Author Archives: Rosaliene Bacchus

The Changing Earth – Dispelling Delusion with Alchemy

11 Sunday Oct 2026

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Human Behavior

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U.S. Map showing 2025 Uncovered Crop Losses Top $5.7 Billion
Photo Credit: American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF)

This is the ninth 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.

#9: Melissa K. Nelson, PhD (Anishinaabe, Métis, Norwegian [Turtle Mountain Chippewa])
      (Chapter 14, pp. 210-228)

Melissa K. Nelson, PhD is an ecologist, writer, editor, media-maker, and Indigenous scholar-activist. Of Anishinaabe, Métis, and Norwegian descent, she is a proud member of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa. After earning her BA in Ecology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, she obtained her PhD in Native American Environmental Studies from the University of California, Davis. She first served as Professor of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University (2002-2020) before taking up her current position as Professor of Indigenous Sustainability at Arizona State University.

In 1993, Melissa became the first Native American executive director of The Cultural Conservancy (TCC), a nonprofit organization in San Francisco focused on Cultural preservation. She has spent the past 20 years as part of the Native American food movement and has been an international Indigenous food sovereignty activist.

Dahr and Stan asked Melissa to address how humans arrived at this point of converging crises—climate change, ecological disasters, and the COVID-19 pandemic (at the time of the interview)—how we could move forward in the best way possible, what stands in our way of moving forward, and how we might comport ourselves.

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California: Life Lesson from My Garden

04 Sunday Oct 2026

Posted by in Nature and the Environment, United States

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Rosaliene’s Succulent Garden – Summer 2026 – Los Angeles – California

While we were teased with a few cooler days in late September, the summer heat has not yet let go of its grip. Here in Los Angeles County and across Southern California, since Friday, October 2nd, we’re under an extreme heat warning alert expected to last until this coming Thursday, October 8th. Maximum temperatures predicted this Saturday and Sunday are 97°F (36°C) and 96°F (35.5°C), respectively. When taking the humidity into account, the actual temperatures rise to three-digit figures. My garden projects, planned for this weekend, will have to wait until it’s safe again to work outdoors.

For those of us living in California and other states in the Southwest, Summer 2026 has been brutal. We’re not alone. Across our contiguous states, this summer (June-August) has been the warmest summer in the last 132 years, beating records set in 1936 and 2021. This August was also the warmest August on record (1895 to the present). Daytime maximum temperatures averaged 88.6°F (31.4°C).

I’m now well versed in how to stay cool and well hydrated. Having an air-conditioner and electric fan make all the difference. To use as little energy as needed to cool down my apartment, I turn on the AC for two to three hours during the day and two hours at night. On a few excessively hot nights, I resorted to soaking my head to make it through the night. My energy bill tells the tale: a whopping 347 percent increase over the period June to September. Staying cool is costly.

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Thought for Today: The Endgame Mindset of the Tech Billionaires

27 Sunday Sep 2026

Posted by in Human Behavior, Recommended Reading

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Front Cover: Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires by Douglas Rushkoff (USA 2022)
Photo Credit: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Amplified by digital technologies and the unprecedented wealth disparity they afford, The Mindset [of the Tech Billionaires] allows for the easy externalization of harm to others, and inspires a corresponding longing for transcendence and separation from the people and places that have been abused. As we will see, The Mindset is based in a staunchly atheistic and materialist scientism, a faith in technology to solve problems, an adherence to biases of digital code, and understanding of human relationships as market phenomena… 

Instead of just lording over us forever, however, the billionaires at the top of these virtual pyramids actively seek the endgame…. Everything must resolve to a one or a zero, a winner or loser, the saved or the damned. Actual, imminent catastrophes from the climate emergency to mass migrations support the mythology, offering these would-be superheroes the opportunity to play out the finale in their own lifetimes. For The Mindset also includes a faith-based Silicon Valley certainty that they can develop a technology that will somehow break the laws of physics, economics, and morality to offer them something even better than a way of saving the world: a means of escape from the apocalypse of their own making.

Excerpt from Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires by Douglas Rushkoff, published by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., USA, 2022, pp. 11-12.

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“Simple Recipe for a Good Life” – Poem by Brazilian Poet Dirceu Villa

20 Sunday Sep 2026

Posted by in Brazil, Poetry

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Brazilian Poet Dirceu Villa
Photo Credit: Acapivara Cultural (Instagram/May 2025)

In my Poetry Corner September 2026, I feature the poem “Simple Recipe for a Good Life / Receita Simples para o Bem-Viver” by Brazilian poet Dirceu Villa. Born in 1975 in São Paulo, he holds a doctorate in English Literature from the University of São Paulo (USP), studying the Renaissance in England and Italy with a doctoral internship in London, and a post-doctorate in Brazilian Literature, revising the canon of Portuguese-language poetry.

