Living on a dying delta by Dahr Jamail

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by Dahr Jamail
Dahr Jamail Dispatches
June 30, 2010

Our first full day in Louisiana finds us venturing south from New Orleans to Houma, a town about an hours drive to the southwest. It is from here we are to take a flight over the marsh to inspect the damage, thus far, caused by the ongoing BP oil catastrophe.

Walking into the office of Butler Aviation Services at the airport, the downtrodden mood, and accompanying anger, are palpable. Of course this is not assisted by the fact that Vice President Joe Biden is visiting Louisiana today.

Message of the Day: Love and Forgiveness

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Last updated: Aug. 28, 2015

Message of the Day

The 99 Yarder: a Brooklyn Story by Philip A. Farruggio

by Philip A. Farruggio
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
26 June, 2010

The skinny legged wide receiver with 4.7 speed (fast for a white guy in 1970), was running like “a thief from a grocery store” down the sidelines. It was a late Saturday morning in October. The pale blue cloudless sky suspended the sunny brilliance of this “Indian Summer” day. Such a contrast to the dirt brown city grass and the fire engine red of his uniform. His hands cradled the pigskin tucked close to his body. The only sound he could hear was the wind whistling through his sweaty helmet. The poorly arranged yard lines, white chalked like some giant checkerboard, passed below him rhythmically. In the distance, an empty end zone. His heart and mind raced along with his legs.

Your Active Role in Life: Next Comes Genesis by Ariel Ky

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by Ariel Ky
Dandelion Salad
Peacevisionary’s Blog
June 18, 2010

So many wonderful writers at Dandelion Salad, so much truth revealed, such a great community forming! But it’s time to take it to another level and for every reader to start becoming more responsive to what’s posted. This is a challenge to readers – take the time and garner the courage to respond to the writing when it hits a chord in you. Trust your own unique voice and inner self and what you have to contribute to the community. If we just all start becoming more responsive, that will lead us to taking more responsibility for what’s happening, not just being an audience to major actors on the stage. “Life is not a dress rehearsal.” Who said that? We’re all actors in this play.

Walt Cares… Happy Birthday Walt! by Philip A. Farruggio

by Philip A. Farruggio
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
open.salon.com
23 April, 2010

photo by Dandelion Salad

Walt Cares….. Nuff Said

He’s usually the first one out on the corner, Peace sign in hand. A shade over six feet, a click in front of 81 years, Walt stands tall. His white hair flows in the wind, and you can tell he should take better care of his person….. The way he cares for Fran, his significant other….. Like one cares for a wounded bird. Quite a guy!

Clif Grubbs’ Memorial Service by Daniel N. White

by Daniel N. White
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
April 6, 2010

Clif Grubbs was an economics professor of long standing at the University of Texas at Austin, and I was fortunate enough to take a class from him many years ago. Clif was a truly extraordinary person and an outstanding instructor, one of the very few that made a real impression on me and one of the two or three instructors I ever had who I still remembered fondly years after. One day in 1996 I saw an article in the paper about his death, and I called out to UT and got the details about the memorial service, held about a month later out on the UT campus. I attended the service, and it still lingers in my memory, and it and my reaction to it tells a lot about us as a society and myself as a person. Don’t know how much good it says about either.

Letter of Condolence I Never Wrote, and Should Have by Daniel N. White

by Daniel N. White
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
April 3, 2010

Clif Grubbs was an economics professor of mine out at UT in my days there, more than two decades ago now. I took an intermediate economics course from him, don’t remember if it was micro or macro, those details are now lost to memory. What isn’t lost to my memory is what an outstanding teacher Clif was, how he kept the class somewhere between mesmerized and spellbound the entire hour, lecturing on economics, and how skilfully he brought the fairly dry and technical material to animated and useful life with his lectures. I wasn’t his only fan–Bill Moyers, who was a student of his in the late 50’s, did one of his Bill Moyers Reports shows on Clif in the early ’80’s on him entitled “The Volcanic Professor”, and in it treated Clif with a mixture of admiration and affection, attitudes that most all his students had towards him.

Time to ban this health threat: Leaf blowers By Shepherd Bliss

By Shepherd Bliss
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://www.vowvop.org
February 9, 2010

photo by Dandelion Salad

‘‘Avoid using leaf blowers and other dust-producing equipment to cut down particulate matter,” recommends the California Air Resources Board. Why?

