tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16866200086736802072024-03-05T06:21:42.765-08:00Poems, News and Other StoriesTiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.comBlogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-82260209348470851682019-01-30T18:21:00.001-08:002019-01-30T18:39:28.472-08:00A Tale of Captivity, A Fungus Among Us, and a Very Small Dating Pool<br />
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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/zoKXX8NmC2tJQoJSECtyosuV5II=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/BHPFHTR55ZDUJCFJTA5AERDELI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="213" src="https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/zoKXX8NmC2tJQoJSECtyosuV5II=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/BHPFHTR55ZDUJCFJTA5AERDELI.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Juliet, one of five Sehuencas water frogs found at the base of a Bolivian waterfall. Look at those eyes like holographic galaxies, the reaches of dark outer space! How could she and her frog companions have reached the brink of extinction? The chytridiomycosis fungus spread quickly among them, while invasive trout popped into the mountain rivers to munch up the water frog's eggs.<br />
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<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/AHvkIb-zhMy2EdtCwUkvJHlrqNU=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/4RJWL356MFDJZD344NZNTCDFGQ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="213" src="https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/AHvkIb-zhMy2EdtCwUkvJHlrqNU=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/4RJWL356MFDJZD344NZNTCDFGQ.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Then there's Romeo, who's been waiting for some of his froggy kind in a Bolivian museum for ten years. The scientists, thinking of Romeo, would go on forays into the cloud forest to search for more Sehuencas. For ten years, the researchers hiked, sometimes seemingly aimlessly. Look at that orange underbelly, those shimmering yellow eye-globes, those velvety indigo arms and rippled back, those expressive fingers, that reproachful zig-zag posture!<br />
<br />
Poor Romeo gave up hope and stopped sounding his mating call around 2017. He was like, <i>Why make the effort?</i> with the shrug of single people everywhere. Except this male Sehuencas, graced with a becursed name by his guardians, was single in a very unique way that had everything to do with the non-frogs.<br />
<br />
On the very last trail through the cloud forest, in the rush and crash of the waterfall, the herpetologists found three male and two female Sehuencas hunkered down in the water. What must they have felt, likely the last of their kind? At least they had stuck together.<br />
<br />
What if you were presented with a dating pool consisting of five (if you're adaptable)--perhaps two (if you're not)--options? A very minimalist edition of the Bachelor or Bachelorette. Would you snub your nose at the reduced choice set? Or would you kick your Sehuencas legs?<br />
<br />
Looking at the pic of Juliet, though--isn't she irresistible? Let's hope so.Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-24169320896801389452018-12-26T12:07:00.000-08:002018-12-26T12:17:20.001-08:00How a Spider Reads<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">When he was young, Daniel Munduruku worked cleaning a library. He found an enormous spider's web on a shelf and brushed it off, destroying the web. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">He did this three times, but as in a fairy tale, the web reappeared each day. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">On the third day, Daniel became "curious to know what the spider was reading." He began to read <i>The Little Prince</i>. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: white; font-family: inherit;">Thus began a lifetime of reading--and of writing books. He never has killed another spider.</span></span></div>
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<br />Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-5450071887129970962016-09-24T13:42:00.000-07:002016-09-24T13:45:16.982-07:00"The Seeds of Aleppo": A Prayer for the Syrian People<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/09/24/world/middleeast/24syria-rubble/24syria-rubble-master675.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/09/24/world/middleeast/24syria-rubble/24syria-rubble-master675.jpg" width="400" height="248" /></a></div>Thinking of the people of Aleppo. Sad and angry to see renewed Russian and Syrian government bombing of Aleppo. Devastating images of children being rescued from rubble. What of those who are not rescued from beneath caved-in, bombed buildings? The assault on the Syrian people not only continues but intensifies.<br />
<br />
In such times, a poem can seem to me of little worth. <br />
<br />
And yet, a poem is a prayer. A prayer may be all that I can give to the Syrian people just now.<br />
<br />
Here's my poem written for the people of Syria, "The Seeds of Aleppo." An offering as a prayer for the well being of the Syrian people. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVY9StZUwAE8Olz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CVY9StZUwAE8Olz.jpg" width="495" height="640" /></a></div>Art by Sarah Van Sanden<br />
<br />
The poem refers to the news last year that due to the Syrian war, it was requested to open the Svalbard (Norway) global seed vault so that Syria could in essence make the first withdrawal from the seed vault, thus underlining the gravity of the crisis in Syria.<br />
<br />
A collaboration with artist Sarah Van Sanden, the poem appears as a broadside which you can see in better resolution and <a href="http://broadsidedpress.org/responses/2015syrianrefugees/Syria-Seeds.pdf">download free here</a>. It's part of a series of art-poem responses to the Syrian crisis, and you can <a href="http://broadsidedpress.org/responses/2015syrianrefugees/">view the other artists' beautiful broadsides here</a>. Thank you to Broadsided Press' Elizabeth Bradfield for publishing the broadside series.<br />
<br />
Here's the poem without art:<br />
<blockquote><b>The Seeds of Aleppo</b><br />
<br />
The bazaar has burned,<br />
The gathering of seeds dispersed<br />
<br />
Sent to Morocco and Mexico;<br />
with escort, to Turkey.<br />
<br />
Seeds who escape,<br />
Seeds who flee.<br />
<br />
And far in the Svalbard archipelago, <br />
Blue light over glacier,<br />
<br />
Swirls of snow. Abrupt <br />
triangle, armed guard<br />
<br />
into vault.<br />
Vault of seeds.<br />
<br />
For asteroid impact,<br />
nuclear glow.<br />
<br />
Now, though, first<br />
withdrawal of deposit:<br />
<br />
Syria’s seeds petition<br />
to return to desert<br />
<br />
peas and beans,<br />
packets of light.<br />
<br />
Each sample temporary,<br />
a memory to grow.<br />
<br />
Each seed repeats,<br />
Of course, if we could return,<br />
<br />
Then of course,<br />
We would go.<br />
<br />
</blockquote><br />
Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-73041815991801203782016-09-08T09:45:00.001-07:002016-09-08T09:45:37.630-07:00"And Aeneas Stares into Her Helmet" on Philip Metres' BlogI'm grateful to amazing poet Philip Metres for writing about my book of poems, <i>And Aeneas Stares into Her Helmet</i> (Carolina Wren Press 2009). Philip is author of <i>Sand Opera</i>, (Alice James Books, 2015). Thank you, Philip! He writes: <br />
<blockquote>I've been reading Tiffany Higgins' <i>And Aeneas stares into her helmet</i> (Carolina Wren Press Press (2009), a book-length meditation on the wars of our recent age. Higgins does a remarkable discipline by staying with the war, measuring the extent of its merging in us, its emergence from us. Neither expose nor diatribe, Higgins stays with it, dances in time with it, in its time. <br />
<br />
Since the recent imperial wars seem not to require anything more than our silence, such a poetic perseverance is itself an achievement; whatever the gain of having a professional army (and not a volunteer one), we collectively have lost by our greater distance from the brutalities of the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War. We need to stop burying that brutality. The truths will out, Wikileaks or no Wikileaks, Assange or no Assange.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://youtu.be/8rWMvtzs0h0">Here's a video I featured before, from Higgins</a>, which explores the way the war is both with us and invisible to us. <a href="http://youtu.be/8rWMvtzs0h0">Watch the "Where is the War" video here<br />
</a></blockquote><a href="http://behindthelinespoetry.blogspot.com/2010/12/countries-of-our-skulls-and-myths-we.html">Read Philip Metres' blog post on <i>And Aeneas Stares into Her Helmet</i> here</a>Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-71380517896730937112016-09-05T14:47:00.001-07:002016-09-05T14:47:59.903-07:00"Legacy Tattoo" Poem in Catamaran Literary Reader<br />
In this poem written in Monterey, I watch the rough rocks, look at surfers, and consider research suggesting we once were aquatic mammals.<br />
