Margotlog: The Smallest One Was Madeline
In the vault of The Old Citadel, my mother sits on a saggy sofa in the huge bedroom she shares with my father. She's reading to us before bedtime. It's maybe the only time of the day when she sits down. But snuggling against her isn't the only reason my sister and I relish these moments. It's her voice and the story she reads: Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmens.
We all have our expressive side, and hers was surely the reading-aloud voice, with decorating second. My father is said to have complained soon after they married that he slept on flowers, sat on flowers, ate on flowers. My mother never changed the decor.
She was the runt of her family, second born to her twin brother, and plagued with childhood ricketts, a queasy stomach, and terror of storms. She also professed to being shy as a girl though we never saw evidence of this. She plunged forward into new landscapes, leaving North Dakota for Pittsburgh after graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1929, leaving Pittsburgh for Charleston after the war years--my father got a job teaching veterans at The Citadel, but she was the one who packed us up and got us there. Pioneer-grit and determination to break free (I see it now) from my father's Pittsburgh Italian tribe where she, who had no knack for languages other than English, often sat silent in the corner.
Early in their marriage, B.B. "before babies," he took her to Europe. It was 1939, and the guns of the Spanish Civil War popped red against the sky as the ship passed through the Straits of Gibraltar. She was seasick much of the time, except when "doing her nails" before sitting down at the captain's table. It was an Italian ship, and my father, speaking beautiful Italian, had endeared himself to the captain.
She insisted she was the "mousy" one of her two older sisters and vigorous brother, and perhaps that was the case. But by the time my sister and I came along, she commanded workmen, train porters, shop-keepers with determined efficiency. Sometimes I cringed at the harsh edge to her voice--especially in contrast to the gentle drawl of Southerners. But maybe she didn't hear how she sounded, or more likely didn't care. Getting things done was her top priority. That and making sure that we "girls," were "exposed" to the best things in life.
These included taking us to concerts of the Charleston Symphony when we were around six and eight stopping at art museums and historical sites on our summer trips north, and always and forever, visiting the Charleston Library. It was housed in a remarkable three-story town house, like many Charleston houses, with its narrow end to the street. Wide porches looked into a murky garden dominated by huge magnolia trees.
We had to take the bus: a lesson in race relations. Possibly we had to take two buses to arrive at Rutledge Avenue from The Old Citadel, but I am certain that we walked up huge grey steps to an imposing front door. Even now my eyes adjust to the cool shadowy interior of the library. Miss Janie Smith was in charge of the children's room--a small birdlike woman with wispy grey hair flying out of a knot, and a soft round body feathered in black. It seems to be, on the beak of her nose, perched round spectacles. Other than that, she is lost to me, for after pleasantly greeting Miss Janie, my mother took charge.
We brought home armloads of books, for it wasn't common to own lots of children's books, plus we were rather poor. Other than The Book House in twelve volumes which was ensconced in the upper shelf of a bookcase in the living room (the Encyclopedia Britannica on the lower shelf), our books came from the library. But since we went to the library at least once a week, it was never a hardship to borrow rather than own.
My mother herself was a librarian, but she worked at home, washing our clothes by hand, ironing my father's heavy uniforms, cleaning and cooking. Then in early afternoons, she "went down for her nap," a sacred period we dared not interrupt unless there was a real emergency. She also helped my father correct papers, but that was late into the night when we were fast asleep.
Dreaming, no doubt, of "twelve little girls in two straight lines...the smallest one was Madeline."
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Margotlog: The Death of an Old Friend
Margotlog: The Death of an Old Friend
Meaning we go back a ways. Meaning with her jaunty, gravelly voice, Janet was apparently above death. In an illness that would have put most people in a wheelchair, she gamely refused. Throughout the years, we played all sorts of games; we meant to outlive each other.
She might have been my first friend in Minnesota--next door neighbor in the first house in the first marriage with our first and only children. To my clenched-jaw solitude, she brought a red-head's charm. We sat in her kitchen booth and added cream to our coffee. At home I kept only skim milk. She said outloud the most delicious gossip about people who made headlines. That's what happens when you marry into a Minneapolis political family.
But Janet herself came of East Side, Saint Paul stock, though she actually grew up in Highland. It took me years and a move to the capitol city before I had a clue to what that meant--outsider Southerner as I was, from a place she had no trouble finding on a map, but would never visit.
She and Richard and Andrew owned a friendly dog--Elmer, named I think for a Minnesota governor. Elmer Anderson. Our family started and ended with cats with catlike names: Clarence, Wilhemina. We spread the cat-contagion next door, and later acquired a kitten from Janet and Richard and Andrew. But of course it was an offspring of a pure-bred. Even in her last days, Janet was cat proud: she'd put Louie, her huge Siamese mix, on a diet and he looked dandy, strolling across her bed. I was properly awed at their accomplishment, I who can never withhold food from anything with whiskers.
Janet and I traded books--she never wanted hers back, she was that generous, plus neat to the point of obsession. Always clearing out and putting away--other things I have trouble doing. It was nice to visit a friend with an artful touch, blending old and new, for a lived-in look. Yet her bathroom sink ornaments were as fine as the Ritz. And her scarf and sock drawers, geometric marvels.
We were artists together, in the days when "women artists" had a kind of coming out--Janet, the painter; I, the writer. She staunchly supported me, and I her. Yet I doubt that we grasped what the other was after. Perhaps because we were so new at this that we didn't know our own bent.
When I moved to Saint Paul, we saw less of each other, but lately, within the last five years, we reconnected. First she hosted yoga sessions in her Loring Park apartment--I still can't tell if the stretching and chanting were simply an excuse for the lasagna afterwards. As in our younger days, I giggled at her gossip--she was so loving and so nasty. Would I want to know what she said of me? Not until now, have I asked that question. She had the talent of making each encounter seem just the thing to make her happy.
Our last Sunday afternoon together, I knelt beside her bed, petted Louie, and asked her about people in our old Minneapolis neighborhood. For that brief time, we lived our golden age again. I brought us plates of lasagna and we ate beside each other on her bed. She knew she was going elsewhere, yet her worries were more about how her family would cope and how she could manage dying without upsetting the beautiful order of her life. I think she succeeded. Now it is up to us not to muss her arrangements too much, or hug too hard what was, in the end, both strong and fragile. I will miss her more than I can say.
Meaning we go back a ways. Meaning with her jaunty, gravelly voice, Janet was apparently above death. In an illness that would have put most people in a wheelchair, she gamely refused. Throughout the years, we played all sorts of games; we meant to outlive each other.
She might have been my first friend in Minnesota--next door neighbor in the first house in the first marriage with our first and only children. To my clenched-jaw solitude, she brought a red-head's charm. We sat in her kitchen booth and added cream to our coffee. At home I kept only skim milk. She said outloud the most delicious gossip about people who made headlines. That's what happens when you marry into a Minneapolis political family.
But Janet herself came of East Side, Saint Paul stock, though she actually grew up in Highland. It took me years and a move to the capitol city before I had a clue to what that meant--outsider Southerner as I was, from a place she had no trouble finding on a map, but would never visit.
She and Richard and Andrew owned a friendly dog--Elmer, named I think for a Minnesota governor. Elmer Anderson. Our family started and ended with cats with catlike names: Clarence, Wilhemina. We spread the cat-contagion next door, and later acquired a kitten from Janet and Richard and Andrew. But of course it was an offspring of a pure-bred. Even in her last days, Janet was cat proud: she'd put Louie, her huge Siamese mix, on a diet and he looked dandy, strolling across her bed. I was properly awed at their accomplishment, I who can never withhold food from anything with whiskers.
Janet and I traded books--she never wanted hers back, she was that generous, plus neat to the point of obsession. Always clearing out and putting away--other things I have trouble doing. It was nice to visit a friend with an artful touch, blending old and new, for a lived-in look. Yet her bathroom sink ornaments were as fine as the Ritz. And her scarf and sock drawers, geometric marvels.
We were artists together, in the days when "women artists" had a kind of coming out--Janet, the painter; I, the writer. She staunchly supported me, and I her. Yet I doubt that we grasped what the other was after. Perhaps because we were so new at this that we didn't know our own bent.
When I moved to Saint Paul, we saw less of each other, but lately, within the last five years, we reconnected. First she hosted yoga sessions in her Loring Park apartment--I still can't tell if the stretching and chanting were simply an excuse for the lasagna afterwards. As in our younger days, I giggled at her gossip--she was so loving and so nasty. Would I want to know what she said of me? Not until now, have I asked that question. She had the talent of making each encounter seem just the thing to make her happy.
Our last Sunday afternoon together, I knelt beside her bed, petted Louie, and asked her about people in our old Minneapolis neighborhood. For that brief time, we lived our golden age again. I brought us plates of lasagna and we ate beside each other on her bed. She knew she was going elsewhere, yet her worries were more about how her family would cope and how she could manage dying without upsetting the beautiful order of her life. I think she succeeded. Now it is up to us not to muss her arrangements too much, or hug too hard what was, in the end, both strong and fragile. I will miss her more than I can say.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Margotlog: Put Your Mind Where Your Mouth Is, And Other Short Directives from the Holiday Buzz
Margotlog: Put Your Mind Where Your Mouth Is, and Other Short Directives from the Holiday Buzz
He sat at the edge of holiday chat, bent forward as if he wanted to catch the drift, but talking more with his face than his voice. When the subject turned to health, he revealed that he was a nurse. We asked, "What have you noticed from your years of nursing?"
"Want to know the two hardest things?" he answered. We did. "Weight's the first. Every medical condition, every medical emergency is complicated by excessive weight. Everywhere I look, on the street, in hospitals, in fast-food parlors, there's obesity." We nodded in agreement and concern.
"The second," he went on, "is the teaching of nursing. When I was training, first as a nurse, then a nurse anesthetist, 80% of our training was clinical. Nurses learned on the floor to give sponge baths, to administer medication taking care not to over or under dose. We looked at patients' skin, pulled down their eyelids, inspected the inside of their mouths, even casually tested their reflexes as we made them comfortable." We nodded approvingly, remembering how frequently it was the nurses who soothed a fever, popped hemorrhoids back inside the rectum, kept up the regular supply of fluids--either intravenously or by mouth. Doctors would speed in and out, barely noticing the body in the bed, but the nurses felt around.
