Friday, November 30, 2012

Tricycle Daily Dharma November 30, 2012

Great Compassion

The virtues of great compassion are infinite; they could be expounded upon forever without exhausting them, but it boils down to this: Whoever has great compassion can extinguish all obstructions caused by past actions and can fulfill all virtues; no principle cannot be understood, no path cannot be practiced, no knowledge not attained, no virtue not developed.
- Zen Master Torei, "Great Compassion"

WANDA COLEMAN NEEDS YOUR HELP


 PLEASE READ:
http://www.latimes.com/features/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-poet-wanda-coleman-ill-20121122,0,1382926.story

 PLEASE HELP:
 http://www.indiegogo.com/Wanda-Coleman/x/342878



  
 
 

Thursday, November 29, 2012

MUST VIEWING





The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Legends of the Fault
www.hulu.com
John McCain and Lindsey Graham criticize Susan Rice for her Benghazi misstatement, despite their own history with misstatements.

FROM JOANNA CHEN


Abbas, Palestine Win Symbolic Victory at U.N.
www.thedailybeast.com

SARAH BROWNING

Sarah Browning is going to be celebrating her 50th birthday in a few days. She's having a big bash. Sarah is one woman who is responsible for the transformation of the literary community in Washington, D.C. As the executive director of Split This Rock she fuses poetry and politics into a seamless gown; wonderful attire for all of us. Browning is a bridge builder bringing people together. The Peace Movement has always been important to her. As a child she inherited progressive training wheels. Today this woman has wings capable of lifting us all up. I always feel blessed when we take a moment every few months to have breakfast together. It's a time to chat, laugh and network. In another life I was once on Sarah's board. Now I just order the eggs. This morning we drove over to The Coupe in Columbia Heights (3415 11th Street, NW).

It was my first time there.


SARAH BROWNING photo by Ethelbert


THE BLACK SCHOLAR (TBS)

Effective June 2012, TBS has relaunched, with new editors, an expanded editorial and advisory board, and an expanded vision to reflect a new generation of scholars and activists that has emerged in the last twenty years. We are responding to the Black Studies revolution and the institutionalizing of black scholarship; the explosion of various forms of racial, ethnic, gender and sexuality studies; vast changes in immigration patterns; the end of Apartheid in South Africa; the election of President Barack Obama; and the burgeoning of a black middle class alongside the metastasizing of an increasingly criminalized black underclass. New questions about the meanings or value of American or global blackness and the operation of racial politics and cultural production are being posed. We are now peer-reviewed.

The new editors—Laura Chrisman, Editor-in-Chief; Sundiata Cha-Jua, Senior Editor; Louis Chude-Sokei, Senior Editor—are committed to continuing the tradition of political engagement while reimagining the journal in keeping with these changes in the field and actively participating in its redefinition. We will strengthen its position as the primary space for interdisciplinary, cross-cultural black reflection and conversation. Though many of our clientele have come to regard TBS as primarily an academic journal due to our scholarly rigor, we continue to welcome non-specialist writers and to maintain the journal’s commitment to a broader community of readers.
Washington Memorial Services for Lawrence Guyot

The Washington, D. C. memorial service for longtime activist and freedom
warrior Lawrence Guyot will be held Saturday December 15, 2012 at 10 am at
the Goodwill Baptist Church, 1862 Kalorama RD NW, Washington, D. C. 20009.
Off-street parking will be available.  Longtime activist and family friend
Frank Smith has been asked by the family to coordinate the services. 

Guyots' remains will be carried by his family back to his hometown Pass
Christian, Mississippi for a service on Saturday December 8th. The Veterans
of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement will be hosting a memorial service
for Lawrence Guyot in the Chapel of Tougaloo College on Monday December
10th. For more information you may contact me at the African American Civil
War Museum, 1925 Vermont Ave. NW, 202-667-2667 or by email at
franksmith@afroamcivilwar.org.

