With thanks to Lucy Barton and Lore Segal

Somehow I missed it when evryone was reading it, but just last week I read, “My Name Is Lucy Barton” by Elizabeth Strout. And I read Lore Segal’s short story collection, “Ladies’ Lunch.” In both of them I admired the ease with which the author offered her words, the tone almost a personal confiding that leaves you with the misguided thought that anyone—I?—could do the same. Could write stories filled with casual intimacies and asides that add up to wisdom. Not likely, but isn’t that what art is?

Anyhow, I will share two quotes from Lucy that I had to write down. I say from Lucy because the novel, written in the first person, feels more like possibly Lucy Barton’s writing than Elizabeth Strout’s. But again, art.

So, the first quote is this: “It has been my experience throughout life that the people who have been given the most by our government==education, food, rent subsidies—are the ones who are most apt to find fault with the whole idea of government.”

Here I have to mention that yesterday I visited Mount Vernon and, among other things, thought about the revolt against “taxation without representation,” which, of course, I am reminded of also when I see a District of Columbia license plate. And not for the first time I thought about how the colonists were fighting for the right not to be free of taxes which are needed to pay for all those “common good” things we want and need, but to be free to tax themselves. Right?

The second quote is this: “It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it’s the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.”

Those are the two quotes I wrote down. I’ll just leave them here.

Today at the gallery

The woman I met today said she wrote a blog and I said I did, too, or, rather I used to but I’m not sure I do anymore. It’s been so long. But maybe I can try not to be embarrassed or reach for explanations but just say I’m here again: so hello.

The woman I met today was, as I was, looking at the Dorothea Lange exhibit at the National Gallery in Washington. I was in the last room of the exhibit and, prolonging the moment of finishing, looped back a room to find Dr. D. talking to someone. And as I got closer I realized he wasn’t talking to her, but, rather, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. He was just at “under God with liberty and justice for all.” Oops, I said, you forgot “indivisible.” (An understandable omission at this moment in time, but whatever.)

And I met the woman he was talking to, who was visiting from Saudi Arabia, where she writes, among other things, a blog. As I have written, among other things. They had stood in front of a photograph of children crowded together, hands over their hearts. Japanese-American children pledging their allegiance to a country about to scoop them up and send them to internment camps. And the woman had asked Dr. D. what the Pledge of Allegiance was and he was reciting it for her.

And so we met and stopped to talk in front of these iconic gelatin silver prints, these clear visions of a country living through the 20th century. She and I exchanged contact information and I’ve just looked at her beautiful blog. To leave a comment I had to choose the “translate into English” option which let me write left to right, but then if I wanted to change something, added it right to left, a reminder of how intentional we need to be sometimes if we want to communicate.

Maybe Dorothea would have enjoyed seeing this small moment she inspired.

“The nobility of lost and discarded bits”

For most of the “aughts” I had the great pleasure of writing a column for the Boston Globe that allowed me to talk with some of the area’s amazing writers and poets, including Jeanne Steig, who died a few days ago at the age of 92.

Jeanne was both a writer and a visual artist, the creator of sculptures and collages made of found objects. Yes, trash as in “one person’s trash, another’s treasure.” The Globe obituary notice today quotes her as saying, “If my work is ‘about’ anything, it is about the pieces. It is about the nobility of lost and discarded bits, humble fragments unique, unexpected.” And today as I think about Jeanne, I am thinking, too, about what is discarded that might be a treasure.

This is what I wrote for the Globe almost 14 years ago, on August 10, 2008.

