Margotlog: The Essence of Hawaii: Daughters of Fire by Tom Peek

Margotlog: The Essence of Hawaii: Daughters of Fire by Tom Peek

"Surely, Hawaii isn't really in the US?" I quip to my husband as our plane descends into the dark of Kauai. Even more so in the daylight, the island seems too remote from cold snowy Minnesota to be in the same family: no icy roads, no bedclothes like Nanook of the North, no winds that piece down coats. No snow crunches under my boots. In fact I'm not wearing boots, I suddenly realize. I'm walking around in sandals. 

This should be familiar. I grew up in South Carolina where we learned how to sweat. Even Minnesotans know how to sweat. In fact the hottest I've ever been was 98 degrees in a Minnesota July. I left two inches of water in the bath tub and stepped in every few hours to splash cool. But in Hawaii, the temp rarely rises above 85, and the nights, well most need a blanket or two. Hawaii's stately, long-necked palms put Carolina's palmettos to shame: they never clatter, never look cold, only remote, closer to the sun. Yes it rains and squawls a bit (even two hurricanes since the mid-1980s) but mostly the place is more pacific than not, like its ocean, like the native people. Except for the volcanoes.

We've made maybe six visits to the Hawaiian Islands, trying out big hotels in Honolulu, and the Big Island's volcanoland of lava and huge mountains. We've returned again and again to Kauai because we like the small towns of Koloa and Hanalei, the remnants of ancient refuges, the many many gardens. In fact, I've come to believe that what Tom Peek portrays in his new novel about the Big Island is not just a state of mind, it is a culture bred out Hawaii's unique mix of peoples, tempered and shaped by a landscape isolated from most of the rest of the world.

Tom's Daughters of Fire is about several major elements of Hawaiian experience: the attempt to plant mega-pleasurelands in a delicate unstable environment and the people who fight against this, led by native Hawaiians, abetted by a crusty old WWII vet and a younger Aussie astronomer. Building a pleasureland rivaling Kubla Khan's ultimately arouses the fiery goddess Pele. We know by the middle of the book that the danger is extreme, but Peek does a wonderful job of nudging the eruption just this much further along the plot, drawing in the native underground (not exactly freedom fighters, but definitely undercover), along with a finely drawn native/Asian archaeologist who's been perhaps a bit too lax in giving developers permission.

She is a magnificent character, statuesque with a glorious mass of wild hair and charisma to match her intelligence. When she and the Aussie astronomer try to make sense of each other, we get a strong introduction to how fierce loyalty to native culture can perplex even a sympathetic outsider. Given the gentle "aloha" element of Hawaiian life, this determined refusal to submit comes as a shock, but also as a relief--there are many Hawaiians fighting against what could destroy the Islands' unique natural beauty and way of life. Not only have the Islands already lost many native birds and plants due to invasive species (read mosquitoes) but the unique quality of Island life is also constantly threatened by outsiders (and some insiders) who have no sense of limits.

Tom Peek's book is huge--nearly 500 pages. It contains a large cast of characters. It touches the mystical and the sleazy. Most of the time the extremes are tempered with humor,insight, sympathy. I like particularly the old codgers--one Hawaiian and the other the aged WWII vet. Their sage and ironic friendship nicely contrasts with the larger-than-life movers and shakers, the politicians and developers, the pussy women and aged seers. It's nice to have two characters who don't "stand" for something other than themselves. I will remember them, as well as the native archaeologist and Aussie astronomer's astonishing underground trek to outrun the volcanic eruption itself. We very much want them to make it. It's not at all clear that they will.

Footnotes: Tom Peek was born in Minnesota and grew up "on an island in the Mississippi opposite Fort Snelling." I heard him say this when he gave a reading in Minneapolis this autumn. Since then, I've been puzzled by this. Has anyone lived on an island in the Mississippi opposite Ft. Snelling since the Dakota warriors were hung in 1862?

Tom has also worked for a long time as a volcano ranger on the Big Island. His expertise and face-to-face experience with volcanic outbursts fill the pages of Daughters of Fire. After reading the book, I have no trouble believing this one.

Margotlog: Cold as a Witch's Titty

Margotlog: Cold as a Witch's Titty

So my daughter used to say with a naughty smirk on her face. She was probably 8th grade, that age when children all of a sudden become aware of what makes adults laugh and then think better of it. Witches' titties: saggy and withered, can put a ruinous spell on you if they win the duel with winter sun.  

Sitting  in my second-floor study, feet in double socks stuck between the tines of an old-fashioned radiator, I'm spooning soup into my houth. Sun is pouring in, tirmomg the flat Christmas cactus translucent. Julia the cat enters. Orca black and white and sleek as a whale, this most pliant of cats is willing to stare with me across the backyard frozen waste, where bird feeders stand guard against the cold. Have all the birds frozen? Then we spy them, high in the white pine, chickadees and finches basking in sun, before darting down for a seed.

The last time it was this cold was 2007. My first winter in Minnesota, I wore my New York style, knee-high leather boots with silk linings. Smart enough for 5th Avenue, but dumb for standing an hour watching dog races in St. Paul. My feet turned cold, then numb, then brickish. Warmed in tepid water at home, they emerged glistening red, puffy, throbbing and painful. I was horrified. Frostbite, said the doctor. Buy mukluks with thick soles and padding and wear double socks. Hello Minnesota, goodbye wimpy New York.

Now I  know how to dress for our fancy dress winter ball. I can cavort with wind-chill and glide gracefully across icy intersections. "I wouldn't recognize you two," say I to yoga pals as they gear up to hit the street,  caps down to their eyes, scarves up to their noses. I, on the othr hand, wear a full-length red down coat,  making me look like a cross between a extremely large hot dog and a bowling ball.

Margotlog: Jeremy Denk and the Sunset Maker

Margotlog: Jeremy Denk and the Sunset Maker

In case you haven't heard, Jeremy Denk recenly won a MacArthur genius grant. As did our very own Patricia Hampl, not recently, but well remembered. Ah, genius in relative youth! And I am thinking of Mozart, and his divine sonorities, bred by revolt and acquiescence toward dictator Papa, aka Leopold.
Not Bloom.

 Jeremy Denk is a fine pianisto, and just maybe an even finer writer. So I am led to believe by hearing him speak, then play piano at the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra this Saturday. (He has been published in The New Yorker and his blog, "think Denk" has been selected by the Library of Congress to be part of its digital archive. When he speaks as he did Saturday night with SPCO chairman Bruce Coppick, he is witty, just enough humble, and insightful about the two works he would be playing: a Brahms piano quintet, and a Mozart concerto from the most productive ten years before the five opera years, before early death.

Brahms destroyed so many of his drafts we will never know his full oeuvre. He also rearranged the quintet from a work for two pianos (probably intending his dear friend Clara Schumann as one of the duo) and at her suggestion replaced one piano with a quartet of strings. Brahms has never been among my favorite composers--too dense, not sufficiently melodic--but Denk and the SPCO strings (including a wonderfully sonorous cello played by Peter Wiley) held my complete attention. Denk subdued the piano (which is after all a percussion instrument) to blend well, and the strings took excellent turns helping to stir up the depths.

Then came the Mozart with a much fuller orchestra, and the huge piano with its guts exposed, at which Denk sat with his back to the audience--"No slight intended," he told us. I assumed he would be signaling the orchestra at key moments.

When I took music lessons in Charleston, South Carolina, in the years before general air-conditioning, Mozart and Haydn were the best I could do. Meaning, I had the physical dexterity to run the notes fast and clear, and the guidance from my rather broken-down music teacher to make small, telling deviations from strict time, for emotional effect. But only over the years as a listener have I attained a sense of what constitutes a truly bravura performance. For my money Christian Zacharias, who often performs with the SPCO as both conductor and pianisto, offers just such performances.

One of our finest poets (and occasional prose writers),  Donald Justice also took up the topic of music lessons. In his slim volume The Sunset Maker (1987) I find echoes of my own musical years in South Carolina. We both had teachers and ambitions that soared beyond the dry clack of palm fronds, beyond the department store magic of canisters carrying money into upper registers.  

"Busts if the great composers glimmered in niches,
Pale stars. Poor Mrs. Snow, who could forget her,
Calling the time out in that hushed falsetto?" (Mrs. Snow)
---

                                 "on the piano top,
a nest of souvenirs:
                              paper
Flowers, old programs, a broken fan" (Busted Dreams)
---

"--And sometimes she succumbed
To the passion of a nocturne,
The fury of the climax
Ascending through the folds
Of secret and abandoned flesh
Into those bitten finger-ends"  (Those Tropic Afternoons)

Since then, I've developed a theory that the education of American musicians currently emphasizes precision at the expense of inclusive expressiveness (even if secret and decayed) . Jeremy Denk's Mozart did nicely when part of the orchestra, but when his piano was on its own, it became huge and out of sync. Remember, a piano is a percussion instrument. When played with percussive speed, all I could do was hold my breath to see if Denk would hit all the notes. His passages did not blend, They shouted: "I'm bigger, I'm best." When he tried connoting heart-stopping emotion, he lingered with such determined emphasis that emotion dissolved  into flamboyance.

 European-trained musicians like Christian Zacharias do not aim for such WOW, such rigorous, cliff-hanging, performances. Especially with a composer like Mozart whose own instrument, a pianoforte, had not the excessive force of steel. Instead, they tend to draw out  musical lines in lyrical and nuanced ways until an entire ensemble, orchestra and soloist, become joined in a dream of musical possibility, which reaches out and wraps the audience in its embrace. Then, I sigh with completion, and thank the stars for a glimpse of beauty and generosity that includes us all.

