CURRENT EVENTS

LOST and FOUND

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There was fog and some low clouds in the coast when we went out just after 6 this morning. We walked north, as we usually do, picking up trash and hoping for beach glass. I found three pieces in three colors, but my husband had no such luck and thought he would be skunked again.

On our way home, Gary saw what he assumed was a clear jelly fish cast onshore. As is his habit, he gave it a nudge with his foot. Instead of wobbling, the clear object spun around on the sand. Gary had his sea glass. A huge piece found.

In the mean time, fog closed in and as we walked further south toward home, both the waves to our west and the houses fronting the shore to our east became mere suggestions. This reminded both of us of a time my old dog show partner, Bonita, was here with her husband and children. We went for a walk and fog closed in so thick that visibility was reduced to perhaps ten feet. It was extraordinary!

One of Bonnie’s children became lost and searching for the child was impossible, like search for a penny on the floor in absolute darkness. Moments later, as best I recall though it seemed like hours in frantic effort, the child was found. The father began to yell, a reaction I remember from a day long before that when Alan went missing in Lower Woodland Park in Seattle. Gary and I were both nearly hysterical. My mother was with us and commented mildly that Alan had probably gone to the bathroom. But his parents were panicked and running everywhere to search. It was my mother who strolled over to the public restroom and returned our toddler (perhaps he was 4?). Our immediate impulse was to yell at him, but my mother calmed us both.

When we lose those we love, even for an hour or a moment, the adrenaline and sorrow can overwhelm good sense.

That is what we spoke of on our way home. We recognized the faint rooflines silhouetted against the brighter eastern sun.

A friend and his wife have lost a baby at 20 weeks gestation. They are handling this with grace, from what I can see. Hundreds of miles away, I am not there to offer physical comfort. Is there any comfort to be had? I cannot imagine. What they have lost will not be found again. Perhaps they believe in another life and reunion then, but for now, that child is gone as if never was. Lost in fog.

When we have fog like today in summer, this is generally a sign that Portland will have a 100° day. It is what is forecasted. It is a best guess, but only an educated one, not a certainty. There few things certain in life other than morning and loss. We all lose people we love during our lifetime. It is rare to survive to adulthood without gathering ghostly memories of people we will never see again on earth.

Just now, I want to remember the little girl walking out of the fog, my son grasping the hand of his grandmother. Those children are grown now. They, like my friend who lost his baby, will experience the entire range of human losses. They will also find courage and companionship. They will find meaning where they can. They will create and consume. They will share good intentions and make mistakes. And sometimes what they most love will seem lost.

Like all those before them, they will take their losses in hand and search for meaning. And they will, sometimes, find what they need to walk on in the fog.

“Father, Son, and the Holy Spigot”

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Dr. Salk developed the polio vaccine. My title is a line from Four Weddings and a Funeral, otherwise notable for the use of an elegy by W. H. Auden, listed as “Funeral Blues” but also known as “Stop All the Clocks.” It is a poem of friendship and devotion and love.

But I mean to write about not partisan or political tolerance, but about the actual support for Donald Trump. On most levels this supportive base completely mystifies me. The man disrespects nearly everyone, including what might be considered the conservative base. He is a friend to our national enemies and an enemy to our friends. He has been married three times, and committed adultery while his most recent wife was in childbed. He has used language on tape that the men I admire would never use. He has insulted a Gold Star family, a POW, and the men and officers of his own military. He admires dictators and autocrats and seems indifferent to nations struggling to achieve what we have in the way of freedom. He is a hypocrite by both claiming religious faith and failing to evidence any knowledge of Christian teachings.

So here’s my understanding of why some still flock to his message:

  1. Money. Despite the fact that he was born wealthy, was handed wealth, and apparently had squandered more than he actually possessed at election, Trump is filthy rich. We admire money, don’t we? Money is power. Money is success. Never mind the seven deadly sins of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth, the man is selfish and mean. But he’s rich and America loves a rich man. “Wealthy”, by the 19th century, was used as a girl’s name. In that case, of course, the meaning was not about wealth in terms of money, which the Bible and Jesus absolutely condemned, but “wealthy in the sight of the Lord.” It was that much-denied group the Puritans who preached that monetary success was a sign of God’s favor, despite an entire book in the Bible designed to refute that notion. Americans gave up Puritanical notions about sex, but decided we liked money. So some like the man because he’s rich.
  2. Vulgarity. He says exactly what he thinks and what many Americans apparently also think. He’s rich enough not to care if some object to his racism and sexism and bias against compassion and humility. They like that Trump attacks the poor for being poor, that he supports religious freedom so long as that religion is the one he pretends to follow. It is a cynical view of many Americans that everyone, or a majority of people, would speak exactly as Trump does, that they would ridicule a disabled person if they could get away with it. They like him for spouting hatred they dare not spout themselves, and for providing an opportunity for that venom to achieve acceptance.
  3. He is Everyman. Trump proves that anyone can be President. We don’t have to know the Constitution or pay attention to the news, study the complexities of international and national events, or even vote in elections. Certainly, if we are smart, we avoid paying taxes. We can brag that we “know more than the generals” and belittle those who have devoted their lives to the public good. Seriously. Some like the idea that a President can be as ill-informed, perhaps even as stupid, selfish, and self-serving as they are themselves. They genuinely believe no one is nicer than they are themselves. And they are not nice.
  4. Government. There are individuals in the world more powerful than small governments. There are companies more powerful that most nations. Yet, paranoia about government control is rampant. Children raised in strict, top-down households, particularly households with a strong authoritarian father, are often fearful of government. The psychological theory explaining this well-documented tendency postulates that when a child’s initial introduction to control and power is cruel and arbitrary, the child often retains distrust of governance throughout life. Trump removes government controls, and many do not seem to mind that those left in power are now the ones more concerned about profit than people. It’s the money again. Some will forgive most anything if a profit is to be made, even at the cost of health, safety, opportunity, and futures of others.

