Margotlog: Slaughter of the Innocents
What explains a passion for an animal and a faraway place? I certainly did not grow up with live elephants. When I was a kid in South Carolina, there were no elephants in sight. Not even at the zoo, a rather pathetic affair with open-air cages--it was warm 9 months of the year--where creatures stared or paced and made me rather uneasy.
But within the pages of the Babar books - stories of an elephant family with grey pliable bodies, and large, picture-hat ears, and trunks like arms on their faces--I met an elephant family to adore. The girl wore a tutu and in her pink toe-dance slippers, she was even more awkward than I in my orthopedic shoes. Her father was Babar, King of the animals, and the mother his Queen. The boy (all had perky, intriguing French names--after all, their author was French), the boy, as I recollect, was rather docile. Now and then he did something naughty, but never destructive. He had no toy gun. He never played cowboys and Indians, the way boys in our Old Citadel complex did, shooting at each other around the edges of our elephant grey buildings. The Babars were far from a violent family, rather musical and arty, a bit like my own. From their stories, I grew a companionable love for them which has never abated.
Time passed. I moved to New York, Atlanta, Kansas City, finally Minneapolis/St. Paul. By this time I was 25, I'd seen real elephants, probably at a circus or two. But my youthful zest for them, my sense that they deserved honor and respect, similar to what I would give my parents, friends, teachers--that had quieted. Then, in the early 1990s, remarried, my daughter grown into an accomplished teen, I was standing in my Saint Paul kitchen staring into the brightness of a summer backyard. Seeing not the tall elm lifting its fountaining shade or the birds feeding on the feeders. But African elephants slaughtered for their tusks and left to rot.
It was a horrific hallucination--their tusks hacked off, their bodies--the grey children huddled beside the huge parents--brought low by powerful rifles. That this was happening half the world collapsed. I felt as if it was taking place just beyond my own backyard. The shots broke a pact I'd made unconsciously as a child. A pact of love and honor, which extended far beyond my own skin to include elephants as a tribe. And becasuse I was one of the kind who had killed them, I was responsible.
Now bear with me a moment. Let's imagine that the 3,000 Americans who have been shot between the slaughter of the 22 innocents at Sandy Hook Elementary in late October and the present moment are elephants. Let's imagine that these huge, gentle giants are protective parents, whose family groups extend to aunts and uncles, oldsters and youngsters. When a small elephant is trapped in a sink hole, somewhere in Africa, the child's aunts and mother gather around, drop to their knees and lift the baby elephant out by their trunks. It is a touching sight to behold: the largest land animals extending to their child the care and concern we extend to our own children, just as did the teachers at Sandy Hook--those who died and those who survived--did that horrible day. Extending themselves to help the small ones of their kind. Not parents or other direct relations, but caring people whose immediate, instinctual response was to protect the innocent.
Now, another slaughter is taking place. Over the last two months, I have received word from the African Wildlife Foundation and other wildlife welfare efforts that large groups of elephants--thirty or forty at a time, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, children--are being gunned down by high-powered rifles. All shot within seconds by automatic weapons with huge magazines of bullets.
There is an economic motive for shooting the elephants: selling the adults' tusks to China and other Asian countries where ivory is deemed an aphrodisiac. International agreements exist against trade in ivory, but there are obviously not observed. I imagine (bolstered with information gathered over the years) that poor Africans (in the Cameroons currently) do the killing (like Herod's henchmen in the Bible when another slaughter of the innocents took place). What they make by this slaughter is little compared to what middlemen capture in the sale.
The motive that spurred the young man who killed at Sandy Hook may never be entirely known, though someday I hope the remainder of his family comes forth and speaks about him. Knowledge will help focus our attempts to outlaw automatic weapons and large magazines of bullets, and create a system of background checks to retard the sale of guns to the mentally ill.
But not until we as a people fall deeply in love with human life, not until we come to accept that we are harboring a culture of death by our unwillingness to protect the innocence in ourselves, not until we see that we are selling our own for a pittance, and allowing groups far from the violence to suck on the rewards, only then will we cry out, "Let us be brave. Let us truly stand by the tenets of our country's faith. Let us truly link LIBERTY and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS to the bedrock of being, to LIFE. .
.
I could not see straight.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Margotlog: You Are My Sunshine
Margotlog: You Are My Sunshine
My only sunshine. You do make me happy. Dreaming of catching you in sun flower disks, and little peaked roofs, in giant mirrored faces that track across the sky. My sunshine, our sunshine, with as much potential as Houston, as New Jersey. Never thought of that, didja, Minnesota?
At home, we had our 1912 peaks and valleys assessed. Not so fine, with many "facets" high along a crowded urban street. Not so fine for applying shining solar panels. Better would be a roof with a long sun-south facing slope like friends we know closer to the Big River. Perfect for gathering rays and transmiting them to the electrical grid. Not only to beam heat and light inside, but sell the extra bucks back to Xcel! How bout them bananas?
Yet I persist, calling to help the Sierra Club entice outstate Minnesotans to spent Earth Day, April 22, at the State Capitol in Saint Paul. To whisper in the ears of legislators from Austin and Winona, Duluth and Grand Marais, Rochester and Hibbing, Moorhead and Mankato: we want renewable, we want a standard even better than 25% renewable by 2025. Let's aim for 40% renewable by 2030. Think of the jobs!
Think about creating better roads to Minnesota farms who've opted to have an immense wind turbine installed. There goes the dirt track. In comes a modern cement ribbon strong enough for a behemoth to pass over.
