Playlist: It's Not What You're Given. It's What You Do With What You Get
Compiled By: Susan J. Cook

These days, from the new fascination with genetic endowment and Ancestry to the moral entitlement of any number of religious sects, what you are given is grabbed to like a brass ring. Enough to make a difference. Turns out though, as the lyrics of a great Maine jazz singer remind us, it's not what you're given, it's what you do with what you get.
The Happiness of the Human Family and Its Familiar Enemy
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 04:45
All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, Tolstoi wrote as the first sentence in Anna Karenina. The epitaph he chose to precede it , though, is from the Bible, Romans 12 verse 19. ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repayeth, saith the lord.’ There is no family that quite fits Tolstoi’s juxtaposition of these two observations as well as our very large human family because the variations humans find to reap unhappiness in their own deliberate vengeful acts against others seems endless. We witnessed this most recently in San Bernandino.
But we have seen these cold deliberate acts disregarding human connection before. They are not new. Remembering might help us acknowledge this couple’s deliberate creation of unhappiness is a familiar enemy of the human family- vengeance- in the same family that Tolstoi said so casually and yes, sometimes, monotonously carries out its happiness.
The Happiness of the Human Family and Its Familiar Enemy -Susan Cook- All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, Tolstoi wrote as the first sentence in Anna Karenina. The epitaph he chose to precede it , though, is from the Bible, Romans 12 verse 19. ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repayeth, saith the lord.’ There is no family that quite fits Tolstoi’s juxtaposition of these two observations as well as our very large human family because the variations humans find to reap unhappiness in their own deliberate vengeful acts against others seems endless. We witnessed this most recently in San Bernandino. But we have seen these cold deliberate acts disregarding human connection before. They are not new. Remembering might help us acknowledge this couple’s deliberate creation of unhappiness is a familiar enemy of the human family- vengeance- in the same family that Tolstoi said so casually and yes, sometimes, monotonously carries out its happiness. Please remember the murder by hooded Ku Klux Klansmen of a quiet civil rights supporter Emmet Till in the 1960‘s America. Please remember the Holodomar, Stalin’s deliberate starvation of millions of Ukrainians in the rich fertile farmlands of Ukraine in the 1930’s. Please remember the Nazi Doctors who willingly used concentration camp prisoners as human subjects in cruel sadistic medical experiments. Please remember the Rwanadan genocide in which one million Tutsis were murdered in 100 days by the Hutu majority. There are many many examples of cold indifference to the human consequence of deliberately created unhappiness. A peculiarity of the San Bernadino massacre is that parents of a six month old girl carried it out, deliberately disregarding their connection to her. That peculiarity of the perpetrators might even raise the question of whether the parents alleged motivator Isis, carries such force as to untie one of the human family’s most primitive instincts, to bond with and protect a child. We, after all, worry about the abandonment of a six month old, who by the time they left her that morning would have developed the stranger wariness that attachment brings and now, in her six month old way, knows in her typically human family way, that the most familiar faces, those of her parents, have not come back. These odd parents, concerned enough about the continuity of their membership in the human family to leave a descendant have now out of their vengeance left her alone. One wonders if they were becoming so attached to her and she to them that thoughts of leaving her were becoming- as they do- intolerable- thus pushing them to act soon, before the enormous power that six-month old babies attached to their parents have to keep them close thus rendering parents powerless and unable to tolerate abandoning the child. A six month old’s need for others and their need for the six month old is one of the places the human heart can not withstand pressure no matter where it comes from to leave someone behind. The bond is too powerful. The vengeance of Isis and these terrorists has been seen before . But it has not yet succeeded in undoing the wistfulness of a six month old looking for her lost connection or our acknowledgment of that distress. That, may be, after all what keeps the effortless unfolding of unremarkable happiness in the human family in the first place, a sensibility no vengeance has ever succeeded in doing away with.
"All Happy Families are Like One Another; Each Unhappy Family is Unhappy in Its Own Way" : The Holidays and the High Conflict Divorce
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 08:12
Some holiday recommendations for divorced parents, the American Bar Association and all who re-cast the spell of Santa Claus every year.
All Happy Families are Alike; Each Unhappy Family is Unhappy in its Own Way:
Some High Conflict Divorce Holiday Recommendations
-Susan Cook-
Children know that holiday giving, receiving and sharing does not alone dispell the hostilities of high conflict divorce. "All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" Tolstoi began in Anna Karenina (p.17, 1961. Original 1877) . The traumatic severing of high conflict divorce inflicts an unhappiness different for each child . Bessel Van derKoerk, MD identifies Developmental Trauma as one of its outcomes. Like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - an array of nightmares, flashbacks, hyper-vigilance, disruptive anxiety and the self-deprecation of depression- are now carried internally by the child. It is one of the most under acknowledged emotional traumas of our time.
Lawyers know high conflict divorce litigation is a rainmaker. The 40-60,000 dollar divorce means victory- after all that money is spent- becomes the priority- and often cost to the child uncomplaining but internalizing it all, knowing that intense protest all by itself breaks relationships.
After all; hostile divorce threatens the childhood spell that a family never really stops being a family. I use the word spell not to make light of psychological experience- but rather to emphasize the magic of its refuge. My doctoral dissertation research (Cook, S.J. A Sense of Belonging, A Sense of Place: The Child in the Family and the Perspective Taken. Harvard University, 1986. ) included interviews with about 90 children and adolescents about their conceptions of family continuity and attachment. A longitudinal study of children who were between 7 and 11 when I first began the study formed a small, matched sibling subset of the larger project. All children answered questions like: Does a family ever stop being a family? When you're 50 and your sister is 53, will you still be a family?
Astonishingly, 96 percent of the girls held that a family never stops being a family- even if parents divorce. Seventy six percent of the boys held that view. These particpants were in 1st , 2nd and 3rd grade.
The children I studied longitudinally, between age 7 and 11 at time one, were young adults, between 19 and 23, the third and last time. By the third interview, parents of half of the sibling pairs had divorced.
The findings were curious, heartening and worthy of a good listen by every divorce judge and attorney. If anything, time made the children studied longitudinally even more a captive of the "spell" of unconditional family attachment.
Here is Sam who I talked when he was seven, ten and then at 19.
At seven, he told me that family is always a family " because Mom and Dad still remember you and they have pictures of you when you're young and stuff and you will always be a family and even when Mom and Dad die, we'll still be a family because I'll always remember them."
Then, at age 10, "We'll still be a family but we won't get in each other's way and well forget about them more, much more...You'd get in touch with them once in awhile, like Christmas."
By 19 yrs., 9 months, Sam's parents had divorced.
But Sam said, "Even though marriage isn't for life, parenting is. So it's always a family I think no matter how tight they are...no matter how much turmoil is going on,in a certain family, at a wedding or a funeral, everyone would be there....Because it really reasserts who they, who they are. I think like touching base. Like coming home, for me today, I came home. I hadn't been home in awhile and I just sort of lay down where my bed used to be and it was calm, it was soothing, it's protection then you carry that with you. That sense of knowing you always have some place where you can just go and you don't have to look behind your back."
A few Christmas or Hanukkah or Kawanza caveats, for divorced parents- made with the mental health of children in mind.
Cast the spell over yourself that children - especially girls- hold onto. "You are always a family. And you were once a family. Make what the remembering of this season memorable. Do not let this year be the year the hatred exchanged with your ex- be - who knows- just enough to break that spell and make that family- once and for all- no longer a family.
Secondly, for the American Bar Association, please publicly disclose state-by-state the amount of revenue raised by attorney divorce fees- attorney by attorney. There are children who need protection from abusive caretakers. They also need protection from indifferent litigators.
Third, the mental health consequences of family dissolution are not Christmas fantasy They are found for real not just in the broken spirits of children torn from caretakers at the US/Mexico border. A 9 year old I interviewed had been taken from her biological mother when she was 3. In a foster home, she had formed a very close attachment to a foster mother. Now 9, I asked if she had a mother. She told me she thought she did but she thought she had died. She brought a torn and wrinkled photograph, of the mother who was not dead but had been denied contact with the child for several years through a detached, distant legal decision by a court appointed guardian who distorted almost all the facts.
Any one adult can offer real life examples of the hostility that buries family connection. But just like adults world wide collude in the play therapy of someone named Santa Claus, how about taking on this one- even in the most contemptuous divorce . That once upon a time, there was a mom and a dad... now remember the good parts. and keep your hostilty at bay- if only for a day.
The Thickness of the Moral Skin of the US Senate: To Be the Catcher in the Rye
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 08:19
The thickness of moral skin is sometimes measured in the willingness of its inhabitants to take on the risk of being the catcher in the rye- the one who protects the children running toward danger. The US Senate during the hearings to vet a Supreme Court nominee stepped aside- almost to a one. The spectacle was almost like watching the ingenuousness of Holden Caulfield falling away after encountering the world's indifference- this time right in front of us.
The Thickness of the Moral Skin of the US Senate: To Be the Catcher in the Rye
"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye? I'd like-"
"It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said. "It's a poem. By Robert Burns."
"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."
She was right, though. It is "If a body meet a body coming through the rye." I didn't know it then, though.
"I thought it was "If a body catch a body'," I said."Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around-nobody big, I mean-except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch eveybody if they start to go over the cliff-I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."
After Holden Caulfield has this conversation with his little sister, in his sojourn before entering a psychiatric hospital, he calls up Mr. Antolini, the Pencey Prep teacher . "He's the one that finally picked up that boy that jumped out the window I told you about, James Castle. Old Mr. Antolini felt his pulse and all, and then he took off his coat and put it over James Castle and carried him all the way over to the infirmary. He didn't even give a damn if his coat got all bloody."
In the aftermath of the confirmation hearing of a prep school alumnus who left a trail of nightmares and unresolved trauma in the emotional web of one 15 year old, the thickness of the moral skin of US Senate members comes to mind. I'll talk about the 2 from my state since I know most about their moments of moral cowering.
In 2007, I was interviewed and quoted by a reporter for Current.org , a public broadcasting newspaper. Susan Collins had contributed mightly to the firing of a popular Friday night jazz host who had criticized the Iraq War- in a genial, understated. way Turns out that the Maine public broadcasting Board of Trustees was comprised of members who together gave over $160,000 to the Republican party. I said (look it up) that Mainers would work hard to defeat Susan Collins in her next go-round she being someone who engages in activities that usually get legislators thrown out of Washington. Now, Senator Collins does not like anyone making reference to her pre-marital relationships in her first 50 years of dating eligibility or recreational activities. That off-sides view that Susan Collins endorses about her own past, may explain her minimizing the testimony of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's sexually assaulted victim. Indecent exposure is also illegal. Instead, she insisted his distortions, lies and beligerence toward his 2018 Senate questioners had nothing to do with his judicial temperament. By Collins' side, as she announced her choice, was Maine's recent failed GOP gubernatorial candidate, former DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew whose cost-cutting adminstration co-occurred with an almost unparalled number of deaths of children at the hands of their foster, biological or step-parents.(https://www.pressherald.com/2018/05/14/letter-to-the-editor-mayhews-dhhs-neglected-maines-children/)
Senator Collins usually hires out her thin moral skin and backlash toward those who threaten. Her one-time Director of New Media Matthew Gagnon was a player on the Maine political commentator scene whose willingness to bully has been documented on the front page of Maine's largest newspaper.
Then there's Maine's other Senator Angus King who ires quickly when anyone calls him out on his - ahem- purchase - when he was governor- of a state-owned oceanfront parcel of land abutting one of Maine's pristine ocean-side state parks. I even a wrote some lyrics sung to the tune from "America the Beautiful" which his purchase decidely was not.The purchase was documented in the Times Record and noted there was no "public bidding" on a piece of property that any one knew would do nothing but increase in value. It is now worth many times what he paid for it by encouraging the right state employee .
"Oh beautiful for spacious me, for land I'd like to buy,
that borders on state property in Georgetown or nearby,
that suddenly the state of Maine would like to sell to me,
the ocean deep, the price real cheap, what better guy than me?"
