I’m excited that an art gallery is opening here in Denton. Since Art Prostitute left for Dallas (and then became The Public Trust) almost four years ago, there’s been a vacancy in the art scene that university and city galleries and coffee shop walls couldn’t quite fill. But once again Denton has a space dedicated to showcasing interesting new art–Meme Gallery. And it’s conveniently located next to RGRS, where the gallery will celebrate its opening.

I took a peek at Leti Gomez’s art, and it’s enough reason to come to the show. But the bands should also make for an entertaining evening. Babar’s upbeat Math (?) rock and Final Clubs’ messy, poppy punk pleased a sold-out crowd at Dan’s a few weeks ago and I expect the same this time around (I assume A Portrait of St. Anthony will be fun as well, though I couldn’t find anything about the music … sorry!).

Suffice to say, this will be where the cool kids are in Denton tonight. But I’m sure Austin Swann already told you and 400 (RGRS latest RSVP count) of his other close, personal friends.

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Since gaining independence in 1947, India has been a secular state. But now, as religious fundamentalism grips much of India’s population, the greatest danger to the nation’s extremely strained social fabric may come not from Sikh or Muslim separatists, but from Hindu fundamentalists who are appealing to the 83% Hindu majority to redefine India as a Hindu nation.

IN THE NAME OF GOD focuses on the campaign waged by the militant Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) to destroy a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya said to have been built by Babar, the first Mughal Emperor of India. The VHP claim the mosque was built at the birth site of the Hindu god Ram after Babar razed an existing Ram temple. They are determined to build a new temple to Ram on the same site. This controversial issue, which successive governments have refused to resolve, has led to religious riots which have cost thousands their lives, culminating in the mosque’s destruction by the Hindus in December of 1992. The resulting religious violence immediately spread throughout India and Pakistan leaving more than 5,000 dead, and causing thousands of Indian Muslims to flee their homes.

Filmed prior to the mosque’s demolition, IN THE NAME OF GOD examines the motivations which would ultimately lead to the drastic actions of the Hindu militants, as well as the efforts of secular Indians – many of whom are Hindus – to combat the religious intolerance and hatred that has seized India in the name of God. (www.patwardhan.com)

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This image show us about the copper texture called “BABAR JERUK“

This image is show us about copper texture called “BABAR“

Wouldn’t it be great if everything worked like it did in the books we read to children?  An elephant becomes king after receiving an education in France, homes that are secluded forever are suddenly bombarded and become part of a cityscape, a steam shovel builds itself into a hole and becomes a fixture in the new house.  I mean… what’s not to like about these stories?  Or am I just being overly dramatic when I suggest that maybe these stories have some sort of dark, sick twisted humor that children miss in the first tellings.  Perhaps being an autocratic dictator is cool for elephants, but Babar only goes to Paris after seeing his mother shot by a hunter.  Delightful story?  I think not.  Maybe becoming a house locked in by high rises is cool and all, but the problem is deeper than that, even though the house gets moved to a new empty field the great manifest is just a heartbeat away locking it in there as well.  And, realistically now, what does it teach children to do when they make a mistake other than to turn their bitter lemons into lemonade when they make a mistake.  See the bright side of things?  Sure.

Really, I hope I haven’t ruined the ending of any of these stories for you have you yet to read them.  My main theme is developments that don’t work out for the best.  Elephants who bring dictatorship to the jungle, houses that are encroached on by modernization, and the holes we dig ourselves into and the solutions we have to come up with.  Perhaps these endings are meant to inspire the future generations to fix their problems before they see unfold.  Maybe the best plan of action is inaction.

People who don’t get involved seem to lack something really important, the need to intervene when you feel deeply about something.  One of my coworkers once suggested that I work best when I’m enflamed about how things are unraveling around me.  Maybe I just get pushed into action when I feel there are problems coming down the track.  Obviously, I’m encouraged to do something about them and immediately alleviate the upcoming problems.

I recently stumbled across a story that I wrote about a child who was ignored for the first few months of its life and then was rediscovered by its mother.  Of course, the child had some uncanny ability to take care of itself and was fairly self-sufficient in the few months that had gone by.  My story dwelled even deeper into the problems of development without relationships to prop you up with.  How would language, relationships, love, and your understanding of the world around you occur without meeting another human being.  You see, the child lived alone in a giant house which the mother just ran around in with a great depression for a few months.  Perhaps there was no real moral of the story, even though I never completed it.  Maybe it was just me experimenting with the idea that we really need to be involved more positively (or negatively) in each others lives to encourage social evolution.  Realistically, it was a pretty trite concept.  But the idea still goes that maybe if we were more involved in our own decision making, the end result would be in a more positive direction.

