December 3, 2012 · 4:46 pm

Miracles Come Up Where They May

I spent a fair amount of Sundays at church in my life, and one of the things I came away with is a fondness for benedictions. Perhaps in part because the benediction was always at the end of each service, but one particular minister’s parting words, “Now go, and take on the day!” inspire me still. First thing in the morning I summon these words to sit down and write, and today is no exception.

Last week I was hiking with an esteemed naturalist in the Galapagos, crossing over an uninhabited island to a particular beach. I believe we were on Isla Espanola that day. Here’s the problem: my journal got lost somewhere on the long route home to Seattle by way of Quito, Ecuador, Lima, Peru, and Los Angeles, and all the days and islands of Galapagos are running together. I’ve filled out lost & found forms with every airport, every airline, and each day hope to hear from one of them. And yet I know, I should let it go. As Mark Twain put it, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

Billy, the naturalist, wanted to show us where an extraordinary number of sea turtles make their nests. When we reached the beach the only imprints were turtle tracks, running perpendicular between the water and the shore. High up on the shore—hours of trekking for a turtle—a honeycomb pattern of multiple nests were dug in the sand between grasses. Once eggs are laid, mother sea turtles crawl out to sea, never to return to the nest. Upon hatching, baby sea turtles make their own trek to the water.

Looking out to sea, we could see numerous sea turtles treading water by the edge. Billy explained that they were awaiting sunset—mind you, we are on the equator here—to start their journey toward the nesting spot. Half a night climbing up onto the beach, and half a night making it back. No predators around, it looked perfect but for one thing: two large sea turtles hadn’t quite made it back to the water. They lay on the beach, their heads buried deep in sand. Heartbreaking.

I questioned whether the three of us could possibly lift each turtle and help it back to sea, but Billy explained that they were dead. Most likely they had started their trek back to sea too close to sunrise, and got caught in the heat of the day. And besides, we are not to interfere with nature in the Galapagos Islands. I knew that, of course, but I had to ask.

At that point the three of us went off and took a little time to ourselves. I sat down on a piece of driftwood facing the two mother sea turtles and sort of praying. I’m not sure what I mean exactly by praying, but all my thoughts went out to those two magnificent turtles whose last act on earth was to lay eggs.

Suddenly–no not suddenly, for nothing is sudden with sea turtles on land–I noticed that one of them had repositioned her body. What had been a parallel position to the water’s edge was now perpendicular, with her tail end toward me. Running down there I could see she was moving.

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“Billy, Billy,” I screamed, then I ran up the beach to get him. Billy ran back with me and the two of us were dancing around and jumping for joy—by now all the sand was marked up with human imprints. We saw the sea turtle reach the waves, and the waves wash over her, and we knew that with each laborious step she was finally cooling off after a long, hot, beached day.

Billy and I then went to inspect the other one. The body unmoved, head still buried in the sand, and once again Billy pronounced her dead. But we stayed with her, and in a sense that is what I think prayer must be: paying total attention. Sitting on the driftwood or standing by their side, I had no other thoughts but for these turtles.

She responded by blowing bubbles. At first we weren’t sure what we were seeing. But her head slowly came up, eyelids lifted, and this one too was alive! Slowly she swung herself around, orienting herself to the water. And we saw her off as well.

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Call me crazy, but I felt we had witnessed two miracles that day. More than witness, I was certain that it was our thoughts, our prayers, and our love that made them rise. And that without our presence, it may not have happened. I still feel that way.

I may have lost my journal on the expedition, but the stories of Galapagos are etched in my heart. A place so perfectly environmentally balanced, it felt wrong to ever leave. And especially wrong to step on exhaust-spewing planes to go home…. except to spread the word.

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November 14, 2012 · 4:50 pm

Shrines in the Hood

I don’t know why I log onto news some mornings. A woman in Arizona ran over her husband with a car because he had not voted in the presidential election. An elderly man in New Zealand is under court orders to keep 550 yards from the visiting Prince Charles and Camilla. Apparently in 1994 he sprayed Prince Charles with air fresheners “to remove the stink of royalty.” This time what he had in mind was more like horse manure. And back in this country, the CIA/FBI/Pentagon sex & email scandal implodes like a house of cards in high school.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going for a walk.

