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City Voices
LANDGREN FEELING LABOR PAINS AT SAINT VINCENT HOSPITAL
LETTER TO THE EDITOR Approach to combating racism is counterproductive
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Paul Gallo
Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
I believe the vast majority of Americans sincerely want racial harmony and equality. However, our nation appears stymied in making meaningful progress in reducing racism. Why?
One reason is our approach has been counterproductive. Reducing racism will never happen utilizing discriminatory methods or labels. Some folks try to justify discriminatory methods to compensate for past wrongs. Two “wrongs” have never made a “right.”
It is impossible to achieve “color blindness” if we persist in noting a person’s or organization’s color, or promoting a color-based agenda. Do organizations that focus on advancing a specific race really seek treating everyone the same? Racism exists because we don’t have the objectivity and courage to speak and act with real indifference to a person’s color. If and when we do, then real positive change will happen.
Paul Gallo lives in Barre.
FIRST PERSON
What will happen in classrooms when the masks come off?
Mark Wagner
Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
Educators and students at all levels, in Massachusetts and other states, have been in masks for two academic years and will be so for the foreseeable future. A question arises about what role the human expression plays in learning and communication.
We share with our closest relatives — the bonobos — the same structure in our faces:122 muscles capable of a many overt, or blended and subtle meanings. Birdwhistle, Montague and others observed that the face is capable of +/- 1000 expressions and messages. These emotional cues and messages — sometimes called nonverbal communication (NVC) and separate from spoken and written language — are at the heart of establishing identities, of social care and belonging, from the birthing room to classrooms to marriage beds and family rooms.
The study of NVC is a relatively young science, but a dichotomy between language and communication is not new. In the view of Nobel laureate Francois Jacob, “the role of language as a communication system between individuals would have come about only secondarily” because “language is not for communicating directives for actions” nor other common •AllpiercersarecurrentAPPmembers •Piercingsareappointmentonly •PrivatetattooroomswithTVs •Samedayappointmentsmaybe availablefortattoos
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WORCESTERIA
A Worcester Common Thanksgiving
Victor D. Infante
Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
I’ve been hit up for cash and cigarettes on the Worcester Common before, but last week I heard a new one: “Do you have a mask you can spare?” I apologized and he shuffled off, and I found myself hoping he could find one … it was getting late, not a lot would be open, and a lot of cheap eateries won’t let you in without one. Why else would he be seeking a mask? It’s not like drug dealers are diligent about mandates.
That’s where we find ourselves these days: It’s the holidays, and we’re inventing new ways to beg. Don’t get me wrong: I’m actually grateful for rather a lot of the changes to the Common over the past decade. I remember what it was like to work down here and not be able to get a sandwich after 5 p.m., yet somehow, the jarring request of someone looking for a mask in the shadow of the city’s unlit Christmas tree is a startling reminder that not everyone has benefitted from those changes. I’m reminded of Jesus in Mark 14:7: “For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me.”
It’s one of my favorite Bible verses, as it makes two very salient reminders: First, that the battle against poverty is unending. You can’t expect to WIN it, so much as not be defeated by it. There will always be more need. The second is to appreciate the people you love while they’re here. In this instance, Jesus was talking about himself, but it’s important to note that he’s talking in a physical sense, not a spiritual one. It’s a message that resonates even today, in this world of Facebook and Zoom: It’s very easy to take people for granted, something more than a year of pandemic and quarantine should have driven home, but we’re forgetful creatures.
Returning to the office, I took a brief Facebook poll, asking what people were grateful for. The results were exactly what you would suspect: Family, friends, health, work, health care, the ABBA reunion. Losing any of those is a tragedy for anybody, and we’ve all lost people and jobs, even our health, at
The Worcester Common at Twilight, a few days before Thanksgiving.
VICTOR D. INFANTE/TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF
See COMMON, Page 21
POETRY TOWN
Me & Kenny, ‘burb geeks in hot summer his ‘78 Fiat Spider wooden dashboard more dials than a Bond car, top down cruise into the city pool parking lot oh so cool.
Strutting skinny bodies, taking the dive off the high board twisting turning bending over backwards yet somehow the ladies are unimpressed. It’s ’83, hip hopping kids breakdancing pop and sizzle on the concrete, grab my 35mm Cannon ask for a few shots –sure thing, homes but it’s called Breakin’, get it right now.
I was schooled twice that day. Robert Eugene Perry is a poet and author of several books, his most recent collection of poetry, “Surrendering to the Path,” was released by Human Error Publishing in 2020. The state pool on Vernon Hill, in 1972. RICHARD R. THIBODEAU/T&G FILE PHOTO
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they? Between the impassioned singing of Voices of Black Persuasion and Children of Black Persuasion; the charismatic narration of Voncille Ross; and the dynamic musicianship of an ensemble that included piano, organ, bass, and a variety of African percussion instruments, this was a presentation that combined the emotional fervor of a revival meeting with the sheer joy of the Christmas season.
Hughes’ organization of “Black Nativity’s” plot is straightforward enough, referencing the main events of the biblical narrative as recounted in the Gospel of Luke: the Annunciation, journey to Bethlehem, birth of Jesus, and visits of shepherds and Magi. Actors portray the various characters, occasionally through dance. The musical selections periodically offer insights into their disparate states of mind, all the while serving to move the story along.
