Shame!

Shame!

Shame! Shame! Shame!

This is what we are eliminating: “USAID’s Food for Peace (FFP) Program works for a world free of hunger and poverty, where people live in dignity, peace, and security. FFP and its partners share one mission: to reduce hunger and malnutrition and assure that people everywhere have enough food at all times for healthy, productive lives.” The cost is likely to be tens of millions of lives.

WASHINGTON — Staffers of the U.S. Agency for International Development were instructed to stay out of the agency’s Washington headquarters on Monday, according to a notice distributed to them, after billionaire Elon Musk announced President Donald Trump had agreed with him to shut the agency.

USAID staffers said they also tracked more than 600 employees who reported being locked out of the agency’s computer systems overnight. Those still in the system received emails saying that “at the direction of Agency leadership” the headquarters building “will be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, Feb. 3.”

Two government employees who tried to gain access to the USAID offices in the building on Monday morning said they were turned away by security guards, who told them the offices were open but people could not go in. Later in the morning, uniformed Department of Homeland Security officers blocked the lobby of the USAID’s headquarters using yellow tape with the words “do not cross.”

The developments come after Musk, who’s leading an extraordinary civilian review of the federal government with the Republican president’s agreement, said early Monday that he had spoken with Trump about the six-decade U.S. aid and development agency and “he agreed we should shut it down.”

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The greatest commandments

The greatest commandments

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When asked to name the greatest commandment, Jesus answered with two: Love the Lord your God, with all your heart and mind and strength, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.

How do 1) revoking the humanitarian parole of persons fleeing deadly violence in their homelands, 2) denying HIV medications necessary to the well-being and survival of infected patients, 3) forbidding health organizations from inter-agency communication, thus hampering their ability to respond swiftly and smartly to the next national or global pandemic, 4) coveting the territories of other sovereign nations, 5) making disaster assistance contingent on acquiescence to unrelated political agendas — how do any of these actions in any way fulfill the laws Jesus said matter most?

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Denali

Denali

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Denali
pinnacle of the continent
prince among mountains
imposing massif
intimidating summit
bowing to no one
honoring no one
except the One
who laid your foundations
when time began
the One bearing no other name than
“I am”

Denali
long before us
long after us
heedless of politics
careless of human whim
you remain you
you need no name
we might give you
bearing only the name
that is already yours
Dee-naa-lee
“Tall One”

Denali
what you are
is what you are
irrespective of moniker
your dignity
irrevocably bestowed
may we too
wear a dignity unbesmirched
by narrow-minded defamation
each bearing the name shared
with every son of Adam and daughter of Eve
“Child of God”

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A warning

A warning

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When the separation between church and state is erased, the one is subsumed into the other. It is not the state that loses its identity and purpose. It is the church. It is already happening.

When a large part of the evangelical church weds itself to the MAGA agenda, it sacrifices its distinctive message. There is no gospel in Trumpism: no grace, no mercy, no compassion, no love, certainly no love for enemies as Jesus commanded, and even little love for neighbors.

“Be on your guard against false prophets; they come to you looking like sheep on the outside, but on the inside they are really like wild wolves. You will know them by what they do.” (Matthew 7:15-16)

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Whatever shall we do with you, Charlie?

Whatever shall we do with you, Charlie?

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Whatever shall we do with you, Charlie,
Preaching hate in the name of love, Charlie,
Disparaging the least of these, Charlie,
Betraying the Lord you claim, Charlie?

Last Wednesday, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and a self-identified evangelical Christian, complained about the ASL interpreters taking up half the screen during Los Angeles fire briefings, calling them a distraction. “We can’t do this. We gotta get back to how it used to be … It’s just too much. The reason is they do these emergency briefings for fires or terrorist attacks, and you’re looking at this and you’re not listening. I don’t like it … Closed captioning’s perfectly fine.”

Whatever shall we do with you, Charlie,
Preaching hate in the name of love, Charlie?
But what if your daughter were deaf, Charlie,
Would you be singing a different tune, Charlie?

A year ago, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and a self-identified evangelical Christian, said: ”If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified.’”

Whatever shall we do with you, Charlie,
Preaching hate in the name of love, Charlie?
If you broke down on the edge of the road, Charlie,
Would you take help from a man who is black,, Charlie?