The morally thin skin of US Senators created a Brett Kavanaugh nomination and hearing that has left millions of sexual assault survivors in this country with a deep sense of moral betrayal. While survivors are compromised because of the emotional fissures trauma creates, many have stepped forward to disclose, despite the insistent cacophony of shame and the self-doubt that the assault is their own fault. Withstanding that self-blame requires morally thick skin which the moral imperative of the Kavanaugh hearing creates.
I do not trust Senator Collins or our other Senators- to be- we all hope they might- the catcher in the rye. Only one came to Holden Caulfield's mind- the teacher who carried the suiciding adolescent boy and didn't even care if he got blood on his jacket. Senator Collins and her GOP Senators minimized the belligerance, hostility and denial of his past of a Supreme Court nominee accused - not in a trial- but a job interview. In the wake of that dismissal, many, many sexual assault survivors who the equally morally thin-skinned Lindsay Graham said "have a problem"( hint: are flawed, damaged, mentally ill) will go home and direct the damage toward themselves- in self-harm, self-mutilation, if not suicidality.
Not one of these Senators can be trusted to be the catcher in the rye- nor can this Supreme Court nominee-. They are far too frightened of getting blood on their jackets or their morally thin skin.
"It's Not What You're Given, It's What You Do With What You Get: An Antidote to Donald Trump World"
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 05:57
Recently, two Washington Post reporters looked at how human beings are valued in Donald Trump world, now, and as he turned the $200000 his father gave him into billions. The values of Trump world are very different from a rural state like Maine where deer, beavers, fish, rare endangered wildlife , serene forests, trucks that work, no traffic and enduring cold, long winters well have special value. There are Maine virtuosos who celebrate the values of rural life. Listening to them is an antidote, to the queasy feeling left in the stomach by the lip-smacking exclusionary greed of Donald Trump world.
"It's not what you're given. It's what you do with what you get," the bootstrapping virtuoso blues singer, Pat Pepin, sings. She riffs about free Wal-mart’ overnight parking for campers and RVs , and cherishes her “long-haul trucker”. Another virtuoso is Robert Skoglund, The humble Farmer, whose oldtime jazz radio program is now making its way into New York City radio air waves. Humble’s program was removed from Maine public radio for - I guess you could call it - political insubordination - for criticizing the Iraq War. Humble has all the qualities necessary for a Donald Trump world antidote because humble really does value money, not quantity, but every breathing atom and neutron and ounce of chemical valence on its surface.
We hope his listeners will drink deeply of this antidote, the radio detox- for the money culture-the Donald Trump world that’s forgotten that $.99 can be far far better quality than several billion because, as Pat Pepin sings, it isn’t what you’re given. It’ s what you do with what you get.
In Donald Trump world, quantity of money takes precedence over quality of money . Thus the welfare tenants of his New York apartments and Mexican immigrants are devalued because they don’t have any money. If he allowed welfare tenants into his apartments, Trump said , “there would be a massive fleeing from the city, not only our tenants but the community as a whole.“ In Donald Trump world, people shouldn‘t get caught. Thus, he said Senator John McCain is not a hero because, as Trump said, he likes people who don’t get caught. The measure of the man is his money, no matter how he got it; the woman, her physical appearance, no matter the cost in self-devaluation or sexual exploitation. After all, he told the reporters, as a young man, he dated often. “These were beautiful women. but many of them couldn’t carry on a normal conversation.“ One might ask, why then seek their company, because in Trump world, the true measure of success is not getting caught -without physical attractiveness, money or by the atrocities of war, or I suppose, a good lie. The values of Trump world are very different from a rural state like Maine where deer, beavers, fish, rare endangered wildlife , serene forests, trucks that work, no traffic and enduring cold, long winters well have special value. There are Maine virtuosos who celebrate the values of rural life. Listening to them is an antidote, to the queasy feeling left in the stomach by the lip-smacking exclusionary greed of Donald Trump world. “It’s not what you’re given, it’s what you do with what you get” Maine’s bootstrapping virtuoso blues singer, Pat Pepin sings. She riffs about free Wal-mart’ overnight parking for campers and RVs and cherishes her “long-haul trucker” who’s in it for the “long haul” Another Maine virtuoso is Robert Skoglund, The humble Farmer, whose oldtime jazz radio program was removed from Maine public radio for - I guess you could call it - political insubordination - for criticizing the Iraq War. Like Donald Trump world, “humble” values money, every breathing atom and neutron and ounce of chemical valence on its surface, but he goes for quality. On his early American jazz program, humble, immodestly complains about how expensive Goodwill stores have become- what with shirts that used to cost $.99 now going for over seven dollars. And his gustatory taste well satisfied by a can of spaghetti uncooked. Eaten. And then there is his trademark reference to his wife Marsha as “the almost perfect woman” which - raised the hackles of our assertiveness trained Maine feminists who assumed his remarks were drawn from the one to ten scale of physical attractiveness of Donald Trump world. And yes, Donald Trump regaled the days when he observed several “well-known super models” in a fast-track New York night club engaging in let’s say- physical actions on a bench in the center of the room “each one with a different guy”. But, no, “humble” wasn’t referring to a Donald Trump world one to ten rating. When finally asked what would make his wife perfect, humble said, “If I was 19.“ And thus an 80 something man valuing a woman in the same way Adam and Eve did is an antidote to the Donald Trump world, which is not exactly like the garden of Eden- even if he was only watching. Recently, The humble Farmer has announced that his radio show is indeed bound for the New York City radio waves. On WFDU at 89.1FM . There we hope his listeners will drink deeply of this antidote, the public radio detox- for the money culture-the Donald Trump world that’s forgotten that $.99 can be far far better quality than several billion because as Pat Pepin sings, it isn’t what you’re given. It’ s what you do with what you get.
"It's Not What You'reGiven, Its What You Do With Wat You Get: An Antidote to Donald Trump World""
-Susan Cook-
Two Washington Post reporters recently looked at how human beings are valued in Donald Trump world, now and as he carried on while turning the first $200000 his father gave him into billions.
It's Not What You're Given, It's What You Do With What You Get: My Supermarket Monopoly Game and The Pentagon Budget
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 08:36
Fifty-four cents of every federally appropriated dollar goes to the Defense Department budget. Exactly where, the Pentagon auditors find "impossible" to track. Maybe they should hire some Supermarket game auditors to help out.
It's Not What You're Given, It's What You Do With What You Get:
My Supermarket Monopoly Contest and the Pentagon Budget
In my state, the annual "Shop, Play, Win Monopoly"game, a"Collect and Win" game offering" "over $250 million in prizes and money saving offers" after 3 months of fabulous opportunities at every checkout moment at my local Supermarket is winding down.
Fingers crossed . I finally went through the hours long process of tearing open (along the perforated lines, of course) each potential gold mother lode held in each small folded square (one for each 10 dollars spent) and then placing each individual rectangular stamp (after meticulously moistening the back) on the "Monopoly Board.
The one million dollar cash prize required that you randomly receive 6 certain stamps each with an assigned number (333A1, 334B1, 335C1, 336D1, 337E1 and 338F1) of bewildering complexity.
I knew it would be tough to win that. So I set my sights slightly lower, the $100,000 cash prize maybe with only 5 specifically numbered stamps .
In every single category I came up one stamp short with the exception of the One Million Dollar prize in which I came up 2 short. Correction, I also came up 2 short for the $500 Portable Grill and Groceries which I didn't really want. Last year, almost the same thing happened. I won nothing.
But how is it that a supermarket chain presenting the same contest in several states offering 28 different prizes manages to precisely track the distribution of millions of these tiny rectangular stamps and confidently state that 3 lucky shoppers "might" win the million dollars or 250 "might" win the $500 Portable Grill and Groceries?
This is in stunning contrast to The Nation magazine's article (November 27, 2018) "Exclusive: The Pentagon's Massive Accounting Fraud Exposed". Independent auditors Ernst and Young and others hired to externally audit the Department of Defense reported it impossible to have a reliable audit because of a completely flawed Pentagon accounting system. The audit request came because The Pentagon for 26 years failed to internally audit themselves despite the 1990 Chief Financial Officers' Act requiring all departments and agencies to reliabily internally audit. Only the Pentagon has failed to comply. Impossible to have a reliable Pentagon audit? So, why doesn't the Pentagon hire auditors who took the same statistics classes the people who design the "Shop, Play, Win Monopoly " game did? In the supermarket game, "impossible" probably means one person getting all the little stamps to win "the Million Dollars" and "the $500 Portable Grill and Groceries" and the "$30,000 Jet Skis" . Maybe the "$20,000 College Tuition". And, you know, the Supermarket statisticians know exactly the impossibility of one person winning all 4 of the prizes .
Now, the bookkeepers at the Pentagon have far better benefits and far better salaries. than the Supermarket chain contest makers, let alone the benefits and salaries of the high school kids and young adults who work as baggers and cashiers. But those Supermarket statisticians still figure out these complicated probabilities and get every penny the Federal government levies on the workers in taxes.
By the way, The Pentagon receives $.54 out of every dollar of federal appropriations.
It has a 2.7 trillion dollar budget and no one knows exactly where that money goes.
The Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan said at least they tried and the Pentagon didn't think they would pass anyway. That attitude would not be tolerated at my local supermarket chain. They after all track those millions of rectangular stamps and insure that only 75 of the "$7500 Family Vacation" prize will be available. Or have the where-with-all to hire auditors who can. No way will more than 75 people ever become lucky winners of that prize- unless- through some miracle in which Pentagon bookkeepers are suddenly cast down the ladder of success and hold jobs at the Supermarket Chain corporate headquarters. And then more Family Vacations then you could imagine going to the unsuspecting shoppers who- it turns out- with the same stroke of Pentagon incompetence have a major lucky day.
The Nation article went on to say that years of fraud in the Pentagon books works like this. Quote "When the Dept of Defense submits its annual budget requests to Congress, it sends along the prior year's financial reports, which contain fabricated numbers. The fabricated numbers disguise the fact that the DoD does not always spend all the money Congress allocates in a given year. However, instead of returning such unspent funds to the US Treasury, as the law requires, the Pentagon sometimes launders and shifts such money to other parts of the DoD budget." All of it a violation of the US Constitution. And thus the Pentagon's budget increases every single year.
Congress does not demand that the Pentagon enforce the 1990 Chief Financial Officers Act . Each year, the cost of the military budget goes up and up.
Going through the Supermarket Checkout line is very poignant sometimes. Food is our life blood. Sometimes, there's the young mom trying to keep a baby quiet and a 4 year old engaged while waiting to see the cost of all the food piled high in her grocery cart. Food is a largely unsubsidized commodity in this country or at least never subsidized at the $.54 cents of every dollar that the military receives. Until Congress demands that the financial record be set straight, no one knows exactly what the Pentagon spends on what. But you can bet, when military conflict comes, the Pentagon is more than willing to entice the low-paid , no subsidized college tuition - federally taxed supermarket workers- to enlist or - be drafted- to place their lives in the the lottery that every military bloodbath inevitably creates.
One small correction. I did win won thing this year. A free bagel.
Compassion and Its Blindspots: Women's Turn for No Compassion in Alabama
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 08:09
A Buddhist teacher talking about Compassion told the story of the leader ripping open his vein to feed a starving stranger. Bodily acts coming out of compassion to prevent suffering are found in many spiritual traditions. The blindspots in compassion in this society it appears may now prevent recognition of the decision to end a pregnancy as one of those acts.
Compassion and Its Blindspots: Finding A New Dedication to Merit
I heard a Buddhist teacher talk recently about Compassion, he born in Bhutan. In Bhutan, wealth is measured by Gross National Happiness, not a Gross National Product. There is no military. Hatred, anger and suffering the teacher said are dispelled by compassion. He explained the origin of a Buddhist liturgy that like in any other tradition people will repeat without really understanding its significance. The liturgy recited after a lengthy practice session or teaching goes like this,
By this merit may all obtain omniscience,
May it defeat the enemy wrongdoing,
From stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness and death,
from the ocean of samsara may I free all beings
A variation of this liturgy says,
By the confidence of the golden sun of the Great East
May the lotus garden of the rigdens' wisdom bloom
May the dark ignorance of sensient being be dispelled.
May we all obtain profound brilliant glory.
