February 7, 2014 · 6:01 pm

David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust #FosterFriday – Garzi

As a build up to the upcoming Symposium on International Wildlife Trafficking in London on February 11th and 12th I want to share stories and tales of the wildlife that is trying to be saved. My focus is elephants but the more I look the more I see and the bigger the problems seem to get. Tigers, rhinos, lions…anything that moves seem to be a target. It’s harder to guess what’s not under siege.

But today let’s focus on this story – the story of Garzi and his rescue by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya. This is a good story but nevertheless heart wrenching for what this poor guy has to go through. Luckily he lands in safe, warm loving hands. This is just a fraction of the work that this organization does.  Here is Garzi’s story.

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February 4, 2014 · 7:50 pm

Shout For Their Survival – The Wildlife Summit to End Poaching

thunder“Their futures is in our hands. Save #elephants before it’s too late. Call on world governments to #endwildlifecrime http://thndr.it/1bwbLG6”

Join Thunderclap to socially share and participate!

Save Elephants. End the ivory trade.

Elephants are being killed every day for their ivory . Every 15 minutes, an elephant will fall victim to the illegal ivory trade.

Wildlife Summit

On 12th and 13th February 2014, governments from around the world will gather in London to determine how to end illegal wildlife trade, discussing:

• Improved law enforcement and the role of the criminal justice system

• Demand reduction for wildlife products

• The development of sustainable livelihoods for communities affected by illegal wildlife trade

The Prince of Wales and The Duke of Cambridge will be attending along with 50 Heads of State invited to enhance high-level political attention on this crisis which is devastating our most iconic species.

Get Involved

Call for action and send your message to those attending the conference by joining  the DSWT thunderclap campaign, ensuring your voice is heard loud and clear on 12th February.

For further information on the work of the DSWT please visit: dswt.org

Join iworry for latest news and updates.

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February 1, 2014 · 9:25 pm

Global March for Lions – Full Listing of Cities Around the World Who are Marching

Image

Why People are Marching – and the Cities Where People are Marching to Ban Canned Lion Hunting
For detailed information on Canned Lion Hunting and its devastating effects visit: CACH (Campaign Against Lion Hunting)

Participating Cities as of January 26th

For the most up-to-date list of cities participating click here.

ASIA

Hong Kong

Time: 2:00pm – 3:00pm assembly
Location: Wanchai MTR Station A3 exit

https://www.facebook.com/events/268137030004548/

AUSTRALIA

Adelaide

16:00 in UTC+10:30
Frome Street to North Terrace to Elder Park

https://www.facebook.com/events/496273517154615/?source=1

Brisbane
https://www.facebook.com/events/1470411616511725/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Melbourne

12:00 in UTC+11
Parliament House to City Square

https://www.facebook.com/events/734997343178806/?ref=3&ref_newsfeed_story_

Perth, WA

9.00am-11.00am
Mosman Dog Beach

https://www.facebook.com/events/169787546565006/

Sydney

11:00am

From NSW Parliament House to Town Hall.

https://www.facebook.com/events/613649062033293/?source=1

Townsville – no Facebook page yet!

BELGIUM

Brussels

14:30 until 17:00 in UTC+01
Rue Montoyer 17 -19 Bruxelles

https://www.facebook.com/events/449617725142958/?ref=3&ref_newsfeed_story_&source=1

Also –https://www.facebook.com/events/238689319624678/

BRAZIL

Sau Paulo

https://www.facebook.com/events/408594329244368/?source=1

Rio de Janeiro

2 pm at Arpoador:
The march will be on the edge of the sea. We will march through 5 km in round 5 more miles in the back. On this day the beach is very crowded and the streets are open for recreation of the people. We’ll walk up to the Arpoador neighborhood Leblon and return to the starting point. We will meet at 2 pm at Arpoador and there we wear the masks and match performances.

https://www.facebook.com/events/639127449486869/?context=create&ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

CANADA

Calgary, Alberta

11:30 until 13:00 in UTC-06

We will gather outside City Hall, downtown Calgary and walk down Stephen’s Avenue and back to City Hall.
https://www.facebook.com/events/784173878260886/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Ottawa

17:00 until 01:00 in EDT
GLOBALLY THE WORLD WILL BE MARCHING FOR LIONS BUT HERE IN OTTAWA WE WILL BE A LITTLE DIFFERENT AND WE WILL BE HOSTING AN EVENT WITH LIVE MUSIC!!

