STRANGE RUE
Marinated with your rue, and intellectual
Two, not one in primacy, that being gorilla,
I fall into our morning evening ritual
And with my teeth tug out the flotilla.
Oh you make me tow a heavy line,
With cashmere sweaters, invisible cloaks--
I nightly imbibe your stash of French wine,
Morning tea; the aura Earl Grey tea evokes
Encircles my head as well as my nose,
Bringing in the yacht of dream to woo me.
Your garden produce, promises of rose
With walks in hand and travel on the sea
Are things I both desire and need:
I respond to them as water to a seed.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Time and the world
Time is anything but constant. Only the arbitrary measures of clocks make it seem so, and all our cyclical calendars plod on against the rising and falling of the sun--that alone seems constant. When I was very young it seemed to me the world was more than up to date. It seemed full of things which were perfected, being passed on to me, given into my care. I had to learn how to fit in with them, and that seemed natural. But when these things which filled the world into which I was born were no longer made, some of them, and other things in their place were invented, time began to speed up and the perfection of the world began to fray a little, and its imperfections began to show. Eras which then seem to have occurred eons and eons ago when I was little slowly came closer and closer to my own era. Now I think 'Why, Shakespeare lived almost yesterday!' And once when I was very small I was shocked to learn he had lived only four or five hundred years before the present time; I thought it was a thousand years. Experience warps time perception, and clocks and calendars try to keep it constant. Time, it turns out, is highly personal.
In the No Direction Home cd release, the liner notes Dylan (my age) remembers hearing about Elvis joining the army. It was a big deal, he is right remembering it. It was a huge media event. In 1958 or 59, whenever it was--maybe earlier?--I was a young teenager, fourteen or younger. Maybe Dylan was sixteen. There were fewer events in those days but they stirred much more excitement than anything the news can now. Now we hear of the three wars we are in regularly, climate change, diet, regulations, emotions, sports, from a million different sources through multiple devices--and none of it is as exciting as Elvis getting drafted was to everyone listening to radio or tv back then. Imagine--for Dylan and me back in 1958 or '59, yet to come was the Vietnam War, the assassination of the president, integration, plastic everywhere, the war on poverty, support groups, supervised children, rock concerts, gay rights, the decline of baseball, the rise of football, warmer weather in the winter. The world I lived in still sold Dr. Lyon's tooth powder, had no malls and no safety awareness or mission statements in schools. Women's rights were assumed synonymous with human rights only by the upper (meaning educated) classes. There was just the war with Communism (later they called it the cold war)--Russia and China were the enemy. The catching of the Spy Plane U2 over Russia made much bigger news than anything does today. Today the universe of news is like a bang, bang crash crash movie, filled up with constant violent drama which has little effect on the listener and beholder in its too constant bombardment: over time it dulls the senses and the sensibilities. The meaningful things in our lives are not the ones reported, but the ones we personally respond to.
In the No Direction Home cd release, the liner notes Dylan (my age) remembers hearing about Elvis joining the army. It was a big deal, he is right remembering it. It was a huge media event. In 1958 or 59, whenever it was--maybe earlier?--I was a young teenager, fourteen or younger. Maybe Dylan was sixteen. There were fewer events in those days but they stirred much more excitement than anything the news can now. Now we hear of the three wars we are in regularly, climate change, diet, regulations, emotions, sports, from a million different sources through multiple devices--and none of it is as exciting as Elvis getting drafted was to everyone listening to radio or tv back then. Imagine--for Dylan and me back in 1958 or '59, yet to come was the Vietnam War, the assassination of the president, integration, plastic everywhere, the war on poverty, support groups, supervised children, rock concerts, gay rights, the decline of baseball, the rise of football, warmer weather in the winter. The world I lived in still sold Dr. Lyon's tooth powder, had no malls and no safety awareness or mission statements in schools. Women's rights were assumed synonymous with human rights only by the upper (meaning educated) classes. There was just the war with Communism (later they called it the cold war)--Russia and China were the enemy. The catching of the Spy Plane U2 over Russia made much bigger news than anything does today. Today the universe of news is like a bang, bang crash crash movie, filled up with constant violent drama which has little effect on the listener and beholder in its too constant bombardment: over time it dulls the senses and the sensibilities. The meaningful things in our lives are not the ones reported, but the ones we personally respond to.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
The mystery of Ignorance
Ignorance may be paradoxically applied in one important universal sense. We are all profoundly ignorant of each other--and yet profoundly knowing too. We each individually see, and all universally recognize, the patterns of human behavior when we see them in each other. Our individual particular manifestation of common humanity is unique--God's gift to himself--us! Or vice versa. The knowing and not knowing each other's uniqueness is as important as knowing and not knowing each other's universality.
It is a mystery!
It is a mystery!
Friday, October 23, 2009
Which George?? (You are nuts!)
In the last blog I've confused George Eliot with George Sand--it was George Sand, not George Eliot, who was in love with Chopin? But both Georges were women writing under pseudonyms, and both were novelists. In the beginning I was ignorant totally and didn't know the works of either. A well read friend reminded me Eliot had an affair with Chopin, but she was wrong and didn't know it so I believed her--we were both very ignorant.
Then another friend told me the truth--it was Sand, the French writer, who had the affair with Chopin.
Then another friend, smarting probably from the trouncing I'd recently given him in English, leaped into action: was I STUPID? It was SAND NOT ELIOT!! he yelled in email at me, and cited wikipedia as to the novelists' thirty some year (??) gap in age and generation. Then he dismissed my excuses about the two Georges both being novelists, and my having read none of them (and only having seen a movie once about one of them having an affair with Chopin!) Would I connect him with Chopin just because his name was George--in that case George Bush might be connected with Chopin?
I thought about our different kinds of ignorance. Mine, first, the profound. The second, from the friend who misinformed me--nearly as ignorant as I was. The third kind of ignorance, that exhibited by my second friend, never for a moment shaking it (my ignorance) in my face. Here it is, the correction nicely couched in his reading history, his own ignorance highlighted:
"One thing I should mention is that Chopin did not have an affair with George Eliot. It was with George Sand, the French novelist, whom I've never read. Have you? And have you read Middlemarch? It's up there in my top five of all time. I've got to get back to her and read Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda."
The fourth kind of ignorance was the worse kind, exhibited by the third friend. Only the exchange itself explains how bad it was:
HIM: George Eliot? did you mean George Sand?
ME: No, George Eliot --Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss,Silas Marner. I did confuse them in my blog though, since my friend told me George Eliot and Chopin were an item--it was George Sand and Chopin she meant.
HIM: you could not mean George Elliot and Chopin...it is George Sand and Chopin torid love affair on Mallorca....you wrote: No, George Eliot --Mill on the Floss etc...
I saw masterpiece Theater version of Middlemarch...my what a depressing story...but powerful, wonder how he would read...but I am into maragaret Atwood now and Updike and Coetzee...
ME: Yes! George Sand not George Eliot with Chopin! That's what I said in my last letter, guess you didn't read it to the end, here's a copy--
"No, George Eliot --Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner. I did confuse them in my blog though, since my friend told me George Eliot and Chopin were an item--it was George Sand and Chopin she meant."
Like George Sand, George Eliot was a woman too (Mary Ann Evans?
something like that)--one of the greats.
HIM: yes both are greats, but only one had an affair with Chopin...
i KNOW THAT YOUR FRIEND TOLD YOU THAT, BUT HOW COULD ANYONE THINK THAT?
MY POINT IS YOUR SHOULD HAVE KNOWN RIGHT OFF...
Eliot was involved with George Henry Lewes who was a married man.
she died in 1880,,,....
George Sand was four years old when George elliot died....
Chopin was born in 1837....37 years after Eliot's death....
so how can anyone associate them? because their names were George....well what not say George Bush was involved with Chopin too.
ME: Oh dear, of COURSE they would be mixed up! Both 19th century
female novelists whose pseudonym is George? You are nuts
(He then sent me, separately, a link to WIKIPEDIA about George Sand, so I'd see when she was born and all.)
There you have four different aspects of ignorance--and two examples of how those who are in the know handle that fact with other people. Some, ignoring the fact that everyone is ignorant about something, make a big deal of what they know. Others, exhibiting wisdom and lovely manners (which are, you know, meant to put others at ease--of this I am not ignorant) put you in proper relation with your ignorance, as in the case of the second friend. The first friend? The one who first misinformed me George Eliot and Chopin were an item? She is less ignorant than I, being my younger twin, and I too remember that movie, in which the Ms. Sand went off arm and arm with Mr. Chopin. She at least had read Silas Marner in high school, as I had not.
Now I am glorying in the magnificence of George Eliot's Middlemarch. I have finally discovered a character in a novel to which I can totally relate--Dorothea. I am amazed that I am only now discovering George Eliot. Should I read something by George Sand, of whom I am terribly ignorant? I don't think I will, since reading Wikipedia about her has made me more aware of her reputation as a personality than as an author. Unlike her reputation as the lover of Chopin, Sand's reputation as a writer has not lasted the test of time.
Wouldn't it have been funny if Jane Austen wrote under the name George?
**********Appendum--photograph of my great, great grandmother Mary (Polly) Freemen, a contemporary of George Eliot. She was born seven years before Eliot and lived ten years longer than she did. From what I have read of what she wrote (she too was a fine writer), she had much in common with Dorothea in Middlemarch.
Then another friend told me the truth--it was Sand, the French writer, who had the affair with Chopin.
Then another friend, smarting probably from the trouncing I'd recently given him in English, leaped into action: was I STUPID? It was SAND NOT ELIOT!! he yelled in email at me, and cited wikipedia as to the novelists' thirty some year (??) gap in age and generation. Then he dismissed my excuses about the two Georges both being novelists, and my having read none of them (and only having seen a movie once about one of them having an affair with Chopin!) Would I connect him with Chopin just because his name was George--in that case George Bush might be connected with Chopin?
I thought about our different kinds of ignorance. Mine, first, the profound. The second, from the friend who misinformed me--nearly as ignorant as I was. The third kind of ignorance, that exhibited by my second friend, never for a moment shaking it (my ignorance) in my face. Here it is, the correction nicely couched in his reading history, his own ignorance highlighted:
"One thing I should mention is that Chopin did not have an affair with George Eliot. It was with George Sand, the French novelist, whom I've never read. Have you? And have you read Middlemarch? It's up there in my top five of all time. I've got to get back to her and read Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda."
The fourth kind of ignorance was the worse kind, exhibited by the third friend. Only the exchange itself explains how bad it was:
HIM: George Eliot? did you mean George Sand?
ME: No, George Eliot --Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss,Silas Marner. I did confuse them in my blog though, since my friend told me George Eliot and Chopin were an item--it was George Sand and Chopin she meant.
HIM: you could not mean George Elliot and Chopin...it is George Sand and Chopin torid love affair on Mallorca....you wrote: No, George Eliot --Mill on the Floss etc...
I saw masterpiece Theater version of Middlemarch...my what a depressing story...but powerful, wonder how he would read...but I am into maragaret Atwood now and Updike and Coetzee...
ME: Yes! George Sand not George Eliot with Chopin! That's what I said in my last letter, guess you didn't read it to the end, here's a copy--
"No, George Eliot --Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner. I did confuse them in my blog though, since my friend told me George Eliot and Chopin were an item--it was George Sand and Chopin she meant."
Like George Sand, George Eliot was a woman too (Mary Ann Evans?
something like that)--one of the greats.
HIM: yes both are greats, but only one had an affair with Chopin...
i KNOW THAT YOUR FRIEND TOLD YOU THAT, BUT HOW COULD ANYONE THINK THAT?
MY POINT IS YOUR SHOULD HAVE KNOWN RIGHT OFF...
Eliot was involved with George Henry Lewes who was a married man.
she died in 1880,,,....
George Sand was four years old when George elliot died....
Chopin was born in 1837....37 years after Eliot's death....
so how can anyone associate them? because their names were George....well what not say George Bush was involved with Chopin too.
ME: Oh dear, of COURSE they would be mixed up! Both 19th century
female novelists whose pseudonym is George? You are nuts
(He then sent me, separately, a link to WIKIPEDIA about George Sand, so I'd see when she was born and all.)
There you have four different aspects of ignorance--and two examples of how those who are in the know handle that fact with other people. Some, ignoring the fact that everyone is ignorant about something, make a big deal of what they know. Others, exhibiting wisdom and lovely manners (which are, you know, meant to put others at ease--of this I am not ignorant) put you in proper relation with your ignorance, as in the case of the second friend. The first friend? The one who first misinformed me George Eliot and Chopin were an item? She is less ignorant than I, being my younger twin, and I too remember that movie, in which the Ms. Sand went off arm and arm with Mr. Chopin. She at least had read Silas Marner in high school, as I had not.
Now I am glorying in the magnificence of George Eliot's Middlemarch. I have finally discovered a character in a novel to which I can totally relate--Dorothea. I am amazed that I am only now discovering George Eliot. Should I read something by George Sand, of whom I am terribly ignorant? I don't think I will, since reading Wikipedia about her has made me more aware of her reputation as a personality than as an author. Unlike her reputation as the lover of Chopin, Sand's reputation as a writer has not lasted the test of time.
Wouldn't it have been funny if Jane Austen wrote under the name George?
**********Appendum--photograph of my great, great grandmother Mary (Polly) Freemen, a contemporary of George Eliot. She was born seven years before Eliot and lived ten years longer than she did. From what I have read of what she wrote (she too was a fine writer), she had much in common with Dorothea in Middlemarch.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Silas Marner, or the virtue of leaving your door open
I finally read Silas Marner! I was supposed to have read it in high school (everyone else did), but I happened to have been provided by Providence (a major theme in Silas Marner) with a remarkable, memorable great teacher who taught Moby Dick instead. This is not to say the one is better than the other, though Silas Marner is not Moby Dick, and to be fair, Moby Dick is no Silas Marner. But both are great! One of the themes of Silas Marner is that things will work out after a while, and it so happens that having been assigned Moby Dick instead of Silas Marner did work out extraordinarily well--my wonderful teacher assigned me the task of writing about all the metaphors and symbols and other figures in Moby Dick that I could find, and I was so enthused about it that I came to get hooked on finding them everywhere--and throughout my lifetime.
Ergo: When I worked on my BA I wrote about Shakespeare's influence on Moby Dick,and how Pip in Moby Dick was analogous to the Fool in King Lear, and Lear analogous to Captain Ahab. When I worked on my MA I assigned myself the task of writing about all the metaphors and symbols and other figures in King Lear, Bob Dylan's lyrics, and the Japanese Noh play Nishikigi. When I worked on my doctorate I assigned myself the task of writing about all the metaphors and symbols and other figures in nationally distributed 4th to 8th grade science trade books and textbooks. I had one friend who knew me most of that whole time who found it remarkable that I had written about metaphor for so long--and it all began with my wonderful teacher assigning us Moby Dick instead of Silas Marner.
My wonderful teacher at Kents Hill, Mr. Fosse, may have been remiss about assigning me Moby Dick instead of Silas Marner, but he certainly knew how to make assignments that lasted for a lifetime. He told us his colleagues mocked him for trying to teach Moby Dick to high school students, but I for one greatly profited from it. For one thing, I discovered a lot of the other kids were coming to me for help writing their papers on what the different chapters in Moby Dick meant. I actually had ideas about it while many of them didn't have a clue. This in turn helped me realize, along with getting an A+ in geometry, that I must not be retarded! I was sure I was, because I didn't have very good grades and I never seemed to know how to be anywhere on time like the other kids (B minus average, 41st in a class of 76). So the fact they came to me for help interpreting Moby Dick helped me see I must not be retarded ....(this was years before "self-esteem" popped up)--years later I realized the bad grades and the geographical disorientation were due to all the reading and thinking I was doing nonstop to the neglect of everything else; plus I was near-sighted. They did not call it ADHD then--more likely, absent-minded professor-like (I was always and still am, reading about five books at once.) Only I wasn't a professor yet then, I just thought and acted like one. So they didn't and I didn't know what was my problem--I logically concluded I must be retarded. So you see being assigned Moby Dick was a very good thing for me--I did get an A in that class--and so did many others, due to my insights and the papers they turned in written by me (I didn't mind--it made me feel not stupid you see).
Fifty years passed. Finally I read Silas Marner!
As I started to read it, I thought wow! How did I miss this for so long? Of course as an English major (anthrolology, my first love, not being offered in the only college which accepted me) I knew all about it , and knew about George Eliot too--and Middlemarch, and Mill on the Floss. My own mother loved Mill on the Floss and gave it to me once for a birthday present--I dropped it after a few pages. I emailed my friend (who naturally was assigned it in high school along with everyone else) and she reminded me how George Eliot and Frederick Chopin (another of my great loves) had been an item, and the movie I saw about that all came back to me.
