The Writer’s Life: An Easter Story

13 Sunday Apr 2025

Posted by in Brazil, The Writer's Life

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Downtown Fortaleza – Northeast State of Ceará – Brazil

Today marks the beginning of Holy Week in the Christian Church calendar. During these seven days, the church commemorates Jesus’ triumphal arrival in Jerusalem (Palm Sunday), His betrayal (Wednesday), the Last Supper with his disciples (Maundy Thursday), crucifixion (Good Friday), and ends with His resurrection on Easter Sunday. When we dare to speak truth to power, retribution can be swift. It’s not easy to follow in His footsteps: To love one’s neighbor can come with risks to one’s safety and life. Sometimes, we may also lose what we hold dear.

In my short story “Rescued: An Easter Story,” the protagonist Dwayne Higgins, an innocent man caught up in a crime not of his making, is forced to examine the direction of his life. The story is inspired by a scary incident that occurred during the period we lived in Fortaleza, capital of the Northeastern State of Ceará in Brazil.

The year was 1990. At the time, I was working at a small family-owned international trade consultancy firm. On July 16th, sometime after 2:00 p.m., my estranged husband (hereafter called Husband) called me at the office. He had been robbed at gunpoint at the office of a local cambista (a black market foreign-exchange broker) with whom he worked in downtown Fortaleza buying and selling foreign currency. The bandits seized US dollars and Brazilian cruzeiros, amounting to over forty-one federal minimum salaries. My monthly salary as an import-export assistant was only two minimum salaries.

Several attempts to reach Husband failed. The cambista he worked with claimed that he knew nothing about Husband’s whereabouts. After leaving the office at 6:00 p.m., I picked up our five- and seven-year-old sons at school and told them what had happened to their father. We went to the apartment where Husband lived with his Brazilian amante (mistress). Also distraught, she had not heard from him since his call earlier that afternoon.

Fears of him being locked up in a Brazilian prison or, worse yet, “disappeared” by the police muddied my thoughts. The gravity of their father’s disappearance subdued the boys.

Our shared ordeal ended after nine o’clock that evening. Husband arrived in the company of two burly plainclothes police officers in search of the stolen money. Surprised to see me and the boys, one officer headed into the bedroom with Husband and his amante. The other officer remained with me and the kids in the living room.

In a polite manner, he questioned me about my name, where I lived, where I worked, our country of origin, how long we had been living in Fortaleza, our residential status, how long we were married, how long we were separated, and my relationship with my husband’s mistress. I assumed these questions were intended as verification of the information they had obtained from Husband—their major suspect of the theft. Our sons remained quiet and motionless, seated on the only sofa in the small space.

My sons and I did not get home until after ten o’clock that evening. We had missed a bullet. For now.

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Solidarity: The People’s Power

06 Sunday Apr 2025

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Nature and the Environment, United States

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Hands Off Nationwide Protest – Los Angeles – California – April 5, 2025
Photo Credit: Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images

I know… I share your pain. I’m also scared. These are dangerous times for immigrants in America—scapegoats for the social and economic ills of our nation. Our trade partners, too, have come under attack. It’s now tit-for-tat for unfair trade practices. “Liberation Day” on April 2nd has unleashed import tariffs/taxes, ranging from 10 percent to 54 percent, for all countries that sell goods to the United States. What a high-risk economic strategy! But this is just the latest drastic change assaulting us daily since January 20, 2025.

Regardless of our political views or ideology, we the people will have to deal with the negative or unexpected consequences of dismantling our government agencies and picking a fight with our closest allies since the end of World War II. Judging from these developments, it seems that the globalized capitalist economic system is under stress. And so it should be. For how much longer can we sustain an economic model of continual growth and profits that is pushing our planetary life systems to their limits?

Non-human life faces extinction and more frequent, extreme weather events are disrupting and threatening human life. The minority billionaire ruling class (MBRC) believes that environmental and other deregulations are the answer to renewed economic growth. Their insatiable greed blinds them to all the warning signs of economic and societal collapse. Instead, they now grasp at AI, an energy guzzler, to preserve their way of life.

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Poem “Expropriation” by Brazilian Poet Rubens Jardim

23 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by in Brazil, Poetry

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Brazilian Poet Rubens Jardim (1946-2024)
Photo Credit: Brazilian Editora Arribaçã

My Poetry Corner March 2025 features the poem “Expropriation / Expropriação” from the poetry collection Outside of the Bookshelf / Fora da Estante by Brazilian poet and journalist Rubens Jardim (1946-2024). Born in Vila Itambé in the interior of São Paulo, he was one of three siblings, with an older brother and younger sister. Poetry was always a part of his life. An aunt, passionate about poetry with a magnificent collection, would always recite Brazil’s renowned poets at family gatherings. He attributed his skill at public poetry readings to her.

