i just saw a picture of new york city.

i was overwhelmed. i very much so am happy living in a small mountain town with out skyscrapers or subways, without rush hour or hordes of anonymous people passing you left and right every minute of each day.

give me this quite mountain town, this center of agriculture supplies for the campesinoes, give me my friendly net cafe operators and give me my amazing nicaraguan mother, families, and friends any day of the week over new york city.

for some reason, on ometepe last week, i was scared about this upcoming year, scared i might not fit in, i might not make it, might not hack it, maybe today was just a good day. Maybe the gods are smiling on me and moon is waxing in my direction.

Bueno. Estoy contento.

Demetrius

its been an amazing day.

work started this week, and my first two letters were received positively by Dhyana, my freelance article was accepted and more work was offered to me and i got two letters! how exciting.

I mean, i still havent eaten lunch, but so what, that will happen when it happens. i found great information about travelling and connected with some other people about travelling and i think im feeling really good about what im doing right now. and knowing that, having that confidence and resounding faith in my path. my path, which i am creating.

creating. i like that work, how it sounds, and feel positive because i am doing. yeah. im going to put more of this out in some more thoughts later, but right now im going to eat. ride and drink some water and maybe write a letter. sweet.

hugs and kisses
demetrius

Students in Chile take to the streets to protest cuts in their educational system, peek at the pictures.

un poblador que no se preocupa de lo que posa en su municipio, ni busca involucrarse en las soluciones: no es ciudadano activo.

Legislation supporting Fair Trade Certified Goods has been introduced into the NJ State Legislature.

The South Jersey Fair Trade Alliance is very excited to inform you
about Bill #AR178 to support Fair Trade in the State House! The bill
can be viewed here.

The Bill to support fair trade was submitted by Assemblyman Frank Blee
and has been assigned to the State Government Committee. The Bill is
asking that the food service providers for the State House complex
serve Fair Trade coffee, tea and chocolate. It is also intended to
inform legislators and the public about the current crises that small
farmers are enduring because of the unfair prices that they receive.
It also acknowledges that Fair Trade is a viable solution to the
problem.

Currently there are millions of small farmers that are selling their
goods below the cost of production while the coffee industry is seeing
record profits. According to the U.S. State Departments 2001 report,
they found over 15,000 children in Ivory Coast alone that had been
sold into forced labor on coffee, cocoa and cotton plantations. The
report also found an estimated 250,000 children working in unsafe
conditions such as using machetes, applying pesticides and herbicides
without protection in the west African region.

The Fair Trade certification ensures that there is no child labor, a
living wage is paid, environmental sustainable practices must be
implemented, and there must be democratic organization and safe
working conditions. This is just some of the criteria that must be
met. We encourage everyone to call their Assemblyman regardless if
they are the ones listed below because at some point in the near
future it will come up for a full vote.

You can support the South Jersey Fair Trade Coalition´s (SJFTC) work to get this legislation passed in the NJ Legislature by contacting your representative - Find your representative here. - or contact the SJFTC directly through email: southjerseyfairtrade@hotmail.com or by phone: (609) 713-7272.

Once, I walked down a street in Madurai, India and I saw an elephant drinking Coca-Cola. Then I showed the elephant to Lawrence. We had the worst conversation - ever - about believing people. I hated that walk. That conversation ruined my memory of the elephant drinking Coca-Cola.

Once I sat on a train with the door open as the moon glowed lusciously over a rapidly moving Indian landscape. Katrin told me this why she travelled. I didnt need to say anything just being there with her was an agreement.

just some things i want to add.

does anyone want a CRS Fair Trade postcard?

and to continue my racism thoughts with that it is not only systematic but institutionalized and profound.

"Its no good to go to Costco not Walmart unless you tell Walmart why you aint going there." Jim Hightower, American Populist.

The British as they wrote and rewrote english reduced the importance of the subjunctive clause - a clause which is used to express hypotheticals, dreams, wishes and anything that is not precise, exact or sure or unknown - inorder to control people better and to limit the expanse of our thought process for those that think in english. they wanted us to stop dreaming so that we could only think in black and white, in rules, so that we could be controlled easier. Fucked up. Think about that.

and finally:

Donald Rumsfield used to be a CEO of a pharmacutical company, Searle Pharmacuticals.

