The Reporter looked at it and saw that they, and we, were damned if we allowed the women’s organization to get away with their late night public education sessions. But they must have seen that they, and we, would be damned if they gave any ink and paper to the mischief, because that would be adding to the advertisement.
Belize isn’t dumb to the tactic of IGNORE. We might have perfected it, taken it to higher heights, or deeper depths, depending on your angle. Bishop Diego de Landa infamously put fire to Mayan literature. The Kremlin banned Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s, The Gulag Archipelago. They just did away with anything they didn’t approve of. In Belize, we borrowed from the ostrich. We bury our heads and ignore.
What does one do if one is damned every which way? In that instance one looks to see if there is a pro in any of the cons, any kind of satisfaction there. The mature person knows that you can’t always satisfy everyone. Clearly, in this instance the Reporter couldn’t be a good Rotarian and satisfy all those involved because it was at serious odds with the after-hours crowd.
One cannot sneeze at the opportunity to please one’s self. Damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t, the Reporter saw an opportunity to satisfy itself and went after them! Two weeks ago they called them out on front page; last week it was back page; and who knows if this week it won’t be a centerfold splash.
Personally, I think they should have ignored them. I say that especially because the church leaders won’t help. That crowd has gone completely soft after the dastard Calebites drove a wedge between their factions. How else can you explain Scott Stirm’s comment that their board (the Evangelicals) had not yet met “to discuss the issue.”
In the old days, when all churches hurled fire and brimstone, they would have responded on the spot, long before the Reporter reported. Their transgression doesn’t end there. Inability or disinterest to meet and chew out the matter might be a pecadillo, but Stirm will punish in hell for his declaration that “the Bible is silent on the issue.”
Didn’t anybody tell him that’s an endorsement! All along I’ve been telling people that these Evangelicals get their credentials too early. If he read the Reporter’s back page he would have learned that Catholic instruction says that on the ladder to perdition that thing is no mere venial sin!
The private matter could have been left to fly under the radar. Drug planes do it all the time. If the Reporter had asked, I would have told them to ehm, ignore those people and their late night escapades. But I can’t blame them because I am always choosing the wrong side. Yap, they decided to go public and express their grief.
We are aware of how it was in the old days. A young woman had to be good at the CS, cooking and sewing, or she would get sent home… A sari, mama’s got to take she back. You know the Harry Belafonte song: Angelik-o, Angelik-o, Mama’s gotta take you back, Angelik-o, Angelik-o, teach you all the things you lack.
Well, women no longer have to cook and sew (CS). There are no credits in those trades anymore. But some women think it will be an advantage if she can and will SC. So, gone are the hard core cooking and sewing, the food and clothing industry, and enter into the vacuum one from the entertainment industry, a service that was the domain of call persons (there is no new thing under heaven, only discoveries).
Wa, we refer to this Service that was the domain for Call persons as SC, so as not to confuse it with the old essentials, the cooking and sewing, CS. And my, isn’t it flippin amazing how the position of things can make such a profound, deep difference? Keeping things benign, we’ll take the alphabet and the positioning of the letters. A top becomes a pot if you reverse the letters. If you attack someone’s dog with a bat, and they take you to court, the judge could reverse the letters and leave you with a tab.
It’s incredible. If you say the woman can and will CS, that’s benign, wonderful, flip the letters and say she can and will SC, you’ve got a moral issue. It’s really incredible.
Aha, in the good old days when things were discreet, the only place where you could find anything near taboo was the sneaky classifieds in the gardening magazines. Lonely farmer looking for wife: must be able to CS (cook and sew), and perform other duties.
Well we can’t allow morality to stop progress. Anything that is standing in the way of progress has to be pushed out. An article on spssi.onlinelibrary explained how “moral convictions can cause individuals to challenge scientific facts (e.g., evolution), oppose technologies that can improve health and well being (e.g., vaccinations and GMO foods), and fuel political polarization and segregation.”
The wheel of progress must turn, come hell or high water. Morality unfettered can get in the way of people’s food. We flog the hog to emphasize the point. Did you know that Leviticus stopped men from eating pork? Yes, they spewed a lot of wild propaganda to fool innocent people, and when the dust settled pig meat was morally unclean.
They said the declaration was from God. Well, we know who was first to challenge what they said God said. And where would we be, really, if our other half didn’t have the courage, the lack of fear, to challenge the status quo? Why, we’d still be laying around the garden, bored to death by a sinless world. But they said death came into the world through sin. Now there’s another damned both ways catch-22 for you.
We must appreciate the wisdom in modern women, a wisdom borrowed straight from China. Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. They recognize that this new wisdom can improve the worth of women, and everything that can increase the worth of women is good for that half of our breed. So they’ve decided to act on it with education. And what will happen next is pure genius. These empowered, enlightened women will be able to pass on their knowledge. It’s absolutely win, win.
There, there’s further proof that there is no entirely worthless endeavor under the sun. If you’re a Simon Pure or a Lily White, think about the bonding! In the old days, a man would take his sons hunting and fishing and falling bush. And a woman would take her daughters to the kitchen and the sewing room. Those times are no more. And because those times are no more, the children and youth are bonding with their cell phones and other electronic gadgets, instead of their parents.
It will be an entire family affair. Yes, men will be in on it too. Ralph Fonseca, the author of the failed and now despised Ralphonomics, promised he’d turn every living room in Belize into a factory. He must have been a prophet come too early. History will say it all started with the instructions on SC.
Neri Briceño likes to say it’s all about the people, well on this critical instruction it’s all about passing on the knowledge, passing it onto the offspring. Now there’ll be dads teaching their maturing boys how to plastic wrap bananas, and moms teaching their soon-to-be-bride daughters how to harden it into a popsicle.
The Reporter ought to be thanking the women’s organization for their vision. I don’t know how they didn’t see all the possibilities. Bah, they got distracted by what they saw as abuse of the banana and cucumber, and completely forgot the primary utility, the wholesome food part. They are a pro-business newspaper, one hundred percent true to their roots. They should have seen it, they should have seen the other bonanza from the late night program.
Racism, bigotry, and morality can so blind us we mistake a friendly earthworm for a deadly snake. Caramba, how in hell they didn’t see that the demand for cylindrical fruits will go up! This is just absolutely the greatest news for farmers. Of course, greater demand means higher price, so we’ll never again get 8 bananas for a dollar.
Anjeliko was a protest song
The web page, mamalisa.com, points out that Anjeliko is really an anti-colonial song. Here’s what it said the article Carnival in Haiti said about this song:
During the first U.S. occupation of Haiti [1915 – 1934], for example, after the U.S. commander sent his wife, Angelica, back to the U.S. because of marital problems, a song was born which is still heard today: “Anjeliko, Anjeliko, ale kay manman ou…” (“Angelica, Angelica, go on back to your mother’s house…”) While its words concern a wife who does not know how to wash and iron and is sent back home, its true meaning was clear to all. Jean Fouchard, author of Meringues et Danses d’Haiti, calls it the first cry of “Yankee go home!” It was repeatedly played by popular and bourgeois bands to express the population’s desire to have their country un-occupied.