Planting Seeds

I got out my old copy of The Grapes of Wrath this morning.  Something I heard on an early national newscast used the phrase "I to We." That's Steinbeck's phrase, I thought, and then later I opened my battle-scarred copy of the text to Chapter 14 and re-read the little 3-page essay that is one of the most powerful inter-chapters of this epic novel.  I say battle-scarred because my copy looks as if it survived a war.  I purposely chose an old, beat-p copy of the novel when I first began to teach it on a regular basis.  That's because I intended to mark it up, write all over it, riddle it with Post-it notes and bend every page...often.

What Steinbeck was writing about during the Great Depression of the 1930s is happening again, right now as our country grapples with the Coronavirus pandemic. This public health crisis was always political.  Just as a worker's wages, hours, and conditions have always been.  But we are experiencing a very large dose of kindness and empathy in a strange time and in a time when the country has been the most polarized.
It's Karma, some shout.  The guy that gained the oval office by dividing is watching all his numbers erode because the people are uniting.  E Pluribus Unum.  Out of many, one.  You can feel it in the air just as Steinbeck wrote over 70 years ago.  The Grapes of Wrath was banned, you know.  What better motivation for a person to read a book than to read a book someone doesn't want you to read.
So I re-read the chapter and applied it to today.  Of course, it's not a perfect fit, but like Mark Twain once said, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes."
I remember the class discussions about this chapter.  How it relates to the concept of Chapter 3 where a turtle slowly moves across the dry landscape and unintentionally plants a seed.  The dry castoff from some wild oat gets caught inside the turtle's shell, rides for a while, and then drops off naturally after moving from one place to another.   The "anlage of movement," Steinbeck calls it.  The potential for movement, the potential for change.

So here is something hopeful.  That we may or will never be the same after this pandemic is a good thing.  Sure it is fraught with fear and longing, but we move on, as we always have done. 
And what might that mean?  Perhaps this renewed feeling of unity might work as a deterrent for those who would still believe the ramblings of a narcissistic President who has done more to divide the country than any other before him.  Perhaps it might re-ignite the thought process that dimmed with the thinking that we are not all Americans, only the chosen few.  What was it that so threatened the power structure 75 years ago that they would have a book banned?  If people feel united then they can accomplish any goal.  Take a good look at priorities that have recently surfaced.  The people shall judge.

Turning

It's in the air.  No, not a virus or even the abundant pollen this time of year.  It's swirling like a wisp of smoke over our heads and silently through our minds.  Some articulate, but most just think about it.  The earth is seeking to right the ship.  The earth has sent out a memo and as we all know the times, they are a changin.'
We've hit the end of the spectrum.  Can't go farther.  Turn, turn, turn.
Some called it the myth of the eternal return; others simply karma.  What goes around comes back around.  Or some other version of payback.  This is not revenge.  This is learning a lesson. This is old school actions have consequences.
Any thinking person knows that our democracy is in grave danger.  We have some immediate tasks to resolve but after the coronavirus pandemic, we have to come together as a nation and purge Washington D.C. of a hapless President and an administration that lacks the will or intelligence to lead this country forward.  The wrong people in the halls of power is a major task, but the numbers are in favor of the majority of the people.  We've hit the end of the toleration spectrum. So where now? Nature has spoken.  For your own good health make a change it's time.

We see this paradigm in other ways and in other worlds.
I remember back in the late 1960s when rock bands were getting louder and louder and music went from acoustic to amplified in a few short years, there was one band whose claim to fame was being the loudest. Blue Cheer (named after the detergent but probably a strain of LSD too) laid claim to the title for a while.  Others came along to claim the title but the distinction soon proved useless. To eschew music and go for decibels is not the way to success.  They died as quickly as their eardrums.  But people began asking, where does our music go now?  We've evolved from simple folk tunes to electronic amplified noise machines, what's next.  The answer emerged.  When we get too far out we return to the original.  In the case of popular music, we unplug, we go to the standards, and we wait until another genre evolves from all that has been.
For those who seek reasons, the narrative is simple.  Our country got so polarized that it almost committed suicide.  Then a great unifier came along.  We found a common enemy.  During the height of the cold war, people speculated what the world might need to prevent human extinction.  Often, because of the times, the answer given was an attack from a common enemy.  Hence all the horror films of the 50s and 60s.  An alien force, a Godzilla, the living dead, et.al would quickly give the human race the perspective needed to cooperate and survive.
Disease and the threat of a worldwide pandemic works the same way.  There will be those that swear that Donald Trump's failed Presidency was brought to an end by the pandemic.  He cannot blame or insult a disease.  He can only expose his ignorance and inability to be an effective, caring, human being.  Just when you thought it was safe to go on, it became apparent it is not. Turn, turn, turn.

