My Brother Loren: Courage and Hope

Loren's autobiography, front and back covers, designed by his niece Elissa,
my daughter, which came out in August 2010, three months after he died.
 The photo on back cover is our mom reading to Loren. Loren's book
has helped hundreds of readers understand Asperger's Syndrome.



I was pleased to learn that there is growing awareness and lots of services in the Toledo area for people of all ages with Asperger's Syndrome and autism.  This wasn't so when my brother Loren was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s.  How different it would have been if he had had early diagnosis and intervention in his life.  Instead, he coped on his own until he found his own way.  I write this blog in memory of my brother, and for all the Aspies out there who should never give up.

It's my brother Loren's birthday.  It's been three years since he took his last hike on the Aucilla River with the Florida Trail Association.  He would have been 66 years old today.  The good die young.

I lost my soulmate, the person who taught me about facing obstacles with courage and hope.  Loren faced his challenges head on, searching ceaselessly for meaning and purpose in his life.  He accepted his Asperger diagnosis, at age 55, with relief, relief that there was a name for the social challenges he had faced since birth.  Loren was an Aspie with purpose.

He taught me how to see life from a different angle. When I tried to go where he went, to see what he saw, to think as he thought, I was in a new and glorious realm of being.  Loren took me to places I had never been before, to new ways of seeing the world, the transcendent, eternity.

I was the historian but he was the genius who held a myriad of knowledge in his head, and shared it openly, freely; some said too openly and too freely.  Sometimes Loren would get so enthusiastic it was hard to stop him.  He didn't catch those subtle verbal cues and unspoken hints.  It was hard for him, and people got impatient, dismissed him, left him on the margins.  He knew it. He fought it.   
But what knowledge he had, about every subject imaginable! What an awesome cosmic perspective! How generous and compassionate his outreach and his volunteerism.   Sure he often went over the top. But he came to recognize it, to deal with it, to gain in those common social skills that most ordinary mortals learn early on.

But he wouldn't have been Loren if he had been ordinary.  Loren was extraordinary.  He was passionate about life. And the kindest person I ever met.



It's what I loved about him.  It's what I can never replace, what I miss.  How I wish I could believe he's in a better place. "There are no ends in nature, only beginnings," he would say.  My friend Doris believes it.  She said, when I visited her in California a month ago, "I feel his ongoing sprit from another dimension.  He's cheering you on, Fran, as you continue your life's work." 






Loren's memorial bench, in northern Florida.

Some Asperger services in Toledo area: 

http://localmarket.autismsupportnetwork.com
http://support.autism-society.org
http://www.bittersweetfarms.org
Loren's books is available if you email me at fcurrocary@yahoo.com







Remembering Peace Corps Service on Veterans Day



Service to country.  It's what the Peace Corps is all about.  It's a commitment to representing America abroad, building grassroots friendships and cross-cultural understanding. So on this Veteran's Day 2013, I hope Americans will recognize Peace Corps along with our brave soldiers, veterans, and all those who have served and still serve abroad.
 

English Club, Starobelsk Public Library, 2009-11.
"We are the World!"

My Ukrainian friend Olga emailed me that she walked to the Starobelsk Public Library the other day and went into the grand reading room where we had held our English Club.  It is now the "Computer Room,' she said, thanks to the dedicated work we did to make it happen, including three grants to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  

The Foundation had a project, the Bibliomist project, whose goal was to computerize libraries in Ukraine.  This certainly addressed a real need in Starobelsk.  We jumped  on it.  After going through many hoops and many tries, "the little library that could" in far-eastern Ukraine got ten computers, wifi, and free ublic access to incredible online resources and services.   

So Olga watched the people at the computers and talked with the librarians.  It was nice news.

Добрый день, дорогая Френ! Я заходила в библиотеку. В большом зале стоят компьютеры. Зал полон людей- студентов и школьников за компьютерами. Все сотрудники передают вам огромный привет. Только при упоминании о вашем имени все улыбались. Вы сделали большое дело. Оставили яркий и незабываемый след  Спасибо вам за ваш труд. Здоровья вам и удачи! Мы вас любим!

 Loosely translated Olga said: Good day, dear Fran! I came to the library and went into the great hall with the computers. The room was full of people, students and school children at the computers. All employees send you a huge hello. Just the mention of your name brought smiles to all!  You left an indelible mark. We all thank you for your hard work. We wish you health and good luck. We love you!

