doing the right thing

SHARING

/ janpriddyoregon / 4 Comments

David Brooks, as is typical, almost gets the point: “Poverty has been the norm through most of human history,” he wrote in The New York Times a few days ago. “

The question is not ‘Why is there poverty?’ but ‘Why is there wealth?’”

Edward Curtis photo of a Kwakwaka’wakw potlatch with dancers and singers. Kwakwaka’wakw people in a wedding ceremony, bride in centre. Photo taken by Edward Curtis, 1914. Film footage of this same event was used in Curtis’ feature film In the Land of the Head Hunters [also called In the Land of War Canoes]. This image is in the public domain. Note: The film itself is infamous for inaccuracies. “Some aspects of the film do have documentary accuracy: the artwork, the ceremonial dances, the clothing, the architecture of the buildings, and the construction of the dugout, or a war canoe reflected Kwakwaka’wakw culture. Other aspects of the film were based on the Kwakwaka’wakw’s orally transmitted traditions or on aspects of other neighboring cultures. The film also accurately portrays Kwakwaka’wakw rituals that were, at the time, prohibited by Canada’s potlatch prohibition, enacted in 1884 and not rescinded until 1951.”
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MINDFULNESS

/ janpriddyoregon / 5 Comments

PE was the hardest class for me all the way through public school. Girls were not much encouraged to play sports in the 50s and 60s, of course. Outside the school day, I rode my bike everywhere, climbed trees and a rope all the way to the top of the gym, nearly drowned in Echo Lake, and later learned to swim but not the kick-turn or water skiing (failed both). During the school day I was teased and bullied and sexually assaulted before I was ten. Ellen and I were always chosen last for playground softball. I learned shame and fear in grade school. Junior high was not much better. I was told I had ugly hands, still couldn’t throw, and the play on my name Priddy still led to many chants of “Janice Ugly.” High school was better because I liked the uneven parallel bars and a bio-feedback unit that taught us how to fully relax our body and focus/unfocus our minds. I imagine what I learned then—the only useful thing I ever learned in school PE classes—might be called mindfulness today.

It took me from “Think how the other person must feel” to “Be mindful of how you feel.”

What you might think you see at left in my photograph of this sandstone headland?—yeah, I see it too.

I am about to write about detail from my real life. I ramble. I wade into shallow waters. Be warned.

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