My mother spent four months last year in for-profit nursing homes in 2008-9. Before that, I had researched statistics that the U.S. health care system is 1/3 more expensive than any other industrialized nations but our health is the worse of any industrialized country. I knew those statistics, but seeing up close how my mother was treated in two nursing homes, I began to understand exactly why we pay so much but get so little from our privatized health care system.
My mother, who had been in fairly good health, in her 86th year fell, broke her hip, and had immediate surgery. The surgeon instructed the nurses to get her walking the next day, and I watched as two nurses helped my mother up and gingerly walk two steps to a chair. His instructions were she needed to walk as much as possible and shouldn’t stay in the hospital. She was moved the next day to a nursing home I will call Bel Air Nursing Home (not its real name) but it is located in one of the most expensive areas of Los Angeles.
Bel Air at first glance looked like the Rolls Royce of nursing homes. The cafeteria had attractive wooden tables and chairs; there were two attractive outside patios carefully landscaped with plants in planters and more tables and chairs. The gym for physical therapy was large and well-equipped. My mother had two roommates but her own TV and phone on a bedside table in fairly large room.
The actual nursing care stank. Besides needing to walk daily to relearn how to walk, My mom need to be walking or at least sitting in a wheelchair or she’s get bedsores, but the first two days every time I visited she was in her hospital gown not even dressed. Nobody showed her how to use the overhead TV while the phone was on the bedside table outside her reach. An aide put down a pudding on her bedside table where she couldn’t reach and refused to listen to my request to put it on the overhead tray. If she was having physical therapy, nobody told me when it started but sometime it did start, I guessed.
My mom said a male patient sexually harassed her. I sat next to her while a male patient in a wheelchair wheeled into her room, wheeled past her, and then stopped by the middle patient for about 10 minutes. Finally, he wheeled his way past me out the door. I went and complained to the RN that male patients shouldn’t have such access to my mother’s room.
My mother complained that her Certified Nursing Assistant verbally insulted her. The actually nursing is done by Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs), immigrant or black women who got a little training, do all the hard work, and are paid barely above minimum wage. Most of them seem hard working and deserve a raise but one had insulted my mom. In the central station are the Registered Nurses (RNs) whom I never saw work with the patient. Daily whenever I came in I asked the RNs how my mother was and they would read off her chart—they didn’t know my mother at all. The licensed vocational nurses (LVNs) give out medication and also I never saw any work with the patient. All the six nursing homes I saw were organized this way. After my complaint, the RN removed the offensive CNA from working with my mom.
At this point I figured the only way to get my mother dressed and out of bed was to demand a meeting with the head of nursing which I did. Preparing for the meeting, I discovered online that Medicare does inspections of all the nursing homes in the country and puts the results online (http://www.medicare.gov/Nursing/Overview.asp) including a listing of “Nursing Home Resident Rights.” I learned it doesn’t matter if the nursing home is located in the most expensive neighborhood in the city with the fanciest decorations. If you want to know what it’s really like, read Medicare evaluation online.
According to Medicare inspections in June 2008, Bel Air rated one star out of five (much below average) for health inspections, one star for nursing home staffing, one star for quality measures.My mother was there October 2008, a few months after the report. Most interesting was to me was two out of four (“minimal harm or potential for actual harm”) for two categories: “Make sure that residents with reduced range of motion get proper treatment and services to increase range of motion” and for “Develop a complete care plan that meets all of a resident's needs, with timetables and actions that can be measured.”
I downloaded the report and handed it to the director of nursing in our meeting. Her male associate said, “We’re working on it.” Since they were unable to come up with a complete nursing care plan, I wrote up one and handed it to the director of nursing (cc’d a copy to her doctor) asking for reasonable items such as the CNAs dress my mom daily and wheel her to the cafeteria for meals and daily activities such as bingo. The director of nursing took my written out nursing plan, headed upstairs with me beside her, and handed it to the RNs, telling them to do it. From then on my mother was dressed daily and taken to the cafeteria for meals and bingo.
A week later I was called into a meeting with the social worker, RN, and physical therapist. Naïve me thought they would tell me how my mom was doing. Nope. They all three asked me again and again and pounded at where I was taking my mom because in a week they would expel her. They harassed me verbally and viciously for ½ hour. I mentioned the name of the only other nursing home I knew called F nursing home. They ignored me and pounded at me with their questions. Two days later the physical therapist told me to go ask the social worker to arrange transfer to F nursing home. At this point the social worker who had beaten me up verbally then was amazingly efficient arranging the transfer. After using up two weeks of my mother’s topflight medical coverage, they expelled my mom to another nursing home.
Bel Air was, I learned, did the lowest level of custodial care—letting her lay in her hospital gown being taken care of a poorly paid poorly trained overworked staff was fine. It saved then money. The RNs did nothing until I complained. Then one of them harassed me. I like RNs—my mother was one and many of her friends were. I thought the CNAs most of them were hard working and deserved a raise. It’s the executives of the company that design the policies that provide poor nursing care but great profits for the companies. This is for-profit medical care in the nursing home—extraordinarily expensive designed to give profit to the company and extraordinarily bad for the patient. But the decorations were fine!
Friday, July 10, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
"Wrestling with Zionism"
Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon, the co-editors of "Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," say in their introduction that they wanted to read a book of dissident American Jewish responses to the Palestinian-Israel conflict. No such book existed so they created this anthology of essays and poem which was published in 2003. The book has an impressive roster of contributors of American Jewish poets, playwrights, and academics including Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, Adrienne Rich and many others. This anthology ably documents the 100-year historical tradition within the Jewish community of those Jews who criticized first Zionism and then Israeli policies; however, the book’s last section “Resistance and Activism” has weaknesses.
Section I reprints the writings of three neglected left Zionists: Ahad Ha’am, the creator of spiritual Zionism; Judah Magnes, the founder of the Hebrew University, and Martin Buber, the philosopher. Before 1948 all three men rejected Jewish military might and a Jewish state but instead championed a cultural Zionism in a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Judah Magnes went the furthest in advocating a binational state in which all groups—Jews, Arabs, Moslems, Christians—would have equal rights. Magnes’ binational state where Jews would have no special privileges was indeed a Zionist position though many Israelis now treat the idea like anti-semitic heresy.
These historical writings show that before 1970 American Jewish progressives as well as Ahad Ha’am, Magnes, and Buber severely criticized mainstream and right-wing Zionists. The editors happily rescue from oblivion the 1948 letter where philosopher Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, Sidney Hook and over 30 American Jews roundly condemned Begin’s right-wing group, the Irgun, for the massacre at the Arab village of Deir Yassin and they called the Irgun fascist. Adding to these earlier criticisms, journalist I.F. Stone develops an anti-imperialist critique of Israel in 1967 describing how mainstream Zionists offered themselves as outposts in the Arab world to imperial powers: the Turks in 1900; the German Kaiser soon thereafter; and the British in 1915.
Section II “The Contemporary Crisis” provides excellent essays both analyzing and criticizing current U.S and Israeli policies. Joel Benin in “The United States-Israel Alliance” describes how after 1967 Israel in return for carrying out U.S policies got U.S. arms. Michael Massing’s “Deal Breakers” discusses how two right wing American Zionist organizations effectively lobby U.S. presidents and the Congress. Seth Ackerman’s “Israel and the Media” shows how U.S. mass media in the 1970s-1990s became ardently pro-Israel. Finally, Phyllis Bennis in “Of Dogs and Tails” analyzes the four pillars of this U.S.-Israel alliance: Israel’s acting as U.S. #1 Middle Eastern ally; the Christian Zionists support of Israel; the neo-conservatives politicians; and the defense industry’s advocacy of increased military aid. These essays are a must read for anyone seriously interested in a critical understanding of the U.S.-Israeli alliance.
The third area where this anthology does good work is documenting a thirty-year right-wing Zionist assault on American Jewish dissidents. Michael E. Staub’s “If We Really Care About Israel: Breira and Its Limits” is a fine essay describing how in the 1970s right-wing Zionists destroyed the moderate Jewish peace group. Though Breira was quite mainstream (it never identified as left-wing and was often led by moderate Hillel rabbis), right-wing Zionists assaulted it in the media, libeled it as pro-PLO, resulting in Breira’s destruction. Staub argues that after Breira was destroyed the American Jewish community splintered: many Jews left the community physically or spiritually. The anthology's essays point out how right-wing Zionists again and again resorted to smear attacks from smashing Breira in the 1970s to attacking Jewish anti-war critics of Israel in 2003, which Esther Kaplan discusses in “Globalize the Intifada.”
Section Four in particular deals with right-wing Zionist charges that criticism of Israel is anti-semitic. UC Berkeley professor Judith Butler takes on Lawrence Summer’s statement that calls for boycotts of Israeli are anti-semitic. Butler argues that when criticisms of Israel’s policies are called anti-semitic, the charge is both an attack on freedom of speech and an act that undermines attempts to fight real anti-semitism.
