Posts
http://mousemedicine.blogspot.com/2010/03/because-of.html
greetings! thought I'd do a quick post. up to now, my attendance at the cleveland international film festival has been sporadic; but that will be changing tomorrow as I ratchet up my presence and my time in the dark. as of now I've only seen six films - but the films I've seen have all been excellent. in case you are curious here's what I've seen, you can't go wrong if you are able to catch any (or all) of them, order presented is in order seen:
a brand new life, narrative film from south korea and france based on the filmmaker's own story; this film, set in the mid-1970s, is about a young girl who is given over to an orphanage by her father. a tender tale of friendship and reinvention, the acting is superb, beautifully filmed.
ingredients, u.s. documentary about the local foods movement - unlike food inc. (which by the way I thought was great) this film makes a case to embrace a sustainable food system not by scaring us but by enticing us - a very intelligent film with cinematography that is absolutely gorgeous. visit the film's website for a trailer and for more information.
harvest, us indy film - powerful family drama, the most striking thing about this film was the authenticity of its characters - and how the film realistically captures the dynamics of family life, warts and all - but in the end it is an uplifting and inspiring story and film. want more, check out the film's blog raising harvest.
About
This blog shares the journey of bringing our feature film HARVEST to life. Hence, raising HARVEST.
In HARVEST, three generations of a family come together one summer, around the eventual passing of the patriarch of the family, a WWII veteran. Gathered at the family home and in and around their beautiful shoreline town, years of resentment and betrayal within the family surface, and the grandson, a college student, does his part to hold them all together, growing up in the process.
HARVEST is a poignant and moving story that is ultimately uplifting, with moments of humor anchoring this realistic portrait of a family hanging on to what was, what is, and to each other. It’s also a film about how we all come of age, in our own ways, both young and old.
The ensemble cast includes Academy Award nominee Robert Loggia, Jack Carpenter, Arye Gross, Tony Winner Victoria Clark, and Academy Award nominee Barbara Barrie. With Peter Friedman, Adriana Sevan, Kel O’Neill, Christine Evangelista, and Daniel Eric Gold.
beauty in trouble, narrative film from the czech republic. a smart, sensual, oddly affecting film with a great cast. seeing this film makes me want to find all the other films that jan hrebejk directed.
wikpedia plot synopsis
Plot synopsis
The film is a love story about a woman called Marcela and about two men: Jarda (Marcela’s husband) and rich Evžen Beneš. Marcela and Jarda live in a small, smelly and ugly house with their two children Kuba and Lucie. Jarda steals Evžen’s car and he must go to prison. Evžen offers Marcela help (she can live in his empty house) and he lends her money. Marcela falls in love with Evžen and his money and they move to Italy. Marcela’s mother dies and Marcela comes to her funeral. Marcela has never liked her mother’s boyfriend but now they forget their struggle. Marcela sees her husband again and she finds out that she doesn’t want to live with him any more. She returns to Italy and takes her mother’s boyfriend Richard with her. At the end of the film Marcela lives in Italy but still thinks about her husband
dear lemon lima, narrative u.s. indy film. love love love this movie. quirky, brilliant and absolutely magical. I want everyone I know to see this film!
Vanessa believes that a victory in the Snowstorm Survivor championship is the only way into Philip’s heart. She quickly forms a quirky team with her fan base in the weight room. TEAM FUBAR prepares for the event, driven by Vanessa’s plight for her true love. Unlike the Native Olympics that brings together people of all sizes and shapes to celebrate Native Alaskan culture, Nichols’ Snowstorm Survivor simply perverts the traditional Eskimo games in order to foster an antiquated class system.
After the tragic loss of a beloved teammate, Vanessa discovers the true meaning of love and must embrace her Native heritage to reclaim the spirit of the World Eskimo Indian Olympics. After TEAM FUBARs sensational victory in the final dance competition, the Nichols community attempts to embrace a new wave of thinking.
Traditional values have been lost in Western culture. The World Olympics are a competition that celebrates being “number one”. Dear Lemon Lima, thrives off the notion that life is a time to come together and celebrate our common traits and differences, inspiring kindness, individuality and equality, values kindled by the diary of a 13-year old girl.
warrior champions, u.s. documentary - inspiring film by veteran documentary filmmakers craig and brent renaud about iraq veterans who have suffered tremendous losses who came back and rather than giving in went on to become paralympians. and yes, there is a website.although the two films I saw yesterday late afternoon/evening were great, yesterday's big treat was a visit with john of robert frost banjo. john is currently working his way back home after a whirlwind trip east visiting family, friends and meeting a few of us in the bloggyhood. this was the first time I met john, but as so often happens when meeting someone whose blog one has read for a while, it felt like I've known john for years. the weather was chilly and wet, so my plans to take a wander with john and show him some of my favorite spots were abandoned in favor of just hanging out, swapping stories and having a simple lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato-basil soup before he had to hit the road for his next stop.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Domestic Intelligence Agency and Terrorism
http://pfiresources.blogspot.com/2008/10/reorganizing-us-domestic-intelligence.html
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG767.sum.pdf
Reorganizing U.S. Domestic Intelligence
Assessing the Options
By: Gregory F. Treverton
One of the questions in the fight against terrorism is whether the United States needs a dedicated domestic intelligence agency separate from law enforcement, on the model of many comparable democracies. To examine this issue, Congress directed that the Department of Homeland Security perform an independent study on the feasibility of creating a counterterrorism intelligence agency and the department turned to the RAND Corporation for this analysis but asked it specifically not to make a recommendation. This volume lays out the relevant considerations for creating such an agency. It draws on a variety of research methods, including historical and legal analysis; a review of organizational theory; examination of current domestic intelligence efforts, their history, and the public's view of them; examination of the domestic intelligence agencies in six other democracies; and interviews with an expert panel made up of current and former intelligence and law enforcement professionals. The monograph highlights five principal problems that might be seen to afflict current domestic intelligence enterprise; for each, there are several possible solutions, and the creation of a new agency addresses only some of the five problems. The volume discusses how a technique called break-even analysis can be used to evaluate proposals for a new agency in the context of the perceived magnitude of the terrorism threat. It concludes with a discussion of how to address the unanswered questions and lack of information that currently cloud the debate over whether to create a dedicated domestic intelligence agency.
Table S.1
Expressed Concerns and Possible Responses
Expressed Concern Possible Responses
If the FBI is dominated by a law
enforcement and case-based approach;
and if, as a result, collection is
dominated by case requirements and
analysis is dominated by operational
support . . .
. . . then increase resources, change
organization, change culture, change
laws, change regulations or orders, and/or
improve leadership.
If the FBI, CIA, and other agencies do
not talk to each other . . .
. . . then change organization, change
culture, change laws, change regulations
or orders, enhance collaboration, and/or
improve leadership.
If too much poor-quality information is
collected, and collection efforts are too
uncoordinated . . .
. . . then change regulations or orders,
enhance collaboration, and/or improve
leadership.
If analysis is fragmented and sometimes
conflicting; and if the National
Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which
acts as a central clearinghouse, mostly
provides information to the President
rather than to other intelligence
organizations . . .
. . . then change organization, change
regulations or orders, enhance
collaboration, and/or improve leadership.
If it is difficult to move information and
analysis across the domestic intelligence
enterprise . . .
. . . then increase resources, change
regulations or orders, enhance
collaboration, and/or improve leadership.
Similarly, how many political appointees the agency had and
whether they were appointed for fixed terms would also matter. The
FBI is a very closed professional service, one dominated by its agents,
with only a single political appointee—the director—and that appointee
has a fixed, ten-year term. Until recently, lateral movements into
the Bureau’s senior managerial ranks were rare, and even now they
are driven by needs for technical or management expertise, not politics.
These considerations would all be important for a new agency, as
would the height and width of the agency’s hierarchy, the agency’s latitude
in selecting and training the professionals that would compose it,
and a host of other details.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG767.sum.pdf
Reorganizing U.S. Domestic Intelligence
Assessing the Options
By: Gregory F. Treverton
One of the questions in the fight against terrorism is whether the United States needs a dedicated domestic intelligence agency separate from law enforcement, on the model of many comparable democracies. To examine this issue, Congress directed that the Department of Homeland Security perform an independent study on the feasibility of creating a counterterrorism intelligence agency and the department turned to the RAND Corporation for this analysis but asked it specifically not to make a recommendation. This volume lays out the relevant considerations for creating such an agency. It draws on a variety of research methods, including historical and legal analysis; a review of organizational theory; examination of current domestic intelligence efforts, their history, and the public's view of them; examination of the domestic intelligence agencies in six other democracies; and interviews with an expert panel made up of current and former intelligence and law enforcement professionals. The monograph highlights five principal problems that might be seen to afflict current domestic intelligence enterprise; for each, there are several possible solutions, and the creation of a new agency addresses only some of the five problems. The volume discusses how a technique called break-even analysis can be used to evaluate proposals for a new agency in the context of the perceived magnitude of the terrorism threat. It concludes with a discussion of how to address the unanswered questions and lack of information that currently cloud the debate over whether to create a dedicated domestic intelligence agency.
Table S.1
Expressed Concerns and Possible Responses
Expressed Concern Possible Responses
If the FBI is dominated by a law
enforcement and case-based approach;
and if, as a result, collection is
dominated by case requirements and
analysis is dominated by operational
support . . .
. . . then increase resources, change
organization, change culture, change
laws, change regulations or orders, and/or
improve leadership.
If the FBI, CIA, and other agencies do
not talk to each other . . .
. . . then change organization, change
culture, change laws, change regulations
or orders, enhance collaboration, and/or
improve leadership.
If too much poor-quality information is
collected, and collection efforts are too
uncoordinated . . .
. . . then change regulations or orders,
enhance collaboration, and/or improve
leadership.
If analysis is fragmented and sometimes
conflicting; and if the National
Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which
acts as a central clearinghouse, mostly
provides information to the President
rather than to other intelligence
organizations . . .
. . . then change organization, change
regulations or orders, enhance
collaboration, and/or improve leadership.
If it is difficult to move information and
analysis across the domestic intelligence
enterprise . . .
. . . then increase resources, change
regulations or orders, enhance
collaboration, and/or improve leadership.
Less dramatic organizational change could also be relevant. The
Bureau created the National Security Branch to emphasize prevention
and intelligence, particularly in the counterterrorism mission. That
was part of an effort to transform culture in a number of ways, from
re centralizing the management of terrorism cases, to training, to instituting
a five-year “up or out” cap on supervisors to breed new leaders.
Rapid growth means that more than half of FBI agents now have
served for less than five years, presumably having joined an organization
they did not perceive as dominated by traditional law enforcement.
Changed laws, such as the PATRIOT Act, made it easier to
collect counterterrorism intelligence, especially of the more exploratory
sort, and changed regulations had the same effect, including dismantling
the wall between intelligence and law enforcement.
Before its recent transformation, the FBI had a mission divided
between law enforcement and intelligence. The question is whether
a transformed FBI whose mission was intelligence-driven prevention
would in fact have the clarity of a single mission. While law enforcement
is a tool in prevention and can aid intelligence—if, for instance,
the threat of prosecution helps recruit informants—the two remain
quite different disciplines. The question is whether a transformed FBI
whose mission was intelligence-driven prevention would in fact have the
clarity of a single mission. Our assessment of other countries’ domestic
intelligence services suggested the value of a single focus, one that can
foster what might be called a “culture of prevention” with respect to
terrorism. Perhaps the single greatest teething pain of DHS—which
brought together 180,000 employees from 22 existing agencies—has
been that the constituent agencies did not share a single mission.
The other advantage of a separate service suggested by the review
of other countries is that the new service might be able to draw on a
wider, more diverse recruitment pool. The foreign services we reviewed
feel that they are more able to attract individuals who would not normally
be interested in entering a law enforcement profession, such as
linguists, historians, social scientists, psychologists, economists and
country/regional experts.
Yet the history of organizational design, and reorganization, in
the public sector is cautionary in that it shows the process to be one
of political competition among interests and interest groups. This
helps explain why reorganizations in government so often seem to
fail. If a new domestic intelligence service were created in “normal”
circumstances—that is, not in the wake of another major attack—the
result would be a political compromise and an agency that would likely
not reflect exactly what any participant in the process sought.
The devil would be in the details, which would themselves be the
result of compromises in the political arena. For instance, if the authorizing
legislation were written in very specific terms, that would tie the
hands of future officials in the organization—or insulate them from
future pressures, depending on one’s view of the outcome. The more
independence a new agency had, the more autonomy it would have in
shaping and sustaining its mission. If the new agency were located in
some departmental hierarchy, it would surely matter which one: Being
in the Department of Justice would make it part of an established organization
dominated by law enforcement, whereas a location in DHS
would subject it to the pressures of a work in progress, one now influenced
by several forces, not the least of which are border control and
crisis management.
Similarly, how many political appointees the agency had and
whether they were appointed for fixed terms would also matter. The
FBI is a very closed professional service, one dominated by its agents,
with only a single political appointee—the director—and that appointee
has a fixed, ten-year term. Until recently, lateral movements into
the Bureau’s senior managerial ranks were rare, and even now they
are driven by needs for technical or management expertise, not politics.
These considerations would all be important for a new agency, as
would the height and width of the agency’s hierarchy, the agency’s latitude
in selecting and training the professionals that would compose it,
and a host of other details.
The other advantage of a separate service suggested by the review
of other countries is that the new service might be able to draw on a
wider, more diverse recruitment pool. The foreign services we reviewed
feel that they are more able to attract individuals who would not normally
be interested in entering a law enforcement profession, such as
linguists, historians, social scientists, psychologists, economists and
country/regional experts.
Yet the history of organizational design, and reorganization, in
the public sector is cautionary in that it shows the process to be one
of political competition among interests and interest groups. This
helps explain why reorganizations in government so often seem to
fail. If a new domestic intelligence service were created in “normal”
Summary xv
circumstances—that is, not in the wake of another major attack—the
result would be a political compromise and an agency that would likely
not reflect exactly what any participant in the process sought.
The devil would be in the details, which would themselves be the
result of compromises in the political arena. For instance, if the authorizing
legislation were written in very specific terms, that would tie the
hands of future officials in the organization—or insulate them from
future pressures, depending on one’s view of the outcome. The more
independence a new agency had, the more autonomy it would have in
shaping and sustaining its mission. If the new agency were located in
some departmental hierarchy, it would surely matter which one: Being
in the Department of Justice would make it part of an established organization
dominated by law enforcement, whereas a location in DHS
would subject it to the pressures of a work in progress, one now influenced
by several forces, not the least of which are border control and
crisis management.
Similarly, how many political appointees the agency had and
whether they were appointed for fixed terms would also matter. The
FBI is a very closed professional service, one dominated by its agents,
with only a single political appointee—the director—and that appointee
has a fixed, ten-year term. Until recently, lateral movements into
the Bureau’s senior managerial ranks were rare, and even now they
are driven by needs for technical or management expertise, not politics.
These considerations would all be important for a new agency, as
would the height and width of the agency’s hierarchy, the agency’s latitude
in selecting and training the professionals that would compose it,
and a host of other details.
terrorism its reality Dr Marc Cetron
http://pfiresources.blogspot.com/2008/10/marc-cetron-on-analysts-corner.html
Marc Cetron on Analysts' Corner: Terrorism is a Real Threat
What is the future of terrorism? How should we look at the problem? Join me, Deborah Osborne, and Dr. Marvin Cetron, as we discuss terrorism and the future on Analysts' Corner Blog Talk Radio show.Dr. Marvin Cetron is the Founder and President of Forecasting International and is one of the foremost forecaster-futurists in the world. During his 20 year career in research and development planning and forecasting with the U.S. Navy, Dr. Marvin Cetron was in charge of the design, development and implementation of the most comprehensive technological forecast in the United States. Dr. Marvin Cetron has authored numerous articles, papers and publications and he has authored over three dozen books.