"Now, too much of nurses' training is by the book. Ph.D's have taken over the training. Too much is in the classroom, as memorization. Even at best, this is insufficiently applied in clinical situations, and once a nurse is actually working, the stuff that was crammed in the head gets confused or fuzzy."
Listening, we quietly determined never to be sick, though lately it seems we're surrounded by seriously ill friends or relatives. Breast cancer here, internal bleeding there, bone deterioration. So far, no mental breakdowns, but wait, yes there are. We tell ourselves it's normal aging, except that normal has such disturbingly individual shapes. Each sufferer tugs at our heart strings and makes our stomachs tighten with anxiety.
After some cogitation, these bits of holiday buzz coalesced toward several simple conclusions: FIRST: smaller and shorter are better. Smaller portions. My mother changed the size of her dinner plates when she and my father began to put on weight. "If you see a full plate, you think you're getting enough," she commented. She out-foxed the belly with the brain.
Add to smaller, shorter. Shorter stays with extended family (especially kids made wild by excitement--it's wearing!) Shorter WALKING distances between home and grocery store, library, work place. Smaller care facilities--as long as certain minimum standards of cleanliness, nutrition and medication monitoring are in place, the essence of good care is regular, hands-on loving kindness. That's easier to deliver in a small facility.
Of course, there are wide exceptions--friends going to the Mayo Clinic for tests, etc., report being amazed at the clinic's intelligent, careful assessment and treatment. I'd add that hospitals in the Twin Cities can also perform daily miracles of teamwork and yes, astonishingly competent nursing. Emergency Room nurses being at the top of the list.
SECOND holiday message: Training that's hands-on and personal. First-hand experience of illness for nurses and doctors. Bring back the clinical model. BUT ALSO FOR TEACHERS, since health care and education belong in one over-lapping category. If White teachers in training are truly going to understand what it means to be African-American in Minnesota, they need to work with classrooms of African-Americans. And they need to be guided by teachers who themselves have learned to walk in the shoes of this least understood community of color. Least understood in this land of the "white" meal, White Christmas and White opportunity. I tried it recently: imagined myself an aging Black woman walking down Grand Avenue, with a limited income, and grandkids to feed. All the treats had a Nordic or Gaelic flavor. Every face I passed was white. I was miles away from family in Mississippi or South Carolina. After years of living in cold country, I still pined for warm Christmases where tinsel was draped over live oaks and palmettos. Where some Santas have brown faces, and chittlins and collard greens are served at, yes, white folks' restaurants. I decided that, next year, even if I had to take the bus, I'll get myself home, really home for Christmas.
He sat at the edge of holiday chat, bent forward as if he wanted to catch the drift, but talking more with his face than his voice. When the subject turned to health, he revealed that he was a nurse. We asked, "What have you noticed from your years of nursing?"
"Want to know the two hardest things?" he answered. We did. "Weight's the first. Every medical condition, every medical emergency is complicated by excessive weight. Everywhere I look, on the street, in hospitals, in fast-food parlors, there's obesity." We nodded in agreement and concern.
"The second," he went on, "is the teaching of nursing. When I was training, first as a nurse, then a nurse anesthetist, 80% of our training was clinical. Nurses learned on the floor to give sponge baths, to administer medication taking care not to over or under dose. We looked at patients' skin, pulled down their eyelids, inspected the inside of their mouths, even casually tested their reflexes as we made them comfortable." We nodded approvingly, remembering how frequently it was the nurses who soothed a fever, popped hemorrhoids back inside the rectum, kept up the regular supply of fluids--either intravenously or by mouth. Doctors would speed in and out, barely noticing the body in the bed, but the nurses felt around.
"Now, too much of nurses' training is by the book. Ph.D's have taken over the training. Too much is in the classroom, as memorization. Even at best, this is insufficiently applied in clinical situations, and once a nurse is actually working, the stuff that was crammed in the head gets confused or fuzzy."
Listening, we quietly determined never to be sick, though lately it seems we're surrounded by seriously ill friends or relatives. Breast cancer here, internal bleeding there, bone deterioration. So far, no mental breakdowns, but wait, yes there are. We tell ourselves it's normal aging, except that normal has such disturbingly individual shapes. Each sufferer tugs at our heart strings and makes our stomachs tighten with anxiety.
After some cogitation, these bits of holiday buzz coalesced toward several simple conclusions: FIRST: smaller and shorter are better. Smaller portions. My mother changed the size of her dinner plates when she and my father began to put on weight. "If you see a full plate, you think you're getting enough," she commented. She out-foxed the belly with the brain.
Add to smaller, shorter. Shorter stays with extended family (especially kids made wild by excitement--it's wearing!) Shorter WALKING distances between home and grocery store, library, work place. Smaller care facilities--as long as certain minimum standards of cleanliness, nutrition and medication monitoring are in place, the essence of good care is regular, hands-on loving kindness. That's easier to deliver in a small facility.
Of course, there are wide exceptions--friends going to the Mayo Clinic for tests, etc., report being amazed at the clinic's intelligent, careful assessment and treatment. I'd add that hospitals in the Twin Cities can also perform daily miracles of teamwork and yes, astonishingly competent nursing. Emergency Room nurses being at the top of the list.
SECOND holiday message: Training that's hands-on and personal. First-hand experience of illness for nurses and doctors. Bring back the clinical model. BUT ALSO FOR TEACHERS, since health care and education belong in one over-lapping category. If White teachers in training are truly going to understand what it means to be African-American in Minnesota, they need to work with classrooms of African-Americans. And they need to be guided by teachers who themselves have learned to walk in the shoes of this least understood community of color. Least understood in this land of the "white" meal, White Christmas and White opportunity. I tried it recently: imagined myself an aging Black woman walking down Grand Avenue, with a limited income, and grandkids to feed. All the treats had a Nordic or Gaelic flavor. Every face I passed was white. I was miles away from family in Mississippi or South Carolina. After years of living in cold country, I still pined for warm Christmases where tinsel was draped over live oaks and palmettos. Where some Santas have brown faces, and chittlins and collard greens are served at, yes, white folks' restaurants. I decided that, next year, even if I had to take the bus, I'll get myself home, really home for Christmas.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Margotlog: The Man by the Freeway
Margotlog: The Man by the Freeway
He was carrying a sign, standing beside the inside turn before you entered the freeway. I didn't have to read the sign; I knew what he wanted. Money for food.
A few months ago someone who looked like a woman with very short hair but might have been a small man approached me while I walked in our neighborhood. Each time this person asked me if I knew somewhere she could get free food. This put me in a mild panic, I mumbled something and walked quickly away.
I never carry money with me when I walk. I don't want to give a potential drug addict money that might go to buy drugs.
As I thought over these brief encounters, in the midst of unemployment even among our friends, and news briefs about families needing food, I decided to buy three gift cards from a fast food chain not far from us. I gave one card to my husband and asked him to keep it in his car in case he passed someone asking for food.
This morning on our way to a family Christmas gift exchange and brunch across the river, we passed the man with the sign.
This season every year I feel a little sick: we have so much. As we stopped for the light before crossing the intersection and entering the freeway, I felt a strong need to give this gift card to the man standing beside the freeway.
My husband loves Christmas. He grew up poor, the son of a missionary/preacher first in China, then in small Congregational Churches in the U.S. South and Midwest. His parents were almost always more liberal in their politics than the parishioners. His father was asked to leave several churches.
My husband has spent his adulthood attempting to make up for the lack of abundance in his childhood. I don't know any other adult who is so enthralled by Christmas. He wakes up in the dark and stares at the presents under the tree, not quite believing they are there. Now that he has grandsons (they are the youngest generation in the family), he is lit by an inner fire. He was in a rush this morning, to bring Christmas to these boys. Never a placid, easy driver, he was truly ablaze to cross that river and begin the dazzle,
When I pointed out the man and said, "Let's find the food gift card," we were in the lane leading straight to the freeway. Not the turn lane where the man stood. The light was about to change, we had the gift card in hand, but at the last minute, my husband said, "No, it's too dangerous," meaning he didn't want to move left into the turn lane, take the time to pause and hand the card out the window, and then turn left. This would have taken us several blocks out of our way.
We sped through the green light onto the freeway. Immediately, I was deeply troubled. Angry at him for his haste, angry at myself for not insisting that help the man, and torn with grief at how much we have.
Christmas carols were playing on the radio: "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," "Mary, meek and mild, brought to earth a little child," "Come, let us adore Him."
We had just been talking about his parents, not so much their missionary work, their lives of Christian goodness, but simply themselves, as they were when I met them, well past middle age, gentle but sometimes goofy spirits. The kind of people who wear clothes until then are threadbare because they would rather give money to those who have less. Such generosity can sometimes look like poverty and can embarrass grown-up children who may themselves have been ridiculed because they looked poor when they were younger.
During the twenty minutes it took for us to cross the river and reach my son-in-law's house, I wept. When I didn't speak, my husband asked me what was wrong. I couldn't believe he didn't know. "We have so much," I said. "It would have taken only a few extra minute to go out of our way and help a stranger who was hungry."
It seems to me, as I rather bleakly look back over this missed chance, that we are quite typical. We write checks to good causes, we sympathize with friends and even strangers in trouble, but we rarely approach this kind of trouble face to face. It would require a freedom and the moral courage we don't seem to have. We'd have to put aside our comforts and certainties. Risk rebuff or ostracism. I know only a few who venture into such actions alone, and they have an awkward, even childlike caste to their characters. I have rarely allowed myself to be so naked.
Yet what I kept repeating to myself this morning still echoes: "We have so much." I want the next time to have resolve and confidence. To go out of my way for what I know, instinctively, is the right thing to do. I want to give away my comfort and let myself come face to face with need. Maybe this childlikeness I've noticed in those who do so is joy, the best kind because it's given away.
He was carrying a sign, standing beside the inside turn before you entered the freeway. I didn't have to read the sign; I knew what he wanted. Money for food.
