The Gifted Children – Open Windows 2009
The Gifted Children
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Monday, July 31, 2017
The Gifted Children – Open Windows 2009
The Gifted Children
Bandcamp
THE MASK THAT SANG by Susan Currie
THE MASK THAT SANG by Susan Currie
Susan Curries The Mask That Sang was released on September 6, 2016, from Second Story Press. She dedicates the book to her "birth aunt, Bev Huzzard, who handed me the gift of my own identity."
That dedication--referencing a birth aunt and identity--prompted me to visit Curries biography at the Second Story website. There, I read that:
Susan is an adopted person who made contact with a birth aunt a few years ago and subsequently learned about her Cayuga heritage. The Mask That Sang grew out of the experience of discovering those roots, and of learning that her grandmother attended residential school.On goodreads "Ask the Author" page, Currie writes that:
My most recent book, "The Mask That Sang," was inspired by my own experience of learning that I was Haudenosaunee. Because I was adopted, I did not know about my roots until I went searching for answers, and made contact with a birth aunt. She shared with me about my Cayuga heritage. It changed my life!And on her website, Currie writes that:
An important part of my history has to do with the fact that I am adopted. I have had a wonderful upbringing with my parents, Jean and Martin, and with my two brothers, David and Mike. As an adult I felt I wanted to know more about my own unique history. Following some detective work, I made contact with my amazing birth aunt, Bev (my birth mother, Louise, had passed away). She then provided me with the great gift of my own personal history. I was astonished and thrilled to learn about my own Haudenosaunee background. I am of Cayuga descent. My grandmother, Marjorie Hill, grew up at Six Nations and attended residential school in Brantford.My heart aches for all the Native people who were taken from their parents and communities when they were infants or children. We dont know the details of Curries adoption. She may not have been part of that forceful removal. We do know, however, that the governments of the United States and Canada were determined to turn Native people into White people. These governments were determined to undermine our nations and our sovereignty. Some government programs, like the boarding schools (residential schools in Canada) are becoming known.
There were other efforts, too, by which Native children were taken from their communities. Adoption and child welfare service is one by which thousands of Native children were removed from their homes. In Canada, newspapers report on the Sixties Scoop, a term used to refer to the adoption of First Nations and M�tis children in Canada, from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. The reports include interviews with adults who are being reunited with their families. The accounts are searing. In Indigenous Writes, Chelsea Vowel writes that (p. 88):
When these people want to learn more about their culture, they have to wade through so many inaccuracies that it can feel impossible at times to reconnect.As Curries biography indicates, she was adopted and only recently became aware of her Cayuga heritage and that her grandmother was in residential school. As I read her book, I had empathy for Cass (her main character) and the struggle she was going through, but I also feel that the parts of the story about the mask sound very much like ones written by people who arent Native.
Heres the synopsis for the book:
Cass and her mom have always stood on their own against the world. Then Cass learns she had a grandmother, one who was never part of her life, one who has just died and left her and her mother the first house they could call their own. But with it comes more questions than answers: Why is her Mom so determined not to live there? Why was this relative kept so secret? And what is the unusual mask, forgotten in a drawer, trying to tell her? Strange dreams, strange voices, and strange incidents all lead Cass closer to solving the mystery and making connections she never dreamed she had.Remember: The Mask That Sang is inspired by what Currie learned as an adult.
Currie said that she found out about her identity through research. Cass, however, finds out because of a mask she finds in a dresser drawer in a home that is left to her and her mom by her grandmother, who has passed away. That grandmother is likely based on Curries own grandmother, the one who went to residential school. In The Mask That Sang, we learn that Casss mother was abandoned by her own mother, and she ended up in the foster care system (p. 10):
My mother abandoned me as a baby, she gave me up to Childrens Aid and never tried to find me. Ive been in over twenty foster homes, and Ive lived at about as many addresses since.It makes me wonder if Currie herself was abandoned by her birth mother. Curries grandmother, at residential school, would not have been able to maintain her Cayuga ways of being. She may have lost touch with the Cayuga community. From Curries website, we know she gave birth to Curries mother (she is deceased) and two other children. When Currie found that birth aunt, Bev, she began learning about her Cayuga heritage from her, but I wonder what Bevs sources are? Did she reconnect with the Six Nations community? Did she relearn ways of being Cayuga?
