The Foot of Mount Olympus

Where I'm From

2011-09-19T22:33:00.002-04:00

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Where I’m From

Bumpy bitter melon hangs from the vine,
Roses nod their red velvet heads
as I pluck beetles from scented petals
and tuck them into a glass jar.

I ride city busses and a subway with wooden seats;
Play in parks with lakes and cherry blossoms,
Shop in bakeries with onion rolls, miniature danish and knishes,
Walk through the museum and sit in the library, marble quiet cool and calm
while the streets outside rumble with rebellion.

There’s a raggedy yellow teddy bear sign at the corner auto repair shop.
Cardboard Coca Cola Santa’s hang from the ceiling of the corner store.
Speedy Alka Seltzer’s on TV, Good Humor men sell ice cream from bicycles and the Sinclair Dinosaur sign hangs at the gas station.
Pastel pink and lavender Thunderbirds park like butterflies on crowded streets.
The twelve o’clock whistle signals the end of Saturday cartoons and the TV shouts, “Out of the blue of the western sky, comes Sky King.”

“Lazy hazy crazy days of summer” and “Sukiyaki” play on the radio while
women at the lake with petaled organza kerchiefs covering their pink rollers
lie on blankets to tan, smothered in Coppertone.

We sing in the back seat of a blue and white Buick Special,
“Michael Row the Boat Ashore” and “Soldier Boy.”
“The M.T.A” and the” Merry Minuet” my bothers and sister,
mother and father on the long ride from Newark to Williamstown on Friday night
after taking rolls of wrapped coins to Vic’s candy store to
trade for bills so we can buy the gas to go.

During South Jersey summers before the casino’s come
we eat Sotanghan and Pancit,.
can peaches and pick blueberries.
Moths flutter around the back door light,
as we try to dance the tinikling without smashing our ankles between sticks of bamboo.
We sing with cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents
long into the night
while my uncle plays the guitar

We catch frogs in the swamp near
the ruins of an old scout camp in the woods,
Dig for blue mason jars
and bits of broken plates at a long abandoned dump
and find an inkwell
with a metal top. My sister still has it.

Back home in the city,
I play Double Dutch and clapping games.
Sing the Sanctus and Agnus Dei at mass,
but only boys are allowed in the choir.
Nuns who teach us everything we know at school,
in church just deck the altar with flowers
while the priests run the show.
My first phone number is Bigelow 3-7452
and the Pope’s is Et Cum Spiri 220.
Before Mr. Zip moved the mail I lived in Zone 8.

Abad’s, Acutanza’s, Balot’s, Carbonel’s,
Dimacali’s and Europa’s.
Leonen’s, Monsalud’s
Quilban’s, and Relova’s. Filipino family names
by way of the four Gallagher girls.

Potato pancakes and sugar cookies in the house
Where a WWI vet named George Sackmann sings
With tears in his eyes, “There’s a long, long trail a winding into the land of my dreams,”
with me on his knee. He takes me for walks to look for money
on the street. (we always find some.)

I read Taro Yashima’s Momo, the little girl who got rain boots and an umbrella
for her birthday and waited and waited for the rain to come
and when it did it was the first day she walked to school
without holding either her mother or her father’s hand.
Wanda Swoboda and the girl with only one dress to wear
to school but a hundred dresses wallpapering her bedroom walls.
Thomas Wolfe’s, “You Can’t Go Home Again”
no matter how many times you try (‘cause it isn’t there anymore)
and Tennessee Williams who understands
that human beings as fragile as we may seem
have an almost limitless capacity to endure pain and still live.
“Look,” he wrote, “'The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks!'

2011-06-10T22:53:00.000-04:00

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Policy Analysis of the National Environmental Policy Act

A. The National Environmental Policy Act
The first policy written in the United States to address environmental issues was the National Environmental Policy created by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 and the subsequent creation of the Environmental; Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970. B. The Purpose of the Policy
The act states in section 101 that Congress recognizes the impact of man’s activity especially population growth, urbanization, industrial expansion, resource exploitation and the importance of restoring and maintaining the environment. In section 102 it states that Congress authorizes that policies, regulations and public laws should use an interdisciplinary approach to identify and develop ways of ensuring that major actions that could significantly affect the quality of the environment should first detail the impact of the action, list any adverse affects, list alternatives, state the relationship between short term use and long term productivity, state any irreversible commitments of resources. (NEPA, 1969).
C. The History of the policy and the problems it addressed.
After World War II with the establishment of the nuclear and chemical age, the environment and people began to be exposed to new and deadly substances. The United States Government began dumping nuclear waste into the oceans in 1946. (Leopold, 2000). Oil companies that previously produced lubricants, gas and oil diversified into petrochemicals including chemical fertilizer. The American people became very aware of environmental issues. Because of the boom in home building in the suburbs, the expansion in the ownership of automobiles for transportation and the need to build superhighways to accommodate the cars, pollution became more visible and harder to ignore. (Dukakis, 1999). In addition to air and water pollution from smog and waste, Americans were made aware of the dangers of pesticides like dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) with the publication of Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring in 1962. The book generated a lot of interest from the public as well as opposition from the chemical industry. Carson did not call for the immediate banning of all pesticides. She pointed out the need for science to explore natural ways of controlling pests and increasing food production. (Graham, 1978) The chemical industry attacked Carson, which generated more publicity for her book, but although more people became aware of environmental issues and DDT was banned in the United States, pesticide production has increased from 124 million pounds in 1947 to 638 million pounds in 1960 to 1.4 billion pounds in 1985. Along with this, cancer rates are also increasing. (Epstein & Briggs, 1987) These facts are at the heart of the lack of effectiveness of the EPA. There is a constant struggle between those who profit from exploiting the environment and those who want to develop it sustainably. The chemical industry uses various tactics to hide the effects of chemicals on humans and the environment. They have hidden reports from the EPA, harassed, criticized and tried to discredit ecologists, epidemiologists and researchers who do not agree with them and they along with other industries that oppose government regulation have suppressed reports that expose practices that are harmful to the environment.
D. What are the benefits, eligibility criteria and the beneficiaries of the policy/program?
Everyone who lives and breathes in the world is experiencing the problem. Cancer rates are going up not just because people are getting older. Chemicals are in our food, air and water. The effect on our bodies and the environment even when they are documented and studied are often hidden from the public. The people who experience a problem may not even be aware of the origin of the problem Efforts to prove that one particular chemical causes a particular illness or disease have not been successful in the US. On the other hand many grassroots groups and organizations are aware of the issues and work very hard to inform the general public about unsafe environmental practices. NEPA is a federal act and the will to enforce it should come from the federal level. There is no way to stop what happens in one state from affecting the air and water supply of another state. I believe the precautionary principal adopted by some European countries is a good one. It would force chemical companies to do testing at their expense. This would force them to find the safest solution, not the short term cheapest solution for them which has the end result of being a very expensive solution for the public for health reasons as well as for environmental clean up. All of us living on the planet would be beneficiaries.
E. What level of government is responsible for its administration and financing?
The EPA and the PA DEP are funded and administered by the Federal and State Government with taxpayer dollars. This year’s federal budget proposes a cut of $1.49 billion from last year. (Restuccia, 2011) The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has had its budget cut over the past five years to 59% of what it was in 2000-2001. (Bauers, 2011)
F. Some of the issues and problems with implementation
Implementation is an issue for a number of reasons. The main reason is that the interests of industry usually come before the interests of the environment of the public. The chemical industry of which oil and gas is a part, experienced great growth after World War II mostly because of the development of synthetic organic petroleum based compounds like DDT and vinyl chloride based plastics like PVC and CPVC piping. (Herman, 2007) The side effects of these chemical-based products on people and the environment were not obvious at first. Because they were effective as pest control and relatively cheap they were widely sold and used. By the time scientists discovered the side effects a large network of interrelated industries was in place. Industries that required the chemicals, farmers now dependent on pesticides, scientists employed by the industry, and the agriculture departments of both state and the federal government allowed the grandfathering of the use of some products so business as usual could continue. In addition to this the burden of proof to link any chemical to any illness is on the public. In the early years after the passage of NEPA under the administration of William D. Ruckelshaus people and responsibilities were transferred from different departments to the EPA. Before reorganization, the registration of pesticides was regulated by the Department of Agriculture; the pesticide label review was regulated by the Department of the Interior; Air, Solid Waste, Radiological Health, Water Hygiene, and Pesticide Tolerance were regulated by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Transferring these responsibilities to the EPA enabled the agency to enact the Federal Environmental Pesticides Control Act (1972); Safety Standards for Farmworkers (1974); regulation of land use (1972); and significantly revise water pollution legislation (1972). Regarding the regulation of water pollution, the EPA changed the focus from the quality of water to restricting effluent discharge with the goal of reaching zero discharge. Thousands of rules and regulations were modified or enacted during this period. (Wismer, 1985)
During the oil crisis in 1973, the EPA and Congress modified the Clean Air Act to allow for more use of coal and eased automobile emissions standards to allow for greater fuel economy. Under the administration of Douglas M. Costle from 1977 to 1981, the major problem was chemical dumping at sites like Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York. The Hooker Chemical Company owned and operated a municipal and industrial chemical dumpsite that was covered over with dirt and sold to the city for one dollar in 1953. Homes were built on the site, but in the late 1970’s after a hard rain drums of chemical began to surface and the chemical soup leached into yards, homes, playgrounds and the school. The entire community was evacuated. (Beck, 1979) In response to this in December 1980 the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) also known as the Superfund Act was passed. The act required oil and chemical companies to pay into a fund to clean up toxic waste sites. It expired in 1995. Pennsylvania has more than 100 Superfund sites, the second highest in the nation. There are also 1000 hazardous waste sites around the state. (Penn Environment, n.d.)
The Reagan Administration in an effort to relieve the burden that these regulations imposed on the business community appointed a task force headed by George H.W. Bush to review existing regulations and streamline the bureaucracy. Of 176 regulations, the task force revised or eliminated 76. They also added a new regulation. Executive Order 12291, issued February 17, 1981, states that any government agency proposing new regulations had to consider the cost benefit. Reagan also cut the EPA’s staff by 11% and its budget by 12%. By 1984, the EPA staff cuts totaled 29% and the budget was cut 44% from what it was in 1980. (Sandhu, 1988). H.R. 564 the Superfund reinvestment Act of 2009 has been introduced by Representative Earl Blumenauer D-OR but has not been passed. That bill would reinstate the Hazardous Superfund financing rate and the corporate environmental income tax until 2018. There are two related bills, the Superfund Polluter Pays Act introduced by Senator Bill Nelson D-FL and the Polluter Pays Restoration Act introduced by Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ. (Open Congress, n.d.). When laws are enforced, rather than protecting the environment, companies pay fines related to the violation if the violation is caught. In the case of hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale for example the Pennsylvania Land Trust Association reports 1614 violations by gas drillers in Pennsylvania alone since 2008. (Pennsylvania Land Trust Association, 2011) From 2005 through February 1, 2011 the total dollar amount of the fines imposed by the PA DEP was at least $2,106,318. The average fine however was $23,666 which is low enough for a company to pay without hurting their bottom line. (Hamill, 2011)
G. Is the program successful? Who says so?
The policy can be effective or not effective depending on the political climate and whether it favors business or the people. Currently the program is not successful. The public can be manipulated by industry misinformation and advertising. In the case of Rachel Carson, the public, the press and the President were all sympathetic to her message. Her book was published soon after the thalidomide scare when pregnant women who took the drug for morning sickness produced children with severe birth defects of the limbs. (National Toxicology Project, 2010) People were concerned with the effects of chemicals on humans and the environment. The New Yorker Magazine published an excerpt of the book and CBS aired a documentary on Carson and the book even though some of the sponsors dropped out of the show. Ten to fifteen million people watched the interview. In spite of this fact pesticide use on farms, for lawn care and in households has consistently grown. (Herman, 2007) Why and how can this be?
Part of the problem is that we use chemicals everyday in many ways. In addition to gasoline for our cars, we use soap, shampoo, cleaning products, weed killers, plant food, plastic food containers, diet foods, non-stick coatings, medicines and many other products. It’s difficult for us to believe that they are harmful if we buy them in supermarkets and bring them home. It’s almost impossible to imagine what life would be like without antibacterial soap or toothpaste. The chemical industry counts on this normalized acceptance of chemicals. Scientists who criticize a product or a policy do not always project the same physical appearance as corporate sponsors or newscasters. They may have a less polished appearance than an industry spokesperson. They may look like you or me. The information they impart may not fit into a sound bite between commercials. In addition to this, the chemical industry deliberately creates doubt and confusion about scientific findings when they do not align with industry policy. The term “junk science” is applied by the industry to environmentalists, researchers, critics of the industry and lawyers who sue on behalf of clients. According to Consumers Union the publisher of Consumer Reports, “the phrase "junk science" has been coined by those practicing public relations and lobbying activities on behalf of some companies in certain industries--particularly the plastics, chemical, biotechnology, and pesticide industries. While its coiners may have legitimate grounds for debate on some issues, the phrase has been used far too often to discredit honest public interest organizations and legitimate scientists who express concerns about consumer safety and environmental risks.” (Wagner, 1999). When the industry funds scientific research and experts, the media accepts them without criticism. Often there is little separation between what is still called independent media and chemical companies. The Washington Post has an executive of Johnson and Johnson on its board of directors as well as a few investment bankers. The Chicago Tribune has a CEO of a major pharmaceutical company, two insurance company executives, and one from an electric utility. All of these industries oppose government regulation. The same corporate culture and class consciousness applies to the advertising industry. According to Herman (2007), of the 100 largest national advertisers 31 are chemical companies. Auto companies use chemicals like oil and gas and are concerned with regulation of those goods. If you add the food industry and their relationship to chemicals, the print industry that produces toxic waste in paper production, you may not have a conspiracy, but you do have a business plan that does not include the health of people or the health of the planet. (Herman, 2007) These companies also depend on a short public memory. Although dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) was banned in the US and many other countries, there is a campaign endorsed by the World Health Organization to bring it back to “save African babies” from malaria. (Schaffer, 2006)
H. Identify gaps and unmet needs and solutions.
Where is the EPA in this picture? Severely under funded and subject to the agenda of several decades of Republican industry friendly rule, the EPA is portrayed as a part of big government thwarting the progress of industry. Unfortunately they have not been able to even regulate the majority of chemical substances they were tasked with in 1976. Seventy to seventy five percent of toxic chemicals in use have not been tested. In the case of Monsanto and Santogard, an anti-scorching chemical used in the rubber industry, the EPA found a report on the negative effects of the product that Monsanto did not give to them as the law required. Monsanto was fined $196,000 (by law the fine should have been 19.7 million) and asked if they had any more hidden reports. 164 were found. The company was fined $648,000 for those. Knowing that other chemical companies must have done the same thing, the EPA granted an amnesty to the industry with nominal fines for the next three years. The industry produced over 11,000 documents. (Herman, 2007) No business was thwarted by the EPA.
After the chemical accident in Bophal India in 1986, Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act which directed chemical companies to inform the public of releases of 654 known chemicals into the environment. The disclosure showed that several billion pounds of toxic chemicals were spewed into the air each year. There was virtually no media coverage of the Toxic Release Inventory. Since then, twenty four states have passed “audit privilege laws” allowing companies to conduct their own audits and correct their own issues. (Herman, 2007) Knowing the history of the industry this does not seem like a good solution for people or the planet.
Albatross chicks die every year from eating tiny pieces of plastic that they mistake for food. While consumers are responsible for some of the plastics in the ocean, the small pellets from which plastics are made come from industrial waste. Fishing nets which once were made of plant fiber are now made of plastic adding to the problem. (Azzarello, M. & Van Fleet, E. 1987)
Proposed Solutions
In order to effect any real enforcement of this policy which proposes to protect the environment from the influences of human activity and restore and maintain it so man and nature can coexist in healthy and pleasing surroundings maximizing the use of the environment without harm while preserving it, maintaining diversity, expanding renewable resources and recycling depleted ones there will have to be some changes in the awareness and the will of the people of the country.
According to the Mt Sinai Medical Center “Over 4 billion pounds of toxic chemicals are released by industry into the nation's environment each year, including 72 million pounds of recognized carcinogens” and “of the top 20 chemicals discharged to the environment, nearly 75% are known or suspected to be toxic to the developing human brain.” The hospital has launched an environmental health education campaign in Queens, NY that includes a workshop on alternatives to plastic. (Mt. Sinai Medical Center, 2001)
J. Compare policy position with Social Work Speaks.
Social Works Speaks Environmental Policy quotes part of an op-ed article. The article begins by asking the question, “If everyone were mentally ill, how would we know whom to treat?” (1995, Berger). He calls our participation in harming the environment, “habitat destruction syndrome” and compares it to a mass mental illness. Berger states that although we are surrounded by information regarding the impact of environmental degradation over the past 50 years, as a society we do little about it. Because the changes are gradual and because we are not as conscious of nature due to our lack of contact with it, we don’t see this issue as a crisis. Because we are inundated with crisis messages through email and social networking sites from a myriad of organizations, we feel overwhelmed and unable to choose which issues we should prioritize or act on.
According to Social Work Speaks, social workers have a “professional obligation” to educate ourselves on environmental issues, to support enforcement of the EPA, to support the use of non-toxic products in schools and the general society and to support the regulation of chemicals through the EPA and other agencies. Social Work Speaks calls the environmental crisis a “major public policy issue that will influence all future human development.” It also goes on to say that there is a solution to the crisis if we act in a timely manner. The concerns of social workers go beyond concerns for the environment to include the health issues that people face including increased rates of cancer, respiratory issues and illnesses linked to the continued use of pesticides. Communities of color are especially vulnerable to be host to chemical plants and toxic waste dumps nationally and internationally. We may face opposition perhaps even in the form of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) suits that are filed against regular people who participate in public dialogue with government agencies in reacting to or reporting among other things, reporting environmental violations. (Potter, 2008)
The current economic crisis can also be a time of opportunity. For some of us, being laid off or underemployed can give us the chance to follow in the footsteps of our grandparents who had victory gardens and grow our own food. We can use more glass containers than plastic. We can walk more than drive. We can read more about the crisis and think more about what we can do about it. We can write to and call our legislators and the companies that produce offending products or packaging. We can go to local meetings of environmental groups. We can make our own cleaners from simple materials at home. We can use power strips and turn our appliances off when not in use. We can put tap water in the refrigerator instead of buying bottled water. We can use cloth bags when we shop. How many chemicals are essential to your daily life? How do you profit from their production and their use? Is your financial future tied to the debasement of the environment through stock ownership or a 401K? If so divest of these interests. These sound like small steps but any act, no matter how small helps to change us as individuals and our relationship with the larger world around us. It’s the first step to becoming politically active outside of the voting booth. Engagement is essential to our continued survival as a free people and to a sustainable planet.
I. Identify available agencies, services or programs available in your area or your hometown including addresses and telephone numbers.
DEP Northeast Regional Office Bethlehem
Wilkes-Barre, PA 18701-1915 4530 Bath Pike
Business Hours: 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Bethlehem, PA 18017
570-826-2511 (24 hours/day) Business Hours: 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Regional Director: Michael Bedrin 610 861-2070

24 Hour area hotline 570-826-2511

Azzarello, M. & Van Fleet, E. (1987, May 6) Marine birds and plastic pollution. Marine Ecology Progress Series. 37, 295 – 303. Retrieved from http://www.int- res.com/articles/meps/37/m037p295.pdf

Bauers, S. (2011, March 24). PA DEP Budget: halved in a decade. Philly.com. Retrieved from http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/PA-DEP-budget-has- dropped-.html

Beck. E. (1979, January). The Love canal tragedy. EPA Journal. Retrieved from: http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/lovecanal/01.htm

Berger, R. (1995, July) Habitat Destruction System. Social Work 40, 4, 441-443

Dukakis, M. (1996, November) Environmental politics in post-World War II America Resources, Conservation and Recycling. 18, 5-9

Epstein, S. & Briggs, S. (2007, June). If Rachel Carson Were Writing Today: Silent Spring in Retrospect. Environmental Law Reporter Vol. 17.

