CITY VOICES
HARVEY
Farewell to my first teacher, my brother
Thoughts on statues and other symbols
H
have recently thought about the symbols we respect and revere more seriously. Flags, statues, monuments, and the police. Recently, here in Worcester, the statue of Christopher Columbus at Union Station was defaced. This has created an outcry in two directions … take the statue down and “How dare you desecrate this statue?” For many years now, I have tried to think about what our symbols stand for — the ideal behind them and the reality that occurs. But, like all of us, I have ignored or just taken for granted that a flag (think the Massachusetts state flag) or statues/monuments we have erected are around. The BLM movement has helped me to refocus and pay attention to what these symbols are and what they represent. I applaud people around the world focusing on flags, statuary and the police to show that there are other voices that need to be heard. Flags stand for what is important to a community … a state … a nation … a cause.
WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM
A U G U S T 6 - 12, 2020
JANICE HARVEY
8
FIRST PERSON
e came into this world fighting to be here, and he went out fighting to stay. My brother Kevin was born on an icy January day in 1948, three months before he was due to appear. 72 years ago, the odds were against a child surviving such a premature birth. I find it ironic that he exited earlier than planned, just as he arrived. He was my first teacher. I was his first student, though thousands like me would follow. He saw in me some spark of curiosity, despite the nine-year age gap between us. He handed me books to read. When my friends were still reading Trixie Belden, I was reading the plays of Tennessee Williams and novels by Thomas Mann. I gobbled up Kurt Vonnegut by eighth grade because Kevin said: “Read this.” By ninth grade, I’d read his copy of Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” so many times, the binding was shot. In his room, his sacred room, I would wander when he wasn’t home and run my fingers over the spines of his books. I couldn’t decipher his system. Sometimes, the works of one author were clumped together, but a random volume might be elsewhere in the bookcase. His former wife Nancy once told me that he placed them where they would be “comfortable,” where they would like being neighbors to certain books by other authors. He was crafting a peaceful, happy world within his shelves. In that room there stood a table that held an old Smith-Corona surrounded by what he was reading currently, and a stack of clean white paper. This too I touched gingerly, as if he might dust for fingerprints. I sneaked from his albums music I wanted to play in my room – his eclectic collection was already extraordinary, since every cent he made working Denholm’s receiving docks went into the cash register of Arnold’s record shop. I left the Elvis albums untouched; this obsession we didn’t share. But from his room I first pilfered the Beatles and eventually Crosby,
Stills, Nash & Young. I smuggled Todd Rundgren and Randy Newman. With T. Rex, I banged an imaginary gong when he was out with friends, and slipped the records back into their slots before he arrived. If he noticed, he never spoke of it. Kevin was Paul McCartney’s doppelganger, and I heard it ad nauseam from starry-eyed girls who fell madly in love with him. Sometimes, they would boldly attempt to befriend me and my sister Lyn to learn more about him, to get closer. We’d roll our eyes. He’d bat his baby blues, and smirk. What he was thinking was a mystery if it was personal, but he’d pontificate endlessly about everything else from sports, to music to politics. He once described himself laughingly as “the aloof icon.” Lest Kevin sound like an egghead, he certainly had an affinity for junkier things. He insisted that the French were right about Jerry Lewis “unappreciated” genius, and forced on me like a homework assignment a set of the comic’s “gems.” He owned all of Elvis Presley’s movies on DVD and more than a few “Godzillas” and “Beach Blanket Bingos.” He was what we call “well-rounded.” He firmly believed that truly awful art, if done right, is as enjoyable as any masterpiece. Kevin was devastatingly funny – much funnier than Jerry Lewis. For 30 years Kevin was a professor of English literature at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire, and an authority on the life and works of author Henry James. He often wrote music reviews for Muddy Water magazine. He was a novelist and a playwright who lived to see his one-act play “Albert” about jazz composer Sun Ra and saxophonist Albert Ayler performed in New York. An aggressive lymphoma beyond the miracles of Dana Farber finally took him from us last week. I watched in awe as his son Ellery and his daughter Kate cradled him and massaged the wispy limbs of their father. They murmured words of love as they wiped his brow and offered water-soaked sponges for
his parched lips. I held his hand in mine and whispered an apology. “I love you, and I’m really sorry for sneaking your albums out of your room when you weren’t home. I know my crappy little stereo with the worn needle probably ruined the surface,” I said. He was beyond answering but his eyes fluttered. I think he always knew. My first teacher was the reason I am a teacher, the reason I am a writer. To the end I looked for his approval of columns and cover stories I penned for Worcester Magazine. I will always try to regard my own work through those baby blues. Kevin was never one for displays of affection, and as I stroked his arm, I recalled a scene from one of the many wonderful books he gave me to read. In the last pages of “To Kill a Mockingbird” Scout brings Boo Radley in to see a sedated Jem. “You can pet him, Mr. Arthur, he’s asleep,” Scout says. “You couldn’t if he was awake, though, he wouldn’t let you…” And so I kissed his hand because I could, and because I loved him.
I
LEE O’DONNELL
Statuary indicates who and what events, we, want to commemorate and revere. The police signify what our society enforces and who gets treated well, fairly or not. Let us start with flags. Recently, Mississippi took steps to rethink their state flag. I was glad to read the news … the Confederate battle flag in the upper left corner of the flag had to go! So, now the Native Americans residing in our own state have reignited a controversy (they have been pursuing a change in the flag since the 1980s) with our own state flag … the broad sword hanging over the head of the “Indian.” I can remember seeing that when I was younger and wondering about that symbolism. But I did not really think about it too much. The Native Americans have a simple solution for changing the flag … remove the arm with the broad sword and replace it with a pine tree. Next, statues and monuments need to be addressed. Who do we commemorate … want to remember? What kind of event do we to honor? We erect monuments to the C O N T I N U E D O N N E XT PA G E
