This kid myth-busted the history of Christopher Columbus to his teacher and it's amazing

This kid is brilliantly setting the record straight on Christopher Columbus.

When King Johnson studied 'the man who discovered America' (for contemporary Europeans, anyway) at school, he wrote about the lesson in a journal entry.

Picture: FACEBOOK / ALANYA KOLBERG; WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

King's blistering lesson review quickly went viral.

This kid roasting his teacher for lying about Christopher Columbus is the greatest thing you'll read today: https://t.co/uTOBMKggwQ pic.twitter.com/7y5MoDKbeg

— The Root (@TheRoot) January 23, 2018

King immediately hit off with a blunt point about the standards of teaching that day.

Today was not a good learning day.

Blah blah blah i only wanted to hear you not talking

He went on to make a salient point - that a better Christopher to celebrate would be Christopher Wallace aka The Notorious B.I.G.

You said something wrong and i can't listen when I hear lies.

My mom said that tho only Christofer we acknowledge is Wallace.

Then he hits the teacher with some hard facts.

Columbus didn't find our country the Indians did.

Not one to throw away the opportunity to kick back at home, he did say he still wanted the holiday off.

I like to have Columbus day off but I want you to not teach me lies.

That is all.

My question for the day is; how can white people teach black history?

To the teacher's unimpressed comments scrawled in red pen, he simply replied:

Ok

The teacher might not have been impressed - but everyone else was.

"How can white people teach black history?" I HOLLERED https://t.co/QbHfhvuhwg

— DEUCEmber (@_Petty_Wap_) January 23, 2018

“My mom said that the only Christopher we acknowledge is Wallace" and “I want you to not teach me lies” took me out.

— Alamin Yohannes 🇪🇷 (@AlaminYohannes) January 23, 2018

please rise for our future president https://t.co/Pm2EvGmuyE

— amy brown (@arb) January 23, 2018

And his momma named him King. Super woke ✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/eIx7B2wTms

— Lindsey Alexandria (@EllAlexandria) January 23, 2018

King now has an Instagram page, run with the help of his mum.
Who is clearly bringing her son up the right way.

On the page, they shared part of a response from a teacher who was impressed by his journal entry.

And King's already got more Instagram game than you.

All hail the King.

(Source: The Independent) 

Notes nearing ninety: Learning to write less

Donald Hall, who died in June this year at the age of eighty-nine, was a prolific poet, essayist, and editor whose work has had an enormous impact on American letters. He was The Paris Review’s first poetry editor, and he served as the U.S. poet laureate. Before his death, he compiled one final book of essays, A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety, an excerpt from which is below:

When I was sixteen, I read ten books a week: E. E. Cummings, William Faulkner, Henry James, Hart Crane, John Steinbeck. I thought I progressed in literature by reading faster and faster—but reading more is reading less. I learned to slow down. Thirty years later, in New Hampshire with Jane, I made a living by freelance writing all day, so I read books only at night. Jane went to sleep quickly and didn’t mind the light on my side of the bed. I read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and six huge volumes of Henry Adams’s letters. I read the late novels of Henry James over and over again. After Jane died, I kept reading books, at first only murderous or violent writers like Cormac McCarthy. Today I am forty years older than Jane ever got to be, and I realize I haven’t finished reading a book in a year.

DONALD HALL, 1977

An athlete goes professional at twenty. At thirty, he is slower but more canny. At forty, he leaves behind the identity that he was born to and that sustained him. He diminishes into fifty, sixty, seventy. Anyone ambitious who lives to be old or even old endures the inevitable loss of ambition’s fulfillment. In a Hollywood retirement home to meet a friend, I watched a handsome old woman in a wheelchair, unrecognizable, leap up in ecstasy when I walked toward her. “An interview!” she said. “An interview!” A writer usually works until late in life. When I was eighty, still doing frequent poetry readings, audiences stood and clapped when I concluded, and kept on clapping until I shushed them. Of course I stayed to sign book after book and returned to my hotel understanding that they applauded so much because they would never see me again.

Suppose I am the hundred-fifty-year-old maple outside my porch. When winter budges toward spring, I push out tiny leaves, which gradually curl yellowish green, then enlarge, turning darker green and flourishing through summer. In September, flecks of orange seep into green, and October turns the leaves gorgeously orange and red. Leaves fall, emptying the branches, and in December, only a few remain. In January, the last survivors flutter down onto snow. These black leaves are the words I write.

