Bella Ciao is an Italian folk ballad, with a robust, storied past, the author of the lyrics is unknown; but the music and spirit of the song is
based on a folk song sung by rice-weeders on the River Po basin in the
early part of the 20th century,the earliest written version is dated 1906 and comes from near Vercelli, Piedmont.
It was revised and re-written during Word WarII for the Italian anti-fascist resistance fighters, and it has since becomes used worldwide as an anti-fascist hymn of freedom and resistance.
The original Partisan version sung in Italian can be found here:-
Many Italian versions, including this modern rendition by the Modena City Ramblers,
have appeared over the years, while in addition to the original
Italian, the song has been sung by revolutionaries and fighters the
world over in numerous languages.including Arabic, Bosnian,
Breton, Catalan, Chinese ,
Croatian, Danish, English, Esperanto, Finnish, German, Hungarian,
Hebrew, Japanese, Persian, Kurdish, Norwegian, Occitan, Russian,
Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Syriac, You can read more about the songs long history here http://riowang.blogspot.com/2008/12/bella-ciao.html
The following beautiful version featuring Tom Waits with his grizzled inimitable voice, that puts real feeling into his reading of the song, is taken from Songs of Resistance 1948-2016, the new album by guitarist Marc Ribot, who describes it as a protest record adding, "Every movement which has won anyrhing has had songs." “Tom brings a certain gravitas to everything he does,” says Ribot.
“My Italian friends say he sounds exactly like an old ‘partigiano’
(resistance fighter)!”
The video below is directed by Jem Cohen and uses footage from anti-Trump demonstrations in Washington DC, that makes its parallels with modern life very explicit, the song is still so relevant for the world we are in today. Pairing Waits' vocals with footage of police and soldiers guarding barricades at anti-Trump protests.
This year. we have seen some of the biggest fascist demonstrations in decades, supported by the international Alt-right. The fight against these forces of fascism must continue, as the flower of resistance still grows strong.. Songs of Resistance 1942-2018 comes out today Sept. 14 via Anti-.
Bella Ciao
One fine morning
I woke up early
(bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao)
One fine morning
I woke up early
to find the fascist at my door.
O, partisano,
please, take me with you
(bella ciao, bella ciao, goodbye beautiful)
O, partisano,
please take me with you,
I’m not afraid anymore.
And if I die
a partisano
(bella ciao, bella ciao, goodbye beautiful)
bury me upon my mountain
beneath the shadow of a flower.
So all the people,
the people passing
(bella ciao, bella ciao, goodbye beautiful)
So all the people, the people passing,
they say “O, what a beautiful flower!”
This is the flower of the partisan
(bella ciao, bella ciao, goodbye beautiful)
This is the flower of the partisan
who died for freedom.
This is the flower
of the partisan
who died for freedom.
Repost with additional information On September 11, 2001 the USA experienced a great tragedy,I join people all over the world in remembering the lives lost on that day, and the hundreds of thousands more killed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the other wars that followed.
Today though I also remember another 9/11, when on this day on September 11 1973, the democratically elected Government of Chile's socialist President Allende was brutally overthrown in a bloody, military coup led by
fascist General Augusto Pinochet, friend of Margaret Thatcher. An
American sponsored coup that crushed a democratically elected
government, which would lead to years of repression, torture, forced
disappearance, false imprisonment, fear, death and for many Chileans
exile. Democracy would not return for 17 years with the Chilean people having to endure years of autocratic military rule.
In Chile in 1970 Salvador Allende won 36.6% of the vote and established
his Popular Unity government in power much to the alarm of the United
States government who feared his leftist government would slide into one
party rule like Fidel Castro's Cuba. Allende's political platform was
populist and he promised the nationalization of many sectors of the
Chilean economy and the distribution of wealth to the country's poor. These plans, however, were not accepted in Washington, which saw
Chile as the new “red menace”, a cancer to be eradicated and in a way to
make it an example to anyone who dared to follow in its footsteps.The involvement of the CIA is proved by documents and files decrypted
that confirm what we already knew: the coup had its legitimation from President Nixon and the National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger,
the future Nobel Peace Prize.
