Mom's Tickets & Zorba

September 14
I've been working on getting tickets for my mother's Big Trip. She's going to go to Knoxville to visit my Dad's great nieces, then from there to San Luis Obispo to visit my sister, then from San Luis back to New Jersey for Christmas--and now we're working on New Jersey to Cleveland where's she'll visit her nephew and his extended family, then back to Pittsburgh, where family friend and West Virginia artist Charlie Cowger will pick her up! This will cost a bundle, but it's great she's so popular with her family.

September 12, 2005
More gorgeous weather, although it's supposed to get hot today. The usual million and a half things preying on my mind, including "reformatting" of my office. Listen to that language. Oh, yes, I've gone over to the dark side. Every night I spend at least forty five minutes just surfing. On the one hand, I am just having a good time with this stuff. On the other hand, I think it's taking away from writing time (although I can't totally be sure– the nervous-pleasurable-quicktime of digital is now associated through e-mail and websites with a lot of projects I didn't used to do: Coalition, writing, Ethical.) I like to think that this digital stuff is taking the place of some of my old depressions. I think, more definitely, it's a space where I once watched more t.v. (All before Joel was born, so more than twenty years ago). I've been using a computre for more than twenty years now! I began with something Zorba (see below). What a trip that thing was! "Portable" sewing machine size and shape, and weight. I thought it was essentially a glorified selectric typewriter. My first MS-Dos system came after we moved to New Jersey. I insisted on amber letters on black, but I wanted no images. Then, a computer later, you couldn't get them without color and imagery, and I then there was e-mail, and then I began to play with the idea that a website – I've always loved art and design in an amateurish way– and began, thanks as usual to brother-in-law David Weinberger, to dabble in HTML, or rather, programs that use HTML, and once I got Dreamweaver, and saw how that eases certain kinds of communication–well, I was hooked, and I remain hooked, and sometimes that I am indeed addicted-- maybe not to gaming or gambling or raw sex images, but, I think, to the flickering screen, to the quickness of information (example--I thought nostalgically of Zorba, clicked over to the Internet, Googled "Old Computers Zorba" and got an image and information within fifteen seconds)

September 11, 2005
This is four years with two wars, one continuing endlessly, plus Hurricane Katrina. Art by Mahasin Nor-Pomarico

September 5, 2005
Back from the lake, closing all day, always sad to see the last day of the season at the house, and the lake was just splendid, cool sunny, perfect.

September 1
I planted fall lettuce today--indoors in pots because the slugs did in one small patch of lettuce and one of radicchio. On the other hand, I have several surviving radicchios and a couple of patches of lettuce. What is with this nature? Slugs eating my tiny lettuces, hurricanes eating half of Louisiana. I'm trying to be amusing, but one is reminded that we are not alone here on our planet. Judy Moffett has an interesting science fiction novel called Pennterra in which a planet rejects the colonists whose approach is ownership rather than community with the ecosystem.

August 30
We'll be going to the lake this week-end and then plunging into lots of activities with the Coalition and gearing up for teaching. I've been cleaning my office-- that is to say, throwing out endless stacks of paper-- old book projects, records of a magazine I was fiction editor for, putting away records of schools where I worked last year, etc. etc. It's very satisfying, and gives a certain sense of control. I've even taken photos and bits of art work and actually put up nails on the walls and hung 'em up. For eighteen years they've been propped here and there, charmingly disheveled. I guess this means I've decided to stay awhile. Joel, meanwhile, called, and he is in his new room, but not unpacked yet. He had to move himself, two trips, in a borrowed car. I felt bad he didn't ask me to come up and help him move. I seem to have turned exactly into what I didn't want to be-- what he calls "such a mother." I really didn't mean to. I swore I'd never eat food that my kid left on his plate, and of course I did. I swore a lot of things. Motherhood is strewn with broken vows....

August 26
Well, the skunk was released. Andy set the trap to catch raccoon, got a skunk instead. The town Animal Control guy doesn’t take skunks or 'possums away, only raccoons, so he apparently crept down while I was out and used a long stick to open the Hav-a-hart and let the dear little skunk go free.
Meanwhile, the deer are totally brazen-- the mangy looking mother– definitely a teenmother, maybe younger– plus twins Bambi and Bambino. They leave deposits of their shiny black scat and eat the growing points off the cucumber and squash plants, and seem to have retarded the tomatoes too. Worse garden in years, although we did have our own carrots, mini-cukes, kohlrabi, and peppers for dinner last night.

And tonight-- Trader Joe's and the movies in Westfield where we saw....

Yes, March of the Penguins. I liked it a lot. For a funny comment on it, see Miles Klee's blog at http://www.thismilkishot.blogspot.com/ --entry for August 15.

August 21
Mary and Tony Sciaino kindly invited us to their (air-conditioned!) West Orange home for grilled steaks last night. Joel came too, and he and Ryan went out to the movies afterward. I like our new neighbors in South Orange a lot, but there'll never be neighbors like Mary and Tony! They were across the street from us for fifteen years, always ready to let Joel come over to play with Ryan and Ann (Joel is exactly nine months younger than Ryan and nine months older than Ann), always including us in their family events, inviting us over for soup on snowy days when the schools were closed (they're both educators) and generally making life in the suburbs just what I had always been afraid it wouldn't be!
In a couple of hours, Joel heads back to Providence for his last week of work, then training to be a Teaching Assistant, then back to school.
I have the kind of twisted mind that misses him most when he's here...

August 20
This is what summer looks like to me, in spite of deer, slow ripening fruits and vegetables. It's always these lovely things that want to grow for me.

August 19

I had such a lovely visit to the museum yesterday. I was going to go out with Chiaki in the afternoon and take her to an English tea at Tea and Sympathy (expensive but fun), so I went to the Metropolitan Museum first and did one of my go-where-you-will visits.
I grabbed a bun and iced tea first, then looked at some things in the photo and print gallery, pretty random, photos of American slaves and free people, 16th century drawings and etchings of saints being tortured by their enemies, the slaughter of the innocents, a battle, which really set me up for the thing that sucked me in most, which was the Indian sculptures.
I hadn't been in there for a long time–I was desultorily looking for the Chinese brush painting which I never found, but instead walked into one of these galleries where you have to read the scorecard to tell the Buddha from Lord Shiva– well, Buddha usually only has two arms and never has a lady consort. There were a couple of mithunas, the loving couples with the tiny waists and bodies that you just want to hug and hold. There was a wonderful Durga (not this one, but one with some of the same elements) wonderful Durga, many-armed and busty saving the world from the water buffalo demon– I don't know, but the grace and pulsing life (there's a Sanskrit word for this that I can't remember) and the dark rooms like elegant caves, just blew me away.
I took a few steps over and sat in the entrance to the Chinese meditation garden to calm down a little. That's why I love that museum so much– I had just been thinking how different I feel towards it after having been in Rome where the art is in its place-- Caravaggio in every church you wander into, Roman ruins sticking up beside the trolley people grab to go to work– how our art is largely stolen from elsewhere by Robber Baron types–and then I step into the Indian galleries and just want to laugh with delight. Thankful that if they had to go over there and buy the store out, at least it's here in a public place where I can see it.

August 18
Andy and I went to the nearest Cindy vigil-- Maplecrest Park in Maplewood. There were probably 200 people there, and MoveOn.Org directs people to a Flickr site that has a slide show of vigils all over the country. Click here for the slide show.

See My Other Blog...

http://www.meredithsuewillis.com/blog.html



August 18
Andy and I went to the nearest Cindy vigil-- Maplecrest Park in Maplewood. There were probably 200 people there, and MoveOn.Org directs people to a Flickr site that has a slide show of vigils all over the country. Click here for the slide show.

August 15
A little late, but here are some photos of folks from the Appalachian Writers Workshop at the Hindman Settlement House in Hindman, Kentucky. All photos courtesy of Fred First.

To see the full sized images, visit Fred's Flickr site at http://flickr.com/photos/fred1st/32566802/in/set-746692/.




August 14

We had dinner with our good friends Marc Kaminsky and Maddy Santner from the old 317 Sixth Avenue Co-op in Brooklyn. When we all began moving to houses, they moved farther out into Brooklyn while we came to New Jersey. So good to talk of the things they like to talk about-- she's a school social worker in some of the toughest high schools in Brooklyn, he is a poet and psychotherapist. The great freedom of talking to people from your cohort-- in this case, having gone through serious things together, having had babies two months apart.