At THE BRASS MONKEY

https://www.facebook.com/events/1412759988970557/

Toronto

https://www.facebook.com/events/1414771305431155/?source=1

Vancouver BC

11:00 in PDT
Vancouver Art Gallery, North Plaza (Georgia Street, by the Lion statues)

https://www.facebook.com/events/235061229995930/?ref=3&ref_newsfeed_story_

COSTA RICA

Nicoya, Guanacaste – * special private retreat event for lions!
Thank you to – http://www.pachamama.com/

GERMANY

Frankfurt

https://www.facebook.com/events/668604263192464/?ref=ts&fref=ts

FRANCE

Paris

15:00 until 17:00 in UTC+01
Place Trocadero Paris

https://www.facebook.com/events/540943359337278/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Pau

14:00 to 15:00.
Place Clemenceau

https://www.facebook.com/events/215904515276794/?ref=ts&fref=ts

NETHERLANDS

Amsterdam

14:00 in UTC+01
Stationsplein, tegenover Centraal Station Amsterdam
https://www.facebook.com/events/412057092261003/?ref=ts&fref=ts

ISRAEL

Tel Aviv & Jerusalem
https://www.facebook.com/events/186019864937275/?source=1

ITALY

Padova

11:00 until 19:00
Padova Piazza della Frutta

https://www.facebook.com/events/227190124134970/?ref=ts&fref=ts

INDIA

Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh

15:30

https://www.facebook.com/events/663725897018831/

KENYA

Mombasa

08:30 in UTC+03
Mombasa, Kenya- Tononoko Grounds Starting point and ends at KWS Coast Headquarters

https://www.facebook.com/events/606948892709383/

MALAWI

Lilongwe

Lilongwe Wildlife Centre at 9am

NEW ZEALAND

Auckland

Western Park, Ponsonby  at 1.00pm
Contact: globalmarchforlionsnz@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/events/579873578764398/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Wellington

13:00 until 14:00
Civic Square – 65 Victoria Street- Route TBA
https://www.facebook.com/events/651433918232791/?ref=ts&fref=ts

PORTUGAL

Porto
https://www.facebook.com/events/549910858441174/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular

ROMANIA

Buhusi, Bacau

12:00

https://www.facebook.com/events/1418556248395414

SENEGAL

Dakar
https://www.facebook.com/events/685295044856793/?source=1

SOUTH AFRICA

Cape Town

11:00
From Keizergracht St to Parliament.

https://www.facebook.com/events/432960136805903/?source=1

Durban

10:30 until 13:30
Durban Beachfront from near the Suncoast Casino complex (Pirates Surf Lifesaving Club) along the promenade to finish at the NEW Beach amphitheatre .. opposite the Tropicana Hotel.

https://www.facebook.com/events/492598160855304/

East London, SA

March Start Time: 11.00am
Starting point ►from road on beachfront below Buccaneers/Backpackers.
email: sandy@elspca.org.za

https://www.facebook.com/events/651857634871135/?ref=ts&fref=ts

George

10:45 – we gather at Unity Park
11:00 – make speeches, give interviews, hold up pickets for passerby, make lots of noise – be visible – hand pamplets to pedestrians
11:30 – after 45 minutes, we march 2km to Checkers Centre, 24 marchers + 6 cars – carrying banners, vehicle magnets, placards (30 mins walk)
12:00 Arrive at Checkers
Until 12:15 – we repeat the placard waving at Checkers Centre entrance
12:20 – we leave for Mall, by car, park and walk to intersection
12:30 – 13:00 We create visible and audible awareness at Mall Intersection
13:10 – we meet at farmers market for drinks (it closes at 14:00)
https://www.facebook.com/events/423290224468655/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Grahamstown

09:45 until 12:00
The protestors will congregate and begin the procession from the Drostdy Arch on Somerset Street, down High Street to Church Square, where the information will be passed and a vigil held in honour of the mighty lion.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1378815795701408/?ref=2&ref_dashboard_filter=calendar&source=1

Hoedspruit – special event for lions!

