World Book Encyclopedia, Robert Frost, and more..

     When I was growing up we had the complete set of the World Book Encyclopedia in the green and white cover edition, the expensive ones that were nicer than the set in the school library.  We had them because my father was bamboozled by an encyclopedia salesman and his assistant who sold door to door and found us on our farm outside the tiny village of Varysburg. 
     As an immigrant family, we were an easy mark.  The salesman handed a volume to me, saying, "She's too young; she can't read that."  Of course I read- I was the one in my second grade class who was called on to read when the principal visisted; I was the one who memorized complicated poems and scoffed at the kids who chose the easy two liners about bears.  I  didn't stop reading.
     So the sale was complete.   The volumes stood on top of a dresser upstairs, updated each year with a yearbook that was a jumble of information and rarely touched.  For years my favorite volume was E because of Egypt.  I loved the drawings of the straight haired Egyptians and the hieroglyphics of birds and shapes.  I preferred them to the entry of Rome for in my mind those were apparently the only two choices of civilizations. 
     Other books entered the house.  We had a National Geographic collection of countries of the world that came in a magazine like format complete with stamps you stuck onto the pages.  These books were always of unknown African countries like Gabon.  I suspect we were waiting for the volume about Latvia which never came.
      Then there was the four volume set of medical encyclopedias that I pored over and found  fascinating information like how long a hospital stay was required for a hysterectomy.  I learned all the skin diseases since there were pictures and I could dazzle the science teachers with obscure medical information.
      My uncle whose English language abilities were limited brought us books too.  He chose books by size and he got them from a used book store in Buffalo.  He brought us "The Selected Letters of Robert Frost" which at that point in my life was the dullest book I'd ever seen and "My Secret Life".  Luckily no one else in the household suspected what it was about.  So I could say I had a well-rounded education. 

Who's a fascist?

            With the current Russian takeover of Crimea and possible incursions into Ukraine, we’re reminded of another time.  How did the Russians clean up their image to the point that those who don’t support them are called fascists?  I recently had a discussion with companions who dismissed the entire crisis as unimportant because the Ukrainians were fascists.  This label has stuck to the point that when you spoke Latvian in Latvia you could be called a fascist.  That happened to many Latvians who returned  in the 90’s and didn’t know Russian.

            The smear campaign of the former satellite countries is almost complete.  In the aftermath of the post WWll landscape when the horrors of the Nazi regime were revealed and the USSR was considered an ally, this was the way to categorize these countries and cover up the horrors of the war from the Russian side.  Latvians (despite losing 1/3 of the population) were deemed fascists because they were trapped in the untenable situation caught between Russia and Germany.  See Bloodlands by Timothy Synder .  The much reviled Latvian legion was formed after the Nazi deportations yet the label stands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHtcgaeC4T8

            There were no innocents in that war but there were certainly victims. Russians were not the heros not even to the Jewish populations it purported to protect. Many Jews were arrested in Siberia.  Here is the letter the Jewish community in Ukraine sent to criticize Putin. 

http://www.jns.org/news-briefs/2014/3/5/iry6leczywh8oqze14iygpfee30o7q#.Uy2NFGdOVjo

            Siberia with its 30 million prisoners in 60 years, the mass graves discovered, the decimation of populations of many countries, the closed corrupt society of the USSR that destroyed any idealist dream of a communist society.  Yet everyone but the Russians is labeled fascist. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_graves_in_the_Soviet_Union

            Throughout we can feel sympathy for a country where the life expectancy is lower than most western countries and as we always say in these cases, the people deserve much better than their government.

Food as Fetish

At what point did food cease to be nourishment or pleasure and turn into a fetish?  Food is expected to solve every health woe these days.  Besides nourishing you it is supposed to be magical.  Unfortunately, the categories of which foods are “good” or “bad” for you change radically- take coconut oil.  Once it was considered the worse possible oil, now it’s perfect.  And rather than just eating it you can down teaspoonfuls to stay healthy. All this categorization of food takes us further away from reality. The reality was eating meals and enjoying them. 