In contrast, it is an essential part of the American character to respect the needs of each individual, so long as this does not trespass on the needs of others. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness is at our core. To this end, we live together as human beings have always lived in community. There is evidence of this truth.

I offer Dr. Salk.

“On March 26, 1953, American medical researcher Dr. Jonas Salk announces on a national radio show that he has successfully tested a vaccine against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes the crippling disease of polio. In 1952—an epidemic year for polio—there were 58,000 new cases reported in the United States, and more than 3,000 died from the disease. For promising eventually to eradicate the disease, which is known as ‘infant paralysis’ because it mainly affects children, Dr. Salk was celebrated as the great doctor-benefactor of his time.”

Both my husband and I were spared this disease when we were children because Dr. Jonas Salk invented a vaccine that protected us and he gave it away for the public good. Both of us knew people who had polio, were confined in iron lungs for weeks or months, and spent the rest of their lives struggling to walk. Dr. Salk made an adequate living as a doctor, he claimed. “His sole focus had been to develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit. When asked who owned the patent to it, Salk said, ‘Well, to the people I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?’ ”

There is irony throughout my explanations. It is ironic to trust Trump because he is “successful” and “says what he thinks” and is as petty as the worst of us, because our life experiences should tell us that success is rarely gained only by those who are deserving. Surely, some people are kinder than others, not out of any selfish motive, but because they sincerely care about being good.

I am genuinely grateful that there are people willing to sacrifice for the common good, that some people are smarter and more generous than I am myself, and that consideration of the needs and feelings of others is not a conservative or liberal notion, but a humane one. And I am grateful that the majority of Americans feel as I do.

My hope and the hope of a majority of Americans is that we will soon inoculate our government against the current virus infecting our nation.

Yet, there is good. There is good in each of us. We fear and are comforted. We hunger and are fed. We are homeless and are housed. We join together to maintain the common good, because as human beings that is what we must do to survive. It is what we have always done. A strong nation protects weak from strong, the vulnerable from powerful, and small from the great. That is, ultimately, our greatness.

WHY WE DO NOT LOVE THE 4th

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It is not a “victimless crime.”

One of our neighbors takes her dog to British Columbia right after Canada Day until after the 4th. Other people drug their pets in order to spare their nerves. My husband and I do that too. We would happily have left the country, but we are afraid to leave our home unattended over the 4th of July. Instead, Gary hooks up the power-washing nozzle on the hose, and we watch the drone filming the action with trepidation. Yesterday morning, an osprey was fishing right in front of the house, and then the pyros arrived on the sand.

Years ago, a person actually trained in fireworks put on a display on our beach. Eventually the crowd of onlookers grew so large that he no longer felt it was safe. Now all the illegal explosives and fireworks are lit by ordinary people bent on having a good time.

It’s not good.

“Each July 4th, thousands of people, most often children and teens, are injured while using consumer fireworks. Despite the dangers of fireworks, few people understand the associated risks – devastating burns, other injuries, fires, and even death.”

The safest 4th of July on my beach was like last night. We’d had some damp weather so the hedges were not quite tinder. The temperature was mild, the air light and breezy, tending to flow from the east or south rather that onshore. There was a sprinkle of rain. The tide was going out all evening so there was plenty of sand and no need to set off fireworks too close to the hedge. True, some people build fires too close to the hedge anyway, but we found the remains of only one rocket in our yard. That was how it was yesterday night until after 11.

There was the year it rained and people blew up their illegal fireworks every single night for the rest of the summer. There was the still year when the smoke from nearby blasts was so thick we were forced indoors to breathe. There was the year bottle rockets landed, still blazing, on our cedar roof. We replaced that roof, but last year we watched floating lanterns drift over shore. One landed, still glowing, in an old spruce tree.

“Smoke from fireworks is harmful to health, study suggests. Summary: The metallic particles in the smoke emitted by fireworks pose a health risk, particularly to people who suffer from asthma, new research shows. … The different colours and effects produced in these displays are achieved by adding metals to the gunpowder.”

