Margotlog: Biophilia
My husband has just acquired the new American Heritage dictionary, advertised as having several hundred new words. I haven't checked yet, but I bet one of them is "biophilia," new to me when encountered recently in a New Yorker article. The great naturalist E.O.Wilson (I'm about to look him up too) is remembered from a trip to Jerusalem for paying almost no attention to Holy sites, but instead being fascinated by the behavior of ants around an ancient wall. Biophilia: fascination with the natural world.
Is there a word for the interaction of humans and what we pleasantly call "nature," separating it from us just enough to get a grip on it? Yes: it's sociobiology, also one of E.O. Wilson's words.
It's come to my attention that some of the very young are quite interested in the natural world. Before they graduate to dinosaurs, they take to shells--counting, and ordering them, peering into the spiraled innards. Or they discover hawk feathers in the bushes between their house and the neighbor's and hunch over a guidebook, trying to identify who met its demise. Hearing about Jonah, they shout, "cool," and want to get inside with their little lantern and explore the watery cathedral.
Most of us fall into a more pedestrian category: we love what we euphemistically call "pets." Turtles, hamsters, possibly canaries, cats, dogs. The rest of the natural world can go hang, but we love our critters. My daughter was born into a household where cats named Clarence and Wilhelmina already prowled. I haven't proved this with her, but I expect some of her early memories include furry tails, meows, and big eyes peering from the shadows. No surprise, she's now hostess, parent or what have you to two cats, Beau and Norma, and lately a huge white Pyrennese named Winston. (Does he look like Winston Churchill? Maybe a bit with the jowls and the loose-lipped grin.) But ask her to extend her love to birds or trees and she gives me one of her slightly bored, tolerant looks, of the loving off-spring facing a parent's inexplicable tic.
Now I've looked up E.O.Wilson, a mymecologist--student of ants. No surprise, then, his focus on Jerusalem mymecon. More to our point, Wilson has developed a theory that the human mind is shaped by genetic inheritance--culture and language have something to do with shaping how we develop, but we are all hard-wired for certain behaviors, like associations in groups, though our groups don't resemble ant colonies, with one enormous, sexual female and many asexual workers. On Human Nature, 1969, and The Ants, 1991, carry forward Wilson's theories and research. As to biophilia, he coined it, and yes, it's in the new American Heritage dictionary.
Here's my thought of the day: that we develop interest in living things outside us in rather predictable patterns--from small moveable shells or turtles or feathers, to the places where they might live--seasides where we build drip castles. Then dinosaurs take over: we develop that overweening pride in association with what is huge which often threatens to overwhelm us with toxins, wars, etc. Then we settle down a bit; we want companionship, and either with parents' help or a bit later on our own, we acquire pets we can cuddle, talk to, watch walk around, as we laugh at their nonbothered fixation with smelling body parts.
Finally, when we're close to a half-century old, we develop an awareness of larger nature--the trees that shade our homes, the rivers that carry our canoes, the birds that come and go, singing the seasons. If we're really lucky (I'm biased of course), we take to gardening, watching bees in our flowers and grasping a tiny piece of the intricate dance of life. And if we're just a little bit cracked, we decide it's our job to feed the birds. This is my stage in life. For a while, I could recruit several 12-year-old neighbor girls to help if I had to be out of town. I paid them a bit, and they filled the bird bath and spread sunflower seeds and corn about and in feeders.
Not anymore--they've grown beyond this. They've entered late childhood, early adolescence when the focus is entirely on the human group and what part we want to and are allowed to play. Today, with our brown winter city about to undergo a winter storm (it's late February!), I am left wishing for a broader swath of biophilia. I'm up a creek to find stand-in bird-lovers.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Margotlog: Mexican Masks
Margotlog: Mexican Masks
Those years we visited Isla Mujeres every February, we coveted Mexican masks like bits of the sun and moon--a tiny scrap worth more than gold to take home. My husband always bought Mexican beer the day before we caught the ferry, then as the plane lifted over turquoise water, he'd drink a beery salute to our beloved island, his last taste of happiness expiring as blue-green turned to grey, then white.
Not a beer drinker myself, I thought if I captured a face from Isla, I might pretend I was a conquistadore or a mermaid with flowing locks and huge finny tail. During an afternoon stroll from our hotel to the town plaza, rebuilt after the hurricane, we window-shopped down Benito Juarez Avenue (Am I making this up?) and paused at the corner near the plaza. There in the only store resembling a dime store, masks of rather inferior quality gathered dust behind the glass.
The true mask shop perched on a tiny hill at the ocean side of the plaza. Though damaged by the hurricano, it hadn't been as destroyed as the parrot restaurant or an adjacent disco--both of whom now exposed carcasses of cables and crumbling walls to the crash of waves and cries of gulls. The shop was run by a woman with a more European than Mayan look, though she was clearly Mexican, given her accent. We'd learned to identify visitors with more Spanish in them--their hair curled and grayed, their faces with wider lips, paler skin. They often wore westernized clothes--odd usage, that "westernized," since we were further west than Spain itself, and the clothes probably came from the U.S.
Like a museum, her shop demanded careful study and contemplation. The conquistadores had long grey or short black beards--something the native people never possessed--and their eyes--beyond the round openings cut in their faces--were blue. Perhaps they had conquored simply because of their oddity, though we certainly knew about the scourges of disease which actually went both ways, European smallpox for New World syphilis. The mermaids with their finny tales also had blue eyes--like the Spaniards come from the deep. We studied the "jagulars" (as we called them with a touch of Christopher Robin) who sprouted real whiskers from their black-dotted, orange faces and tufted ears. And the panthers so black and menacing that we quaked under the staring golden glass eyes.
The double faces intrigued us most: half Spaniard/half jagular, or half moon/half sun. There was something fitting about these clearly announced hybrids, like Isla itself perched between jungle and ocean, Spaniard and Mayan, rocked constantly in the division of these faces.
Eventually we made our first purchase of a mask: of thin though sturdy metal, more round than long, it sported a fiery sun with wicked lips who was kissing in the center a pale damsel moon--the sun the conqueror, the moon the pliant beloved. We didn't buy it at the mask shop, but asked that a clearly Mayan young woman lift it from among its dusty cousins in the five and dime. Cheaper and perhaps more durable than the wooden and far more ancient masks hung above the waves. Eventually, we would also purchase a mask from the lady of the shop, but this was later, when we had more gringo cash, and when having something authentic (whatever that meant) was more important than bringing home a charming replica of our days and nights, sun, sand, clacking palms and sweet, kissable moon.
Those years we visited Isla Mujeres every February, we coveted Mexican masks like bits of the sun and moon--a tiny scrap worth more than gold to take home. My husband always bought Mexican beer the day before we caught the ferry, then as the plane lifted over turquoise water, he'd drink a beery salute to our beloved island, his last taste of happiness expiring as blue-green turned to grey, then white.
Not a beer drinker myself, I thought if I captured a face from Isla, I might pretend I was a conquistadore or a mermaid with flowing locks and huge finny tail. During an afternoon stroll from our hotel to the town plaza, rebuilt after the hurricane, we window-shopped down Benito Juarez Avenue (Am I making this up?) and paused at the corner near the plaza. There in the only store resembling a dime store, masks of rather inferior quality gathered dust behind the glass.
The true mask shop perched on a tiny hill at the ocean side of the plaza. Though damaged by the hurricano, it hadn't been as destroyed as the parrot restaurant or an adjacent disco--both of whom now exposed carcasses of cables and crumbling walls to the crash of waves and cries of gulls. The shop was run by a woman with a more European than Mayan look, though she was clearly Mexican, given her accent. We'd learned to identify visitors with more Spanish in them--their hair curled and grayed, their faces with wider lips, paler skin. They often wore westernized clothes--odd usage, that "westernized," since we were further west than Spain itself, and the clothes probably came from the U.S.
Like a museum, her shop demanded careful study and contemplation. The conquistadores had long grey or short black beards--something the native people never possessed--and their eyes--beyond the round openings cut in their faces--were blue. Perhaps they had conquored simply because of their oddity, though we certainly knew about the scourges of disease which actually went both ways, European smallpox for New World syphilis. The mermaids with their finny tales also had blue eyes--like the Spaniards come from the deep. We studied the "jagulars" (as we called them with a touch of Christopher Robin) who sprouted real whiskers from their black-dotted, orange faces and tufted ears. And the panthers so black and menacing that we quaked under the staring golden glass eyes.
The double faces intrigued us most: half Spaniard/half jagular, or half moon/half sun. There was something fitting about these clearly announced hybrids, like Isla itself perched between jungle and ocean, Spaniard and Mayan, rocked constantly in the division of these faces.
