Talking with ghosts

Love this quote from an interview with editors M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt in the New York Times about the Norton Anthology's anniversary:

Has the Norton Anthology then lost its relevance?

Greenblatt: Not at all. The Norton Anthology was based on the idea that it actually matters to plunge into a comic masterpiece written in the 1300s or to weep at a tragedy performed in the 1700s. What would it mean for a culture to give up on its past? It is vitally important to remind people that the humanities carry the experience, the life-forms of those who came before us, into the present and into the future. Through reading literature we can make ghosts speak to us, and we can speak back to them. Besides — as many studies have shown — cultural knowledge turns out to be good for your career.

And so I continue to stumble through Sophocles and Shakespeare with my students at the community college, even though I'm sure they wonder whether they are getting their money's worth from this class.

Actually, I have been very happy with the way the literature class has been going. It's a smaller group than last semester, and about half of the students are older than I am, so they are happy to sit around and talk about the relationships in these plays.  Last week we had a great discussion about whether it would have been better for Oedipus to live in ignorance than to find out his sins.  The class was pretty well split in opinion.  They may have had a hard time with the language, but they picked up on the themes. They were able to weep at this masterpiece from thousands of years ago.

There seems to be a good rapport among the lit students, and one lady really brought the class to life last week by bringing in warm bunelos. I was only going to eat a bite of one to be polite, but the donut melted away too quickly, reminding me of the donuts from a bakery near where my dad used to work. He could polish off a dozen in no time because they were so airy and sugary when warm that they seemed to evaporate. Only thing missing was coffee, which I'm afraid to drink because this class starts at 8 pm.

We are going to read "Fences" by August Wilson next, because the university next door is staging it in a few weeks.   I just read it for the first time myself, and although the language may strike some students as a bit rough (it was a bit jarring to me, at least - it had crossed my mind to take my kids to the play because I'm always looking for ways to sneak some culture in them, but it's definitely too mature for the youngers), I think the students will really enjoy discussing the family dynamics.  They've enjoyed talking about how the lovers in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" fall into familiar patterns; in "Fences" I hope they'll listen to the ghosts speaking about the next phase of life: marriage and parenting - and how the songs sung by Troy and Lyons and Gabe (like the stories in the anthology) keep the characters waking up in the morning, even when it seems like they've cut themselves off from all their reasons for living.

Now if I could just figure out how to get the same energy to enliven my composition class.  I get a lot of blank stares when I ask for volunteers to read or discuss.  Maybe it's time to bring in hot donuts.

Coming late to the fan club

Melanie posted not long ago about books that you discover you love by chance - not just little known novels, but discovering in famous novels something that surprises you with its truth, even though you've heard all your life how great this book is.  And I just had one of those experiences with Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, after going through a reading dry spell.

I know this is a book you are supposed to have read and fallen in love with as a young teen, but when I first picked it up years ago I couldn’t stick with it. It seemed syrupy and plotless. I never got past the first 20 pages.

But it is on enough lists of favorites that when I saw it on the shelf at the library, I finally decided to give it a second chance and checked it out.

And of course, I’m glad I did, or I wouldn’t be writing about it.  This time around it resonated, even though I never felt I adopted Francie Nolan’s character, like I might have as an adolescent.  Maybe I am just in the right frame of mind to read this kind of episodic story.  I have only had time to read in snatches lately. Also, the setting is easier for me to place compared to the first time I picked this book up: I’ve been to Brooklyn, I’ve learned more about this period before the world wars, I’ve witnessed more poverty.  Maybe I’m in a sentimental time of month.  The writing isn’t especially beautiful, or complex. If it weren’t for some of the subject matter, it would rightly be a children’s book. Whatever the reason, I found myself craving time with the Nolans when I was supposed to be doing other things. Time for a hide in the bathroom…

To be honest, it wasn’t Francie with whom I identified, it was Francie’s mother Katie. I wanted to see what happened to her as much as anyone. She doesn’t hide her cynicism, but neither does she hide her willingness to do what she must.  Francie’s parents are the kind of people who hoped to get somewhere, or at least to have love and music in their lives, but instead got stuck because of drink and tough times. It may seem clichéd now to write about a drunken Irishman whose zest for love and songs makes people love and pity him, but Johnnie Nolan doesn't come across as a cliche.  His bravado in pulling himself together to get Francie into the better school in the next neighborhood over proved his desire to help his daughter.  

