Sunday Morning ~ Walking in Memphis

Diso la lumbe lili m’kamwa, nkulinga utaliona. ~ That the eye of a nightjar is in the mouth, you can only know that after you have seen it.

~Chewa proverb.

October 27, 2019

Hi Everyone,

If Sarah hadn’t wanted to see Graceland, I may have skipped Memphis altogether and headed south on the Natchez Trace from Nashville. But traveling with friends means being open to alternatives and I’d never been to Memphis, so good time to go. We could pick up the Trace in Tupelo, Mississippi. I figure I’ll do the northern part another time. I liked Elvis as much as the next person, but was not planning to spend an outrageous amount of money to see his house and jumpsuits. I am all for museums and love them, but I’m against extortion. I sat in the sunshine and read while Chris and Sarah toured the property which seems more shrine than museum. I did find out from one of the security guards, however, that you can walk to his grave for free from 7:30-8:30 a.m. but I didn’t go back. 

We checked in to our apartment in Memphis and I was completely blown away by how sweet the city is! Very walkable and safe, and the setting on the Mississippi is spectacular. Why had I not been there? We only had a day and a half so chose three of the dozens of museums to see and started out with the tiny Sun Studio where so many great singers recorded. I knew of this place only from seeing the stage play, The Million Dollar Quartet about the jam session with Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis secretly recorded by Sam Phillips. We got there for the first tour and waited in the lobby, a vintage soda fountain, and drank a one dollar cup of coffee. I had no idea that Elvis started his recording career by stopping in to this studio on his lunch hour to record a song for his mother. Not a music scholar, I knew of this studio only from seeing the play with my cousin. I loved hearing the history about Sam Phillips who built this business and the luck and perseverance that led to his success. I always find those stories inspiring. The actual recording studio is just as it was when the great stars recorded there. The only thing they let you touch is the original microphone that they used during recording sessions. People can go have their photos taken with it, or just caress it. I was much more moved by that tour than I expected. I’m not sure if it’s just all the history I hadn’t known, or the thought that kept running through my mind of…this was during the depression and then World War II. All this life and talent kept rolling. That somehow felt reassuring. We left there and walked across town, chatting and laughing, to the Civil Rights Museum. OMG. That’s when the laughing stopped.

I was eleven years old when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. I knew of him from watching the news every evening in my house. The television occupied a quarter of the den with it’s small screen in the big wooden frame. The big knob protruding to the right had to be turned like a shower faucet to change to one of the three channels. Evenings it was always tuned to the news and Walter Cronkite. That Thursday my mother and I were shopping for fabric in Framingham, which was a special outing. We had a fabric store in Maynard, but the one in Framingham was enormous and had a huge selection. It was a treat to go there. We went to find fabric for Easter dresses and left right after supper, leaving the dishes for when we got home. Thursday evenings my father had office hours so my mother could use the family car. It was the one night the store was open late. I remember being happy in the ocean liner-sized station wagon on the way home. It was that early spring damp and cold, the kind where you need to wear a coat but you are still chilly with the lighter weight apparel. I remember walking into the kitchen with our shopping bags and being all happy about what I was about to start sewing. My brothers were in the den with the television on and I heard my mother say as she was bending to pick something up, “Oh no. They shot him too?” But not in a shrieking kind of grief stricken voice. It was more of a resigned voice, like you’d say when you overwatered a plant and it died. Oh crap. This one died too. I don’t remember what I did then, but it wasn’t sit in front of the television waiting for more news or hover around waiting to hear of the collapse of our country. It was a school night. I may have been told go get ready for bed. I was in sixth grade. Bedtime was nine. 

On this past Thursday, as I slowly walked through the Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, the site of Dr. King’s assassination, I was overcome with shame for not knowing so much of the history. Did our teacher talk about it on that Friday? I have no recollection of that. Did we discuss it at the dinner table? I don’t think so. There was sadness, yes, but no attempt to understand any of it. I never knew he had a brother. I never knew his parents were still alive then, but he was only thirty-nine! Of course they were still alive. I have a child who is thirty-nine! I didn’t know why he’d been in Memphis in the first place. I didn’t know Jesse Jackson was with him. The most shameful thing is that I never tried to find any of this out.

