It always makes me feel tearful when I read the love-notes to you when you take a night off. Even then you always leave us a gift--this time a lovely bridge and a fantasy about another time. I suspect it is a relief to read these well-wishes and grateful notes from people who love you. I am one of this crowd, and wish you a peaceful and restorative night.
Rowshan, I sincerely believe that you should contact Heather and discuss how you two can make happen a gallery show with your poems next to her photos. It would be spectacular. Maybe something virtual for those of us Covid hermits.
Yes, Rowshan, good of you to think of Heather's full plate. What of the other poets among us who post at the end of the line when they arrive -- unless they are replying to another's comment? It is considerate and worthwhile to remember the subscribers in the middle to the back of our Forum's bus, where gems of poetry and prose, along with information glisten. Subscriber, Elisabeth Luard, for instance, posted a poem by Kipling, and I'm sure that there is more that I have not seen. Check it out back there, where much thought and care await us. Cheers!
Fern, numerous people may indeed post pertinent poems as comments to Heather's photos, but I'm talking about Rowshan's only. They each perfectly describe the images Heather has created in her photos. However, if there are other subscriber's who write poems specifically about Heather's photos, then, sure, let the gallery include them, too. All I know, though, is what I read from Rowshan, and I am immensely impressed. (I would not want in the gallery Kipling's or any other's poems that are not about specific photos by Heather.)
Mim, Most subscribers with prose and or poetry related to the letter and or picture post in the order that they arrive. Subscribers generally check out the comments closest to the Letter/picture., so a few, in their eagerness to be read, may or may not jump the line. I am referring to 'polite' behavior and also advocating for learning from one another, up and down the line. A gallery exhibition or exhibitions is a separate idea of yours and perhaps others wanting to combine the work/artistry of subscribers whose posts highlight Heather's and who they believe to be gifted.
Tell me your comment was not a clumsy diminishment of the well deserved praise of Rowshan's sincere love embodied in this wonderful series of poems directly tied to HCR's letters...unlike those you dredged up for some misguided reason...
"Too much posting after 3 a.m. this week, and I’m going to go to bed and see if I can catch up."
Thank you, Dr. Cox Richardson, for your amazing contribution and the hard work that takes. I'm glad you're caring for yourself while running this marathon.
yes, she is a model for us all in many ways..Laura X, Women's History Library, and we all need models even at 81 , which I am..! i see you are all still awake! :)
'Poet Robert Hayden was born Asa Bundy Sheffey into a poor family in the Paradise Valley neighborhood of Detroit; he had an emotionally traumatic childhood and was raised in part by foster parents.'
'Due to extreme nearsightedness, Hayden turned to books rather than sports in his childhood. After graduating from high school in 1932, he attended Detroit City College (now Wayne State University) on scholarship and later earned a graduate degree in English literature from the University of Michigan. As a teaching fellow, he was the first Black faculty member in Michigan’s English department. Hayden eventually became the first African American to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.'
'His collections of poetry include Heart-Shape in the Dust (1940), Figure of Time (1955), A Ballad of Remembrance (1962), which won the grand prize at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, Selected Poems (1966), Words in the Mourning Time (1970), The Night-Blooming Cereus (1972), Angle of Ascent: New and Selected Poems (1975), and American Journal (1978). Hayden’s formal, elegant poems about the Black history and experience earned him a number of other major awards as well. “Robert Hayden is now generally accepted,” Frederick Glaysher stated in Hayden’s Collected Prose, “as the most outstanding craftsman of Afro-American poetry.”
'The historical basis for much of Hayden’s poetry stemmed from his extensive study of American and African American history. Beginning in the 1930s, when he researched Black history for the Federal Writers’ Project in his native Detroit, Hayden studied the story of Black people from their roots in Africa to their present condition in the United States. “History,” Charles T. Davis wrote in Black is the Color of the Cosmos: Essays on Afro-American Literature and Culture, 1942-1981, “has haunted Robert Hayden from the beginning of his career as a poet.” As he once explained to Glenford E. Mitchell of World Order, Hayden saw history “as a long, tortuous, and often bloody process of becoming, of psychic evolution.”
'Other early influences on Hayden’s development as a poet were W. H. Auden, under whom Hayden studied at the University of Michigan, and Stephen Vincent Benet, particularly Benet’s poem “John Brown’s Body.” That poem describes the Black reaction to General Sherman’s march through Georgia during the Civil War and inspired Hayden to also write about that period of history, creating a series of poems on slavery and the Civil War that won him a Hopwood Award in 1942.' (PoetryFoundation) See link below.
Thank you, Fern, for that wonderful biography of Robert Hayden. We members of the Baha'i faith are very proud of our fellow Baha'i Robert Hayden. My neighbor Jefferson Carter, a respected Tucson poet, studied with Robert Hayden and recently wrote beautifully about that experience on Facebook.
omg.. so grateful! thanks Fern.. i knew way too little..shocking.. and i will send all this to my pals in poetry , my pals in Detroit and certainly to my BLM e list and to my pal Charles Pace who portrays Frederick Douglass and WEB DuBois and Malcolm X, and Gordon Parks, and others..
ok here is a fun quiz for you all... in what film did Denzel Washington portray a lesser known Harlem Renaissance poet who was born in Missouri..??
You do not seem to grasp the artistically balanced cogency of Rowshan's brilliance in summarizing HDR's message in the bliss of poignant word pictures that grab at our heart strings!
