Margotlog: May All Your Christmases Be White?
Even as I write this, I sense the double meaning--white as in snow-covered, aka, Minnesota Northland Christmases, but also "white" as in belonging to those with white skin. When I was growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, we "whities" were surrounded by people with brown skin, who celebrated Christmas much as I thought we did. They shopped with us at the dime stores, though not yet sitting at lunch counters. When I occasionally passed their homes, especially those on the barrier islands south of Charleston, the decorations shouted "Christmas"--strings of red bells, twinkling colored lights, maybe even a Rudolph and a sleigh cavorting across a roof top. Christmases were not white at all--but often brilliantly blue and green, with palm fronds clacking, and street-corner Santas looking hot in their red flannel as they rang their bells.
We kids in the Old Citadel decorated our family trees with homemade ornaments cut from colored paper. My parents hung glass dew-drops and balls up high. Lower we placed funny pipe cleaner guys in striped trousers and black vests along with our homemade angels, purple and pink. Who knew where those funny guys in striped pants had come from. Maybe from our parents' Christmases before my sister and I were born. They lived in Pittsburgh for a decade through the Depression and parts of World War II before having children. Sometimes my mother talked nostalgically about big iced cakes from "Swan's" which she picked up after work for Christmas eve. (I have no idea if that was really the name of the store, though something like it rings a bell.)
I have lived in Minnesota longer than anywhere else and Christmases are often white, white and cold. If we're lucky, a brilliant blue sky compensates for unbearable windchill. Again I muse about the line "May all your Christmases be white," and remember that the day before Christmas this year, my husband and I drove west from our Saint Paul neighborhood, across the still unfrozen Mississippi. Another old song popped into mind: "Over the river and through the woods/ To Grandfather's house we go." We certainly wouldn't have wanted to try driving a sleigh over the river this Christmas eve. Not until a few days later did snow and piercing cold arrive. Even now, I bet the Mississippi is not frozen solid.
Still there are these expectations. As Fran and I commented, driving through a still brown urban landscape to Minneapolis and the first of our family Christmas celebrations, so many Christmas songs assume the land will be covered with snow--"that stings the toes and bites the nose as over the ground we go." This is a Nordic assumption, probably from Germany and Britain, I think. "Good king Wenceslas looked out, on the feast of Stephen, When the snow lay round about,/ deep and crisp and even." Suddenly, my mind springs back to an encounter I had with my daughter years ago in the huge Munich museum called the Alta Pinakothek.
We were standing before a painting by Albrecht Durer, the great early Renaissance German painter. We're looking at the subject of the painting, a firm-cheeked handsome man named Oswald Krel (1499). He looks thoroughly Renaissance, meaning clear-eyed, in command of his existence, and wearing a fur-trimmed collar. Yet in panels beside him, hairy men brandish clubs and firebrands, attacking travelers on snowy forest roads. "How creepy," I say to her. And she, with her superior knowledge of German language and culture, labels them "Krampus, Austrian ghost walkers who around St. Nicholas eve, Dec 6th, attack villagers in the fields."
As I will write in the book I'm finally finishing called "The Shared Leg or Falling for Botticelli," these ghost walkers and their cruel, unprovoked attacks reminded me of something I hadn't thought of for a very long time. My mother, who grew up in eastern North Dakota, with a German father and Swedish mother, used to tell us that she and her brother and sisters almost always received a piece of coal in their Christmas stockings. When I thought of those killjoy Krampus, I thought of the coal in her stocking. What was it supposed to mean?
A reminder of their inherently "fallen-from-grace" devilishness? Or that "Papa" was always on the lookout for wrong-doers? Or that all of us need the guidance of a loving saint across the winter wastes at Christmas time? The carol about Good King Wencaslas tells us exactly that. Like the King's page, we need to step behind someone who has "dinted" the snow, and when we encounter a poor man, we need to call out "Bring me flesh and bring me wine, bring me pine logs hither." Because in the bitterest weather of the year, the message of Christmas is...
Therefore, Christian men, be sure, wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.
That still leaves the uncertain meaning of coal in one's stocking, and attacks by Krampus in snowy fields. Deep in the Nordic psyche, I think, lies a delight in shocking expectations, in shocking the innocent on a forest path. Like a snowstorm that roars in out of the west, making it impossible to push open the front door for days. I'm not wishing such a development on any of us. I'm just remembering...
May all your Christmases be white!
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Margotlog: Tucson: Desert Birds
Margotlog: Tucson: Desert Birds
We found a comfy hideaway on the eastern side of Tucson, renting the next to smallest of six casitas (Spanish for little houses), called "Rain Dancer." Second morning as I read to Fran from a new story-in-progress, the ceiling started to drip on his side of the bed--Rain Dancer, living up to its name, but it was a danse macabre in my story. My character, a young woman who was scheduled to waitress at a restaurant in the World Trade Center, had called in sick. The 9/11 attacks occurred. Now she was tormented with guilt at the death of her stand-in. Drip, drip, drip went the gentle rain on my husband's side of the bed.
