Reckonings: a journal of justice, hope and history

"Monet Refuses the Operation"

The Private Life, a book of 73 short poems in which "Monet Refuses the Operation" first appeared, was Liesel Mueller's second book of poems, published in 1976. That collection, which was the 1975 Lamont Poetry Selection, is filled with poems exploring the character of human lives with wonderful insight and power. Dick Allen wrote of those poems that he experienced "shocks of recognition.... She goes after our secrets, this poet; often, she finds them." Russell Brignano added that "her verses are filled with captivating figures and metaphors, projecting an imaginative, deeply reflective, subtle intelligence."

 

"Monet Refuses the Operation" is written in the voice of Claude Monet as an elderly man speaking to his physician. He has returned from a visit with the doctor in which the doctor has advised him to have surgery for an undisclosed ailment. The doctor has also advised his patient to abandon his gift of metaphoric imagination - the center of his life personally and as an artist - and return to a more literal, as the doctor would have it, more realistic view of the world. Monet, thankfully, refuses both the operation and the gratuitous and insensitive advice.

 

Sadly, that doctor's comments are still not unusual in our day. A friend recently told me she had been to her doctor recently: he came bustling into the examining room, his hands full of papers, saying "Now, here are the lab reports..." My friend, like Monet, stopped him and said, "You must ask me first, "How are you?" Fortunately the doctor complied, and I hope learned a lesson about human relationships that is not commonly taught in medical schools.

 

Perhaps returning home after that unsettling visit, Monet sits at his desk and puts into words the truth of experience the doctor does not understand. He does so clearly and beautifully, not in anger but eloquently and in a kind of wistful sympathy for the doctor's lack of imagination. He wishes his doctor might have something of the gift he has taken most of a lifetime to acquire.

 

Doctor, you say that there are no haloes

around the streetlights in Paris

and what I see is an aberration

caused by old age, an affliction.

 

 ______________________________

 

 

Monet Refuses the Operation

 

Doctor, you say there are no haloes

around the streetlights in Paris

and what I see is an aberration

caused by old age, an affliction.

I tell you it has taken me all my life

to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,

to soften and blur and finally banish

the edges you regret I don’t see,

to learn that the line I called the horizon

does not exist and sky and water,

so long apart, are the same state of being.

Fifty-four years before I could see

Rouen cathedral is built

of parallel shafts of sun,

and now you want to restore

my youthful errors: fixed

notions of top and bottom,

the illusion of three-dimensional space,

wisteria separate

from the bridge it covers.

What can I say to convince you

the Houses of Parliament dissolve

night after night to become

the fluid dream of the Thames?

I will not return to a universe

of objects that don’t know each other,

as if islands were not the lost children

of one great continent.  The world

is flux, and light becomes what it touches,

becomes water, lilies on water,

above and below water,

becomes lilac and mauve and yellow

and white and cerulean lamps,

small fists passing sunlight

so quickly to one another

that it would take long, streaming hair

inside my brush to catch it.

To paint the speed of light!

Our weighted shapes, these verticals,

burn to mix with air

and changes our bones, skin, clothes

to gases.  Doctor,

if only you could see

how heaven pulls earth into its arms

and how infinitely the heart expands

to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

The last triptych of Monet's paintings of water lilies on his pond at Giverny was painted near the end of his life, during the years 1920 to 1922. He was going blind, and many early critics found these paintings obscure and ill-made because his eyesight was failing, reflecting an alleged realism kin to that of Monet's doctor in Liesl Mueller's poem. The triptych lay in Monet's studio for twenty years after his death. Now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, they were most recently the subject of a special MOMA exhibition in late 2010 and early 2011. (Mueller herself was growing blind when she wrote the poem.) MOMA's curator on that occasion spoke revealingly of their character in contrast to Monet's paintings of the same water lilies 25 years earlier:

"The Japanese Footbridge is among Monet's last paintings of this subject, made between 1920 and 1922. Twenty-five years earlier, in the late 1890s, the footbridge provided the subject of Monet's first series of paintings of his pond at Giverny. While the paintings in the earlier series are more naturalistic in style, the later works feature dense swirls and loose strokes of color that almost obscure the form of the bridge. These later paintings also feature a fiery palette of maroons, rusts, and oranges unique within Monet's body of work.... The aim of his large Water Lilies paintings, Monet said, was to supply 'the illusion of an endless whole, of water without horizon or bank.'  In the attempt to capture the constantly changing qualities of natural light and color, spatial cues all but dissolve; above and below, near and far, water and sky all commingle. In his enveloping, large-scale canvases Monet sought to create 'the refuge of a peaceful meditation in the center of a flowering aquarium.'"

 

The last lines of Mueller's poem, again expressly addressing the doctor, speak of an opportunity awaiting any of us. To know how "the heart expands to claim this world," how any and all of our experience of the myraid things of this world can be transformed into the bright gift of a thousand suns, we have only to wait, to find "the refuge of a peaceful meditation." To gain some inkling of what is suggested by heaven pulling earth into its arms, we have only to disenthrall ourselves, to exercise our common gift of metaphoric imagination, to wait and yearn, to meditate or pray,  so we are in time — in a lifetime and in a moment — drawn into a larger consciousness of that which moves mysteriously and in silence behind, above and beyond us.  

Below the radar of the news: reports on social change throughout the world

As David Bornstein writes in the column below, "[P]eople often come away from the news with a lot more information about problems than about how society is dealing with them.... social change doesn’t always take the form of dramatic, televised events, like the Arab Spring or the Occupy movement. Often it is through gradual, unnoticed, yet steady advancements that new ideas take hold ― like trees spreading roots."

