With the power of the mind put into practice for conserving nature, we can make the whole world a better place because we are part of nature, made of fire, water, earth, and air.
In our annual celebration of this year’s Earth Day, we want to spread the spirit of Mother Nature. We want all to find the beauty of life in music from the trills of birds in the rhythm of running brooks, words of wisdom in the susurrus of trees, and books in the vivid scarlet twilight of the sunset lingering in the west. The wonders of nature tame belligerent brutes and soften the hardened hearts of cynics.
One-touch of nature makes the whole world kin. In the arms of Mother Nature, we are all her children, so keeping the earth clean and livable is our filial duty to her.
Of all liturgical feast days, only Easter Sunday rekindles my dying embers of hope at the dire moment of despair, beginning to grow bigger and glow lighter, filling the void of the heart’s chamber with excellent brilliancy. So when the priest during the homily this morning asked the congregation what Easter meant to us, I had my inner share of answer that it’s about Hope against Hope till the last breath, just as Jesus himself has risen from death. Whether a pious Christian myth or ecclesiastical dogma, the idea of Resurrection gives one the joy of reckoning that there is no night so long that it has no hope of a day. It is aptly applied to the present -day of the war in Ukraine and everyday life circumstances when hope seems a fleeting dream, foolhardy gambling without responsibility.
Pope St. Francis addressed the Ukrainians during the Easter Vigil Mass and the Way of the Cross on Good Friday: “We can only give you our company, our prayers, and say’ you’ courage, we accompany you.” Courage with humor being a handmaid to hope defeats the shadows of darkness. It motivates one to continue a journey in life, however perilous and disappointing it seems to appear, as attested by Viktor E. Frankl, the father of Logotherapy during his internment years in Nazi death concentration camps. Frankl forced his mind to be occupied with the hopeful thought of writing a book about Logotherapy. Suppose anyone challenges Frankl’sFrankl’s experience as no more sordid than what the present-day Ukrainians are experiencing now. In that case, the person is equally no less lofty than an unreconstructed nationalist with no regard for the human race.
Further to the importance of courage and hope, the pope also spoke of reconciliation and forgiveness when loss of values, vengeance, and rage dominated humanity’s better angels. However, the Major Archbishop of Ukraine’s Byzantine-rite Catholic Church disagreed with the pope, calling it untimely during the carnage of the war broken up by Russia. In the meantime, Zelensky is pressuring President Biden to declare Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism, striking “HELP” to the West. Didn’t Jesus point out the importance of love of your enemy because the fury would consume your whole being, making you ever unhappy and miserable with no sight of mirth and laughter but anger clenched with fists? While I commiserate with the sufferings of the Ukrainians, I also understand the price of a continuous blaze of ire hell-bent on vengeance. It will only continue a vicious cycle of war in epicycle, just as Herodotetus realized in the narrative of the ancient battles in the Histories. One can use the free will to either forget the past regrets thing or move on because the footprints left behind can only take you back and in a backward mode, making you fall by the wayside of your yet unknown destinations in life.
Easter Sunday is beginning to be drawn into the past. I want to record and convey my train of thought visible before the sun with its pale scarlet hues lingering in the twilight of the West. But I still have hope and keep it with me. Thucydides called it a dangerous illusion more potent than the reason that transforms it into an awareness of odds in one’s favor. Whatever it may be, for what’s worth, I will have hope as long I breathe—Happy Easter to Urbi and Orbi.
My heart is longing Though my mind is confused. My soul is tired of sighing, My spirit is revolted, Time flows rapidly, Woes disappear slowly, I’m tired of repining, Will the universe conspire To reset it all anew As if all of this were a dream In the likeness of truth?
For all this time beneath this visiting moon, Where treasure is, my heart has not been at it with the lights of the lamp glowing in the gloom. But now I see the voracious time devour the kingdom of the shore, And the solid earth rule over the liquid main, Increasing store with loss and loss with store; When I see such vicissitudes of state, Or fate itself repeated over and over; Splashes of battle have taught me to ruminate That nothing stays the same to remain forever And I can’t depend on anything that changes. This thought is a truth that hope chooses And in the dying moments of today, fears I lose.
