Sometimes it’s smart to play the fool. There are three types of fools, Michael Dirda writes for In Character: real, professional, and unsuspecting. Shakespeare’s King Lear thinks himself wise, until his best plans fall apart and he realizes that he is an unsuspecting fool. Professionals fools include con men, jesters, and other hucksters who “aims to reinforce his client’s conviction of his own superiority.” And the unsuspecting fools are the innocents, the idiot savants, the “saintly or holy fools” who “possess a primitive, almost prelapsarian goodness.” They’re also the ones most apt to speak up and say, “the emperor has no clothes!”

Source: In Character

There’s been no shortage of inappropriate Halloween costumes this year, including the pulled-from-the-shelves “illegal alien” and “Anna Rexia” outfits, of which Jezebel observes: “It’s inexplicable finding such a thing delightfully amusing in the first place—does seeing 20 of them on a shelves of a drugstore make the joke seem . . . more funny? . . . What’s bad enough as an asshole frat boy’s attempt at racist irony becomes something else entirely when it’s got money and presumably more than one yes-man behind it.”

Should you encounter a get-up in poor taste, there’s some truly thoughtful advice on broaching racist Halloween costumes from Washington CityPaper’s blog The Sexist, from the gentle—don’t make it personal—to the very straightforward: “Ask your friend if she has any reservations about wearing the costume in public. Just straight up ask her if she’s worried about any indigenous Alaskans seeing her Sexy Eskimo Costume.”

Sources: Jezebel, The Sexist

The spookiest day of the year is just around the corner—and the alt-press has been gearing up for weeks. So hold out your virtual goodie bags and let us load them up with links to everything from the best pumpkin ales and vegan Halloween candy, to expertly carved pumpkins and how to mind your spooky manners. Here’s wishing you a very alternative holiday.

—Trick-or-treating? Forgo the plastic pumpkin pail. Craft has DIY instructions for recycling a t-shirt into a trick-or-treat bag.

—VegNews has the Official Guide to Vegan Halloween Candy. Too much candy? Discover reports on two charity-minded Michigan dentists’ cash-for-candy scheme.

—Psychology Today offers advice on Halloween etiquette, including how to signal to others whether or not you’re handing out treats.

—Did you know you can recycle candy wrappers? Our sister publication Natural Home lists some less-obvious ways to green your Halloween.

—For the adults, Imbibe recommends a seasonal selection of spicy pumpkin ales, one of which gets a second thumbs-up from Paste’s editor in chief.

—Mental Floss rounds up classic Halloween TV specials, as well as some creative ways to carve pumpkins. Creative Review also has a nice (albeit small) gallery of illustrators’ art pumpkins.

—Banish boring pumpkin seeds: Natural Solutions recommends roasting pepitas with a pinch of chili-lime seasoning; Mothering shares a promising recipe for pumpkin seed pesto ravioli.

Sources: Craft, VegNews, Psychology Today, Natural Home, Discover, Imbibe, Mental Floss, Creative Review, Natural Solutions, Mothering

Image by foundphotoslj, licensed under Creative Commons.

What does the American Indian community have to say about the deaths of three spiritual seekers at a sweat-lodge ceremony in Arizona? That’s a ridiculous question to ask, of course: There is no central “Indian community,” nor is there a great chief who speaks for everyone with indigenous blood. With that in mind, we hit the web to survey reactions to the tragedy from various voices across the native world. Here are some of them:

Lakota spiritual leader Chief Arvol Looking Horse in News from Indian Country:

My prayers go out for [the victims’] families and loved ones for their loss. . . . I would like to clarify that this lodge and many others, are not our ceremonial way of life, because of the way they are being conducted. . . . We deal with the pure sincere energy to create healing that comes from everyone in that circle of ceremony. The heart and mind must be connected. When you involve money, it changes the energy of healing.

Tim Giago in Native American Times:

I am not going to dance around the consequences of [lodge organizer] James Arthur Ray’s stupidity because he was blatantly using a religious ceremony of the Native Americans to enrich himself, and what is worse, he didn’t know any of the sacred rites that accompany the inipi nor did he know the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota language, an intricate part of the ceremony.

Many Lakota are concerned about the deaths attributable to a botched sweat lodge ceremony. They have a lot more than this to worry about.

I look around Indian Country and I see the devastation and degradation, the hopelessness, the alcoholism, the drug addiction, the lack of respect for the elders, the many suicides among the young, the criminal acts of the gangs that now roam our reservations . . . the domestic violence, the abuse of children and spouses, and the total renunciation of any spirituality, and I am deeply concerned. . . .

Arvol, why are the sacred rites you represent not being used to bring our own people back from the brink? Why aren’t they being used to bring back the good health our people once enjoyed?

