A Poem for National Poetry Month: “Hatred” by Wislawa Szymborska

Posted on April 19, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro

WislawaSzymborska2SUBMITTED BY ELAINE MAGLIARO

Back in 1999, US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky read Wislawa’s Szymborska’s poem Hatred on the PBS Newshour Poetry Series. Unfortunately, the video of Pinsky’s poetry reading is no longer available—but the text of the poem is still posted online. Before his reading of Szymborska’s poem, Pinsky said, “The cycles of mistrust, savagery, revenge and violation in the Balkans remind us what a powerful, important force hatred is in the world. Hatred drives much of what happens, public as well as private. The Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska comments on hatred in her poem of that title.”

NOTE: Szymborska’s poem was translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.

From HATRED
By Wislawa Szymborska

See how efficient it still is,
how it keeps itself in shape—
our century’s hatred.
How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.
How rapidly it pounces, tracks us down.

It’s not like other feelings.
At once both older and younger.
It gives birth itself to the reasons
that give it life.
When it sleeps, it’s never eternal rest.
And sleeplessness won’t sap its strength; it feeds it.

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Posted in Literature, Poetry | Tagged , , | 21 Comments

A Mark Fiore Video Cartoon: “Tradition”–On Having an Originalist Respect for Our Roots

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro

SUBMITTED BY ELAINE MAGLIARO

In the following cartoon video, Mark Fiore ponders what life might be like in this country if we lived in the same kind of society Americans did at the time our Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution.

NOTE: Below the fold, I have a link to a funny Colbert Nation segment about “Originalist” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Continue reading →

Posted in American History, United States | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

THE DIVIDE: Matt Taibbi Talks about Unequal Justice in the Age of Inequality

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro

TaibbiTheDivideBY ELAINE MAGLIARO

Back in February 2011, Matt Taibbi wrote an article for Rolling Stone titled Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail? In his article, he said that “financial crooks” brought down the world’s economy—yet the feds were doing more to protect than prosecute them. Taibbi began his article with a story about a conversation he had with a former Senate investigator at a bar in Washington, D.C. Here’s an excerpt from Taibbi’s article:

Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.

“Everything’s fucked up, and nobody goes to jail,” he said. “That’s your whole story right there. Hell, you don’t even have to write the rest of it. Just write that.”

I put down my notebook. “Just that?”

“That’s right,” he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. “Everything’s fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there.”

Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.

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Posted in Crime, DOJ, Financial, Fraud, Law Enforcement, Prison, United States, Wall Street | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Ain’t She Dead Yet?: Octogenarian Phyllis Schlafly Writes Op-Ed Explaining Why the Gender Wage Gap Is a Good Thing

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro

PhyllisSchlaflyBookBY ELAINE MAGLIARO

Phyllis Schlafly is a career woman who built a highly successful career “out of telling other women that they should not have highly successful careers…” Younger women may not know of her—but many women of my Baby Boomer generation cringe when we hear her name. Erin Gloria Ryan of Jezebel put it well when she wrote that Schlafly “is known for reciting mushy half-microwaved sexism casserole from the 1950’s and calling it conservative philosophy.”

I hadn’t heard any news or read any stories about Schlafly in years. (Maybe I’ve just ignored the mention of her name.) I had assumed that Phyllis might have gone to meet her maker in that heavenly home where women “know their place” for eternity in the post-life-on-Earth society in the ether. Not so. She recently stirred things up a bit in the media after she penned an op-ed for The Christian Post in which she noted the positive aspects of a having a wage gender gap in this country. According to Schlafly, the wage gap helps women to find “suitable” husbands. Go figure!

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Posted in Conservatives, Equal Rights, Politics, Society | Tagged | 9 Comments

“Right-Wing Hack” Laura Ingraham Hired by Major Network’s News Division

Posted on April 16, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro

BY ELAINE MAGLIARO

Guess which major network’s news division just hired “right-wing hack” Laura Ingraham as a news contributor? ABC! George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s This Week, made the announcement last Sunday. Politico reported on Monday that Ingraham will continue to serve as a Fox News contributor, as guest host for “The O’Reilly Factor”—and will also continue as the host of her own radio program. Ingraham served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and “as a speechwriter-turned-adviser to President Ronald Reagan.” She joined Fox News in 2007.

