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February 9 seems early, even for hellebore.
 

(Always) More Garden Thoughts

 

Other than a few remnant patches here and there, our snow melted and evaporated, leaving bare, squashed grass, weeds, and last autumn’s fallen leaves, a tired palette not at all brightened by a string of grey, overcast days. Cold wind didn’t help, either. During an unseasonably warm spell, my sturdy hellebore dared to put forth blossoms. Will they survive, now that the temperature has gone back below freezing at night?

 

Friday was busy in the bookstore, Saturday not, but a cheery surprise awaited me at the post office: my seed order had arrived! 

Small packages hold big dreams.

It may not look like much, but my kitchen garden is small, so I tried not to get carried away, because besides these packets I’ll be starting tomatoes from seed and, as usual, buying other plants as my budget permits. Oh, frabjus joy! Another year of gardening! More planting and weeding and watering and pruning and moving things around in the endless search for the right placement for all -- the doing as rewarding as the results, if not more so.

 

Seeds to start indoors --

Six weeks from last frost date. As I see it, that means it will be mid-April when I’ll have to rearrange my home office to make way for seed trays and pots in the big south-facing window. Meanwhile, at the bookstore, the big pot of parsley continues to thrive, as do geraniums, asparagus fern, and citronella. Citronella has small pink blossoms! Not showy, but still, it’s cheery and encouraging at this time of year to see any kind of blooms. The citronella will go back outdoors for the summer, but perhaps I should break off some leaves now to take home and deploy as mouse repellant? Because a couple of those little devils made uninvited indoor appearances recently....

 

 

More Book Thoughts

 

Since my last blog post (which was shorter than usual, with not a single picture of my dog), I’ve continued to think about Bonnie Jo Campbell’s novel, The Waters, in connection with Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated. A novel is fiction, a memoir nonfiction, so that’s an important difference, not to be forgotten, and there are others. For example, The Waters puts a woman in the driver’s seat, as it were: Hermine Zook, the healer, dominates the island as well as the hearts and minds of her daughters and granddaughter. Westover, on the other hand, despite relationships with her mother and sisters, is ruled over (as are the mother and sisters and brothers) by her father in more ways than one. Her brothers play major roles in her life, as well -- for better or for worse.

 

As for similarities, here I’ll quote what I wrote a few days ago: “Yet in both stories, unlike as they are in so many ways, there is a family isolated from its own surrounding community, as well as from the larger world; a young girl, hungry to learn, who is kept out of school; a mother who knows herbs and how to take care of babies; and violence, an omnipresent threat, that breaks out from time to time without warning.”

 

Continuing to think about both stories, the fictional and the actual, has led me to watch several interviews each with authors Campbell and Westover. (I’ve linked two here, and you can find many others by searching online yourself.) One thought since my last post (this came from the linked interview with Campbell) is how important choice is to the women we meet in both stories. As in life, much happens that was not chosen by Tara or Hermine or Rose Thorn or Donkey, but in other moments and situations they did make choices, sometimes considered for a long while beforehand, but not always. Sometimes impulse gave voice to feelings that had been simmering unrecognized beneath the surface until the moment they burst through. 

 

Tara’s father made many choices for her before she became strong enough to know what she wanted for herself, and the same was true of Donkey, with her mother and grandmother deciding her fate for years. Is personal growth is a paradox or a feedback loop? It is only by making choices that we become ourselves, and at the same time we have to gain knowledge of ourselves in order to be strong enough to make choices that we need to make.

 

(Campbell seems to be having a wonderful time with her book tour travels and visits, and she has certainly earned every bit of the attention she’s getting. Also, as she herself notes, it doesn’t make sense to spend years working on a book and then not do everything possible to get it into readers’ hands. Westover’s memoir was a sensation when it first appeared in 2018, and she was a national phenomenon, appearing everywhere, so if she has chosen to disappear from the public eye for a while, as it seems is the case, one can hardly wonder at that decision.) 

 

The question of home, like that of choice, looms large for Tara in the memoir and for the women of M’sauga Island in the novel. Molly and Prim have left the island to live elsewhere, and Molly wants her mother and Donkey to move off the island, too, but Hermine would not be at home anywhere else, and the four adult women are “more themselves” when there, together, the author tells us, even when they are at odds with each other. For Hermine and Donkey, the relationship to the natural world in which they live is as important as Rose Cottage. But Donkey needs a larger world, one that includes school – and boys and men.

