Patriot's Day 2015

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet 

sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
― Mark Twain

I will admit right off the bat that I have no idea of the anguish parents must suffer when a child dies, even more so when that death is violent. Although I have had many children in my life whom I love dearly, I recognize that the bond a parent has is something much deeper and stronger. It’s understandable that these parents may feel a need for revenge when the person whom they love more than life itself has been taken from them. There is a need to take that fury and do something with it, something that feels like justice. Yet, there are loving parents who choose another path, a quite extraordinary path. I lift up three stories here.

Bill and Denise Richard’s 8-year old son Martin was killed in the Boston Marathon Bombing two years ago, and their daughter Jane lost her leg. This week, as the sentencing phase of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial begins, they have asked the federal authorities to spare their son’s killer the death penalty, to end what could be years of appeals causing  them to re-live the horror over and over. They have also founded the Martin W. Richard Charitable Foundation that honors Martin's message of "No more hurting people. Peace" by investing in education, athletics and community.

In 2006, after their daughters were brutally shot to death in their classroom, Amish parents went to the home of the killer’s widow to grieve with her, and to say that, true to their religious beliefs, they forgave him. Later, donations totaling $4.3 million came from all over to support the families of the victims. The money was used for medical expenses, local emergency services, and a portion was given to the widow and children of the killer.

In 1993 Peter and Linda Biehl’s 26-year-old daughter Amy, a Fulbright scholar who worked with disadvantaged South Africans, was stoned and stabbed as a crowd shouted anti-white slogans. Four black men were convicted in her death. The Biehls went to South Africa, and when the perpetrators asked for amnesty, they supported it, and shook hands with the men who had killed their daughter. The Amy Biehl Foundation, a charity that dedicates its work to putting up barriers against violence, was formed, and two of the convicted men now work for the foundation.

These are extraordinary stories, hard to believe, and yet each ends with a legacy of peace and rebuilding and a hope for a better future. Revenge cannot offer that.

English Anguish

“It’s tough,” she said with a cough, after falling from a bough into the slough.

Indeed, she is right. English is tough. It gathers words from all over the globe, and even when they have the same linguistic source, they may be pronounced differently, hence those Old English “ough” words.  It picks up new words and lets go of others. It discards some colloquialisms and hangs on to others. What was slang becomes common usage. In 1922 Emily Post considered “taxi” barely acceptable slang. (I wonder what she’d think of Uber). Yet its flexibility and accommodation are what make English so useful.

Clearly, having spent my entire professional career teaching it, I love the language. What I do not like is when I am introduced as a former English teacher, and the immediate response is, “Now I’ll have to watch what I say.” To many, we are seen as guardians of “proper English,” the scolds of acceptable speech and writing. My usual response is, “No need to worry, I’m retired.”

All this is not to say that “between you and I” or “Me and Lucy went to the dance” don’t grate on my ears, or that I get the urge to grab some Wite-out and eliminate apostrophes in plurals. Truth to tell, I actually corrected the grammar on some graffiti in a bathroom stall once. It’s an occupational hazard!

I started thinking about all of the again after a friend sent me a link to Oliver Kamm’s article “There is no ‘Proper English'" in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal. His main point is, “If it is in general use, then that is what the language is.” Split infinitives, ending a sentence with a preposition, using “hopefully” to modify an entire sentence—all these are remnants of 18^th century prescriptive manuals “intended to teach propriety to an emerging merchant class….The whole debate about English usage has been bedeviled ever since by this snobbery, whereas the real task of language instruction (for adults as for children) should be to help people learn how to address different types of audience at different sorts of occasions.”

Right you are, Mr. Kamm, and one of those audiences is people like me who learned those rules. When I was teaching, it was not uncommon for students to complain that the language they used was the language they heard around them, so how could it be wrong. It was then I would give my wardrobe speech:

Language is like a closet full of clothes. The language you use should suit the situation. You wouldn't go to the beach in a ball gown, nor to the prom in jeans. You decide what to wear according to the situation, likewise with language. There is language that is appropriate for the locker room and different language appropriate for a job interview. I do not have to teach you how to speak in the locker room. In fact, you could probably teach me about that language. What I do have to teach you is your “best dressed” English, the kind you need to use when you go on that important interview.

