Saturday, November 5, 2011

WHAT WOMAN WANTS, GOD WANTS



Genyen!

What woman wants



God Wants...
Sing!

Play!

Sunday, October 9, 2011

GOOD-BYE, COLUMBUS - SAIL ON, SAIL ON




Columbus is not a hero anymore, except maybe in New York, where Italian Americans still have a Columbus Day parade - don't they?

 It was in the Oakland hills, California, in 1892, that Joaquin Miller -the Poet of the Sierras, the Byron of the West - composed the poem he is most famous for today, “Columbus,” in honor of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the Americas.

It's the motion across the ocean, and not Columbus the man, celebrated in the poem.

Joaquin Miller's poem celebrates motion across the unknown, across oceans.  To dream impossible dreams, to explore, reach and yes, reach out...Move mountains.  Maybe we should not throw out Columbus with the  salt water?  Sail on, sail on, friends.


Columbus - Joaquin Miller 

Behind him lay the gray Azores,
  Behind the Gates of Hercules;
Before him not the ghost of shores,
  Before him only shoreless seas.
The good mate said: “Now must we pray,        5
  For lo! the very stars are gone.
Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say?”
  “Why, say, ‘Sail on! sail on! and on!’”
“My men grow mutinous day by day;
  My men grow ghastly wan and weak.”        10
The stout mate thought of home; a spray
  Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek.
“What shall I say, brave Admiral, say,
  If we sight naught but seas at dawn?”
“Why, you shall say at break of day,        15
  ‘Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!’”
They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow,
  Until at last the blanched mate said:
“Why, now not even God would know
  Should I and all my men fall dead.        20
These very winds forget their way,
  For God from these dread seas is gone.
Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say”—
  He said: “Sail on! sail on! and on!”
They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the mate:        25
  “This mad sea shows his teeth to-night.
He curls his lip, he lies in wait,
  With lifted teeth, as if to bite!
Brave Admiral, say but one good word:
  What shall we do when hope is gone?”        30
The words leapt like a leaping sword:
  “Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!”
Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck,
  And peered through darkness. Ah, that night
Of all dark nights! And then a speck—        35
  A light! A light! A light! A light!
It grew, a starlit flag unfurled!
  It grew to be Time’s burst of dawn.
He gained a world; he gave that world
  Its grandest lesson: “On! sail on!”

Sunday, September 18, 2011

A LA VOLONTE DU PEUPLE



'A la Volonte Du Peuple'

A la volonté du peuple
et à la santé du progrès
remplie ton coeur d'un vin rebelle
et à demain, ami fidèle
nous voulons faire la lumière
malgré le masque de la nuit
pour illuminer notre terre
et changer la vie

Il faut gagner par la guerre
notre sillon à labourer
déblayer la misère
pour les blonds épis de la paix
qui danseront de joie au grand vent de la liberté

A la volonté du peuple
et à la santé du progrès
remplie ton coeur d'un vin rebelle
Lyrics www.allthelyrics.com/lyrics/les_miserables_original_broadway_cast_recording_soundtrack/
et à demain, ami fidèle
nous voulons faire la lumière
malgré le masque de la nuit
pour illuminer notre terre
et changer la vie

A la volonté du peuple
je fais don de ma volonté
s'il faut mourir pour elle
moi je veux être le premier
le premier nom gravé au marbre du monument d'espoir

TOUS
A la volonté du peuple
et à la santé du progrès
remplis ton c_ur d'un vin rebelle
et à demain, ami fidèle
nous voulons faire la lumière
malgré le masque de la nuit
pour illuminer notre terre
et changer la vie 

Friday, September 16, 2011

"THEN, I WILL DO IT MYSELF"

STATUS UPDATE:
"Than I will do it myself." -- The Little Red Hen

Sunday, September 11, 2011

MON PRINCE EST EN CHEMIN




Tous les enfants ont une enfance


D'un coup de mon balai magique
il apparaît si je le veux
dans un murmure de musique
et je voyage dans ses yeux



Tous les enfants ont une enfance

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Miracles

"The world is full of wonders and miracles, but we take our little hand and we cover our eyes and see nothing." the Baal Shem Tov.

Monday, September 5, 2011

APROPO PRESIDENT OBAMA'S UPCOMING SPEECH: "Hard Times Come And Go"

Build schools, and lay off teachers? Repair schools and cram more kids in without adequate - and adequately TRAINED - instructors and supervisors?

In U.S. as in Haiti, they are building schools, laying brick, and paving roads so kids can get to schools where teachers are overloaded and yes, under-paid.

Someone who has President Obama's ear - and President Martelly's - please put in a word, Pssst - a classroom is more than 4 walls and a roof.


Pokey LaFarge & The South City Three "Hard Times Come And Go" - OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO

LABOR OF LOVE DAY - SEPT. 5, 2011

LABOR OF LOVE DAY Starts right here. Yes, there ARE many Causes, but there's only ONE HAITI, one Mon Bouton you can save at a time. One can only do soo much, right? So, do it! Join us nOW! Make Labor Day a Labor of Love for rural Haiti http://www.causes.com/causes/529435-if-pigs-could-fly-haiti

Pick up your pikwa and join us!