Graham Jr., F. (1978, November/December) Rachel Carson. EPA Journal. Retrieved from http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/perspect/carson.htm
Hamill, S. (2011, April 17). What fines reveal about drilling in state. Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Retrieved from http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11107/1139961-503- 0.stm?cmpid=marcellusshale.xml
Herman, E. (2009, January 5). Corporate Sovereignty and (Junk) Science and Media. Z Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/doc/11316515/Edward-S- Herman-Corporate-Sovereignty-and-Junk-Science-and-Media-3-Articles
Leopold, E. (May 2000). Seeing the Forest and the Trees:
The Politics of Rachel Carson The Monthly Review. 52 01 Retrieved from http://www.monthlyreview.org/500leopo.htm
Melchor, S. (2000, February 17.) European Commission approves precautionary principle guidelines .Pesticide & Toxic Chemical News. Retrieved from http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-59578792/european-commission- approves-precautionary.html
National Association of Social Workers (NASW). (2006) Social Work Speaks: National association of social workers policy statements. environmental policy. Washington, DC: NASW Press

National Environmental Policy Act (1969). Retrieved from http://ceq.hss.doe.gov/nepa/regs/nepa/nepaeqia.htm

National Environmental Policy Act. (1970, January 1) National Environmental Policy Act, Retrieved January 24, 2011, from
http://ceq.hss.doe.gov/nepa/regs/nepa/nepaeqia.htm

National Toxicology Project (2010, November 12). Retrieved from http://cerhr.niehs.nih.gov/common/thalidomide.html

Open Congress (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111- s3164/show

Penn Environment. (n.d.) Cleaning up toxic waste sites. Retrieved from http://www.pennenvironment.org/healthy-communities/cleaning-up-toxic-waste- sites

Pennsylvania Land Trust Association (2011) Marcellus Shale drillers in PA amass 1614 violations since 2008. Retrieved from http://conserveland.org/violationsrpt

Potter, Lori. (2008, December). Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation Overview. Retrieved from http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/petition/topic.aspx?topic=slapp

Restuccia, A. (2011, April 12.) Spending bill cuts EPA funding, delists wolves, limits funding for Interior 'wild lands' policy. The Hill. Retrieved from http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/155425-spending-agreement-cuts- energy-and-water-programs-by-five-percent-from-fy2010-levels

Sandhu, J. (1988). The Environmental Protection Agency in the 1980s. Retrieved from http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/fenlewis/epa.htm

Schaffer, K. (December 2006) What’s behind the DDT comeback? Pesticides News No.74, page 4

Wagner, L. (1999, December) Consumers Union statement about consumer distorts. Consumers Union. Retrieved from http://www.consumersunion.org/products/distortsopi1299.htm

Wisman, P. (1985, November). EPA History (1970-1985). Retrieved from http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/epa/15b.htm

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2011-04-05T17:05:00.000-04:00

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GASLAND Trailer 2010

2011-04-05T16:00:00.000-04:00

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Warning

2010-11-28T15:10:00.002-05:00

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I can feel it coming.

I hear it moving under the earth,
tremors so slight I’m not quite sure
they shook the earth under my feet.
There’s an odor in the summer air,
suddenly strong, as suddenly gone.

On the fringes of my world
the evil has overwhelmed the light.
Its thunderous step has stamped out all song.
Its blackness has eliminated all color
but the one that runs like water in the streets,
the one that soaks the earth
the one that obliterates the difference
in the color of the skin,
the difference in language,
the separate historical condition,
of each time and place.
The color of blood.
The color under which we will fight
the blackness of death.

The evil began so long ago
that it has no distinct beginning
in our consciousness.
It has always been with us
at times a whisper,
at times a shout.
Sometimes it is crushed for a while,
but the struggle against it
leaves the victor near death,
unable to nourish itself,
unable to flourish.

In the high places,
the struggle against it is barely noticeable
as people go about their lives
painting,
singing,
laughing.
working.
At times a great horror pierced through
the invisible wall.
People stop their individual noises and turn to watch.
They cry out in sorrow and give money for a while,
but soon it’s Christmas or summer or Halloween
and the happiness of children with the world at their fingertips
and bright futures before them takes precedence over the distant sorrow.

Within the high places
always there are those who fight the evil at its source,
but the blows they strike are toothpicks hurled at a Goliath,
an annoyance easily crushed by tricks and laws.
The fighters grow old and die and are born again
Battles ebb and low and ebb
as those who would be soldiers marry,
bear children work and live the everyday lives of the privileged,
lives of safety.

As the people in the outlands farm
increasingly smaller
more meager plots of soil
for more meager rations
the high places bloom with the products of the world.
Fruits and vegetables in many forms
From every corner of the world
are always available to those who can pay.

Then even in the high places,
the trouble begins to spread.
An entire population of those seen
only in the outlands begins to grow
within the cities of the high places.
Their eyes recede into their sockets.
Their bellies growl with hunger.
They sleep in the streets and
scavenge food and clothing.
They watch as the privileged drive by
in cars that cost more than two years wages
or walk by in sneakers that cost as much
as it would to feed a family of four for a month.

City buildings stand empty while hundreds of thousands are homeless.
Country fields lie fallow as farmers are driven from the land.
The net of safety we believed existed, has turned into a web.

During the years of prosperity
The people in the high places never asked
Where their coffee beans,
pineapples,
ginger,
tangerines,
teas,
raspberries came from.
On the part of the privileged
whose ancestors had fled poverty and persecution
there was no question,
no curiosity of life in the outlands.
No knowledge, no want of knowledge
for any world other than their own.

As world conditions worsened
the people of the high places
are seen as the enemy.
They are murdered
by desperate people who would die alone
or take one person with them
touching the people of the high places
with a fraction of the terror
and sorrow they live with all their lives.

Now, the armies of the world stand ready,
parading their weapons on land, sea and air.
Will this be the beginning of the end of the planet earth?

2010-05-06T11:44:00.000-04:00

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This year flew by. It's hard to believe I was laid off a year ago. All application material are in at Kutztown. I'm trying to find an on-line statistics class that does not have prerequisites. Hopefully I can take this over the summer. I also still have to take the GRE's. I think the Social Work thing is right for me.

I went for a 3 mile walk this morning. There's a mother duck with 11 babies in the rose garden pond. This morning they were all huddled together on one of the stepping stones that crosses the pond. Of course I didn't have my camera, but I'll go back later and see if I can get a good picture. Yesterday afternoon they were all swimming around and cheeping like crazy. They are just TOO cute. The park is really looking beautiful now. The path has been paved so I don't have to look down when I'm walking for fear of twisting my ankle on the irregular stones that used to be there.

Still doing Census work. It's nice to be out among different kinds of people again. For the past 16 years everyone I've worked with in the offices has been white.

I'm doing a lot of beading and I have some new material to work with too - dupioni silk ribbon, brass cages, smoky quartz and leather. I'm moving to a bigger booth at Cottage Crafters when my lease is up. I want to make some hanging things with glass and beads and bells. I'm going to call them Luminosities. You will be able to hang them outside or in a window as a sun catcher. I also might do some stained glass mosaic stuff. We'll see.

I haven't planted anything yet. It's been warm but I think I'll wait until after may 15 as usual. The lavender in the front yard looks beautiful this year. It's very full and springy looking. The peony, bleeding heart and alliums I moved from the back yard survived and look good. I have to take out some of the spiderwort though because it's getting out of control. The Stella D'Oro lilies are also nice and bushy.

I have this weird houseplant that I bought at Ikea a few years ago. I love it because it's very architectural. It's growing a new center branch and the branch is sweating a gooey clear substance. I wish I knew what kind of plant it was though. It's getting big but it has an odd footprint. Long hard green "branches" and as they grow they curve to one side or the other. The new "branch" comes from the middle of the plant.

Well that's all for now. I am really pissed off about the BP gusher and the drones, but right now I feel pretty good so I don't want to spoil it.

What's Wrong Here

2010-02-26T11:02:00.002-05:00

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Reading about and personally experiencing the current problem of unemployment in the US has made me realize that on the sixth day God did not create Adam and Eve the first two human beings, but Adam and Eve the first two human resources. It is a global issue that people are valued only if they can be exploited.

Workers in the US are the most productive in the world according to many sources, mostly due to working longer hours. As a reward for our efforts, many of us are now unemployed or under employed after working for 20-30 years. Many of us are too young to qualify for Medicare or Social Security, or as the song goes, “Too old to work and too young to die.” While official employment statistics put the unemployment rate at 10% it is actually closer to 20%. At the same time there are many needs that are not being met because private industry has no interest in rebuilding New Orleans, fixing a badly crumbling infrastructure of levees and bridges, adequately staffing the nation’s schools or rationally and adequately feeding and sheltering the nation’s people. The spread of “American Culture” around the world through Mc Donald’s and war has disrupted the lives of people in many other countries. These people are forced to emigrate legally and illegally to escape violence and poverty.

In any solution for the above issue that involves planning or government intervention the rabid cry of Socialism is heard loud and wide. When government interference takes the form of subsidies to industry including weapons manufacturers, deregulation, or allowing an American company to send jobs offshore or build factories in other countries, putting the burden of increased poverty on the government, no cry is heard. When companies in India and Africa take water from the ground while the people have to pay outrageous sums or when the World Bank imposes penalties on a country that are guaranteed to keep them impoverished forever everyone feels really bad and some movie stars adopt a child or two, but nothing is done to stop it.

For the problems abroad the solutions are:
• Stop supporting dictatorships, interfering in elections and the business of sovereign countries.
• Stop military aid to all countries in a civil war.
• In a court of law, try corporations who give aid and comfort as well as facilities to governments engaged in the murder of labor and human rights workers.
• Educate the American people on the real history of their country so they can be aware enough to object to these practices.

For the problems in the US, I propose the following:

Education
Public education should be federally funded. Teachers should be trained to find and enhance a child’s’ innate abilities and interests from an early age, communicating them to each subsequent teacher. The goal of education should be a well rounded, happy person who can be productive in an area that serves the needs of society while also being fulfilling to the individual.

Manufacturing
The car, while fun, has been one of the most destructive inventions ever made. Its destructive not only to the environment but to the social fabric to have everyone riding around I their own little bubble or more often than not, huge boat. Instead of bailing out GM and letting them decide what they would produce the government should have tied the bailout to lighter rail and mass transit. GM bought up and dismantled mass transit in many American cities, was given a very small fine when found guilty and circumvented environmental laws by producing SUV’s on truck bodies. The government should have seen this bailout as an opportunity for progress. More jobs would have been provided because transit workers would be needed and railroad workers would be needed to rework or rebuild abandoned rails all across the country.

Federal Prison Industries (Unicor) employed 18,972 “inmate workers” according to their 2009 annual report. They make everything from clothing and textiles to office furniture to electronics. They make many statements about improving peoples’ lives and teaching them skills while they are in prison. I believe that poverty is the main cause of crime and that most of the people in US prisons are poor people there for drug related, non-violent crimes. If they and their parents had decent paying productive jobs on the outside, they probably wouldn’t be in jail. Given the trend of runaway shops and jobs over the past 40 years they are not likely to get a decent job when they get out. While I think working is a good idea for everyone, work release to a decent paying job outside the prison walls along with education and counseling is what should be done.

We have a free source of energy that everyone has access to: the Sun. Many new solar panels have been developed including roof tiles that look just like normal roofing but have solar panels incorporated in them and super thin solar film. This industry should be eligible for research and capital equipment grants so they can produce as soon as possible a reasonably priced product. This industry would employ engineers, workers to assemble and install.

Businesses who locate out of the country should be taxed at a high rate.

Farming
Factory farming does not work, is inefficient and causes environmental and medical problems for the people of this country. The water crisis in the artificially fertile state of California and the outbreak of e-coli in corn fed beef are just two examples of this.
Food should be grown locally and organically. Experienced farmers could be hired to set up and run cooperative farms in every county. Workers of various abilities could be trained and hired to work while continuing their education in related fields. This would not only solve part of the unemployment problem but also stop pesticides from leaching into the water supply and cut down on the amount of plastic packaging and pollution from diesel fuel from the trucks that bring your lettuce from California. This will also help in efforts to stop a chemical company responsible for the manufacture of Agent Orange from creating pesticide laden, dead, seeds.

Building
The documentary “America Betrayed” documented that the problems with levees built by the Army Corp of Engineers does not stop with New Orleans and Katrina. Bridges and levees built to protect many cities across the country are in danger of collapsing. Given the current water crisis and what we now know about the problems with damming a river rebuilding in these areas might take the form of restoring then to their previous state in order for the land to be able to protect itself. In a country of this size this would be a massive public works project employing thousands of laborers as well as engineers and scientists.

Many beautiful and salvageable buildings in our inner cities are vacant while ticky tacky housing is built on farmland that could still be productive. Rehabbing takes more labor than putting up new housing but labor is in abundance now. Working with the farming community to stop rezoning of farmland for new construction would help to use all these resources in a more rational way.
Hire and train field agents to assist homeowners to refinance their mortgages at a fare rate. If a homeowner had paid 50% of the value of his or her home, forgive the balance owed.

There superfund sites in every state in the union. In addition to this there are many other polluted areas that need to be cleaned up and the pollution itself needs to stop. The EPA should hire enough field agents to be able to deal with these issues.

Social Life and Art
Since the 1950’s non-representational art has taken a front seat in our culture. Black painted tarpaulins titled “Thanatos”, white canvases titled, “Untitled”, and a slab of black countertop leaned up against a wall, also “Untitled.” (My suggestion for a title was “On Sale at Home Depot, Cheap) abound in contemporary art museums. Painters like Irving Norman, photographers like Milton Rogovin are not everyday names to most people. People are missing from contemporary art as if we are nothing. I recently saw an exhibit of WPA art in Washington and it was wonderful. Part of the devaluation of people is in raising art to a “higher” level. I believe that each of us has an artist in us but we are rarely given a chance for it to emerge. Art should surround us. It should be projected onto blank brick walls, performed in every public space on a regular basis. Instead of buying schlock institutions should display art made at home by their students, patients, workers. Art therapy should be a growing field. Although most Americans have not experienced the horrors of war as Judith Herman showed in her book “Trauma and Recovery,” many have been traumatized at a young age. In addition to this many of the new immigrants from the former Yugoslavia and the African continent have experienced horrors that my have to be suppressed as they get on with their lives. I think art can go along way in helping people overcome these experiences. The American Visionary Art Museum many times exhibits art by people who have been hurt in some way. A man who was mugged and beaten severely made art from matchsticks, a woman whose house burned down with some of her family in it painted on discarded doors; a woman whose childhood was marred by an abusive, alcoholic father makes tiny dresses out of scraps of fabric showing how resilient people are and how much is untapped within them.

I started this article by saying that American workers were the most productive in the world mostly because they work longer hours. It has been 100 years since workers fought for and won the right to an 8 hour day. “8 hours work, 8 hours rest, 8 hours for what we will,” was the cry of these workers. In 2010 people who still have jobs are working at least that much if not more. We are human beings. We are not here to serve industry nor to be chewed up and spit out when we re no longer necessary to them. We have a right to live and a need to work, but our work should be meaningful. We cannot be real participants in this democracy unless we have the time to read, speak and meet about our social problems. After 100 years of the 8 hour day we should have a 4 hour day with no reduction in pay.

How do we pay for this?

• Return the tax rate to pre-Reagan levels 70% for the top income levels.
• End the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and all interference in the internal politics of sovereign countries.
• Stop the research, production and purchase of drones and other weapons of mass destruction.
• Reinstate the Environmental Superfund contributions from polluting industries.
• Instate a Medical Superfund to fund Universal Health care. Industries such as coal, oil, pesticide manufactures should contribute since they cause a number of preventable illnesses. Also contributing should be the Pharmaceutical companies.
• Time phase the nationalization of the medical insurance companies. As long as the private insurance companies continue to operate tax them at a high rate.
• Stop all foreclosures. Cap credit card interest rates at 4% and allow people to restructure their debt.

These solutions may seem like pipe dreams and for the most part they are. Not because they are outrageous or unreasonable but because the power that stands in the way of solving the problems of poverty and ignorance is enormous. Every town, every state courts business. People say you need corporations to give you a job. These companies are not giving you job out of charity. They are making a profit from your labor. They are not necessary entities. People exist like all the other wonderful things on this planet. We need to learn to celebrate ourselves and use our talents, our abilities, our bodies and minds to make the world a better place, safe from the vampiric ravages of corporate entities.

2010-02-12T17:26:00.002-05:00

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Bush was handed the presidency twice - once by fraud in Florida and other places, once by the Supreme Court. Even though most people voted for both Gore and Kerry, they were not allowed to win. Somehow Obama was.

I'm beginning to think that that was part of the plan to keep people quiet in the face of the worst economic crisis since the '30's. If we had a Republican president people would have been down in Washington demonstrating against the bailouts, the foreclosures and the job losses. Because Obama is the first Black president people are cutting him slack that he doesn't deserve.

There are a lot of phone callers into the various shows on Sirius Left who express dismay over the lack of change that Obama promised to bring. When's the last time you believed what a politician said? Not too many years after you stopped believing in Santa Claus I'll bet. If you watched the DNC you heard Biden say we have to get out of Iraq and get into Afghanistan. That should have been no surprise. Obama is a Democrat, not a Socialist and what have they brought in last few presidencies - war, NAFTA, GATT, more job losses, continued environmental devastation, bankrupting of the public to subsidize industry and the wealthy. I vote Democratic because it's the lesser of two evils if Nader is not on the ballot.

Workers have never gotten anything from a politician. We human beings - as opposed to human resources - have fought for everything we have and we have to continue to do that in any way we can. The president doesn't run the country, the money that elected him does. How many more people have to suffer? Write letters, talk to people, go to Washington on March 20.

The Entity (a work in progress)

2010-01-25T09:20:00.004-05:00

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The Entity (a work in progress)

The enemy doesn’t live halfway around the world in a country whose name you intentionally mispronounce to show which side you’re on.

It doesn’t come from another country, work at a low-paying job and speak your language with a heavy accent.It has no interest in dating your daughter or living in your neighborhood.

It will throw you out of a job without a thought and pocket the profit when the market rises due to its efficiency, smiling discretely all the way to the bank.

It’ll throw you out of your house after you’ve paid 20 years on 30 year mortgage and the law will help it because it’s their job. No one will live in your empty house. The pipes will burst, the house will rot. Animals and birds will move in and make it their own. But, ha ha ha ha ha, you can’t have it, even if you have paid double the value of your house already in interest.

Maybe you'll get sick and your medical “insurance” won’t pay for your treatment or you don’t have any insurance because you lost your job. You’ve worked all your life, paid off your house, have no debt. Too bad goody-two-shoes. You lose your house to save your life.

It’s legal.

This enemy can’t be fought with guns because it doesn’t have a body or a face.

