Chez Robert Giron

Former Vice-President Al Gore has done us all a great service by bringing global warming to the attention to the world. Too bad that many world leaders, like our own currently, cannot face the truth.

Director David Guggenheim has given Al Gore the perfect medium to educate the world about a major disaster which is occurring at this very moment. Saddly many fail to recognize what is actually happening mostly because we are all so busy with our lives as they are and caught up in the madness to use resources and produce pollution senselessly and to discard of waste in the same manner instead of recycling, etc.

To see what is happening on the globe, one need only compare present day pictures of glaciers in Europe or on Kilimangaro to pictures taken 10 years ago to see that the ice is melting. In fact just last night I was watching France2 which pointed out that an ice berg that ended up near New Zealand has begun to melt in the sea. One need only to look around and notice the ice melting and the hotter summer days to realize that we are in the middle of global warming. Eventually many sea coast cities will be under water as a result.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if all CEOs of major USA corporations were to see this movie and began to make changes in their corporations to create new technologies to prevent the present level of pollution they are creating? They could and should do this because if the economy falters or major population areas are devasted chances are their corporations' profits will begin to decline and some could find themselves out of business altogether.



To order a copy of the DVD, click here:
An Inconvenient Truth

On November 14, 2006 in Germany, twelve detainees, who were abused in military jails in Iraq and Cuba, filed a law suit against former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, including American officials who might have either approved or "allowed" such abuse and sexual humiliation to happen under USA watch as was the case at Abu Ghraib.

Certainly Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and others who have been part of the process of making such abuse and torture seem reasonable and not illegal will have to defend their position, notwithstanding that Congress (before the recent Democratic take over) passed an act allowing President Bush the leeway he said he needed to face any violation of the Geneva Convention with regard to dealing with prisoners of war.

Also of late the Supreme Court might have to get involved in a Texas case in which the International Court of Justice in The Hague has ruled that the USA violated the rights of 51 Mexican citizens who were not told they could speak with a consular official after their arrest. The fact that these 51 are on death row is no laughing matter, nor should Americans over react that the World Court is telling the USA what to do when we as a free democracy appear to have violated the very rights we are so eager to establish across the globe. In other words what is good for the goose is also good for the gander, and, to belabor it even more, what goes around comes around.

To make the realization of the bad image the USA has recently created under the Bush regime even more clear, in today's papers there is an article that Australia is about to create a Center of U.S. Studies because our reputation in Australia has fallen to the lowest point, some 10 points below that reputation Australians hold for China, France, the United Nations and the county of Papua New Guinea. How much lower could the USA fall?

Now, we Americans must make Congress step up to the plate to salvage our reputation throughout the world, for as a democracy that insists on spreading democracy, one cannot be hypocritical about what a democracy can or should not do. If anything, we must go the extra mile to convince others that we are not cut from the same cloth as are the nations which we do not respect because they abuse the rights of its citizens, illegal aliens within their borders, or prisoners captured during a period of war.

On the Altar of Greece by Donna J. Gelagotis Lee, winner of the 2005 Gival Press Poetry Award, has been released by Gival Press.

The book was recently nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and has received the following advance praise:

“The poetry of Donna J. Gelagotis Lee combines the sharp resourcefulness of the observer with the powers of the visionary. Her poems travel both in time and in memory to Greek villages and to Athens, bringing with them the spiky sensibility of a contemporary American woman….”
—Molly Peacock, author of Cornucopia: New and Selected Poems

“Like the hands she describes preparing food, Lee stirs up a rich linguistic concoction…. She knows that to empathize distinguishes the gifted poet from the merely good one, and enacts her compassion through the concreteness of her writing. With that physicality, she brings to life the numinous core of language.”
—Dean Kostos, author of Last Supper of the Senses



(Photo by Alicia Kozikowski of Pryde Brown Photographs.)


"Donna J. Gelagotis Lee’s On the Altar of Greece actually does place its reader before, or on, an elevated place where the ceremony of everyday sublime life in Greece plays out. Without resorting to prefabricated classical references we’ve already heard to the nth, she includes us totally in everything she experiences and sharply senses there, the orange-turned-yellow air, corners of walls, the shaded grove of stone men, the dark beach, a thread through looped thread, Poseidon cracking a wave, goat bells, 'the speech unfolding / that flung dice against the white walls / until they wore eyes.' Then, as important, there’s the undertow of her subtle and deft suggestions of how the people in these scenes relate, and of the intriguingly close connection she herself has to them. Ms. Lee shows us a new, vivid, freshly layered world inside an ancient and long-known one. With her eyes, strong mind and solidly classical style of picturing in new terms this historical place turned myth turned 'real' again, the journey of our time at this altar offers us a striking, immense set of views of a world we thought we knew, and still, wonderfully, do know in much richer ways by the end."
—Don Berger, Judge of the 2005 Gival Press Poetry Award, Poet Laureate of Takoma Park, Maryland, and author of Quality Hill and The Cream-Filled Muse

To order a copy at Amazon.com, click here:
On the Altar of Greece

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The Eighth Annual Gival Press Poetry Award

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Deadline:
December 15, 2006 (postmarked).
Our dates never change, if the date falls on a Sunday, then Monday becomes the default postmarked date.

