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> United States Environmental protection Agency Award Letter July 15,2020

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2020.3

Chief Guest speaker Micro July 25th 2020

2021.2

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Over the years, Hillol Ray has been popularly regarded as
the "Poet of Ecology". It means, he literally suffers
mankind and its follies. He has taken upon himself to awake
us and to warn us about the perils of the New Millennium.
Consequently, he has painstakingly created some sort of
mystical threshold with the change of millenniums, which
might induce us to change for the good. And this is
certainly possible. After all, the changes must be
engendered first in our feverish minds. We cannot go over
there with the same nonchalance of the ninetieth century,
when people hurried to salute the end and the beginning
which promised to be the season of rationality, industrial
progress and all sort of wonders brought up by science and
technology. We have had our share of wonders, indeed, but
the twentieth century has brought us more of
continuous "ennui", forced by the boredom of reality,
engendered by the series of wars, atrocities, holocausts
and, most recently, the "ethnic cleansing" with which we
have said good-bye to rationality and the assurance of the
possibility of the ideal man. Hillol Ray now tells us that
our man for the next millennium has to come to grips with
his tribal past, with his basic emotions and begin anew to
build the old relationships of tribal and family love - and
those of heroism and altruism. If we want to become real
human, we must renew our old emotions of the past. If
anything, the past century taught us that by rationalism,
consumerism, individualism and the likes, we have become
only addictive and corrupt. It is evident that addictions
to power, to chemical stuffs, to greed and manipulation are
bringing mankind to its self-destruction.

Hillol Ray, educated as an Environmental Engineer, has
dedicated his entire life to solving problems of ecology;
but now he wants to help resolve the problems of the mind.
In this context, he continues venerable traditions of
philosophers, anthropologists and present-day
neuroscientists. His words remind us of Jean Pierre
Changeux, when he warns us that after devastating the
environment, man is about to devastate his own mind.
Hillol's poems remind us also of the works of Professor
Charles D. Laughlin of Canada who through his extensive and
lifelong genial works offers some clues to understand the
real systems of mind and foresees that future-day colonies
in cyberspace will be constructed along the structures of
ancient tribes. Man certainly lived in tribal life during
millions of years. When man becomes an unattached
individual, he becomes a lone predator and has to fill his
emotional emptiness with addictions. Thus, in this regard,
Hillol Ray is a wise man sincerely warning us of the hidden
dangers of modern life.

In the old days, the wise man of the tribe was the person
who put certain harmony and senses in common knowledge. He
brought the cognitive systems to balance in his vision of
goodness and tradition and, most often gave the necessary
guidance to the eager and restless group. Wise men of the
old tribes were replaced by priests, academicians,
politicians and sometimes with a philosopher or two, but
nowadays, the wise men have become obsolete. Nobody seems
to have any use for them, while corrupt politicians and
greedy mafias have taken over. Nowadays, wise men like
Hillol Ray are mostly in need, precisely because the
systems have become so complicated that it is hard to make
sense of them. If anything, the human systems tend to
become complicated, absurd and malignant …that is why the
poems of Hillol Ray are so interesting and beautiful. They
have the beauty of harmonic systems coming to balance our
mind with emotional words wrapped in beautiful verses. The
aroma of his poems is based on this connection of emotions
and rationality, the subjects on which real art is made.

I have come to enjoy Hillol Ray´s poems because of my
assignment of translating his poems to the Spanish
language, a difficult task indeed. But I have diligently
learnt to love his work and so have students and the
general public that have read or heard his beautiful poems
in this part of the world. Perhaps, it is a very
appropriate time to listen to his prophetic and didactic
poems for the third millennium.

Recognized as “Earth Day” poet by U.S. President Bill
Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Jr., and many other
dignitaries and Earth Day Organizations from around the
world, Hillol Ray (HR) is well known as the “Poet of Human
Rights (HR)” – so synonymous with his name initials! A
glance at his poems quickly reveals the true reflections of
his innermost feelings and that’s why I believe that his
poems continue to attract the global attention. We still
see the religious wars, intransigence, marginalization, and
hegemonic power of imposing self-convenient rule. This is
a time to claim for the rights of each and everyone, and
Hillol has been striving vocally in the right direction
through his poems. To name a few: “Earth Day”, “Human
Rights: A Cross-Cutting Issue”, “Food For Thought”, “The
Turning Point (In memory of ashes from Hiroshima and
Nagasaki)”, “Dialogue: A Seed for Global
Relations”, “Tolerance – An Egalitarian Impulse”, “Ethics –
A Rare Commodity”, “Leaning Tower of Pisa”, “Agonized Trail
of Tears (In memory of “cleansing” of Australian
Aborigines)”, “Chernobyl: A Continuing Catastrophe”, and
the list goes on and on ….. To satisfy the passions of his
writing and feel the “pulse” of the people and nature, he
has traveled extensively to remote places, historical
excavations, safaris, deserts, and cold places of Tibet and
Iceland. As a matter of fact, he has composed many poems
during his travel to such distant places!

Hillol Ray is an Environmental Engineer engaged in
correcting the pollution problems in earth and mind. Both
seem to be just one big unity. It is time to pay attention
to Mother Earth, it is time to look into our minds and
profess to honor the most marvelous miracle - mind itself.
Hillol is also the "Poet of Neuroscience", and I dare to
say that this must be a first. Old poets were considered
to be Quasi-divine. It is about time that we hear the
intuitive voice of the poets that create out of joy and
suffering this vision that can carry us to the Promised
Land. The singers of songs are needed, as well as the poets
and the prophets are needed to help us attain the New
Millennium. The message should come across and it should
help us to create the communities of love - the big tribe
of mankind.

In conclusion, I convey my best wishes to Hillol Ray, the
Poet, and his outstanding contribution, an
Anthology: “Poems for the Third Millennium”.

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