Silas Marner takes place in a mythical place where good things happen to you because you leave your door unlocked and where if a two year old child of a young drug addict wanders into your livingroom after its mother has passed out and died not far away outside your unlocked door, you get to keep it and adopt it and raise it to happy adulthood, no questions asked, no adoption papers to make out or anything. It is definitely my kind of book. Immediately I identified with Silas Marner! For one thing, he is way too trusting--something my mother was always telling me, though I didn't believe her (I was defiantly trusting of all others); and, like Silas Marner, I too am near-sighted. Like him I enjoy the sight of my gold coins (various and unnamed), and his story of redemption by providence is mine too. I have hope, you see, because I leave my door open too.....
Silas Marner's faith in providence and in his fellow man is redeemed by the theft (quite beyond his control though he enables it by leaving his door open) of what his narrower focus must be until a greater one arrives--also enabled by him--when a child wanders in through his open door. This has happened to me a great number of times, and continues to happen. To date I have nine children and who knows how many more are about to arrive, for isn't my door still open?
Read it! It's wonderful! Especially if you had to read it in high school. Re-reading it after having lived a while will only make it better--and you'll "get it" this time ever so much more. In a way, Silas Marner was the child that wandered in my door of late, bringing with it so much light on the progress of my days and the content of my character. Some call it providence, some fate. I am beginning to believe in it, just as my narrow scope on life has widened so far as to now being able to detect the feelings of those who live in the mythical land across the wide Atlantic.
Ergo: When I worked on my BA I wrote about Shakespeare's influence on Moby Dick,and how Pip in Moby Dick was analogous to the Fool in King Lear, and Lear analogous to Captain Ahab. When I worked on my MA I assigned myself the task of writing about all the metaphors and symbols and other figures in King Lear, Bob Dylan's lyrics, and the Japanese Noh play Nishikigi. When I worked on my doctorate I assigned myself the task of writing about all the metaphors and symbols and other figures in nationally distributed 4th to 8th grade science trade books and textbooks. I had one friend who knew me most of that whole time who found it remarkable that I had written about metaphor for so long--and it all began with my wonderful teacher assigning us Moby Dick instead of Silas Marner.
My wonderful teacher at Kents Hill, Mr. Fosse, may have been remiss about assigning me Moby Dick instead of Silas Marner, but he certainly knew how to make assignments that lasted for a lifetime. He told us his colleagues mocked him for trying to teach Moby Dick to high school students, but I for one greatly profited from it. For one thing, I discovered a lot of the other kids were coming to me for help writing their papers on what the different chapters in Moby Dick meant. I actually had ideas about it while many of them didn't have a clue. This in turn helped me realize, along with getting an A+ in geometry, that I must not be retarded! I was sure I was, because I didn't have very good grades and I never seemed to know how to be anywhere on time like the other kids (B minus average, 41st in a class of 76). So the fact they came to me for help interpreting Moby Dick helped me see I must not be retarded ....(this was years before "self-esteem" popped up)--years later I realized the bad grades and the geographical disorientation were due to all the reading and thinking I was doing nonstop to the neglect of everything else; plus I was near-sighted. They did not call it ADHD then--more likely, absent-minded professor-like (I was always and still am, reading about five books at once.) Only I wasn't a professor yet then, I just thought and acted like one. So they didn't and I didn't know what was my problem--I logically concluded I must be retarded. So you see being assigned Moby Dick was a very good thing for me--I did get an A in that class--and so did many others, due to my insights and the papers they turned in written by me (I didn't mind--it made me feel not stupid you see).
Fifty years passed. Finally I read Silas Marner!
As I started to read it, I thought wow! How did I miss this for so long? Of course as an English major (anthrolology, my first love, not being offered in the only college which accepted me) I knew all about it , and knew about George Eliot too--and Middlemarch, and Mill on the Floss. My own mother loved Mill on the Floss and gave it to me once for a birthday present--I dropped it after a few pages. I emailed my friend (who naturally was assigned it in high school along with everyone else) and she reminded me how George Eliot and Frederick Chopin (another of my great loves) had been an item, and the movie I saw about that all came back to me.
Silas Marner takes place in a mythical place where good things happen to you because you leave your door unlocked and where if a two year old child of a young drug addict wanders into your livingroom after its mother has passed out and died not far away outside your unlocked door, you get to keep it and adopt it and raise it to happy adulthood, no questions asked, no adoption papers to make out or anything. It is definitely my kind of book. Immediately I identified with Silas Marner! For one thing, he is way too trusting--something my mother was always telling me, though I didn't believe her (I was defiantly trusting of all others); and, like Silas Marner, I too am near-sighted. Like him I enjoy the sight of my gold coins (various and unnamed), and his story of redemption by providence is mine too. I have hope, you see, because I leave my door open too.....
Silas Marner's faith in providence and in his fellow man is redeemed by the theft (quite beyond his control though he enables it by leaving his door open) of what his narrower focus must be until a greater one arrives--also enabled by him--when a child wanders in through his open door. This has happened to me a great number of times, and continues to happen. To date I have nine children and who knows how many more are about to arrive, for isn't my door still open?
Read it! It's wonderful! Especially if you had to read it in high school. Re-reading it after having lived a while will only make it better--and you'll "get it" this time ever so much more. In a way, Silas Marner was the child that wandered in my door of late, bringing with it so much light on the progress of my days and the content of my character. Some call it providence, some fate. I am beginning to believe in it, just as my narrow scope on life has widened so far as to now being able to detect the feelings of those who live in the mythical land across the wide Atlantic.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Remember to leave some matches behind
REMEMBER TO LEAVE SOME MATCHES BEHIND (a villanelle for September)
Remember to leave some matches behind
When your fire has burned to ember;
Someone will find them and mind.
If you lifted high a glass of wine
When came a time to remember,
Remember to leave some matches behind.
This eternal journey you travel blind
Bears no debris but dark November;
Someone will find them and mind.
As this eternal bend must end or wind,
Regardless the cold of December,
Remember to leave some matches behind
I say this to one who is one of a kind
Yet of our old race full member --
Someone will find them and mind.
And if you grow no grain to grind
By harvest time September,
Someone will find them and mind;
Remember to leave some matches behind.
Remember to leave some matches behind
When your fire has burned to ember;
Someone will find them and mind.
If you lifted high a glass of wine
When came a time to remember,
Remember to leave some matches behind.
This eternal journey you travel blind
Bears no debris but dark November;
Someone will find them and mind.
As this eternal bend must end or wind,
Regardless the cold of December,
Remember to leave some matches behind
I say this to one who is one of a kind
Yet of our old race full member --
Someone will find them and mind.
And if you grow no grain to grind
By harvest time September,
Someone will find them and mind;
Remember to leave some matches behind.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The Silence of the Ma'ms
The Silence of the M'ams
I heard something good on the national news the other night--some, if not all, of the Ma'ms are soon going to be silenced! "Ma'ms," to be distinguished from "lambs," who are generally emblematic of innocence itself, are anything but innocent and deserve silencing, in fact if you ask me it's been a long time coming, this silencing legislation the GPIC (Good People In Congress) have decided to enact. Long ago, various members of my family, including myself, began receiving phone calls from this or that banking conglomerant or credit card group reminding us of exactly how much we owed on this or that loan-- commercial, educational or other--detailing to the cent and to the day exactly how much and how long we were, or had been, or would be overdue by said amount, and asking us if we wouldn't like immediately to schedule a payment on same.....????
The conversation was always polite enough--indeed it always ended with a "Ma'm" on the other end, as in: "...we realize you are in dire circumstances Ma'm, and you were laid off, how unfortunate M'am, and we do realize you are now on a pension Ma'm, and that your means are extremely limited M'am, and M'am we do realize you have raised nine children, but when you first agreed to the conditions of this loan, M'am, surely you did re-a-lize that re-spon-si-bi-li-ty upon which you were entering M'am, did you not M'am? (silence--the best tactic).....M'am?... MA'M???????" (click) This is how we came to call them "Ma'ms," the polite but agonizingly persistent and forgetful (they call again the next day as though they never, ever talked to you just the day before, and you have to explain all over again!!) progenitors and perpetuators and advancers and continuators of these calls, represented by the poor M'am employees with the Southern or Indian accents hired to do the big bosses' dirty work.....Now it's routine: "Oh, that call? No, just ignore it. Let it ring. I'm sure it's just a Ma'm..."
And now NBC's Brian Williams has made me feel as though I must have had a senior moment and forgotten I had signed up for a Ma'm support group (MA? Twelve steps to not hanging up on Ma'ms?), because here he is on the 6:30 news asking me: "You know those annoying, life-interrupting calls we all get day in and day out from agencies--usually from the credit card industry or a bank--reminding us it is URGENT we call them back??".....? (Yes, yes I answer inwardly, fervently wringing my hands and glancing at my cell phone..........) And then....
He says the M'ams are to be silenced! (This is almost BETTER than the movie!) Someone in the legislature has written a law and now it is to be enacted! Some good person noticed that it was annoying and disturbing and distracting people too much and maybe even offending their Bill of Rights or breaking some Constitutional Amendment that until now M'ams thought did not apply to them. Well! We'll just see about that!
Yes indeedy! Of course I will not believe it until my cell phone--set with the special ring for M'ams--ceases to ring, but I am hopeful! Yes, I am.
:-)
Meanwhile I have just noticed that a little meanness brings out the worse in everybody--even in a saintly sort of person such as myself. Call it a little too many M'ams for too long....something like that.
Anyway, thirteen days ago (as of this writing) I was charged $3870.00 for unpaid, overdue charges on my PHONE bill and was summarily (if erroneously) disconnected. You will realize of course, if you read about the M'ams (above), I rarely if ever even use the phone, much less ring up an unpaid bill on it. How then did I even know I was disconnected?--because they do leave on the 911 access, you see, and a dial tone that gets you to it. It is true I would never have known at all that I was disconnected except for the fact that I receive my internet access over it.
Internet--whole different story. Hate phone, loooove internet. You write on it, not talk. Ma'ms may be instantly deleted if and when they get your email address.
So that morning, thirteen days ago, I found I had no internet! This sent the blood pounding in my ears and my breath coming in stops and starts and long exhaustive, anxious sighs! After all, I had 62 moves on 62 games waiting on chessworld for me to make a move, and no holiday assigned! My rating was going to plummet like a hawk as my opponents watched my games time-out, one after another, while they merrily claimed wins on me, and time ticked on. I was disconnected??? This couldn't be happening to me!!
It was true I would have to speak to a M'am about this, but after all my granddaughters, aged nine and twelve and probably expecting at least a little internet access after swimming and tennis, were about to arrive for a week's stay. I got myself in proactive mode (hard for me since mothers of nine are generally reactive to the nth degree) and called to find out what the problem was--wasn't it true I always have my bank automatically send them $20 a month whatever the balance? So I called the M'am. That is when I found out I owed the $3780--approximately one third of my annual income--for "some long-distance calls in April, M'am," and got to really huffing and puffing with anxiety and disbelief. Was I the victim of fraud? What else could be the explanation? But no, it turned out quite unexpectedly. The phone company was in the wrong!
Here is what happened. I spent last winter with one of my daughters to share the heating bill, closed down the house, turned off all the ultilities, including the phone, for a period of five months. Arrived back April 1st and found I must have left my modem (through which I get high speech internet access) at my daughter's house (I called, she couldn't find it either). So I called the phone company, changed my billing address back to normal, and asked them to send me another modem. It should arrive in three days they said, why not use dial-up until it does?--they gave me a dial-up number. Alas, the modem did NOT arrive in three days. I had to make a call and be a M'am myself and ask them for it again--it arrived about twenty days after that first call. I got my fast internet again and all went well for a month or two--then again my internet would not connect! This time it was my computer's logic board--again I used dial-up with the number they had given me for about ten days. During this whole time I did not receive a bill, even though I had changed my address back! But that's okay--I was sending $20 a month anyway just to cover whatever, right?
To make a long story short, the number they had given me for dial-up was not a free number--it was a long-distance number! $3870 worth of long distance calls I was making, apparently, just to get that temporary slow dial-up access to the internet--and of course I had used this (supposedly) free dial-up number non-stop. Well, the phone company M'ams bent over backwards to apologize. None of that $3870 bill was my fault (I knew that), and in fact, when the dust settled they actually owed me $7.00--that sounded about right too. They would terminate the whole account and start up the new one right away. How would that be Ma'm? Would that be better?
That was six days ago. And yesterday--five days in waiting for reconnection it hit me--I'm still not connected to the internet--and I'm getting used to it!! Enough of this!! I called up the phone company!
*I* was the M'am!
I asked why I wasn't connected yet, and detailed the exact duration of the interrupted service to the second. They pleaded (if in a ma'mish way) with me! They said it was something technical, and described it to me in detail. I listened, I drummed my fingers, and I said okay: I was polite. I did not say M'am--but I will not say I was not tempted to do so......
Today, I called again. Again--just as though I had never, ever heard about all the technical difficulties they were experiencing--I asked why was I not yet connected to the internet???
And I almost added "M'am"
I silenced myself though. It must have been my conscience. One must silence the M'ams after all, because after all, one act of meanness (or a thousand) does not--or ought not to--engender another. Not if the world is ever to be straightened out. No indeed--all the Ma'ms must be silenced. For if paradise is the place we would find the world to be if only we followed beauty's guide, surely we are straight on course. What could be more beautiful than the silence of the M'ams?
I heard something good on the national news the other night--some, if not all, of the Ma'ms are soon going to be silenced! "Ma'ms," to be distinguished from "lambs," who are generally emblematic of innocence itself, are anything but innocent and deserve silencing, in fact if you ask me it's been a long time coming, this silencing legislation the GPIC (Good People In Congress) have decided to enact. Long ago, various members of my family, including myself, began receiving phone calls from this or that banking conglomerant or credit card group reminding us of exactly how much we owed on this or that loan-- commercial, educational or other--detailing to the cent and to the day exactly how much and how long we were, or had been, or would be overdue by said amount, and asking us if we wouldn't like immediately to schedule a payment on same.....????
The conversation was always polite enough--indeed it always ended with a "Ma'm" on the other end, as in: "...we realize you are in dire circumstances Ma'm, and you were laid off, how unfortunate M'am, and we do realize you are now on a pension Ma'm, and that your means are extremely limited M'am, and M'am we do realize you have raised nine children, but when you first agreed to the conditions of this loan, M'am, surely you did re-a-lize that re-spon-si-bi-li-ty upon which you were entering M'am, did you not M'am? (silence--the best tactic).....M'am?... MA'M???????" (click) This is how we came to call them "Ma'ms," the polite but agonizingly persistent and forgetful (they call again the next day as though they never, ever talked to you just the day before, and you have to explain all over again!!) progenitors and perpetuators and advancers and continuators of these calls, represented by the poor M'am employees with the Southern or Indian accents hired to do the big bosses' dirty work.....Now it's routine: "Oh, that call? No, just ignore it. Let it ring. I'm sure it's just a Ma'm..."
And now NBC's Brian Williams has made me feel as though I must have had a senior moment and forgotten I had signed up for a Ma'm support group (MA? Twelve steps to not hanging up on Ma'ms?), because here he is on the 6:30 news asking me: "You know those annoying, life-interrupting calls we all get day in and day out from agencies--usually from the credit card industry or a bank--reminding us it is URGENT we call them back??".....? (Yes, yes I answer inwardly, fervently wringing my hands and glancing at my cell phone..........) And then....
He says the M'ams are to be silenced! (This is almost BETTER than the movie!) Someone in the legislature has written a law and now it is to be enacted! Some good person noticed that it was annoying and disturbing and distracting people too much and maybe even offending their Bill of Rights or breaking some Constitutional Amendment that until now M'ams thought did not apply to them. Well! We'll just see about that!
Yes indeedy! Of course I will not believe it until my cell phone--set with the special ring for M'ams--ceases to ring, but I am hopeful! Yes, I am.
:-)
Meanwhile I have just noticed that a little meanness brings out the worse in everybody--even in a saintly sort of person such as myself. Call it a little too many M'ams for too long....something like that.
Anyway, thirteen days ago (as of this writing) I was charged $3870.00 for unpaid, overdue charges on my PHONE bill and was summarily (if erroneously) disconnected. You will realize of course, if you read about the M'ams (above), I rarely if ever even use the phone, much less ring up an unpaid bill on it. How then did I even know I was disconnected?--because they do leave on the 911 access, you see, and a dial tone that gets you to it. It is true I would never have known at all that I was disconnected except for the fact that I receive my internet access over it.
Internet--whole different story. Hate phone, loooove internet. You write on it, not talk. Ma'ms may be instantly deleted if and when they get your email address.
So that morning, thirteen days ago, I found I had no internet! This sent the blood pounding in my ears and my breath coming in stops and starts and long exhaustive, anxious sighs! After all, I had 62 moves on 62 games waiting on chessworld for me to make a move, and no holiday assigned! My rating was going to plummet like a hawk as my opponents watched my games time-out, one after another, while they merrily claimed wins on me, and time ticked on. I was disconnected??? This couldn't be happening to me!!
