Community/Interconnectedness – Page 21

October 31, 2009: BOO!

Here’s an e-mail I just sent to the Boston Globe:

In its October 31st “Nation” section, the Boston Globe has chosen to publish not, not two, but three articles concerning Muslims: “Mosque members deny FBI claims,” “Accused Muslim says spouse abusive,” and “Iraqi father held in attack on woman.” Three articles out of the six is hardly representational of our nation. Were you just not paying attention? Or is it the Globe’s policy to further complicate the already fraught relationship between Muslims and members of other religious denominations?

October 21, 2009: “. . . fear, itself.”

Last night my husband and I were walking down Park Street when, half a block in front of us, lights flashed, a warning bell sounded, and the crossing gates descended, signaling the approach of a commuter train. Which almost immediately roared past, furiously blasting its horn again and again.

“But they never blow their whistle here,” David commented.

“So you didn’t see that woman duck under the gates and cross the tracks?” He hadn’t.

“Those whistles were about her, I’ll bet. And how angry she made that engineer.”

Angry. And scared.

Like so many of us right now. And accounts for, I think, “our society’s open welcome of public displays of hatred,” as a letter -to -the- editor writer noted in this morning’s Boston Globe.

October 14, 2009: “A thing of beauty. . . “

Years ago at a wedding reception at Cambridge Meeting, I met a man from Philadelphia who, apparently, lived in a recently gentrified neighborhood. He talked about his neighborhood association deciding to hang planters from the street lights on his block. “God, no!” he told the association. “I mean, why don’t you just hang out a sign saying, ‘Yuppies live here. Please come rob us.’ !”

I thought of that man yesterday as I walked home from Ricky’s, a nursery/garden center right smack dab in the center of bustling Union Square, cradling a big, gorgeous pot of flame-colored mums. Living, as I do, in a semi-gentrified neighborhood (i.e. with people like me side by side with people out of work or working several jobs just to get by) and aware, as we all are, that although the recession abates, unacceptably high unemployment stubbornly continues, what was I doing? Surely decorating my front porch with a $9 pot of flowers both flaunts my financial ease AND begs to be ripped off.

But just before I got home, I passed a man who, judging from his accent, his clothing, and his skin color, might very well be either out of work or working several jobs to get by (Of course I could be wrong and hope I am). When he saw those flowers he smiled broadly: “Oh! How beautiful!”

Later, yesterday, I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate, give a lecture at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre (when in an expansive mood, I consider Harvard’s campus part of my neighborhood, too.) In passing, Pamuk said something to the effect that novels set in small villages in non-Western countries show us that characters living in such places, people of color, perhaps, Muslim, perhaps, certainly people who haven’t read many books, are as “deep” as Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary and Oliver Twist. (I hope I understood him correctly!)

As John Keats reminds us:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:*

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

[*See “Bright Star” —it’s quite as beautiful as the mums on my front porch.]

August 3, 2009: Johanna Appleseed

Saturday, a glorious summer day, I was picking up windfall apples in the front yard when a scruffy-looking guy walked by.”You Johnny Appleseed?” he asked. Wise guy responses much appreciated in these parts, I quickly corrected him: “Johanna Appleseed,” I replied. (He chuckled.)

That reminder of the plucky, selfless JA ( we’re talking the Walt Disney version, here, not the Michael Pollan account) was timely: My image for getting Way Opens into people’s hands has resembled the JA myth. You know, traveling around, talking to people about race and white privilege (there might be a wee bit of another John, John Woolman, wrapped up in my mental image), selling my book when appropriate but giving it away, too; getting the word out.

Timely, too, because the next day (yesterday) I was to give a reading at New England Yearly Meeting with Donna McDaniel, co-author with Vanessa Julye of the amazing Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship: Quakers, African Americans, and the Myth of Racial Justice. How exciting to sow seeds among Quakers, my targeted audience, alongside the wise and deeply committed anti-racist Donna!

But Donna called Sunday morning to report that because of SO MANY YM activities going on, a notice for our reading hadn’t made it into the daily announcement sheet. So only a handful of people attended our half-hour presentation. Since David and I had driven down to Smithfield, Rhode island, I might have been upset at this small turnout. But I wasn’t and am not.

Here’s why:

It is always a pleasure to spend time with Donna and to hear her take on how the world really works.