It’s an entity. A sulfuric gas that wafts yellow and stinking all around us. A gas that drugs us, blinds us, makes us sleepy and tired and stupid and afraid of anything and everything. A gas that makes us ache for a past that never was and makes it impossible for us to see the future.

It’s name is capitalism. It’s face is the corporation.

Unfinished poem regarding memorials to anti-capitalism

2009-08-31T23:27:00.001-04:00

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Dig a little here, Dig a little there
Victims of capital are everywhere.
Buried in a mountain,
Thrown into the sea and
Strewn across the fields of every country.

Some were shot, kicked in trenches
After digging their own graves
Some were thrown from helicopters
Into the waves
Some were raped and tortured,
Burned alive in their huts
Some were beaten to death with rifle butts.

They were burned in England,
They were burned in France.
They were burned in Germany (much more advanced.)
They were burned in Korea and in Vietnam
They are burning now in Gaza and Afghanistan.

Burned at the stake,
Burned in the ovens,
Bombs raining from the air
Dozens and dozens.

Some were plowing their fields,
Some were singing a song,
Some were putting on their stockings
For a night on the town.

Some were going to work.
Some were going to school.
Some were in the marketplace.
Shopping for food.

Some were in uniform
Many more were not
Some crouched behind the barbed wire.
Some stirred a pot.

Some were old, some were young
Some were not even born.
Their names we don’t know
But we can learn.

In Argentina, In Chile,
Honduras, El Salvador
Mothers search for the missing
And there’s more

In Spain they’re exhuming
Mass graves of Loyalists
Who were murdered by Franco
And the fascists.

We have our own missing in the US.
The ghosts of our ancestors cannot rest
Until we know the truth about their lives
Whether they lived 200 years ago
Or recently died.

But it’s not just the dead
Of our own families we seek
We need to know History.
So we won’t be weak.
We need to know the names of the people who fought
Right here on American soil for everything we’ve got.

We need to know about the Indians then and now,
To see how we are different yet the same some how.
We need to realize their struggle’s not done
There’s only one way that it can be won.

We need to know about indentured servants and slavery
And how if one is slave, the other can’t be free.
We need to see how hard people fought
In spite of odds so overwhelming it’s hard to give it thought.

We need to understand labor history
And the men, women and children who fought to keep us free
From the greed and the suffering of 7 days a week
Working 16 hour days to make ends meet.

We need to understand that the 1950’s
The Red Scare, union purges, firing commies
Is one of the reasons we don’t know today
How in the heck the world got this way.

We need to study history that’s within our reach
The Civil Rights Era and the dancing in the streets.
The joy and the pain and the subterfuge
That our government directed at anyone who moved.

We need to remember our disappeared
In the jails and the prisons
And remember that Angola used to be a plantation
Then go to the website Unicor.gov
And tell me what it reminds you of.

We are all suffering now, some much more than others
But we have to remember that we really are all brothers
And sisters under the skin.
And if we stick together we really can win

Even if it’s just a few steps forward
Don’t let ruling class push us backward.
To the days when there wasn’t enough to go around
When we fought each other for scraps on the ground.

For we are the people each unique in our way
But we won’t have the power ‘till we stand up and say
In spite of our differences there’s one thing to be stated,
The people united can never be defeated.

We have our differences but we can get along
And make a much better world than the one we’re living in.
We just need to realize who’s the true enemy
And that we don’t need guns to fight to be free.

Fallout after watching PBS Pete Seeger's 90th Birthday

2009-08-02T22:31:00.003-04:00

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Sorry just understood why I don't like Bruce.

Obesity and HFCS

2009-07-29T07:59:00.008-04:00

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The July 29th Morning Call carried and article by Kristina Sherry titled, "Selbelius touts strategies for winning obesity fight."

The article states that "the direct medical costs of obesity total $147 billion annually" and "some of the $1 billion in stimulus money...would go toward obesity strategies." Does this direct cost include the subsidies to the corn industry ($243 million per year according to a Tufts University study) which benefit producers of high fructose corn syrup which in addition to extra calories elevates triglycerides since HFCS is processed by the body differently than sugar?

At a time when there is such a need and so much resistance to a single payer health care solution shouldn't someone be pointing out that we subsidize the Archer Daniel Midlands of the world so they can make super profits by making us sick?

Maybe if we stopped doing that we could find the money for healthcare. Maybe these people should be sued for producing and profiting from products that shorten the life of the people of this country.

Mr. Obama, how about some "personal responsibility" lectures to corporate America?

Here are a few links regarding HFCS:

Ramblings

2009-07-28T08:43:00.003-04:00

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This has been a busy summer. Nora's dying, dad getting sick, Cyndy coming out. I've been really busy. Not complaining. This neighborhood is incredibly noisy during the day between the lawn maintenance and just work at the funeral home and the Scottish Rite/Masonic Temple, roadwork, traffic - it's loud.

I have to get back to walking again-I haven't done it since Cyndy came out. It was nice to see Auntie Del and Phil, nice to go into the city (although I hate the Lincoln Tunnel.)

We bought the kayaks down to Green Lane so we don't have to transport them everytime we want to use them. It's smaller than Nockamixon but I think we will use them more this way. they have to be quarantined for 10 days to make sure they are not carrying zebra mussels.

I watched a cute movie last night with Judi Dench-The Last of the Blonde Bombshells about a recently widowed woman who had been a member of an almost all girl band during WWII. It was very nice. Today I will harvest the basil, make and freeze pesto and plant more basil. I have 3 yellow squash that I have to do something with and I have to go to Elia's for red peppers, fruit and lemons and limes. For some reason I have been off beading. I'm not sure why. We have lots of tomato's but none are ripe yet. The plants are huge. Eggplant and peppers are not so great. I think they are not getting enough sun. I'll have to move the plants on the other side to the front next year or in the fall and make more room for veggies in the back.

I cannot believe that we are not going to get single payer healthcare. I am so sick of these politicians. I haven't heard back from Jimmy since my last email. I hope he is OK. I am not sure if he's in Afghanistan yet. 53 years old and they're sending him into that muck. Why can't this country leave everyone else alone and spend our tax dollars on making life better for the people at home instead of killing them everywhere else? What is wrong with this country?

Reading

2009-06-22T10:09:00.002-04:00

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Well in the past week I've read Pearl by Mary Gordon, Harvest and The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen (internist turned mystery writer) and The Tempest Tales by Walter Mosely.

The Tempest Tales wasn't the best but the premise of the story was interesting. A black man is killed by the police in a case of mistaken identity. When he gets to St. Peter he is told he has to go to hell because of some of the things he's done. He refuses which upsets everyone because up until now no-one has questioned a sentence. As a result an accounting Angel is sent down to earth to live as a mortal and Tempest is returned to earth in another body to convince the Angel that he should not go to hell. Everything is progressing in an interesting manner until Basel Bob shows up to add another threat to Tempest and the Angel named Joshua.

Tess Gerritsen is a former MD who writes mystery novels set in the medical community. I found her by wandering around in the fiction section looking for a mystery writer with a long line of books.(I've read all of Sara Paretsky's books including the essays and Bloody Kansas; all the Sherri S. Tepper's and Lia Matera's Roger L. Simon's and almost all the Walter Mosely's so I am desperate.) I read Harvest first because it was her first book and planned to continue in chronological order but at a Flea Market over the weekend I found The Surgeon. This is her sixth book and moved a lot faster than the first one. I am going back to the library for more today. I don't even want to tell you the plots because even a few sentences could spoil them for you.

Pearl is the story of a young woman who goes on a hunger strike and chains herself to the American Embassy in Ireland after a friend dies. The other main characters are Pearls single forceful mother and the son of Pearl's father's former housekeeper who is also the executor of his will since Maria (Pearl's mother) and her father were not speaking at the time of his death. I thought Maria was going to get the short end of the stick since she comes across as a force of nature and people are normally put off by that but I was happy with the ending. It really made me cry though. I hope I never have to see my kids in the hospital with tubes all over them near death. I'm not all that familiar with the problems in Northern Ireland but the ethnic, political and religious backgrounds of the main characters meshing in that setting make an interesting story.

2009-06-07T13:52:00.003-04:00

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I got a phone call last week from a financial services company asking me if I was interested in coming in for an interview. Since I am currently unemployed I said yes so on Thursday morning I drove down to a strip office center about 15 minutes away not sure what to expect.

The hallway was long and dark. I found the suite number and entered a small room with a receptionist where I was asked to sign in and have a seat in another room. I entered a large room with several small offices around it. There were about 20 folding chairs set up in front of a desk and a a large pad on an easel. I took a seat and a man who turned out to be the owner of the company handed me some literature to look over. Eventually 4 other people also came in -all men. The job turned out to be sales for an insurance agency. We heard a spiel about how successful you can be selling supplemental health insurance to people over 65 since 1 person turned 65 every 15 seconds. If you make 15-20 appointments per week and get 2 sales per week you can make between $40-$60,000 the first year. Commissions range from $400 for senior life insurance policies to $9000 for annuities. You can do all this by calling 200 people a week.

We heard about the inadequacy of Medicare, the shame attached to having to go on Medicaid after having worked all your life, the uncertainty of the current stock market and how that is playing havoc with everyone's life savings. Basically you are preying on people's fear.

This is not something I care to do but it was worth going to check it out. After outlining the products we heard about the 12 agents currently working for the company who come from all walks of life; how the only limit on your earning power is you...very inspirational... then a parting remark, "Who else is calling you? How many calls did you get this week?" and a laugh. It was almost cult-like or like buying a car. We were asked to fill out a questionnaire listing 3 questions we would ask at our interview and to make an appointment for a one-on-one interview with the receptionist on the way out. She asked if I would like to come back the following day but I said, "I don't think so." "You'll call?" she asked.

You would also have to use your own laptop, buy your own business cards, calculator, map, planner, direct mail leads, stamps and envelopes and dress in suits.

It was an interesting experience.

The First Day of the Rest of My Life

2009-05-04T10:04:00.004-04:00

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I peeked out the window this morning and saw a panel truck outside. It was a plumber for someone else on the block. "I hear music..." popped into my head, "the murmur of the morning breeze up there, the rattle of the milkman on the stair..."

I walked to the Post Office today in the rain. Walking down Hamilton Street I said hello to several people including a man who gave me a ticket to heaven. He was sitting in front of a coffee shop and I smiled and said hello. He said hello back and then asked me to wait while he fished in his pocket. He said, "It's nothing bad. I'm a good christian man," handed me the ticket and said it was because of my smile that he gave it to me.

There's a new bakery/coffee shop that I didn't know was there. It's on the block before the Americus Hotel. There don't seem to be any slate sidewalks but some of the curbs are slate.

It's very different walking than driving. Even the pink and white house on Linden and 14th didn't look bad walking by. It looks like birthday cake. The landscaping is quite nice too.

I felt like I was in a movie; looking in shop windows-it looks like someone bought and is renovating Grim's Bakery on Linden. I peeked in-it's quite cute inside; hearing muted snatches of music from inside a house; saying hello to man reading the paper on his porch. I want to walk everywhere I can. Just seeing the grass and the sidewalks, waiting for the light to change to cross the street made me remember being young and having time. I even saw "oil in puddles in taffeta patterns," as described by Joni Mitchell in Michael from Mountains. I almost didn't walk because of the rain but I said to myself, you have an umbrella and I really wanted today to be different...to be the start of something new. I would have gone to the library but I have to finish the Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana first.

It looks like rain all week unfortunately. Tomorrow I'll shampoo the carpets and the upholstery on the couches; Wednesday I'll give the kitchen and pantry a good cleaning. Today I'm going to just read and bead.

No New Gun for Me

2009-03-01T14:20:00.006-05:00

A security system would cost about $500 more than the $762 Bathsheba Monk spent on her 357 Magnum with ammo, and there’s a monthly fee. A dog, while being an effective burglar deterrent, is a lot of responsibility and also an expense.

Three or four trips to the vet for well care could easily add up to $762. Still if I felt I was afraid of burglars I would choose either alternative rather than buy a gun.

Years ago my husband and I thought about getting a gun. Some of our friends were getting them and would go and practice at a shooting range. It was 1975 and we were living in New Brunswick, NJ. I was just about to drop out of college and was working at the local Gino’s/Kentucky Fried Chicken while finishing the semester. I would walk home at night past a transvestite bar and a housing project thinking it was the safest route. The transvestites were loud, sometimes spilling out of the bar and onto the street, but they were not a threat to me. The project basketball courts were always lit up and adults were out there playing ball with the kids. I had worked in downtown Newark and had taken the bus home from Ohrbach’s at 9:30-10:00 at night and then walked eight or nine blocks from the bus stop under the railroad arch home to Elizabeth NJ with no problems. One night after I passed the projects and was walking past a fenced construction site that was soon to be a gas station, 2 young men came up behind me, grabbed my purse from my shoulder and ran away. At the time, all I could think of was what a hassle it would be to have to get a new college ID and driver’s license. I shouted after them, “There’s no money in there.” (There wasn’t.) They stopped running, turned around and came back. “Do you have any money in your pockets?” one asked. I pulled my hand out of my pocket. “Yeah, a nickel. Do you want that?” “No.” one of them said and they ran away. By the time I crossed the street and got up to my apartment I realized that shouting after them was probably a mistake and imagined what could have happened when they came back and confronted me. That made me a little shaky.

We never got the gun. I thought if we got one, the police could always plant it somewhere and say we committed a crime. In those days there were a lot of stories about political people being set up and sent to jail and we were political people working on celebrating the Bicentennial with the slogan, “We’ve Carried the Rich for 200 years Let’s Get Them Off Our Backs.” When 5000 of us marched in Philadelphia on July 4^th 1976 there were a lot of guns, pointed at us from the rooftops along the route of the march.

Since the 1970’s real wages have declined while corporate profits have increased at a record-setting rate. American factory owners exported labor to maximize profits with no thought of the social cost of that decision, Drug use, drug arrests and prison sentences have increased, particularly among minorities. The latest economic crisis is extremely severe. More and more people will be driven to desperate acts. Should we buy guns to protect ourselves from each other? Was Jay Gould right when he said he could hire one half of the working class to kill the other half?

People have the right to food, housing, clothing, education and health care.

They have the right to do meaningful work at a living wage. Those rights were fought for and won by workers who for the most part did not fight with guns but were shot at by the police and the National Guard who acted on the orders of the factory owners. Buying a gun may make a person feel safe for a little while, but it will not protect us from the devastation that an economic system based on exploitation and oppression has created.

An organized conscious working class, a working class that includes anyone who gets or used to get a paycheck, does not need guns. Through a Facebook friend I found out that Acorn is training Home Defender Teams to allow people to stay in their foreclosed homes. Wouldn’t you rather have your neighbor in his or her home than be surrounded by vacant houses? Wouldn’t you rather see people fed, educated and healthy with your help?

Racism not just about Obama

2008-10-11T13:25:00.004-04:00

I just finished watching some of the anti-Obama video’s on You Tube.
Regarding Barack Obama’s association with Bill Ayers I can really see why the media are using this. Most people think the US should have won the war in Vietnam and really hate anyone who protested then and those who protest against the current government. They feel that protests are un-patriotic. Well they are. Patriotism is not good for people or the planet. Protests are humanistic.

I searched on line and could not find anything regarding the number of people who were killed by the Weather Underground. On Wiki Answers I did find this regarding the number of people killed in Vietnam:
• 58, 169 Americans killed (11, 465 were teenagers).
• 304,000 Americans wounded.
• 444, 000 North Vietnamese killed.
• 220, 557 South Vietnamese (this is not precise as the Vietnamese took away their dead.
• 587, 00 civilians killed.
• 6,72,084 ton of bombs dropped (3x the amount of the WW1 and WW2 combined)
• 3,500,000 acres of Vietnam were sprayed with defoliant, the effect lasts more than 100 years.
• Agent orange caused cancer in the people affected and mutations in the third generation.

Many people were against this war and subsequent interventions of the American government in South and Central America. There is no WE in America. America always was and still is divided.
There are people who support and accept anything the government does no matter how horrible it is and there are people who do not. Bill Ayers is one of those people who did not. The use of bombs and guns was not a good decision and I think history has proven that that was a mistake. Organizing, educating and protesting against unimaginable brutality is never a mistake.
There are people who vocally protest against the murder of innocent people and the illegal interventions of the US government in sovereign countries. There are people who protest for health care, education, shelter and food instead of bombs. There are people who write letters to the editor, who go to demonstrations and vigils, who engage their co workers in political conversations. There are people who pray for peace and go to vigils for peace. There are too many people who don’t do anything. Wake up. Get a library card. Go to the internet. Read Killing Hope by William Blum. There is nothing wrong with criticizing the government of the country that you live in-the country you pay taxes in. This is not only a right but a responsibility-a much more important responsibility than pulling a lever once every few years. People are the world’s most important resource. We have brains and talents that we never get a chance to tap because of the oppressive nature of our society. The bail out of Wall Street will force more of us out into the streets, cold, hungry and tired of being chewed up and spit out like we are nothing.

I am voting for Barack Obama because I believe Mc Cain-Palin supporters to be racist not just because Obama is black although that is a big reason, but also because I believe they support the racist propaganda that has enabled the US invasions of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, the brutal interventions in Chile, El Salvador and Nicaragua, the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. What color are those people and why doesn’t it turn everyone’s stomach to think of these people being tortured and murdered? What kind of person can justify those actions?

Watching the 2nd Debate

2008-10-07T21:30:00.002-04:00

How much longer do we have to serve somebody?
"we" have to sacrifice.
"we" have to accept reduction in our "entitlements" like pensions, social security, welfare, health care.

We work for a small part of the wealth we produce. We are taxed on those earnings after we have provided a profit for someone else. Talk about double dipping.
Now these candidates are talking about "us" as though the owners and the workers are one and the same people.

Referring to social security, Medicare and a potential national health insurance plan as "entitlements" is turning reality on its head.

What do you call deregulation if not an entitlement for the rich to rip off the public wealth? What do you call record corporate profits, tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations and their top executives paying no taxes by moving their money offshore? Those are entitlements. Social Security, medicare, national heathcare, affordable education are areas where we invest our wealth and the wealth of our parents, grandparents, children and grandchildren for the benefit of all the people.

Nuclear Power as an option? WHAT ABOUT THE WASTE. DOES ANYONE REMEMBER 3 MILE ISLAND AND CHERNOBYL? How about a 3 day work week? How about shorter hours and sidewalks
so we can walk to work? How about a national public ad campaign urging us to walk to work and save American's lives-like we used to do with the pagan babies and our pennies-walk 25 miles a week to save some 18 year old from having to die on foreign soil for oil profits? What do you think?

Gidget Goes To Washington

2008-10-03T16:38:00.002-04:00

While Sarah Palin's performance in the debate on Friday was nothing less or more than awfully perky, I was more upset by Joe Biden's reiteration that we have to get out of Iraq...so we can go into Afghanistan where the real bogeymen are.

He let Palin slide when she said she was against National Healthcare because the government has made such a mess of things-referring to the bailout. It was a perfect opportunity for him to point out it was LACK of government regulation that got us in this mess.

Is there a plan to extend and expand unemployment benefits? Is there a plan for National Health Care into the bailout? Where 's the democracy here?

They both want war.
They both want to drill for oil.
They're both against gay marriage.
They both want to issue tax credits for businesses.

The ticket should have been Dennis Kucinich and Marcy Kaptur. Maybe then we would have gotten some kind of real solution without having to pay through the nose.

