Sweet Nectar of Hope

lighthouse for exiles

Statue of Liberty glows

let’s keep her promise

“Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand / A mighty woman with a torch.”  Emma Lazarus penned per request “The New Colossus” in 1883, a sonnet fundraiser for the Statue of  Liberty’s pedestal.  Her words, cast twenty years later on a bronze plaque inside the lower level, spring from memory in countless languages and in hopeful hearts: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” 

“I am a lighthouse / I stand for refugees.”  Rising Appalachia, sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith, breathe fresh life into Lazarus’s sonnet in their August release “Lady Liberty.”  Because “She is our Lady,” they invite us to reimagine what the “Mother of Exiles” might sing today to anyone seeking her safe harbor.  Smith speaks for the activist duo: “We question what we’ve become in relation to the original promise of the United States as a refuge for liberty.”

Nectarines—Marc Elias and Robert Reich  

Without any assurance of eventual success, Democracy Docket founder and dogged litigating warrior Marc Elias shares with us what gives him hope.  “Most importantly, I have hope when people refuse the cool cynicism of despair.  Despair is peddled by the right to convince us that resistance is futile, and it is echoed by too many on the left who would rather sit back and say all is lost.  Cynicism asks nothing of us; hope demands everything.  When people choose to act rather than surrender, that is what keeps democracy alive.”  Slow the march toward authoritarianism.  Do your best and buy time.  Stoke the fire of hope-generated courage to “act in the face of uncertainty.”

Obama economic advisor and Clinton labor secretary, author of eighteen books including just-released Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, professor and lawyer, spirited Robert Reich rejects despair and serves us “Bread and Butter and Hope.”  He toasts the accomplishments of mayors Wu in Boston, Scott in Baltimore, and Johnson in Chicago while celebrating mayoral candidate Mamdani in New York.  “Pragmatic progressives – armed with a mixture of bread-and-butter proposals to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, and an upbeat message of hope that such proposals can get enacted – will win even more elections.”  Reich encourages everyone.  “The most powerful force in American politics today is antiestablishment rage at a system that’s rigged against most people.”  He offers a short, clear video detailing how to contribute immediately in our national emergency.  Call your representatives in Congress.  Attend town halls.  Join local resistance groups or help organize one.  Boycott corporations and organizations caving to governmental cruelty.  Protect the most vulnerable in your community.  “And together we will win.”  

Ladies Liberty—Nicole Collier, Michelle Wu, Tammy Duckworth

No, Nicole Collier would not sign a “permission slip” agreeing to round-the-clock police supervision guaranteeing her presence in the House chamber to pass the governor’s blatantly racist redistricting plan.  Fort Worth attorney serving her eighth term in the Texas House of Representatives, she therefore spent two chilly nights on the House floor, held hostage by remarkable stupidity.  Along with over fifty Texas democratic legislators, Collier had departed the state for fifteen days, thereby depriving republicans of the quorum needed for the governor’s special session designed to rig the 2026 elections.  The champs returned home, knowing that the governor would continue calling special sessions.  “I refuse to sign away my dignity as a duly elected representative just so Republicans can control my movements and monitor me with police escorts.  My community is majority-minority, and they expect me to stand up for their representation.  When I press the button to vote, I know these maps will harm my constituents – I won’t just go along quietly with their intimidation or their discrimination.”  For Collier’s second overnight, additional House members tore up their “permission slips” and enjoyed “a slumber party for democracy.”

“Boston will never back down from being a beacon of freedom, and a home for everyone.” Attorney and mayor since 2021, Michelle Wu responds to threats hurled by the current “attorney general” demanding that she oversee assistance in deportations, or else local officials will be prosecuted and federal grants and contracts (illegally) withheld.  “You have eliminated health care and food assistance for our families; unlawfully canceled grants for our schools and roads; slashed funding for our universities, hospitals, and research institutions; and deployed military personnel to occupy our streets.”  Mayor Wu blasts this wicked attempt “to divide, isolate, and intimidate our cities, and make Americans fearful of one another.”

First Thai American and first woman with a disability elected to Congress, retired Army National Guard lieutenant colonel now Illinois Senator, Black Hawk helicopter pilot Tammy Duckworth stands.  She calls out “a small man,” a would-be “tin pot dictator” threatening to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago.  “Forcing the military, uninvited, into Chicago to intimidate Americans in their own communities does not make our nation stronger, it simply distracts the military from its core mission of keeping Americans safe from real adversaries who wish us harm.  It’s yet another unwarranted, unwanted, and unjust move straight out of the authoritarian’s playbook.”  Watch unassailable Duckworth’s August 25th Chicago Address.   

funky interlude

child’s sneakers, tree house secrets

curling wobbling toy

Bodies everywhere, wake and shake.  Grab a baseball cap and any instrument.  Ooh, jammin’ time with Lettuce—clap, “Rising to the Top,” hug.  Jivin’ hips and shoulders.  “Let’s start heading homeward bound / Let some love shine on through.”  (The studio….)  “That’s a take.” Clap—Hug. 

Childhood birthdays.  Adult at five.  Age seven, got it all.  Now nine, not so sure.  Thoughts “On Turning Ten” sickened poet Billy Collins with “mumps of the psyche.”  Lying in bed he reminisces about his single-digit life.  Dark blue speed-bike and true-blue imaginary friends.  “It seems to be yesterday that I used to believe / there was nothing under our skin but light.”

Poet Rosemerry Waltola Frommer’s “Intention” is to keep alive her childhood wonder.  Yes, the way a small child experiences the world—a roly-poly toy on the move then suddenly still.  Eek!  Body imagines—mind floats.  “To wonder beyond the edge / of the known, and in that spaciousness play.”  Maybe there is, indeed, nothing under our skin but light.   

Tuck under a “twilight canopy” as The 5th Dimension lifts us “Up, Up, and Away” in our beautiful balloon.  Marilyn McCoo leads this more grownup quintet since its first flight took off almost sixty years ago.  “If you hold my hand we’ll chase your dream across the sky / For we can fly (we can fly).”  Guiding star—moon companion.  Sailing “along the silver sky.”  

“Sing to me.”  Bells chime—children laugh.  We gulp nectar with 2,600 non-gladiators in this ancient Roman amphitheater.  Strapped in by his Fender guitar, David Gilmour and bandmates catch the sun dipping into a Pompeian night.  “When that Fat Old Sun in the sky is falling / Summer evenin’ birds are calling.”  Inhaling the delicious smell of new mown grass, we wiggle its green blades between bare toes.  Sing to us a “silver sound.”

silver sky and sound

balloons, evenin’ birds, our hopes

grow younger with me