Author Archives: Patricia Wild

October 25, 2012: “Don’t Blame Me . . . “

So, here’s the first op-ed piece I submitted to The Boston Globe:

“Don’t Blame Me . . . ”

            Remember those heady, “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts” days? Remember, post Watergate, post Nixon’s cringe-worthy “I am not a crook,” how proud we were to tell the world we lived in the only state Tricky Dick didn’t win in 1972? That George McGovern, principled, fierce opponent to the Vietnam war and Nixon’s Democratic opponent, died on Sunday at the age of ninety recalls those smug bumper stickers—when hailing from Massachusetts was something to brag about.

These days? Not so much. Sure, MA progressives can crow about our same-sex marriage first-state-in-the-nation record. And we’re tickled pink that Massachusetts’ health care insurance reform law (aka as Romneycare until it wasn’t) inspired Obamacare. But a recent, shameful scandal worthy of Watergate sullies our state’s we’re-not quite-the-rest-of-you reputation and may ultimately prove that, indeed, Massachusetts is exactly like Texas or Louisiana.

This is not about our hapless, 69—93 Red Sox. This is not about The Whitey Bulger Affair (The title of a 2004 MA House Committee on Government Reform report, “Everything Secret Degenerates: The FBI’s Use of Murderers as Informants” perfectly sums up that scandal.) This is about our very own drug lab scandal.

60,000 tainted samples, 34,000 affected cases; such numbers grant First Class scandal status. No one yet knows the full impact of this criminal justice nightmare yet one thing already seems clear: thousands of cases will be thrown out and thousands of inmates will be released. So re-entry, i.e. finding an affordable place to live in a safe neighborhood, a decent job, and, if applicable, staying clean and sober, never easy in the past, just got that much harder for all of Massachusetts’ former inmates.

Early days, as this scandal unfolded, it was tempting to wonder: “Why should I care? I don’t deal drugs. Neither do my friends. What’s this got to do with me?” When a possible link between a drug lab employee and a Norfolk County prosecutor surfaced, however, this scandal became everyone’s story. Prosecutors are a key part of our criminal justice system. Even the whisper that the Bay State’s system has been co-opted affects us all.

A 2009 Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP) study explains why:  “Prosecutorial misconduct is an important issue for us as a society, regardless of the guilt or innocence of the criminal defendants involved in the individual cases. Prosecutorial misconduct fundamentally perverts the course of justice and costs taxpayers millions of dollars in protracted litigation.”

Further, The NCIP report stated: “Those empowered to address the problem—California state and federal courts, prosecutors and the California State Bar—repeatedly fail to take meaningful action. Courts fail to report prosecutorial misconduct (despite having a statuary obligation to do so), prosecutors deny that it occurred, and the California State bar almost never disciplines it.”

In their July 2, 2012 report, “Wrongful Conviction and Prosecutorial Misconduct,” John Floyd and Billy Sinclair concluded: “We strongly suspect these alarming NCIP findings, suggesting the lack of disciplinary action in cases of prosecutorial misconduct, will be similar in the remaining 49 states.” Like Texas. Louisiana. Massachusetts.

Every day, of course, from the Berkshire Superior Court to the Falmouth District Court, honorable prosecutors ably perform their jobs. But this possible link between Annie Dookhan, who allegedly tainted those 60,000 samples and George Papachristos, who has recently resigned, is a flashing red light.

Let’s not ignore it. Let’s contact Attorney General Martha Coakley and David E. Meier, appointed by Governor Patrick to investigate this scandal, and let them know that we demand a thorough and rigorous investigation.

October 16, 2012: How do we say “NO!”?

On the other side of way too much busyness—life doesn’t string out our Must Dos over a reasonable amount of time, does it—and feelin’ good. Feeling present. Feeling liberated from those Must Dos (until a bunch of them gang up on me, again.)

So able to sit and to be and to ponder.

Here’s a sampling of what’s now rattling around my less-stressed-out mind:

First, the promised report re sharing NO! with Friends Meeting at Cambridge children. It didn’t quite happen. Or should I say, MY plans didn’t happen.

What did happen was that I had a brief interaction with 3 JH/HS students re the upcoming Textron meeting for worship. And one young man pushed back, declaring that 60 or 70 Quakers sitting in silence outside a factory that produces cluster bombs “a political demonstration.” Hmm. THEN he said, in effect, “And, besides, that’s those people’s job.” Double hmmm.

