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Our incapacity to comprehend other cultures stems from our insistence on measuring things in our own terms.

quote by Arthur Erickson
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Soccer Under 20

soccer teams close to pa
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soccer teams england
soccer teams aurora co age 11
soccer teams for ren jacksonville fl
soccer teams for girls in atlanta
soccer teams for ren
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soccer teams from spain
soccer teams girls massachusetts
soccer teams in alberta
soccer teams for women in massachusetts
soccer teams for women n massachusetts
soccer teams for the facup 2007
soccer teams for toddlers in california
soccer teams from colombia and argentina
soccer teams for winfield
soccer teams games in sarasota florida
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soccer teams for s in delaware
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soccer teams for youth in newark
soccer teams in clifton new jersey
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soccer teams in brazil
soccer teams in around chicago
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soccer teams in central america
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soccer teams in chula vista
soccer teams in carrollton tx
soccer teams in canada
soccer teams in central valley
soccer teams in charlotte nc
soccer teams in athens greece
soccer teams in charlotte
soccer teams in chile
soccer teams in argintina
soccer teams in arizona
soccer teams in argentina and chile
soccer teams in argentina
soccer teams in concord mass
soccer teams in dundee il

[...] Read more

poem by Rwetewrt Erwtwer
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Eat It All

Of life and war!
Of a mighty malak with a rainbow on his head;
Seal up those things for many to learn.
They were meant for the future,
They were meant for us to learn;
So take up my love and eat it all day long.

Of a reed like a measuring rod,
Of the two olive trees;
But do let your mind be at peace always.
Of a weed like a measuring rope,
I am the one for you;
Of a seed like a measuring hope,
I really know what you want on this love;
And it is all about the love that we share,
Like the sweet food of my love to you.

To eat the sweet fruit of my love,
Like the little book beside you;
Of the feed which is like a measuring harveat,
Of the deed which is like a measuring vision,
But to heed like a measuring mission on this love;
Eat it all to satisfy yourself because,
Love is all that we share now.

poem by Edward Kofi Louis
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A Map Of Culture

Culture

Contents

What is Culture?

The Importance of Culture

Culture Varies

Culture is Critical

The Sociobiology Debate

Values, Norms, and Social Control

Signs and Symbols

Language

Terms and Definitions

Approaches to the Study of Culture

Are We Prisoners of Our Culture?

What is Culture?

I prefer the definition used by Ian Robertson: 'all the shared products of society: material and nonmaterial' (Our text defines it in somewhat more ponderous terms- 'The totality of learned, socially transmitted behavior. It includes ideas, values, and customs (as well as the sailboats, comic books, and birth control devices) of groups of people' (p.32) .

Back to Contents

[...] Read more

poem by Nyein Way
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Measure

are we measuring time
or is time measuring us?

how old is time? where is its
head and where's the tail?
its beginning if not the end?

does it go in a round or
in a straight path? does it
need space to realise
its own identity?

are we measuring time
or is time measuring us?

how old am i? where is the
head and tail of this state of
being, this consciousness?

is it longer than time? Is it as old
and large as the universe?

if everything becomes sterile
100 years on, earth will be
as quiet and red as mars
time as ever goes on, a
measure of the unviverse

will time be sleeping then
in the bossom of our consciousness?

or will we be sleeping in its bossom
instead, waiting to be resurrected,
a component of matter, of time?

a pendulum that goes to and fro,
to and fro, to help us get a grasp
of the universe and its workings

poem by John Tiong Chunghoo
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Essay on Psychiatrists

I. Invocation

It‘s crazy to think one could describe them—
Calling on reason, fantasy, memory, eves and ears—
As though they were all alike any more

Than sweeps, opticians, poets or masseurs.
Moreover, they are for more than one reason
Difficult to speak of seriously and freely,

And I have never (even this is difficult to say
Plainly, without foolishness or irony)
Consulted one for professional help, though it happens

Many or most of my friends have—and that,
Perhaps, is why it seems urgent to try to speak
Sensibly about them, about the psychiatrists.