I pose that question because of what Ive read about the ways that the Haudenosaunee peoples (this includes the nations in the US and Canada) treat the masks. Back in 1991, in their I is not for Indian bibliography, Naomi Caldwell Wood and Lisa Mitten, president and secretary of the American Indian Library Association wrote about Welwyn Wilton Katzs False Face. They said:
"Katz conjures up a ridiculously evil power that is supposed to inhabit the false face mask and alter the personalities of characters who attempt to possess the mask. This personalities of characters who attempt to possess the mask. This goes beyond the wild fantasies of a creative author. False face masks are an integral part of traditional Iroquois religion practised today on the very reserve that Katz describes so well. Her description of the mask as an absolute evil amounts to religious intolerance and goes far in fostering the conception of native, non-Christian religions as savage pagan rituals. A very harmful book."Currie does that, too. In The Mask That Sang, Cass enters the house that had belonged to her grandmother. When she goes inside she hears "a mischievous purr" (p. 23) that becomes a hum and then a song as she nears the dresser where the mask is. It seems that the song she hears tells her that she wont be lonely anymore.
When she finally opens the drawer and unwraps the mask, she screams. Mr. Gregor, a neighbor theyve just met, tells them it is a false face. Casss mom says it is an ugly face, and Mr. Gregor replies that it is an Iroquois healing mask and that theres a large Aboriginal population in their new neighborhood. He asks if theyre Aboriginal and they say no, because at this point in the story, they dont know theyre Native. Cass thinks, though, that she somehow feels like she recognizes the mask.
That night at bedtime, Cass opens the drawer and looks the mask in the eye, telling it that she thinks she likes it, but "lets not go too far" (p. 37). The voices in the mask sing to her:
Too late, the voice seemed to sing, filled with satisfaction at their own funny selves, pleased with the mischief they had played while hiding and being found. Now they had a new playmate, and they darted around Cass as if they were strings binding her. But friendly strings, friendlier than what waited tomorrow."Tomorrow" is a reference to Casss first day of school. Shes dreading it because at previous schools, shes been bullied. As she drifts off to sleep, the masks earlier message of her not being alone, is chanting as she falls asleep and into a dream where she and others are trapped in a school "like animals" who are "being groomed for something" and who are not "free creatures anymore, because free meant wild" (p. 40). She wakes, realizing the mask is singing to the children in her dream, comforting them. They were also telling Cass to go to school, and to be brave, chanting and "looping about Cass like an incantation."
As the story continues, the voices speak to her at key moments. They tell her to stick up for Degan Hill, a Cayuga boy she meets at school. She does, and the two become friends. He tells her about his aunt, who is a healer and has dreams. He tells her that dreams, spirits, and healing are part of their traditional ways. She tells him about the mask and he tells her that his aunt says theyre tricky, that they move stuff, turn lights on and off, and that the masks can go either good or bad. She takes him to her house to show it to him but it is gone. Her mother has pawned it to get money to buy a computer.
The story, from there, is about recovering the mask. Cass continues to have dreams, and, Cass and Degan use the dreams to find the mask. At one point, Cass is feeling sorry for herself and tells her mother that her life would have been better if Cass had never been born. She feels intense rage, brought on by the mask. It music is now "deadly and dangerous" (p. 120). Her dreams also include the children she saw in the first dream. One night, she sees them, trapped by fire.
The ways that Currie is writing about the masks feels wrong. Turning lights on and off? That sounds more like a poltergeist story, and the use of some words, like incantation, puts the masks--as presented by Currie--into an inappropriate framework of Eurocentric magic and supernatural stories. It reminds me of what I saw in Shadows Cast By Stars. That author, Catherine Knutsson, is similar to Currie in this way: both came to know their Native heritage as adults. Knutssons book has paranormal qualities to, it, too that feel inappropriate. I saw similar problems with dreams in Tara Whites Where I Belong.
I really want to read stories from people like Currie and Knuttson and White, who come to know their heritage, later in life, but for me, they lose their potential and value when they sound just like the stories that White people write. Their stories can inform readers about racist programs and histories, but when those stories enter this magical and mystical thread, they misinform and even denigrate the very people their stories are about. These writers have not moved beyond the inaccuracies that Vowel referenced in Indigenous Writes.
On goodreads, Currie writes that shes working on another book:
I am beginning to work on a new story exploring the residential school experience. At present, it is starting to shape into a bit of a time travel story in which two parallel events are occurring - in one timeline, we follow a young girl in residential school who is fighting to hang onto her culture, and in the other, we follow a young girl in the foster care system who is searching for her missing mother. How these two timelines come together, and how the girls become friends, is tied up in visions and magic and the power of traditions....Seeing "magic" there points, again, to a framework that I think is Eurocentric. I do think a time travel story that explores these two different periods of time would be one Id want to read but I hope that Currie picks up a copy of Love Beyond Space, Body, and Time to see how other Native writers write that sort of storyline. That book is exquisite. It isnt for children. Older teens, yes. The full title is Love Beyond Space, Body, and Time: An LGBT and Two-Spirit Anthology. Ive not yet reviewed it for AICL, but did a Storify on it a few days ago. In fact, anyone who wants to write Native characters ought to read that book. I highly recommend it.
