CURRENT EVENTS

MEDIA MOB

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My husband and I love films and we have seen a great many of them. We avoid the bad ones, when we are aware they are going to be bad. Lately, “bad” has become such a relative term that even Rotten Tomatoes seems unable to warn us away from films we dislike. We wasted over $30 seeing Knives Out (or Up or In or whatever). The overpriced popcorn and Milk Duds were the best part. I hasten to assure you that everyone else in the theater seemed to love the film. They laughed a great deal more than we did, did not seem to mind Craig’s silly accent or the pathetic attempts at political pandering or the way the main character (vomiting on cue—that was only funny once and not the first time) was used as a cliché victim. The predictable plot twists even seemed to surprise people. Really? If you loved the newest version of Murder on the Orient Express, you will find a familiar scenario here. This is the cartoon version where everyone but the ingenue is despicable. If you thought that mustache on Branagh was ridiculous, well, consider yourself warned.

On the other hand, we had relatively low expectations for The Good Liar, the overall twist was expected, but, you know, Helen Mirren. That one was fun.

In the mean time, the single best film entertainment we’ve enjoyed recently has been on Netflix. Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories has two seasons (2016 and 2019), just twenty 28-minute episodes, and some are deeply touching and some are spectacular. A couple have been flat out sad, but mostly they are something more subtle. Newsweek declares it “the best show no one is watching.” As we near the end of the second season, we’re dolling them out one at a time to make them last. We never skip the opening sequence . . . and apparently others feel the same way about “Omiede.”

There have been many more shots and films we enjoyed this year. Gary credits me with finding Midnight Diner, and promising is was short and we could turn it off if we didn’t like it. He says it’s on the level with Detectorists, which is his all-time favorite. Its funny and dear to us both.

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Joan Baez sings “Diamonds and Rust.”

BRING BACK OUR MIGHTY DREAM

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Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes  (1902-1967)

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

 

[and every woman too . . . originally published in the July 1936 issue of Esquire]

 

 

WILD PLACES

/ janpriddyoregon / 5 Comments

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When I was in high school the last of my grandparents died. And then in my twenties so had all the step parents—a lot of divorce in my family. My maternal grandfather’s third wife had taken a fancy to me and her second husband was fond of Gary. I’ve written about this before. It’s how we came to live in Oregon and raise a family here.

All of that happened together. We had gone back and forth about having children, but a key was wild spaces. My husband grew up in rural Washington and Arizona. Most of my childhood was in the growing suburbs north of Seattle. There were still cows at the end of the road, goats over the hill, and a small barn with palomino horses just a couple of blocks away. Best of all were the remains of second and third growth Douglas firs. The stumps of massive old growth cut down in the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries were so old they crumbled rust red—I could dig right into them with my hands. Hidden away were ponds and swampy places. I watched frogs swim underwater and admired the water skippers on top. I tripped over the native blackberry vines, tore bracken from the earth and heaved it as javelins, put foxglove blossoms on my fingertips, and ate the sulphurous yellow blossoms of Oregon grape in the spring and the tart berries later in summer. My mother had no idea where I was most of the time. I brought home pollywogs and splinters. I came home filthy.

Gary had a similarly unrestrained childhood in the desert but also rattlesnakes and scorpions. I wrote my MFA thesis based on his childhood stories. Most of what I wrote was entirely made up, but once in a while, Gary would look up from reading one of my stories: “Did I tell you this? I’m sure I never told you this.”

I got it right.

Having children in the city, even in a house with cedar trees in the front yard and dogwood in the back, and just a few blocks from the zoo . . . that would never do.

Raising children at the beach felt possible. My mother would later declare the move to Oregon as a reason for having children “stupid.” It felt only right to me.

I hope my sons have their own stories of wilderness and sand, wetsuits and wild waves. Jellyfish and sand dollars, castles and glorious sunsets.

Overpopulation worried me even when I was still in grade school. I’m sure I have written about that before too. The world is too crowded these days and all the places I played growing up are paved over, fenced, and tame. Wild places are few and far between today. I just read that the Earth is predicted to have 10 billion people by 2050. That’s four times the population on Earth in the year I was born. Our sons and their wives and our grandchildren will live to see that coming crowded world. I probably will not.

