Patricia Wild

April 16, 2010: The Things We Carry

The Somerville Public Library received a grant this year to sponsor “Somerville Reads,” an opportunity for any city resident who can read, can read English, and wanted to, to read the same book: Tim O’Brien’s amazing The Things They Carried. The SPL also arranged a number of discussion groups, a community read-aloud, and a Vietnam film series. These have been happening all this month. Cool, huh?

Tuesday, I attended a well-attended discussion at Porter Square Books, a wonderful, independent bookstore which, to be technical, is in Cambridge. Sigh. (Like many Somervillians, I’m just a wee bit pissed that next-city-over Cambridge boosts so many bookstores; don’t get me started about its brand-new library.)

Much as I loved every minute of Tuesday’s discussion, ably moderated by writer Margot Livesey, much as I love, love, love Porter Square Books, I couldn’t help but feel sad that a discussion re a Vietnam novel couldn’t have happened on Somerville “soil.” Somerville lost so many, many soldiers in Vietnam; a disproportionate number. Soil. Isn’t war about soil?

O’Brien makes war and the men and women who fight it excruciatingly, you-can-smell-it-and-taste-it real. None of these abstractions about “courage” and “glory” and “sacrifice,” please. First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, the odious Azar, the soulful Kiowa; by the end of the book, we KNOW these men.

And here’s something we carry, after finishing O’Brien’s masterpiece. We read an April, 2010 account of American soldiers killing civilians, women and children, on a bus in Afghanistan—a bus!— and we know that men and women like Bowker and Cross and, yes, even Kiowa perpetuated that attack. (Which, apparently, happened in a thick fog. The fog of war?) We know how scared those soldiers are, how exhausted, how so often poorly commanded. We know for a fact that American soldiers have and can and will kill for revenge. We know that in war, horrendous mistakes happen.

We can’t condone such an attack, no way. But we get it.

April 10, 2010: Ain’t Necessarily So

In Way Opens, I talk about a much-needed history lesson on the back of a segregated bus in 1961. But, like everyone else, these Oh-My-Goodness/You-Mean-What-I’ve-Always-Thought-To-Be-True-Ain’t-Necessarily-So? lessons have continued. In an American History class in college a couple of years later, for example, I first learned how, in the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Quakers had been brutally persecuted by the Puritans.

Really? Who knew?

These lessons have taught me, like the bumper sticker advises, to “Question Authority.” Much as I fight it, however, like many white Americans, I frequently lapse into a blind acceptance of what the mainstream media, dominated by other white Americans, tell me.

But when The Boston Globe reported this week that Manny “Junior” daVeiga shot himself in the head while struggling with Boston police, even I, so often clueless, muttered, “Yeah, right.”

The Globe’s unequivocal support of the police and the Suffolk County district attorney’s version of what happened continues: In a classic blame-the-victim piece, the 19-year-old DaVeiga’s mental health history and his association with a Cape Verdean gang made the front page of the “Metro” section the day after his death; an ominous photo of a tanked-up Hummer now being used by the police in that neighborhood appeared the following day.

My dear friend Lynn Lazar is asking white people to stand in solidarity with the Cape Verdean community—bless her.

This blog’s my way to do so.

April 6, 2010: This one’s for you, Sarah “Reload” Palin

This month’s history theme came up because my dear friend Lissa gave me a copy of Richard J. Evans’ The Coming of the Third Reich (if you know Lissa, you know that such a book is a pretty typical offering. If you know me, you know how grateful I am to have a friend like Lissa.)

“Gripping,” “Comprehensive,” Magisterial,” “Definitive,” claims the paperback’s covers. All true.

That I was reading this gripping, . . . book the weekend Barney Frank and John Lewis were verbally abused made this page-turner even more compelling.

Today’s lesson: One reason the Nazis rose to power? A pervasive, ominous, well-publicized threat of violence. Yes, certainly the Brownshirts and the Stormtroopers outright attacked newspaper offices, union headquarters, assaulted Jews, university professors, Communists.

But for the exhausted Germans, debilitated by war and hyper-inflation and shame (I am becoming more and more fascinated by shame; more anon), that this violent, might-is-right movement (in its earliest days, Nazis called themselves a movement, not a political party) had been unleashed [great word, huh] was enough. Even if the Brownshirts hadn’t burned any books in your town, you were likely to think and act and vote as if they had.