MY NOTES
Blog Talk Radio 102108 PRESENTED LECTURE AT PENTAGON TERRORISTS WILL HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS THE THREAT OF TERRORISM IS REAL AND NOT A MYTHICAL DANGER BUT WILL COME IN THE FUTURE PRESIDENT OF FORECASTING INTERNATIONAL WROTE OVER 3 DZN BOOKS
55 TRENDS NOW AFFECTING TERRORISM NO COST MATERIALS PROTEUS ARMY WAR COLLEGE
WILL USE TOXIC GASES BIO WARFARE AND WEAPONIZED BACTERIA
-USE OF FUSION CENTERS SHARING OF DATA AND PUBLIC INFORMATION
MOTIVES OF TH TERRORISTS INDISCRIMINATE AND BARBARIC FROM MOSLEM COUNTRIES
REFERENCE TO ABDUL (K)NADIR KHAN PERCEPTION OF THE WEST -INTERFERERS W THIR PERONAL LIFE AND VALUES AND SOURCE OF POLLUTION AND MORAL CONTAMINATION JUSTIFYING TERRORIST ACTS (7% OF WORLD'S MUSLIMS OR THE FUNDAMENTALISTS BELIEVE THIS TO BE TRUE) SUCH FUNDAMENTALISTS ARE WELL EDUCATED AND OF ABOVE AVERAGE WEALTH
26 MADRASAS INPAKITAN WITH BACKING OF THE SAUDIS ARE INSTRUCTING YOUNG OF THE NXT GENERATION IN TERRORISM
BRITAIN AND FRANC WILL BE FUTURE FOCAL POINTS OF ATTACK
POVERTY NOT BELIEVED TO BE MOTIVATING FACTOR
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army/proteus-55-terror.pdf
EXCERPT FROM THE 55 TRENDS
Implications for Terrorism:
Networks of video cameras are just the first of many high-tech tools that will affect antiterrorist operations in the years ahead.
To prevent or interrupt terrorist attacks, nanotech sensors capable of detecting explosives, chemical, and biological weapons will be scattered around prime targets, such as major public gatherings, relaying the location of any possible threat to the local command center. This is a likely prospect for 2015 and beyond.
Intelligence analysts, already overwhelmed by the amount of data collected each day, will face a growing torrent of data in the years ahead. As surveillance spreads through society, this will be a problem for police agencies as well. Until automated systems become available to help monitor incoming data, much of the information collected by cameras and other tools will be used more to provide evidence for prosecutions than to prevent or interrupt terrorist actions.
To assist them, engineers will develop automated systems to help "mesh" information from incompatible data stores, recognize patterns in the data, develop rigorous hypotheses, perform collaborative analyses, and "capture" the skills of the most capable analysts so that others can benefit from them, even when the analysts themselves are not available. Eventually, these systems will spread from the intelligence community to law enforcement. These techniques may offer the best chance of giving security agencies a clear advantage over their adversaries.
The recent decision by an American court to block data mining by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a significant loss to security efforts in this country. While similar military projects continue, the DHS shares data with the regional Fusion Centers responsible for much of the work carried out at the local level. Loss of this resource will make their efforts notably less effective.
The events that followed—to include the anthrax events of 2001, West Nile Virus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, monkeypox, and other disease outbreaks—all demonstrated to me that our government faces significant obstacles in effectively "connecting the dots" of knowledge held in the minds of numerous individuals working for different organizational units. Not only is the challenge to discern truth from fiction, but also to put all the pieces of knowledge together to form a complete picture. In this age of knowledge-overload, no one individual harbors sufficient knowledge to either mitigate negative outcomes or capitalize on positive opportunities. Knowledge exchanges in these government agencies must transcend physical group proximity, social networks, and the institutions themselves.
There is a significant correlation between globalization efforts and increasing knowledge velocity, volume, volatility, and veracity concerns. Human societies, economies, and civil infrastructures are increasingly interdependent and complex. Instead of attempting the traditional "top-down" approach to management, my research espouses a "bottom-up" approach to cultivating individual insights. Recall the events of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina: no one individual harbored sufficient knowledge to mitigate these events. Such realities will occur with increasing frequency for employees of either government agencies or private entities. To assemble the entire puzzle, knowledge exchanges must occur among multiple individuals in different organizational units and institutions without prompting from the "top," but instead must be motivated at the grassroots by collaboration-fostering incentives, values, and trust-relationships; such an idea embodies innovative "knowledge ecosystems."
5 – Privacy, once a definingrightfor Americans, is dyingquickly. (Trend17)
Internet communications, a basic part of life for many people, are nearly impossible to protect against • interception, and governments around the world are working to ensure their unfettered access to them. Postings to blogs and Web forums are nearly immortal.
The contents of most Internet-connected computers are open to virtually unobstructed snooping by ––anyone with a minimum of skill and the will to examine them. All but the most secure can be invaded by more-capable hackers.
Corporate databases are collecting and marketing data on individual credit-worthiness, incomes, spending • patterns, brand choices, medical conditions, and lifestyles.
While privacy regulations bar distribution of much personal information in the European Union, ––restrictions in the United States are much weaker.
Widespread surveillance of private individuals is technically feasible and economically viable, as tiny, • powerful cameras now cost next to nothing. Increased surveillance has become socially acceptable in an age when many people fear terrorism and crime.
In Britain, an estimated 4.2 million surveillance cameras watch over streets, office buildings, schools, ––and shopping centers, making the U.K. one of the most closely monitored nations in the world. On average, Britons are caught on camera an estimated three hundred times per day.
In the United States, the growth of surveillance also is driven by the fear that lawsuits following a future ––terrorist attack could claim that failure to install monitoring equipment constitutes negligence.
Video surveillance systems have been installed in Chicago, New York City, Washington DC, Tampa ––FL, and other cities around the United States, In most cases, local police departments have been a driving force in this movement. Protests thus far have been small and ineffective.
The USA Patriot Act of 2001 sets aside the constitutional requirement of a search warrant for government • officials who wish to search someone’s home in order to thwart possible terrorism. Its provisions have been used to justify searches in pursuit of drug dealers and even, in one attempt thus far blocked by the courts, copyright abusers.29 55 Trends Now Shaping the Future of Terrorism
Assessment:
Pessimists could say that privacy already is a thing of the past; society is merely coming to recognize its loss. We believe that enough effective privacy survives outside the most authoritarian countries to justify noting its continued erosion. However, this trend could easily reach its logical conclusion within ten years.
Implications:
In the future, privacy is likely to be defined, not by the ability to keep information truly secret, but by the legal power to restrict its distribution. Even this limited form of privacy will be eroded as both government and private organizations find legal justification for their interest in personal information. Once access is granted to any type of information, it is unlikely ever to be rescinded.
Most surveillance provisions of the USA Patriot Act will survive, even if the law itself is repealed or modified.
In the absence of a major terrorist event, most Americans will continue to consider privacy a "right," and privacy-related lawsuits are likely to proliferate as more people feel violated or inconvenienced by surveillance. However, courts will be unsympathetic to such suits for so long as conservative appointees dominate the bench.
In large and medium-size cities around the world, spaces that remain unwatched by video cameras will continue to shrink.
Growing numbers of companies, and even private citizens, will encrypt their computer data.
The number of criminal cases based on surveillance will grow rapidly in countries with the required technological sophistication and infrastructure.
Private citizens increasingly will use similar technologies to watch over government abuse, as in cases where bystanders have recorded police misconduct with their cell-phone cameras.
Implications for Terrorism:
It will be nearly impossible for terrorists to operate without being observed. However, until artificial intelligence systems "learn" to recognize suspicious activities, manpower will limit use of these observations. Except in obvious target areas, surveillance will be most useful in forensic reconstruction, rather than in active incident prevention.
What remains of privacy protections often conflicts with security needs. A good example is the recent decision to scrap an important data-mining program at the DHS on the grounds that it might implicate the innocent in terrorism or other illegal activities. A more appropriate solution would have been to require that data used by the program be confirmed by at least two independent sources, as is routinely done in the intelligence community.
This is clearly one of the ten most important trends for antiterrorism. It may be one of the top five
ALONG WITH ITEM 8 OF THIS LIST
9 – Advancedcommunications technologies are changingthe way we work andlive. (Trend35)
The Internet is as much a communications medium as it is an information resource.•
Telecommuting is growing rapidly, thanks largely to e-mail and other high-tech forms of communication. • About 80 percent of companies worldwide now have employees who work at home, up from 54 percent in 2003. The number of telecommuters in the United States reached an estimated 20 million in 2006.
AT&T says that 90 percent of its employees do some work away from the office, while 41 percent work ––at home one or two days per week. This saves the company a reported $180 million a year.
However, Millennials already have abandoned e-mail for most purposes other than communicating ––with "clueless" parents and grandparents. Most have adopted instant messaging and social-network Websites to communicate with their peers.
"Podcasting"—recording college lectures, news stories, business reports, and the like for playback on the • Apple iPod—allows users to listen at their convenience.42 55 Trends Now Shaping the Future of Terrorism
Better communications is a major goal of many government agencies, particularly in law enforcement • and disaster services, which need to coordinate the activities of many different agencies under emergency conditions.
So-called "Web 2.0" services are building communities nearly as complex and involving as those existing • wholly in the real world.
Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Launched in 2003, by May ––2007 it had 6.8 million residents, 1.75 million of whom had logged on in the previous two months. Here in the real world, designers earn substantial incomes creating fashions and other paraphernalia for Second Life characters. One resident was banned when his character raped another "avatar" in virtual reality.
MySpace and Facebook have a total of more than 180 million members who form communities of ––friends, most of whom have never met except on the Internet.
A number of people have taken to wearing a small Web camera, either recording their entire lives or ––broadcasting them over the Internet.
Assessment:
Again, this trend has only just begun.
Implications:
E-mail promised to speed business. Instead, it absorbs more time than busy executives can afford to lose. Expect the nascent reaction against e-mail to grow as many people eliminate mailing lists, demand precise e-communications rather than open-ended conversation, and schedule only brief periods for dealing with mail.
Instant messaging is likely to be even more destructive of time for the under-thirty set.
However, e-mail is a major contributor to globalization and outsourcing, because it eliminates many of the obstacles of doing business across long distances and many time zones.
Unfortunately, e-mail and other modern communications techniques also have made possible a variety of crimes, from online fraud to some forms of identity theft.
They also make it virtually impossible to retract ill-considered statements or embarrassing online activities. Once something exists on the Internet, it is all but immortal and nearly impossible to hide.
Implications for Terrorism:
See Trend 34 (item 8 of this list
ITEM 8 TREND
Implications for Terrorism:
This is a top-ten trend.
International fraud, money laundering, and other economic crimes (particularly carried out via the Internet) are a growing problem, and one that can be expected to spread. At least some of these activities can be expected to finance extremist and terrorist movements.
In addition, entrepreneurial success in global markets could widen the gap between the rich and poor, worsening social strains in countries already vulnerable to extremist movements. It is likely to worsen the problem of international terrorism
Meilahn: This is a Muslim problem that can only be fought by Muslims. The more moderate Muslims must take on this fight, and the U.S. can help them. Currently only about 2 percent are radicals; but that is still a large number. According to a Gallup analysis of polls representing 90 percent of the world’s Muslim population, another 7 percent are "politically radicalized." That is, they believe the 9/11 attacks were completely justified and have an unfavorable view of the United States. And in 2006, the Pew Research Center found that 17.7 percent of Muslim respondents believed that violence against civilian targets in order to defend Islam can be justified "often" or "sometimes." At least some of the radicalized 2 percent can be re-educated about Islam and "de-radicalized," prevented from executing acts of terror. This group is the one the USG should concern itself with from a preventive standpoint.
Another point is that most of the Muslims who condoned attacks on 9/11 believe that it was justifiable because of U.S. "colonizing" and the way we are too controlling of other countries. The USG could do much with regard to its foreign policy to change its image from "occupier" to cooperative member of the world community. That would do much to decrease motivations for jihad, and keep terrorists away from our borders or our interests worldwide.
Tan: The startling failures of U.S. grand strategy after 9/11, particularly its disastrous strategy in Iraq, have been counter-productive to the global war on terrorism. From relative stability albeit under Saddam’s dictatorial hand, Iraq has slid into chaos and has become the training ground for the global jihad much as Afghanistan had become the training ground from which Al Qaeda emerged. However, the jihadists in Iraq are honing their skills in combating the world’s technologically most advanced armed forces and are learning to perfect techniques in IEDs, sabotage, sniping, kidnappings, assassinations, urban warfare, etc. Once dispersed throughout the world, these jihadists will re-constitute a post-Al Qaeda network that will be much more competent, effective, and deadly. Unfortunately, their first targets will be likely Muslim governments and allies of the U.S.A. throughout the Middle East. Can these regimes meet the emerging challenge of the post-Iraq militants? Will the radicalization being spawned in Iraq today seep through its borders to destabilize the entire Middle East? The question today is not how to win Iraq. The questions are: What can the U.S.A. and the West do to meet and contain the growing threat from radical Islam? How can we contain Iranian Shi’ite fundamentalism from threatening the stability of the entire Middle East
?
Marc Cetron on Analysts' Corner: Terrorism is a Real Threat
What is the future of terrorism? How should we look at the problem? Join me, Deborah Osborne, and Dr. Marvin Cetron, as we discuss terrorism and the future on Analysts' Corner Blog Talk Radio show.Dr. Marvin Cetron is the Founder and President of Forecasting International and is one of the foremost forecaster-futurists in the world. During his 20 year career in research and development planning and forecasting with the U.S. Navy, Dr. Marvin Cetron was in charge of the design, development and implementation of the most comprehensive technological forecast in the United States. Dr. Marvin Cetron has authored numerous articles, papers and publications and he has authored over three dozen books.
MY NOTES
Blog Talk Radio 102108 PRESENTED LECTURE AT PENTAGON TERRORISTS WILL HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS THE THREAT OF TERRORISM IS REAL AND NOT A MYTHICAL DANGER BUT WILL COME IN THE FUTURE PRESIDENT OF FORECASTING INTERNATIONAL WROTE OVER 3 DZN BOOKS
55 TRENDS NOW AFFECTING TERRORISM NO COST MATERIALS PROTEUS ARMY WAR COLLEGE
WILL USE TOXIC GASES BIO WARFARE AND WEAPONIZED BACTERIA
-USE OF FUSION CENTERS SHARING OF DATA AND PUBLIC INFORMATION
MOTIVES OF TH TERRORISTS INDISCRIMINATE AND BARBARIC FROM MOSLEM COUNTRIES
REFERENCE TO ABDUL (K)NADIR KHAN PERCEPTION OF THE WEST -INTERFERERS W THIR PERONAL LIFE AND VALUES AND SOURCE OF POLLUTION AND MORAL CONTAMINATION JUSTIFYING TERRORIST ACTS (7% OF WORLD'S MUSLIMS OR THE FUNDAMENTALISTS BELIEVE THIS TO BE TRUE) SUCH FUNDAMENTALISTS ARE WELL EDUCATED AND OF ABOVE AVERAGE WEALTH
26 MADRASAS INPAKITAN WITH BACKING OF THE SAUDIS ARE INSTRUCTING YOUNG OF THE NXT GENERATION IN TERRORISM
BRITAIN AND FRANC WILL BE FUTURE FOCAL POINTS OF ATTACK
POVERTY NOT BELIEVED TO BE MOTIVATING FACTOR
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army/proteus-55-terror.pdf
EXCERPT FROM THE 55 TRENDS
Implications for Terrorism:
Networks of video cameras are just the first of many high-tech tools that will affect antiterrorist operations in the years ahead.
