Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

On May 17, 1954, Chief Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court

Oliver Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas

Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does.

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the Negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation, therefore, has a tendency to retard the educational development of Negro children and to deprive them of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system.

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. We have now announced that segregation is a denial of the equal protection of the laws.

It is so ordered.

Pictured above: Thurgood Marshall (Counsel for the NAACP, which represented plaintiff Linda and her father Oliver Brown. Marshall would later be appointed to the Supreme Court), Chief Justice Earl Warren, Linda Brown (who was denied admission to the Topeka public school near her home because of its "Whites Only" policy), W.E.B. DuBois (one of the founders of the NAACP, author of The Souls of Black Folk), Charles Houston (Counsel to the NAACP and architect of its litigation strategy; it was he who conceived of a plan to attack segregation in the courts. He died in 1950, too soon to see the fruition of his life's work.)

"If my grandmothers saw me now they'd say, Boy, the devil never sleeps."

I sit beside two women, kitty-corner
to the stage, as Elvin's sticks blur
the club into a blue fantasia.
I thought my body had forgotten the Deep
South, how I'd cross the street
if a woman like these two walked
towards me, as if a cat traversed
my path beneath the evening star.
Which one is wearing jasmine?
If my grandmothers saw me now
they'd say, Boy, the devil never sleeps.
My mind is lost among November
cotton flowers, a soft rain on my face
as Richard Davis plucks the fat notes
of chance on his upright
leaning into the future.
The blonde, the brunette—
which one is scented with jasmine?

from Jasmine by Yusef Komunyakaa
(born 1947)

"We slowly drove, he knew no haste,..."

On May 15, 1886, Emily Dickenson passed from this life into the next. She was 55 years of age.

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

"There was no joy in my heart. I was thinking of the war we were going to have to fight."

On the afternoon of May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of a new nation. "We hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, to be called Israel.”

"And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
Isaiah 2:4

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

On May 12, 1925, in St. Louis, Missouri, was born Lawrence Peter Berra.

While waiting in the dugout for his turn at bat, he had a habit of sitting cross-legged.

So his team mates began to call him "Yogi".

"Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours."

"Hand-painted dream photographs..."

On this day was born Salvador Dali, in 1904, in Figueras, Spain. He passed from this life on January 23, 1989, as his recording of Tristan and Isolde played on a phonograph.

"Surrealism will at least have served to give experimental proof that total sterility and attempts at automatizations have gone too far and have led to a totalitarian system. ... Today's laziness and the total lack of technique have reached their paroxysm in the psychological signification of the current use of the college."

"With hurricanes it's not the wind or the noise or the water.... it's the mangoes, avocados, green plantains and bananas..."

A campesino looked at the air
And told me:
With hurricanes it's not the wind
or the noise or the water.
I'll tell you he said:
it's the mangoes, avocados
Green plantains and bananas
flying into town like projectiles.

How would your family
feel if they had to tell
The generations that you
got killed by a flying
Banana.

Death by drowning has honor
If the wind picked you up
and slammed you
Against a mountain boulder
This would not carry shame
But
to suffer a mango smashing
Your skull
or a plantain hitting your
Temple at 70 miles per hour
is the ultimate disgrace. . . .

from Problems with Hurricanes by Victor Hernández Cruz

"Why, why do we feel (we all feel) this sweet sensation of joy?"

A moose has come out of
the impenetrable wood
and stands there, looms, rather,
in the middle of the road.
It approaches; it sniffs at
the bus's hot hood.

Towering, antlerless,
high as a church,
homely as a house
(or, safe as houses).
A man's voice assures us
"Perfectly harmless. . . ."

Some of the passengers
exclaim in whispers,
childishly, softly,
"Sure are big creatures."
"It's awful plain."
"Look! It's a she!"

Taking her time,
she looks the bus over,
grand, otherworldly.
Why, why do we feel
(we all feel) this sweet
sensation of joy?

from The Moose by Elizabeth Bishop

Why I Am Not a Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says....

from Why I Am Not a Painter by Frank O'Hara

"In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody."