"This is the greenest desert in the world," a ranger told us. Huge saguaro cacti poked up throughout an uneven terrain of barrel cactus, organ pipe cactus, prickly pear cactus, mesquite trees--some gnarled like ancient bodies gripped by pain. Mesquite protects the small saguaro from heat and predators until they can rise into 200-year grandeur. I was awed. A twelve or twenty-foot saguaro has roots extending the same number of feet in all directions. Even below ground they dominate this desert.
Eventually we had to move out of Rain Center to the larger casita next door. It was decorated with deep indigo-blue tiles around a rounded Mexican fireplace. Deep blue indigo suggests water in the tan and gray-green of the desert, water so rich as to be jeweled, humming with shadowy eminence. In my story set on the North Shore of Lake Superior, water plays a savage role. An ore boat cracks apart in mammoth waves and wind. A sailor from Uzbekistan is rescued and brought into the life of the guilt-ridden young woman.
In our week in the desert, half the days were overcast, but rain fell heavily only once, scaring us out of the Rain Dancer casita. Days later, down a slow incline we reached a "wash." Parts were still wet. A starry plant close to the ground sparkled with drops of dew or left-over rain. Under the dry surface, the sandy soil was still wet. Cottonwoods bent down to get their arms in the dirt. Tall western ash trees turned golden and did not bend at all. It was quiet except for the birds.
Was it the spiny resistance of the vegetation, making one feel alien, that fixed my eyes on the sky? There on wires in the back yard sang a burbling, warbling, scolding, twittering big gray bird with a curved-downward beak. It sounded like a mocking bird. Suddenly I was home in the lush green of a South Carolina Christmas. My father would soon get out his violin and we'd play duets, he counting Italian solfeggio to keep me in tow. The curved-bill thrasher would keep us company.
Walking one evening up the road, I spied a brilliant red bird high in a mesquite bush. Suddenly it swooped into the air, displaying black wings, and returned to its perch. A Vermillion flycatcher. I was mesmerized. It kept spiraling away and returning against the slowly receding light.
From morning to noon, hummers chased each other away from the feeder near the covered patio. One hummer took its time. It was bright green with a touch of black on its cheek. Its beak would tilt down to suck, lift out while the bird looked around before tilting down again into the tiny hole of sugar water. Calm, almost nonchalant before another whose black head ruffled open into brilliant red, chased it away with a huge buzz. It was a bit like slapstick, except to the humming birds, territory was everything.
There were no flocks of birds, but four Harris hawks--huge brown-black birds with white across their tails--flew through the brush, posting themselves on electric poles or atop the low trees. Almost too big for the diminutive scale of the desert, these hawks, we learned, work as a family team, scouting and harrying their prey. Our arrival sent them packing to quieter territory and leaving the sky to us and the jewels and capers of the desert.
Maybe the one who made me laugh the most was the rather ungainly Gila woodpecker, with its black and white striped coat and tail. This bird would crouch on the tiny hummer feeder, almost embracing it, as it awkwardly tried to fit its thick beak into the sipping holes. We laughed and felt rather ungainly ourselves in the spare, muted quiet of the almost-winter desert.
We found a comfy hideaway on the eastern side of Tucson, renting the next to smallest of six casitas (Spanish for little houses), called "Rain Dancer." Second morning as I read to Fran from a new story-in-progress, the ceiling started to drip on his side of the bed--Rain Dancer, living up to its name, but it was a danse macabre in my story. My character, a young woman who was scheduled to waitress at a restaurant in the World Trade Center, had called in sick. The 9/11 attacks occurred. Now she was tormented with guilt at the death of her stand-in. Drip, drip, drip went the gentle rain on my husband's side of the bed.
"This is the greenest desert in the world," a ranger told us. Huge saguaro cacti poked up throughout an uneven terrain of barrel cactus, organ pipe cactus, prickly pear cactus, mesquite trees--some gnarled like ancient bodies gripped by pain. Mesquite protects the small saguaro from heat and predators until they can rise into 200-year grandeur. I was awed. A twelve or twenty-foot saguaro has roots extending the same number of feet in all directions. Even below ground they dominate this desert.
Eventually we had to move out of Rain Center to the larger casita next door. It was decorated with deep indigo-blue tiles around a rounded Mexican fireplace. Deep blue indigo suggests water in the tan and gray-green of the desert, water so rich as to be jeweled, humming with shadowy eminence. In my story set on the North Shore of Lake Superior, water plays a savage role. An ore boat cracks apart in mammoth waves and wind. A sailor from Uzbekistan is rescued and brought into the life of the guilt-ridden young woman.
