Topsoil bomber

Thanks to Fidel Fernando for sharing his work on Unsplash


By BOB SCHILDGEN*


My finest accomplishment–not that I’m burdened with choices
in this department–is the creation
of five-hundred cubic feet of topsoil,
with the aid of billions of unidentified micro-organisms,
and earthworms churning through the compost,
and several rabbits who worked with uncommon dedication
to contribute manure and maintain morale:
Myrtle, who passed away of old age–
Habermas, who was murdered by a pit bull
that ripped the bottom from his cage–
Sartre, who perished suddenly from unknown causes,
and Derrida, who is uncommonly fond of dandelions.
Five hundred cubic feet of topsoil from sheer waste,
to enrich a garden, transform to food and flower
orange peels, tea leaves, clippings, weeds,
a bonsai Mount Fuji of compost power.
The world needs all the compost it can get.
Topsoil made us what we are,
without it we simply don’t exist,
which is an earnest modern way to say
God did indeed make Adam out of clay.

Imagine a world transformed by compost,
fertile, abundant, fecundant reckless green.
Imagine cargo ships loaded with topsoil
for every compost-craving corner of the world.
Imagine nuclear submarines distributing topsoil!
Military transport planes packed with topsoil!
Precision missiles delivering topsoil exactly where most needed.
Aircraft carriers piled high with topsoil!
Bombers dropping two-ton bombs of topsoil!
Preemptive strikes of topsoil,
weapons of mass destruction buried
under thousands of feet of steaming compost!
Imagine composters in every land, tending peaceful heaps,
singing in a vast harmony of regeneration.
Down slopes of compost comes the world’s salvation.

*From Hey Mr Green, Sierra Magazine, May 25, 2010; reprinted for educational and informative purposes.

TO ENGAGE OR NOT TO ENGAGE – THAT IS THE QUESTION

San Francisco protesters of the U.S. immigration ban hold signs reading “Imagine All The People” and “People For Peace”. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: Pax Ahimsa Gethen

by Stefan Schindler

Part One: YESTERDAY’S STORM AND TOMORROW’S RAINBOW

There is nothing stable in the world; uproar’s your only music. – John Keats

Fifty years after President Eisenhower launched a multi-trillion dollar arms race with the Soviet Union, the Cheney-Bush Administration (in a version of “the boy who cried wolf”) saw fit to shout the greatest and most dangerous lie in American history, claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and repeating – day after day, week after week, in the post-9/11 rush to vengeance and preemptive war – “Mushroom cloud!  Mushroom cloud!  Mushroom cloud!”

Thus did Cheney-Bush – and their cabal of Gingrichian sycophants, aided by a cheering mainstream news media – bring to fruition the nightmare envisioned in Bob Dylan’s 1963 tour de force, “Masters of War.”  Dylan sings, and the lyrics still resonate:

You’ve thrown the worst fear / that can ever be hurled: 

fear to bring children / into the world.

In the dawning of the year 2019, it remains to be seen whether President Donald Trump will also escape punishment for his narcissistic and multitudinous lies, for his continuation of American militaristic violence, and for his Reagan-Cheney-Bush-like crimes – economic and ecological – against the American people and the planet.

In what Gore Vidal called “The United States of Amnesia,” the Orwellian ignoration of the citizen population continues unabated.  For example:

I go to the store and buy some stamps.  The clerk hands me a packet.  Each stamp has an American flag on it.  In the lower left hand corner of each stamp is written “USA Forever” – a truly insidious slogan.  Nothing lasts forever.  Not a season; not a life; not an empire.  George Carlin said: “That’s why they call it the American dream.  You have to be asleep to believe it.”

          In 1821, John Quincy Adams warned that America should not go abroad “in search of monsters to destroy,” for in doing so, “she might become the dictatress of the world, [but] she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”

In the late 1890s, Mark Twain witnessed America’s imperial acquisition of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the Spanish-American war.  Twain responded with an observation not taught in school: “America’s flag should be a skull-and-crossbones.”  Then he added: “America cannot have an empire abroad and a Republic at home.”  Adams and Twain understood that empire and democracy are mutually exclusive.

Lyndon Johnson said in 1964 that he did not want “a wider war” in Vietnam, even as he was lying about events in the Gulf of Tonkin and planning the invasion that President Kennedy refused to launch.  Richard Nixon said he would bring The Vietnam War to an early end with “peace and honor,” yet disgraced himself with a heartless disregard for peace and an utter lack of honor, becoming the first American president to resign from office.

Due to the lies and depredations of Johnson and Nixon, the American people grew increasingly suspicious of their political leaders.  That distrust deepened into cynicism when President George W. Bush’s claim – that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction,” which he then used as a pretext for war – proved to be an outrageous lie.  And now, alas, Donald Trump inhabits the White House, proving once again that a Nixonian neurotic and Bush-whacking ideologue can become the most powerful and most dangerous man in the world.

Yet all is not lost, not hopeless, not without redemptive possibilities.  Despite the forces of obstruction, the American landscape is filled with a multitude of brave, inquisitive, vocal, active, dedicated justice-seekers and peacemakers.  They recognize that they are not alone, that solidarity is our only hope, and that their collective voice indicates something like A Renaissance of The Renaissance.  They – We! – know who Tom Paine was, and why he wrote “Common Sense” and “The Rights of Man.”

We know that John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were killed for their courage of conscience; and because we refuse to let their lives and deaths be in vain, we carry the torch they lit for a sane and better world.  We dare, with John Lennon, to Imagine.  We know that there are millions around the world who feel the same, and who are also doing their part to bequeath to a new generation the world of peace and beauty they deserve.  Accordingly, we shall not despair; we shall not relinquish hope; and we shall indeed do whatever is necessary to restore America’s tarnished ideals to their once and future glory, for the sake of all humanity, and for Mother Earth and all her blessings.

Stefan Schindler

…………………….

Stefan Schindler is the co-founder of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection; a Board Member of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey; and author of America’s Indochina Holocaust: The History and Global Matrix of The Vietnam War.  His forthcoming book is entitled Buddha’s Political Philosophy.