Literacy: Reading

Writing about the purposes and standards for reading.

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Redemption

Creator and Redeemer– that pretty much summarizes what God does and explains the human predicament.  We live on a planet ideally suited for life, the work of a savvy Creator. We also fail to respect both the planet and its citizens, so we are in need of transformation. That is where the redeemer comes in.  God teaches us how to survive and love our fellow creatures.

Then comes the invisible, intractable foe–racism–and we are struggling with something larger and uncontrollable than legislation or intellect can resolve.  Some of us deny that we live in a country dominated by racism. We have the Emancipation Proclamation and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and a Black President, so how could we be racist? Or we insist it is only a few individuals– the “bad apple” theory, a theory advocated by the President.  The rest of us are respectable and law-abiding citizens who don’t see color at all.

Then comes someone claiming racism is larger than we suppose–it is “systemic.” It is as pervasive as the air we breathe and the water we drink. It is an underlying disposition, something we are born into. It is more than good behavior.  We are asked to admit to something we cannot quantify or legislate.  We can not claim innocence, because no one can claim innocence.

Eddie Glaude makes this claim in his critical biography of James Baldwin Begin Again.  He says we live in a “value gap” where no one is equal to our white race or social group, however we define it. He says our society is poisoned by “the lie,” a complex of stereotypes and misinformation about Black people that lowers them unconsciously in our eyes.  We act out “the lie” in a dozen ways every day without noticing our offenses. White people give subtle signals that they are superior, and Black people receive the unintended message.

So how do you manage a systemic virus that has resisted the antidotes of nonviolent protest, legislation, schooling and the honoring of human rights heroes?  White people cry, What do you want from us? Black people answer, Respect, Equality, Justice.  And we realize we are at the end of our management skills.

James Baldwin hit the wall many times in his struggle to reconcile Black and White, and he chronicles his recovery over and over again in books and articles he wrote from 1954 to 1987.  Eddie Glaude wanted to show Baldwin’s great resilience in an extended relationship with the Civil Rights Movement with a tribute to Baldwin, Begin Again.

At the end of his life Baldwin wrote an essay published by Playboy, January 1987.

Salvation is not flight from the wrath of God, it is accepting and reciprocating the love of God. Salvation is not separation. It is the beginning of union with all that is or has been or ever will be . . . . Salvation connects   . . . . It keeps the channel open between oneself and however one wished to name That which is greater than oneself. It has nothing to do with one’s fortunes or one’s circumstances in one’s passage through this world. It is a mighty fortress, even in ruin or at the gates of death. (Glaude, E. Begin Again, 213).

We have reached the place where we must be redeemed in order to be reconciled.We know God is prepared to redeem us, because that has been God’s role from the Exodus to the present day. Yet we must first admit our limitations and appeal to a merciful God.

James Baldwin was not a church-goer or a righteous crusader. He was a gay Black man wrestling with his own prejudice and anger. Yet his understanding of redemption was well-aligned with the prayer of the Psalmist. It is a prayer of humility and desire to change. A prayer we need today.

But who can detect their errors?

Clear me from hidden faults

Keep back your servant also from the insolent;

do not let them have dominion over me.

Then I shall be innocent of great transgression.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart.

be acceptable to you,

O Lord, my rock and my redeemer. (Psalms 19:12-14)

 

 

 

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Bred to a Harder Thing Than Triumph

13-year-old Braydon Harrington, from New Hampshire, spoke of connecting with Joe Biden over stuttering. DNC

One certain star of the Democratic Nominating Convention was 13-year-old Brayden Harrington, who bravely stuttered his way through a campaign endorsement  of Joe Biden. Harrington had met Biden back in February at a CNN Town Hall in Concord, NH, where Biden had told stories of his struggle with stuttering as a child.

Biden’s sister later observed, “The stutter at the time was horrible for him. But I think it was a great gift, because he did not let the stuttering define him.” This is the message that Biden shared with Brayden Harrington in Concord. More than a pep talk, Biden’s advice extended to examples of how he marked his speeches with pauses to prevent the stutter from interrupting him. He gave Brayden the text of a speech marked with his pauses to keep as a reference.

“And in a short amount of time, Joe Biden made me feel more confident about something that’s  bothered me my whole life. Joe Biden cared. Imagine what he could do for all of us,” Harrington said in his video-taped campaign speech. The young man’s confidence was displayed throughout his speech, as his struggles with the “s’ sound were retained in the recording. He never looked dismayed or frustrated with his stutter; he just overcame it and went on. That is the essence of learning: coping with frustration and trying again.

We can imagine the Democratic Presidential candidate facing off against stuttering as a boy. He even lapsed briefly into a stutter in a Democratic Primary debate in December. The former White House Press secretary ridiculed Biden on Twitter, but later took it down and apologized. But she reminds us of Trump’s ridiculing of a disabled person at a campaign appearance earlier that year.  Even adults enjoy victimizing people with handicaps, for whatever reason.

