‘Raise Your Voice’ Archives
Ready for Some Football?
By Peter Molenaar I trust that no Vikings fan from this neighborhood has given up their seat or TV time to boycott the NFL. However, in D. Trump”'s words, those who “dishonor our flag” are “sons of bitches.” The historical “bitch” was, of course, the enslaved woman the master would rape”¦only to have her mixed-race children torn from her breast and sold “down river.” These were the Black mothers who cradled the men who built the house D. Trump lives in now. Charlottesville”¦ We witnessed the Nazis rally their friends, with an eye towards the “final solution.” To the consternation of “traditional conservatives,” D. Trump did not fully condemn these forces. Yet, push come to shove, such conservatives will combine with the Fascists”¦ democracy be damned. This too, we know from history. Children ask: What happened to that nice man who was our president? Yet, some “leftists” [...]
Two Harveys Among Us
By Peter Molenaar Almost everyone in the Phillips Community knows something about Hurricane Harvey and associates. Not as many are acquainted with Harvey Winje, editor of the Alley Newspaper. So sad. Truth to tell, Harvey (the hurricane) is not a totally bad sort of being. Actually, Mother Earth deploys hurricanes to flush excess heat from her oceans into outer space. As is revealed in great beds of fossils, this was a common practice in olden times. However, it is no longer the methane of dinosaur farts which confines Sun”'s rays to our atmosphere, rather it is the burning of fossil fuels. So in the recent teaching moment, H. Harvey posed some questions: 1.) How much energy will it take to create the infrastructure for a post-fossil-fuel economy? 2.) How might we mitigate ongoing damage in the process? 3.) Will the pivot from coal to natural gas slow global warming? 4.) Are market forces combined with the profit motive impeding necessary [...]
The Aerobics Beyond the “Y”
By Peter Molenaar Visits to the Lake Street YWCA have become familiar to me, in the aftermath of thirty-five years hard labor at Smith Foundry. However, when worn ankles dictate, treadmills and elipticals won”'t do. It is from the vantage of a stationary bike that I am allowed to discreetly observe. As for aerobics, evidently there are many women who have surpassed what I once was. One wonders why a world-wide movement of women has not been mobilized to fight ISIS. Sending our young men to war tends to make matters worse. Recently, en route to burning 100 calories at 95rpm, the caption line on the big screen flashed BREAKING NEWS: NORTH KOREA THREATENS GUAM WITH MISSILE ATTACK. Amazingly, the elipticals and treadmills kept churning. I happen to garden with the Koreans who founded the Community Peace Garden, at the junction of Highway 94 and Cedar Avenue. From them I received a copy of the spring issue of the Korean Quarterly with the front [...]
