The Christmas Concert

 
The hall is packed
With pairs of parents

Except hers.

She knows her friends are peeking
From behind the curtains to wave
To their parents…
And to gossip about her.

She pretends they have to work late.
And that they just might make it.
If….
They care enough, are her silent thoughts…

They snigger. They know. They gloat.

The teacher had asked who wanted to be
The Hind Legs Of The Donkey.
Taking Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, the House of Bread.

Nobody’s hands went up, except hers.

That way, she thought, they wouldn’t see her crying.
And she wouldn’t have to sit out
The performance backstage.

Heavy thoughts for a child merely eight years old.

Curtain up.

“When fishes flew and forests walked, and…
Fish grew up on thorns… some moment when…
The Moon was Blood…”

…intones the Reader.

As the Donkey walks majestically up the aisle
Between the seats
Front Legs whispers to Hind Legs
“Your Ma and Pa are here…
How funny! How silly!
They are holding hands!”

She struggles to undo the zipper from inside…
But cannot.
She gasps for breath.

Her legs give way.
Donkey collapses.

The audience thinks its part of the show
And laughs delightedly
At the absurdity of it all.

The Show Must Go On…
And it does…. without her.

Front Legs sits on empty haunches.

And the Concert continues.
As she watches from her mother’s lap,

Holding her father’s hand.

The Grief of Life

 

Sobbing through the night
Tiny slave girl, working hard;
Bought for a pittance.

Party till you drop;
Drink, drugs, sex are all you have;
Your life is empty.

A child on crutches,
Soldiers bleeding, houses bombed…
Images of war.

Photograph album;
Children in an orphanage;
Who’ll be adopted?

Hush don’t fuss and fret
Mother has new lover now;
Baby’s needs come last.

Turned out of the house;
Dad’s new girlfriend’s just moved in;
She will not share him.

Wife stays, though she knows
The other woman’s pregnant,
With her husband’s child.

Screaming in silence;
Sold her soul for wealth and fame…
Poor little rich girl.

Caught in the middle,
Bitter feud between parents;
Being made to choose.

Guests did not turn up;
Birthday party that fell flat;
Nobody loves her.

Dirty clothes on chairs;
Unwashed plates piled in the sink:
Scenes of loneliness.

Christmas Facts

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Good King Wenceslas really existed. He was born in 907 AD in Prague, the son of the Duke of Bohemia, and grandson of Saint Lyudmila. He is credited with commissioning the gothic St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. In September, 929, his brother Boleslaw invited him to Alt Bunglou for the celebration of the feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian, and had him murdered on the way to Mass. Although this was primarily a political murder, Wenceslas was hailed as a martyr, and his tomb became a shrine for pilgrims to visit.
Maltese folklore usually invokes Saint Barbara, whose feast in on December 4, during thunderstorms. She is the patroness of builders and architects, miners and artillery men. On her feast day, unmarried girls would cut cherry, apricot or almond twigs and place them in a jar of water, having attached the names of bachelors they liked to each one. The ones that would have flowered before Midnight Mass indicated potential suitors. A more prosaic explanation said that if none of them flowered, a bad harvest would follow.
In Hungary, as elsewhere, Bishop Miklós (Saint Nicholas) visits all the children in the night before Christmas. The good ones receive sweets in the boot or on the plates they would have placed by the window – the naughty ones get coals or a willow twig used as a lash. A man dressed as a Bishop would go out, accompanied by Krmapus, known as Black Peter in other cultures. The latter would be wearing chains, and holding a bunch of twigs with which to wallop the legs of passers-by. Sometimes, they walked uninvited into houses or restaurants, and ran about switching everyone with the twigs. They were usually given a glass of wine before they left the place.
In Guatemala, one of the traditions is an adaptation of the Mayan flying pole dance, held on the Feast Day of Saint Thomas on December 21. This appealing combination of Mayan customs and Christian religious practice may also be seen in the depictions of the Nativity scene, and tamales, the “packed lunch” made by filling corn dough (masa) with a selection of fillings according to the region and preference. Then they are wrapped in plantain leaves or cornhusks, and steamed. During each day of the novena there is a procession; the statues are accompanied by music and fire-crackers.
Dating from the 17th century, pure white candy canes are said to have been the brainchild of the choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany, meant to be given to toddlers to keep them quiet during the Service. In 1847 German immigrant August Imgard used them to decorate a Christmas tree in Wooster, Ohio, and half a century later, Bob McCormack of Albany, Georgia made some to give away as Christmas sweetmeats. His brother-in-law, Catholic priest Gregory Keller, invented a machine in the 1950s that eliminated the labour intensive method of pulling-sugar paste into shape. The red stripes were added then merely as decoration – it was only later that they acquired a meaning associated with religion.
Most people would know that the poinsettia is a native Mexican plant named after Joel R. Poinsett, U.S. ambassador to Mexico who took it to America in 1828. A charming legend says that young Amato was on his way to visit the grotto set up at his village. Halfway there, he realised he had not brought a gift. So, to the amusement of his peers, he gathered some branches and took those along. Once he laid it at the foot of the Manger, the bunch became a bouquet of red, star-shaped flowers.
Another legend says that Pepita was on her way to Midnight Mass, and all the children had been asked to bring flowers. She picked up some weeds, which became the original Flores de Noche Buena (Flowers of Holy Night). These days, poinsettia cultivars come in other colours besides red; the flowers are actually the tiny yellow blooms and the centre, and the coloured parts are bracts – modified leaves.

