Remember a Hallmark card when you carry enough to send the very best. The Hallmark greeting cards bring you Deborah Carr in James M. Berry's quality streak on the Hallmark Playhouse. This week Hallmark brings you Hollywood's greatest stars in outstanding stories chosen by one of the world's best known authors. The distinguished novelist, Mr. James Hilton. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is James Hilton. Very glad to be back with you all and to welcome you to our new season of the Hallmark Playhouse. Our fourth year, by the way, which is what I'd call a pretty long run. Tonight, our opening night, we present a radio version of Quality Street by James Berry, one of the great names of the theatre. A play that has delighted millions all over the world since its first performance almost half a century ago. You know, when a play lives as long as this, there must be a reason. And in Quality Street it isn't hard to find, for the play has much of that strange charm that Berry distills into all his work. And incidentally, the play's first performance wasn't in Scotland or even England, but in Toledo, Ohio, where it was produced by the great Charles Proman. To be our star tonight, we have most appropriately chosen one of Hollywood's most enchanting actresses, Deborah Carr. And now here is Frank Goss from the Makers of Hallmark Cards. All of us in the Hallmark family, the Makers of Hallmark Cards, the Vine stores where you purchase Hallmark Cards, and the cast of the Hallmark Playhouse, are happy to be back with you for another season. We hope you'll like these radio adaptations of Fine Stories.  And hope when you want to remember your friends and loved ones, you'll remember Hallmark Cards. Our star tonight, Deborah Carr, will next be seen with Robert Taylor and the cast of Thousands in the forthcoming Metro Golden Mayor Technicolor production, Co Vadis. And now Hallmark Playhouse, presenting James M. Berry's Quality Street, starring Deborah Carr. Very tiny street in a very tiny town. At the moment flakes of snow are falling discreetly. Gentlemen are an event in Quality Street. But see, there goes the recruiting sergeant to remind us that we are in the period of the Napoleonic Wars. This room in this house in Quality Street is done entirely in blue and white. It's the home of Miss Phoebe and Miss Susan Flosso. Phoebe is our heroine. Miss Susan might have been our heroine 10 years ago. But alas, she's already tucked her girlish ringlets inside her cap. She's alone now in the blue and white room, sewing garments for brave soldiers far away fighting the Corsican ogre. Susan! Oh Susan, Phoebe, what's happened? My dear sister, you're positively trembling. Susan, I have just talked to a certain individual. Phoebe? Yes, Valentine Brown. My love. Oh Susan, I passed him on the street and he closed one of his eyes at me, then quickly opened it. How dashing! Then he said, I have something I am wishful to tell you, Miss Phoebe. I shall call and tell you this afternoon. Phoebe! And I think it has all happened in a single year. And he is so amusing for a physician. I am thankful, Susan, that I too have a sense of humour. I am exceedingly funny at times, am I not Susan? All exceedingly? Susan, if I should marry, you must come with us. Oh my dear, I could not leave this room. My lovely blue and white room. It is my husband. Susan, I have something distressing to tell you. You are lying. You know, Mr. Brown advised us how to invest half of our money. Well, I know it gives us eight per cent, so why it should do so, I cannot understand. Susan, all that money is lost. Somebody seems to have absconded. But, Mr. Brown, I have not told him yet, for he will think it was his fault. You see, my dear, we have very little left, so you must live with us. Phoebe, I have a wedding gift for you. Oh, not yet. Been ready for a long time. I began it when you were not ten years old, and I was a young woman. I meant it for myself, Phoebe. I had hope. His name is William. But I must have been too unattractive, my love. Sweetest, dearest Susan. What was it? It was a wedding gown, my dear. Even playing women, Phoebe, we can't help it. When we are young, we have romantic ideas, just as if we were pretty. And so the wedding gown was never used. Here. Here, Phoebe dear. Oh. Oh, how sweet. How beautiful. Oh, but Susan, I could not wear it. I wear it, my love. And the tears it was sown this long ago will all turn into smiles on my Phoebe's wedding day. Oh, Susan, I suddenly remembered something. I think he kissed me once. You think? That evening a week ago, when he was squaring me home from the concert. It was raining, and my face was wet. He said that was why he did it. Oh, Phoebe, before he had offered. I fear it was most unladylike. So dashing, so imperious. Come in. Fine, Mr. Valentine Brown. What a surprise. Miss Susan, how do you do, ma'am? Hey, Miss Phoebe, though we've met today already, I insist on shaking hands with you again. Oh, it's so dashing. And my other friends, I hope I find them in health. The spinet, ma'am, seems quite herself today. I trust the ottoman past a good night. We are all quite well, sir. May I sit on this chair, Miss Phoebe? I know Miss Susan likes me to break her chair. Indeed, sir, I do. The remark was humorous, was it not? Oh, how you see through me, Miss Phoebe. Oh, I have something really dashing to tell you today. Oh, excuse me. You're not going, Miss Susan. Oh, I must. Then I shall tell you alone, Miss Phoebe. But it is you who first put it into my head. Oh, I hope not. Your demure eyes flashed so every time the war was mentioned. Mr. Brown, what is it you have to tell us? I haven't listed. I'll leave tomorrow for my barracks. This must be goodbye, Miss Phoebe. You have done very bravely, Mr. Brown. These are stunning times. Here's but half a man who stays at home. I shall pray for you, Mr. Brown. Thank you. And when I think of home, I shall think of this blue and white room. End of you, Miss Phoebe. For you have been to me like a quiet, old-fashioned garden, full of the flowers that Englishmen love best. The daisy that stands for innocence, and the hyacinth for constancy, and the modest violet and the rose. When I'm far away, ma'am, I shall often think of Miss Phoebe's pretty soul, which is her garden, and shut my eyes and walk in it. I'll call Susan. She'll wish to bid you Godspeed, sir. Susan, dear, Mr. Brown wishes to say goodbye. Goodbye? He's off to the wars. Am I not the ideal recruit, ma'am? A man without a wife, a mother, or a sweetheart? No sweetheart? Who would have me? Well, I must be off. God bless you both. We shall miss you very much, Mr. Brown. Oh, there's one little matter. That investment I advised you to make, I am happy it has turned out so well. But, Susan, accept our grateful thanks. Miss Phoebe, a last look at the garden, and this little blue and white room may it be unchanged when I come back. Goodbye. Put away the wedding gown, Susan. Why didn't you let me tell him about the money? So that he might offer out of pity? How are we to live? I think, Susan, we shall open a little school. You, a school mist. Phoebe of the ringlet, I shall hide the ringlets away in a cap like yours, Susan. And I shall try to look staid, and to grow old quickly. Ten years have passed in Polity Street. The blue and white room is now a school room with blackboards and globes and children. And the lady in the cap is Miss Phoebe. Though perhaps you don't recognize her, for she looks not ten years older, but twenty. When the school day is over, we know that she has the headache. Phoebe, yes, Susan? If a herring and a half costs three heavens, how many for eleven pins? Eleven. William Smith says it is fifteen. And he's such a big boy, do you think I ought to contradict him? May I say there are differences of opinion about it? No one can be sure. He is eleven. I once worked it out with real herring. Oh, Susan, next term we must teach algebra. What is algebra exactly? Is it those three corner things? It is x minus y equals a plus b and things like that. And all the time you're saying they are equal, you feel in your heart, why should they be? Oh, it's the music for tonight's ball. It's not every year that there is a waterloo to celebrate. He'll be at the ball tonight. I think we've not seen him for ten years. Ten years. Now, who can that be? Captain Brown. Oh, dear. I hope I do not intrude, but I wish to report myself home again. Miss Susan, how good to be home. Where is Miss Phoebe? Phoebe of the Ringlets. I do not believe I know this other lady. Welcome home, Captain Brown. Miss Phoebe, is that you? Yes. I have changed, Captain Brown. We are both holders, Miss Phoebe. I have come to invite you to the ball. No, Captain Brown. You see that my dancing days are over. Oh, no. We are proud of you. You have been such a brave soldier. I believe ladies who keep a school are also brave. My respects to you both. I pray I may call for tea soon. Any day, Captain. Forgive my speedy departure, but I must report to my superior officer concerning my arrival home. Dear ladies. Susan, he thought I was old. I'm only 30. Why does 30 seem so much more than 29?  It is what gentlemen prefer. If there were a sufficient number of these geese to go around, no woman of sense would ever get a husband. I know just how they talk, too.  That is not ladylike, Phoebe. I'm tired of being ladylike. Ten years ago I went to bed a young girl and I woke up with this cap on my head. Phoebe, Phoebe. What has become of that young girl? Sometimes I hear her weeping and she cries out to me, oh, where are my pretty curls? Where is my youth? My youth. The clock and the calendar are with all of us, Phoebe dear. No. If I were to dress young again and put the candles back into these eyes that were bright once and coax back my curls hidden under this cap, listen, the music is calling, Susan. I will go to the ball and celebrate Waterloo. But dare you do it?  