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Welcome to The Coffee Shop, just for you early risers
on Monday mornings. This is an Open Thread forum,
so if you have an off-topic opinion burning a hole in
your brainpan, feel free to add a comment.
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The internment of thousands of Japanese Americans during WWII is a dark stain on United States history. There were people who spoke out against it even at the time, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, but the attack on Pearl Harbor swept America with a wave of fury which drowned out the dissenting voices. Mitsuye Yasutake, 18 years old, was one of the many young Americans whose families lost their livelihoods and their homes to that wave.
Mitsuye Yamada (July 5, 1923 – ) born as Mitsuye Yasutake in Fukuoka, Japan; Japanese-American activist, feminist, fiction author, poet, essayist, editor and professor of English. Her parents were both first-generation Japanese Americans living in the U.S., but they were visiting Japan when she was born. Her father was arrested by the FBI for espionage after Pearl Harbor, so she and her family were interned at Mindoka War Relocation Center in Idaho. She was allowed to leave to attend college after she renounced loyalty to the Emperor of Japan. Her first book, Camp Notes and Other Poems, was written during the war, but was not published until 1976. She had to become a “naturalized” U.S. citizen in 1955, five years after her marriage to Yoshikasu Yamada, who was born in Hawaii, and served as a medic and a translator in the U.S. Army during WWII. Her other published works include Lighthouse, her essay “Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster,” and Desert Run: Poems and stories.
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To read “Evacuation” and “The Question of Loyalty” by Mitsuye Yamada, click
Apple Turnover Day
Graham Cracker Day
Bikini Day *
Workaholics Day
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This 4th of July I don’t feel much like celebrating. The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave is in trouble, more divided, more unequal, and certainly less free, than ever. In November, I do believe we will have a last chance to vote to save the soul of this Republic.
But for too many people in the United States, this is how it has always been. Some of them overcome the obstacles in their path, but many fall down the rabbit hole. Jimmy Santiago Baca is one of the survivors, who beat the long odds, and made a life for himself.
Jimmy Santiago Baca (1952 – ) was born in Santa Fe, of Apache and Chicano ancestry. Abandoned by his parents, he ran away at 13 from the orphanage where his grandmother had placed him. Baca was convicted on drug charges in 1973, and spent five years in prison, where he learned to read, and began writing poetry. His semiautobiographical novel in verse, Martin and Meditations on the South Valley (1987), received the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award. He has also published over a dozen books of poetry. Social justice, addiction, the disenfranchised, and the barrios of the American Southwest are common themes in his work. In a Callaloo interview, Baca said, “I approach language as if it will contain who I am as a person.”
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To read Jimmy Santiago Baca’s poem, “Immigrants in Our Own Land,” click:
Happy U.S. Independence Day!
Barbecued Spareribs Day
Caesar Salad Day
Country Music Day
Sidewalk Egg Frying Day
Independence from Meat Day
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Chocolate Wafer Day
Disobedience Day
Fried Clam Day
Stay Out of the Sun Day
International Plastic Bag Free Day *
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MORE! M.F.K. Fisher, Dr Charles Drew and Gloria Allred, click
by NONA BLYTH CLOUD
Tomorrow is the 4th of July, the Independence Day of the United States of America. This will not be a Fourth as usual. Many of us will be spending it inside our homes, waiting for it to be safe to venture out again, but knowing that the number of Covid-19 cases, and the number of dead are going up, not down.
So these words of Thomas Paine take on a newer meaning:
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered . . .”
#BlackLivesMatter has become a global movement, so these words from Paine should be considered by those who still cling to a past that never was as they imagine:
“Whatever is my right as a man is also the right of another; and it becomes my duty to guarantee as well as to possess.”
“He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.”
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by Langston Hughes
I look at the world
From awakening eyes in a black face—
And this is what I see:
This fenced-off narrow space
Assigned to me.
I look then at the silly walls
Through dark eyes in a dark face—
And this is what I know:
That all these walls oppression builds
Will have to go!
I look at my own body
With eyes no longer blind—
And I see that my own hands can make
The world that’s in my mind.
Then let us hurry, comrades,
The road to find.
“I Look at the World” from The Collected Works of Langston Hughes, © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes – Knopf and Vintage Books
Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was born in Joplin Missouri. American poet-author-playwright, social activist, novelist, and columnist. After working his way to Europe as a ship’s crewman, he spent time in Paris, and London, then returned to the states, spending time in Washington DC, where he met Vachel Lindsay, who helped him gain recognition. He became one of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance in New York City.
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Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 – ) dubbed “the most popular poet in America” by Bruce Weber in the New York Times, was a two-term U.S. Poet Laureate (2001-2003), and 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.”
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To read “Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins, click
Anisette Liqueur Day
I Forgot Day
World UFO Day *
Salvation Army Founding Day *
2nd Half of the Non-Leap Year Day
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When I was a kid, I used to think, ‘Man, if I could ever afford
all the ice cream I want to eat, that’s as rich as I ever want to be.
– Jimmy Dean
Jack Prelutsky (1940 – ), American poet and children’s author; he has published over 50 poetry collections, mostly for children, and was named as the very first ‘Children’s Poet Laureate’ by the Poetry Foundation (2006-2008). He lives in the Seattle, Washington area, and spends much of his time reading his poems aloud to children in schools and libraries all around the United States.
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Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 