what depends on the red wheelbarrow?

Ah, late again. Here's a classic.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

 

--William Carlos Williams

don't speak too soon, for the wheel's still in spin

Oh, blog. I'm sorry for my neglect of you. *pets* Life's been a little crazy.

I've been keeping track, at least peripherally, of two different movements that have been going on: the Occupy movements, which (as I'm sure you all know) started fairly recently, and the Slutwalk movements, which have been happening since (I think?) this spring.

Occupy Philly is underway, with protesters camping outside of City Hall. Since the movement here doesn't seem to have a website, here's their Facebook page and the PW blog, which seems to be covering it pretty often.

I personally haven't checked out what's going on at City Hall, but it's pretty close to where I work. Last week I walked by and got a glimpse of lots of tents, but it was cold and raining, so no one was really out. I might go by later this week when things have slowed down for me.

In general, I'm interested more in the smaller, local movements than in the larger Occupy ones. If we're going to change things, I think we need to start in the places in which we live. I think if this had happened six, seven years ago, I might be more optimistic about larger structural changes. But bringing down Wall Street? The IRS? The Federal Reserve? Hmm.

I think this could turn into a solid movement, one that takes root in the US (maybe the rest of the world, too; who knows?). But I also think it needs concrete goals, which (from what I understand) are developing slowly. So we'll see. It might fizzle out, or it might burst into something wonderful.

If you asked me about what I'd like to see here in Philly, I'd say this: I want to see good schools. I want to see support for struggling families. I want to see neighborhoods revitalized from the bottom up.I want good affordable housing for every person who needs or wants it.

I think slogans are all well and good (I used to have shirts that said, "There's enough for everyone's need but not enough for everyone's greed" and "Live Simply" on them). But we need to think longer-term as well.

On the more meta-side, I've been reading a lot of interesting articles on the idea of occupation. It's a loaded word--and for some groups, it's a word that has a lot of history. (What does it mean to occupy on occupied land?) For Native Americans, the US is already occupied--by people like me, and probably, if you're not a Native American, you too, dear reader.

Here's some reading that I've done: A Letter to the Occupy Together Movement and Decolonization and Occupy Wall Street.

The Slutwalk movements started in Toronto, when a police officer, in giving a talk about safety, said that "women should avoid dressing like sluts" to prevent rape. The first Slutwalk was in direct response to his remark, but also in response to the larger issues: 1) dressing not like a "slut" does not prevent rape (there were women in the walks who were wearing pajamas and jeans and jackets holding signs that said, "this is what I was wearing when I was raped.") 2) rape is very, very under-reported, and most rapists don't even spend time in jail 3) and then this, which is from Slutwalk Toronto's website: "We are tired of being oppressed by slut-shaming; of being judged by our sexuality and feeling unsafe as a result. Being in charge of our sexual lives should not mean that we are opening ourselves to an expectation of violence, regardless if we participate in sex for pleasure or work. No one should equate enjoying sex with attracting sexual assault."

To be honest, I don't really have a personal desire to re-appropriate the word "slut." It's not something I identify with, and it's not something that I really want to identify with. And, of course, let's look meta again:

An Open Letter from Black Women to the Slutwalk: If you're interested at all in the movement, read this. Sometimes--many times--we in the majority have to sit down, shut up, and listen. 

We are deeply concerned. As Black women and girls we find no space in SlutWalk, no space for participation and to unequivocally denounce rape and sexual assault as we have experienced it.  We are perplexed by the use of the term “slut” and by any implication that this word, much like the word “Ho” or the “N” word should be re-appropriated. The way in which we are perceived and what happens to us before, during and after sexual assault crosses the boundaries of our mode of dress.  Much of this is tied to our particular history.  In the United States, where slavery constructed Black female sexualities, Jim Crow kidnappings, rape and lynchings, gender misrepresentations, and more recently, where the Black female immigrant struggle combine, “slut” has different associations for Black women.  We do not recognize ourselves nor do we see our lived experiences reflected within SlutWalk and especially not in its brand and its label.

