Sherry Chandler

So my calendar tells me that this is Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I will try to meditate a bit on what it is that makes us want to commit genocide against our fellow humans. Pray, if you will, if prayer is, as Georgia Stamper defines it, a medition of empathy and compassion.

This last weekend, my family and I finally got enough courage to watch Hotel Rwanda. It was as intense an experience as I had thought it would be, and yet a very, very good movie.

Recently, reading in Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism, I was struck by this statement: “If any literary work is emotionally ‘depressing,’ there is something wrong with either the writing or the reader’s response.” Hotel Rwanda was not depressing — it is, after all, primarily about the heights to which a human can rise in times of unimaginable adversity. It might also be called a poem or an act of prayer. It was beautiful in an awful way. Sobering.

Never again is the motto. And yet we did not act to stop that holocaust in Rwanda. We are not acting in Darfur. Our invasion was the catalyst for something very similar in Iraq, though I hope not of the same magnitude. We did help out in Bosnia. But that is in Europe. Is that what the difference is?

Here is a poem that I found this morning by Joseph S. Cotter, Jr. (more on him tomorrow). It was written in 1918 or 19, just before he died. It evokes some irony, now, I think.

Africa

A thousand years of darkness in her face,
She turns at last from out the centuries’ blight
Of labored moan and dull oppression’s might,
To slowly mount the rugged path and trace
Her measured step unto her ancient place.
And upward, ever upward towards the light
She strains, seeing afar the day when right
Shall rule the world and justice leaven the race.

Now bare her swarthy arm and firm her sword,
She stands where Universal Freedom bleeds,
And slays in holy wrath to save the word
Of nations and their puny, boasting creeds.
Sear with the truth, O God, each doubting heart,
Of mankind’s need and Afric’s gloried part.

Our governor, in his wisdom and having been given absolute line-item veto by the foot-dragging legislature, has left $10 million in the state budget to build a pharmacy school at the private, Baptist-run University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg. This is the same school that recently expelled a student for being gay. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, the money was left in the budget “partially because Eastern Kentucky needs pharmacists.” “Partially?”

State senator Daniel Mongiardo has pointed out that the building for a rural pharmacy program and the beginnings of such a program already are in place at the University of Kentucky’s Center for Rural Health in Hazard. Fletcher also cut $4.9 million for the expansion and renovation of a nursing school building at Kentucky State University in Frankfort. And he cut nearly $30 million from the budget of Morehead State, which also serves Eastern Kentucky. Ten million of that was to go for student housing, and having had a son live in MSU dorms, I know that the university is desperate for decent student housing. Altogether, of the $370 million in cuts Fletcher made to the budget, over $300 million was taken from the budgets of state universities.

But we still have $10 million for a private school that expells gays.

from Talking Points Memo:

Last week I mentioned that there’s a very bad bill moving through Congress. It’s supported overwhelmingly by Republicans but also by a lot of Democrats too. Basically the bill would turn over the control of the Internet to the phone companies — though ‘phone companies’ is probably now an antiquated phrase for Verizon and AT&T and other such outfits. There’s a lot more underlying complexity to it of course. But the change could make it much harder to access TPM or any source of news or entertainment that isn’t owned by some big corporation or, more likely, have the inside track with one of the phone companies. If you’re cool with AT&T deciding the sources of use you can access then you probably won’t mind. But if you like making those decisions yourself, you may want to speak up.

Here’s one group mobilizing against the bill: savetheinternet.com. Another group that is on the case is publicknowledge.org.

This isn’t some obscure issue of interest only to policy wonks. It may seem like it, but it’s not. It’s a very big deal and I strongly encourage you to find out what’s going on.

MoveOn.org is also active in this fight. Whatever you may think of Al Gore, I would urge you to look into this bill and make your voice heard.

A slightly different perspective from The Washington Monthly:

NET NEUTRALITY….I’ve been trying to understand this whole “net neutrality” thing and I’ve failed utterly. I just can’t figure out the underlying issues.

On the one hand, the telecom industry says they just want to be able guarantee service levels (for a price) for high-value, high-bandwidth services like on-demand video. This does not seem very alarming to me. Companies already buy bigger pipes and negotiate quality-of-service agreements when they need guaranteed bandwidth, and that’s never caused any problems. Bloggers are accustomed to paying their hosts based on the bandwidth they plan to use, for example, and this seems like more of the same on a larger scale.

At the same time, the CEO of Qwest claims that “No one should deny or impede access to lawful sites on the Web. Everyone supports that position.” But in fact, last year a small broadband provider decided to block access to Vonage phone service — so apparently support for that position isn’t quite as universal as Qwest’s CEO claims.

What’s more, if the real issue is that telecom companies want to be able to offer higher service levels to certain customers but would never reduce service levels for other customers — well then, why not write that into law? Especially if “everyone” supports this position?

Joseph Seamon Cotter (1861-1949) appears to have been Kentucky’s first African-American poet to get any attention from the white establishment. My peregrinations and researches lead me to believe that his poetic reputation has been eclipsed lately by that of his son, Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr. (and, in fact, there’s some confusion between them on the web), but Cotter Senior’s accomplishments are impressive. KYLIT has posted an excellent biography that is well worth reading. I’ll hit the highlights. He was born free in Bardstown, because his great-grandfather had bought his own freedom in 1829 and after that continued to buy members of his family into freedom. He also bought a farm, so he must have been both very industrious and very respected.

Like George D. Prentice, Cotter learned to read by age 3 and also like Prentice, he had to give up formal schooling to work the family farm. Cotter published five poetry collections, the most famous of which is Sequel to the Pied Piper of Hamlin, a book of short stories, and a play, Caleb the Degenerate. In addition, he founded Louisville’s Paul Laurence Dunbar High School (he was an admirer and friend of Dunbar, who visited his home in Louisville) and was principal there for nearly twenty years. He served in Louisville public schools for 50 years. He was active in the National Organization for the Advancement of Colored People, a member of the Author’s League of America, and was listed in Who’s Who in America.

The little poem below is reproduced by William S. Ward in his Literary History of Kentucky. I like it as well as anything else of Cotter’s I’ve been able to find.

The Tryst

The moon hangs limp in a lusty sky
And trysts with the evening star,
Which flingeth back a golden smile,
And they straightway lovers are.

The rich man trinkets the wares of life
And mocks the poor man’s plea,
Which flingeth back a dagger-thought
That trysts with anarchy.