The merit , he explained, comes from an example set by the ruler of a mythical and beatific country where establishing compassion was the standard by which everyone lived. Some very dark evil carnivorous beings came who had no compassion and because this was a country where killing to eat was not tolerated, they had nothing to eat. They came to the ruler, starving and on the verge of death and asked him to given them food. And the ruler ripped open his vein and gave them blood to save them and from this he created the Dedication of Merit.
From the beginning of time, war and conflict between men (largely) has been the source of blood sacrifice that is considered noble, patriotic, beyond question as an act of valor. Compassion rarely comes from that. Rather, we are more familiar with body strewn images of the Civil War, World War I and II, the Vietnam War, any war that comes to mind. and the misery of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder so closely associated with those who survive the horrors of war. Somewhere along the line, the ripping open of the veins to feed the starving as an act of compassion to end suffering has been subverted: the patriotic encouraging the blood shed unaccompanied by compassionate intent.
This brings us to the current vitriol surrounding the termination of pregnancies. There is much more beyond conception to creation of compassionate care for the breathing born 40 weeks or less later. This is not a secret. Women know what is not available to the unborn, the deprivations of the unborn in utero that psychological and emotional despair, poor nutrition, poverty, alcohol and opiod use, and abuse of the body of the woman carrying the child creates. Who bears the deprivation of care most significantly, if the infant survives to a breathing birth, is the child.
The decision to terminate a pregnancy is the ripping open of the vein like the king in the Dedication of Merit origin- a choice to bear the suffering oneself rather than 40 weeks later pass the deprivation, the abuse, the harm onto a being only able to breath on their own at birth.
Like the leader, it is an act of compassion in which one bears the consequence ones self. It is only in white Western elite societies that sophisticated medical technology allows survival of some infants after birth that in third world countries without medical sophistication do not never survive.
The "merit" that Donald Trump know endorses as a criteria for immigration to this country reifies the White Western elitism seen in births that survive because of sophisticated medical technology and the absence of that "merit" in third world countries.
There is no license granted in any spiritual tradition to my knowledge to reserve bodily sacrifice for the War dead. The ruler ripping open his vein to feed those filled with hatred and contempt as an act of compassion is not unlike those ending a pregnancy who openly acknowledge their own inability to provide compassionate care because no mystery here- society or family do not or will not provide the care either. The deprivation of care after birth is passed on after a 40 week gestation period- if a breathing being endures the deprivations. Many do not feel entitled to make the zygote, the embryo, the fetus bear the suffering of the deprivation. Like the Buddhist leader who chose to bear it himself, they choose to bear it themselves and terminate the pregnancy.
There is a spiritual blindspot in the pronouncements of the Alabama and Missouri governors who pass legislation to ban termination of all pregnancies because- this is no mystery either- they fail to acknowledge "the life" they alledgely are saving needs much much more to survive to a live birth let alone grow to and through a healthy childhood. In keeping with the Dedication of Merit, we could establish a new merit rating for each for these states that pretend to glorify life by assessing these qualities:
-availability of free birth control to all conception-eligible women to prevent unwanted pregnancy
-provision of housing, food, medical care and employment at a living wage scale for women during pregnancy
- provision of safe, reliable, well monitored child care immediately after birth
-Medicaid and Medicare for all
- Food stamps distributed without shaming or race-baiting
-psychological and psychotherapy intervention widely available
-healthy, safe foster care if a mother cannot provide care
Men or family may well not be willing or able to provide care. In the United States,society is not- no surprise- our extended family. And for the woman who is victimized, incested, raped, shunned, broke, abandoned, partner-less, or damaged in body, mind and spirit, ripping open the vein, terminating a pregnancy may be the only act of compassion available and she chooses it.
Seeing Consequence Before It Happens: Asking Questions about Children who are Suffering, Noticing the Answer
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 05:20
We know the consequence of indifference.In late 2017, Maine witnessed 3 murders of children: 2 by foster care-takers, one at the hands of the nonbiological partner of the parent and a pregnant parent. Just-like-that. Although we know it was not just-like-that. It was consequence. And we have to say, from the Commissioner of the Dept. of Health and Human Services on down, ours to be accountable for.
Seeing Consequence Before It Happens: Asking Questions, Noticing the Answer
-Susan Cook-
Why Women Don't Tell, Part 2: July 20, 1969 for Some Women Means Remembering Violence
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 06:29
The 54th anniversary of the Moon Landing reminds some of us that violence toward women and girls is still minimized.
Death of a Paddler
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 06:41
Those who sign on for white water rafting trips, fishing and hunting day trips are hoping to find a few hours or so of Great Abandon, an experience the Pandemic has made even more difficult for many Americans to access. Just a little over a year ago, a River rafting Guide who brought that experience to many passed on. And now so much has changed.
- Playing
- Death of a Paddler
- From
- Susan J. Cook
Death of a Paddler
A white water rafting guide died on July 24, last year, four weeks after being diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. "Sully" was a white water rafting guide out of the West Branch of the Penobscot slightly northwest of the place where the flow of the East leg joins it to become the Penobscot River.
When I was told that he died of a very aggressive cancer four weeks after initial diagnosis, my first thought was, "I wonder if he had health insurance." White water rafting guides, registered Maine Guides, commercial fisherman, small family farmers, all the self-employed seasonally based vocations that are the bristling heart and soul that Maine's natural resources offer up, do not have a reliable, affordable health insurance network. Going without means missing medical check-ups.
I only knew this particular guide because he was a guest at a relative's wedding, the groom and his bride, both White Water Rafting Guides. The wedding celebrated every aspect of Maine's outdoors. The vows were exchanged on "Miss Moggin", a lobster boat decorated with white tulle, moored off Pumpkin Island Lighthouse, at the southern end of Eggemoggin Reach. Other wedding guests reached the wedding location on a boat formerly used as an island mailboat which tied up on the port side of the "Miss Moggin" and the "Millie", a smaller lobster boat tied up on the starboard. The officiant, a commercial fisherman, donned his white Captain's shirt, trimmed with gold braid epaulets along with a white dress cap loaned to him for the occasion by the local Fire Department chief. Under blue skies, with a fair wind, over sixty guests on the mailboat, 30 others on the Miss Moggin and 10 on the Millie observed as the couple vowed "to love and cherish" "til' death do us part" noting that "marriage is a vow not to be taken lightly". The bride wore a white, empire-style wedding gown, with beaded bodice and lace overlays. Both the bride and groom wore boat shoes. The Miss Moggin, despite the white tulle, still looked like a lobster boat which the groom's soon-to-be-mother-in-law noted, to no one in particular, “She knows I don't like boats.”
At the reception, the couple's engagement with the outdoors was on full display: the two tier wedding cake, decorated with fishing rods, canoes, moose, deer and white water rapids, a collage of the couple with the moose which the bride had shot when she won a permit through the Moose Lottery, with the groom as co-permitee. Several photos of the couple with deer and various fish they shot or caught together were included, along with one photo of a rafting run in which the groom served as stern paddler with the bride paddling at the side. The best man congratulated the groom on sharing his life with a bride willing to lather herself up with fly dope, to walk 2 miles through the woods to fish for trout.
The bride invited the crowd "to party it down". Sully and the white water rafting guides, dressed in their semi-formal wedding attire: water-proof sandals, short-sleeved shirts and dressy water-proof shorts,took her up on it. Their gift to the bride was a bottle of "Hot Damn", a Made-in-Maine liquer. The female rafting guides decided to move away from the stuffiness of the dance floor to the less restrictive area on the top of their table (#11 in the Guest Seating Guide) from which the dishes had been cleared. They were joined , shortly thereafter, by their male rafting guide companions, Sully included. They danced with great abandon until the groom's maternal aunt tapped the dancer closest to her on the ankle, pointing to the table that looked like it might break. "Thank you", she said, and they got down. The party was, one of rafting guides said, "A Ray-jah (spelled R-a-g-e-r).
Great abandon moves a body through a landscape far different from a cancer diagnosis that ends a life in 4 weeks.Great abandon is what day trippers try to get a taste of when they sign up for a rafting trip. Maine legislators, if they want to insure that young people cultivate careers as Outdoor Crafters of Great Abandon, need to make health care available and affordable to them, maybe even allowing them to buy into the Maine State employees' health plan. Maybe even at the same rate that legislators do. "In wildness is the preservation of the world", Thoreau wrote. He too relied on the expertise of Maine Abenaki guides to craft his trip into the Maine Woods. Someone needs to be looking out to preserve the health and wellbeing of Maine's Outdoor Crafters, who create the rafting, bird hunting, fishing trips, Great Abandon moments for those lacking those opportunities in their everyday lives.
It turns out Sully had moved to Alaska from Maine and found his dream job, calling on his knowledge of the wild,that maybe even gave him health insurance. Twenty years and four paddlers later, the now very married couple drove to the Forks. They missed the spreading of the ashes but got there in time for the party.
As American as Apple Pie: Domestic Violence and The Abuse of Power to Tarnish Victims' Credibility
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 09:31
A new exhibit at the Holocaust and Human Rights Center in Maine called "Finding Our Voices: Ending the Silence of Domestic Abuse" opened just before Domestic Violence Awareness month. From the halls of the US Senate to a poetry reading, readiness to silence the credibility of the accuser persists.
As American as Apple Pie: Domestic Violence and The Abuse of Power to Tarnish Victims' Credibility
-Susan Cook-
The other day on a radio call-in program, Susan Collins, Maine's Senator, justified her vote for Judge Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court because (she said this) even though she thought something awful happened to PhD Holder and Academic Scholar Christine Blasey-Ford, Susan Collins didn't think it was Brett Kavanaugh who did it. In other words, Susan Collins just can't bring herself to grant Dr Ford credibility. Playing both ends against the middle, this time with Dr Ford's credibility, like she has in the US Senate. At the same time, Susan Collins said that to believe Dr. Ford threatens the entire judicial standard of innocent until proven guilty. What she didn't say is that by automatically granting credibility to a Job Applicant over his accusing victim, she replicates an abuse of power that keeps victims silent.
Two of the most agonizing moments for assault victims are when it happens and when the victim discloses. For women, credibility is immediately questioned- with or without professional accomplishment, with or without the scrutiny of a large audience.
On men's side, and on the side of Susan Collins who has gained longevity by playing the middle against both ends, is Power and the fact that men require less Proof to back up their statements than women do. We have seen the backwash from men finally held accountable for their abuse of power in the #Me too movement. Many of those men remain "miffed" or staunch in their refusal to take responsibility for the abuse of that discrepancy - financially, culturally, physically, in professional hierarchies ( 80.7 cents for women for every dollar men make). Indeed, many fall back on their reverence for "Power" to justify the reluctance to continue to fight #Me too.
The Public Radio host whose host public radio organization distanced themselves rapidly finally published his NOT "Mea Culpa" column, advising the reader to "look what happened to me" over a "harmless flirtation". Discrepancy of power places whoever was on the receiving end of the "harmless flirtation", in a subjugated position. Power interferes with saying "No", further undermined when, as the Pubic Radio host said, "she worked for me but it never happened in the office." He called upon his concern for the powerlessness of children in the NOT "Mea Culpa" piece to explain how he has managed to water down his anger toward #Me too which remember "Look what it did" to him. A negligent out not unlike Susan Collins claiming herself the better judge of what happened to Christine Blasey Ford. The magnitude of the discrepancy in physical power of adolescent boys and adolescent girls is not that hard to fathom.
This call-in program preceded the opening of an exhibit called "Finding Our Voices: Breaking the Silence of Domestic Abuse" at the Holocaust and Human Rights Center in Maine, encouraged by Patrisha Mclean, the ex-wife of the singer Don McLean of "Bye, bye, Miss American Pie". He was convicted 3 years ago of domestic violence criminal threatening, criminal mischief and criminal restraint.
One of the women in the exhibit, the wife of a man named "Charlie" who took out a gun and threatened to shoot her after she told him she had almost suicided, did not speak for years of the domestic abuse in her marriage. She left, still not disclosing until two years after she left, at 65, 43 years into the marriage. Had she disclosed before, her credibility would be on the line.
