Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin p.77-78--Commonplace Book

Quick set-up (taken from here): He is in the middle of racism central/Mississippi and has luckily found haven with a friend for the weekend -- His friend has compiled news clippings and propoganda for him to rifle through (1950's internet - ha)...

I left them around eleven and meant to fall into bed.  But the material P.D. had placed on the two bed tables fascinated me so that I studied it and made notes without sleeping until dawn.  It is perhaps the most incredible collection of what East calls "assdom" in the South.  It shows that the most obscene figures are not the ignorant ranting racists, but the legal minds who front for them, who "invent" for them the legislative proposals and the propaganda bulletins.  They deliberately choose to foster distortions, always under the guise of patriotism, upon a people who have no means of checking the facts.  Their appeals are to regional interest, showing complete contempt for privacy of conscience, and a willingness to destroy and subvert values that have traditionally been held supreme in this land.

Lynching of Mack Charles Parker--Interesting Random Facts

I'm rereading Black Like Me, and one of the points in the book is the "Parker lynch case"

At the shoe stand, Sterling did not give his usual cordial greeting. His eyes looked yellower than usual.

“You heard?” he asked. 

“No . . . I haven’t heard anything . . .” 

He told me the Mississippi jury refused to indict in the Parker lynch case. The news had spread over the quarter like a wave of acid. Everyone talked of it. Not since I was in Europe, when the Russo-German Pact of 1939 was signed, had I seen news spread such bitterness and despair. 

(This is from p.48-49, but the case also gets discussed a few more times later in the book.) 

Sounds like this case was a really big deal back in its day, but I never even heard of it.

It's strange.  You think that you learned all the major events in the Civil Rights Movement.  After all, I learned about Emmet Till,  The Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, The Scottsboro Boys, Medgar Evers, etc.  And I thought I knew it all.  But this is a reminder that there was a whole lot more stuff happening that never makes it into the history classroom--probably just because there's just way too much to talk about, so the teachers have to just choose a couple of cases to talk about, rather than try to include everything.

Anyway, if you (like me) had never heard of the Parker lynch case, you can read all about it on Wikipedia.  It's not pleasant reading, but it is American history.

Mack Charles Parker (May 20, 1936 – April 24, 1959) was a Black American victim of lynching in the United States. He had been accused of raping a pregnant white woman in northern Pearl River County, Mississippi. Three days before he was to stand trial, Parker was kidnapped from his jail cell in the Pearl River County Courthouse by a mob, beaten and shot. His body was found in the Pearl River, 20 miles west of Poplarville, 10 days later. Following an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the men who killed him were released. Despite confessions, no one was ever indicted for the killing.^[1][2][3][4] Historian Howard Smead called the killing the "last classic lynching in America."^[5]

...etc.  Read the whole article for all the details.

Psalm 83--Commonplace Book (from my readthrough of the Bible)

From the Jerusalem Bible, Psalm 83 begins:

God, do not remain silent;

do not be umoved, O God, or unresponsive!

See how your enemies are stirring, see how those who hate you rear their heads.

Weaving a plot against your people,

conspiring against those you protect, they say

"Come, we will finish them as a nation,

the name of Israel shall be forgotten!"

Unanimous in their plot,

they seal a treaty against you;

the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites,

Moab and the Hagrites,

Gebel, Ammon, Amalek,

Philistia and the Tyrians;

and now Assur has joined them to reinforce the sons of Lot.

The footnotes in the Jerusalem Bible reads:

The names are those of ten traditional enemies of Israel.  Three of them are not immediately familiar from the historical books: "Hagrites", the sons of Hagar, are Transjordianian nomads; "Gebal" is Gablene in Idumaea; "Assur" may be either Assyria or the Asshurite tribe.

***********************

I wanted to note this briefly here, because I just found it interesting that the Psalms include 3 "traditional enemies" of Israel that get completely left out of the historical books.  It's a reminder that that the historical books were a very selective history, and there must have been tons of stuff that got left out.  We get glimpses of some of that other stuff in books like Psalms.

Also, I googed "the Asshurite tribe" to try to find out who they were.  There's not a lot of information about them online, but I did find this from: https://biblehub.com/topical/a/asshurites.htm

The Asshurites are a group mentioned in the Old Testament, specifically in the context of the early monarchy of Israel. The term "Asshurites" is derived from "Asshur," which is often associated with Assyria, a major Mesopotamian kingdom and empire. However, in the biblical context, the Asshurites are not directly linked to the Assyrian Empire but rather appear as a distinct group within the narrative of King David's reign.

The primary reference to the Asshurites is found in 2 Samuel 2:9, where they are listed among the territories over which Ish-bosheth, the son of Saul, was made king by Abner, the commander of Saul's army. The verse states: "He made him king over Gilead, Ashuri, Jezreel, Ephraim, Benjamin, and all Israel" . The term "Ashuri" is often understood to refer to the Asshurites, indicating a region or people under Ish-bosheth's rule. 

The Tribe of Benjamin, The Tribe of Simeon and The Kingdom of Judah--Interesting Random Facts

I've told this story a couple times before (here and here), but when I was in 7th grade, I was taking confirmation classes (W) at my church, and as we worked through the Biblical narrative, we got to the split between Israel and Judah.  The confirmation teacher summarized it like this.  "There were 10 tribes that formed the northern Kingdom of Israel. The tribe of Judah in the South was left to become the Kingdom of Judah.  And there was one tribe, the tribe of Benjamin, that was stuck in the middle between these two kingdoms."