Back then, I wrote all day, getting up at five. By this time, I rise scratchy at six or twitch in bed until seven. I drink coffee before I pick up a pen. I look through the newspaper. I try to write all morning, but exhaustion shuts me down by ten o’clock. I dictate a letter. I nap. I rise to a lunch of crackers and peanut butter, followed by further exhaustion. At night I watch baseball on television, and between innings run through the New York Times Book Review. I roll over all night. Breakfast. Coffee.

When Jane was alive, our dog Gus needed walking every day. Jane walked him when she woke, feeling sleepy before breakfast. When they left, I lifted my hand from the page, waving goodbye. Midday, we had lunch and a nap, and then I walked Gus. In my car, I drove him up New Canada, the dirt road near our house, and parked where the single lane widened. We walked the flat earth, not for long because I wanted to get back to the manuscript again. Now when someone brings a dog to the house, I barricade myself in a big chair. An attentive dog would break my hip.

Louise is my cat. Ten years ago, her vigorous sister Thelma squirmed out of the house and discovered Route 4. My assistant Kendel dug a hole, and we set a half-barrel over the grave to impede hungry animals from enjoying a Thelma snack. Louise is passive, too shy to scoot through an open door. At night, when I watch MSNBC, she annoys me by rubbing my knee, but she never knocks me over.

Striving to pay the mortgage in the late seventies and eighties, some years I published four books. Now it takes me a month to finish seven hundred words. Here they are.

p.s.: Donald Hall (1928–2018) served as the U.S. poet laureate from 2006 to 2007. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a recipient of the National Medal of the Arts.
“Seven Hundred Words” excerpted from A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety, by Donald Hall. Copyright © 2018 by Donald Hall. 

(Source: The Paris Review)

Astonishing Christmas-themed Mughal miniatures from the courts of Akbar and Jehangir

Jesuits came to the Mughal court hoping to convert the emperors. Instead, the Indian rulers used Christian images for their own royal propaganda.

When Mughal emperor Akbar invited Portuguese Jesuits from Goa to his court in 1579, they were elated. Converting Akbar to Christianity would be their biggest achievement outside the European world.

They sent excited reports back to their home country, saying that India's largest empire would soon be a part of the Christian world.

As it turned out, Akbar had other ideas. His court was in the midst of intense inter-religious discussions. At the time the Jesuits were sharing their art and discussing the Bible with scholars in the court, others were being directed to translate hundreds of Sanskrit and Arabic texts, including the Ramayana, into Persian.

Mughal Emperor Akbar holds a religious assembly in the Ibadat Khana
in Fatehpur Sikri; the two men dressed in black are the Jesuit missionaries
Rodolfo Acquaviva and Francisco Henriques, c. 1605.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

Akbar directed court artists to use Christian imagery for his own royal propaganda but refused to commit any further.

The presentation of the infant Jesus in the temple at Jerusalem, 40 days after
his birth, c. 1600-1610. Possibly painted in Bijapur.
hoto credit: Victoria and Albert Museum.

Christian iconography is unusually adaptive. When Christianity reached China, the Chinese portrayed Jesus Christ as one of their own. It's no wonder that Christ was Indianised when the Jesuits first came to India. But as artists, particularly four in Akbar and Jehangir’s reign, learned from and adapted to Western styles, their depictions of Christ and Mary became steadily more European.

If you do not look closely, some of the most striking Mughal art between 1580 and 1630 could be mistaken for belonging to European schools of art.

Mother and Child with a White Cat. Attributed to Manohar
(active ca. 1582–1624) or Basawan.
Photo credit: The San Diego Museum of Art.

Virgin and Child, c. 1625. Photo credit: Caravaggista.

Christian stories were also not entirely alien to the Mughals. Ninety verses of the Koran deal with Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad is said to have allowed the portraits of Jesus and Mary to be preserved when he ordered all other idolatrous images to be destroyed in the Kaaba.

Jesus was also popular among the Sufis as a sort of hermetic ascetic. Given Akbar’s strong endorsement of the Sufis, it is not surprising that the two figures were then steadily incorporated into royal commissions.

Akbar’s son Prince Salim, who would later become Jehangir, also did the same. Unlike his father, who encouraged depictions of Jesus and other saints in secular, royal and religious settings inspired only partly by European art, Jehangir seems to have insisted on a more strictly European approach, at least the saints.

Even so, propaganda is not to be sniffed at. One painting shows Jehangir as ruler of the world atop another image of Christ holding a cross. Another pair, also of Jehangir, shows him holding an image of his father Akbar and his spiritual mother, Mary.

