tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25981798012344202022024-03-05T00:36:50.284-08:00nulla dies sine linea - not a day without a lineUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-56361525878067684382015-10-07T13:43:00.001-07:002015-10-07T13:43:38.004-07:00Running to Reconciliation and SelfI've never been an athlete. Sedentary by nature and choice, I can't recall ever running unless being chased by a bee. My brother, Rob, is different, however. RenegadeBooks just published his premiere novel, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Pronator-R-S-Chase-ebook/dp/B015TK8UZW" target="_blank">The Pronator</a></i>, last week.<br />
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Until I read his book, I didn't know what a pronator was. It sounded like something out of science fiction, or a role Arnold Schwarzenegger would play. However, I discovered that a pronator is one who pronates; that is, a runner whose foot turns slightly so that that the inner edge of the sole bears the weight. Rob's protagonist, Jay, suffers from pronation, but its literal meaning affects the story only slightly; symbolically, it is the flaw that each of us must overcome to reach our next level.<br />
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The action of <i>The Pronator </i>takes place during the running of a marathon. Jay wants only to beat his old time and come in under four hours. During that time, the psycho-physical changes that affect runners during a race such as this--intermittent flashes of memories, dreams, speculations--form the narrative as mile follows mile. Recurring themes of a Catholic childhood, nightmare schools replete with bullies, family dynamics, and the mysteries of spirituality reveal a dreamlike biography.<br />
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Being the writer's sister, it's obvious to me that Jay is a thinly disguised version of my brother. Further, I know the parts he left out. I don't know what the popularity of this book will be outside the family, but for me it was a revelation and a rare invitation to a sibling's inner life.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-18128822908969126572015-10-02T16:16:00.001-07:002015-10-04T09:15:51.674-07:00The ricochet of gun violence and the balm of loveI was at school when I saw the news bulletin about the shooter at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. UCC is just about 3 hours south of us, but we are part of the same community college system. Just that morning we had talked about guns on campus in my WR 115 classroom. Meanwhile, the shooter had entered another WR 115 class and interrupted their conversation in a vicious and terrible way.<br />
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Shock at a distance is shock nonetheless. As an instructor at a CC, it's hard not to imagine the same thing happening on my campus, even in my classroom. There's one exit and a pair of enormous windows that open on the world. What would I do? How could I protect my students? I know the emergency drill: lock the door turn off the lights, pull the blinds, turn off the projector and get everyone on the floor. But that only works if the shooter is somewhere else.<br />
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I've been reading responses to the news, many of which suggest that we need more armed security guards and even armed instructors--unworkable for numerous reasons, not the least of which is the plethora of aging educators who are just as likely to shoot themselves in the foot as protect their charges. Besides, taking out one shooter does just that and no more. Another will rise to take his place.<br />
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So, how do we stop this epidemic of gun violence? How do <i>I</i> do something? That's the crux of it, isn't it? Knowing as we all do that politics and government won't serve, the duty falls to the individual. What can each of us do to keep unhappiness and its frequent companion, mental illness, from deteriorating into an unreasoning rage that takes its revenge on the innocent?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZvepwMt65HrpAKxeOKNRQBEuLNIhpFacD3NvG-d_lqmg2MAPYtnB4Pbs7fKfemFw-W1DZLtT-HumrTKTEc6bsRDQDDGFza6Wi7dL1vHJPvlL9-y4ORxWUAb2Rzd8ThhJxusl7HnoxOL_l/s1600/bleeding+heart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZvepwMt65HrpAKxeOKNRQBEuLNIhpFacD3NvG-d_lqmg2MAPYtnB4Pbs7fKfemFw-W1DZLtT-HumrTKTEc6bsRDQDDGFza6Wi7dL1vHJPvlL9-y4ORxWUAb2Rzd8ThhJxusl7HnoxOL_l/s200/bleeding+heart.jpg" width="133" /></a>As I look at the parade of killers who've emerged over the past 20 years, I see souls who've been rejected and marginalized, who grow in their anger towards insanity and violence. They are not born this way--or, if they are, they need treatment. I'd like to suggest that each of us has the power, through love and kindness, to salvage lives and turn them towards open-hearted community rather than festering isolation. I can do this in my classroom, on the street, in social media. What about you?<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-12904747148106277662015-09-30T09:52:00.000-07:002015-09-30T09:52:04.945-07:00Happiness before arising<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The room is still dark. The heater has clicked on. From the glow behind the curtains, I can tell today will be another autumn gem. For just this moment, all is calm and full of possibility.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-74927312801972988582015-09-29T09:46:00.002-07:002015-09-29T09:46:03.982-07:00Sometimes you can't look awayIf you're old enough, you probably remember watching Mutual of Omaha's <i class=""><a class="" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_Kingdom" target="_blank">Wild Kingdom</a></i>, starring Marlin Perkins and his long-suffering sidekick, Jim Fowler. This program introduced violence on TV, albeit animal kingdom violence. Among the most memorable segments featured the insatiable python and the enormous beasts it could swallow whole: deer, cows, even crocodiles. Horrendous as the sights were, they were hypnotic. It was impossible to look away.<br />
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That's how I feel during Presidential Debate season. Granted, we've only seen the Republicans so far, but their encounters are as gruesome and mesmerizing as those of python versus croc. I imagine it's no coincidence that <i>croc</i> is a homophone for <i>crock</i>, as in "that's a crock of crap." It's also interesting that some of the debaters shed crocodile tears over issues less poignant than a Hallmark commercial. So far, no one has disagreed with the others over anything substantive. They are just generally cranky and like to point fingers.</div>
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I really don't understand how we came to this means of selecting a leader. Surely we don't want someone who's merely good at self-defense and nitpicking. My mother used to suggest that, instead of waging war and slaughtering the best members of a generation, leaders of belligerent countries should have to fight each other in some sort of international arena. They'd engage in mud wrestling, say, pole-vaulting. Then perhaps we'd choose leaders based on a different kind of strength. What do you think?</div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-21025533900982741972015-09-27T12:06:00.000-07:002015-09-27T12:06:57.951-07:00The little moments<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZUGHS-lmn7PLX6RW8usdtHv_5Cn5u-l4cHGRI3EjC1mjQrFEq7j2wPs561gXNsZU9cROE_Y-OeDKfY9xLdOACI9qOjjm8HP13H3zliscnX8Q99rg_Fa-GXfnoNHx801RoemfhLsnwijSy/s1600/multitasking+brain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZUGHS-lmn7PLX6RW8usdtHv_5Cn5u-l4cHGRI3EjC1mjQrFEq7j2wPs561gXNsZU9cROE_Y-OeDKfY9xLdOACI9qOjjm8HP13H3zliscnX8Q99rg_Fa-GXfnoNHx801RoemfhLsnwijSy/s320/multitasking+brain.jpg" width="297" /></a>This term I've asked my Writing 115 classes to develop the daily habit of observing and thinking about the world around them and then share their thoughts with the world in a blog. I hope that they will become more aware, more appreciative, and more introspective as they compile the raw materials of good writing. This isn't an easy task. Everyone is multitasking their lives, trying to do their best and avoid the crazy-making world that interjects itself with fearful sound-bytes and flashing ads about losing belly fat.<br />
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I am going to join my students in this endeavor, so you should see many short posts from me as I, too, attempt to engage with the little moments that pass into nothingness unless explored.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">* I won't be posting these on FaceBook, etc. but if you want to see what's going on around me, enter your email address into the "Follow by email" form on this page.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-91318173333564541392015-09-11T03:10:00.002-07:002019-09-07T10:36:12.341-07:009/11<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "sylfaen" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">September the Eleventh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "sylfaen" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mary Chase</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-2858946650092658062014-12-07T14:47:00.000-08:002014-12-09T18:44:22.104-08:00Floods, vermin, and a multitude of blessingsLife is hard. We all know that. Granted, no one is shooting at me, and I have not contracted any strange viruses, but I am nonetheless bogged down by life events, those I chose and those I didn't. So, if you've been wondering why I am not posting more often, here's the rundown:<br />
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<b>The Great Flood</b><br />
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Why should a flood resulting from a freak summer downpour still be affecting my life in December? To begin with, it joined the parade of "one damn thing after another" from which so many of us suffer. Rain flowed in through the basement windows with ungodly abandon, soaking Persian carpets and the wall-to-wall Berber beneath them while I slept peacefully upstairs. I had no idea what had happened until I went downstairs a day or two later to see why the smell of mold was beginning to waft its way up. My first step onto the basement floor went <i>squish</i>. Crap.<br />
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Like many people who have too much stuff, too many collections and too little sense of organization, our basement--all 1000 square feet of it--is a labyrinth of cardboard boxes, unsorted piles, forgotten files and out-of-favor furniture. Not to mention one small room I had converted to a clothes closet. Just add water, and the entropy of our lives had begun to meld into one soggy and possibly sentient being.<br />
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Even after the cavalry arrived with their fans and vacuums, I was still removing 12 litres of water from the air every day for weeks with my newly purchased dehumidifier. Hauling, sorting, and tossing preceded the removal of the carpets, more drying and finally the installation of a new floor. Even though the tasks are now completed (well, almost...I still have a little <i>bit</i> of organization to take care of) my nights are filled with dreams of swelling books, molding dolls, floating receipts and seeping water.<br />
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<b>Rats!</b><br />
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I never like to say anything bad about Oregon, but, in addition to the friendly beaver and majestic Roosevelt elk, the Norway rat is indigenous and prolific here. Further, recent destruction of a wooded area in our neighborhood stirred up the local population of <i>rodentia</i> and sent it looking for new digs down the street. Our street.<br />
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Rats! Plague-ridden, destructive, and evil! A family of them appeared in our laundry room in early fall, entering through a hole Mom and Pop rat had chewed along a pipeline. The parents succumbed rapidly to traps, but their children were observant and smart. We ended up buying several kinds of traps, and experimenting with different kinds of bait after the <i>wunderkinden</i> had learned to avoid peanut butter, dog food, cheese, rice, etc. My husband, Jose, master of gadgets, bought a device called a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Raticator-Infrared-Sensing-Humanely-Exterminates/dp/B009N8X6GA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414959293&sr=8-1&keywords=raticator" target="_blank">Raticator</a>, which boasts an "infrared sensing zapper."<br />
This eerie chamber worked on the last two. Or, rather, I <i>thought</i> they were the last two.<br />
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I didn't see any physical evidence, but from time to time my Scottie, Whisky, sniffed behind the couch and barked down the heating vents. Whisky is a <i>retired</i> ratter, though, and had achieved little in the area of pest eradication until last week when he wrought such a hullabaloo of pent-up vengeance as I will not soon forget.<br />
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Whisky had been sniffing and growling around the dishwasher and Jose, resorting to the least technical of mouse traps, decided to block the entrance to the kitchen with sticky paper designed for trapping unwanted interlopers. I didn't like the idea. Getting stuck and then tossed into a dumpster sounds like a bad way to go, even for a rat. At least the Raticator offers a quick end to life's travails. However, Jose is as stubborn as a terrier. Down went the sticky paper on the other side of the baby-gate that keeps the dogs out of the kitchen, and off to bed we went.<br />
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We had no sooner turned off the light than I heard a high-pitched <i>Skreeee-skreeee-skreeee! </i>from the kitchen accompanied by an outraged barrage of Scottie barks. "They will both get tired," Jose said laconically. Not so.<br />
<br />
I made Jose get up to see what was happening. He came back and said, "There is a rat on the paper." I already knew that. <i>Skreeee-skreeee-skreeee! </i><i>Woof-woof-woof!</i><br />
<br />
"Are we going to let that poor creature stay stuck there all night?"<br />
<br />
"Whisky is very interested," Jose said.<br />
<br />
"What if he knocks that gate over?" <i>Skreeee-skreeee-skreeee! Woof-woof-woof!</i><br />
<br />
"Whisky cannot knock the gate over. It is a strong gate." <i>Skreeee-skreeee-skreeee! </i><i>Woof-woof-woof!</i><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghIHsmrmT_Y_eg63YHLnP_ExKSLKFySGYzZG5fQFoJBXU9wvUYC3Kg1SAJr9_AgktKZdjl-JDvZW5-hY89WKQBuADDRN51_H9Wh8hJ_rdhOtiswiuLLn-t_jqs_D0bWp8VOXEDOUkApkEQ/s1600/Scottish-Terrier-Dog-Breed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghIHsmrmT_Y_eg63YHLnP_ExKSLKFySGYzZG5fQFoJBXU9wvUYC3Kg1SAJr9_AgktKZdjl-JDvZW5-hY89WKQBuADDRN51_H9Wh8hJ_rdhOtiswiuLLn-t_jqs_D0bWp8VOXEDOUkApkEQ/s1600/Scottish-Terrier-Dog-Breed.jpg" height="198" width="200" /></a>Immediately, a crash came from the kitchen, followed by a yip. Then silence. The gate had been breached. I swear, if Jose didn't say everything in a cute Brazilian accent I'd have smacked him.<br />
<br />
We went out to the kitchen. There was no sign of the rat, but Whisky was stuck to the paper. Crap.<br />
<br />
I grabbed a pair of scissors to separate Whisky from the paper, lifted him by the tail (this convenient, strong handle comes standard on all Scotties) and found the rat underneath, rather untidily disemboweled. I dropped the tail and pushed the whole mess away with my foot without thinking. My bunny-eared slipper was now stuck to the paper as well.<br />
<br />
I think you can imagine the rest. Snip-snip, curse-curse. Detritus out to the trash. Lysol clean-up. Dog and me into the shower. To bed by 2 a.m.<br />
<br />
I still think there's one more. Either that of the spirits of rats past are eating the bait in the Raticator--that device appears to have given up the ghost.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>AND... </b>There's also good stuff in my life that also keeps me from posting here. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Teaching</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
As usual, just when I despaired of my students, they have stunned me again with their insights. and I remember why it is I do this.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Writing</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I found a critique group that works for me. They are fabulous readers who offer practical, insightful feedback. Now I need to write more fiction, too.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b>Publishing</b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Earlier this year, I started RenegadeBooks to publish my own work, as well as books by authors who don't fit the mold of today's romance publishers. They don't want to write <i>50 Shades of...Yikes! </i>So far, we have 11 titles and a website that needs work.<i> </i>If you want to know more, read <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Jordans-Marriage-Margaret-ONeil-ebook">Peter Jordan’s Marriage</a> </i>or <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Here-You-Always-Margaret-ONeil-ebook/dp/B00MLGS55I" target="_blank">Here for You Always</a></i> by Margaret O’Neil.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