Today in 1973 the Chilean military, under Pinochet's
command, announced a coup and Air Force planes
attacked the presidential palace. Within a few hours, the military had
seized control of the government, and Allende and many of his ministers were left dead in the presidential palace as the military unleashed a wave of brutal repression against the population and the people's movements, ushering in almost two decades of right wing military rule under Pinochet.
The military and secret police began rounding up thousands of
people loyal to President Allende.Many disappeared" into army-run, CIA-supported torture
centers, never to be heard from again.Over 20,000 people are established to have been killed during
Pinochet's reign of terror. and 60,000 tortured, hundreds of Allendes
supporters alone were gunned down in Santiago Soccer stadium, so today in Chile this event is still marked with
anger, people taking to the streets and displaying it, Chileans still
having to deal with the devastating legacy of life under a fascist
regime.
Today on this tragic anniversary, it is time to remember again, a time
in our history that still holds daily reverence to most Chileans lives,and
for much of Latin America, and for the many democratic reformers and
carriers of solidarity's message worldwide.
In Florida in June,2016 a jury found a former Chilean army officer liable for
the murder of folk singer and activist Víctor Jara in 1973. Jara was
tortured and shot more than 40 times in the days after the U.S.-backed coup. The verdict against Pedro
Pablo Barrientos Nuñez marked what The Guardian newspaper called "one of
the biggest and most significant legal human rights victories against a
foreign war criminal in a US courtroom." https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/27/victor-jara-pedro-pablo-barrientos-nunez-killing-chile Speaking on the steps of the
Florida courthouse, on , Jara’s widow Joan Jara Turner said at the time, "What we were
trying to do for more than 40 years, for Víctor, has today come true."
Since then in a form of justice eight retired Chilean military officers have been sentenced to 15 years in prison for Victor's murder.This hero of the people whose life and music has been celebrated ever since.
Yet no US presidential apology, has ever been made for
what was unleashed on the workers, students and ordinary people of
Chile on this day. So today as America remembers their own 9/11 lets not forget the other injustice that they helped cause.
I am sadly reminded that years after the world watched as planes hijacked by terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center ( that caused a further millions deaths, also creating millions of refugees, malnutrition, birth defects and other health disasters on generations of children in Iraq and other war zones), the harrowing cycle of violence never ended.
My only hope now is that we continue to express true sorrow, whilst collectively recognising the terrible legacy of these two 9/11's. Let us chart a more just and peaceful path forward. Lets hope the forces of truth and reconciliation long continue to be fostered and that all victims are rightfully remembered.
Today I commemorate the Battle of Stockton when over 2000 anti-fascist demonstrators drove out of this town members of the British Union of fascists.
In the 1930's Oswald Mosley's party saw deprived areas experiencing mass unemployment and acute poverty, their planned march was an early attempt to rally support and recruits in depressed areas. Stockton was an ideal town for the BUF to target as it was particularly hard hit by the 1930 Great Depression.In Germany, similar towns had fallen under the sway of the Nazis so the BUF had expected to be greeted with a warm welcome.
In Stockton, the first attempts by the local BUF Branch to begin organised street propaganda and open air soapbox meetings had hit determined opposition from local leftwingers. The footsoldiers of this opposition was supplied by members of the local Branch of the National Unemployed Workers Movement, with the active support of both local supporters and members of the Labour Party and the relatively small Teesside Communist Party.
On this day on Sunday 10th September 1933, the blackshirts arrived at Thornaby Town Hall and marched in formation over Victoria Bridge and into Stockton town centre. They were heading for the market cross in Stockton High Street, with the view of galvanising support and encouraging locals to join their ranks. But as their leader, Captain Vincent Collier, tried to speak from the steps of the Market Cross, outside the grand town hall, he and his fellow fascists numbering around 100 were met with a wave of resistance, their leaders voice was drowned out and spat at, greeted by more than two thousand local people who had been waiting for them.
