I'm a very old man, both in years and regrets, therefore when American society began its final decent on November 8th in 2016, I had few defenses against despair and depression during the next four years.
Friday, April 9, 2021
OK, Civilization is still here. Sorta
Thanks, Joe,
By the end of the day on January 6th, I had pretty much given up hope.
Most days now, I'm just plain proud of Joe Biden and the majority of my fellow countrymen who support a future.
Compassion. Competence. Community. Commitment to the Future.
Monday, October 8, 2018
Sorrow in the pumpkin patch
The date is October 8, 2018.
I live in Kentucky, if you don't know who my senators are look it up. If you don't know who the President was on this date, well you must be from the future and that would be great because sitting here on a hot October night in almost record breaking heat predicting that there will be a future is very optimistic.
A lot of grandparents end up at fruit stands with pumpkin patches on Sunday afternoons in October. Henry David Thoreau held melon parties for the citizens of Concord in late summer. He played his flute and people danced. There were probably grandparents and grandchildren in attendance. He enjoyed those gatherings even though his country was troubled and entering a dangerous and deadly period of its history.
His family were abolitionists. They often harbored escaped slaves. Thoreau "conducted" a number of them to the train to Canada himself. Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and John Brown stayed at his house in Concord. Thoreau thought pretty deeply about freedom, democracy, and community. His definition of community included the natural world -- the whole of living things and the people and trees and frogs that lived out their lives in Concord Massachusetts.
Sunday afternoon, October 7th I was standing in a pumpkin patch by the Ohio river in Kentucky with my family - granddaughter, nephew, grandnephew, all the young ones, when the band played an old protest song that spoke for the poor and condemned the lies of the rich. All the sorrow of the last two years filled my heart and wet my eyes.
Around here there's a lot of talk of limited government that sounds to me like limited Compassion and limited Community. Quite of few people I've met here definitely believe in Unlimited Racism as the best reason for limited government.
I live in Kentucky, if you don't know who my senators are look it up. If you don't know who the President was on this date, well you must be from the future and that would be great because sitting here on a hot October night in almost record breaking heat predicting that there will be a future is very optimistic.
A lot of grandparents end up at fruit stands with pumpkin patches on Sunday afternoons in October. Henry David Thoreau held melon parties for the citizens of Concord in late summer. He played his flute and people danced. There were probably grandparents and grandchildren in attendance. He enjoyed those gatherings even though his country was troubled and entering a dangerous and deadly period of its history.
His family were abolitionists. They often harbored escaped slaves. Thoreau "conducted" a number of them to the train to Canada himself. Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and John Brown stayed at his house in Concord. Thoreau thought pretty deeply about freedom, democracy, and community. His definition of community included the natural world -- the whole of living things and the people and trees and frogs that lived out their lives in Concord Massachusetts.
Sunday afternoon, October 7th I was standing in a pumpkin patch by the Ohio river in Kentucky with my family - granddaughter, nephew, grandnephew, all the young ones, when the band played an old protest song that spoke for the poor and condemned the lies of the rich. All the sorrow of the last two years filled my heart and wet my eyes.
Around here there's a lot of talk of limited government that sounds to me like limited Compassion and limited Community. Quite of few people I've met here definitely believe in Unlimited Racism as the best reason for limited government.
Friday, September 9, 2016
Darkest Heart
These days I often find myself profoundly stressed by an American real estate developer. I live in Ohio, a state that is likely to vote for he-who-must-not-be-elected. Hope, peace, and calm fade when what cannot be is about to be.
In that state, I walked outside to feed my pond fish. They’re very old fish but they respond to the sight of me hold the coffee can in which I keep their food. Bodies moving in water have a grace and elegance earthbound creatures cannot achieve. Is he-who-must-not-be-elected proof that we made a mistake when we crawled up onto the land those millions years ago?
And then I turned around and clumsily brushed my face into my Japanese maple tree. Each leaf suspended four or five perfect globes of water, alight and transparent. I could not find in them any hint of politics or monsters and calmed enough to start my day.
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Dark Heart
It’s been two and a half years since I retired from forty-three years of public education.I kept myself busy during the first two years. Unfortunately, I’ve been ill a lot this winter. Idleness and discomfort lead to dark thoughts. Many years of my half-century of teaching may have been productive, but those aren’t the times that come back to haunt. Success is rarely the subject of a nightmare.
Today marks the Challenger launch. Thirty years ago, we had daily updates broadcast throughout the school in the weeks leading up to the event. This launch was of special interest because a teacher was riding along with the astronauts. That morning all eight hundred of our students watched the disaster in realtime. This wasn’t a news story, it was something that they witnessed. The impact was like witnessing a car accident.At class change, a twelve year old student — an exceptionally bright, creative young lady — came skipping down the hall singing, “A teacher died, a teacher died,about time.”This bizarre reaction has haunted me for years. Had our teachers tormented this child?
That day marked an awakening for me, as time passed I began to realize how little we know of our children’s hearts. How we were stumbling in our own darkness.
Today marks the Challenger launch. Thirty years ago, we had daily updates broadcast throughout the school in the weeks leading up to the event. This launch was of special interest because a teacher was riding along with the astronauts. That morning all eight hundred of our students watched the disaster in realtime. This wasn’t a news story, it was something that they witnessed. The impact was like witnessing a car accident.At class change, a twelve year old student — an exceptionally bright, creative young lady — came skipping down the hall singing, “A teacher died, a teacher died,about time.”This bizarre reaction has haunted me for years. Had our teachers tormented this child?