***</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
So that's what's up with me. I will post more...soon I hope. Maybe my students will keep me honest and give me some due dates.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-50771406189413685452014-10-18T13:03:00.002-07:002014-10-18T13:13:39.337-07:00A Re-Post and a Conspiracy TheoryThe political season is in full-swing again (does it ever stop?) and we're getting ready for another mid-term election. Fingers are pointing, excuses are fumbling and fear is mongering. Same old stuff. I was going to blog on this topic and lead into a conspiracy theory that's been percolating in the back of my head, but I decided to repost the following instead, one of my favorites from the last election:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>I Got the Foghorn Leghorn Blues </b></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> "The blues isn't about feeling better. It's about making other people feel <i>worse</i>..."</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> -- Bleeding Gums Murphy to Lisa in <i>The Simpsons </i></span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdDGRnB_pXkboud_uqqwW3_OIzIS8VMEwj_HtOcUsWpY39rtCQH1WOtTbftN1nccq_rb1jxT4l3izUDgPIB1jUIGGbVG9mSufiOokbC9tCYXZ2xzeQLD_KOe02078ki_g1YN6kr9aYpZXs/s1600/bleeding+gums.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdDGRnB_pXkboud_uqqwW3_OIzIS8VMEwj_HtOcUsWpY39rtCQH1WOtTbftN1nccq_rb1jxT4l3izUDgPIB1jUIGGbVG9mSufiOokbC9tCYXZ2xzeQLD_KOe02078ki_g1YN6kr9aYpZXs/s1600/bleeding+gums.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a>Have you been reading <i>Salon</i>? <i>Huffington Post</i>? Watching the news on MSNBC? If you have, you know the Democrats have got the blues, and they've got them bad. The Democrats are good at having the blues. It keeps them from having to do anything substantive, but provides great talking points and finger pointing opportunities. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There are rules for having the blues and I highly suggest you read them <a href="http://home.earthlink.net/~lex.alexander/blues.htm" target="_blank"><b>here</b></a>. The Democrat Blues differ somewhat, however: </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i></i></span><br />
<ul>
<li>You cannot have the blues on the back porch or "down by the river". You must have the blues in public, preferably in front of a camera.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Even if you shot a man in Memphis, it wasn't your fault -- but you can tell everyone which obstructionist Republican tripped you on the way to a meet & greet and made you fall on the gun he was carrying and it discharged, killing the man in Memphis (who, by the way didn't have health insurance).</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Your blues tragedy cannot be brought about by <i>hubris</i>. Rather, you were done wrong by a low-lyin' <i>Don't Tread on Me</i> snake who had promised you his/her vote, but instead voted the other way after some soul searchin'.</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><i>Et cetera</i>...</li>
</ul>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqiLI6gY-rZTsf7byhUbwQPiBLn3UljDg5Hy0h71kMgbMrhkQCLBiWda88lzk8RL6BzwGclBT3uIScuH7al7baWcS5pLXfjtDWxdGyg01R7JT_CEIRRusMnoEUHNjFfb_6VY60fZe1yFiW/s1600/pic_foghornleghorndvd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqiLI6gY-rZTsf7byhUbwQPiBLn3UljDg5Hy0h71kMgbMrhkQCLBiWda88lzk8RL6BzwGclBT3uIScuH7al7baWcS5pLXfjtDWxdGyg01R7JT_CEIRRusMnoEUHNjFfb_6VY60fZe1yFiW/s1600/pic_foghornleghorndvd.jpg" height="137" width="200" /></a></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote>
Politically, the blues are the irrefutable domain of the Democrats. But if the Dems have the blues, what's left for the Republicans? Well, there's no need to worry. They got something even better. Republicans got <i>outrage</i>. Luckily for them, outrage has no rules and the Republicans, those champions of deregulation, like this a lot. They can, will, and have been outraged over everything. They don't much like Bleeding Gums Murphy, for obvious reasons. Instead they've modeled themselves after the irascible Foghorn Leghorn.<br />
There are no accidents in the universe, so it is not in the least surprising that Foghorn Leghorn was brought to us by Looney Tunes in the1950s. Foghorns don't need to make sense -- they just have to be loud. They can rev up indignation over anything: replacing <i>cr</i><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">è</span></i><i>che</i> scenes with "holiday trees," Super Bowl ads, and video games that reward sustainable community choices.<br />
They rant against and blame the current administration for our economic woes, blithely forgetting their role in its inception. In the name of protecting life, they can vilify a woman who defends access to health services and at the same time support the death penalty. They can spout a simplification of any complex problem into an endless loop of self-serving sound-bytes that appeal to the ignorant masses who are products of a school system they continue to cripple. Blather, wince, repeat. It really doesn't matter which side offends us the most or more slyly undercuts our liberties and livelihoods: there's not much to choose between them.<br />
But where do we fit in? Don't fret. We also play a role in this cartoon show: the dependably trusting Yakky Doodle who doesn't realize his own peril until he's roasting in the Fibber Fox's oven, and finally quacks: "I think you're the FOX!" <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD8BDirkhMtfH3zCEl8SCcp4Sdnlz5qb6riUpLj1acCK9clyh_r1DVz0dubq1xBRWdpPPm4WhKp7lJmWi6SUQCiZgCcDb350hIB6XInlcn2P5r3KHsJ0uq94s62luq-6jWxKDyVKYWU1ya/s1600/Yakky33.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD8BDirkhMtfH3zCEl8SCcp4Sdnlz5qb6riUpLj1acCK9clyh_r1DVz0dubq1xBRWdpPPm4WhKp7lJmWi6SUQCiZgCcDb350hIB6XInlcn2P5r3KHsJ0uq94s62luq-6jWxKDyVKYWU1ya/s1600/Yakky33.jpg" height="136" width="200" /></a>In the series, Yakky was always rescued by his friend Chopper the Bulldog. But this is where my metaphor breaks down, as metaphors always do. However much politics in America may resemble the funnies, it's very real. And all of us are sitting in a pot waiting to be stewed again.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: center;">
****</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgqdJzh3jnaloZtbEW71f0_9_d3m4TKDDAI400g9eQUainnWUQD1VsrdW2pP_H_3QRbnt0XUk5KV1HNVPvGMtMErXmSkKcxNr5qwIo3VPmL6OFwM9L1RH99ahDUuwyxZi0Zy-5dkorIglO/s1600/honey+boo+boo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgqdJzh3jnaloZtbEW71f0_9_d3m4TKDDAI400g9eQUainnWUQD1VsrdW2pP_H_3QRbnt0XUk5KV1HNVPvGMtMErXmSkKcxNr5qwIo3VPmL6OFwM9L1RH99ahDUuwyxZi0Zy-5dkorIglO/s1600/honey+boo+boo.jpg" height="166" width="200" /></a></blockquote>
Well, we only have to change out a few words--Ebola or ISIS, for instance--and this post is completely up to date. However, I'm beginning to think it is no accident that politicians can't compromise anymore, refuse to consider the common good and fling a constant barrage of accusations: lying, treason and horn-swaggling. The atmosphere of distrust and aggression is so consistent, I begin to fear it is deliberate. I fear the "opposing sides" are actually working together to ensure that nothing gets done. A frustrated populace eventually tires of the farce and turns its attention elsewhere. Why else would anyone play Candy Crush into the late hours, photograph their dinner for the delectation of FaceBook friends or watch Honey Boo Boo?</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Safely attached to our various devices, as I so surely am, there is little fear we'll notice what's going on in Washington, much less the rest of the world. Perhaps we'll sign a few more petitions or post a few protests. But the blinking ads in the margins of our monitors call like Sirens to Odysseus and we sail faithfully into oblivion.</blockquote>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-42223608794500744112014-02-02T14:32:00.001-08:002014-02-04T13:01:27.601-08:00The line draws me<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaZMqKFws3LO8gWadamc5DkQt_UjtkHYY9vdHCoAEo36GbTrWYFPyymj4hnAeH5vyO_jIVmNJJpCuerqz1Qq6GGxzOCQResNWHso1-WcczqwY9xEPsqK1kWSd8kg9wWmU3B7UXb6G1M7Wj/s1600/undo_button.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaZMqKFws3LO8gWadamc5DkQt_UjtkHYY9vdHCoAEo36GbTrWYFPyymj4hnAeH5vyO_jIVmNJJpCuerqz1Qq6GGxzOCQResNWHso1-WcczqwY9xEPsqK1kWSd8kg9wWmU3B7UXb6G1M7Wj/s1600/undo_button.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a>I made yet another New Year's resolution this year. I've done this before, but this time I've actually honored my resolution for the month of January and the first of February. Before, I never got much past the first week, as abandoned folders on my desktop ("Poem of the Day," "Story Idea of the Day" -- never, mind you,"Housework of the Day") will attest. But this time I put it out there -- as on FaceBook-- that I would create "a picture a day."<br />
<br />
The notion of audience is powerful, as are digital tools. Using those at pixlr.com catapulted me past the logistics of supplies, and messy spaces, spaces for display and allowed me that remarkable--almost godly--bulwark against false starts, the UNDO button. (Which of us doesn't wish we had one in life?)<br />
<br />
I've been hearing the call of art from the time I could hold a pencil, and avoiding it like crazy. Drawing in the flyleaves of books, on the woodwork, on the cardboard rectangles that used to be part of the packaging for my mother's hosiery, and later the margins of notebook paper in school and yellow legal pads at work, I made almost all of my efforts casual. In these latter places, I rarely wrote down much and, although I could usually remember what I should have been writing down just by looking at the pictures, I was often reprimanded by teachers and even written up by a supervisor for my "inattention" during meetings.<br />
<br />
I've done some formal art from time to time--a couple of restaurant murals, a few paintings that went to a friend's gallery (where my mother promptly bought them so I'd think I was successful, just as she once sent me an anonymous bouquet of pink roses in college so I would think someone liked me) but little else. Usually, however, the burden of knowing I only had one canvas or sheaf of paper stunted whatever free-flow might otherwise have emerged. (I am the same way when someone gives me one of those beautiful blank books to write in--the stress of writing something worthy of the gift closes me down.)<br />
<br />
I began without expecting much of myself -- it was to be a discipline. I believed real art was always done with brushes and paint, or chalk or ink. Sadly, I've even held that photographs weren't quite on the level with other art. Snob! Further, I've always seen my art as going from brain to hand to canvas or page. I didn't realize it could happen the other way around.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoq22Bxz3tvzEQN2b7I2cFeNMpfULu2WBFtdka9YO_TP1pInvdwh38O5Ww9rAjpdmzgagEbE6Eg1t0JjGGM6DXFZsOh_aVof_pqCnbae0uQWgFb1TH6GUayLk0_VZszQ3dj80ERIajJkxX/s1600/moonboy.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoq22Bxz3tvzEQN2b7I2cFeNMpfULu2WBFtdka9YO_TP1pInvdwh38O5Ww9rAjpdmzgagEbE6Eg1t0JjGGM6DXFZsOh_aVof_pqCnbae0uQWgFb1TH6GUayLk0_VZszQ3dj80ERIajJkxX/s1600/moonboy.png" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Moonboy"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In the past when I've done digital art, I've used a stylus and tablet. This time, however, that would have meant actually going downstairs to my desk. The dogs need supervision, however, so I stayed in my chair and drew with my finger on the track pad and drifted back to my days of finger-painting, admittedly with a much better set of paints. My first efforts resembled my marginal doodles, especially the man in the moon I've been drawing for about 20 years. There was a progression, though, especially when I started using filters and overlays, achieving effects I could never approach with my own techniques. Such fun!<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRJhavrJrGVS05Hg8PIJMTKmQjLVj_tikwU5C0C2BJCwHnGlHDRBTApoOpHCXUN2lsUc8CF5T2eIVd5W33TrxNEe1iU19UKuoQC4j83Qra_ly0WzjOB7CQ-V-fVAucsZGDIM5m6GNmydDi/s1600/friends.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRJhavrJrGVS05Hg8PIJMTKmQjLVj_tikwU5C0C2BJCwHnGlHDRBTApoOpHCXUN2lsUc8CF5T2eIVd5W33TrxNEe1iU19UKuoQC4j83Qra_ly0WzjOB7CQ-V-fVAucsZGDIM5m6GNmydDi/s1600/friends.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Friends"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY4q6yO08kTV14y_nYiOhEeVz2jcPyJgNfNVgUeTogeNpaIa8AKfy537nzbMt8AzLqnG-uclVUa2yXIHBRc3poC0RxB9At-kfs7UqSnWCrryNpxHNwq3T9TgGpe0MPLksO50XbBoA6Sr40/s1600/evil+moon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY4q6yO08kTV14y_nYiOhEeVz2jcPyJgNfNVgUeTogeNpaIa8AKfy537nzbMt8AzLqnG-uclVUa2yXIHBRc3poC0RxB9At-kfs7UqSnWCrryNpxHNwq3T9TgGpe0MPLksO50XbBoA6Sr40/s1600/evil+moon.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Evil Moon"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
With the three images above, I already knew I was going to draw a moon and play around with it. The art became better, however, when I started without an idea and let the initial lines not only tell me what they wanted to be, but began to tell me stories as well. I revisited memories and the titles of the works changed according:<br />
<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsp4_pmQYjG1CQ_rvdWZCZX9QbFbKf8I5JWiGP2bR3LdyRqc4Ytfz4M8QwsikCD7bnbS9tYOO9itI5VlhjSaGrOZiZJflJc2yXbkXtUV1pDHjVyz9qEFoMZIVLtUUIbAoL6oX0vqqbXBY6/s1600/wyoming.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsp4_pmQYjG1CQ_rvdWZCZX9QbFbKf8I5JWiGP2bR3LdyRqc4Ytfz4M8QwsikCD7bnbS9tYOO9itI5VlhjSaGrOZiZJflJc2yXbkXtUV1pDHjVyz9qEFoMZIVLtUUIbAoL6oX0vqqbXBY6/s1600/wyoming.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Wyoming Road Trip, January, 1963"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpdRvAm4dcQ2CK1sc5MhicPVs-HP_kqCJno2ZqLxxlmBJmFAoV-RRlkSuuOofZDODY5wXKzWGK9aAkpPdJHtL2m2Zl73VupUfPy6yGc-aotPlRqez9_eHNk_tHaNjTr1YurI1K639HJU2w/s1600/moscow+pullman+highway.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpdRvAm4dcQ2CK1sc5MhicPVs-HP_kqCJno2ZqLxxlmBJmFAoV-RRlkSuuOofZDODY5wXKzWGK9aAkpPdJHtL2m2Zl73VupUfPy6yGc-aotPlRqez9_eHNk_tHaNjTr1YurI1K639HJU2w/s1600/moscow+pullman+highway.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Moscow Pullman Highway in Spring"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
The line I didn't know became both evocative and communicative, and I would suddenly understand, remember what I was drawing.<br />
<br />
<br />
Even more interesting was when the line took on a life of its own, and I had no idea what the picture would be until it was done. Here is an example:<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwze-jqsRd3neX1wPXx0wW_eEr2VyzeZ525FPZ5vTHRmJ_zvU6K1aTl6vgDFRZPOHBB3rcYkekCDYU0ow059SyIhJuGTn3x60VtMkOhXwmUzERn5Y_bYrcxNmMAnIr23J4HQrIafRH9Zoh/s1600/line.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwze-jqsRd3neX1wPXx0wW_eEr2VyzeZ525FPZ5vTHRmJ_zvU6K1aTl6vgDFRZPOHBB3rcYkekCDYU0ow059SyIhJuGTn3x60VtMkOhXwmUzERn5Y_bYrcxNmMAnIr23J4HQrIafRH9Zoh/s1600/line.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Beginning line: I had no idea what it was.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAVa9_gkfaupWZL8VXyXSXr-ZEf-OzduCaMYw6_9Ti6piNOjEYp6MFqNmglkdN7m2NTnNKzx53ZJxgDqpxeiqKnat8aM8sTmR0PzJAb5nDA8SUynt1tpQW3qKld-Pifi1PwW7qQ6KAl4yr/s1600/babushka.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAVa9_gkfaupWZL8VXyXSXr-ZEf-OzduCaMYw6_9Ti6piNOjEYp6MFqNmglkdN7m2NTnNKzx53ZJxgDqpxeiqKnat8aM8sTmR0PzJAb5nDA8SUynt1tpQW3qKld-Pifi1PwW7qQ6KAl4yr/s1600/babushka.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Second line, all in one stroke: It was a face in a babushka!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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When I saw the addition of the babushka had turned the first line into a face, I thought for a moment I was drawing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga" target="_blank">Baba Yaga</a>. I decided to add some shadowing where the eyes would be and start the body. Again I was surprised. The eyes, the emerging face and body were young and joyful. I knew, too that my girl was blind.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHWOUHuxBDZ_z2Oq_bNTaLvQAo1MDXfbp7YsVgmj6Zwj7GTBKtYOrimmHGZHAZAOTGhJura_NWRYWJdhfCnJ-Cf8Zt7FNaMTdFYmxly7p6Dp6zbP801HORrtQ3GEu_yYrUmJHeHEiIWbrG/s1600/blind.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHWOUHuxBDZ_z2Oq_bNTaLvQAo1MDXfbp7YsVgmj6Zwj7GTBKtYOrimmHGZHAZAOTGhJura_NWRYWJdhfCnJ-Cf8Zt7FNaMTdFYmxly7p6Dp6zbP801HORrtQ3GEu_yYrUmJHeHEiIWbrG/s1600/blind.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">She emerged, unexpectedly.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I added a background, a skyscape, I had created some months before and for the first time saw the image of a swan I hadn't noticed before.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_(constellation)" target="_blank"> Cygnus</a>.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo2gfF1pbpJOZ856h8Lj2CChNo52El_8NiNRhih6nw_p4to25S18JmlIruFImzwWq2GFCBMz4ADs6pWA2WuiR8POxWpwW44oYVlssQSx1vYURZ_Mr_epYrg9u6C0Sn_Jw0fdR3vceURvL3/s1600/cygnus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo2gfF1pbpJOZ856h8Lj2CChNo52El_8NiNRhih6nw_p4to25S18JmlIruFImzwWq2GFCBMz4ADs6pWA2WuiR8POxWpwW44oYVlssQSx1vYURZ_Mr_epYrg9u6C0Sn_Jw0fdR3vceURvL3/s1600/cygnus.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Skyscape"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXHkNUl2L_OH7u_gnZLeLpHzKyMWkq_jXyMf3FtYkArw-9hI3xyu3m2WuMHH_Ant9j98WczmvSpnDeWMDLzX_aewEhG-_MDBzGXMiHFr8Ll0o3sr8dbmo5q9ScB-qK0cCik52OKHMALunC/s1600/blind+girl+sees+cygnus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXHkNUl2L_OH7u_gnZLeLpHzKyMWkq_jXyMf3FtYkArw-9hI3xyu3m2WuMHH_Ant9j98WczmvSpnDeWMDLzX_aewEhG-_MDBzGXMiHFr8Ll0o3sr8dbmo5q9ScB-qK0cCik52OKHMALunC/s1600/blind+girl+sees+cygnus.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Blind girl sees Cygnus"</td></tr>
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What's happening here seems miraculous to me. I begin to feel as if I have <i>channeled</i> this art. It came to me, and all I had to do was recognize it, birth it, and send it out into the world. It is the same when I write. I have so often begun one story that became another, encountered characters who would not behave, and words that became the instigating line in a world of surprises. All art is in a constant state of becoming.<br />
