To: <puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org>
Date: Sun, 21 May 2006 14:41:43 -0400
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] personal note on recycling


Hey!  Stick to puppets or go to a different site. Nancy Sander

-----Original Message-----
From: puptcrit-bounces-AT-lists.driftline.org
[mailto:puptcrit-bounces-AT-lists.driftline.org]On Behalf Of Doris Schaefer
Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2006 1:13 PM
To: puptcrit-AT-lists.driftline.org
Subject: Re: [Puptcrit] personal note on recycling



People who say they don't want to start a dialogue on
something and then write two paragraphs about it tell
you where they are coming from pretty clearly.
Instant last word.  But it is mindboggling that you
can have traveled the world and seen other cultures
and not learned basic things from the experience over
a period of years.  "Africans wear tire rubber on
their feet because they don't have shoes; why don't
they wear shoes," you ask, "why are they such a mess?"
 Other cultures are different.  Since the Western
powers bear great responsibility for Africa and the
entire Third World being a mess, because of
exploitation of resources and even of humans
themselves as a commodity or slave labor, your
question is ironic to say the least.

Not all cultures are "good."  Some are better than
others.  But some are merely different.  Do you really
think if you had been born in a hut in Africa you
would be traveling the world as a specialty
marionettist/ airline pilot?  Or that if an African
man your age had been born into the life you had, with
your upbringing in the US and your skin color, that he
would have become a shepherd?  I think you would each
have adapted to the worlds you found yourselves in and
liked them.  Maybe you would have become an itinerant
shadow puppeteer, traveling local villages, raising
cattle and fixing broken radios so your family could
subsist off the throw-aways of the wealthier, lighter
people who had militarily or politically overtaken
your ancestors.  Maybe you wouldn't be bitter about
this, because it was a tradition you'd been brought up
with.  Maybe you would be up early some mornings to
slice bits of rubber tires  into sandals for your
grandchildren to wear.  Maybe you would spend part of
the day gossiping in the shade about griots you'd
heard and puppet shows you'd seen that had lasted over
many nights and connected you and your tribe to the
gods.

Or maybe you would have been kidnapped as a child by a
warlord who slaughtered your family and made you into
a soldier for his ragtag army.  You wouldn't be
important enough for shoes of any kind, just a gun.
You'd be deliberately and quickly addicted to drugs
and turned into a humorless and doomed killing
machine, destroying  whatever peaceful target your
keeper pointed you at.  Your career, and your life,
would be bloody.  And short.

Maybe that African man born into your skin in your
family would become the pilot and cabaret performer,
honored at festivals.  Maybe he would have become a
dentist or accountant.

In any case, maybe he would look down his nose at you
and those "other" people in those benighted countries
that can't seem to get their act together.  He would
wear clothes made by their cheap labor, drink coffee
made from beans they crippled themselves to gather,
and drive an enormous SUV run on oil that people from
his world have sucked out of the ground of the people
in the other world.  The corrupt and murderous leaders
of that other world would be bribed to ensure the oil
and other products bypassed those other people, except
for whatever unskilled labor you needed to do the
dangerous or tedious grunt work.  Out of the kindness
of his people, your people could live off the scraps.

At night, the African in your place would sit in front
of his television and wonder where his children were.
In Africa, after the orange sun set, you, in the
African's place, would set up your shadow screen,
slide out of your tire tread shows, and perform the
story of Creation for those you love, just as your
gradfather did.

Doris


--- Jimsan777-AT-aol.com wrote:

> I don't want to start another dialog over this.
> I've probably traveled
> around the world more than any of you...lived on the
> Altiplano in Bolivia/Peru,
> traveled around Africa, and in many Middle Eastern
> Countries, etc.   Africans
> use rubber tires because they don't have shoes. If
> they are so wise as you
> state, why are they in such a mess?   I visited
> Kenya and Tanzania in the mid
> 70s...While under British rule, the area was
> vibrant, good economy...Now it's
> referred to as "A Cesspool."
> >  I recycle cans, papers, and plastic, but when it
> comes to glue guns...how
> can you re-cycle one?   I cut the cords off, isn't
> that enough?   I'm not in the
> recycling business, I'm in the business of providing
> excellent puppetry for
> education and entertainment.   i don't have time for
> this.   thanks, but I do
> not agree with you to this degree of idiocy.   Jim
> Gamble
>
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