One of the significant services Bornstein and his colleague Tina Rosenberg provide is drawing our attention to these unpublicized developments, the real grassroots embodiment of social change and often real social progress in relieving hunger, increasing the yeild of poor farmers in Africa and elsewhere, educational and other needed reforms in public education. Bornstein illustrates progress in that domain over the past year or so, as well as the absence of progress and lost ground as such organized grassroots programs lack adequate funding or encounter opposition from governing authorities, or fail to take into sufficient account the cultural context of the people whose live they seek to improve. It is an absorbing report, and should draw our continuing attention to Bornstein and Rosenberg's ongoing writing on their New York Times reportorial gathering throughout the year on "solutions to social problems and how they work." called Fixes.

Progress Happens

by David Bornstein

Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work. 

The benefit of writing a column about solutions is that it provides an alternative lens through which to view the world. The daily news tends to be dominated by daunting challenges (unemployment, climate change, the polarization of Congress) and flashpoint events (the killing of Osama bin Laden, the tsunami in Japan, the Penn State scandal). These stories are vital to cover. However, people often come away from the news with a lot more information about problems than about how society is dealing with them.

One of the premises of Fixes is that society is often self-correcting in ways that go under-reported. We need to be able to envision possibilities before we can act on them. Looking back at some of the stories we’ve covered over the past year or so, I’ve found that a number of groups have made substantial gains even during this tough economic period. These stories also remind me that social change doesn’t always take the form of dramatic, televised events, like the Arab Spring or the Occupy movement. Often it is through gradual, unnoticed, yet steady advancements that new ideas take hold ― like trees spreading roots.

A few examples: In our second column, late last year, I wrote about Root Capital, an organization that supplies credit to small-scale agricultural producers in poor parts of the world. In 2010, the organization disbursed $80 million in loans. This year, it disbursed $120 million: 50 percent more. It now finances farmer-owned businesses that support 220,000 producers, extending benefits to roughly a million people. In April, when I reported on Playworks, an organization that helps public schools create safe and inclusive recess and play periods, it was working in 250 schools in 15 cities. It has since expanded to 318 schools in 23 cities. In a survey of 2,591 educators, close to 90 percent said the program decreased bullying and disciplinary problems and improved students’ focus in class. Text4baby, a free service that provides informative text messages to women who are pregnant or have a baby less than a year old, has,since February, roughly doubled its subscribers to 265,000 (though it still has a way to go to reach its target of a million by the end of 2012).

Root CapitalMaraba, a coffee cooperative in Rwanda, is one many small agricultural producers that got loans from the credit organization Root Capital. Read article »

In July, I covered Health Leads, which mobilizes, trains and places student volunteers in hospitals to address the social causes behind the health problems of low-income patients. They have increased the number of clients they serve annually by more than 50 percent ― from about 5,800 in 2010 to about 8,800 families this year. And the 100,000 Homes Campaign, which has set a goal of placing 100,000 chronically homeless individuals into permanent supportive housing by July 2013, is now working with 107 communities, which have housed 11,345 people. This is up from 64 communities, which had housed 6,816 people when I initially covered them last December.

In addition to growth, a number of organizations have broadened and extended their work. Two Canadian-based organizations that I wrote about have launched their work in the United States: Roots of Empathy ― which brings babies and mothers into classrooms as part of a curriculum to strengthen the development of empathy among children ―is now working in Washington State and has just started in New York City (disclosure: my wife has signed on as a volunteer instructor). And JUMP Math, a curriculum that has demonstrated significantly better results than standard math instruction in controlled studies in Canada, is being adapted to conform to the U.S. Common Core State Standards for grades one through eight. JUMP is currently accepting requests from schools on the East Coast of the United States that wish to test its materials, so that they can be studied by researchers from Johns Hopkins and the University of Texas. (The organization will provide the program free of charge.)

In May, I wrote about First Book, an organization that pioneered an online marketplace to extend access to new, high-quality, heavily discounted books to reading programs that serve only children and youth from low-income backgrounds. First Book is now working to expand its marketplace to include digital content, as well as supplies for art, music, science and math education. It is also getting ready to pilot its work in India in 2012, and evaluating expansion opportunities in Brazil, China, South Africa and Britain. This year,Youth Villages, a Tennessee-based organization that provides a home-based therapeutic model more effective than foster care, expanded into Oregon and Indiana. It’s now in 13 states, as well as the District of Columbia. The Strive partnership in and around Cincinnati released its fourth annual report card, revealing improvements along a broad range of academic measures, including particularly big gains in kindergarten readiness. More than 80 cities have expressed interest in adopting this “cradle to career” shared-accountability model.

In April, my colleague, Tina Rosenberg, reported on Benefit Corporations. These are companies that pursue not only profit, but also seek to do good for employees, their community and their environment.  This week, New York became the seventh state to give legal backing to these corporations ― holding them to high standards for social impact and allowing them to pursue a bottom line that includes both financial and social returns. Tina also wrote about the emerging micro-consignment model pioneered by an organization called Soluciones Comunitarias (or Community Enterprise Solutions), which extends economic opportunities that are similar to microcredit without demanding that poor people take on the risks associated with loans. The organization will be piloting its work in Mexico, Peru and the Dominican Republic this year, and will be studying its applicability in Egypt.

While organizational expansion and growth are markers of impact, they aren’t always the most important ones. Many of the problems that these organizations are addressing are the result of systemic failures in public systems or market mechanisms. To achieve major impact, they must find ways to get their “fixes” into the water supply, so to speak.