In an interview with Revista Arte Brasileira, following the publication of his Anthology of Unpublished Poems / Antologia de Inéditos in 2018, he spoke a lot about poetry and its importance in his life.

“Poetry for me is alchemy. It is the transformation of the ignoble into the noble, of the invisible into the visible, of the unspeakable into utterance….

I believe that true poetry increases humanity in man. It shows that if there is a flower, there is also hunger…. Furthermore, poetry is a constant struggle against alienation. It’s nonconformity. Indignation…. What’s more, poetry does not bend to anything. Averse to classification and closed thinking to transformation, poetry does not tolerate dictatorship—not even dictatorship of the word…. It’s also a way of living. It’s an attitude towards and within life. And if I continue writing poems—even knowing that poetry is useless—as the poet Manoel de Barros enlighteningly said—it’s because I like to believe that, thanks to poetry, I have kept the flame of hope for transformation alive.

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California: Winter Garden Reflections During Chaotic Times

16 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by in Nature and the Environment, United States

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Flowering Aloe Saponaria (Soap Aloe) – Los Angeles – California – March 2025

While a two-headed monster is creating havoc, anxiety, and pain across the land of the living, Mother Earth signals that life finds a way in the face of adversity. The captioned photo features the explosion of orange flowers from the succulent Aloe Saponaria (Soap Aloe) in my neighbor’s garden on March 3rd. The photo below is a closeup of the early blooms captured on February 22nd.

Closeup of Flowering Aloe Saponaria (Soap Aloe) on February 22, 2025

In another adjacent garden plot, the potted white azalea plant defied last year’s extreme summer temperatures that scorched its foliage. During a dry winter, my concern grew for its survival. Just three days of continuous light rainfall in early February were enough to give it new life again. What a joy! 

White Azalea – Winter 2025
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Thought for Today: State Sovereignty Under New Threat

09 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by in United States

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Map of North America and Greenland
Source Credit: World Atlas

The [United Nations] Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.

1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.

2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfil in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.

3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.

4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

~ Excerpt from the 1945 Charter of the United Nations, Chapter – Purposes and Principles, Article 2 (1-4). (Emphasis mine)

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Weather/Climate-Related Disasters in the USA 2024

02 Sunday Mar 2025

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption, Economy and Finance, United States

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NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)
U.S. 2024 Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters (released Jan/2025)

During 2024, thousands of our American brothers and sisters lost loved ones, property, and jobs to various weather/climate-related disasters that struck their state. Many of them are still recovering from their losses. Without resources, others will never recover. Tragedy does not impact us all in the same way.

On January 10, 2025, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released the data and analysis quantifying the economic costs of the disasters that reached or exceeded US$1 billion. They confirmed 27 weather/climate disaster events, amounting to a total of US$182.7 billion. This places 2024 as the fourth costliest on record, trailing behind 2017 (US$395.9 billion), 2025 (US$268.5 billion), and 2022 (US$183.6 billion).

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The Writer’s Life: The Growing Threat of AI

23 Sunday Feb 2025

Posted by in The Writer's Life

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Rosaliene’s Collection of Books on the Craft of Writing

In 2004, when I decided to share my story of overcoming abandonment and loss, it became imperative to learn the craft of writing fiction. With limited funds and a crazy work schedule at a large department store in West Hollywood, I opted for a correspondence course. Through an ad in a magazine, I found the Stratford Career Institute (Vermont, USA). Their Creative Writing Course guided me from crafting my first scene of up to 500 words to finding my voice in a 3000-word short story. Working at my own pace, I completed their writing course within two years. On the left in the captioned photo, the five books on the “Elements of Fiction Writing,” all published by Writer’s Digest Books (Ohio, USA), comprised the reading materials for their course study.

After obtaining my Creative Writing Diploma from the Stratford Career Institute in February 2006, I spent four years writing short stories to develop my craft. At the same time, I began working on my writing project: research for the historical setting, the plot, and character development. I completed the first manuscript of Under the Tamarind Tree: A Novel in 2012. Several revisions followed over subsequent years. Believing in the value of my book, despite several rejections from literary agents and publishers, I finally self-published my novel with Lulu Press in 2019.

After years of developing and honing our writing craft, writers are now being ripped off by AI. Without consent from authors or publishers, generative artificial intelligence (GAI) companies have been illegally using copyrighted materials to develop and train their large language models (LLMs) that power chatbots like ChatGPT. Worse still, writers receive no compensation for the copycat books, mimicking or incorporating an author’s work, generated by these LLMs.