P.S. Beyond today’s post, I’m coming up short with actual topics to write about.  This isn’t going to be a review blog, so even though I love the work of JJ Abrams, I doubt the discussion will ever come to that.  So if you have any refreshing ideas for me, post them in the comments box.  Thanks in advance.

My mother loved books. All kinds of books. Today, our basement is filled with her favorites. Biographies on John F. Kennedy. Art History books. Books about the Oriental Art of Tea. Classics such as Tolstoy, Joyce and Fitzgerald, of which she had her own personal love affair. And one special book, “The Sacred White Elephant”, tucked away in a certain corner, where sometimes I go and sit and flip through the pages. I’m not sure where her love of these creatures came from, maybe years of reading me the Babar books or maybe just her dream of visiting Africa, but she could on forever about how in some cultures they were revered as symbols of power and luck. I do know, that while she would read me the Babar books, she would often begin crying when Babar’s mother was killed by the hunter. Sometimes she would take a few seconds, looking off into the distance, and then she would begin reading again.

Now, I’m left with these books, souvenirs of her former thoughts. Not only was she obsessed with books, but she would dog ear, highlight and write notes in every corner of her texts, making the books her own. I, on the other hand, am so careful while reading, that my books often don’t look read even after days or weeks of toting around my current book.

My mother had several small, meditation books, often read by members of 12-step programs. One of her favorites was “Night Light” by Amy Dean, which is a book of Nighttime meditations. It sat next to her bed, even long after she had left for the hospital, never to return. Last night, I was flipping through it’s pages when I came to yesterday’s meditation and there, in orange marker, were several highlighted passages. I love reading her highlighted lines because it gives me insight into exactly what my mother found important within her readings.

“You will forget your misery; you will remember it as waters that have passed away” Job 11:16. We have fewer pains now. That may not be comfortable, so we invent new pain or dredge up the sludge of the past. As ugly as it may be, it’s still familiar. Tonight, we don’t have to look back. We don’t have to fell misery or pain because it’s familiar. We don’t have to drag out that wallet and look at the images of unhappy times again. Tonight we can leave those spaces in our wallets empty, ready to be filled with new moments to remember.

Wow! I definitely needed to hear that. And as usual, when I need to hear something, if I’m open to the voices around, I hear exactly what I need.

And then I remembered a quote my good friend Kate has traced sketched on the wall above her television. “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”

And I’m reminded that life if constantly full of lessons, sometimes joyful, yet often painful. And probably, if it doesn’t hurt or you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t learning. You aren’t growing. And I want the moments that take my breath away.

And I feel so absolutely blessed that I have so many of those with my mother. And tonight, I can take a few pictures out of my wallet, and begin to replace them with new ones. And in the very back, I’ll tuck away a picture of Babar and his mother. I want to be reminded just a little bit. Because we’re on borrowed time as it is…

Who would’ve thunk that my great ally in life would be a volleyball-slamming, scuba-diving, bungee-jumping, bbq-loving, active, outdoor enthusiast? My boyfriend is many things that I am not. Like good at talking things over, reverse-parallel-parking, and cooking steak. Sometimes I wonder what he sees in this clumsy, indoorsy, craft-nerdsy girl. But he sticks around, patiently, with a sense of humour. And I love him for it.

// gifts for your boyfriend, who still won’t admit to snoring even after you recorded a sample on your mobile phone //





1. country road v-neck tee, $49.95.

2. jamie oliver black “morph” pepper mill, £15.00, because he loves cracked pepper on everything.

3. badger balm sore muscle rub for his post-gym muscle burn, $24.95. Available at David Jones. Badger Balm, that is, not muscle burn.

4. Babar poster au chapeau $395.00 (imported from France) from papier d’amour. When I found this, I got the Babar tune stuck in my head all afternoon. Good times.

5. Luke Nguyen’s The Songs of Sapa: Stories and Recipes from Vietnam from fishpond, $69.99, so he can recreate the dishes he eats during his South-East Asia adventure in January.

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Quem desejar estar informado sobre literatura infanto-juvenil e promoção da leitura, aqui fica um conjunto de recursos on-line:

Imaginaria: revista online argentina sobre literatura infantil e juvenil. De periodicidade quinzenal é dirigida a docentes, pais, bibliotecários, escritores, ilustradores, especialistas, e a todos que se relacionem com crianças e leitura. Sedeada em Buenos Aires e em publicação desde 1999.

Dobras de leitura: revista digital brasileira editada mensalmente desde 2003 Peter O´Sagae, editor de conteúdo, formado em comunicação e doutorando em Letras pela Universidade de São Paulo (USP): publica textos de especialistas sobre a relação entre leitor e livro, promove a pesquisa histórica sobre contos tradicionais, oferece sugestões sobre práticas de promoção da leitura literária e divulga lançamentos de literatura infantil e juvenil no Brasil.