Here are the responses from the Slutwalk organizers: first here and then this longer letter.

There have been other responses as well that I think are worth listening to, and then there's this debacle, fiasco, something that makes me want to hit my head against the wall. Read that as well.  

So. Anyway. Movements and things being shaken up and I have no idea.I think, above all, we need to remember to listen to one another, really listen, because that's what solidarity is, at least in part. And really? If I, as a white, straight, educated, really rather privileged woman, want to make some sort of a difference, I think a lot of that will come through keeping my mouth shut and supporting others.

That's all.

forgive me if i laugh

Poetry Tuesday: Sonia Sanchez, most known for her affiliation with the Black Arts movement in the 60s and 70s.

The Philadelphia Weekly did a Q&A with her last year.

Ballad 

                     (after the spanish)

forgive me if i laugh 
you are so sure of love 
you are so young 
and i too old to learn of love.

the rain exploding 
in the air is love 
the grass excreting her 
green wax is love 
and stones remembering 
past steps is love, 
but you. you are too young 
for love 
and i too old.

once. what does it matter 
when or who, i knew 
of love. 
i fixed my body 
under his and went 
to sleep in love 
all trace of me 
was wiped away

forgive me if i smile 
young heiress of a naked dream 
you are so young 
and i too old to learn of love.

 ----------------------------------------

This is from my old neighborhood in Camden, where people
 have taken to painting poetry on abandoned houses. 
  

I feel the wind a-blowing, slowly changing time

A "stuff I've been reading" post:

So Steve Jobs died. I grew up on Macs--my mom is a graphic designer--so I suppose my experience with computers would be very different if he hadn't been around.

Also, Fred Shuttlesworth died. He was a civil rights leader and one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, along with Martin Luther King and David Abernathy.

A look at "traditional femininity" and the ways in which it equates women with children.

Two views on the Occupy Wall Street protests:

The Occupy Movement as a Re-Development Program (a Catholic view)

Colonialism and the Occupy Movement (from Racialicious)

From the slacktivist, a call for jubilee.

And because The Wailin' Jennys are awesome and have a new album out:

let's get Metaphysical

I'm a day late on Poetry Tuesday. Mea culpa. Have a Donne classic:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

and he takes and he takes and he takes

It's the fourth anniversary of my friend Ben's death. He died in a drowning accident in 2007. He would have been 27 this year.

Ben was bright and brilliant and full of life, and there's not much else I can say besides I miss him. 

Here's Sufjan Stevens' "Casimir Pulaski Day." Ben introduced me to Sufjan, and it's a fitting song.

Here were the words of the Blind Poet

This one I picked up from Poets.org, because I didn't have a poem in mind for today.  You could play "name that poem" with the references in here...I put some at the bottom.

An Octave Above Thunder

Carol Muske-Dukes

  ... reverberation

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

He who was living is now dead

We who were living are now dying

With a little patience.

--T. S. Eliot,

"What the Thunder Said"

1

She began as we huddled, six of us,

in the cellar, raising her voice above

those towering syllables...

Never mind she cried when storm candles

flickered, glass shattered upstairs.

Reciting as if on horseback,

                   she whipped the meter,

trampling rhyme, reining in the reins

of the air with her left hand as she

stood, the washing machine behind her

              stunned on its haunches, not spinning.

She spun the lines around each other,

her gaze fixed. I knew she'd silenced

a cacophony of distractions in her head,

              to summon what she owned, rote-bright:

                             Of man's first disobedience,

                                        and the fruit...

                              of the flower in a crannied wall

                              and one clear call...

for the child who'd risen before school assemblies:

eerie Dakota rumble that rolled yet never brought

rain breaking over the podium. Her voice rose,

                        an octave above thunder:

When I consider how my light is spent--

I thought of her light, poured willy-nilly.

in this dark world and wide: half-blind, blind,

a widening distraction Getting and spending

 we lay waste our powers...Different poem, a trick!

Her eyes singled me out as the wind slowed.

Then, reflective, I'd rather be / a Pagan

 suckled in a creed outworn / than a dullard

                         with nothing by heart.