August 11
Hot and humid again, and we'll be continuing this way for days and days. The deer got in my garden yesterday and I actually saw her, the mother of the twins, munching tomato leaves, but she had knocked off the only fruit anywhere near ripe! *&#@!!**#!!
Well, it's back in the community saddle. I attended, but managed to keep my mouth shut at, a community meeting last night at Ethical, ably moderated by Matthew Johnson, the local psychologist and social activist. People who spoke included the families of the three 14 year old boys who were arrested, Larry Hamm of People's Organization for Progress , Dr. Peter Horoshack, Superintendent of Schools, and a number of other people who recounted incidents in which children of color, usually male, were followed, ticketed, and generally experienced unhappy interactions with the Maplewood police force. Also there were at least three members of the Board of Ed, at least two members of the school administration, and at least four members of the Maplewood Township committee as well as members of the Community Coaltion on Race (me and Audrey), the Ethical Culture Society, and other community organizations. There was a sign-up sheet and a number of ideas about the future. Overall, I hope something comes out of it-- maybe a Civilian Police Review Board? For white people, it is important to hear how many stories there are about black boys and police.

August 8
I just drove back from West Virginia today, where's I visited my mother and helped her babysit Ina Hardesty's Westie, Raggs, while Ina was at her nephew's wedding. My mother is thinking about whether or not she wants to get a dog for company, and this was a sort of dry run-- Raggs charming and expressive, and they slept together!
My Kentucky trip was for the annual Appalachian Writers' Conference at the Hindman Settlement House, in Hindman, Kentucky. I taught a short story workshop, and really enjoyed the intensity of all the readings and conferences and Dr. Jack Higgs's Appalachian Literature lectures (here's one of his short reading lists with a photo). So beautiful to be there, beautiful dense green, beautiful accents of Eastern Kentucky, Tennessee, southwestern Virginian, Western North Carolina, and all the rest of them. At the conference there is a wonderful combination of sophisticated and deep appreciation of literature and words and those voices of the mountains. I had a great time.









July 29
I'm back from the lake for a few hours--and here is David's photo of the hummingbirds we spent a lot of time watching! If you want to see the bigger and better picture, go to his website at Joho the Blog. We did the usual take-a-run, soak in the lake, generally hang out, eat bread and cheese, go see Shakespeare (we went to a preview of the rarely performed King John last night and really liked it-- although 14 year old Nathan said he could have used more sword fights). Andy, Joel, and I also went to see a performance of The Importance of Being Earnest at the Barrington Stage Company, which was tremendous fun. And now I'm back, they are all still there, and I'm about to head for WV and then Kentucky, the Appalachian Writers Conference at the Forks of Troublesome Creek!













July 22
There is this photo of me on the Coalition's website, in the Two Towns in Harmony section that isn't pretty, but it is me as I always wanted to be: La Pasionaria. That would be Dolores Ibárruri Gómez, the Spanish Civil War figure, and her nickname meant "Passion Flower," not "The Passionate One," which was what I thought. Probably a pun, though. She was a great public speaker, and I always wanted to be the Passionate One, standing up in front of a crowd, I think I said in Trespassers or somewhere, to be an exclamation point on the wave of history or something. (Surely I said it better than that?) You get the idea, anyhow. So this photo is of me totally focussed on the text and the microphone, and the crowd, and very intense. I had no idea what I looked like, and for once, didn't care, and that's why I like this picture.



July 20
We're about to go away-- the lake for a week, then me to Troublesome Creek to work at the Appalachian Writers Conference.

July 15 Caveat lector! Warning! The following blog entry is about Indo-European roots which I find fascinating and may very well make most people sleepy!

I adore word history. There's nothing, nothing like Indo-European roots, which are words or rather proto-words, that have been reconstructed from present day languages. They are spoken in no language now, but painstaking scholarship has worked backward to find the words that over millennia were transformed into words we used today.
Indo-European, the proto-language that I have read a little about, probably was spoken in the western middle east– like maybe Kazakhstan, although no one really knows. But at any rate, way back in time, the language spoken there was spread in all directions, possibly by invaders. Now its descendent languages (and this probably has significance in political but not racial history) include all the Germanic languages (English and Dutch and Yiddish etc.) and all the Slavic languages plus Greek and Latin and even Welsh and Gaelic. Languages descended from Indo-European are also spoken in northern India. Not among its descendent languages are the Semitic languages (Hebrew and Arabic and Aramaic), American Indian Languages, African languages, Polynesian, Chinese, Japanese–oh, tons of languages. What always amazes me, repeatedly and magnificently, is first the intense scholarship that reconstructed this ancient language, but even more how there are amazing but not illogical connections between English words.
For example, I looked up "story," which, unsurprisingly, is closely connected to "history" via French and Latin. But both "story" and "history" go back much further following paths of words through many many changes of pronunciation (forget spelling which is a whole other ball game) to a reconstructed Indo-European word "weid," which mean something like "to see." And from this ancient word come all of the following English words and more, some relatively recently arriving in English from Latin, some from farther back through French at the Norman conquest, some even farther back from the Germanic language Anglo-Saxon. But all going back to that one word/idea for "See": "story" and "history," "wisdom," and "guide"– but also "idea" and "unwitting" plus, most amazing, "envy," "kaleidoscope," and "penguin"!
So many different ideas that the original general verb "to see." It developed into "kaleidoscope" from a Greek word "eidos" for "form" or "shape," which makes sense as a descendent from a word for "see." The connection between "wisdom" and "guide" isn't surprising– the only surprise is how the words followed different pronunciation paths. "Guise" makes sense too, as if comes from an Old French word about "appearance" or "form." Similarly, all the "view" and "visage" words are also about what is seen– they came to English via Latin.
My fave, though is "penguin," from Welsh "gwynn" for white, which is probably "white" in the sense of "clearly visible."

I don't know if EVERYTHING is connected, but human beings certainly have a history and we TRY to connect everything. I always wonder if the scholars will ever find the show what language from which ALL human languages are descended. Or was human language invented several times?

For more on Indo-European, click here.




July 10
Andy and I went to Aston Magna while we were in the Berkshires this week-end. It's now at a real hall at the beautiful new performing arts center at Simon's Rock Collete, and they did the Art of the Fugue, which was just delightful and surprising. First, I don't think I ever heard the whole thing in a sitting (72 minutes) and second, what I have heard was always on a keyboard. They had a harpsichord, and it played a couple of pieces solo, but much of it was done in small ensembles, a baroque bassoon, oboe, and flute; the harpsichord with a viola di gamba, a violin, viola, and baroque cello. Eight players, and I was just blown away by the music--I forget how much I actually like music. This time, when I was listening (as opposed to surreptitiously stretching my leg or wondering where we'd eat dinner) I think I was really listening to the music. Not making up an imagistic movie to go with it, but listening. I kept saying, Oh I have to remember this one with the slow viola di gamba, so touching, but I can't hold music in my head. Still, I'm ready to listen again soon.

July 8
Last night, late, looking out the window: dark black-green street trees, pools of shimmery light in the damp air, some kids walking and biking past, just talking. I had a shiver of excitement–that excitement that being alive is all you need, the open ended hope of fruition, change, endless excitement. Which is the definition of youth, I think, endemic in youth, innate in youth.
And to be this old? In reasonable health (it's taking a lot of time and energy to keep this way and will take more)– what do I see? Back and forward broadly. Still enormous sinkholes that I fall into occasionally. Much enjoyment, perhaps more now than in youth, but to look forward is to know quite clearly that we won't be here in forty years, well, fifty for sure. And of course, meanwhile, the terrorist attacks on old London, but this time (more than, say Madrid) I have a sense of resignation: This is how we're going to live now. Think of the Blitz, think of Kigali in 1994. Think of all the people whose future is balanced on the edge of a razor. One isn't resigned to dying, one is alive now, but you see for the moment how it is. And that what is, is.



July 5
I'm still a little stunned by TTIH. There was the all day "Neighborhood Village" with neighborhood associations and organizations and face painting and food etc. etc. And in the evening, the enormous 200 plus person (choral and instrumental) performance of the suite written just for our community (Grant from American Composers Forum Continental Harmony project ). It was pretty amazing, all those voices, ranging from an opera star to a chorus of children eight to twelve plus classical strings plus a jazz combo– quite wonderful. Our friends from Japan (and now New York for two years) Tak and Chiaki came out for it, and Joel was in, too, sort of (he spent MOST of his time with friends in NYC!). He went back on on the train with them. At the end of the program, the composer, Janet Albright , presented a print-out copy of her complete score to us–the South Orange Maplewood Community Coalition on Race, and I'm keeping it for now. It is enormous!







July 3
Two Towns in Harmony is over! A long exhausting day, inspiring music, and I'm wiped.



July 2
I haven't been dreaming a lot lately, I think I wake before the time of dreams that I remember. But I had a dream last night with Joel in some kind of school trouble at CHS, and I was going to insist that they go look at the wonderful entry he wrote for Wikipedia about CHS!
But mostly, my dream had puffins in it, wonderful flights of puffins.