Bloc: revista internacional de arte y literatura infantil: revista espanhola que reúne escritores, bibliotecários, editores, ilustradores e críticos, dedica particular atenção ao álbum ilustrado, promovendo a análise e a reflexão sobre o papel da imagem e da palavra na construção de mundos imaginários.

Babar: revista sobre literatura infantil e juvenil. Online desde 2000, é considerado o melhor portal espanhol especializado e detém uma significativa difusão internacional.

Dramatic tension is essential for holding the interest of jack russells

Years ago, when my daughter and I first began drawing faces together, she discovered how easily tears could be added, and she would implore me, “Mommy, draw girl crying!” and I would do the round circle head, the eyes, the down-turned mouth, and last of all, the tears. My daughter is, and was then, a happy, sociable, energetic child, but during that phase she would have watched Bambi every day if I let her. Among her favourite books were the ones I mentioned in my last post, which have happy endings but go to dark places along the way — the threat of being eaten or embedded in stone. Such stories are still the ones she wants to hear again and again, long after the cute, sweet, light stories have been shelved and forgotten.

Babar is riding happily on his mother's back when...

I like to muse about why children want these stories; when (if) they can be too much; how parents should handle the emotions they expose, and the inevitable questions they instigate. For instance, it took my daughter a long time to understand what the gunshot meant in Bambi, and to know what to do with the knowledge. When we read Babar, the story of an elephant whose mother is killed by a hunter, she immediately stopped me and asked, “Do hunters take moms away? Are there hunters in Toronto?” And for the rest of the book, she kept flipping back to that page where Babar’s mother was shot.

For weeks after the Bambi penny dropped, she’d ask, “Did you lock the door?” as soon as we got home. And then I started to hear her role-playing with her stuffed animals, and having one say to the other, “Your mother is not coming back. Your mother is never coming back.” (For a time I worried, but she is turning out just fine.)

Bambi, A Life in the Woods, by Felix Salten

First released in 1942, the movie Bambi holds up well today, and the book, originally published in Austria in 1923, is considered a classic and often referred to as one of the first environmental novels. Apparently its author, Felix Salten, wrote the story with an adult audience in mind, and indeed the Wall Street Journal reported that “you’ll find it in the children’s section at the library, a perfect place for this 293-page volume, packed as it is with blood-and-guts action, sexual conquest and betrayal.”

Salten was in his fifties by the time he wrote Bambi, A Life in the Woods, and had been writing plays, short stories, novels, and essays for years. But his books were banned by the Nazi regime in 1936, and as a Jew he was forced to leave Austria for Switzerland, where he remained until his death in 1945 — just three years after Disney released the animated version of his story, featuring a white-tailed deer rather than a roe, but retaining the heartbreaking scene in which “your mother can’t be with you anymore.”

Plate I from Darwin's Expression of the Emotions

I once met a grandmother who told me she didn’t think her toddler grandson should read How the Grinch Stole Christmas because she believed it was best to expose him only to happiness at his tender age. So that he would only be happy, I guess. But not even babies are “only happy.” In fact, you might argue that happiness is one of the more rare baby emotions. It takes weeks for a baby to smile; the wait is longer for laughter. (Said Charles Darwin, upon observing his own babies for The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, “In this gradual acquirement, by infants, of the habit of laughing, we have a case in some degree analogous to that of weeping. As practice is requisite with the ordinary movements of the body, such as walking, so it seems to be with laughing and weeping. The art of screaming, on the other hand, from being of service to infants, has become finely developed from the first days.”)

Actually — if one is looking for good messages in children’s literature, the Grinch is a stellar example. This is one of the rare Christmas stories in which the protagonist comes around not out of self interest or self preservation, but simply because he is moved by goodness. But I’ll save that for a December post.

The Happy Lion reads so obviously as an allegory of cultural and species dominance, it’s hard to believe it’s really meant to be solely a children’s book. Written in 1954 by Louise Fatio, the story features a lion whose home

… was not the hot and dangerous plains of Africa

where hunters lie in wait with their guns,

it was a lovely French town with brown tile roofs and gray shutters.

The happy lion had a house in the town zoo, all for himself,

with a large rock garden surrounded by a moat…

So right away the opposing virtues of the “dangerous” plains – read, wild, uncivilized – Africa vs. the “lovely” French town – read civilized, under control – are established. The lion has been removed from his home, out of the nature, into society, and he may be alone and enclosed, but he is safe, which is to be prized over freedom, over one’s own nature.

And while the lion remains corralled, the people who visit him from a safe distance are friendly, and he thinks of them as friends – which is why he is so shocked and dismayed when, after his keeper leaves the latch undone and the lion goes to visit his “friends” in their houses (read zoo), they faint and run from him in terror.

“I supposed,” he said, “this must be the way people behave when they are not at the zoo.”

