news/events – The BeZine

Calls for submissions, news/events, The BeZine

Call for Submissions, “The BeZine” – June 2020, Themed sustainAbility

Posted on April 1, 2020 by The Bardo Group Beguines

THE BeZINE MISSION STATEMENT

Our goal is to foster proximity and understanding through a shared love of the arts and humanities and all things spirited and to make – however modest – a contribution toward personal healing and deference for the diverse ways people try to make moral, spiritual and intellectual sense of a world in which illness, violence, despair, loneliness and death are as prevalent as hope, friendship, reason and birth.

Our focus is on sacred space (common ground) as it is expressed through the arts. Our work covers a range of topics: spirituality, life, death, personal experience, culture, current events, history, art, and photography and film . . . We feel that our art and our Internet-facilitated social connection offer a means to see one another in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters, and not as “other.”

Please read our complete Mission Statement HERE.

THE BeZINE CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

SustainABILITY

Call for submissions of feature articles, fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, art and photography, music videos, and documentary videos on diverse environmental topics including but not limited to: degradation, protection, greenhouse gasses, weather/climate change, justice, and agriculture, famine and hunger. This call is open from April 1 through May 15.

While The BeZine does not pay for content, neither do we charge submission or subscription fees.

Work that is not properly submitted will not be considered.

Prose, poetry, and links to videos: submit in the body of the email
Please: no odd, unusual, eccentric layouts
Photographs or artwork: submit as an attachment
DO NOT send PDFs or a document with both narrative and illustrations combined.
By submitting work to thezinesubmissions@gmail.com, you are confirming that you own and hold the rights to the work and that you grant us the right to publish on the blog or in the Zine if your submission is accepted. Submissions via Facebook or other social networking or in the comments section, will not be reviewed or accepted.
Please include a brief bio in the email. No photographs.

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY: We are looking for something special to be the header for The Table of Contents Page.

SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS are okay but please let us know immediately if availability changes.

Among the guidelines: our core team, our guest contributors, and our readership are international and diverse. No works that advocate hate or violence, promote misunderstanding, or that demean others are acceptable. Please read our Complete Submission Guidelines.

The BeZine is featured by
pf poetry
Second Light Live newsletters, website, and magazine
Duotrope®

Jamie Dedes
Founding and Co-managing Editor

Michael Dickel
Co-managing Editor

Domestic Abuse, news/events

A Man, A Woman, and A Stick, a poem; Social Distancing and Victims of Domestic or Sexual Violence [Resources]

Posted on March 19, 2020 by The Bardo Group Beguines

A purple ribbon to promote awareness of Interpersonal Violence and Abuse Prevention courtesy of MesserWoland – CC BY-SA 3.0

a man, a woman, and a stick

(1921)

the stick stood in the corner of the kitchen
a constant threat; stoking, as it was meant to,
chronic intimidation

he had a man’s right to deliver his blows
to vent his anger and his self-contempt
to cause suffering for the insufferable

someone had to make it up to him,
his loss-of-face to race, creed and poverty

for her part, eve’s daughter was ripe,
shamed by her intrinsic sinfulness,
worn by her constant pregnancies

her femininity: tired and task-bound,
guilt flowing freely, as all-consuming as lava

[relief, only in death]

and the seventh child was born to die
and the man was demanding his bread

she wrapped the girl in swaddling cloth,
placed her gently by the stove, and
while the newborn made busy with dying,
the woman prepared him his meal

While we are being directed to quarantine ourselves in the sensible effort to contain the spread of COVID-19, it is easy to forget that home is not a safe place for everyone. Domestic abuse happens and the stress of these times is likely to exacerbate that impulse. Here are some resources if you are in this situation or know someone in this situation. A link is included for a directory of every country’s domestic and sexual violence agency,. These are courtesy of Maggie Royer, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Persephone’s Daughters Magazine. [Recommended]

Courtesy of Maggie:

