Margotlog: Government Shut-down and the Wider Good
Minnesota state government will shut down July 1st if there is no budget passed by the Republican legislature and accepted by the Democratic governor. Need I repeat, this peril has been looming for months, made more acute by the need to bring state government expenditures in line with revenues.
Need I express my anxiety? Not only for myself, but even more perilously for friends who depend on state funds because they are disabled and poor. State funds pay for the aides who get my friends up in the morning, cook for them, help with pain-management via exercise and hot and cold packs, do errands, help them bathe--in short, serve as subsidiary bodies because their own are weak and damaged. To keep my friends functioning in their own abodes costs far less than forcing them into hospital emergency rooms or health-care centers. Not to mention it is a more appealing way of life for these vibrant human beings.
What in heaven's name is wrong with our politicians that they cannot grasp the wider good? I've been puzzling this, I and thousands of other MInnesotans, no doubt. Here are some night thoughts, not all of them kind or pretty:
* Fear of white columns and cupolas unless they're at your own front door: i.e., fear of centralized government. Since the beginning of the United States there's been a tug of war between those who advocate local control whenever possible and those who support a strong central government to levy taxes, create unifying infrastructure, regulate commerce and use of the environment, mount necessary armies etc. This strong difference of orientation appeared in the Constitutional Convention and centered on slavery and a national bank. Washington, our first president, along with Adams and Hamilton, were Federalists. Jefferson, Monroe, Madison were, let's call them, states righters. Southern states with large populations of slaves abhorred the idea of having a central government tamper with their way of life. It essentially came down to this. The agricultural economies fostered by slavery tied up money in land and human beings (abhorrent as that was). Being taxed by a central authority was harder on these southern planters and small farmers than on northern commercial centers dependent on trade.
We don't have agriculture based on slavery anymore. But the divergence still holds: the further one gets from Washington, D.C. and other centers of national and global power, like New York, Boston, Houston, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc., the harder it is to believe in common causes. Note: the agriculture bill at the national level has already received preliminary approval. Why? Because reps from the mid-section of our rather vast country can get behind it.
We still don't have good regulation of the banking industry because the hinterlanders don't see the need for it, though our recent debacle should have taught us all that unchecked and centralized greed ruins even mom-and-pop stores in western Minnesota.
Closer to home, Minnesota is divided between two types of existence: urban and nonurban. Since the Twin Cities has one of the largest geographical spreads in the U.S., there's a huge suburban population with loose ties to our urban centers, but not enough to feel as if they belong. How can you love a government or a hospital system or museums, etc., if you've never been off the farm or the small town or the suburbs? I know this is a low-blow, a weak argument, but think about travel as a necessary ingredient for recognizing common symbols, common goods. When the annual high school basketball tournament brings students from Roseau or Worthington, Grand Marais or Austin to Saint Paul, it also gives these students a vision of the capitol. Sports as the glue that binds outstaters together with urbanites--well, it could be worse.
* Finally in times of financial stress, it's hard for all of us to appreciate the need to care for those in need. Especially when their skin is a different color from ours. Minnesota has a comparatively small population of color--Hispanic, African-American, immigrants from Asia and Africa. Almost all live in the Twin Cities. Step into a cab at the airport and you'll likely meet a driver from Ethiopia or Somalia. Drive down University Avenue from the capitol to the University of MInnesota and you'll pass many small restaurants of Thai, Cambodian, Vietnamese food. Communities of color suffer a higher proportion of need. They are less likely to be hired, first to be fired or let go (though my two friends currently without jobs are both white). Here's where the budget stalemate gets ugly: Legislators from the suburbs and small towns have no vested interest in providing state aid for health and human services to
a. people they rarely see b. people they may resent for coming into the state (over the years of plenty) to tap aid to families with dependent children. This aversion has everything to do with racism and ignorance. The immigrant or migrant families I've encountered often praise the help of Christian agencies and churches. This spirit of giving to others less fortunate would get us far toward compromise. So would moving the state capitol to Saint Peter, where, if I'm not mistaken, it was briefly to be situated. Imagine a small college town like Saint Peter with the huge apparatus of the state government? I kinda love it. It might not solve the current dead-lock, but it would certainly change the balance of awareness. Government adjacent to the corn fields would belong to people who live there. Maybe we need to put the legislature on a circuit!
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Margotlog: Montale and Firenze
Margotlog: Montale and Firenze
Three or four time during my years of visiting Florence/Firenze, I've been driven by friends out of the city. There are places unreachable by train, bicycle, or easy autobus. The restaurant called Bibe's is one of them. In the direction of Rome, passing through the Porta Romana, toward Galluzzo, the road to Bibe's curves sharply down toward the river Greve. In Bibe's garden frogs croak so loudly as to almost drown out the traffic, but in fact, there isn't much traffic. Everyone who wanted to arrive sits on long tables in one of the many rooms hung with paintings from appreciative visitors. Or as I've always done, pull up metal chairs under flaring torches under the trees.
In 1937, the famous Italian poet and Nobel prize winner, Eugenio Montale visited Bibe's and wrote a charming little poem to the host and hostess, parents of the current owner. It's one of my favorite poems which I've mastered in Italian (truly penetrating a poem in another language is very difficult--no translation does justice to the nuances and sounds of the original. Nor would I in the next century grasp all the echoes that these lines created for Montale and his hosts).
The poem is titled "Bibe al Ponte dell'Asse." Or Bibe, at the bridge of the Asse. (Don't ask me why the bridge is called this since the river below it is the Greve. Or at least I think it is.) I'll give you each line first in Italian, then my thoughts about translating it.
1. Bibe, ospite lieve, la bruna tua reginetta di Saba
Addressing Bibe, ospite meaning host and lieve meaning slight, but also echoing lieto/cheerful, moving on to la bruna, meaning a dark-haired woman and dubbing her Bibe's reginetta di Saba or little queen of Sheba, or little queen of the Sabines, an ancient local tribe--think of the famous art historical subject: The Rape of the Sabine Women...
