SPOKEN THOUGHTS

She spoke in a voice low and wispy, as if to take up no more space than her body already claimed.

‘When I speak, you come!  Immediately!’ so spoke the father.

Speak with clarity and get to the point.

If we don’t speak for the voiceless or the vulnerable, who will?

“I can’t speak for her”, and then he went ahead and did so.

She spoke words of wisdom

With the language of eyes and laughter, two need not speak the same oral language to enjoy each other’s company.

The dead speak their secrets as the family unearths the papers and collections left behind.

The silent, living victims are left in turmoil over the pleasant lies spoken of the dead.

The kids in my neighborhood, having a different awareness than I do about law, gangs, and relationships, often speak in code to me with their eyes and facial expressions: don’t do it; don’t say what you’re thinking; I’m hurting, please defend me.

Speak now, says the Holy Spirit...be bold...speak in faith.

Speak up, I can’t hear you. I speak up and you don’t listen.

Speak truth to power.

Words, music, art, nature, facial and body movements, our environment, rhythm...all speak to us. Are we listening? What do we hear?

sage holben 9/2012 (written for Allison McGhee's Brown Bag Readings

View From My Porch

Night’s Presence

1 am: a four-door car driving up the hill on Fourth, from Maria, across Bates and Maple; a full sized mattress, unfastened, on the roof of the car; a man sprawled, face down, across the top.

11:30 pm: a two-door red sports car stops midway on Bates between Fourth and Fifth. Four men exit, the youngest takes a basketball from the trunk and proceeds to circle in the street, bouncing the ball. The others fumble through the trunk, taking something small, unidentifiable to me, out and the four walk to 300 Bates, entering through the north side door. Lights are on, evident only when the door is open. After about fifteen minutes, another man, huge around the waist, walks from Third to the red car and drives it away, making a U-turn and heading toward Third.

Around 12:30, first week of July. A man, a woman and a child, about seven, walk south on Bates, up Fourth, the child pulling a luggage cart. The sound of the wheels convey a lonely, empty, nowhere feeling. A few minutes later, the man returns without the woman and child.

Almost anytime in the evening: a car pulls up on Bates. Headlights blink, wait a few seconds, blink again. A car drives up, driver to driver. hands go out, both cars drive away.

1 am: two men, loudly talking, riding bikes south on Bates. S____! says one man as he jumps off his bike. Broken chain? He drops the bike in the middle of the street and walks away.  From the window, I say, please, at least move it off the street. He obliges. The next day, several people checked it out for possibilities and left it before I pulled it over near the trash bin.

Slam! Around 11:30, the sound caught my attention. Curse words between a male and female. According to another neighbor who saw the incident, a man shoved a woman against the little library and her head hit the roof.

2 am: two women walking down the middle of the street; I could hear their conversation and their names used. Having turned the corner, one curses. Now knowing her name, I call gently from the upper window, “D___, please watch your language.” As if God had spoken, she looked around and answered, “Alright...Sorry!”

At two am, where would two women be going, walking with three very young children including a tiny baby?

After midnight, a neighbor discreetly (or so he thinks) places his scrapped carpeting into my trash bins.

A woman scurries like a rat into the drive, taking one of our recycling bins.

At 2:30 am, awakened by someone dragging scrap metal north on Bates.

Sleep, so often disturbed; wakeful times, so often perplexing.

sh 7/17/2012 (as published in Dayton's Bluff Forum)

United States Post Offices Services

I just read an article in Bloomberg Businessweek that the US Post Office, with its cutbacks in independent postal stations, is looking at small businesses, i.e. cafes, stores, to house USPS minimal service desks/postal boxes, etc. Of course, lockboxes are already situated in various mailing/package depots. The article states that it was only after the Civil War that independent buildings were created, as a result of a growing trust in government. Interesting.

mmm...I remember when I lived in Bloomingdale, Illinois in the 50s and 60s. Bloomingdale was a mere crossroads between Elgin and Chicago; our post office was located in the locally owned hardware store. I remember his face, but can't remember the name of the store owner. He or a woman handled the postal services.

I like the convenience this offers, especially in one of my favorite coffee shops; then I wonder about privacy issues with postal boxes....would a regular Postal employee deliver mail to the lockboxes?
Also, I remember, though I felt leery of walking into the dim hardware store filled with men gathered talking, there was a sense of community. A corner bar was the only gathering spot at that time, or on the steps of the grocery, enjoying a 10oz (8 oz?) Coke, frosty and cold, from the outside vending machine.

The article is: 'The Post Office's Back to the Future Rescue Plan' pp 38-40;Bloomberg Businessweek May 27, 2013.                                                                                                 

VIEW FROM MY PORCH

Car-less

“Your car frame rusted out and separated from the wheel”. The news was not good. I had taken my 1998 Metro LSI to Roy’s garage because something didn’t feel right with the passenger side front wheel. Too much rust, one too many potholes. Jim Goff had given me the car in 2008 and it’s been a trusty little thing, taking me to Chicago, Door County, Wisconsin, Negaunee, Michigan and Iowa to visit family and friends.

