The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings which are all part of one another and all involved in one another.
Thomas Merton
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/11/30/one-liner-wednesday-ha/
A poem from my poet-friend Merrill Oliver Douglas is up on Silver Birch Press as part of their ONE GOOD MEMORY series. Enjoy!
Cleaning Miller Pond
by Merrill Oliver Douglas
Puzzle: how to nudge this boat
among trailing vines and branches,
squeeze through the one bare space,
poke the reeds with the paddle
and pluck out the Coke can?
Then figure the best wrist action
for flipping a taco wrapper
from beneath the snarl of algae
that streams off the paddle
like hair from a corpse.
The bag between my knees
grows lumpy with Styrofoam
bait buckets, beer cans, a slack-faced
soccer ball, glass and plastic
bottles sloshing grainy water.
Puzzle: why is the world so filled
with slobs? And why,
on a mild spring morning
in downtown Elmira,
does all this garbage
beckon like carnival prizes?
Originally published in Eunoia Review (January 27, 2016).
Photo by Gorlov.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I wrote this poem after helping to pick trash out of three ponds in Elmira, New York, during a volunteer cleanup…
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I’ve got too much on my plate – and my blogging has been suffering because of it.
I’ve been busy with poetry, singing, family activities, and chores and a lot of the other things on my plate, like blogging and doing poetry submissions have been pushed off to the side.
As is often the case, it’s not so much that I need more time as that I need more brain power. While I thought that I had gotten through the alternating bouts of numbness and thought-swirl that happen from grieving, this fall has shown that I was mistaken. I have only limited time when I can concentrate well enough to write – and some days that doesn’t come at all.
I know better than to make promises about catching up on blog posts.
I do have a few submissions that will be coming up on deadlines that need to get moved up on the list of tasks – or to the center of the plate if I can make myself return to the original metaphor – and I will need to work on holiday cards, which are a high priority item for me.
I’m hoping that I will have a couple of poems published in December, so there will be posts for those.
If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to get my mind in a more stable place and clear some of the items off my plate.
(She writes, really trying to do stream of consciousness metaphor…)
Stay tuned…
****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “on your/my plate.” Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/11/25/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-nov-26-2022/
At the Vatican on October 4, 2022, the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi, a new film premiered, entitled The Letter.
The Letter in the title refers to Laudato Si’: On Care for our Common Home, Pope Francis’s 2015 papal encyclical which was addressed not only to Catholics around the world but also to all people of good will. Its release in May helped to build momentum for the Paris climate talks that fall that resulted in 196 countries signing onto the landmark agreement on climate change.
Laudato Si’ espouses integral ecology, which involves both care for the earth and care for all people, especially those most vulnerable. The encyclical cites science and various faith traditions to build a framework for fighting climate change and for lifting up those dealing with hunger, poverty, dislocation, water scarcity, and other challenges.
The film’s title has a second meaning, as the first part of the film shows five people around the world receiving a letter from Pope Francis, inviting them to the Vatican to discuss the issues of Laudato Si’ with him. Together, they represent both “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.” It is these five people and the communities they represent that form the bulk of the film.
They are:
~ Cacique Dadá, an indigenous leader of the Borarí people from the Maró Indigenous Territory of Brazil, representing indigenous communities
~ Arouna Kandé, a climate refugee from Senegal, representing the impoverished
~ Ridhima Pandey, a teen-aged climate justice activist from India, representing young people who are inheriting a world that has been damaged by prior generations
~ Greg Asner and Robin Martin, a married couple from Hawai’i in the United States, who are both marine biologists studying the impacts of climate change on ocean ecosystems, representing the voice of nature
The stories of their native places are stunningly conveyed by director Nicolas Brown and the team of Off The Fence Originals, in conjunction with The Laudato Si’ Movement. I especially appreciated the segments from the Amazonian rain forest and the Pacific marine environments.
I also appreciated the diversity of age, race, gender, country of origin, and faith portrayed in the film. While Pope Francis and the Vatican officials are, of course, Catholic, we see participants who follow other faiths, including Islam and indigenous traditions. It is a true reflection of the encyclical being addressed to “all people of good will.”
In keeping with that diversity, people in the film speak in their native languages with subtitles and narration available in English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. There are also subtitles available for the entire film in many other languages. You may watch the film free of charge at the link in the first paragraph of this post or on the YouTube Originals channel. Details about offering a free screening for groups can be found here.
My hope is that many people around the world will view the film and take action on social and environmental justice issues. We are one human family and we must together care for each other and our common home.
The heart of justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be. More than ever before we, as a society, need to renew a commitment to truth telling.
bell hooks
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/11/02/one-liner-wednesday-almost-the-scariest-halloween-ever/
The Design Thinking Initiative and the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College, my alma mater, are currently spearheading a Common Reassemble project using the works of Emily Dickinson.
To participate in the Emily Dashes project, members of the Smith community take a page or two of Dickinson’s poems and create a response to the work using whatever materials they see fit.
I have submitted two pages. Being more of a poet than a visual artist, I relied on erasure style with a bit of added decoration.
The pages will be displayed at the Poetry Center and may be shared on social media. At the conclusion of the project, they will be assembled and housed at the library as part of the Mortimer Rare Book collections.
What a fun and innovative way to leave a bit of myself “in residence” at Smith!
I was working on a poem to send to Rattle Poets Respond, which is an online series from Rattle in which poets submit new work based on something that happened in the news that week. I was literally on the last step to submit this poem when my daughter E, who lives in London, UK, told me that Liz Truss was about to make a statement. I delayed hitting send and, in those few minutes, the poem became moot. Still, I thought it was worth sharing here as a moment in time.
