Three Coliseums

The University of Georgia where I did both my undergraduate and graduate studies periodically sends me travel brochures of their annual trips around the world. The trips are always to exotic and beautiful locations dripping with Romance and history. Two years ago, I received a brochure that stunned me. On it was a photo of a structure that the average person is probably not aware of. Most everyone has heard of and seen photos of the coliseum in Rome, famous for its gladiatorial fights and notorious for the martyrdom of many early Christians. I was stunned to see on a brochure about a trip to Croatia that there is another ancient coliseum still in existence which is in better condition than the one in Rome. This second coliseum is located in the city of Pula and can be seen here.


Even in my mundane southern town, there is also a coliseum on the campus of my old university. Here is an old post card of it. It can be said that I graduated from high school in a coliseum because the building below is where I and my 12th grade classmates gathered on evening in early June to end one phase of our lives and to begin another.

Ali A. Mazrui: Intellectual and Romantic

I am a great admirer of Dr. Ali A. Mazrui, and have been so since I first became familiar with him when I was a university student in the 1980s. Dr. Mazrui came onto the American scene through the PBS series The Africans: A Triple Heritage produced by the BBC and shown on the Public Broadcasting System here in the states. Alex Haley’s Roots got Americans both black and white thinking about our collective heritage here in the US. Ali A. Mazrui’s The Africans showed the world, especially we Americans who have little or no knowledge of the outside world and who have long held a profound fear of “Darkest Africa” that Africa has many little known and positive aspects. In my encounters with Africans over the years, I have marveled at the differences between their drive and ambition and the often lack of drive and ambition which too many African Americans display, especially in the younger generation whose credo has become “under achievement, mediocrity, indifference, and having a good time.” When I was Peace Corps I met Africans who were pained by what they saw as too many African Americans focusing far too much on racism and not on using the opportunities which at lay at hand in the most prosperous nation in the world. They wished with all their hearts that their countries offered opportunities like America

Getting back to Ali A. Mazrui. He was born in Mombasa, Kenya and is Swahili and Sunni Muslim. Dr. Mazrui received his doctorate from Oxford University. He has taught in Africa, Europe, and the US and is one of the world’s top intellectuals. His series The Africans: A Triple Heritage also has a companion book. Dr. Mazrui is a liberal Muslim who has written a number of books and hundreds of articles about Africa and how capitalism as it is now practiced exploits and cripples Africa. He is a critic of the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis and compares what is happening in Israel to the apartheid system which once reigned over black South Africans. Also he is a critic of fundamentalist Islam, but praises aspects of it which is anti-imperialistic. In his opinion, Islamic sharia law is not compatible with a modern democratically structured society. I do not agree with all of Dr. Mazrui’s views, but we do have much common ground which is shared. Here is a very thought provoking article by him written over 10 years ago called Islamic and Western Values.

In recent years Dr. Mazrui has been targeted by a neoconservative student group here in the US and has been labelled as a left wing extremist and an anti-Semite because of some of his comments. Also he has been targeted by the Department of Homeland Security and the US State Department, not for any links to terrorism, but for allegations of corruption.

I think Dr. Mazrui might be the victim of the paranoid and fearful climate that developed after September 11th. The climate has abated to a degree and the intense fear mongering that was driving everything has been toned down especially since so many supporters of President Bush and his star chamber has lost most of its’ public support.

I also have long thought that Ali A. Mazrui looks very much like my late uncle Robert, which everyone called “Rag.”

Dr. Ali A. Mazrui, a world class and classy, exotic intellectual, scholar, an African and a Romantic.

Cutely Romantic: Barack Obama

He may not get the Democratic nomination for president and become the next president because despite all of our greatness and advancement America still has not matured in certain areas, but I have the optimism that if the world stand we might get there. Nevertheless, Barack Obama is the first serious, mainstream, and classy African American candidate we have had in a long, long time. In a post tomorrow I will mention the other long forgotten serious black candidate.

Because presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is using her husband as her own personal attack dog and the mud is really flying now from the direction of the Clinton camp, Barack Obama has told his African American supporters to not get angry and bitter and view the Clintons as racists because this is politics, not something that should be perceived as personal. I agree with him, because Barack Obama knows our people must stop being stifled and stopped by words or even something as hideous and sick as an empty noose. We must start back progressing the way we did in the days of Dr. King. There can be no retreat for us; we must keep our eyes on the prize.

