“Earth Crisis” – Poem by African American Poet Kym Gordon Moore

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Climate Crisis, Earth Day 2024, Environmental Degradation, Illiteracy and Aliteracy, North Carolina/USA Poet, Poem “Earth Crisis” by Kym Gordon Moore, We Are Poetry: Lessons I Didn’t Learn in a Textbook by Kym Gordon Moore

African American Poet Kym Gordon Moore
Photo Credit: Amazon Author Page

My Poetry Corner April 2024 features the poem “Earth Crisis” from the poetry collection We Are Poetry: Lessons I Didn’t Learn in a Textbook (USA, 2022) by Kym Gordon Moore, an African American poet and marketing communications professional. The following excerpts of poems are all sourced from this collection.

Moore earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice and a Master of Business Administration degree with a concentration in Marketing. Born and raised in South Carolina, she now lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

With over four decades as a writer and public speaker in marketing communications, Moore has become an advocate of using poetry in the fight against illiteracy and aliteracy among children and adults. She also mentors young and aspiring poets by identifying commonalities in their personal stories while exposing them to diverse opportunities that transform their experiences into creative development.

Moore’s latest book is not your regular collection of poetry. As noted on the back cover: “This book contains several components that serve as an academic complement giving creative insight into the poetry revolutionary movement. It functions as a dialogue engineer, designed to build and employ the application of poetry in the fight against illiteracy, functional illiteracy, aliteracy, and disparity.”

Earth Day 2024: Earth vs. Plastics

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Earth Day 2024, Earth Day Network (EDN), Global Plastics Treaty 2024, Great Global Plastics Cleanup 2024, Planet vs Plastics, Reject Fast Fashion

Earth Day 2024: Earth vs. Plastics
Official Earth Day 2024 Poster
Photo Credit: Earth Day Official Website

April 22, 2024, is Earth Day. The theme this year, Planet vs. Plastics, “calls to advocate for widespread awareness on the health risk of plastics, rapidly phase out all single use plastics, urgently push for a strong UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution, and demand an end to fast fashion.”

In their unwavering commitment to end plastics for the sake of human and planetary health, the Earth Day Network (EDN) is demanding a 60 percent reduction in the production of ALL plastics by 2040. To achieve this goal, they are:

1. Raising public awareness about plastic’s harm to human and biodiversity health, pushing for research transparency.
2. Proposing to phase out single-use plastics by 2030 and embedding these commitments in the United Nations Global Plastic Treaty on Plastic Pollution in 2024.
3. Advocating for policies aimed at combating the environmental impact of fast fashion which relies on the use of synthetic materials made of plastics, such as polyester and nylon.
4. Calling for investment in innovative technologies aimed at finding sustainable alternatives to plastics because plastics are made from oil and toxic chemicals.

Become part of the solution. Together, we can create a future where our planet thrives without the burden of plastics.

Join me in signing the Global Plastics Treaty

Join me in rejecting Fast Fashion

Find a location near you to join in the Great Global [Plastics] Cleanup

Earth Day 2024: Planet vs. Plastics

Thought for Today: Unintended Deaths

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Civilian Deaths of America’s Wars, USA Global War on Terror, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine by Norman Solomon, Warfare

Front Cover: War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine by Norman Solomon

Frequent killing of civilians is inherent in the types of wars that the United States has waged in this century. Despite all the hype about precision weaponry, even its top-rated technologies are fallible. What’s more, they operate in flawed—and sometimes highly dysfunctional—contexts. Whether launching attacks from distant positions or directly deployed, American forces are far removed from the societies they seek to affect. Key dynamics include scant knowledge of language, ignorance of cultures, and unawareness of such matters as manipulation due to local rivalries.

When U.S. officials say that civilian deaths are merely accidental outcomes of the war effort, they don’t mention that such deaths are not only predictable—they’re also virtually inevitable as results of policy priorities. Presumptions of acceptability are hot-wired into the war machine. The lives taken, injuries inflicted, traumas caused, environmental devastation wrought, social decimation imposed—all scarcely rank as even secondary importance to the power centers in Washington.