The people who did come were lovely: engaged, open, attentive.

It is always good to be reminded how busy and distracted Quakers (aka my targeted audience) are.

Although I did deliver books to the YM bookstore, expending that gas to get to and from Bryant College for so brief and scantily attended an event emphasized something I’ve been lackadaisically pursuing: an online, interactive expansion to this website. Stay tuned.

About those windfalls: Despite wind, rain, and squirrels knocking down bushels of apples (or so it seems), there is still plenty of fruit on our tree. Since there were hardly any blossoms on the tree this wet, cold spring, that there are ANY apples seems a minor miracle. A Johanna Appleseed wannabe, I need to be reminded of Nature’s mystery, its bountifulness, its resiliency, and how, contrary to the biblical enjoiner, seeds cast on rocky soil actually do sometimes germinate—and apples somehow grow unexpectedly.

July 24, 2009: Skip Gates, local resilience

Since every Greater-Boston commentator, black and white, is weighing in on the recent Skip Gates incident, why should I be any different?

Because I’m presently hyper-aware of nothing less than ENORMOUS COLLECTIVE VULNERABILTY* I’ll be brief: To arrest Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. on his own porch because the Harvard scholar, possibly exhausted and certainly pissed, refused to kowtow to a police officer, was racially motivated. And maybe, although Gates’ friends claim otherwise, the possibly exhausted and certainly pissed prof pushed another button belonging to a white, working class Cambridge cop by being indignant—perhaps by being haughtily, righteously indignant: “Do you know who you’re dealing with?”

But here’s what I want to say: We don’t have time for this. (And we certainly don’t have time to pay a lot of attention when every Greater-Boston commentator, black and white, says exactly what you’d expect. When it come to race, we don’t need pontificators. We need dialogue.) As Richard Heinberg boldly states in the foreword to The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience, “We humans are facing tough times.”

Humans. That’s all of us. Black, white, the police, the formerly incarcerated, Mayflower descendants, the undocumented; all of us. Given that the Age of Cheap Oil will end in fifteen to twenty years, how are all of us going to work on local resilience—and, as the crow flies, Gates’ ritzy Cambridge neighborhood and my Somerville neighborhood, while socio-economically miles apart, are most certainly LOCAL—if we keep focusing on what’s different about us? Huh?

Schooled, first by Lynda and Owen and now by formerly incarcerated men, that, yes, racism is real, present, disturbingly operational, I (mostly) see the world differently. (Also disturbing is how easily I can lapse into age-old cluelessness sometimes.) Now I’m being schooled to be mindful of something else, something equally pervasive, huge, and absolutely critical to constantly consider: Life’s about to profoundly change.

A story: Last night, while reading The Transition Handbook, I suddenly had a terrifying thought: “Ohmygod, David, how will we heat this house?” (We’re going to run out of natural gas, faster than you might expect, too.)

My wise husband, David, who is building us a greenhouse, who built raised beds last year, and who, like me, is intricately connected to his neighborhood community, his faith community, and his Wednesday night community of the formerly incarcerated and those who care about them said, “That’s something we can’t do ourselves. That’s a problem to be solved collectively.”

As usual, he’s right.

Officer James Crowley, the man he arrested, Professor Gates, David and I face shrinking resources and cold New England winters together. A woman of faith (and the mother of a daughter named Hope), I believe that we WILL figure out how to survive. And WILL create a Blessed Community.

Collectively. Resiliently. Locally. And with compassion.

* Another quote from The Transition Handbook.

July 12, 2009: Interconnectedness

As you may know, I usually spend my Wednesday nights at my Quaker meeting breaking bread and talking with several formerly incarcerated men, a few folks in recovery, and a handful of Quakers. Indeed, these Wednesday nights, aka “meals-and-sharing,” are central to my life and, often the highlight of my week. But when I received an invitation to watch “Crash” and discuss it with members of an East Somerville community group last Wednesday, I decided to go. Much as I love m&s, I equally love discussing race and class. This East Somerville discussion—about a movie I’d already seen—would be especially important to show up for because, I knew, much of this discussion would happen in English and Spanish.

The evening didn’t go as well as one might hope for largely because the film took almost 2 hours so that there really wasn’t adequate time for discussion. A shame. That this hurried, happened-while-people were-moving-furniture (!) conversation did happen in English and Spanish was a plus, however.