Think of significant pollution decrease--no more coal-fired mess. Less mercury in waters, thus in fish, thus in people, especially children more prone to suffer neurological damage. Far less asthma. Think of that, you parents whose childen wheeze, who don't dare run fast, play sports, play hard. Fear fear fear waking at night and not being able to catch that disappearing breath.
Yes, it's true: If we covered the Sahara desert with solar panels we could power the entire planet virtually until the end of time. But nobody's factored in the weight of those panels. Enough to dent the Earth, wouldn'tja bet? Me, I wouldn't. But I would drop my socks if the Earth got it together sufficiently to create such a life-saving measure. Better luck starting close to home where we can lobby, and suggest, plead and connive.
Me, I want a solar disk or two shared by our block, proceeds to cleaner air, slower global warming, to our own pockets.
Me, I want a solar sculpture part along the river in Saint Paul. It's a million dollar idea. But instead of proposing it to the give-away by that name, I opted to ask for funds to help our threatened SPCO orchestra. The solar sculpture park idea is there for the taking. What a novelty! What a kick? Huge robots powered by the sun. Kids agaga! Parents trying to recall the lay of their roofs. Everyone romping around in and out of the sun, even in wnter. In our coldest, clearest, sunniest days. Solar cooking hotdogs outdoors. Dogs trying not to get cooked outdoors. Shades on the sun who's smiling down on us.
.
My only sunshine. You do make me happy. Dreaming of catching you in sun flower disks, and little peaked roofs, in giant mirrored faces that track across the sky. My sunshine, our sunshine, with as much potential as Houston, as New Jersey. Never thought of that, didja, Minnesota?
At home, we had our 1912 peaks and valleys assessed. Not so fine, with many "facets" high along a crowded urban street. Not so fine for applying shining solar panels. Better would be a roof with a long sun-south facing slope like friends we know closer to the Big River. Perfect for gathering rays and transmiting them to the electrical grid. Not only to beam heat and light inside, but sell the extra bucks back to Xcel! How bout them bananas?
Yet I persist, calling to help the Sierra Club entice outstate Minnesotans to spent Earth Day, April 22, at the State Capitol in Saint Paul. To whisper in the ears of legislators from Austin and Winona, Duluth and Grand Marais, Rochester and Hibbing, Moorhead and Mankato: we want renewable, we want a standard even better than 25% renewable by 2025. Let's aim for 40% renewable by 2030. Think of the jobs!
Think about creating better roads to Minnesota farms who've opted to have an immense wind turbine installed. There goes the dirt track. In comes a modern cement ribbon strong enough for a behemoth to pass over.
Think of significant pollution decrease--no more coal-fired mess. Less mercury in waters, thus in fish, thus in people, especially children more prone to suffer neurological damage. Far less asthma. Think of that, you parents whose childen wheeze, who don't dare run fast, play sports, play hard. Fear fear fear waking at night and not being able to catch that disappearing breath.
Yes, it's true: If we covered the Sahara desert with solar panels we could power the entire planet virtually until the end of time. But nobody's factored in the weight of those panels. Enough to dent the Earth, wouldn'tja bet? Me, I wouldn't. But I would drop my socks if the Earth got it together sufficiently to create such a life-saving measure. Better luck starting close to home where we can lobby, and suggest, plead and connive.
Me, I want a solar disk or two shared by our block, proceeds to cleaner air, slower global warming, to our own pockets.
Me, I want a solar sculpture part along the river in Saint Paul. It's a million dollar idea. But instead of proposing it to the give-away by that name, I opted to ask for funds to help our threatened SPCO orchestra. The solar sculpture park idea is there for the taking. What a novelty! What a kick? Huge robots powered by the sun. Kids agaga! Parents trying to recall the lay of their roofs. Everyone romping around in and out of the sun, even in wnter. In our coldest, clearest, sunniest days. Solar cooking hotdogs outdoors. Dogs trying not to get cooked outdoors. Shades on the sun who's smiling down on us.
.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Margotlog: Two Cousins Take their Landscape with Them
Margotlog: Two Cousins Take Their Landscape with Them
Sadie and Eleonora, younger and older, first to die at 86, second to die at 95, I've known since my earliest memories. My father's first cousins who grew up down a hilly Pittsburgh street from him, whose adorable little mother was tiny as his, Josephine and Rosalie, another Italian sister pair, the older dead first--the grandmother I hardly knew. The younger, Sadie and Eleonora's Josephine, who lived well into her 90s and was my grandmother substitute.
Sadie and Eleonora, who lived together and took care of tiny adorable Josephine, and teased their cousin, Leonard my father, for his terrible driving, confirming my terror since childhood. Sadie and Eleonora, whom I visited when they lived in Washington, D.C., and I went to college in Baltimore. Then when they moved first to Arlington, then Silver Spring, Maryland, I introduced them to my daughter and first husband.
Sadie and Eleonora, whom I visited most often in their last location, a senior-living complex in Dover, Delaware. Finally freer to come more often, and almost always alone, I drove south from Philly down Hghwy 95, then sequed to Hghwy 1 and over a soaring bridge of golden fluted wings, until I was almost there.
Sadie's dying in 2008 enriched her rather tart, emphatic personality with slow languor, with acceptance one would not have predicted. Her last few weeks were threaded with agony as her lungs needed to be drained, and she could no longer eat or swallow much. But earlier she gave in to death. She became simply more quiet, more langorous, sitting with us, nibbling saltines, sipping water, looking at us intently. I mourned losing her humor and insightful political mind. But she left me Eleonora, her older sister, who then blossomed even beyond her previous vibrant strength.