It’s carried neighborhood boys and bikes to bike shops and to pick up paint for bikes. Always loaded with at least three boxes of donated books, I’ve made runs to fill Little Free Libaries around Saint Paul. It’s transported some of the men I’ve met, who stay at Dorothy Day, to their doctors and has helped them move into their new apartments. It’s carried kids to events out of their neighborhood, carried bags of collected winter coats to Gospel Mission and reusables to the thrift stores.

It’s chased down stolen bikes; carried garden supplies, plants, bags and bins of mulch.

Linda Charpentier and I served soup from the little red Metro over the last couple years in the Dorothy Day Center parking lot. My car carried several of my political protest/peace rally signs - you never know when you’ll come across an opportunity to make your voice heard; and you want to be prepared!

I’ve often wondered what my life would be without a car. It’s one of those situations that I imagined intellectually, but experiencing it is completely different. Over time I suppose I would adapt. Never having had a new car, I’ve never taken for granted the priviliege of having a car readily available. I do admit to being car-dependent. I’ve had many little awakenings since being without a vehicle. The Red Cross called, but I couldn’t make my regular platelet donation because of transportation. At 9:30 one night, I couldn’t just run out to Rainbow for the missing recipe ingredient.

I’ve become more aware of Phoenix Market hours...and cost (a can of cat food at Target is 49 cents, at Rainbow it is 59 cents, and at Phoenix it is 99 cents. Little things do matter. If convenience of a nearby ‘corner market’ becomes a necessity, it’ll hurt my pocketbook in a big way and it also limits my fresh food/healthy food availability. Ali, I love that you’re in the neighborhood, but it would be like giving up my ‘brainiac books’ as someone once called my library, for pulp fiction, just because it’s all I could get!

I realized I could no longer keep my schedule - like being in Roseville and making it back in twenty minutes to a meeting in Dayton’s Bluff...let’s see, the bus leaves... I need to pick up super large pieces of cardboard to make templates for a community project, but I have to figure a way to get them home. I can’t run errands on my lunch hour or before work.. After work is more likely, but it’s not as if I can run to several places while someone else is driving and they have other things to do.

I now see outside of my intellectual sphere why payday stores do well, though I question their ethics. I had a difficult time getting to my credit union and then only after hours. ATM fees? the more convenient, the higher the fee. Fun stuff? I picked up my bag the other morning to treat myself to breakfast - oops, no car. I know, I know, I’ve just not yet made the transition that the bus is first on my mind.I recall from when my sons were young - how difficult it was to walk nine blocks between home and store with two grocery bags, a six year old who wanted to run a block ahead and a crying two year old who needed to be carried through the Wisconsin snow. Now I’m at an age where when my pride doesn’t like asking for help and I don’t want to be a drag on friends by asking for errand rides (my perception, not theirs).

Assumed rights become a hard-earned privilege when one doesn’t have ease in access and availability (think fresh food and carrying several days worth for two very hungry, growing boys; think money exchange/bill paying centers (not everyone has computer access or a stable bank account to pay online; getting to and from community resources and agency appointments. Think recreation with the kids in tow. Think a clinic appointment taking three hours instead of a lunch hour, because taking a bus is involved and then walking several blocks on the bad foot the doctor will look at, tell you to stay off - once you walk back to the bus stop and then walk home, of course. This is just over my first week. I’m hoping I’ll have a car again by the time this is printed. But I do promise, even if/after I get a car again, I’ll be a bigger voice for people who lack these conveniences that so many of us take for granted as a right.

sage 5/7/2013

Happy Birthday, BonBon!

Wednesday evening was much like any other at Bates and Fourth in Dayton's Bluff...that means anything can happen. Bonni and I were on the porch, talking about the upcoming Neighborhood Night Out on Tuesday. She brought out her face-painting pencils and twisty balloons for animals. As she was practicing, I was working on the banner several of us started the previous day. Cesar stopped by and we learned that he knew how to make balloon figures. Also, he had done face-painting.
Soon a little girl, who had stopped on Tuesday, came again...she was fundraising for new school instruments. Carrying her keyboard under her arm, she would play a song for 25 cents. She had learned quite a bit in a matter of 24 hours!!
Soon, Cesar and Bonni had company in two other kids, all making balloon swords, sheathes, hats, and animals. Lara then stopped by with two young friends - they had heard of our screeching slingshot monkeys. They stayed and worked on the banner. Bonni and I had thought we were pretty much done; obviously not, since it now has several little drawings, speckles, and signatures...truly a community project.
I love that the kids come and visit. Their smiles and shy humor really lighten the day. I'm trying to get the projector for a Tuesday movie, which we'll do in the parking area for the night out.  (From 2009 posting: Porch....)

