the old-school guestbook archives
my amazon wish list... my favorite astrologer... my favorite artist... yerba mate revolution! erowid: a travel guide for interior journeys... no more war: MoveOn.org United for Peace and Justice True Majority seek the truth: Common Dreams Unamerican Activities The Nation people I adore, diaries I read: rev.raikes ariana cubiclegirl epiphany glitter333 laurakay wammo the music: the asylum street spankers backyard tire fire blue highway bill camplin wendy colonna freedom tribe joules graves guy forsyth band hamsa lila hanuman libby kirkpatrick leftover salmon pamela means medeski martin & wood the motet the nice outfit nickel creek open road rose polenzani railroad earth south austin jug band string cheese incident taarka tha musemeant the devil makes three tim o'brien band trolley wild sage keller williams yonder mountain string band |
waiting for the sun to rise... ~ March 17, 2003 - 6:46 p.m. happy saint patrick's day, y'all... it's a holiday I more or less ignore, in spite of-- or maybe because of-- being irish-as-all-get-out. especially in america, where every asshole who's one-sixteenth irish goes out to get wasted in the bars and harrass girls with long red hair. on saint patrick's day, I'm likely to tell people I'm italian. it's a joke you'd have to see me to really get. I'm as irish as my name, Kelly Gael Murphy McNally. there's just no hiding it. so today I did a little bit of saint patrick's, for my students, who'd never heard of it. just for a bit of multicultural flavor. I talked about ireland, about wearing green, about how they dye the river in chicago. I told them about green food. then I passed out green candies, which of course was their favorite part. of course, in ireland or america, I doubt the candies would have been green tea flavored marshmallows, but you work with what you've got. one of the lao teachers today asked me to explain freckles. one of my students has asked about this, too. it's funny, I grew up surrounded by all colors and varieties of human. it never really occurred to me, the kind of things you might not know if you've never really known white people. like the fact that we come in many vareties of color and tone, like the fact that we burn when we've been in the sun too long. and then there's what happened the other day in class, when we were talking about what we'd like to be when we grow up (ha!), what kinds of lives we wanted for ourselves. and bee, a kid with a grin you'd have to see to believe, said "I want a wife who is beautiful, and smart, and not very black." "you mean dark-skinned?" I asked. "yes," said bee. "I no like." "I think dark skin is very beautiful," I said, and there were general noises of disbelief. because in asian society, as in african-american society, there is a lot of internalized racism. it's just so sad, and coming from a people with such deliciously burnished golden brown skin. the closer you look to white, the more beautiful you are considered, in this land of brown and gold and every shade in between. stores here carry whole lines of skin-lightening products. the body shop even has a special line to sell in asia. sad. I don't know how it is this race I was born to has caused so much destruction. and I'm scared about this war, this almost-war that the madman in charge of my country is determined to visit upon an already-devastated country. tomorrow... tomorrow we'll see. here in my sweet little corner of the planet, surrounded by children with hearts of light who have learned to hate their own skin, I wait, and watch, and pray. anything can happen. I have to believe it. because tomorrow is a brand new day.
(((rings))) |