I will not go to the ball as that school teacher. I am not myself tonight. I am, let me see, I am my niece. Miss Livy, we shall create a niece for ourselves. Oh, Phoebe, and I shall flirt and pout and tickle like all the other geese. Oh, Captain Brown, the dashing Captain Brown, I should not go down again. Oh, Susan, we shall tear up the calendar and stop the hands of the clock for one beautiful night. At the moment we'll return to the second act of James M. Berry's quality straight starring Deborah Carr. You know, there's a fascinating history surrounding the word hallmark that has its parallel in the public's preference for hallmark cards today. It started about eight centuries ago in the days of King Edward III when the silversmiths of England first grouped together to make articles of silver and gold. The men worked in long buildings called guild halls. In time they developed a close group feeling and proudly put the mark of their hall on each piece they made. The hallmark of a particular group became famous and respected in direct proportion to the skill and artistic abilities of the people who made it. So whenever people want to judge the worth of a silver piece they look on the back for the hallmark. Today there is another form of hallmark that discriminating people look for. It's the hallmark on the back of a greeting card. That's because people have found that this hallmark also has a meaning. It represents the skill of craftsmen who for years have designed greeting cards with but one thought in mind. To give you a card you'll be proud to send and one that will be received with pleasure. Because the message is presented with the good taste you demand of anything that bears your personal signature. That's why the hallmark on the back of a card means you cared enough to send the very best. And now back to James Hilton and the second act of James M. Berry's quality straight starring Deborah Carr. Music of the ball that lured Miss Phoebe, that and a good natured moon. Indeed Miss Susan and Miss Phoebe seem to have rushed forth upon a career of crime. For Miss Phoebe is masquerading as the young coquette Miss Libby and the dashing Captain Valentine Brown whirls her around as the music makes the very air dance. I believe you are the same, Mr. Brown, my dear aunt, speak of. Why not, ma'am? Why, you still dance. Still? Well, as for you, my dear Miss Libby, you could never deny that you are Miss Phoebe's niece. The likeness, even the voice. Ah, sir, everyone says that and indeed it is no compliment. It would have been a compliment once. Oh, Lord Captain Brown, you are the degree. Oh, Captain, I must join my chaperone, dear aunt Susan.  Your servant, Miss Libby, I shall await the next dance.  Ah, Captain. Susan, are you happy, my love? Every dance with the dashing Captain Brown.  You still care for him, Phoebe. No, Susan, no. I did love him all those years. But oh, tonight Libby found out in a short hour that he is not noble. Susan, there has been a declaration in his eyes all evening.  You're much too old for me. Libby, how can you be so cruel? Because he has taken from me the one great glory that is in a woman's life. Not a man's love she can do without that. But her own, dear, sweet love for him. He is unworthy of my love. That is why I can be so cruel. Here comes your dashing Captain to claim you for the dance. Ah, and I must be Miss Libby again.  I want to be back in quiet quality street. It is really pleasant to know that I shall wake up tomorrow slightly middle-aged. Little Miss Libby, my dance. La, Captain. There's something I've been wanting to tell you all evening. Oh? Miss Libby, you must learn that it is not the flaunting flower in love. It is the modest violet. And when you were acquainted with what love really is... Oh, what do you know of love, sir? Well, I am in love with a lady who is once very like you. Not... It is your Aunt Libby whom I love. You're making sport of her. No, Miss Libby. You certainly don't mean tired, unattractive Libby. All the beautiful memories of my life center around her. Memories. That is the Libby you love, the bright girl of the past, not the school mistress in her cab. Fair you, wrong me, for I have discovered that the school mistress is the noblest Miss Phoebe of them all. Tell me, Miss Libby, do you think there is any hope for me? I know this. There was a man whom Miss Phoebe loved long ago, but he did not love her.  He kissed her once, but he forgot about it. I suppose men are like that. No, Miss Libby, men are not like that. I am a very average man, but thank God I am not like that. It was you. Did Miss Phoebe tell you that? Yes. She told me all about it. It was raining and her face was wet. You said you did it because her face was wet. I had quite forgotten. She remembers. I must win her. Miss Libby, with your help... My help? I have not helped. I tried to spoil it all. You mean that you tried to flirt with me, I know. And that is one of the things that has made me love her even more. Sir? You so resemble her as she was. For an hour, Miss Libby, you bewitched me, but it was only for an hour. How like at first, but soon it was. How unlike. I once called her a garden. A quiet, loving garden. That is the woman I wish to marry. Excuse me, Captain Brown. I must go now. I'm afraid I feel a bit faint. Certainly, ma'am. Susan. Oh, Susan. My dear, you're crying. That terrible thing, as he said to you. Terrible, glorious. Susan, it's Phoebe he loves. Not Libby. He loves me. Me, Phoebe. Phoebe, you cannot send me away again. I wrote and begged you not to come. How can you do that? Miss Phoebe, let me take care of you. No, Mr. Brown. Please, sir. I beg you no more. It is ended. I shall gradually turn into a grumpy, crusty, bottle-nosed old bachelor. Oh, Mr. Brown. Miss Phoebe, there are tears trembling on your eyes. No, Mr. Brown. No, there are not. You have shaken your head so emphatically, Miss Phoebe, that two girlish ringlets which seem to belong to Miss Libby have peaked out from your school, Mistress's cat. Oh, oh dear. Speaking of Miss Libby, where is she, Miss Phoebe? Oh, ill. She's quite ill. I desire to see you, Miss Libby. Oh, impossible. Why, on a physician? Perhaps I can cure her. Perhaps I can cure her for good. I'll confer with my sister. Oh, Susan, we must get rid of Libby and immediately. We can't, dear. All the busybodies up and down the street, they would have to see her leave. Well, quickly go in and tell Mr. Brown that Miss Libby is feeling better and we'll see him immediately. Yes, yes. Mr. Brown, I'm happy to inform you that Miss Libby is feeling better and we'll see you immediately. I shall be happy to see the poor endless. Ah, here she is. Lovely Libby of the ringlets. Yes. La, the bashing physician. Sit here, dear child. How do you think she's looking, Captain Brown? She will recover. By the way, where is Miss Phoebe? She hopes you will excuse her. She's taken the opportunity of airing the bedroom. Of course. Captain Brown, will it be you too, Phoebe? Miss Libby, I have a cure for you. The air of Quality Street is not good for you. My medical advice is that you leave for home today. Immediately, in fact. Leave? As it happens, my carriage is standing at your door. There's some wraps for her, Miss Susan. Blankets, a whole roll of them. Blankets? If you won't give them to me, perhaps Miss Phoebe will. No, go to the bedroom. Ah, Miss Phoebe. Still airing the room, I see. Two blankets rolled together will be fine. Thank you, dear Miss Phoebe. Good heavens. Who's he talking to? Oh, dear. Now, Miss Libby, we shall carry you into my carriage. Thus. And thus. Phoebe, he's rolling the blankets up to look like a person and carrying it out to the carriage. Say goodbye to you, dear aunts, Miss Libby. No, no, do not strain your tinkly little voice. I shall do it for you. So that all of Quality Street can hear. Goodbye, dear Aunt Susan. Goodbye, dear Aunt Phoebe. The poor, invalid Libby wishes you and all the ladies on Quality Street farewell. Libby? Susan. He is putting that bundle of blankets into the carriage and is ordering it to drive away. He is a fine gentleman. Oh, he is a fine doctor. He has cured us of the worst malady of our lives. The Libby epidemic. He's coming back. Oh, how can I face him? Oh, Susan. Once I thought he merely dashing. Then I lost my poor woman's love and faith in him. No, I know.  Oh, dear. Are my ringlets inside my capital out? Am I Libby or Phoebe?  May I come in again? Oh, thank me, Captain Brown. Miss Phoebe. Yes? It is not raining. But your face is wet.  Miss Libby will never trouble you again. I have sent her home. Oh, sir. How can you invent such a story for us? I did not. I invented it for all the nosy ladies who watched me from their windows. You're not angry? I am furious. Can't you tell from the ferocious gleam in my heart? Oh, Mr. Brown. Dear Phoebe Throssel, will you become Phoebe Throssel Brown? No, you'll know everything. But you must know the most important thing, that I am not a gardener. I know everything, ma'am. Accept that. Sir, the dictates of my heart enjoin me to accept your too flattering offer. Come to my arms, Miss Phoebe. Oh, dear Mr. Brown. Yes, ma'am. Kisses and two. A few moments ago, I mentioned that hallmark cards are designed with but one thought in mind. If you give a card, you'll be proud to send, and one that will be received with pleasure. You may wonder why all this effort and insistence on quality for something as inexpensive as a greeting card. But did you ever stop to think that of all the purchases we make, a greeting card is something we buy only for others, never for ourselves? In a sense, it's like a gift. For ourselves, we might be content with less, but for others, we want it to reflect the very best. That's why the makers of hallmark cards are so particular about the design, the color, the colors, and the words that go inside a hallmark card. They know you want a card to represent you, your good taste in color and design, and your thoughts and feelings expressed in the right words. And it's because hallmark cards are made to such high standards that the hallmark on the back has come to mean so much to so many people. It's like the label on the box from the fine store where you select a gift. Like sterling on silver, it's a mark of distinction quickly recognized.  