<br />
Thanks to editor Zack Rogow for publishing the poem in the beautifully produced <i>Catamaran Literary Reader</i>. (If you've never seen it, it's filled with colorful paintings by original artists on every page!)<br />
<br />
<a href="http://static1.squarespace.com/static/50a3e7b0e4b0216a96954b82/t/55244770e4b0445bac7553ed/1428440944961/Higgins+-+Legacy+Tattoo.pdf">Read "Legacy Tattoo" in the magazine here</a><br />
<blockquote>L<i></i>egacy Tattoo<br />
<br />
The waters have washed you ashore.<br />
The flood, the rising.<br />
(The continents asked for more.)<br />
<br />
Cast adrift, floating.<br />
Now you’ve found land again.<br />
<br />
Legacy tattoo: it hit, scratched<br />
you when it made you.<br />
<br />
You bear the scar at the base<br />
of your spine, where lies<br />
the shadow of the moon.<br />
<br />
We choose our tattoos, <br />
our tattoos choose<br />
to alter us before we can begin.<br />
<br />
Sea green-blue ink waves in skin.<br />
<br />
≈ ≈ ≈<br />
<br />
Let’s begin again.<br />
Something carries over,<br />
once we lived in oceans,<br />
aquatic ancestor.<br />
<br />
You remember, right?<br />
It’s what’s brought you here<br />
by my side to the edge of the sea<br />
<br />
Where we gather kelp in our hands.<br />
Okay, right, help me?<br />
Somehow we are drawn <br />
to the brink where water clinks land.<br />
<br />
Look, out there: a man<br />
stands on the wave<br />
<br />
in black seal suit<br />
aloft sea foam curl<br />
<br />
≈ ≈ ≈<br />
<br />
Yes, I was a dolphin too,<br />
you were a manatee<br />
Keep gathering, please<br />
<br />
kelp in our mouths<br />
keep gathering<br />
<br />
Cast your gaze out<br />
stare across sharp rocks<br />
to the man who is paused<br />
if only briefly on water<br />
<br />
and then descends<br />
and then he is swallowed<br />
and then the sea <br />
takes him in unceasingly<br />
<br />
as all of us, as we—<br />
<br />
(as for me, I float <br />
on time)<br />
<br />
the salt chest rises, <br />
the salt chest falls,<br />
the salt chest hollows,<br />
the salt chest swells—<br />
<br />
and the wave caroms<br />
as the crest, sudden<br />
lurch, throws<br />
the salt searcher in<br />
<br />
</blockquote><a href="http://static1.squarespace.com/static/50a3e7b0e4b0216a96954b82/t/55244770e4b0445bac7553ed/1428440944961/Higgins+-+Legacy+Tattoo.pdf">Read the poem in <i>Catamaran Literary Reader</i></a><br />
<br />
Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-32695305929544050202016-03-17T16:19:00.001-07:002016-03-17T16:22:31.848-07:00back up<blockquote>please back all <br />
this up<br />
in the stars<br />
<br />
it’s all passing so<br />
quickly like sun<br />
motes<br />
<br />
and these little <br />
gaps<br />
in our irises<br />
<br />
once will widen<br />
and silver<br />
<br />
across our <br />
photos<br />
<br />
negatives<br />
<br />
of another<br />
day<br />
</blockquote>Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-59127248126617328212016-03-12T11:59:00.000-08:002016-03-13T13:08:48.623-07:00Sippie Wallace and the Suitcase Blues<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VMnh5MFUBLc/hqdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VMnh5MFUBLc/hqdefault.jpg" /></a></div>On my kitchen counter is a 4 ½’ x 4’ X 4’ inch Sony Dream Machine. My best companion, I got it down a few blocks in the pink-painted Out of the Closet thrift store in my neighborhood, down by the lake. I was donating clothes in the back room, and as I was leaving, I happened to walk by the discarded electronics section. My other radio had grown out of tune, unable to hold a station without static. “Perfect,” I said, and brought the hand-sized cube to the counter, someone’s cast off that would please me with its complex simplicity. A surprising 3 dollars later, I walked out with my radio. I have of late tuned my cream colored block with the circle of pores on the side to Jazz station KCSM 91.1, and I have been learning a lot from its jazz gurus. (Finding the station, I immediately sent some money in, grateful for this stream of heritage and knowledge.)<br />
<br />
Listening to KCSM 91.1 Friday night (March 11), going on toward 10 p.m., I was rattling around the kitchen making a late dinner as station host Kathleen Lawton was spinning some blues cycles. We were getting deep in there together. And then, as I chopped onions and mushrooms and put kale on to boil with chopped garlic in salted water, the circle of pores—kind of an ear— from the Sony block spoke these words in the clear, low voice of a woman: <br />
<blockquote>I love you baby <br />
But your ways I just can’t stand</blockquote>The blues arrangement instrumentation style registered as calling from a bygone era, but the speaker’s words were as clear and present to me as if she were in my kitchen with me, full-bodied and breathing, effortlessly declaring something that I just couldn’t miss. I immediately thought of about eleven situations in which her lyric would apply perfectly. My attention spiked upward, and I listened in closely for the next quatrains of wisdom. The singer didn’t disappoint, and Sippie Wallace instantly became my new heroine. <br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMnh5MFUBLc">Watch Sippie Wallace sing "Suitcase Blues"</a><br />
<br />
Born in Arkansas in 1898 as Beulah Thomas, one of 13 children, Sippie by her teens was sneaking out with her siblings to watch travelling tent shows. Ragtime bands would breeze into town and Sippie and her siblings would listen through a crack in the canvas tent. She was listening just so one night when one of the band members called to her to come replace a chorus girl. She sang that night, and began performing in tent shows. She went on to tour throughout Texas, a blueswoman who sang lyrics written by herself and her two brothers. In 1923, along with her brother Hersal Thomas, a talented pianist, she moved to Chicago and soon was on top of the country’s blues records. She was the contemporary of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, and later in her life, would go on to record & tour in Denmark and Germany. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0000/433/MI0000433431.jpg?partner=allrovi.com" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0000/433/MI0000433431.jpg?partner=allrovi.com" /></a></div>But in the late 20s, things changed for Sippie. The Great Depression hit, and Sippie’s brother & musical collaborator Hersal died of food poisoning, followed by her brother George, who died in a streetcar accident, and finally, her own husband. <br />
<br />
Shaken, in the 1930s Sippie took a sabbatical from show business, opting to be the church organist, choir director, and singer in Detroit’s Leland Baptist Church. <br />
<br />
In the 1960s, with the blues revival, the younger blues artist Victoria Spivey coaxed Sippie out of retirement to perform secular music again, with Sippie eventually winning a Grammy Award in 1982.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.bonnieraitt.com/sites/default/files/photographs/Bonnie-Sippie-on.stage_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.bonnieraitt.com/sites/default/files/photographs/Bonnie-Sippie-on.stage_.jpg" /></a></div>Listening to the radio in my Oakland kitchen in March 2016, I feel pulled by Sippie Wallace’s lyrics:<br />
<blockquote>I love you baby <br />
But your ways I just can’t stand</blockquote>This couplet seems in short order to solve a conundrum I’ve tossed around for some time. How indeed can you love someone whose “ways,” as she terms them, can be inscrutable? <br />
<br />
Some among us might be tempted to either convince the heart to quit loving them, or else to do the slow creep-crawl of permitting such ways. (I’ve done both.) <br />
<br />
But with a swift Zen-soul-woman couplet, she lays down the blues koan that brings them together, denying neither side of this equatorial gap that’s growing:<br />
<blockquote>I love you baby <br />
But your ways I just can’t stand</blockquote>The California 2016 resident in me can’t help noting, having read Marshall Goldberg’s <i>Nonviolent Communication</i>—to which I have turned when my own heart was in many wrangled spots—that she does not at all say “your low-down ways.” She throws out no such phrases. I.e., to use the compassionate communication terminology, she doesn’t blame or judge. We know in these lyrics very little about what her gentleman did to make her prepare her trunk with clothes. Well, she does sing later, <br />
<blockquote>You know baby <br />
You always treated me wrong,</blockquote>but that’s about as specific as she gets. More than a list of complaints, what we hear more is the effect it has on her, which is the gauge by which she knows she has to go:<br />
<blockquote>No more baby<br />
He runs me crazy</blockquote>I love this turn of phrase, “runs me crazy.” As she sings to us, she is on the precipice, trying to convince herself to go. This song is her goodbye song, both to him and to herself: she needs to sing this in order to go. We know she needs this song because she tells us, in that same paradoxical phrasing, of her opposing feelings—at once scared to leave and trying to find the space and volition to set off: <br />