In the same section Phillip Green in his essay argues that the left is not anti-semitic but when right-wing Zionists make Israel and Jewishness synonymous, it is they—and not the left—who have sown the dangerous seed of the new waves of anti-Semitism. This is all too clear in Europe today, where the nationalist ideological equation [Jews = Israel] has helped to inflame some youth who commit most of the anti-Semitic outrages attributed by American propagandists to “the French”—among whom, contrarily, it is chiefly the student left who participates in marches against anti-Semitism. Both Butler and Green construct powerful, coherent arguments that right-wing Zionists make bogus claims that they defend Jews from anti-Semitism.
Many of these writers--Tony Kushner, Alisa Solomon, Adrienne Rich et al.—decry the attempt of right-wing Zionists to impose ideological conformity as harmful to the American Jewish community. Furthermore, Kushner et al. refer to Jewish sources demanding justice for all in their criticism of Israel, particularly the centrality of justice in both secular and religious Jewish thinking. Harvard researcher Sara Roy, a child of Holocaust survivors, and poet Irene Klepfisz, a Holocaust survivor, both argue that the best way to honor Jews who died in the Holocaust is to keep alive their vision of justice for all and their outrage against injustice, as Klepfisz says, “apply it to all situations, whether they involve Jews or non-Jews.”
Marc Ellis, a controversial founder of Jewish liberation theology, contributes some of the most original ideas in the book. Prior to 1948 the large majority of Orthodox (highly religious) Jews were hostile to Zionism. Ellis argues that in the 1950s some Israel right-wing theologians have created a branch of Orthodox Judaism—the religious in the settler movement-- in service to the state and its power. In reaction to this religion-serving-the-state Judaism, Ellis calls for the rebirth of the prophetic voices to criticize Israel just as the prophets in the past did. He gives a Jewish theological blessing for the “secular Jews of conscience who have come into solidarity with the Palestinian people.” When these writers’ advocate that American Jews put the struggle for justice for all at the core of their values, they open up a safe space for both secular and religious Jews critical of Israel.
The editors of this anthology have wisely included writers with different opinions. Some essayists have sounded important minor themes. I. F. Stone and Adrienne Rich are only two of the book's over 50 Ashkenazi Jewish writers who point out the importance of Arab Jews (Jews from Arab lands such as Tunisian Jews, Iraqi Jews etc.) to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Stone argued in 1967 that one of the first steps needed to be taken toward peace is “the eradication of prejudice that greet the Oriental and Arabic-speaking Jews in Israel …” Adrienne Rich salutes what Israeli novelist Shulamith Hareven calls “Levantine” cultures or that rich mixture of cultures in the Middle East, which Rich likens to American multi-culturalism. Yet this book only includes two Arab Jewish writers. Iraqi Jewish American Ella Habiba Shohat eloquently describes those Jews born in Arabic country who learn to speak Arabic as their first language and who identify with many parts of Arabic culture. Ammiel Alcalay in his essay “No Return, which is a linguistic tour-de-force, describes key moments in Arab Jewish intellectual history of the last forty years.
The American Jewish progressives of Wrestling with Zion need to include more Arab Jews such as writers Sami Shalom Chetrit and Jordan Elgrably. In Los Angeles Moroccan-Jewish American Elgrably has worked with Arabs, Armenians, and Persians et al. to create a Levantine Center that promotes many Middle Eastern cultures. Such centers are crucial to helping the American Jewish community redefine itself as well as to help make peace in the Middle East.
Only I.F. Stone and Phyllis Bennis discuss how, as Stone says, Israel “is creating a kind of schizophrenia in world Jewry.” Stone pointed out that outside of Israel “the welfare of Jewry depends on the maintenance of secular, non-racial pluralistic societies” while many Diaspora Jews defend within Israel a society where “non-Jews have lesser status than Jews, and in which the idea [of the Israeli state] is racial and exclusionist.” Stone wrote in 1967 when many Jews marched for civil rights in the United States, helping to promote a secular, non-racial society.
Much later Phyllis Bennis writes in 2002 about right-wing American Jews have an alliance with some Christian fundamentalists who call themselves Christian Zionists. Bennis quotes Robert Zimmerman, president of the American Jewish Congress (AJC) that the Christian fundamentalist have a domestic agenda that “threatens ‘the freedoms that make Jews safe in America.’” Bennis points out that all other major American Jewish organizations ignore AJC’s fears. Now American Jews need to take more seriously Bennis’s arguments that alliances with Christian fundamentalists potentially harm American Jews.
Finally, the weakness of book is in its discussion of current activism as of 2003. A whole section of this book debates the so-called “Law of Return,” the Israeli law whereby any Jew in the world can settle in Israel, claiming full citizenship that includes rights and privileges denied to Palestinians who used to live there but cannot return to live. Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz intellectually wants to refuse the law of return while Letty Cottin Pogrebin, one of the founders of Ms. magazine, defends it. Throughout this debate neither Kaye/Kantrowitz nor Pogrebin looked at how the Arabs’ fear of an ever-expanding Israel are increased by the Law of Return encouraging world-wide Jewry to return to Israel. After 47 British Jews in August 8, 2002, rejected the right to return to Israel, Kaye/Kantrowitz still ends her essay with an “imaginary” renunciation of the right to return. One wonders why not a real renunciation?
Also a section on Israeli politics would improve this book, particularly critical analysis of three areas: what social classes/ethnic groups support the major Israeli political parties and how has these changed in the last 30 years? how did the settler movement including its religious elements develop in the last 30 years as a political force? what groups comprise the Israeli peace movement and also how have they changed over the last 30 years? Also an essay on how American Jewish critics of Zionists could work with Israeli peace groups would be an addition to the book. Only Psychiatrist Dr. Robert Jay Lifton’s excellent essay on why he founded Friends of Courage to Refuse to support the Refusniks, Israeli soldiers who refuse to fight in the occupied territories, speaks to this point.
The book ends with “Doing Activism: Working for Peace: A Roundtable Discussion” with eight activists representing small dissident groups from Boston, New York, Chicago, and the Bay Area as of 2003. Yes, these groups have bravery and moral vision but they have hardly any presence outside a few urban centers in 2003. Steven Feuerstein from Chicago’s Not in My Name said most of these groups’ anti-occupation demonstrations were ineffectual since these groups lacked defined political goals and strategy to obtain their goals. Most of these activists wanted to reduce or eliminate U.S.’s financial support for Israel’s West Bank settlements, but Feuerstein argued that they lacked “the political will or power” to do so. Instead of discussing Fuerstein’s criticisms, most of the others debated among themselves rhetorical strategies, the uses of history, and even the definition of Zionism. Nobody in these 2003 or pre-2003 pieces took up Feuerstein’s criticisms that a small number of dissident Jewish groups based in a few big cities who disagreed among themselves lack the political vision, strategy, or power to change the nearly 40-year old U.S.-Israel alliance. How should these small groups go in coalition with others in? Which others?
The virtues of this anthology far outweigh its flaws. This is a crucial, important, and informative book. Though published in 2003, the book still has many important historical essays still extremely relevant today.
Section I reprints the writings of three neglected left Zionists: Ahad Ha’am, the creator of spiritual Zionism; Judah Magnes, the founder of the Hebrew University, and Martin Buber, the philosopher. Before 1948 all three men rejected Jewish military might and a Jewish state but instead championed a cultural Zionism in a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Judah Magnes went the furthest in advocating a binational state in which all groups—Jews, Arabs, Moslems, Christians—would have equal rights. Magnes’ binational state where Jews would have no special privileges was indeed a Zionist position though many Israelis now treat the idea like anti-semitic heresy.
These historical writings show that before 1970 American Jewish progressives as well as Ahad Ha’am, Magnes, and Buber severely criticized mainstream and right-wing Zionists. The editors happily rescue from oblivion the 1948 letter where philosopher Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein, Sidney Hook and over 30 American Jews roundly condemned Begin’s right-wing group, the Irgun, for the massacre at the Arab village of Deir Yassin and they called the Irgun fascist. Adding to these earlier criticisms, journalist I.F. Stone develops an anti-imperialist critique of Israel in 1967 describing how mainstream Zionists offered themselves as outposts in the Arab world to imperial powers: the Turks in 1900; the German Kaiser soon thereafter; and the British in 1915.
Section II “The Contemporary Crisis” provides excellent essays both analyzing and criticizing current U.S and Israeli policies. Joel Benin in “The United States-Israel Alliance” describes how after 1967 Israel in return for carrying out U.S policies got U.S. arms. Michael Massing’s “Deal Breakers” discusses how two right wing American Zionist organizations effectively lobby U.S. presidents and the Congress. Seth Ackerman’s “Israel and the Media” shows how U.S. mass media in the 1970s-1990s became ardently pro-Israel. Finally, Phyllis Bennis in “Of Dogs and Tails” analyzes the four pillars of this U.S.-Israel alliance: Israel’s acting as U.S. #1 Middle Eastern ally; the Christian Zionists support of Israel; the neo-conservatives politicians; and the defense industry’s advocacy of increased military aid. These essays are a must read for anyone seriously interested in a critical understanding of the U.S.-Israeli alliance.