This contradicted what I had learned in Bible class at the Christian school I attended during the week.  So I raised my hand and said, "No, that's wrong. The tribe of Benjamin was part of the Kingdom of Judah."     

The confirmation teacher didn't agree.  "No, the tribe of Benjamin was in the middle," he said.

But I was sure I was right, so as the class moved on to other topics, I began flipping through my Bible to find proof that the tribe of Benjamin was definitely part of the Kingdom of Judah.  Everyone in the confirmation class had copies of the NIV Student Bible, which contained boxes of explanatory text next to the Bible passages, and I found a text box in the Student Bible that clearly said the southern Kingdom of Judah consisted of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.  I tapped the teacher on the arm (we were all seated around a table, and I was sitting next to him), and showed him the passage.  He stopped the class to issue a correction.  "Okay, everyone, it looks like Joel was right.  The tribe of Benjamin was part of the Kingdom of Judah."

I was so proud of myself.  I knew the Bible better than the teacher (or so I thought.)  For years afterwards, this was a point of pride for me.

...until, of course, I eventually matured, and realized what an annoying little snot I must have been.  "Ah, so that's why nobody liked me."  (Nobody, after all, likes an annoying pedant.) *

However, some 30+ years later, I think I'm beginning to realize that my confirmation teacher might actually have been right.

In my re-readthrough of the Bible, I noticed that the historical books of 1st Kings and 2nd Kings often describes the Kingdom of Judah as just the tribe of Judah.  The tribe of Benjamin is mentioned as joining up with Judah a couple of times, but only a couple of times.  

Upon noticing this, I went to Wikipedia to double check whether or not the tribe of Benjamin was actually part of the Kingdom of Judah.  Wikipedia (at least as of this writing) appears to unambiguously classify Benjamin as part of the Southern Kingdom.  

After the brief period of the United Kingdom of Israel, Benjamin became part of the southern Kingdom of Judah following the split into two kingdoms.

So, that settled my mind for a little while.

But more recently, I've been reading through Psalms, and I came to Psalm 80, which reads:

Shepherd of Israel, listen

you who lead Joseph like a flock;

enthroned on the cherubs, shine

on Ephraim, Benjamin and Mannesseh;

rouse your strength,

come to save us

The footnote in The Jerusalem Bible identifies "Ephriam, Benjamin and Mannesseh" as "The principle tribes of the North".

So, I crossed reference this with the notes for The NIV Study Bible, which goes into more detail:

It seems likely that "Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh" (v. 2) here represent the northern kingdom.  If Jeroboam was indeed given ten tribes (see 1 Kings 11:29-36), leaving only one to Rehoboam–Judah (see 1 Kings 12:20), which was actually two tribes because Simeon was located within Judah–then Benjamin belonged to the northern kingdom.  However, part of Benjamin must always have remained with the southern kingdom since its territory actually bordered on Jerusalem itself, and the southern kingdom continued to control Jerusalem’s environs (see 1 Kings 12:21). This suggests that the disaster suffered was the Assyrian campaign that swept the northern kingdom away (see 2 Kings 17:1-6). 

(p.864 of NIV Study Bible).

Okay, time to Google for more information.  I found this website here on the Tribe of Benjamin, which goes into a lot more detail, and also seems to confirm that Benjamin was neither part of the Northern Kingdom nor the Southern Kingdom:

The northern border of Benjamin would come to constitute the northern frontier of the southern kingdom of Judah. It became the limit of the southern frontier of the northern kingdom of Israel. Simply put, the land of Benjamin was the frontier between Israel and Judah. It buffered the north from the south, and the Benjamite northern border was the very line of separation between the two kingdoms - much like the DMZ between North and South Korea today.

Consequently, the loyalties of the tribe of Benjamin were always divided, and many skirmishes were fought along this frontier over the course of its history. Only one major war was waged on the soil of Benjamin, though sporadic fighting occurred along the frontier, with both sides caught in a perpetual cycle of gaining, then subsequently losing, ground.

It would be nice to have more references here, so I could check the Bible myself, and find out what war and skirmishes are being referred to.  (I don't remember skirmishes over the Tribe of Benjamin being mentioned a lot in 1st and 2nd Kings, but I could just be forgetting.)  But the website sounds like it knows what it's talking about.

So how about that?  I guess my confirmation teacher was right after all!

********************************************

On another note:

Speaking of  the Kingdom of Judah, there's actually one more tribe in the mix: the Tribe of Simeon.  In my youth, both at my Christian school and at my Church don't ever remember the tribe of Simeon being discussed at all.  It was always the 10 Northern Tribes of Israel, and Benjamin and Judah in the South.  But I don't remember anyone mentioning the Tribe of Simeon.

But if you look on the map, it looks like the Tribe of Simeon was completely surrounded by the Tribe of Judah.   

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/12_Tribes_of_Israel_Map.svg

(I mentioned this before in my review of Genesis.  According to the Bible, it looks like Simeon was absorbed by Judah in response to the curse that Jacob put on Simeon and Levi for their attack on the Shechemites in Genesis 34.)
So that means there must have been at least 3 tribes in the Southern Kingdom: Judah, Benjamin (sort of) and Judah.