It’s the best news a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) can get, to know that their work with their community made a difference, created friendships, and opened up a window of hope.   Over 200,000 American citizens who  have volunteered with the Peace Corps in over 200 countries around the globe can say the same thing. 

Today, America needs to remember the 8,073 volunteers who are now serving in 76 countries.   They are grassroots ambassadors empowering local people to take charge of their futures.  They lay the foundations for peace from the bottom up. 

    

      

Modern Japanese Prints and Old Friends Meet at the Toledo Museum of Art

TMA's Monroe Street entrance features the gate sculpted by Louise Nevelson.
Entrance to Modern Japanese Prints above it,
contemporary paintings and sculptures around it.



The Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) is not only full of beautiful art of every medium, variety, and era, it is also a great meeting place.  I went with my friend Teddy to see the modern Japanese woodblock exhibit "Fresh Impressions," which was lovely, and it turned into "old home week."  We bumped into several friends, including three friends who had also lived in the Old West End (OWE) in the 1970s and 80s. We had raised our children in the Victorian neighborhood and, now grown, they are friends to this day; many of them share an OWE facebook page, chatting frequently from all around the world.  It's a special bond.  We parents have it, too.

Since coming back to Toledo in 2011, I am gradually connecting with dear friends I haven't seen since I left in 1985. What better place to meet than at the TMA,  surrounded by beauty, soft jazz playing in the gift shop, great food and camaraderie in the café. We had once shared so many things, including a love of art and music, the varied architecture of our neighborhood and the distinctive personalities of our neighbors, the goal of preservation and restoration, the talent and creativity that abounded, ideas about gardening and plants, and some progressive politics. 

Here we are, I thought, almost thirty years later, older, wiser perhaps, lots of different experiences under our belts. So much to talk about, so much catching up to do.  

We chatted about the exhibit, about the art, craft and techniques of woodblock prints, the subjects and bold colors of the modern prints, as well as the artifacts on display around them. We all enjoyed the prints of women in various dress and attitude, the kabuki actors, and the scenes of Mount Fuji, cherry trees and other familiar landscapes.

The prints taken together compose what's called the Shin Hanga movement, which revived the well-known Edo printmaking tradition (1615-1862), but with a modern perspective.  Shin hanga prints, created mostly between 1919 and the 1940s, appealed as much to new markets in Europe and America as to Japanese collectors, the exhibit brochure tells us.

The amazing thing is that the ten artists featured in this show were first exhibited at the TMA in 1930.  Imagine!  An exhibit called "Modern Japanese Prints" in 1930!  These same artists, the brochure notes, "continue to be the most revered artists of the shin hanga movement."

How extraordinary, given those decades of world-wide change, depression, and chaos--the volatile mixture that accompanied the rise of a vicious nationalism and finally erupted into another world war. I think it's a wonder the shin hanga movement existed at all, and especially through World War II and its devastating aftermath.  

Art soars above bleak landscapes and human violence, I thought.  The Shin hanga movement exemplifies this, as well as art's power to draw in like-minded spirits and to bring together friends. We friends didn't have a lot more time to talk, but we agreed we'd get together again soon and take up where we left off, maybe back at the Toledo Museum of Art in the Old West End, our common ground.
 

Exposing the Culture of Secrecy

A culture of secrecy has taken over America. 

I think Julian Assange, Wikileaks, Ed Snowden will go down in history as speaking truth to power, as pioneers in exposing government cyper-surveillance excesses and lack of transparency, and in seeking to protect our first amendment right to free speech.  The whistle-blowers, in the tradition of Daniel Ellsburg and the Pentagon Papers, are blasting the culture of secrecy that enables the expansion and abuse of power.

It's not pretty. It's messy. It's not the best way to do it.  But is there another way to expose  the breadth and depth of these excesses?  I really would like some answers to this question.  How?  How, when we see the ways in which the US government has reacted to exposure, how defensive its responses, how overzealous its efforts to charge espionage, viciously pursue, capture, and imprison leakers like Snowden. 

I don't necessarily like these guys or the way they go about their work, but I dislike the secrets, lies, and over-the-top spying even more. There have to be boundaries. 

