Brandon’s post on the ideas and history of Socrates’ teacher, Diotima of Mantinea: Diotima introduced Socrates to a paradigm for finding and understanding beauty at higher and more abstract levels, starting with the physical world and going deeper into the realm of ideas.

Kristie LeVangie, creator of the Shades of K- podcast, writes to celebrate Margaret Fuller and educated, thinking, and hardworking women everywhere who balance the life of the mind with work and family responsibilities: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.viewcustom&friendId=458113705&blogId=496569695&swapped=true

Callisto’s post on Simone de Beauvoir…she included the Wikipedia link to provide a comprehensive overview of Beauvoir’s life and works in terms of existentialism/freedom of choice and her feminist ideas, such as how she believed women should not be objectified as ‘other’ and ‘mysterious’ and should just be thought of as regular people: http://callisto24.insanejournal.com/42036.html

Valeria Holtz’ comparison of the ideas of Margaret Cavendish and Alfred Whitehead, in terms of the active role of the mind in generating and understanding knowledge of the physical world, and in terms of looking at patterns that emerge over expanses of space and time rather than separating and reducing observations to certain discrete units. Holtz argues that Cavendish’s ideas resemble Whitehead’s more so than currently thought, and that she certainly laid the groundwork for many of his seminal concepts. http://docs.google.com/View?id=dgzwhsd5_0j64qh2ss

I will add more as they come in, and will create one myself later.

Music for Theano’s Day: Eneida Marta’s Mindjer Doce Mel (Woman Sweet Honey) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFWwuNoFR9U From Africa’s Guinea-Bisseau (northwestern coast), Marta sings accompanied by a calabash water drum – a gourd placed in water – and the video shows girls and women dancing, swinging, and reading. And there are plenty of men in the band too, having a wonderful time singing and thinking.

I would like to use this space to acknowledge the work and the simple, effective grassroots approach of the Box Project to helping rural families in the southeast/midwest United States. People and families sign up to be matched with a family living with an income below the U.S. government’s poverty level. Many families have several members who work full time, or who may be elderly or disabled…and sponsors continually comment on how strong, resourceful, and uncomplaining the rural families are.

People send periodic boxes of gifts…dishes, towels, socks, canned food, etc…things which would help out a family with few resources. And some families have gotten more education/better jobs and no longer need the boxes, but still value the friendship and letter exchange.

I’m spotlighting this organization as an example of a group which came out of a real, observed need ‘on the ground’ in the back country areas of the United States, and which has a practical, simple solution. Also, the low-cost grassroots aspect of this has worked well for them, as has staying adaptable (incorporating some aspects of long-term disaster response, focusing increasingly on education and school supplies, etc.) The relationship building and cultural exchange parts of the program…where people in different areas of the U.S. can educate each other about their locales and cultures also helps to educate people as we have a large, diverse country.

I know many of Synchronized Chaos’ readers come from outside the United States, and I spotlight American programs mostly because I am more familiar with them, but am very open to hearing about interesting humanitarian or other ideas elsewhere. We here try to uncover interesting models for getting things done which seem to be working and put them out there as possibilities to see if they might also work with some changes in other cultural contexts.

If people are interested in learning more about the Box Project’s approach, their website is available here: http://www.boxproject.org/index.html

They are also fundraising by selling lithographs from a Maine artist…so maybe some of the visual artists here might be interested in seeing if they could use more donated artwork.

Interesting commentary, taken from a featured letter from a family who sends boxes regularly: The kids’ schools are doing drives for food, clothes, hats, gloves, books, stuffed animals…you name it. The principal told the kids in an assembly that some of the things they donated would be used right here in our community. Later, some of the kids were talking to the first grade teacher and said that they didn’t know any poor people. My son said HE knew some poor people, and told about packing these boxes. He became the class expert, and he expounded on how some people are poor, but others are poorer and can’t even afford enough food or clothes, and that people are not poor because they don’t have money, they are poor because they don’t have opportunities to make enough money. Then he told them that once you have one kind of problem, you automatically get others along with it, like if you don’t have enough money to buy meat and vegetables, you eat a lot of cheap spaghetti and gain weight and get sick and then you can’t work anyway and you can’t afford a doctor and it gets harder to find clothes that fit and other things. He’s six, remember. I thought that was a pretty interesting understanding of poverty!