This is my friend Kayla's website, she takes pictures. Good pictures. You should look at them.

life is flexible; a joyous conflagration of unbridled emotions and improbable occurences that bring shocking moments of clarity and horror to the forefront of my vision. keeping me uncomfortably moving forward.

i wish that we were living in the same place right now, cause living without her has been worse than not knowing her. seeing pictures of her felt as if someone trying to pull my heart out of one of those games in supermarkets with the robotic arm, always missing, but pulling at the flesh every time. i just want to hold her and talk about everything that has just happened. Oh. I miss you. I want you here. I cannot wait to see you.

Mangos! I eat mangos almost everyday down here and reading about them in india made me so happy! Kind of odd cause i never got to eat mangos while in india, only drink the delicious.

Whats everyones favorite way to eat a mango?

Here is the prompt:

The objective of this work is to construct realities about how young American women build worlds of their own from an obsession with body image and societal pressures in an effort to maintain a cultural standard of body image. This work makes references to female culture and how prettiness is embedded in material things that women use and have used as developing children. For instance, jewelry boxes open to reveal a pretty ballerina dancing gracefully. Often there is angelic-like music playing in synch to the ballerina’s movement. A fantasyland is created every time the box is opened, transplanting the woman into a psychological world consumed by artificiality. I am interested in how these milestones in female culture became established, who invented them and how they have survived through generations of women. I am also interested in how this in-your-face prettiness has affected women’s self esteem, subconscious thoughts and daily behaviors. Furthermore, why do most young women like to feel pretty? Is this general attitude rooted in the nature of womanhood, or has society influenced women so heavily through media, material consumption, and gender roles that are placed on developing girls to the extent that these ideals have become embedded in how women think and perceive?

And here is what I spit out:

Wow, ok i can give you a little on that, cause im kind of short for time and with the time change i dont even know if this is going to reach you.

but living here and seeing women in this culture and also seeing them in india, beauty has totally moved in a different direction for me. i see women here do almost anything for mens approval, its a social thing, cause i have and havent seen that in india and the states, europe too. Here, within the context of machismo women are placed below men in relation to power and are consistently looking for men to support, affirm, or validate their existence. Just being a man here gives me more visible power than i recieve from being a man in the states. Nicaraguan women come close to falling all over me. I sit strongly in the cultural social camp on this. I have seen different cultures do different things to different babies, how could the same baby speak a different language just by being born in a different place? If culture can shape how we express our thoughts, culture can shape how we choose to display ourselves and how we choose to act in society. What interests me as a question is whether we choose these roles? Or these gender roles and stereotypes are forced upon us?

How is the image of women and how women see themselves in comparison to men or under the scrutiny of beauty affected by people who are begining to actively cut into deep rooted gender roles and create different possibilites of existence?

American women, wow. I feel both knowledgable and stupid about the subject. I feel out of context too and think because of that its going to be hard for me to say anything.

The question I like best though is: Why do young women or people like to feel pretty? Because it feels good to be acknowledged by someone else, to have our existence and our appearance approved by someone else. Lacking community in the states, some parts of the states depending on race, class, and gender, we lack the support of other people in our daily existence, we have no one to tell us that we are looking goof, would be a good father, or that someone would be lucky to date us or marry us. I think that while those statements reinforce gender roles which are problematic, those statements also calm and soothe a battered American psyche and are much needed, I like to be told that im pretty because it makes me feel less alone in the world. I also believe that not just young women like to feel or be told that they are pretty.

Talking about the nature of anything is challenging as having an objective base to refer to or start from is often impossible. Again, different societies produce different results in people and places, depending, so I believe that it is society that shapes and reinforces these roles. You can see in the states how that changes and drifts as our culture does the same, you can also see the same in europe. But in more traditional cultures, by traditional i mean less affected by globalization and external ideas, you can see that the ideas of womanhood and manhood are static, that they are not really changing so much and that to me, indicates that ideas of identity are handed down generation by generation through societally enforced gender images and roles.
Growing up in a heavily gendered society, as we have, though less and less as time goes by, shapes ones ability to think and percieve. I think perception and thinking are manifestions of culture. My perceptions and thought process has been constantly changing as i explore and learn about new cultures. I think that no matter the environment we would grow up in our thoughts and perceptions would be shaped by that place and that setting.