Jehangir and Jesus. Hashim, Jehangir, c. 1615-1620. Abu'l-Hasan.
Photo credit: Chester Beatty Library, Dublin.

If the Jesuits still retained any hope of converting either emperor, a painting by Bichitr would have snuffed that out. The painting, adorned with naked and clothed European cherubs  shows Jehangir snubbing King James I and VI of England in favour of a Sufi sheikh.

Jehangir Preferring a Sufi Shaikh to Kings, from the St. Petersburg album,
c. 1615-1618. Bichitr. Photo credit: Freer Gallery of Art.

The influence of European art on Mughal miniatures continued well after Akbar and Jehangir, even in paintings that did not directly reference Christ. One of the later examples of this comes around a century later. The Birth of Christ with its title written in English is now at the National Museum in Delhi.

The Birth of Christ. Mid 18th century, late Mughal, Muhammad Shah period.
Photo credit: National Museum, New Delhi.

(Source: Scroll)

Satire and the Malayali: Why India’s best cartoonists almost always come from Kerala

Political cartooning and Kerala have been a perfect match since the first cartoon was published in the state in 1919.

A fearsome god-like figure in the middle of the frame appears to be presiding over a scene of death, starvation and torture. Impaled on a spear held in his left hand is a human kill. A terrified creature in his right fist is struggling to escape a similar fate. The only one seemingly unaffected by the grisly goings-on is a smaller figure of authority, clad in western attire – boots, trousers, cape and cap – standing with his hands raised in benediction or approval.

This is a scene from Mahakshamadevatha, or the God of Famine, likely the first-ever cartoon published in Kerala. It appeared in a humour monthly, Vidooshakan (Jester), published from Kollam in October 1919. The work was unsigned.

Bonny Thomas, author and former cartoonist at the Economic Times, stumbled across Mahakshamadevatha in the archives of the State Central Library in Thiruvananthapuram in 1989. Thomas, who was trying to document the rise of cartooning in Kerala at the time, says the work was a powerful statement against war and colonialism. “It was the end of World War I, many parts of Kerala were facing famine because of rice shortages,” he said. “The Travancore king had introduced tapioca cultivation to keep off a crisis – you can see the plant in the margins. The Englishman, likely a policeman or an army man and a representative of colonial powers, is blessing the durdevatha or malevolent god, and the destruction he was causing.”

Mahakshamadevatha, likely the first-ever cartoon published in Kerala.

Mahakshamadevatha was clearly inspired by Punch, the storied British humour and satire magazine. But over the next ten decades, cartooning became as much a part of Kerala as the tapioca that had arrived from Brazil. The state not only produced cartoonists who were star draws in Malayalam newspapers and magazines, but also sent out legends to national and international publications. One such dearly loved export, PKS Kutty, even worked in the Bengali Anandabazar Patrika.

“Almost every newspaper in Kerala has a front-page cartoon and sometimes inside as well,” said seasoned Indian Express cartoonist EP Unny in an article celebrating Kerala’s cartooning centenary in Bhashaposhini, a Malayalam literary journal published by Malayala Manorama. “Even in Europe you will not find the art this prolifically visible every single day. Three crore people, 100% literacy, three in five a newspaper reader, three out of four a voter. And cartoons everywhere.”

Kerala was by no means the first state to take to cartooning. Punch and its sharp caricaturing of British colonialism in India had already inspired the birth of Oudh Punch in 1877 and Parsee Punch in 1854, which served rapier-sharp political wit in Urdu and Parsi Gujarati, respectively. In neighbouring Tamil Nadu, Subramania Bharati, poet, journalist and activist, had introduced cartoons in Indian, the fiercely political journal he started editing in 1906.

But it was in Kerala that cartooning found its natural home.

'The bride isn't enough, they want dowry as well.' Cartoonist Sivaram on reorganisation of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh in 1956 and its demand that it be handed Madras (now Chennai).

Politics and cartooning
The Malayali propensity for satire is ancient and deep-rooted, going as far back as 1500 years. Chakyarkoothu, a jester’s act grounded in the Sanskrit theatre tradition of Koodiyattam, allowed every actor in costume the unfettered freedom to knock down kings, priests and the nobility. In 18th century Kerala, the narrative art of Ottanthullal – a delightful jumble of poetry, dance and music – was scripted by one of the greatest satirists of Malayalam literature, poet Kunjan Nambiar.

Even today, satire saturates the media and entertainment scene. There is the popular “mimics parade”, travelling troupes that specialise in imitating and parodying politicians and celebrities. The nightly political spoofs on practically every news channel show how deeply wired black humour is in the Malayali mindset. The average man or woman on the street has always been argumentative, contrarian and highly political – a god-sent audience for cartooning.