2. mesce sorrisi e Rufina di quattordici gradi
She mixes smiles and a country wine called Rufina to the 14th grade, which suggests its intensity,
3. Si vede in basso riluccere la terra fra gli aceri radi
You see below how the earth (terra) is relighted, literally riluccere, luce being light, among the scattered maples. I imagine Montale means that the river light bounces up onto the flickering maple leaves which then recast the light onto the ground.
4. E un bimbo curva la canna sul gomito della Greve
And a small child/bimbo (before the word was adopted in English for a saucy dame) curves his cane fishing pole over the elbow/gomito of the Greve.
Several of the charms of this poem in Italian are its mix of sounds which to my ear suggest flickering light: the "i's" and "a's" playing off each other, the rhymes within lines--Italian is veritably stuffed with rhyming sounds since almost all its words end in vowels which chime against the consonants. Montale mixes these rich sounds in an easy rhythm which flows with his attention from the bar and its Rufina and hostess down to the river light flickering from maple leaves and finally to the still silhouette of the child with its cane pole, ending as the elbow of the river carries us away.
Here is the poem without interruption:
Bibe, al Ponte dell'Asse
Bibe, ospite lieve, la bruna tua reginetta di Saba
mesce sorrisi e Rufina di quattordici gradi.
Si vede in basso rilucere la terra fra gli aceri radi
E un bimbo curva la canna sul gomito delle Greve.
Eugenio Montale 1937
All this is printed on a charming card beneath a sketch of Bibe's--it's one of my most treasured mementos of Florence.
Three or four time during my years of visiting Florence/Firenze, I've been driven by friends out of the city. There are places unreachable by train, bicycle, or easy autobus. The restaurant called Bibe's is one of them. In the direction of Rome, passing through the Porta Romana, toward Galluzzo, the road to Bibe's curves sharply down toward the river Greve. In Bibe's garden frogs croak so loudly as to almost drown out the traffic, but in fact, there isn't much traffic. Everyone who wanted to arrive sits on long tables in one of the many rooms hung with paintings from appreciative visitors. Or as I've always done, pull up metal chairs under flaring torches under the trees.
In 1937, the famous Italian poet and Nobel prize winner, Eugenio Montale visited Bibe's and wrote a charming little poem to the host and hostess, parents of the current owner. It's one of my favorite poems which I've mastered in Italian (truly penetrating a poem in another language is very difficult--no translation does justice to the nuances and sounds of the original. Nor would I in the next century grasp all the echoes that these lines created for Montale and his hosts).
The poem is titled "Bibe al Ponte dell'Asse." Or Bibe, at the bridge of the Asse. (Don't ask me why the bridge is called this since the river below it is the Greve. Or at least I think it is.) I'll give you each line first in Italian, then my thoughts about translating it.
1. Bibe, ospite lieve, la bruna tua reginetta di Saba
Addressing Bibe, ospite meaning host and lieve meaning slight, but also echoing lieto/cheerful, moving on to la bruna, meaning a dark-haired woman and dubbing her Bibe's reginetta di Saba or little queen of Sheba, or little queen of the Sabines, an ancient local tribe--think of the famous art historical subject: The Rape of the Sabine Women...
2. mesce sorrisi e Rufina di quattordici gradi
She mixes smiles and a country wine called Rufina to the 14th grade, which suggests its intensity,
3. Si vede in basso riluccere la terra fra gli aceri radi
You see below how the earth (terra) is relighted, literally riluccere, luce being light, among the scattered maples. I imagine Montale means that the river light bounces up onto the flickering maple leaves which then recast the light onto the ground.
4. E un bimbo curva la canna sul gomito della Greve
And a small child/bimbo (before the word was adopted in English for a saucy dame) curves his cane fishing pole over the elbow/gomito of the Greve.
Several of the charms of this poem in Italian are its mix of sounds which to my ear suggest flickering light: the "i's" and "a's" playing off each other, the rhymes within lines--Italian is veritably stuffed with rhyming sounds since almost all its words end in vowels which chime against the consonants. Montale mixes these rich sounds in an easy rhythm which flows with his attention from the bar and its Rufina and hostess down to the river light flickering from maple leaves and finally to the still silhouette of the child with its cane pole, ending as the elbow of the river carries us away.
Here is the poem without interruption:
Bibe, al Ponte dell'Asse
Bibe, ospite lieve, la bruna tua reginetta di Saba
mesce sorrisi e Rufina di quattordici gradi.
Si vede in basso rilucere la terra fra gli aceri radi
E un bimbo curva la canna sul gomito delle Greve.
Eugenio Montale 1937
All this is printed on a charming card beneath a sketch of Bibe's--it's one of my most treasured mementos of Florence.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Margotlog: Entering the United States
Margotlog: Entering the U.S., Returning to Italy
When my grandfather, Giovanni Battista Fortunato, entered the United States in 1900, he probably came through Ellis Island in New York. I imagine he spoke enough English to insist that the official inscribe his correct name on the ledger. Also, by then, enough Italians had entered the port of New York that those inscribing officials must have become somewhat familiar with Italian names. My grandfather also had a fair amount of education for an immigrant of that era: years of primary schooling from the priest in his tiny mountain town of Pescopagano (east of Naples in the province of Basilicata); then a year or two in a Naples seminary before disgust with ecclesiastical attitudes toward a united Italy OR an incipient romance (the family stories conflict on this), he left Italy and the priesthood for the land of western promise.
I'm not as versed in stories of Italian immigration as I should be--by the time I was old enough to question "Grandpa," he'd become wily in the ways of snoopy relatives after "the goods." It was his youngest son, Frankie, the one of his four boys who spent the most time in Italy, and the biggest rascal, who laid out the two possible interpretations. There are many fine novels and memoirs of the Italian immigration-- the several I've read most closely are Mont Allegro by Jerry Mangione (1943) , Gay Talese's Honor Thy Father (1971), and a Minnesota author, Emilio DeGrazia's memoir, Walking on Air in a Field of Dreams (2009). But, of course, The Godfather by Mario Puzo (1969) captured the American imagination like no other Italian-American work, until perhaps Moonstruck, the film with Cher (1987). When my daughter went to college in Minnesota she stuck up a poster of Moonstruck on her dorm door.
