Eight Years Later

The story of my day on September 11, 2001, is one that I've told over and over as a way of explaining my continued optimism about humankind. I felt that the horror of the day was alleviated by my direct experience showing that intelligent thoughtful people overcame their differences.

Now here we are on September 11, 2009 and the US is starting to look more and more like the Middle East. The national evening news sounds less like Walter Cronkite and more like Al Jazeera, our own Jihadists rave about birth certificates, death panels, socialism, fascism, and all the other buzzwords of fear.

Intelligent conservatives are drowned out and tainted by association with the neocons who themselves have been too easily seduced by the insanity fringe whose core beliefs are that diversity of opinion is wrong, that government should be a theocracy but only if it is their church in charge.

What has it come to when we hear people proclaiming publicly that letting the president address schoolchildren about the importance of education is just like Lim Il Jung's control of North Korean education, when we hear (as I did a few days ago) people talking openly whether it would be better to impeach the president or just assassinate him.

I'm a great believer in free speech, but I must admit that I am taken aback by the bile, the lies, the disinformation, the viciousness, and ... frankly the traitorous language that seems to be so pervasive. I am repulsed by the smearing of lipstick on the theocratics of Rushdoony and Chaitkin (whose only perceptible positive trait is that he dislikes ex-President Bush just as much as he dislikes everybody else) in an attempt to pass their prejudices as rational approach to governance of a diverse country.

It saddens me that we seem to have fallen so far, that instead of seeing Al Qaeda as the enemy we have taken them as a model.

The good thing, though, is that this is not (despite what the neocons try to say) a "grassroots" movement. It is a well-orchestrated and vicious attack by a few nuts and the sheep that follow them.

Most of us citizens voted for one of two candidates, neither of whom had outrageous ideas or megalomanic tendencies. Far from it! The two presidential candidates in the last election agreed more than disagreed. They were both intelligent thoughtful men, and either would have been acceptable to a majority of us.

I cannot help but think that the vituperative attitude of these conservative spokespeople is a result of embarrassment at the failure of eight years of control resulting in the current mess that our country finds itself in, coupled with jealousy over the loss of power. The tools they use are language loaded with kneejerk terms that their audience knows to fear but cannot define, a delivery that asserts the absolute undeniable correctness of a single viewpoint, and (I'm sorry to say) a kind of racism disguised as political thought.

The problem, is that crazy people are far more interesting than reasonable people. A quiet intelligent discussion is always trumped by someone being hit by a chair. William F. Buckley has been replaced with the political equivalent of professional wrestling. When I (rarely) watch some of these shows on Fox News I can't help but think that the participants should be wearing tights and screaming about their upcoming cage match. In my bleaker moments I sometimes imagine that substituting "Rowdy" Roddy Piper for Bill O'Reilly and Jesse "The Body" Ventura for Sean Hannity would result in a more intelligent, reasonable and entertaining discussion.

Maybe what we need are some spokespeople for the rest of us who aren't loonies but still have a killer instinct ... but I guess it's hard to find rabid attack dogs that will protect the middle of the road.

The fires of September

It was a bright clear fall day as I drove over the Tobin Bridge and into Boston. I commuted in the early morning to avoid rush hour. I was in a good mood. I had some Doo-wop on the radio and a four-shot Americano in the cup holder. I drove through the maze of twisty downtown streets, pulled into my space in the parking garage, grabbed my coffee and my Land's End briefcase and took the elevator up to my office.

Humming "Cara Mia Mine" badly, I booted my computers, adjusted the blinds against the glare of the early morning sun, turned on some music (Bela Fleck this time), sat down and got to work. I answered the overnight crop of email and checked my schedule for meetings and approaching deadlines.

I was just settling into a rat's nest of verbosity disguised as a chapter of a software manual for automated backups on enterprise networks, when there was a knock on the door and Kate from QA opened it and stuck her head in.

"Got a radio?"

"No just a CD player."

"Okay."

It was an unusual request, so I called after her, "What's up?"

"Just wanted to listen to the news," she said turning back. "There's a weird story I heard on the car radio, something about a plane hitting a building in New York."

"One of those little private planes?"

"Must be."

"Let's find out."

I accessed a streaming news feed. As we listened, the door opened and someone else came in. I waved them to a seat without turning.

"Be with you in a minute."