It was true I would have to speak to a M'am about this, but after all my granddaughters, aged nine and twelve and probably expecting at least a little internet access after swimming and tennis, were about to arrive for a week's stay. I got myself in proactive mode (hard for me since mothers of nine are generally reactive to the nth degree) and called to find out what the problem was--wasn't it true I always have my bank automatically send them $20 a month whatever the balance? So I called the M'am. That is when I found out I owed the $3780--approximately one third of my annual income--for "some long-distance calls in April, M'am," and got to really huffing and puffing with anxiety and disbelief. Was I the victim of fraud? What else could be the explanation? But no, it turned out quite unexpectedly. The phone company was in the wrong!
Here is what happened. I spent last winter with one of my daughters to share the heating bill, closed down the house, turned off all the ultilities, including the phone, for a period of five months. Arrived back April 1st and found I must have left my modem (through which I get high speech internet access) at my daughter's house (I called, she couldn't find it either). So I called the phone company, changed my billing address back to normal, and asked them to send me another modem. It should arrive in three days they said, why not use dial-up until it does?--they gave me a dial-up number. Alas, the modem did NOT arrive in three days. I had to make a call and be a M'am myself and ask them for it again--it arrived about twenty days after that first call. I got my fast internet again and all went well for a month or two--then again my internet would not connect! This time it was my computer's logic board--again I used dial-up with the number they had given me for about ten days. During this whole time I did not receive a bill, even though I had changed my address back! But that's okay--I was sending $20 a month anyway just to cover whatever, right?
To make a long story short, the number they had given me for dial-up was not a free number--it was a long-distance number! $3870 worth of long distance calls I was making, apparently, just to get that temporary slow dial-up access to the internet--and of course I had used this (supposedly) free dial-up number non-stop. Well, the phone company M'ams bent over backwards to apologize. None of that $3870 bill was my fault (I knew that), and in fact, when the dust settled they actually owed me $7.00--that sounded about right too. They would terminate the whole account and start up the new one right away. How would that be Ma'm? Would that be better?
That was six days ago. And yesterday--five days in waiting for reconnection it hit me--I'm still not connected to the internet--and I'm getting used to it!! Enough of this!! I called up the phone company!
*I* was the M'am!
I asked why I wasn't connected yet, and detailed the exact duration of the interrupted service to the second. They pleaded (if in a ma'mish way) with me! They said it was something technical, and described it to me in detail. I listened, I drummed my fingers, and I said okay: I was polite. I did not say M'am--but I will not say I was not tempted to do so......
Today, I called again. Again--just as though I had never, ever heard about all the technical difficulties they were experiencing--I asked why was I not yet connected to the internet???
And I almost added "M'am"
I silenced myself though. It must have been my conscience. One must silence the M'ams after all, because after all, one act of meanness (or a thousand) does not--or ought not to--engender another. Not if the world is ever to be straightened out. No indeed--all the Ma'ms must be silenced. For if paradise is the place we would find the world to be if only we followed beauty's guide, surely we are straight on course. What could be more beautiful than the silence of the M'ams?
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Uncommon Sense
One learns to listen to the meaning of language, when one has been instructed in language endlessly. Does it conduct the owner of education, imagination and a sense of humor? Does it demand scientific scrutiny and historical relevance? As a child I learned these things early, to listen to the speech of others, for the family was already in the fold. My mother might correct my usage all her life, but my language was a priori at least equal to if not superior to that of all others outside the family, in her view—and it was her view which held the family standard. She was not particularly scientific in method, if wholly so in attitude, and so sometimes I saw her logic as lacking, for I was wholly scientific both in method and attitude. It is not conducive to common sense, such an upbringing, in such a family.
One learns very early to admire the humorous, the “wit” which is the family humor, the understatement, the ironic. And yet my mother screamed herself with laughter into sanity all her life. She depended on humor, the ability to see the funny and absurd and the ridiculous to see her through the worst of circumstances. Common sense does not enter in; common sense might have dictated a melt-down. But my mother's uncommon sense was well developed toward an always available window of opportunity framed by laughter. It relieved her and with it she rose above an abusive, corrosive undependable outer world of trouble. She rose newly strengthened by it, for rarely was it not followed by solid plans of self-intervention and, ultimately, victory over all foes, these being, mainly, people with no imagination, whose sense and knowledge were merely conventional. Imagination itself is not conducive to common sense and when common sense becomes merely conventional, then it becomes the foe. Uncommon sense is much more interesting, for one, than common sense. It is also never in danger of becoming merely conventional.
My grandfather was of that tribe which has always lived among men admired by all the other tribes, currently coined a “whisperer.” My mother thought that birds and cats and all sorts of animals “knew”
things. Of course this was not scientifically viable, and I snickered at her. Yet she had a father who, in spite of being an eminent scientist, talked to animals; and I myself admit to having had a grounded robin chick hop right into my lap once. Common sense tells you a dog knows what you're thinking. Uncommon sense tells you you know what the dog is thinking. We have, as a family, the latter kind.
A well-educated person reveals himself in language--the purpose he puts it to, not just the way it is put. My mother revealed to me a remarkable compassion for others when she over-looked the ill-constructed syntax of a given respect-deserving outsider and focused on his sense of humor and his good common sense. Those with uncommon sense always look up to and respect those with common sense, and my mother's uncommon sense was superior. She had a keen eye to the essential human being beneath the trappings of style, even such verbal accouterments as those which had been garnered in a language-poor upbringing. My mother could forgive, and willingly did so consistently, poor language usage in the mouth of a person who had sterling integrity, fierce protectiveness, loyalty and—always—common sense. She loved carpenters. I guess she found they exuded common sense, and she found they shared the same sense of humor, uncommon as it was.
Common sense would have told her she and carpenters weren't likely to find the same things funny. But uncommon sense, of which our family has plenty, she had in spades. I thought I was the only one with common sense—me and Grandma Ruggli, my grandfather's mother-in-law. Now she had common sense. You could, and can, see it in her wrinkles. I can see, using my magic mirror (rendered magic by its frequent disuse) that I am slowly turning into my great grandmother, wrinkles and all. But the common sense? I somehow doubt it will come in time for it to cause my bodily demise to have no meaning. Such thoughts invariably render me melancholy; but it passes. Uncommon sense, of which I have much, tells me that in a hundred years I will have a descendant turning into me.
The use of uncommon sense is that one keeps in touch with one's remote ancestors and one's remote descendants. Common sense says that it's all over when it's all over. Common sense says dust to dust. Uncommon sense, such as my family believes in, says death is only bodily, the family lives forever, and with it the stories and language which feature it forever. The family is uncommonly featured in the kind of sense which makes sense to my family, and my family only. Not quite. We're not that exclusive. Not when it comes to marriage.
We're always noticing others—people who exude a certain humorous imaginative approach to life and looping them in matrimonially. Uncommon sense must be perpetuated. Uncommon sense says you marry someone you love. Common sense dictates you fall in love with someone who understands where you're coming from, family wise. (Does he talk to the animals? Is he not lazy? Hard-working? Is he thoughtful of others? NOT conventional, I hope—the worst is to be conventional in my family.) Most importantly, is he prepared to go script-less into the conversation of the night? (Does he speak well? Is he educated?) Why be in love with somebody else? Makes sense. But which kind?
Uncommon sense says you marry the person you fall in love with. With any luck, you might fall in love with someone your family would approve of, that being someone who, though lacking in common sense, is still imaginative and creative. Good luck thus becomes an indispensable component of one's own destiny package. To someone without common sense, luck redeems all; indeed is all that's left for hope after uncommon wisdom speaks. Someone with common sense doesn't need luck (he has sense).
When it comes to discovering lovers of an ilk, uncommon sense is always sending members of our family messages during the courting process. I have a daughter who calls the messenger of her own uncommon sense her “Stupid Friend.” Stupid is a good way of describing uncommon sense. Common sense would make you never stupid, ever.
Common sense is much to be wanted, for it's the fortress of the ages, the sign of common wisdom. Uncommon wisdom has to be family grown. I strive ever toward the former, having been given so much of the latter.
One learns very early to admire the humorous, the “wit” which is the family humor, the understatement, the ironic. And yet my mother screamed herself with laughter into sanity all her life. She depended on humor, the ability to see the funny and absurd and the ridiculous to see her through the worst of circumstances. Common sense does not enter in; common sense might have dictated a melt-down. But my mother's uncommon sense was well developed toward an always available window of opportunity framed by laughter. It relieved her and with it she rose above an abusive, corrosive undependable outer world of trouble. She rose newly strengthened by it, for rarely was it not followed by solid plans of self-intervention and, ultimately, victory over all foes, these being, mainly, people with no imagination, whose sense and knowledge were merely conventional. Imagination itself is not conducive to common sense and when common sense becomes merely conventional, then it becomes the foe. Uncommon sense is much more interesting, for one, than common sense. It is also never in danger of becoming merely conventional.
My grandfather was of that tribe which has always lived among men admired by all the other tribes, currently coined a “whisperer.” My mother thought that birds and cats and all sorts of animals “knew”
things. Of course this was not scientifically viable, and I snickered at her. Yet she had a father who, in spite of being an eminent scientist, talked to animals; and I myself admit to having had a grounded robin chick hop right into my lap once. Common sense tells you a dog knows what you're thinking. Uncommon sense tells you you know what the dog is thinking. We have, as a family, the latter kind.
A well-educated person reveals himself in language--the purpose he puts it to, not just the way it is put. My mother revealed to me a remarkable compassion for others when she over-looked the ill-constructed syntax of a given respect-deserving outsider and focused on his sense of humor and his good common sense. Those with uncommon sense always look up to and respect those with common sense, and my mother's uncommon sense was superior. She had a keen eye to the essential human being beneath the trappings of style, even such verbal accouterments as those which had been garnered in a language-poor upbringing. My mother could forgive, and willingly did so consistently, poor language usage in the mouth of a person who had sterling integrity, fierce protectiveness, loyalty and—always—common sense. She loved carpenters. I guess she found they exuded common sense, and she found they shared the same sense of humor, uncommon as it was.
Common sense would have told her she and carpenters weren't likely to find the same things funny. But uncommon sense, of which our family has plenty, she had in spades. I thought I was the only one with common sense—me and Grandma Ruggli, my grandfather's mother-in-law. Now she had common sense. You could, and can, see it in her wrinkles. I can see, using my magic mirror (rendered magic by its frequent disuse) that I am slowly turning into my great grandmother, wrinkles and all. But the common sense? I somehow doubt it will come in time for it to cause my bodily demise to have no meaning. Such thoughts invariably render me melancholy; but it passes. Uncommon sense, of which I have much, tells me that in a hundred years I will have a descendant turning into me.
The use of uncommon sense is that one keeps in touch with one's remote ancestors and one's remote descendants. Common sense says that it's all over when it's all over. Common sense says dust to dust. Uncommon sense, such as my family believes in, says death is only bodily, the family lives forever, and with it the stories and language which feature it forever. The family is uncommonly featured in the kind of sense which makes sense to my family, and my family only. Not quite. We're not that exclusive. Not when it comes to marriage.
We're always noticing others—people who exude a certain humorous imaginative approach to life and looping them in matrimonially. Uncommon sense must be perpetuated. Uncommon sense says you marry someone you love. Common sense dictates you fall in love with someone who understands where you're coming from, family wise. (Does he talk to the animals? Is he not lazy? Hard-working? Is he thoughtful of others? NOT conventional, I hope—the worst is to be conventional in my family.) Most importantly, is he prepared to go script-less into the conversation of the night? (Does he speak well? Is he educated?) Why be in love with somebody else? Makes sense. But which kind?
Uncommon sense says you marry the person you fall in love with. With any luck, you might fall in love with someone your family would approve of, that being someone who, though lacking in common sense, is still imaginative and creative. Good luck thus becomes an indispensable component of one's own destiny package. To someone without common sense, luck redeems all; indeed is all that's left for hope after uncommon wisdom speaks. Someone with common sense doesn't need luck (he has sense).
When it comes to discovering lovers of an ilk, uncommon sense is always sending members of our family messages during the courting process. I have a daughter who calls the messenger of her own uncommon sense her “Stupid Friend.” Stupid is a good way of describing uncommon sense. Common sense would make you never stupid, ever.
Common sense is much to be wanted, for it's the fortress of the ages, the sign of common wisdom. Uncommon wisdom has to be family grown. I strive ever toward the former, having been given so much of the latter.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Norman Lear's religious tolerance, Stoicism, Obama, and the coming generation
I heard Norman Lear interviewed today, and was startled to hear him say several things I think of as essentially Stoic. In particular, that each individual has his or her own theism--whether it be monotheistic, polytheistic, atheistic or whatever--to address. Each of us must determine that relationship for ourselves. In Norman Lear's eyes (http://normanlear.com/spirit_8.html) this is what has determined whether or not he has lived a purposeful life; for other individuals, he stresses, it may or may not be the same--that is none of his concern. Particularly he makes it clear how others address their religious concerns is none of his concern. Religious unconcern is the basis for his religious tolerance, in fact, the result of his belief that divine struggles are personal, not collective; they reside in each of us, and it is not the individual's proper place to determine what the religious beliefs of others should or should not be.
It is a typically Stoic position; both Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (http://www.bartleby.com/2/3/14.html) and Epictetus (http://www.ptypes.com/enchiridion.html) express similar beliefs. Simplicius, historian of Alexander the Great, records in Epictetus's Enchiridion ("handbook"): "...and if it relates to anything which is not in our power, be ready to say, that it does not concern you." Lear cites American forefathers Jefferson and Madison as progenitors of his views. He calls their thought "secular humanism." He writes:
"That is, with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and most of the nation's other founders, I believe that whether one is theist or atheist is irrelevant to civil purpose. Jefferson: “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god.” Madison: “Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, profess and observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.” In other words, some of my—and America's—best friends are secular humanists.
George Long, who translated Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus at the end of the 19th century, and who taught at Jefferson's University of Virginia, discusses at length in his introductions to these works by these two philosophers (Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) the long tradition of Stoic thought in history:
"From the time of Zeno to Simplicius, a period of about nine hundred years, the Stoic Philosophy formed the characters of some of the best and greatest men."
How did Stoic thought come down to Norman Lear? Most educated men of Madison and Jefferson's generation had read these works by Epictetus and Antoninus; they were an important part of the "core curriculum" of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, carried through since the Renaissance's great Classical revival. Norman Lear read and agreed with Madison and Jefferson, but really Madison and Jefferson were channeling Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, and he agreed with them. Many of us today agree with them. We are, perhaps, Neo-Stoics and don't realize it. Obama surely is, and anyone who has heard or read his views on religious toleration knows it (http://theframeproblem.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/barack-obamas-speech-on-religion-in-america/).
I think maybe this kind of tolerance is what is catching the imagination of those in our current generation who say they are not religious, but are spiritual; or say they are personally atheistic but don't mind others believing what they want(whatever floats your spiritual boat); inclusive, accepting of diversity, not exclusive. They are in this secular humanistic, Stoic tradition so well expressed in Norman Lear's personal philosophy. I think the age of Lear and the NeoStoics has found its time. Our world communicates so well now, we all might as well think of ourselves as seated at the same table. And we all know we shouldn't be discussing the religion, sex, and politics of each other --it is none of our concern!--but respect each others' differences of opinion in all matters religious, sexual, and political.
As Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Meditations,VIII, 56)puts it, be tolerant of other's free will to opine as they will:
"To my own free will the free will of my neighbor is just as indifferent as his poor breath and flesh. For though we are made especially for the sake of one another, still the ruling power of each of us has its own office..."
It is a typically Stoic position; both Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (http://www.bartleby.com/2/3/14.html) and Epictetus (http://www.ptypes.com/enchiridion.html) express similar beliefs. Simplicius, historian of Alexander the Great, records in Epictetus's Enchiridion ("handbook"): "...and if it relates to anything which is not in our power, be ready to say, that it does not concern you." Lear cites American forefathers Jefferson and Madison as progenitors of his views. He calls their thought "secular humanism." He writes:
"That is, with Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and most of the nation's other founders, I believe that whether one is theist or atheist is irrelevant to civil purpose. Jefferson: “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god.” Madison: “Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, profess and observe the Religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.” In other words, some of my—and America's—best friends are secular humanists.
George Long, who translated Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus at the end of the 19th century, and who taught at Jefferson's University of Virginia, discusses at length in his introductions to these works by these two philosophers (Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) the long tradition of Stoic thought in history:
"From the time of Zeno to Simplicius, a period of about nine hundred years, the Stoic Philosophy formed the characters of some of the best and greatest men."
How did Stoic thought come down to Norman Lear? Most educated men of Madison and Jefferson's generation had read these works by Epictetus and Antoninus; they were an important part of the "core curriculum" of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, carried through since the Renaissance's great Classical revival. Norman Lear read and agreed with Madison and Jefferson, but really Madison and Jefferson were channeling Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, and he agreed with them. Many of us today agree with them. We are, perhaps, Neo-Stoics and don't realize it. Obama surely is, and anyone who has heard or read his views on religious toleration knows it (http://theframeproblem.wordpress.com/2008/02/11/barack-obamas-speech-on-religion-in-america/).
