Margotlog: War in Val D'Orcia
According to Uncle Frankie, fighting with the American 8th Army, surviving malaria in North Africa, working their way up Italy's boot, slipping Neapolitan whores into American officers' beds, and falling in love with a New York lawyer attached to Eisenhower's central staff kept him so busy and entertained, he never felt hunger, fear or exhaustion. Let his flat-footed, weak-eyed brothers stay home and drive cab or do war work. With his perfect Neapolitan dialect, my rascally youngest uncle played World War II for all it was worth.
Iris and Antonio Origin, deep in the hills of southern Tuscany, weren't particularly discomfited by the war either, not in the beginning. On their network of 50 farms, they worked with Tuscan farmers to refashion agricultural practices that had eroded the soil. Iris went to Rome for the birth of her second child. The city was tense, she found, as the U.S. 8th Army advanced from Sicily, and German troops retreated behind them. But the Origos were absorbed in their experiment to return 150, 000 acres of marginal Tuscan land to productivity. In their huge 15th-century manor house, La Foce, they had no trouble housing twenty refugee children from the north, bombed out of their homes. Iris started a school. She began writing a diary at night when the children slept.
It is this diary that now has become one of the most respected accounts of life in the chaos that was Italy's disintegration. Mussolini had fallen. For a while it looked like Prime Minister Badoglio would declare Italian neutrality, but as he hesitated, Fascists took control of many towns, grimly determined to resist the Allies. With an insouciance hard to imagine, Iris and Antonio conversed with German officers, begged Fascists for leniency, urged infuriated Partisans to caution and stealth, and kept faith with their peasant co-conspirators. All buried hams and cheese. Iris buried books and beautiful objects, cloth and thread. What could not be purchased, was made over from what remained. Each affectionate connection with a combatant throbbed with shared danger and the fear of loss, yet Antonio drove through mined fields to various provincial towns to beg or consult, to advise or test the water.
The nearer the Americans came, the more dire became their situation. German troops had flooded down from the north. Sporadic fighting among Partisans, Fascists and Germans proved constantly unpredictable. Many whom the Origos encountered they could not trust. But to show this openly was as dangerous as their uncertainty. Through most of it, these two stanch patriots of what was best in Italy struggled to maintain their composure, the health and livelihood of the farms that depended on them, and the lives of their own smaller but always growing group.
Thinking back on this absorbing account, I am reminded of another war diary, Mary Boykin Chestnut's Diary from Dixie, her description of South Carolina during the Civil Wary. In General Sherman's march to the sea, the Battle of Charleston, the fate of plantations throughout the South Carolina low country, and the chaos of unpredictable allegiances and troop movements--Mary Chestnut kept her head held high and her pluck in hand. It's impossible to compare suffering, but the immediacy of both these diaries and the writers' intelligence, stamina, and determination to survive make them unforgettable.
Only at the end, when the Origos and their many charges had to walk away from La Foce, with only the clothes and minimal food they could carry, only after sleeping with children on the ground, soothing their fears of constant aircraft strafing, and with almost no water to be had, only then did Iris begin to suffer acutely. Finding refuge in a tiny town, being stuffed in cellars for days as the battle raged above them--this meant that when the British and Americans finally arrived, she and all her clan greeted them with passionate relief. Yet she noted that the soldiers were a bit bored by it all, having lived through similar "liberations."
At the end her offering to the peasants stands as testimony to what was best in conflicted country: "Resigned and laborious, they and their men folk turn back from the fresh graves and the wreckage of their homes to their accustomed daily toil. It is they who will bring the land to life again." (1947, 1984, p. 239)
Thursday, July 24, 2014
Monday, July 7, 2014
Margotlog: Musing on Losing the Elephants
Margotlog: Musing on Losing the Elephants
I was standing in the shadows of my kitchen, looking out into blazing summer heat. What I saw instead of backyard summer green was the death of elephants. Hundreds of them. I saw the Babar I'd loved as a child, gunned down in rampant slaughter. I saw his children nudging his prone body and his face with his huge ears, bloodied from hacked-off tusks. A wave of nausea and hatred against my tribe paralyzed me, and kept me staring from darkness into rampant sun. Eventually I turned and wrote a check to African Conservation. I had to do something from my northern state, halfway across the world, to try and save the Elephants. It was the mid-1990s, the beginning of my environmental conscience.
It's very difficult to write about the whole-sale slaughter of one of the earth's most magnificent animals. Over the years, my outrage and sorrow have taken me toward many other gross indignities against life on earth. Dangers from pesticides and herbicides--read increased autism if one lives within a mile of most U.S. farms, read loss of one third of the nation's colonies of bees--create fear and extra efforts for my little plot of soil and beyond. Lower and lower numbers of many birds--read loss of habitat to increased population, human numbers growing at 227,000 per day. Threats against drinking water and pristine native habitats from fracking and the transport via pipelines or rail cars of oil. And then there are the extreme disasters like the British Petroleum oil rig spew that has turned some of the Gulf of Mexico into a death trap for every kind of creature from tuna fry to sea birds to dolphins, not to mention humans who try to make a living from the sea.
It's hard to write about whole-sale slaughter because over the years, I've become deadened myself to the outrage and stupidity, the whole-sale greed and convenient ignorance of so much of the world, including many neighbors in parts of the United States. Our news comes to us piecemeal. It takes concentration and stitching together of separate facts, it takes time to let these facts percolate into reality before outrage and determination are aroused.
Recently I saw a documentary about 1964: Mississippi Freedom Summer, commemorating that enormous sweep of mostly white young people into Mississippi to live with black people there who were denied the right to vote. What struck me was the danger, but even more how those who being denied had to overcome enormous fear and centuries of submission. It took an outside force, young blacks and whites often from the north, to help stand by them, to build up hope.
