Lessons learned from Scout Finch

Back in my primordial past, when I was five, I saw Scout Finch stare down a lynch mob in Maycomb, Alabama.  I didn’t even remember it clearly until years later when, reading To Kill a Mockingbird, the scene – like a lot of other scenes from Mockingbird – rang familiar.  I had to have seen it when it was first aired on broadcast TV, in 1968, because in the era before VCRs and cable, that would’ve been my only opportunity. (click here to watch the scene on YouTube)

I’m sure you know the scene.  Scout, Jem, and Dill have gone to the jail in the middle of the night to surprise Atticus, who himself had gone to watch over Tom Robinson the night before his trial.  Tom, a black man, was accused of raping Mayella, Ewell, a young white woman, and Atticus had been appointed to defend him.  Tom had been kept out of town, and had just been returned for trial the next morning.  Atticus, fearing a lynch mob, had camped out in front of he jail to watch.

The children show up just moments after the mob arrives and tells Atticus to step aside and let them have Tom.  The children don’t really understand why the crowd is there, only that there's some disagreement.  Scout, suddenly in the spotlight and unsure about what to do, falls back on what Atticus told her about awkward situations – you find something that interests the other person and talk about that.  So, she zeroes in on Mr. Cunningham, whose son she goes to school with, and who she has run into before, bringing payments in kind to the Finch house.

Without realizing the significance of what she is doing, she connects with Mr. Cunningham, humanizes the moment, and replaces the anger with embarrassment.  Mr. Cunningham tells them all to go home, and crowd shuffles off.

I couldn’t have articulated it at age five, when I first saw the scene, but I took several lessons from the moment.

1. Be a watcher.  People are less inclined to do shameful things if they know they’re being watched. Edmund Burke said “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” The first and easiest thing is to watch. That soaked in quickly.  My mother’s family was rife with alcoholism, spousal abuse, violence, neglect, etc., and I quickly became the watcher of the family.  Even at five, I was already an outcast, being surprisingly smart, articulate and serious, so it was no great loss to me.  I made sure that the adults knew they were being watched.  It hardly stopped all their behaviors, but seemed to make a difference
2. Talk to people like you want to hear them, not just them hear you.  Find common ground between the two of you, and find something you can respect about them.  Especially these days, real listening is rarer than you might think, and people will respond to actually being heard, even if you disagree with them.

Watching isn’t a magical formula.  These days, when everyone has a camera and/or a blog, it can be a godsend when conditions are just right, or it can get lost in the noise of an event.  It’s also just a first step of activism.  

Also, there’s no substitute for talking to people instead of at them. Polemics may feel good rolling off our tongues, but they lack substance.  Albert Camus says in Resistance, Rebellion, and Death that “The world needs real dialogue … falsehood is just as much the opposite of dialogue as is silence, and … the only possible dialogue is the kind between people who remain what they are and speak their minds.”  We’re not going to change the other person’s mind by our words, but we may change their hearts by showing not only our good will but our dedication to the truth we are advocating for.  

I’m relearning these lessons.  I was an activist for years, then tapered off as my own life got complicated, which included raising twins.  They’re grown now, life is less complicated, and – unsurprisingly - the old problems didn’t magically get better in my absence.  So, now it’s time to pick up my pieces and join them back up with the thousands of people who have continued to work and focus on improvement.  

Old white guys in power are still as un-enlightened as ever, it seems, holding on to their power and making ill-informed and narrow-minded decisions that affect all of us.  And, following the past election, they’re even more insistent that they’re on the right track.

Resolution for 2015?

Like most of us, New Year's resolutions and I have a very ... spotty relationship.

In the back of my mind, though, I keep hearing this refrain:

Read more poetry.

Write more pages.

Live more protest.

Expect more progress.

Enriching reflection on elections and our neighbors

cupcakes + champagne: election: 

"Today at lunch, I attended a lecture at the Church of the Immaculate Conception , a beautiful cathedral in downtown New Orleans ...