This museum is one of the best I’ve ever gone to, and I go to a lot of museums. I met Chris and Sarah outside afterward and we couldn’t even speak. Over and over I wondered if I’d have been that brave had I been a little older. Would I have marched? Would I have attended student protests? Would I have sat at those lunch counters risking arrest and beatings? I have no idea. Growing up white in a white town I reflected on what a tiny bubble I existed in. Where was the attempt at understanding such monumental shifts in our civilization? The Vietnam War, the murder of our leaders: what was in the minds of adults back then? Is it at all similar to what we feel now? Our marches aren’t all resulting in firehoses being turned on us, so it seems safer. National Guard aren’t shooting students as they protest but are we less racist as a whole with the racist leadership we have now? What kind of museum will stand as an education to those who come after us? Will it hold the bullet-ridden doorways of schools? Or the cigarette packs of young men strangled by policemen? What kind of species are we? 

Now having followed south the ancient route of bison and indigenous people on the Natchez Trace I’m trying to grapple with a line between hope and despair. I can see how we can come back from dark times in our history but then think, it doesn’t really change. It’s only the methods that change. 

Love to all,

Linda 

Sunday Morning ~ Road Trip

Kokomo kea mnzako mdi kamba wako. ~ The helpfulness of your friend is your provision for your journey.

~ Chewa proverb

October 20, 2019

Hi Everyone,

I’m on the road this week, and the journey started with an opera last Sunday. Each summer I host some musicians in Bar Harbor, one of whom plays the violin for the Metropolitan Opera. For several years now he’s been offering tickets and this was the week I took him up on it. He gave me two premium tickets to see Porgy and Bess which was playing at the Met for the first time in 30 years. Jake agreed to go with me and I drove from my brief visit with the grands early Sunday morning to his apartment in Brooklyn and then we headed over the Triborough Bridge to Manhattan. I’ve done this drive many times and it’s about twenty minutes; with terrible traffic it’s an hour. I wanted to be there in plenty of time to park the car in mid town and walk over to Lincoln Center, with time to grab a bite to eat. We allowed two and a half hours. It was a beautiful day and I envisioned strolling along in the sunshine to meet Leszek, get our tickets and have time for a chat. He said there might be a chance he could take us backstage before the performance. All very exciting. 

Well, it started out great. As we drove over the bridge I had warm fuzzy memories of running over it a year ago to the last borough in the marathon. I was all smiles thinking of it. Then we got stopped by a police barricade as I tried to cut across town. They directed me north, the opposite direction of where I wanted to go. We kept trying to go west and every single intersection was barricaded. I wondered if there’d been a terrorist attack but no one looked particularly anxious. The police looked a little bored actually. Finally, we got as far west as Fifth Avenue and we traveled south, again me reliving the glory of running down that stretch a year ago to the finish line, basking in my forty thousandth place finish. Seriously. I came in forty thousandth. There were ten thousand more behind me. But it was grand. But way before we got to 57th where I wanted to turn right and where I have always found a parking space, which is free on Sunday, they made us turn east again! What?! It was getting later and later. We thought we’d still be fine just wouldn’t have time for a walk. A half hour later the lunch plan was canceled, too. At this point I was getting worried about making it there at all. As I slowly got corralled back to Madison Avenue I thought if I found a parking spot I’d just take it and we’d walk. And then they sent us south again! We were getting further and further away and my calculations of how long it would take us was getting scary. These tickets cost more than my round trip airfare to Europe and if we were late they wouldn’t seat us at all. I was getting panicky. I saw a spot where the car would just fit, took twenty back and forths to tuck it in there, and we ran thirty blocks to Lincoln Center with me in heels. We made it with three minutes to spare. So that was fun. The opera was fantastic and I felt rather special in our box once we caught our breath and the sweat dried. Afterward we walked back to the car at a leisurely New York pace to find all the other cars gone and my little mini sitting there with a $115 ticket. It was a no standing zone. Didn’t notice that sign as we parked and ran but it was better than missing the opera and I was grateful the car wasn’t towed. Ah, New York, New York.

