How to Fix a World: A Four-Year-Old’s Prayerful Poem, Animated by a Ukrainian Artist

An 84-second revelation in the heart, from humanity at its most purehearted.

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As she got to know the children and their families, she also discovered that they were writing their poems with their lives — lives often strewn with hardship and violence and loss, but also irradiated by an innocent gladness and irrepressible hunger for connection, for beauty, for wonder.

She discovered that children are silent virtuosi of noticing — both the beauty and the terror that make life life — and noticing is the crucible of all poetry.

After nearly a decade of teaching poetry to young children — and letting children teach her the poetics of reality seen with the clearest eyes — Kangas teamed up with documentary filmmaker Josh Kun in what became their lovely project Preschool Poets, inviting artists from around the world to animate eight of the children’s tenderest and most touching poems.

This is one of them — composed by Brayden, performed by Miracle, and animated by Ukrainian filmmaker and artist Stas Santimov.

BULLETS
by Brayden

Sit down, world
and relax
so you don’t have tornadoes.

Trees, color your leaves.

Relax, people. Go to sleep.

Relax, wolves. Lay down by the trees.

Relax, bullets from guns.
Stop shooting people.

Fire, eat wood.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2022/03/10/preschool-poets-bullets/

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT/Gray News) – An assistant principal in Mississippi was fired last week after reading the children’s book “I Need a New Butt!” to a class of second-grade students.

“My boss had asked me to set up a Zoom with the second-grade classes and the principal at the school they’re going to be at next year, and she was going to read to them. And she didn’t show,” Assistant Principal Toby Price told WLBT.

To improvise, Price said his boss told him to read to the students instead.

“I grabbed one of my favorite books that I had nearby, I read it to them. It’s a funny, silly book,” Price explained.

https://www.wbrc.com/2022/03/09/assistant-principal-fired-after-reading-childrens-book-class/

BREAKING: A $133 million redevelopment of the Fisher Body No. 21 plant would turn the dilapidated building into 433 apartments, plus retail, commercial and coworking space in one of the largest Black-led developments in city history.

Police officers in Moscow today are stopping people, demanding to see their phones, READING THEIR MESSAGES, and refusing to release them if they refuse. This from Kommersant journalist Ana Vasilyeva.

This, even in Russia, is illegal as hell. Ana says she approached the officers to ask on what grounds they were doing this. They demanded to see her press credentials and ignored her question after confirming that she is a journalist.

I can tell you that independent Russian newsrooms all instruct their employees in Russia to disable all biometrics on their smart devices, to prevent the cops from smashing your finger on Touch ID or holding your phone in front of you for Face ID.

PURCHASE, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--For more than a week, the world has watched the shocking and devastating events resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Our colleagues, our customers and our partners have been affected in ways that most of us could not imagine.

We have previously shared the steps we have taken in response to these events, with the well-being and safety of our employees being our first and foremost priority. And as we have navigated and complied with our regulatory commitments, we have been in constant dialogue with our customers, partners and governments. We’ve received perspectives from our employees, in addition to people across the industry, consumers and our shareholders. We have also considered what would be most important to support the continued availability of services, if possible, to impacted people in the region.

It’s with all of this in mind – and noting the unprecedented nature of the current conflict and the uncertain economic environment – we have decided to suspend our network services in Russia.

This decision flows from our recent action to block multiple financial institutions from the Mastercard payment network, as required by regulators globally.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220305005035/en/Mastercard-Statement-on-Suspension-of-Russian-Operations

I joined Truth Social. Why do I feel like the only one?

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Inside Truth Social, everything once blue was now a bright, jewel-toned purple. Tweets, a.k.a. posts, were now “Truths.” Retweets were now “ReTruths,” capital T. And above my username, I saw the site’s default avatar: Twitter’s cream-colored egg icon, the image given to all new users, had apparently given birth to a proud purple eagle. The rest of the site appeared familiar: Replies were still replies. Likes were still likes. Direct messages, still in development, were still direct messages. And Donald Trump was still @realDonaldTrump — followed, as of this writing, by 140,000 people, a tiny fraction of his onetime total audience on Twitter. Only one Truth appeared on his page: “Get Ready! Your favorite President will see you soon!” he wrote two weeks ago, before the app’s launch. The Truth displayed 7,750 ReTruths, 30,500 likes and 4,700 replies. (Inexplicably, unlike replies on other user posts, none of the responses to Trump’s message were visible to me.)

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Most people are still awaiting entry to this purple-shaded landscape. Eleven days after its launch on Feb. 21, timed for the indistinct federal holiday that is President’s Day, I was welcomed to Donald Trump’s new online home after holding the 169,685th spot on the waitlist. (The line is hundreds of thousands of users long, according to other people waiting to get in.)

The site promises a safe space for “free expression,” encouraging of “all viewpoints,” according to the welcome email, “as we do not discriminate against political ideology.” But inside the app, digital tumbleweeds blew through my feed. The site is a bit slow, and a bit empty. Its stalled roll-out, led by Devin Nunes, the Trump supporter and former Republican congressman from California, has become a source of frustration and confusion in MAGA-world, according to my colleague Meridith McGraw. Republican lawmakers like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz and Kevin McCarthy already have accounts and appear to be posting similar or identical content to both Truth Social and Twitter, along with right-leaning platforms like Gettr and Parler. (Apparently, no one is quite ready to turn their backs on an actual audience yet.) But when they do finally get their welcome emails, the thousands of regular Trump fans still waiting in line, eager for their chance to search for truth, will find a Twitter knock-off with no immediately discernible improvement on the original — a vanity project that has yet to prove its utility.

Put simply, there isn’t much happening on the site.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/03/05/truth-social-emptiness-donald-trump-00014355

NEW: Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) has endorsed U.S. Rep. Andy Levin (D-Bloomfield Township) in Michigan’s 11th District.

Rep. Waters is the most senior Black woman in Congress and former Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.