May there be something left of wilderness for my great great grandchildren to enjoy. May they watch water skippers on the surface of ponds, frogs beneath the surface. Forest and water hidden away. May they know monstrous trees and places silent, still, and out of control.

SHORE BIRDS

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We saw dozens of  small shorebirds bathing in Asbury Creek this morning. They looked like smallish (largish robin-sized) but very fat pigeons. I stood and watched them while Gary moved quietly up to my side and gestured to his pocket where he carried the camera. A neighbor joined us. None of us knew what they were, and I took photos to be sure I could accurately recall what they looked like.  Continue reading →

DEFINE TERMS

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Early in the school year, I used to do vocabulary activities in my junior English classes. They required the use of hardcover dictionaries and most often teamwork. In each case the terms and their definitions were written into classroom journals which could be accessed during quizzes and exams. No need to write any of this down, I’d say, but if you find you need the information during a test, you can look it up in your own journals. Sometimes I did this twice.

The short version had four words: “sympathy,” “pity,” “empathy,” and “compassion,” and illustrates the classic case of dictionary definitions that reference one another. Continue reading →

FALLING

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I just finished In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. I usually read a book in a few days, but this memoir took longer. Where was the wisdom I was seeking? I was afraid for a long time that it would not come. I was doing NaNo during those weeks too, so I was writing my own angry story and struggled to know how to rate Machado’s until the last entries raised it up for me. “Dream House as Memory.”

Machado is brilliant and her writing is important. There is an element of revenge here but also of documentation. I believe her. She did not have to work so hard to prove her experiences to me. 

“It’s not radical to point out that people on the fringe have to be better than people in the mainstream, that they have twice as much to prove. In trying to get people to see your humanity, you reveal just that: your humanity.”

She did not need to prove that abuse is also possible between women lovers, I understand that. I have seen abuse. The seduction and gaslighting she so deliberately documents through her own experience and popular culture with an episode of Star Trek and Alice’s adventures. Readers must be forgiven for thinking again and agin: Why is she still there? Why does she come back? Again? Though Machado fails to fully explore the why, the answer is common enough. We believe the abuse is what we deserve. 

The last entries saved this book for me. I was impatient throughout the second hundred pages, but she writes so well—I make this judgement as a writer. She is brilliant. I nearly did not finish because I disagree that queer abuse is different. From inside all abusive relationships are the same. It is only details that differ. It is strong relationships, constructive and kind relationships that [should] matter, and this is merely a sketch here. I wish she had the perspective and distance to tell me more of that story. 

Perhaps in time she will.

SENSE OF DIRECTION

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Tracking shows my package shipped via UPS from Wisconsin and has since traveled to Georgia, Illinois, and Massachusetts. In that order. I live in Oregon. A former student who delivered for UPS once tried to explain to me why such routes are efficient.

I remain unconvinced.

Continue reading →

TREE SKIRTS

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Over the years three boys in my Junior English classes argued in their research papers that nuclear power was the cheap, non-polluting, and safe alternative to fossil fuels. They were blissfully unaware that radiation is deadly. They did not want to hear about it. When one boy asked an engineer via email whether there were any health dangers associated with nuclear power, he was oblivious to the sarcasm dripping from the nuclear expert’s response: None. I pointed out that a nuclear engineer was certainly an expert but not on health. No matter. He found an industry website that gave him the quote he needed to prove his thesis.

1 million years

That’s how long Germany has to keep the radioactive waste from all of its nuclear power plants buried for it to be safe. The country recently closed all of its nuclear power plants and is looking for a way — and a place — to make the million-year commitment.

Nuclear fuel is only cheap if you do not count the waste left behind. It is absolutely polluting in itself as well in the vast amount of water heated while cooling the reactors, and safe? Seriously? Why did I have to keep bringing this up. Radiation is dangerous. At least acknowledge that and work from there. But these young writers were determined to ignore any information that countered their thesis.