Some appear to be moving in that direction. In May, Tina wrote astory about the importance of micro-insurance to protect small-scale farmers in Africa. Last month, as a result of the drought in Ethiopia, farmers who purchased weather insurance received their first payouts from an Oxfam America-sponsored program. The World Food Program is now picking up the idea and plans to spread it initially to three other countries. Last November, Tina also reportedon Manna Energy Limited, which had a plan to finance solar-powered water purification in Africa by tapping the market for carbon credits, based on projected reductions of carbon emissions. In June, Manna became the first water treatment project certified to do so under the United Nations Clean Water Carbon Credit Program.

In November 2010, I reported on an organization in Mexico City,Antenas Por Los Ninos, which developed a series of animated screen characters that are remarkably effective at communicating with children who have suffered traumatic experiences.

Antenas por los NinosTalking about abuse to Antenas Por Los Ninos’s animated character, Dulas, instead of an adult, has been therapeutic for some traumatized children. Read article »

Now the tool has been sanctioned and adopted by the district attorney in Mexico’s Federal District as a way of gaining evidence from children in cases of sexual abuse without causing them the trauma of cross-examination.

Another organization making headway into systems is Health Leads. It’s often noted that the United States health care system is really an illness treatment system, with very little emphasis on health promotion. Hospitals regularly discharge patients, especially low-income patients, into the conditions that caused, or contributed to, their illnesses without follow-up. A national survey, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, found that 85 percent of doctors say that it’s as important to address patients’ social needs (like housing or nutrition) as it is to address their medical conditions. Most doctors (76 percent) want the health system to pay the costs of doing so. But doctors and social workers are already overburdened. Who’s going to do the work?

Health Leads is demonstrating that it can be handled by corps of trained student volunteers (or other lay workers). In some of the centers where the program operates, doctors now regularly inquire about patients’ social problems and request services, a significant change. Close to two-thirds of physicians at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C., have prescribed social services through Health Leads via electronic medical records. And at the Harlem Hospital Center, in New York City, patients whose electronic medical records show an elevated B.M.I. (body mass index) are automatically referred to Health Leads volunteers, who help them access community-based services that can help them reduce their health risks. These are initial, but critically important steps in getting preventive care into the DNA of the health system.

Another system change in the making is the Housing Placement Boot Camp developed by the 100,000 Homes Campaign, in partnership with Home for Good L.A., GOOD Magazine, the Veterans Administration and the Corporation for Supportive Housing. The boot camp is an all-day event that brings together high-level representatives from a variety of social service and veterans agencies and housing authorities. Using a game board with magnetic tiles that represent each of the many steps required to get a person housed, participants work together to re-imagine a system that is now terribly uncoordinated and unnecessarily complex, and leads to long delays for people living on the streets, particularly veterans. (A studyconducted by the campaign reported that homeless veterans remain homeless almost two years longer than non-veterans.) In New York, the boot camp helped agencies cut 60 days off the housing process for veterans. In Los Angeles, it shaved off 68 days, cutting it almost in half. If a one-day process can spark big improvements in the way cities handle housing, what other government functions could be re-imagined over Chutes and Ladders-like game boards?

Few changes carry more weight than those that modify major federal legislation, like the Social Security Act. That’s what Youth Villages, and a range of other children’s advocates, achieved this September, when their efforts led to the passage of the Child and Family Services Improvement and Innovation Act. One of the things that the law does is give states more flexibility in using federal funds to pay for community and home-based services for youth in the child welfare system. About 60 percent of the funds for these state systems come from the federal government. Previously, much of the money could be used only to pay for foster care and residential placements or services. Under the new law, states can experiment with services that can keep families together wherever this is safely possible. Youth Villages estimates that about half of the 425,000 children in foster care could be successfully reunited with parents, relatives or adoptive parents if they were provided with the right kinds of supports.

Governments can supercharge ideas like this. But they can also do great damage. The most disheartening follow-up of the year comes from Bangladesh. In March, I reported on the government’s politically-motivated (and vindictive) actions to oust the Grameen Bank’s founder, Muhammad Yunus. Unfortunately, the government won that battle and now it continues to intimidate the bank’s board members, nine of whom are village women elected by the bank’s borrowers. It also appears to be pursuing a variety of legal strategies searching for a pretext to limit the freedom of nongovernmental organizations, and take control of other Grameen-related companies ― there are 54 ― some of which are quite valuable, particularly Grameen Telecom, which owns a third of Grameen Phone, Bangladesh’s leading telecommunications service company. Governments and foundations that have supported microfinance should be aware that the threat of takeover is very real and could be enormously destructive to these institutions and the people they serve.

Finally, sometimes the biggest changes are those that are hardest to measure. One of the more modest organizations I covered this year (in terms of budget, but not vision) is the Family Independence Initiative, which creates structures in which low-income families come together to help one another solve problems and pursue goals. Earlier this year, in Boston seven of the organization’s members were honored by The Boston Foundation for their contributions to the city as resident leaders. In San Francisco, 30 families came together in lending circles, resurrecting a tradition of mutual assistance. And in New Orleans, a number of families have established community businesses to create jobs for one another and their youth. All these efforts were led by families themselves.

David Bornstein is the author of “How to Change the World,” which has been published in 20 languages, and “The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank,” and is co-author of “Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know.” He is the founder of dowser.org, a media site that reports on social innovation.

Are we canceling our grandchildren's reservations?

Our planet is in peril.