Guidelines:

Theme:
Completely open.

Eligible Poets:
Open to all, national and international poets.

Language:
English.

Forms or Style of Poetry:
Original work, not a translation of someone else's poetry. Open to any form or style; simply good poetry.

Length of Manuscript:
At least 45 typed pages of poetry, on one side only.

Status of the Winning Manuscript:
The manuscript as a whole shall not have been published before. However, include an acknowledgment sheet to indicate any previously published poems in the collection (poem/journal/date). It is the responsibility of the poet to secure the right to publish previously published poems.

Format for Submittal:
Include a separate cover sheet with name, title of manuscript, address (street, city, state, electronic mail), and phone number. The poet's name should not appear on the pages of the ms. The numbered pages should be clipped together.

If the manuscript wins, the poet must make the manuscript available to Gival Press on an IBM-compatible disk or CD in Rich Text Format (RTF)—this refers to how one saves the document on one's computer disk.

A short bio should be included.

Always keep a copy of your manuscript; materials will not be returned and will be recycled after the judging.

Reading Fee:
$20.00 (USD) by personal check or USA money order payable to:
Gival Press, LLC.

International entrants must send a check drawn on a USA bank routed through a USA address, such as Bank of America; no international money orders are acceptable.

Please note that Gival Press can also accept the entry free by major credit card; however, we only take credit card information by phone (703.351.0079).

Mail to:
Robert L. Giron
Poetry Award
Gival Press, LLC
P.O. Box 3812
Arlington, VA 22203.

Notification of the Winner:
Include a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) for notification of the winner or visit our website (http://www.givalpress.com), where the winner and finalists will be announced.

We try our best to announce the winner by mid spring. Unfortunately, it takes time to read and judge the entries and to contact the individuals involved.


Prize:
The winner will receive $1,000.00 (USD) and his/her book of poetry will be published by Gival Press. The winning poet will receive 20 copies of the publication.

A standard publication contract is offered.

Judging: The manuscripts are judged anonymously. The winner for the previous award will be the judge for the following year. The decision of the judge will be final.


Click here for link to the list of past winners of the Gival Press Poetry Award:
Poetry Award Winners: 1999-Current

Per AP and NBC, Jim Webb has just been declared the winner of the Virginia Senate race which now gives the Democrats control of not only the House of Representatives but now also the Senate. With slightly over 7,000 votes, it is unlikely George Allen will come up from behind.

And so we now have Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The third person in power in this country is now a woman. We also have 16 women in the Senate. May these women keep the men on target and corruption free.

I have to say that the 2006 Election has restored my belief in our democratic system. Unfortunately the last two national elections, along with Bush's uncontrolled power and arrogance, slowly began to dismantle my faith in our elections to the point that I was not sure this election was not going to be filled with irregular cases and possible calls of fraud.

So Carl Rove, "The Math" you spoke of is not anything of value in the reality of "legitimate elections." Thank God Americans have caught on to your tactics.


In short, I am relieved that the American people have finally woken up to the nonsense and corruption we have had to endure when the Republicans took over in 1994.

As the saying goes, all good as well as bad things must come to an end.

Now we must not allow the Democrats to lower their standards while we begin to take this country in a different direction.

I am also relieved that President Bush has begun to pay attention and listen to the American people. So long Rumsfeld! Now who will be next?

For those of you who live and are able to vote in the Commonwealth of Virginia, I ask that you read the following Ballot Question Number 1 very carefully as it will not only discriminate against gay people but also straight people who live together without the benefit of marriage.

We Americans must stand up and not allow states or our country to violate the right of freedom and the pursuit of happiness for certain citizens that discriminating / self-righteous individuals believe should not have the same constitutional rights.

Please vote NO on this ballot question:


BALLOT QUESTION NUMBER 1

Question: Shall Article I (the Bill of Rights) of the Constitution of Virginia be amended to state:

"That only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this Commonwealth and its political subdivisions.

This Commonwealth and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage. Nor shall this Commonwealth or its political subdivisions create or recognize another union, partnership, or other legal status to which is assigned the rights, benefits, obligations, qualities, or effects of marriage."?

Please visit:
The Commonwealth Coalition