Margotlog: Giving Thanks Today

Margotlog: Giving Thanks Today

For sadness because my oldest lovely is gone, yet looking through the trees out back, I see her face hovering in the pine branches...

Thankful  that she, Eleonora, had such loving care in Delaware, even through a topsy-turvy break, six months before she died when she stopped taking her anti-depressants and because rough, loud, nuts, kookie!

Grateful that  her dear friend Jo was with her at the very end, when she stopped eating for a week, and finally expired. That's the word--wind and life left her body.

Sad that so many I  love are far away on coasts and across oceans. For instance, Diane and Clare who from their front step, glimpse a creek leading to a harbor and finally to an ocean. I worry sometimes that their coast may soon be under water. And I wonder, should we wish not to live  to see it, or admit that ocean rise is happening faster and faster and we must adjust and change?

Across the miles, I salute Diane in her red coat, that's winter red, to match the berries on Carolina trees when all the leaves (except the live oaks and evergreens) are gone. And Clare with her jaunty smile.

Grateful for their friendship over the years, as they introduced me to Mepkin Abbey near Charleston, where I've spent several peaceful and demanding periods, writing, walking a garden labyrinth and trying to get used to being a lone woman among monks of all ages.

Grateful for Pope Francis, whose humble face and demeanor (I see him driving a little car through Roman traffic) bespeaks his care for multitudes of less fortunates who mean more to me because he is their champion. Strange twist. When we are led by selfish tyrants, we become self-centered, frightened and tyrannical!

Grateful for winter sun in the Christmas cactus lining my south window whose blossoms blare brighter than Christmas trees and provide hope for safe passage through another winter.

Grateful for the twelve "white-footed three, aka Julia, Tilly and Maggie," even when they wake me up at 4:30 a.m., especially Tilly of the soulful green eyes who walks on my body but will never sit in my lap.

Grateful, immensely, practically grateful that pulling up the new bathroom carpet (corn-based!) on which Tilly peed more times than I could count, and replacing it with linoleum (yes it looks like tile but it ain't), helped stop this outrage. Along with Felliway spray and diffusor. That was a siege I hope never to repeat.

Grateful for good neighbors and friends here and abroad, for work I care about and that ends each semester, and writing that continues when all else fails...

Grateful for relative good health and only occasional excesses (read chocolate, vino), for enough to keep and enough to give away, for signs that humans the world over are working to change behaviors that ruin soil, water, air, forests, that kills bees and ravages bird and mammal populations. For human action that says we are not alone here. And the longer we act as if we are, the more we ultimately damage ourselves.

Thank you friends and fellow sufferers. Happy Thanksgiving.

Margotlog: Documentary Excellence

Margotlog: Documentary Excellence

I've been struck by what I call The Documentary Impulse and now, I'm trying to inspire masters students to allow themselves to do the same. This is creating something of a quandary. What worked for Daniel Defoe in the early 1700s documenting a London plague, and for the writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans in the 1930s (Let Us Now Praise Famous Men), seems fraught with new-fangled difficulty today. Can you imagine today, for instance, being welcomed into the makeshift homes of three share-cropper families in the deep South, especially if you're from the Northeast elite? I suspect before you got to the door, you'd be peppered with buckshot. Or try replicating the "eye on the street" of many early 20th-century photographers.

One of my white, middle-aged male students did exactly that on the Lake Street bus. He pointed a new digital camera ar a crown on the bus and began clicking. Americans and work was his subject, and here he was surrounded by them. Suddenly behind him an African-American women began to scream that he had no right to take photos, Suddenly a Somali woman was trying  to wrest the camera from him. The photographer  stretched out his arm and edged her back. He threatened to call the police if she didn't stop. Finally the woman's husband came between them.

"You must ask permission," I said softly, remembering what our class visitor Wing Young Huie said about his Lake Street, USA project. Get friendly with people, go with them to their hang-outs. Have tea, a beer. Then ask for permission.

There's been a lot of damage done to privacy in the last twenty years. We are full of newcomers, many of whom have suffered through profound terror. Their culture or religion may frown on photographs as a theft of sacred space.

My photographer friend Linda Gammell reminds me of a case that went to the Supreme Court--a street photographer charged with invasion of privacy by an orthodox Jew who insisted, "It's against my religion to have my photograph taken." Ultimately the highest court decided that a street is public space, and given this photographer's body of excellent work, he did not constitute a threat to peace and security. Some may disagree.

How often photographs are used to demean and embarrass--think Facebook and postings of semi-nude photos of teens by their so-called friends. How often photographs diminish the vibrant flux that is a constant. We see glossy photos of penguins and think all is well with them. Ditto marine animals like manatees, severely endangered by run-off chemicals from Florida lawns. If we see a photograph, and the bird or mammal looks healthy, we do not question. We assume this is an accurate and enduring representation.

Photographs smooth and arrange what is rough, wild and uncouth. Holly Newton Swift's painting show currently at the Macalester College Janet Wallace Fine Arts building is full of works that began as photographs. Holly tells us how she struggles to avoid replicating the photos, how she wants memory and mystery to take over from a simple rendition of what a camera has captured. What is truer, after all? A rendition of flux and rough ugliness or a deep woods photo where shots of sun fall through tall trees.

I love old photographs. They capture what was evanescent, and we know it's gone. Bathed in the glow of nostalgia, the figures in these old photographs stare out at us like full-bodied ghosts, begging to be let back in on life. I miss them as if they belonged to my family. I itch to tell their stories.

But photographs of scenes I know intimately from daily walks strike me as reductions. They don't carry my experience of layered memory and perspective--how I saw the snow yesterday, how a huge cottonwood shaded a back yard five years ago, how furious I was when it was cut down. How other years, trees retain their winter skeletons far too long. How already I'm longing for leaves, but accepting that "certain slant of light" which Emily Dickinson named as the oppression of fall. It's oppression and strange antic joy.

Margotlog: Margaret Hasse's Poetic Exuberance

Margotlog: Margaret Hasse's Poetic Exuberance

     Sometimes in a schematic mood, I divide poets into Emilys and Tennysons--Emilys belong to the pare-it-down, nail-it-tight school of poetry. Tennysons to the broader sweeping, celebratory school. Their music is different. They look different on the page--Emily's tiny explosions, Tennyson's ranging and gathering, examining and weeping.

     The title of Minnesota poet Margaret Hasse's newest collection--Earth's Appetites (Nodin Press)--suggests the enjoyment and range of her verse. I like her best when she focuses closer, as in "Consideration for the Feet," when an inspection of feet above the bath water, "rosy as babies" becomes "They have been wild to waltz./ They march when I'm mad."  Or in a tea garden, after naming and sampling teas, she and a  friend remember "threshold events" and she gives a haunting rendition of a dying brother's request that bits of his ash be put in things he liked: "his banjo, top drawer of his desk, the garden." Such poignant specificity is hard to forget.

      Those of us around her age flinch as she does, climbing down the ladder to a swimming pool, worried people will notice "her thighs wrinkle like crepe." Or appreciate the methodical, tender way she folds away things her visiting son has left, ending with "I wander around the house, visit his empty room,/ nothing to fold except my hands." This is giving raw power to a time-honored religious phrase.

     Speaking of endings, a poem titled "Grave" goes entirely against the notion of death, as she describes love-making on the grave of her family. This poem ends wonderfully:                                                                                         A light joy talcs my body as if
                    I were abandoned as a child, then
                    fell into good hands. (27)                                                                                                                                                                                
     It's odd that her poems about childhood and youth resonate less with me than the more up-to-date renditions of experience. That is, all except the first poem in the book:Truant. I never left school in the middle of the day, as she describes doing, tooling around with a guy, but the joy of remembering "a meadowlark's liquid song" sets us up for a sassy, prophetic ending that sounds just the way a principal should:
                  "This will be part of 
                    your permanent record."
      That record reverberates through what we are now reading with so much pleasure, honoring Margaret Hasse's powers of description, insight, shaping, and surprise.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

     .                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Margotlog:The Unbelievers - from Orchestras to Global Warming

Margotlog: The Unbelievers - from Orchestras to Global Warming

Every time I try to remember my breakup from my first husband, there are loud voices, the two of us standing in the kitchen shouting, then phone calls when he pled with me not to leave. At least we were communicating!

Lately the Minnesota Orchestra musicians and management have come under more scrutiny than perhaps ever before in their 14-month (?) lockout. Are their patrons becoming restive? Does it look like the organization may disintegrate before our very eyes? I think the chances are good. And I blame both sides.

It's a stretch but I imagine that the musicians, priding themselves on their excellence, can't, still can't believe that their former management could do such a dastardly thing to them. Their audiences have something of the same problem--witness the ploy in the only public meeting I've attended: "Answer the following question in your small-group discussions: "Do we want to have a worldclass orchestra?"

Hmmm! Is that really the question to ask at this juncture, when there's been virtually no negotiation face-to-face except through the mediation of George Mitchell? And even that has fallen flat. As someone said to me recently, "Of course, Mitchell will succeed. He negotiated with the two Irelands." Well, he's just met very  stubborn worldclass musicians.

Aren't they hurting financially? Some must be because they've left. But I'm guessing the bulk of the orchestra is still sitting somewhere with their arms folded across their worldclass bodies, a very aggrieved look on their faces.

As to the management--well I can't speculate, though I suspect the management NEVER expected their worldclass musicians to hold out so long. From what I've read in the paper, the offers from management do cut salaries, but as several friends have commented, these are still living wages we're talking about--hovering around $90-100,000 a year. Worldclass by my standards.