In our week in the desert, half the days were overcast, but rain fell heavily only once, scaring us out of the Rain Dancer casita. Days later, down a slow incline we reached a "wash." Parts were still wet. A starry plant close to the ground sparkled with drops of dew or left-over rain. Under the dry surface, the sandy soil was still wet. Cottonwoods bent down to get their arms in the dirt. Tall western ash trees turned golden and did not bend at all. It was quiet except for the birds.
Was it the spiny resistance of the vegetation, making one feel alien, that fixed my eyes on the sky? There on wires in the back yard sang a burbling, warbling, scolding, twittering big gray bird with a curved-downward beak. It sounded like a mocking bird. Suddenly I was home in the lush green of a South Carolina Christmas. My father would soon get out his violin and we'd play duets, he counting Italian solfeggio to keep me in tow. The curved-bill thrasher would keep us company.
Walking one evening up the road, I spied a brilliant red bird high in a mesquite bush. Suddenly it swooped into the air, displaying black wings, and returned to its perch. A Vermillion flycatcher. I was mesmerized. It kept spiraling away and returning against the slowly receding light.
From morning to noon, hummers chased each other away from the feeder near the covered patio. One hummer took its time. It was bright green with a touch of black on its cheek. Its beak would tilt down to suck, lift out while the bird looked around before tilting down again into the tiny hole of sugar water. Calm, almost nonchalant before another whose black head ruffled open into brilliant red, chased it away with a huge buzz. It was a bit like slapstick, except to the humming birds, territory was everything.
There were no flocks of birds, but four Harris hawks--huge brown-black birds with white across their tails--flew through the brush, posting themselves on electric poles or atop the low trees. Almost too big for the diminutive scale of the desert, these hawks, we learned, work as a family team, scouting and harrying their prey. Our arrival sent them packing to quieter territory and leaving the sky to us and the jewels and capers of the desert.
Maybe the one who made me laugh the most was the rather ungainly Gila woodpecker, with its black and white striped coat and tail. This bird would crouch on the tiny hummer feeder, almost embracing it, as it awkwardly tried to fit its thick beak into the sipping holes. We laughed and felt rather ungainly ourselves in the spare, muted quiet of the almost-winter desert.
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Margotlog: Three Cats and Some Humans - Winter Update
Margotlog: Three Cats and Some Humans - Winter Update
I'm more aware of them now with the windows and doors closed - the swishy tails, the meows, and pawing at sleeve or pants leg. I'm more in the house where they live all the time. In summer feeling guilty about cooping them up, I sometimes take sleek, black-and-white Julia, the most compliant, out to sit with me on the back deck, though I never lift a firm hand off her back. We bask together for a while, then that's enough. But at 8 above zero or 20 below, such indulgences are impossible. She might well have lived outside before the Humane Society got ahold of her. Still, I don't want any more cat-inflicted bird deaths. She's a sweet cat, but I have no doubt she could kill birds. Her pupils widen when she's very intent on capture. She waits, her tail swishing. Then, pounce. Another dead string. Another done-in stuffed mouse.
Live mice visit in winter. Maggie, smooth-haired calico cat with a weird orange square cutting through one eye, paws at an outside corner of the kitchen. The next evening, she and Julia are hunkered down staring under the low TV stand. Next they stalk around to the back of the sofa, starting to patrol the perimeter of the living room. A quick dart out to the adjacent dining room. Something has made a beeline behind the huge black radiator at the room's outside corner. I lift out the reflective panel stashed there to help reflect heat. A quick scurry. A somewhat gimpy gray mouse, awkward as a wind-up toy, skitters out of sight on the kitchen linoleum. The next evening, the guy human baits a mousetrap with a little peanut butter and lifts it into the lowered basement ceiling. The following morning there's a sweet gray-backed mouse whose back is broken. After a qualm or two-- outside with it. Our next-door neighbors confess to luring a mouse out of their house. We may have caught it.
I've just finished my winter evening walk-about, rounding from kitchen through entrance hall, living room, dining room and back to kitchen. As I walk I listen to various kinds of classical music. Tonight it's Boccerini, a delightful minor master, born in Luca, Italy, he spent most of his creative life in Spain. Throughout his hundreds of chamber music pieces, you can hear the Spanish influence in rhythms and use of guitars. Boccerini himself was a renown cellist, who overlapped with Mozart before outliving him by four decades. The jaunty rhythms and speedy tempo are great for walking.
