Boat Oil Can

by Zoya Scholis

copyright 2009

acrylic painting

2010: The Twilight of Illusions

Editorial Opinion by Bea Garth

copyright 2009

What is there to say? 2009 has been no ordinary year while 2010 begins with  a feeling of  quiet desperation, wandering around in an increasingly surreal twilight. Of course  it seems like all our years are extraordinary these days. But this past year began with such hope with the election of our new African-American president–not just for America but for people across the planet–as evidenced by President Obama’s recent Nobel Peace Prize. For many, the last vestiges of hope were rather callously dashed when Obama  approved of adding 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan just three days before he received the Nobel Peace Prize this Fall and proceeded to give a speech lauding ‘War as Peace’ (remind you of anything??).

Obama is not the leader most of the world thought he would be. He is instead, as he actually claimed, a centrist Democrat, much in the style of Bill Clinton. In many ways he is so centrist he leans decidedly towards the right. Ronald Reagan is after all one of his heroes.  Certainly his claims for “Change” are largely illusory since he represents Wall Street and the Big Banks,  the War Economy,  Health Care Reform for the Big Insurance Companies (and not the little guy as hoped) and in actuality,  helped to create more chaos in Copenhagen concerning Global Warming through his  appalling lack of organized leadership. His Administration had nearly eleven months to prepare–and what happened? Basically nothing except Obama went there as a kind of (confusing) symbolic act. America’s pathetic promise to reduce emissions by 17% in 2020 is a case in point (Obama as you might recall just asked for 15%–it was the Republicans who politicked for the additional 2%).

As a result neither Left nor Right seems happy, though I am betting certain Republicans have a wicked little smile behind their complaints. Many are probably thinking that with Obama as president they couldn’t have gotten a better Christmas present. After all, the Left is becoming seriously alienated with their new obfuscating President on almost every important issue that has been up this past year.  For instance it is now claimed the “Recession is over” while the job market remains seriously depressed with no end in sight. And on top of it all more and more people on the Left are now convinced there is no purpose for them to participate in politics (since just look at what happened when they did!).

If the Health Insurance Bill actually passes both houses in Congress without the public option and is signed by the ebullient Obama (which appears to be what will happen),  a great many Americans will end up being very unhappy.  Those on the Right will see it as  indicative of wasteful Big Government spending.  And those on the Left are upset since the Health Insurance Bill without the public option is less than appealing.  However one looks at it,  it appears the public will be  left with a bill that supports the Big Insurance companies while creating extra expense for the average American at a time when most can ill afford it.  Additionally the  Senate amendment, which makes abortion insurance  more expensive and complex (by having to pay for it with a separate check), is a huge slap in the face of most women.

Its supposed to be a brand New Year of positive Change — instead what we have gotten is our hopes for a better world turned upside down. The Left needs reinventing and the Middle has been made into a mockery. In a year when the Right should  be feeling pretty low, they now   have gotten a big boost towards  winning the next round of elections.

This just won’t do. We had eight years of Bush — which basically created a world of economic, social and impending climate catastrophe. There needs to be Change like most of America (and the world) wanted.  The last thing this planet needs is for us all to do nothing — if only to avert catastrophic levels of Global Warming (its not going to go away by itself!!).

This New Year seems to me to represent the twilight of our collective illusions.  It seems as a body politic that we Americans need to  look even farther inward before anything moves on the surface. We are after all involved with the famed impending Apocalypse–which is turning out to be more true than I would have ever thought.  Many of us  continue to struggle financially, which takes much of our time and makes many of us unable or unwilling to do anything political other than perhaps participate in sending mass emails.

2010 looks difficult, bereft as it is of the hope we had last year.  It  feels like many of us are wandering around in the dimming air  as we watch President Obama and the Democratically controlled Congress with disbelief.  Perhaps we are all just gestating. It is my hope that when it is time for us to break out of our shell more people will begin to incorporate their personal healing work and spirituality into politics which will help inform right action.  Which is not to say it will be easy.  It will be hard work. No matter how you call it, politics as usual just isn’t working.   I for one look forward to when politics can take new shape again. For now its slow beginnings.

Meanwhile, as I see it, we as creative  people need to dig deep to express our deepest feelings personally and collectively while at the same time begin to learn to hang together to better negotiate the coming times.

Texture Gold & White

by Zoya Scholis

copyright 2009

acrylic painting

Koni’s Song

by Al Preciado

copyright 2009

.

.

I claim no ownership over the country hood of women

Save one

This new terrain of she.  Her unfolding, fresh continent

of possibilities, land I want to discover with floods of wanting

overwhelming her flowers, her apricot orchards, her Midwest cornfields

She is not a dream like so many others, but blood, bones

Her chemical soul captivates, compels

I am an immigrant standing cautious, pensive outside the walls

encircling the bright city of her heart  At the border, her smiles flicker

like streetlights, beckoning, bending, pushing me down beaten path

of redemption , salvation, down the freeways that grid California, over

the golden hills, the white windmills rotating the velvet breeze calling

like her  touch, her honey caress

I always believed that a new love would hammer me like an

earthquake Crash into me a tidal wave, spin me like a flock of seagulls

shaped  like a tornado, or burn me like the late afternoon torch of

the  Mojave sun

But it enters the new territory of us on padded feet

A mouse whispering past a cat

Ant creeping across the pillow

Or the Tule fog rolling across the Central Valley sublime

This new nation of she enters not like a jackhammer

But like a soft kiss on the neck in the middle of the shade on

an island of bliss, her kisses falling like Jacaranda blossoms

and her eyes a tangerine sunset  of warmth

Remembering Tim

by Bea Garth

copyright 2009

gouache and ink

Arms of the Angel

by Carolyn Donnell

copyright 2009

On the arms of the Angel

a line from a song

The hum of the music

rises to my tongue

whenever I see

gray-haired

bent ladies wobbly

walkers crossing

at lights

insufficient time to catch the train

closed doors don’t wait, schedules to keep.

