Poetry, politics, peace and passion

I’d like to get in the habit of a morning expression instead of espresso, and not be so concerned about how perfect the writing is or who I will offend. I try to be respectful of my e-list because it is a privilege to appear in people’s mailboxes.

Just a few tidbits from my daily dose of democracy now: FEMA head Michael Brown fabricated parts of his resume, per Time magazine, his main qualifications for his job seem to be that the former head of FEMA was his college roommate and that he worked on W. Bush’s campaign. FEMA’s top three charities listed to donate to include Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing. When questioned by reporters about why, Brown said they were doing good work. Aside from the fact that Robertson advocated assassinating Venezuela’s president a couple of week’s ago, his charity had been under indictment in the past for contributions going to private enterprises of Robertson. Details on www.democracynow.org.

Quote from Pacifica Radio news report: Reporters have witnessed the militarization of the city and are starting to feel the effects of the government crack-down on information gathering. FEMA is now rejecting requests by journalists to accompany rescue boats searching for storm victims. In addition, journalists are being asked not to photograph any dead bodies in the region. NBC News Anchor Brian Williams reported on his blog, that police officers had been seen aiming their weapons at members of the media. And a blogger named Bob Brigham wrote a widely read dispatch that the National Guard in Jefferson County are under orders to turn all journalists away. Brigham writes: "Bush is now censoring all reporting from New Orleans, Louisiana. The First Amendment sank with the city."

Earlier this week, Reporters Without Borders issued a warning about police violence against journalists working in New Orleans. They highlighted two cases – in one case police detained a Times-Picayune photographer and smashed his equipment to the ground after he was seen covering a shoot-out with police. In the second case, a photographer from the Toronto Star was detained by police and his photos taken from him when police realized that he had snapped photos of a clash between them and citizens who the police claimed were looters.
Jacquie Soohen, (Independent film maker with Big Noise films. Among her films - "Zapitista" and "Fourth World War," who traversed the globe from South Africa to South Korea, from Argentina to Iraq) said a recent experience in New Orleans rivaled any tension and fear she had in her travels.

I think it’s all well and good that we at the Santa Rosa Symphony are doing a hurricane relief benefit, but I’m worried about where sincere people's money might be going and concerned about Halliburton once again profiteering on tragedy with its exclusive contract to rebuild the military bases on the gulf coast and with Kellogg Brown and Root, who "misplaced millions" in Iraq, setting up shop in Louisiana in displaced people camps. Dick Cheney, who was visiting Mississippi yesterday, got a couple of "go fuck yourself" from people in the crowd. I understand the sentiment but I wouldn’t myself degrade fucking in that fashion.

Listening to Amy Goodman and Democracy Now from 6 to 7 a.m. this morning started my weekend on a hopeful note. Cindy Sheehan’s "Camp Casey" demonstration outside W. Bush’s vacation ranch in Crawford, Texas has not only made The Daily Show, but has hit media around the world and has become a focal point for the largely forgotten suffering families who have lost children and husbands to the Iraq invasion and occupation .

Of course the families want to know why they were lied to about weapons of mass destruction, and want to know where the government’s ill-conceived policy is leading our country. Interesting that Colleen Rowley, the FBI whistle-blower, named Time Magazine Person of the Year for her revelations about intelligence before 9-11 is at Camp Casey talking about how the Iraq invasion and how occupation has given terrorism an incredible boost, has squandered the real possibility of world cooperation that followed the events of 2001. Gold star families, legislators, celebrities such as Lance Armstrong are participating, all in their own ways. A Minnesota state senator who lost her son, a former diplomat to Afganistan who resigned in protest at the time of Iraq invasion, all spoke eloquently, made me cry and smile. Cindy’s imagination and courage was the spark, she said as she left her vigil to attend to her mother who had just had a stroke, but now the "fire of protest is raging out of control. "

I urge you to read the statement below by former CA state senator and longtime (since Vietnam) peace activist Tom Hayden (he was one the the Catonsville 9--people I knew personally who poured blood on draft files during the Vietnam War and had a high profile trial and conviction in the sixties. Hayden and others have drafted a withdrawal from Iraq petition which you can read below and then go online and sign. This is something Progressive Democrats are supporting, although our old friend John Kerry (former eloquent Vietnam veteran against the war) couldn’t seem to get behind when he had the opportunity to do so.

I wish you at least one happy weekend, knowing that over 1600 vigils took place last Thursday in support of "Camp Casey" and Cindy Sheehan and the other mothers. It had top billing in our Press Democrat daily paper yesterday, covering a local vigil, with Santa Rosa war victim families.