I think maybe this kind of tolerance is what is catching the imagination of those in our current generation who say they are not religious, but are spiritual; or say they are personally atheistic but don't mind others believing what they want(whatever floats your spiritual boat); inclusive, accepting of diversity, not exclusive. They are in this secular humanistic, Stoic tradition so well expressed in Norman Lear's personal philosophy. I think the age of Lear and the NeoStoics has found its time. Our world communicates so well now, we all might as well think of ourselves as seated at the same table. And we all know we shouldn't be discussing the religion, sex, and politics of each other --it is none of our concern!--but respect each others' differences of opinion in all matters religious, sexual, and political.
As Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Meditations,VIII, 56)puts it, be tolerant of other's free will to opine as they will:
"To my own free will the free will of my neighbor is just as indifferent as his poor breath and flesh. For though we are made especially for the sake of one another, still the ruling power of each of us has its own office..."
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Tolerance and Robert Greenleaf Leavitt
This is a parable, as told by me, channeling Robert Greenleaf Leavitt.
A dog would not understand why you weed, yanking out and killing things he only sometimes eats. He doesn't understand the principle we weed by, to kill some so other chosen ones can thrive. But he doesn't object to the yanking, he just lays there watching or perhaps takes a nap. This is tolerance of what you cannot understand. One who bows his head to the floor to worship God is not always understood by the one who must imbibe or ingest his God instead. But both may tolerate one another by understanding the common need each has to relate to his divinity in some way, whether by imbibing or by bowing. Both are like dogs supining in the sun while the humans are doing their strange thing weeding, just laying there practicing tolerance.
This is my understanding of how Robert Greenleaf Leavitt perceived tolerance. He kept a Koran in his library and wrote about the similarities among Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought often. He was also according to my mother able to read Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, so he must have thought about common concepts rooted in words the different religions shared. He focused on commonalities, not differences (citing always "do unto others" as a common adage among religions); and communication (citing how animals and humans could and did communicate.)
To him, a botanist, diversity itself might have suggested ecological health. But he was more than a botanist, he was also one who "talked to the animals." They communicated with him, and he with them; conceivably he learned much from them about tolerance--especially from dogs, horses and crows. He was always looking for commonalities between and among species as between and among religions. Hence my mother was raised in an atmosphere of proactive tolerance of differences between and among species and religions (though not politics--I trace this to the influence of Ida my grandmother.)
I think my children will find it is true of their own beliefs, such a strong traditional way of thinking about religious tolerance has existed in our family culture for so long-- along with a certain zeal (so currently manifest in our own Erika) for truth and justice. "Honest, scholarly, retiring" our family is declared in the town history. They were also highly tolerant people. Amos Blazo "attended no religious services," (though ministers of various denominations "were always welcome in his home");his father had come to America an apostate priest. His son married a woman raised by the Shakers. Their son Robert Blazo was a freewill Baptist, but even more that that he was a Stoic, which I know not only from his love letters to his fiance, but through the love of the classics he passed on down to his daughter Susan, whose son Robert Greenleaf Leavitt was, he whose childhood collection of birds' eggs, among everything else of his, has come to me personally.
By the time it came down to me through my mother from my grandfather, I was too trusting according to my mother. But I call it tolerance, that finding of differences in others as being okay, and focusing instead on commonalities amongst others; and I am happy to walk in my grandfather's shoes, whatever my mother may have said. It would be like Robert Greenleaf Leavitt to speak in terms of dogs or horses, and so I tried to do myself (above), in honor of his wonderful view on life he has passed on to us, his descendants, of tolerance, in which I have been lucky enough to have been steeped for a lifetime.
A dog would not understand why you weed, yanking out and killing things he only sometimes eats. He doesn't understand the principle we weed by, to kill some so other chosen ones can thrive. But he doesn't object to the yanking, he just lays there watching or perhaps takes a nap. This is tolerance of what you cannot understand. One who bows his head to the floor to worship God is not always understood by the one who must imbibe or ingest his God instead. But both may tolerate one another by understanding the common need each has to relate to his divinity in some way, whether by imbibing or by bowing. Both are like dogs supining in the sun while the humans are doing their strange thing weeding, just laying there practicing tolerance.
This is my understanding of how Robert Greenleaf Leavitt perceived tolerance. He kept a Koran in his library and wrote about the similarities among Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought often. He was also according to my mother able to read Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, so he must have thought about common concepts rooted in words the different religions shared. He focused on commonalities, not differences (citing always "do unto others" as a common adage among religions); and communication (citing how animals and humans could and did communicate.)
To him, a botanist, diversity itself might have suggested ecological health. But he was more than a botanist, he was also one who "talked to the animals." They communicated with him, and he with them; conceivably he learned much from them about tolerance--especially from dogs, horses and crows. He was always looking for commonalities between and among species as between and among religions. Hence my mother was raised in an atmosphere of proactive tolerance of differences between and among species and religions (though not politics--I trace this to the influence of Ida my grandmother.)
I think my children will find it is true of their own beliefs, such a strong traditional way of thinking about religious tolerance has existed in our family culture for so long-- along with a certain zeal (so currently manifest in our own Erika) for truth and justice. "Honest, scholarly, retiring" our family is declared in the town history. They were also highly tolerant people. Amos Blazo "attended no religious services," (though ministers of various denominations "were always welcome in his home");his father had come to America an apostate priest. His son married a woman raised by the Shakers. Their son Robert Blazo was a freewill Baptist, but even more that that he was a Stoic, which I know not only from his love letters to his fiance, but through the love of the classics he passed on down to his daughter Susan, whose son Robert Greenleaf Leavitt was, he whose childhood collection of birds' eggs, among everything else of his, has come to me personally.
By the time it came down to me through my mother from my grandfather, I was too trusting according to my mother. But I call it tolerance, that finding of differences in others as being okay, and focusing instead on commonalities amongst others; and I am happy to walk in my grandfather's shoes, whatever my mother may have said. It would be like Robert Greenleaf Leavitt to speak in terms of dogs or horses, and so I tried to do myself (above), in honor of his wonderful view on life he has passed on to us, his descendants, of tolerance, in which I have been lucky enough to have been steeped for a lifetime.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Time traveling with Star Trek
I saw Star Trek last night and saw my life pass before my eyes. I went to places never gone to before....For instance, before my very eyes young James T. Kirk turned into my son Stevie (!) Then there was Spock, and he turned into Stevie's younger brother and arch enemy Joey (!) My son Johnny was right next to me watching the movie with me, so I whispered these things in his ear when they occurred to me. He must know what I meant I thought, having been regularly placed between his two big brothers in the back seat of the car whenever we went anywhere to keep them from killing each other, but he only nodded knowingly. Maybe he didn't want to be interrupted by major flash backs going on in my head while I was watching the movie? I fell quiet.
It was the preview that had started the time travel for me-- Angels and Demons, directed by Ron Howard. I didn't care about the angels and demons part (ho-hum) but Ron Howard sure got my attention! Suddenly I was remembering watching Ron Howard as a young mother of two young children way back in the Sixties. Ron Howard was then just a small boy on The Andy Griffeth Show named "Opie"--who would have dreamed that this Opie would someday grow up and direct a movie?? Next thing I knew my mind took a quantum leap (warp speed) forward, and I remembered seeing Caccoon in the Eighties, and thinking Oh! ...he's all grown up now, and is a great director! I leaned over to tell Johnny all this stuff and then changed my mind. We wouldn't see Star Trek at all if I kept reminiscing.
But anyway, Star Trek was another series I loved to watch back then about the same time as I was watching The Andy Griffeth Show, and I was so disappointed when I heard they were going to cancel it after only three seasons. Nothing could possibly have made me realize then that it would not be cancelled, but instead recalled by popular acclaim and more amazingly, go on decade after decade to spawn many, many movies in its wake while actors aged and grew paunchy and finally had to be replaced, while Trekkies multiplied faster than Tribbles. Who would have guessed?
It was more than half the joy of the movie! I began to remember all the Star Treks going back forty years and more, and when I saw Leonard Nimoy's Old Spock confronting his Young Spock self it might as well have been me confronting my own young self when we all were so young and so unknowing of the future. The unknowingness of the future is what makes it later so astounding when the past is looked back upon from it, you see. No one knows now what is going to make a splash in the world in the future at all! Example--looking back you know Elvis Presley made a big splash--his fame is utterly universal. But I remember when Pat Boone and Elvis Presley were absolutely tied as to who was best in the private polls of me and my friends, and we were the ones deciding. Fats Domino was pretty good too--how could you decide? Of course now Pat Boone is best remembered for his white bucks (I had some), and Fats Domino is revered as he should be for his wonderful irreverent piano-playing and lyrics--but Elvis has evolved into this great mythical cult hero god who has been spotted hundreds of times walking the earth--just like the Greek heroes and gods of old did--decades after his death, still wooing women and giving little private showings to the Chosen few lucky enough to have run into him. Who would have guessed?
When you see something over and over again for hundreds of episodes (which you don't realize are going to be famous some day) the way I saw Star Trek in its original setting, the moves all become familiar. The way Captain Kirk sits in the captain's chair defines him; the way Spock and Kirk sort of stand there leaning toward each other facing you, having a little conference deciding what to do next--that's just what they do. As I was going into this movie (Star Trek 2009) I was thinking there was something that was just a little staged about the original they could never capture today in the age of specially effected realism, and something a little like Saturday Night Live about the way Spock and Kirk and the others--Scottie, Bones, Chekov, Sulu, Uhura--were with each other. They were clearly having fun--poking fun at themselves and getting into their characters in a wonderfully funny way.
But I was wrong to think they wouldn't, couldn't capture that! Star Trek 2009 does poke fun at Star Trek 1966! Young Kirk sits in the captain's chair, posed just as he did all those hundreds of times forty years ago, thinking, posturing, looking captainly...along comes young Spock (now he's the captain in this movie!) and says "Outta the chair!" It is hilarious! And at the end, the two together facing the movie audience, conferring with each other about what to do.....they captured it perfectly!
And another thing. They were the original Crew Diversity before it was a concept--this was the world of the future and we knew it had no money in it and was totally integrated as to both race and intergalactic species--which was the way we envisioned a new enlightened world being. The only thing I didn't like was the outfits the girls had to wear--they reminded me too much of Play Boy Club outfits I had seen in magazines! Oh well, you can't have everything, and Captain Kirk had to hit on someone, and girls in feministic outfits (whatever they were--braless maybe) wouldn't have fit the bill. They were still in the future, feminists were, you see. Uhura was the first maybe; she was strong and part of the crew. But she still had the old made-for-men-to-look-at outfit.
Oh Star Trek! What times revisited! What time travel!! I must see it again!
It was the preview that had started the time travel for me-- Angels and Demons, directed by Ron Howard. I didn't care about the angels and demons part (ho-hum) but Ron Howard sure got my attention! Suddenly I was remembering watching Ron Howard as a young mother of two young children way back in the Sixties. Ron Howard was then just a small boy on The Andy Griffeth Show named "Opie"--who would have dreamed that this Opie would someday grow up and direct a movie?? Next thing I knew my mind took a quantum leap (warp speed) forward, and I remembered seeing Caccoon in the Eighties, and thinking Oh! ...he's all grown up now, and is a great director! I leaned over to tell Johnny all this stuff and then changed my mind. We wouldn't see Star Trek at all if I kept reminiscing.
But anyway, Star Trek was another series I loved to watch back then about the same time as I was watching The Andy Griffeth Show, and I was so disappointed when I heard they were going to cancel it after only three seasons. Nothing could possibly have made me realize then that it would not be cancelled, but instead recalled by popular acclaim and more amazingly, go on decade after decade to spawn many, many movies in its wake while actors aged and grew paunchy and finally had to be replaced, while Trekkies multiplied faster than Tribbles. Who would have guessed?
It was more than half the joy of the movie! I began to remember all the Star Treks going back forty years and more, and when I saw Leonard Nimoy's Old Spock confronting his Young Spock self it might as well have been me confronting my own young self when we all were so young and so unknowing of the future. The unknowingness of the future is what makes it later so astounding when the past is looked back upon from it, you see. No one knows now what is going to make a splash in the world in the future at all! Example--looking back you know Elvis Presley made a big splash--his fame is utterly universal. But I remember when Pat Boone and Elvis Presley were absolutely tied as to who was best in the private polls of me and my friends, and we were the ones deciding. Fats Domino was pretty good too--how could you decide? Of course now Pat Boone is best remembered for his white bucks (I had some), and Fats Domino is revered as he should be for his wonderful irreverent piano-playing and lyrics--but Elvis has evolved into this great mythical cult hero god who has been spotted hundreds of times walking the earth--just like the Greek heroes and gods of old did--decades after his death, still wooing women and giving little private showings to the Chosen few lucky enough to have run into him. Who would have guessed?
When you see something over and over again for hundreds of episodes (which you don't realize are going to be famous some day) the way I saw Star Trek in its original setting, the moves all become familiar. The way Captain Kirk sits in the captain's chair defines him; the way Spock and Kirk sort of stand there leaning toward each other facing you, having a little conference deciding what to do next--that's just what they do. As I was going into this movie (Star Trek 2009) I was thinking there was something that was just a little staged about the original they could never capture today in the age of specially effected realism, and something a little like Saturday Night Live about the way Spock and Kirk and the others--Scottie, Bones, Chekov, Sulu, Uhura--were with each other. They were clearly having fun--poking fun at themselves and getting into their characters in a wonderfully funny way.
But I was wrong to think they wouldn't, couldn't capture that! Star Trek 2009 does poke fun at Star Trek 1966! Young Kirk sits in the captain's chair, posed just as he did all those hundreds of times forty years ago, thinking, posturing, looking captainly...along comes young Spock (now he's the captain in this movie!) and says "Outta the chair!" It is hilarious! And at the end, the two together facing the movie audience, conferring with each other about what to do.....they captured it perfectly!
And another thing. They were the original Crew Diversity before it was a concept--this was the world of the future and we knew it had no money in it and was totally integrated as to both race and intergalactic species--which was the way we envisioned a new enlightened world being. The only thing I didn't like was the outfits the girls had to wear--they reminded me too much of Play Boy Club outfits I had seen in magazines! Oh well, you can't have everything, and Captain Kirk had to hit on someone, and girls in feministic outfits (whatever they were--braless maybe) wouldn't have fit the bill. They were still in the future, feminists were, you see. Uhura was the first maybe; she was strong and part of the crew. But she still had the old made-for-men-to-look-at outfit.
Oh Star Trek! What times revisited! What time travel!! I must see it again!
Sunday, May 24, 2009
An essay on war and play
How I loved playing war on the circle as a child! Cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, Americans and Germans ("No! It's the Russians now, Stupid, not the Germans!" ); booby traps, forts, ambushes, secret codes and well-laid plans, them against us. We played all over the neighborhood and in the woods. I imagined myself a marine crawling through the jungle thickets with a knife in my teeth. I loved being the lookout and spy on the enemy camp hidden behind a tree or bushes where they couldn't see me, bringing back to my side all the information. I loved bringing prisoners back to keep in jail too and was good at it. I would jump out from behind a tree or down from a limb or out from under a bridge and grab 'em and bring 'em in.
Some say war is necessary, that out of its great destruction always comes something good, something new, something symbolic, something delivered to men, like a gift after the fact, a better perspective on things. But are bolts of lightning necessary for making burning embers? There must be a better way to strike a match. I want to know from an ecological perspective what specific need large scale destruction of life serves.
Is war like some play we are putting on for ourselves which some of us just must attend or life wouldn't be worth living? An entrenched, intractable collective and subconscious belief in its innate and intrinsic worthwhilessness must be keeping it legal, for we do honor war as we honor nothing else in all our institutions. We call it sacrifice--sacred giving of life for a greater good. But what greater good would this be? Try to look at it scientifically.
It must be something more than burning embers which comes of war to make me believe it is needed and necessary for the world to proceed in a natural way, in the natural order of things. Somehow it has been included in the natural order of things, along with natural enemies pestilence and famine, and death. War is one of the four horses of the Apocalypse, which is itself a false paradigm: the fourth horseman, death, results from the other three and is not merely their fellow. Indeed death, which may be caused by spurious effect, and thereafter known as destiny or fate or providence, comes from the three horsemen of the Apocalypse and all the other horsemen too. Contrariwise, death may cause as well as be caused by the others. Cause and effect in nature are integral components of the same time space continuum--so much for destiny. Ask Frederick Turner about the time continuum's integrity (http://frederickturnerpoet.com/).
