Maybe the peacemakers - 3

 As of 2025, there have been 20 women who were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The heroines of peace – the 16 women awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize before 2014 (1901-2014)

These are women who received their prizes after the above photo collage.

• Narges Mohammadi (2023)
• Maria Ressa (2021)
• Nadia Murad (2018)

And in 2025 Maria Cordoba Machado of Venezuela won... (see my blog, Maybe the Angry Women - 4)

I plan to give you brief (yes an intention) biographies of these other Laureates. 

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"Please join me and many others in making the six compassionate vows of: environmental sustainability, gender equality, socioeconomic justice, participatory governance, cultural tolerance, and nonviolence and peace."

(Thanks, Robertson Work, for this invitation.)

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I've clipped a lot of information on Baroness Bertha von Suttner, available on Open Yesterday's Pages. I had no idea she had been instrumental in Peace movements before WW I. See Open Yesterday's Pages for a lot of information (just half of what's available!) As an early peace activist she may have influenced Nobel to make a Peace Prize! 

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Last week, Bruce Springsteen wrote: “I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.” You can read the lyrics below.

Through the winter’s ice and cold
Down Nicollet Avenue
A city aflame fought fire and ice
‘Neath an occupier’s boots
King Trump’s private army from the DHS
Guns belted to their coats
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law
Or so their story goes
Against smoke and rubber bullets
By the dawn’s early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringing through the night
And there were bloody footprints
Where mercy should have stood
And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pretti and Renee Good

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our home they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

Trump’s federal thugs beat up on
His face and his chest
Then we heard the gunshots
And Alex Pretti lay in the snow, dead
Their claim was self defense, sir
Just don’t believe your eyes
It’s our blood and bones
And these whistles and phones
Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Crying through the bloody mist
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

Now they say they’re here to uphold the law
But they trample on our rights
If your skin is black or brown my friend
You can be questioned or deported on sight

In chants of ICE out now
Our city’s heart and soul persists
Through broken glass and bloody tears
On the streets of Minneapolis

Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
Here in our home they killed and roamed
In the winter of ’26
We’ll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis
We’ll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis

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The song as he sang it was included on my post earlier. But sometimes people want to read the lyrics too. 

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My son in Columbus OH sent me a text while he and his wife were protesting ICE on Saturday afternoon. My son in Tampa FL was a security guard for the Gasparilla Parade that day...in very cold and windy conditions for his Mustang Sallie's Krew on their float, throwing out beads. I posted some snow photos before the day was over of Black Mountain's snow.

Recently

 
Wednesday last, I captured a couple of quick shots of new murals in town.

Our little old fashioned Acorn Motel has bought out the next door motel, which used to be the Apple Blossom. I wonder...did the insurance settlement from the fire the Acorn had last year help at all? 

Now there's Acorn Building One and Acorn Building Two!

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The compassion of strangers

With threats growing each day from this administration, the public response is increasingly pointing toward a path of basic compassion. By this, I mean that people—total strangers, but also fellow residents and neighbors—are taking a stand, including against the injustice, aggression, and cruelty of I.C.E.

Witness what happened in San Diego outside the popular Buona Forchetta restaurant in South Park. When I.C.E. showed up in its vans to detain workers—not criminals, but workers—the community did not stand idly by. They began to fill the streets, block vehicles, and were eventually dispersed with flash bangs.

These acts of peaceful civil disobedience may not stop detentions in the moment, but they accomplish three other very important things.

First, they show the nation—and our fellow residents under threat from I.C.E.—that others still have their backs, understand that what is happening is deeply wrong, and will put themselves on the line to help stop it.

Second, a public stand like this demonstrates what courage in the face of armed force looks like. That can spread quickly from town to town, city to city. If San Diego can resist, so can other communities. Courage is contagious.

Third, officials will understand that they will meet resistance and cannot assume a compliant citizenry. With enough pushback, they may choose to alter their practices—or, of course, escalate, which will only be met with greater resistance.

When people ask me what they can do today as ordinary citizens—beyond making phone calls and donating—I point to San Diego and say: “Get organized. Talk to your neighbors. Call a local community meeting and make a plan for peaceful resistance, including how to mobilize quickly. Know your rights, and come to the site of any I.C.E. raid prepared.”

I believe deeply in the goodness of people. I.C.E. raids are turning whole communities against this administration. There will be an electoral reckoning if we keep up the pressure and keep amplifying these stories..."

Jay Kuo and his two children

"... I know that America is still here, because I have seen and felt the power of its promise.

Have a great [Monday] (written on Sunday) and remember—each of us can play a part in making someone else feel safer and more secure.

Jay Kuo

Newsletter subscriptions to The Status Kuo are available on-line.

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Indivisible Black Mountain says: "I know everyone is excitedly gearing up for June 14. But let's not forget about Mondays! It looks like it will be beautiful weather for our weekly protest on the Town Square tomorrow, 5-5:45 pm!"

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Today's quote:

Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present. -Thomas Babington Macaulay, author and statesman (1800-1859)

The hardest person to forgive, or just have any compassion towards...

 

Compassion....

That's what I'm considering, as suggested by our Sunday (Jan 3) speaker at our virtual church.

Toward those for whom I would surely turn away, or speak harshly to...

Well, I found a quote that I'd saved, about Kuan Yin. She's a goddess of compassion. Here the prayer is focused on the Abuser. That's someone to whom I definitely have trouble having compassion!

I consider our politics lately. A hard place to start!

(NOTE: I wrote that sentence before Jan 6's mob at the Capitol. I am now so angry I considered not posting this...but the viewpoint is still valid. However I want the perpetrators of the mob as well as the followers to have legal consequences. It's about time! I could be a lot more compassionate if they didn't continually (and literally) get away with murder.

Today's quote:

Kuan Yin’s Prayer for the Abuser

To those who withhold refuge,

I cradle you in safety at the core of my Being.

To those that cause a child to cry out,

I grant you the freedom to express your own choked agony.

To those that inflict terror,

I remind you that you shine with the purity of a thousand suns.

To those who would confine, suppress, or deny,

I offer the limitless expanse of the sky.

To those who need to cut, slash, or burn,

I remind you of the invincibility of Spring.

To those who cling and grasp,

I promise more abundance than you could ever hold onto.

To those who vent their rage on small children,

I return to you your deepest innocence.

To those who must frighten into submission,

I hold you in the bosom of your original mother.

To those who cause agony to others,

I give the gift of free flowing tears.

To those that deny another’s right to be,

I remind you that the angels sang 

in celebration of you on the day of your birth.

To those who see only division and separateness,

I remind you that a part is born only by bisecting a whole.

For those who have forgotten 

the tender mercy of a mother’s embrace,

I send a gentle breeze to caress your brow.

To those who still feel somehow incomplete,

I offer the perfect sanctity of this very moment.

Another quote:

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind. -Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, musician, Nobel laureate (14 Jan 1875-1965) 

Good thoughts, where's the compassion?

Thanks to HecateDemeter's blog...she says it so well!

A reminder that roses will still be blooming, no matter how our lives may change with all that's happening these days.

Hope in the face of devastation over time

Hopefulness...

Lost Words Blessing song

Thanks to the Lost Words book, with beautiful illustrations by Jackie Morris (her blog Here).

This is to counteract the facts, which came from the UN, and from this article from MIT...which are telling of the slow killing of our planet and extinction of our species (as well as a million others.)

May we each do whatever we can to show compassion to others, human or otherwise.