Let America be America again - Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home--

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay--

Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--

The land that never has been yet--

And yet must be--the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--

Who made America?

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath--

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain--

All, all the stretch of these great green states--

And make America again!

For my People - Margaret Walker

For My People

BY MARGARET WALKER

For my people everywhere singing their slave songs

     repeatedly: their dirges and their ditties and their blues

     and jubilees, praying their prayers nightly to an

     unknown god, bending their knees humbly to an

     unseen power;

For my people lending their strength to the years, to the

    gone years and the now years and the maybe years,

    washing ironing cooking scrubbing sewing mending

    hoeing plowing digging planting pruning patching

    dragging along never gaining never reaping never

    knowing and never understanding;

For my playmates in the clay and dust and sand of Alabama

    backyards playing baptizing and preaching and doctor

    and jail and soldier and school and mama and cooking

    and playhouse and concert and store and hair and

    Miss Choomby and company;

For the cramped bewildered years we went to school to learn

    to know the reasons why and the answers to and the

    people who and the places where and the days when, in

    memory of the bitter hours when we discovered we

    were black and poor and small and different and nobody

    cared and nobody wondered and nobody understood;

For the boys and girls who grew in spite of these things to

    be man and woman, to laugh and dance and sing and

    play and drink their wine and religion and success, to

    marry their playmates and bear children and then die

    of consumption and anemia and lynching;

For my people thronging 47th Street in Chicago and Lenox

    Avenue in New York and Rampart Street in New

    Orleans, lost disinherited dispossessed and happy

    people filling the cabarets and taverns and other

    people’s pockets and needing bread and shoes and milk and

    land and money and something—something all our own;

For my people walking blindly spreading joy, losing time

     being lazy, sleeping when hungry, shouting when

     burdened, drinking when hopeless, tied, and shackled

     and tangled among ourselves by the unseen creatures

     who tower over us omnisciently and laugh;

For my people blundering and groping and floundering in

     the dark of churches and schools and clubs

     and societies, associations and councils and committees and

     conventions, distressed and disturbed and deceived and

     devoured by money-hungry glory-craving leeches,

     preyed on by facile force of state and fad and novelty, by

     false prophet and holy believer;

For my people standing staring trying to fashion a better way

    from confusion, from hypocrisy and misunderstanding,

    trying to fashion a world that will hold all the people,

    all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless generations;

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a

    bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second

    generation full of courage issue forth; let a people

    loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of

    healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing

    in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs

    be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now

    rise and take control.

Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw and What I saw in it...

These days I practice what can be termed as parallel reading. I read three to four books at the same time. Since I am able to create a Now Reading section in iBooks, I am able to clearly divide my time for each book. I read according to the time, mood, and space. Right now I am occupied with the Swedish mystery writer Henning Mankell's thriller series featuring Kurt Wallander, the detective. Today I finished reading Gladwell's - What the Dog Saw and other adventures. I am waiting for the right chance and time to voraciously feed on the contents of his next book - Outliers. Malcolm Gladwell is known for his explorations into the human mind, for his 'thinking out of the box' ideas. I remember my 'neigbour' in MCC talking excitedly about Gladwell's book titled - 'Tipping Point' which if I remember correctly is all about the changing trends in our world and how quickly some trends 'tips' to become popular and some get washed away in the passage of time. You can read more about the book by following this link -  http://www.gladwell.com/tippingpoint/. 

'What the Dog saw and other adventures' is a book about curiosity. It stresses the need to nurture inquisitiveness. The title reminded me of the essay by A.G.Gardiner  titled -  'All about a Dog'. The essay is about a woman who enters the bus with her dog and the commotion and the altercation that followed it. I have taught this essay and I particularly remember asking students to think the whole incident from the point of view  of the dog. That was a staple question which was based on the essay, I was soon tired of the question but since my students changed every semester, they always found it refreshing and challenging.

I started reading this book in the printed format. Later I continued with the ePub version in my iPad.  Towards the final chapter or adventure I combined the audiobook version and the ePub. It was nice to listen to the author reading the words he has composed. He has this soothing, meditative kind of voice which takes care of each and every word as it came out of his mouth. This is second book  that I finished in a span of 30 days, thanks to my acute 'bathroom reading habits'. The first one was the collection of best author interviews from NDTV's program - Just Books. (My next blog will be based on that. Blogging helps me to cement my reflections on the book and fast-read the book one more time) 

The book may not be about dogs. But, there are two essays on dogs. One is about Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer who had the god given gift to train or groom even the wildest dog. More info here - http://www.cesarsway.com/. The  

essay is an act of profiling where the author wants to know how Cesar Millan did his 'dog whispering' acts. More than this, he wanted to know what went inside dog's head when it was being trained. The second essay featuring dogs is the final one which is titled as 'Troublemakers' which is about how the behaviour of a dog is influenced by the 'wrong background, the wrong history in the hands of the wrong owner'. The essay is about the wrong canine-human interactions. 

