Earth Hour Day *
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International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for Dignity of Victims
Chocolate Covered Raisins Day
Red Nose Day *
World Tuberculosis Day *
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by NONA BLYTH CLOUD
‘Light Verse’ – one of those labels like ‘children’s book’ that makes a many people assume a writer’s work is not quite good enough to be called poetry or literature. But labels, like the covers of books, are far from the best way to make judgments about an author’s ability.
The poetry of Phyllis McGinley (1905-1978) is called ‘light verse’ because much of it is humorous, and it rhymes. She uses a foil instead of a saber, but that doesn’t make her poetic observations any less dead-on.
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Since we’ve just been through the ‘Spring Forward’ change to Daylight Savings Time in the Northern Hemisphere, this poem seems timely. When McGinley wrote it, the time change was still in April, but not much else different.
In spring when maple buds are red,
We turn the clock an hour ahead;
Which means, each April that arrives,
We lose an hour out of our lives.
Who cares? When autumn birds in flocks
Fly southward, back we turn the clocks,
And so regain a lovely thing
That missing hour we lost in spring.
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These poems go a little deeper. There’s more than a little resemblance to my dad, and maybe yours too. My mom? Well, she didn’t understand me, but she loved me anyway.
The first thing to remember about fathers is, they’re men.
A girl has to keep it in mind.
They are dragon-seekers, bent on impossible rescues.
Scratch any father, you find
Someone chock-full of qualms and romantic terrors,
Believing change is a threat –
Like your first shoes with heel on, like your first bicycle
It took months to get.
Walk in strange woods, they warn you about the snakes there.
Climb and they fear you’ll fall.
Books, angular looks, swimming in deep water –
Fathers mistrust them all.
Men are the worriers. It is difficult for them
To learn what they must learn:
How you have a journey to take and very likely,
For a while, will not return.
A mother’s hardest to forgive.
Life is the fruit she longs to hand you,
Ripe on a plate. And while you live,
Relentlessly she understands you.
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By ann summers
![C7nNJ11VMAAMkSw_1_[1]](https://flowersforsocrates.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/c7nnj11vmaamksw_1_1.jpg?w=640)
Shakedowns are always tests, whether evaluating a prototype or making a moral decision about the limits of trust, reputation, and wealth.
The nation may have finally reached that moment when reason may prevail over a slippery slope of compounded lies rather than interest. The nation might even say no to being shook down, and not soon enough.
The unicorn of “Fake News” is the whatabout of media discourse, where a claim of “total bias” trumps(sic) the normalized alternate facts of a POTUS45* White House. Whatabouting the media has tried to become the blood sport it has become in Russia. Americans have even accommodated that as RT/Sputnik becomes FoxNews/Breitbart’s “daddy”.
Devaluing rhetoric does not erase its promissory value and Trump has squandered US political and social capital, apparently 140 characters at a time.
We are now at a moment, perhaps even at that “tipping point” where the crony capitalism normalized at national scales under colonialism and imperialism, has become assimilated into the world system and the governance of kleptocrats has finally come up against democratic rule.
Lord Dampnut has shown himself to be a second rate apprentice compared to Putin because of democratic processes and even a public sphere. Trump’s failure comes from his willing sacrifice of the republic for personal gain. Similarly, the GOP has succumbed to picking up the vigorish of his racketeering and extortion, even as his AHCA threats to the GOP caucus now resemble a gangster’s threat to break limbs.
If there can be a “democratic capitalism” that can rehabilitate a failed neoliberalism, it should appear soon in the form of plea bargaining. And there will be Trump team defections with subsequent revelations.
Trump’s bagmen are now being hemmed in and these people dressed as they are, have come to the legal marketplace of America … let’s make a deal.
Chip and Dip Day
National Puppy Day *
National Chia Day
OK Day
World Meteorological Day *
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March 22nd is
As Young As You Feel Day
Brain Injury Awareness Day
Goof-off Day
World Day for Water *
North American Wildlife Celebration
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It’s World Poetry Day again. Even if you think you don’t like poetry, I’m betting that you will like Billy Collins.
