Author: ellen

Remember that scene in “Mary Poppins” where first Ed Wynn, and then Dick Van Dyck and Julie Andrews, and finally the Banks children all float to the ceiling while drinking tea and singing, “I love to laugh”?

Who doesn’t love to laugh? People enjoy laughing even if it doesn’t make them float to the ceiling. Scientists say laughing is good for us, releasing endorphins and increasing blood flow not unlike a vigorous workout. It’s a stress reliever and both sign and improver of mental and physical resilience. It boosts our immune systems and gives us an overall sense of wellbeing.

And while the kind of laughter we get from watching a comedian is fine, people laugh most often in conversation with one another. It builds social bonds. It connects us to one another, in part because it’s contagious. And here’s an interesting fact: women laugh 126% more than men. (Hmmm.)

Laughing with–the opposite of laughing at—is one of our earliest social interactions, from peek-a-boo to elementary school knock-knock jokes and riddles. It’s not really about humor as much as it is about human relationships. What’s to make fun of?

It is a below-the-fold headline in today’s newspaper of record: A Migrant Mother’s Struggle to Win Back Her Young Son. It is a story about immigration, family trauma, good intentions, and bureaucratic hurdles. The spoiler alert is that the end of the piece has mother and five-year-old son walking off hand in hand; we can only hope that what they are walking toward is a safe future together.

But reading the words “migrant mother” the face I instantly picture—and I’m guessing I’m not alone—is not Olga from Honduras but the unnamed woman in the iconic Dorothea Lange photograph.

We know her name now—Florence Owens Thompson. But the wall label says, “Migrant Agricultural Worker’s Family, Nipomo, California, so she was anonymous two times over. “Mrs. Hisname,” as my rabbi would say, although mister is also without a name here. But the mission Lange was given by the New Deal Farm Security Administration was not to highlight individuals but to document a societal reality. The photograph known as “Migrant Mother” became a symbol of the Depression. Soon after its publication the federal government sent 20,000 pounds of food to the pea-pickers camp in Nipomo. Lange’s photograph, and the term “migrant mother” have become so instantly recognizable that adaptations have been used to draw attention to a world of othered mothers.

The migrant mother in the newspaper story has not migrated from one part of the United States to another. Her English, not fluent, is spoken with the accent of Someplace Else. In the photograph that runs with the story, we see only her back.

Somehow I missed it when everyone was reading it, but just last week I read, “My Name Is Lucy Barton” by Elizabeth Strout. And I read Lore Segal’s short story collection, “Ladies’ Lunch.” In both of them I admired the ease with which the author offered her words, the tone almost a personal confiding that leaves you with the misguided thought that anyone—I?—could do the same. Could write stories filled with casual intimacies and asides that add up to wisdom. Not likely, but isn’t that what art is?

Anyhow, I will share two quotes from Lucy that I had to write down. I say from Lucy because the novel, written in the first person, feels more like possibly Lucy Barton’s writing than Elizabeth Strout’s. But again, art.

So, the first quote is this: “It has been my experience throughout life that the people who have been given the most by our government==education, food, rent subsidies—are the ones who are most apt to find fault with the whole idea of government.”

Here I have to mention that yesterday I visited Mount Vernon and, among other things, thought about the revolt against “taxation without representation,” which, of course, I am reminded of also when I see a District of Columbia license plate. And not for the first time I thought about how the colonists were fighting for the right not to be free of taxes which are needed to pay for all those “common good” things we want and need, but to be free to tax themselves. Right?

The second quote is this: “It interests me how we find ways to feel superior to another person, another group of people. It happens everywhere and all the time. Whatever we call it, I think it’s the lowest part of who we are, this need to find someone else to put down.”

Those are the two quotes I wrote down. I’ll just leave them here.

The woman I met today said she wrote a blog and I said I did, too, or, rather I used to but I’m not sure I do anymore. It’s been so long. But maybe I can try not to be embarrassed or reach for explanations but just say I’m here again: so hello.

