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.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
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.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Margotlog: Facebook & Company
Margotlog: Facebook & Company
Dear Readers, I am no longer on facebook. A while ago, someone or other impersonated me. There were, thus, two facebook pages almost identical, purporting to be from me. But I could get into only one, the "real" one. The other used, I eventually found out, a name I suspect was assumed--something like William Schilling.
How do I know this? Because a few, real life (as opposed to cyper) friends began calling, asking was it true? Had I changed my profession and just won a $50,000 grant? Had I somehow lost my English language ability and was now writing in odd phrases and combinations?
With help, I did what I could. I contacted the people who had "friended" me and gave them instructions on how to "defriend" the duplicate facebook page with my name on it. I also told them I was erasing my real self from facebook.
Since then, I have been mulling over what it means to know someone via cyber space. The image that comes to mind is of a dark night sky with swirling balls of light, which are facsimiles of people. They can't touch or speak face to face because, in truth, they are only hanging out somewhere in the dark. But they can send glowing messages across the night sky. It's rather beautiful. Dazzling really. But it's not hold-in-your-hand real, You can't ask these supposed friends to literally befriend you with a loaf of bread or a borrowed phone..
Studying these friends in the dark also creates some rather dizzying behavior. We have to keep our heads back in order to study the sky. And the blood supply to our heads is shut off because we don't lower our heads frequently enough for the blood to flow normally. We become rather giddy. And sometimes act silly, imagining a reality that is actually pure facsimile.
I adore fiction, but I try not to let it come through the door and ask for drinks. I try to keep it within its glowing little boxes. And limit the time I sit before it.
I'd rather have the old-fashioned fictions with no faces at all. But only voices. Radio voices or photograph voices. And best of all, fictions written and shaped with creative intent, distanced from their authors by a craft that considers how we humans make sense or nonsense of the world and how the world fights back. Not off-shoots of real people pretending to be high-flyers, more or less or other than they are.
As to the facebook page that impersonates me? I hear it's still up in cyber space. Please don't "friend" it. Recently someone I actually know reported that an acquaintances had "friended" me and received a message the tune of $50,000. I don't have that kind of money to t give away.
If you have become involved with this impersonator, please "defriend, unfriend" as soon as possible. Even if it's difficult, it will make your star-gazing just a little bit calmer. I'm applauding in advance.
Dear Readers, I am no longer on facebook. A while ago, someone or other impersonated me. There were, thus, two facebook pages almost identical, purporting to be from me. But I could get into only one, the "real" one. The other used, I eventually found out, a name I suspect was assumed--something like William Schilling.
How do I know this? Because a few, real life (as opposed to cyper) friends began calling, asking was it true? Had I changed my profession and just won a $50,000 grant? Had I somehow lost my English language ability and was now writing in odd phrases and combinations?
With help, I did what I could. I contacted the people who had "friended" me and gave them instructions on how to "defriend" the duplicate facebook page with my name on it. I also told them I was erasing my real self from facebook.
Since then, I have been mulling over what it means to know someone via cyber space. The image that comes to mind is of a dark night sky with swirling balls of light, which are facsimiles of people. They can't touch or speak face to face because, in truth, they are only hanging out somewhere in the dark. But they can send glowing messages across the night sky. It's rather beautiful. Dazzling really. But it's not hold-in-your-hand real, You can't ask these supposed friends to literally befriend you with a loaf of bread or a borrowed phone..
Studying these friends in the dark also creates some rather dizzying behavior. We have to keep our heads back in order to study the sky. And the blood supply to our heads is shut off because we don't lower our heads frequently enough for the blood to flow normally. We become rather giddy. And sometimes act silly, imagining a reality that is actually pure facsimile.
I adore fiction, but I try not to let it come through the door and ask for drinks. I try to keep it within its glowing little boxes. And limit the time I sit before it.
I'd rather have the old-fashioned fictions with no faces at all. But only voices. Radio voices or photograph voices. And best of all, fictions written and shaped with creative intent, distanced from their authors by a craft that considers how we humans make sense or nonsense of the world and how the world fights back. Not off-shoots of real people pretending to be high-flyers, more or less or other than they are.
As to the facebook page that impersonates me? I hear it's still up in cyber space. Please don't "friend" it. Recently someone I actually know reported that an acquaintances had "friended" me and received a message the tune of $50,000. I don't have that kind of money to t give away.
If you have become involved with this impersonator, please "defriend, unfriend" as soon as possible. Even if it's difficult, it will make your star-gazing just a little bit calmer. I'm applauding in advance.
Friday, February 1, 2013
Margotlog: Art Warriors
Margotlog: Art Warriors
Odd these conjunctions: lifesize Chinese tomb warriors from 200 BCE striding in their stone shapes at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Then rooms full of women's art, made from the mid-1970s to the present era, associated with one of the earliest American women's art galleries, WARM.