<blockquote>But I’m scared to go now<br />
Let me go on by myself</blockquote>Trying to go, she denies neither her love for him nor her own need to not stand those ways. I.e., she knows that up with which she cannot put. <br />
<br />
To follow the compassionate communication thread, it’s about her and her own self-knowledge: she has come to that precipice because a line has formed and widened, and that line is her own knowledge about what she can and cannot stand. And that standing or not standing is independent from her love. From that love, she wishes a blessing—in which they both are held: <br />
<blockquote>You get you another woman<br />
I’ll get me another man</blockquote>Now, this blessing-in-common is very different than the vitriol that one might think one should summon in order to push over the precipice into leaving, now isn’t it? In fact, one might fear that if one is really in the zone of heartful blessing, then one may be pulled back in to stay, right? But in this song, despite its mournful tone in spots, there is another tone: the triumph of a love that declines to sow division even when it knows it must depart.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.violafair.com/i/birth/blues/sippiewallace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.violafair.com/i/birth/blues/sippiewallace.jpg" /></a></div>Interestingly, there are 2 kinds of love in this song: first, the generalized, fundamental love mentioned above—from which she declares unconditionally, “I love you baby”—and second, the more specific, contingent love of what’s-happening-now-between-us. It’s from this second, what’s-happening-now love that she sings:<br />
<blockquote>Cuz where there ain’t no lovin’<br />
There ain’t no getting along</blockquote>There is a paradox in this song, which is what sews it together. The paradox sews together both the fullness of her love—in the ideal sense—and her utter emptiness—in the everyday now sense:<br />
<blockquote>Oh I ain’t got me<br />
No more baby now</blockquote>Together, the lines mean: I have nothing more in me that can continue with this relationship. Alternatively, they could be a declaration that she no longer has a lover in him. This lyric she repeats 3 times. These are the magic words to get her over. Over the threshold, into the unnamed place where her trunk has gone on ahead of her. The “trunk done gone,” decisively, and it’s the rest of her that is waiting to catch up with the decisive trunk with its implied fullness in a nameless present-future place. <br />
<br />
But it’s hard. We hear her mournful tone here:<br />
<blockquote>I’m leavin’ you daddy<br />
But it almost breaks my heart</blockquote>And then she departs, in a lyric that unites the dividing line of her departure with an assurance of the endurance of this wider, idealized love that unites friends:<br />
<blockquote>But you know daddy<br />
The best friends some time must part</blockquote>These two distinct feelings remain a paradox, and only by offering this final friend-blessing while at the same time ending with this definitive end-word, “part,” can she finally step toward her packed suitcase and go. Her trunk that she has sent on ahead to an unnamed destination, along with her full suitcase, are all she holds of herself, and she goes.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://auntiebellum.org/mag/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Sippie-Wallace-John-Rockwood-Ann-Arbor-1975.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://auntiebellum.org/mag/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Sippie-Wallace-John-Rockwood-Ann-Arbor-1975.jpg" /></a></div><blockquote><b>Suitcase Blues by Sippie Wallace</b><br />
<br />
Well my suitcase is packed<br />
Trunk done gone<br />
You know by that<br />
I ain’t gonna be here long<br />
<br />
But I’m scared to go now<br />
Let me go on by myself<br />
Lord I’m scared to go now<br />
Let me go by myself<br />
<br />
I love you baby<br />
But your ways I just can’t stand<br />
I love you baby<br />
But your ways I just can’t stand<br />
<br />
You get you another woman<br />
I’ll get me another man<br />
<br />
Cuz where there ain’t no lovin’<br />
There ain’t no getting along<br />
Cuz where there ain’t no lovin’<br />
There ain’t no getting along<br />
<br />
You know baby <br />
You always treated me wrong<br />
<br />
No more baby<br />
He runs me crazy<br />
I ain’t got me<br />
No more baby<br />
<br />
Oh I ain’t got me<br />
No more baby now<br />
Oh I ain’t got me<br />
No more baby now<br />
<br />
I’m leavin’ you daddy<br />
But it almost breaks my heart<br />
I’m leavin’ you daddy<br />
But it almost breaks my heart<br />
<br />
But you know daddy<br />
The best friends some time must part<br />
</blockquote><a href="https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fwaal">Read more about Sippie Wallace</a> Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-61847626172980721712016-03-04T08:32:00.001-08:002016-03-04T08:45:13.986-08:00Berta Caceres, Leader for Indigenous Rights in Honduras, Murdered March 3, 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://entitleblogdotorg3.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/2015_bertacaceres_04.jpg?w=700" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://entitleblogdotorg3.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/2015_bertacaceres_04.jpg?w=700" /></a></div>On March 3, 2016 in Honduras, leader Berta Caceres was murdered in her home. She was an activist for indigenous rights and was mobilizing against the construction of the Agua Zarca Hydroelectric Project, which would negatively impact peoples and animals--and is being built by Chinese state run enterprise SINOHYDRO. The article states, "111 environmental activists in Honduras have been killed between 2002 and 2014, according to the 2014 report '¿Cuántos más?' by the NGO Global Witness." <a href="http://entitleblog.org/2016/03/04/international-call-to-condemn-the-murder-of-indigenous-leader-bertha-caceres-in-honduras/">Read the article here</a><br />
Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-1029800909070845452016-02-20T19:05:00.000-08:002016-02-20T19:05:17.070-08:00Amazon Basin Freshwater Connectivity : What Dams Mean for Animals and People<i>Poetry</i> magazine asked Jan. 2016 issue contributors to tell them what we have been reading. I wrote this for them. <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2016/01/pm-reading-list-january-2016/?woo">Read this post on <i>Poetry Magazine</i>'s website here</a><br />
<br />
I’ve been reading the World Wildlife Fund’s April 2015 scientific report, “State of the Amazon: Freshwater Connectivity and Ecosystem Health.” First of all, it’s amazing to learn that, in rivers with flood pulses that raise water levels, Amazonian fish don’t stay in the river channel. When rainfall and seasonal pulses flood adjacent riparian areas, fish roam into these areas, avoiding predators, seeking resources unavailable in the river, including plant detritus and seeds in nutrient-rich water. They also find nesting and egg-laying areas. Scientists call this “lateral connectivity.” In addition to fish that boost survival rates as they migrate to floodplain resources, other creatures depend on floodplains: pink-nosed and other dolphins, giant turtles, caimans, and otters. Terrestrial animals use riparian areas as migration corridors, including jaguars, tapirs, and peccaries.<br />
<br />
However, due to an unprecedented rise in development in the Amazon in the last 5-10 years—primarily dam construction, and also mining, cattle ranching, and agriculture—these freshwater ecosystems are being altered, and with them, the aquatic animals’ abilities to travel between rivers and surrounding riparian areas. In the Upper Xingu River Basin (Brazil) alone, there are 10,000 small dams, 1 every 4 miles. The created water reservoirs change water quality—temperature and sediment level upstream and downstream, and alter water discharge levels (which correlates with decreased rainfall). Where river sediment grains are larger, as the giant Amazon river turtle and yellow-spotted side-neck turtle nest, their eggs’ survival rates have decreased.<br />
<br />
In Brazil’s share of the Amazon Basin alone, there are 138 operational, 16 under-construction, and 221 planned large dams—each of which involves removing from their river land tens of thousands of indigenous and traditional river peoples. <br />
<br />
In June 2016, when I go to the Tapajos River basin, I will observe this up close. I will post updates here!<br />
<br />
As for poetry, I recently finished reading Multitudinous Heart: Selected Poems by Carlos Drummond de Andrade, translated by Richard Zenith.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2016/01/pm-reading-list-january-2016/?woo">Read my post on <i>Poetry Magazine</i>'s website here</a>Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-5627812253258843142016-01-17T17:11:00.000-08:002016-02-20T18:59:42.372-08:00"Dance, Dance, While the Hive Collapses" Poem in Poetry MagazineI am thrilled to be part of <i>Poetry Magazine</i>'s Jan. 2016 issue on Ecojustice.<br />