As sticks and stones rained down on the fascists and fighting between the BUF and the people of Stockton ensued, as the Northern Echo and other local press. reported at the time the use of weapons being wielded by both sides. Wooden staves and pickaxe handles, and more lethally, potatoes into which razor blades had been studded to be thrown at the fascists.The end result being that the fascists were forced to flee and driven out of town, and never returned.
No arrests were made but a number of the Fascists were injured, some so seriously they required treatment in local hospitals. The Battle of Stockton was over; the Fascists were denied their ‘Conquestof the streets”. Losing credibility and their wealthy backers the BUF declined into a violent, London-based grouping of thugs and misfits.
Local people had nor been to slow to see the analogies between what had happened on the streets of Stockton and what was occurring in the towns and cities of Germany. The Stockton events had occurred after all had occurred a mere eight months after Hitler had seized the German Chancerllorship, and at the same time as the trial and execution of the hapless Van Lubbe, the man accused of starting the Reichstag fire, an event which conveniently allowed Hitler to put into law draconian emergency decrees which effectively turned Germany into a armed dictatorship, and fascist state.
Stockton was by no means unique in attracting the attention of fascist forces during the pre-war years. But unlike the now legendary Battle of Cable Street in London https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2015/10/they-shall-not-pass-battle-for-cable.htm
which took place 3 years later it is now largely forgotten. But as fascism and fascists, and their forces of darkness are still unfortunately with us, and are on the rise, let us proudly remember the people of Stockton who stopped them in their paths. Together united we can repel them again. We will continue what our Grandfathers did, a fight that has never finished. They shall not pass / No Pasaran..
From Sept, 9 to Sept 13, 1971 ,people watched riveted as nearly 1,300 men stood together in America's most dramatic prison uprising, for better conditions at the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York. The men were fed on little to nothing, were given only one roll of toilet paper a month, endured beatings, racial epithets, and barbaric medical treatment, and suffered th trauma of being thrown into a cell and kept there for days, naked, as punishment.
The Attica uprising was historic because these men spoke directly to the public, and by doing so, they powerfully sent out a message that serving time did not make someone less of a human being.
The uprising took place less than two weeks after the killing of imprisoned black revolutionary and Black Panther Party George Jackson on Aug. 21, 1971. The inmates at Attica Prison, had tried to get their concerns addressed through proper and official channels, their frustration, after being ignored on a number of issues ranging from substantial medical care, inadequate food and clothing, insufferable heat and the abusive and racially discriminatory treatment they received from their guards.
They had written to at least one state senator and sent numerous letters to the Department of Corrections, and despite the peaceful nature and relatively tame demands to improve conditions in the prison, the final straw for the men at Attica was the brutalization of two prisoners after an altercation between them and correctional officers on Sept. 8, 1971.
The two men were taken to Housing Block Z (HBZ), an area of the prison where people were routinely assaulted by guards. The next day, the uprising began. prisoners united and revolted and took over the prison, taking a number of hostages at the time.
Four people, one guard and three prisoners, were killed in the early hours of the uprising. Then, for the next four days, a group of leaders emerged out of the initial chaos to try and attempt to negotiate a peaceful surrender with state officials, while demanding amnesty for actions conducted during the uprising, as well as access to classes, religious freedom, and fairer disciplinary practices.
Members from the ALF drafted a list of five demands to be met as preconditions for ending the occupation of the prison. The five demands were as follows:
1.We want complete amnesty, meaning freedom from all and any physical, mental and legal reprisals.
2.We want immediate speedy and safe transportation out of confinement to a non-imperialistic country.
3.We demand that the Federal Government intervene, so that we will be under direct Federal Jurisdiction.
4.We want the Governor and the Judiciary, namely Constance B. Motley, to guarantee that there will be no reprisals and we want all factions of the media to articulate this.
