If you have ever spent time with the TTT you may have noticed that we have this strange obsession with the phrase “baby animal dance party.” Here’s why:
Category: Interesting Readings
While walking around the old city of Sana’a, Yemen, I met a very fascinating woman. Having grown up in Hong Kong, in her middle age she packed all her things into a crate and shipped them to Yemen to begin investigating human civilization, history, and language. Whereas most linguists group languages into families based on grammar, she began to examine languages through their sounds and to examine how certain sounds have meanings (apart from words, but reflected in words) that are present across many (quote unquote unrelated) languages…
Thus, she began taking steps on her quest to understand the unity of humankind by investigating the shared meanings of sounds… and the original oneness of human language. Her quest continues, and I will share but of bit of her wisdom here:
“But with your help, I finally figure out the interesting map of the sound of “the bird” (ger), it seems to me that from Egypt it is a hard “GA“, then it gets softer as it goes north and east. In Yemen, in the south the also say “Ga” (already softer). In Greece, it is “Ge“……… Then in the middle of Yemen from a region called Ibb/Taiz (where most of the emigrant from Yemen are originated because lack of enough farm land for the population, many of them emigrated to other countries), this people actually have a very interesting sound of “gi-ch” (a mixed of the two sound, you have to hear it), then in classic Yemen Arabic, it is of course the “ج” (gim/jim = jer) then we learned in ”fusha”, then as you told me, in Persian you have this “ﭺ” (che) sound……….. and then as you go east further into China, it became “jerk” again in the north China, and when it goes to S. China, my region, then it became “tje” for bird and “Gai” for chicken, sort of similar to Egypt again. Very interesting!
So how on earth I can write this down? But you can see a map here, a big circle when the sound made a full return to its origin…… or if the sound came in the middle (around Sumeria), it spread east (to China) and west (to Egypt) and ended up the same way???? I do not want to say who is first or last (human ego is very delicate), but the thing is that it seemed like a record of how human beings learning how to make sounds!!! How to control our muscles like a child learning how to talk!!!!
“Dj” (in heiroglyph) and “GA” (colloquial Egyptian) –> “Ga” –> “Ge” –> “gi-ch” –> “jer” –> “che” –> “jerk” –> (Chin) “tje” (bird) / “Gai” (chicken) as in “dijeje/digaga” (Chicken in different accents of Arabic)
This is the same form between ancient Chinese drawing of exactly a bird, which ended up now like this “隹” (short tail bird – see its wing?) or “鳥“ (long tailed bird – see the long tail) and another simplified form of the bird shape “乙” and Arabic “ج” (the dot was added much later) the form of a bird. The island (al-jezeera) is the long tailed bird on a hill/rock “ger” (bird on) “sahra” (rock) = 島
And as I said in Chinese all words of “ga”thering carries a “bird” as 雥 / 雦 / 集 (3 birds or 1 bird on tree top) (sound “jaap” = gather, collect, jam together) and of course all Arabic words as well like in “جمع“ “مسجد” “جامع” “جامعة“ (jamah, jama’, masjid, jama’) from gather to University to mosque, all are places of “congregation”, like the gregarious birds, congruent!!! When we write, we put the “bird” inside as a sound, and symbol and to imitate reality as a picture!!
Conjugal is marriage by joining the two, in Chinese it was expressed as 雔 (2 birds together = jugal/jam) and it carried in Chinese the sound of “zau (jau)” like Arabic “زوج” (zawag), see the bird is also there!!! And the Egyptians said “جوز” (gawz), the bird also there, but did you notice it is a reverse of the arabic alphabets? And in Chinese in another love bird, we also have the same sound!! In Greek, since the Arabic “Jim” was the “Gamma” (harder J), the marriage is “Gamos”. Same system!!
And the Egyptian ”جوز” (gawz) marriage, is the word the Arabs used for passport “جوز” (jauwaz – same spelling, different pronunciation) has the bird because it was link to the pilgrims, it was understood as a flock of birds like the peregrine (a falcon like bird) flying every year to its sacred destination!!
See how important the observation of birds in forming languages and writings? That is why the ancient Egyptian god of writing was Thoth, a bird, and as I told you the ancient Chinese book also talked about our legendary inventor of writing did so by the observation of the foot prints of the animals and birds!!! Pedigree!!
“Grue” in Latin is the crane, the “Gerano” in Greek. And Pedigree is the feet (ped) of the “grue” (crane), the 3 toes which we used to draw a family tree……. we followed the feet of our ancestor, represented by this “auspicious bird” which later linked with a “stork” (looks similar) which brings the baby every years (as legend goes every where, including China). The family line also has the other image of a 3-ply thread, like the 3 toes of the bird……….
