npm19: progressive poems lands here

Welcome to all, especially those who are following this year's Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem, an annual April tradition begun in 2012 by Irene Latham of Live Your Poem.  One by one we bring a new line, developing the idea of the poem and spinning it in new directions. This year we're challenging ourselves to build a found poem out of song lines, as suggested on April 1 by our kickoff poet Matt Forrest Esenwine.  Read about this project and enjoy data on previous progressive poems HERE.

Well.  I had been planning to pump up the action with some B-52's beachiness here, but by the time the poem reached me, Amy and Linda had suddenly, interestingly, taken a different tack:

                                    "it's not easy to know
                                     less than one minute old"

"WHO, WHO, WHO?!" I shouted inwardly.  We've had an I, we've had a we, we've had a you, then another we, then an I, then a you again. But I wanted a line with we, you AND I together to the end, and I wanted a line with how--my thought was to find a line that would show that the relationship between these deep divers was new and untried (less than one minute old!), that it wouldn't be easy to know how the waltzing would go...

and the B-52's let me down!  I tried "Rock Lobster," "Nude Beach" and "Dry County," "Roam" and "Song for a Future Generation,"  "Dirty Back Roads" and "Deadbeat Club," and none of them produced exactly what I was looking for (although I did spend a tremendous hour or so reliving the extreme lunatical lyrical glory that is the B-52's).  Here's one I'd forgotten about, making me heartily wish I could work some cake into the scenario (you only need the middle 2-3 minutes of this 6-minute song to get the idea)...

So next I tried Natalie Merchant and the lovely "Milly and Molly and Maggie and May," which is an E.E. Cummings poem set to music, involves the ocean, and which also offers an ending assonance:

as small as a world and as large as alone

--which was cool, except that the emphasis was on small and alone, and still nothing happened. So then I tried Natalie's first outfit, 10,000 Maniacs, and an all-time favorite, "These Are Days," which gave me this line:

to be part of the miracles you see in every hour

--nice, but a little cheesy without its abundant context, and which again did not feel as active or forward-moving as I wanted. So I turned to that other great export of Athens, Georgia: R.E.M.  When you can figure out what Michael Stipe is singing (and sometimes even when you can't), you know it's definitely poetry.

I looked for some watery songs and and fell upon "Find the River," which is a folkier number of theirs and offered a line that didn't include its delicious "bergamot and vetiver" but which finally cements that WE and whizzes us along to the brink of something fabulous-- plus a rhyme. Plus "minute" and "years." Plus a light at the bottom of the deep? Please listen to this whole gorgeous song to get the full effect of the line!

KIDLITOSPHERE
PROGRESSIVE POEM 2019 - DAY 19

Endless summer; I can see for miles...
Fun, fun, fun - and the whole world smiles.
No time for school - just time to play,
we swim the laughin' sea each and every day.

You had only to rise, lean from your window,
the curtain opens on a portrait of today.
Kodachrome greens, dazzling blue,
It's the chance of a lifetime,

make it last forever-ready? Set? Let's Go!
Come, we'll take a walk, the sun is shining down,
Not a cloud in the sky got the sun in my eyes.
Tomorrow's here. It's called today.

Gonna get me a piece o' the sky.
I wanna fly like an eagle, to the sea
and there's a tiger in my veins.
Oh, won't you come with me waltzing the waves,
                                                                        diving the deep?
It's not easy to know
less than one minute old  
we're closer now than light years to go

************************************************

Gosh, I hope that gives Buffy something to go on! Below is the complete list of contributors and lines, and I close with mighty thanks to Irene for making this thang happen every year, and to Amy for hosting today at The Poem Farm.  Happy spring holy days to all to celebrate!

NEW!!! You asked for it and now it exists--THE PLAYLIST!

