Can we talk?

On Tuesday, I was sitting at the reference desk getting ready to open the library when my colleague hurried in, announcing that she had stopped to vote on the way into the library. While turning on the monitors she mentioned that she hadn't know how she would vote until actually going into the booth; ultimately she chose to vote for the candidate her children were supporting.

I started laughing, thinking that she must have been joking. How could she be undecided? This is a woman I like personally and respect professionally. She is thoughtful, funny, a committed parent, considerate and generous with her friends and family, and she was a poli sci major in college! How could she have considered voting for that candidate?

While I was worried about having a such a sensitive conversation at work, I had to know what caused her to be conflicted about what seemed to be a clear choice. She was open to explaining her perspective to me, and shared the issues that were important to her, some related to the candidates and others related to the issues. I listened, just listened.

As I went through the day, I kept coming back to how different this exchange had been from others inmy experience. Most of my political conversations were with folks who are in "my camp." Encounters with folks on the other side of the aisle consisted mostly of Facebook flames posted as comments to my posts or unhappy conversations with family members (nothing like getting into an argument on the way into Mass).  I began to think that we have lost the ability and perhaps the opportunity to engage in a respectful way with folks who believe and live differently from us. 

Are we losing the desire to talk to each other, choosing instead to talk at each other, at best, and about each other, at worst? Are others having rewarding, respectful, revealing conversations with folks who think or live differently from you? If so, where? How? If not, why not? 

What do you think? Do we need to make a conscious and concerted effort to talk? Is there a need for it? Do you think it's possible?

I need to pause for perspective -- a perspective that is different from mine -- and listen with open ears and heart and a closed mouth.

Carl Sandberg, a voice for our day

I've been watching a documentary about poet Carl Sandberg; the son of Swedish immigrants, self-educated, Sandberg is truly an American innovator and truth-speaker. I don't know if I fully understood how revolutionary he truly was. I thought of him as an Ogden Nash or Will Rogers when hearing his most famous phrases: "the city of big shoulders" or "the fog comes in on little cat feet."  While Sandberg lived simply and spoke plainly, he wrote poems that were challenging in form and message.

In the poem of Chicago, Sandberg offers an bare look at the ugliness of this city:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.

But Sandberg embraces the vitality of the city, as well:

Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
                   Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

A working man, himself, and supporter of and organizer for the Democratic Socialist party, Sandberg knew that the life in and of Chicago triumphed over the death found in the city.

We can thank Harriet Monroe, editor of Poetry magazine, for recognizing the true American voice of Carl Sandberg at a time when some reviewers called his work "clumsy, vulgar, metrically inferior and ...prosaic." Monroe became his champion and brought him into a group of poets who included Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, Sara Teasdale, and Edwin Arlington Robinson.

Sandberg did find other supporters of his work.  In 1916, one reviewer predicted that "When men study the growth of humanity in the twentieth century, they will read Carl Sandburg's Chicago Poems."  Reading the poem, The Right to Grief, I am uncomfortable at how little it seems humanity has grown in the past 100 years..

Take your fill of intimate remorse, perfumed sorrow,
Over the dead child of a millionaire,
And the pity of Death refusing any check on the bank
Which the millionaire might order his secretary to
scratch off
And get cashed.
Very well,
You for your grief and I for mine.
Let me have a sorrow my own if I want to. I shall cry over the dead child of a stockyard hunky.
His job is sweeping blood off the floor.
He gets a dollar seventy cents a day when he works
And it's many tubs of blood he shoves out with a broom day by day.
Now his three-year-old daughter
Is in a white coffin that cost him a week's wages.
Every Saturday night he will pay the undertaker fifty cents till the debt is wiped out.
The hunky and his wife and the kids
Cry over the pinched face almost at peace in the white box.
They remember it was scrawny and ran up high doctor bills.
They are glad it is gone for the rest of the family now will have more to eat and wear.
Yet before the majesty of Death they cry around the coffin
And wipe their eyes with red bandanas and sob when the priest says, "God have mercy on us all."
I have a right to feel my throat choke about this.
You take your grief and I mine--see?
Tomorrow there is no funeral and the hunky goes back to his job sweeping blood off the floor at a dollar seventy cents a day.
All he does all day long is keep on shoving hog blood ahead of him with a broom.
(The Right to Grief)


Frederick, John T. "Review of Chicago Poems." Midland 2.6 (June 1916):

Listening to Lois

Published in 1994, Lois Lowry's The Giver was not in my "to read" pile until I was studying children's literature while working on my masters in library science. I read and appreciated The Giver as one of the many wonderful works of literature on my syllabus.