June 30
I was cutting the grass, sweaty and miserable, and this man was standing and looking at me, so I finally stopped and took off my sound blockers. He had white hair, a plaid flannel shirt (in all this heat!) and a rich Irish accent. He said, "And where is the slight little lady who was always out here? She was slight and hard of hearing, and I saw her every day when I went to mass." I was a million miles away, thought he meant Jackie Fahey or the Marshalls, and I said I'd been living here for 18 years, so was it before that? "No, no," he said, "it was the little slight lady who didn't hear well but was so jolly and always working on the flowers..." And finally I realized– he meant my mother! The man is the father of the contracter who lives down the street. He seemed a little lonely, going back to Ireland soon, missing his encounters with Mom.
Meanwhile, Norma and Valerie are gone, I believe. They were closing today, and earlier I saw the new family, some older adults and two small girls, Asian, with braids walking around--the famous walk-through to make sure the sellers haven't pulled out the plumbing. Then I saw Norma and Valerie's car and a rental van they are taking with them, and now it's all locked up tight as a drum. Nice to see children coming, but sad to see endings, any kind of endings.



June 28
I'm still not sure if this is a Blog or a journal-- I treat it like a friendly journal to be read by friends and family, for mostly happy talk. I save most of my literary talk for my private journal or for my free newsletter Books for Readers (to subscribe, see the column on the right!). I generally leave out public affairs, even though that's one area where a lot my time and energy goes.
So here's an article from the Star-Ledger about the Mt. Laurel decision in New Jersey that makes reference to our work in South Orange Maplewood-- quotes from our Executive Director Barbara Heisler Williams. I give a lot of time to this organization, the South Orange Maplewood Community Coalition on Race.
When I was very young I believed I could do something enormous, like become a missionary and save human souls. Then I moved on to saving the world by stopping poverty and/or the War in Vietnam. After I moved to New Jersey, I got involved in helping stop the resegregation of this community: it has seemed like narrowing and narrowing. And have we even really stopped resegregation, or only paused it? And if we have stopped it, have we stopped it only by having black and white stand together against the poor?



June 26
I put the famous 13th century (I think) poem on my index page instead of a picture of me for a while. The rough translation is "Summer is coming in, Loud sings the cuckkoo bird! The seed is gowing, the meadow is blowing, and the woods spring anew. Sing, cuckoo!

Sumer is icumen in
Lhude sing cucu.
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the woode nu.
Sing cucu!

The Cuckoo Bird Song, from about 1250

Somehow, the heat seems okay today, thinking of the old days when I was a little girl in Shinnston, West Virginia, that crisp smell as of secret burning in the grass, the light haze to the blue. No air conditioning in anyone's house then.



June 25
Well, the heat is back. I spent three hours in front of the Post Office giving out literature and selling merchandise for Two Towns in Harmony -- a week from tomorrow is the big day. They're saying a shower is possible-- for a while it was rain, then cloudy, now a shower possible. So many people have been working on this thing-- I have this "It just has to!" feeling about it.
The sun about did me in. I spent a lot of time lying aorund, barely able to move. And kind of liking it.

June 17
I thought I had lost a word, for what you want to be instead of rigid, and all I've been able to think of is "flexible," which may be the word, but seems too physical. "Adaptable" may be it. But neither one sounds right. Do you ever lose a word? I lost "autism" once for a week or two. I thought, or rather didn't think of it, when we were driving back from the country past a school for those kids (giant size swings, for adolescents), and I didn't have access to a dictionary or computer, and forgot about it when I got home, and kept thinking of it at the wrong time, got panicky over losing the word, and finally, it just came back while I was doing something else, running or walking, probably. But this time, I'm not sure there is a word. Maybe that extremely concrete "flexible" is the word. "Adaptable" is okay. Now what seems to be missing, is a perfect word

June 16
More Museum! Writers group at Suzanne's last night, but I went early to do what amounts to finishing my visit last week--to see the Max Ernst retrospective. I was feeling some jealousy over the supreme self-confidence of all those twentieth century artists with their manifestos and convictions. In this case, the Surrealistes. I've been mostly interested in modern/20th century art lately, since I've been back from Italy, as if in my desire for the appropriate cultural manifestations of a place, the real thing to see in New York is modern and twentieth century.
Anyhow, some of Ernst's really did it for me– in general, the colorful ones, his famous Bride with the thick grattage, one absolutely splendid red mountain (maybe after he was spending time in the U.S. Southwest?) The foreboding forests too, and the various cities in decline--a lot of his work very similar to science fiction illustration, probably some of the same horror and fascination at what was/is happening to civilization. Anyhow, I liked least, was least moved by, the most precisely demonstrated theories, the most self-consciously intellectual, or perhaps in the case of a professing surrealist, anti-intellectual, the less I liked it. The big lush splendor of imaginary landscapes and some of the most complex dreamscapes, the more I was moved. I also liked his little "novels" and illustrations that were collages of nineteenth century prints. Lots of wit and humor: which reminds me not forget the the hilarious Blessed Virgin spanking the Baby Jesus that got him into so much trouble in Cologne, I believe. Ernst's life is interesting, too, soldier in WWI, living in France with no papers, being interned as a foreign national during WWII, etc.. Really exciting and good stuff.

Good Things This Week

So far a lot of good things this week. Having Joel around has been fun: dinner Tuesday night for him, Jacob and Doug. Andy was out, and Joel asked for the fruit and nut chili (Jacob is a modified vegan, Doug on a diet–looking at my Popcorn Factory catalog while they waited to eat.)

Monday night I went to a book group, the Barbara Heisler-Williams/Lorraine Graves group, and participated in a discussion of Oradell at Sea, which was a lot of fun– to feel my most- fully-me work participating, as it were, in a conversation.

And yesterday, at Ridge Street School, Rodney Gilbert and a crew of young actors performed monologues by my students there. It was a tremendous amount of fun--They did cuddly puppies and whining chihuahuas and a rotting appendix and blind children and deaf children and Ray Charles and rats and feet in tight shoes and various kids talking about themselves-- oh my it was fun! I'm so glad to have been a part of that. Tonight is my Coalition meeting, but I'm feeling less dread than sometimes. I hope that is a new confidence rather than bad luck.

Why Are We So Busy?

I'm not complaining about today so much, which was a lovely day. But stillyet, I am complaining because I feel so rushed. Today preparing for my last day at Conley School in Asbury, NJ tomorrow, getting out Issue # 71 of my Books for Readers Newsletter, doing some research for Takeshi and Chiaki's New York apartment hunt, plus a trip into New York for Edith Konecky's reading/celebration of her new book View to the North, plus hurrying back to make part of the presentation by Diane Hughes on Stereotype Anxiety and the Academic Achievement Gap. All fun, and one of my main feelings at this tired moment is, Yeah, but I didn't get any writing done.

Teaching, community organizing, the odd bit of writing...

My mom went home yesterday after being here two weeks, and I'm still teaching, looking at more maybe, plus moving the college kid to his summer apartment, also in Pr0vidence. The weather here is superb, mid sixties, light scumble of bright yellow green on all the trees and stunning blue skies.

The trees are finally greening up

It is one of the major miracles, how bit by bit, in tiny increments, the encircling trees turn green. It has happened this week over two days: when mother and I took our walk on Friday before she flew to California, we were commenting on how there were no leaves yet, maybe a distant weeping willing. Lots of yellow, daffodils and the late forsythia, but dark tree limbs, just a little reddish brown on the tips. Then Sunday, a little scumble of pale green in a few places. Yesterday, Monday, the scumble was general, and today there is a whole precise variety: the cherry tree is white; the big oak tree on the next row of houses is light green, a nearby trash tree has lots of bright green, the apple tree has little gray green points on each branch and twig. By this time next week, there will be a canopy.

Why isn't this enough for happiness?

The trees are finally greening up

It is one of the major miracles, how bit by bit, in tiny increments, the encircling trees turn green. It has happened this week over two days: when mother and I took our walk on Friday before she flew to California, we were commenting on how there were no leaves yet, maybe a distant weeping willing. Lots of yellow, daffodils and the late forsythia, but dark tree limbs, just a little reddish brown on the tips. Then Sunday, a little scumble of pale green in a few places. Yesterday, Monday, the scumble was general, and today there is a whole precise variety: the cherry tree is white; the big oak tree on the next row of houses is light green, a nearby trash tree has lots of bright green, the apple tree has little gray green points on each branch and twig. By this time next week, there will be a canopy.

Why isn't this enough for happiness?

Ultimate Mud

April 10
Joel and his Ultimate team eating during a rainy tournament!

Sunshine! In the Garden!

Gorgeous day-- working in the garden in the sunshine. Digging up nasty perennial weeds, sowing turnips and more lettuce and radish. Ahh.

Busy busy

Teaching day and night, Ultimate frisbee players in the house, meetings when I'm not teaching: when am I supposed to write novels?