Of course, the lion does not realize that people consider him dangerous. He doesn’t understand that the fire engine that shows up is meant for him; just in time, a little boy comes and kindly walks the lion back to his cage, which he never desires to leave again. His ignorance of how he is perceived by his “friends” – as a predator, a threat – speaks of something beyond the consciousness of a lion.

In contrast to the adults in the story, when the lion first leaves his enclosure, he is greeted by other animals, squirrels and birds, who take no notice that he is “loose,” but greet him with a familiar friendliness.

The story shows how the dichotomies of nature vs. society, animal vs. human, wildness vs. civilization, freedom vs. control – and Western/white culture vs. African/black culture – not only determine how the adults interact, but completely structure the lion’s thinking as well. He never longs to roam free; he is happy to be walled in; he is happy with politeness and civility. That he so innocently does not understand that he is trapped by society not only makes his enjoyment of his domination poignant, but mirrors the plight of the humans in the story, too. The houses and walls and structures of control are so easily dismissed, by an unlocked latch – and then their ability to behave politely, to treat the lion with their usual regard and civility, goes right out the window. It’s the adults who act out of terror, who scream wildly, who seem lost without the lion’s barriers in place – society’s controlling mechanisms are somewhat flimsy, easily dismantled, and the effect is, to me, truly chilling.

I have no idea if Fatio intended her little story to be quite so pointed in its message about the weaknesses implicit in humanity’s attempts to subjugate the wild forces of nature, both within and without ourselves. It’s hard to imagine, though, that any writing in the 1950s and 60s that includes the landscapes of France and Africa – and we have to mention the Babar series, here, as well – can be read without the context of the historical colonial situations taking place in those decades. The French hold on countries like Algeria started to collapse – in 1954, the same year as the publication of The Happy Lion. Interesting coincidence, no?

The European imagination that underscored its attempts to “civilize” so many parts of Africa plays out in the Babar books even more explicitly. The elephants start wearing human clothing and using human weapons to war with other animals; they adopt human systems of organization in the form of royal hierarchies, and this is AFTER a human hunter kills Babar’s mother while hunting – right in front of him.

As one blogger writes in the British Times Online,

The Story of Babar and Babar the King are, as several critics have already pointed out, potentially dangerous and racist tracts. Cute as he may appear, Babar is worse than an unwitting and unreconstructed colonialist: his blacks are all silly “savages”, targets of ridicule with no positive valuation at all; and his apparently utopian foundation of Celesteville is riven by class and gender discrimination, not to mention bearing a passing resemblance to Leopold’s Leopoldville.

Both Babar and the Happy Lion come to accept and value being dominated for the sake of safety and being civilized, despite the trauma inflicted upon them by their oppressors – a common white fantasy about the slaves/peoples they have oppressed.

And then there’s Curious George (who first appeared in 1941). The creepily nameless Man with the Yellow Hat captures the monkey and treats him like crap – in Curious George Gets a Job, the Man seems to have abandoned George at some point, and only comes to get him so that he can exploit him for a movie deal. The parallels between George and the audience for which his character has been written – curious toddlers and preschoolers – underline the message of the natural/wild/animal instincts within the child that must be tamed, mastered, battened down so that the child can become an accepted member of society.

I’m not the first person to ever have some questions about the underlying messages of these books. In fact, as I’ve poked around the internet, many commentators make fun of this kind of analysis:

Earnest literary types have interpreted the first book as a barely disguised slave narrative. Have you considered that the man’s weird outfit could be a send-up of a colonial officer’s uniform? Or that George is brown and lacks a tail? (Lots of monkeys are brown and most species have visible tails.) Or that he is abducted against his will from Africa and brought across the sea to a foreign land where he engages in high jinks when the master is away?

This interpretation–surely the subject of many half-baked teacher-college lectures--was not on the mind of the Reys as they fled from the Nazis. Perhaps it is helpful to remember something that Margret once said of her books: “I don’t like messages. . . . These are just stories.“

To which I say: Of course, they are “just stories.” All stories are “just” stories. At the same time, all stories use the material of the universe out of which they are created, and if we ignore that universe, we aren’t reading the whole story.

I don’t believe in banning books. In fact, I’m imagining that these stories will afford me the opportunity to ask some pretty hefty questions of my children as they get older, as well as to start some family research projects about the worlds that these stories describe. Where do these lions, elephants, and monkeys come from? Why do they want to live “here” and not in their homelands?

Am I worried that reading these stories to my children now will imprint them with colonial fantasies? That their ideologies of civilization – and their place within it -  will be structured by a value system that girds hegemonic practices?

Yes and no. As I read these books, I become more and more convinced that they aren’t stable narratives – meaning, the subtexts woven in these stories destablilize the seeming ‘message.’ Is the Happy Lion really happy – and could he be happy if he were free? Is the lion free? Is Babar really happy? George? I’m not so sure. And I think teaching my children, even at young ages, to sense those cracks in the wall of a story is more valuable than only providing them with a politically correct version of reality. Teaching them to read critically is key to teaching them to be individuals in a society that pumps out a lot of politically and culturally skewed messages.