You could never begin to successfully compete with the grandeur of eloquence embodied in Rowshan's gorgeous poems...
Why do you continue crowing into the vacuum of your silly blatant jealously?
Become, instead, sincerely nice and the praise you so desperately seek may also be showered upon you, Eh!?
exactly.. my sister who passed away 2 years ago yesterday, took a photo there which r is what reminded me... thank you.. lovely to think of you there too. Laura
What I love is reading your insightful thoughts, backed by historical knowledge, research and discipline, not to mention artful language, and then seeing how touched you are by this wonderful old bridge. You make me smile with affection.
While Heather gets some much-deserved sleep, the insidious conspiracy continues to seep forth big chunks from the sewer in which a constitutional coup was concocted.
I thought that nothing more about Trump’s conspiratorial and deadly narcissism would shock and surprise me. I was wrong.
At the July 21st House 1/6 House Hearing it was revealed that, as White House officials were monitoring frantic Secret Service messages of ‘farewell’ to their families and their professional doubts that they could prevent the murder of Vice President Pence, Trump spoke and tweeted brazenly of Pence deserving what would befall him.
Whether the Secret Service was more concerned about their own lives or of Pence’s may be revealed, when they are subpoenaed to testify before the House 1/6 Committee..
Pence had a momentary ‘Profile in Courage’ moment, when he insisted on staying in the Capitol Building to perform his constitutional duty.
That subsequently he has sucked up to Trump in his bizarre attempt to be the Republican 2024 presidential candidate underscores that he didn’t earn a courage medal from the Wizard of Oz.
What possibly can the Service Service be concealing in its ‘missing messages’ ruse? Such gross insubordination demands subpoenas and firings for such a flagrant cover up.
I’m looking forward to a rested Heather providing us a Baedeker to these wicked underworld machinations.
Couldn’t agree more, thought my shock gauge was worn out long ago, but damn, they corrupt every person, institution, and relationship they encounter. Reminds me that everything that Hitler did was legal. Some States and SC have already started that process. If Nov favors the vermin, federal action will follow…. May the dam break in time
Such across the board flagrance is very troubling to me...I can not believe this is The America I have inhabited for 78 years!
Totally unbalancing and slipping off into raging anger!
So now, after a month of witnessing the J6 revelatory televised hearings, we begin to understand how the Great Deceiver is victoriously laughing at the effortlessness it has always been to enslave the weak minded republicans into their perversions of zealously supporting the so called “Religious Church” to misrepresent JESUS to world forever infecting all those wretched Southern souls in America who idolize the King Of Republicans.
Good Americans must fully exert all resources to forever defeat republican's treasonists governmental participation in America.
VOTE INTELLIGENTLY, and please help others to do the same!
Could they share a lot of chatter monitoring and analyzing what was not taking place in WH? Observations on Trump and his state of mind? Might Donato's phone contain the calls Trump was making and not in the official record? 🤔 Question in my mind, besides issues of actual national security, if charges are criminal and treasonish, does Executive Privilege hold water any longer or can those apparently shaded by it be compelled to to testify? For instance the White House lawyer who so carefully answered? Or, Trump when the questioning focuses upon his state of mind during the 187 minutes?
BK When I was a Foreign Service Officer I was involved in some dicey situations. There was never a ‘clearly messaged’ record of these events. However Hercule Poirot, with his little grey cells, could have reconstructed the substance of these events by deep questioning of each participant.
With the Secret Service, during January 5-6 there was a bevy of messages between headquarters and agents with Pence and Trump related to protecting the president and the Vice President.
Participants have a clear recollection of what happened. My instinct is that the Secret Service is playing CYA, where claiming ‘missing messages’ is better than to lay out what precisely occurred. Were the Secret /Service most focused on getting Pence and themselves away from the Capitol Building? How was Pence able to override them?
At the White House vital info was coming from members of Congress and the Secret Service which irrefutably place Trump in the middle of an despicable conspiracy in which some people were killed and many more came a whisker away from being killed.
Several Secret Service officials had mentioned the Trump car incidence in the presence of Cassidy Hutchinson. Would they, under oath, be willing to deny what they had reported at the time in the presence of Cassidy?
The Secret Service has a reputation, in dealing with presidents, of not disclosing what they witness on a daily basis. THIS IS THE TIME TO BLOW THE SECRET SERVICE COVER AND HAVE THEM TESTIFY HONESTLY REGARDING WHAT PRECISELY HAPPENED ON JAN 5TH/6TH.
This is a conspiracy of silence within a constitutional conspiracy.
/Jeri Breaking a ‘code of silence’ is extremely difficult.In the Mafia the ‘dishonor’ that occurred often included death. The Catholic Church ‘code of silence’ is/was professed to involve one’s mortal soul. This is reflected in the movie SPOTLIGHT and that only now have over 200,000 incidents of priestly pervasive been ‘discovered’ in France.
In a World Series where one team was stealing the pitching signs of another, the was. S ‘code of silence’ secret for years.
The Secret Service (like the staff at Buckingham Palace) is expected to be totally discreet about the foibles of its protected. Not a peep from the Secret Service about FDR’s dying-man-symptoms or Lucy Mercer. Not a whisper from SS about JFK’s bevy of girl friends.