That fact is slowly but surely gaining recognition, but doing enough about it in time to avoid catastrophe is far from certain. The mobilization of those determined and well enough educated to help bring about change is growing, here in the U.S. — by far the greatest source of pollution and its terrible short- and long-term consequences for the planet's health and well-being — and abroad.

But on balance, the situation as a whole isn't getting better. The International Atomic Energy Agency recently warned that the possibility of holding global warming to a limit of 3.6 degrees Farenheit was slipping away: "The door may be closing if we do not act boldly and urgently." Carbon emissions in 2010 rose by nearly 6%, a record high, to a total of more than 33 billion metric tons, and that despite the economic slow-down since 2008. A new record was also set in 2011 for billion-dollar weather disasters.

Environmental education is not yet well established as a subject in our public schools, and environmental awareness often comes with a debilitating price. Knowledge is accompanied by feelings of personal helplessness, and discomfort can dispel awareness, depriving us of the capacity to act.

Read more in one of The New Yorker's online blogs. 

So it's important to know there are some fine efforts having real and measurable consequences.

One such effort is that of three small intertwined organizations working together to foster necessary and systemic changes in larger political and economic domains. These three deserve our admiration and support, and are important resources in our own education.

They work to more sharply define the problem. "Our actions combine to create more stress than ecosystems, communities, and human bodies can tolerate." And they work to bring good solutions to bear one step at a time, in local communities, in universities, law and medical schools, in states and in the federal government.

"Our vision—like yours—is that future generations will inherit a whole and healthy world. It is time to name this vision and take it very seriously. We refuse to leave our descendents a degraded, lonely planet. We can be their voice now and embrace our sacred responsibility to become good ancestors."

These are the words of Carolyn Raffensperger, Executive Director of the Science and Environmental Health Network.  

"We are forging decision-making structures that focus on reducing total impacts, reducing each impact, and moving away from the system of evaluating each impact independently to see if it is justified or causes an unacceptable problem all on its own—the system that got us where we are today."

"Do we have justification for calling ahead and canceling the reservations of the next generation just because we want to eat their lunch?"

Carl Safina, The View from Lazy Point

 

Carl Safina and Carolyn Raffensperger are active in this alliance, consisting of SEHN, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and Cumulative Impacts. Together they are a wonderful source of information and evidence of constructive change. They deserve our support and participation, perhaps beginning with a look at their helpful websites. They offer persuasive evidence that change is occurring, and needs the energy and imagination of us all. Here are four concrete examples drawn from current initiatives.

EPA sustainability decision framework

Sustainability and the US EPA: Model for sustainability decisions at US EPA. National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, 2011. The framework, which was requested by EPA, is intended to help the agency better assess the social, environmental, and economic impacts of various options as it makes decisions. The report is available for free as a pdf.

 

New Jersey cumulative impacts mapping

N.J. works to map cumulative impacts of pollution in neighborhoods. Carolyn Beeler, NewsWorks (WHYY), November 22, 2011. A model ordinance is being developed in Newark that would require cities to inventory existing sources of pollution, and make companies distribute to neighbors information on what, if any, pollution their operation would add.

 

Water costs more for minorities

Minorities pay more for water and sewer. Michigan State University press release, November 29, 2011. A study by Stephen Gasteyer and Rachel Butts, to be published in Environmental Practice, shows how white flight leaves minority residents to bear the higher costs of maintaining aging water and sewer infrastructure, leading to tens of thousands of water shutoffs in Detroit alone.

 

School lunches and the food industry

Impact of Federal Commodity Programs on School Meal Nutrition. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, September 2008.  Thirty million children eat school lunches daily in the United States. An increasingly cozy alliance between companies that manufacture processed foods and companies that serve the meals is making students — a captive market — fat and sick while pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. See also How the Food Industry Eats Your Kid’s Lunch. Lucy Komisar, New York Times, December 3, 2011.

Off a Side Road Near Staunton

American Life in Poetry is a free weekly column attending to the work of contemporary American poets. It is published by the Poetry Foundation, which also publishes Poetry magazine.

This week's issue is introduced by Ted Kooser, another fine poet:

"In many of those Japanese paintings with Mt. Fuji in the background, we find tiny figures moving along under the immensity of the landscape. Here’s an American version of a scene like that, by Stanley Plumly of Maryland, one of our country’s most accomplished poets."

Stanley Plumly's "Off a side road near Staunton" gives us an opportunity to understand what we can see if we are willing to linger. We needn't wait for a special occasion. An ordinary day, a "nothing afternoon," will do just fine for us to fill, or a Japanese landscape upon a wall. An ordinary day, and time retreats into itself.

you could walk the rest of the day into the picture 

and not know why, at any given moment, you’re there. 

 

 Off A Side Road Near Staunton 

Some nothing afternoon, no one anywhere, 

an early autumn stillness in the air, 

the kind of empty day you fill by taking in 

the full size of the valley and its layers leading 

slowly to the Blue Ridge, the quality of country, 

if you stand here long enough, you could stay 

for, step into, the way a landscape, even on a wall, 

pulls you in, one field at a time, pasture and fall 

meadow, high above the harvest, perfect 

to the tree line, then spirit clouds and intermittent 

sunlit smoky rain riding the tops of the mountains, 

though you could walk until it’s dark and not reach those rains— 

you could walk the rest of the day into the picture 

and not know why, at any given moment, you’re there. 

