Learning about the Crimean Tatar

My friend Barbara Wieser has served as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) in Crimea, Ukraine, for over four years. She's from Minnesota, owned a book store, is a book lover, dedicated environmentalist, and indefatiguable hiker.  She was part of our Ukraine Group 36, which trained, and bonded, in Chernigov. She, Jud and I were a trio, surrounded by lots of dear friends. We walked all over the town; visited the fabulous churches, museums, and historic sites; went for a beer or "debrief" after long sessions on Ukrainian culture; shopped at the markets; and Barb and I did a special literature project at the Chernigov Biblioteca, comparing an American and a Ukrainian author.  After almost 3 months of training, Peace Corps assigned us to our sites all over Ukraine.  I went East, far east; Jud and others went North; Suz and others West; Ilse and Carl South to Odessa and others to various towns and cities in between; and Barb to Crimea.  Most of us are home now, but Barb re-upped after her first two years of working with the Crimean Tatar community in Simferopol.  She's been a trooper, a warrior for peaceful relations.  She's now a citizen of the world.

She is also our teacher about Crimea, the land, geography, the towns, the beauty and culture, and especially the Crimean Tatars  Many of us have visited in her city and at her work site, the Ismail Gasprinsky Crimean Tatar Library, and enjoyed hikes and excursions around Crimea.  I had a memorable trip from Simferopol to Bachysaray,  Yevpretoria, and Yalta  on the Black Sea (famous site of the World War II conference between Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill). Breathtakingly beautiful, and so rich in history.  Barb has hiked the mountains and forests, and explored every nook and cranny.

She has become an important part of the Tatar community, developing strong friendships and relationships, helping computerize and modernize the library, increasing its outreach, learning the people's history and struggles, and supporting their contemporary role in rebuilding the community from which they were once forcibly exiled by Stalin. The Tatar people have returned to Crimea, their homeland, after more than 30 years.  It's a harrowing story, of a community brutally demolished, lives shattered, families separated.  It's also a story of courage, the persistence of traditions, and achievement against the odds. The struggle continues.

So many of us have learned about this story of forced exile and return through Barb, and about the Gasprinsky Library, where she has made enormous contributions. The Library's goal is to preserve the memorabilia, artifacts, newspapers, traditions and stories of the Crimean Tatar people, to keep the memories alive, to remember the past so as to shape the future.   Barb has wholeheartedly shared and advanced this goal.

Below is one of her many blogs about the Library, this one focused on its founder, Ismail Gasprinsky, a brilliant and thoughtful man ahead of his times, as Barb tells us.  He reminds me of the Islamic poet Rumi, a man of depth, a source of wisdom.  I was moved by his life and purpose when I visited the Library.  I hope you will be, too.

Crimean Tatar Gasprinskiy Library

This blog is written by a Peace Corps Volunteer assigned to the Crimean Tatar Gasprinskiy Library in Simferopol, Ukraine. The views expressed are my own and do not reflect the views of the Peace Corps or any other organization.

 

TUESDAY, APRIL 9, 2013

Ismail Gasprinskiy--a feminist

Ismail Gasprinskiy in his office in Bakchiseray.

Recently, as they do every year, the library celebrated the anniversary of the birth of Ismail Gasprinskiy (March 21, 1851). The day began with a ceremony of tributes at the Gasprinskiy monument located on the Salgir River in the center of Simferopol. A two-hour seminar on Gasprinskiy’s life and work was held at the Franco Library, and on the following day, a celebration was held in the nearby city of Bakchiseray, where Gasprinskiy lived for most of his life and where he is buried.

The festivities made me think once again about this remarkable man and how so little is known of him in the western world. And perhaps because I am currently showing the recent PBS special on the history of the American women’s movement to students at the Window on America Center in Simferopol, I also thought about Gasprinskiy’s views on women and how he truly is someone we would call a “feminist.” 