Moonstruck captures all the angst and ambivalence of being an Italian-American daughter and son--Cher's fiance, Johnny Cammerei, is called back to Sicily on the eve of their marriage because his mother is dying. While he's gone, Cher encounters Johnny's younger brother Ronny, who lost his hand in a baking accident. This tortured soul couldn't more accurately portray the difficulties many Italian-American sons and daughters have in making the transition from devotion to family and heritage into independent American adulthood. Cher accomplishes this miracle of transmutation by cooking Ronny a steak and getting him into bed. Lucky timing because in Sicily, the dying Mama doesn't die, and her fiance (soon to be "ex") can't break the tie to the old country.
Some Italian-American daughters love to straddle the ocean, to return every year and revive "la lingua," the sense of being immediately transported back to a primary ambience, where the very air and foliage, the gestures and tastes correspond to an interior sense of belonging. Usually my spot of reckoning is Florence, not Southern Italy where my father's family originated. The grace and restraint of Quattrocentro art, the medieval narrowness of the streets and imposing grey facades of the palazzi which then open into fantastic gardens with views of the Duomo against the sky--all this, along with the beautifully articulated (and understandable) Italian spoken by so many Florentines, make Florence my deep home.
Yes, it's hard being simply a tourist there--rewarding but hard. Over the years, I've edged into a special zone, where I will always remain something of a stranger, but am now recognized by friends and hosts. Where I can count on communicating in this language I love to resurrect, and where there's always a surprise. This year an organ concert inside the Duomo which began at 9 p.m. The Florentine cognoscenti and me sitting beside Grazia, un'amica of at least a decade, and hearing organ pipes resound from in front, beside and behind. Our trip into the Apennines with her countryman, Antonio, a sarto or tailor, to look for mushrooms, is another story.
When my grandfather, Giovanni Battista Fortunato, entered the United States in 1900, he probably came through Ellis Island in New York. I imagine he spoke enough English to insist that the official inscribe his correct name on the ledger. Also, by then, enough Italians had entered the port of New York that those inscribing officials must have become somewhat familiar with Italian names. My grandfather also had a fair amount of education for an immigrant of that era: years of primary schooling from the priest in his tiny mountain town of Pescopagano (east of Naples in the province of Basilicata); then a year or two in a Naples seminary before disgust with ecclesiastical attitudes toward a united Italy OR an incipient romance (the family stories conflict on this), he left Italy and the priesthood for the land of western promise.
I'm not as versed in stories of Italian immigration as I should be--by the time I was old enough to question "Grandpa," he'd become wily in the ways of snoopy relatives after "the goods." It was his youngest son, Frankie, the one of his four boys who spent the most time in Italy, and the biggest rascal, who laid out the two possible interpretations. There are many fine novels and memoirs of the Italian immigration-- the several I've read most closely are Mont Allegro by Jerry Mangione (1943) , Gay Talese's Honor Thy Father (1971), and a Minnesota author, Emilio DeGrazia's memoir, Walking on Air in a Field of Dreams (2009). But, of course, The Godfather by Mario Puzo (1969) captured the American imagination like no other Italian-American work, until perhaps Moonstruck, the film with Cher (1987). When my daughter went to college in Minnesota she stuck up a poster of Moonstruck on her dorm door.
Moonstruck captures all the angst and ambivalence of being an Italian-American daughter and son--Cher's fiance, Johnny Cammerei, is called back to Sicily on the eve of their marriage because his mother is dying. While he's gone, Cher encounters Johnny's younger brother Ronny, who lost his hand in a baking accident. This tortured soul couldn't more accurately portray the difficulties many Italian-American sons and daughters have in making the transition from devotion to family and heritage into independent American adulthood. Cher accomplishes this miracle of transmutation by cooking Ronny a steak and getting him into bed. Lucky timing because in Sicily, the dying Mama doesn't die, and her fiance (soon to be "ex") can't break the tie to the old country.
Some Italian-American daughters love to straddle the ocean, to return every year and revive "la lingua," the sense of being immediately transported back to a primary ambience, where the very air and foliage, the gestures and tastes correspond to an interior sense of belonging. Usually my spot of reckoning is Florence, not Southern Italy where my father's family originated. The grace and restraint of Quattrocentro art, the medieval narrowness of the streets and imposing grey facades of the palazzi which then open into fantastic gardens with views of the Duomo against the sky--all this, along with the beautifully articulated (and understandable) Italian spoken by so many Florentines, make Florence my deep home.
Yes, it's hard being simply a tourist there--rewarding but hard. Over the years, I've edged into a special zone, where I will always remain something of a stranger, but am now recognized by friends and hosts. Where I can count on communicating in this language I love to resurrect, and where there's always a surprise. This year an organ concert inside the Duomo which began at 9 p.m. The Florentine cognoscenti and me sitting beside Grazia, un'amica of at least a decade, and hearing organ pipes resound from in front, beside and behind. Our trip into the Apennines with her countryman, Antonio, a sarto or tailor, to look for mushrooms, is another story.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Margotlog: The Hedgehog and the Rich
Margotlog: The Hedgehog and the Rich
One of the beauties of the elegant French novel with a hedgehog in its title is its subdued but often hilarious and biting satire of a wealthy French family. This family could be American. Perhaps that's one reason Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog (first published in 2006) attracted so many American readers. But I choose to think the main reason is the joy of rooting for the intelligent underdog (hedgehog), here in the character of the concierge or apartment custodian, a personage rarely found outside major cities like New York, Paris, London, Rome, etc.
The custodian, Renee Michel, disguises herself but is also veiled by the assumptions of the wealthy residents whom she serves. Only one of these (an equally bright and disenchanted kid) suspects that behind the TV babble coming from Renee's apartment, the concierge reads great literature (Tolstoy) and philosophy in her back room. This heavy scrim of mistaken assumptions between social classes has its peculiar French coloration, but it exists virtually everywhere in the world (with the exception of where? Borneo?).