Here again is James Hilton. Deborah Carr, we certainly enjoyed your performance as Miss Phoebe tonight. Thank you for being with us. An invitation to appear on hallmark playhouses always exciting, Mr. Hilton. And to be asked for the premiere show of the season, well, that's one of those special occasions Frank Goss talks about...  It certainly keeps you traveling, don't you? Yes, but I love it. History has always fascinated me. No matter how much you study it, you're always learning something you didn't know. For instance, when Frank Goss told me about the origin of hallmark tonight, I didn't know the name actually was a combination of mark and hall. Of course, I've always known the name hallmark means the finest in greeting cards. It seems we agree on just about everything, Deborah. So I'm sure you'll agree that our choice of the story for next week's hallmark playhouses is the most timely one. It's the life story of the man who wrote the Star Spangled Banner, Francis Scott King. Oh, how fascinating. We sing his song so often, and yet know so little of the man himself. That's true. And since next week is the 137th anniversary of the writing of the Star Spangled Banner, we thought it a fitting time to tell the great story. And to play the role of Francis Scott King, we are indeed happy to welcome back a star who has become one of the hallmark playhouse favorites, Robert Young. Our hallmark playhouses every Thursday, our producer director is Bill Gay. Our music is composed and conducted by David Rose, and our story tonight was dramatized by Lawrence and Lee. Until next Thursday then, this is James Hilton saying, Good night. When Hallmark Playhouse returns to present Robert Young in FS Key Smith's story of Francis Scott King. And the week following, Anthony hopes the prisoner of Zenda is starring Douglas Fairbanks. And the week after that, Muriel Elwood's Web of Destiny on the Hallmark Playhouse. This is the CDS Week. This is KMBC, Kansas City, Missouri.


So we have gathered to take a retrospective view of subaltern studies and to discuss what that series and the ideas I'm allowing it may have equate to us. Thirty years have gone by since the first body of subaltern studies came out in 1981 granted to Guha the founding editor of the series having taken up in 1980 in his position in what was then the South Asian history section. In the research school of Pacific nation studies at this university. Anthony Lowe as you just heard had invited him to move to Canberra. Guha stopped by in Calcutta on his way to this country and I was in the city doing research for my A.A. and your doctoral thesis. Guha's visit created quite a stir among the left wing lecturers of the series. I had just been to England and spent a few days with Guha in Sussex discussing the project of subaltern studies in which David Hardiman, David Arnold two of Anthony and Ramajit's next students and Shahid Amin and Gyan Pandey from Oxford then they were Guha's acquaintances from Delhi from 1970 when he spent a year in medicine. They were already involved in this conversation which was to become subaltern studies. I had carried the exciting news of this new thing called subaltern studies to friends in Calcutta particularly Gautam Bhadra and Partha Chayadiji. Both of whom Guha spent much time with on his way to Australia and we used to joke amongst ourselves that Guha's ways of, he used to use the word inducting somebody in subaltern studies was always reminiscent of an old communist party boy who was going around recruiting future members for the party. So Bhadra and Gautam also became part of the collective and thus began the journey of the project that looked on itself at first mainly as an intervention in Indian, not even South Asia in those days. Of course others joined subaltern studies later, Sumit Sartar who also eventually registered strong public disagreement with subaltern studies, Guha's respect, Gyan Pratash, Suzy Tharyun, Shail Mayaram, Rajesh Karyya and MSS Pandya. 12 or 13 volumes, I forget exactly how many later, the group was formally disbanded in 2008 when we gifted our royalty incomes to the centre for the study of developing societies in Delhi from where Prothama is visiting. During its lifetime, the project garnered its share of praise and criticism. But whether or not one agrees with the stated aims of the project, it is perhaps undeniable that subaltern studies and scholarship coming out of it made waves in the world of the social sciences and the humanities generally. The current gathering is itself testimony to the many different anticipated ways in which the influence of subaltern studies travelled truly beyond the confines of South Asian studies. It also says something about the richness of the original project that members of the founding editorial collective, instead of forming anything like an intellectual monolith, have individually pursued diverse range of questions that both connect back to where we started from and also evolved towards very different futures. Thus, to speak of the original subalterns, Barth Chatterjee's work on nationalism has led him now to explore, in his forthcoming book, imperial histories. David Hardiman's recent work has ranged from Gandhian non-violence and the burn towards non-violence from subaltern studies and his survival have, might I say, to folk forms of healing and salvation. Shahid Amin has just completed a fascinating study of the legend of Ghazi Nia, the Islamic warrior in pre-colonial, the legendary and mythical Islamic warrior in pre-colonial and colonial India. Gyan Panthe has completed a manuscript comparing subaltern and African-American historiographies. Gotam Bhadra has recently been awarded a prestigious prize in Calcutta for his monumental study of the history of botany publications, the colonial Calcutta's equivalent of London's Grub Street. While Ranjit Guha, battling seriously serious health problems in old age in distant Vienna, has published a series of important and prize-winning books in Bengali, carrying forward both the thesis of old subaltern studies and the anti-history position he had advanced in one of his more recent books, History at the Limits of World History. There are thus many ways of counting time. One way to mark the passage of time is to historicize. And many today will claim that subaltern studies are an expression of its own times. And that recognition, and that recognition of the change historical circumstances of the present will no doubt form an element of the conversation we have over the next two days. The story of time's passing is also to ironically and somewhat unfortunate because this conference, in our two successively scheduled keynote speakers, Parthocharaji and Shaheerabin, not being able to travel for reasons of health. While I'm sure you'll join me, wishing them both robust, wishing them robust health for years to come, the disappointment itself was for me at least an interesting reminder, if such a reminder was needed, of how important being young was to the project of subaltern studies. And being young, at a very particular historical conjunction in the late 60s and early 70s of the last century, when students' movements breaking out all over the world brought into being a global Marxism, India's own version being called the Naxalite movement. When civil rights movements and movements for recognition of indigenous people's rights put the language of decolonization to new and creative uses, when the Vietnamese and the Chinese revolutions inspired spiritual debates and scholarships on the political and analytical vitality of the category peasant, when Western countries facing demographic problems of a shortage of skills opened up to highly skilled immigrants from the aspired colonies of the West, when movements were afoot that near home in Australia would help dismantle the white Australia policy and eventually foster debates on multiculturalism and cultural diversity. Clearly, many of these issues do not strike us today with the same force as they once did. Those sounds still come under tension. The cult of peasant-based modern and armed revolutions that the Chinese and Vietnamese experiences once inspired in the young has been replaced by talk of globalization, while migrants as item seekers, illegal workers and refugees have emerged perhaps as the new subvoltains of the present era. And my recent experience in Delhi looking for real estate for a center then in the University of Chicago was to build in Delhi, was that I suddenly looked at the buildings in Gurgaon, new buildings being built where the workers were still working. And some day I realized I could read the obscenities that were written on the walls, because they were all written in Bengali. And I said to people, how come Delhi workers are writing obscenities in Bengali? And of course they said they're all illegal Bangladeshi workers working for construction companies in Delhi. And they are the new subvoltains. Gramshi, a key theoretical influence on subvoltains studies is still respected, main in many quarters, but he does not seem to occupy the same pedestal as do debuts, baju, or even agamden. Mazudong, on the other hand, another key influence on subvoltains studies has suffered a decline in status both globally and within his own country. One could actually ask them, has time rendered subvoltains studies invalid? Was the vision of peasant revolution on which a project was based, romantic, and utopian? These are legitimate questions. And they've been asked not only by outside observers of subvoltains studies, but actually by subvoltains scholars themselves. I remember having an exchange of e-mail with