At a time when women were almost universally seen as inferior to men, particularly in the Muslim world, Gasprinskiy had the courage to speak out, demanding to be heard on the importance of changing the attitude towards and treatment of women. In the pages of his newspaper Terdjiman which he published from 1887 until his death in 1914, Gasprinskiy criticized the practice of polygamy and arranged marriages and divorce being a prerogative for men only. Edward Lazzerini, the foremost western scholar on Ismail Gasprinskiy, writes that “Gasprinskii insisted that ‘evolution in the marriage laws’ had become a necessity” and Gasprinskii felt that “what was needed…was a regularization of the laws so that men would no longer be able to repudiate their wives arbitrarily, and women would be permitted to divorce their husband for just cause.”

His own marriage to Bibi-Zuhre hanim Akchurina seemed to have been a partnership in the modern sense: “the union of two determined young people who valued the role education could play in the enlightenment of the Muslims of the Russian empire and who were ready to dedicate their energies to achieve this goal,” writes Azade-Ayse Rorlich, translator and editor of the only book of Gasprinskiy’s writings available in English.  Zuhre hanim played a vital role in the publication of Ismail Gasprinskiy’s renowned newspaper, Terdjiman, according to Rorlich:   “Even though her name did not appear in the paper… Terjuman would have neither become a reality, nor endured, had it not been for the material and moral support of his wife Zuhre, as well as for her very real contribution to running the paper.”

Perhaps what Gasprinskiy is most known for is his belief in the importance of the education of Muslim women. In his words: “Whoever loves his own people and wishes it a great future, must concern himself with the enlightenment and education for women, restore freedom and independence to them, and give wide scope to the development of their mind and capabilities.”

He was quick to publicize any evidence of attempts to improve education for Muslim women, such as the opening of schools especially for girls. In Bakchiseray, his sister opened the first school for girls of the new method schools (Gasprinskiy’s modernization of Muslim education which was widespread across the Russian empire). With his daughter Sefika, Gasprinskiy started the first magazine devoted to Muslim women. And in his fiction writings, he often created strong women characters that embodied his ideas of modern women, in the belief that his writings would “inspire the real-life Muslim woman to utilize fully her capabilities as a human being, and real-life Muslim society to permit her the opportunity to do so.” (Lazzerini)

It was in such writing that I came to see how well Gasprinskiy understood the role of society in keeping women oppressed. French and American Letters, the only collection of Gasprinskiy’s writings available in an English translation, are excerpts from a fictional travelogue that he serialized in Terdjiman. It follows the adventures of a Muslim man from Central Asia and his travels to France and Africa, and at least some of the writing is loosely based on Gasprinskiy’s own life.

But the last letters are pure fantasy and recount his and his travelling companions’ capture by a band of “Amazons” in Africa. In this Amazon society, gender roles are reversed—men are sexual slaves, women are rulers and warriors. There is much discussion among the men about this reversal of roles and titillating humor when one of the captured men is summoned into the “harem” of the Amazon sultana. In the end, the men escape but not before doing fierce battle with the Amazons. Gasprinskiy writes:

“The amazons flew toward our improvised fortification with extraordinary speed and courage…the Frenchmen…marveled at the spirit and courage of these desert riders.  The life and courage of these amazons… clearly proved that education and world views could endow women with much courage, strength, and fortitude…It became clear that in other countries women were fearful, weak, had a delicate nature, frail nerves and no will of their own, not because that is how it should be, but because their education, world view, and those life conditions which had shaped them over time, had made them what they were. “

Truly, Ismail Gasprinskiy was a man far ahead of his time. His radical view that women are equal to men and it is society that is holding them back would resonate today and earn him the label of “feminist.”

The information for this blog post came from these sources:

Gasprali, Ismail. French and African Letters, Annotated Translation and Introduction by Azade-Ayse Rorlich, Istanbul: The Isis Press. 2008

Lazzerini, Edward. “Ismail Bey Gasprinskii and Muslim Modernism in Russia, 1871-1914,” unpublished dissertation, University of Washington, 1973.

Fisher, Alan. "A Model Leader for Asia. Ismail Gaspirali."  In The Tatars of Crimea: Return to the Homeland, ed. Edward A. Allworth, Duke University Press, 1998.