In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on
the street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the
stars.

Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.

Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the
dead dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders.

from City That Does Not Sleep by Federico García Lorca
Translated by Robert Bly

Night on the Great River

Night on the Great River by Meng Hao-jan
Translated by William Carlos Williams


Steering my little boat towards a misty islet,
I watch the sun descend while my sorrows grow:
In the vast night the sky hangs lower than the treetops,
But in the blue lake the moon is coming close.

"They see this, and put down their long heads deeper in grass . . ."

Right under their noses, the green
Of the field is paling away
Because of something fallen from the sky.

They see this, and put down
Their long heads deeper in grass
That only just escapes reflecting them

As the dream of a millpond would.
The color green flees over the grass
Like an insect, following the red sun over

The next hill. The grass is white.
There is no cloud so dark and white at once;
There is no pool at dawn that deepens

Their faces and thirsts as this does.
Now they are feeding on solid
Cloud, and, one by one,

With nails as silent as stars among the wood
Hewed down years ago and now rotten,
The stalls are put up around them. . . .

from The Dusk of Horses by James Dickey

"We, like these, are but a dream."

Ah, wherefore, lonely, to and fro
Flittest like the shades that go
Pale wandering by the weedy stream?
We, like these, are but a dream.

from Uncollected Poems by Herman Melville

“I will not write a poem for Edward and Sophie. No self-respecting poet should have to.”

Carol Ann Duffy, whose appointment as Great Britain’s Poet Laureate was announced today. She is the first woman to hold this position in its 341 year history. A decade ago, Ms. Duffy allowed as how she would eschew the PL’s traditional role as provider of verse for various royal events, such as the wedding of Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones. (That task fell to Andrew Motion, who had just been named Poet Laureate at the time.)


She woke up old at last, alone,
bones in a bed, not a tooth
in her head, half dead, shuffled
and limped downstairs
in the rag of her nightdress,
smelling of pee.

Slurped tea, stared
at her hand--twigs, stained gloves--
wheezed and coughed, pulled on
the coat that hung from a hook
on the door, lay on the sofa,
dozed, snored.

She was History.
She'd seen them ease him down
from the Cross, his mother gasping
for breath, as though his death
was a difficult birth, the soldiers spitting,
spears in the earth;

been there
when the fisherman swore he was back
from the dead; seen the basilicas rise
in Jerusalem, Constantinople, Sicily; watched
for a hundred years as the air of Rome
turned into stone . . . .

from History by Carol Ann Duffy

"But I love the I, steel I-beam that my father sold."

But I love the I, steel I-beam
that my father sold. They poured the pig iron
into the mold, and it fed out slowly,
a bending jelly in the bath, and it hardened,
Bessemer, blister, crucible, alloy, and he
marketed it, and bought bourbon, and Cream
of Wheat, its curl of butter right
in the middle of its forehead, he paid for our dresses
with his metal sweat, sweet in the morning
and sour in the evening. . . .

from Take the I Out by Sharon Olds

Let us begin with a simple line . . .

Let us begin with a simple line,
Drawn as a child would draw it,
To indicate the horizon,

More real than the real horizon,
Which is less than line,
Which is visible abstraction, a ratio.

The line ravishes the page with implications
Of white earth, white sky!

The horizon moves as we move,
Making us feel central.
But the horizon is an empty shell . . . .

from Art Class by James Galvin

National Poetry Month

When a poem
speaks by itself,
it has a spark

and can be considered
part of a divine
conversation.

Sometimes the poem weaves
like a basket around
two loaves of yellow bread.

"Break off a piece
of this April with its
raisin nipples," it says. . . .

from National Poetry Month by Elaine Equi


The image above is a mosaic depicting the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii. The mosaic is in the collection of the National Archaeological Museum, Naples, Italy.

"Writing poems about writing poems is like rolling bales of hay in Texas . . ."

Writing poems about writing poems
is like rolling bales of hay in Texas.
Nothing but the horizon to stop you. . . .

from Always on the Train by Ruth Stone

Poetry is a destructive force

That's what misery is,
Nothing to have at heart.
It is to have or nothing.

