Janet Yellen, Sec. of the Treasury, at the Economic Club of Chicago…
Please share this critical address on the state of America’s economy as a way to encourage Americans overall and to stem the tide of disinformation from the MAGA Republicans.
The Art of Diplomacy
The Biden Administration is led by an exceptional Cabinet of experts who carry out the work of the People on a daily basis, many without much public media coverage. However, one exception is Anthony J. Blinken, Secretary of State who is receiving widespread coverage with the Ukraine war and the Israeli-Hamas conflict and other rumblings around the Middle East. No President and administration knows when conflicts like Ukraine and Israeli will happen during their administration. These two conflicts are now consuming Biden and Blinken’s attention, travel and diplomatic talks. Both Ukraine and Israel were attacked without provocation by Russia and Hamas respectively. Each of these conflicts has sent shock waves throughout the world and we are now witnessing new alliances form and old ones consolidate. Some say the U.S. diplomatic position (leading) is waning, others that it is essential to peaceful resolution.
Each time I listen to Anthony Blinken describe America’s diplomatic goals around the world, as well as the thinking behind policies, I realize how critical it is to elect a President with experience, one who will bring the best minds to the challenge to democracies from authoritarian movements rising around the world.
Mr. Blinken executes his office of Secretary of State with wisdom, humanity, and a clear vision of America’s role in the world. In this interview below, Secretary Blinken is interviewed by Tom Friedman at Davos on January 17.
For another perspective on these same topics, check out the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s podcast, The 1st Draft.
Democracy Health Checkup
American culture is a busy, somewhat fraught place as individuals and groups strive to influence the direction of markets and ideas. More and more these activities take place on digital platforms that are globally accessed and influenced by everyone from elementary school children to foreign governments and posers (human and artificial). Evermore diverse and without much internal control except that which participants choose to shape, democracies depend on the individual’s commitment to discerning the truth.
John Adams reminded citizens that “facts are stubborn things,” meaning that truth cannot be corrupted. Yet in today’s digital environment, truth is battered, shaped, recolored and redressed until it represents its opposite. An example is the kidnapping of democratic language used to support MAGA athoritarianism. Citizens duped and caught up in the web of lies are aiding authoritarian forces that seek to destroy the liberal order established after WWII and the system of governance established at our founding.
This article from Pew Research reports on the growing number of Americans who favor technology companies or the U.S. government restricting false or violent information. What do you think? What are the risks? Gains? What are the challenges the average citizen faces in attempting to discern the truth in today’s marketplace of ideas and influencers?
Ode to Joy: Our Present Moment
Until today I did not understand that it was the ideas of the Enlightenment that inspired Ludwig von Beethoven to write the now best loved “Ode to Joy” in the final movement of his second symphony -Symphony No. 9.
I can thank an amazing intellectual, Maria Popova. who writes a weekly treasure of curated ideas and art on a subject in her newsletter, The Marginalian.
That year, he began — though he did not yet know it, as we never do — the long gestation of what would become not only his greatest creative and spiritual triumph, not only a turning point in the history of music that revolutionized the symphony and planted the seed of the pop song, but an eternal masterwork of the supreme human art: making meaning out of chaos, beauty out of sorrow.
Maria Popova from The Marginalian
The masterwork’s libretto contains a message to the world that seems perfect to revisit in another time when chaos threatens to overcome humanity:
Oh friends, no more of these sounds!
Let us sing more cheerful songs,
More full of joy!
Joy, bright spark of divinity,
Daughter of Elysium,
Fire-inspired we tread
Thy sanctuary!
Thy magic power reunites
All that custom has divided;
All men become brothers
Under the sway of thy gentle wings.
Whoever has created
An abiding friendship,
Or has won
A true and loving wife,
All who can call at least one soul theirs,
Join in our song of praise!
But any who cannot must creep tearfully
Away from our circle.
All creatures drink of joy
At nature’s breast.
Just and unjust
Alike taste of her gift;
She gave us kisses and the fruit of the vine,
A tried friend to the end.
Even the worm can feel contentment,
And the cherub stands before God!
Gladly, like the heavenly bodies
Which He set on their courses through the
splendor of the firmament;
Thus, brothers, you should run your race,
As a hero going to conquest.
You millions, I embrace you.
This kiss is for all the world!
Brothers, above the starry canopy
There must dwell a loving Father.
Do you fall in worship, you millions?
World, do you know your Creator?
Seek Him in the heavens!
Above the stars must He dwell.
Now read the Libretto translated by Tracy K. Smith and performed in 2020 at a Carnegie Hall performance, All Together: A Global Ode to Joy.
O friend, my heart has tired
Of such darkness.
Now it vies for joy.
Joy, bright God-spark born of Ever
Daughter of fresh paradise—
Where you walked once now walk rancor,
Greed, suspicion, anger, fright.
Joy, the breeze off all that’s holy,
Pure with terror, wild as flame.
Make us brothers, give us comfort,
Bid us past such fear and hate.
If you’ve loved another’s beauty
If you’ve craved the warmth of flesh,
If your spirit is invested
In another’s sense of worth,
Lift your voice to touch my voice now,
Let our song bring joy to earth.
