7.30.2020 – I dream a world where

I dream a world where
joy attends the needs of all
A world I dream where

From the poem, I Dream a World by Langston Hughes.

The poem was included in UNCOLLECTED POEMS in the 1941-1950 Collected Works of Langston Hughes, Vol2, University of Missouri Press, 2001.

Quoted today by teacher James Lawson at the Funeral of John Robert Lewis.

As President Barack Obama said in his remarks at the funeral, the work goes on.

The testing of his faith, proved his perservernece.

President Obama said that John Lewis, “Believed in us even when we no longer believe in us.”

I Dream A World

Langston Hughes

I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom’s way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind-
Of such I dream, my world!

7.29.2020 – night of summer stars

night of summer stars
low, near, lazy in the sky
sky of summer stars

Walking at night in the warm dark of summer in Georgia is something you to cannot explain to people up north.

I remember our first 4th of July fireworks down here and realizing it was near midnight and I was still in a T shirt and shorts.

No sweatshirt.

No hoodie.

No long pants.

Up north in Michigan, I was lucky to go out at night and not end up wanting a coat.

Jim Harrison in the Brown Dog novellas writes about a summer in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan without tourists.

It was so cold that people went to the 4th of July fireworks in snowmobile suits and watched the rockets red glare through snow flurries.

Walking in the warm dark of the Georgia night.

Stars so fat and close.

No big names but the North Star and the Big Dipper, maybe Booters, but so many stars without names.

Warm and lazy stars of summer time.

Maybe global warming will bring this Michigan.

Maybe that might bring me back.

Summer Stars
by
Carl Sandburg in Smoke and Steel (Harcourt, 1920).

Bend low again, night of summer stars.
So near you are, sky of summer stars,
So near, a long arm man can pick off stars,
Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl,
So near you are, summer stars,
So near, strumming, strumming,
So lazy and hum-strumming.

7.26.2020 – disasters, trials of

disasters, trials of
common fate, can create bonds
of community

Today’s haiku comes from this snippet of text.

New bonds of community are often created by disaster, as Rebecca Solnit charts in A Paradise Built in Hell.

The shanty town built by survivors of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and the self-organised evacuations New Yorkers arranged with strangers after 9/11, show how people facing a common fate can see themselves as belonging to a single group.

Like the Covid-19 mutual aid groups we see today, these altruistic communities provide glimpses of an alternative world.

From the article, “People power: the best books about the allure of crowds and community“

7.25.2020 – the path most taken

the path most taken
Titanic mentality
the end doesn’t change

It seems to me that in the old show, F Troop, a comedy about the good old days in the US Cavalry in the post Civil War West, there was this ongoing gag.

One of the Native American characters was always reading a book on the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

At some point some one would say, “Are you reading that again?”

And the character would answer, “I like how it ends.”

Last night I was watching TV and low and behold a lady from where I live in Gwinnett County was on CNN.

She was telling the CNN Anchor why she and other parents wanted the schools here in Gwinnett, the nations 4th or 5th largest school district, to be open in a few weeks.

She said she felt she was on the Titanic and there was no room in the lifeboats for her and other people who felt like her.

Her comments stuck with me.

It comes to me that the Titanic is a great analogy for where this great county is right now.

All the technology you can ask for.

All the power and services you can ask for.

All the anything you could ask for.

And neighbors, let me tell you, the story ends the same way.

THE

SHIP

SINKS.

We can argue on the course that got us here.

We can argue about who gets in the lifeboats.

We can argue about how to launch the lifeboats.

But in the end.

The story ends the same way.

The

Ship

Sinks.

I am getting more and more used to the idea that WE ARE ON THE TITANIC.

We are sinking.

Congress seems to think we have time to argue about it.

A lot of people seems to think we have time to argue about it.

This morning on TV I heard what I think was a one time Sec of Treasury in another (GW BUSH, OBAMA) administration who said it wasn’t the amount of financial aid in the next the stimulus package it was the LENGTH OF TIME the package would be available.

I cling to that.

One voice saying look at the length of time here folks.

I feel like these arguments and discussions on payments, masks, schools, quarantine, social distancing and what not are important, but in the grand scheme, no one will care.

Why?

Because.

The

Ship

Sinks.

The end of the story stays the same.

Only this time, I do not think any one is going to like how the story ends.

7.23.2020 – every nation gets

every nation gets
the government it deserves
argue, though it fits

“Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite” said Joseph de Maistre (1 April 1753 – 26 February 1821) as recorded in the Correspondance diplomatique, tome 2. Paris : Michel Lévy frères libraires éditeurs, 1860, p.196.

And if you wonder why every nation gets the government it deserves, Maistre argued that constitutions are not the product of human reason, but rather come from God, who slowly brings them to maturity.

Or, as Thomas Jefferson put it (and I have quoted this quote far to often but I am going to keep quoting it until it sinks in);

“Indeed I tremble for my country when reflect that God is just:

that his justice cannot sleep for ever:

that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events:

that it may become probable by supernatural interference!

The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest”

Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII: Manners