Eventually we made our first purchase of a mask: of thin though sturdy metal, more round than long, it sported a fiery sun with wicked lips who was kissing in the center a pale damsel moon--the sun the conqueror, the moon the pliant beloved. We didn't buy it at the mask shop, but asked that a clearly Mayan young woman lift it from among its dusty cousins in the five and dime. Cheaper and perhaps more durable than the wooden and far more ancient masks hung above the waves. Eventually, we would also purchase a mask from the lady of the shop, but this was later, when we had more gringo cash, and when having something authentic (whatever that meant) was more important than bringing home a charming replica of our days and nights, sun, sand, clacking palms and sweet, kissable moon.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Margotlog: She Wanted to Be a Doctor
Margotlog: She Wanted to Be a Doctor
You could probably count to fifty the number of American women who became doctors until the 1960s. Let's imagine it's 1930. My cousin Eleonora was 13. Her youngest sister Sadie had fallen off a stone wall--this was Pittsburgh with high hills. Holding Sadie's hand on one side, with her mother, my aunt Jo, holding the other, Eleonora watched the doctor stitch up Sadie's torn knee. As the doctor came downstairs and said good-bye, he patted Eleonora's shoulder: "This young lady would make a wonderful nurse!"
"Oh, no, Doctor," Eleonora responded, "I want to be a doctor just like you." She'd watched their dogs give birth, she'd fetched water and cool cloths when her two younger sisters had fevers. She'd held slop basins for stomach flu. She was intrepid. But a doctor she was not to be because two things intervened: the Great Depression, and World War II.
I imagine it took great self-confidence in those days to claim for yourself a profession so entirely populated by men. Eleonora had it, in part because her father--in many ways the family's nemesis--refused to see his three daughters mistreated. Eleonora began first grade a week late because the family took a brief vacation. When she entered the classroom and the teacher sent her to the blackboard, Eleonora broke the long piece of chalk. The teacher--nameless and featureless--hit her open palm with a ruler until it bled. Eleonora's father was enraged. The next morning he accompanied her to school and asked the teacher to step out into the hall.
Remembering this now, Eleonora adds quickly, "My father could be charming, but he meant what he said. 'If you hit my child, or any other child again and I hear about it, I'll see you removed from the classroom.'" My branch of the family called him, years later, "Uncle Nick." The last name Eleonora's family used was "Carter," though Sadie, grown-up but still rascally, would whisper to me, "Our last name was really 'Capone,' just like the gangster. But our father changed it. He didn't want us associated with crime." The whisper gave away the difficulty faced by Italian immigrants in the period before World War II. Often illiterate, speaking no English, they formed part of those "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" from Emma Lazarus' poem written to raise money for the Statue of Liberty's pedestal, then inscribed inside the base of the statue. It was easy for native-born Americans with English last names to discriminate against them. And Al Capone's shenanigans didn't help.
Now when I think about the Statue of Liberty, the last lines of Lazarus' poem ring in my ears--
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door--
I am deeply moved by the promise and the danger this entrance represented. So many immigrants were sent back--those with any perceived criminality, or illness, though Ellis Island did house and doctor some who were ill. Call It Sleep by Henry Roth, that modern classic first published in 1934 and republished thirty years later to sell one million copies in the Avon edition, educated me more fully about the lower East Side Jewish immigrant life than I could have gained any other way, outsider that I was, though living in New York and going to graduate school at Columbia.
But as I matured and became more attuned to what it meant to be an immigrant, especially those that entered the U.S. after the 1880s, those who found The Statue of Liberty both guarding the harbor and lighting their way forward, the more I grasped the wrenching, and often harsh environment waiting for them. For my father's Italian-American family--beginning with my great-grandfather the Reverend Leonardo D'Anna who came through the port of New York in the early 1880s, as a religions refugee, a Protestant from Sicily--I know, truly outlandish--and ending with my grandfather's entrance through Ellis Island in 1900--also a religious refugee of a sort, in that he'd renounced the priesthood, but hadn't yet found his calling as a lawyer and Protestant minister--the immigrant experience deeply their psyche.
Even my father who married my German-American mother because, in addition to loving her, he wanted her to make him "thoroughly American," even he, who moved us to South Carolina where he taught at The Citadel, even our family, so removed from the Italian clan in the north was deeply affected by confused ideas about who we were. It's no wonder that I thrive teaching classes of students from Liberia, Somalia, Laos, Thailand, Mexico, and students whose ancestors were brought as slaves to this country, centuries ago. Emma Lazarus' words included all our families: those "huddled masses yearning to breathe free." If Presidents' Day means anything except a pro forma recognition of some who shone like beacons and others who threatened to sink the ship, it means a celebration of the captains that kept that promise of America burning, and opened the "golden door."
You could probably count to fifty the number of American women who became doctors until the 1960s. Let's imagine it's 1930. My cousin Eleonora was 13. Her youngest sister Sadie had fallen off a stone wall--this was Pittsburgh with high hills. Holding Sadie's hand on one side, with her mother, my aunt Jo, holding the other, Eleonora watched the doctor stitch up Sadie's torn knee. As the doctor came downstairs and said good-bye, he patted Eleonora's shoulder: "This young lady would make a wonderful nurse!"
"Oh, no, Doctor," Eleonora responded, "I want to be a doctor just like you." She'd watched their dogs give birth, she'd fetched water and cool cloths when her two younger sisters had fevers. She'd held slop basins for stomach flu. She was intrepid. But a doctor she was not to be because two things intervened: the Great Depression, and World War II.
I imagine it took great self-confidence in those days to claim for yourself a profession so entirely populated by men. Eleonora had it, in part because her father--in many ways the family's nemesis--refused to see his three daughters mistreated. Eleonora began first grade a week late because the family took a brief vacation. When she entered the classroom and the teacher sent her to the blackboard, Eleonora broke the long piece of chalk. The teacher--nameless and featureless--hit her open palm with a ruler until it bled. Eleonora's father was enraged. The next morning he accompanied her to school and asked the teacher to step out into the hall.
Remembering this now, Eleonora adds quickly, "My father could be charming, but he meant what he said. 'If you hit my child, or any other child again and I hear about it, I'll see you removed from the classroom.'" My branch of the family called him, years later, "Uncle Nick." The last name Eleonora's family used was "Carter," though Sadie, grown-up but still rascally, would whisper to me, "Our last name was really 'Capone,' just like the gangster. But our father changed it. He didn't want us associated with crime." The whisper gave away the difficulty faced by Italian immigrants in the period before World War II. Often illiterate, speaking no English, they formed part of those "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" from Emma Lazarus' poem written to raise money for the Statue of Liberty's pedestal, then inscribed inside the base of the statue. It was easy for native-born Americans with English last names to discriminate against them. And Al Capone's shenanigans didn't help.
Now when I think about the Statue of Liberty, the last lines of Lazarus' poem ring in my ears--
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door--
I am deeply moved by the promise and the danger this entrance represented. So many immigrants were sent back--those with any perceived criminality, or illness, though Ellis Island did house and doctor some who were ill. Call It Sleep by Henry Roth, that modern classic first published in 1934 and republished thirty years later to sell one million copies in the Avon edition, educated me more fully about the lower East Side Jewish immigrant life than I could have gained any other way, outsider that I was, though living in New York and going to graduate school at Columbia.
But as I matured and became more attuned to what it meant to be an immigrant, especially those that entered the U.S. after the 1880s, those who found The Statue of Liberty both guarding the harbor and lighting their way forward, the more I grasped the wrenching, and often harsh environment waiting for them. For my father's Italian-American family--beginning with my great-grandfather the Reverend Leonardo D'Anna who came through the port of New York in the early 1880s, as a religions refugee, a Protestant from Sicily--I know, truly outlandish--and ending with my grandfather's entrance through Ellis Island in 1900--also a religious refugee of a sort, in that he'd renounced the priesthood, but hadn't yet found his calling as a lawyer and Protestant minister--the immigrant experience deeply their psyche.
Even my father who married my German-American mother because, in addition to loving her, he wanted her to make him "thoroughly American," even he, who moved us to South Carolina where he taught at The Citadel, even our family, so removed from the Italian clan in the north was deeply affected by confused ideas about who we were. It's no wonder that I thrive teaching classes of students from Liberia, Somalia, Laos, Thailand, Mexico, and students whose ancestors were brought as slaves to this country, centuries ago. Emma Lazarus' words included all our families: those "huddled masses yearning to breathe free." If Presidents' Day means anything except a pro forma recognition of some who shone like beacons and others who threatened to sink the ship, it means a celebration of the captains that kept that promise of America burning, and opened the "golden door."
