haiti

The more things change

/ Tracy Abell / 9 Comments

ONE. As Haiti is devastated by another earthquake, I think back to a blog post from 2010 in  which I wrote:

Haiti has always struggled mightily
to survive on her own terms.
She’s strong, I know.
I just wish the universe would quit testing her.

And here the Haitian people are again, facing more death, destruction, and heartbreak.

TWO. As the Taliban moves closer to regaining control in Afghanistan, I think back to those days of feeling completely enraged/overwhelmed/defeated by how easily Bush/Cheney & Co fear-mongered the U.S. into invading and occupying Afghanistan. I distinctly remember sitting on my patio, drinking a beer, and laughing/crying as I read David Rees’s GET YOUR WAR ON.**

The one good constant in all this is that my patio table remains the same

The clip-art strips were and continue to be profane, hysterical, and spot-on in the framing of how we lost our collective minds after September 11, 2001. (**Lather. Rinse. Repeat. for the invasion/occupation of Iraq, covered in GET YOUR WAR ON II)

THREE. Once again, I’m feeling enraged, overwhelmed, and defeated. There’s so much good we could be doing for one another on a massive scale and yet, people continue to think the military is the answer to every issue, despite all evidence to the contrary.

FOUR. So here I am (again) turning to nature to soothe my soul.

August 14, 2021

Frederick Douglass on Haiti

/ Tracy Abell / 8 Comments


I regard her [Haiti] as the original pioneer emancipator of the nineteenth century. It was her one brave example that first of all started the Christian world into a sense of the Negro’s manhood. It was she who first awoke the Christian world to a sense of “the danger of goading too far the energy that slumbers in a black man’s arm.” Until Haiti struck for freedom, the conscience of the Christian world slept profoundly over slavery. – Hon. Frederick Douglass, ex-United States Minister to the Republic of Haiti, January 2, 1893.

Here’s the link to Douglass’s entire World’s Fair lecture.

Haiti has always struggled mightily
to survive on her own terms.
She’s strong, I know.
I just wish the universe would quit testing her.