Come join the Poetry and Literature Center next week for two new events spotlighting Spanish Literature at the Library of Congress:

International Literature: Javier Cercas
Javier Cercas, novelist and Professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Girona in Spain, reads from his work and discusses the state of contemporary Spanish literature. The event is free and open to the public. Book sales and a signing will follow.
Date: Thursday, December 6, at 2:00 PM
Location: LJ-119, Thomas Jefferson Building

Book Talk About Modern Poetry: T. S. Eliot and Octavio Paz
Pedro Serrano, poet and professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, reads from his work and discusses the relationship between the Modernist poets T. S. Eliot and Octavio Paz. The event is free and open to the public. Book sales and a signing will follow.
Date: Friday, December 7, at 12:00 PM
Location: Mary Pickford Theater, James Madison Building

For more information, please contact (202) 707-5394.


Center for Black Literature at MEC, CUNY
Call for Submissions!!
Killens Review of Arts & Letters
The Killens Review of Arts & Letters 
Invites Submissions

Submission of Material

The Killens Review of Arts & Letters, the literary journal published by the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, CUNY, seeks submissions of poetry, essays, short stories, or visual art that honor the spirit and mission of the late poet, essayist, and activist Louis Reyes Rivera, who passed away on March 3, 2012. Often referred to as the "Janitor of History," Rivera published four books, including Scattered Scripture(1996), for which he received the 1997 poetry award from the Latin American Writers Institute. He also edited and contributed to more than 200 published books, and co-edited Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jamwith Tony Medina.

In late October 2012, Hurricane Sandy, the largest hurricane on record to form in the Atlantic Basin, whipped fiercely through the East Coast and left tens of millions of people devastated, leaving many shelterless. The Killens Review seeks nonfiction, first-person narratives about the impact of the storm on your personal life and your community. Be inspired by words of poet Gwendolyn Brooks: "Look at what's happening in this world. Every day there's something exciting or disturbing to write about. With all that's going on, how could I stop?"

Length: 1,000 - 1,500 words
Paginated.

E-mail materials to writers@mec.cuny.edu with "Killens Review" in the subject heading and brief introduction of yourself or the work submitted.

Please include:
  • your name,
  • telephone number, and
  • e-mail address on the first page of your submission.  
Or mail material to:

Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, CUNY
1650 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11225

RE: Killens Review


NBWC Sym 2013
National Black Writers Conference
Biennial Symposium  Like us on Facebook
When
Wed., March 30, 2013
10:00 AM EDT
 
Where
Founders Auditorium
Medgar Evers College, CUNY
1650 Bedford Avenue
BROOKLYN, NY 11225

Follow us on Twitter

 
Sincerely,
 
Clarence V. Reynolds
Editor, Killens Review 
Associate Director, Center for Black Literature
at MEC, CUNY
1650 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11225
718-804-8883

EAR-UP!

Jukebox Time Machine


This is neat. It's sort of a "Jukebox Time Machine" of music. Each of the years below connects to the best 20 hits of that year via a Jukebox. Click on a year, wait a few seconds, and a Jukebox will appear showing you 20 hits from that year to select from. You can play all 20 hits, or.. click on just those that you like. Enjoy the ride!

> > > 1940
> > > 1950
> > > 1960
> > > 1970
> > > 1980
> > > 1990
> > > 1941
> > > 1951
> > > 1961
> > > 1971
> > > 1981
> > > 1991
> > > 1942
> > > 1952
> > > 1962
> > > 1972
> > > 1982
> > > 1992
> > > 1943
> > > 1953
> > > 1963
> > > 1973
> > > 1983
> > > 1993
> > > 1944
> > > 1954
> > > 1964
> > > 1974
> > > 1984
> > > 1994
> > > 1945
> > > 1955
> > > 1965
> > > 1975
> > > 1985
> > > 1995
> > > 1946
> > > 1956
> > > 1966
> > > 1976
> > > 1986
> > > 1996
> > > 1947
> > > 1957
> > > 1967
> > > 1977
> > > 1987
> > > 1997
> > > 1948
> > > 1958
> > > 1968
> > > 1978
> > > 1988
> > > 1998
> > > 1949
> > > 1959
> > > 1969
> > > 1979
> > > 1989
> > > 1999




