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Re: Día de los Muertos makeup is culture, not a trendy Halloween costume

MorningStar — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 16:14:09 -0000

http://www.nytimes.com/room...

Re: Día de los Muertos makeup is culture, not a trendy Halloween costume

MorningStar — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 16:13:58 -0000

http://www.theatlantic.com/...

Re: Día de los Muertos makeup is culture, not a trendy Halloween costume

MorningStar — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 16:13:41 -0000

But what is rich here is the holding on to old world traditions prejudicially, in spite of having migrated to a country in hopes of "appropriating" their new culture's lifestyle. Bit like hosting a party in someone else's house and then complaining about who can come??! I want to use your house for a holiday celebration, but only my family and friends who are considered Mexican enough can come, and the food and cultural focus will be on me; sorry man. Actually, no sorry. F-U!

I love the comments of the multiculti beautifully blended people of San Diego responding to the front cover op-ed piece in the City Beat (a front cover opinion piece with a hate message!!!!?).
Wander over and check them out! ..."I am half Mexican, Indian, whatever, am I invited to celebrate--"where does tolerance start.."?

The premise here in this beautiful country is to lift each other up in mixed tribe. Isn't it? Fight the good fight together against those that want to fleece us all. We, everyone of us, ostensibly want the same basic things, and if you can't practice tolerance in community, share your ethnic expressions of heritage; food, costumes, fabric, lingo, art, hair and garb, well then you are the one being selfish and insensitive. Quite obviously. If you want to be a cultural isolationist then be darn sure none of your behavior is gleaned from another. Yeah, I thought so...

Re: Día de los Muertos makeup is culture, not a trendy Halloween costume

MorningStar — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 16:13:22 -0000

This is an important conversation. This homily on the front page of City Beat is White bashing masquerading, if you will, as political correctness. The misplaced anger is egregious and offensive. Celebrating our beautifully mixed ethnicity culture in this border town is normative, and a natural outcome of multicultural exchange and shared lives. Chinese New Year, Fantastic yoga and lovely Micronesian kava bars for starters, attest to our enriched diversity and blending throughout our cosmopolitan city, and to what is also found in others like ours. Reverence; the depth and level of your orthodoxy or desire to buy dogma in any religion (Christian, here in this piece), is always a personal journey. The trappings of ceremony are just that. Smoke, saging, tithing, fasting, costumes, embellishments--to hair and body--are not what matters. If you are celebrating a spiritual practice than do so. If someone else wears that Buddha on their jeans or flip-flops as a brand, or a lark or in aesthetic appreciation, oh well.
I remember many balking at Madonna, early days, for her fetishizing the cross. Personal expression is what needs space. To each his/her own. Northern European members of this society share and share alike through many traditional expressions; European and not. As do we all.

Re: Día de los Muertos makeup is culture, not a trendy Halloween costume

MorningStar — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 16:11:09 -0000

http://www.theatlantic.com/...

Re: Día de los Muertos makeup is culture, not a trendy Halloween costume

MorningStar — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 16:10:50 -0000

Some more nuanced journalism; an op-ed from another perspective...
http://www.nytimes.com/room...

Re: Día de los Muertos makeup is culture, not a trendy Halloween costume

MorningStar — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 16:05:12 -0000

Re: Día de los Muertos makeup is culture, not a trendy Halloween costume

MorningStar — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 16:04:44 -0000

Re: Día de los Muertos makeup is culture, not a trendy Halloween costume

MorningStar — Sun, 06 Nov 2016 11:53:43 -0000

It's a prejudiced piece, with negative, exclusionary language. Not cool.
*See my response... and so many others.
Share, blend and be loving. Enlighten others of your personal beliefs around practice and meaning for your journey or traditions. If you choose to live in a blended country (a border town at that) expect to blend and share.

Re: Día de los Muertos makeup is culture, not a trendy Halloween costume

MorningStar — Sun, 06 Nov 2016 11:34:37 -0000

What of Bolivian Bowler hats, Mohawks, the Chignon, ethnic cuisines, fusion cuisines, jazz music, and fairy tales, St Patrick's Day and Christmastime, new holidays and coopted pagan solstice fanfare.
Halloween with Disney princesses ripped from Nordic tales are fair game but Day of the Dead face paint celebration is only for Hispanic Americans? There is much to learn about origin of practice and the zeitgeist for contemporized beliefs around reverence to the deceased, but sharing is key. Both Día de Muertos and Halloween are derived from Christianized pagan peoples.
The origin of our Western holiday known as Halloween is found in the ancient Celtic festival, Samhain (pronounced SOW-in). From present-day Ireland to the United Kingdom to Bretagne (Brittany), France, the ancient Celts marked this as one of their four most important festival quarter days of the year. Samhain commenced on the eve of October 31st, and ushered in the Celtic New Year on November 1st.
After the Roman conquest of much of the Celts’ lands in France and England, Samhain was affected by the advent and subsequent spread of Christianity. The Church attempted to subsume the festival under the celebration of martyrs and saints, which was established on the ancient Celtic new year — November 1st — and recast it as All Saints Day (with the following day, November 2nd as All Soul’s Day). This festival was called All-Hallows, while the evening before was called All-hallows-eve — later becoming, by contraction, our present-day “Halloween.”
The Aztec Festival of the Dead was originally a two-month celebration during which the fall harvest was celebrated, and figures of “death” were personified as well as honored. The festival was presided over by Mictecacíhuatl, Goddess of the Dead and the Underworld, also known to the Aztecs as Mictlán. In the pre-Columbian belief system, Mictlán was not dark or macabre, but rather a peaceful realm where souls rested until the days of visiting the living, or los Días de los Muertos, arrived.
Pre-Hispanic cultures believed that during these days of the year the souls of the departed would return to the realm of the living, where they could visit their loved ones. With the arrival of the Spanish and Christianity, the new rulers of Mexico attempted to marshal the celebrations dedicated to the dead under the auspices of All Saints Day (November 1st), and All Souls Day (November 2nd). The dates of these two Catholic holidays are now celebrated in Mexico as los Días de los Muertos.