5,We urgently demand immediate negotiations through William M. Kunstler, Attorney at Law, 588 9th Avenue, New York, New York; Assemblyman Arthur O. Eve of Buffalo; the Prisoner Solidarity Committee of New York; Minister Farrakan of the Muslims.
We want Huey P. Newton from the Black Panther Party and we want the Chairman of the Young Lords Party. We want Clarence B. Jones of the Amsterdam News. We want Tom Wicker of the New York Times. We want Richard Roth from the Courier Express. We want the Fortune Society; Dave Anderson of the Urban League of Rochester; Brine Eva Barnes; We want Jim Hendling of the Democratic Late Chronicle of Detroit, Michigan. We guarantee the safe passage of all people to and from this institution. We invite all the people to come here and witness this degradation so that they can better know how to bring this degradation to an end. This is what we want.
These five demands were expanded into “15 practical proposals” to be negotiated by various parties including the men inside, representatives for the governor, state prison officials and outside observers. Over the next few days, the demands were heard and dismissed by Gov. Rockefeller. A 28-point plan was negotiated with Commissioner Oswald and rejected by uprising participants.
Soon after, Black Panther Bobby Seale arrived, with many close to the situation hoping he could persuade those inside to accept the 28-point agreement. Seale said he would support all decisions made by prisoners and that he would not tell them what they should do. After the rejection of the agreement, Gov. Rockefeller refused to negotiate further, ignoring pleas of desperate hostages.
A day later, on 13 September, 1971, on what is known as Bloody Monday, Rockefeller ordered thousands of National Guardsmen to swarm the prison, tear gas was dropped into the yard and New York State troopers randomly opened fire non-stop for two minutes into the smoke.Less than an a quarter of an hour after the assault on Attica had begun, the prison was bathed in blood.
At the time of the uprising, there were 2,400 inmates living in a
facility built for 1,600. Though over 60 percent of inmates were Black
and Latino the prison was completely run by white guards and employees,
many of whom were openly racist. Attica on many accounts was a hellhole. The largest industry in a forsaken and
impoverished upstate town, it was a place where urban blacks were locked
up in bathroom-size cells only to be allowed one shower
per week and one roll of
toilet paper each month. Their mail was heavily censored to cut out
anything involving prisons and prisoners’ rights. The medical neglect
within the facility was criminal. Guards often pitted inmates against
each other to incite racial violence. Inmates also labored for 40 cents a
day, assembling mattresses, shoes
and license plates.
Thirty-nine people were killed in the disastrous assault, including 29 prisoners and 10 prison guards, with hundreds left maimed and wounded and the prisoners that were left were subjected to extreme
brutality and torture.
Those who were
considered leaders, the prisoner negotiators, spokesmen and security
men, were singled out for prolonged abuse. The example of the Attica prisoners uniting and
standing up for their rights and dignity in the face of such intense
repression inspired and electrified people around the world.
The Attica prison uprising was by no means an isolated or spontaneous
clash. It came as a revolutionary mood swept through Black and Latino
communities and other progressive sectors of the population in the
United States. By September 1971, the Civil Rights movement had transformed itself
into a movement for national liberation among the Black, Puerto Rican
and Chicano populations.
Starting in 1964, rebellions swept urban areas throughout the United
States. Major insurrections took place in Rochester, Harlem, Watts,
Newark, Detroit and other cities. When Martin Luther King, Jr., was
murdered in 1968 more than 120 cities went up in flames as young people
battled police, National Guard units and state troopers. Revolutionary organizations like the Black Panther Party and Young
Lords Party were militantly organizing in urban communities. Millions of
people were protesting the Vietnam War and joining the women’s and LGBT
liberation movements.
This revolutionary mood in the community
sank deep roots within the prisoner population too. The Attica prisoners
were reading revolutionary newspapers. They were studying Marx and
Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, and Franz Fanon and reading
socialist, communist and revolutionary nationalist newspapers. Prisoners
were staging uprisings all over the country, not just in
Attica, New York. The rebellions were extensions of the national
liberation struggles happening all over the United States.