 

- Stanley Plumly

 

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Reprinted from “Old Heart,” by Stanley Plumly. Copyright ©2007 by Stanley Plumly. Used by permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Introduction copyright © 2011 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate 

 

"Invoking Teddy Roosevelt, Obama Finds His Voice"

I wrote recently of my admiration for President Obama's speech on December 3.  In the last few days many better-known others have weighed in, also in admiration. Having read their views and gained a richer sense of Obama's words, I am prompted to revisit the occasion and offer readers some of their clarifying and well-informed intelligence. Here, for example, is Robert Reich:

“It’s the first time [Obama] or any other president has clearly stated the long-term structural problem that’s been widening the gap between the very top and everyone else for thirty years....Here, finally, is the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008. Hopefully Obama will carry this message through 2012 — and in his second term will take on the growing inequities and game-rigging practices that have been undermining the American economy and American democracy for years."

The context for Obama's speech is manifold — his own personal and political history, the 2008 campaign in which his intelligence and talent for eloquence became evident to so many, especially to so many among the young, the history of progressivism in American politics preceding our own Gilded Age, especially that of Theodore Roosevelt and then more potently his admiring cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt. A close friend and fine historian and philosopher wrote me today,

"Isn't it ironic that the Civil War, having required Northern industry (especially railroads and the clothing industry) to go into high gear, should then have been the prologue to our Gilded Age, i.e. capitalism at full speed, the triumph of the haves. The Progressives briefly planted Slow Down and Stop signs, but not till FDR was an effective new way of thinking brought into play."

I think we shall realize in time that Barack Obama stands firmly in that progressive tradition. Whether he shall come to remind future generations of Canute or of Moses remains to be seen. Our immediate task is to see that he is decisively re-elected in 2012, preferably with Democratic majorities in both House and Senate.

That's a very tall order and a daunting challenge. The American electorate has never been subject to greater manipulation by the dogs of Wall Street and their media minions. Tom Engelhardt recently wrote a chilling piece about the continuing compound growth of money shaping elections, largely through the mainstream media and their owners, especially TV. "It’s clear enough -- or should be by now -- that the electoral process has been occupied by the 1%; which means that what you hear in this 'campaign' is largely refracted versions of their praise, their condemnation, their slurs, their views, their needs, their fears, and their wishes.  They are making money off, and electing a president via, you.  Which means that you -- that all of us -- are occupied, too. So stop calling this an 'election.'  Whatever it is, we need a new name for it." 

The most thoughtful response to Obama's speech I've read is that of John Cassidy, brilliant New Yorker staff writer, contributor to The New York Review of Books and purveyor of lively thinking on his New Yorker blog, "Rational Irrationality." 

December 6, 2011

INVOKING TEDDY ROOSEVELT, OBAMA FINDS HIS VOICE

Posted by John Cassidy

First an admission: just before President Obama followed in the footsteps of Theodore Roosevelt and went to Osawatomie, Kansas, to deliver a populist speech about inequality and the middle class, I had prepared a post criticizing the White House for having the temerity to compare him, at least implicitly, to one of America’s truly great Presidents.

Here is part of what I had written:

 

From a tactical perspective, summoning the ghost of Roosevelt is a clever move. It reinforces the White House line that the Republican Party has strayed from its center-right roots and morphed into an extremist organization populated by firebrands like Ron “abolish the Fed” Paul, Michele “send illegal immigrants home” Bachmann, and Newt “put poor kids to work” Gingrich. On a broader level, though, I am not sure that invoking Teddy Roosevelt is such a wise idea for the White House. When it comes to actual achievements, as opposed to rhetoric, Obama’s record cannot seriously be compared with Roosevelt’s.

 

 

During his seven years in office (1901-1908), Roosevelt pushed through a series of reforms that largely define what historians now call “the Progressive Era.”

 

As a matter of history, I stand by that. But once I read Obama’s speech, I realized I had missed the point, and the news. This isn’t the President saying he deserves to be on Mount Rushmore. This is Obama seeking to define the themes he intends to run on next year, to energize his disillusioned base, and to capitalize on a big change in the political climate. Teddy Roosevelt, whose famous “New Nationalism” speech in 1910 called upon the three branches of the federal government to put the public welfare before the interests of money and property, merely provided a convenient framing device.

Whatever one thinks of Occupy Wall Street—I’m broadly supportive—it has focussed public anger and changed the terms of the political debate, elevating issues such as bankers’ pay, tax evasion by rich people, and corporate lobbying. That’s all to the good. But from the White House’s perspective, it has also had the unfortunate effect of sidelining a President vulnerable to the charge of cozying up to Wall Street and wary of giving the Republicans another cudgel to beat him with. (Think 1968, hippies/anti-war protestors, and Hubert Humphrey.)

Today, Obama gave his first considered response to O.W.S., and it was surprisingly positive. He even adopted some of the protestors’ language, saying:

 

“I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules. Those aren’t Democratic or Republican values; 1% values or 99% values. They’re American values, and we have to reclaim them.”

 

Of course, Obama has talked before about rising inequality and falling tax burdens on the rich. (In the summer of 2010, he made a futile effort to rally support in Congress for ending the Bush tax cuts.) But what was new about today’s speech was the acuteness and depth of Obama’s analysis, and the way he turned it on the Republicans. Rising inequality isn’t only morally repugnant, he said, it is economically inefficient and damaging to the country.

In what was a long speech, here are what I consider to be the six nut grafs:

 

“Look at the statistics. In the last few decades, the average income of the top one percent has gone up by more than 250%, to $1.2 million per year. For the top one hundredth of one percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her workers now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade, the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about six percent.