Segue to politics, mid-June 2011, mid-continent United States. The personages of our political drama edging toward government shut-down include a Democratic governor from a very wealthy family (the Daytons, founders of that big-box giant the Target Corporation) versus many newly elected Republican legislators from what I'll dare to call "outlying" districts. By this I mean further ring suburbs, small towns, and large-agricultural operations throughout the state. What's different in this real-life American scenario from the fictional class differences in Muriel Barbery's novel is that the Republican legislators probably represent a small group of very wealthy agricultural operators (I won't call them farmers) and a much larger number of mid-to-lower-middle class people; whereas the governor himself represents a broader range of income levels, from the urban poor to extremely wealthy, long-time Minnesota Democrats who live in suburbs like Wayzata.
Income is telling here because one major sticking point is Governor Mark Dayton's call for raising income taxes on families earning more than $200,000 a year. The Republicans will have none of it. Need I mention that the state has a huge budget deficit--$5 billion? That it's crucial to bring the next biennium's expenditures within expected revenue. That a government shut-down will cost not only fees and legally mandated severance pay but lots of lost business revenue from suddenly strapped state employees out-of-work.
The main argument I've heard against the governor's plan to raise taxes on a small percentage of wealthy Minnesotans is that it will be bad for business. Whose business? Aren't we talking about increasing the percentage of personal income tax on the very wealthy? Statistics, so I hear, bear out the argument that high personal taxes on the wealthy do not affect business health. Nor do they chase established families out of the state. But higher property taxes, raised across the board, would hit many many home-owners: for instance a family of four with a modest $60,000 a year income and a mortgage, or a widower retiree with a very modest Social Security check and pension (let's image an income of $25,000 a year, the house paid for). Ditto a very wealthy family buying a $500,000 house but earning $300,000 a year. At some point those large numbers stop making sense to those of us with more modest means.
I think it's time to drop the scrim. Imagine shopping for clothing with several thousand dollars at your disposal versus a hundred. Imagine planning a winter vacation with $10,000 to spend on a resort versus taking a modest flight to Arizona to visit your daughter's father-in-law who'll let you sleep above the garage. These are the differences The Elegance of the Hedgehog so nicely pursues. We need not feel sorry for or disdain the wealthy as does her elegant concierge behind their backs. But we need to slip instead into a life lived intelligently on modest means, and recognize that we use the term "filthy rich" because the wealthy can almost always avoid anything filthy. They can avoid the filthy annoyance of taking in the packages of strangers (as does the concierge) or cleaning up dog poop from somebody else's garden (as might a grounds-keeper).
Let's also acknowledge that the wealthy can help pay for those less lucky, less healthy, less well-born. Who keep their lawns, schools and hospitals running. Who, somewhere down the line, buy the goods and services that help to keep the wealthy going. Who are far from benighted or dumb. Who may in fact be far better read and schooled in life than the well-born or self-made (perhaps one of the US's most cherished beliefs). Do the math: two percent of $200,000 is $4000. Not a pittance, but hardly a big chunk in an income that capacious.
Now imagine a sales tax of 7% on food. This is a suggestion made by many Republicans. Back to the family of three living on $40,000 a year. They have to spend around $1000 monthly to rent an apartment (forget a mortgage on this income). They spend, let's imagine, $500 a month on food. If they must add sales tax to that, their expense for food per month will increase around $35. Multiply that by 12 months = $410. About 1% of their yearly income. In a pinched family budget, an additional $410 could mean the difference between very minimal health insurance and none at all. For a family with $200,000, an additional tax of $4000 probably bites only into the extravagance of their vacations.
Go figure, as we like to say, in a favorite bit of American slang. The French Hedgehog concierge would, no doubt, have something philosophical and pungent to add. I suggest those balking at raising taxes on the wealthy, simply gather paper and pencil and take a moment to imagine themselves figuring on much much less.
One of the beauties of the elegant French novel with a hedgehog in its title is its subdued but often hilarious and biting satire of a wealthy French family. This family could be American. Perhaps that's one reason Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog (first published in 2006) attracted so many American readers. But I choose to think the main reason is the joy of rooting for the intelligent underdog (hedgehog), here in the character of the concierge or apartment custodian, a personage rarely found outside major cities like New York, Paris, London, Rome, etc.
The custodian, Renee Michel, disguises herself but is also veiled by the assumptions of the wealthy residents whom she serves. Only one of these (an equally bright and disenchanted kid) suspects that behind the TV babble coming from Renee's apartment, the concierge reads great literature (Tolstoy) and philosophy in her back room. This heavy scrim of mistaken assumptions between social classes has its peculiar French coloration, but it exists virtually everywhere in the world (with the exception of where? Borneo?).
Segue to politics, mid-June 2011, mid-continent United States. The personages of our political drama edging toward government shut-down include a Democratic governor from a very wealthy family (the Daytons, founders of that big-box giant the Target Corporation) versus many newly elected Republican legislators from what I'll dare to call "outlying" districts. By this I mean further ring suburbs, small towns, and large-agricultural operations throughout the state. What's different in this real-life American scenario from the fictional class differences in Muriel Barbery's novel is that the Republican legislators probably represent a small group of very wealthy agricultural operators (I won't call them farmers) and a much larger number of mid-to-lower-middle class people; whereas the governor himself represents a broader range of income levels, from the urban poor to extremely wealthy, long-time Minnesota Democrats who live in suburbs like Wayzata.
Income is telling here because one major sticking point is Governor Mark Dayton's call for raising income taxes on families earning more than $200,000 a year. The Republicans will have none of it. Need I mention that the state has a huge budget deficit--$5 billion? That it's crucial to bring the next biennium's expenditures within expected revenue. That a government shut-down will cost not only fees and legally mandated severance pay but lots of lost business revenue from suddenly strapped state employees out-of-work.
The main argument I've heard against the governor's plan to raise taxes on a small percentage of wealthy Minnesotans is that it will be bad for business. Whose business? Aren't we talking about increasing the percentage of personal income tax on the very wealthy? Statistics, so I hear, bear out the argument that high personal taxes on the wealthy do not affect business health. Nor do they chase established families out of the state. But higher property taxes, raised across the board, would hit many many home-owners: for instance a family of four with a modest $60,000 a year income and a mortgage, or a widower retiree with a very modest Social Security check and pension (let's image an income of $25,000 a year, the house paid for). Ditto a very wealthy family buying a $500,000 house but earning $300,000 a year. At some point those large numbers stop making sense to those of us with more modest means.