The cats like Boccerini because I'm moving around, not sitting and staring silently at something boring like a screen or a page. I swish a toy with colored ribbons threaded through narrow orange and gold tubes to a stuffed mouse flourish. Back and forth this swishing creates a little breeze. The cats don't walk or pounce in my path, but my activity sets them going. Tilly, the old lady of the three, yet the most limber, and most whiny, follows me around with her big green eyes fastened on me. She won't bat at my toy. She wants me to get down on her level, so after 30 minutes or so of walking, I kneel beside the long "barrel" made out of some crinkly fabric and stiffened with heavy interior wires. It has a hole in its top where a hand can reach through and pat a cat inside. Julia, the best game player, will keep batting a ball away from the barrel opening when she's inside. But Tilly simply enters at one end and pads through to the other. I touch her furry back as she passes under the opening. Next she'll inhale or lick up some catnip from the corrugated round scratching disk. Finally, pestering me with meows until I sit on the floor outside the back of her chair, she is energized enough to paw at a ribbon I'm swishing at the openings in the chair back. We eye each other. Her beautiful, foxy-shaped face with its orange lightning mark--a feline Harry Potter--soulful green eyes, and tufty cheeks of motley black--always pleases me. Anyone who says cats don't have facial expressions hasn't looked very hard. Her eyes signal anger, appeal, scorn, sympathy, disgust, jealousy, and right now, relatively lively attention for an old lady cat over fifteen years old.
The cats like Boccerini because they like having me moving around
I'm more aware of them now with the windows and doors closed - the swishy tails, the meows, and pawing at sleeve or pants leg. I'm more in the house where they live all the time. In summer feeling guilty about cooping them up, I sometimes take sleek, black-and-white Julia, the most compliant, out to sit with me on the back deck, though I never lift a firm hand off her back. We bask together for a while, then that's enough. But at 8 above zero or 20 below, such indulgences are impossible. She might well have lived outside before the Humane Society got ahold of her. Still, I don't want any more cat-inflicted bird deaths. She's a sweet cat, but I have no doubt she could kill birds. Her pupils widen when she's very intent on capture. She waits, her tail swishing. Then, pounce. Another dead string. Another done-in stuffed mouse.
Live mice visit in winter. Maggie, smooth-haired calico cat with a weird orange square cutting through one eye, paws at an outside corner of the kitchen. The next evening, she and Julia are hunkered down staring under the low TV stand. Next they stalk around to the back of the sofa, starting to patrol the perimeter of the living room. A quick dart out to the adjacent dining room. Something has made a beeline behind the huge black radiator at the room's outside corner. I lift out the reflective panel stashed there to help reflect heat. A quick scurry. A somewhat gimpy gray mouse, awkward as a wind-up toy, skitters out of sight on the kitchen linoleum. The next evening, the guy human baits a mousetrap with a little peanut butter and lifts it into the lowered basement ceiling. The following morning there's a sweet gray-backed mouse whose back is broken. After a qualm or two-- outside with it. Our next-door neighbors confess to luring a mouse out of their house. We may have caught it.
I've just finished my winter evening walk-about, rounding from kitchen through entrance hall, living room, dining room and back to kitchen. As I walk I listen to various kinds of classical music. Tonight it's Boccerini, a delightful minor master, born in Luca, Italy, he spent most of his creative life in Spain. Throughout his hundreds of chamber music pieces, you can hear the Spanish influence in rhythms and use of guitars. Boccerini himself was a renown cellist, who overlapped with Mozart before outliving him by four decades. The jaunty rhythms and speedy tempo are great for walking.
The cats like Boccerini because I'm moving around, not sitting and staring silently at something boring like a screen or a page. I swish a toy with colored ribbons threaded through narrow orange and gold tubes to a stuffed mouse flourish. Back and forth this swishing creates a little breeze. The cats don't walk or pounce in my path, but my activity sets them going. Tilly, the old lady of the three, yet the most limber, and most whiny, follows me around with her big green eyes fastened on me. She won't bat at my toy. She wants me to get down on her level, so after 30 minutes or so of walking, I kneel beside the long "barrel" made out of some crinkly fabric and stiffened with heavy interior wires. It has a hole in its top where a hand can reach through and pat a cat inside. Julia, the best game player, will keep batting a ball away from the barrel opening when she's inside. But Tilly simply enters at one end and pads through to the other. I touch her furry back as she passes under the opening. Next she'll inhale or lick up some catnip from the corrugated round scratching disk. Finally, pestering me with meows until I sit on the floor outside the back of her chair, she is energized enough to paw at a ribbon I'm swishing at the openings in the chair back. We eye each other. Her beautiful, foxy-shaped face with its orange lightning mark--a feline Harry Potter--soulful green eyes, and tufty cheeks of motley black--always pleases me. Anyone who says cats don't have facial expressions hasn't looked very hard. Her eyes signal anger, appeal, scorn, sympathy, disgust, jealousy, and right now, relatively lively attention for an old lady cat over fifteen years old.