Tricycle Daily Dharma November 29, 2012

Freedom of Heart

Sometimes suffering comes through clinging to certain emotional pain or certain stories; sometimes through not recognizing emptiness, the evanescence of life, that nothing can be claimed as I or mine. The point of dharma practice is to pay attention to where there is suffering, see the clinging and identification, and release it to find a freedom of heart.
- Jack Kornfield, "The Sure Heart’s Release"

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

THE POET AND THE PREACHER


Do you remember when I wrote this?
http://www.capitalcommunitynews.com/content/talking-about-faith-and-wizards

So there we are standing in Section 110 in the Verizon Center. The Wizards are holding onto a 2 point lead. Yes - this team is in need of prayer. All night we've been talking about what's wrong with this basketball team - and I think we're right. Do they need a new coach?  Do they need better players?
After the first win do we simply trust in the Lord?

It was good to witness Washington's win over Portland. Going into the arena I didn't know any of the players on the Trail Blazers. Judging by the size of the crowd I was not alone.  Below is a picture I took.

Photo by Ethelbert


So where do we go from here?  I can't see the Wizards winning 20 games his year.

IPS IN THE NEWS


http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/high-powered-fix-the-debt-group-draws-attention-scrutiny-in-washington/2012/11/28/e7ce096a-38c3-11e2-b01f-5f55b193f58f_story.html
 

NGUGI AT HOWARD UNIVERSITY

NGUGI WA THIONGO

Internationally-acclaimed writer, scholar and activist Ngugi wa Thiongo will spend the day with the University community Friday, Nov. 30, as a special guest and Scholar-in-Residence of the College of Arts and Sciences Freshman Seminar and the University-Wide Common Text Initiative.  As a part of two student panels, winners of the University-wide Common Text Essay Competition will deliver their presentations on his book, Something Torn and New, and Professor Ngugi will respond to their essays. Panel presentations begin 10 a.m. in the Browsing Room of Founders Library. Ngugi will deliver the keynote lecture at 3:30 p.m. in Cramton Auditorium.
 
 
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw

The Shalom Report


Heschel + 40 = Rebirthing America

Dear friends,

Before turning to Heschel, I want to note and mourn the recent death at 73 of Lawrence Guyot, an extraordinary  freedom organizer for SNCC and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. I met him when the Freedom Democrats, led by Fannie Lou Hamer and assisted by Dr. King, came to the Democratic National Convention in 1964 at Atlantic City, demanding to be accredited as the real Democrats from Mississippi. May Guyot make as much fruitful trouble demanding justice in Heaven as he did in Mississippi!

The 40th yohrzeit  of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel falls on December 30-31, 2012 (18 Tevet). It is swiftly followed by the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation (January 1); the actual birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15); the official observance of Dr. King’s birthday (January 21); and the celebration of the Inauguration to a second term of the first President to be an African-American (also January 21).

Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King worked closely together in spiritually rooted Prophetic opposition to racism, poverty, and militarism in American society. The fortieth yohrzeit evokes the biblical treatment of forty days and forty years as a time of pregnant pause before some major transformation  -- perhaps rooted in the forty weeks that is the average period of human pregnancy.

Photo of Heschel and King

In that light, it is time for us to take Rabbi Heschel’s teachings as a transmission across these forty years toward a great American Rebirth. We urge you to make use -- for example, in sermons, adult-education classes, public meetings, etc --  -- of these passages from Rabbi Heschel that unite the "spiritual" and the "political."   After passages from him, there are a few comments of my own on the shared Prophetic vision that he and Dr. King brought forward.

At Mishkan Shalom in Philadelphia, on Friday evening/Saturday of January 4 and 5, there will be a Heschel-King Festival that will draw on the wisdom of Dr. Vincent Harding and Dorothy Cotton, two of Dr. King’s closest associates -- today, members of the activist US National Council of Elders; and of Rabbi Michael Lerner, a student of Rabbi Heschel, editor of Tikkun magazine, and chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives. And there will be multiracial and multicultural music from intercongregational choirs, “Bible rap,” poetry, graphic art, dance --  indeed, a festival!
The Shalom Center helped initiate the Festival, and more than 20 other organizations are its co-sponsors.