Parthar Gyadarji about two years ago over the argument that the model of peasant insurgency that Guha Prayid tried to construct in his book was in elementary aspects, was valid for the colonial period, but was not helpful for deciphering the nature of peasant and tribal protest against land acquisition for industrial and urban development in contemporary areas. Should we then, as Shelly said famously in his letters from Italy, spend our manhood in unlearning the follies and experiencing the mistakes of our youth? Perhaps that advice holds true in the world of action where unlearning past follies makes but imminent sense. In the domain of ideas, however, it does long seem to me that something like the opposite holds true. We keep reading or Marx or Weber or Durkheim or Freud, not so much for what they may have been correct about for those contributions are possibly part of our common sense today, but to understand how and where they went wrong and how will we correct them if we want to for contemporary use. It is their mistakes, in other words, that have had a very long life, much longer life than their heritage is today. Not because the mistakes were silly and obvious mistakes, but precisely because they were fascinating and interesting mistakes. Committed because the questions behind them were of fundamental importance to the social science, even if the answers provided were at best controversial and at worst wrong, and I sometimes told my own PhD students I say aspire to make a very interesting mistake. That people keep coming back to me. So if I'm intended, but what I would call generative mistakes are committed in pursuit of questions that may be termed fundamental. What I would like to do then by the way of initiating a discussion on the global legacy of the Subaltern Studies is to ask what mistakes of the Subaltern Studies project could still be considered generative. The examples I'll give since I'm a historian will relate to problems encountered in historical thinking. In the interest of time, I will organize my examples of sample about the two sub-times, the archaic in the modern and the subject of history. But I could have expanded on the sub-times of generative mistakes. I could have picked others like the religious and the political, the problem of representing the Subaltern or the problem of the archives. Maybe we can touch on some of these so the archaic in the modern where I think Subaltern Studies made some very interesting mistakes, generative mistakes, which required us to go back to read Subaltern Studies. Let me say the problem here anecdotally and in South Asian terms and then move on to some general considerations. The subcontinent is one part of the world where everyday life is marked by cohabitation and intervening of practices and objects that look both ancient and modern at the same time. A latemachine being carried for delivery on a bullock cart or a push cart was not an uncommon sight in the kind that I grew up in. Or if technology has indeed made a difference to such sites, think of how ubiquitous the representation of Puranic or for that matter, Puranic themes are in everyday life. Puranas are these Indian mythical stories about gods and goddesses and with a very lively tradition actually still exists in the traditions. Again to use a very common Calcutta example simply for reasons of familiarity, think of getting into any public vehicle to actually bus or into what they call a minibus, which is a dangerous contraption. So I look at it and basically get into it. You will find pictures coming around the driver's seat that put historical figures such as the Saint Ramakrishna who lived from 1836, 1886. Him together with the image of the Puranic goddess like Kali or maybe the picture of a Sufi shrine and the folk religious saint framed together. In other words, putting humans and gods in the same field of vision is part of popular practices in India. The question is how should we think about this phenomenal analogy? The problem in turn poses many questions about religion, historical time, about belief and its relationship to practices about elite and folk religion and so on. Historians often deal with the problem by speaking of change and continuity, though we seldom know why certain things change while others just continue to. In Indian history the subject existed until the coming of some of the studies. We had parceled life out into a neat division of layer. We left matters religious or ancient to Indologists or historians of ancient India. Matters that needed the historian to know Persian and Arabic fell to the problems of the so-called modernists. And actually talking about periodization and medievalism, Catherine Davis, I'm pretty glad is here, she's written a wonderful book on the question of periodization as a medievalist. And things pertaining to British rule and after fell to the historian of modernity. And the three groups seldom spoke to each other. As a young Indian and a student of Indian history I was aware, as I could not be any better than sentiments, that they were part of my Indian life. But that was not something for which I could make any room in my work, except using thoughts like survival, residues, leftovers, that modernization literatures, both of right-wing and Marxist variety, had really made available. The mismatch between life as described and probed in history and life as remained was something that you actually saw as a historian. My first experience of meeting Guha was something that gave me a jolt on this very particular problem. He invited me to spend a weekend with him at Sussex in 1979. And as a way of introducing me to the incipient subordinates of his project he read out to me a draft of what later became chapter 2 of his book, Elementary Aspects of President's Incidence. I was amazed to find that he was relating oppressive ideologies of rural landlords in 19th century colonial India to infamous texts of the ancient sage Manu, the Manu Samhita, from the composer and the beginning of the Christian era. So as a historian I said how could we do together without showing connections? First scholars on colonial India sell them new Sanskrit texts. But more importantly how could a historian relate 19th century practices and ideologies to texts separated by thousands of years? On the other hand I had this strange feeling that these ideologies however separated they may have been in their historical origins were not at all unfamiliar to me that I was already aware that I had been brought up in a society in which they were valued so that even the 19th century of Guha's description melted away before my mind's eye and blended with the India I knew from experience. It left me wondering about this matter. More reading and a few conversations later I realized that what allowed Guha to connect texts separated by centuries and thus deliberately flout some fundamental rules of historical writing was his deep acceptance of French statuettes so that the underlying proposition was that certain cultural practices could continue to exist long beyond their historical origins by becoming codified through constant repetition and thus entering the structural aspects of a culture. The analyst's job in Guha's view was a semiotic one she or he needed to be able to decode the structure in order to see how the archaic could be alive and well inside the heart of the mountain. I was very excited by this discovery and remember that over the following three months of my stay in the British Isles while I spent the daytime working in archives and libraries for my thesis I spent most evenings and weekends giving myself a course on structuralism and reading a good bit of Levi Strauss, Bola Barth and Roman Jacobson. The discovery of structuralism was quite a heavy experience for us and Guha was the first scholar to introduce structuralism and the so-called linguistic term in Indian history but it caused us much problem later many problems later most historians of South Asia were unfamiliar with the literature Guha had arrived at it via his interest in painting and some well-known scholars mistook our structuralism for orientalism of the inside sense and accused us of recycling orientalist themes in a post-colonial way. I had a first-aid experience of how unfamiliar my Marxist historian friends that Anthony referred to in Delhi were of these continental streams of thought. I came straight to Delhi from the UK to do some more work at the National Archives and one day I got into a scooter rickshaw to visit some reputed historian friends at the Delhi University. On my way to the university neighbourhood as my scooter was winding its way through the crowded busy and bustling neighbourhood of Chandni Chowk literally the moonlit square of the walled city of Delhi as it was built by the Mughals in the 17th century my scooter rickshaw screeched to a halt as a man on a bicycle and something happened in a minute that worked for me almost like a structuralist revolution. The man on the bicycle had a bird of prey a very large falcon sitting on the back of his left hand and the driver and my driver of the jat peasant stock even as he pressed the brake could not but explain in admiration as if driven by an invisible cultural compulsion Shabash Right in the middle of Chandni Chowk that afternoon in 1979 the bicycle, the scooter the modern buildings around and anything and everything that was not 17th century melted away before my eyes and I felt transported to the cultural world of Mughal India where in the middle of the city square it would have been entirely customary or appropriate for a peasant worker to express admiration for the valor and manhood of a man who was able to tame the falcon a royal symbol of the period. I suddenly felt as though I had watched a bit of Mughal India enacted for me not as a piece of commercial historical re-enactment you might play fight with the Red Fort or closer home in the former Goldfielder Ballarat