Category Archives: Community/Interconnectedness

Last night at our Prison Fellowship meeting, we talked a little about how those working within the prison system, the guards, the administrators, the C.O.s, are just as much prisoners as the incarcerated. Today in this week’s New Yorker, I read an article by David Remnick, “The Dissenters, which makes much the same point. Only in this case, it’s what’s happening to Israelis’ souls because of The Occupation. And just now, I signed a petition distributed by The Color of Change. If you choose to watch their featured video—which is graphic—you’ll no doubt let go of the differentiation between “the bad guys” and “the good guys.”

Oppression poisons the oppressed AND the oppressor.

Friday, a woman I know left a message on my answering machine: “Guess I haven’t been in touch for a while,” she said. “Sorry about that.”

The last time she and I had talked had been five months ago, shortly after my father died. I’d been bereft, of course.

“What can I do?” she’d asked.

“Check in with me from time to time,” I’d requested.

So today, I prayed over this complicated and frustrating relationship. (This is not the first bumpy incident between us. Oh, no.)

I’m stuck, I realized. And have no idea what to do or say other than same ol’—which hasn’t worked, isn’t working for me.

Now, usually, moments like these are pretty devastating, when I’m feeling helpless and, can-you-believe-it, humbled by my cluelessness. But today, for some reason, my sudden realization that I had no idea what to do was tremendously exciting!

So I’ll wait. I’ll “trust the process” as my dear friend Anne advises. In the fullness of time, Something will happen.

Today, after an embarrassingly easy Mohs procedure, I took a walk to Porter Square to get surgical dressing stuff for the incision and, why not, flowers. A beautiful, warm, sunny day, the florist had the door to her shop open it was so warm and the two of us oohed and aahed about the balmy weather.

“You’re going to get some customers,” I promised. “Because I’m walking home and I’ll be carrying these flowers and I’ll have a big ol’ smile on my face.”

A couple of doors away from the florist shop, bearing my cobalt-blue flowers—sorry, don’t recall their name—I walked past two young men in tee shirts who were sitting on their front porch, drinking beer.  Catching one guy’s eye, I grinned; he returned my grin with an all-incompassing nod.

You’re an old lady with a big bandage on your cheek and carrying flowers, that nod said. And I’m a young hipster. But, hey, isn’t this fantastic? We’re both so grateful for this day. And, hey, isn’t this fantastic? Neither of us have to say a word!

My most honest thinking often happens when I vacuum. So today, after a complicated and expensive and seemingly 4-eva session at my dentist’s to get a new crown over a broken tooth, in anticipation for some minor surgery tomorrow and therefore being out of commission for a couple of days, and knowing my beloved daughter and her husband arrive Friday, I cleaned.

Hey, I realized, vacuuming. I am in a really foul mood. And maybe need to just take care of myself before tomorrow’s Mohs procedure?

So tonight, instead of going to the prison circle/trying to be sociable but feeling ornery, after I finally could feel my upper lip (it had been completely numb for over 4 hours), I ate leftovers. Including Ben & Jerry’s chocolate brownie ice cream.

I believe I did everyone a favor by doing so.

Readers to this blog know that this month is all about spiritual exercises: letting go, letting  . . . Something. For readers not living in Red Sox Nation, today’s posting may seem, well, weird. But for those of us who know the answer to the question: “What is a directional turn signal?” (Answer: “A sign of weakness.”),* you’ll completely get it.

Yesterday was Truck Day**. So all over New England, there was a collective sigh: Together we let go of our fears that winter will never end. Although sometimes a stern, Puritanical bunch, at about noon yesterday we allowed ourselves to imagine a hot summer day at Fenway Park, cold (incredibly overpriced) drink in hand and, maybe, Jacoby just stole a base. Or something equally thrilling.

Aaaahh.

*[I think this comes from  a Dunkin’ Donuts ad. Not sure, though.]

**[Truck Day is when a green moving truck carrying Red Sox equipment leaves Yawkey Way for Fort Myers, Florida, the first visible sign in Boston that spring training has begun.]

Today walking up sleety, icy College Avenue, I saw an older woman coming in the opposite direction slip and fall maybe 20 feet from me.

“Are you okay?” I asked as we walked closer together.

She brushed off her pants. “Some of these people,” she said, her voice trailing off. She looked behind her to the spot where she’d fallen—right in front of a church.

I nodded in sympathy, then showed off my YakTrax. Still smarting, still angry, she was not impressed. That she could buy something that would allow her NOT to be victimized by poorly maintained sidewalks wasn’t appealing; she wanted some one to pay!

Mentally acknowledging her anger—heh, such homeowner neglect makes me furious, too—I shifted gears: “Do you live in this neighborhood?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Then why don’t you call 311 and complain? You can tell the operator what happened to you. And give the exact address.”

She smiled.

I have a feeling she’ll call.

Today, walking down a slushy, snowy, side street, I walked past a guy in his car trying to get out of his driveway. But he was stuck. What did he do? He kept gunning his engine—literally, spinning his wheels. And even though it was obvious that his just-overpower-the-problem approach was not working, he continued to push his foot on the accelerator. Like maybe something magic would happen the two-hundred-twelfth time he tried it that hadn’t happened before?