<br />
My poem <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/251624">"Dance, Dance, While the Hive Collapses"</a> begins:<br />
<br />
Oh my, oh my, I lose myself<br />
I study atlases and cirrus paths<br />
in search of traces of it, of you<br />
<br />
of that thing, of that song<br />
I keep pressing my ear to the current<br />
of air to hear ... <br />
<br />
I hear it and it disappears<br />
It was all I wanted to do in this life<br />
to sense that phantom tap<br />
<br />
on my nerves, to allow myself<br />
to be hit by it, attacked, aroused<br />
until, as if someone else, I arise<br />
<br />
I dance my part in paradise<br />
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br />
<a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/251624">Read the full poem here</a>Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-10953058416583655652015-11-30T22:14:00.002-08:002015-11-30T22:14:50.041-08:00"The Bear" by leana MălăncioiuI happened on this poem on the site of Southword Editions, a publishing branch of the Munster Literature Centre in Ireland. They have a quite sturdy selection of translated poetry from throughout Europe. The following poem is by Romanian poet leana Mălăncioiu, translated by Irish poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, from the book <i>After the Raising of Lazarus</i>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The Bear</b><br />
<br />
In the high mountain grass, my body curled like the snakes<br />
Crept out to warm themselves in the sun and stiff with pain<br />
I wait for the bear to arrive, to stoop beside me,<br />
To stay there awhile, sniffing me in silence, again.<br />
<br />
Seeing that I am still alive and that I want him to heal me<br />
To begin the soft trampling from shoulder to feet<br />
So I feel him gliding over my ribs and kneeling without wanting to<br />
And getting down on the grass when he knows it’s hurting me,<br />
<br />
Climbing up again gently along the spine as far as the neck<br />
Hearing my vertebrae crackling under his wild right paw<br />
And I can’t cry out in fear since while he’s passing over me<br />
To heal me, if I screamed he might put out his claws,<br />
<br />
Let me rid myself of this female husk of a snake curled in the sun,<br />
Let the bear find the earth shifting as he makes me straight,<br />
Gently, under his weight, trembling as he bends, <br />
Let me coil myself again groaning quietly and wait.<br />
<br />
Then let the cure come, let me go through the trampled grass<br />
And feel for once my body hot from his heavy tread<br />
While the bear moves off slowly as if he were still<br />
Stepping not on the earth, but on a woman’s shoulders instead.<br />
<br />
<blockquote>by Ileana Mălăncioiu<br />
<br />
English translation by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin</blockquote>Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-5809236576889857522015-11-16T22:43:00.000-08:002015-11-16T23:42:51.573-08:00Wildfires in the Chapada Diamantina<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://fw.atarde.uol.com.br/2015/11/650x375_incendio-lencois-fogo-chapada-diamantina_1581899.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://fw.atarde.uol.com.br/2015/11/650x375_incendio-lencois-fogo-chapada-diamantina_1581899.jpg" /></a></div>Sad to see that Chapada National Park and surrounding towns in the Chapada Diamantina in Bahia, Brazil, are burning. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://atarde.uol.com.br/bahia/noticias/1726285-incendio-de-grande-proporcao-atinge-lencois-e-palmeiras">According to César Gonçalves</a>, the acting director of Chapada National Park, the situation is “out of control.”<br />
<br />
<a href="http://g1.globo.com/bahia/noticia/2015/11/novos-focos-de-incendio-surgem-na-regiao-da-chapada-diamantina-na-ba.html">In this video</a> in Portuguese (beware the 30 sec. ad), the park director on Nov. 16 reiterates that the fire is out of control, but then comes the Secretary of the Environment Eugenio Spengler who insists that, no, really, it’s under control. Except that the aerial views in this video look anything but.<br />
<br />
I backpacked there in January 2013, and it was a gorgeous respite from the city. I immediately felt at home there, as if a sudden calm had overtaken me, quieting any anxieties. That first night, I slept a deep sleep, and awakened late to bird song, a kind of symphony the likes of which I'd never heard. I ceased all motion, laying only in the hammock in the yellow-green sea of grasses, listening for hours. After I finally budged to breakfast with a sleepwalker's motions, I went out to walk. Yellow butterflies glutted the air of the valley of Capão, as if it were enchanted. I know that I was –- enchanted, that is. <br />
<br />
Gonçalves said that they have three separate fires, “one in Ibicioara, where Ibama [the federal environmental agency] is combating areas that lay outside the park; a big fire in the north region of the park, between the municipalities of Lençóis e Palmeiras; and one in Morro Branco, in the Valley of Capão.”<br />
<br />
As of Nov. 14, the fourth day of the fires, there didn’t seem to be any improvement in containment. An initial fire began on Nov. 12, near to the Mucugezinho River, which separates the towns of Lençóis and Palmeiras. Dry air, lack of rain, and strong winds have spread the fires.<br />
<br />
Residents of the region complain that the quantity of professionals and volunteers combating the fire is insufficient. Residents of Bahia who feel that the government is allocating insufficient resources to fight the fires are organizing around the hashtag #soschapadadiamantina<br />
<br />
On Nov. 14, police detained a man suspected of lighting the fire in the park. Gildásio Miranda Silva, native of the nearby town of Mucugê, was arrested after being caught in the act of lighting the fire, <a href="http://jornaldachapada.com.br/2015/11/14/suspeito-de-atear-fogo-no-parque-nacional-da-chapada-diamantina-e-detido-pela-policia/">according to the Jornal da Chapada.</a><a href="http://s2.glbimg.com/Oa-Y3GQKjGsJzyLHw1NODLiaTSE=/300x225/s.glbimg.com/jo/g1/f/original/2015/11/13/fogo_chapada.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://s2.glbimg.com/Oa-Y3GQKjGsJzyLHw1NODLiaTSE=/300x225/s.glbimg.com/jo/g1/f/original/2015/11/13/fogo_chapada.jpg" /></a>Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-89244652012931276702015-11-08T22:08:00.001-08:002015-11-16T16:28:27.731-08:00Vale SA Mining Company Dam Fails, Brazil's Biggest Dam Break<a href="http://assets0.exame.abril.com.br/assets/images/2015/11/590599/size_810_16_9_barragem-da-samarco-cede-em-mg.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://assets0.exame.abril.com.br/assets/images/2015/11/590599/size_810_16_9_barragem-da-samarco-cede-em-mg.jpg" /></a><br />
On Nov. 5 in the district of Bento Rodrigues in the town of Marianas in Minas Gerais state, Brazil, the Samarco mining operation's tailings dam failed, pouring 60 million cubic tons of water and iron ore waste into the town. This amounted to a gargantuan wave of mud, which is still flowing at this writing, continuing to devastate the surrounding area. Authorities are unable to enter the area, with only drones providing area pictures of the wide, spreading swath of green land affected. Two people are confirmed killed, and 28 people are still missing. It looks to be Brazil's biggest dam break ever. <br />
<br />
Samarco is a joint venture of BHP Billiton Ltd. and Vale SA, two of the world’s biggest mining companies.<br />
<br />
The dam's alarm system did not sound, leaving the residents without warning besides impromptu help provided by good Samaritans who helped some to evacuate. They only knew a dam had broken when some noticed a big cloud of dust in the sky 4 miles away in the direction of the dam. One man jumped on a flatbed and drove around yelling for people to flee; he was able to get out 60 people, including some elders. Meanwhile, others missed this improvised rescue operation. 200 homes were destroyed, with 800 left homeless.<br />
<br />
According to the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, the residents of Bento Rodrigues reported that they had lived in fear of the dam put above their town, in their observation, without structural reinforcement. It appeared to be propped up with mounds of clay, and residents said that they were made nervous by seeing dam workers constantly patching parts of the dam. The residents had asked the company to improve safety--which met with no Vale actions to address residents' concerns.<br />
<br />
According to <i>Places of Minas</i>'s online commentary (Lugares de Minas), this break is not singular but points to a bigger pattern of greed and land exploitation in the region. They ask, "Até quando Brasil? Cadê os órgãos responsáveis, que deveriam fiscalizar? Quantas comunidades, cidades, não estão no mesmo risco?" or, "How long will this go on, Brazil? Where are the responsible government bodies which should be regulating this activity? How many communities and cities are in the same danger?"<br />
