some California(ish) things...

Found out that a friend from college who now lives in CA does some video editing at http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/preps#

And I just found out that an acquaintance from the Amnesty International group I was part of in highschool moved to CA and, among other things, wrote this interesting article:
An open letter to other men...

03/22/07

Today is my mother's birthday.
Today I was driving down to North Carolina, watching sunlight hitting long golden grasses, listening to DATURA

I was thinking about films, like maybe making a film of a road trip and long golden grasses, or else maybe one about snowboarders, like female snowboarders (I have never been snow boarding) or it could be mixed gender, but just not all just guys please, so, people snowboarding, and also, not just people, please, but lots of views of mountains and sky and sunlight. Washington State or Colorado or California could be good places to see again soon...

O Beauty Beauty Beauty...

Here's a discussion of "the exotic." It almost takes me back to my college/university English major days but...with an extra dose of chatty indulgent celebrity gossip!

http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/003897.html

And...just see how the right product works magic in other countries?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxHu54IgKHg&mode=related&search=

And to round things out:

http://www.sawf.org/mezines/sunny/sunny.asp?sec=health&art=Liberalization&title=Liberalization

This is interesting. I was looking for a video of "iiee" and I found the music set to scenes from a movie I meant to check out from the library before I left but never got to...
Devdas/Tori Amos

cool

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you what you think of the dean of West Point, Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, together with a military interrogator named Tony Lagouranis and the group Human Rights First, going to the heads of the program 24, very popular hit show on FOX, to tell them that what they're doing on this program, glorifying torture, is inspiring young men and women to go to Iraq and torture soldiers there, and to stop it?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: And not only that, but it doesn't work. Yeah, Pat Finnegan is one of my heroes.
AMY GOODMAN: So what do you think about that?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I think it's great.
AMY GOODMAN: And have you been involved in the conversation internally at FOX, which runs 24, to stop it?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, as far as I know, they actually put out a call to all the writers in Hollywood. My son's a writer, and he was one of them who got a call. They were all told: stop talking about torture. It doesn't work. So I think it was an effective move by Pat Finnegan.
AMY GOODMAN: So you support it?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/02/1440234

I’m all for lightening up on a lot of the glorified violence on the evening television shows, and I have been for a long time, ever since, in fact, at the age of three, when son of the pastor of a church in NY (older & bigger than I was, very spoiled, not well-disciplined and a real brat) found it great fun to run around chasing after me and pretending to be “The Incredible Hulk.” >:-P

Song

for my sister, and for me, and maybe even for my car, which took me twice to Texas!
Black Dove (Desert Animals version)
Black Dove (Live Tori Footage version)
To do in this life: learn video editing.

Some cool places...

I visited when I was living in Illinois:
World Bird Sanctuary
Cahokia Mounds
Lizzardo Museum
Spring Valley Nature Sanctuary & Farm (most visited park.)
Schaumburg Township District Library (most visited of all and very much missed. Esp. for their foriegn and travel films/video/dvds.)

Dance

Consider...and view...

Some quotes from Chapter 4 of Sacred Woman, Sacred Dance by Iris J. Stewart.

"It is easy to see that if the bodily movements associated with the birth ritual were transposed to the king's palace or a nightclub for the entertainment of men, those same movements would be viewed in an entirely different way. The belly dance in the context of the birth ritual, however, was done not to project eroticism or present woman as a lure but to display a conciousness of the wonder of birth..." (page 83)

"Let me be clear that the text in this chapter, however, that the text in this chapter is not meant to add to the societal programming of women to the maternal mode...this dance has power in all aspects of life" (page 96).

"By moving her body in a way that is at once sensual and at the same time very energetic and strong, without coquetry or seductiveness, the dancer and her dance return us to the very depth of the power of the feminine" (page 95).

This book came to me from a nice used bookstore in Illinois. Which I have now left behind, having recently relocated to Northern Virginia (again...)

And, oh well, I see to my disappointment that half the posts to youtube are no longer available (though sometimes they can be found anyway if one just searches for them) but....if these work...
Bellydance Superstars Performance
and
Sa'diyya Ethnic Fusion / Veil Dar Fusion

Sidenote: I once had a boss who told me that when he was young, his hockey coach made all his players take belly dance and ballet lessons in secret...because it made them better at playing hockey!

Soon I will be living in a house of boys. Or youngish men technically. There is a lot of communality in this house. For example, there is a communal TV. Yay, communal TV. Maybe I will have to expose them to the phenomenon of...

Tito, Egypt's male belly dancer!

I wonder if they would like that? Today I got asked if I would share any food I cooked with the housemates. Apparently the last housemate had an alcohol problem and didn't pay rent and was (perhaps the last straw) also a gourmet chef who made these tempting creations and wouldn't share. Well I told them, yes I would share. But no one sounded very excited about green blender smoothies for some reason. I wonder why? Would they harbor the same lack of enthusiasm about Tito? Sigh. I guess we'll see! Well I bet it would be nice if I cooked or did some baking ;-)HAH!!!