But it was Francie’s mother who pulled at my heart strings, even though Francie doesn’t love her as much as her father.  I loved the way she was so matter-of-fact about the earthy side of life (for instance, when she talks to Francie about love “as a mother and as a woman”), but also committed to pulling the family up out of the dirt – the “sordid” life that Francie’s teacher encourages her not to write about.  And the way she is willing to celebrate when something needs celebrating, even though most of the time she’s so frugal. And you have to admire her dedication to reading Scripture and Shakespeare before bed every night. Francie may have thought she loved Neeley better, but it’s clear that Katie believes in Francie. I also liked the way Francie’s mother and aunts supported each other even though they made such bad choices with men. The details about the relationships between women, mothers and daughters and sisters, are the richest part of the book.

Finally, this book provided another path for reminiscing about my grandmother who died in the spring.  It brought back the stories my grandmother used to tell about her adolescence.  She would have been about 10 years younger than Francie, and although she wasn’t so poor, she still had to share a room with a grandmother, go to work to earn money for school, and witness her parents’ loveless marriage.  Nonetheless, she had a lot of zest for life.

I want to pull out a trite message: each generation’s standard of living has improved through hard work and perseverance – and the saving power of imagination. But the book also celebrates the catholic belief that life and love are worth are the suffering they beget and sustain and undergo.  I’m rereading Oedipus the King right now, who cries out better not to have been born at all than to suffer such a horrible fate.  But the Nolans survive a lot of tragedy and don’t lose their love for each other or for life. Katie seems at time to want to give in to despair, but she holds onto her love for her family to keep her looking forward. And eventually her suffering does lessen.  She finally, like the good policeman Mr. McShane, is as happy as she deserves to be. Just like her daughter will be.

Summer's end

After a summer of indecision, our fall is shaping up. Here’s the final fall out:

We will not be moving next summer. That is the biggest news, and the most disappointing.  Another well qualified officer was chosen for the position my husband had put his name in for.  It would have been a great experience, but now it is clear that we will be staying put for the full three years in Guam. I’d like to say that I am relieved to know something at least, instead of being unsure about the future, but this was not the something I wanted to know!

The next decision: schooling. 

Over time it has become obvious that my youngest son would do better in a more structured environment.  In other words, he just doesn’t listen to me. Everything’s a battle. I don’t want him to think that learning involves warfare with your mother. He did well in school in Mississippi, so I feel good about the decision to send him to the DODEA school, which starts next week.

The 12 year old is also going to school there. He’s a more willing student, so I’m conflicted about sending him, but he is, like his older brother, motivated by competition, and he’s an extrovert.  Ironically, that same older brother, the introvert, thinks the 12 yr old should stay home because he sees that there is much to learn at home. If it weren’t for sports, I think the oldest would happily return to homeschooling for high school. Or rather, internet-schooling.

Meanwhile, the two girls are staying home by desire, which made my choice easier.  The 6 yr old is a Miss Priss and easily swayed by groupthink, so I worry about her going to school.  I know I’m caving to a wish to shelter her, instead of responding to wish to share my love of learning, but I’m hoping she’ll at least learn to like reading by the end of the year, instead of resisting it more.  The 10 year old is less girly-girly, but she also is a follower, and seeks affection and approval. I’d rather she get that from me. The thing I’m going to have to work on is keeping these two interested. I’m going to have to get crafty, I’m afeared.  Or they will defect from me and want to go to school too.

That means I’m going to have to fight the tendency to prefer to work on the classes I am teaching at the community college, which started last week.  I picked up a second class, composition, in addition to the literature class. Since I never took a composition class, teaching it requires extra planning on my part; it’s too late to teach these students to write the way I learned: read and read and read, though we’ll read in class. When I taught Freshman Composition in Mississippi, I was following someone else's syllabus. That plan didn't seem intuitive enough to me, so I'm trying something different.