To prevent or interrupt terrorist attacks, nanotech sensors capable of detecting explosives, chemical, and biological weapons will be scattered around prime targets, such as major public gatherings, relaying the location of any possible threat to the local command center. This is a likely prospect for 2015 and beyond.
Intelligence analysts, already overwhelmed by the amount of data collected each day, will face a growing torrent of data in the years ahead. As surveillance spreads through society, this will be a problem for police agencies as well. Until automated systems become available to help monitor incoming data, much of the information collected by cameras and other tools will be used more to provide evidence for prosecutions than to prevent or interrupt terrorist actions.
To assist them, engineers will develop automated systems to help "mesh" information from incompatible data stores, recognize patterns in the data, develop rigorous hypotheses, perform collaborative analyses, and "capture" the skills of the most capable analysts so that others can benefit from them, even when the analysts themselves are not available. Eventually, these systems will spread from the intelligence community to law enforcement. These techniques may offer the best chance of giving security agencies a clear advantage over their adversaries.
The recent decision by an American court to block data mining by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a significant loss to security efforts in this country. While similar military projects continue, the DHS shares data with the regional Fusion Centers responsible for much of the work carried out at the local level. Loss of this resource will make their efforts notably less effective.
The events that followed—to include the anthrax events of 2001, West Nile Virus, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, monkeypox, and other disease outbreaks—all demonstrated to me that our government faces significant obstacles in effectively "connecting the dots" of knowledge held in the minds of numerous individuals working for different organizational units. Not only is the challenge to discern truth from fiction, but also to put all the pieces of knowledge together to form a complete picture. In this age of knowledge-overload, no one individual harbors sufficient knowledge to either mitigate negative outcomes or capitalize on positive opportunities. Knowledge exchanges in these government agencies must transcend physical group proximity, social networks, and the institutions themselves.
There is a significant correlation between globalization efforts and increasing knowledge velocity, volume, volatility, and veracity concerns. Human societies, economies, and civil infrastructures are increasingly interdependent and complex. Instead of attempting the traditional "top-down" approach to management, my research espouses a "bottom-up" approach to cultivating individual insights. Recall the events of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina: no one individual harbored sufficient knowledge to mitigate these events. Such realities will occur with increasing frequency for employees of either government agencies or private entities. To assemble the entire puzzle, knowledge exchanges must occur among multiple individuals in different organizational units and institutions without prompting from the "top," but instead must be motivated at the grassroots by collaboration-fostering incentives, values, and trust-relationships; such an idea embodies innovative "knowledge ecosystems."
5 – Privacy, once a definingrightfor Americans, is dyingquickly. (Trend17)
Internet communications, a basic part of life for many people, are nearly impossible to protect against • interception, and governments around the world are working to ensure their unfettered access to them. Postings to blogs and Web forums are nearly immortal.
The contents of most Internet-connected computers are open to virtually unobstructed snooping by ––anyone with a minimum of skill and the will to examine them. All but the most secure can be invaded by more-capable hackers.
Corporate databases are collecting and marketing data on individual credit-worthiness, incomes, spending • patterns, brand choices, medical conditions, and lifestyles.
While privacy regulations bar distribution of much personal information in the European Union, ––restrictions in the United States are much weaker.
Widespread surveillance of private individuals is technically feasible and economically viable, as tiny, • powerful cameras now cost next to nothing. Increased surveillance has become socially acceptable in an age when many people fear terrorism and crime.
In Britain, an estimated 4.2 million surveillance cameras watch over streets, office buildings, schools, ––and shopping centers, making the U.K. one of the most closely monitored nations in the world. On average, Britons are caught on camera an estimated three hundred times per day.
In the United States, the growth of surveillance also is driven by the fear that lawsuits following a future ––terrorist attack could claim that failure to install monitoring equipment constitutes negligence.
Video surveillance systems have been installed in Chicago, New York City, Washington DC, Tampa ––FL, and other cities around the United States, In most cases, local police departments have been a driving force in this movement. Protests thus far have been small and ineffective.
The USA Patriot Act of 2001 sets aside the constitutional requirement of a search warrant for government • officials who wish to search someone’s home in order to thwart possible terrorism. Its provisions have been used to justify searches in pursuit of drug dealers and even, in one attempt thus far blocked by the courts, copyright abusers.29 55 Trends Now Shaping the Future of Terrorism
Assessment:
Pessimists could say that privacy already is a thing of the past; society is merely coming to recognize its loss. We believe that enough effective privacy survives outside the most authoritarian countries to justify noting its continued erosion. However, this trend could easily reach its logical conclusion within ten years.
Implications:
In the future, privacy is likely to be defined, not by the ability to keep information truly secret, but by the legal power to restrict its distribution. Even this limited form of privacy will be eroded as both government and private organizations find legal justification for their interest in personal information. Once access is granted to any type of information, it is unlikely ever to be rescinded.
Most surveillance provisions of the USA Patriot Act will survive, even if the law itself is repealed or modified.
In the absence of a major terrorist event, most Americans will continue to consider privacy a "right," and privacy-related lawsuits are likely to proliferate as more people feel violated or inconvenienced by surveillance. However, courts will be unsympathetic to such suits for so long as conservative appointees dominate the bench.
In large and medium-size cities around the world, spaces that remain unwatched by video cameras will continue to shrink.
Growing numbers of companies, and even private citizens, will encrypt their computer data.
The number of criminal cases based on surveillance will grow rapidly in countries with the required technological sophistication and infrastructure.
Private citizens increasingly will use similar technologies to watch over government abuse, as in cases where bystanders have recorded police misconduct with their cell-phone cameras.
Implications for Terrorism:
It will be nearly impossible for terrorists to operate without being observed. However, until artificial intelligence systems "learn" to recognize suspicious activities, manpower will limit use of these observations. Except in obvious target areas, surveillance will be most useful in forensic reconstruction, rather than in active incident prevention.
What remains of privacy protections often conflicts with security needs. A good example is the recent decision to scrap an important data-mining program at the DHS on the grounds that it might implicate the innocent in terrorism or other illegal activities. A more appropriate solution would have been to require that data used by the program be confirmed by at least two independent sources, as is routinely done in the intelligence community.
This is clearly one of the ten most important trends for antiterrorism. It may be one of the top five
ALONG WITH ITEM 8 OF THIS LIST
9 – Advancedcommunications technologies are changingthe way we work andlive. (Trend35)
The Internet is as much a communications medium as it is an information resource.•
Telecommuting is growing rapidly, thanks largely to e-mail and other high-tech forms of communication. • About 80 percent of companies worldwide now have employees who work at home, up from 54 percent in 2003. The number of telecommuters in the United States reached an estimated 20 million in 2006.
AT&T says that 90 percent of its employees do some work away from the office, while 41 percent work ––at home one or two days per week. This saves the company a reported $180 million a year.
However, Millennials already have abandoned e-mail for most purposes other than communicating ––with "clueless" parents and grandparents. Most have adopted instant messaging and social-network Websites to communicate with their peers.
"Podcasting"—recording college lectures, news stories, business reports, and the like for playback on the • Apple iPod—allows users to listen at their convenience.42 55 Trends Now Shaping the Future of Terrorism
Better communications is a major goal of many government agencies, particularly in law enforcement • and disaster services, which need to coordinate the activities of many different agencies under emergency conditions.
So-called "Web 2.0" services are building communities nearly as complex and involving as those existing • wholly in the real world.
Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Launched in 2003, by May ––2007 it had 6.8 million residents, 1.75 million of whom had logged on in the previous two months. Here in the real world, designers earn substantial incomes creating fashions and other paraphernalia for Second Life characters. One resident was banned when his character raped another "avatar" in virtual reality.
MySpace and Facebook have a total of more than 180 million members who form communities of ––friends, most of whom have never met except on the Internet.
A number of people have taken to wearing a small Web camera, either recording their entire lives or ––broadcasting them over the Internet.
Assessment:
Again, this trend has only just begun.
Implications:
E-mail promised to speed business. Instead, it absorbs more time than busy executives can afford to lose. Expect the nascent reaction against e-mail to grow as many people eliminate mailing lists, demand precise e-communications rather than open-ended conversation, and schedule only brief periods for dealing with mail.
Instant messaging is likely to be even more destructive of time for the under-thirty set.
However, e-mail is a major contributor to globalization and outsourcing, because it eliminates many of the obstacles of doing business across long distances and many time zones.
Unfortunately, e-mail and other modern communications techniques also have made possible a variety of crimes, from online fraud to some forms of identity theft.
They also make it virtually impossible to retract ill-considered statements or embarrassing online activities. Once something exists on the Internet, it is all but immortal and nearly impossible to hide.
Implications for Terrorism:
See Trend 34 (item 8 of this list
ITEM 8 TREND
Implications for Terrorism:
This is a top-ten trend.
International fraud, money laundering, and other economic crimes (particularly carried out via the Internet) are a growing problem, and one that can be expected to spread. At least some of these activities can be expected to finance extremist and terrorist movements.
In addition, entrepreneurial success in global markets could widen the gap between the rich and poor, worsening social strains in countries already vulnerable to extremist movements. It is likely to worsen the problem of international terrorism
Meilahn: This is a Muslim problem that can only be fought by Muslims. The more moderate Muslims must take on this fight, and the U.S. can help them. Currently only about 2 percent are radicals; but that is still a large number. According to a Gallup analysis of polls representing 90 percent of the world’s Muslim population, another 7 percent are "politically radicalized." That is, they believe the 9/11 attacks were completely justified and have an unfavorable view of the United States. And in 2006, the Pew Research Center found that 17.7 percent of Muslim respondents believed that violence against civilian targets in order to defend Islam can be justified "often" or "sometimes." At least some of the radicalized 2 percent can be re-educated about Islam and "de-radicalized," prevented from executing acts of terror. This group is the one the USG should concern itself with from a preventive standpoint.
Another point is that most of the Muslims who condoned attacks on 9/11 believe that it was justifiable because of U.S. "colonizing" and the way we are too controlling of other countries. The USG could do much with regard to its foreign policy to change its image from "occupier" to cooperative member of the world community. That would do much to decrease motivations for jihad, and keep terrorists away from our borders or our interests worldwide.
Tan: The startling failures of U.S. grand strategy after 9/11, particularly its disastrous strategy in Iraq, have been counter-productive to the global war on terrorism. From relative stability albeit under Saddam’s dictatorial hand, Iraq has slid into chaos and has become the training ground for the global jihad much as Afghanistan had become the training ground from which Al Qaeda emerged. However, the jihadists in Iraq are honing their skills in combating the world’s technologically most advanced armed forces and are learning to perfect techniques in IEDs, sabotage, sniping, kidnappings, assassinations, urban warfare, etc. Once dispersed throughout the world, these jihadists will re-constitute a post-Al Qaeda network that will be much more competent, effective, and deadly. Unfortunately, their first targets will be likely Muslim governments and allies of the U.S.A. throughout the Middle East. Can these regimes meet the emerging challenge of the post-Iraq militants? Will the radicalization being spawned in Iraq today seep through its borders to destabilize the entire Middle East? The question today is not how to win Iraq. The questions are: What can the U.S.A. and the West do to meet and contain the growing threat from radical Islam? How can we contain Iranian Shi’ite fundamentalism from threatening the stability of the entire Middle East
?
Chris Rasmussen and Intellipedia
http://pfiresources.blogspot.com/2008/11/intellipedians.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellipedia
http://www.executivebiz.com/newsletter-executives-detail.php?who=crasmussen
Intelligence sharing in real space expanding the bank of users-
Executive Spotlight with Chris Rasmussen
Photo of Chris Rasmussen Chris Rasmussen Knowledge Manager National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
In the 10/25/2007 edition of ExecutiveBiz we had a chance to catch up with Chris Rasmussen, Knowledge Manager of National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
Since 9/11, the intelligence community has been looking for ways to do a better job of sharing information between agencies. Chris Rasmussen is a knowledge manager and trainer for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency within the Department of Defense, and he’s a dynamic part of that effort. He’s a thought leader in the application of Web 2.0 tools to intelligence goals, especially social software. We catch up with him to discuss his role at NGA, Web 2.0 in the intelligence community and why he founded NGA Social Software 101 class.
ExecutiveBiz: What is your role at NGA?
Chris Rasmussen: My paycheck comes from NGA but I’m an “intelligence community man” not an “agency man “per se. It’s not about your agency in this new web 2.0 context; it’s more about the community and what knowledge you can bring to the issues and questions at hand. Where you sit doesn’t necessarily determine where you stand in this new collaborative environment. However, my role at NGA is knowledge management with social software. My job is to promote and train users throughout the community, not just NGA, on the advantages of working topically in agency-neutral platform not channel collaborative space. I founded NGA Social Software 101 in April 2007 and it has been a run-away success. Since April, a group of NGA and non-NGA instructors have trained over 250 students on Intellipedia (wiki), tagconnect (social bookmarking), blogging, picture-sharing services, etc. More importantly, we talk to students about why working in “platform” space is more advantageous than working in isolated “channels.” An analogy I use in the class is about going to New York to see the play “Phantom of the Opera.” Let’s say you drive to New York to see this play, but your seats were perpendicular to the stage and the play took place inside a tube. The only people who could see the play were the small group sitting across the lip of the tube. This tube or channel practice is what we typically do in the IC when we rely solely on email, shared folders behind firewall, and intranets--it limits the base of talent you can summon to work issues. When we remove the tube, we are on a platform or stage that everyone can see. Intellipedia, tagconnect, blogs, etc. in Intelink-space are on a stage that everyone can see not limited by the angle of vision inside a tube. “NGA Social Software 101” is administered by NGA, but I and other NGA and non-NGA instructors have traveled the country and conducted many non-NGA iterations of the course at other intelligence agencies, military units, and law enforcement agencies. The course is community focused, so adaption to non-NGA users is easy.
ExecutiveBiz: What is your definition of Web 2.0?
Chris Rasmussen: Web 2.0 is not about how webmasters or catalogers define your content viewing, generation, or mashup experience. In Web 2.0, you define how content is delivered and mashed up. In many cases, you are also generating the content. You do not solely rely on webmasters to provide “one-stop shopping.” Web 2.0 is helping the intelligence community move away from passive consumption to active consumption. Instead of sitting back and viewing “agency monologues,” users can now post blog replies, tag the content, rate it’s utility, and “vote on it” by making the source a link in the meta-discussion about that topic in Intellipedia.
ExecutiveBiz: What is the future of Web 2.0 in Government space?
Chris Rasmussen: It’s here to stay. Intellipedia has over 37,000 users, users have used tagconnet to socially bookmark hundreds of thousands of urls, and blog posts leave the default main page in about a half hour, so it’s highly unlikely these services will be cut off or reversed. They are only going to grow faster and engrain themselves into the business process deeper. These tools have helped me works so efficiently that I could never go back to the “old way” of email, webmaster-only postings, and channels.
ExecutiveBiz: What hot trends are you tracking?
Chris Rasmussen: I’m tracking the developments of the “semantic web.” However, RDF triples and ontologies have huge limits in the context of pre-defined relationships and categories akin to Web 1.0. Web 2.0 folksonomoies are not multi-layered, can be fuzzy and repetitive, but they do a “good enough” job linking and organizing data.
ExecutiveBiz: What is something most people don’t know about you?
Chris Rasmussen: I’m not a “tech guy.” Most people think that I’m a computer science and video-game playing nerd. Actually, by background, I’m a social scientist. My BA is in history, with an emphasis on Asia, and my master’s is in National Security Studies. I became a “tech guy” at work (self –taught) because of all this “computer stuff” in the content of national security is so vitally important to the success of the Intelligence Community.
For more information about National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, visit www.nga.mil/portal/site/nga01/.