Notes

*Although actually, I think at the time, the urge to correct my confirmation teacher was less about wanting to prove I was smarter than the teacher, and more about trying to protect what I thought I already knew.  Some children have a hard time tolerating ambiguity, and I was one of them.  Having already learned the "fact" that the tribe of Benjamin was part of the Kingdom of Judah, I didn't want to have to unlearn this, and accept that there was some confusion about the historical record.  I had already learned this thing!  Don't you dare tell me I have to learn it differently now.

Amazon Links

* Check out the NIV Student Bible on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/43tZ5xD 

* Jerusalem Bible here: https://amzn.to/4fbgM92

* NIV Study Bible here: https://amzn.to/43zCIHa

(These are Amazon Associate's Links.  If you buy anything through these links, I get a commission.)

Psalm 74--Commonplace Book (from my readthrough of the Bible)

I've recently gotten a bit distracted in my readthrough of the Bible, but I am making slow progress through Psalms.

Psalm 74 had a number of interesting features, so I thought I'd mention it. 

The Jerusalem Bible (which is the Bible I'm reading) titles this Psalm "Lament on the destruction of the Temple", so I guess right away we can guess that there's no use pretending this Psalm was written by David.  The NIV translation doesn't give this Psalm a title.  (The NIV translation is the translation that was used in my community, and the translation I grew up with, so whenever I see something surprising in The Jerusalem Bible, I try to cross reference it with the NIV.)

Anyway, from the beginning, according to The Jerusalem Bible translation, Psalm 74 reads:

God, have you finally rejected us,

raging at the flock you used to pasture?

Remember the people you long since made your own,

your hereditary tribe whom you redeemed, 

and this Mount Zion where you came to live.

Pick your steps over these endless ruins:

the enemy have sacked everything in the sanctuary.

They roared where your Assemblies used to take place,

they stuck their enemy emblems over the entrance, *

emblems we have never seen before.

 As you can see, there's an asterisk by entrance, which references to a footnote at the bottom of the page in The Jerusalem Bible, which reads:

Probably a description of the destruction of the temple by the 'mad king', Antiochus Epiphanes.

Interesting.  I guess this must come from First Maccabees chapter 1, in which Antiochus Epiphanes erects the Abomination of desolation in the Temple. But I had never realized that some of the Psalms were written as late as the Seleucid period.  I had known some of them were from the Babylonian exile, but I didn't realize they came from even later than that.  (The NIV, by the way, does not have this same footnote.  Nor is it as clear from the NIV translation that someone is putting something over the entrance to the temple.  See NIV version here.)

For what it's worth, Wikipedia backs up the idea that there's a tradition of attributing this Psalm to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes.  From Psalm 74 Wikipedia page:

The enemy is not named, but may refer to King Nebuchadnezzar. According to the Targum, the reference is to Antiochus Epiphanes.^[4]

The second interesting thing comes a bit further down in Psalm 74, from verse 12.  Quoting again from The Jerusalem Bible:

Yet, God my king from the first,

author of saving acts throughout the earth,

by your power you split the sea in two,

and smashed the heads of monsters on the waters,

You crushed Leviathan's heads,

leaving him for wild animals to eat,

This section is interesting to me because it seems to be explicitly referencing the Babylonian creation myths, in which at the beginning of time the sea is subdued and the sea monsters killed.  

I'm currently reading Babylonian Creation Myths by W.G. Lambert, so those stories are fresh in my mind at the moment, and it's interesting to see the influence in the Psalms.  

Although I had long known that these references were in the Psalms.  Christine Hayes in her lectures on the Old Testament  had mentioned that the Babylonian creation stories about subduing the sea monsters were absent from Genesis, but in the Psalms and in the book of Job.  I even wrote about this fact in a previous post.  But even though I had known this was in the Psalms, it still jumped out at me when I read it because I'm currently reading the Babylonian Creation Myths.

And finally, the other thing I find interesting about Psalm 74 is that, just like Psalm 44, the author seems to be accusing God of abandoning Israel to its enemies without justification.  

Racso and the Rats of NIMH by Jane Leslie Conly p.83-84--Commonplace Book

"As for you..." Nicodemus paused. "We haven't talked about whether you should stay."

Racso had never really considered the possibility that he would not stay at Thorn Valley. For a moment he was at a loss for words. Finally he said weakly, "I want to stay."

"Why?" Nicodemus asked.

Racso hesitated. He wanted to speak well, but he was scared. After a while he said, "I want to be a scientist. I want to be a hero, like you."

Nicodemus looked genuinely startled. He laughed briefly. His good eye was open wide, and he regarded Racso with quite amusement. "I am not a hero," he said. "And Thorn Valley is not in the business of raising heroes. Heroes are creatures of adversity – war, fire, accident or disaster. Our dreams for Thorn Valley don’t include the tragic circumstances that produce heroes. What we want is a community where rats cooperate to provide food and shelter, where work and pleasure are part of everyone’s life."

"But you'll need heroes," Racso argued. "You'll need leaders."

"Leaders, yes," Nicodemus nodded. "But leaders are no more heroic than the rat who carries more grain than she really has to, or the student who does not lose his temper when another rat takes what is rightfully his."

