Causes for celebrating and slumping

This week is full of birthdays: The 18th would have been John Paul II's 100th birthday. Yesterday was my mother-in-law's birthday. My son's fiancee celebrates a birthday on the 21st, as does our good friend from college. And I have my own birthday this weekend! All seem like good reasons to have a little cake tonight. We are always looking for some excuse to bake around here. 

Since it is also Laudato Si week, which honors the fifth anniversary of the publication of Laudato Si, maybe we should try to make cake that is waste-free. Does that mean we eat it all (no food waste!) and bake from scratch (no packaging waste!)?  For my own reference, here are links to some events and programs: https://catholicclimatemovement.global/.  One of the speakers is the director of the Yale Divinity School's program in Religion and Ecology. I listened for a little bit this morning.  Some good news is that the environment has received a little reprieve from the pandemic stay at home orders.

I have been doing a little research on potential opportunities for furthering my education. I was hoping that a happy byproduct of this Covid shut down would be some online opportunities for graduate study, but I haven't found much in the field I am researching. Since teaching the Nature Writing class, I have thought perhaps I should finally finish the Ph.D. I had started 20 years ago, although to what end, I keep asking. The the number of programs that integrate ecology and the humanities are growing.  One of my summer goals is to send out a few paper proposals to revisit an academic mindset. When I envision teaching in the long term, I am drawn to a program like this over a literature program because it moves beyond the academic to the practical and connects the arts and sciences. I vacillate between the idea of moving towards a "career" and doing something more altruistic, like volunteering more or looking into foster care now that our own kids are moving out and onward and now that our military life is nearing an end in the next year or two or three... the economic downtown has caused us to revisit whether next summer is the right time for my husband to retire and find a civilian job or take another tour with the Navy.

In other news, we received word yesterday that our college kids in Indiana will be back on campus in the fall.  That's good news, although I wouldn't have minded having them around. They return for a short summer break in a week. The plan for reopening is to minimize student travel by starting school early and ending before Thanksgiving.  The reasoning is that students will shelter in place on campus.

 On the other hand, I am frustrated by a photo in the WSJ of a casino not too far from us opening. In the photo, a line of gamblers is waiting outside the door. They certainly do not look six feet apart, nor do they all appear to be masked.  On the other hand, churches are still closed, and the policies for reconvening that the bishop is suggesting to comply with government restrictions limit attendance to only a small portion of the congregation. Parishioners 65 and older are asked to stay home, and the seating arrangement suggested does not allow families to sit together, so basically everyone with young children is being asked to stay home, too.  So many more accessible options are available - and already in practice elsewhere.  Governor Newsom apparently has been advised that his restrictions on religious services may violate some law,  In the meantime, gamblers can throw all their free money from the government away on slot machines - some casinos aren't even restricting capacity.

I can't think about that anymore because it makes me angry. But while I'm ranting, I will also add my irritation at the Wall Street Journal editors in regard to a different issue.  I am rarely moved to write about political news, but the recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal's Saturday Review section by Gerard Baker was incendiary. He compares the lack of press surrounding the shooting of an elderly white couple by a mentally unstable black man after a robbery to the belated outcry over the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery to suggest that the killing of young black men by white people receives disproportionate media attention.  But a stark difference exists in these cases: the alleged perpetrator in the first case was chased down and killed.  The alleged perpetrators in the Arbery killing went home to life as usual for a few months because of their personal and professional relationships with people in the police and justice departments in their area. This gross injustice reeks of an old boy network that protects the guilty and lets the innocent suffer, as well as a shocking miscarriage of justice that negates any progress in the eradication of racism, despite the media attention that Baker decries.  What precedent is set when Arbery's murder goes unprosecuted for two months on the basis of his killers' claim that it was a citizen's arrest, even though he was unarmed and hadn't committed a crime?  

I do not fear for my young adult sons' lives when they go for a jog, or wear hoodies, or get pulled over for minor traffic infractions.  My friend, however, is afraid to allow her sons to walk alone outside. My sons are white; hers are black.  Until she no longer has to live with that fear, Mr. Baker's argument is weak and perpetuates injustice.  It reads like the words of someone who wants to deny what makes him uncomfortable, but Ahmaud Arbery's story should make him feel very uncomfortable, and horrified, shocked, and saddened that such hate crimes still happen without consequences until an outcry is raised. 

Well, I realize that this post started with happy news and ended with frustration. Is the answer to avoid the news and focus on our immediate surroundings?  Should we avoid emotional engagement with national news or try to balance the response? When should we be moved to action - to write letters to the editor and to the governor?  The news has sucked hours of my attention over the past couple of months -- now I am exhausted by it. Even though I do feel we have a civic duty to be informed about social and political issues, and to engage when we can, I am not very gifted in discerning what level of engagement is too much or too little. I am a passive consumer of news, and not a very active participant in movements against injustice. 

In order to balance my self-condemnation, we did take several bags of shelf stable food that I had purchased in my initial fear that the stores would shut down to a boy scout friend's house for his family to take to the food pantry. I am never an organizer, but I am happy to be a laborer.