Interview with Chris Rasmussen conducted by JD Kathuria.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellipedia
http://www.executivebiz.com/newsletter-executives-detail.php?who=crasmussen
Intelligence sharing in real space expanding the bank of users-
Executive Spotlight with Chris Rasmussen
Photo of Chris Rasmussen Chris Rasmussen Knowledge Manager National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
In the 10/25/2007 edition of ExecutiveBiz we had a chance to catch up with Chris Rasmussen, Knowledge Manager of National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
Since 9/11, the intelligence community has been looking for ways to do a better job of sharing information between agencies. Chris Rasmussen is a knowledge manager and trainer for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency within the Department of Defense, and he’s a dynamic part of that effort. He’s a thought leader in the application of Web 2.0 tools to intelligence goals, especially social software. We catch up with him to discuss his role at NGA, Web 2.0 in the intelligence community and why he founded NGA Social Software 101 class.
ExecutiveBiz: What is your role at NGA?
Chris Rasmussen: My paycheck comes from NGA but I’m an “intelligence community man” not an “agency man “per se. It’s not about your agency in this new web 2.0 context; it’s more about the community and what knowledge you can bring to the issues and questions at hand. Where you sit doesn’t necessarily determine where you stand in this new collaborative environment. However, my role at NGA is knowledge management with social software. My job is to promote and train users throughout the community, not just NGA, on the advantages of working topically in agency-neutral platform not channel collaborative space. I founded NGA Social Software 101 in April 2007 and it has been a run-away success. Since April, a group of NGA and non-NGA instructors have trained over 250 students on Intellipedia (wiki), tagconnect (social bookmarking), blogging, picture-sharing services, etc. More importantly, we talk to students about why working in “platform” space is more advantageous than working in isolated “channels.” An analogy I use in the class is about going to New York to see the play “Phantom of the Opera.” Let’s say you drive to New York to see this play, but your seats were perpendicular to the stage and the play took place inside a tube. The only people who could see the play were the small group sitting across the lip of the tube. This tube or channel practice is what we typically do in the IC when we rely solely on email, shared folders behind firewall, and intranets--it limits the base of talent you can summon to work issues. When we remove the tube, we are on a platform or stage that everyone can see. Intellipedia, tagconnect, blogs, etc. in Intelink-space are on a stage that everyone can see not limited by the angle of vision inside a tube. “NGA Social Software 101” is administered by NGA, but I and other NGA and non-NGA instructors have traveled the country and conducted many non-NGA iterations of the course at other intelligence agencies, military units, and law enforcement agencies. The course is community focused, so adaption to non-NGA users is easy.
ExecutiveBiz: What is your definition of Web 2.0?
Chris Rasmussen: Web 2.0 is not about how webmasters or catalogers define your content viewing, generation, or mashup experience. In Web 2.0, you define how content is delivered and mashed up. In many cases, you are also generating the content. You do not solely rely on webmasters to provide “one-stop shopping.” Web 2.0 is helping the intelligence community move away from passive consumption to active consumption. Instead of sitting back and viewing “agency monologues,” users can now post blog replies, tag the content, rate it’s utility, and “vote on it” by making the source a link in the meta-discussion about that topic in Intellipedia.
ExecutiveBiz: What is the future of Web 2.0 in Government space?
Chris Rasmussen: It’s here to stay. Intellipedia has over 37,000 users, users have used tagconnet to socially bookmark hundreds of thousands of urls, and blog posts leave the default main page in about a half hour, so it’s highly unlikely these services will be cut off or reversed. They are only going to grow faster and engrain themselves into the business process deeper. These tools have helped me works so efficiently that I could never go back to the “old way” of email, webmaster-only postings, and channels.
ExecutiveBiz: What hot trends are you tracking?
Chris Rasmussen: I’m tracking the developments of the “semantic web.” However, RDF triples and ontologies have huge limits in the context of pre-defined relationships and categories akin to Web 1.0. Web 2.0 folksonomoies are not multi-layered, can be fuzzy and repetitive, but they do a “good enough” job linking and organizing data.
ExecutiveBiz: What is something most people don’t know about you?
Chris Rasmussen: I’m not a “tech guy.” Most people think that I’m a computer science and video-game playing nerd. Actually, by background, I’m a social scientist. My BA is in history, with an emphasis on Asia, and my master’s is in National Security Studies. I became a “tech guy” at work (self –taught) because of all this “computer stuff” in the content of national security is so vitally important to the success of the Intelligence Community.
For more information about National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, visit www.nga.mil/portal/site/nga01/.
Interview with Chris Rasmussen conducted by JD Kathuria.
RADICAL COMMON SENSE URBAN PLAANING TO PREVENT CRIME
http://pfiresources.blogspot.com/2009/03/radical-coomon-sense-and-analysts-as.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appreciative_inquiry
http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/ LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES VIEW AI DESCRIPTIONS
http://www.policefuturists.org/bios/DeborahOsborne.htm
Deborah Osborne, President
Debbie has worked for ten years as a crime analyst with the Buffalo Police Department. In these past ten years she has been active in developing the profession of crime and intelligence analysis in law enforcement. She teaches online courses on this subject, trains analysts through contract work and is an advisor for ixReveal, a text analytics software company.
Debbie received a BA in Psychology and an MA in Social Policy with a criminal justice emphasis from Empire State College, SUNY. Her book Out of Bounds: Innovation and Change in Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysis was based on a study conducted during her remote fellowship with the Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, Joint Military Intelligence College (now the National Defense Intelligence College). She is author of books, book chapters, articles, and essays on topics related to crime and intelligence analysis.
Debbie is a member of the Global Task Force for the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN), the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE), the International Association of Crime Analysts (IACA), and the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts (IALEIA). She is also on the Counterterrorism Advisory Board of the Lifeboat Foundation and an Associate of the Proteus Management Group.
http://www.policefuturists.org/futures/resources.htm
We offer the following as a selective but representative samplingof both classic & contemporary materials based on Futures Research and methodologies applied to policing.
Affiliates
Books (Selective Listing)
Books (Member Suggested Readings)
Peter Senge, The Fifth DisciplineJohn Kotter, Leading ChangeJim Collins, Good to Great
Alberts, Garstka and Stein, Network Centric WarfareAtkinson and Moffat, The Agile OrganizationAlberts and Hayes, Power to the Edge
Books (Selective Listing)
Bell, Wendell (1997) Foundations of Futures Studies: Human Science for a New Era. New York: Transaction.
Osborne, Deborah, (2006) Out of Bounds: Innovation and Change in Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysis: Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, Joint Military College: Police Futurists International
Cornish, Edward (2004) Futuring: The Exploration of the Future. Bethesda, MD: World Future Society.
Cornish, Edward (1977) The Study of the Future. Washington, DC: World Future Society
Fowles, Jib (1978) Handbook of Futures Research. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Glenn, Jerome C. and Theodore J. Gordon (2000) State of the Future at the Millennium. Washington, DC: American Council for the United Nations University.
Helmer, Olaf (1983) Looking Forward: A Guide to Futures Research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Kurian, George T. and Graham T. T. Molitor, eds. (1996) Encyclopedia of the Future, 2 vol. New York: Macmillan.
Morrison, James L., William L. Renfro & Wayne Il Boucher, eds. (1983) Applying Methods and Techniques of Futures Research. San Francisco: Jossey -Bass.
Petersen, John L. (1994) The Road to 2015: Profiles of the Future. Corte Madera, CA: Waite Group Press.
Rescher, Nicholas (1998) Predicting the Future: Introduction to the Theory of Forecasting.Albany: State University of New York Press.
Ringland, Gill (1998) Scenario Planning. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Stephens, Gene, ed. (1982) The Future of Criminal Justice. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson.
Thaler, Linda K. and Robin Koval (2003) Bang! Getting Your Message Heard in a Noisy World. New York: Currency/Doubleday.
Toffler, Alvin (1970) Future Shock. New York: Random House.
Toffler, Alvin (1980) The Third Wave. New York: William Morrow.
Toffler, Alvin (1990) PowerShift. New York: Bantam.
Toffler, Alvin and Heidi Toffler (1995) War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century. Boston: Little, Brown & Company.
Toffler, Alvin and Heidi Toffler (2006) Revolutionary Wealth. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
* See also "Best Books on the Future," by Michael Marien, The Futurist, 35:3 (May -June, 2001: 42 - 49)
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THIS IS BLOG TALK RADIO WITH DEBORAH OSBORNE TALK SHOW HOSTESS TO PRESENT THE IDEA OF SUB URBAN AN COMMUNITY PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE TO REDUCE CRIME AS PART OF URBAN PLANNING. IDEAS PRESENTED WERE THE FOLLOWING;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appreciative_inquiry
http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/ LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES VIEW AI DESCRIPTIONS
http://www.policefuturists.org/bios/DeborahOsborne.htm
Deborah Osborne, President
Debbie has worked for ten years as a crime analyst with the Buffalo Police Department. In these past ten years she has been active in developing the profession of crime and intelligence analysis in law enforcement. She teaches online courses on this subject, trains analysts through contract work and is an advisor for ixReveal, a text analytics software company.
Debbie received a BA in Psychology and an MA in Social Policy with a criminal justice emphasis from Empire State College, SUNY. Her book Out of Bounds: Innovation and Change in Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysis was based on a study conducted during her remote fellowship with the Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, Joint Military Intelligence College (now the National Defense Intelligence College). She is author of books, book chapters, articles, and essays on topics related to crime and intelligence analysis.
Debbie is a member of the Global Task Force for the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN), the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE), the International Association of Crime Analysts (IACA), and the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts (IALEIA). She is also on the Counterterrorism Advisory Board of the Lifeboat Foundation and an Associate of the Proteus Management Group.
http://www.policefuturists.org/futures/resources.htm
We offer the following as a selective but representative samplingof both classic & contemporary materials based on Futures Research and methodologies applied to policing.
Affiliates
Books (Selective Listing)
Books (Member Suggested Readings)
Peter Senge, The Fifth DisciplineJohn Kotter, Leading ChangeJim Collins, Good to Great
Alberts, Garstka and Stein, Network Centric WarfareAtkinson and Moffat, The Agile OrganizationAlberts and Hayes, Power to the Edge
Books (Selective Listing)
Bell, Wendell (1997) Foundations of Futures Studies: Human Science for a New Era. New York: Transaction.
Osborne, Deborah, (2006) Out of Bounds: Innovation and Change in Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysis: Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, Joint Military College: Police Futurists International
Cornish, Edward (2004) Futuring: The Exploration of the Future. Bethesda, MD: World Future Society.
Cornish, Edward (1977) The Study of the Future. Washington, DC: World Future Society
Fowles, Jib (1978) Handbook of Futures Research. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Glenn, Jerome C. and Theodore J. Gordon (2000) State of the Future at the Millennium. Washington, DC: American Council for the United Nations University.
Helmer, Olaf (1983) Looking Forward: A Guide to Futures Research. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
Kurian, George T. and Graham T. T. Molitor, eds. (1996) Encyclopedia of the Future, 2 vol. New York: Macmillan.
Morrison, James L., William L. Renfro & Wayne Il Boucher, eds. (1983) Applying Methods and Techniques of Futures Research. San Francisco: Jossey -Bass.
Petersen, John L. (1994) The Road to 2015: Profiles of the Future. Corte Madera, CA: Waite Group Press.
Rescher, Nicholas (1998) Predicting the Future: Introduction to the Theory of Forecasting.Albany: State University of New York Press.
Ringland, Gill (1998) Scenario Planning. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Stephens, Gene, ed. (1982) The Future of Criminal Justice. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson.
Thaler, Linda K. and Robin Koval (2003) Bang! Getting Your Message Heard in a Noisy World. New York: Currency/Doubleday.
Toffler, Alvin (1970) Future Shock. New York: Random House.
Toffler, Alvin (1980) The Third Wave. New York: William Morrow.
Toffler, Alvin (1990) PowerShift. New York: Bantam.
Toffler, Alvin and Heidi Toffler (1995) War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century. Boston: Little, Brown & Company.
Toffler, Alvin and Heidi Toffler (2006) Revolutionary Wealth. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
* See also "Best Books on the Future," by Michael Marien, The Futurist, 35:3 (May -June, 2001: 42 - 49)
Book Chapters
Monographs/Reports
Periodical Articles
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Doctoral Dissertations
University Degree Programs
University Courses
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Periodicals
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Annual Conferences
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THIS IS BLOG TALK RADIO WITH DEBORAH OSBORNE TALK SHOW HOSTESS TO PRESENT THE IDEA OF SUB URBAN AN COMMUNITY PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE TO REDUCE CRIME AS PART OF URBAN PLANNING. IDEAS PRESENTED WERE THE FOLLOWING;
- Note wiki article on appreciative inquiry
The basic idea is to build organizations around what works, rather than trying to fix what doesn't. It is the opposite of problem solving. Instead of focusing on gaps and inadequacies to remediate skills or practices, AI focuses on how to create more of the exceptional performance that is occurring when a core of strengths is aligned. It opens the door to a universe of possibilities, since the work doesn't stop when a particular problem is solved but rather focuses on "What is the best we can be?" The approach acknowledges the contribution of individuals, in order to increase trust and organizational alignment. The method aims to create meaning by drawing from stories of concrete successes and lends itself to cross-industrial social activities.
There are a variety of approaches to implementing Appreciative Inquiry, including mass-mobilized interviews and a large, diverse gathering called an Appreciative Inquiry Summit (Ludema, Whitney, Mohr and Griffin, 2003). Both approaches involve bringing very large, diverse groups of people together to study and build upon the best in an organization or community.
The basic philosophy of AI is also found in other positively oriented approaches to individual change as well as organizational change. As noted above, " AI ...fosters positive relationships and builds on the basic goodness in a person, or a situation ...." The principles behind A.I. are based in the rapidly developing science of Positive Psychology. The idea of building on strength, rather than just focusing on faults and weakness is a powerful idea in use in mentoring programs, and in coaching dynamics. It is the basic idea behind teaching "micro-affirmations" as well as teaching about micro-inequities. (See Microinequity Rowe Micro-Affirmations and Micro-inequities in the Journal of the International Ombudsman Association, Volume 1, Number 1, March 2008.)
AI has been used extensively to foster change in businesses (a variety of sectors), health care systems, social profit organizations, educational institutions, communities, local governments, and religious institutions.
- MAPPING FEAR GETTING BYOND TRADITIONAL CRIME STATISTICS AND GETTING THE ANALYSTS OUT ONTO THE STREETS WHERE CRIME BREEDS
- ASKING CRITICAL THINKING QUSTIONS
- CRITICAL THINKING MODEL -GETTING PROVOKED
- MAPPING FEAR PERCEPTIONS CAUSING FEAR AND POOR LIGHTING
Film Noir and Fritz Lange
http://www.musicboxtheatre.com/collections/fritz-langs-film-noirs/
http://www.musicboxtheatre.com/collections/fritz-langs-film-noirs/
Fritz Lang Noirs are included as a picture collage or video sliver. Have not viewed
Fritz Lang’s Film Noirs
February 20 - April 4
A master of German expressionist film, Fritz Lang’s move to America following his fatherland’s decent into fascism proved to be a creative rebirth for the director. His work within mainstream Hollywood cinema was a major pillar for what is now considered the film noir movement. His uncompromisingly bleak tales were matched with a uniquely expressionist flair for lighting and composition. Though his superb 1953 film THE BIG HEAT is widely heralded as a major work in film noir cannon, nearly every film Lang directed in America achieved the same level of nihilism and grit. Yet these other films are criminally under-seen. Thanks to new preservation work by the Library of Congress and UCLA’s Film & Television Archive, films like SCARLET STREET and SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR can be revived with pristine new prints. SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR — Preservation funded by The Film Foundation and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Films Include:
While the City Sleeps February 20, 11:30am; February 21, 11:30am
Fritz Lang, 1956, 100m
Fritz Lang’s penultimate American film includes an exceptional cast, including Vincent Price and Rhonda Fleming. A serial killer is the impetus for a morally bankrupt news agency to exploit the city’s fears and sell more papers. A scathing media critique that resonates strongly today considering our current punditry climate.