Note: There are many different spellings of Gasprinskiy, based on the translation of the original language—T

Off the beaten path in the Dentist chair

I browse through magazines when I’m at the dentist’s office, mostly to ease the anxiety that accompanies these visits.  My experience with dentists, from a young age, evokes nightmare visions of painful toothaches and shrill loud drills.  “I just want to keep what I have for the time I have left,” I tell the dentist.  He smiles, ruefully.  He’d love to put in several implants, to the tune of over $10,000, which would be nice, but I’d rather spend the money on travel and vacations. I’m not his best patient.

So it was that I read the latest issue of the Smithsonian magazine (April 2013) from cover to cover. The travel issue. Some great articles.     

Fireworks sculpture, opening ceremony, 2008 Beijing Olympics,
 www.caiquochang, and below photo by Jason Lee, Reuters. 

My favorite was "Burning Man," by Ron Rosenbaum, about the amazing artist Cai  (pronounced Tsai) Quo-Chang, born in China and now living in New York City, who designed the awesome “fireworks sculptures” that opened the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Remember them?

I never did know much about the artist, but I was one of more than 34 million people worldwide who watched the spectacular fireworks creations in awe, the most artistic I’ve ever seen, before or since.  Not just "bombs bursting in air," but beautiful creations in the sky.  Cai creates “ethereal art traced in flames and gunpowder,” explosive art, writes Rosenbaum.  He “wants to paint the heavens like Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling..."

Cai says simply, "I want to open a dialogue with the universe.” He certainly is doing that, on super-large canvases and through super-large installations, "sculptures," in nature.  He has a fascinating personal history, including memories of his father, a calligrapher and rare book-collector,  during the “cultural revolution,” when  Mao Zedong exiled and killed thousands of intellectuals and “cultural elites.”  Cai's father secretly burned his precious collections in fear of capture. Sad. Thousands upon thousands of professors, writers, and artists were lost, or toiled in fields and factories into oblivion.  These memories burned deep into Cai's psyche, from which he derives his artistic inspiration.  It's an inspiration embellished with a mixture of Taoist and Buddhist beliefs about our eternal connections to the invisible universe, a fascination with modern technology, pyrotechnics, and physics, fear and awe of nuclear power (he worked in Japan after the tsunami), and a sense that aliens or souls from other planets and places want to communicate with us.    Such an unusual artistic vision and such unique ways of expressing it! 

www.amazon. com. I think my family
       had this in its library. These kinds of  nature
books inspired my brother Loren. . 

The April issue of the Smithsonian also has a great article by Tony Perrottet, “Birthplace of the American Vacation,” about  the travel and nature writings of  19th-century Boston preacher William H.H. Murray.  Perrottet traces the idea of a "vacation" to Murray's obsession with the Adirondack Mountains in Upper New York State, their beauty and restorative powers.  Murray wrote as eloquently about the Adirondacks as Thoreau wrote about Walden, John Muir about the American wilderness, and photographer Ansel Adams about the Southwest and California. But  Murray didn't just glorify nature, he offered specific ways of being in the mountains and experiencing them.

Murray, it turns out, published, in 1869, "one of the first guidebooks to a wilderness area in America." The country had emerged from the horrors of Civil War and industrial capitalism was taking off. It’s hard to believe that his eulogies to hiking, hunting, fishing and camping in the Adirondacks were initially condemned as threats to civilized life!  But public opinion came around soon enough.  By 1875 the Adirondacks was becoming a booming tourist attraction. Gilded age tycoons like the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers and Carnegies led the way, building hide-away retreats in the mountains, and ordinary American followed. The lakes, 3000 of them, the winding roads and rivers, the forests and backwoods beckoned, generation after generation.  

I know they called to my family, living as we did in Rochester, NY.  We went to the Adirondacks to visit friends and relatives and to vacation, and my brother Loren went to summer camp there, on Lake Saranac. It meant so much to him. A more recent trip took me to the Lake Placid area, where America hosted the winter Olympics in 1980, and I got to visit with cousins Leo and Kathy in Canton.  So many of my friends have similar Adirondack memories, and we enjoy sharing the songs, folklore and traditions from that special place.  They flourish still.

