Bicycling Through The Underground Railroad

Today's posting was taken from an NPR piece on a group of cyclists riding 2,100 miles along the historic Underground Railroad. The journey from Mobile, Ala., to Ontario, Canada, follows the route that many slaves used to escape to freedom.

The multi-racial group of travelers say they have been deeply affected by the things they have seen and learned during their trek. The average age of the group is 60, and the oldest rider is 77. The six-week tour costs nearly $2,700. They left Mobile on April 14. There, they visited the slave market and a community formed by Africans who escaped from the last known slave ship to come to the U.S. in 1860, more than 50 years after the importation of African slaves was outlawed.

The path they are following is based partly on the spiritual "Follow the Drinking Gourd." The "Drinking Gourd" is a colloquial name for the "Big Dipper," the constellation that points to Polaris, the North Star. Many slaves followed that star north to freedom.

The trip's leader, Alvin Justelien, says the ride has been like a ministering program to him. He says he hopes people learn about the love it required for those involved in the railroad to put their lives on the line to help others. The riders say they hope the trip will promote more dialogue between the races and expect to reach Owen Sound in Canada, the final terminal of the Underground Railroad, on May 30.

Posting info provided by Allison Keyes at National Public Radio.


Now, here's a poem you can hop-on and ride:


To Somewhere Or By

A forest that gives way to paper.

Tarpaulin scratched across pages of verbs.

A door leading to your porcelain yes.

Pink undertones entwined or a cold sore.

Her spine curves into the turnstile.

He nuzzles closer, twice her size.
Language concealed in flashing signals.

There is rain on the rails.

The lavender in a dream (with ruffles).

Oil-slick bubbles in a burnt-blue shimmer.

The O in a vowel made form oak.

Mail that consists mostly of bills.

A leaf against my cheek.Knew it was,

anyway, and tug-of-warring.

This poem first appeared online at: http://www.42opus.com/
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my e-zine at: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and music blog at: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/

The Origins Of Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday that is observed on the last Monday of May (observed this year on 2007-05-28). It was formerly known as Decoration Day. This holiday commemorates U.S. men and women who have died in military service to their country. It began first to honor Union soldiers who died during the American Civil War. After World War I, it expanded to include those who died in any war or military action.

According to Professor David Blight of the Yale University History Department, the first memorial day was observed in 1865 by liberated slaves at the historic race track in Charleston. The site was a former Confederate prison camp as well as a mass grave for Union soldiers who had died while captive. A parade with thousands of freed blacks and Union soldiers was followed by patriotic singing and a picnic.

The official birthplace of Memorial Day is Waterloo, New York. The village was credited with being the birthplace because it observed the day on May 5, 1866, and each year thereafter, and because it is likely that the friendship of General John Murray, a distinguished citizen of Waterloo, and General John A. Logan, who led the call for the day to be observed each year and helped spread the event nationwide, was a key factor in its growth. At that time the day was called Docoration Day.

The alternative name of "Memorial Day" was first used in 1882, but did not become more common until after World War II, and was not declared the official name by Federal law until 1967. On June 28, 1968, the U. S. Congress passed the Uniform Holidays Bill, which moved four holidays from their traditional dates to a specified Monday in order to create a convenient three-day weekend. The holidays included Washington's Birthday (which evolved into Presidents' Day), Columbus Day, Veterans Day, and Memorial Day. The change moved Memorial Day from its traditional May 30 date to the last Monday in May. The law took effect nationwide in 1971.

This Memorial Day let's remember the 3,452 service members who have perished all in the name of "liberating" Iraq and "fighting terrorism". Let's also remember the hundreds of thousands of warriors who have died in the past so we can sleep in late, eat juicy burgers and drink our beer while throwing a baseball around today. Find out more at: http://www.usmemorialday.org/

Research info provided by: www.wikipedia.org


Today's poem:


The Word "Intergalactic" Bordered By Flashing Lights

As we pretend to be our own caretakers never expecting

a single sign of redemption...

"What if tomorrow turns out to be the last available seat on

the bus", she worries, as the blue veins whisper words of

affection beneath her opaque skin.

"That would never happen but if it did the road ahead would

likely be laced with potholes and could easily be disguised

as a snake laced around our occipital wrists", I reply, after

finding our return-tickets to nowhere.