The third area where this anthology does good work is documenting a thirty-year right-wing Zionist assault on American Jewish dissidents. Michael E. Staub’s “If We Really Care About Israel: Breira and Its Limits” is a fine essay describing how in the 1970s right-wing Zionists destroyed the moderate Jewish peace group. Though Breira was quite mainstream (it never identified as left-wing and was often led by moderate Hillel rabbis), right-wing Zionists assaulted it in the media, libeled it as pro-PLO, resulting in Breira’s destruction. Staub argues that after Breira was destroyed the American Jewish community splintered: many Jews left the community physically or spiritually. The anthology's essays point out how right-wing Zionists again and again resorted to smear attacks from smashing Breira in the 1970s to attacking Jewish anti-war critics of Israel in 2003, which Esther Kaplan discusses in “Globalize the Intifada.”
Section Four in particular deals with right-wing Zionist charges that criticism of Israel is anti-semitic. UC Berkeley professor Judith Butler takes on Lawrence Summer’s statement that calls for boycotts of Israeli are anti-semitic. Butler argues that when criticisms of Israel’s policies are called anti-semitic, the charge is both an attack on freedom of speech and an act that undermines attempts to fight real anti-semitism.
In the same section Phillip Green in his essay argues that the left is not anti-semitic but when right-wing Zionists make Israel and Jewishness synonymous, it is they—and not the left—who have sown the dangerous seed of the new waves of anti-Semitism. This is all too clear in Europe today, where the nationalist ideological equation [Jews = Israel] has helped to inflame some youth who commit most of the anti-Semitic outrages attributed by American propagandists to “the French”—among whom, contrarily, it is chiefly the student left who participates in marches against anti-Semitism. Both Butler and Green construct powerful, coherent arguments that right-wing Zionists make bogus claims that they defend Jews from anti-Semitism.
Many of these writers--Tony Kushner, Alisa Solomon, Adrienne Rich et al.—decry the attempt of right-wing Zionists to impose ideological conformity as harmful to the American Jewish community. Furthermore, Kushner et al. refer to Jewish sources demanding justice for all in their criticism of Israel, particularly the centrality of justice in both secular and religious Jewish thinking. Harvard researcher Sara Roy, a child of Holocaust survivors, and poet Irene Klepfisz, a Holocaust survivor, both argue that the best way to honor Jews who died in the Holocaust is to keep alive their vision of justice for all and their outrage against injustice, as Klepfisz says, “apply it to all situations, whether they involve Jews or non-Jews.”
Marc Ellis, a controversial founder of Jewish liberation theology, contributes some of the most original ideas in the book. Prior to 1948 the large majority of Orthodox (highly religious) Jews were hostile to Zionism. Ellis argues that in the 1950s some Israel right-wing theologians have created a branch of Orthodox Judaism—the religious in the settler movement-- in service to the state and its power. In reaction to this religion-serving-the-state Judaism, Ellis calls for the rebirth of the prophetic voices to criticize Israel just as the prophets in the past did. He gives a Jewish theological blessing for the “secular Jews of conscience who have come into solidarity with the Palestinian people.” When these writers’ advocate that American Jews put the struggle for justice for all at the core of their values, they open up a safe space for both secular and religious Jews critical of Israel.
The editors of this anthology have wisely included writers with different opinions. Some essayists have sounded important minor themes. I. F. Stone and Adrienne Rich are only two of the book's over 50 Ashkenazi Jewish writers who point out the importance of Arab Jews (Jews from Arab lands such as Tunisian Jews, Iraqi Jews etc.) to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Stone argued in 1967 that one of the first steps needed to be taken toward peace is “the eradication of prejudice that greet the Oriental and Arabic-speaking Jews in Israel …” Adrienne Rich salutes what Israeli novelist Shulamith Hareven calls “Levantine” cultures or that rich mixture of cultures in the Middle East, which Rich likens to American multi-culturalism. Yet this book only includes two Arab Jewish writers. Iraqi Jewish American Ella Habiba Shohat eloquently describes those Jews born in Arabic country who learn to speak Arabic as their first language and who identify with many parts of Arabic culture. Ammiel Alcalay in his essay “No Return, which is a linguistic tour-de-force, describes key moments in Arab Jewish intellectual history of the last forty years.
The American Jewish progressives of Wrestling with Zion need to include more Arab Jews such as writers Sami Shalom Chetrit and Jordan Elgrably. In Los Angeles Moroccan-Jewish American Elgrably has worked with Arabs, Armenians, and Persians et al. to create a Levantine Center that promotes many Middle Eastern cultures. Such centers are crucial to helping the American Jewish community redefine itself as well as to help make peace in the Middle East.
Only I.F. Stone and Phyllis Bennis discuss how, as Stone says, Israel “is creating a kind of schizophrenia in world Jewry.” Stone pointed out that outside of Israel “the welfare of Jewry depends on the maintenance of secular, non-racial pluralistic societies” while many Diaspora Jews defend within Israel a society where “non-Jews have lesser status than Jews, and in which the idea [of the Israeli state] is racial and exclusionist.” Stone wrote in 1967 when many Jews marched for civil rights in the United States, helping to promote a secular, non-racial society.
Much later Phyllis Bennis writes in 2002 about right-wing American Jews have an alliance with some Christian fundamentalists who call themselves Christian Zionists. Bennis quotes Robert Zimmerman, president of the American Jewish Congress (AJC) that the Christian fundamentalist have a domestic agenda that “threatens ‘the freedoms that make Jews safe in America.’” Bennis points out that all other major American Jewish organizations ignore AJC’s fears. Now American Jews need to take more seriously Bennis’s arguments that alliances with Christian fundamentalists potentially harm American Jews.
Finally, the weakness of book is in its discussion of current activism as of 2003. A whole section of this book debates the so-called “Law of Return,” the Israeli law whereby any Jew in the world can settle in Israel, claiming full citizenship that includes rights and privileges denied to Palestinians who used to live there but cannot return to live. Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz intellectually wants to refuse the law of return while Letty Cottin Pogrebin, one of the founders of Ms. magazine, defends it. Throughout this debate neither Kaye/Kantrowitz nor Pogrebin looked at how the Arabs’ fear of an ever-expanding Israel are increased by the Law of Return encouraging world-wide Jewry to return to Israel. After 47 British Jews in August 8, 2002, rejected the right to return to Israel, Kaye/Kantrowitz still ends her essay with an “imaginary” renunciation of the right to return. One wonders why not a real renunciation?
Also a section on Israeli politics would improve this book, particularly critical analysis of three areas: what social classes/ethnic groups support the major Israeli political parties and how has these changed in the last 30 years? how did the settler movement including its religious elements develop in the last 30 years as a political force? what groups comprise the Israeli peace movement and also how have they changed over the last 30 years? Also an essay on how American Jewish critics of Zionists could work with Israeli peace groups would be an addition to the book. Only Psychiatrist Dr. Robert Jay Lifton’s excellent essay on why he founded Friends of Courage to Refuse to support the Refusniks, Israeli soldiers who refuse to fight in the occupied territories, speaks to this point.
The book ends with “Doing Activism: Working for Peace: A Roundtable Discussion” with eight activists representing small dissident groups from Boston, New York, Chicago, and the Bay Area as of 2003. Yes, these groups have bravery and moral vision but they have hardly any presence outside a few urban centers in 2003. Steven Feuerstein from Chicago’s Not in My Name said most of these groups’ anti-occupation demonstrations were ineffectual since these groups lacked defined political goals and strategy to obtain their goals. Most of these activists wanted to reduce or eliminate U.S.’s financial support for Israel’s West Bank settlements, but Feuerstein argued that they lacked “the political will or power” to do so. Instead of discussing Fuerstein’s criticisms, most of the others debated among themselves rhetorical strategies, the uses of history, and even the definition of Zionism. Nobody in these 2003 or pre-2003 pieces took up Feuerstein’s criticisms that a small number of dissident Jewish groups based in a few big cities who disagreed among themselves lack the political vision, strategy, or power to change the nearly 40-year old U.S.-Israel alliance. How should these small groups go in coalition with others in? Which others?
The virtues of this anthology far outweigh its flaws. This is a crucial, important, and informative book. Though published in 2003, the book still has many important historical essays still extremely relevant today.
Monday, June 08, 2009
Telling Congress to Vote Against the Awful Wars
Your Blog entry has been created.
Telling Congress to Vote Against the Awful Wars
by Julia Stein
June 8, 2009, 8:16 am
So this morning in my email, there was an email telling me that 40 House Democrats can stop these wars by voting against the $95 supplemntal billion for Iraq/Afghan wars. So they asked me to email my Congresswoman to tell her to vote against the $95 supplmental billion bill for the wars.
I did so.. I clicked the click, and low and behold my Congressman Diane Watson had already vote agains the supplemental bill. Hurrah for Diane Watson! Hurrah for Diane Watson! Hurrah for my Congresswoman! Also, I told the my representatives to not let Obama pass a bill that would make it illegal to make public the torture photos. Also, I clicked and told my two U.S. SENATORS to vote for single payer health insurance not warware. we desperately need single payer (I will blog about that soon)
The places to click are below. If you are against these wars, just click and send messages to your Congressperson. Remember, all you Californians out there and everyone else that we need the billions from Congress for your schools and parks and we need to vote down this supplmental bill.
