መልካም፡አዲስ፡አመት።

New Year's smile from my Mom!

Addis Ababa

I asked my mother to smile for the photo, and she playfully obliged.

Melkam Addis Amet - መልካም፡አዲስ፡አመት። - Happy New Year - September 11

New Year's Flowers - Adey Abeba  

መልካም፡አዲስ፡አመት።

[Photo By: KPA]

Addis Ababa

 

Debre Enqu Lideta Mariam Church Bell

Debre Enqu Lideta Mariam Church Bell

Near Addis Ababa

[Photo By: KPA]

Hardy Hibiscus

Hibiscus moscheutos 'Luna White' (Hardy Hibiscus)

[Photo By: KPA]

I spent the whole day, a couple of days ago, visiting my favorite places in Toronto.

This white hibiscus was behind the Allan Gardens Conservatory, where the gardeners continue to maintain the grounds, through "COVID" and the recent heatwaves. The flower was glowing. Hardy, indeed.

Hibiscus moscheutos 'Luna White' (Hardy Hibiscus) is a compact and well-branched perennial noted for its huge, snow-white flowers, 8 in. across (20 cm), adorned with a ruby-red center. Blooming continuously from midsummer to fall, the gigantic flowers display conspicuous, protruding, creamy-white tubes of stamens. [Source]

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The term "hardy hibiscus" generally refers to cultivars of Hibiscus moscheutos that are bred to tolerate colder temperatures than most Hibiscus species, most of which are tropical species. These cold-hardy varieties are also known as "perennial hibiscus." Most hardy hibiscus will reliably tolerate temperatures as far north as zone 5, but even zone 4 gardeners may be able to find varieties suitable for their growing conditions. [Source]

 Here is my patterned rendition.

Ontario Views: Picturing My Landscape

Here is an online gallery of my photographs, paintings, textile works and video/film pieces which I've titled:

Ontario Views: Picturing My Landscape

Visual Art Mississauga's Wildlife Exhibition: My Selection -

2 Ducks,  2 Squirrels, Some Chickadees, and One Heron

Carolyn Daniels

Early Spring on the Credit River

35 x 50 inches (h x w)

Oil

Gabriela Stubbs

Have I seen you here before

50 X 35 inches (h x w)

Acrylic

Chantal Granat

Squirrel

50 x 35 inches (h x w)

Watercolor and Colored Pencil

Lily Marcinek

Red Squirrel

50 x 35 inches (h x w)

Pencil on Oil Paper

Melina Cossio

Winter Birds

35 x 60 inches (h x w)

Oil on Canvas

Leslie Buckle

Chickadee in the Redbud

45 x 45 inches (h x w)

Oil on Canvas

Kidist Paulos Asrat

Black-Crowned Night-Heron

40 x 50 inches (h x w)

Digital Photograph

Black-Crowned Night-Heron: Sentinel

Black-Crowned Night-Heron: Sentinel

Photo By: Kidist Paulos Asrat

Now on view at Visual Arts Mississauga's Wildlife Exhibition.

(I recently also had my Riverwood barn photograph exhibited at VAM's Fall series - Riverwood Barn Sunflower Glow, August 18 to September 6, 2021.) 

If you're up to it, you can view Black-Crowned Night-Heron: Sentinel in the virtual gallery by clicking "Back to 3D Exhibition."

I took the photograph at the Riverwood Conservancy, a large, protected, forest in the middle of Mississauga. It is quite a hike through the forest, and I would join bird watching groups several times from the Spring through to the Fall. I took this photo during such a hike, in early summer about two years ago (2019).

Visual Arts Mississauga is in the Conservancy. It is a genius idea to combine art and nature.

Black-crowned night-herons are rare to see during the day, and especially standing tall and alert as in my photograph:

Seen by day, these chunky herons seem dull and lethargic, with groups sitting hunched and motionless in trees near water. They become more active at dusk, flying out to foraging sites, calling 'wok' as they pass high overhead in the darkness. Some studies suggest that they feed at night because they are dominated by other herons and egrets by day. A cosmopolitan species, nesting on every continent except Australia and Antarctica [Source: The National Audubon Society]. 