Sex Appals

Wednesday, April 25, 2012, 12:10

The other day, Welsh international footballer Ched Evans raped a teenager. His friend, Port Vale defender Clayton McDonald had sex with her.
Is there any difference between the terms, seeing that both men claimed it was consensual? Does it make any difference that she was drunk at the time, and that she has no memory at all of what happened, perhaps because one or more of her drinks (allegedly wine, double vodkas with lemonade and a Sambuca shot) had been spiked?
The Court held that Evans was guilty of rape, and sentenced him to five years in prison; McDonald was deemed ‘not guilty’ of rape.
Sheffield United player Connor Brown sought to ‘defend’ his friend by calling the victim ‘a money-grabbing little tramp’. He then went on to use bad English and worse words in his Twitter account to insult the girl, but later removed his posts.
The aura of the rich, the powerful, the handsome, the popular, and those who consider themselves above the law, sometimes translates into these wannabe studs (correctly) thinking they can pick and choose women for sex. Some go even further and expect the women to think they are being done a favour, and, hence, no type of compensation to her would be due.
This, essentially, means that any girl who decides to complain – or, heaven forbid – press charges later, will automatically be branded a bitch, a liar, or a gold-digger, and sometimes all three at once.
Consider, for a moment, the current crisis assailing the American Secret Service.
About 11 Secret Service agents brought prostitutes back to their rooms while they were preparing the venue for President Obama’s arrival for the Summit of the Americas. Although such doings are illegal, the police in the area have some ‘tolerance zones’ – which apparently are both in the concrete and in the abstract.
However, as it happened, one of the women refused to leave the premises after 7.00am, as is the praxis. But she had a reason; she had not been paid adequately for services rendered. And this is, basically, what lit the fuse that exploded the bomb that blew the story open.
There will always be teachers who will try to din into students’ minds that ‘sluts’ (read a girl who has sex before she is married, with one person or more) are merely fornicators with a more modern name.
There will always be people like Albert Locher, the Sacramento County District Attorney, who actually arrest rape victims to make sure they are present to testify against their aggressors.
But the worst thing of all is that there are a whole slew of myths, masquerading as reasons, why many people do not accept that rape would have happened.
We are asked to believe that it’s not rape if the woman: didn’t put up a fight; had been with another man twenty-four hours before or after the attack; had no signs of violence on her body; has an active sex life; is a prostitute ‘anyway’; is old, and ugly, and might not otherwise have had sex; is a lesbian; is young and attractive, and therefore a temptation; did not know what was happening anyway; ordered, tempted or dared the man to have sex; uses birth-control; was dating the man; was dressed indecently; was drinking to make herself lose her inhibitions; was not supposed to be where she was; or went to his place of her own volition.
Moreover, if “her no obviously meant yes”; if the sex was consensual, and / or the man used a prophylactic; or of the act happened in her house or a neutral place, we are supposed to think that the woman is crying wolf as well as rape.
These conditions nicely cover just about any situation, do they not?
As far as I am concerned, a “slut” is someone who uses sex-related accusations to lie about a man for her own ends – when no sex at all would have taken place.
Yet it remains a sad fact of life that in most countries, sex crimes are treated differently from other types of crimes.
If you sell stolen goods, you are guilty of that. If you help someone hide a murdered body, you are an accessory after the fact. In a nutshell, if you aid and abet someone in a crime, you have to pay the penalty.
Just because someone entices you to commit murder, fraud, theft, or perjury, you do not just play along willy-nilly. Whether the issue involves stealing a car for joy-riding, beating up someone, robbing a house, doing drugs, or jumping off a cliff, it cuts no ice to tell the judge that “peer pressure” made you comply.
Yet sex between consenting adults is sometimes considered all right; especially if it is the word of one person ‘with a reputation’ against an abuser who may or may not be in collusion with other witnesses.
Incidentally, most women who have had unwanted sexual relations, inclusive of rape, usually go home to scrub themselves physically clean from their emotional trauma.
This, too, may count against them – because they are ‘supposed’ to hie off for an examination that would document evidence of any kind available.

