WELL, JOANNIE, MY DEAR

Well, Joannie, my dear,
here you are again,
slim and graceful as
you always are, your voice
hanging in the air.
Beauty that goes deeper
than your heart, melodies
that so fall apart, but I love
you so I pick them out
of air and hand them back
to you.

I see you all of your life, your
singing on stage like a recur-
ring dream, black hair falling
over brown skin, thin and
thick at the same time, rhyme
and rhythm mixing into a
stream of love that courses
through me endlessly. I kiss
your guitar that never goes
afar but is always on your
hip;  I’ll not let it slip.

I see you singing to one
fellow in the third row, then
realize he sits almost ever-
where, floating on every chord,
Lord knows how many men
have fallen in love with you.
But I do not misconstrue;  I know
you are the world’s love, and I
share you with eternity and bliss
and share your every kiss with
all who need your wisdom and
warmth. As I’m with you every
day, I say, “Baez, you are fighting
wars, putting just into justice,
loving Dr. King, willing to die
for him, stopping only to re-
ceive another accolade, which
you place into your silky black
hair, so fair.

I am with you even when you’re
far away. I stay in you when you’re
in Bangladesh and Montreal. Your
face stays young, Your voice, too,
is as fresh as Spring, and though
your hair is grayer now, I see you
as you always are, ageless, tran-
scending time.

God bless you for the life you’ve
lived, an easing of the strife of billions,
No minions there, just you on
stage, your guitar that floats
through air, love and bliss
that blesses and kisses every
soul you sing to.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

WHAT IF I SCREAMED TRUTH WORLDWIDE

What if I screamed truth worldwide
and everyone could hear me? What
if I whispered love into the hearts of
every woman, and each could feel
the joy? What if I could gather up
all children of the world and give
all and each a hug, and then another
one? Would love and truth permeate
all birds and bees and a gathering
of flowers?  

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

THE SAVGERY OF THE BIRTH AND HISTORY
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

The birth of the United States of America,
our democracy, was borne of the savgery
of slavery and genocide, and its history
and growth were perpetrated by the same.
It is an incalculable and unconscionable trav-
esty that so few citizens today know the
horror of this dual devilry, the history of our
country.

Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the
Declarartion of Independence, which included
in it the indelible phrase “all men are created
equal,” and became our third president, was
the owner himself of over 600 slaves. He was
one of eight U.S. presidents who were at one
time or another slave owners, the first of whom
was George Washington.

The Constitution of the United States, when
ratified, thereby legalized the brutality of
slavery, through the 3/5ths and Fugutive Slave
clauses therein, in all of the 13 new states.
Both the northern and southern states prospered
mightily through the evils of slavery, the northern
states through processing the cotton and shipping
it to England, the southern by growing it through
slavery.

Over time, the northern states gradually declared
slavery to be illegal, but in 1861, the year the Civil
War began, there were still 4,000,000 blacks in
slavery in the Deep South. If you happen to be white
and not black while reading this, give eternal thanks,
and while you’re at it, pray for atonement, because
our entire country still suffers greatly from the legacy
of slavery, which we now call racism.

If you were a slave, you had no legal rights. If you fell
in love as a slave, you probably would have done what
most human beings do when they fall in love:  make
love and probably give birth to a baby, whom you would
also love. But if your slave master had a whim and wanted
to **** the mother of the new baby, or if he wanted to ****
her 13-year-old daughter, all the slave master had to do was
to decide which whim was greater in him, because he
could do either with impunity, and did. If any slave said
a word, he or she was subject to 60 lashes while tied
to a tree trunk.

If you were a slave and dared to begin to learn how to
read and write, and if you were caught doing either or
both, you were whipped to near death. And if you had
the incredible courage to try to escape this hell on Earth
and were caught in your attempt, either you were killed,
or wish you had been. (Read about Harriet Tubman and
Sojouner Truth, for starters.) And, of course, your slave
master could sell any of his slaves whenever he wanted
to.

You, the reader, may glean from this brief overview some
insight as to why we, as a country, are still struggling
terribly with what we now call euphemistically “race
relations.” Only 160 years ago, we called it slavery, and
it was LEGAL.

Now genocide. As our new nation grew, it grew obviously
westward, which meant, of course, the United States committed
genocide against countless nations of indigenous peoples who
had lived on this continent for centuries before Columbus showed
up in the Caribbean in 1492. Treaties they had signed with the U. S.
government were routinely broken. The final campaign against these
proud and heroic peoples took place between 1860 to 1890,
culminating in the massacre of Wounded Knee, where old men,
women, and children were slaughtered.

If you have the guts to witness the detritus our government left
behind, take a trip to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the
southwest corner of South Dakota, the poorest place in the
United States today:  rampant alcoholism;  widespread clinical
depression;  a suicide rate of children 12 and younger, three
times the national average.

