18 Sunday Jun 2017
Posted in Poetry by Rosaliene Bacchus, United States
Father said not to worry about anything.
He was working to provide for my needs.
And I believed him.
Father said he would never let anyone hurt me.
He was there to protect me, Mother, and my brother Paul.
And I believed him.
Father said not to worry about climate change;
the science is still debatable.
And I believed him.
Father said the abortion of an unborn child is an abomination.
Life is sacred. Only God can take a life.
And I believed him. Continue reading
11 Sunday Jun 2017
Posted in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption
Tags
Climate Change, Climate change and the water cycle, Climate change education, Global warming, High school geography teacher, High school science teachers
As a geographer and former high school geography teacher, I must confess that I take some scientific facts for granted, such as climate and the water cycle. A recent post “Climate Science Meets a Stubborn Obstacle: Students” by fellow blogger Robert Vella brought to my attention the challenges some of our high school science teachers face in regions of America where climate change denial creates havoc in the minds of our youth.
When your father has raised you to believe that the coal they once mined, or still mine, can in no way affect our climate, it’s difficult to have an open mind to scientific consensus on the issue.
Geography lessons in high school expanded my curious mind to our relationship with our world: land, oceans, atmosphere, and all the in-between. When taking a climatology course at university, I found myself at a disadvantage for having chosen to study art instead of physics in high school. I had lots of catching up to do. Our course in biogeography alerted me to the ways that we humans are degrading our ecosystems. Those were the days before the Internet and Wikipedia. Continue reading
04 Sunday Jun 2017
Tags
Agricultural workers, Brazilian Oral Poet Patativa do Assaré, Ceará/Brazil, Landless peasant farmers, O Agregado e o Operário, Sertão Nordestino/Northeast Brazil, The Peasant Farmer and the Factory Worker, Workers Rights
My Poetry Corner June 2017 features the poem “The Peasant Farmer and the Factory Worker” (O Agregado e o Operário) by Antônio Gonçalves da Silva, known as Patativa do Assaré (1909-2002), a popular Brazilian oral poet, improviser of oral verse, composer, singer, and guitar player.
The son of poor peasant farmers eking out a subsistence livelihood in the semi-arid hinterlands, known as the sertão, of the Northeast State of Ceará, Patativa began working at an early age on his family’s small plot of land. At the age of four, he lost his sight in one eye due to lack of medical assistance. With his father’s death four years later, he had to work as a farmhand to help his family, leaving him no time to attend school. During his six months of formal education, he learned to read and write.
God was his Master; Nature was his teacher.
Sertão Nordestino – Northeast Brazil [Photo Credit: poesiafaclube.com]
I was born listening to songs
of birds in my mountain terrain
and seeing wonderful marvels
that the beautiful woodlands enclose.
That is where I grew up
watching and learning
from the book of nature
where God is most visible
the heart most sensitive
and life has more purity.
Continue reading
01 Monday May 2017
Posted in Guyana, Immigrants, Poetry
Tags
"Destination" by Janet Naidu, "New System of Slavery", Guyanese-Canadian Poet, Immigrants, Indian indentured laborers, Indian Indentureship in Guyana 1838-1917, Sugar plantations in Guyana
In commemoration of the centennial of the abolition of Indian Indentureship on March 12, 1917, my Poetry Corner May 2017 features the poem “Destination” by Janet Naidu, a Guyanese-born poet, writer, social activist, and life-skills coach. She migrated to Canada in 1975, at the age of twenty-two, where she obtained a BA in Political Science and Caribbean Studies from the University of Toronto and, later in life, an LLB from the University of London (UK).
With the abolition of slavery in 1834 and the end of the apprenticeship scheme in 1838, the mass exodus of ex-slaves from plantations across the British Empire created a dire need for a regular and reliable supply of labor. On May 5, 1838, the first group of about 400 Indian indentured laborers, on a five-year contract, arrived in British Guiana on the sailing ships, Whitby and Hesperus. By 1917, their numbers totaled over 238,000 Indians, comprising 42 percent of the colony’s population. Only 65,538 returned to India on terminating their contract. Janet Naidu’s grandparents from Tamil Nadu were among those who arrived on the SS Ganges on November 8, 1915.
Born in the village of Covent Garden, East Bank Demerara, Naidu was the seventh of eight children. Like his parents, her father was a cane cutter. Her mother sold home-grown, green vegetables in the market.
In “Destination” from her poetry collection, Rainwater (2005), Naidu conjures the immigrants’ fearsome voyage across the ocean for an unknown destination. Continue reading
16 Sunday Apr 2017
Posted in Poetry by Rosaliene Bacchus, United States
I am Mother.
Created by Father.
A complex scientific birthing process, they say.
I weighed over twenty-one thousand pounds at birth.
Father spared no expense;
he happily paid the $314 million.
I carried you for nine months
in the womb, my child.
I almost lost you, you know.
They closed the clinic
where I used to get healthcare.
I am Mother.
Created by Father.
My over-pressure waves obliterate
everything & everyone within a one-mile radius.
Look at me with awe & trepidation.
I am Death.
Where is Father?
I am cold & hungry, Mother.
He abandoned us, my child—
to pursue his dreams
of dominating the world.
I am Mother.
Created by Father.
He dropped me from the sky
to plummet to the earth.
My body detonated into gazillion atoms.
My soul became a black hole.
I am beautiful.
I am strong.
I am invincible.
Created in Father’s image.