The evening’s Ah hah turned out to be not some bit o’ wisdom I heard from someone, however, but a very new way I experienced the film. The first time I saw this amazing movie, much as I loved it, the coincidence-driven plot bothered me. I mean, c’mon: haven’t we moved on since Dickens?

But since my heightened awareness of how deeply, how profoundly, everything on this planet is connected, I experienced this film as an affirmation of this inter-dependency, our (often maddening) interconnectedness.

Word.

June 2, 2009: Diversity as a Survival Tool

Last night I went to my first Transition Somerville meeting. Still a little unclear on the concept, I’m pretty sure this group is concerned with the peak oil crisis and climate change and living gently on this earth and, my personal fav, building community to collectively create a brave new post-peak-oil world. (I’ve ordered the Transition Handbook so will be way more informed after I read it.)

It was the kind of meeting where people dared to say things like, “This is just my intuition but. . . ” and then saying something right-on/brilliant or “I read this thing in a novel which has nothing to do with climate change but I think one thing in this book might be a good idea for our ArtBeat table.” And it was. It was the kind of group that wondered if using either Google or Yahoo to keep in touch wasn’t relying too heavily on computers and what if power failed—in other words, allowing the possibility of all hell breaking loose down the road informing the group’s decisions here and now.

I loved it.

Coming home, the much-repeated words of diversity and resiliency very much on my mind, I read of the Air France Airbus jetliner presumably lost in the Atlantic. Not sure why—maybe it was intuition—but Something moved me to read the NYT’s comments re this tragedy. Here’s the one made me sit up and take notice:

I always had concerns about Airbus design of their aircraft. They use fly by wire technology. They have 3 redundant computer systems to control the airplane including flight controls. It is nice on paper and very efficient, except a systemic failure like getting hit by lightning fries all the computers.

Boeing still uses a combination of mechanical and hydraulics. Take a little more weight and not as efficient… but much more reliable. It goes back to the tradition from WWII with the B-17 Bombers. It would take something like 25 direct hits on the average of 20 mm cannon from German fighters to bring one down. The Germans had to go to the MK-108 30 mm cannon and then it would need 4 direct hits on the average . . .

— Buba2000, USA

Ohmygod, I realized. Diversity isn’t just about justice and racial equality and, as Reverend Cardwell says, “Being equals at the table.” (BTW: the TS group acknowledged its lack of diversity and took a couple of “baby steps” to address that. And promises to do more.) Collectively creating a resilient web of support is how ALL of us will survive “direct hits.” Which are coming.

May 26, 2009: What gets lost

In today’s Boston Globe, there’s an article about Hobson City, Alabama, a “small town which once thrived as a rarity: a place where black people were in charge in the midst of the Jim Crow South.” Now dying, this historic community, incorporated in 1899 and governed by African Americans, once supported businesses, restaurants, a skating rink, and “a vibrant culture centered on the all-black vocational school.”

“Sometimes I think I wouldn’t have gone out and done all that marching if I realized how much we were going to lose,” Mayor Alberta McCory is quoted as saying. Her (complicated, bittersweet) comment re the civil rights movement and its aftermath—Hobson City’s all-black vocational school integrated in 1972—of course reminded me of Lynchburg’s all-black Dunbar High School and that city’s “vibrant” cultural center. After Lynchburg’s schools integrated, Dunbar was razed. And, sadly, something absolutely vital to Lynchburg’s African American community was irrevocably lost.

Because I knew about the Dunbar-demise story, I could instantly understand Mayor McCory’s comment. And, I realized, that immediate gestalt just might be pointing me in a new direction.

To connect the dots:

Dot 1) Because Lynda Woodruff insisted I learn “CONTEXT!” I discovered the Dunbar-demise story.

Dot 2) Some days I’d emerge from my house, having just spent a few hours reading about Lynchburg history, and realize, “Oh! I live here!”

Dot 3) There are thousands of comparable Somerville stories I know nothing about.

Dot 4) Because I’m currently working on a novel, I have zero interest in researching such stories.

Dot 5) But have enormous interest in reading them; learning more.

Dot 6) A group of writers and activists here in Somerville are looking at community-based journalism, i.e. when interested readers pledge money in order for a journalist to research and write a particular article.