Now let's stop to contemplate recent news about global warming. A beautiful and extremely sad article in the Star Tribune Sunday about a search for living coral reefs. The swimmers found many bleached beyond redemption. Gone for good. Another article, also in the Sunday Star Tribune, about forests in N. Minnesota showing evidence of extremely rapid change, either through die-offs of boreal trees who can't tolerate increased warmth, or the appearance in northern range of more southern trees. Some extrapolate a loss of forests entirely along the northern tier of Minnesota within 50 years--only a rough-hewn form of prairie.

I've been convinced of global warming for almost ten years. And I've done things that a single-family can do--put in UV-protective glass and very tight windows, changed almost entirely to compact flourescent or LED lights, led a plan on the homefront to reduce energy use--everything from turning down the furnace AFTER we turn it up in the morning to simply doing without as many lights. Plus both my husband and I drive a Prius, not the only low-energy choice, but a good one.

Still I know it's not enough for one family. The entire neighborhood, city, county, nation needs to make changes in energy production--to wind and solar. In transportation energy use--to mass transit and cars that run far less thirsty for fuel. If we did these two things, and did them very very fast, say within three years, or four, we just might be able to keep from the tipping point, after which there is no return in anyone's lifetime. We are headed for sunstroke disaster.

Yet, bigger and bigger cars (really they're small fat trucks) idle daily in my neighborhood for no apparent reason, spewing CO2 from their tailpipes, Here are houses lit up like carnivals. Here are traffic jams that boggle the mind. Isn't being stuck in a jam every day of the week evidence enough that something is truly wrong with the way we've orchestrated our cities?

I've very very pessimistic that we can change our tunes, step up to the plate and actually play the game we are supposedly interested in playing - let's go all the way and saying, interesting in staying alive in relative comfort and handing over a decent world to our children and grandchildren.

Margotlog: Dickens' Divine Extremity

Margotlog: Dickens' Divine Extremity

For sheer outrageous characterization, Charles Dickens has no match. It helps that his England was rife with class divisions (probably still is). Whereas  US  novelists play around with outlaws, hoodwinking innocents with snake oil and motley, Dickens almost always draws a firm line between haves and have-nots, between the benign and the criminal, and then dares one or the other to step across and challenge the other. It's a fight within a tight arena, and the players remain vividly recognizable, until the mean crumble under their own weight.

Hard Times, one of the master's most extreme satires, gives us two extraordinarily bad (often ridiculous) men: Mr. Josiah Bounderby, and Mr. Grandgrind. Coke Town where these two preside is filthy with fumes and poverty. And though we soon meet one of the mill hands, a mild-mannered sort named Stephen Blackpool, most of the action centers around these two giant malefactors sounding off in various locations, including a circus.

Usually I wait at least six months before listening to a book on disk again because I have to forget the story  as well as the reader's voice. But for Hard Times, I'll probably have to wait twice that long. Not that I can quote much verbatim, but I can still hear the reader Patrick Tull announcing, "I am Josiah Bounderby of Coke Town," as if Bounderby were Moses reciting the Ten Commandments. Tull has a deep, incredibly variable voice, and to portray  Bounderby he puffs up with swaggering self-importance, which includes a ready reminder that "I, Josiah Bounderby have come from nothing," an orphan who fed on offal, raised by a snarling she-wolf of a grandmother.  

His sidekick, Mr. Grandgrind, is not much better, though he is capable of affection for his children, Dickens tells us. Strange how he shows it, drilling them with "facts" until he drills all sentiment, frivolity, imagination, sympathy, desire, enjoyment out of them, leaving his eldest daughter Louisa to sit for long hours in silent contemplation of the fire. He's ground down her surface with "facts," but she has kept an inner life burning. We suspect intelligence is her fuel.

His son Tom, Louisa's childhood playmate and her fondest friend, hasn't been ground down enough, it turns out, but I won't give the plot away, for it is a splendid plot, involving Mrs. Sparsit, a "lady of the highest gentility," who places herself under Bounderby's thumb. With her "Coriolanian eyebrows" and sharp nose, she has powers of discernment far beyond the pliant female she pretends to be. Eventually this discernment and indefatigable industry do Bounderby harm. By then, we're rubbing our hands with glee. We couldn't be more delighted to see class snobbery unseat self-made snobbery.  

But Dickens has a huge heart, and the suffering and desires of those mill hands, ground down by facts and greed and  snobbery, deprived of joy and hope, even food and drink rouse us to ire. We applaud the storm that drenches Mrs. Sparsit. We cheer Sissy, the daughter of a circus performer, brought up by Gradgrind's facts, who yet can detect the true nature of crime and goodness, and helps set things right in the end.

Hard Times is not fall-down funny, but it is full of wicked self-revelation, where we join league with the author to cheer his nasty fictions to self-immolation. We also weep at the pain they cause to the well-meaning and innocent, and are entirely happy to have Tom Gradgrind forced into the circus for disguise, his face blacked, with his job something to do with a horse. This, prefatory to his being shipped off to the colonies. I do wonder what horrors await him in Canada or in a Kansas prairie snowstorm.

I don't know of any other author who enjoys criminals so hugely and who paints their false denominations with such fervor. The fervor of a convert who himself suffered in working poverty until he gave himself over to practice the literary faith.  

Margotlog: Grass-fed Beef and Ladies Plates in Amsterdam and Bologna

Margotlog: Grass-fed Beef and Ladies Plates in Amsterdam and Bologna

Three thousand miles up, I'm sometimes at a loss for things to do. Recently, flying home from Italy via Amsterdam, I started reading the KLM packaging. Not only did the flight magazine tell me that Amsterdam's Concertgewau orchestra hall is one of the finest in the world, along with Boston's Symphony Hall, but that the beef served on board KLM planes comes from a cow first bred in the Middle Ages, the blaarkop. Not only do these feed on nothing but grass, herbs, and wildflowers, but some actually are stationed near Schiphol airport.

As we came down for a landing, I spied plots of corn and other crops, but no cows. Using every inch of land makes sense in a country mostly claimed from the sea. I also applaud the raising of beef cattle on essentially wild grasses and flowers. Yes it take longer than the horrible methods of feed lot concentration and fattening on corn in the US, but feeding cattle grass and making them more around to get it, is far better for the environment--no lagoons of sludge from cow feces and urine (in some cases so huge that they dwarf what some major cities) but also no fast-fattening on corn which bulks up cows but riddles their meat with fat. Seems to me I remember the highly enjoyable documentary "King Corn" mentioning that corn-fed beef is around 98% fat, versus 15% for grass fed. Why anyone with any sense would buy corn-fed beef is beyond me, but then I don't much like beef anymore, and our family has the bucks to purchase grass-fed.

As a whole I'd say that the Europeans in Holland and Italy eat better food than do we in the US. And the KLM airplane paper cups tell us (in very fine print along the side) that they are made from 100% renewable resources, and the inside is coated with Inego innovation, made from plants not oil. Hurrah, say I, blinking to readjust my eye sight. Then my heart sank. Four months ago we purchased new bathroom carpeting (it's a bath plus dressing room)  made from corn. There I was strutting my environmental green, while the cats (heaven help us) were sniffing themselves into new places to pee! Slowly the lovely new carpeting began to smell suspiciously of a piss pot. Soon I was rendered frantic as I tried all sorts of products shy of sending the offending cat (we have three but were pretty sure the culprit was Tilly, the oldest and most aggrieved) to the rendering plant. After weeks of denial, hope, disgust, more hope and finally resignation, we visited the carpet/linoleum dealer yesterday and selected an oil-based linoleum replacement. There's no telling how Tilly will react, but even if she continues to pee on the floor, not in the litter box, there will be hard, impermeable oil-based linoleum under her. Fingers crossed. As the lovely dame in the carpet store said, "They're family." Yup, she's got that right. Pretty hard to put down a critter who's survived tornadoes, flu, children leaving home, spousal disagreements, aging joints, dashed hopes, and loves you so intensely she walks over your sleeping body for comfort.

As I say, the Italians (and probably the Hollanders) eat better than we do in the US. Food for us is often something to be downed fast and furious. In Europe, it's something to savor well into the evening. My favorite meal in Italy was the first night in Florence when my friend the artist Patricia Glee Smith (check out her website) and I went across  narrow Borgo Pinto from our convent hotel to Accadi, a family-run small restaurant. That night huge mushrooms (porcini? morels?) were on the menu. I had pasta with them and Pat had rice. The smooth sauce, just piquant enough for the delicious earthy taste of the mushrooms, was divine. The pasta cooked to perfection, just enough, and the portion not too large or too small. As we ate, we were grinning ear to ear.

Then visiting in Bologna, I encountered a series of plates on the wall of our hostess. Turns out the plates are made by a Bolognese artist Angela Lorenz, or to use her professional name, "L'Aura," the Wind. The images on each plate are of women in antique Renaissance head gear, puffed sleeves and swooping necklines, i.e. "Babes" from 450 years ago. Of course I don't need to mention that women have been in charge of food preparation for millennia. These dames, slyly and in concert, suggest something different. Here, in order of the plates, reading left to right, is their message:

She is round.
She is idealized.
She hangs on the wall.
She is not to be used.
She is not disposable.
She is a dish.

By the end, I was laughing out loud, highly entertained at the simplicity and sly resistance of these plates.

Margotlog: Hummers

Margotlog: Hummers

What inspired me to hang the humming bird feeder in the crab apple tree, early August? Maybe the dismal showing of those helicopter birds during my stint at the North Shore/Lake Superior? It was such a cold spring, then summer, here in St. Paul, and north too, near Lutsen town. Hummers had stalled, no doubt, further south. When I hung the feeder on the deck facing the Big Lake, mid-July, it took days for any to find it--probably still raising broods. Finally when one or two showed up, they were so skittish, they disappeared if even a shadow flickered nearby. Then distracted by a house-mouse invasion, I lost track of hummers.

