Books, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Edward Bear and Stochastic Terrorism

As America wakes up this Sunday morning it is confronted with the horror of two major acts of domestic terrorism. America is being dragged down – bump, bump, bump on the head – as the atrocities mount up. It is  thanks to a white nationalist race-baiter squatting in the White House. And a Republican Party rendered inert and spineless by…

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Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Dem Debates: And the winner is ….

It’s hard to cut through the clutter and fog of an overcrowded political field. But Elizabeth Warren did it this week. The debates were not conducive to any kind of discussion of issues beyond sound bite point scoring. They were structured for personal zingers and not for any exploration of policy differences. All that time spent on health care but…

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Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Let Me Be Clear

We are well into the election season although the actual vote is well over a year away. This time in 2020 we will know our Democratic presidential candidate. It’s a crowded field and candidates must find a way to distinguish themselves from the pack. Right now we have four clear leaders – Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth…

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Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Pentrich Martyrs and Peterloo

I was intrigued when I discovered that I am distantly related to the last person beheaded in England. The year is 1817 and the place Derbyshire. Isaac Ludlam was one of three men executed at Derby gaol. His head was cut from his corpse and shown to the thousands in the crowd. This was not a story handed down in…

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Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Diversity is Our Strength, Unity is Our Power

One Plays Chess, the Other Checkers Nancy Pelosi does serious politics and toddler management 101. Trump watches Fox.  As everyone knows – the lying bully-in-chief who – wanting to erect a pointless, ineffective and vastly expensive monument to himself on the southern border – was thoroughly defeated and out-maneuvered by Nancy Pelosi. She demonstrated the political will. Transportation workers delivered the coup…

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Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

David Lammy and the Fraud that is Brexit

David Lammy is the Labour MP for Tottenham. He made the speech and took the stand that many of us hoped that Jeremy Corbyn would lead the party with. Didn’t happen. If you follow British politics in any degree beyond zero then you may well have seen this video of David Lammy addressing the House of Commons on the shame…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

What is the purpose of high school?

Lots of chatter about the fresh faces, diversity and new perspectives of the incoming class in the House of Representatives. Here’s a heartwarming story of the new everyday congress folk via Time magazine. It captures snippets of their hopes, dreams and earnest aspirations. Watch it below.  My new congressman Antonio Delgado is in the group and also Max Rose from…

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Poetry, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Brexit, Beowulf and the Bum Trumpet

The day after the Brexit referendum our dear leader – then candidate for the presidency – was on his way to Scotland to re-open a golf course. As soon as he landed he tweeted:  The response was fast and furious – an impressive torrent of inventive invective and obscenity that kept Twitter amused for days as the true significance of…

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Art, Film, Photography, Poetry, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The United States Welcomes You

We’re happier when we chat to strangers, but our instinct is to ignore them https://t.co/ExmL3GSCWw via @researchdigest — Tina Seelig (@tseelig) July 19, 2018 A tweet from Tina Seelig led to this interesting piece of research:  It’s become a truism that humans are “social animals”. And yet, you’ve probably noticed – people on public transport or in waiting rooms seem…

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Education, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Learned Helplessness and the Grief and Rage of Parklands

From the orphans of Flanders to the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School – four photographs with an uncanny and chilling similarity. Keep your eyes forward, your hands on the shoulders of the person in front of you and keep quiet. – instructions during a high school shooter drill.  We’ve come to accept that the only thing we can…

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Art, Film, Photography, Poetry, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes wrote this in 1935.  It had meaning and relevance then. It still has. Read it. Let America Be America Again  Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America…

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Art, Film, Photography, Poetry, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Prospective Immigrants Please Note

Immigration. Immigrants. Emigrants. Refugees. Travelers across borders. Changing countries by choice or by necessity of survival. Moving from one state of awareness to another. Learning. Growth. Transformation. Going deeper. Looking more closely. The threshold of consciousness. To grow and change. Or not. We have that choice. Here the poet speaks from the other side of the frontier, the border, the…

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Art, Film, Photography, Books, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Kate Millett, Eng Lit and the The Farm in Poughkeepsie

There are pockets of Poughkeepsie that still have a rural look and feel. Cows graze and the corn is ripe for harvest. Old Overlook Road is one of them. It’s under fifteen minutes from my house and today I went to pay tribute to its most famous resident – Kate Millett who died in Paris last week. In 1970 Millett…

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Art, Film, Photography, Poetry, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Partition

“I was so rushed I had not time to go into the details,”  – Cyril Ratcliffe. The political leaders of the independence movement in British India were unable to agree on a united post-colonial future. The result was a plan for a territorial division. The task was huge and fraught with difficulties. The consequences were traumatic. August 15th marks the…

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Art, Film, Photography, Poetry, Politics, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Home

Home no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark you only run for the border when you see the whole city running as well your neighbors running faster than you breath bloody in their throats the boy you went to school with who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is holding a gun bigger…

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