The Terrorists
Staci Ferrick and Edward J. Mock
Copyright, January, 2009, by Staci Ferrick

“Heads up Jack!  Here come our friends out of passport control.  Hold up your Dallas Tigers pennants”.

“Thanks Tom, I’m all smiles for the FBI cameras.”

Holding up his Lubbock Lions pennant, Tom smiled.

“Over here fellows!  Baggage claim is this way.  Our bus is outside waiting for you,” yelled Jack.

The tired, weary young men followed the pennants and eventually claimed their luggage and soccer gear.  As prearranged there was almost complete silence among the soccer players.  They looked exhausted and bored.

Read more here: http://community.livejournal.com/chaos_zine/2858.html

Edward J. Mock resides at 2114 Spalding Dr., Maryville, TN 37803. His phone is 865-379-1708. Staci Ferrick is on the West Coast and may be reached by commenting to this entry.

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.