IN MEMORY OF NELSON MANDELA, THE MAN WHO HUMANIZED POLITICS

INVICTUS is a poem that inspired and sustained the spirit and courage of Nelson Mandela while he was in Robben Island Prison for 27 years. It is a short Victorian poem by the English poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903). It was first published in 1875 in a book called Book of Verses, where it was number four in several poems called Life and Death (Echoes).

I got introduced to this when I saw the movie “Invictus” and since then have been hooked on to it. Down the years this poem has been a great source of solace and encouragement for me.

Invictus (Unconquerable)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul. 

William Ernest Henley

My Great Loss

I stood aghast, lost and deserted,
what a tragedy!....
I'm at the edge of my world, 
Isolated and forlorn, 
no friends, no music, no laughter
nothing but silence!

Where do I begin,
How do I reach out and start afresh?
How far back do I go
Picking up the threads of my life?
My comfort in loneliness, my link with the world,
My loss is immeasurable
Immense and absolute!

I sit down, defeated, empty, resigned to my fate
till my ring tone pierced the air!

With that one sweet sound
I'm alive again____

My heart beats like a thousand drums
My feet dance like never before___

I sing I dance
I haven't lost my mobile after all!!!! 

Chiang Mai
27 July 2013

Helen Thomas:  "A pioneering journalist" who added "more than her share of cracks to the glass ceiling".

Helen Thomas, a trailblazing journalist who covered the White House for nearly five decades, has died aged 92. She died at her Washington apartment after a long illness, the Gridiron Club, Washington's historic press organisation, said.

Ms Thomas covered the administrations of 10 presidents and was known for asking difficult questions. She was a fixture at White House news conferences and considered a pioneer for women in journalism. From her seat in the middle of the front row of the briefing room, she would grill presidents and exasperate government spokespeople with her pointed, persistent questions. One White House press secretary described her questioning as "torture" - and he was one of her fans, the Associated Press reports.

Tributes  

Mr Obama and his wife Michelle released a statement praising Thomas for her work.

"Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism," he said. "She never failed to keep presidents, myself included, on their toes. What made Helen the 'dean of the White House Press Corps' was not just the length of her tenure, but her fierce belief that our democracy works best when we ask tough questions and hold our leaders to account."

Former president Bill Clinton and his wife, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, also paid tribute to Thomas. The pair praised her as "a pioneering journalist" who added "more than her share of cracks to the glass ceiling".

Veteran NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell tweeted that Thomas "made it possible for all of us who followed".

Her Career

Born to Lebanese immigrants in Kentucky in 1920, Helen Thomas found her calling while working for her student newspaper at school. She started out as a copy girl for a small Washington newspaper before moving to the United Press (UPI) wire service with whom she covered the presidential campaign of John F Kennedy. Following Kennedy's election, the huge demand for stories about First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy helped Ms Thomas secure her place within the White House press corps. Over the next decade, she began to report harder news and became UPI's White House bureau chief in the 1970s - the first woman to hold the post.

Ms Thomas was a pioneer for women in journalism, notching up a series of firsts during her career. She became the first female president of the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA), the first female member of the Gridiron Club and the only female print journalist to travel with President Richard Nixon on his first trip to China. As the senior news service correspondent at the White House, she was often the one who would end the news conference with the phrase "Thank you, Mr President". Her husband, Douglas Cornell, who was the Associated Press's chief White House correspondent, died in 1982.

Nadia Popova

Nadezhda (Nadia) Popova, night bomber pilot, died on July 8th, aged 91

Salutations to this brave woman who served as a Russian Night Bomber Pilot during the Second World War!  She died on July 8^th, 2013, at the age of 91!

She could turn her aircraft over and dive full-throttle through raking German searchlights, swerving and dancing, acting as a decoy for a second plane that would glide in silently behind her to drop its payload of bombs. That done, the second plane would act as decoy while she glided in to drop bombs herself. She made 852 such sorties in the Second World War as a pilot in the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, later named the 46th Guards in honour of its courage. Once, over Poland in 1944, she made 18 sorties in a single night. The aircraft were old two-seater biplanes, PO-2s, originally training planes, made of canvas and plywood with open cockpits. When it rained, water ran over the instruments; when the planes were shot at, shrapnel tore the wings to shreds. There was no radio and, to save weight, she never wore a parachute. If you were hit, that was it.

