A Thunderstorm of Adjectives

A dark summer night, a curtain of heavy rain, thunder confuses the senses and then a bright flash of light from the window reveals the garden: branches are down, heavy chairs have blown into the rose bed, an electrical wire is sparking in the grass. 

The summer before the presidential primaries is usually pretty dull in the United States. Most years in both parties a few candidates, who have been expected to run for years anyway, finally announce that they do in fact want to become President of the country. This summer has been different. Donald Trump, an American billionaire, entered the race with a thunderstorm of predicate adjectives: I am smart, I am rich, successful, and powerful. I am strong.

Everyone else running for the office is stupid, incompetent, powerless, weak, and the worst. Trump avoids specific details and ideologies that require complex descriptions. He is a huge, classy, straight-shooter. His speeches consist of simple boasts stated simply, exactly in the manner and vocabulary of a ten-year-old bragging on the playground. 

We are a nation of immigrants, but there is a growing minority who are scared and want to close the doors for good. Trump’s followers like the sound of a bully who says he’s big and strong and he’ll beat up the foreigner who tries to get in our neighborhood. Pick up your baseball bats, guns, and lynching ropes. Elect Trump and America will beat the crap out of Mexico, China, and the so-called Islamic State.

Nearly a third of Republican voters say they will vote for Trump, thankfully that’s less than a sixth of all American voters. He will never be elected, but this summer’s thunderstorm of adjectives has produced lightening flashes that reveal a dangerous mess in our backyard. 

Little Rabbit Foo Foo

I began the week thinking about two versions of the children’s song “Little Rabbit Foo Foo” and ended up thinking about politics. 

 My granddaughter’s version:

Little Rabbit Foo Foo

Running through the forest

Scooping up the field mice

And bopping them on the head!

Unfortunately, bopping field mice is definitely not within the boundaries of the Good Fairy’s moral code and when Little Rabbit refuses to cease his “bopping” activities, she turns him into a Goon.

The version that my wife and I remember is rather different:

Little Rabbit Foo Foo

hopping through the forest

Scooping up the field mice

And bashing them on the head!

 George Lakoff is an American cognitive linguist who writes about  how language creates metaphorical moral frameworks that shape how we reason. Bopping is annoying. Bashing is murderous.  The difference in the two verbs is the wide chasm between two imagined worlds, two very different metaphors - in one there are annoying rabbits, in the other darker world there are murderous ones.  If I was a field mouse, I know which imagined world I would choose to live in: Could I have the one with the Bopping, please.

I’ve had the misfortune of listening to a lot of American politicians lately. One group seems to clearly live inside the metaphor: Government is Evil. Actually, in their metaphorical framework a lot of things are Evil. Evil is out there and it will bash you and so will Government, big or little, because Government is Evil.

The other group seems to occupy the metaphor: Government is Community. Within this framework Big Community and Little Community aren’t scary words. Even though there are a lot of boppers out there, if we work together we can solve a lot of problems.

 A couple of facts:

For millions of years, people have needed community to survive.  

Rabbits are herbivores; field mice aren’t on their diet. 

HAMATREYA

by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Bulkeley, Hunt, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint, Possessed the land which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, and wood. Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm, Saying, “’Tis mine, my children’s and my name’s. How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees! How graceful climb those shadows on my hill!
I fancy these pure waters and the flags Know me, as does my dog: we sympathize; And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.”
Where are these men? Asleep beneath their grounds: And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough. Earth laughs in flowers, to see her boastful boys Earth-proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs; Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet Clear of the grave.
They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,
And sighed for all that bounded their domain;
“This suits me for a pasture; that’s my park;
We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,
And misty lowland, where to go for peat.
The land is well,—lies fairly to the south.
’Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back, To find the sitfast acres where you left them.”
Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds Him to his land, a lump of mould the more. Hear what the Earth say:—
EARTH-SONG
“Mine and yours; Mine, not yours. Earth endures; Stars abide—

Shine down in the old sea; Old are the shores;
But where are old men?
I who have seen much, Such have I never seen.
“The lawyer’s deed
Ran sure,
In tail,
To them and to their heirs Who shall succeed, Without fail,
Forevermore.
“Here is the land,
Shaggy with wood,
With its old valley, Mound and flood.
But the heritors?—
Fled like the flood’s foam. The lawyer and the laws, And the kingdom,
Clean swept herefrom.
“They called me theirs,
Who so controlled me;
Yet every one
Wished to stay, and is gone, How am I theirs,
If they cannot hold me, But I hold them?”
When I heard the Earth-song
I was no longer brave;
My avarice cooled
Like lust in the chill of the grave. 

