Independence Day

The irony is inescapable; celebrating the birth of our nation as it was in the maternity ward, even as it is now in the emergency room. Our job is to keep it from the morgue.

In fact, the signing in 1776 did not declare the establishment of a new nation. It declared the severing of ties with our mother country. At the time we were a loose confederation of colonies. The word nation first appeared in 1783.

250 years ago was not all that different from today. The division between blue and red states is deep. Our country is almost as fissured as in the antebellum period. 

The legislative branch is dormant. The judiciary contorts itself to find justification for the dissolution of our democracy as it grants the president authoritarian powers with impunity. We are witnessing an imperial presidency which our Founders would have disavowed.

Surely, we did not break with one monarchy to embrace another.

Back in those good ole days of 1776 the colonies were split into three camps. The four New England States, (NH, MA, RI and CT were founded largely by those seeking religious freedom. They became more literate by reading the Bible. Too cold for growing crops in inarable soil year-round, they lived on logging, fishing and shipbuilding.

The middle ones, PA, NJ, NY and DE furnished wheat and grain. Their population was more diverse with settlers from Scandinavia, Germany and Holland and were known for greater religious tolerance. The upper Midwest might be regarded as our purple states in today's electoral map.

The five Southern States were home to four of our first five presidents, aka Founding Fathers. They relied on slave labor for their wealth and were later ardent supporters of state's rights.

The racism of the 18th century in all its virulence, poisons the air again today, with discriminatory hirings and firings as well as denial of voting rights. Until we confront our sins of human bondage, racist behavior will continue.

At the same time, we are also a country born out of the Enlightenment. Our founders were deists who relied on reason, rejected dogma and the divine right of kings. This new experiment called Democracy was a beacon for those seeking new opportunity and in flight from oppression.

We have always been a fractious country. As we celebrate our document of aspirations, we must also acknowledge the stains in our heritage. The tree of Democracy demands watering and custodial care as well as action against the blight which threatens our beautiful country at its roots.

 

  

Straddling Two Worlds

 I am currently reading three books. One is by Thomas Mann's son Klaus written in the early 1940s. He traces the early years of his life in that illustrious German family and the descent of his country into Nazi barbarism. The second is an anthology of short stories which Adele and I read over the phone. We've discovered some gems including works by Tim O'Brien, Joyce Carol Oates, Charles Baxter and Lorrie Moore.

Short pieces of fiction tend to concentrate on a single moment as a way of penetrating the subject. Reading aloud adds a new dimension, lifting characters off the page into a new life as we assume their voices.

The third is a new autofiction by Ben Lerner entitled Transcriptions. His novella reminds me how those of us over fifty straddle two cultures. The analog world of straight-ahead sequential movies and fiction. I didn't even have a telephone til I was thirteen. (None were available during WWII). We talked to each without rushing to recover forgotten names and we walked away with unanswered wonder. More personal, less performative.

Contrasted with this is the virtual universe of mobile phones, Zoom meetings, Facetime, instant images and breaking news. We have learned to live with simultaneity, fluent in a gestalt of surfaces. No, I don't want to see a photo of your french toast.

Lerner creates situations in which technology fails, and the character has to revert to his elemental senses such as listening and taking time in our rush to nowhere.

To a certain extent, Hitler was a product of that newfangled technology in the 1930s called radio. While he ranted with fury, mesmerizing his flock, FDR also utilized radio, delivering his fireside chats which often drew an audience of over sixty million. The medium lent itself to opposite messages, but it was the force that moved millions.

Our would-be dictator has mastered social media with his midnight rambles, hogwash and decrees as if his delusions crossed the blood-brain barrier to his new bamboozled reality. Every morning the world waits with held breath for his latest blabbering; and that is the name of the game.

I read Klaus Mann's autobiography to gain insight into the degradation of two proud cultures. The parallels are clear. The lesson learned is the fragility of the human spirit particularly in periods of epochal changes. The two worlds I straddle not only mark changes in sensibility due to technology but also challenge us to stay centered during these years of infamy, breathing the foul air of indecency and lust for power. 

By The Dawn's Early Light

Up at five.

Have to pee. No, you don't. Yes, I do.

Waking does not end the dream.

Reviewing that embryonic summer of ’32, 

umbilically speaking.

Half awake but woke and half in pillowed drift,

turning swords to words,

over my head in this stream of streams,

a hummingbird in strenuous stillness,

ashore to find my loom of hanging threads.

I do everything I never ever...

Run three miles,  Fifty push-ups.

Pilates, Tai Chi, Yoga …no sweat.

Pedal to Patagonia on stationary bike.

Walk the dog I don’t have.

Water my pet rock, Feed the fish,

Listen to Art Pepper.

Prune the herb garden.

Thinking about Johnny Mercer songs.

Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe.

Other train songs... Chattanooga Choo-Choo (1941)

Tempus ... big hands ... fugit.

This Train Was Made For Glory. Midnight Special.