Just a few steps from home, I found it: a little civility. It looked, at first glance, like a birdhouse. Little Free Libraries, standing on posts alongside sidewalks in residential neighborhoods. Each hutch hosts a remarkably full, ever-changing variety of books, protected from the weather.

Little Free Libraries is the brainchild of a couple of men from Wisconsin, Rick Brooks and Todd Bol. When Bol’s mother, a school teacher, died, he built a memorial for her in his front yard. Shaped like a little red schoolhouse, it offered free books to passersby. People loved the idea and hired him to make more. When he met up with Brooks, an outreach program manager at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a social enterprise was launched.

Today Little Free Libraries have popped up in over forty states and are going international–more than 40 in Ghana alone. And I’m lucky enough to have one on my walk to town. I regard it as a shrine. Today I lent a book of poetry and borrowed Willa Cather’s O Pioneer!

Using no start-up capital, Todd Bol and Rick Brooks founded a chain of micro lending libraries that help build community, much like bookgroups. Donations and volunteerism keep it all going. “(Neighbors) would tell me they had met more people than in the last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years,” noted Bol. Brooks concurs, “This is obviously about more than just books. Something is going on.”

Something is going on. Some people are thinking of ways to make the world a better place. And the more we all read, the better behaved we all are, and the more we stay out of trouble. It’s a start anyway.

Visit their site, http://www.littlefreelibrary.org/

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November 7, 2012 · 5:37 pm

Falling Leaves and First Ladies

Tuesday was the longest day. I don’t think many of us knew what to do with ourselves. Of course, some people were simply standing in lines to vote. Unbelievable images when you take into consideration that we are not a new democracy, and when you appreciate all our advanced technology. Still, people stood patiently in lines long past polling hours.

When I was at home in the day, I made calls. When I was out, I went for long walks amongst the trees. The sun was out and I took that as a sign. And I needed the air. Finally, I settled into raking leaves around my house. Bright yellows, golds, red and orange leaves that were lovely and falling at the same rate I could gather them. Nevertheless, it seemed important that I try to make things tidy. It was an impossibly long day, waiting for the results to roll in. And when I was done raking, I did it again.

Keep America Beautiful came to mind, the nonprofit organization Lady Bird Johnson embraced. I have heard that before her campaign, it was quite common for Americans to throw trash out their car windows. Our highways were littered, and in the course of inspiring people to clean up the trash she went a step further and proposed roadside wildflowers, a program that would sustain itself. (And the idea being that people would be less inclined to litter when the landscape was lovely). Lady Bird worked tirelessly to restore natural beauty to America’s public spaces. This was before we even had the word for environmentalism, but she understood it. She knew the impact it would have on the quality of our lives and communities.

While twice filling the yard waste bin it occurred to me that Lady Bird may be one of our most underappreciated First Ladies. I was also thinking it may be safe to come in now. It was dark and in the street lights the leaves in trees looked like blossoms. Another sign?

I’d enough air, I could breathe. I can make it.

And indeed, it’s over. The center is holding and we were not derailed. We can all go forward with what we do in this beautiful country of ours.

Now, where was I?

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October 31, 2012 · 8:37 pm

Hair of the Dog

Seattle is, as they say, a city of neighborhoods, and when we first moved to Queen Anne, the local 5 Spot restaurant was particularly welcoming. We liked to sit and eat at the bar, watch a UW game or the Mariners, and befriend the bartender. Hank may have been the first person in town to remember our names every time, and so the 5 Spot became for us, the local Cheers bar.

Every now and then we feel in need of that again. Earlier this week, at a time of high election angst, we returned. (It is important to note here that this was before Hurricane Sandy made landfall). The intensity of the election was, at that time, Category 4, all consuming and draining. As Anne Lamott put it, “This is no way to live–rooting around the internet and twitter sites like a truffle hound, looking for better polls.” We had to get out of the house.

Once again, the 5 Spot was just the ticket. For those who are unfamiliar, the 5 Spot continually celebrates an “American Food Festival” by changing its theme every three months.  Sometimes it’s Texas, New Orleans or New York. Currently the theme was Washington D.C. Of course it would be.

Customers entered via a red or blue door to a restaurant decorated with every red, white and blue cliché: stars & stripes, beads, hats and streamers. It felt like one enormous rally. It felt like election night. And it occurred to us that maybe this was one way to deflect from the election, by just stepping right into it. Soon it would all be over, in other words.