And pigeons crowded with feathers in the rafters watch us

dine on our heroics wrapped in tin foil or

aliens wait for the perfect time to mutate into no-smoking signs

This poem first publised at: http://www.moriapoetry.com/
Copright 2007 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my e-zine: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and music blog: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/

The German Oprah

Today's posting is about a woman who many consider German TV's evaluate of America's Oprah Winfrey. She is a talkshow celebrity I first noticed when I lived and worked as a freelance photographer there during the 80s.

Arabella Kiesbauer ( born April 8, 1969 in Vienna as Cosima Arabella Asereba Kiesbauer) is a well-known Austrian television host, with TV shows in Switzerland, and particularly in Germany.

Kiesbauer (which means gravel farmer in German) is the daughter of the German theater actress Hannelore Kiesbauer and Ghanaian mechanical engineer Sammy Ammissah. She was raised by her grandmother in Vienna. After the Matura at the Lycee Francais de Vienne she studied journalism and theater sciences.

She began a television career 1987 as a host of the ORF Jugensendung X-Large. Then in 1994 in she hosted a daily Talkshow Arabella and in that same year published a CD titled NUMBER One.

On June 9, 1995, a racially-motivated letter bomb assassination was made, an incident in which a female assistant was hurt. The sender, Franz Fox was seized later and committed suicide before he was sent to trail.

A month later, in July 1995 Arabella appeared on the cover of the German version of Playboy as if to send a message to other would-be assassins. In 2004 Arabella was intended to be replaced by a new show called Confession but in the end both shows were concealed.

That same year she did play the relevant host of a show called “Nachmittagstalkshow", which polarized the spectators. The unorthodox talkshow, with its controversial topics and hardline tactics may have been too much for the Bavarian television taste and was taken off the air after only a brief run.

Over the past few years, Arabella has been working as a model for Vögele Shoes in Switzerland, as well as a jury member on the TV show Music Box. She married in November 2004 to a Viennese entrepreneur Florens Eblinger after a seven-year-old relationship with the painter and cameraman Fred Schuler.

So, I hope all my friends who don't believe me when I said, "Germany has never imported Oprah Winfrey's talkshow because it has it own Oprah" will believe me now. I'm glad my memory still serves me well, glad there's Wikipedia to verify it, and extremely glad I don't have to write my address down on the palm of my hand before I go to the laundry room in case I get lost, at least not yet anyway.

Now, here's a poem for you talkshow lovers:


Or The God Who Plunders Saltworks

Sleep you can teach how to curtsy.

The alternative story appears in pictures of sun

on a lake of still water and includes a disclaimer.

Some sunbathers from the gravel pit stop for lunch.

"I'll rearrange your furniture if you give me an all-day

admission pass", he says, hoping her birthmark is

merely a quiet animal. " Sometimes the shapes &

sizes can vary from a mustache to lead pipe", she

replies, just before her barbershop closes. And

over the years a trumpet becomes more & more

vague...

bringing buckets of ice water by day...

& a fox loose in the chicken coupe by night.

A list of ways to threat hysteria.

Mental illnesses that are mistaken for scrap-metal...

always in a straight line the trees the cars the traffic...

& the way most taxidermists always seem to look so stiff.

This poem first published online at: http://www.kulturevulture.org/
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my e-zine at: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
And music blog at: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/

Remembering Yolanda King

Born in Montgomery, Alabama, King was a human rights worker and actress. She was the oldest daugther of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She was a member of the Board of Directors of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Incorporated (the official national memorial to her father) and was founding Director of the King Center's Cultural Affairs Program. Shealso served on the Partnership Council of Habitat for Humanity, was the first national Ambassador for the American Stroke Association's "Power to End Stroke" Campaign, a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a sponsor of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Human Rights Campaign, and held a lifetime membership in the NAACP.

Yolanda Denise King received a B.A. degree with honors from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, a Masters degree in Theatre from New York University and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Marywood University. In 1978 she starred as Rosa Parks in the TV miniseries King (which was based on her father's life and released on DVD in 2005). She often collsborated with the playwright Attallah Shabazz, the oldest daugther of Malcolm X. Ms. King was a spokesperson for the national stroke awareness association.