Library Thing Early Reviewers Book Review: In the Body of the World by Eve Ensler

I just received this early reviewer book this afternoon, was home with a bad headache and read Ensler's book in a matter of a few hours. It cast light on my own family relations beyond all else this book does. Contrary to its subject matter, it is not a depressing book.

Relationships, communicating with one’s body, facing life and death, defining love in its many forms, giving to the earth and its people more than one takes away. This is, in summary, what Eve Ensler expresses in her book, ‘In the Body of the World’. Ensler talks about her experience, her relationship, with cancer and chemo with wry wit, and candor.

In exploring and courageously sharing her raw and life changing experience of surgeries, ports, chemo, and all their emotional and physical side effects, Ensler emboldens others to find their own way, but encourages us to be bold enough to feel, to love, to name, to cry, and to believe that others are there for us. Ensler carries us through with beautiful metaphors and honesty about the facing and fearing death. At one point, her mother, also ill, tells Eve that “I dreamed they are came to take our hearts. They didn’t want mine. They wanted yours the most”...The next morning they move my mother to the cardiac unit because her heart has now become the problem. It is where we do not live that the dying comes.”

sh 4/201

Library Thing Early Reviewers Book Review: 'A Slave in the White House - Paul Jennings and the Madisons'

Though I would have appreciated better organization of the historic material and events, once I took the mindset of 'listening to an elder reminisce', I was able to enjoy 'A Slave in the White House'. The author has definitely done far-reaching research into material not before shared in the history of slavery. I am grateful for the truths and facts Elizabeth Dowling Taylor puts before the reader; some clear up myths, some opened my eyes to the deeper relationships between white and Black, and owner and slave, and a reminder of how much and how deeply whites' selfish desire slashed lives and families of those they chose to own.

I hope that history classes will teach the truth of our founding fathers and that we all question whether our leaders have the courage and the will to live what they preach; live by the laws they enact. I knew much of the background, but Taylor, through research, especially of James Madison's slave, Paul Jennings, added the personal. It's the personal that makes history come alive for me. Though much of the 'fill-in' bits of slavery and how whites justified owning other humans left me gagging, I appreciated that Taylor included the conflict between heart, soul, mind, and law, also.   (sh 4/2013, noted in LibraryThing.com, Walkonmyearth

Recognizing Neighborhood Rankism

View From My Porch

True or false? Most men and women will agree that sexism continues in one degree or another. True or false? Racism flourishes no matter how many letters to the editor, anti-racism workshops, or directly challenging another’s actions or words - how does one get inside another’s head or soul?

Now, consider ‘rankism’. Rankism, as described by Robert W. Fuller, the coiner of the term, is “using one’s real or perceived power to hold the balance of power in a relationship”. In the context of a neighborhood, a person might translate simple social position into power. It might be the person who has been a resident for the longest time; a  homeowner over a renter; a resident who participates in community activities over one who doesn’t;  a child whose toys are boxed, spendy, and off the shelf rather than makeshift or  built from scraps; a privileged youth  (whose free time consists of travel, leisure and organized/costly sports) assumes or is given the role of ’boss’ over other youths (most often youths of color), whose  free time is spent working to supplement the family income; the person with a college education over the one who didn’t finish high school; the person who ‘knows’ and uses governmental ‘connections’ over the neighbor who barely makes it through life’s system and tends to avoid anyone ‘official’. The list continues. Some of these examples can be labeled as classism; some, upon closer examination, as racism. Rankism encompasses virtually all other ‘-isms’ and can help introduce the other ‘-isms’ into conversation with less fire than perhaps  racism, which needs to be faced, but creates eerie quiet or spitting anger when brought up in most conversation.

Robert W. Fuller, author of Somebodies and Nobodies states: “Rankism is

what people who take themselves for ‘somebodies’ do to those they mistake

for ‘nobodies’." Whether directed at an individual or a group, rankism aims

to put targets in their place and keep them weak so they will do as they're told

and submit to being taken advantage of.”  

Not wanting to see a ‘problem’ where there isn’t any, yet seeing a system that rankled me, I talked with a colleague whose career and personal life are steeped in addressing and examining racism, classism, relationships, attitudes, and systems.