Rarely are we Americans as divided as a people as we are on Election Day. It's one of the perils of a two-party system. No other day do we shame or "other" or blame or disrespect our neighbors so much ...

So let's try. Let's show each other, and ourselves, mercy as the results roll in  ..."

Want more light? Follow @curlyemmy on Twitter.

"Strange Fruit" - Billie Holiday

A friend told me this morning that he'd never heard of "Strange Fruit."

I told him "I can fix that."

Click here to see & hear Billie sing "Strange Fruit"

The song was written as a poem in 1937 by Abel Meeropol, a high school teacher in the Bronx. Before anyone says "Aha! But do you know what he was!?" I will say, yes, he was also a member of the Communist Party. But you don't have to be a Communist to be opposed to lynchings.

Seriously. If the Tea Party doesn't mind Klan supporters, then I don't mind that some Communists have also found fault with lynchings.

At any rate, Billie sang and recorded this for the first time in 1939. Because of the nature of the song, she feared retaliation, but continued to sing it because it brought her father to mind each time. 

Columbia Records refused to release it on a record, fearing flashback from retailers, especially in the South, so Billie got a one-session release from her contract to record it on an alternate label, Commodore, which produced alternative jazz records.  

The 1939 release sold a million copies and eventually became her biggest selling record.

"let it go ..." - e e cummings

“let it go -- the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise -- let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go -- the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers -- you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go -- the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things -- let all go
dear
so comes love” 
― E.E. Cummings

Wise Men in Their Bad Hours - Robinson Jeffers

(to hear this poem read by Jeffers himself, click here)

Wise men in their bad hours have envied 
The little people making merry like grasshoppers 
In spots of sunlight, hardly thinking 
Backward but never forward, and if they somehow 
Take hold upon the future they do it 
Half asleep, with the tools of generation 
Foolishly reduplicating 
Folly in thirty-year periods; the eat and laugh too, 
Groan against labors, wars and partings, 
Dance, talk, dress and undress; wise men have pretended 
The summer insects enviable; 
One must indulge the wise in moments of mockery. 
Strength and desire possess the future, 
The breed of the grasshopper shrills, "What does the future 
Matter, we shall be dead?" Ah, grasshoppers, 
Death's a fierce meadowlark: but to die having made 
Something more equal to the centuries 
Than muscle and bone, is mostly to shed weakness. 
The mountains are dead stone, the people 
Admire or hate their stature, their insolent quietness, 
The mountains are not softened nor troubled 
And a few dead men's thoughts have the same temper.

"A revolution is coming ..." - Robert Kennedy

A revolution is coming — a revolution which will be peaceful if we are wise enough; compassionate if we care enough; successful if we are fortunate enough — But a revolution which is coming whether we will it or not. We can affect its character; we cannot alter its inevitability.

Speech in the United States Senate (9 May 1966)

To the Stone-Cutters, Robinson Jeffers

Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you fore defeated 
Challengers of oblivion 
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down, 
The square-limbed Roman letters 
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well 
Builds his monument mockingly; 
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun 
Die blind and blacken to the heart: 
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found 
The honey of peace in old poems.

from Tamar and Other Poems, 1924

Georgia O'Keeffe - 5 watercolor nudes from 1917

These are most likely self portraits done with a mirror, though the final, all in blue, might be a portrait of Texas friend Leah Harris

Ted Cruz - better friends with Cicero than with Democracy

In his latest rabid indictment of President Obama, Ted Cruz uses Cicero's speech "Against Catiline" to explicitly accuse the President of being "openly desirous to destroy the Constitution and this Republic." Make no mistake - that's an accusation of treason. 

Even more, he speaks longingly of times past "when brave men and women would repress mischievous citizens with severer chastisement than the most bitter enemy."  Severer chastisement than the most bitter enemy?  How close can you get to wishing personal harm to the President without explicitly stating it? It's tantamount to paraphrasing Henry II's words about Thomas Becket and asking "Will no one rid me of this turbulent president?"