Ultimate frisbee team is coming

This is the day Joel's vacation starts, and he and eleven friends from his Ultimate frisbee squad are coming to crash at my house! They bring sleeping bags and presumably their own towels and wash cloths, but they'll fill the house. I'm putting up a big pot of spaghetti (shades of the old pre-meet track team dinners). Looing forward to seeing Joel: I'd rather see him alone, I guess, but I also enjoy seeing him in context, meeting some of his friends.

Snow and Good teaching day

Thursday morning, Coalition meeting to plan, snow on the ground! I hope the last of the year? We are in spring! (I exclaim this just like everyone else, indignant that we should get weather that doesn't fit our categories: if it's spring, there must be pink blossoms and bunnies!)
Meanwhile, I had a sterling but exhausting day yesterday in my teaching: maybe because I had the least orderly class first thing in the day, and they were both extremely orderly and extremely engaging kids, and maybe because I was party to a situation where an excellent veteran teacher was having a struggle with a good but disrespectful kid (and this was what he called himself in a piece he wrote for me, which became part of the whole exchange, so I felt part of more than just standing up and entertaining), and maybe it was just that the kids were glad to see me two days in a row, and maybe because it was a more-or-less new lesson that I was intent on figuring out how to deliver (on writing monologue– not that I've never done that before, but I haven't featured it in a while, and this is leading to the presentation for the school later in the year). And then the evening novel class was excellent–I'm beginning really to like the intimacy of the small class, and of course having strong students, strong personalities, a lot of the teaching comes from them– I was very satisfied with the day.
And the tiredness didn't seem a negative, but a positive, until my mind started rushing over all the things I have to do, have failed to do, will never do. Meanwhile, I have to prepare my monthly Coalition meeting. And tomorrow the Ultimate team arrives to eat spaghetti and sleep in our house! Twelve kids, but at least Joel is one of them. If we want to see him, we'll have to go watch him play ultimate frisbee down at Rutgers forty five minutes away!

Beings Unvisited by Angels--George Eliot's World View

Here is a sample of George Eliot's sad, brave humanist agnosticism from her novel of Florence in the time of Savonarola:

Beings Unvisited by Angels

....No radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for her. In those times, as now, there were human beings who never saw angels or heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came to them was brought confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs of unfailing wing and piercing vision,–men who believed falsities as well as truth, and did the wrong as well as the right. The helping hands stretched out to them were the hands of men who stumbled and often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels had no other choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness and disbelief, which is no path, the arrest of inaction and death.


George Eliot, Romola, in The Best-Known Novels of George Eliot (Modern Library edition: New York), p. 1163.

Beings Unvisited by Angels

Here is George Eliot's sad, brave humanist agnostic view of the world from her novel about Florence in the days of Savonarola, Romola


....No radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for her. In those times, as now, there were human beings who never saw angels or heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came to them was brought confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs of unfailing wing and piercing vision,–men who believed falsities as well as truth, and did the wrong as well as the right. The helping hands stretched out to them were the hands of men who stumbled and often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels had no other choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness and disbelief, which is no path, the arrest of inaction and death.


George Eliot, Romola, in The Best-Known Novels of George Eliot (Modern Library edition: New York), p. 1163.

St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Day, and I planted peas! I lived today like a retiree– that is, I gathered seeds and garden catalogs and I went down, just to see how the garden was, and dug a little, and raked, and set in one of the bean towers– and I planted peas! Super sugar snaps and Oregon Sugar Pod II's, and a new one, Sugar Lace II!! I also thinned the cabbages now under lights, still in their egg carton, not peat pots yet. It was sunny and 40 ish today, and I kept thinking, This is what I want to do, I want to be retired for a while, and garden and write memoir (I'm finishing up a short piece about poor old Miss Shreve to submit to Maggie Anderson's book about schooling.)
Also cut lettuce from under the umbrellas and dug up parsnips and carrots planted last April, baked them with potatoes, had salad and ham, a funeral gift.

Family photo

March 16, 2005
This is an unusual picture of my sister, my mother and me. My father passed away a week ago after several years of being sadly disabled, and we were gathered in West Virginia for the funeral and remembering and celebrating him. The celebration came largely in the form of many of his former students who came to the funeral home and the funeral to say he had been their best teacher.

Nightline Bloggers

We stayed up past our bedtime to watch the Nightline show on bloggers which had a quick background view or two of my husband Andy's brother David Weinberger.
The Nightline reporter was all portentous and pompous about this new phenomenon while appearing to remain remarkably clueless about the impulse to communicate and participate in this enormous amorphous thing of proto-democracy on the Internet.

Week-end at Brown

We just got back from an overnight in Connecticut at Andy's sister's Ellen's. She went with us yesterday up to see Joel and Brown, and then we slept at her house. When we were dropping him off after dinner on Federal Hill in Providence, Joel said, "Aren't you going to get out?" and of course I wanted nothing so much as to hug him, so I got out and did.

His demands have always told me what I want to do. Well, I'm thinking about when he was a baby and I was an ignorant old mother. Then there was a message on the phone when we got back, from him, asking if he could bring twenty or forty ultimate player friends to sleep on the floor before a tournament at Rutgers! Mercy upon us.

I'm thinking about how first there is imagination; then there is experiencing; then there is memory. I"m good on 1) and 3), and less good on the experiencing. I'm thinking about Italy, and about yesterday, and how already yesterday has started to glow: when we arrived and saw Joel coming toward us with his skully on and Ellen yelling "The Chia pet!" (for his hairstyle) and Joel's room very neat with the Indian blanket cover over his comforter, and the floor clear, and shirts hanging in the open closet. And really good omelettes at Rue d'espoir. And a kind of bronzed gentle hanging out in his room, him showing us books, things on the Internet, Phil and Kyle in and out. Walking around campus, always so beautiful even in dirty snow weather, eating dinner at theBombay Club and driving around busy gay Providence, some big event at the Performing Art center or else the Dunkin Donut arena.

And fast fading some of the actual experience: an upset stomach, no place to sit, feeling hot, sleepy, at different times. But it smooths out in memory–I guess Italy did too, but it's so far now that I really have to stretch and make an effort to recall the discomforts, the squabbles

In looking for some online pictures of Brooklyn for my biography page, I found a nice painter named Ella Yang who paints a lot of things, but I especially like her paintings of Brooklyn. She responded promptly to my e-mail and gave permission for me to use her work on my website as long as I gave the title and a link. Take a look at her website!

Sweet Smell of Success

February 26, 2005
I've been trying to get ahead of desk work to clear time/space for writing. This is always the objective. We saw Sweet Smell of Success last night on DVD--a really good old noir (also black and white) movie, lots of shots of wonderful New York City as it used to be with phones at the tables in the 21 Club etc. Tony Curtis was so slimy he shone, so attractive that you root for him whatever he does. Burt Lancaster does a terrific job too, as the power broker columnist J.J. Hunsecker, but he plays it-- appropriately-- like a man with his face frozen, someone so heavy with his own importance and power that you imagine the human being is so far inside the caverns of stone he'll never come out. Whereas Curtis is all over the place, quicksilver, meteoric, trying something new if the other thing doesn't work. He has all this youth and hope and a kind of animal energy. The "good" guys in the movie, potato faced Martin Millner and Susan Harrison (who never did much of anything else as far as I know) were totally missing in action (although Millner's character gets to attack Hunsecker's false patriotism in a neat slap at red baiting-- Cliff Odets a co-writer of this). And surely I'm not the only person who saw that Hunsecker was dying of incestuous love for his little sister? .

Snow in Jersey

We've got wet snow, four or five inches, here in urban NJ-- it's President's Day, so most schools are closed, and I don't have to go in to NYU either. The white and bright under gray skies is lovely, but I especially love the silence, until the snowblowers come out.

Good Media Experiences

We've got the Food Network again! Wow! Are they trying to suck us into buying the expensive cable? I don't care, but just watched someone named Sarah teaching saute, seafood over noodles, turkey cutlets with hot salsa, chicken stock and cider vinegar! to deglaze the turkey pan. Beat out turkey cutlets with water, beteween plastic wrap sheets. I don't know why I like food network so much– I expect it's partly because it does something that t.v. is best at, which is spontaneity of a certain sort: I always remember in 1963 that the best tv was the coverage of the Kennedy assassination and the funeral after. They did Ronald Reagan's funeral well. Anything that lends itself to channel surfing, just sort of drifting in and out. The cooking shows are scripted in a general sort of way, but you get the sense that it is happening now. The breaks from real time are pretty transparent: you go away for a commerical and the turkey cutlets are finished cooking, but you know this is a five minute procedure, so you haven't been really tricked. I think the desire for this witnessing through the little window into the big neighborhood outside is part of what draws people to reality tv and the live talk shows. Anyhow, this is one of the first things I've really liked on television, and I'm thrilled we've got it back, at least for the moment.
Another recent happy media experience is the Wikipedia article. I put up my little note and it got added to, although not changed. The idea of this kind of communal pooling of knowledge really thrills me.