The Secret Service is almost like a frat house with a ‘code of silence.’ My sense is that it is similar to the task of Augean Stables—how does one break the SS code of silence while assuring presidents and others total discretion in their private lives.
I reflect on rooting out police corruption and the dangerous life of Serpico. Can it be done? That is what we are about to see.
As I am reminded daily … yesterday my husband and I went to look at a “natural” cemetery and I was excited—as much as one can be—about this alternative. The picture Heather posted moves me toward that decision.
It's a cemetery that permits only natural materials that will become part of the earth: no chemicals, often burials with only a shroud or simple biodegradable caskets, burial shallower than usual so that the living part of the soil can be part of the process, simple natural markers or none at all (all burials are geolocated).
A natural cemetery just received final approval here in Vermont. I am on their waiting list as they prepare to open to people wanting to select a spot. I am really relieved to have this option.
I am too. A close friend died after a very short bout with cancer in March, and she chose cremation, something that has never appealed (if that is the right word) to me. However, her rather sudden death and the fortuitous timing of a talk at the local episcopal church on green alternatives offered us the opportunity to choose this.
There are some in Oregon, too, Ally, ranging from a kind of high end rapid composting to the kind of simple, natural burial similar to what I just described. This is a movement, nation-wide, and more states are coming on board, changing the unrealistic and environmentally sound practices that the mortuary industry lobbied for in the 20th century back to something more like our ancestors used.
It may depend on the cemetery, but in my case one is clothed in a biodegradable shroud or a box made of specified woods and placed in the ground. No embalming or other “preservation” activity.
Thank you for your intrepid work, and for this beautiful verdant image. You are amazing and your work is invaluable. Rest well and enjoy sweet dreams of democracy!! ♥️🙏🏽🙏🏿🙏♥️
great wish@@ do you know about http://Limnosophy.com, a friend has been doing this work since his college days..The book is the Wisdom of Dreaming.. by Paul Sheldon.. I will see if i can get permission to send you a video of his sitting by a stream singing about dreams!
"Experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire."
here is Pauls's gift to me.. it is not ready for prime time, i think another friend is going to figure out harmony but those of us who need to sleep, perchance to dream may enjoy this now with due respect for his ownership
,: And I recorded a song for you -- I hope you can download and listen to it:
To live on a boat (again) was my husband’s dream retirement. What we could afford was a used French rental boat - actually English, as it was built on the Norfolk Broads for a French rental boat company. We spent a month on her in the summer of 2021 and went back in October to spend most of the year until October of 2011. We started off on the Canal du Midi, but that canal became so crowded that my husband decided, after a second trip up the Rhône, that we should stay north where we could move about freely. Our home port was Pont-de-Vaux, a small town 100k north of Lyon and 3k east of the Saône. Because my husband was an experienced boats man and I had years of French as student and teacher behind me, we explored rivers and canals, ate from farmers markets and occasionally from Michelin restaurants and, with visitors, explored the champagne houses of the Marne, all the while watching climate change become more and more obvious in every facet of our lives.
That’s much more than you asked for, but I must add that until the pandemic I visited friends in France every year from 2012 (the year of my husband’s death) until the pandemic closeted me in 2020. One friend in the Nièvre emailed the day after DT was elected “You must come live with me.” I renew that invitation every year. She lives on a huge cattle farm where every year now the family grows more wheat and fewer cattle and sheep because the EU hopes to “feed more people.”
As you see from this, I have seen much of France from a boat, most of it beautiful. A girl from farming country in Virginia, the first city lived in as a student, was Paris. When I say “I am going to France,” the response is frequently “You are going to Paris” so I have to explain that I will land there, but catch a train at the airport for another place, visiting Paris friends on my way out of France, a country so much more than its capital. To have seen the battlefields of WWI and arrive by boat at St. Valéry-sur-Somme where William the Conqueror set sail for England is a thrill as great as any to be had in Paris!
Thank you for asking the question and please forgive the early morning pleasure in over-answering it.
Thank you for your "over-answer", which dredged up all my own wonderful memories of France. My first 4 years in Europe (Holland) in the summers ('89-'92) I went down to south central France to work with a small Baroque ensemble (I was the singer) based in Amsterdam. The harpsichordist and her husband were Dutch but had lived in this little village in the Corrèze département since the 1970s. They both had been teachers at the University of Amsterdam (she taught German and French, and he taught English and Russian) and lived in Amsterdam during the year, but spent summers and Christmas in their place in France. It was a little slice of paradise, a rebuilt farmhouse that dated from the 14th century (back when animals would stay indoors by the family in the winter), with a huge garden that had been written up in gardening journals in France because of its variety. Truly amazing. We would spend 4-6 weeks there in the summer rehearsing and then do some concerts at various chateaux in central France. We all took our meals together there at the house, or sometimes at the Hôtel de Ville in the village (St. Robert, one of the Cent Plus Beaux Villages de France). To say I fell in love with France is an understatement! In my years in Holland I went to Paris countless times to perform, and I adore that city, but getting out into France Profonde gives a completely different view of the country. The people are AMAZING and SO friendly and down to earth....and the natural beauty of France and its incredible villages is sadly something so many people never get to see. (It's SO much more than just Paris!) I wouldn't take anything for those times I spent in France and the tons of wonderful memories I have from there. I was indescribably lucky that I got to see so much of it on subsequent tours around France and its cities (LOVE Lyons!) over the years. Thank you for jarring my memory and unleashing a flood of remembrances!