Norman Solomon, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, The New Press, New York, USA, 2023, pp. 53-54.

NORMAN SOLOMON is an American journalist, media critic, author, and activist. He is the co-founder of the online organization RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, a consortium of policy researchers and analysts. His books include War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2006) and Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State (2008). He lives in the San Francisco area in California.

The Writer’s Life: Challenge of re-creating an unrecorded life

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Bookers Guyana, British Guiana (Guyana)/South America, Cheddi and Janet Jagan, Descendant of East Indian indentured laborers, Guiana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU), Guyana People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Guyana Women’s Progressive Organization (WPO), Kowsilla of Leonora (1920-1964), Sugar Plantation Leonora/British Guiana 1964

Kowsilla (1920-1964) – Leonora Village – British Guiana

Since I had already featured Kowsilla of Leonora on International Women’s Day in 2013, I had decided not to share her expanded portrait in Chapter Nine of my work in progress. I changed my mind the day that our former president and current presidential candidate called the black- and brown-skinned migrants/refugees at our southern border “animals.” “[They’re] poisoning the blood of our country,” he said on another occasion. His remarks hurt. It matters not that the blood of these people has fueled and continues to fuel our giant corporations worldwide. Kowsilla (1920-1964) was such a person.

Kowsilla’s abruptly shortened life was so inconsequential to the powerful British sugar producers that her ultimate sacrifice at Plantation Leonora only merited a brief description in our local newspapers. In recalling those early days of growing up in then British Guiana, I regard her as a worthy and memorable representative of the rural working-class women of her generation. With little information about her life, I took on the challenge of re-creating her story.

To tell her story, I turned to Kowsilla’s ancestral history as a descendant of Indian indentured laborers. I found Coolie Woman: The Odyssey of Indenture by Gaiutra Bahadur (The University of Chicago Press, 2014) an excellent resource. What strong and courageous women! I also considered the cultural norms of the rural East Indian population during Kowsilla’s early years.

I hope that I have done justice in re-creating her unrecorded life.

Poem “Certainties” by Brazilian Poet Mário Quintana

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Brazilian Poet Mário Quintana, Brazilian Poet of “simple things”, Love and Friendship, Poem “Certainties” by Mário Quintana, Poema “Certezas” por Mário Quintana, Porto Alegre/Rio Grande do Sul/Brazil

Brazilian Poet Mário Quintana (1966)
Photo Credit: Correio da Manhã (Posted on Wikipedia)

My Poetry Corner March 2024 features the poem “Certainties / Certezas” by Brazilian poet, writer, and translator Mário Quintana (1906-1994). Known as the poet of “simple things,” Quintana shares his beliefs on love and friendship for making our lives worthwhile. Though unable to determine the publication date of this poem, I get the sense that it was written at a later stage in his life. In a change to my normal presentation, I intersperse excerpts of this poem with the poet’s lifelong journey to becoming a beloved and acclaimed poet in his state and across Brazil.

I don’t want someone who dies of love for me…
I just need someone who lives for me, who wants to be with me, hugging me.

Born in the municipality of Alegrete in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, Quintana was the third child: a son of a pharmacist and grandson of doctors. At the age of seven, with the help of his parents, he learned to read using the local newspaper as a primer. His parents also initiated his studies in French and Spanish. After he completed elementary school in his hometown, his father enrolled him as a boarding student at the Military College in the state capital, Porto Alegre.

I don’t demand that someone loves me like I love them, I just want them to love me, no matter with what intensity.
I don’t assume that everyone I like likes me…

California: Winter Garden Highlights

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Aeonium succulents, Azalea flowering plant, Camellia trees, Foxtail Fern, Los Angeles/California, Purple Graptoveria Debbie, Succulent Garden Winter 2024

Camellia Trees – Winter 2024 – Los Angeles – Southern California

After the hottest year on record, we’ve had another unusually wet winter. Our garden turned a luxurious green with joy. Red camellias, in the captioned photo, blushed as we passed by on the way to and from the parking area. With a few exceptions, the succulent plants have also responded well to the soaking.

