We often forget that there is an incomparable beauty in being alive.

© words and picture by Dan DeMarle 10/2021

It is easy to forget that President Biden resoundingly defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 election. There have been many attempts to spin what happened. You may have heard, things such as he was popular with Hispanics or with black men, or even that it was close.

It wasn’t and most of what you heard was just spin. President Biden received more than 81 million votes, the most votes ever cast for a candidate in a U.S. presidential election. Biden won 65% of the Latino vote according to Edison Research. Biden won 87% of the Black vote. Polls showed that 68% of Asian American and Pacific Island (AAPI) voters supported Biden/Harris. Data from Five Thirty Eight indicated 65% of Indian American voters backed Joe Biden. 68% of American Indian and Alaska Native voters supporting Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

So who voted for Trump. In the words of D.L. Hughley, 57% “of whites voted for a racist psychopath” A man who as President, who at the time of the election had let over 240,000 Americans die on his watch, by the time he left office it was over 400,000. Of those white people, 53% were white men and 42% were white women.

So if it wasn’t for people of color he would still be President, which is why those Republican States are doing everything they can to limit voting by POC.

My mother grew butterflies.

She had an old garden bed by the front door,

in which she grew milkweed.

She had eight children.

In a miracle of wings, monarchs –

yearly migrate from Central Mexico to Canada, and then make the trip back.

It takes five generations to make that trip.

They only lay eggs on milkweed.

She had eight children.

My mother knew about migrations.

She knew how children come and go,

Come and go.

She knew they needed a safe place.

The right home.

She knew about watching children launch into uncertain winds and futures.

Two of my nieces –

The third generation, spent time growing up in that house.

I like to think they needed milkweed like milk to grow.

Yesterday a wounded monarch lay in my yard.

I showed my granddaughter how to pick it up.

We carried it down the street to a neighbor’s patch of milkweed.

So if it still needed to lay eggs,

to carry on the next generation,

it could.

This was the fourth generation of children

Helping the fourth generation of monarchs.

My mother grew monarchs

And she knew how to grow families.

© words and pictures by Daniel DeMarle

Continue reading →

Growing up I spent a lot of time in my teens burning off energy splitting wood. In part this may have been because the wood was in the driveway in the way of the basketball net. In retrospect that may have been a clever parental ploy to encourage the splitting of wood.

During the pandemic, with indoor gatherings not allowed. I would gather wood in my urban forest to burn in the cold night air with socially distanced friends. That included large unsplit tree trunks, that at first were to wet to split.

After a wet winter and seven months they are now ready to split. I watch myself with sledge hammer and wedge, and wonder what that young man would think of this now grey haired man splitting wood. I know that If I could say something to him, I would tell him “ a life isn’t a life if you don’t live it, so live it as if each day is a gift, because it is.”

© words and picture Dan DeMarle 7/22/21

Currently there are a number of bills in the 21-22 legislative session aimed at restricting voting in NY. The Brennan Center for Justice has identified the following bills as restricting voting access. These include in the Assembly

A04326Requires a government photo identification card to be presented when casting a ballot

A04569Provides that absentee ballots shall not be mailed or delivered to a voter unless such voter has specifically requested to receive an absentee ballot

A04901Enacts the voter registration integrity act

A04929Relates to prohibiting ballot harvesting

A04969Clarifies the qualification to receive an absentee ballot and clarifies the process for delivery of an absentee ballot

A05783Relates to absentee voting application deadlines

A06970Establishes an electronic absentee ballot application transmittal system

https://www.nyassembly.gov/leg/?default_fld=&leg_video=&bn=A04326&term=2021&Summary=Y

In the State Senate the following bills have been submitted.

S1540 – Prohibits sex offenders who are on parole and in civil confinement from voting in certain elections

S1805 – Relates to prohibiting ballot harvesting

1853 – Enacts the voter integrity act

S264 – Relates to absentee voting application deadlines – Signed by Governor on 7/16/21

Bill S3625 – Relates to providing valid government issued photo identification when casting a ballot

S3820 – Authorizes any registered voter to vote by absentee ballot

S4447 – Relates to implementing driving privilege licenses and requiring a social security number to register to vote on an application for a motor vehicle driver’s license; repealer

S6540 – Voter ID law for first time voters

https://www.nysenate.gov/search/legislation?searched=true&type=f_bill&bill_printno=6540&page=1

I grew up enclosed in white racism. Reading “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and you” by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. I was struck by how many of my childhood heroes are really just racist tropes. It took me decades to unlearn the messages I learned in my childhood.

I grew up loving Tarzan. I did not know that Tarzan came from a cultural response to the great boxer and fighter Jack Johnson who as a black man kept humiliating white challengers. You may know the phrase, the great white hope. Well he defeated them all. Hence the need for a white male hero to defeat all those Africans and apes. Remember those apes, they show up again in the next paragraph.

Then as the Black Power movements rose, the culture came up with a blockbuster to encourage all Whites to fear that Black Power. The Planet of the Apes – where white astronauts land on a planet run by apes (just another derogatory name for black people). I loved those movies.

Then in the 1970s when the idea of the slum, and of fear of powerful black men was running rampant, the new powerful white hero rose up from the streets of Philadelphia, Rocky.

I grew up with those figures. I enjoyed those movies. Yet I was clueless as to what the real message of those movies and figures were. Now, I know better, and maybe now you do as well.

© words by Daniel DeMarle 7/19/21

While Rochester and many other cities have seen a rise in violent gun deaths so far in 2021 everyone likes to point to their favorite issue of the day to tell us what is causing these deaths. This includes attacking any progressive politician they can possible point to. So lets go through the facts, our current upswing in violent deaths is due to:

bail reform

poverty

black on black violence

the fact Biden was elected

the ongoing decline of the American family

progressive female politicians

the Supreme Court

Guns

OK the answer is the Supreme Court, particularly the deceased Honorable Justice Antonio Scalia, and the rest of the Roberts court, Roberts, Kennedy, and Alito, and and many other previous and subsequent Supreme Court Justices who have taken the Second Amendment and turned it into a open spickit for conservative christian causes and the Republican NRA.

And of course guns.

© words by Daniel DeMarle 7/6/2021