In the Old Days When the Dead Stuck Around

I confess its a little trick I have of thinking about the late Victorians and the Edwardians and all that happy ghost worship they used to do. My mother was a serious ghost watcher and say what you will, such people are always happily occupied.

One thinks of Virginia Woolf talking to her grandmother:

“We sit in the dark and wait for the dead to speak,” says Virginia to her grandmother—“and they drift into the room so softly, with their faint smell of mohair and whale oil. The smell is like nothing else in the world; the entering dead who waft over our hair.”

Lately as spring arrives and the days grow longer I’ve found myself dreaming of the dead–though not the abstrract chalky missing, but rather those who I have loved and who I still miss though my days are filled with bus schedules and the nearly private gamesmanship  of getting by in the political world.

I miss John Lydenberg, Professor of English at Hobart and William Smith Colleges who taught me how to read Herman Melville. I deeply miss his sharp, unsentimental humor and his unapologetic leftist politics which he learned at Harvard in the years before the second world war when pacifism and idealism weren’t yet sullied by all that’s come since. I especially miss his game of cutting out funny, overlooked newspaper headlines: “Young Couple Happy on Small Newspaper” was particuarly good. I thought of him the other day when I read: “Pope’s Condom-stance Under Fire” .

I miss my father who died on Easter Sunday 2000. One doesn’t need a reason to miss one’s father but today I miss him because I’ve been  reading William Manchester’s “The LastLion” about Winston Churchill and I know that he would have very interesting things to say both about Manchester as a historian and about Sir Winston. I miss my dad’s voice. I miss the way he used to sing to the dog.

14 years ago today I arrived home in Ithaca, New York with my first guide dog “Corky” who changed my life in a thousand ways. How I miss her! I could start crying right now.

So I love the odd, innocent, half-shy silliness of the Bloomsbury crowd. Tonight I want to wear a turban with a sapphire pinned to the front. I want to carry on a bit with my gorgeous and beloved dead and feel them touching my hair.

I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

 

S.K.

Rumors of the Death of Poetry Department

 

“Poetry’s Death?”

 

By Andrea Scarpino

Los Angeles, CA  

Some say American poetry is dead, or at least, Americans’ interest in poetry is dead. It seems every couple of years, someone of great note announces the fact that Americans don’t read poetry, don’t have time for poetry, don’t understand poetry’s value. Being a someone-of-not-so-great note, I’ve often agreed with their opinions and can speak—well—poetically about the importance put on poetry in previous generations and civilizations, and/or in other countries and cultures in contrast to the United States.

However, sometimes things happen to make me wonder if American poetry is really dead. Several weeks ago, I attended a celebration of the Tufts Poetry Awards presented by the Poetry Society of America, Red Hen Press and Claremont Graduate University. Three poets read their work that night, each a former recipient of a Tufts award: Deborah Digges, Rodney Jones and Yusef Komunyakaa.

I’ll be honest: I went to hear Komunyakaa, and I figured, as usual, the crowd would be sparse. I was ready to bemoan the death of American poetry, while taking the opportunity presented by such death to speak one-on-one with Komunyakaa after the reading. Instead, the place was packed to capacity. As the poets were reading, ushers brought in more chairs so that latecomers would have a place to sit. People stood along the sides of the theater and crowded their bags into the aisles. Not even the fact that the stage was set for the theater’s contemporary re-telling of the play Tartuffe complete with a wooden lawn full of fake grass—not even that disguised the fact that the crowd was eager to hear poetry. And forget about speaking with Komunyakaa after the reading! A long line of people holding copies of his books, eager for a bit of conversation and his signature formed before I could even get out of my seat. So maybe poetry is just on life support?

Then, this weekend, the aforementioned someone-of-not-so-great-note gave a poetry reading to support her chapbook, The Grove Behind. I’ve never before given a reading in support of a book I had written, and certainly never as a “headliner” so to speak. I was terrified, not that I would stumble on my poems or trip getting to the stage—I have stood in front of classrooms long enough to know that a joke can make even the most awkward of my mistakes less terrible. Instead, I was terrified no one would come, that I would be alone in the bookstore with the wine and desserts I had brought and no one to listen to my poems but the hapless workers who had no choice but to attend. No one cares about poetry, remember?