Emerson uses a combination of unrhymed iambic pentameter, short lines, and iambic heptameter. Whatever or which “devises” he uses to construct the poem, I think is unimportant. What is amazing in this poem is that we hear a voice that is such a contrast to the sermonizing, often conflated, convoluted, impossible to read tones of most of his essays. I was “forced” to read Nature a few days ago; handed this poem without an identified author, I would never have guessed Emerson! Never. 

This poem is a little miracle. Where did this poem come from? After a night of reading a Hindu text, did he wake up and this just pour out of him? Did a conversation with Henry David have some influence? Several years would pass before Whitman would send Emerson a copy of Leaves of Grass. Unlike the stilted vocabulary and circular sentences that seem to me to be the essence of Emerson, this poem has crystal clarity. I’m almost certain that Whitman and Sandburg read Hamatreya at some point in their careers. I can identify two dozen of their poems that are influence by both the form and the message.  I’ve always avoided Emerson when possible, never admired his prose. Thoreau, who I hold as the Greatest American Writer, overshadows him completely in breath and depth of thought.

Much Ado About Nothing

Seventeen years ago I was a middle school English teacher in what would now be called a high-poverty, high-risk-of-failure school district in Ohio. This was before American teachers had Curriculum Standards, and High Stakes Testing data to tell them that their students were being “Left Behind.” Somehow, without any testing data, I figured out that my fourteen-year-old students weren’t getting enough to eat, talked and wrote about a lot of crime and violence in their daily lives and needed an education of the highest quality to move on in life.

The school’s reading textbooks were expensive and lavashly colorful. They were also very large and very heavy, difficult to carry and filled with dull, boring stories that no one would ever choose to read, even if stranded on a desert island. They apparently were designed by a committee in Texas whose goal was to instill a deep hatred for literature and the English language in the young.

And so I locked the textbooks up in a cabinet and started teaching with the goal of reaching Shakespeare. I partnered with another English teacher, bought a lot of supplemental materials and books and spent late nights at the copying machine.

What do you need to know to really enjoy Shakespeare’s language? The answer is a a lot of stuff. We started with Ovid and Mythology. Then we moved on to the Romans and the Latin language. The kids loved the Cambridge Latin Course http://amzn.to/1z2WZAT. We did all of Unit One occasionally wearing togas. Latin built their confidence in being able to translate unfamiliar sentence structure. Next, we immersed the students in Medieval and Renaissance history and daily life. We cooked a Medieval Feast using recipes from The Medieval Baker’s Daughter by Madeleine Pelner Cosman http://amzn.to/1BkYKf4.

We started exploring Shakespeare with Baz Luhrmann’s film of Romeo and Juliet. The kids loved the violence, thought the ending was stupid, and maybe didn’t mind memorizing the Palmer’s Sonnet as much as they said they did.

And then I made a major mistake. I scheduled a field trip to the local Renaissance festival for our 120 students. An hour after we arrived I noticed that most of our girls were walking around with roses. Romeo and Juliet had inspired one of our shortest thirteen year old boys to steal $234 of flowers from the shop at the festival. As I was explaining to the flower stand owner that I hadn’t brought my checkbook, my partner teacher arrived with two of our girls and a fully costumed Shakespeare holding a handkerchief to his bleeding nose. The two girls had started a loud name-calling fist fight with each other during his performance. He had bravely left the stage to attempt to break them apart, receiving a sound punch in the nose for his efforts.Total immersion in the period was working a little too well that day!

Not in the least discouraged, we moved on to Branagh’s Much Ado and found that this sunny adaptation had depths that touched my young student’s lives. Hateful siblings, fathers whose tempers quickly turned to abuse and violence, shyness and uncertain feelings about who to love and who is loved, these were emotions my students understood far better than the idealized romance of Romeo and Juliet. They liked the play, demanded to see it again immediately. Bantered Beatrice and Benedick’s lines to each other. Dogberryed at me endlessly and talked on and on about its characters, injustice, deceit. It was without a doubt one of the happiest times of my life. I had, at least for those kids, saved the English language and its greatest writer from that Texas textbook committee.

The Problem of Normativity

What is the Problem of Normativity? Which philosopher from the course do you think has the best response to it?