Reading some blogs

I keep wanting to like the blogs I see, and so far, reading them hasn't quite caught on with me. I wonder if the people who read regularly are reading instead of-- what? reading books? Drinking beer? watching television?

This week is too much like last week

This week is a little too much like last week. Double jobs, exhausting work at Lincoln Park, lots of Community Coaltion stuff. I had a recommendation to write today, a nerve wracking phone call, exchanges with George Brosi at Appalachian Heritage over my article about novelist Gretchen Laskas, an hour at Columbia High School for their student ACLU meeting and a speaker on race and justice, make dinner, prepare Advanced Novel for tomorrow night and 7th graders for tomorrow day. Just part of it. I'm cheerful when I'm like this, though. Still having sort of commentary flashes of Italy. Amazing that a month ago were were there, in that place not this one. Amazing thing: I wrote a Wikipedia article on Harriette Arnow, and within a day, one of their editors had added more information--I learned something new from the article I wrote. Is that amazing or what?

Saturday night, home alone....

And having a great time! I'm reading my first P.D. James book, Innocent Blood, and yes I know it isn't necessarily typical of her work, but it's got at least one murder so far and maybe more to come. Andy drove to the Berkshires today, walked on frozen Lake Buel, bought sour dough bread at Daily Bread and, presumably, bought the diet orange soda we like. I've been working hard on an article for Appalachian Heritage. Nice day, all told.

Lincoln Park, Washington Square

What a week of teaching! Two new classes starting at NYU, two days in Lincoln Park, a teacher workshop, meetings. So thankful to be with no meeting, no work tonight. So loxed out, I watched a cheap bio pic about Michael Jackson

It seems so long since we got back from Italy. Italy was like a restart on the computer, somehow, a lot of rough edges smoothed, things that seemed tangled smoothed out. You push the restart and problems disappear.

Like the old depression treatment of shock therapy, only delightful
instead of traumatic! Yesterday, in Lincoln Park, NJ, I saw a woman in a pink
sweatshirt with a waddling little gray old dog that squatted in some
dirty snow. I found it moving for some reason, the sad tragedy of
this country, people stumbling along, thinking somehow they are righteous
and have the right to stomp on whoever.

In Washington Square, in New York, when I go to teach
there, the big Judson Memorial church keeps on its message board the
count of American service people dead in Afghanistan and Iraq, well
over a thousand now, but also over a hundred thousdan Afghanis and
Iraquis. The question is: for those other people we don't count (Saddam
is beaten, full speed ahead!) who are dead or whose families are dead,
was it worth it? I doubt it, but the real point to me is, why did
the people in Washington, riding on the ignorance of the pink lady
with the fat dog, get to decide?

The rawness the sharp edges here in the United States are just blowing
me away, the new homes in the developmets are are attractive– spacious,
but the sharp edges are what I keep comparing to the buildings seen
from a distance in Tuscany, on the train from Rome to Florence. But
even in the cities there was a roundness of the the cobblestones the
piazzas, the old stone work in Florence.

New Web Browser

I just downloaded Firefox after reading an issue of Wired. Now I feel all tingly and technologically advanced!

Party at the Museum

We had our final event with the fall Newark Museum program-- at the Museum, the court full of kids from various schools, art projects.
Ours from Warren Street School was our books, art and words. Satisfying to end so well, all those kids, all that art.

Last evening, I slogged down through the snow to the garden, pulled up a sunbrella (damaging it, I think, and cut some lettuce and radicchio for dinner. Whatever the weather, there is brightness of days getting longer at this time of year.

Wet Friday morning

I'm in the midst of major teaching responsibilities--finished up one series of creative writing at a school in Linden, taking in final anthologies of children's work to the school in Newark, NYU classes are starting next week, and cetera and cetera. I've got a writing project I'm committed to, and wonder when I'll get back to my own writing.

New Newsletter Up

Take a look at my newsletter at Books for Readers # 67. You can subscribe too by sending an email to Readerbooks-subscribe@topica.com. It's all about books.

Also, for more our our Italy vacation, click here.

Getting back into it

How strange to be back here, everything seems larger (especially the SUV cars!) colder (obviously), whiter (duh--there's snow on the ground), but also, more seriously, somehow more raw. Andy said people are less nice when you drive. Everything feels unfinished here, which I guess is some of that typical sense that American is young, awkward. It will be interesting to go back to the City and see how New York feels after Rome and Florence (larger? colder? )

Back from Italy

January 24, 2005

We are back from Italy! Amazing that we went, amazing that we are back. Among the amazing things: that we left Rome on a splendid sunny day with no coats required, and arrived (delayed flight) at the end of a major snowstorm and single digit Farenheit temperatures. Quick memories: Thinking at the Colosseum about gladiators, "We Who Are About To Die Salute You," and all the Medicis and the Borgias and the Augustuses and Constantines -- so many dead. Rome in the sun but also the Parthenon roof next to our hotel just before dawn, deep deep blue, white sudden explosions of gulls between me and Orion's belt: deep salmon bricks, deep blue sky, chips of white flung agains. Also: tiny pink roses in bloom near the circus maximus. Sound of music below, rising from "our" piazza. At the Capitoline museum the beautiful brass lupa with the little bambini from a thousand years later. An Escher exhibit, very popular locally, and one I'd love to see at my leisure in NYC. High point: almost back to the hotel at 4:30, we stopped at a cafe and sat outside (in the third week of January!) and the waiter was friendly, we took his picture, and I got up my courage and said, "Somos americanos ma non votamo per il Bush!" And the waiter shook my hand and each of our hands! Very satisfying. I tried it again on the cab to the airport, and again got a delighted reaction, the cabbie saying that the Italian president and Bush are like that (fingers pressed together)-- "due putti!"

Off to Florence and Rome!

People are being so nice, ideas for places to get pizza in Rome, special museums in Firenze, lending expensive travel books, and cetera. Andy's cousin Sam the travel agent extraordinaire (You cancontact him at sammy@tsi-tzell.com called for last minute questions. It's just me being terrified of the Unknown, which ranges from airplane sounds to death.

The Day is Approaching

My first plane trip in ten years is rapidly approaching, and I'm already hyperventilating...

New Year Greetings Should be Over...

We've passed Twelfth Night El Dia de los Reyes, so I think we can stop giving one another New Year's greetings. I spent yesterday with 3rd and 4th graders in Linden, NJ at School # 8, pleasant place, very well run classes, children pleased to meet a real author, lots of questions about Marco.
Then today it was Warren Streeet School in Newark.

And now I've been putting my first full entry into Wikipedia! What an extraordinary feeling, to be able to contribute to and participate in something that thousands maybe millions of people are working on together. A kind of euphoria and marvelling. I did the story "Life in the Iron Mills" because I already had the research done. A week or so ago I put in some grammatical corrections, but this was my own article!

New Year's Evening

January 1
Early today, a beautiful low 60's day with lots of sun, I officially finished my holiday messages and end-of-year donation. I also went to Maplewood's reorganization meeting which was nice and colorful--a lot of folks show up, there is a clipped-step police color guard, lots of swearing in of trustees and officers, and the magnificent Lori Brown Mirabal sang "God Bless America" and more. Prayers Christian and Muslim--a visit from Congressman Payne. I wish South Orange did something similar!
Last night, we went out to Verjus with Joel and the Graveses, and afterwards, Joel went out to a party and we four elders came home and sat in front of the fire and the Christmas tree.

This evening, a walk:

Pink fingernail scrapes
On a chalkboard of sky–jets
Pass: New Year's evening.

Penultimate Day of 2004

We've been shopping, eating Mexican dinner at the new restaurant, and I finished Brunelleschi's Dome by Ross King, about the building of the Duomo in Florence Italy. Small book, interesting. Good winter reading, although not as good as the reread I'm engaged in of Bleak House.

Back from Christmas in West Virginia

December 26
Back from WV, ate homemade peanut brittle and fudge and cookies and Abruzzino bakery pecan pie and sticky buns from Weaver's in Hancock, MD, and lots of Joel and Andy with dueling computers on the kitchen table and cooking and washing dishes with my mother and worry about my dad who is eating less, not even demanding candy, probably depressed. The santa on the tree is one that has been on every tree since he was born: starting in 1917 when he was six weeks old! There is a delicate old ceramic bell, too, but it is so delicate my mother only puts it on the tree for a little while and then takes it off. We visited Margie Hardesty and Ina, saw Edith Burnett, bought Mom's exercycle, and generally were busy, and not there very long so I feel guilty. Driving back, snow on the ground in West Virginia and Maryland, then none in Pennsylvania, then snow in New Jersey!