On May 15, 2007, King died at age 51 in Santa Monica, California. She collapsed in the doorway of her brother Dexter King's home and could not be revived. Her family has speculated that her death was caused by a heart condition. A public memorial for Yolanda King will be held today (May 24th) at Ebenezer Baptist Church Horizons Sanctuary, the church where her father and his father before him once preached. There will not be a public viewing. King will be cremated. I was very fortunate to recieve a photo from her wake which my brother sent me and which I'd like to share with you. I'm sure that all our prays are with the family. May she rest in peace.

Research info from: www.wikipedia.org


Today's poem:


With An Accompanying Soundtrack

Later, the truck is pulled out of the murky

water as brave bystanders look on.

More apples than water. A photograph of her standing

next to an open window. The tea water boiling. More

like a 60-watt smile. Or a sign that says "For Day Use

Only". Cathedral or river. Tire tracks along a muddy

bank. Weeds wishing they could be more brazen. The

sound a busted screen door makes. "Home to me is

anywhere there are rolling hills that work up to one

gentle plateau", she says, while adding more sky to the

branches of our backyard tree. "Yeah, and there's sun

in your hair even at midnight", I reply, searching for

the bottle opener before our dam wakes up. Or try to

imagine the sun as a yellow stain on the horizon...

a forest cut away for a causeway...

more natural phenomena still unexplained.

And how the land says so much as it wades ankle-deep

in a row of porcelain wash basins...

air balloons drifting over a heelless crater.

Then gradually darker, into a blood-orange perhaps.

This poem first appeared online at: www.fifthstreetreview.com

Copyright 2007 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my e-zine at: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and music blog at: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/

How Cartoonists See It

The top Republican on the Senate committee investigating Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Penn., said over the past weekend he believes a "sizable number" of GOP lawmakers would join Democrats in expressing their lack of confidence in the attorney general and believes Gonzales, who is the head of the Justice Department and is at center of a controversy over firing of eight U.S. attorneys, could step down before a no-confidence vote is sought this week by Senate Democrats.

Gonzales will be in Washington on Monday and part of Tuesday before heading to Europe, visiting counterparts in Hungary and Switzerland and then joining a conference of leading industrial nations Thursday in Germany. He will be back in Washington on Friday — before the long Memorial Day weekend and a planned congressional vacation.

No matter where you stand on the issue of the highest lawyer in the land's questionable firing of US federal judges and whether they were "politically" motivated, here's a look at how cartoonists tackle one of the biggest news items in American poilitics, six witty examples taken from the website for Slate Magazine:

Now, cross-examine this poem:


"Pure Inflatables" Sonnet

A slide show projected on a white bed
sheet clouds like accordions Cars
hap-hazardly parked along a dusty road
A coast lash like Bearded coves More
dune grass but no roots Beach umbrellas
titled towards the sun Trash cans all
numbered Gulls stalking scraps on the
pier A high tide exceeding yes Electric
eel Red herring Things that can be lifted
by the tail Half a sand castle Bread in a
picnic basket Dogs determined to bark
Azalea faces or just plain lobster red Kite
sting too tangled to care Dusk fastening
itself to a pole Hands meant for waving
Mostly a paper moon Verbs pulling the
car home So the water tower turns to
kiss the lifeguard stand Sliding down
belly first below And in now sleep tight


First published online at: http://www.bullfightreview.com/
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my e-zine at: http://www.concelelbratory.blogspot.com/
and music blog at: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/

World's Oldest College Graduate

When you're a tutor articles in the news that have to do with education always catch your eye. This past week I stumbled upon a story that made national headlines. The story is about the world's oldest person to receive a college diploma.

Nola Ochs just mounted the stage to receive her bachelor's degree in general studies and history during a May 13th graduation ceremony at Fort Hays State University in Fort Hays, Kansas. What makes the event noteworthy is that Ms. Ochs is 95 years old.

When she was handed her degree by current Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, the crowd gave her a standing ovation, breaking a rule against applauding until all the names of all 2,176 graduates were read -- including that of her granddaughter, Alexandra Ochs who graduated with her. Relatives from as far away as California cheered and waved American flags as she walked across the stage.

She told a news conference after the ceremony that she was "just another student". But none of the other graduates will be entered in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest person receiving a college degree. The former record holder was Mozelle Richardson, who earned a degree from the University of Oklahoma in 2004 at the age of 90.

Ms. Ochs is the matriarch of a family that includes three sons -- a fourth died in 1995 -- along with 13 grandchildren and 15 great grandchildren. She started taking classes occasionally at Dodge City Community College after the 1972 death of her husband of 39 years, Vernon. After moving to Fort Hays last fall from her farm southwest of Jetmore, she completed the final 30 hours required for her degree.