Where does such stubborn inability to accept the obvious come from? My guess is that guy—middle-aged, white, flabby—doesn’t  have much experience with problem-solving without some machine being involved. Something comes up, something needs to be fixed or changed, he uses a computer, grabs a power tool. And, I’m also guessing, that means of problem-solving works for him so much of the time, the idea that he should give up on the mighty power of his car engine and do something low-tech like shoveling or throwing sand under his tires simply doesn’t occur to him.

Or maybe he just loves the smell of burning rubber.

So,  a housebound friend, in between reading good books today, has been listening to the news. She reports that because of the unrest in Egypt et al, oil supplies might be compromised and global markets are already reacting, shall we say skittishly?

“I’m telling you this because I know you’re interested in peak oil,” she told me.

This is NOT the scenario the “We must prepare for the end of cheap oil!” Cassandras have envisioned (Big surprise.).

Given the potential scariness, here, let me offer a prayer: Should, indeed, the violent unrest in so much of the Mideast seriously disrupt oil production and supply, let this momentous moment be a teaching moment for this planet. A dress rehearsal without bloodshed.

Oh. And this: May this moment, when a resource we have so heavily relied upon may be at risk for God knows how long, allow us to think deeply about all the resources we have been blessed with. To think long and hard about, as Buckminster Fuller enjoined us, how “to do more with less.” Let us look at the ways we squander resources. And, yes, certainly, may war-waging be the first thing we look at.

So today I was invited on a tour of possible locations for  T stations when the extension to the existing Green Line subway comes through Somerville. What an enormous project! Standing on a couple of different bridges spanning the existing commuter rail lines—the light rail subway will eventually run alongside these tracks—everything covered with a couple of feet of snow, the enormity of the project, the complexity of meeting the needs of so many different and worthwhile groups and concerns seemed overwhelming.

I was there because, as a member of Somerville Climate Action, I’m supposed to raise the “What about. . . ?” questions re sustainability, open space, permeability, planning from a permaculture point of view. (Other partners on this ambitious Green Line Extension project include, for example, Somerville anti-poverty agencies who are looking at issues like gentrification: what happens to existing, low-income neighborhoods when, ohmygod, suddenly they become enormously attractive due to easy access to public transportation?)

Frankly, before this tour, I honestly didn’t think I knew enough to be able to put my 2 cents in. But I am slowly being schooled to think of systems, of patterns, of visioning what the world’s going to be like when we can’t simply hop into our cars anymore. I’m slowly thinking about linkage and neighborhoods and, this is my favorite, about the fact that this planning needs to take into consideration living things besides ourselves.

For example: Here’s this densely populated city, 79% paved over, and, from its earliest, earliest days, a city swayed by the needs of developers and business owners. (Translation: almost NO open space.)  But, as I recently learned, Somerville has a secret wilderness! It’s the neglected, no-man’s land alongside the two commuter rail lines running through our fair city. All kinds of wildlife live there.

So, on our tour, I mentioned that. In fact, I couldn’t shut up! I talked about construction along those tracks not happening when birds are nesting (Oy. ) And, mindful that post-cheap-oil, we need to be rethinking transportation BIG TIME,  I reminded my tour-mates that, indeed, a river does run through Somerville: the Mystic River. Why aren’t we also thinking about linkage with a really, really easy way to get from Somerville to downtown Boston? By boat! (Frankly, I think my ritual of reading a Dickens novel every winter is really helping me vision. There’s nothing like early 19th century England-—including industrialized, coal-burning, nightmarish London—to clarify the mind.)

As I sit here, I realize  there was so much more I could have been wondering aloud about: like where will the energy for these shiny new subway trains come from? Nuclear power? Coal?

“Hose that woman down,” my tour mates probably thought from time to time. (It’s been said before.) And I wouldn’t blame them.

But I am also deeply committed to the concept of synergy. So although I am way too effusive and mouthy, sometimes, I’m going to trust that the energy I’m bringing to a laudable project like this Green Line extension is easily matched by other passionate folks and that, together, we’re going to create something freakin’ awesome!

Like every other writer in America this week, I have something to say about Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. Well, to be precise, I have something to say about Chua and about Elizabeth Kolbert’s piece re “America’s Top Parent” in this week’s New Yorker. It’s not Chua’s stringent, some say abusive parenting  Kolbert first discusses. No. The New Yorker writer is worried that “Western mothers” just might be aiding and abetting our nation’s decline, pointing to international test scores as an alarming indicator that our self-esteem-focused child-rearing means our kids are being “out-educated.” (That’s Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education’s, characterization.)

No matter what their ethnicity, parents’ responsibility, I think, is to imagine the sort of world their children will be living in and to prepare their children, as best they can, to survive in that future. A wise parent these days, then, needs to spend some time wondering: what traits, what skills will my children need to thrive in the post-cheap-energy world they’re inheriting—poor darlings.

So I would advise Ms. Chua, who insisted her daughters receive only As in everything except gym and drama, to rethink that position. For the brave, new world her children will inhabit will rely heavily on collaboration and community-building and, no doubt, physical strength—skills taught in gym and drama. After a strenuous day of lifting and carrying and shlepping, of working in a garden, perhaps, or working with neighbors on some project, maybe knowing how to work as a team and Tiger Balm will be more to the point than test scores?

[*The heat of today’s post]