The woman I met today was, as I was, looking at the Dorothea Lange exhibit at the National Gallery in Washington. I was in the last room of the exhibit and, prolonging the moment of finishing, looped back a room to find Dr. D. talking to someone. And as I got closer I realized he wasn’t talking to her, but, rather, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. He was just at “under God with liberty and justice for all.” Oops, I said, you forgot “indivisible.” (An understandable omission at this moment in time, but whatever.)

And I met the woman he was talking to, who was visiting from Saudi Arabia, where she writes, among other things, a blog. As I have written, among other things. They had stood in front of a photograph of children crowded together, hands over their hearts. Japanese-American children pledging their allegiance to a country about to scoop them up and send them to internment camps. And the woman had asked Dr. D. what the Pledge of Allegiance was and he was reciting it for her.

And so we met and stopped to talk in front of these iconic gelatin silver prints, these clear visions of a country living through the 20th century. She and I exchanged contact information and I’ve just looked at her beautiful blog. To leave a comment I had to choose the “translate into English” option which let me write left to right, but then if I wanted to change something, added it right to left, a reminder of how intentional we need to be sometimes if we want to communicate.

Maybe Dorothea would have enjoyed seeing this small moment she inspired.

For most of the “aughts” I had the great pleasure of writing a column for the Boston Globe that allowed me to talk with some of the area’s amazing writers and poets, including Jeanne Steig, who died a few days ago at the age of 92.

Jeanne was both a writer and a visual artist, the creator of sculptures and collages made of found objects. Yes, trash as in “one person’s trash, another’s treasure.” The Globe obituary notice today quotes her as saying, “If my work is ‘about’ anything, it is about the pieces. It is about the nobility of lost and discarded bits, humble fragments unique, unexpected.” And today as I think about Jeanne, I am thinking, too, about what is discarded that might be a treasure.

This is what I wrote for the Globe almost 14 years ago, on August 10, 2008.

A life of art from the materials at hand
There’s an old adage, “one person’s trash is another person’s treasure.” Certainly makes sense in these recycling-conscious times. But there is another aspect to the idea, too: even the most humble throw-aways can, in the right hands, become something wonderful.
And that’s just what happens in Fleas! a new book for children and what has happened, also, throughout the life of its author, Jeanne Steig. Steig has written books written both on her own and in collaboration with her late husband, William Steig, the famed New Yorker cartoonist and children’s book author. Together they did, among others, A Gift from Zeus, Alpha Beta Chowder, and A Handful of Beans. Fleas! and Tales from Gizzard’s Grill are Jeanne Steig’s first books since William Steig’s death in 2003 .
In Fleas!, people trade away things they don’t want. The hero, Quantz, after befriending a dog that gives him fleas, goes off on an adventure where his first step is to offload the fleas. He manages to get rid of them in exchange for an overly talkative uncle, whom he then deposits with a man who trades away a huge cheese, and….well, you know how these things go.
“It’s about cast-offs,” says Steig. “Everything finally finds its right place.”
But recycling isn’t only a story line for Steig. It is at the heart of her work as a visual artist, in which her primary medium is what she terms “street finds.” Scraps of roofing tile, bits of tar and cardboard, and other detritus make their way from gutter to canvas in her world. She sees possibilities in the humblest leavings she finds on walks around Boston. She says, though, that the streets here are generally too clean to be a good source of materials. Instead, she receives packages of street scraps sent from Paris by her son-in-law.
The random bits most often become people who may float through the sky in seeming wonder. Or they may wear wistful expressions that belie a harsh setting, such as a desperate border crossing. They manage to look wordly-wise and cheerful at the same time. Looking at them, I think of how Steig manages to recognize the beginnings of art in what has been thrown away, stepped on, rained on, ignored. It is part of a whole, of a life lived noticing what can be beautiful and useful if only someone takes the time to see. At its heart, it is a life of creating books a visual art, of course, but more: it is about making a conscious art of living.
Steig’s fondness for the cast-offs.is apparent in both story and picture. Quantz, even in his itchy torment, manages a gentle affection for the fleas. He tells them, “you dance very well,” as he tactfully suggests they might be happier elsewhere. It is what I imagine Steig is thinking as she transforms a street scrap into part of a picture: you will be happier here.
As I leave Steig’s sun-filled apartment and, walk home, I feel a little bit under the spell of the lesson of her street finds. On one block I see the intentional beauty, yes, of a blazing yellow clump of begonias. But there is also the surprising bright blueness of a van parked nearby. The vivid colors around the neighborhood, the shapes with crisp edges of shadow and soft curving lines: these are the materials at hand. Everywhere is something to see, something to think about, to notice!