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In both art and writing, it seems, it is the line that draws me. My friend <a href="http://www.stenhouse.com/html/authorbios_304.htm" target="_blank">Tim Gillespie</a> once told me, "The muse follows the call of the moving pen..." or cursor. It surely does. And perhaps I am not even writing or drawing, rather pulling a thread from the web of meaning that surrounds us, and following it into possibility.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-12861384169395382692013-12-31T21:38:00.000-08:002013-12-31T21:38:07.423-08:00New Year's Eve 2013-2014<div class="MsoNormal">
Sufficient Moment<o:p></o:p></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyHx2pmuywkYNHpArsaeMvh41BnhCPYzd4HMrHy23q-y-mEH1YgLvQTkkVgSN8Cf4Iy70iQRpdbOGZ__NmWmJjNbb69iaUH8AL3dTQH-W7L4SJ2PzFuJADfOhcjFDHPwi5lv2GN16eBF6p/s1600/download.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyHx2pmuywkYNHpArsaeMvh41BnhCPYzd4HMrHy23q-y-mEH1YgLvQTkkVgSN8Cf4Iy70iQRpdbOGZ__NmWmJjNbb69iaUH8AL3dTQH-W7L4SJ2PzFuJADfOhcjFDHPwi5lv2GN16eBF6p/s1600/download.jpeg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Where we live</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Overhead the stars are quiet, </div>
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their heat a glow,</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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fire a distant promise.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I feel your eyes on my words tonight, <o:p></o:p></div>
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searching, searching.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Tarot cards are on the table. I know what I wish to see.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The night is full of it already: possibility.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Mary Chase</div>
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Dec. 31, 2013</div>
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<br /></div>
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Happy New Year!</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-5362779924383075962013-10-24T13:34:00.002-07:002013-10-25T10:59:33.251-07:00Adventures in Dreamtown<br />
<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy_4mUDxXvNMhLWKOgZpRTg7dTYcIBsXk0ms2cRgfhfzh0tQ1Ox6HRbLR0K6cAU-fnoytY1jtEQBJdG9xoUb18rWAmkvv7GCECy4-2bEtLQRBqVFN2KzyY2EHTYol6gQxcq_snTPrMYLSp/s1600/Klee_dream_city_1921_lg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhy_4mUDxXvNMhLWKOgZpRTg7dTYcIBsXk0ms2cRgfhfzh0tQ1Ox6HRbLR0K6cAU-fnoytY1jtEQBJdG9xoUb18rWAmkvv7GCECy4-2bEtLQRBqVFN2KzyY2EHTYol6gQxcq_snTPrMYLSp/s320/Klee_dream_city_1921_lg.jpg" width="210" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #a9a6c3; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px;"><a href="http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/paul-klee/dream-city-1921" target="_blank">Paul Klee Dream City 1921</a></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There's a town</span> </span>I visit in my dreams almost every night. It's the same every time I'm there--only the plot changes.<br />
<br />
I've come to know the neighborhoods, shopping malls, an enormous grocery store, the school, hospital, even a small casino. In homes, towels and mixing bowls spill from partially packed boxes and I never know if the residents are moving in or out. Some of these are houses I used to live in, but they are no longer my home. Wandering through the neighborhoods I used to know, I cut through back yards and living rooms, encountering children who run to find their parents. After all, I am sometimes in a hospital gown, dragging my drip IV behind me like a hobbyhorse.<br />
<br />
I'm often on my way to a hospital which I enter through a loading dock. I never really know if I'm there to visit or to have another surgery. I try to find out at the nurses' station, but it is always deserted, except for an old man smoking a cigarette. He has nothing to say. Sooner or later I encounter my mother who is strangely calm. She wanders off find someone to help me, much as she would to find a cup of coffee.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://iheartshabbychic.blogspot.com/2010_12_01_archive.html" target="_blank">Dream window</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDhMhIFLKhyphenhyphenJpOlcx51i8CXpAjAMwV2fseWM3tHj_7T6n-9ehDORuotR4HTlMd-WUn5ujqc7w0yuToMyXZ7ei2FJYXozS4AolkZyKabYinYUbD1p_CrCFVl57eiUmJvEU5rmDJC7vjrpoZ/s1600/walmart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="131" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDhMhIFLKhyphenhyphenJpOlcx51i8CXpAjAMwV2fseWM3tHj_7T6n-9ehDORuotR4HTlMd-WUn5ujqc7w0yuToMyXZ7ei2FJYXozS4AolkZyKabYinYUbD1p_CrCFVl57eiUmJvEU5rmDJC7vjrpoZ/s200/walmart.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://business.time.com/2013/08/07/meet-the-low-key-low-cost-grocery-chain-being-called-wal-marts-worst-nightmare/" target="_blank">Walmart-esque nightmare</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I shop at a mall where most of the stores are closed or understocked, but through the windows I sometimes see outlandish but beautiful clothing: tall hats made of silver fur, silks figured with scenes from a fairytale, whimsical crafts clicking with magic. When I open the door I am in a Walmart-esque nightmare.<br />
<br />
There are a few spots of brilliant beauty in Dreamtown, for example, a bare silver tree in whose branches a hundred yellow canaries wearing red pagoda-shaped hats trill Vivaldi. For the most part, though, the light is always dim and ramshackle buildings sway under matchstick scaffolding. Every street ends suddenly and my dreaming self asks endlessly, <i>What is this place? Why do I return here night after night?</i><br />
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Freud might say that the houses, which in women's dreams represent their bodies, demonstrate my unhappiness with the way my own aging corpus betrays me. Jung might identify the old man smoking as an archetypal gatekeeper or mentor who will remain silent until I unlock his tongue with the right sort of magic. In these dreams I trespass in homes no longer my own and in hospital wards marked DO NOT ENTER. According to <a href="http://www.dreammoods.com/" target="_blank">Dream Moods</a>, one of the most popular dream interpretation sites on the Internet, "To dream that you are trespassing suggests that you are forcing your beliefs on others." Perhaps. Readers? Students?<br />
<br />
Writing, we are <a href="http://www.willamette.edu/gse/owp/docs/TeachWritingasaProcessNotProduct.pdf" target="_blank">told</a>, is a process of discovery. I write this blog as a way of thinking, more than as a means of communication. And as I've written this particular post, I've remembered that, whatever else dreams may be -- portents, warped figments of the mind at rest, echoes of the deep, dark past -- they are always metaphors. But what does this one teach me? Perhaps that I know more as a dreamer than as a waking being. As a citizen of <i>HereAndNow</i>, I am so often frustrated, afraid and angry. I curse while I drive and as I read the newspaper. I worry about the prices of gold and gas. I continue to despise Karl Rove and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Heydrich" target="_blank">Reinhard Heydrich</a>.<br />
<br />
My Dreamtown may have emerged from unresolved fears and thwarted expectations, but oddly enough, I am never afraid there or angry, merely curious. So, is this series of nightly vignettes instructing me to meet what I encounter with curiosity? With acceptance? Not expectation or judgment? Will calm consideration dispel the threat of whatever I confront? Turn a bomb into a bubble or a serpent to a string of pearls?<br />
<br />
I don't know, but I suspect there is something to this lesson. I will try for now to unclench my mind from expectation and my heart from fear. I think that such a change can at least do no harm.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-15093487315975459132013-09-11T13:42:00.002-07:002015-09-11T03:09:05.193-07:009/11<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwjbnfhhTErP6yNhpel-3Q9k5FVCpav5p2_D69n0ZgW4Ji-tsyaglFIN2mE9VSymhhHr_f6xG5CmQA8C23h-W43cOUPnLfjymdpQh6Hik-lXJJA9dpYIBljCcPyOQfJyoNC2BAaaw4E5op/s1600/icarus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwjbnfhhTErP6yNhpel-3Q9k5FVCpav5p2_D69n0ZgW4Ji-tsyaglFIN2mE9VSymhhHr_f6xG5CmQA8C23h-W43cOUPnLfjymdpQh6Hik-lXJJA9dpYIBljCcPyOQfJyoNC2BAaaw4E5op/s1600/icarus.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Sylfaen","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sylfaen;">September the Eleventh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Sylfaen","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sylfaen;">If you, knowing what you know,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Sylfaen","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sylfaen;">Having read what you have read, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Sylfaen","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sylfaen;">All the tales you’ve heard<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Sylfaen","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sylfaen;">Should despite
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<span style="font-family: "Sylfaen","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sylfaen;">name your son <i>Icarus</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">,</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Sylfaen","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sylfaen;">You cannot feign surprise<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Sylfaen","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sylfaen;">When blood of your blood <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Sylfaen","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sylfaen;">reaching wide as a swan unfurled <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Sylfaen","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sylfaen;">The updraft buoys
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<span style="font-family: "Sylfaen","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sylfaen;">So, too, Daedalus treading the shore, brushing <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Sylfaen","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sylfaen;">feathers of ash<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
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<span style="font-family: "Sylfaen","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sylfaen;">Still thinks of cheating disaster.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Sylfaen","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Sylfaen;">Mary Chase<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-58557291937726503402013-08-24T16:04:00.002-07:002013-08-24T21:40:25.174-07:00Overcoming the Gruesome Legacy of English Composition<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like many in education, I have been plagued for some time by just how useless the whole endeavor seems to be -- and how <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/02/09/a-warning-to-college-profs-from-a-high-school-teacher/" target="_blank">meddling in education by non-educators </a>has made it even more lame, bored more students and made teachers' jobs even harder than ever (<i>viz</i>., the disproportional amount of time spent preparing for and taking standardized tests that focus only on what can be quantified--therefore multiple choice questions at the expense of descriptive/analytic responses). It's more than this, though. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It's sacred tradition as well. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I taught Writing 121 - Introduction to Composition this summer, trying once again to make it both interesting and useful. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The class</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, as you might suspect, is dedicated to the production on large scale of unreadable essays whose uniform badness exerts an intellectual lethargy on those who must write or read them. </span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhre7wQRB9HF5thzWeZoMzbpk14Amr2LYRBc2YirFnqjuHj6J28fcflwTDoclZR95kfNx-msjd0rrObcAyW73eSzgEtNmREHlZMNv8t0kOI4FJIH2XtT0OKXf9rp5TjKJ3TPTIjwYeKlwe/s1600/maidens.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhre7wQRB9HF5thzWeZoMzbpk14Amr2LYRBc2YirFnqjuHj6J28fcflwTDoclZR95kfNx-msjd0rrObcAyW73eSzgEtNmREHlZMNv8t0kOI4FJIH2XtT0OKXf9rp5TjKJ3TPTIjwYeKlwe/s320/maidens.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Half-wits will work for less.</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The essay as a form was invented in the 16th century by people who were no good at writing poetry. It did not reach its apex of unpopularity, however, until the late 19th century. Then it became the most ubiquitous and effective means of ensuring that students became disengaged from their educations and asked only the questions that would get them through the assignment. After all, who wants the world to be full of thinkers, when half-wits work for less?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In any case, the notion that emphasis on formal essay-writing is not only responsible, but also right and good, has become so fixed in the traditions of writing departments that debate is all but pointless. And as for students, is there any among you whose heart actually cried out with joy at the notion of outlining, creating a thesis statement, adding supporting details whether or not there were any to be had? If so, you were not among my charges who lined up obediently, if listlessly, for their dose of educational castor oil. They knew (because they'd been <i>told</i>) it was good for them, no matter how bad it tasted. Even when I allowed students to chose their own topics, write from experience and share with peers, the writing was lackluster more often than not. It was still something they had to do to get through my class on the way to some other goal.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHxGduo8Vcleh-8xSznO2E7kgBUsRqS_MZrwIz0HRFYM9ltV88OBZ1jOygspiIwEEm_cazG06DDNhuVV2YtieuwlAH5qUAHgWg4-pMZ3szTa4POemyazl5lkSFq2_Nyw8zg-pxLhxlD8U1/s1600/gorey-e-charlotte-sophie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHxGduo8Vcleh-8xSznO2E7kgBUsRqS_MZrwIz0HRFYM9ltV88OBZ1jOygspiIwEEm_cazG06DDNhuVV2YtieuwlAH5qUAHgWg4-pMZ3szTa4POemyazl5lkSFq2_Nyw8zg-pxLhxlD8U1/s400/gorey-e-charlotte-sophie.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">From <a href="http://www.goreystore.com/shop/books/edward-gorey-hapless-child-book" target="_blank"><i>The Hapless Child</i> </a>by Edward Gorey (with my textual addition)</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Age prompts us to be reflective and reconsider the various decisions we've made in life; for example, I used to require essays. Age also makes us less fearful -- we know where we're headed, so the threat of temporal consequences (losing my contract!) becomes less frightful than a sprinkling of gnats. Age has its benefits.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Taking advantage of the courage age bestows has brought about one of the most successful writing classes I've ever taught. How? By not requiring any </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essay" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">essays</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Students don't want to write them and I certainly do not want to read them. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what did my WR121 students doing instead? What they did instead was focus on research and reflect on what they'd found by keeping an online blog. "The blog," I told them at the beginning of the term, "has not yet defined itself as a form. We are pioneers, exploring a new, emerging genre. There is no length, except what your reader will bear. There is no formulaic way to begin or end. It is interactive. There is a real audience beyond the teacher." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And what were they to write about? <a href="http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3284" target="_blank">Donald Graves</a>, one of my dissertation advisors, was keen on allowing students to "pursue their obsessions". So I told students to write about whatever drove them, fascinated them, made them angry or confused. They were in charge of the topic and the form. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Graves' friend and colleague, </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Murray_(writer)" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank">Donald Murray</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">,</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> famously said, "We don't write with words. We write with information." So they would use the information they discovered as the raw material of thought.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I didn't know what would happen, but I knew that the writing could be no worse than what I had read over the years. I was floored, however, when I read the first posts:</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> it was some of the best student writing I'd ever seen. Topics were important and unexpected: government surveillance, NRA funding, child soldiers, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">art therapy, rape as a weapon of war... Gone was the awkward flailing about for topic and theme, the padded sentences and crippled logic so often prompted by the need to support a thesis or find accordance with format. Instead, their writing was tip of the pen (or cursor) excitement. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In some mysterious way, the requirements of the course combined</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to create a successful writing and <i>learning</i> experience. I have some notions as to why -- the discovery that their readers included not only me and their classmates, but perfect strangers who had stumbled across their blogs ("I have a reader from Russia!"); the luxury of deciding the content of their studies and the time to investigate it over weeks and weeks; the comfort of knowing no one was counting words, telling them how many paragraphs they needed, or even expecting them to arrive at a conclusion. Magic arises from the interaction between reading and writing, and from a marriage of investigation and reflection. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's a lot to consider about this pedagogical experiment. For instance:</span><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why did students think that this was one of the best writing classes they'd ever taken, when I didn't teach them about writing? Our discussions focused on where their research was leading them, which direction to follow, what new questions had emerged. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is this the kind of experience necessary to bring students to the point where a great piece</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> of writing could really be crafted? In the past I'd spent untold hours trying to help students revise writing not worthy of revision. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why have teachers become an unimportant, nearly invisible audience for their student writers? </span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">... and more.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'll try it again this fall with two more classes. I'll let you know what happens.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-82821149429589421002013-06-02T09:55:00.000-07:002013-06-04T15:05:41.328-07:00Since last I wrote<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's been a long time since I made an entry here. Several ideas have drifted by and faded into the collective morass of abandoned possibilities we call yesterday. Much has happened since last I wrote. To begin with, we have a new...</span><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pope</span></b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Pope's nose</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My family members have long been followers of all things Papal, beginning (in my experience at least) with Pope Pius XII. My memories of him coincide with my Protestant and highly anti-Catholic grandfather who always referred to the nether regions of a turkey as "the Pope's nose." This epithet made my parents uncomfortable and did little for my piety during formative years. It may, in part, explain my eventual separation from Holy Mother Church.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Consequent with my own life, a sequence of popes has reminded me that we never really left the Dark Ages. Jolly John XXIII wrought havoc with the Latin Mass. Dour Paul VI brought us back in line. The abbreviated reign of John Paul I prompted one of my favorite questions from a precocious child: <i>Pope dead again? </i>John Paul II was both flashy and saintly, a tough customer who looked the leader. (J-P I looked like a clerk). Benedict, our new Pope <i>emeritus</i>, looks guilty, as befits a former member of Hitler Youth. And Pope Francis? Interesting.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6YuijqyLeLLp5fL2VWWdkHo4F0qkG3bzRXOJ6IAJbmK3fj8lVQnrfXUACGQLPER_Ck6Y5yB3g7nERwuMI0yq8yxDHE1xX9nkDPPq3bwa2y5nmseOATRAVcuQEErnM8-5b70w7Pg6BEhpd/s1600/pope+slippers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6YuijqyLeLLp5fL2VWWdkHo4F0qkG3bzRXOJ6IAJbmK3fj8lVQnrfXUACGQLPER_Ck6Y5yB3g7nERwuMI0yq8yxDHE1xX9nkDPPq3bwa2y5nmseOATRAVcuQEErnM8-5b70w7Pg6BEhpd/s1600/pope+slippers.jpg" /></span></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wonder about Francis a lot. Will he miss the land of the tango? The sultry nights full of animal cries, barking dogs and sirens? Almost certainly he will miss his little apartment, anonymous rides on the bus, and perhaps even the <a href="http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/fw/crls.rxml" target="_blank">Coriolis Effect</a>. I picture him in his new digs, waiting impatiently for everyone to leave at the end of his first day so he could look in the closets and drawers. There he undoubtedly discovered his new papal duds-- all embroidered with the papal seal. Almost like going to parochial school and having to wear a uniform...hmmmm. I know he's conservative, but he is such a Bilbo Baggins type and has already offended fundamentalists that I have decided to like him, for now.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Observant readers will recall that I visited <a href="http://nulla-mary.blogspot.com/2012/10/surrealism-on-road.html" target="_blank">Brazil</a> last year so that my husband and I could attend to the business of his <a href="http://nulla-mary.blogspot.com/2012/08/reunion-in-rio.html" target="_blank">late mother</a>'s estate. The cargo ship wended its way through the Panama Canal and arrived in January. Since then I have been spending much of my time finding places for, researching and generally shifting around the contents of 181 boxes and 500 cubic feet of furniture. Now...</span><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I live in a museum!</span></b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrqUxdtWeM3C1MgfzliHpjKEvDq_DFG6Jp-BDkysIknLy3XXU8VC4zlbCMp3EiASxh9l3Df1dUJFAzI7LCWaBEbZaVUbU3IzEygNXZngz94Vbp7Be-egQC6doBlodlXc56NcnBgCzDzFxs/s1600/Display+cabinet+with+crystal+door.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrqUxdtWeM3C1MgfzliHpjKEvDq_DFG6Jp-BDkysIknLy3XXU8VC4zlbCMp3EiASxh9l3Df1dUJFAzI7LCWaBEbZaVUbU3IzEygNXZngz94Vbp7Be-egQC6doBlodlXc56NcnBgCzDzFxs/s400/Display+cabinet+with+crystal+door.JPG" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Display cabinet with portrait miniatures</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pitching a TV series on the life I live now would include the sell line: <i>Antiques Roadshow</i> meets <i>Hoarders</i>. Honestly, I cannot get from the kitchen to the living room without having to side-step stacks of engravings, rolled carpets, Victorian curiosities and even four enormous cupboards circa 1600. Jose comes from a family of diplomats who travelled all over and collected whatever they liked: portrait miniatures (what rich people had before photographs), china (there are no sets with fewer than 20 place-settings), hat pins, books, snuff boxes, figurines, and unidentifiable Hindu gods in bronze.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yamantaka? Anyone?</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is a delightful burden, but a burden nonetheless. At my best, I am a very bad organizer and very good procrastinator, a perilous combination. My housekeeping has always been "casual" and my tolerance for states of flux admirable. I need help. Help!</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Great-grandmother</span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, how do I survive? As ever: avoidance. Summer has brought the summer to-do list in the garden, but when I am avoiding that, I write instead.</span><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Writing</span></b></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/High-Spirits-at-Harroweby-ebook/dp/B00CLDLKY4/" target="_blank">High Spirits at Harroweby</a>,</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I began this blog to help me overcome writer's block so I could work on my novels. Lately, I've had blogger's block, so I've <i>had</i> to work on my novels. Ironic, isn't it?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wrote five romance novels in the 1990s, short Austen-esque comedies of manners set in Regency England. They went out of print, rights reverted, and I've finally gotten most of them up on Amazon. The interesting thing is that in the last 3 weeks they've sold better than they did in a traditional venue and I am finally earning something from them. Maybe I should abandon the mystery novel I've been working on and go back to the early 19th century. I have the furniture to go with it. </span></div>
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and Teaching Writing...</span></b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I thought I was taking this term off, but about a week ago I got a call asking if I could take over for a staff member diagnosed with cancer. I could and did, and it has been a wild ride taking over with five sessions left before the end of the term and 50 students who had not yet received a paper back from their instructor. She was too sick. I was left with about 300 pages of partially marked work and the assignments were badly at odds with anything I would have done. Different philosophies are necessary in schools, of course, but I wish there had been a closer match. We are all working hard, reaching up to touch the ground. Let's hope we all come out the other end enlightened in some way.</span><br />
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<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But overshadowing all of this...</span></b><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I write above about distractions from what has really been going on.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our darling Irish Wolfhound, Silver, passed away two weeks ago after walking a long declining path. He's been my best friend for eight years--smart, funny, charming and demanding. It broke our hearts to see this big strong boy weaken with pain, stop eating, and finally have to be lifted into the <a href="https://www.yellercab.com/" target="_blank">taxi-van</a> (I can't say enough about these good people) that took him to the vet. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #37404e; line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Where is my hero, my heart, my hound?<br />Where does he prance, my bright pawed darling?<br />In the fields where rabbits run, and roses are always blooming.</span></span></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was prepared for Silver's dying, but not for his being gone. It's one thing to see the end of his suffering. As a student reminded me, putting a pet down is the final act of love. But Silver started and ended our days. He woke us in the morning, alerted us to strangers, oversaw cooking and eating, and, peeking around corners, grinned at us from doorways when he wanted a treat. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I look for him everywhere, but all I can see is absence, in the shape of a dog. </span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-2064995937080317232013-02-11T16:46:00.001-08:002013-02-19T11:57:45.930-08:00The Heartache and Privilege of Teaching WritingI learned again this week why I am teaching writing at a community college. It isn't about semicolons.<br />
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Community colleges are strange places, or such has been my experience. I am a part-timer here, as are most English instructors. Budgetary constraints being what they are, I share a desk with seven others, each of us holding our office hours there for two hours per teaching day, and then moving on so someone else can have the desk. Sometimes I see another instructor in passing, but I know the receptionist far better than anyone else in the department. Still, I am bonded to the place. Why? My students.<br />
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Students at CCs are often those who have not prospered in traditional educational settings, but find they must pursue an education -- or at least a certificate -- in this degree-glutted job market. Many students are ADHD, suffer from depression or bipolar disorder, fall somewhere within the autism spectrum or are recovering from the ravages of a misspent youth. There are also ESL students, this term Chinese, Russian, Korean, Viet Namese, and African: halfway across the world from what they know, strangers in a strange land.<br />
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Combine these hurdles with the fact that community, despite the "community college" moniker, is as scarce for students as it is for instructors. I teach on one of several campuses connected by a shuttle system. Students migrate around the city in search of credit fulfillment as no one campus meets all their needs. Whatever bonds they might form in the classroom grow small on the horizon as they embark on the journey to another campus and further isolation.<br />
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When we teach writing authentically (that is, allowing students to write about and explore issues of personal importance) we often end up as one of the few in their circle whom they trust, in whom they can confide. By the end of the first month of the quarter, the vortex of emotion swirls about me and most students who approach me do so to confide.<br />
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On my way to class on Wednesday, a student came up to me and said he wouldn't be there because he was getting the flu, but he wanted to check before he left campus to see if his idea for a paper was all right. "I'm going to write about addiction," he said. I asked if he had narrowed his topic. "Well, it's really about <i>my</i> addiction. I'm an addict."<br />
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Later, as we were brainstorming topics for the paper, one of the very quiet ones approached me and said, "I want to write 'Leaves of Grass' -- my version of it. Can I write a poem for the first paper?" I had told them to write what needed to be written. Could I say no? No. "Just let me know how it's going," I told him. "You can change if you want." Another told me, "I want to write about the last time I saw my father." <br />
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At the end of that class, one of my African students came up to apologize for missing class. She had written to me two weeks earlier about a vague family emergency. I asked her if everything was all right and the tears started to roll down her cheeks. "My uncle was missing," she told me. "We didn't know where he was. In my country it is not the same as here. He was politically active and now we have learned that he was kidnapped and tortured. We learned they cut his head off. Now my father wants to go back to Africa and I am trying to stop him. I don't know what to do."<br />
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My head and heart were spinning. There was no response, no words, no frame of reference. All I could do was try to be of comfort. <br />
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I have reached an age where I am trying to fulfill my job on earth, not necessarily the one I've been contracted to do. If I am to be a teacher, what is my curriculum? Not, anymore, finding and correcting errors, or binding student thought with rigid parameters for expression. No. I think my job is to help my students tell their stories and to listen in the way the story requires, to create a space where ideas can open onto paths that lead to right action, where the first response is thoughtful rather than angry.<br />
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I don't know what my African student will write, whether she will take on this recent horror, or soothe it by exploring something else. Regardless, it will be shared in a safe space by those whose job it is to listen. The semicolon will take care of itself.<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-9709379478188312232012-12-23T12:36:00.000-08:002012-12-29T12:00:52.142-08:00Nostalgia is the luxury of survival<div style="text-align: right;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZiA-zRVqmIALZbBkRlJa7yCS8FFRN99qwIUDXitjGD8naGAm9qEhOO88PXY4dt8i76VlMAO0KWt_0oOmG-zaM5MINlYmSJovzJqgqjQosUz-_6E15Xd_x6dfb3UnGun1OxNyeGmsk4gsX/s1600/sears+roebuck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZiA-zRVqmIALZbBkRlJa7yCS8FFRN99qwIUDXitjGD8naGAm9qEhOO88PXY4dt8i76VlMAO0KWt_0oOmG-zaM5MINlYmSJovzJqgqjQosUz-_6E15Xd_x6dfb3UnGun1OxNyeGmsk4gsX/s200/sears+roebuck.jpg" width="148" /></a>When I was a child, one of the highlights of the pre-holiday season was the arrival of the Sears Christmas Catalog. The cover, usually a family enjoying the aftermath of gift-opening frenzy or a pair of alert Nordic-looking children on the watch for Santa Claus, was itself entrancing. But the contents, page after page of toys and velvet dresses, prompted a consumerist rush and glut of possibility. Look at everything I could have! Dolls, play houses, my own girl-sized vanity! My siblings and I would pore over the pages, picking what we liked best and eying the packages under the tree in hopes of spotting a match.<br />
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This sort of reminiscence usually propels me into a self-indulgent glow of reconstructed memories, featuring more what might-have-been than what was. This year, however, neither visions of sugar plums nor the gradual appearance of holiday lighting in the neighborhood summons the magic. I am just too sad. We all know about the 20 children who won't be able to build more memories, and the families for whom Christmas will forever be a different kind of anniversary.<br />
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Last week's slaughter of innocents in Connecticut lays heavy in the air and in my heart. I know I'm not alone in imagining their trees decorated, but unlit. Gifts wrapped for those who will never receive them. They may be gone, but their faces are familiar. I see them on every street, in every grocery line, on every playground I drive by.<br />
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Nostalgia is a luxury not everyone can afford. It's a reward for surviving, or at least reinventing, the past. But this is isn't quite what I'm experiencing. The Portuguese have a word for it, <i>saudade</i>. It's like nostalgia, but it also encompasses emptiness and longing for something that should be there, but is missing. It's a feeling of loss for something we may never had had, but yearn for all the same. <br />