Clash By Night February 27, 11:30am; February 28, 11:30am
Fritz Lang, 1952, 105m
Mae Doyle (Barbara Stanwyck) moves back to her hometown after living in New York. Bored by her simple life, she vies for the attention of her husband’s friend Earl (Robert Ryan), as sister-in-law Peggy (Marilyn Monroe) begins mimicking Mae’s bad habits.
Human Desire March 6, 11:30am; March 7, 11:30am
Fritz Lang, 1954, 91m
Émile Zola’s La bête humaine, previously adapted by Jean Renoir, is given an Americanization by Fritz Lang. Railroad engineer Jeff Warren (Glenn Ford) is drawn into a deadly romantic triangle with a hard-drinking rival (Broderick Crawford) and his seductive young wife (Gloria Grahame).
The Big Heat March 13, 11:30am; March 14, 11:30am
Fritz Lang, 1953, 89m
The most well-known of Fritz Lang’s American films is the quintessential noir. Glenn Ford stars as a cop determined to bust a citywide crime ring, with the salacious Gloria Grahame as the bad girl who helps him close the case.
Secret Beyond the Door March 20, 11:30am; March 21, 11:30am
Fritz Lang, 1948, 99m
On vacation, Joan Bennett becomes captivated by Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave), and quickly marries him. She discovers many secrets about her new husband and his mansion, but what she really wants to know is what is in the room her husband always keeps locked…
Scarlet Street March 27, 11:30am; March 28, 11:30am
Fritz Lang, 1945
Edward G Robinson faces a mid-life crisis when he meets beautiful young Kitty (Joan Bennett). Desperate for her attention, Cross lets Kitty believe he is a wealthy artist, and Kitty’s persuaded to con Cross out of the fortune she thinks he has.
Woman in the Window April 3, 11:30am; April 4, 11:30am
Fritz Lang, 1944, 99m
A college professor (Edward G Robinson) becomes obsessed with a painting and surreptitiously meets the portrait’s subject (Joan Bennett) one day. The moment is ruined by Bennett’s jealous boyfriend. A fracas ensues and Robinson finds himself covering up a murder.
spiritual diary growth in the spiritual world faster purges
Friday, January 15, 2010
LEARNIGN FROM APPRENTICESHIP AND SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE REFERENCES TO DIVINE FEMININE AND PURGING OF WESTERN CONSCIOUSNESS
Beginning Year 3: 180 Ceremonies
Wow time is so crazy ... in some ways I feel like I just began my apprenticeship...the deeper I go, the bigger the picture gets. At the same time, my growth in the physical world appears fast (since the physical world is slow compared to the spirit world.) Either way, here I am in year three already, and the Light just keeps on flooding in...So I am going to start blogging for real now, after each group at the very least (five ceremonies at a time) since there is just so much to be shared. A quick recap for those who don´t know me, I began my apprenticeship formally in January of 2008 in the village of Jenaro Herrera, in the Amazon region of Peru (near Iquitos). Since then, my entire world has flipped upside down (in an unbelievably amazing way!) I could list all the crap that has purged out of my body (depression, obesity, chronic back pain, spiritual urgency, control, blah blah) But it all seems so far away it doesn´t even feel worth getting into. Once it´s gone it´s gone (at least whatever layer I´m working on now.) All I know is that life finally became real, and seeing through clear eyes to levels I never even dreamed of, has been the blessing of a lifetime.So as many of you know, born quickly out of my apprenticehip was Infinite Light, the center in the village Luco (the shaman) and I now run. It has truly been a Divine experience watching this community/family form (and no it´s not a cult, for all you paranoid people!) Luco and I met at another program, and quickly connected as our life purpose together was very apparent. In the last couple of months, both of us have been reaching new levels in love, communication and connection, as our relationship has been shifting around from that of two people in love, to the purest form of soul-level and service love, with the natural freedom that accompanies it.Though I had released many levels of jealousy and control over the last two years, the Medicine really got to the foundation of my relationship imbalances with this one (or so I think, famous last words!) While in the States for the last few months, I got the mother of all emotional purges (for me.) Basically using a friend of mine as the catalyst and a Divine dream, doors were unlocked from adolescence that flooded open (now that I was at a level where I could not only recognize and understand what was going on, but handle it emotionally and physically.) The trapped energies of the insecure 14-year-old came out in full. One time I looked in the mirror and physically saw the energy patterns purging off of my face. I went through periods of pedestalization (is that a word?) of the guy, starry-eyed love, fantasies of the white picket fence future with kids and all (and anyone who knows me knows that that is definitely a purge, since it´s so not the real me!) becoming so intense, that I knew I had to allow it to come to a head and purge out through an awkward conversation. Now, the whole time I knew I was purging (which was why I was finally ready to handle it) though I wasn´t clear if the whole thing was a Divine set-up to get the energy out (since my friend who was involved is also in the Medicine and naturally would support me through it) or if there was any reality to the feelings underneath it. When I dropped the bomb, the let down triggered the second half of the purge...the deep feelings of rejection, unworthiness, anger, embarrassment...the full gammut. This was much deeper than feeling dissed by a boy...this was about my true connection to everything and everyone...to God, to the Universe, to All that Is.
LEARNIGN FROM APPRENTICESHIP AND SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE REFERENCES TO DIVINE FEMININE AND PURGING OF WESTERN CONSCIOUSNESS
Beginning Year 3: 180 Ceremonies
Wow time is so crazy ... in some ways I feel like I just began my apprenticeship...the deeper I go, the bigger the picture gets. At the same time, my growth in the physical world appears fast (since the physical world is slow compared to the spirit world.) Either way, here I am in year three already, and the Light just keeps on flooding in...So I am going to start blogging for real now, after each group at the very least (five ceremonies at a time) since there is just so much to be shared. A quick recap for those who don´t know me, I began my apprenticeship formally in January of 2008 in the village of Jenaro Herrera, in the Amazon region of Peru (near Iquitos). Since then, my entire world has flipped upside down (in an unbelievably amazing way!) I could list all the crap that has purged out of my body (depression, obesity, chronic back pain, spiritual urgency, control, blah blah) But it all seems so far away it doesn´t even feel worth getting into. Once it´s gone it´s gone (at least whatever layer I´m working on now.) All I know is that life finally became real, and seeing through clear eyes to levels I never even dreamed of, has been the blessing of a lifetime.So as many of you know, born quickly out of my apprenticehip was Infinite Light, the center in the village Luco (the shaman) and I now run. It has truly been a Divine experience watching this community/family form (and no it´s not a cult, for all you paranoid people!) Luco and I met at another program, and quickly connected as our life purpose together was very apparent. In the last couple of months, both of us have been reaching new levels in love, communication and connection, as our relationship has been shifting around from that of two people in love, to the purest form of soul-level and service love, with the natural freedom that accompanies it.Though I had released many levels of jealousy and control over the last two years, the Medicine really got to the foundation of my relationship imbalances with this one (or so I think, famous last words!) While in the States for the last few months, I got the mother of all emotional purges (for me.) Basically using a friend of mine as the catalyst and a Divine dream, doors were unlocked from adolescence that flooded open (now that I was at a level where I could not only recognize and understand what was going on, but handle it emotionally and physically.) The trapped energies of the insecure 14-year-old came out in full. One time I looked in the mirror and physically saw the energy patterns purging off of my face. I went through periods of pedestalization (is that a word?) of the guy, starry-eyed love, fantasies of the white picket fence future with kids and all (and anyone who knows me knows that that is definitely a purge, since it´s so not the real me!) becoming so intense, that I knew I had to allow it to come to a head and purge out through an awkward conversation. Now, the whole time I knew I was purging (which was why I was finally ready to handle it) though I wasn´t clear if the whole thing was a Divine set-up to get the energy out (since my friend who was involved is also in the Medicine and naturally would support me through it) or if there was any reality to the feelings underneath it. When I dropped the bomb, the let down triggered the second half of the purge...the deep feelings of rejection, unworthiness, anger, embarrassment...the full gammut. This was much deeper than feeling dissed by a boy...this was about my true connection to everything and everyone...to God, to the Universe, to All that Is.
I also had to trust my instincts in knowing that even though I was purging, I was very clear I needed to shift around the relationship with Luco. Purges like this are for all of us, every person involved benefits in the end (whether they recognize it or not.) Coming to full trust in my instinct, God and the Medicine, and doing what I know I needed to do, despite my fears of how the shift could effect Infinite Light, I went to the most vulnerable places in my heart, closed my eyes, and lept.So of course, the Medicine gave me enough time to recover before heading back to Peru in January. During the last group, it all became blazingly clear as to why it all happened, how it opened doors and moved things around, maximizing the healing for all parties involved. Within days, Luco and I had passed a big test in trust and communication, ultimately making us more solid and ´in love´(in the truest sense of the word) than before. My friend and I are great (the feelings are completely and totally gone...since the job was done) and I began to move into a new level of purging as I saw deeper into it, pulling up the blocks to the pure connection of the Divine feminine (that´s another story but related...but you get the idea.)I still wasn´t clear as to what the root of all these energies were...my parent´s divorce? Felt too superficial. In the first ceremony, I asked. I saw a vision of a thick, concrete foundation layer that I will be purging over the next couple of months: the Western Consciousness.
PURGING LAYERS OF CONSCIOUSNESS OUT OF THE BODY STAGES OF THE SHAMAN
-VENTIADAS AND ICAROS LEARNING THE CRAFT?
I didn´t even know you could actually purge layers of the crap in the concsciousness out of my body. It was all fear. Fear manifested in the form of feeling abandoned, or rejected, or separated in any form. Which causes the ego to build defenses to protect, since there is a perceived void in the foundational structure. The ego defends with control, and manipulation, and micromanagement, and guilt, and judgement, and ten thousand other things. But if the foundation appears as solid as it truly is, and there is no fear, those defense mechanisms need not exist. So we dive into the foundation layer of the Western Consiousness.The first ceremony was more of my actual shamanic training I´d begun receiving as of late. After about a year and a half of intense purging, I was finally at the level where I could actually begin working in ceremony (I´m still purging at times obviously, but at a much more manageable level). I had learned how to give ventiadas, begun singing Icaros, and able to clearly feel energetically what do to and to what extent to support others in ceremony. I always felt like I would be Luco´s five year old daughter tagging along, since he´s always going to be 25 years ahead of me in the Medicine. But this week things became empowered.Second ceremony, they actually took a chunk out of the consciousness. It was a different kind of purge, and there would be no Icaros for me that night. However, as deeply as the shit was leaving my body, I was able to jump to when someone asked me for something (which was exactly once...much less than normal. The Medicine plans very efficiently).
Ceremony three, I got my first Icaro that was just mine. It was all about Divine Feminine, and basically was showing me how I wouldn´t even be learning most of the traditional Icaros, as part of my role is to support in bringing in the Medicine in a new, more feminiely balanced, more loving way. The tradition is amazing and though this felt right to me, I checked with Luco as to his thoughts. This wasn´t exactly traditional shamanism if I´m getting Icaros that are for me, a white Western woman. But he validated exactly what I was feeling. What´s more important? Preserving and conserving a tradition that has brought the Medicine through for centuries, through a sometimes overly masculine culture (his words - this is not my judgement, this is just what I got in ceremony and validated) and the approach has been even a bit violent at times, as spiritual battle is commonplace among many shamans. The Icaros were born out of this energy, and the approach the shaman uses, their own light/love level, and whether they choose to focus in or participate in outside battling, will effect the entire stage the Medicine is set in. Neither way is right or wrong...for some, the more militant styles will be exactly what they need to release the purges. But for whatever reason, bringing the Medicine through in a Divine Feminine way, balanced by Luco and the more traditional masculine way (though he doesn´t battle...I don´t think this would work if he did:=) is part of our purpose and Infinite Light´s particular thumbprint in bringing the Medicine through in this way (I know we´re not the only ones either, as spiritual the Divine Feminine rebalance would most likely bring a shift to many working in the Medicine or other spiritual endeavors.)So purging and rebalancing the layer of consciousness in my body, simultaneously with the Divine Feminine being empowered into me...coincidence? Definitely not. I see why the ´boy´issues would be a layer on top of that, then the ´girl´issues (catty dumb shit - that´s actually really serious on the spiritual level) works out as the rebalance continues. I will keep you guys updated, but all and I am am super excited about this period!I´ve also gotten a lot of Divine hits about 2011 and what´s in store for Infinite Light (as far as working apprenticeships, various opportunities, etc) but I´ll save that for another blog. It´s still January after all!Sorry that was so long, but that was really from the last five months, not just five ceremonies. I´ll keep it concise for the future ones!Much love everyone! And go watch Avatar if you haven´t seen it yet:) Be back after the next group with more!Peace:)Meghan
Posted by Ayahuasca Meghan at 11:23 PM
Labels: amazon, apprenticeship, avatar, ayahuasca, divine, feminine, icaros, shaman, shamanism
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Blog Archive
▼ 2010 (5)
► March (1)
The "Spiritual Warrior" Concept: Oxymoron and Feed...
► February (2)
191 + Sanango Diet
190: Finishing Phase One
▼ January (2)
185: Most difficult purge so far...
Beginning Year 3: 180 Ceremonies
► 2009 (7)
► December (1)
"Avatar" and Ayahuasca - James Cameron's Movie
► October (1)
Update Time! Firedancing, Teresa and Meghan Update...
► September (1)
Updates! New Infinite Light Peru website! Consciou...
► June (1)
Updates! Teresa/Paraplegia, Jafari/Iraq, Meghan/We...
► May (1)
What is Ayahuasca...Really...?
► March (1)
Ayahuasca, Sanago, Quadriplegia, Schizophrenia, Ob...
► January (1)
BIG NEWS from Infinite Light Peru Ayahuasca Healin...
► 2008 (7)
► October (1)
Video! Ayahuasca Shamanic Healing (Deaf-friendly, ...
► August (1)
Understanding
► May (1)
Deaf and the Spirit World?
► April (4)
Monday, April 21, 200...
Peru Update 1 (January 2008)
Post-Peru Comedown (October 2007)
First Peru Trip (August. 2007)
About Me
Meghan Shannon
Jenaro Herrera, Amazon Region, Peru
I am an ayahuasca shamanic apprentice when in the Amazon and a sign language interpreter when in the US. Visit my site at www.infinitelightperu.com! View my complete profile
Posted by Ayahuasca Meghan at 11:23 PM
Labels: amazon, apprenticeship, avatar, ayahuasca, divine, feminine, icaros, shaman, shamanism
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Blog Archive
▼ 2010 (5)
► March (1)
The "Spiritual Warrior" Concept: Oxymoron and Feed...
► February (2)
191 + Sanango Diet
190: Finishing Phase One
▼ January (2)
185: Most difficult purge so far...
Beginning Year 3: 180 Ceremonies
► 2009 (7)
► December (1)
"Avatar" and Ayahuasca - James Cameron's Movie
► October (1)
Update Time! Firedancing, Teresa and Meghan Update...
► September (1)
Updates! New Infinite Light Peru website! Consciou...
► June (1)
Updates! Teresa/Paraplegia, Jafari/Iraq, Meghan/We...
► May (1)
What is Ayahuasca...Really...?
► March (1)
Ayahuasca, Sanago, Quadriplegia, Schizophrenia, Ob...
► January (1)
BIG NEWS from Infinite Light Peru Ayahuasca Healin...
► 2008 (7)
► October (1)
Video! Ayahuasca Shamanic Healing (Deaf-friendly, ...
► August (1)
Understanding
► May (1)
Deaf and the Spirit World?
► April (4)
Monday, April 21, 200...