<br />
I actually have some personal experience with Vale mining company. In 2010, when I visited Minas Gerais, driving between Belo Horizonte and Ouro Preto, the beautiful green rolling hills were often gashed with orange, dramatically cut away. Curious, and suspicious of the roadside billboards describing how eco-friendly Vale was (which we suspected was so much green washing), we pulled off to the side of the road. We followed our noses off the ramp and up to a guard station that served as checkpoint into the Vale mined area. The station house was stocked with fully militarized guards, in paramilitary gear. We innocently asked if we could tour the facilities. This met with no smile cracked in the faces whose eyes were hidden behind shaded glasses. We hurriedly made a U-turn and left the way we had come, our curiosity about Vale's operations unquenched, but with a strong instruction in Vale's security system. Security, that is, for the operations--less so for nearby residents.<br />
<br />
A tailings dam is built to shore up mine waste and water produced in the milling process. Sometimes in tailing ponds, other minerals are mixed with the mining waste in order to slow its dispersal into the environment. According to Scott Dunbar, department head of the Norman B. Keevil Institute of Mining Engineering at the University of British Columbia, tailings dams usually fail from excess of water in the tailings ponds. The people in the town were not warned.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://p2.trrsf.com.br/image/fget/cf/fit-in/940/627/images.terra.com/2015/11/06/635824168235212038.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://p2.trrsf.com.br/image/fget/cf/fit-in/940/627/images.terra.com/2015/11/06/635824168235212038.jpg" /></a>The destruction of the town of Bento Rodrigues is all the more sad given the town's women's cooperative that collaborated to grow and harvest local fruits and chili peppers in order to make local delicacies that they sold in jars. This artisanal collective of poor rural women who harvested the land traditionally to create their own business--is now destroyed, primarily because the land, and all their homes and cooking facilities, were destroyed in the giant wave of mud. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/LugaresdeMinas/videos/541392646014112/">Watch this video</a> to see how the land looked prior to the Samargo mining company's dam fail. It is so peaceful and bucolic, it is truly heart breaking to think of these women entrepreneurs' efforts, and traditional lives, literally soiled and in ruins.<br />
<br />
This is personally upsetting for me, knowing how people in country areas of Minas Gerais struggle to maintain a traditional lifestyle of tending the land--in the face of expanding mining operations. Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-9367091561406553452015-10-12T16:52:00.001-07:002015-10-12T16:52:56.092-07:00from "Book of Hours" by Kevin Young<blockquote>The light here leaves you<br />
lonely, fading<br />
<br />
as does the dusk<br />
that takes too long<br />
<br />
to arrive. By morning<br />
the mountain moving <br />
<br />
a bit closer to the sun.<br />
<br />
This valley belongs<br />
to no one—<br />
<br />
except birds who name<br />
themselves by their songs<br />
<br />
in the dawn.<br />
What good<br />
<br />
are wishes, if they aren't<br />
used up<br />
<br />
The lamp of your arms.<br />
<br />
The brightest<br />
blue beneath the clouds—<br />
<br />
We guess<br />
at what's next<br />
<br />
unlike the mountain<br />
<br />
who knows it<br />
in the bones, a music <br />
<br />
too high<br />
to scale.<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
The burnt, <br />
blurred world<br />
<br />
where does it end—<br />
<br />
The wind<br />
kicks up the scent<br />
<br />
from the stables<br />
where horseshoes hold<br />
<br />
not just luck, but<br />
beyond. But<br />
<br />
weight. But a body<br />
<br />
that itself burns,<br />
begs to run.<br />
<br />
The gondola quits just<br />
past the clouds.<br />
<br />
The telephone poles <br />
tall crosses in the road.<br />
<br />
Let us go<br />
each, into the valley—<br />
<br />
turn ourselves <br />
& our hairshirts<br />
<br />
inside out, let the world<br />
itch—for once—<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
Black like an eye<br />
<br />
bruised night brightens<br />
by morning, yellow<br />
<br />
then grey—<br />
a memory.<br />
<br />
What the light was like.<br />
<br />
All day the heat a heavy,<br />
colored coat. <br />
<br />
I want to lie<br />
down like the lamb—<br />
<br />
down & down<br />
till gone—<br />
<br />
shorn of its wool.<br />
The cool<br />
<br />
of setting & rising<br />
in this valley,<br />
<br />
the canyon between us<br />
shoulders our echoes.<br />
<br />
Moan, & make way.<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
The sun's small fury<br />
feeds me.<br />
<br />
Wind dying down.<br />
<br />
We delay, & dither<br />
then are lifted<br />
<br />
into it, brightness<br />
all about—<br />
<br />
O setting.<br />
O the music<br />
<br />
as we soar<br />
is small, yet sating.<br />
<br />
What you want—<br />
<br />
Nobody, or nothing<br />
fills our short journeying.<br />
<br />
Above even the birds,<br />
winging heavenward,<br />
<br />
the world is hard<br />
to leave behind<br />
<br />
or land against—<br />
must end.<br />
<br />
I mean to make it.<br />
<br />
Turning slow beneath<br />
our feet, <br />
<br />
finding sun, seen<br />
from above,<br />
<br />
this world looks <br />
like us—mostly<br />
<br />
salt, dark water.<br />
<br />
* * *<br />
<br />
It's death there<br />
is no cure for<br />
<br />
life the long<br />
disease.<br />
<br />
If we're lucky.<br />
<br />
Otherwise, short<br />
trip beyond.<br />
<br />
And below.<br />
<br />
Noon, <br />
growing shadow.<br />
<br />
I chase the quiet<br />
round the house.<br />
<br />
Soon the sound—<br />
<br />
wind wills<br />
its way against<br />
<br />
the panes. Welcome<br />
the rain. <br />
<br />
Welcome<br />
the moon's squinting<br />
<br />
into space.<br />
The trees<br />
<br />
bow like priests.<br />
<br />
The storm lifts<br />
up the leaves.<br />
<br />
Why not sing.</blockquote><br />
Source: Poetry (November 2007) <br />
Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-57651895020217464512015-10-12T16:49:00.000-07:002015-10-12T16:49:02.755-07:00"Sleeping Trees" by Fady Joudah<blockquote>Between what should and what should not be<br />
Everything is liable to explode. Many times<br />
I was told who has no land has no sea. My father<br />
Learned to fly in a dream. This is the story<br />
Of a sycamore tree he used to climb<br />
When he was young to watch the rain.<br />
<br />
Sometimes it rained so hard it hurt. Like being<br />
Beaten with sticks. Then the mud would run red.<br />
<br />
My brother believed bad dreams could kill<br />
A man in his sleep, he insisted<br />
We wake my father from his muffled screams<br />
On the night of the day he took us to see his village.<br />
No longer his village he found his tree amputated.<br />
Between one falling and the next<br />
<br />
There’s a weightless state. There was a woman<br />
Who loved me. Asked me how to say tree<br />
In Arabic. I didn’t tell her. She was sad. I didn’t understand.<br />
When she left. I saw a man in my sleep three times. A man I knew<br />
Could turn anyone into one-half reptile.<br />
I was immune. I thought I was. I was terrified of being<br />
<br />
The only one left. When we woke my father<br />
He was running away from soldiers. Now<br />
He doesn’t remember that night. He laughs<br />
About another sleep, he raised his arms to strike a king<br />
And tried not to stop. He flew<br />
But mother woke him and held him for an hour,<br />
<br />
Or half an hour, or as long as it takes a migration inward.<br />
Maybe if I had just said it.<br />
Shejerah, she would’ve remembered me longer. Maybe<br />
I don’t know much about dreams<br />
But my mother taught me the law of omen. The dead<br />
Know about the dying and sometimes<br />
Catch them in sleep like the sycamore tree<br />
My father used to climb<br />
<br />
When he was young to watch the rain stream,<br />
And he would gently swing.</blockquote><br />
Fady Joudah, “Sleeping Trees” from The Earth in the Attic. Copyright © 2008 by Fady Joudah. Reprinted by permission of Yale University Press.<br />
<br />
Source: The Earth in the Attic (Yale University Press, 2008)<br />
Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-18087668576276990902015-10-04T12:28:00.000-07:002015-10-04T12:28:38.776-07:00"Any fool can destroy trees; they cannot run away"<blockquote>Through all the wonderful, eventful centuries since Christ's time--and long before that--God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods; but he cannot save them from fools--only Uncle Sam can do that.<br />
</blockquote>--from "Our National Parks" by John Muir<br />
Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-91735214315091204972015-09-30T09:31:00.000-07:002015-09-30T09:31:30.455-07:00"Thanks" by W. S. MerwinListen<br />