And thank you in return. My husband played French horn. We had the horn on the boat. One summer Sunday morning members of the French hunting horn society were spread out along the canal bank as we passed by. My husband grabbed his horn and played their call back to them. Great fun all around. Envy you doing music in Europe. (Just remembering: did get to sing the Fauré requiem with the Sorbonne chorus. Thank you for jarring that.)
Thank you both, Bruce & Virginia, for the delicious morsels from your French travels! While I too have had a taste of European dwelling & traveling, I yearn for more exploration, especially throughout France. My most recent trip took me to cathedrals across Paris and the Loire Valley, enjoying breath-taking choral performances — the acoustics, wow! Phenomenal voices filled these stained glass-illuminated architectural wonders of the ages. Dreams come true.
We all need to spend time in nature. On the water. In the water. Too many of us are much too disconnected from the real world, from our planet...from the universe...and live here in the electronic land of flashing lights in a box. Thanks for the reminder. I'm going to visit my granddaughter today and get centered on a 2 1/2 years olds level of being.
A 2.5 year old knows what really matters. Our 4 y/o will be arriving for a week before she starts preschool and it will be she taking over the household.
ah yes.. good perspective!! 60 years ago I was a Head Start teacher in the pilot program in nyc.. i am still in touch with one of my kids from there.. thanks to FB!! she could sing the entire of Jamaica Farewell at 3! Laura
It always makes me feel tearful when I read the love-notes to you when you take a night off. Even then you always leave us a gift--this time a lovely bridge and a fantasy about another time. I suspect it is a relief to read these well-wishes and grateful notes from people who love you. I am one of this crowd, and wish you a peaceful and restorative night.
Thank you, Barbara, for such a precious acknowledgement of how we feel. This is my addition.
“Enchantment”
Be still. Enchantment has
found you. The river narrows ahead
and the surrounding trees,
on opposing green banks
reach out for one another —
their gentle emerald branches
forming layers of arcs as they reach
for the sky.
You sense a moment of soundless
wonder. Wherever you are …
be still, it is your now —
your perfect today.
It is sentience … being.
The water shimmers and breathes,
welcome its golden and silver reflections
as your new companions.
Just ahead, a bridge
of stones arches across your path.
Each stone on the bridge
speaks of a yesterday — their collective
power and wisdom ask you
to float beneath,
to acknowledge the past.
Know it and be known by it.
Light shines through
the archway. Be still.
Know it and be known by it.
Rowshan, I sincerely believe that you should contact Heather and discuss how you two can make happen a gallery show with your poems next to her photos. It would be spectacular. Maybe something virtual for those of us Covid hermits.
I would love to, Mim, but do you think, with all that Heather has on her plate, that she’d want to?
Yes, Rowshan, good of you to think of Heather's full plate. What of the other poets among us who post at the end of the line when they arrive -- unless they are replying to another's comment? It is considerate and worthwhile to remember the subscribers in the middle to the back of our Forum's bus, where gems of poetry and prose, along with information glisten. Subscriber, Elisabeth Luard, for instance, posted a poem by Kipling, and I'm sure that there is more that I have not seen. Check it out back there, where much thought and care await us. Cheers!
Fern, numerous people may indeed post pertinent poems as comments to Heather's photos, but I'm talking about Rowshan's only. They each perfectly describe the images Heather has created in her photos. However, if there are other subscriber's who write poems specifically about Heather's photos, then, sure, let the gallery include them, too. All I know, though, is what I read from Rowshan, and I am immensely impressed. (I would not want in the gallery Kipling's or any other's poems that are not about specific photos by Heather.)
Thank you, Mim. I truly appreciate your encouragement and endorsement❣️
Mim, Most subscribers with prose and or poetry related to the letter and or picture post in the order that they arrive. Subscribers generally check out the comments closest to the Letter/picture., so a few, in their eagerness to be read, may or may not jump the line. I am referring to 'polite' behavior and also advocating for learning from one another, up and down the line. A gallery exhibition or exhibitions is a separate idea of yours and perhaps others wanting to combine the work/artistry of subscribers whose posts highlight Heather's and who they believe to be gifted.
Oh! Fern:
Tell me your comment was not a clumsy diminishment of the well deserved praise of Rowshan's sincere love embodied in this wonderful series of poems directly tied to HCR's letters...unlike those you dredged up for some misguided reason...
George, thank you so much for your kind words about my reflections.
At least put the suggestion to her to consider. There's no rush.
Possible Buddy and/or Peter Ralston could help make it happen?!
Wouldn't that be nice?
Beautiful
Thank you, Ally!
Wild applause
So ❤️ this
Thank so much, Jeri!
Never too late, I hope, to say this gave me goose bumps, Rowshan! Love that poetic brain of yours!
Thank you so much, Lynell!
What a lovely and kind comment, Barbara.
Thank you, Barbara for so eloquently expressing how we feel about HCR and all her vital work. Also how she leaves us with a gift regardless.❤
Me too <3
I love your name, Sky Otter!
Thank you, Elisabeth Iler! https://billpfeiffer.org
Just watched your opening statement on your website. Lovely connection through gratitude. gratitudemojo.com
Thank you. Gratitude mojo. Love it
You read my mind, Barbara….
And my heart.
me, too
"Too much posting after 3 a.m. this week, and I’m going to go to bed and see if I can catch up."
