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“Bless This Land” – Poem by Native American Poet Laureate Joy Harjo

16 Sunday Apr 2023

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Poetry, United States

≈ 70 Comments

Tags

An American Sunrise: Poems by Joy Harjo, Native American poet, Poem “Bless This Land” by Joy Harjo, United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (2019-2022)

Native American Poet Laureate Joy Harjo 2019-2022
Photo Credit: Joy Harjo Official Website (Photo by Shawn Miller)

My Poetry Corner April 2023 features the poem “Bless This Land” from the poetry collection An American Sunrise by Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the United States 2019-2022. (The following excerpts of poems are all sourced from this collection.)

Born in 1951 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the first of four siblings, Joy Harjo is a poet, musician, playwright, and author. Her father was Muscogee (Creek) Nation and her mother of mixed ancestry of Cherokee, French, and Irish. Her mother exposed her to poetry at an early age, but painting was her first love.

My mother was a songwriter and singer, Harjo relates in her poem “Washing My Mother’s Body.” My mother’s gifts were trampled by economic necessity and emotional imprisonment. // My father was a dancer, a rhythm keeper. His ancestors were orators, painters, tribal chiefs, stomp dancers, preachers, and speakers… All his relatively short life he looked for a vision or song to counter the heartache of history. Her father’s drinking and abuse ended their marriage.

At sixteen years of age, Harjo’s abusive and violent stepfather kicked her out of their home. She moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she received her high school education at the Institute of American Indian Arts. After graduation, she returned to Oklahoma, gave birth to a son, and returned to New Mexico to pursue a life as an artist. After earning her BA at the University of New Mexico (UNM) in 1976, Harjo moved to Iowa where she completed an MFA in 1978 at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

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Thought for Today: Weapon of Mass Destruction

02 Sunday Apr 2023

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Human Behavior, Save Our Children, United States, Urban Violence

≈ 79 Comments

Tags

Covenant School Shooting March 2023, Gun Rights in the USA, Mass shootings in the USA, Weapon of Mass Destruction

Victims of the Covenant School Shooting – Nashville/Tennessee/USA – March 27, 2023

What does it say about us as a nation where the right to own a weapon of mass destruction is more sacred than life itself?

California – From One Extreme to the Next

05 Sunday Feb 2023

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, United States

≈ 69 Comments

Tags

Atmospheric rivers, Bomb cyclone, California Drought, California State Water Project, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, U.S. Drought Monitor Map January 31/2023, Winter flooding in California January 2023

NOAA Northwestern U.S. Bomb Cyclone – January 4, 2023
Source: NOAA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In the midst of our Christmas Day preparations, local meteorologists warned that a severe winter storm brewing over the Pacific Ocean was headed towards the U.S. West Coast. They described it as a densely saturated atmospheric river. Thanks to advanced technological methods for studying our atmosphere, we now know that the atmosphere can hold an entire river of water vapor. These rivers in the sky are about 250 to 375 miles wide and can be more than 1,000 miles long. That is an awful lot of water vapor. Californians living in high-risk zones for flooding and mudslides were put on high alert.

After seven months of mandated water rationing, due to California’s three-year drought conditions, I was elated about the news. My water-deprived plants would be happy. But the Sky God can be merciless or overzealous when answering our prayers for rain. Beginning on December 27, 2022, California was hit by wave after wave of intense storms that dumped more water than our outdated water infrastructure could handle. In the first week of the New Year, I braced myself for what the meteorologists described as a “bomb cyclone,” as shown in the captioned photo, captured by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

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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.

Thought for Today: Trapped in a Loop

27 Sunday Nov 2022

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in United States

≈ 79 Comments

Tags

Mass shootings in America, Thanksgiving Day 2022, Violence in America

Abstract Painting by Dibs on Pexels

Heavy is my heart this Thanksgiving for families grieving the loss of a loved one

targeted in yet another mass shooting

Just this month through November 26, across these disunited states of America

thirty-seven mass shootings, forty-eight people killed, fifty-two injured

Total figures for 2022 alone: 613 mass shootings, 642 deaths, more than 2,500 people injured

At war with ourselves

The next family hit could be mine or yours

No public space is safe or sacred

When will we say ENOUGH?

When will we break free?

Trapped in a loop woven with false narratives

Creating a drought-resistant garden in The City of Angels

21 Sunday Aug 2022

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Nature and the Environment, United States

≈ 73 Comments

Tags

Colorado River Basin, Drought in Southern California, Flowering succulent plants, Los Angeles/Southern California, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), Succulent Garden

Rosaliene’s Succulent Garden – Los Angeles – Southern California – August 21, 2022

Eighty-one days have passed since emergency drought restrictions went into effect in Southern California. In an August 16th Press Release, Adel Hagekhalil, General Manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) that supplies our neighborhood with water, announced that discussions are in progress regarding the effort of the Colorado Basin States to develop “an aggressive but realistic plan to reduce demands” on the Colorado River by 2 to 4 million acre-feet. The MWD imports water from the Colorado River and Northern California to supplement local supplies.

“As these discussions continue, we urgently call on everyone who relies on Colorado River water, including communities across Southern California, to prepare for reduced supplies from this source, permanently,” Adel Hagekhalil said. “This is not simply a drought that will end, allowing reservoir levels to recover on their own – this is a drying of the Colorado River Basin. We are going to have to live with less. Working together, we know we can meet the challenge.” (Emphasis mine.)

So far, we have received no new directives from the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP) regarding any further reduction in water allocation of about 80 gallons per person per day. Meanwhile, I have found ways of saving and reusing domestic usage for watering my small vegetable garden. Caring for my succulent and other ornamental plants remains a challenge.

