Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Happiness vs. Meaning, or Give Back to Community vs. Just You (mild depression trigger warning)…

Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better

Looking back on this post in March, 2022, I see that Toni Morrison’s advice was more apt:

If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,”

in her  1981 speech at the Ohio Arts Council.

  Do Better is that book, for me…

(Back to earlier post:)

Here is where I am in my reflections on previous year’s mental health states, and where to go this coming year, given the temptation to give up and find the nearest convent that will have me:  I will continue to look for meaning, rather than listening to what others insist ought to make me happy.  Looking back at previous years, I can at least see progress.

“…and just the other year, in 2016, my cousin expressed the similar belief that I’d been destroyed, writing me off as hopelessly depressed…

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Anti-Russian, anti-war voices grow louder in China in backlash against party line — Radio Free Asia

More than 130 alumni of China’s most prestigious universities have condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, calling on the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to honor a mutual security pact it signed with Kyiv in 1994.

“We strongly condemn Russian aggression against Ukraine and resolutely support the just struggle of the Ukrainian people to resist it, and defend their country,” said the statement, signed by graduates of disparate departments from journalism to physics at Peking, Tsinghua and Renmin universities.

It cited a joint security pact signed between China and Ukraine that commits Beijing to “providing security guarantees” to Ukraine, in the event that Ukraine was the subject of foreign aggression. Source: Anti-Russian, anti-war voices grow louder in China in backlash against party line — Radio Free Asia

Laissez les bons temps rouler

From Behind the Pen

Image Credit: Linnaea Mallette

Let the good times roll y’all! Today is Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday! Grab your purple, green, and gold because there is a lot to this day’s celebration than you can imagine. There is so much history and diverse cultures rolled up into this event, and instead of boring you by writing down snippets of the history, and tradition, clickHEREto be directed to that site.

While the pandemic changed the way we celebrate this festival, it certainly cannot take away the heart and spirit of the passion and meaning since the first Mardi Gras was celebrated on March 3, 1699. So in the words of the Cajun French, “Laissez les bons temps rouler” (Let the good times roll)!

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. If you observe the Lenten season, do not take your focus off of what the next…

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Turkish Tuesdays, and Three Lessons Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, s1e4 Teaches About Learning From the Past

Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better

What do we learn from season 1, episode 4, and then, my impressions of this fourth episode?

1.   “It’s never going to be easy.”  Hakan will learn, unfortunately.

1. “Asla kolay olmayacak.”. Hakan öğrenecek… Maalesef.

2.  Mimar Sinan, çok eseri var İstanbul’da.
2.  Sinan, the great architect, has alot of works in Istanbul.
3. “Bugünü anlamak için geçmişe bakmak gerekir.”
3.  “To understand today you must look back at the past.”
*spoilers*
Zeynep, Leyla hanım ile boş boş tartıştı  ve polis yer de kötü, Lupin gibi.
Çok teşekkürler Hakan!!  Hakan haklı Zeynep!!
Kendi kendine cezası hiç bir şey değişmez, Mazhar bey.
*end of spoilers*
   (I love that look Leyla gives the guy, down to her elbow: excellent and typical strong Turkish women’s reactions to male aggression.  We have a few things to learn from their culture, imho.
“Doğru müdürü getir” diyorsa: doğru getir, Tekin!!  …   “Take this to…

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