To register for the Festival, please click here:
http://mishkan.org/story/heschel-king-festival
<https://theshalomcenter.org/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=2187&qid=1006041>

I know this is an unusually long letter. I beg your indulgence and even forgiveness, for putting these gems of Heschel directly before you instead of in an elsewhere URL.   You can see other essays and anthologies in a section of our Website: https://theshalomcenter.org/treasury/52

Shalom,
Arthur

**********************************
SPIRIT & POLITICS IN HESCHEL
Selected by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

"Where does God dwell in America today? Is God at home with those who are complacent, indifferent to other people's agony, devoid of mercy? Is God not rather with the poor and the contrite in the slums? ... Where in America do we hear a voice like the voice of the prophets of Israel? Martin Luther King is a sign that God has not forsaken the United States of America. ... Martin Luther King is a voice, a vision and a way. I call upon every Jew to hearken to his voice, to share his vision, to follow his way. The whole future of America will depend upon the impact and influence of Dr. King." -- Introducing Martin Luther King for his speech to the Rabbinical Assembly, March 25, 1968, ten days before King's assassination.

A photo of Heschel and King at Arlington

This photo was taken in 1967 at Arlington
National Cemetery, where Rabbi Heschel and Dr. King were mourning the dead of the Vietnam War and demanding an end to the war.

*********************

"The beginning of prayer is praise. The power of worship is song. To worship is to join the cosmos in praising God. . . . Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision." ("On Prayer," pp. 257-267, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, Susannah Heschel, ed. (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996).

*************************

"The White Man on Trial," spoken in February 1964 and published in a collection of Heschel's essays, The Insecurity of Freedom (Schocken, 1972).

"The decisive event in the story of the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt was the crossing of the Red Sea. . . . It was a moment of supreme spiritual exaltation, of sublime joy, and prophetic elevation for the entire people. . . .

"Then Moses led Israel onward from the Red Sea, and they went three days in the Wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water because it was bitter. And they murmured against Moses, saying, "What shall we drink?"

"This episode seems shocking. What a comedown! -- Only three days earlier they had reached the highest peak of prophetic and spiritual exaltation, and now they complain about such a prosaic and unspiritual item as water.

"The Negroes of America behave just like the children of Israel. Only in 1963 they experienced the miracle of having turned the tide of history . . . . . the March to Washington. Now only a few months later they have the audacity to murmur, '. . . We want adequate education, decent housing, proper employment.' How ordinary, how unpoetic, how annoying!

"Life could be so pleasant. The Beatles have just paid us a visit. The AT&T is about to split its stock. Dividends are higher than ever. Castro is quiet and well-mannered. Russia is purchasing grain from us. Only the Negroes continue to disturb us. . . .

"That prosaic demand for housing without vermin, for adequate schools, for adequate employment -- right here in the vicinity of Park Avenue in New York City -- seems so trite, so drab, so banal, so devoid of magnificence.

"The teaching of Judaism is the theology of the common deed. God is concerned with everydayness, with the trivialities of life. . . . The prophet's field of concern is not the mysteries of heaven, the glories of eternity, but the blights of society, the affairs of the market place. . . . [The prophet] addresses himself to those who trample upon the needy, who increase the price of grain, use dishonest scales, and sell the refuse of corn.

"What is at stake is a social movement, a call for social change in social theory and practice. Technology is transforming our society continuously, industry is recklessly dynamic, yet our thinking is static. Prosperity and comfort have made us listless, smug, indifferent. We enjoy our privileges, we detest any dislocation in our intellectual habits. But automation is with us, and so is poverty, and unemployment.. ..