A few months ago someone who looked like a woman with very short hair but might have been a small man approached me while I walked in our neighborhood. Each time this person asked me if I knew somewhere she could get free food. This put me in a mild panic, I mumbled something and walked quickly away.
I never carry money with me when I walk. I don't want to give a potential drug addict money that might go to buy drugs.
As I thought over these brief encounters, in the midst of unemployment even among our friends, and news briefs about families needing food, I decided to buy three gift cards from a fast food chain not far from us. I gave one card to my husband and asked him to keep it in his car in case he passed someone asking for food.
This morning on our way to a family Christmas gift exchange and brunch across the river, we passed the man with the sign.
This season every year I feel a little sick: we have so much. As we stopped for the light before crossing the intersection and entering the freeway, I felt a strong need to give this gift card to the man standing beside the freeway.
My husband loves Christmas. He grew up poor, the son of a missionary/preacher first in China, then in small Congregational Churches in the U.S. South and Midwest. His parents were almost always more liberal in their politics than the parishioners. His father was asked to leave several churches.
My husband has spent his adulthood attempting to make up for the lack of abundance in his childhood. I don't know any other adult who is so enthralled by Christmas. He wakes up in the dark and stares at the presents under the tree, not quite believing they are there. Now that he has grandsons (they are the youngest generation in the family), he is lit by an inner fire. He was in a rush this morning, to bring Christmas to these boys. Never a placid, easy driver, he was truly ablaze to cross that river and begin the dazzle,
When I pointed out the man and said, "Let's find the food gift card," we were in the lane leading straight to the freeway. Not the turn lane where the man stood. The light was about to change, we had the gift card in hand, but at the last minute, my husband said, "No, it's too dangerous," meaning he didn't want to move left into the turn lane, take the time to pause and hand the card out the window, and then turn left. This would have taken us several blocks out of our way.
We sped through the green light onto the freeway. Immediately, I was deeply troubled. Angry at him for his haste, angry at myself for not insisting that help the man, and torn with grief at how much we have.
Christmas carols were playing on the radio: "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," "Mary, meek and mild, brought to earth a little child," "Come, let us adore Him."
We had just been talking about his parents, not so much their missionary work, their lives of Christian goodness, but simply themselves, as they were when I met them, well past middle age, gentle but sometimes goofy spirits. The kind of people who wear clothes until then are threadbare because they would rather give money to those who have less. Such generosity can sometimes look like poverty and can embarrass grown-up children who may themselves have been ridiculed because they looked poor when they were younger.
During the twenty minutes it took for us to cross the river and reach my son-in-law's house, I wept. When I didn't speak, my husband asked me what was wrong. I couldn't believe he didn't know. "We have so much," I said. "It would have taken only a few extra minute to go out of our way and help a stranger who was hungry."
It seems to me, as I rather bleakly look back over this missed chance, that we are quite typical. We write checks to good causes, we sympathize with friends and even strangers in trouble, but we rarely approach this kind of trouble face to face. It would require a freedom and the moral courage we don't seem to have. We'd have to put aside our comforts and certainties. Risk rebuff or ostracism. I know only a few who venture into such actions alone, and they have an awkward, even childlike caste to their characters. I have rarely allowed myself to be so naked.
Yet what I kept repeating to myself this morning still echoes: "We have so much." I want the next time to have resolve and confidence. To go out of my way for what I know, instinctively, is the right thing to do. I want to give away my comfort and let myself come face to face with need. Maybe this childlikeness I've noticed in those who do so is joy, the best kind because it's given away.
Friday, December 23, 2011
Margotlog: A Reluctant Environmentalist
Margotlog: A Reluctant Environmentalist
Well, not entirely reluctant. I "submit" my pre-formed letters protesting delisting this, fracking that. I contribute almost all the funds I allocate to "charity" to help hungry downtrodden people and protect global lands and seas from pollution, degradation, and ruin. Once in a while I even phone up the president of the United States, my senators and congresswoman. But I'm not usually an in-your-face environmentalist.
Except for helping trees. Somewhere in my genetic background a forest-dweller named trees as our people. Whether the huge spreading live oaks of South Carolina or Minnesota's pointed spruce and feathery white pines, pin oaks that whisper in their winter leaves and maples that turn their dresses silver in the wind--all are my family. I'm not wild about the ash the city of Saint Paul planted along our boulevard, but I tend it like a cousin, water and fertilize it, and now that its tribe are troubled with ash borers, I have it treated.
When we first moved into this typical city house, built in 1912 on a lot longer than it is wide, I almost immediately began planting trees because it was hot in the summer as we faced south and bare of green in winter. I remembered the cooling effect of Carolina live oaks shading front porches. No live oaks in Minnesota so we dug holes for a Russian olive and a honey locust. This brought up to three the number of trees in our front yard until the Arbor Day Foundation donated a spruce seedling, making four.
Filling the larger back yard was fun. My in-laws sent home with us from Tennessee three maple seedlings dug up from their rambling domain. These all went into the back yard along with more spruce seedlings, a white pine, and a flowering crab. Sometimes standing across the street and looking at our house and lot, I have to laugh: we sport a mini forest between two savannahs on either side. The Minnesota natives who bracket us want little to do with trees. Their lawns are bare of anything but summer flowers. Probably they have in their souls the "prairie effect," just as I do the forest.
On behalf of our neighborhood trees, I can become rather pushy. "Water your trees in the drought," say the handouts I stuff in neighbors' mailboxes. "Put the hose a bit away from the trunk and let a slow flow go for an hour or so." Since we moved into this neighborhood, there have been an inordinate number of dry years. This past season, we're not only had a dry summer, but a long long dry fall. Already I'm plotting my strategy, infused with Paul Douglas's support. He's the StarTribune's weatherman, and has already urged "Water your trees," in many September and October weather forecasts. "Especially evergreens."
One thing I discovered as a tree lover and preserver (this also goes for perennial plants and bushes): mulching in all seasons helps preserve moisture and prevent the worst that winter can do to roots. This "worst" isn't just deep cold, it's the freezing and thawing that happens on either side of deep. Mulching moderates soil temperature, and over the years, the leaf mulch I apply (having a passion for raking and mounding leaves), has helped keep the soil from becoming flinty. We have naturally beautiful heavy loam in our neighborhood as part of an ancient oak forest. (Think acorns decaying into richness decade after decade.) But I want to add my bit.
Consider yourself told: the reluctant environmentalist has shed her skin and turned instructor. Mind your trees, my people. Trees are the protectors of our world.
Well, not entirely reluctant. I "submit" my pre-formed letters protesting delisting this, fracking that. I contribute almost all the funds I allocate to "charity" to help hungry downtrodden people and protect global lands and seas from pollution, degradation, and ruin. Once in a while I even phone up the president of the United States, my senators and congresswoman. But I'm not usually an in-your-face environmentalist.
Except for helping trees. Somewhere in my genetic background a forest-dweller named trees as our people. Whether the huge spreading live oaks of South Carolina or Minnesota's pointed spruce and feathery white pines, pin oaks that whisper in their winter leaves and maples that turn their dresses silver in the wind--all are my family. I'm not wild about the ash the city of Saint Paul planted along our boulevard, but I tend it like a cousin, water and fertilize it, and now that its tribe are troubled with ash borers, I have it treated.
When we first moved into this typical city house, built in 1912 on a lot longer than it is wide, I almost immediately began planting trees because it was hot in the summer as we faced south and bare of green in winter. I remembered the cooling effect of Carolina live oaks shading front porches. No live oaks in Minnesota so we dug holes for a Russian olive and a honey locust. This brought up to three the number of trees in our front yard until the Arbor Day Foundation donated a spruce seedling, making four.
Filling the larger back yard was fun. My in-laws sent home with us from Tennessee three maple seedlings dug up from their rambling domain. These all went into the back yard along with more spruce seedlings, a white pine, and a flowering crab. Sometimes standing across the street and looking at our house and lot, I have to laugh: we sport a mini forest between two savannahs on either side. The Minnesota natives who bracket us want little to do with trees. Their lawns are bare of anything but summer flowers. Probably they have in their souls the "prairie effect," just as I do the forest.
On behalf of our neighborhood trees, I can become rather pushy. "Water your trees in the drought," say the handouts I stuff in neighbors' mailboxes. "Put the hose a bit away from the trunk and let a slow flow go for an hour or so." Since we moved into this neighborhood, there have been an inordinate number of dry years. This past season, we're not only had a dry summer, but a long long dry fall. Already I'm plotting my strategy, infused with Paul Douglas's support. He's the StarTribune's weatherman, and has already urged "Water your trees," in many September and October weather forecasts. "Especially evergreens."
One thing I discovered as a tree lover and preserver (this also goes for perennial plants and bushes): mulching in all seasons helps preserve moisture and prevent the worst that winter can do to roots. This "worst" isn't just deep cold, it's the freezing and thawing that happens on either side of deep. Mulching moderates soil temperature, and over the years, the leaf mulch I apply (having a passion for raking and mounding leaves), has helped keep the soil from becoming flinty. We have naturally beautiful heavy loam in our neighborhood as part of an ancient oak forest. (Think acorns decaying into richness decade after decade.) But I want to add my bit.
Consider yourself told: the reluctant environmentalist has shed her skin and turned instructor. Mind your trees, my people. Trees are the protectors of our world.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Margotlog: Mother Christmas
Margotlog: Mother Christmas
To some, such a notion might seem like heresy, but lately, I'm repositioning myself vis-a-vis the canonical figures of Christmas. I want to add a Mother Christmas. No, not in Father's sleigh. He can soar with his huge pack of toys and goodies down whatever chimney will allow. Tight spaces make me nervous. I want to give her a clam shell conveyance, drawn by sky-dolphins all harnessed with stars. If live dolphins can lift drowning mariners from the sea, their souls in heaven can easily transport Mother Christmas on her clam shell (hints of ropey-haired Venus).
She doesn't carry a pack, but a dainty purse, for her gifts are celestial, little touches of fairy dust. (I know, she's beginning to resemble Pinocchio's Blue Fairy.) She walks on transparent fur-lined slippers (Cinderella grown up) across snowy or sandy fields, into huts and mansions, to sit beside the trashy, nasty, pained and sorrowing. Listen, Christmas isn't only for good little girls and boys, but the bad and sad ones along with their grown-up selves. Think of her as the kindest, most lovely white-haired teacher you ever met, and you'll be close to her charm.