After teaching two classes so far, I'm convinced my literature class is going to be fun - it's a small group, but interested and inquisitive - while the composition class is going to require some magic tricks.  I think that there might be one student who likes writing, but the rest of them just don't want to be there. Judging by their assessment essays, I'm going to have to review some basic grammar.  

Even though I struggle to come up with a plan for this composition class, I’d rather spend time planning a classroom lecture for college kids than a lapbook or display board for a 5^th and 1^st grader.   I’m hoping they’ll be happy to do a lot of reading outloud together and call it school.

While I hemmed and hawed about the school decision, summer rushed to a close.  The younger kids participated in the Missoula Children's Theater production of "Beauty Lou and the Country Beast," which they loved immensely despite the cheesiness of it.  We watched A LOT of Olympics (about Guam Olympians here).  I was inspired to race an Olympic length triathlon (1.5K swim, 40 K bike, 10 K run) last weekend, and got 2nd out of the women (out of about 5, but the first place girl was at least 10 years younger than me.)  Now walking is painful.

And we've been puppy sitting for a couple weeks for a cute dog. The kids ask for either a dog or a baby regularly. 

Yes those are Bart Simpson comic books. Summer isn't officially over.

Then sports practices began: football for one, cross country for the other and soccer for the final four.  This means I spend a LONG part of my day shuttling kids places. This does not make me happy, other than for the fact that it makes them very happy. Practice is the highlight of their days, rain or shine.

My orchid was working on its third shoot before a recent squall.

Now the broken stems from the garden are on the window sill.

And raining it is has been. Lots of rain. I thought I’d have to push the car to dry land one day, but it floated through a mini-sea on its own.  Monsoon season is here, and a typhoon system has been forming in the Pacific. I’m hoping it doesn’t have power to arrive here. We survived two years in Mississippi without facing a hurricane, and I’d be happy to leave the Pacific without ever having weathered a typhoon.



We did catch a break in the rain to take a last boonie stomp to Priest's Pools and one of the mass graves of Chamorros after they were massacred by the Japanese during WWII.

Outside of the War in the Pacific National Park's visitor center. Great new exhibit there.

Good for a smile

I'm getting ready for the semester to start at the community college tonight. In addition to teaching literature again, I'll be teaching composition.

While looking for a poem to start the year with, I visited the homepage of one of our textbook's editors. It made me happy, so I'm sharing. I imagine Dorothy and X. J. are pretty fun grandparents. I'd like to visit their half century-old/half new house in Massachusetts. See http://xjanddorothymkennedy.com for more.

New Verse for Kids

Illustration by Josh Kennedy

A Mammoth Surprise
Down the trunk of an elephant, Daredevil Jed
With incredible speed took a slide on his sled
At a time when that pachyderm, lunching on hay,
Was happily tucking a bundle away.
Off that doubled-up nose-hose, poor Jed shot the
     chutes—
Blubbery brutes have such rubbery snoots.

A Needed Invention
For safety’s sake, each jumbo jet
Should travel with a safety net
Suspended from its underbelly
Or racing on the ground below it
To break its fall or slightly slow it,
Sort of an upside-down umbrelly

I have to credit my own grandparents, all four of them, for sharing a love of silly verse.

Growing roots

I had to drive to the other side of the island today to pick up a book for my community college class. I was finally in the car by myself after shuttling kids all week to different pre-season practices and play rehearsals. I’ve agreed to teach a freshman composition class in addition to the literature class this semester. I should be writing a syllabus and making plans for the semester, instead of blogging. But my thoughts keep straying back to the drive.  I took Cross Island road, which is one of three roads that go through the middle of the island.  It’s a sparsely populated and hilly road – with lots of chuckholes and dips that made me pray for our recently patched front wheel. (My prayer: for our 10 year old car to just survive until it’s time to move again.) As I crested a hill, the sun was shining from behind a black rain cloud – another monsoon on the way. The interplay of shadows and light on the grassy hills was arresting, the kind of vision that makes you understand why people stay here, why people who leave come back.

I have a friend who says she is suspicious of people who come here from the mainland and stay for years. “They either are running away from something or someone or have something to hide,” she says.  I don’t think she’s including people who marry someone local or who come here for mission work, but she evidently is not adding Guam to her list of potential retirement spots when her husband’s time is up.