************************************************
Found Lines:
L1 The Who, 'I Can See for Miles' / The Beach Boys, 'Endless Summer'
L2 The Beach Boys, 'Fun, Fun, Fun'/Dean Martin, "When You're Smiling"
L3 The Jamies, "Summertime, Summertime'
L4 The Doors, 'Summer's Almost Gone' / Led Zeppelin, 'Good Times, Bad Times'
L5 Ray Bradbury, 'Dandelion Wine'
L6 Joni Mitchell, "Chelsea Morning"
L7 Paul Simon, "Kodachrome," "Dazzling Blue"
L8 Dan Fogelberg, "Run for the Roses"
L9 Spice Girls, "Wannabe"/Will Smith, "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It"
L10 The Beatles, "Good Day Sunshine"
L11 The Carpenters, "Top of the World"
L12 Lin-Manuel Miranda, "Underneath the Lovely London Sky" from MARY POPPINS
L13 Carole King, "Hi-de-ho (That Sweet Roll)"
L14 Steve Miller, "Fly Like An Eagle"
L15 Don Felder, "Wild Life"
L16 Nowlenn Leroy, "Song of the Sea" (lullaby)
L17 Sara Bareilles, "She Used to Be Mine" from WAITRESS
L18 Stevie Wonder, "Isn't She Lovely"
L19 R.E.M., "Find the River"

And you can see the list of Poem Line Contributors in the right sidebar!

these are days: maysong

Greetings from the sodden mid-Atlantic, where on Mother's Day I looked at my weather app and saw something I truly thought was some kind of misprint, user error, data glitch.

Alas, this ten-day forecast has been pretty much accurate, and although my class got lucky with outdoor recess on Monday and Tuesday, today will be our 3rd straight day of indoor recess--in May!

May, of all months, the most voluptuous and enticing of all months,
the month when April showers are to have brought swathes of flowers, when a young person's fancy turns to thoughts of

I CANNOT SPEND A SINGLE  'NOTHER MINUTE INSIDE THIS CLASSROOM EVEN IF TODAY IS THE DAY THAT OUR CHRYSALISES CRACK OPEN & BECOME BUTTERFLIES.


I personally will not be sodden and down-trodden (even as I think with respect and compassion on those of  Muslim students and colleagues who are navigating this dreary gray week of AP's and exams WHILE FASTING) because I will be playing this poem on repeat.  I posted it in April of 2016 as part of my "Lyrics as Poetry" series, but it was a Monday and no one was paying attention...

so here's Natalie Merchant, with 10,000 Maniacs and line breaks by me.

These Are Days

These are the days

These are days 

you'll remember
Never before and never since

I promise

will the whole world be warm as this
And as you feel it

you'll know it's true 

that you are blessed and lucky
It's true 

that you are touched by something 

that will grow and bloom in you.

These are days 

you'll remember
When May is rushing over you 

with desire

to be part of the miracles you see

in every hour
You'll know it's true 

that you are blessed and lucky
It's true 

that you are touched by something 

that will grow and bloom in you

These are days

These are the days you might fill with laughter 

until you break
These days you might feel a shaft of light 

make its way across your face
And when you do 

you'll know how it was meant to be
See the signs and know their meaning
It's true

you'll know how it was meant to be
Hear the signs 

and know they're speaking to you,

to you. 

Play loud against the rain-dimmed sunrise and the rain-bent trees and the rain-rusted azaleas.

"These Are Days" by Natalie Merchant and Rob Buck

from the album Our Time in Eden, 1992

The round-up today is with Rebecca at Sloth Reads.  Slog on over and see what sun peeks from between the clouds....I'm just no good at raining.

birthday discoveries psa...

 
Readers, I have now become a woman d'un certain âge.  Many would say that with age comes wisdom; I maintain that my main function in the world is to be enthusiastic, not wise.  And yet I do have some recent discoveries to share with you--a sort of public service announcement, a list of birthday discoveries that you might not want to miss.  (And, as various Documentations of Interventions must be completed for various students exhibiting various needs for intervention, my PSA will be merely a list of thanks with links.)

