TIM E S
EA G LE
N O RTH
C O A ST
VO L26N O 550C EN TS
MAY/JUNE 2005
‘I n a d a r k t i m e t h e e y e b e g i n s t o s e e '
-THEODORE ROTHKE
M AY DAY
A call for rebellion. A call for change. A call for help. May Day. The ancient
celebration of Spring. The festival of rebirth.
May Day is celebrated all over the world in every culture and kitchen. For
many it is Labor Day in honor of the anonymous billions who break their backs or
wear out their nerves for their daily bread. It is the symbol of seeding the Earth in
hope of a good harvest to ease the dreadful hunger that stalks the human race.
May Day is also a day of revolution, a charge against history that demands
sweeping changes among the world's societies.This claim usually originates from
compassion and the perception that there is no excuse for anyone to go hungry,
be without shelter or denied adequate health and medical care. It is the demand
for freedom and respect of all the world's people.
The world situation perpetually eludes optimists and idealists. The balance
of wealth and distribution of resources is dismally inequitable, which intensifies the
disparity between rich and poor. Millions are out of work, their lives ruined by poverty
Millions more die from famine and epidemics. Oppression, tyranny and corruption infect
the world's governments. World leaders move pitilessly against their own peoples and
their neighbors. Armies and police kill innocent people in retaliation for terrorist acts,
which perpetuates terrorism. Populations are the major targets of wars, contrary to
pious perfidy, which makes war itself a foremost and persistent act of enormous
terrorism. The terror of nuclear annihilation looms ¡conically sixty years after the first
atomic bombs obliterated two Japanese cities and gave birth to the Nuclear Age.
We have built a global greenhouse and we dwell within. We have pummeled
and plundered our home planet as if it offered an inexhaustible feast without charge
or cleanup, but the consequences of our careless and excessive indulgence are
converging approximate with our disregard and denial. Our probable proximity to
extinction is not from any single cause or danger or combination of them but because
we seem helpless as well as unwilling to undo the damage or change direction. Our
paradox is that our opulent civilization is based on processes that threaten to obliterate
it; we will most likely strangle on the effluence of our affluence.
The Millennium is an X-ray of our history which lies behind us like an immense
junkyard that seems cluttered with artifacts of no use to us anymore We try to escape
history as if by accelerating past we are tefloned: but history brought us to where we
are and made us who we are. This new Millennium evokes old prophecies; apocalyptic
cults that believe the end of history is at hand flourish and seize theolitical power all
over the world — inexorable bipolar dogmata armed with the means to achieve what
ancient prophecy continues to incite.
The poets might be right after all. The prospect of peace is more irrational
than the dark brooding desire for murder each of us hosts like a malevolent gene
Humanity’s penchant for sinister error, folly, mass psychosis and loathsome horror
gives us our sense of humor, our appreciation of the comedy of inescapable death
Yet optimism persists.
Perhaps because in even the worst of times our predecessors always raised
a Maypole for themselves and their children to dance around. Perhaps in especially
the worst times it is necessary to hope
-Michael Paul McCusker (Uno de Mayo, 2005)
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