If you are a reader, you might want to pick up Howard Zinn’s
A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES and
Dee Brown’s BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE.

PEACE ON EARTH THROUGH LOVE:  Planet Peace


Turning the World Right-Side In

by

Tod Howard Hawks


PREAMBLE:  All we have is our little planet, Earth. For the vast majority of my life, I have thought, “What would it be like to have Peace on Earth?” But for only two, maybe three, weeks every year, usually around Christmas, I would see the phrase “Peace on Earth," usually on Christmas cards. But after Christmas, I would not hear or see that sanguine notion for 11 more months. The longer I lived, the more this  annual ritual bothered me. At Andover, I had studied European history. At Columbia, I had majored in American history. Over time, I increasingly came to the realization that in both prep school and college, I had essentially been studying about wars on top of wars and their aftermaths:  millions and millions and millions of human beings being killed. Then, when I got curious, I used my computer to find out that, according to many scholars, only a little over 200, out of roughly 3,400 years of recorded history, were deemed “peaceful.” Humanity, I concluded, had a horrible track record when it came to effectuating “Peace on Earth.” And during my lifetime things have not gotten any better.  

SPIRITUAL ECOLOGY:  There is one land, one sky, one sea, one people. The boundaries that divide us are not on maps, but in our minds and hearts. John Donne was prescient. Earth is as impoverished as its poorest Citizen, as healthy as her sickest, as educated as her most ignorant. If we pollute the upper waters of the Mississippi, then ineluctably we shall pollute the Indian Ocean. If we continue to pollute our air, the current 7,500,000,000 Citizens on Earth will die. All species will be accorded the same concern and care as Citizens. The imminent threats of nuclear holocaust and catastrophic climate change we need urgently to prevent. This is the truth of Spiritual Ecology.  

CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH:  If we can wage war, why should we not wage peace? Nations are anachronistic;  therefore, there will be none. There will only be Earth and Citizens of Earth. Each Citizen will devote a sizable number of years of her/his life to the betterment of humankind and Earth. All military weapons--from handguns to hydrogen bombs--will be destroyed, and any future weapons will be prohibited. All jails and prisons will be closed, replaced by Love Centers (see below). Automation and other technological advances will enhance the opportunity for all Citizens exponentially to realize their potential, personally and spiritually. There will be no money. All precious resources and assets of Earth will be distributed equally among all Citizens. The only things Citizens will own are the right to be treated well and the responsibility to treat Earth and all its Citizens well. All Citizens will be free to travel anywhere, at any time, on Earth. All Citizens will be free to choose their own personal and professional goals, but will do no harm to Earth or other Citizens. All Citizens will be afforded the same resources to live a full, safe, and satisfying life, including the best education, health care, housing, food, and other necessities throughout Earth.

LOVE:  The only way to change anything for the good, for good, is through love. Love is what every living creation on Earth needs. Love Centers are for those Citizens who were not loved enough, or at all, especially at their earliest of ages. Concomitantly, they act out their pain hurtfully, sometimes lethally, often against other Citizens. Citizens who are emotionally ill will be separated from those who are not. Jails and prisons only abet this deleterious situation. Some Citizens in pain may need to be constrained in Love Centers humanely while they recover, through being loved, so they do not hurt themselves or others. In some extreme cases, Citizens may be in so much pain that they remain violent for a long time.  Thus, they may need to be constrained for the rest of their lives, but always loved, never punished. In time, Citizens, when loved enough, will only have love to give, and the need for Love Centers will commensurately decline.

EARTH:  In 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt chaired the commission that wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. UDHR, with some updates and revisions, will serve as the moral and legal guidepost for Earth.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY:  To honor and remember the former nations on Earth, one member will be elected by Citizens from each of these former nations to serve a one five-year term as a member of the General Assembly. In succeeding elections, Citizens currently residing at that time in areas that were formerly nations, will again, in perpetuity, vote for one Citizen also residing in that area, for a one five-year term as a member of the General Assembly.
  
FIRST VOTE:  The first vote of all Citizens will be to establish CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH. Majority rules. All Citizens will have access to  Internet voting, as well as access to cell phones and other types of computers. Citizens will have her/his own secured ID codes. Citizens will have to be 18 or older to vote. Citizens will be encouraged to bring before the General Assembly all ideas and recommendations, as well as any concerns or complaints, which will be considered and responded to promptly. Citizens’ ideas and recommendations will be formed into proposals drafted by members of the General Assembly. Citizens will vote on these proposals of each month during the days of the following month. Citizens of Earth will be Earth’s government. Members of the General Assembly will be facilitators who will work with millions of volunteers. There will be no president of Earth.