"Open-wide," a voice said gently out of the blue, just as I was sharing in author Tony Perrottet’s elation upon discovering an original 1869 version of Murray’s guidebook in the archives of the New York Public Library!  Oh,  how neat....oh, right, I'm at the dentist's!

I closed the magazine as the expert hygienist Helen went to work, but I focused on visions of the Adirondacks in all their glory, in all their seasons.  “Teeth look good,” I heard Helen say, as I took a dip in Sagamore Lake and  walked on the road to Great Camp Santanoni, and then saw a sculpted explosion of light around Beijing.    

Marriage Equality: Let Love Be

"No one knows for certain how the arguments...will go, nor do we know how the Supreme Court will rule in June. But we  know that the day will soon come when LGBT individuals, couples, and families are equally protected under the law. We know it won't be long until we are fully and wholly included in the lofty American ideals of liberty and justice for all. And we know that we will win this fight." 

  John Becker, "The Weight of History: Marriage Equality before the Supreme Court,"
 Huffpost, 27 March 2012.

(www.hrc.org)

John Becker of the Huff Post is right: It's just a matter of time.  Like the century-long struggles for equality for women and African-Americans, it's about completing the American civil rights agenda. 

If you are a man and a woman over-55 and want to get married, but not have children, is it against the law?  Is "marriage" by definition only between a man and a woman, more specifically a  heterosexual couple who want children? Fertility tests required?  Judge Sotomayor has asked some of these kinds of questions about the gay marriage cases now before the Supreme Court.

For me the main question is:  Aren't all Americans equal under the law? Why is the government in the marriage business at all?   Aren't all Americans guaranteed "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" by the Constitution, including the 14th amendment, which as I understand it applies to everything and everyone, animate and inanimate?

Let the angels do their work. People fall in love, want to make a commitment, get married, so be it.  Do it. And hope, I guess, that you don't fall under the marriage/divorce ratio ramped up by heterosexual couples. As for families, some of the most loving families I know, and the most stable, are gay and lesbian couples, many of whom have been together a long time, are raising children who are wanted and thriving, and lead happy middle-class lives. Why in the world treat them like  3rd-class citizen without rights, discriminate against them, and then create ridiculous arguments for maintaining such injustice? 

I don't know if the Supreme Court will move on marriage equality and the (archaic) definitions of marriage yet (born in the days of primogenitor and concern with the transfer of property, as I see it, more about property than what Fox's Bill O'Reilly calls Bible-thumping).   But I do think public opinion is way ahead of the Supreme Court and the courts, and Congress and state legislators.  The Gen X-Y-Zers don't care; they have real issues to worry about, like the economy and jobs, education and housing. Families, they know, most from experience, come in all kinds of configurations.

Human beings are wonderfully diverse. All Americans have equal rights protected under the Constitution. It's a free country.  Let love reign. Let equality and justice reign.


  

Connecting with Mystic Rumi

      

“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

“The wound is the place where the light enters.”

"Don’t grieve.  Anything you lose comes around in another form.”

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.  I'll meet you there."                                 Rumi, 13^th century Islamic Sufi poet 

These are some of my favorite quotes by Rumi, the 13^th century Islamic Sufi poet and mystic from Persia (born near what is now Afghanistan). Rumi is the ancient root of the Order of Whirling Dervishes and their dance known as the Sama ceremony.  

It was my friend Doris, a devotee of A Course in Miracles (ACIM), who took me back to Rumi. We were talking on the phone after many months, even years, in different parts of the world, with little communication.  We were friends in Toledo, but she’s lived in California for a long time, and is now in Berkeley, and I’ve been all over the map.  All we have to do is email, phone, touch base somehow, and we pick up from where we left off.  Our friendship is beyond space and time.  She’s a soulmate, like my brother Loren and sister Andy.  We are always connected.

Doris reminded me of Rumi and Rumi reminds me of Loren, whose spirit has perhaps come round in another form, perhaps in the form of Doris herself, whom Loren adored.  