His teacher told me that the class was totally awed by the concept that it was possible to become poor, that poor people could be victims of circumstance and not just lazy people who didn’t want to get a job at McDonald’s or maybe people who weren’t born into poverty. The idea that you could become poor threw them for a loop, I think. One of the kids asked my son why our match family just couldn’t all go work at McDonald’s and get free food, too. So my son said there weren’t any McDonalds around them. When asked why, he had to think a minute, then he said “because no one can afford to eat there, so McDonald’s just built them where there were people with enough money to eat there.”

I didn’t tell them any of this stuff (well, not in so many words!), so you can just see how much they’re learning.

Announcement for a new magazine seeking submissions of writing and visual art, from anyone, anywhere. First issue of Bread and Circuses came out last March, new issue due this summer. First heard about and became intrigued with this project last winter at the San Francisco Writers’ Conference.

Please read below for more information, email breadandcircuseszine@gmail.com with questions or submissions.

Bread & Circuses is a new zine produced by the members of the Orinda Poetry Project. We welcome submissions of original and unpublished poetry, prose, letters, recipes, reviews, interviews, manifestos, photos, scripts, confessions, paintings, collages, essays, cartoons, found art, etc., from anyone, anywhere.

Feel free to email us at breadandcircuseszine(at)gmail(dot)com with questions, comments, interesting facts, and, of course, your submissions. Don’t hesitate- we want what you’ve got. Thanks for your interest!

Contact

Annelyse Gelman
Orinda, CA
(925) 254-5358

Happy Father’s Day, Graduation Day, Bastille Day, first day of summer – whatever you celebrate this June! And welcome to our latest issue of Synchronized Chaos Magazine.

June’s theme is Foreground and Background – with a set of works which explore how individual lives fit into larger ethnic, political, historical, and cultural contexts. Somewhat reminiscent of a large landscape painting or one of those 3-D puzzles from a decade ago, the protagonists and/or creators of each of this month’s works stand in relief against their cultures and societies, encouraging people to look deeper at what and who helps to make us who we are.

Elina Hirvonen’s debut novel When I Forgot, reviewed in this issue, presents characters who look to literature to help them communicate nearly unspeakable personal struggles with violence, mental illness, and the aftermath of war. By stepping back and seeing their traumas in light of the larger human history surrounding them, they are able to distance themselves enough, ironically, to remember those who need their attention.

Laila Lalami’s novel Secret Son also grapples with individuals seeking out places to belong within their larger cultures. In a sobering contrast to the tender hope of Hirvonen’s piece, Lalami shows how people can get lost amidst undercurrents of family, cultural, and religious politics originating long before their birth. When I Forgot’s characters discover a background for their own lives which empowers them by giving them words and a framework for what they have experienced, while Secret Son’s people are hunted out and manipulated by their pasts and by the cultural divides and tensions within Morocco and within expatriate life.

Reclaiming and discovering one’s personal heritage by choice can be an empowering and fascinating experience, as Mary Jane Daugherty-Srubar finds in her memoir Ozark Princess. While she enjoys her own life, its simple country pleasures and calm, decent people, she seeks out information on her Irish clan, linking herself to a broader past out of curiosity. Her memoir shares anecdotes from her childhood, her marriage, her family, her spiritual journey – and celebrates family and belonging to a certain place through starting with a chapter on her family before her birth.

Azerbajani scholar and magazine co-editor Narmin Ka tries an academic tack to explore these themes – as opposed to a particular person or place, she probes how one can define the concept of creativity. What does it mean, in a philosophical or organizational context, to come up with new ideas, and how can we facilitate creativity? She begins with an anecdote about a gentleman on a train endlessly re-reading the same newspaper articles, and progresses to tie in creativity to a history of philosophical and cybernetic thought, to put the concept in its philosophical context.

The band Aryawn, seeking to provide cultural critique through experimental acoustics, lists classical composers among their leading inspirations. Classical works are still used within popular culture to set tones and moods for other pieces, and honored for the structure and psychological impact and sensitivity of their motifs and organization. Uniquely, Aryawn seeks out lesser-known composers, out of a mutual curiosity as to why and how certain music was rejected from production or why its creators were rejected from the canon of celebrated composers. Also, the band hopes to provide cultural analysis and social commentary through its sounds and unusual titles, such as “Sensationalism is the Opiate of the Asses.”