Many years ago, I was a colleague of the man who physically assaulted his wife for those 43 years. With 3 other Professors, we flew to a northern Maine University to teach graduate students. I taught life span development, always including sections on childhood sexual abuse, abusive relationships and abusive parenting. Those were topics that I had a deep commitment to, and still do. In one of the videos I always showed in the class, the victim said "Sexual abuse is about power. The abuse of power." Thirty three years ago, the reality of incest was not broadly acknowledged. Nor was wife battering or domestic violence. Or child abuse. Or parents who gave themselves license to terrorize or abuse. The college where I taught was sexist. I complained about the job inequities of assigning me to teach 4 courses I had never taught before and The "Dean" clearly made a mental checkmark against me for speaking out about that.
No one would have guessed that this quiet man had his own private target when his power was challenged. His wife. And to this day, abuse of power to keep victims quiet persists. The Edna St Vincent Millay Poetry and Arts Festival began a day or so after Susan Collins' radio appearance. It included a Poetry Slam and reading held at night at a local bar. The organizers felt compelled to include a Caveat to poets and artists taking part.
"Please be advised. As participants will include people of all ages, please be sensitive to content and language that might be of concern, scare children or trigger trauma."
No one wants to scare children or trigger trauma. The accusatory nature of the statement was inflated and not necessary in this context. Even when that was pointed out, the organizer still would not take it off the website.
And with it, the perpetrating "Charlies" and the adolescent "Kavanaughs" go about exercising their power. Yet, one more time, those who have experienced trauma will question if they have the power to speak about it or will say it "right" or won't "upset" anyone. Even at a Poetry and Arts Festival. The contributions to the power that diminishes women's credibility are many and varied. From the US Senate, to the dimly lit bar at night, credibility of the victim takes second place to the protective tidings of the powerful. I noticed that a person featured in that video many years ago had signed up for the poetry slam. I made the decision not to take part. I don't know if the person who appeared in the video 33 years ago did.
Bannon's Farewell: An Addendum "I Was Seeing Him"
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 02:47
Great American Wrong Book lyrics for Mr. Bannon, now that Roger Stone, one of 6 of his former campaign colleagues indicted, is one of 3 now convicted.
Addendum to Bannon's Farewell. "I Was Seeing Him..."
to the tune from "I'll Be Seeing You.."
-Susan Cook-
I was seeing him, yes
it was a minor whim
I probably should have stayed home
watching re-runs of
a certain Cosa Nostra film .
I had no idea
it was a favorite of his too.
I was hard at work helping You-Know-Who.
So I guess I'll change my pattern.
Try to get back to the gym.
Do a lot more yoga.
See if my PC could possibly fit in
The next space launch they're having
maybe Elon Musk could try
get it out there- headed straight
for Mars, hey, maybe for Saturn.
Actually, I barely knew him.
Roger Boulder, was that him?
The other thing I do not do
is send out emails
on a whim.
I hope you understand emails
easily are faked.
The important things- I say, face-to-face.
That was why I saw him briefly,
usually at yoga class.
He is a big tanner.
Not my style. Burns my nose too fast.
I spend enough time dealing
with my allergies to dust.
How I got by with no yoga,
Let's just say, it's now a must.
Now I won't be seeing him
at yoga anymore.
It may be a little while before
a class offered near him. But more
and more, federal prisons opt
to have it. Keeps the prisoners calm.
No more tanning booths.
Just downward facing dog.
I will not be seeing him.
I got my computer cleaned up.
Gee, I'm sorry that he's hit
a road bump. Sort of a hiccup.
I don't think back to those days,
I secretly admired
Mr. Mueller. Those head stand shoulders,
shout out, Yoga something he has tried.
AND DON'T FORGET!
THE ORIGINAL!
A Poetic Tribute to the Departure of Mr. Bannon’
To the Tune from ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’
Susan Cook-
read between the fine lines,
called reporters back,
still read things in The New York Times,
I didn’t ever bother,
I never used words like suck or cock.
I’m a journalist.
You know I just like to talk.
I am kind of Presidential.
I think that came through.
Yes I’m allergic to
Certain foods, mold, cat dander too.
That’s why my nose looked stuffy
Kind of red, yes, my eyes too,
never got a chance to Photoshop
my best side for you.
they both do
A certain kind of yoga pose,
I’ll tell you just between us too,
I think yoga is liberal ,
Mahatma Gandhi had his version too
Who’d do that kind of thing?
Alt-left wingers ok Melania, too.
There might be a yoga version
made with alt-right guys in mind,
Politically on target
Where you keep your ammo by your side
I won’t have that much time,
I am not planning to retire
I’ll be back at Breitbart,
White guys only need apply!
starting his own studio,
Sean Spicer, Reince, maybe even
Mitch McConnell might decide to go
And when the class is over
Lying in Shavasana,
They will all be chanting
Three times,
What happened,
Ohm, Ohm, Ohm, Ohm.
l
Love Really Counts: Greta Thunberg's Plea for Climate Change Action
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 05:17
Greta Thunberg, in her UN Climate Change speech called on threatened loss of the loved, in her view, the environment to bring action on climate change. If loss of the environment is not enough to change deniers, perhaps loss of the loved will be, just like the grief the loss of loved ones brings to the surface on holidays and anniversaries.
Love Really Counts: Greta Thunberg Calls on Love to End Climate Change
Greta Thunberg's address to the United Nations Climate Change Summit sounded like love suspicious of yet more betrayal and imminent disappointment. "We will never forgive you"she said, if these leaders fail to act. Greta accused them of leaving Love behind for the fairytale of perpetual economic growth.
The hearts' UPC scan code to distinguish false love from true is not perfect. But its accuracy depends on one premise and one premise alone. Love really counts. And now we bear witness to the winding and wending path climate change has created into the heart of Greta Thuberg. Where scientific documentation of imminent extinction of koala bears and right whales, the collapse of ecosystems, uncontainable widespread drought and wildfires have not impressed the economically driven, love will. If it really counts, that is.
George Bernard Shaw or some other member of the white Western male canon said genius is perpetual adolescence. Adolescence is the developmental proving ground in which love re-discovers and re-invents itself over and over. It is not naive or diminishing to believe love really counts, as Greta Thunberg does but adulthood is the disproving ground where awareness of love's limits are re-discovered: as life's carbon-spewing, coal-fired engine spews along.
I am not the first to use the phrase "Love really Counts" but I did vote for it at a Board meeting for a Maine center which offers free services to families who have lost a loved member. The Center for Grieving Children was founded by a dear colleague after his sister died. After all, bereavement is not pathology. It is the human molting of an interior layer of love, taking its own very long time to surface. Even under the best of circumstances, grief never quite goes away. So my colleague, Bill Hemmens founded a place where children and their parents could go to sit together in that long shedding. When time for the Board to find a brief summation of the Center's mission, "Love really counts" came up, I voted for it. It passed.
Scientific progress has not eliminated bereavement.Only in its absence after loss of a loved one, does the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (Fifth version) codify with a diagnosis. Persistent Complex Bereavement Disorder, ICD-10 code F43.21. For a time, we worked on a project to put into print interviews he had done with children who attended the Center. A very young child whose sister had died, told him, in the safe confines of grief acknowledged, "Sometimes in the night when the wind blows, I can hear her crying." And thus a five year old's image resonates with many who have known grief that is both silent and loud enough to wake you from sleep.
As Greta Thunberg looks dead-on into the eye of the world's money-driven, we are struck by their absence of grief at the loss of the natural world and the complete lack of reckoning that the death that goes unmourned may be our own. Witnessed oblivion makes those who heard Greta Thunberg, listen, shuddering, because, we know she believes love really counts. Her indignation toward the world's powerful as they come to her generation for hope betrays her recognition of the underlying pathology that makes Denial of Climate Change political fodder. And "sometimes in the night when the wind blows" the deniers may be awakened by what they have not done.
Re-purposing Good:Sustaining Heart, Finding Truth During the Pandemic
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 07:32
The pandemic has brought much repurposing for good. As the current President comes to Maine for Public Relations at a factory churning out 1 million nasal test swabs a week, let us acknowledge how we have sustained heart and struggled to find the Truth.
Re-purposing Goodness-Sustaining Heart
Nancy Messonier is the sister of Trump-fired former Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who suggested his co-workers tape record Trump as documentation of Trump's mental status. The Trump administration was not above threatening defunding or some other vendetta against this Rosenstein relative Nancy Messonier, as early as January and February we know now.
"Trump," the Washington Post said on April 23, "ignored 70 days of warnings about the Coronavirus beginning in early January. He kept insisting as he did on March 10, that "it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away." Even the Wall Street Journal stepped up and reported that "Trump was 'furious' after Nancy Messonier warned finally on February 25 that the coronavirus was rapidly spreading and that 'the disruption to everyday life might be severe.' Trump called Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and threatened to fire Messonier. " Vice President Pence the next day was declared "in charge" of the pandemic. Azar too was telling Trump exactly what Trump wanted to hear.
When we consider the heart Mainers bring to fighting Covid19 spread, Trump's actions to – as ever- repurpose any situation to his own self-serving myopia- borders on sinister. His government has worked against Mainers who in their own good way, like the Guilford folk going to work despite fears, did their part.
I went to "Big Al's Super Values" recently the first time since March 21 when Maine began closing almost all of its doors and the electronic sign outside changed from "We Have Toilet Paper"
to "Closed. Saturday March 21 6 PM" to "Reopen?" Big Al has bent with the times, compliance with CDC recommendations required for entry.
The items they sell, "Odd Lot Outlet" all seem slightly more luminous now- not just because the clerks said they have been sanitizing everything. I know they have. Us all in our face masks and face shields, every cookware item, automobile repair assistance tool, toy and coloring book and the fire sale paper and office products from a nationwide retailer who I won't mention by name, all of it seemed brighter.
Yes, a little, just because it was there, even the canary yellow legal size paper. I noticed that because as Maine closed its doors, me running out of paper loomed large. I knew I would soon run out of the 6 for $1.00 small metal clip binders I place around hard copies of my PRX series submissions. For some reason, I thought I'd have enough until the store re-opened. I did run out. I knew I was set with my collapsible portable blanket storage box which serves as my sound and echo-proof recording studio, barring additional disaster.
And yes, far greater loss has merged into American lives, our country, too, a repository of stunned grief like that of refugees or other trauma survivors. Our roots are newly veined with heart breaking events that have become commonplace. The high school seniors with their drive-thru graduations. Many, many members of this disparate society finding a mask to wear, one a friend made, a relative passed on, or something re-purposed to protect.
There are the dancers in their apartment hallways now using the confines of their sequestered freedom to roam, as props in choreography. And the children with their crooked elbows resting their chins on hands. The sadness in their eyes while they gaze into computer screens not photo-shopped out.
We all lose track of time in upending moments, even the usual reliability of time has changed. Three months in the life of an 8 year old does not have the same duration as that of a ninety year old in an entire life span lived. And the delineation of time, in the stores we visit, in retail, of all things, keeps us from losing hope in an ending. This pandemic gives us a taste of just how debilitating the timelessness anti-aging drugs tantalize us with.
While Big Al's, his staff, we were all doing our part, good was being repurposed for bad by an administration set on deception. In many countries, lying to please the Fuhrer has been commonplace. There is a way in which leaders repurposing good for bad is timeless. In our masks, staying 6 feet away, we need to recognize it when it decides to visit us where we live.
Dept of Poetic Justice! Nate Silver's Still Counting All the Numbers! Extra Golf Strokes!
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 07:10
No False Equivalence here! The Pandemic. Trillions of Dollars of National Debt! And You Know Who's Extra Golf Strokes! Counting Every One!
Nate Silver's Still Counting All the Numbers"
In the Department of Poetic Justice and Reckoning
(With lyrics for the Great American Wrongbook to the tune from
'It's Beginning To Look Alot Like Christmas'
Nate Silver's still counting all the numbers.
It's that time. It's what he does
like post offices sorting mail,
delivering snow, sleet or hail.
Nate Silver's on it. Never fail.
We're hoping he's got more time to focus.
There's no football. All that fuss
is finally put on hold
so we are hoping we'll be told
what voters will actually do.
We're taking a moment to remind him
like we did two years ago
to call Ellen Langer right up, try
a seance, maybe two with Stephen
Jay Gould. They both know.