I am Mother of All Bombs. Continue reading
09 Sunday Apr 2017
Posted in United States
Tags
Capitalism run amok, European Refugee Crisis, Humanitarianism, Raytheon Tomahawk Cruise Missiles, Syria, Syrian Children Refugees, Warfare
On Thursday night, April 3rd, our president unilaterally and without congressional approval launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on a Syrian airbase, the alleged site of a chemical attack that targeted innocent civilians. The dust had not yet settled. No United Nations investigation of the heinous crime was conducted to determine the type of chemical weapons used and the perpetrators. But we – the defenders of democracy, peace, freedom, and humanitarianism – know, beyond all doubt, that Syria’s brutal dictator was responsible.
After killing innocent children and beautiful babies, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had to be sent a strong message. Military power is strength. Money is no problem. Continue reading
05 Sunday Mar 2017
Posted in Poetry
My Poetry Corner March 2017 features the poem “The Statutes of Man” (Os Estatutos do Homem) by Brazilian poet Thiago de Mello, born in 1926 in the State of Amazonas of Northern Brazil.
Growing up among Brazil’s exploited working class, Thiago de Mello devoted his poetry to addressing freedom, human dignity, and other social causes. When the military coup occurred in Brazil in 1964, he was the Cultural Attaché at the Brazilian Embassy in Santiago, Chile (1961-1964), where he became close friends with Pablo Neruda. He responded to the junta’s repressive, extra-constitutional decrees with his most famous poem, “The Statutes of Man.”
After resigning his overseas post and returning to Brazil, he was exiled in 1968 for denouncing the oppressive military dictatorship government (1964-1985). During his nine years in exile, he lived in Chile, Argentina, Portugal, France, and Germany. Continue reading
05 Sunday Feb 2017
Posted in Poetry
Tags
American Immigrant Family Detention Centers, “The Place of No Dreams” by Lauren K. Alleyne, Caribbean-American Poet, Difficult Fruit by Lauren K. Alleyne, Overcoming adversity, Power of imagination
My Poetry Corner February 2017 features the poem “The Place of No Dreams” by Lauren K. Alleyne, a Caribbean-American poet born in the twin-island nation of Trinidad & Tobago. She is an Associate Professor of English at James Madison University and Assistant Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center.
Armed with her dreams and a scholarship from St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, Lauren Alleyne left home in 1997 for New York City. After completing a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, she pursued a Masters of Arts in English and Creative Writing at Iowa State University, graduating in 2002. Three years later, while working for her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Poetry), she also earned a Graduate Certificate in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Cornell University.
Her poems and essays, published in several journals and anthologies, have gained several prizes and awards. Her first collection of poetry, Difficult Fruit, was published by Peepal Tree Press in 2014. Continue reading
08 Sunday Jan 2017
Posted in Poetry
Tags
Brazilian lyricist & novelist Paulo Coelho, Preparing for life's battles, Rio de Janeiro/Brazil, Warrior of the Light: A Manual
My Poetry Corner January 2017 features a passage from Warrior of the Light: A Manual by Brazilian lyricist and novelist, Paulo Coelho, born in 1947 in Rio de Janeiro, Southeast Brazil. While Coelho’s background as a songwriter endows his prose with an engaging lyricism, the featured work is not a poem.
Warrior of the Light: A Manual, published in 1997, is written in the form of short philosophical passages. Drawing on his own life experiences and ancient Eastern wisdom, Coelho invites each one of us to become a Warrior of the Light: someone capable of understanding the miracle of life, of fighting to the last for something he believes in.
This is not a normal year. We must prepare ourselves to enter the battlefield to defend our civil and human rights under threat.
Every Warrior of the light has felt afraid of going into battle.
Continue reading
01 Sunday Jan 2017
Posted in United States
Year 2016 began with the death of my friend and neighbor Benny on January 4. Every day, I looked out onto our desolate courtyard. Gone were the moments spent with Benny, his wife, and their nature-loving daughter.
I wasn’t alone in my grief. In the Middle East where our endless wars of terror ground on without mercy, death was everywhere. No family was spared. Collective grief saturated the air. Wailing mothers shattered the light. Traumatized orphaned children roamed the rubble of a stolen future.
How many more people must lose their homes, their livelihoods, and their loved ones for our freedom, comfort, and security? What are the consequences for the pain we inflict with impunity on women, children, and other civilians? Where is our moral compass?
The disintegration of my son’s marriage came two days after the news of Benny’s death. After my emotional struggle to let go of my son, his sudden return home disrupted the space (emotional and physical) I had created for myself in his absence. Watching my son’s battle to realign his life, while still clinging to his love for his estranged wife, frittered away at my inner peace.
During our 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, I observed the disintegration of our two-party political system. Both parties were in crisis. My disappointment at having my favored candidate lose the nomination for the Democratic Party shattered my hope for meaningful change. Whichever presidential candidate won the top post meant a loss for we the people.
The discovery of cancer cells in one of her lungs turned the life of a close friend on its head and threw mine off balance. Over the months that followed, experimental and other treatments didn’t prevent the spread of the cancerous cells to other areas of her body. Cancer sucked the joy from the time we spent together.
During his bid for the presidency, the Republican candidate unleashed cancerous cells of bigotry, hatred, misogyny, and xenophobia. This virulent cancer infected the heart and lungs of our nation. Millions of Americans can’t breathe under oppressive police force and an economic system that puts profits before people.
While we fought each other over our perceived differences and imagined threats, Year 2016 was the hottest year since NASA started recording global temperatures 136 years ago. In California, we entered our sixth year of drought. We also battled 7,200 wildfires that burned almost 570,000 acres across the state. Ice sheets on land and sea continued to melt at rates faster than those predicted by our climate scientists.
Thanks to my sons, supportive neighbors, and friends, I have survived the dark days of Year 2016. I send out a big ‘thank you’ to my blogger friends who brightened my days and buoyed up my belief in our human capacity for compassion and love for the other. Working together, we the people have won many battles in Year 2016 across America and worldwide against powerful transnational corporations who put their profits before life. We cannot give up.
Three Worlds One Vision 