When was the last time you had a meal in which no one talked about weight or fat or guilt?  “I shouldn’t eat this.  Oh, I feel so fat.” When was the last time you were at a dinner when everyone could eat whatever was served?  I can barely remember.  There always is a vegan or a paleo or a raw foods consumer complicating life for the host.  I wonder how someone with a restricted diet can travel anywhere.  And how so much energy devoted to analyzing or obsessing about food works out.  Do you actually feel healthier?  Is it worth it?

When did the idea that food can harm you occur?  I’m not talking about fast food or junk food which obviously can but grains and dairy.  And I’m not talking about celiac or people with food allergies but the general population which takes on these trends and drops them just as quickly as a new theory comes into fashion. 

I almost have to go back to Europe to have an idea what normal portions look like and enjoy a three course meal complete with wine and dessert.  And I weighed less there than here with all the fads and attempts as losing weight.  I can go to Europe where food is a celebration on special occasions and the refrigerator isn’t crammed full but is designed to buy the freshest products and cook them immediately.  There I won’t find eating to be a 24 hour possibility.  My taste buds won’t be battered by too much sugar and salt and fat. 

I’m guilty of the food fetish myself.  Mornings I often prepare a smoothie which bears almost no resemblance to food as we know it.  I throw protein powder and frozen fruit into a blender.  Why?  It’s easy and filling.  Probably the same reasons people have for consuming fast food. 

Even for the wealthy food resembles itself less and less.  There are foams and liquid nitrogen to make it more spectacular in the style of Ferran Adria.  There are endless elaborations to bring out the flavor of food which is simply not of the quality it once was.  GMO’s, farmed fish,and agribusiness have all changed food for the worse,  I have to admit I’d be happy to try Michel Bras’s famous vegetable and herb concoction that is as beautiful an array of color and form that I’ve ever seen.  I’m not sure it would taste as good as the vegetables on the farm I grew up on or the seasonal produce at the corner store in Barcelona. 

Barrier Islands, Snowbirds, and the Future

Barrier Islands, snowbirds, and the future

I’ve had the fortune to escape the endless winter of Buffalo and head south to Perdido Key, a barrier island on the Gulf Coast.  70% of this key is still natural and escaped the rows of high rises crammed on the beach which is a such a part of Florida.  This key has the natural beauty of sugar white sand, dunes, and several parks which preserve what one sign described as the true Florida.   Despite the horrific gulf spill, dolphins still swim by, herons fish, and pelicans fly overhead.

The question is for how long.  One of the barrier islands thins to the width of a road which most certainly gets covered with water in storms.  The last hurricane destroyed the pretty wooden houses on the beach and left the uglier more solid cement constructions.  With ocean levels on the rise and coastal properties in danger how long will these places last?  Through my lifetime?  I always imagined that global warming would take place in its fiercest form long after my lifetime but I was wrong.  I never would have imagined New York flooded by Sandy.  Nor would I have thought the polar vortex would drain all my energies throughout this long grueling winter. 

And that brings me to another question.  Any place you go on the coast is peopled by older snowbirds from Canada and northern states.  They are lucky enough to afford to spend the winter away from the freezing cold.  How many people of my generation will be able to retire?  I don’t see it as a possibility at all especially living in the US.  If I had stayed in Spain it might have been more likely.  Here will I end up as a cashier at a dollar store in an attempt to supplement whatever meager retirement I get? 

Slow down! Stop! Review! Don't multitask!

     Could these be my New Year's resolutions or simple admonitions? Three recent occurrences have led me to these conclusions.  First of all I lost a chance for a good job because I hadn't reviewed a cover letter closely.  It included a sentence I'd put in for a different job leading to the interviewer's first question- "I'm confused.  Why did you say you'd relocate to Atlanta when the job is in New Jersey?"
      Next a short story of mine was published with the character's name as Dave in one sentence, followed  by Doug in the next line.  Embarrassing to say the least.  It almost happened in another story that's due to be published but fortunately my sister caught the mistake.  Impatience is winning out and wreaking havoc. 
     It's the end of the year and I'm pondering a couple of other decisions.  I had a short story that with a couple of tweaks could have been published in a well-known literary magazine.  I didn't make the changes.  Now I wonder, was I mad or just lazy?  The same thing happened with an essay.  They both were published but in lesser known journals.
    As I face other questions with big repercussions my advice to myself and everyone else is in the title.  With that in mind it'll be a new year with good decisions and better editing! 