*************************

"I interpret the young people's escape to drugs as coming from their driving desire to experience moments of exaltation.... The classical form of exaltation is worship.... But exaltation is gone from the synagogue [and] from the church.... Our life thus devours the wisdom of religious tradition without deriving from it sources of renewal and uplift.... The new witnesses for a revival of the spirit in America may well turn out to be those poor miserable men and women who are victims of the narcotics epidemic. If we will but . . . try to understand their misguided search for exaltation, we can begin the task of turning curse into blessing." ("In Search of Exaltation," pp. 227-229, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, Susannah Heschel, ed. (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996)

****************************

There is an evil which most of us condone and are even guilty of: indiffercnce to evil. We remain neutral, impartial, and not easily moved by the wrongs done unto other people. Indifference to evil is more insidious than evil itself; it is more universal, more contagious, more dangerous. A silent justification, it makes possible an evil erupting as an exception becoming the rule and being in turn accepted.

The prophets' great contribution to humanity was the discovery of the evil of indifference. One may be decent and sinister, pious and sinful.

The prophet is a person who suffers the harms done to others. Wherever a crime is committed, it is as if the prophet were the victim and the prey. The prophet's angry words cry. The wrath of God is a lamentation. All prophecy is one great exclamation: God is not indifferent to evil! He is always concerned, He is personally affected by what man does to man. He is a God of pathos.

In condemning the clergymen who joined Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in protesting against local statutes and practices which denied constitutional liberties to groups of citizens on account of race, a white preacher declared: "The job of the minister is to lead the souls of men to God, not to bring about confusion by getting tangled up in transitory social problems."

In contrast to this definition, the prophets passionately proclaim that God himself is concerned with "the transitory social problems," with the blights of society, with the affairs of the market place.

What is the essence of being a prophet? A prophet is a person who holds God and men in one thought at one time, at all times. Our tragedy begins with thc segregation of God, with the bifurcation of the secular and sacred. We worry more about the purity of dogma than about the integrity of love. We think of God in the past tense and refuse to realize that God is always present and never, never past; that God may be more intimately present in slums than in mansions, with those who are smarting under the abuse of thc callous.

There are, of course, many among us whose record in dealing with the Negroes and other minority groups is unspotted. However, an honest estimation of the moral state of our society will disclose: Some arc guilty, but all are responsible. If we admit that the individual is in some measure conditioned or affected by the public climate of opinion, an individual's crime discloses society's corruption. In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, racial discrimination would be infrequent rather than common.

>From "Religion and Race," in The Insecurity of Freedom , pp. 110-111.

****

That equality is a good thing, a fine goal, may be generally accepted. What is lacking is a sense of the monstrosity of inequality. Seen from the perspective of prophetic faith, the predicament of justice is the predicament of God.

The Negro movement is an outcry of pain in which a sickness of our total society comes to expression: supersonic planes and sub-standard housing; esoteric science and vulgar ethics; an elite of highly specialized experts, and a mass of unprepared, unskilled laborers. The apex of the pyramid ascends most rapidly, while the basis expands with equal rapidity. It is the Negro movement that sounds the alarm at a time when the rest of society seems content and unprepared to face a social emergency. It is the problem of jobs for the disemployed [sic], dignity for those who are on relief, employment for the unskilled, the threat of automation, the curse of poverty, the blighted slums in our cities.

Religion becomes a mockery if we remain callous to the irony of sending satellites to the sky and failing to find employment for our fellow citizens, of a highly publicized World's Fair and insufficient funds for the extermination of vermin in the slums.

Is religion to be a mockery ?

>From "The White Man on Trial," in The Insecurity of Freedom , pp. 110-111.

**************

"We have failed to offer sacrifices on the altar of peace; now we must offer sacrifices on the altar of war.... Let Fascism not serve as an alibi for our conscience.... Where were we when men learned to hate in the days of starvation? When raving madmen were sowing wrath in the hearts of the unemployed? . . . In our everyday life we worshipped force, despised compassion, and obeyed no law but our unappeasable appetite." ("The Meaning of This War [World War II]," pp. 210-212. Written in 1942.  Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, Susannah Heschel, ed. (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996)

*****************************************************************

Time is like an eternal burning bush. Though each instant must vanish to open the way to the next one, time itself is not consumed. . . . Time has independent ultimate significance; it is of more majesty and more provocative of awe than even a sky studded with stars.... Time is the process of creation, and things of space are results of creation. When looking at space we see the products of creation; when intuiting time we hear the process of creation.