Mostly, the fireworks were gold and green and red this year. Last night it was a particularly loud and lengthy display. Rockets with a diameter of up to 6 inches managed not to light any homes on fire. So you could say it’s been worse, more dangerous, more frightening, the smoke more choking.

And then this morning, one person came out with a wheelbarrow to police the area directly in front of their beach camp. Along the rest of the shore is filth my husband and I will be picking up for the next year.

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It is not harmless. Chemicals enter the air and percolate into soil and sand. Seabirds are disoriented, and the impact of the chemical refuse remains. The paper wrappers are impregnated with toxins but will unroll and dissolve. The plastic cones will wash into the rocks where we will gather them in January. And that only counts the stuff we see.

“Although much of the perchlorate present in pyrotechnic devices is transformed into harmless compounds during combustion, any remnants of the chemical that fall back to earth can enter into the soil and water. When ingested, perchlorate is absorbed by the thyroid gland in place of iodine, which can interfere with the production of thyroid hormone, an essential part of metabolism and mental development. As a result, perchlorate exposure may be particularly harmful to fetuses.

“A recent study of lake water in Ada, Okla., before and after annual fireworks displays found that the perchlorate concentration in the water increased by up to a factor of 1,000 in the hours after the show, exceeding several states’ maximum allowable levels for drinking water. The levels took between 20 and 80 days to return to normal.

“The heavy metals that colorize fireworks can also be dangerous, and unlike perchlorate, they’re not used up during the combustion reaction. ‘What you start with is also what you end up with,’ Chavez explains. ‘They can get aerosolized and breathed in, or they go into the soil and water.’  Particularly harmful is barium, used to produce green; studies suggest it may cause respiratory problems, among other maladies. One study found that barium levels in the air increased 1,000 times after a fireworks-heavy Diwali festival in India.”—Newsweek

 

Green.

To be clear, aside from the danger of injury and fire, research proves that fireworks are hazardous to our health. They are made of dangerous, poisonous chemicals. They not only frighten birds, they poison people. They do not “just go away” because they are blown up. They land on sand and water, they infect the air. The party on our beach is over and people are checking out of rentals and heading back home. They leave behind a mess.

Some beach fires still smolder 18 hours later. That was once a beautiful drift log in the photo below. Beer cans, pop bottles, plastic trash, and the remains of a great many completely illegal explosions. The began yesterday afternoon with a dense black cloud. The refuse at top is from this party. There are people out trying to clean up, but the making of this mess are not among them.

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The people who made this mess do not live here, they are not people who walk the beach at sunrise or enjoy the quiet or nature. They come here to drink and blow things up—illegal explosions that they indulge in here because there is no one to stop them.

“ ‘When people think of air pollution, they think of other kinds of things—smoke stacks, automobile exhaust pipes, construction sites,’ says study author Dian J. Seidel, senior scientist for climate measurements at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). ‘I don’t think most people think of fireworks.’

“The level of particulate matter, or small pollutants like dust, dirt and soot present in the air, increased by 42% on average across the U.S. on the Fourth of July, according to the study. Air conditions are at their worst between 9 and to 10 p.m. on the day of the holiday. The researchers, who looked at data from 315 sites across the country, found that ten of the sites met a threshold deemed unsafe by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) when sustained for a prolonged period of time.”—Time

I sometime indulge in a fantasy where I drive to Lake Oswego and light explosives in a driveway, set a fire in a Laurelhurst lawn, or drive all the way to Seattle and set off firecrackers in the middle of the night.

 

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“The Supreme Court traded one injustice for another 74 years later.”

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FIGHTING HATE // TEACHING TOLERANCE // SEEKING JUSTICE

JUNE 30, 2018

Weekend Read // Issue 86

Fred Korematsu was 23 when he defied the order sending him to an internment camp.

He was one of 120,000 Japanese immigrants and Americans detained by the federal government under Executive Order 9066. He fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court.

He lost.

Korematsu v. United States — in which the Supreme Court ruled that the internment was justified — was never overturned.

Not even after President Gerald Ford formally terminated Executive Order 9066; not after President Ronald Reagan provided each detainee with financial redress; not even after President Bill Clinton awarded Korematsu with the Presidential Medal of Freedom did the Supreme Court overturn its ruling upholding the internment of Japanese Americans.

That all changed Tuesday, when the Supreme Court finally repudiated Korematsu v. United States, writing that it “was gravely wrong” — at the same time that it upheld Trump’s discriminatory Muslim ban.

It was painful irony, especially for Korematsu’s daughter.

“Racial profiling was wrong in 1942 and racial profiling and religious profiling is wrong in 2018,” Karen Korematsu told The Washington Post. “The Supreme Court traded one injustice for another 74 years later.”

Using the “same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a powerful dissent, the Supreme Court “blindly accept[ed] the government’s misguided invitation to sanction a discriminatory policy motivated by animosity toward a disfavored group, all in the name of a superficial claim of national security.”

Or, as Karen neatly summarized it, the court allowed the government to “racially profil[e] a group because they looked like the enemy.”

It’s not the only parallel between the Trump administration’s actions and the incarceration of people President Franklin D. Roosevelt deemed “alien enemies.”

