Happy New Year 2016
Source: Esplorando Cartoline Blogspot

Year 2015 has been a tumultuous journey on Spaceship Earth. But all wasn’t bleak. In the blogosphere, friends like Cyril Bryan at the Guyanese Online Blog boosted my spirits and hits by sharing my posts and keeping me in touch with news from Guyana and the Guyanese Diaspora. In May, we welcomed the newly-elected coalition government of President David Granger and Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo. The challenges are innumerable. Clean-up goes much deeper than unclogging drains and removing trash.

Blogging friends, Dr. Gerald Stein (Chicago/USA) and Bruce Witzel (Vancouver/Canada), continue to inspire, motivate, and lift me up when passing through an asteroid field. Carol Hand, a new blogging friend from the Sokaogon Ojibwe Community (Wisconsin/USA), shares much-needed voices from the margins of Native American life.

I thank each one of you who have read and commented on my posts. You have made this year’s journey through our galaxy meaningful and brighter.

My failure to find a literary agent for my first novel, Under the Tamarind Tree, clouded my days. In September following another rejection, I put my search on hold. Work on my second novel, The Twisted Circle, held my shattered heart together. Later that month, I completed the first draft. With ongoing feedback from my best friend and poet as well as the members of my writers’ critique group, I’ve made great strides in the revision process.

Here in the United States, gun violence remains a part of our daily lives. Three hundred and fifty-three mass shootings, within 350 days, have killed or injured four or more people. When our nation responds to every aggression from our enemies with even greater violence, what else can we expect from our home-grown, male, white terrorists raised on entitlement, fear, and hatred?

Our police force, too, is fast becoming another enemy within our borders. This is already a reality for black communities, even where they comprise the majority. Disproportionate incarceration of blacks fractures their families, leaving them even more vulnerable.

This year, the plight of women and children fleeing war-torn countries in the Middle East and Africa darkened my days and kept me awake at nights. The majority of refugees who made it to Europe have not found a new haven. Exposure to the European winter brings death to the weakest. Hearts filled with hate and fear of the other have no room for compassion.

The UN climate conference in Paris has come and gone. Agreements reached are not enough to reduce global warming within safety margins for human survival. The greatest crisis facing humanity demands a collective, revolutionary global response.

Through control of our minds and hearts, the Empire draws us to the Dark Side. Only light can overcome the darkness spreading across Spaceship Earth. Let us free ourselves from slavery to consumerism. Let us free ourselves from our addiction to oil. Let us free ourselves from hate and fear. Only then will the Force awaken.