ENTERPRISING MORNING GLORY
AFTER THE TRAGEDY
Here in New England, the battle for control of the Market Basket supermarkets remains the biggest news story – but with a storybook twist. Rather than ending up as another soulless corporate bottom-line victim, there’s been a resurrection.
The bitter DeMoulas family feud finally led to an agreement less than a week ago in which the Good Guy (aka Arthur T) buys out the other half for roughly $1.5 billion. Ownership stays here at home. And, yes, there have been cheers all around in this remarkable alliance of stakeholders – managers, workers, loyal shoppers, and their communities – against the faction that fired the Good Guy and his visionary leadership.
The boycott held through August. The parking lots were vacant. Workers saw their hours cut. Some managers were fired … and now they’re back.
There’s almost a party atmosphere in the stores, but nobody’s slacking. Managers began showing up to work at midnight just an hour after reports of the agreement surfaced. Suppliers offered to deliver goods directly to the stores, rather than the distribution center, to speed the restocking of depleted shelves.
Many details remain to be ironed out, and a lot of damage will take time to repair. But at least there’s also a rainbow.
SPACE FOR DECOMPRESSION
It’s hard to believe five years have passed since we made the loft of the barn much more usable.
When we moved here, the loft was accessible only via a second-floor catwalk from the master bedroom, and getting there and back could be tricky, especially when snow was piled on the deck.
I’ll save the home renovation project description and photos for another time, and just mention that it involved removing the catwalk, deck, bedroom doorway, and barn loft doorway, installing stairs inside the barn and lighting in the loft.
What it essentially did was give us another 450 square feet of usable work and storage space – especially once we replaced the leaky roof two years ago. (Gee, I think that’s the size of some of those Ikea model apartments.)
Admittedly, it’s not someplace you linger for much of the year. It’s not insulated and there’s no heat, so you do little more than dash in and out in January-February or July-August, but for me it’s been a huge blessing.
As I wrote in August 2009, an “especially humid Tuesday: No Rick yesterday or today.” Our carpenter/master electrician was “off on another project.” We were in no rush, anyway. Still, enough of the project had progressed for me to note, “Having the top of the barn – the Squirrel Piss Studio or Jnana’s Red Barn or the Summer House – finally available as usable space is mind-boggling. At last! Ten years. A time for decompression, unpacking. The difference in scale as a result of the larger space (framed posters, for instance, now appear so much smaller).” I detailed more effusively in my journal. What I noted was “t
he array of items: places I’ve gone off to, to live. Sometimes unwillingly. The skulls – steer, horse, dog. Elk bones. Shells.
“So much to discard, too. My burgundy valet bag, an artifact of the past (after 9/11, nobody travels with one). Burgundy, LAL’s color. Same as the Chevy. The specially designed coat hangers, with their folding hooks – open for the hotel, closed to slide into the bag. Those two years, a ‘backpack for business travelers.’
“A Quaker altar: a candle on a piece of squared birch firewood, the side with bark facing the sitter; incense; in time, flowers or dried arrangement; Bible, Gita, notebook?
“I sit in the space and recall how Roger Pfingston could sit for hours in front of a blank piece of paper without writing a word. Maybe smoke a cigar. Now see it as his way of meditation and self-collection.”
The space also gave me a place to resume hatha yoga exercises after way too long a hiatus.
I love having large surfaces where I can spread out the pages for a poetry collection and rearrange the sequence. I’m not one who works easily with a crowded desk, unlike many of my colleagues. No, it’s Zen order or Quaker/Shaker simplicity I desire.
The loft is far from the year-round office studio I’d envisioned when we moved here. To get there, though, apart from the money, we’d have to cover the wooden underside of the roof I’ve come to enjoy viewing. The feel would become much different than the funky, well, summer cottage I so much enjoy now – even when it’s fall and spring rather than summer when I most use it.
Besides, to be candid, as I’m able to clean out and dispose of more and more, and as I move increasingly to online, paperless writing and submissions, I don’t really need the big office of those earlier dreams. At least that’s what I’m thinking now.
Who knows what’s really ahead.
FORGET THE STEEPLE, IT’S ALL THE PEOPLE
One of the most revolutionary concepts the Society of Friends has upheld is an understanding of “church” as a body of believers – not as the building (“the Methodist Church” beside the river) or the organization (“Presbyterian” or “Congregational”) or a hierarchy (“the Vatican” or even a nearby bishop I once heard quoted as saying, “I am the church.”) This sense of a gathering of the saints is the reason ours is a “meeting” of the church – of the believers – and why we gather in a meetinghouse, rather than calling the building itself the church. For that matter, early Friends typically referred to the gathering place of other denominations as a “steeplehouse,” thus emphasizing a distinction between the building and its users.