It is a thing to have,
A lion, an ox in his breast,
To feel it breathing there. . . .

from Poetry Is a Destructive Force by Wallace Stevens

"In the old days a poet once said . . ."

In the old days a poet once said
our nation is destroyed
yet the mountains and rivers survive

Today's poet says
the mountains and rivers are destroyed
yet our nation survives . . .

from In the old days a poet once said by Ko Un

" . . . there are things that are important beyone all this fiddle."

I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one
discovers in
it after all, a place for the genuine.
Hands that can grasp, eyes
that can dilate, hair that can rise
if it must, these things are important not because a

high-sounding interpretation can be put upon them but because
they are
useful.

from Poetry by Marianne Moore

A poem should be palpable and mute

A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,

Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.

from Ars Poetica by Archibald MacLeish

Eating Poetry

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

from Eating Poetry by Mark Strand

"Always an inner avalanche . . ."

It's not only the word roses
lurking inside neurosis or the fact
that most of my formal education
occurred in the midwest, so too
my summer job inhaling industrial
reactants should be considered.
It's an unstable world, babe.
Always an inner avalanche
as they say in receiving.
I'm sure if I'd gotten a shot
of Karl instead of Zeppo Marx
in utero, things would have turned out
differently. Instead, my mother
went right on eating lobster.
But where were we? . . .

from This Living Hand by Dean Young

Revenant - a story like a poem

Revenant: One Sandhill Crane's Story . . .

(The following is a pastiche of several articles published by The Associated Press in late March through April 1, 2009)


First AP article, published in late March 2009

Sandhill crane survives arrow through body, will be freed

The Associated Press, MILWAUKEE — A sandhill crane that was captured in central Wisconsin with an arrow through her body is ready for life in the wild after what a veteran bird rehabilitator calls a truly amazing recovery.

Bird watcher Don Darnell from Eden Prairie, Minn., spotted the crane standing by the road near Wisconsin Rapids as he and his wife were driving through last Labor Day weekend. "We couldn't believe it. This bird had an arrow clean through it," Darnell said. "We got out of the car to see if we could get a hold of it but it was too fast and got away."
They also alerted police and other authorities, but the injured crane remained on the loose.

Then, one evening in late September, 11-year-old Monica Schaetz saw the same bird in a stream near her home with its mate and a young crane — and with the arrow still through its body. "We were going for a walk that night — she insisted on going along," said Monica's mother, Connie. "She saw the crane across the street. It was a good thing she went with me."

The next day, Connie reached bird rehabilitator Marge Gibson, executive director of the Raptor Education Group Inc. in Antigo. Gibson and wildlife rehabilitator Nicki Christianson of Wisconsin Rapids developed a capture plan. On Sept. 29, more than two dozen people helped locate and capture the weakened crane.

The arrow was quickly removed. Gibson said the crane had a bad infection but survived during treatment and spent the winter at her center, serving as a foster parent for six young cranes that came in with a variety of injuries in late fall.
Through the recovery, Gibson had her doubts whether the crane could ever be released.

"I didn't think she'd ever fly again," she said, but a couple weeks ago she went to check on the crane in a large flight building and got a surprise.

"She flew straight over the top of my head," she said. She said the bird's survival has been miraculous, first when the arrow missed any vital organs and then when the infection failed to kill her.

"I've done this for 40 years and I've never seen anything like this before," she said.

Plans called for releasing the crane today. The crane's mate and the young crane have been seen in the area after returning from migration. Cranes mate for life. Gibson wanted to get the female back in the wild before the male starts looking for a replacement.

And here is the happy conclusion of the story of the sand hill crane….
Associated Press- Updated: 04/01/2009

A sandhill crane captured last September with an arrow through her body was released Wednesday and quickly reunited with her mate and offspring.

"She went high quickly with perfect flight. About 30 seconds into the flight, her mate from last year began calling. She circled back and called to him," bird rehabilitator Marge Gibson said in an e-mail. "The family was together within a few minutes, including their male juvenile from last year."