And I want them, metaphorically speaking, to be like the kid who doesn’t flip out when the lion has left his moated cage. I want them to face the lions roaming on the street with the kind of kindness and civility that bounds across social and cultural divisions, that isn’t afraid of nature – and that isn’t afraid of themselves.

BABRI MASJID

Babar was the founder of the Mughal dynasty in India. He built a mosque at Ayodhya, where Hindus claim, stood a temple of Ram.

In 1962, there was a movement, spearheaded by Hindu fanatics, to demolish the mosque and build the original temple there. On 6-12-1992, the structure, which was a historic monument, was destroyed, followed be terrorist attacks by Muslims in Bombay.

Now the enquiry commission has come to the conclusion that, it was a conspiracy by leaders of the Hindutwa movement, and not a spontaneous mass movement that resulted in the demolition of Babri Masjid.

Earlier, there used to be Hindu-Muslim riots, in parts of India, but terrorism was practically unknown. All this changed after 6-12-1992. Davood Ibrahim, living in Pakistan, conspired terror strikes against India. Hindu terrorists too became a reality. Black money and illegal arms trade played their own role in this game.

Now, things are out of control.

In today’s paper, details have come, of how the Government of Uttar Pradesh posted police officers, Magistrate etc. sympathetic to their cause, so that none tried to preserve the historic monument when some people climbed up on top of the roof and started pulling it down, in the presence of TV camera !

This is India, our precious democracy.

Childhood was the October theme for il studio . French and Belgian comic book characters. From left to right: Babar, Obelix, Asterix, Gaston’s laughing seagull, Tintin, Capitaine Hadock, Gaston (sleeping), Lucky Luke (with no cigarette as per the law asked), Jolly Jumper (the horse), le petit Nicolas, Rantanplan , Gaston’s cat, Bill (the dog), Boule (the little boy) and Milou (Snowy). I still read them with pleasure.

Enfance, le thème d’octobre au studio. Si vous ne les reconnaissez , de gauche a droite, Babar, obelix, Asterix, la mouette rieuse de Gaston, Tintin, Capitaine Hadock, Gaston faisant la sieste, Lucky Luke sans sa cigarette tel que demandé par la loi, Jolly Jumper son fidèle compagnon, Le petit Nicolas, Rantanplan, le chat de Gaston, Bill le cocker, Boule et Milou. Je les lis encore avec plaisir.

NOTE: This material is from web pages and forums carrying statements attributed to the Taliban, Taliban spokespersons or supporters of the Taliban, or analysis thereof. Posting of this material neither confirms nor endorses any of its content – it is shared for information only. When material translated into English is not available, Google Translate is used to translate the original (indicated by “GoogEng”) – this is only a machine translation, NOT an official one.

Saturday morning 24-10-2009 at around 8 am local time, Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan with an explosive device blew up a Ranger vehicle of the puppet army in Zawando hydara area in Arghandab district of Kandahar province, when the enemy patrol was passing the area. In the blast the vehicle was destroyed and eight terrorists in it were killed. According to another report, Friday night 23-10-2009 at around 8 pm local time, the Mujahideen with an improvised explosive device blew up a tank of the NATO invader forces in Babar area in Arghandab district of Kandahar province, about hour later when the enemy were moving from the first blast site, the Mujahideen detonated another landmine, in which another enemy tank was blown up, in both blasts both enemy tanks were destroyed and all the terrorists onboard were killed. After the two blasts the enemy indiscriminate started shelling the surrounding areas, but caused no losses on the Mujahideen side. Reported by Qari Muhammad Yousuf

British invaders tank blown up in Helmand (6th headline)

Friday evening 23-10-2009 at around 6 pm local time, Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan with an explosive device blew up a tank of the British invader forces in Ali Zai area in Nawzad district of Helmand province, in the blast the was destroyed and all the terrorists onboard were killed, soon after the blast the Mujahideen ambushed the enemy convoy, during which inflicting more losses to the enemy. Reported by Qari Muhammad Yousuf

5 British terrorists killed and wounded in an ambush in Helmand (1st headline)

Saturday morning 24-10-2009 at around 10 am local time, Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan ambushed a patrol of the British invader forces in Baba jee Gul ikhtiar area in Lashkargah city in Helmand province, in the ambush the Mujahideen killed three and wounded two British terrorists. Reported by Qari Muhammad Yousuf

The bombing of a tank of British improvised explosive device in the Directorate of Nawzad (Original in Arabic) – Google English translation – Official English

(Official English) Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan destroyed two tanks of the invading enemy in Ali Zai area of Nawzad district in Helmand province. According to the report, the enemy was trying to launch military operation against the Mujhideeen based in the area. Later Mujahideen ambushed the enemy troops when they were taking dead bodies of the soldiers, inflicting further casualties on the invading enemy.