But of course it wasn't a minute ... it was September 11th.

We sat quietly listening as things progressed getting worse and worse.

Finally over-saturated I turned down the volume and turned from my computer.

My office was full of people, and there were more people grouped outside the door in the corridor. Friends and rivals among my co-workers were sitting on the floor or had pulled chairs from neighboring offices. Many were crying, some were hugging each other for support, but all of them wanted the volume back up.

For hours we listened in silence, until security came and told us that the office building was closing and we had to leave. We were in a tall office building in downtown Boston, and paranoia had begun to emerge.

The streets were jammed. I called my wife to let her know what was going on and that it would take me some time to get home. She was shaken and asked me to detour to Mission Hill to pick up my daughter and bring her home.

On the way up Huntington Avenue. I watched crowds of students, brightly-plumed, or raven-moody Massachusetts College of Art students, somewhat more preppily garbed Northeastern students, piling off the trolleys and flowing across the street. None of them seemed to notice the increased traffic around them. None of them noticed as a plane flew overhead and drivers ducked.

My daughter wasn't at home, so I drove to where she worked to pick her up. It took hours to get through the clogged streets and back up to the North Shore. We didn't talk much during the ride. Just listened to the news on the radio, switching back and forth between WBUR's NPR coverage, and WBZ's CBS feed.

At some point during the drive something occurred to me. Among the people sitting in and around my office, aghast and horrified and frightened and angry, had been a veritable UN. There were people from every corner of the earth ... people of every religion; Moslems, Sikhs, Coptic Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Christians, Wiccans, Atheists, Agnostics, even an eccentric who claimed to be a Jedi practitioner.

And there we all were, sitting side by side in shared disbelief, horror, and communal sympathy, rivalries forgotten, failures unimportant, and, in my microcosm of an office, peace reigned. It's an image that I keep with me, an image that lets me hope.

All these years later, I still feel deep affection and a surge of pride in my fellow geeks and nerds who, in a work environment that prized logic and scientific thought, spontaneously formed an emotional community that ignored differences of culture and spirituality.

And I guess what makes me proudest is that I wasn't surprised, that I knew that there was a commonality, that respect for others' work, understanding of common goals, can lead to an environment where differences are less important than humanity.

Notice to residents

NOTICE TO RESIDENTS:

Some tenants of the backyard have forgotten the established rules. Your rudeness has not gone unnoticed.

1. The aluminum foil pie pans hanging from the branches of the blueberry bush are not play things or mirrors in which to admire your bad selves. They are reminders that the humans who live in the white cave have first dibs on the blueberries. The humans have excluded felines from the yard and have always left plenty of berries on the bush for the rest of you. In return for this effort, they merely ask for enough blueberries for a couple of pies.
2. It is both rude and a little disgusting to leave partially eaten berries on the bush to rot and become unpleasant surprises when the humans come to pick their share. We won't name names <stares fixedly at an arrogant Jay perched on the fence who cocks his head as if to say "shut up already">, but you know who you are.
3. We do want to acknowledge the discipline shown by some of the yard residents. Chip <nods to a Chipping Sparrow bobbing up and down next to a lettuce> has been extremely helpful with the bug reduction exercises. Pat and Pat <two Catbirds, one on a bough of the White Pine, the other on the edge of the birdbath> despite their late return this year have kept us all amused, as has their cousin Mimus <nods at the mockingbird on the dead pine>.
4. I am sure that we all wish Dolores and Downer the Mourning Doves good luck with their new meds. Some of these new uptake inhibitors can work wonders.
5. A quick word to the Hummingbirds, the feeders are for your use as is the Bee Balm patch, but please bear in mind that not every brightly colored object contains nectar ... hats, even those with flowers on them, tend to contain humans and the flowers are not real. I know it's confusing, but try to figure out the contextual cues guys. We don't want a repetition of last week's disaster. You will be relieved to know, however, that Aunt Sally has fully recovered and we are considering putting a railing on the porch.

I'd like to close with another reminder that those of you who like blueberries should be polite and wait just another couple of days. Remember, you are guests here <stares sternly at the Jay>.

I was reading a chapter or two of Tom Holt's "My Hero" this morning, and rediscovered a passage that, as a writer, has always resonated.

In the beginning . . .