In my work as a children's librarian, I have not had to dip back into the book; it "sells itself" to kids as a recommended read by their friends and a required read by many teachers. Plus it has the coveted gold sticker on the cover, celebrating its status as a Newbery award recipient.

Now, 18 years later, The Giver is back on my reading list, this time as personal wish to read through the first three books in the quartet that concludes with Lowry's latest book Son.  I am intrigued to see how this experience of The Giver will be different, reading it nearly 2 decades later and as part of a larger collection.

I have found that any good work I revisit – book, movie, play, painting, garden, etc. – rewards my subsequent time and attention. I have found that creative works often have an impact on me immediately and over time. Art has the ability to change my mind about the world in big sudden ways and on smaller incremental issues.

I was intrigued to learn that Lowry doesn't have the same experience. In a recent Huffington Post interview, Lowry noted:

"Early on I came to realize ...kids at that pivotal age, 12, 13 or 14, [are] still deeply affected by what they read, some are changed by what they read, books can change the way they feel about the world in general. I don't think thats true of adults as much. I'm an adult, I read, I'm no longer going to be changed by it. I think writing for kids is profoundly important."

Well, I certainly agree that writing for kids (not to them, or worse, at them) has an impact. I recently read about a school visit Lowry made after the publication of her first book when she "realized...that she could talk to kids or she could talk to adults, but not to both: “And so..chose the kids."  How fortunate for all of us, children and adults, that Lowry continues to tell her stories.

articles cited
The Children's Author Who Actually Listens to Children. Dan Kois. New York Times Magazine.
10/03/12
Lois Lowry...Reflects on Dystopian Novels, Psycopaths, and Why Kids Make the Best Audiences. Lucas Kavner. Huffington Post. 10/05/12

It's okay to stare ... the slow art movement

Most people spend more time gazing into the fridge than they do looking at a work of art. Even  a masterpiece like the Mona Lisa merits only 15 seconds from the average viewer. What might we be missing? Phil Terry, whose vocations and avocations defy simple description, launched Slow Art Day in April 2008 with a party of one – Mr. Terry – at the Jewish Museum in NYC. In 2009, the group increased to four visitors at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, also in NYC. Now, Slow Art Day has increased to 89 institutions officially registered for April 27, 2013.

But you don't need to wait until April to slow down. On October 20, I attended a Slow Art Saturday program at the wonderful Milwaukee Museum of Art.  Led by the arts educator Amy Kirschke, 10 or so participants were encouraged to "discover new delights and uncover mysteries in a single painting through slow looking and facilitated dialogue with fellow art enthusiasts."

We looked at a dramatic painting depicting four figures, with two men at the center of the composition. The light focused on and radiated from a figure the group assumed to be Christ.  Each viewer had a different perspective, both literally and figurately. After silent looking and group discussion, Amy revealed the artist and the work. We had been looking at Christ Before the High Priest, painted in 1633 by Dutch artist Matthias Stom(er). Stom was a Caravaggisti (follower of the painter Caravaggio) and influenced by Gerard van Honthorst, another Dutch artist.

One of the most interesting aspects of the discussion was consideration of the "life of the painting and its purpose." Originally, one of 12 religious paintings in a church in Naples, the painting would have been meant to inspire and instruct the parishioners. In the 1770's the painting was purchased by Lord Barrymore, a member of English artistocracy, during a tour of Italy. The painting was then on display in the Lord's stately home, signifying the sophistication and wealth of the owners to all who visited the house. In 1933, the painting was sold at auction to the museum, becoming a work of art and history, with a more scholarly purpose. I need to think about how the purpose of the painting affects how it is received and perceived.

As we started our program on Saturday, Amy commented that "paintings repay the attention they are given." An eye-opening, mind-opening thought to consider as I pause throughout my day.

I encourage you to pause for art, whether in on a museum wall or on your refrigerator at home. While you can go slow on your own anytime, it's a treat to learn from Amy and the other participants. The next Slow Art Saturday at MAM is Saturday, November 17, at 10:30am.  Just rsvp to adults@mam.org or 414-224-3826.