Finally, a contributor who left his/her piece in Synchronized Chaos’ online LiveJournal community (chaos_zine) is published and recognized here. This contributor presented a short existential piece encouraging us not to give up the quest to find and define meaning in our own lives, to ask the questions which matter and not settle for easy answers.

Thanks to all of the contributors for such a diverse, intellectual group of submissions this month! We welcome readers and encourage everyone to think through and enjoy the works.

Also, this website is intended as a resource for writers, artists, musicians, etc. We try to post submission and publication and gig opportunities, if you would like please comment anytime and let us know who you are, what kind of work you do, and what kind of opportunity you are looking for. Also, if you are with a gallery or concert venue or literary agency or publisher and need artists meeting certain specifications, then please let us know and we would be honored to provide some recommendations.

Mary Jane Daugherty-Srubar reflects on her life as a part-Irish American country girl making her home in the southeastern Ozark Mountains. This piece is a collection of anecdotes from her childhood and early life, including her farm days, schooling, and marriage.

You may learn more at her website and contact her here: http://ozarkprincess.com/Home_Page.html

Have you ever seen an ice cream cone that held two dips side by side? When I was a little girl there was a drug store and a grocery store in our town that sold ice cream. The price was a nickel a cone but the grocery store had the double dip cone, so that is where I bought my ice cream. One chocolate and one strawberry. A poor princess has to be thrifty.

Why did I think I was a princess? I didn’t then, that idea came in later years. I grew up in a low income family. We never went hungry mostly because of the hard work of my mom, her garden, and the chickens she raised, and, most of all, the wonderful fresh fish out of the Spring River. My mom and grandmother Susanna were very accomplished seamstresses so I always had beautiful clothes, many of them made from old dresses.

On my father’s side of the family, I was the youngest cousin, and with my blond curly hair and green eyes, I was certainly the princess of the Daugherty clan. From first grade through fifth grade, I was queen of my class every year but one. That year, my friend, Eva Jo Long, was elected.

My cousin, Roberta, sent me a beautiful maroon colored Schwinn bicycle for my 10th birthday. No one in our town had a bike like this one. The other bikes were big, clumsy with thick tires. My bike had small, thin sporty tires and brakes attached to the curved chrome handlebars. I had never seen a bike like this.

My dad’s friends were always good to me and were always giving me a nickel for soda or ice cream. I was an only child, and maybe I was slightly spoiled. I hate that word and had rather not admit this could be the case.

As I was growing up, not much was mentioned about our ancestors being Irish on my father’s side. A few years ago I came in contact with a second cousin, Fred Daugherty, who has been researching our clan for a long time and he gave me the information he uncovered. I was especially amazed by one fact: our clan leader was the last chieftain in Ireland before the English took over. He was killed He was killed in 1607 in County Donegal; his head was removed and mounted on a pike in front of Dublin Castle. I was amazed at these facts and the more I read, the more interested I became in our history and especially the Irish clan.

As I studied this information, it occurred to me that if our clan leader had not been killed and had been declared King of Ireland, today I could be a princess, a little far fetched, I must admit, but it confirmed my feeling of being an Ozark Princess.

This short piece, by an up and coming writer who posted in our Synchronized Chaos LiveJournal community, can also be found here, where you may leave comments and correspond with the author: http://community.livejournal.com/chaos_zine/2550.html

It’s all fiction. Reality a myth. We are all hypnotized. We think we think. We believe we know. We wish and we have faith. Only faith. Without dreams we sleep. Sleep without rest. Haunted by nightmares. Consumed by the mundane. Frightened by death. Terrified of living. Morbid ideals of ascension. We exist as though we have purpose. Aimlessly pursuing a means to an end. To what end. Existential meandering. Presupposing a begining. Begining of the end? Who has the answers. What are the questions. As if it matters. Truth is meaningless. We know without understanding. We have faith. We hope and pray for a savior. As if we are worth saving. Still we hope. We have faith in lunatics and heretics. We worship death. Yet we long for immortality. We long for the promised land. Faithful empty promise. The writing is on the wall. the signs are everywhere. If only we could read. WHAT? Our eyes are blind. Our ears are deaf. Our minds comatose. Too bad we are not mute. Inane rhetoric. We choke on propaganda. But we have faith. Seduced by impetuous imps. Abandoned in vitro. It’s all for naught. Irrelevant reverence. Misguided chaotic order. We stumble on stable ground. We stand firm with no legs to stand on. Just remember, god hates you, just not as much as me…

Answers are irrelevant. Only questions matter.