I don’t share her suspicions. I can understand why people stay: it is beautiful here, and island time is a nice pace of life.  I don’t mind not having a lot of places to shop. I like the mild climate. I love that our kids play in the street and know all the neighbors. I’ve yet to experience a major storm, so the ocean seems nothing but beautiful, teeming with life, always calling: look at me, look above me, look within me. After growing up landlocked, I now know why people get drawn into lifelong love affairs with the sea.

But as beautiful as the moment was this afternoon, it also made me homesick.  Waving grasses, big sky, sudden storms.  The summer schedule. if not the summer weather, (listening to the weather on the radio is monotonous: partly cloudy skies, chance of thunderstorms, highs near 87, lows near 76, today, yesterday, tomorrow, next month.) is drawing to a close. My relatives are at the Michigan lake house, that restorative place (see the E.B. White essay "Once More to the Lake," which I can't find online...) every bit as lovely as anywhere, where lows dip to the 50s, and highs rarely top 85, and when it rains, it rains all day, not just a bit in the afternoon. Do I feel left out, even though I am in a tropical paradise? Of course. 

It doesn’t help to have read a little Wendell Berry lately - essays about his work from the book, "The Human Vision of Wendell Berry."  He makes you yearn to be rooted like no one else. He makes it seem right to love the places of our childhood as much as we love the people.

Nor does it help to have been listening to an old mix tape – the black car can’t play cds any more, and the adaptor to play the ipods through the speakers is broken.  So I found a box of tapes from high school and college in another box and got them out to let the teenagers listen to REM and U2 – so I don’t have to listen to Eminem or whatever it is they want to play. Why are we still moving these around? For cultural literacy? Just to have moments of nostalgia every 10 years or so when they are unearthed?

The upswell of longing, of the sense that I’m missing out on something in life, that somewhere life is going on without me – I’m missing the party at the lake!, was momentary, although I indulged it a bit. These moments usually are.  Although I was sorry not to get back to the states this summer, the summer has passed much more quickly than I anticipated in between our trip to Japan and the kids’ activities. And since we’ve reached our year anniversary of moving here, I’ve stopped thinking of this as the new house. This is home for now.

As a military family you have two choices: always look forward to the next move, which you imagine to be better, or you can make the best of where you are.  Obviously, we try to live according to the bloom where you are planted mantra.  But there’s always a voice in the back of the mind saying, this isn’t permanent. Don’t get attached.

Then again, nothing is.  And a little pain sometimes is welcome, especially after days that are so busy that you don’t have time to feel much of anything except rushed.  I can fall in love with the drive across the island, love it more perhaps because our stay is temporary, and I’ll feel sad to leave it. The potholes are charming, right?  I can wish to be elsewhere, playing cards with the cousins, or trying to keep warm in the frigid lake water, then trying to catch the warmth of the sun on the float, when the wind keeps interrupting.  And at the same time I can love the feeling of being kept afloat while snorkeling in warm salt water, where every time I look beneath the surface I am amazed at the vibrant world that carries on below.

We’ve said goodbye to some friends we really liked this summer, but we’ve met three new neighbors in the last couple of weeks, and I’ve finally met some of the other community college faculty after being the night owl last semester.  I’m becoming more entrenched in this life, even though our stay is not long.  I sometimes wish I could live a life in a community like the one Wendell Berry describes, but most of the time I’m too busy living in this transient community we’re a part of to dwell on a life that isn’t mine.  

Maybe our roots aren't deep, but they are wide, like a lot of the plants here - shallow but tenacious orchid roots come to mind. They cling to whatever surface they are attached to.

We still have a lot of the island to explore and hope to see more of the Pacific.  After a year here, we are familiar with the roads and our favorite beaches and hikes.  And it is with familiar things that we fall in love. Whether we’re here one or two more years, we’ll make the best of the time we are given. Which is all we can do and all that is asked of us. 

Shark!

This past weekend my 15 year old and I went on a morning dive to a reef a few hundred meters from the shore. A feeding station is set up on the reef so that a tourist submarine can drive around it and observe ocean life.  Can you see what my son caught on video?

A nurse shark!
That's me off in the distance at the end of the video motioning, "Don't go any closer!"
The big black fish are jacks and the silver fish are spades.

