A Prayer of Urgency to Stop Monsanto

This photo was taken a couple of years ago.  This year the mustard did not bloom.  This memory helps me to feel hopeful and so grateful that we have had some very nice rain.........

For my morning write today, I was still tossing around in my brain....the terrifying news of the loss of the monarch migration numbers......with startling statistics.that were released just yesterday, even on USA Today online news which began to form into a liturgical prayer form, that has always, for me, been the most powerful moment in the liturgy, when collectively we listen to the prayer and we respond out loud....."HEAR OUR PRAYER!
WE PRAY..............

For the monarch butterfly migration and its increase;
For the milkweed to flourish again;
For the farmers to follow the Light of ecologists and earth savers;
For more Percy and Louise Schmizers;
For more collective out cries of dissent and disgust;
For the demise of powerful monopolies who rape and kill living species.....animal and human;
For those leaders and countries and US states, who have put bans on GMOs into place;
For our utmost care of the environment;
For the total ban on all pesticides and chemicals....especially ROUND UP;
For the restoration of the bee population;
For the waning of the cancer epidemic and healing for those who are ill;
For clean air and water;
For the Elder Wisdom Keepers;
For the words of activist poets who write to preserve the nature they so poetically describe and honor;
For those who gather in protest to inform us, educate us and protect us;
For those who refuse to give up the hope for change;
And for these intentions and our own personal pleas.........

We pray, meditate, shout out to the Goddess, the Gods of many faiths, to Yaweh, to Allah, to Buddha,
to Quan Yin, the angels and druids that travel among us, the Christ, the Lamas, the gurus, the nations and their leaders, the Pope and his bishops, priests, vicars, rabbis and to all people of sensibility and sanity

Please add your intentions.......your prayers.........your hopes..........

Tulip Magnolia in the Rain

FEBRUARY  8,  2014     

Tulip Magnolia in the Rain

I walk by it on Brown Street, 
a very ancient Burbank tree,
pink and lavender mixed blossoms,
with those large oval, thick petals.
When it rains,
and it finally does!
the huge mantle of color
struggles to keep its glory,
like a Monet against the sky,
blue or gray
in a magnificent silent humble way.
Does not flaunt its beauty.  It just is.
I stop to give a gratuitous bow
for its annual flamboyant free show.  

ONE OF MY POEMS HAS WON A THIRD PRIZE!

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

MY POEM:  MIGRATION   has earned a Third Place prize in the NATIONAL AMATEUR POETRY
 COMPETITION sponsored by Eber & Wein Publishing........

MIGRATION

Whale watchers are mammals, too.
We all nurse our young,
expelled from the womb in placenta blood,
nurtured by instinct,
filled with water,
the fluid of life.
The mammals who killed mammals to near extinction,
now searching for spout and breech
to fill the camera lens.
Do the whales watch us watch them?
Do their memories forgive our killing ways?
We gaze out to sea,
braced against the ocean wind
to face forward off the Bodega Cliff edges,
that hold the onlookers
for the annual mammalian migration.

Copyright 2011
Nina Tepedino


Be sure to see the Film:  Blackfish.......which chronicles the early capture of baby Orcas in Puget Sound
for the horrible crime and profit for the Sea Worlds of the world and how some of the original hunters have been asking for forgiveness and expressing great remorse for their actions.  They are now convinced that one of the most intelligent mammals of the sea have experienced great mistreatment, death and the loss of their young whale children with screaming cries of anguish and mourning witnessed by the hunters.  You can locate this documentary film on line.  It is being shown in some theaters, but is not available for live streaming from Netflix.  

VIEW MY INTERVIEW ON WOMEN'S SPACES

NOVEMBER 10, 2013

THE INTERVIEW VIDEO CAN BE SEEN AT http://www.womensspaces.com/

ArchiveWSshow/WS131011.html

Appearing on the cable show, Women's Spaces

Add caption

Community Television, Cable 26, WOMEN'S SPACES   show with Elaine Holtz, producer with Nina

I was interviewed and taped on Friday, October 11, with an air date for November (TBA).  I will keep everyone posted  re: time and Channels access.  It was a wonderful opportunity to share my new children's  book and to answer questions about what it is like to be a creative and active eighty year-old elder in these times.  Hope you will all watch and comment.

POSTED:  SEPTEMBER 21                                                                                                                      

POEM PUBLISHED IN THE NEW 2013 VINTAGE VOICES
 ANTHOLOGY, REDWOOD WRITERS, SONOMA COUNTY.

EMANCIPATION SECTION.....PG 43

POSTCARDS OF DEATH

It was a twenty-first century event.
Images were hung on a Mississippi gallery wall
for an exhibition of black and white
photos sold for a souvenir
of anonymous faces posed in fear.
Images that were mailed as picture postcards
by lynching mobs and tourists,
who gathered to watch and wait
for the moment of entry at Death's gate,
without guilt for the innocent,
without trial by a jury,
with no one to shout:
"Set him free!  Set him free!
from the hangman's tree!"
Emancipation came too late
for those African ancestors,
thought to be less than human
by photographers, who profited 
from their postcards of death.

@2013  Nina Tepedino

Today I read this poem at the Reading Circle venue at the Sonoma County Book Festival, at the Santa Rosa Junior College


Happy Fall Equinox!! 

                                          photo by Greg Pfeiffer

September, 18, 2013

I would like to announce my new sole proprietor enterprise.......LOVEJOY  PRESS.  I will be publishing my own books for children and for my poetry.  I am currently working on a music book for young children:  "Never Too Tired For Singing"  with photos, text and notated songs, resources for the home and school setting.  

I am also creating four or five little books for children, ages 5 thru 10 that center on the character's activities and messages for helping to save our planet's  wildlife and habitats that threatened by climate change and global warming.  So, I will keep in touch with all the latest developments as they happen. 

Happy writing!!