Johannesburg

11:00
Starting and ending at Zoo Lake, Lower Park Drive Jhb

https://www.facebook.com/events/1442385619316696/?source=1

Nelspruit

11:00 until 13:00
In Nelspruit, we will be holding an Awareness Campaign instead of an actual March. Please meet at the Boulevard Entrance to the Riverside Mall (at the big “crystal tree”) OR i’langa Mall (between Vodacom and Foto First).
https://www.facebook.com/events/666969576683365/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Pietermaritzburg

11:00
Hoërskool Voortrekker
https://www.facebook.com/events/344109765730975/

Port Elizabeth

10:00 to 10:30
Kings Beach Parking Lot

https://www.facebook.com/events/1381000722142061/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Pretoria

11:00
Brooklyn circle – down George Starrar to Totius
https://www.facebook.com/events/495830440533246/?ref=ts&fref=ts

SPAIN

Madrid is roaring with a big march

SABADO, 15 DE MARZO, PUERTA DEL SOL, JUNTO AL OSO Y EL MADROÑO, A LAS 12:00 HORAS

https://www.facebook.com/events/255804801257453/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

SWEDEN

Stockholm

13:00
South African Embassy, Sweden
112 26 Stockholm, Sweden

https://www.facebook.com/events/691574647540891/?ref=3&ref_newsfeed_story_

UGANDA

Butogota (Rogando)
https://www.facebook.com/events/289172344565253/?source=1

Kampala
https://www.facebook.com/events/220975788082900/

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Abu Dhabi

(New location, formerly Dubai)
https://www.facebook.com/events/1401755526741341/?ref=ts&fref=ts

UNITED KINGDOM

The UK  has 5 cities that are marching in support of Africa’s lions – London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Sheffield and Liverpool. Our goal is to have a White Lion representation at each march to show our support and unity for this cause. In order to show our unity and support for the marches we will identify ourselves with White Lion Tshirts.
If you haven’t already decided to join one of the marches on the 15th PLEASE consider making your voice, your ROAR and your feet count – This is your chance to make a difference for lions and ultimately ALL wildlife.
 
If you’d like to join one of the 5 marches in the UK please contact Tracey who is co-ordinating the White Lion’s support for the marches in the UK.

Birmingham

https://www.facebook.com/events/248622171968479/?ref=3&ref_newsfeed_story_

Edinburgh
https://www.facebook.com/events/1390645131187321/?ref=3&ref_newsfeed_story_

Liverpool
https://www.facebook.com/events/377430509062800/?ref=ts&fref=ts

London
https://www.facebook.com/events/434452360015357/?source=1

Sheffield
https://www.facebook.com/events/1391615654441295/?ref=ts&fref=ts

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Austin, Texas
https://www.facebook.com/events/189255317934557/?source=1

Charleston, South Carolina
https://www.facebook.com/events/705692316147571/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Chicago
https://www.facebook.com/events/609456769126825/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Columbus, Ohio
https://www.facebook.com/events/630505866998722/

Las Vegas
https://www.facebook.com/events/1415618815343371/

Los Angeles

·         WHEN: Saturday, March 15, 2014  |  11am – 2pm

·         WHERE: La Brea Tar Pits, 5801 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036.  Front of the George C. Page Museum at the lion statue.

·         DETAILS: The march begins at 11am. Marchers will walk down Wilshire Blvd in a funeral procession in memory of all the murdered lions to the South African Consulate then return for a rally.  The Rally begins when marchers return to the La Brea Tar Pits at appx. 12:15pm.