Her skin has an array of hues which change in reflections of those before her. She is brown, black, tan, pale. And her cloak is a motley of feathers and fur, leaves and grass, quartz and coal. No point in frightening those who meet her for the first time. She envelopes her visits with favorite scents--baking cinnamon and cloves, fresh sea air, a spicy barbeque, coconut milk, the fishiest of fish.
As for gifts, silence is the first. The silence necessary to hear the quiet rumblings of deepest grief and aching desire. This Christmas she hears the despair of a gypsy family in Romania whose home, lawfully built on a parcel of land, is threatened by the return of wealthy former owners ousted by an outmoded communism. She listens to the whispers of children who've walked with drought-starved families in Africa toward the mirage of plenty that retreats each time they approach it. She cradles Black children in the wealthiest White country in the world whose well-meaning teachers can't erase their own ignorance of racism.
Silence goes a long way if it's sprinkled with the fairy dust of compassion, but it only fills the toe of a stocking. So Mother Christmas must cook up a whole passle of notions and remedies which extend far across the years into hearts and minds pulled tight with refusal. She must open them to think wisely beyond their borders, to resist beliefs based on privilege, to embrace what is less but ultimately more. To reuse and remake. If you think Father Christmas has millions of lists to check for who is naughty and nice, consider Mother's undertaking. She's got the whole world in her hands, not to mention the winds and rains, the seas and lands, the critters and trees. This Christmas Eve, I'm going to set out a plate and cup for her, and under the cookies and milk, I'm going to slip the extra I might have spent on baubles. Along with that, my thanks for all she has accomplished this year, and a promise to heft part of the job myself. To write and speak and act. Given her gi-normous work, it's the least I can do.
To some, such a notion might seem like heresy, but lately, I'm repositioning myself vis-a-vis the canonical figures of Christmas. I want to add a Mother Christmas. No, not in Father's sleigh. He can soar with his huge pack of toys and goodies down whatever chimney will allow. Tight spaces make me nervous. I want to give her a clam shell conveyance, drawn by sky-dolphins all harnessed with stars. If live dolphins can lift drowning mariners from the sea, their souls in heaven can easily transport Mother Christmas on her clam shell (hints of ropey-haired Venus).
She doesn't carry a pack, but a dainty purse, for her gifts are celestial, little touches of fairy dust. (I know, she's beginning to resemble Pinocchio's Blue Fairy.) She walks on transparent fur-lined slippers (Cinderella grown up) across snowy or sandy fields, into huts and mansions, to sit beside the trashy, nasty, pained and sorrowing. Listen, Christmas isn't only for good little girls and boys, but the bad and sad ones along with their grown-up selves. Think of her as the kindest, most lovely white-haired teacher you ever met, and you'll be close to her charm.
Her skin has an array of hues which change in reflections of those before her. She is brown, black, tan, pale. And her cloak is a motley of feathers and fur, leaves and grass, quartz and coal. No point in frightening those who meet her for the first time. She envelopes her visits with favorite scents--baking cinnamon and cloves, fresh sea air, a spicy barbeque, coconut milk, the fishiest of fish.
As for gifts, silence is the first. The silence necessary to hear the quiet rumblings of deepest grief and aching desire. This Christmas she hears the despair of a gypsy family in Romania whose home, lawfully built on a parcel of land, is threatened by the return of wealthy former owners ousted by an outmoded communism. She listens to the whispers of children who've walked with drought-starved families in Africa toward the mirage of plenty that retreats each time they approach it. She cradles Black children in the wealthiest White country in the world whose well-meaning teachers can't erase their own ignorance of racism.
Silence goes a long way if it's sprinkled with the fairy dust of compassion, but it only fills the toe of a stocking. So Mother Christmas must cook up a whole passle of notions and remedies which extend far across the years into hearts and minds pulled tight with refusal. She must open them to think wisely beyond their borders, to resist beliefs based on privilege, to embrace what is less but ultimately more. To reuse and remake. If you think Father Christmas has millions of lists to check for who is naughty and nice, consider Mother's undertaking. She's got the whole world in her hands, not to mention the winds and rains, the seas and lands, the critters and trees. This Christmas Eve, I'm going to set out a plate and cup for her, and under the cookies and milk, I'm going to slip the extra I might have spent on baubles. Along with that, my thanks for all she has accomplished this year, and a promise to heft part of the job myself. To write and speak and act. Given her gi-normous work, it's the least I can do.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Margotlog: The Star at the Top of the Tree
Margotlog: The Star at the Top of the Tree
It's very northern of us, this tree-in-the-house at Christmas. I know, there are Celtic precedents, something about mistletoe, holly and the Druids, but the Christmas tree itself came from Nordic folk around the Baltic Sea, worshipping what remained green throughout the long, dark, cold winter. Germans, my mother's family included, set their trees up on Christmas Eve, which in the Roman Catholic tradition, remains Adam and Eve's feast day. Some of the early German trees were hung with one tantalizing apple.
Ours for years was some kind of fir, usually bought from an outdoor lot beside a hardware store or even from the Boy Scouts. We hoisted it atop the car and drove home with it, our version of the hunter's prize. Early in this second marriage, we took our young kids out to a tree farm and hacked one down. It was hard work, all done by already worn-out parents. But those self-harvested trees brought into our lives empty birds' nests, which we took as wonderful symbols of fecundity and joy. They became our first communal ornaments, passed down and still displayed in our now fake tree.
It's interesting, even challenging, making a union of two quite different traditions--mine and my second husband's. His two kids, my one, and all the ornaments and associations that we'd already acquired. Now with the kids all grown, and only us aging adults to tend the tradition, I stand rather bemused before our fake tree lighted with bright blue and white LED lights. There hang floppy white plastic catfish with long whiskers and bright beads--holdovers from his parents' years as missionaries in China. From my parents' early Depression trees have come balls with much of the color worn off--now faded blue, silver, green. I couldn't bear to throw them away after my mother died. I also kept funny pipecleaner men in stripped pants and bowler hats--who knows their origin or what they signified.
There among the thick plastic branches hang small red cherries. Last evening driving down Summit Avenue, I asked my daughter if she remembered buying a living Norfolk Island pine covered with these little balls, the first year I moved out of the first marriage house. She has no recollection of those years, she says. But even now I can see the small tree bravely fronting an increasingly desperate living room, its little bright cherries twirling in the furnace heat.
Dotted up and around our current tree are expensive ornaments given by affectionate, well-heeled relatives and friends--a tum-tum-tum drum with guilded ribbon up and down its sides; a fiercely snouted hedgehog dressed in mob-cap and old lace; a tiny mouse in top hat sitting in its own white rocking chair. Oddly enough, I can't remember their givers, only the yearly sensation that they must reappear as promises of continued beneficence.
Finally up and down perch dozens of birds. Our first birds' nests fit my fascination with birds so perfectly it seemed preordained. Especially in winter, feeding and providing fresh, warmed water for outdoor birds keeps me from desperation. After all, my earliest remembered Christmases were in Charleston, South Carolina, where winters are dark, but only dampishly cold, not ever frozen, never. And my parents' last backyard drew wonderful flocks of migrants--waxwings, robins, and resident cardinals, mocking birds and jays, chickadees and nuthatches, plus an occasional hawk, not to mention in the swamp just out of sight a heron or two. For our tree the Audubon Society has kindly provided (for a yearly membership) wonderfully bright, stained-glass bird ornaments, and we have purchased tiny feathered creatures who sit so pertly at the end of twigs, I expect them to cock their heads and sing.
It is all about hope and sustenance in dark times. We've never had much of a star atop our tree, though there is one, surrounded by a bevy of wasted angels, retrieved from the dump of my parents' ornaments. With paper wings and sequined skirts, they have sustained another kind of fluttering hope for over sixty years. I can't imagine ever "doing over" the tree in decorator colors. What lives on are its associations, and the revival of winter hope from year to year.
It's very northern of us, this tree-in-the-house at Christmas. I know, there are Celtic precedents, something about mistletoe, holly and the Druids, but the Christmas tree itself came from Nordic folk around the Baltic Sea, worshipping what remained green throughout the long, dark, cold winter. Germans, my mother's family included, set their trees up on Christmas Eve, which in the Roman Catholic tradition, remains Adam and Eve's feast day. Some of the early German trees were hung with one tantalizing apple.
Ours for years was some kind of fir, usually bought from an outdoor lot beside a hardware store or even from the Boy Scouts. We hoisted it atop the car and drove home with it, our version of the hunter's prize. Early in this second marriage, we took our young kids out to a tree farm and hacked one down. It was hard work, all done by already worn-out parents. But those self-harvested trees brought into our lives empty birds' nests, which we took as wonderful symbols of fecundity and joy. They became our first communal ornaments, passed down and still displayed in our now fake tree.
It's interesting, even challenging, making a union of two quite different traditions--mine and my second husband's. His two kids, my one, and all the ornaments and associations that we'd already acquired. Now with the kids all grown, and only us aging adults to tend the tradition, I stand rather bemused before our fake tree lighted with bright blue and white LED lights. There hang floppy white plastic catfish with long whiskers and bright beads--holdovers from his parents' years as missionaries in China. From my parents' early Depression trees have come balls with much of the color worn off--now faded blue, silver, green. I couldn't bear to throw them away after my mother died. I also kept funny pipecleaner men in stripped pants and bowler hats--who knows their origin or what they signified.
There among the thick plastic branches hang small red cherries. Last evening driving down Summit Avenue, I asked my daughter if she remembered buying a living Norfolk Island pine covered with these little balls, the first year I moved out of the first marriage house. She has no recollection of those years, she says. But even now I can see the small tree bravely fronting an increasingly desperate living room, its little bright cherries twirling in the furnace heat.
Dotted up and around our current tree are expensive ornaments given by affectionate, well-heeled relatives and friends--a tum-tum-tum drum with guilded ribbon up and down its sides; a fiercely snouted hedgehog dressed in mob-cap and old lace; a tiny mouse in top hat sitting in its own white rocking chair. Oddly enough, I can't remember their givers, only the yearly sensation that they must reappear as promises of continued beneficence.