This is not specifically my holiday except that, as an American, I celebrate the freedom of all Americans. As an American I celebrate every incremental move my country has taken toward the ideals it signed on to when it declared its wish to its own country.

But every time I think about Juneteenth I marvel in gratitude at the optimism, the generosity of spirit, the patriotism with which the community rooted in former enslavement observes it.

The story of the “news”—ahem—coming to enslaved people in Texas two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation is a glass half full and half empty moment. Freedom, yes, but only after their enslavers had withheld the news of their freedom and extracted another two and a half years of unpaid toil and misery from 250,000 people. It would be easy to mark the day with mourning and anger. But no. There is celebration. And there is what I see as a marvel of generosity and patriotism.

The soaring words that Jefferson wrote, despite the huge flaws of his own history, those words we pay lip service to are words the formerly enslaved and their descendants have believed. And held their country to.

Maybe Juneteenth celebrates exactly that, the highest ideals of those who founded the country and those who have, over the years, believed in those ideals and worked to move us closer to realizing them. And so it is a holiday for all of us, whatever our family’s story. At a moment when those lofty goals seem ever farther out of reach, as we observe the second year of the federal holiday 157 years after the original day of freedom, maybe Juneteenth is just what we all need.

Like thousands—millions?—of others I have succumbed to the charm of Wordle. There’s the wonderful name of its creator—Josh Wardle. There’s the backstory of his presenting it as a gift to his word-game-loving partner. There’s it’s modesty: just one small word just once a day, as if in recognition that we have—or should have -other things to do. And there was the purity with which it was first offered without charge, with Wardle resisting the temptation to “monetize,” though I’m glad he was ultimately rewarded for his ingenuity. I hope it won’t eventually slide behind a paywall or start sprouting ads.

But what I think I like most compelling about the game is its ubiquity.

We used to share things, remember? Before we got siloed by cable tv, we all got our news from one of maybe three national broadcasters, especially Walter Cronkite. When JFK was shot, he choked up with us. When he said, at the end of a broadcast, “And that’s the way it is,” we knew we had not just been served a sludge of “alternative facts” but rather the reality of what had happened that day in the world we shared.

And I think, too, of “Sesame Street,” which was such a broadly shared staple of a certain moment of childhood. Obviously not everyone shared those moments, but enough did to make it a touchstone. I pictured children all across the country learning, with mine, that C is for cookie and facing the hard reality of death as they mourned Mr, Hooper.

Was it a more innocent time? Maybe, and definitely one with fewer options, fewer opportunities. But what there was, we shared. And now we’re sharing this quick little game. This one small moment of fun. A-R-I-S-E and play together!

Some friends and I were having an email exchange about exclamation points. It wasn’t my first online conversation about punctuation by a long shot. A few high school friends and I reminisced just the other day about diagramming sentences. Oh, diagramming—so much has been lost without you, including an understanding of why not to say, “between you and I.”

There’s something I vaguely remember about not using a lot of exclamation points. (Okay, most of my remembering feels a little vague these days, but that’s another story.) Something about being allotted 10 or 12 or some similar limited number of exclamation points to use in your life. The “rule” is imaginary and silly and the number is unimportant but I like the idea of using them sparingly. Like a spice. Too many exclamations and nothing is worthy of exclamation.

Nothing, I noted in the conversation, is worthy of multiple exclamation points, except maybe a college acceptance, book publication, new baby. Something at least slightly momentous. Something that, in person, might elicit a raised glass or raised eyebrows.

But isn’t that just the thing: “in person.” How to approximate a little enthusiasm in an email? Type “that’s terrific.” in response to some mildly pleasant news and it feels a little flat. Maybe even snarky: yeah, terrific. Without the in-person smile or happy tone of voice, a little more is needed. The spice. Just a pinch–not a handful, but some. Even if we’re using a little more than usual. Even if we’re using more than the lifetime allotment. To make it closer to what it would sound like if we were really together.