Gibson said the wounded bird's recovery has been surprising because the arrow missed vital organs and the crane survived a bad infection.

The crane had the arrow through its body at least a month by the time it was captured Sept. 29. Gibson treated the bird at the Raptor Education Group in Antigo.

No one has been charged with shooting the crane, despite a reward offered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The sandhill crane is a federally protected species.— Associated Press

Jane Goodall, born April 3, 1934

Loving chimps to death
by Jane Goodall 2/27/2009

Last week in Stamford, Conn., a chimpanzee named Travis was shot and killed after he mauled a friend of his owner. The chimpanzee lived with a widow, eating lobster and ice cream at the table, wearing human clothes and entertaining himself with a computer and television.

But as the tragedy made clear, a chimpanzee can never be totally domesticated.

The human brain is more highly developed than that of any other living creature. So why can't we learn that wild animals simply do not make good "pets"?

I believe it has a great deal to do with the fact that chimpanzees are so frequently used in entertainment and advertising. Only a month ago, Americans watching the Super Bowl may have laughed at an ad in which chimpanzees dressed as mechanics worked on a car. They seemed cute, funny and even lovable. Is it any wonder viewers might think that chimpanzees would make great pets?

Nothing could be further from the truth. Only infant chimpanzees are used in entertainment and advertising, because as they approach maturity, at about 6 to 8 years of age, they become strong and unmanageable. Chimpanzees evolved in the tropical forests of Africa, and that's where they're suited to live, roaming in groups of their own kind. A house in Connecticut was a completely alien environment for a chimp.

Yet as a "domesticated" chimpanzee, Travis could never have returned to the wild. He had never learned the array of skills necessary to survive there. The entertainment industry and pet owners rarely, if ever, provide for the long-term care of chimpanzees. Zoos don't want them because they have not learned to interact with others of their kind. So most of these poor creatures spend the rest of their lives -- as much as 50 years or more -- in small cages in circuses, roadside attractions and, yes, even in the homes of individuals who lack the means to provide for them.

Meanwhile, more infant chimpanzees are bred to maintain the supply for the entertainment industry.

The use of chimpanzees in entertainment and advertising not only condemns chimpanzees to lives they were not meant to live, it makes it hard for people to believe that these apes are actually endangered in the wild. But they are.

Chimpanzees are losing habitat, in part because of commercial logging and in part because of encroachment by ever-growing human populations who live in poverty and cut down the forest to grow crops and graze cattle. This deforestation also contributes significantly to climate change. And sometimes chimpanzees are caught up in ethnic conflicts or killed for their meat, a practice that is believed to have led to the human strains of HIV.

The Connecticut tragedy should remind us not just that chimpanzees do not make good pets but that their fate is intimately tied to ours.

"Looking up at the stars, I know quite well that, for all they care, I can go to hell"

The More Loving One
by W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

L'esprit du jour

The Man Who Pretends to Be Deaf, by Nguyen Khuyen (Vietnam, 1835-1901)

A man I know pretends to be deaf.
He throws such crazy looks that you’d think he cannot speak.
Who knows he is deaf only during working hours?
That kind of deafness, I would love to learn.
In a crowd his face is wooden, but at night he comes to life.

He roams in his garden, smoking a pipe, chewing betel, drinking tea and quoting classic poetry.
He is all ears one moment, and deaf the next.
Who wouldn’t like to be that kid of deaf?
But it’s not easy to be deaf that way:
Ask him how, and he will just say, “Eh?”

“Cogito ergo sum.”

René Descartes. Born March 31, 1596, La Haye. Died February 11, 1650, Stockholm.

Revelation of the day: Descartes was a lawyer (Poitiers, Class of 1616).

“Now that I have once, in some measure, made proof of the opinions of men regarding my work, I again undertake to treat of God and the human soul, and at the same time to discuss the principles of the entire First Philosophy, without, however, expecting any commendation from the crowd of my endeavors, or a wide circle of readers.”