Her death was protracted, crazy, stubborn with pain. I saw her between bouts of wrestling with dementia, cancer pain, incontinence, depression. When I last saw her alive, she'd survived a face-out with death where, had there not been her good friend Jo beside her, the nurses would have had to tie her down.
At the end she moaned solid for nine days and finally was gone.
. Now I've discovered that the landscape and social ties which I treasured and enjoyed so much when they were alive--the walks around the Electric Company grounds, with its buffer of feathery white pines, the friends of theirs who sat with us for lunch and dinner, whose stories intrigued me, who gave other faces to age, and the kind, attentive nurses and aides, the activity director Linda and her little dog Molly--whom Eleonora smothered with hugs--I have lost them now.
My last visit for Eleonora's memorial service I tried to believe that if I visited again, I could enter that envelope of love in which these two sisters surrounded me. But I am reminded of Charleston, South Carolina, where my parents lived on after I moved away, of how this most charming of Southern cities also lost its power to comfort and delight me in a deep and life-giving way. How slowly the magic that touched every leaf and rooftop, every tree and singing bird when they still lived to set it ablaze, how that gradually diminished, because they were no longer there. Now though I occasionally return and recognize the beauty and kindness of the city, yet they no longer ease the ache of care and affection. They no longer belong to me or I to them as I once did.
This is because the center of affection is gone and no other has taken its place. Because I came to where they lived until they died, but never put down my roots myself. They watered the place for me, even though I thought I walked to escape from our intense togetherness. How odd, now, to find I simply spun the thread of their love out into streets and by-ways, how it wove me into the arms of every crossroad until they, dying, cut it.
Sadie and Eleonora, younger and older, first to die at 86, second to die at 95, I've known since my earliest memories. My father's first cousins who grew up down a hilly Pittsburgh street from him, whose adorable little mother was tiny as his, Josephine and Rosalie, another Italian sister pair, the older dead first--the grandmother I hardly knew. The younger, Sadie and Eleonora's Josephine, who lived well into her 90s and was my grandmother substitute.
Sadie and Eleonora, who lived together and took care of tiny adorable Josephine, and teased their cousin, Leonard my father, for his terrible driving, confirming my terror since childhood. Sadie and Eleonora, whom I visited when they lived in Washington, D.C., and I went to college in Baltimore. Then when they moved first to Arlington, then Silver Spring, Maryland, I introduced them to my daughter and first husband.
Sadie and Eleonora, whom I visited most often in their last location, a senior-living complex in Dover, Delaware. Finally freer to come more often, and almost always alone, I drove south from Philly down Hghwy 95, then sequed to Hghwy 1 and over a soaring bridge of golden fluted wings, until I was almost there.
Sadie's dying in 2008 enriched her rather tart, emphatic personality with slow languor, with acceptance one would not have predicted. Her last few weeks were threaded with agony as her lungs needed to be drained, and she could no longer eat or swallow much. But earlier she gave in to death. She became simply more quiet, more langorous, sitting with us, nibbling saltines, sipping water, looking at us intently. I mourned losing her humor and insightful political mind. But she left me Eleonora, her older sister, who then blossomed even beyond her previous vibrant strength.
Her death was protracted, crazy, stubborn with pain. I saw her between bouts of wrestling with dementia, cancer pain, incontinence, depression. When I last saw her alive, she'd survived a face-out with death where, had there not been her good friend Jo beside her, the nurses would have had to tie her down.
At the end she moaned solid for nine days and finally was gone.
. Now I've discovered that the landscape and social ties which I treasured and enjoyed so much when they were alive--the walks around the Electric Company grounds, with its buffer of feathery white pines, the friends of theirs who sat with us for lunch and dinner, whose stories intrigued me, who gave other faces to age, and the kind, attentive nurses and aides, the activity director Linda and her little dog Molly--whom Eleonora smothered with hugs--I have lost them now.
My last visit for Eleonora's memorial service I tried to believe that if I visited again, I could enter that envelope of love in which these two sisters surrounded me. But I am reminded of Charleston, South Carolina, where my parents lived on after I moved away, of how this most charming of Southern cities also lost its power to comfort and delight me in a deep and life-giving way. How slowly the magic that touched every leaf and rooftop, every tree and singing bird when they still lived to set it ablaze, how that gradually diminished, because they were no longer there. Now though I occasionally return and recognize the beauty and kindness of the city, yet they no longer ease the ache of care and affection. They no longer belong to me or I to them as I once did.
This is because the center of affection is gone and no other has taken its place. Because I came to where they lived until they died, but never put down my roots myself. They watered the place for me, even though I thought I walked to escape from our intense togetherness. How odd, now, to find I simply spun the thread of their love out into streets and by-ways, how it wove me into the arms of every crossroad until they, dying, cut it.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Margotlog: Maggie's Advent
Margotlog: Maggie's Advent
We were at the North Shore in a favorite cabin high above Lake Superior. No phone, no cell phone but the friends up the hill did. They received a phone call from our landlady: Fran's mother had died in Tennessee.
Fran, my husband, who by then didn't love the North Shore as much as I did, had no trouble packing up to go. Maybe a little regret at ditching the warblers and night full of stars, but for him, there was no question about the proper route. The funeral was a week hence.
I, on the other hand, chafed. I didn't want to go home early, but I would. I would come home after four days, He would already be gone, and I would settle into gardening and cat care while he was in Tennessee. No one expected me to attend Lou's funeral. That's what sometimes happens in second marriages.