1. 40 House Progressives Can End the Wars
This week, Congress will vote for another $95 billion for the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan (Af/Pak).
But 40 House Progressives can end these wars if they simply vote NO. That's because all 178 Republicans opppose $5 billion added for the IMF, and 178+40=218, a House majority.
Tell Congress: Healthcare Not Warfare
http://www.democrats.com/healthcare-not-warfare?cid=ZGVtczQ2MTU3NGRlbXM=
On May 14, 51 Democrats voted NO. Now those 51 are under immense pressure to switch to YES. Don't let them switch! Check if your Representative is here:
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/Supplemental
Then call and report the response you get using the webform.
If you use Twitter, you can "retweet" my messages to key Members of Congress:
http://www.democrats.com/tweet-against-war-funds
Post your commends and look for updates here:
http://www.democrats.com/progressives-and-bluedogs-can-defeat-war-supplemental
Thanks for all you do!
Bob Fertik
Telling Congress to Vote Against the Awful Wars
by Julia Stein
June 8, 2009, 8:16 am
So this morning in my email, there was an email telling me that 40 House Democrats can stop these wars by voting against the $95 supplemntal billion for Iraq/Afghan wars. So they asked me to email my Congresswoman to tell her to vote against the $95 supplmental billion bill for the wars.
I did so.. I clicked the click, and low and behold my Congressman Diane Watson had already vote agains the supplemental bill. Hurrah for Diane Watson! Hurrah for Diane Watson! Hurrah for my Congresswoman! Also, I told the my representatives to not let Obama pass a bill that would make it illegal to make public the torture photos. Also, I clicked and told my two U.S. SENATORS to vote for single payer health insurance not warware. we desperately need single payer (I will blog about that soon)
The places to click are below. If you are against these wars, just click and send messages to your Congressperson. Remember, all you Californians out there and everyone else that we need the billions from Congress for your schools and parks and we need to vote down this supplmental bill.
1. 40 House Progressives Can End the Wars
This week, Congress will vote for another $95 billion for the endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan (Af/Pak).
But 40 House Progressives can end these wars if they simply vote NO. That's because all 178 Republicans opppose $5 billion added for the IMF, and 178+40=218, a House majority.
Tell Congress: Healthcare Not Warfare
http://www.democrats.com/healthcare-not-warfare?cid=ZGVtczQ2MTU3NGRlbXM=
On May 14, 51 Democrats voted NO. Now those 51 are under immense pressure to switch to YES. Don't let them switch! Check if your Representative is here:
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/Supplemental
Then call and report the response you get using the webform.
If you use Twitter, you can "retweet" my messages to key Members of Congress:
http://www.democrats.com/tweet-against-war-funds
Post your commends and look for updates here:
http://www.democrats.com/progressives-and-bluedogs-can-defeat-war-supplemental
Thanks for all you do!
Bob Fertik
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
My Illegal Abortion
I had an illegal abortion when I was nineteen. I went to Juarerz, Mexico, because I wanted to have a doctor, anesthesia, and a nurse. When I returned to Los Angeles I started to hemorrhage and then was running out of blood, so I had to be rushed to Cedars hospital to save my life. In the hospital I contracted mononucleosis, and then was sick for the next five months. I would encourage all other women to tell publicly about their abortions—both legal and illegal.
I wrote along poem “When the Clock Was Smashed” about my illegal abortion and published it in my first book of poetry Under the Ladder to Heaven, my first book of poetry published in 1984. In that book I also wrote a poem about Rosaura Jimenez, the first woman to die from a bad abortion after abortion was legalized. In 1977 Jimenez couldn’t afford a legal abortion (she was a college student in Texas planning to be a teacher) so she went to an illegal abortionist. The anti-abortionists caused cutbacks in funding for abortions for low-income women so Rosaura Jimenez couldn’t afford to pay for a legal, safe abortion. Jimenez’s illegal abortion gave her an infection and her suffering was intense; her death was totally unnecessary.
I am 100% pro-abortion because legal abortions save women ‘s lives and save women’s health—particularly saving women from hemorrhaging like I did and save them from bad infections that killed Jimenz.
The Los Angeles Times yesterday June 1, 2009, has an excellent article “A History of violence on the fringe,” detailing the violence of the anti-abortionists: “Bombings. Butyric acid attacks. Sniper shootings. Letters filled with fake anthrax.” The Times reported that the National Abortion Federation “documented more than 6,100 acts of violence against abortion providers in the United States and Canada since 1977. The group classifieds as ‘violent’ not only acts of murder, attempted murder, bombing and arson; but also vandalism, burglary, and stalking among others.” The anti-abortionists aren’t pro-life. It’s not pro-life to bomb, shoot, or set fires. They are anti-life.
The anti-abortionists have murdered eight abortion workers in the U.S. or Canada including four doctors. Dr. David Gunn was shot and killed in Pensacola, Florida. Dr. John Britton and a 74-year old clinic worker were killed in 1994. Also in 1994 “John Salvi III shot up two Boston-area clinics killing two receptionists and injuring five other people.” In 1998 an anti-abortionist murdered a clinic security guard and injured a nurse in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1998 obstetrician Barnett Slepian was murdered in Amherst, New York. Just a few days ago Dr. Tiller was murdered in church in Wichita, Kansas.
When you next think about the anti-abortionists, call them anti-life. Nine people are died: Rosaura Jimenez and eight clinic workers. Nine people who should be alive.
I wrote along poem “When the Clock Was Smashed” about my illegal abortion and published it in my first book of poetry Under the Ladder to Heaven, my first book of poetry published in 1984. In that book I also wrote a poem about Rosaura Jimenez, the first woman to die from a bad abortion after abortion was legalized. In 1977 Jimenez couldn’t afford a legal abortion (she was a college student in Texas planning to be a teacher) so she went to an illegal abortionist. The anti-abortionists caused cutbacks in funding for abortions for low-income women so Rosaura Jimenez couldn’t afford to pay for a legal, safe abortion. Jimenez’s illegal abortion gave her an infection and her suffering was intense; her death was totally unnecessary.
I am 100% pro-abortion because legal abortions save women ‘s lives and save women’s health—particularly saving women from hemorrhaging like I did and save them from bad infections that killed Jimenz.
The Los Angeles Times yesterday June 1, 2009, has an excellent article “A History of violence on the fringe,” detailing the violence of the anti-abortionists: “Bombings. Butyric acid attacks. Sniper shootings. Letters filled with fake anthrax.” The Times reported that the National Abortion Federation “documented more than 6,100 acts of violence against abortion providers in the United States and Canada since 1977. The group classifieds as ‘violent’ not only acts of murder, attempted murder, bombing and arson; but also vandalism, burglary, and stalking among others.” The anti-abortionists aren’t pro-life. It’s not pro-life to bomb, shoot, or set fires. They are anti-life.
The anti-abortionists have murdered eight abortion workers in the U.S. or Canada including four doctors. Dr. David Gunn was shot and killed in Pensacola, Florida. Dr. John Britton and a 74-year old clinic worker were killed in 1994. Also in 1994 “John Salvi III shot up two Boston-area clinics killing two receptionists and injuring five other people.” In 1998 an anti-abortionist murdered a clinic security guard and injured a nurse in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1998 obstetrician Barnett Slepian was murdered in Amherst, New York. Just a few days ago Dr. Tiller was murdered in church in Wichita, Kansas.
When you next think about the anti-abortionists, call them anti-life. Nine people are died: Rosaura Jimenez and eight clinic workers. Nine people who should be alive.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Governor Schwarzenegger Wants to Bring Back the 19th Century
Governor Schwarzenegger’s proposed cuts of $5.1 billion would wreck havoc on the lives of millions of Californians while President Obama told California to refuse to help California at all with its budget deficit of $21 billion. Schwarzenegger’s cuts could cause tens of thousands of Californians to go hungry, to be homeless, and to be without medical care—he’s bringing back the 19th century for the poor.
Schwarzenegger’s cuts will end the safety net for poor children. The cuts would end CalWORKS, the welfare program for 521,000 families who now get $526 average monthly grants. After eliminating CalWORKS, Schwarzenegger also plans to eliminate Healthy Families, the program that gives children from low-income families health insurance. The cuts also would reduce Medical insurance to the very poor. These cuts aren’t even cost effective as they would cause California to lose billions in matching funds. The Governor’s proposed cuts are both cruel and stupid.
The cuts would phase out Cal Grant tuition assistance for 200,000 college students: no new grants and existing grants reduced. UC and California State University systems would have further reduction in budgets of approximately $333 million apiece. Within the community college students the cuts would lead to 250,000 students forced out of the system and huge spikes in fees. The cuts would destroy programs including student services and end part-time faculty office hours, heath insurance, and pay equity. Also, new students including veterans and unemployed would be shut out of the community colleges.
The proposed cuts would severely reduce In Home Social Service aid to disabled and elderly people which subsidizes in-home health care workers. It costs $12,000 to keep a disabled person in the home but $60,000 to keep them in the nursing homes, so the cuts would drive disabled and elderly out of the homes into institutions, causing California either to spend more money or let the disabled suffer horrific 19th century conditions.