My hat's off to you Ms. Ochs. I hear you are considering a master's degree. I wish just one of these spoiled brats (hope they don't read this) I teach could show even a fraction of your determination to succeed. I want you to know too, that I'm waiting patiently for an announcement that you're received you Master's. Good Luck!

Photo: Nola Ochs with Gov. Sebelius. Research info provided by AP.

Now, the least I can do is dedicate a poem to you:


Obscure & Rather Iridescent

Masquerading as trees we

step into the night A thick

coat of laurel nobody wants

to steal Recovering from

a fear of decimals in high

places A set of hairy paws

raised in a friendly salute

"Let me snow on your

parade" she suggests More

photos framed in a velveteen

relief Colossal green olives

suitable for martinis One good

squint & you can see the rockies

A glinting mirror in the shape

of a heart An intimacy as

anonymous as generic cereal

Longing for another summer

white sale Pagan drawings

impaled on the edges of

stalagmite At dawn the dream

sequence unravels like yarn


This poem first published at: http://www.redchinamagazine.com/
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my e-zine at: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and music blog at: http://www.medleymakersant.com/

Obama's "Shamrock Connection"

Know who I'd like to see as the next President of what was, and hopefully what can be again, the great nation of America; Barack Obama.

A while ago he made an historic trip to the nation of Kenya in Africa to search for the roots of his father's side of the family. Now as it looks, he will make another equally historic trip to search for his mother's side of the family, this time to a tiny village in Ireland.

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, Democratic candidate for president, is the talk of this village because of recently unearthed records made by Stephen Neill, a local Anglican rector, that indicate that the church documents, along with census, and in accordance with immigration and other records tracked down by U.S. genealogists, appear to show that Obama's great-great-great-grandfather, Fulmuth Kearney, was reared in Moneygall, the tiny village in Ireland, and then left for America in 1850, when he was 19.

Megan Smolenyak, chief family historian for Ancestry.com, an online repository of family history records, said that although no single "smoking gun" document was found, there are about 20 different records that when pieced together make her "absolutely certain" of Obama's Moneygall roots.

Kearney sailed to New York aboard the S.S. Marmion at a time when legions of Irish were leaving their famine-stricken island. The shoemaker's son made a life in America, and his family line eventually produced Ann Durham, who was born in Kansas, according to Ancestry.com. Durham would eventually marry a Kenyan, also named Barack Obama, who was studying in Hawaii, and in 1961 they would have a son, now a leading candidate to become president of the United States. And while neither Obama nor his campaign has confirmed the connection, it has created a buzz in Moneygall, which has one stoplight, two pubs and a population of 298. Find out more about the candidate at: http://www.barackobama.com/

Research info from an article in The Washington Post by Mary Jordan.

Before you comtemplate your bloodlines, here's a poem to read:


"Skip #86" Sonnet

I have my reasons. For instance,
the ability to carry a brimming
teacup across a crowded station
for one. To carve a world from
an aerodrome of downed power
lines for another. Cloned orchestra
conductors and a new symphony
composed for an odometer instead
of a grandfather clock makes sense

to me too. Tarred toast. Rat-tailed

soup. Lead feathers. A forest after

forest after forest with no shortage

of pine cones. Or maybe a lamp on

a table that fits. Books that can read
to themselves. What we don't need
is more defiant caterpillars.
Edible snails. Beauty when it's not
accidental. And of course, those few
who walk around asking "why".


This poem first published at: http://www.moriapoetry.com/
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my e-zine at: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
and music blog at: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/

My Maternal Grandparents

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Flash Poetry

What is flash poetry? Flash poetry is a poem with just the right music and images- in a macromedia flash file format. It is an interactive, electronic interpretation of poetry. It is a ralatively new innovative effort to give poetry another rich outlet in order to connect people with greater human understanding. Flash Poetry (http://flashpoetry.net/) is one of the first flashpoetry-only websites, created but the advent of high-speed internet connections.

The major strength of Flash is its versatility. It's not difficult to learn basic techniques for moving text around the screen, distorting it, adding graphics and sound. With these abilities, Flash poets can produce interesting and engaging work. Yet Flash is powerful enough, if you need that power, to do much more than this. A poet with a bit (or a lot) of programming skill can build in much more complex behaviours.