Hazy gold treetips
Green black hillside evergreens:
The pink of winter!

December 23

We're off to sunny-- well, closer to the sun in altitude anyhow-- West Virginia tomorrow morning. I've got tons of gifts, have to buy a can of sweet potatoes and marshmallows to go with Mom's turkey breast and stuffing and stuff. She had to get a new stove– just delivered Monday, after a lifetime of the old Tappan, which finally was mostly not working and often smelling of gas. She was down to two burners and a possible explosion.
Yesterday, Joel's old babysitter (from when she was a student) Charlene stopped by– great to see her, and we sent her home with a bag of frozen garden sauce from my garden–my tomatoes, basil, etc, but I guess it had commercial onions and garlic as I've pretty much given upon growing them. I pulled up two of the sunbrella-cold frames yesterday to get some lovely lettuce, Winter Marvel and Brune d'hiver, but the ground was more frozen that I realized, and I think I did some damage to the sunbrellas.

Happy Winter Solstice

December 21
Solstice, and now the days will get longer! My son is home from college, and we'll all be going to West Virginia to visit my parents for Christmas. We're an all-denominational family: Christmas and Hanukkah, and I just learned about Diwali this year (I was reading The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri). And our local school district in New Jersey has been making national news because of a disagreement about the interpretation of No Religious Celebrations with a probably overly strict interpretation in the musical performance area. We've got a suit from a right wing foundation that, ironically enough, names itself after Thomas More, and lots of jokes from radio guys, and now a New Jersey gubernatorial hopeful comes to demonstrate by singing Christmas carols in front of the high school where they're having the Winter Concert. Busy, busy, busy.

Fresh Kale from the Garden!

December 18
Such a pleasure today to go down and cut a fair amount of kale fro the garden (plus a little mustard greens and collards and komatsura) to go in a sausage soup. Sun shining, cold, ground hard with a little frost in the shady places. This feels like a good day: Joel comes home tomorrow evening, we're driving to West Virginia in a few days to check on my parents and be with them for

Strangers are visiting my Blog, I presume through BLog Explosion-- it's actually an odd feeling, that a kind sounding individual from Los Angeles read my blog from last Sunday and liked my photo. She says she's a Christian, and asked me if I ever thought of writing a book. That was a compliment, of course, to my writing. If anyone is interested, I've published twelve books, or more, depending on how you count them. My book page lists them all.

Winter sky

December 12, 2004
I really love winter sky– I've been out for a walk, after getting a Coalition executive committee meeting ready for tonight, and before going to the meeting. We've had two days of rain followed by two days of gray, but just as I was going up Midland Boulevard and about to turn south again, all of a sudden there was a break in the clouds, and the low sun broke through and made the trees and houses had this magical gilded-glow briefly. Then it faded, but there was still a nice mix of gray blue and white overhead, and a little later a muted glare between two layers of nimbus.
Nine days until solstice, and then lengthening days. I'm facing a lot of travelling in the next month–West Virginia, possibly a real vacation with airplanes, too, which would thrill most people, but scares me spitless

Putting away books

I've spent an hour and a half this evening moving books out of large stacks in the living room and my office and moving them to shelves or at least piles where I can see what I have. I threw away some magazines, and discovered books I have doubles of, and books that I thought had gone missing. The main problem now is that the actually books shelves don't come near holding all the books. The extras lie on their sides on top of other books. The real main problem is that my reading is so erratic that I don't use libraries much, but rather buy books, apparently huge numbers of them, and many I don't quite finish either because I don't like them much or because I get distracted. I used to read books straight through in great gulps, and I start out the same way, but don't quite have enough time/eneergy/breath to finish, so there is this enormous stack of not-finished books.

Thanksgiving

November 26, 2004
Well, it's still sunny, and we're back from Connecticut where Andy and I stayed at the Clinton motel, Joel at Ellen's along with her family, andthe other Weinbergers in another room at the Clinton motel. It was a bellyaching good time, too much food and wine-- Ellen's usual delicious turkey, carrot souffle with walnut crisp top, turnips. taters red and white, beans, stuffings, etc. etc., and for dessert, pumpkin pie, cheesecake, brownies. Pound cake and whipped cream and berries. And more. Joel shaggy haired and distinctly not wanting suggestions from his parents. Lots of laughing, the traditional viewing of Jurassic Park, a late evening walk with the sky suddenly clear and windy with the temperature dropped thirty degrees. In the morning, we got up at six thirty a.m. to go shopping at Clinton Corners: Kenneth Cole, Geoffrey Beene, all the guys. Joel has moved his taste in clothing to DKNY. Everyone did okay, although I was less in the mood to consume material goods than I sometimes am. An orgy of consumption, but relaxing to be all belly and eye and fingertips on fabric.

November Evening Poem

Red magenta pink
Black trunk, crimson gold edged leaves–
Trees, you create light!

November Haiku

Overcast flat sky,
Pink and gray November day
Hesitate--then wait.

Darker and darker

Sometimes I think how we are about a month before the winter solstice, which means the light is about the same as a month after the winter solstice, which would be at about mid January, but it just doesn't feel the same. There are still scattered leaves on the ground, and even some clumps up in the treses. By January, the clumps will only be squirrel nests.

Daily Insight

Two views of the past: One, the books I hadn't looked at in a long time, all covered with dust, especially a little square block of a baby book of Joel's– a coat of dust, so sad and dry. And then, Two, within ten minutes, I was looking at publications from the old 1976 Phillip Lopate comic book project at P.S. 75, and Bob Sievert's comic of the comic book project, and my fotonovela "The 4 Winds," with the girls from the bilingual class--black and white photos with little white balloon tags, and suddenly the past was very alive, the past is with us, enriching, today.
It was very striking– in a context of getting together some word/picture stuff for the Newark Museum project where I'll be doing some comix and graphic novels again with kids, in some form– starting later this morning. But the main thing was how within one swath of time (I was tired of course, always a factor as I get older) I went from feeling so sad and overwhelmed by books it has been so long since I've read, most poignantly the ones from Joel's babyhood, to that flash of revivifying memory from the seventies and our work at P.S. 75.
Thus: my Daily Insight: That the future and the past are analogous for the young and the old. I am just on the cusp, future getting short fast. But the more important point is that both of these things live in the imagination– the elder's long past, edited and embellished perhaps, and the young person's wildly powerful hoped-for future. Both playing fields of the imagination. For me, I hope, the past will be rich and enriching to others

Philosophy?

I am getting more and more sure that there's this place people have that can be reached through meditation, what some call prayer, that I tend to call "creativity" or some such. It is the quick, the vital core, from which insights and ideas spring up, full-fledged, with feathers and the ability to fly. It is the finest thing I know, to work at my writing or sometimes to leave my writing and go sit in the back yard or to take a run– and it happens: a vision, an idea, a solution, a whole scene springs up.
My belief is that this is the human doing its thing, integrating whatever is floating around in me, my experiences, voices I've heard, the movement of my muscles. But if someone could prove to me beyond the shadow of a doubt that this came from some god, or from Oneness with the Universe, or from a Jungian archetype of past human experience– I wouldn't be particularly surprised.
In other words, I think my creative insights are probably made of the same stuff as my mother's prayers and someone else's meditation and someone else's mystical experience. It is the most wonderful sensation, and I think it must be fairly common, more common to some that to others– it is totally wonderful, but has no more ethical content than sex or biting into a big sweet ripe peach. Albert Speer no doubt felt it, the rush, as he envisioned some imperial monstrosity to express the ambitions of the Third Reich.
What is needed along with this thing is reason and experience and ethics. Omigod, I'm getting a philosophy: this place where creative stuff arises is totally amoral and non-ethical. Ethics, it seems to me rises from reason and experience, although probably the greatest leaders (speaking broadly here– poets and the first people who figured out you could sow the seed you'd been gathering--as well as political leaders) probably had both things, the ethical outlook and that great upsurge from the place I don't have a name for. It's the brain/heart, feeling/thinking thing.

The morning after the morning after

Update on the weather: outside gray with rain coming later (but gray sky means the orange and yellow look especially fine), and I've have an early morning Coalition meeting that reminds me we have other work to do. Also a long conversation with Joel at college last night--I had asked him for some of his Libertarian friends' arguments for why it isn't the end of the world. The Libertarians say, well, \ if those middle class Americans can't see their own interests are being screwed by this administration, well, screw them, us more affluent folks will be just fine. For the real deal, see The Brown Daily Squeal, especally scroll down to Rob Montz. So that's where the smart young money is? Of course, I believe they're idealists at heart, but heart-wounded by this world.
That's pretty sentimental of me.
And even if the missing anti-altruism is a serious problem, I suppose I still should be thankful that I'm breathing, had breakfast, have beautiful turning trees outside my window. No bubonic plague, legal slavery outlawed. No shooting civil war yet. Have most of my teeth still...