Follow the link to the petition, please sign, and tell your friends and family about the proposal when they say "we just can’t up and leave Iraq." This is your answer.

Heartfelt desire for peace and justice and a thank you from me.
jennie


http://www.peace-action.org/home/08.16.05Hayden.html
http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/Peaceact/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=102

Use this link to see photos and read reports of the vigils in solidarity with Cindy Sheehan and Camp Casey
http://www.political.moveon.org/cindyvigils/pics.html?&id=5916-379048-lQFbF3H4W_6X7QXbImRgjA&t=14

Can it be that I haven’t posted to my blog since March? To ease back into it, let me post a poem I wrote after our so-called Independence Day. Seems I’ve written many poems following the Fourth of July holiday. It inspires me.


(July 5)

"Spins on ground, emits flames and sparks"
I picked up the small red cannister,
read and dropped it, an unthinking part of me
started to think the dud could explode.

Signs of last night’s celebration litter the asphalt
black-on-black shadows amid carboard and plastic
carnage. "No smoking" signs plastered on the abandoned
fireworks shed; two for one on selected items.

News broadcast says the Pentagon’s revised its strategy
no longer able to “fight two wars simultaneously
anywhere in the world.” Now it’s one war and protect
the homeland. Booms, crackles and the barking of terrified

dogs kept me awake. Remember the 70-day bombing of
what was once Yugoslavia? The elderly sisters wrote:
"noise more than the blood is driving us insane." In Iraq
a boy picks up the litter of war, a girl in Afganistan

spins on the ground, emitting flames and sparks.


© 2005 Jennie Orvino

In light of the California court decision yesterday supporting marriage equality by declaring the state’s marriage law unconstitutional for discriminating against same sex partners, I want to share with you two pieces of writing by my long time friend Barbara. I’ve known her since she was 40 and I was 22, and we were involved in actions against the Vietnam War in the city of Milwaukee. She is now over 70, a minister, living with her partner in the state of Washington. The first excerpt is from an op ed piece she wrote for the local newspaper titled "God teaches us to accept others." The poem is, according to Barbara, where "I let my full feelings out better than I could in the editorial." I read an article last year that pointed out that marriage was seeming to be a dead institution until the gays and Mayor Newsom in SF made it glamorous again. The "traditionals" should be glad for the p.r. boost.

I’m sharing the poem and excerpt in celebration of love, and for couples of all persuasions; and to support the wonderful families that have two mommies or two daddies. As my friend writes: the more mommies the better!

Make love not war,
Jennie

from an op ed piece in The Olympian, 2/19/05

"My wedding day started early on a fine June morning in 2001. Flowers were needed to decorate the plain white cake, so my friend, Jennie, walked into the garden to pick some. Other friends went t the church early to decorate the reception hall and to set out tea sandwiches and fruit plates… My partner and I promised to love and care for each other for better or for worse…We remember that every day, through thick and thin. This is marriage…"

***

How can it be that some people in this town
with its cloudy skies and soaring gulls
can tear themselves away from watching the sunset
over the Black Hills, to make an issue
of Carol and me and our lesbian marriage?
Don’t they ever stop--and praise--and weep?
How come instead of solving the problems
of poverty and war, they’ve taken up
trying to ban gay marriage
as their new religious duty?

They believe--they really believe--
that Carol and I are damned for eternity,
unless we give up on our wayward
sinful lives and take Jesus-Christ-as-our-personal-
lord-and-savior. Wait a minute! I’m more
of a Buddhist than a Christian, but
I actually love Jesus, the guy who hung out
with the "unclean," those the Good People
shunned. The Jesus who said "love
your enemies" and who refused to be a king.

I find it hard to believe that this radical,
mystical preacher and teacher, who
was humble and cosmic at the same time
would judge Carol and me the way
these people who call themselves
Christians do. Of course we’re not
perfect. Like everyone we’re crabby at times
and selfish and we get distracted
by unimportant things like TV shows.

But these people!
They don’t want us to get married.
They don’t want us to kiss each other
or touch each other’s body in tenderness
and sleep in the same bed
and mix our breathing as we dream.

They don’t want people like us
to adopt abandoned and abused children,
or give birth to children, or raise
each other’s kids and make new families.
They say: "A child can’t have two mommies."
I say: the more mommies the better.
The more love the better.
The more good marriages the better.

They say Carol and I can’t be married.
We are married! In the eyes of God
and my children and grandchildren
and Carol’s children and grandchildren
and our friends who came to church
on a warm June day to sing and dance
with us and listen to us say our vows.
We made promises to each other
in the presence of not one but two ministers!
Two serious and funny gray-haired women ministers!

