And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
(from 'Last Fragment')
WWYD?
What would you do?
We saw this little electric car (the Volt) at the Detroit auto show in January, and of course it was my favorite. I dragged Don out into the frigid cold to downtown Detroit because I wanted to see cars with alternative fuel sources, I thought it would be a big year for cars like this in the news. (And I had the East Lansing Daily Photo blog to keep going.)
Well this little guy is one of the reasons the GM United Auto Workers union has gone on national strike for the first time in 37 years: They want GM to build this car in the US, not in Asia. They want job security: 73,000 workers nationally, over 5,000 locally here around Lansing.
So many issues! I've been supporting foreign cars for years because the quality is better. (However I currently drive a Chevy Aveo.) But I don't want 73,000 American workers out of work. I have to see "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and get angrier at the auto company executives for killing the technology of this alternative car energy in the 1970s.
Yes, auto execs at GM asked that their salary be halved earlier this year to help the struggling auto company (or at least to help how they look). Only $2.5 million for the CEO Rick Wagoner, not $5 million. And no bonuses this year. But their compensation packages still doubled! (Stocks, etc.)
Even auto workers are finally disgusted with auto execs and the choices they've made in the past few decades. Detroit could have been, should have been, the leader in alternative fuel-burning car development! Detroit could have been Paris by now. This could have been the Riviera. But no, they let Japan take the lead in developing hybrid cars. Our execs were greedy for the high price tags and profits of SUVs. Don't misunderstand me, I want all countries, all economies to do well. I'm not waving the American flag for dominance, believe me. I just want this powerful country of ours to take a lead IN THE RIGHT THINGS.
-
This also raises the question of unions. We recently watched the folksinger Woody Guthrie's story in the film "Bound for Glory" which is also about the start of unions in the US. Back in the 1930s, unions were an important way for poor workers to obtain and maintain their rights. Wiki has a history of the United Auto Workers. And here is a UAW timeline.
But what do unions do for many of us now? I don't belong to a union, but Don does. But because his is for public school employees, it's against the law to strike. So what power do they have for the $800 per annum they pay per person? And auto plant workers make $26 an hour now. How times have changed.
So many questions, so little time.
Anyway, if you were the CEO of GM, what would you do?
First poem
If you can't read it, click on the image to enlarge it (hope it works)
One of the reasons I want to memorize poems is to understand allusions when I hear or read them. For this reason, I'm going to start with poems that are in the western poetry "canon." Old English is beautiful, so melodic. So I'm going to start with Robert Herrick's "Upon Julia's Clothes," (above) a sensual, lyrical poem that is SHORT!
The bookmark I'm using is a postcard of Picasso's 1919 painting Les Amoureux on display at le Musée National Picasso, Paris.
Waiting
Audrey and Asher couldn't come for the weekend because their dad got sick. The bears are disappointed.
They'll be waiting for next time.
Committing to Memory
Last year I went to dinner with a teacher from Don’s school who has since retired from grade school resource room teaching and now teaches at the University. Thank goodness she’s being utilized this way, because Marilyn has a mind that astonishes.
Sitting at Sultan’s eating schwarma before going to a lecture at the University, we discussed poetry, among other things. She knew I was a writer. She asked what poems I’ve memorized written by other poets. I looked at her, “um, well, maybe a couple.”
“Why!” she asked. And she proceeded to praise the benefits of memorizing and reciting poems.
Well, John Hollander, at the request of the Academy of American Poets, has compiled an anthology of over 100 poems for memorization: Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize. The poems were chosen mostly for younger readers. They are short, but not too short. Many have rhyme, because free verse is harder to remember/memorize.
Don has taught his 4th graders to memorize Carl Sandberg’s “Fog” and Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” I learned them with him during those times. (Those are the “couple” I told Marilyn I know.)
Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
- Carl Sandberg
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Sitting at Sultan’s eating schwarma before going to a lecture at the University, we discussed poetry, among other things. She knew I was a writer. She asked what poems I’ve memorized written by other poets. I looked at her, “um, well, maybe a couple.”
“Why!” she asked. And she proceeded to praise the benefits of memorizing and reciting poems.
Well, John Hollander, at the request of the Academy of American Poets, has compiled an anthology of over 100 poems for memorization: Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize. The poems were chosen mostly for younger readers. They are short, but not too short. Many have rhyme, because free verse is harder to remember/memorize.
