Sextant Volume XX, Fall 2012

SEXTANT

Fall 2012

Volume XX, No. 1

F R O M T H E E D I T O R

X-Rated 2 Gayle V. Fischer

E S S A Y

Global Mind Change:

Whole Brain Harmony and the Re-Enchantment of the World 4 Stefan Schindler

Speaking the Unspeakable 30 Mary Ni and Carl “Cap” Johnson

The Mouse Killer 42 Gwendolyn L. Rosemond

Helen Smith c. 1930

S H O R T S T O R Y

Something They Will Probably Never Talk About Carolyn M. Kerr

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P O E T R Y

Psyche Offers Venus Waters of the Styx, Padova: Sunday Afternoon and Response to the Bowman of Shu Thomas R. Simons

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Old Men on Motorcycles 41 Gina Vega

P O R T F O L I O

Autism: A Portrait of Mothers and Sons Kim Mimnaugh

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B O O K E S S A Y

The Dawn of Environmentalism­­ —Silent Spring (1962) 38 Alan M. Young

F R O M T H E A R C H I V E S

Blackboard Sketching

Charles Frederick Whitney

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On the cover: Kim Mimnaugh, Tanuja and Pavan, see page 21.

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E S S A Y

Global Mind Change:

Whole Brain Harmony and the Re-Enchantment of the World Stefan Schindler

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the other

My launching point is hears, obeys, behaves.

But what exactly is Princeton psychologist Julian bicameral mind? What is Jaynes’s 1976 magnum opus: human experience before the emergence of the selfThe Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral conscious moral agent?

According to Jaynes, humans— Mind. My thesis is: Ego’s emergence was necessary, from about 9000 to 1000 B.C.—were essentially but ego’s destiny is to transcend itself. My argument automata, responding to neurologically generated voices. is: Human evolution is best understood in terms of These voices are heard in the bicameral mind-space. three essential epochs: prepersonal, personal, and Bicameral experience is rooted in the auditory. One transpersonal. We are on the cusp of the third. part of the brain speaks; the other part of the brain Jaynes offers a novel interpretation of split-brain hears, obeys, behaves. There is no sense of self, no selftheory. He asserts that what we call consciousness conscious subject in the bicameral cosmos of ancient emerged from the breakdown of pre-subjective civilizations. There are, however, degrees of collective awareness, which he calls bicameral mind. “Bicameral” awareness; what Rupert Sheldrake calls pre-subjective signifies here the two chambers, the two hemispheres, fields of “morphic resonance.” of the brain. “Bicameral mind” signifies their interaction, resulting in the worldview—the cognitive structure Right: The figure is very probably Urizen in the act of creating and/or of—humanity’s long history of preconscious culture. circumscribing the material universe. This design, perhaps William Blake’s The breakdown of bicameral mind took over a thousand most famous, has also been titled by critics “The Ancient of Days” and years, from about 2200 to 800 B.C., consciousness “God Creating the Universe.” William Blake, Europe a Prophecy, copy E, 1794 (Library of Congress). emerging clearly at last in, for example, the birth of 4

Copyright © 1998 by Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi. This image copyright © 1998 William Blake Archive.

Western philosophy on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey in the sixth century B.C. The breakdownbreakthrough event—the transition from prepersonal to personal—is manifest in the difference between the voice-hearing, god-speaking early Hebrew prophets and the poetizing, angst-haunted later prophets. It is manifest in the difference between mythologizing Hesiod and philosophizing Thales. It is present in the evolution from Iliad to Odyssey, where the petulant, explosive Achilles the brain speaks; gives way to a new kind of hero: the sly, strategic part of the brain Odysseus.

n a provisional and introductory way, this essay attempts to make sense out of the times in which we live. It takes a broad view, engaging in a philosophy of history. Conclusion? We are living in what I call “The Renaissance of The Renaissance.” An opportunity to rediscover the spirit of The Renaissance, tempered by the lessons we, collectively, still need to learn. These lessons—frugality, compassion, interbeing—are crucial to the contemporary paradigm shift; to what Willis Harman One part of calls our necessary “Global Mind Change.”

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© Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

A nude female with long, flame-like hair kneels on a cloud and lifts with both hands, a cloak, blanket, or heavy drapery to uncover the youth below, at whom she is looking. William Blake, Europe a Prophecy, copy K, 1821 (Fitzwilliam Museum).

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n the artifacts and myths of ancient cultures, hearing has primacy over seeing—as befits bicameral experience. Then a change occurs. The voices retreat.

To survive the ensuing silence, the ego-subject must emerge: must see the world in a new way; must extend and spatialize time in order to plan and remember. This new being is now more than ever a becoming; a selfconscious agent who must survey, evaluate, decide, act— with all the anguish that comes with freedom, choice and responsibility. The breakdown of bicameral mind signifies the increasing absence of voice-directed behavior and the consequent emergence of subjectivity as a new mode of human being-in-the-world. Auditory-based bicamerality gives way to a spatialization of time and a correspondingly visual and newly narratizing mind-space.

This new mode of experience is reflected in language most especially, where seeing now assumes primacy over hearing, and new words appear: words for mind and self; words for knowing and understanding. Even today we express sudden realization with the words, “Now I see.”

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In bicameral civilizations, seeing was secondary, and there simply was no “I.” Jaynes attempts a neurological account of bicameral experience. He then shows the breakdown of that experiential paradigm, and the consequent emergence of consciousness: not as a biological event, but as the socio-linguistic construction of a unified mind-space.

This unified, temporalizing mind-space, this radically new sense of personal identity, is based on a new capacity for metaphor, symbolism, and interior storytelling. In short: memory and imagination. Resisting a neuro-anatomical reductionism of subjectivity, Jaynes is inclined to agree with Kierkegaard: “You’ll never find consciousness at the other end of a microscope.”

Let us glance at the difference between The Iliad and The Odyssey. Jaynes invites us to appreciate Homer’s contrast between the perpetually bicameral Achilles and the agonistic Odysseus on his long journey to subjectivity.

Jaynes interprets The Odyssey as a pilgrim’s progress to consciousness. He writes:

After The Iliad, The Odyssey … a gigantic vault in mentality…. Odysseus of the many devises is the hero of a new mentality of how to get along in a ruined and god-weakened world. …

The contrast with The Iliad is astonishing. …

[The] series of stories [in The Odyssey] sweeps from its lost hero sobbing on an alien shore in bicameral thrall to his beautiful goddess Calypso, to his defiant war hoops in a rivaltouted home, from trance through disguise to recognition, from sea to land, east to west, defeat to prerogative, the whole long song is an odyssey toward subjective identity ….1

Heidegger’s view of temporality as key to Dasein’s worldhood—thrown toward futurity—foreshadows Jaynes’ insistence on the temporality of consciousness.

Jayne’s refers to this narratizing “spatialization of time” as a spreading out in mind-space, making room for memory and imagination. Being-in-the-world is constructed from internal self-distancing, which Heidegger calls ecstasis, Sartre calls self-transcendence, and Kierkegaard calls the root of our anxiety.

The breakdown of the bicameral mind “throws” Dasein into what Heidegger calls lichtung: a “lighting/clearing,” a there-being, which is projective, death-bound, anguished, and Promethean; an existential dance of teleology and nostalgia.

To illustrate further, we observe that the Achilles/ Odysseus distinction is comparable to that between Julian Jaynes ranges across the millennia like a Amos and Ecclesiastes. Amos is an eighth century B.C., Renaissance scholar to illustrate and argue for his mostly bicameral, early Hebrew prophet, giving voice to thesis. He thus builds a foundation for the Schindlerian a god who speaks. It is doubtful that Amos comprehends innovation: transpersonal bicamerality. By which I mean the words. Ecclesiastes, a meta-personal rather than second century B.C., late pre-personal awareness.

