Feeding the Masses, Starving our Troops

4.27.07

At our staff meeting today, the receptionist shared a story, that appalled and amazed me. Her son is serving in Iraq and called her at 3am to tell her he was hungry. Apparently, our government only provides our soldiers 1 meal a day. This administration who accuses anyone of questioning the war or its rationale as being traitorous and unsupportive of our troops. This administration who lies to us about its reasons for sending our soldiers into hostile territory and closes its eyes and ears to all questions and criticisms with the response, "shut-up, I'm the decider." It reminds me of pre-school.

How can it be that we under-protect and under-feed our boys and girls as we expose them to the most gruesome wartime injuries ever? How can we continue to vote for these policies without knowing exactly what they are funding? Why do we see only the valient men and women in action and so few of the 100 fold more mentally and physically maimed veterans who return home, broken and now also apparently, underserved by the country they promised to serve? Denying veterans benefits, reducing medical coverage, cutting off promised services are more ways the Bush administration honors our "brave men and women overseas."

When we read about this in the news, do we just shake our heads in dismay and head on off to work? Do we write a check to a veteran's support group and feel better? Do we write our members of congress in protest? Or do we just gloss on over to the more salicious stories about aliented students run amok, 475 pound 9 year olds and the latest celebrity faux pas? What does it take to raise our hackles high enough to act out?

This soldier's mother responded immediatley by boxing up food to send to him and his fellow troops. Then she told family and friends who provided similar support. And then, this mother, this Latina immigrant whose son serves a nation of gringo lawmakers, she took up the tool we all have lying as close as our nearest pencil cup and she wrote her representatives in Congress. And they made something happen. This battalion got more food.

We hear stories about mothers fund-raising for better armor for their children's Hummers, more modern flak jackets, collecting used discarded cell phones so they can keep in touch. It is when it hurts us most at home that we are finally moved out of the barcalounger to take up our swords or pens and fight for what is right.

Is it the mother gene? The female gender? The goddess in all of us that makes us think twice about pulling triggers? Were women to run the world would we have less war and more diplomacy? Would we have universal health and day care and more parks and better schools? Would we network more and climb less? Would we turn this country into a place that grows real food and allows us teh time to nourish ourselves with family over commute time? Would we abolish the draft and instigate mandatory stints in service of our local communities?

I'm not sure we would do a better job at running the joint, but of one thing I am positive. We would not treat our sons and daughters like anonymous miniture missiles to be fired at conjured or convenient enemies. We would truly support and honor them both in teh field and when they return home. These are our babies, who for whatever reasons have chosen to fight for us, risk life and more limbs than ever for our rights to pursue, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the freedom to protest the very policies that put them in harm's way. If they are being asked to serve "at the pleasure" of the president, they deserve to be served 3 squares daily and true hero's welcomes on their return.

4.3.07

I wend my way via NYC, walking from Port Authority to Penn Station, pulling a back muscle navigating rush hour pedestrian traffic in mid-town to train it down to Trenton, NJ where I find Mary Morris, 85 and her huge, bright red lipsticked smile awaiting me in a run-down part of the city. She’s no end to the stories and old photographs, memories pouring out of her like her beloved Pepsi from a can. I came down for one piece of family history which she dispelles and I’m reminded of the power of myths. I had always thought she had cared for me and my sister when my parents divorced, my mother having supposed succumbed to an alcoholic depression when he left. Turns out, she just went shopping. Mary giggles as she remembers telling her to do so when my mother informed her of the divorce, having gone through her own husband’s betrayal. “You go buy whatever you want, Mrs. Byfield, he’ll be paying!” I love this comiserating between boss and employee, both suffering the wandering hearts of their men. Class, race, age and beauty mattered not.

She has many more stories to tell and I sit there marveling at the desire to share and how some of us do and some of us don’t. The afternoon gets warm as her head turns from side to side with laughter and thought. The taxi arrives too soon to take me back to the train station and my homeward trip and I leave her sun and plant filled apartment with a sense of calm. Her memories of my sister and me and her time with my family are not my own, as I have few, but they are a version of the truth (as Jack Nicholson says in “As Good as It Gets”) and maybe it’s time to look at the past differently. Or just leave it behind as I move forward. The next half-century awaits.

Into the second half

4.6.07

I came across this quote on the site of my quintet partner, violinist and artist, John August Swanson.