Passenger Pigeons--Interesting Random Facts

I've been reading The Silver Age Teen Titans Archives: Volume 1, which contains reprinted comics from the 1960s.  In the first reprinted issue, from 1964, the villain is Brom Stikk, and the plot revolves around the fact that passenger pigeons were once so common in America, and are now completely gone.

Image from: https://marswillsendnomore.wordpress.com/2013/07/27/robin-kid-flash-and-aqualad/braveandthebold054_13-teentitans9/

(see here and here for more).

I was curious, so I Googled it, and found the Wikipedia article:

The passenger pigeon or wild pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) is an extinct species of pigeon that was endemic to North America.

It mainly inhabited the deciduous forests of eastern North America and was also recorded elsewhere, but bred primarily around the Great Lakes. The pigeon migrated in enormous flocks, constantly searching for food, shelter, and breeding grounds, and was once the most abundant bird in North America, numbering around 3 billion, and possibly up to 5 billion.

Passenger pigeons were hunted by Native Americans, but hunting intensified after the arrival of Europeans, particularly in the 19th century. Pigeon meat was commercialized as cheap food, resulting in hunting on a massive scale for many decades. There were several other factors contributing to the decline and subsequent extinction of the species, including shrinking of the large breeding populations necessary for preservation of the species and widespread deforestation, which destroyed its habitat. A slow decline between about 1800 and 1870 was followed by a rapid decline between 1870 and 1890. In 1900, the last confirmed wild bird was shot in southern Ohio.^[2][4] The last captive birds were divided in three groups around the turn of the 20th century, some of which were photographed alive. Martha, thought to be the last passenger pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, at the Cincinnati Zoo. The eradication of the species is a notable example of anthropogenic extinction.

I found this interesting because:

1) I had never heard of passenger pigeons before, but this 1964 children's comic treats it like their extinction was common knowledge.  Is this a forgotten piece of history?  Did more people know about passenger pigeons in the 1960s, and then it just faded out of public memory?

(Of course it could be just me, but, I ran this by the my mother, sister and brother-in-law, and they had never heard of the passenger pigeon before either.  What about you, dear reader?)

2) It's interesting the huge scale of the reverse, huh?  This went from being the must abundant bird in North America to being extinct. That's a pretty remarkable change.

There's tons more interesting material on the Wikipedia page: everything from their vocalizations, to their relationship with humans to (perhaps most interestingly) the potential resurrection of the species.  Check out the Wikipedia page if you have time.

Psalm 44

(Commonplace Book)

From my reread of The Bible.

Psalms admittedly isn't my favorite book of The Bible.  I like narratives, and Psalms is more poetics.  But one of the interesting things about reading Psalms is seeing how the theology seems to differ from psalm to psalm.  One psalm will assert that God rewards the righteous and punishes the wicked, the next psalm will lament that God allows the wicked to prosper while the righteous suffer.

I read Psalm 44 today, and I thought it was interesting, because Psalm 44 is asserting that God allowed Israel( *) to suffer at the hands of its foreign adversaries despite the fact that Israel had been faithful to God.

This is in contrast, of course, to the narrative of the Deuteronomistic Historian (W), but one thing to keep in mind is that the historical narrative in the Bible may be reinterpreting events to fit its theological conclusions.  The theological conclusion that was reached in the time of the exile was: God allowed us to be conquered because we were unfaithful to him.

But in the years leading up to the exile, it could have been that the Israelites believed that they were still being faithful to God, and couldn't understand why God was allowing this to happen.

(*) I'm using the word "Israel" to refer to both Israel and Judah here.

Anyway, below is Psalm 44.  I've been reading The Jerusalem Bible, but because the NIV is easier to find online, I'm copying and pasting from the NIV:

Psalm 44

For the director of music. Of the Sons of Korah. A maskil.

1 We have heard it with our ears, O God;

    our ancestors have told us

what you did in their days,

    in days long ago.

2 With your hand you drove out the nations

    and planted our ancestors;

you crushed the peoples

    and made our ancestors flourish.

3 It was not by their sword that they won the land,

    nor did their arm bring them victory;

it was your right hand, your arm,

    and the light of your face, for you loved them.

4 You are my King and my God,

    who decrees victories for Jacob.

5 Through you we push back our enemies;

    through your name we trample our foes.

6 I put no trust in my bow,

    my sword does not bring me victory;

7 but you give us victory over our enemies,

    you put our adversaries to shame.

8 In God we make our boast all day long,

    and we will praise your name forever.

9 But now you have rejected and humbled us;

    you no longer go out with our armies.

10 You made us retreat before the enemy,

    and our adversaries have plundered us.

11 You gave us up to be devoured like sheep

    and have scattered us among the nations.

12 You sold your people for a pittance,

    gaining nothing from their sale.

13 You have made us a reproach to our neighbors,

    the scorn and derision of those around us.

14 You have made us a byword among the nations;

    the peoples shake their heads at us.

15 I live in disgrace all day long,

    and my face is covered with shame

16 at the taunts of those who reproach and revile me,

    because of the enemy, who is bent on revenge.

17 All this came upon us,

    though we had not forgotten you;

    we had not been false to your covenant.

18 Our hearts had not turned back;

    our feet had not strayed from your path.

