Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
the cassandra pages
words, pictures, and a life
Saturday, November 20, 2004
SOME GOOD THINGS
Oh, we're all so dispirited by the news these days, and posts like the previous one I wrote don't help. So here are a few good things from my day yesterday:
- young knobby sumac shoots covered with velvety fur, just like a young deer's antlers
- a totally blue sky
- clumps of crimson nightshade berries, each with a heavy water droplet refusing to fall
- a group of peeling white birches, so brilliantly white in the afternoon light that it almost hurt my eyes to look at them
- getting less winded and going further on my afternoon hike up the steep hill in back of our house
- spending most of the day doing research and writing about southern evangelicals and realizing I was more interested than depressed
- reading intelligent, thoughtful blog comments
- an email conversation about writing
- hamburgers for dinner, grilled outside in the dark at 38 degrees
An appeal came into my inbox today from CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, asking for letters of objection to be sent to MS-NBC cable television for remarks made by a colleague on Don Imus’ show referring to Palestinians as “filthy animals” and suggesting that they all be killed. This was on November 12th, during a discussion of Yasser Arafat’s funeral. Here’s a transcript of what was said:
DON IMUS: They’re (the Palestinians) eating dirt and that fat pig wife of his is living in Paris. COLLEAGUE: They’re all brainwashed, though. That’s what it is. And they’re stupid, to begin with, but they’re brainwashed now. Stinking animals. They ought to drop the bomb right there, kill ‘em all right now. IMUS: Well, the problem is we have (reporter) Andrea (Mitchell) there; we don’t want anything to happen to her. COLLEAGUE: Oh, she’s got to get out. Andrea, get out and then drop the bomb and kill everybody. COLLEAGUE: Look at this. Animals. Animals!
The appeal went on to say “This is not the first time Imus has been involved in a controversy over anti-Arab and Islamophobic remarks. As early as 1985, he was forced to apologize for referring to Arabs as ‘goat-humping weasels’. (Sunday Mail, 4/21/85) He has also been criticized for using the derogatory term ‘raghead.’ (Accuracy in Media) In a reference to the crash of an Iranian airliner earlier this year that killed 43 passengers, Imus said, ‘When I hear stories like that, I think who cares.’ He then stated: ‘Too bad it wasn't full of Saudi Arabians.’ (National Iranian American Council)”
How on earth are we supposed to ever move toward peace when this sort of hatred is all over the airwaves, unchallenged? And why should the Muslim community be solely responsible for trying to counter it? Why shouldn’t all people of conscience object? Even during the worst days of Vietnam, I don’t remember hearing racist bigotry and hatred on this level from the media – maybe it went on among the military or the hawks, but you didn’t hear it on mass media radio and TV. I know how popular Don Imus is – friends and family of mine listen to him every day, and enjoy his particular brand of “humor”. No wonder our country is so polarized and so filled with fear and hate, with this sort of thing as “entertainment”.
Yesterday, on our way out of the city, we stopped on St. Laurent to do two errands: a run to Haddad, a small, family-run Middle Eastern grocery we've become fond of, and the purchase of two Vietnamese sandwiches for lunch. Both are within a couple of blocks of each other, so we parked in Chinatown and walked. I bought the sandwiches - which are more like subs on French bread, with grilled chicken, white radishes, slivered carrots, cilantro, extremely hot green peppers, and a special sauce that turns this combination of ingredients into something like heaven - and then went back to keep an eye on the car, which had disguised but valuable cameras and computers inside.
Montreal's Chinatown is small, packed, and enterprisingly touristy while also catering authentically to the needs of the local population for everything from travel to banking. Apothecary shops filled with dried herbs and brightly-colored boxes of Chinese patent medicines are chock-a-block with clothing stores selling cheap silk robes and slippers; young rough-looking vegetable vendors, cigarettes dangling from their lips, slice bunches of greens on the street; an old man with a hand-lettered sign offers to tell your fortune; an itinerant musician plays a melancholy one-string lute while, a few steps away, members of Falun Gong meditate and pass out literature. The food is generally good, sometimes terrific, and the narrow streets are crowded with mothers and children, yellow-haired adolescents, shuffling ancients.
I sat outside the Dental Center in the picture above, and watched the people go by. Everyone is trying, it seems, to get by, and even get ahead. Under the Centre Dentaire and its universal tooth were other signs: Bureau de change (currency exchange); Bijouterie (jewelry); watch batteries; cell phones. A steady stream of patients and customers came and went. Even this northern, much smaller Chinatown is, as in the famous movie, a place where a lot goes on that may not be on the up-and-up; I saw some questionable activities in the twenty minutes I sat there, but nothing that seemed to be endangering anyone. Mostly I wondered about the lives of the people who passed by, casting their shadows on the bright wall: these young lovers; this young woman in her skintight jeans and high heels; this old woman; these mixed-race groups of adolescents in hip-hop clothing; this beggar who stops a woman and tells her - what? a sad story? - until she shakes her head "no" and, clutching her purse, continues doggedly on.
Monday, November 15, 2004 A response to elck's unpunctuated-sentence challenge:
Home under a night curtain punched with flying star-holes and the tiny careful slice of moon home to icy grass a key in the lock pink buds on the Christmas cactus home to a fly buzzing near the piano and a bat flying darkly and startled in a bedroom suddenly filled with light.
This is a travel day for us; I've spent the last few hours cleaning and doing laundry and am about to go out and get some food to take back with us. The produce here is better than what we get three hours to the south, although a lot of it comes from the United States. This is puzzling. But even worse has been the realization that this excellent produce spoils a lot faster, even in the refrigerator. I'm not disturbed about that at all - what bothers me is that this indicates that the American produce has been treated much more with preservatives, fungicides, and the like, as well as being shipped and sold when it is less ripe.
In the summers we've historically grown a good deal of our own food, and I've always had an organic garden, so I'm aware of the normal "shelf-life" of untreated produce. But we don't buy organic produce all the time; I've followed the advice that eating lots of fruits and vegetables is good for you and outweighs the dangers of nonorganic, treated produce - if you wash it, peel waxed fruit, and so on. Being a gardener and having studied plenty of biology, though, I know that washing will never remove systemic pesticides, and that plants are absorbent organisms which take in the substances that touch them, including after-harvest treatments to prolong shelf life. Seeing how differently ordinary store produce behaves here, I'm really wondering now what we've been eating all these years, and I am wondering if the two countries have different shipping systems, and different regulations about what preservatives can be used to treat the food supply.