Peru Update 1 (January 2008)
Post-Peru Comedown (October 2007)
First Peru Trip (August. 2007)
About Me
Meghan Shannon
Jenaro Herrera, Amazon Region, Peru
I am an ayahuasca shamanic apprentice when in the Amazon and a sign language interpreter when in the US. Visit my site at www.infinitelightperu.com! View my complete profile
Willa Cather My Antonia Ch II pp 1,2 BK I Ch III 1.2
IMMIGRANTS AND THE AMERICAN WESTTHE IDEA OF THE SAVAGE WILDERNESS AND THE AMER WEST
MYTH OF MIGRATION
Footnotes
^ a b Heller, Terry (2007) "Cather's My Ántonia Promotes Regional Literature" pp. 1403-1406 In Gorman, Robert F. (editor) (2007) Great Events from History: The 20th Century: 1901-1940 - Volume 3 1915-1923 Salem Press, Pasadena, California, page 1403, ISBN 978-1-58765-327-8
^ Murphy, John J. (1994) "Introduction" to Cather, Wila (1994) My Ántonia Penguin Books, New York, page vii, ISBN 0-14-018764-2
^ ^ Shammas, Anton. Arabesques. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988. p. 138. Footnotes
^ a b Heller, Terry (2007) "Cather's My Ántonia Promotes Regional Literature" pp. 1403-1406 In Gorman, Robert F. (editor) (2007) Great Events from History: The 20th Century: 1901-1940 - Volume 3 1915-1923 Salem Press, Pasadena, California, page 1403, ISBN 978-1-58765-327-8
^ a b Heller, Terry (2007) "Cather's My Ántonia Promotes Regional Literature" pp. 1403-1406 In Gorman, Robert F. (editor) (2007) Great Events from History: The 20th Century: 1901-1940 - Volume 3 1915-1923 Salem Press, Pasadena, California, page 1404, ISBN 978-1-58765-327-8
^ Murphy, John J. (1994) "Introduction" to Cather, Wila (1994) My Ántonia Penguin Books, New York, page vii, ISBN 0-14-018764-2
^ Heller, Terry (2007) "Cather's My Ántonia Promotes Regional Literature" pp. 1403-1406 In Gorman, Robert F. (editor) (2007) Great Events from History: The 20th Century: 1901-1940 - Volume 3 1915-1923 Salem Press, Pasadena, California, page 1405, ISBN 978-1-58765-327-8
^ Murphy, John J. (1994) "Introduction" to Cather, Wila (1994) My Ántonia Penguin Books, New York, page xV, ISBN 0-14-018764-2, citing analysis by Blanche Gelfant, Deborah Lambert and Judith Fetterley
^ Shammas, Anton. Arabesques. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1988. p. 138.
Cultural references
A made-for-television movie, also entitled My Ántonia, was based on this novel.
The French songwriter and singer, Dominique A, wrote a song inspired by the novel, called "Antonia" (from the LP "Auguri" -2001-).
In Richard Powers' 2006 novel The Echo Maker the character Mark Schluter reads "My Ántonia" on the recommendation of his nurse, who notes that it is "[A] very sexy story....About a young Nebraska country boy who has the hots for an older woman" (page 240).
In Anton Shammas' 1986 novel Arabesques, the autobiographical character of Anton reads "My Ántonia" on the plane to a writers' workshop in Iowa. It is the first novel he ever read, and he expects Iowa to have the same grass "the color of wine stains" that Cather describes of Nebraska.[6]
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Chapter II p1
I DO NOT remember our arrival at my grandfather's farm sometime before daybreak, after a drive of nearly twenty miles with heavy workhorses. When I awoke, it was afternoon. I was lying in a little room, scarcely larger than the bed that held me, and the window shade at my head was flapping softly in a warm wind. A tall woman, with wrinkled brown skin and black hair, stood looking down at me; I knew that she must be my grandmother. She had been crying, I could see, but when I opened my eyes she smiled, peered at me anxiously, and sat down on the foot of my bed.
“Had a good sleep, Jimmy?” she asked briskly. Then in a very different tone she said, as if to herself, “My, how you do look like your father!” I remembered that my father had been her little boy; she must often have come to wake him like this when he overslept. “Here are your clean clothes,” she went on, stroking my coverlid with her brown hand as she talked. “But first you come down to the kitchen with me, and have a nice warm bath behind the stove. Bring your things; there's nobody about.”
“Down to the kitchen” struck me as curious; it was always “out in the kitchen” at home. I picked up my shoes and stockings and followed her through the living room and down a flight of stairs into a basement. This basement was divided into a dining room at the right of the stairs and a kitchen at the left. Both rooms were plastered and whitewashed—the plaster laid directly upon the earth walls, as it used to be in dugouts. The floor was of hard cement. Up under the wooden ceiling there were little half-windows with white curtains, and pots of geraniums and wandering Jew in the deep sills. As I entered the kitchen I sniffed a pleasant smell of gingerbread baking. The stove was very large, with bright nickel trimmings, and behind it there was a long wooden bench against the wall, and a tin washtub, into which grandmother poured hot and cold water. When she brought the soap and towels, I told her that I was used to taking my bath without help.
“Can you do your ears, Jimmy? Are you sure? Well, now, I call you a right smart little boy.”
It was pleasant there in the kitchen. The sun shone into my bath water through the west half-window, and a big Maltese cat came up and rubbed himself against the tub, watching me curiously. While I scrubbed, my grandmother busied herself in the dining room until I called anxiously, “Grandmother, I'm afraid the cakes are burning!” Then she came laughing, waving her apron before her as if she were shooing chickens.
She was a spare, tall woman, a little stooped, and she was apt to carry her head thrust forward in an attitude of attention, as if she were looking at something, or listening to something, far away. As I grew older, I came to believe that it was only because she was so often thinking of things that were far away. She was quick-footed and energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill, and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum. Her laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a strong woman, of unusual endurance.
After I was dressed I explored the long cellar next the kitchen. It was dug out under the wing of the house, was plastered and cemented, with a stairway and an outside door by which the men came and went. Under one of the windows there was a place for them to wash when they came in from work.
While my grandmother was busy about supper I settled myself on the wooden bench behind the stove and got acquainted with the cat—he caught not only rats and mice, but gophers, I was told. The patch of yellow sunlight on the floor traveled back toward the stairway, and grandmother and I talked about my journey, and about the arrival of the new Bohemian family; she said they were to be our nearest neighbors. We did not talk about the farm in Virginia, which had been her home for so many years. But after the men came in from the fields, and we were all seated at the supper table, then she asked Jake about the old place and about our friends and neighbors there.
My grandfather said little. When he first came in he kissed me and spoke kindly to me, but he was not demonstrative. I felt at once his deliberateness and personal dignity, and was a little in awe of him. The thing one immediately noticed about him was his beautiful, crinkly, snow-white beard. I once heard a missionary say it was like the beard of an Arabian sheik. His bald crown only made it more impressive.
Grandfather's eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they were bright blue, and had a fresh, frosty sparkle. His teeth were white and regular—so sound that he had never been to a dentist in his life. He had a delicate skin, easily roughened by sun and wind. When he was a young man his hair and beard were red; his eyebrows were still coppery.
As we sat at the table Otto Fuchs and I kept stealing covert glances at each other. Grandmother had told me while she was getting supper that he was an Austrian who came to this country a young boy and had led an adventurous life in the Far West among mining camps and cow outfits. His iron constitution was somewhat broken by mountain pneumonia, and he had drifted back to live in a milder country for a while. He had relatives in Bismarck, a German settlement to the north of us, but for a year now he had been working for grandfather.
The minute supper was over, Otto took me into the kitchen to whisper to me about a pony down in the barn that had been bought for me at a sale; he had been riding him to find out whether he had any bad tricks, but he was a “perfect gentleman,” and his name was Dude. Fuchs told me everything I wanted to know: how he had lost his ear in a Wyoming blizzard when he was a stage driver, and how to throw a lasso. He promised to rope a steer for me before sundown next day. He got out his “chaps” and silver spurs to show them to Jake and me, and his best cowboy boots, with tops stitched in bold design—roses, and true-lover's knots, and undraped female figures. These, he solemnly explained, were angels.
wandering Jew – a type of plant
inflection – the way words are pronounced; intonation; rising and falling of the voice
decorum – proper behavior, correctness
strident – shrill
Bohemian family – immigrants who came to the Nebraska from Bohemia (an area of southwestern Europe, now known as the Czech Republic)
covert – secretive
chaps – protective leather coverings worn over pants
My Antonia Chapter II - Page 2
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Before we went to bed Jake and Otto were called up to the living room for prayers. Grandfather put on silver-rimmed spectacles and read several Psalms. His voice was so sympathetic and he read so interestingly that I wished he had chosen one of my favorite chapters in the Book of Kings. I was awed by his intonation of the word “selah.” “He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom He loved. Selah.” I had no idea what the word meant; perhaps he had not. But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the most sacred of words.
Early the next morning I ran out of doors to look about me. I had been told that ours was the only wooden house west of Black Hawk—until you came to the Norwegian settlement, where there were several. Our neighbors lived in sod houses and dugouts—comfortable, but not very roomy. Our white frame house, with a story and half-story above the basement, stood at the east end of what I might call the farmyard, with the windmill close by the kitchen door. From the windmill the ground sloped westward, down to the barns and granaries and pig yards. This slope was trampled hard and bare, and washed out in winding gullies by the rain. Beyond the corncribs, at the bottom of the shallow draw, was a muddy little pond, with rusty willow bushes growing about it. The road from the post office came directly by our door, crossed the farmyard, and curved round this little pond, beyond which it began to climb the gentle swell of unbroken prairie to the west. There, along the western skyline, it skirted a great cornfield, much larger than any field I had ever seen. This cornfield, and the sorghum patch behind the barn, were the only broken land in sight. Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy, red grass, most of it as tall as I.
North of the house, inside the ploughed fire-breaks, grew a thick-set strip of box elder trees, low and bushy, their leaves already turning yellow. This hedge was nearly a quarter of a mile long, but I had to look very hard to see it at all. The little trees were insignificant against the grass. It seemed as if the grass were about to run over them, and over the plum patch behind the sod chickenhouse.
As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the color of wine stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.
I had almost forgotten that I had a grandmother, when she came out, her sunbonnet on her head, a grain sack in her hand, and asked me if I did not want to go to the garden with her to dig potatoes for dinner. The garden, curiously enough, was a quarter of a mile from the house, and the way to it led up a shallow draw past the cattle corral. Grandmother called my attention to a stout hickory cane, tipped with copper, which hung by a leather thong from her belt. This, she said, was her rattlesnake cane. I must never go to the garden without a heavy stick or a corn knife; she had killed a good many rattlers on her way back and forth. A little girl who lived on the Black Hawk road was bitten on the ankle and had been sick all summer.
I can remember exactly how the country looked to me as I walked beside my grandmother along the faint wagon tracks on that early September morning. Perhaps the glide of long railway travel was still with me, for more than anything else I felt motion in the landscape; in the fresh, easy-blowing morning wind, and in the earth itself, as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping, galloping…
Alone, I should never have found the garden—except, perhaps, for the big yellow pumpkins that lay about unprotected by their withering vines—and I felt very little interest in it when I got there. I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass. While grandmother took the pitchfork we found standing in one of the rows and dug potatoes, while I picked them up out of the soft brown earth and put them into the bag, I kept looking up at the hawks that were doing what I might so easily do.
When grandmother was ready to go, I said I would like to stay up there in the garden awhile.
She peered down at me from under her sunbonnet. “Aren't you afraid of snakes?”
“A little,” I admitted, “but I'd like to stay, anyhow.”
“Well, if you see one, don't have anything to do with him. The big yellow and brown ones won't hurt you; they're bull snakes and help to keep the gophers down. Don't be scared if you see anything look out of that hole in the bank over there. That's a badger hole. He's about as big as a big 'possum, and his face is striped, black and white. He takes a chicken once in a while, but I won't let the men harm him. In a new country a body feels friendly to the animals. I like to have him come out and watch me when I'm at work.”
Grandmother swung the bag of potatoes over her shoulder and went down the path, leaning forward a little. The road followed the windings of the draw; when she came to the first bend she waved at me and disappeared. I was left alone with this new feeling of lightness and content.
I sat down in the middle of the garden, where snakes could scarcely approach unseen, and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin. There were some ground-cherry bushes growing along the furrows, full of fruit. I turned back the papery triangular sheaths that protected the berries and ate a few. All about me giant grasshoppers, twice as big as any I had ever seen, were doing acrobatic feats among the dried vines. The gophers scurried up and down the ploughed ground. There in the sheltered draw-bottom the wind did not blow very hard, but I could hear it singing its humming tune up on the level, and I could see the tall grasses wave. The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers. Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons around me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.
selah – this word appears in the Bible in Psalms; some believe it is a direction for reading, reflecting, or interpreting the Psalms. It is considered a pause or a rest.
oracular – solemn; as if from an oracle
sod houses – primitive frontier homes built by homesteaders cut from thick prairie sod
dugouts – early frontier homes constructed by digging out a cave in a hill or a large hole in the ground
sorghum – a type of grain or grass used as a food
vermilion – bright red
Chapter III p1
ON SUNDAY MORNING Otto Fuchs was to drive us over to make the acquaintance of our new Bohemian neighbors. We were taking them some provisions, as they had come to live on a wild place where there was no garden or chicken house, and very little broken land. Fuchs brought up a sack of potatoes and a piece of cured pork from the cellar, and grandmother packed some loaves of Saturday's bread, a jar of butter, and several pumpkin pies in the straw of the wagon box. We clambered up to the front seat and jolted off past the little pond and along the road that climbed to the big cornfield.
I could hardly wait to see what lay beyond that cornfield; but there was only red grass like ours, and nothing else, though from the high wagon-seat one could look off a long way. The road ran about like a wild thing, avoiding the deep draws, crossing them where they were wide and shallow. And all along it, wherever it looped or ran, the sunflowers grew; some of them were as big as little trees, with great rough leaves and many branches which bore dozens of blossoms. They made a gold ribbon across the prairie. Occasionally one of the horses would tear off with his teeth a plant full of blossoms, and walk along munching it, the flowers nodding in time to his bites as he ate down toward them.
The Bohemian family, grandmother told me as we drove along, had bought the homestead of a fellow-countryman, Peter Krajiek, and had paid him more than it was worth. Their agreement with him was made before they left the old country, through a cousin of his, who was also a relative of Mrs. Shimerda. The Shimerdas were the first Bohemian family to come to this part of the county. Krajiek was their only interpreter, and could tell them anything he chose. They could not speak enough English to ask for advice, or even to make their most pressing wants known. One son, Fuchs said, was well-grown, and strong enough to work the land; but the father was old and frail and knew nothing about farming. He was a weaver by trade; had been a skilled workman on tapestries and upholstery materials. He had brought his fiddle with him, which wouldn't be of much use here, though he used to pick up money by it at home.
“If they're nice people, I hate to think of them spending the winter in that cave of Krajiek's,” said grandmother. “It's no better than a badger hole; no proper dugout at all. And I hear he's made them pay twenty dollars for his old cookstove that ain't worth ten.”
“Yes'm,” said Otto; “and he's sold 'em his oxen and his two bony old horses for the price of good work-teams. I'd have interfered about the horses—the old man can understand some German—if I'd I 'a' thought it would do any good. But Bohemians has a natural distrust of Austrians.”
Grandmother looked interested. “Now, why is that, Otto?”
Fuchs wrinkled his brow and nose. “Well, ma'm, it's politics. It would take me a long while to explain.”
The land was growing rougher; I was told that we were approaching Squaw Creek, which cut up the west half of the Shimerdas' place and made the land of little value for farming. Soon we could see the broken, grassy clay cliffs which indicated the windings of the stream, and the glittering tops of the cottonwoods and ash trees that grew down in the ravine. Some of the cottonwoods had already turned, and the yellow leaves and shining white bark made them look like the gold and silver trees in fairy tales.