0) Thanks to Mary Lee: reading must be risked (see number 11 at link) despite and because of that gone feeling you get from the ideal book for the moment.

1) Thanks to the Wyngate Arts Exhibition:   "The Cup Song" is a perfect variety show number for elementary school girls--far more appropriate than, say, "Please Don't Stop the Music."

2) Thanks to Mark and Kim at Baltimore's Area 405's Supper and a Movie:  Paris, Texas is a film worth returning to 1984 for.

3) Thanks to DJ Ivan and lots of my friends:  dance party knows no age, and the "tea dance" is a concept that deserves a popular general update!

4)  Thanks to my mom, personal shopper:  a bright new fruit bowl can just transform one's attitude in the kitchen. 






5) Thanks to my own good sense:  on the first sunny warm afternoon of nominal spring, three spa treatments is plenty and four is just excessive.

6) Thanks to writerly friends Tabatha Yeatts and Laura Shovan:  virtual is very fine, but you can't beat lunch with Pisces persons at a nice vegan restaurant with gifties from Robyn Hood Black's artsyletters shop.

7) Thanks to British in-laws Teresa O'Brien and John White:  poets Liz Cashdan, Gillian Clarke, Rebecca Elson, Beatrice Garland, Christopher Reid.  Golly.

8)  Thanks to creative, clever, caring offspring:  coupons for fancy meals, ten-minute massages, and happy playlists.  Something to look forward to is a great gift.  (And unlinkable children is probably also a great gift.)

9) Thanks to beloved spouse:  Sonos upstairs, Sonos downstairs, Sonos all around!  Please don't stop the music.  And also The Flavour Thesaurus, a synaesthetizing thing of joy.

10)  Thanks to my juicy little universe:  gratitude is good medicine. 

Today's Poetry Friday round-up is hosted by Kara at the intriguingly-named blog Rogue Anthropologist.  Wishing you all some of this same birthday enthusiasm this week, birthday or not!

precurso

It was fairly easy, at the dinner table on our Yuletide Day of Intellect, to answer Daisy's question,"Who is Garrison Keillor?" What was harder was to explain "Why is Garrison Keillor?", a much bigger question about cultural phenomena that I'll look forward to coming back to someday.

In the meantime, it's enough to say that I"m enjoying the gift of Keillor's Good Poems immensely for its range and for the familiar voices interspersed with the poets whose work is new-to-me. One of those is Howard Moss, who was poetry editor at New Yorker magazine for 40 years and is probably well known to everyone but me. There are three of his poems in Good Poems, including one that made me think, as I read it for the first time, "Wait, wait--don't tell me--something extra's going on here!"

It will be a long time before there is enough said about the genius of Marilyn Singer's reverso poetry form, so cleverly deployed to shift point of view in Mirror, Mirror. (If you don't know the reverso, go here and here for some descriptions and "the rules.") Today I want to suggest that Howard Moss at least, at least one time, used the reverso form in a slightly different way to equally brilliant effect. Here is the "precurso" in question, from Moss's New Selected Poems published in 1985.

The Persistence of Song

Although it is not yet evening
The secretaries have changed their frocks
As if it were time for dancing,
And locked up in the scholars' books
There is a kind of rejoicing,
There is a kind of singing
That even the dark stone canyon makes
As though all fountains were going
At once, and the color flowed from bricks
In one wild, lit upsurging.

What is the weather doing?
And who arrived on a scallop shell
With the smell of the sea this morning?
--Creating a small upheaval
High above the scaffolding
By saying, "All will be well.
There is a kind of rejoicing."

Is there a kind of rejoicing
In saying, "All will be well?"
High above the scaffolding,
Creating a small upheaval,
The smell of the sea this morning
Arrived on a scallop shell.
What was the weather doing
In one wild, lit upsurging?
At once, the color flowed from bricks
As though all fountains were going,
And even the dark stone canyon makes
Here a kind of singing,
And there a kind of rejoicing,
And locked up in the scholars' books
There is a time for dancing
When the secretaries have changed their frocks,
And though it is not yet evening,

There is the persistence of song.

