In Which I Join The Neighborhood Association

There is a tiny garden down the street from us, tucked between a couple of houses, surrounded by a metal fence and a rusted gate with curling decorations, not obviously belonging to anyone.... with a plaque in it reading "In Memorium." I have wandered by many times with the boys and wondered about it, trying to place which house it belonged to and thinking curiously about the woman whose name was inscribed there.

Just tonight, looking up our neighborhood organization (which I am always meaning to join and never getting around to) I noticed her name "Beverly Eckert" in past events from 2009. Turns out she was my neighbor, she lived in the house behind us, our backyards kiss, there is a family living there now who have big happy dogs who play catch with their balls back there. This lady who has now become a name on a plaque to me, in an overgrown garden behind a rusted gate had quite an interesting story. Her husband died in the 9/11 attacks in the towers while she talked to him on the phone. Beverly then devoted herself to community life, to activism, to tutoring children and volunteering for Habitat for Humanity and planting gardens and painting murals in my neighborhood. Small things...ways to make good in her world. And then in 2009 she was killed in a plane crash, and the neighbors with the big dogs moved in.

And that's how she became a name on a plaque in an overgrown garden down the street. 

I think I'll go join my neighborhood association now.

Golden Memories

Cropped transparent version of Image:Olympic flag.svg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Olympics were about the only real t.v. material I remember watching as a family when I was a little girl.We didn't have a television through my whole growing up (on purpose) so we had to go to my grandma's cabin five miles away or to a friend's house in order to catch any of the events. Man, did that make it seem like a big deal! I remember pretending I was Kristi Yamaguchi after watching her stunning skating performances and imagining how it might feel to do fabulous routines on the uneven parallel bars.

We were a family of nature lovers and artists, not really sports types for the most part. It seemed very important when Papa suddenly manifested team spirit and a magnetic attraction to viewing this sporting event. I remember feeling curious by his excitement and watching him cheer for a photo finish to see what it all meant and how you reacted to it.

I think The Olympics, chapter books and missionaries were the ways I learned about other cultures and countries. There wasn't a lot of first-hand ethnic variation in the north woods of Michigan. Seeing all those bright, unfamiliar flags and proud athletes from the other side of the globe representing their people seemed like something deeply poetic and opened the world to me in my little log house.  I remember watching my eccentric, witty, tall, liberal grandmother sitting next to me, my little legs pulled up Indian style on her couch, her leaning forward, pausing in the middle of her eternal Solitaire game squinting up at the little television set on the wall. Some American was being awarded the gold medal for their performance, they slipped the ribbon necklace over their neck, they clutched their roses, they waved to the crowd, and with the camera panning the sea of Americans and the winner's hand proudly over their heart, the music swelled into our national anthem, and next to me on the couch my clever, stoic grandmother had tears running down her cheeks. I was astonished, The Olympics were clearly important stuff.

And now, here I am watching re-runs of yesterdays key events on YouTube with my little boys who are watching my face to see what it all means and trying to understand how it all works. It gives me a deep thrill to see them acting our foot-races, being impressed by the good sportsmanship on the screen, asking if they can get out our flag to wave and making Tinker Toy torches. And I do hope I'm passing the flame on well.

Really Seeing

I heard an interview with a professional hostage negotiator, of all things, yesterday and he got me thinking about really seeing other people. Its so easy to be really judgmental about the people around us that we disagree with, who irk us, who seem evil, who screw us over in some significant way....but, I have been struck lately by the power in choosing to really see them instead.

This hostage negotiator guy was talking about his job (which he had done for decades) and at some point asked the interviewer what she might imagine would be the most important quality in an individual considering his profession. She suggested a few options that came to her mind: ability to control emotions, strong logical thinking, a powerful voice, thorough knowledge of the law...etc. Nope. The thing he had in mind was the ability to see the hostage taker as a real person with their own needs, a person who is looking for something who is trying a desperate act to either silence the pain of their need or in some strange way meet it. The best skill a hostage negotiator could posses is the ability to really see people? Wow. That bowled me over. What compassion! What humanity!

The fact that a professional in the FBI has spent years practicing really, truly seeing some of the worst in society doesn't mean he's a person of immense love, after all...the point is the connive a way to get the hostages free and that usually means either arresting or shooting the perpetrator, but still...the concept is so powerful that it seems to me that it would have to impact you. Practicing compassion and valuing human dignity and looking under all the bad stuff for a way to a single person's heart seems like a deeply powerful and profound thing to do over and over until its your knee-jerk reaction for interaction with a criminal.

I have heard before that we should love our fellow man, all men, because they are our kind. All humankind deserves respect just because it is an innate right , but I feel like this reason....understanding people's underlying needs and motivations takes things even further. Its not a bland blanket statement..."because they're human" or a vague notion, its individual specific and it takes us down to the deepest level of that particular person's driving force. We all have needs. Its not some early baby step on the road to maturity, something we once did before were so together. Needs are ever-present and healthy to boot. I feel like understanding our grouchy neighbor, our totally annoying four year old, the person who cuts us off in traffic, even the guy on the five o'clock news who shot a 15 year old in New York City or Hitler himself, the Western World's greatest scapegoat for evil...is a very good thing. Its a good thing because it develops in us a compassion that is always relevant and a hope that can see value where we're really tempted to dump a heap of culturally acceptable boiling anger.

Such is love. I aspire.

Living in Color

I like Calvin and Hobbes...and somehow...even though Calvin's dad makes his usual incredibly confusing muddle of the topic....there's something to this idea. I somehow feel a little like color was invented in very recent history. Its hard to imagine the turn of the century and the 20-30 years afterwards being reliably "real" somehow because I see it all in these somewhat less lively looking black and white photography. People feel like sketches, not real humans and it somehow really shocked, emotionally moved and deeply touched me to see this little series of photos that The Library of Congress has put up on Flikr....Rare Color Photographs of The Great Depression Era.

The people feel heart-breakingly real....alive...and somehow painfully interrupted and touchable. Its very core shaking especially in the midst of  reading The Grapes of Wrath. (We're nearing the end) I feel in some small way from looking through the photos that the people still are in some vague sense. They don't feel like someone's ancestor...they feel like themselves: mothers and fathers and young women and little boys with messy hair. There's something very gritty and gutpunching about it for me.

I am also impressed by the true formality of the era in small ways. The dresses that the black field workers are wearing look like church clothes to my modern eye. Very interesting to see female mechanics working with make-up, pretty scarves on their hair and just so touches.

Here's a link the whole shebang on Flikr and if you have less time in your life, here's a more touching smaller selection of them, singled out by ABC