Who supplies the context - you or your audience?

 You have the novel of your life in your head. War and Peace - hundreds of pages. On a given day you recall and relate a few short bits to others.  But these vignettes are entirely without context to some listeners and they could conclude things you didn't intend. 

You know the whole of it. It's hard for you relate to the few statements you've made without the context of your self-knowledge. However other people may reach  conclusions that are inaccurate projections relating to their experiences, their imaginings, their hopes or fears. 

They say the devil is in the details.... The ones you forget to say and the ones listeners supply......

DO NOT TRUST "VOTESAFE" -DOT -ORG

 It's NOT a voter registration site  -- It's a data collection site. Not only does it sell the info you enter into it  - it hoovers up your browser history, location history and device data, past purchases, interests AND SELLS YOUR DATA to its associated businesses -- but doesn't actually register you to vote.

LET ME REPEAT --- IT DOES NOT REGISTER YOU TO VOTE.

It's designed to look like vote.org which is a voter registration site. The guy with the chainsaw from doge created it. He has motives alright.

BE CAREFUL PEOPLE. 

POEM: Ashes to Ashes into brick - on coalitions of the formerly powerless

 Ashes to Ashes*

Dust has no tongue,

hasn't a song,
wields no pen,
no tools for building or carving,
scumbles no brushes
in maddening rhythms.

Dust does not long for nor aspire.
Dust lies in random arrangement,

drifts will-less though the cracks under doors,
accumulates behind the tassels of bedspreads,
in the dim beneath of things.

Dampened  with a measure of tears,

pressed by hardship to a mold,
dust becomes brick,
paves the way,
shoulders a roof,
shatters plate glass with aplomb.

                    - Mad Mar Walker (Mistryel)

* published in heck I forget where

Club America, Members Only

One of the consequences of 9/11 is the extended backlash against immigrants, even visitors or folks on work or student visas. Even citizens who display evidence of "otherness."  Some of us have gone back to Joe McCarthy's ways.

 

There is such irony that people whose ancestors came here to flee oppression, seek opportunity, find freedom, find home - they don't want to pass it on. While I don't believe in open borders -- I do believe in the melting pot, in asylum and a pathway to entry and to citizenship. There once was a long negotiated bipartisan immigration bill passed that 45|47 squashed because he wanted to run on the issue. That's bad form. 

This poem dates from 2005 published in A First Tuesday in Wilton an anthology, edited by Rose Drew and Alan Gillot and printed by Stairwell Press. It was then titled The Get Away. 

Club America, Members Only

Outside
=========
a locked gate waiting.
Socked-in, Statue of Liberty's
harbor gone grey.
Ellis Island, your sentimental
push-button displays,
sepia-toned icons, a memory
of distance and desperation,
clutched burlap bundles, dented
suitcases, hand-written name tags,
befuddled seekers. almost home.

Now you welcome

only tourists. Neon bloodies

your halls of remembrance:

"No Vacancy * No Vacancy * No Vacancy"

Close the airports!

Close the Brooklyn Bridge!

The children of the children

of the formerly oppressed

want to seal the borders

with invisible force fields

with infallible alien detection devices

and declare

"CLUB AMERICA -  MEMBERS ONLY!"

So take back your tired, and your

poor, your huddled masses yearning....

Give them a cell

with room service, limited menu,

meticulously kept steel bunks.

STOP - PACK UP!

Fold your love of FREEDOM,

tuck it in.

Fold your sweat up with your dreams,

Forget about your son in Cinncinati.

Do not pass. Do not collect. Go directly. Go back

================

Outside

Enough said. Or never enough said.

 This is a photo of a poster from years ago.....

A sweepstakes poem inspired by the old print Contest Newsletter*

Send in your post card, post card!

Fabulous prizes you can win so
be sure to send your entry in....

Write down your name, address, your zip
so we can save and catalog it!

(We'll sell it to marketers you don't know
- they got things to sell and wares to show.)

So send in Your name address your zip
- we'll sell it for decades in triplicate!

Be sure to send your entry in, for
fabulous prizes you can win!

-------

*The original founders of Contest Newsletter were a couple whose hobby turned into a newsletter with several million subscribers.  It all because too much I guess. and they sold it -- but the new owner turned out to be a mailing list company who really only wanted the subscribers list. Comprised mainly of seniors and folks willing to respond to adds and offers with a post card - it was a valuable list, nick-named "The suckers list."  This was just before online contest entries became a thing. Ah well.