19 But you crushed us and made us a haunt for jackals;

    you covered us over with deep darkness.

20 If we had forgotten the name of our God

    or spread out our hands to a foreign god,

21 would not God have discovered it,

    since he knows the secrets of the heart?

22 Yet for your sake we face death all day long;

    we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

23 Awake, Lord! Why do you sleep?

    Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever.

24 Why do you hide your face

    and forget our misery and oppression?

25 We are brought down to the dust;

    our bodies cling to the ground.

26 Rise up and help us;

    rescue us because of your unfailing love.

Steal This Book Introduction p.xxiii-xxv

(Commonplace Book)

From my reread of Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman:

Steal This Book is, in a way, a manual of survival in the prison that is Amerika. It preaches jailbreak. It shows you where exactly how to place the dynamite that will destroy the walls. The first section--SURVIVE!--lays out a potential action program for our new Nation. The chapter headings spell out the demands for a free society. A community where the technology produces goods and services for whoever needs them, come who may. It calls on the Robin Hoods of Santa Barbara Forest to steal from the robber barons who own the castles of capitalism. It implies that the reader already is “ideologically set,” in that he understands corporate feudalism as the only robbery worthy of being called “crime,” for it is committed against the people as a whole. Whether the ways it describes to rip-off shit are legal or illegal is irrelevant. The dictionary of law is written by the bosses of order. Our moral dictionary says no heisting from each other. To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.

Community within our Nation, chaos in theirs; that is the message of SURVIVE!

We cannot survive without learning to fight and that is the lesson in the second section. FIGHT! separates revolutionaries from outlaws. The purpose of part two is not to fuck the system, but destroy it. The weapons are carefully chosen. They are “home-made,” in that they are designed for use in our unique electronic jungle. Here the uptown reviewer will find ample proof of our “violent” nature. But again, the dictionary of law fails us. Murder in a uniform is heroic, in a costume it is a crime. False advertisements win awards, forgers end up in jail. Inflated prices guarantee large profits while shoplifters are punished. Politicians conspire to create police riots and the victims are convicted in the courts. Students are gunned down and then indicted by suburban grand juries as the trouble-makers. A modern, highly mechanized army travels 9,000 miles to commit genocide against a small nation of great vision and then accuses its people of aggression. Slumlords allow rats to maim children and then complain of violence in the streets. Everything is topsy-turvy. If we internalize the language and imagery of the pigs, we will forever be fucked. Let me illustrate the point. Amerika was built on the slaughter of a people. That is its history. For years we watched movie after movie that demonstrated the white man’s benevolence. Jimmy Stewart, the epitome of fairness, puts his arm around Cochise and tells how the Indians and the whites can live in peace if only both sides will be reasonable, responsible and rational (the three R’s imperialists always teach the “natives”). “You will find good grazing land on the other side of the mountain,” drawls the public relations man. “Take your people and go in peace.” Cochise as well as millions of youngsters in the balcony of learning, were being dealt off the bottom of the deck. The Indians should have offed Jimmy Stewart in every picture and we should have cheered ourselves hoarse. Until we understand the nature of institutional violence and how it manipulates values and mores to maintain the power of the few, we will forever be imprisoned in the caves of ignorance. When we conclude that bank robbers rather than bankers should be the trustees of the universities, then we begin to think clearly. When we see the Army Mathematics Research and Development Center and the Bank of Amerika as cesspools of violence, filling the minds of our young with hatred, turning one against another, then we begin to think revolutionary.

Be clever using section two; clever as a snake. Dig the spirit of the struggle. Don’t get hung up on a sacrifice trip. Revolution is not about suicide, it is about life. With your fingers probe the holiness of your body and see that it was meant to live. Your body is just one in a mass of cuddly humanity. Become an internationalist and learn to respect all life. Make war on machines, and in particular the sterile machines of corporate death and the robots that guard them. The duty of a revolutionary is to make love and that means staying alive and free. That doesn’t allow for cop-outs. Smoking dope and hanging up Che’s picture is no more a commitment than drinking milk and collecting postage stamps. A revolution in consciousness is an empty high without a revolution in the distribution of power. We are not interested in the greening of Amerika except for the grass that will cover its grave.

******************************************

For better or for worse (probably for worse), this passage had a big impact on me when I first read it at age 18.  I was unfortunately influenced by some of Abbie Hoffman's outrageous pronouncements like: 

To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.

...which at the time caused me to think it was okay to steal from a supermarket if you could get away with it.  (Sigh, what an idiot I was.) 

During my college years, I was fond of quoting this section.  My email archive reveals that on December 2nd, 1996, I actually copied this out into an email I wrote to a friend.  I included this introduction at the time:

Here’s some food for thought for you. It is a passage from Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman (Yippie founder, and one of the Chicago eight--but you probably already knew that.)  Take note—I don’t agree with everything he says.  I am in total agreement with him when he points out the problems in American society (or Amerika as Abbie puts it, but I’m not sure what the unconformist spelling stands for) however I part ways from him regarding his violent solutions.  Here it is:

....and then I proceeded to quote the entire above section.

I also quoted a line from this section in my Chimes article on the Death Penalty from 1999 (see here and here):

“Murder in a uniform is heroic, in a costume it is a crime.” -- Abbie Hoffman.

