Patricia Wild

May 10, 2010: “We can do no great things, . . .

. . . only small things with great love.” —Mother Teresa—

Last week while watching my energetic grandson play in a Brooklyn playground, I happily sat on a park bench in dappled sunshine. A mother with two children joined me, a daughter about 4 and an infant asleep in his stroller. After greeting the trio, my attention returned to never-stopping Dmitri. Watching him dart from here to there, I nevertheless was aware of the 4-year-old’s persistent and nasty cough.

Her raggedy sounds put me in a terrible funk: I was immediately reminded of a dire article re an alarming rise in childhood asthma in the NE. The sounds of heavy traffic just a few feet away from the playground didn’t help my “Oh, God, we’re doomed—these precious children are doomed!” terror.

And given the weird weather we’ve had this spring, thinking her cough might just be allergies wasn’t all that comforting.

Confronting my pervading fears re global warming, climate disaster, etc, etc., and what life will be like for Dmitri’s generation, it actually helps to remember that as a young(er) mother, I’d had exactly the same heart-racing fears around nuclear proliferation. And to remember that amazing anti-nuke march in NYC when my daughter Hope was just a baby. (1981? 1982?)

And, thinking about Mother Teresa’s wise words, to contemplate what small, loving, life-affirming acts I can be doing in my small, precious part of this ailing planet.

May 6, 2010: A Spiritual Exercise

Yesterday, leaving NYC on a Peter Pan bus, heading home on I-95 N, a truck caught on fire just ahead of my bus. What a scene! Billowing smoke, screaming fire trucks somehow getting past the backed-up traffic and, in very short time, a complex, beautifully organized rerouting process involving stopping all the traffic on I-95 S and miles of backed-up cars and trucks and buses on I-95 N—like the one I was on—crossing the median strip to get on I-95 S—and, presumably, alternative routes. (And yet my bus eventually arrived in Boston only a half-hour late.)

Having just left the Big Apple, where every newspaper I saw screamed something about the Time Square (botched) bombing attempt, I immediately assumed that truck fire was a terrorist attack. How could I not?

Well, here’s how: all this month, I’m going to write about fear and its antidote: love.

Keep reading.

April 26, 2010: Working the Room

The last time I was in a hotel banquet room was precisely one year ago— at a writer’s conference in Boston; best-selling novelist Ann Patchett delivered the keynote address. Lunch had already been served so the wait staff stood at the edges of the huge ballroom while Patchett expounded to 300 or so rapt writers, editors, et al.

Although I’d really appreciated her message (Hey, writers: None of this waiting on the Muse stuff, please. Just plant your butt on a chair and WORK!), there was one very uncomfortable moment in that ballroom. When she’d heard that her first book was going to be published, she was truly excited, she told us, because now she could actually live! Because, you see, she’d been in a nowhere job, wasting her life, going nowhere waitressing. As I remember it, she’d denigrated waitressing at some length.

My friend Lynne nudged me, pointing to the (black and white) wait staff in their black and white uniforms standing nearby: “Wonder how they’re feeling about what she’s saying?” she’d asked rhetorically.

This past Saturday night, in a banquet room in the Richmond (VA) Marriot Hotel, I joined 80 or so wellwishers to celebrate Owen Cardwell’s 40th pastoral anniversary. When, during one of the songs performed by the talented LeRoix and Chantel Hampton and their band, I noticed one of the (all black) wait staff singing along, I remembered Ann Patchett’s insensitivity.

“So,” I thought. “When those serving and those being served are black [mostly], something different can happen, huh?”

But then it really got interesting: Soon after person after person had stood up to tell what “Pastor” had meant in their lives, Elder Jason Boswell, co-mc for the evening, was suddenly moved to directly address one of the waiters (Quakers and Baptists: we’re both sometimes just moved to do something!)

“You from New York?” he asked the burly waiter standing by the banquet room’s main door.

Nonplussed when the whole room went quiet, the guy said he was, then stated how moved he’d been to hear all the nice things people had to say about Dr. Cardwell.

Well!

Before you knew it, that waiter’s [I don’t know his name] standing in the front of the room being prayed over, the room’s cheering and clapping, and he’s publicly declaring that he’s accepting Christ into his life.

I’ll never know what accepting Christ means to that waiter (or myself, for that matter.) Or, over the long haul, what that moment will mean in his life.

But I sure know how moved I was when Jason broke through that them-us divide.

Beautiful!

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?