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Most of us have lived through -- or at least lived past -- incidents of rage and violence, but when children are the victims we remember again that our world is sick. Worse than that, we know that it was bound to happen. Americans--not even 5% of the world's population-- own half the guns. Sooner or later they will fall into the hands of people who'll use them to blaze a trail of sorrow.<br />
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We can say what we like about too many guns, lack of regulation, poor funding for mental health. The fact is, however, that fear and violence are in the air we breathe in this country. Our games, our recreational media, our fictions abound with mayhem.<br />
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I know nice people who own guns and use them to hunt and target-shoot. I know others who want to protect their property. I also know if they God appeared to them in a glowing cloud and asked if they would give up their guns in exchange for the life of even one of these children, they'd do it in a heartbeat. But that's what it would take -- a divine intervention.<br />
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People ask why God allows such horrendous episodes as the one at Sandy Hook Elementary. Maybe it's not divine oversight or callousness. Maybe it's a message, a warning as to the people of the Old Testament: Forsake this idol you have made of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution" target="_blank">Second Amendment</a>.<br />
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When I was a child, we'd go on drives in the country looking for old cemeteries, one of my mother's hobbies. Among the slanting stones we'd see little marble lambs, memorials for children who had succumbed to typhus, diphtheria, long winters. Lonely, abandoned lambs brought tears to my eyes then and now. I picture twenty of them in Connecticut. I never knew them. But I miss them. <i>Saudade.</i><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-74374352692879939642012-12-02T12:40:00.000-08:002012-12-23T12:43:35.614-08:00When paths converge, events are summoned<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxN34J8P6fzxNMdbBHWhIwu6C3b0iaM9z7NbJxdPtoFmGOtYeXf8SVZ1VtEjKWKk0fZJIAkxBktPdT2srsrBCi8-HTvt12ig4b2DUw06_KepiYT0NhYNGyJwNHoL1zVGyrRhSKhHJL3GvD/s1600/VintageWomanOnPhone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxN34J8P6fzxNMdbBHWhIwu6C3b0iaM9z7NbJxdPtoFmGOtYeXf8SVZ1VtEjKWKk0fZJIAkxBktPdT2srsrBCi8-HTvt12ig4b2DUw06_KepiYT0NhYNGyJwNHoL1zVGyrRhSKhHJL3GvD/s200/VintageWomanOnPhone.jpg" width="200" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As we all know, life is very strange. For the last several weeks, I've been teaching writing for the first time in 20 years (hence, the dearth of blog entries). It was an odd circumstance that brought me back to the whiteboard jungle. I had been home from Brazil for less than a day, still jet-lagged and wobbly, when I received a call from someone at the local community college.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Voice: Hello! Is this Mary Chase?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I assured her it was.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Voice: Is there any chance you could teach a writing class on Monday?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Me: Silence.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Voice: I found your resume at the bottom of a pile. It looks like you're a fit and I am desperate.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><i>How compelling, </i>I think. <i>I have floated up from the bottom of the barrel and attracted attention like a floater across an eyeball. I must know more about this.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Me: Can I have some details?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Voice: Blah, blah, blah.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Step onto the path that opens before you," I always say. Do I mean it? Well, I had been missing teaching and, possibly because of the caller's informality and desperation, I accepted a one-term, one class offer to teach Writing 121, whatever that was. I had to drive over to the campus and sign a contract that same day. No one I could find knew what the position paid or what the content was supposed to be other than "English Composition". The department secretary, after assigning me to Desk 7 for office hours twice a week, suggested that I look through a binder of old syllabi to see how others had taught in the past.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Informality is a kind of license and I am sufficiently advanced in age and resolution to ignore the syllabi of others. We learn how to write by writing, so write we would. That was the syllabus. As I drove home, I recalled my former students tearing the tracker tape from the edges of their papers before turning them in, and my taking home piles of essays and journals to comment on. This time, I wouldn't have to see physical papers at all. This time we wouldn't even do essays. This time we would blog, and explore this interesting, emerging form.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8WzNNnTK3m2Ntuu9yGrqnF5W45pPSkjEM-Icl4Wm4aHNhFhaTT_zzQnpf9OZcx1KVy2oR_VWn2SB07K8CI_ssnCycMezyZC7Yb9r2CiFqtELeDQbHohQ0Kf8csMHV4AjQYl7q7yd-WjXE/s1600/computerlab.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8WzNNnTK3m2Ntuu9yGrqnF5W45pPSkjEM-Icl4Wm4aHNhFhaTT_zzQnpf9OZcx1KVy2oR_VWn2SB07K8CI_ssnCycMezyZC7Yb9r2CiFqtELeDQbHohQ0Kf8csMHV4AjQYl7q7yd-WjXE/s320/computerlab.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">All went well, and my students seemed happy enough, embraced the informality of the assignment and my calm (some would say comatose) demeanor. They were mixed crew, typical of community colleges across the nation, veterans returning from the Middle East, the unemployed benefitting from ARRA and TARP funds, recent high school graduates and the requisite "old guy," a nice fellow about 15 years younger than I. We did the usual writing process approach, starting with brainstorming, quick writes, absurd topics supplied by me when all else failed (<i>If you could have a tail, what kind would it be?</i>). And then we were off.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Over the next few weeks, students explored topics that affected their lives--finding distance from selfish father, embracing Christianity, exploring Wicca, the loneliness of life after high school, what it means to be generous. Then one day, on my way to Desk 7, I finally met the voice from the phone, the department chair as it turned out. She asked how class was going, and I said, "Great! We're blogging."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Her face froze. "The purpose of Writing 121 is to teach the academic essay and ensure that students know how to use the MLA citation form."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Really?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"Yes. This is our mandate from the college. If students come into their other classes without knowing this, there will be questions."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw-zqjZEfEDDMBcyR8kLNyHUbFcVsFNzzruI7JpvOU20cM2yFy5_9NmnBGvWCuFmoSLwpFlN3A9CXKKmlFNXmCbAYt7arzOFd91cQJtOBEvLUn0SccsZxHy0ABFQMr22sGZnOBCTUUO5HY/s1600/stoners-jughead-is-the-man-demotivational-poster-1273392683.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw-zqjZEfEDDMBcyR8kLNyHUbFcVsFNzzruI7JpvOU20cM2yFy5_9NmnBGvWCuFmoSLwpFlN3A9CXKKmlFNXmCbAYt7arzOFd91cQJtOBEvLUn0SccsZxHy0ABFQMr22sGZnOBCTUUO5HY/s320/stoners-jughead-is-the-man-demotivational-poster-1273392683.jpg" width="320" /></a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hmmm. That sounded ominous. And unlikely.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"I taught high school for years," I told her. "I know these students have all had a brush with the academic essay and some kind of citation system -- MLA, APA, Chicago Style--"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"The students we have here are not the students you taught."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">At times like this, I fall back on the words of my late and sainted mentor, <a href="http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3284" target="_blank">Don Graves</a>. Don was a great one for asking the questions that stopped conversations and made us all rethink what we were doing. However, he use to tell us that the two most important questions we could ask were: What's it for? and Does it make sense? "What's education for?" Don would ask. "It's an important question, because what it's for has everything to do with what we're for."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So, what was this course for? According the department chair, it was for learning the academic essay. Did that make sense? When was the last time you saw a job opening for an essayist, let alone an academic essayist? So, no. It didn't make sense. In my class, most students were at the point of writing what they really needed to write -- writing <i>for</i> exorcism. Writing <i>for </i>therapy. Writing <i>for </i>finding possibility. To me, what writing was for in my class made sense. (As for the MLA, there are <a href="http://www.easybib.com/" target="_blank">resources</a> online. Memorizing a style sheet makes about as much sense as memorizing the Periodic Table of Elements. You can look it up.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Last month<b> </b>I was in Las Vegas, that city of sin, Shriners' conventions and now academic conferences. Oddly enough, I was attending the annual conference of the National Council of Teachers of English, and presenting as part of a panel on the life and work of Don Graves. Don was important to me, to teachers of English and to the world. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">He was a great and kind man, sweet and unassuming with a mind like razor wire. A friend of mine has described Don as "Che Guevera disguised as Mr. Rogers."</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The first time I heard him speak he was focusing on the horrors of dittoed hand-outs in lieu of real writing. "We've put kids on a writing welfare system," he said. "Anytime they need something we give them a hand-out. They need an idea, we give them a hand-out. They need structure, we give them a hand-out. We make them dependent on this system of hand-outs. We've made education a welfare system where students are never responsible for anything. We do so at our great peril."</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The day of the presentation I still didn't know what I would say. Then, as I sat in my room that morning checking in on my students' blogs, I came across one that demonstrated why having had Graves in my life affected the lives of others. As I faced the audience that day, I told them about my recent return to teaching, using blogs instead of essays, about my class and about the writing: the unleashing of story and experience as powerful as a major meteorological event. I told them about the blog I'd read that morning, about the student who had had to tell the love of his life that he had AIDS.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Among the myriad connections we make in life, what seems accidental may be <i>fated</i>, capital F or small. I worked with Graves, who taught me to think beyond syllabi and ask simple questions. Later, as a teacher, I crossed paths with students who needed to be healed--and the cure was inside them if only they had permission to find it.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-1071347244044001372012-10-29T00:34:00.000-07:002012-10-29T09:36:13.612-07:00Thoughts on the veil between worlds <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Harvest time extends its withered leavings and winter wolves are at the door. If, from the corner of your heart, you sense a different, colder light, you're not alone. It's almost <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samhain" target="_blank">Samhain</a>, All Hallow's Eve, Dead Time. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLT0HOhQ9UsJ-Hw47GILLLVmxo-3C6-DwvYNHSpPkJA7jecjDsgKLE1q6yBTeocxecnUPMYsgp-V9lRMt9Y_X0K-vjHXRhBKlD2hmWoHv2r-Or4sJaaQunFH739lqUnxSDsK6lhHaRg_Zx/s1600/Eerie_moon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLT0HOhQ9UsJ-Hw47GILLLVmxo-3C6-DwvYNHSpPkJA7jecjDsgKLE1q6yBTeocxecnUPMYsgp-V9lRMt9Y_X0K-vjHXRhBKlD2hmWoHv2r-Or4sJaaQunFH739lqUnxSDsK6lhHaRg_Zx/s320/Eerie_moon.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Most cultures seem to mark -- through ritual or celebration-- the hour when the world of the dead encroaches on the living world. Bears lumber past the shades of mastodons as they seek their caves. Bees slump into deathlike slumber and our human bones dance a lively jig beneath our slack skin.<br />
<br />
What do we do when we sense this sepulchral nearness? Stoke the flames and seek the fire's warmth? Mock the spirits with our seasonal disguises? Read more into the black cat's glass-green gaze than the cat ever intended? Yes. But more than that, we revel -- leap around the fire, paint our faces white and tell the tales that curdle blood, for that blood still runs. We are still alive.<br />
<br />
Those we've loved and lost inch closer now, but we have not yet joined them. No matter that we die a little more each day, we also breathe, "Not yet, not yet."<br />
<br />
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<blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><i>Ubi Sunt </i>motif </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 63.5pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-text-raise: -7.0pt;">H<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">ere in the year of fathers passing</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">in the month sweet-all must fade</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">dim days drain down their measured courses</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">and the birds rise up like leaves</span></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<div style="font: 16.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">When in the land that is always shadow</span></div>
<div style="font: 16.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Last moments rise and fade</span></div>
<div style="font: 16.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Bones rattle bleak in the windfall nightscape</span></div>
<div style="font: 16.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">While the darkling sun dreams the east </span></div>
<div style="font: 16.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font: 16.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">From the light when birds sing <i>sursum corda </i></span></div>
<div style="font: 16.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> Till we dance in the yew-tree night </span></div>
<div style="font: 16.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">With brothers still and silent sisters</span></div>
<div style="font: 16.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">We will dream of our mother's bony arms</span></div>
<div style="font: 16.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 19.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;"> Mary Chase</span> </span></blockquote>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Times;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2598179801234420202#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title="">[1]</a></span></span></span></span> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><i>Ubi sunt</i> motif</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> (Latin, "Where are....?"): A literary </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: blue; font-family: "Times New Roman";">motif</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> dealing with the transience of life. The name comes from a longer
Latin phrase, "Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerent?" [Where are those who
were before us?], a phrase that begins several medieval poems in Latin.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2598179801234420202#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Times;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a> <i><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Sursum corda</b> </i>(Latin: "Lift up your
hearts"); part of the Catholic mass.</span></blockquote>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-22317375741038909472012-10-19T15:48:00.000-07:002013-12-19T06:38:40.816-08:00Surrealism on the Road<blockquote>