Often she flew in pitch dark and freezing air. In an aircraft so frail, the wind could toss her over. Its swishing glide sounded, to the sleepless Germans, like a witch’s broomstick passing: so to them she was one of the Nachthexen, or Night Witches. To the Russian marines trapped on the beach at Malaya Zemlya, to whom she dropped food and medicine late in 1942, she sounded more like an angel. She had to fly so low that she heard their cheers. Later, she found 42 bullet holes in her plane.

She eventually wore on her smart dark suit the medal of a Hero of the Soviet Union, the Order of Friendship, the Order of Lenin and three Orders of the Patriotic War. With enormous pride she sported them, a beaming blonde among the men. She admitted she stood gazing at the night sky sometimes, wondering how she had ever managed to perform such feats up there. Well, came her down-to-earth answer, because you had to; and so you did.

My heart bursts with pride for a fellow woman who has done us all proud!

Inputs from The Economist, July 20, 2013

Reflections on Mother's Day

MOTHERS DAY  2013

                                             Photo Credit: Facebook Page: Imagen Perfecta

Reflections of a Mother 

Nice to greet you all on Mother’s Day. This is in tribute and celebration of motherhood. Let us offer a toast to our mothers, and to those of us who have gone through this turbulent, emotional and yet enjoyable period of seeing our children grow up. Whether you have gone through the throes of delivering a baby or not, I am sure that everybody, born a girl, has a natural maternal instinct in her. Every girl child nurtures, protects and mothers from the moment she can think for herself, which makes us all mothers through all ages…

I am thinking of a mother in the Bible, whom we haven’t given much thought to, at least I haven’t..   Jochebed, the mother of Moses: When Jochebed gave birth to a son, she saw that he was a healthy baby. Instead of letting him be killed by the Egyptians, she took a basket and coated the bottom with tar, to make it waterproof. Then she put the baby in it and set it among the reeds on the bank of the Nile river. At that same time, Pharaoh’s daughter was bathing in the river. One of her maidservants saw the basket and brought it to her.

I can link the mothers in war torn areas with this brave lady, the Mother of Moses…. in war torn areas and in refugee camps where children are born in trenches and in the most uncomfortable and dangerous situations, where soldiers have no respect for the dignity of women, where children have no safety, where life is a constant struggle to protect your children from the evil eyes of the enemy.  The Asia and the Pacific region is home to some of the world’s largest refugee situations holding almost 9.5 million people, which is 30 per cent of the global population of concern to UNHCR.

This also brings into focus the number of children who are orphaned, disabled, missing, kidnapped, abused, trafficked and scarred for life mentally and physically.

In a 1996 UNICEF report on children and war, it was reported that during the decade from 1986-1996: 2 million children were killed; 4-5 million disabled; 12 million left homeless; more than 1 million orphaned or separated from their parents; some 10 million psychologically traumatized. 15 years and many wars after this report was published, one can imagine what the statistics would be!

Children, who have survived the war in Sri Lanka, remember only the bodies that were strewn around and   kept falling all around them. They remember that they were scared even to come out and join the long queues for food being doled out in refugee camps, because they were scared that they would get shot. One girl said that all that she could remember was hunger and being scared to come out… but, her mother would get food for all of them, despite the risks involved. Of course she lost her mother to one of those bullets.. ….

Peace is not something that we can dream of till hatred and violence exists, till boundaries and political divides form obstacles, till we think of each other as aliens, (at least so it says in passports), till we speak of the supremacy of our own races and dogmas….. Life is for the living and loving….

Loving as unconditionally as a mother does….

Susan 

12 May 2013

 Innocence 

My child,

Your innocence, is fresh as the morning dew,

Your smiles are flowers in the sun

Your eyes, bright twinkling stars—

Your chatter, the patter of rain!                                   

Your laughter, chimes of tinkling bells-

Your spirit, free, dancing in the wind!

My child,

Where are they taking you?  ...........

To fight against your hapless kin?

To be beasts of burden in killing fields?

As camel jockeys or human shields,

Used and abused, trafficked and sold?

To appease a hunger of a different kind!

My child,

They brought you back to me—

Quiet, tired, pale, unsmiling—

Your blank eyes gaze through me!

Your deathly silence haunts me!

I hug you, in anguish, in tears…

You have lost your childhood,

My child, you have forgotten to smile!!!

  

Susan Jacob

Chiang Mai

14/03/2013