As we approached the Shimerdas' dwelling, I could still see nothing but rough red hillocks, and draws with shelving banks and long roots hanging out where the earth had crumbled away. Presently, against one of those banks, I saw a sort of shed, thatched with the same wine-colored grass that grew everywhere. Near it tilted a shattered windmill-frame, that had no wheel. We drove up to this skeleton to tie our horses, and then I saw a door and window sunk deep in the draw-bank. The door stood open, and a woman and a girl of fourteen ran out and looked up at us hopefully. A little girl trailed along behind them. The woman had on her head the same embroidered shawl with silk fringes that she wore when she had alighted from the train at Black Hawk. She was not old, but she was certainly not young. Her face was alert and lively, with a sharp chin and shrewd little eyes. She shook grandmother's hand energetically.
“Very glad, very glad!” she ejaculated. Immediately she pointed to the bank out of which she had emerged and said, “House no good, house no good!”
Grandmother nodded consolingly. “You'll get fixed up comfortable after while, Mrs. Shimerda; make good house.”
My grandmother always spoke in a very loud tone to foreigners, as if they were deaf. She made Mrs. Shimerda understand the friendly intention of our visit, and the Bohemian woman handled the loaves of bread and even smelled them, and examined the pies with lively curiosity, exclaiming, “Much good, much thank!”—and again she wrung grandmother's hand.
The oldest son, Ambroz,—they called it Ambrosch,—came out of the cave and stood beside his mother. He was nineteen years old, short and broad-backed, with a close-cropped, flat head, and a wide, flat face. His hazel eyes were little and shrewd, like his mother's, but more sly and suspicious; they fairly snapped at the food. The family had been living on corncakes and sorghum molasses for three days.
The little girl was pretty, but Án-tonia—they accented the name thus, strongly, when they spoke to her—was still prettier. I remembered what the conductor had said about her eyes. They were big and warm and full of light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood. Her skin was brown, too, and in her cheeks she had a glow of rich, dark color. Her brown hair was curly and wild-looking. The little sister, whom they called Yulka (Julka), was fair, and seemed mild and obedient. While I stood awkwardly confronting the two girls, Krajiek came up from the barn to see what was going on. With him was another Shimerda son. Even from a distance one could see that there was something strange about this boy. As he approached us, he began to make uncouth noises, and held up his hands to show us his fingers, which were webbed to the first knuckle, like a duck's foot. When he saw me draw back, he began to crow delightedly, “Hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo!” like a rooster. His mother scowled and said sternly, “Marek!” then spoke rapidly to Krajiek in Bohemian.
draws – gullies, ditches
ravine – a dry riverbed
consolingly – comfortingly
uncouth – improper, impolite; without manners
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My Antonia Chapter III - Page 2
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“She wants me to tell you he won't hurt nobody, Mrs. Burden. He was born like that. The others are smart. Ambrosch, he make good farmer.” He struck Ambrosch on the back, and the boy smiled knowingly.
At that moment the father came out of the hole in the bank. He wore no hat, and his thick, iron-gray hair was brushed straight back from his forehead. It was so long that it bushed out behind his ears, and made him look like the old portraits I remembered in Virginia. He was tall and slender, and his thin shoulders stooped. He looked at us understandingly, then took grandmother's hand and bent over it. I noticed how white and well shaped his own hands were. They looked calm, somehow, and skilled. His eyes were melancholy, and were set back deep under his brow. His face was ruggedly formed, but it looked like ashes—like something from which all the warmth and light had died out. Everything about this old man was in keeping with his dignified manner. He was neatly dressed. Under his coat he wore a knitted gray vest, and, instead of a collar, a silk scarf of a dark bronze-green, carefully crossed and held together by a red coral pin. While Krajiek was translating for Mr. Shimerda, Ántonia came up to me and held out her hand coaxingly. In a moment we were running up the steep drawside together, Yulka trotting after us.
When we reached the level and could see the gold treetops, I pointed toward them, and Ántonia laughed and squeezed my hand as if to tell me how glad she was I had come. We raced off toward Squaw Creek and did not stop until the ground itself stopped—fell away before us so abruptly that the next step would have been out into the treetops. We stood panting on the edge of the ravine, looking down at the trees and bushes that grew below us. The wind was so strong that I had to hold my hat on, and the girls' skirts were blown out before them. Ántonia seemed to like it; she held her little sister by the hand and chattered away in that language which seemed to me spoken so much more rapidly than mine. She looked at me, her eyes fairly blazing with things she could not say.
“Name? What name?” she asked, touching me on the shoulder. I told her my name, and she repeated it after me and made Yulka say it. She pointed into the gold cottonwood tree behind whose top we stood and said again, “What name?”
We sat down and made a nest in the long red grass. Yulka curled up like a baby rabbit and played with a grasshopper. Ántonia pointed up to the sky and questioned me with her glance. I gave her the word, but she was not satisfied and pointed to my eyes. I told her, and she repeated the word, making it sound like “ice.” She pointed up to the sky, then to my eyes, then back to the sky, with movements so quick and impulsive that she distracted me, and I had no idea what she wanted. She got up on her knees and wrung her hands. She pointed to her own eyes and shook her head, then to mine and to the sky, nodding violently.
“Oh,” I exclaimed, “blue; blue sky.”
She clapped her hands and murmured, “Blue sky, blue eyes,” as if it amused her. While we snuggled down there out of the wind she learned a score of words. She was quick, and very eager. We were so deep in the grass that we could see nothing but the blue sky over us and the gold tree in front of us. It was wonderfully pleasant. After Ántonia had said the new words over and over, she wanted to give me a little chased silver ring she wore on her middle finger. When she coaxed and insisted, I repulsed her quite sternly. I didn't want her ring, and I felt there was something reckless and extravagant about her wishing to give it away to a boy she had never seen before. No wonder Krajiek got the better of these people, if this was how they behaved.
While we were disputing about the ring, I heard a mournful voice calling, “Án-tonia, Án-tonia!” She sprang up like a hare. “Tatinek! Tatinek!” she shouted, and we ran to meet the old man who was coming toward us. Ántonia reached him first, took his hand and kissed it. When I came up, he touched my shoulder and looked searchingly down into my face for several seconds. I became somewhat embarrassed, for I was used to being taken for granted by my elders.
We went with Mr. Shimerda back to the dugout, where grandmother was waiting for me. Before I got into the wagon, he took a book out of his pocket, opened it, and showed me a page with two alphabets, one English and the other Bohemian. He placed this book in my grandmother's hands, looked at her entreatingly, and said, with an earnestness which I shall never forget, “Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my Án-tonia!”
Chapter II p1
I DO NOT remember our arrival at my grandfather's farm sometime before daybreak, after a drive of nearly twenty miles with heavy workhorses. When I awoke, it was afternoon. I was lying in a little room, scarcely larger than the bed that held me, and the window shade at my head was flapping softly in a warm wind. A tall woman, with wrinkled brown skin and black hair, stood looking down at me; I knew that she must be my grandmother. She had been crying, I could see, but when I opened my eyes she smiled, peered at me anxiously, and sat down on the foot of my bed.
“Had a good sleep, Jimmy?” she asked briskly. Then in a very different tone she said, as if to herself, “My, how you do look like your father!” I remembered that my father had been her little boy; she must often have come to wake him like this when he overslept. “Here are your clean clothes,” she went on, stroking my coverlid with her brown hand as she talked. “But first you come down to the kitchen with me, and have a nice warm bath behind the stove. Bring your things; there's nobody about.”
“Down to the kitchen” struck me as curious; it was always “out in the kitchen” at home. I picked up my shoes and stockings and followed her through the living room and down a flight of stairs into a basement. This basement was divided into a dining room at the right of the stairs and a kitchen at the left. Both rooms were plastered and whitewashed—the plaster laid directly upon the earth walls, as it used to be in dugouts. The floor was of hard cement. Up under the wooden ceiling there were little half-windows with white curtains, and pots of geraniums and wandering Jew in the deep sills. As I entered the kitchen I sniffed a pleasant smell of gingerbread baking. The stove was very large, with bright nickel trimmings, and behind it there was a long wooden bench against the wall, and a tin washtub, into which grandmother poured hot and cold water. When she brought the soap and towels, I told her that I was used to taking my bath without help.
“Can you do your ears, Jimmy? Are you sure? Well, now, I call you a right smart little boy.”
It was pleasant there in the kitchen. The sun shone into my bath water through the west half-window, and a big Maltese cat came up and rubbed himself against the tub, watching me curiously. While I scrubbed, my grandmother busied herself in the dining room until I called anxiously, “Grandmother, I'm afraid the cakes are burning!” Then she came laughing, waving her apron before her as if she were shooing chickens.
She was a spare, tall woman, a little stooped, and she was apt to carry her head thrust forward in an attitude of attention, as if she were looking at something, or listening to something, far away. As I grew older, I came to believe that it was only because she was so often thinking of things that were far away. She was quick-footed and energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill, and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum. Her laugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was a lively intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a strong woman, of unusual endurance.
After I was dressed I explored the long cellar next the kitchen. It was dug out under the wing of the house, was plastered and cemented, with a stairway and an outside door by which the men came and went. Under one of the windows there was a place for them to wash when they came in from work.
While my grandmother was busy about supper I settled myself on the wooden bench behind the stove and got acquainted with the cat—he caught not only rats and mice, but gophers, I was told. The patch of yellow sunlight on the floor traveled back toward the stairway, and grandmother and I talked about my journey, and about the arrival of the new Bohemian family; she said they were to be our nearest neighbors. We did not talk about the farm in Virginia, which had been her home for so many years. But after the men came in from the fields, and we were all seated at the supper table, then she asked Jake about the old place and about our friends and neighbors there.
My grandfather said little. When he first came in he kissed me and spoke kindly to me, but he was not demonstrative. I felt at once his deliberateness and personal dignity, and was a little in awe of him. The thing one immediately noticed about him was his beautiful, crinkly, snow-white beard. I once heard a missionary say it was like the beard of an Arabian sheik. His bald crown only made it more impressive.
Grandfather's eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they were bright blue, and had a fresh, frosty sparkle. His teeth were white and regular—so sound that he had never been to a dentist in his life. He had a delicate skin, easily roughened by sun and wind. When he was a young man his hair and beard were red; his eyebrows were still coppery.
As we sat at the table Otto Fuchs and I kept stealing covert glances at each other. Grandmother had told me while she was getting supper that he was an Austrian who came to this country a young boy and had led an adventurous life in the Far West among mining camps and cow outfits. His iron constitution was somewhat broken by mountain pneumonia, and he had drifted back to live in a milder country for a while. He had relatives in Bismarck, a German settlement to the north of us, but for a year now he had been working for grandfather.
The minute supper was over, Otto took me into the kitchen to whisper to me about a pony down in the barn that had been bought for me at a sale; he had been riding him to find out whether he had any bad tricks, but he was a “perfect gentleman,” and his name was Dude. Fuchs told me everything I wanted to know: how he had lost his ear in a Wyoming blizzard when he was a stage driver, and how to throw a lasso. He promised to rope a steer for me before sundown next day. He got out his “chaps” and silver spurs to show them to Jake and me, and his best cowboy boots, with tops stitched in bold design—roses, and true-lover's knots, and undraped female figures. These, he solemnly explained, were angels.
wandering Jew – a type of plant
inflection – the way words are pronounced; intonation; rising and falling of the voice
decorum – proper behavior, correctness
strident – shrill
Bohemian family – immigrants who came to the Nebraska from Bohemia (an area of southwestern Europe, now known as the Czech Republic)
covert – secretive
chaps – protective leather coverings worn over pants
My Antonia Chapter II - Page 2
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Before we went to bed Jake and Otto were called up to the living room for prayers. Grandfather put on silver-rimmed spectacles and read several Psalms. His voice was so sympathetic and he read so interestingly that I wished he had chosen one of my favorite chapters in the Book of Kings. I was awed by his intonation of the word “selah.” “He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom He loved. Selah.” I had no idea what the word meant; perhaps he had not. But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the most sacred of words.
Early the next morning I ran out of doors to look about me. I had been told that ours was the only wooden house west of Black Hawk—until you came to the Norwegian settlement, where there were several. Our neighbors lived in sod houses and dugouts—comfortable, but not very roomy. Our white frame house, with a story and half-story above the basement, stood at the east end of what I might call the farmyard, with the windmill close by the kitchen door. From the windmill the ground sloped westward, down to the barns and granaries and pig yards. This slope was trampled hard and bare, and washed out in winding gullies by the rain. Beyond the corncribs, at the bottom of the shallow draw, was a muddy little pond, with rusty willow bushes growing about it. The road from the post office came directly by our door, crossed the farmyard, and curved round this little pond, beyond which it began to climb the gentle swell of unbroken prairie to the west. There, along the western skyline, it skirted a great cornfield, much larger than any field I had ever seen. This cornfield, and the sorghum patch behind the barn, were the only broken land in sight. Everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy, red grass, most of it as tall as I.
North of the house, inside the ploughed fire-breaks, grew a thick-set strip of box elder trees, low and bushy, their leaves already turning yellow. This hedge was nearly a quarter of a mile long, but I had to look very hard to see it at all. The little trees were insignificant against the grass. It seemed as if the grass were about to run over them, and over the plum patch behind the sod chickenhouse.
As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the color of wine stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running.
I had almost forgotten that I had a grandmother, when she came out, her sunbonnet on her head, a grain sack in her hand, and asked me if I did not want to go to the garden with her to dig potatoes for dinner. The garden, curiously enough, was a quarter of a mile from the house, and the way to it led up a shallow draw past the cattle corral. Grandmother called my attention to a stout hickory cane, tipped with copper, which hung by a leather thong from her belt. This, she said, was her rattlesnake cane. I must never go to the garden without a heavy stick or a corn knife; she had killed a good many rattlers on her way back and forth. A little girl who lived on the Black Hawk road was bitten on the ankle and had been sick all summer.
I can remember exactly how the country looked to me as I walked beside my grandmother along the faint wagon tracks on that early September morning. Perhaps the glide of long railway travel was still with me, for more than anything else I felt motion in the landscape; in the fresh, easy-blowing morning wind, and in the earth itself, as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping, galloping…
Alone, I should never have found the garden—except, perhaps, for the big yellow pumpkins that lay about unprotected by their withering vines—and I felt very little interest in it when I got there. I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass. While grandmother took the pitchfork we found standing in one of the rows and dug potatoes, while I picked them up out of the soft brown earth and put them into the bag, I kept looking up at the hawks that were doing what I might so easily do.
When grandmother was ready to go, I said I would like to stay up there in the garden awhile.
She peered down at me from under her sunbonnet. “Aren't you afraid of snakes?”
“A little,” I admitted, “but I'd like to stay, anyhow.”
“Well, if you see one, don't have anything to do with him. The big yellow and brown ones won't hurt you; they're bull snakes and help to keep the gophers down. Don't be scared if you see anything look out of that hole in the bank over there. That's a badger hole. He's about as big as a big 'possum, and his face is striped, black and white. He takes a chicken once in a while, but I won't let the men harm him. In a new country a body feels friendly to the animals. I like to have him come out and watch me when I'm at work.”
Grandmother swung the bag of potatoes over her shoulder and went down the path, leaning forward a little. The road followed the windings of the draw; when she came to the first bend she waved at me and disappeared. I was left alone with this new feeling of lightness and content.