Monday morning I moved the car to the most beautiful parking space uptown and, because of the holiday, it was good there until Friday! Ruth said I should stay the week, because how could you give up that parking space? We walked to my favorite spice shop on 9th Avenue and then across town stopping at some new green spaces near the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, which, are really a marvel. Ruth then went off to a medical appointment and I headed to the fashion district. In the past I’ve have spent many a happy hour there stocking up on fabrics and notions. It’s heaven. Entire stores stocking only thread or buttons. It is a dream. But when I got to the area I couldn’t find any of the stores! The whole area was filled with coffee shops, handbag stores, psychic readings, Starbucks, appliances, noodle shops, and copy centers. It was incredibly disorienting and depressing. I finally found one little old store and asked the proprietor if all the fabric stores had closed. English was not his first language and with a thick accent of some sort he answered, “Yes, closed for the holiday.” I said, “No, closed as in gone. I can’t find any of the shops I used to go to.” He then understood and replied, “Yes. Closed or moved.”  I walked about ten miles up and down and found a few of the old stores seeming out of place next to their new neighbors. It just wasn’t the same. With a sense of loss I put my pins, zippers, and thread in with the spices and went to meet Jake and Ruth for dinner.

The next morning I reluctantly removed the car from that most beautiful (free and un-ticketed) parking spot and headed for Philadelphia. I spent a wonderful afternoon and evening with a good friend from my early Malawi days. A Medical Mission Sister, she was working in Lilongwe, the sole obstetrician for the entire country when I was a Peace Corps volunteer. She did this with great humility and sense of humor. I was a scared 22 year old with an unplanned pregnancy. I wasn’t scared of the pregnancy; I wanted that. I was scared because Peace Corps had threatened to move us from our remote location in the far north, to a place closer to a city. We didn’t want to move and argued that if women in Karonga can have pregnancies there, why can’t I? Nowadays they’d just send me straight home, but then the big fight was to stay in the community we’d gotten to know and love. The idea that I was a privileged white person who’s pregnancy was more important than the women in Karonga was intolerable to me. Myrtle was reassuring and supportive and advocated for me and I got to stay in Karonga. I’ve always been grateful for that and for her loving presence in remote corners of my life. To spend a good part of the day with her, and later Sister Helen, was a treat.

Then it was two days with the architect students at Jefferson University who are working on plans for health and maternity centers in Malawi. That was totally fun and fueled my longing to be back on a college campus teaching. Good to know the vibes were there. We had a conference video call with Malawi and got to see my colleagues! The technology I tell you. It’s like NASA to me. My last night in Philly was spent with a friend from my Women’s Health Center days. Al Vernacchio is a fantastic speaker, teacher, TED talker, author, and all around great guy who’d come to Bar Harbor to speak on healthy sexuality. We’ve stayed in touch and the timing worked out for wine and a meal in a great restaurant walking distance from where I was staying. More good vibes. 

Friday I headed south and though it was possible to make it to Kathy’s in Tennessee in one shot, the thought of a twelve hour drive made me feel my age. I don’t like to drive on unfamiliar roads at night anymore. I just don’t feel safe. It’s like having to admit my 1990’s skirts don’t button at the waist anymore. I hate to say it, but it’s true. So I got an Airbnb in the mountains in southern Virginia, and as I drove up to the house, the Deliverance theme started playing in the back of my head. The location was spectacular and the house looked amazing and I could imagine George and I joking about the place if he’d been there, but it was a little eerier being alone. I shook off the creepy feeling and punched in the door code. I was greeted with a gift shop-like scene with ruffled pillows scattered among the fake flowers and fruit. Millions of cutesy bible themed knick knacks covered every surface. On the walls were framed family photos and if you’ve ever seen the spoofs on family photos, this was it in real life. Framed photos of little kids who looked like they should have had soccer balls in their hands, instead had huge rifles. Little kids! I mean like six years old! Big framed family Christmas photos had guns in them. Every male adult held a weapon, smiling and looking directly into the camera. My first impulse was to bolt. Several of the photos in frilly frames standing on shelves and bureaus I laid face down. I couldn’t sleep with those guns pointing at me. Every woman in the photos was smiling ferociously with one hand on the shoulder of the gun-holder. Most of them wore white dresses. I counted six open bibles around the room and read some of the passages to see if there were some message being relayed. I left the door open for awhile thinking I may have to run out. But it was clean. Super clean. It looked like a second home in the country with a basement apartment. No one was upstairs that I could tell, and there was no cell service. The reviews were good. I repeated that to myself several times. The reviews were good.  And the view was glorious so I settled down, and went for a long walk along the country road. Wow. It’s good to get out and see who lives among us. I thought about going into town to get supper but it was more than ten miles away and I definitely did not want to return to that place after dark. There was an old bag of popcorn on top of the microwave so I popped that and drank herbal tea while watching a family of deer graze with a beautiful sunset showing off in the distance. I slept surprisingly well. 

