Join us every Tuesday afternoon at the Daily Kos community political poetry club.
Your own poetry is always welcome in the comments.
Bongos, berets & turtle neck sweaters optional.
The keyboard is mightier than the sword.
Readers & Book Lovers Series Schedule
Do what you can.
Can you console someone,
either in your face-to-face world,
or here at Daily Kos?
Then do it;
console someone,
someone feeling horrific grief,
here at The Grieving Room;
someone facing serious illness:
several diaries on the rec list
have given us chances to do that.
Take care of your family;
take care of yourself.
I presume you're doing that;
then tell yourself,
I'm already doing what bigjac is suggesting.
You can give yourself one gold star each day,
if you keep up the good work,
doing your normal duties.
I'm rambling on like this,
because the reason I so enjoy Daiy Kos,
is the feeling,
maybe only a tiny bit true,
maybe not true at all,
but it's the feeling that I can help;
the feeling that I can help a few,
the feeling that I can help all humanity.
I try to help with the little things,
at home and online,
such as getting to work,
earning money,
paying the bills,
doing household chores;
and online,
getting a diary in the queue
for this poetry group,
and trying to console those feeling stress,
stress from a serious illness in the family,
stress from a death in the family.
I also want to help with bigger things:
I want to reduce my carbon footprint,
but I've already done the biggest thing I can do
to reduce the carbon footprint
of myself and all my descendants:
I got a vasectomy in 1977,
and I have no descendants.
I want everyone to have healthy food,
and to have it with no pesticide residue,
and no carbon footprint for production of their food.
But to do this,
we must have everyone living on the land their food comes from,
to eliminate transportation of food.
To do that,
we need a great deal of land for each family,
and if there is a drought where a family lives,
they may need to move,
to more land,
land with nobody already on it.
We don't have that much good land
with good rainfall,
on the whole planet,
for billions of humans.
So,
I keep begging folks to consider
using surgical sterilization,
and my wife says I don't ask in the right way,
I don't suggest it in such a way as to persuade anyone,
and I don't know what to do.
And folks keep making the news
by shooting each other,
including a man,
feeling bad from post traumatic stress disorder,
(we should spell it out,
to think about what it means)
who shot a famous sniper...
And so many folks feel
that the top priority
is to do something to make it better.
I look at America,
full of guns,
300 million Americans,
about 300 million guns,
and a deep seated culture
that accepts guns as......
not as lethal as they truly are.
(that's my guess,
my guess at the erroneous mindset
that contributes to the gun deaths)
And I look at the future of America,
and I see food shortages,
and I see that in this country,
more than any other,
folks might shoot each other,
fighting over food,
fighting over water rights,
water for growing food.
And the global climate change
is making it worse,
making more droughts,
longer droughts,
worse droughts.
So,
I want to help folks avoid famines.
I want to help,
by persuading folks to have very few children,
one child for every five couples,
for two generations,
until we have way under one billion of us on this planet,
maybe less than 100 million,
and then we can all grow our own food,
and move to new land in times of drought.
And the global climate change
is making this more urgent.
And the many guns
make the future more scary.
I don't think enough folks will believe me.
I think the famines will come.
I want to help.
But all I can do,
in the short term,
besides writing diaries like this,
is console folks feeling stress,
stress from a death in the family;
stress from a serious illness.
Maybe,
as a symbolic gesture,
I'll build a chicken coop this spring,
and get two ducks,
and plant potatoes and green beans.
I'll eat duck eggs,
and potatoes,
and green beans,
and the carbon footprint
for that food to get from the point of production
to my mouth
will be zero.
Thanks for reading.
If you want to volunteer
to write a diary for this series,
all dates are open,
so take your pick:
February:
12th open
19th open
26th open
March:
5th open
Hmmmm.......