 

More from The National Audubon Society:

Marshes, shores; roosts in trees. Found in a wide variety of aquatic habitats, around both fresh and salt water, including marshes, rivers, ponds, mangrove swamps, tidal flats, canals, ricefields. Nests in groves of trees, in thickets, or on ground, usually on islands or above water, perhaps to avoid predators.

This fits perfectly with the conservancy's landscape of: 

Forest, tablelands, meadows, ravines, wetlands, creeks, and the Credit River

And where these heron can find their fill of fish from the Credit River, which flows through the forest, as well as from the dozens of smaller creeks, and the expansive wetlands.

A little heaven on earth!

Sound: Scroll down at The National Audubon Society web page to "songs and calls" for various examples. Not a graceful sound, but then, here's the bird in full flight, below. 

Image from The National Audubon Society's photo album.

Light Glow: Self Portrait

Oromo Instigators and the Amharic Language

Of course, Beshir doesn't speak Oromigna, the language predominant in her film Faya Dayi.

"I’m fascinated by form and language" she declares in the interview I quoted in my previous post on what is next after Faya Dayi. 

I said at the end of my piece:

Oromo youth need to speak Amharic in order to be fully Ethiopian. This is the reality, and the practicality. PM Abiy, son of an Oromo father and an Amhara mother, speaks in Amharic on all his functions, and speaks Oromigna AND Amharic at Oromo-centered events when he visits local regions (and I think he also speaks some - minimal - Tigrigna). I would say that ALL Ethiopians speak Amharic, and their local, ethnic-based languages, but only the Amhara speak ONLY Amharic. The Ethiopian society is based around the Amharic language.

 

Here's an article at Addis Standard, an Ethiopia-based online journal which discusses the problems of Oromigna-speaking Oromo youth having difficulties in various societal problems, including "not getting job opportunities" and taking it on a racist/discriminatory angle. What else is there when practicalities are ignored?

And right on schedule, it is the Face Book literati, which I have declared have bases outside Ethiopia which instigate, on an international level, that are instigating these discontented Oromo youth and increasing the friction in their communities. 

The Addis Standard article, posted on August 16, 2022 says (I wrote my article, Beshir's Follow-up to Faya Dayi an Esoteric Discussion of Language on August 15):

He [an Oromo job-seeker] believes even though his name is not explicitly an Oromo name there are some indicators such as his birthplace and language that could have hampered his chance of joining the company.

I still stand with my statement that Amharic is the lingua franca of Ethiopia. Without knowledge of Amharic, these Oromo youth reduce greatly their ability to participate in the country's economic enterprises. 

Someone has to tell them this.

Beshir's follow-up to Faya Dayi is an Esoteric Discussion of "Language."

I will end here my expose of Beshir, the director of Faya Dayi. My article that is available in several Ethiopian news and commentary sites holds ground. And my question to Beshir remains unanswered.

"What are you going to do about the khat-disoriented Oromo youth, on whose backs you made the film Faya Dayi, and which gave you substantial monetary remuneration?" 

Why not give this money to the Oromo youth, through a local employment center, for example, or a drug rehabilitation center? 

Beshir is revealing her "next" release as a "follow-up" to Faya Dayi.

Here she is in London, in June 2022, a year after the accolades and prize money from Faya Dayi, talking about her film, and the inevitable comes up, when the interviewer asks her about her next project:

I’m fascinated by form and language, and ways of delivering it, and just cinema itself, and what it’s doing, and what I can do.”

Beshir's "follow-up" is an esoteric discussion of "language."

Right up the indie (that is "independent for those who don't follow the intricate maneuvers of off-the-grid filmmakers) film world's alley. Let's latch on to an obscure, and irrelevant (to the topic at hand) subject, and just go for it!

Continues Beshir:

“I am not just inspired, but I am excited about African cinema, and what those incredible filmmakers are doing. (Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s sci-fi hip-hop musical set in Rwanda) Neptune Frost breaks open the imagination and possibilities of the future. It’s an incredible time for African cinema.”