Fran had trouble getting a flight. For three days he was home with the two cats we already had: aged Bart the Brute who used to bite ankles, and leap three times his length after a piece of string. But now spent his days lying around, snarling if you came too close. Bart and newish Tilly-the-terrified, beautiful but lacking confidence.
The day before Fran was to leave, I called from a pay phone to see how he was doing. "There's a surprise for you here," he said. "Four legs and a tail. Named Magnolia." What!? Another cat? Just after he'd been teasing me on vacation about my wanting another critter "to keep Tilly company?"
"I couldn't resist," he said, sounding a sheepish. "She was sittiing in a cage at Peg Smart, putting out her paw, and she had the most beautiful cat face. I had to adopt her."
Right, I thought. Smitten first, but lonesome second. Lonesome for Lou, your nice mom, leaving your peculiar dad for you to tackle alone. Yup, I'm sure this Maggie the Cat is a beauty. Maggie a real cat named for Maggie the human cat in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Maggie the Cat as in Elizabeth Taylor. That kind of beautiful.
I was hot and sweaty. It was July and I'd just driven five hours, the last half on a freeway through sun-wavery fields. Opening the back door, my shoulders weighted down with backpack, I set a cooler on the table and called, "Here, Maggie." Almost as nervous, I bet, as she was, hearing an unfamiliar voice, being left in a strange place alone over night.
I brought in more gear. Hot, tired, dazed, disoriented. "Here, Maggie." Another trip, then another. Finally the kitchen was piled with clothes, bags of groceries, cooler, hiking boots, binoculars, bird books. Fran had watered nothing the days he'd been home. Our cat-care trio had gone as soon as he arrived. I went out to water, fill the bird feeders.
When I came back, I called again "Here, Maggie." There was a faint "meow." Calling and listening I tracked the faint response to the second floor, to our bedroom, and then under our bed. Kneeling down, I peered into the dark. Light came from a window near the other side. There staring at me was a wide cat face belonging to a calico cat with stout tail and white paws. But what a face! A square of orange sat unevenly over the eyes and nose. Through the left eye, ran the edge of the square. Acat put together by a kid using stubby scissors and construction paper.
This cat looked ridiculous. Not ugly, just goofy. I tried to reach in and tickle her under her chin, but she backed away as if she knew what I was thinking. I didn't apolotize but I did sympathize with her obvious fear. "Come on out, Girl. Come on. I won't hurt you," I crooned. But she only stared at me with glittering eyes. Not hissing, but not advancing either. I left a plate of food under the bed, and a bowl of water.
Later, when Fran called, I told him, "This is the strangest looking cat I've ever seen. How could you think she's beautiful." Ah, the eyes of the beholder. The yearning of a son for a lost mother, and finding her in the face of a lonesome cat.
He still teases me about yelping "How could you think she's beautiful." Originally, there was an edge of pain in the teasing. Now, that's muted. But still there. We both love Maggie. She knows her place--in the middle between Terrified Tilly and Adorable Julia, the Teenage Mother. Sometimes when she sits up very tall, her ears lifted and eyes very alert, Maggie looks regal. Other people have called her pretty, "What a pretty cat!" I love her, I feel guilty because she's the middle cat and defers to the other two. I try to make it up to her by playing with her in the dark after the other two have gone to bed. But I think she still knows. We've come to an understanding: I love her for her goofty, funny face, and she tolerates my misperception.
We were at the North Shore in a favorite cabin high above Lake Superior. No phone, no cell phone but the friends up the hill did. They received a phone call from our landlady: Fran's mother had died in Tennessee.
Fran, my husband, who by then didn't love the North Shore as much as I did, had no trouble packing up to go. Maybe a little regret at ditching the warblers and night full of stars, but for him, there was no question about the proper route. The funeral was a week hence.
I, on the other hand, chafed. I didn't want to go home early, but I would. I would come home after four days, He would already be gone, and I would settle into gardening and cat care while he was in Tennessee. No one expected me to attend Lou's funeral. That's what sometimes happens in second marriages.
Fran had trouble getting a flight. For three days he was home with the two cats we already had: aged Bart the Brute who used to bite ankles, and leap three times his length after a piece of string. But now spent his days lying around, snarling if you came too close. Bart and newish Tilly-the-terrified, beautiful but lacking confidence.
The day before Fran was to leave, I called from a pay phone to see how he was doing. "There's a surprise for you here," he said. "Four legs and a tail. Named Magnolia." What!? Another cat? Just after he'd been teasing me on vacation about my wanting another critter "to keep Tilly company?"
"I couldn't resist," he said, sounding a sheepish. "She was sittiing in a cage at Peg Smart, putting out her paw, and she had the most beautiful cat face. I had to adopt her."
Right, I thought. Smitten first, but lonesome second. Lonesome for Lou, your nice mom, leaving your peculiar dad for you to tackle alone. Yup, I'm sure this Maggie the Cat is a beauty. Maggie a real cat named for Maggie the human cat in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Maggie the Cat as in Elizabeth Taylor. That kind of beautiful.
I was hot and sweaty. It was July and I'd just driven five hours, the last half on a freeway through sun-wavery fields. Opening the back door, my shoulders weighted down with backpack, I set a cooler on the table and called, "Here, Maggie." Almost as nervous, I bet, as she was, hearing an unfamiliar voice, being left in a strange place alone over night.