Finally up and down perch dozens of birds. Our first birds' nests fit my fascination with birds so perfectly it seemed preordained. Especially in winter, feeding and providing fresh, warmed water for outdoor birds keeps me from desperation. After all, my earliest remembered Christmases were in Charleston, South Carolina, where winters are dark, but only dampishly cold, not ever frozen, never. And my parents' last backyard drew wonderful flocks of migrants--waxwings, robins, and resident cardinals, mocking birds and jays, chickadees and nuthatches, plus an occasional hawk, not to mention in the swamp just out of sight a heron or two. For our tree the Audubon Society has kindly provided (for a yearly membership) wonderfully bright, stained-glass bird ornaments, and we have purchased tiny feathered creatures who sit so pertly at the end of twigs, I expect them to cock their heads and sing.
It is all about hope and sustenance in dark times. We've never had much of a star atop our tree, though there is one, surrounded by a bevy of wasted angels, retrieved from the dump of my parents' ornaments. With paper wings and sequined skirts, they have sustained another kind of fluttering hope for over sixty years. I can't imagine ever "doing over" the tree in decorator colors. What lives on are its associations, and the revival of winter hope from year to year.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Margotlog: Bat Attack
Margotlog: Bat Attack
I know, we are supposed to treasure our fellow creatures on this steadily shrinking planet. But there are limits. My limits start with bats. Pipistrelle from French or Italian; ours are probably myotis. From our first year in this tall old house, we have had bats in the attic. The heavily taped tiny attic door at the top of the third-floor stairs attests to my first attempts to keep them between the walls. Yesterday once again I failed.
You'd think with three cats, our problem would be solved. Not so. At the first swoosh, they're under a bed. It was early, probably 8 a.m. Husband and I groggily drinking morning coffee when lo and behold, across the living room fluttered a winged thing. "It's a bat," croaked the husband. We were slow at that hour--putting hand to broom took a minute or two. (I'm good at fetching, worthless at capturing.) By then, the creature had retreated, probably up the stairs, back toward home.
I don't want to hate them and in the abstract I realize they belong just as much as I do. They were, after all, here between the attic walls before we arrived. Lately, I'm also disturbed by the die-off of bat colonies in the eastern U.S. from a fungus called "white nose disease." A million or so bats gone, with some subspecies threatened with extinction. Recently a newspaper article mentioned the genome of the causative fungus had been deciphered, leading to hope for an cure. Evidently European bats can harbor the fungus without dying. No doubt they brought it to our shores--flew the Atlantic? Sped over in a cargo of Turkish coffee? Spanish dates? Italian olive oil?
Over the quarter century we've lived in this Saint Paul house, we've probably maimed, murdered, or simply helped escape at last a dozen bats. A few got thrown outside in winter. One was eased into a trash can in February. The next day, husband released the lid for another load of garbage. Lo and behold out flew a winged thing. OMG!
Last year we put up a bat house. I seriously doubt it has been given the once-over. The critters like our "between the walls" abode. I can hear them scratching and sometimes even peeping when I'm writing away on the third floor. Usually I just sigh and carry on, hoping no wing or snout will show itself emerging from a hole as thin as a dime.
My fear has abated from its original absolute terror--screaming, running from the room with head covered, hiding in closets until the "bat trapper" had done his job. Lately I watch to make sure I'm not in its line of flight, then hope the trapper can capture it within minutes, rather than the hours it took yesterday. Bat first sighted at 8 a.m., captured and released into the cold around 10 p.m. I haven't been outside to see what creeps. Mostly I d0n't want to know, yet am drawn in terrible fascination. I hope it died of exposure.
The cause of this fear inevitably comes back to me. Years ago, soon after arriving in Minneapolis and buying the likewise tall house of my first marriage, I awoke in early morning dark to a scratching and clawing at the headboard. Then in total consternation I realized the thing was inside my pillowcase. Leaping out of bed, I screamed for help. Husband jumped up, whacked the pillow and its case many times against the floor. Finally he dumped the contents in the toilet. The pillow slumped to one side. When we looked into the bowl, there floated the bloody little body of the family hamster.
It was flushed in a flash, but I was reduced to a voiceless crouch for many minutes. When I could finally stand, we looked at each other. No way could we admit to this rodent-a-cide. That afternoon when the kid was in nursery school, I visited the pet store and bought another hamster. Placed in its cage, it was supposed to start speeding around its wheel. Nothing doing. As I watched, I realized that the poor thing had a stump for one of its back legs.
As I write this, I'm beginning to breathe shallowly. It took the kid months to realize that "Freundlich" was wounded. We blamed it on the wheel. I have never quite recovered.
I know, we are supposed to treasure our fellow creatures on this steadily shrinking planet. But there are limits. My limits start with bats. Pipistrelle from French or Italian; ours are probably myotis. From our first year in this tall old house, we have had bats in the attic. The heavily taped tiny attic door at the top of the third-floor stairs attests to my first attempts to keep them between the walls. Yesterday once again I failed.
You'd think with three cats, our problem would be solved. Not so. At the first swoosh, they're under a bed. It was early, probably 8 a.m. Husband and I groggily drinking morning coffee when lo and behold, across the living room fluttered a winged thing. "It's a bat," croaked the husband. We were slow at that hour--putting hand to broom took a minute or two. (I'm good at fetching, worthless at capturing.) By then, the creature had retreated, probably up the stairs, back toward home.
I don't want to hate them and in the abstract I realize they belong just as much as I do. They were, after all, here between the attic walls before we arrived. Lately, I'm also disturbed by the die-off of bat colonies in the eastern U.S. from a fungus called "white nose disease." A million or so bats gone, with some subspecies threatened with extinction. Recently a newspaper article mentioned the genome of the causative fungus had been deciphered, leading to hope for an cure. Evidently European bats can harbor the fungus without dying. No doubt they brought it to our shores--flew the Atlantic? Sped over in a cargo of Turkish coffee? Spanish dates? Italian olive oil?
Over the quarter century we've lived in this Saint Paul house, we've probably maimed, murdered, or simply helped escape at last a dozen bats. A few got thrown outside in winter. One was eased into a trash can in February. The next day, husband released the lid for another load of garbage. Lo and behold out flew a winged thing. OMG!
Last year we put up a bat house. I seriously doubt it has been given the once-over. The critters like our "between the walls" abode. I can hear them scratching and sometimes even peeping when I'm writing away on the third floor. Usually I just sigh and carry on, hoping no wing or snout will show itself emerging from a hole as thin as a dime.
My fear has abated from its original absolute terror--screaming, running from the room with head covered, hiding in closets until the "bat trapper" had done his job. Lately I watch to make sure I'm not in its line of flight, then hope the trapper can capture it within minutes, rather than the hours it took yesterday. Bat first sighted at 8 a.m., captured and released into the cold around 10 p.m. I haven't been outside to see what creeps. Mostly I d0n't want to know, yet am drawn in terrible fascination. I hope it died of exposure.
The cause of this fear inevitably comes back to me. Years ago, soon after arriving in Minneapolis and buying the likewise tall house of my first marriage, I awoke in early morning dark to a scratching and clawing at the headboard. Then in total consternation I realized the thing was inside my pillowcase. Leaping out of bed, I screamed for help. Husband jumped up, whacked the pillow and its case many times against the floor. Finally he dumped the contents in the toilet. The pillow slumped to one side. When we looked into the bowl, there floated the bloody little body of the family hamster.
It was flushed in a flash, but I was reduced to a voiceless crouch for many minutes. When I could finally stand, we looked at each other. No way could we admit to this rodent-a-cide. That afternoon when the kid was in nursery school, I visited the pet store and bought another hamster. Placed in its cage, it was supposed to start speeding around its wheel. Nothing doing. As I watched, I realized that the poor thing had a stump for one of its back legs.
As I write this, I'm beginning to breathe shallowly. It took the kid months to realize that "Freundlich" was wounded. We blamed it on the wheel. I have never quite recovered.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Margotlog: Shy-Drager Dearth
Margotlog: Shy-Drager Death
It's not a Star Wars character, nor the name of a deep sea creature. It's a neurodegenerative disease that attacks the central autonomic nervous system. It's caused (as much as is known) by long exposure to herbicides and pesticides. It's a major player in Mary Rockcastle's new novel, In Caddis Wood.
Over the weekend I dipped into DuPont land, better known as Delaware. Beautiful country with flat plains and copses of trees, plus one of my favorite bird-watching spots in the country: the National Wildlife Refuge called Bombay Hook. There my adorable oldest living relative Eleonora and I watched hundreds of ducks and Canada geese paddle in tidal pools, a few great blue heron hunch at the edge of swift-flowing tidal creeks, and a weird fox, surrounded by wary Japanese bird-watchers, cross and recross the road. A sign at the beginning of the refuge warns against getting too close to the resident foxes: they may have rabies.
"If we but knew when we delve and hew..." sings Gerard Manley Hopkins, the great Irish poet. Mary Rockcastle's novel is set in the Wisconsin woods and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/Saint Paul. It's always curious and strange to read the works of friends--there are familiar names and places (such as the Weisman Art Museum on the University of Minnesota campus) which are lifted from their usual associations and burnished in a fictional world. The family in Rockcastle's novel is struggling with multiple accidents and diseases, yet their world is lush with artistic discovery, creature comforts, and with Rockcastle's evocation of Upper Midwest woodland plants and climate, as well as the fate of Captive Island near Fort Myers, Florida, after a hurricane.
I honor her work, subtly revealing how choices to hack and hew have long-term effects on health and happiness. Carl, the father, has torn open the woods in front of the elaborate edifice he, as an architect, has built for the family in Caddis Woods. There he's planted what could pass for an English garden, full of roses. Casually year after year he sprays the roses with pesticides and herbicides. As the novel opens, he's beginning to experience the onset of Shy-Drager, though we don't find out what's really wrong with him until the middle of the book. With consummate skill, the author takes us into his disintegrating yet fantastical world with its whisps of recurring ghosts, its strange blackouts and its sudden weakness. Before he loses sight and speech, his experience of the natural world becomes acute, beautiful, and strange. What is certainly at heart a cautionary tale becomes also an evocation of an altered state, the last gift of life to a talented artist.