So listen up, Sarah Palin. As a Quaker, I “utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons.” (That’s from our Peace Testimony which we announced “to the whole world” in 1661.) And now that I’m hip to how incredibly effective just threatening violence can be, well, I’m asking you to cut it out. Okay?

April 5, 2010: “Most things are colorful things—”*

The current controversy regarding the use of the word “Negro” on the US Census forms reminds me of an exchange I had with Chauncey Spencer, now deceased, in June of 2002. Son of Harlem Renaissance poet (and Lynchburg resident) Anne Spencer, ninety-six years old at the time of our meeting, Chauncey Spencer had been a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, our country’s first African-American fighter pilots. In fact, he’d help to found the Tuskegee Airmen (with a little help from a guy named Harry Truman).

” ‘People! We’re all just people!’ My mother always said that,” the World War II hero noted re whether or not to use the word “Black” or “African-American.”

The word “Negro” wasn’t mentioned—I think even to a ninety-six year old African-American, that word was passe.

Our conversation continued: I’d felt compelled to amend Anne Spencer’s statement.”White Americans need to understand more of African-Americans’ experience, first,” I said, before we can all agree that such words don’t matter. And the former Tuskegee Airman readily agreed.

* from “White Things” by Anne Spencer: Most things are colorful things—the sky, earth, and sea /Black men are most men; but the white are free!

April 1, 2010: “Good fences make. . .”

[Dedicated to Anne Kuckro, January 4, 1945 – March 10, 2010, whose dedication to Wethersfield CT’s historic preservation and to beauty and aesthetics were remarkable.]

This morning as I sat at my computer, I heard several voices in the side yard of the 6-unit condo building next door. A peek out my study window revealed two workmen carrying fencing poles, directed by the building’s often-gone-missing handyman. Next appeared sections of (unpainted, crudely-made) stockade fencing which were stacked against the Norway maples between our yards. An April Fool’s Joke?

You see, my husband and I had recently torn down the six-feet-tall fencing between our two yards (well, let’s be honest: He did. I just came up with the idea.) and now there’s a charming and graceful stone wall, maybe two feet tall, between us.

Like many writers, I often work in my pajamas and robe so in the time it took me to get showered and dressed in order to confront those bozos, I had worked myself up into a real hissy fit—AND was alternately appalled at how appalled I was.

The hissy fit went like this: “Those horrible people! How dare they! How can they erect a fence without even discussing it with us? And it’s so ugly. It’ll completely ruin that open and natural area. I know there was a break-in in that first-floor unit but, really, if those condo people want security, there are a zillion other ways to make that building more safe than by erecting an ugly, obstructing fence!”

The appalled dialogue went like this: “I live in a city. The economy is terrible. It’s elitist and irrational to care about how my side yard looks when people are out of work, losing their homes, etc, etc.”

But you know what? You can be passionate about social injustice AND care about how things look.

Finally dressed, I went outside. “Hi,” I said, trying to keep the shrill out my voice. “Where’s this fence going?”

“In the back,” the handyman told me, putting his hand on my (indignant) shoulder.

“Phew,” I replied. “I was afraid it was—”

“Oh, no, no no!” the handyman assured me. “I like your stone wall. Nice and open. Looks nice.”

Yes, it does. That stone wall, so very very New England, fits. And although erected this past fall, it’s already timeless. Historic.

March 29, 2010: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do. . .

. . . with your one wild and precious life?” [from “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver.]

Here’s how extraordinary Nesto Monell is: he’s now asking himself, “What am I supposed to be doing with my life, now that it has been given back to me? How do I give back?”

May all of us, transformed by Nesto and his story, listen to what the Universe is saying when we ask the same questions.

March 25, 2010: “Well-meaning but clueless”

Today’s posting, the hardest to write, coincides with an obituary for “Courtroom Tony” in today’s Boston Globe. For 25 years, the never-married Tony Torosian daily showed up in Boston courtrooms to watch and listen; “almost religiously devoted to observing the operations of this court,” Judge Mark L. Wolf noted in Tony’s obit. Courtroom drama is exactly that. So I completely understand Mr. Torosian’s devotion.

The six or seven Nesto supporters from Friends Meeting at Cambridge who religiously showed up at his trial were not there for the free show, however. Yes, of course we were there to show our support. But we were also—at least I was—white faces in that courtroom for the jury to see.