II. Some Terms

“Shrink” is a misnomer. The religious
Analogy is all wrong, too, and the old,
Half-forgotten jokes about Viennese accents

And beards hardly apply to the good-looking woman
In boots and a knit dress, or the man
Seen buying the Sunday Times in mutton-chop

Whiskers and expensive running shoes.
In a way I suspect that even the terms “doctor”
And “therapist” are misnomers; the patient

Is not necessarily “sick.” And one assumes
That no small part of the psychiatrist’s
Role is just that: to point out misnomers.

III. Proposition

These are the first citizens of contingency.
Far from the doctrinaire past of the old ones,
They think in their prudent meditations

Not about ecstasy (the soul leaving the body)
Nor enthusiasm (the god entering one’s person)
Nor even about sanity (which means

Health, an impossible perfection)
But ponder instead relative truth and the warm

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Pinsky
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An Epidemic Of Melancholy Proportions

an epidemic of melancholy proportions
is sweeping through many societies countries
despair dejection sadness misery hopelessness
are recession downturn decline consequences

suicide globally haunts many countries cultures
suicide globally engulfs preys upon countries cultures

many countries cultures ethnic societies
never even developed coined a word for depression
yet globally according to recent studies
fifty percent of women suffer episodes of depression

yearly mainly
each at least
a single episode

as opposed
to only ten
percent of men

ask the question
is depression
an issue the world

should take seriously...

one million people a year
are cured permanently
one million people a year succeed
in their attempts at suicide

issue depression needs countries cultures to address
society wide ways to address negative mind problems
depression has become a diabolical mind field killer
when will we learn to honour all our human family?

poem by Terence George Craddock
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The Victories Of Love. Book II

I
From Jane To Her Mother

Thank Heaven, the burthens on the heart
Are not half known till they depart!
Although I long'd, for many a year,
To love with love that casts out fear,
My Frederick's kindness frighten'd me,
And heaven seem'd less far off than he;
And in my fancy I would trace
A lady with an angel's face,
That made devotion simply debt,
Till sick with envy and regret,
And wicked grief that God should e'er
Make women, and not make them fair.
That he might love me more because
Another in his memory was,
And that my indigence might be
To him what Baby's was to me,
The chief of charms, who could have thought?
But God's wise way is to give nought
Till we with asking it are tired;
And when, indeed, the change desired
Comes, lest we give ourselves the praise,
It comes by Providence, not Grace;
And mostly our thanks for granted pray'rs
Are groans at unexpected cares.
First Baby went to heaven, you know,
And, five weeks after, Grace went, too.
Then he became more talkative,
And, stooping to my heart, would give
Signs of his love, which pleased me more
Than all the proofs he gave before;
And, in that time of our great grief,
We talk'd religion for relief;
For, though we very seldom name
Religion, we now think the same!
Oh, what a bar is thus removed
To loving and to being loved!
For no agreement really is
In anything when none's in this.
Why, Mother, once, if Frederick press'd
His wife against his hearty breast,
The interior difference seem'd to tear
My own, until I could not bear
The trouble. 'Twas a dreadful strife,
And show'd, indeed, that faith is life.
He never felt this. If he did,
I'm sure it could not have been hid;
For wives, I need not say to you,

[...] Read more

poem by Coventry Patmore
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Take The Heat Off Me

Take the heat off me
Please take the heat off me
Yes Im burning
If you really lie and cheat
I dont want to meet your kind of terms no more
So take the heat off me
Please take the heat off me
Yes Im burning
Dont believe youre trying to make it
And I just cant keep on taking it no more
Dont mean to say you double-crossed me
But somehow I think that youve lost me
Maybe you werent even trying to see
Where I was or where I should be
And if youre just faking
Wed better start breaking away tonight
So take this fire from my heart tonight
So take the heat off me
Please take the heat off me
Yes Im burning
Dont believe youre trying to make it
And I just cant keep on taking it no more
Take the heat off me
Please take the heat off me
Yes Im burning
If you really lie and cheat
I dont want to meet your kind of terms no more
Dont mean to say you double-crossed me
But somehow I think that youve lost me
Maybe you werent even trying to see
Where I was or where I should be
And if youre just faking
Wed better start breaking away tonight
So take this fire from my heart tonight
So take the heat off me
Please take the heat off me
Take the heat off me
Please take the heat off me
Take the heat off me
Yes Im burning
If you really lie and cheat
I dont want to meet your kind of terms no more
So take the heat off me
Please take the heat off me
Take the heat off me
Please take the heat off me
Take the heat off me
Yes Im burning
If you really lie and cheat
I dont want to meet your kind of terms no more

[...] Read more

song performed by Boney M.
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The Cremona Violin

Part First

Frau Concert-Meister Altgelt shut the door.
A storm was rising, heavy gusts of wind
Swirled through the trees, and scattered leaves before
Her on the clean, flagged path. The sky behind
The distant town was black, and sharp defined
Against it shone the lines of roofs and towers,
Superimposed and flat like cardboard flowers.