Every alphabet had been a picture, then it became stylised as a symbol, then it became a phoneme (a sound sign), then we use it blindly as “alphabets”!! So when we “spell” a word, we are still drawing all the elements as pictures inside a word!! So to say!
It is fascinating how close the way we think in ancient times and how similar the sounds were, so was there really ONE language? I guess (this is my guess) human as an ape, started as sign and body language, then we actually learn to speak bit by bit like a child………… language history is how human learnt to control the muscles of our mouths, tongues, lips, teeth…….. bit by bit. And as times goes by we speak with more skill and more speed!! We distinguished many sounds are we are proud of it, it became a competition, see how Arabs are proud of their confusing 4 “h”s????? I found out every single “H” in Chinese we have exactly the same sound in one word meaning exactly the same thing!!! But since we are not based on consonants and alphabets, we just don’t care if you do not speak it so “rightly” as long as we understand what you say!
In the Bible, there were story that when a group tried to identified their enemy, they forced every passers-by to pronounce a certain consonant, because at that time certain group could not dominate a sound………. those who could not pronounced that sound revealed that he was not a member of a group, they might be killed because of that…………. (like many Chinese until now cannot say “R”, they will only say “L”, unless they were trained as a child in another language).
Language and writing became a tool of “separation” instead of “communication”, because that was a weapon we used to distinguish people, that was a weapon we used to “spy” and convey secret messages………. The Tower of Babel is in a true sense, because of economic and political benefit, different groups of people started to use symbols and language as a tool to exclude those who they didn’t want to include in their plan. Interestingly, I started to research in a tool of communication and I found out that people actually use a lot of effort to hide things inside their writings so the other could not understand…………. very interesting!!
tracking the "g" sound across continents
“Therefore if you insist upon fighting to protect me or `our’ country let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share; but not to gratify my instincts, or to protect either myself or my country. For, The outsider will say, in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is The whole world.”
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas, 1938.
A revolutionary wave is sweeping the Middle East the likes of which we have never seen before….
“
Fuck Israel. Fuck Hamas. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community! We want to scream and break this wall of silence, injustice and indifference like the Israeli F16’s breaking the wall of sound; scream with all the power in our souls in order to release this immense frustration that consumes us because of this fucking situation we live in; we are like lice between two nails living a nightmare inside a nightmare, no room for hope, no space for freedom.
We are sick of being caught in this political struggle; sick of coal dark nights with airplanes circling above our homes; sick of innocent farmers getting shot in the buffer zone because they are taking care of their lands; sick of bearded guys walking around with their guns abusing their power, beating up or incarcerating young people demonstrating for what they believe in; sick of the wall of shame that separates us from the rest of our country and keeps us imprisoned in a stamp-sized piece of land; sick of being portrayed as terrorists, homemade fanatics with explosives in our pockets and evil in our eyes; sick of the indifference we meet from the international community, the so-called experts in expressing concerns and drafting resolutions but cowards in enforcing anything they agree on; we are sick and tired of living a shitty life, being kept in jail by Israel, beaten up by Hamas and completely ignored by the rest of the world.
…
We are youth with heavy hearts. We carry in ourselves a heaviness so immense that it makes it difficult to us to enjoy the sunset. How to enjoy it when dark clouds paint the horizon and bleak memories run past our eyes every time we close them? We smile in order to hide the pain. We laugh in order to forget the war. We hope in order not to commit suicide here and now. During the war we got the unmistakable feeling that Israel wanted to erase us from the face of the earth. During the last years Hamas has been doing all they can to control our thoughts, behaviour and aspirations. We are a generation of young people used to face missiles, carrying what seems to be a impossible mission of living a normal and healthy life, and only barely tolerated by a massive organization that has spread in our society as a malicious cancer disease, causing mayhem and effectively killing all living cells, thoughts and dreams on its way as well as paralyzing people with its terror regime. Not to mention the prison we live in, a prison sustained by a so-called democratic country.”
More here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gaza-Youth-Breaks-Out-GYBO/118914244840679?v=info
Dear Technicolor Tree Tribe,
I have been meaning to write a good-bye letter to you for a while now – my original intention was to read it at our last house meeting – but Max and I have been working non-stop on the bus, and now that it’s finished, we can’t wait to hit the road. So I am writing it now, the night before we depart, appropriately/ironically right after a meeting about recruiting new co-op members. 
I officially joined the TTT in August 2008, a year after I had graduated from USC, so I’ve never been a student cooper (which I can imagine must be an incredibly difficult task). I spent my first year after graduation back home in Seattle, a year during which I was constantly on the phone with my LA friends who were working tirelessly to start this thing called a co-op. By the time I was ready to leave Seattle I was so fascinated by the concept of the co-op that I had to come back and experience it for myself. So I returned to LA – not because I love LA, or had a job lined up, or to return to school… but simply because I was inexplicably drawn to the idea of a cooperative house full of politically conscious, artistic, fun-loving crazy people who happened to be my best friends and lovers.