I knew nothing and still know very little about the Chinese warriors, but two clashing standards stay in mind. The warriors are extremely lifelike, with faces full of individuality, clothing different too, some with doubled over skirts, others with thick trousers, some tunics, hair rolled into cords around the brow. Others with heads covered, only a bit of hair showing above arrow-proof vests. Yet, these figures were not meant to be viewed and appreciated. The artists, in fact, were buried alive to prevent word from escaping about the entombed warriors. Either their instigator, the first emperor to unite China, fervently believed they would meet him in the afterlife, and wanted the faces of real life people around him. Or the artists could not help themselves--they had to create what they knew, in other words what we call realism. Realism, without the viewers to appreciate it. It makes our seeing them even more compelling.
Now to our modern warriors. It's hard to recapture the stress and excitement, the rigor (I only heard about this) with which the WARM artists interrogated themselves as they launched their radical experiment. Hard to recapture because what they won has entered and changed the fabric of American art. As I viewed the current show at the Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota, I was struck by this. There is Lynn Ball's assemblage of continuouly playing: photographs portraying an artistic love affair in Italy. I had to see this several times, almost better than a movie because I knew the landscape and the lovers. Art as biography, art as personal history. The photographs are even grainy and slightly out of focus. A real life camera, quick shots, now shown slowly--contemplation after a lover's death..
There was Quimetta Pearl's astonishing deployment of embroidery--every stitch known to woman--to outline in flame silk a woman's body. Quintessential women's work, yet with such exquisite finesse. It's going, going, gone. How many women do you know who embroider, who stitch? An homage to common occupation become artistic in her unique hands.
Then there are elements from Linda Gammell and Sandra Taylor's "seed" house construction on the Grinnell College campus (since dismantled). I didn't see the original, but got a taste of the artists' wide experiimentalism--sun-dried peppers become a window dressing. A baby dress rendered ghostly through an odd photographic medium--suggestive of how frequently children died from diseases now long past, and of the elusive, quickly changing character of childhood itself. This is wild realism that takes communal truth and forces us to see it fresh.
Which, for many of these artists, was the point. They wanted to rename through art what in women's lives is taken for granted, subsumed, ignored. Now that their struggle has born such fruits, now that their examples inform many younger artists, male and female, environmental and political, it's fine to unearth from the past what shines with such vigor and knowing.
Odd these conjunctions: lifesize Chinese tomb warriors from 200 BCE striding in their stone shapes at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Then rooms full of women's art, made from the mid-1970s to the present era, associated with one of the earliest American women's art galleries, WARM.
I knew nothing and still know very little about the Chinese warriors, but two clashing standards stay in mind. The warriors are extremely lifelike, with faces full of individuality, clothing different too, some with doubled over skirts, others with thick trousers, some tunics, hair rolled into cords around the brow. Others with heads covered, only a bit of hair showing above arrow-proof vests. Yet, these figures were not meant to be viewed and appreciated. The artists, in fact, were buried alive to prevent word from escaping about the entombed warriors. Either their instigator, the first emperor to unite China, fervently believed they would meet him in the afterlife, and wanted the faces of real life people around him. Or the artists could not help themselves--they had to create what they knew, in other words what we call realism. Realism, without the viewers to appreciate it. It makes our seeing them even more compelling.
Now to our modern warriors. It's hard to recapture the stress and excitement, the rigor (I only heard about this) with which the WARM artists interrogated themselves as they launched their radical experiment. Hard to recapture because what they won has entered and changed the fabric of American art. As I viewed the current show at the Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota, I was struck by this. There is Lynn Ball's assemblage of continuouly playing: photographs portraying an artistic love affair in Italy. I had to see this several times, almost better than a movie because I knew the landscape and the lovers. Art as biography, art as personal history. The photographs are even grainy and slightly out of focus. A real life camera, quick shots, now shown slowly--contemplation after a lover's death..
There was Quimetta Pearl's astonishing deployment of embroidery--every stitch known to woman--to outline in flame silk a woman's body. Quintessential women's work, yet with such exquisite finesse. It's going, going, gone. How many women do you know who embroider, who stitch? An homage to common occupation become artistic in her unique hands.
Then there are elements from Linda Gammell and Sandra Taylor's "seed" house construction on the Grinnell College campus (since dismantled). I didn't see the original, but got a taste of the artists' wide experiimentalism--sun-dried peppers become a window dressing. A baby dress rendered ghostly through an odd photographic medium--suggestive of how frequently children died from diseases now long past, and of the elusive, quickly changing character of childhood itself. This is wild realism that takes communal truth and forces us to see it fresh.
Which, for many of these artists, was the point. They wanted to rename through art what in women's lives is taken for granted, subsumed, ignored. Now that their struggle has born such fruits, now that their examples inform many younger artists, male and female, environmental and political, it's fine to unearth from the past what shines with such vigor and knowing.
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