We tremble before making our choice in life, and after having made it again tremble in fear of having chosen wrong. But the moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we see and realize that grace is infinite. Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude. Grace, brothers, makes no conditions and singles out none of us in particular; grace takes us all to its bosom and proclaims general amnesty. See! That which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us. Aye, that which we have rejected is poured upon us abundantly. For mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss have kissed one another!’ “

--Babette’s Feast -Isak Dinesen

4.2.07

4.2.07

Early morning run in the mist and I come across 4 deer families at different spots on the road, their white tails dancing like popcorn in a vendor’s machine. They look at this bi-ped for a moment before crossing the road and heading to safety. I am again reminded of how far removed from nature, a winter’s potential meal, a hunter’s delight. Eunice does not hear the doorbell as I ring and ring so I find a lader and scale 25 feet up the side of her house to the kitchen window in the hopes of flagging her. Poor dear, she thinks someone is about to break in, but opens the front door, finally to investigate and lets me in. She’s amazed at my energy and I am chagrined by how this houseguest has turned her schedule upside down and flustered her sense of normalcy. Last night we couldn’t’ figure out what had happened to the electric blanket control, quite vital in her cellar cold basement bedroom, so I slept upstairs by the fireplace instead. I had learned that my god-father picked up the cello when stationed in the Philippines during WWII and had heard a fellow troop playing. In his down time, he managed to find an old band instrument and proceeded to teach himself, even when strings broke and he was down to two. Later he ends up finding an instrument in a dumpster in Germany, which ultimately is priced quite well and now belongs to a concert performer he befriended back stateside. I love these stories.

3.31.-7

3.31.07

Lunch with good friends of my father, who sailed with us, is bittersweet as the husband is dying of throat cancer and his wife of 38 years reconciles a new phase of her own life. We have a brief chat with him and then lunch at a local polish place. Wandering around in search of an artist she is fond of draws us past a glass-blowing shop where their wares are displayed to the street and one is invited to watch a class taking place behind the goods for sale. It is mesmerizing, to watch the young man sit at a special seat, rolling the long metal tube back and forth across his lap, shaping the glowing orb of hot sand, then rising to reheat it in a fire breathing oven. I am reminded of how few of us get the time, opportunity or perhaps inclination to be so creative in our lives, how far removed we are from creating the necessities of living on a day to day basis, rather depending on the market economy to provide our goods and services. We then happen upon a garden shop, with amazing topiary and green displays, including a bonsai Redwood forest, tiny yet commanding in a foot long dish. We don’t find the artist on this trek, but I get to see the warehouses that are being bought up by developers and how soon this area will become too chic for the polish community, which had decided to reject low-income housing for fear of the “darkies” moving in. Finally we locate the shop where an artist creates original works by the yard, setting up shingles lined up in a row, adding to each as he goes up and down the line. He’s created more than 180,000 pieces which he sells for $5-10 so now I am an owner of fun take on Homer’s “Christina’s World” in which she lies on the grass, her arm outstretched as if searching. The subtitle is “Lost Glasses.” It seems a perfect gift for my 50th, as I’m constantly losing my reading spectacles.

The evening is capped with a lovely dinner with the man who lived with Michael and me years ago and his wife, an artist. They have a small apartment, but lovely as a display for her books dipped in wax, large canvases, antique iron beds and all white décor. They make a lovely fish stew and we catch up on his writing efforts and their current disagreement about whether a sofa, that he wants for reading, is the death of creativity. She prefers uncomfortable seating to keep her on edge and I’m interesting in this whole idea of whether one can be an artist and “happy.”

3.30.07

3.30.07

Olana. The home of Frederic Church where Sara works is a fantastic example of passionate building. It’s not a sprawling estate but rather filled with details belying the painter’s love of countries (India, Mexico, Morocco) motifs, colors, textures, angles, light and perspective. The main house is being renovated, paint and stencils restored on walls and ceilings, floors and heating systems redone. But the love of home and hearth is evident in the rich woods and amber colored glass and while his art is missing, I can see in the landscapes from the various windows his inspiration in the Hudson Valley. It’s a joy to see the fruits of Sara’s labors in both her family and her work life and I head on south to NYC on the train.

Arriving early at the apartment of my best friend from grammar school, I walk down Hudson Street and stop by the house I grew up in. It faces St. Luke’s School and I smile remembering many years there. How different to now imagine it from the perspective of being a mother sending her kids across the street while she worked in her 3rd floor library and could look out the window to watch us during recess, playing in the yard, swinging and scampering. I then stop into school, wander the grounds and for some reason am drawn to an open door that allows me to visit the basement and the auditorium. The stage door entrance is open and I sneak a peak into backstage and remember my one and only performance as the Queen of Sheba, whose single line was “My, the grasshoppers are particularly succulent this year.” I wore my mother’s fur coat to represent my royal wealth and the line brought down the house. I later learn that Kate Winslet’s children now attend the school and wonder if they will find their passion on the stage as well.

Liz and her wonderful, youngest daughter Caroline, arrive at her apartment down the street and it’s a delight to see her smiling face after 10 years. She’s changed not a bit, perhaps more gray, but still that friend of yore, with whom secrets, bags of potato chips and an ill-fated attempt at hiking the Apalachian Trail were shared so many years ago. Her daughter’s going to get her prom dress at Saks and I am transported back to our graduation day, when granny gowns and Frye boots were the style, not the tailored, sophisticated gown she chooses. A wonderful dinner at Monster Sushi followed by more catching up on her career, now retired from teaching Latin at Yale to teaching same at a charter school nearby her home in Woodstock CT. Her older girls are in college and alight home now and then to tend to horses and check in.

Sleep comes late but welcome.