Planning my afterlife.

The java is roasted, the bagel is toasted.

An occasional rhyme happens

in this familiar chaos I call order

to meet another ho-hum day.

Last train to Clarkesville.

 

All Happening At The Market

Here I am taking my place with day-old bread and dented cans. Yet not beyond my shelf-life. 

I'm walking here, I'm walking; the cart is my walker. It leads me to berries and cherries. I shall not want. The man who waters the lettuce anoints me. My life runneth over. I fear nothing as I walk in the shadows of gondolas. 

Shoppers affixed on bulletins breaking into barcodes breaking into QRs to be scanned. We are being tracked and surveilled into the nakedness of our consumption. Buy one, second half-price.

There goes Walt Whitman hearing America's yawp through leaves of grass. I’m listening to Benny Goodman's clarinet Sing, Sing, Sing.

There are no women to come and go speaking of Michelangelo or even Joe DiMaggio. Where have you gone, Clifton Fadiman? We need your Information, Please. Answers are in Jeopardy.

Yet, it’s all here. This garden of tulips breathing Amsterdam air. Picasso turning bananas to goldfinch. The still life of peaches is stirring. Teas steeping. Sodas fizzing. Heirlooms pulsing. Pollock dripping. Ginsberg howling. 

Melons pregnant each with their palette. Celery stalks at midnight. Monet stroking impressions of lotus. Larkin cultivating his depression from Wordsworth's daffodils. Rauschenberg eyeing the assemblage on the conveyor belt beeping and bagged while Calder studies the balancing display at the end of an aisle.

There’s a wedding procession coming down two aisles to take their vows at the check stand, I now pronounce you. Reception in the parking lot. It's the marriage of everything, baked and frozen, fresh and wilted, organic and forbidden. Tops off the carrots. Peel me a grape.

 

Fathering

At age thirty, in 1963, I was the father of three daughters. There is no rehearsal for the human drama known as parenting. It is all improvisational theater. My wife and I stumbled and bumbled our way along. Having children, you hear a calling for your nature to nurture.

At the same time, we were discovering ourselves. She was taking courses in college while I was trying to come to terms with my chosen profession. My own education was limited to Pharmacy with very little exposure to the humanities. I found myself getting a smattering of knowledge from my wife’s school books. She was a sociology major. I even wrote some of her term papers. 

While struggling with who we were, Janice was born in 1962 with a profound hearing loss. We chose to enroll her in the John Tracy Clinic where for four years she learned to lip-read and speak. Oralism became her first language. Signing came later. Whether this was the wise choice remains an unanswered question. In any case, mothering and fathering took on an enhanced role. We taught her every word she knew at that time. 

Janice hears through her eyes. When she entered the public school system at age six her receptive language expanded through signing with her new friends. Her special needs reset our attention given to her sisters, Shari and Lauren. 

I look back through an opaque lens. So much is a blur. Shari was tasked, too early, to take on household chores and baby-sitting. Her mother was overwhelmed. I did much of the laundry and shopping while working six days a week. What held us together, I hear you ask. 

Lauren had her own special needs as a middle child. I remember her difficulty with math and how I devised some crazy way for her to never forget that 8 plus 6 is 14. Then there was her dancing, in the living room, to music from Zorba the Greek. I passed along my love of Gilbert and Sullivan. Words became a fascination for her along with history. She was the only Caucasian in her black history class.

Shari grew up with a strong sense of herself. She was an excellent student. I witnessed her world becoming wider the evening I took her to a Joan Baez concert. Her first job was at a donut shop which opened at 4 AM. catering to truckers. I drove her. She is the only one of us who learned sign language and fingerspelling. Did we deprive her of a part of her childhood by burdening her early on? Another question I can pose to myself but not answer. 

It pleases me so much that all my daughters have access to their inner worlds. Shari has rendered her imaginative life onto canvases. Lauren writes with verve and wit and Janice has a lively curiosity about the world as she probes her own inscape. 

I take great pride in each one though I cannot take credit. They took in the good stuff and ran with it far beyond my reach. I have no great formulas or insights on how to be a father other than to be myself and model that behavior. Whatever values and the even temperament I possess, were probably bequeathed to me by my father. 

Daddys are supposed to set the world right. By that measure, I have failed miserably. The schoolyard bully who ran with scissors and threw spitballs is running the country while those who played well with others seem doomed. I can only hope that the rubble of democracy I have left my children contains some soft clay and seeds sufficient to repair the wreckage. 

I'd like to believe they all got the message that, to a certain extent, life is malleable and they can be their own sculptors.

Now I turn to Janice, Lauren and Shari to care for me as the future presents itself. Where did they ever learn to be so caring, wise and loving? I look to them each for their unique form of daughtering. 

Speaking About Talking

The last time I spoke was a few weeks ago at Mavis' 97th party when I read a few of my rambles. Speaking is planned, talking is what we do over a bagel or a Chinese chicken salad. I'm just saying.