Once targeted, Japanese Americans were interned for over four years. They were held in converted racetracks, fairgrounds and horse stables in camps west of the Rocky Mountains. Korematsu himself was held in a horse stall with a single light bulb.

“Jail was better than this,” he told one biographer.

Today, migrant children are being detained — soon, ostensibly, to be held with their parents — in “tent cities” and converted Walmarts.

Their trauma, according to psychotherapist Satsuki Ina, herself born in an internment camp, is all too familiar. As she detailed for Splinter:

They have no idea how long they’re going to be held. They have no idea if they’ll ever see their parents again. That level of anxiety causes tremendous emotional stress, and we know from the research in neuroscience that constant release of these stress hormones can affect a child’s ability to learn, a child’s ability to self-manage, to regulate themselves. The long-term impact that I’ve seen in my own Japanese American community is this hyper-vigilance … a reaction to having been incarcerated unjustly. This kind of treatment has consequences for a lifetime for a child. The trauma effect is pretty severe when there’s been captivity trauma. We were unjustly incarcerated when we weren’t guilty of anything.

Today, people across the country will rally to protest Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy toward migrants who cross the border. We’re partnering with the ACLU and the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice to host the Families Belong Together rally here in Montgomery, Alabama, as well as in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.

Now, more than ever, apathy is not an option. As Ina recalled for Splinter:

When thousands of Japanese Americans were being removed from their classrooms, from their jobs, and their neighborhoods, there was no outcry. No one instituted any kind of protest. … My hope is that people will know how important it is to stand up for the injustice that’s happening right now.

We couldn’t agree more.

The Editors

THE FLAG

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With baby Ian in 1982. Maybe not the 4th, but there are the colors.

When I was a little girl, I looked at a book with colored illustrations of flags. Compared to the emblems and gilded centers of others, I did not like the U.S. flag much. It was out of balance to my eyes, and the color scheme did not appeal to me. It was not so boring as all those European flags with only two or three horizontal color bands, but far less interesting that the ones with colorful emblems, or Japan’s elegant simplicity. I understood as I aged that the flag is symbolic, however, and that it represented notions of fairness and opportunity and liberty admired throughout the world.

Nevertheless, the reason I have never cut or damaged or worn the flag might signify less respect for our flag than artistic preference.

Still, a flag is a symbol and symbols matter.

A symbol is less important than what it symbolizes. It is less important than its people. It is less important than its ideals.

So I wonder sometimes, what people mean when they use the flag.

Men driving around with a flag hanging off the back of a vehicle seems less patriotic than disrespectful. The stars and stripes made into headgear likewise causes me to cringe.

I am loyal to my country, despite recent developments, despite the man in the Whitehouse, despite my discomfort with fellow citizens who get the news from shock radio and memes, do not read books, and perversely assume politics are beneath their notice. The 42%, give or take, who still support what this administration is doing to our global reputation.

Our reputation has already taken hits.

Who has the right to use the flag for their personal agenda? This is the Land of the Free, so anyone may. If some are offended by flag burning, let me say here that I am offended to see a United States flag wrapped around someone’s head or dragged behind their pick-up truck.

Some of my ancestors have been here a long time, the more recent arrived in the 20th century. My immediate family was born here, but distant and not-so distant relatives came from other nations including England and Mexico, Finland and Scotland. Those traveling north from south, west from east. The eldest moved east to west. Such is the passage of human migration, the claim of humanity on any land. The only claim I have on this soil is personal.

Just now the flag flying day and night in the yard of a house due south of me is hanging still. I do not display a flag, but I know that proper treatment of our national symbol includes taking it down unless it is lit in the dark. I know it is not proper to use this symbol of respect and righteousness as a bludgeon. I am sorry that my country is no longer a beacon light of hope in the world but become the bully on the block.

I will go out on my walk, and along the way I will greet other walkers, the roar of water constantly in motion, just as I must remain moving to be alive.

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4BITS OF FOUND WISDOM

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We had no local ravens when we moved to the coast in 1979. In 1992 I saw a raven at the crest of highway 26 through the coast range. He stood on the shoulder and four crows walked around him. I would never confuse crows and ravens again. The first raven I saw at sea level would have been while running in the late 1990s. Then a pair moved into the neighborhood. Today we have an extended family of four ravens. This is one of the youngsters.

What to do and how to live.

1. SMILING. As a very young girl I read in one of my mother’s magazines—Redbook?—that smiling was the secret to forming friendships. I was a lonely child, but I learned that lesson that most girls are taught from a magazine.

Too many girl and women have been told to smile. Maybe not so much. Maybe smile only when there is something to smile about. Lesson unlearned.

2. SLEEPING. Somewhere, at least ten years later, I read another article that more permanently altered the way I live my life. A neuroscientist explained that sleeping in on the weekends guaranteed that on Mondays, I would feel “jet-lagged” since my body would have to make a two-three hour adjustment to sleep schedule. I realized then that the secret to getting my eight hours of sleep was not so much bedtime as getting-up time. Yes, I needed to be asleep by ten or eleven at night, but that meant I also needed to have gotten up by six or seven in the morning in order to feel ready to sleep that night. It is the reason I took Art 101 Drawing at 7:30am my first term at the University of Washington. The class was smaller and I knew I would be awake.