I brought in more gear. Hot, tired, dazed, disoriented. "Here, Maggie." Another trip, then another. Finally the kitchen was piled with clothes, bags of groceries, cooler, hiking boots, binoculars, bird books. Fran had watered nothing the days he'd been home. Our cat-care trio had gone as soon as he arrived. I went out to water, fill the bird feeders.
When I came back, I called again "Here, Maggie." There was a faint "meow." Calling and listening I tracked the faint response to the second floor, to our bedroom, and then under our bed. Kneeling down, I peered into the dark. Light came from a window near the other side. There staring at me was a wide cat face belonging to a calico cat with stout tail and white paws. But what a face! A square of orange sat unevenly over the eyes and nose. Through the left eye, ran the edge of the square. Acat put together by a kid using stubby scissors and construction paper.
This cat looked ridiculous. Not ugly, just goofy. I tried to reach in and tickle her under her chin, but she backed away as if she knew what I was thinking. I didn't apolotize but I did sympathize with her obvious fear. "Come on out, Girl. Come on. I won't hurt you," I crooned. But she only stared at me with glittering eyes. Not hissing, but not advancing either. I left a plate of food under the bed, and a bowl of water.
Later, when Fran called, I told him, "This is the strangest looking cat I've ever seen. How could you think she's beautiful." Ah, the eyes of the beholder. The yearning of a son for a lost mother, and finding her in the face of a lonesome cat.
He still teases me about yelping "How could you think she's beautiful." Originally, there was an edge of pain in the teasing. Now, that's muted. But still there. We both love Maggie. She knows her place--in the middle between Terrified Tilly and Adorable Julia, the Teenage Mother. Sometimes when she sits up very tall, her ears lifted and eyes very alert, Maggie looks regal. Other people have called her pretty, "What a pretty cat!" I love her, I feel guilty because she's the middle cat and defers to the other two. I try to make it up to her by playing with her in the dark after the other two have gone to bed. But I think she still knows. We've come to an understanding: I love her for her goofty, funny face, and she tolerates my misperception.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Margotlog: Life Without a Car
Margotlog: Life Without a Car
Or I should say, Life in fly-over land without a car. It's quite possible to live a decent, middle-class existence in Chicago without a car. Buses and trains are excellent, the elevated trains get you to the airport far faster than you can drive. Life in New York and probably Boston, fine without a car. New York has a subway system par excellence except when it's flooded by Superstorm Sandy. Life without a car in Manhattan is almost imperative because car traffic is ridiculously slow--in my earlier life, my husband and I were stuck in Manhattan traffic three hours and went six blocks. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We sat and fumed. Eventually we turned around, parked the car, and took a train to Baltimore.
Maybe in Washington and Philadelphia, life can be fine without a car, as long as the suburbs are serviced by frequent buses or trains--as they are in Chicago and New York. On a flight recently into Philadelphia, I suggested to a smart young dame beside me that instead of taking a cab downtown to catch a train to Washington (our flight was late 90 minutes, and she'd already been bumped from the Washington flight of her dreams due to predicted heavy snow, which never materialized). "Take the train from the airport," I urged. "You'll save a lot of money."
"There's a train?" she asked. I couldn't believe she wasn't aware of it since as I've often walked from the airport to rental car pick-up, I pass over freeway and train tracks, where often a train is passing. But maybe my seatmate had never before flown into Philly.
Los Angeles without a car? IMPOSSIBLE. Maybe in San Fran. Maybe in Seattle because their ferry system brings in commuters in a timely fashion and buses ferry them throughout the city. But Minneapolis/Saint Paul without a car? RIDICULOUS. We have one of the most spread-out "Metro Areas" in the US.One hundred miles from western Minnetonka to eastern Stillwatr.
My Minneapolis-based friend Pat Blakely has just published a handy, cheery green book called Carfree Living (CAREFREE Living is how I rad it at first). Order it on Amazon and have it printed off and sent to you. It's more than handy--you don't have to leave your house.
Then enjoy her jaunty, personal style, but do not be surprised to learn that living without a car in Minneapolis (even near downtown) is NOT without care, not open to impulse or whim. PLANNING required. Memorization of bus schedules required. A box of "takeables" beside the door - necessary. Acceptance of missed possibilities CRUCIAL - making cookies rather than attending a tango dance class, reading a good book or even a bad book rather than braving sub-zero weather.
In fact, winter wind, cold, snow, ice are the context of her experiment. They make her attempt at a carless life much more difficult than it would be, say in Baltimore, Maryland, or Chattanooga, Tenn. We often have six months of real winter, or four with a month on either side of crud, slush, and freezing rain. YET, she settles into acceptance and comes to appreciate what she learns about herself when she rides the bus.
I like the bus-riding life she describes. Slower, more meditative, giving time to muse about other riders, about scenes at 20 mph. Beautiful glances at city and lakes. And now I'm remembering a bus tide in Honolulu from maybe four years ago, up, up curving ever upward from the harbor and tall buildings into little communities crouched on hillsides, families with chidlren getting on, school kids getting off. An old one helped up by the soft-bodied, pony-tailed driver, with his gentle Island speech, and expert turning around the curves.
Then he told me, it was my stop. The National Cemetery of the Pacific was maybe five blocks up a road edging a cliff, lined with pink and orange azaleas. The blue Pacific spread below disappearing into distant haze. I walked alone, breathing moist, redolent air. So happy to be alive, and paying homage to the men and women buried here who originated far away.
Pat Blakely is also engaged in a war, less damazing potenially, more internal, yet fighting against cultural norms and her own long habit of a car. She fights with herself and a transit system not particularly bad, nor particularly good. And she wins through to make a difference. Entertaining us along the way with her pluck and candor.