 

Tara Westover had to leave her mountain home to go to school, and she wanted to go much more than she wanted to stay, and yet the mountain pulled her back over and over again. In “the end” -- of the memoir, that is, which isn’t “the end” of her story, of course, since she and family members are all still alive -- she had to lose half her family, including both parents, in order to be true to herself. It was interesting, however, that in one of her appearances (on a podcast called “Mormon Stories”), two of her aunts and a cousin showed up to support the decisions she had made.

 

Q. If Tara Westover were to read The Waters (and I hope she will), would she think Campbell romanticized rural isolation and the life of a child kept out of school and away from doctors, despite the violent incidents that take place in the novel?

 

Q. If Bonnie Jo Campbell were to read Educated (and perhaps she has), I’m sure she would point out differences between the Westover family and the Zooks, but would she also see parallels in the strength that both Tara and Donkey needed to make their own way in a larger world?

 

I keep searching out interviews with both authors and will continue to think about their stories, I’m sure, for a long time to come.

 

 

More Dog Reports and Thoughts 

 

Two years ago I often called her "Tiny Girl."

Sunny and I have been to the dog park in Northport a couple times in the past weeks, and she has made some new friends, human and canine. The last time we were there, she was one of four dogs (about an ideal number, as far as I’m concerned, at one time), the others a hound named Gilbert (who chases soap bubbles) and two Labrador retrievers, but Sunny Juliet was the only one of the four with any interest in chasing tennis balls. I thought of my sister saying that their Labs have never been big on chasing balls, and for the first time it occurred to me that while Labs are “retrievers,” they are bird dogs, and the hunter does not throw a bird for the dog to bring back! Ah, but then I remember a friend’s golden retriever, who would chase and bring back tennis balls for as long as anyone could be persuaded to throw them, so – small sample, no conclusions here. Any thoughts on this burning question?

 

As for why a dog like Sunny, bred for herding, would care for tennis ball play, I have no explanation, and neither can I venture a guess why she behaves like a terrier – dig! dig! dig! -- whenever she senses a mouse or mole in a pile of brush or underground. 

 

Oh, and then there is her fascination with wild animals that take refuge in our old, ramshackle barn! Birds and feral cats and skunks, you name it. Sunday morning she had a mild skunking, what I call a "skunking-at-a-distance," i.e., not so strong as to bring tears to human eyes but still not a smell I would want on my bed, so out came the Dawn detergent (2 T), hydrogen peroxide (1 quart), and baking soda (1/4 cup) for a deskunking bath (need to renew those important supplies), plus a strip of bacon to lure her into the bathtub. She was not eager but didn’t make a big fuss, thank heaven. Important note: The deskunking mixture must not be mixed up ahead of time and/or ever stored in a closed container! But if you have a dog, it’s a good idea to have the ingredients and recipe on hand.

 

Afterward, she was full of smiles and wiggles and so much energy that I gave her three of the calming treats that would have been helpful, maybe, an hour earlier. Supplies have since been restocked, but I do have to hope that Sunny won't go back for more skunk experiences any time soon!

None the worse for her experiences!

 

Challenges

Tunnel, teeter-totter, and hurdles that Sunny is learning to master

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

 

-      William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

 

This particular truth of Shakespeare’s is so often quoted out of context (almost always!) that we easily forget its role in the play and poor Malvolio as the victim of a humiliating practical joke, but just so, in the usual fashion, I too intend to shove Malvolio offstage and use Shakespeare’s words to introduce my own topic:

 

Some challenges we choose, others are thrust upon us.

 

I’ll begin with myself (since this is my blog). In my own quite ordinary life, a new puppy was a challenge I chose (not anticipating quite how much of a challenge she would be, but that’s a common story, too, I’m sure), while being transported to Widowland was a challenge life thrust upon me, for sure. Certain aspects of this truth doubtless apply to your life, as well, in that some challenges you would have avoided if possible, and others you probably went out of your way to embrace.

 

Some human beings are born into the world challenged, with physical handicaps or poverty thrust upon them from the very beginning. I can’t say I was “born on third base,” but I was born in the United States, broadly speaking into the middle class, of educated parents, and all that was a head start that I didn’t have to earn.