Here's a story that was out awhile ago.

 

 

Dr. Lee

 

 

It wasn´t my favorite class, a survey of Chinese history with its endless dynasties of too similar names.  We´d finally moved into modern times and were now stuck in the early 20^th century.  Dr. Lee was Korean, a delicate man with wire rimmed glasses.  He taught all the Asian history courses, no doubt because of his ethnicity.

                I counted up credits and found I could graduate faster in history than anything else so I was filling semesters with requirements.  There were two tracks: one was for potential Social Studies teachers and the other, was  filled with boys and seminars on war.  I don´t even know how I found myself in it, probably my advisor thought it would keep my options open though, for what, I had no idea.

                There were only two bright spots in the whole business.  The history of Brazil was filled with Brazilians students aiming for an easy A and they talked, making it come alive.  I read Jorge Amado, and imagined Bahia, with coconut custard and tropical drinks, far from the chill of the Northeast and the winter that had just begun and would never end.  The other was a fatherly professor of American history who claimed the Singer sewing machine was the most perfect creation ever made. He lamented those transformed into decorator tables.  I could relate since my aunt sewed all her clothing on one with its metal foot pedal that kept up a smooth rhythm. 

                The rest of the professors did what I´d been told never to do, which was to read from a paper.  It was how they generally filled the fifty or eighty minute blocks.  Dr. Lee was one of them.  I got to the room right on time and settled in.  It was November and I had the routine down, sitting towards the back, but not too far.  I had a glimpse of the outdoors from the window at the top of the basement room.  A fat guy came and sat near me, smiling. Once he followed me out of class telling me the desperately sad story of his mother going blind from her job as an x-ray technician.  I managed to avoid him without being rude. 

                In the beginning there were about thirty of us, now down to ten.  Some of the students no longer bothered with notes.  They sat staring into space or an occasional beep of something electronic alerted us to their presence. I felt a little sorry for Dr. Lee, tiny in front of the room, facing us all.

                He arrived right on time with his regulation black briefcase.  He popped it open and sifted through sheaves of papers.  What would it be today?  It looked like he was making a decision.  I hoped for the spice of the opium wars.  He stood at the podium, reminding us of a test.  Then he began to read from his notes.  ¨1900, it was a reactionary movement.  Meant to eliminate the expanding control of the foreigners. The Boxer Rebellion.¨

                 I shifted position, the chair digging into my back.  My foot knocked over a half filled cup of machine coffee I hadn´t spotted on the floor.  I lost the thread of Dr. Lee as I watched the coffee spread and finally stop in a brown puddle several feet from my desk. 

                ¨In 1900…¨ Dr. Lee paused.  He started again.  ¨In 1900.¨ He stopped. 

                I snapped to alertness.  Had we offended Dr. Lee?  I once was in a class where the professor threw a girl out for no apparent reason and since then had never felt completely at ease.

                Silence grew and expanded.  

                ¨I can´t.¨ He sat down.

                More silence. Students shot each other looks.  After what seemed like ages, one of the students in the front row tried to encourage either him or us, ¨We need to know what happens.  In 1900.¨

                Dr. Lee was beyond explanations, knowing perfectly well 1900 was irrelevant to us.  Silence made it hard to breathe.  He shook his head, all eyes on him.  ¨I don´t know what´s happened.¨ He sounded as surprised as all of us.

                Another voice, ¨Go on, please.¨

                ¨It´s not just this.¨ He dismissed the centuries of China.  ¨It´s everything.¨

                My palms started to sweat.  We were sophomores, not prepared for this display of humanity.

