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Monday, March 29, 2021

Monday Music: See Me: A Global Concert

This week's Monday Music feature is 23 good minutes of music from the midst of our COVID shutdown. From the World Economic Forum YouTube site:

"See Me: A Global Concert” is the remarkable result of an international collaboration between hundreds of musicians, artists and film teams who took a leap of faith, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, to create together, across the world, a beautiful 23-minute musical production in the spirit of trust, connection and hope. 

With the participation of Yo-Yo Ma, the Chamber Orchestra of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra, the Choir of the State Orchestra of São Paulo, the Orchestra della Toscana, the Drakensberg Boys Choir, the Beijing NCPA Orchestra, and sand artist Jim Denevan.


 


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Saturday, March 27, 2021

Saturday Haiku: Peaceful Grazing

 

in morning mist
 horses peacefully graze
no saddles, no bits



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Photo by Randy Bearden. "Early morning in Shelby County."
Found on Facebook at Alabama the Beautiful
Used with permission from the photographer



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Wednesday, March 24, 2021

More Gun Violence in America

Sadly, I have posted this essay six times now since 2015.  Why are we so trapped in this death-making culture? ~ CK

The Fires of Moloch Are Burning


Moreover he burnt incense in the valley of Ben Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen whom the Lord had cast out before the children of Israel.
                                                                                                                  2 Chronicles 28:3
And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of Ben Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination
                                                                                                                  Jeremiah 32:35


Illustration from Foster Bible Pictures
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons 

Moloch was the ancient Phoenician and Canaanite god known in the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy for the practice of propitiatory child sacrifice.  There are few images more horrifying than that of fearful people offering up their own children to be burned on the altar of a domineering death-making god. Yet we are seeing the fires of Moloch burning in 21st century America.

We have seen this week yet another disturbing incident of promising lives brought to a sudden end by gun violence. Once again there is talk of stronger gun control laws, yet we are impotent to make any changes. Our failure to act even in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre  in which 20 young children were killed, all of them 6 and 7 years old, demonstrated that we would rather sacrifice our beautiful preschoolers than do anything that might be perceived as a desecration of the Bill of Rights. Our words say that we honor American freedom, while our actions say that we live in fear and have so little regard for our children that we will willingly feed them to our modern day fires of Moloch. [To see a map of all the mass shooting since Sandy Hook, go here]

In a country whose politicians love to shout “God Bless America!” at the end of their speeches, and whose people speak of faith in the public square and argue about putting the Ten Commandments on display, it is the ancient and brutal god Moloch who holds sway over so much of our public discourse. Indeed the fires of Moloch continue to consume our children while nothing is done to extinguish those flames.

Why Do We Tolerate Death and Glorify Violence?

According to The Brady Center, “Over 18,000 American children and teens are injured or killed each year due to gun violence. This means nearly 48 youth are shot every day, including 7 fatalities.” 


America has a problem with gun violence

·         One in three people in the U.S. know someone who has been shot.
·         On average, 31 Americans are murdered with guns every day and 151 are treated for a gun assault in an emergency room.
·         Every day on average, 55 people kill themselves with a firearm, and 46 people are shot or killed in an accident with a gun.
·         The U.S. firearm homicide rate is 20 times higher than the combined rates of 22 countries that are our peers in wealth and population.
·         A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to kill or injure in a domestic homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting than to be used in self-defense.

Gun Violence Takes a Massive Toll on American Children

·         More than one in five U.S. teenagers (ages 14 to 17) report having witnessed a shooting.
·         An average of seven children and teens under the age of 20 are killed by guns every day.
·         American children die by guns 11 times as often as children in other high-income countries.
·         Youth (ages 0 to 19) in the most rural U.S. counties are as likely to die from a gunshot as those living in the most urban counties. Rural children die of more gun suicides and unintentional shooting deaths. Urban children die more often of gun homicides.
·         Firearm homicide is the second-leading cause of death (after motor vehicle crashes) for young people ages 1-19 in the U.S.
·         In 2007, more pre-school-aged children (85) were killed by guns than police officers were killed in the line of duty.

Gun Violence is a Drain on U.S. Taxpayers

·         Medical treatment, criminal justice proceedings, new security precautions, and reductions in quality of life are estimated to cost U.S. citizens $100 billion annually.
·         The lifetime medical cost for all gun violence victims in the United States is estimated at $2.3 billion, with almost half the costs borne by taxpayers.

Americans Support Universal Background Checks

·         Nine out of 10 Americans agree that we should have universal background checks, including three out of four NRA members.
·         Since the Brady Law was initially passed, about 2 million attempts to purchase firearms have been blocked due to a background check. About half of these blocked attempts were by felons.
·         Unfortunately, our current background check system only applies to about 60% of gun sales, leaving 40% (online sales, purchases at gun shows, etc.) without a background check.

One question we must answer is why does our society so quickly come to the defense of guns after every deadly incident of gun violence? There are those who call for change, but such calls are always met with a push back from people who cannot tolerate any change in our gun laws. Lawmakers are forever paralyzed by the gun lobbyists and the fear-mongers.

Freedom or Fear?