What would you have said to him?

Second: Vis a vis gearing up to submit op-ed pieces (one of the inconveniently-timed but amazing things I did this past weekend was to attend an all-day symposium at Simmons given by the Op-Ed Project), am pondering a bunch of stuff! For starters, “Do I, a white, privileged woman, have the cred to write about our racist, immoral criminal justice system? How do I, in 750 words, say ‘NO!’ to our status quo Tough on Crime mentality?”

Now do you see why I need some time to wade through such questions?

 

October 12, 2012: NO!

Next Sunday, Friends Meeting at Cambridge will be worshiping on the sidewalk in front of the Textron plant—they make cluster bombs—in Burlington, MA. Knee to knee, we will conduct a meeting for worship on folding chairs and under the sky.

In order to prepare Meeting’s children for this, I plan to read David McPhail’s NO! this Sunday.

Although I think this book is pretty amazing (I’ll blog how it was received on Monday), something that a young F/friend said years ago seems a better take: Nora, maybe 5 or 6 at the time, her big sister, her mother, my three daughters and I had been standing silently on Boston Common on a chilly, damp Good Friday as participants of FMC’s yearly Good Friday vigil. All five daughters under the age of ten, after a couple of hours, the two moms had whispered that our daughters’ silent participation definitely needed to rewarded. So we left.

Crossing Tremont Street in search of hot chocolate or some other treat, Nora had something to say: “My witness isn’t against war,” she announced. “It’s for peace!”

So, yes: No!

And, better: Yes! Yes!

 

September 24, 2012: What was left out:

For the past 3 days, The Boston Globe has featured Carolyn Arond’s obituary.

But here’s a critically important fact about this amazing woman’s life The Globe  left out:

“Carolyn was diagnosed with ALS last year. Her commitment to a message of peace continued strong even as she faced this difficult challenge. Carolyn believed that her exposure to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War had caused her to develop ALS.” (from the program for Carolyn’s Standing-Room-Only memorial, held with love and reverence and many, many tears at Friends Meeting at Cambridge on Saturday.)

Like those brave little blue signs on front lawns say: “War is not the answer.”

 

 

September 17, 2012: “What We Hold On To”

As perhaps noted previously, I am in waiting mode. I’ve finished a couple of big writing projects and now must wait for the recipients of numerous queries* to respond.

Waiting’s hard.

So, inspired by Hare With Amber Eyes, I’ve begun a research project re three Chinese rice-paper paintings I’ve inherited. Apparently my great, great aunt, Isabella Faulkner Ranlett, bought them—maybe in Shanhai?—in the mid-eighteen-hundreds while accompanying her husband, Captain Charles Ranlett, Jr., captain of the clipper ship “Surprise.”

Lots to discover. Here’s just one thing of hundreds that intrigues me. Why did “Belle” buy a painting of an opium den?

But, also, lots to ponder. Like this: Given that Belle was the sister of my great-great grandmother, Amy Faulkner Wild, my claim to these paintings seems a little tenuous. How did they end up on MY wall?More than that, these beautiful artifacts are still in my family’s possession. Not sold.

That this is true  is both cause for deep gratitude and cause for curiosity: What art, what artifacts, what treasures hang on the walls of my neighbors? What things of beauty had been passed down to them, brought to Somerville from, say, El Salvador, Eritrea, Iraq? Perhaps lovingly wrapped and carried in luggage because of dire circumstances? And yet, despite hardships and economic setbacks, held on to. Kept. Treasured.

So am mulling this over with the hopes that something will jell. Because how cool would it to figure this out in time to apply for a Somerville Arts Council LCC Grant? (Deadline: October 15th.) An interactive exhibit at the Somerville Museum, maybe?

Hmm.

* an e-mail or letter sent to an agent or theater company or publishing firm saying, essentially, “I’ve written something you’re gonna LOVE! Contact me.”

September 10, 2012: “Are You Better Off Than You Were 4 Years Ago?”

It’s the wrong question.

Or, rather, it’s the wrong question if asked as a referendum re Obama.

Is Obama responsible for Citizens United? No.

Is he responsible for the NRA’s death-grip on Congress? No.

The Kardashians? Or weird and terrifying weather? No.

