Poem for Thursday

Deportees
By Woody Guthrie

The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps
They're flying 'em back to the Mexico border
To take all their money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, farewell Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big airplane
All they will call you will be deportees

My Father's own father, he waded that river
They took all the money he made in his life
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees
And they rode the truck till they took down and died

Some of us are illegal, and some are not wanted
Our work contracts out and we have to move on
Six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves

We died in your hills, we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys, and died on your plains
We died 'neath your trees, and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, we died just the same

The skyplane caught fire over Los Gatos Canyon
The great ball of fire it shook all our hills
Who are these dear friends who are falling like dry leaves?
Radio said, "They are just deportees"

Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can raise our good crops?
To fall like dry leaves and rot on our topsoil
And be known by no names except "deportees"

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has reminded me not to neglect the lyricists who are some of the most interesting poets of the last quarter century.

From many people on my flist I learned about the antisemitic Google bombing going on for the word Jew. Can we please try to get this site to come up instead?

Last night at TrekToday I posted "Affiliate Claims 'Enterprise' Will Return This Fall", even though stories like this make me nervous, and indeed my mail has been interesting this morning. We had to go with it, because if it turns out to be true, it's obviously a major scoop and we'll be able to say we were the first site on the web to break the news, but it's a single news source and the entire time I was writing it, all I could think about was how the woman who gave us the information must be either confused or really nuts. There's no way UPN gave the affiliates a confirmation of Enterprise's renewal yet failed to make an official announcement. I think that she's either reading too much into the fact that the network is calling this season's last episode a season finale rather than a series finale, or she just blabbed something she shouldn't have and is going to be in big trouble. Either way I feel sorry for her -- okay, not that sorry, as it's also possible that she just wanted her fifteen minutes of Trek fame -- and the voice of my college editor screaming about the importance of double-sourcing or unimpeachable single-sourcing is ringing in my head. I couldn't even confirm her title on the TV station's web site.

has posted "War President" from American Leftist, a photo mosaic of George W. Bush made up of the faces of American soldiers who died in Iraq. She says probably everyone has seen it, but I hadn't, so just in case, here's the link.


And , sorry to be late but hope it was happy!