It was midsummer, Minnesota. In the sky,

the Blind Poet blew sideways, his cape spilling

rain. They also serve! she sang, hailing

                                  closure

as I stopped hearing her. I did not want to

stand and wait. I loathed nothing so much

as the forbearance now in her voice,

              insisting that Beauty was at hand,

but not credible. I considered

how we twisted into ourselves to live.

When the storm stopped, I sat still,

                             listening.

Here were the words of the Blind Poet--

crumpled like wash for the line, to be

dried, pressed flat. Upstairs, someone called

                   my name. What sense would it ever

make to them, the unread world, the getters and spenders,

if they could not hear what I heard,

              not feel what I felt

              nothing ruined poetry, a voice revived it,

                                              extremity.

References:

"Of man's first disobedience" --Milton, Paradise Lost

"of the flower in a crannied wall" -- Tennyson, "Flower in a crannied wall"

"One clear call" -- Tennyson, "Crossing the Bar"

"When I consider how my light is spent" 

 "in this dark world and wide" 

                       --Milton, Sonnet 19, "On His Blindness"

"Getting and spending/we lay waste our powers" 

"I'd rather be / a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn

             -- Wordsworth, "The World is Too Much with Us"

"They also serve"

"stand and wait"

                 --Milton, Sonnet 19, "On His Blindness" 

"The Blind Poet" could be an allusion to Homer or to Milton (at the end of his life), but perhaps also to Tiresias, the blind prophet and a voice in The Waste Land. And the number of allusions here make it seem like she is paying homage to Eliot.

hold on to that... something

If yesterday made me sad, today had to go up somehow. So, things that made me happy today:



I've only seen about a half a season of Glee, and that was because one of my housemates liked to watch it. But Sesame Street! And Journey! And...oh, it makes me wish I were a kid.

And this, because it made me laugh and smile and stuff:

That's all. It's raining here in Philly, and fall has arrived.

(not) beyond reasonable doubt

I am anti-death penalty in general, for a variety of reasons. The Troy Davis case in particular makes me sick to my stomach, especially because I know that there are more Troy Davises out there.

Here's what I've been reading:

From The Guardian: Troy Davis execution goes ahead despite serious doubts about his guilt

From The Nation: The Killing of Troy Davis

Also from The Nation, a look at the drugs used in lethal injection and their rather sketchy origins: The Executioner's Dilemma

From Racialicious: RIP Troy Davis

A view from the other side of the ocean: The Custody Sergeant

The death penalty is final. Even after 21yrs in prison there is still considerable doubt about the Troy Davis case. If we can't get to the truth in 21 years then it gives us a great example that ultimately, no matter how sure we are, we can still be very, very wrong.

A more meta look at racial bias and the death penalty from the Equal Justice Institute:

Each year in Alabama, nearly 65% of all murders involve black victims, yet 80% of the people currently awaiting execution in Alabama were convicted of crimes in which the victims were white. Only 6% of all murders in Alabama involve black defendants and white victims, but over 60% of black death row prisoners have been sentenced for killing someone white. (emphasis mine)

I think, also, what this highlights is the fact that Troy Davis is a symptom of a host of larger issues--though I am loath to say that, because we're talking about a man's life right here. But there are more meta-issues here: whether the death penalty is actually real justice; the very real reality that race makes a difference in sentencing; the also real reality of police coercion. And the list goes on.

There was a spontaneous protest in Philly last night. The coverage from the Philly Inquirer includes a quote from an acquaintance of mine:

In front of City Hall, protesters complained that police were aggressive toward the crowd.
"They were unnecessarily rough, but I stood my ground," said Cambria Hooven, a social worker. "I'm an advocate for my kids - that's why I'm here. Any one of them could be Troy Davis."

 I feel the need to re-re-re-re-quote (heh) Seamus Heaney, because it's at moments like these that I feel the world is beyond redemption:

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

Or perhaps, just this: miserere nobis.

this is your fate: to live

I promise that in the next week, I will post something other than poetry. But because it's Tuesday, and because this is lovely, have an untitled poem by Pedro Salinas.