A normative statement is an opinion or value judgement that, because it is not a statement of fact - such as x + y = y + x —cannot be proved. The Problem of Normativity is that my aunt, for example, might state that I ought to get my hair cut, or vote for candidate X, but she would so state because trimmed hair and voting for party X are norms in my family. My next door neighbor might state that I would look best with a more casual haircut and that I should vote for party Y because those are the norms in her family. Both women would be unable to prove that their specific examples of normativity met the same standard of permanence and validity as 2 + 2 = 4.

I find that I am most comfortable in the company of the Enlightenment philosopher David Hume who stated, “Apart from mathematics we know nothing for certain. But we have to live: and to live is to act. All actions have to be based on assumptions about reality.” Why assumptions? Hume shared the basic premise of the empiricists - Locke, Berkeley — that our knowledge of anything outside ourselves can only be derived from experience - our own or the experience of someone else. We can never know with absolute certainty what exists beyond ourselves. Certainty of the facts, is not available to us. “We can only deal in hopeful probabilities.”

Our actions, Hume thought, are driven by our feelings and our passions. I have found that Hume is right, my reason is slave to my passions. Therefore, my best course is to develop an informed heart. Since what I can experience myself directly is limited, I must depend for guidance mainly on the experience of others - several thousand years of books, novels, music, theatre — the long record of mankind’s quest not for certainty, not for a list of rules or norms, but for an informed heart that acts in hopeful probabilities.

Professor Bonevac stated that in the 1970’s “normativity — ought, should, good, bad, evil, right, wrong, virtuous,vicious, just, and unjust--returned to the center of the philosophical dance floor.” He spends his final lectures discussing the two 20th century politicians, Ronald Reagan and Margret Thatcher. In clear opposition to David Hume’s philosophy, the discussion is in fact deceptive argument framed in absolute certainties, not hopeful probabilities. He sets up the vague term “Socialism” as a straw dog to defend these two figureheads of heartless conservative politics. This might be an effective strategy to convince a student who believes that Certainty is possible or who is informed only by a limited compassion for humanity.

The straw dog, “Socialism” does not hold. Kindly Sweden plods along. My quality of life is greatly enhanced by Medicare. Bonevac supports his argument with false data, stating that Reagan’s policies created twenty million jobs, when in fact during his terms only 203,486 jobs were created. Reagan and Thatcher’s policies did in fact help give the final push to the already rotting totalitarian Soviet Union, but we must remember also that Stalin aided in the fall of Hitler while murdering millions of his own people. Ronald Reagan reversed America’s progress toward racial and economic equality by blessing Racism as a vote getting tool—clearly not the action of an informed heart. Reagan’s racist fear-mongering strategies to gain and hold power are still used daily and completely successfully by the Republican party. Reagan’s influence on Bush and Clinton’s economic policies resulted inevitably in the Great Recession that has destroyed the American middle class and enhanced the power of the rich to control public policy for their private benefit. Thatcher institutionalized economic policies that have greatly weakened Europe’s capacity to recover from the Great Recession. Perhaps most tragically, she redefined compassion in government as a synonym for weakness, a redefinition that has caused much unnecessary suffering throughout Europe. 

While it is clear that Reagan and Thatcher equate Normativity with Absolute Certainty. This may not necessarily be true of Bonevac. In his last lecture, Professor Bonevac held up his priced baseball and stated, “does it (my ownership) result from a set of institutions that together respect basic liberties, grant people equal opportunities, and make the poor as well-off as possible. Again, I have no idea how to begin answering that question.” Given Professor Bonevac’s choice of 20th Century heroes, we must assume that statement to be true.

John Boehner, the dark and orange

John Boehner, the dark and orange

From Cincinnati, of all cities known as the Queen,
Out of your father’s tavern, the small businessman’s dream,
Came you, O orangey tanned John, the cause of our despair.
Your stubbornness, calumniated tongue,and slicked down hair,
Entrapped our country in unescapable political mire,
While you profited mightily from the corporate empire.
You listened not to men whose souls burned for the good,
But harkened to the dead tea party hearts made of wood,
Now when families of Latin folk are safe, you curse and rant
“Sue Obama, Sue Obama” Dark orange Boehner, recant, recant.

O, John, hater of ObamaCare, give up your evil Republican ways,
And pass bills for common folk that will lengthen their days.

Three more annotations

9.  The last paragraphs of the Ithaca episode of James Joyces’ Ulysses

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“He rests. He has travelled.

With?

Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer.

When?

Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc's auk's egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler.

Where?”

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This is my favorite passage from Ulysses. Leopold Bloom has finally gone to bed.