 

Books

 

All these thoughts ran through my mind this morning as I was reading Jacob Wheeler’s new nonfiction book, Angel of the Garbage Dump: How Hanley Denning Changed the World One Child at a Time. Hanley Denning was a young woman from a comfortable American background whose life trajectory changed dramatically when she saw children living in extreme poverty in a garbage dump outside Guatemala City. Hearing the subject of this book, you might shudder and want to back away, fearing it would be too “depressing” to read, but such is far from the case, because Hanley’s determination to help the children was matched by her love for them and her ability to connect not only with children in Guatemala but with wealthy American donors to make a difference. Given all that, the story of the growth of Hanley’s nonprofit, Camino Seguro, or Safe Passage, is inspiring and uplifting. As I read this book, my head and heart are filled with images of children – and their parents – who find safety, joy, love, and learning in their challenging present, as well as hope for a better future. A wonderful story, well told by the publisher of Leelanau County’s Glen Arbor Sun.

An inspiring story!

Hanley Denning chose early on in life on the challenge of long-distance running, and she went on to choose the almost superhuman challenges of changing the lives of some of the poorest children in the Western hemisphere. Most of our lives are much tamer, but no life is immune to challenging situations.

 

Anne-Marie Ooman’s book, As Long As I Know You: The Mom Book, recounts challenges of a different kind. For most of Anne-Marie’s life, her own mother’s example was one she was determined not to follow. With five children born in six and a half years, both Oomen parents had to work hard to feed and clothe them all in rural northern Michigan, and the children had to work, too. Anne-Marie wanted a different kind of life -- and she wanted it away from the farm. Signing up for a college semester abroad, against her mother’s wishes, was one early blow she struck for her own freedom, determined to become a writer, not a housewife. While writing, however, was something Oomen chose, different challenges awaited her with the coming of her widowed mother’s old age. 

We can all learn from Anne-Marie's honest true tale.

 

When a parent can no longer live alone safely, how do adult children deal with the problem? Where does the money come from for increasing levels of care? What kinds of conversation are possible between unhappy aged parents and confused, guilt-ridden adult children? Are there ways to avoid the unhappy feelings of the two generations?

 

No one chooses old age. Inevitable it is, however, for those who live long -- the price of long life -- and however well prepared we may try to be, it cannot be otherwise than challenging. 

 

Where Jacob Wheeler’s book about Hanley Denning is inspiring for the enormous challenges his subject took upon herself, Anne-Marie Oomen writes of challenges more of us are likely to face, whether we want to or not. We can learn, though, from both books. From Wheeler’s, we see the enormous difference that one very other-directed person can make in the world. Yes, it can be done! From Oomen’s, looking ahead to very probable situations in our own lives, we can perhaps avoid some -- not all! -- of the problems she and her mother and siblings experienced, profiting by what the author would have liked to know and understand earlier. 

 

We will not all move to Guatemala, after all, but we are all getting older every day of our lives. 

 

Dogs

 

One of the many wonderful things about dogs is that they don’t compare the lives they have to other possible lives. When a dog is sick or hurt, the dog doesn’t cry, “Why me?” and in a household with only one often boring adult, the dog doesn’t say, “I never asked to be born! I wish I had a different family!” I am the one who chose the challenges of learning agility work for Sunny Juliet, not Sunny herself, but she is responding whole-heartedly! The work exercises her mind along with her muscles. It requires her full attention, and her attention channels otherwise wild energy into focused energy. The payoff (besides generous treats throughout the exercises) is that after a lesson she and her classmate get to run around and play off-leash. Social time! Happy dogs! 

 

May we all meet the challenges of the day with courage and cheerful spirits --. 

The Practice of Grief

Humans and Dogs

 

The very next morning after we said goodbye to our beloved little Peasy, a much-beloved human friend of ours took leave of this earthly life. We knew it was going to happen and had spent as much time as possible with her during the beautiful Michigan autumn of 2021, laughing, reminiscing, and also seriously plumbing life’s deepest mysteries – in short, having the kind of conversations one has with a close friend of many years. She had been through a decade of cancer treatments and had outlived her physicians’ expectations for her threefold, but now she was ready to go, and we had to continue to be understanding and supportive and strong for her. She had been through enough. It was a cruel twist of fate that had taken her own little dog from her only two months earlier.