Hard Times Come Again No More

Just now, on the "Breaking News" is a line of cars miles long somewhere in Texas.  People lined up for food.  No job and now no food in the continuing pandemic reality we've inherited.  All this while in other parts of the country crops are being plowed under and milk is poured in ditches to raise farmer's prices.
85 years ago, we saw the same thing.  In the Great Depression, people formed bread lines and instructed the soup ladelers to "dip deep, goddammit."  The soup was so thin that only a deep dip would retrieve a chunk of potato or an errant piece of carrot.  We've been here before as a nation.
Just as the trauma of a national depression left permanent scars, so too will this coronavirus pandemic.  In preparing for a "new normal" we would do well to remind ourselves about the lessons of the Great Depression.
In his remarkable oral history of the Depression, Studs Terkel interviewed many folks from all walks of life.  Some of the stories they tell resonate loudly today.  People don't soon forget the feeling in their gut that accompanies hunger when they realize that potato crops have been burned or that the milk that would nourish their babies lies spoiling in the dirt.  Econ. 101...supply and demand.
There was an upside too.  A few folks did very well during those hard times.  Terkel met a man who realized that people could no longer afford to buy birthday or anniversary gifts, but would spend a little more for a greeting card.  He designed and successfully sold a line of cards that was very lucrative in a downtime.  Similarly, one guy figured out how to sell a complete chicken dinner cheaply.  Demand soared.  He made money.  On one occasion, a man pawned his radio in order to get one of those dinners for his family.   There may be similar stories today, but I fee we are more inclined to scam on another these days.

So yes, this sort of "Hard Times" is certainly not new.  Jokes abound.  One currently going around, says your great grandparents sacrificed and went to war against a common enemy.  They united to defeat racism, and you are being asked to sit on the couch and stay home.  Buck up!

Corona Chronicle

Outside it looks as if everyone is riding the range.  Bandanas make pedestrians all look like bank robbers or kids playing Western movies.   But they are necessary now that we've moved into our third week of quarantine.
The gym is closed so we've taken to long walks trying to get in those thousands of steps.  It's easy to cross the street now.  Anywhere.  People approach on the sidewalk and come within 100 feet or so before the little game of "chicken" takes place and somebody either crosses the street or goes wide.
Rarely do  I see more than a pair of people moving about together.  Nobody sits at the outside tables of restaurants or bars because they've all been removed.  In my neighborhood, like many I suspect, businesses are taking this time to remodel, re-do the floors.  The new businesses that we were waiting for are all on hold.
This year my tax man would meet no client in person.  After a phone call, we remembered to take our own pens and then wait in front of the door at the office.  Through a slop, the forms were marked for signing.  We did it all without touching anything but our pens.  Our own pens.
I haven't touched my harmonicas in a month.  I sanitized them with a peroxide bath and put them to bed for a while.

The walks we take are longer.  They reveal some amusingly desperate street art.  The Brewery near me is still open and people ease their cars up to get their beer and pub food and then go home.
Most establishments have signs posted about their commitment to social distancing and what the new rules for them doing business are or are not.  We have come to believe that we are now living in a dystopic novel.  A simple trip to the grocery store will cement that notion.  Shopping carts are sanitized after each use.  Spots are painted orange on the floor to tell customers where to stand and await their turn at the check stand.  Paper products are rare.  Anyone over 65 is admitted between 8 and 9 am.  It's laughable when the soundtrack of shopping music hardly reflects the tastes of the post 65 set.  The usual Wednesday 10% discount is offered every day now.  There are no more samples of cheese, berries, or crackers.

The other day I walked by a car with a sign posted on the back window.  A few minutes late I walked back to snap a picture of someone's message.  It occurred to me that there are many ways to interpret those three words.  A sign of the times.

Where Were You When...

There are only a handful of days that you can say I'll always remember the moment... I'll always remember where I was when....


52 years ago today I sat in a three-hour poetry seminar.  It was a warm early Spring day in Southern California and the UCLA campus fairly sparkled.  I was fortunate to have been selected as one of the participants by poet Jascha Kessler, the professor and a fine poet himself.  His anthology was the text for this seminar, and though it included poems by Alan Ginsburg and a number of other well-known and widely published poets, most of the work considered by the seminar was our own.  A month earlier, we had all dropped off three original poems in a large manilla envelope attached to Kessler's office door.  Two weeks later, the final list of names of those admitted was posted where the envelope had been.  While most were either happy or crushed upon finding or not finding their name of the list, I was surprised but deeply pleased. 
Each week three of the 15 selected young poets would share their work and endure critical analysis with grace and dignity. These young writers were talented, funny, and committed to their craft.  I believe I was the only member of the seminar who was not an English major.  I wondered through this experience if I belonged, but in time I came to accept myself and my work and listened intently and learned about the necessity and skill of giving and accepting feedback.

This long seminar met from 1-4 pm.  On that day, 52 years ago, the shadows were beginning to fall when, at last, I exited the seminar and made my way across the campus.  The view of the Westwood hills was as beautiful as ever as I made my way past Royce Hall and down the hill toward the Student Union.  I stopped at a snack bar near the bottom of the hill before making my way past the athletic fields, Pauley Pavillion, and up another hill to the parking lot near one of the huge hospital-like dorms.  I was a commuter student and parking was scarce, thus the long trek before driving home.
I noticed one car starting and stopping on the campus road that paralleled Sunset Blvd.  In herky-jerky style the car would stop near small groups of students, a window would roll down, words exchanged, and the car would scuttle away.
When I finally neared a person who had been the recipient of the erratic car's message, I got the nerve to ask.  I approached a young African-American woman with a well-shaped natural.
"What's with that car," I asked.
"Martin Luther King has been assassinated." came the reply.
That afternoon will remain vivid throughout my lifetime.  Not for the poetry, unfortunately.