Week's End - The Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony

Unless you've been under a rock (man, I hope not), you know that the ceremony was today but that the award could not be given. Liu Xiabao was not allowed to be there as he's in prison for 11 outrageous years. Those who have been in contact with his wife Liu Xia have not heard from her in at least 3 days. It's believed that she is under house arrest.

The last time a Nobel Peace Prize was not handed out was 1936. Guess who nixed that one? You can watch the video on the Nobel Organization page, here. By the by, today is International Human Rights Day & Amnesty International's Write for Rights campaign runs through the 13th. Wherever you are, you can do something without joining anything. A letter with a stamp. That's it.

Sadly, I can't have comments on these posts due to spamming.

(The lovely holiday candle photograph is by Aimee White)

What Would Oscar Do?

I like to think he'd wear purple anyway. That he would use his wit to punch holes in bullies. But the thing is, though he'd be an expert spoke-person for gay rights, we know what happened to him. So it isn't enough to leave it to our gay friends, family, & colleagues to counter this backward trend.

I freak out on behalf of friends in certain countries, especially in Africa & the Middle East about this issue. And then,whoa, there were anti-gay riots in Europe recently.

So it's up to everyone to help stop bullying. For those in other countries who might not know, here in the States bullying of all kids is an ongoing problem & statistics indicate that it's getting worse. The most vulnerable of all are self-identified (or other-people identified) LGBTQ youth. There have been several recent suicides connected to the heinous behavior of bullying.

I'm rushing to get this posted but I am wearing purple plaid pj bottoms (you don't want to know more, I assure you) & I hope that counts. Go to Bleeding Espresso for better links. (Or Change.org) Think of Oscar. Think of all the gay & lesbian icons we (straight) folks revere. The writers, the artists, poets, etc. More anon.

Chimes of Freedom

The Nobel Peace Prize 2010 was awarded to Liu Xiaobo "for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China".

Note: It's not you, I've turned off comments on this post. Reason at bottom in italics.

Liu Xiaobo was sentenced on 25 December 2009, the day after a two-hour trial and more than a year after he was first detained. Articles he wrote about the June 1989 pro-democracy movement were also cited in his verdict as evidence of “inciting subversion”.

Amnesty International has campaigned for his release, along with that of other activists who signed Charter 08 including Liu Xianbin, who was arrested in June.

Several other signatories of Charter 08 have asked to share the responsibility with Liu Xiaobo and a group of senior Communist Party members have questioned the legality of Liu Xiaobo's sentence.

Former president of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel and Nobel Peace Price Laureate the Dalai Lama were among those who supported the nomination of Liu Xiaobo for the 2010 award. Vaclav Havel co-wrote Charter 77, the 1977 document calling for respect of human rights in Czechoslovakia on which Charter 08 was modeled. (Amnesty International website)

Note: Comments are turned off for this post, as they are permanently on Julie's innocent leetle blog. The spam level reaches heights of absurdity whenever something like this appears. Yes, even on theese leetle blog. I'm still searching for photography attribution; I have had it in a file for months & did not save with info. It's just perfect, to me, though & so I dug it off a CD of pix. (Update - photograph by Ricardson Williams via flickr)

Week's End - Fiammetta

It's too soon for autumn leaves but the photograph reminds me of fiammetta - little flame. Or, if you want to be picky about it, fiammette (plural, I am assuming & I'm not checking my dictionary. Correct me, I don't mind at all.) I've been reading Boccaccio via Keats (Isabella and the Pot of Basil). I was vaguely aware that Bocaccio was another Italian inspired by a woman who didn't look at him twice. (Petrarch, too.)

This past spring, I won La Bella Lingua by Dianne Hales from Michelle Fabio's Bleeding Espresso. Dianne wrote a charming chapter on Italian's Literary Lions. As soon as I read, "For years I barely glanced at the white marble busts of Italy's grandi that line the shady paths of Rome's Pincio, the gardens above the Piazza del Popolo," I thought/yelled "I noticed!" But Dianne was doing something I have never done in Rome--jogged. I salute her - it's a great place to run.

I'm in more fragile health & feeling Keats-y, so if there today, I'd be walking by that gorgeous view & sighing. Mainly about the horrible news from Italy & France that Roma are being treated worse than usual. I'm beyond upset. (You just knew I'd turn this into something sad, right? An editor once said to me...you turn a lovely poem into the apocalypse every damn time. Crikey. -- he was English. Then he went on to say something rude about melancholic Welsh ethnic stuff. Harumph.)

Where are the writers, the artists, the poets, the philosophers? (They are actually still valued in some fashion in Europe, unlike here in America.) Well, there are protests, yes. I'll find individual names as soon as I post this. But Italy. France. Shame. Your noble pasts will be so much cold marble statuary lining grand avenues if you continue this outrage. We'll leave WWII out of this, ahem, for now. (I'm talking to you, too, Hungary.) Scapegoats. Remind you of anything? Suddenly, flaming red maples, little flames licking at the blue sky don't seem so innocent.

Apologies to Dianne, for using her charming love letter to Italian in this manner. I did not plan it (obviously, or I'd taken more care with grammar). But that's it; I can't do much more today or the rest of the weekend. Here's where you can buy it (& visit Dianne). I definitely recommend it. This know-it-all didn't know most of it (so far). Giulia Geranium is supposed to start again on Tuesday; but I'm postponing it until I see friends off to Sudan next Sunday.

(The beautiful Jen Gotch photograph via Joanna Goddard's Cup of Jo)

The Interrupted Concert

It was on this day in 1936 that the 38-year-old Spanish poet Federico García Lorca was executed, a few weeks after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. In those first weeks, people on both sides — the leftist republicans and the right-wing nationalists — were rounded up and killed, as many as 50,000, with particularly heavy casualties against the republicans. Lorca was a leftist sympathizer, an open homosexual, and a writer who wrote about oppressed people like gypsies, so he was an easy target for the nationalists.--The Writer's Almanac

"Seventy years after his death, his voice is just as alive as on that 19 August night when bullets tried to silence it." --conclusion to this 2006 article, Poet's Death Still Troubles Spain.

Here is the link to the bilingual Fundacion Federico García Lorca (in Madrid) created by Lorca's sister, Isabel. BBC link of Lorca's life in pictures, here. I can barely write a thing as this horrific murder makes me weep.

The Interrupted Concert

The frozen sleepy pause

of the half moon

has broken the harmony

of the deep night.

The ditches, shrouded in sedge,

protest in silence,

and the frogs, muezzins of shadow,

have fallen silent.

In the old village inn

the sad music has ceased,

and the most ancient of stars

has muted its ray.

The wind has come to rest

in dark mountain caves,

and a solitary poplar—Pythagoras

of the pure plain—

lifts its aged hand

to strike at the moon. (trans. W.S. Merwin)