Karinaland River

  I Will Not Be Sad In This World   #2 This declaration is my every day mantra nowadays. 94-year-old Zaroohe – the protagonist of  I Will Not Be Sad In This   World , is a survivor of the Armenian Genocide (1914 – 18). In my 2001 film, she comes alive as gardener, fabulous cook, storyteller, mother, seamstress, grand- & great-grandmother, lover of music and life. She is my heroine. All my life, I had the good fortune of counting amazing elder women as close friends, several of them German-Jewish Holocaust survivors, now long gone. Remembering and honoring them is how I find  Trost , consolation in our times.  Yesterday, my friend Connie sends me pictures from a small town in Germany where she and her late mother Lucy are honored by the 500-year-old Gymnasium  (advanced high school) and the City of Nienburg.  90 years ago, Lucy was forced at age 20 to emigrate to save her life. Recently my lawyer warned me visiting my brother and sister in...

  When You Feel Afraid   When i feel afraid i become a hare at dusk small and white and soft exploring the fields of life learning to bolt, turn corners escaping fitful deadly dangers quickly recognizing helpers i nuzzle and restore   When you feel afraid i become an owl at sunset sailing silently through oaks scanning cool air and ground speedily i carry medicine to those in silenced need of swift miracles calmly sensing their despair i gather and embrace When i feel afraid i become a little girl at midnight tracing paw prints with my fingers counting stars as close friends of mine feeling insanely safe amidst explosions with invisible fierce feet i run and run abruptly stop, rendered helpless i remember and snuggle   When you feel afraid i become a raindrop before dawn letting myself fall and fall and fall along the way touching in with clouds breeze and branches, multiplied by sunrise gently i land on fragrant quince tree blossoms and on your cheek, languidly evap...

  “America, This Is an Old and Brutal Tyranny” Jamelle Bouie, opinion columnist for The New York Times since 2019, has written extensively on racial politics. Only 38 years-old, he knows that in order to navigate forward we have to know our past. Is America willing to remember its own history? It is up to us to do so, collectively and individually. For years, the books have been getting banned, currently the websites are getting scrubbed and cleaned of anything that has to do with justice and collective memory. Its old “sins” are coming to haunt America. Many white people refuse to remember, but Black people do, and see the parallels between back then, always, and now. Money, profit, greed, power, slavery, and bystanders, facilitating exactly what we see happening in 2025.  What is happening right now is not okay, and of course it was not okay back then. Never. Who apologized? Paid reparations? In order for a society to move forward, it needs to go back in history, remember, m...