When he and his wife, a poet, tear out the rose garden and resoil and seed the plot with native prairie plants, I breathe a sigh of relief. Yet, the author withholds judgment. She is a tender chronicler of their troubled yet enduring love, as well as the many attendant family lives they touch. By the end, a project of remediation--to render useful a dump named Pig's Eye on the Mississippi--becomes another reminder of human skill at curing what humans have deeply tainted.
As I drive away from Delaware and catch Highway 95 toward the Philadelphia airport, I'm reminded of efforts to initiate "fracking" in the Delaware River basin and Chesapeake Bay. Fracking is shorthand for extracting natural gas from shale buried deep in the earth. The process not only destroys the surface growth and soil--thousands of acres of boreal forest have been upended in northern Alberta, Canada--but it uses an enormous amount of water, which then becomes tainted with heavy metals and other contaminants. I'm completely and utterly opposed to this process anywhere, but especially in a rich tidal ecosystem such as the Delaware River Basin and Chesapeake Bay. I want Bombay Hook and its birds and animals to enjoy a healthy rest stop, and I want my loving Eleonore to live our her days without the threat of new environmental contaminants. Not to mention the young men and women who take care of her, and their children, and children's children.
We need a stronger, more ecologically sound energy policy, here and globally.
It's not a Star Wars character, nor the name of a deep sea creature. It's a neurodegenerative disease that attacks the central autonomic nervous system. It's caused (as much as is known) by long exposure to herbicides and pesticides. It's a major player in Mary Rockcastle's new novel, In Caddis Wood.
Over the weekend I dipped into DuPont land, better known as Delaware. Beautiful country with flat plains and copses of trees, plus one of my favorite bird-watching spots in the country: the National Wildlife Refuge called Bombay Hook. There my adorable oldest living relative Eleonora and I watched hundreds of ducks and Canada geese paddle in tidal pools, a few great blue heron hunch at the edge of swift-flowing tidal creeks, and a weird fox, surrounded by wary Japanese bird-watchers, cross and recross the road. A sign at the beginning of the refuge warns against getting too close to the resident foxes: they may have rabies.
"If we but knew when we delve and hew..." sings Gerard Manley Hopkins, the great Irish poet. Mary Rockcastle's novel is set in the Wisconsin woods and the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/Saint Paul. It's always curious and strange to read the works of friends--there are familiar names and places (such as the Weisman Art Museum on the University of Minnesota campus) which are lifted from their usual associations and burnished in a fictional world. The family in Rockcastle's novel is struggling with multiple accidents and diseases, yet their world is lush with artistic discovery, creature comforts, and with Rockcastle's evocation of Upper Midwest woodland plants and climate, as well as the fate of Captive Island near Fort Myers, Florida, after a hurricane.
I honor her work, subtly revealing how choices to hack and hew have long-term effects on health and happiness. Carl, the father, has torn open the woods in front of the elaborate edifice he, as an architect, has built for the family in Caddis Woods. There he's planted what could pass for an English garden, full of roses. Casually year after year he sprays the roses with pesticides and herbicides. As the novel opens, he's beginning to experience the onset of Shy-Drager, though we don't find out what's really wrong with him until the middle of the book. With consummate skill, the author takes us into his disintegrating yet fantastical world with its whisps of recurring ghosts, its strange blackouts and its sudden weakness. Before he loses sight and speech, his experience of the natural world becomes acute, beautiful, and strange. What is certainly at heart a cautionary tale becomes also an evocation of an altered state, the last gift of life to a talented artist.
When he and his wife, a poet, tear out the rose garden and resoil and seed the plot with native prairie plants, I breathe a sigh of relief. Yet, the author withholds judgment. She is a tender chronicler of their troubled yet enduring love, as well as the many attendant family lives they touch. By the end, a project of remediation--to render useful a dump named Pig's Eye on the Mississippi--becomes another reminder of human skill at curing what humans have deeply tainted.
As I drive away from Delaware and catch Highway 95 toward the Philadelphia airport, I'm reminded of efforts to initiate "fracking" in the Delaware River basin and Chesapeake Bay. Fracking is shorthand for extracting natural gas from shale buried deep in the earth. The process not only destroys the surface growth and soil--thousands of acres of boreal forest have been upended in northern Alberta, Canada--but it uses an enormous amount of water, which then becomes tainted with heavy metals and other contaminants. I'm completely and utterly opposed to this process anywhere, but especially in a rich tidal ecosystem such as the Delaware River Basin and Chesapeake Bay. I want Bombay Hook and its birds and animals to enjoy a healthy rest stop, and I want my loving Eleonore to live our her days without the threat of new environmental contaminants. Not to mention the young men and women who take care of her, and their children, and children's children.
We need a stronger, more ecologically sound energy policy, here and globally.
Friday, December 9, 2011
Margotlog: Parent Substitutes
Margotlog: Parent Substitutes
When the primary ones are gone, those lucky of us find subsitutes. Mine is a 94-year-old second cousin which means she is my father's first cousin, younger than he by eight years, and much much longer lived. Eleanora has been Eleanor to her lifetime American friends, but since she's reached her "maturity," she's allowed the final Italian "a" to reappear as it was on her birth certificate in 1917. Born to my great aunt Josephine, my grandmother's youngest sister, Eleanora was the oldest of three sisters (the girls) who lived down the street from my father and his three brothers (the boys). In fact, Eleanora's earliest memory is of sitting on the curb in front of her house with the youngest of the "boys," Frankie, and telling him, "I have another sister." Since my earliest memory is of staying with her and her mother, Aunt Josephine to me, when my sister was born, I count us as linked by the strange convolutions of family memory as well as blood.
Eleanora is one of the most "with it" people I know partly because she was a nurse and retains the savvy that comes from staring down doctors, admirals, generals. Working in various governmental agencies in Washington, she did indeed treat these higher ups, while her youngest sister Sadie typed documents in the Office of the President through four administrations: Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan. Eleanora and Sadie lived together for more than fifty years, moving from the center of our nation's capitol, to Arlington, Virginia, then to Silver Spring, Maryland, and finally to Dover, Delaware, where Sadie died in January of 2009. Typically, their fortunes peaked when they were in their fifties, and their huge apartment of 3 bedrooms in Arlington used to amaze me with its two bathrooms and living room/dining room you could almost roller skate across. It was there that I brought my first husband and young daughter to meet the "cousins and Aunt Jo."
They never had to discipline me, but their models of generous and rollicking adulthood (including their tiny mother Aunt Jo who had a smile as broad as a ball field) helped subdue my distress over my own father's wildness when I saw that they also rolled their eyes at his racist comments, and held hands in the back of his car when his driving threatened to send the car into the drink. (Here I'm remembering driving with him over the old Cooper River Bridge connecting downtown Charleston, South Carolina, with the suburb of Mount Pleasant. My parents moved to Charleston when I was four and never left its environs.)
Talking to Eleanora has also taught me a fair amount about forgiveness and facing the inevitable, but I think the biggest influence she's had on me, she who never had children, is as a model of adult guidance. She connects me to an era without television or cell phones, with only one family car driven to work daily by the father of the family, leaving the others to take the bus. When there was a huge snow fall in Pittsburgh one year and electricity and water service went out in the city, her parents dug a hole in an enormous snowbank and put their perishables there in a covered container. "We also made nightly visits to another part of the yard and hid our 'waste,'" by which she means the contents of the slop jar. "Everyone on the block tried to do that when no one else was looking."
I've also had my share of emergency situations when lights and water are knocked out, but for some reason, Eleanora's examples stick with me. Not to mention her intense desire to find a calling, thwarted by the Depression and the War. She wanted to become a doctor, quite unusual in the post World War I era, but the family couldn't afford to keep her in college and she had to find a job, which wasn't easy. She married in the late 1930s, but her first child died soon after a very difficult birth. Then her husband Dick was killed at the tail end of World War II. How she recovered her self-possession after these losses and talked her way into nurses training as a student ten years younger than all the others, is another story of a desire to serve tempered with an awareness of her differences. She requested a private room through her training, and unless a fellow nurse came to her in confidence, her classmates always called her Mrs. B.
Now when I teach young teachers, some of whose students are immigrant or African-American migrants from the south (with several stops along the way), I remember Eleanora and her "tribal" family, with its close intertwining of two large families, and the way they were raised not just by their own parents (her father was a tyrant) but also by the two model parents of Aunt Rose and Uncle John (my grandparents) down the block. We like to think we all have nuclear families, but it ain't necessarily so, now or then. Often relatives are as important to our lives as our own parents. Especially when they're the only ones left.
When the primary ones are gone, those lucky of us find subsitutes. Mine is a 94-year-old second cousin which means she is my father's first cousin, younger than he by eight years, and much much longer lived. Eleanora has been Eleanor to her lifetime American friends, but since she's reached her "maturity," she's allowed the final Italian "a" to reappear as it was on her birth certificate in 1917. Born to my great aunt Josephine, my grandmother's youngest sister, Eleanora was the oldest of three sisters (the girls) who lived down the street from my father and his three brothers (the boys). In fact, Eleanora's earliest memory is of sitting on the curb in front of her house with the youngest of the "boys," Frankie, and telling him, "I have another sister." Since my earliest memory is of staying with her and her mother, Aunt Josephine to me, when my sister was born, I count us as linked by the strange convolutions of family memory as well as blood.
Eleanora is one of the most "with it" people I know partly because she was a nurse and retains the savvy that comes from staring down doctors, admirals, generals. Working in various governmental agencies in Washington, she did indeed treat these higher ups, while her youngest sister Sadie typed documents in the Office of the President through four administrations: Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan. Eleanora and Sadie lived together for more than fifty years, moving from the center of our nation's capitol, to Arlington, Virginia, then to Silver Spring, Maryland, and finally to Dover, Delaware, where Sadie died in January of 2009. Typically, their fortunes peaked when they were in their fifties, and their huge apartment of 3 bedrooms in Arlington used to amaze me with its two bathrooms and living room/dining room you could almost roller skate across. It was there that I brought my first husband and young daughter to meet the "cousins and Aunt Jo."