Dot 7) Maybe other writers, from Somerville’s immigrant community, perhaps, could be paid to research and to write such stories.

[I know. This is pretty vague. But, as I’ve learned from following a leading this far, this kinda/sorta stuff is EXACTLY how something eventually happens. Whatever that something is. Like “A Chorus Line” ‘s Michael Bennett said of that amazing Broadway production’s earliest, earliest iteration: “We have something here.”]

Meanwhile, while this sorts itself out, let us mourn Dunbar High School’s death and let us pray that Hobson City’s unique history isn’t lost.

May 19, 2009: Lynchburg’s Community Dialogue on Race and Racism

[OOPS! This SHOULD have been posted last week. So sorry]

Here’s a description of the Community Dialogue written by Leslie King, who coordinates this important project. The people who’d participated in the program—and, BTW, read Way Opens—are invited, nay URGED, to write comments.

The Community Dialogue on Race and Racism began in response to some racially charged incidence in our community:Real and perceived gang activity in the City, the death of an African-American man, Clarence Beard while in the custody of White police officers, public reaction to low-income housing proposal (Pedcor) and conversations with community leaders/others. As a result of these events, the City Manager and Mayor decided it was time to address the issues of race and racism in Lynchburg. With the assistance of two-community based groups, Lynchburg Community Council and the Neighborhood Executive Advisory Committee, the study circle model was chosen as the method for engaging the community in the conversation. Everyday Democracy(www.everyday-democracy.org) out of Hartford, CT have advised and provided the necessary resources in order begin the Community Dialogue on Race and Racism. We have engaged over a 1000 people in our work and intend to continue the discussion. As of today, we currently have 8 Action Groups actively working toward racial equity in the following areas: 1) Police 2) Education Youth & Family Support 3) Faith-Based 4) Citizen Advocacy/Strengthening Community 5) Diversity Events 6) Ward Forums 7) Workforce Development 8) Communications and Media. In an effort to shift the leadership of the Dialogue from a City lead initiative to a more community based one, we have made the transition from a Working Group to our current Advisory Board. The board realizes that it must continue learning about the issues and about our community, which are some of the reasons why your book was very helpful in beginning the discussion on white privilege and relevance of Lynchburg’s history to our work.

May 19, 2009: Drama on Longfellow Park

On Sunday morning, just as we were settling into worship, the Mormon church across Longfellow Park from Friends Meeting at Cambridge, maybe fifty yards away, caught fire. As I’d taken my usual seat that morning, I’d heard an insistent alarm bleating but, like the 300 or so Mormons inside the (doomed) building, did not, could not imagine that the annoying alarm meant imminent danger. Assuming the alarm to be a drill, the Mormons apparently exited without fuss. Everyone made it out, thank God. (Meanwhile, of course, across the little park’s green, most Quakers were still centering. Except for the ones sitting near the windows facing the park. They knew something extraordinary was happening.) A few minutes later, a member of FMC entered the meetinghouse to report the fire and to suggest that people move their cars to assist firefighters’ access.

Some back-story which informed my subsequent discernment re whether to remain in worship or to go outside:

Pre-9/11, I was already in love with firefighters and would, whenever possible, witness them in action. (Even a peace-loving Quaker like me needs action figures!) So, I reminded myself on Sunday, I’d already seen plenty of fires.”Stay in your seat, Patricia. And pray for the people around the world swept up in similar disasters. The world needs your prayers.”

My dear friend Wendy Sanford gave a terrific forum that morning re her faithfulness to Spirit and about her daily spiritual practices in order to “sink down to that seed which God sows.” She used the word obedient several times. So I asked, as she reminded us to ask: What am I asked to do? And, again, it seemed as though remaining in my seat was what I was being asked to do. (Meanwhile, twenty-foot flames are now shooting out of the church’s roof!)

But then I was reminded of one of my greatest fears: That I become so inwardly focused I lose sight of what’s happening right under my nose. Or fifty yards away. So I “prayed with my feet” and left meeting. Left while someone was giving a message. (Which for non-Quakes, is SIMPLY NOT DONE!)