The cats like Boccerini because they like having me moving around
Monday, November 10, 2014
Margotlog: Bare Ruined Choirs, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Margotlog: Bare Ruined Choirs, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
The Wise Old Owl counts the leaves falling off her catalpa tree with the snow. She counts up to 56, the same number as children who have been abused by caregivers in Minnesota since 2005. Not many two-leggeds care to count catalpa leaves falling. Not many have cared to climb the tree of these children's lives to help them hold onto their leaves, keep those young chests and limbs from snapping off, breaking open.
It makes the Wise Old very sad. "Bare ruined choirs" calls to her the soaring cathedral of nature--quite a religious experience, she'll tell you. Choirs where children might sing, might have been kept safe, beloved and gently held, not with palms burned down to the bone, not with hearts beating inside broken ribs, not with cracked-open skulls.
Is this the poor house of Charles Dickens' time? Lots of very young children died then from malnutrition and exposure to cold and wet. No, the state of Minnesota does not condone poor houses or orphanages. Maybe she's mistaken, maybe the homes where these children died are the poor house of today. Not enough decent food, not any protection from rats and garbage, or the rampage of caregivers.
She wonders if maybe these poor houses are the killing fields of a kind of war? She's heard of concentration camps across the oceans where whole flocks were burned to death, stuffed into ovens. "Sing a song of blackbirds," blacked bones baked in a pyre of hatred. But not here, surely. Not in the sane security of the U.S. of A.
In her travels she's noted differences, however. Homes huge as pumpkins on steroids with four or five of those racing roaches that humans like to crowd onto highways. Homes that are mere piles of sticks with cold zinging through them. Poor versions of the poet's "bare ruined choirs." Noting as she does how pumpkins patches crowd together, whereas the piles of sticks are often off by themselves, at least here in the heartland. Or if crowded together, they house only the poor.
She suspects the caregivers who neglected or abused these 56 fallen leaves lived in the seclusion of Minnesota's heartland. It's not such a jolly place, this heartland. She's noticed that. Little towns become quite bare themselves. Empty. Ruined choirs. Why? She's watched slowly one jolly giant gathers all the acres into one enormous parcel. Takes several big machines and a few two-leggeds, leaving the town flock with very poor pickings. She can attest to that.
Knowing what's good for her, she's lately moved her home to a park land in a city. By the big river. One of her favorite places, that river. Don't find too many mangled, burned, picked over skeletons in places like this. They hum with prosperity. If they can't keep the leaves on their trees--nature being what it is--they buy fake. Take a gander, she suggests, liking the notion of a goose walking around with the two-leggeds. Don't find many bare ruined children in places like these.
The Wise Old Owl counts the leaves falling off her catalpa tree with the snow. She counts up to 56, the same number as children who have been abused by caregivers in Minnesota since 2005. Not many two-leggeds care to count catalpa leaves falling. Not many have cared to climb the tree of these children's lives to help them hold onto their leaves, keep those young chests and limbs from snapping off, breaking open.
It makes the Wise Old very sad. "Bare ruined choirs" calls to her the soaring cathedral of nature--quite a religious experience, she'll tell you. Choirs where children might sing, might have been kept safe, beloved and gently held, not with palms burned down to the bone, not with hearts beating inside broken ribs, not with cracked-open skulls.
Is this the poor house of Charles Dickens' time? Lots of very young children died then from malnutrition and exposure to cold and wet. No, the state of Minnesota does not condone poor houses or orphanages. Maybe she's mistaken, maybe the homes where these children died are the poor house of today. Not enough decent food, not any protection from rats and garbage, or the rampage of caregivers.
She wonders if maybe these poor houses are the killing fields of a kind of war? She's heard of concentration camps across the oceans where whole flocks were burned to death, stuffed into ovens. "Sing a song of blackbirds," blacked bones baked in a pyre of hatred. But not here, surely. Not in the sane security of the U.S. of A.
In her travels she's noted differences, however. Homes huge as pumpkins on steroids with four or five of those racing roaches that humans like to crowd onto highways. Homes that are mere piles of sticks with cold zinging through them. Poor versions of the poet's "bare ruined choirs." Noting as she does how pumpkins patches crowd together, whereas the piles of sticks are often off by themselves, at least here in the heartland. Or if crowded together, they house only the poor.
She suspects the caregivers who neglected or abused these 56 fallen leaves lived in the seclusion of Minnesota's heartland. It's not such a jolly place, this heartland. She's noticed that. Little towns become quite bare themselves. Empty. Ruined choirs. Why? She's watched slowly one jolly giant gathers all the acres into one enormous parcel. Takes several big machines and a few two-leggeds, leaving the town flock with very poor pickings. She can attest to that.