Our rally features 4 speakers, here’s all the info you might need about it:

Speakers at our rally in Los Angeles include actress and wildlife advocate Tippi Hedren, Founder and President of the ROAR Foundation and the Shambala Preserve, Martine Colette, Founder and Director of the Wildlife Waystation and designated Wild Animal Expert for the city of Los Angeles, Catherine Doyle, Director of Science Research and Advocacy at the Performing Animals Welfare Society (PAWS), and Matt Rossell, Campaigns Director for Animal Defenders International.  Vaud & the Villains will provide a New Orleans-style funeral band to accompany our Lion Funeral Procession as we walk down Wilshire Blvd in memory of all the murdered lions to the South African Consulate, then return to the La Brea Tar Pits for the rally. Our Mistress of Ceremonies, actress and Animal Activist Georja Umano from Elephants LA, will speak about her many trips to Africa and give a eulogy for all the murdered lions in a funeral ceremony before our speakers begin.

https://www.facebook.com/events/205630696290197/?source=1

New York
https://www.facebook.com/events/234671106707328/?source=1

Phoenix, AZ
https://www.facebook.com/events/711429758877148/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Sacramento

Where: 10th St & N St.
When: 1:30, starting at 2:00 to 4:00.
https://www.facebook.com/events/289872107828517/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Seattle
https://www.facebook.com/events/628710687176472/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Tampa, Florida
https://www.facebook.com/events/638012792909115/?source=1

Washington DC
https://www.facebook.com/events/248680125313773/?ref=22

 

 

– See more at: http://www.globalmarch4lions.org/join-a-march-in-your-city/#sthash.0W7CbvCj.dpuf

“When its time for the sun to set and you look back at your life one day – wouldn’t you be bitterly ashamed of ignoring the horrific reality of the animals or would you like to know that you tried to end the terrible suffering our species has wrought on them. ” Christine Jordaan

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January 27, 2014 · 8:46 pm

Global March for Lions – Why People Are Marching

1426185_10153559117810158_376885063_nIn its simplest form the practice of ‘canned hunting’ is the rearing of lions  (wildlife is regularly kept captive not just lions) for slaughter. Hunters come to shoot these iconic animals within an enclosure they can’t escape. Often they are tame. You can look practically at any corner of the earth and find evidence of the war on wild life and animals. This is what the war on lions looks like:

Hunting

Hunting

  • 50 years ago there were an estimated 100,000 lions in Africa.
  • Since then lion habitat has declined 75% and lion population has dropped to less than 20,000.
  • Only 9 countries in Africa have more than a 1000 lions.
  • Tanzania is home to  40% of the total population.
  • Increase in human population has had a devastating affect on the species.
  • Lions are routinely killed to protect livestock.
  • Trophy hunting is a major cause of the decline of the species particularly as hunters want the pride male. Once he has been removed pride cohesion is broken, with competing males killing cubs.
  • It takes 7 years for a pride to recover from the killing of the pride male.

Because there are so few wild lions left there is a growing demand for a constant supply of living targets.

  • Lion farming is on the rise in South Africa.
  • Captive lions now number at 8,000.

How it works:

cub

  •  Lion farmers grow out lions for at least three years before they reach huntable size.
  • To help pay the cost of rearing lions, lion farmers rent out their cubs to be played with by tourists. And they take in volunteers who pay to be allowed to work at a lion farm (deceitfully described usually as a lion sanctuary).
  • Once they are too big to be petted they are mostly left in miserable conditions in small cages, usually malnourished and neglected, waiting until someone pays to shoot them.

Guaranteed Kill

  • A canned hunt is a guaranteed kill as the hunting company only charges if there’s a kill.
  • So the hunt is rigged.
  • The lion is often drugged, dogs are sometimes used, meat is put out as bait, and it’s in a small enclosure from which it’s impossible to escape.
  • The head is then exported to the hunter’s country of origin. The skin and bones are sent to China for use in tiger wine – a traditional medicine.

 What you can do to help save the African Lion 

Cunt backman

  • Cub petting. Do not patronise any tourist resort where cub-petting is allowed.
  •  Volunteers. Do not volunteer at any facility where breeding of lions takes place. If there are cubs then it is a lion farm breeding centre.
  • Write to your MEP. And ask her to ban the import of African lion/leopard trophies in to Europe.
  • Born into slavery and murdered for fun
  • Please see http://www.cannedlion.org for further info.

With your help, understanding and passion, we can stop this cruelty and murder.

1656364_10203056023825935_477191403_nJOIN A GLOBAL MARCH FOR LIONS MARCH 15 2014

  • Capetown South Africa
  • Durban
  • Vancouver, B.C. Canada
  • Toronto, Ont. Canada
  • Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • London, UK
  • New York, USA
  • Los Angeles, USA
  • Perth, Australia
  • Johannesburg, SA

If you still have doubts a video – not for the faint of heart.