Or I should say, Life in fly-over land without a car. It's quite possible to live a decent, middle-class existence in Chicago without a car. Buses and trains are excellent, the elevated trains get you to the airport far faster than you can drive. Life in New York and probably Boston, fine without a car. New York has a subway system par excellence except when it's flooded by Superstorm Sandy. Life without a car in Manhattan is almost imperative because car traffic is ridiculously slow--in my earlier life, my husband and I were stuck in Manhattan traffic three hours and went six blocks. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We sat and fumed. Eventually we turned around, parked the car, and took a train to Baltimore.
Maybe in Washington and Philadelphia, life can be fine without a car, as long as the suburbs are serviced by frequent buses or trains--as they are in Chicago and New York. On a flight recently into Philadelphia, I suggested to a smart young dame beside me that instead of taking a cab downtown to catch a train to Washington (our flight was late 90 minutes, and she'd already been bumped from the Washington flight of her dreams due to predicted heavy snow, which never materialized). "Take the train from the airport," I urged. "You'll save a lot of money."
"There's a train?" she asked. I couldn't believe she wasn't aware of it since as I've often walked from the airport to rental car pick-up, I pass over freeway and train tracks, where often a train is passing. But maybe my seatmate had never before flown into Philly.
Los Angeles without a car? IMPOSSIBLE. Maybe in San Fran. Maybe in Seattle because their ferry system brings in commuters in a timely fashion and buses ferry them throughout the city. But Minneapolis/Saint Paul without a car? RIDICULOUS. We have one of the most spread-out "Metro Areas" in the US.One hundred miles from western Minnetonka to eastern Stillwatr.
My Minneapolis-based friend Pat Blakely has just published a handy, cheery green book called Carfree Living (CAREFREE Living is how I rad it at first). Order it on Amazon and have it printed off and sent to you. It's more than handy--you don't have to leave your house.
Then enjoy her jaunty, personal style, but do not be surprised to learn that living without a car in Minneapolis (even near downtown) is NOT without care, not open to impulse or whim. PLANNING required. Memorization of bus schedules required. A box of "takeables" beside the door - necessary. Acceptance of missed possibilities CRUCIAL - making cookies rather than attending a tango dance class, reading a good book or even a bad book rather than braving sub-zero weather.
In fact, winter wind, cold, snow, ice are the context of her experiment. They make her attempt at a carless life much more difficult than it would be, say in Baltimore, Maryland, or Chattanooga, Tenn. We often have six months of real winter, or four with a month on either side of crud, slush, and freezing rain. YET, she settles into acceptance and comes to appreciate what she learns about herself when she rides the bus.
I like the bus-riding life she describes. Slower, more meditative, giving time to muse about other riders, about scenes at 20 mph. Beautiful glances at city and lakes. And now I'm remembering a bus tide in Honolulu from maybe four years ago, up, up curving ever upward from the harbor and tall buildings into little communities crouched on hillsides, families with chidlren getting on, school kids getting off. An old one helped up by the soft-bodied, pony-tailed driver, with his gentle Island speech, and expert turning around the curves.
Then he told me, it was my stop. The National Cemetery of the Pacific was maybe five blocks up a road edging a cliff, lined with pink and orange azaleas. The blue Pacific spread below disappearing into distant haze. I walked alone, breathing moist, redolent air. So happy to be alive, and paying homage to the men and women buried here who originated far away.
Pat Blakely is also engaged in a war, less damazing potenially, more internal, yet fighting against cultural norms and her own long habit of a car. She fights with herself and a transit system not particularly bad, nor particularly good. And she wins through to make a difference. Entertaining us along the way with her pluck and candor.
Monday, February 25, 2013
Margotlog: Writing Toward the "Other" -- Linda Hogan and Kathryn Stockett
Margotlog: Writing Toward the "Other"--Linda Hogan and Kathryn Stockett
Sorry, you alien-mystery lovers. I'm not with you. Instead, I find myself drawn to writers whose imagination transcends their own boundaries of race, class, and culture. They have the power to evoke lives quite unlike their own.
I've read other works by Linda Hogan, but People of the Whale has made the most indelible impression. Though Native American from the North American heartland, Hogan here describes people of the sea. Once whale hunters, always sparingly, but now almost not at all because there is an international moritorium on whale killing (which Norwegians ignore). The book focuses on a woman who lives on a boat and fishes for her living. She has lost her husband to the war in Vietnam, yet as the story unfolds, he will return, first in vividly evoked scenes from the Vietnam jungle, then to his original people (presumably on the coast of Washington). He is a broken soul, yet when a conniving tribal member rouses the people to a whale hunt (he intends to steal the flesh and sell it to the Japanese--don't get me started on the depredations of sushi on global fish populations), this Vietnam vet once again takes his place in the hunt. .
In the hunt, the husband--once the designated heir of the people's highest aims and beliefs--is injured, and his son with the main characters is killed. This is a terrible loss to the mother, and suggests how damaging to the people themselves this hunt will become.Slowly the narrative shifts to modern-day Vietnam, and the daughter of the Native American soldier with a Vietnamese woman who befriended him. This lovely, vital child--who figures out how to survive in Ho Chi Minh City by sweeping sidewalks in front of shops--is eventually taken into a florist's family. She becomes an arranger of beautiful flowers and an accomplished translator. This long section is perhaps the most sustained and powerful narrative of the book. Yet it is outside the author's immediate cultural experience. Hogan may well have traveled to Vietnam, but it is only through imagination that she could have created this vibrant, stunning young woman who breathes life onto the page.