Why are our citizens and our politicians are unable to put a stop to gun violence? If there were the political will, assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons could be banned tomorrow. The sad fact is, however, that our people seem to be too fearful to consider a peaceful society. We say that we are honoring the Second Amendment to the Constitution  that we hold the Bill of Rights to ensure our freedom  but the truth is, we live in fear. Why else would we be so powerless to stop our current practice of sacrificing children to the fires of gun violence?


Poster from The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence


Picture depicting worship of Moloch from The Jewish Encyclopedia


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Saturday, March 20, 2021

Saturday Haiku: Spring Rains

 


every springtime rain
is a bright song to the world
of another chance




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Photo: Spring Rain (Getty Images)


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Saturday, March 13, 2021

Saturday Haiku: Dandelions


 winter slips away
with the dandelion flight
in the chill spring air


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Photo courtesy of Pixabay


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Friday, March 12, 2021

Friday Funnies: Pi Day

 Looking ahead to  Sunday, 3.14.21 (Pi Day)




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Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Poets, Prayers, and Radio Talk Show Hosts

A  Brief Review of Recent Popular Posts


Photo by Charles Kinnaird

Earlier this year my blog surpassed 600,000 page views (602,000 as of this date), so I figured it was time fora brief review of what’s happening at Not Dark Yet.

The Top Four Posts This Month

The top posts for the past month include two new ones and two old ones. My recollection of “Rush Limbaugh’s On-Air Reign” has been the most read piece this month. The second most read is an interfaith essay that was first posted during Ramadan in 2013, “The Lamps are Different but the Light is the Same.” 

Coming in at number 3 is “My Season with Dante,” a colorful account of my encounter with Dante’s Divine Comedy that began with an evening class at church and continued with my listening to the entire work on an audiobook. It was first posted in 2012 and includes illustrations by William Blake depicting the passage through Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.  

The fourth most popular post this month was my review of all the Inaugural poets from U.S. Presidential Inaugurations (there have only been six, and I make a tenuous claim to have heard all of them in real-time). With “The Presidential Inaugural Poem: Calling Us to Our Touchstones” you can see and hear each inaugural poet from Robert Frost to Amanda Gorman.

Recent Popular Posts

Some of you followed my series about growing up in the Jim Crow South. Growing Up under Southern Apartheid featured 10 personal essays that spanned my pre-school and elementary school days in which I tried to convey what it was like in the days of segregation. There is an eleventh essay about my grandfather and his encounter with the KKK back in the 1920s.

There is still a lot more to tell about growing up in the segregated South and I have plans to continue the memoir series at a later date. For an index to all the stories so far go to https://notdarkyet-commentary.blogspot.com/2020/10/index-for-growing-up-under-southern_6.html.



During the past year, as one would expect, there were many essays and poems about life during the pandemic which we continue to live with even as we are finding hope with the vaccine efforts. Some of my poems are in a book that my writing group has published, The Social Distance: Poetry in Response to COVID-19. You can read about that in my September post, “PoetryDuring Days of COVID.”



In the Days Ahead

In the coming month of April, I will feature a variety of poets reading their work in celebration of National Poetry Month. Not Dark Yet continues to feature music on Mondays, haiku on Saturdays, and personal essays during the week with humor and recipes tossed in as well. I hope you will find something that piques your interest there.



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Monday, March 8, 2021

Monday Music: Remembering Peter Ostroushko

Like many people, I first heard Peter Ostroushko while listening to A Prairie Home Companion on Public Radio. The son of Ukrainian immigrants, Ostroushko played mandolin, fiddle, and guitar. He played the folk songs of his heritage and composed new songs that were both intimate and expansive. Here he is performing his composition, "Heart of the Heartland," on A Prairie Home Companion. Also included below is his visit to Mister Rogers Neighborhood to talk about the mandolin and Ukraine songs. 

Peter Ostroushko died on February 24, 2021, at the age of 67. Garrison Keilor said of him in a Star Tribune article,  "Peter had a real calling and stayed true to it." Referring to Ostroushko's performances on A Prairie Home Companion, Keilor observed, "To me, it was only a show, but to him it was church, and when he picked up a mandolin, he played for his folks, his people, for Marge [his wife] and Anna, the family, for northeast Minneapolis. He played the blues and made it Ukrainian. He could play 'I Saw Her Standing There,' and she was standing in the middle of Kyiv. He never tried to find himself. He knew who he was the whole time."


When my daughter was just a tike I would often watch Mister Rogers Neighborhood with her. I remember being delighted when I saw the episode of Fred Rogers' visit with Peter Ostroushko. I had heard his name on the radio when I would tune into A Prairie Home Companion, but this was my first time to see him.

 

And here, Peter is at an outdoor concert and tells about his very first recording gig with none other than Bob Dylan. He then plays Dylan's "Girl from the North Country."

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Saturday, March 6, 2021

Saturday Haiku*: Uncontained

  

there are some people
whose abundance of talent 
cannot be contained

 

*Author's note: The poem featured this week, though in the format of a haiku, is actually a senryu. Senryu tend to be about human traits and foibles while haiku are centered upon nature and have a seasonal reference.

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Photo: Courtesy Of KeeneVisions, found in the SFGate article, "Striking new Robin Williams mural pops up in Bay Area."


Monday, March 1, 2021

Monday Music: Saint Coltrane

Here is an excellent short film (about 20 minutes), Saint Coltrane, about the San Francisco church built on "A Love Supreme" (from KQED Arts & Culture).

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