Racism? And how it impacts our criminal justice system? (In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander’s analysis re Obama’s constraints made me sit up and pay attention.)

That my beloved father died two years ago? C’mon!

Indeed, I heard in Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention a poignant reminder: “Hey! I’m the president. Not God.”

Here, in Bubbleland,* I feel God/Spirit moving. The real God—who shakes and moves through us. Whose love means that, yes, over the past four years my life HAS become better:

My family thrives. Which is another way to say: Grace happens.

My (diverse, integrated) neighborhood’s better connected—we even have young families living on the street, now. (How clear is that of God’s blessing? That parents have chosen to raise their children, here!) And one small action, a raised-bed vegetable garden in a neighbor’s back yard (we have little sun in our own), points the way to other shared, sustainable neighborhood initiatives.

Bubbletown streets are filled with bikes and hybrids, now; each a reassurance that, yes, the paradigm is shifting.

And speaking of paradigms, I sense that, WAY too slowly, the “Get tough on crime” mindset is morphing. And I take strength from my black and brown brothers and sisters who know, in a way that I never will know, that God’s time in not human time. And, like they have been doing/continue to do, to “hold on.” And, like them, keep showing up, keep praying.

More and more over the past four years I feel, my meeting’s been asking Spirit: What is asked of us? And listening for answers.

So: How does the truth Prosper among you?

 

* Bubbleland: My tiny Somerville/Cambridge world.

 

September 6, 2012: The opposite of love is . . .

. . . Fear.

That came to me so powerfully at meeting this week.

It’s so easy to “feel the love” when I’m in worship, with my family, in community, sitting around the flickering candles of our Wednesday evening circle for “the formerly incarcerated and those who care about them.”

But . . . (Don’t even have to finish that sentence, do I?!)

Just finished the “astonishing” The Hare with Amber Eyes , a memoir about the Ephrussi family. But also about netsuke—tiny, exquisite Japanese carvings once used as toggles. So have been thinking about carrying in my pocket/on my person some thing that I can touch (the author of The Hare with Amber Eyes, Edmund De Waal, is a potter and has lots to say about touching things as a way of learning) to, ahem, feel the love. To be  sustained and comforted when I find myself in that scary and dark valley.

Sure beats a hairshirt!

 

 

Labor Day, 2012: Underneath It All

Remember when Clinton was asked, “Boxers or briefs?”

Why do I ask?

Because yesterday, after meeting for worship, as I was walking down Brattle Street towards Harvard Square, a group of college-aged Mormon women passed me on the sidewalk. (There is a Mormon church directly across the Longfellow green from Friends Meeting at Cambridge— so Quakers and LDS-ers often find ourselves in the same place at the same time.) Struggling, as I do these days, with super-anxiety about the election, their high-heels, lots of make-up, bouncy-curled ‘dos and Sunday-best clothes depressed me.

Tagging along behind them,  smelling their perfume, I found myself thinking some very dark, very weird stuff. (Because that’s how anxiety works.) “Oh, dear!” I thought, “getting all gussied up like that looks like fun. Appealing.” ( I suspect part of me was just plain jealous they were tripping down Cambridge’s notoriously treacherous sidewalk in heels, no problem!)

And, in that weird, crazy place I immediately connected that appeal, such a precious commodity these days, with the presidential race and wondered: “Is this how Romney wins? He taps into this let’s play dress-up for real thing?”

Crazy, right? But it gets worse. Because I live in this wonderful Somerville/Cambridge Bubble where most people don’t dress like they’re going to the most fancy wedding in their whole lives just to go to church, I couldn’t even trust myself to say: C’mon, Patricia! Because I KNOW I don’t really understand what going on in, say, Ohio. (Just to mention a critically important, must-win-to-win state.) I really don’t know how the sight of that gaggle of gussied-up women would play in Cincinnati or Cleveland.

But just as I was, once again, sinking into “Oh, God, we’re doomed and I have to move to Canada,” a tattooed guy on a bike whisked past. A tattooed angel. Because at the sight of him I remembered: Oh, right! Under those fancy clothes those women are wearing Mormon underwear!

Now I have no intention of getting all snarky about “temple garments.” I have no intention of making fun of Mormons. What I want to do is this: Remind myself, as I was reminded, yesterday, remind YOU that, yes, women have come a long way, baby. We can wear our underwear on the outside if we so choose (thanks, Madonna!).