Much to my surprise, 25 people attended. And they bought books, spoke to me with passion and intelligence about the poems I had read, asked questions, offered their opinions and personal stories. Of course, I knew most everyone as friends or students, even one former student. But for the most part, they weren’t “poetry people,” just people willing to engage poetry when given the opportunity, when invited personally by a friend, or when—ahem—offered extra credit. American poetry doesn’t have to be dead, nor does American interest in poetry. Yes, I still believe American interest in poetry is much declined from what it should be, but after nights like the Tuft’s reading and my own small reading, I have a little more hope that poetry has, after all, a place when given the chance.

 

Andrea Scarpino is the West Coast Bureau Chief of POTB and you can visit her at: www.andreascarpino.com

Murder by Police of Mentally Ill Man in Spokane, Washington Covered Up by Cops, ETc.

 

The story of the death of Otto Zehm in a Spokane convenience store where the mentally ill man was trying to buy a soda, the story of a death caused by the unwarranted use of a taser isn’t going away. Thanks again to Dave Reynolds of The inclusion Daily Express.  

 

Lawsuit Filed In Otto Zehm Death
(Spokesman-Review)
March 24, 2008
SPOKANE, WASHINGTON– [Excerpt] A federal civil rights suit against the city of Spokane and nine of its police officers says Otto Zehm died three years ago when police officers used batons and Tasers in a display of excessive force on the unarmed, passive, mentally ill man who merely wanted to buy a soda.

The lawsuit was filed Friday by the Center for Justice, five days before a legal deadline, after its attorneys spent months in private meetings with city attorneys. The negotiations failed to produce a damage settlement, a plan for changes in the way police deal with mentally ill people, or a sought-after apology.

The suit alleges the Police Department and its former acting chief, Jim Nicks, engaged in a conspiracy to portray Zehm as the aggressor after the 36-year-old janitor’s March 18, 2006, encounter with Officer Karl Thompson and other officers in a North Spokane convenience store. Zehm’s death two days later was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner.

The filing of the suit came after the Center for Justice and city attorneys failed to reach an out-of-court settlement.

Entire article:
Lawsuit filed in Otto Zehm death
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/2009/red/0324d.htm

 

S.K.

The Only Joke in the New Testament

 

Once many years ago when I was foolling around I told a fellow grad student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where I was tarrying for awhile in my transient bookish student days that I was going to write my Ph.D. dissertation on the subject of jokes in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. “Well,” said my friend, “That ought to be a short thesis.” 

You can learn a lot about people by pulling their ambulatory appendages and in that instance I saw that my buddy didn’t know much about Emily who though a dark spirit in many of her poems was also a great master of riddles. To which I add that its no sin to not have read deeply in Emily Dickinson but I like to imagine that perhaps someday that fellow will do just that and be amused in his old age.

Jesus made a pun on Peter’s name: ‘Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church’.

Peter is petras, a stone, in Greek.

I’ve been in mind of this moment in the New Testament for a couple of reasons: the first has to do with the magic of giving one another spiritually expansive names. As I said to my friend Gary Whittington just the other day: “Has there ever been a better name than Crazy Horse?”

My own surname means grove of spruce trees in Finnish unless you take out one of the “U” s in which case the root of the word changes from Kuusi which means spruce tree to Kusi which means piss.

Grove of spruce is, I submit, a spiritual name. Piss-pot is another matter but one might argue for its religious meaning with sufficient comparative analysis and some brio.

The second thing that Jesus’ pun puts me in mind of is that we can admire each other’s strengths and build a vision from something we’ve seen that is not immediately apparent to the naked eye.

The pun is not always the lowest form of humor.

 

Perhaps the last thing to add is that it takes only a single stone to have a church. Peter is also an alter.