Don has taught his 4th graders to memorize Carl Sandberg’s “Fog” and Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” I learned them with him during those times. (Those are the “couple” I told Marilyn I know.)
Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
- Carl Sandberg
Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
*
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
*
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
*
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
- Robert Frost
Hollander’s anthology includes sonnets (such as Shakespeare’s #18 “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day”), songs (such as Blake’s “The Tyger”), counsels (such as “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas), tales (such as “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll), and meditations (such as “To Autumn” by Keats).
This anthology is of poems written in English. I would like to add poems written in other languages that have been translated well, if I’m going to memorize poems. I'll have to figure out which ones these will be, need to read more.
The benefits of memorizing poetry are maintaining oral traditions, hearing the melodies of the words, not just reading them, using and challening your brain in ways other activities don’t. And reciting poems together with someone you like is a treat.
Will you join me?
Still Lifes - for my girl
Like the waves in your hair, the curls
of your plant “Harley” are spreading
wide into summer, joining the wind
that skims across the farm.
And on your piano, Beethoven
relaxes with Clementi,
waiting quietly for any Italian
phrases that might be carried in
on the current.
Although you are not here,
these scenes bring you to me
every morning, like the lapping tide
from the big ocean far away.
freedom of speech, Constitution Day, and Turkishness
Sorry, this is a little long.
(When I started writing this post a couple days ago, I had no clue September 17 is Constitution Day in the US. You can see the Bill of Rights (amendments added to the constitution in 1791) here, including the First Amendment involving freedom of speech.)
I’ve written here about Orhan Pamuk, and I’ll write about him again soon, because I’ll hear him speak October 1 when he visits East Lansing.
Pamuk is the Turkish author who won the 2006 Nobel prize for literature. His life is threatened, he feels, after he was arrested last year for breaking Turkish Article 301 , the law against “denigrating Turkishness,” when he publicly criticized the Turks for their part in the WWI-era mass killings of one million Armenians as well as 30,000 Kurds in the 20th c. (which Turkey officially denies). Merely mentioning the “genocide” is against this Turkish law. To not be offensive, you’re supposed to call it the “Armenian question.” Charges were dropped against Pamuk in January last year, and sometime this year he moved to New York in self exile.
He moved partly because of the January 19, 2007 murder of Hrant Dink, an Armenian-Turkish newspaper editor, for his frank writing on the same topic. Pamuk felt threatened by the same Turkish nationalist group to which the 17-year-old who killed Dink belonged.
So, the other day I bought a Glamour magazine in line at the grocery store, and after I got home and stared at some revenge dressing and tummy flattening photos, I found an article about Elif Şafak (or Shafak), another Turkish author whose life has been threatened by the same Turkish nationalist group that killed her friend Hrant Dink and threatened Orhan Pamuk. (Look here for some stories about other inspiring women. I’ve also added the Global Diary link to my sidebar.)
Like Dink, Şafak wants Turks and Armenians to reconcile, but she understands it won’t happen until Turkey acknowledges what happened in 1915.
What does it mean to be Turkish anyway? In 1985-88 when we lived in Istanbul our lives straddled Asia and Europe: we lived in Asia and Lesley crossed the Bosphorus bridge every day to her British school on the European side of Istanbul, and Don did much of his export business from the European side. Turkey’s culture straddles Asia and Europe philosophically too, as there is a constant tension between conservative Muslim traditions and modern European trends as Turkey tries to become part of the European Union. I’m currently reading Snow by Orhan Pamuk (still, I know, I know, I started it in July), a novel about Turkish women who are torn between traditional Islam and modern Western womanhood, represented by wearing, or not wearing, head scarves, which have been banned in some public Turkish places.
Şafak’s 2006 novel Bastard of Istanbul is on my list of books to read. It’s about gender and cultural identity of Turkish, Armenian and Turkish-American and Armenian-American women, and the violence of their past. The world is changing fast, and books like this help me understand some of it.
Şafak, Dink and Pamuk risked their lives to tell the truth as they understand it.
My freedoms and lifestyle cost many people a lot. And yes, I know our rights as US citizens have been in question, especially since 9/11. But for the most part, we don’t get arrested for speaking our minds. I think Constitution Day is a good day to remember that.