Friday, February 17, 2012
Margotlog: Eleonora
Margotlog: Eleonora
She was named Eleonora after her grandmother, who in her turn must have been named for the great actress Eleonora Duse (1858-1924), a great rage in Pittsburgh among Italians recently immigrated who remained enamored of their country’s culture and heritage. To me, now, ninety-four years after her birth in 1917, Eleanora is the only living remnant of that culture, a second cousin, who grew up with her two sisters almost next door to my father and his three brothers for many years of their young lives.
Luckily for me, that connection proved strong and elastic enough to bring her rather early into my life, for she was the occasion of my first memory. “Sandy’s so ‘decided,’” I exclaimed at age two and a half. Sandy being the rather doughty, snappy cocker spaniel who greeted us at the door of her parents’ home. I had come to stay with them while my sister was being born. It was late February of 1945, and another world war had taken Dick, Eleonora’s husband, to the Pacific. Only much later do I learn that within months of my visit, she would receive a telegram stating that his ship had been sunk by the Japanese. It was the second trauma of her life.
I retain very sharp recollections of the house Eleonora shared then with her mother and father, reached like many Pittsburgh houses up several flights of cement steps. Once inside we stood in a large hallway with an interior staircase dimly visible at the back. To the right was a brightly lit dining room where Uncle Nick sat at the end of the long table, a white napkin spread over his bulging stomach. Sandy’s nails click across the polished floor as she barks and waddles toward us: “Sandy’s so ‘decided,’” I repeat, mimicking as best I can Eleonora’s amusing explanation.
The scene goes dark and then another is illuminated from the same visit. I’m squeezed beside Aunt Josephine, Eleonora’s mother, a tiny woman with wide, smiling mouth and expressive hands. She is playing on a spinet organ a very imposing and sonorous piece called “The Holy City.” I try to sing with her the elaborate name “Jeru-sa-lem,” and fail because I am so intrigued by her little hands that race up and down the keys, making big arpeggios in the bass.
In the last part of this memory, Aunt Jo and Eleanora are putting me to bed upstairs in a dark, imposing bedstead, between thick white sheets. Opposite is a bureau with a mirror that shows myself sitting up in bed, staring at the glimmering mirror which holds my rather heavy-featured face.
After that, the scene goes dark, until six weeks later when we all are stuffed in an attic. Later I’ll learn that my parents, newly born sister and I are living in a house in Beaver, Pennsylvania, not far from the Beaver River which has oveflowed in spring rains. Water laps at the doorway and will soon enter the downstairs. We have retreated to the attic where we sleep on pallets on the floor. I’m aware of Eleonora’s large shape arranged beside me and of two dim little windows at either end of the cavernous room. The water soon recedes; we return to the lower stories. Eleonora probably remains to help my mother clean up the mess, but I have no memory of that. It will be several years before I see her again, and by then my parents, sister and I will have moved to Charleston, South Carolina, and are living in the huge pseudo-fortress called The Old Citadel. I am six.
She was named Eleonora after her grandmother, who in her turn must have been named for the great actress Eleonora Duse (1858-1924), a great rage in Pittsburgh among Italians recently immigrated who remained enamored of their country’s culture and heritage. To me, now, ninety-four years after her birth in 1917, Eleanora is the only living remnant of that culture, a second cousin, who grew up with her two sisters almost next door to my father and his three brothers for many years of their young lives.
Luckily for me, that connection proved strong and elastic enough to bring her rather early into my life, for she was the occasion of my first memory. “Sandy’s so ‘decided,’” I exclaimed at age two and a half. Sandy being the rather doughty, snappy cocker spaniel who greeted us at the door of her parents’ home. I had come to stay with them while my sister was being born. It was late February of 1945, and another world war had taken Dick, Eleonora’s husband, to the Pacific. Only much later do I learn that within months of my visit, she would receive a telegram stating that his ship had been sunk by the Japanese. It was the second trauma of her life.
I retain very sharp recollections of the house Eleonora shared then with her mother and father, reached like many Pittsburgh houses up several flights of cement steps. Once inside we stood in a large hallway with an interior staircase dimly visible at the back. To the right was a brightly lit dining room where Uncle Nick sat at the end of the long table, a white napkin spread over his bulging stomach. Sandy’s nails click across the polished floor as she barks and waddles toward us: “Sandy’s so ‘decided,’” I repeat, mimicking as best I can Eleonora’s amusing explanation.
The scene goes dark and then another is illuminated from the same visit. I’m squeezed beside Aunt Josephine, Eleonora’s mother, a tiny woman with wide, smiling mouth and expressive hands. She is playing on a spinet organ a very imposing and sonorous piece called “The Holy City.” I try to sing with her the elaborate name “Jeru-sa-lem,” and fail because I am so intrigued by her little hands that race up and down the keys, making big arpeggios in the bass.
In the last part of this memory, Aunt Jo and Eleanora are putting me to bed upstairs in a dark, imposing bedstead, between thick white sheets. Opposite is a bureau with a mirror that shows myself sitting up in bed, staring at the glimmering mirror which holds my rather heavy-featured face.
After that, the scene goes dark, until six weeks later when we all are stuffed in an attic. Later I’ll learn that my parents, newly born sister and I are living in a house in Beaver, Pennsylvania, not far from the Beaver River which has oveflowed in spring rains. Water laps at the doorway and will soon enter the downstairs. We have retreated to the attic where we sleep on pallets on the floor. I’m aware of Eleonora’s large shape arranged beside me and of two dim little windows at either end of the cavernous room. The water soon recedes; we return to the lower stories. Eleonora probably remains to help my mother clean up the mess, but I have no memory of that. It will be several years before I see her again, and by then my parents, sister and I will have moved to Charleston, South Carolina, and are living in the huge pseudo-fortress called The Old Citadel. I am six.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Margotlog: Boy Soldiers
Margotlog: Boy Soldiers
War fascinates me--maybe by studying it elsewhere, I hope to keep it away from here. Yet, there's more to it: war with its upheaval, its extremes of fear, heroism, death, destruction, hope and camaraderie shows the human condition at its most extreme. Several days ago the citizens of Dresden celebrated the anniversary of the fire-bombing of Dresden by American forces. My experience of the Germans today, limited as it is, suggests that they accept with deep regret their nation's culpability in beginning World War II and perpetrating the Holocaust, the world's deadliest, most prolonged institutionalization of violence. Yet the firebombing of the beautiful city of Dresden, committed after it was clear the Allies had won the war, stands out for its wanton destruction. I can mourn the loss of an ancient city and light a candle in my mind to what its citizens suffered and over the years have been able to rebuild.
Recently I've been listening to A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah (2007), who as a boy of thirteen was forced into combat in Sierra Leon's civil war. At the start of the memoir, he is twelve years old, a fan of American rap music, an enthusiastic soccer play, a good scholar at a distant school, who just happens to be visiting his parents in their village when rebels attack, sending the inhabitants fleeing in all directions. For days he wandered alone in the forest; for weeks and months he and other boys banded together, sometimes being held hostage briefly by villagers until their innocence became obvious, then fed, and forced to move on. The band of seven boys swam in strange rivers, ate fruit they'd never seen before, ran for miles, for days away from the sounds of fighting. Circling back to the edge of his parents' village, the boys were detained overnight by a kindly banana farmer. In the morning as they headed toward what he expected to be a joyful reunion with his parents and brother, the war engulfed his village and once again he and his companions fled.
Eventually they were corralled and brought into a government-held village. Given work in the kitchen, still Ishmael suffered excrutiating migraines and could not sleep. He already had seen too many dead bodies, too many people shot, too many burned villages, and he sensed that the war would soon claim him as well. That it did: the government soldiers enlisted the boys, and began training them. In a hut with two younger boys, age 7 and 11, Ishmael finds that his migraine headaches are gone, yet he still cannot sleep, and often he shakes uncontrollably. After days of training--the younger boys can't even carry their AKA rifles--the boy soldiers are sent into battle, outfitted with new shorts and American brand running shoes.
In the first battle, one of his companions from the days of wandering is shot and dies beside him, as does one of the little boys. Here again the clarity, calm and beauty of the writing transfixes the horror of the subject. The sentences could not be more simple: Beah shows us his little companion's feet shaking, his hand holding his side, which when removed allows blood to pour out, the brightness of his gaze slowly turn dull as his eyes sink into his head, and finally, as Ishmael and another boy lift the wounded boy's arms onto their shoulders to carry him away, his quiet passing.