Liz Truss or Lettuce
Which will last longer?
asks the Daily Star.
On Day One, the iceberg
is unadorned, but soon
enhanced with googly
eyes, a smile,
sprouts a full head
of blonde hair.
While the PM dodges
questions, sheds
Cabinet ministers,
the lettuce tries to stay
fresh, despite the spotlight,
enjoys snacks, a glass
of wine, some tofu
on day six, a nod
to the departed
Home Secretary.
The bookies’ current
odds are 1 / 2
that Liz will outlast
the lettuce.
Place your bets
before it’s too late.
Rattle also requests an explanatory note and links to the news stories involved. This is what I had prepared:
With the government of UK Prime Minister Liz Truss in turmoil, the Daily Star has a livestream of her photo beside an increasingly adorned head of lettuce. Brits seem to have a special talent for finding humor in any situation. A clip explaining the Home Secretary/tofu connection can be found here.
If anyone is moved to share this post or poem, please include my name, Joanne Corey. I hope it will give people a smile or chuckle, however rueful.
Lettuce wins!
My apologies for the infrequent posts as of late. There has been a string of important events and I haven’t had much time/brain for posting, but I did want to get the word out that I am back at The Studios at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) for the annual reunion residency of the Boiler House Poets Collective.
We have three first-time members joining us this year and there have been some renovations at the Studios. With ever-evolving COVID protocols in addition, things feel somehow new as we make our way together, taking the opportunity to re-vamp our usual routine.
I’m very excited that we will be doing our first public reading in several years on Friday, October 14, 2022 at 4 PM at the Artist Book Foundation in North Adams. If you are in the area, come join us for a sampler of the work of eight members of the Boiler House Poets Collective!
One of the fears that I have about COVID is the risk of experiencing long COVID, where any number of a vast constellation of symptoms occurs for months/years after the acute infection phase.
The symptoms are very similar to those that characterize ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome). I have a family member with ME/CFS, so I am achingly familiar with the level of disability that can result. ME used to be referred to as fibromyalgia in the US, but now the ME designation is more common.
The October 5, 2022 edition of the (US) National Public Radio show On Point features an extensive discussion of long COVID and ME/CFS and how long COVID researchers and clinicians are learning from their peers who have been working for years on ME/CFS. All of these conditions are underdiagnosed and undertreated, so I wanted to share this with all of you. I believe this link will permanently take you to a recording of the episode. If the link breaks, you can try searching from the On Point link above or searching on your favorite podcast platform.
Anyone who has experienced these conditions or seen a loved one contend with them knows how difficult they can be. I want to raise awareness so that everyone affected can get the help they need. I also want everyone to realize that these conditions exist and are serious. Too often, affected people are dismissed and told their symptoms are “all in their heads.” While there is still much to learn, help is available, although it may be difficult to find, depending on the medical resources nearby. I hope we will all support research and treatment expansion so that the millions of people affected get the help they need.
Over the last ten or so years, I’ve spent a lot more time thinking about methane than most people.
This is due to the fighting against fracking here in my region with the Marcellus shale, in the shale plays in the US, and the export of the technology around the world.
I will spare you all the detailed things I learned about fracking and methane’s effects on climate from Bob Howarth, Tony Ingraffea, Sandra Steingraber, Walter Hang, and so many others back in the thick of the fight in New York State, which led to first an administrative ban and later a legislative one. One of my roles at the time was to comment on media articles as part of a rapid response team. I learned to argue from economic, health, environmental, social, and other perspectives, depending on the circumstances.
Fun times.
N0t really. It was super stressful. It was also important to get accurate information out into the public and I was very grateful that we were able to get some better policies in place.
Unfortunately, the damage done by fracking and by methane leakage is still with us, widespread and massive.
Atmospheric methane levels are at record highs and are part of the supercharging of global warming that we are seeing now. As a greenhouse gas, methane is more short-lived in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide but it is much more powerful in the near term. In a ten-year timeframe, methane is about a hundred times more powerful than carbon dioxide, so it is imperative to cut emissions of it now to avert various tipping points.
There was a major methane reduction initiative signed last year, which is good. The problem is that emissions have not been carefully measured or monitored by governments and the fossil fuel industry and estimates have been much lower than what some scientific studies have shown. I was just reading about a study earlier in the week and will try to insert the link after I’m done stream-of-conscious-ing.
It’s cold comfort that the problems the scientists and environmentalists have been pointing out for years are finally being more widely acknowledged when so much damage that could have been averted has already been done.
We need to stop adding fossil methane to our climate system in order to have any hope of meeting the 1.5 degree C level in the Paris accord.
I am very distressed about the breaks in the Nordstream pipelines. Every time I see video of the roiling, methane-saturated sea water, I feel sick, knowing how dangerous it is. It’s especially upsetting to see it in juxtaposition with the footage of the devastation caused by hurricane Ian. Most media coverage is finally acknowledging the role of climate change in supercharging storms but I wish they had been doing it years ago when it would have been easier to avert this level of greenhouse gases. We finally have some decent federal legislation in place but the scope of the problem outstrips that level of spending. The damage estimates from Ian will be higher than the climate spending in the law.
Our family over these last years has taken steps to stop using methane. When we installed a geothermal heat pump a few years ago, we were able to disconnect from the methane system. Our electricity comes from either our solar panels or a 100% renewable grid supplier, so we aren’t using electricity generated from burning fossil fuels. I continue to advocate for the transition away from methane and other fossil fuels.
It can’t come soon enough.
*****
Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week was to base your post on “me” or a word that begins with “me.” Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2022/09/30/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-1-2022/
Joanne Corey 