It was hard to justify my return to LA to some people (namely my parents and my Seattle punk friends), but honestly I never had to work hard to justify it to myself. I have always proudly identified as a feminist and as Hapa (look it up), and have never tired of fantasizing about utopian societies. The nuclear family into which I was born was abusive and depressing, so I have always searched for a “chosen family” to which to belong. My world view is a mix of hard science and Nature mysticism, and though I don’t call myself an artist I believe art is an essential aspect of human expression and health. The evolution of human social behavior and the rise and fall of hippie communes in the ’60s and ’70s are two of my favorite topics. Thus I felt the Technicolor Tree Tribe (which I assumed to be trying to create a utopian society) would be a wonderful place and project for me, and in preparation for joining I read the following books, all of which I recommend:
Walden Two, B.F. Skinner
Ecotopia, Ernest Callenbach
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Brave New World Revisted, Aldous Huxley
Utopia, Sir Thomas More
The Republic, Plato
Erewhon, Samuel Butler
1984, George Orwell
Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy
Drop City, T.C. Boyle
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan
The Ethical Slut, Easton and Liszt
Living Walden Two, Hilke Kuhlmann
I would also highly recommend two documentaries: The Commune (2007) and Taylor Camp (2009), both about hippie communes back in the day.
I guess I’m telling you all this because I want to encourage and inspire you to do some reading and really give this community everything you’ve got – by learning everything you can about it: what it could potentially be, what you want it to be, what it has been in the past, and what others have wanted from it. The co-op isn’t just a place to live. It’s a family, a trip, a gift, and an enormous responsibility. I believe that most people who truly love this community despite its inevitable problems grow much more than they would had they lived anywhere else – this is definitely true for me. Most people in our society don’t question institutionalized prejudice or try to make their culture better for themselves or others. By living in this house we have a chance to create our own society that isn’t racist, sexist, heterosexist, violent, hierarchical, or consumeristic. Imagine what your ideal society would be like – egalitarian, consensual, respectful, etc AND MAKE IT SO. Changing the whole world is an admirable goal but it’s too big for most people, so start with 20 people and see how far you can get.
That is what the Technicolor Tree Tribe is to me. It is an experiment in creating a different kind of society, and the on-going outcomes of the experiment are incredibly important lessons: we learn how much the culture in which we were born affects us even if we consciously reject it; we learn how difficult it can be to even identify oppression, let alone eliminate it; we realize how much time and energy it takes to educate ourselves; and we learn how to create safe spaces for ourselves within the larger community which may or may not feel supportive at any given moment. Taking advantage of where you are living right now is so important – please, please do not take the co-op for granted. It’s not perfect – it never will be – but just remember how much more fun and mind-expanding it is compared to your other current options, and try to imagine how much time and effort previous coopers have put in to keep it going. Having a communal house this big is not easy logistically, financially, or emotionally. But it is worth it if you make it worth it. Please embrace it, expand it, and love it. USC needs it, LA needs it, all of us need it.
I have spent the last two and a half years of my life thinking more about our house than about anything else in my life – seriously. It has been all-consuming for me, and though I’m excited to leave and do some informal research on other communities to get a better understanding of the larger intentional communities movement, I will always adore the Technicolor Tree Tribe like family – even when no one knows me anymore (perhaps even more then!) I have accumulated a satisfying wealth of good memories, weird memories, fuzzy memories… and I can only hope that everyone else who leaves our house leaves with as much joy and satisfaction.
THANK YOU to all the previous Tribe members for putting in so much blood, sweat and tears
Tani Ikeda
Reina Fukuda
Sunny Yang
Bryan Susman
Teddy Raven
Erin Christovale
Alex Shams
Iris Fung
Laila Ekboir
Charlie Furman
Mitch Graw
Taylor Ganz
Donnie Pepper
Dru Pollini
Taylor Webb
Manpreet Sadhal
Nicole Hummel
Noelle Miller
Kellee Matsushita
Daniel Alexander
Payam Pakbin
Jacob Jensen
Patrick Keller
Erin Hern
Ali Bissonette
Carlo Adorno
Caroline Caselli
Teresa Cheng
Rafaela Luna-Pizarro
Zebah Pinkham
Wave Melen
Strawberry Raskin
Drew Peltier
Joanna Stulting
Sara Smith
Katie Wilde
Anna Mkhikian
Rachel Finfer
Hannah Wong
Angie Hermes
Hestia Rojas
Daniel Estevao
Adam Werner
Kevin Daley
Alicia Liang
Gerardo Inzunza Higuera
Andy Bunting
Laura Simmons
Gale Bartkiewicz
Max Hoilland
Toni Cannon
Sonya Collier
Brian Peachy
Michaela Wagner
Kadhja Bonet
Emma Sheffer
Rachel Yukimura
Max Bittman
Willoughby RIP
Rascal
Mana
Puppy/Gandalf
Voltaire
Coby
Chin Chin
Bubbles RIP
George
Ducky
Daisy
Beyonce
Oreo
Chub Chub RIP
the hampster RIP
Clementine
Radagast
Van Buren
Angie’s beta fish
Toni and Sonya’s parakeet
and THANK YOU to all the future co-op members for keeping the community alive!