What I really know about humming birds could make ten drops of red liquid in a hummer feeder. Why they are attracted to red, I don't know. How far south they migrate, I don't know. Why they like northern Minnesota for summer baby-making, I can only guess since red flowers don't predominate in the mid-summer landscape. More like gold and pink--golden rod, golden tansy and sunflower varieties, pink roadside roses, pink fireweed. Why hummers are so feisty when they're so small, and have never heard of Napoleon, I don't know. But for sure, they are fast.

By early August I'd installed the feeder in the crab apple tree just beyond our backyard deck. Finally the weather was warm, even hot. Cloudless days when I walked early morning because it got too hot in the afternoon. Plenty of chickadees, in fact more than I'd ever remembered, ate sunflower seeds like there was no tomorrow. Two kinds of woodpeckers--hairy and downy--went after the solid suet/seed mix in the hanging net bag. Pigeons and European sparrows galore, but what wasn't surprising. Goldfinch on the thistle feeder in front, then goldfinch babies, all tan, on the sunflowers feeders in the back.

One heart-stopping few days of concern for a fledgling blue jay--all puffy feathers, and big eyes, staring at us from the deck railing, then attempting flight, and finally making it half across the yard to the entwined small spruce, its parents rattling and calling it ahead. Our neighbors with the two elderly cats agreed to keep them in--I trust no wandering feline, even deaf and arthritic. Last summer there was a dead baby blue jay waiting for me when I came home from the North Shore. I felt as if I'd failed the bird kingdom.

It's amazing how we humans can come to feel  we're in charge. Nature's salvation is up to us. Now, after years of preferring cat lives over bird lives, I've switched my allegiance. I'm all for the winged tribes--butterflies, bees, moths, lady bugs and yes, birds. We used to house two famous outdoor cats years ago, Archie and Justa, but no more. Our cats now stay indoors , with an occasional foray to the deck, held tightly in my arms. Too much evidence that cats kill the birds I am  attempting to feed, plus too much expense from menaces like bee-bee guns, vicious dogs, and the cats' own preference for attempting to leap ten times their height in a single bound.

Suddenly two weeks ago, I spied two green mighty mites in the crab apple tree--hummers. For two weeks, they buzzed in and out of the tree, picked invisible insects from the air, dive-bombed chickadees two or three times their size, and sucked at the sugar water in the hummer feeder which I refilled  three or four times. Every spare minute I stood at various windows looking out on the yard and watched for them. They were my talismans of summer delight. My connection to hope, joy, and the belief that nature was boundless in its abundance and mystery. Then two days ago, after a very chilly night, I searched the tree and air for them, but they were gone.

Just as the internet information I consulted said they would be. They knew when to leave and they left without a goodbye, without a thank you. For several weepy hours, I was sure I had failed. Maybe my last filling of the feeder had gone awry? I took the feeder down and very carefully calibrated: one cup water, boiled three minutes then cooled, and 1/4 cup of sugar. Even with the new elixir to temp them, they did not return. They are so small, after all, and their metabolism must be enormously fast. They probably can't survive in cold below 45 degrees Fahrenheit. I would not want them to die, still I am sad, very sad. They pierced the membrane of my complacency with an acknowledgment that my place was good for a stopover. They charmed me with their antics, speed, agility, and yes their metaphoric resemblance--green back, oval shape, to green crab apple leaf, oral shaped. They belonged here with me watching for a while. It's probably all we can ask of ourselves and the truly natural creatures we let return us to humility.

Margotlog: Morning Medley: the Commons

Margotlog: Mornng Medley: the Commons

"My home is my castle" makes me think of an impregnable, guarded estate, high above the plebs. That might work for some city or suburban neighborhoods but not for mine in Saint Paul. Here with lots leaving about ten feet from the side of a house to the property line, we have a lot in common with our neighbors on either side. Not to mention the common boulevard which stretches down the block and around the corner.

The English who settled New England brought another form of commons to the "new world." A town phenomenon, not a plantation one, so not much visible in Virginia and points south. But I enjoy considering the New England commons as I walk about ten blocks west and back, crossing many property lines, noticing many boulevard trees, and enjoying a small "pocket park" with huge oaks. The New England settlers used a "commons" to pasture livestock, and possibly to cut hay. It was often land in the middle of a group of houses, thus allowing all the users to keep an eye on it.

Recently the Minneapolis city council has passed an ordinance allowing for feral cat "commons," as long as the humans in charge neuter and vaccinate and "chip" the feral felines. One council person opined that she had a bird guide and had learned to identify the English sparrow. Bird-lover that I am, I keep all my cats indoors. That wasn't always the case, I admit, but  the more I learn about the enormous damage feral cats do to bird populations, the more firmly I support trapping and euthanasia for feral cats.

Here's a notion that occurred to me as I walked: Let's take the Mpls city council members on a bird walking tour. Let's remind them that the English sparrows are an invasive species (sort of like feral cats--neither has a predator sufficiently strong enough to keep their populations in check). Let's introduce these well-meaning council members to ten native and common American birds, starting with the robin, blue jay, crow, chickadee, nuthatch, and yes the humming bird (more of these in a moment), on to the adorable goldfinch, the slightly less adorable house finch, the beautiful singer the cardinal, and completing the list with several native woodpeckers--hairy and downy. All these birds regularly visit  my back yard, which, as I say, is quite small, but full of eight varieties of trees. Plus, regular fresh water, suet, and seeds. You might say I have a bird commons.

Some falls (I think today feels like fall), I have seen maybe one humming bird passing through on its way south. This year, perhaps because I put out a sugar-water feeder with eye-catching red top and bottom, I've seen or heard maybe ten. This morning I stood in awe as one brilliant iridescent green mite hovered in the air, up and down, in and out, closer and farther from a huge silver maple. It was picking gnats from the air. Yes, it took a few sips from my feeder, but mostly it was tooling up on protein for its very long journey south.

I love it that people whose yards I know quite well from this daily walk are now watering their boulevard trees. We are again in a drought, and it's a crucial time for trees. They need to have moisture in their roots before the freeze; otherwise their roots may die and they'll meet the spring without leaves. Dead. Since our street has become a summer cathedral of arching green, I applaud tree care. Also because trees are our best defense against excessive heat and poor air quality, i.e. they're on the front line against global warming, breathing in CO2 and exhaling oxygen.

More and more, I think we're learning that our care of the land, air, water, soil, native birds and animals, bees and butterflies, fish and plants rebounds mightily on our own well-being. It also helps our neighbors--Lady Bird Johnson, years ago, was so right when she urged a clean-up and beautification of American highways. I love the sheets of stamps in her honor currently for sale at the P.O. Beautiful images of lovely landscapes and one of her as a handsome young woman. I think I might have to buy up a whole carton.

Margotlog: Blood Red

Margotlog: Blood Red

I'm lying beside a window which blushes red, dark, red, dark. I'm aware of myself as a watcher, almost a listener for the first time. This is an awareness of consciousness, of watching rhythm, color, pattern, and silence. Across the hall lies another being in the dark--my baby sister just born. It will be years before I have a memory of her separate from her relation to myself.

What is it that makes us who we are? Years later, I will marry for the second time. On the first date with this eventual mate, we will argue about Lilian Hellman's writing. Sitting in a spring Sunday restaurant, he becomes argumentative. Not harsh or cruel, just engaged. Now I remember only the general subject and the fact of each of us taking a stand and arguing about it. I am also aware of my continuing surprise that from this beginning we evolved into mates.

Why? Because my father's arguments ricocheted through the house of childhood, leaving me stunned, with my back turned to him. I was a child then, and he was arguing with my mother about whether there was a spot on his uniform. Typical work-day anxiety but at exhorbitant decibels. He was racked with anxiety. Later I faced him in our Carolina kitchen and talked back, told him "colored people" were not massed outside our door, ready to murder us in our beds. Talking back--a crucial effort to sustain sanity and the worth of my own opinion.

Blood red. Not a color I would ever choose for a car, but my second husband has bought a number of red cars and drives one now. Recently it occurred to me to consider when I've encountered women writers describing the cars driven by men. Trish Hampl in A Florist's Daughter considers her father's Oldsmobile, a car for the wealthy, it seems to me, and in this case, also of a man edging toward death, and buying himself something fine. Women, as a whole, do not fixate on cars. So I notice my noticing of this red car parked outside our house.

I'm guessing it was six summers ago when I was yanked out of writerly solitude on the North Shore by my husband saying to me over the phone: "My left leg is swollen." Remember how we argued on our first date. He has shown himself to be a man who almost reflexively responds with disbelief when I assert something. A form of argument. In this case I was so concerned that I phoned back the next day. The leg was more swollen.

You perhaps have guessed what I began shouting at him long-distance. Finally after several more days, I packed up and started the five-hour drive back to the Twin Cities. When I arrived, he was not at home. But I tracked him via cell phone to the emergency room where he was waiting to be seen. Quite a bit later, he appeared at home: he had a blood clot in that leg, he had a prescription for a blood thinner and a return appointment in a few days.

Thick blood. Blood is thicker than water. Thick head. Argument is thicker than assent. Three or four years passed without blood trouble, our pattern of assertion and denial, assertion and denial, with me insisting and he usually, though not always, taking the action I urge. Telling it this way makes me sound like a bully. I hasten to add that many times he will assert something, and I will argue back. Oddly enough, given the pattern of our first date, he is not as determined in his stance, or at least he doesn't desire to pursue a point the way I often do. This makes him seem like a softie, which he is not. Result: we occasionally have quite bitter exchanges, arguments, fights--whatever you want to call them, because he has finally had it and let me know. Then I often capitulate. Or not capitulate but come over to his way of thinking. Or act as he wishes because it is he who wishes it.