                ¨You need to take a break.¨ Suddenly suggestions came from all parts of the room.

                ¨You´ll feel better tomorrow; get some rest.¨

                ¨Go out with your friends, have a beer.¨

                ¨Are you married?¨ Dr. Lee shook his head.  ¨You need to meet someone.¨

                I put in my two cents worth.  ¨Take a vacation.  That´ll help.¨

                Silence again.  Then he picked up his briefcase, nodded at us all, and left the room.

                There was a buzz in the room.  Then we got up and left without a word.

                Tuesday Dr. Lee was no longer there.  A graduate student took his place. He didn´t come back in the spring semester either.  Rumors were he´d gone to Korea.  I needed to believe he´d gone home or that he was vacationing somewhere far away.  If not, we had failed him. 

Snow Memories

    When I lived abroad I had a predilection for snow movies- the made for TV movies where a couple is stranded in mountain snow, the climbing Everest movies, and of course, the long snowy trek in "The Day after Tomorrow". 
     Fast forward.  I'm back in snow after 20 years.  The first winter when I looked out the window to snow piled up outside, I wondered, "What do I do now?"  It took a couple of winters to get the right footwear and the right clothes.
      And the verdict?  My sister (in Atlanta) joked and said a rescue mission to get me might be in order and I'm almost at the point of agreeing.  But I can't give up (at least, not yet).  Should I try snowshoes?  Or just stay in, watch Netflix, read Scandinavian crime novels, and drink red wine?  I can emerge pasty white and shivering in April.
   Part 2 of my bus series.

 

 

11

 

 

The light is dying

This city is dying

One burnt building

a day.

A leaf

falls.

At the bus stop

a man asks

are you the baby girl

and,

I say yes, I am.

 

 

 

The Class War

What happened?  All the years away and I never saw it coming.  My workmate said, “Everything I was told as a child was a lie”  Work hard?  Where does it get you?”

            Good question.  I am probably working more hours than I have in years and it isn’t leading anywhere.  There are no raises, no opportunities in sight.  This is what has happened in America in the years I was gone and is beginning to occur in Europe too.  You can work full time at McDonald’s and be told to apply for food stamps and to eat more slowly so you feel full.  You can be like the adjunct professor who wrote that his salary was so low, he sometimes resorted to selling his blood.

https://chroniclevitae.com/news/91-off-track-adjuncts-are-addicts

You can be like a workmate who said she can only afford the interest on her school loans so she’s hoping they’ll be forgiven when she retires. 

That leads us to the second statement my workmate said was a lie, “Education will make a difference.”  It always did to me and to my immigrant parents.  It’s still what I tell my students but am I wrong?  How much debt does it take?  Can you study something you love?  What is waiting for you when you finish?  The job as a security guard at Walmart?  That ever present adjunct job?

When did the decision get made to squeeze out the middle class so that profits for the famous top 1% can be scandalous?   How wealthy are the wealthy? I taught English to an insurance exec in Barcelona who said he had enough for his children and grandchildren and didn’t need to amass more wealth.  That seems reasonable but not very common.  How far are we from the grim future of the Scifi novels?  Already studies show the wealthy are less likely to show compassion.

http://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/

More questions than answers.  How do we live in a more compassionate society?

 

One of my poems from “A Remedy of Touch”

Love this Place

 

Am I to love this place,

no bridges arch

over a glittering city.

No gargoyles keep watch.

 

To love this place

where steel mills lay fallow,

hunks of metal shade

gutted homes.

Past the Michigan Avenue

Baptist Church,

my mother and father

enter home on their wedding day,

She dreams of white

And thresholds

 to be carried across.

 

Love this place,

drip drop of ice

slides off eaves, 

like so many promises.

Phones, refugees, and a poem

I’ve been actively looking for a job which has kept me from posting anything.  So far, no success- at least not for a job I really want.  So will I be facing a very long freezing cold winter here?  Looks like it….

