April 12, 2026: “Part of Eve’s Discussion,” Wild Week, “A Whole Civilization”

It has been a wild week.  

Tuesday morning, President #47 threatened to wipe out “a whole civilization.”  You read that right—he said he was going to genocide the country of Iran if it didn’t open up the Strait of Hormuz.  After his post on Truth Social, the whole world seemed to be holding its breath, not sure if the orange lunatic was going to actually start World War III.

If you’ve ever lived through the threat of some kind of apocalyptic weather/environmental event—hurricane, blizzard, tsunami, volcanic eruption—that’s what it felt like.  The planet was teetering on the brink of something cataclysmic, and only one person could prevent it.  And that one person was/is a mentally unstable Putin wannabe.  

Don’t worry.  This post isn’t going to be a political rant.  Y’all know I stand on the side of compassion, kindness, empathy, and freedom.  You know, all that shit you heard in church last Easter Sunday.  No, I won’t go all Sam Kinison on you (The man’s a fuckin’ baby with nuclear codes!!!!  Ahhhh, ahhhhhh, ahhhhhhhh!!!!!).   I’m more interested in that collective held breath—everyone waiting to see what was going to happen.  Like Christmas morning, except Santa Claus has missiles packed in his sleigh.

Marie Howe writes about just-before moments . . . 

Part of Eve’s Discussion

by: Marie Howe

It was like the moment when a bird decides not to eat from your hand,

and flies, just before it flies, the moment when rivers seem to still

and stop because a storm is coming, but there is no storm, as when

a hundred starlings lift and bank together before they wheel and drop,

very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you

your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin, like

the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say,

it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only

all the time.

Howe is talking about an anticipated experience that never materializes—a bird right before eating from your palm, a river right before a squall, a car right before it starts spinning on lake ice.  If you’re anything like me, you’ve already imagined the experience in your mind.  The bird has already gorged itself on the seed.  The storm has already whipped the river into froth.  The car has already spun and spun and spun like an amusement park ride.  

I think the world has become so focused on speed.  We want the fastest cell phones.  Fastest cars.  Fastest WiFi connections.  Call it the Era of Instant Gratification.  Anticipation is practically non-existent.  Movies don’t even stay in theaters all that long anymore.  They’re released, and, four weeks later, they’re streaming on Netflix or HBO Max.  You don’t have to wait six months or a year for the DVD or Blu-ray.  

President #47 did NOT go through with his threat.  Supposedly, there’s a two-week moratorium on bombing between Iran, Israel, and the United States.  (Somebody needs to let Netanyahu know about this ceasefire, by the way.)  The bird flew off without eating the seed.  The storm blew itself out like a birthday candle.  And the car’s tires found traction.  For two weeks.  Then, all bets are off.

As Howe says at the end of her poem, “. . . it was still like that, only / all the time.”  It’s exhausting living in a state of constant anticipation.  Even if Tuesday’s  threat has been postponed, it’s still present.  And the people of the United States have been living on this edge like this for close to ten years now.  Almost an entire generation of young people only remember #47 and Joe Biden as Presidents of the United States.  (You can argue with me if you want, but at least President Biden never brought us to the brink of armageddon, and he isn’t a convicted felon.)

We are a divided country.  That’s a fact.  Also a fact:  the inmates are in charge of the asylum right now.  When my kids and grandkids read this post dozens of years from now, I want them to know I stood on the side of love and kindness during this held-breath moment.  And I will continue to do so.  

I have friends who are incredibly pessimistic about the future.  That’s not me.  I believe that democracy is still alive in the United States.  The fact that Hungarian dictator Viktor Orbán lost the election in his country by a landslide today gives me hope.  In the end, good people win, and despots end up on the trash heap.  We will recover from the past ten years of MAGA-induced insanity, but it will take a while.  No instant gratification available.  Sorry millennials.

In the meantime, we gather, protest, speak up, speak out, listen to and recite poetry at readings (like I did today), and sing songs.  

Here’s a poem Saint Marty wrote last Tuesday . . . 

A Whole Civilization

by: Martin Achatz

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
                    --- Donald Trump

We sit on this side of the world,
complain about egg prices, milk
prices, pill prices. We pump gas
into our SUVs, complain about that, too.
We have to get to Florida for our spring breaks.
Because we’re civilized.