English must change to remain alive. Try reading Beowulf in Old English if you don’t agree. To allow for change, and at the same time hold on to a common understanding, that is the challenge.

The Gifts of Old Age

See those eyes. Imagine a soft whimper to go along with it. That was Riley this morning at my feet as I had finished my oatmeal and was starting to write. I had already let him out twice and checked his water bowl. He doesn't eat at this hour, so I wasn't sure what he wanted, but there he sat with that plaintive look, asking me for something, and once again I was frustrated that I don't speak Lhasa.

This language barrier, however, does not stop me from talking to him, so I picked him up, put him in my lap, and explained that I was trying to write, and to my surprise he settled down and now sits here warm and soft. Now I have the problem of trying to type when he's in front of the keyboard, but that's okay.

This is a new behavior. When he was younger the only time he would sit on my lap was when he was scared--either when there was a thunder storm or when I was about to leave him, but he is old now, 14 to be exact. Now he is content to just sit and cuddle, and I am pleased to have him here  especially on this frigid morning. Don't get me wrong, I have always appreciated him, enjoyed his youthful energy, his curiosity, but this quieter, mellower pup is a gift.

There have been other, not so welcome changes. He seems to have forgotten the rules about bodily elimination, so I invest in puppy pads which I place at his favorite release points. Of course, then he finds new favorite spots. He still loves his walks in the park, though he tends to leave the geese to themselves, and he no longer chases any of the squirrels or cats who wander into the yard. He takes longer naps and  sleeps much more soundly.

Funny, I find myself taking longer naps too. Yes, we're growing older together, and when it's sub-zero outside and the world is still enjoying Valentine's candy, it's nice to have someone warm and soft to cuddle with.

I Love Coffee, I Love Tea

Every morning in the kitchen on Lancaster Street my mother would get out the small aluminum percolator, fill it with water, measure the Eight O'Clock coffee into the basket, and set it on the old gas stove where it would bubble perk, bubble perk. The pot made just three cups of coffee--one for my mother, one for my father, and one for my grandfather to pour over his Shredded Wheat.

I always tried to be nearby when he opened the box with the picture of Niagara Falls on the front. In each box were four layers, each with three pillows of cereal. I had no interest in the cereal. (Amazingly I was a picky eater back then). What I was interested in were the cardboard inserts between each layer, and when Grandpa reached another layer, I got the insert. There were puzzles, and cut-outs, and other such things of interest to an eight year old.

I wasn't a fan of coffee either. I was offered a spoonful of very light, very sweet coffee once, and made the immediate judgment that the adults were welcome to it. Tea, on the other hand, was something I not only drank, but something that became a part of play as my cousin Bonnie and I planned and celebrated countless tea parties with our dolls on my tiny set of blue willow wear china.

My mother would make tea using one Lipton’s tea bag to a very large pot of water. Our miniature cups were half filled with this pale liquid. Then we would add a couple of spoonfuls of sugar and fill up the cup with milk. I’m sure neither Bonnie nor I knew about holding the cup with our pinkie extended, but we felt quite grown up drinking real tea. Of course, my favorite part of the tea party was not the tea, but the food that went with it.

We did not serve watercress sandwiches or crumpets. No, our favorite delicacy was Ritz crackers covered in peanut butter and marshmallow. We each had our own small knife to use for spreading, and sometimes it was almost a duel as we reached for the peanut butter or the marshmallow fluff at the same time. The tea was cool by the time we had devoured all the crackers. At the end of our repast the remaining peanut butter was streaked with white marshmallow, and the marshmallow fluff jar had peanut butter thumbprints on it. When the party was over and Bonnie went home, I would wash all the dishes and return them to their place in the corner cupboard, safe until the next grand feast.

Today I drink mostly coffee which I discovered to be quite satisfying, and when I drink tea, I drink it plain without either sugar or milk. In my dining room I have a few pieces left of that blue willow ware tea set. They sit quietly on the shelf. Most of the time I don’t even notice them until I do my biennial dusting. Sometimes a guest will ask if they are part of a set. I reply that yes, once there was a full set that was used regularly. They were the service for magnificent tea parties that would have made the Mad Hatter jealous.

I Keep Learning from Emily

One of the treasures under my Christmas tree this year was The Gorgeous Nothings—a facsimile publication of poems and fragments of poems that Emily Dickinson wrote on envelopes. They are photographed and reproduced so clearly that I have to resist picking them up off the page. It feels as if I’m looking over her shoulder as she writes on that tiny table in the upstairs room in Amherst.