....which I now also look back on with embarrassment.  For one thing, quoting Abbie Hoffman in a political article only encourages people not to take you seriously.  But even beyond that, this quote wasn't really about the death penalty.  Abbie Hoffman was talking about the difference between killing in war and killing in peacetime.  In my mind, it was related to the death penalty because I equated "murder in a uniform" to a uniformed officer executing the death penalty, and "murder in a costume" to the person receiving the death penalty.  But I think I was stretching things a bit too far. 

But put a pin in all of that for right now.  When I finish this book, and get around to reviewing it, I'll talk more about the politics of it.  For now, I want to forget about the politics, and focus on how effective this prose is.

I was taking a freshman English class at Calvin College at the time, and every week we had to bring in a piece of writing that we liked to share with the class.  I brought this piece in. I edited it slightly. I cut out the meandering parts and just kept in the punches.  And, because this was Calvin College, I changed "we will forever be fucked" to "we will forever be deceived".  If memory serves, my edited version was something like this.

We cannot survive without learning to fight and that is the lesson in the second section. FIGHT! separates revolutionaries from outlaws. The purpose of part two is not to change the system, but destroy it. Here the uptown reviewer will find ample proof of our “violent” nature. But again, the dictionary of law fails us. Murder in a uniform is heroic, in a costume it is a crime. False advertisements win awards, forgers end up in jail. Inflated prices guarantee large profits while shoplifters are punished. Politicians conspire to create police riots and the victims are convicted in the courts. Students are gunned down and then indicted by suburban grand juries as the trouble-makers. A modern, highly mechanized army travels 9,000 miles to commit genocide against a small nation of great vision and then accuses its people of aggression. Slumlords allow rats to maim children and then complain of violence in the streets. Everything is topsy-turvy. If we internalize the language and imagery of the pigs, we will forever be deceived. 

Until we understand the nature of institutional violence and how it manipulates values and mores to maintain the power of the few, we will forever be imprisoned in the caves of ignorance. When we conclude that bank robbers rather than bankers should be the trustees of the universities, then we begin to think clearly. When we see the Army Mathematics Research and Development Center and the Bank of Amerika as cesspools of violence, filling the minds of our young with hatred, turning one against another, then we begin to think revolutionary.

Surprisingly (this was Calvin College, after all), the professor actually liked it.  After I got done reading it aloud, she commented, "A very powerful piece.  And what makes it so powerful?  It's that parallel structure."

And, I think I agree. If you read the above passage aloud, and you emphasis the words dramatically, and get into the rhythm of the parallel structure, then it can be a very effective piece of rhetoric.

Sidenote:  In the sentence:

A modern, highly mechanized army travels 9,000 miles to commit genocide against a small nation of great vision and then accuses its people of aggression. 

...I was never sure if "its" was meant to refer to the army or the small nation.  That is to say, I wasn't sure if "it's people" was supposed to mean "its own people" (i.e. the people of the country that the army is from, or in other words, American citizens) or if "its people" is the people of the small nation. Back in college, I thought it meant the former, but rereading it now, I think it's probably the latter.

So, if we're scoring this passage on its prose style, maybe take off one point for an ambiguous pronoun.  

Check this book out on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/4aGuSP3           (This is an Amazon Associate's Link.  If you buy anything through that link, I get a commission.)

Is the Deuterocanonical Referenced in the New Testament?

(Commonplace Book)

From Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction by Lawrence Boadt p.18

All seven of the deuterocanonical books, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Judith, Tobit, Baruch, Sirach and The Wisdom of Solomon, are known and referred to by authors in the New Testament...

Strange, I had learned that one of the reasons that the Protestants rejected the Deuterocanon is precisely because it wasn't ever referred to in the New Testament.  Is Lawrence Boadt right?

Well, I googled it, and came across this website: Deuterocanonical References in the New Testament.

It looks like, from what I can tell, there are no direct references to the Deuterocanon in the New Testament, but there are several passages which might be references.

1st Samuel 8:10-17: The Arguments against Monarchy

(Commonplace Book)

From 1st Samuel:

10 Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. 11 He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. 12 Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. 15 He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. 16 Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. 17 He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. 

***************************END QUOTE********

I mentioned this quote in my weekly reading vlog yesterday, but I thought I'd highlight it here as well.  I was pondering whether or not this was worth making a separate blogpost about, but then I remembered that I had made a big deal out of highlighting Herodotus's arguments against monarchy during my readthrough of Herodotus a few years ago, so I might as well do the same thing for the arguments in the Old Testament.  It's always interesting to see these anti-ruling class ideas show up way back in ancient literature.

The above quotation is from the NIV translation.  I'm reading through The Jerusalem Bible at the moment, but the NIV is more widely available on the web, so it's easier to cut and paste.  Plus I grew up on the NIV, so this is the wording I'm more familiar with anyway.  

Christine Hayes, in her lectures on the Old Testament, points out that in the Book of Judges and in 1st Samuel there are echoes of both an anti-monarchist tradition and a pro-monarchist position.