Thank you, Dr. Cox Richardson, for your amazing contribution and the hard work that takes. I'm glad you're caring for yourself while running this marathon.
yes, she is a model for us all in many ways..Laura X, Women's History Library, and we all need models even at 81 , which I am..! i see you are all still awake! :)
Under the bridge
Beyond the bend
Adventure awaits
Where nature mends…
Thank you for your incredible insights Heather.
Nature mends…
Can we Americans?
If given a chance
Terrific almost-Haiku, Richard!
18 syllables - American Jewish version; Chai!
Thank you Heather for your letters this week and the beautiful sun-kissed picture of water, trees and proud stone bridge.
Liberty
by Frederick Douglass
He loves to see his eyrie seat
Some Rock on ocean's lonely shore
Whose old bare top, the tempest beat
And round whose base the billows roar,
Or mount through tempest shrouded air
All thick and dark, with wild wind swelling
Or brave the lightning's lurid glare,
And talk with thunders in their dwelling.
Written by Douglass in a notebook on September 13, 1847.
© by owner. provided at no charge for educational purposes
Frederick Douglass
By Robert Hayden
When it is finally ours, this freedom, this liberty, this beautiful
and terrible thing, needful to man as air,
usable as earth; when it belongs at last to all,
when it is truly instinct, brain matter, diastole, systole,
reflex action; when it is finally won; when it is more
than the gaudy mumbo jumbo of politicians:
this man, this Douglass, this former slave, this Negro
beaten to his knees, exiled, visioning a world
where none is lonely, none hunted, alien,
this man, superb in love and logic, this man
shall be remembered. Oh, not with statues’ rhetoric,
not with legends and poems and wreaths of bronze alone,
but with the lives grown out of his life, the lives
fleshing his dream of the beautiful, needful thing.
Robert Hayden, “Frederick Douglass” from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher. Copyright © 1966 by Robert Hayden. Reprinted with the permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.
Source: The Collected Poems of Robert Hayden (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1966)
Oh Fern. Oh Fern Fern Fern. 💜💔💜💔💜💔🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤🤍🖤
Thank you, Gailee, for such exquisite poetry.
Cara, that poetry was from Fern. The first was from Fredrick Douglass and the second by Robert Hayden.
who knows more about Robert Hayden.. and i feel like someone used this felicitous phrase of his the night i spent with you all .. 17th.. 18th, Laura
'Poet Robert Hayden was born Asa Bundy Sheffey into a poor family in the Paradise Valley neighborhood of Detroit; he had an emotionally traumatic childhood and was raised in part by foster parents.'
'Due to extreme nearsightedness, Hayden turned to books rather than sports in his childhood. After graduating from high school in 1932, he attended Detroit City College (now Wayne State University) on scholarship and later earned a graduate degree in English literature from the University of Michigan. As a teaching fellow, he was the first Black faculty member in Michigan’s English department. Hayden eventually became the first African American to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.'
'His collections of poetry include Heart-Shape in the Dust (1940), Figure of Time (1955), A Ballad of Remembrance (1962), which won the grand prize at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, Selected Poems (1966), Words in the Mourning Time (1970), The Night-Blooming Cereus (1972), Angle of Ascent: New and Selected Poems (1975), and American Journal (1978). Hayden’s formal, elegant poems about the Black history and experience earned him a number of other major awards as well. “Robert Hayden is now generally accepted,” Frederick Glaysher stated in Hayden’s Collected Prose, “as the most outstanding craftsman of Afro-American poetry.”
'The historical basis for much of Hayden’s poetry stemmed from his extensive study of American and African American history. Beginning in the 1930s, when he researched Black history for the Federal Writers’ Project in his native Detroit, Hayden studied the story of Black people from their roots in Africa to their present condition in the United States. “History,” Charles T. Davis wrote in Black is the Color of the Cosmos: Essays on Afro-American Literature and Culture, 1942-1981, “has haunted Robert Hayden from the beginning of his career as a poet.” As he once explained to Glenford E. Mitchell of World Order, Hayden saw history “as a long, tortuous, and often bloody process of becoming, of psychic evolution.”
'Other early influences on Hayden’s development as a poet were W. H. Auden, under whom Hayden studied at the University of Michigan, and Stephen Vincent Benet, particularly Benet’s poem “John Brown’s Body.” That poem describes the Black reaction to General Sherman’s march through Georgia during the Civil War and inspired Hayden to also write about that period of history, creating a series of poems on slavery and the Civil War that won him a Hopwood Award in 1942.' (PoetryFoundation) See link below.
POEMS BY ROBERT HAYDEN
The Ballad of Nat Turner
Frederick Douglass
Middle Passage
See All Poems by Robert Hayden
RELATED COLLECTIONS
Poems about Loneliness and Solitude
Poems That Say Thank You
Celebrating Black History Month
Poems About Fathers
Father’s Day Poems
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/robert-hayden
Thank you, Fern, for that wonderful biography of Robert Hayden. We members of the Baha'i faith are very proud of our fellow Baha'i Robert Hayden. My neighbor Jefferson Carter, a respected Tucson poet, studied with Robert Hayden and recently wrote beautifully about that experience on Facebook.