<i>I'm in a car with two men. They are arguing loudly in a language I don't know. I can decode some of the words, but not enough find meaning, and I am awash in their anger. Their voices rise as their shouts overlap, but suddenly they dissolve in laughter. It makes no sense. One of the men is my husband.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEEg1-ZW9K5dppSIlu_j3fY_Uf7a91Dqcfo_D1fAHn3sULxMWnfffKENhjLkelk0Lyo3QIjUsEZ-JjGkm0WbZ8JzPiWjdt1uzwFDe0oUSMQBwnuonwq0s0aIunIA_Qsyf_v14a_Za1iYcs/s1600/jungle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><i style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEEg1-ZW9K5dppSIlu_j3fY_Uf7a91Dqcfo_D1fAHn3sULxMWnfffKENhjLkelk0Lyo3QIjUsEZ-JjGkm0WbZ8JzPiWjdt1uzwFDe0oUSMQBwnuonwq0s0aIunIA_Qsyf_v14a_Za1iYcs/s320/jungle.jpg" width="320" /></i></a><i>We are in a strange city, too, surrounded by mountains. We head into the hills and begin to drive up a steep road, mottled with green and gold light. The foliage is foreign, dense, vines dropping down from branches, taking root in the ground and rising up to become swift growing trees. All are broad-leafed, no firs or pines. Some have enormous brown fruit </i><i>the size of watermelons </i><i>growing out of the trunks, like warts on an elephant.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>The car's engine keeps dying and the driver laughs, glancing back at me with a mischievous smirk, as he tries to restart the car. The car whines, then dies again, wheezes and then clicks on. We charge up the hill with a puff of blue smoke. It's then I see people emerging from among the trees. Their eyes are soft and dangerous. We should not be here.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>At a sudden turn in the road, a crowd has gathered. The driver screeches to a halt, the engine dies, and he gestures for me to get out of the car and see what they are looking at. I don't want to, but I skirt the edges of the gathering and see that a three-toed sloth is crossing the road. Everyone pulls out cameras, and I do too, even though I'm nervous to be outside the car</i>.</blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnp855hoyhl42kjJyfH0XABABc87ppXoYJDg4jODQHiZlH0CuBT_ljRzHpXPE3a12CV4RigtBf2thUyQF6OlrYJpXwzFxo31EL87WjxpTrGx6lUwSOO3xYDXtfk8wxbKLOjKmWKoqhnLiR/s1600/crash+sloth.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><i><img border="0" height="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnp855hoyhl42kjJyfH0XABABc87ppXoYJDg4jODQHiZlH0CuBT_ljRzHpXPE3a12CV4RigtBf2thUyQF6OlrYJpXwzFxo31EL87WjxpTrGx6lUwSOO3xYDXtfk8wxbKLOjKmWKoqhnLiR/s320/crash+sloth.tiff" width="320" /></i></a><i>The sloth has a face like a smiling coconut, but its claws longer than my fingers. This is his road, and he takes the time he needs to drag himself from one ditch to the other, arm over slow arm. I am mesmerized. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>Suddenly, whispers of "Autoridades, autoridades!" ripple through the crowd. Even I can tell that the cavalry has arrived. I see their uniforms: park rangers? But they carry AK-47s. I hurry back to the car and slide into the back seat. "Is it safe to be here?" I ask my husband. "What do you think?" he answers. "You saw the rangers. Imagine what the tourists are carrying."</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote>
<i>We continue to drive. The road slants almost straight up like a kid's drawing of a mountain. Just before we reach the top, the car dies again. My husband yells at the driver who gets out slowly and looks under the hood. I can see eyes in the trees and figures shifting among the branches. The hood slams down and we start again, gaining the crest and starting down to where the road ends at a Pagoda-like building with dragon heads at every corner. It is stunning against the blue sky. Below, islands float on the turquoise water. One of the islands is shaped like a whale.</i> . .</blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This isn't a dream. It's a memory. Much of what I experienced during my recent visit to Brazil retains a dreamlike quality.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Part of this is the fault of technology -- or rather, the lack of it. We stayed in the apartment of my late mother-in-law, Dona Roberta. It was elegant, enormous (only two apartments per floor, each with its own elevator) and airy. But there was no television. That was fine, for the most part. However, the third day of our stay, my laptop died. No mail, no blogs, no Facebook, no solitaire! Then I found that my Kindle wouldn't connect from the below the equator. There were thousands of books but all in Portuguese, except for a copy of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Novel-American-Chronicle-Series/dp/0375708766/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350665459&sr=8-1&keywords=lincoln+gore+vidal" target="_blank">Lincoln</a>, by Gore Vidal, and, thankfully, over 800 pages. It was my link with the English language.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiepJDzotvh2jO0kQKLRIu9-skvqeKK9Ifn8QJub02iY2Klbm2YTGOYb93UWKe9VPmQzQzAKVHcMvwyPl7QptQsOuRYFDUgK0MXou-MGDTTgw88pD553SXUhxBihiia6XTumwmNUywqy9kQ/s1600/Christ-the-Redeemer-and-Sugar-Loaf-Mountain-by-Senthikumar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiepJDzotvh2jO0kQKLRIu9-skvqeKK9Ifn8QJub02iY2Klbm2YTGOYb93UWKe9VPmQzQzAKVHcMvwyPl7QptQsOuRYFDUgK0MXou-MGDTTgw88pD553SXUhxBihiia6XTumwmNUywqy9kQ/s320/Christ-the-Redeemer-and-Sugar-Loaf-Mountain-by-Senthikumar.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Much of our concept of the world rests in language, and therefore, our self-concepts and those of people we encounter. Most of the lovely people I met spoke some English, but only a few conversations went deeper than pleasantries. My shallow understanding of the world where I was a temporary inhabitant was both crippling and revealing. I paid more attention to what I saw than what I heard.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Brazil was nothing like I expected. I pictured bright colors and laughter, sounds of the samba, rare birds dropping like jewels from the sky, monkeys in every tree, buildings from the Colonial era, gilt-edged and crumbling. There was some of that, but everywhere interspersed I saw the tired clothing and faces of people who worked hard every day-- harder than I ever have -- and whom only the night brings alive with a sort of desperate hysteria. I'd also expected danger, and had been warned by everyone to look as if I had nothing to take. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px;">I</span> knew that Brazil was a country where the gap between rich and poor was not only enormous, but I also learned that it was clearly visible to everyone. In the U.S., poverty, like racism, is less obvious and, somehow, less honest. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From the windows of the apartment I could see both Sugarloaf and the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer. There was also a view of Santa Marta, a<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favela" target="_blank"> <i>favela</i></a><i> </i>that cascaded down the mountain like a waterfall of displaced humanity. I first came across the word when I read Robert Coles', <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Life-Children-Robert-Coles/dp/0871137704/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1350672107&sr=8-6&keywords=robert+coles%2C+the+moral+life+of+children" target="_blank"><i>The Moral Life of Children</i></a>. He calls the <i>favelas </i>"a collective tragedy" (p.96). And, indeed, the tragedy of <i>favelas</i> seems to be public property in Brazil. There's no escaping them. Turn away from the ocean a moment, and the view becomes the mountains with their rivers of poverty. The poor look down on the rich and make their way down each day to eke out their livings from industriousness or crime. The cocaine trade makes its home in the <i>favelas</i>. Drug lords rule and shootouts are common. Children, though vulnerable to the ills that accompany poverty, are dangerous as well. It is a part of their survival.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYyN3b1i142I4lPobRee4cbn5IY4-5VqTBhZCIVOWGzLaz4DrDyoGUF736-KQN1Vvstm_kmuckQwPO6RD95hlVuVmeranztBgl50PK8fSUT-DZ6ChZMd0eHQuyfC-WuQp4PKyY1x6Nv9q2/s1600/Santa+Marta+close.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYyN3b1i142I4lPobRee4cbn5IY4-5VqTBhZCIVOWGzLaz4DrDyoGUF736-KQN1Vvstm_kmuckQwPO6RD95hlVuVmeranztBgl50PK8fSUT-DZ6ChZMd0eHQuyfC-WuQp4PKyY1x6Nv9q2/s320/Santa+Marta+close.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Rio, the rich prefer to live within walking distance of Ipanema and Copacaba beaches. The poor have the view property. These <i>favela</i> neighborhoods grew up, building by building and shack by shack, on the steep hillsides surrounding cities so that those who worked in the cities were close to their employment. There were no roads, and, until recently, little access to power and water.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From the window of the apartment one night, we looked through a pair of opera glasses we had found at the beginnings of a fire on the rooftops of Santa Marta. My husband told me it would simply burn because, without roads, no help could get to them. We watched as the flames leapt from one dwelling to another, the night-time silence uninterrupted by sirens. Against the glare of the flames, however, we could see help coming. The denizens of Santa Marta came with buckets and pumps to fight the fire and, by morning, only a black scar remained. What seemed a lost cause was rescued by community with deep ties and mutual responsibilities.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't understand Brazil -- but I don't understand my own country either. Experience continues to teach me this, but so did the book I read on my trip: <i>Lincoln</i>. The story in my head of the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation was pure and generous, but the facts -- moral pragmatism, cronyism, corruption, politics as usual -- tempered my vision of my homeland, as well as the one I was visiting.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even as I write, I know I'm making a fiction of experience. Putting images and impressions into words skews them past recognition. A trip up the side of a mountain becomes a surreal nightmare, while visions of a city become code for both fate and possibility. Always, truth runs faster than I can chase it, fleeting and ephemeral as dreams.</span><br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-51267793072019661412012-08-25T16:19:00.002-07:002020-06-30T10:06:03.981-07:00Reunion in RioI have been neglecting this blog lately, partially because summer leaves me so uninspired -- I prefer the cold and gloom for blogging. In fact, the word <i>blog</i> might even be an etymological offspring of blustery+fog (except that we all know it's short for weblog). So, what's up with me? Oh, not much. Just flying down to Rio de Janeiro tomorrow morning.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihU7I88L2KVJXEifRmv-miH5fOvdNVCSWtqvh2w2p3VQAdU63JTd5tfJ9axPDJ5P3_eIezmoGa4GiQs_2k4Ts1-Fp8k2WBSEBBRC1Sk3D-ZmZHkGaYhr3DcUFG4EfIanJVQf9gpSIwpsxp/s1600/rio+wing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihU7I88L2KVJXEifRmv-miH5fOvdNVCSWtqvh2w2p3VQAdU63JTd5tfJ9axPDJ5P3_eIezmoGa4GiQs_2k4Ts1-Fp8k2WBSEBBRC1Sk3D-ZmZHkGaYhr3DcUFG4EfIanJVQf9gpSIwpsxp/s1600/rio+wing.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In Rio, everyone <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6xzyVY7EfU" target="_blank">dances on the wings</a>!</td></tr>
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Rio! Yes! The one in South America! The Rio that inspired that satisfyingly silly 1933 film I watch whenever it's on Turner: <i>Flying Down to Rio</i>. According to the film, which stars Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and, of course, Dolores del Rio (after all, Mexicans are almost the same as Brazilians), Rio is all about dancing and flirting and parodying the local culture. They dance all over the place, including the wings of a plane. This is the film that brought us that catchy tune, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0BVV-auHN0&feature=related" target="_blank">"The Carioca "</a>-- which will be running my head until I get back from Rio. <br />
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Rio de Janeiro. I might just as well be going to the moon.<br />
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I have never been to Brazil before, but I have been headed there for fifteen years. My husband, Jose, is Brazilian, and even though I've been eating Brazilian food, listening to one-sided telephone conversations in Portuguese and interacting with Brazilian guests for that long, life interfered as it so often does and I was never well enough or had time enough to go with him. I've built mental pictures, of course, some spawned by bad movies, <i>Blame It on Rio</i>, Jose's stories of working with early <i>bossa nova</i> artists (Gilberto Gil, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B4nio_Carlos_Jobim" target="_blank">Antônio Carlos Jobim,</a> João Gilberto), good movies about the crime that arises out of poverty (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317248/" target="_blank">City of God</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0140888/" target="_blank">Central Station)</a> the entrancing and frightening practices of the voodoo-like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candomble" target="_blank">candombl<b>é.</b></a> More than that, though, my conception of Brazil springs from the stories of Dona Roberta.<br />
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Jose's mother was born at an interesting time (only 40 years after slavery ended in Brazil and echoes of the old empire were still reverberating) into an interesting family (all diplomats except for my black sheep husband, who is an audio engineer). She grew up on an estate when that meant having a chauffeur, butler, nanny and gardeners. From her bedroom window she could see the laundresses, former slaves and the daughters of slaves, coming up from the riverside, back from where everything had been washed by hand and spread to dry. They carried the baskets on their heads, the linens heaped with jasmine blossoms. "Ah, it was so fragrant!" she said. <br />
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When she was a girl, the family followed her father to his various diplomatic assignments in the Netherlands, Portugal, and finally Italy where he was the ambassador. She remembered disembarking the ship and standing with her parents on the dock as their trunks and other luggage was piled about them. Among these were four cages full of canaries her father loved, and she would blush with embarrassment as he took out his flute and played to make them sing. Then the delegation would arrive, her parents would leave, and she and her brothers would have to wait with the luggage. "So annoying! And all those canaries!"<br />
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While living in Europe, her father sent the children to English schools so they could learn another language and told them they had better be perfect. "You are Brazilians," he said, "and no one expects so much of us. Surprise them!"<br />
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When I met Roberta (she had come to Portland to visit her son ... and see who this American woman was) she was 84 and still spoke English beautifully -- as well as French, Italian and Spanish. And she told me stories -- simple stories, but with details that made them memorable. Despite her privileged upbringing, her life was not happy. She met Jose's father on the beach at Copacabana. "He was blond," she said. "That was so unusual and exotic to me. And he had green eyes, green like the sea. Our families knew each other -- yes, they were diplomatic corps too -- and soon enough we decided to marry."<br />
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It should have been a marriage made in heaven. When she came down the stairs to greet him before the wedding, "... he stood back and clasped his hands and said, 'Ah, I am marrying a princess!'" They were married in the most beautiful church in Brazil, the wedding witnessed by the most important people in the country. The next evening, he went out with friends and did not come back for two days. "I was frantic," she said. "I had no idea what to think or what to do." Can you imagine?<br />
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When he returned, he all he had to say was, "I have decided not to be married." He left and she never saw him again. As luck would have it, though, she was pregnant. She heard from him one more time after she wrote to tell him he had a son. He sent a telegram. "It is better for the child to be with you. You will make him a man. You are strong and I am not."<br />
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And so, Dona Roberta was left to raise the baby on her own. She named him Jose Augusto (all the men in her family are given the first name Jose because their sugar plantation was saved from a devastating fire on St. Joseph's Day). Divorce was not yet legal in Brazil and her father forbade her to work, so she went to live with her parents again. She and little Jose traveled with them to Europe and her life was subsumed into theirs once more. It must have been odd, uncomfortable and so humiliating. But she was strong. When her father died, she found a job doing social work and took no more money from the family.<br />
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She worked, studied art history, wrote stories for magazines, and for the newspaper. She was courted by the poet, de Paiva, and even after Jose's father died, she refused to marry him until her son was grown and out of the house. "I didn't want any stranger to tell him what to do," she said. When she married the poet, though, it was a miserable life. He put a stop to her writing. "One writer in the family is enough," he told her. Jealous? Clearly. "I was so happy when my mother became ill," she told me. "Well, after all, she and I had never gotten on, but now I was able to tell de Paiva, 'I am sorry, but I must go to my mother. It is my duty.' And off I went."<br />
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"What became of the poet?" I asked. "Oh...eventually he died. I was not so fond of him after all."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO-7PBQPelyctfi8wfPP2WjnHt8oeryjtIigmraFmP6zkOfLFVwvI5wQUzNMX0q_nx8Q8U5laIfQASF38oa5bEo_t6VPmk2sYWr9O0qGfXa2i4dTvqh_FAyLd4QtPXzSeGoKzGa_NQdFEj/s1600/Dona+Roberta.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO-7PBQPelyctfi8wfPP2WjnHt8oeryjtIigmraFmP6zkOfLFVwvI5wQUzNMX0q_nx8Q8U5laIfQASF38oa5bEo_t6VPmk2sYWr9O0qGfXa2i4dTvqh_FAyLd4QtPXzSeGoKzGa_NQdFEj/s320/Dona+Roberta.JPG" width="222" /></a></div>
Dona Roberta was her own woman, rare then and, in many ways, rare now. She was wise, yet still happy to learn and laugh. Kind. She paid for the retirement of all the servants who had been a part of her family -- and paid the education of all of their children. She was small in size, coming only to my shoulder, and I'm only 5'4". She looked like she had just stepped out of a black and white photo of another time: her long white hair pulled back in a chignon, an elegant uniform of sensible shoes, straight dark skirt with a cashmere twin-set. Pearls, when she was not traveling. She taught at the university until she was almost 90. "The students like to hear my stories," she would say with a