Don’t Quota Me!

Sunday, 25 November 2012

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20121123/blogs/don-t-quota-me.446598
Friday, November 23, 2012, 16:39

Tulsi Gabbard Tamayo is an Iraq War veteran, and, incidentally, America’s first Hindu Congresswoman on the Democratic ticket. Her Oath of Office, come January 3, will be the first ever to be administered over the Bhagavad Gita. Her father is Hawaii State Senator Mike Gabbard. Aged 23, she was the state’s first elected official who resigned voluntarily to go to war.
Tammy Baldwin is Wisconsin first openly lesbian Senator, which is ironic, considering that the state gave a 59 per cent yes vote to a 2006 homosexual marriage ban. She is one of four openly homosexual House members of the 112 U.S. Congress, the other three being fellow Democrats Jared Polis of Colorado, Barney Frank of Massachusetts, and David Cicilline of Rhode Island.
Ladda Tammy Duckworth lost both legs and severely damaged her right arm when serving in the U.S. Army as the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter pilot in the Iraq War, when a rocket-propelled grenade struck the cockpit of her helicopter and exploded. She is the first Thai-American elected to Congress in Illinois’ 8th congressional district, defeating incumbent Joe Walsh.
Mazie Hirono, who has represented Hawaii’s 2nd district in Congress since 2007, was elected to represent Hawaii in the U.S. Senate. She was born in Japan, immigrating to Hawaii with her family as a child. Hirono defeated Republican Linda Lingle 62 per cent to 37 per cent. She was raised in the Jodo Shinshu tradition, and is one of the two Buddhists to be elected to the House of Representatives; Hank Johnson of Georgia is the other one.
These four women ran the race to be the change as well as to make it, and not just because there were not a part of the “angry white male machine.”
I am assuming they did not fill in application forms that said, in part, Positive Discrimination! Female Minority Candidates Wanted: Non-Caucasian, LGBT, Congenital or Acquired Disabilities…
And yet, Duckworth, who would have qualified for the above on two counts, was disparaged by her opponent, Rep. Joe Walsh, as a “…female, wounded veteran…ehhhh. She is nothing more than a handpicked Washington bureaucrat…” Duckworth herself has said of the incident, “I hope this is the worst thing that happens to anyone in the 106th during this deployment. This is not so bad. There is always somebody worse off than you are. I’m just glad it was me and not one of my guys out there.”
I suppose Walsh found other words with which to denigrate those women of the 19 per cent in Congress who do not happen to share his political views; unless he regretted venting his spleen, if only for the way his malevolence backfired. In all, 20 women have seats in the American Senate. But of course, for many, it is nowhere near enough.
In Malta, we don’t really have a pool of foreigners, persons with disabilities, or other representatives of minorities who are ready to sacrifice themselves on the altar of politics as they do in the USA.
Ironically, a woman who decides to compete “with the men” does so on the platform that she is “like all women” and, presumably, therefore, understands our wants and needs. They tell us that it’s time that women being voting for women – rather as if they know what we do, or don’t.
They mention buzzwords such as glass ceilings while daring us to ask them about role reversal and who does the school run in the morning, and chide us for being complacent (i.e. not like them).
We all know that if women had to run Parliament, or at least be there on parity with men, there would be flexi-time, job-sharing, and teleworking as a matter of course. More money would be voted for healthcare, education, and eradication of poverty. Is this a sexist comment?
Alas, the much-vaunted “quotas” and “positive discrimination” will never give us a Rwanda-like legislature, which is 56.3 per cent female, or one akin to that of Andorra, which is 53.6 per cent female, or even like that of Sweden, at 45 per cent female.
A quota is not positive discrimination; it’s crumbs for the dogs, off the table of a rich man. Why should a man who is more competent than a woman be ousted, so false justice may be seen to have been done through an arbitrary system?
We are told to celebrate the differences between men and women, and in the same breath, it is pointed out to us that these differences must be redressed by (presumably) employing women who are less qualified then men, in order to “make up numbers”.
Dozens of papers – some with titles just this side of eccentricity – purport to explain why despite this so-called enlightenment, bias still exists against the distaff side.
We have The Portia Hypothesis, a study by Bentley Coffey (Clemson University, Department of Economics) and Patrick McLaughlin (George Mason University, Mercatus Center), which claims that female lawyers with masculine-sounding first names have better odds of becoming judges than colleagues with feminine names…at least in South Carolina.
We read about symphony orchestras that have adopted “blind” audition procedures where candidates perform behind a screen to conceal their gender. This, parenthetically, has led to more women being assumed.
Viviane Reding, the EU Justice Commissioner, had mooted a “gender quota”, wherein all publicly listed companies are to have at least 40 per cent of their boards composed of women by 2050. She said nothing about shop floors and minor staff. Would Reding be offended if anyone suggested she is where she is, because of a decree like the one she would like to see enacted?
Whatever happened to meritocracy?