“Vote with Your Liver” screamed the cocktails menu. Although I knew we would be ordering our usual iced teas, it was a good read:

Let Me Be Clear Martini, “no details, perfectly clear”

Bain Baubles & Bubbles, “silly, what recession?”

Joe’s Scranton Manhattan

Private Sector Sunrise, “we build, you drink, no interference”

Hair of the Dog, “for those mornings when you feel like you were tied to the roof of your car”

One of my goals this campaign season was to change my mother’s mind, to get her “to vote like a woman.” I wrote a blog post on the subject, “Don’t Call Me During the Debates,” and told mom that I had written it for her. And in every conversation I tried in some way to convince her. Then one day she informed me that it was too late.

“Your father and I have already voted,” she said.

“So there’s no sense talking to you anymore?” I quipped.

Mom laughed, I laughed.

Well, maybe I will try a Hair of the Dog cocktail afterall.

The specialty menu at 5 Spot offered Congressional House Hash, Marion Barry Cakes, White House Standoff, Koch Bros. Memorial Super Pac Porkity Pork Wich, and Initiative 502 “Herb” Salad (in reference to Washington state’s marijuana legalization initiative). I went with my usual, Cobb Salad.

There was no room for dessert. We had so much on our plates. Slurping to the bottom of my Hair of the Dog I was thinking, we can’t go back and protest for women’s rights again, not twice in one lifetime! I want to pray, please let Obama win so I can get on with my work!

Meanwhile, over on the Eastern seaboard, global warming was at our door. And she didn’t knock, and she didn’t just huff and puff, but blew our house down. How many times do we have to be reminded? Nature rules.

Vote, and vote intelligently.

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October 24, 2012 · 3:52 pm

All Aboard!

As a child traveling Pullman cars with my family through the south and on trips out west, I had a romance with the railroads.  Smiling porters, seemingly as happy as I. Gleaming brass and wood, the freshest of linens, service whenever we wanted it, and always with that smile. I had no idea at the time what a moment in history we were caught in.

The first Pullman porters were recruited from the first generation of black men to be freed. It had to be considered a desirable occupation at the time. Porters were trained in schools and wore their uniform proudly, but their working conditions were horrendous. Meager wages, hurried meals, 400 hours of work per month, catering to rich white passengers, some of whom felt free to buzz all night and call any porter “George,” after George Pullman.

And yet the Pullman porters’ contribution to the Civil Rights Movement was immense. Forming the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1937, it was the first organized black labor union and wages finally  improved. Porters were couriers for “The Chicago Defender,” an African American newspaper that advertised job and living opportunities in the urban north, helping to encourage the migration of African Americans from the rural south.

I learned all this while enjoying the “Pullman Porter Blues” theatrical production at Seattle Repertory Theatre. The year is 1937, on the eve of the first black heavyweight championship, and hopes are high for Joe Lewis among porters aboard the Panama Limited, bound from Chicago to New Orleans. Three generations of men serve as porters. Musicians and singer Sister Juba are along for the ride, wailing blues, spirituals and slave era work songs. The set is designed like a fast moving train and moves seamlessly between luxury Pullman cars to coach, cargo, and caboose, and I’m in heaven….

And this ride isn’t over. Next stop is Arena Stage in Washington D.C. (opening November 23). We are casting our ballots out here and sending local playwright Cheryl L. West’s “Pullman Porter Blues” to “the other Washington,” as we call it. Consider them both, our vote and this production, from Seattle with love.

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October 17, 2012 · 5:09 pm

View from the Rafters

I haven’t been this nervous since seventh grade, when as captain of my debating team, I had to go before the school. I’m sure I feigned a sore throat that morning in an effort to stay home, and I’m sure my mother made me go. It was too important, something like “The Cuban Missile Crisis,” and I know I felt the weight of the world riding on my performance.

Now here I am, hours before the second presidential debate, beside myself again. And I have every confidence in my candidate. It’s not that. It’s that with so much at stake, the content of this debate is going to be shaped by people who cannot make up their minds.

Really? As a nation with one of the most critically important decisions to make, we fill the hall with undecideds? When was the last time you had an important decision to make? Did you call upon undecided people for help?

That’s what it’s like out there right now. All the emphasis is on the undecided or mixed-up states. What if you are not in a mixed up state? What if you are not a mixed up voter? We hardly matter anymore. Many of us have a pretty good idea of what we envision for our country, and suddenly, this election is no longer in our hands.