but it's part of a busy unselfconscious everyday life I had just seen a cultural code I thought all that Goohar had been speaking to me about in Sussex, in action structuralism works I thought he excitedly the first thing I spoke to my historian friends about when I got to their place was this incident and very unexcited by my narration of this relatively experienced person in my path they immediately sought to calm my nerves down by telling me that Foucault had somehow gone to my head what could I say they could not even see it was not Foucault but Levi Strauss who was the man corrupting me here and that Foucault was a rebellion so all that the structuralist tradition might have stood for that's how unfamiliar historians in India were with anything that happened outside the British tradition in which they've been here just to verify that I've not been entirely delusional in my sense of being there, in my sense of having in a cultural code at play in the event in Chathnichok I related the incident the next day the friends I'm talking about were immigrants to Delhi from outside of Delhi original Delhi waters so next day I checked with my friend Nilalji Bhattacharya a historian from JNU from Bengali but who'd grown up in Delhi and I told the story to him, stopping at the point where my scooter rickshaw driver had halted to notice this man with a falcon sitting on his hand and I asked Nilalji, now what do you think my driver said when he saw this man and Nilalji correctly guessed Shabash and you can imagine how confirmed I felt in my structural discrimination well, structuralism may have been the wrong answer it at least had its own share of ecological problems but who's question was right and the problem of the RTA in the model is not just a problem for western other countries we face it in many interesting ways in Australia, a nation that often finds interesting substitutes for the medieval or the ancient past it tells itself it does not have but that's a different story my second subject is about the subject of Indian history as many of you would know the Subaltern Studies began with the aim of making the Subaltern the subject of their own history in the 1980s subject was a tricky territory in the 1980s Rosalie Rohanman first pointed out in print that the ostensible subject of Subaltern Studies seemed unambiguously maimed Gayatri Spivak who began to be active in the 1980s and 1980s not only repeated the charge she also made the point that our idea of the subject was somewhat naïve in the age of post structuralism and deconstruction some of us had made some use of Foucault in the spirit of updating Marx in fact it was Guha who introduced me to Foucault as well during those research months in British India but we had no idea of Gayrida or Lakshad or Duluth or Quatervir or Batay talking into Guha's office in the Coombs Building here in this university one day in the early 1980s and Guha pointing to a book on the top and the most unreachable part of his bookshelves it was there it as a gamatology in Spivak's translation Guha and Spivak had already met in Calhoun he said have you read this book I said no I have not he said I have not either but it's a very important subject said this the conversation did not proceed until Spivak entered the scene with a re-pocket question and the Savaltan speak deconstruction was not easy to observe it's linguistic acrobatics alienated many in the group David Hardingon wrote an important essay once on these divisions and Sumit Sarkar taking his departure from the group wrote a complaining essay entitled the decline of the Savaltan in Savaltan studies though he blamed it all on the deleterious effect in front of Edwin's side and many others of the Indian and international left saw this new term as giving ammunition to the Hindu right in India in retrospect however we can safely say that Spivak's question has had a long life the book was published from Columbia recently to celebrate 20 years of the essay again I'm not sure that I'm persuaded by the answer that Spivak gave to her question one has to remember again also that Spivak's answer itself has been a moving target because she keeps rewriting the essay but there is no doubt that whatever her errors were they were in my sense of the term generated but they were motivated by a question we cannot escape in whose voice does the Savaltan speak as Verida once famously said voice is no guarantor of presence but I do not want to pursue here Spivak's line of inquiry I want to return to the foundational moment of Savaltan studies and look for Guha's book and look at the Guha's book elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial India 1983 for the way it posed the question of the subject of history and by implication the subject of Indian politics obviously Guha's expectation born of the 70's discussions of peasant jubilee development in his youth in the communist party so his expectation that the popular insurgencies of the 19th century could be seen as somehow presaging or anticipating a more political popular struggle for the wholesale transformation of Indian social structure in the direction of socialist equality will not seem valid today but I do think that with this careful study of the methods by which peasant crowds mobilized themselves both in the cities and in the countryside of 19th century India Guha gave us the most interesting and creative genealogy of crowd politics actually as it exists in India today at bottom Guha asked a question that had been asked in the English context by someone like AP Johnson what role did the people of England play in shaping the English institutions of democracy that for example was an animating question both in the making of English working class and in the weeks and hours Guha's question was similar how did popular politics develop and shape the democracy that India became after independence but Guha's approach to answering this question and I would say his answer itself often implicit in the pages of elementary aspects were different from what the leftist annual historians had divided whether it was AP Thompson or George Rude their analysis of rioters Thompson's analysis of Golden Rags and Rude's analysis of many riots were different their analysis of rioters and crowds went in the direction of humanizing the crowd by looking for individual faces in the crowd and Rude is of course famous for this pro-socographic approach to crowd studies there is no doubt about how historiography in general has been enriched by the efforts of these deservedly famous and gifted historians yet Guha's structure and stance was significantly different he did not look to delineate faces in the crowd for that method only dissolves the crowd into so many individuals whereas the agency of the crowd is affected and legitimized precisely by its facelessness and it is facelessness that makes a crowd into an effective political force or an effective force now how does all this relate to Indian democracy one of the most interesting ways in which Indian and some other emerging democracies such as the South African one liberal western democracies is in the use of public disorder and I am using that word provisionally as part of political bargaining within a constitutionally democratic structure a feature that for instance distinguishes Indian mainstream political parties from their counterparts in the west is then a successful Indian political party has to have the capacity to create mayhem on the streets as a way of publicizing and pushing their demands this is not required formally or informally of any political party in the west except very rightly or extremely likely but the mainstream parties don't even political movements fighting for rights of particular caste those of peasants against land acquisition today will try to acquire at least the capacity for public violence as a way of advancing their cause right as crowds are an old established pre-colonial feature of Indian politics the words we use in Hindi or Bengali are to describe crowd violence Khasad, Hangama, Ullman and so on are all figures of disorder which is opposite for the Mughals and the British rulers after them we treat the crowd we treat crowd action only as a problem of order and not as a political problem the emergence of the crowd is a mainstream political act that begins of course under Gandhi though he was always formally and morally opposed to the violence that often ensued from this in the earliest of the independence the Prime Minister of Nehru and the constitutionist leader of the formally untouchable groups often reminded the nation that even the Gandhi amendment of Sathya Pradesh was only suited for fighting the British and should not be deployed against the national government but all this fellow has fallen on deaf ears over the decades today one cannot write off crowd action or more broadly violent politics of the street as simply the disorder of Indian democracy it is an integral part of how democratic politics are understood and practiced in India and a new kind of political subject has emerged in India that is demotic and democratic in the sense in which the word democratic is used in India or the meanings, the multiple meanings it's come to have the present insurgencies Guha wrote about were the forerunners of this political subject and their modes of mobilization are still visible in many of the riots and insurgencies in India today Guha's hunch that peasants of colonial societies were not pre-political as Hobson had imagined them to be but rather political captured something of the spirit of his times but we did not know very clearly in what sense the word political was meant when we made the claim that the peasants were already political Guha's answer that these peasants could form the basis of a sustained move towards radical social transformation in India has proven wrong but again the error in my sense was a generator it was a question that you somehow perceived was right one day scholars will return to the India aspects not to read the book on Guha's terms but to find in it a way, a method of constructing a genealogy of the mass political subject in India today this would not be the only genealogy because the very logic of genealogy is multiple but would be one important way of figuring out how the history of Savaljan Dibellion has left its imprint on the way that democracy is being shaped in contemporary India so with those two examples I will finish to say that to return to the theme that really leading a legacy is I think about making interesting mistakes and really interesting mistakes are made when you pursue questions questions that are somehow fundamental and I think at least in my life the main legacy of Savaljan Dibellion was that it gave me the courage and I am very grateful to Guha for that aspect of his mentoring giving me the courage to not only ask fundamental questions in an impressive way which Indian historians do anyway but actually bring them to the surface of the discussion Thank you very much


