Category Archives: United States

“american child” – Poem by normal

03 Sunday Jun 2018

Posted by in Poetry, United States

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Four-year-old American child learns to us a machine gun

Four-year-old American child – in the age of the National Rifle Association – learns to use a machine gun
Photo Credit: ABC News Video (January 2014)

 

My Poetry Corner June 2018 features an excerpt from the poem “american child” by normal. Raised in Passaic, New Jersey, normal is a poet and registered nurse now retired and living in Saugerties, New York.

As a young poet in the early 1960s, he began reading his work at the Rafio Café in Greenwich Village, frequented by Beat poets and writers. Among the poets who influenced normal’s sensibilities is the American poet, e.e. cummings (1894-1962), whose use of low-case letters and minimal punctuation he emulates.

The following excerpts come from normal’s chapbooks, Blood on the Floor (1999) and American Child (2001).

His poem “blood on the floor” brings to mind America’s powerlessness to end mass shootings, stealing the future of our children.

don’t slip
there is blood on the floor.

blood of apathy
blood of the dispassionate
the ignoring
blood of those numbed by dumb
life
blood of those who pretend it
never happens / the cheerfully
humbled who go about it all
smiling.

Meanwhile, the raindrops are loaded / with the eyes of children.

The featured poem, “american child,” portrays Americans in all our glory and shame. Penned on Labor Day 2000, the poem begins with the plight of the American worker.

i am the child of america
the sierra madres are bleeding
i am america
the mad & the magnate marry
the factory wolf howls
i am america
the mantra rumbles with the kinds & the cripples.

Trappings of American life ring through the verses: dinty moore stew, soup kitchens, porno talkshows, paparazzi, honkytonk queen, sams club, home depot, tickertape parade, flophouse, and more.

Four stanzas speak of “death to” individuals, special groups, historical events, and man-made systems. Among the targets are lewis & clark, manifest destiny, trail of tears & of schemes, and the american dream. The poet also boots the capitalist, communist, anarchist, antichrist, and atheist. (I would like to add racist and misogynist.)

Apart from lewis & clark, normal mentions several other personalities that make up the American character: joe dimaggio, thomas jefferson, geronimo, benedict arnold, einstein, and chief joseph. (No shout out to Frederick Douglass or Martin Luther King?)   

In the following stanza, the poet captures the schizoid character of the American child and his impact on the world:

i am beauty
i am invention
i am wonder
i am the united fruit company
i am promontory point pikes peak & mai lie
i am the glory
i am the savior
i am the black tide of the acid sky

(mai lie instead of My Lai reframes the massacre in Vietnam.)

[…]

fool / genius // the kind of heaven & hell // the arithmetic eyes of the bureaucrat robot

Yet, for all his flaws, the American child is a fighter and survivor in a crazy world, as normal concludes in his final verses.

i am the feral infant dancing on the freakstage / of the final sunset // i am the child of america.

Much has changed over the past seventeen plus years since normal’s portrayal of the American child. How could he have foreseen Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump? I live in hope that an American child – rising from a bloody school floor; less feral and more inclusive – has now embarked on the path to the presidency.

To read the excerpt from the featured poem and learn more about the work of normal, go to my Poetry Corner June 2018.

 

Extreme Weather and the Climate Crisis: What You Need to Know

20 Sunday May 2018

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, United States

≈ 58 Comments

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US 2017 Billion-Dollar Disaster Map - NOAA

U.S. 2017 Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters
Photo Credit: NOAA

 

Earlier this month, while the Trump administration quietly cancelled NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), concentrations of carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa Observatory averaged above 410 parts per million (ppm) throughout April. With such irresponsible action, we-the-people must prepare ourselves for more extreme weather.

Extreme Weather & the Climate Crisis: What You Need to Know, published by the Climate Reality Project (March 2018), helps us to understand the challenges we now face. As the captioned NOAA chart shows, climate-related and other natural disasters are costly. Total damages in 2017 left the U.S. with a bill of $306 billion. Families who were hit are still recovering from their loss. Families in poor communities may never recover.

Here’s what we need to know about our extreme weather and the climate crisis. Bear in mind that weather refers to short-term atmospheric changes in temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind, cloud cover, and visibility. Climate is the average of weather patterns over a longer period of 30 or more years.

