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Donald Trump is an equal opportunity racist, whose hateful, divisive and disingenouous rhetoric is cynically designed to whip up rage, in damaged, grudge-filled individuals.
December 7, 1920 – Tatamkhulu Afrika born as Mogamed Fu’ad Nasif in Egypt, South African poet and author; he came to South Africa as a very young child, and was fostered by family friends after his parents died; he was a soldier in the WWII North Africa Campaign, and was captured at Tobruk. His experiences as a prisoner of war are prominently featured in his writing. In the 1960s, he became an anti-apartheid activist, and a member of the armed wing of the ANC, uMkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation). In 1987, he was arrested for terrorism and banned from speaking in public or publishing his work for 5 years, but continued writing under the name Tatamkhulu Afrika. He served 11 years in prison until his release in 1992. Just after the 2002 publication of his final novel, Bitter Eden, he was run over by a car, and died of his injuries two weeks later.
To read Tatamkhulu Afrika’s poem “Dark Where Loneliness Hides” click:
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December 3, 1954 – Grace Andreacchi was born in New York City; American novelist, poet, and playwright. Her first play, Vegetable Medley, opened at the Soho Repertory Theater in 1985. Her novels include Music for Glass Orchestra, Poetry and Fear, and Scarabocchio. Her poetry collections include: Songs for a Mad Queen, Berlin Elegies, and Ten Poems for the End of Time.
To read Grace Andreacchi’s poem “On the Beach” click:
The lioness roared and determined it was time to leap into the thickets and marshlands of a Presidential impeachment; taking the whole Pride with her and using the last of her nine lives to fight a just cause. In Africa the roar of a lion is amplified multiple times, sending shockwaves through the jungle –
Before Kamala Harris was elected as U.S. vice president, Pelosi was the highest ranking elected woman in U.S. history. First elected to congress in 1987, she is serving as the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Possessed of oodles of smarts, tenacity, forbearance and sheer grit, she has translated these qualities into a stellar political career “sans pareil”. In essence, she inhabits her own orbit and is not to be trifled with. She is the chosen one.
Famously, the twilight days of her formidable career intersected with the tenure of the most criminal and anti-democracy US President – a certain discredited, malefactor called Donald Trump.
November 30, 1874 – Lucy Maud Montgomery born, English-Canadian author; best known for her Anne of Green Gables series. She also used the pen name L.M. Montgomery. After her mother died, her father left her in the custody of her maternal grandparents, who raised her in the small community of Cavendish, Prince Edward Island. She was a lonely child, who created imaginary friends and make-believe places, kept a journal, and wrote short stories and poetry. She earned a teacher’s license at Prince of Wales College, then studied literature at Dalhoousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She taught school, but didn’t enjoy it, and spent her free time writing short stories, which were published in magazines and newspapers. In 1897, she accepted a proposal of marriage, but later broke off the engagement because she fell in love with someone else, but he died of influenza. In 1898, she went to live with her widowed grandmother, who died in 1911. From 1901 to 1902, she worked in Halifax as a substitute proofreader for the newspapers Morning Chronicle and The Daily Echo. The press portrayed her as the “ideal young woman author” – a shy school teacher, wanting to write only part-time, her femininity “unspoiled.” The portrait was not much like the real Montgomery, who wrote a friend, “I am frankly in literature to make a living out of it.” Shortly after her grandmother’s death, Mongomery, at the age of 37, married Ewen MacDonald, a Presbyterian minister, with whom she had little in common. The marriage was difficult from the start – the ‘manse’ provided by the church lacked a toilet and bathroom, and her husband became increasingly depressed. Convinced that he was not of ‘the Elect’ chosen by God to go to heaven, he would sit for hours staring into space. He did nothing to help raise their children, and Montgomery suffered from bouts of depression herself. Writing was her solace. She died in 1942 of coronary thrombosis, at the age of 67. Her husband outlived her by about a year.
Though remembered now mostly for Anne of Green Gables, she was a prolific writer, producing over 50 novels, dozens of short stories, and many poems. In her writing, even though her characters often faced adversity, there were “kindred spirits” to help them, and things came right in the end. For the many hours of pleasure her books and stories brought to generations of readers, it seems a shame that Lucy Montgomery’s life should have been so filled with isolation, sadness, and struggle.
To read her poem “The Garden in Winter” click:
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“Those who won our independence … valued
liberty as an end and as a means. They believed
liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage
to be the secret of liberty.”
– Justice Louis D. Brandeis
by NONA BLYTH CLOUD
“Not what we say about our blessings,
but how we use them, is the true
measure of our Thanksgiving.”
— W.T. Purkiser,
author of The Gifts of the Spirit
Thanksgiving – an American national holiday, where we celebrate the Pilgrims’ thanksgiving after the first harvest in their new land, right? Not really.
It was President George Washington who first issued a proclamation calling upon all the “people of the United States” to observe “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer” on a specific date. On September 25, 1789, in the first year of Washington’s presidency, Elias Boudinot of Burlington, New Jersey, introduced in the United States House of Representatives a resolution, “That a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States, to request that he would recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Constitution of government for their safety and happiness.”
Nicole Plyler Fisk
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FFS Guest Blogger
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