In the case of youths: my hope is that parents who recognize that their children are privileged, whether by color of skin,education, or economic status and the luxury of costly or fee-based extracurricular activities, or easily replacing a stolen bike instead of having to rebuild one from parts; that these parents will teach not only ‘tolerance’ (whatever that means) but also why their children are very fortunate to take for granted what others must eke out; why they have access to and can expect financial/time based activities. My hope is that parents - ALL parents - teach their children that when they do live a privileged life with its benefits, that the children share the gifts of privilege much as they might share their toys: if privilege assumes being ‘boss’, share that role; if it is the gift of a job that you neither need nor want, share the opportunity; if you have more off-the-shelf toys than you need, stash them away (or give away) and experience playing only with the cardboard box.  Last, do all this unconditionally and without the pride of being ‘tolerant’. Do it with the knowledge that life often offers some a bigger stage than it offer others....share that stage.

Do it without the arrogance of ‘tolerance’.

As often happens when I question behaviors in a ‘system’, I end up challenging my own beliefs and actions. I was reminded that the beauty and truth of a youth having to build his bike from parts, or making the cardboard box the all-purpose toy: playhouse/fort/sled/ dollhouse/airport, or finding jobs through his or her own inventiveness and resourcefulness does not make one ‘disadvantaged’. That youth may not be the most privileged as societally defined, but certainly is one apt to have learned resourcefulness and creativity and to find and name his or her own success because of recognizing what defines tolerance, entitlement, privilege, and being named ‘the other’. I look forward to knowing that person when he or she is an adult. As always, youth in our neighborhood open my eyes and teach with great depth.

sage holben 3/2013

Privacy of the Poor

“Anguish...anguish is the only way I can describe it.” That was my answer to the Ramsey County dispatch on a hot summer night in describing the sounds emanating from the nearby building. It was one of those calls I teetered with - do I call or not? On the one hand, it could be someone who had been physically hurt...a woman? a child?...I couldn’t distinguish which. Could it be a child alone? In fear? Could it be a woman trying to stifle the wails caused by a lovers’ argument?
Like so many old buildings these small apartments had no air conditioning. Windows open directly onto the street, inviting the immediate world to share in whatever life is dealing to the inhabitants at the moment. At that moment, I thought how unfair and humiliating life had to be for those who didn’t enjoy the privacy and emotional safety of a private home, set back from the sidewalk with trees, grass and shrubs to filter and separate street noise and life from within what should be personal space.
True, sound can carry from any house if loud or piercing enough. But for apartments stacked on top of each other, often crammed with too many people or excessive energy, no air conditioning to muffle sounds or cool the interior, sounds of personal conversation, sex, sobbing, and family arguments waft or even leap into public domain. On this night, the sounds stopped and I called back to dispatch to cancel the call; dispatch indicated it was my decision on whether to cancel or not. What does ‘stopped’ mean? That someone died, fell asleep? I opted to cancel, being of the mind that someone had been emotionally hurting, not physically harmed; and though I was unable to offer comfort to the unknown person, neither would I encourage the intrusion of police banging at the secured door and possible embarrassment to the tenant. Privacy works the other way, also.
I recall last year, dozens of mourners gathered on the corner opposite me, grieving for a young man killed in our intersection. For many nights the families within an apartment building were separated by only a thin wall from the angry talk, drinking, grieving, mournful murmuring, shouting, and the occasional smashed bottle. All this was taking place just inches on the outer side of their window. Some who were within had already lived through their own hell of death, shooting, and the unknown. As unwilling prisoners in their own apartment, were they now reliving nightmares?
I’ve recently come across several articles referring to ‘privacy of the poor’ in terms of data privacy. Important, yes. However, it’s the daily humiliations that erode our spirits. What can we do?

sh 11/2012 (published in Dayton's Bluff District Forum)
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AFTER VISITING FRIENDS - Book review for LibraryThing.com/ early book reviews

Michael Hainey’s appreciation of a good story becomes apparent from the very first chapter - and I was hooked. He set the foundation of trust and spirit of understanding on which his search for the truth of his father’s death would be built. He searched and questioned with a deep if not completely clear understanding of the human mind and heart. Relationships have often been likened to quilts and tapestries. Considering the generations and cultures in the makeup of Michael’s family, I will glom onto the quilt concept; the quilt that rashly combines silks and denims; fragile, thin cottons and aged sateens that occasionally catch the light and reveal an original radiance. Stitches of aging thread that provide varying degrees of tension between the equally aging pieces.

Michael makes the reader privvy to the grandson/grandmother/mother relationships; the shared stories and observations of family quirks; factual comments casually dropped by the grandmother; the wariness tempered by respectful tenderness in the mother/son relationship. How does one sift out the facts and truth in a history that that has been somewhat distorted by people protecting their own?  Does the truth even hold the same power after being buried for decades? When we find the truth, we may have simply uncovered new truths...with the real truth revealed in the tensions we were afraid to face. Michael’s father had his demons. He was a man with a passion for his job, and an inner torment he could face only in living a facade. In the end, perhaps the real hero is the person who knew of the demons and kept them at bay from the children.

I couldn’t put this book down until I was done...and even then it haunted me.

sh 2/2013