This is the blog for the Bentari Project.
Sunday, April 24, 2016
During the Spanish Civil War, we saw Hitler’s German air force studying the Art of War. It was at Guernica where a peaceful Basque community had little interest in Spain’s turbulent Civil War. In Guernica, European civilians were bombed from the air for the very first time. The Spanish version of Hitler was Generalissimo Francisco Franco.[1] Franco...
Read full postSaturday, April 09, 2016
In his popular series “The Twilight Zone,” Rod Serling [1] set the television table for us to feast upon the unknown. He saw to it that we dined in a state of fear, or anxiety or at the very least in a state of intense curiosity. He kept us awake on Friday nights with tales of aliens, demons, time warps, criminals and despots. But what Mr. Serling ...
Read full postMonday, March 28, 2016
Mae C. Jemison [1] is a Renaissance woman if there ever was one—a woman with many talents and a woman who utilizes them all. Family support boosted Mae to many milestones including onto the NASA launching pad on September 12, 1992 when she and six other astronauts were launched aboard the Endeavour for an eight-day mission in space. Not bad for a g...
Read full postFriday, March 25, 2016
These passages from Maya Angelou’s book [1] reveal two strong, good teachers—Sister Flowers and the author herself when she was a very young victim. In the depressed, Jim Crow town of Stamps, Sister Flowers was the black folks’ answer to the rich white women. She wasn’t rich, but she carried herself with such dignity that all the neighbors looked u...
Read full postTuesday, March 22, 2016
Thanks to author Patricia Kullberg [1] for her gripping novel, Girl in the River . [2] This book is riveting. Mae Rose is a poor, small-town girl, orphaned in her teens. Her life in Portland, Oregon in the 1940s and 50s becomes an inferno filled with darkness and evil. The Great Depression and rotten luck gang up on her as she slogs through deep an...
Read full postSaturday, March 19, 2016
Bentari has a nickname for everyone and for many animal friends in the forest. “Scheherezade” is a name he employed twice. He used it for his mother, Mirawami, and for the lioness that saved his life—the same lioness he had taunted when he was a child—the same lioness that chased him to his dying father. There is an excellent TV mini-series called ...
Read full postFriday, March 11, 2016
A Scotsman narrates our story Bentari . This choice was easy since my family shares Scottish heritage; and how does one include a Scot in an African tale, after all, if he isn’t telling it? His name is Max Farleigh and he lost an arm at the Battle of Narvik during the dark early days of World War II. Since he couldn’t fight the Germans in his condi...
Read full postThursday, March 10, 2016
People remember the “Bard of Ayrshire” Robert Burns for his “Auld Lang Syne” and for his long list of songs and poems. People remember him as the great poet of Scotland and for being one of the early founders of Romanticism. Robert Burns must also be remembered for his early inspiration of the human movement toward empathy, equality and compassion....
Read full postTuesday, March 08, 2016
Pete Seeger (1919-2014) is widely and rightly remembered for many of his peace songs like “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.” Please enjoy this simple song of Pete’s. Though lesser known, its lilting tune and seasonal theme are fitting for early springtime—a time of awakening and energizing—a time of prepa...
Read full postTuesday, March 01, 2016
We are honored to join a grassroots effort to save endangered animals from extinction. Hundreds of volunteers have each committed to gathering 1,000 petition signatures so that Oregon’s ballot in November, 2016 will include the “Wildlife Trafficking Prevention Act”. When Oregon voters approve this measure, we will be effectively shutting down illeg...
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