WISDOM OF THE SAGES
EPISODE V: SPRING 2023
Hello People of the World;
Write the intro: Once again, late. I think I may be losing interest in this weblog. I hope not. I would like to keep it going. Though, at this point, no one is actually reading this. I am changing up the format for a bit. I will have the opening and closing COVID commentary, short movie review, and one single item of observation each month. Hopefully, this will ease the pressure to come up with ten items a month and have three out of five set.
The summer is fast approaching. I am writing and posting this on June 3rd.
As always: Stay safe. Stay home.
All right, let’s get going:
1:[ This virus really showed how equal we all really are: How quickly we want to forget things and pretend things can or should “go back to normal”. But the plus-side of this pandemic is that so many people realized the equity of our systems and structures that allowed so much horrible things to be dismissed as “normal”. I hope we can do something about it….
2:[ EW3 MOVIE REVIEWS:
Spirited Away Live of Stage
Saw this beautifully recreated stage version of the film as part of the Ghibli Fest 2023 that screens Studio Ghibli films throughout the year. I have seen some great ones. You know the story of young Chihiro being forced to work for Yubaba at their spa for the spirits so she can try and save her parents for the mistake they made. Very deep theme of how our children pay for our mistakes.
The stage production was very faithful to the film with a full repertoire of theater mechanics used to recreate the magical scenes and characters. There are two versions of the play, I saw the version Mone Kamishiraishi as Chihiro and she was a delight in the role, it helps that she resembles the animated character moreso than Kanna Hashimoto (Though, who am I to judge?).
Beautifully rendered and enthusiastically performed, it is a production I am so happy I took the time to go and see. I am going to get a copy of it on Blu-ray so I can share it with family and friends.
HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION
Polite Society: BEST OF 2023 (So far…)
Directed by Nida Manzoor
A young Pakistani Brit teen whom wants to be a stuntwoman and continually trains to be one, becomes suspicious of her ne’er-do-well artist sister’s sudden wedding and works to undermine the match. What ensues is a fun romp with some pokes and parodies of Tarantino. The sisters, played by Priya Kansara and Ritu Arya have charm to spare. Definitely the Best Movie I have seen so far in 2023.
BEST OF 2023 (So far…)
3:[ EW3 Essay of the month. This Month’s Essay:
'2035: No One Expected That'
An essay on Public Health in 2035
Solving the issues of the Indigenous peoples of the United States has had a huge impact on many social issues threaded throughout so many communities. That looking at every issue of going concern for public health in the United States from an Indigenous perspective, we have come to realize that their issues were our deeply-rooted issues in public health as well. No one expected that.
When looking back at the history of Indigenous peoples, we find how much we have erased their gigantic contributions to the sciences – mental health, medicine, child care, environment, and including housing, education, and commerce. The tendrils of connection to Indigenous issues as it pertains to our overall welfare is astounding. How is homelessness not connected to Indigenous removal and land theft? If we can overlook the removal of Indigenous peoples from their homelands, how much easier is it to have overlooked the plight of the homeless Veteran? Let’s focus on how their concerns for the environment through the millennia have impacted their survivance, and how our dismissal of their concerns has had detrimental effects that impact public health today.
Indigenous peoples were great at environmental upkeep – their stewardship of the lands which kept their cultures thriving included irrigation, animal population control, farming and harvesting, even prescribed burning and sustainable architecture. It was much more than “living in harmony with nature”. Indigenous peoples shaped nature to their usage, but did so in a manner that sustained them for centuries. Early journals of the colonists would remark on finding roadways through the wilderness. How could there have been roads without prescribed clearings?
As we have come to learn that Indigenous tribes in many regions, used prescribed burnings as a means of environmental maintenance. The benefits of such burnings; removing undergrowth, soil maintenance, clearing large areas for animal feeding, had led to a well-maintained homeland. It was also good for animal control, making sure that healthy grass areas were not overrun by invasive species and kept needed food sources (the deer and antelope) nearby the villages. Add to this the benefits of a balanced diet on physical health.
We have learned that tribes in California have been holding prescribed burnings for centuries and this led to much reduced wildfire occurrences. As we saw in the 2010’s and the deluge of wildfires in the state was due a great deal to the amount of flammable foliage that was never controlled by the state parks or by the state itself. In addition to the dry conditions of the on-going drought in California, the abundance of overgrowth is tinder for any un-thought-out gender reveals.
The drought of California again leads us to the Indigenous peoples of the United States and their care for waterways and the idea that “Water is Life”. For centuries, it was the irrigation of the Pueblo peoples that moved water into the arid areas of the southwest to grow abundances of corn. Intricate irrigation systems long-thought to be “alien technology” was simply Native peoples understanding architecture and how necessary water is to life. Now, we find that the deregulation of corporations led to the draining of aquafers, which in part, led to the drought conditions that led to the wildfires.
It is this disregard to the protection and safety of waterways that helped in the strip mining of reservation lands for uranium leading to poisoned water and large numbers of illnesses and deaths on reservation that had uranium, or other forms of strip mining of the lands which were barely regulated when dumping their wastes into local rivers.
Through these and many more examples, we have learned that tuning into the concerns of the Indigenous peoples of the United States, we begin to see how their issues relate to our issues. That to ignore them is to ignore ourselves. We did not expect this since we are so used to not ever seeing Indigenous peoples as modern contemporaries. That their issues now were of no impact, or that they were dealing with things long past which should be forgotten.
No one expected that we would ever have ignored these issues, even ten years ago. But taking the time to explore these issue and work with tribes to better these situations have led to greater leaps forward in public health overall. No one expected that.
References:
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/24/899422710/to-manage-wildfire-california-looks-to-what-tribes-have-known-all-along
https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/snap/prescribed-fire-natural-areas.html
Doolittle, William E. "Agriculture in North America on the Eve of Contact: A Reassessment" Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 1992,
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/3772628-keystone-pipeline-has-now-leaked-more-oil-in-the-us-than-any-other-since-2010-report/
Context: this was written as par of an application process that I was unable to submit. The process was confusing and I click the next step to submit the application by accident and was unable to attach this to the online application. It did not even offer a Review/Edit page. It just submitted it. The essay was 600-800 words on public health with the theme of "No One Expected That 2035".
I post it here because I though, someone should read it. Enjoy. I guess....
4:[ Observation: On Twenty-something’s saying “I’m Old”
You’re not old. You are just experienced. Life has dealt you a shitty hand and you’re not able to relish having free time or disposable income for it. Learning that the world is a shit place that WE LEFT YOU and now: YOU HAVE TO DEAL WITH THAT!
I apologize. I am truly sorry. This was not the Twenties you were promised.
5:[ We cannot go back to “Normal” all after this: thinking that fresh water is a infinite resource. I will repeat this constantly….
That is it for this month.
As always, I invite you to comment, correct, or contradict anything I write here. I am open to a critical debate. Thanks for taking the time to check out what I write here and I will see you in a month.
Until next time, remember “I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control everything really are.”
2023 Ernest M Whiteman III
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