2008-09-28T12:42:00.003-04:00

Regarding the proposed Wall St. bailout, can I tell you how angry this makes me? Things are bad enough for working people, blue or white collar. Our real wages are less than they were in the '70's thanks to years of Republican rule. We need national health care but we're told there is no money for that. There are people working until they die because they can't afford to retire and people who have lost their homes and gone bankrupt due to heath care costs. This is a sad commentary on capitalist civilization and a tragedy for us all. If this bailout is approved we will be living with more crime, more homelessness, and more poverty. The deregulation of electricity and the high cost of home heating oil and gas will mean more deaths this coming winter. I am sick and tired of the private rip-off of public wealth.

Here’s my proposal:
Raise the taxes on unearned income, lower taxes for people who work for their money.
Suspend all pending deregulation (PPL) and reverse all past deregulation.
Fully fund a decent National Health Care Plan immediately.
Fund public transportation and build a bus shelter at every stop. (Did you ever stop to look around Allentown and see people standing in the rain and snow in the industrial parks or even on Hamilton Street because there are no bus shelters? This is ridiculous. How much can they cost?)
Stop the wars. I am sick of seeing young people die for nothing because there are no jobs for them at home.

The American people have always sacrificed for the greater good, but this is the straw that broke the camels back. For years we have been watching the rich get richer while we got poorer. Enough is enough. We should not have to pay because these people danced like madmen around the golden calf destroying the environment in the process. They are crazy-like King Midas they want everything to turn to gold, but you can't eat gold, you can't breathe gold, you can't drink gold. These people gambled and lost. They should wear the asses ears, not us. I don't even buy lottery tickets. Why should I or any other working American have to pay for their greed? The damage done to the people of this country during the Bush Jr., Bush Sr. and Reagan years should be reversed, not compounded and the only way to do it is to make the rich pay their full share.

Whatever happens with the bailout we must continue to protest against bearing the burden. We are ripped off first when we are not paid the full value of our labor. We the have to pay taxes on what we earn. We have no say in where our tax dollars go or who they benefit. We are forced to allow them to be used to kill people all over the world while Americans also die from cancer, starvation, homelessness and the diseases of despair-drug use and gang violence.

The world could be a beautiful place and our tax dollars could be use to repair the environmental and social damage that unregulated capitalism has caused while employing people in every community. The people who are running this country are sucking all life out of it for their own private profit. They have so much money their crisis is that they have nowhere to invest it. Meanwhile we live in the middle of the bank robberies and shootings working like dogs until we die wondering if we’ll have jobs tomorrow. This is wrong and has to stop.

I sent a shortened version of this post to all my elected representatives. We have to wake up, stay outraged and keep the pressure on to get our money back and turn this country around.

Endless War is not Human Nature

2007-10-12T06:58:00.000-04:00

John Brinson in his Oct. 6, 2007 article in The Morning Call about why we must have endless war states, “some people are evil, and seek to take from others whatever they want. They will take the property of others, the land of others, the lives of others, the freedom of others.” I couldn’t agree more with this statement, but I totally disagree with his opinion of who these people are.

Growing up in the 60’s and ‘70’s I was taught that Hitler came to power because he was a charismatic person and a great speaker. The assassinations of the Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King very charismatic men and great speakers made me wonder how Hitler got so far toward his patriotic, nationalist goal while these good people were dead. I did some independent research and learned that Hitler had many powerful financial supporters like the notoriously anti-Semitic and anti-labor Henry Ford and the cartel I.G.Farben. I also learned that when people have no jobs and money the way to keep the heat off of the people who have it all whether in Germany in the 1930’s or the US in 2007 is to find a scapegoat. For Hitler it was the Jews and communists, for the US it’s immigrants and the anti-war and environmental movements.

When Franco overthrew the democratically elected government in Spain, in El Salvador in the ‘80’s and during the destruction of Yugoslavia it was necessary for good people to fight. Unfortunately the US was on the wrong side in all of those conflicts. Now it is necessary for good people to fight against those who are using our tax money to kill other people while corporate war profiteers make a fortune. The freedoms that we still have left after the “Patriot” Act were not fought for by men with guns on foreign soil. There were no headlines, “WWI Ends, Workers Win the 8 Hour Day, WWII Ends, Workers Gain the Right to Organize, Korean War Ends, No More Jim Crow.” These freedoms were fought for by ordinary people right here.

Brinson states, “War has always been with us, and as long as human nature gives us human evil, there will be war.” Anyone who is aware of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder will tell you that violence is not a part of human nature. The human evil he should be referring to is the psychopathic need to suck the monetary value out of everything that exists leaving behind nothing but chaos and death. Unfortunately for the evil people who want to own and control everything on the planet chaos and death are preferred.

One Possibility for a New World

2007-10-11T22:59:00.001-04:00

Hiss, slither, rattle and bite.
I know what you are.
Hate and greed.
Bloody, viscous lover of death.
Burn it.
Poison it.
Turn it’s womb from sponge to puss.
Turn it’s penis from giver of life to weapon of death.
What life remains spills dead seed from a dispenser after the dollars are inserted into the appropriate slot.

Progress of the paper dollar kind.

What if tomorrow you woke up and there was no money?

No money for anyone. No money for the rich, no money for the poor.

No money for yachts, no money for mortgages.
No money for Beverly Hills mansions, no money for student loans.
No money for war, no money for food.

No food for money, just food for when you’re hungry.
You grow it, you eat it.

No housing for profit, just shelter where and when you need it.
Maybe picking oranges in Florida today, maybe camping in Maine tomorrow.
Maybe Museums in New York today, maybe teaching in Mississippi tomorrow.
Maybe camping at a tent in the woods today, maybe harvesting on a farm in the country tomorrow.
Maybe Pennsylvania today, maybe Mexico tomorrow.
You would live, teach, learn work, live a thousand lives among your fellow human beings.

No utopia - no pre-peeled grapes and bon-bons.
Working, reading, talking with people.

Still a world filled with sexism, racism, homo and redneck-phobia.
But those are contradictions among the people and maybe if money didn’t exist anymore
there would not be a battle in the ring
in any given country
on any given public street in any little town anywhere in the world.

No nukes.
No cluster bombs.
No tanks (or whatever they call them these days.)
No 18 year olds with weapons abroad or in Newark, NJ. (My home town.)

No capitalism.

Just us.
Up for it?

Democracy

2007-10-07T10:22:00.000-04:00

Dear Congressman Dent,
The word ‘Democracy” is thrown around a lot these days. The more we hear it spoken, the more the reality of democracy disappears. We need cameras in the street to “preserve democracy.” We need wiretaps to “preserve democracy.” We need wars in Iraq, Columbia and all over Africa to “preserve democracy.”
Right under our noses the wealth that our parents and grandparents created is being stolen to enrich the few. Taxes are lowered for the wealthy and the poor starve while they work at minimum wage jobs with no healthcare benefits. The factories where our grandparents and parents fought for the 8 hour day and decent benefits and working conditions are becoming museums or condominiums, just as farms, orchards and wetlands are destroyed for housing developments named Pheasant Run or Orchard View.
We are told that Social Security is in danger of running out but the military budget is gushing full force with our tax dollars mixing with the blood of young men and women fighting each other all over the world. There are no decent paying jobs for young Americans, but there are plenty for young people in third world countries with no health, safety or environmental protections. American corporations are free to make a profit anywhere in the world. American are free to starve, work until they drop to keep their medical benefits, send their children to under funded, crumbling schools, join the military where they will gamble with their lives and the lives of other human beings or go to jail.
I constantly hear tell of how the military fought for our right to freedom of speech and assembly. Is that the truth? Was our right to free speech and assembly, our right to protest and participate in this democracy fought for on some far off shore? No. It was fought for right here in the USA by working men, women and children not by soldiers or the National Guard (who were usually shooting AT them.) Our freedom was fought for by the people who participated in the Union movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, the Anti-War Movement.
We have not reverted to Fascism yet. As much as many might welcome it, we still do not all follow the leader. We don’t all march in lockstep, hands over our hearts, blinders firmly fixed, yellow ribbons flapping in the breeze while young people are burned to death, torn to pieces or mentally scarred for life. Some of us exercise our rights in our own neighborhoods to stand up for what we know is right. Nine of these people were arrested in your office on January 17, 2006. Your actions in having these people arrested show much more than words what you think of actually existing democracy when it is standing in front of your face. I am asking you to examine your feelings on this issue and drop the charges against these practicing democrats (with a small d.) Focus you efforts on rooting out and jailing the people responsible for ripping off the public trust of its money and its hope for a better future.

Merry Christmas

2006-12-25T20:51:00.000-05:00

I know I'm not being politically correct but Christmas is a pagan holiday and since I'm a pagan by way of catholicism and communism I guess Merry Christmas is ok. I. don't like X mas. I know there's a christ in christmas but ... enough on that subject.

I've been really busy between the candy and the beading but I got everything done. We were supposed to have 8 people here for dinner tonight, but someone was shot last night. Three of our invited guests knew the victim and they were up all night.

It was ok though. I was so tired. I still haven't caught up on my sleep from the 2 and 3 in the morning nights doing the candy and then the wrapping of the presents. Then yesterday one of Barry's co-worker's had an open house so I had to finish shopping, cleaning and make a candy tray.

So it was just Barry, Katy, Danny, Berto and me and it was fine. (Berto has 2 teeth!)I couldn't wait to go through my beads and bead books and we are eating again-Barry just made us plates-ham sandwiches and potato salad that I made at 6 this morning-I was the first one up-watching FSTV and peeling potatoes. There were a few good shows on-a documentary about Yip Harburg the blacklisted lyricist who wrote Brother Can You Spare a Dime ( apparantly the Rockefeller Dad was going around handing out dimes to people dring the depression )and of course Somewhere Over the Rainbow. There was one about the mess coal companies are making in the south and another one about the anti-war movement in Amherst, MA at the Republican National Convention (we were there.) We should have been at the Democratic Nationl Convention too the pigs-Leiberman and Madelaine Albright yuch!

Anyway so it's just us now-Katy and Berto are out and Danny's watching TV so we are surfing and blogging and listening to the Four Tops and Stevie Wonder-I love Bernadette-no whores and bitches in those lyrics-
Bernadette,
people are searching for the kind of love that we possess,
some go on searching their whole lives through and never find someone like you...

Ribbon in the sky
This is not a coincidence
And far more than a lucky chance But what is that was always meant Is our ribbon in the sky for our love.

So it's just us-Me and Barry, Barry and me, Barry and Diana.
I am so grateful to have him here still. I think he's gonna be OK.
A few more months-April and the oncologist says he's home free.

I have my Barry and my kids are here and I have 2 grandchildren that I never thought I'd have-they're both boys but you can't have everything...

I'm pretty happy.
Merry Chrstmas everyone.
Love,
Diana

today

2006-11-04T22:03:00.000-05:00

My kids are back home. Katy with a baby. Danny without his baby. I like having them home. I don't have to worry about them too along with global warming and the economy and the invasions.
I've been very nervous lately though. I'm not particularly happy with my job. I am working too many hours and I don't have time to think abou anything.
I'm tired, can't do any home improvements and that is making me nervous.

Deja Vu

2006-04-30T10:41:00.000-04:00

Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury comic is following the formerly fooball helmeted BD through therapy for whatever they call shell shock these days.
He is home minus a leg from Iraq. He's angry and weak at the same time.

In her Vampire Chronicles Ann Rice says that because vampires live forever, they sometimes have to bury themselves in the ground to regenerate and some of them never come back. I am only 51 but I already see the consequences of not teaching the true history of the world. These boys and girls now too who join the army for whatever reason and go to war and do what they do coming back wounded, missing limbs, burned faces, crimes against other human beings indelibly etched in their minds when will they ever learn? There's only so much you can blame on the society at large when all you really need is 1/2 a brain and a library card to figure it out for yourself.

Don't try to tell them before they go. 10-12 years ago when we did the first local antiwar march during the welcome home the troops parade in bethlehem soeone asked one of the skinny young boys driving a tank what he thought of the antiwar marchers. He pointe dto a squirrel that had been crushed beneath the wheels of one of the military vehicles and said that's what I thik of them. Idiot. He doesn't know that he is that squirrel. Cannon fodder.

These wars, the rich taking everything, the destruction of the planet-these things make so little sense to me that I don't know how to talk to people anymore. I feel like an alien in my own country.

I am getting kind of annoyed by ANSWER too. I mean I'm glad they're organizing these demonstrations but we only have one life and not that much time to live it. They really need to hit the culture issue. The left does not have a cultural wing. We need one that will hit peoples hearts, their emotions. Something to make their stomachs hurt and their hearts reel.

It's hard out there for a pimp!!! Give me a break

2006-03-11T10:23:00.000-05:00

I cannot believe this song won an Oscar; and yes I saw the movie.
Here's my parody. I'm not a fan of rap music but it's the best I can do.

It’s hard out there for a pimp? (You must be kidding!)

A man who lives off women is a wimp! (I’m not kidding.)

Get a job at McDonalds for your rent. (I’m not kidding.)

Work a double shift for the gas. (I’m not kidding.)

Because at least it’s your back that working. (Not a woman’s)

Because at least it’s you soul that’s breaking (Not a woman’s)

In my life I’ve seen and read a lot of history

And I know that life for working people is never easy

But that doesn’t mean any man has the right

To use women and children so he can take his next bite.

I’ve seen people beaten down by sickness and death

I’ve seen people lose hope when they’ve done their best

I’ve seen people deal with the hand they were dealt

By working hard and not using anyone else

A lot of blood, sweat and tears built this country’s wealth

And the few want to keep it all for themselves

But using other people to get “your fare share” of the crumbs

Is stupid, mean and just plain dumb!

If you were at work and not on the street

If you sweated your own body instead of using women like pieces of meat

Maybe you would get a taste of what life is really like
Instead of moaning, groaning and glorifying lumpen life

Newark NJ’s where I’m from, in my heart I’m still there

But it’s OK because I am aware

That its people like us who can build a better place.

Without being millionaires and spitting in peoples face.

I hate the words chick, whore, babe and bitch
I don’t want to be famous, flashy or rich

Our time will come. Maybe tomorrow’s not the date

But we’ve got a lot of patience so we can watch and wait

We’ll keep on pushing one step at a time

and if you get in our way you are way out of line.

A long Goodbye

2006-02-20T01:47:00.000-05:00

I can’t stop thinking about my grandmother. My neighbor’s husband died suddenly. He knew he had cancer, he went back to work to wait for chemotherapy and he collapsed at work and died 4 days later. Joan Did ion’s husband died while she was making dinner.

My husband who is in remission from small cell lung cancer since May 2005 after a year long diagnosis/treatment nightmare has been sick for 3 days. Only one with a fever, but the noise in his lungs is like aluminum on a washboard. His fever reached 103 at one point. He wasn’t delirious so we are letting it ride since it’s a three day weekend. Last time this happened in August/September he was talking about how juicy bats are and totally out of it. I took him to the emergency room but it turned out to be a nightmare after the semi-deliriousness went away. When we were at the oncologist last month I mentioned the sound in his chest. The medical assistant had the stethoscope on Barry’s chest and had to take it out of her ears to hear me say, “That sound.” She said it sounded like a dry cough, but I sounded like a very wet cough to me. She sent him for an X-ray and gave him 2 meds. That was about a month ago and the sound has gotten to this. The infection that he has in his lungs has nothing to do with cancer except for his increased susceptibility so it’s not their function to take care of it.

When he was first feeling wrong I was very angry at both him and the doctors. Him because he was not enough in touch with himself to know that he was being fed a line. Sleep apnea was the best they could come up with. If you understand the current medical system there is no Dr Grueben who knew you since you were born. Who came to your house with 4 sick kids to give them the measles vaccine. I had to send him back again and again to make them find the cancer.

That’s what saved his life.

And this is our life now. I was so, so, angry at first for all the years I told him to stop smoking, but I don’t know if that would have made any difference because of hs family history. I was so, so angry that finally we were going to be able to enjoy the results of all our work and have some fun and as Ferlinghetti wrote, “right in the middle of it comes the smiling mortician.”

I was mad at the therapists available at the local hospital. The one available to me was an acceptor of my situation. I should go out with friends. I should find other interests. What kind of crap is that? I have never accepted anything in my life that I did not like. Why do I have to accept this? Barry does accept. He’s too conventional. He makes fun of me because I don’t walk on the grass or go up the down staircase or in the out door, but this …this conventional crap medical advice he accepts just like he accepted Sam’s pronouncement that “comrades don’t buy houses.”

Why would I call attention to myself by walking on the grass or walking in the out door?

That kind of stuff only makes your life harder than it already is. If you’re a white middle class man or woman may be you can get away with it. It makes you feel like Jesus to have yourself arrested and put in jail and have people have potluck fundraisers to pay your fines while you await the results of your sentence. All I can think of is that movie, “Romero,” and the beautiful young girl raped countless times, her tongue cut out, trucked out to a dumpsite and then shot. Democracy is not a moral principal. It’s a human right. American democracy only exists for the people who accept capitalism and see the brutality of its reach at home and abroad as an exception rather than the rule. They forget that Jesus was not arrested and let out so the community could have a pot luck dinner to raise his bail. He was crucified as a criminal.

So anyway, my grandmother died after having had Alzheimer’s for years. She was not herself for a long time. She didn’t remember her Danny O’Day which is what she used to call me because I loved the Irish songs so much. She wasn’t Irish as far as I know. Her dad was French; her mom was adopted and didn’t know what she was. My great grandfather Pierre Lambe was a housepainter and a painter of landscapes. My grandmother Pearl was the youngest of their children and the sickliest. She was 13 years younger than my grandfather. She taught me how to bake. She taught me to love potato pancakes and German potato salad and sugar cookies and Hungarian squares and bundt cake. She loved me in the way that someone who had been coddled and loved herself can love someone-with no fear and no reservation. I don’t love that way. I can’t love that way. When I was older I used to go and visit her. We would talk. When I was living with Barry she came to our apartment in Avenel and we went to lunch and shopping in Perth Amboy. That was before she walked over to the UPS terminal at Newark Airport and got lost, before she got lost at the Christmas tree farm, before she hit Danny when he was just a baby. Before the illness took over her life.

Barry’s illness has taken over our lives. He will not finish the bathroom. He will not come back to the way he used to be. My grandfather George Sackmann used to take me for walks and apple picking. He got sick and he turned into his illness, he became his illness. Barry has become his illness. He’s not Barry anymore. So I guess I can accept that Barry is gone already in so many ways and that what I have to do is make sure he is loved until the end. The memories I have of my grandparents were those of a child. The memories I have of Barry are as an adult. I chose him. It wasn’t an accident. I love him more than anyone in the world.

These are some of my favorite books.

2005-12-03T11:54:00.000-05:00

Testament of Youth

Vera Brittain

This is an autobiographical account of a woman coming of age during WWI. I believe it is the only memoir of WWI written by a woman. Also was a Masterpiece Theater series. Available at Alibris.com

The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina

Pioneers for Woman’s Rights and Abolition

Gerda Lerner

Really great account of 2 courageous sisters. Gives you an interesting picture of the pacifist Quakers too. “Reasonable” men can tolerate a lot of horror and violence if they are not personally affected by it. Available at Alibris.com

Black Women in White America

Gerda Lerner

Documentary history of black women in their own words from slavery times through 1971. Available at Alibris.com

America’s Working Women

A Documentary History 1600-present

Edited by Rosalyn Baxandall, Linda Gordon, Susan Reverby

My favorite part of this book is written by Meridel Le Sueur. It’s called “I Was Marching” and was first published in Proletarian Literature in the US in 1935.