We want to believe what we want to believe sometimes. Climate change is not happening. The hearings are unfair. I do not have to testify. I am safe to drive. I do not have to tell you. My situation is different. 

Yes, it is. They are fair. You do and you should. No, you’re not. Yes, you do. It’s the same for everyone else.

It is inconvenient to face facts.

There is no magic in pretending. What we believe is not the same as what we know. Faith in what we want does not have the permanence of truth in the real world.

Year after year, the majority of my students chose to write their persuasive essays about something they already believed and many of them left cavernous gaps in their argument because they could not be objective in their research. And year after year a few students chose to write about something they did not already believe and generally wrote better papers as a result. Once in a great while students changed their minds, and that was most impressive of all.

Yesterday I addressed holiday cards. They say “Happy New Year!” so there really is no hurry sending them out. It’s just one of those things on our list like ordering candles (done) and finding a tree (also done) and wrapping gifts (whoops). My approach to the holidays is to spread the labor throughout the year so that I can better enjoy the season. This must be a habit left over from having two toddlers and six dogs (with weekly grooming I did myself), and later a job that overwhelmed my time. I even held a holiday Open House for years when the kids were small. (Baking done each night after I got home from school for a month in advance.) Get it done early so that I am “not rushing about at the last minute,” as my mother used to warn me.

By the time the big Black Friday sales begin, my shopping is already done because I started a year ago. I am free to enjoy the season. Yes?

Does that really work for me anymore?

I’m not certain. The truth is that I enjoy making and buying presents. The truth is that I am one of those people who overdo the holidays. The truth is that my mother never entertained so I had no model for how to do that. The truth is my husband had a genuinely impoverished childhood and this was a dreaded season for him before we met, but now he loves it all. So that mission is accomplished.

Is that the goal? I check my list and mark off the tasks and something always remains undone.

There is a tree in our living room and NaNo is done and I still have to seal and stamp cards and one bed is crowded with gifts waiting to be wrapped. I am still knitting. This year I have several projects I hope to complete sooner rather than later. I thought I might actually sew patchwork tree skirts for family members. That project has been on my list literally for years. It generally haunts me till New Years. I plan each year to start on them earlier . . . and then I don’t.

I have already decided that to cross out tree skirts. It is good to let go of some obligations. It is best to face truth that everything cannot and need not be done. I am not sewing tree skirts.

There’s always something.

ON NOT CONNECTING DOTS

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It was the orange jellies I was warned against as a child. The clear ones tended to be a couple of inches across when I was young. The orange ones were six or eight inches. This one is closer to eighteen inches. No, Daddy, I didn’t touch it.

We had such a wonderful Thanksgiving that I am embarrassed to think of it. I told Tammy on the beach this morning that I didn’t feel I deserved such a lovely day. She said, “It’s best not to connect the dots.”

Our drive over was uneventful—good news given forecasts of snow and ice. We walked in Forest Park with our younger son’s family, checked into a hotel, had dinner with our older son’s and his wife’s family, and then went back to the Kennedy School for a long soak in their pool. It was very cold and the soaking pool is outdoors. Bamboo and fats and palms rustled overhead, but the water was perfectly warm. We slept well, had breakfast and drove home again. Snow on the verges but no ice on the pass.

We also had an opportunity to drive in the city. Always an adventure. We were honked at twice, each time while waiting for a pedestrian in a crosswalk. People gave us exasperated looks for driving too slow—barely over the speed limit. (I have come up with a new safety rule about speed: drive at the posted limit plus 20% and other drivers will not throw up their hands.)

Today I received a link to a fascinating history of automobiles in the U.S. Apparently our “love affair with the automobile” began where Groucho Marx declared it so in a documentary financed by the car industry. Early on there were perfectly functioning electric cars and people walking, on horseback, or driving were not in such a rush. Most hated the new cars that only the wealthy could afford. All Americans would pay for the roads these drivers demanded.

In his 1896 essay making the case for electric vehicles, Salom decried the fumes associated with the internal combustion engine: “Imagine thousands of such vehicles on the streets, each offering up its column of smell . . . and consider whether such a system has general utility or adaptability.”