Day After Gloom

Well, it's Wednesday morning and it looks a lot like Bush is going to get what he interprets as a mandate, shades of Orwellian Newspeak. They are still counting votes, but you have to put your money on Bush, and we will be looking at four more years of degrading the environment and robbing the poor of education and health care to feed the investment portfolios of the rich. Of bullying abroad, of giving Israel free rein to impoverish and fence off the Palestinians, of more recruitment for Al Queda because of our heavy handed international bullying, of decreasing civil rights at home. It's a grim prospect, and I'm old enough that the cushion of biological hope is gone: I not longer believe that it just has to turn out okay!
During a short night of bad sleep, I half dreamed about a sort of two dimensional map in which we in the Northeast were boxed in and surrounded by by rigid triumphant evangelical Christians at home and rigid triumphant evangelical Islam abroad. And us secular Jews and ethical culturists and gaia goddess people and pointy headed intelectuals not to mention African-Americans and self-identified anti-racists-- that we were finally separated out by the zealots and put in concentration camps.
And us all saying, "How could it happen? We didn't hate anybody! We paid our taxes! We were good Germans--I mean Americans. This isn't rational!"
Which is, of course, the point. It isn't rational for blue collar Ameridcans to vote against their economic self-interest for an ideologue and bully like Bush. But maybe this huge rush of irrationality is the underside of democracy? That religious fantatics and Hindu nationalists are able to energize people to feel their own righteousness until there is a critical mass that begins to push public policy down a slippery slope away from reason and toward stepping on those who don't really count as people becaue they aren't part of the majority.
This vision makes old fashioned venal ward heelers and patrician do-gooders and maybe even Wall street tycoons look good. I wonder if the masses will ever get smart, or are masses indeed by definition stupid? THis is disheartening to me, as I've alwys really been a sort of Carl Sandburg populist (The People Yes!) But something has degeneratedbadly, or maybe, to be honest, I've stopped trusting them.
It's a gorgeous golden day outside, very windy, and I'm feeling enormous loss.
Wouldn't it be nice to believe it didn't matter how sad and suffering now, everything will be just fine On the Other Side. No wonder Al Queda and Hamas and Pat Robertson and the rest have no trouble finding followers.

Election coming at us fast

We're almost there-- I have this feeling that a lot is suspended while we wait to find out how it goes-- how many votes will be stolen, people whose names are similar to names of convicted felons denied the vote, etc. etc. Not sanguine, nervously hopeful.

We finally got lawn signs, by the way, and they were stolen Wednesday night-- a whole group of houses on Prospect Street! But I got more signs and deposited them on people's porches. Ha! Take that, sign stealers!

A week ago today, we were with Joel at Brown: Sue, Joel, and Andy.

Atlantic City

We just watched Atlantic City on DVD. I saw it long ago and had totally forgotten-- I remember thinking Burt Lancaster was sexy-- maybe I was surprised twenty odd years ago to see sex in an old guy. Now it's the silly wasted lives I see, and the change in Gracie the poodle lady that I liked. The young seem more callow, the old more hopeless.

Off to West Virginia

I'm off to Shinnston, West Virginia, where I don't have access to the Internet-- actually, it isn't that Shinnston lacks access. My friends there are extremely computer-active, having found the Web a perfect way to be in touch with the world fully and still live in Almost Heaven-- it's rather the household where I'll be, my parents', age 85 and 87, that isn't wired to the Internet. And even that isn't entirely true. My mother after much nagging finally accepted a gift of a Mailstation, which is a small dedicated e-mail machine, and she likes it and uses it, but isn't interested in a computer. So it's going to be me and my aged portable computer without a modem, plus the mailstation for emergencies, telephone, of course, lots of neighbors dropping by, bowls of candy to stave off neurosis.

Can't get lawn signs in New Jersey!!

Well, after months of having a peace sign on our lawn, we finally decided we wanted one for the Democrats, and I've been on the phone to Washington, Trenton, and a local guy in Essex County, and there are no more signs! They aren't pushing them in NJ anyhow-- assuming this a (I always forget the color-- are dems blue or red??) Democratic state, but somehow there seem to be tons of signs for the Republicans around.

The reason, by the way, that I'm not using the names of the candidates is my own personal protest in favor of issues over personalities. I'm really not voting for a man, but for a handful of ways in which the Democrats are infinitely superior to the Republicans: Pre-emptive war; environment; participation rather than bullying in international affairs; choice of Supremes and other judges down the line; stem cell research; women's right to choose, etc.

Anybody depressed besides me?

It's the election. I am usually pretty good at imagining various people's outlooks, but I honestly can't see why millions of people aren't pulling back in horror from what our present administration has done. A lady started talking to me in the grocery line yesterday, one of these people who can't be not talking, and she was looking at a copy of Black Enterprise with a picture of the guy who spoke at the Democration COnvention, Obama? She started in on how people are being fooled, which I was about to agree with, but she meant by the ones who are considering voting Democratic. "All that matters is our safety," she said. "I know the facts." I was both dumbfounded and in total coupons-for-groceries mode, so I didn't engage her. A lost opportunity: I might have actually learned something about the answer to my question, How can you support liars and bullies, warmonger and corporate shills? Well, maybe she answered it: fear?

She said she lived twenty years in Miami. Might she be an emigre Cuban? Will I have to make up a story to have this make sense for me?

Beginning of Fall Haiku

First yellow leaves dropped,
Dull robin on the phone wire;
Tarnish of autumn

I ordered a fountain pen!

I've been yearning for a working fountain pen-- you can't buy the cheap old Parker cartridge pens in Staples or Office Max anymore. Apparently profits reside with the new smearing ball points. Well, I've now got a company that sells beautiful incredibly expensive pens with a handful of affordable ones, and I ordered a pen! Maybe I won't any longer hate handwriting.

Pro bono and Quid pro Quo

We were supposed to watch a DVD of On The Waterfront last night, but Andy fell asleep, so I was surfing the web and found a documentary called Dr. 90210 ?? Or something like that, on one of the cable stations I never remember, maybe health tv? Is there such a thing?

Anyhow, it was about a plastic surgeon, Dr. Rey, who works with the stars, but this segment was about some pro bono work for a Mexican American woman who lives in a small trailer behind a car wash with husband and little son. She has a condition of extra breasts that embarrasses her and hurts her, and there is lots of explicit photography of her breasts and others– although always with the nipples smeared out! Is there a word for Fear-of-Nipples?

Dr. Rey is warm (Como esta? he cries, gives lots of big hugs to his patients) and explains to the camera that his mother cleaned houses to put him through school– and he likes to give back. At the end gets tearful over “his people.” There is also an interesting moment when he shows off a beautiful Rolex watch, and then there’s his blonde Anglo wife who is appalled by the neighborhood where he used to live. Lots of stuff that could make a good, big, thick melodrama pop novel.

But afterwards, I’m thinking to myself: he was extremely kind for a surgeon, and did this extra-breast removal for free, but what about Maria the pro bono patient. Did she think the only way to get the free surgery was to allow the cameras to run? I’m sure it was never said overtly, but people can usually smell a quid pro quo a mile away, and are usually willing to trade
So maybe it's a fair trade, but it adds another layer to things that the chubby lady with the big dimples around her smile and the nipple-smeared breasts is not some wealthy starlet but the car wash lady....

Netscape and Internet Explorer as Hood Ornaments

Conversation with a technical person at Symantec, a young woman who decided to describe to me the imporance of my Norton Internet Security: “Your operating system,” she said, “It’s like the engine of your car, and Norton Internet Security is like the oil that makes the car run and all the other programs are like hood ornaments.” The imagery takes your breath away, doesn’t it?

Compu-slowness

The computer wasn't bothering me much, except for its extremely slow start up, but Andy thinks it's terrible and has been working on it for two days, so now I'm aware of the slowness too. Essentially, Windows causes as much problems as it solves. Simplistic, but I'm tired and annoyed.

Today

They're showing pictures and pictures on t.v. of 9-11. Much of it is shocking, moving, important, but after about fifteen minutes you start to realize that something else is happening-- it isn't just the chocolate pudding of the towers collapsing (not my image) but a kind of fakery, of a message being given that more shocking is more meaningful when it's really numbing.

Most meaningful to me was one person's story at a time: Suzanne's story-- she and Gary rode bikes south to see what was happening as everyone else struggled north-- plus the teachers I worked with for the 9-11 Teachers College Press project. For me, real people's stories, verbal and in writing.

T.V. is corrupted by selling: can't distingish experience from what will make a profit for the sponsors.