Biden told Harrington that he used to read Yeats out loud as a young man to help him overcome his stutter. I wondered which poems, and I thought of one entitled, “To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing.”  Apparently Yeats’ friend must have been competing with another dishonest rival, because he says,

Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors’ eyes;

In this poem of encouragement, Yeats portrays his friend as honest and willing to accept defeat, while his rival has no sense of decency to give credit to him.  The bravado of the rival is contrasted with the inner strength of Yeats’ friend in the final lines.

Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.
Yeats compares his friend to a stringed instrument vibrating with music in a cave or a stone temple, hidden from the public.  No one may hear his brave music, but he will know he has overcome the spirit of defeat and is poised to go on.

It is not hard to imagine a stutter as such a defeat and the quiet resolve to fight on as a “place of stone,” a hidden place where you must shape your character.  Yeats concedes that “of all things known,/ That is most difficult.”  I love that he rhymes “exult”with “difficult.”  It makes the emotional healing and resolve to go on more possible. I imagine Brayden Harrington as forming this resolve after meeting Joe Biden.

That was the endorsement we will all remember. You can say it was exploiting a child for a campaign or that there are others who struggle more with persecution, but it was an indelible memory.  It was a teen-ager showing his vulnerability to millions of others for a cause he believed in.  How many of us have such courage?

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Open Schools, Contributing Communities

Does the “re-opening” means school  mean “school as usual,” while “not opening” means parents are locked down in their homes? 

We have been trapped into thinking how much risk is acceptable for getting children out of the house all day.  We assume we can’t have student health and economic health, because the present hours of schooling make it impossible.  Parents want to be done with the responsibility of education, and teachers want their schedules to be as predictable are they were a year ago.

Nobody gets to avoid inconvenience, if we are to maximize both education and health for the coming school year. A good plan would inconvenience everyone, and make education a community responsibility, as ideally it would be.  It would ask for contributions of time, energy and money that would make everyone feel a little compromised, because they couldn’t live in a manner to which they have been accustomed. Yet, just as we have learned to appreciate the value of seclusion, along with its annoyances, we could find value in education being shared across the community. 

Here is a proposal for schooling for 2020-21, not an irrevocable plan for school reform.  Yet we could learn something about education in the coming school year, whether the plan is successful or not. For example:

Learning is more of a present-and-practice process, than a present-and-memorize process. This would not be startling to most educators, but to the general population learning has always seemed like an assimilation of facts to be regurgitated later. It makes standardized testing more significant than it really is. This proposal is based on an orientation-and-formative practice model of learning.

The logistical problem is social distancing and the need for supervised space for students when they are not in school. This proposal advocates split sessions with students in school everyday for half a day.  It takes advantage of likely vacant space and employable personnel during the gradual recovery of the economy for the next twelve months. According to the CDC guidelines, it is an educational environment with “more risk” than virtual classes and less risk than classes with no social distancing or limitation on numbers of students in the classroom. (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/schools.html?deliveryName=USCDC_2067-DM28938)

It seems safe to assume that there will be available space and employees for the next year, as the economy recovers.  The space is an urgent need, since the entire student body can not occupy their school at once. If we operate on split session, we need a place for kids to learn for the other half of the day, other than the home.

This proposal would establish “integral learning centers” outside of the schools for the 2-3 hours/ day students are not in school, because of split sessions. The split sessions would run roughly from 9-12 p.m. and 1-4 p.m. Two hours plus a lunch hour would be spent in independent learning centers around the community. For students in the morning classes at school, lunch would be served at school after classes.

An integral learning center would meet the following requirements:

  • at least 1,500 square feet of space that can be divided into two rooms  of 750 sq feet, with tables and chairs age appropriate for 30 students to use for independent learning (or whatever space is required for six-foot social distancing)
  • available restrooms for students only
  • bookshelves to contain 100 paperback age-appropriate books, both fiction and non-fiction
  • a part-time site supervisor, who will ensure the hygiene and order of these classrooms

The host for the integral learning center is responsible for the maintenance, not the learning in these spaces. The feeder schools will be responsible for the hiring of tutors, attendance/ lunch coordinators and the supply of wireless devices adequate for online learning.

Both the integral learning centers and the schools associated with them should follow the CDC guidelines for a safe learning environment: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/schools.html?deliveryName=USCDC_2067-DM28938

Schools will have to decide how to best use the critical three hours students are in their buildings.  Some obvious adaptations would be the integration of Math and Science along with integration of English and Social Studies, forming two 75-minute blocks of learning. Some common readings can make the disciplines connect.  Teachers will rely on work done at the Independent Learning Centers to move their curriculum at a reasonable pace. Project-based learning and e-classroom platforms can connect the school classroom with the Independent Learning site.

Not addressed here is the arts curriculum: music, visual arts and drama. These are essential to all levels (K-12) and should not be neglected. Arts can be integrated with core subjects, but individual instruction would have to be addressed at the proposed Integral learning centers. Could they include studios or practice rooms?  The logistics are daunting, but every effort should be made to support the arts, even in a skeletal curriculum. Some studio work could be done at the school from 4:30- 6:30 p.m., the same slot as inter-scholastic athletics.