So when Doris quoted from Rumi, the line about the field beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing, I had a rumbling in my brain.  I know that name.  “Is he somehow related to the Whirling Dervishes?” I asked Doris, drawing deep from an unconscious memory. “I think so,” she answered, “a wise man.  Wisdom comes from many sources."  .

The Whirling Dervishes!  I saw a group of Whirling Dervishes when I was in Istanbul with PCV friends Jud and Jason.  It was one of the most wondrous evenings we spent in this beautiful city that is both Asian and European.  We had a wonderful meal, listened spellbound to sacred Persian music played expertly on ancient traditional instruments, and we followed the spinning Dervishes, round and round, their white skirts billowing around them. Incredibly moving. Mesmerizing! .

With the Sama ceremony crossing my mind, Doris told me about ACIM and her experiences on this path.   I went back and forth between lessons in ACIM and Rumi.  I remembered that he too wrote of the entanglement of the soul in the material world, and how to find love and harmony  along the way.  He taught about reconnecting to the source of life, from which we become separated, and with which we long to reconnect.   So by turning and turning to the sounds of sacred  music becoming the sound of silence, a dervish grows through love, abandons time and ego, and arrives at a point of perfect serenity, a field of exquisite harmony with all things.

Aha.  So this is the field about which Rumi teaches.  It's the field beyond the barriers we build to the love we seek.    

A Course in Miracles seems like a good path for Doris. She’s happy, and so are her adult children. From her unique perspective, Doris gave me another way to see my Peace Corps experience in Ukraine, where I felt connected in such profound ways to the people and country, even though I couldn't speak the language, very little. "We somehow connected beyond language," I told Doris.  I was just there, taking life as it came, one day at a time, without judging, without a lot of thought.  I was beyond my comfort zone.  Completely psychologically naked, as it were.   

"How amazing and wonderful, Fran," Doris remarked.  She understood. "Without language, in the dark, beyond your comfort zone, you had to connect on other levels.  And you did!"

Yes, that's it! We "connected on other levels."  Without the ability to speak and participate in daily conversations beyond "good day, the weather is good,  I don't understand, but yes and no,." I felt a kinship beyond words, a bond that neither time nor distance nor language barrier can sever.

So this too is the field Rumi told about.

Thus did the mystic Rumi become our bridge, the eternal bridge between Doris and me.  We are on similar paths, not identical but in harmony, in the same field or close to it.  

Ah Mary Oliver!  You're there too.  You write about it in your poetry. So this is why I love your poetry; this is why I read and reread your poems, like a dervish in a Sama ceremony.  I feel it; the field where wisdom resides, along with the souls of all those we have loved and lost.  A field of light and love, and miracles.

I haven't felt this close to Loren in a long time.

What is There Beyond Knowing, by Mary Oliver (New and Selected Poems 2, 2005) 
What is there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me?  I can't

turn in any direction
but it's there.  I don't mean

the leaves' grip and shine or even the thrush's
silk song, but the far-off

fires, for example,
of the stars, heaven's slowly turning

theater of light, or the wind
playful with its breath,

or time that's always rushing forward,
or stanind still

in the same -- what shall I say --
moment. 

What I know
I could put into a pack

as if it were  bread and cheese, and carry it
on one shoulder

important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained

and unexplainable.  How wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end.
I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out.  Life so far doesn't have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet.
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass
   and the weeds.

White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field, Mary Oliver, Owls and Other Fantasies, 2003

Coming down

out of the freezing sky

with its depths of light,

like an angel,

or a bhddha with wings,

it was beautiful

and accurate

striking the snow and whatever was there

with a force that left the imprint

of the tips of its wings--

five feet apart--and the grabbing

thrust of its feet,

and the indentation of what had been running,

through the white valleys

of the snow ----

and then it rose, gracefully,

and flew back to the frozen marshes,

to lurk there,

like a little lighthouse

in the blue shadows--

so I thought:

maybe death

isn't darkness, after all,

but so much light

wrapping itself around us--

as soft as feathers--

that we are instantly weary

of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,

not without amazement,

and let ourselves be carried,

as through the translucence of mica,

to the river

that is without the least dapple or shadow--

that is nothing but light--scalding, aortal light--

in which we are washed and washed

out of our bones. 