The cuts would severely reduce education, drug rehab and vocational programs within the prisons as well as let nonviolent, nonserious offenders go free a year early.
The cuts would close 70 of the state’s parks.
Governor Schwarzenegger and the Republicans have refused all tax increases including refusing to impose a tax on yachts.
Schwarzenegger’s cuts will end the safety net for poor children. The cuts would end CalWORKS, the welfare program for 521,000 families who now get $526 average monthly grants. After eliminating CalWORKS, Schwarzenegger also plans to eliminate Healthy Families, the program that gives children from low-income families health insurance. The cuts also would reduce Medical insurance to the very poor. These cuts aren’t even cost effective as they would cause California to lose billions in matching funds. The Governor’s proposed cuts are both cruel and stupid.
The cuts would phase out Cal Grant tuition assistance for 200,000 college students: no new grants and existing grants reduced. UC and California State University systems would have further reduction in budgets of approximately $333 million apiece. Within the community college students the cuts would lead to 250,000 students forced out of the system and huge spikes in fees. The cuts would destroy programs including student services and end part-time faculty office hours, heath insurance, and pay equity. Also, new students including veterans and unemployed would be shut out of the community colleges.
The proposed cuts would severely reduce In Home Social Service aid to disabled and elderly people which subsidizes in-home health care workers. It costs $12,000 to keep a disabled person in the home but $60,000 to keep them in the nursing homes, so the cuts would drive disabled and elderly out of the homes into institutions, causing California either to spend more money or let the disabled suffer horrific 19th century conditions.
The cuts would severely reduce education, drug rehab and vocational programs within the prisons as well as let nonviolent, nonserious offenders go free a year early.
The cuts would close 70 of the state’s parks.
Governor Schwarzenegger and the Republicans have refused all tax increases including refusing to impose a tax on yachts.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Unemloyment Rises... A poem by Carol Tarlen
Inflation Achieves a Single Digit
Unemployment Rises to 8.9%
By Carol Tarlen
Our hands complain of protein deficiency as
David slices more than his ration of ham
5 ½ lbs of meat per person per month in Poland
Pass the navy beans, please
They are pink and slushy
Legumes are good for the soul
The free enterprise of a well-balanced amino acids
The dialectics of eating
Alicia denounces bland cabbage soup
History gets a C- at your fashionable
Bourgeois Butcher Block Table
When the grade drops to a D+
We steal a loaf of bread
Then we build barricades
Unemployment Rises to 8.9%
By Carol Tarlen
Our hands complain of protein deficiency as
David slices more than his ration of ham
5 ½ lbs of meat per person per month in Poland
Pass the navy beans, please
They are pink and slushy
Legumes are good for the soul
The free enterprise of a well-balanced amino acids
The dialectics of eating
Alicia denounces bland cabbage soup
History gets a C- at your fashionable
Bourgeois Butcher Block Table
When the grade drops to a D+
We steal a loaf of bread
Then we build barricades
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Poets Imagine Peace
The anthology Come Together: Imagine Peace edited by Phillip Metres, Ann Smith, and Larry Smith was published in 2008 is produced after United States has been in wars for six years. The anthology brilliantly shows U.S. poets in the past and present write compelling peace poetry. The anthology is a companion volume to Metres brilliant book of literary criticism Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront.
In Behind the Lines Metres has an excellent discussion of 20th century American peace poetry while in "Section one: Some Precedents" in Come Together the editors have a wonderful selection of poets whom Metres discussed in his criticism. The editors begin with a lovely Sappho lyric, share a short Whitman poem, have Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Conscientious Objector,” include Lowell on fear of nuclear war in 1961, and share Muriel Rukeyser’s wonderful “Poem” where she confessed “I lived in the first century of world wars/Most mornings I would be more or less insane.”
The editors have three eloquent but quiet poems by William Stafford as well as Denise Levertov’s poem “Making Peace” where she says “A voice from the dark called out, ‘the poets must give us imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar/imagination of disaster' … Grammar of justice,/syntax of mutual aid.” Levertov to me is central both to 20th century peace poetry and to 20th century poetry in English.
The editors include Ginsberg’s amazing poem ”Wichita Vortex Sutra,” which is one of the great anti-war poems of American literature. Ginsberg first calls on all the gods to help him and then says “I hereby declare the end of war.”The first section of the anthology then goes on to include important poems by Audre Lorde, June Jordan etc. The first section of great poems is absolutely wonderful and reason enough to buy this book.
The editors have heeded Levertov’s advise to include poets who imagine peace which is a splendid way to organize an anthology. Section Two are Poems of “Witness and Elegy” including Karen Kovacik’s marvelous poem “Requiem for Buddhas of Bamiyan,” lamenting the great sculptures the Taliban blew up: ‘for fourteen centuries you stood fast/still as Siddhartha/on the night of his enlightenment/as much a part of this valley as the wind.”
Section three “Call and Answer: Poems of Exhortation & Action” include such wonderful works by Bly, Rich, Heyen, Espada and Ferlinghetti along with new poets. Other sections of the book dealing with “Poems of Reconciliation” in section four, “Poems of Shared Humanity” in section five, “Poems of ritual & Vigil” in Section Seven, and “Poems of Meditation & Prayer” in Section Eight. So the many poems included are imagining peace through elegy, witness, exhortation, ritual, vigil, meditation, and prayer.
Another excellent feature of this book is to include poems about Palestine/Israel including Palestinian, Israeli, and U.S poets in a rich dialogue. There are marvelous poems by Palestinian poets Mahmoud Darwish and Taha Muhammad Ali as well as Israeli poets Yehuda Amachai and Aharon Shabtai. The anthology also includes Arab-American poets such as Elmaz Abinader and Angele Ellis as well as Jewish-American like Karl Shapiro and Enid Shomer.
Further, the editors wonderfully include both U.S. poet Steve Wilson and Palestinian poet Deema Shehabi writing ghazals, a poetry form going back to 6th century Arabic verse using rhyming couplets. When a book of peace poetry includes both Whitman and ghazals, the poets at least are beginning to imagine a peaceful meeting in literature. Hopefully in future anthologies U.S. poets will continue to learn from the long tradition of Sumerian, Arabic and Persian poetry.
In Behind the Lines Metres has an excellent discussion of 20th century American peace poetry while in "Section one: Some Precedents" in Come Together the editors have a wonderful selection of poets whom Metres discussed in his criticism. The editors begin with a lovely Sappho lyric, share a short Whitman poem, have Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Conscientious Objector,” include Lowell on fear of nuclear war in 1961, and share Muriel Rukeyser’s wonderful “Poem” where she confessed “I lived in the first century of world wars/Most mornings I would be more or less insane.”
The editors have three eloquent but quiet poems by William Stafford as well as Denise Levertov’s poem “Making Peace” where she says “A voice from the dark called out, ‘the poets must give us imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar/imagination of disaster' … Grammar of justice,/syntax of mutual aid.” Levertov to me is central both to 20th century peace poetry and to 20th century poetry in English.
The editors include Ginsberg’s amazing poem ”Wichita Vortex Sutra,” which is one of the great anti-war poems of American literature. Ginsberg first calls on all the gods to help him and then says “I hereby declare the end of war.”The first section of the anthology then goes on to include important poems by Audre Lorde, June Jordan etc. The first section of great poems is absolutely wonderful and reason enough to buy this book.
The editors have heeded Levertov’s advise to include poets who imagine peace which is a splendid way to organize an anthology. Section Two are Poems of “Witness and Elegy” including Karen Kovacik’s marvelous poem “Requiem for Buddhas of Bamiyan,” lamenting the great sculptures the Taliban blew up: ‘for fourteen centuries you stood fast/still as Siddhartha/on the night of his enlightenment/as much a part of this valley as the wind.”
Section three “Call and Answer: Poems of Exhortation & Action” include such wonderful works by Bly, Rich, Heyen, Espada and Ferlinghetti along with new poets. Other sections of the book dealing with “Poems of Reconciliation” in section four, “Poems of Shared Humanity” in section five, “Poems of ritual & Vigil” in Section Seven, and “Poems of Meditation & Prayer” in Section Eight. So the many poems included are imagining peace through elegy, witness, exhortation, ritual, vigil, meditation, and prayer.
Another excellent feature of this book is to include poems about Palestine/Israel including Palestinian, Israeli, and U.S poets in a rich dialogue. There are marvelous poems by Palestinian poets Mahmoud Darwish and Taha Muhammad Ali as well as Israeli poets Yehuda Amachai and Aharon Shabtai. The anthology also includes Arab-American poets such as Elmaz Abinader and Angele Ellis as well as Jewish-American like Karl Shapiro and Enid Shomer.
Further, the editors wonderfully include both U.S. poet Steve Wilson and Palestinian poet Deema Shehabi writing ghazals, a poetry form going back to 6th century Arabic verse using rhyming couplets. When a book of peace poetry includes both Whitman and ghazals, the poets at least are beginning to imagine a peaceful meeting in literature. Hopefully in future anthologies U.S. poets will continue to learn from the long tradition of Sumerian, Arabic and Persian poetry.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Guilty as Charged by Carol Tarlen
I'm going to put up a poem/week by my poet friend Carol Tarlen who died in 2004 leading up to the reading the S.F. poets are doing July 10 in her honor in S.F.