He has taught literature in postgraduate courses at USP and undergraduate courses at the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP). For over six years, he has been a professor at the Poetic Translation Workshop at Casa Guilherme de Almeida, Center for Literary Translation Studies.

When asked about the role of poetry in 21st century Brazil, during an interview with Guilherme Gontijo Flores for R. Nott Magazine in February 2014, Villa said:

“Poetry is a force that creates the world. Not in the sense of a god coming and issuing a fiat lux, but it operates in people’s minds in such a way as to give them a new configuration of the world, a new description of life, which in a few years usually becomes what everyone recognizes as the world, in their imagination.
[…]
Hence, the poet’s function remains the same: it is up to him to know his craft like no one else, and to be rigorously faithful to his perceptions, no matter how much they conflict with society.”

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The Changing Earth – Living from the Heart

13 Sunday Sep 2026

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Human Behavior

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Snapshot from video clip of deadly flash floods and mudslide on the Trishuli River following partial collapse of melting glacier
Nepal near Border with Tibet – August 26, 2026
See Videos and Learn More at The Guardian Online

This is the eight 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.

#8: Ilarion Merculieff (Unangan)
      (Chapter 3, pp. 30-47)

Ilarion ‘Kuuyux’ Merculieff was born and raised on St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea, where his people the Unangan (Aleut)—the name means “the people of the sea”—have lived for more than ten thousand years. When he was four years old, he received his traditional name ‘Kuuyux’ from the previous Kuuyux, to become the carrier of ancient messages for his people into modern times. After living half of his life on the island, he now resides in Homer, Alaska, where he welcomed Dahr and Stan for their interview.

Ilarion is the founder and president of the Global Center for Leadership and Lifeways. He was the first Alaska Native commissioner of the Alaska Department of Commerce and Economic Development, a state cabinet position. He has given keynote addresses at the National Academy of Sciences Annual Meeting and the White House Conference on the Oceans. In 2009, he chaired the Indigenous Knowledge sessions of the Global Summit of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change. Among his numerous awards is his lifetime achievement award for Environmental Excellence from the Alaska Forum on the Environment.

For more than five decades, Ilarion has worked with the traditional knowledge, wisdom, and spirituality he has received from the elders, and in sharing with culture bearers worldwide. He says of his traditional upbringing (p. 33): “[They were] very present in the moment and in the heart. Through that place of the heart, it tells the mind what to do, not the mind telling the heart what to do.” He adds that the great imbalance playing out across our planet stems from the fact that “We left our hearts. And when we left our hearts, we left ourselves.”

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The Writer’s Life: Using Elements of Magical Realism in Storytelling

06 Sunday Sep 2026

Posted by in The Writer's Life

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Silk Cotton Tree / Jumbie Tree / Dutchman Tree
Mahaicony – East Coast Demerara – Guyana – Circa 1980s
Photo Credit: Natasha Smith-Thomas

I first learned about magical realism after completing the first draft of my debut novel. To my surprise, I discovered it has nothing to do with the kind of magic used in the Harry Potter series. Such magical characters, living in a world outside of our real world, relate to the fantasy genre. Rather, magical realism is an acceptable element of literary fiction used by award-winning authors like Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967); Isabel Allende (The House of Spirits, 1982), and Toni Morrison (Beloved, 1987). The more recent experimental novel, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, winner of the 2017 Booker Prize, also falls into this category of literary fiction.

These award-winning novels are all grounded in the real world. The magic refers to an extraordinary element in the story—from folklore, mythology, or the supernatural (such as ghosts or spirts)—described as a matter-of-fact occurrence. No explanation given. Some literary scholars have suggested that magical realism is a natural outcome of post-colonial writers seeking to make sense of two realities: the conquerors and the conquered. I don’t quite see it this way.

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Thought for Today: America’s Spiritual Unraveling

30 Sunday Aug 2026

Posted by in Human Behavior, Recommended Reading, United States

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Front Cover: Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America by US Senator Chris Murphy (USA, 2026)
Photo Credit: Macmillan Publishers (Jacket design by Rodrigo Corral)

Donald Trump is a symptom, not the cause, of America’s spiritual unraveling. Make no mistake: he is no ordinary symptom. He could prove fatal to our 250-year experiment in multicultural democracy. But our nation would make a grave error if we believed we could repair what is broken within us simply by defeating Trump—or his successor—at the ballot box. No, a deeper rot festers in the American soul: a callousness toward our neighbors, a me-first selfishness, a relentless focus on “getting mine” even if it leaves others behind. Today, we worship false cults—profit at any cost, consumerism instead of citizenship, a blind faith in technology, a winner-takes-all politics—that leave us feeling empty and devoid of purpose.