In the aftermath of the bloody raid authorities said that the inmates had killed the slain hostages by slitting their throats. However, autopsies later revealed this to be false, and in fact all 10 hostages had been shot dead by police. In the bloody aftermath ,it turned into a manhunt: the enraged
correction officers and troopers sought out those whom they thought of
as ringleaders and executed them. Several of the dead among the leaders
were seen alive well after the prison had been retaken. Some were shot
as many as twelve times, at close range.
Even the thirty-nine dead did
not end the violence, as the guards forced the inmates to strip naked
and then tortured them for most of the
rest of the day and night. Any prisoner who troopers or CO’s considered
to be a leader was chalked across the back with a large white X. As each one was made to run a gantlet of clubs, the
officers would call out, “You want your amnesty? Well, come and get it.”
The vengeful officers played Russian roulette with the inmates, and
then forced them to drink the guards’ urine. One inmate, Frank (Big
Black) Smith, who had been visible in the uprising, lay wounded on a
table for many hours, made to clutch a football beneath his chin, and
warned that if it dropped he would be killed. When he was released, he
collapsed and the guards battered him repeatedly in the groin and anal
region as he pleaded for mercy.
In the week after its conclusion, police engaged in brutal
reprisals against the prisoners, forcing them to run a gauntlet of
nightsticks and crawl naked across broken glass, among other tortures.
The many injured inmates received substandard medical treatment, if any.
The fallout after the 1971 Attica uprising was considerable. The Weather Underground, a group of left-wing militants, set off a bomb at the New York Department of Corrections offices. Under political and public pressure, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, who had ordered the massacre in the first place, responded to it by creating the New York State Special Commission on Attica, which found there was plenty of official blame to go around. However the attempted cover-up increased public condemnation of the raid and prompted a Congressional investigation. In January 2000, New York State settled a 26-year-old class-action lawsuit filed by the Attica inmates against prison and state officials. For their suffering during the raid and the weeks following, the former and current inmates accepted $8 million.
The post Attic uprising years instead of leading to reform led to an even more punitive justice policy which has had very real social, political and economic consequences. Decades of policy failures, including a culture of impunity for correctional officers, have eroded many of the gains that the Attica uprising’s incarcerated leaders fought and died to secure. First of all, tougher laws put in place led to extraordinarily high rates of incarcernation since 1971. Back then there were several hundred thousand in prison, today there are now well over two million behind bars.
Not only does the US have the world’s largest
incarcerated population it also harbours at state level some of the harshest felony disenfranchisement laws in the world. Prisoners have also stated that under the 13th Amendment which abolished
racial slavery, at the same time it allowed human beings to be worked
for free or next to nothing as long as they were prisoners. Prisoners
see the current system of prison slavery to thus be a continuation of
racial slavery, which is a system that generates billions of dollars in
profits each year for major corporations in key industries such as
fossil fuels, fast food, banking, and the US military.
One would think that slavery should not be legal under any
circumstances and prisons should be staffed well-enough to ensure that
inmates are not killed and sexually violated on a regular basis, surely these should not be controversial sentiments in the 21st-century.
At the present time 1 in 100 American adults are locked behind bars, and many more are on probation, parole, house arrest, or in immigrant detention facilities. While African-Americans, Native, Latino, and poor whites make up the bulk of the prison population, black, brown, and red convicts make up much a higher percentage of inmates than their white counter-parts.
For instance, there are currently more African-American people locked within the prison industrial complex than were held in racialized slavery prior to the American civil war in the 1860s. It is in this climate in the footsteps of their predecessors at Attica that today's prison rebels have organized themselves to carry out the strike.
The cruel mass incarceration system in the USA that is still inherently merciless and immoral must continue to be exposed. And a radical vision for change behind bars is still urgently needed, which was powerfully captured in the Manifesto of Demands read out by LD Barkley, one of the leaders of the Attica rebellion who was killed along with the 38 others when the prison was violently re-taken:
We are men! We are not beasts and do not intend to be beaten or driven as such. The entire prison populace has set forth to change forever the ruthless brutalization and disregard for the lives of the prisoners here and throughout the United States. What has happened here is but the sound before the fury of those who are oppressed...We call upon all the conscientious citizens of America to assist us in putting an end to this situation that threatens not only our lives, but each and every citizen as well.