What Barack Obama is doing is symbolic and will open the doors for more progressive blacks in the future if we hold on. I am very proud of him. He is a symbol of hope at a time which often seems bleak, trivial, hopeless, and unRomantic. The other week a news clip showed him speaking in that deep mellow voice of his, and when someone in the audience fell behind him he forgot about himself and what he was saying, but turned around and asked, “Is everybody OK?” What a sweetie and a Romantic and cute to boot and so is his wife Michelle and his kids.
My mother thinks that Hillary has a secret crush on Barack Obama, and all this picking and mudslinging has a Romantic element. We both think Hillary has never fully forgiven Bill for his Don Juan escapades but ambition makes her hold on to him. Now that Bill is not cute anymore, she really has a crush on Obama. Mom jokes that Hillary says she is only using Bill to get what she wants, and once she gets in the White House, Bill can move to Harlem if he wants. I very seriously doubt that she will get in the White House again. Bill knows this, but is playing the game with her being the devoted husband. Once she is defeated and destroyed by the Republicans, Bill knows she will need him and Chelsea more than ever. He might even have to put Hillary in mental health treatment for awhile, but he cares for her and will always be there for her even though she rides a VERY high horse.

The Romance of Cameos

Today when I was out, a woman came up to me and just stared at my throat because from it hung one of my most treasured pieces of jewelry, a genuine, hand engraved shell cameo pendant of Mary Queen of Scots. Since I was a girl I have adored cameos. The woman who approached me was a nurse, and said she has long wanted to own a cameo. I told her that what I had on was the real thing, not some mass produced junk.

When some people think of cameos they probably envision prim Victoria ladies in high collars with a cameo pinned on their collars at their necks. I envision them too in my mind’s eye, but my imagination also takes me further back in time to ancient Roman patrician ladies in elaborately circled hairdos with cameo earrings dangling from their earlobes and with intricate necklaces composed of a number cameos around their necks.

The making of handmade cameos is an ancient and dying art which began in the 6th century in ancient Greece. After ancient Roman times cameos enjoyed revivals during the Renaissance, the 17th and 18th centuries and in Victorian times. For a time they were produced and were quite poplar in post World War II Germany.

M + M Scognamiglio is run by Amedeo Scognamiglio who is keeping the cameo tradition alive and well in Italy as are a few other families there. Amedeo comes to the US several times a year and appears on the Home Shopping Network to present new batches of his company’s cameos once they are produced. Some of his available cameos can be seen here. The production of cameos is a painstaking process. Since each piece is made by hand, no two items are exactly alike. Most cameos today are made out of shell, but in the past, cameos were sometimes made out of precious or semi-precious stones. Engraving cameos in stone is more difficult than in shell.

The word “cameo” means “to engrave,” and is believed to be to come from the ancient Hebrew or Arabic word “kamea” which means “charm” or “amulet.” Folkloric claims say that cameos bring on good fortune and or health.

Here is my own cameo which I bought nearly two years ago from M + M Scognamiglio of the tragic and beautiful Mary Queen of Scots.

Last year my mom and I went to see an exhibition of Byzantine artifacts at The Georgia Museum of Art here in Athens on The University of Georgia campus. The collection contained a good quantity of jewelry with pieces that were cameos in semi-precious stone. Over the centuries the subject matter of cameos has tended to be from classical mythology and the profiles of rulers. The Byzantine cameos were not only from Greek mythology, but also on Christian themes since the Byzantine Empire was the Christian offshoot of the Roman Empire. I had a very special and full feeling in the rooms where those pieces were on display because of their mystic and ancient beauty. I wondered about the long dead people who wore those cameos. Most of the pieces which came from what is now Turkey, Syria, and Iraq were well over 1000 years old.

Amedeo Scognamiglio has said that people who appreciate cameos today are those who live history, tradition, art, and beauty. The art of cameo making is a Romantic craft that I hope will never die. I hope to increase my collection someday.

Happy Official Birthday Dr. King!

Today Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday is observed. His vision of non-violent social change did not apply to just blacks in America or those in South Africa, it can be applied globally. His vision is not a classically Romantic vision, but one that is highly important if humanity is to survive.

It is very easy to be a murderer. It is very difficult to love one's enemy. Hate the enemy's deeds, not the enemy.

To Die So Young A Hero

Today fellow blogger Hans posted a story about a Turkish Muslim who will be playing Anne Frank in a stage production of The Diary of Anne Frank.

Besides having read Anne Frank's diary in middle school, I have become familiar in more latter years of a Jewish diarist and poet whose writing was equally if not more powerful than Anne Frank's masterpiece. The creator of this other great Holocaust document was Hannah Senesh (1921-1944). In fact, I am an even greater fan of Senesh's diary than I am of Frank's because of its' maturity and depth. More about Hannah and her poetry can be read here.

My most favorite of all her poems is this one.

Walk To Caesaerea

God---may there be no end
to sea, to sand,
water's splash,
lightning's flash,
the prayer of man

Eternal Love In China

The age we live in is a cynical, selfish, and insensitive one and also quite tacky, tasteless, vulgar, and very unRomantic at times. Like a character in one of my favorite Romantic films Mississippi Masala mused, 'There is so little love in the world, yet so much.' And like the old song says, "What the world needs now is love, sweet love. That's the only thing that there's just too little of."I discovered a love story that was the talk of China concerning the couple above. To begin their story, the husband carved his wife 6000 steps! The rest can be read here.It should be remembered that love like hate or indifference is a CHOICE.