I have to get going…. the stage is all set at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. I can feel my old familiar bellyache, or was it a sore throat? The candidates tonight will be playing to a selected group of eighty-two uncommitted voters seated on stage, while the “general audience” sits up on rafters, in the cheap seats, in the dark. The candidates have been coached not to make eye contact with the general audience. It’s much like a microcosm of society right now. So many of us with little to do for the next three weeks but hang here in the dark, and check the daily tracking polls morning, noon and night.

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October 10, 2012 · 4:11 pm

Sounds of Silence

After seeing the film, “Descendents,” my sister remarked that it made her aware of all the superfluous chatter in life, that much of what we mean can be expressed without words. No doubt it was George Clooney’s eyes that spoke to her, nevertheless we are all capable of so much more in nonverbal communication.

And while this blazingly beautiful Indian Summer of ours just won’t quit, my husband and I slipped off in the boat again for “one more weekend.” Pulling up at Rosario on Orcas Island, we came ashore as tens of people were pouring out of a seminar. They were out on a break and while most sat on the shore facing the sun, some lay down on the grass, or strolled singularly on paths. The notable thing about it was the quietude. None of the participants spoke. Not to each other, not to anyone. And we did not want to disturb it.

Describing quietude is like trying to describe the dark. There is little light on land at night in the San Juan Islands. Soft lights from boats reflect, and diffuse, in the water. It is darker there at night. The sky, however, can be lit up like the Hayden Planetarium on the Upper West Side in NYC. Stargazing did for me a child, and this was again, such a night.

We were taken with it, both the quietude and darkness. While on a walk at midnight, my husband encountered a deer. It was close yet he couldn’t see it. When he came back to the boat his description was of “a low hum, the sound of air moving fast.” We talked like this that weekend.

We learned that we had arrived on the second day of an intensive, three-day, Tibetan Buddhist Tantric Retreat. Tom Kenyon was creating catalytic sounds by channeling a celestial musician, the participants found it transformational, and although we were not in the program, it affected us nonetheless. For the entire weekend we did not play the music we are usually fond of hearing out on the water, and I don’t know that either of us noticed.

I wish I could write this from inside the retreat too, but no, I wouldn’t have wanted to spend all that time indoors. One of the benefits of boating is we can absorb all that good Vitamin D and raise our serotonin and endorphin levels through the roof. And if we go a bit overboard in the summer, it is because we are stocking up for all the gray months ahead.

On the final day of the program–day three for them, day two for us– one by one, participants out on break began to say “hello.” It was as if they were resurfacing, and us as well.

Time had stood still, it seemed, and now it was time to return from whence we all came. Soundlessly, people wandered off with their backpacks, and boats left their slips or moorage, more sailboats than motor. We hoped to bring some of it back with us, the sounds of silence and the lights of darkness.

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October 3, 2012 · 3:47 pm

Don’t Call Me During the Debates

“We will decide this election, really it’s a question of whether we vote or not. It’s that simple.” Gloria Steinem

For weeks now I’ve been lining up chairs and turning my house into a theatre. Whenever I find more chairs, I start another row. This will be a full house and it should be a handful.

Out front, horse drawn carriages and buggies are drawing up to the curb on my street. Antique cars are coming around the bend in every direction. Sacagawea walks up from the banks of the Columbia River in Chinook on The Lewis and Clark Trail.

Eleanor Roosevelt gets things started in her sing song voice, “We don’t know our strength until we are in hot water!”

A few ladies sit in rockers, skirts and petticoats making a wide girth. Others prefer a hard bench, and still others insist on standing, but most are in chairs. I never could have anticipated such a turn out.

Margaret Mead interrupted important research she was doing in Samoa for the occasion, and hangs her pith helmet at my door.

Freshly bailed out of jail, Margaret Sanger proclaims “No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether or not she will be a mother.”

Abigail Adams agrees, “Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.”

“Here, here!” comes up from the crowd.

Elizabeth Stanton, Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Clare Barton, Betty Friedan. Scanning around the room, I am impressed by the number of writers: Margaret Fuller, Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Hurston to name a few.

“America’s future will be determined by the home and the school….” declares Jane Addams, feminist, social worker, and friend to the poor.

“And voting!” they all chime.

In the remaining minutes before the debate begins, I try to explain to them who our moderators are, Jim Lehrer, Martha Raddatz, Candy Crowley, and Bob Schieffer.