1. We are spreading awareness on our social media pages of the unique impacts of COVID-19 on domestic and sexual violence survivors using the hashtag #MakeHomesHavens. Please feel free to use this hashtag and share information as well from our Twitter: https://twitter.com/persephonesmag

2. We are building a By Survivors, For Survivors COVID-19 Self-Care List. During this time, media coverage of the virus is overwhelming and may trigger panic and anxiety among survivors already experiencing trauma. How can we take care of ourselves during this time? If you identify as a survivor and would like to share your self-care ideas here anonymously, please do! We will compile and share via social media, website, and newsletter.
PersephonesDaughters.sarahah.com

3. Our March newsletter will focus specifically on providing calm and peace from anxiety. We know this is a time of uncertainty, and our newsletter will reflect ways to cope with that.

4. We are sharing links to coverage that focuses on how the virus is impacting survivors. Please read and share.

How Coronavirus Is Affecting Domestic Violence Victims (TIME)

Home Is Not a Safe Place for Everyone (Huffington Post)

Coronavirus Social Distancing: Bad News for Domestic Violence Victims (LA Times)

Staying Safe During COVID-19 (National Domestic Violence Hotline)

5. We are offering information for how to support your domestic and sexual violence programs during this. For a directory of every country’s domestic and sexual violence agency, please visit Hot Peach Pages. Programs may need the following support: financial donations, in-kind donations of sanitary products, toilet paper, disinfectant, and cleaning supplies, and as always, your calls to legislators to support their work.

RELATED:

#MeToo: rallying against sexual assault and harassment, a women’s poetry anthology” edited by Deborah Alma; “Persephone’s Daughters,” empowering readers and writes who’ve experience gendered abuse

The Return of Persephone, c.1891 (oil on canvas) by Leighton, Frederic (1830-96); 203×152 cm; Leeds Museums and Galleries (City Art Gallery) U.K.; English, public domain

PERSEPHONE’S DAUGHTERS is published online, in print and in film. This magazine’s content is based on a mission to empower women / femme individuals who have experienced various forms of gendered abuse (sexual, emotional, physical, racial, verbal, etc), or other forms of degradation (harassment, catcalling, threats, etc). Persephone’s Daughters welcomes all identities.

Online Sunday Stories feature personal accounts of those surviving abuse. There is also a film submission category that aligns with the mission. Accepted works are featured online on Film Fridays. Of note is a post-election mini-issue, a writing and art collection by people who are negatively effected by the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election. Proceeds from the sales of that collection go to the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, which provides services, legal help, and advocacy to unaccompanied immigrant children fleeing trafficking, conflict, poverty and more.

news/events

Adults Unintentionally Make It Easy for Young Children to Eat Dangerous Pills

Posted on February 22, 2020February 20, 2020 by The Bardo Group Beguines

Each year there are about 400,000 poison center calls and 50,000 ER visits as a result of young children ingesting medications when adults weren’t paying attention. A new study finds that more than half of the time when children get into prescription pills, the medication had already been removed from the child-resistant container by an adult.

The findings come from a study of calls to five U.S. poison control centers by researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Emory University School of Medicine, and the Georgia Poison Center. The study appears this week in The Journal of Pediatricsexternal icon.

“These data suggest it may be time to place greater emphasis on encouraging adults to keep medicines in containers with child-resistant features,” says the study’s senior author, Daniel Budnitz, M.D., MPH, of CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion. “There is an opportunity here for innovative medication container options that promote adult adherence and provide portability and convenience, while maintaining child safety.”

Child-resistant packaging keeps kids safe – but only when pills are inside

The current study found four common scenarios in which young children get into prescription pills after the pills are out of their original containers:

Removed to remember to take as prescribed: Adults put pills into pill organizers that are not child-resistant.
Removed for ease of travel or transport: Adults put pills into baggies or other small containers that are not child-resistant to carry with them.
Removed for convenience: Adults leave pills out on countertops or on a bedside table for someone to take later.
Removed unintentionally: Adults sometimes spill or drop pills and may miss some when picking them up.

