Gal Pal Email 26th Edition

Gal Pal Email 26th Edition
Quote of the Week
Ebonics lesson of the week
On the Flip SideMama's Korner
(which will feature Maya Angelou for the next couple of weeks thanks to a trip to see here speak with Gal Pal Angel)
She SpeaksAnnouncements/Shout outs
Quote of the Week:
"Love goes bankrupt if you do not make deposits in its account."

Ebonics Lesson of the Week:
"Snaps":Something that you can say when someone does something good or well"No Snaps":When someone does something wrong or is messed up, you give them no snaps(Snaps to Salina for using this lingo and reviving it for me)

On the Flip Side
Building Character Part 1

bell hooks rocks my world because she in one of her recent books all about love keeps it real about life and the human condition. Many politicians preach to us about different moral dilemmas but with no real resolution. This is because they are too part of the problem. The issue of the human condition is the fact we have forgotten to tell the truth. "Lies are told about the most insignificant aspects of daily life. When may of us are asked basic questions, like How are you today? A lies is substituted for the truth. Much of the lying that people do in everyday life is done either to avoid conflict or to spare someone's feelings." "Lots of people learn to lie in childhood. Usually they begin to lie to avoid punishment or avoid disappointing or hurting an adult. Basically children learn that lying is a way to avoid being hurt and hurting others. The fear should not be there if one is being honest. Honesty sometimes does mean that are feelings are hurt, but truly how tragic is this?

Eventually children are fascinated with lying because they see that there is power that it can give them over situations and adults. Hooks goes on to say that the art of dissimulation (taking on whatever appearance is needed to manipulated a situation) is learned quickly by many kids and others find it hard to mask their true feelings. They began to arrange a set of values that is around being dishonest. Lying becomes a means of gaining power in a relationship. "It is not accident that the greater cultural acceptance of lying in this society coincided with women gaining greater social equality." This is part and parcel with the power dynamic. Justice can not exist with a culture that values lying over being honest. Sometimes the truth hurts, but that is part of the growing process. There is not progress without struggle. "Since the values and behavior of men are usually standards by which everyone in our culture determines what is acceptable, it is important to understand that condoning lying is an essential component of patriarchal thinking for everyone." Patriarchal femininity and masculinity estranges men from their selfhood.
This denial of self lends itself for women to use lying as a form of manipulation in relationships and because this has become socially acceptable, both men and women suffer the fate of a dishonest society. We all wear a mask because we all participate in lies. Hooks champions the difference between privacy and secrecy. She says that truth telling individuals value privacy, but this should not be confused with secrecy, remembering that keeping secrets involves some level of power. Secrecy usually involves lying and deceitfulness. Moreover, this must be coupled with the reality that some people like to take someone's personal information and use it as a tool of oppression of a forum of gossip. In this case many of us are guilty. Lastly the selling point for me in this piece was that consumer culture encourages lying. That we have "passive acceptance of lies in the public life, via mass media, upholds and perpetuates lying in our private lives." Truth telling could be the way to treat tabloid journalism. If people were honest there would not be a need for such media. Hooks ends this part of her book with this wisdom: "to be loving we willingly hear each other's truth and, most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them know love." This is true.

Maya's Korner:
"The Lesson" by Maya Angelou
I keep on dying again.
Veins collapse, opening like the Small fists of sleepingChildren.
Memory of old tombs,Rotting flesh and worms do
Not convince me against
The challenge. The years
And cold defeat live deep inLines along my face.They dull my eyes, yetI keep on dying,Because I love to live.

(S)he Speaks:
All I ever needed to know, I learned in Kindergarten
Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand box at nursery school.These are the things I learned. Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. Learn some and think some and draw some and paint and sing and dance and play and work everyday.Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out in the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why. We are like that.And then remember that book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK! Everything you need to know is there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation, ecology, and politics and the sane living.Think of what a better world it would be if we all, the whole world, had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and clean up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.--- Robert Fulghum

Shout Outs:
Birfdays this week:
Jessica Andrews
Liza Toher
Lesley Jenkins
Christina "Teeny" Philips

Snaps to Kathryn French, Salina Cole, Lisa Michna, and Emily Rapoport for being great gal pals
Everyone have a great week and remember to tell a gal pal that you love her...honestly