Some contributions of federal and state government

  • funding for businesses/ public institutions making space and a site supervisor available for learning centers
  • funding for age-appropriate circulating libraries at each learning center
  • funding for extra bus drivers for transportation between schools and learning centers
  • joint funding with school districts for staffing of learning centers

Some contributions of local education:

  • students are taught in 3-hour shifts: 9-12 and 1-4
  • for teachers of grades 4-12, project based learning with daily targets, will be required
  • some method of communication with students’ off-campus tutors
  • each school would hire 2-3 tutors for each of 10-20 learning centers, and an attendance/lunch monitor to supervise students from 9 a.m – 12:00 p.m and  1- 4:00 p.m. They would receive competitive wages of $15-$20 hour. No tutor would carry a student load of more than 15. Tutors would receive mandatory training of at least five hours before taking full responsibilities. High school students could receive appropriate credit for tutoring younger students or those struggling academically.
  • provide Chromebooks or wireless learning devices for students without computer access at the learning center or at home.
  • hire more drivers and set up bus schedules for getting students to learning centers and back to school or home again.
  • many special education students may have to remain in resource rooms for much of the school day; integration with mainstream population would be a school-based decision; community visitors could enhance learning and experience.
  • physical education would be a school-based decision, possibly incorporated with lunch hour.
  • inter-scholastic athletics (assuming they exist) practice would run from 4:30 – 6:30 p.m 

Some contributions for parents

  • students will only be in school or learning centers from 9-4
  • students may still need help at home with assignments
  • students will have to keep strict bus schedules

Some contributions from the community

  • businesses and public institutions (e.g. libraries, senior education centers, recreation centers) would allocate about 1,500 sq feet for two learning centers each with 15 students/ center. Some compensation for the space and an onsite supervisor would be funded externally, along with an onsite library of 100 age-appropriate books, which could be integrated or supplemental to student learning. The amount of space would have to be consistent with social distancing.
  • tutors/ monitors could be hired from the semi-employed population of high school, college students, retired seniors and other part-time workers.

There are  dozens of ways a program like this could fail. It depends heavily on seamless collaboration between schools, transportation systems, integral learning centers, and the community at large to keep students safe within a dynamic system. Of course, schools and communities could make less risky adaptations, but these are proposed for maximum coverage of time spent out of school. 

If parents have learned anything in the past three months, it is that education can be a lonely, exhausting job. There is no safe way to re-open schools in the fall without full collaboration of community members: parents, site supervisors, teachers, tutors, bus drivers, etc. Nothing proposed here is for free, but the attention to,  and support for, student learning goes beyond hourly wage. It involves noticing and a willingness to help a child adjust to a new learning environment. Intangibles such as caring can not be built into any proposal, but they are indispensable to its success.

We can have re-opening of both schools and economy, if we can all  assume our share of responsibility for education. This proposal calls on the willingness  of citizens to step up to the challenge.

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Dragons and Hoops

Gene Luen Yang pushes the genre envelope with this graphic memoir of basketball, history, biography, school legacy, and reflection. He draws in the super-hero tradition of Marvel comics, sketching intense inter-actions with Pa-pa, Slam! Wap! Swish! Steal!   He follows his own high school’s basketball team over several years, even coaching generations. He creates biographical sketches of young stars, for some a trajectory to the National Basketball Association, and he educates his readers on topics ranging from the origins of men’s and women’s basketball to the principles of the Sikh religion.

Perhaps most interesting of all is how he negotiates the roles of Teaching, Comics and Family as he is drawn into a sport that evoked failure for him from his earliest forays.  More than anything, the saga of Bishop O’Dowd High School’s basketball team lured him into interviewing the coach and the players, because of the remarkable tradition he found over his years teaching mathematics there.  The story becomes an increasing part of the “comics” quadrant of his time as the drama unfolds (see below).

Like Yang’s previous epic Boxers and Saints the generational story of Bishop O’Dowd’s High School basketball team addresses large themes of self-discipline, family loyalty, inter-racial conflict, religious prejudice, gender discrimination among others. Some chapters are baldly socio-historical, such his fascinating analysis of the rules of early Women’s Basketball. Yang points out how the the tripartite division of the court and rules excluding dribbling and stealing, preserved the traditional view of women: “avoids ugly muscles,” avoids scowling faces,” “avoids competitive spirits,” and “they’ll still be able to attract the most worthy fathers for their children” (174).
With the same instructional goals, Yang gives his readers an illustrated history of men’s basketball, the origins of basketball in Catholic high schools, the Sikh-Hindu conflict that turned the Sikhs against Mahatma Gandhi, and the decades-long development of basketball in China.
None of this seems incidental to the epic of Bishop O’Dowd’s pursuit of the State High School Basketball Championship. Yang interviews Coach Llewellyn Blackmon Richie throughout the narrative, showing his dedication to his players and to scholastic basketball. Richie played basketball for the same high school under their legendary coach Mike Phelps. Later he tells Yang stories of his best young ball players when he was coach.  Jeevin Sandhu (Punjabi Sikh), Qianjun “Alex” Zhao (Chinese), and Austin Walker (African American) are later featured to show the diversity and character of the 2015 team.
The final chapter tells of the march of the team to the California State Championship against the Mater Dei Monarchs, a powerhouse going for its fifth straight championship. Yang makes both the individual and team performance critical to the exciting outcome in overtime.
Although Dragon Hoops will totally absorb the basketball junkies among men and women, it carries strong themes of his previous graphic novel American-Born Chinese to engage many other readers of adolescent fiction.  It is the first graphic narrative I have seen with extensive notes in the Appendix, documenting sources of both information and drawings, including those of popular culture, school yearbooks, and his own experiences.  The chapter-by-chapter bibliography completes the strong impression of a graphic documentary of a period of scholastic basketball.