Howard Stern might not be everyone’s friend, but he’s got the point when he articulated in his radio show a decade ago that what was eating out this great nation was not racism but classicism. The recent unionization movements among service industry workers, such as Amazon and Starbucks, indicate that the demand for the dignity of workers supersedes ideological politics that discourage the growth of American esprit de corps. American Made is a story about this American class consciousness that will put together disintegrated tesserae of the collective national mosaic made by the people and events.
The author follows the three principal workers of the now-defunct Rexnord Factory in Indiana: Wally, a black man whose diligence and amiability promoted him to a coveted position in the factory; Shannon, a single white woman with an abusive partner taking pride herself in being a wielder, a male-dominated position, and John whose fortitude and conscience never left him during his long, turbulent unemployment days. Sex and race don’t matter when it comes to losing their jobs, let alone loving them because the importance of what they do for a living and the need for their livelihood are their commonalities that build a sense of camaraderie. In fact, class solidarity can never be achieved if class consciousness is transcendent of racial prejudice to be achieved first. Unfortunately, the antebellum wealthy southern plantation owners systematically destroyed the poor white laborers’ wage systems by replacing their workforce with the free labor of African slaves, thus planting the seeds of racial hatred in the hearts of the poor whites. The vicious cycle of devious racialized economic caste system has since firmly constituted the American economic system ethos under “Separated but Equal.” The author sees the absurdities of American society as a result of the disintegrated labor movements primarily due to racial prejudices, which is why worker’s solidarity is a way forward to achieve national unity.
Wally, Shannon, and John are not just working-class Americans. The author emphasizes differentiating her elite station characterized by expensive private higher education and intellectual “profession” from those with hardened coarse hands of workers in the factory. They are ordinary people, a majority of Americans making up this country, ubiquitous in the landscape of our daily life. They are expendable at the whims and caprice of profit-driven employers who see their employees as no more than living at-will automates. That is what happened to the Rexnord Factory, where workers’ lives were no less than collateral damage for a successful operational mission of the company.
At times, the author positions herself as a conscientious liberal intellectual, paralleling her fortunate environment with her unfortunate subjects. Perhaps it’s an occupational hazard for being an NYT journalist. Nevertheless, the book succeeds in pointing out a lack of national cohesion resulting from the politicization of racial rhetorics into bipartisan ideology, which falls by the wayside of solidarity of labor movement overcoming institutionalized racial prejudices. Recently, I have read that the workers of Starbucks and Amazon in New York have voted to unionize. American Made is a story about them and us too because the dignity of work makes us who we are.
There is an excellent article in the newest issue of BBC History Revealed about how the Industrial Revolution has upended the fundamental social and cultural structures of the world as the French Revolution has changed political and economic systems of the world as we take for granted nowadays. Epochal changes are a juggernaut of our human civilizations as a process akin to a caterpillar turning mulberry leaves into fine silk despite seismic transitions ensuing from such transformation. A terse army motto of “No pain, no gain” rings true as a universal objective reality, whether or not you embrace it with open arms.
Yet, amid the mountainous waves of indomitable revolutions and a Levitan that dictates new norms and conventions in every aspect of life from clothing to parlance, one thing never changes, and that is a life of a worker, spending most of the day outside the home with strangers for livelihood. For instance, a person whose labor is paid is not entirely free from the whims and caprice of the employer for fear of losing jobs. There are still employers whose common sense is inconsistent with the progressive minds that today’s employees are not modern-day indentured servants or maids, if not those ancient slaves under Roman mastership. It would be anachronistic and unfair to compare the slaves with free citizens working for money, but a provision of service for subsistence puts the progeny on the same continuum.
Come to think of it, now I know why neurologist/psychiatrist/linguist Steven Pinker, aka the Rational Thinker, disagrees with Descartes’ dualism that the body and the mind are separable and Rousseau’s theory of the Blank State of the mind. We can’t be all workaholics without being personal, like cyborgs at work. Maybe that’s why nowadays, many self-checkouts have proliferated in retail and manufacturing sectors. Mind you, that the Luddites were not brute, ignorant anti-machinists destroying the factory machinery in 19th century England. They were somewhat naive angry workers who repelled against the sordid working conditions they were placed like human-like automation. The class distinctions demarcated by the types of work have become new social hierarchy even after the revolutions as aforesaid.
Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh 
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