Both are Christianized, coopted All Saints Day celebrations, in short.
Neither are native celebrations to the indigenous nor ethnocentric. Although they carry the DNA of these people, they have more in common than are disparate. A person of Latin-American heritage, living in the US is acculturated to many things shared and borrowed that are not Hispanic. Clearly.

Do Hispanic Americans celebrate St Patrick's Day? Do they reverlnetly remain in awareness of the clover which is "sacred" and represents the conversion of the Irish into Christians, by St. Patrick who used the shamrock to explain the holy trinity with each leaf representing the Father, Son and Holy Spirit? The three leaves of a shamrock are also said to stand for faith, hope and love. A fourth leaf is where we get the luck from. No, not so much...AND THAT IS OK. How many Jewish children have Nordic Christmas trees as well? The Vikings in Scandinavia thought that evergreens were the special plant of the sun god, Balder. Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition as we now know it in the 16th century when devout Christians brought decorated trees into their homes. AND IT'S ALL OK. It's great. Why not? Blending and sharing, yes?
Since the later 20th century, Mexico has adopted a number of German and U.S. Christmas traditions. Christmas trees were originally imported into Mexico for the expatriate community, but have since become more popular with the Mexican population, either placed with more traditional nativity scenes or in some other location. Christmas trees have become more common as personal incomes rise and tree prices fall, with artificial trees easily available in places like Wal-Mart, Costco and Mexican chain stores. Live trees are also common and Christmas tree production in Mexico is now a large industry. For poorer families that cannot afford live trees, alternatives are small artificial trees, or even branches from local trees or shrubs.
In Mexico, today Christmas is celebrated from the December 12th to January 6th. From December 16th to Christmas Eve, children often perform the 'Posada' processions or Posadas. Posada is Spanish for Inn or Lodging. ... These celebrate the part of the Christmas story where Joseph and Mary looked for somewhere to stay. Also a Christianized holiday. Coopted? Appropriated? Hmmm.
What is borrowed what is blended what is unique what is the true origin or what is original and therefore sacred? Are dreads sacred; Greek?, Rasta? What of tea, fire crackers and noodles, ponchos, moccasins, braids (corn rows, French Braids, two braids, one...beaded braids, Danish crown braids, the braid is universally explored), straightening ones hair--is that appropriation? Which face paint is "allowed"? Tattooing? Turbans? Face sparkles? Is a Hindi decal embellishment or culturally sacred? Is the wearer's intent what matters or the perception of others personal relationship to Deity most important? Is this a case of non-inclusion as retribution for past slights and injustice? When is being aspirationally upwardly mobile appropriation of another culture? Or is it ever? I call bullshit. Be free. Celebrate each other and share. My god. Your god any god!

Re: Vitamix Giveaway - by Jennifer Pallian

MorningStar — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 19:50:36 -0000

Oh exciting! I just happened by. This site is great! I'm in for the Vita-mix if that happens by my way; don't mind if I do. All sorts of Yay! Thanks!!

Re: April Fools: Dunkie Drinks Dunkin's Coffee

MorningStar — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 13:54:53 -0000

Nifty!

Re: What Would Great-Grandma Eat?

MorningStar — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:25:42 -0000

http://www.huffingtonpost.c...
Great article from today's Huffington Post and - Marc Hyman, MD.
"...The Bible says, "Give us this day our daily bread." Eating bread is nearly a religious commandment. But the Einkorn, heirloom, Biblical wheat of our ancestors is something modern humans [almost] never eat [these days].
Instead, we eat dwarf wheat, the product of genetic manipulation and hybridization that created short, stubby, hardy, high-yielding wheat plants with much higher amounts of starch and gluten and many more chromosomes coding for all sorts of new odd proteins. The man who engineered this modern wheat won the Nobel Prize -- it promised to feed millions of starving around the world. Well, it has, and it has made them fat and sick...
Read: The "bread" of yore (serving as a wonderful metaphor here, "staff of life" and all...) was not only nutritionally a better/real food but big agriculture and the insidiously morally corrupt industrialization of our core foods (dairy, meat, grain) has lead to global illness and starvation. The ideas of goodness, morality and social outcome are a lot broader than you've led on.