Another great resource and testimonial to the horrors of lions being raised for slaughter. Kirsten’s Diary – Stop the Exploitation

My name is Kirsten and I would like to share my personal experience with you.Before you pay to volunteer with animals in South Africa, before you gleefully tell your friends that you are going to play with and cuddle lion cubs please read my story which will be posted on this blog site.

Join the March today! Spread the word, share this post.. If you’re a part of the twitter verse use hash tag #bancannedhunting or look for @GlobalMarchLion @PaulTully @ScotlandRoars @condofire

This blog post was written with contents and articles shared on the Global Organizers site including content from Christine Jordaan. Thanks to everyone for their hard work.

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January 26, 2014 · 11:02 pm

I’ll Have Baked Pasta Please

There was a time when I loved cooking. I truly loved it. Now all I want is to be cooked for. Life change. That’s it. I have nothing more to say.

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Aside

HOW FICTION WRITERS CAN SAVE THE WORLD or LET THE POETS TAKE OVER,

For some time I’ve been throwing around the idea of writing a post along the lines of HOW FICTION WRITERS CAN SAVE THE WORLD or LET THE POETS TAKE OVER, or WHO NEEdS MORE BUSINESS SCHOOLS or WHERE HAVE ALL THE LIBRARIES GONE or THE IMPORTANCE OF READING AND THE GODFUL-NESS OF WRITERS.

I apologize for the all caps. But this is important. The world, we can agree, is a mess. Hey, I live in a country where the Prime Minister is destroying all our science libraries because who needs information when you can have pure dogma.

My thinking behind my all cap exhortations is that the world requires and needs to breed empathy, imagination, innovation and empathy and more empathy and to want less and do more. Let’s unleash the potential to empathize the hell out of greed until greed disappears. I am prepared to make the bold statement that the world needs, indeed requires more imagination. We need more fiction readers, poets and poetry readers. We need people to feel the heartbeat of others through words, to see other worlds, to imagine to reach beyond ourselves and into ourselves.

Books saved my rocky turbulent childhood. They were my older sister’s saviour and through her I loved them too. As soon as I could I worked at a library for Hazel who was a little old lady who taught me how to put books in order according to the dewey decimal systems. I would go to work and breathe in the calm atmosphere and lose myself in the stacks looking at books just as I would much later working in bookstores and then in publishing companies. I lived in many worlds and wore the heart and soul of thousands of characters. My world got bigger.

I escaped. I wanted to write an ode to books, to writers, to readers, to empathetic souls but someone beat me to it. I read this piece in the Guardian the other day…ode to the library and I couldn’t have said it better if I tried. I am coincidentally reading a Neil Gaiman novel right now “American Gods”. I reached for something utterly different this time because I want my world to be unimaginably big and bold and heartbreaking in ways that only new things, new words and experiences can bring to you. So thank you Mr. Gaimon and thank you all you librarians and fiction writers and poets out there. This is a long piece but read it all. Read it all and pass it on.

Neil GaimanNeil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming

A lecture explaining why using our imaginations, and providing for others to use theirs, is an obligation for all citizens

It’s important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members’ interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I’m going to tell you that libraries are important. I’m going to suggest that reading fiction, that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do. I’m going to make an impassioned plea for people to understand what libraries and librarians are, and to preserve both of these things.

And I am biased, obviously and enormously: I’m an author, often an author of fiction. I write for children and for adults. For about 30 years I have been earning my living though my words, mostly by making things up and writing them down. It is obviously in my interest for people to read, for them to read fiction, for libraries and librarians to exist and help foster a love of reading and places in which reading can occur.

So I’m biased as a writer. But I am much, much more biased as a reader. And I am even more biased as a British citizen.