Yesterday I drove 90 miles through the mountains as the mist rose off of ponds and rivers and flocks of geese flew south over head. The foliage isn’t dramatic here but the scenery was spectacular. Five hours later Kathy and Michael were waiting for me with a southern home cooked lunch and then it was girlfriend time. Life is good.

Later I’ll drive to Nashville for a gig at Vanderbilt tomorrow and some tourist time with Chris and Sarah who fly in from UK tonight. Zack was born thirty-six years ago today. How the world has changed since then. On this road trip, every motorist I passed who’d stopped to help someone along the road made my heart swell. There are so many good people. I felt deep down that we’re going to be ok. 

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~ Filling the Basket

Mtanga ukoma mdi kusomera. ~ The basket of maize looks good when you have really topped it up.

~ Chewa proverb

October 13, 2019

Hi Everyone,

This week I drove to Brunswick for a TEDx celebration and reunion for those who’ve participated in Maine since it’s inception ten years ago. The TEDx talk I did was in May of 2016 and is one of the most exciting and scary things I have ever done. I don’t think I ever would have been chosen if it weren’t for my luck to have friends who believed in my message and had skills to make a professional one minute video to submit with the application. My friends Kathy and Desiree had the knowledge and skill and generously gave of their time. I totally credit them with my being there. I so badly didn’t want to let them down. Once accepted, there was the writing and re-writing of the script, the practicing, the re-learning how to hold my body, stop pointing at the audience, stop swaying, remember the pauses and (not being a theater person) oh my God, it was hard. I felt so much pressure. I felt like I had nine minutes to make a difference in women’s lives. TED talks can be so powerful and I thought I had a chance and didn’t want to blow it. I watched about a million TED talks in the months leading up to it, and learned a lot! I watched some of them several times trying to glean from the speakers what made them powerful and riveting. I prayed. I did the wonder woman pose trying to gain confidence. I freaked at every criticism of my posture and gestures thinking I just wasn’t going to be able to pull it off. I wondered how people got through this? I’ve done scary things before! I’ve done lots of public speaking! I thrive on it! What was so terrifying about this? The lights! The rules! Still, it was an amazing experience and I am so grateful for it. I was euphoric when it was done. I received lots of positive feedback. But the women I spoke about? They have not felt any benefit.

I arrived at the celebration and mingled with the crowd. i didn’t see anyone from my May 2016 group there. I found my coach and reconnected, telling her how much I appreciated her. I chatted with some people from other groups, some were organizers some were speakers. I asked all of the speakers, “Was it the scariest thing you’ve ever done?” and there was a pretty good consensus that, yeah, it was. One guy I was talking to who’d done a talk in 2013 asked me about my topic. It didn’t take me long to get worked up into the frenzy that motivated me to do the talk in the first place. I started ranting about what’s happened in the rural parts of the country for maternity care for women. How the c-section rate is astronomical and is killing women, especially poor women and women of color. I was in a froth again and he asked, “So what came out of your talk?” I stopped and thought and said, “Not much, if anything.” Then went on saying, “It was a different world then. There was so much potential and there was so much hope for women’s issues. It was spring of 2016. We were about to have our first woman president and the focus should have been on how we should be cleaning up our act, refocusing our priorities, and joining the rest of industrialized countries with offering health care as a basic human right not an expensive luxury. We should have been addressing our gender inequalities and discrimination. But then November happened and the world changed.” I didn’t need to say any more. He nodded. He’d been mayor of a city in Maine for six years. We talked about the changing tide now in our state and both expressed hope that the pendulum is starting to swing. We’ve got a great woman governor, we’ve got potential for a brilliant new senator who is motivated to work on this. I told him about my dream of starting a graduate program for midwifery in Maine and we kicked around how to go about that. He finished his beer, I finished my cider. We exchanged business cards and moved on to other conversations with other interesting people. 

