Hong Kong

We long to have a home where civil freedoms are respected, where our children will not be subject to mass surveillance, abuse of human rights, political censorship and mass incarceration.
~Joshua Wong

Saluting the bravery of pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong today. I wish I had good news about them, but the long work continues.

Protest artwork referencing Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (1830)
A Yang for Studio Incendo CC BY 4.0

From 2020:



From a January 3, 2022 article:

Democracy is over in Hong Kong, in other words, and has been for some time now. What Beijing is currently in is a mop-up mode, as it looks to take the vice it has built around the city-state and spin the tightening lever...

Cantopop star and prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Denise Ho was arrested at her home on Wednesday morning by the city’s national security police.

From November 18, 2024: 45 Hong Kong pro-democracy activists are sentenced to jail in city’s biggest national security trial

"Among those handed sentences on Tuesday was Joshua Wong, a former student leader and poster child of the city’s once thriving pro-democracy movement, who shouted 'I love Hong Kong' before he left the dock." CNN

The flip side of unfairness is pure grace

Listening is being able to be changed by the other person.
~Alan Alda

Another Wellness Wednesday rerun today!

Here is an excerpt from a blog post by Mari Andrew, talking about her time as a hospital chaplain: "It’s Unfair and It Doesn’t Make Sense":

The way our culture of offering is set up, the whole-hearted feel like they have something of worth to say to the broken-hearted, the denizens of the healthy think they know more than the sick. Around those who are in pain, people suddenly assume the role of expert: “I suggest feeling your feelings. Be grateful for the good in your life.” Why do the perfectly-fine presume they have tools for the suffering? My supervisor reminded me, “The patients are your teachers. You don’t know more than they do. Other way around.”

It was so hard not to offer anything. I’ve been through enough that I know I shouldn’t try to find a bright side, or explain away the pain, or say “I know how you feel,” but it was extremely uncomfortable to sit with someone my age who was dying, or with the family member of someone who just got very bad news. I was in the position of helping them, and I thought that help meant I had to offer something. I had to leave them with a nugget, a mantra, something brilliant to soothe and uplift them.

But it doesn’t work that way.

read the whole thing here

(With thanks to Ariana.)

Knocking upon your door

The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.
~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

For Music Monday, a song from me to you. James Taylor:

Two poems by Cassian

[Nina] Cassian travelled to the United States as a visiting professor for creative writing at New York University in 1985. During her stay in America, a friend of hers, Gheorghe Ursu, was arrested and subsequently beaten to death by the Securitate for possessing a diary. The diary contained several of Cassian's poems which satirized the Communist regime and the authorities thought to be inflammatory. Hence, she decided to remain in the US.
~Wikipedia entry on Nina Cassian

Happy Poetry Friday, all! Poems by Romanian poet Nina Cassian today.

Preston and Lucy

Nina Cassian: "I switched to literature for children because it was the only field where metaphors were still allowed, where imagination was tolerated and assonance was permitted." (How bad was it in Romania? "A 2006 commission estimated the number of direct victims of the Communist repression at two million people." But Nina Cassian was still writing secret anti-Communist poems, up until she left.)

Morning Exercises
by Nina Cassian

I wake up and say: I'm through.
It's my first thought at dawn.
What a nice way to start the day
with such a murderous thought.

God, take pity on me
-- is the second thought, and then
I get out of bed
and live as if
nothing had been said.

translated by Brenda Walker and Andrea Deletant

***************

A Man
by Nina Cassian

While fighting for his country, he lost an arm
and was suddenly afraid:
'From now on, I shall only be able to do
things by halves.

I shall reap half a harvest.
I shall be able to play either the tune
or the accompaniment on the piano,
but never both parts together.
I shall be able to bang with only one fist
on doors, and worst of all
I shall only be able to half hold
my love close to me.
There will be things I cannot do at all,
applaud for example,
at shows where everyone applauds.'

From that moment on, he set himself to do
everything with twice as much enthusiasm.
And where the arm had been torn away
a wing grew.

translated by Roy MacGregor-Hastie

***************

Karen Edmisten has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Karen!