The book opens with a quote, 

"To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish"

This is followed by the preface which discusses the philosophy behind the composition of the book. As mentioned earlier the driving force behind these essays is curiosity, 'the trick of finding ideas is to convince yourself that everyone and everything has story to tell'. People who are occupying the seats of power can never acquire knowledge, because they are always self-conscious about what they say and they have to protect their position and privilege. The author says, 'self conscious is the enemy of interestingness'. The book is based on real life incidents and reports that were published in The New Yorker. When the author wrote about the art of failure ( panicking and choking) and the accident that happened to John F Kennedy Jr., he wanted to experience the act of falling from sky and he flew with this friend to immerse himself authentic experience. He talks about another instance where the original and real experience guided his writing - the connection between satellite images and mammography images in the essay titled - The Picture Problem. Talking about this pursuit for originality he says " I spent an afternoon with a radiologist looking at mammograms and halfway through - completely unprompted - he mentioned that he imagined that the problems people like him had in reading breast X-rays were not like the problems people in the CIA had in reading satellite photos.  

There are five things that I found appealing and interesting in this book: 

1) Malcolm Gladwell is somebody who enjoys writing and he talks about this hobby/job in the preface: Writing was the thing I ended up doing by default, for the simple reason that it took me forever to realize that it took me forever to realize that writing could be job. Jobs were things that were serious and daunting. Writing was fun. He also talks about Late bloomers, 'people who don't realize they're good at something until they're fifty'. He uses the life of Ben Fountain as the example for this late blooming creativity. He was a lawyer and he took a decision to quit his job and dedicate his life to writing. He was apprehensive and he describes the feeling 'I felt like I'd stepped off a cliff and I didn't know if the parachute was going to happen'. I personally felt inspired by his PLAN -  'He sat down at his kitchen table at 7:30 a.m. He made a plan. Everyday, he would write until lunchtime. Then he would write until lunchtime. Then he would lie down on the floor for twenty minutes to rest his mind. Then he would return to work for a few more hours'. This essay also discusses the importance of authentic feelings that should brought in to one's writing. The research element also is of pivotal importance. 

2) The essay titled - The Talent Myth - Are smart people overrated? examines the myth of talent and checks it against the organisational settings in a company.  He quotes the case study of McKinsey &amp Company,and  their War for Talent. The two catch words used here are - differentiation and affirmation. There is the need for the employers to sit down, once or twice a year and hold a "candid, probing, no-holds barred debate about each individual sorting employees into A, B, C groups. The A's should be awarded, the B's need to be encouraged and affirmed. The C's need to shape up or be shipped out. The Internal Performance Review Committee should be set up to monitor these acts.  The biggest drawback of schooling is that it cultivates 'the habit of doing things all by ourselves'. Once you get out in the real world, everything you do involves working with other people. What is required is the tacit knowledge which involves things like knowing how to manage yourself and others and how to navigate complicated social situations. 


The essay also talks about three types of flawed managers - One is the High Likability Floater, the next one is the Homme de Ressentiment, and the third is the Narcissist. The first type does not take any difficult decisions or make enemies. The second type seethes below the surface and plots against his enemies. The third type tends to self nominate, they are self-confident and they have the strong need for recognition. The talent myth assumes that people make organisations smart. More often than not, its the other way around. The essay also takes a dig at the concept of thinking out of the  box - 'They were there looking for people who had the talent to think outside the box. It never occurred to them that, if everyone had to think outside  the box, maybe it was  the box that needed fixing'. 


The book in many ways need a second reading, maybe not all the chapters but at least a few chapters which are indeed the purple patches of the book. 

Addicted to Apple

 This is insane!!! 

You are trying to be a technocrat

You are addicted to Apple

These are some of the reactions that I received for buying/owning the almost all the products from Apple Inc.

I couldn't really blame them because I have realized that everybody has their perspectives in this world. For some it may be constructing a house of their own, some may find happiness in travelling, and some may attain nirvana in doing nothing. The act of buying the complete range of Apple products was a dream come true situation for me. I now realize that some dreams are powered by money. I still mournfully think about the missed opportunity to do higher studies abroad due to the financial constraints. This time Gods were not crazy, they just acted  as the epitomes of benevolence and love. Today I own my dreams and those dreams are living with me. I am able to expand my personal horizon to a better level. I feel confident and sometimes I become a slave to the negative feeling of pride that comes when you own something precious and priceless. At times I also visualize about the future when there will be no Apple by my side. Those days I will take solace in the fact that once I owned the complete range of Apple products.  

