Sunday, January 26, 2020

A World Beyond Haiti

The Deceptive Present, the Phoenix Year

- a poem by Delmore Schwartz (wish I could write like him, instead of to simply quote, and feel the resonance in my photos,  and try to illustrate)


 

As I looked, the poplar rose in the shining air
Like a slender throat,
And there was an exaltation of flowers,
The surf of apple tree delicately foaming.






All winter, the trees had been
Silent soldiers, a vigil of woods,
Their hidden feelings
Scrawled and became
Scores of black vines,
Barbed wire sharp against the ice-white sky.
Who could believe then
In the green, glittering vividness of full-leafed summer?


Who will be able to believe, when winter again begins
After the autumn burns down again, and the day is ashen,
And all returns to winter and winter's ashes,
Wet, white, ice, wooden, dulled and dead, brittle or frozen,
Who will believe or feel in mind and heart
The reality of the spring and of birth,
In the green warm opulence of summer, and the inexhaustible vitality and immortality of the earth?




Thursday, January 9, 2020

Do You Know the Way to Mon Bouton?





The music is Italian rap - the beat accompanies a traditional Haitian corvee, broadening the path to Mon Bouton, for safety's sake.  Work supported by  "If Pigs Could Fly Haiti"

Haiti: Solar Powered Pumps go the Distance

















Our small Palo Alto-based  non-profit  (we put the "non" in non-profit) is directed in the hills above the plain of Leogane by Elisee A. (our “CEO” - Chief Eternal Optimist)  in Southwestern Haiti, at about 4000 feet.  This one minute clip shows the overflow as we have a slower pump at the second station - soon to be replaced.  Haitian friends fly them in for us! An "Underground Railroad" of solar technology, brings water closer to residences.  No, there is no indoor plumbing, but the distance to haul water is minimized, saving caloric expenditure in this region of chronic malnutrition.