Segue to Kathryn Stockett's The Help. Since I grew up in South Carolina, I've been long aware of the divide between black maids and their white mistresses. My mother, the North Dakota prairie
invidiaulist, wouldn't have tolerated a maid--she had to do it all herself. Not to mention that my college-teacher father couldn't have afforded one anyway. But I met black maids in the lovely homes of well-off Southern friends-- kindly black women in their kitchens, soft-spoken, who served us girls as if we were royalty.
Later as I grew up to ride the city buses, my fear of offense fought with my intense discomfort as maids, tired and hot after long hours at work, were forced to pass empty seats in the front and find accommodation in the back. Kathryn Stockett captures this conflict. In fact, one of her main characters is a privileged, well-educated white "girl," who decides to write the histories of "the help" in Jackson, Mississippi. I like the voice and difficulties of this white character, but it's the group of black maids who truly carry the story.
Their personalities--from rough and feisty to gentle and well-spoken, from beaten by a black husband to solitary and prayerful--become the high point of the story. They are so fully real, so filled with the duty to submit to segregation in order to keep their jobs, and subversive as they undermine racism, while raising white children. These interactions are the most tender and laced with irony--white children being loved by black maids who often instruct them as they tend to their needs. Stockett shows us over and over how racism and segregation undo themselves in the persons of these black women.
The book the maids write with the college "girl" becomes an outstanding success, but of course it is fully dangerous if the white women in Jackson figure out they are being portrayed. There are as many loving portrayals as there are searing portraits, yet it's terribly dangerous, in this lawless place. Ultimately it's a seed planted by the maids that ultimately protects them. I won't give any more away. Suffice it to say, it involves the most virulent (and ridiculous) white female racist of them all--Hilly Holbrook.
When The Help first came out, I read it. But it's now as I listen to it on disk--with the maids' sections read by wonderful African-American voices--that the book gains my intense and lasting admiration. Yes, the author herself grew up in Jackson. We have to suspect she used much of her own experience from the 1960s. But it's her power to imagine the inner lives of the black maids that rings the most true. And Kathryn Stockett, according to her author photos, is white as they come.
Sorry, you alien-mystery lovers. I'm not with you. Instead, I find myself drawn to writers whose imagination transcends their own boundaries of race, class, and culture. They have the power to evoke lives quite unlike their own.
I've read other works by Linda Hogan, but People of the Whale has made the most indelible impression. Though Native American from the North American heartland, Hogan here describes people of the sea. Once whale hunters, always sparingly, but now almost not at all because there is an international moritorium on whale killing (which Norwegians ignore). The book focuses on a woman who lives on a boat and fishes for her living. She has lost her husband to the war in Vietnam, yet as the story unfolds, he will return, first in vividly evoked scenes from the Vietnam jungle, then to his original people (presumably on the coast of Washington). He is a broken soul, yet when a conniving tribal member rouses the people to a whale hunt (he intends to steal the flesh and sell it to the Japanese--don't get me started on the depredations of sushi on global fish populations), this Vietnam vet once again takes his place in the hunt. .
In the hunt, the husband--once the designated heir of the people's highest aims and beliefs--is injured, and his son with the main characters is killed. This is a terrible loss to the mother, and suggests how damaging to the people themselves this hunt will become.Slowly the narrative shifts to modern-day Vietnam, and the daughter of the Native American soldier with a Vietnamese woman who befriended him. This lovely, vital child--who figures out how to survive in Ho Chi Minh City by sweeping sidewalks in front of shops--is eventually taken into a florist's family. She becomes an arranger of beautiful flowers and an accomplished translator. This long section is perhaps the most sustained and powerful narrative of the book. Yet it is outside the author's immediate cultural experience. Hogan may well have traveled to Vietnam, but it is only through imagination that she could have created this vibrant, stunning young woman who breathes life onto the page.
Segue to Kathryn Stockett's The Help. Since I grew up in South Carolina, I've been long aware of the divide between black maids and their white mistresses. My mother, the North Dakota prairie
invidiaulist, wouldn't have tolerated a maid--she had to do it all herself. Not to mention that my college-teacher father couldn't have afforded one anyway. But I met black maids in the lovely homes of well-off Southern friends-- kindly black women in their kitchens, soft-spoken, who served us girls as if we were royalty.
Later as I grew up to ride the city buses, my fear of offense fought with my intense discomfort as maids, tired and hot after long hours at work, were forced to pass empty seats in the front and find accommodation in the back. Kathryn Stockett captures this conflict. In fact, one of her main characters is a privileged, well-educated white "girl," who decides to write the histories of "the help" in Jackson, Mississippi. I like the voice and difficulties of this white character, but it's the group of black maids who truly carry the story.
Their personalities--from rough and feisty to gentle and well-spoken, from beaten by a black husband to solitary and prayerful--become the high point of the story. They are so fully real, so filled with the duty to submit to segregation in order to keep their jobs, and subversive as they undermine racism, while raising white children. These interactions are the most tender and laced with irony--white children being loved by black maids who often instruct them as they tend to their needs. Stockett shows us over and over how racism and segregation undo themselves in the persons of these black women.
The book the maids write with the college "girl" becomes an outstanding success, but of course it is fully dangerous if the white women in Jackson figure out they are being portrayed. There are as many loving portrayals as there are searing portraits, yet it's terribly dangerous, in this lawless place. Ultimately it's a seed planted by the maids that ultimately protects them. I won't give any more away. Suffice it to say, it involves the most virulent (and ridiculous) white female racist of them all--Hilly Holbrook.