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“My President Asks Me about Redemption” by Yemeni American Poet Threa Almontaser

17 Sunday Jul 2022

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Poetry, United States

≈ 43 Comments

Tags

Poem “My President Asks Me about Redemption” by Threa Almontaser, The Wild Fox of Yemen: Poems by Yemeni American Poet Threa Almontaser, Truce in Yemen War, Yemeni culture and literature

Yemeni American Poet Threa Almontaser (Photo by Yasmin Ali)
Poet’s Official Website

My Poetry Corner July 2022 features the poem “My President Asks Me about Redemption” from the debut poetry collection The Wild Fox of Yemen (Graywolf Press, 2021) by Yemeni American poet Threa Almontaser. Born and raised in New York City, Almontaser earned an MFA in Creative Writing and a TESOL certification from North Carolina State University. She is an editor for Tinderbox Poetry Journal and a juror for both the Pen America Writing for Justice Fellowship and the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards. A translator and English teacher to immigrants and refugees, she lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.  

Winner of the 2021 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, The Wild Fox of Yemen is Almontaser’s attempt to showcase Yemeni experiences, underrepresented in the Arab American literary world. In an interview with Dana Isokawa for the Poets & Writers Magazine in December 2021, the poet said: “I couldn’t find contemporary work written by an Adeni American of this generation. It makes me sad to know a culture so rich and ancient is hidden in this way.”

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Independence Day 2022: Millions of Women Lose Bodily Autonomy

07 Thursday Jul 2022

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in United States, Women Issues

≈ 47 Comments

Tags

Birth control, Female Bodily Autonomy, Miscarriage/Abortion, Patriarchal Power Elite, Reproductive Health Care, Roe v. Wade

Pro-Choice Abortion is Health Care Poster
The Nation (Photo by Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

Due to a problem with my WordPress Editor, thankfully now resolved by our Tech Team, I was unable to publish the following post on July 3rd.

I am heartbroken. I could not hold back the tears on Friday, June 24, on hearing news about the overturn of Roe v. Wade. With one blow, the U.S. Supreme Court has demolished decades of women’s struggle to gain control over our bodies and lives. Regardless of our stance on abortion, this is a severe blow for all women of childbearing age in America, especially low-income and minority women. In the Dobbs, State Health Officer of the Mississippi Department of Health v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, decided on June 24, 2022, dissenting Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan (p. 159) noted:

The majority [members of the US Supreme Court] would allow States to ban abor­tion from conception onward because it does not think forced childbirth at all implicates a woman’s rights to equal­ity and freedom. Today’s Court, that is, does not think there is anything of constitutional significance attached to a woman’s control of her body and the path of her life.

In the twenty-first century, in the world’s most powerful and democratic nation, The Court finds that the right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition, so declares the majority on page 2 of their June twenty-fourth decision. Our Founding Fathers must be turning in their graves. For sure, they did not intend for the Constitution to remain rooted in eighteenth century norms and traditions. They knew that conditions change over time and specified the process for amending the Constitution, when needed.

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California: A gardener’s woes in a drought-stricken land

05 Sunday Jun 2022

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Nature and the Environment, United States

≈ 59 Comments

Tags

California Drought, Climate Crisis, Lake Oroville-California-USA, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), Southern California Water Restrictions 2022, Succulent Garden, Water Conservation in California

US Drought Monitor – California – May 31, 2022
Source: US Drought Monitor

Gardening on the weekends has been my lifeline since the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in March 2020. When I am outdoors among the trees and plants, all my cares and fears disappear. I am fully engaged. I am present. I am at peace.

Since drought is a recurring issue here in California, I have planted mostly succulents that are quite content with watering once or twice a week. Some succulents prefer even longer periods of ten to fourteen days between watering. But a sudden rise in temperatures can shock even the sturdiest of succulents. In March, when we experienced two days of high summer temperatures, a branch of my largest, three-foot high, jade plant collapsed with heat stress. With summer almost upon us, there will be no respite for several other plants that need extra water for giving their best.

Rosaliene’s Garden Plot with Succulents – City of Los Angeles – California – June 3, 2022
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Guest Post: “The State of the Earth 2022” by Pam Lazos

24 Sunday Apr 2022

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Nature and the Environment, United States

≈ 29 Comments

Tags

Climate Change, Climate Deniers, Documentary An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth – Documentary Film
Photo Credit: Green Life Blue Water Blog

In her article “The State of the Earth 2022,” published on her blog Green Life Blue Water, American environment lawyer and author Pam Lazos provides an unsettling critique of where humanity stands when it comes to dealing with the inconvenient truth of our climate crisis and the threat to life as we know it on Planet Earth.


Not your typical Earth Day post

There are only two roads in life, growing and dying. Tolbert McCarroll, Notes from the Song of Life

Earth Day 2022.  If you want to know how it all started, you can read last year’s post on the first Earth Day.  If you want to know how we’re doing (così così — so so in Italian), you can read Jeff Goodell’s article in Rolling Stone this week entitled, The Climate Fight Isn’t Lost. Here are 10 Ways to Win.  And if you want to know where to hide until it’s all over, read Paul Greenberg’s Is Anywhere Safe From Climate Change which is a solution for maybe less than one half of one percent of us, but I totally get the sentiment.  The real truth is,  Environmental Justice is critical as Adele Costa tells us in her article Hog Waste Plastic Petals, and Cancer in the Air:  The Intersection Between Environmental Justice and Women’s Health, and if we don’t take care of the most vulnerable among us, it will be lights out for all of us.


Read the complete article by Pam Lazos published on her blog Green Life Blue Water, April 22, 2022.

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