So now let us turn to celebrating the gift of life and eat cake. . . 

Not that far away

News travels slowly here.  NPR only broadcasts briefly, our Wall Street Journal subscription was too expensive to forward, I can’t seem to stay awake for the news on TV. I know, it’s all on the internet, but I only catch glimpses of it. 

And I did catch a glimpse of the news about Kadhafi’s capture and death.  I wish I could feel more of a sense of victory but after Bin Laden’s death brought little change, it seems precipitous to hope that change for Libya is coming.  Kadhafi’s successor might be a worse despot. The regime change in Egypt, too, seems to be even less tolerant of Christianity.  The persecutions of Christians in the Middle East seem far away.

But after reading Persepolis, a graphic novel about a young girl experiencing the tumult of the Shah of Iran’s rise to power in 1980, these events seem closer.

After the moral soul scrubbing of reading Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer, I meant to stay away from novels for a bit while I worked on that weak will problem.  I went back the A Mother’s Rule of Life, which rubbed me the wrong way when I first read it, and braced myself to make a schedule and to again rededicate myself to setting priorities, like going to bed at a decent hour instead of staying up late reading.  With homeschooling, I have more time for prayer with the kids and more motivation to stick to a schedule, but I also have a greater temptation to give myself chocolate+coffee breaks and social media breaks and turning off the brain breaks. Then suddenly it’s time to run to soccer practice, and the kitchen’s a disaster, and nothing is planned for dinner. 

But in the name of previewing some literature for the older kids, I gave myself a novel break to read a graphic version of King Lear by Gareth Hinds and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. And I think I can make an argument that both of these “novels” are a kind of lectio divina. 

Lear needs no excuse. Hinds retains Shakespeare’s language but places it in word bubbles above sketchy drawings of the main players. In the interest of space and illustration a couple minor characters and a few speeches were cut, but I was happy – excited even – with the book.  I’ve been trying to get my older boys to read a few classics in between homework, practices, and ipods, and this was a great intro to Lear, if they can’t see it performed. The illustrations give expression to lines that might be difficult to interpret on a page of text.  And it was easy to keep track of who is who.  Some of the subplots between the brother-in-laws were still a little confusing to the boys, but the duplicity of Regan and Goneril was obvious.  And the tragedy of Lear’s descent and the blinding of Gloucester were movingly conveyed by the illustrations.  But of course the real power is Shakespeare’s wordsmithery.  I had forgotten how despicable Regan and Goneril are in their grasping for Edmund, and how tragic the ending is. Shakes lets you believe that Lear and Cordelia might survive, that good will win out in the end, but then kills off the characters who could redeem the treachery.

Here you have food for meditation on the nature of parental duty, on aging and death, on loyalty and truth, on the brevity of life and what makes it worth living. And Shakespeare makes it all seem so dramatic and important – and beautiful - as if all of life were concerned with these Big Topics. Hinds's illustrations don't distract from all that.

Persepolis is quite a different creation, but it also set my head spinning. Its form is more like a traditional comic book: black and white drawings in little squares for distinct actions and conversations. But this story of a 12 year old girl living in Iran in 1979-1980 is incredibly moving.  Genre-wise, it’s really a memoir, not a novel, but the form removes what could come across as melodrama in a traditional memoir.

The story reminds me a little of Reading Lolita in Tehran.  An educated family in Iran is thrilled when the government is overthrown, but then overcome with disbelief at the fundamentalism of the Shah.  Why don't they leave? It’s a topic that fascinates: how does such an evil regime come into being? Why do people accept the dictator’s decrees? They live in fear because their friends and relations are killed off.

But Marji retains a spunky, free-thinking attitude. She wears tight jeans under her burkha. She sasses her teachers. She questions the propaganda.  Her parents are upper-class, communist-leaning, idealists who believe the regime is going to get better. But it doesn’t.  Arrests, death, and exile follow

.

Both of these books raise the question of whether a graphic form traditionally used by “comic” books is effective for tragedies.  I suppose you could argue whether Persepolis is by classical definition a tragedy or not, since Marji escapes the country and flourishes in France, but she loses her family and her homeland, along with whatever innocence she had when the Shah takes over.

I lay down in bed after finishing the book with my mind replaying the events in the life of Marji’s family and thinking about the tumultuous experiences of the people of the Middle East today.   We have it so good; we are so blessed.  But how easily it could all be lost.  The news is often grim – and here we are on an island much closer to places like North Korea that could easily erupt into violence.  But these stories of perseverance in the face of tragedy provide hope at the same time that they taunt “this could be you. . . . What are you doing to help?” 

An eventful week

What a week of news. Where to start? Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. Spring brings new life amid the storms.

This week the kids were on spring break, so we took a short camping trip.  Thursday morning we drove into Natchez to explore this beautiful town on the coast of the Mississippi River. We parked near the river and walked into a “primitive” antique store with a reproduction Confederate officer uniform displayed by the door. The antique owner immediately accosted us, his only customers. He wasn’t nervous about our half dozen children roaming among his goods, because “primitive” antiques are already beat up. But he had a message for us.