 

Melanie called our weekly meetings in the fall “our special Sundays,” and we had five of them altogether. The Artist was with us for two of them, as he and Melanie had a special friendship dating back to the year her mother was dying (and died) of cancer, and David helped listen and talk her through that hard time. Melanie and I, on the other hand, when by ourselves, talked of family and friendship matters but also spent a lot of our time together talking about dogs.

 

“I think it’s harder when a dog dies than when a human does,” Melanie said to me one Sunday, “but you can get over losing a dog faster.” It broke her heart to lose Lulu, but even with Stage IV cancer and two broken legs, our dear Mel was seriously considering bringing another little dog into her life. And that was pure Melanie – always looking past present pain to future joy.

The only thing that got me over losing Sarah was adopting Peasy, so I think I know what Melanie was saying. Over time, the dogs we love tend to blend together in memory to a large extent, and taking a new dog into your heart crowds out the pain of having lost the one before, whereas one never really 100% “gets over” losing a family member or close friend, and the personalities of those individuals do not blur together over time. When I think of Annie or Linda or my grandmother, it is that person I want here at my kitchen table, sitting across from me, smiling and laughing and sharing stories. Melanie!

 

But there she was, only weeks away from the end, telling me that she thought it was “harder when a dog dies”! If she were here with me now, Melanie would not chide me for the grief I feel over Peasy but would understand it completely. A dog, after all, is an around-the-clock, constant companion. When you share your world with a dog, you are the sun and the moon to that animal. You never have to worry that the dog might have other plans for the day. He or she is there, rain or shine, whatever your mood.

 

 

Grief Practice

 

It is a new year.

The year 2021 brought countless deep losses for many people, not only us, and, as the Artist notes, at our time of life it is in the nature of things that friends will die. Another friend, blessedly (!) still alive in her 90s, made the suggestion the other day that perhaps grief is a practice. The way I heard her suggestion was understanding grief as a kind of meditation, with its own rituals, something we go to daily, like prayer.

Julia made her suggestion about grief as a practice after I had posted on Facebook a pencil sketch I’d done of Peasy. He was a beautiful, extremely photogenic dog, and I have a lot of photographs of him to use as models for sketches. Another friend (maybe the same day) shared the idea that grief is love that has nowhere to go, and that made sense to me, too. When the ones we love are alive, our love has their physical presence as its object. Now, with my little guy’s absence confronting me everywhere I look in the physical space around me, it is some comfort not only to look at photos of him but also to try to capture as many details as possible on paper with my pencils. The visual and tactile aspects of drawing give my love “somewhere to go” so that it doesn’t paralyze me. It is grief work. Soul work. 

 

Talk is a big part of the practice of grief, too. The Artist and I spend countless hours remembering friends no longer with us and also recalling the dear and beautiful and humorous aspects of our departed dogs. (“What do you miss about him most?” “The snuggling.” “Yeah, that was the best part.” “And his little ears, too.” The way his little rear end would wiggle with joy, since he had no tail to wag. The way he would run so proudly from one end of the house to the other with his squeaky lion.) We tell and retell stories of times spent with friends, as a way of keeping them with us. I also go back mentally, over and over, the meal menus of the “special Sundays” with Melanie: homemade muffins from my farmhouse kitchen; Polish sausage and sauerkraut from Bunting’s Market in Cedar, Indian food from NJ’s in Lake Leelanau, that fabulous “Figgy Piggy” sandwich from the New Bohemian Café; and Indian food again. Planning each Sunday meal helped to make those afternoons celebratory. And the Artist and I go over the conversations….

 

Talking often leads to crying, and crying is part of the value of the talk. There is no shortcut through grief, only the painful way through it, and the talk and the tears allow the feelings to be consciously and fully felt. Does that sound paradoxical? That a person could have “feelings” without feeling them? Think denying, repressing. Not a solution.

 

Talking and drawing invite grief to sit down next to me. I need to let myself feel the losses fully. On the social side, however, I am also forcing myself out to spend time in the world of other people rather than immersing myself in grief fulltime. Dropping out is no solution, tempting though it can be. -- In fact, quite honestly, it tempts me again and again, and I have to overcome it over and over….

 

 

Ambiguity and Dilemmas

 

I’m going to try to telescope and condense as much as possible other topics I wanted to cover in this post -- ambiguous loss, moral dilemmas, and negativity bias – so as not to exhaust readers’ patience or my own mental and emotional energy. 