The most common scenarios varied by type of medication. Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medications (49%) and opioids (43%) were more often not in any container when found by young children. Diabetes drugs (34%) and cardiac medications (31%) were more often transferred to alternate containers such as pill organizers or baggies. Nonprescription medications were most often accessed from the original containers, but for many of these medications, child-resistant packaging is not required because of low potential for toxicity.

Grandparents’ pill organizers often involved

Investigators also asked whose pills the children were getting into. Most of the time, the children got into their parents’ pills. However, for some prescription medications that can be very harmful to young children in small amounts (e.g., diabetes or cardiac medications), over half belonged to grandparents. Therefore, it will be important to remind grandparents, as well as parents, about the importance of keeping medications up and away and out of the reach and sight of children.

CDC recommends keeping medications in the original child-resistant packaging. If one must remove pills from their original containers, a few precautions can help keep children safe:

Use a container that is child resistant.
Securely re-close the container after every use.
Put the container up and away and out of a child’s reach and sight immediately after every use.
Keep purses, other bags, or pockets with medicines in them up and away from young children.
If pills are spilled when taking or transferring medications, double-check to make sure that all pills are picked up.
Save the Poison Help number in your phone – (800) 222-1222 – and call right away if you think your child might have gotten into a medicine or a vitamin, even if you are not sure.

For more information on what parents and grandparents can do to safely store their medications, visit: https://www.cdc.gov/features/medicationstorage/index.html and UpandAway.orgexternal icon.

100TPC, Bardo News, Calls for submissions, Event/s, Facebook Discussion Page, General Interest, news/events, Poets/Writers, The Bardo Group Beguines, The BeZine

Announcing our three new Zine team members and other news …

Posted on January 21, 2020January 21, 2020 by The Bardo Group Beguines

The Bardo Group Beguines, publisher of The BeZine, is pleased to welcome Mbizo Chirasha, Anjum Wasim Dar, and Kella Hanna-Wayne to our team.

MBIZO CHIRASHA (Mbizo, The Black Poet) is a recipient of PEN Deutschland Exiled Writer Grant (2017), Literary Arts Projects Curator, Writer in Residence, Blogs Publisher, Arts for Human Rights/Peace Activism Catalyst, Social Media Publicist and Internationally Anthologized Writer, 2017 African Partner of the International Human Rights Arts Festival Exiled in Africa Program in New York. 2017 Grantee of the EU- Horn of Africa Defend Human Rights Defenders Protection Fund. Resident Curator of 100 Thousand Poets for Peace-Zimbabwe, Originator of Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Movement. He has published a collection of poetry, Good Morning President, and co-created another one Whispering Woes of Ganges and Zembezi with Indian poet Sweta Vikram.

ANJUM WASIM DAR (Poetic Oceans) was born in Srinagar (Indian occupied Kashmir) in 1949. Her family opted for and migrated to Pakistan after the Partition of India and she was educated in St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi where she passed the Matriculation Examination in 1964. Anjum ji was a Graduate with Distinction in English in 1968 from the Punjab University, which ended the four years of College with many academic prizes and the All Round Best Student Cup, but she found she had to make extra efforts for the Masters Degree in English Literature/American Studies from the Punjab University of Pakistan since she was at the time also a back-to-college mom with three school-age children.

Her work required further studies, hence a Post Graduate Diploma in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) from Allama Iqbal Open University Islamabad and a CPE, a proficiency certificate, from Cambridge University UK (LSE – Local Syndicate Examination – British Council) were added to her professional qualifications.