Today's poem is Tarlen's poem "Small Deaths."
"Small Deaths" by Carol Tarlen
I tear my hair like the
mad queen of hearts. "What? you
used a whole cube of butter
to fry one eggs?" Leah's eyes drop;
I refuse to see the lashes cast
shadow on her cheeks, too busy
thinking, I must wipe dust
from under the coffee table, and
I'm tired, my gaze sagging on the
electric wires splintering
the pale blue sky. Her voice
trembles, "I'll go to the store,
Mommy, and buy it with my allowance."
Another small death, this time caused
by the misappropriation of fifth
cents worth of cholesterol.
Last night my obscene "friend"
called to awake me with silence.
The telephone company will charge
eleven dollars for a new number.
Friday the boss will sign my
paycheck at three minutes past
five. The bank opens at ten a.m.
Monday morning. This weekend
marks our conversion to
vegetarianism, Sunday dinners
of brown rice, inexpensive
walks on the beach to quiet
our taste for blood.
And this evening, when the bus
winds up and down city hills,
pushing me closer to my 5/6ths
psychiatric hour, when I will discuss
the hostility inherent
in my passive aggressive
overdue bill, I will be grateful
for a seat by the window;
I will be grateful for the sun's
heat on my cheek, it's light
slipping through the yellow
and red strands of hair that
I stretch around my fingers
so that I may sing
there are rainbows in me yet.
I am pulling the cord, steeping
onto littered sidewalks, furtively
searching for two-way mirrors,
hidden microphones as I slouch
on the therapeutic chair, pleading:
GUILTY AS CHARGED!
Guilty of screaming at my child
Guilty of stealing the office stamps
Conspiracy to cheat Landlords of Cleaning Deposits
Writing Rhetorical Poems with no Metaphorical Content
Refusing to tend my garden, instead
Proclaiming the aesthetic purity of weeds
Guilty of even the inability to fantasize rape
The nonownership of a vibrator
Yes I am guilty of
Refraining from reading the NYSE Daily Quotations
Choosing instead to watch fog seep through the heavy
branches of cypress trees, dark green foiaage weted
darker green. Yes! Yes!
guilty of the desire to raise my fist to Montgomery Street's
Skyscraped glare, shouting "Next year in Madrid!"
and most of all
Guilty of keeping my mouth shut
Crossing my legs in public
Ignoring the wind's cry as it sweeps grease
from tankers mounting the ocean's dying waves.
The doctor wipes his glasses on his
imported Italian shirt and suggest
redefining options,
acceptance of limitations,
a course in assertiveness training.
I shrink back on the cushions
and cop a please. "Nolo contendere."
I am thrusting the key in the
hole, turning its toothy blade.
Leah is linking her hands
around my belly. I flop
rag dolled on the couch as
she removes my shoes, her
fleshly padded fingers de-
manding, "Play with me."
It's no game, kid, this living,
no accident that profit
is mined from dirty phone calls.
OK, pumpkin, do I bury you
with the wasted butter
or do we buy guns? You're
right. It's too early
to go to bed. Even fifth
graders know the earth is not
a pyramid, but a porous,
shimmering egg dropped
monthly from between our legs,
giving and taking the pounding
of our feet and we dance
round and round, sweat
circling our throats, our faces
lifting to the moon dripping
juicy on our tongues flagging
cars that screech past
the window, yes, our wet, red,
throbbing anarchist tongues.
Today's poem is Tarlen's poem "Small Deaths."
"Small Deaths" by Carol Tarlen
I tear my hair like the
mad queen of hearts. "What? you
used a whole cube of butter
to fry one eggs?" Leah's eyes drop;
I refuse to see the lashes cast
shadow on her cheeks, too busy
thinking, I must wipe dust
from under the coffee table, and
I'm tired, my gaze sagging on the
electric wires splintering
the pale blue sky. Her voice
trembles, "I'll go to the store,
Mommy, and buy it with my allowance."
Another small death, this time caused
by the misappropriation of fifth
cents worth of cholesterol.
Last night my obscene "friend"
called to awake me with silence.
The telephone company will charge
eleven dollars for a new number.
Friday the boss will sign my
paycheck at three minutes past
five. The bank opens at ten a.m.
Monday morning. This weekend
marks our conversion to
vegetarianism, Sunday dinners
of brown rice, inexpensive
walks on the beach to quiet
our taste for blood.
And this evening, when the bus
winds up and down city hills,
pushing me closer to my 5/6ths
psychiatric hour, when I will discuss
the hostility inherent
in my passive aggressive
overdue bill, I will be grateful
for a seat by the window;
I will be grateful for the sun's
heat on my cheek, it's light
slipping through the yellow
and red strands of hair that
I stretch around my fingers
so that I may sing
there are rainbows in me yet.
I am pulling the cord, steeping
onto littered sidewalks, furtively
searching for two-way mirrors,
hidden microphones as I slouch
on the therapeutic chair, pleading:
GUILTY AS CHARGED!
Guilty of screaming at my child
Guilty of stealing the office stamps
Conspiracy to cheat Landlords of Cleaning Deposits
Writing Rhetorical Poems with no Metaphorical Content
Refusing to tend my garden, instead
Proclaiming the aesthetic purity of weeds
Guilty of even the inability to fantasize rape
The nonownership of a vibrator
Yes I am guilty of
Refraining from reading the NYSE Daily Quotations
Choosing instead to watch fog seep through the heavy
branches of cypress trees, dark green foiaage weted
darker green. Yes! Yes!
guilty of the desire to raise my fist to Montgomery Street's
Skyscraped glare, shouting "Next year in Madrid!"
and most of all
Guilty of keeping my mouth shut
Crossing my legs in public
Ignoring the wind's cry as it sweeps grease
from tankers mounting the ocean's dying waves.
The doctor wipes his glasses on his
imported Italian shirt and suggest
redefining options,
acceptance of limitations,
a course in assertiveness training.
I shrink back on the cushions
and cop a please. "Nolo contendere."
I am thrusting the key in the
hole, turning its toothy blade.
Leah is linking her hands
around my belly. I flop
rag dolled on the couch as
she removes my shoes, her
fleshly padded fingers de-
manding, "Play with me."
It's no game, kid, this living,
no accident that profit
is mined from dirty phone calls.
OK, pumpkin, do I bury you
with the wasted butter
or do we buy guns? You're
right. It's too early
to go to bed. Even fifth
graders know the earth is not
a pyramid, but a porous,
shimmering egg dropped
monthly from between our legs,
giving and taking the pounding
of our feet and we dance
round and round, sweat
circling our throats, our faces
lifting to the moon dripping
juicy on our tongues flagging
cars that screech past
the window, yes, our wet, red,
throbbing anarchist tongues.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Dunya Mikhail, first contemporary Iraqi woman poet translated into English
Dunya Mikhail’s The War Works Hard (New Directions, 2005) is the first contemporary Iraqi woman poet translated from Arabic into English. Her poetry is brilliant.
She is an Iraqi Christian whose first two languages are Aramaic and Arabic, and she learned English during her long exile in the United States. Mikhail began publishing in the 1980s and has published five book of poetry. After Mikhail published her second book Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea (1995) in Baghdad, she suffered harassment from the dictatorship and fled into exile in the United States.
Mikhail writes in The War Works Hard about war, dictatorship, and exile of a forty-year war. In the Introduction Saadi Simawe, who edited in English Iraqi Poetry Today, said, “… [T]to many Iraqis, the American war against Iraq actually started in February 8, 1963 when the Baath junta, aided by U.S. intelligence from Kuwait, too over Baghdad. During the first two days of battle, more than 30,000 Iraqis who fiercely resisted the fascist coup were massacred.” Mikhail was born two years later after the coup in 1965 and attended college in Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war. The poems from the two earlier books Psalms from Absence and Almost Music reprinted in this volume come out of Mikhail’s experiences during the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War of 1991, and the period of U.S. sanctions against Iraq.
The poems from Psalms from Absence, Mikhail’s earliest book, are highly metaphorical renderings of her experiences with war and dictatorship where the metaphors eluded the Iraqi censors. In these earliest poems the poet has a child’s voice describing “the red puddle/under a child’s feet” in “Transformation of the Child and the War,” the ruins of war in “The Chaldean’s Ruins,” a nun leaving her convent where the church bells are dead in “The Nun,” and the dictatorship where “He plays general. She plays people./They declare war” in “Pronouns.”
The child’s voice matures into a young woman’s voice in the next volume Almost Music whose world is even darker and claustrophobic. The poet says “I sit on top of death/like a pile of smoke/and cry” in “An Orange.” The poet is imprisoned with her sisters as pomegranate seeds” whose “losses increase each day.” The voice is afraid “we will rot before anyone thinks of us.” The titles tell the story of living inside the dictatorship: “A Tombstone” or “The Departure of Friends.”
