Here we are to share, discuss, and engage with Haiti, earthquake and other such nature occurrences, and Building Global Community. The first post is a paper I wrote Seeing Through Hillman's Archetypal Psychological lens of my first experience in Haiti after the Earthquake as part of documentary trio witnessing the creation of a non profit called Helping Hands Noramise in Limbe, Haiti. 

My main intent is to begin a conversation on how Psyche can be held and expressed:

To continue to challenge humanity to really look at our small moments to see how they relate to global horrors and potential joy. 

To re engage with the Mythic forms as they are manifest today and to see what we have to learn from and with them.

Finally, to remember the Natural world of which we humans are a part.  

So please, read, allow the posts to be portals beyond our present moments yet access points to pieces of ourselves that resonate beyond man made boarders, and hopefully we as a global community can re vision how such Catastrophic Experiences can be potential our guides.

Salud

annie jordan

Archetypal Haiti.pdf

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  • Well I just saw this photo and had to post it before I comment on what it brought up for me:
    http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/05/31/honduras.storm.emergen...
    The office of Guatemala's president handed out this aerial view of a crater that opened up after Agatha hit.

    Tropical storm leaves at least 115 dead in Central America - CNN.com
    At least 115 people have died after a tropical storm battered Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador over the weekend, officials in those countries repo…
    • And interesting news to add to the Natural Catastrophe monitor: The Earth has burped, big time.
      Pacific submarine volcano issues 'big burp'
      By the CNN Wire Staff May 31, 2010 2:29 p.m. EDT

      (CNN) -- A rapid Pacific submarine volcano eruption has exhaled a steam and ash cloud in the air and left a trail of debris on the surface of the water near Sarigan Island in the Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. officials said Monday.
      Game McGimsey, a volcanologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, said the vent, lying 1,000 feet under the surface, issued a cloud 40,000 reaching feet in the air.

      As a result, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service evacuated 16 people, mostly its scientists, from the Northern Islands off Saipan following the eruption, reported the Saipan Tribune. The area is U.S. territory.

      The current volcano alert level is advisory, and the current aviation color code is yellow, meaning volcanic activity has decreased significantly but continues to be closely monitored for possible renewed increase.

      Satellite images show no sign of ongoing activity, according to a report form the USGS.

      Seismographs indicate a rapid and short-lived onset and that the eruption lasted a couple of minutes, McGimsey said.

      "It seems to be just one big burp," said Mike Middlebooke, a senior forecaster at the National Weather Service in Guam, about the cloud burst.

      The vent lies seven miles south of Sarigan, an uninhabited island that was used as a copra plantation during World War II, in the Northern Mariana Islands, a chain between Hawaii and the Phillipines in the Pacific Ocean about 3,800 miles southwest of Hawaii.

      Evacuees from the islands Sarigan and Pagan were all U.S. Marine and Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands scientific crews, McGimsey said.

      The USGS monitors don't have instruments on submarine volcanoes, and it took a while for scientists to pinpoint the exact location of the volcano, McGimsey said.

      Satellites picked up the ash cloud on Friday. The cloud detached from the area above the vent, indicating the underwater eruption had ceased, he said.

      Scientists, who originally thought the cloud came from the Anatahan or Sarigan volcano, identified the cloud source by the large amount of debris and water discoloration above the vent, he said.

      While people aren't encouraged to hang around, there are no restrictions on the area, Middlebrooke said.
  • By the way, did you know that unemployment rates in Haiti hover around 70%, that over 50,000 children were in orphanages BEFORE the earthquake (many with at least one living parent who just couldn't afford to care for them), and that many mothers make dirt cakes to fill their children's bellies because they have nothing else? Additionally there is a huge slave labor market with many children becoming "restaveks"--that is, they are sent to live with more wealthy families who promise to send them to school (a big promise in a country where nearly half the population is illiterate) but often end up being kept almost as slaves for the family who never follow up on their promise to send them to school.

    I saw a pretty horrific but compelling report by ABC called "How to Buy a Child in 10 Hours" (2008) - an expose on how easy it was to acquire a child for almost nothing in almost no time. If you have the courage to watch it (witness it), here's the link: http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/buy-child-10-hours/story?id=5326508
  • Annie: Thanks so much for introducing the topic of Haiti into the forum. It's so relevant and yet I'm rather shocked by how, after the incessant coverage the first few weeks of the catastrophic earthquake, the topic has virtually disappeared from the media--even while hundreds of thousand remain homeless and live side by side with the Trash Heaps you so compellingly describe in your wonderful paper. I can only imagine what it must have been like for you to be there in March! Thank you so much for sharing a look at your experience through your lens in your paper. I hope others will take a few minutes to read it!

    I also wrote a piece on Haiti recently using James Hillman's lens of Archetypal Psychology--but approaching the quake itself from a more traditional mythic standpoint. My paper seems hauntingly related to some of what you touch on--that the colonization, oppression, and overall disregard of the country (once all its resources were drained) is devastating. Haiti has been ignored and downplayed for a long time resulting in an Underworld (more related perhaps to Hades, its near-homophone) than to the Jewel of the New World as it was called by the Spanish when they first "discovered" it and availed themselves of its riches.

    I believe the quake was a wakeup call for the world to take notice--and we did, in some ways--as we each texted our $10 donations to the Red Cross by cell phone from the comfort of our own (still safe and standing) homes with all the amenities we enjoy (myself included). Its just so sad that so many Haitians died for the cause--and worse yet that so many have been--and still are--displaced. They are a nation that has been displaced in so many ways. I hope we who are willing witnesses can continue to do so, holding them in our hearts and minds as so many still struggle--both individually and collectively.

    I will post my paper on Haiti here as well in case anyone would like to read it. I think it compliments Annie's nicely with some history and mythic context, too. What do you (all) think of the fact that media coverage has all but evaporated? Or am I missing something?

    Mythoimaginal_Take_Haiti_Quake-BBright.pdf

    https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/9142611271?profile=original
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