Excerpt from Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America by U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, USA, 2026, pp. 7-8.

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“As New and As Old (I)” – Poem by Guyanese Poet Martin Carter

23 Sunday Aug 2026

Posted by in Poetry

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Guyanese Poet Martin Carter (1927-1997)
Photo Credit: Peepal Tree Press (UK)

My Poetry Corner August 2026 features the poem “As New and As Old (I)” from the poetry collection Poems of Affinity 1978-80 by Guyanese poet Martin Carter (1927-1997), published by Release Publications (Guyana, 1980). He is regarded as the finest of all Guyanese poets.

Carter was born in Georgetown, Guyana (then British Guiana), to middle-class parents of mixed African, Amerindian, and Portuguese ancestry. His father, a civil servant and avid reader, introduced him to a love of books and philosophy. His mother imbibed in him a love of poetry.

In his early twenties, he became a member of the anti-colonialist political party, founded in 1950. His early poetry reflects his concern about the human condition and freedom from colonial oppression. In “Tomorrow and the World,” published in 1951 (Footnote 1), he expresses his joy of being one with people on the streets and sharing their hope for a better world.

In verse one of four he writes: I am most happy / as I walk the seller of sweets says “friend” / and the shoemaker with his awl and waxen thread / reminds me of tomorrow and the world.

The political party’s gains towards self-governance were short-lived. In 1953, British troops landed and the British governor suspended the newly inked constitution. Together with other political leaders of the party, the poet-politician was arrested and interred at the British/American airbase for three months.

After his release in 1954, Carter published his renowned collection, Poems of Resistance from British Guiana. These poems reflect the anxiety of the times from oppression, fear, and bloodshed. In the poem “This Is the Dark Time My Love” (F2), he writes in verse two of three: This is the dark time, my love. / It is the season of oppression, dark metal, and tears. / It is the festival of guns, the carnival of misery. / Everywhere the faces of men are strained and anxious.

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The Changing Earth – Change

09 Sunday Aug 2026

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Human Behavior

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France Wildfires 2026: Hottest July Ever Sparks Massive Fires and Evacuations
Photo Credit: Asianet News English, published on August 6, 2026

This is the seventh 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.

#7: Marita Hacker (Hunkpapa, Norwegian)
      (Chapter 9, pp. 124-139)

Marita Hacker is an elder of Dakota Hunkpapa and Norwegian descent, with a wealth of knowledge from her own lineage, and an ardent scholar of other world traditions. She’s a healer, spiritual advisor, former foster parent, and retired high school teacher and counselor. One of just a few female Apostolic bishops in the United States, she has also been involved with hospice care for almost thirty years.

As a member of the US military, Marita’s Native American father met her Norwegian mother when he was transferred to West Germany, where she was forced to relocate, thanks to Hitler. Before Marita’s birth, her father died in an accident. Following his wishes, Marita was raised in Germany and not the United States. After moving to California when she turned 21 years old, she left for Oregon where she lived off-grid for seven years, spending time on a Hopi reservation and in the homes of different Native folks as she “let them foster what I had within me.”

Today, Marita lives with her husband in his homeland of Apacheria in southern New Mexico, serving her community as well as others who travel to see them for ceremony and other spiritual work. She spoke with Dahr and Stan from the front porch of their humble adobe home, surrounded by the rolling hills and mountains of Apacheria.

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The Writer’s Life: Creating Authentic Female Characters

02 Sunday Aug 2026

Posted by in Human Behavior, The Writer's Life, Women Issues

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Chinese Actress Gong Li – My pick for antagonist Mildred Gomes nee Cheong
Photo Credit: Fandango

I was born and raised in a time and place where children did not enjoy the rights they do today. When adults or big-people (Caribbean English) were engaged in conversation or disagreement, children were not allowed to put their mouth in big-people talk. Children, they said, should be seen and not heard. Break the rules and you could get a licking (flogging). And so, from a young age, I learned to observe women’s behavior and listen in to their conversations.

Big-women often spoke in coded language that I learned to decipher when I entered my teenage years.

—Watch yourself around Mary husband. He hand fast.

—She sleeping with her boss. He promise her the world.

—Mary daughter get a big-belly for the landlord son.

—He take advantage of his own daughter/niece.

—Open your eyes, girl. The white man (British soldiers) only want a good time. When the time come, he going up and gone. And you get left behind as spoiled goods.

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