They sit on the other side of the world,
wait for the whistle of missiles,
watch skies on fire, and dig
their daughters’ bodies from school
rubble. They weep, wail, tear their clothes,
wonder how frightened their children
were when heaven collapsed on top of them.
Because they’re civilized.

May 21: Sacred Heart of Jesus, a Life of Faith, Baby Shower

Santiago's home . . . 

They walked up the road together to the old man's shack and went in through its open door. The old man leaned the mast with its wrapped sail against the wall and the boy put the box and the other gear beside it. The mast was nearly as long as the one room of the shack. The shack was made of the tough bud-shields of the royal palm which are called guano and in it there was a bed, a table, one chair, and a place on the dirt floor to cook with charcoal. On the brown walls of the flattened, overlapping leaves of the sturdy fibered guano there was a picture in color of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the Virgin of Cobre. These were relics of his wife. Once there had been a tinted photograph of his wife on the wall but he had taken it down because it made him too lonely to see it and it was on the shelf in the corner under his clean shirt.

I was raised in a devoutly Catholic home.  A picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus was always on the wall, right beside a picture of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  I have clear memories of those two images always being present in my life.  They were like guardians of our home, watching over us.

Of course, just because you are devoutly religious doesn't mean that your life is going to be smooth sailing.  In fact, in my experience, life is more like The Poseidon Adventure, with everyone trying to make it to the hull of the ship to escape to sunlight and fresh air.  Faith doesn't guarantee a life without catastrophe or sorrow.

In the past five or six years in my family, I've lost a brother, two sisters, and both my parents.  There have been other challenges in my life, as well, including mental illness and addiction in close family members.  When I go to church every weekend (and I often attend several services--Catholic, Methodist, and/or Lutheran), I listen to the gospels.  A good portion of them are not really happy stories.  There's leprosy, illness, death, betrayal, and torture.  The Jesus narratives are not easy, in any way.  A life of faith doesn't mean a life without battles and trials.

Today, I went to a baby shower for my nephew and his wife.  It was a wonderful celebration in anticipation of new life.  A baby boy.  There were tacos and burritos and nachos and cookies.  Lots of gifts.  And there was happiness.  Anticipation.  That's all part of faith, too.

You can go through life thinking that the human race is on a collision course with disaster and potential extinction.  Or you can go through life thinking the human race will do the right thing--work to end climate change, gun violence, institutional racism, homophobia, and bullying.  That list could go on and on.  And we are on a pretty terrible trajectory at the moment, with the war in Ukraine, hunger, melting polar ice cap, and school shootings.  (Don't even get me started on the Supreme Court of the United States.)  To lose all hope, however, isn't a viable option.

At their present ages, my kids are smarter than I ever was.  That is where my faith in humanity lies--with the children.  They don't want to end up living in a Wall-E world of pollution and devastation and loss.  And really, that's what a baby shower is--a gathering of hope for a brighter tomorrow.  Not a tomorrow without struggle.  That's unrealistic.  

But a tomorrow that's brighter than the one Saint Marty inherited from his parents.

July 23: Anticipation, Sending Out, Getting Back

Just as in childhood his anticipation of the monthly issue of St. Nicholas had been greatly enhanced by the suspense of contributing to it, so had his trips to the newsstand gained in importance as he sent out light verse and small stories to newspaper columnists...

I love reading about E. B. White struggling as a young writer in New York.  Sending out his poems and stories.  Waiting to see his name in print.  White wasn't much different than I am now.  It gives me hope.  Charlotte's Web.  "Once More to the Lake."  Stuart Little.  White wrote a lot of classics.  And White also was neurotic and unsure of himself.

The process of sending out poems is difficult.  Every magazine advises would-be contributors to read back issues, familiarize themselves with the content.  Well, that would be great, if I could afford it.  Google helps out sometimes.  But it's all a crapshoot, basically.  There are a lot of really great poets out there, and I'm competing with all of them.

Every day, when I check my e-mail, I cringe.  Rejection is never easy.  Getting back an electronic message from editors saying something like "Thanks for sending us your poems but we hated them" is bruising.  Deflating.  Yet, writers are masochists.  We keep sending out our stuff, waiting, hoping.  Getting rejected never gets easy.  It always hurts a little.

Until that one moment when the electronic message from an editor goes something like "We are happy to accept your poem 'Anal Retention' for publication in our next issue."  Then, for several weeks, you feel special.  Chosen.  As if God has reached down and touched you.

Saint Marty hasn't been touched like that in a while.

Touch me, please!