When voters pick up the cell phone ringing
and they're asked who they will choose
the next thing he must require
is this answer. Yes, it's dire.
Will they be mailing in their vote?
Kelly Ann Conway has decided
a good way to sabotage
the abundance of dislike now
for You Know What he's called.
He lives in Washington D.C.
Cheryl Sandberg creates the conscience
for Facebook. Yes, she's not an app
but she and Mark Zuckerberg
decided to make Truth their act
Just click Like on a Facebook Page.
Just in case you haven't noticed
how she and Mark just said "Ok"
to posting lies left and right, on Facebook pages,
What's the gripe with Russians
sharing Voting plans?
So what if they're not really voters?
Remember US citizens
have always had to enroll, prove they live here,
Zuckerberg, Cheryl Sandberg,
look it up!
Nate Silver, I guess, did not have Facebook
on his radar, plus Russian hack-
ers would not answer calls,
"Are you voting in the Fall?"
Til' Paul Manafort said"Hi, it's me."
When You Know Who's not on a golf course
spoiling for those who admire
the skill of hitting the ball,
the little white one so it will fall
into a hole with a big flag.
One of the most disturbing shortfalls
of this man's abilities
is when he picks up the stick
tries to reach it back to hit
the little ball off of the tee,
There are probably house flies in the suburbs
who are thinking while they laugh
along with the PGA
and Sunday Hackers who would say
"Maybe his fly swatter works best?"
For accomplishing something that eludes him.
In this case, to hit the ball.
Mitch McConnell likely regrets
Not just the trillion dollar debts
but Trump's golfing embarassment.
Displaying ridiculous ineptness.
We're not talking when adhoc
he starts making things up to say
in press conferences. No, it is the way
he pretends he's playing golf.
To get back to Nate Silver's special forte
accuracy, counting skill
Though statistics cannot predict
Election outcomes that will stick
because the ballots must arrive.
Nate Silver learned that the hard way.
We know now he's on his game.
Maybe lovers of golf can save
admiration for this game
and hire Nate to clarify
Exactly how many strokes are taken
by You Know Who after he shakes
his golf club above the tee,
tries to give it the old heave-
Ho to make it move toward that small hole.
Nate Silver can finally help them realize
the cost the country now must bear.
The Pandemic has taken more
lives than several major wars.
And then there's Donald fake golf scores.
The country has got to hope there's something
left when- Syonara- he is gone.
Yes, I mean living human beings
but don't forget the viewers seein'
the mockery he's made of golf.
We're not making falsely equiva-
lent. The Pandemic is far worse
but give us a little break
for Sunday hackers now trying to take
socially distant honest strokes.
It's beginning to look alot like Christmas.
Don't hold your breath. Just check your mail.
The golfers in every town want Nate
counting extra golf strokes You Know Who takes!
Something Russians cannot hide!
A Citizen's Guide to Passion and Political Gamesmanship in Democracies
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 06:47
The protesters in Ukraine are showing us on a very public stage that criticism free from harassment and ridicule of the actions of public elected officials is or should be what a democracy allows. The protesters in Ukraine, those who we memorialize for their passion and those who stand and testify through their actions remind us that what we have in this country is always up for grabs- if not from foreign threat but from each other. We really do not know how democracy sustains itself here. Speaking up is dismissed as “passion”. Passion is the code word for somebody who doesn’t know that the preferred approach is Political gamesmanship even as it erodes- day in, day out, as we see in Congress and state governments the democracy we live in.
In the Department of Poetic Justice: Uncle Donald Had a Farm
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 03:05
Turning once again to the extensive value of nursery rhyme to bring us deep understanding, which brilliant skilled public servants did Donald Trump ignore as he and Rudy Giuliani birthed The Big Lie? The same ones who went quiet like a clam until they got subpoenaed?
In the Department of Poetic Justice
Uncle Donald Had (had) a Farm
To the tune of ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’
-Susan Cook-
Uncle Donald has a Farm,
Got it with your vote
And on that farm he had a fit
History will note.
With a fit fit there,
And a fit, fit here
Here a fit, there a fit,
weekend’s are a big big fit fit.
Uncle Donald had a farm,
Bought it with your vote.
Got it with your vote
And yes, that farm is very big,
History will note.
With a snort snort here
and a snort, snort there,
Mar-a-largo ,
snort, snort, snort there,
Uncle Donald had a farm
Got it with your vote.
Uncle Donald has a Farm,
Got it with your vote
Likes to fit his golf game in
Every chance he got,
With a cheat cheat there
and a cheat cheat here
Drop a stroke, Move the ball,
Who will know he faked it all,
Uncle Donald has a farm,
Got it with your vote.
Uncle Donald picked his team
Scarramouchi too,
Started out with Sean Spicer,
But he had to go
With a Tom Price here
and a Bannon there
Comey, Pribus,
Prett Bharara,
Uncle Donald had his team
Fired them you know.
Uncle Donald doesn’t like
People who know more
Than he does
so what he does
Shows them to the door
Sally Yates, Michael Flynn,
Ethics Smethics Walter Shaub,
Michael Short and Dubke too,
All of them have lost their jobs.
Uncle Donald doesn't like
People who know more.
Uncle Donald doesn’t see
What the problem is
Thinks he’s back in New Jersey
Hitting a golf tee
With the ball up there
and the ball down there
Random, Land em
Any where there
Uncle Donald doesn’t see
What the problem is.
Uncle Donald hired a
Mouthpiece for his staff,
tells her what occurs to him
No thought of aftermath
McEnaney quotes him word for word
Irresponsible, absurd,
Uncle Donald
Hired her
Thoughtlessness what he prefers.
Uncle Donald had a Farm,
Got it with your vote
hired some small minded folk
Ee-yikes- oh no yikes oh no,
With a world threat here
Some racists there
Here a thug, there a thug
Everywhere some sheep dung
Uncle Donald had a farm,
Bought it with your vote.
In Dept. Of Poetic Justice "When the Saints See My Receipts" Turbo Tax Tribute!
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 03:58
Lyrics for the Great American Wrongbook! Depreciation. Commuting miles. My Old and Trusty Mileage Log. Tax Experts Waiting to Answer! And much much more.
“When The Saints Find My Receipts”
--Susan Cook-
A Musical Tribute to Turbo Tax To the tune from “When I Paint my Masterpiece”
by Bob Dylan
Oh the sheets that hold
all my deductions
MS Works and Excel too
Spread mighty wide,
The rows and columns,
stretch up high,
toward heaven too.
Refrain
I sleep calmly knowing my deductions
for my taxes clean as they can be.
If I've erred, I'll find my redemption
I have always kept receipts.
You’ve got all last
year’s deductions,
Rental properties, you knew,
The nonprofits
I give my time to
My hourly fee
Of course you knew.
Refrain
Sleeping calmly kmowing contributions
to non-profits where they ought to be.
Someday, maybe more things will be tax-free
Then I'll stop keeping receipts.
My mileage log
is old and trusty
Audometers
I use to tell
The truth to you if I get busted
Commuting miles?
The road to hell.
Refrain
Tax experts are always standing ready
Answer any questions I might have.
Do I have depreciations?
God Bless You! You know I have!
Just goes to show
Our home computers,
Desktops or a laptop too
Can bust the chops
of higher taxes
Knock down how much
Federal tax due.
Refrain
Of course you always Will review them.
Ask politely let's go through again.
You looking hard for one more tax break.
For hard earned cash I shouldn't spend.
The streets where gold
Is used for toilets
Mostly down
In Manhattan.
The IRS
tries to stay on it, hence
you devised Audit Defense.
Refrain
I sleep calmly knowing the deductions
for tax I've paid accurate and clean.
If I erred I'll find my redemption.
When the Saints see my receipts.
Oh the sheets that hold
all my deductions
MS Works and Excel too
Spread mighty wide,
The rows and columns,
stretching high,
toward heaven too.
Bannon, Santa Claus and all that in The Dept. of Poetic Justice
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 05:00
A lyrical tribute from one Special Viewer observing the Republican National Convention and a certain Pardon being given by You Know Who!
One thing in the jail cell
would not come my way.
Remembering We Have Already Said Farewell: "Epilogue: To a Fire Gone" from "Breathing: American Sonnets"
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 01:42
An American Sonnet to those to whom we have said "Farewell".
From "Breathing: American Sonnets"
by Susan Cook
(available from GulfofMainebooks@gmail.com)
Epilogue
To a Fire Gone
After "Reluctance: by Robert Frost
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
When was it less than treason? But what do
you mean, Mr. Frost? That’s for countries to
feel short-changed by. Loss happens to those who
see the passing on of days, years, one blue
time in life, one breaking, undoing a
treacherous rope they have been tied onto,
its deep burn. In the coldest time of day
or night, fires started that you thought grew
larger instead were, licked back into their
own intensity, remained confined on
one small patch of earth. You did not see where
the fire, some time later, died. You were gone.
Big difference, see, between countries resigned
to losing, small unfed fires, gone in time.
Einstein's Sonnet: Love Is Relativity
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 01:23
On September 28, 1905 Einstein's paper on the special theory of relativity was published in Annalen der Physik. A Poetic version, "Einstein's Sonnet" offered in anticipation of Valentine's Day.
- Playing
- Einstein's Sonnet: Love Is Relativity
- From
- Susan J. Cook
On September 28, 1905
Einstein published his paper on the special theory of relativity
In Annalen der Physik
-Susan Cook-
Do not tell me that in time all things pass.
my love, Einstein mused, makes but a minute.
Ode to Mr. Roubini's West Grand Lake Bass Update
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 03:18
In Maine, Bass fishing on West Grand Lake is a destination respite for many, including Mr. Nouriel Roubini, the legendary economist who was almost single-handed in anticipating the 2008 housing collapse and world-wide recession. This "Ode to Mr. Roubini's West Grand Lake Bass " is revisited in the wake of the recent change in , let's say, the landscape under the "River of Financial Abundance".
ODE TO MR. ROUBINI'S WEST GRAND LAKE BASS REVISITED
MR. ROUBINI, DO YOU THINK IT WAS THE WEST GRAND LAKE BASS
THAT HELPED YOUR BRAIN CELLS FORECAST THE 2008 CRASH?
LUCKY FOR YOU, SOME BASS STILL REMAINED
TELL US, WILL INTRODUCING ALEWIVES TO THE ST. CROIX RIVER DRIVE OUT THE BASS?
The 2022 Prologue,
Mr. Roubini, time to fire up the grill,
Your very best guide in this time of ticker tape upheaval
is not Bloomberg News or today's Wall Street Journal.
To keep your title as Dr. West Grand Lake Bass,
your Omega-3s jumping, still saving our last
nickels and dollars from going out with the tide,
go to www.grandlakestreamguides."
-SUSAN COOK-
Sonnet For The Baseball Teams Playing "Sweet Caroline"
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | :54
This is a sonnet for the baseball teams who after the tragedy at the Boston Marathon each played the song the Boston Red Sox play during a game when they score a home run.
On the death of Stephen Hawking "Sonnet for The Black Hole" "Sonnet for A Loss"
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 02:03
Stephen Hawking has died who brought us all to imagine what black holes are and to recognize ourselves in them and him.
After Stephen Hawking and A Brief History of Time
-Susan Cook-
in a book. There are places far from earth
where once you're there, you will know it .
Leaving's struggle, to escape, just not worth
the time, the gravitational force on
the feet stronger, even though the mind may
say, "Time", time has become love's distraction
what once seemed stardust, that too swept away.
The only choice is stay: "passing that point
of no return, without noticing it",
collapsing, in tiny increments, joined
no longer. What will never again fit
is this: the logic of the light that drew
you, stars still sparkling far away and few.
Sonnet for A Loss
speaking, I mean, it has only happened
when I know you have died, I mean, I see
you not being where you were at the end,
you straddling that big stream that's rising up,
threatening to separate you from yourself,
you from your own, your reach not wide enough.
We're made of all those days we find that shelf
of river's edge, climb up, and get there, strive
for that (time, now and then, dipping into
that thirsty bowl of water called a life).
Your straddle grows still wider, merely you,
who one day is here, then one day it's you
who's moved away from you, away from you.