Liberation Day

Last weekend, a few days after our return from Japan – just after finishing all the laundry – we attended the biggest fiesta on Guam – the Liberation Day parade. This was the 68^th celebration of the July 21 liberation of Guam from the Japanese by the US Marines during World War II.

Some families went all out decorating their booths.  No one went hungry.

Scouts get in on the action.

Scout sisters at work.

The guy on the left is famous on Guam. We call him Elvis because of his hat.
He can be found every Wednesday dancing like a Muppet at Chamorro Village.

Guam is one of several Pacific islands that were critical in the US-Asia front during WWII.  It’s the front I didn’t learn much about in school, and most of my current knowledge is from the National Park Service publications here on Guam, from reading Unbroken last fall, and from the speeches of the Admiral in charge of Joint Region Marianas, who just left the island for his next duty station, after giving the most fired-up politically charge change of command speech I have ever heard. More on that later.

What you need to know: Guam was under US protection from the time of the Spanish-American war in 1898 until 1942, when the Japanese captured it, ran out the Americans, and enslaved the Chamorros.  Many were massacred. Two years later, on July 21, 1944, the Marines were back, charged the beach, and recaptured the island. According to our Admiral, more Marines died on the shores of Guam than at Guadalcanal.

Ever since that day, the Chamorro people have honored the Marines (and the Seabees who rebuilt the island) by celebrating the 21^st of July in a much bigger way than the 4^th. 

The princesses of each village.

We were warned that crowds and traffic for the parade would be awful. A couple neighbors intended to watch the parade on TV instead of fighting the crowds. I guess people get spoiled here. I think there were more people in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Chicago than live on this island.

One of the scout moms stood in line for 5 hours to reserve a spot on the parade route for a tent, so that the scouts could sell drinks and treats to make money for their Eagle projects.  I’d been busy shopping and baking for the previous 2 days, after restocking the pantry post-vacation. Bought a bunch of freezer pops, but didn’t give them enough time to freeze.  We loaded up the GMC at 0500 the day of the parade with tents, chairs, goodies, coolers, drinks, chips, posters, and sunscreen.  Some people had set out their tents the day before so that they could camp out and start cooking their fiestas early before the parade’s start at 10.

I showed up with the younger kids at 8:30, and had no problem finding a parking spot, although I admit I had to walk 4 blocks, hardly a stretch after our miles through Tokyo.  We found the Boy Scout tent and set up our chairs. We had the ocean to our backs – perfect for a quick dip when it got hot.  Best spot to watch a parade ever.

View from behind our tent. The smoke down the way is from grills.

The bishopmobile.

And the parade way exceeded my expectations. The floats were beautiful. The bands were good. Spirits were high.  It was a beautiful day on the island. 

The theme was "68 years of Progress through Peace," and the floats were supposed to be made with local sustainable materials.

The flowers on this float are made of coconut husks.

By the time the parade started, the boys had handed out all the sweets, except the unfrozen freezer pops and some melted lemon bars, and most of the waters.  They gave away what was left of the waters to people in the parade.  Under my husband the scoutmaster’s direction, they gave things away for free, and just asked for donations. 

A lot of people, especially kids, took without giving. This made me a little uncomfortable, because I was the one who had charged all the groceries.  But my husband’s sense of charity was good.  Many people gave more than enough to cover our costs. And many people, especially some of the volunteers, were really grateful for a free, cold water.  And my husband felt rewarded for the act of community service when he heard someone at work (who didn’t know he’s the scoutmaster) say “I heard the scouts were giving away waters.”

The proa, a sailing canoe, is a symbol of the island.

This group was popular. The bird lady was quite stunning.

When the parade ended a few hours later, clean-up of our space was quick and easy.  But the boys worked another couple hours sorting cans and bottles for recycling. This was a dirty, stinky job, that I got out of because I took the littles home, after I saw enough messy garbage to be even more impressed with the cleanliness of Japan.  It surprises me on an island people aren’t more careful with their garbage. If as much care were given to cleaning up and beautification as was given to the floats, Guam would be a prettier place.

This energy efficiency bulb is from the Navy base.

Our youngest is afraid of mascots.

This one is for my dad: big man on a little chair roasting a pig.