 

“Moral dilemmas,” the idea of them, is a large area of exploration and thought in the academic study of ethics in departments of philosophy. Some philosophers think moral dilemmas do not exist: there are only right and wrong choices, and if you don’t know what to do, you’re either not thinking clearly or trying to put one over on yourself. What world do these people live in? In my world, whether there are only two choices or half a dozen, sometimes there is no choice that comes without something to regret. 

 

“You had no choice,” people like to say, and yes, sometimes life decides for us, but other times we do indeed have to choose. “You did the right thing. You have nothing to regret.” Oh, yeah?

 

“Choosing under uncertainty” is also an area of study, not only in philosophy but also in economics. Well, aren’t we always? We repeatedly ask “What if?” questions. What if this or that consequence were to come about? Horrible! Need to avoid it! But what if it never would have? We cannot know.

 

A friend sent me an article on negativity bias (here is one article on negativity bias, though not the one my friend had copied and pasted into an e-mail to me) after I’d sent her one on ambiguous loss, and I’ll be reflecting on these ideas for quite a while. But putting them together, I wonder: can there also be ambiguous gains? I understand the idea that some losses are obvious and clear-cut, others hard to point to or recognize, but I’m wondering now if the same might not be true of gains and if it is negativity bias that gets in the way of our seeing ambiguous gains.

 

Deciding to end our young, happy, loving dog’s life out of concern for the safety of our human friends and family was a hard, hard call, and I would be lying if I were to say I am completely comfortable in thinking that I did “the right thing,” i.e., made the only ethical choice possible. It isn’t only that I miss Peasy dreadfully. It’s knowing how much he loved his life with us! His future was uncertain! Well, we “played it safe,” and he won’t injure anyone else in future (now that he has no future), but I can’t help the agony of second thoughts, the bleak, dark hours of wishing I had tried longer and harder and more wisely to rehabilitate him fully. Is that negativity? For me, I see it as trying to understand and to learn. 

 

Losing him was not an ambiguous loss. Damned obvious! What, though, about gains?

Pointing to the obvious gains of his presence in our life is easy (something about this, at least, is easy-Peasy!): the love we gave him and the love he gave us, all of it growing stronger and deeper all the time; the joy he took in being alive and in having a family and the joy we took in seeing him happy; satisfaction in being able to give shelter and security and a good life to the dear little creature. More ambiguous gains, perhaps, were the lessons we two human beings learned in being calm and patient and nonjudgmental. There were incidents of unacceptable behavior, but we never blamed our dog for what he couldn’t help. Can we carry this learning back into the world of other human beings? Should we try?

 

Now that he’s gone (and there is no getting him back again!), I don’t want to hear about all the horrible things that could have happened with him. None of those horrible things will happen now. It’s over. He’s gone. All I want to think about (if only I could control what comes into my mind! Because what keeps coming in are the second thoughts, the regrets!) is everything about my little dog-boy that was lovely, beautiful, cute, funny, sweet, joyful. His wonderful qualities were unambiguous.

 

So where am I now? Still alive, awash in ambiguity and uncertainty, gratitude and regret.

 

 

Books Read Since Last Listed

 

Here are the books I read in the last days of 2021:

 

174. Frank, Anne. The Diary of a Young Girl (nonfiction)

175. Benítez, Sandra. Bitter Grounds (fiction)

176. Charging Eagle, Tom & Ron Zeilinger. Black Hills, Sacred Hills (nonfiction)

177. Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (nonfiction)

178. Diffenbaugh, Vanessa. The Language of Flowers (fiction)

 

(In case you’re wondering, 174, 177, and 178 were all re-reads for me.)

 

The first things I’ve read in this new year have been:

 

1. Into the Savage Country, by Shannon Burke (fiction); and

2. Le Coeur Simple, by Gustave Flaubert (fiction)

3. Fidelity, by Grace Paley (poetry)

 

I had read none of these three books before. New year, new (to me) books. Onward and upward --

P.S. I hope at least some of this makes sense. I am not at the top of my game these days.

Which Side Are You On?

When I went to work in my fields [following his marriage], I worked with more alacrity and sprightliness. I felt that I did not work for myself alone, and this encouraged me much. My wife would often come with her knitting in her hand, and sit under the shady tree, praising the straightness of my furrows and the docility of my horses. This swelled my heart and made every thing light and pleasant, and I regretted that I had not married before. I felt myself happy in my new situation, and where is that station which can confer a more substantial system of felicity than that of an American farmer…? 