One way to produce an animated poem is to take an existing conventional poem and see what you can add to it using the techniques Flash offers. This needs a bit of care, though. If the poem was satisfactory in its original state, you need to ask yourself what's to be gained by changing it. It helps if your starting point poem has some weakness, lacks something you weren't able to achieve with pencil and paper. It might be, for example, that there was a choice of words, each of which added something different, but it wasn't possible to use both. By animating the poem, you can allow the reader to see the effect of each choice, and make the additional point that there was a choice.

Start with an existing poem, then use Flash to fill in the gaps or plan your poem from the outset as an animation. Remember to bear in mind the possibilities of movement, selective display, colour while composing your piece which will require a familiarity of the capabilities of Flash.

The Irish poet Bill Dorris, has supplied an example of Flash poetry so you can see what it looks like. As is often the case with Flash poetry, "The Burning" is the result of a collaboration, in this case between Bill and American poet, Janet Kuypers. Some feel that flash poetry somehow taints the purity of the artistic endeavour. On the other hand, some could claim that the pen and paper used in writing conventional poems are manufactured by commercial companies too. What do you think? Before you decide though, take a look at: http://homepage.eircom.net/~wdorris/theburning.html

Here is a "conventional" poem to read too:


Orchids For Her Hothouse

Dear Samantha,

The orchids that accompany this letter are from a hothouse in

Delaware. At least, that's what the florist says. He's the same

guy who insists that the social interaction between individuals

of varying demographics over the limited space on this planet

should be settled with enough squabbling to counterweight the

power of the State. But he smokes a pipe so what else would

you expect. Sometimes no one speaks to him for days. They

just make their purchases and leave the correct change on the

shinny counter after giving him a supercilious stare. You're

nothing like him. You're an idea that replicates itself like a virus.

Your symptoms pass from mind to mind and can be found in the

latest fashion statement. These orchids are intended to be my

way of saying I miss your little bare pantry and the way your

farmhouse smells. I miss putting my Balinese bench where your

corral is. What I guess I really mean is I need you to recommend

my next set of power tools. And the postage stamp in the snow is

definitely foreign. Why even my plastic lawn flamingos stay awake

all night imagining backyard barbecues. Sure I have my faults and

I'll always be dishonest. But I'm getting much better at predicting

when I'm about to do something stupid.


This poem first published online at: http://www.centrifugal.com/
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my e-zine at: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
My music blog: http://www.mdeleymakersant.blogpsot.com/

Eco-Friendly Homes

Ever think about building your own affordable, energy-efficient home that could withstand anything, come hell or high water and still be an ecological purist. I know, you're thinking of prefab. But the problem with the prefab movement is that it, like most new construction, typically uses less-than-sustainable resources, like steel and wood. (True factory production could indeed reduce our ecological footprint by eliminating the waste typical of construction, but that's still quite far from reality.) And the problem with environmentally sound but old-fashioned building techniques is that they require too much time and skilled labor to solve our society's need for affordable green housing on a grand scale.

Well there may be a solution to scouring the earth for the magic bullet in home building, and that solution may be the weird, pragmatic beauty of the used shipping container. Cheap, strong and easily transportable by boat, truck or train, these big steel structures now litter the ports of America as mementos of our Asian-trade imbalance. (Many more full containers arrive on our shores than depart, so ports either ship them back empty -- to the tune of about $900 per -- or sell them.)

Hurricane proof, flood proof, fire proof, these metal Lego blocks are tough enough to be stacked 12-high empty -- and thus can be used in smaller multistory buildings. Used containers (which can be picked up for $1,500 to $2,000) often have teak floors and sometimes are insulated. The bright orange, blue and rust corrugated boxes may not appeal to everyone. But contemporary hipsters find them not just the ultimate in postmodern appropriation but aesthetically pleasing as well.

The idea is not new. Examples of designers incorporating shipping containers into residential designs date back to 1982. Lately though, a field known as container architecture has evolved, offering the hope that what was once only a post-industrial pipe dream can emerge as a practical new building form. A handful of architectural firms around the world -- from New York to New Zealand -- have built prototypes or plans for shipping-container homes. You can learn more at: www.treehugger.com/files/2005/01/shipping_contai.php


Here's a poem why you decide on an interior decorator:

Harry Houdini On Holiday

In the poem version about the untied military boots war breaks out in a
virtual car chase allowing vandals a bumper-sticker of green lights for miles
before the night is lit-up by artillery fire.