It was a drizzly, chilly morning; some Mormons were shivering, some were crying; all of us, Mormons and Quakers, stood shoulder-to-shoulder watching the firefighters struggle against that stubborn, consuming blaze. (It was the worst fire I’d ever witnessed.) Suited, high-heeled CLS-ers and fleece-n-sneakers folks, side by side. Dumbstruck. Horrified. Someone passed around cups of juice to the crowd, Mormon children were invited inside to play in our nursery, etc. When it became painfully clear that the church was doomed, invitations to use our facilities were extended.

This past Sunday was a read-a-query-aloud morning at FMC, i.e. a series of questions on a particular topic that are read at the beginning of meeting so we can collectively contemplate this topic. Ironically, here’s what was read this past Sunday, just as that fire alarm went off: Do you welcome inquirers and visitors to your meeting?. . .

Two days after that tragedy and one day after receiving a phone call from a former writing student and a Mormon who asked me to thank my “church” for its kindnesses, here’s where I’ve gotten:

1) That particular church, the first Mormon church in NE, had been started in the fifties by Mormons attending Harvard, a creation story which closely parallels FMC’s inception. Learning this reminded me that when you talk to people, face to face, you will discover common ground. (Sidewalk conversations about Quakers being persecuted in Puritan Boston and Mormons knowing all about persecution came up, too.)

2) How easy, how absolutely automatic it is to put aside whatever reservations or disagreements I might have with a particular sect or political party in the face of disaster!

3) I like to think that I am a seeker and open to Spirit and that it’s that Mormon certainty I find so appalling. But when I regard the (somewhat astonished) person who just wrote #s 1 and 2, when it comes to my brothers and sisters at 4 Longfellow Park, haven’t I, too, been a wee bit shut down, rigid, judgmental?

You betcha.

PS: The fire has been deemed “accidental” and not, as some in the crowd wondered, arson.

January 29, 2009: Happy anniversary, Owen and Lynda!

This past Sunday during meeting for worship, Katie Cullinan, a member of Friends Meeting at Cambridge, led all of us in a rousing “Rosa sat.” [“Rosa sat/ so Martin could walk. Martin walked/So Obama could run. Obama ran/He ran and he won/So all our children could fly.”]

Now although I am prone, as my daughters would tell you, to blithely burst out in song, I am usually not a big fan of singing during worship. In my experience, it is extremely rare when whatever song is put forth feels like an organic and natural expression of however Spirit is moving among us that morning. “Amazing Grace” sung like a dirge almost never speaks to my condition!

But this past Sunday, five days before the forty-seventh anniversary (!!) of Lynda Woodruff and Owen Cardwell desegregating E.C. Glass High School, to celebrate the Rosas and the Martins and the Lyndas and the Owens and the Virgils with my faith community felt just right. Virgil, by the way, is Dr. Virgil Wood, Lynchburg’s leading civil rights activist. “We stand on their shoulders,” he noted once, in reference to other Lynchburg civil rights movement notables.

Yes, we do.

January 15, 2009: Witnessing On the T

Earlier this week, right after lunch, I was on a Boston subway train (aka “the T”) and, since it wasn’t rush hour, easily got a seat. Pinned to my down coat’s collar was my “I’m Pro-Immigrant—and I vote!” button. Since my friend—and tireless immigration rights activist—Mary Hopkins told me that she’d been verbally attacked for wearing that same button while on the T, I have been a little wary. But continue to wear it.

Across from me sat two young Hispanic men, neither dressed warmly enough for the frigid weather, one so agitated his right leg shook violently from time to time. As the train rattled along, their attention was drawn to the older Asian woman seated to my left as she worked through the large bundle of bills on her lap, slowly and carefully opening each business-sized envelope, glancing at it, then moving on. Since she sat so close I snuck a peek: they were medical bills. A thick stack of them.

One of the young men and I made eye contact. “Whoa!” our eyebrows and slight tilting of heads towards the Asian woman seemed to say. “That’s a huge pile.” Did that young man wonder about her health, about her health care, about her ability to pay those bills? I sure did. Did he wonder if she revealed her private life to strangers on a Green Line train because she felt invisible? Or because she held down multiple jobs so the only time she had to do things like look at her mail was between jobs? I sure did.

Whatever was going with that woman and with those two thinly-clad young men, whatever the reason that man’s leg shook, one thing was clear: my travel companions’ lives were hard. Very hard. Harder than I can imagine, I imagine.

And I stress about wearing my button?