“I think,” states Elizabeth Stanton, “that the young women of today do not and can not know at what price their right to speak and to speak at all in public has been earned.” There is great agreement among all, settling down to a palpable quietude as the debate begins.

I am watching for Betty Friedan. I am watching for Margaret Sanger. I am watching for Margaret Mead. I am watching for Elizabeth Blackwell, first American female physician.  I am watching for them all.

I am watching for the women who died at the hands of back-alley abortionists. I am watching for women whose education was derailed by unwanted pregnancy. I am watching for all the young women who were sent off to Homes for Unwed Mothers. I am watching the debates in the company of all these extraordinary women and we will not blink.

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer,” muses Zora Neale Hurston as she slips into her wool coat.

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September 26, 2012 · 5:00 pm

Over Our Heads

Sometimes you just have to do something that is outside your comfort zone. “Do one thing a day that scares you” is written all over the Lululemon bags. I don’t know about you, but I always listen to my tote.

When my friend, Lynn, and I found that each of our submissions had been accepted for publication in “Minerva Rising,” a new literary journal for women, we thought, this is great. We’d show it to our families, mention it in our bio’s, and then it would retire to our shelves…. Or, we could throw a party! A perfect excuse in this case, as it’s the debut edition. And so, The Seattle Launch of Minerva Rising was born.

I’ve lost track of time, that was a few weeks back. Shortly after releasing electronic invitations to all the local literary illuminati we could think of, we lost control of it. With four or five files where there should have been one, we could never be certain of the count. (I knew I preferred paper invitations).

A few years ago on an island off Seattle, an ancient Japanese woman named Sally lived next door to me. Sally and I saw a lot of each other because both of us were always out, weather permitting, to garden, weed, clean up, and in the course of it, exchange conversation and plants. Sally owned a block-long warehouse in downtown Seattle, worth millions in real estate alone.  She and her husband had built up a wholesale floral business, after what I can only imagine may have been a period in internment. (She never mentioned that). Her husband passed away, and well into her nineties or hundreds Sally was retired and their daughter ran the business, but every now and then Sally insisted on going to the office “to be sure the money was flowing in the right direction.” I loved that line.

Well, Lynn and I may have lost count with our event, but acceptances have trickled in daily, assuring us everything was flowing in the right direction. The day before the event we will round up fresh flowers from Pikes Market (most likely from Sally’s warehouse), and arrange them. Lynn’s son will man the door, my husband will play bartender, and the Northwest Girlchoir will make an appearance at the event and sing a few songs. We will dim the lights, light candles, and pump in soft music when the girls aren’t singing. It will be a reunion of sorts among Goddard MFA alum and friends. We will treat our guests to readings, always our choice for entertainment at MFA residencies. And from our coast and our fair city, we will help, I hope, launch this new literary journal for women.

The editors are flying in from Atlanta, Georgia and Portland, Maine. They will stay at our house and we will drive them around town like dignitaries. The beds are made, steps are swept, and yesterday I added purple pansies to my window box. (Purple being the color of “Minerva Rising Literary Journal”). Afterall, it isn’t everyday one’s friends start a new publication. And it isn’t every day you get published in one. Soon we will pass the mark where we’ve done all that we can anticipate, and there will be nothing more to do but celebrate.

 

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September 19, 2012 · 5:37 pm

Everything Matters

This week the world has been shocked to witness what in chaos theory is called The Butterfly Effect, whereby “when a butterfly flaps its wings in one part of the world it can cause a hurricane in another part of the world.” Or in other words, when an amateur filmmaker in Los Angeles makes a hateful anti-Muslim film, it can cause riots, death, and destruction throughout The Middle East. We witnessed this too with the Qur’an-burning pastor in Florida.

Personally I’d like to see the film maker behind bars as well as the pastor, but the problem is bigger than that. Free speech, for one thing. Democracy demands it. Civility, however, has its own demands. To put it simply, we must respect others.

Civilization is eroding and evolving at once, and perhaps this has always been the case. We know how fast things can erode, as a mere snowball turned into an avalanche while we sat frozen in our seats.  But let’s remind ourselves that The Butterfly Effect works both ways, toward healing, understanding, and enlightenment as well.

Robert F. Kennedy expressed it elegantly, “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

What we say and do matters. What we write matters. It all matters.

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