In sum: I do not recommend Susan Curries The Mask That Sang.
____________________
For further reading, see:
Haudenosaunee Confederacys policy on false face masks, published in 1995 in Akwesasne Notes.
Cayuga Museum Receives Replica Wampum Belt for Returning Haudenosaunee Spiritual Objects, published in 2013 at Indian Country Today.
Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, M�tis & Inuit Issues in Canada by Chelsea Vowel, published in 2016 by Portage & Main Press.
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The Switch
The Switch
Okay so heres the Treehouse presentation from last night.
The short version is
- $300
- March 3rd
- Launch titles are...
- Super Bomberman R
- 1-2-Switch (a bunch of minigames)
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Skylanders Imaginators (2016 port)
- Just Dance 2017
- ...and thats it. Five fucking games. Coming later will be...
- Fire Emblem Warriors
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2
- Super Mario Odyssey
- Splatoon 2 (why in Earth it isnt called Splat2n is beyond me)
- ARMS. a funny-looking PvP fighter.
- Disgaea 5
- Has Been Heroes (Roguelike)
- Puyo Puyo Tetris
- Rayman Legends
- Steep
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
- Sonic Mania
- An undefined Shin Megami Tensei game
- Battery Life: 2.5-6 hours
- Time to charge the battery: 3 hours
- Ability to remove the battery: No.
- Ability to play it with a charging cable: Yes!
- Region: Free.
- Online: Free to start, but then theres a subscription fee coming Fall 2017.
- Free games each month with online subscription: Yes! (SNES or NES Virtual Console games.)
- Amount of time you get access to those games: Just that month! After that you have to buy them if you wanna play them! (Yes, seriously.)
So... lets watch the trailer for Super Mario Odyssey.
Hm. That doesnt look as awful as word of mouth on the Internet led me to believe. Its nice to see Nintendo doing something halfway ambitious. Remember when they were a technology leader? Those were the days.
So yeah, Id say last nights presentation did not... inspire much confidence in the gamer population as a whole. Or at least my Twitter feed today was full of stuff like this:
But it launches with a brand new Zelda,
and thats enough for some people.
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The Incredibles Game
The Incredibles Game
Pengenalan
Nganggur lagi.... bikin skrip lagi ah~
Fitur
- Bisa ngeflip animation pada saat event berjalan
Screenshots
Scripts
Here
Versi Vx dan Vx-Ace --> http://www.rpgmakerid.com/t5368-vx-vx-a-flip-animation
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The Punisher Game Full Version Free Download
The Punisher Game Full Version Free Download
The Punisher Game highly compressed Direct free download
The Punisher Game Full Setup.exe (250.0 MB)
System Requirements:
2 GHz Intel Pentium 4 Or Equialent
RAM 256 MB
Video Card 128 MB
ScreenShots
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download The Sims 3 Seasons
The Sims 3 Seasons
Download PC Game The Sims 3 Seasons Full PC Game
The Sims 3 Seasons Full PC Download Free
The Sims 3 Seasons PC Download Free PC Game
Minimum System Requirements:
OS: Windows XP/Vista/7
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.0 GHz / AMD Athlon XP 2000+
Memory: 1 GB
Hard Drive: 7 GB free
Video Memory: 128 Mb
Video Card: nVidia GeForce FX 5900 / ATI Radeon 9500
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Turbobit Download Links:
http://ncrypt.in/folder-KpeMP1BK
Uploaded Download Links:
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UploadCore Download Links:
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Password: www.skidrowgames.net
Installation Notes:
1. Unrar.
2. Mount the ISO with daemon tools.
3. Install the game.
4. Play!
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The Unchaining Ithilien
The Unchaining Ithilien
Banda: The Unchaining
Album: Ithilien
Data: 2015
Estilo: Atmospheric Black Metal
Pa�s: Italy
| 1. | The Thousand Caves | 02:50 | |
| 2. | The Eyes of the Forest | 06:37 | |
| 3. | Fires upon the Peaks | 06:25 | |
| 4. | Through the Wild Lands | 05:38 | |
| 5. | Defending the Citadel | 06:40 | |
| 6. | Dawn | 06:11 | |
| 7. | Towards Ithilien | 02:42 | |
| 37:03 | |||
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The Last Kingdom Episode 4
The Last Kingdom Episode 4
The Last Kingdom
Episode 4
Rating: 5 out of 10 (Average)
Episode 4
Rating: 5 out of 10 (Average)
In A Nutshell
Nudity warning this week. After another recap, we see Uhtred washing stark naked in a river and then being visited by Odda who is trying to dissuade Uhtred from his upcoming marriage which seems to have speeded up in terms of wedding planning like lightning since last week. Sure enough, in the space of the next 5 minutes, Uhtred is married to Mildrith (who apparently owns nearby land) and turns out to be quite a "looker" in Uhtreds eyes after all the chat beforehand was on who hed end up with. So staged was all this pre-wedding chat, youd be surprised if she was anything but pretty when revealed. He heads back to her home, Liscomb, with her and Leofric, whom he now seems to be best buddies with. What he didnt know was that hes inherited his wifes dads debt, which although hes unhappy with and says hell have words with Alfred about, he fails to really made much of a big deal about it in the end. Talk is cheap it seems.
