This was our last evening walk of 2022! Today was an overcast day.
I love my evening walks. I love being on this hill, listening to and watching the bats, and working out with fellow Monrovians in the shadows of the Big Bad American Embassy and the Masonic Lodge. ๐
Loved this address by Javed Akhtar and, his pointed critique of how Urdu is being attacked as a 'foreign language' in BJP infested Hindustan. Urdu is a beloved language of the people of India and, is a people's language. I really appreciate how he explains that relationship language/zubaan has with script and syntax grammar. For example, Khari Boli is the ancestor of Urdu and Hindi and, Urdu and Hindi can be written in both Devanagri and Persian scripts just as Western Roman languages borrowed Roman script. As for syntax and grammar, just because you sprinkle an Urdu sentence with English words doesn't mean you are speaking English because it is syntax and grammar which make language. Lastly, Urdu was never a priestly/religious language but incredibly agnostic and philosophical. We should all be proud we know and speak Urdu.
(See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h5C857U0C0)
Kavita and Desire tried their best at jump rope. Results are hilarious and cute. See this video: Children thinking they are doing jump rope.
But the Woggle-Bug strutted along as if he had made some brilliant remark, and the Scarecrow was obliged to say:
“I have heard, my dear friend, that a person can become over-educated; and although I have a high respect for brains, no matter how they may be arranged or classified, I begin to suspect that yours are slightly tangled. In any event, I must beg you to restrain your superior education while in our society.”
“We are not very particular,” added the Tin Woodman; “and we are exceedingly kind hearted. But if your superior culture gets leaky again—” He did not complete the sentence, but he twirled his gleaming axe so carelessly that the Woggle-Bug looked frightened, and shrank away to a safe distance.
The others marched on in silence, and the Highly Magnified one, after a period of deep thought, said in an humble voice:
“I will endeavor to restrain myself.”
Please see a video of Kavita reading from The Marvellous Land of Oz: "We are exceedingly kind hearted". And, guess what? You can read the whole book online here: The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Marvellous Land of Oz, by L. Frank Baum.
Read this by L. Frank Baum on how he was convinced to write this book. And, for Kavita to know the L. Frank Baum is from Chicago, city of her birth:
I love these illustrations:
I explained to Kavita this book was published in 1904 and she's reading a beloved children's book that is more than a 100 years old!
I am very proud of Kavita's reading skills and she is reading much more than I was at her age. However, with all the distractions that lurk everywhere (on demand streaming, YouTube, Netflix, video games on the phone), one has to force children to read. But when they do start reading, they get lost in the story.
Biden held a thoroughly panned Summit of the Americas earlier this year and now is trying again with a US Africa Summit. US efforts to counter China's trade and diplomacy are, what can we say, pathetic since they are so insincere. Just a few months ago, the former American Ambassador to Liberia , now the US rep at the UN, came to Africa to literally warn African countries not to trade with Russia. What has Biden promised Africa now? A paltry US $ 55 billion to the second biggest continent while it spends more than US $ 800 billion on defence. Don't let any one be fooled by Biden and Americans they are a war machine and, everything they do is to serve American imperialism.