If Cruz is serious - and isn't a through-and-through demagogue - then he should immediately be pushing for impeachment, indeed, expending all of his energies, night and day, on bringing this treasonous activity he claims to an end, and bringing its chief proponent to justice.  But no, in order to be more full of shit, Ted Cruz would have to be two or even three people.  

Just one additional note - aside from Cruz trying to show how smart, well-read, and statesmanlike he is by pilfering Cicero's oratory, he should remember that Cicero was no friend of the working man, nor was he an advocate of anything approaching democracy.  Cicero was an articulate and powerful force in support of the old, strong republic, and had no warm feelings for the voice of the people. He blames democracy for the fall of the Greeks, and refers to the "lower classes" as "insane."  Cicero also has his mouthpiece, Scipio, assert the importance of a "well-constituted aristocracy" to lead Rome and protect it from a bunch of democratic, lower class rabble.

Come to think of it, that does sound more than a little bit like the Ted Cruz I recognize.

Ted Cruz, like Joe McCarthy, like James Michael Curley, like Benjamin Tillman, like Old Yeller, will eventually be recognized for the danger he presents to a healthy democracy.  It's inevitable. How much danger can he do, though, before the American White (Republican) Party, scrapes him from their heels?

The truth - the true truth - about Obama's proposed immigration reforms

1.      It’s not automatic amnesty. It allows families who have been low risk residents for 5 or more years to choose a path toward legal residence status for a finite period.

2.      Felons and gang members are not only excluded, but they’re going to be priority targets for expulsion.  They’ll no longer be on an even standing with lower profile and lower risk “illegals.”

3.      The new plan will not issue Green Cards.

4.      The new plan will not offer citizenship as any form of amnesty.

On the one hand, I want the Republicans to try to impeach Obama for "overstepping bounds" and "running roughshod over the Constitution" in his exercise of Executive Orders.  I want their lies to see the light of day and to be put to an open, Constitutional test.  Every since Nixon, they’ve been trying to exorcise the party’s shame over impeachment by trying to nail one Democratic President or another.  Given the fact that Obama has used Executive decrees less often than every other president since Nixon, this is not the battle they want.

At the same time, why should they have free reign to waste more time which should be put to passing productive laws.  Why should the most obstructionist congress since the Civil War be given one more toxic toy to play with?

No racist like an old racist

My folks moved us from Pueblo, Colorado to Texarkana, Arkansas, in 1977, when I was in 8th grade.  We went from high plains to high pines, and the scenery change wasn’t the only or the biggest adjustment.  There was a definite culture shock.  Not intrinsically bad, no, though the culture of Texarkana was definitely more closed to outsiders than the culture of Pueblo.

I’d encountered racism before, at least from a distance.  In Pueblo, the two conflicting cultures were Anglo and Chicano. Chicano wasn’t and isn’t interchangeable with Mexican-American, but they were the main oppositional culture – tired of Anglo dominance in an area that had belonged to their ancestors back.  In Texarkana, the chief cultural/racial friction was Black & White.  It was the mid-seventies, and the foment of the sixties hadn’t completely faded. There were still plenty of battles to resolve.  Still, though, I wandered around in my own little fog.  I was introverted, and was equally polite to and equally oblivious with people of all races.

I learned one big lesson, though, that has stuck with me through the years. It’s not the Grand Dragons that are the problem, at least not exclusively, but the grand mothers.

One day in 8th grade, after school, I went over to a friend’s house.  I’d finished my homework at school and he was going to wrap his up, then we were going to go do … whatever thirteen year old boys did then. Honestly, it was so dull, I don’t remember.

At any rate, I got there early and was directed toward the sunken den. His grandmother was there, watching the news, and I was sent in there to watch with her while he finished his homework.

It was a little eerie to start with.  It’s like they made a nest for her – off to the side, but not neglected.  She was in her armchair, propped between right and left by pillows, staring at the blue glow of the television.