In popular culture, the legacy of Attica is invoked by a chant (“Attica! Attica!”) to signal that excessive force and brutalization by police is imminent. The uprising ignited a new awareness around prison conditions. Thanks to the work of historians and political educators, we now know more about the unnecessary and extreme violence law enforcement enacted against the people who took part.
DJ Williams (Left) Lewis Valentine (Centre) and Saunders Lewis (Right)
On this day 8 September 1936, in what is now recognised as one of the most defining moments in modern Welsh history, 3 respected middle aged men, pillars of their local community, a Baptist minister, a University lecturer and school teacher took part in the symbolic burning of a RAF aerodrome at Penyberth, near Pwlhelli in Gwynedd, North Wales.
The Fire represented the final act in an unsuccessful eighteen months battle to prevent the building of an RAF bombing school on a site of particular importance in Welsh literary culture, the site of a culturally significant farmhouse affiliated with centuries of patrons of Welsh language poetry, and also a way-station for pilgrims to Bardsey Island.
The UK government settled on Llŷn as the site for its new bombing
school after similar locations in Northumberland and Dorset were met with
protests.Opposition to the presence of the bombing school in Penyberth was widespread at the time, with many objecting on pacifist and environmental grounds, however, UK Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin refused to hear the case
against the bombing school in Wales, despite a deputation representing
half a million Welsh protesters. Protest against the bombing school was
summed up by Saunders Lewis when he wrote that the UK government was
intent upon turning one of the 'essential homes of Welsh culture, idiom
and literature' into a place for promoting a barbaric method of
warfare. For Saunders Lewis, D.J.Williams and Lewis Valentine, the bombing school
represented the oppression of the English over the Welsh and the
imposition of English warmongering and violence on the peaceful Welsh
countryside.
The three men after deliberately torching the buildings, then calmly presented themselves calmly at Pwllheli police station to tell the confused police officer on duty at the time, what they had done and . to accept responsibility. for their actions.
They were subsequently put on trial at Caernarfon on 13 October 1936. At that time (and up until the “Welsh Language Act” of 1967), a
Welsh person had no right to give their testimony in Welsh in a court in
Wales. Ever since the “Laws in Wales” acts of 1535-1542, English had
been made the only language of legal proceedings in Wales.
The only
exception allowed to this rule was if one could prove that one’s English
was inadequate. All three wished to give their testimonies in Welsh,
but Lewis Valentine was the only one allowed to do so, as no evidence
could be provided that he was anything like fluent enough in English.
As for the other two, Saunders Lewis had a degree in English from
Liverpool University (the city where he was born and brought up); and
D.J. Williams also had a degree in English from Aberystwyth (University
of Wales, Aberystwyth), and had done post-graduate studies at Jesus
College, Oxford! Additionally, at the time of the trial, Saunders Lewis
was lecturing in English, and D.J. Williams teaching English at
Fishguard Grammar School. Not surprisingly, their English was deemed to
be good enough, and they were not allowed to testify in their own
language.
The largely sympathetic jury
however were unable to reach a decision or find them guilty and the trial was transferred to the Old
Bailey in London, this decision to move the case to London, and the judge’s scornful
treatment of the case at the Old Bailey angered many in Wales, but despite this the three men were sentenced to nine months in
prison.
They served 8 months in prison at Wormwood Scrubs. Saunders Lewis was, controversially, dismissed from his job at Swansea University before he had been found guilty of the crime. He was subsequently hired as a
lecturer of English at Cardiff University.
Following
their release from prison on 27 August 1937, Lewis, Williams and
Valentine were greeted at Caernarfon pavilion to a hero's welcome by a crowd of around
15,000. Such displays of support were seen across Wales, demonstrating
the impact the event had on contemporaries, particularly the
Welsh-speaking community.
