The Poet as Conscience of Our Time

Au poète indivis d'attester parmi nous la double vocation de l'homme. Et c'est hausser devant l'esprit un miroir plus sensible à ses chances spirituelles. C'est évoquer dans le siècle même une condition humaine plus digne de l'homme originel. C'est associer enfin plus largement l'âme collective à la circulation de l'énergie spirituelle dans le monde ... Face à l'énergie nucléaire, la lampe d'argile du poète suffira-t-elle à son propos ? Oui, si d'argile se souvient l'homme.

Et c'est assez, pour le poète, d'être la mauvaise conscience de son temps. 
                                     

                                                                               --Saint-John Perse, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

41st Anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium

¡No olvidemos!

The Chicano Moratorium was organized to protest the war in Vietnam, as well as oppression and discrimination at home. On August 29, 1970, the Chicano Moratorium culminated with a mass demonstration in Los Angeles, California.  When police attacked the demonstrators, four persons (including award-winning journalist Ruben Salazar) were killed, and hundreds injured.  The spirit of the Chicano Moratorium reminds us that the struggle continues and that minorities and the poor continue to bear the burden of imprisonment, homelessness, unemployment, and all of the other negative effects of the economic crisis; while continuing to die in disproportionate numbers in senseless foreign wars. 

Dom Helder Câmara

Dom Helder Câmara

(Feb. 7, 1909 - Aug. 27, 1999
A VOZ DOS QUE NAO TEM VOZ

More than two thirds of humanity are slaves to hunger, sickness, forced labor, despair.   The other third is in slavery to selfishness and fear...

Let us open our eyes.  Let us begin at once to fight our selfishness and come out of ourselves, to dedicate ourselves once and for all, whatever the sacrifices, to the non-violent struggle for a juster and more human world.

                                                              --Dom Helder Câmara, Le desert est fertile, tr. Dinah Livingstone

                                                           

Pastoral

The garden in late summer: a pair of hummingbirds, one red and one green, chase each other above the trumpet vines heavy with flowers and green seed pods.  Meanwhile, sparrows, finches, and doves pick at the drying seed heads of the sunflowers that grew tall and sturdy in the brutal heat.  The lantanas have recovered from the freeze last winter and are in full bloom.  Blue storm clouds rise in the distance; hopefully, they are a promise of desperately-needed rain.  The spearmint and the bee balm haven’t flowered yet, but the catmint is covered with spikes of purple-blue flowers.  In the midst of an America gone insane, a moment of respite from the struggle to survive what are hopefully the last days of capitalism.

Gardens

How I have come to love gardens!  While looking at a series of paintings of the Muskauer Park/Park Muzakowski by Lucy Barkley de Tolly, I knew I had seen that landscape of trees and water before. Then it came to me--the breakfast picnic in the seventh chapter of Heinrich von Ofterdingen. 

Who Are the Real Freeloaders?

Did you get a tax refund last year?  Let’s see who did:

Valero Energy, the 25^th largest company in America, with $68 billion in sales last year, received a $157 million tax refund check from the IRS.

Boeing got a $124 million refund from the IRS last year.

Chevron received a $19 million refund from the IRS last year, after it made $10 billion in profits in 2009.

General Electric made $26 billion in profits over the last five years and not only paid no federal income tax, it got a $4.1 billion refund.

Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits in 2009 and paid no federal income taxes.  It did receive a $156 million rebate from the IRS.

(SOURCE: “Who Pays Taxes? Not Americas Richest Companies,” CWA News, Summer 2011, from a list compiled by Senator Bernie Sanders [I-VT])