I came across this bit of prose poetry yesterday. Someone, can’t even recall if it was a friend or merely a random post that popped up on my news feed, posted it without attribution and I was a bit enthralled by it. I’m tempted to break it down so it looks more like a poem, but I’m just going to leave it the way I encountered it. I don’t even know if that part about their taste buds is true, but I like to think it is … and I love the subtle twist with which the author concludes. I just now highlighted what I thought was a sufficiently distinctive phrase and searched for it on Google, immediately discovering who the author is … so I will now add a citation below. I hope you enjoy this very short, highly evocative bit of writing.
Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste buds all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies, I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine the dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley, avocado, and melon, the tops of carrots.
I’d always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden, almost vulgar—though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can, forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.
I recently came across this simple graphic I put together and I took the opportunity to re-read this poem in its entirety. It hit me that I had neither heard nor read the complete poem by Emma Lazarus, entitled “The New Colossus,” before I had put this together (which was probably sometime last year) and, in fact, didn’t have much of a recollection of reading it back then.
So I then posted it on Twitter, which gave me the opportunity to read it a couple more times. Each time, I gained a bit more insight into the message Ms. Lazarus was attempting to convey, and each time I felt her message a bit more deeply.
It didn’t get that many likes, but it did generate enough feedback for me to pay really close attention to the poem, and I took the opportunity to read it several times. It finally brought me this image of my Bubbie, my paternal grandmother, along with my uncles Sam and Al and my aunt Sophie, arriving in New York from the Ukraine, where they had fled the pogroms. My grandfather, who I never knew, had made his way to Chicago and had worked to earn and save enough to send for all four of them to book “steerage” to the United States. My father was the first-born in the United States.
Reading her words and looking at this beautiful picture of the Statue of Liberty lifting “her lamp beside the golden door” moved me to tears as I thought of the struggles my ancestors must have endured, knowing as well that most of them never made it past their sixties, if they made it there. My father didn’t quite hit his 60th birthday before he died and, as I mentioned, I never knew my grandfather. I only saw my grandmother once that I can recall, as we lived in California and they lived in Chicago.
I also felt a deep sense of gratitude that my family was able to escape those pogroms relatively intact and they were able to resettle here in the U.S., where I was born a quarter century later. The more I read the poem, the deeper I feel that gratitude, though I’m disappointed to find things have been slipping backward in the struggle for justice and equality and in the level of welcome this country has traditionally shown (even if sometimes half-heartedly) to the ongoing flow of immigration.
I hope it moves some who read it as it moved me. This is the attitude I want my country to have toward immigration.
I don’t get much feedback that isn’t spam on this blog site, but I continue to carry on despite it. I did, however, just receive a wonderful communication with some good information that I’ve been asked to pass along. I’ll share the text and the link that accompanied it for you to check out. I have and there are some interesting businesses represented at the site. Most of them appear to be closely allied with activists and social justice causes. The page, located at a site called “Website Planet,” is “Support Black-Owned Businesses: 181 Places to Start Online.”
Here’s the text of the feedback, as I received it:
Hi there , I saw your page rickladd.com/, and I wanted to thank you for supporting the Black community. The events of last summer (BLM protests and COVID-19) saw many people rally to support Black-owned businesses. Sadly, since summer ended, people forgot to keep sharing and supporting these businesses. I just found a new article with links to more than 150 Black-owned businesses. I was so happy to see that people still care about helping these companies thrive! The link is here: https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/support-black-owned-businesses/ I think sharing this link on your page would be a great way to help your readers keep supporting Black-owned sites and stores. I think it will be a great addition to your site and that your audience will love this new resource! Thank you in advance for your support, Fabiola
I believe now, more than ever, we need to show our support for our black brothers and sisters. This seems a good way to do it. Thanks to Fabiolo, who I’ll be emailing shortly to thank for providing the info.
One caveat … while some of these businesses offer merchandise online, many if not most of them are located in Brooklyn, NY and aren’t easily accessible by folks like me, who are out here on the west coast.
This is just a part of the collection of my political memorabilia from the late sixties and early seventies. The button at the top left is from Radio Habana, as is the pic of Che, which has a 1973 calendar on the back. The button with the torch I got when I was in Cuba in 1973 as well; it’s from Cabo Verde y Guinea Bissau. The Cubans were providing military assistance for their liberation struggle and we were fortunate enough to be able to meet a few of their fighters, who gave us the button.
The one next to that is from the fight to lower the voting age to draft age (I couldn’t vote until I was 21.) Next over, to the right, as a Vietnam era veteran I was eligible for membership in VVAW and I worked very closely with them for several years during that time. The next one conveys my general feeling about drugs … which hasn’t changed much in the ensuing years. The last button is from the time when Angela was on trial for providing the weapons Jonathan Jackson used in an ill-fated attempt to free his brother, George Jackson, from prison while he was in court at the Marin County Courthouse.