A life of art from the materials at hand
There’s an old adage, “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” Certainly makes sense in these recycling-conscious times. But there is another aspect to the idea, too: even the most humble throw-aways can, in the right hands, become something wonderful.
And that’s just what happens in Fleas! a new book for children and what has happened, also, throughout the life of its author, Jeanne Steig. Steig has written books written both on her own and in collaboration with her late husband, William Steig, the famed New Yorker cartoonist and children’s book author. Together they did, among others, A Gift from Zeus, Alpha Beta Chowder, and A Handful of Beans. Fleas! and Tales from Gizzard’s Grill are Jeanne Steig’s first books since William Steig’s death in 2003 .
In Fleas!, people trade away things they don’t want. The hero, Quantz, after befriending a dog that gives him fleas, goes off on an adventure where his first step is to offload the fleas. He manages to get rid of them in exchange for an overly talkative uncle, whom he then deposits with a man who trades away a huge cheese, and….well, you know how these things go.
“It’s about cast-offs,” says Steig. “Everything finally finds its right place.”
But recycling isn’t only a story line for Steig. It is at the heart of her work as a visual artist, in which her primary medium is what she terms “street finds.” Scraps of roofing tile, bits of tar and cardboard, and other detritus make their way from gutter to canvas in her world. She sees possibilities in the humblest leavings she finds on walks around Boston. She says, though, that the streets here are generally too clean to be a good source of materials. Instead, she receives packages of street scraps sent from Paris by her son-in-law.
The random bits most often become people who may float through the sky in seeming wonder. Or they may wear wistful expressions that belie a harsh setting, such as a desperate border crossing. They manage to look wordly-wise and cheerful at the same time. Looking at them, I think of how Steig manages to recognize the beginnings of art in what has been thrown away, stepped on, rained on, ignored. It is part of a whole, of a life lived noticing what can be beautiful and useful if only someone takes the time to see. At its heart, it is a life of creating books a visual art, of course, but more: it is about making a conscious art of living.
Steig’s fondness for the cast-offs.is apparent in both story and picture. Quantz, even in his itchy torment, manages a gentle affection for the fleas. He tells them, “you dance very well,” as he tactfully suggests they might be happier elsewhere. It is what I imagine Steig is thinking as she transforms a street scrap into part of a picture: you will be happier here.
As I leave Steig’s sun-filled apartment and, walk home, I feel a little bit under the spell of the lesson of her street finds. On one block I see the intentional beauty, yes, of a blazing yellow clump of begonias. But there is also the surprising bright blueness of a van parked nearby. The vivid colors around the neighborhood, the shapes with crisp edges of shadow and soft curving lines: these are the materials at hand. Everywhere is something to see, something to think about, to notice!

Thinking about Juneteenth

This is not specifically my holiday except that, as an American, I celebrate the freedom of all Americans. As an American I celebrate every incremental move my country has taken toward the ideals it signed on to when it declared its wish to its own country.

But every time I think about Juneteenth I marvel in gratitude at the optimism, the generosity of spirit, the patriotism with which the community rooted in former enslavement observes it.

The story of the “news”—ahem—coming to enslaved people in Texas two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation is a glass half full and half empty moment. Freedom, yes, but only after their enslavers had withheld the news of their freedom and extracted another two and a half years of unpaid toil and misery from 250,000 people. It would be easy to mark the day with mourning and anger. But no. There is celebration. And there is what I see as a marvel of generosity and patriotism.

The soaring words that Jefferson wrote, despite the huge flaws of his own history, those words we pay lip service to are words the formerly enslaved and their descendants have believed. And held their country to.

Maybe Juneteenth celebrates exactly that, the highest ideals of those who founded the country and those who have, over the years, believed in those ideals and worked to move us closer to realizing them. And so it is a holiday for all of us, whatever our family’s story. At a moment when those lofty goals seem ever farther out of reach, as we observe the second year of the federal holiday 157 years after the original day of freedom, maybe Juneteenth is just what we all need.

Walter Cronkite, Sesame Street, and Wordle

Like thousands—millions?—of others I have succumbed to the charm of Wordle. There’s the wonderful name of its creator—Josh Wardle. There’s the backstory of his presenting it as a gift to his word-game-loving partner. There’s it’s modesty: just one small word just once a day, as if in recognition that we have—or should have -other things to do. And there was the purity with which it was first offered without charge, with Wardle resisting the temptation to “monetize,” though I’m glad he was ultimately rewarded for his ingenuity. I hope it won’t eventually slide behind a paywall or start sprouting ads.

But what I think I like most compelling about the game is its ubiquity.

We used to share things, remember? Before we got siloed by cable tv, we all got our news from one of maybe three national broadcasters, especially Walter Cronkite. When JFK was shot, he choked up with us. When he said, at the end of a broadcast, “And that’s the way it is,” we knew we had not just been served a sludge of “alternative facts” but rather the reality of what had happened that day in the world we shared.

And I think, too, of “Sesame Street,” which was such a broadly shared staple of a certain moment of childhood. Obviously not everyone shared those moments, but enough did to make it a touchstone. I pictured children all across the country learning, with mine, that C is for cookie and facing the hard reality of death as they mourned Mr, Hooper.

Was it a more innocent time? Maybe, and definitely one with fewer options, fewer opportunities. But what there was, we shared. And now we’re sharing this quick little game. This one small moment of fun. A-R-I-S-E and play together!

Exclamations!

Some friends and I were having an email exchange about exclamation points. It wasn’t my first online conversation about punctuation by a long shot. A few high school friends and I reminisced just the other day about diagramming sentences. Oh, diagramming—so much has been lost without you, including an understanding of why not to say, “between you and I.”

There’s something I vaguely remember about not using a lot of exclamation points. (Okay, most of my remembering feels a little vague these days, but that’s another story.) Something about being allotted 10 or 12 or some similar limited number of exclamation points to use in your life. The “rule” is imaginary and silly and the number is unimportant but I like the idea of using them sparingly. Like a spice. Too many exclamations and nothing is worthy of exclamation.