The Obama administration has dusted off the old Espionage Act of 1917, enacted during World War I and noted for its questionable constitutionality, and used it to go after the leakers.  This nasty undemocratic act enabled jailing anyone with a German surname, imprisoning reformers like Eugene V.Debs, deporting Emma Goldman, interring Japanese Americans, and charging Daniel Ellsberg with fraud for releasing the Pentagon Papers.

This act, amended a few times, is now embedded and enshrouded in all of the anti-terrorism legislation passed since 9/11.  The Secret State has burgeoned. 

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the 1990s denounced the "culture of secrecy" made possible by the 1917 Act, noting the tendency of bureaucracies "to enlarge their powers by increasing the scope of what is held secret." (Wikipedia article on the Espionage Act).

"Increasing the scope of what is held secret."  This is the heart of the matter.  Why kill the messengers? Who else will speak truth to power?

Halloween Tales

"He's a lion not a tiger, Nana."  That's Josh, with the Uncle Sam hat.

 Oops, here's the revised tale! 

It was Halloween night, Sylvania 2013, and the little lion--tail wagging, ears perky, whiskers alert--walked through the woods to grandma's house.  Along the winding path he met a . . . .Santa Claus? 

Wait, where's the big bad wolf?  "No big bad wolves in this forest, Nana," grandson Kyle grinned.  "Just me and a friendly lion, and that would be my brother Chase.  He's harmless."

"Well, I like that story better," I replied.  "But Santa, you're a little early this year!"

"Yep, I'm getting ready.  This time I'm getting the candy, though!"

"Good idea.  And instead of reindeer, you have a happy lion to go along with you."

"I'd bring Rudolph if I could.  Oh wait, next year that's what I'll be!"

"Great idea," I yelled after him, as their mom took Santa and the courageous lion into the dark night with other goblins. The light from smiling or frowning or fierce pumpkins lit the way.

The ghosts howled and laughed. 

What memories these times create!

I remember the time we were in Rochester for my Dad's funeral. No costumes? No problem! My kids and my sister's kids dressed up in my mom's clothes and shoes, adding as much jewelry and make-up as they could. What a group!  My brother Loren took them tricks or treating that year.  As sad as we were, we knew my Dad would have wanted it this way.  "Life goes on."

My mom remembered a Halloween when she took my brother tricks or treating. My sister and I, so much older than Loren, went our own ways.  We lived in Rochester, NY.  Loren was a few years younger than my grandson is now, about 8 or 9, dressed as a soldier, helmet on, gun at the ready.  My mom, as creative and clever as ever, dressed up as a flapper.  She remembered it this way:

Armed and Unarmed
byRoseLynn Curro

It is dark, crispy cold
A silence fill the trees.
Soft sounds, faint lights
and smell of burning leaves.
Suddenly,
war hoop cries and
bands of ghosts appear.
Howl, howl
Tricks or treats!
They charge, attack and disappear....
Hurry, hurry time to go,
The conquerors' battle won. 
Tired flapper, weary soldier,
the ghosts all had their fun.
Deep the night, frosty cold,
My soldier leaves his gun.
Welcome sleep, contented smile.
I'm his mother, he's my son.

Secrets have Weight

yahoo public domain image

"Secrets have weight." It's a line from a TV show I flashed by on the way to the final world series game that the Red Sox won. That thought has stayed with me, for lots of reasons, personal, political, and cosmic. 

I think of secrets I have kept, usually to no good purpose.  I think of secrets others have had, ranging from silly rumors to blindsiding kinds of secrets, relentless, hateful.  Dirty little secrets, dirty little lies, like in the John Mellencamp song "Dirty Laundry."  I think what goes round, comes round.

On the political front, I think about our NSA cyper surveillance crisis and Obama's role in it. What does he know and how long has he known it?

It's a Catch 22 in any case.  If he knew about it, the unlimited scope of it, approved and condoned it, it's outrageous, possibly illegal.  If he didn't know about it, it's outrageous. 

Secrets have weight.  Either he approved the NSA cyper spying that includes spying on allies and millions of personal phone calls in cahoots with giant communication companies, or he didn't know because NSA is running its own out-of-bounds spy operations, a secret government doing its own thing, without a transparent chain of command, without oversight or accountability.  No doubt America has superior capability in electronic spying.  Some of it might be necessary, although a definition here, some criteria, some legal parameters that were public knowledge, would be helpful, and are warranted. It's the excess that worries.