Hurricanes – With average global sea surface temperatures becoming warmer, hurricanes can become more powerful. A warmer ocean also means an increase in evaporation, thereby feeding hurricanes with much more water to dump on those of us who live in their path. It gets worse. As melting ice caps and glaciers raise sea levels, storm surges caused by hurricanes will be stronger and carry water farther and farther inland.

Flooding – As air temperatures increase, more water evaporates into the atmosphere. Because warmer air holds more water vapor, some places get more rain and snow than their average annual amounts; other places may experience intense rainstorms. At the same time, rising sea levels are worsening coastal flooding worldwide.

Drought – Soils dry out when evaporation increases over land. When the rain comes, the hard, cracked ground absorbs little water. The run-off carries pollutants in the dry soil into our streams, rivers, and lakes. Drought also worsens forest fires.

Wildfires – Droughts kill plant life. Dried out, dead vegetation can ignite with a spark. Once started, these fires are harder to contain. With warm weather arriving earlier and extending further into the fall, we now face longer fire seasons. To make matters worse, pests like the mountain pine beetle thrive in the warm, dry weather. The dead trees dry out, adding to the fury of our forest fires.

Extreme Heat – Of the 18 hottest years on record, 17 have occurred this century. If we don’t reduce the greenhouse gases heating up our atmosphere, more and more of us will face the deadly threshold of extreme heat on our fragile human bodies.

Extreme Cold – As global temperatures rise and the Arctic continues to warm, the jet stream is slowing and becoming more wavy. This causes bone-chilling Arctic air to linger longer in northern regions and spread much farther south than usual.

While we cannot prevent climate-related natural disasters from occurring, it’s our responsibility to do everything we can to prevent the worst of it. And it certainly could get much worse.

Motherhood: Where is the joy?

13 Sunday May 2018

Posted by in Family Life, Human Behavior, United States

≈ 38 Comments

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Today on Mother’s Day in America, families are celebrating the day with their mothers and grandmothers. While my sons will mark the day by joining me in activities I enjoy, I see no cause to celebrate motherhood.

Where is the joy of motherhood, I ask myself, when you live in fear of ICE agents separating you from your American-born children? Where is the joy in motherhood when your hours of labor value little to provide food and shelter for your children? Where is the joy in motherhood when intolerance, bullying, and hate put your children’s lives at risk? Where is the joy in motherhood when you watch your child suffer for lack of medical treatment?

Why, I ask myself, do we bring children into a hostile world that no longer fights for their right to life once they leave our womb? Why do we bring children into a world facing ecological collapse, climate disruption, and threat of nuclear war?

Speak to me not of love. Love protects and defends our young. Love nurtures.

I speak not to parents and grandparents who are doing their best, going beyond the possible. Rather, I speak to those among us who support laws and policies that favor corporations and billionaires and punish the families of our nation.

In an overpopulated world, motherhood has lost its meaning. Our uterus is for “baby-hosting.” Just ask Katy Talento on the White House team.

 

The Souls of Poor Folk: A National Call for Moral Revival

15 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by in Social Injustice, United States

≈ 39 Comments

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Poor Peoples Campaign - A National Call for Moral Revival 2018
Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival
Photo Credit: Poor People’s Campaign

 

I’m finding it hard to stay abreast of all the upheaval triggered by our Twitter-in-Chief. His tweets and threats boggle my mind, create instability across our nation, and embolden our rivals and enemies overseas.

While our bombs turn the Middle East into rubble, people at the bottom rungs in America face their own hell. This month, the Institute for Policy Studies has published its empirical study, The Souls of Poor Folk, highlighting the complex issues that entangle our lives: systemic racism, persistent poverty, the war economy and militarism, and ecological devastation. Here are some of their key findings. Continue reading →

Climate Science Special Report

21 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, United States

≈ 68 Comments

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Thomas Fire - Santa Barbara County - Southern California - 12 December 2017

Thomas Fire – Santa Barbara County – Southern California – December 12, 2017
Photo Credit: Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department

 

Here in California, after years of drought, ferocious wildfires have consumed the tinder and everything in their path. Ignited on December 4, 2017, the Thomas Fire was not fully contained until January 12, 2018. Now ranked as the largest fire in California’s modern history, it burned about 281,900 acres, equivalent to the size of Dallas and Miami combined. It destroyed 1,063 structures and damaged another 280.