Knowing what's good for her, she's lately moved her home to a park land in a city. By the big river. One of her favorite places, that river. Don't find too many mangled, burned, picked over skeletons in places like this. They hum with prosperity. If they can't keep the leaves on their trees--nature being what it is--they buy fake. Take a gander, she suggests, liking the notion of a goose walking around with the two-leggeds. Don't find many bare ruined children in places like these.
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Margotlog: Why GIve a Hoot?
Margotlog: Why Give a Hoot?
Wise Old Owl looks at various arguments pro and con about adding bird-friendly glass to the Vikings Stadium design, in Minneapolis, MN.
* Item one: A Star Tribune editorial (Oct 18) has asked Wise Old to keep "bird deaths in perspective." Being a bird in modern America isn't work a hoot, so the argument goes. Bird deaths due to hitting a tall glass, Viking wall will be a drop in the bucket, simply not worth the expense of installing less-damaging glass.
* Item two: Wise Old decides to expand the human and avian perspective on this advice. The city of Minneapolis via the Park Board has been considering what to do with a piece of supposed parkland once called The Yard, and now evidently called The Common, adjacent to the rising stadium. When Wise Old closes her eyes, she easily imagines this parcel littered with dead birds, each 24 hours' "harvest" from winged encounters with Vikings glass. This is possibly akin to a football quarterback being clobbered by a linebacker. But, of course, birds don't wear helmets.
* Item three: Wise Old tries expanding the perspective even further. Another recent article in the Star Tribune reports Minneapolis' desire to recreate its downtown as more "tree friendly." Wise Old scratches her neck feathers at this one. How does a desire to be more tree-friendly, attracting birds in the process, fit with a shoulder-shrug against more bird-friendly glass? Quite a conundrum for this Wise Old.
* Item four, last item: Star Tribune reporter Brandon Stahl has roused astonished outrage at the death of 4-year-old Eric Dean of Pope County, whose stepmother beat him repeatedly, yet county child protection did nothing to stop it. Minnesota, it turns out, has one of the country's worse records on child protection. Gov. Mark Dayton has convened a panel to look into this.'
Not to be confusing, Wise Old asks, What's the connection between a lack of child protection and bird deaths from nonfriendly glass in the Vikings stadium? Wise Old hoots at even having to ask the question: It's a matter of compassion and--she gives two hoots here--preventing damage once the danger is identified.
With a final couple of hoots, Wise Old urges commercial giants in her adopted city to reconsider. Bird-friendly glass is, if nothing else, a great popular move. She closes her eyes and imagines the marketing potential: a gorgeous red cardinal preening atop the helmet of Adrian Peterson, if he's ever allowed back on the field.
Better yet, for the Vikes, a proud blue jay hanging on while rookie Teddy Bridgewater runs the ball down the line. Plus a medley of warblers on their way south, fanning the balls toward wide receivers like Greg Jennings and Cordarrelle Patterson, who haven't done so well lately fielding. Maybe bird-friendly acts can help.
(Originally published in the Opinion Exchange section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Tuesday Oct 21, 2014.)
Wise Old Owl looks at various arguments pro and con about adding bird-friendly glass to the Vikings Stadium design, in Minneapolis, MN.
* Item one: A Star Tribune editorial (Oct 18) has asked Wise Old to keep "bird deaths in perspective." Being a bird in modern America isn't work a hoot, so the argument goes. Bird deaths due to hitting a tall glass, Viking wall will be a drop in the bucket, simply not worth the expense of installing less-damaging glass.
* Item two: Wise Old decides to expand the human and avian perspective on this advice. The city of Minneapolis via the Park Board has been considering what to do with a piece of supposed parkland once called The Yard, and now evidently called The Common, adjacent to the rising stadium. When Wise Old closes her eyes, she easily imagines this parcel littered with dead birds, each 24 hours' "harvest" from winged encounters with Vikings glass. This is possibly akin to a football quarterback being clobbered by a linebacker. But, of course, birds don't wear helmets.
* Item three: Wise Old tries expanding the perspective even further. Another recent article in the Star Tribune reports Minneapolis' desire to recreate its downtown as more "tree friendly." Wise Old scratches her neck feathers at this one. How does a desire to be more tree-friendly, attracting birds in the process, fit with a shoulder-shrug against more bird-friendly glass? Quite a conundrum for this Wise Old.
* Item four, last item: Star Tribune reporter Brandon Stahl has roused astonished outrage at the death of 4-year-old Eric Dean of Pope County, whose stepmother beat him repeatedly, yet county child protection did nothing to stop it. Minnesota, it turns out, has one of the country's worse records on child protection. Gov. Mark Dayton has convened a panel to look into this.'