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Here’s a poem he wrote about what he’d like people to get out of his poems, and what happens to the poems when critics and academics start analyzing them.
by Billy Collins
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope 
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.
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“Introduction to Poetry” from The Apple that Astonished Paris, © 1988, 1996 by Billy Collins – University of Arkansas Press
BILLY COLLINS (born March 22, 1941 – ) dubbed “the most popular poet in America” by Bruce Weber in the New York Times, a two-term U.S. Poet Laureate (2001-03), has published many poetry collections, including Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning and Nine Horses: Poems. It was Questions About Angels, published in 1991, that put him in the literary spotlight.
Collins says his poetry is “suburban, it’s domestic, it’s middle class, and it’s sort of unashamedly that.”
His career: Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College and founding advisory board member for CUNY Institute for Irish-American studies; Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Winter Park Institute in Florida; member at the State University of New York-Stonybrook Southampton; poetry consultant for Smithsonian Magazine; faculty writer-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence College; served as Literary Lion of the New York Public Library; US Poet Laureate, 2001-2003; New York State Poet Laureate from 2004-2006; has also taught at Columbia University; appears regularly on National Public Radio and was guest host for “The Writer’s Almanac,” June-August 2013.
The dead-pan delivery which he has mastered reminds me of Bob Newhart. It’s easy to see why he’s been a popular guest on National Public Radio programs.
International Day of Forests *
Common Courtesy Day
French Bread Day
National Memory Day
Single Parent Day *
Twitter Day *
World Poetry Day *
World Down Syndrome Day *
International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination *
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by GENE HOWINGTON
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.” – George Orwell in “Politics and the English Language”
We’ve previously discussed both the power of words and the power of silence as propaganda tools. This current story creates the perfect example to illustrate the synthesis of those powers in action. How does one combine words and silence as a method of distorting information? The editorial process, both in general and in the practice of (selective) summation. I say selective summation with purpose and we’ll get to that purpose presently, but first a small detour into technologies past. In the days before computers, editing was done with colored pencils on hard copies. A red pencil was used because it did not show up on xerograhpic reproduction processes. A blue pencil was used because it did not show up on lithograhpic or photograhpic reproduction processes (hence the name “non-photo blue”). It should also be noted that the “Blue Pencil doctrine” is a real thing at common law, referring to the doctrine of rendering components of a contract null and unenforceable while retaining the rest of the documents terms. Given the vast editorial power of the blue pencil, it should come as no surprise that “blue pencil” is a pejorative term for censorship. Which in turn brings us back to propaganda and the power of editing and selective summation. We will also touch upon restrictions of scope in investigation as a tool for information management.
Since 2009, the British government has been ostensibly looking at the build up for the invasion of Iraq via the Chilicot inquiry led by Sir John Chilicot, a Privy Council and former civil servant. In particular, the Chilicot Iraq Inquiry was examining the communications between former President (George W.) Bush and then British Prime Minister Tony Blair. This inquiry has come under fire for many reasons but not the least of which is the selective release of information via summary conclusions having been deemed by some, specifically former cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell, “that there was no way the notes or records of correspondence between Bush and Blair could be published in their entirety, even with redactions.” Add to this the rather spotty record of Sir John Chilicot in such inquires (which we’ll get to) and the power of selective summary as one of the most powerful tools to re-frame truths into untruths and the Chilicot Iraq Inquiry appears to be another in a running exercise of what we’ll call blue pencil propaganda. All applied neatly to the effect of whitewashing; the process of glossing over or covering up vices, crimes or scandals or to exonerate by means of a perfunctory investigation or through biased presentation of data. These perfunctory investigations do a good bit of their dirty work in two ways: placing restrictions (found in what is known as the terms of reference or project charter) on scope designed to steer findings and/or render the purpose of investigation – nominally the truth – functionally null and the use of skewed summary conclusions designed to influence public opinion (and some would argue re-write history). Let’s look at some examples.
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Atheist Pride Day
Proposal Day
Ravioli Day
UN French Language Day *
World Storytelling Day *
Won’t You Be My Neighbor Day *
Great American Meat Out Day *
World Day of Theatre for Children *
National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day
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