At America Fest, in December, 2023, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and a self-identified evangelical Christian, said: “We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s … The courts have been really weak on this. Federal courts just yield to the Civil Rights Act as if it’s the actual American Constitution.” [It’s] “a way to get rid of the First Amendment.”

Whatever shall we do with you, Charlie,
Preaching hate in the name of love, Charlie?
Shall I hate you in return, Charlie,
Or pray for a change of heart, Charlie?

This last summer, while introducing the Republican presidential candidate at a campaign rally, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA and a self-identified evangelical Christian, said: “I worship a God that defeats evil.”

May God have mercy on your soul, Charlie,
The God who says vengeance is mine, Charlie.
Pray God show grace to you, Charlie,
So much more than ever you’ve shown, Charlie.

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On Salamander Road

On Salamander Road

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There is nothing like a morning breeze
Arustling through these ice-coated trees,
The briny air a wintry tease
On Salamander Road.

For thirty years I’ve lived this lane,
My nearest neighbor a sandhill crane,
But she went away with September rain
On Salamander Road.

Loud squawks of gulls disturb the quiet,
They swoop and twirl in exuberant riot.
If I were a bird I’d have to try it
On Salamander Road.

Pale sun sits low in the clouded sky,
Across its face two ospreys fly,
Their whistles echo, a haunting cry
On Salamander Road.

A tufted titmouse alights on the limb
Of a scruffy tamarack, perhaps on a whim,
But bringing delight as I gaze on him
On Salamander Road.

A pileated woodpecker, that prince of birds,
Circles a cedar in a dance of thirds,
Its plumes a sight that beggars words
On Salamander Road.

Our Maine state bird, a black-capped chickadee,
Twitters its song and hops about merrily,
Its antics cheering, but only temporarily
On Salamander Road.

There is nothing like a morning walk,
A January check on all my flock,
Escaping all the poppycock
On Salamander Road.

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“Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies”

“Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies”

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Gathering in the tender hours of a crystalline winter morning in Maine, eleven members of the Deer Isle Writers Group enjoyed the blessed bounty of a Bayley buffet before pausing, after some persistent chatter about Thanksgiving dinners and two-year-old puppies and three-thousand-acre broccoli fields in northern Maine, to listen with careful consideration to a prompt delivered by erudite writer cum gifted artist, Frederica Marshall, the prompt curiously provocative, a line from an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem, “childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies,” prompting, as it were, from some of them immediate protestations to the contrary, those writers maintaining that, of course, goldfish die and pets die and, yes, people die, too, when one is yet a child, except that, if you read Millay’s poem, you realize that is not her point at all, that she readily acknowledges that cats die then to be buried by a weeping child in the backyard in a box bigger than a shoe-box, engendering a grief that, though entirely real, does not burrow deep into one’s soul eliciting an outburst of “Oh, God! Oh, God!” in the middle of the night two years hence, and that distant relatives die that the child hardly knows and, therefore, “cannot really be said to have lived at all,” all of this a prelude to the crux of her poem which is that “childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies that matters,” meaning mothers and fathers, meaning mothers and fathers don’t die, except they do sometimes and do eventually, which is her point, that the death of a mother or a father, of one toward whom all of one’s kingdom is oriented, knowing intimately their routines, their foibles, their quotidian pleasures, their well-earned pride, the death of this mother or this father leaving one standing alone in their house drinking tea now gone cold, is the death of childhood.

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Her name is Eilidh

Her name is Eilidh

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Her name means Radiant OneEilidh
Bright and brilliant and exuberant
Blazing orb at the center
Of her own universe
Our bodies and hearts bound
                        in her orbit.

Her name could mean Eccentric One
Odd and abstruse and outlandish
Baffling behaviors defying explanation
Compulsive routines taxing toleration
Our bodies and hearts bewildered
                       by her id.

Her name should mean Indefatigable One
Tireless and tenacious and temerarious
Jumping in with all four feet
Sprinting, bounding, leaping, flying
Our bodies and hearts drained
                       by her zeal.

Her name means Radiant One
Bodacious and beautiful and beguiling
Commanding our complete attention
Even is spite of ourselves
Our bodies and hearts utterly ensnared
                       by her charms.

Her name is Eilidh

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