Sabbath for the Gulf Coast

“It is the end of the world as we know it.” With this statement, made on Day 31, my daughter, a resident of the Gulf Coast, brought the oil spill up close and personal to her New England family. Her ability to approach and resolve challenges with humor and vision is legendary, but her words were void of both. Her cousins were silent. Their children looked to their mothers for comfort. To ward off nightmares, theirs and mine, I asked “Given that what you said may well be true, what is the world we want to know?” We talked of “Green Energy” and “Organic Living”, but on day 70+ of the disaster, I have yet to find comforting answers to my question.
The President quoted a priest who participated in the blessing of the fleet in LA a few weeks ago. “The blessing is not that God has promised to remove all obstacles and dangers. The blessing is that He is with us always,” a blessing that’s granted “even in the midst of the storm.” In that spirit, I've made a commitment to celebrate our Sabbaths with a sense of gratitude for the gifts of creation, and to abstain as much as possible from the use of petroleum product on Sundays. Art’s response? “That means no TV or Computers, but I’ll do it if you will.”
Check out this site to see what else we’ll try not to use on Sundays - http://www.ranken-energy.com/Products%20from%20Petroleum.htm
And please let us know if you’ll join us.
Peace and good_________,
Beth

The Kumquat Festival: Or how another industrial town maintains its identity despite a half century of economic challenges.

Dade City FL

January 30, 2010

A Florida Project Adventure

The Kumquat, a native of China and not quite a citrus fruit*, is about the size of a grape and packs a tart or sweet punch depending on your choice.(Nagami = tart, Marumi= sweet). After a not so long drive through Florida’s Green Swamp, we ate at the Kiwanis booth - hotdog or hamburger with all the fixings plus fries and a drink for 6 dollars. We were served by H.S. athletes, working under the Chief Cook/ Athletic Director, helping out their little brothers and sisters (all the money raised at the festival would go to the elementary school for playground equipment).
The streets were crowded with vendors – arts and crafts mostly - but we’d come for the kumquat jam so we headed straight to the Kumquat Growers Association Booth. Good thing too, as a downpour sent us to the car and, as it was early in the day, a trip to the Pioneer Florida Museum & Village, a mile away.
We expected to see history from the 1800’s when the Homestead Act gave land to pioneers (We thought they all went West, too!) instead, we found what is left of a train station and the memory of a bustling company town of the 1950’s. While Art played engineer on the 1913 Porter-Steam Engine, we chatted with Tom, the volunteer Stationmaster and discovered the history of an area that centered on cattle and citrus. Trains that once ran 24/7 as 6 lines from Sanford to Tampa to Lakeland to Miami, criss-crossed an area as big as New England, mostly stopped In 1989 when a deep freeze sent the citrus industry south and the many packing plants in the area closed. In our two hour visit, two coal trains, one empty, one full, heading to and from the Tampa Power Plant, reminded us once again that the United States is not just the name of our country, but the reality of our lives. We also again realized how large the state is (The Green Swamp Preserve is 173,000 acres in only 5 of Florida’s 67 counties) and how rich its history. Hence – our Florida Project. Our goal – to visit at least one festival or state park monthly so that we will learn and love Florida’s history as much as we do our home here. We invite you to share our journey on Roots and Routes.
(Words don’t do the museum justice. Check out our pictures on http://therami.shutterfly.com/)

*The Kumquat was re-classified as a member of the fortunella genus – cousin to citrus – in 1915.

La Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver - a Review

Violet Brown, the narrator of La Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel, is the kind of faithful person I wonder if I am. She is loyal to her employer who becomes her friend and defends him beyond death as he is caught in the tide of anti-communism that flowed from the House Committee on Un-American Activities in the 1950’s. Her employer is Harrison William Shepherd, whom we meet as quite a child of the streets in Mexico in the 1930’s, naive to the political intrigue that surrounds his life, cook to Lev ("Leon" Trotsky) friend of Frieda Kahlo, son of an American Government worker and Mexican beauty. He begins his adult life in the United States when he accompanies art work from Kahlo and her husband, the muralist Diego Rivera, to the United States. After working as a protector of American Art during WWII and a short stint as a Spanish teacher, the success of his first novel, set in long ago Mexico, gives him the freedom to stay at home and write. The irony of the freedom to stay confined is subtly reflected in Shepherd’s dry, voice, a voice the reader clearly hears because the author is so, so, good at her craft, but that draws no empathy from the reader. He has become after all, an adult who has chosen to shut himself away, never discussing the only freedom he ever allowed himself - that of swimming in La Lacuna, an underwater tunnel when he was a child in Mexico. In the end, we remember that time. We remember that there is always hope if one waits for the tide to change, but not until we fully empathize with Violet Brown’s dilemma – whether to let written accounts of Shepherd’s life define him or let the world know the soul of the man by publishing through the journals he’d kept since childhood that she had not destroyed when he’d asked.
In Violet Brown, Ms. Kingsolver has given us an honest, hard-working, woman whose passion for the good comes through her conversations with Shepherd. Her idealism doesn’t blind her to the darkness Shepherd faces as the insidiousness of the politics of the early 1950’s overtakes their lives (and the novel.) “You are a poet, Mrs. Brown,” he says as he acknowledges the truth in her advice while choosing not to heed it.
My advice to you, dear reader, is to stick with this novel as it slogs through a very difficult time in American History. While Ms. Kingsolver comes close to proselytizing, the lesson to be learned is deeper than how fear controls politics. It is one that speaks to the power of fidelity and it is not learned until the book is closed and we say, “Wise choice, Mrs. Brown.”