Sleeping in these days means 6am, and that is because it is June and the day is bright by 5am.

I have absolutely no memory of where I found this bit of wisdom.

If we struggle to get up Monday morning at 6:30, but we have to because we have to get to work or school, we resist and resent the effort to be wide-awake-an-bushy-tailed at the crack of dawn. We struggle Tuesday and Wednesday, and by Thursday we’re thinking one more day till the weekend. So Friday is only bearable because tomorrow is Saturday. The Saturday and and Sunday we sleep in a couple or three hours, so on Monday morning, we feel cheated of sleep and much start all over again with the struggle to wake.

Get up at the same time every day. No matter what. Pick a time and get up. Go to bed in time to get the sleep you need. And then get up at the same time as yesterday.

3 MY WAY. Another great truth that I might never have come by on my own concerned the Way People Do Things. If you want something done in a particular way—the dishes washed just so, the laundry sorted in a particular way (beyond not putting the red t-shirt in with your white underwear), colored pencils sorted by rainbow—if you are very picky about a job and your partner is not, do it yourself. Yes, I know, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” But this is a reminder that when we are fussy about some things, it is unreasonable to expect anyone else to absorb our fuss, because half the time it’s just our preference.

If it’s rationally better and the other person is willing, teach them to do the job right. But if the precise manner something is done is just a personal preference, for heaven’s sake don’t expect others to see the need.

Do it yourself the way you want. 

4. COMPLAINING. One bit of wisdom dropped on me all by myself partially as a daughter and reinforced as a result of teaching for over 40 years has to do with dealing with parents. You cannot go wrong telling parents something good about their child. I’m a daughter and mother, and as a teacher: Say something nice and keep most criticism to yourself.

My husband and I were not perfect people when I met him and we are certain I still am not a perfect person today. Both of us have our flaws, our fussiness, our weaknesses and fits of temper. My husband dyed the laundry pink at least three times before he learned to sort colors. I have given in to being a morning person. But in the early years of our relationship, while were were famously in love with the giddy passion associated with youth and romance, sometimes we got on one another’s case. We squabbled and quarreled and yelled.

In all those years, I never once complained to his parents about Gary. I did not even complain to my parents about him. Our struggles, however angry and irritating, were between us and they were worth working through because, you know, love. Complaining to his parents would only have been seeking allies. And what kind of future daughter-in-law allies herself with her husband’s parents against him? Not this one.

Do not complain to parents or in-laws about their children. You will only hurt their feelings. They likely did the best they could, and most do as well as anyone. Give them a break.

Did I have complaints about my in-laws’ offspring? Of course. Did Gary? Undoubtedly. We worked it out.

Perhaps that is a reason we have 49 years.

TALKING OUT OF TURN

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I lost my temper the other day. I used a couple of bad words in public. I have apologized, but the incident has troubled me since.

In the past, I have managed to keep my cool under extremely trying circumstances, and to make reasoned responses to completely unreasonable, even deeply offensive people. Once in a while I lose it and say something I should not. It is not that my opinion is wrong—at least not always—but that my approach, my words are wrong.

There really is not excuse for that.

This morning on the beach, I shared my distress with a neighbor and she was quick to offer me excuses, mostly having to do with stress. “We are all so stressed,” she said.

Yes, I would agree with that.

One of the essays I used to share with my students concerned civility. The author contrasts the offenses upon civility as noted by the right, and then a slightly different list of offenses identified by the left. All concerned offenses on common courtesy and decency. In the middle of the essay, the author asks of himself: “What do I think?” He thinks they are both absolutely correct, but then he goes on to identify his own take on civility.

Civility is more than words and one-on-one actions. Civility is how we regard others as individual members of the greater community. Is crude language offensive? Is bragging about casual sex offensive? Both likely are to most. What about lies and exploitation, taking over a business only to dismantle it and putting people out of work in the process? How about ridiculing a person with a health problem? What about the family of a soldier? The soldier? People struggling to make ends meet? Saying whatever will draw cheers at a rally, even to the point of advocating violence?

There was a time when a decent member of either party would have found all those behaviors deplorable.

What happened?

Why am I losing sleep over an f-bomb spoken in the heat of the moment, when our leader with speech-writers at his disposal chooses to speak as if he were leading a Klan rally instead of my country?

Does anyone believe that man ever loses sleep over anything but his personal bank account?

Well, maybe that is unfair.

This morning I saw a tiny shrew, dead on the sand a hundred yards out from the shore. Poor little thing. It knows to eat insects. It knows to hide from predators. It was completely unmarked.

Four raven fed on the most recently dead seal. The other day the body—now more gone than remaining to be eaten—had been dragged a few feet across the sand. No human or dog footprints. I suggested maybe an eagle had tried to lift it.