 

“This kind of inequality—a level we haven’t seen since the Great Depression—hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, it drags down the entire economy, from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity—that’s why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars they made. It’s also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.

“Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. And it leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them—that our elected representatives aren’t looking out for the interests of most Americans.

“More fundamentally, this kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise at the very heart of America: that this is the place where you can make it if you try. We tell people that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, hard work can get you into the middle class; and that your children will have the chance to do even better than you. That’s why immigrants from around the world flocked to our shores.

“And yet, over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk. A few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult. By 1980, that chance fell to around 40%. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it’s estimated that a child born today will only have a 1 in 3 chance of making it to the middle class.

“It’s heartbreaking enough that there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal. But the idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work? That’s inexcusable. It’s wrong. It flies in the face of everything we stand for.”

 

Maybe I’m wrong. But to me that seems like strong and cogent stuff. Doubtless, the Republicans will dismiss it as “class warfare.” That is largely because they don’t have anything more convincing to say. And anyway, Obama has already anticipated their response:

 

“It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay a higher tax rate than somebody pulling in $50 million. It is wrong for Warren Buffett’s secretary to pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. And he agrees with me….

 

“This isn’t about class warfare. This is about the nation’s welfare. It’s about making choices that benefit not just the people who’ve done fantastically well over the last few decades, but that benefits the middle class, and those fighting to get to the middle class, and the economy as a whole.”

 

Like many people who voted for Obama in 2008, I have been critical of some of his actions and inactions. What has bothered me most has not been any one thing in particular, but his overall failure to articulate and defend the vision of an activist government tackling market failures and protecting the public interest, which Teddy Roosevelt helped to create. Yes, the President has done some positive things and made some good speeches, and, yes too, he has faced enormous difficulties, but all too often his heart hasn’t seemed to be in the fight.

Today, at last, he found his voice, or Teddy Roosevelt’s voice—or, as some are suggesting, Elizabeth Warren’s voice. Anyway, it was a big improvement.

 

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2011/12/invoking-teddy-roosevelt-obama-finds-his-voice.html#ixzz1gFQ6tFb6

 

Before He Makes Each One: a day of politics and poetry

The poet Ranier Maria Rilke has given me and generations of others the gift of his wisdom throughout our lives. He speaks anew to me in successive stages of my own life, as I return to the same lines, old and still mysterious friends, again and again. The shock of rediscovery is as profound as the shock of first dawn. I rediscover what I had not known. Images and feelings appear, leave lingering traces, reappear freshly in new light, mingle gracefully with other gifts.

I thought today was going to be a political day of renewed hope. It was that for a few hours, and the impact lingers. But I found a midday turning in response to the Rilke poem below, and I was intensely moved.

So here is a paragraph about my political morning, before a related but more poetic and spiritually focused afternoon and evening:

After early morning at my writing table I went to breakfast having plucked from the internet and eagerly read the text of the president's speech yesterday in Osawatomie, Kansas. Barack Obama found again the voice that the mongrel wolves of Washington had muted but not destroyed. I suspect we'll discover that his canniness in these past three years has served us better than his critics on left and right have known. His words were clear, passionate, eloquent, and at least bear some measure of kinship to those of Theodore Roosevelt, his predecessor in Osawatomie a century ago. (President Obama may be seen and heard here. Timothy Egan offers a valuable and more critical perspective on Roosevelt and Obama here.)

What impact Obama's words will have we can't know. The times are still very dark, inequality continues to grow, plutocracy and war still reign, winter comes and the Occupy movement is at an unpredictable turning point, and the clarion call of a campaign for re-election has been heard.

_________________________________

Now to Rilke.

I'm not going to write about the poem that follows or Rilke's other work. Or the craft of Stephen Mitchell's translations, or the connections between politics and poetry. All in good time.

You will know or love or not, as you will, and may well know Rilke's gifts longer and better than I. The translation below is not Mitchell's but is nonetheless beautiful.

If you like, linger with the poem. You may then ease into its depths. Or it may carry you as if you stepped into a river.

I'll only note that some readers will need to draw upon their gift for metaphor, while others will see and hear, think and feel more immediately as strong a response as I felt and continue to feel. Those two alternatives are not mutually exclusive.

Before He Makes Each One

Before he makes each one
of us, God speaks.

Then, without speaking,
he takes each one 
out of the darkness.

And these are the cloudy
words God speaks
before each of us begins:

"You have been sent out
by your senses. Go
to the farthest edge
of desire, and give me
clothing: burn like a great
fire so that the stretched-out
shadows of the things
of the world cover
me completely.
Let everything happen
to you: beauty and terror.
You must just go--
no feeling is the farthest
you can go. Don't let
yourself be separated
from me. The country
called life is close.
By its seriousness,
you will know it.
Give me your hand."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke  ~

(Translated by Annie Boutelle, Metamorphoses Fall 2001)

Note to a friend at The Redwoods, my community

I feel grateful for what you say today, and what you said 40 years ago. Yes, Rich's poem "What kind of times are these" is indeed shockingly powerful.

All of what you say feels true in the best sense of that often poorly used word.  Your note prompts me to re-imagine the much-remembered line with which Robert Frost begins his poem "Mending Wall." 

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall."

I don't like to speak or read poetry independently of the whole poem. Seeing that single line hanging out there on my mental clothesline feels unkind to the poet and so much of my own and others' experience of "Mending Wall." The setting is Frost's own, New Hampshire or Vermont.

Because I don't know how you may know that poem, or come again to know it, I am including it for you here as a small gift of thanks.