The footnotes of the Jerusalem Bible make the same point.  According to the Jerusalem Bible, 1st Samuel 8, 10:17-24 and 12 are the anti-royalist history, and 1st Samuel 9-10:16 and 11 are the pro-royalist version.  So, for example, in the very next chapter (chapter 9), God suddenly seems to be in favor of the idea of a king:

15 Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed this to Samuel: 16 “About this time tomorrow I will send you a man from the land of Benjamin. Anoint him ruler over my people Israel; he will deliver them from the hand of the Philistines. I have looked on my people, for their cry has reached me.” (NIV)

Azazel--Interesting Random Facts

So, as I've been mentioning on my Weekly Reading Vlogs, I'm currently reading through the Book of Leviticus on the Jerusalem Bible Translation.  

And I came across an interesting little passage in Leviticus 16.  It's talking about the sacrifices for the great Day of Atonement, and it says:

He [Aaron] is to draw lots for the two goats and allot one to Yahweh and the other to Azazel.  Aaron is to offer up the goat whose lot was marked 'For Yahweh', and offer it as a sacrifice for sin.  The goat whose lot was marked 'For Azazel' shall be set before Yahweh, still alive, to perform the the rite of atonement over it, sending it out into the desert to Azazel.

There is also footnote, which says that:

Azazel, in ancient Hebrew and Canaanite belief, is a demon of the desert.

...Wait, what?  Hold on a second.  What is the book of Leviticus doing telling the Israelites to give goats to an ancient Canaanite demon?  I don't remember this at all. 

Now, granted, the last time I read the Bible straight through was 30 years ago.  And I've probably forgotten a lot over the years.  But another Canaanite deity sharing the sacrifice with Yahweh?  That seems like the kind of thing I would have remembered.

So I checked the NIV translation (the version I grew up with), to see if it was the same, and I found the same passage translated thus:

7 Then he is to take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting. 8 He is to cast lots for the two goats—one lot for the Lord and the other for the scapegoat.[b] 9 Aaron shall bring the goat whose lot falls to the Lord and sacrifice it for a sin offering. 10 But the goat chosen by lot as the scapegoat shall be presented alive before the Lord to be used for making atonement by sending it into the wilderness as a scapegoat.

Ah, so in the NIV, "the goat for Azazel" is translated as scapegoat. Now scapegoat I actually remember from Bible school.  (I remember in 6th grade we studied this passage, and my Bible teacher pointed out to us that this ancient Hebrew ritual is where we get the English word scapegoating (W))

But, you can see that there's also a footnote attached to the word scapegoat.  Which reads: 

The meaning of the Hebrew for this word is uncertain; also in verses 10 and 26.

Well "uncertain" is one way of putting it.  The word apparently could either mean a scapegoat, or it could mean an ancient Canaanite desert demon.  Was the NIV trying to hide this possibly hint of polytheism with a vaguely worded footnote?

Maybe.  But I went to Wikipedia, and apparently it is genuinely uncertain.  The word could mean scapegoat, or it could refer to the desert demon, or it could refer to some mountains in the desert. Basically nobody really knows.

But, the mythology around Azazel looks really interesting.  According to Wikipedia:

During the late Second Temple period, Azazel came to be viewed as a fallen angel responsible for introducing humans to forbidden knowledge, as described in the Book of Enoch. His role as a fallen angel partly remains in Christian and Islamic traditions.

...and if you keep digging around the Wikipedia article, there's lots of interesting stuff there, about Azazel's role in the Book of Enoch and the Nephilim .

More interesting information can be found by digging further on the web, like this entry from New World Encyclopedia which mentioned Azazel as possibly a member of The Se'irim--

According to the Book of Enoch, Azazel is the chief of the Se'irim ("the hairy ones"). The Se'irim are goat-demons who haunted the desert and to whom most primitive Semitic tribes offered sacrifices. Jeroboam may have appointed priests for the Se'irim (2 Chron 11:15), but that Josiah destroyed the places of their worship (2 Kgs 23:19).

The Se'irim are mentioned in Leviticus 17:7 and 2 Chronicles 11:15. Additionally, Isaiah 34:14 says that the Se'irim greet each other among the ruins of Edom along with Lilith and other wild beasts.

Yes, speaking of Leviticus 17, that's another interesting footnote in The Jerusalem Bible, where the text reads that the priests "must no longer offer their sacrifices to to the satyrs in whose services they once prostituted themselves" and then the footnote for satyrs reads " 'goats' contemptuously used of the demons in animal-form thought to live in the deserts and ruins, eg. Azazel"

It looks like there's a lot more to explore here if one were inclined to dive further.  I'm going to stop writing here, but feel free to check out some of those links, and do your own research.

Word Bingo for Listening

(TESOL Ideas--Activities That Can Be Used With Any Listening Text)

Sample: docs, pub

I got this idea from How to Teach Listening by J.J. Wilson.  On page 83 of the book, it reads:

Bingo: in this activity, which is particularly enjoyable for young learners, the teacher writes a list of words on the board, all of which occur during the listening passage.  These should be content words--nouns and some verbs, not words such as of or and.  The students, working alone, choose and write down seven of these words (or however many the teacher feels is appropriate).  They then listen to the passage. Whenever their word comes up, they tick them.  They shout Bingo! when they have ticked all seven.  This activity is excellent for selective listening though it actually prevents listening for global meaning.  As such, it should only be done after an initial listening has established the gist.

I adapted the activity somewhat.  I created an actual bingo grid, and told my students they needed to get 5 words in a row (horizontally, vertically or diagonally).  