“It’s too heavy for an eagle to lift.”

“Exactly.”

MY WRITING LIFE

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I began writing fiction in 1990 when I was hired to teach English at Seaside High School. I believed myself wholly unqualified to teach English (and others have agreed), but I had taught art in an elite prep school for three years, picked up a Social Studies endorsement through exam, and substituted in the Seaside District for eleven years. I had 20 undergraduate English credits. I had never considered teaching English. Nevertheless, the Chair of the English Department at that time knew me well as a substitute teacher and argued that I was better read than she was and urged me to apply.

My hiring was contingent upon gaining a certification in English. I took another test and began taking graduate classes that summer. In the fall, I was teaching English. Among my advantages were an excellent public school education and substantial experience as an essayist.

My first novel was written over the summer of 1995, working with a student who also wrote a (better) novel. Both were read my the editor of a major publishing house. My student’s manuscript received the better response.

My second novel, Clean Away, was written from multiple points of view, nine women representing several generations of a family over many decades. Certain experiences seem to repeat themselves through the generations. I began that in 1999 and it was funny.

My third novel, A Single Fact written in 2002, was the very rough draft I later rewrote in 2017. The main character of this novel is a teenager who is having a rotten senior year and afraid the only thing worse than high school might be that nothing better will come next. The title story was published by CALYX in 2006 as “A Single Fact Can Spoil a Good Argument.”

All this time I was working 60-80 hours a week teaching English and advising the yearbook. When I crawled out from under the yearbook in 2002, I found I could not slow down. I wrote more.

In 2007, while completing my MFA, I compiled Blonde Indian, later retitled Living in Snake Land. These linked stories about a poor white boy are set in 1961 in Phoenix, Arizona. That novel-in-stories is number four.

In 2007 I completed an MFA in fiction from Pacific University. Three of my dearest friends came to my graduation—two of them from Seattle. It was a great day, and Gary preserved that for me by not telling my that my mom had been back in the hospital until all my obligations in defending my thesis, a public reading and craft talk, were complete. She died a week later.

I dropped 40 pounds in the next few months. I stopped writing. I struggled to regain optimism, to regain my stride, whatever that might be.

Revision happens in people’s lives, too. I retired from teaching full time in 2015 after nearly 40 years of teaching art and English in private and public high schools. I think I am, I was good at my job. My greatest joy is hearing from former students who discover I taught them something useful. I think most of us hope to be useful.

In November of 2016, I  took the 4k short story, “The Promised Hour,” that I wrote to apply for my MFA and wrote from there. I had rewritten that story dozens of times (literally) and submitted it dozens of times but it couldn’t find a home. I hoped that maybe what it needed was to become a novel. National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) offered me an opportunity to race through a much longer version of that story.

Since then, I revised the novel going-on eight times. I originally hoped for 60k but did better than that, ending the month with over 75,000 words. By it’s 8th draft, it was retitled Escape My Heart of Sorrows. By the eleventh draft it had seen several new names, the best of which was suggested by a former student who got it from her husband, Painting Over. I am working on draft 14 now and still dithering about the title. Maybe Everybody’s Mother Dies. This is novel number five and it is not finished.

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My work has earned many awards including an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship, Arts & Letters fellowship, Soapstone residency, Pushcart nomination, and publication in the Brevity blog (several times), The MacGuffin, CALYX, Work Magazine, Raven Chronicles, Ink Filled Page, The Humanist, North American Review, and anthologies about running and race. There is a list of all my publications, or most of them, under “Publications” on this site. There are links to all the works available online.

I thought my second NaNo year in 2017 was time for something completely different, stories or fantasy, but I changed my mind at the last minute. Instead of a new piece, I returned to an earlier effort, the novel from 2002. I altered verb tense, added and changed characters, and introduced the crime I originally intended to provide more tension. So those were the differences. A familiar first person voice but an entirely new book. I hoped to complete 80k and I got 75k. I was okay with that, but since then I have completely lost track of that novel and begun working in a new direction.

Last year I surprised myself by writing a fantasy story, “If It Were True Owls Dream,” which will be published in August in Liminal Stories. (When that goes live, I will provide a link.)

In April 2018, I wrote 15k of a science fiction novelette. Writing science fiction is new for me though I have been a fan for many years. In the fall I intend to add 50k to an existing short manuscript. But I might be still busy rewriting novel number five, the one that began as “The Promised Hour”:

The way back from loss may seem unimaginable, but people do it all the time. Thena Justice was building a new life near Seattle after the death of her mother and breakup of a terrible marriage when her former husband murders the babysitter and their daughter before committing suicide. Lost in grief and guilt, Thena first hides in a friend’s converted garage, then in a tiny cottage on the Pacific coast, thrashing her way through anguish, apathy, anger, and routine. Instead of returning to Puget Sound, she moves to Portland, Oregon, the city where she was born, takes the bus to a retail job each day, and keeps her head down until a child crying in the night wakens her sense of agency and hope.