 

S.K.

The Texas Two Step

Thanks are due to Dave Reynolds at The Inclusion Daily Express for bringing this story to our attention.

Victim Of Beating At State School Seeks Lawsuit
(Houston Chronicle)
March 23, 2009
AUSTIN, TEXAS– [Excerpt] Haseeb Chishty was beaten for sport.

A mentally disabled but physically healthy adult, Chishty was living at the Denton State School in 2002 when he was kicked and punched by a staff member who did it for fun, leaving him in a wheelchair and unable to feed himself or use the bathroom.

Chishty’s attacker went to prison and the family has for years been trying to sue the state, only to be prevented by legal roadblocks that grant the state immunity. But given new allegations of abuse that put conditions at the state’s large homes for the mentally disabled in the spotlight, state lawmakers may finally be ready to give Chishty his day in court.

The family is asking the Legislature to pass a resolution that waives the state’s sovereign immunity, allowing them to sue the Department of Aging and Disability Services for damages. They also want an atonement for what was done to him.

“I have many blisters on the soles of my feet from running around trying to find justice for my son,” Chishty’s mother, Farhat Chishty, told members of the House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence on Monday.

Entire article:
Victim of beating at state school seeks lawsuit
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6334803.html

When the President of the United States is Tired He laughs Department

 

This morning on the Today Show I heard NBC’s political analyst Chuck Todd suggest that Barack Obama’s laughing incident on Sunday’s 60 Minutes was a consequence of the president’s fatigue. IN short: when asked on the CBS news program last evening about the economy the president did some extended chuckling as he framed his answers–so much chuckling that Steve Kroft of CBS asked the president to explain himself.

The president dutifully said that he didn’t think the economic state of the nation was funny but added that sometimes one has to see the dark humor in a bad situation. (The paraphrase is mine.)

“Well,” I thought. “If I ain’t a horn swoggled Deja-Vu Voulez Vous–I mean, what the heck–I mean didn’t we just get rid of a smirking sub-Cartesian-ding-Dong? I mean, weren’t we bargaining for big C Change?”

“What is it?” I asked just out loud enough that my dog looked up. “Is it the drinking water at 1600Pennsylvania Avenue? Do presidents move in, unpack their boy-toys, drink a glass of water and turn into Schmucks? Did the CIA engineer this back in 1960?    (I know of no particular incident where J.F.K. laughed at the nation’s problems but he “did” bring Thumper and Bambi onto the premises for sexual hijinks in the White House swimming pool–an activity that requires some serious smirking. 

Personally I don’t care if the president is tired. That’s what we elected him to be: tired. Tired beyond any routine level of human suspension. I want the man to be tired and serious. I want him to be serious as a Special Olympian. Serious as an Iowa farmer. Serious as all the people who are frightened out of their frigging wits because has anyone noticed–there are no jobs in Michigan?

Last night’s interview on CBS may have done the White House a whole lot of damage. CNN has a headline today: “First 100 days gone in 60minutes”. That may well be far fetched but perception is nine tenths of public relations and getting good will “back” in Washington or with the Washington “bubble” media is very hard to do.

S.K.

The Shame of Atalissa

 

Advocates: ‘Atalissa Needs To Bring Change’
(Des Moines Register)
March 20, 2009

Excerpt from The Inclusion Daily Express
ATALISSA, IOWA– [Excerpt] The Atalissa scandal must serve as a catalyst for overhauling the way Iowa protects the mentally disabled, parents and advocates told a state task force on Friday.

The committee was formed last month by Gov. Chet Culver in response to disclosures that dozens of mentally retarded men had been working for several decades in a West Liberty turkey-processing plant for as little as 44 cents an hour, plus room and board.

The task force is looking at ways to close the gaps in Iowa’s regulatory system and strengthen state laws dealing with unlicensed care centers that house the disabled.

Geoffrey Lauer, executive director of the Brain Injury Association of Iowa, urged the task force to use the opportunity created by the public’s outrage over Atalissa.