Nothing, I noted in the conversation, is worthy of multiple exclamation points, except maybe a college acceptance, book publication, new baby. Something at least slightly momentous. Something that, in person, might elicit a raised glass or raised eyebrows.

But isn’t that just the thing: “in person.” How to approximate a little enthusiasm in an email? Type “that’s terrific.” in response to some mildly pleasant news and it feels a little flat. Maybe even snarky: yeah, terrific. Without the in-person smile or happy tone of voice, a little more is needed. The spice. Just a pinch–not a handful, but some. Even if we’re using a little more than usual. Even if we’re using more than the lifetime allotment. To make it closer to what it would sound like if we were really together.

Whose house is it anyway?

It wasn’t that I was afraid of the mouse. I didn’t let out the stereotypical “eek” or consider leaping onto a chair, even if I were still agile enough to manage it. I was more startled. In retrospect, I have to admit the mouse was kind of cute, but there was no question I wanted it out out out. And now I’m wondering what exactly it is that makes me anxiously count the days until we can give Ed a lot of money to do major mouse-proofing.

“It feels like an invasion,” someone suggested. No, not exactly that. Someone else told me about their mouse-ridden apartment in Paris and a landlord who scoffed at his complaint and said those mice had been there since the 15th century. I think of the delightfully Parisian “Ratatouille” (though, fortunately, I am dealing with his smaller cousin) and all the other charming storybook mice. Stuart Little! Maisie! Angelina Ballerina! Despereaux! Poor unloved Alexander and that wind-up lookalike! And someone did suggest I give the mouse a cookie, but who’s to say I wouldn’t soon be visited by a muffin-hunting moose.

So, ok cute. But why am I something a little more negative than simply startled? Disease potential? Check. Of course. But even given where cats’ and dogs’ faces sometimes get to, people still cuddle them and kiss them and invite them onto laps and into beds. So what is it about the mouse that makes me insist on the singular “mouse” and pull back from the thought of plural “mice” and pull back from the thought of its being my roommate?

Without burdening the mouse with a philosophical outlook, I think the distaste lies in the mouse’s total negation of thousands of years of human civilization. At the first sighting I quickly left the room and shut the door. Door? Ha! It might keep out a larger intruder, but the fraction of an inch at the bottom goes unnoticed as the mouse puts my space to his or her purpose. Our walls have openings we don’t see. Welcome heat enters into our rooms through pipes with enough space around them for easy mouse access. Likewise electricity, water, air conditioning. It’s not so much that we are afraid or even inconvenienced by them. It’s that we barely exist in the world we think is ours. Far from being the boss of them, we’re not even in the room where anything happens.

It feels more like outrage: how dare they invade our carefully curated space. Here we are sitting in our living room, surrounded by our selected books, maybe even books autographed by talented friends. We are having Important Conversations. And along comes a tiny creature living its own life in the same space, not recognizing our ownership, barely noticing us. We’re the kings and queens of the jungle, the pinnacle of creation on the planet. How can this being go about its small life in total ignorance of our importance, our power?

Meanwhile we wait for Ed and his mouse-proofing skills. It’s not killing or harming, but simply creating a barrier between our space and mouse space. Surely the world is big enough for both.

9/11 plus 20

It’s a day of what ifs. Or maybe if onlys. If only out of the long shadow of tragedy and loss had come a different sort of reckoning: the world brought together—as it was, in sympathy on our behalf—not to settle scores with guns, but with the shock and awe of radical justice. What if the oppression that nurtured the hatreds and resentments had, itself, been attacked? What if terrorism had been treated as a violation of international law instead of a strike against national pride?

Today what I’m most remembering that came immediately after is not only the shock of 9/11 but, as some have said, 9/12: the feeling of common fragility, of tenderness, and of charity toward one another. We can’t bring back who was lost, but I wish we could bring back what was.

I’m re-reading a few poems I wrote that now remind me of who we were on 9/12. Here are two:

Iceman

He may have bled to death
there on the mountain:
flint arrowhead imbedded
in carbon-dated
shoulderblade, neolithic
agony echoing down to us
through tectonic shifts,
his computer image
looking like someone
I might have met.

I thought of him again–
I don’t know why–
on a warm afternoon
later that September.

The streets were hushed and
shadowy although the sky
of course, was emptier,
bluer, too, than necessary,
the scent still in the air and
flowers wilting
outside the fire stations,
posters in every window–
someone might yet come home.

In another age
a week before
we had owned small fears,
certainty.
We were young then.