It sounds a sad book, I know, but it is all about survival, about hope. My interest is in how we regain an active role after a calamity and that is the focus of this story. Would you read it?

For several years I blogged at Quiet Minds, which is now renamed and active here on WordPress as Imperfect Patience. I send work out. I am still teaching college writing in Winter and Spring Term, at least I hope I am.

I walk the beach. I weave. I write. I am mostly retired, but I am not done.

 

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“Hillbilly”

/ janpriddyoregon / Leave a comment

Last fall, I read the memoir Hillbilly Elegy and I struggled with its view of poverty. The man suffered, but suffering does not necessarily make us wise. I both recognized that he was reporting his personal experience, and felt concerned that his view of his own life was limited by his selfish political point of view. This morning, an essay by Chris Offut, “I Will Always Write About Appalachia” helped me understand why.

“The most recent addition to these false accounts of Appalachian life is the widely read book Hillbilly Elegy, the author of which grew up in the decaying Rust Belt town of Middletown, Ohio. Nevertheless, he blames his personal difficulties on the culture of Appalachia.”

The writing in Vance’s memoir isn’t anything special, but the story is emotionally compelling. Vance grew up in a violent, loud, drug-afflicted, under-educated, and sometimes poor household, but he had people who genuinely loved him and cared for him, even if those people had their flaws and were not necessarily his parents. I love the quote from a teacher at his former high school: “They want us to be shepherds to these kids. But no one wants to talk about the fact that many of them are raised by wolves.” And then . . .

I began to consider stories I knew best from my own family and from teaching in public schools. I don’t know much about Appalachia, but I do know something about poverty and disadvantage. “Hillbilly” and “white trash” are filthy words in my home.

For one, I know it’s no shame to be poor is immediately followed in my head by “It’s no great honor either” from Fiddler on the Roof. Tevye was not a sinful man, but a good, honest, hardworking father and husband. “Economically disadvantaged” is a euphemism I find personally offensive because it suggest there is something shameful about poverty. Being rich is not supposed to give anyone special rights or privileges, and I have been thinking a lot about that lately. I know being poor is not a sin or a failure.

My husband was raised poor in a family that did not take charity. His family bought “day old” bread from an outlet when he was little, and he picked the mold off his lunch, trying not to be seen doing it. He sat on the porch waiting for his dad to get home on payday because there was no food in the house beyond scraped jars of condiments. His experience of poverty was not unique, and it didn’t happen in Kentucky, but in Arizona, but it was hard. One side of his family was Ballard Swedes from Seattle, Washington and the other was Dust Bowl Scots-Irish share croppers from Oklahoma, orphaned when their mother died and Pappie gave them away.

No one in his family intervened or encouraged him to make something of himself. Vietnam was raging and his hair was long. In the years between high school and college, he had three pieces of luck. He was granted a draft deferment based on his eyesight that eventually became permanent, he began working at the University Book Store where he was exposed to new people and ideas, and he met me. When I graduated from high school the next year, he went to college because I was going to college. My husband graduated from high school with a C average but he was Phi Beta Kappa when he graduated from the University of Washington four years later. Like Vance, he saw no point in pajamas and is still in a perpetual state of what others term catastrophizing. Christmas was fraught when I met him but has become a good holiday through decades of determined effort on my part. He loves his cotton jersey pajamas.

Vance would like to give himself all the credit. He would blame achievement or lack of it on people rather than circumstance, but like my husband, he had some luck.

From the LA Times: “As Vance puts it at the beginning of this American dream memoir, he has done nothing ‘extraordinary.’ So what’s wrong with all those other hillbillies? In suggesting that his own success in Silicon Valley was a matter of refusing cinnamon rolls, Vance is giving us a basis in feeling for the devastating policy Ben Carson wants to enact. People are poor because they deserve to be. And there it is: Trump-era elitism defined.”

Some people abuse the system, and some people are too proud to accept help, even for their children. When my husband was given a sweater by his pastor because his second-hand store clothing was too poor for church and too sad for the pastor to ignore, it was only because his mother won the argument with his father that he was allowed to keep it. It was the nicest item of clothing he ever owned as a child. “White trash” is a filthy expression in my home. “Red neck” was the term I was taught as a child. I would not use it today. Change is not easy.

In my forty-year experience working with students, I witnessed most parents doing the absolute best they knew how. Neglectful poor parents do not necessarily love their children any less than neglectful affluent parents do, but the results tend to be more public among the poor. They are less skillful at concealing problems because they do not have the money to hide behind. Some parents work too many jobs just to get by. I think of a single parent who could not ensure his child did his homework because he got off work in the middle of the night find his teenager drinking soda and playing video games instead of sleeping.

Affluent families have their own troubles involving drugs and mental health, abuse and time. Even in my poor, rural community, some entitled parents send their children to elite private schools. They can afford private lessons and vacations their peers cannot even imagine. Their students drive cars worth more than the average local yearly income. Affluent parents may not need to work two or three jobs to pay rent, but sometimes they work long hours or ignore their children because they choose to do so. The results are similar.