Science Fiction Gives a Moral Compass

When I was eight years old I read a folk tale that said anyone who could kiss her elbow would turn into a boy. A middle child, and the only girl, I found the concept intriguing and practiced for days. In the same story collection, I met King Midas, I imagined myself his daughter, and then her mother. I was Pandora. I was hope. Myth, legend, folk tale, and fantasy rolled into one in the genre Science Fiction I discovered in my twenties. The science behind the fiction made it possible to trust the questions I asked of myself (and everyone who’d read the books along with me). Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, Frank Hebert’s Dune, and Issac Asimov’s I, Robot inspired this flower child to seek community, work for justice and accept that while evil is a reality, humanity can choose to create a good that will survive it.
Now the children of the 60’s are approaching their seventies and their Science Fiction has morphed into apologia. In The Year of the Flood, Margaret Atwood allows her personal despair about the lack of international Climate Change policy and technology without regulation to color her characters with a shallow, dark pen. The “flood” is a pandemic brought on by a virus developed by corporations in order to sell the cure. But the virus is not the only gene alteration we discover in this future. Technology has changed the balance of the planet and the only ones who seem to care are religious cults that warn of the dangers, but live in isolation. By making her protagonists religious eccentrics, Ms. Atwood offers those of us in the mainstream world little hope for change or motivation for action. And there is much: for those reading this review who would like to take action, GOOGLE your faith community name and ecology. I found over 200 sites organized by Catholics.
Catholic stories of saints and martyrs also formed my conscience, which may be why I recognized the spiritual quest in Stephenie Meyer’s Host. How strong is your Self? How strong is your commitment to those you love? Would you be willing to let another being reside in your brain in order to bring peace to the world? What if that meant never loving your family again? For Melanie Stryder, our heroine, the answer is obvious. Love and Self will not give in, so the peaceful alien who invades her body works with her. This intriguing novel gives the reader the opportunity to debate questions of life, death, love, commitment and wisdom with as many moral twists and turns as the caves in which the protagonist finds her family. Theirs is not an easy journey – anyone ever faced with a moral dilemma knows how confusing conversations in one’s own head can be – but Ms. Meyers gives us balance and opportunity in her characters and a romantic adventure as well.

A Blessing for Jackson

A blessing for Jackson

Light upon you
Light before you
Wisdom holds you
Firmly, open

Breathes the life
Of those before you
Gentle men of whom
You’re one.

Truth. Courage.
Faith. Compassion.
Weave the fabric
Of your soul

Threads of sorrow
Will pass through it,
Yarns of Laughter,
Lift it up


Stories told
At Grandma’s table
Where we sit
This quiet night

While I hold you
Gently open
Welcome, Jackson
To the light.

Written in memory of Kevin and in celebration of Zak and Scarlet

Bel Canto – Just a Moment?

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett was Book Club’s choice this month. It’s the story of people gathered to celebrate the birthday of a foreign business man who the President of this unnamed country thinks he can buy by bringing in the man’s favorite opera star to sing “Happy Birthday” and arias of the man’s choosing. The president himself doesn’t come to the party, but terrorists do, and we end up spending four months with the hostages and their captors.
It’s the third time I’ve read Bel Canto as its popular with discussion groups, but the first when opera was playing in the background, and the music caused the conversation within me to take an unexpected turn. No longer did Bel Canto, the beautiful song of the title refer just to the main character whose voice and presence commands the attention of all. I thought for a while that Bel Canto meant the long moment of captivity wherein days drifts into months, boundaries become fluid and the house becomes a haven for the people it contains. Then, one woman said “Not one of them will be the same,” and I was brought back to the grief of my brother’s sudden death twenty years ago. In that months’ long moment, every sound I heard was felt in my core, colors were so vivid they breathed and all that I did was backdrop to my loss - until one day it reversed and my grief became the background song for my life. Bel Canto, the beautiful song reminds us that given nothing but time, we will hear the song deep within that is the core of our humanness, our souls, and we need not wait until we are hostage to a moment to listen. Do read it...with accompaniment.

Sunday, Satisfying Sunday

Four thirty AM, alarm, shower, walk the dog, drive to work. 7 AM sitting with 20 plus colleagues I like a lot, but see far too little of, being briefed on how we will cheer on the 6 thousand plus runners in Disney’s Princess Half-Marathon. The marathon, a fund raiser for the Make –A-Wish Foundation is a trinity of goodness; kids win, runners are happy and Disney is even more than the place Uncle Walt imagined it to be.
The participants in this race are mostly women and, as they past me in groups of 2, three and four, I am reminded of the women who have paced me throughout my 60 years, and cheered “Hand in hand, that’s the way” to mothers and daughters of several generations as they entered Epcot for the last mile. The first competitor to pass me was a 40+ woman in a wheel chair, pushing, pushing up the hill and my eyes filled with tears of envy for her commitment and passion. Three hours later, as the last woman, red faced with chin held high, walked slowly through the gate, I gave up the last of my voice, my hands became numb from clapping, and the envy was gone, replaced with a quiet sense of self that I didn’t realize I had until I returned home and finished my sleep.
When I shouted “Keep it up, you’re motivating me” over and over to several thousand people, I must have internalized what I was seeing, for I began and finished a project this afternoon that I didn’t know was possible even to do, and surprised myself with a new sense of focus, enthusiasm and stick-with-it-to-the-end for the sheer joy of accomplishment.
Thank you, Princesses for your dedication to yourselves. Please know that while I don’t expect you’ll ever actually see me running beside you, the energy I put into my life’s course is now a part of you, as yours is a part of me.
Shalom.