Many thanks, my friend,

John

Mending Wall

by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of out-door game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

 

Two of Adrienne Rich's poems and the Occupy movement

Dear [poet friend],

I enjoy listening each week to Curtis Fox's short (15-minute) public radio program, "Poetry off the shelf." You very likely know it, both as part of your history and because it's produced by the Poetry Foundation, which does Poetry magazine. Fox usually has a bright younger guest poet join him in looking at a little of the work of another poet. This week the question was something like "Should Adrienne Rich be the poet laureate of the Occupy movement?" 

Not a promising query — the Occupy movement needs a poet laureate about as much as it needs a president and a first and 2nd vice president. Even Adrienne Rich.

Fox may be off the mark in this instance, but he's not dumb. And his guest thankfully spent little time dispatching the question.

But they also read and talked intelligently about two Rich poems, neither of which I knew, and both of them are fine, brilliant in the very English and Scottish senses of the word. One, the shorter of the two poems, is called simply "Wait," written just as the 2nd American invasion of Iraq was getting underway. It appears addressed to an American soldier sent by his anonymous elders to fight and risk inflicting and enduring injury and death in that war. "They never told you." I think it the more difficult of the two poems to the tin ear, and your audience must be assumed to have such disabled ears. What little you said of your editor's first response suggests it.

I'm inclined to incorporate this note into a current Reckonings post, but I won't identify you other than as "a poet friend," and of course won't use your address. [Our own home grown editor of our monthly newsletter in the community that is my home] advises us well not to take our friends' names into our ventures on the web without their permission.

I have no idea if Reckonings has more than a half-dozen readers, most of whom are surely my children. There is ample encouraging provision for online response to Reckonings posts, but the last one I had was probably in aught2. I gave the journal up while in Norway, but am happy to return to it now in a blessedly peaceful place and time. Roosevelt grandchildren and great-grandchildren should always put fame where it belongs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wait

by Adrienne Rich

In paradise every

the desert wind is rising

third thought

in hell there are no thoughts

is of earth

sand screams against your government

issued tent    

hell’s noise     in your nostrils      crawl

into your ear-shell

wrap yourself in no-thought

wait    no place for the little lyric

wedding-ring glint the reason why   

on earth

they never told you

“Wait,” from The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004 by Adrienne Rich. Copyright © 2006 by Adrienne Rich. 

The second of Rich's poems is "What kinds of times are these," and it's that question and Rich's response that put me in mind of your wishing to expand upon your writing about the Occupy movement. I thought yes, her times are ours, and to add some brief discussion of that poem might expand your writing. See what you think.

 
I drew from my listening that Rich took the title from Bertold Brecht, and Curtis Fox's guest poet spoke of Rich's themes of "poetry of witness" and empathic sensibility, our lack of memory and community, and the notion that Zucotti Park is not a physical place, nor is the true academy, the grove of trees, the meeting place. "It's necessary to talk about trees." 

I'll try to find the poem, though you may have it.

 
That poem seems suitably short and apropos of your own current theme, and I think it lovely. Not prosiac language of course, but lovely.

Cheers and good hunting,

John

PS: I noted that Rich, like you, is 10 years my senior. I have at least a decade of good learning ahead of me! (Joan Rivers is closer to my age.)

What Kind of Times Are These [I include a link to Adrienne Rich reading "What Kind of Times Are These," but I must warn you, dear reader, not to look at the subtitles, for they are wildly inaccurate renderings of her reading. Listen to her voice.]

by  Adrienne Rich

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—ghost-ridden crossroads, leaf

mold paradise:I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees.

“What Kind of Times Are These”. © 2002, 1995 by Adrienne Rich, from The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems 1950-2001 by Adrienne Rich. 

Adrienne Rich, 1929 —

Vocation: Poet

Executive summary: An atlas of the difficult world

University: Radcliffe College (1951)   

Visiting professor, Brandeis University (1972-73)   

Visiting professor, Scripps College (1983-84)   

Visiting professor, Stanford University (1984-86)   

Professor of English, Stanford University (1986-93)

National Book Award for Poetry 1974 for Diving into the Wreck   

Bollingen Prize in Poetry 2003   

MacArthur Fellowship 1994-99   

Guggenheim Fellowship 1952   

Guggenheim Fellowship 1961   

Phi Beta Kappa Society    

American Academy of Arts and Letters    

American Academy of Arts and Sciences    

Women Against Pornography

 
Books:

A Change of World (1951, poetry)

Necessities of Life: Poems 1962-1965 (1966, poetry)

Diving into the Wreck (1973, poetry)

The Dream of a Common Language (1978, poetry)

The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950-1984 (1984, poetry)

Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1986)

Time's Power: Poems 1985-1988 (1989, poetry)

An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 (1991, poetry)

Collected Early Poems: 1950-1970 (1993, poetry)

What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (1993, essays)

Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995 (1995, poetry)

Midnight Salvage: Poems 1995-1998 (1999, poetry)

Fox: Poems 1998-2000 (2001, poetry)

Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations (2001, essays)

Gail Collins - an appreciation

Gail Collins writes with good humor in her own distinctive voice and on New York Times opinion pages.

No one could or will take the place of Mark Twain's adventures of Huckleberry Finn or his friend Tom Sawyer. We won't have a contemporary Will Rogers or know the likes of Molly Ivins or Herblock. Joan Rivers at 76 isn't worried that anyone will succeed her. She's enterprising enough for a dozen followers, and with any luck will be an actress until she dies. (You should, however, see the fine documentary, "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work," written, directed, produced — and brilliantly edited — by Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern.) Dave Barry, author of I'll Mature When I'm Dead, is probably right. And that's just fine. He is a splendidly prolific author of adult and children's literature, as well as a newspaper columnist.