Secrets have weight.  While we were tapping German president Merkel's private phone, her calls and texts, and those of other close allies, the Ambasador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed in Benghazi in a secret terrorists attack on the US Embassy. Three other Embassy workers were also killed.  Where was the "surveillance" on this?  I don't want to jump on any political bandwagon here, but do we know all we need to know?  The juxtaposition is tragic.

On the cosmic front, I think of those more than 350 drone attacks in northwestern Pakistan. Cosmic because it involves the deaths of innocent victims.  I'm wondering about Obama's love of drones and the bombing of little villages like Warikistan, where terrorists are said to hang out.  How many terrorists have we gotten for all these secret attacks? We don't know.  We don't know much if anything about this secret little war. But we are now learning that hundreds of civilians have been killed, and that the attacks are probably creating a whole new cadre of terrorists who hate America and want revenge.   Does this kind of secret war make sense?

Secrets have weight, and these secrets are boding ill for Obama's contemporary role in peace-making and his place in history. They are contravening his goals and his promises. They are weighing him down.  We had hoped for so much more in his second term.    

Naomi Shihab Nye: Poet Without Boundaries

 

Nye at a book signing. Yahoo photo. 

Poetry soothes the soul. So I was glad that my cousin Kathy Curro, who led me to Mary Oliver when I lived in Ukraine, led me to another poet. Oliver remains one of my favorite poets, along with the likes of Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who died a few months ago and whose poems, transcendent and profound, I've been reading. Dig deep, and Heaney will be there.   

Now I am reading Naomi Shihab Nye, thanks to Kathy.  Nye is a Palestinian-American born in the US in 1952.  As a child, she spent some time with a grandmother in Palestine, her father's mother, an experience that infuses her writing. "She waits by the oven watching a strange car circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son, lost to America."  The lost son, Nye's father, tells his daughter who he is, that his name, "Shihab," means shooting star, "a good name, borrowed from the sky," she says in the poem "Blood." 

Nye has lived in San Antonio, Texas, for a long time and calls it home.  She's published dozens of books of poetry for adults and children, novels and songs.

Her sensibilities are international, transnational, tuned into identity and awareness of self and others. 

 

Poetry teaches with words strung together like pearls.  Nye's poetry is like that, necklaces of beauty that accessorize  our ordinary lives.

In Words Under the Words (1995), a compilation of her poems, she writes about her heritage, the American southwest, her travels all over the world. I like the poems about her father, and those in which she remembers her Palestinian grandmother, watching her bake bread, doing the tasks of daily living, praying to Allah.  "My grandmother's voice says nothing can surprise her." 

I also like her poems about hope and meaning, like the poem "Kindness," which Kathy pointed out. We've all experienced sorrow and kindness, and we know in our gut that kindness can keep us going when nothing else will do. Kindness has provided comfort since my brother's sudden death. Nye helps us understand. 

Nye's poems are evocative.  I feel the words at times, the emotions that flow around the words, "the words under the words."  

Words Under the Words

for Sitti Khadra, north of Jerusalem

My grandmother’s hands recognize grapes,   

the damp shine of a goat’s new skin.   

When I was sick they followed me,

I woke from the long fever to find them   

covering my head like cool prayers.

My grandmother’s days are made of bread,   

a round pat-pat and the slow baking.

She waits by the oven watching a strange car   

circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son,   

lost to America. More often, tourists,   

who kneel and weep at mysterious shrines.   

She knows how often mail arrives,

how rarely there is a letter.

When one comes, she announces it, a miracle,   

listening to it read again and again

in the dim evening light.

 

My grandmother’s voice says nothing can surprise her.

Take her the shotgun wound and the crippled baby.   

She knows the spaces we travel through,   

the messages we cannot send—our voices are short   

and would get lost on the journey.

Farewell to the husband’s coat,

the ones she has loved and nourished,

who fly from her like seeds into a deep sky.   

They will plant themselves. We will all die.

 

My grandmother’s eyes say Allah is everywhere, even in death.   

When she talks of the orchard and the new olive press,   

when she tells the stories of Joha and his foolish wisdoms,   

He is her first thought, what she really thinks of is His name.

“Answer, if you hear the words under the words—

otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges,   

difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones.” 

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Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995). Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.  You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and      purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you every where like a shadow or a friend.