Blood red. When blood hits the air it is rich, vibrant red, but it soon turns darker. Think of a scab, almost black on your leg. Two summers ago my husband and a guy friend took a baseball driving trip to Kansas City. They were supposed to be gone three or four nights, a long weekend. I invited some friends over for the dinner to keep me company the night before they were supposed to return. That afternoon my husband called and said he was not feeling well and they would be home around 5 p.m. Not to change my plans, he urged, he was going to bed.

He crawled through the front door. I could not believe my eyes. "My stomach feels terrible," he said. "I was afraid to stand up because I might faint." With his friend's help he got upstairs to bed. I brought him some ice to suck on--all he wanted. And a basin in case he vomited. Then I went downstairs and had my little dinner party.

Over the next few hours, he vomited blackish stuff. Argued that his stomach was upset and it was probably the ribs he'd eaten in Kansas City. I went to bed. Around midnight I was aware that he was not beside me. Going into our large bathroom, I found him on the floor. He was not very articulate. I felt the rise of anxiety and decision. I called 911. The paramedics came within minutes and took his vital signs. "You know, his vitals are all normal," one told me. "We usually don't take someone in if that's the case. Call us if things change."

Two hours later, after sleeping and waking to sharp awareness, I found he'd vomited. This time it looked like blood. The paramedics worked upstairs while I gave all the pertinent information by the front door. I saw him carried out, so weak he couldn't hold his head up. They had him in a sling.

I often wake very alert around 3 in the morning. The city streets were eerily lit and very dark. By the time I reached the emergency room, he was being pumped full of blood. He'd been bleeding internally. Various doctors had inspected him. But it was the team of emergency-room nurses that saved his life.Their concentrated and knowledgeable efforts, and the blood that replenished the many pints he had lost.

 Several days later, after an endoscopy showed a tear in the esophagus, he admitted that he and his buddy had been drinking quite a bit during their baseball adventure--beer in the ballpark, then several or more shots of the hard stuff in the motel room at night. For someone on blood thinner, alcohol in more than one drink is very dangerous because alcohol also thins the blood. The tear in the esophagus probably resulted from various kinds of acid reflux and eventually vomiting. It's a phenomenon common to hard drinkers.

Needless to say, we don't argue about how much he drinks any more.

Margotlog: Go, Musicians, Go!

Margotlog: Go, Musicians, Go!

     This is addressed to you, the excellent musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra! Don't be a rhinoceros. Try instead the part of a gazelle. Yes, I know: gazelles are brought down by big cats, and rhinoceros can stand as long as they like in their wading pools without worry. They're covered with horny plates. But, consider this: gazelles can run forward. They can mauenver quickly. And they are not endangered. For all their vaunted impregnability, the fortress-animal rhinoceros is as easily shot from a distance with a high-powered rifle as a gazelle. And there are far fewer of them.

     But this is not Africa, you say. True, and musicians with their bows and horns are not four-footed African animals. However, in the dark of night, it may interest you to know these are the comparisons that occur to me.

     Your counterparts and competitors across the river in Saint Paul have not only bargained and settled with their management, but they are beginning a new season with a reputation burnished by their flexibility and by the outstanding support of their audience, personified in the organization Save Our SPCO! You, beloved musicians of the sister city, have just been offered a quite reasonable (my opinion, of course) proposal by your management. It's time to come out of your wallow and take action.

     In the tides of public opinion, you musicians have received a great deal of compassion and concern. But tides turn (ok, now I'm onto another metaphor, I admit it!). And with such changes, you stand to lose  audience members -- after all, they now can cross over to the other side, and it is not a dark side at all.

     Yes, the SPCO is a changed organization, smaller and younger. Ten of its older musicians have retired on the package offered by management. But it has emerged from negotiation with two musicians on the leadership team (whoops, another metaphor), and a return of a former president, giving management a broader leadership base. My family is eager to return to our favorite fall/winter/spring arts activity: sitting in the audience and enjoying the SPCO sound.

     You too have a loving audience, very eager to see you take up your instruments and play. It's time to bow to reality. Change will occur, with, or without you. If you care about the organization that has nurtured you for many years, and for the audience who have made your talents a high priority in their lives, it is time to negotiate and PLAY!

Margotlog: Orchestras on the Slide: A Tale of Two Cities

Margotlog: Orchestras on the Slide: A Tale of Two Cities

"The Twin Cities were separate at birth and far from identical," I wrote in a novel called Falling for Botticelli (not yet published). Yet sometimes these separate cities suffer similar fates. Take the duo lockouts of orchestra musicians by management which both cities have endured over the last year. The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra resolved its dispute in the late spring, 2013, and played  the final three or four concerts of the season. The Minnesota Orchestra (I know, it pretends to be the state's orchestra, but in fact it began as the Minneapolis Symphony and remains housed in Minneapolis. More of that in a moment)--the Minnesota Orchestra's difficulties are, in my opinion, far from resolution. Therein hangs a tale.

The SPCO audience was roused to battle quite early after the  lockout. Under expert (and feisty) leadership, an organization called Save Our SPCO created a logo, began to gain  members, who with all kinds of other music-lovers supported three hugely popular concerts to raise money and remind the community (of both cities and circling suburbs) of how they value and enjoy the SPCO. .

The audience and musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra took a wait-and-see, or perhaps a dig-in-our-heels and resist approach. The musicians refused to negotiate until management canceled the lockout. On the other hand, the SPCO musicians formed a determined and resilient negotiating team who continually attempted to meet with management. To their credit, management was often willing. Yes, there was acrimony and they sniped across the divide.  The audience organization SOSPCO held several meetings a month. They helped bring up the question of using MN Legacy money (each orchestra had been granted money under this program) to the state representative in charge. Though nothing changed in real terms, the publicity created by groups of musicians attending the capitol to lobby helped keep the issue in the public eye.

As the SOSPCO membership grew, the organization staged a public declaration that it was considering negotiating with the musicians to form a cooperative orchestra. Public in its very being--held in Rice Park before the Ordway Music Hall where the SPCO performs, and quite near the mayor's office--this public demonstration of determination and forward-thinking, I believe, helped spark Mayor Coleman's decision to become an advocate for a solution.

NOW, finally the MN Orchestra's audience has become aroused. It's banding together, listening to Alan Fletcher, CEO of the Aspen Music Festival, assert that not all that happens if negotiating can occur will satisfy everybody. Some musicians will leave--taking other jobs, being relieved of their posts, etc. Salaries will be cut--as they were for the SPCO. And perhaps long-time musicians will be encouraged to retire, as ten of the SPCO did, taking a buy-out package offered by management.

The moral of the story: Be feisty. Be active. Don't sit on your laurels and wait for fate to come to you. At a recent meeting of over 300 Orchestra Excellence supporters, the first discussion question was "Does Minnesota want a world class orchestra and why?" I point out that Minnesota has two world-class orchestras. And one of them has resolved its gripes.

As Alan Fletcher reminded us, there is no way to predict whether a restored orchestra will be the same as the one locked out. But resolution is crucial. Audience in-put, in my opinion, needs to be regular and argumentative and creatively confrontational. The public, and even more the musicians and management, need to know that they are being supported. Tell stories, as did the SOSPCO, about musicians who are losing their health insurance, having trouble paying their mortgages. There is a very human face to this lock out. Audience needs to care deeply not just for the result, but for the hardship in the ongoing trouble.

Band together, my friends. Lobby, make noise. Do not be afraid of stepping on toes. Don't be excessively nice. Be smart. Be savvy, but most important of all, show the musicians that you care about them and their talents and dedication.

Our hopes are with you. .


musicians were not working.

Margotlot: What We Fear Can Sometimes Help Us - aka Bats!

 Margotlog: What We Fear Can Sometimes Help Us - aka Bats!

For years "bat attacks" in my Minnesota residences wrought terror so extreme I was reduced to a quivering mass. What! Malevolent creatures flying across the moon, then swooping into my hair! Didn't they carry rabies? On dark winter nights, I heard them scratching and squeaking inside the walls. I taped up a small door to a crawl space, and NEVER opened it afterwards. I pounded on the walls to scare them. Once a claw emerged through the bathroom vent. I ran screeching from the room and refused to enter for 24 hours. 

Worse yet, one night I woke up to something crawling in my pillow case. Shrieking I lept out of bed, fled to the hallway, and collapsed. While my husband beat the pillow on the floor, I could not look. When he dumped the contents into the toilet, I peaked over his shoulder. There floating in the bowl was our four-year-old daughter's hamster. I don't remember how long we sat on the bathroom floor in a stupor. 

I know I'm weak and sniveling. I admit I always turn over bat capture to the resident guy. If none was resident, I'd drag in someone off the street. I only get involved once the critter has been thrown outside. Usually this is the next day. And winter. Once I couldn't find the invader. Husband # 2 said he'd thrown it into the trash can. When the garbage guy lifted the top, something flew up and out. We watched him starting around, with a very puzzled look on his face.

I've taken at least three dead bats (frozen to death) to the University of Minnesota Ag campus to have them tested for rabies. None has ever tested positive.A few years ago we installed a bat house on the northern, highest point of the house--it's where the bats seemed to emanate. Who knows if it's the right spot because, truth to tell, we now have fewer bats around. I'm probably testing providence when I admit it's been a year since we had a bat attack in the house.