I want to build hope that we can help save the Elephants, the bees, the endangered birds. For Elephants, many efforts have already been tried and for a time succeeded--adding rangers to the various national parks in African where most Elephants live; creating a global signatory of nations agreeing to ban the sale of ivory, supporting skilled NGO's like TRAFFIC which keep track of Elephants and what happens to them and the ivory which is so often the reason they are killed.
As Elizabeth Kolbert's recent commentary in The New Yorker outlines (7/7/2014) the United States plus the British and Chinese have pledged large grants and the outlawing of ivory. But I think much much more needs to be done. Here are some ideas:
* Since the primary sales of ivory occur in Thailand, we need to pressure the Thai government to put real teeth into forbidding the sale of ivory products. We need to fund these efforts, and probably as important, educate school children in Thailand about the magnificent animals who are being killed to bring bracelets to Thai shops.
* Coloring books, posters, school curriculum - all about Elephants in Africa. We need to rouse children to love these big animals the way I loved Babar and his family, years ago in Charleston, South Carolina, before I even saw an elephant. We need to give rewards to those shops that proudly display "NO IVORY SALES" in their windows. We need to educate tourists against buying ivory and encourage them to protest any sale they encounter.
* We need an international, political effort, perhaps a Peace Corps for the Elephants, to educate and protect the animals and to arouse the countries where Elephants roam and ivory is sold to act in their defense.
I want to believe this is possible. I want to believe that my monthly contributions to the World Wildlife Fund's endeavors for Elephants will make a difference. I hope you who read this will contact your legislators and urge that the US institute immediately the planned efforts to protect the elephants. I urge all of us to remain involved, submit ideas, protest and lobby. In our lifetimes, there have been astonishing environmental successes in our lifetimes - notably outlawing DDT. There can be more. As they say in the ballparks, MAKE NOISE.
I was standing in the shadows of my kitchen, looking out into blazing summer heat. What I saw instead of backyard summer green was the death of elephants. Hundreds of them. I saw the Babar I'd loved as a child, gunned down in rampant slaughter. I saw his children nudging his prone body and his face with his huge ears, bloodied from hacked-off tusks. A wave of nausea and hatred against my tribe paralyzed me, and kept me staring from darkness into rampant sun. Eventually I turned and wrote a check to African Conservation. I had to do something from my northern state, halfway across the world, to try and save the Elephants. It was the mid-1990s, the beginning of my environmental conscience.
It's very difficult to write about the whole-sale slaughter of one of the earth's most magnificent animals. Over the years, my outrage and sorrow have taken me toward many other gross indignities against life on earth. Dangers from pesticides and herbicides--read increased autism if one lives within a mile of most U.S. farms, read loss of one third of the nation's colonies of bees--create fear and extra efforts for my little plot of soil and beyond. Lower and lower numbers of many birds--read loss of habitat to increased population, human numbers growing at 227,000 per day. Threats against drinking water and pristine native habitats from fracking and the transport via pipelines or rail cars of oil. And then there are the extreme disasters like the British Petroleum oil rig spew that has turned some of the Gulf of Mexico into a death trap for every kind of creature from tuna fry to sea birds to dolphins, not to mention humans who try to make a living from the sea.
It's hard to write about whole-sale slaughter because over the years, I've become deadened myself to the outrage and stupidity, the whole-sale greed and convenient ignorance of so much of the world, including many neighbors in parts of the United States. Our news comes to us piecemeal. It takes concentration and stitching together of separate facts, it takes time to let these facts percolate into reality before outrage and determination are aroused.
Recently I saw a documentary about 1964: Mississippi Freedom Summer, commemorating that enormous sweep of mostly white young people into Mississippi to live with black people there who were denied the right to vote. What struck me was the danger, but even more how those who being denied had to overcome enormous fear and centuries of submission. It took an outside force, young blacks and whites often from the north, to help stand by them, to build up hope.
I want to build hope that we can help save the Elephants, the bees, the endangered birds. For Elephants, many efforts have already been tried and for a time succeeded--adding rangers to the various national parks in African where most Elephants live; creating a global signatory of nations agreeing to ban the sale of ivory, supporting skilled NGO's like TRAFFIC which keep track of Elephants and what happens to them and the ivory which is so often the reason they are killed.
As Elizabeth Kolbert's recent commentary in The New Yorker outlines (7/7/2014) the United States plus the British and Chinese have pledged large grants and the outlawing of ivory. But I think much much more needs to be done. Here are some ideas:
* Since the primary sales of ivory occur in Thailand, we need to pressure the Thai government to put real teeth into forbidding the sale of ivory products. We need to fund these efforts, and probably as important, educate school children in Thailand about the magnificent animals who are being killed to bring bracelets to Thai shops.
* Coloring books, posters, school curriculum - all about Elephants in Africa. We need to rouse children to love these big animals the way I loved Babar and his family, years ago in Charleston, South Carolina, before I even saw an elephant. We need to give rewards to those shops that proudly display "NO IVORY SALES" in their windows. We need to educate tourists against buying ivory and encourage them to protest any sale they encounter.
* We need an international, political effort, perhaps a Peace Corps for the Elephants, to educate and protect the animals and to arouse the countries where Elephants roam and ivory is sold to act in their defense.
I want to believe this is possible. I want to believe that my monthly contributions to the World Wildlife Fund's endeavors for Elephants will make a difference. I hope you who read this will contact your legislators and urge that the US institute immediately the planned efforts to protect the elephants. I urge all of us to remain involved, submit ideas, protest and lobby. In our lifetimes, there have been astonishing environmental successes in our lifetimes - notably outlawing DDT. There can be more. As they say in the ballparks, MAKE NOISE.
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