Happy 2013

Happy New Year!

Dr. Peyman, recipient of National Medal of Technology and Innovation

"Gholam A. Peyman, MD recipient of National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the nation’s highest honor for technological achievement, bestowed by the President of the United States, President Obama, on America's leading innovators and a Hall of Fame of Ophthalmology and retina surgeon who is also a prolific and successful inventor...."

Aleph & words of wisdom

This passage of  Aleph by Paulo Coelho takes me to the tragedy happened at Sandy Hook elementary School in Newtown.

In his travelling to Tunis, Paulo Coelho meets Samil, a Tunisian young man who takes him to this Palace:

“He takes us to a beautiful building where, in 1754, q man killed his own brother. The brother’s father resolved to build this palace as a school, as a way of keeping alive the memory of his murdered son. I say that surely the son who had committed the murder would also be remembered.

“It’s not quite like that,” says Samil. “In our culture, the criminal shares his guilt with everyone who allowed him to commit the crime. When a man is murderer, the person who sold him the weapon is also responsible before God. The only way in which the father could correct what he perceived as his own mistake was to transform the tragedy into something useful to others.”

Page 36-37

“Instead of resorting to vengeance, which would be merely a one-time punishment, he created a school in which wisdom and learning were passed on more than two centuries,” Samil says.
Page 37

Leonard Cohen's Speech

Leonard Cohen's speech.

Wisdom

دو چیز طیره عقل است، دم فرو بستن به وقت گفتن و گفتن به وقت خاموشی
 سعدی   

Lincoln

What we can learn from Lincoln.
Bill Moyers interviews Tony Kushner, the screenwriter

Lincoln, a hopeful film

Director: Steven Spielberg 

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Jackie Earle Haley, Tommy Lee Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

"A revealing drama that focuses on the 16th President's tumultuous final months in office. In a nation divided by war and the strong winds of change, Lincoln pursues a course of action designed to end the war, unite the country and abolish slavery. With the moral courage and fierce determination to succeed, his choices during this critical moment will change the fate of generations to come."

Tad, Lincoln's fourth son portrayal beautifully in this film. After his father he could not live through harsh reality, the same as his mother.

"On April 14, 1865, Tad went to Grover's Theater to see Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp while his parents attended Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater. The same night, his father was assassinated and when the news spread to Grover's Theater the manager made an announcement to the entire audience. Tad began running and screaming, "They killed Papa! They killed Papa!" Tad was escorted back to the White House while his mother pleaded to have Tad brought to his father's deathbed at the Petersen House. "Bring Tad—he will speak to Tad—he loves him so." Late that night an inconsolable Tad was put to bed by a White House doorman. As to the death of his father Tad said:

"Pa is dead. I can hardly believe that I shall never see him again. I must learn to take care of myself now. Yes, Pa is dead, and I am only Tad Lincoln now, little Tad, like other little boys. I am not a president's son now. I won't have many presents anymore. Well, I will try and be a good boy, and will hope to go someday to Pa and brother Willie, in heaven."^"

Remember the Victims, Reject the Violence

Remember the Victims, Reject the Violence
Bill Moyers

The Crucible

The Crucible, Arthur Miller's play is based on the witch hunt in Salem in 1692, which was first opened at the Beck Theatre on Broadway on January 22, 1953. It's a play which is most frequently being produced throughout the world.

Thank you dear Arthur Miller for writing this timeless play.
 
Watch the trailer of The Crucible, a film written by himself with the same title.

The End of the world or "the Mayan Song of Hope"

Songs of coffee : Letter #1

By Reza Deghati

"I'm writing to you from the high plateaus of Guatemala, at the heart of the land of the Mayan peoples. There, the mountainsides are carpeted with coffee plantations – a sea of green sprinkled with red berries and men bent over them. With delicate passion, they separate the fruit from the branches, their gestures resound in an ineffable song which echoes through these mountains. Thus begins the starting point of the Songs of the Coffee Fields, a new photographic story I'll be pursuing in the coffee fields throughout the world, among the people who labour in them.

In the heart of a little village, a few kilometers from the most ancient vestiges of the Mayan civilization, a community of small coffee growers has assembled to discuss their passion – a gathering of wise and noble faces. I raise the now global question of the posited end of the world on this 21st of December.
My question is greeted with nothing less than a burst of laughter, making light of the international anxieties purveyed by the world's media.

One of them explains: "Our calendar announces the end of an era, and thus, the beginning of another. This December 21st marks the beginning of this new era. Our Mayan civilization will be renewed."

Then, he adds: "We have given much to the world. The successive invasions here have been nothing more than a brief interlude on the scale of our history and that of humanity. The fears of the end of the world are merely one interpretation of our calendar that is reflective of a state of mind."

Reza, by Rachel Deghati

Poetic vision on life

Leonard Cohen on Loss, Politics, Poetry and songs....
Listen to his song and  read lyrics: The Future 

.........
 I've seen the future, brother:
it is murder.

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul
...........
His concert in London

Instead of WHAT is happening, we should see WHY is happening

The Newtown Sandy Hook Elementary School reminded me of one of Bertolt Brecht’s interviews on  a way an audience should observe a scene:  “….Instead of WHAT is happening, we should see WHY is happening.”

The whole world is lamenting for the Friday tragedy.  We are profoundly devastated for what has happened in Newtown School. I can’t imagine the amount of sorrow and grief it has created among victims’ families, friends, the town, the country and the whole world. I share my sorrow with all of them.
I have left with a question:  Do we ask WHY our youth are drowned to such ruthless violence? Do we analyze the “reasons” behind all these tragedies? We could say the young mass murderers had autism or Asperger's syndrome, a personality disorder or had suffered from “mental illness” . But WHY some in a society suffer tremendously from that kind of psychological disorder? And WHY are they become capable of such cruelty? Things are related. An individual act cannot be separated from political, sociological, economical, cultural, educational, geographical and family’s situation.  We can start from simple questions such as: Why was Adam’s mother a gun collector? 

“But Mrs Lanza was also, according to friends, an avid gun collector.
Dan Holmes, owner of a Connecticut landscaping firm, said Mrs Lanza once showed him a "high-end rifle" that she had purchased, adding, "She said she would often go target shooting with her kids".
The gun used to shoot Mrs Lanza was her own.” 

In 1991 when I was at the University of Iowa and a massshooting happened, I had a discussion with a good hearted woman lawyer, asked her innocently that in a society that great facilities are available for the safety of its citizen and people pay taxes, why the notion of gun control is still a taboo? She looked at me shockingly and said:  “what you’re saying is against the secondamendment of the U.S. Constitution. People have the right to protect themselves by keeping and bearing arms.” I said: “The second amendment of the US constitution had been issued in 1791. Things have changed since then! We should change the law!”  She said: “You’re touching on something which is sacred to our people!”

I kept silent. 

I care for people and the world around me…and I see the world as a big stage. I cannot close my eyes to those who suffer from great losses. I cannot hold my weeping cry....

Why does a society produce many mass murderers among its youth?

Some words pop up in my mind:

Methods of analysis need to be learned. Humanity and Love need to be redefined. We should see a phenomenon from different dimensions and angles. We should learn how to think in search of solutions. We are all responsible.

Isolation vs inclusion/integration

Individualism vs community.

Materialism vs spiritualism

Divorce vs Reconciliation

Greed vs moderation

Guns vs Gun control /serenity

Violent video games vs games based on great literature

Violent movies vs artistic movies

War vs Peace

Education vs artificiality

Depth vs superficiality

Hypocrisy vs  honesty
Humanity vs...........

Read more related words to this issue. 
Read Tomorrow's Children by Riane Eisler