And I’m here giving this talk tonight, under the auspices of the Reading Agency: a charity whose mission is to give everyone an equal chance in life by helping people become confident and enthusiastic readers. Which supports literacy programs, and libraries and individuals and nakedly and wantonly encourages the act of reading. Because, they tell us, everything changes when we read. Continue Reading

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January 24, 2014 · 4:45 am
January 22, 2014 · 3:01 am

Rise Up For Elephants – Orphans for Orphans Project Fundraiser

It’s no secret that I’m an insane animal lover and that one of my great loves are elephants. The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya is an amazing organization that hand rears baby elephants whose families have been slaughtered by poachers. Every day lovers, friends and supporters of DSWT are treated to news from the Trust. This video came my way the other day and it touched me. Dame Sheldrick teaching orphans about orphans. So lovely.

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January 20, 2014 · 12:17 am

Lullabies for Little Criminals – Heather O’Neill – Book Review

ImageIt’s like poetry he said. And then he would read sentences and pause and look at me and say, isn’t that beautiful?  Isn’t that amazing? And then he would keep reading. Typically Dave prefers non-fiction. But he loved this book. My sister loved this book. So when the holidays came and I knew I would finally have some time to read I picked up Lullaby for Little Criminals and read it voraciously.  And I loved it too. Although the book has been out for a few years now it was the first novel by Canadian writer Heather O’Neill.

It’s an incredibly beautiful thing for a writer to create a character so compelling that you completely surrender to seeing the world from the character’s point of view and at the same time you remain outside of it just enough to hold your heart and say no, no don’t go there because I know where that will take you.  And you know it because you’re an adult and you see the dangers that can befall the vulnerable. And in this case the person who is vulnerable is Baby,  a young girl of 12 who lives with her heroin addicted father on the bad side of town in Montreal. And life ain’t easy for Baby. She and Jules move from one seedy apartment to another, she does time in foster care, and juvenile detention, she is practically fatherless and she is utterly motherless.

And because she is a child she doesn’t realize what she doesn’t have. She knows she has Jules. And you hold your heart becuae sometimes she has friends. But not enough. And sometimes she has people in her corner but not enough and not the right ones. It’s only when she begins to traverse the uneasy road between adulthood and childhood that there is a growing awareness of what has been lost to her in her life.  And as her beauty grows and her father disappears into his addiction the threat to her childhood and her well-being increases. And yet inside she is a child. A child who wants simple things. Love and a safe place both of which seem elusive.

There’s a transitional moment in the book when she experiences a kiss and she acknowledges that there would be real consequences to that kiss and of course there are. But it’s that moment where you see a child slowly reckoning with the very adult consequences of something they’ve done and that’s been done to them. A kiss that should have been sweet and beautiful.  And that moment in the book is beautiful and hard all at the same time because you witness her fragility and all the consequences that come with it. And it makes you want to cry.

And the other moment is when she is locked out of her house and it’s late and cold and she has nowhere to go so she goes to her friend’s house. And the friend’s parents are assholes and turn the young girl away in the middle of the night. And it’s the final failure of adults in her world that sends her catapulting towards a very different life. And in the end ,just as the jacket copy says, she really has to figure it out herself.  As we all do I suppose. But she is still a child.

So wow. A heartbreaking book, a funny book, a book with a beautiful, real, raw voice of a kid who is just a kid and who doesn’t know any better and who doesn’t have a single person around her to help break her fall. So I would say go out and read it. It’s a beautiful heartbreaker.

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January 15, 2014 · 3:18 pm

How Strange, How Sweet – by Joshua Mehigan Poem of the Week via Alison McGhee bu

 

This was a butcher. This, a Chinese laundry.
This was a Schrafft’s with 10-cent custard ice creams.
Off toward the park, that was the new St. Saviour.
Then, for five blocks, not much but chain-link fences.
These foolish things, here today, gone today,
yesterday, forty years ago, tomorrow.
Deloreses and Normas not quite gone,
with slippers on, and heads like white carnations,
little, and brittle, and mum, why did the fine
September weather call you out today?
To dangerously bend and touch a cat.
To lean beside your final door and smile.
To go a block and get a thing you need.
What are you hiding, ladies? What do you know?