Dragon Hoops, Gene Luen Yang,  New York: First Second, Roaring Brook Press, 2020

 

 

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Disarm Your Language!

Whereas slurs and insults have already been declared offensive language,

While rhetorical war continues to rage in the halls of Congress, on the platforms of social media, in religious denominations and institutions of higher education, and across our dinner tables.

And labeling language remains accessible to all and avoided by few and

Whereas a high season of labeling looms (an impeachment trial, a Presidential campaign) ,

Therefore we propose to curtail labeling as a weapon against partisans.

We challenge partisans to lay down weapons of language such as, but not limited to, the following:

words containing “ism” and “ist” for example: racist   sexist  globalist  classist  elitist socialist  fascist  communist  

words beginning with “anti” and “pro” alleging bias, for example:  anti-police  anti-intellectual

anti-military  anti-God  anti-gay  anti-immigrant  anti-American  anti-science  pro-death   

words containing “phobia,” for example: homophobia  xenophobia  technophobia

words alleging polar positions, for example: race war/ race card   class war   politically correct unpatriotic  radical  totalitarian  

[Feel free to add your own labels]

And finally, we declare zero tolerance for those that disregard this standard of decent language.

Speakers and writers armed with labeling language are a threat to civil life.  “That comment was racist!”  “His court decisions are anti-God.”  “Your opinions instigate race war.” “That proposal is anti-immigrant!” Such comments incense our feelings more than our minds.

Labeling is a word bomb. It plants a name on an individual and sets off all the negative associations we link to that name. Instead of understanding the individual, we are distracted by the shrapnel from the bomb, the connotations of a word like “unpatriotic.”

Let’s stop the nonsense. Take a lesson from the infamous labeler Senator Joe McCarthy, who aroused terror in a free society in the 1950’s with the incendiary label “communist.”  Today we regularly ignite our discourse communities with inflammatory labels.  It has become more convenient to declare  “–ism” or “–ist” or “–phobia” than to describe the behavior we object to.  Trivializing and efficiency override reflection and explanation.

We know when a civil argument is about to leave the rails; the discharge of labels is one such occasion–a reckless acceleration that antagonists take personally. It is shorthand for claims without evidence, for headlines without the backstory, for tweet without elaboration.  It is ideal for the sound bites, not civil discourse. Disarming our rhetoric can moderate brusqueness in order to pay attention and  be attended to.

Every “ism” and “anti” has a story behind it, which we often dismiss with a single word.  Was it “racism” that caused a police officer to shoot a woman in her home in Fort Worth last week or was that the “anti-police” bias in the reporting of the press? When a university bans a speaker because of his or her message is it “anti-intellectual,” violating free speech, or “No-platforming” excluding noxious discourse on campus (https://aeon.co/ideas/is-it-legitimate-to-ban-speakers-from-college-campuses)? The clues are in the backstory.

Most prefixed and suffixed labels are weaponized, designed to put targets on people.  It defames character, only to be answered by counter-defamation or defensiveness. In neither case can meaningful dialogue ensue, only punches and counter-punches.

At the very least, we should describe behavior instead of labeling.  Instead of calling a politician “anti-gay” refer to him as the opponent of civil rights legislation to protect LGTB individuals from housing discrimination.  That is the kind of evidence that holds up under scrutiny.  Yes, it takes more words, and the words lack punch, but that is the point. Words should be used to describe rather than punch.

And what if we own our labels? A certain majority of women want to be known as “feminists,” and yet the label can be used to construe all kinds of behavior demeaning to men, for example claiming men can not be victims of sexual harassment.  Then it becomes a weapon. It is safe to own your labels, but unsafe to be labelled. Likewise many of us are happy to be politically correct, but an increasing number may consider it a kind of shaming that traps us in our casual use of language.  We may be politically correct, but we don’t want that label to be used against us.  Therefore, labeling could be permitted if it is self-labeling.

“To understand everything is to forgive everything” (Madame de Stael, 1766-1817), often paraphrased as “To know all is to forgive all.” Understanding nurtures patience and patience, understanding.  If we take the time to tell the story or explain the behavior, and our opposition summons the patience to listen, we have the makings of dialogue.  Forgiveness is found in the details.   Forgiveness does not guarantee we will agree, but we might accept the good will of the other. We  make a treaty, we go on.

