Sherry Chandler

It’s May Day

Another of those pesky cross-quarter days, this one also sometimes known as Beltane.

The Baltimore Orioles have breezed into town, as they do every year about this time. They seem to stay, in our yard at least, only a couple of weeks but while they’re around they make their presence known with their splashy colors and much raucous singing. It’s a simple song but lovely and it’s always a joy when the birds return.

(I give you a photo stolen from the US Geological Survey. Not much way that I could get a shot, I think. They like the upper terraces of the tall wild cherries and the old black locusts that are just about to bloom now in our yard.)

We have also seen a hummingbird, probably a female ruby-throated since they are the ones that range in the east, feeding on the last few surviving redbud blooms. Most of the blooms were killed by the 5-day freeze we had mid-April.

May Day is also a worker’s holiday in many nations around the world and so demonstrations are planned around the nation for immigrant workers. [Added: Or, if you're a hard-nosed capitalist, you can celebrate Law Day, mandated by Eisenhower to co-opt the socialist May Day.]

It also means that NaPoWriMo is over and I hope all of you who participated got some good stuff going.

And speaking of gaudy male display, this is the fourth anniversary of Dubya Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” appearance on board an aircraft carrier, the Abraham Lincoln, carefully positioned to look as though it were out to sea, proving once and for all that an action figure doll does not make a good president.

To commemorate that event, I give you words from the inaugural address of our new Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere:

But now that I have achieved virtual immortality, or mortal virtuality, my first act as laureate is to declare power, as we know it, bankrupt. I realize I am among the choir, but I find it important, especially now, to point a finger at the war the U.S. began, and maintains at extreme cost, on false pretenses and without the support of the countries seated at the United Nations’ table, since we are nearing a voting period. The “Policeman” of the world has ridden its course, and we have to start an articulate buzz about the demise of this kind of brute, money-motivated power – among ourselves — so that we can begin re-building our international diplomacy skills, and most vitality, engage the next generation of U.S. citizens in the process.

I listen to NPR some mornings and report war details, including death tolls, to my students now and then. Once in awhile, a handful will get flustered and demand to know why “we didn’t know these details before,” especially in relation to the genesis of the war. These outbursts are common enough that I think, If just a few more adults were talking to young adults about the specificities and the perils the war will provide for their futures, maybe these Millennials won’t be so easily media-duped once they truly become the voting majority.

Related posts:

Poet Laureate of the Blogsphere

April 1

Emerson

World Poetry Day

Goldenrod

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