Micks were from here to there. Down there, the Mob.
And, way down there, the mob the bill let in.
Far west were Puerto Ricans. Farther west,
in Newark, Maplewood, or Pennsylvania,
one canceled choice away, why, there’s nostalgia,
lipstick, and curls, and gum, and pearls on Sunday.
So here’s a platinum arc from someone’s neck chain,
bass through a tinted window, loudest laughter,
the colored fellow with the amber eyes
who doesn’t need to stand just where he is.
Here sits the son of 1941,
a pendulous pink arm across a chair back;
his sister, she of 1943,
her hair the shade of an orangutan.
Food stamps and welfare, Medicaid and Medicare.
Kilroy was here. Here was where to get out of.

Last come the new inevitable whites.
See how the gracious evening sunshine lights
their balconied high-rise’s apricot
contemporary stucco-style finish.
Smell the pink-orange powder as some punk
sandblasts Uneeda Biscuit off the wall.
Flinch at the miter saw and nail gun,
at three-inch nails that yelp as men dismantle
a rooftop pigeon loft. Those special birds
will not fly home to the implicit neighbor,
or fall like tiny Esther Williamses
in glad succession from a wire, to climb
and circle in the white December sky.
Far up, from blocks away, the pale birds seemed,
when they all turned at once, to disappear.
Across the street, the normal pigeons eat.

A big thanks to Alison McGhee for her thoughtful curation of these poems.

For more information on Joshua Mehigan, please click here:http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/joshua-mehigan

My Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Alison-McGhee/119862491361265?ref=ts

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December 30, 2013 · 5:58 pm

Twenty-Five Things – 2013

I love making lists. It makes me feel like I’m putting together a plan for world domination so I turn to it gleefully at the end of each year.It includes highlights, great books, things learned, things to be repeated, and objectives for the new year.

Here it is:

1. Having fun with someone you’ve known for a long time in a whole new way. Dave and I laughed our asses off when we got on the plane to Europe. Grief, challenges, the weight of life all thrown back at the universe in gales of laughter.

2. Realizing I don’t know any other way to travel except like the 18 year old I was way back when and that Dave is the same and neither of us knew that about the other.

3. Adventure is the spice of life. I’d forgotten how fun unplanned things are – that making your way, walking your way, getting lost, not showing up on time, showing up wherever you want whenever you want is the greatest most carefree feeling.

3. That daring to speak broken French really is fun so I will go back and do it again – hopefully a little better this time.

4. Watching someone who doesn’t realize his gifts create those gifts is a beautiful thing.

5. I love reading fiction and poetry much more than my books on sustainability. I need fiction and poetry for my soul. Great art gives me great hope that the world isn’t as terrible a place as I often think it is.

6. That reading books and taking courses on sustainability are giving me tools to fight against the mess we have created and at the end of the day that gives me hope.

7. I need hope.

8. I’d rather die trying than not try at all.

9. Once upon a time I thought I would have 8 children. All boys. They would call me mom and I would cook awesome meals and build a family of love and joy. They would adore me. There never was a father in this picture until I met Dave.

10. That didn’t happen.

11. But other great things did so I don’t worry about what I didn’t get.

12. I transferred all my maternal love to my beautiful boy Reuben.

13. When he left I transferred all that love outwards to animals.

14. That I am walking a path towards activism. I would rather die trying than not having tried at all.

15. That I have already learned from a committed group of people about ACTION. The only thing that works is ACTION. You have to do things to change things.

16. I feel overwhelmed by the weight of things to be done.

17. I feel less overwhelmed because I can start measuring success where I see it.

18. I am arming myself with knowledge so I can fight better and this makes me laugh inside. Really laugh.

19. I love seeing my niece Ella become immersed in the world of animals and all she does for them. Seeing that gives me hope. EllaPhant she calls herself. She’s a fundraiser. And she shares her knowledge when she can.

20. I love talking stupid talk on the phone with my brother Johnny. I love my brother Johnny.

21. I like the look of shock on people’s faces when I tell them this is the year I will become a righteous bitch.

22. I finally realize that I really do need down time. That I learned that from Dave but now I need it.

23. I can learn and understand science and this has been a big, big surprise. I won’t be the best but I’m not the worst.

24. My sisters. I love that I can even say that. My sisters.

25. I love spending time with Dave more than anybody else. We are best, best friends and I can’t believe how lucky we are. Even though he’s messy:)

26. My mom took her red necklace back but I got something else instead. And I’m happy she has it back. I want her to look beautiful wherever she is.

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