I sat down in the middle of the garden, where snakes could scarcely approach unseen, and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin. There were some ground-cherry bushes growing along the furrows, full of fruit. I turned back the papery triangular sheaths that protected the berries and ate a few. All about me giant grasshoppers, twice as big as any I had ever seen, were doing acrobatic feats among the dried vines. The gophers scurried up and down the ploughed ground. There in the sheltered draw-bottom the wind did not blow very hard, but I could hear it singing its humming tune up on the level, and I could see the tall grasses wave. The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers. Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons around me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.
selah – this word appears in the Bible in Psalms; some believe it is a direction for reading, reflecting, or interpreting the Psalms. It is considered a pause or a rest.
oracular – solemn; as if from an oracle
sod houses – primitive frontier homes built by homesteaders cut from thick prairie sod
dugouts – early frontier homes constructed by digging out a cave in a hill or a large hole in the ground
sorghum – a type of grain or grass used as a food
vermilion – bright red
Chapter III p1
ON SUNDAY MORNING Otto Fuchs was to drive us over to make the acquaintance of our new Bohemian neighbors. We were taking them some provisions, as they had come to live on a wild place where there was no garden or chicken house, and very little broken land. Fuchs brought up a sack of potatoes and a piece of cured pork from the cellar, and grandmother packed some loaves of Saturday's bread, a jar of butter, and several pumpkin pies in the straw of the wagon box. We clambered up to the front seat and jolted off past the little pond and along the road that climbed to the big cornfield.
I could hardly wait to see what lay beyond that cornfield; but there was only red grass like ours, and nothing else, though from the high wagon-seat one could look off a long way. The road ran about like a wild thing, avoiding the deep draws, crossing them where they were wide and shallow. And all along it, wherever it looped or ran, the sunflowers grew; some of them were as big as little trees, with great rough leaves and many branches which bore dozens of blossoms. They made a gold ribbon across the prairie. Occasionally one of the horses would tear off with his teeth a plant full of blossoms, and walk along munching it, the flowers nodding in time to his bites as he ate down toward them.
The Bohemian family, grandmother told me as we drove along, had bought the homestead of a fellow-countryman, Peter Krajiek, and had paid him more than it was worth. Their agreement with him was made before they left the old country, through a cousin of his, who was also a relative of Mrs. Shimerda. The Shimerdas were the first Bohemian family to come to this part of the county. Krajiek was their only interpreter, and could tell them anything he chose. They could not speak enough English to ask for advice, or even to make their most pressing wants known. One son, Fuchs said, was well-grown, and strong enough to work the land; but the father was old and frail and knew nothing about farming. He was a weaver by trade; had been a skilled workman on tapestries and upholstery materials. He had brought his fiddle with him, which wouldn't be of much use here, though he used to pick up money by it at home.
“If they're nice people, I hate to think of them spending the winter in that cave of Krajiek's,” said grandmother. “It's no better than a badger hole; no proper dugout at all. And I hear he's made them pay twenty dollars for his old cookstove that ain't worth ten.”
“Yes'm,” said Otto; “and he's sold 'em his oxen and his two bony old horses for the price of good work-teams. I'd have interfered about the horses—the old man can understand some German—if I'd I 'a' thought it would do any good. But Bohemians has a natural distrust of Austrians.”
Grandmother looked interested. “Now, why is that, Otto?”
Fuchs wrinkled his brow and nose. “Well, ma'm, it's politics. It would take me a long while to explain.”
The land was growing rougher; I was told that we were approaching Squaw Creek, which cut up the west half of the Shimerdas' place and made the land of little value for farming. Soon we could see the broken, grassy clay cliffs which indicated the windings of the stream, and the glittering tops of the cottonwoods and ash trees that grew down in the ravine. Some of the cottonwoods had already turned, and the yellow leaves and shining white bark made them look like the gold and silver trees in fairy tales.
As we approached the Shimerdas' dwelling, I could still see nothing but rough red hillocks, and draws with shelving banks and long roots hanging out where the earth had crumbled away. Presently, against one of those banks, I saw a sort of shed, thatched with the same wine-colored grass that grew everywhere. Near it tilted a shattered windmill-frame, that had no wheel. We drove up to this skeleton to tie our horses, and then I saw a door and window sunk deep in the draw-bank. The door stood open, and a woman and a girl of fourteen ran out and looked up at us hopefully. A little girl trailed along behind them. The woman had on her head the same embroidered shawl with silk fringes that she wore when she had alighted from the train at Black Hawk. She was not old, but she was certainly not young. Her face was alert and lively, with a sharp chin and shrewd little eyes. She shook grandmother's hand energetically.
“Very glad, very glad!” she ejaculated. Immediately she pointed to the bank out of which she had emerged and said, “House no good, house no good!”
Grandmother nodded consolingly. “You'll get fixed up comfortable after while, Mrs. Shimerda; make good house.”
My grandmother always spoke in a very loud tone to foreigners, as if they were deaf. She made Mrs. Shimerda understand the friendly intention of our visit, and the Bohemian woman handled the loaves of bread and even smelled them, and examined the pies with lively curiosity, exclaiming, “Much good, much thank!”—and again she wrung grandmother's hand.
The oldest son, Ambroz,—they called it Ambrosch,—came out of the cave and stood beside his mother. He was nineteen years old, short and broad-backed, with a close-cropped, flat head, and a wide, flat face. His hazel eyes were little and shrewd, like his mother's, but more sly and suspicious; they fairly snapped at the food. The family had been living on corncakes and sorghum molasses for three days.
The little girl was pretty, but Án-tonia—they accented the name thus, strongly, when they spoke to her—was still prettier. I remembered what the conductor had said about her eyes. They were big and warm and full of light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood. Her skin was brown, too, and in her cheeks she had a glow of rich, dark color. Her brown hair was curly and wild-looking. The little sister, whom they called Yulka (Julka), was fair, and seemed mild and obedient. While I stood awkwardly confronting the two girls, Krajiek came up from the barn to see what was going on. With him was another Shimerda son. Even from a distance one could see that there was something strange about this boy. As he approached us, he began to make uncouth noises, and held up his hands to show us his fingers, which were webbed to the first knuckle, like a duck's foot. When he saw me draw back, he began to crow delightedly, “Hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo!” like a rooster. His mother scowled and said sternly, “Marek!” then spoke rapidly to Krajiek in Bohemian.
draws – gullies, ditches
ravine – a dry riverbed
consolingly – comfortingly
uncouth – improper, impolite; without manners
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My Antonia Chapter III - Page 2
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“She wants me to tell you he won't hurt nobody, Mrs. Burden. He was born like that. The others are smart. Ambrosch, he make good farmer.” He struck Ambrosch on the back, and the boy smiled knowingly.
At that moment the father came out of the hole in the bank. He wore no hat, and his thick, iron-gray hair was brushed straight back from his forehead. It was so long that it bushed out behind his ears, and made him look like the old portraits I remembered in Virginia. He was tall and slender, and his thin shoulders stooped. He looked at us understandingly, then took grandmother's hand and bent over it. I noticed how white and well shaped his own hands were. They looked calm, somehow, and skilled. His eyes were melancholy, and were set back deep under his brow. His face was ruggedly formed, but it looked like ashes—like something from which all the warmth and light had died out. Everything about this old man was in keeping with his dignified manner. He was neatly dressed. Under his coat he wore a knitted gray vest, and, instead of a collar, a silk scarf of a dark bronze-green, carefully crossed and held together by a red coral pin. While Krajiek was translating for Mr. Shimerda, Ántonia came up to me and held out her hand coaxingly. In a moment we were running up the steep drawside together, Yulka trotting after us.
When we reached the level and could see the gold treetops, I pointed toward them, and Ántonia laughed and squeezed my hand as if to tell me how glad she was I had come. We raced off toward Squaw Creek and did not stop until the ground itself stopped—fell away before us so abruptly that the next step would have been out into the treetops. We stood panting on the edge of the ravine, looking down at the trees and bushes that grew below us. The wind was so strong that I had to hold my hat on, and the girls' skirts were blown out before them. Ántonia seemed to like it; she held her little sister by the hand and chattered away in that language which seemed to me spoken so much more rapidly than mine. She looked at me, her eyes fairly blazing with things she could not say.
“Name? What name?” she asked, touching me on the shoulder. I told her my name, and she repeated it after me and made Yulka say it. She pointed into the gold cottonwood tree behind whose top we stood and said again, “What name?”
We sat down and made a nest in the long red grass. Yulka curled up like a baby rabbit and played with a grasshopper. Ántonia pointed up to the sky and questioned me with her glance. I gave her the word, but she was not satisfied and pointed to my eyes. I told her, and she repeated the word, making it sound like “ice.” She pointed up to the sky, then to my eyes, then back to the sky, with movements so quick and impulsive that she distracted me, and I had no idea what she wanted. She got up on her knees and wrung her hands. She pointed to her own eyes and shook her head, then to mine and to the sky, nodding violently.
“Oh,” I exclaimed, “blue; blue sky.”
She clapped her hands and murmured, “Blue sky, blue eyes,” as if it amused her. While we snuggled down there out of the wind she learned a score of words. She was quick, and very eager. We were so deep in the grass that we could see nothing but the blue sky over us and the gold tree in front of us. It was wonderfully pleasant. After Ántonia had said the new words over and over, she wanted to give me a little chased silver ring she wore on her middle finger. When she coaxed and insisted, I repulsed her quite sternly. I didn't want her ring, and I felt there was something reckless and extravagant about her wishing to give it away to a boy she had never seen before. No wonder Krajiek got the better of these people, if this was how they behaved.
While we were disputing about the ring, I heard a mournful voice calling, “Án-tonia, Án-tonia!” She sprang up like a hare. “Tatinek! Tatinek!” she shouted, and we ran to meet the old man who was coming toward us. Ántonia reached him first, took his hand and kissed it. When I came up, he touched my shoulder and looked searchingly down into my face for several seconds. I became somewhat embarrassed, for I was used to being taken for granted by my elders.
We went with Mr. Shimerda back to the dugout, where grandmother was waiting for me. Before I got into the wagon, he took a book out of his pocket, opened it, and showed me a page with two alphabets, one English and the other Bohemian. He placed this book in my grandmother's hands, looked at her entreatingly, and said, with an earnestness which I shall never forget, “Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my Án-tonia!”
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Articles
Fetterley, Judith (1986) "My Ántonia, Jim Burden, and the Dilemma of the Lesbian Writer" In Spector, Judith (editor) (1986) Gender Studies: New Directions in Feminist Criticism Bowling Green State University Popular Press, Bowling Green, Ohio, pages 43-59, ISBN 0-87972-351-3; and In Jay, Karla and Glasgow, Joanne (editors) (1990) Lesbian Texts and Contexts: Radical Revisions New York University Press, New York, pages 145-163, ISBN 0-8147-4175-4
Fischer, Mike (1990) "Pastoralism and Its Discontents: Willa Cather and the Burden of Imperialism" Mosaic (Winnipeg) 23(11): pp. 31-44
Fischer-Worth, Ann (1993) "Out of the Mother: Loss in My Ántonia" Cather Studies 2: pp. 41-71
Gelfant, Blanche H. (1971) "The Forgotten Reaping-Hook: Sex in My Ántonia" American Literature 43: pp. 60-82
Giannone, Richard (1965) "Music in My Ántonia" Prairie Schooner 38(4); covered in Giannone, Richard (1968) Music in Willa Cather's Fiction University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska, pages 116-122, OCLC 598716
Holmes, Catherine D. (1999) "Jim Burden's Lost Worlds: Exile in My Ántonia" Twentieth-Century Literature 45(3): pp. 336-346
Lambert, Deborah G. (1982) "The Defeat of a Hero: Autonomy and Sexuality in My Ántonia" American Literature 53(4): pp. 676-690
Millington, Richard H. (1994) "Willa Cather and "The Storyteller": Hostility to the Novel in My Ántonia" American Literature 66(4): pp. 689-717
Prchal, Tim (2004) "The Bohemian Paradox: My Antonia and Popular Images of Czech Immigrants" MELUS (Society for the Study of the Multi- Ethnic Literature of the United States) 29(2): pp. 3-25
Tellefsen, Blythe (1999) "Blood in the Wheat: Willa Cather's My Antonia" Studies in American Fiction 27(2): pp. 229-244
Urgo, Joseph (1997) "Willa Cather and the Myth of American Migration" College English 59(2): pp. 206-217
Yukman, Claudia (1988) "Frontier Relationships in Willa Cather's My Ántonia" Pacific Coast Philology 23(1/2): pp. 94-105
Fetterley, Judith (1986) "My Ántonia, Jim Burden, and the Dilemma of the Lesbian Writer" In Spector, Judith (editor) (1986) Gender Studies: New Directions in Feminist Criticism Bowling Green State University Popular Press, Bowling Green, Ohio, pages 43-59, ISBN 0-87972-351-3; and In Jay, Karla and Glasgow, Joanne (editors) (1990) Lesbian Texts and Contexts: Radical Revisions New York University Press, New York, pages 145-163, ISBN 0-8147-4175-4
Fischer, Mike (1990) "Pastoralism and Its Discontents: Willa Cather and the Burden of Imperialism" Mosaic (Winnipeg) 23(11): pp. 31-44
Fischer-Worth, Ann (1993) "Out of the Mother: Loss in My Ántonia" Cather Studies 2: pp. 41-71
Gelfant, Blanche H. (1971) "The Forgotten Reaping-Hook: Sex in My Ántonia" American Literature 43: pp. 60-82
Giannone, Richard (1965) "Music in My Ántonia" Prairie Schooner 38(4); covered in Giannone, Richard (1968) Music in Willa Cather's Fiction University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska, pages 116-122, OCLC 598716
Holmes, Catherine D. (1999) "Jim Burden's Lost Worlds: Exile in My Ántonia" Twentieth-Century Literature 45(3): pp. 336-346
Lambert, Deborah G. (1982) "The Defeat of a Hero: Autonomy and Sexuality in My Ántonia" American Literature 53(4): pp. 676-690
Millington, Richard H. (1994) "Willa Cather and "The Storyteller": Hostility to the Novel in My Ántonia" American Literature 66(4): pp. 689-717
Prchal, Tim (2004) "The Bohemian Paradox: My Antonia and Popular Images of Czech Immigrants" MELUS (Society for the Study of the Multi- Ethnic Literature of the United States) 29(2): pp. 3-25
Tellefsen, Blythe (1999) "Blood in the Wheat: Willa Cather's My Antonia" Studies in American Fiction 27(2): pp. 229-244
Urgo, Joseph (1997) "Willa Cather and the Myth of American Migration" College English 59(2): pp. 206-217
Yukman, Claudia (1988) "Frontier Relationships in Willa Cather's My Ántonia" Pacific Coast Philology 23(1/2): pp. 94-105
[edit] External links
Scholarly Edition at the Willa Cather Archive
My Ántonia at American Literature
My Ántonia at Project Gutenberg
My Ántonia study guide, themes, quotes, character analyses, plot analysis, teacher guide
Scholarly Edition at the Willa Cather Archive
My Ántonia at American Literature
My Ántonia at Project Gutenberg
My Ántonia study guide, themes, quotes, character analyses, plot analysis, teacher guide
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_%C3%81ntoniaImpact and interpretations
My Ántonia was enthusiastically received in 1918 when it was first published.[1] It was considered a masterpiece and placed her in the forefront of women novelists.[2] Today, it is considered as her first masterpiece.[3] Cather was praised for bringing the American West to life and making it personally interesting.[1] It brought place forward almost as if it were one of the characters, while at the same time playing upon the universality of the emotions,[2] which in turn promoted regional American literature as a valid part of mainstream literature.[4]
While interpretations vary, My Ántonia is clearly an elegy to those families who built new lives west of the Mississippi River and highlights the role of women pioneers in particular.
Cather also makes a number of comments concerning her views on women's rights and there are many disguised sexual metaphors in the text.[5]
My Ántonia remains in print in a number of editions ranging from free Internet editions to inexpensive, mass-market paperbacks to expensive "scholarly editions" aimed at more serious students of Cather's work.
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