There's a line in the Maltese Falcon when Sydney Greenstreet says to Bogart, I love to talk to a man who loves to talk. He then laughs his enormous guffaw. I too love to talk. I can't say enough about it. Even more, I enjoy listening. An interchange is a beautiful thing, sometimes a found poem when it flows spontaneously.

Here is a phone conversation I had with a dear friend who died about 10 years ago.

She……Hello, Peggy?

Me…….This is Norm

She……Why do you sound funny?

Me…….I’m in the shower.

She……What are you doing there?

Me…… Next to washing …..I do some of my best thinking in the shower.

She……Maybe you should wake up in the shower.

Me…… I’ve been here since last Thursday.

She……I think you’re clean by now.

Me…    A microscope shows all the organisms in our eyebrows and fingernails.

She…… And some of them are good bacteria, I’ll bet.

Me…… I wish they were labeled.

She……All creatures great and small.

Me……As we speak, trillions of microbes are going down the drain.

She……Sounds like my portfolio.

Me-       I don't even have a portfolio.

She……Failure makes you try harder.

Me…….What are we talking about? I suppose you want to speak to Peggy.

She……I forgot why I'm calling.

Me…….That’s OK. I forgot why I’m in the shower. Peggy is in the bathtub.

She........Is she thinking, too, or just getting clean?

He…….. I can hear her singing.

________

I can almost hear the first known conversation spoken in grunts and gesticulations around the fire. Your cave or mine? Have I got a headache. You’re getting old. You’re 23…. Tomorrow, you hunt and I’ll gather.

The greatest leap forward was Bell's invention of Hello. Prior to Hello people didn’t know how to break the ice. Now they say What’s happening? or just Hey. If the next sentence is about the weather, you're off to a bad start. Yet, much can be said for non-verbal communication; it beats non-communicative verbiage.

Marina Abramovits, the conceptual artist, conversed wordlessly  with folks from one minute to several hours as they wished. This took place at the Museum of Modern Art in 2010. A friend of mine waited in line for seven hours to have her audience. A few seconds of eye contact brought tears to both their eyes.

So much can be expressed through our eyes, facial gestures and body language. Even in normal discourse silence is essential. As the old adage goes, If you have nothing to say the very least you can do is shut up.

On the other hand, one wonders how so little can be said in so many words. But enough about Trump. 

How many times have I overheard a monologue in a restaurant where two or three people are seated at a nearby table and only one voice is audible?

Nothing beats soulful communing; discourse without self-censure. Layers are peeled back in self-discovery just in being present for each other.

Talking to friends in an honest exchange, sharing new ideas or revelations is, itself, a subversive act. Kindred spirits in conversation create a form of resistance against a repressive regime. 

Crickets and Cicadas

Poets have been writing about cicadas since Euripedes sent his toga to Eumenides for repair, and the other day I overheard someone in line at the market speaking about crickets. I have now learned that cicadas are a completely different species from crickets. They sing by day while the crickets croon by the light of the silvery moon.

You may not care about such things but I imagine a cricket, with no sense of direction, wouldn’t be looked upon kindly in a throng of cicadas. They might serenade him to an early demise.

I always thought cicadas were the highfalutin name used by college graduates, heavily in debt and needing to show something for all that, while the rest of us just say crickets.

Marlon Brando has a great line in On the Waterfront when Eva Marie Saint suggests that he move to the country. He says, Naw, da crickets make me noivous.

He would never have said cicadas. They are related to leafhoppers and spittlebugs (you have to love them for that) and crickets have no such lineage. Neither are they in the locust family in spite of the Bob Dylan song.

Both of them sing as best they can. Male crickets have that instrument on their wings, and there's the rub, while male cicadas have their noise-makers on their tummies. When a swarm of them lets loose they can reach 90 decibels. Females have better things to do. It turns out those chirps come from troubadors crooning their repertoire of mating songs. 

I gave up singing in the 6^th grade when I was designated a Listener. Nothing cricket about that. I’m so tone deaf I have to lip-synch Happy Birthday. If I had wings to rub together, I might have been invited to more parties. I can hardly wait for my next incarnation.

The most famous cricket is, of course, Jiminy Cricket which I always took as one of those euphemisms for Jesus Christ along with Jeepers Creepers or Jumping Jehoshaphat. Some crickets can jump as high as five feet which is higher than Jehoshaphat.

People actually grow crickets in farms. Who knew? They can be used to increase protein intake for livestock. Sort of like Ensure-Plus. They also make Good Bait… one of my favorite jazz tunes.

In fact, cicadas are on the menu throughout Asia. Beware of what you order from column B. I’m told, they taste like mushy asparagus and can never be mistaken for beef broccoli.

I’m glad we’ve cleared up all these matters. Now I’m ready for those summer nights when a choir of either one or both can chirp me back to my misspent youth, suddenly lit by fireflies in the deep silence when crickets hesitate.