(Arabic to Google English) Continental / Yousuf Ahmadi
Mujahideen of Islamic Emirate of the dawn of an explosive device planted in a military tank of the occupying British forces near the center of the Directorate of Nawzad in Helmand. Officials say the jihadists in the region that the explosion was at the Sixth of Morocco yesterday (2009-10-23) in the Department Alizo Nawzad, resulting in the destruction of the enemy tank is full, killing all the British soldiers. Adds the report, after the explosion Mujahideen rockets fired at the enemy forces which resulted in causing death and injury of one volume to the enemy occupier.

9 puppet army terrorists killed and 2 vehicles destroyed in Zabul (2nd headline)

Saturday morning 24-10-2009 at around 10 am local time, Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan ambushed a convoy of the puppet army in Roghani village area Shikai district Zabul province, in the ambush the Mujahideen destroyed two enemy vehicles and killed nine terrorists. Reported by Qari Muhammad Yousuf

PDF version of this page also available
at non-terrorist site here.

By Melissa Crowe

I honestly can’t remember the last show I went to at the 715 Panhandle House for one of two reasons:
a) Crushers are dangerously cheap.
b) It would have been at least a year ago.

The new renters have said they’re staking their claim tonight at 9 p.m. and Human Groove Hormone, Lazy Native, Babar, and Dear, Human are on the set list.

I sat down with Dear, Human a few weeks ago to discuss the band’s start and trying to find a downbeat to dance to. (Try it, I dare you.)

Anyway – The conversation is after the jump.

How did this all come to be?

Dan: There’s two converging stories. Because me and Michael have been playing music since the beginning of last semester and then I met John.

John: My old band Magnets played a show with Red Faced Laughter in Austin with Casey our drummer. When Magnets broke up, I called Casey and we jammed a few times, then I met Dan at a party.

Dan: We met and I was like “Hey, we kind of do the same thing a little bit…”

John: he was like “Oh my God, I have this great dude, call me.”

Dan: I showed up but it didn’t work. It was just awful. It was shit.

John: Dan has good taste in music and what not…but can he actually play?

(Fast forward to first gig)

John: Okay, we have a show in four week at J&Js, so we had to come up with a set real quickly. We wrote three songs in a real big hurry and played our first show in June like five weeks after I met Michael.

Dan: it was great
John: it was alright

Dan: There’s some footage, it was fun. It was also was Babar’s first show – two of my roommates. There was probably an inguestimatable amount of people. We played three shows in three weeks; one of the last shows at Annex House in Dallas. Even though its only three songs it’s not a short set. And it’s four now.

John: It’s about to be five cause I have like 18 riffs…

how does the music come about?
John: If Casey were here he’d say, he’d say his night terrors invoke goblins from the eighth dimension.. yes, scorched earth goblins taught us all our songs. I don’t know how we write our songs.

Dan: We collaborate as a group

And all the unusual time signature business?
Michael: Whenever we get together and play, Casey does whatever the fuck he wants. It’s a big flow.

Dan: Me and John are into 90s indie rock stuff. They were doing the weird time signature stuff that we’re really into. If one of us writes a part and thinks, “What’s a regular part we can write off of this?”  We try to make it more fucked up. He’ll play in one time signature and I’ll play in another one, so every four measures we’ll hit a down beat

John: When we’re playing correctly, every part has a pulse.

The style surely was something new — or are you all just incredibly brilliant minded?
Michael: I didn’t like it at first but it warmed up to me.

John: My old band was kind of mathy

Dan: It all kind of came out of just wanting to do something different that’s interesting for everyone involved: Interesting for us to play and write and interesting for someone to listen to.

John: Most stuff if you play it over and over again it gets really boring. In a band like this — we have a “more is more” mentality and what’s popular now is a “less is more” mentality. We listen to it, it’s more fun to me to just throw a bunch of stuff. It’s the kind of thing that repeatedly listening and repeatedly playing….

How do you keep your head from exploding?
Michael: That’s how we feel when we’re practicing. We have to go outside and take a break.

Dan: We’ll intentionally throw in a part that fucks us all up and we just practice it over and over until we hate it but it’s natural. It’s just looking at things on a time line.

What timeline?

Dan: Writing this type of music. A lot of time the shit we come up with is really unnatural, the more time you spend with it, the more natural it becomes.

Michael: It keeps your mind involved the whole time. You can never really check out.

Should music keep you involved, why not just sign off?

Michael: This is a polar opposite of the music I’m used to playing. That’s kind of why I love it now. I have this and I have my other way I look at music.