with the night falling we are saying thank you<br />
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings<br />
we are running out of the glass rooms<br />
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky<br />
and say thank you<br />
we are standing by the water thanking it<br />
standing by the windows looking out<br />
in our directions<br />
<br />
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging<br />
after funerals we are saying thank you<br />
after the news of the dead<br />
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you<br />
<br />
over telephones we are saying thank you<br />
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators<br />
remembering wars and the police at the door<br />
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you<br />
in the banks we are saying thank you<br />
in the faces of the officials and the rich<br />
and of all who will never change<br />
we go on saying thank you thank you<br />
<br />
with the animals dying around us<br />
taking our feelings we are saying thank you<br />
with the forests falling faster than the minutes<br />
of our lives we are saying thank you<br />
with the words going out like cells of a brain<br />
with the cities growing over us<br />
we are saying thank you faster and faster<br />
with nobody listening we are saying thank you<br />
thank you we are saying and waving<br />
dark though it is<br />
Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-27733929983346110052015-09-20T13:25:00.001-07:002015-09-20T13:38:58.637-07:00"My Job is Joy: Beatitude in B Flat / A Sharp" in Taos Journal of Poetry and ArtMy poem "My Job is Joy: Beatitude in B Flat / A Sharp," which appears in the <i>Taos Journal of Poetry and Art</i>, begins:<i></i><br />
<blockquote>In life, I thought my job to follow<br />
the to do list, complete<br />
items with maximum<br />
efficiency. Log tasks.<br />
Enter numbers. Earn bucks...</blockquote>Geesh, that doesn't sound fun.<br />
<br />
The poem pivots its way toward this realization:<br />
<blockquote>Let us be lessoned how it is, finally,<br />
to be without membrane: that bliss<br />
those who worship—through hands pressed,<br />
eyes upturned, with implorations—sought:<br />
<br />
that joining<br />
in the palms<br />
of the infinite, who has<br />
no hand.<br />
<br />
Let all quarrels be lessened.<br />
From the hovering cloud perspective:<br />
those who seemed my nemeses<br />
were but sucklers of my evolution.<br />
Sudden inrush of forgiving.<br />
<br />
God, they held me to their breast!<br />
For them, a gratitude. Forgiveness.<br />
In opposition, there can be no opposition.<br />
(Why not earlier? Then:<br />
forgiveness even of this.)<br />
<br />
Let all rifts, upheld with victim<br />
and the wronger, be as none.<br />
Let me in this life begin this practice.<br />
<br />
Let the goddess of chaos<br />
descend, eager<br />
vulture await on highest branch,<br />
to tear all temporary form apart.<br />
Let us be sundered from one another.<br />
<br />
Let me be mere particulate, rattle,<br />
become the stuff of matter:<br />
cells, molecules. Immanent,<br />
the spirit that moves in every<br />
thing. At once tiny and grand.<br />
Nanophoton, yet expansive.<br />
Husked from identity.<br />
<br />
Entered into the wide open that,<br />
in those dreams, I always trekked<br />
toward, repeated motif.<br />
Let me be released from any motive<br />
but pure being, humble, that pulse.<br />
<br />
Thank the blessed circumstance<br />
of shift. Pivot<br />
into it.<br />
</blockquote>Thanks to editor Veronica Golos for including the poem in the Taos journal. <br />
<a href="http://www.taosjournalofpoetry.com/my-job-is-joy-beatitude-in-b-flat-a-sharp/">Read the whole poem here</a><br />
Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-10625769680780568562015-09-19T23:44:00.000-07:002015-09-25T10:49:32.657-07:00Guarani-Kaiowá Leader Killed in Retaliation for Land Reoccupation<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://racismoambiental.net.br/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ID-semiao-nanderu-marangatu1-750x410.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://racismoambiental.net.br/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ID-semiao-nanderu-marangatu1-750x410.jpg" /></a></div>On August 30, 2015, Semião Fernandes Vilhalva, an indigenous leader of the Guarani-Kaiowá tribe, was killed in the town of Antonio João, which is 402 miles from Campo Grande, the capital of Brazil’s state of Mato Grosso do Sul (MS). The state is in the west of Brazil, on the border of Paraguay and Bolivia. <br />
<br />
The murdered indigenous leader, Semião Fernandes Vilhalva, at the time was involved in mobilizing a lands reoccupation. He “actively participated in efforts undertaken for the recognition of indigenous territories and the recognition of the lands of the Guarani-Kaiowá people,” <a href="https://www.fidh.org/International-Federation-for-Human-Rights/americas/brazil/brazil-killing-of-mr-semiao-fernandes-vilhalva-one-of-the-leaders-of ">according to the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders. </a><br />
<br />
Vilhalva’s murder is part of a chain of such murders of indigenous leaders. Pierce Nahigyan of Planet Keepers describes Ambrósio Vilhalva and Marinalva Manoel, both Guarani-Kaiowá leaders:<br />
<blockquote>Ambrósio Vilhalva was a Guarani leader who spent decades campaigning against the planting of sugar cane on his tribe’s former lands. Vilhalva starred in the award-winning film Birdwatchers and traveled the world to speak about the Brazilian government’s failure to protect native Guarani land. In December 2013, after months of death threats, Vilhalva was found dead in his hut from multiple stab wounds. <a href=" https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=71&v=hQNTO5kkBQQ">See video on Ambrósio Vilhalva, murdered Guarani leader</a><br />
<br />
Marinalva Manoel was also a leading figure in the Guarani Indian repatriation movement. In November 2014, she was found dead on the side of a highway after being raped and stabbed to death. <a href="http://www.planetexperts.com/native-leaders-killed-amazon-want-right-live/">Read article on Guarani murdered leader Marinalva Manoel</a> </blockquote><br />
And the list of murdered Guarani leaders goes on. Hermano de Melo, in a Sept. 13, 2015 article on the Brazilian site <a href="http://racismoambiental.net.br/">Environmental Racism</a>, continues the lamentable list. De Melo alleges that there is a pattern of murders associated with reoccupation of lands. In a reoccupation of the Terra Indígena Buriti (Buriti Indigenous Territory), Oziel Gabriel, 35, murdered in Sidrolândia (Mato Grosso do Sul) in May 2013. The Guarani-Kaiowá Chief, Nísio Gomes, was murdered in the Guaiviry encampment, in Aral Moreira, MS, on the border that Brazil shares with Paraguay on Nov. 18, 2011. <br />
<br />
It would be difficult to avoid the conclusion that the local ranchers regard it as a legitimate strategy to systematically murder the Guarani-Kaiowá leaders as a way of stamping out land disputes over ratified lands.<br />
<br />
In 2005, the Brazilian government indeed ratified 10,000 hectares as the possession of the Guarani-Kaiowá. Yet local ranchers petitioned to have this decision overturned. As a result, the 2005 possession was never transferred. Instead, 9,317 of these hectares were divided into nine ranches, which were given into the possession of local ranchers, who now own the land, and are reluctant to give it up. The ranchers hear “reoccupation” but call it the “invasion” of indigenous people. <br />
<br />
The remaining 150 hectares, which amounts to just .58 of a square mile, are all that the Guarani-Kaiowá have had to live on. They live in such a state of overcrowding that malnutrition, illness, and suicide have abounded. As a result, some members have squeezed onto the edge of local highways to live—as you can imagine, a precarious and dangerous situation. According to the NGO CIMI, <a href="ahttp://www.planetexperts.com/guarani-activist-leader-brutally-murdered-brazil/">cited in an article by Planet Keepers,</a> 72 Guarani-Kaiowá committed suicide in 2013, “equivalent to 232 deaths per 100,000, a rate ‘that has nearly tripled over the last two decades,’ says Survival International.” <br />
<br />
And thus, on August 30, 2015, after decades of inaction by the Brazilian government to enforce the 2005 legal demarcation of the Guarani-Kaiowá territory, Semião Vilhalva and other people of the Guarani-Kaiowá tribe were engaged in a reoccupation of the lands that had been legally deeded to them in 2005. In the town of Antonio João, people of the Guarani-Kaiowá tribe mobilized to reoccupy the lands that the Brazilian government had ratified for them—-those 10,000 hectares. <br />
<br />
In response to the indigenous reoccupation of 4 ranches deeded to them in 2005, on Aug. 30, 2015, "about 100 people in trucks approached the Barra and Fronteira ranches, in the town of Antônio João, in order to retake the area which they view as having been invaded by the indigenous peoples," <a href="http://www.correiodoestado.com.br/opiniao/hermano-de-melo-a-morte-do-indigena-guaranikaiowa-semiao/257575/ ">according to the newspaper Correio do Estado,</a> which is based in and covers news based in Mato Grosso do Sul.<br />
