RINGOFGOLD

Transnistria: When we learned of the trauma that is still ongoing for these families of their failure to bury the dead in the killing fields of Transnistria, the grandmothers of both Diamanta and Ionel having walked back home to Romania with most of their family dead and unburied, no grave, coffin, cemetery, priest, candle, bread, wine or feast, we invited a Romanian Orthodox priest to celebrate these dead, naming all of them, in our cemetery. Diamanta cooked the traditional meal, for Romanians believe the dead are hungry and eat with us. We recited all the names below. These dead members of their families had died of starvation in WWII: Veta Curte, Constantin Durac, della famiglia di Daniel-Claudiu Dumitresc;
Panta Danila, Margica Danila, Verda Danila, Caizer Mundeanu, Lenuta Danila, Bicusa Danila, Tiberean Danila, Ivanciu Danila, della famiglia di Diamanta Danila; Sofia Copalea, Sivirino Copalea, Verige Copalea, Dod Copalea, Duga Copalea, Cosia Copalea, Bisa Copalea, Cristi Copalea, Hortanza Copalea, Pomelnic Copalea, Grafian Copalea, Grecu Copalea, Madita Copalea, della famiglia di Ionel, Mihai, Gheorghe Copalea.. The herding of Roma into rat-infested camps today outside of Roma, Florence and elsewhere in Italy, then bulldozing them as at Osmannoro, is part of this pattern. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/02/why-concentration-camps-are-still-with-us Politically both sides become hostile to each other, we acquiescing in the creation of these 'hostile environments'. While we are jointly responsible for their evil, Lord Caradon, who served in such crisis spots as Cyprus, Palestine, Jamaica, Nigeria and the United Nations, nevertheless explained to me that 'the evil of the oppressed is less evil than that of the oppressor'.

EDUCATION
Roma often cannot afford to pay for schooling for their children in Romania. But children learn from their parents important skills useful for survival, how to work with metal, stone, wood and earth. They work collaboratively in families with great courtesy towards each other. Taking the children from their parents at an early age to teach them Gadje (non-Roma) 'socialization' and in tellecuatl skills is not necessarily the answer. In America 'socialization skills' translate into unethical competitiveness, the Orwellian opposite of what the word seems to imply. Instead there should be projects of alphabetization of all ages, for women and men, which include practical hands on information for better health, nutrition and housing, so that children are not alienated from their parents by education. Statistically it has been found that where schools are held in Romani far better retention results. At the same time attention paid to the health, nutrition and housing of young children in families results in better academic work. Ideally Roma can be encouraged to retain their traditional manual skills while learning our intellectual ones, and even teaching their excellent skills to our young people who are in such great need of them. Our own education system has divorced us from centuries of traditions of manual skills' learning and teaching and has consequently caused children to despise their parents to the point where they now cannot work manually and are afraid for their survival in our current economic collapse. We can learn much from the Roma; our children could learn to work manually, gainfully and joyfully alongside of Roma. That is how Roma work.

ALPHABETSCHOOL.ppt English

ALFABETOSCUOLA.ppt italiano

Alphabet English

Alfabeto italiano

AlfabetoBadia italiano

Alphabet Voice Recording of Romanian Roma in Mediatheca Fioretta Mazzei's Alphabet School reciting the alphabet

Alphabet School in Florence's English Cemetery and Library for Roma Families

How to do stone lettering English

Literacy English

Education English

Daniel-Claudiu Dumitrescu, Vandana Culea Romany Vocabulary with drawings by Daniel Dumitrescu. Romanì, Romanian, Italian and English

Voice Recording of Romany Vocabulary by Daniel Dumitrescu, Vandana Culea and JBH at Romany.mp3 Romanì, Romanian, Italian and English

Arabesquing the University, Antwerp, 2008 English/ In italiano

Women and the Lord's Prayer English

A suggested model for literacy, but from Ethiopia: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7777560.stm English