I dont have the time, but i love this question and will think about it all day: I am also interested in how this in-your-face prettiness has affected women's self esteem, subconscious thoughts and daily behaviors.

so, the other day in class, meg and brit and i were talking about racism after being spurred on by federico. so, they say "racism is a problem and its systemic and overwhelming" it was at that point that i became frustrated, i mean these conversations frustrate me in general, talks about racism, globalization, sexism, and other forms of oppression. i want to talk about these things. i want to discuss and forward criticisms and action plans to fuck up oppressors, learn from the oppressed and create alternatives, i want to do those things, but so often i find that the conversations are boring circle jerks and not really worth having.

maybe they need to be had with the right people, maybe there just needs to be action and little talk, maybe there needs to be more listening by white folk and more talking by folk of color, and hell maybe there needs to be nothing. i dont know. but i want there to be something and im not sure what it is.

im young and i dont know alot of stuff, im not going to pretend like i do. not my place. but i want to move this conversation forward. but how.

maybe its a matter of searching out the dialogue, working with or just reading work from groups that are consistently actively working to destroy racism and groups are mainly people of color. i think that for me, people of color have been my best teachers. and i know that some people say and see the value in white only groups for expression and working out internalized racism, fine, sure, do that i say, but make you sure you are also working to cultivate friends, allies, and people who arent white. hanging out in all white antiracist groups is the same as hanging out in your all white suburb, sure theres no racism here, well yeah, cause there are no people of color there.

ok lunch time.

i really enjoyed this article about recycling. comprhensive and informative, well written and with good clear information about how to recycle damn near everything. get to it.

From Emagazine.com:

"Don’t throw away those exercise videos and ubiquitous AOL CDs. Jim Williams wants you to mail old videotapes and CDs to him, so that more than 40 disabled staffers at his ACT Recycling in Columbia, Missouri can recycle them. And, oh, don’t toss out those used Fed-Ex envelopes or broken smoke detectors; their manufacturers take them back for recycling.

Indeed, these days, it seems that more cast-offs than ever can be recycled. No matter where you live, you can recycle a wide range of discards—aseptic juice packages, printer cartridges, ordinary batteries, iPods, PDAs, and even cell phones.

Surprised? Recycling has leap-frogged ahead, meaning if you haven’t checked the recycling scene since the mid-1990s, it’s possible that much of what you thought you knew is wrong. Not only can you recycle more things, but your discards are very much in demand, perhaps more than you realize." More...

amazing. things.


the position with the centro de idiomas was offered. i am thinking on it. there are factors to consider.

so we know that within american culture racism is systemic, we know that its wrong. what now?

and angry annoyed, just became because...that space is empty. and im being prevented from filling it. i...


to the drifters
demetrius

excerpt from email.


this shit -

"She said that I am seeing the world through the eyes of a twenty year old .. that I'll 'see one day' when our country becomes a third world country."

infuriates me. its as if immigrants or other people, other workers are destroying the benefits that living in the US offers. its as if we, the college student radicals or progressives, are tearing down things that benefit humanity. its as if people think that we are actively engaged in some conspiracy to democratize poverty(gioconda belli) not democratize access or improve everyones living, working and loving conditions.

when she says stuff like that, when people say stuff like that, its so clear that they arent thinking. arent thinking of the governments and the corporations that are democratizing poverty by concentrating wealth and power in their few dirty hands. its that bullshit, its the people versus people bullshit that is killing us. that is seperating us and keeping us from being strong, its that fucking bullshit that is turning the US into a thirld world country not the people who are coming here to live and work and love. its wars and greed, not labor and love that are changing our reality for the worse. its government cuts to state funds that makes your mom lose her jobs, its lack of access to health care that is ruining your moms health not immigrants, not people but governments and employers.

aye and im here in solidarity with everyone marching this weekend for peace and freedom in the US and worldwide.