<br />
As the ranchers and the indigenous gathered on the disputed lands were facing off, Vilhalva, 24 years old, was searching for his 4 year old son in the crowd. He was standing on one side of a stream when, from the other side of the stream, according to the indigenous account, a gunman hired by the ranchers fired a 22 caliber revolver. The bullet hit Vilhalva's face, then exited his neck. Vilhava never found his son. As for the ranchers' account, the ranchers claim, improbably, that Vilhalva had died earlier that week and his body had only been transported to the area, and they claim it had already begun to show rigor mortis. <a href="http://www.correiodoestado.com.br/opiniao/hermano-de-melo-a-morte-do-indigena-guaranikaiowa-semiao/257575/">However, the police report negated this fabrication,</a> finding no rigor mortis on the date of the confrontation, and citing the date of death as Aug. 30. On Sept. 2, Semião was buried, attended by mourners, including his wife. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.correiodoestado.com.br/img/c/300/250/dn_noticia/2015/09/1608150266velorioantoniojoaomsvr1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.correiodoestado.com.br/img/c/300/250/dn_noticia/2015/09/1608150266velorioantoniojoaomsvr1.jpg" /></a></div>Not one person from the town who wasn’t indigenous attended the funeral, an indication of how far the two communities are from understanding one another. The climate between them is hostile, and it looks like the Federal Police are biased; <a href="http://www.midiamax.com.br/cotidiano/policia-escolta-levar-comida-fazendeiros-antonio-joao-272177">Midiamax, a local newspaper, reported</a> that the Federal Police were giving an escort for ranchers to deliver food, while the indigenous in the face-off went without escort and thus were going hungry. <br />
<br />
Though the Federal Police have come to the area, the attacks against the indigenous have continued. According to the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, <a href="https://www.fidh.org/International-Federation-for-Human-Rights/americas/brazil/brazil-killing-of-mr-semiao-fernandes-vilhalva-one-of-the-leaders-of">more attacks have occurred</a>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Attacks against the Guarani-Kaiowás continue even after the killing of Mr. Semião Fernandes Vilhalva. The Nanderu Marangatu territory was attacked again on August 30 by 60 gunmen, who entered the land shooting against children, elderly people, women and indigenous men. On September 3, 4 and 5, another Guarani-Kaiowá territory was targeted by the farmers, Guyra Kamby’I, which was attacked with fire conflagration and gun shooting.</blockquote><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.cartacapital.com.br/sociedade/questao-indigena-um-barril-de-polvora-no-mato-grosso-do-sul-479.html/manifestacao-guarani-kaiowa/@@images/90a7d3a2-2ba8-4778-8eb7-cea54d5b3639.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.cartacapital.com.br/sociedade/questao-indigena-um-barril-de-polvora-no-mato-grosso-do-sul-479.html/manifestacao-guarani-kaiowa/@@images/90a7d3a2-2ba8-4778-8eb7-cea54d5b3639.jpeg" /></a></div>In the photo above, <a href="http://www.desenvolvimentistas.com.br/blog/blog/2015/09/09/no-ms-a-questao-indigena-e-um-barril-de-polvora-prestes-a-explodir/">leaders from 6 indigenous peoples gathered</a> in protest of the murder of Vilhalva (Guarani-kaiowá, Terena, Munduruku, Baré, kambeba e Baniwa). Their sign reads: "We are not invaders. We're taking back what is ours!"<br />
<br />
The Guarani-Kaiowá need long term legal protection. The Brazilian Government needs to protect their territory—those 10,000 hectares that need to be legally demarcated, again as in 2005. At this writing, the Guarani are in an unsustainable situation, and <a href="http://racismoambiental.net.br/2015/09/15/ataques-paramilitares-contra-os-guarani-kaiowa-envolveriam-ate-senador-e-deputados/">lies are being circulated by and in the media to justify the attack</a> against Vilhalva and the Guarani.<br />
<br />
The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders urges the following actions to pressure Brazilian authorities to act to protect the Guarani-Kaiowá in this increasingly hostile situation:<br />
<br />
Actions requested:<br />
<br />
Please write to the authorities in Brazil, urging them to:<br />
<blockquote>i. Carry out an immediate, thorough, impartial and transparent investigation into the above-mentioned events in order to identify all those responsible, bring them before an independent tribunal, and sanction them as provided by the law;<br />
ii. Move forward in the processes of Guarani-Kaiowá land demarcation, as delays in the finalization of such processes results in legal uncertainty and insecurity regarding land ownership and foster increased violence in land dispute;<br />
iii. Guarantee in all circumstances the physical and psychological integrity of all human rights defenders in Brazil, including in particular land rights defenders;<br />
iv. Conform to the provisions of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1998</blockquote><br />
Addresses:<br />
<blockquote>• H.E. Ms. Dilma Rousseff, President of the Federative Republic of Brazil, Palácio do Planalto, Praça dos Três Poderes, 70150-900, Brasilia DF, Brazil.<br />
• Mr. Gilberto José Spier Vargas, Secretary for Human Rights, Secretariat for Human Rights of the Presidency of the Republic, Setor Comercial Sul - B, Quadra 9, Lote C, Edificio Parque Cidade Corporate, Torre A, 10º andar, Brasília, Distrito Federal, Brasil - CEP: 70308-200. Email: direitoshumanos@sdh.gov.br; snpddh@sdh.gov.br. Twitter: @DHumanosBrasil<br />
• Ms. Izabella Mônica Vieira Teixeira, State Minister of the Environment, Ministry of the Environment, Esplanada dos Ministérios - Bloco B, CEP 70068-900 - Brasília/DF, Brazil. FAX: 2028-1756. Email: gm@mma.gov.br Twitter: @mmeioambiente<br />
• Mr. João Pedro Gonçalves da Costa, President of the Indian National Foundation (FUNAI), SBS, Quadra 02, Lote 14, Ed. Cleto Meireles, CEP 70.070-120 – Brasília/DF, Brazil, Email: presidencia@funai.gov.br.<br />
• H.E. Ms. Regina Maria Cordeiro Dunlop, Ambassador, Permanent Mission of Brazil to the United Nations in Geneva, Chemin Louis-Dunant 15 (6th Floor), 1202 Geneva, Switzerland. Fax: +41 22 910 07 51, Email: delbrasgen@itamaraty.gov.br<br />
• H.E. Mr. André Mattoso Maia Amado, Ambassador, Embassy of Brazil in Brussels, Avenue Louise, 350 B-1050, 1050 Brussels, Belgium. Fax: +32 2 640 81 34, Email: brasbruxelas@beon.be</blockquote><br />
Please also write to the embassy of Brazil. <a href="http://washington.itamaraty.gov.br/en-us/brazilian_consulates_in_the_us.xml">Click here to find the email of the Brazil embassy closest to you</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-34183280">Watch BBC Video on the Murder of Semião Fernandes Vilhalva</a>Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-68551019344671651602015-09-17T09:40:00.000-07:002015-09-17T13:10:21.940-07:00Horses & Other Animals of the Valley Fire<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://img-ak.verticalresponse.com/media/8/a/7/8a7abd70ac/cb86d9b987/e635ff3b84/library/HOrse-and-fire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://img-ak.verticalresponse.com/media/8/a/7/8a7abd70ac/cb86d9b987/e635ff3b84/library/HOrse-and-fire.jpg" /></a></div>My heart has hurt to see pictures of frightened horses fleeing walls of flame in the Valley Fire in Lake County, CA, as well as surrounding Sonoma and Napa counties. The fire has now burned 73,700 acres, and is just 35% contained at this writing. <br />
<br />
My mind has boggled to imagine how animals would flee such a massive and rapidly jumping fire: Could they run or fly that far? <br />
<br />
Last year, I sat in the countryside of Middletown, and listened to the symphony of birdsong, a weaving of spirit through the landscape, from grasses to bushes to trees that are habitat to a multitude of animals. <br />
<br />
It lead me to consider that we ourselves have had a hand in animals of all kinds losing their homes in the Valley Fire and fires all across California and the West. With the larger cause of the drought our own human-caused climatic impacts, our failures have resulted in the robbing of home to all sorts of animals, human, equine, ornithological. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguO4xmMN5egHlErGJwUqJl85P6pCUiE-7ZFYv_-DjODa4RUVRRnbyPBeicU0XRmOutdYfYkCpMsZDhVJPEHvP6souMVak4SVliwvpc4bWKfqVAvgkxAV6N2-ezYE3HirSyFoNqCqWKqJs/s1600/NuttallsWoodpeckerMichaelBaird.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguO4xmMN5egHlErGJwUqJl85P6pCUiE-7ZFYv_-DjODa4RUVRRnbyPBeicU0XRmOutdYfYkCpMsZDhVJPEHvP6souMVak4SVliwvpc4bWKfqVAvgkxAV6N2-ezYE3HirSyFoNqCqWKqJs/s320/NuttallsWoodpeckerMichaelBaird.jpg" /></a></div>I wince to consider the tree homes of the woodpeckers I heard pecking last year: Which trees will they lodge in now?<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/us/frantic-evacuation-in-california-left-animals-to-face-wildfire-alone.html?_r=0"><i>The New York Times</i> reported</a> on a coordinated, local effort to rescue livestock. Some stayed behind in the <a href="http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2015/09/15/trio-saves-horses-from-worst-of-valley-fire/">fire to save their animals</a> as we see in "Trio Saves Horses From Worst Of Valley Fire" by CBS Sacramento. <br />