These two cartoons by PK Manthri, which appeared on the same day in humour journal 'Naradan', indicate how the same cartoonist is capable of making a stinging statement about global politics and a banal one about two policewomen fighting in public, says Unny in 'Bhashaposhini'. The first cartoon also indicates the sexism rampant in Kerala's cartooning.

But going back to its growing years, Unny attributes cartooning’s dazzling rise in Kerala to two of its greatest social reformers of the early 20th century – Sree Narayana Guru and Ayyan Kali – who tore down the state’s repressive caste practices. “They gave the common man and the lower castes, who couldn’t even use words like salt in public, the courage to join public conversations,” said Unny. “The teashop became the site of verbal humour, a lot of it political, and that translated easily into the visual humour of cartoons. That is where cartooning in Kerala acquired its intensity.”

Social and cultural historian AR Venkatachalapathy, who has researched the history of cartooning in Tamil Nadu, believes the politically-charged air of Kerala gave its cartooning an edge.

'This Is Delhi', a series by T Samuel, the first pocket cartoonist in India who created Babuji, the predecessor to RK Laxman's Common Man, in 'Times of India'. Babuji was a Delhi character.

“Cartooning requires audacity,” said Venkatachalapathy in an interview to Sahapedia. “You need to have a political vision. The political vision of Tamil cartoonists has never gone beyond accepted middle-class norms…I think Kerala has succeeded because of the strong Left tradition, which gives a theoretical arsenal to criticise. You should have a political vocabulary to criticise, which has been provided by Marxism which essentially a very anti-status quoist ideology.”

Another factor behind cartooning’s rise was the mercurial, binary and combustive nature of politics in Kerala. In the seven years of its democratic existence, the erstwhile Travancore-Cochin state had five chief ministers. After just three years of Left rule, led by EMS Namboodiripad, in the late 1950s, the state of Kerala has largely been led by complex, rocky coalitions helmed either by a fissiparous Congress or the Left. This has guaranteed Malayali cartoonists a perennial wellspring of daily inspiration – factionalism, party hopping, double dealing and scandals that never end. “Neither Kerala’s politicians nor its cartoonists have had any rest since the birth of the state,” quipped Unny in Bhashaposhini.

Early pioneers
Many visionary cartoonists and events, some planned and others purely serendipitous, propelled the unique history of cartooning in Kerala. The 1930s and ’40s saw an explosion of humour magazines in Kerala, such as Sarasan, Vikadakesari, Narmada and Naradan. Between 1935 and 1942, literary critic, lecturer and humourist MR Nair, known by his pen name Sanjayan, started editing two satire weeklies in Kozhikode: Sanjayan and Viswaroopam. These journals, with high standards of writing, nurtured great talents such as PKS Kutty and M Bhaskaran. They also raised “cartoon awareness and readership in Kerala,” Unny said in his chronicling of the state’s cartooning history in Seminar magazine. Sanjayan’s impact was such that “the laid-back port town of Kozhikode in the late 1930s came to acquire subscribers for the Punch magazine in unlikely numbers,” wrote Unny.

Around the same time, another strand of Kerala’s cartooning history was unfurling in Delhi. At the centre of it was a gifted artist from Kayamkulam – Shankar Pillai, the man who was famously commanded by cartoon connoisseur Nehru with the words “Don’t spare me Shankar.” And who went on to obey Nehru by lampooning him in 4,000 cartoons.

Shankar was hired as the first editorial cartoonist of an English newspaper (Hindustan Times) in 1932 by editor Pothen Joseph and remained there till 1947, documenting the nation’s march to freedom and political self-determination.

Shankar Pillai's 'Coconut Ramayana', a pre-Independence cartoon depicting a representation from Kerala requesting viceregal intervention in stopping the import of coconuts from Sri Lanka.

Shankar occupies a huge space in the story of cartooning in Kerala. Not only was he prodigiously talented but he also generously mentored some of the most brilliant talents from the state: OV Vijayan, Abu Abraham, Kutty, T Samuel, Kerala Varma, BM Gafoor and Yesudasan.