These lines are the final words of the Ithaca episode, the last section before the word “Yes” that begins Molly Bloom’s long affirmation of human existence.

Ulysses happened to me when I was sixteen, for the next eight years the book was always with me. Then life happened. I put the book aside but so much of it remained inside my head that I think I may have always processed language using Joyce’s model. Reading Joyce, I re-learned language.

Pun, rhyme, image - there is music in a word. Joyce makes words-music. Any word, all words. He jams them together, misspells them, rhyme layers of meaning into sentences that are meant to never end. “Auks and rocs” and “roc’ auk’s egg”  have a sea rhythm for Sinbad to sail on and a cradle rhythm - Leopold Bloom is going to bed. How many times have I laid down in my bed as Finbad the Failer or the mystical Xinbad the Phthailer? 

10. 

Shakespeare — Epilogue from the Tempest

Prospero:

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,

And what strength I have's mine own,

Which is most faint: now, 'tis true,

I must be here confined by you,

Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

Since I have my dukedom got

And pardon'd the deceiver, dwell

In this bare island by your spell;

But release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands:

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Must fill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,

And my ending is despair,

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so that it assaults

Mercy itself and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,

Let your indulgence set me free.

This happened to me - watching The Tempest I decided to let go of the work that had occupied my time and substance for forty-some years and retire from teaching. At that moment I shared Prospero’s plea to the audience to release him:

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,

Let your indulgence set me free.

,“what strength I have's mine own,/ Which is most faint” 

This is one of Shakespeare’s last plays and I think must reflect his own thoughts about his work. Heard aloud, it is a long breath, a long, quiet, sigh at the end of a task.

These final lines end the Tempest, which taken as a whole is in my opinion is the most beautiful and profound nature poem ever written. No writer has described man’s position in nature as completely as Shakespeare. All the of issues of our relationship with the natural world are dealt with so subtilely that we hardly notice that the magic Shakespeare enchants us with is actually the rise of science, the rend between nature and man was already clear to him four hundred years before global warming.  

I'll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I'll drown my book.

Prospero has found his place in nature and can retire to rest.

11. 

Elizabeth Bishop -The Fish

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/fish-2

This poem happened to me as I was preparing  lesson plans for a ninth grade class. I decided to include the poem in the weeks lessons. It was simple, easy to read and would interest any students who were fishermen or women. That week I taught the poem, reading it aloud five times —I had five classes— and hearing it read by ten, maybe fifth-teen during the day, I realized that it was an extraordinary piece of craftsmanship. 

Long slender lines, designed to guide the breath of the reader reads. 

The simple report of what the poet’s I can see. Imagery that is so clear  plain stated similes— wallpaper, a peony, tinfoil, a beard… This is like that is enough and we see the fish as if we were holding in our own hand.

The poem is a lesson in seeing, in visual literacy, that which is once seen with Bishop eyes, we are capable of seeing again.

Finally, there is the echo of Shakespeare in the last lines, “rainbow, rainbow, rainbow/and I let the fish go.” My favorite poems are the poems that bring me back to my place in nature. Bishop has caught the fish, and the fish has caught her, the circle is closed again.

12.

Henry David Thoreau —

(This is the song Thoreau sang as he built his cabin on Walden pond.)

“So I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having many communicable or scholar-like thoughts, singing to myself, —

Men say they know many things;

But lo! they have taken wings --

The arts and sciences,

And a thousand appliances;

The wind that blows

Is all that any body knows.”

Throughout my life, whenever I am discouraged by the actions of my fellow Americans, when I am in dark despair for my country’s soul, I remember that Henry David Thoreau is my countryman and will be my great-great-grandchildren’s countryman long after the disgrace that is today’s Republican party is a footnote in history and Ronald Reagan’s stature is removed from the Capital and recycled for dog food cans.

Thoreau and David Hume would have gotten along very well, at least in philosophical conversations. This little song has essentially the same message Hume’s most famous quote, “Apart from mathematics we know nothing for certain. But we have to live: and to live is to act. All actions have to be based on assumptions about reality. We can only deal in hopeful probabilities.”

Thoreau was a man of millions of words and thousands of famous opinions. Yet, no one who knows his work well would disagree that he never claimed certainty for his thoughts. They were his observations of the world, well and cleverly expressed,  just common sense. There is a poetry in common sense that can be found no where else. At the end of the day, great poetry guides us back to our place in nature. 

“The wind that blows/Is all that any body knows.”