tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post2140089055977963044..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Nancy Morejón: Tobacco WorkerUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-53337670162107320872014-12-23T03:06:07.306-08:002014-12-23T03:06:07.306-08:00This has all the critical force you find in Brecht...This has all the critical force you find in Brecht - we need works of art that are both social engaged and beautiful.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/14/us-tobacco-fields-child-workers-nicotine-danger" rel="nofollow">I read this article a few months ago.</a>Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-15391016625696503432014-12-23T02:46:54.685-08:002014-12-23T02:46:54.685-08:00Hazen,
Yes, I've been thinking along those sa...Hazen,<br /><br />Yes, I've been thinking along those same lines. To be shocked away from a knowable if often painful past into smartphones and apps -- frying pan to fire?<br /><br />That more might well be lost than gained is almost any given in any transaction involving any bully on any block is a given, but still... and Guantanamo still open for bad business. <br /><br />But it was encouraging to hear that Cuba has refused that extradition case from New Jersey. Because they are driven to have to do business does not seem to mean they are quite yet a client state.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-164924669833911022014-12-22T08:54:24.152-08:002014-12-22T08:54:24.152-08:00Wonderful poems by Nancy Morejón, Tom, here and in...Wonderful poems by Nancy Morejón, Tom, here and in the videos. As for dear Cuba, I tremble to think what globalization will make of that island. One hears the knives being sharpened at the whetstone even now. The AP reports this morning that “American technology firms will likely be interested in putting Cubans to work assembling electronic components, taking advantage of low-wage labor far closer to the United States than India and China.” (Note that low wages are assumed).<br /><br />We know how that turned out: slave factories, worker suicides, and deadly pollution over there; and over here, the antipodes of joblessness and commodity addiction—and deadly pollution.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-3324682193610603482014-12-22T02:12:52.035-08:002014-12-22T02:12:52.035-08:00Tobacco labour figures in the history in this coun...Tobacco labour figures in the history in this country as well, of course. Perhaps not the brightest chapter. <br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/lewis-w-hine-child-labor-kentucky-1916.html" rel="nofollow">Lewis W. Hine: Child Labor, Kentucky, 1916</a><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/dorothea-lange-wake-county-north.html" rel="nofollow">Dorothea Lange: Wake County, North Carolina, July 1937</a><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/dorothea-lange-granville-county-north.html" rel="nofollow">Dorothea Lange: Granville County, North Carolina, July 1937</a><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/dorothea-lange-person-county-north.html" rel="nofollow">Dorothea Lange: Person County, North Carolina, July 1937</a><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/dorothea-lange-whitfield-family-person.html" rel="nofollow">Dorothea Lange: Whitfield Family, Person County, North Carolina</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-63287397483830568682014-12-22T01:50:19.988-08:002014-12-22T01:50:19.988-08:00Billoo,
Many thanks.
I beieve the poem has to d...Billoo,<br /><br />Many thanks. <br /><br />I beieve the poem has to do with the life and experience of Nancy's mother, who did this sort of work in prerevolutionary Havana.<br /><br />Some interesting links:<br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2ZZq8pqHXg" rel="nofollow">From a documentary by Juanamaria Cordones-Cook on Nancy Morejón</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr6B6vwMwjc" rel="nofollow">Nancy Morejón reads Botella al mar, 2007 (Spanish)</a><br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPMdP-XRuDU" rel="nofollow">Nancy Morejón reads her poems at First International Festival of Poetry of Resistance, Toronto, 2009 (Spanish / English)</a><br /><br />Nancy is a world poet who continues to make her home in Havana, where she was born and raised. Her mother was a tobacco labourer, her father a dockworker and merchant seaman. Her work is an important cultural product of the Cuban Revolution. In 1985 I was fortunate to get to meet and talk with her after reviewing her first American book, Where The Island Sleeps Like a Wing (Black Scholar). A treat, that was.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-60486085125820421672014-12-22T01:10:06.603-08:002014-12-22T01:10:06.603-08:00some wonderful photos, Tom.
Here's some Wende...some wonderful photos, Tom.<br /><br />Here's some Wendel Berry, on tobacco cutting...<br /><br />'There is incessant speculation about the weather. There is much laughter; because of the unrelenting difficulty of the work, everything funny or amusing is relished.And there are memories. ..The crew to which I belong is the product of friendship and kinship going far back. And so as we work we have before us not only the present crop and the present fields, but other crops and other fields that are remembered. The tobacco cutting is a sort of ritual of remembrance....The conversation, one feels, is ancient.<br /><br />One does not miss or regret the past, or fear or long for the future. Being there is simple all, and is enough.'billoohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10716970909272480118noreply@blogger.com