Of course, they don't attack. They, like mice, compress their bodies through unbelievably tiny spaces and then begin flying in their erratic, sonar mode. Often it's a winter warm spell that wakes them out of hibernation too early. They reaching toward warmth - i.e. inside, rather than cold outdoors. I should pity them, really, but I can't shake the memory of that squirming mass in my pillow--even thought it wasn't a bat.

Lately, my fear and concern have shifted. Now I'm afraid FOR the bats, not OF them. Eastern bats have been dying in droves from something called "white nose syndrome." This fungal disease made its way to the U.S. from Europe where bats have developed an immunity. How long, how many hundreds or thousands of years it took for this immunity to develop, we don't know. But like other foreign invasions, the presence of this fungus has been lethal on bats without the immunity - aka all American bat colonies that come into contact with it. 

Many states, including Minnesota, have bat caves where huge numbers of bats live, sleep, wake and fly around . Where they go home to roost after eating millions, billions of mosquitoes. Like so many other companions in the natural world (Yes, Dorothy, we humans are actually natural, part of nature, though we often act as if we aren't.), bats have a crucial niche. They devour small flying insects in exorbitant numbers. No Minnesota bat sucks blood! I promise. Furthermore, the more bats there are, the more they help keep these flying menaces in check. Doing us a huge service. Not that they care about us. They care about living, breathing, eating, sleeping, and mating. And not being sick. 

Now some statistics. According to the Center for Biological Diversity: some 7 million bats in 22 Eastern U.S. states and five Canadian provinces have died of white-nose syndrome. Now the fungus has been discovered in Arkansas and in several Minnesota bat caves. These caves are in two Minnesota state parks--Mystery Cave in southeastern Minnesota (with 2300 bats) and Soudan Underground Mine in northeastern Minnesota with between 10,000 and 15,000 bats. (StarTribune, 8/10/13)

The Center for Biological diversity calls the white-nose syndrome outbreak "the worst wildlife epidemic in history." It's not that we--you, me and the guys next door--have caused this, but we could suffer significantly if bats in North America are reduced to such small numbers that they don't survive.

It's time to stop being afraid OF the bats and begin fearing FOR them. We need to recognize them as comrades deserving a chance for survival. Forget Batman. Forget Dracula! 

And call the Department of Natural Resources to urge that they close these two caves to tourists--651-296-6157. Human contact with the fungus spores transfers the spores indiscriminately. Not even washing clothes will kill whiite-nose fungus spores. Only washing clothes in a 6% bleach solution. That's asking a lot. Not to mention wiping off shoes, and all other items carried into the caves. The chance to make a difference is NOW. We also have a great opportunity to educate kids and adults about how our behavior can make or break chances of survival--our own and other species. We are in this together. 

Margotlog: Monarchs in the Mirror

Monarchs in the Mirror

My yearly summer jaunt up to the North Shore of Lake Superior used to run me home through a lazy blizzard of black and orange--not Iowa Hawkeye footballers, but Monarch butterflies on their way south and west. This year, I saw not a single Monarch, either on the road, or anywhere else on my lake-shore rambles. In fact I saw fewer winged insects of any kind than I can ever remember. One spectacular Luna Moth was plastered to the steps of the hardware store in Lutsen. And I plucked a smashed Buckeye butterfly from a side road after a thunderstorm. Yes, there were dragon flies in decent numbers, but that was it, except for, of course, mosquitoes. Plentiful as always. Too bad mosquitoes don't pollinate, carry beauty on the wing, or unfurl long tongues like the huge blue dragonflies I fed one year with sugar water.

Yes, it's too bad, isn't it. But (shoulder shrug) what can we do? We, meaning all of us who permit a farm policy that pays farmers by the area they have under cultivation. And what's wrong with that? says the defensive farm-supporter. Isn't industriousness a virtue? Isn't farming a multi-billion dollar Minnesota industry?

I call it greed. Environmental madness sanctioned by a powerful lobby. And, with all the Calvinist vigor I can muster, I predict we will pay, Big time. Not just with the loss of one of  summer's most beautiful and mysterious visitors, its treasured butterfly, but with illness generated by water running off fields planted to the edges of water ways, bringing us, thanks to Monsanto and other herbicide and pesticide fabricators, diseases and huge remedial costs. It is simply not good for us life forms to eat and drink what kills other life forms. Try repeating this mantra: Monarchs, Milkweed, Waterways, and Me! Monarchs, Milkweed, Waterways and Me.

I am not heavily invested in farming, but I like to eat decently. I appreciate drinking water that is not polluted with cancer-producing, insect-killing chemicals. I appreciate farming practices that reduce the need for chemicals by using crop rotation to discourage pest production. Remember how cold it gets in a Minnesota winter? That cold can kill off pests if they are  not given the same corn crop, season season to fatten up on.

I appreciate farming practices that  use natural means to clean water running off fields. And that natural way is allowing buffers of what we sneeringly call "weeds," but are actually time-honored homes and food for winged creatures that benefit us: BEES for honey and pollination and MONARCHS.for beauty and inspiration. And a host of others.

Here's a thought: email this blog with a note of approval from you personally to your congressional representatives. Let them know you support a farm policy that REQUIRES all fields be buffered with native plants to clean run-off water of chemicals. Tell them that you OPPOSE a farm policy that encourages farmers to plant one crop (especially that DEVIL CORN) year after year, without allowing fields to go fallow.

By doing so, you will significantly reduce the insane marriage of excessive plowing with chemical spraying. You will be supporting a return to saner and more life-supporting practices. BECAUSE YOU want to stay healthy, and we are finally figuring out that the whole world is in our hands. Yup, we are that powerful, and that deadly, and too much of the time, that stupid.

Don't look in the mirror and see a thousand, a million dead Monarchs. And behind them, a thousand, a million sick and dying humans.

Margotlog: Mouse Attack

Margotlog: Mouse Attack

     Yes, we've had a few in our Saint Paul house over the years. One crept across the dining room floor, almost under Fluffy's legs. She, the aged Maine Coon cat, sniffed at the tiny intruder,  Fran scooped it up and tossed it in the backyard. That was the end of that. We've had far more bats, over the years, though none this season, knock on wood. And one rat crept into the basement, probably through the sewer pipes, and somehow drowned itself in the toilet. A shocking thing, as one lowers the derriere to the toilet seat.

   But not until last week, have I ever felt invaded by mice. The site was a large dwelling by big Lake Superior. "In  the woods," remonstrated the mother of the dwelling's owner. In other words, what should I expect?

     The attack unfolded with a grace I'd never have prophesied. My third or fourth evening there as I relaxed downstairs on the sofa after dinner, a slow shadow made its way from some secret place to my right and scurried across the rug, then paused to look back at me--"What are you doing here!?" it seemed to say. I yelped and stomped. The mouse, rather large in my limited estimation, was not,  I was sure, a rat. It withdrew, where I knew not, nor particularly cared..

     Maybe the next morning--I didn't begin to chart such things until fear and vengeance drove me to it--anyway, just as light was  beginning to seep through the tall pines and aspen, a furry critter, low to the ground and not very long, appeared in the kitchen, just beyond a heat vent. There were lots of places where a critter could enter. Even at that early hour I thought so. I yelled and stomped again. The white-throated mouse withdrew again.

     That was enough to set me looking for mouse droppings. Little pellets about the size of a pencil point. I found them in front of the fridge, along some of the kitchen counters. Not furious, just determined, I cleaned and moped with a few paper towels. That would take care of any stray crumbs luring the critter inside.

     The next morning, more droppings, this time in the adjacent dining area on the round oak table. This disturbed me more. I washed not only the table top, but also a round decorative dish that had been sitting there when I arrived. Now when I inspected it, I discovered it was strewn with what looked like crumbs. I gave it a thorough washing.

     That evening as I sat upstairs in bed, light on, a tiny form scurried from the alcove just to the right of my bed and across the carpet, then under the door to the chamber and disappeared. Oh, HELP! I'd had enough of mice. Tomorrow, I promised myself, I'd do something to get rid of the mice. I  called the owner, one time-zone west. She was polite but bored. "Sure, buy some traps. Have the hardware store put them  on my bill. I'll even call them and alert them you're coming."

     The following afternoon, I searched the huge store on Highway 61 for traps. There they were, two to a cellophane packet, along with various kinds of poison. Poison was not an option, or at least not after discussion with various people in town who pointed that that poisoned mice takes themselves outside where they can be eaten by pets or wild critters. I certainly didn't want to do in other mammals who had the decency to stay where they belonged.

     "Put a little peanut butter on the 'trip,'" advised the young sales clerk. He was showing me how to set the things. "Not too much. Some mice figure out very fast how to snitch a bit and not spring the trap." So warned I made my way back to the MacCabin. Hands trembling I set two traps, one just outside the door to my bedroom--Heaven forfend, the thing should die in my viewing. And the other downstairs just beyond the kitchen heat fixture, where I could almost see through the wall to the outside.

     Then again I sat up in bed and distracted myself with reading. Light seeped from the sky. Soon it was dark. "SNAP!" I heard from outside the door. OMG!. My heart started to pound. What would I find? One of my interlocutors in town advised simply throwing the trap with its booty in the trash. I remembered that.

     Putting on my slippers with their hard soles, I tied my robe securely around me, and slipped into my slacks--no rodent was going to run up my bare legs! Then pulling open the door, I saw a tiny mouse lying in the trap. Its two beady eyes stared up. The gold spring of the trap fastened it  securely behind the ears. It didn't seem to notice me. I kicked it with my foot. Nothing--no blink, no tail twitching. It was surely dead. But I couldn't bear to bury it now. So I left it there, thinking perhaps encountering one dead of their kind would send other mice back into their hiding places.