HAITI WORKS!

AND WORKS!


AND MOVES MOUNTAINS!

AND MAKES MAMBA

AND WORKED CANE
LABOR OF LOVE DAY Starts right here. Yes, there ARE many Causes, but there's only ONE HAITI, one Mon Bouton you can save at a time. One can only do soo much, right? So, do it! Join us nOW! Make Labor Day a Labor of Love for rural Haiti http://www.causes.com/causes/529435-if-pigs-could-fly-haiti

Sunday, September 4, 2011

PRETTY THINGS



Notes on walking the Palo Alto Arts and Wine Festival:

So many lovely, well-crafted things for sale!  So many expensive, beautiful items, stretching from one end of well-heeled, well-sandaled,  University Avenue, to the other.  Pretty, pretty, pretty pricey.

I felt so...rich!  So rich, seeing all what I can so easily live without!

SO MANY, MANY PRETTY, PRETTY THINGS.
SO MANY ASTONISHING WORKS OF BEAUTY.

SIMPLE PLEASURES, REDWOODS...

BIRCH, EUCALYPTUS TREES - ARE ALL FREE!

WRITER'S BLOG: On Earth in U.S. as in Haiti, Repair Roads, Build Schools?

Yesterday's New York Times (p. B3) heralds President Obama's speech upcoming this Thursday.  
He'll address jobs - or rather, the lack thereof.


Now don't get me wrong, folks - I have and will vote for Pres. Obama and hope you'll all join together with me and enough constituents to send the Tea Party packing...And I do think that, at least in part, "putting people to work repairing roads, bridges and schools" a la WPA and Haiti'a Cash For Work program ain't a bad idea at all.


Just one question: Build schools, yet teachers are being laid off?  Build schools, and cram 35+ students in middle school and high school classes?


Why not train, re-train, hire and re-hire teachers to teach?  Gosh, just imagine:  jobs are going to be pouring cement and asphalt and raising roof beams - and unemployed teachers will be doing the road work! This is a solution?
Well, it has precedent. The "American plan" has precedent in Haiti.  Schools are being rebuilt.  Also roads and bridges.  Maybe even a sewage system...

Now, back in June, the Digicel Foundation was going to train teachers, subsidize teacher salaries AND build well-lit schools and with desks and places for books.  Even latrines, too.  

As of mid-July, however, that has changed.  The CEO, Denis O'Brien, who has already reconstructed the iconic Iron Market in Haiti's capital Port-Au-Prince, met with Pres. Martelly.  After that meeting, the bit about teacher training and salaries was off the table.  Digicel Foundation is still (as of this writing) committed to rebuilding schools - and thus, contractors all over the capital are very busy there.  None are (yet) available to make the trek to any remote mountain zones...such as Mon Bouton above the plain of Leogane - but, Digicel is working on it, hoping to find one contractor who will be free of the easier and lucrative task of rebuilding city schools, and who might be willing to trek up 4000 feet, schlepping materials all the way.

Port au Prince (or "Haiti" as it is often mistakenly called) will have new, sturdy, well-lit, earthquake-resistant schools.  And roads so students can get to them.

But no teacher training.  And no pay for teachers!  
In Haiti, as in the U.S., the jobs will require the literati and teachers to hit the road and build the road, build and repair the classrooms where they will no longer teach.

Why do I find myself mulling over China, under Mao, when 100 Flowers bloomed...?  And that "Great Leap Forward,"  大躍進 -Dà yuè jìn of the PRC...No, not at all the same thing - I mean, a public works program is hardly a socialist, Marxist movement...Right?
But repairing schools when there are fewer trained teachers to staff them seems odd in the case of Haiti and not very smart in the U.S., where we don't have the same, er, excuses as an impoverished Caribbean nation.
At least not yet.

Now, I certainly have nada against manual labor.  
Some of my best friends work the land, lay brick and clean houses. But when there are teachers laid off, and classrooms over-crowded, and teachers over-worked --- does it make sense to think more of stimulus funds going into, say "Teach for America," or "Be a  Teacher's Aide" in America...or Haiti?

How about invite our educated (and so frequently "over-educated" or "over-qualified") unemployed and pay them to assist teachers in classrooms -  here, and in Haiti?



Friday, August 26, 2011

SAVE THE PLANET? THE WHOLE WORLD'S IN HER HANDS



She's got the whole world in her hands - where are you in her future?

SUPPORT OUR TROOPERS!


Click on this and support our troopers!
SMALL DONATIONS GO RIGHT HERE

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

THANK YOU BROTHER LANGSTON HUGHES!

He knew well our people in rural Haiti...

Sadly, there's little that's changed since Brother Langston's 6-month sojourn there, in the 1930's.