Torrential rainfall on January 9, a welcome respite for firefighters, brought more distress to residents in the area. Mudslides roared down fire scarred slopes, destroying and damaging hundreds of homes, as well as commercial property. Twenty people lost their lives; three are still missing.

A home on Glen Oaks Road damaged by mudslides in Montecito

Home damaged by mudslides – Montecido – Santa Barbara County – Southern California
January 10, 2018
Photo Credit: Kenneth Song/Santa Barbara News

 

Meanwhile, extreme winter weather on America’s East Coast provides vindication for climate change deniers. But, as world-renowned climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann explains, this is “an example of precisely the sort of extreme winter weather we expect because of climate change.” What’s happening is the collision of increasingly warm Atlantic Ocean waters with cold Arctic air masses. To make matters worse, the warmer oceans also mean more moisture in the atmosphere to fuel the storm and produce larger snowfalls.

Woman walks down street in East Boston - Massachusetts - 4 January 2018

Woman walks down street in East Boston – Massachusetts – January 4, 2018
Photo Credit: Michael Dwyer/AP

 

In November 2017, the U.S. Global Change Research Program released its 477-page Climate Science Special Report (CSSR), in compliance with regulations issued by the Department of Commerce/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The CSSR is “designed to be an authoritative assessment of the science of climate change, with a focus on the United States, to serve as the foundation for efforts to assess climate-related risks and inform decision making about responses.”

Continue reading →

I come from a “shit-hole”

14 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in People, Social Injustice, United States

≈ 87 Comments

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Wahoo Bay Beach - Haiti
Wahoo Bay Beach – Haiti

 

It is so easy to disparage others when we are in a privileged position of wealth and power. In such positions, we can lose touch with our shared fragility as human beings. We can forget that the labor of millions of invisible human beings sustains our lives. Immersed in our comforts and luxuries, we can believe we belong to an invincible special breed.

In October 2017, I featured the work of the young immigrant Salvadoran poet, Javier Zamora, who holds a Temporary Protected Status (TPS) now up for review by our Congress. Following that post, another Salvadoran immigrant, who blogs under the name Koyote the Blind, started following my blog. Our president’s disparaging remarks about his country has struck a deep wound.

Ruins of Tazumal - El Salvador
Ruins of Tazumal – pre-Columbian Mayan archeological site in Chalchuapa – El Salvador

 

In his blog post, “I come from a shit-hole,” on Thursday, January 11, he wrote:

I am Salvadoran, even if the term was imposed by Spain. I am American, even if the US thinks they own the name. I am güanaco, even if you think it’s an insult.

I am not Mexican. Mexicans call me “cerote”–a piece of turd.

Today, Trump agreed with them. Today, he said he didn’t understand why liberals want to bring people from those shit-hole countries.

I am a piece of turd from a shit-hole country in the backyard of Ronald Reagan.

Yet, I am here. And I come from the Land of the Jewel, Cuzcatlan, the last bastion of resistance.

I am here to stay, and to change this land, this entire continent, into what it truly is: the mother land in the process of awakening.

You may see in me a turd from a shit-hole country, but I see in you and me and all the true silver light of the empty mind, the freedom from the past, the glory of the New Sun that heralds the coming of the True Human Being. I am here to share that future with you, my reader, without hatred in my heart, without resentment, and without any names to hurl back at you.

You can read his complete post here.

Whether we live on the African continent, El Salvador, Haiti, Norway, or the United States of America, we are all human beings with short life spans in the grand scheme of death and rebirth of interconnected cycles of life on Planet Earth. What makes our insignificant lives meaningful is not our material trappings, but rather the way in which we touch the lives of others we meet along our journey. The greater our influence and power, the greater our responsibility to do good in the world.

Our Gods of War

07 Sunday Jan 2018

Posted by in United States

≈ 41 Comments

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Costs of War Project Map of USA Counterterror War Locations 2015-2017

Costs of War Project Map of USA Counterterror War Locations 2015-2017
Prepared by: Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs – Brown University

 

In his article “Mapping a World From Hell,” published on January 4, Tom Engelhardt presents a unique map produced by Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. After more than 16 years since the United States embarked on its war on terror that has transformed entire countries into hell on Earth, we finally have a visual representation of the true extent of our never-ending wars.

After first targeting Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist group back in October 2001, as retribution for the group’s 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, our nation is now militarily engaged in some form in 76 countries. That’s 39 percent of the world’s nations, as indicated in the captioned map.

