Friday, November 23, 2018

When death comes

Do not stand at my grave and weep
by Mary Elizabeth Frye
Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

Malcolm and his wife Pamela in a Hillsboro, VA Memorial Day
Parade. Malcolm was a passionate voice for conserving the rural land and farms
of Loudon County, VA. 
An old friend from my high school days just died, and I find myself grieving as if we had never parted upon graduating so long ago.  Malcolm Baldwin, classmate at Harley School, Rochester, NY, brilliant, funny, voracious reader and learner, class leader, and that twinkle in his eye that all who knew him comment on to this day. The sadness hits me, to see the fabric of our lives unraveling.
Harley student council, I think. Memory photo from
classmate Barbara Poole von Schilcher.
I remember Malcolm for his wide-ranging interests and curious intellect. I remember how he passed a news-of-the-day quiz with flying colors in a Harley social studies class, while I struggled because I wasn't paying as much attention to what was going on in the world.  Malcolm paid attention.

After we graduated from Harley, we went our separate ways, all of us in this lively, intelligent class of 16 serious students with bright futures. We scattered into the four winds like seeds floating across a field of wildflowers. We went to colleges and universities across the country. Malcolm went to Haverford and then to the University of Chicago Law School. I took off to Wheaton College in Norton, Mass, and then on to the University of Wisconsin-Madison for graduate study in American history. We all went in different directions, on different paths, far apart, finding ourselves as we went along, finding our ways to a sense of purpose, to work and the professions, to family and kids, to farms and cities, to travel and other adventures.

We shared our stories at the 50th Harley Class reunion. I'm glad we did. I got a glimpse of Malcolm in full stride, retired from the U.S. Foreign Service, pioneering environmental lawyer, a farmer he called himself, talking about his beloved WeatherLea Farm, about raising sheep and growing grapes, about his commitment to conserving the land and small farms of Loudon County, Virginia. We caught up as much as we could, learned of hopes and dreams and changes, talked about where we had been and where we were going.

This Wendell Berry saying
reminds me of Malcolm.
I had just been accepted into the Peace Corps, so I knew I was going someplace far away. It was a dream I had had since JKF established it in the early 1960s. That's how Malcolm and I connected again at the 50th reunion. Pamela asked if I knew where I was going. "Somewhere in eastern Europe," I said. "You're probably going to Ukraine," she replied. Malcolm agreed. We talked about it for a while, she and Malcolm sharing their knowledge and experience of working abroad.

They were right. I did go to Ukraine soon after that reunion, living for the next two years (2009-2011) as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the village of Starobelsk, Lugansk oblast, not far from the Russian border. My friends joked I could see Russia from there, and they weren't far off. That part of far-eastern Ukraine, including Crimea, has since been invaded and occupied by Russia. Malcolm and Priscilla understood the terror I felt for my friends, still in harm's way to this day.  They understood as well how different the experience of a PCV was compared to Paul Manafort's, who was there when I served, although I had no idea at the time. I learned when I returned to the US that while we volunteers worked to help Ukrainians strengthen their communities, Manafort worked for Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs on behalf of Russia, against the self-interests of Ukraine.  

Malcolm shared a passion for the land
like poet and farmer Wendell Berry.
.
When I learned about Malcolm's passing, I turned to some of my favorite poets seeking comfort and assurance. Mary Oliver and Wendall Berry came immediately to mind. Their poetry reminds me of Malcolm. Oliver has a way of making the natural world come alive, and Wendell Berry is a farmer, a conservationist and advocate for small farms like Malcolm. I imagine he liked their poetry. I've put a few poems here. I want to believe Malcolm is now embraced by the awesome wonders of the natural world he loved, the same place I hope one day to find my brother Loren.  It's why I love the poem by Elizabeth Frye that begins this remembrance.


Trees, by Wendell Berry
I part the out thrusting branches
and come in beneath
the blessed and the blessing trees.
Though I am silent
there is singing around me.
Though I am dark
there is vision around me.
Though I am heavy
there is flight around me

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. 

Messenger By Mary Oliver
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.




Monday, November 12, 2018

A Message from Loren: "Hey you guys have work to do. Don't stop now!"



It's been eight years since my dear brother's last hike, on May 23, 2010. He died along the trails of Northern Florida in a place he loved, along the Aucilla River. I was in Ukraine then, and my grief at the sudden never-expected news knew no bounds. Our sister Andy, living in Tallahassee, almost fainted in shock when two police officers, in solemn face, brought her the news. 

Loren  (far left) after a hike with FL Trail Association
Andy and I always think of Loren during our over-the-top, unscreened and unfiltered private (very private) rants against what is happening in our America today. What would Loren have said? What knowledge, what insights would he have shared? We miss his views. We believe he would have been on fire if he were here with us. He would have been on the front lines of the Resistance, prodding us on. 