RAF Penrhos survives today as a single strip civilian airfield and is today the site of the annual Wakestock music festival and home to the Penrhos home for Polish refugees, one of the last remaining WW2 displaced persons camp, but this incident is known in the Welsh language as Llosgi'r ysgol fomio (The bombing school burning) or Tân yn Llŷn (Fire in Llŷn), and has since attained iconic status in Welsh nationalist circles.
Today, Penyberth ranks alongside Tryweryn https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2015/10/cofiwch-dryweryn-remember-tryweryn.html in its significance in the fight for the Welsh language. The stance of Lewis, Valentine and Williams was an inspiration to Welsh language campaigners for decades and their continued efforts to advance Wales and the Welsh and made them three of Wales’ most notable political activists. Dafydd Glyn Jones wrote of the fire that it was "the first time in five centuries that Wales struck back at England with a measure of violence... To the Welsh people, who had long ceased to believe that they had it in them, it was a profound shock."
Saunders Lewis went on to broadcast the famous ‘Tynged yr Iaith’ speech in 1962, https://morris.cymru/testun/saunders-lewis-fate-of-the-language.html giving rise to the formation of the Welsh Language Society which campaigns for the rights of the Welsh language to this day.
A Plaque at the site of the arson of the bombing school in Penyberth today
.
All days politicians spread the blues
Like mocking crows throwing their taunts,
Hard times are growing, what are we going to do
On every circle of futility, are we born to lose?
Do we try keep on living, as blues mess up mind
Souls in trouble, gotta stop it, try and be kind,
Down the road we go, the moon still shines brightly
But in everyday vista ,the blues arrives nightly,
All around it's crooked grin descends
Spreading its tentacles on the wind,
Allowing fine wines to become rotten
Voices to become lonely and forgotten,
Way down here on this animal farm
It's time to escape, and try ramble on,
Find some smiles of kindness, another riff
As birds head south, in search of warm drift,
We can find spaces, to try drive away the shit
With time, we can turn again into rainbows.
Today marks National Read a Book Day, designated for taking a little time out, dusting of that book you've been meaning to read for ages, and diving right in. Personally I love a good book, everyday is read a book day. but sometimes life gets to distracting, especially now that I'm addicted to the bloody internet.
Research has shown though that reading can have several health and social benefits. frequent readers tend to have lower stress levels than non-readers. (though that is not flipping true in my case). Well read people though tend to be more empathetic and aware of societal ills and differences, and reading is said to be good at improving critical thinking. (Which has assisted me, a lot because I can be an argumentative so and so.)
However harsh and dark the world can be at times, books can provide insights, at the same time freeing minds to engage with contradictory consciousness, without a predetermined end, reading books can be an incredibly enriching experiences, teaching us, moving us, taking us into worlds of the unknown and adventure, they also have the capacity to enrich us, heal us and change our lives forever.
Incidentally the Japanese word tsundoku refers to the act of piling up books without reading them. Have we not all been guilty from one time or other of buying multiple books and letting them pile up without ever getting around to reading them, I do it all the time. A way you could mark National Read a Book Day, is if you have a pile of books that you know your not going to get around to looking at, simply give them away to your friends, or take them to your local charity shop so others can appreciate them and have a good read too.
Reading is not just about pleasure, books have the power to touch us profoundly, to open our eyes to injustices, and sometimes even act as a catalyst for social change. If you simply have not the time today,to pick up a fine book and read, keep looking at the breathing living world all around you, and for goodness' sake keep on questioning.
Here are 10 books I'd recommend you read that have helped shape my own world;-
1. The Ragged Trousered Pilanthropist - Robert Tressell
2. Homage to Catatonia - George Orwell
3. News from Nowhere and other writings - William Morris
4. Towards Democracy - Edward Carpenter
5. The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
6. The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin
7.Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
8. Mother Jones Speaks. edited by Philip Foner
9. Thus were there faces ;Selected Stories - Silvina Ocampa