………….

ever since

now
in the fragile time
between the thunder claps
in the time after
the sky split open
and solidness
dissolved

the fire
continues
to leave no one
unscorched
shelter collapses
again and again
around us
the acrid dust
preserves us
perfect as Pompeii

we were gentle
with each other then
liable to break
now we sort through
what is left to us
sift the rubble
for what
we have lost

An age of tenderness

My high school reunion just got canceled. For the second time. And, though no one in the class wants to think so, given advancing age versus lingering virus, what was first being called “postponement” is likely to remain “cancellation.”

One of the organizers sent out the news in an email signed “lovingly.” “Lovingly, Mary Alice.” I’m not sure but I think she was a class officer, maybe a cheerleader. Definitely someone remembered widely, I’d guess, with much affection.

Maybe for an earlier reunion a casual “see ya next year” might have felt appropriate. Or something on the order of “stay well and stay tuned.” But with our high school years pretty distant in the rear view mirror , the tenderness of “lovingly” feels exactly right.

Tenderness, an idea I’ve thought and written about, feels totally at odds with what’s in the air around us, virally, societally, where things feel harsh and unsettled. That quality of loving acceptance, forgiveness, drawing near. It’s what feels comforting right now. It’s what I want and what I had been looking forward to at this reunion.

Early on, school reunions can feel a little show-offy. Look how well I’ve done, look at what I’ve accomplished in the 5, 10, 25 years since you last saw me. Yes, since YOU saw ME—those early ones may be a little more about that. But later, later if we’re get the chance, it’s about MY seeing YOU, and especially this year, checking in on how YOU are, all of you, the close friends, the ones I didn’t know so well, the ones whose names ring only distant bells. We share so much of who we are and I care about all of you.

Those later reunions are for recognizing that much of what passes for accomplishment can be laid at the doorstep of dumb luck. When we gather in those years, it is in gratitude at our good fortune.

And now it’s cancelled. Here we are again, after the hesitant , optimistic tip-toeing out in May and June, retreating again. We’re ordering a new supply of masks, crossing out dates on the calendar. And this time, instead of shock and determination, it feels a little more poignant especially when we cancel the occasions we’re not sure will ever happen. Now we are trying to set up a Zoom gathering, sharing hellos on Facebook. We’re thinking of who we’re not going to be seeing after all and worrying about who hasn’t been heard from. We’re remembering times we haven’t thought about in years, that added up to what our lives became.

Yes. “Lovingly.”

Observing the first federal Juneteenth

When my people celebrate redemption from slavery, we sit around the table and say, “Dayenu.” Dayenu—it would have been enough. The recounting of blessings is long—if we had been freed from slavery and not had the sea divided for us, not crossed to dry land, not been led to Mount Sinai. Etc., etc. You get the idea–every miracle would have been enough, every reason to be grateful enough and yet we were grateful that there were still more miracles to come.

For COVID Passover. with only two of us at the table, we named more personal miracles—the health of friends and family, satisfying work, the love and companionship we share. Dayenu. If we had been given only one of these it would have been enough. But we were grateful, too, that the blessings continued.

And in W. S. Merwin’s glorious poem, “Thanks,” he begins a litany of gratitude with “night falling” and “with our mouths full of food.” But then it gets complicated. Then “back from a mugging” and “after funerals” “we go on saying thank you.” And finally “with the animals dying around us” and “with nobody listening” still “we are saying thank you/ thank you we are saying and waving/ dark though it is.” Dark though it is.

And so we come to Juneteenth and I am looking at this celebration with these echoes of gratitude. It is not my celebration except as I celebrate every attempt to create a better, more just America. This is not mine to revel in, only to support and, on behalf of my country and my fellow inhabitants, to stand in amazed gratitude that in Texas on June 19, 1865 those enslaved for 2 ½ years after the Emancipation Proclamation—not to mention after 246 years of brutal enslavement–reacted in celebration of what they were reclaiming, rather than in bitter regret at what they had been so long denied. (Maybe the enslaved people already knew about their freedom, but needed the word to go officially to enslavers: no more. My people look always for midrash, the possible stories behind the stories.)

So there was January 1, 1863, the moment of the Emancipation Proclamation. and then there was Juneteenth—dayenu. And there was the brief optimism at the end of the Civil War, when in an astonishingly short time, the formerly enslaved people created schools and businesses and became elected representatives of the public. Dayenu That was followed by Jim Crow and the KKK, but still the descendants of the formerly enslaved volunteered to defend America in its wars—dayenu—even when they returned home to injustice. They fought and died for the right to vote and, when they could, turned out in impressive numbers—dayenu—although they are now watching that right being eroded in state after state. And it has been the descendants of the formerly enslaved people who have stood up time and again for justice for themselves and for others who have been denied it. They have been the true believers in what we like to think of as the promise of America.

And so it is Juneteenth across the country—dayenu. But not yet enough.