Two sacred mounds of prickly hats are blindfolded then forced to stand before
the hangman's noose where scat looks like a lavish Hollywood movie where
identity theft grows up to be urban blight's stage prop.

The blindfolds don't care. Neither does bird flu. It brings a twig to the empty
c-cup then brides porcupine quills to boycott any notice of amnesty, so long as
those little metal weighs are still sown in buttons of window drapes.


This poem first appeared online at: www.foame.org
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my e-zine at: www.concelebratory.blogspot.com
And music blog at: www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com

America's Policy Of Torture

I'm a news junkie. I've got every major domestic and foreign news source bookmarked in a file simply titled "news" in my laptop. I suppose that's why one particular article caught my eye the other day and I thought it worth sharing.

The article titled "Beyond The Multiplex" by Andrew O'Hehir and printed in Salon talks about America's current practice of torture in its war on terror and asked the question exactly how and when did the United States of America become a police state.

The piece is about an elegant and terrifying documentary "Taxi to the Dark Side" by film producer Alex Gibney which premiered this past weekend at a movie house in New York City. The movie offers a thoroughly researched history lesson on the recent development of torture as U.S. policy, from the Afghanistan invasion through Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, and is a striking account of how the Bush-Cheney administration has eviscerated the Constitution, and abandoned basic tenets of human rights and human dignity. According to Mr. O'hehir's observation, once he'd finished watching the screening, he felt like he wanted to "scream at strangers, tell them that if this country had any fucking stones we would drag these people out of Washington, strip them of their citizenship and their clothes, and drive them white-baby naked across the Rio Grande to fend for themselves in the Sonora desert."

He goes on to say, " it's not that there's any truly startling new information in Taxi to the Dark Side. Gibney makes clear how much of his film rests on the reporting of Carlotta Gall and Tim Golden of the New York Times, among various others. If you've been reading the best investigative reporting on the subject since the Abu Ghraib scandal first broke, in fact, you've gotten the main points already: The abuse and beatings and torture and murder (yes, murder) of detainees in U.S. custody have not been the result of a few undisciplined "bad apples" in the military. Rather, they have resulted from a deliberately murky policy set at the Defense Department and in the White House, whose true goals are to claim far-reaching, extra-constitutional powers for the president; to establish that Muslim detainees from other countries have no inherent human rights or legal rights at all; and to condition the American people to the belief that torture will stop terrorism, and that to think otherwise is to be a pantywaist Osama lover."

O'Hehir continues by saying, " As he did in his influential "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," Gibney illustrates the news in compelling human detail, and broadens and deepens both the reporting and the argumentation. He coaxes several former Abu Ghraib interrogators and military police to speak on camera, and there are photographs and grainy video images -- some of them pretty hard to take -- that haven't been seen by the public before. Among his interviewees are many of the star figures in this sordid drama: British-born detainee Moazzam Begg, who spent almost three years in U.S. custody; Damien Corsetti, a hulking former Army intelligence specialist who served both at Abu Ghraib and at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan; and Alberto Mora, former general counsel to the Navy and the Bush administration's leading legal whistle-blower on these issues.

Find out more at: http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org/ or http://www.salon.com/


Now, here's the latest new poems to go online:


Postcards Dipped In Corn Syrup

After many revisions Iowa stops growing corn.

Huck Finn drifts up-river and then renames the
body of water "Mutual of Omaha". Mark Twain
is still a funny read but the average yearly farm
revenue slips so low the adventure story gets a
G-P rating...


Mode et Accessoires

Some are preferred over others, for instances:

-Plastic encroachments covered with insect bits.

-Eyeliner smeared around the seafarer's porthole.

-Any constellations able to pass the white-glove test.

-Beauty with teeth strong enough to eat through the skin.

-The porous quality of crazed thrill seekers.

-An asphalt jungle woven by silk worms.

-The sibling behavior noted in snow angels.

-Woozy wanderlust just beyond the masses' reach.

-Peristaltic rhythm caught in oncoming headlights.

-The invisible thread in the eye of love's needle.

-Debts that are so old they have coagulated.


Poems first published at: http://the-otolith.blogspot.com/
Copyright 2007 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my e-zine: http://www.concelebratory.blogspot.com/
And my music blog: http://www.medleymakersant.blogspot.com/