Like a prophet of old, he spouted forth predictions of doom and destruction. Towns were destroyed, the floods are coming, darkness will cover the earth.


At first I was confused by his story. Then I realized he was talking about what he had seen on the news the night before – hundreds of tornadoes across northern Mississippi and Alabama. Suddenly I felt the hand of God on my shoulder. We were supposed to be camping outside of Birmingham, but at the last minute Wednesday morning, we had checked the weather and decided to head west instead. I can’t determine if tornadoes struck the campground where we were going to stay, but we would’ve been in for a sleepless night regardless. We have been known to be heedless of weather reports, but this time we are grateful we changed course.


The store owner also was concerned about the course of the Mississippi River. Flooding up north will cause flooding down south. His store may be standing in the river in a few weeks if the rains don’t abate. And he had predictions about the downfall of the economy and the bankruptcy of America. And once he found out my husband was in the military, he had forecasts for him, too, about dangers of becoming embroiled in Muslim politics. But he did not foretell the assassination of Osama bin Laden.


All of these surprises upstaged the long planned festivities surrounding the wedding of Prince William and now Duchess Kate and the beatification of John Paul II. Not to mention the celebration of Easter and the enjoyment of spring break in our own little corner of the world.


So a round-up of the week: First Easter, celebrated without extended family, a rarity for us, even though we live hundreds of miles from cousins and grandparents. But this summer will bring extended travels for us, so we opted to stay home and attend the Triduum masses in our parish here. We did join up Sunday afternoon with some other military families and the Polish priest from the Air Force Base, who reminds me of Blessed JP II, to celebrate a First Communion and the Resurrection with an appropriately rich feast. It was a joyful and sweet day.


I spent the next day prepping for my class on Don Quixote and Othello. All these little dips and dives into the classics for the class are only tantalizing bites of a rich main course, but I’m afraid my students have begun to feel overfull and are no longer indulging. Class ends this week. Hoping they at least are inspired to go back to these works, knowing they are loved by someone, and don’t accept with Mark Twain’s definition: “’Classic.’ A book which people praise and don’t read.” Meaning to collect and record some reading notes into coherent sentences.

A couple days later, we received confirmation of my husband’s orders. The move to Guam will take place this summer after all. More to come on this. If we get base housing, we will still live on a bay, so I won’t have to change the name of my blog. But that’s only if I don’t go crazy before we get there. I can’t even think about what we have to do to get ready. It will get done, but I’m putting off thinking about it for a couple more weeks.


On Wednesday we left for our scaled down camping trip, which was once going to be a weeklong trip to the Smokies, but because of kids qualifying for regional track meets and soccer tournaments, we decided to shorten it, eventually down to a two night trip to western Mississippi. While tornadoes destroyed the area we had picked as a second choice, we enjoyed clear, cool weather, the quick tour of Natchez, and a couple long hikes, the second marred only by a couple stops for the eight yr old to throw up. (She told us her stomach hurt, but we thought it was all the s’mores the night before.) My husband and I had been to Natchez once before for a friend’s wedding nearly 15 years ago, so part of the motivation to go there was to revisit a place of fond memory. Seemed a different place, of course. We had peeked into the antique store because we had always regretted not buying a framed manuscript page from a 17th century missal on our first visit there. And do you know, we found the store, amid the dozens of antique shoppes in Natchez, and a framed manuscript. The same? Authentic? We bought it nonetheless, so to us, the answers to those questions will be yes.



Perfect marshmellow




Alligator mississippiensis




Woodland pinkroot



Fraser Magnolia - huge

Watching for floods and gators.



Stanford Hall - site of a big party some years ago



Along the St. Catherine Creek

Happy hikers. Guess which one threw up?

When we returned home, after starting the first of multiple loads of laundry, I got online to check out the news. Watched videos of killer tornadoes until I was afraid to go to bed, remembering a recurrent dream I used to have as a child of tornadoes out my front door and tornadoes out my back door. So as a tonic, I watched videos of the royal wedding and read descriptions of all the hats and dresses. Did not love Pippa Middleton’s dress, although 84% of viewers did.


Yesterday’s news capped all: First the pope’s beatification. Several months ago, we thought about trying to go to Rome with some cousins with whom we went to Mother Teresa’s beatification in 2003. We priced out tickets to Roma. We discussed the option of spending our tax return on air fare. Then we decided that was improvident and spent it instead on recent car repairs. Would much rather have gone to Rome.


Photos like this one – our daughter who threw up on the hike is the baby under the E - might be worth a few thousand dollars.

In St. Peter's Square for Mother Teresa's beatification and JP II's 25th anniversary.

Then the death of Osama bin Laden. I fear retaliations and his elevation to martyr status.  Security is tight at the base. This morning I had to flash my ID about 10 times to go about my business at the gym and the commissary.  Bin Laden's body apparently has been buried at sea, but that is a story that seems to invite conspiracy theories. But I also am glad for all the United States, especially the military members, the SEALS, and the CIA operatives we know (okay, not many of the last, I admit) that they have this moment of triumph. Carry on.