Fort Meigs and Ohio History

“Fort Meigs is a War of 1812 battlefield located in Perrysburg, Ohio. A reconstructed fort and museum help bring history alive. Fort Meigs is one of fifty-eight sites within the Ohio Historical Society, now managed by the Fort Meigs nonprofit organization. Along with school tours and interactive displays, a number of reenactments and special events take place here throughout the summer. Dedicated staff and volunteers allow Fort Meigs to bring fun and education to hundreds of visitors each year.”    www.fortmeigs.org

Bob Smith, board president, Sylvania Area Historical Society (lower right)
 introduces Rick Finch, director of Fort Meigs,at March 20 SAHS program. 

"It is observed by all the officers that I have had any conversation with who have been a long time in the service, some of them in the Revolutionary War, that this is the most disagreeable encampment they ever saw,"  wrote Lt. Joseph Larwill in his journal in March 1812, describing the building of the huge Fort Meigs site in Northwest Ohio. Hard to believe it could be worse than a Revolutionary War encampment, when we think of General George Washington and his troops! 

Rick Finch, director of the Fort Meigs historic site and museum, shared journal entries of soldiers and war veterans during a program about the War of 1812 at the Sylvania Area Historical Society (SAHS). Fort Meigs witnessed some terrifying encounters with the British and their Indian allies. The American soldiers at Fort Meigs  were a super-hearty bunch. "These guys had no coverage but thin canvas tents," Finch said about a winter campaign.  "They were huddled six to a tent in freezing weather."   At another point Finch told how the soldiers had to hike through mud and swamp lands up to their knees, inch by inch, and how they fought side by side in forests and unfamiliar territory without enough supplies or reinforcements. 
   

Finch presented an interesting history of the building, and re-building, of the Fort, a strategic site on the Maumee river and important battleground in the War's "western theater."  He spoke about the reasons for and the geography of the War, which few Americans know much about, and the military battles, which were fiercely fought and resulted in much hardship and many deaths. 

The War of 1812 was a 32-month military conflict between the US and the British Empire and their Indian Allies.  The Indians were led by Shawnee confederation leader Tecumseh, who sided with the British in hopes of building an independent Indian nation.  Americans at the time thought of the War of 1812 as a “Second War of Independence” against the British, and perhaps that was its greatest outcome.  America had asserted its autonomy, seizures of American sailors and goods stopped (as Europe became engulfed in the Napoleonic War), and an "Era of Good Feeling" followed. Otherwise the War of 1812, in spite of its brutality and devastation, including the burning of Washington, the new capitol, ended with a stalemate and no changes in territory.  It pretty much settled the American border with Canada as well. 

It did have another important outcome for the nation, and for our region, however, Finch concluded: “It opened the Northwest territory, the Great Lakes region and the  Midwest, to further settlement and growth.”  

Romanticized painting of  Tecumseh,
 leader of  Shawnee confederacy, by Benson Lossing,
 based on a pencil sketch by Pierre le Dru (wikiiphoto)..

America’s relentless westward march to the Pacific continued throughout the 19th century, through the Civil War and beyond, and with it the destruction of Native Americans,  who were forced off their lands and pushed ever-Westward or onto reservations. Fort Meigs helped clear the way West for the expanding new nation.  Among the biggest losers were not the British, but the Native peoples of North America.  Tecumseh was killed during the War, in 1813. His death marked the end of the dream for uniting and saving his people.  

 

American  history encompasses a complex process of evolution and change, war and peace, achievements and disappointments. It takes place on many levels: political, military, economic, social and cultural.  It includes the diverse stories of natives and newcomers, migrants and immigrants over time.  It begins with our local histories and our family stories, woven piece by piece into the fabric of the common narrative we all share. Rick Finch reminded us that Fort Meigs and the history of Ohio is an important chapter in this narrative.    