They never had to discipline me, but their models of generous and rollicking adulthood (including their tiny mother Aunt Jo who had a smile as broad as a ball field) helped subdue my distress over my own father's wildness when I saw that they also rolled their eyes at his racist comments, and held hands in the back of his car when his driving threatened to send the car into the drink. (Here I'm remembering driving with him over the old Cooper River Bridge connecting downtown Charleston, South Carolina, with the suburb of Mount Pleasant. My parents moved to Charleston when I was four and never left its environs.)
Talking to Eleanora has also taught me a fair amount about forgiveness and facing the inevitable, but I think the biggest influence she's had on me, she who never had children, is as a model of adult guidance. She connects me to an era without television or cell phones, with only one family car driven to work daily by the father of the family, leaving the others to take the bus. When there was a huge snow fall in Pittsburgh one year and electricity and water service went out in the city, her parents dug a hole in an enormous snowbank and put their perishables there in a covered container. "We also made nightly visits to another part of the yard and hid our 'waste,'" by which she means the contents of the slop jar. "Everyone on the block tried to do that when no one else was looking."
I've also had my share of emergency situations when lights and water are knocked out, but for some reason, Eleanora's examples stick with me. Not to mention her intense desire to find a calling, thwarted by the Depression and the War. She wanted to become a doctor, quite unusual in the post World War I era, but the family couldn't afford to keep her in college and she had to find a job, which wasn't easy. She married in the late 1930s, but her first child died soon after a very difficult birth. Then her husband Dick was killed at the tail end of World War II. How she recovered her self-possession after these losses and talked her way into nurses training as a student ten years younger than all the others, is another story of a desire to serve tempered with an awareness of her differences. She requested a private room through her training, and unless a fellow nurse came to her in confidence, her classmates always called her Mrs. B.
Now when I teach young teachers, some of whose students are immigrant or African-American migrants from the south (with several stops along the way), I remember Eleanora and her "tribal" family, with its close intertwining of two large families, and the way they were raised not just by their own parents (her father was a tyrant) but also by the two model parents of Aunt Rose and Uncle John (my grandparents) down the block. We like to think we all have nuclear families, but it ain't necessarily so, now or then. Often relatives are as important to our lives as our own parents. Especially when they're the only ones left.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Margotlog: Life at Its Most Lush
Margotlog: Life at Its Most Lush
The magazine, I mean. Life Magazine as a large weekly magazine, with glossy paper and often full-page ads, came into existence in 1936 when Henry Luce bought the name from a smaller-scale humor "rag." Throughout World War II and the 1950s, Life brought images of war and peacetime prosperity into millions of American homes.
Why do we care? The ads! Better than any photograph (and the legion of outstanding photographers working for Life includes Margaret Bourke-White and Robert Capa), Life ads show the United States undergoing an enormous transition. Pages 2 and 3 from June 22, 1942: on the right a full-page ad for the Bell Telephone System with a drawing of a lovely young lady with cameo pin and soft curls at the back of her neck, speaking into a receiver of an telephone with a "cradle." "When war needs delay your call...let's put the blame right where it belongs--on the war." The subtext is that beauty and romance in its old-fashioned guise will be delayed, but accepted with a smile because of the war.
On the adjacent page, a young man rises in pencil drawings from a sailor to a chief petty officer. Though often at sea, his Arrow Collar make him so irresistible that Genevieve believes him when he boasts:
it won't be planes, ships or cannon
that will win the war, he'll do it
single-handed.
Note: Davy drags home knocked-out German, Italian, and Japanese, each caricatured so deftly they're unmistakable. His puss is ready for Gen to kiss.
By June 14,1943, Graduation graces the front cover of Life, but inside it's very much war business: Pages 44-45, Western Electric sends an "Uncle Sam-clothed" arm pointing to a plane flying above the clouds: "Radar puts its finger on our enemies," while on the facing page "Romance begins when Five O'Clock Shadow Ends," and the sailor with a cute snub-nose grins as he's surrounded by a bevy of pretty girls. It's an ad for Gem razor blades.
Is there any text on these pages: Yup. A thin column of pretty girls in backless dresses, the newest summer fashion. Begins the article: "Since many women will not be getting to the country or shore this summer, country fashions are going to the city." The implication is that everyone makes sacrifices for the war, but there are dandy compensations.
Finally from April 30, 1945, in the last year of the war, "Life's War Artists" are on the cover Inside there are pages of vivid images from war artists: note Bruce Mitchell's drawings from Iran where American soldiers and sailors off-load a ship with supplies for Russia, and trucks deliver Lend-Lease supplies over 750 miles of "frying desert and brutal mountains" to Karzin. But for my money, it's still the ads that tell the truest story: on the back cover, "Just like old times...Have a Coca-Cola," and in the midst of a soda fountain scene, with pretty girls in pageboy hairdos, the pipe-smoking father points over his soldier's shoulder to the two bars of ribbon. A footnote says, Our fighting men meet up with Coca-Cola many places overseas where it's bottled on the spot."
From this sampling, here's what strikes me: the "can-do" hearty goodwill and success of U.S. troops; the "can-do" and willing sacrifice of folks back home. This is commercial propaganda at its best. I'm serious. World War was brutal; hundreds of thousands of Americans died or were injured. But the war boosted the United States out of the Depression, gave it humming industry and purpose, united the country (at least on the surface), and pushed into existence social changes, like allowing African-Americans and Japanese-Americans into the military, which would have been hard to win otherwise. Not only that, it put women to work in industries where before they would not have been welcome. To incorporate these changes fully into peacetime society would take decades. I can't help but thrill to the sloughing of prejudice and willingness to work together for a truly momentous purpose which these issues of Life recognize.
Do we still have such energy and focused purpose? I won't answer that except to say, I pray that some galvanizing event will rouse us from our contentious lethargy and selfishness to create an all-out determined assault on the energy crisis which burns just below the surface. It's our war of the worlds today.
The magazine, I mean. Life Magazine as a large weekly magazine, with glossy paper and often full-page ads, came into existence in 1936 when Henry Luce bought the name from a smaller-scale humor "rag." Throughout World War II and the 1950s, Life brought images of war and peacetime prosperity into millions of American homes.
Why do we care? The ads! Better than any photograph (and the legion of outstanding photographers working for Life includes Margaret Bourke-White and Robert Capa), Life ads show the United States undergoing an enormous transition. Pages 2 and 3 from June 22, 1942: on the right a full-page ad for the Bell Telephone System with a drawing of a lovely young lady with cameo pin and soft curls at the back of her neck, speaking into a receiver of an telephone with a "cradle." "When war needs delay your call...let's put the blame right where it belongs--on the war." The subtext is that beauty and romance in its old-fashioned guise will be delayed, but accepted with a smile because of the war.
On the adjacent page, a young man rises in pencil drawings from a sailor to a chief petty officer. Though often at sea, his Arrow Collar make him so irresistible that Genevieve believes him when he boasts:
it won't be planes, ships or cannon
that will win the war, he'll do it
single-handed.
Note: Davy drags home knocked-out German, Italian, and Japanese, each caricatured so deftly they're unmistakable. His puss is ready for Gen to kiss.
By June 14,1943, Graduation graces the front cover of Life, but inside it's very much war business: Pages 44-45, Western Electric sends an "Uncle Sam-clothed" arm pointing to a plane flying above the clouds: "Radar puts its finger on our enemies," while on the facing page "Romance begins when Five O'Clock Shadow Ends," and the sailor with a cute snub-nose grins as he's surrounded by a bevy of pretty girls. It's an ad for Gem razor blades.
Is there any text on these pages: Yup. A thin column of pretty girls in backless dresses, the newest summer fashion. Begins the article: "Since many women will not be getting to the country or shore this summer, country fashions are going to the city." The implication is that everyone makes sacrifices for the war, but there are dandy compensations.
Finally from April 30, 1945, in the last year of the war, "Life's War Artists" are on the cover Inside there are pages of vivid images from war artists: note Bruce Mitchell's drawings from Iran where American soldiers and sailors off-load a ship with supplies for Russia, and trucks deliver Lend-Lease supplies over 750 miles of "frying desert and brutal mountains" to Karzin. But for my money, it's still the ads that tell the truest story: on the back cover, "Just like old times...Have a Coca-Cola," and in the midst of a soda fountain scene, with pretty girls in pageboy hairdos, the pipe-smoking father points over his soldier's shoulder to the two bars of ribbon. A footnote says, Our fighting men meet up with Coca-Cola many places overseas where it's bottled on the spot."
From this sampling, here's what strikes me: the "can-do" hearty goodwill and success of U.S. troops; the "can-do" and willing sacrifice of folks back home. This is commercial propaganda at its best. I'm serious. World War was brutal; hundreds of thousands of Americans died or were injured. But the war boosted the United States out of the Depression, gave it humming industry and purpose, united the country (at least on the surface), and pushed into existence social changes, like allowing African-Americans and Japanese-Americans into the military, which would have been hard to win otherwise. Not only that, it put women to work in industries where before they would not have been welcome. To incorporate these changes fully into peacetime society would take decades. I can't help but thrill to the sloughing of prejudice and willingness to work together for a truly momentous purpose which these issues of Life recognize.
Do we still have such energy and focused purpose? I won't answer that except to say, I pray that some galvanizing event will rouse us from our contentious lethargy and selfishness to create an all-out determined assault on the energy crisis which burns just below the surface. It's our war of the worlds today.
Monday, December 5, 2011
Margotlog: Cats, Catz, Katz
Margotlog: Cats, Catz, Katz
The first that belonged to me was a small tiger cat who probably wandered into the courtyard at The Old Citadel and was adopted. I remember this tiger car more in losing it than in its care. But lost, it haunted my walks to school. I must have been in the second grade.
My calls echoed down narrow Charleston streets--Vanderhorst, was the one I remember, notable as much for its long and non-English name, as for what it took me past--the side of a large white church whose front had stout white columns; many ramshackled "narrow end to the street" Charleston houses, which hadn't been painted in almost a century.