I don’t think she even acknowledged me as I sat down.  I’d met her once before and she was warm and welcoming, using all the gracious Southern manners I’d heard about on television and read about in books.  She didn’t even seem to mind that I was from the highly questionable Midwest, the people of which, as far as most Southerners were concerned, were indistinguishable from Yankees. So, the grey-dark of the den was undisturbed by my arrival. Everything happening in that room worth noticing was happening on the television.

It was local news, and the next item was a piece on the upcoming elections.  A businessman whose signs I’d seen around town was announcing his run for Mayor.  There was a little rally downtown, and cameras were on hand.  He was a well-known figure.  His signs were all over town – nobody could miss him. The reportage was straight-up, and done in about a minute, then they were on to traffic or weather or whatever.

We kept sitting silently, just staring at the screen.  It had to have been at least five minutes later when I glanced over at her, and her eyes jumped my direction, which surprised me to start with.

She leaned in as much as her pillows allowed and looked straight into my eyes.

“I don’t mean anything against anyone.” She gave that a moment to sink in, and probably to get some acknowledgement from me, which I probably gave.  After all, who was I to accuse her, a woman I barely knew, and the matriarch of a decent, hard-working family, of meaning anything bad against anyone else?  I was not only a mere child, but a stranger in a strange land as well.

Once I bobbed my head or whatever it is I did, she jabbed a seasoned finger down at the arm of her chair and continued, “I don’t mean anything against anyone … but I fail to understand why people don’t stay where they belong, why they feel they have to get involved in things that don’t concern them.”

I had no idea what to say, and no idea what expression to have on my face.  I’m sure I just stared.  There was this inherently sweet and kind grandmother saying something that seemed to fly hard and cold right into the face of her identity.  She wasn’t even necessarily saying that this man was beneath political office, just that it didn’t concern him, that it wasn’t where he belonged, that there was some separate reality outside her white world that he inhabited.  She didn’t even claim that he was some scoundrel, some ne’er do well who couldn’t be relied on.  He was just other, and he didn’t have any business getting involved in running things – in telling other people how things were going to get done – not outside his own business, anyway.

I wanted to be angry.  I was a very polite, but also very politically aware thirteen year old.  I’d read all about the civil rights movement and Watergate and Vietnam, and had all kinds of information crammed into my head about what was good and what was bad, and I couldn’t summon a single reaction beyond surprise.

A few minutes later, my friend came in and we went off and did whatever time waste it was we did.  I didn’t mention what his grandmother had said.  He asked me if I talked to her and I said “Kinda” and that was it.

While we were goofing around, and later in the evening, I kept that encounter in the back of my mind.  My grandmother would never have dreamt of saying – or even feeling – such a thing, at least as far as I knew.  Did other grandmothers think and feel those things?

At some point, it dawned on me.  From this far perspective, it seems like it came to me in a flash that very day, though maybe I simmered over it for a while.  Eventually, I realized. His grandmother was the problem. She, more than anything else, was what was keeping the races divided in the south – and the north – and the Midwest – and in other places.

It wasn’t the guys burning crosses. They were a symptom of a disease.  It was the sweet, kind grandmothers, the ladies who were the gentle heart of the family, who were carriers of the disease acted out in their progeny.  The crabby grandfathers who hated everyone under the age of sixty, and anyone of a different color or background … it was easy to say “Well, you have to take this with a grain of salt.”  But your grandmother? The woman who nurtured your parents and you and your siblings and your aunts and uncles and cousins?  You were going to tell her that she was wrong? You were going to tell her that her dark and cozy den was a little more dangerous because you weren’t going to protect her from the unrest and the dangers out in the world, dangers that you were too sophisticated to take seriously.