Instead of thousands of such vehicles, we now have more than a billion. Had the desire of working Americans for safety been prioritized and their enthusiasm for public space been respected, transport might have designed on the basis of public good rather than private enrichment. If that had happened, the planet would look very different today.

Instead, a relatively small number of entrepreneurs successfully campaigned to reorganize the country—and subsequently the world—so that their particular business model might succeed.—“The Car Culture That’s Helping Destroy the Planet Was By No Means Inevitable: On the Relentless Campaign to Force Americans to Accept the Automobile” by Jeff Sparrow

Today is the last day of NaNo and I have over 53 thousand words. I think they are mostly in the right order, though I might have to flip chapters 19 and 23, which are both flashbacks and probably need to be in chronological order. I have marked the five chapters I need to develop further. Overall, it is way too short, but I think once I develop another plot thread (plot!) and those five short chapters, I might get to a more desirable length. I aim for 70-80k words.

fullsizeoutput_112bThis morning we went out for our beach walk on last night’s high tide line where we expected to find trash. We did and brought it home, and I found three pieces of glass, some shells and frozen jellyfish. When I was a girl, jellyfish were rare. I might see one orange jelly six or eight inches across in a half mile walk. These days we see dozens or hundreds, both blue and orange and ranging from an inch up to two feet across.

It was sunny and cold this morning, and we were glad to be out and home.

 

WITH OR WITHOUT

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We wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Alone or with friends or family. With or without turkey. With or without.

There is always something missing. In childhood that was whatever the parents were allowed to do that we, at seven and four, believed we were missing. As adults there is the glossy image in magazines and television of what holidays look like. They never looked that way for us. Disagreements and tension, jealousy and resentment. There are the missed opportunities and missed events. Mostly we miss people.

We hope to see most of our family today, but not one of our siblings. Most live far away. One has already died. One does not speak to me. I imagine some people assume that last is my fault. Sometimes I have too. But mostly I am over the rejected overtures and that particular guilt. I am thankful for that. I am thankful.

“When psychologists study siblings, they usually study children, emphasizing sibling rivalry and the fact that brothers and sisters refine their social maneuvering skills on one another. The adult sibling relationship has only sporadically been the subject of attention. Yet we’re tethered to our brothers and sisters as adults far longer than we are as children; our sibling relationships, in fact, are the longest-lasting family ties we have. . . .

“In one Swedish study, satisfaction with sibling contact in one’s 80s was closely correlated with health and positive mood — more so than was satisfaction with friendships or relationships with adult children. And loneliness was eased for older people in a supportive relationship with their siblings, no matter whether they gave or got support.

“That’s why it’s so sad when things between siblings fall apart. This often happens when aging parents need care or die — old feelings of rivalry, jealousy and grief erupt all over again, masked as petty fights ostensibly over who takes Mom to the doctor or who calls the nursing home about Dad.

“Many families get through parents’ illnesses just fine, establishing networks where the workload is divided pretty much equally. Paul and I did fine, too, throughout our mother’s progressive frailty and forgetfulness, and we also had no problem splitting the chores that arose in the aftermath of her death. But about 40% of the time, according to one study, there is a single primary caregiver who feels like she (and it’s almost always a she) is not getting any help from her brothers and sisters, which can lead to serious conflict.

“And because of the particular intensity of sibling relationships, such conflict cuts to the bone. People grieve for the frayed ties to their siblings as though they’ve lost a piece of themselves.”—“Here’s to Grown-Up Siblings and the Ties that Bind” by Robin Marantz Henig on NPR. [Well worth a read.]

That has been the other loss I grieve on top of parents, profession, and pets.

I am thankful for my husband, our children and grandchildren and their other families, for the memories of forty years of teaching, for art and the ocean, for still being able to walk miles, for my step-grandmother who left me this house, for books and so many decent citizens and those committed to justice and kindness. Thankful for the hard work of others who care about more than themselves.

And I am grateful that the water in the bird bath is not frozen this morning, and that in a couple of hours we may be safely on our way to see people we love.

Thankful.