Loren, when he lived in Orlando
I sometimes think I hear his voice. But he's not on fire. He's calm. He seems to know that things will work out, that our ideals will save us, as they always have. That the arc of history is toward justice, as MLK taught us. I hear the voice of compassion and empathy. I see the light from a lovely soul at peace with himself and the world.

Hey, you guys I'm fine, but you have work to do.  Don't stop now. The good will prevail. Promise."   

Sunday, November 11, 2018

The Buck stops at the Top: State-condoned American Terror

"Those who can make you believe aburdities, can make you commit atrocities." 
Voltaire

Above and below photos: Auschwitz, from German archives.
Jewish victims, young and old, mothers, grandmothers, their children, were sent to the gas chambers by the Nazis
 in horrendous acts of  STATE-SPONSORED extermination of European Jews. Over six million Jews were killed. More than 17 million people, adding in Roma, Poles, Gays, POWs, were killed overall in the German genocide of WWII.  Add to this the over 14 million killed in the horror story of  state-sponsored murder in eastern Europe, the "Bloodlands," the countries caught between Hilter and Stalin with no exit, no way out. 
"We need to remember our history, or we are doomed to repeat it."
 

Rose Mallinger, 97, was one of eleven innocent victims murdered at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg by a crazed man with an assault rifle who had posted anti-Semitic rants on social media. He yelled that "all Jews should be killed."

He killed Rose. She had come to America from Lithuania as a child, fleeing anti-Semitism and oppression  She had lived to witness the Holocaust, the state-sanctioned murder of over 6 million Jews during World War II.  Hitler's "final solution."  She lived in Squirrel Hill in Pittsburg, Mr. Roger's Neighborhood.

Yes, the very neighborhood Fred Rogers made his home. The place from which he taught us and our children to love our neighbors, to be kind. The heart of Pittsburg's Jewish community. Rose Mallinger was killed in cold blood in a vicious act of anti-Semitism right here in America, the very same anti-semitism she had fled some 90 years before.

History repeating itself.

Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz,
family doctor to all. 
There were 10 other victims, all remembered as good people, generous, kind, caring: Daniel Stein, 71; Joyce Feinberg, 75; Richard Gottfried, 65;  Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; brothers Cecil Rosenthal, 59, and David Rosenthal 54; husband and wife Bernice Simon, 84 and Sylvan Simon, 86; Melvin Wax, 88; and Irving Younger, 69. America's loss.The sadness is overwhelming.

I believe this is on tRump. This is on Republicans and the NRA, who refuse to even consider common sense gun control. It is on the alt-right and those who supported Kavanaugh for SCOTUS. It is on those who promote violence and do nothing to stop it. It's on elected representatives like Kevin McCarthy (R, CA) who called out certain Democratic fundraisers--George Soros, Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg--who happened to be Jewish, in a rant that rivaled tRump's tweets and unhinged rhetoric.

Why? To what purpose? To get people to believe "absurdities" and  lead them to commit them as well? To encourage them to commit atrocities fostered by hate and an ignorance of history?

It starts at the top.

Julia Ioffe, journalist and MSNBC contributor, spoke mournfully about what tRump, his media supporters, and Congressional Republicans have done to create the conditions where such hate and violence occur and thrive, and to what tragic consequences. She made a point to call out the anti-immigrant vitriol as well. A president and his ilk carrying on darkly about Muslims, Mexicans, the refugees marching to America, the Middle Easterners among them. Talking about a "caravan" of invaders and sending the military to the border. 

Scare tactics to create fear, to divide us, to turn us against each other.  A form of state-sponsored American terror. Terrorism from within.

Julia Ioffe knows this playbook well. It turns out that her own family fled Russia in 1988 to escape the rising tide of virulent anti-semitism there. She spoke from experience. So did many of those who were at the Tree of Life Synagogue a few weeks ago.

"The people at the top set the tone of what's acceptable and what isn't.....It's not just social media and facebook....The buck stops with the president,"  Ioffe wrote.  Trump's ignorant, uninformed, hateful Nationalism ("I am a Nationalist," he boasted) has put America and the world in danger.  We've seen it before. We're seeing it again.

Some sources:
*  https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/28/us/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-victims/index.html
*  https://www.yahoo.com/news/nearly-century-rose-mallinger-saw-best-worst-america-saturday-193121954.html
*  Wikipedia, the Holocaust, a good general description. There are many excellent histories, all available online.

Here' a map showing gun violence in 2018. It's an incredible graphic of an horrific American reality. My friend Kristina, herself an immigrant from Russia, calls it "a map of lost hopes and dreams."  According to data compiled by Gun Violence Archive, an independent data-collection and research group: "In 2018 alone, including the most recent carnage at the synagogue in Pittsburgh, there have been 47,220 gun-related incidents resulting in 11,984 deaths in the United States. "  I think that this in itself is a form of state-sponsored and condoned violence.









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