At Shankar’s Weekly, which Shankar launched after he quit Hindustan Times, these men got a place to sharpen their skills and polish their styles. Nobody was required there to become Shankar’s clone, says Unny. There was, for instance, Vijayan with his searing honesty, bleak humour and brutal style which, far from giving anyone a good morning laugh, could send them into depression. “It was Vijayan who brought to an end the age of genial cartooning and made savagery his baseline,” said Pritish Nandy in a review of the memoirs of the cartoonist-novelist who contributed to the Far Eastern Economic Review, among other publications. Abu Abraham, who drew for Observer and The Guardian in a London stint, was known for his clean lines and withering wit.

An Abu Abraham cartoon lampoons President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed's signing of the ordinance that ushered in Emergency in 1975.

Something for everyone
While political cartooning remains the mainstay in Malayalam cartooning, the one wildly popular series, adored by children and adults alike, was Bobanum Moliyum (Bob and Molly) that began in 1962. It mapped the little world of two impish children, a small dog at their feet and their adventures in a quintessential Kerala village. It had some staple characters – a mofussil politician, a hippie (named Appi), a harassed mother, a lawyer father – and a gentle humour that landed spot-on nevertheless. Almost every Malayali has a favourite Bobanum Moliyum episode.

Created by cartoonist VT Thomas (better known as Toms) for the Malayala Manorama, it appeared every week on the last page of the magazine, and for devoted fans the last page was always the first page they turned to when the magazine arrived. The children’s antics were of course the heart of the story but alongside, there was a lot of gentle social and political satire in a world where rallies, slogans and village conspiracies were commonplace.

Around the same time, G Aravindan, who was later to become a filmmaker, was pulling in readers into the world of Ramu, a common man observing the world around him, in his cartoon series Cheriya Manushyarum Valiya Lokavum, which appeared in Mathrubhumi from 1961 to 1973.

A cartoon by Aravindan.

The only hole, and a large gaping one, is that this wonderful world of lines has been dominated entirely by men. And the male gaze. The jokes are often sexist and that is no longer funny. “When I go to talk to young school children on cartooning, the girls ask me: do women really look or behave like that? We need to find an answer to that,” said Unny.

(Source: Scroll)

Dutch church clocks up 1,400 hours to prevent family being deported

A non-stop church service in the Netherlands -- aimed at stopping an Armenian family from being deported -- has become so popular it has issued tickets for the Christmas period to control numbers.

The service has been going around the clock since October 26 -- more than 1,400 hours.

Under Dutch law, police officers are not permitted to enter a church while a religious service is taking place. So, church leaders hatched the idea of meeting non-stop to prevent the Tamrazyan's from being removed from the country.

Since then, hundreds of pastors and volunteers have taken part in the service.

Hayarpi Tamrazyan (C) from Armenia attends a service in the Bethel church as it holds round-the-clock religious services to prevent the family from being deported.

Axel Wicke from the Bethel church and community center in The Hague told CNN the service has become something of a "pilgrimage" for people across the Netherlands.

"We have had to account for so many people who want to visit during Christmas," Wicke said, adding that two of the services are being streamed on Christmas eve and Christmas Day.

The Tamrazyans have lived in the Netherlands for almost nine years, but their claim for political asylum was rejected. The Dutch Minister for Migration, Mark Harbers, has so far refused to use his discretionary powers to intervene and allow them to stay. His office declined to specifically discuss the case when contacted by CNN.

The five members of the Tamrazyan family, who have been living in the Netherlands for nine years, took refuge in the church on October 25, 2018 after Dutch authorities turned down their request for asylum.

Last week, the church said it was disappointed by the Minister's inaction and vowed to continue the service.

"Just before Christmas, when we celebrate Gods humanity-loving and peaceful deeds, we feel strengthened not to forsake our responsibility for the Tamrazyan family," Rev. Theo Hettema, chair of the Protestant Church The Hague, said in a statement.

He says the church provided an "extensive file with new information" to the Minister to help convince him of the family's case.

21-year-old Hayarpi -- the oldest daughter in the family of five -- said on Twitter she has been encouraged by the full attendance at the church.

Óók vandaag zit de Bethelkapel vol.. wat een bemoediging voor ons na een harde klap. Dank allemaal! ☺ #kerkasielbethel #kerkasielgaatdoor #kinderpardon pic.twitter.com/Mr7caAzAhT

— Hayarpi (@hayarpi_3) December 21, 2018

Speaking to Reuters earlier this month, she said: "I really don't know what the outcome will be, but we hope we can stay here (in the Netherlands), because this is our home, this is where we belong. And my brother, my sister and I, we grew up in the Netherlands and we have been living here for almost nine years."

This Christmas season, though, the family will spend time together holed up in a church that has offered them sanctuary, hoping and praying for a Christmas miracle.

(Source: CNN)