In the many times I have visited her home, I am most fascinated by this very small table by the window where she wrote--the surface of which is as sparse as her poems.

When I sit down to write, I like space to spread out, reference books close at hand, fresh paper  and ink in the printer. I like the room at a comfortable temperature—not too cold in the winter, not too hot in the summer. I like a beverage nearby—usually either herbal tea or diet soda. I like it quiet, silent really. I like it well lit, both with the overhead light and the desk lamp lit. When all that is in place, I may write something worthy of being worked into a poem. She sat at a table not much larger than my laptop and wrote magnificence.

In this book I see scraps that she turned into wonder.  Envelopes I would throw into the recycling bin without a second thought she saw as an opportunity to explore the world. Thumbing through this book, I am reminded of a former student.

When I was teaching poetry, I asked my students to keep a daily journal, encouraging them to use it as a place to write down any fragments of inspiration that came to them, and any poems that might come from that. Most students used spiral notebooks or loose leaf binders, all except one. Bob had an after school job in a stock room where there were lulls between his responsibilities, so he used that time to write. His “journal” was a collection of packing slips, register receipts, and any other scrap of paper he could find to write on. More often than not, it was in these “nothings” that I saw some of the best work from my students.

Bob and Emily understood something I am still learning—where you write and on what you write is less important that that you write. The muse can be distracted by concerns about furniture and paper stock.

Feeling Scrappy

I am not a quilter. I am too imprecise at measuring and cutting, not to mention my uneven stitches. My motto on most crafty projects is "close enough." But close enough doesn't work with pieces that need to line up evenly. Years ago I collected a box of fabric scraps intending to create my own quilt, but eventually I faced facts and gave up the idea. Still I continue to admire the work of those who know what they're doing such as my late cousin Evelyn who created several beautiful pieces, one of which covers a small table next to my bed.

I bring this up because at the moment  I am producing a lot of scraps in my writing. I will put a few lines together--some of which I really like and think could be formed into a good poem. I have a real sense of where I want them to go, what I want them to say, but in the process of working on them, I get stuck, so I go on to another piece, and the same thing happens.

Today, for instance, I started working on a poem about my visit to Pompeii in 1999 with my boyfriend at the time. I had started this poem awhile back but abandoned it (another scrap).  I found parallels between a cast of lovers, their passion frozen in time by the volcanic eruption and the two of us stumbling through the ruins, while at the same time our relationship was headed toward finality, albeit less dramatic. Did I want to start with us or the lovers? Did I want to include historical details? Did I want to include the fact that I bought a flimsy hat I thought would protect me from the sun? As you can see, "close enough" does not work for me when I'm writing. I stopped a few times to look up information on the eruption, get a cup of coffee, stare out the window, but eventually I gave up, adding another scrap to the pile.

While I am not a quilter, I don't like to think of myself as a quitter. I believe someday I will get back to all these orphaned scraps and create something from them, but for now I will have to settle for this post of clumsily stitched together frustrations.

Connecticut 191

Traveling south into Connecticut, I enjoy a back road route through the old villages of Hazardville, Scitico, Melrose, and Broad Brook-- hamlets  that were long ago swallowed up into the towns of Enfield and East Windsor. 

Below Route 190, it's mostly farmland--tobacco, corn, apples, squash, blueberries, and tree farms. I enjoy watching the seasons change--the rough furrows of soil being made ready for planting in the spring, and a little later acres of rhododendrons and azaleas flashing bright pink. This time of year the orchards are loaded with apples.

This week in between fields cut back ready for a winter's rest, there was a whole field of sunflowers still standing and staring at their namesake, and a field of perfectly ripe pumpkins I hadn't noticed last week.  Between last week and this, the pumpkins' leaves had dried and withered, exposing this array of round orange fruit. I did not see any farm stand nearby selling pumpkins, so I suspect there are no future jack o' lanterns here. These are the leftovers, left to be eaten by the wildlife.

A little beyond the field of pumpkins is an old tobacco barn that has fallen. I remember its slow leaning, leaning, finally succumbing to gravity with the help of a hurricane.  The old barn, the old villages have past, but today the pumpkins are ripe and ready.