ENDLESS PHONING

The first time I witnessed cell phone excess was in the 90’s.  I was in Rome in a restaurant next to a table of 20 somethings.  They barely gave the waiter enough attention to place their orders, still holding onto their phones almost through the entire dinner.  Now, it’s commonplace.  In Rite-Aid the clerk told me she felt invisible since customers barely acknowledged her.  Last weekend I went to see the Balle Fokloric de Bahia.  Now this is a fabulous dance troupe with great musicians and drumming that keeps you moving to the music.  Or not.  A woman in front of me was glued to her cell phone even though the drummers and dancers came up the stairs into the audience.  Well, maybe that got her attention.

   I’m guilty of the cell phone connectedness.  It gives me something to do with my nervous fingers.  It helps me block out all the crazies on my daily public transportation.  I hope I know the limits of my escapism before I miss something wonderful or important.

 

The deaths of two refugee students last week led me to this…. and my own parents’ escape from the war.

 

                    HERITAGE

Buy gold

Buy it now.

When you flee

the home exploding,

the burnt landscape,

trade it for a loaf of bread.

 

Remember poems,

as many that

fill the confined

calendar days  

of prison.

 

Repost of Mediterranean plus a poem

Yesterday I spent the day on the Lake, thinking of the history of Lake Erie and how once it was the largest fish producer in the world.  Then I remembered the Mediterranean Sea with its history of the Greeks, Romans, and Iberians.  And that leads me to this repost from my happy moments on my favorite sea.  At the end of the post after the classic song, Mediterranean,  I included the poem with the same title from my first chapbook.

Mediterranean

     After 4 years of swimming in lakes, I've returned to the beaches of the Mediterranean.  I feel the slippery salt on my skin and its taste on my lips.  I'm not bounced about in the waves or flung under, scraping my knees on the bottom like in the Atlantic.  And let's not even talk about the Pacific with its fierce waves and chilly waters.  For the most part, the Mediterranean is gentle.
    When I step out of the water here I feel light.  When I get out of a lake something soggy stays with me, like from the mud bottom of a pond.  The salt of the sea is a great purifier, a healer in its way.  So I have one more day to enjoy if not the water, then the pastel colors of the sunsets.

   The classic song by Joan Manuel Serrat:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNkcAUAv1kw

I have a poem from my first chapbook too.

 

 

Mediterranean

 

I live in a country

where you can choose to die

trampled by a bull, madly foaming

in an age old ritual,

where  slowly yet certainly

parrots nest in the palms

replacing street worn pigeons

already tagged and counted.

No prohibition

the body is gently forgiven

I too lay naked outside.

 

Red flowers burst

against white walls

narrow rocks step

to the sea,

blue as ice,

warm as milk.

Who's your Favorite Saint?

The mind boggles at the options.  The saints had messy curious lives which makes them oddities populating a strange world.   I had the paperback books of saints as a child preparing for my communion.  I never understood Catherine who was tortured with a toothed wheel and beheaded or Lucy, depicted with her eyes on a plate. It’s amazing these stories were given to impressionable children to read.  Knowing nothing other than the name Teresa, (Therese) Little Flower, I chose her.  She looked gentle enough.  She fit in with my love of the Jesus of a blurry painting of the blond man with the red pulsating heart. At the age of 7 I proclaimed I wanted to be a nun.  “You’ll have to sleep on a bed of nails.”  I was told.  I don’t care, I’ll do it, was my answer. Years later in a film depicting  Teresa’s life, she drank the tubercular sputum from an infected lung.  My connection through name was permanently severed. 

    These days I have a book of the saints (Saints, A year in Faith and Art)  with golden pages and short biographies.  I discovered the namesakes of all the street names I knew in Barcelona, like Saint Anthony Mary Claret ( a confessor to the king and therefore suspect) or Sant Roc, a hermit and healer who was miraculously cured by an angel and nourished by a dog.  There is the dramatic, the outrageous about the saints. I like the layer in the religious hierarchy they represent though I couldn’t imagine praying to them to intercede to God for me.  Why would I, when, like a good pagan, I believe God is everywhere, within or without.  How would they serve as a model?