 

Who cares about picking with a fine-toothed comb the intricacies of language? Who cares about African Cinema? I say this for the sake of argument. Of course I am interested in African Cinema, and in language, just read this blog. 

But why not Ethiopian Cinema? Why not the Oromo youth in their totality, without dissecting language through them?  

This is Beshir clever tactic of distancing, eradicating, "Ethiopia" from the context of cinema. "Ethiopian Cinema cannot exist separate and apart from African Cinema" is her underhanded argument. What could be more false (more on this later - but there is a rich history of filmmakers in Ethiopia, who LEAD the way for African Cinema).

And in lazy, elitist, fashion, going to the Oromo youth, figuring out ways, even if just giving them her Faya Dayi award money, is just too much work. And too boring, when she can sit in her smart Brooklyn apartment and google (and get paid for it) "Oromo Language" while sipping her cup of home-brewed latte.

What WE want from her is a follow-up film, or just a documented report on:

What happened to those Oromo Youth?

Where are they now?

How are they adapting to PM Abiy's assistance (and promise)?

Here is PM Abiy in Harar, in the Oromo region, visiting and inaugurating a Dire Dawa Free Trade Zone (from his Facebook page): 

 

The languages of Ethiopia are an age-old phenomenon. The Oromo language exists, as does the Tigrigna as dominant languages of the country.

But is is Amharic, which built the Ethiopian civilization, and which introduced script into the language, and which all the others refer to.

Oromo youth need to speak Amharic in order to be fully Ethiopian. This is the reality, and the practicality. PM Abiy, son of an Oromo father and an Amhara mother, speaks in Amharic on all his functions, and speaks Oromigna AND Amharic at Oromo-centered events when he visits local regions (and I think he also speaks some - minimal - Tigrigna). I would say that ALL Ethiopians speak Amharic, and their local, ethnic-based languages, but only the Amhara speak ONLY Amharic. The Ethiopian society is based around the Amharic language.

What does Beshir have to say about this, other than, as per the title of this posting: "an esoteric discussion of "'language'" revolving around the region/ethnic-based Oromigna?

Beshir's embittered, anti-Ethiopia, anti-Amhara, stand rears its head in this next "project," an esoteric rambling about language. Just as I predicted - the esoteric, disconnected, part.

As I said in this article, published at various international online magazines:

If Beshir were really up to it, and not in her mental cinematic mood, which apparently isn’t going away any time soon, she would contact these local Oromo centers, and why not, PM Abiy himself, to go ahead with putting her money where her mouth is. 

 

And I continue with:

Instead, Beshir lives in her smart Brooklyn apartment, plotting her next film against Ethiopia, and her false, distant, allegiance to the Oromo of Ethiopia. 

 

Beshir, now, has told us exactly what she will do. And it isn't about those Oromo youth who bared their souls to her, and through whom she extracted a nice sum.

Diverting the Course of The Blue Nile

St. George (Patron Saint of Ethiopia) 

Ethiopian Orthodox Illuminated Manuscript

ca. 1740-55 

From an article I wrote in 2010:

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Ethiopia keeps cropping up in various (negative) news stories recently. I wrote earlier about the report in Macleans magazine on the Chinese presence in the region, and their underhanded colonization of the land, where they have leased land for up to one hundred years in order to grow food that they can then send back to their own country. Revolt on the Nile is a National Post article describing  Egyptian and Sudanese claims to the Nile. This occurred around the time when Ethiopia, whose Blue Nile merges with the White Nile to travel into Egypt, was reclaiming occupied land from fascist Italy (1940s to 50s), and the Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania, who also claim they have some rights to this legendary and life-giving river, were still under colonial rule. Oil, which generally doesn't mix with water, is also part of the story, as is war, allies, and broken promises. One interesting quote from the article about the dogmatic Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi (who leased those acres to the Chinese for 100 years):

Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, is one of the agreement's most assertive spokesperson. "Egypt continues to maintain the obsolete notion that it owns the Nile and can dictate the distribution of its waters, and that upstream states are incapable of using the water because they are politically unstable and poverty stricken," he says. "But circumstances have changed."