How Einstein Understood E=mc Squared
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | :55
Poetry Month and Einstein creating E=mc squared
- Playing
- How Einstein Understood E=mc Squared
- From
- Susan J. Cook
Sonnet for Why Einstein Understood E=mc2
I believe it was Einstein’s broken heart
that led him to understand E equals
mc squared. He knew when E fell apart
in his life. He knew how love goes. Sequels
that should have followed each other wouldn’t.
Just one listlessly paralyzed moment proved
it. Nothing gave him motion. He couldn’t
lift a finger, let alone an arm moved
by a body, within a body, held
by light they shared: she’d hold hers for him, he’d
hold his for her, then they’d fall. Oh, they fell
and fell. It broke his heart, the last of E.
Bereft and broke, idle in his time,
he knew his heart longed for some equal sign.
Small: An American Sonnet
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | :57
In the large, large universe, the mind's eye still sees what it will.
- Playing
- Small: An American Sonnet
- From
- Susan J. Cook
Small
It doesn't matter how diminished we
feel, situated deep deep within the
large, large universe, we now know, we see
more and more of, its every corner, the
source of a revelation, a surprise
appearance of something we did not know
was there but has been all along. The size
of anything is not important, no,
changes mostly depend on nothing more
than the sun's cast shadow, the patterns we are sure
to form, in our mind's eye, largeness ignored,
the smallest persistent, convinced we'll endure.
Small, large do not save us as the mind's eye
slowly watches, no urgent need to hide.
The Discovery of Light: An American Sonnet
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | :55
Thomas Edison and what his light did- understood through an American Sonnet.
- Playing
- The Discovery of Light: An American Sonnet
- From
- Susan J. Cook
The Discovery of Light: An American Sonnet
-Susan Cook-
Thomas Edison discovered cotton,
carbonized, sent out strands of silky light.
The non-believers drove for miles, not in
fascination, but in doubt that night sight
didn't require burning fire first,
a kindling so much harder to ignite,
the loss of life, from time to time, the curse
of other lamps, the tragedy of fire
placed too close, times when frightened horses kicked
the stable candle, burning hay that brought
entire towns to ash, the flames that licked
up everything, the cost of fire caught.
Some still don't trust a horse's fear, sudden
swaying, still not sure what this light has done.
The Discovery of Light: An American Sonnet
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | :55
Thomas Edison and what his light did- understood through an American Sonnet.
- Playing
- The Discovery of Light: An American Sonnet
- From
- Susan J. Cook
The Discovery of Light: An American Sonnet
-Susan Cook-
Thomas Edison discovered cotton,
carbonized, sent out strands of silky light.
The non-believers drove for miles, not in
fascination, but in doubt that night sight
didn't require burning fire first,
a kindling so much harder to ignite,
the loss of life, from time to time, the curse
of other lamps, the tragedy of fire
placed too close, times when frightened horses kicked
the stable candle, burning hay that brought
entire towns to ash, the flames that licked
up everything, the cost of fire caught.
Some still don't trust a horse's fear, sudden
swaying, still not sure what this light has done.
Sonnet for the Higgs Boson: A Poem Demystifing
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | :49
In National Poetry Month, a poem to explain how the Higgs boson really works.
Sonnet for the Higgs boson
-Susan Cook-
You, Higgs boson, you come out of nowhere,
once you're blasted, hard enough, then, they say
indifference turns into desire, prepares
these subtle transformations, mystery's way,
bringing things together. Beauty, boson.
A boy beside me pulls me to my feet.
His truck is dark, darkness all in motion,
moving in the heat. Higgs, that was not heat
alone. Heat, remember, cools so quickly,
his, a perfect truck, catching you. You've known
that darkness deep inside a truck, thickly
threading all as one. I think Adam owned
a truck, magnetic wheels. The moving sent
him off. A truck, a truck, world without end.
Do Good For Evil, My Grandmother Used to Say
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 03:28
There are many many examples of malice these days. And then there are the opportunities to do good.
-Susan Cook-
There's a quote from The Bible I've taken to lately that my father often said my grandmother used.
It's in Romans Chapter12. She quoted the simple, straightforward version. "Do good for evil."
That ethic seems reassuring these days. Day after day, there are examples of malice in the world, in our country, in our state. Does it really require trillions of dollars or a mound of extensive years-long clinical trials to prove the intent of vaccine developers to do good for evil? Does it really require another 15 years of US National Guard members in Afghanistan to prove that the vast majority of the Afghan people see malice not good in what the US has been offering them, calling upon their religion ?
I watched a journalist interview a hospital surgical technician who underwent chemotherapy who now refuses to be vaccinated. They rolled the vaccine out too quickly, she said, and didn't do enough studies first.
The journalist asked if she thought 600000 people dead from Covid 19 was adequate reason to expedite vaccine development. The Covid 19 genome was made available to Western scientists in in January 2020
At that point, the Surgical Technician broke into a broad smile. I was struck, at first, by the numbed quality of her response. As I've thought about it, this seems yet another time when good done for evil is perceived as malice.
The Life enhancing, yes, Prolife core of any ethic lies in doing good for evil, that too, now stained as Antilife. How can a fierce opposition to a vaccine to do good for evil be seen as Prolife?
These are traumatizing times- emotionally numbing, mind- fogging, time bending, anxiety inducing.
We don't have trillions of dollars or access to the high echelons of power. We do have simple acts of kindness, and as my grandmother said, in our small way, we can do good for evil.
The Freedom to Succeed and the Mind's Eye:One Runner's Success
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 05:01
In Maine, recently, an internationally known annual road race was held . 6338 runners raced. One runner in the group of the first 183 spent a full year- in another state locked up- not for committing a crime- but for having a mental illness. In some states that is still possible.
This year he missed the first 100 places in the 2017 Maine Marathon by a few minutes.
In order to have success you have to have freedom to succeed. And there are hundreds of obstacles to that - in this country- still touted as the free-est nation on earth. We know it's not always but most of us still hold out having the freedom to succeed as America’s cherished offering .
The current political rhetoric ignores that. The anti- freedom to succeed catch phrases of this Presidential election cycle remind us of that. Don’t let immigrants come here. Build a wall. She must be a liar-don’t let her succeed. Don’t trust her. And yes, he’s not fit countered by she’s not fit. I guess it comes down to success being having the freedom to succeed, and then seizing it. Many, many people don’t do that but that’s what this runner did. Where a person finds the motivation let alone - as another runner called it the audacity to hope- that success is still up for grabs- I don’t know. It takes a large mind to see what small minds shut out-and who is shut out. But it has nothing to do with the mind’s size. It has more to do with the mind’s eye- that sees the horizon, like runners see, when they get out on the road, getting out on the road, giving it another go, giving themselves the freedom to succeed, with only 182 others in front of them. It also takes a culture or a country that yes, may hold them back for awhile, but not long enough to take away the freedom to succeed for good.
-Susan Cook-
The Texas Abortion Ban, Vigilante Justice and Frankie Valli's Love for Human Connection
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 08:17
The Supreme Court decision to ignore the inhumane aspects of the Texas Abortion law reminds us to look to the places where human connection is valued.
The Texas Abortion Ban, Vigilante Justice and Frankie Valli's Love for Human Connection
-Susan Cook-
"Jersey Boys", the emotionally sensuous, tender musical journey of the 1960's-era Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons is now the one remaining 2021 production of Maine State Musical Theater shown to vaccination proving/ masked audiences only.
Opening night coincided with the US Supreme Court 5-4 decision to not review the Texas abortion law which appoints and allows citizens to seek vigilante justice against a medical provider or insurance company who is "suspected" to have supported or enabled a woman to terminate a pregnancy. A Vigilante Justice mindset toward women who support or act on Reproductive Choice is not new. Social media "shaming", "outing" if not outright harassment have become commonplace, fostered by Vigilante Justice -types- those who have seized on anti-abortion stands as a chance to fan the moral crevices of their narcissism through anonymous Facebook or other social media posts. That has yet to become a prosecutable crime so it is not surprising that women's privacy again is seen as fair game for assault if not rape.
The music of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons was and is a mirror for the moral narcissism of their time. The libido-driven romance of – yes- men and women (adolescents and adults) reckoning with the quest for deep human connection- heterosexually- it seemed- carrying on the myth of "The One" while the fifties and sixties culture around them minimized any of the psychological or physical trauma of the time. The unwanted pregnancies, some terminated by inner city abortionists, the deaths that followed from physical consequences or suicide, the closeted men and women invisible in the cultural edification of heterosexuality, the dismissiveness toward date rape, incest, domestic violence, wife and child battering, the lack of any safe and sound child care options so latch-key children were left as caretakers, 9 years old left to caretake 5 year olds.
The Four Season's second big hit, "Big Girls Don't Cry" perfectly mirrors the time's trivilialzation of deep emotional pain:
"...told my girl we had to break up
...maybe I was cru-you-el...
Shame on you, your Mama said...
Shame on you you're crying in your bed...
Shame on you you told me lies...
Big Girls Do Cry...
Any number of teenage women whose disclosure of an unwanted pregnancy or incest or rape or sexual intercourse were met with (still often are) physical assault, face slapping, shunned exile or abandonment by mothers, fathers, relatives, the circles they might have reached toward. Collectively, the woman's emotional pain became invisible. The shame that Facebook and other social media now profit from in their anonymous posting options allow the Vigilante Justice-types a new means for public shaming through privacy rape. Many Frankie Valli-era teenagers and young women died from the shaming that fueled their drug or alcohol addiction or promiscuity or suicidality. Big girls don't cry.
Shame is precisely the emotion that the Senior Legislative Aide of Texas Right to Life, Rebecca Parma attempts to generate in an NPR interview when she offers the false equivalence that terminating the pregnancy of a zygote, embryo or fetus which is non-viable outside of the mother's uterus is equivalent to killing a child that even rape or incest do not justify.The 30 or 40-something Rebecca Parma now endorsing Privacy rape by forcing providers to disclose private medical information is as exploitive as the Frankie Valli-era exploitation of privacy then dismissing as "private" incest, date rape, domestic violence and in the case of unidentified paternity, fathers whose signatures and names were left off birth certificates of infants born to single mothers, later left and ignored in foster homes, foundling homes or orphanages. Ancestry.com has now filled in many of those blank signatures. Ms. Parma may not know of any suicided pregnant women or backroom abortion recipients or incested or physically assaulted children. The Texas Abortion law renders them as invisible to her as the privacy rape victims the law targets. A case in point is the non-acknowledgement to her Republican colleagues of the profound impact being born into poverty carries. As early as 1980, the Maine Children's Death Study documented the strongest correlate of child death before the age of 18 as the child's household's eligibility for Food Stamps.
Tragedy came Frankie Valli's way, too. His 22 year old daughter Francie died of a drug overdose, alcoholism ended his marriage , likely more human suffering than Jersey Boys reveals. But his lyricists and songwriters brought their creative longings to the moral underpinnings of true love: that it could be good, whole and true. In 1967 "You're Just Too Good to Be True" came just six years before Roe Vs. Wade began to unpack the cultural truth around him, in all its human suffering, walkup abortionists and suiciding 20- somethings. Roe vs. Wade began to prevent what had always belonged to women to bear: the ignored suffering of children after birth . Frankie Valli's devoted musical reverence for the deep nourishment of a healthy life-enhancing human connection did not and could not succeed in bringing those to fruition in the ways that Roe vs. Wade has- in far far more ways than Ms. Parma could ever know, despite the Texas license giving her and anyone else permission to invade privacy at whatever cost.
The Conscience of Anonymity:Naming Native American Artists
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 05:25
I went to an exhibit of Native American basketry recently- made by Maine Penobscots and Passamaquoddies. The reception was as polished as any other art exhibit opening- except in one respect . None of the artists whose work was displayed were named. No brass plate. No calligraphy on an ivory placard. The artists- all of whom- were Maine Indians -were anonymous. With the exception of the one Indian artist whose talk explained the origin and lineage of the art of basket making, none were named- no birth date- no home town- no tribal affiliation. At an exhibit intended to warmly acknowledge, they were excluded by being made anonymous. What is it that lingers when gifted artists of a brilliant tradition are not given the recognition any artist in any art gallery or museum in the country is given- a name? The consequence of cultural anonymity is often indifference . Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island given different names as they left, Jews with their identity papers taken as they board a train, young men first targeted because of race . Making people anonymous makes it easier to hurt them.