I think it's time to drop the scrim. Imagine shopping for clothing with several thousand dollars at your disposal versus a hundred. Imagine planning a winter vacation with $10,000 to spend on a resort versus taking a modest flight to Arizona to visit your daughter's father-in-law who'll let you sleep above the garage. These are the differences The Elegance of the Hedgehog so nicely pursues. We need not feel sorry for or disdain the wealthy as does her elegant concierge behind their backs. But we need to slip instead into a life lived intelligently on modest means, and recognize that we use the term "filthy rich" because the wealthy can almost always avoid anything filthy. They can avoid the filthy annoyance of taking in the packages of strangers (as does the concierge) or cleaning up dog poop from somebody else's garden (as might a grounds-keeper).
Let's also acknowledge that the wealthy can help pay for those less lucky, less healthy, less well-born. Who keep their lawns, schools and hospitals running. Who, somewhere down the line, buy the goods and services that help to keep the wealthy going. Who are far from benighted or dumb. Who may in fact be far better read and schooled in life than the well-born or self-made (perhaps one of the US's most cherished beliefs). Do the math: two percent of $200,000 is $4000. Not a pittance, but hardly a big chunk in an income that capacious.
Now imagine a sales tax of 7% on food. This is a suggestion made by many Republicans. Back to the family of three living on $40,000 a year. They have to spend around $1000 monthly to rent an apartment (forget a mortgage on this income). They spend, let's imagine, $500 a month on food. If they must add sales tax to that, their expense for food per month will increase around $35. Multiply that by 12 months = $410. About 1% of their yearly income. In a pinched family budget, an additional $410 could mean the difference between very minimal health insurance and none at all. For a family with $200,000, an additional tax of $4000 probably bites only into the extravagance of their vacations.
Go figure, as we like to say, in a favorite bit of American slang. The French Hedgehog concierge would, no doubt, have something philosophical and pungent to add. I suggest those balking at raising taxes on the wealthy, simply gather paper and pencil and take a moment to imagine themselves figuring on much much less.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Margotlog: The Midnight RIde of Paul Revere and the Zimmermann Telegram
Margotlog: The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere and the Zimmermann Telegram
In our press lately, we're being treated to a furor over Sarah Palin's gaffe about Paul Revere--did he or didn't he alert the British that the Americans were coming? Or was it more as you and I learned in school, that with the help of lanterns in the Old North Church, one if by land and two if by sea, he rode to rouse all "Middlesex village and farm/ For the country folk to be up and to arm" that"The British are coming, the British are coming."
I'm quoting from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's classic poem "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" which has all the history mostly correct, except that Revere was indeed, as Sarah Palin commented, taken by the British and so in part, he alerted them that, in Longfellow's words,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
But the United States, especially its leaders, have not always been keen to hear a story contrary to the one they are wedded to. Item: Barbara Tuchman's astonishingly revealing history of what finally brought President Woodrow Wilson into World War I to aid the British, French Allies against Germany. This was effected by a telegram sent by the German Foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann to German U.S. ambassador, Count Johann von Bernstorff in January of 1917. World War I had been raging for three years. Britian's financial resources were virtually depleted. The trench warfare in Flanders daily sent thousands of men into battle over yards of soil, and inevitable stalemate.
To break this stalemate and assure its victory, the German high command decided to institute submarine (U-boat) warfare against British shipping. The Zimmermann telegram announced this to the U.S. ambassador in Washington, along with a proposed German alliance with Mexico and Japan. For supporting Germany, Mexico (and its oil) would recover the states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona from the United States.
The secret telegram written in cypher and code was intercepted by British intelligence concentrated in "Room 40" and eventually decoded. Once appraised of its content, President Wilson roiled around in his personal moral morass of resistance to war, desire to broker a "peace without victory" among the combatants, and insistence on US neutrality. By 1917, the U.S. was already aware of small alliances between Mexico and Japan and Japan and Germany. Japan was particularly antagonistic to the United States because of its local and federal resistance to Japanese immigration and settlement. In Mexico Wilson had interfered with various changes of leadership. In fact Wilson sent General Pershing into Mexico with an aggressive force, only to pull him out shortly after receiving word of the Zimmermann telegram.
For a portrait of a U.S. leader deeply conflicted between the reality of global politics, U.S. actions and their consequences, and his own highly rigid and moral set of beliefs, Tuchmann could not have chosen a more telling subject than Wilson. He was no dummy: a reknown political scientist and former president of Princeton University. Yet as a political leader, Wilson in relation to World War I left much to be desired. He believed that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans protected the US from attack; he believed that US interests would not be directly affected by this war in Europe. Not until the telegram laid bare the potential invasion of Japan from the west and Mexico from the South, with Japan and Mexico potentially taking over Canada from the vanquished British, leaving the US encircled by enemies, did Wilson step down from his moral high ground and face political realities. He asked Congress on April 2, 1917 to declare war against Germany and the other Central Powers.
I see a great deal of rigid ideology at work in our state and national politics this season. Facing the threat of a government shut-down, Minnesota's Republican-controlled legislature dukes it out with Democratic governor Mark Dayton. On paper their proposals seem fairly close: the Republicans want a budget of 36 billion; Dayton 38. But Dayton wants to raise taxes on the top-earning families, to regain revenues lost years ago when the tax code was tailored to benefit the wealthy.
Most of us on the outside see the need to bring spending into line with income and combat an enormous state deficit. Many of us also see no reason families with yearly income over $200,000 can't afford a 2% increase in their yearly state taxes. Yet the inability of our officials to reach agreement on a budget and avoid the looming threat of a state shut-down, with legally required payments to laid-off workers, with a cessation of vital services we count on, and still with no budget--all strikes a toll of ideological intransigence, a "Wilson moment."
Currently I'm begging some goddess of compromise to send a Zimmermann telegram into the laps of both arms of government. According to the polls, most Minnesota residents want compromise. They want to avoid a state government shut-down. Would that our elected officials would listen.
In our press lately, we're being treated to a furor over Sarah Palin's gaffe about Paul Revere--did he or didn't he alert the British that the Americans were coming? Or was it more as you and I learned in school, that with the help of lanterns in the Old North Church, one if by land and two if by sea, he rode to rouse all "Middlesex village and farm/ For the country folk to be up and to arm" that"The British are coming, the British are coming."