Laura Ingraham Attacks Sotomayor ‘Allegiance’ to US Because She’s Puerto Rican

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Posted in Conservatives, Immigrants, Media, Politics, Propaganda | Tagged | 7 Comments

The Tenth Post in the “Oh My Achin’ Head” Series: Republican Candidate for Congress in Virginia Thinks That Sometimes Incest Is “Voluntary”

Posted on April 14, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro

BobMarshallBY ELAINE MAGLIARO

Bob Marshall, a senior Republican member of the Virginia General Assembly, is running for an open seat in the House of Representatives. He’s a political candidate who has already gained notoriety “for his long track history of controversial remarks.” Back in 1989 during the course of an interview with The Boston Globe, Marshall stated that he wouldn’t make exceptions for abortions—even in cases of rape and incest. He was quoted as saying, “What if incest is voluntary? Sometimes it is.”

Tom Boggioni of Raw Story reported recently that in 2010, Marshall called for an end to state funding for Planned Parenthood. At that time, Marshall “suggested” that women who have abortions “are more likely to face ‘vengeance’ from ‘nature’ in the form of children being born with developmental disabilities.” Marshall said, “The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion who have handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the firstborn of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.”

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Posted in Conservatives, Government, Politics | Tagged , , | 40 Comments

In Honor of National Poetry Month: War Poems

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Chuck Stanley

By Charlton “Chuck” Stanley

I first became interested in war poems when I discovered the work of Wilfred Owen. He was killed exactly one week before the Armistice was signed in November 1918. That first poem of his I read was Anthem for a Doomed Youth.

Some of the best poetry to come out of war was from World War I, although great poetry has come from almost all wars. Poets who were there do not romanticize it. Like all poets, Wilfred Owen, Seigfried Sassoon, and Rupert Brooke spoke the truth. The unvarnished hard truth, because they had been there and seen war.  It is no accident that almost all “war poems” are anti-war.

Many literature and military experts alike regard Wilfred Owen as the best of the WW-I poets, although this is an arguable distinction.

More over the flip.

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Posted in Philosophy, War, World History, World War I | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments

In Celebration of National Poetry Month: “I Am the People, the Mob”—a Poem by Carl Sandburg

Posted on April 13, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro

SUBMITTED BY ELAINE MAGLIARO

Posted in Literature, Poetry | 3 Comments

EDIBLE FLOWERS: A Recipe for Elaine’s Champagne Mango Martini

Posted on April 12, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro

BY ELAINE MAGLIARO

ChampagneMangoMartini

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I LOVE champagne mangoes. When they’re available in our local market, I buy a half dozen or so. I like to keep them on hand to eat as a snack or for breakfast with some strawberries. Back in 2012—when my granddaughter was less than a year old—I puréed some champagne mangoes and fed them to her for lunch. She loved them too!

ChampagneMangos

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Edible Flowers, Libations, Recipes | 7 Comments

From “The Nation”: Kurt Vonnegut’s “Why You Can’t Stop Me from Speaking Ill of Thomas Jefferson”

Posted on April 12, 2014 by Elaine Magliaro
US Army Portrait of Kurt Vonnegut

US Army Portrait of Kurt Vonnegut

BY ELAINE MAGLIARO

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite authors—and his book Slaughterhouse Five is one of my all-time favorite books. I was pleased to see an article written by Vonnegut in the April 14, 2014 edition of The Nation. [NOTE: The article titled Why You Can’t Stop Me from Speaking Ill of Thomas Jefferson was adapted from a speech he made on September 16, 2000, to the Indiana Civil Liberties Union (now known as the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana).] The piece also appears in a collection of Vonnegut’s speeches titled If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? Advice to the Young. The book, edited by Vonnegut’s good friend Dan Wakefield, is to be published by Seven Stories Press this month.

According to Clare Swanson of Publishers Weekly, Donald Farber—the literary executor of Vonnegut’s estate—asked Wakefield “to come from Indianapolis to New York City to sift through cardboard boxes full of the late writer’s belongings. Among the stack of papers, which included rejected short stories from the 1950s, were speeches from the many commencement addresses Vonnegut delivered in his lifetime.”

Swanson said that Wakefield “compiled and edited the speeches, and wrote an introduction, for an e-book called If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? published by RosettaBooks last April.” The book being published this April “consists of nine speeches, seven of which were delivered at university commencements.” It’s has been updated with illustrations from Kurt Vonnegut’s journals.

In Why You Can’t Stop Me from Speaking Ill of Thomas Jefferson, Vonnegut speaks about his experience growing up in a segregated society in Indianapolis, attending an all-white high school, and having had some extraordinary women teachers. He touches on natural law and some other subjects as well.

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Posted in American History, Equal Rights, Literature, Racism, Thomas Jefferson | Tagged , | 7 Comments