Let me take a stroll down the lanes of the bygone days. During my days at Loyola, I did some part time work as a proof reader. The plan was to edit some books for two months. I don't exactly remember the name of the firm but what I remember is the fact the i saw for the first time in my life a Macintosh. It was like a blue pearl and the graphic designers were working on the final output. I even got a chance to proof read the contents of the text on the blue pearl. That was my first encounter with Steve Jobs and his creations. Then I remember that one day my Pianist friend brought his Ipod and it was there with me for a few hours. I stealthy tried copying some songs into  my PC. I managed to copy some since the Ipod files were all in a encrypted format ( which now I recognize as AAC - Advanced audio coding) . Then Libya happened, there was a financial surge and I decided that I should buy a Mp3 player to quench my thirst for music. My option was not an Ipod, it was a Zen Player from Creative. I took it home and found that the Player was useless. I took it back and the Libyan shop owner who was not that technically sound offered me the Ipod in exchange of the Zen player. That's how I owned my first Apple product. It became my music mate and I had the pleasure of listening to songs as my eyes scanned the Libyan landscape while travelling, visiting the Roman ruins, and while walking on the beach.

The return to the homeland and joining SSIMS was a turning point in my affairs with Apple. I found myself in the world of wireless internet and my attention was on the world of podcasts. The use of podcasts for language learning was a new found thing and I was engaged in the act of downloading hundreds of audio and video podcasts. In addition to this podcasting experience I got a chance to fiddle with FCP ( Final Cut Pro) in Mac which was installed in the Multimedia lab. I still remember how SSIMS director used to brag about the cost of the each Mac and there were no other media center in Bangalore with the same facilities. He was right that time but now things have changed with more and more media institutes cropping up around the cityscape equipped with Mac and Ipads. As the language lab in charge I remember how I used to show my students the Apple WWDC - Worldwide Developers Conference 2005 video in which Steve Jobs unveiled the thinnest laptop in the world known as Mac book Air. I can still hear the gasps of my students when they saw the Mac book fitting into an office envelope. 

The journey continued with BCT recruiting me to teach English to the Omani horde. I soon found myself in a different dimension both in teaching and in personal life. I got married and I soon discovered that a human playmate is much more animate than a mechanical one. On the other side I felt that am wasting my time with these students ( which was not true, a language teacher should always see the big picture and the range of students from beginner level to advanced level. I have learned a lot after interacting with the boys/girls here). I was conscious of the time and the teaching black hole that I was in. I felt the need to compensate with something and that is when I realized that I should spend more time in writing and journaling. I was particularly attracted to one app in the I tunes store. It was called Momento.  I used to check out the features and dreamt about writing about daily events using Momento. Meanwhile I was caught in a bad choice-making act and purchased Sony Ericsson Xperia in 2009 and it proved to be a disaster. The yearning continued for the Apple phone. In the month of June, 2010, Steve Jobs released the fourth generation of Iphone named as Iphone 4. In the month of September 2010, I purchased my Iphone 4. There was no dilly dallying this time and everything was perfect and the first app which I downloaded from  the app store was Momento. Iphone became a kind of status symbol. People started recognizing me for the phone and kids and adults were eager to see the phone and use the pinch and zoom option. 


A few months later, Apple released its first tablet and I didn't think twice about buying the same. This time I was enchanted by the iBooks. I also enjoyed the painting and drawing apps like - Brushes, Art Rage and Drawing. I  found that the Ipad is the perfect tool for writing and also for reading. I purchased Ipod touch as a gift for my partner and soon she started using it  as a gaming and reference tool. There were times when both of us were engaged in games and we were lost in the virtual world for a long time. The last and final purchase I made from Apple is the Mac book Pro which serves as the mothership for the all the apple products. The Mac is a technological marvel after I upgraded it to Mac OS Lion. The multi-gesture track pad is doing wonders. The only product that I would like to own from Apple is the adapter for the projector. 


Apple products helps me to increase my productivity. I always carry my precious documents (Dropbox) with me. I am able to take care of my writing to an extent. I am using Momento to capture the best and worst moments in my life. The mind mapping apps helps me to plan out my lessons and project works. The things-to-do apps gives me the necessary focus when it comes to 

accomplishing my daily tasks and plans. Some of the tools inspire me write better whereas some help me in teaching. I am clarify my language uncertainties using the dictionary and language apps installed. Waiting for someone or something is a act of joy, waiting is now a time to delve into the numerous word games and puzzles that is installed in the devices. The best part of owning devices from the same manufacturer is syncing becomes an easy task. There is magic in the act of syncing when you see documents and images are there in the place where you want them to be.