Wake up. Day calls you
to your life: your duty.
And to live, nothing else.
Root it out of the glum
night and the shadow
that covered your body
for which light waits
on tiptoe in the dawn.
Stand up, affirm the straight
simple will to be
a pure vertical virgin.
Test your body's metal.
Cold, heat? Your blood
will say it against the snow,
behind the window.
The color
in your cheeks will say it.
And look at the world. Rest
doing no more than adding
your perfection to another day.
Your task
is to carry your life high,
play with it, hurl it
like a voice to the clouds
so that it may retrieve the lights
already gone from us.
This is your fate: to live.
Do nothing.
Your work is you, nothing else.

(translated by Willis Barnstone)

All things counter, original, spare, strange

Tuesday already? What?

Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of my go-to poets, partially because of his use of "sprung rhythm" and his general playfulness with words. Partially it's also because I went to his church, St. Aloysius, when I studied at Oxford for a semester.

Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things--
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
       For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough;
       And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                     Praise Him.

And just because it's fun to hear it aloud:

all shall be well

This is what I wrote last year about September 11, and I don't have much of a desire to repeat myself. In lieu of anything profound, I'm going to post these things that I've found:

And then this:



(...because who doesn't like children's choirs?)

Or if your tastes run more to the professional side...

this badland beyond my ken

Stuff I've been reading:

From Truth-Out: Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult

From the Chronicle of Higher Ed: Let's Get Serious About Cultivating Creativity

From the Washington Post:  PAPA Festival highlights Christianity, anarchism and community spirit

From the blog Red-Letter Christians: Moving on the Block: What White People Can Do About Racism

Also:

Perdido Street Station, China Miéville: It's...fantastical. Weird. Bizarre. I read a review that says that one reads this book for the prose more than the plot. The prose is certainly kind of wonderful and voluptuous and a bit overwhelming--as is the world that Miéville builds. For example:

New Crobuzon was a city unconvinced by gravity....The city thrust upwards massively, as if inspired by those vast mountains to the west. Blistering square slabs of habitation ten, twenty, thirty storeys high punctuated the skyline. They burst into the air like fat fingers, like fists, like the stumps of limbs waving frantically above the swells of the lower houses (55).

Miéville weaves his story into this world, giving us flawed, sometimes despicable, characters. The main thrust of the plot is this: Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin is a scientist who's something of a rogue. He is visited by a (half-bird, half-human) garuda, who has had his wings cut off as punishment for a crime. The garuda, Yagharek, enlists Isaac in his search to fly again, and in researching flight, Isaac accidentally unleashes a monster into the city. There's one main twist at the end that was surprising enough that I had to re-read it. Perdido Street Station is not a happy book. I wouldn't suggest it if you want something uplifting. But it's sure as hell worth reading.

Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler: Butler sets this story in a dystopian United States, in which the government has fallen apart and people live in walled communities that protect them from the outside. The protagonist, Lauren Olamina, suffers from a condition called hyperempathy, in which she feels others' pain. She's been raised Baptist--her father is a pastor of sorts--but she develops her own religion called Earthseed, in which the principle tenet is "God is Change." When her community is destroyed, she leaves and starts a journey north, picking up people as she goes and trying to convert them to Earthseed. 

Dystopian fiction's gotten bigger these days--we can see that in books like The Hunger Games and The Road. Parable of the Sower was written a bit earlier (1993). There's a second book, Parable of the Talents, and Butler had been planning a third book, but she died before she could write it (which is a shame). Butler was a pioneer of science fiction, especially as she was one of the few African-American women writing in the field.

I just started Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl. It's a bit of a departure from what I've been reading.

Anyway, bits and pieces, hints and guesses, all that. I am happy for the sunshine after a week of rain.

"sorrow chain'd my tongue"

The first official Poetry Tuesday!

This is Ann Eliza Bleecker's "Written in the Retreat from Burgoyne." I chose this one because 1) I often focus on 20th-century poets and I wanted something different and 2) in grad school, I wrote my last paper for my Futures of American Poetry class on Bleecker (specifically on this poem), looking at the ways her poetry and life intersect with modern trauma theory.

