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America’s poet-photographer-laureate-in-exile Linh Dinh speaks to us from Vietnam, where he has been working in an in-law’s plastics factory and composing essays. Linh’s brilliant new essay “America as Religion” begins:
“I just got off Skype with Kevin Barrett. Interviewed, I sat in the dusty office of our dustier plastic recycling plant. Truck horns and roosters crowing provided background noises. Though we covered many topics, I want to expand on just one, that of America as a religion…”
We also “talk about some of the issues that this place raises, such as cultural hegemony, and the Vietnamese taking over this territory and changing life here, but it’s not all bad, for the Rade’s standard of living is improving. Of course, many Rade didn’t want any of this, and that’s why they fought against Vietnamese encroachment, but they lost, so that’s that. It’s an age old story.”
At the beginning of the show Linh describes how despite being blacklisted by most of the poetry establishment he recently received an invitation to speak at the Brooklyn Public Library on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the birth of America’s all-time greatest poet, Walt Whitman. For the full story, see Linh’s “Walt Whitman, Mass Media, and Jewish Power.”
The life journey of ‘Irwin Jacobs’ – succinctly described below (wikipedia)- is kind of a microcosm of the life journey of America :
‘Irwin L Jacobs”, entrepreneur and the CEO of several large corporations. ‘Jacobs’ and his wife were found dead in their Orono home on the morning of April 10, 2019. A friend of the family stated that Irwin Jacobs shot and killed his wife Alexandra Jacobs before taking his own life.
Another species very likely goes down the drain, thanks to progress (dams), habitat loss, hunting, hard hearts (“skulls are often kept as trophies”)…etc :
“The last known female Yangtze giant softshell turtle, the world’s largest species of freshwater turtle and one of the most endangered species on the planet, dies at Suzhou Zoo in China. She was over 90 yo.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/04/female-rare-turtle-species-dies-china-zoo-190414094329985.html