~ Howard Moss
collected in Good Poems
selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor, 2002


Today's Poetry Friday round-up is at Carol's Corner today. May your year begin in song; may the singing persist the whole year long!

An InLinkz Link-up

look out, you rock-and-rollers

As primary school teachers go, I'm a bit of a rock-and-roller, at least in the musical sense. This is proving helpful at the moment: due to all kinds of factors, our school district is experiencing flash flooding and children are pouring into my school like heavy beautiful raindrops. We keep adding teachers, but not as one-whole-teacher-at-a-time; as a part-timer, I'm one of the folks whose schedule and teaching assignments keep getting "adjusted." This week (just when I was hoping to settle into a rhythm with my 2nd and 1st grade reading classes), instead I'm moving out of one classroom and into another, and losing my 2nd grade class and gaining a Kindergarten class instead!

How handy, at times like these, to log into Rhapsody on my classroom computer and play--at some volume--uplifting, pertinent songs like this 1971 classic by David Bowie (during my prep time, not class time. We listen to other rock-and-roll then). As in all good poems or lyrics, there's some ambiguity here, some interpretation demanded of us, the reader/listeners.

Culturally, I'm not as much of a rock-and-roller, if that implies going raucously, carelessly with the flow. Being a teacher is perfect for those of us who like routine, who "nest" into their classrooms like mamapapabirds, but who enjoy the surprises and challenges that arrive with each child each morning. However, I did appreciate being asked to help problem-solve on all these changes because of my ability to think outside the box. (Little do most people know how far outside of the box I'm willing to go!)

My only other comment is that I have never intentionally spit on any children.


Changes

I still don't know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take that test

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
Don't want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can't trace time

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're going through

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
Don't tell them to grow up and out of it
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
Where's your shame?
You've left us up to our necks in it
Time may change me
But you can't trace time

Strange fascination, fascinating me
Ah, changes are taking
the pace I'm going through

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
Oh, look out you rock 'n rollers
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes
Pretty soon you're gonna get a little older
Time may change me
But I can't trace time
I said that time may change me
But I can't trace time

~ David Bowie

Dip into Poetry Friday's stream of warm impermanence with Jen at Biblio File.

can't help myself

Those of us who thrive in the classroom environment have now been out of school long enough to be thinking of "next year." (Actually we were probably scheming about how do everything Better, Stronger, Slower before school was over, or that might just be me.)

So I woke up this morning (too early; bad cat!) thinking about the sense (or not) in a class mission statement, which led to a picture of me and my new reading class of 2nd graders making our silent and stealthy way ("Your mission, should you choose to accept it...") through the halls of our new school building, occupying and exploring our new room, and in the background was playing the theme from Mission Impossible (click to get the effect), which vision only works if you participated in Pallotta TeamWorks AIDS rides of the 90's, the motto for which was (and here finally is today's poem, a brilliant one-word piece of punctuation genius)--


I'mpossible.


I think my second-graders just became the I-Team. Poetry Friday is at Irene's Live. Love. Explore! blog today.

poemusic

I've been a fan of Natalie Merchant since near the beginning, and many of her songs with the band 10,000 Maniacs are in my top 50 of all time (however, do not ask me to list my Top 50 of All Time; I'm nowhere near ready to commit. But "These Are Days" is in the Top Ten). Today I'm finally getting around to enjoying a (March) birthday present from my mother: Natalie's new project, Leave Your Sleep.

Leave Your Sleep is a collection of 26 songs, all of them composed around poems by a wide variety of well- and lesser-known poets including Rachel Field, Jack Prelutsky (the only one still living), Ogden Nash and Eleanor Farjeon. The year-long project "represents parts of a long conversation I've had with daughter during the first six years of her life."

