Monthly Archives: June 2026

“Learn to Live” – Poem by Brazilian Poet Cora Coralina (1889-1985)

21 Sunday Jun 2026

Posted by in Brazil, Poetry

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Brazilian Poet Cora Coralina (1889-1985)
Photo Credit: Association of the House of Cora Coralina

In my Poetry Corner June 2026, I feature the poem “Learn to Live / Saber Viver” by one of Brazil’s great twentieth-century poets, known by her pen name, Cora Coralina (1889-1985). Baptized Ana Lins dos Guimarães Peixoto, the poet adopted the name at fifteen years old when she began writing her first poems. Cora comes from coração (heart) and Coralina from the red coralline algae: red heart.

I first featured this poem in April 2014. It soon became the topmost read post on my blog and retained that position for several years. The poet’s message is much needed in today’s upside-down world. Bear in mind that Cora Coralina lived through a turbulent period, both nationally and worldwide: two World Wars (1914-1918 & 1939-1945) and Brazil’s dictatorship (1964-1985). For those who have read my 2014 post, I offer new excerpts selected from her four poetry collections published during the period 1965 to 1985.

Born in the small town of Goiás Velho, then the capital of the State of Goiás, Aninha (as she was called) lost her father, a High Court judge, when she was a toddler. In her poem, “My Childhood,” we learn that she was not favored as the third of four daughters:

Among them, I always occupied the worst place. […] I grew up as a daughter without a father, / second-rate among my sisters. // I was sad, nervous, and ugly. / Yellowish, with a pale face. / With weak legs, falling over easily. / Those who saw me like that – said: / “This girl is the living image / of her sick old father.”

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Thought for Today: How Disinformation Is Sabotaging America

14 Sunday Jun 2026

Posted by in Recommended Reading, United States

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Front Cover – Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America by Barbara McQuade (USA, 2025)
Photo Credit: Seven Stories Press

Disinformation is the deliberate use of lies to manipulate people, whether to extract profit or to advance a political agenda. Its unwitting accomplice, misinformation, is spread by unknowing dupes who repeat lies they believe to be true. In America today, both forms of falsehood are distorting our perception of reality. In a democracy, the people need a shared set of facts as a basis to debate and make decisions that advance and secure their collective interests. Differences of opinion, and even propaganda, have always existed in the United States, but now, enemies of democracy are using disinformation to attack our sovereign right to truthful information, intellectual integrity, and the exercise of the will of the people.

[…]

Throughout history, authoritarians have used disinformation to seize power from the people. As a former national security prosecutor, I see self-serving forces sabotaging our country. Manipulators are using disinformation to poison discourse and stoke divisions in society…. Our country’s constantly changing demographics naturally bring differences of opinion, but the bitter divides are not the inevitable result of a pluralistic society with diverse ethnic, racial, religious, and social groups. They are the product of a deliberate attack through disinformation. Lies are becoming increasingly normalized, and our democracy is in peril. The conversation I propose is not a debate about Democratic and Republican politics. It is about the essential need for truth in self-governance.

Excerpts from the Updated Paperback Edition of Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America by Barbara McQuade, published by Seven Stories Press, New York, USA, 2025, pp. 5-6 & 13.  

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The Changing Earth – Trust

07 Sunday Jun 2026

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Human Behavior, Nature and the Environment

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WMO Super El Niño 2026 – Prepare for hotter-than-normal temperatures across nearly all parts of the globe – July-August 2026
Source Credit: World Meteorological Organization (WMO)

This is the fifth article in my series about our changing Earth from interviews with Native Americans shared in We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth, edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth (USA 2022). My presentation does not follow the order of the interviews.

#5: Lyla June Johnston (Diné [Navajo], Tsétsêhéstâhese [Cheyenne])
      (Chapter 5, pp. 61-72)

Lyla June Johnston is a Native American poet, singer-songwriter, hip-hop artist, human ecologist, public speaker, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne), and European lineages. She’s originally from Taos, New Mexico. Her multi-genre presentations focus on Indigenous issues and solutions, supporting youth, inter-cultural healing, historical trauma, and traditional land stewardship practices.

She has a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Anthropology (with Honors) from Stanford University (2012) and a Master’s degree in American Indian Education (with Distinction) from the University of New Mexico (2017). Following her 2021 interview with Dahr and Stan, she earned her PhD from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her doctoral research focused on the ways in which pre-colonial Indigenous Nations shaped large regions of Turtle Island (aka the Americas) to produce abundant food systems for humans and non-humans.   

Having grown up with an Indigenous worldview, coupled with her education, Lyla June’s personal goal is to “grow closer to Creator by learning how to love deeper.”

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