A pasted city on a purple ground,
Picked out with luminous paint, it seemed. The cloud
Split on an edge of lightning, and a sound
Of rivers full and rushing boomed through bowed,
Tossed, hissing branches. Thunder rumbled loud
Beyond the town fast swallowing into gloom.
Frau Altgelt closed the windows of each room.

She bustled round to shake by constant moving
The strange, weird atmosphere. She stirred the fire,
She twitched the supper-cloth as though improving
Its careful setting, then her own attire
Came in for notice, tiptoeing higher and higher
She peered into the wall-glass, now adjusting
A straying lock, or else a ribbon thrusting

This way or that to suit her. At last sitting,
Or rather plumping down upon a chair,
She took her work, the stocking she was knitting,
And watched the rain upon the window glare
In white, bright drops. Through the black glass a flare
Of lightning squirmed about her needles. 'Oh!'
She cried. 'What can be keeping Theodore so!'

A roll of thunder set the casements clapping.
Frau Altgelt flung her work aside and ran,
Pulled open the house door, with kerchief flapping
She stood and gazed along the street. A man
Flung back the garden-gate and nearly ran
Her down as she stood in the door. 'Why, Dear,
What in the name of patience brings you here?

Quick, Lotta, shut the door, my violin
I fear is wetted. Now, Dear, bring a light.
This clasp is very much too worn and thin.
I'll take the other fiddle out to-night
If it still rains. Tut! Tut! my child, you're quite
Clumsy. Here, help me, hold the case while I -
Give me the candle. No, the inside's dry.

[...] Read more

poem by Amy Lowell
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In a Greek Amphitheatre: George Seferis, poet

Noon here in hot summer in this quarter-sphere of stepped stone;
the smell of herbs rolling down from the mountainside,
the light so strong that it seems to have bleached away all thought;
time is taking a siesta.

come sit with me here in this almost deserted amphitheatre
which has stood for more than two thousand years,
only the bees are quietly moving,
searching the flowers which grow between these huge blocks of stone
which someone quarried, someone brought here,
someone acted out the world upon, some many sat
and were moved to fear and tears;
someone ate olives, spat the pits between the blocks of stone;
now an olive tree bears witness,
its bleached roots like an arthritic climber,
splitting the stone blocks with the insistence of history.

‘Memory, wherever you touch it,
hurts’…

merciful gods might have removed these stones
with two thousand years of rain, of wind, of searing sun,
so that the insistence of history might not be
so painful to a Greek.

The only other figure in this huge amphitheatre -
you see him down there? In the white hat
and dark suit of summer cloth? He’s a poet;
but is his mind too, sitting in the audience? Or is he
on the stage? Is he
living the play; the hero with a tragic flaw,
the chorus commenting, the tragedy unfolding?

In Greek, the same word means martyr
and means witness.

He was born a Greek in a Greek colony;
at 22, the Turks flung them out;
he sailed in wine-dark seas of wars and occupations;
and when the sailor sailed into the port to take his place in his immortal court,
found Greece, not celebrating peace, but Greek fighting Greek;
the cruellest of wars.

It was not Odysseus but Greece itself
that wandering, had not yet come home;
the harbours boatless; silent the shepherd's flute;
the olive groves untended; hives deserted;
grapes that never tasted wine; figs that burst uneaten;
Olympia's grass, all silent and untrodden;
temples empty, marble columns

[...] Read more

poem by Michael Shepherd
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Paradise Lost: Book 06