I gave the students 30 words to choose from, of which they had to pick 25 to fill out their Bingo sheet.  (This was an EAP class, so the listenings were longer--about 5-7 minutes.   With shorter listenings, maybe less words would work better?)

 I had the students shout out bingo when they got 5 in a row.  We paused the audio, and (just to verify) I had them tell me which 5 words they got.  (Before class I had underlined all the key words in the transcript, so I was able to quickly ascertain whether or not those words had been said on the audio yet.

In my class, I played up until 3 students got bingo (1st place, 2nd place and 3rd place).  Then we stopped the game, congratulated the winners, and went on to the next activity.  

The sample activity linked to above is from Reflect Listening & Speaking 5 Listening: How to Plan a City p.94-97

Vocabulary Bingo

absolutely, architect, argued, authorities, calling for, conversation, compact, disease, demolish, factor, friendly, glass, historian, ideal, invention, knocked down, layout, persuaded, pointed out, preserve,  principle, professionals, proposed, quotation, recognize, recommend , restaurants, square, urban, Vietnam

Word Grab for Listening

(TESOL Ideas--Activities That Can Be Used With Any Listening Text)

Sample: docs, pub

Recently I've been looking for new ideas to try and liven up my listening lessons, and this was recommended to me by a colleague.

The basic idea is that vocabulary words that occur in the listening text are put on little strips of paper, and cut up, and one set is given to each pair of students.

Students listen to the audio, and when they hear the vocabulary word, they grab it.  They do this in competition with their partner--whoever grabs the card first gets to keep it, and at the end of the game, the person with the most cards wins.  (In other words, the same basic idea as the Japanese game Karuta.)

The game is commonly done as a post-listening activity (i.e. as a 3rd listening, after the students have already processed the listening text once for gist, and then once for detail)

You may already recognize this activity.  It's very common in TESOL.  In fact, I had actually used it years ago myself, but I had stopped using it over the years.  (It's essentially the same idea that I described in a 2013 post: Vocabulary Review After Reading.) 

One of the reasons I had stopped using this activity is that I had difficulty managing it.  The students often found this activity surprising difficult.  They would quite often not hear the key words when listening to the audio, and subsequently not grab them at the appropriate times.   Or students would mishear the audio, and grab the wrong word at the wrong time.  Because the audio was playing, I found it difficult to give feedback as the game was being conducted.  For example, if I would say...

"No, no, you got the wrong word. That word hasn't come up yet."

...then while I was talking, the students wouldn't be able to hear the audio, and consequently miss out on the next word.

When I decided to try this activity out again, I solved the problem by pausing the audio after each word.  And this worked well in terms of managing the activity.

The problem, though, is that I think the students quickly realized they didn't need to listen to the whole audio carefully.  They simply needed to wait for me to pause the audio, and then just think back to whatever the last word was.

They were, however, engaged with the activity.  So it did work well in terms of boosting student engagement.

One teacher told me that the way she runs the activity is that she just plays the whole audio through without pausing it.  Students grab whichever words they hear, and if they miss some words, she doesn't worry about it.  Then, at the end, she gives them a copy of the transcript.  Students have to look through the transcript to find where the words that they missed are located.

I should note that I've been talking about this activity with a few different teachers in my staffroom, and some of them are skeptical about the value of this activity.

One teacher didn't like the activity because it wasn't authentic--i.e. it didn't mimic the kind of listening task people use in everyday life.

Another teacher thought that the the idea of simply listening for individual words didn't help improve students overall listening comprehension.  He said that the activity might have some value if the students had to listen to distinguish between similar sounding words (e.g. minimal pairs like "ship" and "sheep").  But if they were just listening for normal vocabulary, then he didn't see the point.

....although, I don't know.  I personally think the activity might have some benefit for training students to pick out individual words in the stream of speech.  (I mean, the fact that the students have such difficulty with this game demonstrates that there is a gap in their ability, right?  Would this game help them close that gap?)

Another teacher thought that any sort of moving activity (such as grabbing) interferes with the activity of listening, and should be avoided.  He suggested an activity where the students put the cards in order instead of grabbing them (still some movement going on, but less disruptive.)

So... I don't know.  Use your own judgement on this one I guess.  What do you think?  Is this a useful activity to do after a listening activity?

Addendum:

This activity also pops up in How to Teach Listening by J.J. Wilson, which I'm currently reading.

J.J. Wilson describes it as follows:

Grab the word: Choose about fifteen key words from the listening passage and write them on individual cards.  Stick the cards on the wall or board, or if there are a a lot of students, place the cards on the desks after making duplicate copies.  The students listen as you read the passage or play the recording, and they grab the words when they hear them.  The winner is the person who grabbed the largest number of cards.  As an alternative, instead of grabbing the words, the students put the words/phrases in order.  A tip: warn them beforehand that the activity is violent! Though not strictly true, this tends to get them in the mood! (p.95)

Here is a sample activity  of 10 words that I used with Reflect Listening & Speaking 5 Video: So, What Makes You Laugh? p.76-80.  In this case, the 10 words are the words that were selected by the textbook publishers as key words to learn from the unit, so this activity also helped the students focus on key vocabulary.

comedian	deliberately
essentially	exaggerated
humorous	logical
problematic	reality
relieve	victim