Thank you, Fern, for this education on him and his work. I did not know.
omg.. so grateful! thanks Fern.. i knew way too little..shocking.. and i will send all this to my pals in poetry , my pals in Detroit and certainly to my BLM e list and to my pal Charles Pace who portrays Frederick Douglass and WEB DuBois and Malcolm X, and Gordon Parks, and others..
ok here is a fun quiz for you all... in what film did Denzel Washington portray a lesser known Harlem Renaissance poet who was born in Missouri..??
And no shortage of scholarly inspiration…
🌺
Thank you, Gailee, on behalf of the poets.
How beautiful, Fern. Thank you for both Douglass and Robert Hayden, on this monsoon, cloudy afternoon in western India!
''...that beautiful, needful thing.''
Thank you for sharing these stunning poems.
HCR is not our only inspiration
Such insight and intellect and artistry. :’-)
Fern: This makes my heart sing. ❤️
Fern!
Why!?
You just can not help yourself, can you?
You do not seem to grasp the artistically balanced cogency of Rowshan's brilliance in summarizing HDR's message in the bliss of poignant word pictures that grab at our heart strings!
You could never begin to successfully compete with the grandeur of eloquence embodied in Rowshan's gorgeous poems...
Why do you continue crowing into the vacuum of your silly blatant jealously?
Become, instead, sincerely nice and the praise you so desperately seek may also be showered upon you, Eh!?
The best thing about the images you post? All evoke tranquility. And it's easy to be transported into them, where we find a respite from the madness.
I will now remember that bridge with the name, Bridge of Tranquility.
the water is quite Monet like.. and straight out of Funny Face with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire.. a fave movie of mine, Laura
It reminded me of A picture I took when we visited his property in France.
exactly.. my sister who passed away 2 years ago yesterday, took a photo there which r is what reminded me... thank you.. lovely to think of you there too. Laura
Yes, serene and peaceful always. I always look forward to the pictures which give Heather some rest and us respite from the noise of the news.
Well said!
Well said, Michael.
Rest well and many thanks for all you do to keep us informed. You are a true patriot!
What I love is reading your insightful thoughts, backed by historical knowledge, research and discipline, not to mention artful language, and then seeing how touched you are by this wonderful old bridge. You make me smile with affection.
💜
While Heather gets some much-deserved sleep, the insidious conspiracy continues to seep forth big chunks from the sewer in which a constitutional coup was concocted.
I thought that nothing more about Trump’s conspiratorial and deadly narcissism would shock and surprise me. I was wrong.
At the July 21st House 1/6 House Hearing it was revealed that, as White House officials were monitoring frantic Secret Service messages of ‘farewell’ to their families and their professional doubts that they could prevent the murder of Vice President Pence, Trump spoke and tweeted brazenly of Pence deserving what would befall him.
Whether the Secret Service was more concerned about their own lives or of Pence’s may be revealed, when they are subpoenaed to testify before the House 1/6 Committee..
Pence had a momentary ‘Profile in Courage’ moment, when he insisted on staying in the Capitol Building to perform his constitutional duty.
That subsequently he has sucked up to Trump in his bizarre attempt to be the Republican 2024 presidential candidate underscores that he didn’t earn a courage medal from the Wizard of Oz.
What possibly can the Service Service be concealing in its ‘missing messages’ ruse? Such gross insubordination demands subpoenas and firings for such a flagrant cover up.
I’m looking forward to a rested Heather providing us a Baedeker to these wicked underworld machinations.
Couldn’t agree more, thought my shock gauge was worn out long ago, but damn, they corrupt every person, institution, and relationship they encounter. Reminds me that everything that Hitler did was legal. Some States and SC have already started that process. If Nov favors the vermin, federal action will follow…. May the dam break in time
Keith Wheelock:
I agree with you.
Such across the board flagrance is very troubling to me...I can not believe this is The America I have inhabited for 78 years!
Totally unbalancing and slipping off into raging anger!
So now, after a month of witnessing the J6 revelatory televised hearings, we begin to understand how the Great Deceiver is victoriously laughing at the effortlessness it has always been to enslave the weak minded republicans into their perversions of zealously supporting the so called “Religious Church” to misrepresent JESUS to world forever infecting all those wretched Southern souls in America who idolize the King Of Republicans.
Good Americans must fully exert all resources to forever defeat republican's treasonists governmental participation in America.
VOTE INTELLIGENTLY, and please help others to do the same!
Could they share a lot of chatter monitoring and analyzing what was not taking place in WH? Observations on Trump and his state of mind? Might Donato's phone contain the calls Trump was making and not in the official record? 🤔 Question in my mind, besides issues of actual national security, if charges are criminal and treasonish, does Executive Privilege hold water any longer or can those apparently shaded by it be compelled to to testify? For instance the White House lawyer who so carefully answered? Or, Trump when the questioning focuses upon his state of mind during the 187 minutes?
BK When I was a Foreign Service Officer I was involved in some dicey situations. There was never a ‘clearly messaged’ record of these events. However Hercule Poirot, with his little grey cells, could have reconstructed the substance of these events by deep questioning of each participant.
With the Secret Service, during January 5-6 there was a bevy of messages between headquarters and agents with Pence and Trump related to protecting the president and the Vice President.
Participants have a clear recollection of what happened. My instinct is that the Secret Service is playing CYA, where claiming ‘missing messages’ is better than to lay out what precisely occurred. Were the Secret /Service most focused on getting Pence and themselves away from the Capitol Building? How was Pence able to override them?