I'm quoting from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's classic poem "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere" which has all the history mostly correct, except that Revere was indeed, as Sarah Palin commented, taken by the British and so in part, he alerted them that, in Longfellow's words,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
But the United States, especially its leaders, have not always been keen to hear a story contrary to the one they are wedded to. Item: Barbara Tuchman's astonishingly revealing history of what finally brought President Woodrow Wilson into World War I to aid the British, French Allies against Germany. This was effected by a telegram sent by the German Foreign minister, Arthur Zimmermann to German U.S. ambassador, Count Johann von Bernstorff in January of 1917. World War I had been raging for three years. Britian's financial resources were virtually depleted. The trench warfare in Flanders daily sent thousands of men into battle over yards of soil, and inevitable stalemate.
To break this stalemate and assure its victory, the German high command decided to institute submarine (U-boat) warfare against British shipping. The Zimmermann telegram announced this to the U.S. ambassador in Washington, along with a proposed German alliance with Mexico and Japan. For supporting Germany, Mexico (and its oil) would recover the states of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona from the United States.
The secret telegram written in cypher and code was intercepted by British intelligence concentrated in "Room 40" and eventually decoded. Once appraised of its content, President Wilson roiled around in his personal moral morass of resistance to war, desire to broker a "peace without victory" among the combatants, and insistence on US neutrality. By 1917, the U.S. was already aware of small alliances between Mexico and Japan and Japan and Germany. Japan was particularly antagonistic to the United States because of its local and federal resistance to Japanese immigration and settlement. In Mexico Wilson had interfered with various changes of leadership. In fact Wilson sent General Pershing into Mexico with an aggressive force, only to pull him out shortly after receiving word of the Zimmermann telegram.
For a portrait of a U.S. leader deeply conflicted between the reality of global politics, U.S. actions and their consequences, and his own highly rigid and moral set of beliefs, Tuchmann could not have chosen a more telling subject than Wilson. He was no dummy: a reknown political scientist and former president of Princeton University. Yet as a political leader, Wilson in relation to World War I left much to be desired. He believed that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans protected the US from attack; he believed that US interests would not be directly affected by this war in Europe. Not until the telegram laid bare the potential invasion of Japan from the west and Mexico from the South, with Japan and Mexico potentially taking over Canada from the vanquished British, leaving the US encircled by enemies, did Wilson step down from his moral high ground and face political realities. He asked Congress on April 2, 1917 to declare war against Germany and the other Central Powers.
I see a great deal of rigid ideology at work in our state and national politics this season. Facing the threat of a government shut-down, Minnesota's Republican-controlled legislature dukes it out with Democratic governor Mark Dayton. On paper their proposals seem fairly close: the Republicans want a budget of 36 billion; Dayton 38. But Dayton wants to raise taxes on the top-earning families, to regain revenues lost years ago when the tax code was tailored to benefit the wealthy.
Most of us on the outside see the need to bring spending into line with income and combat an enormous state deficit. Many of us also see no reason families with yearly income over $200,000 can't afford a 2% increase in their yearly state taxes. Yet the inability of our officials to reach agreement on a budget and avoid the looming threat of a state shut-down, with legally required payments to laid-off workers, with a cessation of vital services we count on, and still with no budget--all strikes a toll of ideological intransigence, a "Wilson moment."
Currently I'm begging some goddess of compromise to send a Zimmermann telegram into the laps of both arms of government. According to the polls, most Minnesota residents want compromise. They want to avoid a state government shut-down. Would that our elected officials would listen.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Margotlog: A Child-Changed Father
Margotlog: A Child-Changed Father
I've been reading James Carroll's 1996 memoir An American Requiem: God, My Father and the War that Came Between Us. The phrase, "a child-changed father," comes toward the end of the book, after Carroll's three-star general father (also a lawyer) has come out of retirement to defend his son Dennis' right to be granted a Vietnam-war conscientious-objector status. His father's willingness to do this startles, even shocks James because General Carroll has sat among the top American "brass" as brinksmanship with the Russians, then with the Vietcong played out across the second half of the 20th century.
To have this war-starred general advocate for his son Dennis' absolute American right to oppose war as a solution to world problems ultimately unites them at one crucial point: the general's fear of nuclear holocaust. The general explains his willingness to help his son this way: "All I know for sure is that if human beings don't drastically change the way they resolve their conflicts, we won't survive this century...My son Dennis certainly represents a drastic change from the way we were brought up. And that may be just the change we need." (pp. 248-49)
At this point, the author admits that he never understood until then the depths of his father's fear of "the bomb."
The phrase a "child-changed father" comes from Shakespeare's play "King Lear." It refers to Lear's penultimate admission that his daughter Cordelia's subdued assessment of him meant far more than her two sisters' extravagant praise. That extravagance turned into hateful greed; Cordelia remained her father's steadfast advocate until the end.
I'm touched by this episode from Carroll's memoir because it's another version of the father, son and war connundrum which my husband Fran and his father also played out. But their relationship was perhaps the reverse, the more common "father-impressed child." Fran refused to register for the Vietnam draft partly because his own father had served time in prison during World War II as a pacifist. My sense of their differences is that Fran suffered greater psychological trauma in prison than did his Protestant-minister father. He became anorectic toward the end of his sentence. He did not have much in common with most other draft resisters, who were Jehovah's Witnesses. Instead he made friends with bank robbers and car thieves. He emerged to craft a relatively happy and productive adulthood, but he repudiated his father's religion. In fact, it's hard now to get him inside a church at all.
When daughters and mothers face each other across the generational divide, power and ideology are less likely to shape their similarities and differences than questions of love and acceptance. As I think about my own upbringing, my ideological fights with my father about race have many of the same elements as James Carroll's differences with his father over religion and war. But my difficulties and eventual communion with my mother were based on my wanting approval from her and freedom to make my own choices without her meddling. Every happy family is alike; it's the unhappy ones that display the garish irregularities that make for great literature. Because women have historically had far less power and status than men, their bequests to their daughters come through emotional intimacy and the working out of complicated accords with the larger world. I hope to be the kind of mother who learns from her daughter, if only in reassessing our shared history.