Was the Word? Not quite. To be strictly accurate, in the beginning was the Screen; And the screen was with God and the screen was God. And, admittedly, the Word moved upon the face of the screen, was put into pitch ten, italics, bold, right margin justify, macro/WORD and all the rest of it, but that came later.

Nowadays, the screen just thinks it's God, particularly when you want to print out. In the intervening time, creation has become a routine, a simple task that anybody can perform, given (as a bare minimum) a sheet of paper and a pencil.

Graphic Novels

I have been a fan of graphic novels since long before they were called that.

The first time I opened one of Lynd Ward's "novels without words" I was stunned. The powerful graphics, the emotional content, the dynamics of the storytelling took my breath away. I wish that they were better known. Some of the titles that I own are "God's Man", "Madman's Drum", and "Vertigo".

Milt Gross' parodied Ward wonderfully, with his "He Done Her Wrong: The Great American Novel and Not a Word in It — No Music, Too".

So I was happy to see that one of my favorite Blogs, BibliOdyssey is featuring some graphics from these novels on their latest post "Speechless", and even happier that they have provided some artists with whom I am unfamiliar.

Mournful

I was standing at the kitchen sink spooning French roast into the coffee press, when a flutter of wings past the window notified me that there was a visitor to our backyard garden. I was disappointed to see that it was a mourning dove.

It's hard to describe my feelings toward these birds, I guess it's a kind of ambivalence bordering on irritability.

For one thing, their proportions seem wrong. Their large pigeon-like body is surmounted by a tiny head that seems too small, like an afterthought, like the head that a naughty child would have constructed out of clay to replace the one that fell off and broke.

Perhaps it bothers me because their disproportions remind me so much of my seventh-grade teacher. A piece of work named Miss Watson who looked like a pigeon. Early in the school year she had selected me as her target for abuse (there seemed to be no reason for this, I wasn't a clown or disobedient) and would often discipline for some obscure fault by keeping me in the classroom during lunch; sitting waiting hungrily as she ate her invariable tomato soup from a thermos, two saltines, and a preserved kumquat extracted from a glass jar with a special fork. I'd have delighted in her eccentricity had I not been the target of it.

Another thing about the doves that grates on me is their song. I'm not sure if the thing that bothers me is its unrelenting sameness; four notes, mostly the same one, over and over, sounding as if an obsessive compulsive had got hold of a syrinx or ocarina or simply a couple of beer bottles.

Perhaps it's the relentlessly minor key of the song. I can listen to other birdsong repeat without getting bothered, but I guess that I have had my fill of depressives lately, and having a pair of them in the trees by the garden is more than I need for my own peace.

By the time the coffee had brewed, the plunger had been pressed, and the life-giving black elixir poured, the dove had left.

I went out to the back porch and sat. The long side of our backyard faces approximately south east so the early morning sun slides up behind the palisade fence to my left and plays hide and seek through the branches of a huge white pine for a couple of hours. it was just barely over the fence when a mockingbird decided to land atop one of the fenceposts.

It came in straight, facing the sun, and at the last minute turned its head to the right, and went vertical to brake, its wings and tail spread wide the white band prominent as the bird was silhouetted against the hidden rising sun the light streaming through the tips of its feathers and a small cheerful bird was suddenly transformed into a heraldic symbol.

Gray Summer

This is the grayest coldest and dampest summer I've seen here in a long time.

I was up at about 5 am; puttering about, shower, shave, French press full of coffee. I took my coffee out onto the back porch and looked at the cold and soggy garden. It is unfortunate weather for my tomatoes. They need the dusty heat of the summer sun. The blueberries are late too. If this keeps up, instead of feasting in August, I'll have tomato salad and blueberry pie for Thanksgiving. The rhubarb seems happy, but the lettuce and beans, which should thrive in this weather, are sulking and refusing to thrive.

But there is one vegetable which is doing well, and it was the bright spot of my morning.

I put my cup down on the porch railing and walked down the steps and out to the vegetable patch. The ground is so wet that even though we use raised beds the area between rows sinks beneath my weight and I leave footprints in the dirt as I walk through and bend over to grab the base of a seven inch high cluster of eight broad leaves and pull.

There it is. People who buy these in a supermarket just don't know what a wonderful thing a radish is. Beneath the green crown of the leaves is a large darkish red globe nearly two inches in diameter. Below that Dirt clings to it. It's good dirt.