There is so much misery in the world,
So much poverty and pain,
So many who have no food
Nor shelter from the rain,
So many wandering friendless,
So many facing cold,
So many gnawing bitter bread
And growing old!

What can I do?
And you?
What can we do alone?
How short a way
The few spare crumbs
We have will go!
How short a reach
The hand stretched out
To those who know
No handshake anywhere.
How little help our love
When they themselves
No longer care.
How thin a blanket ours
For the withered body
Of despair!


Our community's needs and development are now supported by Facebook Causes Page: IF PIGS COULD FLY - HAITI! 

Thank you for reflecting on this post.  If you would like to help the community in the mountains of Haiti, please start here:

http://www.causes.com/causes/529435

LABOR DAY: HAITI WORKS

Haiti Works.  Indeed.

This countryside, this part of Haiti at least, the mountains, have been where maroons, and descendants of maroons, ran to, quitting the plantations before - and after - 1804. It was, and still is, harsh life.

And yet, today, the countryside in Haiti will not rise up for change, as did many countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Why not?

For one thing, folks are way too busy to have any "leisure time" to rebel or join forces. For that, you have to be in the city, where folks are better fed. Why?

'Cause the city's where the food is, where the options - if not opportunities - are. options, chances - you can take your chances. Every day is a risky business but in the city you can carry water for someone, you can shine shoes, be a peddler, you can empty the slop jar you can be a bodyguard or threaten someone so's they'll hire you to be their "Security"!

In the city, chances can be taken. In the countryside, there's no time for that. You plant, you sekle








Maybe...you can lend a hand?
http://www.causes.com/causes/529435

TENT LIVING - AN INSIDE VIEW


SHARING THE PIE - EVEN IF IT'S JUST CRUMBS FROM THE TABLE, ER PLATE...

They share - why not you and I?
Video, link below, is in Kreyol, but you will understand everything, pictures speak volumes.





They share - why not you and I?

This video is in Kreyol, not yet translated. The two children are cousins. The larger girl lost a father, her mother has 6 children including a new baby. Pastor Dieudonne is doing his best - these are part of his extended family. Very extended.



So yes, the video, link above, is in Kreyol - but, let me know if...you get it?

They share - why not you and I?
http://www.causes.com/causes/529435

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Reading "The Blue Sweater," Writing "The White Shmate שמאַטע*"



Work in progress.

Reading, excoriating Jacqueline Novogratz' "The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World."

Will there be interest, I wonder, in a sequel, "The White Schmate שמאַטע:  Blood from Stones and Sharing the Pie in Haiti"? 

For those of you - Haitians and friends of Haiti not familiar with Yiddish - that is, for Haitians not from Brooklyn nor the greater metropolitan New York area, the word "שמאַטע  - shmate"  means "rag." 

There  are other differences between Jacqueline's book and mine.  Her's is published.  Mine's not written.  Her's sells, people buy it, libraries stock it.  On the other hand, if you are reading this, well, it’s a start.

Ah, so then. There is nothing new under the sun...perhaps.


I did not find a long-not-lost-but-donated sweater.  Instead, in Haiti I found children in bits of remnants and rags.  I found women washing bits of remnants and rags.
  
 I found children sporting torn baggy pants, crotch-less legging pants, girls in garish skirts over pants, and kids with no pants. 



Do I say I found bits and pieces of a heart, that heart, mine, that I did not recognize? yes, beating, yes throbbing, yes here, alive.  Now,



Neighbors. Ah, now, here they come – carrying 10 gallons of water on their heads, wearing logo’ed T-shirts that shout out It’s Community Day at Stanford... 




...and look, there’s one, Dance or Die, and another, The Negro Baseball League, now climbs up the Leukemia Foundation, and next a pink be-ribboned on demands Find a Cure!



Cotton shirts, cotton knits, juxtaposed with sturdy, lean, rippled, sinewy arms, chests, torsos, legs of runners, athletes, marathoners, then bare feet, the feet with thick soles that have no need for shoes, have never known shoes, invincible feet that fly over scorched rock and bramble, skip over glass and machetes and climb, and climb,  and speed higher and faster and faster than I  can.



No missing sweaters


Down outside of Darbonne, by the izin sik,  old sugar factory, a woman straddles cement at a pump, draws water into a bucket, turns.  I read:  Neiman Marcus.

No missing sweaters, no donated sweater with my name on it.  Instead, in Haiti, I found Dieula, the girl next door , Dieula and her sisters.  Dieula, one of the 6 girls next door – on the mountain of Mon Bouton, 4000 feet or so above the plain of Leogane.



I find her, she finds me, I find me.


Here she is, in her white shmate, her crowning glory of reddish hair – the kwashiorkor tint – nestled next to someone’s dropped blade of a machete.  


The white shmate gets washed and she has a spare, a faded green stretchy thing that she’ll pull down over her knees when she crouches in my doorway round about 6 a.m.  


Cold.  It's mountains here.


Dieula here.  Always waiting there. Always astonishing.  
Always striking the un-posed pose. 

Dieula always.


Always Dieula.

.