Ego’s emergence was necessary, Hebrew prophet, speaks his Here we touch on the heart own words. He exhibits the but ego’s destiny is to transcend itself. of the philosophy of history inwardly alone, self-conscious I wish to elaborate: Ego’s The emergence of the personal subject emerging from emergence was necessary, but ego’s bicameral breakdown. destiny is to transcend itself. The from the prepersonal is preparation emergence of the personal from Ecclesiastes’s sense of for the transpersonal. the prepersonal is preparation for the tragic, his fullness of the transpersonal. Allow me to compassion, his experiential borrow from two of our most famous poets: The time is spatializing of time, his poetic and reflective pondering— still out of joint; but the times, they are a changin’. all contrast dramatically with the voice-hearing bluster and immediacy of Amos. Jaynes elaborates: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is one of the most provocative works of scholarship In Amos there are no words for mind or think to have appeared in the Western world since Freud’s The or feel or understand or anything similar Interpretation of Dreams in 1900. Jaynes defines religion as whatever; Amos never ponders anything in nostalgia for bicameral comfort; offers a corresponding his heart; he can’t; he would not know what hermeneutic of The Fall; interprets Jesus as offering a new it meant. … His thought is done for him. He ethic for a new mentality; emphasizes the thousand-year feels his bicameral voice about to speak and neo-bicameral endurance of Greek oracles after the birth shushes those about him with a “Thus speaks of consciousness; defines consciousness linguistically, and the Lord!” and follows with an angry forceful language as an organ of perception.

He writes: speech which he probably does not understand himself. Ecclesiastes is the opposite. … He The concept of the bicameral mind … sets an ponders things …. Who but a very subjective astonishingly recent date for the introduction man could say ‘Vanity of vanities, all is into the world of [the remarkably private] vanity,” (1:2), or say that he sees that wisdom covert [mind-space] we call consciousness. exceeds folly? (2:13)2 The date is slightly different in different parts of the world, but in the Middle East, where Jaynes asserts, “The famous [passage in the] third bicameral civilization began, the date [for chapter [of Ecclesiastes], ‘To everything there is a season, the emergence of consciousness out of the and a time to every purpose under heaven…’ is precisely breakdown of bicameral mind] is roughly the spatialization of time, its spreading out in mind-space, 1000 B.C.3 so characteristic of consciousness.” Jaynes unwittingly touches here on a major theme in Martin Heidegger’s The evidence for all this [bicameral and neoBeing and Time. For Heidegger, human reality—which he bicameral experience] would be much more calls Dasein, “being-there”—is always a time-horizoning obvious today had not Constantine in the being-in-the-world; a thrown, projective, worlding fourth century, even like King Josiah in Israel becoming. one millennium earlier, sent his armies of 7

Christian converts out with sledge hammers through the once bicameral world to smash all its physical vestiges in sight.4 The emergence of subjectivity is a long, developmental process. It is also agonistic: thwarted and oppressed by social institutions. For example: The Church closed Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum—the first two Western universities—in 529. This was followed by a thousand years of terror, tyranny and superstition, climaxing in a centuries-long Inquisition. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600, simply for postulating a multiverse. Galileo was threatened with torture in 1633 if he refused to repudiate his Copernican-inspired scientific discoveries about inertia and the moon.

Today, bicameral mentality—the need for authority— permeates and undermines democracy. America is in fact a high-tech version of Plato’s cave. Citizens are socialized into ignorance. Their consent is manufactured by the artful deployment of WMDs: Weapons of Mass Dysfunction. At school, at work, and through print and electronic media, the puppeteers are experts at deception, distortion and distraction. This is why I invented the verb “to ignorate.”

Why William Blake refers to our “mind-forged manacles.”

Why Erich Fromm coined the phrase “chains of illusion.”

Why Herbert Marcuse critiques Western culture as “one-dimensional.” Why Kant refers to our “self-imposed immaturity.” Why Michael Parenti says our schools “owe more to Sparta than to Athens.” Why Noam Chomsky says we don’t even know that we don’t know. Why Frank Baum wrote The Wizard of Oz. And why Gore Vidal has given us a new name: “The United States of Amnesia.”

This monotheistic, anti-philosophic dogmatism and terror is mirrored in the third Abrahamic tradition.

The Muslim invasion of India, about 1000 C.E., led in Think of the slogan “United We Stand,” effectively time to the burning of the great Buddhist University of used after 9/11 to launch another Vietnam War, this time Nalanda. Nalanda’s temple campus was several hundred in the Middle East, while Wall Street bankers prepared times the size of Plato’s Academy. It was the greatest to perpetrate the worst stock market crash since 1929. garden of wisdom the world has ever seen. Its burning I ask you: Who was standing with whom? Why are we to the ground was the work of Mohammed Al Ghuari. still paying, while the war-makers and the bankers are Al Ghuari’s sweep across India in 1192 destroyed other walking around free and Buddhist communities, rich, instead of rotting in which, like Nalanda, included Today, bicameral mentality—the prison where they belong? monasteries, libraries, A government no longer need for authority—permeates and meditation halls and debating by the people is no longer a centers. By the end of the undermines democracy.

America is in government for the people. twelfth century, Buddhism fact a high-tech version of Plato’s cave. had all but disappeared from Martin Luther King risked the land of its birth. Al his to inform us of this Citizens are socialized into ignorance. fact:lifewealth, Ghuari’s destruction of the poverty, racism University of Nalanda repeats and war—these four always the Christian burning of The Great Library at Alexandria. go together; and we cannot solve one without solving the others. Robert Thurman—America’s own, homegrown History, however, is not without a sense of irony. bodhisattva—articulates a tragic truth: “We are led by The Muslims are inspired to build their own gardens lunatics.” Perhaps Michael Parenti says it best: “The rich of wisdom—their own philosophic and scientific are never satisfied. They want it all. If you know that, and institutions, adorned with fountains, flowers, poets, nothing else, you still know more than all those people calligraphers and alchemists; the accumulated learning who know everything else, but not that.”5 of which is discovered by the West in the Christian re-

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conquest of Spain, the capture of Toledo’s libraries in 1089 sparking the emergence of Western culture from its long dark night of the soul. Plato and Aristotle come alive again in the Western imagination. Socratic dialogue, scientific exploration, artistic creativity re-blossom in The Renaissance, progressing through The Enlightenment toward the modern triumph of the self-consciously free individual.

Parenti notes that “the Vietnam War was not a ‘mistake,’ but part of a long-standing pattern of U.S. interventionism to make the world safe for corporate exploitation.”6 The same of course can be said of the Bush-Cheney Administration’s wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, creating the scenario for a potentially nuclear conflict with Iran, whose social democratic government America overthrew in 1953.

But even this modern “triumph” is ironic, being at best a tender and provisional achievement, barely present in large parts of the world, and still opposed by potent forces in even the freest societies. Hence Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, echoing the Stoics and Rousseau, cautioned against “herd mentality.” They were prophets of today’s postmodern Matrix.

American democracy cannot be sustained if its citizens are sleepwalking through history. Parenti shows the way out of Plato’s cave: “Not only must we love social justice more than personal gain, we also must realize that our greatest personal gain comes in the struggle for social justice. … We are most in touch with our own individual humanity when we stand close to all of humanity.” 7

Let us pause for some illustrative quotes.

Reporter: “Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of Western civilization?” Gandhi: “I think it would be a good idea.”