FYI: I have been a white face in a courtroom once before, four years ago, in a case of racial profiling and the Medford (MA) police. Embracing my “White Supremacy Culture” values [see p. 29 of Way Opens], i.e. “worshipping the written word,” I sat in the front row busily taking notes. By the third day, a defense attorney told me: “You being here makes a difference.”

Part of me celebrates that people from my faith community—and others—sat in that courtroom every day. (It’s important to note that many of those same people had also helped to raise the $50,000 bail money so that Nesto could get out of jail two years ago. Halleluiah!)

But. But: Why should our white faces make a difference? In the midst of all the joy that Nesto’s been acquitted lies profound sadness for me. How incredibly sad that who’s sitting in a courtroom should be a factor, a player, in our criminal justice system, a system that overwhelmingly convicts men and women of color.

It’s tricky. Yes, absolutely, white people should be showing up, should be witnessing, should be a presence in every courtroom in this country when the defendant’s race is, in some significant way, an issue.* But as exhilarating as it is to think, “My presence could possibly make a difference,” any of us who decide to engage in this kind of witnessing need to be doing from a very deep, profound, humble, SAD place. Moment by moment we need to remind ourselves that we live in a country when, so painfully often, it is only when white people become engaged that things change.

That sucks.

*******************

*I hope it’s obvious that I’m NOT talking about letting someone off because they’re black. But given the absolutely appalling behavior last weekend by the Tea Party crazies, thought I’d be really, really explicit.

March 22, 2010: “What else can I do?”

Saturday, March 19, 2010, Codman Square’s Great Hall:

Opening Night for “And Still We Rise” and the echoing hall—a former library— slowly filled. Now in its fifth season, “And Still We Rise” offers interwoven, autobiographical vignettes movingly performed by formerly incarcerated men and women. Genevor Monell, Nesto’s mother, was there.

Since I hadn’t seen her since the trial—and hadn’t been able to attend the last day—I was delighted to see her: “I heard you were dancing,” I said, hugging her.

“Yes, I was,” she beamed. “What else can I do?”

Here’s what Genevor did—and continues to do:

She raised a wonderful son. (After the trial, one of the jurors praised Nesto’s mother for doing such a good job.)

She’s working on behalf of other mothers, other sons caught up in this racist criminal justice system and the pain of loss.

She tirelessly told her son’s story. (Friends Meeting at Cambridge’s Lynn Lazar, who’d been volunteering at the same organizations where Genevor worked, after hearing Genevor’s story, had invited Genevor to speak at FMC)

When, after a group of Friends Meeting at Cambridge volunteered to help, Genevor accepted that help—even though she knew that alliances with well-meaning but often clueless white people are never, ever easy.

She prayed.

She was a powerful, loving presence every day at her son’s trial.

When her son was found not guilty, she danced!

But, as the stories the “ASWR” troupe performed that night so poignantly illustrate, racism and poverty and messed-up family dynamics and addiction and mental illness form “The Jail Trail.”* How many families of color are caught up in that web? Even the strongest and most together mothers find themselves asking, “What else can I do?”

But, I think, Genevor’s question on Opening Night was not about that ongoing sense of futility but, rather: In the face of the unbelievable, when justice was served, and a good thing happened to a good person, what choice do I have but to dance?!

* A phrase coined by Dr. Virgil Wood, Lynchburg, VA’s foremost civil rights leader. (He would add “inferior schools,” too.)

March 17, 2010: A Riff/Rant re “Government”

Joseph Krowski, Nesto’s attorney, is very, very good at what he does. And a huge part of what he does, i.e. defend people, is to be constantly aware of one, simple, fundamental question: How does this [whatever it is] play to the jury?

So when, as happened consistently, he’d gently rest one suited arm on Nesto’s suited arm as they conferred—heck, the way he did consistently seek Nesto’s opinion during the trial, sent a very powerful message. (When I’d complimented him on this collegial/respectful body-language communication, he’d said, seemingly surprised I’d be mentioning it, “It’s genuine.” I have NO doubt that’s true.)

And when, in his opening remarks, he’d used the word “government” as shorthand for: The prosecutor/assistant DA/Bristol County/Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Joseph Krowski knew exactly what he was doing.

The Riff:

“Government”: Lots of fear attached to that word. Distrust, too. Powerlessness? Big time. And, I’m thinking, a sense that “government” is lying through its collective shiny-white teeth (paid for by OUR tax dollars?) about, well, no one’s quite sure because “government” ain’t sayin’.