The growth of the potted Aeonium Mint, shown below, was impressive. Just two plants! Compare its growth since October 2023.

Aeonium Mint February 2024

Aeonium Mint October 2023

Other large potted plants in this open area, shown below, have also responded well to the drenching.

The Aeonium Kiwi, one of my favorite succulents, is also happy. Thankfully, the open area did not flood and drained well.

Thought for Today: Civility and Tolerance

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Civility and Tolerance, The Civil Citizen, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves by Alexandra Hudson

Front Cover: The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves by Alexandra Hudson

Civility tempers and elevates the interactions between citizens, whether or not those citizens are public leaders. Civility begins with recognizing our shared humanity. It starts with seeing that we are more alike than unlike, and viewing our difference in light of our likeness. It starts in small ways, sowing seeds of the friendship and trust that ensure our civitas survives.

Deliberative democracy depends on the premise that people of goodwill can negotiate differences and work together in a productive way through rational—and civil—debate. Civility builds an active willingness to listen to others, to consider their point of view alongside our own, and to evaluate varying conceptions of “the good.” The civil citizen accepts that others have genuinely held moral positions, and that reasonable minds can disagree. These traits are equally essential for all positions along the political spectrum, and for our democracy, public leaders, and citizens alike.

~ Alexandra Hudson, The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves, St. Martin’s Publishing Group, New York, USA, 2023, p. 257.

ALEXANDRA HUDSON is a writer, storyteller, and the founder of Civic Renaissance, a publication and intellectual community dedicated to reviving the wisdom of the past to help us lead richer lives in the present. She was named a 2019 Novak Journalism Fellow, and she contributes to Fox News, CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time magazine, Politico magazine, and Newsweek. Her TV series, Storytelling and the Human Condition, was produced with The Great Courses and is available for streaming on Wondrium and Audible. Hudson earned a master’s degree in public policy at the London School of Economics as a Rotary Scholar. An adjunct professor at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, she lives in Indianapolis with her husband and children.

The Writer’s Life: Looking at “the outsider” with an open mind

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British Guiana (Guyana)/South America, Cheddi Jagan (1918-1997), First Female Executive President of Guyana, Georgetown/Guyana, Guyana People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Guyana Women’s Progressive Organization (WPO), Janet Jagan nee Rosenberg (1920-2009), Women in politics

Janet Jagan nee Rosenberg – President of Guyana (1997-1999)

Since I’ve already posted Chapter Eight of my work in progress, featuring “Winifred Gaskin: A Political Woman,” I’m moving on to Chapter Nine that portrays another political woman and the first female president of Guyana (1997-1999): Janet Jagan nee Rosenberg. The white American-born wife of Cheddi Jagan—co-founder of the left-leaning People’s Progressive Party (PPP), Guyana’s first political party to garner massive support—was regarded as an “outsider” among the ruling British and local elite at the time.

When I started this book project, I did not plan on including Janet Jagan among the influential women in the formation of my social and political consciousness. As a young devout Christian, I viewed her not only as an outsider but also as a threat to religious education in our parochial schools. Though I did not share her communist ideology, I would be remiss in not acknowledging her influence in empowering Guyanese women to speak out against oppression and injustice by those holding power or authority within the home, workplace, and public spaces. In retrospect, she may well be the driving force for my rebellious attitude towards those in authority: A criticism I received from my religious superiors as a young Catholic nun.

As Cheddi’s wife and political partner, Janet’s remarkable journey is also an interesting case of what can be achieved when the male and female work together as equal partners. Here in the United States, we are still plagued by the patriarchal dominator model of organizing our society. As the world’s greatest democratic nation, we lag behind other countries, advanced and developing, in electing a woman for the top position as president. Since the 1872 elections, several American women have tried and failed. Isn’t it ironic that the first American woman to hold the position did so in a foreign country? Hillary Clinton came close in the 2016 elections. Does Nikki Haley stand a chance in 2024? We have no shortage of remarkable American-born women capable of leading our nation.