In places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, U.S. drone or other air strikes are the norm and U.S. ground troops (often Special Operations forces) have been either directly or indirectly engaged in combat. In these and several other countries, American advisers are also training local militaries or militias in counterterror tactics.

The number of U.S. military bases and “lily pads” (small, cooperative security locations) is also impressive. In 2017 alone, the USA deployed American Special Operations forces to 149 countries. We have so many troops on so many bases in so many places worldwide that the Pentagon has trouble keeping track of all of them.

While our gods of war reap the profits and spoils of warmongering, we the American people must pay the bill. In a separate study, released in November 2017, the Costs of War Project estimated a price tag that had already reached $5.6 trillion. That’s more than enough money to put millions of Americans to work again in rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure.

In the gods of war, we trust. In defense of our nation, we must rain down terror on our enemies. It matters not that our endless wars have created more terrorists and enemies. Next in line to suffer our fire and fury—North Korea. To follow: Iran, Russia, and China. World without end. Amen. 

Read more details at Mapping a World From Hell: 76 Countries Are Now Involved in Washington’s War on Terror

 

Trump: China not to blame for US trade deficit

11 Saturday Nov 2017

Posted by in Economy and Finance, United States

≈ 42 Comments

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US President Donald Trump with Chinese President Xi Jinping - Beijing - China - 9 November 2017

While watching BBC World News America on Thursday, November 9, 2017, I was surprised to hear our president say that he doesn’t blame China for America’s trade deficit with that country. This change of tone occurred during his recent state visit to China.

With President Xi Jinping by his side, President Trump told business leaders inside Beijing’s Great Hall of the People: “I don’t blame China. After all, who can blame a country for being able to take advantage of another country for the sake of its citizens?” [Read the complete news report at BBC Online News.]

While still describing the relationship as “very unfair” and “one-sided,” Trump blamed past US administrations for allowing our trade deficit with China to grow. As indicated in the chart below, showing US Trade in Goods with China 2004-2016, the trade deficit with China was US$266.3 billion (2008) at the end of the Bush administration. It ballooned by 30.3 percent to US$347 billion during the Obama administration (2009-2016).

US Trade in Goods with China 2004-2016
US Trade in Goods with China 2004-2016 prepared by Rosaliene Bacchus
Data Source: US Foreign Trade Statistics

 

On November 9, according to a press release from the US Department of Commerce, America’s trade delegation signed approximately a quarter trillion dollars (US$250 billion) in deals between private US businesses and Chinese entities. The deals signed included shale gas, liquefied natural gas, and aviation projects. Among American executives present at the signing ceremony were representatives from General Motors, GE, Boeing, Caterpillar, Dow Chemical, and Goldman Sachs.

Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross expects these deals to bring thousands of new jobs to America. “American businesses are the most innovative in the world, and, when given access, can compete with anyone,” he said. “I believe these deals can provide a solid foundation for a stronger relationship that is more free, fair, and reciprocal between the U.S. and China.”

Descriptions of each deal can be viewed HERE (pdf file). Some of these deals are only memoranda of understanding, making them non-binding agreements that may end up being just Christmas tree decorations. Time will tell which deals bear real fruit. For jobless Americans who are hurting, the sooner the better.

CAPTIONED PHOTO
US President Donald Trump with Chinese President Xi Jinping
Beijing, China – November 9, 2017
Source: ABC News (Associated Press)

The Climate Swerve: Reflections on Mind, Hope and Survival with Robert Jay Lifton and Bill Moyers

24 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, United States

≈ 49 Comments

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Atomic bomb mushroom cloud over Nagasaki - Japan

Dotard & Rocket Man
play nuclear war games
while Frankenstorms rage.

 

Bill Moyers, managing editor of Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com, recently sat down with 91-year-old Robert Jay Lifton, a renowned American psychiatrist and historian. They talked about his just published book, The Climate Swerve: Reflections of Mind, Hope, and Survival. Lifton borrowed the term “swerve” from Harvard humanities professor Stephen Greenblatt who used the term to describe a major historical change in human consciousness. Lifton has turned his attention to climate change, which, he says, “presents us with what may be the most demanding and unique psychological task ever required of humankind.”

I share with you some excerpts from Lifton’s responses to Moyers during the interview. Continue reading →