-Susan Cook-
Native American Indians have so often been anonymous to popular culture, except through stereotype. The ones history gives names to are those who fought back- and died- or the ones who provided some indispensable service to white men. Most are anonymous. Not in the graveyards of tribal reservations. I remember walking through one, at Peter Dana Point, in Maine, one time, and reading the names- of Indian men whose dates of death subtracted from their dates of birth- for many- meant they died at age 45, 38, 49. By 2000 the average age of death among Native American Indians in Maine was 60. The average age of death among whites in Maine was 74.1 years then. Now in 2012, for whites it is 79. (https://www1.maine.gov/dhhs/mecdc/files/nar/nar.htm)
Privacy Rape, the Right to Be Free from Exploitation and Facebook
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 07:28
A recent Fresh Air interview with Heidi Schreck about the Supreme Court recognition of privacy as the premise for a woman's right to control her own body reminds me of a word I've been thinking about. "Privacy Rape".
- Playing
- Privacy Rape, the Right to Be Free from ...
- From
- Susan J. Cook
Privacy Rape, Facebook and the Right to Be Free From Exploitation
-Susan Cook-
I was listening to Heidi Schreck, the playwright whose Broadway production "What the Constitution Means To Me" discusses "How Women Have Been Profoundly Left Out of the Constitution", as the Fresh Air Heading says. Ms. Schreck talked us through the long arduous constitutional journey from the 1965 Supreme Court Ruling that finally legalized birth control for married women, to legalization of birth control for unmarried women to legalization of abortion in Roe vs. Wade. All 3 of those, decided by Supreme Court justices, all white men, whose premise is that the Constitution protects Privacy.
Ms. Schrek brought to mind a term I have been thinking about for some time. "Privacy Rape".
It's very clear that the public still doesn't get or perhaps laws and the Constitution still fail to protect Privacy: privacy of personal information, the privacy of the person, the privacy of what people do in their lives.
The casual oblivion to matters of privacy was exemplified in a message posted on Facebook by an Executive Director of a major political party directed to a significantly influential political organizer who previously was single-handedly responsible for the election and re-election of hundreds of Democrats from the largest Legislative district to the state Legislation. "We noticed you signed up to volunteer for GOTV. As you know, we've asked you not to volunteer with us anymore. That has not changed. Please don't come into our offices for GOTV." This a post ignoring Privacy violation to publicly shame let alone damage Reputation by an Executive Director giving herself permission to communicate using Facebook.
Privacy is and has been better acknowledged by other politicians, Senator Ted Kennedy in particular. He significantly influenced passage of the Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act which insures that patients are told about the limitations of information sharing, when the patient has not signed a Consent to Release. HIPPA specifically states that psychotherapy notes are off-limits to those seeking to access HIPPA-protected information, their exclusion hopefully the strength of Kevlar.
But the use of Facebook to casually exploit privacy (and abuse) is reflected in ongoing public permission to minimize privacy. The platform, after all, has repeatedly failed to legitimize complaints from users about personal abuses and the intrusions Facebook used to capitalize on private material as revenue.
Date Rape only became fully acknowledged form of sexual assault after it was given a name. The familiar, the seemingly socially solicitious becoming the sexual perpetrator. The guise of innocence is similarly postured by Facebook users who go onto engage in Privacy Rape or stand passively by as others engage in it too.
On Frontline recently, the Vice-President of Social Good at Facebook Naomi Gleit repeated the company's mission in the wake of the company now beginning to own up to the abuse and violence the platform's unique chemical mixture of anonymity and mathmatical exponents. "Bringing the world closer together" by doing good, she said, is the company's mission. Is it all in the past?
The quest for closeness through sharing information and listening to others is a human magnet for psychological intimacy. It is a magnet that can spiral into voyeurism and Privacy Rape much as physical touch can descend into Date Rape.
That Mark Zuckerberg's team, the company's beatific Vice President of Social Good and others did not consider that something called Privacy Rape could evolve out of anonymous , mathematical exponent-driven information sharing perplexes. History explains that human exploitation is preceded by social shaming, stigma creation and anonymous permission to ostracize. The isolation of Jews in pograms and ghettos came after generations of social stigmata, all of which gave way to exportation to concentration camps. The same could be said of Native Americans and their forced emigration to Reservations . Well-educated, privileged Facebook executives did not- and probably still don't grasp that their mission to create human connection does not undo the power of anonymity and math exponents. as lubricants of abuse.
Like generations before the Supreme Court privacy rulings, Facebook has ignored how their users posts might- and have evolved into- Privacy Rape. Their many, many "This post does not reach the level of abuse" automated replies to complaints echo- the sanctioning of violations of women's privacy- violations of a woman's bodies- violation of the right to privacy.
Despite repeated legal volleys- the Supreme Court has not backtracked on the Constitutional right to privacy. The surreptitious succoring of private information that Facebook freely engaged - like generations before them- says the temptations to transgress in secrecy - abusively- persists among the most privileged and innovative. And in the Facebook users who passively stand by as Privacy Rape continues without posting one word to stop it.
Auld Lang Syne Repurposing the Bottom Line To Hear For Whom The Bell Tolls!
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 03:45
This year, even with its dashed hopes and fear of "deja vu all over again" an abundance of good prevailed.
Auld Lang Syne !
Repurposing The Bottom Line To Hear For Whom The Bell Now Tolls!
-Susan Cook-
Should old stock options be forgot and not put up for trade?
Curevac, Novartis, Sputnik Five
Oh, right Sputnik's not on our exchange.
Now do not fret. Moderna and German-based Bio N Tech pulled through
and managed to earned good money
unlike what Pfizer, their US partner could not quite do.
For those of you who wonder how vaccine makers gears did shift
to their bank accounts
and bigger wallets to make sure their profits fit.
Into their pockets to not confuse the world (they are discrete)
their job of saving lives
with good old American Wall Street greed.
And don't forget the home test kits, administered at your leisure
so when you board a New York bus
your weapon will not be your sneeze.
Now for a minute, let's forget Nancy Messonier, the queen
of 2020 Test disasters
like the CDC had never seen.
And put on hold her minimizing so she'd stay employed
the virus which we needed testing for,
the bug we needed to avoid.
So fortunately Abbott, Quidel stepped up to the plate
and gave us Binax, Quick-Vue tests
to check on antigens we've made.
And since we're on the topic, yes, these home tests are great.
Please remember twenty-nine point six,
Abbott's stock increase this year, to date.
Now, no one in their right mind, well, hard times can bring forgetting
this country's favorite sound.
It goes like this: Ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching.
Even so, some companies disregard the bottom line
when a crisis comes
(think 3/10/20) they thought of us all the time.
In Maine, some companies said, “We 'll make products that will help”
Protective clothing and face masks, hand
sanitizer, and brand new tests.
Alcohol once used in Maine Spirit Bourbon quarts
was repurposed in a Growler size
to sanitize germs of all sorts.
And Idexx didn't drop the ball, recommissioned Canine tests
to accommodate Covid genomes
found in human nostrils through their tests.
And LL Bean did not bail out on doing what they could.
They made masks, protective shoes,
and gowns. Just their way of doing good.
These times have been exhausting. Yes, we've been raked through the coals.
For some Maine business, the bottom line
listens for whom the bell now tolls.
To the First Images Seen of A Black Hole
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 01:03
Black holes still doing what they do. Re-visiting Einstein imagining his most important discovery.
- Playing
- To the First Images Seen of A Black Hole
- From
- Susan J. Cook
To the First Images Seen of A Black Hole
Shaming and Humiliating By Choice: Roe v. Wade and Denying Consequence
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 06:13
As 6 Supreme Court Justices end Roe v. Wade, shaming and humiliating Pro-Choice advocates becomes the anti-choice strategy.
Reproductive choice supporters know each of these circumstances has precipitated many female suicides.
A Sonnet for the Quantum Mechanics of Poetry
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 01:03
Poetry best helps us grasp the Quantum Mechanics topic of the latest Nobel Prize in Physics.
"I Saw Santa Scrolling Through his Phone at Nate Silver's Polls" In the Dept of Poetic Justice !
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | :00
In the Department of Poetic Justice (and Poetic Reckoning)! The Midterm Election results according to Santa's List .
Clean Elections and the Credibility of History
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 05:44
Clean elections protect constituent rights so wealthy individuals or self-serving personal interests or six-figure job candidates don’t exploit the election process - and constituents- to influence elections.This month, on Election Day, voters in Maine will vote on a Clean Elections referendum to fund campaigns of legislative candidates.
If those now speaking out about Clean Elections, don’t understand how clean elections protect civil liberties or are communicating out of both sides of the mouth, by disrespecting constituents while making up cute phrases about clean elections, well, that ‘s the historical track record- spoken , written, and available on-line. That does not add credibility to arguments for clean elections and all we're left with to understand why constituents are or are not respected by clean elections legislation is history- which it turns out- is often the most credible of all.
A Clean Elections referendum to fund campaigns of candidates for public office will be on Maine ballots this month. Both sides have spokespeople who some years back led a fierce negative media campaign against a constituent criticizing a legislator for disrespect of constituents. Spokespeople whose track records don’t respect constituents in the first place doesn’t legitimize clean elections.
On August 23, 2011, I testified before Maine’s Congressional Re-districting Commission. There were big stakes. The chair of the Redistricting Committee was up for a six figure politically appointed job as head of the Small Business Administration New England Region. The ousted Democratic attorney general wanted a Democrat legislative majority the next year to re-elect her. The Legislature’s partisan staffers and the Chief of Staff for the Second District Congressional District wanted to keep their jobs. None of them wanted districts redrawn so Republican voters held majorities. The usual gerrymandering of redistricting was replaced by fat salary jobmandering.
There was little or no focus on constituents.
My testimony protested the Republican proposal to move the first congressional representative out of her own district and Maine’s climate of disregard for constituents - a referendum to eliminate same-day voter registration and a State Senate President who recorded constituents calling him.
Civil liberties protect critics of public officials from being deemed enemies of the state. All the government-paid job seekers and holders became angry that my “irritation” of the Republican party leader might make the other side less cooperative or create election losses two years later. The party chair gave permission to coordinate a negative media campaign against me for criticizing the legislator. I was defending constituents.
In 2015, a Clean Elections referendum is here. Supporters say this is not welfare for legislators but fairness for constituents. But the spokesperson for clean elections supporters, Liz Reinholt told the media following my 2011 testimony that I had no proof for my criticism of the legislator, circulated high-tech like that my testimony was an ‘antic‘. Now, she never asked me about my proof- an important Republican warning me that calling the aforesaid legislator about local environmental pollution would result in a recorded phone call- after- I already made that observation. Freedom of the press is helpless to protect civil liberties if the media is not told the truth.
Then there’s the new spokesperson for the Maine Heritage Foundation. On August 23, 2011, still on Senator Susan Collins’ payroll but just two weeks after leaving his job as her Director of New Media, Matthew Gagnon wrote on his website Pinetreepolitics.com, a series of lies, slandering me about my two minutes of testimony defending constituents. ’She’s a lunatic’ he wrote on his blog. ’Rambling, slurring’… he wrote about my testimony defending constituents on his website. Lies. Not a word from him about constituent respect.
Last week, the Maine Sunday Telegram quoted Matthew Gagnon as complaining that Clean Election supporters are hypocrites because they take money from the outside sources the referendum will forbid.
The problem here is not hypocrisy- the problem is no respect for constituents and the civil liberties that aim to protect them- the right to criticize government officials without enduring harassment or public slander as an enemy of the state. Mr. Gagnon’s record of constituent disrespect when constituents exercise civil liberties is there for the reading.
Clean elections protect constituent rights so wealthy individuals or self-serving personal interests or six-figure job candidates don’t exploit the election process - and constituents. But targeting government critics because someone wants the fat government salaried job does what clean elections are supposed to prevent. It exploits constituents one person at a time.