Bleecker was a colonial poet. She lived from 1752 to 1783, and she experienced quite a lot of grief in her short life. She lost many family members, including her daughter Abella, her mother, and her sister, as they were driven from their home during the American Revolution.

Her daughter Margaretta also became a poet.

So, without further ado:

Written in the retreat from Burgoyne

Was it for this, with thee a pleasing load,
I sadly wander'd thro' the hostile wood;
When I thought fortune's spite could do no more,
To see thee perish on a foreign shore?

Oh my lov'd babe! my treasure's left behind,
Ne'er sunk a cloud of grief upon my mind;
Rich in my children---on my arms I bore
My living treasures from the scalper's pow'r:
When I sat down to rest beneath some shade,
On the soft grass how innocent she play'd,
While her sweet sister, from the fragrant wild,
Collects the flow'rs to please my precious child;
Unconscious of her danger, laughing roves,
Nor dreads the painted savage in the groves.

Soon as the spires of Albany appear'd,
With fallacies my rising grief I cheer'd;
'Resign'd I bear,' said I, 'heaven's just reproof,
'Content to dwell beneath a stranger's roof;
'Content my babes should eat dependent bread,
'Or by the labour of my hands be fed:
'What tho' my houses, lands, and goods are gone,
'My babes remain---these I can call my own.'
But soon my lov'd Abella hung her head,
From her soft cheek the bright carnation fled;
Her smooth transparent skin too plainly shew'd
How fierce thro' every vein the fever glow'd.
---In bitter anguish o'er her limbs I hung,
I wept and sigh'd, but sorrow chain'd my tongue;
At length her languid eyes clos'd from the day,
The idol of my soul was torn away;
Her spirit fled and left me ghastly clay!

Then---then my soul rejected all relief,
Comfort I wish'd not for, I lov'd my grief:
'Hear, my Abella!' cried I, 'hear me mourn,
'For one short moment, oh! my child return;
'Let my complaint detain thee from the skies,
'Though troops of angels urge thee on to rise.'

All night I mourn'd---and when the rising day
Gilt her sad chest with his benignest ray,
My friends press round me with officious care,
Bid me suppress my sighs, nor drop a tear;
Of resignation talk'd---passions subdu'd,
Of souls serene and christian fortitude;
Bade me be calm, nor murmur at my loss,
But unrepining bear each heavy cross.

'Go!' cried I raging, 'stoick bosoms go!
'Whose hearts vibrate not to the sound of woe;
'Go from the sweet society of men,
'Seek some unfeeling tyger's savage den,
'There calm---alone---of resignation preach,
'My Christ's examples better precepts teach.'
Where the cold limbs of gentle Laz'rus lay
I find him weeping o'er the humid clay;
His spirit groan'd, while the beholders said
(With gushing eyes) 'see how he lov'd the dead!'
And when his thoughts on great Jerus'lem turn'd,
Oh! how pathetic o'er her fall he mourn'd!
And sad Gethsemene's nocturnal shade
The anguish of my weeping Lord survey'd:
Yes, 'tis my boast to harbour in my breast
The sensibilities by God exprest;
Nor shall the mollifying hand of time,
Which wipes off common sorrows, cancel mine.

pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.

A poem about baseball, by Marianne Moore.

I feel like I should start doing something like "Poetry Tuesdays" (or Wednesdays, or Thursdays, or whatever). Any input?


Baseball and Writing

(Suggested by post-game broadcasts)

Fanaticism?  No.  Writing is exciting
and baseball is like writing.
   You can never tell with either
      how it will go
      or what you will do;
   generating excitement--
   a fever in the victim--
   pitcher, catcher, fielder, batter.
	Victim in what category?
Owlman watching from the press box?
	To whom does it apply?
	Who is excited?  Might it be I?