Daily Show

Polls favoring Bush, but John Kerry showed up on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show last night, a little stiff, very earnest about his health plan etc., but also with a gorgeous grin and seeming honestly appreciative of Stewart’s humor (“You may be a fourth Jew, but I’m the whole thing–” and “Tell me, is it true that every time I put ketchup on my fries that your wife gets five cents?”). I've been watching the Daily Show while I exercise my bad shoulder, and I especially like the Stephen Colbert bits-- last night, he has his charming 8 year old daughter acting the part of "Big Oil," and telling her feelings!

September 8

Raining like a sonofagun all day, and this is just the outer fringes of Hurricane Frances. We've have lights out twice, dimmed another. I keep thinking of the diaster movie we saw early in the summer, the one where hell freezes over, or at least New York. Meanwhile, 1000 Americans dead in Iraq now, and uncounted Iraqis, but only girliemen count the little brown people, right?

Summer is over!

Beautiful weather at the lake, where we closed up the house, drank wine and beer, glued in a temporary crown, commiserated that we thought the Republicans were heading for victory, but David W. says Kerry is famous for coming on strong late, and Clinton having heart surgery! Oh dear! My age cohort having heart surgery?

Visitors From Japan

Tak and Chiaki, our newlywed visitors from Japan are charming together, so interested in each other. Tak is the cousin of Joel's cousin--that is, my sister's husband's nephew. Chiaki is from Shikoku Island, and is working on a Ph.D. in vocal music! Specializing in Japanese "classical:" composers like Yamada, Taki, Nakata, and Takemitsu. She has lovely skin, and Tak is so slim now (he was chubby when we first met him when he was a high school exchange students). He has a confident, pleasant face and strong deep voice. She laughs and covers her mouth just a little, Japanese style, not nearly as much as older Japanese women. Her English has limited vocabulary, but she nods as if she understands everything, although I think much of it is good acting. However, when she does speak– in answer to a question, she speaks with an excellent accent. Is this because she is trained singer to whom sounds come with manifold distinctions, more than the rest of us hear? She seems very happy and cheerful, and together they are– I feel so old saying this!– so cute!
They brought us gifts from Japan, and from Takeshi's mother a lovely bag designed by a famous Japanese writer named Uno Chiyo who I've now looked up, and ordered a book by. "Most famous Japanese woman writer of the twentieth century."

August 28, 2004

I'm losing drafts. I don't know where stuff goes on this.

Well, it's hot as the dickens, damp hot, sunny hot. The summer we didn't have, and now we are waiting to hear from Takeshi Achiwa and his bride Chiaki from Japan who are arriving-- to visit New York in the middle of the Republican National Convention and the giant demonstrations planned for today tomorrow and who knows what else. Not to mention Fear of Terrorism, changed train schedules, and more.

It's gotten hot at last-- so damp nothing dries, but also sunny, so you really feel it. Takeshi and Chiaki theoretically are now on a van coming from JFK airport to Newark where they will call us and we'll go pick them up. I'm so sorry the weather is like this, also worried because they want to go to New York City.

Back from West Virginia

My college sophomore son Joel and I are back from West Virginia, which is always a big adjustment, both ways: staying with my parents, going to church at the solidly middle class First Baptist Church of Shinnston, WV. It is always an interesting experience, being around people who approach life differently from me: one of my mother's friends who is going to vote for George W. Bush because she thinks he is a more sincere Christian than John Kerry! In fact, of course, people are mostly interested in their own business, like most of us, I guess-- their sons in Iraq, their diseases, aches and pains. Their political energies are used at work, in their churches, which some people pick and choose based on, for example, whether a church's music is stodgy and slow or lively Christian rock. It's a big world out there.

At the Met

Yesterday I was in New York to get my NYU ID and went to the Met where I saw a big exhibition of Childe Hassam, and liked some of his things a lot– the snowy and rainy street scenes in NYC and Boston best, actually, and also his Barbizon-style blocky dark countrysides.
But I am feeling tired of the art of the wealthy–I understand that in as far as art is a luxury, there has to be added value in someone’s economy or bankbook to support it-- thus the Church in the Middle Ages, thus people wealthy enough to buy the paintings of an entrepreneurial artist like Hassam in the Gilded Age. Hassam was explicitly avoiding poor people in his later work.
But, exciting and new-to-me was was the photography of August Sander’s huge project of indexing German people. All those face on people in the brown prints. A group called “People who came to my door” included a beggar, a peddler, and a bailiff! Also revolutionaries and the odd Nazi. What an amazing collection. I bought 6 or 7 postcards as samples, butit was the sheer mass of art work as well as the individual portraits that got to me.

Quick and Indian

I love to cook when the cooking is (1) quick and (b) tasty. One of my favorites is to put rice in the rice maker and open a can of "simmer sauces" from Jyoti. You just sautee some onion, chicken or whatever protein you like, whatever vegetables are from the garden (I had a zuke, some pole beans, a little garlic, tomato tonight, but it's just as good with a handful of spinach or mixed greens and some chunks of old tomatoes from the freezer) add the can of sauce and heat for up to a half hour, then serve over rice with whatever condiments you like. Tonight I also made a cucumber raita with cucumber, yoghurt, garlic and mint. Joyti usually has some specials at their website.

Gloomy With Rain, Again

We've got a couple more days of it, too. Gray, damp, and gloomy.

I finished reading Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, which I had picked up in Great Barrington at the Yellow House used book store in the movie tie-in paperback version with the kid actor's face on the cover. I was looking for something gripping to read for vacation, and I had put this one off for a long time, as I always do with best sellers out of reverse snobbishness ("Oh no, I'm not reading the popular best-seller, I'm reading this 18th century pre-cursor to Jane Austen's domestic dramas....")

Not that I ever begrudged Frank McCourt his success: a life long high school English teacher who I may actually have met when I did a Teachers & Writers Collaborative job in the late seventies at Stuyvesant High School. Also, a little earlier, when I was working with Phillip Lopate and the others at P.S. 75 (also through T&W), Malachy McCourt the actor (and next younger brother of Frank) lived in the neighborhood, and we taught his kids, I think.

As to the book-- it was very good, although in the end a comedy in the classical sense of having a happy ending in spite of the extraordinary poverty, detailed with great gusto, and the runaway drunken dad, and the little dead siblings and others. It's told with highly appropriate energy-- that biological optimism of children again-- and with linked anecdotes and tales, structured well and naturally by little Frankie's chronological age, quintessential experiences, and lovely insights and misunderstandings, always right on target agewise and usually highly entertaining to read.

In the end, it is an oddly light book-- or perhaps only told with a light touch. I have this feeling that reviewers and book club people may have mistaken it for a profound and tragic book that wasn't painful to read. Am I being snobbish again? There are infinitely painful moments -- hunger, humiliation, misunderstandings, and disappointments galore-- but there is that determined bouncing back that somehow makes all of us who have survived whatever small setbacks in our own lives seem enhanced by little Frankie's survival.

Well, I liked the book.

August 14

This is a dreary day, damp and greasy and building up to some big rain tonight. I did get the front grass cut, and a little weeding, but mostly I'm doing office work. There's something about day after day of damp, heavy, gray weather that takes the starch out of me.

Rainy With Toothache

It's gray with rain and thunderstorms planned for today-- "grainy," I used to call it, back when I was into inventing words. I had a big bout with the dentist yesterday and feel pretty beat up about it. My summer vacation, it appears, will be full of check-ups and dentist's chairs. Sigh.

Too Much Dinner at Caribbean Cuisine

We had a great dinner at South Orange's new Caribbean Cuisine Restaurant. It's Trinidad-Tobago style, which means, said the helpful friendly waitress (probably an owner-family member), that it has a lot of Indian influence-- curries, roti, etc. But great platanos maduros came as a side, and you choose your rice (spinach rice with a touch of dried cod; red beans and rice; peas and rice) and then pick a meat or fish to go with it. We got tastes, too-- a great thick lentil soup with interesting spices, maybe pumpkin too, a taste of yucca pone for dessert (like a wet zucchini bread, my husband said), their homemade ginger beer. Totally stuffed now.

Back from Vacation

Back from a wedding in Williamsport, PA, where we stayed at the fabulous Genetti Hotel, which really was a nice old fashioned hotel (our room was the Jackie Gleason room!), even though it was wildly noisy with a regional convention of Narcotics Anonymous. I'm trying to figure out why being a recovering addict means that you embrace your friends for long hugs (okay, that I understand), then step back ten paces and SHOUT at each other. Yes, dozens of people in the lobby and in front, SHOUTING happily at one another.

The lake was great this year-- fewer mosquito bites because of the very cold weather, I expect, and with the new roof, knock on wood, no bats.

Got back a few hours ago, and I've been happily doing the wash (sheets and towels from the lake) and freezing beans, making sauce, variously using up garden stuff.