I’d thought about whether making the three hour drive to this party was worth it and decided to go, noting I could visit friends and get some errands done along the way. It was a luxury I am privileged to have. I traveled three hours in my well serviced car with a full tank of gas on dry roads. The foliage was spectacular. But imagine being a woman in active (painful) labor in a car that has no gas, faulty brakes, and bad tires in an ice storm traveling three hours to the closest hospital that will care for you. That ride would not be pleasant. But that’s what we are forcing women to do. It’s inhumane. It is a crisis. I got to sip a drink and schmooze with people as we ate fabulous food. I am so well aware of my privilege and fortune. I left there thinking, thinking, thinking, very glad I went, needing to do something tangible. 

I’d been thinking for some time about how to get a graduate program for midwifery started in Maine. Having more midwives is a very realistic solution to this problem but there are very few educational programs and none are in Maine. I’ve talked about it but didn’t know how to go about taking the first step. This reunion was a booster shot and motivator. I drove to Husson University parked in one of the lots and walked around looking for the nursing school. I found it, went to the deans office, introduced myself, and asked the secretary if I could make an appointment to talk with the dean. I was expecting a refusal or at least some hassle, but she said, sure, next week? We set a date for when I’m back from my current trip and then she asked, “Can I tell her what it is about?” I said, “I want to talk with her about starting a midwifery program here.” Then thinking she was going to act as if it were a ridiculous request, I added, “I know it’s a tall order.” The secretary wrote it down and said very sincerely, “Oh wow! She is gonna love this.” 

Step one. Done.

Love to all,

Linda

Sunday Morning ~  The Seed

Ndidyeretu, chire anasowa mbeu. ~ The one who ate all there was discovered the bush had no seeds.

~ Chewa Proverb

October 6, 2019

Hi Everyone,

I usually get up early on Sunday and write a draft of this before I go to mass. Today I woke early but fell back into a deep sleep with dreams so vivid that waking up was confusing. I’d overslept by a lot. I dashed to the garden to let the chickens out and getting distracted as I always do, stopped to pick a lonely pepper on the plant growing since May. One lovely, mid-sized pepper was the only resident on the plant I lovingly tended. One pepper! I spent a frustrating summer watching one blossom after another fall off and die even though the plant looked healthy. I’d given it the sunniest spot, and though I’d pictured myself picking dozens of peppers, only one lived. This morning I gave up on getting anymore, picked that solitary pepper, and put it in the bowl of random, partnerless vegetables on my counter. I looked at it and wondered what to do with it? Something special? Make a salsa so it can be spread out among a few meals? Or would it’s specialness get lost with that? Maybe I should stuff it and make it a whole meal, but having no one to share it with seemed sad. Oh hell, I thought, maybe I’ll just eat the thing right now, raw and naked while it’s still as fresh as possible. But I was late for church and ran out thinking about that pepper as a metaphor for my life. I’ve only got one. What to do with it? Solitary and healthy with resources and energy I feel a responsibility to use it wisely. As usual, I was late for mass. I blamed the pepper. I have a different excuse every week.