Not to be confusing, Wise Old asks, What's the connection between a lack of child protection and bird deaths from nonfriendly glass in the Vikings stadium? Wise Old hoots at even having to ask the question: It's a matter of compassion and--she gives two hoots here--preventing damage once the danger is identified.
With a final couple of hoots, Wise Old urges commercial giants in her adopted city to reconsider. Bird-friendly glass is, if nothing else, a great popular move. She closes her eyes and imagines the marketing potential: a gorgeous red cardinal preening atop the helmet of Adrian Peterson, if he's ever allowed back on the field.
Better yet, for the Vikes, a proud blue jay hanging on while rookie Teddy Bridgewater runs the ball down the line. Plus a medley of warblers on their way south, fanning the balls toward wide receivers like Greg Jennings and Cordarrelle Patterson, who haven't done so well lately fielding. Maybe bird-friendly acts can help.
(Originally published in the Opinion Exchange section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Tuesday Oct 21, 2014.)
Sunday, October 12, 2014
Margotlog: Where Were the Neighbors?
Margotlog: Where
Were the Neighbors?
We
Americans like to think of ourselves as individuals to the max, making our own
way for better or worse in the world. Yet, as I think about the tragedy of
4-year-old's Eric Dean's death, reported Sept 2, 2014 in the StarTribune, I
find myself asking, "Where were the neighbors?"
Eric's
childcare workers brought frequent reports of the child's abuse to the Pope
County's Child Protection services. Yet, little was done. The boy was bitten by
his father's girlfriend, bitten many times, as well as punched, bruised, thrown
down stairs which led to his arm being broken. And finally he was inflicted
with sufficient bodily harm to lead to gastro-intestinal death. No wonder
his former childcare workers feel guilty.
Yet,
why didn't they go to the police. Were none of the neighbors suspicious of the
boy's trauma? Was his house so isolated that no one except his childcare
workers saw much of him? As I mull the difference between city and rural life,
I'm aware of events in my St. Paul Lex-Ham neighborhood that took place about
ten years ago.
The
"incident" involved a very friendly, full-bred Siamese kitten named
Bandit. Anyone walking past Bandit's house, as I often did, would find him coming
to be patted. He seemed to have a limp. A month later he began walking the
neighborhood meowing for food. When he came up on our porch and yowled, I fed
him and he purred a thank-you.
Word
about Bandit began to circulate--his friendliness, his limp, his desire for
food, his being outside in all weathers. A neighbor closer to Bandit's house
reported that his owners were keeping him as a "stud." They wanted
him inside only when it was time to impregnate their female Siamese.
His
limp got worse. He looked thinner and thinner. I along with a few others
knocked on the owners' door and told the surly man who answered that we were
concerned about the cat. "I'll be happy to adopt him if you don't want
him," I said through the screen and gave him my name.
The
owner threatened to call the police if Bandit went missing, and slammed the
door in our faces. The next afternoon a very polite Saint Paul policeman rang
our bell. We stood talking on the porch for a few minutes. The gist of his
message was that the owner had called, threatening to do damage to anyone who
showed any interest in Bandit. The policeman urged me to stay away from Bandit.
He also said he'd told the owner it was his job to feed the cat, and keep it
indoors if he didn't want it wandering the neighborhood.
A
cat is not a child. Yet we often treat our pets the way we treat our children.
Some are pampered and indulged. Some deprived like Eric of a most basic human
rights--safety. Bandit might not have been older than a four-year-old boy, but
he knew how to survive up to a point. Within a month, however, we heard that
his owner had run over him, whether on purpose or not, we never knew. Some of
us were very sad for Bandit.
Six
years later when Bandit's home burned, his surly owner died of smoke inhalation.
Few of us grieved. But we were shaken. The fire seemed like retribution far
beyond the misdemeanor of neglecting or abusing a pet.
If
Bandit had been a child, I like to tell myself, our neighborhood attempt to
help him might have made a difference. It certainly eased my distress over
Bandit's neglect, and gave us the support of like-minded neighbors and a kind,
sensible city policeman.
I
wish the same had been true for Eric's childcare workers who tried so hard to
protect him but were stymied by the family's stone-walling, by limits on Child
Protection follow-ups, by fear that going to the police might lose them their
jobs. Some things, like limits on the number of abuse reports kept active, will
change, so Minnesota officials promise, but no change will bring back a badly
and repeatedly damaged child. I wish there had been neighbors to sound the alarm. I wish someone had called the police.