It's a pitcher's battle all the way--a duel--
a catcher's, as, with cruel
   puma paw, Elston Howard lumbers lightly
      back to plate.  (His spring 
      de-winged a bat swing.)
   They have that killer instinct;
   yet Elston--whose catching
   arm has hurt them all with the bat--
	when questioned, says, unenviously,
   "I'm very satisfied.  We won."
	Shorn of the batting crown, says, "We";
	robbed by a technicality.

When three players on a side play three positions
and modify conditions,
   the massive run need not be everything.
      "Going, going . . . "  Is
      it?  Roger Maris
   has it, running fast.  You will
   never see a finer catch.  Well . . .
   "Mickey, leaping like the devil"--why
	gild it, although deer sounds better--
snares what was speeding towards its treetop nest,
	one-handing the souvenir-to-be
	meant to be caught by you or me.

Assign Yogi Berra to Cape Canaveral;
he could handle any missile.
   He is no feather.  "Strike! . . . Strike two!"
      Fouled back.  A blur.
      It's gone.  You would infer
   that the bat had eyes.
   He put the wood to that one.
Praised, Skowron says, "Thanks, Mel.
   I think I helped a little bit."
	All business, each, and modesty.
        Blanchard, Richardson, Kubek, Boyer.
	In that galaxy of nine, say which
	won the pennant?  Each.  It was he.

Those two magnificent saves from the knee-throws
by Boyer, finesses in twos--
   like Whitey's three kinds of pitch and pre-
      diagnosis
      with pick-off psychosis.
   Pitching is a large subject.
   Your arm, too true at first, can learn to
   catch your corners--even trouble
	Mickey Mantle.  ("Grazed a Yankee!
My baby pitcher, Montejo!"
	With some pedagogy,
	you'll be tough, premature prodigy.)

They crowd him and curve him and aim for the knees.  Trying
indeed!  The secret implying:
   "I can stand here, bat held steady."
      One may suit him;
       none has hit him.
   Imponderables smite him.
   Muscle kinks, infections, spike wounds
   require food, rest, respite from ruffians.  (Drat it!
	Celebrity costs privacy!)
Cow's milk, "tiger's milk," soy milk, carrot juice,
	brewer's yeast (high-potency--
	concentrates presage victory

sped by Luis Arroyo, Hector Lopez--
deadly in a pinch.  And "Yes,
   it's work; I want you to bear down,
      but enjoy it
      while you're doing it."
   Mr. Houk and Mr. Sain,
   if you have a rummage sale,
   don't sell Roland Sheldon or Tom Tresh.
	Studded with stars in belt and crown,
the Stadium is an adastrium.
	O flashing Orion,
	your stars are muscled like the lion. 

bringing heaven to earth; or, reflections on ordinariness

A few years ago, I got about 3 minutes of fame in a documentary called The Ordinary Radicals. 
 First off, here's the trailer so you can get an idea:




Side note: It was weird, let me tell you, to see myself on the big screen (I hid my face and covered my ears when I came on). But that's not the point here.

I know a lot of the people in the film--some are friends; some I lived with; some are just acquaintances--and I know the filmmaker, Jamie Moffett. A lot of them are really the best people I know. And they live in, well, radical ways: in communities, or off the grid, or as nomads.

When I was filmed, I was living in a community house in Camden, NJ. Camden is one of the US's poorest, most dangerous cities. I write about Camden a lot because the year I lived there gave me invaluable experiences and some insight into race, poverty, and injustice. I worked as a grant writer for a small non-profit, as a teacher's aide for second graders, and as an academic aide/Americorps summer service member at a great organization called The Work Group.

I don't know how radical it was. Or rather, how radical I was. Most days I felt pretty ordinary (wake up to the cat licking your face, go to work, come home and cook dinner, hang out with your housemates). Some days were harder than others. But it was worth it, I think--and I probably would have stayed if I hadn't had the urge to go to grad school.

So why am I thinking about this now, three years later? Partially it has to do with PAPA Fest: it's a place for those sorts of radicals, people who don't really make a big fuss about how they live--they just do it. They live their lives mostly quietly, on the fringe, whether it's in rural Kentucky or urban Philadelphia. So PAPA Fest made me think about my life.