Fort Meigs is commemorating its 200^th anniversary this year (1813-2013) with lots of programs and special events. Site descriptions note that "Ohio's War of 1812 battlefield is home to the largest reconstructed, wooden-walled fort in the country." It also has a great bookstore, full of books and information on Ohio history.  See you there!

For more information about Fort Meigs go to www.fortmeigs.org.  For more information about the Sylvania Area Historical Society go to www.sylvaniahistory.org. Join the SAHS and learn about YOUR history! 

Welcome Aboard!

Train travel is alive and well in the US.  Nice to know.  Last week, my friend Teddy and I went to a Lifelong Learning lecture at Lourdes University on the world of trains, more specifically passenger trains.  William Gill, regional coordinator of “All Aboard Ohio” reported on the current status and future vision of rail travel.  We learned that the Obama administration has given stimulus funds to 13 high-speed rail projects in 31 states, including Ohio.  These are the kinds of projects we need to know more about, and support.  The stimulus funds give Amtrak a much-needed boost and the means to examine  long distance routes like the Capitol Limited, a daily train between Chicago and Washington, DC that stops in Toledo, which Gill said  has the busiest train station in Ohio.    Didn't know that.  

Dr. Gill, at 80, remains an avid, active, and articulate advocate for the history and use of railroad  service up to present. He’s a volunteer lobbyist for rapid rail transport in Ohio;  friends with our representative to Congress, Marcy Kaptur;  a  member of the National Association of Railroad Passengers; and an enthusiastic  supporter of Amtrak and it’s “Reconnecting America” initiative. His enthusiasm is contagious.  He even had us singing “Dinah Blow Your Horn,” and “I've been working on the railroad.”    

There is a lot more going on in this busy universe, which sees over 30 million travelers a year, than meets the eye: constant: infrastructure improvements, connecting privately owned lines and Amtrak lines, increasing capacity and service on different routes, and working on the next-generation of high speed trains.  Three brief but informative videos upped the audience’s excitement.

Gill handed out Amtrak timetables so we could all think about  money-saving train travel in the not-too-distant future!  I’m studying the schedule now.  I took the train from DC to Toledo, when I moved here to Sylvania two years ago, a fine experience, reminiscent of train rides I took as a child  between Rochester and Buffalo when my grandfather Curro worked on the railroad, and we got free tickets.  It was such a thrill.  I remember train rides to Boston and to Wisconsin, too, as a college and graduate student.  Trains were also the  main mode of transportation in Ukraine, and I had plenty of overnight and long-distance train rides from Lugansk to Kyiv, and to and from Kyiv, Odessa, Chernigov, Lviv, Crimea, the Carpathans and all around. The trains were mostly very old and the tracks were in need of upgrades (I was especially aware of this on a train ride to Kyiv with a broken arm and nothing but a few tylenol),  but the service was terrific and the trains were always on schedule. Woe be the passenger who arrived a few minutes late, as I did, once.. 

 

Friends Teddy and Marilyn with their Amtrak timetables.
at Lourdes University. 

So now I'm thinking about a train vacation across America. How about an exciting train trip along the Northern route through Chicago to Minnesota, North Dakoka, Montana , over to Portland and  up to Seattle and Vancouver? or how about  the  popular  “Coast Starlight,” which runs along the west coast, a beautiful route from Seattle down to Sacramento and San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara.and LA. 

"Passenger rail in America is very much alive,” Gill concluded.  Won't it be super to have those rapid rail lines up and running!  I'm writing a letter to Rep. Marcy Kaptur now.  Join me fellow travelers!    .

Contact Marcy at:  www.kaptur.house.gov, or 202-225-4146, or 2186 Rayburn Bldg, WDC 20515.....  

National Train Day in Toledo this year is May 11. Learn all about trains in America.  Elissa takes grandson Philip.  I think I'll join them this year!  

Habemas papam

Prayer of St. Francis, yahoo image

It’s black!  It’s white! Habemas papam.  We have a pope. I love the drama and the pomp.  And the Latin, which takes me back to Mrs. Bullard's Latin classes at Harley School in Rochester, NY,  a language hardly taught now. How many people have read the Aeniad in Latin?