All night the dreadless Angel, unpursued,
Through Heaven's wide champain held his way; till Morn,
Waked by the circling Hours, with rosy hand
Unbarred the gates of light. There is a cave
Within the mount of God, fast by his throne,
Where light and darkness in perpetual round
Lodge and dislodge by turns, which makes through Heaven
Grateful vicissitude, like day and night;
Light issues forth, and at the other door
Obsequious darkness enters, till her hour
To veil the Heaven, though darkness there might well
Seem twilight here: And now went forth the Morn
Such as in highest Heaven arrayed in gold
Empyreal; from before her vanished Night,
Shot through with orient beams; when all the plain
Covered with thick embattled squadrons bright,
Chariots, and flaming arms, and fiery steeds,
Reflecting blaze on blaze, first met his view:
War he perceived, war in procinct; and found
Already known what he for news had thought
To have reported: Gladly then he mixed
Among those friendly Powers, who him received
With joy and acclamations loud, that one,
That of so many myriads fallen, yet one
Returned not lost. On to the sacred hill
They led him high applauded, and present
Before the seat supreme; from whence a voice,
From midst a golden cloud, thus mild was heard.
Servant of God. Well done; well hast thou fought
The better fight, who single hast maintained
Against revolted multitudes the cause
Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms;
And for the testimony of truth hast borne
Universal reproach, far worse to bear
Than violence; for this was all thy care
To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds
Judged thee perverse: The easier conquest now
Remains thee, aided by this host of friends,
Back on thy foes more glorious to return,
Than scorned thou didst depart; and to subdue
By force, who reason for their law refuse,
Right reason for their law, and for their King
Messiah, who by right of merit reigns.
Go, Michael, of celestial armies prince,
And thou, in military prowess next,
Gabriel, lead forth to battle these my sons
Invincible; lead forth my armed Saints,
By thousands and by millions, ranged for fight,
Equal in number to that Godless crew
Rebellious: Them with fire and hostile arms

[...] Read more

poem by John Milton
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When To The Attractions Of The Busy World

WHEN, to the attractions of the busy world,
Preferring studious leisure, I had chosen
A habitation in this peaceful Vale,
Sharp season followed of continual storm
In deepest winter; and, from week to week,
Pathway, and lane, and public road, were clogged
With frequent showers of snow. Upon a hill
At a short distance from my cottage, stands
A stately Fir-grove, whither I was wont
To hasten, for I found, beneath the roof
Of that perennial shade, a cloistral place
Of refuge, with an unincumbered floor.
Here, in safe covert, on the shallow snow,
And, sometimes, on a speck of visible earth,
The redbreast near me hopped; nor was I loth
To sympathise with vulgar coppice birds
That, for protection from the nipping blast,
Hither repaired.--A single beech-tree grew
Within this grove of firs! and, on the fork
Of that one beech, appeared a thrush's nest;
A last year's nest, conspicuously built
At such small elevation from the ground
As gave sure sign that they, who in that house
Of nature and of love had made their home
Amid the fir-trees, all the summer long
Dwelt in a tranquil spot. And oftentimes,
A few sheep, stragglers from some mountain-flock,
Would watch my motions with suspicious stare,
From the remotest outskirts of the grove,--
Some nook where they had made their final stand,
Huddling together from two fears--the fear
Of me and of the storm. Full many an hour
Here did I lose. But in this grove the trees
Had been so thickly planted, and had thriven
In such perplexed and intricate array;
That vainly did I seek, beneath their stems
A length of open space, where to and fro
My feet might move without concern or care;
And, baffled thus, though earth from day to day
Was fettered, and the air by storm disturbed,
I ceased the shelter to frequent,--and prized,
Less than I wished to prize, that calm recess.
The snows dissolved, and genial Spring returned
To clothe the fields with verdure. Other haunts
Meanwhile were mine; till, one bright April day,
By chance retiring from the glare of noon
To this forsaken covert, there I found
A hoary pathway traced between the trees,
And winding on with such an easy line
Along a natural opening, that I stood

[...] Read more

poem by William Wordsworth
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It Does Not Have To Be This Way

Every culture tries to control, manipulate, shame, dominate the other culture, the dominate cultures today where the so called inferior cultures of the past, the so called inferiors to day where the dominate cultures of the past in many or most cases, in their region or in their portion of their continent. This is what individuals do to one another. This is how we are habituated on many levels, but it does not have to be this way. Believe in your self, face this tendency of humanity that we need to grow out of, defend your self from this, rise without putting others down. Weed out dysfunctional patterns of relating, of being that you picked up from your family.

