The deep south and the Afro-Americans

Needs revising
So, there I was with a bag full of interests in my closet waiting to be opened, to seek adventures and to see what the world out there is hiding. I felt like I was in a pimple on God's ass - totally removed from everything wild, crazy, and fun.

In 2003, I decided to go to Arkansas. It wasn't me who came up with the choice of that state. Arkansas sounded like Kansas at the time and I was prepared for the worst, but I didn't really care. To be honest, I didn't know anything about the state but that it was in the deep south and that is where I wanted to go.

You see, when I was kid, it wasn't only the 'Indians' I was obsessed with. It was also Afro-Americans and blues and jazz. This admiration also has roots in the stories my mother told me. I can't remember the title of the story, but it was about an African boy who one day sat on a whale and traveled the world on its back. Then, my dad told me about Uncle Tom's Cabin. Then there was Jim who escaped from the plantation and sailed on the raft with Huckleberry Finn.

Then, my father introduced Miles and Coltrane and old blues men records that he brought from his sea adventures.

There was something about these stories....I felt it when I was little although I couldn't name it...it was more a subconscious thing. But there was something powerful that I felt. It was this strength in the characters, in the blues men sang, in the jazz musicians playing so deeply immersed in their feelings and thoughts...there was something that is not SAD, hopeless or miserable, but strong, wise, and mysterious.

The romantic naivety of the story atmosphere soon broke apart when I dived into the history books about the Afro-Americans and found what the white race did to Africans, who even after building "America" in horrible conditions as slaves and degraded people never became Americans but a hyphenated minority, just like all other minorities there. So much for your melting pot! As far as I see it, nothing in America melts. Maybe on the surface, but the inside is still a salad of particles oiled by the white race, and will never melt.
Those books really made me want to puke on the human existence....

Anyway, I was not allowed to watch much TV as a kid- especially not in the evening, when it was bed time. But I remember once, years and years ago, we had this channel in Slovenia. Just for a few months and then it got canceled. It was Sky One - an American or a British channel, I can't remember which. But I remember as freshly as if it was yesterday...One Sunday evening, a series of films began, and it was called Roots. The films were inspired by a novel of the same name, Roots, written by Alex Haley. It started out with a black man running into the dark jungle somewhere in Africa, trying to escape from people who were after him with ropes and chains. He could not escape and was transported to America on a slave ship. That man's name was Kunta Kinte. I will never forget it. Memories come back vividly now. I had goose bumps then and I have goose bumps now. Anyway, he was enslaved on a cotton plantation in Virginia. Soon, he tried to escape, but was caught. His punishment disabled him from ever escaping again - his master cut off his foot.
The series of films were about Kunta Kinte's descendants trying to survive in the cruel world ruled by white Americans. They tried to abolish slavery, they fought for their rights after the abolition, fought the Jim Crow laws and the ugly claws of segregation...all this while trying to keep their dignity and pride. Haley, through a history of one family, captured the history of an entire race of people whose names and identities were stolen from them.

I watched the movies as a kid, and tried to read the book when I got a little older. I quit,though. Over 600 pages takes some of your motivation away...It takes a hell of an exciting story for me to finish if it has over 600 pages....

But to come back to my story...I needed to see the old south. And these stories from my childhood strongly enhanced my travels.

Coming to the deep south, I was first shocked by the humidity and the heat. I thought I would die at first. Just imagine slaves and workers working through the day on the fields for hours on end...day by day...IN THIS UNBEARABLE HEAT!!!! .... Nowadays, people stay in more than they are outdoors. I learned to like the heat of the South. Somehow, my body liked the heat and the humidity, so I wandered around constantly, having the streets all to myself, cars honking at me, people yelling out of their windows how crazy I was to walk...There were no sidewalks...but that didn't stop me from exploring....Soon, I found those supposedly extinct juke joints where Afro-Americans play their music and just sing sing sing...no pompous lights or tables....no stage or lights...no mike...no speakers...no toilets...no nothing. Just pure music and soul. And fun, of course.

The Mississippi Delta was just as I expected it would be. Mississippi and Alabama are the poorest states in America...but certainly my favorite - next to Louisiana and California. ....

But more about that in the next post.

See ya there.

A prelude to my adventures

NOT FINISHED

I used to be a nasty kid (you would never guess, would you??!!) We lived right next to a river and my sister, our neighbors' daughter, and I were the only girls in the neighborhood. My sister liked New Kids on the Block, Jason Donovan, and pink dresses, so she was seldom my 'hang-out-and-play buddy'. Our neighbor Spela was her best friend, so, my only option for wild adventures was turning to the remaining kid population of our neighborhood - boys. Preferring playing with insects and animals to dull dolls, I already had a good predisposition to becoming something that is not what the society names 'a girl', I became a tom-boy of the neighborhood. I always had a boyish hairstyle, cut very short; I was wearing torn and dirty jeans, and I rode that cool BMX bike, and the good old Kekec, of course.