All kinds of stray dogs and cats wandered that long street to the "lower school" of Ashley Hall. I called and called over many days, until one morning a little tiger cat, barely grown from a kitten, came bounding up to me. Though, even then, I sensed it was not the same cat, I scooped it up and carried it to Mrs. Watkins, my beautiful second-grade teacher with the white pageboy. She like my mother was a "Citadel professor's wife." I couldn't keep the kitten in the classroom, she said, but we could take it to the principal's house and the principal would call my mother. When I came home that afternoon, there it was in our huge Old Citadel kitchen with the dark brown painted floor, waiting and mewing its little pink mouth.
Only now do I imagine what my mother had to do to retrieve it: first, leave my younger sister with the neighbor across the hall, then walk herself down long Vanderhorst street, across the playing fields of Ashley Hall behind the row of two-story little houses where the "lower school" classes met, then stepping up onto a raised copse of trees, she entered the principal's little house. What was her name, this formidable woman with the iron grey hair pulled back in a bun, and the steel spectacles? Maybe it will come back to me. Whether she actually lived in that little house--dark green with white trim--or merely had her office there, I don't know. Only one other time did I take notice of it. That was in sixth grade. By then I had moved upstairs to the second small house and become one of the "big girls" in the lower school. For some reason my teacher then, Mrs. McCrae, sent me and another girl across the playing fields to the principal's house. I couldn't help myself: there on her desk (in her absence) stood stacks of achievement tests.
This was way before the years of No Child Left Behind--that Bush-era mandate for frequent standardized testing which so bedevils educators today. But Ashley Hall did test its students toward the end of every year, and I, one of the known "smart girls," had a yen to achieve so strong that I overstepped the boundaries between what was right and what was wrong: I looked at the ranking of the girls in my grade. There was my name, right at the top. As far as I can remember, it was the only strictly illegal thing I did until much much later.
The Catz kept coming, though not after a doggie period when we moved to Mount Pleasant, across the Cooper River Bridge, and owned first a red hound named Rover, and then a stray pooch my sister named Missy. Missy was sweet, with a round belly, and black ears and tail; her body tan like a Siamese. One afternoon I shashayed home in my starched crinolines and there in the shed, my sister sat with Missy and four puppies. My sister, with her soft heart, was weeping: she had seen the birth. I WAS way too far gone into teen posturing to pay much attention.
The first that belonged to me was a small tiger cat who probably wandered into the courtyard at The Old Citadel and was adopted. I remember this tiger car more in losing it than in its care. But lost, it haunted my walks to school. I must have been in the second grade.
My calls echoed down narrow Charleston streets--Vanderhorst, was the one I remember, notable as much for its long and non-English name, as for what it took me past--the side of a large white church whose front had stout white columns; many ramshackled "narrow end to the street" Charleston houses, which hadn't been painted in almost a century.
All kinds of stray dogs and cats wandered that long street to the "lower school" of Ashley Hall. I called and called over many days, until one morning a little tiger cat, barely grown from a kitten, came bounding up to me. Though, even then, I sensed it was not the same cat, I scooped it up and carried it to Mrs. Watkins, my beautiful second-grade teacher with the white pageboy. She like my mother was a "Citadel professor's wife." I couldn't keep the kitten in the classroom, she said, but we could take it to the principal's house and the principal would call my mother. When I came home that afternoon, there it was in our huge Old Citadel kitchen with the dark brown painted floor, waiting and mewing its little pink mouth.
Only now do I imagine what my mother had to do to retrieve it: first, leave my younger sister with the neighbor across the hall, then walk herself down long Vanderhorst street, across the playing fields of Ashley Hall behind the row of two-story little houses where the "lower school" classes met, then stepping up onto a raised copse of trees, she entered the principal's little house. What was her name, this formidable woman with the iron grey hair pulled back in a bun, and the steel spectacles? Maybe it will come back to me. Whether she actually lived in that little house--dark green with white trim--or merely had her office there, I don't know. Only one other time did I take notice of it. That was in sixth grade. By then I had moved upstairs to the second small house and become one of the "big girls" in the lower school. For some reason my teacher then, Mrs. McCrae, sent me and another girl across the playing fields to the principal's house. I couldn't help myself: there on her desk (in her absence) stood stacks of achievement tests.
This was way before the years of No Child Left Behind--that Bush-era mandate for frequent standardized testing which so bedevils educators today. But Ashley Hall did test its students toward the end of every year, and I, one of the known "smart girls," had a yen to achieve so strong that I overstepped the boundaries between what was right and what was wrong: I looked at the ranking of the girls in my grade. There was my name, right at the top. As far as I can remember, it was the only strictly illegal thing I did until much much later.
The Catz kept coming, though not after a doggie period when we moved to Mount Pleasant, across the Cooper River Bridge, and owned first a red hound named Rover, and then a stray pooch my sister named Missy. Missy was sweet, with a round belly, and black ears and tail; her body tan like a Siamese. One afternoon I shashayed home in my starched crinolines and there in the shed, my sister sat with Missy and four puppies. My sister, with her soft heart, was weeping: she had seen the birth. I WAS way too far gone into teen posturing to pay much attention.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Margotlog: One More Round with Tricky Dicky
Margotlog: One More Round with Tricky Dicky
I thought I'd never forget my outrage at Richard Nixon in the presidency (1969-74), but so I have, until now, when listening to Barbara Tuchman's occasional pieces brings his astonishing depredations roiling back. Yet, he was in office when some of the cornerstones of our contemporary era were put in place: the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act, even abolishing the draft and putting in place an all-civilian army. He also visited China and shook Mao's hand, the first American President to do so, which signaled to Russia that we were cultivating another Communist power, and may have furthered the rounds of talks to limit American and Russian nuclear arms proliferation.
Two things stand out in Tuchman's incisive considerations: that the U.S. as a whole was just emerging from its Communist "witch-hunt"--she cites such activity as a recurring strain in the American character--all the way back to the Massachusetts witch trials in 1690. Nixon had risen to prominence in the House Un-American Activities Committee which helped finger Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy. He also created a "pink sheet" against his opponent in the 1949 California Senate campaign. This kind of suspicious sniffing around, along with a taste for undercover politics helped fuel the three major mistakes that led to his forced resignation (rather than impeachment). First as president, his tape-recording daily notes about his "agents," and then these agents' dirty tricks: bugging political opponents, harrassing activist groups, and breaking into Democratic party headquarters to steal supposedly incriminating papers--the Watergate affair. Finally his undercover bombing of Cambodia and Laos, once it was exposed, not only enraged the legions of anti-war activists but also added to Nixon's reputation for going underground to proceed outside legal channels.
I remember loathing him. But it was more for the man's weasel looks and his sneaky "smile-in-your-face" while stabbing you in the back behavior that I remember. We shouldn't blame the weasel, after all, who is no more than a small predator trying to sustain itself in a narrow environmental niche. Barbara Tuchman, writing in the 1980s, suggests that the American presidency under John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon had risen above its supposed limitations to act outside the checks and balances forged in the constitution. Now, when our various heads of state--Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton or our country's president Barack Obama--are so mightily opposed and stymied by gridlock in Congress or state legislature, when the legislative branches of government seem unable to reach consensus and pass necessary measures to reduce a mountain of national debt--I muse back on this era when presidents operated with sweeping powers, and wonder what the heck we can expect next. For all-out brawls, just this side of civil war, it's hard to imagine anymore more wild than the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 or the various occupation of capitol grounds and flight of legislators in contemporary Wisconsin. Political theater at its wild and wooliest. I guess I'd rather have the conflict out in the open rather than, as Nixon tried, secretive and illegal. But when it means an obstruction of necessary government, I'd like to dispense with both.
I thought I'd never forget my outrage at Richard Nixon in the presidency (1969-74), but so I have, until now, when listening to Barbara Tuchman's occasional pieces brings his astonishing depredations roiling back. Yet, he was in office when some of the cornerstones of our contemporary era were put in place: the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act, even abolishing the draft and putting in place an all-civilian army. He also visited China and shook Mao's hand, the first American President to do so, which signaled to Russia that we were cultivating another Communist power, and may have furthered the rounds of talks to limit American and Russian nuclear arms proliferation.
Two things stand out in Tuchman's incisive considerations: that the U.S. as a whole was just emerging from its Communist "witch-hunt"--she cites such activity as a recurring strain in the American character--all the way back to the Massachusetts witch trials in 1690. Nixon had risen to prominence in the House Un-American Activities Committee which helped finger Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy. He also created a "pink sheet" against his opponent in the 1949 California Senate campaign. This kind of suspicious sniffing around, along with a taste for undercover politics helped fuel the three major mistakes that led to his forced resignation (rather than impeachment). First as president, his tape-recording daily notes about his "agents," and then these agents' dirty tricks: bugging political opponents, harrassing activist groups, and breaking into Democratic party headquarters to steal supposedly incriminating papers--the Watergate affair. Finally his undercover bombing of Cambodia and Laos, once it was exposed, not only enraged the legions of anti-war activists but also added to Nixon's reputation for going underground to proceed outside legal channels.
I remember loathing him. But it was more for the man's weasel looks and his sneaky "smile-in-your-face" while stabbing you in the back behavior that I remember. We shouldn't blame the weasel, after all, who is no more than a small predator trying to sustain itself in a narrow environmental niche. Barbara Tuchman, writing in the 1980s, suggests that the American presidency under John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon had risen above its supposed limitations to act outside the checks and balances forged in the constitution. Now, when our various heads of state--Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton or our country's president Barack Obama--are so mightily opposed and stymied by gridlock in Congress or state legislature, when the legislative branches of government seem unable to reach consensus and pass necessary measures to reduce a mountain of national debt--I muse back on this era when presidents operated with sweeping powers, and wonder what the heck we can expect next. For all-out brawls, just this side of civil war, it's hard to imagine anymore more wild than the Democratic Convention in Chicago in 1968 or the various occupation of capitol grounds and flight of legislators in contemporary Wisconsin. Political theater at its wild and wooliest. I guess I'd rather have the conflict out in the open rather than, as Nixon tried, secretive and illegal. But when it means an obstruction of necessary government, I'd like to dispense with both.
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