Citizens, lay down your labels!  It is a little less satisfying to reply “Can you give an example?” than to shout “elitist,” but it may open possibilities that would otherwise be closed. It takes more patience to listen to the back story than to brand a writer as “politically correct.” We appeal for zero-tolerance on name-callers. And we appeal for patience, not accusations.  Accept no labels! Throw down your weaponized language!  Listen to your opponents!

You might actually learn something.

Unofficial Committee for Language Disarmament

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Pity the Nation

      I remember a biblical quotation at the top of the editorial page of Newsday when I was in junior high school: “Where there is no vision, the people perish”  (Proverbs 29:18). As a young, professing Christian it was both remarkable and exciting to me to see the biblical juxtaposed with the contemporary. The voice of the prophet had found a niche in journalism.

     I refer to the prophet who speaks truth to power, who invokes standards of judgment higher than what society has deemed “norms.” This is not the Nostradamus kind of prophet or the Greek oracles with their dire predictions.  The Old Testament prophet who warned kings and the elite of Jerusalem is different from the messianic visionaries. The traditional prophet foresaw the seeds of downfall in the moral decay of society. The theologian Walter Bruggemann says, “The prophets are imaginers, not predictors or social activists” ( Embracing the Prophets in Contemporary Culture, 2011)
     In times of physical, verbal, and social discord the voices of the prophets are still invoked to gain a perspective when moral bearings are slipping. The prophet Isaiah and his contemporaries have become especially relevant in an era of “spin,” when losses are turned into victories and “threats” are turned into “favors.” How well Isaiah understood human nature when he foreshadowed our spin-masters.
Ah you who call evil good and good evil,
Who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
Who put bitter for sweet and sweet bitter! (5:20)
     It was clear when Donald Trump asked President Zelenskiy for “a favor” that the request was a threat. The withholding of $400 million in arms was audibly juxtaposed with the “favor.”  The transcript implicitly reveals this, but Donald Trump insists it was all in the name of cleaning up Ukrainian politics.  The weapons were withheld for another five weeks while Mr. Trump waited for his “favor.”  The funds were released in September after the Democrats threatened to withhold the entire Pentagon funding of more than $5 billion dollars until Ukraine received its arms. Clearly the “favor” Trump requested had the kind of force implied when the mafia don asks for “a favor” from trembling victims.

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      This past week was not the first time I have seen Lawrence Ferlinghetti cited as a prophet for our times and certainly not the first time on Facebook. Once he  seemed radical to me,  espousing “democratic socialism.” But this morning he seemed to be paraphrasing the Old Testament prophets in “Pity the Nation” (2017) when he said, “people are sheep/ shepherds mislead them [Ezekial 34:8] . . .sages are silenced [Jeremiah 38:4-6] . . . whose breath is money [Micah 3:11]. . . the sleep of the too well fed [Amos 6:4] . . . My country tears of thee [Hosea 4:3]” These phrases are the backbone of his poem, which comments on the USA in 2017.
      Have we finally become this nation to be pitied? Is Ferlinghetti one of our contemporary prophets? Are we ignoring such voices at our peril?
      We may have thought that the ideals of the nation-embodied in the Bill of Rights and conforming international treaties– could shape and restrain our leaders, but the opposite has happened.  We have been formed in the image of our President. We have become more tribal, more suspicious, more divisive than we have been since the Vietnam Era. Even church leaders have despaired of democratic processes that have held our country together since 1776 and are ready to throw the gauntlet down with little provocation.  Reverend Robert Jeffress foreshadowed “civil war” over the invoking of a Constitutional procedure (impeachment), betraying his remorseless antagonism for his political opponents. The “Evangelical” churches have become pitted adversaries in their own community, depending on their political orientation.
       This take-it-or-leave-it discourse has come from the leadership of Donald Trump, for whom every criticism of decisions or policies is disloyalty or treason.  He punishes disloyalty (criticism) ruthlessly and charges treason against those he can not punish. He has led us to the abandonment of civil discourse. “Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own.”
       Encompassing this breakdown of civility is the distortion of language, so that words no longer mean what they are denoted to be.  Words like “favor” substituted for “threat” or “extortion.”
        As newspaper columnists proclaimed and echoed this week (October 7-11), the President operates on no principle, but what is good for himself (Dana Millbank Tuesday, Washington Post, Michael Gerson, Wednesday,Washington Post October 8-9, 2019) . On Tuesday, October 9, Jonah Goldberg, National Review: “There’s no halfway defensible ideological, intellectual or moral standard that Trump doesn’t violate, often routinely.”  The search for an ideology or governing principle of this administration has continued in vain, for Trump’s Twitter-feed merely offers the most self-aggrandizing comments of the moment.
         The ultimate control lies in the manipulation of language, such as “middle class tax cuts,” which primarily benefit the wealthy or the pursuit of “freedom,” which allow industrial polluters the license to foul the air and water. When newspapers expose such lies, they are blamed for “fake news.”  Thus the “vision” proclaimed by the news media is dismissed by the language of victimhood, fogging the truth.
    George Orwell was a modern prophet in the realm of language manipulation.  In 1984 he imagined the world of  “doublespeak,” where language could be perverted to mean what the Party wanted it to mean. The slogans of the Party were:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
(Orwell Reader, 398)
     When I read this classic in high school I remember thinking how warped the thinking of  (protagonist) Winston’s contemporaries must have been to believe such lies. In the 1960’s the practice of “spin” was less noticed.  Today we can see Orwell as a prophet who recognized how language could be abused for a political agenda. And in the last three years, we have seen how language can be abused for a personal agenda–to turn light into darkness on Twitter to cast a spell on your followers and anyone else who will disconnect their critical faculties and believe.
     We must not dismiss the words of the prophets as “fake news” or “socialist” or even “sexist” or “racist,” when they question our accepted ways of thinking. They may be our only way out of the murky discourse that surrounds us. We are victims of our own comfortable ways of  speaking.  We can trace this plight back 2500 years to Isaiah, the best known of our prophets:
Ah you who call evil good and good evil,
Who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
Who put bitter for sweet and sweet bitter! (5:20)