     I slept fine. Fortified, I repeated the garb of the night before, and opened the door again. The mouse in its trap with its black bulging eyes was still there. Now, with more light I could see that it had bled profusely into the small hollow of the trap. I pulled on a plastic glove and lifted the trap from the end without the mouse and carried it downstairs. There in the kitchen, the other trap had sprung with a somewhat larger victim caught precisely in the same fashion as the tiny upstairs critter.

    It was morning. I had stamina and courage. With plastic gloves on both hands, I opened first one, then the other trap, taking the victims outside and flinging them into the grass. "Someone will eat them," I thought, glad I had not poisoned them. Then I drank some coffee.

     The next evening, I had enough courage to set the traps again with a bit more peanut butter to sweeten the kill. Then I put them in the same places as before. And again, with some trepidation, I sat  upstairs in bed and listened. Nothing happened outside the bedroom door. But after about 20 minutes, I heard a loud SNAP! from downstairs and an odd flailing. OMG! I caught a mouse, but it's not dead! Heart pounding, suited up as before, I stole down the long stairway and crept into the kitchen, first turning on the glaring overhead light.

     There with its back to me, tail extended, crouched a much larger mouse than the other two. Just beyond it, the trap sat, sprung. I had no idea what to do. The mouse though stunned, and no doubt injured--there was some spots of blood on the floor--was not dead. Lightning thoughts flashed this way and that. On the counter sat a large hardcover edition of The Joy of Cooking. Lifting the book, I approached the mouse who did not move. Then bending a bit closer, I heaved the book on top of it.

    A wild flicking of the tail. A scurrying of feet. With all my might, I brought my foot down on the top of the book and jumped. Under the book, something splintered. The mouse--what I could see of it--lay silent. I was sure I had killed it.

    Stunned and  mindless, I went back upstairs, washed my hands, and eventually crawled back into bed. In the morning, again with more courage and emotional stamina, I lifted the heavy tome. The mouse's skull was crushed into a blackened profile of its head. The rest of its rather large body, yes with a white chest, lay inert. Again hand in glove, I lifted it by the tail and flung it outside. There was a lot more blood to clean up this time.

     I set no more traps and made plans to leave the next day. These three mice, dear reader, were my first and I fervently hope, my last, intentional, live kills. .

Margotlog: A Cathedral in the Pines

Margotlog: A Cathedral in the Pines

     My North Dakota cousins had one of the most beautiful churches I have ever entered--an outdoor cathedral in the pines. Air and  sunlight fell down upon us. Breezes blew. Music and text, belief and sustenance rose into an  immensity tempered by the tree tops.

     Now, the closest thing I can find to that piney chapel is the Saint Paul Cathedral. Unlike many churches, the cathedral is almost always open. It commands the city like a huge tree commands the lesser brush down below. I enter a high, hushed atmosphere. Light.streams down from two rose windows, rich with deep blues. Through a dome spreads the light of the sky. We rest from the traffic, and in the quiet, say what is in our hearts.

     There was nothing objectionable about the Presbyterian churches of my childhood, the first in Charleston, the second  in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. The churches introduced me to notions of prayer and praise, but they did not enfold and elevate me. Perhaps I was too young. The ministers were a little frightening in the sweeping black robes. What they said made almost no sense to me. Yet I liked to the hymns and singing them.
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     Taking  the collection made a little drama as adults slipped tiny envelopes into large silver-edged platters and I put in my dimes. The buildings--both plain and white, with narrow sanctuaries and green velvet draperies--did not offend. I stared out wide windows in a kind of trance. Outside sun filtered down, leaves fluttered, an occasional bird flew by. Gravestones made a pleasant change and I entertained  random notions about who lay beneath them. As a teen, dressing for church with white gloves and hat occupied me far more than anything that actually happened inside the church. As a child, drawing on the program passed the time.

     Had this been all, I doubt that I would enter the cathedral today. It was life that taught me the need for offering up my insignificance into a quiet whose enormity I could never plumb. Where I could rest from fear, and hope to be sustained. Where I was humbled enough to kneel, and where the statues and images carried the familiar gentle Christ and his parents of my childhood.

     We live in a deeply secular world. Also a deeply divided In the United States, the "religious right" has become a political force. I am not so naive as the pretend that the "religious left" doesn't also have a secular agenda. When a religious leader like the newly elected Pope Francis comes on the scene with a message of love and compassion for the poor in spirit and in purse, I almost weep with relief that goodness and mercy can still make waves in this world. But it's my deep concern and love for the natural world, that  compels me most emphatically toward that old-time religious action.  Not because it fits with any dogma or creed, but because it rises from what the cathedral teaches me about our place in the world.

      We are not alone. Nor are we omnipotent. When I enter the cathedral and sink into the immensity, I eventually feel the truth of both these statements. I emerge freshened by  insignificance and buoyed by weakness. But also freed to think and feel toward what is good and right, and emboldened to take action where I can. The cathedral puts what is busy and selfish about my own pursuits within a circle of connection. It is that piercing revelation--I must answer for what I commit--which helps me find my  place within our world's  enormous generosity of creatures and oceans,  water and air,  seasons and darkness. I belong to them, and owe them as much attention and action as I can possibly contribute. If I and many others are to sustain the bees, there must be wildflowers on my altar. And water for our Eucharist cleaned through rejuvenated soil. And bread for our communion ground from  seeds with enough sustenance in them to keep us alive and alert. .

Margotlog: Wanna Know How I Beat the Heat and Saved $100 a Month?

Margotlog: Wanna Know How We Beat the Heat and Saved $100 a Month?

Numero Uno: Gave up air-conditioning. Hated it anyway. Dried up the nostrils, made ears ring. Instead: we
        *  Put in tight-fitting new windows with UV glass in the 1912 house.This meant winter and summer, the cold and hot stay out, the bearable temps stayed in.
        *  In summer we track the sun around the house. (Yes, we are the center of the universe. Just in case you didn't know!) Hot morning sun on the south side we slap in the face with closed windows and lowered shades.
     Hot afternoon sun on west-facing kitchen windows, ditto with window closings and shades. Remember those dainty Victorian females who pasted cologne-wettened handkies to their fevered brows? They collapsed in darkened rooms. Dark in summer equals cooler.
     When the sun moves away and the windows are in shade, we open them and position floor fans to draw cool air inside.

Numero Due We planted trees like there's no tomorrow. Over twenty-five years, our no-tree lot has become a green jungle. Eight species of shade now cool us north and south. We can't control east and west. These belong to the driveways, but our neighbors are close. They shade us. We shade them. Note: we planted mostly northland natives--better survivors. Silver Maples our favorite.

Numero Tre Cotton, cotton and more cotton. Abhor synthetics--they paste the sweat to your body. Cotton breathes. Cotton like linen and wool is a natural fiber. Light, loose clothing for summer--easy skirts, tank tops, shorts. Bulky layered clothing for winter. Many many layers like a critter adding fur. Simple, but humans don't have smarts born in. We have to teach every generation over and over and over. (Watching TV from a young age doesn't help.)

Numero Quatro We stopped plugging in what we weren't using. Mostly. It was a fight, but I won. The husband went blah-blah-blah, this won't work on a power strip, this is too much trouble on a power-strip. I bought the strips, I power-stripped TVs, computers, fans, DVD players, shredders. I also began pulling out of the sockets the dangling plug-ins for stupid phones. What kind of smarts keeps a power cord plugged in when it's not attached to what it's supposed to be juicing--eh? That's when the electric bill really bottomed out. We power-strip TVs, computers, fans, DVD players, shredders.I'm still working on the coffee pot.


Numero Cinco We changed all the light blubs to compact flourescents and LEDs. Our Christmas tree now has bright blue LED lights. (Maybe Rudolph needs a blue LED nose?) ALL the lights are flourescent or LED--in the ceiling fixtures, in the lamps, under the cabinets, above the stairs, in the basement, in the attic. ALL the lights. When we leave a room, we turn out the lights. I get a little zing when I turn off his lights! 
Now he's frowning and turning off my lights.


Postscript: Energy conservation, and staying cool and cheap was all my schtick. But he's caught on. In winter, we conserve by turning up the thermostat to 68 and down to 62. Every night. I cheat with an electric blanket. My argument: I'm a southern girl. My blood will never be thick enough for 30-below. My first winter in Minnesota I had frostbitten fingers and toes. I was wearing thin leather gloves and boots. Fine for New York. Stupid for Minnesota.But I didn't know!

Postscript: Some African women wet their long, scarf-like clothing to cool off by evaporation. I keep an inch of water in the tub, and on 90+ days, step in, douse myself all over, pat dry. The fan feels heavenly on wet skin.

Finale: Our monthly electric bill has shed $100. This began about 9 months ago. No reason to think it will go back up. We got energy credit with the replacement windows.
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Margotlog: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Margotlog: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

So wrote Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. Those words give me a shiver--they promise so much! But on this eve of July 4th, our Independence Day, let's start with "Life." The opposite of Death. We are very moved by death, personal, national, global. The recent deaths of 17 firefighters in Colorado. The deaths of thousands in New York and Pennsylvania during 9/11. The starvation of some 200,000 Somali children during a prolonged famine in the 1990s.

If we pause long enough, as I did recently at my parents' beautiful (but buggy) gravesite near Charleston, South Carolina, Death means personal loss. It means memory and appreciation and forgiveness. These emotions for essentially good people, my parents, who nurtured me physically and artistically and socially. They made huge mistakes, but often their mistakes were so different that they balanced each other out: excessive rage at black people, versus excessive silence and noninvolvement. Excessive order versus excessive randomness.

Life comes first, to us personally and as an aggregate.