“Please, do not squander this gift. Do not turn away from this opportunity to boldly and publicly declare our system of service as one that has been, and is, stuck in an outdated and broken model of thinking and serving.”

Entire article:
‘Atalissa needs to bring change’
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/2009/red/0320f.htm

Some Atalissa men malnourished (Des Moines Register)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/2009/red/0320e.htm
Atalissa: Feds saw no need for fines at bunkhouse (Des Moines Register)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/2009/red/0320d.htm

Dissecting a Frog in the Dark

Its a worn observation that on occasion people can learn more with their eyes shut but Ye Olde Bromide is warranted when the biology class doesn’t seem to be learning.  

Right about now if I had my way I’d have our elected officials in Washington slow down and if that meant asking them to wear blindfolds or struggle through the service entrances of badly designed buildings while using wheelchairs so much the better. (I don’t believe in “Try Disability On for a Day” sensitivity exorcizes and I don’t favor disabling vengeance fantasies but if having to work with accommodations made the politicians have to think for themselves, well I’d be for it.)

Not long ago I told a friend who has deep pockets and a clear head that I felt President Obama’s job at hand is to prevent the United States from becoming a third world country. We weren’t having an argument but we were feeling around the issues–I was for the president’s economic stimulus plan and my friend had serious doubts about the enterprise. I said a third world nation was one where the government and the people were so entirely in debt to the rest of the world that they no longer had any say about how they could spend moneyor what crops they could grow. I think I also said something about crumbling roads and bridges.

The spectacle of last week’s televised capitol hill outrage over the AIG bonuses tells me that the legislature is going to be unable to dissect the frog. Every minute of every day that our leaders are not putting their full attention to restoring the flow of capital and creating a renewed climate for investment is time wasted and I think this country has very little time.

In my view the three most impressive politicians in the United States other than the president are Governor Schwarzeneggerof California, Governor Rendell of Pennsylvania, and Mayor Bloomberg of New York City all of whom insist that we must tackle the erosion of the nation’s infrastructure if we’re to have an economic future.

Still I couldn’t help but feel today as I watched these men on Meet the Press that despite their collective argument that serious investments in rebuilding the U.S. are critical to our survival our Senators and Representatives in Washington are not up to the job.

Thomas L. Friedman’s OpED column in today’s New York Times is incisive about the evident crisis in our political focus. I was hooked by his opening lines:

“I ran into an Indian businessman friend last week and he said something to me that really struck a chord: “This is the first time I’ve ever visited the United States when I feel like you’re acting like an immature democracy.””

To this Friedman adds:

“You know what he meant: We’re in a once-a-century financial crisis, and yet we’ve actually descended into politics worse than usual. There don’t seem to be any adults at the top — nobody acting larger than the moment, nobody being impelled by anything deeper than the last news cycle. Instead, Congress is slapping together punitive tax laws overnight like some Banana Republic, our president is getting in trouble cracking jokes on Jay Leno comparing his bowling skills to a Special Olympian, and the opposition party is behaving as if its only priority is to deflate President Obama’s popularity.”

 

Friedman goes on to say that the president missed a teaching moment last week by not having a fireside chat with the nation in which he would have shared with the country the full measure of our current economic crisis and I agree in part but I would add that no one knows the full dimensions of the crisis and in the absence of all the facts Barack Obama is not likely to risk looking like Jimmy Carter–that is, you can’t lead with merely the appearance of seriousness you have to have substantive policy at your fingertips.

I thought it was a good sign when Obama met with Governors Schwarzenegger, Rendell, and Mayor Bloomberg last week–I took this as the week’s most substantive story. And now in the spirit of Thomas Friedman’s advice it is time for the president to lead with what he knows. We’re in the fight of our lives.And yes we may have to throw more money at  the banking and insurance systems before all is said and done. But we need to do this with a sense that every penny is accounted for, a matter that even revisionist types can’t take away from F.D.R.. Say what you will Americans didn’t lose money on the New Deal.

 

S.K.