Even if you yourself didn’t agree with what she was saying, maybe thinking “Well, she might have a point, but I haven’t had a problem with any of them …” you were still making allowances, and maybe at some point, something happens, and you think to yourself “Hmm … this guy is going to make my grandmother nervous” and from there you start to draw out new boundary lines.  You want the guy, well-meaning or not, to leave your grandmother in peace, not to upset her world.  But no, he’s got his agenda, which he feels is more important than your grandmother’s feelings and sense of well-being, so you dig in your heels and make ready to lash out if you need to.  Maybe you start thinking about how, if “those people” would just be patient, thing would work themselves out naturally, but noooooo, they’ve got to change everything all of a sudden, and where’s that going to leave things?  What right do they have to disrupt things that have been running well enough all this time?

Even as I type all these things I disagree with, the bile rises in my throat. "'Those people' have a lot of nerve trying to upset grandmothers who never hurt anyone."

But they did hurt people, directly or not, intentionally or not. Or maybe they've moved beyond that, and they only wish other people well at this point, in the grey hours of their lives.

But still we protect them.  Maybe not as volatilely and reflexively as we did back in 1977, but we still do.  We still cause harm by trying to protect something that's indefensible ... because our grandmothers happen to believe it ...

Climate Change and the Climate of Congress

Four days ago, we significantly increased the number of people now in Congress who can't - or won't, or maybe are paid very well not to - understand science, specifically the science of climate change. Not only climate change, though – lots of science, and other good things, took a beating this election cycle.  I don’t think there has been a time since the Dark Ages when knowledge and facts and insight have been so in danger of being immolated by the fires of fear and threats to the established order.

Their position is effectively "I'm not a scientist, so I'll only take advice from people equally small-minded when making science policy.” They’ll take science input from poll-takers who move with the wind, from industry lobbyists with deep pockets, and from pastors who imagine that science is “anti-God” and “a trick of Satan.”  We need more public voices saying things that are real - and scientific - and smart - to counter these people who lack the courage to see and to speak the truth.  There are plenty of things they hide from, but since climate change is the one that’s most likely to doom our children and grandchildren, let’s at least take up that issue for now.  Plus, if we can get the general public to see the obvious science behind climate change, maybe they’ll be more amenable to acknowledging the science of evolution, vaccines, etc.

Let's not deny that climate change is real. Let's not try to bury it under some pseudo-smart sounding hyper-nuanced answer that, as much as outright denial, allows us hide from truth.  Let’s stop arguing that small exceptions to a scientific principle invalidate the entire rule. 

Albert Einstein said, “I have little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part, and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easiest.”  In this case, we have laymen drilling holes where the drilling is easiest, and then proclaiming that their hole invalidates not just the integrity of the board, which it doesn’t, but the whole existence of the board, which it most definitely doesn’t.  That leaves aside the handful of quisling and collaborationist scientists who like to claim the title of scientist without using any of its tools.  Instead, they use their titles to bolster anti-science arguments from people who are proud of proclaiming their ignorance. “I’m not a scientist, BUT …”

We’ve been polite and patient for decades now, and have told ourselves “They’ll get it … any day now, they’ll get it. They can’t ignore reality much longer.”  But they can. They live for today’s ballot, and their corporate owners live for today’s profits, and they have no incentive for changing their positions other than the eventual threat of losing power, privilege and attention.

This is far from the only dark outcome to this week’s election. While there were local and some regional outcomes for science, reason, tolerance and individual rights, nationally the average is bad. All across the US, conservatives won out against those four principles.  Sure, the pendulum has been swinging back and forth for years now, from right to left, from midterm to midterm, but what we can’t afford is to simply hope that science, reason, tolerance and individual rights will get better treatment in the next election.  The direction may well stay toward the dark for a while as conservatives fight against changing demographics by increased fear-mongering on a whole spectrum of issues. 

I was trying to wrap up with something hopeful, but instead I have in my hands this quote from Camus: 

“We shall be sure that freedom is not a gift received from a State or a leader, but a possession to be won every day by the effort of each and the union of all.”

It’s more about Sisyphus and his rock, I think, than about an invigorating triumph, but we work with what we have.  I’d lost hope for a while, and I’d even given up on rolling my rock to the foothills, much less up the mountain, but maybe despair and hope are irrelevant, and we just do what we can – together.