So to associate all those negative feelings with the prosecution/the case against Nesto was masterful.

The Rant:

As noted in a previous blog, Nesto’s trial felt right-smack-dab Present, suspended in the middle of a fading Past and a fast-approaching Future, as represented by the decrepit courtroom and listening to a new courthouse being built just feet away.

A new courthouse, perhaps more energy-efficient, certainly with an electrical system that won’t overheat the court reporter’s computer (this happened on the third day) is one thing. One version of the Future.

But, when most people think about what’s coming down the Pike, their heart-rate spikes. I firmly believe that our collective sense that government “is lying through its collective shiny-white teeth (paid for by OUR tax dollars?) about, well, no one’s quite sure because “government” ain’t sayin’ ” is about our dread of the future. (And why, in large part, Scott Brown was elected, in my humble [?] opinion).

I firmly believe that all of us intuitively know that profound changes are happening. We intuitively know that those in power aren’t telling us the Whole Story (like about the FACT that the world’s running out of oil, for example.)

To the extent that the jury was sensing these profound changes and conflating the powers-that-be-who-ain’t-tellin’ with the-powers-that-be bringing a case against Nesto Monell: Hey! It worked!

Now, what?

March 15, 2010: A word or two about the police

It wasn’t until Day 3 of Nesto’s trial that one huge aspect of this trial became clear: Finding those 5 kilos of coke in Nesto’s house was a big, big deal to the Taunton police. A “once in a career seizure,” as Dennis Ledo, from New Bedford’s crime unit put it.

Oh. (Silly me; I thought such an amount to be, you know, routine.)

So. Besides the usual possibility that the police might have misinterpreted “the pieces of the puzzle,” as Taunton police officer Troy Medeiros put it, and the usual possibility of racial profiling, Nesto’s case was also about a BIG Deal Seizure. That must have been pretty exciting!

Oh.

And, unfortunately, this must be said: How could I sit in that shabby courtroom and NOT wonder if, given Bedford County’s rampant drug economy, that police corruption might not be part of The Big (and VERY exciting) Picture, too?

Oh, yeah: This, too: Those drugs were discovered 5 years ago. So when the very first witness, Taunton police officer Deborah Lavoie, admitted she was a bit hazy on what had happened on March 31, 2005, that made perfect sense.

Oh, dear.

To learn more about The War on Drugs and a much-needed perspective from former police officers, I urge you to check out Law Enforcement Against Prohibition’s website: http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php (LEAP can also be found in Links)

March 12, 2010: Who IS Nesto Monell?

[Cut and pasted from www.weallbe.blogspot.com/2008/05/american-hero-needs-your-helpsupport.html, posted May 14, 2008]

“They say the time when an inmate awaits trial is a greater period of fear and uncertainty than the actual prison sentence. It is hard for the mind to settle down because it doesn’t know what it is settling down to. In my case, the future can hold the possibility of merely a few months in jail or several years. How can I make plans? How do I dare to hope?”

—Lennie Spitale

I’ve been in this concentration camp for 3 years, 1 month. I know who I was, I also know who I am going to be, it’s very hard to figure out who I am right now. So when I was asked to write about myself, I found myself frozen with pen in hand.I have come to a determination: who I was, was too long ago, who I will be is still undetermined, and who I am now is a mental volleyball in a championship tournament.It’s very hard to describe who I am without addressing some facts of the case without sort of analyzing the case. Let’s face it though, I’ve been in front of at least 6 judges, 5 lawyers, I’ve represented myself, had 5 bail hearings officially and unofficially, I’ve personally addressed a judge 3 times in open court, personally wrote to two judges, wrote to the prosecutor twice, have had 3 different prosecutors (DA’s), hundreds of pages of testimony collected, hundreds of pages of testimony thrown out, and that’s just the basics.

Analysis: there are two rifles, $110,000.00 worth of drugs, three different fingerprints, a house under renovation that was also for sale, 4 years in the army, weeks after an honorable discharge, 3 years, 28 days and counting, 22 ½ hours a day locked in a cell, and a trial 90 days away (date finally set as of April 08).