ALLCOTT MOVEMENT:  If the multinational corporations that now rule Earth do not abide by the outcome of a majority vote in favor of CAMPAIGN FOR EARTH, Citizens of Earth will instigate the Allcott Movement, a one-at-a-time mancott, womancott, girlcott, boycott--hence, Allcott--against each multinational corporation unwilling to relinquish control of its global business and give it, and all its assets, to Citizens of Earth. Citizens will continue the Allcott Movement until all multinational corporations have done the same. All personal and smaller-business wealth will be converted into resources to be distributed equally to all Citizens. All proceeds in excess of what’s needed reasonably by each Citizen will be saved for future generations. No violence of any kind will occur during the transfer of these resources. Citizens will take these steps because they are the moral, the right, steps to take to save all living creations on Earth, and Earth itself.

CELEBRATE AND SHARE: If you were to take a photograph of humanity and gaze at it, you would see a beautiful mosaic of mankind of different, beautiful colors. If you could step into the photograph, you would hear a melody of languages and dialects. You could have a worldwide picnic with all your sisters and brothers and experience different customs and taste different, delicious foods. And in moments of silence, all of you could pray in your different religions, separate but together at the same time. You would also share the same human laughter and joys and feel the same sorrows and cry the same tears, all in Peace on Earth eternal. All of you would come to delight in these differences, not dread them. You would look forward to celebrating and sharing with your family, not killing them. The spiritual whole would be larger than the sum of its sacred parts.

A QUANTUM LEAP:  The world, over millennia, keeps evolving. Over 3,200 years of recorded history, powers, nations keep shifting, sometimes seismically. Now is the time for not only the grandest seismic shift ever, but also the one that will save Earth and all living creations upon it. It is time for Earth to become Earth--not a scattering of over 200 nations with artificial borders, but an Earth that has one land, one sea, one sky, one people. The boundaries that have simplistically divided us for eons are not on maps, but in our minds and hearts. The air and water of Earth, even the pandemic, take no notice of national borders, nor should we, the Citizens of Earth. Technology, with its innumerable advances, has made us into a world when all can become one. We are free to be our real selves, to spend our variegated lives not aggrandizing, but by sharing and giving. Rather than dreading our superficial differences--our different skin colors, our different cultures, our different religions, our different languages--we can explore and enjoy them. Let us finally be what we truly have been forever, one big, worldwide family of humanity. No more wars, no more weapons, no more killing. No more hunger, no more homelessness, no more hopelessness. No more ignorance, no more illnesses, no more social classes. This is the quantum leap of which I speak.

PEACE ON EARTH:  Wealth is not worth. The mansuetude of loving, and being loved, are. When love is your currency, all else is counterfeit. Citizens will be able to go about creating their own happiness that is built on love-based personal relationships and professional activities. No longer will human beings be able to profit from another’s pain. With love at the center of being and living, there will be no more wars, no more dictators, no more corruption. Finally, there will only be Peace on Earth forever.

Copyright 2023 Tod Howard Hawks

A graduate of Phillips Andover Academy and Columbia College, Columbia University, Tod Howard Hawks has been a poet and a human-rights advocate his entire adult life.

todhawks2@gmail.com

(Please share this commentary with others and email me if you wish to join all the other Citizens of Earth around the world in helping to save Earth through LOVE.)

Some people love only a
particular kind of face, only
a certain color of skin, only
a distinctive accent in another’s
voice, only a spelling of a
last name like their own.
They probably prefer a blank
canvass to one of Picasso’s.
They need no eyes, not even
a heart:  bigotry blinds their
sight;  the suffering of others
they do not feel or see;  their
soul is dark and sick. I prefer
different faces, eyes as blue
as robins’ eggs, brown or black
as Mother Earth from which we
all come. Show me different
dances, different clothings,
different customs. Teach me
of the variegated ways so
many others live and fall in
love, making babies of skin
colors, one different from the
others, but all crying for mother’s
milk like infant members of a
Greek chorus. We need a
deus ex machina to turn
racism into the rhapsody
of love.

I never met Jesus. I wish
I had. I think we would have
hit it off. I mean, he had impor-
tant things to share. Maybe
we could have shared some
wine. I would have asked him
how he grew up, what kinds of
games he played when he
was a boy, when did he first
realize he was different
from his friends, why he
waited 30 years before he
began to share his truths
with others, that he didn’t
tell those around him how to
get rich, but how to love one
another. I would have
shared my beliefs with him,
that all creations in the
Cosmos are sacred, that
there is a hell, but that
it was life on earth, that
the Supreme Being would
never torture anyone, only
love those who had never
been loved enough, if at all,
that his power was Love,
that everyone’s power is
Love. At times we would
have laughed with each
other, and, at other times,
cried together.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks

All people live downstream.

Copyright 2019 Tod Howard Hawks