Haiti as paradigm English

HEALTH
Among our prejudices against the Roma is the belief are that they are dirty. Instead they have strict rules from their Indian origins about the need to wash in running water frequently, about not washing the top part of the body with the same soap that is used for the bottom part of the body (a good recipe against cholera), about washing hands very thoroughly (including the backs of hands, the wrists, etc.), about not dressing in dirty clothes (if they are denied access to water they will throw dirty garments away rather than continue to wear them, to prevent diseases like typhus from lice). Their most serious health problems come about from the denial to them of water, of adequate housing with windows (leading to tuberculosis), lack of employment (meaning they cannot pay for medical care), lack of education, particularly amongst women (resulting in being unable to read medical information or to limit the size of their families), intermarriage and environmental pollutiion causing genetic defects, and alcohol and tobacco abuse, typical amongst oppressed groups kept in poverty, Native Americans, Irish, Blacks, Aborigine (leading to liver diseases and cancers). A major reason for the reluctance to send their children to Gadje schools is their exposure there to drugs. But when it is explained to women that where they become educated life expectancy increases and infant mortality drops they are eager to learn.

Daniel-Claudiu Dumitrescu, Vandana Culea Doctor Visit Romanì, Romanian, Italian and English, with drawings by Daniel Dumitrescu

Charles Kemp, Baylor University Medical School Doctors and the Roma English

Lancet article on early childhood health and education English

FAMILY
The greatest value to Roma is the family. They marry young, are faithful, and care for their children. One can be in a Roma camp filled with babies, and not one of them crying. Often, Social Assistance desires to remove the babies from the parents because of their poverty, or at least the father from the child and mother, but better and less costly would be giving the father a job so he can support his family. Roma, lacking the right to work, are further handicapped in the modern economy by the high cost of disposable diapers and the premature births of their babies resulting in their being bottle instead of breast fed, both expenses they cannot afford. Enormous sums will be spent on funerals out of respect for the dead, a family even selling their home for the culturally required rites. We have much to learn from Roma about the care, nurturing and education of babies and children.

Alleluia italiano

Hedera's Family The Rom in Europe English

Florence and Gypsies English

How to Raise a Child English

Child/Mother English

CULTURE
Roma love beauty. Roma are deeply religious, whether they are Orthodox, Catholic or Muslim. A Romanian Orthodox Roma nursing mother will not drink milk on Friday nor will Roma touch iron on that day. Their music combines joy and sorrow.

Karen Graffeo Now Let Us Praise the Rom English

A Photographer from Prague English

Rose Lloyds An English Rose The Autobiography of an Orphan Roma, Written by Herself English

Elizabeth Barrett Browning Aurora Leigh in mp3 recordings. Go to http://www.florin.ms for complete playlist. English

Frances Alexander The Madonna and the Gypsy English, italiano

A barrel organ is played in Piazza Beccaria. I have recorded its hauntingly beautiful music in mp3. Use it as background to these essays. New

EXTERNAL LINKS:

§ 'Cara Europa' http://www.everyonegroup.com/it/EveryOne/MainPage/Entries/2008/5/26_Cara_Europa._Appello_di_Rebecca_Covaciu_contro_la_persecuzione_dei_Rom_in_Italia.html

§ http://nigeldickinson.com/gallery/finlandroma Look for this on the WayBackMachine for 11/5/2011. Only in Finland can Roma be wealthy, their women go to university

§ Patrin Web Journal: Romani Culture and History http://www.oocities.org/~patrin/ This fine website goes to 2000 only.

§ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romani_people

European Roma Rights Centre § http://www.errc.org/

Formerly, Baylor University § http://www3.baylor.edu/~Charles_Kemp/gypsy_health.htm
No longer at that web address instead available at http://www.ringofgold.eu/charleskemp.html
An excellent essay on medical aspects with essential insight into Roma culture

§ http://www.rroma.org/

The Stories Exchange Project § http://www.stories-exchange.org Funded by the World Bank, The Stories Exchange Project is an experiment in generating global dialogue about the Romany experience and tensions between the Roma and the white majority worldwide. Visitors to the site are invited to comment on articles and discussions and to share their own stories. Available in English and Cesky, the site offers summaries of workshop discussions, text excerpts from dramatic performances, video clips of the film Stories Exchange Project, as well as poignant passages from interviews of project participants.

http://artists-for-roma-net.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network Artists for Roma Initiative Newest

And this suggested by a young Romanian Roma, but about Romanians: Go looking for all of Gheorghe Zamfir on the Web.