It’s an account of a militant Teamsters Strike in Minneapolis in 1934 and how she-a middle class woman unused to being a part of a larger thing-joined the strike. Available at Alibris.com

Tell Me a Riddle

Tillie Olsen

First published in 1962 although written during the depression, this is a working class feminist classic. “I Stand Here Ironing,” is a heart wrenching memoir of the choices a young mother was forced to make when raising her children during the depression. She is ironing and thinking about how these choices affected her eldest daughter. Here’s the last line, “Only help her to know-help make it so there is cause for her to know-that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron.” Available at Alibris.com

Yonnondio

Tillie Olsen

A novel about a poor white family during the depression set in Wyoming in a mining town. It was originally written in the 1920’s but lost for 40 years. Available at Alibris.com

Silences

Tillie Olsen

Nonfiction book on why women and the working class don’t write as much as they should. The silences she refers to are not natural welcome silences but, the silences imposed on people “century after century their beings consumed in the hard, everyday essential work of maintaining human life.” Available at Alibris.com

These are some of the books I remember from the class on American Ethnic Groups

The Rise of David Levinsky

Abraham Cahan

Russian Jewish immigrant in NYC. Successful, but not happy.

Available at Alibris.com

The Dollmaker

Harriet Arnow.

They made a TV movie of this with Jane Fonda.

A woman moves to the city from the hills to follow her husband to a factory job.

Big mistake, but the woman is heroic in the way she faces all the trials laid before her. The title comes from the carving she does for a hobby. Available at Alibris.com

The Fortunate Pilgrim

Mario Puzo

Italian immigrants in the US during the depression. Available at Alibris.com

Non Fiction books about Education of the Working Class in America

The Night is Dark and I am Far From Home

Jonathon Kozol

Great book that was blacklisted from Teacher Education classes for years.” School is the ether of our lives by now: the first emaciation along the surgical road that qualifies the young to be effective citizens, alert to need but tempered as to passion, cognizant of horror but well inoculated against vigorous response.”

And “Basic training does not begin in boot camp. It begins in kindergarten. It continues with a vengeance for the subsequent 12 years. Available at Alibris.com

Hidden Injuries of Class

Richard Sennet and Jonathon Cobb

I read this book in college and liked it a lot because it deals with some of the issues working class people have fitting into the middle class world. Two of the things I remember most are that working class fathers use their lives as a warning, not an example. Unlike the lawyers and doctors, they do not want their children to follow in their footsteps. The other thing is that being singled out is uncomfortable for a working class person. Middle class people see themselves as individuals whereas working class people to not like to be seen as better than their peers. So those of us who move into the middle class are “lone, lorn creatures.”

Available at Alibris.com

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Paola Friere

Philosophy of education and the poor. How the educational system is set up to oppress the poor and to maintain their silence and powerlessness. This is an extremely important book and helps us to understand the world we live in-like why do poor people, working people vote for Bush who is not “robbing us with a six-gun” but “with a fountain pen.”

“But almost always, during the initial stage of struggle, the oppressed instead of striving for liberation tend themselves to become oppressors or ‘sub-oppressors.” …Their ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors.” This book is something everyone in the country should read and one that we should have a national dialogue about. It is about becoming humanized as opposed to remaining alienated and how important that is to building a new world.

Available at Alibris.com

The Other Side of Western Civilization

I was lucky enough to have gone to college at a time when I could study my history-women and the working class. These are some books about that.

The War on labor and the Left

Patricia Cayo Sexton

The details of the enormous amount of legal and illegal violence used against working people as they have fought to organize and maintain a decent life-through the Reagan/Thatcher 1980’s. Written by the wife of one of my college professors, Brendan Sexton. The Working Class Experience was the name of the class I took with him. There were about 10 students and we had to write a paper on our family. I wrote one about my father’s family. My grandfather was Filipino and my grandmother was Irish, but before WWII my grandfather was deported to the Philippines rather than go to a camp. (It wasn’t just the Japanese who were interned.) They were caught there during the Japanese occupation including my father who was one of their 9 children, 7 born here, 2 in the Philippines one born blind, the other died in infancy. It was a great class. Available at Alibris.com

A Peoples History of the United States

1492 to the Present

Howard Zinn

American history from the point of view of the people, not the hero’s.

Refreshing and should be required reading for middle school/high school students.

Available at Alibris.com

Rebel Voices an IWW Anthology

Joyce Kornbluth

This book tells the history of the Industrial Workers of the World organized in Eugene Debs words, “not to conciliate but to fight the capitalist class.” This book brings the labor movement to life. It is filled with cartoons, songs and stories written by workers-conscious workers. The song, “Solidarity Forever” was written by a Wobbly. Here are some of the lesser sung words, “All the world that’s owned by idel drones, is ours and ours alone. We have laid the wide foundations; buil it skyward stone by stone. It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own. While the union makes us strong.” On the masthead of the Solidarity newspaper the letters are formed from tools. Mr. Block, the unconscious worker provides political humor. The union the IWW wanted was one big union. Their demands included: A 4 hour day, Jobs for everyone. Security of income. Abolition of the wage system. Production for use and not for profit. A new social order based on the scientific administration of industry. Abundance for workers, nothing for parasites. On page 346 there is an illustration from the Industrial Pioneer, 1925. It is a plant whose roots are Profits. The plant is War and the fruits are skull. On each skull a word is written: want, disability, pain, death, ruin, debt, honor an glory, taxes, disease, despair, sorrow, insanity. On one side of the plant is a soldier/worker, on the other is a capitalist who is saying, “My good fellow, you will be well paid for your patriotic action in tending this glorious plant. You shall have all the fruit above the ground-I’ll take only the roots.” Pretty relevant today. The IWW was eventually squashed, but they left a legacy for us to study and use. The Allentown Public Library has this book. Mine was given to me by the ex-wob and catholic worker, Tim O’ Brien who I met when I was managing and instant print shop in NJ where he used to come in to copy his medical bills and talk. Available at Alibris.com

Atomic Soldiers

American Victims of Nuclear Experiments

Howard L. Rosenberg

This August in my Blog, From the Foot of Mount Olympus, http://tfomo.blogspot.com/ I wrote about dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “It is more than a war crime; it’s a crime against all life on the planet. We are living with the deadly legacy of those bombs. Our loved ones are dying from it; our planet is dying from it and still people wave the flag. Uncle Sam kicks them in the butt while like a reverse mechanical bank they open their mouths to dispense their hard earned cash so he can use the money to kill them, their loved ones and every good thing on this earth. What kind of a god would bless that kind of behavior? This book tells about how the government used American soldiers as guinea pigs. Another example of how we are just fodder-cannon or otherwise.

Available at Alibris.com

Working Class War

American Combat Soldiers in Vietnam

Christian G. Appy

80% of enlisted men in Vietnam came from poor and working class families. Just a little reminder that a lot of these guys did not want to be there folks.

Available at Alibris.com

Expendable Americans

Paul Brodeur

Tens of thousands of Americans die every year of preventable industrial diseases. Legal murder and no consequences to the industries that profit from it.

Available at Alibris.com

Factories in the Fields

Carey McWilliams

It’s hard to believe that this was published in 1935. Explains why “illegal” workers are needed to maintain the profits of agribusiness. Guess why? All the legal immigrants unionized. Not much has changed since then. Your tax dollars are hard at work maintaining horrible working and living conditions and shooting people coming across the border so we can eat factory food. Available at Alibris.com

The Fabulous ‘50’s

Books that reinforce my theory that our good old days haven’t come yet

Tender Comrades

A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist

Patrick Mc Gilligan and Paul Buhle

Interviews with people who were blacklisted during the 50’s. Not just the Hollywood 10. The reason why American movies are so lacking in beauty, skill and content. Available at Alibris.com

Thirty Years of Treason

Excerpts from Hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities 1938-1968

Edited by Eric Bentley

In their own words, the testimony of Pete Seeger, Zero Mostel, Joe Papp, Arthur Miller, Jose Ferrer etc. before HUAC. Very limited gang of thugs intimidates creative, intelligent people. How was that allowed to happen? Available at Alibris.com

Naming Names

Victor Navasky

“The blacklist savaged private lives, but the informer’s particular contribution was to pollute the public well, to poison social life in general, to destroy every possibility of a community; for the informer operates on the principle of betrayal and a community survives on the principle of trust.” Available at Alibris.com

The Cold War and the University

Toward an intellectual history of the postwar years.

Contributors: Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Immanuel Wallerstein

Destructiveness of Mc McCarthyism on higher education and despite the many letters to the editor in the Morning Call about leftist professors dominating academia, how its legacy continues to intimidate. Available at Alibris.com

The Cultural Cold War

The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters

Frances Stoner Saunders

Battle for hearts and minds after WWII. The staunchest anti-fascists were communists so after the war in many countries they democratically won political offices in many countries in Europe. Well we can’t have that now, can we? So the CIA created magazines and other cultural institutions and paid many writers and intellectuals who wrote for them. About 10 years ago or so there was an exhibit at the Zoellner called, “Shouts from the Wall” Posters and photographs brought home by veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. In the accompanying book there was a quote from John Sayles, the writer and director, “They fought when they didn’t have to fight, fought when it brought no public glory in their hometowns, fought to put a lie to the cynicism that keeps people in darkness. They won’t go away…And in a world run by cynics, in a time when caring about someone you’ve never met is seen as weakness or treachery, how much strength have we taken from the thought of them…” That is what was destroyed in the cultural cold war-humanity. Available at Alibris.com

And the Saga continues in the 60’s and ‘70’s

Agents of Repression the FBI’s Secret War against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement

Ward Churchill

In this and the Cointelpro Papers Ward Churchill documents the covert war against political activists during the ‘60’s and ‘70’s with great detail and controlled anger. The murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, the circumstances behind Leonard Peltiers imprisonment, the murder of the American Indian poet John Trudell’s family are among the many details in this book. Why? Here’s a quote from Dennis Banks reflecting on the second Wounded Knee, “We were prepared for beatings and arrests, time spent in jails and prisons to some degree or another. I guess…you’d have to say we expected death. But somehow, we still didn’t really understand the rules of the game; we weren’t prepared for the magnitude of what happened. Part of that was maybe because we still didn’t really comprehend what the stakes were.” It seems that in the Black Hills, leases for uranium mining were granted to Union Carbide, Chevron, Anaconda, and Kerr-McGee (remember Karen Silkwood) White/Westinghouse among others. This book also makes you realize what Mt. Rushmore is all about. Can you imagine-carving the heads of the conquerors into the sacred Black Hills of the conquered. Civilized?

If you ever get a chance to see the movie, “The Murder of Fred Hampton,” watch it. They were showing it on streaming video on the FSTV site, but I don’t know I they ever got permission to air it. When I was a student in the ‘70’s the group I was in showed this movie at different colleges. It gives you a totally different picture of the Black Panthers. You will conclude from both the book and the movie that “the movement” did not fall apart on its own but was destroyed covertly and overtly. Available at Alibris.com

Link to great article on Columbus originally published in indigenous Thought around the time of the Columbus Quincentenary.

http://www.uctp.org/ColumbusMyth.html

Intelligent Entertaining Fiction

My Year of Meats

Ruth Ozeki

A divorced unemployed documentary film maker gets an offer to make commercials for American beef for the Japanese market. Funny, enlightening political and everything works out in the end. Available at Alibris.com

He, She, It

Marge Piercy

A science fiction book that may very well predict our future if we don’t do something about it soon. The Glop-where the poor live; Feelies: Porn that stimulates the nerve endings in your brain, highly addictive; Secskin: what you wear to protect your body whenever you go outdoors-watch out for organ pirates. The writer is a feminist and the author of the novel Vida-a fictionalized account of a member of the Weather Underground among many other books. Working class background. Available at Alibris.com

Hard Time

Sara Paretsky

VI Warshowsky goes to prison to investigate the murder of a female prisoner.

Terrifying. I cried my eyes out. Available at Alibris.com

Howard Fasts Historical Novels

Working class writer still living but writing in a more popular style now.

These are early books. He is also the author of the book, Spartacus which the Kirk Douglas movie was based on. Dalton Trumbo, the blacklisted writer first worked again on this movie at Kirk Douglas’ insistence.

The Proud and the Free

The American Revolution though the eyes of the men who didn’t have horses or uniforms including the revolt of the Pennsylvania Line, the squashing of the revolt, the executions of the leaders. Available at Alibris.com

Freedom Road

The story of the beginning of a new society after the civil war told through the eyes of a freed slave who goes through a painful educational process and a major transformation until the betrayal of reconstruction when the Federal troops are pulled out of the south and the Klan is allowed to rise. They made a TV movie of this in the ‘80’s with Mohammad Ali and Kris Kristofferson, but the book is better. Available at Alibris.com

The American

The story of John Peter Altgelt the governor of Illinois who pardoned the Haymarket martyrs who were hung during the fight for the 8 hour day. Available at Alibris.com

Art and Culture

Decade of Protest

Political Posters from the US, Vietnam, Cuba 1965-1975

Smart Art Press

There are some really hard hitting posters here. From the US: A photograph of dead Vietnamese people in the middle of a dirt road with the words, Q. And babies? A. And babies. A drawing of a Vietnamese with the statue of liberty being rammed down his throat and the word EAT. 2 Photographs. One with a lighter and a whie child’s hand. Would you burn a child. Then a photograph of a woman holding a child burned by napalm, Vietnamese of course., and the words, When necessary. And many more.For those who are too young to remember Vietnam it will give you a different more serious picture of the ant-war movement. No hippies. It reminds me of the Brecht Poem “To Posterity” or “To Those Born Later, “…hatred even of meanness contorts the features. Anger, even against injustice makes the voice hoarse. Oh we who wanted to prepare the ground for friendliness could not ourselves be friendly. But you, when the time comes at last and man is helper to man think of us with forbearance.” Available at Alibris.com

The Forgotten Ones

Milton Rogovin

Photographs of families in Buffalo by the optometrist who turned photographer after he was blacklisted by HUAC. Kind of a less alienated, more tender Diane Arbus. People like this are never photographed and never seen in this way. It’s kind of what Tillie Olsen says in “Silences” about writing. We never see ourselves in print, in art, in photographs. This is a beautiful book because Rogovin returns to his subjects year after year so you can see them age and grow. I just happened to be in Washington DC, picked up a newspaper and saw an article about this and that’s how I found it. Available at Alibris.com

Palante

Young Lords Party

The Young Lords Party and Michael Abramson

Originally published by MacGraw-Hill ISBN 07-000158-8

I confess that I “borrowed” this book years ago and “forgot” to return it. It’s got a tom of photographs including some of Felipe Luciano, Pablo Guzman and Juan Gonzalez-all respectable journalists now-as young Young Lords. Here are some quotes, “We believe that a man’s and a woman’s most precious possession is life. We should therefore live our lives so that we are no consumed by the anguish of long years of purposeless existence, or the shame of a trivial and cowardly past, so that we may say when we die: We give our energies to the most noble cause in the world-the struggle for the liberation of the human race.” “The reason why you study history is ‘cause your gonna make history. The reason you study the past is ‘cause you’re concerned about making a new life, not making the same mistakes that our people did before us.” Available at Alibris.com

Images of American Radicalism

Paul Buhle and Edmund B. Sullivan

Introduction: Howard Fast

Priceless images-like a valentine with a woman in a slinky white gown winking and the text is: “I’m a socialist. Will you be one? Free drinks, free money, free love.” There is so much in this book. Pictures of people you may have heard of but never seen like Louise Bryant and John Reed from Warren Beatty’s movie, “Red’s” A picture of Meridel Le Seuer who wrote the strike story in America’s Working Women that I mention above. Pictures of buttons-Mayday 1925, a Karl Marx Pin (an enamled red flag.) for .25. The Pyramid of Capitalism like a wedding cake. The bottom layer is the workers:We work for all, we feed all-Second layer the rich-We eat for you. Third layer the cops and army-We shoot at you. Fourth layer the church- we fool you Top layer Kings, Queens- we rule you. Too much to mention. Also shows the multinational character of American radicalism. Available at Alibris.com

Alternative Media

http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm

Monthy Review

http://www.monthlyreview.org/

Counterpunch

http://www.counterpunch.org/

Adbusters

http://www.adbusters.org/home/

Bring them Home Now

http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

FAIR-Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

http://www.fair.org/index.php

Free Speech TV Dishnet channel 9415

http://www.freespeech.org/fscm2/genx.php?name=home

Democracy Now

http://www.democracynow.org/

Independent Media Center

Indymedia

Organized by area. There is a Philly Indymedia and anyone can post articles, pictures etc. I posted an article on Nader here that The Morning Call chose not to publish as a letter to the editor that was picked up by another Pro-Nader site who also linked to my Blog.

http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml

More Novels

Anything by Roger L. Simon (Moses Wine, ex-Berkely radical turned private detective. The Big Fix was made into a movie with Richard Dreyfus and Susan Anspach.) Walter Mosely-Easy Rawlins ex-factory worker turned private detective in post war LA-Devil in a Blue Dress was made into a movie with Denzel Washington; Anything by Joan Didion especially Democracy and Miami.

Great Source for out of print and sometimes inexpensive used books.

Alibris

http://www.alibris.com/

Diana Balot Frank

dianabalotfrank@yahoo.com

History

2005-11-30T11:20:00.000-05:00

I was walking to the march site, for what turned out to be one of the biggest anti-war demonstrations to date. She was sitting on the grass on the mall in Washington with a hand lettered sign that said, “My husband is fighting for your right to protest.” How did she come to that conclusion I wondered? Doesn’t having a loved one in the path of such danger make a person go beyond the political rhetoric and try to find the real reason for things?

Whatever freedom we have and our right to protest was not fought for by a military force halfway across the world. Those rights were fought for right here on our soil by people who were not wearing a military uniform, but were still shot at and sometimes killed by people in uniform while they were fighting for the right to organize, the right to vote, the right to be treated like human beings, the right to try and stop illegal and immoral wars that our government was waging in our name.

There are few monuments to people like us. They don’t stand in every public park or in center city squares. A holiday like Labor Day doesn’t quite memorialize the sacrifices made to win decent working conditions and the 8 hour day. Mayday doesn’t exist in the country in which it originated. International Woman’s Day is not celebrated here although the event that it commemorates, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire where over 140 women died many by being forced to jump from the building where the exits were locked to keep them in occurred in NYC.

The celebration of the history of resistance of the multinational American working class would bring to light not only our strength, resilience and creativity but would also expose the illegal and violent tactics of the capitalist class that continues to grow wealthy on the sweat of workers here and all over the world.

We need a cultural revolution in America; a revolution during which we rediscover our past and ourselves. Individually, we need to come to the conclusion that we have a right and responsibility to be aware and to participate as much as possible in this democracy. As a class, we need to fight for the right to have time to participate, for a right is not a right if you cannot use it because you are working 2 jobs just to make ends meet.

The words of Eugene V. Debs are as relevant today as they were when he first uttered them, “I don't want you to follow me or anyone else. If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out."

And From the preamble to the constitution of the United Mineworkers of America, “Step by step the longest march can be won, can be won. Many stones can form an arch, singly none, singly none. And by union what we will can be accomplished still. Drops of water turn a mill, singly none, singly none.

Only when we organize and fight for our rights to healthcare, education, housing, the rights of the planet on which we depend for our survival will we become human beings and not just superfluous objects of capitalism. The technology that increased productivity was paid for with our labor. We deserve a share of the profit including leisure time without worrying how we will pay the bills.

