Catching Some Rays

 

Mid-March Morning

 

At the Museum

 A few images from the current exhibition, 

Coast to Coast to Coast: Indigenous Art from the McMichael Canadian Art Collection

Taksam (woodbug) - Beau Dick

Eagle Spirit - Simon Dick

Transformation Mask - Art Thompson

Chief of the Undersea Kingdom - Johnny Davis

Chief of the Undersea Kingdom - Charlie George Sr.

Crooked Beak of Heaven  - Henry Speck Jr.

Albuquerque Spring

 

The Neighborhood

River Otters at the Aquarium

The Day after SOTU

 Biden put on a good performance in his State of the Union address.  He said about what I expected, including in those last seconds of the speech in which he vowed to conquer cancer.  

Well, every president in my now lengthy memory of the office has promised that.  So, the question remains: How do we weigh the damage we have contributed to in Gaza against the prospects of success in Biden's agenda, and the obvious threat of allowing Trump back into office?  It is clearly a complex computation.  

For instance:

 5 people killed in Gaza as aid package parachute fails to deploy

Eight months to go.

More:

I heard one of the pundits after Biden's speech referring to protestors wanting an immediate ceasefire as "one issue" voters.  I disagree.  Thirty thousand dead are thirty thousand issues.

A message for Joe

 Robert Reich, in today's Guardian, has a few suggestions for what Biden might want to say in this evening's State of the Union address.  Reich's list is essentially an outline for a coherent Democratic Party platform based on FDR's 1936 summary of his first term accomplishments.  I thought it was a good list as far as it went.  Missing was any mention of Gaza, or the complicity of the U.S. military-industrial complex in the ongoing Genocide.  We'll see what Joe has to say on those topics.

Makeba

Miriam Makeba Foundation

 

We often listen to the music of Miriam Makeba, but a recent long article on the Daily Kos brought forth memories for me of when I first became aware of her sixty years ago. The article includes a short biography from South Africa History Online, and links to many of Makeba's songs. Listening to the Swahili song, Malaika, brought forth a particularly emotional response from me because of the way it reminded me of her extraordinary voice, strength and courage.

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest. In those years the area had no overt evidence of racism -- no signs proclaiming separate public facility access. The racism was largely hidden from sight in housing contracts and unspoken assumptions. I don't recall any people of color then in the vast expanse of tract homes where we lived outside of Bellevue. I did have a Filipino friend and a Black friend in high school.  If it were not for the children of those two families Bellevue High School would have been totally segregated.

I recall as a child having strong feelings about any kind of unfairness or injustice.  However, the lack of any real contact with clear racist expression kept my level of awareness at an abstract level for a long time.  Makeba's appearance on the world stage gave a sense of reality and urgency to the issue. The problems of inequality and racism are clearly still with us, but Makeba's songs continue to bolster the resolve to overcome.

Morning in Old Town