Don’t tell me that the Spirit of Love
and Goodness wasn’t with us that day.
Don’t even suggest that Jesus
wouldn’t have joined us that day in June 2001,
with his sad Jewish face lit up with smiles
and his bare feet moving in the dance
and he would eat our white cake, too.
I know he would.

To these so-called Christians I say:
lighten up! Walk around the lake
and watch the bufflehead ducks and
mergansers. Go help out at the Food Bank.
Or stay home and read Winnie-the-Pooh stories
to your children, and then make love
with your own beloved spouse.
And drop the anti-gay obsession.
You don’t need it to be happy.


© 2005 Barbara Gibson

My friends say I’m a little crazy for setting my alarm for 6 a.m. each day to listen to Democracy Now with my favorite journalist and role model Amy Goodman and her wonderful crew, but it heartens me to hear the truth. While the talking heads jabber, I hear interviews with real people--the one who was picked up in a NY airport on his way home to his family in Canada and shipped to Syria to be tortured in prisons there for more than a year before returning uncharged with any crime to his shattered life. The U.S. policy of "rendition" for torture, now sanctioned by our attorney general.

Underneath the headlines, to hear the actual words of the Italian journalist, Giuliana Sgrena , held hostage in Iraq, who had been seen pleading for her life in video, whose release was negotiated by an Italian secret service agent over the weekend, only to have that same agent killed by American soldiers when their rescue car was fired upon on the way to Baghdad airport. Giuliana, unharmed by her Iraq captors, was wounded in the barrage of tank fire. She says there was no warning from the Americans, and that the car was travelling at normal speed. All of which contradicts the military version. The Italian people, already against the war, are even more furious now. Huge demonstrations at the agent’s funeral in Rome. We know this has happened to innocent Iraqis, and has happened to other journalists as well.

Listening further, the trial of Irish Peace Activists opposed to U.S. Military use of Shannon Airport has begun in Dublin. I was thrown back to the 1960s, non-violent direct action by the likes of the Fathers Berrigan. These are "Ploughshares" activists who hammered on aircraft, disrupting and trying to prevent these "pit stops" in their country. Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit was there to support: "I’ve been against the war on the Iraqi people since 1991, he said. Does anyone remember the first time we destroyed Iraq from the air with a few dozen casualties compared to hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. It amazes me that anyone can ask the question "why do they hate us?" but, according to "unembedded" reporters on the ground, Iraqis still give them hospitality, understand that half this country does not approve of killing them, poisoning them with radiation and killing their children with sanctions for 12 years.

Ah, nothing like a good rant on a Monday morning before work. Meanwhile, the government is refusing funding to high schools that won’t allow army recruiters on campus. The military "leaves no child behind." And even after a devastating report on "Oceans in Crisis", the Bush administration won’t give an ounce of funding to ocean research and education. I have to ask myself what more can I do, before it’s too late. In my lifetime, (which I admit is not that much longer) huge parts of our wonderful oceans could be damaged beyond repair. Is there no area or topic that can set the ordinary American on fire with activism? What will move us? More later.

I'll be reading this piece on KRCB radio, 91.1 FM in Sonoma County (www.krcb.org) on the Word by Word show on Feb. 2. WbW just got an NEA grant and I'm proud to have co-produced it through its first year, and slightly into its second. I had the pleasure of interviewing many great writers, including poets Billy Collins, Nikki Giovanni and Diane DiPrima. The question, from Tiny Lights Magazine's "Searchlights and Signal Flares" writers exchange [www.tiny-lights.com] was WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM YOUR WRITING?

The question is not so much what do I want from my writing as what am I willing to give to my writing. I approach this-what is it, propensity, vocation, obsession?-like an intimate relationship which demands attention, care, respect, nourishment and a long leash. I also need to acknowledge that I write for the satisfaction of self-expression and sometimes for money. I love to read for audiences and I do it for the glory of the Muse and to get some of her reflected spotlight.

Each day I renew the commitment to my relationship "vows": pay attention, honor your process, be patient, read other writers, and "keep your hand moving."

Some writing is easy. Once a day, at least, I take up my journal to document, moan, rage, affirm, list and notice: Often I start with "today I celebrate myself for." whether I'm feeling blue or feeling high. As I did as I teen-ager, I write about requited and unrequited love. On the floor of my bedroom closet there are cardboard boxes full of 40 years of this stuff. For the gift of daily loyalty, my writing gives in return a container for my psyche, my Self. And when the Muse grins, I might find the seed of a poem in the pages of my diary.

