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Hi folks! Happy National Poetry Month!

I generally have a plan for National Poetry Month (last year I wrote poems inspired by short stories), but this year I'm still not sure what I'm doing. I've decided to give myself a break and I'm going to wait until next week to figure it out.

Yesterday, I was trying to accomplish two things that after hours and hours still were not working. One of them was related to my new blog. (I'm trying to move this blog to Wordpress.) I think this will be the last post I put here, other than one that tells you where to go instead. The other thing was related to a birthday.

So that was really frustrating, but in the background, I could see Cory Booker uplifting us with a feat of strength. Physical, intellectual, and moral strength. After being disappointed by so many people and their incompetence, cowardice, and cruelty, it was like a balm for the spirit. Thank you, Cory Booker.

I'm still trying to make this blog migration happen (and birthday event!) and then I'll be back with deets.

Hugs to all!
T.

There's a whole lot of rhythm going 'round

We need the funk,
Gotta have that funk
~Parliament

James Brown, Germany, 1973

For Music Monday, old skool funk R&B from DJ Demetrius:



For something more serious:

Twenty Lessons (from On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder), read by John Lithgow

If you can't fly, then run

And I noticed my new best friend—
by now we were holding hands—had a potted plant poking out of her bag,
some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi-
tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.
~Naomi Shihab Nye

Happy Poetry Friday! Are you ready for National Poetry Month? I'm not, but I hope to get my act together soon. I'll be away next Friday but I'll schedule something. Today, we have a poem that is based on a true story about children striving to become Olympians.

The Ditch Kids of the Maui Sugar Company
by Derek Otsuji

Barred from swimming pools the hot summer long
but loving the delicious cold on our skins,
we dove in ditches dug to irrigate
the same fields where our fathers slogged, under
the supervising eye of a white sun winking
on the blades of their machetes. Of course
there were barbed fences to keep us from ditches,
just as there were codes that banned us from pools
sealed behind an elite sports club’s gleaming
walls, a taboo, like a shiny thing, asking
to be smashed.
Released from sluice gates,
the sloshing water, brown as our arms,
ran down the channels, as we dipped and stroked,
like salmon driven upstream, the russeting
current sliding off flexed shoulder blades
in silted robes as we reached speeds that broke
all barriers and in our homegrown upstart way,
always the outside chance, the dark horse’s surge,
we sugar ditch kids, turning laps like verses
of an olympian ode, plowed that narrow lane
to victory and were crowned aquatic kings.

************************

* The title of the post comes from a quote from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” I thought that was appropriate since the "ditch kids" found a way to keep swimming, and we all need to figure out our own ways to move forward.

* Fighting Back: A Citizen’s Guide to Resistance Ordinary people have more power than they know.

* National Bail Fund Network

* Poetry as a path to recovery for children in Ukraine



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Marcie Flinchum Atkins has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Marcie!

Terra Mariana

Creating a new country from scratch has given Estonia the license to imagine what a country could be.
~Taavet Hinrikus

Having a peaceful Art Thursday with photos of Estonia:

Võipere village
Iifar

Letipea peninsula
Kalev Vask

Noctilucent clouds, Kuresoo bog, Soomaa National Park
Martin Koitmäe

Ruhnu church from 1643–44
Metsavend

Osmussaar
Tõnis Saadre

Heroic

I don't know how it is, but the Germans are amazed at me and I am amazed at them for finding anything to be amazed about.
~Frederic Chopin

Happy Music Monday! Heroic Polonaise (1842) by Frédéric Chopin today, performed by the Berlin Pro Musica Symphony Orchestra.

Flag of the November Uprising that carried the motto
"For our freedom and yours"

Info about the piece from 10 Pieces of Classical Music About Freedom by Emily E. Hogstad:

No sooner had [Polish composer Chopin] left for Vienna... than Warsaw broke out into armed conflict.

The November Uprising in Warsaw lasted from November 1830 until October 1831...

The Poles fought their occupiers, the Russians, but were ultimately crushed.

Chopin was devastated when he heard about the outcome. He wrote in his journal, “Oh God! … You are there, and yet you do not take vengeance!”

...He began incorporating polonaises – a dance form that originated in Poland – into his piano music.

He also began dating Paris-based authoress George Sand, who backed the Polish cause in her writings. After he wrote the Heroic Polonaise, she drew a direct line between the Polonaise and other countries’ fights for freedom and self-determination, writing, “The inspiration! The force! The vigour! There is no doubt that such a spirit must be present in the [1848] French Revolution. From now on, this Polonaise should be a symbol, a heroic symbol.”

A reminder

Unveiling of the
Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World (1886)
by Edward Moran

French MEP Raphaël Glucksmann responding to the White House press secretary’s attack after Glucksmann suggested France should reclaim the Statue of Liberty:

“Dear Americans, since the White House press secretary is attacking me today, I wanted to tell you this:

Our two peoples are intimately linked by history, by the blood we shed, and by our shared passion for freedom—symbolized by the Statue of Liberty, which France gifted to honor your glorious Revolution.

As the press secretary for this shameful administration said: without your nation, France would have ‘spoken German.’ In my case, it goes further: I would simply not be here if Americans hadn’t landed on our beaches in Normandy.

Our gratitude to these heroes and their sacrifices is eternal. But the America of these heroes fought against tyrants, it did not flatter them. It was the enemy of fascism, not the friend of Putin.

It helped the resistance, not attacked Zelensky. It celebrated science, not fired researchers for using banned words. It welcomed the persecuted, not targeted them. It was far—so far—from what your current president does, says, and embodies.

This America—faithful to the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, your America—is worth so much more than betrayal. More than the abandonment of Ukraine and Europe. More than xenophobia and obscurantism.

We in Europe love this nation to which we owe so much. And we know it will rise again. You will rise again. We are counting on you.

And that is why I said in a rally: if your government despises everything the Statue of Liberty symbolizes, we could symbolically reclaim it. It was a wake-up call.

No one, of course, will come and steal the Statue of Liberty. The statue is yours. But what it embodies belongs to all of us. And if your government no longer cares for the free world, we will take up the torch here in Europe.

Until we meet again in the fight for freedom and dignity, we will be the continuators of our shared history and the protectors of our greatest treasure: not copper and steel, but the freedom it represents.”

****************

A poem I wrote last year:

FIRST, THE ARM WITH THE TORCH WAS BUILT

In 1865 when the Union held,
in his mind's eye
Edouard de Laboulaye
spotted the light of a beacon
in the hand of a woman
all the way from France

what greater gift
what better friend
than one who calls forth
the truest self
again and again?  

Calling all dragon-slayers

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.
~J. R. R. Tolkien

Confront the dragon by David Revoy

Happy Poetry Friday!



This Is An Incitement
by Chris Riddell

Don’t settle into inertia
As the ash falls on your head and shoulders,
Soft and ankle deep at your feet

Take up your pens and brushes
And make Art.

The ancient dragon of greed
Coiled tight around their hoards
Don’t understand Art.
But the snake oil minions
Who whisper in their ears as they sleep,
They fear it.

Art can capture the souls
They bought and paid for.
If you want to slay dragons,
Make Art.

***************

Imagine the Possibilities has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Rose!

A housekeeping note: I'm moving my blog to Wordpress! (I've been partially de-Googlifying myself for various reasons...The last straw was removing Black History Month from their calendar. What a bunch of cowards) My new blog is quirky because I can't figure out how some things work, but it should be okay by next Friday.

P.S. Support for US International Media Workers
P.P.S. Creative Protests popping up everywhere
P.P.P.S. Wired: How to Avoid U.S.-Based Digital Services and why you might want to