Surely recounting such experiences is one of the most difficult efforts for a writer. Making clarity of confusion, finding calm for reflection amid the days of flight and chaos of battle, and finally in both precise description and striking metaphors guiding us above the conflict to watch the sun eat the day and give birth to the moon and stars--all these elements give painful joy to this tragic story.
I have many more chapters to go, but from other reading, I have some sense of the extent of this war, in which soldiers constantly switched sides, in which the rich diamond mines enticed many into the conflict, in which thousands of civilians were brutally raped and murdered or horribly wounded--arms, or hands, or legs cut off--and various attempts from the outside, including a UN-sponsored force of Angolean and Nambian soldiers eventually failed to bring the fighting to a stop or help a government hold its own against corruption. Only when the British send in forces in 2000 and remained in the country until 2005, did the fighting cease and a functioning government begin again. From the beginning of Ismael Beah's book, I know that he eventually made his way to the U.S. where he entered college. But I still have yet to hear how he is removed from this awful role, helped to repent and mourn for what he has suffered and been forced to perpetrate, and finally attain the calm eloquence which gives his account its lasting power.
War fascinates me--maybe by studying it elsewhere, I hope to keep it away from here. Yet, there's more to it: war with its upheaval, its extremes of fear, heroism, death, destruction, hope and camaraderie shows the human condition at its most extreme. Several days ago the citizens of Dresden celebrated the anniversary of the fire-bombing of Dresden by American forces. My experience of the Germans today, limited as it is, suggests that they accept with deep regret their nation's culpability in beginning World War II and perpetrating the Holocaust, the world's deadliest, most prolonged institutionalization of violence. Yet the firebombing of the beautiful city of Dresden, committed after it was clear the Allies had won the war, stands out for its wanton destruction. I can mourn the loss of an ancient city and light a candle in my mind to what its citizens suffered and over the years have been able to rebuild.
Recently I've been listening to A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah (2007), who as a boy of thirteen was forced into combat in Sierra Leon's civil war. At the start of the memoir, he is twelve years old, a fan of American rap music, an enthusiastic soccer play, a good scholar at a distant school, who just happens to be visiting his parents in their village when rebels attack, sending the inhabitants fleeing in all directions. For days he wandered alone in the forest; for weeks and months he and other boys banded together, sometimes being held hostage briefly by villagers until their innocence became obvious, then fed, and forced to move on. The band of seven boys swam in strange rivers, ate fruit they'd never seen before, ran for miles, for days away from the sounds of fighting. Circling back to the edge of his parents' village, the boys were detained overnight by a kindly banana farmer. In the morning as they headed toward what he expected to be a joyful reunion with his parents and brother, the war engulfed his village and once again he and his companions fled.
Eventually they were corralled and brought into a government-held village. Given work in the kitchen, still Ishmael suffered excrutiating migraines and could not sleep. He already had seen too many dead bodies, too many people shot, too many burned villages, and he sensed that the war would soon claim him as well. That it did: the government soldiers enlisted the boys, and began training them. In a hut with two younger boys, age 7 and 11, Ishmael finds that his migraine headaches are gone, yet he still cannot sleep, and often he shakes uncontrollably. After days of training--the younger boys can't even carry their AKA rifles--the boy soldiers are sent into battle, outfitted with new shorts and American brand running shoes.
In the first battle, one of his companions from the days of wandering is shot and dies beside him, as does one of the little boys. Here again the clarity, calm and beauty of the writing transfixes the horror of the subject. The sentences could not be more simple: Beah shows us his little companion's feet shaking, his hand holding his side, which when removed allows blood to pour out, the brightness of his gaze slowly turn dull as his eyes sink into his head, and finally, as Ishmael and another boy lift the wounded boy's arms onto their shoulders to carry him away, his quiet passing.
Surely recounting such experiences is one of the most difficult efforts for a writer. Making clarity of confusion, finding calm for reflection amid the days of flight and chaos of battle, and finally in both precise description and striking metaphors guiding us above the conflict to watch the sun eat the day and give birth to the moon and stars--all these elements give painful joy to this tragic story.
I have many more chapters to go, but from other reading, I have some sense of the extent of this war, in which soldiers constantly switched sides, in which the rich diamond mines enticed many into the conflict, in which thousands of civilians were brutally raped and murdered or horribly wounded--arms, or hands, or legs cut off--and various attempts from the outside, including a UN-sponsored force of Angolean and Nambian soldiers eventually failed to bring the fighting to a stop or help a government hold its own against corruption. Only when the British send in forces in 2000 and remained in the country until 2005, did the fighting cease and a functioning government begin again. From the beginning of Ismael Beah's book, I know that he eventually made his way to the U.S. where he entered college. But I still have yet to hear how he is removed from this awful role, helped to repent and mourn for what he has suffered and been forced to perpetrate, and finally attain the calm eloquence which gives his account its lasting power.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Margotlog: Moby Dick's Town
Margotlog: Moby Dick's Town
Well, not really. Moby Dick was the whale chased by the Pequod out of Nantucket. I don't mean Nantucket, though it figures in these notes, but the mainland town that in the 1830s, 40s, 50s, fitted out the most whaling ships in North America--New Bedford, Massachusetts.
I've been reading The Diary of Samuel Rodman, a prominent citizen who spent his work days at the "counting house," but his evenings and Sundays in what used to be called "the bosom of his family." He was a pious man but not in the stern, straight-jacketed manner we associate with that rock-bound coast. Though a Quaker, he bought a pew in the new Episcopal church because the Swedish dames who served his family found it the closest to their Lutheranism from home. He was also a frequent church hopper, attending services in the Congregational, the Episcopal, Baptist Churches and yes his own Friends, not just on Sunday but weekday evenings as well.
Why should we care? Try to imagine life without screens of any kind--no movies, TV, computers, hand-held communication devices. How did Samuel Rodman and his wife from New York, whom he calls "my chere H.," enlarge their minds and enliven their hearts? Well, they gadded about. There is more "tea-taking" in Samuel Rodman's diary than you can imagine, and it's not for love of the beverage, but the company that surrounds the teapot. Almost every evening of the years I've surveyed so far, he and his family are either hosting visitors for tea, or stopping by to "take tea" with his mother, in her early 80s, his brothers, their numerous friends, many of them business associates. When his last child Ellen turns 4 in 1837, the family gives her a tea party, and her father praises her genteel, kindly serving of the tea from a child-size tea service.
By this time, Samuel and his wife Hannah Prior Rodman, have six living children ranging in age from 14 to 4. Often in the evenings when he attends lectures or lyceums, he brings along one or both of his two oldest sons: Frank and Tom. They hear well-known orators like Wendell Phillips and Horace Mann, who was the Massachusetts Secretary for Education. Others inform them about electricity, organic remains, Radicalism and Ultracism, the whale fishery, Animal Magnetism, Egypt and Palestine. Rodman sneers at Phrenology. He himself is an amateur astronomer and weather watcher who occasionally compares rainfall levels with another in town. He mightily enjoys lectures on Chemistry and Physics. And so do his wife and children.
Several adult family members live with them off and on: his wife's sister Phebe, who seems like the angel of many households, returning to New York when their mother dies to succor her father and brother. But a few months later she and Rodman's father-in-law from New York are settled in the large Rodman house. All kinds of educational events take place in that house: the oldest daughter Mary receives lessons on the accordian. The Accordian!?! School masters of various children stop by in the evening, yes for tea, and to quizz their charges on Latin, etc. The family reads all kinds of things aloud: I recognize the writing of Madame de Genlis, 18th-century French governess to the royal family, to the boy who would eventually become King Louis-Philippe. Madame de Genlis receives Rodman's approval for her new educational methods: botanizing outside, teaching history with that early version of the slide show, the Magic Lantern.
Rodman is also constantly involved in his own soil--planting many young trees including elms in his town property, and making sure they're well watered. He monitors haying and corn planting on farms outside of town. He teaches his children about flowers and plants, trees and insects. He has shares in many whaling ships and discusses their out-fitting and their taking sail, often delayed by headwinds or ice in the river. He participates in a new method for removing ice from the harbor, using "charges," by which I think he means dynamite, and men in boats with pikes to tip and crack the ice and break it up.
And he and his family travel--many times to New York, to Newport, to Boston. There is a rail road in the 1830s which they reach by stage coach There are steamships, and "packet boats," by which I think he means passenger sailing ships. These travels strike me as much for pleasure as business, for the family visits Boston landmarks like the commemorative marker to the Battle of Bunker Hill. Yet he is constantly a man of affairs, and when Andrew Jackson is elected president, his mood falls, for he fears attacks on the banks, and currency trouble. This comes to pass all too soon, and he is embroiled in stopping the payment of "specie" in the New Bedford banks, following the same in banks higher up.