My other easy writing is correspondence. I've always written letters, with special pens, stationery with matching envelopes, and cursive technique drilled into me by grade-school nuns. When I learned to type, I had a tiny corner desk, the Hermes manual, and a hand-painted, hinge-top box for stamps. And now, email! My passion, my delight, my marketing tool, my romance builder, my connection to hundreds, maybe thousands of like-minded souls. My longest-lasting friendships seem to be with those who "give good mail." And beyond the intimacy of deep electronic conversations, there's the gift of online magazines and instant publishing, which has connected me with writers around the world. For keyboards, electricity, DSL lines, chats and lists (a mixed blessing), and the ability to communicate with my fingers, I give thanks.

My journalistic and creative writing is more challenging, and. the greater the risk, the greater the reward. When I do meet a deadline, write something I'm proud of that pleases, provokes, inspires, I get a sense of "being who I really am, doing what I'm supposed to do." That sounds a little corny, but how else to say what I seek through writing is a feeling of wholeness, a relaxing into "aaahhhh, now that's more like it."

I wrote this Dec. 11 but forgot to post it in my hurry to scurry to work.

"The United Church of Christ. No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you’re welcome here." NBC and CBS TV both rejected this ad--which shows bouncers working a rope line in front a church turning away a gay couple, a black girl and a Hispanic man--as "too controversial." To quote columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. of the Miami Herald, "The maggot eaters of Fear Factor are evidently OK to broadcast…but a commercial that says only that God’s love includes us all is too controversial to show?! Unbelievable."

I second that emotion.

"Unbelievable" is the word I’ve written and uttered the most in the past four years, but I may have to add something to the lexicon that is a whole lot stronger. The example above, indicating the bankruptcy of the American monopolized media, is unfortunately just one of many assaults on my (our) sensibilities. Last night, I happened to flip on the television while I was gobbling a late supper, to see a PBS Nova segment entitled: Life and Death in the War Zone.

The program had been made over a year ago (we must now assume conditions are much worse in Iraq) about the army field hospitals set up in conjunction with the American pre-emptive war. The outpost they examined was in the desert north of Baghdad, and the subject was doctors dealing with the "guidelines" on who they could treat and who they couldn’t with their "limited resources." All the tough decisions the head doctors had to make: A mother who brought in her 20-something son paralyzed by a missile that hit their house was a "no." Same for the Iraqi policeman whose stomach was infected from multiple shrapnel wounds, and the badly-burned two year old girl. Not enough supplies and beds to treat everyone, and of course, the American soldiers are first priority.

The Iraqi hospitals have no supplies, and haven’t had any for 10 years due to sanctions. Iraqi doctors were interviewed. "We have the knowledge to save people’s lives, but no medicines and supplies." The report then focused on a mother who brought to the American field hospital her 10-year-old daughter with lots of horrible burn and bomb injuries. But what was striking was how malnourished the girl was. Her arms were just bones. The report said the mother (I almost wrote "parents" but the Iraqi men are in jail or dead) hadn’t been able to get the girl to treatment because they were trapped in their house due to fighting. I don’t think a month of siege, though horrible, made that girl so agonizingly thin. Yes they tried all means to save her, were even going to fly her--the one exception that touched the young medic’s heart-- out of the country, but, well, she died before they could. A nurse cried, "I can’t take this--the children!) The dead girl’s mother wept, in the arms of one of the female nurse-soldiers (her head wrapped in a scarf). The docs put up a screen for privacy.

Nova reported this field hospital had treated 30,000 casualties (this was in 2003).

Now cut to a fully-equipped field hospital in Kuwait. They had personnel sitting around reading books, hadn’t seen one casualty since they opened. Nova reported, that particular hospital was subsequently abandoned.

I’ve gone to the Nova website and read the subsequent comments of the U.S. medical personnel interviewed in the film. They are so dedicated, work so hard, suffer a lot and do a lot. They will ultimately be casualties also, their memories, their stress. They also have had the opportunity to witness courage and be courageous.

And yet, and yet, as noble as it is, it is all so expensive and unnecessary. It never had to be done, the war was based on lies and greed, and while so many Americans and Iraqis suffer, the neo-cons and their corp cohorts and families enjoy their dinners, play their golf.

(Does anyone remember that this is ongoing suffering, with our awareness --or mine--just beginning during the Gulf War in 1991. Deaths of hundreds of thousands of children Marilyn Albright said were the price to pay for undermining Saddam (but sanctions didn’t work, did they? and we had to go on in and bomb this defiant oil rich country and occupy it.)