This
is again a little bit of a break from politics, exploring instead poetry and
philosophy, and weaving it all back into the fabric of current events.
July turned out to be a tale of two
towns, and their poets and philosophers.
First, Concord celebrated the 200th
birthday of Henry David Thoreau, with cake and speeches at his birthplace,
Thoreau Farm, on July 12th, and many other events at various locations
over the course of the month. There were literally bus-loads of Thoreau-vians
who converged on Concord in July.
The only event I made it to was the
birthday celebration at his birthplace, Thoreau Farm. (Did I mention there was
going to be cake?) The US Postal Service also unveiled a commemorative stamp in
his honor, and historian, Richard Smith, who portrays HDT at Walden Pond was also in
attendance.
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| Cake - need I say more? |
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| Historian Richard Smith, as Henry David Thoreau. |
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| The room where Henry David Thoreau was born. |
His most famous works – Walden and Civil Disobedience – strike me as all the more relevant now, 200
years later. I will have to add them to my summer reading list. Some quotes
from his essays on Civil Disobedience apply
equally well to modern times. Here’s an example of one I grabbed off www.goodreads.com that spoke to me, but check it out
for yourself.
“I
wish my countrymen to consider, that whatever the human law may be, neither an
individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice against the
obscurest individual, without having to pay the penalty for it. A government
which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length ever
become the laughing-stock of the world.”
Yes, you can see that this led my
thoughts back to President Trump, and his fixation with repealing the
Affordable Care Act, building a border wall, suddenly trying to ban transgender
people from serving in the military (via a tweet). His staff in the Department
of Justice have filed a brief arguing that LGBT employees are not protected by
the Civil Rights Act, reversing the Obama era decision that covered sexual
orientation.
Yes, when he needs to rally his core
38% fan base (or is it 33% now?), all he has to do is take a few low blows at
their easiest targets. Bullying is on the rise, is it any wonder? The license
to hate has been unleashed and empowered, as evidenced by the Alt-Right/KKK
rally in Charlottesville, Virginia Saturday, August 12th. It reminded me of something Idgie Threadgoode said in the movie, Fried
Green Tomatoes:
“When they go marchin’ in those stupid
parades, how come they don’t have sense to change their shoes?"
The hoods are off. Unashamed, they
parade their hatred. American democracy has reached a new low. It’s
heartbreaking. Meanwhile, the saber rattling continues between Trump and North
Korea, and the Russian web of collusion continues to spin. These are difficult
times, and so I am reminded again of the quote by Polish poet, Leopold Staff,
when he was living in the Warsaw Ghetto, another time when hate was unleashed:
“Even more than bread, we now need
poetry, in a time when it seems that it is not needed at all.”
~Leopold Staff
Sometimes we need both bread &
poetry!
Here’s a really nice article by Anne
O’Connor that gives the full back story on how this event came to be.
If you build it, they will come, and
come they did. The show sold out, and 16 poets signed up to read their verse to
a full house. But not to be slammed. While there was a three-person panel of
jurors, headed up by poet and Professor Doug Holder, scoring was done silently
and the winners announced at the end of the night. It was a far more humane way
to expose one’s heart on one’s sleeve, with no fear of harsh judgment or
comparative scoring. The organizers had succeeded in creating the perfect
environment for everyone to just sit back and appreciate the shared humanity,
in a safe, comfortable, encouraging setting.
One of the greatest books about
writing is by Brenda Ueland, titled If
You Want to Write. Published in 1938, it still rings just as true today. A
couple of quotes from Brenda:
“Everybody
is talented, original and has something important to say.”
“For when you come to think of it, the
only way to love a person is not, as the stereotyped Christian notion is, to
coddle them and bring them soup when they are sick, but by listening to them
and seeing and believing in the god, in the poet, in them. For by doing this,
you keep the god and poet alive and make it flourish.”
Into such a warm and welcoming
environment, after dinner and a welcome from Alison Tocci, an introduction and
reading by Doug Holder, came the first poet, called up to the stage to read.
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| Kristie Connolly (L) |
 |
| Alison Tocci, Bull Run Inn Keeper |
 |
| Poet, Professor Doug Holder |
The poets were women and men, students, housewives, everyday people, young and old, ranging in age from not-yet-eighteen to over eighty. And each one had a part of their soul to share, just five minutes, but pure essence, fire from their heart, observations on everything, death, beauty, hope, light, darkness, regret, capturing just a moment, like a fly in amber, or a crystal inside a geode. Each poet was a surprise. It was like Christmas morning, each poem getting unwrapped by a nervous elf standing at the microphone, notebook in hand, voice sometimes quivering, and sometimes bold, thundering loud, vibrating right off the rafters, just about knocking me off my chair.
There was the teenager’s poem about
people’s inability to unplug and connect, the hair stylist who saw the glimpse
of something special in one of her clients, and perhaps my favorite, the apple
orchard worker, reflecting on the death of a friend, and sharing his
appreciation for the pure beauty of the orchards in spring.
It was like sitting back with a bag of
Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Jelly Beans. Just looking at the exterior, no way
to know what would be inside, each one a sacred mystery, a god and poet, a
burst of unexpected flavors, unfolding and exploding, like a firework, lighting
up the night sky, giving some light within the darkness.
Bravo!
Get your tickets now – the next poetry
night at the Bull Run is Saturday, October 7th!
Post-Script
Also in July was the Favorite Poem Project’s Summer Poetry Institute in Boston, started by Boston University Professor Robert Pinsky (Wickersham, 2017), bringing K-12 teachers together to explore how to better inspire students’ appreciation for poetry. Professor Pinsky was quoted as saying, “You don’t have to understand everything, if you’re having a good time.”