Unfinished thoughts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

2005-08-11T21:56:00.000-04:00

It has been 60 years since the government of the United States dropped not one but 2 Atomic bombs on Japanese civilians. It has been 35 years since I was a 16 year old catholic school girl reading John Hersey’s Hiroshima as a history class assignment. Even before I read the book, I did not think for one second that the bombings were justified. Why should civilians pay for the mistakes of their leaders? It was 1970 and Richard Nixon was president. I certainly did not want to have to pay for his.
What mystifies me today is not that pundits are still wailing that the bombing saved lives, “both Japanese and American,” but that anyone still publishes this nonsense and even more mystifying that anyone believes it.
Nuclear power knows no boundaries. The air, oceans and earth contain it deadly legacy. Our bones, our blood our genes carry it as well.
The atomic bomb did not appear and disappear over the days of August 6-8 1945. During its development American soldiers were sacrificed, not by an enemy outside our borders but to the craving for power and domination within. In his book,’ Atomic Soldiers American Victims of Nuclear Experiments,” published by Beacon Press in 1980, Howard L. Rosenberg writes about the American soldiers who were used as physical and psychological guinea pigs for the promoters of nuclear power. The legacy of human devastation these madmen left behind is the same as the one for the soldiers exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam and the vaccines, depleted uranium and other toxins during the first and current Gulf Wars: Sounds like a personal problem to me soldier. Evidence, what evidence? At times the men who were victims of these experiments were not even believed by their own families. It wasn’t until after their deaths when some enterprising young journalist or lawyer came knocking at the families door that they realized the crazy man was telling the truth.
This is not to deny the fact that dropping this type of weapon on anyone-even people who are considered “the enemy” is anything less than a war crime. It is more than a war crime; it’s a crime against all life on the planet. We are living with the deadly legacy of those bombs. Our loved ones are dying from it; our planet is dying from it and still people wave the flag. Uncle Sam kicks them in the butt while like a reverse mechanical bank they open their mouths to dispense their hard earned cash so he can use the money to kill them, their loved ones and every good thing on this earth. What kind of a god would bless that kind of behavior?

When things get real bad

2005-07-23T09:16:00.000-04:00

It helps to remember
that freedom is as close
as some duct tape and
a length of dryer hose.

Abandoned

2005-07-20T22:25:00.000-04:00

In a cage with
Walls too slick and high to scale.
Nothing to do but run head on into them.
Run arms outstretched pounding my body into them.
Run sideways into them bruising my body black.
Run backwards into them hoping I will break my spine
Into a million shards so it will crash to the floor
With what used to be my heart.

The sun invisible in the blue summer sky.
The smell of the warm earth,
The water rushing over rocks,
The beaded mermaid arms outstretched,
The fractured brilliance of a cosmic egg,
The memory of crickets fleeing my step in high grass,
The sweat of babies,
The sheen of a Japanese beetle,
The taste of honey
Flicker across my senses.
Memories of the world that was.

Don’t touch me my rage will engulf you.
Don’t come near me my rage will hurl you across the room.
Don’t listen to me my rage will fuse your ears shut.
Don’t look at me my rage will turn you to stone.

Spinning at the speed of sound until I ignite
Leaving nothing behind but the stench of defeat and a pile of slimy ash.

Life

2005-04-02T13:29:00.000-05:00

"What is life? Did you read about it in a magazine? Silent lies, never giving you what you need," wrote Laura Nyro in "To a Child."

Due to my husband's illness I've been thinking a lot about life lately. Actually we were both thinking about it for a at least a year before we knew he was sick. We were talking about what to do with the rest of our lives now that things were relatively settled and the kids were grown up.

One of the things we were thinking about was "living up to your potential." I didn't have a burning desire to be a buyer that's for sure, but there aren't too many classified ads for "Angry Female Poet. Sharp tongue, endless pool of rage from which to draw. Great pay and benefits."

When I think of wasted potential I don't think of someone standing on the corner with a sign that say's, "will work for food. " I think of Marlon Brando or Orson Welles. I guess it's not really wasted potential it's more like the seed get's planted and as it's growing someone puts an invisible box over it so instead of growing straight and true and strong the limbs are constricted and distorted. What should be reaching for the sky turns and twists and strangles itself. Besides before Barry's illness, we didn't have it so bad. My job is not terrible. Sometimes it's even fun. But in the back of my mind and in the front of my mind too, there's always this nagging feeling that I should be doing more.

Yesterday a coworker told me about an internet news article about the soldiers who were caught tring to smuggle cocaine in from Columbia. I said, "So what's new. They've been doing that for years." Here's a quote from Alfred W. McCoy's book, "The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia" which I read when I was in college in the 1970's: "After a decade of American military intervention Southeast Asia has become the source of 70% of the world's illicit opium and the major supplier of raw materials for America's booming heroin market." What he was objecting to was not so much the smuggling but a bit of information in the article that said that the US government has given 3 billion dollars in military aid to the government of Columbia. "We" were "helping" other countries while Social Security is going down the tubes. My response was that "we" don't help anyone. Our tax dollars are at work around the world and at home screwing us and people just like us. I sent him the link to Columbia Solidarity Campaign http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk/cocacolacampaign.html where you can see whose freedom your tax dollars are maintaining and expanding by paying for killing union organizers at Coke plants.

I have an image in my mind of the American Working Man as an old fashioned iron mechanical bank. The smiling worker with an American Flag in his hand is bending over. Behind him stands Uncle Sam. Everytime Uncle Sam kicks the worker in the butt, he waves the flag and opens his mouth to DISPENSE a coin.

Jonathon Kozol in his book, "The Night is Dark and I Am far From Home," writes, "It is our lot to live within a world of pain. Much of that pain is now the economic bedrock of our own material advantage. It is essential...that we do not recognize the evil that we live by...if we do..we might grow up to understand we do not need to race and run forever...We might grow up instead to feel enraged about sick people, dead black infants, napalm, war machines...to wonder what kind of government it is to which we hold allegience...We might grow up to be brave and subversive human beings."

What if you did grow up subversive and even a lttle brave? Then what?

There's that Lao Tze quote, "To know and not to act is not to know." Although I know a lot of things about "our" government and I do participate in small ways in democratic resistance verbally, in writing and by going to demonstrations, I have always felt that I don't know enough to go further. I don't mean that I'm not a college professor. I didn't want to be that or a labor lawyer which is why I was a Labor Studies major at Livingston College in Piscataway, NJ for only one semester. They are both legitimate and necessary occupations, but not for me. I mean that I can't get to the next step until I pick up the right concept. The key to the next door. What is it?

The phrase, "living up to your potential" has the hollow clang of individualism attached to it. One of the passages in Kozol's book that I really don't like is, "The New Left will to have 'no leaders' is often, in my judgement, less an evidence of faith in democratic process than a disguised form of the fear to be one." This is totally opposite to what Eugene Debs said, "I am not a... leader. I don't want you to follow me or anything else. If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the... wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out." This is pretty important. Maybe this is at the heart of the cultural revolution that is really needed in this country.

Friends that I have spoken to in recent months have mentioned how much humbler they've become as they've gotten older. I'm not sure that humble is the right word to use. The emphasis that our society places on the importance of the individual is a major problem.

First:capitalist society cares nothing for the individual, it's all just words.
Second: human beings need each other. No one person can live by his own labor alone.
Third: it's not individuals who move the world forward, it's groups of people.
Fourth: We are as individual as snowflakes. So what? That and 5 cents won't get you anywhere.

In the movie about the Flint sit down strike, "With Babies and Banners," I remember one of the women saying, "We weren't individuals anymore. We had the union." In Stan Goff's book, "Full Spectrum Disorder," he talks about reading Marx, "Society does not consist of individuals," and being blown away by that concept, "You can't burrow down into your little niche and look down on anyyone, because we are all in this system together." That's not becoming more humble, that's becoming more conscious.

I have grown attached to the ant as a symbol. I have 2 ant pins that I wear when I'm feeling powerful. I like Laura Nyro and Diane Arbus and Joan Didion. I like shellfish and summer tomatoes even though I'm slightly allergic to both. I like shoes-I LOVE shoes!-and pins and the color green. I sing Barbra Streisand songs in the car when I'm driving in bad weather because you have to concentrate to hit the high notes and it makes me less frightened. I like to cook. I like the city better than the country. I love Brie. None of these things will help me change the world, but they might make things more fun for the other ants.

Life will never "give you what you need." You have to demand what you need whether it's pushing for more visibility for awareness of cancer and it's causes; the lack of coordination of patient care in the for-profit health care industry; industry and war as cancer promoting entities, war, the destruction of the human spirit-whatever. You have a lot more leverage when you're standing with a hundred or a thousand or a million people than when you standing there all smily and cute and pretty and smelling nice and wearing your cute new shoes all by yourself.

The Five Hardest Things

2005-02-09T00:20:00.000-05:00

Let’s just say you’re like me-you just turned 50. The kids are grown and not in the federal penitentiary, you’re relatively debt free. All the issues you had with your parents and all the mistakes they made raising you are resolved for the most part. You may not be in love with your job, but you can tolerate it most of the time.

All the petty jealousy’s and power struggles that occurred early in your relationship have been resolved and even though there are certain acts and words and phrases that can still push your buttons for the most part you rarely have a fight and when you do it lasts for minutes, not hours.

You’re beginning to think about retirement, maybe starting a business. You’re starting to do the household chores during the week so you can spend the weekends walking in the woods or birding.

Then you find out your husband, partner, the love of your life has lung cancer.

There’s a television commercial for an SUV, I can’t remember which one. The driver takes the vehicle to the edge of a cliff. He stands at the end of the earth and there is nothing there but darkness and stars. I’m at the edge of that cliff, but there are no stars. The first hardest thing is realizing that you have no future.

Try to imagine it. You have built a life. Two weeks after you turned 20 you met a male person you could have a conversation with who wasn’t gay. Somehow you swallowed a barbed hook that’s still pulls at your stomach, heart and head. He tried to break up with you twice but you wouldn’t let him. Well, once you wouldn’t let him quoting from his very own Little Red Book, the second time he changed his mind. You got married and had babies. You worked hard and had fights and made love all over the place. Making up for a lack of experience you explored “The Joy of Sex” bending down the corners of the pages so you could “practice.” You christened every room in every apartment and every piece of furniture in every room, the stairs, and the floors. When you went on vacation the first thing you would do when you got on the highway (since the car seat was facing backwards in tback seat) was whip out his penis and start your trip with a bang while passing truck drivers got a birds eye view. You made love in the woods up against the trees, under the bushes at the Wolverton Inn, giggling as people walked by. In front of a giant mirror in a room over a drag show in New Hope.

This man was so strong he could have crushed you, could have snapped your neck with practically no effort, but he used his strength to hug you, to hold you, to love you more than anyone else in the whole world had ever loved you. You were safer than you’d ever been and that made you feel free. He used his strength to work hard and fix cars and build bookcases and put up sheet rock and change light fixtures and change babies and help you wallpaper.

All those things he would do, but he would also read you poetry even if you don’t like the kind that rhymes. He would talk to you about politics and literature and how to make wine. He would make you breakfast and goat curry even though you don’t like goat curry. He would argue with you about the nature of World War II for 13 years and then admit that you were right.

Now when he lays there drifting in and out of sleep saying that he’s too tired to think, dragging himself down the stairs to drink a milkshake laced with Prosure you find it hard to take a breath. You wish you were the one who was sick and when he says, “No, you don’t wish that honey,” it hurts so much your head could explode all over the walls. Someone who saved your life, who helped make your life, who held you up through years of depression and mental pain is suffering more than he ever has in his life. To not be able to fix this by sheer force of will; to not be able to meld your body into his and drag him through this is the way you’ve always done everything-together- is intolerable. The second hardest thing is being powerless.

<>We live in a time when “family values” are trumpeted to justify oppression and robbery.
We have something called the Family Leave Act that is supposed to cover situations like this. When a family member is seriously ill you are supposed to be able to take time off to care for them. Unfortunately the act doesn’t say what you’re supposed to do for money. If you’re lucky, the person who gets sick is a teacher who has 45 sick days instead of 7 like you do, so for 45 days he gets full salary. After that it’s 50 percent on short term disability. So instead of being supportive and nurturing, you get to worry about money and paperwork and picking up all the slack of the household shores while working full time. He wants you to be with him and you can’t. Financial and time pressure, these are the third hardest things.

Once if you had a bad day at work or your kids screwed up again you could come home and blow of steam. You could go out to dinner or go for a walk or have a few glasses of wine and tumble into bed to release the tension. Now there’s no one to talk to rant at or run away with. There is no fun. No fun in June, July, August, September, November, December, January, now it’s February. There was only worry-wondering what the problem was, what it would mean. Then there was the discovery; the worst possible discovery. Now there’s limbo – suspended animation with no end in sight. The first deadline is 2 weeks away. A CT scan. Did it work? If the answer is yes, “prophylactic cranial radiation,” then a month or 2 later, another CT scan. Repeat, repeat, repeat. If the answer is no…Uncertainty, this is the fourth hardest thing.

People ask you how you are. They tell you they are praying for you even though you don’t believe in prayer or god. They tell you they were so sorry to hear about it. You wonder if they really mean it or are secretly glad that something came to break that bond that no one else seemed to have. You went everywhere together-meetings, movies, walking the dog, to the supermarket, flea-marketing. You didn’t want to go anywhere alone. Not you and not him. “Come with me,” he would say. “Take a ride with me.” And even if you were in the middle of cleaning the house or weren’t planning on going out you would change your clothes-“Do I have to wear a bra?” and comb your hair and go because he wanted you to go with him.

People ask you how you are and you say “OK.” You have to go to work and you have to do your job and you have to pay bills and do the laundry and go to the store. You have to get up every morning and get through every second of every day. You cry in the shower and you cry in the car and you cry in the middle of the night. All your memories play in your head when you’re alone. You wish you had made him buy a video camera so you could have captured his smile, his walk, and the way he crossed his legs and held his pipe. Panic overcomes you in the middle of the day when he used to call to see if you needed anything from the supermarket or what you wanted for dinner. There are days when he never calls. The days after chemotherapy when he lays on the couch all day too weak to pick up the phone you realize that this could be the way your life is from now on: no one calling for any reason at all. How do you express these feelings to a stranger? Who can listen to this tidal wave of pain?

What if someone shows up in your inbox one day with a message that he heard about your husband being sick and to let him know how things are going? What if it’s someone you haven’t seen in 12 years but you can talk to like you just saw him yesterday? What if it’s someone you’ve known for 30 years who loves you? What if one day you send a small message back-“I’m scared,” you say because you are terrified and alone. And he answers back, “Call me, anytime.” I suppose you should say, “No thank you, that wouldn’t be proper.” I suppose you should shred your brain, your body and your heart with your nails; beat your head against the wall until you can’t think anymore; cry every night until your eyes are purple slits and your head throbs. I suppose you should enshrine your loneliness in a near-crypt, surrounded with bouquets of lilies.

To have the chance to be human again, to have fun again, to love again. That is the fifth hardest thing.

Living in America

2005-01-25T14:34:00.000-05:00

The chipmunk on the wall
is staring at me
aggressively shaking it’s tail.
I am the interloper.

All winter and spring
it has gone unmolested,
foraging for food,
digging tunnels
jumping over the walls

Now, almost summer
it encounters me,
sitting on the patio, feet up
senses swimming in the sounds and smells
of almost summer in America,

Knowing that on this day
so beautiful, yellow-green
and full of sweet life
everywhere in the world
people just like me
scream and die
scream and live.
Beaten,
Mutilated,
Raped,
Shocked by electricity

I accept the pleasure this day offers me.
I will hold it in a drawer in my memory.
Someday, in the midst of terror,
the drawer will fly open, wide
taking me back to this day
of almost summer in America.

A Circumstantial Education

2005-01-25T07:11:00.000-05:00

I was encouraged to explore, to read, to question.
I was encouraged to explore, to read, to question, and to come to conclusions.
I was encouraged to explore, to read, to question, and to come to the conclusion that this was the best of all possible worlds and I was lucky to have been born at a time so free from the disease and hardship that was a mere generation away.
I was encouraged to explore, to read, to question, and to come to the conclusion that this was the best of all possible worlds and I was lucky to have been born at a time so free from the disease and hardship that was mere generation away and to have the opportunity to be anything I wanted to be regardless of class, race or sex. Bzzzzz.

In the fourth grade John F. Kennedy is killed. In the eighth grade Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy are killed. I sit at my bent plywood and Formica desk unmoved while others sob watching the black & white TV. Even the nun’s are crying. We read “The Diary of Anne Frank” in the seventh grade. What a tragedy! Such a young girl! How poignant! Later I find out about Goodman and Shwerner and Chaney and Medgar Evers and Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Later I find out how hard it is to accomplish something good when powerful people don’t want things to change. Reading alone in my bittersweet orange room with it’s flowered curtains and fishmobiles hanging from the ceiling, I am beginning to not understand how Hitler, charismatic as he may have been, did what he did all by himself. Bzzzzz.

I ask the librarian in my high school for a map of Vietnam and she says, “You girls should be thinking about parties and dances. You should be having fun, not worrying about things like war.” I am angry with her for not understanding: this is my party, this is my dance. In the Museum of Modern Art there is a poster that is a photograph of a pile of dead Vietnamese bodies. The caption asks, “And babies too?” and answers, “And babies, too.” I come to the conclusion that “Never again!” really means never again in exactly the same place in exactly the same way. Bzzzzz.

I pull down the cardboard box in my closet with old issues of my “Catholic Child’s Treasure Box.” Laura Nyro is singing, “Buy and Sell” on my pink and purple record player. I turn to the story of Wupsy the Guardian Angel and Sonny John the African pagan baby that is his first charge. The head angel tells Wupsy not to stop Sonny John from getting too close to the open fire. Sonny falls into the fire and is badly burned, but because his mother Ntaka Ntaka thinks he is going to die, she allows him to be baptized so he will go to heaven. Bzzzzz.

I explore the public library for things that I should read. I find “Treblinka”, “While 6 Million Died”, “Who Financed Hitler”, “The Crime and Punishment of IG Farbin”, “Blowback”, “Wanted, The Search for Nazi’s in America”, “The Deputy”, “They Fought Back”, “The Wall”, “Fascism and Social Revolution”, “You Can’t Go Home Again.” I question the role of German capital in the rise of the National Socialist Movement. I question the role of International capital in the rise of the National Socialist Movement. Standing in the stacks, my arms piled high with evidence. I question the role of Social Democrats in their capitulation to the National Socialist Movement. This is an old argument. Communists know one truth, Social Democrats another. The issue is in the past, but not in the past. Read Bogdan Denitch on Kosovo. Read Michael Parenti on Kosovo. Draw your own conclusions. I question the role of the US government in the aftermath of the National Socialist Movement. In 1995 Serge Stetkievich, an engineer at the company where I work, sees me reading Christopher Simpson’s “Blowback”, points to a picture of a Nazi in the book and says “I worked with him after the war.” My stomach feels odd. I look at him. “ We had no choice,” he says, “It was them or ….” He stops after seeing the look on my face. I come to the conclusion that Hitler did not accomplish the murder of 14 million people all by himself. Bzzzzz.

