Race in the USA: Trayvon Martin vs. George Zimmerman

Today, Charles Blow, New York Times, wrote a clear article regarding the injustice of the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman, that declared him not innocent, but not guilty.

Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post wrote a similar article, both men speaking of the travesty of the verdict's injustice and how "the system failed Trayvon Martin."

Both men are black.

I am neither male nor black, brown or a person of colour.  I am female, a senior citizen, well educated, both urban and rural.   In America, I have lived in New England, the sage strewn roads of New Mexico, the Greenwich Village streets of New York City, the dairy farmland of Pennsylvania, the countryside of Charlotte, North Carolina and presently live in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains.

I too believe that the system failed Mr. Martin, a 17 year old black boy walking, or perhaps even sauntering home to his Dad's house after making a run to a neighbourhood convenience store.

I rarely watch the kind of news that runs full cycle on some issue of the day, but I was riveted to the MSNBC coverage until the verdict came in Saturday night.

I was exhausted from the emotion that came up for me whilst hearing the testimony, watching the trial, listening to the analysis, and finally hearing the verdict.   I promised Color of Change I would be alert to any anti-bias against Mr. Martin.  I heard none on MSNBC.

But the case of George Zimmerman's innocence, and the death of Tryvan Martin brings up for me my entire growing up in New York City, the short time I lived in Charlotte, and the period I worked in New England.

Race, racial profiling, discrimination of all kinds was in the air, stronger, if not bolder than jasmine, more poignant than honey suckle, or worse than the stench that only the recycle center gets after days of massive rain.

I could, but have decided against, enumerating the countless times I've encounters racial profiling. If you believe that justice has not been served for the dead young man, sign a petition with Color of Change, or the NAACP.

A writer's library

Oh to have back my library, walls lined with books, one extraordinary comfortable chair, and the sun shining into the tall windows.  But, I gave it up for the road and the end of academia.

But Jack London's library

London's Library, via the William Brown Project ©

brings me back, crawling on my hands and knees to writing.   I'd not quite given it up as I write for the local art alliance, and wrote for more than 5 years for the local newspaper, but I had forsaken my daily writings, glimpses into larger works, noodles of thought, lists, and all in one single journal, often leather bound, and in more recent years in a Moleskine sketchbook.  I didn't draw in those journals, but wrote and wrote.

In 1992, I was determined and succeeded in writing 1000 words each day and not answer the phone or receive visitors until the words were planted on the page.  I did this after Rebby and I did morning pages and worked our way through the Artists Way, Julia Cameron's singular masterpiece of get it going. 

When Rebecca suggested we buy this book on a drive down to Newport (RI) I was aghast and said let's buy one copy and share it.  Then when we began it was clear that we needed two copies and I had to run, or rather drive over to Brown's Bookstore (I still had my faculty ID) and buy a second copy.

Perhaps it was just this sabbatical year or serendipity, but in 1992 I did these exercises, took a workshop on Proprioceptive Writing in Portland (ME) and wrote every day. 

I followed this workshop with a sojourn to Liberty (ME), a quiet place, and a room with a view, in what was once a wreak of a chicken coop, turned into a masterful 3-level house by a fellow aspiring writer.  Each room had floor to ceiling windows and small outdoor porches, all of which captured the light, often dim in Maine.

Liberty Post Office © Michal Flisiuk

M, my friend worked 50 miles from Liberty, left early in the morning and arrived back late in the evening, giving me the house all day to write, and write, and go into Belfast for typewriter ribbon (yes that long ago) and buy great food at the local food cooperative.  But it was writing I was after and writing I got.

One great cooking adventure was when on a weekend we visited a neighbour friend and gathered together tons of just ripened tomatoes.  The two, M and Y had been partners in a herb business and the right pot and lovely dried herbs were waiting for us at home.  I did up a marvelous sauce while wringing out Parsifal's Adventures on a slow moving electric typewriter.

...to be continued...

So Painful! Does anyone hear?

It's early morning. 

I am not at home but enroute from Scotland, Pa  home.  I am stalling because I don't really want to get on the highway and face another 225 miles.

I read the paper, instead and read this story.

Daniel Barden © Washington Post via Barden Family

I find myself distraught.  I nearly cry aloud.  Does anyone in government hear the pleas of those who want a change in gun control?

Just the other day, out on another highway, I heard only a snippet of yet another massacre in Santa Monica, California.  Several dead.  Perhaps more.  The gunman was not identified.  His rage and an automatic weapon palpable.

My father lived in Santa Monica once.   He could have been on those streets, a victim of an armed man with no purpose other than to wreck vengeance on his neighbours or strangers.

What does it take for the US to change its notion of John Wayne, the Wild West and the 2nd amendment?

All the buildings in New York City

What a project!

Flatiron building, NYC

Blog or book by James G. Hancock

Itching Amsterdam

Bloemgracht, Amsterdam

Twenty free things to do in Amsterdam so makes me home sick for my life gone by in City I not only loved, but was loved in  and gave birth.

Gardens and Gardening

New land, new space, old tools, but what are these tools that line the back wall, or float around the new digs waiting for a potential accident to occur.

I really wondered when I picked up what I thought would was the proper tool to prune my sage, now failing, and found she wouldn't do the job.

Alas, alack gardening can be both a delight, and occasionally tiresome.

What Jane Saw, Jane Austin that is!

A new exhibit of what Jane Austin may have seen that inspired her writing is now on line at What Jane saw.

Boy with cabbage nets © Manning

I'm not certain whether I am a fame of Austin's but I've certainly read most, if not all, of her work and gladly went to see what the exhibit was like and if it popped for me.

It may for you!

Poetry: William Wadsworth: Ode, Intimations of Immortality...

536. Ode
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

William Wordsworth. 1770–1850

536. Ode Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.	5
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
The rainbow comes and goes,	10
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;	15
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.
Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound	20
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;	25
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea	30
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy	35
Shepherd-boy!
Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,	40
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,	45
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:—	50
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet	55
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,	60
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come	65
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,	70
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;	75
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,	80
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.	85
Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!	90
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;	95
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long	100
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,	105
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.
Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;	110
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest!	115
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave,	120
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;	125
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?	130
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!
O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,	135
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—	140
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;	145
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,	150
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,	155
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,	160
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!	165
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,	170
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!	175
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright	180
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;	185
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,	190
In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight	195
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;	200
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,	205
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

 

Le Poisson d’Avril 2002

In 2002,  the Belle Papier yahoogroup [ended] traded Poisson d'Avril faux stamps at the instigation of member, Kelly.

With the prospect of new writing paper and somewhat matching envelops, I decided on a very serious whim to decorate a rather nice cigar box with stamps.   I sorted out the Belle Papier stamps from those real stamps from around the world that I received in the mail on envelops, or from friends who brought them back to me from their travels.

Left hand section, under construction

I really enjoyed that exchange.  If anyone wanted to do it again, I'd sure be game.