I am not talking about how we get as a species to the point of obliterating war along with disease and hunger, though this might seem an honorable ambition for mankind; I only want to establish that war is not necessary to our well-being as a natural occurrence built into the moral fiber of any ecosystem our species would need in order to sustain itself.. If the good of war, for example, is in the removal of excess population (read Dickens on this), then let us find a better way to control our excess. We do not need hunger, disease and war to keep us in check, because tsunamis, earthquakes and forest fires provide us plenty of relief in that area. We could, if we wanted, manage all kinds of beneficent exterminations short of war's infinitely more brutal, providence-fraught umbrella. Why do we regard the holocaust with horror and call World War II the good war ? They are twins of the same mother. Why is force of coercion given such respectability, why such honor delivered to its members, dead, live and maimed ? It is always said they had to go to war, because "a job" had to be done, someone had to do it and these honored few answered the call. Heed it well, need is expressed. But what need, I want to know.
'O reason not the need!' King Lear says wearily to Regan when she asks him what need he has of even one of his old comrades of war, his fellow veterans, now drunken and disabled and dependent on him as he is on them for his veracity, his identity as warrior. They can tell him who he is. " ...Our basest beggars are in the poorest thing superfluous. Allow not nature more than nature needs, man's life is as cheap as beast's." And of course by man he meant woman too.
Perhaps I am being Regan and do not see what need this seemingly superfluous gathering of old men in the comradery of remembering of life defined by death and love actually serves. Do we war then for love? Could we not then, should we not, play at war instead somehow? The way I did when I was little in my neighborhood in the Fifties?
Somehow we must get excessive population under control (I say tie it to credit), make war illegal, and transform it into play. Surely play is necessary to our well-being, a natural occurrence built into the moral fiber of any cultural ecosystem our species would need in order to sustain itself naturally. Cannot play, work, love and creation become the new four horsemen of the apocalypse, forces to bring low the evil rulers of the old world? It is in the name of reasoned necessity I declare it so.
Some say war is necessary, that out of its great destruction always comes something good, something new, something symbolic, something delivered to men, like a gift after the fact, a better perspective on things. But are bolts of lightning necessary for making burning embers? There must be a better way to strike a match. I want to know from an ecological perspective what specific need large scale destruction of life serves.
Is war like some play we are putting on for ourselves which some of us just must attend or life wouldn't be worth living? An entrenched, intractable collective and subconscious belief in its innate and intrinsic worthwhilessness must be keeping it legal, for we do honor war as we honor nothing else in all our institutions. We call it sacrifice--sacred giving of life for a greater good. But what greater good would this be? Try to look at it scientifically.
It must be something more than burning embers which comes of war to make me believe it is needed and necessary for the world to proceed in a natural way, in the natural order of things. Somehow it has been included in the natural order of things, along with natural enemies pestilence and famine, and death. War is one of the four horses of the Apocalypse, which is itself a false paradigm: the fourth horseman, death, results from the other three and is not merely their fellow. Indeed death, which may be caused by spurious effect, and thereafter known as destiny or fate or providence, comes from the three horsemen of the Apocalypse and all the other horsemen too. Contrariwise, death may cause as well as be caused by the others. Cause and effect in nature are integral components of the same time space continuum--so much for destiny. Ask Frederick Turner about the time continuum's integrity (http://frederickturnerpoet.com/).
I am not talking about how we get as a species to the point of obliterating war along with disease and hunger, though this might seem an honorable ambition for mankind; I only want to establish that war is not necessary to our well-being as a natural occurrence built into the moral fiber of any ecosystem our species would need in order to sustain itself.. If the good of war, for example, is in the removal of excess population (read Dickens on this), then let us find a better way to control our excess. We do not need hunger, disease and war to keep us in check, because tsunamis, earthquakes and forest fires provide us plenty of relief in that area. We could, if we wanted, manage all kinds of beneficent exterminations short of war's infinitely more brutal, providence-fraught umbrella. Why do we regard the holocaust with horror and call World War II the good war ? They are twins of the same mother. Why is force of coercion given such respectability, why such honor delivered to its members, dead, live and maimed ? It is always said they had to go to war, because "a job" had to be done, someone had to do it and these honored few answered the call. Heed it well, need is expressed. But what need, I want to know.
'O reason not the need!' King Lear says wearily to Regan when she asks him what need he has of even one of his old comrades of war, his fellow veterans, now drunken and disabled and dependent on him as he is on them for his veracity, his identity as warrior. They can tell him who he is. " ...Our basest beggars are in the poorest thing superfluous. Allow not nature more than nature needs, man's life is as cheap as beast's." And of course by man he meant woman too.
Perhaps I am being Regan and do not see what need this seemingly superfluous gathering of old men in the comradery of remembering of life defined by death and love actually serves. Do we war then for love? Could we not then, should we not, play at war instead somehow? The way I did when I was little in my neighborhood in the Fifties?
Somehow we must get excessive population under control (I say tie it to credit), make war illegal, and transform it into play. Surely play is necessary to our well-being, a natural occurrence built into the moral fiber of any cultural ecosystem our species would need in order to sustain itself naturally. Cannot play, work, love and creation become the new four horsemen of the apocalypse, forces to bring low the evil rulers of the old world? It is in the name of reasoned necessity I declare it so.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
The Doctorate--Part Two
I thought I was getting the degree to make myself more employable, period; but the degree itself was the least I got out of the doctorate. Even the jobs which inevitably ensued from acquiring it paled beside the real effects of what eventually came of actually doing it. It was a period of rejuvenation for me. I would go to school tired to death from teaching and housework and come home hours later completely refreshed and ready to change the world with new ideas. And I think this was because I was so happy that my "invisible" experience teaching was finally becoming visible to everybody.
The graduate-level courses I was taking did not phase me in the least because there was little I didn't already know about education, either in practice or theory. And this was specifically because, beginning with Donna and Erika in Duxbury way back in 1979, and continuing with their little brothers and sisters in Fryeburg and Monroe through 1989, I had been annually teaching, developing curricula, researching resources, administering assessments, and evaluating programs quarterly in an on-going process (grades one through eight) for eight years straight, topping it off with two more years in Islesboro in the public school system (grades seven through twelve). It was as though I had been in hard training for this particular doctoral-level degree for a decade and now I could finally just sit there and take it all in--and then take it to a higher level still.
Few realize what goes into implementing a home education program, but the superintendents who supervised my programs certainly did. It may as well as not have existed at all for purposes of finding teaching jobs; no more than raising nine children over a period of forty-two years qualifies you for credit in Child Development courses, or running a household for almost half a century earns any practicum credit in a Home Economics degree whatsoever. And this was a pity, because home education at my house went on all year long, day after day, with no breaks for holidays and summer vacation. But academia has its own milestones to pass, and schools hire (and states certify) teachers who have passed courses in college, not teachers who have mastered the same skills doing the same thing at home. I had, by 1976, two degrees in English, a minor in history, and was certified to teach science, history, and English in the secondary schools; in addition, I had had three years teaching in college (1969-1972). Yet I had little chance of being hired because I had "no experience" --teaching at home did not count, and my college-teaching experience was seventeen years old. To make it worse, one superintendent told me he had decided he couldn't even hire me as a substitute, because this would interfere with my home education program, wouldn't it? It had been very discouraging to me to realize that the very practice which was giving my children (to my mind) a superior education was the very thing which was preventing me from finding work to support them.....
Now all of that was changed. I was back in the system--"visible" again, so to speak--going to school with the well-defined objective of making myself employable again. What I didn't realize when I began was that the home education experience my children would be having while I got the doctorate would be greatly enhanced by it--and it by them.
I had always found raising children and attending college highly compatible, complementary activities. It didn't matter what I studied, I could always relate what I was learning to something about my children. Once, studying for my B.A, degree in Portland in 1968 (at what was to become USM), I used Evie and Rachael as case studies in an undergraduate course in philosophy I was taking. For example, I could see that Evie's dialogues (aged five) at home with me and her sister were those of a Continental Rationalist, and Rachael's (aged three) those of a British Empiricist. Accordingly I inserted pieces of our dialogues with each other into my term paper to make my points. To my surprise and delight, the professor got it!....and I got an A.
Now, twenty-one years later, I again found my children perfect case studies for my courses! I got permission from the professor to study my own children's use of The Writing Process as a formal class in my home education writing class. My five children (Margaret, Andrea, Johnny, Joey, and Stevie) ranged in age from three up to thirteen; they, and I with them, sat around the kitchen table and wrote.
From a board at the University of Maine I copied the three questions we used to critique what we wrote. These were: " What did you like best about it? What part didn't you understand? What would you like to hear more about?" Was Margaret (only three at the time) included? She was the best part! Unable to read or write, Margaret scribbled out her entire stories and then read them back to us each time it was her turn (usually a continuation of the story about a little girl in a bear's cave--we all loved her stories!) Then, just like the rest of us, she would ask everyone at the table in turn the three questions (" What did you like best about it? What part didn't you understand? What would you like to hear more about?") and get feedback. We evaluated each other's work and built up portfolios which in turn were turned in by me to the professor at semester's end.
The real result was not, of course, just the A I received for the course (the children cheered), but substantial practice for my children (my students) in writing and critiquing of writing, as a community of writers within a family of writers, practice which continued in this form for the next ten years (until 1998) as long as I had anyone home to teach. I could, at this point, relate multiple long term results of those five years of my life and its effect upon my children and their respective educations. But since we have glimpsed that of Margaret at three, it might be instructive to glimpse her resume at twenty-two, and use her example as representative of the rest. Leaving much out, it includes not only a B.A. in English from UNH, (3.6 GPA in the major), but also the fact that she is an unpaid senior online editor of mugglenet.com, author of numerous fanfiction stories online, even more offline, has worked in her university's Writing Center assisting other students with their writing assignments, and has had an editorial internship with Heinemann. As far as I know, she's written something every day since she was three, which is for the non-math people among you, no less than 6,935 days of writing. I repeat, the example of Margaret's growth as a writer is just one among many lasting, long-term results of that period of time when I worked (I thought) for a degree merely in order to become employable again.
It is hard to separate the mother student from the mother teacher in my mind. I am sure I was a better mother as well, because I was both a student and a teacher myself during those five years. Often it seems to me that the by-product of something one undertakes in life both outlasts and outbests the original undertaking's most treasured purpose by far--and that's the part (most mysteriously) which had not been planned for at all!
The graduate-level courses I was taking did not phase me in the least because there was little I didn't already know about education, either in practice or theory. And this was specifically because, beginning with Donna and Erika in Duxbury way back in 1979, and continuing with their little brothers and sisters in Fryeburg and Monroe through 1989, I had been annually teaching, developing curricula, researching resources, administering assessments, and evaluating programs quarterly in an on-going process (grades one through eight) for eight years straight, topping it off with two more years in Islesboro in the public school system (grades seven through twelve). It was as though I had been in hard training for this particular doctoral-level degree for a decade and now I could finally just sit there and take it all in--and then take it to a higher level still.
Few realize what goes into implementing a home education program, but the superintendents who supervised my programs certainly did. It may as well as not have existed at all for purposes of finding teaching jobs; no more than raising nine children over a period of forty-two years qualifies you for credit in Child Development courses, or running a household for almost half a century earns any practicum credit in a Home Economics degree whatsoever. And this was a pity, because home education at my house went on all year long, day after day, with no breaks for holidays and summer vacation. But academia has its own milestones to pass, and schools hire (and states certify) teachers who have passed courses in college, not teachers who have mastered the same skills doing the same thing at home. I had, by 1976, two degrees in English, a minor in history, and was certified to teach science, history, and English in the secondary schools; in addition, I had had three years teaching in college (1969-1972). Yet I had little chance of being hired because I had "no experience" --teaching at home did not count, and my college-teaching experience was seventeen years old. To make it worse, one superintendent told me he had decided he couldn't even hire me as a substitute, because this would interfere with my home education program, wouldn't it? It had been very discouraging to me to realize that the very practice which was giving my children (to my mind) a superior education was the very thing which was preventing me from finding work to support them.....
Now all of that was changed. I was back in the system--"visible" again, so to speak--going to school with the well-defined objective of making myself employable again. What I didn't realize when I began was that the home education experience my children would be having while I got the doctorate would be greatly enhanced by it--and it by them.
I had always found raising children and attending college highly compatible, complementary activities. It didn't matter what I studied, I could always relate what I was learning to something about my children. Once, studying for my B.A, degree in Portland in 1968 (at what was to become USM), I used Evie and Rachael as case studies in an undergraduate course in philosophy I was taking. For example, I could see that Evie's dialogues (aged five) at home with me and her sister were those of a Continental Rationalist, and Rachael's (aged three) those of a British Empiricist. Accordingly I inserted pieces of our dialogues with each other into my term paper to make my points. To my surprise and delight, the professor got it!....and I got an A.
Now, twenty-one years later, I again found my children perfect case studies for my courses! I got permission from the professor to study my own children's use of The Writing Process as a formal class in my home education writing class. My five children (Margaret, Andrea, Johnny, Joey, and Stevie) ranged in age from three up to thirteen; they, and I with them, sat around the kitchen table and wrote.
From a board at the University of Maine I copied the three questions we used to critique what we wrote. These were: " What did you like best about it? What part didn't you understand? What would you like to hear more about?" Was Margaret (only three at the time) included? She was the best part! Unable to read or write, Margaret scribbled out her entire stories and then read them back to us each time it was her turn (usually a continuation of the story about a little girl in a bear's cave--we all loved her stories!) Then, just like the rest of us, she would ask everyone at the table in turn the three questions (" What did you like best about it? What part didn't you understand? What would you like to hear more about?") and get feedback. We evaluated each other's work and built up portfolios which in turn were turned in by me to the professor at semester's end.
The real result was not, of course, just the A I received for the course (the children cheered), but substantial practice for my children (my students) in writing and critiquing of writing, as a community of writers within a family of writers, practice which continued in this form for the next ten years (until 1998) as long as I had anyone home to teach. I could, at this point, relate multiple long term results of those five years of my life and its effect upon my children and their respective educations. But since we have glimpsed that of Margaret at three, it might be instructive to glimpse her resume at twenty-two, and use her example as representative of the rest. Leaving much out, it includes not only a B.A. in English from UNH, (3.6 GPA in the major), but also the fact that she is an unpaid senior online editor of mugglenet.com, author of numerous fanfiction stories online, even more offline, has worked in her university's Writing Center assisting other students with their writing assignments, and has had an editorial internship with Heinemann. As far as I know, she's written something every day since she was three, which is for the non-math people among you, no less than 6,935 days of writing. I repeat, the example of Margaret's growth as a writer is just one among many lasting, long-term results of that period of time when I worked (I thought) for a degree merely in order to become employable again.
It is hard to separate the mother student from the mother teacher in my mind. I am sure I was a better mother as well, because I was both a student and a teacher myself during those five years. Often it seems to me that the by-product of something one undertakes in life both outlasts and outbests the original undertaking's most treasured purpose by far--and that's the part (most mysteriously) which had not been planned for at all!
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Growing up in racially segregated Virginia in the Fifties
No one ever talked to me about racial prejudice that I can remember before we moved to Charlottesville in 1949, but Virginia was below the Mason Dixon line, and although I was only five and a half at the time, I can still remember clearly my first experiences with it--not with prejudice, but with the result of prejudice so deep and so amassed throughout a whole population it had become law ("Jim Crow" I found out later these laws were called, which I still think is a strange name for a law.)
I myself of course was not in the least prejudiced--there were no "colored people" (the term used by polite whites for blacks in those days) in Morrisville, that I had ever met anyway, none at all in Maine that I knew of, and the first black people I ever saw were in Washington D.C. sitting in a big crowds on the stoops of buildings we were passing by on our way down to Virginia on a hot, hot day. I remember hearing my mother and grandmother talking about the terrible conditions of the buildings where the people sat as we drove by--their tones were sympathetic for the people I could tell. "Terrible" was my mother's term, which I already knew was her favorite term and the one she used for anything which she thought was wrong. But we drove on.
It rained in torrents on the way down. We were in our old Plymouth, the one before the gray '51 Dodge my mother bought which lasted us the whole time we were in Charlottesville. The windshield wipers kept stopping on the Plymouth and my brother, who always sat next to my mother in the passenger's seat when we went on long trips, had to keep reaching out the window and nudging them into action again so my mother could see. "I can't see!" she would say with great alarm and out he would reach and get them going again. I recently saw a 1948 Plymouth and it all came back, that memory. But we made it to Charlottesville. My brother must have been about twelve, my mother forty-one, and my grandmother seventy-seven. My grandmother and I always rode in the back seat when we all went somewhere together, especially when we drove to Maine every Summer and back to Virginia again every Fall.
In my family going to the movies was something we all loved to do, and so right away after arriving and moving in we went to the movies at the Paramount theater in downtown Charlottesville. We parked along a side street next to the theater and went to the box office to get our tickets. Oh oh! Something was wrong! The lady wouldn't give us our tickets--she kept pointing up the street and telling my mother we couldn't come in! She said something else to my mother I couldn't hear and then my mother said "Oh! I'm sorry!" and told us (my brother and grandmother and me, all waiting expectantly) that the entrance for white people (that was us) was around front--this was the entrance to the BALCONY where only Colored People could go--and we were not colored. I was SO disappointed! I really did want to sit in the balcony, since I'd never sat in one before. We went around to the front and sure enough, there was another box office with another lady (white) selling other tickets to the same movie. So we got our tickets and went in and sat down. I looked way, way back and up and sure enough there was the coveted balcony with lots of people in it--black people. I still wanted to sit up there, but it just wasn't allowed. And that was my first experience with Jim Crow.