Who am I? I’m Nesto Monell, 28 years old, drinks Budweiser, generally watches TV only on Super bowl, I’ve been in trouble as a teen (nothing serious), graduated Bristol Plymouth Tech, took mechanical/architectural drafting, took auto body my last year, have had four car accidents (one my fault), worked since age 15 (had to get work permit because of labor laws), worked through my four years of high school, got my license at age 16 ½.

I’ve had a few long term (over 3 years) relationships with great positive women, I’ve aspired to be an architect, then an auto body technician, and other occupations. I’ve been rude to my parents, stayed out late nights without permission, been to summer school twice in my life, got a skip (skipped a grade) once (then sent back), been to numerous private Christian schools (last one being 8th grade), I’ve been in fights, favorite sport is swimming, attended New England Tech then dropped out, joined the Army, hated jumping out of planes and secretly planned to stop (but turned out to love it after about the tenth time), started smoking cigarettes in 2001 at an Army school (yes, my mother hates it). I’ve attended church while on my own, love my sister and brothers, helped raise them, signed up for the Army with my mother, officially made an oath for active duty on my long term girlfriend’s birthday (then had to announce to her family that I was leaving in 5 weeks for four years—I’m a jerk, I know), got dumped while in Afghanistan, owned a few cars, first car was a 1981, ran a business from my mom’s garage (traveling auto body tech), rented a building for my business but the business failed after a year. I was 19.

I’ve had credit card debt (debt free in 2003), spent my vacations with my family, met some good friends, been a victim of fraud by credit scams, ripped off by my life insurance company, went to college in the Army, worked on cars (my hobby) on the weekends for beer and expenses (Army), worked at a gym (Army), learned my girlfriend was cheating, cried at times, been to Myrtle Beach, Virginia, Florida, Georgia, Germany, New York, South Carolina, drove thousands of miles, bought a ’95 mustang (my dream car) at age 23, been to two weddings, 5 retirement parties, two college graduations, won $2,000.00 on a scratch ticket, and I did drink while underage… I can go on.

What I am not:

A drug dealer, the owner of a hundred grand in drugs, owner of any rifles (they do have serial #s), or the owner of the three fingerprints that were lifted from the drugs. The man I knew for only three weeks was not a close friend, I’m not pleading guilty, and I don’t need help to plead guilty to a sentence of 15 years, 10 years, or 5 years. No deals period.

March 11, 2010: “So what happened, exactly?”

Ahh, but recounting what happened is never exact, now, is it. Everyone knows this. At this very moment, in courtrooms around the country, juries and judges are listening for The Truth in the stories told by witnesses, family members, the police, etc.

God bless them.

My account re the night of March 31, 2005 will be just as sloppy, subjective, and just plain wrong in spots as the sworn testimony those juries and judges are listening to:

In February of 2005, having recently been honorably discharged from the army (he’d served in Afghanistan), Nesto Monell came home to discover that, after pipes had burst, his family had moved from their Taunton, MA home. Indeed, the seriously-damaged house was for sale. A self-starter and “between jobs,” so to speak, the twenty-five year old decided to renovate the house himself.

After some false starts and not much progress, Nesto’s ” friend,” who’d been letting Nesto sleep on his couch, suggested the “help” of 2 well-connected guys (WCGs) who owned a lot of property in the Taunton area so had connections with construction workers.[Quotation marks certainly help my take on this story, don’t they!]

On the evening of March 31, Nesto had been drinking beer and playing pool when he received a phone call from one of the WCGs, asking him if he planned to come by the house. Nesto said no. Later that night, driving past his house, he sees all the lights on and cars in the driveway.

What the hell?

So he goes into his house and tries to talk to one of the WCGs but he’s on his cell. Frustrated, Nesto calls his girlfriend but, as he’s talking to her, suddenly two men (three men? I was never sure) in hoodies burst into the room with guns and handcuffs. Nesto keeps his cell phone on, his girlfriend hears everything, she calls the police. Nesto is handcuffed, forced to the floor, but decides that “if I’m going to be killed, I don’t want to be on the floor,” and, in fact, manages to escape. Still handcuffed, he runs through the neighborhood until, some time later, circles back to see his house surrounded by police cars. Handcuffed, “a black man,” as one policeman described him, Nesto walks up to a policeman, asks what’s happening, says “That’s my house,” and is promptly arrested. You see, when the police responded to the home invasion call from Nesto’s girlfriend, they’d found 5 kilos of coke and several guns, including an AK 47.

Yikes.