This brings to mind the early debate between the centralists and states righters, which does not have to do with slavery direction, but everything to do with centralizing control and regulation of banking to promote lending and borrowing and the growth of commerce and industry, versus the more far-flung farming contingent, including plantation owners like Thomas Jefferson, who oppose this kinds of government centralization. In fact, by Rodman's time, it's clear that anti-slavery beliefs go hand in hand with more centralizing money attitudes. Rodman decries a murder in Alton, Illinois, of the newspaper editor whose Observer has championed the end of slavery. Rodman writes that the fetters that hold 2.5 million in slavery must be struck off and they "restored to the prerogatives of man." A reminder that New Bedford was the most active anti-slavery town in New England, hosting many escaped slaves, and protecting them on arrival by ringing church bells when slaver hunters showed up.
He has a lively and sincere style. For a few hours, I'm living with him and his "chere H." which is not boring at all, but may, in fact, have been fuller of learning and humankind than our lives today.
Well, not really. Moby Dick was the whale chased by the Pequod out of Nantucket. I don't mean Nantucket, though it figures in these notes, but the mainland town that in the 1830s, 40s, 50s, fitted out the most whaling ships in North America--New Bedford, Massachusetts.
I've been reading The Diary of Samuel Rodman, a prominent citizen who spent his work days at the "counting house," but his evenings and Sundays in what used to be called "the bosom of his family." He was a pious man but not in the stern, straight-jacketed manner we associate with that rock-bound coast. Though a Quaker, he bought a pew in the new Episcopal church because the Swedish dames who served his family found it the closest to their Lutheranism from home. He was also a frequent church hopper, attending services in the Congregational, the Episcopal, Baptist Churches and yes his own Friends, not just on Sunday but weekday evenings as well.
Why should we care? Try to imagine life without screens of any kind--no movies, TV, computers, hand-held communication devices. How did Samuel Rodman and his wife from New York, whom he calls "my chere H.," enlarge their minds and enliven their hearts? Well, they gadded about. There is more "tea-taking" in Samuel Rodman's diary than you can imagine, and it's not for love of the beverage, but the company that surrounds the teapot. Almost every evening of the years I've surveyed so far, he and his family are either hosting visitors for tea, or stopping by to "take tea" with his mother, in her early 80s, his brothers, their numerous friends, many of them business associates. When his last child Ellen turns 4 in 1837, the family gives her a tea party, and her father praises her genteel, kindly serving of the tea from a child-size tea service.
By this time, Samuel and his wife Hannah Prior Rodman, have six living children ranging in age from 14 to 4. Often in the evenings when he attends lectures or lyceums, he brings along one or both of his two oldest sons: Frank and Tom. They hear well-known orators like Wendell Phillips and Horace Mann, who was the Massachusetts Secretary for Education. Others inform them about electricity, organic remains, Radicalism and Ultracism, the whale fishery, Animal Magnetism, Egypt and Palestine. Rodman sneers at Phrenology. He himself is an amateur astronomer and weather watcher who occasionally compares rainfall levels with another in town. He mightily enjoys lectures on Chemistry and Physics. And so do his wife and children.
Several adult family members live with them off and on: his wife's sister Phebe, who seems like the angel of many households, returning to New York when their mother dies to succor her father and brother. But a few months later she and Rodman's father-in-law from New York are settled in the large Rodman house. All kinds of educational events take place in that house: the oldest daughter Mary receives lessons on the accordian. The Accordian!?! School masters of various children stop by in the evening, yes for tea, and to quizz their charges on Latin, etc. The family reads all kinds of things aloud: I recognize the writing of Madame de Genlis, 18th-century French governess to the royal family, to the boy who would eventually become King Louis-Philippe. Madame de Genlis receives Rodman's approval for her new educational methods: botanizing outside, teaching history with that early version of the slide show, the Magic Lantern.
Rodman is also constantly involved in his own soil--planting many young trees including elms in his town property, and making sure they're well watered. He monitors haying and corn planting on farms outside of town. He teaches his children about flowers and plants, trees and insects. He has shares in many whaling ships and discusses their out-fitting and their taking sail, often delayed by headwinds or ice in the river. He participates in a new method for removing ice from the harbor, using "charges," by which I think he means dynamite, and men in boats with pikes to tip and crack the ice and break it up.
And he and his family travel--many times to New York, to Newport, to Boston. There is a rail road in the 1830s which they reach by stage coach There are steamships, and "packet boats," by which I think he means passenger sailing ships. These travels strike me as much for pleasure as business, for the family visits Boston landmarks like the commemorative marker to the Battle of Bunker Hill. Yet he is constantly a man of affairs, and when Andrew Jackson is elected president, his mood falls, for he fears attacks on the banks, and currency trouble. This comes to pass all too soon, and he is embroiled in stopping the payment of "specie" in the New Bedford banks, following the same in banks higher up.
This brings to mind the early debate between the centralists and states righters, which does not have to do with slavery direction, but everything to do with centralizing control and regulation of banking to promote lending and borrowing and the growth of commerce and industry, versus the more far-flung farming contingent, including plantation owners like Thomas Jefferson, who oppose this kinds of government centralization. In fact, by Rodman's time, it's clear that anti-slavery beliefs go hand in hand with more centralizing money attitudes. Rodman decries a murder in Alton, Illinois, of the newspaper editor whose Observer has championed the end of slavery. Rodman writes that the fetters that hold 2.5 million in slavery must be struck off and they "restored to the prerogatives of man." A reminder that New Bedford was the most active anti-slavery town in New England, hosting many escaped slaves, and protecting them on arrival by ringing church bells when slaver hunters showed up.
He has a lively and sincere style. For a few hours, I'm living with him and his "chere H." which is not boring at all, but may, in fact, have been fuller of learning and humankind than our lives today.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Margotlog: Perfect Dragonfly, Perfect Poets
Margotlog: Perfect Dragonfly, Perfect Poets
Even if you're born, bred and live in the Cities (here in Minnesota that means the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/Saint Paul), you have a very good chance of being seduced by prairies. Heading out of the western suburbs, the prairies begin to undulate almost immediately. The sky is huge; you can see for miles. Small towns speed by (that is, if you're smart enough to avoid the slam/dunk speed of interstate 94), each town dotted by its farming temples of grain elevators. There'll be a cafe or two, a feed store, grocery emporia, several steeples--one likely Catholic, the other Lutheran--and tidy two-story houses with flower and vegetable plots plowed into rectangles.
My experience with prairies began as a girl when my North Dakota mother brought my sister and me "north" by train from South Carolina to visit her father whom we called Papa Max. When I came to live in the Twin Cities in my 20s--purely by chance, yet drawn by an invisible force I now recognize as fate--I walked Twin Cities neighborhoods and felt strangely at home because the architecture resembled Papa Max's "gingerbread" house with its huge third-story attic, and gables high above each side, its front porch with pebble foundation, and its big "Palladian" window at the front.
But it was my years as a writer-in-the-schools that truly taught me prairies and the small towns that sustain far-flung farmers. Don't let anyone kid you: there are two distinct cultures in Minnesota (or more, but that's another story): farm and city. Now we get to the poets. When I taught in small town or rural schools--Roseau, Blue Earth, Hallock, Swanville (oh, the beauty of that name), even the bigger towns like Worthington, Alexandria, Bemidji, and Red Wing--I eventually discovered the rich heritage of soil and weather, crops and quirky characters and the complex heritage of Native Americans and various immigrant groups--all part of the students' lives. This is the heritage that made its way into the students' poems, and of course into the poetry of adults who just happened to live near the prairie.
Now we have a beautifully compiled, designed and printed anthology of many poets from the prairie (and some from the city): Scott King's Perfect Dragonfly. Scott King and his Red Dragonfly Press, housed in The Anderson Center, Red Wing, have been steadily publishing letterpress books (small, beautifully designed and often illustrated "fine-art" books) and larger more standard collections of poetry for a decade and a half. Scott himself grew up on the prairie and many poets he's published represent this amazingly rich prairie culture.
Take Nancy Paddock's poem "The Splendor of Music" whose first lines go like this:
In a small Minnesota town where life is reasonable
though cropped at both ends of its intensity...
Listening to Nancy read this at the Birchbark Reading Series Wednesday night hosted by Michael Kiesow Moore, I laughed out loud, picturing immediately the way you can see from one end of main street to the other, and know that prairie wind is waiting to grab you outside. Though Nancy made me laugh, I also realized what the town (Litchfield in her case) protects against: that intense, often frightening blow. When the land itself is so huge and powerful, town needs to be a haven.
