I
would carry him over my back and run amongst the people.” So said the
brother of a man soon to be released after 13 years from imprisonment at the
age of 17 in the hell-hole of Guantanamo back to his small village in Yemen. I
have saved the best for last: a visit to Fahd, and to a paradise-on-Earth, a
village in the country Saudi Arabia, with the complicity of the United States
and Britain, is bombing back to the stone age
"Waiting for Fahd:One Family’s Hope for Life Beyond Guantanamo." Your visit to this village will
be a short one (no more than 10 minutes) but to those who have lived there all
their lives, truly there is nothing closer to paradise on Earth. As his waiting
wife says: “God will bless him because he will be released and we can live on
Earth together.”
Monday, January 4, 2016
WORDS TO MEND A WORLD
SCHEDULE OF JANUARY
APPEARANCES
Cecile Pineda will be talking about Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World and signing books
during the month of January:
January 17: Silk Road
House, 1944 University Avenue between MLK Jr. Way &
January 23: San
Francisco Mime Troupe, 855 Treat Avenue at 22nd Street on San
Francisco, Saturday, January 23 at 2:30 PM. Space is limited. Please call first
to reserve your place (415) 285-1717.
January 24: Berkeley
Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, Cedar at Bonita Streets, Sunday,
January 24 at 7 PM. The evening is a fund raiser for the Drone 4 whistleblowers.
The event is wheelchair accessible. For information call
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