Ten Menoroth

 

It made the headlines.
A page from the History of a People…
Tainted and trivialised with Curio Value.
Thousands of souls and millions of years of pain.
Statistics. Schindler’s List. Chilling data of logistics.
The boy in striped pyjamas looks at Evil Haman’s spawn.
Chanting prayers he learned at his grandfather’s knee;
The child is yet to understand how, why,
Baba is gone; his skills, culled and harnessed for the
“War Effort” were his saving grace.
Hashem ro’i lo echsar,
Bin’ot deshe yarbitzeni, al me m’nuchot y’nahaleni;
Nafshi y’shovev
Yancheni b’ma’agle tzedek l’ma’an sh’mo
Out of bounds restrictions
Collective memories of
Toiling to get straw
For the same quota of bricks
Past and future as one.
For the present is but transient form; stolen blessings.
Whispers in the night. Warnings about Why
This Night Is Different From All Other Nights.
Gam ki elech b’ge tzalmavet; Lo ira ra, ki atah imadi
Shivt’cha umish’antecha hema y’nachamuni
Tomorrow is but a speck on the horizon that
May disappear on the whims of Spiteful Hate, Hateful Spite
Prideful Murder and Murderous Pride.
Ta’aroch l’fanai shulchan neged tzor’rai
Dishanta vashemen roshi; Kosi r’vaya
The Roll of the Die of Death. Frozen tears.
Why hast Thou forsaken Thy Chosen Ones?
The bitter herbs of genocide;
The choking weeds of systematic slaughter.
Rebecca-Ruth-Esther-Deborah
Memories that they retry to make us forget.
Strange gods before them – They came with trickery…
Power. Evil. Ego. Always remember. Never forget.
Ach tov vachesed yird’funi kol y’me chayai
V’shavti b’vet Hashem l’orech yamim.

