Litany at the Tomb of Frederick Douglass
Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, New York
November 7, 2008
This is the longitude and latitude of the impossible;
this is the epicenter of the unthinkable;
this is the crossroads of the unimaginable:
the tomb of Frederick Douglass, three days after the election.
This is a world spinning away from the gravity of centuries,
where the grave of a fugitive slave has become an altar.
This is the tomb of a man born as chattel, who taught himself to read in secret,
scraping the letters in his name with chalk on wood; now on the anvil-flat stone
a campaign button fills the O in Douglass. The button says: Obama.
This is the tomb of a man in chains, who left his fingerprints
on the slavebreaker’s throat so the whip would never carve his back again;
now a labor union T-shirt drapes itself across the stone, offered up
by a nurse, a janitor, a bus driver. A sticker on the sleeve says: I Voted Today.
This is the tomb of a man who rolled his call to arms off the press,
peering through spectacles at the abolitionist headline; now a newspaper
spreads above his dates of birth and death. The headline says: Obama Wins.
This is the stillness at the heart of the storm that began in the body
of the first slave, dragged aboard the first ship to America. Yellow leaves
descend in waves, and the newspaper flutters on the tomb, like the sails
Douglass saw in the bay, like the eyes of a slave closing to watch himself
escape with the tide. Believers in spirits would see the pages trembling
on the stone and say: look how the slave boy teaches himself to read.
I say a prayer, the first in years: that here we bury what we call
the impossible, the unthinkable, the unimaginable, now and forever. Amen.
~~~ Martín Espada
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Tips for Better Life
1. Take a 10-30 minutes walk every day. And while you walk, smile.
2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day.
3. Sleep for 7 hours.
4. Live with the 3 E's -- Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy.
5. Play more games.
6. Read more books than you did the previous year.
7. Make time to practice meditation, yoga, and prayer. They provide us with daily fuel for our busy lives.
8. Spend time with people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6.
9. Dream more while you are awake.
10. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
11. Drink plenty of water.
12. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
13. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip.
14. Forget issues of the past. Don't remind your partner with his/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness.
15. Don't have negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.
16. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
17. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar.
18. Smile and laugh more.
19. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don't hate others.
20. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
21. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
22. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present.
23. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about. Don't compare your partner with others.
24. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
25. Forgive everyone for everything.
26. What other people think of you is none of your business.
27. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
28. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.
29. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
30. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
31. The best is yet to come.
32. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
33. Do the right thing!
34. Call your family often.
35. Your inner most is always happy. So be happy.
36. Each day give something good to others.
37. Don't over do. Keep your limits.
38. Share this with someone you care about
Lisa Alvarado
I Have to Post Something Today...
...Or I'll break my streak very soon after my blog-every-weekday resolution.
I took the day off work today. I spent the morning at a pumpkin farm with Murray and a bajillion other four-year olds. I spent the afternoon seeing Obama speak with a bajallion other Cincinnatians. Both events we're exhausting and amazing in their own ways. I'm tired and keyed up.
Come back tomorrow for my Blog of the Week.
I'm Left Handed and So Is Our Next President...
Last night I watched the presidential debate between Barak Obama and John McCain on TV (I'd listened to the first one on the radio) and noticed that, like me, they are both left handed.
Naturally, I did some googling and found that there have been lots of lefties in the White House. Says the Washington Post:
No matter who wins in November, 6 of the 12 chief executives since the end of World War II will have been left-handed: Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, the elder Bush, Clinton and either Obama or McCain. That's a disproportionate number, considering that only one in 10 people in the general population is left-handed.
This phenomenon of lefty Commanders-in-Chief has been covered in a number of other places including
The New York Sun (which had a great photo of southpaw Obama autographing books),
ACB News (which has a headline like a sugarless gum ad), and
Economist.com (which includes a nifty lefty visual).
Come forward all you creative people--who's else out there is left-handed? (Maybe we should start a Facebook group.)
Authors & Illustrators for Obama Wanted...
Below is an email I got from Bruce Balan. Bruce and April Halprin Wayland are behind the creation of Authors and Illustrators for Children and they're currently looking for published authors and illustrators to lend their names to a pro-Barak Obama ad. Read on and if this interests you and please use the email address below to participate or click on their website for more information and to see the ad.
Hi Everyone,
I just returned from nearly a year away and I’ve been whining about how awful life is in the United States:
The media invades. The pollsters attack. The news overwhelms.
April says to me “It doesn’t matter. We can do it.”
And Barack Obama says “Yes we can!”
I believe them.
It doesn’t matter what the polls say. It doesn’t matter what the pundits say. What matters is what we do, NOW.
AIC can make a difference in this election but first we need YOUR NAME. We want 500 authors in our ad. We have 74.
That means we need 426 more by the end of next week.
It’s time to act. If you want to be included in the AIC campaign to make Obama our next president, do the following:
If you are a published author and/or illustrator, send an email to [email protected]. The message body should simply be your name as you want it to appear in the ad.
Send this email to 20 authors and illustrators you know. It doesn’t matter if they might have received it from someone else. Get the word out! That’s the most important part.
In a day or two, check the website to make sure your name is on the list and spelled correctly!: www.aiforc.org/obama/thelist.html.
You can view the ad at: www.aiforc.org/obama
You can donate to our campaign (credit card, check or PayPal). We’re focusing on swing states, we’re creating printable materials that you can hand out, we’re booking online advertising, we’re producing a video. It all takes money. www.aiforc.org/donate.html
That’s it for now. Don’t let this sit in your mailbox. We need 500 authors and we need them now!
Yes we do.
Yes we can!
Bruce
HALFWAY DOWN THE DANUBE has an interesting discussion going on about the democrats and McCain. (Click this 189. blog post title for link.) A view from western-Asia, eastern-Europe.
Definitely worth checking out, and definitely worth clicking on the links provided -in the HDTD blog, and in the comments.
I love the videos on HDTD--both the Obama one (linked) and the "McCain" take-off (embedded).
Right now, I'm still rooting for Hillary Clinton, but if Obama wins the nomination, I'm going to add those videos to my blog, too.
Derek Landy has scored a huge book deal (1 million British pounds) for a middle grade trilogy. (Owen Bowcott reports for the Guardian. Read the article for the rags-to-riches and cauliflower story.)
The first in the three-book series--Skulduggery Pleasant--comes out in the U.K. on April 2. It stars "a smartly-dressed skeleton detective and a 12-year-old girl."
glad to see you back in the swing of things.
how long have you been blogging?
i would appreciate any blogging advice you could give me. =)
could you spare a few minutes for some tips and a critique of my blog?
best,
rusty j
Don't you just love pumpkin farms? miles and miles of orange !!!!
http://usadastangas.blogspot.com/ bonito blog besossss carla
Pum'kin patches are sooo much fun - but tend to be dusty and exhausting.
Blogging every workday. Ahh. I started off that way, and have now gone to mon-wed-fri-sat. It had to be done!! But, so glad you are upping your entries. We love them.
I can relate to the balance of writer, mom, intellectual, political, blogger, writer - goodness how do we do it all! I love how you mixed pumpins with politics! :) Shelli http://www.faeriality.blogspot.com/