My usual spot was open and I slid into the pew just before the first reading and I settled into the comfort of the familiar ritual: the readings, the responses, the gospel, the sermon. I often don’t listen to the sermon. My mind wanders and my list of things to do replays a loop especially if the delivery is dry. When George was coming to church with me I was always worried the sermon would be something open to criticism. I felt the need to defend the priest even if I agreed with George that the message was less than inspiring. But then I’d think, who cares? No one listens to the sermon anyway. It’s all about the ritual. Today though, the priest hit it square. My current state of limbo made me spongy for soaking up the message. I’ve spent a fair amount of time recently thinking about how I can make a difference or have some kind of lasting influence. I’m a bit stuck trying to transform lofty goals into achievable steps and figure out what the first step actually is. Today’s story about the mustard seed, that tiniest of seeds which grows into the largest herb (or tree, or other large vegetation that feeds the world depending on whether you like Matthew, Mark, or Luke) seemed especially poignant and obvious.  We can all relate to the metaphor but it struck me hard today and, judging from the conversation at coffee hour, others as well. The priest spoke from the heart and his authenticity was refreshing. He wasn’t preachy. I loved that. He didn’t need to describe our current state of scandalous, racist, corrupt government or national shame, but the message was as clear as if he’d spray painted it on his vestments. Maybe others heard it differently; I know we can have personal interpretations. But for me focusing on the tiniest seed was brilliant, though I got distracted a bit with wondering if mustard seeds were really smaller than say, cabbage?  Actually as I write this it sounds corny as hell, but there was a shiny moment when I thought it was the most profound thing I’d ever heard. Like I said, I was yearning for a sign, and my mustard crop is always the most reliable of anything I plant. I wondered if I was stretching it too much.

Graham Nash gave a concert in Bar Harbor this week. He was my coming-of-age celebrity crush and I always credited him with saving the world with those protest songs. He sang in our little town, looking pretty darn good, reminding us to do something and have hope. Won’t you please come to Chicago for the help that you can bring? We can save the world, re-arrange the world, it’s dying to get better. I thought the chance to see and hear him sing those words was long gone but there I was singing along with the rest of the audience, and I felt the same way I did after church today–– there’s a lot of us and we can change the world. But then I talked with a friend who told me she’d never heard of Graham Nash and I was shocked! “Really? Chicago? Teach Your Children?” I asked, horrified. “Nope, never heard of them.” she said without embarrassment. And I thought, good God, what kind of work is ahead of us? 

…Now it is Monday. I left this to attend the memorial service of a friend who was killed in a car accident. Like me, he’d been a Peace Corps volunteer right out of college. He was a bit older and I learned yesterday that Peace Corps saved him from fighting a war he didn’t believe in. He spent four years in Africa in the 60’s as a volunteer, came back and worked in many different capacities as well as a boat mechanic here on the island. He was my son’s baseball coach. He was a lover of music. He played the violin and I’d often see him at concerts in town. He came to many of the presentations I gave and we often talked about life and work in Africa. He was recently back from working with Doctor’s Without Borders in Central African Republic and two weeks before he died we had a long philosophical discussion about that organization. On August 13, I was driving back from the beach with the grandkids when we saw a firetruck blocking the road. In any other situation I would have eagerly exclaimed to James, “Look! A firetruck!”  But I knew at 3:30 on a weekday afternoon in the summer, this was not good. We got directed to a detour and as I turned I could see a demolished car near the woods. I had a sinking realization that any occupant of that car was most likely dead. I read the next morning that it was Ted, hit head on in his little old economical car. His memorial yesterday was beautiful with music and poetry and fabulous food. Many of his photographs of Africa were on display, stunning beauty both of the landscape and the people. I left there sad and confused. 

I went to my French group, then to a concert and got home late thinking I would continue writing. But everything I put down was crap. I was trying to be philosophical and it sounded pandering and pathetic, painful words my son once used to describe my writing. I thought he was right. I reread what I wrote about the priest’s sermon yesterday and realized I really hadn’t said much about it. How much of it did I really remember? The metaphor of sowing a tiny seed and believing something great would come out of it was what I heard, and thought, Right! Start with that! How obvious! But I’m not sure now that’s what he said. I thought of how messages get interpreted. I might consider something inspiring and think everyone must see it the same way. Of course this isn’t true. God knows this has been the start of many an argument I’ve had with others. I realize a lot depends on what I want to hear and what I want to be true. I think now of how many roads this has taken me down and how lucky I am that most of them have led somewhere positive. 

Love to all,

Linda