Spring melts ICE

Today is the Celtic feast of Imbolc. In Celtic country it would be the first day of Spring. Here in the North Country it's mid-Winter and snow is falling. We're a month from the start of meteorological Spring and about seven weeks from astronomical Spring (locally Friday, March 20, 2026 at 9:46 am CDT). At least the temperature is beginning to moderate from the well below 0℉ we've been experiencing for days.

when ICE melts it flows away

Photo by J. Harrington

It's also the first day of Black History Month. This year is the 100th anniversary. We as a country and as a collection of peoples continue to battle, 250 years after declaring independence, on the proper interpretation of the phrases in that declaration:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

In a couple of weeks it will be Valentines Day, a fine time to acknowledge that Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness for all (men) are at the heart of what America keeps trying to be all about.

Too many of US try to insert a parenthetical (white) ahead of men and apply only a literal interpretation to that three letter term, erasing the Bill of Rights and the 14th and 15th amendments to our Constitution. Since this year we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our founding, it seems highly inappropriate to regress to making a black person equal to 3/5 of a white and rescinding the rights of women to vote, bodily autonomy, and health care.

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day. It's forecast to be cloudy until almost 10 am tomorrow in Punxsutawney, PA, so maybe Phil won't see his shadow and we can look forward to an early Spring and an accompanying destruction of ICE and the other negative forces supporting a kleptocracy of autocratic oligarchs who would turn US into a nation of slaves. We can do better!

I look at the world

Langston Hughes

1901 – 1967

 

I look at the world

From awakening eyes in a black face —

And this is what I see:

This fenced-off narrow space

Assigned to me.



I look then at the silly walls

Through dark eyes in a dark face —

And this is what I know:

That all these walls oppression builds

Will have to go!



I look at my own body

With eyes no longer blind —

And I see that my own hands can make

The world that’s in my mind.

Then let us hurry, comrades,

The road to find.

“I Look at the World” by Langston Hughes, copyright © 2009 by The Estate of Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of Langston Hughes and International Literary Properties LLC.

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Please be kind to each other while you can

Valentine's minus 4

Red, in different shades, is the color for Valentine’s Day. That means on or before the fourteenth of this month we’ll start looking at the local clusters of dogwood to see if the colors of their stems have brightened yet. I bet we can find a few more vases and places to set them if we collect some dogwood stems to help brighten the rooms and hasten the feeling of spring’s arrival.

red osier dogwood in February

Photo by J. Harrington

Red, again in different shades for arteries (bright) or veins (dark), is a color that comes into view or to mind all too often in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric.

Citizen came out in October 2014. In the first printing, according to a Graywolf publicist, Page 134 read:

November 23, 2012 / In Memory of Jordan Russell Davis  

That was the date the black 17-year-old was gunned down in Jacksonville, Florida.

The next page, 135, was headed:

February 15, 2014 / The Justice System

That was the date the prosecution of Davis’ shooter, Michael Dunn, ended in a mistrial. (Dunn was later convicted, in October, of first-degree murder.)

But for the second printing, which went to press on Sept. 24, 2014, Rankine chose to add another name to Page 134’s written monument—that of Ferguson’s Michael Brown. The new edition read:

November 23, 2012 / In Memory of Jordan Russell Davis

August 9, 2014 / In Memory of Michael Brown

Now, the third printing, from Nov. 20, 2014, shows the most powerful change yet. The phrase “In Memory Of” repeats down the side of Page 134, with the names of victims arrayed to the right: Jordan Russell Davis, Eric Garner, John Crawford, and Michael Brown. Blank spaces next to the remaining “In Memories” suggest that more black men will eventually join the ranks of those already fallen.

As we approach Valentine’s Day almost a decade after the third printing, it’s more than disheartening to think how much longer, with how many more names, could be added to pages 134 and following. [My copy of Citizen has a list that stops at the name Sandra Bland, “a 28-year-old African-American woman who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas, on July 13, 2015, three days after being arrested during a traffic stop.”]

I’d love to listen to, or read a transcript of, a conversation between Amanda Gorman, talking about Call Us What We Carry and Claudia Rankine, discussing Citizen and whether the former contradicts or complements the latter.

To return to a Valentine’s theme, “Only love can break a heart, only love can mend it again.”

from Citizen, VI [I knew whatever was in front of me was happening]

Claudia Rankine

I knew whatever was in front of me was happening and then the police vehicle came to a screeching halt in front of me like they were setting up a blockade. Everywhere were flashes, a siren sounding and a stretched-out roar. Get on the ground. Get on the ground now. Then I just knew.

And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.

 

I left my client's house knowing I would be pulled over. I knew. I just knew. I opened my briefcase on the passenger seat, just so they could see. Yes officer rolled around on my tongue, which grew out of a bell that could never ring because its emergency was a tolling I was meant to swallow.

In a landscape drawn from an ocean bed, you can't drive yourself sane—so angry you are crying. You can't drive yourself sane. This motion wears a guy out. Our motion is wearing you out and still you are not that guy.

 

//

 

Then flashes, a siren, a stretched-out roar—and you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.

Get on the ground. Get on the ground now. I must have been speeding. No, you weren't speeding. I wasn't speeding? You didn't do anything wrong. Then why are you pulling me over? Why am I pulled over? Put your hands where they can be seen. Put your hands in the air. Put your hands up.

Then you are stretched out on the hood. Then cuffed. Get on the ground now.

 

//

 

Each time it begins in the same way, it doesn't begin the same way, each time it begins it's the same. Flashes, a siren, the stretched-out roar—

Maybe because home was a hood the officer could not afford, not that a reason was needed, I was pulled out of my vehicle a block from my door, handcuffed and pushed into the police vehicle's backseat, the officer's knee pressing into my collarbone, the officer's warm breath vacating a face creased into the smile of its own private joke.

Each time it begins in the same way, it doesn't begin the same way, each time it begins it's the same.

Go ahead hit me motherfucker fled my lips and the officer did not need to hit me, the officer did not need anything from me except the look on my face on the drive across town. You can't drive yourself sane. You are not insane. Our motion is wearing you out. You are not the guy.

 

//

 

This is what it looks like. You know this is wrong. This is not what it looks like. You need to be quiet. This is wrong. You need to close your mouth now. This is what it looks like. Why are you talking if you haven't done anything wrong?

And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.

 

//

 

In a landscape drawn from an ocean bed, you can't drive yourself sane—so angry you can't drive yourself sane.

The charge the officer decided on was exhibition of speed. I was told, after the fingerprinting, to stand naked. I stood naked. It was only then I was instructed to dress, to leave, to walk all those miles back home.

And still you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.