A Sunset in Bali By Gary Corseri

By Gary Corseri
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
December 24, 2009

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“Revolution without the Arts is meaningless,” writes Gary Corseri, whose self-appointed task since his undergraduate days has been “to humanize and aestheticize political-social-economic consciousness and to revolutionize and socialize the perspectives of artists.” He has performed his work at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta. His dramas have been published and performed on Atlanta-PBS and in five states. His articles, poems, stories and plays have appeared in/at Dandelion Salad, Thomas Paine’s Corner, DissidentVoice, The New York Times, Village Voice, CounterPunch, Sky, Redbook, Philadelphia Inquirer, City Lights Review, CommonDreams, Georgia Review, The Miami Herald, WorldProutAssembly, Palestine Chronicle, TelesurTV.net, LuogoComune, and hundreds of other periodicals and websites worldwide. He has published two poetry collections and two novels (A Fine Excess; and Holy Grail, Holy Grail), and edited the Manifestations anthology. His work has been translated and published in Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Icelandic.

In Praise of Fallen Leaves – Let Them Be! By Shepherd Bliss

By Shepherd Bliss
Guest Writer
Dandelion Salad
http://www.vowvop.org
Dec. 12, 2009

photo by Dandelion Salad

(Background: This November a City Council member in the small Northern California town of Sebastopol proposed a ban on leaf blowers, which the community and Council are currently discussing. Bans have been passed in many cities around the United States and proposed elsewhere. Though some dismiss this issue as minor, others consider it important.

Why are we dreaming we can change the world? By Roland Michel Tremblay

By Roland Michel Tremblay
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
The Marginal
3 September, 2009

What are dreams? For that matter, what is sleeping? We spend at least a third of our time sleeping and perhaps also dreaming, in fact, sleeping and dreaming can almost define us more than anything else we will ever do or achieve in our lifetime, and yet so rarely we stop to wonder about their real significance, and how it could actually change the world.

Why do we need to sleep? Every single mechanical machine we have created requires fuel or energy to function, like oil, gas, hydro-electricity, nuclear energy, solar energy, etc. And yet, they could function all the time until they finally break down, and still they can be repaired on the spot and made to work for many more years. They don’t need to sleep, they certainly don’t need to dream.

A Bunnies’ Tale by Walter and Rosemary Brasch

by Walter and Rosemary Brasch
Featured Writers
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
Aug 25, 2009

Image by Dandelion Salad via Flickr

Forget everything you learned about Bre’er Rabbit, the brightest, most cunning of all animals in West African folklore and Joel Chandler Harris stories.

Disregard what you saw Bugs Bunny, the Brooklyn–born wise-cracking Br’er Rabbit spinoff, do to mentally-lame hunter Elmer Fudd and a host of cartoon characters.

Peter Cottontale, Peter Rabbit, and Roger Rabbit. Thumper, the March Hare, and The Easter Bunny. All are smarter in fiction than in real life. Even the average Playboy Bunny is brighter than the average rabbit.

So easily you will lose your social status By Roland Michel Tremblay

By Roland Michel Tremblay
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
The Marginal
13 August, 2009

I work in a criminal court, this is the best place to observe all in one go the different levels of social status. It goes from the lowest to the highest all in one day, in any court. I was able to identify with all these players in this great game of judging and punishing citizens for the slightest misconduct. So easily all of them can lose their social status overnight, you would not believe. The next case I call could easily be yours.

Michael Jackson is dead, it is too late to develop a conscience By Roland Michel Tremblay

By Roland Michel Tremblay
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
The Marginal
18 July, 2009

We Are the World, but do we have a conscience? I’m sure you believe we do. Sometimes though it could be opened to debate as we can easily point out many human beings, Black or White, who do not appear to have any conscience at all. Mostly politicians, religious leaders, management and all sorts of Smooth Criminals. They send us Off the Wall. Maybe none of them require a conscience to reach ultimate power and wealth. As Michael Jackson stated, They Don’t Care About Us. Is it too late to develop a conscience?

This last decade will be remembered and talked about in HIStory, perhaps as much if not more than both first world wars. Don’t Stop ’til You Get Enough. As we appear to have avoided another world war and another Hitler, but still, some financial sharks stole all our money and here comes a second great depression crowned with Swine Flu. This world is really sick, and there is no one left to Heal the World, now that MJ is but a corpse, Gone Too Soon.

No one is aware the propaganda machine is on By Roland Michel Tremblay

By Roland Michel Tremblay
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
The Marginal
30 June, 2009

We are blind to what is truly going on in the world, it is an unexplained mystery. After all that has happened in the last decade, how will politicians, religious leaders and financial institutions ever to regain our trust? The answer is simple, they don’t have to. From the point of view of the masses, after the propaganda machine went on, they never lost our trust. We are blissfully unaware of what truly happened since we only read and watch the mass media.