Joe Paddock's long poem "The Big Snapper" puts us in a rowboat with boy and poacher who snags a huge snapper:
it hit the boat's bottom, legs and tail and neck thrashing
like a knotted bunch of angry, heavy-bodied snakes.
Its neck lashed out fifteen inches, its razor beak
snapped at the air, me sitting there barefoot.
Again, there's humor, and that tension between the fierceness of nature versus the minimal chance of the human. We root for the boy and are very very glad when the poacher swings the snapper back where it belongs.
Not all prairie poets stay on the prairie: Lyle Daggert's poem "guantanamera" is a kaleidoscope of shifting perspectives:
this man when did you
first meet this man do you
know this man being
transferred to another facility effective
huge flashes of light explosions
dropping from the sky along
the tigris the night
a dream of shattered glass
(Sorry, Lyle, my computer formatting won't let your spacing stay.)
By the time it's done, the horror of the Iraq war, its shifting untruths, and the hidden holding of unknown men have unhinged us.
Finally a note about Diane Jarvenpa's "Ancient Wonders, the Modern World," originally published as a letterpress book with illustrations. This skillful blend of modern and ancient humanoid life washes back and forth like an ancient sea:
We reach from our sleep to take the day,
legs emerge from the whipped foam of sheets
and there we are--
like that pair walking together in Laetoli
3.6 million years before
On the cover of Perfect Dragonfly, Scott King has inscribed his version of Leonardo da Vinci's archtypal "Vitruvian Man." Instead of da Vinci's man with two sets of arms and legs inscribed with a square and a circle, Scott King has put a dragonfly, its four wings like the arms and legs of the human. Just as da Vinci suggested that the human is the measure of all architecture, i.e. of all things, so King suggests that his dragonfly (he studies them) and his press likewise provide a measure. The humor is gentle; the art is diverse and wonderful.
Even if you're born, bred and live in the Cities (here in Minnesota that means the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/Saint Paul), you have a very good chance of being seduced by prairies. Heading out of the western suburbs, the prairies begin to undulate almost immediately. The sky is huge; you can see for miles. Small towns speed by (that is, if you're smart enough to avoid the slam/dunk speed of interstate 94), each town dotted by its farming temples of grain elevators. There'll be a cafe or two, a feed store, grocery emporia, several steeples--one likely Catholic, the other Lutheran--and tidy two-story houses with flower and vegetable plots plowed into rectangles.
My experience with prairies began as a girl when my North Dakota mother brought my sister and me "north" by train from South Carolina to visit her father whom we called Papa Max. When I came to live in the Twin Cities in my 20s--purely by chance, yet drawn by an invisible force I now recognize as fate--I walked Twin Cities neighborhoods and felt strangely at home because the architecture resembled Papa Max's "gingerbread" house with its huge third-story attic, and gables high above each side, its front porch with pebble foundation, and its big "Palladian" window at the front.
But it was my years as a writer-in-the-schools that truly taught me prairies and the small towns that sustain far-flung farmers. Don't let anyone kid you: there are two distinct cultures in Minnesota (or more, but that's another story): farm and city. Now we get to the poets. When I taught in small town or rural schools--Roseau, Blue Earth, Hallock, Swanville (oh, the beauty of that name), even the bigger towns like Worthington, Alexandria, Bemidji, and Red Wing--I eventually discovered the rich heritage of soil and weather, crops and quirky characters and the complex heritage of Native Americans and various immigrant groups--all part of the students' lives. This is the heritage that made its way into the students' poems, and of course into the poetry of adults who just happened to live near the prairie.
Now we have a beautifully compiled, designed and printed anthology of many poets from the prairie (and some from the city): Scott King's Perfect Dragonfly. Scott King and his Red Dragonfly Press, housed in The Anderson Center, Red Wing, have been steadily publishing letterpress books (small, beautifully designed and often illustrated "fine-art" books) and larger more standard collections of poetry for a decade and a half. Scott himself grew up on the prairie and many poets he's published represent this amazingly rich prairie culture.
Take Nancy Paddock's poem "The Splendor of Music" whose first lines go like this:
In a small Minnesota town where life is reasonable
though cropped at both ends of its intensity...
Listening to Nancy read this at the Birchbark Reading Series Wednesday night hosted by Michael Kiesow Moore, I laughed out loud, picturing immediately the way you can see from one end of main street to the other, and know that prairie wind is waiting to grab you outside. Though Nancy made me laugh, I also realized what the town (Litchfield in her case) protects against: that intense, often frightening blow. When the land itself is so huge and powerful, town needs to be a haven.
Joe Paddock's long poem "The Big Snapper" puts us in a rowboat with boy and poacher who snags a huge snapper:
it hit the boat's bottom, legs and tail and neck thrashing
like a knotted bunch of angry, heavy-bodied snakes.
Its neck lashed out fifteen inches, its razor beak
snapped at the air, me sitting there barefoot.
Again, there's humor, and that tension between the fierceness of nature versus the minimal chance of the human. We root for the boy and are very very glad when the poacher swings the snapper back where it belongs.
Not all prairie poets stay on the prairie: Lyle Daggert's poem "guantanamera" is a kaleidoscope of shifting perspectives:
this man when did you
first meet this man do you
know this man being
transferred to another facility effective
huge flashes of light explosions
dropping from the sky along
the tigris the night
a dream of shattered glass
(Sorry, Lyle, my computer formatting won't let your spacing stay.)
By the time it's done, the horror of the Iraq war, its shifting untruths, and the hidden holding of unknown men have unhinged us.
Finally a note about Diane Jarvenpa's "Ancient Wonders, the Modern World," originally published as a letterpress book with illustrations. This skillful blend of modern and ancient humanoid life washes back and forth like an ancient sea:
We reach from our sleep to take the day,
legs emerge from the whipped foam of sheets
and there we are--
like that pair walking together in Laetoli
3.6 million years before
On the cover of Perfect Dragonfly, Scott King has inscribed his version of Leonardo da Vinci's archtypal "Vitruvian Man." Instead of da Vinci's man with two sets of arms and legs inscribed with a square and a circle, Scott King has put a dragonfly, its four wings like the arms and legs of the human. Just as da Vinci suggested that the human is the measure of all architecture, i.e. of all things, so King suggests that his dragonfly (he studies them) and his press likewise provide a measure. The humor is gentle; the art is diverse and wonderful.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Margotlog: I heard myself say...
Margotlog: I heard myself say...
We were sitting around in our pajamas, this attire requested by the three-year-old birthday boy. He loves pjs. In fact he wanted pink pjs, in his three-year-old glory, but his older brother whom I'm ready to call the "jock" protested mightily. The parents of these two are unfazzed. Pink pjs, a real-sized coffee pot, a rather large toy kitchen--give the kid whatever he enjoys as long as it's not addictive, dangerous, or obscene. One grandparent made noises earlier about the long blond curls being let grow, but his daughter, the kid's mom, would have none of it. No cutting the glorious locks.
Being only an amused attendant--they're my sons' grandchildren "from the first marriage"--I slipped gleefully into the celebration, holding my ears as hordes of youngsters stampeded from family room to living room and around the dining room to start all over again. But otherwise, unfazzed myself, even sitting in relative comfort with the "first marriage wife" and her long-time current husband, whose own mother I adore, this Australian who spent months interned in the Philippines during World War II. She reads the most interesting books, recently, Robert Hughes' ROME. "He's another Australian," she commented, "and has that off-hand humor and outsider's 'call it what it is.' He's not at all impressed by most of the popes."
Since it's Minnesota and winter, talk turns eventually to the weather. No one is complaining that we've had probably the mildest winter in the last 150 years--a quarter of the snow that usually falls and temps, well balmy. Yet this deviance unsettles us: "Europe is being smashed with cold and snow. Old people dying in Paris apartment of the cold," someone mentions. We shake our heads in that alarm that also includes relief that it's not us. Still....
"It's global warming, for sure," I pipe up. Heads nod. Then I hear myself say, "But there's nothing I can do about it." No one challenges me. But I instantly feel remorse and even shock. What's this slacker's attitude? I've spent a good portion of the last 25 years working to protect endangered animals--elephants got me going, learning how to compost, trim electrical usage, turn down the thermostat. I contribute to many environmental organizations--the Gulf oil spill enraged me so much I tried to launch an anthology of poetry written in protest.
I don't really believe there's nothing I can do about it. Many daily actions fly in the face of that assertion. I sign almost daily petitions (made easy via the internet) to protest fracking, the Keystone pipeline. I monitor household water and electricity use, I just bought our first large LED light, I pick up trash because it's unsightly and because I don't want it going down the sewer holes to the river, OUR RIVER. I feel connected to orangutangs in Africa and pandas in Asia, to polar bears in the Arctic and penguins in the Antarctic.