These days, I have a 9-5 job at a college, where I tutor in writing and provide academic support to struggling students. In the fall, my job will change slightly--I'll be helping to direct our writing center and training new peer tutors. On one hand, it's sort of a dream job. I get to help students learn to write. I don't grade. I'm, for the most part, on my own, since my supervisor gives me a ton of leeway to try different things.

On another hand (we have more than two hands here), students who go to art school are in some way--economically, educationally--privileged. To study art--to study the humanities in general, I think--is a privilege. That's not a bad thing; I certainly don't want to disrespect my students, or myself, since my background is in literature. But here's me, after years of hanging out with homeless folks, working in shelters, living in places like Camden, and now I'm working at a college?

And yet, on another hand, a lot of my students come from the Philly school district. And the Philadelphia school district is...let's just say it's not doing too well. And the students who come from the Philly schools tend to be the weakest. We catch the Philly school district's aftermath, students who come from, perhaps, the top of their classes in their schools and then can't make it in college. It's depressing.

When I was in college, I struggled to juggle my two sides: my very academic side that just wanted to read and write and the caring-about-social-justice side that made me want to do things. I don't know which one to pick, I remember saying to one of my professors, and, wise woman that she is, she looked back at me and said, Do you have to pick?

I am still struggling to answer that question. What's my life like now? I have that 9 to 5 job. I live in West Philly. My housemates and I are white girls in a mostly African-American neighborhood. I don't own a car (though my housemates do), and I take public transportation (mainly because I'm kind of afraid of biking in the city). We have a little garden, and we compost. We eat on our front porch when it's nice. When there are block parties and we're around, we do some grilling. I go to Mass with one of my neighbors, who's in her 70s or 80s and has been going to this particular church since the 1950s. I volunteer twice a month at one of Project HOME's "safe havens" for chronically homeless men with mental illnesses.

My life is not very radical. On a daily basis, it's downright ordinary. And I worry sometimes about that ordinariness, like I've perhaps given up on my values or my ideals.

But. But. I want to say this, that the basis of my faith--the basis of my life--is "love one another." Love your neighbor and your enemy. Love the person who blasts music at one in the morning. Love your students who show up at your door when their papers are due in two hours. Love your family when they drive you crazy and your roommates even when you want to hole up and not talk to anyone. But then--how do you love the drug dealers down the street? Or the cops who are prone to violence? Or the men who cat-call you when you're walking to the trolley?

 I don't really have the answers to those questions (hell, when do I ever have answers?). I think, sometimes, that most of my life is kind of fumbling around in the dark or trying to figure out where I fit in. Because I'm not a nomad or a farmer--if I tried to fit myself into one of those lives, it would be liking sticking a square peg in a round hole. And I'm trying to make myself okay with that.

orphans, vagabonds, angels who lost their halos

So I finally bought a new camera cord. I promised pictures from PAPA Fest, so here they are:


Our stage, built from recycled wood:

Drumming during the first night:

Compost buckets, because we try to be as easy on the earth as we can:

One of our workshop leaders was from the New Sanctuary Movement, an immigrants rights coalition in Philly. She put us in touch with an indigenous Mexican group that does Aztec dance, and we invited them. Here they are:

Our "little village" from the top of the hill:

Me, doing my thing in the Volunteer and Info tent.

I really wanted to post my own video of the Psalters, but for some reason it won't upload. But here's a video from the same night, complete with fire-breathers:

Oklahoma, O-K

In honor of the fact that I was in OK last week, here's a video:



It's a testament, I think, to the lasting-ness of "Sesame Street" that when I told my mom that I was going to Oklahoma, her immediate reaction was "Ayyyyy-klahoma."

One thing I did not know about Oklahoma: the whole state is split up into Native American reservations. We were on the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache reservation, which you can see here:

(I got this picture from the Pawnee tribe website--http://pawneetribe.blogspot.com/--so the arrow points to the Pawnee territory.)