Recently, a masters student in education concluded her final project surveying violence prevention and protection  in three Minnesota schools. As we talked, one of her committee, a white woman who works in a northern Minnesota Native American school, commented that during her friend's survey of the school, a horrendous murder occurred among Native American youths--one was hacked to death with an ax. Yet the school said nothing about it. Of course the students knew. They went home to the community where it happened. Yet the school, peopled largely by whites, kept silent. This is neither preventive nor protective. It's about fear and a huge sense of distance. A refusal to act in concert, as if the basic right to Life did not mean the same to all of us.

There are many instances of violence that snuffs out life among people marginalized by poverty, disease, race. The violence is also marginalized. It does not receive the scrutiny or larger mourning it deserves.

Now we come to Liberty. Liberty  initially meant freedom from England, freedom from the oppression of what had become an alien power, across the seas. Freedom to set our own national standards and mores, to pursue our own goals. This was not the kind of liberty that gave license to  violence. This kind of Liberty supported Life.

Yet, as we discussed during our review of this student's project, any recent attempt to enact national gun-control legislation has been met by excessive ramping up of gun-purchasing and toting. The loud shout of NO legal body of the United States, CAN INFRINGE ON THIS BASIC RIGHT. How basic is this right to snuff out another's life? Hmm? How basic is it to carry an automatic weapon with hundreds of fast-shooting rounds of ammo along a crowded street, into a school? Is this Liberty or unbridled license?  

Finally we come to the Pursuit of Happiness. I love pursing happiness. Basic sybarite at heart, happiness is for me is leisure, happiness is chosing a mate and having the right and liberty for full protection under the law for your union. Happiness can demand vigor. Think of those runners at the Boston Marathon whose pursuit was bombed. Think of the happiness of young families whose children were shot. Happiness is NOT shooting or bombing. But sometimes it  requires fighting, as in the First Minnesota Regiment who volunteered to fight for the lives, liberty and yes pursuit of happiness for African Americans. .

Happy 4th, Happy celebration of all our Lives in the Liberty of safe and secure protection, in our individual and collective happiness.

Margotlog: Water...a Film about India and Widowhood

Margotlog: Water...a Film about India and Widowhood

But it's filmed in Shri Lanka. Beautifully filmed with close-ups of a dreamy eyed girl (around 8) in the back of an oxen-pulled wagon. Her dark eyes, framed by long heavy dark hair, stare into watery distance. Inside the wagon is a corpse of a man who looks old enough to be her grandfather.  We unquestionably assume he is her grandfather. We from the west do not marry children. Girls with dreamy eyes never consider they might be married to men old enough to be their grandfathers. We assume that marriage is not really marriage until it's consummated.

The watery world is so beautiful. Then we see a pyre, burning beside the river. We assume the river is the Ganges. Then the girl's hair is being cut off, next her head is shaved, next she is dressed in white, brought to a heavy door, let in and the door closes behind these people whom we assumed were her family.

Furious, terrified, she is cowed by a huge woman also in white. All the people in this compound are older women, all are dressed in white. Only one younger one is grinding something yellow. Soon this yellow powder is mixed with water into a paste. It is spread on the girl's head. Tumeric, to cool the skin after the head is shaved. All the women have shaved heads. They are all windows. Some may have lived almost their entire lives here, we finally realize.

For a long time it is not at all clear how they survive, though there is one exceptionally beautiful and long-haired woman among these dessicated widows. She lives upstairs with a puppy. The puppy helps the newly arrived child to calm her terror, to begin to examine where and what she is consigned to. This beautiful, long-haried woman becomes her friend. We notice an elegantly dressed heavy-set woman standing outside the bars of the huge widow who must be the head of this enclosure. Soon, we are shocked to discover that the beautiful long-haired young woman is rowed across the river to assignations. She is a whore.

Though there is a script, the spare language and our ignorance make the experience of watching this film like a watery dream. The fact that there is a plot. There is a young educated man who encounters both the new widow girl and the beautiful widow whore. He befriends them and falls in love. In one brief image we watch the castrated pimp in "her.his" expensive colorful clothes waiting outside the balcony of a wealthy colonial home. We know by then that inside is the beautiful young widow with one of her customers.

It seems to take us forever to discover the horrors that lie in wait for the people in this film--for the beautiful whore, the young stalwart man who believes in freedom and justice and who loves her, his mother who wants him to marry the right kind of girl, and his father--his father who preys on young widows.

It is the late 1930s, the time of Ghandi's rise to power. He has just been released from prison by the British. Toward the end of the film, after the beautiful widow and young man have fallen in love and met under an extraordinary tree, whose huge arms ripple out like a dark flowing river, we attend a rally to honor Ghandi. By now we are not so ignorant. We realize how desperately poor and repressed, how ground under the heel of colonialism (both British and Indian) are most of the Indian people. We believe for a brief moment that Ghandi will make a difference for these forsaken, outcast widows.

But the young girl will be the only one to escape. I will not reveal the shattering fate of the beautiful young widow-whore, nor of the many old women who have lived out their lives as the trashed, hidden away. Finally we begin to grasp how deceitful and cunning, how debased and needy, their lives are. The holy water of the river cannot wash away what has been done to them.

My empowered, elegant, learned, witty, beautiful women friends in the west do not really understand the degredation of these women. Yet we have just read in Poetry Magazine some Afghani landays, brief poems created by women, whispered on the phone, sung privately to each other The landays in the June 2013 issue of Poetry remind me of this movie "Water." I recommend them both. They show how often women are repressed, thrown like fodder to the anger, desperation, desire of men. But also of women's wily creativity, their desire and determination to be heard if only in whispers among themselves.
     Two landays, gathered in danger to the writers:

         I'll make a tattoo from my lover's blood
         And shame every rose in the green garden.

and

         The old goat seized a kiss from my pout
         like tearing a piece of fat from a starving dog's snout.

Margotlog: Teatro Goldoni and The Rape of Lucretia

Margotlog: Teatro Goldoni and The Rape of Lucretia

     We in Minneapolis/Saint Paul enjoy one of the world's great images of the Roman matron Lucretia, Rembrandt's deeply moving portrayal just after she's stabbed herself. I've stood before this achingly beautiful young woman, her chemise stained with blood, a tear on her cheek, as she holds onto a bell rope, ringing for her maid even as she is about to collapse. The painting is entirely about innocent suffering, the rape a wager made among her husband's officers, and cruelly executed in his absence. She has been dragged from bed.

     And stands before us in bruised and shattered innocence. Preparing to watch Benjamin Britten's opera of the same name at the Teatro Goldoni, a few weeks ago in Florence, I held this image before me.

     "Everything in Italy is always the first time," quipped a gentleman behind me as I asked if this line was for reservations. He gave me a quintessential Italian shrug as we inched forward to the ticket window. The Teatro Goldoni was closed for renovations, my friend and companion Grazia told me. I assumed we were thus viewing the opening production.

     Like many Italian theaters I've seen before, the Teatro Goldoni is a jewel-box of a place, narrow and tall with a high stage, and the boxes like bird cages ranked together to the sky. Our box with four,velvet-cushioned chairs was almost in the middle, but high up, next to il pigioneaio (or some such, a slang term for the top-most crowded quarters, like a tenement flocked with birds).

     A tall, shy youngish man had already entered when I took the other front seat. We gave each other a simple greeting and he hunched over a book or libretto? Grazia entered after smoking a cigarette outside (she still smokes as so many Italians. I wish to heaven she'd stop!)

    The opera is told from a great remove, with two commentators setting forth the conflict between Romans and Etruscans. They sing against flashes of imagery from ancient sculpture, modern warfare, notably World War II. When we enter the drama, brave, hardy men quarrel and plot, with murder and conquest in mind. Still nothing about Lucretia, quietly at home.

     Then we meet her. She is gorgeous, but we are to understand, chaste. Still her power and glamor interest the composer/librettist more than her modesty. Her power is linked to her beauty and status as the wife of a commanding general.

     When the rape begins to take root, the story and music focus on the soldier who vows to test her fidelity. There's a lot of commentary about fickle women, about how the body takes over when touched in certain ways--a bit like a hidden safe unlocked by a secret spring. The commentators bemoan the man's rough determination. We see Lucretia laughing and playing, guilelessly worried about her husband's health and safety.

     The rape gets far more play than her resistance. The rape of a people--viewed in video and still images, ancient and modern--becomes conflated with her suffering. Yes it is brutal, the commentators tell us and we see it, but we do not see her, solitary and alone, friendless and abandoned, taking the ultimate courageous act of suicide. Her husband, warned of the depredation done to his wife, arrives and finds her in the act of stabbing herself.

     But by this time, the commentators have lifted above the human realm to the divine. They are singing about how God looks out for all. This is a Christian addition, not at all what the ancient story signifies. Think about it: pre-Christian, the ancient story is all about moral courage and fidelity. Not about how belief in God's forgiveness smooths away ugliness. Britten, whatever his motivations, has done the ancient story an injustice, not to mention his contemporary audience who is all too aware that Christ was not conceived when this ancient act took place.

Give me Rembrandt any day, yet I'm glad to have sat with my friend, and the quiet young man who rushed away the minute the curtain falls, saying "arriverderci," the formal Italian good-bye. I wonder if perhaps he, like us, feels diminished by the composer's effort to "sanctify" for Christendom what is, after all, an ancient and painful conundrum! A dilemma that is still with us, the double standard that holds a woman's chastity hostage to male lust for dominance. We disparage Britten, but bow in homage before Rembrandt's portrayal of this young woman, who destroys herself for a honor we cannot help but loathe, yet in her face, see what achingly painful struggle she has endured and in a painful, ultimate way surmounted.