So what's up with me? Perhaps at that moment, the enormity of the job overwhelmed me. Perhaps among this company of young and younger relations, I recognized my position in the last tier, recognized that whatever change happens must also be supported by the parents of the children racing around the house. Ultimately by the golden-haired cherub who wants (and receives) a play kitchen for his birthday and his older brother who's fascinated by sea creatures, shells and now dinosaurs. To help them fall in love with life, lived first hand, not via a screen is our job as parents and quasi or real grandparents. I'm heartened because the older boy found in the fence between the house feathers from a hawk and was excited. Sorry indeed for the hawk, then glad for the child who recognized a beginning link between his world and the other creatures who share it.
We going with this family to Florida beaches in March. The goal is fun, but also exploration. A bit of environmental education. Sanibal Island has the earliest and one of the best National Wildlife Refuges: The J. Ding Darling NWF with its host of sea birds and wide mud flats and mangrove swamps. I'm looking forward to question and answer time with the younger set. I'm sure I'll have something to say, and do, about protecting the beach, the dolphins, the sea birds. I'm sure I'll say, "It's up to us. It's up to me." Back on track after a lapse. Sometimes it takes a shock like this to reassert a commitment.
I'm going outside to feed the birds, give them clean warm water, and do as much as I can where I can, when I can to help save our world. I have my eye on a huge oak that might be in the way of the Hamline Bridge renovation come spring. Make a mental note to call our city councilman. Determine to do what I can to save it.
We were sitting around in our pajamas, this attire requested by the three-year-old birthday boy. He loves pjs. In fact he wanted pink pjs, in his three-year-old glory, but his older brother whom I'm ready to call the "jock" protested mightily. The parents of these two are unfazzed. Pink pjs, a real-sized coffee pot, a rather large toy kitchen--give the kid whatever he enjoys as long as it's not addictive, dangerous, or obscene. One grandparent made noises earlier about the long blond curls being let grow, but his daughter, the kid's mom, would have none of it. No cutting the glorious locks.
Being only an amused attendant--they're my sons' grandchildren "from the first marriage"--I slipped gleefully into the celebration, holding my ears as hordes of youngsters stampeded from family room to living room and around the dining room to start all over again. But otherwise, unfazzed myself, even sitting in relative comfort with the "first marriage wife" and her long-time current husband, whose own mother I adore, this Australian who spent months interned in the Philippines during World War II. She reads the most interesting books, recently, Robert Hughes' ROME. "He's another Australian," she commented, "and has that off-hand humor and outsider's 'call it what it is.' He's not at all impressed by most of the popes."
Since it's Minnesota and winter, talk turns eventually to the weather. No one is complaining that we've had probably the mildest winter in the last 150 years--a quarter of the snow that usually falls and temps, well balmy. Yet this deviance unsettles us: "Europe is being smashed with cold and snow. Old people dying in Paris apartment of the cold," someone mentions. We shake our heads in that alarm that also includes relief that it's not us. Still....
"It's global warming, for sure," I pipe up. Heads nod. Then I hear myself say, "But there's nothing I can do about it." No one challenges me. But I instantly feel remorse and even shock. What's this slacker's attitude? I've spent a good portion of the last 25 years working to protect endangered animals--elephants got me going, learning how to compost, trim electrical usage, turn down the thermostat. I contribute to many environmental organizations--the Gulf oil spill enraged me so much I tried to launch an anthology of poetry written in protest.
I don't really believe there's nothing I can do about it. Many daily actions fly in the face of that assertion. I sign almost daily petitions (made easy via the internet) to protest fracking, the Keystone pipeline. I monitor household water and electricity use, I just bought our first large LED light, I pick up trash because it's unsightly and because I don't want it going down the sewer holes to the river, OUR RIVER. I feel connected to orangutangs in Africa and pandas in Asia, to polar bears in the Arctic and penguins in the Antarctic.
So what's up with me? Perhaps at that moment, the enormity of the job overwhelmed me. Perhaps among this company of young and younger relations, I recognized my position in the last tier, recognized that whatever change happens must also be supported by the parents of the children racing around the house. Ultimately by the golden-haired cherub who wants (and receives) a play kitchen for his birthday and his older brother who's fascinated by sea creatures, shells and now dinosaurs. To help them fall in love with life, lived first hand, not via a screen is our job as parents and quasi or real grandparents. I'm heartened because the older boy found in the fence between the house feathers from a hawk and was excited. Sorry indeed for the hawk, then glad for the child who recognized a beginning link between his world and the other creatures who share it.
We going with this family to Florida beaches in March. The goal is fun, but also exploration. A bit of environmental education. Sanibal Island has the earliest and one of the best National Wildlife Refuges: The J. Ding Darling NWF with its host of sea birds and wide mud flats and mangrove swamps. I'm looking forward to question and answer time with the younger set. I'm sure I'll have something to say, and do, about protecting the beach, the dolphins, the sea birds. I'm sure I'll say, "It's up to us. It's up to me." Back on track after a lapse. Sometimes it takes a shock like this to reassert a commitment.
I'm going outside to feed the birds, give them clean warm water, and do as much as I can where I can, when I can to help save our world. I have my eye on a huge oak that might be in the way of the Hamline Bridge renovation come spring. Make a mental note to call our city councilman. Determine to do what I can to save it.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Margotlog: Stopping by Woods
Margotlog: Stopping by Woods
Robert Frost's poem with these three words in its title leads us into sudden contemplation of cold, deep snow, and of a woods with its heavy, silent magic lived so separate from us. Even our word woods, used in the plural to mean a singular, expansive entity, rouses this sense of a being vast, impenetrable, filled with dangers and creatures that lead lives we can't fully track--wolves, bears.
I've been thinking into this poem because two artist friends, Linda Gammell and Holly Newton-Smith, have portrayed in photographs and paintings the wonder and menace of the North Woods, or to use another curious word that rouses a shiver: boreal, from the Latin that refers to the north wind. These forests rise along the northern tier of U.S. states and stretch far north into Canada, then around the globe to meet their cousins across a major portion of Russia. Now I'm thinking of "Doctor Zhivago," Boris Pasternak's wonderful novel in which the main characters set forth in a troika to traverse a forest of solitude and deep snow. The movie with Julie Christie and Omar Sharif flashes across my memory: a log house, with roaring fire, Julie and Omar muffled in fur rugs and enjoying a respite from the politics that have hounded them. (Note: it was the Russian winter that did in Napoleon, including his insatiable ego which would not retreat before the cold).
In Minnesota, we learn respect for far northern cold, the forests that blanket the region, and the hardiness it takes to leave the road where Robert Frost has paused to contemplate the "darkest evening of the year." The speaker's little horse, who jingles his harness bells, thinks it "queer/To stop without a farmhouse near." Ah, there it is: the loneliness and fear of being frozen with no retreat.
Yet, the magnetic pull of these woods, so "lovely, dark and deep," where my two friends with their vision of cold, unrepentant depths, challenge us to put no other promises between ourselves and the forest. To conquer our fear of that sleep which in such woods could mean death for us, so warm-blooded and foolish. Frost's nervous little horse knows precisely what the woods mean, and the speaker too. He insists that he has promises to keep, "And miles to go before I sleep." Repeated twice. The woods as winter death couldn't be more evident. My friends defy this. Their work full of the awful, awkward struggle to penetrate beyond it captures the beauty and fear of playing in depths where our notions of comfort have no place.
Robert Frost's poem with these three words in its title leads us into sudden contemplation of cold, deep snow, and of a woods with its heavy, silent magic lived so separate from us. Even our word woods, used in the plural to mean a singular, expansive entity, rouses this sense of a being vast, impenetrable, filled with dangers and creatures that lead lives we can't fully track--wolves, bears.
I've been thinking into this poem because two artist friends, Linda Gammell and Holly Newton-Smith, have portrayed in photographs and paintings the wonder and menace of the North Woods, or to use another curious word that rouses a shiver: boreal, from the Latin that refers to the north wind. These forests rise along the northern tier of U.S. states and stretch far north into Canada, then around the globe to meet their cousins across a major portion of Russia. Now I'm thinking of "Doctor Zhivago," Boris Pasternak's wonderful novel in which the main characters set forth in a troika to traverse a forest of solitude and deep snow. The movie with Julie Christie and Omar Sharif flashes across my memory: a log house, with roaring fire, Julie and Omar muffled in fur rugs and enjoying a respite from the politics that have hounded them. (Note: it was the Russian winter that did in Napoleon, including his insatiable ego which would not retreat before the cold).