First like let me just give you like a quick disclaimer because I'm making this video, but like I don't necessarily always feel like this like in my mind I'm like well forget you like this is my life. I don't have to explain anything to you.  This is Donna. I am back with another video for you guys So you guys I got this comment on one of my Q&A's and I was like, oh man That's so sad. So I wanted to kind of make a video about it. So that's what I'm gonna be doing Someone left a comment and they were talking about their dad and how their father just didn't understand and guys sometimes Parents just don't understand like that old That old Will Smith song Parents just don't understand and not just parents but friends and family They may not always get why you want to switch careers or why you want to become a PA instead of being a Physician or an NP or or nurse or a chef Whatever it is that the path that you may have been on before before you decided to become PA or You were thinking about I'm gonna read the comments So you guys just get a little bit more background information and then we'll go from there. Bless you for this video I'm far from being a PA. However, I did have a question for you My father and I were discussing my our future plans and it came up that I wanted to be a physician assistant He looked at me a bit funny He said and I quote son, you should just go ahead and become a doctor But that's just not my aspirations. I like the flexibility and it's the perfect amount of school for me But he doesn't understand that how do I give him a little more insight about being a PA? Thank you for your input. Okay, so how do you give him a little bit more insight? Well, first off, you know, hopefully your dad is like open and willing to listen and Just anybody that may be dealing with just With this trying to get people to understand why you want to do what you want to do first Like let me just give you like a quick disclaimer because I'm making this video But like I don't necessarily always feel like this like in my mind. I'm like, well forget you like this is my life I don't have to explain anything to you. You don't have to understand because you're not the one that's living this life I'm living it because I want to be a PA. However, that's like the petty Adana coming out, right? So when you're trying to get people on board with you, you explain things So you can just be like dad. Look, you know, it really where I'm at in my life Like I don't want to be in school for another four to eight plus years If I'm trying to be a physician and honestly, I would like to spend a lot more time for myself I want the flexibility that a PA gets. I want to be able to move laterally from field to field You can explain that to whoever it is that doesn't understand what exactly a PA does you can send them to a PA.org that has a lot of information about the PA profession But even if you don't necessarily want to send them places so that they're doing research You yourself can go to a pa.org and you can find that information out and then you can bring it to them You know, there was this I can't I don't remember what it was Maybe a show or something or maybe I dreamed it up There was this thing where it's like as long as you come as prepared as possible Like if you come which like you want a business you want somebody to invest in you, right?  Well, that's not what I want to be if I wanted to be a physician. That's what I would do I would go ahead and get my MD, but that's not where I want to go in my life I want to be a PA because these are the reasons why and so you explain that out as much as you possibly can Then note to my channel say come watch this girl who's on her way to PA school Who's in PA school and on her way to becoming a PA and see the enthusiasm that she has and the things that she's dealing with and the things that she's Learning you can bring them on over to this channel and help them see What it is like while you're going through PA school and the possibilities that the PA career holds for Everyone that's in it currently and it's only gonna get better can send them to other people's YouTube channels as well And then also Instagram has a really good PA community But after you've done all of that research and you've done all of that educating if they still don't understand Hopefully you can just have the heart to heart and be like well, you know I understand that you may not understand exactly why I would like to be a PA and that Necessarily makes sense to you, but this is what I really want to do with my life And I don't feel like it's gonna be a detriment It's not something that I'm gonna regret in the future come with all of the reasons why you want to be a PA Make it so more personal to you And this is what it is as opposed to making it about the career and then hopefully, you know, they're your parents They're your family members. Hopefully they're just supportive and they love you and they're gonna be supportive as possible If they're not then that sucks And then you're gonna have to sit up here and make the decision for yourself on how you want to move forward With you becoming a PA and that being the path that you want to pursue and how you will now Quantify that and meld it with your family or friend life because you don't want extra added stress on yourself So those are that's really kind of what you got to do you explain Educate educate educate. I'm still educating people you guys like I'm still educating people in my life right now Like what's a PA? Well, I mean a PA is a physician assistant.  I'm a PA. These are the things that I do But don't worry about that our time will come soon when it's widely known But you just educate as much as you can and then after you've done all that educating Okay, after you've done that if they still don't understand bring it back around folks full circle to you Say this is what I really believe this is how I feel I just hope you can respect that and then keep it moving, you know, that's all you can do But hopefully this has helped Hopefully maybe you can even share this video with your dad or your family member that maybe not understanding Exactly how you feel as just an added tool and then you guys can like all be happy About you becoming a PA wanting to be a PA in the future. All right. Well, thank you guys so much for watching I really really appreciate all of you guys Thank you so much for subscribing if you've already done so and if you haven't go ahead and do that now and Follow me on Instagram at Adana the PA. Thank you. I will talk to you guys next time. Bye


everyone is your girl Sharon Thomas your bro and today sister power is our mission is that women everywhere were learned to live as sisters to respect each other's differences to heal each other's wounds to promote each other's progress and to benefit from each other's knowledge. We have such a fabulous show for you ladies here black girl magic for wellness mind body and soul and I challenge each human being to stop what you're doing right now stop what you're doing bringing your friends because the black magic is going to give you some tips that are going to keep you motivated keep you encouraged and keep you inspired so sit back grab a cup of tea relax and I'm going to introduce you to our guest Ty Hawkins welcome thank you Mahalo and our everlasting always guest Sequoia Car Brown welcome to sister power aloha hey beautiful people hey this is so good you know we have so much going on we have you know people who don't want to wear their masks we were talking about that earlier people want to get vaccinations we've got the carries are acting up I need to talk to you Ty because you're a licensed acupuncturist you're an herbalist and your massage therapist tell us about your business all of the above yes we actually just moved locations we are an open space acupuncture and herbal apothecary we just just starting to like unfold our new apothecary we've always had a customized herbal tincture pharmacy as since the pandemic began essentially when we closed right at the beginning of the pandemic we knew that our community still really needed our support and we knew people were also not really comfortable coming out so we started making herbs and we started delivering herbs to people and that was really the start of our apothecary as like a our new business inside of our already built up acupuncture clinic which has been actually really booming since the pandemic started and it's been a refreshing thing to see because I've seen so many people actively taking responsibility for their own health and their own wellness and realizing that stress and all of this external factors really do affect our internal wellness and our actual pain that we carry in our bodies um so that's been really amazing to see and support through community work um and acupuncture and herbs and we love all of it