This isn't the place to plumb the difference between varieties of good humor, or between humor and comedy, much less comedy and tragedy.

So we're free simply to celebrate Gail Collins, and gratefully to read her excellent columns in the Times.

Underneath every truly successful comic is an intelligent critic. In this event, a critic skilled in combining humor and biting analysis to characterize American politics, cultural craziness and corporate ripoffs. She is especially good at deflating the pretentiousness of politicians caught in their own maze of contradictions and foibles.

Political humor or genuinely humorous political commentary is a necessary and largely lost art, but every generation seems to bring us at least one wonderful example of doing it well. Gail Collins bids fair to become that example in this second decade of the 21st century. I wish her a long and happy life.

Witness a few of the opening paragraphs of her column today, Saturday, December 3, 2011.

"It’s weird how you can lose track of our ever-changing world. For instance, until recently, I thought 'reality TV' meant games about people who were stuck on an island or locked in a house together for the summer. Then, suddenly, I noticed that there were seven different regularly scheduled shows about real housewives, three about people who bid on abandoned storage lockers and two about people who kill wild hogs for a living. 

"And then there was online education. (Confession: This entire column is actually going to be about online education. I just used the wild hogs to reel you in.)

"I always thought that the only kids getting their entire public schooling online were in the hospital, living in the Alaskan tundra, or pursuing a career as a singing orphan in the road company of 'Annie.' Not so. There are now around 250,000 cyberschool students in kindergarten through high school [actually through college and graduate school], and the number is growing fast...." 

She goes on to point out that behind every such ripoff there is enterprising capitalism, at least one corporation and probably several making a tidy profit off American taxpayers, in this instance including a company called K12 Inc.

She even manages to bring out the humor in David Brooks:

David Brooks: Gail, which was your favorite not-Romney boomlet? Did you like the Bachmann Spring, the Cain Supernova, the Trump Tornado or the Gingrich Comet?

Gail Collins: David, we may part philosophical company as this campaign rolls along, but I like to think we will always have Donald Trump, Presidential Front-Runner.

David: I think I liked the Cain moment the best because this was a presidential campaign predicated on the conviction that the candidate was not actually running for president. The whole campaign had a modernist “This is Not a Pipe” absurdity to it, and I’m sorry to see him collapse, though I did see a nice tweet from somebody who observed that the only thing Herman Cain knows about foreign affairs is that he denies having had any. Read more…

 

 

In memory of Edward R. Murrow

"Good night and good luck." It was his sign-off phrase. I shiver when I remember his distinctive voice saying those words when he closed his radio and later his television report of the news. He was a man of integrity unafraid to speak truth to power. He should be an exemplary presence in American journalism today.

I'm putting together this small tribute to Murrow for that reason, and because it's been six years since we saw the fine film narrated by George Clooney (it may be bought, rented or streamed from Amazon).

It has been much longer — before the beginning of World War II in Europe — since Edward R. Murrow's reporting career began, in effect bringing a revolution to American radio journalism with his short-wave broadcasts sent from London and aboard Allied bombers to listeners in the United States. He was a pioneer of a kind of journalism we see too little of in these days of media empires and news that must make its way by its entertainment value. 

Murrow began a new kind of radio news, CBS's "World News Round Up." H.V. Kaltenborn, who narrated the program from New York, could be heard with anxiety in his voice because the quality of radio connection was uneven and unpredictable, "Come in Ed Murrow, Come in Ed Murrow." During the Blitz, when German planes rained bombs on London, Murrow sometimes spoke from the steps of damaged St. Paul's Cathedral. Air raid sirens could be heard in the background.

Murrow and other journalists followed Allied troops into the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald in April 1945, as it happened on the very day President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in Warm Springs. Georgia. Murrow, obviously shaken by what he saw, described the exhausted physical state of the 21,000 concentration camp prisoners who had survived (many died of their starvation in the following days and weeks), mentioning "rows of bodies stacked up like cordwood." And he refused to apologize for the horror of his words:

"I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it I have no words. If I've offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I'm not in the least sorry."

   

 

It is now more than a half century since, in his pioneering television reporting on "See It Now," Murrow courageously took on Joe McCarthy, the junior Senator from Wisconsin who had made a career of irresponsible, bullying and dishonest red-baiting. On that program Murrow said something that bears repeating in 2011, in every time and place.

"We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason.... No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices."

Edward R. Murrow in his office, 1957

Later he initiated a program called This I Believe , an opportunity for ordinary Americans to speak for five minutes on their fundamental values. Fifty-three years ago he gave a memorable speech in Chicago on October 15, 1958. It is a speech as pertinent now as it was then.

A chain smoker throughout his life, Murrow was known for almost never being seen without his trademark Camel cigarette. He evidently smoked from sixty to sixty-five cigarettes a day, roughly three packs. His own television program See It Now was the first to have a report about the connection between smoking and cancer. Murrow said during the show, "I doubt I could spend a half hour without a cigarette with any comfort or ease." 

His last major TV milestone was reporting and narrating the CBS Reports installment "Harvest of Shame," on the plight of migrant farm workers in the United States. 

Edward R. Murrow died on April 27, 1965, two days after his 57th birthday. His colleague and friend Eric Sevareid said of him,

"He was a shooting star; and we will live in his afterglow a very long time."