This hearkens back to a fourteenth century Ethiopian Emperor Amde Seyon, who threatened to divert the Blue Nile's course away from Egypt if the Egyptian Muslims didn't stop persecuting their Coptic Christians. What a different interaction there is now. Meles Zenawi, who is an atheist  unlike the deeply religious northern Ethiopian Tigray people to which he belongs,  has no higher mission for his reaction to Egypt other than hypocritical nationalism and a desire for war. Beware of a leader who marches irrationally or too willfully towards war. It really means that all the saber waving is hiding some deep faults in his rule. Still, if Meles could could get cash for water, would he oblige the Egyptians? How about auctioning off the the air as well? Meles's behavior is getting more and more similar to his predecessor, the communist Mengistu Hail Mariam, who put the country through twenty years of war with the north simply because his will for a greater (communist) Ethiopia wasn't working. Another interesting thought. 

Despite China's swaggers about its growing economy, and its presence in the world market, there is no indication that the country has removed its communist yolk. Much of the government still works in a bureaucratic and secretive way, typical of autocratic regimes. And why all those Chinese who are incessantly immigrating to the West? At least  here in Canada, the Chinese immigration influx continues unabated despite all those wonderful things that are meant to be happening in their country. 

Below is the full article from the National Post.

Revolt on the Nile

Geoffrey Clarfield

Friday, Sept. 3, 2010

Some African journalists are calling it the Nile Revolt: Last May, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania signed the Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement, a document that could profoundly change the way the life-giving waters from one of the world's most important rivers are distributed. Congo and Burundi likely will soon add their signatures as well. Only Egypt and Sudan refuse to sign. And the reason they are dragging their feet is obvious: The Agreement would end the virtual monopoly those two Arab-led nations have had on Nile water for generations -- and thereby overturn the politics, economics and demography of northeastern Africa. The Nile is the longest river in the world, 6,000 kilometres from start to finish. As the Greek historian Herodotus once wrote, Egypt is "the gift of the Nile," as it is almost completely dependant on its waters for its survival. This is as true today as it was in the 5th century B.C., when Herodotus wrote his histories. The Nile begins in numerous highland streams in the mountains of Rwanda, in the Ruwenzori range, once dubbed the Mountains of the Moon by the ancient Greeks. These and other streams feed into Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa, whose shores are shared by Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The White Nile drains out of Lake Victoria's northern end and crosses into southern Sudan. There, it moves through miles of verdant swampland, amongst the cattle herding Nuer and Dinka tribes (traditionalists and converts to Christianity) who recently fought a successful 20-year defensive war against the largely Arab and Muslim northern Sudanese, who wanted their water and the oil that lies beneath it. The Nile then threads its way into northern Sudan -- meeting the Blue Nile, whose origins lie in Lake Tana in highland Ethiopia. The combined river then flows through Sudan to Egypt, passing through the Aswan dam, which generates much of Egypt 's electricity and regulates the country's annual floods. There are ecologists and water engineers who argue that the Aswan dam is a failure because of its interference with the Nile's natural regenerative processes, and that it will eventually cause irreparable ecological damage to the entire basin. But that is a minor headache for Cairo. Egypt's biggest problem is control. A few years ago, during a trip to the region, I surveyed the Nile from Cairo and Lake Victoria. I was convinced that one day soon the upstream countries would finally demand their water rights so that they, too, could build local economies around the irrigation that the Nile can provide. That day has come. Egypt and Sudan negotiated the original two Nile river treaties when they were the only independent countries in the Nile basin-- 1929 and 1959. At the time of the latter agreement, Ethiopia was still slowly recovering from its occupation by fascist Italy, while Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda had not yet attained independence. They were still colonies. And so Egypt and Sudan claimed the whole river --with Egypt taking 87%of the Nile water and Sudan 13%. This control includes a veto of any upstream projects. Egypt's Aswan dam, which depends on a steady flow from upstream countries, was constructed in the 1960s, during the political acme of the Arab League, and Sudan supported the project. Egypt's president, Gamal Nasser, then was the chief spokesperson for African socialism, and Africa's Marxist elites saw Egypt as a leader in the liberation