Valerie Taliman in Indian Country Today:

Selling the sacred has been around for a long time, and Ray is just the latest to capitalize on it. Native healers and spiritual leaders have been speaking out for decades about the abuse of sacred ceremonies, and continue to oppose the appropriation and exploitation of sacred ceremonies.

Back in 1992, Indian author Sherman Alexie criticized the appropriation of native ceremonies by new-age white men in a witty, sharp-tongued New York Times Magazine essay, “White Men Can’t Drum.” Given this history, and Alexie’s general eagerness to make fun of white guys playing Indian, I wondered if Alexie had weighed in on the sweat-lodge hubbub—and while it doesn’t appear that he has, a 2000 interview with Iowa Review makes me think that he’ll probably go against his nature and hold his tongue on this one. It seems that some things are too sacred to share, even for Alexie:

You often say during readings and talks that you want to honor your culture's privacy, and yet your work is so public. It seems like you protect it and expose it at the same time. There’s a tension created.

Yes, of course there is. One of the ways I’ve dealt with it is that I don’t write about anything sacred. I don’t write about any ceremonies; I don’t use any Indian songs.

How do you draw the line as to what is off limits?

My tribe drew that line for me a long time ago. It’s not written down, but I know it. If you’re Catholic you wouldn’t tell anybody about the confessional. I feel a heavy personal responsibility, and I accept it, and I honor it. It’s part of the beauty of my culture. . . . I’ve censored myself. I’ve written things that I have since known to be wrong. . . . I’ve written about cultural events inappropriately.

How did you know?

The people involved told me. . . . There are Indian writers who write about things they aren’t supposed to. They know. They’ll pay for it. I’m a firm believer in what people call ‘karma.’ Even some of the writing I really admire, like Leslie Silko’s Ceremony, steps on all sorts of sacred toes. I wouldn’t go near that kind of writing. I’d be afraid of the repercussions. I write about a drunk in a bar, or a guy who plays basketball.

Sources: News from Indian Country, Native American Times, Indian Country Today, Iowa Review

Image by Smoobs, licensed under Creative Commons.

People who “can’t take a joke” are often pegged as spoilsports—but recent research suggests that there might be more going on. According to Science News, gelotophobia is the fear of being laughed at, characterized by difficulty distinguishing mean-spirited teasing from the friendly variety.

Gelotophobes flew under the radar until the mid 1990s, when psychologist Willibald Ruch of the University of Zurich identified the personality trait and began researching it. “That shame is a predominant emotion in gelotophobia explains, in part, why the affliction received little scrutiny from scientists for so long,” the biweekly magazine reports. “Burning shame can create more feelings of shame and is rarely acknowledged to others.”

Ruch and his colleages have now developed questionnaires and assessment tools to help identify the trait. They’ve surveyed 23,000 people in 73 countries, finding gelotophobia present in all countries, from 2 to 30 percent of each population. In the United States that figure is 11 percent.

So on the one hand, we’ve got a new name for a trait that’s been under our noses all along. On the other, perhaps this emerging understanding of the spectrum of ways people perceive laughter could help us all get along a little better. Just one question remains: Can you take a joke?

Source: Science News

We sing with our children constantly when they’re small—lullabies when they’re babies, all kinds of on-the-fly songs when they’re toddlers—but as kids get older, families seem to stop singing together. Some quality time with the singsongy kids’ show Wonder Pets made Toner Quinn, editor of The Journal of Music, wonder why we lose our voices.

When kids hit school age, Quinn writes, parents tend to channel their musical impulses into instruments—piano lessons and trumpet practice come in, and singing goes out. “From a toddler-hood of joy in singing,” he writes, “parents suddenly emphasize playing an instrument, as if singing just wasn’t substantial enough. Instruments are purchased, music stands are put up, practice is emphasized, and slowly that natural instinct to sing out at the drop of a hat is left behind.”

Part of it stems from a widespread belief that while musical instruments can be learned, a good singing voice is innate. “Our language is full of phrases to inhibit us singing—‘she’s tone deaf’, ‘he doesn’t have a note in his head’, ‘I never had a voice’. Very few people are actually tone deaf. Not being able to sing in tune is little more than a matter of practice.”

Society—the bulk of it—has become shy about singing. . . . Family occasions that cry out for a song—not just weddings and funerals, but lunches and dinners—are bereft of the practice of calling for hush, and asking the one or two in the family who are known to have a voice to release it. Do we know today if any of our nearest or dearest even have a voice?

There’s no easy solution, of course, which Quinn acknowledges. But his assertion that “music clearly needs a champion in the home” is a good place to start.

Source:  The Journal of Music , August-September 2009 (excerpt only available online)