We left Guyana for Brazil in 1987 before the PPP returned to power in 1992, after spending 28 years in Parliament as the major opposition party. With her husband as Executive President, the 72-year-old Janet became First Lady of the Republic of Guyana. She was 77 years old when she was elected as Executive President, following Cheddi’s death.

“Archipelagos” – Poem by Jamaican American Poet Geoffrey Philp

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Anthropocene, Capitalism, Climate Crisis in the Caribbean Region, Colonialism, Jamaica/Caribbean, Jamaican American Poet Geoffrey Philp, Poem “Archipelagos” by Geoffrey Philp, Poetry Collection Archipelagos by Geoffrey Philp (UK 2023)

Jamaican American Poet Geoffrey Philp
Photo Credit: Vanessa Diaz / National Library of Jamaica

My Poetry Corner February 2024 features the title poem “Archipelagos” from the poetry collection Archipelagos by poet and novelist Geoffrey Philp, published by Peepal Tree Press (UK, 2023). Born in 1958 in Kingston, Jamaica, Philp left the Caribbean Island nation in 1979 to attend the Miami Dade College in the United States. After graduation, he studied Caribbean, African, and African American literature. As a James Michener Fellow at the University of Miami, he studied poetry with Kamau Brathwaite and fiction with George Lamming.

Philp is the author of seven books of poetry, two books of short stories, a novel, and two children’s books. In 2022, he was awarded the Silver Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica for outstanding merit in literature. That same year, he also received the Marcus Garvey Award for Excellence in Education. A retired Miami Dade College professor, he lives in Miami, Florida.

The publisher Peepal Tree Press describes Philp’s poetry collection Archipelagos as “a call to arms that opens out the struggle for human survival in the epoch of the Anthropocene to remind us that this began not just in the factories of Europe but in the holds of the slave ships and plantations of the Caribbean…. Philp’s powerful and elegant poems span past and present and make it very clear that there cannot be a moral response to the climate crisis that is not also embedded in the struggle for social justice, for overcoming the malignancies of empire and colonialism and the power of global capitalism—the missions of the West that always had and still have at their heart the ideology of white supremacy and a capitalism endlessly voracious for the world’s human and natural resources.”

We Can No Longer Have It All

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Atmospheric CO² Jan 1959 – Jan 2024, City of Los Angeles/California, Climate Change, Climate Crisis, EU Copernicus Global Climate Highlights 2023, Fossil Fuel Emissions, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), NCEI/NOAA Annual 2023 Global Climate Report, NOAA Mauna Loa Observatory, NOAA/NASA 2023 Global Climate Media Briefing, Pineapple Express Atmospheric River, US 2023 Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters Map

Storm Damage from mudslide – Studio City – City of Los Angeles – Southern California – February 5, 2024
Photo Credit: David Crane / Associated Press

The sun is out again. Alleluia! Beginning last Sunday and throughout Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the Pineapple Express atmospheric river unloaded its burden across California. Don’t get me wrong: We need the rain to replenish our state’s depleted reservoirs after years of drought. Is it asking too much not to have the rain all at once? Consider downtown Los Angeles. Within just four days, the area was drenched with more than 8 inches (20 cm) of rain. That’s more than half of the area’s normal annual rainfall of 14.25 inches (36 cm).

We were well warned ahead of the onslaught. To ensure our city had the required resources to respond to the storm’s impacts, on Monday, February 5th, our Mayor Karen Bass signed a Declaration of Local Emergency throughout the City of Los Angeles. Flooding, fallen trees, and hundreds of mudslides were merciless to everything and everyone in their path. I give thanks that our neighborhood was spared from such devastating blows. At our apartment complex, the lawn and garden plots are fully saturated. Some plants thrive in such weather. Others, like some of my succulents, not so much.

Extreme climate change events have become more frequent and severe. How the gods must laugh at human ineptitude in connecting the dots between our behavior and our environment! We can no longer have it all. Yet, we persist in our self-destructive ways of being and doing. Drill, Baby, Drill!