It wasn’t that I was afraid of the mouse. I didn’t let out the stereotypical “eek” or consider leaping onto a chair, even if I were still agile enough to manage it. I was more startled. In retrospect, I have to admit the mouse was kind of cute, but there was no question I wanted it out out out. And now I’m wondering what exactly it is that makes me anxiously count the days until we can give Ed a lot of money to do major mouse-proofing.

“It feels like an invasion,” someone suggested. No, not exactly that. Someone else told me about their mouse-ridden apartment in Paris and a landlord who scoffed at his complaint and said those mice had been there since the 15th century. I think of the delightfully Parisian “Ratatouille” (though, fortunately, I am dealing with his smaller cousin) and all the other charming storybook mice. Stuart Little! Maisie! Angelina Ballerina! Despereaux! Poor unloved Alexander and that wind-up lookalike! And someone did suggest I give the mouse a cookie, but who’s to say I wouldn’t soon be visited by a muffin-hunting moose.

So, ok cute. But why am I something a little more negative than simply startled? Disease potential? Check. Of course. But even given where cats’ and dogs’ faces sometimes get to, people still cuddle them and kiss them and invite them onto laps and into beds. So what is it about the mouse that makes me insist on the singular “mouse” and pull back from the thought of plural “mice” and pull back from the thought of its being my roommate?

Without burdening the mouse with a philosophical outlook, I think the distaste lies in the mouse’s total negation of thousands of years of human civilization. At the first sighting I quickly left the room and shut the door. Door? Ha! It might keep out a larger intruder, but the fraction of an inch at the bottom goes unnoticed as the mouse puts my space to his or her purpose. Our walls have openings we don’t see. Welcome heat enters into our rooms through pipes with enough space around them for easy mouse access. Likewise electricity, water, air conditioning. It’s not so much that we are afraid or even inconvenienced by them. It’s that we barely exist in the world we think is ours. Far from being the boss of them, we’re not even in the room where anything happens.

It feels more like outrage: how dare they invade our carefully curated space. Here we are sitting in our living room, surrounded by our selected books, maybe even books autographed by talented friends. We are having Important Conversations. And along comes a tiny creature living its own life in the same space, not recognizing our ownership, barely noticing us. We’re the kings and queens of the jungle, the pinnacle of creation on the planet. How can this being go about its small life in total ignorance of our importance, our power?

Meanwhile we wait for Ed and his mouse-proofing skills. It’s not killing or harming, but simply creating a barrier between our space and mouse space. Surely the world is big enough for both.

It’s a day of what ifs. Or maybe if onlys. If only out of the long shadow of tragedy and loss had come a different sort of reckoning: the world brought together—as it was, in sympathy on our behalf—not to settle scores with guns, but with the shock and awe of radical justice. What if the oppression that nurtured the hatreds and resentments had, itself, been attacked? What if terrorism had been treated as a violation of international law instead of a strike against national pride?

Today what I’m most remembering that came immediately after is not only the shock of 9/11 but, as some have said, 9/12: the feeling of common fragility, of tenderness, and of charity toward one another. We can’t bring back who was lost, but I wish we could bring back what was.

I’m re-reading a few poems I wrote that now remind me of who we were on 9/12. Here are two:

Iceman

He may have bled to death
there on the mountain:
flint arrowhead imbedded
in carbon-dated
shoulderblade, neolithic
agony echoing down to us
through tectonic shifts,
his computer image
looking like someone
I might have met.

I thought of him again–
I don’t know why–
on a warm afternoon
later that September.

The streets were hushed and
shadowy although the sky
of course, was emptier,
bluer, too, than necessary,
the scent still in the air and
flowers wilting
outside the fire stations,
posters in every window–
someone might yet come home.

In another age
a week before
we had owned small fears,
certainty.
We were young then.

………….

ever since

now
in the fragile time
between the thunder claps
in the time after
the sky split open
and solidness
dissolved

the fire
continues
to leave no one
unscorched
shelter collapses
again and again
around us
the acrid dust
preserves us
perfect as Pompeii

we were gentle
with each other then
liable to break
now we sort through
what is left to us
sift the rubble
for what
we have lost