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Monthly Archives: December 2022

“The Christmas Song” by Prisma Brasil

18 Sunday Dec 2022

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Brazil, Poetry

≈ 50 Comments

Tags

A Canção de Natal por Prisma Brasil, Brazilian Christian musical group, São Paulo/Brazil, Seventh-Day Adventist Young Choir, The Christmas Song by Prisma Brasil

A Canção de Natal / The Christmas Song by Prisma Brasil

My Poetry Corner December 2022 features the song “The Christmas Song” (A Canção de Natal) by Prisma Brasil, the opening song on their 2017 CD album of the same name. Prisma Brasil is a Brazilian Christian musical group dedicated to spreading the love of God through song.

With headquarters in Hortolândia, São Paulo, the group was founded in 1980 by the pianist Eli Prates as the Young Choir of the Adventist University Center of São Paulo (UNASP) of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Comprised of students, employees, and professors of UNASP, the group retains its youthful base as graduating members are replaced by incoming students.

Glory to God in the highest
Echoes at night in Bethlehem
Angels from heaven announce:
The Redeemer was born
Celebrate! Hallelujah!
The Messiah has come

To the world hope has been given
Reaching every tribe and nation
For all the weary and afflicted
He became flesh and offers peace
This is the hour, glorious hour
The Messiah has come! The messiah has come!
This is the Christmas song

Glory to God in the highest
Sung for generations
We no longer fear the darkness
For Christ is with us
Celebrate! Hallelujah!
Jesus saved us

[…]

Glory! Glory! Glory!
Let the people sing: Glory! Glory! Glory!
Let the earth sing: Glory! Glory! Glory!
Glory! Glory!


I wish you and your loved ones a Happy Christmas filled with peace and joy!

To read the complete featured “The Christmas Song” in English and its original Portuguese, and to learn more about Prisma Brasil, go to my Poetry Corner December 2022.

California: My drought-resistant garden brings Christmas joy

11 Sunday Dec 2022

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in United States

≈ 114 Comments

Tags

Aeonium Mint succulent plant, Camellia tree, Christmas Cactus in bloom, Drought in Southern California, Indian Hawthorn shrub, Jade plant, Los Angeles/Southern California, Pencil or Firestick Succulent Plant, Potted fruit trees, Succulent Garden

Rosaliene’s Succulent Garden – Los Angeles – Southern California – December 8, 2022

In August, I shared my challenge of “Creating a drought-resistant garden in The City of Angels.” By October, I completed the painful task of uprooting the plants struggling to adapt to our extreme heat and drought. I’m happy to report that most of the plants have adjusted well to once-a-week watering, a fifty percent reduction.

Not surprisingly, the Aeonium Mint succulent plants suffered the most. I uprooted three plants in areas where they faced over four hours of intense afternoon sunlight. What a difference from their cousin, shown on the right, that receives only a few hours of direct sun in the morning!

Aeonium Mint – Afternoon Sun – September 28
Aeonium Mint – Morning Sun – September 28

The expansive, five-foot-tall Pencil or Firestick plants have all partially collapsed. After cutting off the collapsed branches and trimming the fleshy stems, I fortified the remaining branches with wooden sticks, as shown in the photo below. The Firestick is my favorite succulent plant for adding height and color—red, orange, yellow, and green—to a succulent garden with few seasonal flowering plants.

Pencil or Firestick Succulent Plant – December 8

The ten-year-old, three-foot-tall jade plant, rooted in the ground, is also not happy with water rationing. On Thanksgiving Day, another branch collapsed. I sliced off the branch and did a general pruning to reduce the weight on the remaining branches. To prevent another collapse, I secured all the branches together with green ribbon, as pictured below. I’m considering the painful choice of cutting down the plant; I will wait and see if it recovers with less evaporation over the winter months.

The potted jade is doing very well. I marvel at the way plants adapt to the confining space. As shown in the photo to the right, the leaves with orange edges are much smaller than its all-green, earth-rooted relative.

Jade Plant – December 8
Potted Jade Plant – December 8

I reserve the gray water I save after domestic use for my son’s three potted fruit trees—guava, lime, and orange—as well as my vegetable plants. The infrequent visits of Mother Nature’s pollinators have been the greatest constraint for our dwarfed fruit trees. After several years of watching their blossoms fall from the stems, I was surprised this year to see the appearance of two oranges, five guavas, and several limes. The lime tree has shed most of its leaves following the drop in temperatures.

Potted Guava Tree – December 8
Potted Lime Tree – December 8
Potted Orange Tree – December 8

The Christmas Cactus is now in full bloom, adding color to my garden plot. But it’s the Camellia trees—now laden with buds and early flowers of pink, red and white—and an Indian Hawthorn shrub that steal the show at this time of the year. (All photos were taken on December 8.)

Christmas Cactus
Indian Hawthorn Shrub
Camellia Tree

NOTE: The captioned photo is a section of our largest garden plot, located across from my apartment.

Reflections on Autonomy

04 Sunday Dec 2022

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Human Behavior

≈ 65 Comments

Tags

Autonomy in Jem Bendell’s e-s-c-A-p-e Ideology, Chief Si’ahl known as Seattle of the Duwamish Tribe, Climate Chaos, Climate emergency, Cultural Conditioning, Seattle/Washington State, Self-determination, Social Constructs

Seattle – Washington State – USA
Photo by Josh Fields on Pexels

This is the fifth in the series of my reflections on the “shifts of being” proposed by Jem Bendell in Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos (UK/USA 2021).

#1: Reflections on the Nature of Being
#2: Reflections on Entitlement
#3: Reflections on Surety or Certainty
#4: Reflections on Control

Jem Bendell uses the word “autonomy” in e-s-c-A-p-e ideology to describe the idea among the modern dominant culture that each of us is the separate autonomous origin of our awareness, values and decisions, and that it is good to become more autonomous (Bendell, p. 133). He asserts that this assumption is false. Instead, our ability to conceptualize, communicate, and perceive stimuli are built on social constructs and conditioning of our culture and upbringing. Even our free will is socially conditioned. We also cannot ignore the influence of human physiology in defining our nature of being.

I am one of those individuals who believe that I have the right to personal autonomy or self-determination, as I prefer to call it. Over the years, I have discovered that achieving self-determination has its limitations based not only on where one lives on this planet, but also on one’s gender, religion, race, income, and social status.

Earlier this year, millions of American women of childbearing age have lost their right to decide when to start a family, the spacing and size of their family, or not to have children at all. More recently in September, Iranian women took to the streets to protest morality police enforcement of hijab rules that endanger the lives of women who dare to expose their hair in public spaces.

Autonomy based on developing one’s own individual self is a more complex concept that I have yet to fully grasp. This emphasis on individualism goes against my own view of our interdependence as a species within the web of life and dependence upon the contributions of others within society. On the other hand, I have learned from living within three distinct cultures—Guyanese (British Caribbean), Brazilian, and American—that social constructs and conditioning of our culture and upbringing do, indeed, influence our self-awareness and vision of the world.

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