24 Sunday Nov 2019
Posted in United States
Trump’s Shakedown Makes Washington Just Another Racket The impeachment inquiry into U.S. President Donald Trump has pulled my homeland, Ukraine, into the spotlight, and more Americans are talking about it than ever before. Yet few see it clearly. Some still call it — wrongly — “the Ukraine”, and few seem willing to spell the name of […]
17 Sunday Nov 2019
Tags
Amazonas/Brazil, Belém/Pará/Brazil, Destruction of Amazon Rainforest, Indigenous Brazilian poet Márcia Wayna Kambeba, Poem “Silêncio Guerreiro” (Silent Warrior) by Márcia Wayna Kambeba, Poetry collection Ay Kakyri Tama – Eu Moro Na Cidade by Márcia Wayna Kambeba, Rights of Indigenous Peoples
My Poetry Corner November 2019 features the poem “Silent Warrior” (Silêncio Guerreiro) by Márcia Wayna Kambeba, the artistic name of Márcia Vieira da Silva, an indigenous Brazilian poet, geographer, performer, and activist for indigenous rights. Born in 1979 in the village of Belém do Solimões in the northern Brazilian state of Pará, she is of Omágua Kambeba ethnicity. At eight years, she moved with her family to São Paulo de Olivença—once the largest settlement of the Kambeba people—in Amazonas. Today, she lives in the city of Belém, capital of Pará.
In the opening stanza of the title poem—written in Tupi followed by its translation in Portuguese—of her poetry collection, Ay Kakyri Tama – Eu Moro na Cidade (Ay Kakyri Tama – I Live in the City), she writes:
I live in the city
This city is also our village
We do not erase our ancestral culture
Come white man, let us dance our ritual.
Influenced by her grandmother, a teacher and poet, Márcia Wayna began writing her first poems at twelve years. She earned a bachelor’s degree in geography at the Amazonas State University in Manaus. In 2012, she received her master’s degree at the Amazonas Federal University. For her dissertation, she documented the history of the Omágua Kambeba people from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century, examining the relationship between territory, identity, and ethnicity. Her poetry collection, self-published in 2018, is the transformation of her dissertation to inform others about the invisible life of indigenous peoples.
13 Wednesday Nov 2019
Under the Tamarind Tree by Rosaliene Bacchus is a fictional story centered on a young man in British Guyana from 1950 to the nation’s independence in the late 1960s. The two-decade long tale of his life is highlighted with haunting memories of his childhood, captivating family intrigue exquisitely unwound by the author, and touching marital troubles all told within the context of a culturally diverse country torn by political and ethnic strife. It’s a gripping page-turner that will tug hard on your heartstrings.
The story moves along briskly from scene to scene and is delightfully filled with tactile samplings of Guyanese culture particularly its lifestyles, cuisine, and colloquial speech. Reading it brought the activities, tastes, sounds, and even the climate and geography of the country vividly to my mind. It was almost like being there. This quality of the novel cannot be understated and it is the most essential component of the story.
Dear Reader, my debut novel, Under the Tamarind Tree, is available at Rosaliene’s Store on Lulu.com and other book retailers at Amazon, BAM! Book-A-Million, Barnes and Noble, Book Depository, and Indie Bound.
Learn more about Under the Tamarind Tree at Rosaliene’s writer’s website.
10 Sunday Nov 2019
Posted in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption
Tags
Alliance of World Scientists, American Institute of Biological Sciences (BioScience), Changes in global human activities (1979-2019), Climate emergency, Climatic response to global human activities (1979-2019), Critical steps to reduce worst effects of climate change, World Scientists’ Warning of Climate Emergency (Nov/2019)
On November 5, 2019 more than 11,000 scientists from 153 countries signed a declaration, published in the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, that states “clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.” Though scientists began alerting world leaders forty years ago about global warming, greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar.
In an effort to expand our understanding of the climate emergency, the scientists have prepared several graphics of the vital signs of climate change over the last forty years.
The climate crisis is closely linked to excessive consumption of the wealthy lifestyle.
The 15 charts in Figure 1 depict the changes in global human activities from 1979 to the present:
01. Human population
02. Total fertility rate
03. Ruminant livestock (cattle)
04. Per capita meat production
05. World GDP (Gross Domestic Product)
06. Global tree cover loss
07. Brazilian Amazon Forest loss
08. Energy consumption (oil, coal, gas, solar/wind)
09. Air transport (by number of passengers)
10. Total institutional fossil fuel assets divested
11. CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions
12. Per capita CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions
13. Greenhouse gas emissions covered by carbon pricing
14. Carbon price
15. Fossil fuel subsidies
The 14 charts in Figure 2 depict the climatic response time series for the same period, 1979 to the present:
01. Carbon dioxide in atmosphere
02. Methane in atmosphere
03. Nitrous oxide in atmosphere
04. Surface temperature change
05. Minimum Arctic sea ice
06. Greenland ice mass change
07. Antarctica ice mass change
08. Glacial thickness change
09. Ocean heat content change
10. Ocean acidity
11. Sea level change
12. Area burned in the United States
13. Extreme weather/climate/hydro events
14. Annual losses due to weather/climate/hydro events Continue reading
03 Sunday Nov 2019
Posted in Nature and the Environment
Tags
Adapting to Change, California wildfires, Climate Crisis, Ecological Crisis, Georgetown/Guyana, Lessons from Nature, Succulent plants
The succulent plants in my garden brighten my life. During humanity’s mad dash towards the abyss, their quiet dynamic presence calm my troubled mind. Under California’s scorching sunshine that set dry brush ablaze, my succulent plants have found a way to survive the extreme heat. Some change color; others become more compact in form.
Given their amazing ability to propagate from cuttings, I’ve planted succulents in several garden plots of our apartment complex. I marvel at their adaptation to different soil quality and amount of sunlight.
The adverse effects of our climate and ecological crises will intensify in the years ahead. It’s already happening here in California. People who have lost their homes in areas ravaged by wildfires must now question the viability of staying and rebuilding. This is also the case for areas facing prolonged drought and frequent flooding.
My birthplace in Georgetown, Guyana, is also under threat. The Guyanese Online Blog recently posted a video (duration 2:04 minutes) demonstrating the gravity of the situation.
A time is coming—perhaps, sooner than we envisage—when people everywhere across our country and planet will be on the move. Pulling up our roots and resettling in different lands is nothing new for our species. But the climate and ecological changes already underway will demand much more of us.
Like the succulents, will our species adapt to surviving on less water, on less food? How will we adapt to living on a hotter planet?