At the White House vital info was coming from members of Congress and the Secret Service which irrefutably place Trump in the middle of an despicable conspiracy in which some people were killed and many more came a whisker away from being killed.
Several Secret Service officials had mentioned the Trump car incidence in the presence of Cassidy Hutchinson. Would they, under oath, be willing to deny what they had reported at the time in the presence of Cassidy?
The Secret Service has a reputation, in dealing with presidents, of not disclosing what they witness on a daily basis. THIS IS THE TIME TO BLOW THE SECRET SERVICE COVER AND HAVE THEM TESTIFY HONESTLY REGARDING WHAT PRECISELY HAPPENED ON JAN 5TH/6TH.
This is a conspiracy of silence within a constitutional conspiracy.
Could not agree more, hope this percolates far and wide
/Jeri Breaking a ‘code of silence’ is extremely difficult.In the Mafia the ‘dishonor’ that occurred often included death. The Catholic Church ‘code of silence’ is/was professed to involve one’s mortal soul. This is reflected in the movie SPOTLIGHT and that only now have over 200,000 incidents of priestly pervasive been ‘discovered’ in France.
In a World Series where one team was stealing the pitching signs of another, the was. S ‘code of silence’ secret for years.
The Secret Service (like the staff at Buckingham Palace) is expected to be totally discreet about the foibles of its protected. Not a peep from the Secret Service about FDR’s dying-man-symptoms or Lucy Mercer. Not a whisper from SS about JFK’s bevy of girl friends.
The Secret Service is almost like a frat house with a ‘code of silence.’ My sense is that it is similar to the task of Augean Stables—how does one break the SS code of silence while assuring presidents and others total discretion in their private lives.
I reflect on rooting out police corruption and the dangerous life of Serpico. Can it be done? That is what we are about to see.
109% knocked me off my props. It took some doing to make such a “mistake.”
Reminds me of the John Denver song "Cool and Green and Shady"
Okay, now ya'll know how old I am LOL
Almost everyone who posts here is old. 😊
As I am reminded daily … yesterday my husband and I went to look at a “natural” cemetery and I was excited—as much as one can be—about this alternative. The picture Heather posted moves me toward that decision.
What is a natural cemetery?
It's a cemetery that permits only natural materials that will become part of the earth: no chemicals, often burials with only a shroud or simple biodegradable caskets, burial shallower than usual so that the living part of the soil can be part of the process, simple natural markers or none at all (all burials are geolocated).
A natural cemetery just received final approval here in Vermont. I am on their waiting list as they prepare to open to people wanting to select a spot. I am really relieved to have this option.
I am too. A close friend died after a very short bout with cancer in March, and she chose cremation, something that has never appealed (if that is the right word) to me. However, her rather sudden death and the fortuitous timing of a talk at the local episcopal church on green alternatives offered us the opportunity to choose this.
That is cool!
There are some in Oregon, too, Ally, ranging from a kind of high end rapid composting to the kind of simple, natural burial similar to what I just described. This is a movement, nation-wide, and more states are coming on board, changing the unrealistic and environmentally sound practices that the mortuary industry lobbied for in the 20th century back to something more like our ancestors used.
with hairy armpits too? LOL
dirt.
It may depend on the cemetery, but in my case one is clothed in a biodegradable shroud or a box made of specified woods and placed in the ground. No embalming or other “preservation” activity.
True - AND well seasoned!
Roland!
Ah! YES!
But here we see old is only a state of mind that can be easily overcome by patriotic love of American democracy, Eh!?
Roland Old in body, young at heart. We share a common hope, which I find inspiring. What’s the saying?—‘Faith, Hope, and Charity.’
Terrie Did you ever hear Al Jolson sing Swanee? LOL
Thank you for your intrepid work, and for this beautiful verdant image. You are amazing and your work is invaluable. Rest well and enjoy sweet dreams of democracy!! ♥️🙏🏽🙏🏿🙏♥️
great wish@@ do you know about http://Limnosophy.com, a friend has been doing this work since his college days..The book is the Wisdom of Dreaming.. by Paul Sheldon.. I will see if i can get permission to send you a video of his sitting by a stream singing about dreams!
From: Paul Sheldon <paul@4lx.org>
Subject: Please join as my guest--7 minutes for 7 days to unlock the potential off your dreams
Date: July 22, 2022 at 2:29:01 PM PDT
To: Laura X <laurax@4lx.org>
Please share with friends!
https://www.dreamosophy.com/wisdom-of-dreaming/
--
Paul M. Sheldon, M.A.
[pronouns: he/him/his]
paul@4lx.org
Development Consultant
Laura's Social Movements Archives
www.LauraXinstitute.org
https://wikimili.com/en/Laura_X
iPhone: (303) 808-7880
"Experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire."
--Sonia Sotomayor
Laura X, founder/director of the former
National Clearinghouse on Marital and Date Rape
Women's History Library
(510) 587-3372 Berkeley, Ca.
http://ncmdr.org
New website: http://lauraxinstitute.org
for Laura’s Social Movement Archives
Facebook: https://facebook.com/laurarorthweinjr
here is Pauls's gift to me.. it is not ready for prime time, i think another friend is going to figure out harmony but those of us who need to sleep, perchance to dream may enjoy this now with due respect for his ownership
,: And I recorded a song for you -- I hope you can download and listen to it:
https://share.icloud.com/photos/07d1GwgYYcO2MlSjkSbvqEgag
A lovely bridge and a wonderful vision. Sleep tight and awake renewed. It has been a long week.