     That brings me to Teresa of Avila, another namesake.  In “A Tremor of Bliss, Contemporary Writers on the Saints”, Francine Prose writes “ Teresa claimed to hate writing, to be unable to write, her work is full of self-doubt, of excuses for procrastinations and apologies..Whys is she not-for these reasons alone- the patron saint of writers?”  Indeed.  So along with my inusuk, budda, ganesh statue, dirt from Latvia, the black virgin of Aglona, and other icons, I try to cover all the bases.  I need that statue of Teresa next. 

 

And an old poem, as I’m clearing out papers…

                       Apolonia Painted

 

 

We pointed out the flaws,

Look, a dog as big as a house

in the background,

no perspective here,

But Apolonia painted

and danced,

Her wig askew

after vodka shots,

Apolonia painted

and promised love

 

Society of Consumption and a poem

As I was walking to my poetry reading in a crowd of people at a local infringement festival, a woman stopped and pointed at me.  “Flax,” she said.  “What?’  Then I looked down at my shirt; she was identifying the brand of clothing in a recognition that must have provided connection in this deeply disconnected realm.  Your brand, even if you pay little or no attention to it, serves as an identification.  It’s just one more puzzle in the world of consumption that is America.

    Today I just redeemed a $10 coupon, plus 15% off, plus another $5 off in what must be the most brilliant of sales techniques.  It brings me to a store I would never have gone into otherwise and which now I frequent though I need nothing at all.  What does this consumption replace? 

   In Barcelona, consumption was massive crowds on Saturday afternoons.  Shopping gave a sense of a happening, an event that was not to be missed.  Here in contrast, it is what takes over a part of your life that could be reserved for meeting friends, having a coffee, doing anything at all to contact with people. 

    And there no one would admit to a bargain.  While here in the US I can brag that after all my discounts the dress I’m wearing only cost $10, that would never happen in BCN.  There’s no merit to admitting you got your shirt at the rebajas at Zara.  Maybe you’re supposed to pretend everything you wear is full priced high quality that will last forever.  And that’s never the case.

    So tell me, why do YOU shop?

 

I’ve found some poems.

 

                  Common Prayer

Upstairs alone

I check off countries

Gambia, Bahrain, Sudan

from a list of possibilities.

Downstairs I hear

your child announcing

her love, your voice

smooth surprise in return.

  

Bureaucracy in your life.

      How big a role does bureaucracy play in your life?  That may very well depend on where you live or where you work.  When I lived in Spain, bureaucracy was always a factor to keep in mind.  How long would a simple transaction (bank, bills, offices, work permits, etc) take?  An hour or all day? Here is an essay account of renewing my work permit in Barcelona.  (The article needs Adobe to open it.)

http://www.universaltable.org/images/Glass2.pdf

      But this pales compared to working with the Board of Ed.  Here I inhabit an authentic Catch 22 universe. 
      Case in point 1.  I taught a night class in which I provided my own computer (nothing functioned in the building), my own texts and materials, and I even canvassed for students.  My reward for this was a written evaluation in which I was told I had to be more proactive.  You've got to be kidding was my response.

    Point 2.  Paperwork.  We have weekly attendance, lesson plans, and scan sheets to turn in which I never had any problems with.  There are apparently 2 people dedicated to full time monitoring like police officers.  Twice I've been called in to meet a particular person.  The first time was because I was off the day paperwork was due and I turned it in one day late.
      This week the office has lost my paperwork.  It was turned it on time correctly but since they are blameless I pay the consequences- letters on file, missed classes to attend the reprimand meeting. 
       What's you bureaucratic nightmare?


Back to the Spanish nostalgia- a poem from my first chapbook.

What I´ve Lost  

                          Leaving Europe                   

 

Paths lead

from town to

medieval town,

cathedral bones

stick out,

bells toll centuries.

The solemnity

of a saint´s day

procession,

We crowd to touch

the body of christ

while drums

pound out

God´s arrival. 

 

Ocean jet buzz

brings me across

to America,

empire of things,

following the white

highway line

 

                     into deep deep sleep.