and modernization of their continent. But that relationship began to break down. In 1973, in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, the Arab League and OPEC submitted the West to an oil embargo. The Arab League promised to provide the countries of sub-Saharan Africa with discounted oil if they broke diplomatic ties with Israel. African nations complied, but later discovered that no discounts were forthcoming. They had been stung. When I was working in Tanzania in the 1990s, many Tanzanians whom I met remembered this betrayal. It was one of many factors that motivated a new group of African rulers to begin to think in national and regional terms, as opposed to the Pan African ideology, which had swept the continent during the euphoric days of independence in the 1960s. They also have a new-found sense of their own history, as Western and African scholars have spent the last 50 years uncovering a distinctively sub-Saharan narrative of the continent, one transformed by the phenomenal rise and spread of the Bantu speaking peoples, as well as other tribal movements (such as those of the Masai) during the last two millennia. It became clear to these new elites that their ancestors had suffered terribly from the East African slave trade, whose main perpetrators were Egyptians, Sudanese and coastal Zanzibaris. Today, they no longer look to Egypt and Sudan as leaders of African politics. Indeed, they see them as more corrupt and autocratic than their own fragile democracies. These new African elites contain a significant number of feminists, and professional African women holding advanced degrees. And so it comes as no surprise that the key Kenyan politician behind the Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement, Charity Kaluki Ngilu, is a woman. Many of these men and women also happen to be devout Christians. They know their Bible better than most Europeans. In my meetings with them, they have expressed a clear understanding of Egypt's role as oppressor in the story of Exodus. They no longer want to render unto Pharaoh. This emerging mentality, one of increasing African self-confidence toward the Arab states to the north, has not been widely reported in the Western press. In essence, the descendants of the enslaved are now confronting the descendants of their enslavers. The Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement is a manifestation of this demand for regional social justice. Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, is one of the agreement's most assertive spokesperson. "Egypt continues to maintain the obsolete notion that it owns the Nile and can dictate the distribution of its waters, and that upstream states are incapable of using the water because they are politically unstable and poverty stricken," he says. "But circumstances have changed." Until recently, Ethiopia was using only 1% of the Nile for irrigation -- even though it is a country famous for periodic drought and starvation. But the country has just opened a new dam on Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile. It is called Tana Beles, and will generate much needed electricity for the highly stressed Ethiopian electricity grid. Similar projects will add more power -- including Gibe 3, which will be the biggest hydro-electric dam in sub-Saharan Africa. This fight over water could get ugly. Given Sudan's continuing support for the destabilization of Uganda, and al-Qaeda's bombing of the American Embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam in 1998, the future emergence of more radicalized Islamic regimes in Sudan, and possibly even Egypt, could trigger a military showdown between upstream and downstream countries -- including a sort of hydrological jihad. We have not heard the end of the Nile revolt. gwclarfield@yahoo.com-Geoffrey Clarfield is an anthropologist-at-large.

Horizon

Horizon

Photo Triptych By: KPA

Lake Ontario at Port Credit (yesterday)

Paris: Learning About Independence

From a post a few years ago:

Paris: Learning About Independence

Here, even then, in my juvenile amateurship, I seemed to know something about perspective. The view is from the steps of the Eglise de la Madeleine, and looks all the way down to Place de la Concorde.

Paris became a perfect training ground where I learned to rely on my wits to understand the often confusing and contradictory worlds I would inhabit for the rest of my life. I learned to be independent in Paris, and to understand my surroundings based on my own deductions, childish and simplistic at first, usually through quiet observation, and more sophisticated in my later years, and, up to this day, through additional support from books and study.

I became an avid reader in Paris. Almost all my books were in English, although I went through phases of reading some French classics, mostly because of my school requirements or my holiday French Language immersion classes during our summer vacations in Paris. These texts included Jean Racine's Iphigenie, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Emile Zola's Therese Ranquin, Stendhal's Le Rouge et Le Noir, Marguerite Duras' Moderato Cantabile.

