Who you think you are, be really. Peace Love Compassion Anger Fear Judgment Basket Bucket Honor
Crime Rape Integrity Grace DisGrace Selfishness Us Them Mercy Rigidity
Now Now Black grey White (What do you think it means to Be Kind To Each Other?) Freedom versus Utopia
Good gray Evil Sacred grey Profane Peace gray Fear Asleep grey Awake Violence gray Understanding Pride grey Humility The Art of Rape Sacrifice Innocent Real gray Deception Gift grey Seduction
Truth Hope Love
-Betti O.'s debut in directing/choreographing shows off real talent and provided a great Friday Night Date Night in Junction City's Hoover Opera House.
I'm exhausted-- my toe was tappin and my head was popping, nonstop--i'm sure i lost weight--so here's a couple quick impressions,
gotta hit the hay,
more tomorrow.
BTW, the clever opening- the musicians sat as in a perfect postcard, then- well, i won't tell you -- but pay attention! who thought of that? wonderful.
alan drew was amazing.
Tracy Birdsong, Justin Black, Stacy Brown, Janice R Dowell, and Alan Drew were alternately Beautiful, hilarious, lovely, and nuaced. I was going to say how funny Janice Dowell was until i thought back and realized how each performer had Completely Pleased the audience in both singing, humor, and supportive actions, and each brought the house to to loud appreciation.
The House said no video or flash photography, so i only used a nonflash quiet camera; Man i wish i could have taken some time and caught the beauty of these actors. The set was truly gorgeous. The musicians were absolutely top notch.
It was Clever -- which means
smart actors and wonderful direction. O, Betti.
My only complaints: wishing i could have heard the voices louder in the back of the theater; wishing betti o had a cameo walk on, wishing i could have taken some good pics because each cast member was alluring and beautiful.
You must have stroked a rabbit
Soft
Softer than milkweed
Softening your heart
So soft that no bump registered
The truck drove smoothly on as if not even a pebble had been under
The wheel
That instantly
Sent the life of that beautiful rabbit elsewhere
(I know there is no sin here
But
On this Friday after the Good Friday
As I drive into town
And these strange hot tears keep streaming down my face
I feel Buddha looking this way
maybe wondering
If we still shed tears
If we ever shed tears
For the Bigger Life we took
One cannot write about it all the time. One tires of writing, and reading, and thinking about it. Still, it must be chronicled, repeated, and from time to time, shouted. Here is a column from Mary Sanchez of the Kansas City Star:
excerpt: (Posted on Mon, Apr. 11, 2011)
Libya proves that war still means mass rape
By MARY SANCHEZ
"You can read about it in the Bible, and it remains true to our very day. Rape is an integral part of war, a favored tactic to demoralize an enemy army or population.
Mass rape is never quite acknowledged in the glorious accounts of the victors, and the shame of it impels the defeated not to dwell on its memory. Often it’s left to historians to dredge up its horrors, or to a handful of victims that demand justice. Only recently has rape in wartime become a topic for sustained discussion, much less systematic prosecution as a war crime.
But now there is Libya and Eman al-Obeidy.
Is her name unfamiliar? If you pay attention to the news on television, you might recognize her strained face and her anguished cries. She is the woman who last month was dragged out of a Tripoli hotel as she desperately tried to relay to international press the story of her kidnap and rape and (and the kidnap and rape of numerous other Libyan women) by henchmen of Col. Moammar Gadhafi.
Despite the risks to her safety, Obeidy bravely made her way to the hotel to tell her story of being raped and sodomized by Libyan security forces. Cameras caught the scene as government thugs beat and kicked reporters who tried to protect Obeidy.
It seems she was picked up at a checkpoint because her accent gave her away as being from the east of Libya, the center of the rebellion against Gadhafi. “Let the men from eastern Libya come and see what we are doing to their women and how we rape them,” are the words Obeidy attributed to her attackers.
Broadcast around the world, the incident forced the Libyan government to follow a hackneyed script of denial and damage control. She’s lying. She’s a drunk, a thief. Then the inevitable: She’s a prostitute. Libyan government operatives circulated a home video of a belly dancer, claiming the dancer was Obeidy and that the tape was a pornographic film.
Right. The world is not buying it.
The truth is that Obeidy is a law school graduate. She’s also fortunate. Her well-timed outburst before international reporters quite possibly spared her life, and may spare her from the fate that awaits most Libyan women who are raped: being shuttered behind closed doors, sent to live in rehabilitation centers as if they were the criminal, not the victim. Obeidy is a symbol now.
Men have long been the main instigators of war, but women often bear its most gruesome scars. A 1996 UNICEF report, titled 'Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War,' declared: 'From [recent] conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina to Peru to Rwanda, girls and women have been singled out for rape, imprisonment, torture and execution. Rape, identified by psychologists as the most intrusive of traumatic events, has been documented in many armed conflicts including those in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cyprus, Haiti, Liberia, Somalia and Uganda.'
Rape has been used as a method of spreading HIV/AIDS, to contribute to ethnic cleansing and human trafficking as women are forced into prostitution... ...We can hope that the bravery of Eman al-Obeidy, her dogged determination to use the media to expose the Libyan regime’s atrocities, will help the world denounce rape as a crime of war." To reach Mary Sanchez, call 816-234-4752 or send email to msanchez@kcstar.com
Running and jumping bassett hounds: too funny. I found myself accidentally on a ksu chat page and found these: at the end is howie, a bassett beagle mix.
