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Happy St. Patrick’s Day to those who are celebrating; Happy Green Everything Day to everyone

Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am.
Be still and know.
Be still.
Be.
Attributed to St. Patrick

Okay, it IS St. Patrick’s Day, but the whole green thing, I made up. Why not? Celebrating green: as in the traditional color of St. Patrick’s Day; as in the Emerald Isle with its engaging traditions; as in a sustainable world; as in the lovely green eyes some people have; as in Christmas Trees, front lawns, and forests.

All over the world there are wonderful religious and cultural traditions around this day, which in Ireland is a holy day of obligation for Catholics, meaning attendance at Mass is required.

St. Patrick, a fifth century Roman, went to Ireland to convert its peoples from their pagan* Celtic traditions. He is considered the Apostle of Ireland, equal to the original twelve. He is revered by Lutherans, Anglicans, and the Eastern Rites (Orthodox and Catholic) as well as the Roman Catholic Church. It is a day cheerfully celebrated with long colorful parades and famously or infamously (depending on your view) with a heavy-duty beer-fest, sometimes with beer that is tinted green.

*”Pagan” is often used as a pejorative. I would submit that the pagan path is simply another well leading to the one great Spiritual river. We see evidence on the Earth and in the sky, that the Creative Essence (also known as God) expresses with great diversity. Dishonoring and dismissing other traditions, other mystical expressions of the one Light, is disrespectful and a powerful way manipulative political and religious leaders pit us against one another for their own ends, even to war, torture and genocide. “To connect with the great river we all need a path, but when you get down there there’s only one river.” Matthew Fox The other guy’s religion is sacred, not superstition.

On my nightstand, I keep a copy of Eknath Easwaran’s God Makes the Rivers to Flow, An Anthology of the World’s Sacred Poetry and Prose. Here is St. Patrick’s Prayer shared by Eknath in that small treasure of a volume. Depending on what your tradition or leanings are, you could substitute God, Allah, Being, Mind, Light or some other resonating pointer in place of “Christ” as used here.

ST. PATRICK’S PRAYER

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise,
Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks to me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
Salvation is of the Lord.
Salvation is of the Christ.
May your salvation, Lord, be ever with us.

© 2019, Jamie Dedes; illustration from Saint Patrick Catholic Church (Junction City, Ohio) – stained glass, Saint Patrick courtesy of Nheyob under CC BY-SA 4.0.; clip art courtesy of Public Domain Clip Art.

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My Sidto (Grandmother) Adele Riachi Aboumoosa circa 1942

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

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…the burning… a poem by Sonja Benskin Mesher

My apologies to Sonja and to readers. This poem was scheduled to appear in the March 2019 issue of the Zine, themed Waging Peace. Somehow it dropped out of the line-up. It’s an excellent poem and I know you’ll find yourself touched. / J.D.

he said the flames

came over the trees.

behind the buildings.

bombed the buildings.

so do not wonder why

i don’t play soldiers,

lay them down to die.

he says that i will not battle,

i am no good at it.

too peaceful. i can play

hospitals.

© 2019, Sonja Benskin Mesher RCA UA
Sonja Benskin Mesher‘s (sonja-benskin-mesher.net) is a woman of many talents including Asemic Writing. You’ll find samples of her Asemic Writing by rummaging around HERE. Sonja’s bio is HERE.

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Brooklyn, 1970, Rich and me

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

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Three of mine from “Levure litteraire”

“Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.”
– Mark Strand, Selected Poems

Magazine international d’information et d’éducation culturelle.

Levure litteraire is an eclectic online Zine with an international masthead featuring art, music and literature in multiple languages.  It’s the sort of Zine you will love to swim in, rich with color and experience. It’s worth your time. Meanwhile, here are three of mine published HERE in Levure litteraire. Enjoy!

Between Language and Myth

In the garden of light, I stand,

between language and myth.

Strands of wild green words
weave irresistible vines to climb.

I find the rules of grammar written
in the language of cellular memory,

strung like seedlings and pollen dust
around my bare and willing neck.

Each day I walk to the quarries
to hard mine for the sweetly lyrical.

I blister from digging in hot sands
and hard stone for parables.
The walls that bind my heart
are broken by the solace of

language spun on a vision quest.
I stride the hills of my heartland.

I write as though the fables are
my only real nourishment –

perhaps they are

Once Upon a Sea Green Day

We flew along the freeway yesterday under
a cold coastal expanse of a blue ceiling.

It reminded me of you and how we dusted
the vaults of our minds to rid them of fear
and the old lexicons of grief and guilt, the
whalebone girdles of unfounded faith and
common conventions, saccharine and sticky.

I thought of that one sea-green day we spent

under just such a sky in a land far away and
how we changed your name then, reframed
your story to tell of hope and not despair.
You sketched flowers blossoming in the dust
of a spring that promised but never delivered.

Now we don’t speak of men but of cats with

their custom of keeping heart and claws intact.
We tell ourselves stories in rhythms that resound
in deep sleep. Soon now the ancient calls to
feral festivals will still and the time’s arrived when
our only play is in the margins, fate hanging from
our skeletons like Spanish moss on old oak.

It pleases me that life’s passage spins
into poemed reliquary and a memory of the
red peau de soie I wore to your prom that June.

