Happy Monday!
And a happy fathers’ day to all fathers!
Today I started reading this crazy, crazy book called Nowhere Girl - A Memoir Of A Fugitive Childhood by Cheryl Diamond. I can’t seem to put it down. It’s about a family that’s supposedly on the run from the Interpol and travel around the world on fake passports, never lingering too long in any one place and always changing their identities. Isn’t that an exciting concept?
Except it could quite easily all be made up, and I don’t know the difference. It seems like a new book, so there aren’t that many interviews with the writer and the writer doesn’t seem to have much of an online presence beyond her website. I can’t find any information about her online, and the memoir so far is pretty hazy on when things take place. It’s all specified as location and her age during it, like “Kashmir, Age 4”, and I don’t know when anything happens, except she’s 13 during the Bush v Gore election.
Either way, it’s gripping and very suspenseful because it goes from a child deliberately being kept in the dark about everything to her slowly discovering the truth about her family. I can’t wait to get to the place where she figures it all out.
Onto our links!
This really nice animated book (with GIFs) that explains Apache Kafka like you’re five. I have used Kafka in the past, but watching it be explained like this is so calming and easy to absorb that I wish everything was explained like this.
This article about a protest by Indian carnival performers in Melbourne in 1889. There was a man named Charles Bastard who hired several performers from India for his “Museum of Indian Curiosities” show. They began touring Australia. Soon enough, he didn’t pay his employees, and when one of them committed suicide, he blamed it on their drinking. Then he and his partner were charged with embezzlement and went to prison, leaving all these Indian performers without money or a sponsor. The police didn’t treat them well when they went to complain either. They protested until they were allowed to be heard by a magistrate and asked for their return to India to be covered. The magistrate gave Mr. Bastard until Monday to arrange for it. But Monday came and went, and nothing happened, so they were back on the streets agitating for a resolution. Since their plight was reflecting poorly on the Victoria government and police, the government ate the cost of 11 pounds per person to send them back to India.
While distance might make this an entertaining story, this kind of issue is all too real for Indian immigrants around the world even today. There’s a Facebook group called SOS Global Indians where Indians facing immigration issues and questions in the USA post. So many heartbreaking stories there make you realize things haven’t changed all that much, and we are still in a precarious position on foreign soil. At least now we have numbers and the Internet and can band together, and even be helped by the government to get back home safe.The North American Field Herping Association is mad at the words ‘snek’, ‘danger noodle’, ‘nope rope’ and ‘shell boi’ and has banned them from being used on their official Facebook community. Apparently ‘danger noodle’ is too flippant and doesn’t convey the seriousness of a venomous snake.
But meanwhile, the Audobon society, after issuing guidelines on what is a birb, are now issuing a clarification on what constitutes a ‘borb’ and how it differs from a ‘floof’.
Weird world we live in.Artefact of the week: Ancient Greek terracotta vase shaped like a hedgehog. This vase is from the Cycladic era. I didn’t know what that was, and looked it up, and apparently that was an era where the Cycladic islands had their own culture. It lasted from 3000 BC to 2000BC by when it essentially merged into the Minoan civilization.