what is the name of your uh company is yes so my business is ola nani acu oasis and ola nani in hawaiian means beautiful life and really for us a beautiful life is about having balance and being happy from the inside out and that beautiful life will serve the entire community by kind of uplifting everyone around you so that's what we're all about yeah shine that light we need the light now whatever it takes to get us to reset we need to revive and we need to just get some type of release it sequoia that's where you come in I I love the name of your company strange fruit express tell us about that well that manifested out of first the love for uh Billie holiday she's one of my favorite artists but just what the song meant and even that it was written by a jewish man makes it even more profound and uh I felt that my ancestors were speaking to me I was a history major at my university and uh I was receiving a lot of pushback when I would include the african-american experience so uh I felt like those strange fruit that were lost and not killed destroyed that information that knowledge that they had needed to come forward so uh those shoulders we stand upon I'm being that voice for past future and present voices by using the arts I bring in american history of our unsung heroes I've used that with fine art and dance to tell our stories and sometimes I just do art just for art the sake of art art sake rather yeah yeah yeah you know we have different forms uh reviving ourselves we can do yoga we can meditate um we can even dance and might you know some people meditate I'm a praying girl I'm going to pray pray pray that's just me so Ty tell us you know because of this COVID I wanted to ask you about that you know because now you do massage therapy and how has this affected your business this COVID-19 pandemic affected your business this is hands on absolutely so in terms of massage I don't do that much massage I do mostly acupuncture and herbs um but we used to have a clinic that was kind of what they call community style acupuncture which is just one big open room there's seats kind of close to each other and you know it's really a community kind of feeling um but when COVID hit we really had to shift gears because people didn't feel safe being in a room with a bunch of other people um and it wasn't relaxing for them anymore so we um we basically kind of geared back a little bit so we're still seeing a few patients at a time but we have little pods around them so everybody's curtained off and in their own kind of section so they feel safe and secure um really just people being compliant with how we know at least the things that we definitely know stop the spread of the disease like wearing a mask you know wearing a mask spreading things out a bit social distancing um we got some extra you know air filters and just the protocols of cleaning it's it's not rocket science it's just having the right protocols and being able to fall back on them when things do go right like if there is exposure issues which is just part of how we're going to have to move through the next you know who knows six to 12 months um but like I said I was I was a little concerned at the beginning and definitely we started this herb the herb side of our business as an offset like we might need this to kind of carry the business for a while um but what we found is actually we're busier than ever and I honestly in what I've seen is it's people's awareness of their own kind of internal um mental or emotional stress manifesting in their body so like just to give an example like I will be working on you know somebody's shoulder injury and we work on their shoulder injury it's you know they sleep wrong they come in to get their neck fixed and they they walk away they never talk about this being the result of you know some kind of mental emotional stress or trauma it's just physical pain right those same people that never talked about pain and emotions being connected were coming in and telling me I am so stressed out and I feel it right here you know instead of I slept funny and I feel it here like they had the awareness and the consciousness of mine to say that actually that is connected like the body and the mind connection has been really I feel like bubbled up to the surface and in some ways it's really uncomfortable but I do think it is a really powerful step for people to actually take their wellness into their own hands you know absolutely Sequoia what is your definition of wellness well just to kind of pick up on Ty's concept that somatic element of wellness right in being and I take that approach with my work with strange food express in the fitness classes that I created so wellness to me in self-care is a form of self-defense particularly for us I think that we carry along with the regular everyday stress of just the stresses of living our lives we also as a culture as the people across the African diaspora have a kind of a epigenetic memory that kind of can muster up some really negative harsh feelings that do manifest in the mind body and spirit and certain types of ailments and such so my work is all about reconnecting to the ancestors and our ways of knowing up against the the way that we've been indoctrinated to try to heal you know it's it's a mainstream way that does not work for us was not even designed for us so why even go there so I'm all about our wellness our self-care our state of being is connected to remembering where we came from and who we are and making that mind body spirit connection soul connection somatically yeah and you know there's fun ways to do it I know that you ladies and tie you have an African dance class on Saturday that awesome it is outdoors and you can just shake it off and that is so important to release itself and so um tell us a little bit about the dance type of how it affects us mentally and physically and spiritually so I was first first speak just from my personal experience um and dance to me absolutely is movement medicine it's really it's probably the first thing on my self-care list of things to do when I'm like really feeling funky it's because I haven't danced in too long so for me it really is very about very much about somatic a somatic release at the same time it is fully grounding and really about connecting for me especially so with African dance there's always this connection between the dancer and the drummer the dance and the drum are never separated this is a togetherness it's not like you can have the dance department and the the percussion department separately they exist together um and that's it's the beauty of that that foundation that starts with connectivity because then you can feel it that connectivity between the dancers between the drummers and you really have a communion of source and everyone is there in it and in their presence which really is like to me it's like going to church sometimes and that's that's how it feels because I when I'm in the dance I'm fully connected and present in this moment whatever is happening around me or even if I'm having a terrible week if I can have a moment of dance I have respite from whatever it is because I feel in flow and like in Chinese medicine everything is about flow essentially wellness is being in balance and being in flow without any blockage or obstruction and to me when I'm dancing I can actually move through obstructions that otherwise feel really stuck in and stagnant um and so the beauty of the dance in the community is that connectivity but there's also this really awesome space just to be an individual and and let it all out however your body lets it all out and all of our bodies are different and that's another aspect of um African dance that I truly truly love there's a diversity in the oneness and there's peace there's peace there yeah and you know with your help Sequoia every Saturday we meet in in a beautiful garden and you have this Orisha fit class that happens every Saturday from 11 to 12 30 tell us about that well Orisha fit is all about similarly this mind body spirit connection and so it's like a physical affirmation uh that connects us to our ancestors I we don't exactly invoke these spirits of the Orishas but we take in uh elements of African dance fitness meditation and we use those qualities of say Oshun I would ask my queens fellow queens you know how are you feeling are you not feeling beautiful are you feeling bad about yourself self-esteem well let's let's talk about Oshun beauty fertility wealth right all of those things let's wear yellow and gold and this just like be uh free affirming of ourselves our confidence it's not ego-based it's not arrogance it's about coming together as Ty said as a community right and embracing your true authentic self that black girl magic that we have in there and just uh just kind of pushing away the mainstream ways of uh being annoying and coming into our own so uh it's a gradual little method that I developed over the years um it's I have right now it's for 40 years and over for us mature you know and um it's just all about being we uh reconnecting with yourself and mind body and spirit and remembering our ancestors for example you know yoga is very popular and that's great but in a sense it's kind of been gentrified in a way that I think the true intention of it is being lost and we as our people we don't really have anything like that in the society where you can just rattle off uh our ancestors our spirits in ways that affirm us so this is just my way of going against the mainstream culture and fighting something for us and by us oh I love that you know also when we're doing something for ourselves it also feels good when we're both of you ladies do this every week is when you give something back to your community I know that sisters in part Hawaii the nurses here at queen's hospital are so overworked because of the pandemic so my friends and I um put together a post um bag that post uh what is that