My great grandfather was a farmer.

My very German grandmother and grandfather,

were gardeners and canners.

Many cells of my body –

were formed eating food from their garden,

their cherry tree,

and their canned food.

My parents were gardeners.

Many cells of my body,

were formed from sweet corn,

grown in their yard.

Epi-genetics.

inheritance.

While I may know no German words.

I know what a German garden looks like.

Inheritance works in so many twisted ways.

Are planting tomatoes a dominant or recessive trait?

What about canning produce grown in the sun,

that falls on you while you work in a garden?

Of my siblings those who own land,

garden.

The few that don’t grow other things.

My sister grows planets in cyberspace.

My brother grows plants in window boxes.

My other sister grows pets.

The rest grow a variety of plants

Will those traits continue?

Will my grandchildren someday say,

its canning time,

excuse me while I pick some of those ripe tomatoes?

© words by Daniel DeMarle 5/27/21

The White Lion –

Don’t forget that name.

How many times have you heard that so and so,

is a distant relative of someone who came across,

on the Mayflower. You know that name!

The Mayflower, one of the most famous and mythic ships,

in the American cosmology.

Landing near Cape Cod with those Pilgrims in 1620.

We all know their god and worship.

Yet, while the First People were here with their religion and government

The Pilgrims were not the second.

What of the White Lion?

What you do not know about the 1st ship to bring people to America?

Could it be because their cargo had beautiful black skin?

That they were in truth the second people.

Yet those 20 or so people were from the Ndongo people,

in what is now Angola.

They were taken from Africa in the São João Bautista,

a Portuguese ship.

They probably gave praise when their ship was attacked,

by the English ship the White Lion.

They probably hoped and prayed that this meant their freedom,

for who could be so barbaric to reenslave newly enslaved people?

After defeating the Portuguese, the English sailors,

did not free them.

Imagine the tears!

As they were simply transferred from one hold to another.

To eventually be traded for food in the Virginia Colony.

What of their descendants?

Who are the descendants of those men and women,

who came to America in 1619 a year before,

those pious Pilgrims arrived.

What of the gods of the Ndongo people?

You know they were prayed to.

Why do we all not know of the White Lion?

We mostly know of the centuries of woe that the white men and women

who accepted that trade,

brought to this country.

Where are the monuments to the men and women of the White Lion?

Where are the memorials to their tears?

to our tears?

© words by Daniel DeMarle

Click here to learn more.

i was born in a place where we only saw two colors,

those colors were white and black.

i was born in a place where history was only taught,

from a white book,

where the world was paper-thin.

Where history was only two dimensional,

where only white men had agency,

where only white men made history.

i was born in a time where we watched Westerns,

where the white settlers or calvary,

were doing right by massacring first nation people,

both men, women, children, and infants.

It would be decades before I learned the term first nations.

There was no black in my life other than images on a screen.

It would be years before I knew someone who was not white.

I was born in a twisted and malformed world!

A world were you were taught 2+2 was 4;

but not cuatro, or أربعة or nne, or even ceathrar.

At some point, my foot and then I, fell through that paper-thin world.

I, like Dorothy, found a beautiful technicolor world;

of life, food, love, experience, and taste and oh so many glorious tastes,

and stories,

and lives,

and vibrancy,

and pathos and sorrow,

and JOY!

Let alone agency and power!

It’s amazing that I grew up in the shadow of the company,

that made Kodachrome,

but yet it took me decades to live in a Kodachrome world.

Today at the Doctors the receptionist was having a hard time getting the computer to print,

She made a comment about oh you know women,

I answered, Yes I know women are strong, and vibrant, and heroes and the foundation of this country.

She started to cry and later thanked me.

After I thought what system do we live in that a random stranger has to tell you a truth that is so,

true.

Yet the fact is,

the fact is,

that I myself, besides having strong women in my life,

did not know that about women,

until I could see more than white and black.

It’s a beautiful world,

Come see it with me.

© words by Daniel DeMarle 5/13/21

A quick note, I have seen lots of memes and posts lately about individual police officers being upstanding people on the job. I agree, I know some fantastic officers. That does not mean, however, that policing in the US is not racist, bad, and leads to very negative outcomes for primarily BIPOC. It is the system of policing, not police officers as a whole. We hear all the time that the problem is a few bad apples. No, the problem is a system that allows and encourages the behavior of a few bad apples and the rest of the system that oppresses BIPOC. When someone tampered with Tylenol in Chicago in 1982, we did not say oh it was just a few bad bottles. No, we re-manufactured the dang bottles and passed federal anti-tampering laws. Every time you struggle to take off a safety cap and safety seal on a new bottle, that is because “A total of seven people died in the original poisonings, with several more deaths in subsequent copycat crimes.” Around a dozen people died and we redid the entire system. All that because of a few bad apples. One attempted shoe boomer, and we end up taking all our shoes off to get on a plane. Billions of shoes on and off. Think of how many BIPOC have died at the hands of police, been incorrectly killed by the States, and spent years and decades behind bars. It is the system, NOT the officers. They just work the way the system designed their jobs to work. If you care about police officers, CHANGE THE D*(& SYSTEM!!! If you care about the blue line then change the D&^% system.

©words by Dan DeMarle 5/8/21