Keep your eyes and ears open, though, and you’ll observe the inevitable turns that try to fit us into those other concepts. Calling us, for instance, “the meetinghouse people” or our organization the Dover Friends Meetinghouse, rather than Meeting. While there is something quaint about referring to a “Quaker Church” down the road, it misses the point entirely. For us, a church does not burn to the ground – its martyrs may burn at the stake or we may burn with a passionate cause, but the church itself will be found everywhere, with many different individuals, and at odd moments. In fact, in this understanding, “church” even becomes a verb – something that can happen on a street corner or a field or our workplace as easily as in our historic meetinghouse. As I remember one couple saying, “We were unchurched and then we discovered Quakers.”
By extension, the Society of Friends was envisioned as being a people of God, modeled loosely on the Jewish people, with much of the teaching and practice coming down at home through generations of families. Whatever shortcomings Quakers have experienced in instilling the continued practice in their children, we remain a people of faith – one chosen freely, and experienced both personally and together. We meet, indeed, in many ways.
NOT WHAT YOU THINK
I’ve always been a visual person. Had even considered a career in art before the writing took over. As further evidence, remembering a story or argument I’ve heard has always been more difficult to recall than one I’ve read. As for names, I’m hopeless unless there’s been a name tag.
Somehow, though, I can remember a musical line much more than I can any lyrics, including those we’ve been working on in chorus. So I’m not memory deaf, exactly.
As a visual person, I’ve found the point-and-shoot digital camera entries you’ve seen posted in my blogs to be a wonderful way of sharing the way I look at the world and many of the details that catch my attention.
But there’s another range of experiences I can’t begin to describe. Often, especially while watching people, my vision shifts from photo-realism to real-life cartoons. I hope I’m not staring, but the transformation is incredible. R. Crumb had nothing on me, other than technique. Sometimes they’re squiggling black-and-white line drawings. Sometimes, baroque etchings. Other times, wild blobs of color.
Even before they start moving.
SABBATICAL LESSONS
As I said at the time …
When I was 38, several developments occurred in a way that allowed me to give myself a year of unemployment, drawing largely on savings. Rather than travel the world or undertake some related activity, I hunkered down in a writing spree [that resulted in the novels now (finally) being published]. The sabbatical meant that for the first time in my life, I had a period of uninterrupted concentration on this work. The writing itself. Three fast novels, now to be revised, and thud! skidding to a crash or whatever. Enough to expand to a dozen, in the hours of revision after I went back to the paying work. Looking back, I know it had to be done. And done then.
Nevertheless, in my struggle between practicality and art, there’s been a longstanding sense of guilt in spending time on myself. To my surprise, a resolution came through a workshop on prayer, when we were divided into smaller groups and then asked to write out a prayer request. Not for what others might need or a social issue, but for something we needed individually. “Ask for something for yourself,” which the others would then pray for.
Of course, each of us works differently. I’m not one for the blank sheet writer’s block syndrome: I’m usually springing from notes jotted down earlier. (Pacing is another matter: just where is this going? And why?)
In contrast, I recall a poet friend who was also a public school teacher; he was quite prolific during the busy school year, yet during the summer, could produce little, though he could never quite figure out why. (He could also stare at a piece of paper for five hours and then turn out a sharply focused gem.) The other friend, having all the leisure in the world, could produce only disconnected flashes. Could it be some juggling or resistance is also essential to the practice?
MOCKINGBIRD, ESPECIALLY
The amount of wildlife in our yard continually impresses me, especially compared to my childhood home. The abundance of squirrels, of course, and (yuck!) the winter rats we occasionally see but also skunks, opossums, the groundhog (woodchuck) can be added in, plus garden snakes and a rainbow of insects. We must be doing something right, or just be in the right location. (Once, a fox trotted atop my ladder stored over snow, right here in the city.)
A first: amid a throng of blue jays chasing a crow, a mockingbird: was its nest raided or threatened?
But remember, never mock a mockingbird. Like the one singing lustily from our neighbors’ when I’d drive in from work at midnight. They’re quite remarkable musicians.
~*~
The influence of the animal kingdom shapes my newest collection of poems, In a Heartbeat, on tap at Barometric Pressures.
GODDESSES IN SUBURBIA
As I mentioned to her sometime back, I’d spent much time in a recent year reflecting on the jagged pathway that landed me here. Often I’ve felt I took one took many turns somewhere back there, and on some mornings after we moved into this house – well, some moments in my homes before that, too – I’d find myself wondering just where the hell I was, after all. In a bigger sense, I’ve been trying to envision how it all adds up. Guess it’s another version of the old “What is the meaning of life” conundrum. At least I finally figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up … retired! Meaning free to concentrate on the Real Work. (Now that I’m there, I’m finding more questions.)