Before he gets to meet Alfred again, things skip along what must be 4 months, as we see Mildrith bathing (nude) in a pond and looking as pregnant as they come. Either she aint all the pies in 24 hours or, as we find out, shes with Uhtreds child. In the blink of the eye, months have indeed past as we cut to seeing Uhtred and companions observing an army of Vikings moving through nearby woodland towards a town. Naturally no one else has noticed this mass ensemble of Vikings it seems, so Uhtred and his wife and bromance buddy Leofric head to Winchester to alert Alfred. One minute later and Alfred is agreeing with everything Uhtred says and he ammases an army to go help out the besieged town, if they arrive in time. They camp out nearby at nightfall, and come the next morning the fortress has fallen, but already been repaired by the vikings, so theres no point them attacking it seems. Its all rather odd and illogical at this moment in the show, more than any other time. Why did they stop so short, and how was the fortress, which looks very beefy, repaired so quickly? Ahh well.
In another plot twist that feels more like a way of making the show last more episodes than actually being interesting to watch, we learn that Ubba has buggered off to Ireland to avenge his brothers recent death, leaving the fortress theyd taken without enough Vikings to hold it. Ragnor and Guthrum are the two in charge so they agree for some reason to have a truce. Even though Guthrum feels let down by Ubba, he will wait for him to return. The truce is for a month, after Alfred refuses to budge from that time limit. Then there is an exchange of hostages, for some reason. Not necessary as far as I can see, but it happens, and just like Ubba leaving, it feels very much like a staged plotline whose only aim is so Uhtred can get inside information. Yes, hes one of the hostages. Something youd think the Vikings would think could only have a secret reason behind him being selected. Brida asks Uhtred, and he tells him its his plan to find out when Ubba returns, escape and alert Alfred. Its all rather bizarre that Alfred would think it would be easy for him to escape but alas he takes the chance. Along the way, Uhtred has fun and games with his best viking buddies Ragnor and Brida, before having a semi awkward moment over the different paths theyve taken in recent months. Still, it feels all rather nice and friendly considering one minute Uhtred is slaughtering Vikings and the next hes drinking with his buddies. Friends or not, youd think theyd have a problem with the fighting bit. Anyhow, one of the other hostage includes a priest, whose screen time beforehand suggested he might have been wearing a big "Kill Me" t-shirt on him. Especially when he tells Uhtred he thinks hes almost converted Guthrum to christianity, after whats been only a few weeks. Blimey, he must think hes a good teacher. You know that can only mean a grisly end for the poor guy.
Sure enough, news of Ubba returning is delivered to Viking HQ, and Guthrum orders all the hostages slaughtered, leading to Uhtred legging it, being saved by Ragnor/Brida, and thus being allowed to leave. He then enacts Alfreds plan and lights a beacon so quickly that a boy scout would be guaranteed a badge, so as to alert Winchester of Ubbas return.
What I liked
As ever, the scenery and costumes are excellent in this show. Top Production values, including the music. Even the CGI was up to scratch this week. The fortress and the ships on the sea were really gorgeous.
Alfred is head and shoulders above everyone else in this show for actually making any logical sense with his actions and words, but also with his fantastic acting.
What I Didnt Like
Still very wishy washy stuff going on with Uhtred and anyone. Sure, he might feel conflicted but its hard to really feel it in this show. All his dealings with Alfred, and his Viking friends come more across more as a whim than anything else.
The fact that Brida knew Uhtred was acting as a spy, and probably Ragnor too, didnt make them at least think he shouldnt be there with them? And what exactly was the point behind the hostages? It seemed to be made up merely as a plot point to get Uhtred inside the fortress and his reunion scene.
Huh?
 |
| The Priest crapped himself on news of being ordered to be a hostage. |
 |
| No one wanted to tell her what she already knew, which was that the cloak had a wardrobe malfunction. |
 |
| Uhtred was the butt of everyones jokes this week. |
Well, this show really fails to build on any tension by simply just talking about it, and then it turning into some sort of wet fish, full of illogical plot decisions and stupidity by characters. Everything is just "meh". Its not awful, thanks to the scenery and customs really setting the atmosphere, but its like a bowl of porridge thats been put on the oven ring on the lowest heat setting there is, slowly lightly cooking, rather than actually building to a boil.
Rating: 5 out of 10 (Average)
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