If those now speaking about Clean Elections, don’t understand how clean elections protect civil liberties or are communicating out of both sides of the mouth, by disrespecting constituents while making up cute phrases about clean elections, well, that ‘s the track record- spoken , written, and available on-line. That is history which is often the most credible of all.
A Citizen's Guide to Voter Fraud
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 05:22
Well, we have an enigmatic scandal brewing in my state. Twenty-one ballots- all for a state Senate Republican candidate surfaced inside a sealed ballot box during a recount. In which- before the recount - the Democrat held a slight edge. Now a committee convened by the Republican majority State Senate is to determine if voter fraud happened and who should hold the seat. The naïve assume that only a Republican could do the ballot box stuffing since the ballots would give the Republican a victory. But reality says that winning that one Republican seat would not change the party with the Senate majority and thus leadership power.
Perhaps the committee will consider that this is another favored Democratic strategy- or at least one that’s been used before- called immunization- trying to introduce tarnishing- that can be useful later on.- a strategy at least one Democratic lawyer thought “brilliant.” Republican ballots could have just as easily been placed -post election- in the ballot box by Democrats gloved fingers, to embarrass Republicans by making it look like those old anti-voter fraud Republicans were doing it themselves.
It would not be the first time a political party used deception to create the opposite pubic perception of what has actually happened. In other words, Democrats creating voter fraud to make it look like the kind of voter fraud only Republicans would commit- since the phony votes would make a Republican win. Some things are more important than winning.
- Playing
- A Citizen's Guide to Voter Fraud
- From
- Susan J. Cook
What the Truth Costs: An Advanced Citizen's Guide
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 11:09
When we see the tools of discrediting the truth happily taken on, now or in history- we might say this. The cost of the truth is, it turns out, the truth.
I attended a conference recently about “Exploring Women’s Testimony: Genocide, War, revolution, The Holocaust and Human Rights”. After hearing how those things might be connected, it occurred to me hat maybe an advanced Citizens Guide to what the truth costs would be helpful. The truth comes at a high cost but the cost exacted varies from culture to culture, person to person, time, and context. The cost can be measured by its consequence. It can be measured by the intricacy, the arduous effort put into discrediting the speaker. This is what the conference was about.
I attended a conference recently about “Exploring Women’s Testimony: Genocide, War, revolution, The Holocaust and Human Rights”. After hearing how those things might be connected, it occurred to me hat maybe an advanced Citizens Guide to what the truth costs would be helpful. The truth comes at a high cost but the cost exacted varies from culture to culture, person to person, time, and context. The cost can be measured by its consequence. It can be measured by the intricacy, the arduous effort put into discrediting the speaker. This is what the conerence was about.
Sonnet for Looking for China
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | :59
From the Spring 2023 Maine Arts Journal. A poem on the intricacies of grieving.
- Playing
- Sonnet for Looking for China
- From
- Susan J. Cook
Sonnet for Looking for China
(Maine Arts Journal, Spring 2023)
-Susan Cook-
I am in my garden when I fall on
my knees because I remember I can't
find you now. Things that call or that beckon,
what walks toward me, has not been you. It can't
be. So, because I remember behind
everything, there is always something more,
I start to dig. People have tried to find
China this way. You found it, I bet, sure
now, of where it is that loss goes, the fall
it brings. I will find it too and when we're
there, together, we will celebrate small
truths. "Woman burrows to China." We'll cheer
human accomplishment, what cupped hands can
do, know what it is we didn't know then.
Credibility in Business Casual: Sexism Wears a New Outfit
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 04:46
The Republican attack on women, a not- so thinly veiled attack on credibility, the females, that is, is not new. Women, you may remember, require more “proof” that they are telling the truth than men do. Women’s credibility remains the non-credentialed, not appropriately dressed, inarticulate sweetspot where, when hit just right, sexism implants its tendrils and goes viral, its derision entitled, origin unknown, because we are talking about women.
Much is heard about the "new" Republican attack on women, a not so thinly veiled attack on credibility, the females’, that is. Women, you may remember require more “proof” that they are telling the truth than men do. Women’s credibility remains the non-credentialed, not appropriately dressed, inarticulate sweetspot where, when hit just right, sexism implants its tendrils and goes viral, its derision entitled, origin unknown, because we are talking abut women.
Many women don’t realize that today’s war on women’s credibility is like that faced by Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearing either because they now have credentials that they hope protect their credibility or they were not old enough or not allowed to watch that spectacle as it unfolded on national television in the early 1990’s. During the hearings to admit Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, Anita Hill, an African-American attorney was subpoenaed to testify about the sexual harassment she endured at his hands at his previous job.
I still have my “I Believe Anita Hill” button. Many women don’t. Many men never got one in the first place. The smug confidence that Clarence Thomas evinced during those hearings has metastasized into complete silence, as he now sits on the Court. He perhaps now believes he doesn’t have to say anything to have credibility as he has not said or asked any questions during the oral arguments for something like 6 years.
Some believe that blatantly different standards for male and female credibility have gone away. We need go no further than the recent trial of John Edwards for federal campaign law violations for “proof” that sexism’s new business casual dress does not mean standards have changed.
Criminal law trials are about credibility. The “designer” proof presented by John Edwards that he was telling the truth was this: A video of his nationally-televised appearance lauded as his moment of truth-telling, the “tell-all” in which he stated that he had a brief affair with Rielle Hunter but it had ended and his unethical staffer had fathered her child.
This “truth telling” explique was presented to the jury as evidence that the man before them was really not telling the truth then, even though he said he was before a national television audience, but he was telling the truth now. This, strategized his defense team, was, yes, a wardrobe failure in credibility that would now be restored with that ever-trustworthy safety pin- the fact that John Edwards is a man. They knew that would hold up better than the fact that Edwards is a lawyer. One word captures how a woman engaging in such tactics would be characterized: Flighty!
The Credibility dress standard is not the same for men and women. Credibility remains an icon of sexism that presumes that women have to meet different standards of proof than men do. There are cultural and social questions that we all must ask about the different standards for “proof” that apply to men and women, that are as unfair and unequal now as they were when Anita Hill was subpoenaed to testify about Clarence Thomas.
When we ask for proof from men and women, do we ask each of them, equally, no matter what the context, no matter who has been privileged with the presumptive “truth-teller” status? When the ” court of public opinion” is courted, really deep down, don't you think you can overlook what she says is true? That what everybody else thinks is better proof? That any other truth that she might offer is really just her reaching for a safety pin- when really- there isn’t one big enough to fill the gap?
Why Women Don't Tell, Part 3: The Cultural Anomie that Keeps Violence Toward Women Hidden in Broad Daylight
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 08:36
The arrest of a Fifth Avenue architect as the alleged serial murderer of several women brings up the question of whether anyone over that long period of time knew of the man's aggressive and violent underworld life. Did they know and just not tell? Is this yet another example of Not Telling about Violence Toward Women, about the cultural anomie about disclosure- "a lack of moral standards" a "lawlessness" about disclosing about violence toward women?
Why Women Don't Tell Part 3
The Cultural Anomie that Keeps Violence Toward Women Hidden in Broad Daylight
In the 15 or so years since the first woman was murdered by the alleged perpetrator, the now- indicted and arrested Fifth Avenue Architect, didn't anyone suspect or even know this man had violent tendencies? Aggression toward women? Was there no speculation that his wife and children periodically left because of a recurrent aggression no longer suppressed? Some recurrent resurfacing of a pathology? Did no one suspect or even witness events that raised doubts about violence and aggression in the man's life?
The deaths of these women described only as “prostitutes” as if there was nothing else to say about them, renews fears that this culture's anomie about violence toward women has not gone away or is at least quietly accepted. Anomie, Google says, means “a lack of moral standards, or a sense of lawlessness, or sometimes the anxiety that comes from being in a lawless place.”
Then there is the Anomie about Telling What We Know about someone else's violence and aggression. The arrest of this particular alleged perpetrator hiding in plain sight raises renewed anxiety that cultural acceptance of failing to Tell What We Know persists-Why Women Don't Tell. Surely, someone must have known or suspected this alleged perpetrator's violent side. The Tarrasoff Law would dictate that even healthcare providers disclose to authorities threats of known violence or homicide or committed ones.
Sometimes, the most fiercely internalized moral lessons come from witnessing in ourselves or in others the horrible aftermath of moral atrocities. The next step is to speak out but we know too well that if you see something you very often do not say something. Telling, comes at a cost- a well known cost that many avoid. Our internalized evolutionary tool for bettering the human race by telling- our sensitivity to human pain and suffering betrays us. There is no telling. The secret is kept.
I am a psychotherapist who for many years has studied and continues to study and provide Trauma intervention. Knowing itself- witnessing- violence- the discovery of the dark truth can be all by itself traumatic. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V acknowledges hearing about and witnessing violence, atrocious events can lead to post traumatic stress disorder. The frontal lobes- where we plan, decide, our executive skills which lead us through our lives, go offline, as Bessel Van der Kolk writes. Psychotherapist Sebern Fisher notes the neurobiology of a response to trauma may bring fight or flight, tonic immobility, collapsed immobility, an orienting freeze, or loss of consciousness or fainting (the vasovagal response) The human abilities through which we function are hijacked or shutdown completely. All reasons why others don't tell what they have seen, heard or know.
There is also plenty of exposure to culturally sanctioned punishment for Telling by the discloser. A shameful example of that punishment if not assassination for telling is best exemplified by a Washington Post Pulitzer Prize toting- columnist who reviewed in 1997 “The Kiss”, Kathryn Harrison's telling about her father's incestuous acts with her. The words in book synchronize almost with precise the torturous emotional sequalae of the act of telling about incest and the incest itself. Precise to chills which they did on my first, second and third reading. The real topic of the Washington Post reviewer Jonathan Yardley is given away by the article's title: “Daddy's Girl Cashes In”. His review explicates how to take down the girl who tells the truth about being the object of violence- physical or sexual- or fearful that violation or victimization has taken or is about to take place. The visual metaphor of Yardley's stance is that of him standing with his heel on the back of Kathryn Harrison's neck- pushing her face, the mind with which she eloquently and painfully found the words to disclose and the lips that mouthed them in mud. “Slimy, repellent, meretricious, cynical”, he wrote. “His seduction of the not-unwilling her. Its essential elements are not graphic sex -- in that department Harrison is coy rather than revealing -- but a revolting mixture of self-pity and narcissism“. “The real act of dishonesty is this shameful book, which exploits the private life of the author's family -- if, by the way, anything herein actually happened as she claims it did...” As if telling about sexual violence is exploiting “family privacy”.
Jonathan Yardley could have served as Consultant for anyone hoping to suppress suspicions about the now DNA-verified suspect in the Gilgo Beach murders. He reminds any perpetrator how to irreducibly discredit Anyone who might Tell the Truth of what they have seen, heard or observed. Yardley even refers to the same geographic area, the “polygon” of the alleged murderer's route writing that salaciousness rather than the atrocity of Harrison's sexual abuse drew readers. “The chattering classes of Manhattan and the Hamptons have homed in on it with the unerring instinct of swine slopping in swill. It is the Flavor of the Month.”
If the response to the trauma of hearing the atrocious does not bring shut down, freeze, a loss of conscious willingness to know what we know, our ethical core can be part of the making sense. There's a chance here that the Cultural anomie of Telling about Violence toward women will be uncovered- if it's held up to the light here- broad daylight where it has been hiding all along.
Tell Me How Many Black Seabirds
From Susan J. Cook | Part of the The River Is Wide series | 01:02
In these times, a poem for the places we find resilience.
- Playing
- Tell Me How Many Black Seabirds
- From
- Susan J. Cook
Tell Me How Many Black Seabirds
-Susan Cook-
Tell me how many black seabirds
woke up this morning, flew to a high place,
shook off a thousand drops of river, heard
each one, in slow motion, fall, a trace
of where each one began inside. This is
a daily ritual. They celebrate
with such silence, quiet applause, which is
to say, this abundance will tell a (late
sometimes) lie. The absence of chaos, just
drops of water shaken off, lets the heat
from the sun's dependable rays, we trust,
bring heart to any body's weary beat.
Tell me how we remind ourselves to turn
to the deliberate, needing it just now.