As you can imagine, in a neighborhood packed with boys, dolls, tea parties, playing teachers, and wearing mother's high heels were out of question. Especially for a tom-boy. Even if I had the desire to play with toys of the kind, I didn't because I needed to keep my reputation. So, most of the times we played 'Indians' in a ruined bunker from the WWII. We built tee-pees, slept in them if our parents allowed us (which happened close to a zero), we colored bird feathers and wore them in our caps or tied them to our heads; animals were our main attraction. My mother would find snakes and lizards in my pockets when doing laundry. Sometimes I came home having a strange and mysterious smell, walking through mud and this strange type of grass that has a terrible odor and she would take me out of the apartment and wash me with the garden hose. I escaped home several times, starting when I was 5. All of this not because my family would be unloving or uncaring (on the contrary!), but simply because in my imagination, I was Huckleberry Finn. Vinetou. I was Geronimo. I was Crazy Horse and Pocahontas.

I didn't care for anything but maps and stories when I was a child. My father sailed the world twice before I was born. He would read maps to me when he put me to sleep. My mother would tell stories. Lots and lots and lots of stories. She is an amazing story teller and I wouldn't let her away without at least one. Huckleberry Fin and Winetou were my favourites. They also offered a lot of wild ideas that I did not think crazy at the time. This is why my friends and I built our own raft and wanted to escape down the river. We got caught before we did it and there was some serious spanking going on. The neighborhood was not far from the power station where my father worked at the time, and he constantly warned us about the dangers of that part of the river.

Playing 'indians' was a lot of fun. ...Those men with bows and arrows, speaking with low and calm voices made such an impression on me that I decided, as a little girl that I wanted to be an 'Indian'....Little did I know about the real situation. Growing older, I was more and more interested in the spiritual brave 'Indians', and searched for information and ways to get to them somehow. Of course, what was in my imagination did not turn out to be the truth. Karl May never even saw an Indian when he wrote the book Vinetou. And even worse, 'Indians' practically didn't exist anymore....

Is bush a comedian or an idiot???Do we have to think twice???

http://24ur.com/naslovnica/ekskluziv/ekspres/20070508_3096983_60013565.php

This is something you would like to see if you are amused by Bush's stupidity and his SPEECH DISABILITIES....He seems to be amused by it himself..maybe you will be, too...It seems that Bushisms (there is even a name for it!!!) have become the target entertainment....

He certainly has become the court jester of the world. Doesn't that make us wonder about the politicians we choose to govern our countries...

Learning new words and giving them home in my active vocabulary :-)

The only way I can think of learning new words is by trying to use them in as many sentences as I can. I will do that every day (I hope I can manage). Over a period of time, I will try to repeat all of them by using them in even more sentences. I always try to learn a new word by collocating it to others. I think there's no point in learning a word on its own, because there is a danger of collocating it with wrong words. That is why I only use dictionaries that have lots of examples.

So, here we go...the 5 words for today are:

• We went to Egypt for the summer holidays and were shocked by the abysmal living conditions.
• After his mother died, he was in abysmal misery.
• Ignored by authorities and communities, the gypsies in Romania lived in abysmal poverty.
• I did not enjoy it. It was an abysmal performance.
• The weather was abysmal.

I like the way the word atrocity sounds. But I have no idea what it means. Let's check it out.

• The invading army committed many atrocities.
• Hitler not only committed and act of atrocious cruelty, but committed crimes against all humanity.
• Americans were behaving atrociously in the Vietnam war. Just watch The Apocalypse Now by Coppola. It is a very vivid example of how atrocious the behavior of people can get when they think they are God.

I don't like the way the word sound anymore. It's meaning ruins it!

• What we wanted this summer was going away from crowded cities and beaches. What we wanted was a quiet little place in the back of beyond.
• We fell for the commercial of the gorgeous little cottage on the edge of the town, but in the end we found that it was in the back of beyond. It took us 2 hours to get to the nearest shop.

• I get very annoyed if I am on a train, trying to read a kick ass novel, and some hectic woman starts to cackle.
• He seemed like an interesting fellow, but every now and then he cackled like a madman, which shocked me every time.
• I prefer giggling to cackling, because the latter makes me fall into a shock.

So far, I've go abysmal, atrocity and cackle. I will try to make a sentence out of all three.
The army devastated the land, behaving atrociously towards the hostages left behind. One of the soldiers cackled like a madman every time a hostage tried to escape but couldn't.

Oh, dear. All of these words are so depressing. I don't think it is even possible to use them in a more positive meaning, because of their negative connotation, except maybe the word cackle. Although, I can't imagine anyone not being annoyed by it....Let's move on to some more positive words this time.

• We discerned a sail on the horizon.
• She is incapable of discerning right from wrong.
• Walking for miles on end without a living soul, we finally discerned twinkly lights and a few houses in the distance.
• Tina finally discerned a figure approaching through the fog and we were rescued.
• Walking through the kitchen we discerned a strange odor. (we can discern with other senses than the eyes as well!)
• We had no clue why he did it. We were unable to discern his motives.

I can already tell that this is going to be a tough one to remember - or to use in my active vocab. I need to come back to that one...I hope I will discern the word through the huge chunk of other words:-)

• That was a nifty joke! You have a clever mind.
• He's always full of nifty ideas.
• I bought a nifty dress for my prom.
• Luckily, I sold my car for a nifty price.