Dan: It’s like, “Hey come with us here. Try to experience this with us.” We’re attempting to revive a dead genre in a lot of ways and sort of bring back these things. There’s a lot of bands coming back now that are reemergence, I don’t think we’re playing anything out of place or necessarily new, it’s just our take on it.

Michael: It’s a lot like America. It’s a big melting pot.

Dan: Yeah, it’s just like America. You just gotta love it and not ask why.

I forgot to mention the shopping we did in Paris. We had a lot of fun shopping along Boulevard Saint-Germain on the Left Bank, spending most of our time in bookstores. Brodacious was looking at design books, and I was interested in the Asterix and Obelix comic books, Tintin and Petit Nicholas (although those are easy to come by in London) and yes, Babar. Forget Proust or Hugo—I know there’s no chance I’ll be able to read any serious literature in French. But the Babar books I could read. It was great.

We also went on a quest for marron glacé, the sugared chestnuts that are a French delicacy. It was my brilliant idea that we needed to have a taste, even though it required a bit more diligence than I had anticipated to track them down. And what did I think of the marron glacés? They were surprisingly expensive (at 4 Euros for each little chestnut) and a bit disappointing. Kind of like Turkish Delight: it sounds exotic and you think it’s going to be a delicious treat, but really it’s just got a strange texture and isn’t nearly as good as chocolate. But at least now we know.

Nature’s great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.

John Dunne

INTRO TO THAILAND…

The summer following my completion of graduate school I decided in both a mix of over exhuberance and impulsivity that I would go on a solo backpacking trip to Thailand and Laos for a month.   I knew little about either country besides having heard that Thailand was very traversable alone for a backpacker and a female. 

The little I knew about Southeast Asia as a whole was from various filmic references including “The Beach” and “Brokedown Palace”.  My friends and family must have had similar filmic references dancing through their heads because everyone was certain I would end up in some Thai prison after having drugs shoved into my bag when I wasn’t looking.  I was certain this would not happen and certain it would be a cinch of a trip.  I had backpacked through Europe and Latin America prior with friends and I thought how much harder could it be to backpack alone. 

I underestimated every element of this trip from the start.  It was the most profound, painful, breaking and stretching, weakening and strengthening, powerful, and beautiful trip I had ever taken–much more a pilgrimage than a vacation in  many ways.  I traveled through myself and into myself and came out the other side more self-aware and far more humble than before I began.

INTRO TO THE ELEPHANT NATURE PARK…

One of the most profound experiences from that trip (besides my experience with “Mama” in Laos that I spoke about in a previous post) was my experience at The Elephant Nature Park in the Mae Taeng Valley just north of the city of Chiang Mai.  I have had a reverence for the mystical, magical, graceful and grand elephants since I read Babar as a child.  I wanted to have an intimate pachyderm experience while in Asia with them.  I didn’t know how exactly but research led me to The Elephant Nature Park where elephants were treated like elephants rather than carnival rides or service beasts. 

A few Elephant “Tours” I found on my way to discovering the Nature Park touted things like elephants that could paint, riding tours atop elephants, and various “animal tricks” these creatures would perform for paying customers.  The more I read the more sickened I became–the cruelty and mockery seemed to drip from every sappy word of their ads and something ugly hid behind the surface of the  glossy packaging, I just wasn’t certain of what.  My trip to the Nature Park fully informed me of what was being hidden and what they were doing to prevent it.

LEK AND HER WORK

A woman, one who was unfortunately omitted from my “strangers who impacted my life” post, named Lek created the Nature Park in the 90’s.  The park was created to be a refuge for abused elephants that had been used in the tourism or logging industries. 

The major issue with these industries was not, primarily, that they were using elephants in their business but rather the manner in which they trained these animals was cruel beyond imagination.  They utilized an old cultural ritual of training called “The Pajeon” (literally translated it means “the crush”) which includes whips, a cat-o-nine tails type device, sleep and food deprivation, and the kind of abuses that leave lifelong emotional and physical scars of unendingly painful proportions. 

They say an elephant never forgets but I think no creature could forget the kinds of horrors I witnessed in videos of Pajeon “trainings” of baby elephants who had been taken from their mothers at very young ages and seemed so weak and fragile that tears could come to anyone’s eyes watching the footage.  And no one watching could ever forget the sound of frightened baby elephant screams. 

Lek’s conservation project to protect these elephants expanded quickly from one or two rescued elephants given up by owners to a large park with wide open valley spaces for elephants to roam free of torture and shackles.  The beautiful part as a volunteer and visitor is being able to walk into this valley that seemed too mystical to be true; an observer and participant to grace walking among tall grasses.  And to be a witness to a place that is covered with mist and speckled with herds of untethered elephants roaming free. 

MY MEMORIES…

I remember my first night in the elephant park waking to the sound of a large, heavily breathing shadow stalking around my mosquito netted bed.  I was certain whatever was in my room was ready to pounce and was further rattled by the crashing sound of the wood door flapping against the think hut walls.