But soon enough I got to know and see lots of "colored people." Mr. Gardner came and worked for us every Sunday--he was black. After my brother went off to live at Christchurch School on the Rappahanock River, there was only my mother, my grandmother and myself at home, so I imagine he was hired to do any heavy work that a father would otherwise do. One day he and my grandmother made soap in the back yard with the fat my grandmother saved from cooking. This saved fat gave my mother occasion to observe to me that "Germans never throw anything away!" --referring to my grandmother's ethnicity (German and Swiss). I suppose this is a sort of prejudice--to this day I still think of all Germans as being very thrifty like my grandmother and never throwing anything away.
Anyway, she and Mr. Gardner, who was a very tall, thin man while my grandmother was rather short and stout (though still taller than I was), were mixing fat and lye together in the back yard in a metal garbage can--the kind my friends and I used the lids of (for shields) when we were sword fighting--I was watching intently. They were getting along famously. They were laughing and talking together the whole time. He would always have to repeat whatever he said to her about three times before she understood him, because he had such a thick, strong Southern accent that sometimes even I couldn't understand what he was saying and would have to say "what?" to him until I got it. He was a very patient man and kept repeating what he said more slowly and more distinctly each time until we got it. I think he must have had a lot of funny stories to share with his family and friends about this family of Yankees he was working for.
Back to the soap-making: they put ashes into it after the lye and fat was mixed enough, and then poured the whole strange mixture (after warning me not to touch the lye because it would burn me...?) into a large cardboard box in layers. Each layer of soap was covered with a sheet of newspaper, in this case the funnies from the Sunday paper, The Daily Progress. (I loved the funnies, even before I could read, so I watched with even more interest.) Then this was all allowed to solidify and the newspaper peeled off and the soap cut in squares with a knife--I watched the whole process, deeply impressed. The very best part was that the funnies came off on the soap and we had soap with the funnies on it!
Mr. Gardner's first name was William, but both my mother and grandmother always addressed him respectfully as Mr. Gardner. My mother told me that the other six days of the week he worked as a janitor at the University of Virginia hospital. "How hard he works, just imagine!" she said to me once with great respect in her voice. "He works every minute to support his family!" His son was just graduating from high school at the time she said this to me, and she also made a point of telling me Mr. Gardner was very proud of his son for doing that. I could tell she admired Mr. Gardner in every way. Later on during the Sixties when the civil rights movement was getting underway I used to imagine that Mr. Gardner's son had joined the Black Panthers now, because his father had worked every single day of the week somewhere, either at the hospital or with us, to support his family, and I thought probably his son must have resented that just a little, not to ever get to see his own father. And of course I sympathized. I never got to see my own father either (my parents were divorced), but at least I got to see Mr. Gardner one day a week, while his own kids never did apparently.
Mr. Gardner wasn't the only black person who worked in the neighborhood. There was a nice black lady who took care of the baby of the family next door, and whenever I got on the bus there were lots of people who would be either arriving for or leaving from work on the circle, though none of them lived there, all black people who lived somewhere else ( or so I supposed--I didn't really know or give it much thought). Riding the bus was something we children liked to do for fun--ride the bus on its entire route and end up back home again; our mothers always let us do this. My mother told me when she was little she used to do the same thing with her friends on the trolleys all over Trenton.
Anyway, one day I wanted to ride at the back of the bus, and so I did. But all the black people who were sitting back there (I had begun to notice they always sat back there!) kept staring at me and moving over to make room for me--or away from me and not looking at me. I couldn't understand why--I wasn't doing anything wrong. I told my mother about it and she told me that there was a law that said that only Colored People were supposed to sit back there, no whites--and I was white. Well, she might have warned me not to try and sit back there in the first place. Once again I had run into Jim Crow!
We went to the Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Church in Charlottesville--it was about the only time I ever wore a dress, even though Betsy Glancy (my arch enemy in school) used to say I shouldn't wear dungarees or pants to school, but instead should be "a little lady." Ugh! I hated that expression and told my mother what she said. My mother just laughed at the expression, and looked a little haughty, and said "How silly!" and sniffed! She was on my side always; she didn't mind if I wore dungarees every day and played with the boys, and neither did Betsy Hennemann's mother. Betsy was my best friend on the circle. We played football and baseball with the boys all the time, no problem. Our mothers were educated and liberated I realized later--the two went hand in hand. Indeed, Betsy ended up becoming a lawyer after being a stock broker for a while. We both made fun of Betty Ann Rex, my arch enemy on the circle and Betsy's next door neighbor.
Betty Ann Rex always wore a dress--and she hated me. She pushed me to the other half of the street, or tried to, whenever she could (it was her side of the road she said). But I was always stronger and could push her back. Her family had a "family council" every Sunday to decide what they were going to do that week, and she and her sister had regular chores to do like polish the floor with floor wax and hang out the laundry "just so." Betsy and I sneered at her ways and laughed behind her back--our families did things like talk politics and read books, not get serious about waxing the floor and deciding when a first date could happen.
Years later, in our forties, Betsy and I talked on the phone and still we could make each other laugh talking about Betty Ann Rex! Betty Ann Rex did play the piano really well; and she had a television (in my family you were supposed to read); so I would always try to be nice so she would let me watch I Love Lucy week nights or Walt Disney or Lassie on Sunday nights. It was hard though (being nice.) This was class prejudice Betsy and I were practicing against Betty Ann Rex and she against us, but we didn't realize it; and when my mother and I laughed at Betsy Glancy's expecting me to be a little lady, we were being feministic in our attitude, but we didn't realize it. These ways of speaking had no such names in those days. Prejudice was prejudice and it had no classifications, people didn't point it out and talk about it. It was just practiced.
But anyway, to church I did wear a dress, much as I disliked it, year after year. And one night, the year after I came back from going out west with my mother, when I was twelve, I wore a really beautiful skirt to church in which to go Christmas caroling. I actually liked it! It was made of satin and had sequins on it. It even was my least favorite color--pink--and still I didn't mind. (Perhaps I was just beginning to think of boys in a different light.) So I arrived for caroling with other kids in the Unitarian Church, decked out in this beautiful skirt and very happy. But when we left to go caroling, instead of going down the street --the church was on Rugby Road, near the University--we were all herded into cars and taken to a place I had never been or seen before.
I was so surprised! It was a place which had mud on the ground, it was very, very dark there, and there were lots of shacks all crowded together in a strange, jumbled, disconnected way --think Slum Dog Millionaire. The shacks were not much taller than I was I noticed, and people were milling around us in the dark where we couldn't see them, not really coming up close to us.
Then I noticed all the people were black--colored people! We lined up and we sang, while my squined, satin skirt, which was below my knees as skirts were in those days, got really muddy all around the bottom. Of course I didn't care much about that. I just was surprised to see where we were and what it looked like there. We sang Silent Night and We Three Kings and Away in a Manger--all the songs I knew well--but in a place I had never even imagined existed before. It was dark, there were no electric lights, it was muddy, and people were holding candles, the only lights around. It was purely surreal. When we finished singing we heard claps, and "thank you, " and "Merry Christmas"--that was all; and then we drove back to the church, and my mother picked me up, and I told her all about it. She too was surprised and didn't know what to say. I don't remember ever wearing that skirt again. Maybe it was ruined in the mud.
Where that place in Charlottesville was, I do not know. I have come to realize gradually that all cities have such places in them where people live in shacks and tents and boxes on the city's perimeter, or near its dump, and the bigger the city is, the more likely you are to find one. This one must have been Charlottesville's. Two years later in 1958 when we moved back to Maine and I went to live at Kents Hill, I heard on the radio about the segregation laws in Virginia being repealed and I read an article in a magazine (Look? Life?) about Lane High School being integrated--Lane was the school I had gone to for the eighth and ninth grade. There were young people my age interviewed in that article who talked about how glad they were about the new integration laws. And I thought "I bet they were!" I was thinking that now Lane High School, which had the state's worst football team, would now get the black kids' high school's football players: Burley High School, the black high school in Charlottesville, were state football champions! Lane High was definitely benefitting.
But I also thought "Of course! Why not? No big deal!" It was a generation thing, much like gay marriage is now among the young--a non-issue. I also thought of my church and the caroling I had done in 1956, and realized I had been part of the change that had come to Virginia. I had no inkling at that point that a major Civil Rights movement was to come. I just knew that I agreed with the new law that made the schools the same.
Years later I saw a documentary of Bobby Kennedy encountering really hungry black families in shacks in the country down south, and being really disturbed by it. I remembered seeing such places and people myself, black people who looked ragged and discouraged standing outside of falling-down shacks; I saw them while riding in the car with my mother to go horse-back riding on the weekends on the outskirts of Charlottesville. I remembered Bobby and Teddy both went to UVA for law school, and I remember thinking that maybe, like me, they hadn't really looked into --just at--the lives of the black people who lived on the outskirts of town in the country. It must have made Bobby Kennedy feel good that he was actually in a position, as Attorney General, to do something about it.
My mother of course thought it (integration) was all part of a sinister Communist plot devised in Moscow to bring our country to its knees, this undermining of the rights of states to decide for themselves whether or not they would be integrated. "Separate but equal" schools were alright with her --in principle. She did not seem to connect the lives of black people she actually knew--people she liked and respected--with these new integration laws. But I did. I was part of a generation just coming to age which would throw out all sorts of things which were to us non-issues in judging others--war, race, religion, straight sex, conventional clothing, music, art, education, or English erudition. These things mattered to our parents and other adults--but not to us. There was a generation gap. It wouldn't be long before we would say so, and rather loudly.
The year I graduated from high school (1961), the Sixties generation was still in high school, all the boys had crew cuts, and the girls all strove to look "clean-cut." But we had had our eyes and, more importantly, our minds opened already just watching older people being intolerant. The major prejudice of the future--PCism, in which you had to be tolerant or you were not tolerated--was still in the future. In 1961 the Beatles were getting popular in Liverpool and Germany, Bob Dylan was writing "The Times They are A-Changin'," and Barack Obama was just being born.
Slowly, over the next four decades, even my own mother's prejudices were worn down and discarded. The Soviet Union self-destructed in 1989, and I was so glad she was alive (82 at the time) to see it. "Wonderful!" she breathed with a sincere breath of relief! How hard she had fought all her life, even spying without pay for the FBI, against the Communists for the sake of her country! But for me, her real changes were reflected in the way she accepted my friendships with actual black people, the way she came to feel the Vietnam War was all wrong, and the way, eventually, she actually saw black people as her equals, personally. I know this became true because sometime in the Seventies, maybe the Eighties, she reported to me she had met a young professional black woman in some sort of job situation, and "She spoke just beautifully!" I can hear her repeat it again to me, her amazement and admiration very evident in her voice. "She was very well spoken, and very well educated!" And again she repeated, almost in disbelief, "...she spoke just beautifully--and she had beautiful manners!"
It was an observation on class. For my mother, class had nothing whatsoever to do with money, but everything to do with language, education, manners, considerations of others, and moral rectitude. If I were ever to bring up a prospective boyfriend, her first question would always be "Does he speak well? Where did he go to school?" This young black woman she had met had clearly won her deepest respect and admiration, for she had proved herself on a par with herself! That was an almost unfathomable thought for me--few were on par with my mother, at least in her eyes, and it was always evident to me in her body language exactly what she thought of people in these terms--acceptable or not acceptable. For me, it was more profound change than the Iron Curtain crumbling, my mother reaching that point. I am so sad she did not live to see and listen to Obama.
I myself of course was not in the least prejudiced--there were no "colored people" (the term used by polite whites for blacks in those days) in Morrisville, that I had ever met anyway, none at all in Maine that I knew of, and the first black people I ever saw were in Washington D.C. sitting in a big crowds on the stoops of buildings we were passing by on our way down to Virginia on a hot, hot day. I remember hearing my mother and grandmother talking about the terrible conditions of the buildings where the people sat as we drove by--their tones were sympathetic for the people I could tell. "Terrible" was my mother's term, which I already knew was her favorite term and the one she used for anything which she thought was wrong. But we drove on.
It rained in torrents on the way down. We were in our old Plymouth, the one before the gray '51 Dodge my mother bought which lasted us the whole time we were in Charlottesville. The windshield wipers kept stopping on the Plymouth and my brother, who always sat next to my mother in the passenger's seat when we went on long trips, had to keep reaching out the window and nudging them into action again so my mother could see. "I can't see!" she would say with great alarm and out he would reach and get them going again. I recently saw a 1948 Plymouth and it all came back, that memory. But we made it to Charlottesville. My brother must have been about twelve, my mother forty-one, and my grandmother seventy-seven. My grandmother and I always rode in the back seat when we all went somewhere together, especially when we drove to Maine every Summer and back to Virginia again every Fall.
In my family going to the movies was something we all loved to do, and so right away after arriving and moving in we went to the movies at the Paramount theater in downtown Charlottesville. We parked along a side street next to the theater and went to the box office to get our tickets. Oh oh! Something was wrong! The lady wouldn't give us our tickets--she kept pointing up the street and telling my mother we couldn't come in! She said something else to my mother I couldn't hear and then my mother said "Oh! I'm sorry!" and told us (my brother and grandmother and me, all waiting expectantly) that the entrance for white people (that was us) was around front--this was the entrance to the BALCONY where only Colored People could go--and we were not colored. I was SO disappointed! I really did want to sit in the balcony, since I'd never sat in one before. We went around to the front and sure enough, there was another box office with another lady (white) selling other tickets to the same movie. So we got our tickets and went in and sat down. I looked way, way back and up and sure enough there was the coveted balcony with lots of people in it--black people. I still wanted to sit up there, but it just wasn't allowed. And that was my first experience with Jim Crow.
But soon enough I got to know and see lots of "colored people." Mr. Gardner came and worked for us every Sunday--he was black. After my brother went off to live at Christchurch School on the Rappahanock River, there was only my mother, my grandmother and myself at home, so I imagine he was hired to do any heavy work that a father would otherwise do. One day he and my grandmother made soap in the back yard with the fat my grandmother saved from cooking. This saved fat gave my mother occasion to observe to me that "Germans never throw anything away!" --referring to my grandmother's ethnicity (German and Swiss). I suppose this is a sort of prejudice--to this day I still think of all Germans as being very thrifty like my grandmother and never throwing anything away.
Anyway, she and Mr. Gardner, who was a very tall, thin man while my grandmother was rather short and stout (though still taller than I was), were mixing fat and lye together in the back yard in a metal garbage can--the kind my friends and I used the lids of (for shields) when we were sword fighting--I was watching intently. They were getting along famously. They were laughing and talking together the whole time. He would always have to repeat whatever he said to her about three times before she understood him, because he had such a thick, strong Southern accent that sometimes even I couldn't understand what he was saying and would have to say "what?" to him until I got it. He was a very patient man and kept repeating what he said more slowly and more distinctly each time until we got it. I think he must have had a lot of funny stories to share with his family and friends about this family of Yankees he was working for.
Back to the soap-making: they put ashes into it after the lye and fat was mixed enough, and then poured the whole strange mixture (after warning me not to touch the lye because it would burn me...?) into a large cardboard box in layers. Each layer of soap was covered with a sheet of newspaper, in this case the funnies from the Sunday paper, The Daily Progress. (I loved the funnies, even before I could read, so I watched with even more interest.) Then this was all allowed to solidify and the newspaper peeled off and the soap cut in squares with a knife--I watched the whole process, deeply impressed. The very best part was that the funnies came off on the soap and we had soap with the funnies on it!
Mr. Gardner's first name was William, but both my mother and grandmother always addressed him respectfully as Mr. Gardner. My mother told me that the other six days of the week he worked as a janitor at the University of Virginia hospital. "How hard he works, just imagine!" she said to me once with great respect in her voice. "He works every minute to support his family!" His son was just graduating from high school at the time she said this to me, and she also made a point of telling me Mr. Gardner was very proud of his son for doing that. I could tell she admired Mr. Gardner in every way. Later on during the Sixties when the civil rights movement was getting underway I used to imagine that Mr. Gardner's son had joined the Black Panthers now, because his father had worked every single day of the week somewhere, either at the hospital or with us, to support his family, and I thought probably his son must have resented that just a little, not to ever get to see his own father. And of course I sympathized. I never got to see my own father either (my parents were divorced), but at least I got to see Mr. Gardner one day a week, while his own kids never did apparently.
Mr. Gardner wasn't the only black person who worked in the neighborhood. There was a nice black lady who took care of the baby of the family next door, and whenever I got on the bus there were lots of people who would be either arriving for or leaving from work on the circle, though none of them lived there, all black people who lived somewhere else ( or so I supposed--I didn't really know or give it much thought). Riding the bus was something we children liked to do for fun--ride the bus on its entire route and end up back home again; our mothers always let us do this. My mother told me when she was little she used to do the same thing with her friends on the trolleys all over Trenton.