The Way We Were

 

Monday, December 15, 2008, 10:36

Ava Gardner; Dima Bilan; Edwige Fenech; Howard Hughes; Rex Stout; Ricky Martin; Saint Ignatius of Loyola…
All these people were born on December 24. And that, according to Maltese lore, makes them eligible for Gawgaw status.
Tradition held that it was “not nice” for anyone to share a birthday with Jesus – although, for some reason, the date ‘reserved’ for the Christ child was not December 25, i.e. Christmas Day, officially adopted by Bishop Liberius of Rome in 354, but Christmas Eve.
It was said that a person born on that day was destined to become a ghost on Christmas Eve, fated to haunt the streets until the dawn of Christmas morning… when the physical body would again come to life.
There was, of course an antidote for this curse – counting the holes on a sieve from dusk until dawn. Either way, the person would feel like a wet rag on the morrow; and not many people would believe the second option would have been the reason for this fatigue!
On the other hand, people who are born on Christmas Day proper are supposed to be immune to murders by hanging or drowning. The minus side of this is that they are gifted with “Sixth Sense” that allows them to see all manner of ghosts, ghouls, spirits and phantoms… although some cultures have it exactly the opposite… just as a black cat is good luck for some, and bad luck for others. The Irish believe that the gates of Heaven open at midnight on Christmas Eve, and therefore those who die then go straight to Heaven.
A poem dated 1525 says that it is not only the date of birth that matters, but also the day on which Christmas happens to fall that will affect the person’s life:

Yef that day that Cryste was borne. Falle upon a Sunday …
what chylde that day borne be, A grete lorde he shalle be
Yf Crystemas day on Monday be …
They that be borne that day, I wene,
They shalle be stronge eche on and kene…
Yf Crystmas day on Tuysday be…
Alle that be born there in may se,
They shalbe stronge and covethouse…
Yf Cyrstmas day the so the to say, Fall upon a Woydnysday
What childe that day borne ys, He shall dowghte and lyghte i-wysse…
Yf Crystmas day on Thursday be,
What chylde that day borne bee, He shalle have happy ryghte well to the,
Of deeds he shall be good and stabylle; Of speche and tonge wyse and reasonabylle…
Yf Crystmas day on Friday be,
The chylde that ys borne that day,
Shall long lyve and lecherowus be aye…
Yf Crystmas on the Saterday falle…
chyldren that e born that day,
Within a halfe a yere they shall dye, par fay.
In Malta, we are quite likely to have a mild winter – some foolhardy souls might even brave a dip in the briny to prove the point – but elsewhere there is the proverb that “A green Christmas makes a full graveyard”.
This distils the rural belief that mild winter weather is followed by more diseases in livestock and produce. The proverb does not refer to the custom of decorating homes with greenery – although for a time, even that was forbidden, since it was considered a pagan custom… for instance, Sweet By is the ancient laurel, the “glory herb” lorbeer or daphne, used as a wreath for heroes and poets. Indeed, the word “bachelor” in our college degrees comes from “bacca-laureus” or “laurel- berry” through the French bachelier.
Superstition and custom mish-mash in a nation’s folklore, such that no one knows where one begins and the other ends. Eastertide and Yuletide seem especially rife with these folk beliefs – perhaps because originally, the periods of the year in which these two major festivals lie were hitherto devoted to pagan deities, and several customs are but Christianised pagan rituals.
However, most people appear to agree that the first person to pass from near the door to the house (on the inside) on Christmas morning, was supposed to open wide the door, sweep the household’s troubles from the threshold, and welcome Christmas. For his pains, he was supposed to have good luck thought the year following, as did the first person in a household who heard the rooster crow.
That is – unless he took down the Christmas tree before the year was out, in which case, bad luck would dog him – or anyone else who did – throughout the next twelve months, up to the anniversary of the day in which he would have done it. It is also said that no decorations must be taken down until the twelfth night is past, but always before Candlemas.
It almost goes without saying that on Christmas Night, the bells of all the churches that have been destroyed by earthquakes, fire, flood, and landslides, may be heard tolling in unity, to celebrate this special time.
Many superstitions involve the greenery associated with Christmas – holly, for instance, was not supposed to be brought inside the house before Christmas Eve, lest a member of the family died during the year. It is said that myrrh plants will flower only for an hour on Christmas Eve… and some animals, if you listen carefully, will have acquired the power of speech on Holy Night, too.
Bales of hay carried around a church three times on Christmas Eve would meet the requirements of cattle far more efficiently than they otherwise would have done.
Even if you can’t bear the taste of mince pies – remember that eating one made by a different person in a different house, means a month of happiness.
For a full purse, you are to carry in your pocket a scale from a fish eaten at Christmas.