The two CDs come packaged in a fetching small book which includes short biography and a black-and-white portrait of each poet--a treasure trove for anyone who has wondered, like me, why more popular songs aren't set to poems.

Easily my favorite so far is "maggie and milly and molly and may"--lyrics by e. e. cummings, a poet also dear to my heart. Click here to listen to a snippet of this lovely piece that gives, as my own read-alouds often fail to do, a seemingly simple narrative poem all the glow and gravitas in the atmosphere as it has inside us.

maggie and milly and molly and may
~ e. e. cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

"this curriculum sponsored in part by Tom Chapin"

Today's poem is really part of a song from Tom Chapin's album "Billy the Squid." In case you don't know him, Tom Chapin is a musician famous for being Harry Chapin's younger brother--but I'd risk asserting that his music for kids is known by far more people because of his downright usefulness in the classroom.

The first day of school I sent my first-graders out delightedly singing verse one of "Great Big Words"--because there's great pleasure in being able to announce to grown-ups that you're an "eager bibliophile." And here I give a loud shout-out to John Forster, a frequent lyricist for Tom Chapin. I can't confirm that he wrote the lyrics for this one, but his wordsmithing is behind most of the other cleverly composed, perfectly appropriate yet never syrupy songs I've taught children over the years. All join in!

La, la, la la la la la, la, la, la!
When I was a little kid (a diminutive juvenile),
I liked my folks to read to me--I was an eager bibliophile.
Now I like words for how they sound and how they communicate...
I guess I should explain myself--that is, elucidate.
Great big words, I love big words!
Letter by letter, the bigger the better--
Great big words!

Now maybe you're adept at sports or excellent at school,
Or maybe you're vainglorious (which means you think you're cool).
But give me a massive ideogram (a big word) to make my point--
When you can verbalize your thoughts, you can really rock the joint!
Great big words, I love big words!
I get a thrill out of every syllable--
Great big words!

Big words are prodigious terms; now don't they sound delicious?
They impress your teachers, confuse your folks, and make your friends suspicious.
But that's okay; we'll start a trend that soon will sweep the nation:
The Hyperlinguistic Polysyllabic Speech Association!
Great big words, I love big words!
Letter by letter, the bigger the better--
Great big words!

La, la, la la la la la, la, la, la!

as civilization unravels

it's soothing to chant something like the following, in which everything set backwards and upside down leads to a sense of floating rather than sinking....

I Am the Song

I am the song that sings the bird.
I am the leaf that grows the land.
I am the tide that moves the moon.
I am the stream that halts the sand.
I am the cloud that drives the storm.
I am the earth that lights the sun.
I am the fire that strikes the stone.
I am the clay that shapes the hand.
I am the word that speaks the man.


~Charles Causley
from The Puffin Book of Utterly Brilliant Poetry, ed. Brian Patten

'and she was' to 'je vais vite': the quantification of music part 1

Becoming a math teacher has begun to take its effect on my real life. I find I have begun increasingly to think of the world in mathematical terms as well as in poetic turns, and I’m seeing patterns and trends everywhere (except in my personal finances, which I leave entirely in the capable hands of another). Let's do some numbers: In 1986 I was walking down East 84th Street towards the 1–bedroom apartment I shared with Lisa, crossing 3rd Avenue and listening for the x-hundredth time to 'Little Creatures' on my Walk-It. It was Friday afternoon and my book bag must have been light because I was swinging along; 'And She Was' came on and for the 1st time I noticed how the beat matched my stride exactly…and there I experienced simultaneously a moment of A-HA + DUH. (I believe mathematicians call this a Duh-Ha Moment.)

A-HA + DUH = A person who dislikes “working out” but who does like dancing could put together a mix of favorite songs and turn all that city walking into exercise! This meant laboriously trawling through all my cassettes and vinyl records and copying songs with the Magic Number, which was not Three but 29 beats per 15 seconds (which, as my 2nd graders cannot yet figure out, equals 116 beats per minute, but who sits counting beats for a whole minute?)