Below that is my ticket to the fundraising concert for Angela, where I was one of the armed bodyguards for the McAfee family, who put their farm up for Angela’s bail. Finally, the ticket in the middle is from when I attended an event at UCLA where several of the defendants in the “conspiracy” spoke about their trial. Sacha Baron Cohen was, regrettably, not present that day. Neither was Abbie Hoffman.
Yesterday, 11 April 2021, I created a gofundme account in an effort to raise money for a memoir I am writing about my experiences with International—and interracial—adoption when I was 55-years-old and again at 59. As regular readers might know, my wife Linda and I adopted our oldest daughter, Aimee, in September of 2002, when she was 14 months old. We again adopted in September of 2006, when our younger daughter, Alyssa, was 33 months old.
Each of these adoptions took over two years to complete and were both nerve-wracking and fulfilling experiences. We were required to travel to the People’s Republic of China each time, staying at the China Hotel, in Guangzhou, which is in the Southeast of the country, not far from Hong Kong. Each time we went, we managed to get in a little sightseeing prior to our daughters being introduced to us.
Our first time we flew to Guangzhou (it took 15 hours) where we had a three-hour layover, after which we flew to Beijing, which was a three and a half hour flight. The second time we flew directly to Hong Kong. We stayed in Beijing for six days, visiting some of the things tourists are wont to see, e.g. The Great Wall, The Forbidden City, etc. We stayed in Hong Kong for only three nights, then took a train to Guangzhou. After our time in Beijing, we flew back to Guangzhou. Each time we arrived, we were met by a team of “assistants” from the organization that facilitated our stay, our travel arrangements, the interpretation and completion of numerous documents, and the transfer of money for the various services we used to complete our adoptions.
I have posted a few times regarding our adoptions, but I’ve been reluctant to share too much about our girls, as I felt it was their story to tell. However, the time has come for me to share my story as best I know how. I had a discussion with the girls yesterday, and they gave me permission to do this.
As a result, I opened the gofundme account I’m referring to where I am seeking a total of $6,000, which I believe will help me concentrate for the next six months on writing this memoir while continuing to assist my girls in achieving their independence. My youngest, Alyssa, is just finishing her Junior year in High School, and it has been exceptionally challenging. She has some issues, which I will write about in this memoir, that required an IEP (Individualized Education Program) and presented some not-so-unique problems that continue. My older daughter, Aimee, is attending (virtually) classes at Moorpark College, but is having difficulty deciding on what direction she wishes to go in.
I am offering copies of this memoir to anyone who donates, no matter how much they give. For donations of $50 or more, I will provide a digitally signed, personalized copy, and for donations of $100 or more, I’m offering a 30-minute telecon via the platform of their choice (Zoom, Facebook Rooms, etc.) I will make the book available in any one of several formats, including .mobi for Kindle.
This is a new experience for me and I’m not completely comfortable with asking for money. However, I need to supplement our limited income and, at nearly 74-years-old, especially during a pandemic, it’s difficult to find ways to earn money and still have the energy to write and edit my story. Whether or not you can afford to donate, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share the gofundme link, which is gf.me/u/zp7gaw. You can click here to get to it as well.
Thank you for reading and, I hope, at least sharing my campaign so I can share my story.
Rick
Although I’ve been blogging for over 15 years, I never wanted to use it to make money. For much of the time I was either working full-time at Rocketdyne or pursuing clients for my business providing social media marketing services to small businesses. Now that I’m approaching my 74th birthday, and have no intention of returning to a regular job, I’ve decided to seek ways to earn a little bit of supplemental income. If you find my writing interesting or useful, please consider a donation to help me continue writing, instead of becoming a Costco greeter. Thank you.
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Any amount you care to offer is greatly appreciated. I’m also deeply honored that you have taken the time to read any of my posts. Thank you.
Recently, I came across an article on Axios.com with the title “America is losing its religion.” In the article, the author (Bryan Walsh) opens by saying, “New surveys show Americans’ membership in communities of worship has declined sharply in recent years, with less than 50% of the country belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque.” He goes on to list the Gallup poll results he rests his premise on and concludes with the following thought: “But conventional religion’s power is on the wane, and it might take a miracle for that to change.”
I can’t say I’m bothered in the slightest about this trend. Being an atheist, I have a somewhat dim view of organized religion, especially when it’s used to deny rights to others based on some cockamamie interpretation of words that were uttered thousands of years ago, when life, economics, and society in general were much different than they are now.
On the other hand, I understand, and empathize with, the desire for community that religious observance brings to those who practice, but belief in a supreme intelligence/being that literally created us and watches over us is, IMO, patently absurd. I find acknowledging and appreciating how physics, chemistry, and cosmology (in other words, science) explain where we came from far more compelling and beautiful than anything to be found in any religious text I’ve read. And to be clear, my general attitude toward religion is, “what you believe is none of my business … until you start telling me or others we are required to believe as you do or we’re damned.”
So … here’s the deal. If attending services at a “house of worship” is your cup of tea, and you attend with others who share your beliefs or your faith (however you define those) I say “zei gezunt,” which is Yiddish for “be well” or, as I tend to think of it, and somewhat more ironically “more power to you.” Just keep it to yourself. Don’t bring it to the commons. Enjoy it for you and those who you consider part of your fellowship, but don’t for one minute suppose you can tell others this is the ONLY way. Do that and you will richly deserve to be shunned by others who don’t feel as you do.
PS – You can read the article, which contains a bit more detail than I’m including, here.
I have, in the past, asked when it would be time to consider acting out against polluters, climate change deniers and, especially, so-called governmental leaders as acts of self-defense. After all, increasingly severe weather events are killing large groups of people who currently have no say in how we deal with the climate crisis, which I believe is very real and abundantly documented.
So I’ve wondered just how long we’re going to sit back and allow our leaders and businesses to ignore what is patently obvious, ensuring more and more of us will be sickened, impoverished, and killed because of their greed and intransigence.
You might want to take 10 minutes of your time and listen to what Chris has to say here. It seems to me we have only about three paths to implement the changes that are necessary. Massive participation in the electoral process to fundamentally change our leadership, massive civil disobedience to disrupt the status quo, or massive violence to overthrow the government and install new leadership. I would prefer one of the first two (and, like Chris, I’m fairly convinced the second of the two has the best chance of making real, fundamental, transformative change) but I’m not opposed to the latter on ethical grounds. I do, however, think violence will end up hurting those who are the most susceptible to oppression and suppression and, therefore, am not terribly sanguine about such a direction.
I’m thinking this is something that will deeply impact all of use far sooner than we’ve been led to believe, and action is imperative. What do you think?
I came across this graphic on Facebook today. It struck me, as the concept has struck me for decades, that this should be part of any truly progressive agenda. I have been an “ordained minister” since the late sixties. I have performed approximately 50 weddings, which was the main reason I became “ordained.” It wasn’t to lead a congregation or even to claim tax breaks, and I claim no special relationship with the universe. In fact, I am an atheist.
One thing I learned early on, though, is the State considers a church a business, an organization, with the lone exception (that I can think of) of taxation. By not taxing religious organizations the State is giving them an unfair advantage over any other type of business and is, in my less-than-humble opinion, violating the 1st Amendment to the Constitution by—in fact—making a law respecting an establishment of religion.
Even more egregious is the situation depicted here. Mega churches are nothing more than income sources for their “leaders.” I believe this is Joel Osteen’s “flock,” as well as his home. Why does a follower of Jesus, a poor itinerant, and one who purports to be a spiritual leader, need a house that could probably accommodate the entire village of ancient Bethlehem? If nothing else, these huge and “Osteen”tacious abominations should pay their fair share of taxes on the revenue they get from their “flock.”
As if there weren’t enough problems with the absolutely crazy proliferation of guns in the United States, some people are so caught up in the perceived value of everyone owning and constantly carrying guns, we’re beginning to see what I would consider crazier and crazier legislation to exalt the use of firearms. This article from American Military News is a bit disheartening. Isn’t this a mission the National Guard is designed to fulfill?
If you ask me (I know, you haven’t. Consider it a figure of speech on my behalf) this is nothing more than fear mongering; a cowardly bend of the knee to racism and xenophobia. We already have Police forces, Sheriff’s departments, and various types of Marshals, in addition to the aforementioned National Guard. Who are these “minutemen” going to protect us from? White supremacists. For some reason, I suspect this would actually prove to be a natural way for white supremacists to move closer to realize some of their darkest fantasies.
I’ll reiterate. Bad idea! Bad, bad fucking idea. Here’s an excerpt and you can read more at the link appearing below.
Lawmakers in Missouri are considering legislation that would make it legal to create a Missouri Minutemen, a group of legal gun owners who could be called to action by the governor. On Tuesday, state senators discussed S.B. 258, which would establish “that there shall be the minutemen of the state which shall be called into service by the governor for use in defense during a state of emergency with consent of two-thirds of the General Assembly.” According to the legislation, any legal Missouri resident who is legally able to own a firearm will be allowed to voluntarily join the minutemen
A guy I follow on Twitter, Dave Weasel, tweeted asking why we aren’t calling the investigation of Matt Gaetz, Pizza Gaetz. It was in response to a tweet by Mehdi Hasan, who noted that QAnon believes this investigation is all part of “the plan”. It got me thinking and, here’s my contribution to the effort. I have nothing more to add at the moment other than to point out how I expect this years full load of schadenfreude to be exceptionally bounteous and eminently enjoyable.