The garden was dug by hand with shovel and digging fork. working on our hands and knees, we shook the dirt out of the grass clods and tossed them into the wheelbarrow for hauling to the compost heap. The rocks were removed to a pile by the fence where they wait to become a wall or path. The soil was once full of clay and too dense for gardening.

But, we worked at it. We hauled wheelbarrow loads of our own compost, composted manure from a nearby farm, and peat moss to the plot, then dug it in mixing it, sometimes with a digging fork, sometimes with our hands, to loosen it. Now it is friable and, if it weren't so wet today, crumbles loosely in my hand.

This is the dirt that damply clings to the radish that I hold. This is not just any dirt. This is my dirt. This is wonderful dark rich pleasant dirt. This is dirt that is expensive in time, effort, care, and love.

That is to say ... this dirt is not going to be washed down any drain.

I brush off most of the dirt. Then I roll the radish in the moisture accumulated on the rhubarb leaves. I pull my pocket knife out, flip open the blade and cut off the stringy tendril of the lower part of the root and leave it on the ground.

I walk back to the porch and cut off the crown to use later (it makes excellent pesto, it's good in potato soup, and there's a curry recipe that I've wanted to try). I take a sip of coffee and admire the globular beauty of my radish. It is so red with just a hint of pure white flesh peeking through where I cut.

I decide to take my time, so I use the knife to cut myself a slice of the radish. The contrast between the red skin and white flesh is so dramatic that it almost looks fake, as if someone has been Photoshopping my garden.

I eat the slice of radish. It is crisp and and the white flesh snaps as I bite. There is just a moment, a brief one, where I can taste the sweetness of starch converting to sugar and a light hint of water drunk from an old wooden cup. Then the burn hits, a wave of peppery potency that overwhelms any delicacy of flavor as the radish bites back.

I take my time and finish the little beauty, forgetting my coffee and letting it get cold as I sit in the early morning drizzle, cold and wet, but with a little bit of warmth on my tongue.

The Weaver's Dilemma

I was talking to my brother the other day and he made an offhand comment that I almost missed. We had been talking about communication and our different approaches to it. I said that I was speaking less during social occasions these days, since (as it seemed to me) whenever I did I seemed to be the target of irritated looks from people. Foremost among those angry glancers were members of my own family.

Well, you're a storyteller he said, not a conversationalist. I shrugged acknowledgement, and returned to the main topic. Suddenly I stopped, as it occurred to me that what he had just said was a huge portion of the problem that I have with interpersonal communications.

I am a storyteller. I communicate in narratives that flow along specific channels in order to reach a point. In order to communicate, I need to follow that stream until it finishes.

To use another metaphor, when I converse I'm like a weaver amongst tailors.

I carefully arrange the threads, the warp and woof of my thought, and create a tapestry. The tailors around me are impatient with the complexity and unconcerned with the subject. They interrupt, their words like shears cut across my work, my story, my meaning as they take small inconsequential pieces and stitch them into a patchwork. They glare as the sound of my loom and shuttle slowly click and clack. They have plenty of leftover scraps. They have no need of this new cloth.

But still, they cut the cloth as it comes from the loom and finally they cut so close that the weave is damaged the loom falls silent and I sit quietly at the table with nothing to contribute. Unlike Penelope, I have no need to unravel my work. That task is done for me.

I sit in silence and listen to the spools of thread whiz by my head, words that could be woven but not by me, or at least not here and now.

In a little while, after those around me have blocked my existence from their minds, I will pick up my loom and go to the small room, walled with books, and set the device back up. I will take the stories I have to tell and I will weave them the way I want. I will use black thread for the borders of the story and the pauses, the ellipses that indicate the twists and turns. I will use red thread for emotional content, green for physical growth, blue for spirituality, or maybe I will mix and match in different ways.

But I will sit alone in my room with my loom and I will weave the stories the way they should be woven. I will finish them and I will hang them whole on my walls.

In the other room the tailors chatter and make cat's cradles with the thread, playing with what I can only perceive as remnants and scraps. They have their art, I have mine. I cannot tell which is the best. I can only turn inward and realize that my weaving is what I do, is who I am, and if I am doomed to live as a weaver among tailors, I will have to get used to silence, solitude and (most painfully) scorn.