When The Help first came out, I read it. But it's now as I listen to it on disk--with the maids' sections read by wonderful African-American voices--that the book gains my intense and lasting admiration. Yes, the author herself grew up in Jackson. We have to suspect she used much of her own experience from the 1960s. But it's her power to imagine the inner lives of the black maids that rings the most true. And Kathryn Stockett, according to her author photos, is white as they come.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Margotlog: The Hawks of Winter
Margotlog: The Hawks of Winter
I thought it was a hawk as first. Swiveling its beaked head almost completely around. Sitting high in the white pine, level with my second floor windows. Big but not enormous. Not an eagle. Not a condor!
The bird book disagreed. Not a true hawk (which to me means a Buteo, the classic red-tailed hawk). This bird had splotches of white on its back and a brown streamed neck, chest and wings. A juvenile Northern Goshawk, the largest of the family Accipters, from smallest Sharp-shinned, to mid-size Cooper's, to this threatening bird.
Every one of the birds I feed winter, summer, spring and fall, were silent. It was like a tomb, which indeed it could well become for any bird that ventured to show itself.
The day was brilliantly clear.with heaps of snow on the ground.where I had shoveled paths for ground feeders. Little did I know.
That first day of silence and intense scrutiny--for this Accipter stayed put for hours, swiveling its head, shaking snow from its feathers--I was fascinated, training binoculars on it, checking on its position from all the back windows.
The second day, it had disappeared from view but must have stayed close. Blue jays bugled their warning calls, and when I returned after two hours away, mid-afternoon, there was evidence of a death in the snow--feathers spread in a circle and a touch of blood. The Harrier had carried off its prey. My heart sank: I was afraid it was a cardinal, one of the ten who usually settle in twilight to feed. I felt complicit in the crime. Thought of taking a pot-shot at the hawk. I've never shot anything nor did I intend to start. But the impulse was there, startling.
The third day the silence made me so sad I almost covered my ears. No twitter of goldfinch, no gossip of sparrows, no chick-a-dee-dee, no little rasp announcing a nut hatch. No flutter of wings. I drove to the store for groceries and as crossed the freeway home, two big brown and white stripped birds soared close above. Accipters, two of them.
The backyard was strewn with little fans of pale grey feathers. A pigeon had put up a fight and succumbed. The body had been carried away. Since then, I've seen one of the Accipters again. It dove out of the blue into a gaggle of pigeons gobbling up seeds. I saw the wide shadow on the snow, the spread wings. The pigeons got away, probably because the Accipter knocked into a low-hanging feeder. But in a trice, it righted itself and was gone.
We all are wary. I am no longer angry or even sad. Just glad the small birds know they are in mortal danger, know to stay low or simply not to appear at all. I'm saving on bird seed. And wonder when the Accipters will lift the imbargo on my yard, and restore my usually peaceable kingdom.
According to the Sibley Guide to North American Birds, these Goshawks do not spend spring and summer here. I'm praying that spring comes soon.
I thought it was a hawk as first. Swiveling its beaked head almost completely around. Sitting high in the white pine, level with my second floor windows. Big but not enormous. Not an eagle. Not a condor!
The bird book disagreed. Not a true hawk (which to me means a Buteo, the classic red-tailed hawk). This bird had splotches of white on its back and a brown streamed neck, chest and wings. A juvenile Northern Goshawk, the largest of the family Accipters, from smallest Sharp-shinned, to mid-size Cooper's, to this threatening bird.
Every one of the birds I feed winter, summer, spring and fall, were silent. It was like a tomb, which indeed it could well become for any bird that ventured to show itself.
The day was brilliantly clear.with heaps of snow on the ground.where I had shoveled paths for ground feeders. Little did I know.
That first day of silence and intense scrutiny--for this Accipter stayed put for hours, swiveling its head, shaking snow from its feathers--I was fascinated, training binoculars on it, checking on its position from all the back windows.
The second day, it had disappeared from view but must have stayed close. Blue jays bugled their warning calls, and when I returned after two hours away, mid-afternoon, there was evidence of a death in the snow--feathers spread in a circle and a touch of blood. The Harrier had carried off its prey. My heart sank: I was afraid it was a cardinal, one of the ten who usually settle in twilight to feed. I felt complicit in the crime. Thought of taking a pot-shot at the hawk. I've never shot anything nor did I intend to start. But the impulse was there, startling.
The third day the silence made me so sad I almost covered my ears. No twitter of goldfinch, no gossip of sparrows, no chick-a-dee-dee, no little rasp announcing a nut hatch. No flutter of wings. I drove to the store for groceries and as crossed the freeway home, two big brown and white stripped birds soared close above. Accipters, two of them.
The backyard was strewn with little fans of pale grey feathers. A pigeon had put up a fight and succumbed. The body had been carried away. Since then, I've seen one of the Accipters again. It dove out of the blue into a gaggle of pigeons gobbling up seeds. I saw the wide shadow on the snow, the spread wings. The pigeons got away, probably because the Accipter knocked into a low-hanging feeder. But in a trice, it righted itself and was gone.
We all are wary. I am no longer angry or even sad. Just glad the small birds know they are in mortal danger, know to stay low or simply not to appear at all. I'm saving on bird seed. And wonder when the Accipters will lift the imbargo on my yard, and restore my usually peaceable kingdom.
According to the Sibley Guide to North American Birds, these Goshawks do not spend spring and summer here. I'm praying that spring comes soon.
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