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Margotlog: Three Cities in Italy and My Poem, "The Annunciation"
Margotlog: Three Cities in Italy, and My Poem "The Annunciation"
I just came home from la bel'Italia, specifically three cities: Orte, Arezzo, and Florence. I've never been to Orte and Arezzo before, Florence, however, many many times. As part-Italian, and an art-lover, as a happy speaker of even limited Italian, as a fan of the country's quirky history and beautiful landscapes, and ever a pasta-lover--my trips to Italy rejuvenate me and send me home after 8-10 days completely satisfied.
There are always snags. This time, I was at my wits end trying to procure b & b's and even a hotel at the last minute. Luckily, friends who know Orte agreed to pick me up at the train station and chug-chug me up the incredibly high wall face to the old city. They deposited me at the clean quiet B&B I'd reserved, and the second day I took a tour of the enormous city underground - miles of snaking tunnels and deep pools which once formed the city's water reservoir and delivery system. There were no desiccated bodies as in Rome's catacombs, but the sense of being in another world, with quivery light, and deep blue water satisfied some desire to try out burial ahead of time.
Arezzo, though also high, is not much like Orte's almost funeral quiet. Arezzo is a town of youth wearing everything from torn jeans to tiered gauzy dresses. The first evening in a rambling two-room hall, a friend held a retrospective exhibit of her lover's work. He died three years ago. They kept horses in a stone farmhouse 40 kilometers outside town. She still stables two mares and a filly-in-training for the big time. It was a time of celebration, but full of strangers and maybe on my part, too much wine.
It was the second day, on my own, when I truly gathered a sense of this ancient yet very lively town.
High up beside the cathedral, I sat in a very pleasant park under a rim of umbrella pines leaning together to catch the sun. Children ran across an open circle with their dark German shepherd barking after them. When he was leashed and couldn't follow, he emitted the strangest groans and gurgles I've ever heard coming from a dog. Otherwise, in the quiet, I looked into the hills studded with a few
quintessential Tuscan farmhouses, three-story, with the bronzed terracotta look of old wood, and topped by an almost flat roof that overhung the entire building, like a sheltering hat.
Coming down from this repose, I found myself surrounded by young men in snazzy suits, pulling and pushing one of their comrades in a bicycle three-seater. He carried a bouquet of huge zinnias. What's going on? I wondered. Following them as they braked to keep him from zipping down the steep street, I stopped with them before an ancient building renown for its collection of different columns. Then, up from the bottom of the street, chugged a VW bus. Inside sat the bride, dressed in gauzy white, with cheeks as round and firm as a ripe apple. She looked so young, almost like myself, in the photos of my first wedding, the one where I too wore a veil partly hiding my face. Lots of onlookers like myself hung around to see her slowly descend, have her veil spread around her and slowly enter the sanctuary, carrying her own bouquet of red, pink, yellow, and orange zinnias.
Finally Florence with my artist friend Patricia Glee Smith (look for her website). We visited the Uffizi at night, the only way to avoid the crowds. Standing before Leonardo's "Annunciation," I was happily transported to my first love affair with this painting, which coincided with falling in love with the back of a young man walking down the aisle of a Minneapolis poetry reading.
Now I give you the poem, published in my full-length poetry collection, Between the Houses (Laurel Poetry Collective, 2004). If you order it from Amazon and read it, please leave a comment on the Amazon page for the book. Here's the poem, perhaps the one I treasure most:
The Annunciation
In Leonardo's painting, she studies
out of doors, this eminent virgin
in her habitual cloth of red and blue.
out of doors, this eminent virgin
in her habitual cloth of red and blue.
Before her on a pedestal table
encrusted with a mollusk shell, lies
an open book from which she raises her eyes
to the boy dressed in swan's wings, wearing
a cap of curls and carrying a lily wand.
She may have seen him ahead of her
encrusted with a mollusk shell, lies
an open book from which she raises her eyes
to the boy dressed in swan's wings, wearing
a cap of curls and carrying a lily wand.
She may have seen him ahead of her
in church, his shoulders and torso
masculine and square, his hair
a tangle of innuendo.
masculine and square, his hair
a tangle of innuendo.
That he comes to her in the garb
of heaven is only an accident
of myth and history, for she needs
nothing announced. The cleft in the palm
of her raised hand anticipates all he means
and she accepts only provisionally,
for he is her inspiration, not a winged
word or an unborn child. This child-man
with fabulous pinions, will cause her
to abandon the protected corner,
to crush the low, delicate plants,
and dream his weight will never rise.
of heaven is only an accident
of myth and history, for she needs
nothing announced. The cleft in the palm
of her raised hand anticipates all he means
and she accepts only provisionally,
for he is her inspiration, not a winged
word or an unborn child. This child-man
with fabulous pinions, will cause her
to abandon the protected corner,
to crush the low, delicate plants,
and dream his weight will never rise.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)