Good News, Bad News, Plus Poem

This is a news post and a poem prompt. I have good news, and I have bad news.

On the gopher front, we have one casualty. R.I.P., Mr. Gopher.

In the bad news department we have some serious developments in Haiti to discuss.

I’ve been following a very good blog by a humanitarian worker, Ellen B., who works with the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation. They’re receiving spinal-cord-injury patients out of Port-au-Prince.

She has posted some links to utterly thought-provoking articles written about the aftermath of the earthquake on Jan. 12.

Ramifications that come as news to me:

Institutions of higher learning—universities, vocational schools, medical training schools—were demolished in the earthquake. An entire generation of students, those who survived the earthquake itself and whose skills would have aided the future of that poor country, have nowhere to go anymore.

From the New York Times, dateline Feb. 13, an article by Marc Lacey begins:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Christina Julme was scribbling notes in the back of a linguistics class at the State University of Haiti when, in an instant, everything went black.
“You’re in class, your professor is talking, you’re writing notes and then you’re buried alive,” said Ms. Julme, 23, recounting how her semester came to a halt on the afternoon of Jan. 12 when the earthquake turned her seven-story university into a towering pile of wreckage, with her deep inside.
Read more here.
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Another group of survivors I haven’t considered until yesterday: Women and girls. In the struggle to obtain food, they’re less able to compete against stronger men. Living in streets and tent cities, they have little protection from sexual violence (one study found that over 70 percent of Haitian girls have been raped). And dead in the earthquake are leading women’s rights activists.

In “Cracks of Gender Inequality: Haitian Women After the Earthquake,” writer Régine Michelle Jean-Charles, explains:

“The circumstances under which many Haitians in Port-au-Prince, Leogane, Jacmel, Petit Goave and surrounding areas have been living since the earthquake present unique challenges to women and girls that must be addressed in relief efforts, recovery programs, and the re-construction of the state.”
Read more here.


Ellen deserves a salute for doing what she can to help circulate situations like this. It helps open our eyes, and gives those who pray specific needs for which they can pray.

What do you think?

Photo by Ellen Bolden
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Willow over at Magpie Tales has published a poem or fiction prompt. Today's the day we post our offering. Here's the photo, and my offering:


A Woman’s Mettle


I don’t own any silver.
My purse is empty.
My life is all the silver
I will ever see
and it is tarnished
believe you me.

My lack of precious metal
doesn’t make me poor.
I’m finely wrought
if a little bit battered
and unlike glass
I haven’t shattered.

My shape is still as shapely
but with no filigree
the design as plain
as the day I was born.
It’s for working
that I was formed.

I’ve envied other houses
where rich people live.
They have gold and silver
but still I love my own.
Burnished, cared for,
I have really shone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~