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Securing
my homeland
By Judy Simmons
The
last Thursday in March I raked pine straw: a soothing task
compared to walking the treadmill at the cardiac rehab lab or
the Y, where televisions gabble, machines screech and people
shout conversations over both. A fellow Y patron told me I upset
some people by insisting on turning the giant TV’s volume down
from maximum (I kid you not) to medium. Another man said with
what appeared to be disgust, “Look, she’s got on
headphones.”
Precisely
the point, I said, the TV still overpowered and noise is a
stressor and I also pay to be here. Told I was out-voted I said
I didn’t know it was a democracy. Lame. Should have said,
“Why am I not surprised?” and raised my eyebrows at the five
men present; two women had left. Timid Judy, facing the wrath of
“the majority” for trying to save everyone from deadly noise
pollution — it’s a Walter Mosley novel, Always
Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. Help me, Lord Jesus!
To
scrape up pine droppings I used a good leaf rake I had ponied up
17 bucks for at Downing’s. I shop at local businesses some so
we won’t be totally dependent on chains like Office Max and
Cowboys. After I stuffed a 30-gallon trash bag with cones and
straw, I commenced hostilities with terror-spreading fire ants.
No limit to their appetite for domination. They get you with
conventional and chemical weapons if you step wrong: the nasty
bite and then the poison — at least it’s poison to my system
as I swell up in painful pimples. Fast little buggers, too, very
mobile, strike anywhere.
I
grabbed the pole that fell off last year’s el-cheapo rake and
advanced to the front with a bag of Spectracide and a quart-size
plastic container. A friend told me he pokes the mounds to get
the ants’ attention. I did that though it seems gratuitous to
induce a frenzy of fear before deluging them with death
granules. I guess it’s a shock-and-awe tactic to break their
will to resist. The directions say pour a gallon of water gently
after establishing a two-foot perimeter of poison granules. I
did that. ‘Course we all know they’ve only retreated to eat
their casualties and regroup. They’ll be baaack!
Mice
made a surprise attack on my house this winter. I was caught
off-guard because beloved Pudgy the Cat has been dead for more
than a year; he had waged my war on mice terrorism since we met
in 1989, a military tradition he inherited from other cats who
served and protected before him. Finding myself without a
standing mouser force for the first time since 1968, I went back
to Downing’s and got Havoc poison bait pellets of a pastel
aqua hue. In the next two weeks I disposed of two or three tiny
mouse corpses, feeling tender and regretful that we didn’t
reason together, and have been mice-terrorized no more.
In
a day or two I’ll take out the Round-Up and spray death on the
grasses that are cracking my concrete driveway. I’m shocked
that I’m willing to do so much killing to protect my homeland
security interests. I guess it’s different when invaders
actually enter your own yard and house. Lucky for me I don’t
think the whole world is my personal property.
Judy
Dothard Simmons is an award-winning writer, editor and
broadcaster with national media whose recent work appears in
American Legacy Woman, Black Issues Book Review and Africana.com.
She lives in Anniston.
Source: Special to
The
Star--04-04-2003
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Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
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