Cultural Blackout

Liana and I decided that we want to introduce Peter to elements from many cultures as he grows up. Over the weekend, we were discussing how to celebrate African culture. We do have a CD of African music that Peter loves, but not much else.

I realized during this conversation that I know very little about historical African culture, even relative to what I know about Europe, Asia and the Americas. (A more accurate way to put that would be "any African culture", since I know there are significant differences in different areas, but I know little about any of them.) She asked me what people eat. My first thought was "not much, lately", and I'm still not sure, other than a vague idea that it's rice-based. She asked if there were any movies we could watch, and the best either of us could come up with was The Lion King. I could think of plenty more good and great films about the continent - Hotel Rwanda, Shake Hands With The Devil, The Constant Gardner, Lord of War, The Battle of Algiers, Blood Diamond - but none that I would consider a celebration of the culture (or appropriate for young children, for that matter).

Why is that? Certainly there are plenty of films that portray other cultures unfavorably, but there are also plenty that celebrate historical Europe, Asia and America. It seems that most of the stories about Africa are still focused on white people going in and destroying everything, rather than the positive things about the natives of the continent. Is it just that U.S. audiences don't want to be reminded of the cultural traits that have all but vanished due to European and American interference on the continent?

I do intend on reading more about Africa (and probably Oceana too, an area where it seems there's just not a lot either way in U.S. pop culture), but it still bothers me a little bit that there's not really an equivalent to, say, Braveheart or Dances With Wolves or Hero that doesn't feature lions as the main characters. I'm definitely open to suggestions; if I'm missing something, let me know!

The Story So Far...

Hello, Internet. This is my second attempt at a blog; the original one still exists here as of this writing and for the foreseeable future. This is going to be somewhat of a repost of my first entry there, just because I think first posts should give background on the author, but for the few of you who followed that other blog, I don't plan on reposting anything else. (And thanks for your support!)

My name is Jeremy. I'm from a suburb of Syracuse, NY called Chittenango, the birthplace of such notable folk as L. Frank Baum and Dave Mirra. I have a BA in Communication (journalism concentration), which was mostly a huge mistake. I currently live in a suburb of Rochester, NY with my wife and one year old son. If you want to know more about them, you should head here.

I'm the taller one.

I work for a small consulting firm as a technical writer, a profession I've often described as the Rodney Dangerfield of white-collar jobs. I aspire to be paid to write fiction full-time someday. This blog is mostly geared toward helping me achieve that goal by motivating me to write more.

Besides subjecting you periodically to my poems and short stories, this blog will mostly be non-fiction entries about my life - the usual bloggy stuff. My hobbies, interests and beliefs are disparate, so topics will vary a fair amount. I'm a practicing Christian, but fit few of the stereotypes associated with that in America (e.g., I voted for Kerry and Obama, and I think science is cool). I enjoy games; recently I've started playing video games more frequently again, and I also enjoy niche-market board games, and am working on designing a few of the latter at present. Politics interest me, and by "interest" I mostly mean "infuriate", but that's true of almost everyone I know who's paying attention. I'm an occasional songwriter and general music appreciator, and have mostly switched from playing guitar to drums due to some nerve issues in my wrists. I enjoy filmmaking both as an art form and as entertainment; I've had a short film receive positive marks after a film festival screening and I once hosted a consecutive screening of every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

One of my favorite parts of writing is coming up with titles for the pieces. One of my least favorite parts about having a general blog is coming up with a title for it. I was never really happy with my last title, and so I spent a lot of time thinking about what I was really doing here. I thought about mail, and how a blog is essentially a series of letters to everyone (or no one). So that's my title.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see you again soon.