In the poems written after the fall of Saddam Hussein in The War Works Hard Mikhail’s poet voice is less allusive and much more direct in confronting the wars. Her voice becomes powerful in the poem “Inanna” speaking as the ancient Sumerian Goddess claiming her city, searching on the Internet for the graves, ordering “you sons of the dead! Stop fighting/over my clothes and gold!” In “Urgent Call” she calls the American soldier Lynndie England ordering her to immediately go home.
In some of the poems Mikhail sounds like one of the Trojan women from Euripides great play The Trojan Women: the mother in “the Prisoner” waiting at the prison’s entrance to see her son and who doesn’t understand why he’s imprisoned; the women in “Bag of Bones” at the mass grave site having the good luck to find “his bones./The skull is also in the bag/the bag in the hand/like all other bags/in all other hands. His bones, like thousands of bones/in the mass graveyard …”
Mikhail is great and sorrowful like Eurpides so get her book and read her book.
She is an Iraqi Christian whose first two languages are Aramaic and Arabic, and she learned English during her long exile in the United States. Mikhail began publishing in the 1980s and has published five book of poetry. After Mikhail published her second book Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea (1995) in Baghdad, she suffered harassment from the dictatorship and fled into exile in the United States.
Mikhail writes in The War Works Hard about war, dictatorship, and exile of a forty-year war. In the Introduction Saadi Simawe, who edited in English Iraqi Poetry Today, said, “… [T]to many Iraqis, the American war against Iraq actually started in February 8, 1963 when the Baath junta, aided by U.S. intelligence from Kuwait, too over Baghdad. During the first two days of battle, more than 30,000 Iraqis who fiercely resisted the fascist coup were massacred.” Mikhail was born two years later after the coup in 1965 and attended college in Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq war. The poems from the two earlier books Psalms from Absence and Almost Music reprinted in this volume come out of Mikhail’s experiences during the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War of 1991, and the period of U.S. sanctions against Iraq.
The poems from Psalms from Absence, Mikhail’s earliest book, are highly metaphorical renderings of her experiences with war and dictatorship where the metaphors eluded the Iraqi censors. In these earliest poems the poet has a child’s voice describing “the red puddle/under a child’s feet” in “Transformation of the Child and the War,” the ruins of war in “The Chaldean’s Ruins,” a nun leaving her convent where the church bells are dead in “The Nun,” and the dictatorship where “He plays general. She plays people./They declare war” in “Pronouns.”
The child’s voice matures into a young woman’s voice in the next volume Almost Music whose world is even darker and claustrophobic. The poet says “I sit on top of death/like a pile of smoke/and cry” in “An Orange.” The poet is imprisoned with her sisters as pomegranate seeds” whose “losses increase each day.” The voice is afraid “we will rot before anyone thinks of us.” The titles tell the story of living inside the dictatorship: “A Tombstone” or “The Departure of Friends.”
In the poems written after the fall of Saddam Hussein in The War Works Hard Mikhail’s poet voice is less allusive and much more direct in confronting the wars. Her voice becomes powerful in the poem “Inanna” speaking as the ancient Sumerian Goddess claiming her city, searching on the Internet for the graves, ordering “you sons of the dead! Stop fighting/over my clothes and gold!” In “Urgent Call” she calls the American soldier Lynndie England ordering her to immediately go home.
In some of the poems Mikhail sounds like one of the Trojan women from Euripides great play The Trojan Women: the mother in “the Prisoner” waiting at the prison’s entrance to see her son and who doesn’t understand why he’s imprisoned; the women in “Bag of Bones” at the mass grave site having the good luck to find “his bones./The skull is also in the bag/the bag in the hand/like all other bags/in all other hands. His bones, like thousands of bones/in the mass graveyard …”
Mikhail is great and sorrowful like Eurpides so get her book and read her book.
Monday, May 11, 2009
John Leech and the Onyx Cafe in Los Angeles
Memorial for John Leech, co-founder of the Onyx Café
Sunday I went to the wake for John Leech, co-founder of the Onyx Café, which was the best artists café in Los Angeles for the past forty years. John, beloved by hundreds of hundreds of artists, died March 17. The Onyx itself lasted from 1982-1998—it transformed both the Los Angeles artists’ scene and the Los Feliz neighborhood.
The first time I wandered into the original Onyx next door to the Vista Theater must have been around the mid-1980s when the Reagan right-wing firmly dominated the culture. The Onyx was a small space with about 5-6 tables and could seat maybe 30 people. It had a black-and-white checkerboard floor, lovely color mismatched Fiesta ceramics on the tables, and a jewel of a desert case. Later I learned that Fumiko, who had studied ceramics with internationally known artist Peter Shire had hand-made the dishes. There was art hanging on the walls, of course. John and Fumiko taught me who Peter Shire was and had a show of his tea cups.
John and Fumiko wanted to have a café like that cafes John had known in San Francisco and Fumiko admired the Onyx jazz club in New York. John and Fumiko were a contrast. John was a tall, balding, bulky expatriate Englishman always wearing a fatigue jacket. Fumiko was petite, gorgeous, late twenties, and always the most beautifully dressed in the room in outfits! They created an art gallery supported by coffee—the café name was a disguise. While Los Angeles galleries charged 60% for the artists to show, the Onyx never charged the artists anything for its 16 years. They intended us all to mingle and we did.
After a while coming to the café, I would know ½ of the 20 people there. Since there were so few tables, you were forced to sit next to a new person and usually started talking to them. The people I met! First, the visual artists: Gronk, Linda Gamboa, Jeffery, Daniel Martinez, Fumiko Robinson. I was free-lancing for art, literary, and weekly newspapers, and was meeting the people I was reading about. Then, I met musicians. I always enjoyed talking to Bill Roper, the tuba player for the avant-garde group Fat and Fucked Up. I met other musicians: Vinsula, Michael Whitmore, Guy the piano player etc. There were film people: Jim Balsam was a special effects cameraman was well as bass player while Lucas Reiner was a painter and filmmaker. Some of us were showing in the galleries, putting out our first books, or performing in the clubs. The Onyx was my Paris—I was a poet among the artists! The Onyx was our living room.
My writer friends Lionel Rolfe and Nigey Lennon organized an event in the upstairs annex—for 12 hours people read and performed music. When Lionel and Nigey wanted to start the event, they asked me to be the first reader, and I read my poetry. Los Angeles Times architect critic John Pastier was haranguing against some ugly establishment building to a rapt audience. Cartoonist Matt Groening had his art work up on the wall before he went on to fame and fortune. KPFK was talking about the event as it went on so people kept coming the whole 12 hours. Downstairs Fumiko and Mary McAndrews, an Otis art student, were making coffee. Spoken word and music had taken off at the Onyx and would go on with new curators and many new musicians and many new spoken word organizers.
Fumiko moved to New York but John carried on. The original Onyx was evicted. I was writing regularly for the weekly newspaper LA Reader, and my editor let me write an article about the Onyx where I interviewed the owners and participants of a friendly demo outside of the Onyx with Chicano artist Gonk making up the slogan, “Coffee united will never be defeated. “ John lost the Onyx but then opened up months later on Vermont.
The Onyx on Vermont was much larger: two store fronts. One was a café and the second was a gallery. John nurtured a whole generation as artists, giving jobs so people could get through college and art school. At the memorial one person said he was an angel with bad manner. He could be gruff and rude, but then he would have free bar-b-ques where he would feed all of us. So what if cafe was scruffy a bit. People from the Westside looked at the scruffiness but rarely looked at the art, and the art was a whole new generation speaking out. Manuel Ocampo, a Filipino artist, had a painting show which was an utter knockout: his powerful paintings combed surrealism with a political edge. Ocampo was soon having a big exhibit in Spain and then all around the world.
Gronk was in the big Los Angeles Country Museum Chicano show, and held court from the table in front of the café. Onyx regulars came up to congratulate him. One of us! At the biggest museum in town. John gave us all a space when we all needed it most and helped launch hundreds of people. No wonder he is still so loved. No other café in Los Angeles even came close to the Onyx. John’s shows were multi-ethnic before the major museums did that. They had cartoonists like Matt Groening and often a pop sensibility in the paintings. They were a populist visual arts show off the streets heading toward the major museums.
By the mid-1990s Westsiders were coming more and more to hang out on that block in Vermont, with the Onyx, the great Skylight bookstore, Skylight Theater, the Los Felix movie theater, and the Dresden Room down the block. More people were moving into the neighborhood and rents were rising as gentrification was setting in. Of course, it’s an old story. First, the scruffy bohemian arts and then the bourgeoisie. John had a few crazies who hang out. He would throw out anyone who criticized them. He never made much money.
Of course, he was evicted again. The Onyx had made that neighborhood and now the rent was going too high. I remember a closing music performance listening to Jim Balsam and his musician friends play rock ‘n roll. It was mournful and sad and the end of the era.
Here is John’s own words about the Onyx:
http://onyxwiki.com
Sunday I went to the wake for John Leech, co-founder of the Onyx Café, which was the best artists café in Los Angeles for the past forty years. John, beloved by hundreds of hundreds of artists, died March 17. The Onyx itself lasted from 1982-1998—it transformed both the Los Angeles artists’ scene and the Los Feliz neighborhood.