I question the role of the American Communist Party in encouraging unions to make “no strike deals” during WWII when American capital is making money hand over fist as they have in every war since the Civil War. “After the Soviet Union was invaded we had to support the war to save the Soviet Union! Communists were among the first to fight fascism in Spain. We had to continue the fight!” Yes, the fight against fascism but separate from Capital. What is Fascism but the skeleton of Capital? Underneath the fat of war boom and the fancy clothing of electoral politics the bones are the same. Oops! Here comes Joe Mc Carthy and HUAC. Hello, Film Noir. So long, film rouge. Goodbye, Ethel. Goodbye, Julius. Bzzzzz.

I explore the thoughts of other people.
“Those students don’t know how good they have it.”
“They wouldn’t be able to demonstrate if they lived in Russia!”
“They’re supposed to getting an education, not demonstrating, having sex and taking drugs!”
“Communists are torturers!”
“Hitler was a mad man!”
“Quadaffi is a terrorist!”
“Saddam Hussein is another Hitler!”
“Milosovic is another Hitler!”
What was Truman? What was Johnson? What was Nixon? What is Kissinger? What is Bush? What is Carter? What is Clinton?
“The Viet Cong are Communists. We have to save those people from Communism!”
In James Michener's book, “Kent State,” parents of some of the students on the campus say that if their sons and daughters were throwing rocks and bottles at the National Guard, they SHOULD HAVE BEEN SHOT. How many tons of bombs, naplam, agent orange dropped to save these people from Communism and to save them for what? Bzzzzz.

I return to college. My husband wants me to be a teacher. I explore Paolo Freire and Jonathon Kozol. I read in “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” “with the establishment of the relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of the violence…there would be no oppressed had there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation.” If you teach this way no pair of Nike’s, no designer jeans will satisfy. I can’t take the loyalty oath. I can’t lead the pledge of allegiance. Who will hire me? I decide I can’t be a teacher. Bzzzzz.

I have a class called, “The Philosophy of Peace.” We have to write a peace plan. We have to divide and share the world’s resources. The instructor is a Catholic into liberation theology. He infuriates me. Is that what he thinks is causing the problems of the world? No one has come up with a fair enough PLAN! I do a slide show with my term paper. I show the “plans” that have been trampled in the dirt, buried under the bodies that fell on top of them. He has never seen these things before. I want to scream. Bzzzzz.

Preparing for the Columbus Quincentennary I read about the conquistadors slow cooking a Native American over a fire pit. They tell him not to worry for he will soon be in heaven. “Are their Spaniards in heaven?” he asks. “Yes, of course, many Spaniards,” the soldier answers. “Then I don’t want to go to heaven,” says the Indian. Bzzzzz.

My children are teenagers now. I explore what happened in Italy after 1945 with American tax dollars, covert aid and approval. I read William Blum. I explore what happened in Germany after 1945 with American tax dollars, covert aid and approval. I read William Blum. I explore what happened in Indonesia in 1965 with American tax dollars and direct aid and approval. I read William Blum. My head fills with truths until I can’t hold it up any longer. It grows like a baloon, but it is as heavy as stone. It flops down. I try to pick it up. It flops to the side. It will not stand straight on my neck. I am officially a freak. Bzzzzz.

I march. I rally. I speak. I read. I write. Does it make me happy? Does it make me rich? I search for truth like a blind man reading in stone that’s been worn down by time. Like Anthony Newly and Leslie Bricusse with no star to guide me and no one beside me, I go on my way and after the day the darkness will hide me. Every bookeverypoemeverymovieeverypicture of the crimes of my country is in my head. The pile is bigger than 14 million. All colors, all races, all sexes, all ages across time. There is one thing in common, the color of our blood. That is a fact. There is no denying it. Bzzzzz.

I don’t want to lose this anger. ‘Reconciliation’ is a word that makes me want to vomit an ocean of blood. “Conflict resolution” is a phrase that makes me want to step on the heads of the snakes that hiss it. I sit in my living room so I can see all the colors that surround me. It is the color of acorn squash. The stairway wall is paprika. The dining room is gazpacho green. Nina Simone is singing “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” on the CD player. I explored, I read, I questioned and I came to the conclusion that everything that happens today is directly related to what happened yesterday. I am lucky to have been born at a time when people were turning the world on it’s head and shaking out the dirty secrets for all to share and see so I could run and pick them up, hold them in my hands and let them burn like fire in my pockets until I find their truths.

Zombie

2005-01-23T18:33:00.000-05:00

I am a zombie during the day.
The tasks laid before me are the pegs I use
to pull myself through time.
There is no purpose to what I do.
There is no reason for doing it.
It is not done with thought or with pleasure.
It is a necessity to keep the mortgage paid and food in the refrigerator.

Outside I am starting to shrivel from lack of life.
Inside I am rotting.
Invisible maggots eat at my veins and flesh-maggots of boredom and self induced paralysis,
Contained by the skin they rumble and squirm unseen
slowly, relentlessly devouring me.

I look for a purpose. I look for a reason to be. I find only emptiness.

I watch the sky for a sign of change.
Clouds move swiftly past my eyes.
Thin straight clouds. Puffy cottony clouds.
Clouds that look like eyes that have been crying all night.
Clouds that look like mist.
Underneath there are glimpses of blue.
In the distance there are hills still red and green and gold with autumn leaves.
But houses are swallowing them up. Green lawns. Beige aluminum siding. Perfectly shaped trees.
I listen for the sound of change on the wind, but there is only empty, hollow wailing.

Grayness is a mist over everyday.
All colors are shaded, less brilliant.
The air has no odor.
The birds sing as if on cue.
It’s as if a protective dome was already over us
and everything is already artificial.
Is that a lemon or an illusion of a lemon?
Is that a piece of chicken or a memory of a piece of chicken?
My eyes slide sideways from person to person
to see if anyone else is thinking these thoughts,
but their faces betray nothing unusual.
Only the grayness is real.
I try to grab it, but it eludes my touch.

My nerve endings wave in the air-
thin, pale pink tentacles
waiting to catch the slightest scent
but nothing passes by.

The absence of the hint of change is frightening.
It is also the absence of hope.
Silence rings like a death knoll.
Like the footsteps of a behemoth.
Like a million soldiers marching.
Like a tidal wave crashing over the earth

Nowhere to hide.
No safety. No disguise.
I cannot wear my disguise anyway.
It doesn’t fit.
Whatever mask I wear doesn’t matter,
because I cannot disguise my eyes.
What I know
blazes like neon, squeaking out of the cracks between my closed lids.
My mouth cannot smile at the things said as jokes.
My mouth cannot make small talk.
My mouth can only utter the monosyllables:
“No, no more. Stop. Stop.

Which little country
will be today’s Guernica?
And which will be tomorrows?
Whose children and old people will be laying in the street in shreds ?
Whose fathers and son’s will be turned into killers?
Whose daughters will be raped?
Whose mothers will turn to stone?
Whose lands will be made inhabitable?
Whose water will be polluted?
For centuries. For Centuries. FOR CENTURIES.
What year is this? In what country do I live?

I know, I know it all and yet I do nothing.

If I walk outside the sun shines on me, not knowing I am guilty.
The breeze touches my face gently, not knowing I am guilty.
If it rains on me I go inside.
If it’s cold, I turn up the heat.
If it’s hot, I turn on the air conditioner.
If I’m hungry, or even if I’m not-I eat.
What will it be today?
Spaghetti? Salmon? A sirloin steak?
Or is it breakfast still- a bagel, some oatmeal, pineapple yogurt?
There are no floods here. No tornado’s. We’re too far inland for a hurricane.

This is how I know there is no god.

In the evening the moon sits high above the city trees
with one bright star below and to the left.
What does it mean? What does it mean?
I cannot hear. I cannot smell. I cannot taste.

If I could eat the moon
it would taste cool and sharp.
My tongue would slide along one whole shiny side and then dig sharply in
and scoop out
a tiny,tingly piece
of cream.
And the cream would
Slide down my throat
like liquid ice
and line my belly with sparkle.

If I could lick the stars
they would taste crisp and sweet.
Their sugary coating would come off on my tongue.
I would leave them sticky and wet
and giggling as I passed by
tickling their sweet star stomachs with my tongue.

If I could hold the ocean in my arms
singing it to sleep with a muses ancient song,
I would cradle it like an infant newly born
and sing my sorrow for its injuries.
For years and years, I would sing,
voice high and soft and voice low and deep
and voice velvet with sorrow and voice silvery with light.
Rocking gently back and forth dipping my fingers
in the water of its mouth,
stroking its limbs and singing.

If I could find comfort in this world,
I would let the air undress me
and caress the soft flesh of inner arms.
I would let it whisper in my hair, breathe in my neck,
flutter around my lips like a million butterflies.
I would stand perfectly still on the top of an empty hill
arms outstretched and let it flow and swirl and stream
and glide under, around through me.
Then exhausted, I would lay down in the grass and sleep.

I am not Orpheus

2005-01-03T22:17:00.000-05:00

My husband was recently diagnosed with small cell lung cancer and is about halfway through chemotherapy and radiation. This is a part of how I am trying to deal with it.

I calm no beasts with sweet and gentle strumming.
I do not charm or mesmerize with song.
The thorns on roses harden when they hear me.
And beasts sharpen their fingernails on my tongue.

Death hovers like a yellow gas above us.
Swirls around your eyes and chest and head,
Clings like slime to each second of each day,
Sleeps like a black cold slab in our bed.

Not with a thousand notes can I
Make ghosts cry or stay the pain of the eternal damned,
Pluck Persephone’s longing for the life she abandons half a year,
Bring forth the Furies tears with stroke of hand.

Bloody stars tumble from my open mouth,
Pour from my eyes, embedding in my skin.
Fill my heart as hard as rock.
Clog my veins until they blaze within.

I will not plead. I will not beg the gods,
Perform and wait for their approval.

I am not Orpheus.

Follow me out of this dark place.
No matter how faint your step,
No matter how light your breath,
I will not turn my head.

For Diane Wakoski a Golden Sunday to Erase the Blue Monday

2005-01-03T16:54:00.000-05:00

Gold of the river of honey sliding down her throat
and pooling in her belly.
gold of the hay
that covers farmer’s fields in day
gold of her tongue
that savors the slice of mango
and slides across the skin.
gold of the tiny hands with ruffled cuffs
cradling the emerald heart
encircling her neck like a snake
at the market/melons firm under her hands
and the sun dancing over her head a
wash of silken threads.

Golden Sunday, Sunday at 7:00 and
Sunday at 12, Sunday at 5:00 and
Sunday at 11:00. Sunday sped by the quiet
city park. Sunday together
an amber stone quietly glowing.

We are alive: humming with sound.
We cannot be contained. Our bodies prisms
break into shards of light and dart around the room.

Sunday is the last day of the weekend
and we think of it all week.
we pray for Sunday to come
so that we can be together
all day.

You paint my body gold on the grass
in the shiny glaring day, you paint me
with sunlight and the petals
the petals
the petals
the petals of your lips separate
the day, exposing the feathers of swans
and my face, the gold of saffron
and my neck, the gold of marmalade
and my breasts, the gold of apples
and my arms, corn-gold
and my stomach, honey.

there is tension dropping from me like acorns
there is anger dropping from me I do not need-like thorns

or nettles swept into the gutter.

Reason passes me in a shirtwaist dress
and apron.
Her broom is plastic and filled with
cake mixes and Tang…
She wears pink
spike heels
and hairspray. Her hair is so hard
it’s almost gold.

“Reason, “ I said.
“Excuse me,” she said.
“Mrs. Reason,” I said.
“Excuse me,” she said.

So I saw there was no sense confronting her in the
kitchen.

Reason passed me in the kitchen in a pink
shirtwaist dress. She was a housewife
I could tell.

So gold bees buzz by my open eyes.
Gold coins plop into my lap.
Gold light hums in my
veins and sends satin
slipping into my pores.
Gold nuggets fill
my sweet mouth and gold fibers
enmesh my heart. Gold balls roll
and tumble in my hands.
Gold life fills my soul.

If I could dance one more dance
with light crackling around my feet
I would dance with my legs on fire
the golden heart pulsing that yellow bright beat
and my hips
would flicker with liquid flame
burning in my womb.
life multiplying
in my body. At last my blood
molten and swimming into the air.

It is golden.
It is golden.
It is golden.

Kerry Supporters

2004-11-26T13:03:00.000-05:00

Here's another letter to the editor written before the election, not published by the Morning Call. I had to go to C-Span and watch the DNC over again because there were so many things that disturbed me about what the speakers were saying.

To the Kerry-Edwards supporters who have been calling and urging me to vote for Kerry since Nader is no longer on the ballot in Pennsylvania I would like to remind you in the words of some of the speakers at the Democratic National Convention, what John Kerry stands for:

Gen. Wesley Clarke, “John Kerry will join that great pantheon of wartime democrats like…Harry Truman…Bill Clinton who confronted ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia and with a policy backed by force brought peace to a shattered land.”

Senator Joe Lieberman: “People are worried about their jobs, about rising healthcare bills, about their kid’s education, about their retirement and their environment. John Kerry and John Edwards have practical, progressive, sensible plans to relieve those worries, but all of us know that those plans won’t mean much unless we can restore the American peoples sense of security…shattered by Islamist terrorists…fanatics who are as great a threat to our personal security and freedom as the Nazi’s and Communists who we defeated in the last century.”

Madeleine Albright: “I want a President who will lead in the tradition of Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower…We all know that throughout history freedom has been opposed by dictators, aggressors, fascists and communists. In recent years we have seen arise a new and evil tide-terrorism. As President John Kerry will mobilize the full arsenal of American power including the military, intelligence, law enforcement…under his leadership, we will persist until we prevail.”

And Kerry himself: “I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as President…I will never hesitate to use force…We will add 40,000 active duty troops…double our Special Forces…provide our troops with the newest weapons and technologies…our National Security begins with Homeland Security.”

Ralph Nader may not be a prophet to lead us into the Promised Land. Do we need one?
He may not be building a movement the way some think he should; maybe that’s our job. But he is clearly anti-corporate, while the Democratic Party is the good cop of capitalism.

Remember, those of you who vote for Kerry and Edwards, exactly what principals you supported in this election. Hopefully, organizing and agitation around the real issues of war, poverty, education, healthcare and the environment as they affect the people of the US and the world will continue despite capitalism’s more palatable mask.

Equality

2004-08-27T08:10:00.000-04:00

Standing beside another human being
laughingly pointing a gun at his naked,
bound and blindfolded body. Hoo-ahh!

“I always wanted to be the first woman torturer
caught on camera.”
See Jane smile.
See her blue-green rubber gloves, thumbs rakishly pointed up!

Don’t you want her for a mommy?
A daughter?
A wife?
A neighbor?
A teacher?
My hero!
“I violated prisoners in my maidenform bra.”
Something for your daughters to aspire to.

New this Christmas!
Barbie in uniform complete with dangling cigarette,
dog collar, working cattle prod and
your choice of Prisoner: Middle Eastern, Asian,
Central/South American, African.
Beefsteak tartar a la Brecht is still on the menu at Mom‘s Diner.
Order yours now!
Avoid the Christmas rush.
Pull the string and hear her say in a real familiar voice,
"I think this is a very hard choice, but the price-we think the price is worth it." *
“We need a common enemy to unite us.” **
“The dove of peace has become the ostrich of complacency.” ***

Equality achieved.
Got that side trip out of your system, girls?

Now, can we get back on the road of liberation?

*Madeleine Albright
**Condoleeza Rice
***Jeanne Kirkpatrick

The recipe for a Land of Opportunity

2004-08-23T21:36:00.000-04:00

The recipe for a Land of Opportunity

1. Pour lots of US dollars into tiny, reactionary organizations that exist within a chosen country. (If they don't exist, stir some up.) Make sure they have a well-funded press and many photo opportunities with western journalists. (Toss in some massacre/rape/baby eating stories.)

2. Block all aid to political forces already in power because they are communists. (No documentation necessary. Nor does it matter if the left, communist, coalition government in existence was democratically elected.)

3. Place an embargo on the chosen country cutting off all export/import of necessary items including food and medicine. (Pressure Cooker effect)

4. Make sure plenty of guns, butter and cash get through to the reactionaries. Simmer. Add US troops to taste.

5. The pot will begin to bubble. The side with the most guns, butter and PR wins. (Your tax dollars at work.)

6. Pause to wave the flag.

7. After the dust settles and the blood dries, you have a perfect base for the business community to commit humanitarian deeds so the workers are not starving out on the street and to lay the foundation for future prosperity - for itself.

Note: Recipe can be doubled, tripled, quadrupled as needed.

Vote for Nader, Register your Discontent

2004-08-15T22:04:00.000-04:00

I can see why the Democratic Party is upset by Ralph Nader's candidacy.

If it weren't for Nader we would be faced with another year of either not voting or holding our noses and voting for a more palatable though not lesser of two evils.

If they lose, the Democrats could dismiss us as apathetic or if they win point to their success as proof that they were right to support god, the expansion of the military and the strengthening of Homeland Security while fondly reminiscing about their youthful fervor for peace and justice.

For those of us who know that war, poverty outsourcing and other iinjustice existed before Bush took office; for those of us who watched an international wave of anti-corporate, anti-war movements grow and spread only to be sandbagged by the nationalist backlash after 9/11, voting for the Democratic Party and the Kerry/Edwards ticket is tantamount to waving a white flag.

In the Election 2004 article on Nader in August 3rd's Morning Call, State House Minority Leader and Democrat H. William DeWeese said, “...we are going to do everything humanly possible to intercede against Mr. Nader.” This is the pathetic strategy the “party of the people” has for beating one of the most publically inept political figures of the century. To use Al Sharpton's analogy, this donkey has taken us for a ride long enough.

We don't want the military expanded. We want national health care. We want free education. We want affordable well constructed housing. We want living wage jobs in industries that meet human needs. We want Social Security to be expanded. We want debt forgiveness for student loans.

We don't want the Department of Homeland Security. We want no interference in the internal workings of sovereign governments or grassroots organizations. We don't want a new Cold War around the world or at home paid for with our tax dollars.

We want an end to corporate welfare. We want an end to subsidies to industries that threaten the future of the planet. We want corporations that outsource jobs at slave wages to be heavily taxed. If any military interventions are required to keep the wages low in their chosen lands of opportunity, they should strap on their 6 guns and pray.

We don't need the kind of empty hope that John Edwards promised was “on the way.” We don't

need the kind of trickle down, drop in the bucket help that John Kerry promised “is on the way.”

Behind the razor wire surrounding the Fleet Center, wrapped in red white and blue, produced by

Spielberg, serenaded by Carole King a wolf in sheep's clothing is still a wolf.

More than 2 Evils at the DNC

2004-07-29T20:17:00.000-04:00

With the exception of Rev. Al Sharpton, the performances at Wednesday nights Democratic National Convention were a cross between a Simpsons Halloween Special and Saturday Night Live in its heyday. The fascist Barbie Governor of Michigan and John Edward's lizard like tongue movements punctuated by a nano-second Jimmy Carter Grin offer fertile fodder for any moderately talented comedian. Unfortunately the future of our country and the planet are not laughing matters.

After hearing over and over again of Kerry's military record and promises to expand the military and the "Homeland Security" budget can anyone honestly say that a vote for Kerry is the lesser of 2 evils?

Tear gas, batons, riot gear, bullets, bullet proof vests,K-Rations(or whatever letter they're up to) bombs, planes, surveillance equipment all make a lot of money for a lot of people.
Around the world these products maintain a world order that makes it safe for people to work for a pittance. A world order that makes it safe for people to die of diseases that are preventable and curable. A world order that makes it safe for American corporations to murder those who organize for decent pay and working conditions. A world order that makes drug use-legal and illegal commonplace "in the greatest country in the world in the best of all possible times." A world order that gives young people a choice of war or prison.