I like that the new pope was selected on my birthday, that he is a Jesuit from Argentina, and that he calls himself Francesco, Pope Francis. My grandmother is Francesca, and my Dad, Francis Frank, after whom I am named.  I’m Francine but love Francesca, and find when I’m traveling that it is easier for people to say than just plain Fran. But my family naming patterns notwithstanding, I love that the new pope chose the name Francis after St. Francis of Assisi, a simple and humble friar who loved animals, nature, and all human beings, who embraced the poor and vulnerable, and who prayed for us to love, to understand, to give.

Pope Francis is an international pope, too.  The first non-European pope ever, attesting to the remarkable growth and vitality of the Catholic church in Latin and South America, over 480 million people strong, and also in many countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, and around the globe.  A pope of the people, maybe like John XXIII. 

A good choice, it seems.  Timely and thoughtful.  I’m not Catholic but I understand the power of this religion for millions and millions of people.  I love the Catholic cathedrals of the world, their architecture and history, how they were built, how they were used, the good, the bad and the ugly. I have stopped to meditate in many of them, in Krakow, in Budapest, in the Vatican and at Notre Dame,  and most recently in San Miguel de Allende with my grandson Josh.  He followed me into the oldest Church of San Francisco. I told Josh the denomination didn't matter.  Just a place to pause, reflect, think about loved ones. For me, also, these cathedrals, from magnificent to humble, are places to feel connected to something larger than we are, the great transcendent cloud network where all religions merge into one.   .

Although my mother’s dad, my grandfather Loretto Luchetti, studied briefly for the priesthood, according to family lore, he was happy to escape its clutches at the time, in the early 20^th century, leaving Rome and his family to come to America, a talented, multi-lingual, musical shoemaker.  My grandmother Julia was related somehow to a family of Waldensians, Italian protestants, and was devout.  My grandfather’s job was to take her to church every Sunday, but as far as I know he never went in with her.  In fact, he’d drop off grandma then  run over to see my mom, his daughter, have a shot of whiskey in his coffee, and play the horses!  He was funny. His green eyes sparkled. We adored him.

The other side of my family is equally religiously infamous, my grandfather Leo Curro from a line of  French Huguenots who fled to Sicily, and my grandmother Francesca Curro a convert here (this is a bit fuzzy).  The Curro's, too, being Protestant, were a minority among Italian immigrants in America.  They held their own, that's for sure. I remember lots of heated discussions, in Italian of course, over great meals, about il papa, and his being just another guy “like you or me.”  Such glorious irreverence, earthy and exuberant. . I remember my dad once  pulling out his Bible (he read every word) to demonstrate the illegitimacy of the pope!  "We don't need a Pope to get close to God," my father, the Baptist deacon and revered Sunday school teacher,  would say.

So I have this fascination with the Catholic church, the Vatican, art, religion and rebellion in general.  I think I'm closer to Judaism than anything else; think I may have been Jewish in another life, maybe in Palestine itself; and admire Jewish traditions and stories. I visit Jewish communities wherever I travel, drawn to their history and struggles. I've given up trying to understand these feelings. It doesn't matter.  They are just there, part DNA, part heritage, part cultural tradition, part subconscious memory.  In my family, religion and rebellion, reverence and irreverence, faith and doubt go hand in hand.

Pope Francis will accept it all.  He will be tolerant.  He will be a busy man, an instrument of peace.  He  has a lot to do, a full agenda, but something tells me he's up to the challenges, both practical and spiritual.  He went to get his own luggage today; took streetcars in Buenos Aires, lives simply.  I think he will want to cut the Vatican down to size, literally and figuratively, so that it is transparent, accessible. He understands the poverty in the world, as well as the glory.  So many of us, no matter our backgrounds or religious beliefs or where we live, will look to his leadership to end poverty and bring social justice on earth. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I think Pope Francis is a dove, a messenger of hope and peace on earth as it is in heaven.   .