In Minnesota, we learn respect for far northern cold, the forests that blanket the region, and the hardiness it takes to leave the road where Robert Frost has paused to contemplate the "darkest evening of the year." The speaker's little horse, who jingles his harness bells, thinks it "queer/To stop without a farmhouse near." Ah, there it is: the loneliness and fear of being frozen with no retreat.
Yet, the magnetic pull of these woods, so "lovely, dark and deep," where my two friends with their vision of cold, unrepentant depths, challenge us to put no other promises between ourselves and the forest. To conquer our fear of that sleep which in such woods could mean death for us, so warm-blooded and foolish. Frost's nervous little horse knows precisely what the woods mean, and the speaker too. He insists that he has promises to keep, "And miles to go before I sleep." Repeated twice. The woods as winter death couldn't be more evident. My friends defy this. Their work full of the awful, awkward struggle to penetrate beyond it captures the beauty and fear of playing in depths where our notions of comfort have no place.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Margotlog: Prison, Anyone?
Margotlog: Prison, Anyone?
Back up to opportunity, and even further to need: nobody needs to tell us that the economy is sluggish at best and many people are without work. Fast forward to a few days ago, driving on the frontage road beside Highway 94 from Saint Paul toward Minneapolis. My eyes are clouded with drops: I've been to the eye doctor, but the figure of a man with a sign is unmistakable. I know what he wants. Though I'm in the middle lane, I check behind--no cars coming. So I veer over to the median, and again pause for the stoplight.
He is a largish white man with a pasty face and tan clothes, and he's holding a hand-lettered sign. Months ago I bought 3 food cards from a local chain near my house because I was being solicited on the street. These seemed a good alternative to handing out cash--and maybe being accosted for more or maybe fueling a drug habit. A good way to help someone truly hungry.
As I lowered the window and held out the card, he knew immediately what I meant and came to take it with a thank you. Within seconds, I saw him walk behind my car: someone else had done the same. Then the driver in front also offered a contribution. I was amazed. It struck me that this was an example of community spirit, not to mention action. What I had done inspired others. Had I not pulled over to the closer lane, extended my arm and given the man a token of help and concern, others probably would not have acted either.
A small, public act of concern and yes, even love breeds the same.
Yesterday two writers confirmed this notion in startling ways. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the civilized world! Whereas the long-term percent of violent criminals ranges around 100 per 100,000, the U.S. is imprisoning around 700 per hundred thousand black men and 400 per hundred thousand whites. Many of these are crimes of possession--marijuana possession. And many are created via plea bargaining, which means that instead of bringing the case to a trial, the apprehended person bargains with officials for a supposedly reduced sentence.
What's wrong here, according to these two writers--Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, and Michael O'Donnell in The Nation--is complex, but not irremediable. First, white collar crime--the jerks that work Ponzi schemes and defraud innocent people--along with the users of mild dope are being put in prison when they are not likely to be remediated. Better, in fact, to take away the defrauder's bank accounts and send them off to do community service for years. Better to legalize marijuana!
Here are some other pointed observations both writers make: the U.S. criminal justice system is out of sync with the actual crime rate which has been falling remarkably since the 1960s. This decline is not the result of imprisoning more "criminals." In fact as the crime rate has dropped, the number of incarcerated individuals has hugely risen.
Crime has been reduced through small, consistent, city-wide efforts to break up locations and possibilities for crime: concentrating police in areas known for drug dealing. Getting the criminals off the streets where those who might want to participate can't find them.
In a wide-sweeping criticism of the U.S. criminal justice system, the two writers follow a landmark book written by Harvard law professor (recently deceased): The Collapse of American Criminal Justice by William J. Stuntz. Stuntz traces this disaster all the way to the Bill of Rights which he compares with the French Rights of Man. Written around the same time, the two documents diverge significantly: The French emphasizes justice; the American emphasizes procedure. Procedure is faceless. Justice is not. Writes Gopnik, "The obsession with due process and the cult of brutal prisons...share an essential impersonality. The more professionalized and procedural a system is, the more insulated we become from its real effects on real people."
Scroll up to my incident with the hungry man at the stop sign. Because one person treated him humanely, recognized and tried to alleviate a need, others were moved to compassion to offer help as well. We need to revive trial by jury, argue these writers, following Stuntz. And not simply any jury, but a jury composed of people from the neighborhood where the supposed "crime" was committed. Trial by a jury of our peers, who can trace back whatever crime we've supposedly committed to a block, a house, a family. Who recognize that because a fourteen-year-old is caught on the street with marijuana, that kid will not go on to murder someone.
Our incarceration rate is much higher than was the rate of Soviet people sent to the Gulags in Stalin's time. We are outstanding for the number of teenagers who are serving life sentences! Our prisons are brutal and very very full, run by corporations who voice dismay that their livelihood may dry up. Something is terribly wrong here!
Back up to opportunity, and even further to need: nobody needs to tell us that the economy is sluggish at best and many people are without work. Fast forward to a few days ago, driving on the frontage road beside Highway 94 from Saint Paul toward Minneapolis. My eyes are clouded with drops: I've been to the eye doctor, but the figure of a man with a sign is unmistakable. I know what he wants. Though I'm in the middle lane, I check behind--no cars coming. So I veer over to the median, and again pause for the stoplight.
He is a largish white man with a pasty face and tan clothes, and he's holding a hand-lettered sign. Months ago I bought 3 food cards from a local chain near my house because I was being solicited on the street. These seemed a good alternative to handing out cash--and maybe being accosted for more or maybe fueling a drug habit. A good way to help someone truly hungry.
As I lowered the window and held out the card, he knew immediately what I meant and came to take it with a thank you. Within seconds, I saw him walk behind my car: someone else had done the same. Then the driver in front also offered a contribution. I was amazed. It struck me that this was an example of community spirit, not to mention action. What I had done inspired others. Had I not pulled over to the closer lane, extended my arm and given the man a token of help and concern, others probably would not have acted either.
A small, public act of concern and yes, even love breeds the same.
Yesterday two writers confirmed this notion in startling ways. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the civilized world! Whereas the long-term percent of violent criminals ranges around 100 per 100,000, the U.S. is imprisoning around 700 per hundred thousand black men and 400 per hundred thousand whites. Many of these are crimes of possession--marijuana possession. And many are created via plea bargaining, which means that instead of bringing the case to a trial, the apprehended person bargains with officials for a supposedly reduced sentence.
What's wrong here, according to these two writers--Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker, and Michael O'Donnell in The Nation--is complex, but not irremediable. First, white collar crime--the jerks that work Ponzi schemes and defraud innocent people--along with the users of mild dope are being put in prison when they are not likely to be remediated. Better, in fact, to take away the defrauder's bank accounts and send them off to do community service for years. Better to legalize marijuana!
Here are some other pointed observations both writers make: the U.S. criminal justice system is out of sync with the actual crime rate which has been falling remarkably since the 1960s. This decline is not the result of imprisoning more "criminals." In fact as the crime rate has dropped, the number of incarcerated individuals has hugely risen.
Crime has been reduced through small, consistent, city-wide efforts to break up locations and possibilities for crime: concentrating police in areas known for drug dealing. Getting the criminals off the streets where those who might want to participate can't find them.
In a wide-sweeping criticism of the U.S. criminal justice system, the two writers follow a landmark book written by Harvard law professor (recently deceased): The Collapse of American Criminal Justice by William J. Stuntz. Stuntz traces this disaster all the way to the Bill of Rights which he compares with the French Rights of Man. Written around the same time, the two documents diverge significantly: The French emphasizes justice; the American emphasizes procedure. Procedure is faceless. Justice is not. Writes Gopnik, "The obsession with due process and the cult of brutal prisons...share an essential impersonality. The more professionalized and procedural a system is, the more insulated we become from its real effects on real people."
Scroll up to my incident with the hungry man at the stop sign. Because one person treated him humanely, recognized and tried to alleviate a need, others were moved to compassion to offer help as well. We need to revive trial by jury, argue these writers, following Stuntz. And not simply any jury, but a jury composed of people from the neighborhood where the supposed "crime" was committed. Trial by a jury of our peers, who can trace back whatever crime we've supposedly committed to a block, a house, a family. Who recognize that because a fourteen-year-old is caught on the street with marijuana, that kid will not go on to murder someone.
Our incarceration rate is much higher than was the rate of Soviet people sent to the Gulags in Stalin's time. We are outstanding for the number of teenagers who are serving life sentences! Our prisons are brutal and very very full, run by corporations who voice dismay that their livelihood may dry up. Something is terribly wrong here!
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