interpritations of a photograph

this is not a picture of women practicing good posture.

i wish it was such a photograph.

in this photograph, they are victims of civil war. in another photography, they might find a new metaphor to fill but in this photograph, they carry burdens which i do not understand.

it is impossible to talk about this story without falling under one of two pitfalls.

racism: the poor africans are at war. ever since western imperialists bestowed the word of god onto them, they've been in a constant state of war. we blew their little minds and its all our fault!

boring: ...why would i waste your time with an example of something boring?

the war in bosnia

i knew a bosnian. in high school, my classmates gave him a nick name. sputnick.

i'm not fucking russian! he told us. and we laughed.

the simple version of this story would be of white middle class americans making fun of the foreign kid. it would be a simple moral dilema.

bosnian kid was popular.

white people love to get offended on the behalf of people like bosnian kid. but this is not my point.

it is this: why do americans trivialize the experience of the refuge? when we make a mockery of it or when we defend it from mockery, there is a level of trivialization that takes place. but i ask this: why shouldn't we trivialize it?

war and genocide are large issues. much too large, you might say, to put in your briefcase and bring home.

in some ways, these issues are as relevant as yesterdays news. ten years ago news. before it even happens, it is in a history book. so last century.

no football. no poverty.

as i type this, i'm getting ready for a political science final. i'm reading a lot of hobbes. personally, i think that hobbes's ideas go downhill after man leaves the state of nature.

the balkans are having an equally difficult time emerging from the state of nature.

as i see it, there is a hidden story to the balkans. its full of adventure and excitement. you don't see the full story in the news.

some news stories cover events. these events are often fragmented, seperated from the ideas that inspired those events.

other news stories, like this one, cover ideas. seperated from the events that shaped them. seperated from the events that are to come.

this information reflects reality but it also shaping a new reality. its not even subtle. i want to know, is it effective? how progressive has the balkans become, honestly?

in search of balkan people

its easy to get lost in big cities. paradoxically, in big cities, it is easy to find small communities centered around your internist.

if you are into balkan dancing, you should check out this website.

two weeks ago, i went to see what it was all about. i also mistook this as a perfect opportunity to bring a date.

as it turns out, balkan dancing was popular in the 70s. all sorts of ethnic dancing was popular in the 70s. and the hobby survives today because of people who did it in the 70s.

to my slight surprise and to my date's tragic discovery, no alcohol was served at this dance.

to my surprise, there were much more non-balkan people than actual balkan people. a young bulgarian couple came later in the evening and they told me that in their country, young people do not care about traditional folk dancing. but when they come to america, they said, they are drawn to it because it reminds them of home.

this nostalgia for a time that never existed is fascinating. isn't it?

these last two weeks, i have been exploring other chanels. i have yet to find my person. at this point, i'm a bit frightened for myself. i am running out of time.

history of kosovo

after reading just a few articles from balkan newspapers, i noticed that journalism is done quite differently out there. primarily, they don't even attempt to give any event context. there is a greater expectation on readers to figure things out on their own. of course, i could accept that balkan citizens probably (most definitely) know more about the whose who of the balkans than i do.

lucky for me, there are great websites full for information.