That day marked an awakening for me, as time passed I began to realize how little we know of our children’s hearts. How we were stumbling in our own darkness.
Friday, October 2, 2015
At first listening both Wordsworth and Whitman offend my ears.
At first listening both Wordsworth and Whitman offend my ears. They sing a strange music — unnatural rhythms, twisted syntax that has to be reread to be unraveled.
I have come to a peace with Whitman. His passionate wild flow of images invites surrender - OK, Walt, I’ll open my eyes a little wilder and see more of the world. And Whitman never despairs. I go to him when I’m ready to give up and then I don’t.
I’ve resisted Wordsworth for fifty years. Those stupid sunny daffodils, and the aimless wondering lonely as a cloud, Dear William, you have over-personified yourself out of millions of readers, especially me! Nature personified turns the universe into my crazy aunt, who by the way is one extremely unpleasant woman.
Thank God, you stole that boat, and also that you dropped (“led by her” referring to Nature) from at least the version presented in this course. This Boat Stealing Episode has some real meat to it. Childhood has its pleasant moments. Rowing a boat into the night sounds fun, until the boogieman mountain shows up and haunts your dreams.
I judge a poem by what I’m left with when the poem goes away. I have to admit, I’m left with a lot here. Wonderful images, the strength of the oar’s stroke, the glide through the water, the “troubled pleasures” of the night. I feel the painted scene as an image. It’s wonderful and complete and then the terrible nameless fear appears and for once Wordsworth doesn’t personify:
“… huge and mighty Forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.”
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams.”
The darkness of our nature remains just that.
Well, done. I may come to peace with William yet.
Wordsworth
Poetry, Marianne Moore said, creates “…imaginary gardens with real toads in them…”
I’m a retired American teacher who spent my summer leisures nourishing a backyard garden sheltered behind a six foot fence. I’m sitting there now in the middle of a fall afternoon, no lessons to write, no papers to grade. My garden is a dense leafy place with sunny spots for clusters of day-lilies and roses, and shades for ferns and hostas. The fence keeps out my neighbors and their dogs but not their cats. Two bird feeders invite in a thousand birds and their song. Chipmunks, rabbits, and squirrels are also welcome. Raccoons are definitely not.
This account of my garden is very like Wordsworth’s letter - an account of the landscape and a measure of his place in Nature from the shelter of his house. The letter is as frank and commonplace as any passage from Thoreau’s writings. Thoreau pitied the man who lived in the world and had no time to pay attention to a wildflower. He found an economy and harmony in nature, two qualities reflected in both his prose and poetry. Wordsworth’s prose is proof that he knew to look out the window and frequently walk out the door.
Once he was out the door and in a poetical mood, however, things could get really weird. Icy brooks and naked trees started asking questions like “Whence come ye? To what end?” I’m more than just put off by the devise of using personification to describe the natural world. I become concerned that the writer is somehow completely out of touch with the reality of the planet, lost in his imagination, trapped in his words, unable to see the world and perhaps not to be trusted with preserving it. Wordsworth’s Nature poetry seems to be all about how Nature makes William feel and not at all about the natural world.
I’m new to studying Wordsworth, and I fear I have a long way to go toward understanding his importance. I’ve been put off by “a host of golden daffodils” and such nonsense for sixty years. Thoreau inspired my garden - a quiet place to just be in nature and partner with it. Wordsworth’s imaginary “Nature” is for me, just that - imaginary. Frankly, I wouldn’t fancy a walk with someone who hears the trees asking him questions. The tall cottonwood tree in my garden holds private conversations with the wind. They don’t need to talk to me; I’m happy just to listen in.
I’m a retired American teacher who spent my summer leisures nourishing a backyard garden sheltered behind a six foot fence. I’m sitting there now in the middle of a fall afternoon, no lessons to write, no papers to grade. My garden is a dense leafy place with sunny spots for clusters of day-lilies and roses, and shades for ferns and hostas. The fence keeps out my neighbors and their dogs but not their cats. Two bird feeders invite in a thousand birds and their song. Chipmunks, rabbits, and squirrels are also welcome. Raccoons are definitely not.
This account of my garden is very like Wordsworth’s letter - an account of the landscape and a measure of his place in Nature from the shelter of his house. The letter is as frank and commonplace as any passage from Thoreau’s writings. Thoreau pitied the man who lived in the world and had no time to pay attention to a wildflower. He found an economy and harmony in nature, two qualities reflected in both his prose and poetry. Wordsworth’s prose is proof that he knew to look out the window and frequently walk out the door.
Once he was out the door and in a poetical mood, however, things could get really weird. Icy brooks and naked trees started asking questions like “Whence come ye? To what end?” I’m more than just put off by the devise of using personification to describe the natural world. I become concerned that the writer is somehow completely out of touch with the reality of the planet, lost in his imagination, trapped in his words, unable to see the world and perhaps not to be trusted with preserving it. Wordsworth’s Nature poetry seems to be all about how Nature makes William feel and not at all about the natural world.
I’m new to studying Wordsworth, and I fear I have a long way to go toward understanding his importance. I’ve been put off by “a host of golden daffodils” and such nonsense for sixty years. Thoreau inspired my garden - a quiet place to just be in nature and partner with it. Wordsworth’s imaginary “Nature” is for me, just that - imaginary. Frankly, I wouldn’t fancy a walk with someone who hears the trees asking him questions. The tall cottonwood tree in my garden holds private conversations with the wind. They don’t need to talk to me; I’m happy just to listen in.
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