Scratchpost (an occasional diary): Operatic Millinery

Weekend Update: Got tickets to Das Rheingold at the Met.
Delighted to make NYC visit to see the first portion of The Ring.

Highlight of the performance (offstage): Several very senior ladies in the audience, who arrived at the opera house a la Brunnhilde. Sporting golden helmets with great big horns on each side.

What a hoot!
Love the ladies who take their Wagner with such whimsy.

"If any of you are secret poets, the best way to break into print is to run for the presidency"

COURAGE AFTER SIXTY
by Eugene McCarthy, born March 29, 1916 Watkins, Minnesota. Died December10, 2005, Washington D.C.

Now it is certain.
There is no magic stone.
No secret to be found.
One must go
With the mind's winnowed learning.
No more than the child's handhold
On the willows bending over the lake,
On the sumac roots at the cliff edge.
Ignorance is checked,
Betrayals scratched.
The coat has been hung on the peg,
The cigar laid on the table edge,
The cue chosen and chalked,
The balls set for the final break.
All cards drawn,
All bets called.
The dice, warm as blood in the hand,
Shaken for the last cast.
The glove has been thrown to the ground,
The last choice of weapons made.

“I had a job with a pompous-sounding title . . ."

“I had a job with a pompous-sounding title, a modest salary, duties as a plagiarist, and flexible working hours. …. My editorial staff was limited to Pascual, a youngster who slicked down his hair with quantities of brilliantine and loved catastrophes.”

from Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa, born March 28, 1936

"I will build a cloud-castle. It shall shine all over the North. "

"I will build a cloud-castle.
It shall shine all over the North.
It shall have two wings: one little and one great.
The great wing shall shelter a deathless poet;
the little wing shall serve as a young girl's bower."

from “Building Plans” –a poem by Henrik Ibsen (published in 1858, about 35 years before he created The Master Builder)

Henrik Ibsen, March 27, 1828 – May 23, 1906

"I know myself, but that is all"

. . . from This Side of Paradise, by Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, published March 26, 1920 Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York




"... Well this side of Paradise!...
There's little comfort in the wise."
--Rupert Brooke

"The sun was a huge red ball like an elevated Host"

“The sun was a huge red ball like an elevated Host drenched in blood and when it sank out of sight, it left a line in the sky like a red clay road hanging over the trees.”
from “A Temple of the Holy Ghost” by Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25 1925 – August 3 1964

A rushing together . . . Of the raisins of wrath

To summarize the past by theft and allusion
With a parasong a palimpsest
A manuscreed writ over
A graph of consciousness at best
A consciousness of felt life
A rushing together
Of the raisins of wrath
Of living and dying
The laughter and forgetting
The maze and amaze of life.

from Americus Book I, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, born March 24, 1919, Yonkers

"If this be treason, then make the most of it."

"There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free ... we must fight! ... Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! ... Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"

Patrick Henry, in the Virginia House of Burgesses, March 23, 1775

Remember the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.

Remember the 1340s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called “Find the Cow.”
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

from "Nostalgia" by Billy Collins, born March 22, 1941

Jack Kerouac - born March 12, 1922, Lenox, Massachusetts

"I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won't bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary split-up and my feeling that everything was dead. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road. Before that I'd often dreamed of going West to see the country, always vaguely planning and never taking off. Dean is the perfect guy for the road because he actually was born on the road, when his parents were passing through Salt Lake City in 1926, in a jalopy, on their way to Los Angeles."
. . . from On the Road

"It was a lovely village where no one was over 30 years of age, and no one died."

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

- from Cien Años de Soledad, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, born on March 6, 1928

"Everyone calls 'barbarity' that to which he is not accustomed."

"Chacun appelle 'barbarie' ce qui n'est pas de son usage."

"When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me, rather than I with her?"

- from "An Apology for Raymond Sebond" by Michel de Montaigne (February 28, 1533 - September 13, 1592)

"If you want to give me a present, give me a good life . . ."

"If you want to give me a present - give me a good life. That would be something I could value."

from East of Eden, by John Steinbeck (February 27, 1902 - December 20, 1968)