Guy in the wheelchair.

Unwashed,feeble, maneuvering down

Main Street. To where?

veteran of wars

sent to kill

returned home

to die untended.

Mothers with children

no home to keep.

Bankers’ golden balloon.

Others, no place to sleep.

Where are the families,

sons, daughters or friends?

Church and charity they say

but too often they really pray,

“Thank you God, I am not like them.”

Where is the angel for all of these?

Are angels that selective and few?

On the arms of the Angel,

do you have one?

Lucky you.

What Goes On Now?

by Bea Garth

copyright 2009

mixed media (colored ink and colored pencil)

SLAVE SCARS

by Joan Dobbie

copyright 2009

My friend

is a black man

tall, charming, talented

& filled to the brim

with a seething volcano

of agony, hatred, terror

& rage strong enough

to cover the earth

three times over

with magma

of sorrow

Molten metal of

old prison bars, centuries

of slave chains, ever fresh

scars of daily humiliation. He

never

stops bleeding

His kingly black

race, he tells me,

held down world wide for

centuries under the

spiked colonial boot

of that monstrous lie

White Supremacy

has to stop pleading

for love & acceptance–

Enough of that evil old

game–you know the one–

where white always opens

& white always wins

He will never play chess

Our mutual friends, those

who are white, comment about

how cheerful & friendly he is,

so happy-go-lucky… always that

smile…

He’s got to be thrilled

they say, one, then another,

sporting their fashionable “O’s”

Obama! he rages. They give us

Obama! We never pick him.

Obama! He spits out the word

like a curse

Why not a Garvey? A Douglas?

a King? Why not Rev. Farrakhan?

Obama’s a puppet.

Little black puppet

on pink nylon

string. White Nation’s

house nigger. Master’s new pet

Obama is the opiate of the people

–the one lucky crab

that got out of the barrel–

Fact is, master took him out

You watch:

Master’s gonna cook him

A Valley of Ashes

By Lynn Rogers

Excerpt from a recent novel by Lynn Rogers, copyright 2009, 2008 (Inkling Press)

Prologue

Between the freeway flash of Silicon Valley and its dry hills studded with executive mansions to the end of the Delta in rural Stockton with farm houses where Oakies once stayed, lay postwar tracts of resettled whites and ship worker blacks, lay the stopping place of America’s flotsam and jetsam. It was where the most independent of all the American mavericks, the rejects, the outcasts, the estranged, once came.

And moving out of there toward Sacramento, lay cheerless towns of two stories—cost more than half a million now. Lay everything else threaded between, lives threaded between farms and freeways and warehouses spilling around them both—between the farms’ dust bowl legacy and all the freeways over dry hills, between this simple land the Oakies and Arkies settled in the thirties, to Silicon Valley—now a ghetto of overpriced houses and office waste coming back around the flat hills and sunsets.

But it wasn’t always so. Once the valley was a paradisio of sacred oaks, fish rich sloughs and berry laden plains wet with artesian wells. For thousands of years coastal natives lived simply around the seasons. After missionaries and Californios laid claim, Milpitas farmers fed the Gold Rush from hillside soil and a burst of electricity lit San Jose.

When the Valley of Heart’s Delight’s endless orchards gave way to electronics and silicon chips, a high-priced housing boom buried the land. After dot coms crashed, 9/11 terrorists unsettled whatever was left.

Workers in the old farm motor warehouse turned nuclear on the Monterey; heard their building would be torn away. Like when the high light tower fell a century ago, the valley once of fruitful land, made way for its next metamorphosis. Only thing was, those living poorest and closest too it, had lost their homes—and heart.

Paddy bent down over the green…

Editor’s Note: Above is the Prologue for “A Valley of Ashes ” published by Inkling Press in 2008. To read the first chapter, find the Novels section under the Pages list on the right and select Lynn Rogers: A Valley of Ashes.

Health Insurance Bill — in support of the government option

Editorial by Bea Garth

Whilst I was almost to the end  unconvinced, the House passed the historic Health Insurance bill which includes the government option last night. Overall I think this should give us hope that  something can actually be done right in these United States even now in 2009. While it is not a perfect bill, it is a big improvement over nothing.

I am encouraged since the government option  would not have been included except for citizen involvement. All those emails and phone calls to our Representatives actually made a huge difference. Hard to believe but true–the turn around in what was considered viable or not completely changed due to the public’s involvement this Fall rejecting the general Washington opinion that the government option was a dead deal.  So the lesson remains, more of the same must be done by all of us to encourage the Senate to follow suit. Thus don’t be surprised if I forward on a couple of calls for involvement on this. And also don’t be surprised if there is another huge build up of resistance to the government option by the big insurance companies as well as members of the Right Wing,  even if it means many of them will be irrationally negating their own benefit.

If we get a Health Insurance Bill through the Senate that doesn’t include the government option, my feeling is we  the public will have lost and big insurance companies instead will have won massively  to our detriment. So don’t lose out on this opportunity to make a real difference! Make those emails and phone calls to your senators, go to political gatherings in support of the government option for health care and write letters to the editors .  This is a portentous time to make a positive difference to lessen suffering in America despite other continuing troubles in the world.