That verb “choose”? It’s ours.

So I’m trusting that on November 6th, a significant percentage women of this country, with or without make-up or high heels, will make the right choice.

 

 

August 30, 2012: Oh! So THIS is what all the fuss is about?!

We absorb, we learn in so many ways.

At a recent Meeting for Theism with Attention to Jesus (at Friends Meeting at Cambridge), our attention centered on the Loaves and Fishes passage. Skillfully led by Chris Jorgenson*, we interacted with chapter and verse in a variety of modalities. We listened. We read. We meditated. We spoke. (We might have written but didn’t have time.) And we stood to offer a gesture illustrating a favorite verse; in other words, we embodied.

Embodiment. Have been thinking about that. So wanted to post this:

I was raised a Unitarian-Universalist—which means that in Sunday School and in sermons, Jesus always seemed to get lumped together with Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr. and other “great prophets.” The Bible, I recall being taught, was a crudely translated, politicized text and not to be trusted. Depictions of Jesus in art and movies or plays seemed to depict either a pretty/ pretty simpy guy or gruesome and bloody.

So although I now embrace Jesus’s teachings—thank you, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time—I’ve spent years not getting Jesus!

Until I met Ralph Greene.

The occasion? He was the leader at a NEYM workshop entitled “Civil/Revolutionary Strife and Radical Witness.” More and more pulled to radical witness but not knowing a thing about Ralph Greene, I signed up.

So did over 30 other people! Which completely threw our “befuddled and tongue-tied” leader! (Who then proceeded, over 2 days, to give an excellent presentation on Benjamin Lay, Ralph Sandiford and William Hunt.)

Let me be clear: I’m NOT saying this elderly, Quaker pastor from Downeast Maine is Jesus Christ. I’m saying that for me, this gentle and kind man so embodies that love and compassion girding Christianity that for the first time in my life, I got all that devotion to Jesus Christ! I’m saying that the moment this thin, tall, slightly stooped guy in a baseball cap and chinos walked in the room I felt that love. I experienced a life spent in service of the ideal: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

And, I guess I’m saying, to strive to embody such love as we cheerfully and gently walk over the earth just might be the most radical act of all!

*Much-loved member of FMC, former coordinator for youth programs for New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM), Alternatives to Violence trainer; the list goes on and. . .

August 16, 2012: “To Friends Everywhere” (Continued)

[And welcome to the world, Lilian Jane Sanchez!]

When Quakers gather for their yearly, regional gathering, they collectively write an “epistle” which sums up what they’d done in their time together. So as New England’s yearly gathering progressed, epistles from yearly meetings from around the world were read aloud. Which always began: “To Friends everywhere.”

This year, the epistle from Cuban YM was read aloud by one of the visiting Friends from Cuba. (In Spanish, of course. We heard and sang many tongues at YM) And I had a little frisson I’d like to post:

I GOT our global, Quaker connection. I got our solidarity with the Quakers of Africa, of Australia, of Indiana;  Everywhere! I GOT that all over the world, people as hard-working and centered as the people surrounding me in a too-cold auditorium in a college in Rhode Island work just as hard on issues of peace, social justice, interrupting racism, healing this broken planet.

It’s so easy to feel overwhelmed. it’s so easy to wonder, “What can I do?” It’s so easy to think that Quaker witness is well-meaning but kind of pathetic.

And it’s so wonderful to FEEL our collective strength!

August 14, 2012: “To Friends Everywhere” (Introduction)

Hit the ground running since returning from this year’s New England Yearly Meeting (the annual, early-August, week-long gathering of Quakers from all six New England states.) A weekend spent with visiting, beloved grandchildren—and their equally cherished parents, a very successful but exhausting block party on Saturday (I was one of the organizers), a family-strong effort on Sunday to help my daughter Hope and her husband, Kristian, ready their house for their just-about-due baby and, tragically, yesterday, learning that a wonderful young man from our weekly sharing circle had died from a bee sting so, stunned and grief-stricken, attending his wake and prayer service last night.

God!

So much as I’d hoped to write about a moment at YM, simply haven’t had time. Or energy.

But as one line from “Swimming to the Other Side” says (a song we sang a lot at YM):  “I’m preparing to do my part.”

And I THINK my part is, among other things, to post at this site.