KELLA HANNA-WAYNE (Yopp) is a disabled, chronically/mentally ill freelance writer who is the editor, publisher, and main writer for Yopp, a social justice blog dedicated to civil rights education, elevating voices of marginalized people, and reducing oppression; and for GlutenFreeNom.Com, a resource for learning the basics of gluten-free cooking and baking. Her work has been published in Ms. Magazine blog, Multiamory, Architrave Press and is forthcoming in a chapter of the book Twice Exceptional (2e) Beyond Learning Disabilities: Gifted Persons with Physical Disabilities. For fun, Kella organizes and DJ’s an argentine tango dancing event, bakes gluten-free masterpieces, sings loudly along with pop music, and makes cat noises. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, Patreon, Medium, and Instagram.

The BeZine thebezine.com
bardogroup@gmail.com
This is a digital publication founded by The Bardo Group Beguines, a virtual arts collective.

The Zine is published regularly each quarter and each Zine is themed:

March – Waging Peace;
June -Environmental Sustainability/Environmental Justice;
September – Social Justice; and
December – Life of the Spirit.
The BeZine communications and submissions go to bardogroup@gmail.com

The call for Zine submissions generally opens for 4-to-6 weeks before publication and closes on the 10th of the month in which the Zine is to be published. The Call for Submissions to the March 15 issue – themed Waging Peace – is currently open and will close on March 10. Submissions for the Zine blog may be sent at any time.

Our 2020 100TPC logo designed by team member Corina Ravenscraft (Dragon’s Dreams)

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In September we also do 100,000 Poets (and others ) for Change. This is a global event (see 100TPC.org) and at The BeZine we do a virtual event in which everyone may participate from anywhere in the world. A virtual event also facilitates and encourages participation by the homebound. Contributing Editor, Michael Dickel (Meta/ Phor(e) /Play – Words, Images, & More) hosts. 100TPC is held on the fourth Saturday in September. We hold the event open for 24 hours, sometimes longer.

Occasionally, we have a theme for the month on the Zine blog. February 2020 is illness and disability. This may include mental illness. This event is co-hosted by YOPP!, a social justice blog dedicated to civil rights eduction, elevating voices of marginalized people, and reducing oppression, which was founded and is managed by Kella Hanna-Wayne, one of our new Zine team members.

We are not yet firm on doing April as poetry month but that will probably happen. It is likely that in August 2020 – like August 2019 – the blog will focus on Climate Action.

The Bezine also offers two Facebook Discussion Groups:

The BeZine 100TPC IS NOT a place to share poetry or announce publication. Through this group we’re especially interested in filling an information gap by collecting links to pieces on practical initiatives – ideas for taking action – from anywhere in the world, “best practices” so to speak that foster peace, sustainability and social justice, especially those that might be easily picked up and implemented elsewhere. This has been an uphill battle but the dream that people will regularly start using it for that thrives.

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The BeZine Arts and Humanities Page (not just for poetry) is a place to share all your arts activities and accomplishments, not just poetry, in the hope of inspiring one another and encouraging collaborations among the arts and within our community. Through this group you are invited to announce publications, showings, events et al. You are encouraged to share your videos: music, poetry readings, photography, art, film and so forth.

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The BeZine is an entirely volunteer effort and we are unable to pay contributors but neither do we charge submission or subscription fees.

On behalf of The Bardo Group Beguines and
In the spirit of love (respect) and community,
Jamie Dedes
Managing Editor

100,000 Poets, Musicians, Artists and Activists for Change, 100TPC, news/events, Peace & Justice, Sustainability, The BeZine, youth

“The BeZine” open for submissions to September issue, our solidarity with Youth Climate Strike, and our Virtual 100TPC event

Posted on July 14, 2019July 14, 2019 by Jamie Dedes

“This is a space where we hope you’ll delight in learning how much you have in common with “other” peoples. We hope that your visits here will help you to love (respect) not fear.