Anyway, one day I wanted to ride at the back of the bus, and so I did. But all the black people who were sitting back there (I had begun to notice they always sat back there!) kept staring at me and moving over to make room for me--or away from me and not looking at me. I couldn't understand why--I wasn't doing anything wrong. I told my mother about it and she told me that there was a law that said that only Colored People were supposed to sit back there, no whites--and I was white. Well, she might have warned me not to try and sit back there in the first place. Once again I had run into Jim Crow!
We went to the Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Church in Charlottesville--it was about the only time I ever wore a dress, even though Betsy Glancy (my arch enemy in school) used to say I shouldn't wear dungarees or pants to school, but instead should be "a little lady." Ugh! I hated that expression and told my mother what she said. My mother just laughed at the expression, and looked a little haughty, and said "How silly!" and sniffed! She was on my side always; she didn't mind if I wore dungarees every day and played with the boys, and neither did Betsy Hennemann's mother. Betsy was my best friend on the circle. We played football and baseball with the boys all the time, no problem. Our mothers were educated and liberated I realized later--the two went hand in hand. Indeed, Betsy ended up becoming a lawyer after being a stock broker for a while. We both made fun of Betty Ann Rex, my arch enemy on the circle and Betsy's next door neighbor.
Betty Ann Rex always wore a dress--and she hated me. She pushed me to the other half of the street, or tried to, whenever she could (it was her side of the road she said). But I was always stronger and could push her back. Her family had a "family council" every Sunday to decide what they were going to do that week, and she and her sister had regular chores to do like polish the floor with floor wax and hang out the laundry "just so." Betsy and I sneered at her ways and laughed behind her back--our families did things like talk politics and read books, not get serious about waxing the floor and deciding when a first date could happen.
Years later, in our forties, Betsy and I talked on the phone and still we could make each other laugh talking about Betty Ann Rex! Betty Ann Rex did play the piano really well; and she had a television (in my family you were supposed to read); so I would always try to be nice so she would let me watch I Love Lucy week nights or Walt Disney or Lassie on Sunday nights. It was hard though (being nice.) This was class prejudice Betsy and I were practicing against Betty Ann Rex and she against us, but we didn't realize it; and when my mother and I laughed at Betsy Glancy's expecting me to be a little lady, we were being feministic in our attitude, but we didn't realize it. These ways of speaking had no such names in those days. Prejudice was prejudice and it had no classifications, people didn't point it out and talk about it. It was just practiced.
But anyway, to church I did wear a dress, much as I disliked it, year after year. And one night, the year after I came back from going out west with my mother, when I was twelve, I wore a really beautiful skirt to church in which to go Christmas caroling. I actually liked it! It was made of satin and had sequins on it. It even was my least favorite color--pink--and still I didn't mind. (Perhaps I was just beginning to think of boys in a different light.) So I arrived for caroling with other kids in the Unitarian Church, decked out in this beautiful skirt and very happy. But when we left to go caroling, instead of going down the street --the church was on Rugby Road, near the University--we were all herded into cars and taken to a place I had never been or seen before.
I was so surprised! It was a place which had mud on the ground, it was very, very dark there, and there were lots of shacks all crowded together in a strange, jumbled, disconnected way --think Slum Dog Millionaire. The shacks were not much taller than I was I noticed, and people were milling around us in the dark where we couldn't see them, not really coming up close to us.
Then I noticed all the people were black--colored people! We lined up and we sang, while my squined, satin skirt, which was below my knees as skirts were in those days, got really muddy all around the bottom. Of course I didn't care much about that. I just was surprised to see where we were and what it looked like there. We sang Silent Night and We Three Kings and Away in a Manger--all the songs I knew well--but in a place I had never even imagined existed before. It was dark, there were no electric lights, it was muddy, and people were holding candles, the only lights around. It was purely surreal. When we finished singing we heard claps, and "thank you, " and "Merry Christmas"--that was all; and then we drove back to the church, and my mother picked me up, and I told her all about it. She too was surprised and didn't know what to say. I don't remember ever wearing that skirt again. Maybe it was ruined in the mud.
Where that place in Charlottesville was, I do not know. I have come to realize gradually that all cities have such places in them where people live in shacks and tents and boxes on the city's perimeter, or near its dump, and the bigger the city is, the more likely you are to find one. This one must have been Charlottesville's. Two years later in 1958 when we moved back to Maine and I went to live at Kents Hill, I heard on the radio about the segregation laws in Virginia being repealed and I read an article in a magazine (Look? Life?) about Lane High School being integrated--Lane was the school I had gone to for the eighth and ninth grade. There were young people my age interviewed in that article who talked about how glad they were about the new integration laws. And I thought "I bet they were!" I was thinking that now Lane High School, which had the state's worst football team, would now get the black kids' high school's football players: Burley High School, the black high school in Charlottesville, were state football champions! Lane High was definitely benefitting.
But I also thought "Of course! Why not? No big deal!" It was a generation thing, much like gay marriage is now among the young--a non-issue. I also thought of my church and the caroling I had done in 1956, and realized I had been part of the change that had come to Virginia. I had no inkling at that point that a major Civil Rights movement was to come. I just knew that I agreed with the new law that made the schools the same.
Years later I saw a documentary of Bobby Kennedy encountering really hungry black families in shacks in the country down south, and being really disturbed by it. I remembered seeing such places and people myself, black people who looked ragged and discouraged standing outside of falling-down shacks; I saw them while riding in the car with my mother to go horse-back riding on the weekends on the outskirts of Charlottesville. I remembered Bobby and Teddy both went to UVA for law school, and I remember thinking that maybe, like me, they hadn't really looked into --just at--the lives of the black people who lived on the outskirts of town in the country. It must have made Bobby Kennedy feel good that he was actually in a position, as Attorney General, to do something about it.
My mother of course thought it (integration) was all part of a sinister Communist plot devised in Moscow to bring our country to its knees, this undermining of the rights of states to decide for themselves whether or not they would be integrated. "Separate but equal" schools were alright with her --in principle. She did not seem to connect the lives of black people she actually knew--people she liked and respected--with these new integration laws. But I did. I was part of a generation just coming to age which would throw out all sorts of things which were to us non-issues in judging others--war, race, religion, straight sex, conventional clothing, music, art, education, or English erudition. These things mattered to our parents and other adults--but not to us. There was a generation gap. It wouldn't be long before we would say so, and rather loudly.
The year I graduated from high school (1961), the Sixties generation was still in high school, all the boys had crew cuts, and the girls all strove to look "clean-cut." But we had had our eyes and, more importantly, our minds opened already just watching older people being intolerant. The major prejudice of the future--PCism, in which you had to be tolerant or you were not tolerated--was still in the future. In 1961 the Beatles were getting popular in Liverpool and Germany, Bob Dylan was writing "The Times They are A-Changin'," and Barack Obama was just being born.
Slowly, over the next four decades, even my own mother's prejudices were worn down and discarded. The Soviet Union self-destructed in 1989, and I was so glad she was alive (82 at the time) to see it. "Wonderful!" she breathed with a sincere breath of relief! How hard she had fought all her life, even spying without pay for the FBI, against the Communists for the sake of her country! But for me, her real changes were reflected in the way she accepted my friendships with actual black people, the way she came to feel the Vietnam War was all wrong, and the way, eventually, she actually saw black people as her equals, personally. I know this became true because sometime in the Seventies, maybe the Eighties, she reported to me she had met a young professional black woman in some sort of job situation, and "She spoke just beautifully!" I can hear her repeat it again to me, her amazement and admiration very evident in her voice. "She was very well spoken, and very well educated!" And again she repeated, almost in disbelief, "...she spoke just beautifully--and she had beautiful manners!"
It was an observation on class. For my mother, class had nothing whatsoever to do with money, but everything to do with language, education, manners, considerations of others, and moral rectitude. If I were ever to bring up a prospective boyfriend, her first question would always be "Does he speak well? Where did he go to school?" This young black woman she had met had clearly won her deepest respect and admiration, for she had proved herself on a par with herself! That was an almost unfathomable thought for me--few were on par with my mother, at least in her eyes, and it was always evident to me in her body language exactly what she thought of people in these terms--acceptable or not acceptable. For me, it was more profound change than the Iron Curtain crumbling, my mother reaching that point. I am so sad she did not live to see and listen to Obama.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Famous people I have dreamed of, seen, or written to
Famous people you meet in dreams don't really count, but if they did mine are heavy with political figures. Sometime in my twenties I met Teddy Roosevelt in a dream, and upon meeting him (he was flirting with me) I said "I remember you! You're the one that said 'speak softly but carry a big stick,' aren't you?" That was all. Another night (all these dreams seemed packed into a single week) I found myself hanging out with all the Kennedy women, kind of an entourage following Jack, Bobby and Ted around. It felt like being some Kennedy's significant other, because there they were and there I was, you know? That was it, unfortunately. But the best one of all, really the best, was the night I dreamed I met Henry Kissinger. I was introduced to him in the dining room (in the house in Parsonsfield), and as he bowed and reached for my hand, his hand slightly grazed my breast.....suddenly we were in the southwest bedroom upstairs (my bedroom). And then, facing each other, we began to take turns singing Dylan's song "All Along the Watchtower." I began "...There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief. There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief..." Kissinger took up the refrain without missing a beat: "Business men they drink my wine, plowmen did my earth. None of of them along the line know what any of it is worth..." --we definitely connected. But that was it for that dream.
Bob Dylan dreams also abounded. I was always meeting him behind the curtain between sets back stage, sharing my poetry with him, he'd be sharing his with me, what he'd written lately. Once we were out in the parking lot behind the auditorium riding bikes around. I always had a great time with Bob Dylan. Dreams of my friend Frederick Turner, whom I've never met in real life but only corresponded with, and who is not ubiquitously famous but academically so, surfaced similarly. Once in a dream he and I were out behind the Carnegie building on the University of Maine campus in Orono; Carnegie is the art and used to be the music building too. It was where I spent most of my time while my mother was going to summer school when I was little trying out all the instruments in the practice rooms and looking at all the art in progress and on exhibit. In the dream Fred and I were sitting on a stone bench side by side talking, and we were sort of leaning toward each other, our heads touching. The odd thing was that Fred had a head (though I knew he was Fred, as you do in dreams know such things) with a great crest on it, exactly like Australipithicus robustus--and he had not the gracile jaw of homo Sapien, but the huge chomping jaws (which would go with the crest of course) of robustus too! I wrote Fred about this and he said it made perfect sense, and alluded to his poem in April Wind "The Angry Man," a beastly alter ego of himself.
But dreams are not reality. In real life, one of the most famous person I have ever set eyes on was probably Louis Armstrong--it was probably 1955 0r '56 in Charlottesville, Virginia at UVA. My brother Robert took me to see him, and I was in the crowd getting pushed around, everyone talking, and suddenly the lights dimmed and a bunch of people pushed by us--"that's him! That's Satchmo!" my bother said in my ear over the roar of the crowd. I looked up to see Louis Armstrong about three or four feet away, passing right by us with the other musicians on his way to the stage. Everybody was cheering and clapping wildly--I had no idea who he was--I must have been 12 or 13, my brother was the one who was into jazz, not me. I was listening to Elvis and Pat Boone and Fats Domino at that stage. Anyway, once he was up on stage we stood so near I could see him really well. And the thing I noticed was that his lip went in in one place and out at another in a sort of circle whenever he took his horn away from his mouth--his horn fit to his mouth perfectly. And his cheeks puffed out like grapefruits were in them when he played! Yes, he could really play, and he was always sweating so much while he was playing he had to keep taking out his white handkerchief and wiping his brow with it. I had no idea he was so famous.
One day on Rugby Road my brother pointed to a man walking down the street (this was at the University of Virginia--Rugby Rd. runs right into it) and said "Look! There's William Faulkner!" I didn't know who William Faulkner was either, but later I learned he had given lectures there, and later I took my brother's advice and read some of his books--The River (experimental), and most recently As I Lay Dying, which I think is an amazing book. At that age I was into movies and had a habit of seeing the movie and then, in order to get more out of it, reading the book. Hence I did run into Faulkner after I saw Paul Newman in "The Long, Hot Summer"--my brother told me it was based on the Snopes Trilogy, whatever that was, and I tracked it down and read it. I liked the movie better--it had Paul Newman in it. Other books I read when I was twelve or thirteen because I had seen the movies were: Tea and Sympathy (Deborah Kerr), The Rainmaker (Burt Lancaster, Katherine Hepburn), War and Peace (Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda), Ten Angry Men (Henry Fonda), Night of the Kiawa Moon, a short story I found in an old Saturday Evening Post, the basis for The Unforgiven (Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn), Oliver Twist (Alec Guiness), Hamlet (Lawrence Olivier). If the movie came out in 1956-58 and I liked it, I read the book. So anyway, I saw the actual guy who wrote the book the movie with Paul Newman in it was based on. I would rather have seen Paul Newman, but it's all in your perspective at the time. The name William Faulkner meant nothing to me, but my eyes did behold him.
Then there are the correspondences with famous people who you do not know are famous at the time you are corresponding with them. Thus it was I wrote to and was written back to by Oliver Sacks without being aware in the least that he was the guy Robin Williams was playing along side Robert DiNiro in the movie "Awakenings," which I had of course seen--this was in my fifties I think, not too long ago. Anyway, I was reading a letter in Harpers from this guy Oliver Sacks (??? didn't know him from the man in the moon) and he was talking about how his whole family was into swimming in a big way--his father and himself. So that made me think of my mother and my grandfather (Robert Greenleaf Leavitt), how they would swim twice a day and never think anything of it. I wrote Oliver Sacks all about our family's swimming too, and even sent him pictures of me and my mother in our swim suits, several. And he so kindly wrote back, a nice long letter, returning the photographs too as he knew they were precious to me, and that was that. But then I told Evie I wrote to him and she screamed in amazement and delight and told me who he was, and then sent me his wonderful book Island of the Color Blind, and another one I can't remember now. Oh! He was the guy the Robin Williams character was based on?? So there it is.
I also didn't think much of it that I had a letter from Mrs. Joseph McCarthy (to my mother and grandmother) thanking them for their nice letter to her upon McCarthy's death. I gave these letters (from Sacks and Mrs. McCarthy) to Evie. It can be disconcerting when you are fourteen or fifteen and everyone in the world seems to be hating the person your own mother and grandmother thinks is wonderful, and I am ambivalent still about the whole era. Talk about a divided America. Supporting Joseph McCarthy then was sort of like supporting Rush Limbaugh now. I also have many letters from Herbert Philbrick to my mother--she wanted to be, and actually was, it appears now, a spy (though unpaid) for the FBI! Last of her letters, she was working on getting paid. She was spying on the good leftist members of World Fellowship in Conway, New Hampshire, because their leader, Mr. Willard Uphaus, would not give the membership list up to the House Unamerican Activities Committe ruled by McCarthy. My mother was convinced there were TWO Willard Uphauses, and while one was running World Fellowship in New Hampshire, the other was being a courier of messages to and from Moscow; and the FBI believed it! Maybe my mother saw and liked too many spy thrillers. Her spying consisted of listening to speakers at World Fellowship (with me) talk about how wonderful Fidel Castro and Raul were, then later taking down license plate numbers in the World Fellowship parking lot and then speeding home looking over her shoulder--it was very fun and exciting. One day I went rowing with a boy at Wold Fellowship and I agreed with everything he said! I didn't tell my mother.
I did get to see Bob Dylan up close. I saw him in the first appearance of the Rolling Thunder Revue, and--due to exceptional karma (another story)--got a front row center seat, with only 400 people in the audience, in Plymouth, Mass. Even better, I was invited by a friend to go to the party where he would be the next night at the Plimouth Plantation (the friend worked at the plantation so had an in with the people there)--I took Donna and Erika. This would have been 1974-75. But Dylan did not arrive. Then I heard he had had a falling out with a guy in the parking lot and had left in his van. Then I remembered, as I drove into the parking lot and pulled up, and heard my own van die (electrical system again), there was this big van next to me pulling out. That must have been Dylan! But anyway, I went to the party and Allen Ginsburg was there! They were making a movie for Dylan, and they interviewed me and took pictures of Donna and Erika dancing with Allen Ginsburg, and in fact filmed the whole party all night long. Later I heard that Dylan himself did all the editing for the three-hour-long movie he made from that. And so you see Dylan must have heard and seen me answering those questions the camera man was asking me (a HUGE movie camera it was!), and must have seen Donna and Erika dancing with Allen Ginsburg. Now, what do you call it when a famous person like Dylan sees you, instead of you seeing the famous person? Isn't that a whole different category?