 The extreme winds from the storm had blown through the metal latch and exposed my wood shack to all the elements and all the creatures.   There were just enough flashes of bright white lightning to quickly make out that it wasn’t a deadly mountain creature but a dog seeking refuge. 

There is a “No dogs in your room” policy at Lek’s park but I was not about to argue with a somewhat-rough-nature-park dog at midnight in the middle of a raging storm. However, I also did not sleep quite as soundly for the rest of the evening.

The next morning I woke up to the sound of clawed feet on my roof that were so heavy I was certain the corrugated tin roof would cave at any moment, and that was enough incentive to get up.  I realized as I searched clumsily for my clothes that the creature on the roof was a dog, not my bedtime companion who had begged to leave the hut at dawn, but a much larger and apparently hut scaling mixed breed resembling something like a cross between a pit bull and a Shepard. 

It is important to mention here that besides 30 elephants at any given time on site in the Nature Park there were multiple packs of dogs that had wandered on the property or been brought there, perhaps it had gone through the doggie grapevine that this lady does not turn away animals in need, but nonetheless it was a surreal image to see dogs weaving in and out amid elephant toes, nobody leashed and everyone quite content. 

That first morning I woke after a stormy night and a roof dog alarm clock I thought I could not be shocked further but as I opened the door and breathed in the misty valley morning my eyes rested about 50 feet away at the base of a waterway where a large female elephant stood amid the mist and valley grasses and rich purple flowers with her mahout (or trainer) by her side.  It was one of the most majestic and privileged natural moments I have been privy too–like something secret and ancient that I should never have been allowed to see.

I spent 3 days in huts, in secret moments, and amid nature that had been released inside these once shackled majesties.  I saw how elephants in the park had created their own foster family units and how the babies became the community’s baby that they protected like they bore them.  I saw how elephants fell in love, and created friendships, and forgot trauma and pain deeply rooted through affection and freedom and trust renewed in people and in themselves.  I saw a beautiful trauma recovery center that was as holistic and natural as any treatment could be.

I heard the horrible tales of each elephant and the even sadder stories of elephants the Nature Park couldn’t afford to buy from their owners due to lack of funds as a nonprofit or elephants that had been sent to the center by local business owners to heal after one abuse or another but whose owners refused to sell after they were recovered.  I heard the story of one elephant who had left the park with her abusive owner in the back of a truck and how the sounds of her elephant screams could be heard long after the vehicle went out of sight. 

I heard things I still can’t imagine now.  When I reflect on these instances of such extensive cruelty I well up with tears–even now it makes me well as I write this.  And I saw what kind of cruelty, pain, and torture an elephant could heal from–body and heart and soul.  And what a beautiful soul an elephant has–pure as light and white as the lightning that rains down on the Mae Taeng Valley. 

I left the park, about 3 years ago, vowing that I would write their story and tell people about the pain of these creatures and the amazingly inspiring work of Lek and all the staff at the Elephant Nature Park–I suppose this is my literary treatise to them all. 

Lek went through death threats and the horrific poisoning and murder of some of her first elephant rescues to get to where she is now and she has created a true homage to and refuge for the Asian elephant.  She has become a powerful voice for elephant conservation and a fearless heart empassioned for a cause that few know of or hear of. 

I will always hope and dream of making it back to the park someday.  It was a heavenly oasis for elephant and (wo)man in an anonymous, quiet piece of land in Northern Thailand.  Trauma treatment and healing recovery in its purest and most natural form.

My doctrine is this: that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and we do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.

Anna Sewell

Hos farmor och farfar i Småland får man blåbär i efterrätt. Hur gott som helst.

Starcast: Soham Shah, Mithun Chakraborty, Urvashi Sharma, Om Puri, Sushant Singh, Mukesh Tiwari, Tinu Anand, Govind Namdeo,
Director: Ashu Trikha
Music: Anand Raj Anand

track list:
01. maula yeh
02. baabarr
03. baaje raat
04. pagal manva
05. baabar theme
06. maula unplugged

other movie links:

blue

whats your raashee

aamras

dil bole hadippa

vaada raha

radio

wanted

ye mere india

ek second

love kichdi

quick gun murugesan

mohandas

babarr

Existem dois tipos de deglutição – as voluntárias e as reflexas. Durante a noite elas trabalham com menor intensidade do que durante o dia, o que gera um acúmulo maior de saliva. Além disso, a musculatura ao redor da boca fica mais relaxada e, dependendo da posição em que se dorme, é comum ocorrer a compressão da bochecha. Tudo isso pode causar a baba. A respiração oral também é outro fator agravante, que pode ser corrigida por meio de tratamento médico.

Fonte: Guia dos Curiosos

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