Lift your voice to touch my voice now,
Let our song bring joy to earth.
Joy like water, milk of mothers.
Kind and wicked all deserve
Joy’s compassion freely given,
Joy which can’t be sold or earned.
In the depths of blackest soil
In the lightless atmosphere
In the atom and the ether,
Animating all that is.
Let us feel it, let us heed it,
Let us seek its deepest kiss.
Let us live our brief lives mining
That which joy alone can give.
Battered planet, home of billions,
Our long shadow stalks your face.
All we’ve fractured, all we’ve stolen,
All we’ve sought blind to your grace.
Earth, forgive us, claim us, let us
Live in humble thanks and joy.
Let our hearts wake from our stupor,
Let us praise you in one voice.
Ode to Joy
Adaptation by Tracy K. Smith (b. 1972) for the
culminating concert of All Together: A Global Ode
to Joy at Carnegie Hall on December 6, 2020
Here is a superb performance of the Symphony No. 9 by the Chicago Symphony.
Giving Life to the Land Around You
Water Is A Basic Right – Right?
Not so according to five of nine U.S. Supreme Court Justices. Read how they consider “trust” established in treaties between the Navajo Nation and the U.S.
Listen to Thirst Gap Podcast on KUNC National Public Radio, Episode 5: First in Time. This Episode features the Navajo Nation (The Dine’ People) water issues.
Patterns in Nature I
Sea of Grass on Dream Acres Farm
Meadow Grass
Laurel Family
On any random walk, the ordinary is extraordinary, if we but stop to see it.
A Different Kind of Time: Emanuel Vaughan-Lee
Photo by Susan Feathers 2023
Emergence Magazine provides profound and relevant experiences and knowledge vital to humankind’s return to kinship with all life on Earth.
The magazine is a portal to poets, writers, educators, and spiritual leaders from around the world. It is a portal of reflection and ways to heal, and love. Here for example is an amazing poem by Ross Gay, To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian.
Empower Women and Girls: COP28
Today, a special panel of high level leaders was featured on the role of women in energy transition and sectors for climate adaptation, mitigation, and resilience.
A panel of leaders from countries across the world spoke to the continued general exclusion and/or low opportunities for women in implementing climate goals and contributing leadership and originality. Also, examples where countries are successfuly empowering women inspire us to meet the goals for a just transition including women and girls.
Panel starts at about 18.1 minutes.
Indigenous American Authors: Great New Books in Fiction and Nonfiction
You haven’ lived without reading a new writer of fiction, Angeline Boulley.
You haven’t lived without reading a new writer of fiction, Angeline Boulley. The Firekeeper’s Daughter, her first novel (2021), was listed on the New York Times Best Seller List and has been nominated for numerous awards, and is being produced on Netflix as an episodic story. I was drawn to read it by my local book club but also because Louise Erdrich, Pulitzer and National Book Award-winning Native American novelist, raved about it. See Birchbark Books, Louise’s independent book store in Minneapolis.
In a recent interview by Louise with Angeline, Boulley describes why she wrote the book and its sequel (Warrior Girl Unearthed). Both novels are Young Adult but all adults are reading it as well because the values and knowledge Boulley emparts to readers is chicken soup for the soul, or “how things should be” among us human beings. Her Objibwe culture is generously described throughout the book in an engaging way through the main character, Daunis Fontaine. Boulley was Director of Indigenous Education at the U.S. Department of Education. Her father is a firekeeper in his tribe (a keeper of tradition and culture) and Angeline has been in leadership roles in her tribal nation. Imparting understanding of her Ojibwe traditions is purposeful.
During this interview, I learned about Marcie Rendon, another Ojibwe writer. Murder on the Red River is the first book in a mystery triology with the lead character, Cash Blackbear, a 19-year old kickass woman. Like Boulley, Rendon incorporates current and past issues for Native Women and Native Peoples in America. The issue addressed in this book through Cash is the foster home abduction era when young native children were removed from their homes by BIA officials to be “rescued” from what was considered “bad homes”. Cash has endured seven foster homes before ending up in Fargo, North Dakota. The local sheriff received Cash each time she was kicked out of a foster home for her behavior and continues to observe and intervene with compassion. Their partnership to solve a murder is endearing, gritty and funny. The book is a three part series – Sinister Graves is heading toward my mailbox with Girl Gone Missing next in line. Rendon has that clean-sentence-no-nonsense way of telling a story that allows the reader’s imagination to spark and fire. I read the book over a day. HIghly recommended for you mystery readers!
In Non-Fiction, I recommend Ned Blackhawk’s new The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. It is very well written and riveting as Dr. Blackhawk lays out the book and then shows how Native American tribal communities influenced and shaped outcomes before, during and after the Revolutionary War and Civil War. Ned is a historian whose prose is easy to read but well sourced. It won this year’s National Book Award for Nonfiction. It is a book that can be read over time and should be on every history readers’ bookcase for reference on American history that is inclusive of the great traditions and historical importance of Indigenous peoples.
See below an interview with Dr. Blackhawk at the National Constitution Center.
Susan Feathers 