*****************************************************************

The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space.... Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time. . . . Eternity utters a day.

To set apart one day a week for freedom, a day on which we would not use the instruments which have been so easily turned into weapons of destruction, a day for being with ourselves, a day of detachment from the vulgar, of independence of external obligations, a day on which we stop worshipping the idols of technical civilization, a day on which we use no money, a day of armistice in the economic struggle with our fellow men and the forces of nature. Is there any institution that holds out a greater hope for man's progress than the Sabbath? (From The Sabbath [Farrar Straus and Young, 1951], pp. 10, 28, 64, 78,100-101.)

* * *

How proud we are of our victories in the war with nature, proud of the multitude of instruments we have succeeded in inventing, of the abundance of commodities we have been able to produce. Yet our victories have come to resemble defeats. ... Selling himself into slavery to things, man becomes a utensil that is broken at the fountain. (From The Sabbath [Farrar Straus and Young, 1951], pp. 3, 27, 100.)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Comments by Rabbi Arthur Waskow :

Please note above Heschel’s invention of the word “disemployed” in his essay on
"The White Man on Trial." I don’t know what he intended. I use it frequently to remind us that while “unemployed” sounds as if millions of workers had accidentally stubbed their toes on the way to work, “disemployed” at least hints that some person or institution, a corporation, perhaps a bank, even a state or the US government, made a decision to take those jobs away: by refusing to keep investing money, by shipping jobs elsewhere, by shifting to computers and putting the “productivity savings” into owners’ profitable pockets instead of reducing work-time with no reduction in pay while keeping profits reasonable.

Heschel and King together united prayer to action, creating forms of public politics that were infused with prayerful being (as Heschel said about the Selma March for racial justice alongside Dr. King, “I felt as if my legs were praying”), and creating forms of prayer that were indeed “subversive.”

Together they spoke the triple truth of Prophecy:


Speaking truth to power.

Speaking truth to the powerless, the disempowered, who cannot act unless they hear the truth that has been hidden from them by the powerful.

Speaking truth even to their own supporters when the supporters cringed as they set forth the radical truth, the very roots, of their beliefs. That harsh necessity become clear when for both of them, many friends and allies -- who had encouraged and followed them in their resistance to racial oppression --  tried to hush them from speaking out against the Vietnam War,

All this they did by uniting not only prayer and action, but by uniting the future with the present: acting to embody the future they imagined, in the present they were living. By committing themselves to nonviolence as a means and the Beloved Community as the goal.

Remember:  You can see other essays and anthologies by and about Heschel by clicking here to a section of our Website: https://theshalomcenter.org/treasury/52
And if you want to help us keep turning words into action, prayers into change, please give The Shalom Center a tax-deductible gift by clicking on the "Donate" line just below my signature. Thanks!
Shalom, salaam, paz, peace!  --  Arthur
Please strengthen our transformative work by donating here.
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LAST COMMENT ON THE ELECTION FROM E

For several months I told people the presidential election was not going to be a close one. Why?  How did I reach this conclusion?  I paid no attention to any of the pundits. The problem with our media today is that it's no longer objective. News networks are into storytelling. The best story is the one that makes the most money. One can create a good story simply by creating drama. I knew the media was going to tell us the presidential race was a close one even before the Republicans selected a candidate. If Mickey Mouse was running against Obama the late October polls would have found them tied. Why?  Simple drama stirred into greed and the money making glass. Our failure to Occupy the media will continue to let Big and Little Brothers control our thinking.

Look at how the media is trying to mug us after the election by saying the Republicans have a Hispanic problem. The only Hispanic problem is the media looking at Hispanics- as a problem. How Romney lost the election is as fictional as if he had won. My major concern going into 2012 was that the Republican Party would not nominate a good candidate. I was looking for a strong moderate Republican to emerge; someone who maybe had a few close black friends. This was my problem with Romney and why so many found him corny or a fake. I first got turned off just by how this guy looked in jeans.