In the round of reflection I’m discussing, I concentrated on high school and college – the emotional side, especially – meaning the time before I actually started keeping a journal, and a period that’s largely been a fog in my memory. I uncovered some wonderful prompts for revisiting this, especially letters from the sophomore high school English teacher who put me on the writing/strict grammar path, as well as a confession that despite all the contrary efforts, high school was a bummer. Unlike yours, my public school system was geared largely toward instilling conformity and retarding the growth of gifted students, unless you were a male athlete. Still, much has come back, making me wonder how I survived at all.
This round, I kept asking “What if” … for instance, one of those I saw as goddesses in high school had swept me away (or, more realistically, if I’d been able to say something close to what was really on my heart, or hormones, leading to some, shall we say, quality time together). Would I have continued at Wright State, rather than transferring to Indiana, and eventually stayed in Dayton, maybe even as a Republican? Or if either of my two girlfriends through the college years had led to marriage and home … both of them from Dayton, though neither ended up dwelling there, from what I can tell. Most of those goddesses wound up settling into mundane adult suburban lives, as I find from the class website and Internet – including our online class reunion site. I’m not kidding. (Who are all those old people in those silly photos? The ones holding beer bottles, especially.) (Note to self: Do not allow yourself to be photographed holding a beer bottle. Ever.)
On my part, what I keep finding is a sense of inevitability. Or, as Friends say, “As way opens,” if we’re faithful. There are good reasons I’m where I am, and for that I’m grateful, after so many seasons of sojourning. Even so, when your note arrives, there’s a tinge of sadness or gentle envy, as you live out what appears to be so close to what I had desired when I dreamed of being an independent writer living in my Promised Land, with a house full of my children and visiting friends and a quiet studio hut on the ridge behind. (My wife finds that vision humorous, by the way – finds holes in it all the way around, beginning with who’s going to clean up after the big parties I intended.)
Still, looking back, there are many things I don’t understand, and too many points where I’ve looked away or accepted a glib answer, rather than probing. I’ve always been prone to seeing what I want to see and overlooking the rest – usually, the warning signs and difficult details. (Again, my wife is good at bringing me back to the wider range of questions.) I’d say that trying to answer the inquiry of why you and I didn’t wind up together would be one of those. The astrological answer that you and I would never wind up together but remain prime friends fails to ask why. I believe there’s far more to be uncovered there, if we’re willing. Just why have you always made me feel better, for starters. Or feel special and elated.
SOCCER MOM, RUGBY DAD
As I said at the time …
So here we are. Who would have thought we’d be attending kids’ soccer and rugby matches? Not us!
Or dealing with declining parents. Your mother’s dementia must be difficult. You mention that she still remembers people and is in a wheelchair, which makes me wonder if she’s afflicted with Alzheimer’s or something different. My wife and the girls talk fondly of Grandpa Marion and how his Alzheimer’s brought out a sweetness in him, while another, with episodes in the past years, turns mean and paranoid. Parkinson’s is rough, too, with its long decline; I lost a dear Mennonite mentor last January, in Virginia, and one of my best friends here is in the early stages – so far, controlled by medication, when they get it right.
Galapagos? My elder girl will be very envious. At age 11, she went on a big Darwin kick, a passion that has never abated. A few years ago, we went down to the Boston Museum of Science for a special exhibit they had, and it was quite impressive. In all of the historical debate over his insights, I’m surprised we don’t hear more about the religious roots of his work – most of his encouragement and support seemed to come from clergymen. Me, I’m quite fond of his later affection with earthworms. Maybe it has to do with my monster composting.
Now I still want to hear how you distinguish between mystery and magic. I have a few ideas, but I doubt they’re as expansive or insightful as yours.
In the meantime, I’m hoping to get back to poetry by early fall. Why can’t I stick to just one kind of writing? Or be somehow easily identifiable? A good friend’s son, who is a successful serious novelist, seems to have the same problem. He, too, wants every book to be unique, rather than a continuation of or variation on his others.
Gotta run … time to commute, again. And tomorrow, another birthday. How can that be?
ATTUNED TO THE PULSING
Back in the late ’70s I attended a weeklong interdisciplinary conference at Fort Warden State Park on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, an event that remains a potent influence on my work and thinking. Organized by Sam Hamill, then of Copper Canyon Press, the Power of Animals seminar spanned biology, literature, anthropology, mythology, and more. Presenters included the writers Barry Lopez, Gary Snyder, Howard Norman (then just the author of a chapbook of poems called Born Tying Knots), David Lee, and an equally impressive slate of zoologists and botanists in an interdisciplinary examination of the dimensions of the animal kingdom. One highlight was a stage production from Reed College that relived some of the glorious Coyote tales of the Pacific Northwest.
Now, with the release of my chapbook In a Heartbeat from Barometric Pressures at Kind of a Hurricane Press, I hope to return the favor. This set of poems runs playfully with wild and domestic animals of all sizes and influences as they impact our lives in real and imaginary ways.
To join in, simply click here. And remember, it’s free.
Jnana's Red Barn 