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“Who made me a stranger in my world?” – Poem by Saint Lucian Poet John Robert Lee

16 Sunday Feb 2025

Posted by in Poetry

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Cover Art by Saint Lucian Artist Shallon Fadlien, 2015  
Saint Lucian Poet John Robert Lee

My Poetry Corner February 2025 features the poem “Who made me a stranger in my world?” from the poetry collection Pierrot by poet, preacher, and retired teacher and librarian John Robert Lee, published by Peepal Tree Press (UK, 2020). Born in 1948 in the Caribbean Island nation of Saint Lucia, he majored in English and French Literature, including Caribbean Literature, at the University of the West Indies in Barbados (Cave Hill Campus) and Jamaica (Mona Campus) in the early 1980s.

His main interests and occupations include teaching, library service, literature, theatre, literary journalism, and media (print and electronic). Ordained in 1997 as an Elder of Calvary Baptist Church, he preaches at his local Baptist Church and teaches the Adult Sunday School Class. Father of three children, he lives with his wife in Saint Lucia.

During the poet’s 2020 interview with Adam Lowe of Peepal Tree Press, when asked what drew him to the image of the Pierrot as a core motif for this collection and why now, Lee said:

“In the Pierrot cover…the eyes and mouth seemed to reveal the person beneath the costume, the actor under the masquerade, with all his heart pain, bewilderment and anguish…. I also saw in that face, under the harlequin’s colors, a Christ figure, the Man of Sorrows…

“Why now? Perhaps the times we live in call for masking and unmasking, speaking plainly or through various aliases, pseudonyms, characterizations—which perhaps is a device for speaking truth to power and to each other and to ourselves, and that, self-protectively.”

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Climate Crisis: Wildfires

02 Sunday Feb 2025

Posted by in Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

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Satellite Image of Smoke Plumes from Palisades and Eaton Wildfires – Los Angeles County – Southern California – January 7, 2025
Source : Copernicus European Union

On Tuesday, January 7th, in Los Angeles, our year began with wildfire like no other. I first learned about the Palisades Fire, which ignited at 10:30 a.m. in the affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood, when I tuned into our local TV news broadcast at noon that day. At that moment, I was not alarmed. Like earthquakes, wildfires all year round have become a part of living in California. Besides, this was not the first wildfire in this area. On December 9th, 2024, the Franklin Fire had set more than 4,000 acres (16 square kilometers) ablaze in neighboring Malibu over nine days.

When I tuned in again that evening around eight o’clock, I was shocked to learn that a second wildfire, named the Eaton Fire, had ignited further inland in Altadena, a working-class community just north of Pasadena, where the New Year’s Day Tournament of Roses Parade had celebrated “Best Day Ever!” as its theme for 2025. Who knew then, that the best day ever would end in tragedy seven days later for thousands of Altadena residents?

Even more alarming, the Palisades Fire, driven by exceptionally fierce Santa Ana winds blowing offshore from over the San Gabriel Mountains, was spreading like the fiery breath of an angry dragon. On following the local live newsfeed, I learned that an Evacuation Order went out for an area in the neighboring city of Santa Monica on the southeastern edge of the fire. My heart fluttered. The Palisades Fire was advancing closer to our home. How could this be happening?

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Thought for Today: How the Truth Can Save Us from Tribalism

26 Sunday Jan 2025

Posted by in Religion, United States

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Front Cover: Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America by Russell Moore
Photo Credit: Penguin Random House (USA, 2023)

Increasingly, in this sort of American culture, it is not just that we are divided about what we value about the way things should be, but what we are allowed to say about the way things actually are. Now, notice, what I wrote here is not what we see about the way things are, but what we are allowed to say. This is because we live in a time in which “truth” is seen as a means to tribal belonging, rather than a reality that exists outside of us…. Our passions and experiences and intuitions often warp the way we see things, especially the most important things, which is why we need grace. People are going to have—from now till the Apocalypse—arguments about what is true and what is false, what is real and what is fake. Our problem now, though, is that, increasingly, we are called not just to argue about what is true, but to say things that we know to be false, just to prove that we are part of the tribe to which we belong.  

Excerpt from Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America by Russell Moore, Penguin Random House LLC, USA, 2023 (p. 69).

Note: This excerpt is taken from “Chapter Two: Losing Our Authority” in which Russell Moore addresses the radicalization of many evangelicals, following the controversies regarding the global COVID-19 pandemic and the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

Russell Moore is an evangelical Christian theologian and ordained minister. He is Editor in Chief of Christianity Today and previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (2013-2021). Prior to that role, Moore served as provost and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, where he also taught theology and ethics.