AMERICAN POET, LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI (B. 1919

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Hag-Seed: Profile of the Incarcerated

 

Attending a season of plays by the Prison Performing Arts Program in Missouri, I have witnessed the achievements of incarcerated adults in the performance of classical theater with individual flair.  I have seen versions of Macbeth, Pride and Prejudice, and Animal Farm performed in the spirit of hope and recovery.  I have listened to the personal stories of the performers, how they have embraced collaboration by learning to trust their fellow inmates in a common effort. I have heard their guileless tales of redemption.

A similar narrative is told by Margaret Atwood in her novel Hag-Seed set in a fictional prison in contemporary Canada. Felix Phillips, a has-been director,  has swallowed pride enough to direct the incarcerated and teach a class in drama. Considering a Shakespearian play to perform within the walls of a prison invites some traditional choices: the lessons of ambition in  MacBeth, the quality of mercy in The Merchant of Venice,  or the comedy of amateurs in performance of Midsummer’s Night’s Dream.

Not so much The Tempest. In the play, a shrewd magician named Prospero plans revenge on his enemies, who abandoned him on an island.  The ultimate prisoner of Prospero’s island is Caliban, often referred to as “the monster” or “hag-seed” (alluding to his mother, the witch  Sycorax). The element of revenge and the character of the detestable prisoner would not reinforce the theme of redemption you would hope for in a prison performance.

Rarely has a Shakespearian character been imagined with more distaste than the imprisoned figure of Caliban. Inmates would certainly not identify with him. Or would they? In Atwood’s novel, the monster is improbably redeemed. Not so much in the performance of the play, but in the imagined post-mortem, where each acting team gets to imagine how their assigned character emerged following the final curtain.

After his class’s final video-taping of The Tempest, Felix breaks the actors into teams and charges them with imagining the fate of their assigned characters.  The leader of Team Hag-Seed, Leggs, summarizes his group’s conclusions following their production.

Hag-Seed, I mean Caliban–nobody’s on his team. Even his so-called friends and allies, those two drunk assholes–they’re not loyal to him, they make fun of him and call him names, they’re out to make a buck off him. So inside the play, he don’t have a team.” [ Hag-Seed 270]

Leggs and his team propose three possible fates for Caliban, the first two predictable for those who only see the monster in Caliban. “But that was too dark for us,” says Leggs. His team speaks hopefully for redemption.

Why should the others in this play get a second chance at life, but not him? Why’s he have to suffer so much for being what he is? If like he’s you know, black or Native or something. Five strikes against him from Day One. He never asked to be born. [272]

So Leggs spins a tale of redemption for Caliban, something that could only come out of a culture of punishment  and struggle for rehabilitation. He invents a scenario in which the master sorcerer Prospero is actually the father to Caliban, but does not acknowledge him.  Instead he apprentices Caliban in culture and sorcery, but he has to imprison him when he tries to take advantage of Prospero’s daughter, Miranda.

But every prisoner has his own version of a his crime, so Leggs says,

but whose fault was it anyway, letting Miranda prance around in full view?  Prospero should’a seen it coming. Should’a locked her up, if it was that important. Prospero should eat some of the blame for that number.[273]

This is perhaps a strong measure of rationalization in Leggs’ version, Even the master magician Prospero has things to learn in a Shakespearian comedy.  Team Caliban quotes Shakespeare’s own dialogue in support of Caliban’s redemption:

But, by the end, Prospero’s learning that maybe not everything is someone else’s fault. Plus he sees that the bad in Caliban is pretty much the same as the bad in him. So he owns up: “This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.” That’s what he says and that’s what he means. [274]

Literary critics have hung their interpretations on less textual support than this inference that Prospero is the actual father of Caliban so Felix, director and instructor,  accepts the interpretation.  Later, continues Leggs, Prospero will set up Caliban as a musician in Milan, and the converted monster will make his fame in a musical group called “Hag-Seed and the Things of Darkness.”

The post-mortems of The Tempest in  Hag-Seed prove that the Bard has much to teach 21st Century inmates and, moreover, embittered directors with an ax to grind against treacherous rivals. The actors, as well as Felix, gain some enlightenment about their predicament, and one  of them even gets a shortened sentence on Felix’s recommendation.