The difference is that the Favorite
Poem Project is about reading poems written by others, and not original works,
which in a way, by focusing on the work of others, denies or at least downplays
the possibility that we, too, might be poets, and instead implies that poetry
is written only by special people. Or, maybe they were just sidestepping any
copyright issues.
I like to go back to Brenda Ueland’s
quote instead:
“Everybody
is talented, original and has something important to say.”
See and believe in the god and poet in
one another!
Later in July, we dropped by Thoreau
Farm for a little tour. In the backyard, they have added a replica of his cabin
in the woods. It looks like something you could pick up at the Home Depot
garden center. Our tour guide tells us, while Henry David Thoreau has been
characterized as a loner, he was really far more social than we give him
credit. In his cabin, he had three chairs: one for solitude, one for
friendship, and one for society.
 |
| Three chairs at a friend's house (not Thoreau's cabin). |
1.
The
real problem is the society that President Trump reflects.
2.
All
the chaos is a dangerous distraction.
And now we are witnessing day-to-day
brinksmanship, and serious discussion about the potential for nuclear war. I
thought all of this had been put to rest years ago in the movie War Games. Maybe some folks missed the
show. We need to all get along.
In a certain twist of irony, the Bull
Run sits in Shirley, a town abandoned by the closure of Fort Devens, which
originally opened one hundred years ago in 1917, as Camp Devens for training
soldiers before they were sent off to fight in World War I. One hundred years
of fighting wars, and what have we learned?
Songs
For The Day:
“Budapest” by George Ezra:
https://youtu.be/Cy0pwZnQlyM
Or maybe you’ll like this version
better:
https://youtu.be/VHrLPs3_1Fs
“It’s the End of the World,” by
R.E.M.:
https://youtu.be/Z0GFRcFm-aY
“Closer to Love,” by Mat Kearney:
https://youtu.be/h0CzCQFKORM
“We’re all one phone call from our
knees.”
Indigo Girls: “Prince of Darkness.”
https://youtu.be/fY9-98tkfvg
“My place is of the sun and this place
is of the dark…”
“Someone’s got his finger on the button
in some room…”
Mark
your calendars:
·
October
7, 2017: Poetry night at the Bull Run in Shirley, MA. Please be sure to reserve
your ticket, and e-mail the organizers if you’d like to read your poetry. Guest
speaker will be Emily Pineau. Again, it is not a slam, but instead a simple
sharing of humanity.
“Even more than bread, we now need poetry, in
a time when it seems that it is not needed at all.”
~Leopold Staff
Sometimes we
need both poetry & bread!
·
October
14, 2017: Walk For Education, United Negro College Fund (UNCF) http://give.uncf.org/site/TR?fr_id=2492&pg=entry
For further
reflection on the concept of “opportunity inequality,” please visit my past blogs
on Business and Baseball, the Diversity Question, Katrina, and Immigrants:
Business
& Baseball: A Conversation with Jack Welch and John Henry, Moderated by
Brian McGrory
Business
& Baseball - Part 2: The Diversity Question
For more
on opportunity inequality – Katrina: Ten Years Gone
We Are
All Immigrants
Coming
Next:
I might put all the radio show links
together, in sequence, in a future post, so that readers/listeners can find
them a little more easily and listen to the shows in order. Together, the six radio
shows document this highly unusual time in our country’s history.
As always, comments and suggestions
are welcome!
About
WBCA-LP 102.9 FM Boston & Schmidt Happens:
WBCA is a community radio station
sponsored by the Boston Neighborhood Network, and is on the air from 6 PM to 2
AM each night. Jumana Hashim is a current member of Beantown Women’s Rugby
Club, while Rosemary, aka Rosebud, Schmidt has been retired a few years.
We are taking a little break from the
radio show over the summer, but we plan to be back on the air soon. I’ll continue
to post blogs as topics come up. Maybe we’ll even talk about something other
than politics this fall, such as matters pertaining to public health: health
insurance and the Affordable Health Care Act, concussions, stress, water
quality, antibiotics, the microbiome, nutritional supplements, and diet.
References
Anderson, Leslie. 2017. Concord
prepares to celebrate Thoreau’s 200th Birthday. Boston Globe. July 9, 2017.
Feurer, Alan. 2017. Justice Department
says rights law doesn’t protect gays. The
New York Times. July 27, 2017.
O’Connor, Anne. Poetry on the menu at
historic Bull Run. Nashoba Valley Voice. July
3, 2017.
Sobey, Rick. 2017. In Concord, a Thoreau-ly
historical birthday bash. Lowell Sun. July
13, 2017.
Ueland, Brenda. 1938. (The Estate of
Brenda Ueland. 1987) If You Want to
Write: A Book About Art, Independence and Spirit. Graywolf Press:
Minneapolis, MN.
Wickersham, Joan. 2017. ‘Poetry is a
basic human pleasure.’ Boston Globe. July
28, 2017.
http://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/article_popover.aspx?guid=7e83ca69-8bdd-4a41-abb8-2184a22ab609
©
2017 Rosemary A. Schmidt
Rose
Schmidt is the author of “Go Forward, Support! The Rugby of Life” (Gainline
Press 2004). The views expressed herein are solely those of the author, and do
not reflect the views of any other agency or organization. Use of individual
quotes with proper citation and attribution, within the limits of fair use, is
permitted. If you would like to request permission to use or reprint any of the
content on the site, please contact me. Twitter: Rosebud@GainlineRS
Mission
Statement: To Educate, Inform, Entertain, Inspire, and Open Minds.
(E.I.E.I.O.M.)
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