Addendum: An important message from a country with a terrible prime minister:

Shamsia Hassani

Art changes people's minds and people change the world.
~Shamsia Hassani

For Art Thursday, Afghani graffiti artist Shamsia Hassani:

Hassani’s distinctive style of graffiti – featuring a young woman with closed eyes – appeared on many walls in the Afghan capital, a symbol of social change, empowerment and peace. Much of her work has also been erased.

The artists who have fled Afghanistan remain undeterred and have been creating new work, even in the refugee camps. The ArtLords collective continues to create new pieces in exile and hopes soon to put on an exhibition of works by displaced artists.

“The Taliban can whitewash all our work in Kabul, but we will always have our paint and our brush. We will fight back with that,” says Muhajir.
~Richi Kumar for The Guardian

Buy prints
Artful Resistance: How Afghan Women are Wielding Art Against the Taliban

Quote Journal

I decided to repost some Wellness Wednesday posts. We all need to pump up our wellness.

No quotes needed up here today.
~me

Unfolding

Today for Wellness Wednesday, I'm thinking about keeping quote journals. Do you already save quotes or poems that have special meaning for you? Words that you might find solace in, or just thoughts that you want to return to? I started keeping quotes in high school. I still have my first pocket journal around somewhere, and I still remember some of the quotes I chose back then. Here are a few that I've saved more recently:

A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.
~Rebecca Solnit

Spring has returned.
The Earth is like a child that knows poems.
~Rainer Maria Rilke

Ontologically, chocolate raises profoundly disturbing questions: Does not chocolate offer natural revelation of the goodness of the Creator just as chilies disclose a divine sense of humor? Is the human born with an innate longing for chocolate? Does the notion of chocolate preclude the concept of free will?
~David Augsburger

Because you were born into this particular era doesn’t mean it has to be the limit of your experience. Move about in time, go places. Why restrict your circle of acquaintances to only those who occupy the same stage we call the present?
~David McCullough

Our culture is deeply invested in the concepts of inspiration, having big dreams, innate talent, and luck. These four concepts have one thing in common: they require no work. Success in any field requires work. The arts require hours, days, years...
~Julianna Baggott

Pens and their marks

You can be way more creative in a kids’ book. Kids take whatever you tell them as ground-zero. I could say to a kid: “Once upon a time there was a world made entirely out of kites. The people were kites, the trees were kites, and all of the buildings and rivers and mountains were kites too.”

And a kid would be like, “Yes. And then what happened?” No hesitation. That’s priceless.
-Marcus Ewert

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people.
~Henry Miller

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.
~G.K. Chesterton

English bacteriologist Amalia Fleming spent years working on a problem.
When asked why she refused to quit, she answered, "There is an end even to failures." She did finally figure it out.

Pollinating the Stars by Elena Y

Some resources:
* Free Printable Journal pages
* Wikiquote
* Quote Investigator
* Me, being a little cranky about misattributed quotes (Full disclosure: I don't always check to make sure either. I try to think for a minute about whether it sounds like something the person would say, and if I am hesitant, I look it up.)
* Inspiring Quotes for Art Journaling

Lesson from Mrs. Roback

When all is said and done the only thing you'll have left is your character.
~Vince Gill

I don't know how long I will leave these posts up, but I know there's a community of you who are checking these out so this is for you. Since the election, I keep thinking about an experiment my fourth grade teacher did with our class. It was a rough experiment, not one that would have been done in more recent times (I think?).

In the morning, my teacher told us that kids with a certain eye color would be in charge. They could do whatever they wanted to the other kids. It was stuff along the lines of getting them to sharpen their pencils, tie their shoes, generally being bossy, saying things. I don't remember the details, what exactly was said to me or what I said. I think blue-eyed kids were in charge first. I remember being scared.

Halfway through the day, the teacher had things switch and the brown-eyed kids were in charge. She wanted everyone to have a chance to be afraid. I remember being relieved when it was our turn to be jerks -- she hadn't told us at the beginning that we would be switching, so the kids at the beginning didn't hold back.

My teacher wanted us all to see how it felt and how unfair it was. The people who could do whatever they wanted clearly weren't better than everyone else (although I think she told them that they were when it was their turn to be in charge!). Overall, I thought it was a pretty terrible day.

What I keep thinking about is how much some of the kids enjoyed it.