poem by Michael Kavuoti
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Ordinary People

Ordinary people just dont comprehend
Ordinary people just dont seem to comprehend
The thing you feel they dont even know about
Cut yourself, that never did you no good
You cut yourself, that never did you no good
Nobody watching you, you gotta take care of yourself
Real thing....
When I came down your avenue
Blew you every
Blew you every which way
When I came down your avenue
Bloo hoo hoo you ever which way
Nobody watching you, you gotta take care of yourself
Ordinary people they just dont seem to comprehend
No they dont
Ordinary, everyday people just dont, just dont seem to comprehend
No they dont
Then you feel they dont, they dont, they dont even
Even, even know, even know about..

song performed by Van Morrison
Added by Lucian Velea
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Sit

Sit.
Don't you fidget.
Listen for a bit,
Before you quit it.

If you sit.
And do not fidget,
There is something you may hear...
To even get it.

You may comprehend by listening,
To what is said and mentioned...
If you sit,
And do not fidget...
You may comprehend by listening,
To what is said and mentioned.

If you sit.
And do not fidget,
There is something you may hear...
To even get it.

Sit.
Don't you fidget.
Listen for a bit,
Before you quit it.

You may comprehend by listening,
To what is said and mentioned.
You may comprehend by listening,
To what is said and mentioned...
If you sit.
And do not fidget,
There is something you may hear...
To even get it.

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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August

THERE WERE four apples on the bough,
Half gold half red, that one might know
The blood was ripe inside the core;
The colour of the leaves was more
Like stems of yellow corn that grow
Through all the gold June meadow’s floor.

The warm smell of the fruit was good
To feed on, and the split green wood,
With all its bearded lips and stains
Of mosses in the cloven veins,
Most pleasant, if one lay or stood
In sunshine or in happy rains.

There were four apples on the tree,
Red stained through gold, that all might see
The sun went warm from core to rind;
The green leaves made the summer blind
In that soft place they kept for me
With golden apples shut behind.

The leaves caught gold across the sun,
And where the bluest air begun,
Thirsted for song to help the heat;
As I to feel my lady’s feet
Draw close before the day were done;
Both lips grew dry with dreams of it.

In the mute August afternoon
They trembled to some undertune
Of music in the silver air;
Great pleasure was it to be there
Till green turned duskier and the moon
Coloured the corn-sheaves like gold hair.

That August time it was delight
To watch the red moons wane to white
’Twixt grey seamed stems of apple-trees;
A sense of heavy harmonies
Grew on the growth of patient night,
More sweet than shapen music is.

But some three hours before the moon
The air, still eager from the noon,
Flagged after heat, not wholly dead;
Against the stem I leant my head;
The colour soothed me like a tune,
Green leaves all round the gold and red.

I lay there till the warm smell grew

[...] Read more

poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Ponnaga

Placenta night gathered
Thickness as mucous
On that unlighted lane
There on that rain-soaked lane
I chanced upon them scattered
And gleaming bright white
In the pools of light the car threw up
On the rain-drenched tar-
Five petals with long stems
Under a tree that still sent
A shower whenever the leaves willed
I pulled my car aside
And rushed to meet them
To gather a forgotten childhood for once
One two three…
The petals coated with damp mud
And the yellowishgreen stems
Hidden by the dark tar
Queerly exuding a forty year old perfume
Gathered once upon a time
In course of an unblemished childhood
How immaculate naive hands
Wove plaits with the stems
Coated in unadulterated dirt!

They looked forlorn through the night
And by morning withered
The mud still clinging…

12 Nov 2010
21.40hrs

poem by Indira Babbellapati
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The Plea Of The Midsummer Fairies

I

'Twas in that mellow season of the year
When the hot sun singes the yellow leaves
Till they be gold,—and with a broader sphere
The Moon looks down on Ceres and her sheaves;
When more abundantly the spider weaves,
And the cold wind breathes from a chillier clime;—
That forth I fared, on one of those still eves,
Touch'd with the dewy sadness of the time,
To think how the bright months had spent their prime,

II

So that, wherever I address'd my way,
I seem'd to track the melancholy feet
Of him that is the Father of Decay,
And spoils at once the sour weed and the sweet;—
Wherefore regretfully I made retreat
To some unwasted regions of my brain,
Charm'd with the light of summer and the heat,
And bade that bounteous season bloom again,
And sprout fresh flowers in mine own domain.