post ship personal spa back for the nurses to help them to pamper their their feet pamper their face pamper themselves um you know relax in the bath with the bubble baths we give they were so appreciative this is why I know that um I worked with sister part Hawaii worked with kai edify was the black nurses organization here along with dr um joanne lasoya Williams lasoya and dr elcido so it's not about what we had is about telling taking what we have and doing as much as we can with it and I want to come to you tie what do you need what do we need to know about the effectiveness of traditional chinese medicine and well usually my first response is like if something's been around and used by the most populace one of the most populace countries in the world there's probably something to it um but really it's it's about tapping into your natural healing capabilities which we all have and I think it's really important for everybody to remember that you know and just be reminded of that that our bodies are amazing they're made to work through almost anything and if you just give them a little bit just a little bit of love usually they like our bodies will do amazing things but we live in a world that doesn't um honor or value rest and actual stillness I just saw an ad this was it was interesting it was like a rihanna ad it was some new luggage thing and it said hashtag never still and I was like that's terrible that is a terrible terrible idea you need stillness we all need stillness but it's it's so foreign to our culture that the slowing down and the stillness feels like you're doing something wrong mm-hmm so I like to tell people just reel it back in on your personal judgments of what you need to accomplish all the time and actually think about accomplishing some rest and some stillness sometimes because balance really is the key to life at least in my perspective so if you're going going going going you better put something on put some time on the side for you to not be going at least you know 60 40 so that you can live a long and happy life and your body can be on board with you and not be giving you all kinds of negative negative signals that you don't listen to and then one day all of a sudden it gives you the biggest negative signal and you can't do anything but lay down right so I always advise people just to like try to rest a little more just a little more because I know that you're you're not like all of us are not resting enough I it's just a guarantee yeah you know uh Sequoia you and I had this conversation we always feel that we have to be oh how everything's fine well you're not you're not okay and it's okay not to be okay so you know Sequoia how and why did you develop your concept around self-care as a business plane well I'd always had it like I'd state it earlier as a history major I received so much pushback from my professors who you know didn't take the time to include the African-American experience in their work and I saw that some of my fellow African-Americans were dropping or feeling a certain way about themselves in a negative way and I said you know this is detrimental to our holistically to us you know experiences being in academia for one and I realized that I love the the blood sweat and tears the work that our ancestors did but they worked so hard they were so busy with getting us our equality and justice on the books but along the way we forgot how to take care of ourselves and like dealing with all of that negative energy that we internalize right and manifest in so many different ways in our community of self-hate or destructive behaviors and or even just thinking that it's normalizing the way we are treated so my ancestor told me strange food express girl and nobody got it I've been in this oh 25 years and they're like nobody but what is that nobody wants like trust me we're gonna need it and now more than ever we need to have people like myself concepts business plans where self-care is part of the package so I created my business plan I changed my major I was double majoring and I went into interdisciplinary studies where I fused American history dance and fine art and the concept of holistic somatic kind of healing and I was guided through doctor professor Catherine Waddell Takara I love her so much she helped me to navigate through academia and helped me to learn the ways of the oppressor to protect myself and from that I that was my business plan with my major and I just launched it and again no one got it but gradually over the years it's coming around and it's used as an educational tool for educators I do public speaking I do these classes and workshops every now and then but mostly a lot of first stage production and collaborative projects that have taken me all around the world and I'm really grateful and thankful to my ancestors and all of my mentors that helped me along the way yeah that's this is what it takes it takes a village yeah hi what I have a commonly used plant in herbal medicine oh my goodness there's so many oh my god I know echinacea you know echinacea oh another big one that um that's that they've done a lot of research with uh with covid um honeysuckle oh tell us about it honeysuckle is in chinese medicine it's in a category called clear heat or resolve toxicity but it's often used for upper respiratory issues sore throat stuffy nose it's one of those it basically kicks kicks the pathogen out before it can get deeper into the system and that's just one really basic one that's kind of like a food grade level of herb and those are actually the most premium kinds of herbs the best kind of herb you can take is one that you can eat on the daily basis that you're actually getting in regularly so um red dates are also in um chinese herbs goji berries wheat I mean you name it and it's probably an herb in chinese medicine but echinacea is also a good one that's you know generally for immune support so there's a lot of immune support herbs that we um started ordering and making for people to have kind of um just feel like they have a good baseline of an immune shield if you will so astragalus is also really well known um one that's good for kind of just overall boosting the immune system it can up regulate it or down regulate it so if somebody's having like allergies and they have a hyperactive immune system it can actually chill it out or if you're getting sick often and your your immune system is not working ideally astragalus can up regulate it so a lot of herbs don't necessarily have they do one thing it's not like a pharmaceutical they kind of work with the body and they can have different effects and often they're modulatory effects so they don't just up or down it's like it gets in the body sees assesses what the body needs and it goes kind of in the direction that the body needs it to go in well yeah i i aloe vera is also so sequoia how may one find your company and tell us if you have any upcoming events well you can find me at my website strange fruit express dot com and that's strange fruit the express is x p r e s s dot com and i'm also on linkedin i don't do social media i think is detrimental to our spirit i also i practice buto so i'm trying you know that's about work it's the of your ego and toning that down so i think social media could be a destructive element in that i highly suggest if people try to wean themselves away from social media i know there's a study uh there's zuckerberg and all those guys at the instagram they very well know that um is that is wreaking havoc on the um the confidence of our girls uh so and there's a lot of anti-blackness going on through social media so and black fishing and all those type of things so be careful with that stuff walk away read a book meditate sleep enjoy that be still as tai said and let things come into you at your body speak to you and your mind and a beautiful well-balanced spirit will follow yes yeah that that's so important that we need to love ourselves first yeah it's all about self love and and and in closing i want you ladies to um you know talk to our audience do you think self-care should can or may look different for black women tai hmm that is a really good question i mean i feel like self-care looks different on everybody just like dance looks different on everybody and and and most of us like for me just being horizontal is self-care but like for some people being horizontal drives them crazy so it to me again it's like so personal and it's so individual and whatever nourishes you whatever it is that feeds you do it more that's all you know that's kind of my impotent that's that's my advice to everybody yeah what do you think uh i like that to rest is important and i and bubble baths you know rose petals is good yeah so what what is your what are your thoughts sequoia oh similarly uh like like i said you know i feel self-care is a personal journey i think it's a form of self-defense for us in a positive way um you know we have to protect ourselves we are the only ones that can help and save ourselves the system was not made and designed for us it was made and designed to keep us down i'm just doing exactly what it was designed for we are working in striving to progress and make it better um but at the same time don't forget you don't forget you have to take care of you because if you don't take care of you and love yourself you can't get out there and do anything else right so let's remember who we are and our ancestors um speak those words live those words love yourself be out there you know i love you guys beautiful people let's keep it going and moving and ujama all of that you know yeah you know so release people to close this out release any problems that got you you know here in the first place and replace outdated ideals with renewed perspective and what really works revive your health tie Hawkins and sequoia car brown thank you so much for your wisdom we appreciate that i'm your host Sharon thomas yarbro aloha