The Weird Times
Inner Monologues and Desultory Reporting from Outer Spaces
The Weird Times, (Special Issue) 112A, July 4, 2022
In yesterday’s issue #112, I made an egregious error – the link for the “Must Read” article by Jamelle Bouie from the NY Times is incorrect, and takes you to another (important) story.
My apologies to all.
I’m sending out this special issue to correct that error, and while I’m at it, I hope you don’t mind me adding a few photos, songs and poems to help get us through this day. I’m not celebrating the 4th of July until we are able to fend off the authoritarian attack on democracy and assure the safety, privacy, freedom, and well-being of our citizenry.
The Supreme Court is the Final Word on Nothing: Jamelle Bouie, NY Times, 7/1/22: “As recent events have made clear, powerful reactionaries are waging a successful war against American democracy using the counter-majoritarian institutions of the American political system, cloaking their views in a distorted version of our Constitution, where self-government means minority rule and the bugaboos of right-wing culture warriors are somehow “deeply rooted” in our “history and traditions.”
But the Republic is not defenseless. The Constitution gives our elected officials the power to restrain a lawless Supreme Court, protect citizens from the “sinister legislation” of the states, punish those states for depriving their residents of the right to vote and expel insurrectionists from Congress.”
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me
When the sun come shining, then I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The voice come a-chanting and the fog was lifting
This land was made for you and me
—from “This Land is Your Land,” Woody Guthrie
I see a yellow man, a brown man
A white man, a red man
Lookin' for Uncle Sam
To give you a helpin' hand
But everybody's kickin' sand
Even politicians
We're living in a plastic land
—from “Living in the USA,” Steve Miller
Do you think I'm satisfied
I'd like to express my extreme point of view
I'm not Christian and I'm not a Jew
I'm just living out the American dream
And I just realized that nothing is what it seems
—from “American Life,” Madonna (Ahmadzai Miruais / Ciccone Madonna L / Ahmadzai Mirwais)
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
—from “Let America Be America Again,” Langston Hughes
America, I sing back. Sing back what sung you in.
Sing back the moment you cherished breath.
Sing you home into yourself and back to reason.
Before America began to sing, I sung her to sleep,
held her cradleboard, wept her into day.
My song gave her creation, prepared her delivery,
held her severed cord beautifully beaded.
My song helped her stand, held her hand for first steps,
nourished her very being, fed her, placed her three sisters strong.
My song comforted her as she battled my reason
broke my long-held footing sure, as any child might do.
—from “America, I Sing You Back,”Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
From my five arms and all my hands,
From all my white sins forgiven, they feed,
From my car passing under the stars,
They Lion, from my children inherit,
From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion,
From they sack and they belly opened
And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth
They feed they Lion and he comes.
—from “They Feed They Lion,” Philip Levine
Politics has lost its romance!
The “bloody kitchen” has drowned!
And all that is left are those granite
façades of Pentagon, Justice, and Department—
Politicians do not know youth!
They depend on the old
and the old depend on them
and lo! this has given youth a chance
to think of heaven in their independence.
—from “America Politica Historia, in Spontaneity,” Gregory Corso
A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.
—from “Making Peace,” Denise Levertov
“The undercurrent of American history
has been the running aches and pains
of the worn path to the door of the apothecary”
—Ed Dorn
from where I carry you a feather
as though, sharp, I picked up
in the afternoon delivered you
a jewel,
it flashing more than a wing,
than any old romantic thing,
than memory, than place,
than anything other than that which you carry
than that which is,
call it a nest, around the head of, call it
the next second
than that which you
can do!
—from “I, Maximus to You,” Charles Olson
When we made it back home, back over those curved roads
that wind through the city of peace, we stopped at the
doorway of dusk as it opened to our homelands.
We gave thanks for the story, for all parts of the story
because it was by the light of those challenges we knew
ourselves—
We asked for forgiveness.
We laid down our burdens next to each other.
—from “Conflict Resolutions for Holy Beings,” Joy Harjo
As always, and especially today, thanks for reading. Warm wishes and love to all —David