Keep Exploring Google, both websites and images

Please send Julia Holloway further links to include here

Relevant Books in the Mediatheca 'Fioretta Mazzei', Florence's 'English' Cemetery, where we have taught Roma parents to write their names so they will not lose their children

Alla perifera del mondo: Il popolo dei rom e dei sinti escluso dalla storia. Ed. Isabella D'Isola, Mauro Sullam, Guido Baldoni, Giulia Baldini, Gabriele Frassanito. Milano: Fondazione Roberto Franceschi, 2003. With CD. Università di Firenze, 2003.

Isabel Fonseca. Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and their Journey. New York: Random House, 1996. Father Matthew Naumes, 2001.

Gianni Berengo Gardin. La disperata allegria: Vivere da zingari a Firenze. Firenze: Centro Di, 1994. Paola Cecchi, Firenze, 2003.

Jean-Pierre Liégeois. Gypsies: An Illustrated History. Trans. Tony Berrett. London: Al Saqi Books, 1986. Jane and Philip Weller, Hampshire, 2003.

Le strage nazifasciste a Firenze e Provincia: Trasmettere la memoria. Catalogo della mostra fotografica 27 gennaio-10 febbraio 2002, Gallera Via Larga, Via Cavour, 7r, Firenze. Firenze: Amministrazione Provinciale di Firenze, Istituto Storico della Resistenza in Toscana, 2002. Michele Gesualdi, Firenze, 2003.

William M. Sloane. The Balkans: A Laboratory of History. New York: Eaton and Mains, 1914. Syracuse University, Florence, 2005.

Antonio Tabucchi. Gli Zingari e il Rinascimento: Vivere da Rom a Firenze. Firenze: Feltrinelli, 1999. JBH

Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald. Gypsies of Britain: An Introduction to their History. London: Chapman and Hall, 1946. Jane and Philip Weller, Hampshire, 2003.

Duncan Williamson. Fireside Tales of the Traveller Children. Twelve Scottish Stories. Illustrated, Alan B. Herriot. New York: Harmony Books, 1983. Arizona State University/Mesa Public Library, Tempe, 2004.

Our Mediatheca in Florence will always welcome further materials concerning the Roma

And on the Victoria Discussion List the following suggestions were made for leads for research:

The list of material about the Victorian Roma/Gypsies is long, indeed, but it's a rich and fascinating topic. If you want contemporary accounts, the second half of the century saw the advent of the "Gypsyologists." You might start with The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. It started in 1888, I think.

You might also look at some of the individual C19 Gypsy Scholars/Scholar Gypsies like George Borrow (The Zincali [1841], Lavengro [1851], and The Romany Rye [1857]), Richard Burton (The Jew, The Gypsy, and El Islam [1898]), Francis Hindes Groome, Charles Godfrey Leland, et al.

For more recent examinations of the "Gypsy Problem" in the century, see David Mayall, Gypsy-Travellers in Nineteenth-Century Society (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988) and Gypsy Identities, 1500-2000: From Egipcyans and Moon-men to the Ethnic Romany (London: Routledge, 2004); George K. Behlmer, "The Gypsy Problem in Victorian England," Victorian Studies 28 (1985): 231-53; Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald, Gypsies of Britain: An Introduction to Their History (London: Chapman & Hall, 1944); Thomas Acton, Gypsy Politics and Social Change: The Development of Ethnic Ideology and Pressure Politics among British Gypsies from Victorian Reformism to Romany Nationalism (Boston: Routledge & Paul, 1974).

The book-length studies are quite good and offer longer, more nuanced considerations, but if you want a shorter and quite informative introduction to the subject, the Behlmer article is a fine place to start.

The past 10-15 years have also seen a handful of doctoral dissertations on the subject, including those by Audrey Shields, Michelle Mancini, Mary Burke, and myself.

I don't think it's out yet, but Deborah Nord's Gypsies in the British Imagination, 1807-1930, is listed as forthcoming this year from Columbia UP (I think), and based on an excerpt I heard her read at NAVSA, it promises to be intriguing.

And Gipsy Smith, His Life and Work (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1901). was also suggested. While the discussion list went on to mention Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Marian Erle in Aurora Leigh, Robert Browning's Pied Piper, George Eliot and Matthew Arnold.