Atwood’s novel is a tribute to the rehabilitative potential of theater.  The “hag-seed” becomes the celebrated musician, and the director is restored to his embezzled position in the summer theater.  The inmate actors not only have acquired employable skills, they have the bravado of free men, which they render in a song they composed for Felix:

Freedom, high-day, High-day freedom! Freedom, high-day freedom!

Get outta my cage, now I’m in a rage–

No more dams I make for fish, Nor fetch in firing

At requiring.

As Leggs’ extra-credit song continues, we recognize this is not just about Caliban, but about the “returning citizens,” many of whom enter society with a chip on their shoulders.  They have paid their debt, and they want to be accepted as equals by the free society. Their personal dignity has been restored by their theatrical achievement.

Nor scrape trenchering, nor wash dish;

Ain’t gonna any more like your feet

Or walk behind you on the street,

Ain’t gonna get on the back of the bus,

And you can give our land right back to us! (277-78]

It reminds me of the outcomes of Prison Performing Arts.  One is the rehabilitation of the incarcerated, the other the rehabilitation of the audience.  We are also better citizens for having witnessed their achievements.  If we accept Shakespeare’s claim that, “All the world’s a stage,” these performers are prepared for a world that has also been prepared for them.  We can welcome the company of returning citizens to the stage of free people.

 

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First Impressions

First Impressions

What impressions could I expect

Of two dozen incarcerated women

Impersonating British gentlemen and ladies?

Most never laid eyes on Pride and Prejudice

Until they were handed the cumbersome dialect,

Adapted for the stage.

Some admitting they could not finish the book,

Several preferring the zombie-enhanced movie,

They collapsed the courtships of the Bennets,

Laced with their frank impressions,

Into ninety minutes.

Jane Austen would have been charmed.

The inmate-dramatist  Oscar Wilde

Would have roared his pleasure.

For me, pride and pathos overflowed,

So amazed at the clarity and pace of the dialogue,

So delighted by the futile match-making of adults,

By the meaningful Bennet-glances

To ward off clueless suitors,

Other sisters charging into matrimony.

The actors made me proud

As if they had been my students.

And how do I explain the pathos

That squeezed tears from me

Over a comedy of manners?

Because

I could not forget where I was

Who these dauntless women were

How much confronted and overcome,

How much risked and renounced

To deliver a two hundred-year old drawing room comedy

With spirited excess.

Two dozen stories, within this story,

Grabbing at my heart.

 

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Much Ado About Nothing

The pre-performance lecture by Felicia Harrison Londre at the Heart of America Shakespeare Festival’s rendition of Much Ado About Nothing raised the question of how to view the drama, as comedy or tragedy. The hilarity of the acting seemed to answer “comedy,” but did Shakespeare believe it was all “about nothing” or might he be asking how human nature could turn it into “something.”

We were were thoroughly entertained by the broad comedy of the Sunday night performance (Kcshakes.org, June 24, 2018).  The roles of the mocking rivals, Benedick and Beatrice, were performed with gusto, and Dogberry and the night watchmen were worthy of the Keystone Cops and the Three Stooges.  Shakespeare was never so fresh and modern on the fickleness of love.

If there is a message in a comedy “About Nothing,” it is how fragile human love can be. Both the comedy and pathos thrive on the sudden changes of emotion in the characters. Claudio returns from war with a fierce longing for Hero. Benedick and Beatrice  maintain a suspicious taunting relationship that implies that love could be beneath the surface. Leonato dotes on his only daughter, Hero, delighted to see her engaged to Claudio. The cameraderie of  Don Pedro and his officers expresses the strongest manly affection.  Don Pedro even undertakes the challenge of bringing together the intractable rivals, Benedick and Beatrice, by friendly conspiracy with his officers and Leonato.

Soon after the play resumes from its intermission, Claudio has been poisoned with the suspicion of Hero’s infidelity, Leonato has turned viciously against  his daughter Hero on the same suspicions, Benedick has turned against his best friend Claudio to defend Hero’s honor, and Don Pedro has been alienated from Claudio by Hero’s vengeful father (Leonato).  The middle acts of the play threaten tragic outcomes, because of a diabolical plot to shame Hero and bring havoc on the brotherly affection of the soldiers.

The “About Nothing” of the story suggests how emotions can be turned on mere suspicions and outright falsehoods. You only have to recall Othello to note that suspicion and falsehood are not always exposed in time to avert tragedy. The main difference between the eternal villain Iago and the frustrated misanthrope Don John (the perpetrator in Much Ado) is that one successfully executes his conspiracy against Othello, and the other is caught by a comic device, the goofy night watchmen and their inarticulate captain, Dogberry. The likelihood of such devious plotting being caught by the 17th century Keystone Cops is faint. They are as probable as Inspector Clouseau capturing a brilliant jewel thief.