The first time I wandered into the original Onyx next door to the Vista Theater must have been around the mid-1980s when the Reagan right-wing firmly dominated the culture. The Onyx was a small space with about 5-6 tables and could seat maybe 30 people. It had a black-and-white checkerboard floor, lovely color mismatched Fiesta ceramics on the tables, and a jewel of a desert case. Later I learned that Fumiko, who had studied ceramics with internationally known artist Peter Shire had hand-made the dishes. There was art hanging on the walls, of course. John and Fumiko taught me who Peter Shire was and had a show of his tea cups.
John and Fumiko wanted to have a café like that cafes John had known in San Francisco and Fumiko admired the Onyx jazz club in New York. John and Fumiko were a contrast. John was a tall, balding, bulky expatriate Englishman always wearing a fatigue jacket. Fumiko was petite, gorgeous, late twenties, and always the most beautifully dressed in the room in outfits! They created an art gallery supported by coffee—the café name was a disguise. While Los Angeles galleries charged 60% for the artists to show, the Onyx never charged the artists anything for its 16 years. They intended us all to mingle and we did.
After a while coming to the café, I would know ½ of the 20 people there. Since there were so few tables, you were forced to sit next to a new person and usually started talking to them. The people I met! First, the visual artists: Gronk, Linda Gamboa, Jeffery, Daniel Martinez, Fumiko Robinson. I was free-lancing for art, literary, and weekly newspapers, and was meeting the people I was reading about. Then, I met musicians. I always enjoyed talking to Bill Roper, the tuba player for the avant-garde group Fat and Fucked Up. I met other musicians: Vinsula, Michael Whitmore, Guy the piano player etc. There were film people: Jim Balsam was a special effects cameraman was well as bass player while Lucas Reiner was a painter and filmmaker. Some of us were showing in the galleries, putting out our first books, or performing in the clubs. The Onyx was my Paris—I was a poet among the artists! The Onyx was our living room.
My writer friends Lionel Rolfe and Nigey Lennon organized an event in the upstairs annex—for 12 hours people read and performed music. When Lionel and Nigey wanted to start the event, they asked me to be the first reader, and I read my poetry. Los Angeles Times architect critic John Pastier was haranguing against some ugly establishment building to a rapt audience. Cartoonist Matt Groening had his art work up on the wall before he went on to fame and fortune. KPFK was talking about the event as it went on so people kept coming the whole 12 hours. Downstairs Fumiko and Mary McAndrews, an Otis art student, were making coffee. Spoken word and music had taken off at the Onyx and would go on with new curators and many new musicians and many new spoken word organizers.
Fumiko moved to New York but John carried on. The original Onyx was evicted. I was writing regularly for the weekly newspaper LA Reader, and my editor let me write an article about the Onyx where I interviewed the owners and participants of a friendly demo outside of the Onyx with Chicano artist Gonk making up the slogan, “Coffee united will never be defeated. “ John lost the Onyx but then opened up months later on Vermont.
The Onyx on Vermont was much larger: two store fronts. One was a café and the second was a gallery. John nurtured a whole generation as artists, giving jobs so people could get through college and art school. At the memorial one person said he was an angel with bad manner. He could be gruff and rude, but then he would have free bar-b-ques where he would feed all of us. So what if cafe was scruffy a bit. People from the Westside looked at the scruffiness but rarely looked at the art, and the art was a whole new generation speaking out. Manuel Ocampo, a Filipino artist, had a painting show which was an utter knockout: his powerful paintings combed surrealism with a political edge. Ocampo was soon having a big exhibit in Spain and then all around the world.
Gronk was in the big Los Angeles Country Museum Chicano show, and held court from the table in front of the café. Onyx regulars came up to congratulate him. One of us! At the biggest museum in town. John gave us all a space when we all needed it most and helped launch hundreds of people. No wonder he is still so loved. No other café in Los Angeles even came close to the Onyx. John’s shows were multi-ethnic before the major museums did that. They had cartoonists like Matt Groening and often a pop sensibility in the paintings. They were a populist visual arts show off the streets heading toward the major museums.
By the mid-1990s Westsiders were coming more and more to hang out on that block in Vermont, with the Onyx, the great Skylight bookstore, Skylight Theater, the Los Felix movie theater, and the Dresden Room down the block. More people were moving into the neighborhood and rents were rising as gentrification was setting in. Of course, it’s an old story. First, the scruffy bohemian arts and then the bourgeoisie. John had a few crazies who hang out. He would throw out anyone who criticized them. He never made much money.
Of course, he was evicted again. The Onyx had made that neighborhood and now the rent was going too high. I remember a closing music performance listening to Jim Balsam and his musician friends play rock ‘n roll. It was mournful and sad and the end of the era.
Here is John’s own words about the Onyx:
http://onyxwiki.com
Sunday, May 10, 2009
My poet friend Carol Tarlen came from a Quaker background and took me once in San Francisco to a Quaker meeting house where we sat as traditional with the Quakers in a circle of silence waiting for someone to speak. The Quakers have been pacifists for two hundred years. Many were also abolitionists and suffragettes. Below is her poem about her family's background
In Circled Silence by Carol Tarlen
In circled silence
My people came
Quiet colors, Quaker hats
In peaceful witness
They plowed their light and
Built a freedom train that
Stretched in secret from
Basement to hayloft to
A slaveless border
Gently lawless
My people came
In circled wagons
My people came
Quilting a pattern across
Yellowed plains and greensprung valleys
Gentle gypsies who peddled
Pots and plows and peace
These children of the Light
Friendly seekers
My people came
In circle chains
My people came
Suffragettes and pacifists
Scorned, beaten, forcefed in prison darkness
Drenching a blinded nation with their
Inward Light
Gentle Warriors
My people came
In silenced circles
My people came
Centuries ago
From a Europe I do not claim
These Children of the Light
They came
In peaceful witness to a
Dark skinned earth
And I am rooted to their light
I am their witness to this
America I cannot deny
I am the sound of their
Circled silence
In Circled Silence by Carol Tarlen
In circled silence
My people came
Quiet colors, Quaker hats
In peaceful witness
They plowed their light and
Built a freedom train that
Stretched in secret from
Basement to hayloft to
A slaveless border
Gently lawless
My people came
In circled wagons
My people came
Quilting a pattern across
Yellowed plains and greensprung valleys
Gentle gypsies who peddled
Pots and plows and peace
These children of the Light
Friendly seekers
My people came
In circle chains
My people came
Suffragettes and pacifists
Scorned, beaten, forcefed in prison darkness
Drenching a blinded nation with their
Inward Light
Gentle Warriors
My people came
In silenced circles
My people came
Centuries ago
From a Europe I do not claim
These Children of the Light
They came
In peaceful witness to a
Dark skinned earth
And I am rooted to their light
I am their witness to this
America I cannot deny
I am the sound of their
Circled silence
Friday, May 01, 2009
Today, on this day, when I took, with pay, the day off
Today in honor of May Day a poem by Carol Tarlen
Today
today I slept until the sun eased
under my eyelashes. The office phone
ran and rang. No one answered. ..
I sat in the bistro and sipped absinthe
while Cesar Vallejo strolled past,
his dignity betrayed by the hole
in his pants, and I waved, today
and the dictaphone did not dictate
and the files remained empty
and the boss's coffee cup remained empty
while the ghosts of my ancestors
occupied by chair and threatened all
who disturbed their slumber
today, when I sat in bed, nibbling
croissants and reading the New Yorker
in San Francisco, and I did not make
my daughter's lunch, I did not pay
the PG&E bill, I did not empty the garbage
on my way out the door to catch the bus to
ride the elevator to sat at my desk on time
because today I took the day off
And rain drenched the skins of lepers
and they were healed.
Red flags decorated the doorways
of senior centers, and everyone
received their social
security checks on time.
and I walked the streets at 10
in the morning, praised the sun
in its holiness, led a revolution,
painted my toenails purple,
mediated in solitude,
today, on this day, when I took,
with pay, the day off.
Today
today I slept until the sun eased
under my eyelashes. The office phone
ran and rang. No one answered. ..
I sat in the bistro and sipped absinthe
while Cesar Vallejo strolled past,
his dignity betrayed by the hole
in his pants, and I waved, today
and the dictaphone did not dictate
and the files remained empty
and the boss's coffee cup remained empty
while the ghosts of my ancestors
occupied by chair and threatened all
who disturbed their slumber
today, when I sat in bed, nibbling
croissants and reading the New Yorker
in San Francisco, and I did not make
my daughter's lunch, I did not pay
the PG&E bill, I did not empty the garbage
on my way out the door to catch the bus to
ride the elevator to sat at my desk on time
because today I took the day off
And rain drenched the skins of lepers
and they were healed.
Red flags decorated the doorways
of senior centers, and everyone
received their social
security checks on time.
and I walked the streets at 10
in the morning, praised the sun
in its holiness, led a revolution,
painted my toenails purple,
mediated in solitude,
today, on this day, when I took,
with pay, the day off.
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