I also visited museums with regularity, skillfully weaving my way around the Louvre. I was never attracted to the more modern galleries since they confused me. Much later on, while studying film and photography, I realized that confusion, or distortion of reality, was their very purpose. I used my instinct to include things which I felt benefited me and to mercilessly discard those that didn't. I understood that time was not on my side, and indolence or bad judgment would cost me dearly.

That is a strategy I have kept all my life.

"...another era in Ethiopia where this Jerusalem on the Hill, becomes a land to sabotage"

Debre Damo Monastery

A correspondent asked me this question, regarding Ethiopia:

Dear Kidist,

Good to hear from you!

The news from Ethiopia seems confused - both good and horrible things. 

[...] 

I'll be interested to hear your impressions.

I answered thus:

Yes, the news is confused. There was a period of intense danger. A regional ethnic group from the north, the TPLF (the Tigray People''s Liberation Front) which formed, and deposed the Communist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam (in the early 1990s) ruled the country for several decades.

[...]

PM Abiy (the current Prime Minister) was part of a variety of smaller groups fighting Haile Mariam. He was even joined armed fight as a young man.

The leftist/socialist TPLF with a rebranded name - Weyane - took on several years ago.

Through a national election process (I think there were leadership disputes within this Weyane) about two years ago, Abiy got the helm and started his governance. The elections were heavily disputed, and many disruptions were attempted. Abiy got the army on his side, formed them into a more efficient, and national, unit.

About a year ago, the remnant old guard TPLF (Weyane) leaders started their disruptions once again. This instigated other regional ethnic groups, like the Oromo from the south, the Gurage from the central valleys, and even the Amhara from the highlands to cause friction with the purpose of splintering off. 

These were the leaders - not peoples. Abiy gets huge crowds at his visits in these regions, showing almost unanimous popular support for "Ethiopia" and for him.

To make a long story short, these flare-ups are controlled by strict surveillance, but their ammunitions are gone (almost) and foreign assistance from Egyptian/Israeli (what an alliance - all to destroy Ethiopia) now the target of political concern. Rebels from the Sudan and Somalia borders were instigated by external forces (some Egyptian forces were found in their midst) and we believe again Israeli/Egyptian and even Jewish-led American groups, and Biden is suspected to be part of it.

PM Abiy continues to build a relationship with these regions - Somalia, Sudan, Kenya, and to some extent the Egyptians sympathetic to Ethiopia, with his overall mission to strengthen the Horn of Africa, with Ethiopia as (once again) the leader. He has restrengthened the African Union, started by Haile Selassie, and with its headquarters in Addis Ababa. He has already held several high-powered meetings. 

[T]here is a lot going on, and a lot has happened recently. The horror, I strongly assess, is media propaganda, to distance Americans (ordinary Americans, including in politics and other institutions) to malign, isolate, and even destroy the current Ethiopian regime.

Part of it also is the deeply frustrated Oromo and Tigray (TPLF) peoples, who were abandoned by their leaders and left to fend for themselves, resorting to desperate murders. Abiy has provided humanitarian assistance, and even military protection, for these people, whom he has visited personally.

Part of the leadership of these instigators also comes from abroad from Tigray and Oromo affiliates, with moneys funneled in to finance rebels and terrorists.

It is all of course political - who wants a strong Horn of Africa, with Israeli and Jewish interests so close by?

But, it is also existential (religious/Biblical), another era in Ethiopia where this Jerusalem on the Hill, becomes a land to sabotage.

I have written an article about this in June 2021

Ethiopia's Election - A Strong and United Ethiopia

Here is another article on the "overseas" influences, which got published in various Ethiopia-based online media: A Critique of the Film Faya Dayi by Jessica Beshir

Further down in the article I have a screen shot of a twitter page showing these external instigators (America-based, although there are many in Canada also).

I hope this gives you some idea. I think in very concise, simple terms, as I wrote above:

...it is also [existential] (religious/Biblical), another era in Ethiopia where this Jerusalem on the Hill, becomes a land to sabotage.

Kidist

Viva Mexico Mariachi

Viva Mexico Mariachi on Celebration Square [Photo By: KPA]

The Mariachi warmed up Mississauga yesterday at the LatinFest on Celebration Square.

Video from a previous show in Toronto - at Harbourfront Centre.