<br />
I reached out to my friend, equestrian heroine Alison Martin, asking how I could help animals affected by the Valley Fire. She put me in touch with Sonoma Equine Rescue Rehab And Adoption. Though their name indicates a Sonoma county affiliation, they are rescuing horses from the Valley Fire, 200 at present, with more coming in each day. <br />
<br />
Until these rescued horses are reunited with their owners, the horses need to be fed. SERRA is appealing for donations of hay to feed the rescued horses. They write: "Supplies are few!" I just donated. <a href="http://www.serraequinerescue.org/fire-feed-need.html">You may donate here</a> to help the rescued horses of the Valley Fire.Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-30577481219560961972015-09-17T00:45:00.000-07:002015-09-17T01:09:41.254-07:00Grand Canyon from Space Video<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIiW-YfMn7S8u4Vr6zdqLzPmt-30ESka9wNEWYEHBZJgIIodRLIiAmOn2I4DS2XjmFu0pxfH-pz5DMkHdM3ohlEzF1YYyGEY7yfpZveQy7XxiLIJjDeZdiL7rHAWszxE9OpLnMG7foaDM/s1600/Grand+Canyon+Homecoming+Video.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIiW-YfMn7S8u4Vr6zdqLzPmt-30ESka9wNEWYEHBZJgIIodRLIiAmOn2I4DS2XjmFu0pxfH-pz5DMkHdM3ohlEzF1YYyGEY7yfpZveQy7XxiLIJjDeZdiL7rHAWszxE9OpLnMG7foaDM/s640/Grand+Canyon+Homecoming+Video.png" /></a></div>One day two years ago, a man ties a GoPro camera to a little white balloon. He releases it. In the video, we see him letting us go: his open hand a goodbye. Then, we ascend above the red earth until we can see a red squiggle through the Southwest. It is the Grand Canyon.<br />
<br />
After rising steadily through red-orange earth, our little balloon now matures. It takes in the inky black of space, separated from the earth by a hazy, yet luminous, line that wobbles back and forth as our dirigible bobbles happily through space. <br />
<br />
Departing, a peace descends-ascends: oh, this is it, to travel beyond the confines of earth, to edge away, above, beyond. To be freed.<br />
<br />
Just then, at more than 100,000 feet above the planet, we see a pale drippy thing scurry past our gaze. Our camera eye is abruptly swiveled 180 degrees upward. Before our shredded self, a hundred white confetti bits explode outward across an azure blue background. They--we--drift. A little meteor shower of dispersed skin. So beautiful.<br />
<br />
No time for that, now. We plummet crazily downward, a Charlie Chaplinesque comedy of sped up time. Just as easily as we left the earth's confines, we are deposited solidly again in the low, ochre field, which doesn't hesitate to take us--or is rather indifferent to us--as we, who have known such expanses, stare again our camera eye at the close, dried, yellow brush.<br />
<br />
Just wondering: Which place is the homecoming?<br />
<br />
<a href="http://vp.nyt.com/video/2015/09/15/35538_1_balloon-grand-canyon_wg_720p.mp4">Watch Grand Canyon from Space video here</a>Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-41241400274147814652015-09-13T22:28:00.001-07:002015-09-13T22:28:15.553-07:00Quan Yin in the Valley Fire<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtl1/t31.0-0/p180x540/11708048_10153602235419324_667209579980851_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtl1/t31.0-0/p180x540/11708048_10153602235419324_667209579980851_o.jpg" /></a></div>I meditated many times on a bench before this statue of Quan Yin, just having emerged from an ice cold pool (and just before that, a very hot pool). <br />
<br />
Cross-legged on the bench before Quan Yin, I shivered into insights, sometimes staying there meditating for thirty minutes or more. She seemed to look on with benevolence. The light, petals of slim sun, flickered through the grove. The more goose bumps emerged as I breathed steadily, the more insights descended. In her upturned hand, flowers someone had placed with care, above the lip of her hallowed flask. In there, held against her chest, carefully guarded, delicately poised, the secret waters of healing.<br />
<br />
Now Harbin Hot Springs, where this grove is found in Middletown, CA, has burned down in the Valley Fire, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-middletown-profile-20150913-story.html">according to the LA Times</a>. <br />
<br />
My condolences and prayers for the entire Middletown and Hidden Valley Lake communities, including the Middletown Rancheria of the Pomo Indian community. May those who have lost their homes be offered comfort, care, and prayers. Let us say a special prayer for the animals, especially horses, who were left behind in the rush to evacuate this rapidly moving fire. May they move to safety as best they can.Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-32404140746711933222015-09-10T08:31:00.000-07:002015-09-10T08:56:34.457-07:00Reading Oct. 4 in San FranciscoI am pleased to be reading in the Bazaar Writers Salon in San Francisco.<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Sunday, October 4th, 6:00 p.m.<br />
Bazaar Cafe, 5927 California St., SF</blockquote><br />
I'll be reading for around 25 minutes. Fiction writer Mark Labowskie and poet Casey Thayer will also be reading. Thanks to Peter Kline, the series maestro, for inviting me.<br />
<br />
Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-67656218178524108632015-09-08T23:30:00.000-07:002015-09-08T23:30:25.381-07:00The Dating Life: I'll Make It Easy For YouI received a note from a gentleman on a dating site. The note reads, "I think we have a lot in common." When I clicked on his profile, it showed a scowling man in a black muscle shirt, sitting on a home weight lifting set, bicep positioned across his body as his fist closes around a Budweiser can. I wondered about the in common. <br />
<br />
In one of the photos, though, he is smiling and seems to show his genuine heart. He identifies his ethnicity as Native American, background as Mexican, height 5'3".<br />
<br />
But what touches me is his "About Me," which for me reads like pure poetry:<br />
<blockquote>About Me <br />
<br />
single never been married and no kids always working now it time for me in you think you can rope this wild stud come get me if i like you i'll make it easy for you just grab me and hold me and say i want you</blockquote>Tiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1686620008673680207.post-32181601638330722842015-08-15T18:26:00.000-07:002015-08-15T18:45:35.282-07:00Brazilian Translations from Hilary KaplanGreat translations of Brazilian poet Angélica Freitas, translated by Hilary Kaplan in the latest <i>Granta</i> magazine.<br />
<br />
And a beautiful story from Gonçalo M. Tavares on life in Rio de Janeiro in <i>Granta</i>: <br />
<blockquote>And that’s all there is to it: in Rio de Janeiro the average distance between humans is shorter. And that carries enormous consequences.<br />
<br />
When I walk through Rio de Janeiro, I see moving human spots. It’s the only city, even in Brazil, where skin colour truly doesn’t exist. In other cities, when a white man and a black man walk side by side, even in strong and most excellent companionship, I see the black and I see the white. Not in Rio. In Rio, there are spots of people. After a spot of two, a blot of four, another of six, only with great effort will I be able to make out the colours (like an amateur art critic). Out of those spots come – and we realize this only with great effort, almost artificially – a black man, a mixed race man and a white man (for example).<br />
<br />
The average distance between two people, then: the smallest in the world.</blockquote><a href="https://granta.com/rio-de-janeiro/">Read Tavares' story here</a> <br />
<a href="http://www.publico.pt/culturaipsilon/noticia/rio-de-janeiro-1687501">Read Tavares' story in Portuguese</a><br />
<br />
And here are the two poems by Angélica Freitas, translated by Hilary Kaplan:<br />
<br />
from "Artichoke":<br />
<br />
<blockquote>the bearded lady simply didn’t feel<br />
<br />
the need to discuss<br />
<br />
every little everyday thing</blockquote><br />
Who can resist a poem with a bearded lady? Put <i>that</i> in your artichoke and smoke it. <br />
<br />
<a href="https://granta.com/artichoke/">Read "Artichoke" here</a><br />
<br />
from "woman is a construct":<br />
<br />
<blockquote>woman is basically meant<br />
to be a residential complex<br />
all the same<br />
all plastered over<br />
just in different colors</blockquote>Geesh, I hope not!<br />
<br />
<a href="https://granta.com/woman-is-a-construct/">Read "woman is a construct" here</a> from Angélica Freitas, translated by Hilary KaplanTiffany M. Higginshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10827685611997445613noreply@blogger.com0