Of course, that makes me think of the US's bloody, bloody history, and while I don't have the time or the energy at the moment to ruminate (I kinda love that word) on it at the moment, I'll leave you with this:



Okay, probably not so historically accurate, but hell. We were the original illegal immigrants.

well, no one ever said I didn't have eclectic tastes.

I had a B&N gift card left over, probably from my birthday, which was in November (thanks, Mom and Dad!). So here's what I bought:

Home, Marilynne Robinson: I enjoyed Gilead, so I figured this one was worth a shot, too.

The Pre-Occupation of Postcolonial Studies, edited by Fawzia Afzal-Khan and Kalpana Rahita Seshadri: No, I'm not in grad school anymore; yes, I'm still a nerd.

Perdido Street Station, China Mieville: recommended by a friend whose literary judgment I trust.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide...., Ntozake Shange: have been meaning to get to this one for a while and haven't.

Conversations with Isaiah Berlin, Ramin Jahanbegloo: uh. Looked interesting. And I haven't read Berlin since freshman year of college.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl: Also looked interesting, in a completely different way from Conversations.

Parable of The Sower, Octavia Butler: If it's half as good as Kindred, it'll be plenty good.

And...stuff I've read recently:

Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde

Losing Battles, Eudora Welty

Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie

 Also, I'm going to see Harry Potter tomorrow, and that makes me happy. I should really re-read #7, or at least the last 1/3.

we read to find ourselves; or, a bit of grumbling for the day

I believe in stories. I believe in the power of stories to help us understand and to explain humanity to ourselves. And I get really, really snippy when people take stories and try to make them nothing more than moral lessons. This is an old issue, I know.

This past weekend, I was down at the A-Space trying a banana whip (holy crap, so good!) for the first time, and there was a box of free stuff that someone had dumped. And in this box was this book:

Anyone remember the Great Illustrated Classics? These are sort of like them, with a twist: they're part of a series called "Classic Stories and Essential Values," put out by...Chick-Fil-A.

Some of them are obvious: Pinocchio is, of course, about honesty. And Pollyanna is about hope. But then there's Gulliver's Travels, which, according to this series, is about peace. I...what? Also, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is about the value of orderliness.

We could certainly teach kids about honesty from Pinocchio, hope from Pollyanna, initiative from The Swiss Family Robinson, and fairness from The Prince and the Pauper. In fact, these may be main themes in some of these stories. But to bowdlerize these stories, simplify the language, and boil them down so we can say "here's a story about kindness!" sort of...defeats the purpose.

Stories are about discovery, in many cases. We unravel them slowly, through character and plot and language. When a kid reads Pinocchio in full, he or she will probably see that Pinocchio's troubles come from his lies (the real story, from what I recall, is a lot more disturbing than the Disney film). We don't need to label the book as "a boy learns about honesty" or whatever--it's going to come through. 

I'm not sure what my point is here. I don't think we need to turn every story into a teachable moment, or at least we don't have to say, here, kid, let's read a story and talk about honesty or kindness or what-have-you. And, yes, I realize that at different points in history, stories were used for moral instruction and that writers wrote for that purpose. But I think stories can stand alone, that they teach us as they are without someone wielding the anvil and telling us "hey, this is what this story's about."  Stories, good stories, don't just operate on one level, right? They allow us to unfold them and look at them from all angles. And sometimes they make us say, hey, I never thought about it that way, and sometimes they make us say, hey, this thing is unjust and I just had my eyes open. And, well, that's good.

When my dad read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe to me when I was a kid, I didn't see the themes of redemption and resurrection; that didn't come until later (and, yeah, I know there are problematic things about Narnia, but they remain some of my favorites). Instead, I wanted to be Lucy, going into a closet and finding a hidden world. I wanted to be Peter the High King, or Jill, who works through her fear, or Puddleglum, who has one of the best moments of the series in The Silver Chair. (My favorite character is Edmund, who gets forgiveness despite everything). Reading those stories made me want more stories. They made me, eventually, want to write stories. And if that's not a good in and of itself, I don't know what is.

ETA: Also, Sherman Alexie on YA books. Awesome.