Anyway - it's after the end of the world and Obama is still President of the US. Yes, we survived for now and not even the Mayan calendar has a problem with the final election numbers. What we now know is that Obama has a mandate if he desires to claim it. It must begin by him ignoring the media. Do you think Susan Rice should be fighting for her reputation right now?  Of course not - this is more media BS - trying to create a problem where there is none. Denying Rice the opportunity for her to replace Clinton as Secretary of State is like punishing someone for reading 1 bad poem during Open Mic Night.

Too often I find myself reading several news stories before I can "paste" together a narrative that makes sense. Our task as Americans is to not only know fiction when we see it -but to be careful of creative non-fiction. Don't be seduced by oral sex. One man's fast is another man's slow. Don't let any pundit tell you what love is. Look beyond the romance and the glitter.

Tricycle Daily Dharma November 28, 2012

A Radical Challenge

The Buddha presented a radical challenge to the way we see the world, both the world that was seen two millennia ago and the world that is seen today. What he taught is not different, it is not an alternative, it is the opposite. That the path that we think will lead us to happiness leads instead to sorrow. That what we believe is true is instead false. That what we imagine to be real is unreal. A certain value lies in remembering that challenge from time to time.
- Donald S. Lopez, "The Scientific Buddha"

GRACE A. ALI ON C-SPAN

I received the link below from my friend Grace A. Ali.


GRACE A. ALI photo by Ethelbert



Tuesday, November 27, 2012


Cave Canem in December
Join Cave Canem for poetry in New York City, Pittsburgh and Baltimore. Don't miss two special events with Frost Medalist and Newbery Honor Book Award winner Marilyn Nelson!
December 2, 2 pm
Enoch Pratt Free Library
400 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD
Cave Canem Poets at Enoch Pratt
Kwame Dawes reads from his new book, Duppy Conqueror, with Mahogany L. Browne, Raina Fields, Niki Herd, Brandon D. Johnson, Bettina Judd & Katima Lee.
December 5, 6:30 pm
Cave Canem
20 Jay Street
Suite 310-A
DUMBO, Brooklyn
Cave Canem Workshop Poets Read
Participants in Cave Canem’s NYC Workshops share poems honed in class. Instructors Evie Shockley and Ama Codjoe host. Reception to follow.
December 6, 6 pm
Hill House Kaufmann Center
1835 Centre Ave
Pittsburgh, PA
The Writing Life: A Reading
Participants in Cave Canem's Pittsburgh Workshop share poems honed in class. Instructor Christina Springer hosts.
December 6, 6:30 pm
Cave Canem
20 Jay Street
Suite 310-A
DUMBO, Brooklyn
Light & Lark: A Book Launch
Celebrate the release of three new books by Cave Canem elder Marilyn Nelson: Faster than Light: New and Selected Poems and two children's books, Ostrich & Lark and Snook Alone. She is joined by dg nanouk okpik debuting Corpse Whale, a first collection of poems steeped in the perspective of an Inuit of the twenty-first century. Reception to follow. $5-$10 recommended admission to benefit Cave Canem.
December 7, 5 - 9 pm
Cave Canem
20 Jay Street
Suite 310-A
DUMBO, Brooklyn
Poetic Identities: Exploring Writing & Publishing for Young Adults
A Master Class
with Marilyn Nelson / Open to All
Marilyn will discuss some of the rewards and frustrations of forging a "cross-over" poetic identity between two worlds, two markets: the world of poetry and the world of young adult publishing. Through Skype, participants will hear additional words of wisdom from Peter Johnson, critically acclaimed poet and the author of YA novels What Happened and Loserville; Leslea Newman, author of nearly 30 books for young adults and children, including the iconic Heather Has Two Mommies; and Quincy Troupe, prolific award-winning poet and prose writer, whose books include Little Stevie Wonder and Take It to the Hoop, Magic Johnson. Fee: $125 general public / $95 Cave Canem Fellows & Workshop Poets. Register no w or visit our website for further details.

CAVE CANEM FOUNDATION, INC. • www.cavecanempoets.org • 718.858.0000
20 Jay Street, Suite 310-A, Brooklyn, NY 11201
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