The first walking tape I made was pedestrianly titled Walkabout Mix, and it took 2 years and moving in with a man who owned better stereo equipment than I to get it done. It included 'And She Was', songs by Midnight Oil (hence the Aborigine-flavored name), New Order and Enya ('Orinoco Flow' turned out to be too slow at 28bp15s), and the song that took my listening experiences into a whole new spiritual, philosophical plane. 'Ackee 123', by the Beat (the English Beat to you folks who didn’t spend an extremely formative month in Evesham, England during 1981) led to the next tape, entitled Music for Instant Attitude Adjustment. You can hear it on this playlist, which includes "important" songs from each of the ensuing walking tapes.

http://rhaplinks.real.com/rhaplink?rhapid=5656330&type=playlist&title=Playlist&from=real

Another perk, among many, of moving in with (and then getting married to) Brad with the better stereo equipment was the health club on the roof of our 46-story building in Battery Park City (BPC, not be confused with bps). There I discovered the treadmill, handy for those days when it was cold and wet and a girl really needed a dose of Instant Attitude Adjustment. There I discovered how to check my heart rate, which led in turn to discovering that while walking to all my carefully selected songs, my heart rate matched my stride matched the beat at 29bp15s. Surely the coordination of inner and outer rhythm was why this particular form of exercise felt so darn good. Keep this factoid in mind, as we will return to it later....

Those first 2 compilations lasted very well, supplemented by the likes of Deee-lite and Madonna's 'Immaculate Collection'--right through the move to London in 1991. There were other mix tapes along the way: Dancing and Kissing (What More Is There?) and Lovergirl Mixxx are the musical evidence of my split with Brad, and all of them could be filed under Mixed Feelings. By 1994, using Fiona's new Andersen-Consulting-funded stereo system, I had created walking tapes number 3 and 4, Pavement Pounder and then Pacemaker, which accompanied me on complicated London Tube commutes from West Hampstead to Camden to Haringey.

Meanwhile I was rediscovering the glories of a genre I had scorned during my long-ago "Heidi is/a punk-rocker" past (a pose which fooled no one): I bought a GBP5 cassette called "Divas of Disco" and had soon combined 'Ring My Bell' and 'Shake Your Groove Thing' with London club hits to make a new tape (45 minutes per side, approximately 22 tracks in total) called Sidewalk Groove. By the end of the London era, walking-instead-of-dancing had been joined by Actual Dancing as I took part in the Great London Gay-and-Lesbian-Ballroom&Latin-Movement. I salsaed, I rhumbaed, I East- and West-Coast-swinged, and I cha-chaed to the likes of 'Walking on Broken Glass' by Annie Lennox. Life was one permanently-adjusted attitude.

Please join us next week for Part 2 of The Quantification of Music, when we consider the short-term heart-health effects of life inside the beltway....

heigh-ho heigh-ho it's off to work we go

I'm not at my best this morning, but both of us were smokin' last night at the Out for Equality Inaugural Ball. Everybody was already feeling fabulous, even after some frustrating "but I have tickets!" experiences, and music by Dave Koz, Katie Curtis, Thelma Houston and that ever-bubbling fount of exuberance Cyndi Lauper boosted us all way up over the top. (Rufus Wainwright performed too, remarking insightfully that he's not really a party dude, being "rather morose, but I look good, so it all works out.") The evening ended with Melissa Etheridge growling earnestly away; a friend and I agreed that we're fans of her existence if not her music.

One of the unscheduled visitors (Sir Ian McKellen said a word and Jamie Lee Curtis and Carrie Fisher were both sighted) was Bishop Gene Robinson, who spoke the opening words at Monday's We Are One concert (nearly attended by Fiona but not quite) but whose contribution was inexplicably not broadcast. Here is his prayer; to get the full effect compare it side by side with Rev. Rick Warren's. Whether you're Christian or not, religious or not, Robinson's prayer shows a future of faith that I for one can live alongside.