I love this photo - it looks like it's asking to be a painting!
To live on a boat (again) was my husband’s dream retirement. What we could afford was a used French rental boat - actually English, as it was built on the Norfolk Broads for a French rental boat company. We spent a month on her in the summer of 2021 and went back in October to spend most of the year until October of 2011. We started off on the Canal du Midi, but that canal became so crowded that my husband decided, after a second trip up the Rhône, that we should stay north where we could move about freely. Our home port was Pont-de-Vaux, a small town 100k north of Lyon and 3k east of the Saône. Because my husband was an experienced boats man and I had years of French as student and teacher behind me, we explored rivers and canals, ate from farmers markets and occasionally from Michelin restaurants and, with visitors, explored the champagne houses of the Marne, all the while watching climate change become more and more obvious in every facet of our lives.
That’s much more than you asked for, but I must add that until the pandemic I visited friends in France every year from 2012 (the year of my husband’s death) until the pandemic closeted me in 2020. One friend in the Nièvre emailed the day after DT was elected “You must come live with me.” I renew that invitation every year. She lives on a huge cattle farm where every year now the family grows more wheat and fewer cattle and sheep because the EU hopes to “feed more people.”
As you see from this, I have seen much of France from a boat, most of it beautiful. A girl from farming country in Virginia, the first city lived in as a student, was Paris. When I say “I am going to France,” the response is frequently “You are going to Paris” so I have to explain that I will land there, but catch a train at the airport for another place, visiting Paris friends on my way out of France, a country so much more than its capital. To have seen the battlefields of WWI and arrive by boat at St. Valéry-sur-Somme where William the Conqueror set sail for England is a thrill as great as any to be had in Paris!
Thank you for asking the question and please forgive the early morning pleasure in over-answering it.
Thank you for your "over-answer", which dredged up all my own wonderful memories of France. My first 4 years in Europe (Holland) in the summers ('89-'92) I went down to south central France to work with a small Baroque ensemble (I was the singer) based in Amsterdam. The harpsichordist and her husband were Dutch but had lived in this little village in the Corrèze département since the 1970s. They both had been teachers at the University of Amsterdam (she taught German and French, and he taught English and Russian) and lived in Amsterdam during the year, but spent summers and Christmas in their place in France. It was a little slice of paradise, a rebuilt farmhouse that dated from the 14th century (back when animals would stay indoors by the family in the winter), with a huge garden that had been written up in gardening journals in France because of its variety. Truly amazing. We would spend 4-6 weeks there in the summer rehearsing and then do some concerts at various chateaux in central France. We all took our meals together there at the house, or sometimes at the Hôtel de Ville in the village (St. Robert, one of the Cent Plus Beaux Villages de France). To say I fell in love with France is an understatement! In my years in Holland I went to Paris countless times to perform, and I adore that city, but getting out into France Profonde gives a completely different view of the country. The people are AMAZING and SO friendly and down to earth....and the natural beauty of France and its incredible villages is sadly something so many people never get to see. (It's SO much more than just Paris!) I wouldn't take anything for those times I spent in France and the tons of wonderful memories I have from there. I was indescribably lucky that I got to see so much of it on subsequent tours around France and its cities (LOVE Lyons!) over the years. Thank you for jarring my memory and unleashing a flood of remembrances!
And thank you in return. My husband played French horn. We had the horn on the boat. One summer Sunday morning members of the French hunting horn society were spread out along the canal bank as we passed by. My husband grabbed his horn and played their call back to them. Great fun all around. Envy you doing music in Europe. (Just remembering: did get to sing the Fauré requiem with the Sorbonne chorus. Thank you for jarring that.)
Thank you both, Bruce & Virginia, for the delicious morsels from your French travels! While I too have had a taste of European dwelling & traveling, I yearn for more exploration, especially throughout France. My most recent trip took me to cathedrals across Paris and the Loire Valley, enjoying breath-taking choral performances — the acoustics, wow! Phenomenal voices filled these stained glass-illuminated architectural wonders of the ages. Dreams come true.
Choral performances in cathedrals are heavenly treats. Thank you for the reminder.
Dreamy, French days, Virginia!
Merci de nous dire.
We all need to spend time in nature. On the water. In the water. Too many of us are much too disconnected from the real world, from our planet...from the universe...and live here in the electronic land of flashing lights in a box. Thanks for the reminder. I'm going to visit my granddaughter today and get centered on a 2 1/2 years olds level of being.
A 2.5 year old knows what really matters. Our 4 y/o will be arriving for a week before she starts preschool and it will be she taking over the household.
ah yes.. good perspective!! 60 years ago I was a Head Start teacher in the pilot program in nyc.. i am still in touch with one of my kids from there.. thanks to FB!! she could sing the entire of Jamaica Farewell at 3! Laura
My wife taught Head Start & worked with Head Start programs...the little ones are the best.
Thank you.
You are making such a difference.
You're heading to bed as my wife and I start to celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary. Sleep tight as I look forward to your posts.
Happy Anniversary, Roy and Wife of Roy!!
that is funny!! and if Roy is Roi , she is the La Reine.. Laura
:-) THANKS! She goes by the name KT.
🎇🎆🎇✨🎷🎺🥁🎹🥁🎶
🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉Happy Anniversary 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Happy Anniversary!