Many of “Black Nativity’s” set pieces are familiar.
“Go Tell it on the Mountain” is the work’s anchor: In addition to an extended processional on the anthem, it’s reprised in the second half and at least a pair of numbers — “A Mighty Day” and “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow” — allude to “Mountain” textually and/or musically.
On Saturday, the arrangements of other well-known carols, from the percussive setting of “Joy to the World” to the gospel rendition of “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” were exemplary. A couple of them, too — like “What Child Is This?” and “Away in the Manger” — offered welcome twists on the conventional melodic settings.
In the less traditional fare, “Black Nativity” was likewise bracing.
The piercing blue notes of “My Way Is Cloudy” and bent tones in “Poor Little Jesus” were powerfully articulated. Through dance and song, “No Room” illustrated with remarkable potency the sheer injustice of a pregnant woman and her husband being left out in the cold.
Meanwhile, the call-and-response refrains of “Mary’s On the Road” and “Joseph’s On the Road” snapped. “Oh, What a Pretty Little Baby” served as a lullaby of sorts, while the kids choir shined in “Mary, Mary, What You Gonna’ Name Your Baby?” and “When was Jesus Born?”
As for the birth of Jesus, that’s depicted in a thundering, percussion-accompanied dance for Mary. Sometimes “Black Nativity” includes a live baby as the newborn Savior; on Saturday there was a doll instead — though, given the magnificent decibel levels generated by the drums, perhaps that was for the best.
Taken together, Saturday’s performance confirmed “Black Nativity” as a stirring, timely offering. At its core is a theme of participating and uniting in celebration. Suffice it to say, the message came across compellingly, even if its immediate prospects were rendered somewhat moot by the conventions of the concert hall.
Either way, the call remained. It doesn’t matter, the piece seemed to say, whether the summons is spiritual, emotional, musical, or something else; the point is community and shared humanity. Join with it, engage in it, contribute to it. In these dark, cynical, divisive days, “Black Nativity” fuels the hope that such efforts remain worthwhile.
Wagner
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features such as belonging to a social group, or territory and mating. Jacob writes, language’s unique property is of allowing “infinite combinations of symbols" and therefore “mental creation of possible worlds.”
Comparatively, written and spoken language has had a brief evolutionary history, perhaps 70,000 years. (Chomsky and Tattersall put this number between 40,000 and 50,000 years.) This technology of speech and writing has resulted in a dazzling creative, productive and technological entity. From farming and architecture to science, to print medias to nationalism and multi-nationalism, to today, when electronic medias are recreating our current social and political and economic structures: for better or worse, coded language is the core of the civilization of productivity.
The idea of the global (cloud) brain is an extension of these codes: We are creating a glowing, pulsating intelligence that is far greater than that of one individual human being. Some people see this as an evolutionary step, a kind of world community intelligence lab. Others believe this "machine" (AI) seems to have pulled off without its driver. My point here is not to challenge the splendor of these languages, but to note that in the classroom, the range of emotional and visual communication, which predates symbolic language, establishes social bonds of a deeper history.
Pre-pandemic, I once came across a class taught by sculptor Garth Evans at the New York Studio School in which students did not use language for the entire term. The class is called, tellingly, The Master Class. Over the years, the results were so impressive that a film was made celebrating this approach. Productive learning can happen without the use of language, and, I would argue, these socio-emotional aspects of learning and teaching are elevated by the pandemic and other, larger issues.
In the philosophy of Levinas, as well as in Contact Theory, the human face is at the center of our ethical lives. There’s a reason for this. To many, coded language allowed for ruse and manipulation, and this can be seen as possible reason for the development of larger, human brains and cerebral subjectivity. (We are living through the attempts by certain political parties to triumph through lies using electronic media. Stay tuned.) Our attempts to deceive on the one hand and not be deceived on the other might have resulted in a cleverness arms race that could have taken highly social animals to a new consciousness. I tend to agree with this, though whatever makes human begins capable of lying and deception, the argument here is that a central goal of human society — in education, science, and politics — is authentic (truthful) communication, mutual understandings, a
Educators and students have been in masks for two academic years and will be so for the foreseeable future, which begs the question: “What role does human expression play in learning
and communication?” COURTESY ALEXANDRA KOCH community, and this is communicated non-verbally, as gestures and tones. The face doesn’t lie.
The move from literate culture to electronic culture will not soon alter longstanding building blocks of human consciousness as they have existed in nonverbal cues for millennia. Likewise, the brief, failed experiments with standardized testing as the core of education has not changed this either: From the birthing room to the classroom, these visual, haptic messages define who we are. Genuine emotional expression, trust and cooperation founded in truths, these secure innate needs of human society. This is the public of public education. Looking beyond the pandemic, once the masks come off and beyond, let’s remember that our myriad smiles and attendant expressions are how we learn what is true.
Dr. Mark Wagner explored nonverbal classroom communication in "The Immediate Field, A brief History of the Communicative Body" (Verlag Spring, 2010.) A recent essay on education can be found in Diversity Matters (Lexington Books, 2021)