I've been reading James Carroll's 1996 memoir An American Requiem: God, My Father and the War that Came Between Us. The phrase, "a child-changed father," comes toward the end of the book, after Carroll's three-star general father (also a lawyer) has come out of retirement to defend his son Dennis' right to be granted a Vietnam-war conscientious-objector status. His father's willingness to do this startles, even shocks James because General Carroll has sat among the top American "brass" as brinksmanship with the Russians, then with the Vietcong played out across the second half of the 20th century.
To have this war-starred general advocate for his son Dennis' absolute American right to oppose war as a solution to world problems ultimately unites them at one crucial point: the general's fear of nuclear holocaust. The general explains his willingness to help his son this way: "All I know for sure is that if human beings don't drastically change the way they resolve their conflicts, we won't survive this century...My son Dennis certainly represents a drastic change from the way we were brought up. And that may be just the change we need." (pp. 248-49)
At this point, the author admits that he never understood until then the depths of his father's fear of "the bomb."
The phrase a "child-changed father" comes from Shakespeare's play "King Lear." It refers to Lear's penultimate admission that his daughter Cordelia's subdued assessment of him meant far more than her two sisters' extravagant praise. That extravagance turned into hateful greed; Cordelia remained her father's steadfast advocate until the end.
I'm touched by this episode from Carroll's memoir because it's another version of the father, son and war connundrum which my husband Fran and his father also played out. But their relationship was perhaps the reverse, the more common "father-impressed child." Fran refused to register for the Vietnam draft partly because his own father had served time in prison during World War II as a pacifist. My sense of their differences is that Fran suffered greater psychological trauma in prison than did his Protestant-minister father. He became anorectic toward the end of his sentence. He did not have much in common with most other draft resisters, who were Jehovah's Witnesses. Instead he made friends with bank robbers and car thieves. He emerged to craft a relatively happy and productive adulthood, but he repudiated his father's religion. In fact, it's hard now to get him inside a church at all.
When daughters and mothers face each other across the generational divide, power and ideology are less likely to shape their similarities and differences than questions of love and acceptance. As I think about my own upbringing, my ideological fights with my father about race have many of the same elements as James Carroll's differences with his father over religion and war. But my difficulties and eventual communion with my mother were based on my wanting approval from her and freedom to make my own choices without her meddling. Every happy family is alike; it's the unhappy ones that display the garish irregularities that make for great literature. Because women have historically had far less power and status than men, their bequests to their daughters come through emotional intimacy and the working out of complicated accords with the larger world. I hope to be the kind of mother who learns from her daughter, if only in reassessing our shared history.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Margotlog: Cat Action One - Julia
Margotlog: Julia after Lennon's song - Teenage Cat Mom
This is Julia. Black and White. Came to us from Pet Smart when they still had a store in the Midway. Third cat of three. Smallest. Eating more. Rounder. Kitler, so we were told by soon-to-be son-in-law. Kitten-Hitler=Kitler. We thought he made it up. Came to find out there's a website devoted to Kitlers. Odd phenomenon --that moustache-goatee of black on the funnel of white. What genies lurk?
Second black and white cat in my life after Clarence, named for first husband's grandfather, Baltimore Dutch-American pencil maker. Clarence from Kansas. Not Dutch. No Kitler effect. Unlike Julia in fur and girth: large and furry. Julia small, thin-haired, big-eyed.
The damsel's history: The "incident report" from the Humane Society vets recorded that they had trouble telling the tiny nine-month-old mom from her two kittens. Either she ran away with the boyfriend or never had a home because she and her twin kits were brought into the Saint Paul Animal Humane Society near Como Park. Kits adopted. Her hysterectomy botched, poor girl. She was quite sick and fostered out. Survived. Caught kennel cough. Fostered out again. (Those good people who take in needy animals!)
Second or Third Life Chapter: Fran walks into Pet Smart. When Pet Smart still had a store in the Midway, I did all the cat purchases. There was a reason: Vietnam Pacifist, jailed for seventeen months in the federal pen, Fran melted when he saw cats in cages. "They want to be liberated!" he exclaimed. That was his excuse for adopting middle cat Maggie or Magnolia or Merryland. (Watch for her history.)
Julia also petitioned for freedom. He fetched me to decide. Who could resist? She still wasn't entirely well, but soon lived up to our hopes for a playful rascal to tease Maggie and even older Tilly out of their lethargy.
Her name: from John Lennon's song of the same name, written for his mother and performed on the 1968 White Album. His mother was killed when he was 17, by a drunk, off-duty policeman. His soon-to-be wife Yoko Ono inspired "Oceanchild" in the sone: her name in Japanese means child of the sea. "Julia" also offers up a line from Kahil Gibran: "Half of what I say is meaningless but I say it just to reach you." This fits our communication with our Julia. She squeaks tiny high squeaks, we squeak in reply. She "rowls in her throat," we rowl, or at least I do. Cross-species talk is best conducted by those who believe in it.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Margotlog: Cursing in Italian
Margotlog: Cursing in Italian
Nerves and blood vessels closer to the skin--that's how I see Italians, compared to the WASPS who surrounded me in Charleston, South Carolina when I was a girl. (There were African-Americans, of course, but I did not go to school with them, nor know any families. Consequently, judging from street-talk, their range of expression rivaled my father's. But since I had trouble penetrating their Carolina dialect, I never knew what they said, simple as that.)
Occasionally a ship coming into Charleston harbor would bring into town an Italian captain or steward. My father would get wind of this and invite these Genovese or Sicilians to dinner. Otherwise, an Italian-American student or two from the north, and my German-Swedish mother for contrast, constituted my only comparison to my father's curses.
Fingers raised in an imprecating bouquet, my father, Leonardo, would let fly a stream of melodious but high-powered phrases: "Per de la madonna," or "Specie di porcaccio." Loosely translated for us underlings standing at his knees, this mean Daddy had once again misplaced his briefcase, or the dog had run between his legs, brushing his Citadel trousers (sacrosanct garb) with hair. By the time I learned how to read, I knew that these phrases meant "by the madonna" and simply put, in English, some kind of pig.