If we want to view Much Ado About Nothing as a cautionary almost-tragedy, we can recognize the fickleness and vulnerability of love, the romantic, the parental, and the filial. It can all collapse in a lie that easily undermines trust and turns devotion into scorn.  Analyzing too closely we see that no one questions the evidence that contradicts all their previous experience with their lover, their daughter, their comrades. That’s why it becomes funny when the sinister plot unravels, because everyone sees how easily they have been duped. That’s what makes good comedy.

But if we take the lecturer’s question seriously and see the tragic possibilities of the play, we learn that fickle love is illusionary love.  Essential love is not fragile or easily disillusioned. Othello’s jealousy is based on his inability to evaluate the reports he hears of Desdemona’s infidelity (in Othello). Claudio’s youthful insecurity makes him susceptible to the lie of the unlikely betrayal of Hero, who worships him. Benedick’s sudden infatuation with Beatrice makes him turn on his dear friend Claudio to please her. None of these characters challenge the illusion of infidelity, because they can not confront, and give a hearing to, the victims of these lies. How susceptible are we to false information and sinister plots against fidelity?

“Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy!
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.”(Othello, III, iii, 170-72)
Iago, the most subtle of all villains, warns Othello that he will be consumed by jealousy if he allows it.  Surely this is what almost happens in Much Ado About Nothing as Claudio, Leonato and even Benedick easily read betrayal into illusions, because they do not trust the ones they love.  How much domestic abuse is based on this lack of trust? How many broken relationships are never reconciled for lack of trust? How often are families permanently separated for lack of trust? How much ado is really about nothing?
Certainly Shakespeare went for the laughs in Much Ado About Nothing, but we know he understood  the pathos of misunderstanding as well, much more obviously in Othello. Although the Bard might have hoped after a few belly laughs about his comedy, we still reflect on the thin line separating it from tragedy: about “the Nothing” that leads to broken relationships.

 

 

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Unless we become as rogues . . .

When we read the parables of the Kingdom of Heaven in the Gospels, they are always feasting and partying, rather than standing in solemn choirs. In one parable when some of the invited guests do not show up, the master broadens the invitation:

…22 ‘Sir,’ the servant replied, ‘what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’ 23 So the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the highways and the hedges and compel them to come in, so that my house will be full. 24For I tell you, not one of those men who were invited will taste my banquet.’”…(Luke 14:23)

These guests are probably not the Main Street Christians, but probably the rowdies of the community. You wonder if Emily Dickinson could be one of those romping outside the doors who get the second invitation.

Emily Dickinson apparently hung outside the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven, considering, but never ready to go in. Kristin LeMay quotes these obscure verses from the Dickinson manuscripts.

The Bobolink is gone–the Rowdy of the Meadow–

And no one swaggers now but me–

The Presbyterian Birds can now resume the Meeting

He gaily interrupts that overflowing Day

When opening the Sabbath in their afflictive Way

He bowed to Heaven instead of Earth

And shouted Let us pray–

In the chapter featuring this poem LeMay portrays Emily as critical of the austerity of the sermon, the pulpit, the overdressed congregants and swiping at their solemnity with her ironic commentary.

The pulpit was so high the minister was obliged to infer the effect of his sermon from the tops of the heads and bonnets before him (237).

But others, Dickinson’s niece for example, suggested it was more a sense of the absurd rather than deliberate sacrilege that motivated Emily.

“although Emily took liberties with the Puritan vernacular and dogma . . . these impish flashes were no more to the underlying God-consciousness of the real Emily than the gargoyle on the roof is to the heart of the cathedral within” ( 229).

Interesting analogy: Emily as gargoyle hanging off the side of the cathedral. The gargoyle is a functional appendage to a church, unlike the ornamental lines that glorify God:

In architecture, a gargoyle (/ˈɡɑːrɡɔɪl/) is a carved or formed grotesque[1] with a spout designed to convey water from a roof and away from the side of a building, thereby preventing rainwater from running down masonry walls and eroding the mortar between.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gargoyle

In the same sense that the church is protected from the effects of moisture by the gargoyle, so its sacraments are protected by the grotesque, fearful and even comic representations of these water ducts. We might say the gargoyle not only protects the building from internal damage, but also protects it from taking itself too seriously, mocking the Presbyterian birds for their grave conduct of church business.  Hence the bobloinks’s “shouted”  “let us pray,” instead of intoning “in their afflictive Way.” Of interest are the alternative verbs to “shouted” Emily scribbled in the margins of her manuscript: “bubbled” and “gurgled” (LeMay 231).  A range of emotions for prayer runs between “gurgled” and “shouted.”  They suggest the emotions she might have felt in private prayer as distinguished from the “afflictive Way” she found within the church’s walls.

Presumably Emily abandoned the church, because her swaggering self was unwelcome. She could not play the bobolink among the Presbyterians, so she retired to the sanctuary of her second story bedroom.  Should rogues like her be allowed in the kingdom of heaven? Does Emily fit the pattern of those roaming the highways and hedges? How often have we conducted such rogues out the door, as the gargoyle conducts rainwater into the streets?

“Unless we become as Rogues, we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven,” Emily was quoted to say.  Could rogues like her be the ones in the highways and byways compelled to fill the seats of God’s banquet?

 

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