ACI alum Eryn Star discusses educational abuse: “When the teachers were asked how many teachers in their school emotionally abuse students, only 14% said none.”
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This makes me both heart broken and also SO ANGRY. This needs to stop.
And, no, forced U.S. intervention in the countries where immigrants are coming from is not the answer. Forced U.S. intervention in these countries CAUSED the mess. Further forced intervention risks repeating all the same mistakes and making the problem worse. If you still think that forced U.S. intervention in these countries is necessary or helpful, then you need to seriously bone up on your history of US foreign policy in Latin American countries.
CN: Severe neglect in daily sanitation needs. Medical neglect, including denial of care. Mental and psychological trauma, with probably long-term repercussions. Separation of families. Dehumanization.
Directed Attention Fatigue is something all ADHDers are familiar with; it’s when we get mentally drained after focusing on something (we find boring) for a period of time.
It is not specific to ADHD however, it’s incredibly relevant to us. It’s so straightforward that I’ll just quote wikipedia:
DAF … results from overuse of the brain’s inhibitory attention mechanisms, which handle incoming distractions while maintaining focus on a specific task.
We pay attention mentally pushing away other distractions and stiumli (which ADHDer SUCK at; its why get easily distracted). You get DAF when your brain gets overworked after pushing away these distractions for too long/
“Netflix is adding to its growing slate of African content with its first original animated series, “Mama K’s Team 4,” produced by South Africa’s award-winning Triggerfish Animation Studios and British kids’ and family entertainment production company CAKE.
The series follows four teenage girls living in a futuristic version of Lusaka, Zambia, who are recruited by a retired secret agent to save the world. It was created by Zambian writer Malenga Mulendema, who in 2015 was one of eight winners of the Triggerfish Story Lab, a pan-African talent search backed by the Cape Town-based animation studio and The Walt Disney Co. The series is designed by the Cameroonian artist Malcolm Wope.
Mulendema said she was inspired by the experience of watching cartoons as a child in her native Zambia, where none of the heroes looked like her or lived in a world that resembled her own. “In creating a superhero show set in Lusaka, I hope to introduce the world to four strong African girls who save the day in their own fun and crazy way,” she said. “Most importantly, I want to illustrate that anyone from anywhere can be a superhero.”
“Mama K’s Team 4” is the latest African original for Netflix, which recently announced its first two dramatic series on the continent. The streamer is now collaborating with Triggerfish and CAKE on a pan-African search for local female writing talent to join the creative team on the series.
And speaking of Sophia Tolstoy, her diaries are just so depressing.
“I am to gratify his pleasure and nurse his child, I am a piece of household furniture, I am a woman. I try to suppress all human feelings. When the machine is working properly it heats the milk, knits a blanket, makes little requests and bustles about trying not to think […].“
She wrote this when she was 19, one year into her marriage to Leo and as she was pregnant with the first of his 13 children.
A few years later, when she was 25 or so:
“I am so often alone with my thoughts that the need to write in my diary comes quite naturally … Now I am well again and not pregnant—it terrifies me how often I have been in that condition. He said that for him being young meant “I can achieve anything”. For me […] reason tells me that there is nothing I either want or can do beyond nursing, eating, drinking, sleeping, and loving and caring for my husband and babies, all of which I know is happiness of a kind, but why do I feel so woeful all the time, and weep as I did yesterday? I am writing this now with the pleasantly exciting sense that nobody will ever read it, so I can be quite frank with myself […].“
During her 12th pregnancy she wrote about taking scalding baths and jumping from high pieces of furniture to try and miscarry. And at one point while reading her husband’s diary (which he told her to read) she found the sentence “There is no such thing as love, only the physical need for intercourse and the practical need for a life companion.” In her own diary she wrote “They ebb and flow like waves, these times when I realise how lonely I am and want only to cry…”
A few years before her husband’s death, she published a cycle of prose poems titled “Groans”, under the pseudonym “A Tired Woman”.
the most depressing quote from her diaries:
“I have served a genius for almost forty years. Hundreds of times I have felt my intellectual energy stir within me and all sorts of desires - a longing for education, a love of music and the arts… And time and again I have crushed and smothered these longings… Everyone asks, “But why should a worthless woman like you need an intellectual or artistic life?” To this question I can only reply: “I don’t know, but eternally suppressing it to serve a genius is a great misfortune.”
Earlier this week, I found out that a previous co-facilitator and San Diego Native American activist, Karen Vigneault,
died in January 2019. She was a Kumeyaay twin-spirit (lesbian). I co-facilitated an LGBT Native American discussion
group with her back in 2005. It was called Nations of the 4 Directions.
This notification is a patchwork of what she had accomplished in her lifetime. Excerpts are taken from The San Diego
County Women’s Hall of Fame website, my own personal interactions with Karen, the California Indian Education
website, and an online blog by Lara Trace Hentz.
Karen Vignealt was an enrolled member of the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel. As a child, she was refused attendance at
public schools, since she did not fit into the white/black categories of segregation. Eventually admitted to a Catholic
school, she became passionate about rediscovering traditional Kumeyaay practices.
Karen was the first in her family to earn a degree, she received her Library and Information Sciences M.A. in 2008. She
attended Grossmont College (1997), SDSU (2001), and Drexel University (2008). As a member of the American Indian
Library Association, she raised awareness among peers about indigenous literature and strove to increase the number
of appropriate texts offered in libraries. She educated U.S. and Mexican indigenous peoples about their authentic
traditions and the extraordinary, respected, historic role twin-spirit people have held in indigenous societies. Karen was
awarded the Soroptimists Women Making A Difference Award in 2007 and was inducted into the San Diego County
Women’s Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2010, she was awarded the DURGA award.
Karen also worked with the Peace and Dignity Project at an indigenous children’s shelter in Tecate, Mexico, cultivating
Kumeyaay traditions, language, and culture while protecting children from the hardships of orphanages. In addition,
Karen helped American Indian adoptees locate their birth families. Her work took her as far as Iceland where an
Iceland woman was able to track down her Native ancestry; her father was a Native American US military member who
had been stationed in Reykjavík.
Overall, Karen contributed to the San Diego Native American and LGBT Communities. She was a fierce and stubborn
butch woman that I will miss. I respected her. One cherished memory I have is when she called to tell me the San
Diego Pride Parade for the first time was going to allow LGBT Native Americans to start the parade. And there she was
in full Kumeyaay regalia. She had a huge heart for her fellow LGBT Natives and I’m sure she’s enjoying the huge pow
wow in the sky. Walk in beauty my friend. Hágoónee’.
PLEASE SHARE THIS WITH OTHER LGBT NATIVES. WE ARE NOTORIOUS FOR BEING DIFFICULT TO
NOTIFY. I WANT TO MAKE SURE OTHERS KNOW OUR NATIVE SISTER IS ON HER JOURNEY. THANK
YOU.