“We acknowledge that there are enormous theological differences and historical resentments that carve wedges among and within the traditions and ethnic or national groups, but we believe that ultimately self-preservation, common sense, and human solidarity will empower connections and collaboration and overcome division and disorder.” excerpt from The BeZine Mission Statement

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR

Our Annual 100,000 Poets and Friends for Change Issue

September 2019

Calls for submissions of poems, feature articles, fiction, creative nonfiction, art and photography, music videos, and documentary videos on the themes of peace, sustainability and social justice is open now through September 10, 2019.

ART & PHOTOGRAPHY: Note we also are looking for something special to be the header for The Table of Contents Page.

Your original previously published work may be submitted as long as you own the copyright.

NO simultaneous submissions for September please.

Email submissions to bardogroup@gmail.com. Please note in your subject line: For Zine September 2019.

Among the guidelines: our core team, our guest contributors, and our readership are international and diverse. No works that advocate hate or violence, promote misunderstanding, or that demean others are acceptable.

The BeZine is an entirely volunteer effort. While we do not pay for content, neither do we charge submission or subscription fees.

The BeZine is featured by
pf poetry
Second Light Live newsletters, website, and magazine
Duotrope®

IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE GLOBAL YOUTH CLIMATE STRIKE

CALLING YOUTH & ADULTS

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS of poems, feature articles, fiction, creative nonfiction, art and photography, music videos, documentary videos on climate change for The BeZine blog is open through September 10, 2019. In solidarity with the world’s youth, we’ll post work on Climate Change throughout September. Your original previously published work may be submitted as long as you own the copyright. NO simultaneous submissions. Please note in your subject line: For the climate change blog. Email submissions to bardogroup@gmail.com. All honors to Contributing Editor Michael Dickel for coming up with this idea.

artwork for The BeZine 100TPC 2019 is by the multitalented Corina Ravenscraft dragonkatet

THE BACK STORY:

100 Thousand Poets for Change, or 100TPC.org, is an international grassroots educational organization focusing on the arts, especially poetry, music, and the literary arts. It was founded in 2011 by poet/artist/musician Michael Rothenberg and poet/translator/artist Terri Carrion, and focuses on a worldwide event each September.

This initiative crossed my radar in 2011 when it was founded. I fell in love with the idea of it, the world in solidarity for peace, sustainability and social justice. What could be more wonderful? Since I am disabled and homebound I couldn’t host an event or even attend one. I decided that there were probably others who would like to participate but for one reason or another could not do so. Thus, The BeZine Virtual 100,000 Poets and Others for Change was born. This makes it possible for anyone, no matter where they live or what their circumstance, to join in 100TPC as long as they have access to a computer. People can do a local or regional event and join with our virtual event as well should they care to do so.

About two years after we started doing Virtual 100TPC, I “met” Michael Dickel and invited him to join The Bardo Group Beguines, our core team, and he soon volunteered to be our virtual 100TPC master of ceremonies. This has become one of our more delightful yearly traditions. Michael will also take the lead on the September issue of the Zine, which honors 100TPC themes.

Your Invitation

On Saturday, September 28, you are invited to visit The BeZine Blog and share your work on Peace, Sustainability, and Social Justice via Mr. Linky or in the Comments section. Clear and detailed direction will be provided that day, but truly it’s an easy thing. You will, of course, also be able to read the work of others, which we hope you will do. Michael and I will keep the event going for 24 hours or so beginning at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time on September 28. If you are unsure when that would be in your time zone, check The Time Zone Converter.

On behalf of The Bardo Group Beguines
and in the spirit of love (respect) and community,
Jamie Dedes
Founding and Managing Editor

Our Core Team:
John Anstie
Naomi Baltuck
Cloaked Monk (Terri Stewart)
James R. Cowles
Jamie Dedes
Michael Dickel
dragonkatet (Corina Ravenscraft)
Chrysty Darby Hendrick
Joseph Hesch
Ruth Jewel
Lana Phillips
Charles W. Martin
scillagrace (Priscilla Gallaso)
Michael Watson