Le Fée Verte, Absinthe

in the wilderness of those green hours
gliding with the faerie muse along café
walls virescent, sighing jonquil wings of
poetry, inventing tales in the sooty red
mystery of elusive beauty, beguiled by an
opalescent brew, tangible for the poet and
the pedestrian, the same shared illusions
ascending the rosy ramparts of heaven

“A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world, what difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset.” Oscar Wilde

Poems by Jamie Dedes. All rights reserved.

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My Sidto (Grandmother) Adele Riachi Aboumoosa circa 1942

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

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Truth on the Ballot: Fraudulent News, the Midterm Elections, and Prospects for 2020, a report of PEN America

“…it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it … anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”  Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Warning about the risk of fraudulent news and online disinformation becoming a normalized part of U.S. political discourse, this week PEN America released Truth on the Ballot: Fraudulent News, the Midterm Elections, and Prospects for 2020. The report provides a robust analysis of efforts to counter fraudulent news in the 2018 midterm election cycle, and stresses the importance of social media platforms, candidates and political parties dramatically stepping up efforts to keep fraudulent news from badly polluting the 2020 election cycle.

The 50-page Truth on the Ballot catalogs and evaluates the steps taken by internet platforms, government agencies, and political parties to curb the influence of fraudulent news in the aftermath of the 2016 election cycle; examines current legislative proposals to regulate advertising transparency online; parses the role fraudulent news played in the 2018 midterm election cycle; and offers recommendations to stakeholders on vital steps to combat fraudulent news while protecting free expression rights ahead of the 2020 elections.

With fraudulent news and online disinformation distorting public discourse, eroding faith in journalism, and skewing voting decisions, Truth on the Ballot offers a stark warning about the normalization of fraudulent news and disinformation as campaign tactics, sounding an alarm that such unsavory methods are becoming part of the toolbox of hotly contested modern campaigns.  Micro-targeting capabilities have weaponized disinformation, so that what might once have passed muster as simply a hard-edged campaign message in the public arena can now move with stealthy, laser-like efficiency to reach sub-segments of voters while remaining invisible to the wider public or opposing campaigns.

“Fraudulent news has become an insidious virus infecting our democracy, feeding prejudices, fanning misperceptions, and shaping voting behavior in ways that can distort election outcomes. We see disturbing signals that domestic political actors are beginning to view disinformation as a necessary evil, believing that they have little choice but to fight fire with fire as opponents and outside actors bring disinformation tactics into our elections,” said Suzanne Nossel, Chief Executive Officer of PEN America.

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“To avoid a second presidential election cycle tainted by grave doubts over the role of fraudulent news and information in slanting the outcome we need online platforms to double down their investment in expert human intervention to augment the still-developing capabilities of algorithms and artificial intelligence to detect and address fraudulent news without impairing the free exchange of ideas. Political parties and campaigns need to commit unequivocally to reject the use of fraudulent information as a campaign tool. This report is an alarm bell: We cannot allow fraudulent news to make truth a casualty of our politics.”

Truth on the Ballot builds on PEN America’s October 2017 report, Faking News: Fraudulent News and the Fight for Truth, which examined how fraudulent news is eroding truth-based civic discourse and constitutes a threat to free expression. At the time, the majority of public concern over fraudulent news fixated on foreign actors, including Russian disinformation agents and Macedonian clickbait farms. While foreign-originated disinformation remains a serious concern, Truth on the Ballot warns that domestic actors are increasingly experimenting with fraudulent news and disinformation as a bare-knuckled political tactic.

Truth on the Ballot underscores the need for increased transparency regarding the funding of political ads, analyzing steps that technology companies have taken to address the problem and judging them often important, but insufficient. Additionally, the report reviews some of the most significant examples of fraudulent news during the 2018 election cycle and discusses how such disinformation shapes public discourse.

In addition to recommendations for technology companies, legislators, and political groups, Truth on the Ballot contains the first-of-its-kind Model Pledge Against Fraudulent News, a call to action for candidates and political parties to denounce fraudulent news and disinformation, and forswear its use. The Pledge also serves as a tool to empower citizens to take action and hold their elected officials and aspirants for public office accountable.

Highlights of Truth on the Ballot include:

  • Analysis of the nature, volume, and impact of domestic and foreign fraudulent news and disinformation campaigns during the 2018 midterm elections and major recent political moments, including the 2017 special election in Alabama and the nomination hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh
  • Critical examination of the steps taken by three major platforms, Facebook, Twitter, and Google, to blunt the impact of fraudulent news in the run-up to the midterm elections, including revisions to their algorithms; increased transparency around political advertising; account shutdowns; and collaboration with political campaigns and government agencies
  • Overview of the evolving landscape of online disinformation, from Russian propaganda campaigns to domestic hyper-partisan actors
  • Recommendations for technology companies, political groups, legislators, and citizens, based on the bedrock idea that the most effective proactive tactic against fraudulent news is a citizenry that is well-equipped to detect, and reject, fraudulent claims
  • Call to legislators to establish a federal commission to research and analyze ways to combat the spread of disinformation
  • Call to social media platforms to establish and sufficiently support substantial teams of lawyers, advertising experts, linguists, graphics experts and election experts to augment still-developing and experimental artificial intelligence and algorithmic approaches and bring a trained, expert human eye to content in the lead-up to the 2020 elections
  • A model pledge against fraudulent news for elected officials, aspirants for public office, and political parties to commit to refraining from utilizing fraudulent news and to denouncing its use, even when it benefits them politically

The report is available HERE.

This post is courtesy of PEN America; Presidential Seal is in the public domain.

*****

PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. It champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible. 

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Christmas, late ’80s, San Francisco, California

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton