HOTD / HOTD

HAIR O' THE DAY...(me)


HAT O' THE DAY...(my sister)


Story O' The Day after the jump...
mom *reads* the newspaper. she doesn't understand it, but she reads it. she reads the headlines and portions of several articles every day. she Always says, "i don't understand a word of this."
i see all too well how terribly frustrating it is for her. it breaks my heart. i do what i'm capable of, but usually end up feeling like some inept tutor.

yesterday, *the dallas boring news* had 4 related articles that were actually very interesting. she'd read much of one, but was clueless about what she'd read. so i read it to myself, then to her. then we found there were 3 more stories on the same subject. they were about the EZIDIS in northern iraq. we spent the next hour reading and talking about them. it was pretty cool, even though she basically still didn't fathom much, if any, of it.

it's strange explaining things over and over. truck bombings, kurds, islam. words and meanings that you and i take for granted, she only vaguely understands for a minute. or less.

one of the articles described the Ezidi's religious beliefs and practices. for example, we read that snakes are worshiped rather than being despised as symbols of satan, as they are in the religions more familiar to us.
by way of explaining the 'why' of this non-western reverence, as well as the accompanying photo of a snake on a temple door, there was a brief synopsis of one of their legends.

i'll make it real brief:
*back in the day, a serpent coiled itself into a hole in the hull of Noah's ark. thus, keeping the boat from sinking and God's creatures from peril.*

well, mom just thought this was hilarious. she literally laughed out loud. i assumed she was laughing at the absurdity of the story and i had to bite my tongue to keep from asking her, "how is that any less believable than the whole '2 animals of each kind on a boat' story?"

instead, i asked her, "what's so funny?"

still laughing, she said, "they get their religions all mixed up."


well, just call me slack-jawed-rick. that was, indeed, pretty much (sort of) the gist of the article and i had no idea she'd caught it. way to go, mom!

-----------------------------------------

2 more hats
and much more information than you probably care to know.

Snake at the door of the Sheikh-Adi-shrine in Lalish. In Mithraism, snakes represent the orbit of the sun and the moon. In Yezidism the black snake is sacred and represents good men.


although the ezidi religious heritage predates the sumerians, they incorporate many icons and stories from more modern religions into their belief system.


a yezidi kurd from the past


click here for a short video made in the aftermath of a recent truck bombing contributing to the near annihilation of this ancient culture.



and finally, 2 excerpts from a long, but interesting article:

a poem translated from Persian:

'Arabic is the Alpha and Omega,

Persian is (as sweet as) sugar,

Turkish is a work of art,

Kurdish is a donkey's fart.'

and...
"ln the imagination of the Ezidis, they themselves were created from the seed of Adam, as Adam was androgynous (simultaneously male and female), while all other peoples are the product of the marriage between Adam and Eve (18). The village of 'Lalish', on top of the eponymous mountain (in the district of Shekhan, Central-Kurdistan) is holy to the Ezidis because this mountain is believed to be the first dwelling place of God, after which God tarried three thousand years in a ship at sea (19)."

that's all for today. class dismissed.