Things go horribly wrong for children, dreadful things happen to them, but in my experience, not always, but often when things go wrong with children—pregnancy, drinking, drugs, crime, dropping out—the causes are not simple genetics, politics, poverty, public education, or an unwillingness to work hard. Something is wrong in the home. Too many children from “nice homes” have revealed the truth of their lives to me. Wealthy or impoverished, when kids’ lives go very wrong, there is nearly always something very wrong in their lives. It is not a character flaw, but reaction to something they cannot control. And there is bad luck again.

Unintended teenage pregnancy caused moves and marriages and monstrous errors beginning with his Mamaw when she was too young to drive. It seems to me to be the particular curse of Vance’s family is early pregnancy. Yet he reflects on this only in passing, perhaps because as a boy it did not hit him personally.

Vance works hard not to blame the people he loved, even the people who damaged his life, but he is also specific and detailed in itemizing the chaos, abuses, insults, and injuries inflicted upon himself and he repeats the lists every few chapters to ensure readers do not miss the hardships he suffered. Still, this book is lived truth, and if Vance fails to recognize the irony of complaining that a single call to child services fails to net any interference in a neighbor’s neglect of her children and then complaining a handful of pages later about child services “prying” into his own messy family . . . well, I guess he’s what one of my young students once called “a guy”.

There is no easy answer to the problems we face in America, but I think it is fair to suggest that we could do better as a nation for our children, regardless of who is at fault for their troubles. An equitable public education, a reliable health care, a decent diet, and a nation caring enough to inconvenience itself would go a long way toward making the lives of all American children better. It would give us all a better future.

Vance was lucky in more ways that he credits.

His Mamaw was tough-talking and violent, but she used her threats to keep him off drugs and she assured him that golf was a rich boy’s game and education was his best hope for a decent future. In other words, he was pushed—hard!—to do what every person ambitious for monetary success does. Vance had support.

In addition to choosing to reject the dysfunctional walk he witnessed all around him and gaining the stability and peace of his Mamaw’s house, Vance claims he “found a couple of teachers who inspired [him] to love learning”, but it’s likely he didn’t find them; those teachers found him. No member of his family killed him though several seem to have tried, and he found a family and practical education in the Marines, without seeing action in Iraq. That’s another piece of luck. The Marines taught him to give more than he thought he had, and they took less than they have required from many others.

Vance would like to blame people on assistance for their trouble, but he had plenty of assistance himself.

Vance was lucky. He had strong people who loved him unconditionally. He found friends and mentors along the way. It was luck and generous people who saved him. He knows that. Or at least he should.

APOLOGY

/ janpriddyoregon / 2 Comments
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Koi. Just because they are big fish and pretty.

My husband and I were talking about apologies last evening. We had been discussing boorish behavior revealed by the MeToo movement as contrasted by the genuinely criminal behavior of Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein.

I can forgive the guy who makes a stupid joke or a failed pass. But what about the cases of men who double down on a stupid move by harassing and threatening the careers of women? How bad before borderline become brutality? How bad does it have to be before action pass into unforgivable?

At what point does a mistake become abuse? Is the line so very hard to see? I don’t think it’s all that difficult to define where a mistake becomes a failure to offer basic respect. You make a modest error, and instead of threatening to damage a woman’s career, you apologize. You don’t wait years, you don’t pretend it didn’t happen, you don’t blame her for anything, and you don’t apologize to one woman while ignoring the other two or six or sixteen you abused. You recognize you have been a jerk and say, Sorry! right off. Then you do not do it again.

If, let’s say, you accuse someone of having a bad temper while standing over them and yelling, and while the person you are yelling at is worried because her husband has gone to the doctor and been taken to the ER; or you have yelled at a teacher and called her “vindictive” because she asked your son to rewrite an essay that failed to follow directions, after several papers where the same student didn’t follow directions. It is not enough to stop. “Sorry” is the missing word.

Sucking up to someone later to avoid admitting you have been a jerk is not the same as apologizing. “Being nice” or claiming: “I didn’t intend for your feelings to be hurt” is not the same as apologizing.

An apology begins with “I’m sorry” and moves on from there.

Some people seem to have trouble with those words. Some women have trouble saying they are sorry, too, but mostly it seems to be men. Last night, I said I was glad both our sons and my husband were able to do that.

“Well,” my husband offered mildly, “it’s different for a man to apologize.”

I thought: male ego? Cultural demands for masculine behavior? “Is it?” I said.

“No,” Gary said.

I laughed.

Gary said, “If you’re an asshole you’re an asshole and you should apologize.”

Well, you see why I married him 44 years ago, right? Our sons take after their dad. I am proud that they consider the consequences of their actions. They care about justice. They care about what is right. They aren’t perfect people. Who is?

Gary ordered six CDs today. “I got carried away.” I don’t mind. He loves music the way I love yarn. He’s entitled. (And he’s not sorry.)

On the other hand, we all make mistakes sometimes. We lose our temper or say something we wish we hadn’t. We do or say things we are sorry for.

When that happens, we should just say it: I’m sorry.

We should mean it.

 

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