shrug. <br />
<br />
Dona Roberta died in her sleep more than a year ago, and it has taken me all this while to write about her. And now, time and bureaucracy moving more slowly in Brazil than anywhere else in the Cosmos, we are flying down to settle her worldly goods -- her writing, her books, her collections, and all the odds and ends her family accumulated since fleeing Portugal in the wake of Napoleon. It all came to her, and now to us.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So, we are flying down to Rio tomorrow, and I am excited to see the city, Sugar Loaf, the Christ that looks over land and sea, the markets, the people. But most of all I look forward to sitting in Dona Roberta's home at last, having a long, long visit and communing with the essence that remains.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-972920186632579682012-07-23T23:15:00.003-07:002012-07-24T10:56:36.547-07:00Tales from the Otherworld<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3C8UI57GzXTEibl7mnm_1R3FlrYvH2ocuCYAz_t7xaLKFVHxSwY1kSBHTBjVaOq8hjjGbo-MP4XwsQb4gkEgjIz1DJlA6RDNTZ4zHtQFfXgRGgrLn5sgXXwqkuVvrGB2kGr8kMDBBzus2/s1600/thone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3C8UI57GzXTEibl7mnm_1R3FlrYvH2ocuCYAz_t7xaLKFVHxSwY1kSBHTBjVaOq8hjjGbo-MP4XwsQb4gkEgjIz1DJlA6RDNTZ4zHtQFfXgRGgrLn5sgXXwqkuVvrGB2kGr8kMDBBzus2/s200/thone.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
When my grandmother was a little girl in the dark north woods of Minnesota, her parents sent her away from the farm and into town to go to school. In those days, the woods were full of wolves and ghosts, and it was too far for a child to walk. She boarded with two Norwegian women out on the edge of town, and they slept three to a bed in the frigid nights. One was fat old Mrs. Johnson and the other, Thone Gamle, the local witch.<br />
<br />
The name was pronounced Tony Gomma, <i>gamle</i> being Norwegian for <i>old</i> and Thone a variant on Thora (the feminine form of the god, Thor). "Poor little grandma," my mother used to say. "I can just picture that skinny little red-haired girl squeezed between those two strange ladies. She must have been terrified." <span style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-small;">Story addition from my brother, Robert: Grandma also talked about Tramp Harold who the two ladies would fight over when he came to visit.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg09H10HGpy9c-flt2Ika2KFpAb9X1DH2yNdFXTHOIZvBygZQwudJgNk6I4_O0WvVH14hbM-VgpEh1px5VJPdZziuHG3EaGPT7I0nAAu3BeR-Pjo-JsVV8L819AWtg7xGr7aOv_dJDlFsRy/s1600/wolves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg09H10HGpy9c-flt2Ika2KFpAb9X1DH2yNdFXTHOIZvBygZQwudJgNk6I4_O0WvVH14hbM-VgpEh1px5VJPdZziuHG3EaGPT7I0nAAu3BeR-Pjo-JsVV8L819AWtg7xGr7aOv_dJDlFsRy/s1600/wolves.jpg" /></a></div>
And why not? One time, the winter was so hard that the wolves came out of the forest and right into town, looking for something to eat. Their calls were close and little Grandma could hear them sniffing at the windows and doors. Thone Gamle, who wanted some peace, got up out of the warm bed and went out into the night to talk to them. Soon the wolves went away and bothered someone else.<br />
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Another time, there was a forest fire burning closer and closer the little town. Terrified, Mrs. Johnson begged Thone Gamle to do something about it. The old woman went out through smoky air and walked all around the house three times, muttering and sprinkling a powder she had made. In the morning, little Grandma could see how the fire had made a big circle around them, burning other houses, but not theirs.<br />
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When Grandma told her stories, I pictured her little girl life like an illustration in a fairy tale book. The world of 1910 was equally remote to me: long ago and far away. If she was in a good mood when we visited, Grandma would read our cards or tell ghost stories. If not, she'd say "Fee fie, children don't have fortunes" or "Your mama don't want me to scare you with such foolishness." And we did get scared. There was nothing more delicious than the thrill of hearing her stories, all of us grandchildren sitting on the floor in front of the fire that burned year-round and never needed stoking. "Tell us about the ghost dog!" we'd beg. "Tell us about the dead babies in the woods!"<br />
<br />
Finally she'd agree, and begin by saying, "Strange things happened, in them days." And they did. We knew that back in Norway, her mother's aunt had been stolen by gypsies as a child and never heard from again. Her own sister, Leona, when chastised for playing cards on a Sunday, swore and said she didn't care. Then she was struck by lightning. Anything could happen.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>The Story of the Ghost Dog </i></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Once there was a family that lived near us that thought they'd try their hand at farming, but they had no luck. The farm went bust and they had to move on. They had a big Collie dog they couldn't take with them and couldn't find a home for, so the father shot it and buried it under the floor boards of the house.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>A few years later we five kids was out in the fields playing, but it was getting on toward dusk and we knew we better get home. We decided to cut through the cow pasture near the deserted farmhouse, even though we'd been told not to. We was about half-way across when a bull spotted us and came running with his head down. We headed toward some trees, our little legs pumping. We was thinking we could climb, but them trees was a long ways off and we could hear the bull snorting. </i></blockquote>
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<i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfH1Rze7KGUdXbeJuewU4chtWzhdXnKeJ2sssiFjpgpgSUsLq3tsVsqSf6eBMF_HqUarBr19QhBBurNsPKR5DfzbuucAQavvT3PC-Ci1Rg3dqZdHDMPrPDzP1Gd7GObFmCZHWEjQhPC14F/s1600/ghostly+dog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfH1Rze7KGUdXbeJuewU4chtWzhdXnKeJ2sssiFjpgpgSUsLq3tsVsqSf6eBMF_HqUarBr19QhBBurNsPKR5DfzbuucAQavvT3PC-Ci1Rg3dqZdHDMPrPDzP1Gd7GObFmCZHWEjQhPC14F/s200/ghostly+dog.jpg" width="200" /></a></i></div>
<i> All of a sudden we seen this dog jump out through the broken window of the farmhouse. He ran into the pasture and got the bull's attention till we could get safely out, then that dog turned around and jumped through the window of the old house again. We knew it was the dog that'd been shot because we used to play with it, and we recognized him. He saved our lives, but we never seen him again.</i></blockquote>
<span style="color: #38761d; font-size: x-small;">Story addition from my sister, Nancy: Just as I remembered - but I always liked the part about her father going into the house to search for the dog ( it had a dirt floor) and
seeing the dog foot prints in a circling pattern before it went back to
sleep.</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br />
<i>The Story of the Babies in the Woods </i></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Once in the winter time us kids was coming home through the woods and it was getting dark. At first we thought it was the wind, but then we knew it was babies crying out there, all alone. We searched for them as we could, trying to follow the sound, but soon enough we decided to run home and tell our parents so they could help us rescue them.</i></div>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>When we ran in the door and told our parents, we were frantic. "There are little babies out in the woods. They're crying and crying!" They wouldn't listen to us and said it was just the wind, but they looked at each other strangely and wouldn't say more.</i></blockquote>
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<i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVnhkQrWCxr0pegNLvRcBL0_WppdDJQsUyDAW2n-y-bAeMsZ3hy8DzFYTSjw1Z8kryoOHuPbQ-WnA13JsTpN18A0kgAdtVO8sKhbIRT47BRlm4UO0E9iS6gq1mhER6VB1yqhsNZOUIByj0/s1600/96641-Snowy_Wood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVnhkQrWCxr0pegNLvRcBL0_WppdDJQsUyDAW2n-y-bAeMsZ3hy8DzFYTSjw1Z8kryoOHuPbQ-WnA13JsTpN18A0kgAdtVO8sKhbIRT47BRlm4UO0E9iS6gq1mhER6VB1yqhsNZOUIByj0/s320/96641-Snowy_Wood.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div>
<i>Later, when I was older, my mother told me the story. There used to be a school teacher in town, a pretty girl who lived with her mother, but she still got in the family way. The father left her, as they do, and she hid it as long as she could with her mother's help. When her time came, her mother delivered the twin babies, but she took them out into the woods and buried them in the snow, still crying from their birth. Folks hear them still to this day, and you will too if you ever get out that way.</i></blockquote>
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If you dream of a bride, she told us, someone will die.<br />
Clasp you hands above your head when you cross a bridge to keep the trolls away.<br />
A black deuce means a sad message is coming.<br />
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My grandmother was a woman made of stories and lore from a deep place where dusk is always just falling: the eldritch world.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="luna-Ent">
<span id="hotword"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default;"><b>eldritch</b>: eerie;</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword">weird;</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword">spooky.</span> </span></div>
<div id="rltqns">
<span id="hotword"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default;">perhaps from</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default;">Old</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default;">English</span> </span><i><span id="hotword"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default;">ælf</span> </span></i><span id="hotword"><span id="hotword" name="hotword">elf</span> </span><span id="hotword"> + </span><i><span id="hotword"><span id="hotword" name="hotword">rīce</span> </span></i><span id="hotword"> <span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default;">realm;</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div id="rltqns">
<b><i><span id="hotword"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default;">Origin:</span></span></i></b><span class="rom-inline"><span id="hotword"><span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default;"><i><b> </b></i>1500–10;</span> </span></span><span id="hotword"><span id="hotword" name="hotword">of</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword">a</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default;">strange</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword" style="color: #333333; cursor: default;">country,</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword">pertaining</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword">to</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword">the</span> <span id="hotword" name="hotword">Otherworld</span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="tail">
<div class="ety">
<span id="hotword"> </span></div>
</div>
<br />
Grandma may never have heard the word, but she knew it in her bones. She conjured the eldritch world for us as naturally as knot turns to gnarl in a forest of ancient trees. It is a world we'll never regain except through vicarious memory. That world faded when her daughters faced the horizon unafraid, wearing lipstick and dancing the jitterbug. Disappeared entirely as her grand-daughters wove love beads, learned irony and macrame, not knowing the pathway back was being swept away by a witch's broom. We can tell the stories to our yawning children but there'll be no fearsome awe. Journeys have all been undertaken where no first steps remain.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-67877437360174640152012-06-24T15:07:00.001-07:002012-06-24T15:08:41.204-07:00The Stuff of Dreams and Nightmares<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihoziR6xI3OKy8XHrDFINe7oFqBVug9nzXCEeN17N01E4jMzdAE7wv-f64TAQLpGP1wdi8_xLFW-pwByN8ZqCLdCGW2ns-kpt0JrrGyDNepnUWMALyiLJBUr3BYS3ng3WNfqDG5vinvGw1/s1600/goldenbook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihoziR6xI3OKy8XHrDFINe7oFqBVug9nzXCEeN17N01E4jMzdAE7wv-f64TAQLpGP1wdi8_xLFW-pwByN8ZqCLdCGW2ns-kpt0JrrGyDNepnUWMALyiLJBUr3BYS3ng3WNfqDG5vinvGw1/s200/goldenbook.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="153" /></a>I was shuffling through books the other day, trying to find something I can't remember now, when I came across my old childhood fairytale book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/030717025X/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=nuldie-20&linkCode=am2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=030717025X" target="_blank"><i>The Golden Book of Fairy Tales</i></a>. I opened it and the pages took me away. It wasn't the stories but the pictures, for my childhood was dreamily suspended in the imagination of artist Adrienne S<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">é</span>gur. There is more magic in one of her illustrations than in all of Grimm. <br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeok9qT3BTYxwCQnpIe7PPFIyBZWBTOZ8gEiV90Q2EWFcQkjf4HOfNh7krpP3pWeiIR2oKU0KMu66lAD8RDRThP5ItMXnCeu8r6baLS85ET0OsbfBoyseS0-i3ITMCzxhP-BO8ders3ZCb/s1600/tinderbox.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeok9qT3BTYxwCQnpIe7PPFIyBZWBTOZ8gEiV90Q2EWFcQkjf4HOfNh7krpP3pWeiIR2oKU0KMu66lAD8RDRThP5ItMXnCeu8r6baLS85ET0OsbfBoyseS0-i3ITMCzxhP-BO8ders3ZCb/s200/tinderbox.jpg" width="136" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"The Tinderbox"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVmPNen5LXP2WC6u1VsioPwtoRVL1AEkdtzWUGrI2ALQq6RF9GDr_AVWcJRj5uYa9vZSUXiXIi6rSirFIiO07oz7Ee4sFQNEZhdqxg1sKgo9GiQatUemEtLE8Pm4PMbMtLFsidqIU7iRIi/s1600/thumbelina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVmPNen5LXP2WC6u1VsioPwtoRVL1AEkdtzWUGrI2ALQq6RF9GDr_AVWcJRj5uYa9vZSUXiXIi6rSirFIiO07oz7Ee4sFQNEZhdqxg1sKgo9GiQatUemEtLE8Pm4PMbMtLFsidqIU7iRIi/s200/thumbelina.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Thumbelina"</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik0MxyXkSdoTr6iVQv5D39meVwyDGRH7kot7m5lyWckPaHjZG9Z2xoF1BUUeupzKMntBdMn9wapANvTU_Ore-qD8Ac5GfJWgk_NUJYzAhJLZMfR-uVT90RL8KHpjw93_uzkcXATGDc5-qp/s1600/kip.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik0MxyXkSdoTr6iVQv5D39meVwyDGRH7kot7m5lyWckPaHjZG9Z2xoF1BUUeupzKMntBdMn9wapANvTU_Ore-qD8Ac5GfJWgk_NUJYzAhJLZMfR-uVT90RL8KHpjw93_uzkcXATGDc5-qp/s200/kip.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Kip, the Enchanted Cat"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
It's difficult to share one image without trying to share them all. Notice how still, how <i>private</i>, each of these images is. The heroines are beautiful, but unemotional. What better way for a child to superimpose her own dreams and emotions onto them?<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiCDBwB4XrGH9OgHgDac43xsULgoweGEgu0CFwaDrzQhPpziIflc5OMNg0MnMVGMT80Ob2o2bQkbs8le3nuTuU8WNqCaTDL6qxwOXF0kuAx961J9XihB5l_H4icjpTHJl6_XgCQJ2JDpoL/s1600/baba+yaga.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiCDBwB4XrGH9OgHgDac43xsULgoweGEgu0CFwaDrzQhPpziIflc5OMNg0MnMVGMT80Ob2o2bQkbs8le3nuTuU8WNqCaTDL6qxwOXF0kuAx961J9XihB5l_H4icjpTHJl6_XgCQJ2JDpoL/s320/baba+yaga.jpg" width="242" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Vasilisa the Beautiful" with Baba Yaga</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Even Baba Yaga, that most horrific and mysterious of fairyland's inhabitants, seems unconcerned as Vasilisa whispers to her doll in a garden surrounded by a fence of skulls. (Note: This illustration comes not from the Golden Book edition, but a lesser known French collection, <i>Contes des Pays de Neige</i> (<i>Tales from the Land of Snow</i>).)<br />
<br />
It is only now that I noticed how passive, even resigned, these girls seem, despite the most compelling of circumstances: riding through the night on the back of a hound, nesting among wise winged creatures, accepting the enormous embrace of a magical cat. They seem as immune to their surroundings as dolls. <br />
<br />
I know now that S<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">é</span>gur's depiction is appropriate. The tale of Vasilisa and many other fairy tales encompasses the feminine fate: the three inescapable stages--maiden, mother and crone-- through which each woman must pass. The flesh and blood creature is translated into the archetypal plaything of time. The heroine can't step off this path any more than the King can escape having three sons or three daughters, the youngest of whom is the apple of his eye. <br />
<br />
There's no dearth of maidens in fairy tales, always in starring roles even if, like Snow White, they convey the appearance of death (or at least sleep) at the most important events of their lives. Mothers are likewise essential to the tales. That's where princesses come from. But when the story takes place, they are almost always absent: they have either died or morphed into the role if evil step-mother. In Vasilisa's story, her dead mother advises her through the voice of a doll which leads her safely to the prince and marriage.<br />
<br />
And then what? Motherhood and death? Is that all there is to the maiden's journey? It seems to be so. Even Joseph Campbell identified the heroine's journey as one of biological imperative in the service of nature.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Old Mag in "Green Snake"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But what about crones? Baba Yaga rules them all, flying through the air in a mortar, using the pestle as a rudder.