III

It was a shady and sequester'd scene,
Like those famed gardens of Boccaccio,
Planted with his own laurels evergreen,
And roses that for endless summer blow;
And there were fountain springs to overflow
Their marble basins,—and cool green arcades
Of tall o'erarching sycamores, to throw
Athwart the dappled path their dancing shades,—
With timid coneys cropping the green blades.

IV

And there were crystal pools, peopled with fish,
Argent and gold; and some of Tyrian skin,
Some crimson-barr'd;—and ever at a wish
They rose obsequious till the wave grew thin
As glass upon their backs, and then dived in,
Quenching their ardent scales in watery gloom;
Whilst others with fresh hues row'd forth to win
My changeable regard,—for so we doom
Things born of thought to vanish or to bloom.

[...] Read more

poem by Thomas Hood
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A Place With No Name

“They tell me you are wicked and I believe them…”
— Carl Sandburg, “Chicago”

This is place with no name,
an imagined ideal, nostalgia
wearing bib overalls, chewing
grass stems, herding cattle,
shearing creamy black-faced
lambs. We carry buckets full
of myths and great expectations.

She hungers for the flavor of buffalo, longs for fresh bones, cougar tracks, wolf dens, the scorch of rapid flames escorting one season into the next, total exchange of life for life, of death for hope.
This is neither fairytale nor ancient pastoral, neither romanticism nor barefoot babes—It is Kinsella’s antipastoral in America.
It is coyotes and coydogs lurking behind walls of fiery thistle, luring pups through horseweeds to razor sharp traps with whimpers and pledges of friendship.

I have seen the earth swallow her own children.
I have seen the sun drink until there was nothing left for the land, until the sunflowers hung their heads in shame and wept dry black tears.

I hear nightly incantations of this place, it howls sober songs—I hear the hollow sounds of owls that warn, the cry of cold winds that begin and end every year—
The indifferent frogs chorus through lightening and spring snow—they think only of their children.
I feel her opening up to swallow again—she baits the trap with illusions of splendor, with promises she will not keep—her hunger never satisfied.
She is my grandmother, my mother, your mother, our sister, the apparition from whom we can hide no better than the prince of Denmark. She speaks in a strange language. We lean in to listen—the bait.

This place still has no name.
The nostalgia rusts.
No one wears overalls anymore.
You must know what the owl means.

The old children throw their weapons to the surface in the wake of silver blades, in the bed of that ash which still remains, in the bed where life meets itself—the old women break their dishes against her surface.
The new children cast themselves into her arms—momentarily quench her thirst with tears—they wait for her to yawn.
Cattle are raised in muddy lots. Pigs never see the grass, never the sun, just grated floors and the pretentious hands that mock her grace.

I have seen the red of factories flow through creeks into ponds and wells. I have seen them celebrate their victories and she will not call out to them—she rejects their bitterness. They are sleeping pills, bad drugs.
I see a dead thing on the road. I know the ringed tail, the hoofed leg, the long snout, the white-gray fur, the domestication gone wrong. The vulture is grateful for our mistakes.

The indifferent frogs sing.
Still. The grass has cancer.
We only think of lambs on Easter.
These buckets are getting too heavy.
I cannot tell a lie.

I killed the tree, used it for books that I bought and never read, used it for walls I take for granted, for heat I could have lived without.
I ate the pig, fed the cattle to my children—we used their bodies for shoes, hats, manufactured food for feral cats and roaming hounds.
I leaned in to hear her faint voice whisper. I tried to kiss her, pulled away when she drew me near, stretched toward her again to hear a family secret.
I fed the vultures a skunk, a raccoon, an armadillo, and two cats that I threw into her long weeds.

I chew her poisonous stems, flirt with her cancer, taunt and dare it, engage it in a war where there can be no victor but her, in a battle I expect to win.

We carry buckets full of
myths and great expectations.

[...] Read more

poem by Jane L. Carman
Added by Poetry Lover
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The history of man is a graveyard of great cultures that came to catastrophic ends because of their incapacity for planned, rational, voluntary reaction to challenge.

quote by Erich Fromm
Added by Lucian Velea
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