Peace and love always,
Rachel Y.
Some additional wonderful books about counterculture, gender, sexuality, utopia, race, living together, and revolution I’ ve read since living at the co-op:
The Children of the Counterculture, John Rothchild
The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Theory, Carol J. Adams
Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, ed. Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti
Island, Aldous Huxley
Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity, ed. Mattilda
Fruit of the Motherland: Gender in an Egalitarian Society, Maria Lepowsky
Men Speak Out: Views on Gender, Sex, and Power, ed. Shira Tarrant
Stone Butch Blues, Leslie Feinberg
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Gender Outlaw, Kate Bornstein
Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion, Marshall B. Rosenberg
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, ed. INCITE Women of Color Against Violence
O Au No Keia: Voices from Hawaii’s Mahu and Transgender Communities, Andrew Matzher
Native Tongue, Suzette Haden Elgin
Triton, Samuel R. Delany
Which Veggie Burgers Were Made With a Neurotoxin?
By Kiera Butler, Mother Jones Online
Posted on April 13, 2010, Printed on April 14, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146439/
This is about the time of year when I start keeping packages of veggie burgers in the freezer, just in case of an impromptu barbecue. In the past, I haven’t had much fake meat brand loyalty: I’ve found that once I smother my hunk of textured vegetable protein in barbeque sauce, all soy patties are pretty much created equal. But after reading a recent investigation by the Cornucopia Institute, I’m going to be a lot more picky: The food and agriculture nonprofit found that most non-organic veggie burgers currently on the market are made with the chemical hexane, an EPA-registered air pollutant and neurotoxin.
In order to meet the demands of health-conscious consumers, manufacturers of soy-based fake meat like to make their products have as little fat as possible. The cheapest way to do this is by submerging soybeans in a bath of hexane to separate the oil from the protein. Says Cornucopia Institute senior researcher Charlotte Vallaeys, “If a non-organic product contains a soy protein isolate, soy protein concentrate, or texturized vegetable protein, you can be pretty sure it was made using soy beans that were made with hexane.”
If you’ve heard about hexane before, it was likely in the context of gasoline—the air pollutant is also a byproduct of gas refining. But in 2007, grain processors were responsible for two-thirds of our national hexane emissions. Hexane is hazardous in the factory, too: Workers who have been exposed to it have developed both skin and nervous system disorders. Troubling, then, that the FDA does not monitor or regulate hexane residue in foods. More worrisome still: According to the report, “Nearly every major ingredient in conventional soy-based infant formula is hexane extracted.”
The Cornucopia Institute found that a number of popular veggie burgers were made with hexane. The list (pdf, page 37, and below) is longer than you might think:
Amy’s Kitchen
Boca Burger, conventional
Franklin Farms
Garden Burger
It’s All Good Lightlife
Morningstar Farms
President’s Choice
Taste Above
Trader Joe’s
Yves Veggie Cuisine
Hexane-free products:
Boca Burgers “Made with organic soy”
Helen’s Kitchen
Morningstar “Made with organic”
Superburgers by Turtle Island
Tofurky
Wildwood
Also worth noting: Products labeled “organic” aren’t allowed to contain any hexane-derived ingredients, but that rule doesn’t apply to foods that are labeled “made with organic ingredients.” For more on soy sourcing, plus a list of popular “made with organic ingredients”-labeled protein bars that are made with hexane, read the Cornucopia Institute’s full study, “Behind the Bean.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1145670.html
Wonder article in Ha’aretz by Gideon Levy about Israeli misuse of the Holocaust!
“A thousand speeches against anti-Semitism will not extinguish the flames ignited by Operation Cast Lead, flames that threaten not only Israel but the entire Jewish world. As long as Gaza is under blockade and Israel sinks into its institutionalized xenophobia, Holocaust speeches will remain hollow. As long as evil is rampant here at home, neither the world nor we will be able to accept our preaching to others, even if they deserve it. “
In Solidarity,
alex shams