Though we were Protestant (thanks to my grandfather who converted after escaping a Neapolitan seminary and coming to America), the madonna still held court along with pigs in our kitchen. As far as I can remember, my mother never cursed. Her displeasure grabbed you with vocal barbs: "Margot" and I'd stop in my tracks, fearing a clopse, which if my father were around, she'd have him deliver. Was it simply that Germans and Swedish did not curse?
His expressions included "Mama mia," familiar to almost all Americans, and "Oh, dio." These when he was tired after a day of teaching, and sank down on the edge of the bed. Sometimes worried because he looked so dejected, I'd pat his knee: "It will be alright, Daddy," I'd say. And he tweak my cheek with a little pizzichilli (pinch kiss), "Eh, porceluzza, don't worry." During our childhood, my sister and I were graced with every possible type of pig: porcaccio--dirty, disgusting pig; porceluzza--large but affectionate pig; and porcellina, sweet little pig.
Of course he talked with his hands. He didn't seem capable of doing otherwise. My mother picked this habit up from him, though hers tended to flutter while his cut the air, drew it into bundles, smote the back of his neck, or kissed his lips. Now I know there's a whole vocabulary of hand gestures which Italians, especially men, use to express what perhaps should otherwise remain unspoken in "polite" company. I didn't learn to translate these until recently, but the general effect was that my father's communications required not only a huge vocal range, but hand and facial expressions to boot.
Now, I'm heir to these. They don't surface in normal American exchanges. I don't teach with them. But they certainly have affected my child-rearing. Though in her entirely adult state, my daughter may insist the opposite, I content that when she was a teenager, and we were in conflict, I'd let fly American slang--"Up yours," or "Over my dead body." Or worse.
Here's a interesting conundrum: though we survived a rather tempestuous teen-to-adulthood transition with what I like to think is considerable affection, now that I'm writing a memoir-novel about this slice of life, readers of the manuscript often object to our open display of displeasure. "But she's your daughter," my second husband, not her father, will complain. "I wouldn't say 'Up yours,' to a child of mine. Are you sure you want readers to think of you this way?"
Hmmm, very curious. Sometimes I consider lowering readers with such nice notions into the hotbed of my childhood kitchen. It's a weekday morning, and Daddy can't find his briefcase again. Italian cries from mud to sky fly around like colorful birds. I'm not afraid, just spellbound, wondering what will happen until my mother locates it and Daddy rushes out the door, slamming the screen behind him. It could be a scene from an opera except there's only the tenor lead. Where have all the women gone? They'll surface years later as his daughters.
Nerves and blood vessels closer to the skin--that's how I see Italians, compared to the WASPS who surrounded me in Charleston, South Carolina when I was a girl. (There were African-Americans, of course, but I did not go to school with them, nor know any families. Consequently, judging from street-talk, their range of expression rivaled my father's. But since I had trouble penetrating their Carolina dialect, I never knew what they said, simple as that.)
Occasionally a ship coming into Charleston harbor would bring into town an Italian captain or steward. My father would get wind of this and invite these Genovese or Sicilians to dinner. Otherwise, an Italian-American student or two from the north, and my German-Swedish mother for contrast, constituted my only comparison to my father's curses.
Fingers raised in an imprecating bouquet, my father, Leonardo, would let fly a stream of melodious but high-powered phrases: "Per de la madonna," or "Specie di porcaccio." Loosely translated for us underlings standing at his knees, this mean Daddy had once again misplaced his briefcase, or the dog had run between his legs, brushing his Citadel trousers (sacrosanct garb) with hair. By the time I learned how to read, I knew that these phrases meant "by the madonna" and simply put, in English, some kind of pig.
Though we were Protestant (thanks to my grandfather who converted after escaping a Neapolitan seminary and coming to America), the madonna still held court along with pigs in our kitchen. As far as I can remember, my mother never cursed. Her displeasure grabbed you with vocal barbs: "Margot" and I'd stop in my tracks, fearing a clopse, which if my father were around, she'd have him deliver. Was it simply that Germans and Swedish did not curse?
His expressions included "Mama mia," familiar to almost all Americans, and "Oh, dio." These when he was tired after a day of teaching, and sank down on the edge of the bed. Sometimes worried because he looked so dejected, I'd pat his knee: "It will be alright, Daddy," I'd say. And he tweak my cheek with a little pizzichilli (pinch kiss), "Eh, porceluzza, don't worry." During our childhood, my sister and I were graced with every possible type of pig: porcaccio--dirty, disgusting pig; porceluzza--large but affectionate pig; and porcellina, sweet little pig.
Of course he talked with his hands. He didn't seem capable of doing otherwise. My mother picked this habit up from him, though hers tended to flutter while his cut the air, drew it into bundles, smote the back of his neck, or kissed his lips. Now I know there's a whole vocabulary of hand gestures which Italians, especially men, use to express what perhaps should otherwise remain unspoken in "polite" company. I didn't learn to translate these until recently, but the general effect was that my father's communications required not only a huge vocal range, but hand and facial expressions to boot.
Now, I'm heir to these. They don't surface in normal American exchanges. I don't teach with them. But they certainly have affected my child-rearing. Though in her entirely adult state, my daughter may insist the opposite, I content that when she was a teenager, and we were in conflict, I'd let fly American slang--"Up yours," or "Over my dead body." Or worse.
Here's a interesting conundrum: though we survived a rather tempestuous teen-to-adulthood transition with what I like to think is considerable affection, now that I'm writing a memoir-novel about this slice of life, readers of the manuscript often object to our open display of displeasure. "But she's your daughter," my second husband, not her father, will complain. "I wouldn't say 'Up yours,' to a child of mine. Are you sure you want readers to think of you this way?"
Hmmm, very curious. Sometimes I consider lowering readers with such nice notions into the hotbed of my childhood kitchen. It's a weekday morning, and Daddy can't find his briefcase again. Italian cries from mud to sky fly around like colorful birds. I'm not afraid, just spellbound, wondering what will happen until my mother locates it and Daddy rushes out the door, slamming the screen behind him. It could be a scene from an opera except there's only the tenor lead. Where have all the women gone? They'll surface years later as his daughters.
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