Strengthen homeland security-more women being forced to drink their own breast milk before they're allowed to board an airplane? More hollywood hotties forced to bear their chests to show their nipple rings? More easily recognizable actors made to take their shoes off to show they have no weapons? More men with guns at the entrance to parking lots, bridges and tunnels as we drive around this "free" country?

The war that John Kerry fought in was a war against the tiny country of Vietnam. this is a country that fought the Japanese, then the French before the US came. Already devastated from years of war, they did not have fancy weapons. They didn't travel halfway across the world to bring communism to our shores. They were invaded by the most powerful military machine the world has ever seen and they won anyway. Men, women and children fought against the invaders who raped, mutilated and burned their way across their land. Since when is that something to be proud of? The DNC has loads of veterans telling of their support for John Kerry. Where are the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW?) Outside most likely.
When they played, "Dancing in the Streets" they didn't segue to the "free speech zone."
Which brings me to the musical part of the Convention. Let's start with:

Jackson Brownes, "Lives in the Balance"-
"They sell us the President the same way they sell us our clothes and our cars. They sell us everything from youth to religion the same time they sell us our wars."

Well I guess we'll buy anything.

Al Sharpton made a great speech. He ended by saying something like, we never got our 40 acres and a mule, but we're going to ride this donkey as far as it will take us.

I don't think that's the right way to go right now. Maybe it's because I'm 50. I remember going to see Mc Govern speak in Elizabeth NJ in 1972. I remember that I disliked Nixon, but I did not feel that McGovern was enough. Later, I succumbed to the lesser of 2 evils argument and voted for Carter. In all that time, which way has the world gone? Since Vietnam and Chile, Newark and Detroit, Kent and Jackson State, the murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, El Salvador and Nicaragua, Cointelpro, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, the Patriot Act and Iraq again when is it going to stop?

Get off the donkey. Give it a whack on the rearend and send it packing. John Edwards was saying last night, "Hope is on the way." Well hope as been on the way for more than 200 years. When's it gonna get here? And what will it do when it does. Do we really need more hope? You can't eat hope. Hope can't shelter you or clothe you or give you medical care education clean air and water, a sustainable environment or peace. It takes more than hope for that. It takes action.

Those of us who have fought in whatever small way for justice and democracy know what acting means. We stand with the Americans who fought for decent and safe working conditions; who organized labor before it was legal;

Song: Solidarity Forever
"They have taken untold power that they never toiled to earn.
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn,
the union makes us strong."Sub: In union we are strong.

Who fought for civil rights
Song: Aint Gonna let nobody turn me 'round
Turn me round, turn me round.
Ain't gonna let nobody tun me 'round.
I'm gonna keep on walking, keep on talking
Marching toward freedom land.

For womens rights
Song: Bread and Roses
"As we go marching marching.
We bring the greater day.
The rising of the women
means the rising of the race.
No more the drudge and idler
Ten that toil while one reposes.
But a sharing of lifes glory
Bread and Roses, Bread and Roses."

Who fought to keep schools and firehouses and libraries open in our communities.
Song: It Isn't Nice
It isn't nice to block the doorways.
It isn't nice to go to jail.
There are nicer ways to do things.
But the nice ways always fail.
It isn't nice, it isn't nice.
You told us once, you told us twice,
but if that is freedoms price, we don't mind."

Who fought so no husband, father, son mother, wife or daughter would have to die halfway across the world "hanging on the barbed wire, crying out for water."
Song: Masters of War
Well what do I know to talk out of turn?
You might say that I'm young.
You might say I'm unlearned.
There's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you:
Even Jesus could never forgive what you do."

It's past time to part company with the donkey. We can walk together forward "in a column that's a century-wide. It's still a long and a hard and a bloody ride" in 2004.

More tomorrow.

Unnecessary Illusions

2004-06-20T11:01:00.000-04:00

…”two women hanged from a tree by their hair
with their breasts cut off and their faces painted red.”
page 236 Necessary Illusions Noam Chomsky

Nationalism mutates into Fascism.
Extreme violence becomes commonplace.
Capitalism, continues its long slow death
Eroding, decaying, putrefying with
Sanguinary results. We read of
Slipping, sliding hands grasping the edge of a red riverbank.
Against a wall, ten people are lined up and shot for no reason, but
Reaction lessens as the horror spreads more and more
Year after bloody year.

Infused with stale yellow and sulfur
Lies hang in the air like slime
Linger around the ears like wasps disguised as butterflies.
Uneasy peace. Behind my eyes, a door slides softly closed.
Slumber is restless, broken by
Images of bodies swinging by the hair.
Obfuscated by news of negotiations the murders continue.
No excuse, except the phrase that pays-Fight Communism!
Silence thunders, black, empty, echoing no hope, no hope.

No time for confusion or endless debate
Elusive as a vision of the future is
Capitulation to what exists cannot be
Entertained. The choice is still barbarism or
Socialism. Don’t we know that at least?
So raise your heads and the scarlet banner high
And give this world a chance at life.
Resistance is essential.
Yet we wander, lost in the fog, haunted by Stalin’s ghost.

Incomplete though our plans may be,
Let’s at least begin, motivated not only by hatred of what exists but by
Love for the ones who suffer. Won’t it be a relief to concentrate not on
Ugliness, or personal unhappiness, but on building a better world,
Seeds of which were planted when we crawled out of the slime?
If we try, what can we accomplish? We have
Only to face the mistakes of the past, shed our not so
Necessary illusions and
Step into the fray.

Hearing

2004-06-16T22:30:00.000-04:00

Hearing the cello-sad music
violins screaming in pain
over black and white pictures
of faces from every country
my ears cannot shut out the babble
of too many tongues.

I sit trying not to listen
my head protected by cotton candy news
that despite its sweet softness
cannot block the noise.

All around me people smile
walk, talk, work
not hearing the sounds of suffering
that beat like the telltale heart
through the walls and floor.

It is time to remove the costume of normality
to cleanse ourselves with tears
for those who have fought and are fighting still
and when we have cried ourselves dry,
to look at ourselves naked in the mirror
before we dress for the battle that is to come.

Anti-abortion activists

2004-06-01T21:21:00.000-04:00

On my way to work last Thursday I passed 3 anti-abortion activists standing on Hamilton St. on the sidewalk in front of Cedar Beach. They were standing behind large posters of the same aborted fetus. Two of the signs said, Abortion and the third had an arrow pointing to an office building across the street and had the word, "abortionist" written on it.

Just a few days before I happened upon a documentary on FSTV or LINK about bomblets in Laos and how young children, particularly boys are still being injured by the crap left behind from a war that ended nearly 30 years ago.

Where are the blown up color pictures of those dead and injured actually existing children? Where are the pictures of people starving and dying of diseases spread by war? Why aren't the "pro-lifers" out there demanding food, clothing, shelter, medicine and education for the undead-aka the living?

I had a vision of the Scarlet Letter burned on their chests underneath their neat, conventional clothing. I wondered what terrible sin each of them was hiding.

They were only there for one day thank goodness. It doesn't bother me to look at those pictures. It makes me angry that the pictures I saw on Al Jazeera of the child swathed in bandages or the one dead with a part of his skull missing aren't being carried on the street. It makes me angry that the pictures of the victims of cluster bombs in Yugoslavia and the diaries of the doctors trying to deal with the shredded limbs there was no way to save weren't read on the air every night.

Abortion is not about the fetus. Abortion is about a woman's right to control one teeny tiny part of her body. We are all assaulted daily by propaganda-men and women, but does a man have to walk into a mall and see a Victor's Secret shop where he can buy all manner of costumes that lift and seperate, reveal and conceal in all the right places? Do men wear wonder jocks to fill them out and plump them up? Would any of this make them more appealing to women? Think of it that way and you have to laugh.

I wish they would re-run the 1970's TV show, "All that Glitters" on Nick at Night. I don't remember all of it-It was on right before or right after "Mary Hartman." Chuck McCann, Anita Gillete, Linda Grey, David Duke, Marilyn Sokol and that guy from WKRP in Cincinatti-not Howard Hesseman, the young guy-Gary somone. It reversed the roles of men and women, but it kept the society the same. It really made you see how ridiculous conventional roles are. I remember Chuck Mc Cann crying and wearing an apron and David Duke being in love with Linda Grey who had a sex change operation and was really a man and Marilyn Sokol was a sheik(ess) with a harem. I wish we had something like that now. Satire, I mean. But as Tom Lehrer said, "Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize."

This is disorganized and rambling, but it's all related somehow.
And I cannot believe that women are calling each OTHER "Chicks."
Please don't tell me it's the same thing as gay people calling themselves queer because it certainly doesn't feel like it. I mean "Chick Nation" doesn't have the same ring to it. I suppose at the root of it is the fact that we don't learn our own history-the movements of the '60's are seen as an aberration, not a continuation- a little spurt here, a little spurt there, not a wave that swept over the world. Maybe the tide is out, but the water's still here.

I'll leave that for another day.

Alienation

2004-05-25T20:55:00.000-04:00

In your hands,
a piece of wood becomes a chair
a pile of thread becomes a bolt of cloth
a chunk of ore becomes a steel girder
an empty field becomes a crop of corn.

One of many bodies, no name, no face
you accept the uneven split of wages and profits
reciting the catechism of popular economics.

In your hands
a piece of steel becomes a box of screws
a crop of wheat becomes a loaf of bread
a hunk of clay becomes a set of bowls
a pile of wood becomes a house.

The objects you create stand beside you.
You are smaller in their presence.
They are larger in your presence.

In your hands,
a pile of stones becomes a fireplace,
a load of concrete becomes a sidewalk
a skein of wool becomes a hat,
a nugget of silver becomes a ring.

Some of the money you earn in the uneven exchange
will buy the object you produce
for while in making a car or a chair there is no status
in owning one status is attained.

In your hands,
strength has become weakness.
your creation has become your master,
our history has been rendered over:
granite obscured by a garish coat of red, white and blue.

Why War?

2004-05-25T20:45:00.000-04:00

Wars have never been fought for ideals or ideas. Wars are not fought “to end all wars” or “to make the world safe for democracy.” They are fought over natural resources and for economic and political domination and they make a lot of people a lot of money.

Sadaam Hussein was not a good person. That is not why the US invaded Iraq. If the US government were concerned with “evil” it would not be supporting brutal regimes in Turkey or Indonesia. It would not have subverted the governments of Chile or Nicaragua to name a few. It would not have invaded Grenada. It would not have bombed Yugoslavia.

After September 11 the people of the United States had a chance to look closely at and reevaluate our government and it’s foreign and domestic policies. We had a chance to ask ourselves, “Do we want more money for weapons of mass destruction, more young men and women deployed across the world for war and armed “peacekeeping?” Do we re-prioritize in favor of national health care, more money for education, mass transit, more concern for the environmental destruction that is picking up more and more speed, more time to participate in this democracy?”

The majority of people have decided in favor of the latter, but this doesn’t make billions and billions of dollars for the people who make everything from the weapons to the body bags to the K-rations. When we speak about the military budget we should remember that the money taken from the public coffers, money earned by generations of working people, goes to the corporations who make the weapons that kill people and the planet itself. In spite of their patriotism they do not sell to the government at cost.

The Bush organizations “war on terrorism” has already stripped us of the few democratic rights we have. Oh we still have the right to buy several different models of gas guzzling, mega-polluting SUV’s. We still have the right to shop at the Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club of our choice, but not the unionized Shop Rite or Laneco. We still have the right to send our children into the military gambling that they’ll survive long enough to use their GI benefits to further their educations. We still have the right to work until we drop so we can afford housing, healthcare and contaminated food.

What makes a terrorist? Hopelessness and desperation. What makes terrorists target America? Some people say it’s because they are jealous of our “freedom” and our lifestyle. Americans work longer and harder than their counterparts in other industrialized nations. We are more productive as well, but we receive less and less compensation for that achievement. Where does the money go? 40% of the wealth in America is owned by 1% of the people. Our lifestyles reflect this as more and more people work more than one job just to keep their heads above water, retirees are forced to go back to work and even families with 2 full time working parents earn incomes that are below the poverty line. In the meantime the tax dollars we work until May to pay are used to shore up anti-democratic leaders in El Salvador, Turkey, Columbia and Indonesia to name a few. They are used to develop and produce some of the most horrendous weapons of our time-cluster bombs and nuclear waste “bullets” that have brought horrible death and destruction to the people of Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The priorities of the people who manufacture arms, who own oil companies and who already own most of the wealth created in America are not the same as mine. I do not support an invasion of Iraq or any other country.

What To Do

2004-05-25T20:38:00.000-04:00

I think we need to raise the issues that are affecting people in their daily lives, keep these issues in the forefront as the military budget drains the public coffers. What are you terrified of more-Al Quaeda or not having food, clothing, shelter, a living wage, access to medical care and decent education? We need to say that we are not human resources; we are human beings. We need to stop accepting the voting booth as our only legitimate means of expression.

I have been extremely depressed since the recent elections. I am beginning to snap out of it because I realized that once again, I allowed myself to have faith in the electoral process. I have not always voted. I used to vote when I felt I needed to for the lesser of 2 evils. I voted for Carter when he lost. I voted for a republican governor in Pennsylvania because she was pro-choice. I felt very bad about that and I really didn’t want to do it. She was for 1 issue that I felt very strongly about and against 99 other ones that I also felt strongly about. Voting is a very unsatisfying experience. It’s like having one lick of lemon ice on a really hot summer day and then being told you can’t have any more.

In 1992, I wrote an article for Regeneration, A Magazine of Left Green Social Thought. The focus of Regeneration 4 was Green Electoral Politics, The 1992 debates. One of the things I said was, “As activists, our primary activity not to educate, but coordinate the … anger and frustration that we all feel; to encourage people to see that we can live in a human way and to point out that the capitalist system is stopping us from saving ourselves and the world. Whether we win or lose a particular struggle, the struggle itself is important because involvement in it is a step away from passivity and isolation and a step toward humanity and community. It’s important for people to stand up and say that our lives matter more than their profits and that a system that recognizes capitalism’s right to profit over our right to live must end. Do people come to that realization through electoral activity?”

I feel the same way today. I think for me the problem is in finding a community. There are faith-based groups and race based groups, student groups. There the Labor Party such as it is. But for people working in a non-union office environment in an industrial park, not religious and with anti-capitalist politics, there’s not much community or hope for one.

I don’t know if anyone saw the article in the January 2002 issue of Monthly Review, “Left Politics in the Age of Transition,” an exchange between Immanuel Wallerstein and the Editor’s of Monthly Review, but Wallerstein said some interesting things.

One of the things he said is “Use defensive electoral tactics…Once we don’t think of obtaining state power as a mode of transforming the world, they (elections) are always a matter of the lesser evil, and the decision of what is the lesser evil has to be made case-by-case and moment-by moment.”

The entire article is very good and I think worth reading for everyone here, but let me just summarize his alternative strategy:
“1. Expand the spirit of Porto Allegre-What is this spirit? The coming together in a non-hierarchical fashion of the world family of antisystemic movements to push for a) intellectual clarity b) militant actions based on popular mobilization that can be seen as immediately useful in people’s lives and c) attempts to argue for long term fundamental changes.
2. Use defensive electoral tactics.
3.Push democratization unceasingly. The most popular demand on the states everywhere is “more”- more education, more health, more guaranteed lifetime income.
4. Make the liberal center fulfill its theoretical preferences. This is otherwise known as forcing the pace of liberalism. The liberal center notably seldom means what it says or practices what it preaches.
5. Make anti-racism the defining measure of democracy. Democracy is about treating all people equally-in terms of power, in terms of distribution, in terms of opportunity for personal fulfillment…Racism is not a secondary issue either on a national or a world scale.
6. Move towards decommodification…instead of turning universities and hospitals into profit making institutions we should be thinking of how we can transform steel factories into non-profit institutions…
7. Remember always that we are living in the era of transition from our existing world system to something different. We should not be taken in by the rhetoric of globalization or the inferences about TINA. Not only do alternatives exist, but the only alternative that doesn’t exist is continuing with our present structure.

…The key problem is lucidity. The forces who wish to change the system so that nothing changes…have money, energy and intelligence at their disposal…only careful analysis will keep us from falling into their many traps.”

Sounds good to me. I just don’t know how and if we can do it. I think it was Ted Glick of IPPN that sent out an e-mail saying that we should hold Town Meetings in every community. This at least gives people a chance to get to know each other and communicate. I suppose we could try to hold town meetings on specific issues that are not necessarily seen as local issues-like healthcare- and see what people think, what the problems are in our area. It’s difficult to do anything that involves regular people though without the local honcho’s getting involved. A few years ago in Allentown some women tried to organize a group of people to discuss what the problems were with the downtown area and local political people were all over the meetings trying to co-opt the issues.

Guernica vs. Terrorism in Spain

2004-05-25T20:35:00.000-04:00

This letter is in response to the misuse of Picasso’s Geurnica in the Tuesday March 16th Morning Call. The only relationship the bombing of Geurnica has to the terrorist bombing in Madrid is that perhaps, if the leftist government of Spain in the 1930’s and the spirit of international cooperation that supported it had been allowed to flourish instead of being brutally destroyed with the complicity of “democratic” governments and the Catholic Church, there would not have been a 2004 bombing in Madrid.

The Luftwaffe bombed the town of Guernica in the Basque region of Spain on market day April 26, 1937 in support of the fascist General Franco. For 3 hours, they dropped bombs and strafed the surrounding countryside, killing about 1600 of the towns 5000 men women and children. The outrage of this massacre is what Picasso’s Guernica represents.

The deaths that occurred in Madrid in 2004 were the result of a group of misdirected fundamentalists who do not hold state power. In contrast, with the bombing of Guernica the killing of civilians became a socially and politically acceptable act by governments during World War II, culminating in the horrific atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. To this day, the brutality of aerial “warfare” continues on a regular basis as we have seen from the use of cluster bombs in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The United States government and other major democracies maintained an official non-interventionist position during the Spanish Civil War that resulted in Franco’s forces getting plenty of guns, money and oil eventually ensuring the defeat of the elected leftist government. Before the government fell under the relentless barrage of well-funded fascists, more than 50,000 International Brigade members volunteered to fight for Spanish freedom. They came from Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Poland, the Ukraine, England, Ireland, USSR, Yugoslavia, Scandinavia, Canada, Hungary and of course from the United States. Republican Spain represented hope to people living in poverty and despair through a worldwide economic depression; hope to people who found a chance to fight in Spain against the same fascist enemy that was crushing them at home. Among the many who died there was the first black man to lead an integrated American military force, Oliver Law, a commander in the American Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Upon returning to the United States, survivors were labeled “premature antifascists” because their cause was not tied to nationalism but to internationalism and to the belief that all the people of the world deserve to be free.

A few years ago the Zoellner Arts Center at Lehigh University hosted an exhibit called, Shouts from the Wall Posters and Photographs Brought Home From the War by American Volunteers. The introduction to the exhibit quoted the writer and film maker, John Sayles, “They fought when they didn’t have to fight, fought when it brought no public glory in their home towns, fought to put a lie to the cynicism that keeps people in darkness…for a republic that was mostly a belief in what people could be, in how they could live together…in a time when caring about someone you’ve never met is seen as weakness or treachery how much strength have we taken from the thought of them…”
There are many sources for more information about the Spanish Civil War. One of these is the website of ALBA – The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives at www.alba-valb.org.