Noam Chomsky: “The problem is not that people don’t know, it’s that they don’t know they don’t know.” Karl Kraus: “How do wars start? Politicians lie to journalists, then believe what they read.” Mike Marqusee: “The battles of the ’60s may someday seem merely an early skirmish

in a conflict whose dimensions we have yet to grasp.”

Karl Marx: “The demand to abandon illusions about our condition is a demand to abandon the conditions which require illusion.”

Richard Rorty: “I don’t know whether democracy can survive the gangsterism that now controls America. …

The religious right … is a truly dangerous, potentially fascist movement. …There is a crisis coming.”

F. M. Cornford: Oh “wise and gentle humanist, …in a world that sometimes seems to have forgotten more than it has learnt since Athens fell, the spirit of Socrates can live again.” Walter Anderson: “Everyday I-centered [ego-consciousness] is only one way of organizing cognition. …

Other ways are available to us to all times.” William Blake: “All men partake of [paranormal] abilities— but [these abilities] are lost by not being cultivated.”

Chief Seattle: “What we do to the earth, we do to ourselves.”

Emerson: “I am God in nature.

I am a weed by the wall.” John Lennon: “I am the walrus.”

Getty Images

Notice the elongated ears, indicating ego-consciousness enhanced by audio-bicameral sensitivity. Buddha’s faceBuddha’s Gesicht. Photographed besides the monastery of Likir in Ladakh (India). Statue of Maitreya: the Buddha-to-come.

Buddha: “In each atom of the universe, there exist vast oceans of world systems.” Alan Watts: “Nothingness is uncommonly frisky.” Immanuel Kant: “Enlightenment is humanity’s liberation from self-imposed immaturity.”

We are, I suggest, in the midst of a radical civilizational transformation; a global metamorphosis which offers opportunities for recovering what I like to call Greco-Buddhist wisdom.

The problem is: Humans went from one extreme to the other.

From selfless automata to isolated moral agents alienated from their own interbeing. In a sense: from bicameral bumpkins to egomaniacs.

Socrates and Buddha illustrate the exception: a Golden Mean, a balance, a Middle Way. Socrates and Buddha were fully conscious moral agents who were also voicehearers, synthesizing moral agency and bicameral ability. They were whole-brain functioning.

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© 2003 Yale Center for British

A winged female sits atop a giant sunflower dais floating in the midst of the sea. William Blake, Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion, copy E, object 53.

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he Renaissance offered the West a chance to regain its balance. But the time remained out of joint. Today, we have another opportunity.

The spirit of The Renaissance rises anew. We can see it in The Transpersonal Paradigm Shift in philosophy, psychology, physics, biology, ecology and spirituality.

In its broadest terms, the philosophy of history I want to sketch is dialectical. Thesis: prepersonal bicamerality.

Antithesis: personal subjectivity. Synthesis: transpersonal neo-bicamerality. H. G. Wells was prophetic. History is now “a race between education and catastrophe.” Max Weber was right. The disenchantment of the world leads to nightmare. The transpersonal re-enchantment of the world offers hope that history now opens into possibilities for peace, rooted in a worldview of interbeing.

Alas, war prevails. The battle for the soul of humanity is writ large in the news. History repeats itself. The Renaissance was opposed with brutal force. The Renaissance of The Renaissance is likewise opposed.

With the exception of the Buddhist king Ashoka in third century B.C. India, when in history did those with power ever gently give it up for the common 10

good? Though the times increasingly try men’s souls, this trial is another breakdown-breakthrough event; an opportunity, as Chogyam Trungpa would say, “to recover the sanity we were born with,” fusing personal authenticity with global awareness.

The death of Socrates in 399 exhibits the last Western public breath of dialectical life, the last gasp of subjective responsibility balanced by multimodal ability. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates says, “I thought I heard a voice. My divine sign comes to me. You see, I am a seer.” The father of Western rationality is also a mystic. His bicameral windows are still open, and the voices still speak. Those voices are more than just neurological events. Also, they speak less frequently; and they suggest rather than command. This is psychosynthesis; whole-brain balance; a multimodal Middle May. Socrates, like Buddha, embodied what Jean Huston calls “the possible human.”

The recovery of that possibility is now our brightest beacon of hope. It calls for an educational revolution.

Let us turn to what is perhaps the most intriguing moment in Jaynes’ remarkable text. He narrates his own startling flash of neo-bicameral experience. He writes:

complained, sounded like lame first drafts. Flora’s face grew hot like it did when she was having a hot flash, but she held her tongue, no—bit down— Flannery O’Connor did not need to be defended!

Flora regained control of her classroom and resumed her discussion of the significance of Hulga’s wooden leg, pausing once to admonish that student for texting during class. What a rude girl!

After class, many of the other girls quietly stood by while Flora gathered together her books and notes and one by one they approached her desk and apologized for that student whose name was Krystal.

One student said she hated Flannery O’Connor, but she loved Flora’s class. Another student said Krystal never should have said those things. That evening Flora got an email from a student named Buddy who said he really liked Flannery’s work and that if she was still around writing these stories he would love to get a published subscription that he could read every week. This made Flora smile and then cry.

Later in the week, in her Advanced Writing class at the State College, Flora read and discussed, in individual conferences, story after story—they were on the personal essay—about abuse by a boyfriend, growing up with an alcoholic mother, an unwanted pregnancy, the suicide of a brother, a father’s heroin addiction. How could she begin to address organization, tense issues, use of detail, or comma splices in a piece about a stepfather’s sexual abuse of the student beginning when that student was ten? The answer was: she couldn’t! And then Friday she met the new hire out on the sidewalk, a young Japanese woman without the terminal degree Flora had been told she needed in order to be hired fulltime. It was all too much. Flora dragged herself back to her car.

Flora and Steve had been married for almost thirty years; they had four children in various stages of early adulthood and one dog in advanced adulthood.

The younger two children, away at college, still had bedrooms in the house. The furniture in these bedrooms gathered dust. Flora had good intentions for “fixing them up” but nothing ever came of it. She had good intentions for many things, but she didn’t even

have time to shave her legs. Now that the kids were gone, she didn’t bother to make dinners.

She survived on peanut butter and cereal and spinach leaves and Steve ate most of his meals at work, for free. This was a good strategy for the company, as it kept its employees in the building during lunch hour, so they ended up talking about work while they were eating. Flora spent afternoons on student papers, slogging through tragedy after tragedy, adding commas, circling words, fixing quotes, composing, in pencil, gentle suggestions for improvement. In the evenings she responded to choppy, nearly indecipherable student emails laying out elaborate excuses for not being in class or not doing the work and then she crawled into bed and read the textbook chapters for the next day from the syllabus she’d created last summer. There wasn’t a lot of time for sleeping.

Flora and Steve could recall days when they’d woken up feeling rested and full of joy and possibility. They hadn’t had one of those in a long time.

The last thing they did before going to bed Sunday night was walk the dog. In the summer, the dog stayed outside in his doghouse. In fact, he often slept outside in all but the most extreme cold. But the last several winters had been brutal, and the dog was old, so he slept in the basement in his dog bed and had to be let out every now and then. Usually, Steve walked him first thing in the morning and last thing at night and Flora would walk him during the day, but this night, they walked him together. It was freezing, but luminous— the moon was full—and they ended up walking all the way to the end of the lake and back. When they got home, and the dog was settled into his bed, Steve and Flora changed into their PJs and crawled into their bed and spooned until Flora’s arthritic hip became stiff and then painful and then they repositioned themselves on their backs, side by side holding hands. Steve called this hurtling through space. At 4:31 a.m., the first of seven alarms went off. Each alarm had a different ring tone, and three weeks into the semester, Flora came 13

to appreciate the brilliance of this. Steve got up on the first one to go into the kitchen and pour coffee from the coffeemaker Flora had programmed the night before.

He stirred in Cremora until it was just the right color and placed it on the coaster on the night table on Flora’s side. He always placed a little dish of peanuts and raisins on top, which acted as a lid, keeping the coffee hot and warming up the peanuts and raisins at the same time.

Most mornings, Flora fell back asleep and woke to the fourth alarm, which went off at 6:03, knowing there were three more until 6:17, last call. After the fifth alarm (Flora never fell completely back asleep after the fourth), she felt the weight of her husband’s body next to her on the edge of the bed. He kissed her ear.

Bye, hon, see you tonight.

This is what he always did. He said bye, she said bye.

This particular morning, however, instead of softly shutting the bedroom door and walking down the front hall, through the living room and out the front door, he walked back around the end of the bed and lifted the covers.

What are you doing? You’re wearing clothes. I have to get up soon. You need to go to work.

Steve nuzzled his big nose into Flora’s hair: Just for a minute honey, only for a minute, come on.

It was not difficult for Flora, at that moment, to give up.

Whatevs, she said, an expression she’d learned from one of her students.

Without ever discussing it, they agreed to not answer the phone. Flora heard the thwap of the newspaper on the driveway and the transmission of the school bus and fell back asleep. She woke to the afternoon bus and the mail truck. She and Steve spent the afternoon dozing, waking, dreaming. Sometimes she propped herself up to sip the coffee Steve refilled every now and then, but mostly they slept. When she had to get up for something, like the bathroom, she would dive back into bed like it was a pool. By late afternoon, Flora felt guilty about her students, but picturing their relief and happiness in the empty classroom, she felt less so.

You know my job’s going to go away, Flora said. I should call Eleanor and tell her I’m sick or something.

You can’t lie. Steve said.

I could take a personal day. I’ve never done that.

A personal day would be OK. This IS personal, isn’t it? But it’s too late now. Call her tomorrow.

And get back in here.

Steve pulled her into the splendor of the bed.

What about the dog?

I took him out this morning. He’s fine. He’ll bark when he needs to go out.

They slept through the evening, getting up once to share a glass of wine. Next morning they slept through all seven alarms, and woke up famished. Steve scrambled eggs with garlic and onions and mushrooms and toasted English Muffins. He cut up tomatoes and slices of Brie and drizzled olive oil over everything.

Flora dozed to the smell of bacon and woke when Steve accidentally dropped one of the plates on the rug next to the bed. Miraculously, it landed right side up without spilling hardly anything. He picked it up.

We’re going to eat in bed? Flora asked.

Why the heck not?

Flora and Steve propped up their pillows and ate with gusto. Flora rolled the bacon and egg in her mouth. It was the best meal she’d had in months.

After they were done, they kissed and Steve scraped the leftovers into the dog’s dish and went to stack the dishes in the sink. Flora sank back down into the bed.

She awoke to the sound of the dog barking.

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Each day it became easier to not get up. They ignored the phone and didn’t bother with the mail. They ate the perishables in the refrigerator first and then began on the canned food in the cupboards: tuna, soup, pasta, olives.

Oh, they fed the dog. They did feed the dog. That would be just cruel, to ignore the dog. Flora noticed a stray raisin on the radiator. She wondered how long it would stay there. Would it decompose?

A few years ago there had been a dead cat on top of a stone wall along her running route and she had been fascinated by its daily decomposition. She wondered if insects ate raisins, or if it would just shrivel up and float away like dust.

One morning—they’d been in bed for three or four days, neither Steve nor Flora were keeping track—time stopped, or else slowed way down. That or else the digital clock got stuck. When Flora opened her eyes she could see the clock, which balanced on a ceramic jar of pennies: 7:44. She stared at it for over an hour and it never went to 7:45. It went to 7:43 once, but only for a moment and then popped back to 7:44, where it remained. It was so unusual, she woke up Steve, who grunted and told her to go back to sleep. But she couldn’t. For as long as Flora stayed awake, the clock remained at 7:44. Eventually she fell asleep and when she woke up, it wasn’t 7:44 anymore. It never happened again.

The days went by, with Steve and Flora sleeping and waking, shuffling to the bathroom and diving back into bed, Steve fixing simple but delicious meals from stuff he found in the cupboards. Mostly it was Steve who walked the dog, but after a couple of days, the walks turned into a quick letting out and a quicker letting back in. It must have been very cold outside as the windows were almost completely iced over. At some point, Flora began to smell Steve’s breath, and then—worse—her own. Her pajamas became overly soft and her hip got worse.

One morning she woke with a pain on her chin and when she touched it, she felt a giant zit. Her hair went from limp to oily to coarse.

The dog’s coughing woke her up. She hobbled downstairs to find him curled 15

up in his bed, shivering. She went to the refrigerator to get him a hot dog and when she held it out to him he bit down and dropped it. She looked at his dish and saw that it was full. She wondered when he’d eaten last, when Steve had last filled his dish, why it was still full.

Had Steve been taking him out? She thought so. Flora found an old towel and draped it over the dog and pulled a heater out from under the stairs and plugged it in and pointed it toward him and went back to bed. Steve groaned and Flora told him she was worried about the dog. She told him about the full dish and the heater. Steve hoisted himself out of bed and stayed away for a long time. When he finally came back, he stood at the door.

There’s something wrong with the dog.

Flora had fallen back asleep.

What?

He couldn’t even walk outside just now; I had to carry him out.

What is it?

Don’t know, but he’s in trouble.

Flora propped herself up on one elbow and stared at her husband who looked worried and old. He had whiskers. It was three in the morning.

Well, there’s nothing we can do now. Come to bed.

We’ll see how he is in the morning.

At 6 am, Flora woke up. She had to pee. In the bathroom mirror, she saw the definite beginnings of dreadlocks and studied the unmistakable chin zit, the size of a pea. She consciously resisted the urge to pop it and eventually shut the bathroom door, turned on the hot water and stepped out of her pajamas. The water felt foreign, like another substance at first, but Flora closed her eyes and leaned against the tiles. When she opened them she saw tiny jewels falling out of the showerhead: emeralds and rubies and diamonds and sapphires landed on her skin, not sharp at all, softer than anything she had ever felt.

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She stood in the doorway of their bedroom wrapped in a towel and listened to Steve snore. Flora loved Steve, but now that she’d taken a shower, she could smell how bad he smelled. She limped downstairs to check on the dog. In spite of the heater, he was still shivering. His eyes were red rimmed and sunk into his head. She went to the living room and stared out the front window. Squirrels chased each other up and down dead hemlocks, their tails reminding Flora of the fur wrap her great aunt Kay used to wear, some sort of a weasel, with glass eyes and a real tail. She logged on to the computer and saw that she had 237 email messages. She called Eleanor. She didn’t lie. She was tired, she said, and yes, ok, maybe a little sick too. Plus, she needed to take her dog to the vet. Eleanor said she’d put in a good word to the English Chair. When Flora got back to the bedroom, Steve was swaying next to the bed.

We have to do something about the dog.

I’m on my way down.

I think it’s more complicated than taking him out.

But take a shower first. I know you’re worried—I am too—but feel the tiny soft jewels coming out of the showerhead.

Steve gave Flora a butterfly kiss on the cheek and went into the bathroom.

When she heard the shower turn on, Flora felt an unexpected relief and opened the front door to let in some air.

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Photo Credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY

P O E T R Y

Thomas R. Simons

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Psyche Offers Venus Waters of the Styx Venus is silent, vainly forcing a smile, A gesture which cannot hide sullen desperation’s pains; She who in her confidence has dallied with the war god In sports of lust; now perhaps still dreaming of Paris’ fragile Form, so pliant to her subtle touch and whispered words; Remembering when she herself was queen, Alone enshrined above all the other goddesses.

Psyche, coiled upon her knees, uplifts A golden bowl before the face of Venus, Who lays prone on shifting volcanic sands Still smoldering, an absent look of departed Thoughts pulling at her fluttering eyelids; Her mouth begins to form some word, then closes, Realizing in silence more is said.

Venus reaches towards the bowl, her long arching fingers Tremulous—she pulls back, clutching Her palms, digging jagged nails into wan flesh; And she trance-like again extends her limp arm, A single finger eloquently brushing the lip Of the bowl, tracing the implacable curve in mute surrender, Eyeing enviously the subtle form of the younger goddess, Whose ever-fresh beauty seems so foreign In this ashen realm of decaying, hollow flesh.

What memory does she desire to tear From out her eyes? What time in suspension floats In black orbits turned blankly upward Towards the bowl of immanent oblivion?

Will Adonis be once more disremembered, The blood again crusted on boar’s tusks, to be heaped Together with other anonymous bones, lost Anonymous amongst another hunter’s long-devoured spoils?

Will Vulcan once more rage, shaking his horns In ineffectual anger unheeded?

Or does Vulcan now find comfort in Psyche’s bed, His deformity forgotten in loving caresses, His heart pierced by Cupid’s arrow, loosed

By Psyche’s own hand, from a bow crafted At Vulcan’s forge and tempered by his zeal.

Venus pushes the bowl away and crumples to her knees, Slowly crawling towards the shore, her blank mind fixed Upon the distant bank; she drags herself across The black sands, her feet and hands sinking In her struggles, subsumed by the uncertain landscape; Until, balanced upon the brink, she collapses rolling To the shore, languid limbs numb and flopping, Coming finally to rest at the shoreline, her lips at the verge Of the ponderous, ebon waters, the lapping undulations Splashing her face like tears, or liquor too hastily consumed.

Her body heaves in spasmodic breaths, struggling To inhale the thickening, suffocating air, Eyes bulging with convulsive fear, she stares Across the brackish surface at the bobbing heads Of all who leapt from Charon’s craft in hope Of escape, heads breaking the surface, gasping For fugitive breath, before being reclaimed by darkness, Borne ever nearer to the closing shore By the implacable currents of the turgid stream.

Psyche arises and strides to the verge of the bank, Her form dancing against the shifting orange sky, More soul than form, weightless, dispersed on the wind, Her eyes downcast in mute sympathy, Aware of all the eyes of her rival contain Of failing hopes and resignation forced By natural affinities and simple passage of time.

Venus’ white body appears more pale In contrast with penumbral waters as she slides Her sluggish flesh noiselessly into the abiding river’s course, The waters closing over the curves of her shoulders and calves, Her soles swallowed beneath the implacable surface— And gone.

Left: Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio) (1483-1520) Psyche Presents to Venus the Water of Styx or the Gift of Prosperine. Red chalk, 26.4 x 19.8 cm.

Photo: Michèle Bellot. Louvre, Paris, France.

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© 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SIAE, Rome

Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) Piazza d’Italia. © ARS, NY. Coll. Bergamini, Milan, Italy.

Photo Credit: Scala / Art Resources, NY.

Padova: Sunday Afternoon

Response to the Bowmen of Shu

Empty arcades echo with silence

Who will know of your grief?

In the long diffused shadows of afternoon,

(As though this grief you owned)

The relentless sun

What will sorrows’ report avail?

Reflected in polished and pitted stone walks,

Winter you should have expected,

Bound by marble pillars

Inevitably winter comes—

And cracked yellow stucco facades,

And even generals,

Shutters barred and clasped,

When worn with unyielding effort,

The clink of silverware and the smell of food

Walking pulling one foot behind,

Hint at life hidden.

Dragging in lieu of rest.

The streets persevere in their vacancy,

The willows wear the weight of snows

Like a DeChirico landscape,

And do not complain.

Under the watchful eye of the ever-present tower Half-visible beneath the uppermost curve of the arches, Dormant bells, shining cross, Above motionless green streams dusted by willows.

I cannot ask directions, Continuing to follow sinuous arcades.

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Kim Mimnaugh

Endless walls confront me with crumbling nakedness—

Thomas R. Simons received his PhD from Boston College in 2009 (dissertation: “Being and the Imaginary: An Introduction to Aesthetic Phenomenology and English Literature from the Eighteenth Century to Romanticism”). His article “Coleridge beyond Kant and Hegel: Transcendent Aesthetics and the Dialectic Pentad” was published in Studies in Romanticism. His other interests include: listening to jazz (anything sincere from Bix to Brötzmann) and the Grateful Dead, film (especially black-and-white), and travel (especially Italy and going home to Wisconsin).

P O R T F O L I O P O R T F O L I O

Kim Mimnaugh

Sara and Kyle

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Jacquelyn and John Paul

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Linda and Brett

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Nancy and Roland

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Kerri and Jake

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Lori and Jack

Stephanie’s Story

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he first student example, Stephanie, is a white female at an elite private college. She joined an extracurricular student group called the “Multicultural Peer Educators” [MPE] and described her experience as follows:

During my MPE training…, I went through many levels of emotion as I learned the often-painful truth about racism.

I remember being very skeptical initially of some discussions and claims; I also felt very isolated and lonely. I don’t think I intentionally disrespected anyone’s viewpoint or experience, but I did notice that a lot of my minority peers had a lot of anger about these issues, and I can remember thinking on more than one occasion, is it really as bad as they’re making it out to be?

Why do some people have such a chip on their shoulder when others seem so well-adjusted? I also remember realizing ugly truths about myself: times I’d colluded with racism, realizing I was privileged, etc. I felt so guilty and so ashamed, and for a while I wasn’t sure what I was even guilty or ashamed of.

We began to toss around the term “white guilt” and I remember thinking, Yes! That’s it! That’s what I’m feeling.

One kid said something that got to me, though: “Why do the white people get to feel guilty now? Should I feel bad for them? Why should they get a pat on the back from me?”

feedback. Through this process she realized something important about herself (how she was resisting some truths about racism, and how to break through her own resistance) that will stay with her for the rest of her life.

Tasha’s Story

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nother story related to breaking silence is from Tasha, a mixed heritage (Puerto Rican/Black) student at the same college, and in the same MPE program. Her prior life experiences with white people were not favorable at all, as she describes: When I first came to [this college], I felt a deep animosity towards white people. I had a white friend at home, and contact with some nice white people, but the majority of my interactions with white people were negative to say the least. When I first joined the Multicultural Peer Educators the end of the fall semester of my sophomore year, I only interacted with the other students of color. It wasn’t until Cap encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone, which I eventually did by the end of the spring semester that I felt comfortable enough to talk with white people without feeling any animosity or discomfort.

Power Privilege Difference

These words stung more deeply than I’d ever thought possible. I couldn’t help it; I started crying. I was silent at first, but soon I couldn’t hide it. That same kid looked at me, concerned, and asked if I had something I wanted to say. I opened my mouth to tell him how he wasn’t being fair, that I was hurt by what he said, but those words didn’t come out. What came out instead was a jumbled apology, for being white, for being emotional, for being unable to grasp the minority perspective. I told the truth: the tears were from frustration; I felt so powerless to translate my feelings and outrage into action. I ended by choking out, “I just don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t have an answer.” The same kid looked me right in the eyes for a couple seconds and said, “Steph, I think this is the answer. Keep trying, keep listening, keep feeling.” It was amazing—within the span of two minutes, I had been knocked down and lifted back up higher than before. This was one of my “epiphany moments”—a time of release and a time of hope. It was only after I was honest to myself and got my chip off my own shoulder that I was able to move on and truly learn more about racism.

In this situation Stephanie was able to conceptualize her discomfort, guilt and shame around her white privilege.

Moreover, she was able to express her strong feelings and thoughts to her peers and get immediate support and

The true revelation, however, came during the summer before my junior year during the MPE fall training. More white people were active in the program and my strong connection to Cap, or the “silly old white man,” as a friend and confidant left me feeling more at ease about white people. I still had my doubts, but through listening sessions and deep introspection I was able to confront my antagonistic views of white people and realize that they are oppressed by racism just as people of color.

This really hit home after a “privilege walk” where Steph confronted her own oppression as a white person living in a white bubble, completely oblivious to the emotional impact of racism on people of color. Seeing her experience her revelation, let down her walls, and let her emotion run through her uninhibited, really caused me to see that there was more to white people than dominators, oppressors, and the like. We are all people just the same. We all have feelings, and it’s only when we allow petty differences to separate us that we fail ourselves and each other.

It was through this experience that I began to build my bridge across difference.

In this commentary, we find a description of an ongoing process of relationship building, and the cumulative results of practicing with listening sessions, stepping out of comfort zones, and exposing oneself to people one is not initially comfortable with (in this case, 31

white people). Through the process of Tasha’s own selfreflections, hearing about other people’s experiences, and observing Stephanie confronting herself and her own oppressive behavior, Tasha was able to begin to “build her own bridge across differences.” For Tasha, this was a life changing event.

Their Change Process

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efore they entered the MPE community these two young women both thought something was amiss, but they were not sure what. In this particular peer educator program, they learned about the history and dynamics of oppression, and listened to each other’s personal stories. As they did this, they were able to come to realizations within themselves about how they fit in the hierarchy of oppression. And, they realized more particularly what was amiss.

For example, Tasha admitted that she hated white people. And Stephanie became more aware of her white privilege and how much anger people of color had towards her and other whites because of it.

The Instillation of Silence

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Silence Injustice Oppression

e first experience injustice and oppressive behavior as children through harsh treatment by adults (adult-ism).

For example, it is as young people that we first learn not to ask questions (“Don’t ask questions, just do as I say”), not to express our thinking (“Children should be seen and not heard”), and not to express our emotions (“Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!”).

We are forced to take on oppressive behaviors for fear of negative repercussions (for boys: “Be a man!” or you get beat up and picked on for not wanting to fight; for girls: “All you need is a good man” is the message implying that girls are incomplete and deficient without a male in their lives). A clear example of the teaching and experiencing of oppressive and silencing behavior can be found in the harsh treatment that young boys experience in English boarding schools. School teachers and older boys bully and mistreat younger boys in the name of instilling “discipline.” Then, when the young boys became older, they turn around, become the oppressor, mistreat and bully those younger than them, and perpetuate the awful cycle. As Roald Dahl, a popular author of children’s books, reminisced on his own experiences in Boy, Tales of Childhood: 32

At Repton, prefects were never called prefects.

They were called Boazers, and they had the power of life and death over us junior boys.

They could summon us down in our pyjamas at night-time and thrash us for leaving just one football sock on the floor of the changingroom when it should have been hung up on a peg. A Boazer could thrash us for a hundred and one other piddling little misdemeanours— for burning his toast at tea-time, for failing to dust his study properly, for failing to get his study fire burning in spite of spending half your pocket money on firelighters, for being late at roll-call, for talking in evening Prep, for forgetting to change into house-shoes at six o’clock. The list was endless.1 To be “thrashed” meant to be beaten viciously on the buttocks with a cane. This violence was practiced, encouraged, and condoned by all those in authority.

The older boys were expected to bully and beat the younger boys.

The younger boys were expected to be submissive and silent.

Silence and isolation can be deadening. Unable to speak about what is going on, we remain isolated from people like us and also separated from others who are different from us. Our fear of being singled out and discriminated against for our differences (whatever they may be: height, weight, skin color, economic or social status, gender, sexuality, etc.) moves us to act as unobtrusively as possible. The isolation and separation then amplifies our fear and disrespect for others who are different, in turn augmenting misunderstanding, hostility, misinformation, violence, and deeper divisions.

We are silent in the fear of also being hurt by those who are hurting others. We become used to these hurtful situations, feel helpless about them, and perpetuate oppressive behavior through our silences and lack of action.

A simple, present time example of the isolation and silence between men is related by Cap, one of the author’s of this article: Once at a weekend men’s workshop all of us went to a local bowling alley. When we were there, these other guys started giving the gay men in our group a hard time, calling them names and getting on their case. Not one of

The dynamics of oppression force everyone involved to be victims as well as perpetrators. On the one hand, we are forced to submit to or comply with oppressive acts, limiting our horizons and thinking and behaviors. On the other hand, we consciously or unconsciously take on oppressive roles and recycle the ways we were oppressed by oppressing others in similar ways. This situation is the foundation upon which all the many other oppressions emerge (such as sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, and so on).

Listening to and telling stories that are uncensored of content and feelings are at the heart of it all. It is really the only way for us to discover what the realities are for people who are different from us, and to also learn about ourselves. Talking about how we are different and how we are similar, how we have been hurt and how we might have hurt others, gives us practice at transcending the silences and truly learning about each other. We build community to express our stories and emotions. And expressing our stories and emotions helps build community.

As we learn about each other we begin to see that we each share painful experiences that cause us to behave in the manners that we do. Respectfully sharing stories allows us, who are in the position of being the victim of oppression, to share the pain of our oppression and for us, who are in the position of being the perpetrator of oppression, to hear and understand what it is like to be the victim. At the same time it allows for the victims of oppression to listen to what it is like for the perpetrators to learn to be the perpetrators and to share the pain

inherent in becoming or being oppressors. This sharing allows us all to see each other from different perspectives and to develop a more complete understanding of the differences in our experiences.

The Piece Our Emotions Play

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hen we deny our emotional responses to pain, our memories of the hurtful experiences become confused and distorted, causing us to not think clearly. Conversely, when we are able to examine and express our painful experiences and emotions, healing can occur and clearer thinking can result.2 This process is not therapy though it is certainly therapeutic. It is accomplished through encouraging and modeling the kind of vulnerability necessary to looking at our hurtful experiences and in normalizing the expression of the emotions that often accompanies vulnerability. It is crucial to note that this process does not happen in one meeting: It requires patience and the development of trust over time well spent.

In learning more about privilege, power, and difference, we can force material and conversations on each other: we can read books, have discussions, and write papers.

But, unless we deal with our emotions, too (which often includes experiencing some very uncomfortable feelings) it will be difficult for us to truly learn and integrate hard topics into our frames of reference. We will stay disconnected and not be able to deal with the information, including real life situations, except intellectually. In

Jenny Pourinski (with hat) and Judy Garcia. When someone is telling their story or giving you their opinion, it is helpful to listen with an open mind and heart (even if it might be hard to hear what the speaker is saying). This, of course, takes time and practice.

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Jenny Tian and Ellen Rintell. Sometimes, in listening partnerships, the partners hold hands. Holding hands can help lend a more informal, intimate atmosphere to the session as well as to allow for useful non-verbal information and support to pass between partners.

theory, we will understand that “we are all equal” but in practice we will still act as if some of us are “more equal” and more deserving of privileges than others. Beverly Daniel Tatum speaks to this issue, suggesting that dealing with process and also allowing and dealing with the “powerful emotional responses in students” is essential, if not imperative, to successful mastery of the materials.3

Some Types of Resistance

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here are many challenges in developing these types of learning communities, not the least of which is the necessity for teachers and facilitators to become comfortable with discomfort. Administrators and teachers are often not prepared to deal with the strong feelings and painful emotions that arise from authentic dialogue and the sharing of stories that are close to the heart. We teachers and administrators are many times uneasy about giving up control of our classes and agendas to what may be happening “in the moment” and becoming very “messy.”

Chaos and confusion can be a typical part of the process

when we are trying to make sense of new information.

It is often confusing to look at the issues and the resulting emotions that arise.

Facilitators and teachers need to understand the importance of allowing, even encouraging, participants to express themselves safely and yet, without censor.

It is not uncommon for people to find it difficult to engage in the process in more than a superficial way because we do not want to think about uncomfortable issues and the uncomfortable feelings (such as guilt and shame) that arise from them. Particularly in classes which students are required (i.e. “forced”) to take, it is hard in only one semester to develop the type of community where the type of transformative change noted in the examples above can occur. It is easier to stay with what is comfortable and familiar.

Also, in academic situations, there can be deep institutional resistance to this kind of potentially transformational learning. In one situation, for example, administrators (despite strong student dismay and 35

protests) decided to stop giving academic credit to our year long two-semester course because our classes were considered not “academically rigorous” enough. There was concern in the curriculum committee that the intellectual component in our class was “subordinate to the utilitarian goals of improving leadership strategies, tactics and skills.” The curriculum committee apparently did not consider teaching students practical “leadership strategies, tactics and skills” to be rigorous academic content. In another case, when we were teaching this model to high school students, there were fears from the administration that teaching “listening skills” was too similar to teaching “counseling skills.” The administration feared that our students were too young and immature to learn or apply these skills in real life. They were fearful that the listening skills would encourage students to confide in and rely more on each other than they should in situations where they should continue to depend on the adults around them.

What We Can Do

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orking at the edges of people’s understanding and knowledge of privilege, power, and difference is both exciting and enervating. In order to maintain a certain freshness and positive perspective for the work it is good to remember that change happens one person at a time, and includes the need for us, hopeful change agents, to become aware of our own limits and, hence, our own continued potential for personal growth and change.

Eliminate historical bias. Along with the development of emotional literacy skills, people also need to be exposed to a wider range of historical interpretations, including U.S. history.4 Students should be given a larger perspective from the very beginning and at much earlier ages for why and how things happened. For example: How did racism and slavery develop in the U.S.A.? Who did it benefit? How did it start? Who supported it? Who did not? How did it continue? What were the struggles that occurred to help it end? How did good, kind, decent women and men condone this kind of evil in the first place?

Stories Emotions Community

Become emotionally literate. While much of our work has been done with high school and college students, we know that education and awareness of the dynamics of privilege, power, and difference should be started much earlier in our lives. Also, teaching and encouraging the development of emotional literacy skills and providing environments for the safe expression of all emotions should begin at the youngest ages possible.

People should come to high school and college with a clearer understanding of the dynamics of oppression and liberation. We should also come to our later education with a clearer understanding of how our emotions and feelings compromise or enhance our ability to think and act rationally or irrationally in a complicated world.

Practice emotional awareness in listening.

Part of being emotionally literate is being able to be in the presence of differing opinions and keeping an open 36

mind. We need to be able to practice open-mindedness with each other. Conflict resolution skills should be a part of everyone’s formal education. One of the most interesting parts of teaching about differences is getting to know one another on a more personal basis, and being able to think clearly and stay present when we disagree with one another.

Or, regarding our Constitution and our legal system: Where did non-land owners, non-white men, women, immigrants, and slaves fit into this document? Who was this document written to address and protect? Who did it dismiss or ignore? Who makes our laws and who are they written to uplift or keep down? What is the place of “civil disobedience” in our history and our present lives?

When students become more aware of the inconsistencies and injustices in our laws and social policies they often want to do something about it. This is a good time to encourage and assist them to become activists for positive social change. Giving examples and opportunities of ways to make a difference in real life is empowering and hopeful. And the feelings, whatever they are, that arise in the process are ones that should be allowed, experienced, examined. Feelings of success should be celebrated and appreciated. Feelings of frustration should be expressed and released to allow the type of healing that is necessary for clearer thinking to occur.

Develop a support group. Dealing with difficult issues is certainly easier when we have our own support groups. As we try to make safe spaces for other people, we also need safe spaces for ourselves. We, too, need to be well listened to and accepted for the thoughts and feelings that arise in the work. Making our own support systems and getting together with other like-

B O O K E S S A Y

The Dawn of Environmentalism—

Silent Spring (1962)

Alan M. Young 38

E S S A Y

The

Mouse Killer

Gwendolyn L. Rosemond 42

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ama passed away contentedly when I was twenty three. I had just married a nice young man from a good Christian home, which as I would learn much later, was shaped by lynching witnessed and nourished by madness veiled. It guarded its horrors well.

Dying spared Mama disillusion and denial.

The ritual of death assumed a life of its own. Folks arrived; food appeared. Aunts bustled and uncles hovered.

They were of a generation more intimate with loss and less wavering in faith than we. Mama was with their mother and father and the siblings gone young. The public face of their grief was tearless. There were things to be done.

mother’s faith could not waver. She may have left my conception to God’s will, but she surely never doubted that her prayers would be answered.

One of four sisters who survived past early adulthood, Mama was the only one without a career, who was not a teacher. Lilla, so soft of speech one barely heard her (a quality perfected under Ed, the abusing farmer/preacher/ husband), pumped water, rose before the rooster, collected eggs, and slopped hogs. Perhaps barren, she took in a hapless boy from her one-room school and raised him as her own until the crazed Ed wore her down to death and drove him from the house.

Myrtle, gentle as Lilla, married the kindest widower to come out of Seneca, South Carolina. She left the classroom to raise his children and theirs, none of whom brought them shame. Larcie, rod straight, high-yellow, with heels that clicked like a soldier on the march, and who had been photographed on the running board of a And Mama was pretty, no doubt about roadster (who was that man the wheel?), married a it. She wore no make-up except lipstick atpreacher much her senior and powder, but these she wore whenever who decently died five years thus allowing her she left home. Self-image and tradition later, choices, to teach children, to sail oceans, or both. being what they were, she insisted on

Hundreds attended Mama’s service. Was there anyone who did not know her? A black congregation with a white face here and there testified to her authority and grace, her charm and sweetness. “How Great Thou Art,” sang the choir, but of whom did they sing?

From the church we journeyed by train to South Carolina, along tracks she and I had traveled many times. The murals in the Cincinnati train station gave me my earliest instruction in art appreciation under her tutelage. She taught me geography and geology through the hills of Appalachia and along the twists and turns of the French Broad River.

straightening her silvery hair, naturally curled by the genes of some long ago slave owner. Her chestnut eyes could dance with her dimpled chin.

I put aside the thought of her closed up in the baggage car and twenty-four hours later, another undertaker escorted our now tiny band of tired family to a crossroads on no map and a small, spare country church. I sat between my stricken father and my untested husband. If I cried, who would comfort me? She who could have would shortly lie beneath the red clay and the Carolina pines.

Before Mama’s death, I cannot remember a question unanswered, a hurt unsoothed, a transgression unforgiven. Left only once with a baby sitter, I knew no universe in which she was not the sun. And if she shone so brightly, I was the reigning planet in her universe.

Now my mother was close to forty when I was born.

I would be her only child. Occasionally she made a delicate reference to having miscarried, but the details never surfaced. In her time, women’s problems were the problems of women and a child’s ears were sheltered from whispers at the kitchen table or behind closed doors.

I cannot imagine that my mother resigned herself to being childless, and I know she would not have ceased praying for a baby. Unlike her biblical sister, Sarah, my Left: Mama and me c. 1946.

But Mama had no clocks to punch or lessons to prepare.

She married a man who on occasion raised his voice and who wanted things his way, the pattern of the wallpaper, the picture on the wall. Being a man of honor, dignity, and duty, my father would not have his wife, the mother of his only child, employed.

Certainly he would not have her clean the houses of white folks, the only choice of black women who were not educated as teachers in those pre-civil rights days. So he supplemented his own full-time employment as a post office clerk with various odd jobs for those same white folks. By this sacrifice he sheltered Mama from injury and affront and freed her to be a full-time mother to me.

Mama never complained. Though she laundered, ironed, sewed, cooked, I never saw her climb a ladder, move furniture, or want for any thing she needed or desired. If it grieved her to ask him for money (which she rarely had to do), she never revealed it. He was the man, the provider. What he earned was hers without asking.

Mama’s elegance belied her country upbringing. She could wring a chicken’s neck with one hand, and sweep a sandy yard to silk with a brush broom. She could stoke a coal stove and haul out ashes when Daddy was not around. She prepared prize winning canned tomatoes as easily as she recorded club minutes in flawless shorthand.

Around home she wore housedresses sometimes handed 43

The Smith family of Levelland, South Carolina, 1920. Helen Smith, Mama, is on the right, middle row.

down from white women, but she bought her Sunday clothes at the best stores.

(but certainly not), relishing the scenery he saw every day?

In my earliest memory—I could not yet have been three years old—Mama stands holding me at a bedroom window of the room we rented from a lady and her orange cat, L’ll Bit. (Daddy was away in the Navy.) Snow falls heavily and Mama points out an accident involving a streetcar just in front of the house. Such was her favorite entertainment, a game called “look at” which could be played anywhere and free of charge. A skywriting plane, a lady in a funny dress, an odd car, a particular plant, an impressive structure: “Look at that,” she’d say.

And Mama was pretty, no doubt about it. She wore no make-up except lipstick and powder, but these she wore whenever she left home. Self-image and tradition being what they were, she insisted on straightening her silvery hair, naturally curled by the genes of some long ago slave owner. Her chestnut eyes could dance with her dimpled chin. “A dimple in the chin, the devil within” she’d laugh at herself. Accustomed to the workings of a selfsufficient farm, she seemed tireless around our house, a trait that staved off signs of aging until she was well into her late fifties. And her legs, oh Lord, her lovely calves.

Though she would have denied any suspect motive, she was not afraid to wear skirts just to the knee.

The first years of my life were spent at Mama’s side at home and around town: at the kitchen table listening to her favorite radio programs; to church for Sunday services, funerals, meetings of various ladies’ societies; to shop at F. & R. Lazarus and The Fashion; to parades and to the Ohio State Fair where we took in the canning exhibit, the quilts and crochet displays, and Borden’s butter cows. We attended the yearly performance of Handel’s Messiah at the university. A Renaissance woman from the rural south, Mama enjoyed art galleries, concerts, and libraries as well as Minnie Pearl, Tennessee Ernie Ford, The Grand Old Opr’y.

On summer afternoons we walked to the bus stop where she dropped in the nickel fare and we rode to the end of the line and back while she pointed out every nuance, every amazement. I sat by the window, watching the neighborhoods change, grow whiter, wealthier. At the end of the line, she’d pay another fare and we’d watch the opposite side go by. What must the bus driver have thought of the pretty colored lady and her little girl, seeming aimless 44

If asked, Mama would have argued that she did not spoil me, that while not poor, Daddy’s income met necessities, not frivolities, and that her discipline was swift and sure. Our backyard trees offered a steady supply of fresh green twigs and at church she tucked a switch in the hymn rack behind her red clutch, a reminder that I should sit still. Neighbors knew what Mama would not tolerate and reported my indiscretions to her before I arrived home from school. I understood The Look. From across a room, Mama’s eyes would grow large and unblinking. I would cease whatever impropriety in which I was (or was about to be) engaged.

For a woman raised in the Jim Crow, lynch-laced south, Mama believed no one would challenge her equality north of the Ohio River. Undaunted by titles and trappings of well-educated white schoolteachers and

F R O M T H E A R C H I V E S

BLACKBOARD

SKETCHING Introduction

ABILITY to draw easily and well on the blackboard is a power which every teacher of children covets. Such drawing is a language which never fails to hold attention and awaken delighted interest.

It has been considered impossible for most of us, because we have never done it.

It has been strongly recommended, but no one has really shown us how.

A book like this which does show how, step by step, from the first practice strokes to completed and effective sketches, will be everywhere welcome. No one can follow the plain suggestions given without appreciating the possibilities of chalk and charcoal for ordinary school-room illustration, and finding in himself a steady development of power to sketch on the blackboard.

The book is not the product of theories about drawing, but the fruit of long experience of one who has drawn with and for children and students and teachers, and has been more successful than any one I know in inspiring them by that means. I welcome the book and predict for it a potent influence for increasing and improving blackboard drawing throughout the schools of the land.

WALTER ARGENT. North Scituate, Mass.

Author’s Introduction

T

his collection of blackboard sketches and the accompanying text has been planned at the request of many teachers and pupils who desire lessons and suggestions along this line, but who are unable to secure personal instruction.

In general, these requests have been for simple sketches dealing with the various lines of school work, and at the same time for strokes and explicit directions for using these in the drawings. For these reasons there are given upon nearly every plate the strokes of the chalk useful in producing the desired effect, and upon the opposite page such directions as are generally given to the students in the classroom.

A few of the lessons deal with the strokes and their application to the very simplest objects possible, but even these may be found useful as illustrative material. They are recommended in order that the teacher may become familiar with the medium, and with the simplest and the most direct manner of handling it before attempting sketches which require a great variety of touches. I have tried to have the other sketches cover as great a variety of subjects as possible.

Plates 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23 and 29 have been used with the little people in different forms 46

of stories, language and reading lessons. Plates 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 18, 27, 28 and 29 are suggested for geography lessons in various grades. Plates 8, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 27, 28 and 29 may be used in history lessons. Plates 1 and 3 have been used in primary numbers, and plates 27 and 28 for arithmetic, when the problems had to do with commission, measurement, etc., or when the problems referred to lumbering or manufacturing. Plates 4, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27 and 28 will be found helpful in many lines of nature study, especially when the nature specimens are difficult to obtain. Plates 9, 24, 25 and 26 illustrate the value of this line of drawing in the study of literature; and many of the other drawings may be used in a similar manner. The teacher who uses this type of illustrative sketching will readily see how the drawings may be applied to other subjects.

Teachers have occasionally asked for illustrations for the different months of the school year, something to use with calendars, or for different holiday drawings.

Several sketches given on the plates are suitable for the various months. For calendars I suggest discarding the plaided pumpkin for November, the numbered bricks in a fireplace for December, the kite covered with numbered squares for March, etc., etc. A regular numbered calendar may be used, with an appropriate sketch above or at one