A Prayer for the Nation and Our Next President, Barack Obama
By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire
Opening Inaugural Event, Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC January 18, 2009

Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God's blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will...
Bless us with tears - for a world in which over a billion people existon less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.
Bless us with anger - at discrimination, at home and abroad, againstrefugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Bless us with discomfort - at the easy, simplistic "answers" we've preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.
Bless us with patience - and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be "fixed" anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.
Bless us with humility - open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world. Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance - replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding thatin our diversity, we are stronger.
Bless us with compassion and generosity - remembering that every religion's God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable inthe human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States. Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln's reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy's ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King's dream of a nation for ALL the people.
Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.
Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.
Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.
Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.
Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters' childhoods.
And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we're asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand - that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.
AMEN.

un beau jour/a beautiful day

Ce matin, Duncan crie ses applaudissements. Daisy danse somnolente-réveillée. Fiona embrasse tous ses proches virtuellement. Et moi, je pleure. Je pleure car aujourd’hui je peux avouer que toute ma vie, j’étais embarrassée, j’avais honte de mon pays, meme en croyant fortement en les idéals de notre démocratie. Nous, du « greatest country on earth , » nous n’étions pas un nation de liberté, pas un nation d’égalité, pas (et peut-etre pas encore) un nation de fraternité.

Mais aujourd’hui nous récupérons le droit de dire que nous sommes quelque chose de spécial dans le monde. Il n’existe pas un « greatest country on earth, » mais hier nous avons choisi d’essayer etre grand dans un sens généreux, et d’etre responsable de faire le travail qui accompagne ce défi la.

Donc je pleure. Les larmes sont de la relève, de la joie et oui, de l’espoir. J’adore les mots de Barack Obama, mais pour l’instant, c’est (avec un touche de bizarre) un voix irlandais, c’est Bono de U2 qui chante mon cœur :

Beautiful Day

The heart is a bloom, it shoots up through the stony ground

There's no room, no space to rent in this town

You're out of luck and the reason that you had to care:

The traffic is stuck and you're not moving anywhere.

You thought you'd found a friend to take you out of this place

Someone you could lend a hand in return for grace]

It's a beautiful day, the sky falls

And you feel like it's a beautiful day

Don't let it get away

You're on the road but you've got no destination

You're in the mud, in the maze of her imagination

You love this town even if that doesn't ring true

You've been all over and it's been all over you

It's a beautiful day

Don't let it get away

It's a beautiful day

Don't let it get away

Touch me, take me to that other place

Teach me, I know I'm not a hopeless case

See the world in green and blue

See China right in front of you

See the canyons broken by cloud

See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out

See the Bedouin fires at night

See the oil fields at first light

And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth

After the flood all the colors came out

It was a beautiful day

Beautiful day

Don't let it get away

Touch me, take me to that other place

Reach me, I know I'm not a hopeless case

What you don't have you don't need it now

What you don't know you can feel it somehow

What you don't have you don't need it now

You don't need it now, you don't need it now

It’s a beautiful day

Today, Duncan cheers. Daisy dances, sleepy wide-awake. Fiona’s virtually hugging everybody she knows. And me, I’m crying. I’m crying because today I can admit that my whole life I’ve been embarrassed, I’ve been ashamed of my country, even while I believed to my depths in the ideals of our democracy. We, “the greatest country on earth,” have not been a nation of liberty, not a nation of equality, not (and maybe not yet) a nation of brotherhood.

But today we reclaim the right to say that we’re some kind of special in the world. There is no “greatest country on earth,” but yesterday we chose to try to be great in the most generous sense, and to be responsible for doing the work that comes along with the challenge.

So I’m crying. The tears are of relief, of joy, and yes, of hope. I love the way Obama speaks, but for the moment, strangely, it’s an Irish voice, it’s Bono of U2 who’s singing my heart.