Bob Dylan dreams also abounded. I was always meeting him behind the curtain between sets back stage, sharing my poetry with him, he'd be sharing his with me, what he'd written lately. Once we were out in the parking lot behind the auditorium riding bikes around. I always had a great time with Bob Dylan. Dreams of my friend Frederick Turner, whom I've never met in real life but only corresponded with, and who is not ubiquitously famous but academically so, surfaced similarly. Once in a dream he and I were out behind the Carnegie building on the University of Maine campus in Orono; Carnegie is the art and used to be the music building too. It was where I spent most of my time while my mother was going to summer school when I was little trying out all the instruments in the practice rooms and looking at all the art in progress and on exhibit. In the dream Fred and I were sitting on a stone bench side by side talking, and we were sort of leaning toward each other, our heads touching. The odd thing was that Fred had a head (though I knew he was Fred, as you do in dreams know such things) with a great crest on it, exactly like Australipithicus robustus--and he had not the gracile jaw of homo Sapien, but the huge chomping jaws (which would go with the crest of course) of robustus too! I wrote Fred about this and he said it made perfect sense, and alluded to his poem in April Wind "The Angry Man," a beastly alter ego of himself.
But dreams are not reality. In real life, one of the most famous person I have ever set eyes on was probably Louis Armstrong--it was probably 1955 0r '56 in Charlottesville, Virginia at UVA. My brother Robert took me to see him, and I was in the crowd getting pushed around, everyone talking, and suddenly the lights dimmed and a bunch of people pushed by us--"that's him! That's Satchmo!" my bother said in my ear over the roar of the crowd. I looked up to see Louis Armstrong about three or four feet away, passing right by us with the other musicians on his way to the stage. Everybody was cheering and clapping wildly--I had no idea who he was--I must have been 12 or 13, my brother was the one who was into jazz, not me. I was listening to Elvis and Pat Boone and Fats Domino at that stage. Anyway, once he was up on stage we stood so near I could see him really well. And the thing I noticed was that his lip went in in one place and out at another in a sort of circle whenever he took his horn away from his mouth--his horn fit to his mouth perfectly. And his cheeks puffed out like grapefruits were in them when he played! Yes, he could really play, and he was always sweating so much while he was playing he had to keep taking out his white handkerchief and wiping his brow with it. I had no idea he was so famous.
One day on Rugby Road my brother pointed to a man walking down the street (this was at the University of Virginia--Rugby Rd. runs right into it) and said "Look! There's William Faulkner!" I didn't know who William Faulkner was either, but later I learned he had given lectures there, and later I took my brother's advice and read some of his books--The River (experimental), and most recently As I Lay Dying, which I think is an amazing book. At that age I was into movies and had a habit of seeing the movie and then, in order to get more out of it, reading the book. Hence I did run into Faulkner after I saw Paul Newman in "The Long, Hot Summer"--my brother told me it was based on the Snopes Trilogy, whatever that was, and I tracked it down and read it. I liked the movie better--it had Paul Newman in it. Other books I read when I was twelve or thirteen because I had seen the movies were: Tea and Sympathy (Deborah Kerr), The Rainmaker (Burt Lancaster, Katherine Hepburn), War and Peace (Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda), Ten Angry Men (Henry Fonda), Night of the Kiawa Moon, a short story I found in an old Saturday Evening Post, the basis for The Unforgiven (Burt Lancaster, Audrey Hepburn), Oliver Twist (Alec Guiness), Hamlet (Lawrence Olivier). If the movie came out in 1956-58 and I liked it, I read the book. So anyway, I saw the actual guy who wrote the book the movie with Paul Newman in it was based on. I would rather have seen Paul Newman, but it's all in your perspective at the time. The name William Faulkner meant nothing to me, but my eyes did behold him.
Then there are the correspondences with famous people who you do not know are famous at the time you are corresponding with them. Thus it was I wrote to and was written back to by Oliver Sacks without being aware in the least that he was the guy Robin Williams was playing along side Robert DiNiro in the movie "Awakenings," which I had of course seen--this was in my fifties I think, not too long ago. Anyway, I was reading a letter in Harpers from this guy Oliver Sacks (??? didn't know him from the man in the moon) and he was talking about how his whole family was into swimming in a big way--his father and himself. So that made me think of my mother and my grandfather (Robert Greenleaf Leavitt), how they would swim twice a day and never think anything of it. I wrote Oliver Sacks all about our family's swimming too, and even sent him pictures of me and my mother in our swim suits, several. And he so kindly wrote back, a nice long letter, returning the photographs too as he knew they were precious to me, and that was that. But then I told Evie I wrote to him and she screamed in amazement and delight and told me who he was, and then sent me his wonderful book Island of the Color Blind, and another one I can't remember now. Oh! He was the guy the Robin Williams character was based on?? So there it is.
I also didn't think much of it that I had a letter from Mrs. Joseph McCarthy (to my mother and grandmother) thanking them for their nice letter to her upon McCarthy's death. I gave these letters (from Sacks and Mrs. McCarthy) to Evie. It can be disconcerting when you are fourteen or fifteen and everyone in the world seems to be hating the person your own mother and grandmother thinks is wonderful, and I am ambivalent still about the whole era. Talk about a divided America. Supporting Joseph McCarthy then was sort of like supporting Rush Limbaugh now. I also have many letters from Herbert Philbrick to my mother--she wanted to be, and actually was, it appears now, a spy (though unpaid) for the FBI! Last of her letters, she was working on getting paid. She was spying on the good leftist members of World Fellowship in Conway, New Hampshire, because their leader, Mr. Willard Uphaus, would not give the membership list up to the House Unamerican Activities Committe ruled by McCarthy. My mother was convinced there were TWO Willard Uphauses, and while one was running World Fellowship in New Hampshire, the other was being a courier of messages to and from Moscow; and the FBI believed it! Maybe my mother saw and liked too many spy thrillers. Her spying consisted of listening to speakers at World Fellowship (with me) talk about how wonderful Fidel Castro and Raul were, then later taking down license plate numbers in the World Fellowship parking lot and then speeding home looking over her shoulder--it was very fun and exciting. One day I went rowing with a boy at Wold Fellowship and I agreed with everything he said! I didn't tell my mother.
I did get to see Bob Dylan up close. I saw him in the first appearance of the Rolling Thunder Revue, and--due to exceptional karma (another story)--got a front row center seat, with only 400 people in the audience, in Plymouth, Mass. Even better, I was invited by a friend to go to the party where he would be the next night at the Plimouth Plantation (the friend worked at the plantation so had an in with the people there)--I took Donna and Erika. This would have been 1974-75. But Dylan did not arrive. Then I heard he had had a falling out with a guy in the parking lot and had left in his van. Then I remembered, as I drove into the parking lot and pulled up, and heard my own van die (electrical system again), there was this big van next to me pulling out. That must have been Dylan! But anyway, I went to the party and Allen Ginsburg was there! They were making a movie for Dylan, and they interviewed me and took pictures of Donna and Erika dancing with Allen Ginsburg, and in fact filmed the whole party all night long. Later I heard that Dylan himself did all the editing for the three-hour-long movie he made from that. And so you see Dylan must have heard and seen me answering those questions the camera man was asking me (a HUGE movie camera it was!), and must have seen Donna and Erika dancing with Allen Ginsburg. Now, what do you call it when a famous person like Dylan sees you, instead of you seeing the famous person? Isn't that a whole different category?
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
The 11+ Exam: Dialogue on children, community, and war
A friend of mine, identified only as F-- wrote me this in response to my description of the circle, the neighborhood I grew up in. He wrote:
Lovely memory. But I remember as the son of a poor beginning lecturer at Manchester University, living in a working-class neighborhood where everything was also out in the street, the dark side of community. When I aced the 11+, the old Brit exam that separated kids forever into white-and blue-collars, a bunch of the kids I'd begun to get to know waited for me and beat me up. So the basic ground rules have to be good or community turns into tribalism and witch hunt. The silent neighborhoods are a sad compromise.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
To which I responded:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
That 11+ exam I have pondered for decades--it's one of those things you learn about early and that is discussed a lot over here, especially in educational circles. Surely I would have failed it--though perhaps not. Though I spent my whole time in school day-dreaming, I was well instructed at home in everything which was considered important (history, literature, Latin, grammar--everything but math, and that I could do on my own). Maybe I would have aced it too.
I remember once all the kids ganged up on one boy (working class, despite the class system being supposedly nonexistent over here) and were pelting him with icy snowballs, and I (heroic class) took his side, though they were all friends of mine, and I was prominent among them, all boys--we, the pelted and I, remained friends always. It is indeed the ground rules that need to be understood, and those boys that beat you up probably understood them well. Now was the only time in their lifetime they would get the jump on you, I bet the underlying rationale was, condoned by their parents, but obviously not by yours--and you were the sacrificial lamb. I am thinking the 11+ exam is an example of the adult world interfering with that of children, justified with bias and abstract rationale having nothing to do with the relations among children and everything to do with what adults thought "best" for all concerned.
Just about that time (I was eleven exactly at the time you were, remember) Little League was invented over here, and all my friends (boys) joined. I remember looking at them through a chain-link fence--they were all sitting in a row on a bench with uniforms on and looking up and listening to an adult who was looking down on them and lecturing them. I felt so sorry for them! For one thing, they wouldn't have me, and I was the best batter and first baseman--and fastest runner-- in the neighborhood! (I had just heard girls weren't allowed--I couldn't believe it--that was really stupid of them, I thought) And for another thing, they had to sit there instead of getting up and playing! It was all wrong.
I do think the interference of adults in childhood's self-rule in community began what has ended in obesity and all sorts of other aberrations of human psychological development. My own kids agree with me, and tell me about fellow college students who are unsupervised for the first time in their lives. The lack of community in this age reflects, I think, a fossilization of habits, including habits of thought, which have outgrown the environment they were first spawned in. I love the way facebook (etc) is becoming the new community--youth will have an out!
As for the phenomenon of WAR--please explain its necessity to a STATE to me. Isn't it the height of wrong-thinking, force? (I was raised by a hawk and during this this last war struggled to justify it on your account ("If F-- concurs with Cheney, I must be missing something....) I struggled with it the way Robert Frost struggles with his dualities always. I want your thoughts on why it is ever justified. Isn't it something we as a species, given what we are, we can and should rise above? Isn't that the essential Christian message?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
To which F-- replied:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
How wise you are about children, ground rules, and adult interference! But I think children are capable of cruelty on their own, too. Even if one doesn't believe in the Fall, or believes as I do that the Fall is the same as the creation itself, and started in the Big Bang, and is indeed a happy fall in the long run--freedom still implies that people can and do choose to do bad things.
Which also, when it comes down to it, is the only justification there could be for war. You went to war with snowballs when the working class kid was being pelted. One consequence of those boys ganging up on me--and two other incidents, one where like you I took the side of a Jewish kid who was being picked on, the other when I defended my younger brother B-- who got into trouble with some yahoos--was that I ended up preparing myself by martial arts to be able to defend myself and others, and since that time have never been bothered physically by anyone.
The Iraq war was a bitter trial for me. As you were being loyal to me, I was being loyal to B--, who was out there fighting. Although at first it seemed to be justifiable, as halting the atrocities of Saddam Hussein against his own people and other nations, I came to see it as a mistake on balance. Despite the fact that it looks as if our basic war aims are going to be realized--an elected government in Iraq, a sort of ally in a very dangerous part of the world instead of a bitter enemy, one possible source of WMDs eliminated--we lost far more than we gained and we got pushed into actions and justifications that were unworthy of our ideals. And many people died, and as a citizen and voter I have their blood on my hands, and have had to confess it.
But if we had stopped Hitler in 1933, maybe we would have saved 8 million Jews and tens of millions of other Europeans. Rwanda. Darfur. Do we have their blood on our hands too?
Perhaps this mortal condition is precisely the one where nobody has clean hands. Maybe the seeking of perfect cleanness, of perfect justification, is itself one of the great drivers of murder. Think of the Chosen People and the abomination of Canaan, that must be cleansed. The Crusades. Or ethnic cleansing. Or the purifying Holocaust, that would lead Europe back to its blond innocent heroic noble blue-eyed guiltless condition of Dasein. Or the noble ideals of the Gulag. If we accept that we are dirty and try to do the decent thing, knowing that whatever we do is going to have foul consequences, we may be less in danger of committing really huge crimes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I just thought it was a mighty interesting exchange!
Lovely memory. But I remember as the son of a poor beginning lecturer at Manchester University, living in a working-class neighborhood where everything was also out in the street, the dark side of community. When I aced the 11+, the old Brit exam that separated kids forever into white-and blue-collars, a bunch of the kids I'd begun to get to know waited for me and beat me up. So the basic ground rules have to be good or community turns into tribalism and witch hunt. The silent neighborhoods are a sad compromise.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
To which I responded:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
That 11+ exam I have pondered for decades--it's one of those things you learn about early and that is discussed a lot over here, especially in educational circles. Surely I would have failed it--though perhaps not. Though I spent my whole time in school day-dreaming, I was well instructed at home in everything which was considered important (history, literature, Latin, grammar--everything but math, and that I could do on my own). Maybe I would have aced it too.
I remember once all the kids ganged up on one boy (working class, despite the class system being supposedly nonexistent over here) and were pelting him with icy snowballs, and I (heroic class) took his side, though they were all friends of mine, and I was prominent among them, all boys--we, the pelted and I, remained friends always. It is indeed the ground rules that need to be understood, and those boys that beat you up probably understood them well. Now was the only time in their lifetime they would get the jump on you, I bet the underlying rationale was, condoned by their parents, but obviously not by yours--and you were the sacrificial lamb. I am thinking the 11+ exam is an example of the adult world interfering with that of children, justified with bias and abstract rationale having nothing to do with the relations among children and everything to do with what adults thought "best" for all concerned.
Just about that time (I was eleven exactly at the time you were, remember) Little League was invented over here, and all my friends (boys) joined. I remember looking at them through a chain-link fence--they were all sitting in a row on a bench with uniforms on and looking up and listening to an adult who was looking down on them and lecturing them. I felt so sorry for them! For one thing, they wouldn't have me, and I was the best batter and first baseman--and fastest runner-- in the neighborhood! (I had just heard girls weren't allowed--I couldn't believe it--that was really stupid of them, I thought) And for another thing, they had to sit there instead of getting up and playing! It was all wrong.
I do think the interference of adults in childhood's self-rule in community began what has ended in obesity and all sorts of other aberrations of human psychological development. My own kids agree with me, and tell me about fellow college students who are unsupervised for the first time in their lives. The lack of community in this age reflects, I think, a fossilization of habits, including habits of thought, which have outgrown the environment they were first spawned in. I love the way facebook (etc) is becoming the new community--youth will have an out!
As for the phenomenon of WAR--please explain its necessity to a STATE to me. Isn't it the height of wrong-thinking, force? (I was raised by a hawk and during this this last war struggled to justify it on your account ("If F-- concurs with Cheney, I must be missing something....) I struggled with it the way Robert Frost struggles with his dualities always. I want your thoughts on why it is ever justified. Isn't it something we as a species, given what we are, we can and should rise above? Isn't that the essential Christian message?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
To which F-- replied:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
How wise you are about children, ground rules, and adult interference! But I think children are capable of cruelty on their own, too. Even if one doesn't believe in the Fall, or believes as I do that the Fall is the same as the creation itself, and started in the Big Bang, and is indeed a happy fall in the long run--freedom still implies that people can and do choose to do bad things.
Which also, when it comes down to it, is the only justification there could be for war. You went to war with snowballs when the working class kid was being pelted. One consequence of those boys ganging up on me--and two other incidents, one where like you I took the side of a Jewish kid who was being picked on, the other when I defended my younger brother B-- who got into trouble with some yahoos--was that I ended up preparing myself by martial arts to be able to defend myself and others, and since that time have never been bothered physically by anyone.
The Iraq war was a bitter trial for me. As you were being loyal to me, I was being loyal to B--, who was out there fighting. Although at first it seemed to be justifiable, as halting the atrocities of Saddam Hussein against his own people and other nations, I came to see it as a mistake on balance. Despite the fact that it looks as if our basic war aims are going to be realized--an elected government in Iraq, a sort of ally in a very dangerous part of the world instead of a bitter enemy, one possible source of WMDs eliminated--we lost far more than we gained and we got pushed into actions and justifications that were unworthy of our ideals. And many people died, and as a citizen and voter I have their blood on my hands, and have had to confess it.
But if we had stopped Hitler in 1933, maybe we would have saved 8 million Jews and tens of millions of other Europeans. Rwanda. Darfur. Do we have their blood on our hands too?
Perhaps this mortal condition is precisely the one where nobody has clean hands. Maybe the seeking of perfect cleanness, of perfect justification, is itself one of the great drivers of murder. Think of the Chosen People and the abomination of Canaan, that must be cleansed. The Crusades. Or ethnic cleansing. Or the purifying Holocaust, that would lead Europe back to its blond innocent heroic noble blue-eyed guiltless condition of Dasein. Or the noble ideals of the Gulag. If we accept that we are dirty and try to do the decent thing, knowing that whatever we do is going to have foul consequences, we may be less in danger of committing really huge crimes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I just thought it was a mighty interesting exchange!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