Deep in the woods, in a hut supported by dancing chicken legs, she
awaits the unwary traveler and the quest that burdens them. She holds
her secrets close for every question she answers ages her another year. I
know just how she feels.<br />
<br />
Except for witches and fairies disguised as crones, there are a few old wise women and they don't seem to have been mothers. Is this what becomes of wicked step-sisters who miss out on the prince and marriage? Does the knowledge gained in the quiet of a spinster's life bring this transformation into the hideous yet powerful? <br />
<br />
<br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"></span></b><br />
No wonder all the maidens in S<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt;">é</span>gur's images seem so ambivalent. They
know their own stories. They best they can hope for is death or, if unmarried, a warm
corner for cackling. <br />
These are powerful stories, these tales of girls who achieve their quest through marriage and death.<br />
<br />
I am well on my childless way to cronedom without regret. If I have only one bit of cronish wisdom to share with girls it's this: Be careful of fairy tales. Don't read them. Just look at the pictures. They'll tell you all you need to know.<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 12pt;"></span></b><br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-73412293280491578162012-06-10T13:24:00.001-07:002012-06-10T13:28:11.782-07:00I Got the Foghorn Leghorn Blues<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The blues isn't about feeling better. It's about making other people feel <i>worse</i>..."<br />
-- Bleeding Gums Murphy to Lisa in <i>The Simpsons</i></blockquote>
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Have you been reading <i>Salon</i>? <i>Huffington Post</i>? Watching the news on MSNBC? If you have, you know the Democrats have got the blues, and they've got them bad. The Democrats are good at having the blues. It keeps them from having to do anything substantive, but provides great talking points and finger pointing opportunities.<br />
<br />
There are rules for having the blues and I highly suggest you read them <a href="http://home.earthlink.net/%7Elex.alexander/blues.htm" target="_blank"><b>here</b></a>. The Democrat Blues differ somewhat, however:<br />
<ul>
<li>You cannot have the blues on the back porch or "down by the river". You must have the blues in public, preferably in front of a camera.</li>
<li>Even if you shot a man in Memphis, it wasn't your fault -- but you can tell everyone which obstructionist Republican tripped you on the way to a meet & greet and made you fall on the gun he was carrying and it discharged, killing the man in Memphis (who, by the way didn't have health insurance).</li>
<li>Your blues tragedy cannot be brought about by <i>hubris</i>. Rather, you were done wrong by a low-lyin' <i>Don't Tread on Me</i> snake who had promised you his/her vote, but instead voted the other way after some soul searchin'.</li>
<li><i>Et cetera</i>... </li>
</ul>
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Politically, the blues are the irrefutable domain of the Democrats. But if the Dems have the blues, what's left for the Republicans? Well, there's no need to worry. They got something even better. Republicans got <i>outrage</i>. Luckily for them, outrage has no rules and the Republicans, those champions of deregulation, like this a lot. They can, will, and have been outraged over everything. They don't much like Bleeding Gums Murphy, for obvious reasons. Instead they've modeled themselves after the irascible Foghorn Leghorn. <br />
<br />
There are no accidents in the universe, so it is not in the least surprising that Foghorn Leghorn was brought to us by Looney Tunes in the1950s. Foghorns don't need to make sense -- they just have to be loud. They can rev up indignation over anything: replacing <i>cr</i><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">è</span></i><i>che</i> scenes with "holiday trees," Super Bowl ads, and video games that reward sustainable community choices.<br />
<br />
They rant against and blame the current administration for our economic woes, blithely forgetting their role in its inception. In the name of protecting life, they can vilify a woman who defends access to health services and at the same time support the death penalty. They can spout a simplification of any complex problem into an endless loop of self-serving sound-bytes that appeal to the ignorant masses who are products of a school system they continue to cripple. Blather, wince, repeat. It really doesn't matter which side offends us the most or more slyly undercuts our liberties and livelihoods: there's not much to choose between them.<br />
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But where do we fit in? Don't fret. We also play a role in this cartoon show: the dependably trusting Yakky Doodle who doesn't realize his own peril until he's roasting in the Fibber Fox's oven, and finally quacks: "I think you're the FOX!" <br />
<br />
In the series, Yakky was always rescued by his friend Chopper the Bulldog. But this is where my metaphor breaks down, as metaphors always do. However much politics in America may resemble the funnies, it's very real. And all of us are sitting in a pot waiting to be stewed again.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-6670408348087867912012-05-28T11:10:00.000-07:002012-06-22T15:21:55.032-07:00Time in a Bottle<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The further I advance into my own Middle Ages, the more covetous I
become of other people's youth. Perhaps worse, I am more frequently
assailed by thoughts that begin with <i>if only</i> or <i>what if?</i>
Lately I've been asking people, "If you could go back to some previous
point in your life, knowing what you know now, what would you do?"
Answers vary. Some want to go back to handle their parents' investments.
Others want to give former teachers a piece of their minds or smarten
up about first marriages. Some say they are perfectly happy with the
life they live now--I am particularly suspicious them-- and many would eat right instead of not, or learn an instrument, or take back
words they wish unsaid. <br />
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So many options. According to Ambrose Bierce, a day is "a period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent." Surely everyone must wonder how events might have changed. Perhaps even Mother Teresa speculated: <i>what if I had smiled when that boy winked at me, instead of turning away?</i> Take any memory that has stayed with you and ask, what would I change if I could? Open the forbidden door? Listen to the whispered conversation? Ignore the ravenous beast? <br />
<br />
And yet. A lifetime of reading science fiction has taught me that we change the past at our peril. We have no idea of the tangential consequences our actions and inactions give rise to. (Just suppose I had had children instead of dogs!) One certainly doesn't want to interfere with the space-time continuum.<br />
<br />
I am always the first to preach (and have done so here) that the best course, the only course, is living in the moment, that the past is gone and the future is a distant fiction. Easy enough to say when we're not looking in the mirror or a photo album.<br />
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Some years ago, my sister used to amuse herself by asking her
twelve-year-old daughter and her friends how much they would sell a year
of their youth for. She learned that for under a thousand dollars any one of the girls
would have handed over her resilient energy and flexible joints. It is a
very good thing -- for those girls at least-- that my sister wasn't a
witch. They'd have advanced another year toward the horizon, my sister
would be younger than me, and I would be waiting in line at the ATM. <br />
<br />
Our bodies and minds betray us, giving rise to such speculation as I've been indulging. I used to think that if I didn't use my body it would stay nice for later. Not so, not so. Words escape me and my joints crackle like static. I adjust the volume in opposite ways than in the past. I still don't know how to ride a bike. And also, I am nearing a haunting convergence: this is the year I will out-live my mother. As <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/donald-hall" target="_blank">Donald Hall</a> writes in "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0899199542/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=nuldie-20&linkCode=am2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0899199542%22%3EOld%20and%20New%20Poems%3C/a%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=nuldie-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0899199542" target="_blank">The Day I Was Older</a>":<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
…Now I have waked </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
More mornings to frost whitening the grass</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Read the newspaper more times, and stood more times,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My hand on the doorknob without opening the door.</div>
</blockquote>
Whatever my complaints, this old road isn't really so bad or even lonely. Following in her steps, I know some of the things my mother knew but wasn't here to tell me. The company along the way is often convivial and always varied. And lovely time sloshes in a friendly bottle which we pass from mouth to mouth.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2598179801234420202.post-14449134267118245432012-05-13T17:46:00.002-07:002018-10-17T13:32:01.389-07:00Remembering the SunshineIn these blue days of May it feels as if the world's a friend, the universe is kind and nothing can go amiss. History teaches us otherwise. The Hindenburg exploded into our collective visual memories on May 6, 1937. The Lusitania sank off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915. Forty years ago today, May 13, 1972, the last bodies from the Sunshine Mine disaster in North Idaho, were recovered and made their way back into the springtime air. <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1972/12/-quot-yes-sir-this-has-certainly-been-considered-a-safe-mine-quot/4565/" target="_blank">The fire in the Big Sunshine</a> affected everyone in the Silver Valley in some way or another. In my family, we saw our father cry for the first and only time. We heard our mother say, "I swear, I'll never pray again."<br />
<br />
No one thinks about a fire in a hard rock mine. That happens with coal, not silver. And yet, there's a lot of timber in a mine, and in the Sunshine, polyurethane bulkheads that, when ignited, spewed deadly carbon monoxide fumes. Aided by the ventilation system, it filled the mine--a mile deep with over 100 miles of tunnels -- and took 91 lives. These were fathers, sons and brothers of people I knew. This was the first time the word <i>disaster</i> meant anything to me.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Disaster. From the Latin, <i>astrum</i>, star. Prefix <i>dis</i>- apart from. Unfavorable to one's stars. Indeed. </blockquote>
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People gathered at the mine, Red Cross workers and medical providers at the ready, miners from other companies to see if they could volunteer for the rescue, friends, curiosity seekers, and of course the families who waited and waited. No one knew that all but two were already dead below. Reading the account of the mine disaster, Gregg Olsen's finely detailed <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0307238776/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=nuldie-20&linkCode=am2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0307238776" target="_blank"><i>The Deep Dark</i>: <i>Disaster and Redemption in America's Richest Silver Mine</i></a>, I finally learned what happened after the fire was discovered, and of the many heroes who stayed or went back into the mine to help others to safety. <br />
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I have a permanent link with this tragedy, not because I lost anyone, but because my father was the mine manager. My father, the mild-mannered stamp collector, a good guy who prayed on his knees every night. He wasn't there that day, but attending the annual stockholder's meeting being held forty miles over the mountains in Coeur d'Alene. By the time anyone realized how bad it was, by the time they reached him, it was all over underground. But the days of not knowing went on for everyone. The hoists and elevators full of the dead were stranded between the deep dark and the open air for days before anyone knew that hope was a wasted emotion. <br />
<br />
And what caused the fire? A spark from an acetylene torch? A smoker's
match? Arson? Here's a story:<br />
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Late one night, after midnight, about a month after the fire, our doorbell rang. We lived out by the mine, far from town. Everyone knew the mine manager's house, in those still-feudal days it was the biggest one for miles. I heard my parents go down the stairs, and saw from my window the sudden glow as the porch light flipped on. My brother had been awakened, too, and he and I sat at the top of the stairs in the darkness listening to the low conversation. The visitor was one of the Sunshine widows. She'd been drinking and said she had something she needed to tell.<br />
<br />
She said her husband and another miner had decided to make a device to start a small fire underground. They'd experimented for weeks in the basement, and were ready to go on May 2 as they had planned. Just a little embarrassing smoke for the stockholder's meeting. She said survivors told her that her husband had escaped, but when he saw that his actions had gone way too far, he went back down to try to help, and didn't come back.<br />
<br />
The next day my father called the district attorney, told him the story, and then he let it go. It was his nature. But that night has haunted me ever since. It's with me now as I write. The investigation into the fire at the Sunshine determined the cause to be <i>spontaneous combustion</i>, an unsatisfying verdict implying that no one was responsible. It just happened. So it goes. The report devotes <a href="http://www.usmra.com/saxsewell/sunshine.htm" target="_blank">one line</a> to the arson theory: There has been no substantial evidence provided that leads us to believe the fire was deliberately started.
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The woman was vilified: a drunk and possibly a schizophrenic. Unreliable. That happens to a lot of whistle blowers, especially women. If I'd been through that, I'd be a drunk schizophrenic, too. But I can still recall the woman's voice, nervous, but full of conviction. It would have taken a lot of a courage in those days, regardless of blood alcohol level, for a woman to walk up to our big house and ring the bell. And I know that whenever I think back to that time, I will always be the girl sitting in the dark at the top of the stairs. Listening in the night to a chilling story that unraveled a mystery, and was then ignored.<br />
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