-  J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer

Crevecoeur, an Anglicized Frenchman (born Michel-Guillaume-Jean de Crevecoeur -- and I apologize for not having the proper accent mark available to me on the program I'm using), initially began his New World life in Canada, fighting under General Montcalm until the defeat of the French on the Plains of Abraham. Then, resigning his commission, he traveled through New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. In New York he was naturalized as a British subject and also adopted into the Oneida tribe as an honorary member. He married Mehitabel Tippett in 1769 and spent the following seven years happily farming and raising a family at home, Pine Hill, cultivating friends among his Hudson Valley neighbors, and traveling. 

But his very name — “broken heart” — perhaps presaged what was to come in the author’s life. Count seven years ahead from 1769. Crevecoeur felt himself thoroughly “American,” but to him that meant being a loyal subject of the English king. 

Susan Manning, who edited and wrote the very scholarly introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Letters from an American Farmer, calls the work “a book about identity — specifically American identity — struggling into being.” 

The book that took shape in the years before and during the American Revolution embodies the personal crisis induced by momentous political events. It is at once the fullest literary expression of America’s coming into being … and a moving exploration of the meaning of ‘revolution’ in the personality of any previously established self. 

- Susan Manning

It is easy for us to see the march of history exclusively in broad strokes: migrations, social change, important primary source documents (e.g., in this case, the Declaration of Independence), battles, treaties, etc. What gives Letters from an American Farmer its importance is not only that it was written at all and widely published but that it is a record of one man’s emotions, passions, and responses to the larger events which engulfed his life. We occasionally ask ourselves what we would have done in such-and-such a place in such-and-such a time period. More often we judge the actions of individuals in the past, forgetting to imagine ourselves in their shoes. But there is no possibility of forgetting the man and his family as we read Crevecoeur’s Letters, an epistolary-literary account of real people caught up in world-changing events beyond their control. 

So the Letters constitute a much-neglected American classic, but reading it now, during the COVID-19 crisis, when not only the United States of America but the entire world is struggling and looking for ways to maintain a semblance of normal life and find a way forward while also doing everything possible to avoid contagion in the present and “flatten the curve” (the rising curve of numbers of people infected with the virus), a year that is also an important election year in the U.S., I find added resonance in Crevecoeur’s cries of anguish.

Throughout the early Letters, the author idealizes the American experience and work ethic, particularly that of English and Scottish colonists. (Irish, not so much.) Farmers work hard and bring forth the land’s bounty, while fisherman on Nantucket and Cape Code brave the ocean to harvest subsistence and, for some, even wealth. He is full of admiration for the modest Quaker way of life but paints a picture of religious tolerance, with families of diverse faiths living side by side without acrimony. He admires also the Native Americans, calling their manners “respectable,” in sharp contrast to some of the rude European pioneers along the frontier, who live in “sloth and inactivity.” Those “back-settlers,” he remarks reprovingly, are much more in need of conversion than the Indians. But in general, he presents life along the Eastern Seaboard, on its farms and in its towns and villages, as a veritable pastoral idyll, a dream come true for the poor who fled the nobility-crushed and heavily-taxed Old World, where they had no hope of advancement.

From pastoral idyll, however, Crevecoeur descends into nightmare when he travels in the South and learns firsthand the horrors of slavery. In Charleston and in the countryside, the stories he hears and one particularly gruesome sight he sees stand in such sharp contrast with the threadbare arguments presented to him in defense of the “peculiar institution” that his very belief in God’s beneficence is shaken to the core, and he cries out from his heart —

Is there then no superintending power who conducts the moral operations of the world as well as the physical? The same sublime hand, which guides the planets round the sun with so much exactness, which preserves the arrangement of the whole with such exalted wisdom and paternal care, and prevents the vast system from falling into confusion, doth it mankind to all the errors, the follies, and the miseries, which their most frantic rage, and their most dangerous vices and passions can produce? 

As he looked about him and saw “crimes of the most heinous nature, committed from one end of the world to the other,” he could not help doubting in the existence of wise deity guiding history and ensuring progress. 

Loudly though his every feeling cried out against the evils of slavery, however, Crevecoeur himself was in no immediate personal danger as he traveled through the colonies. He was a white man, after all, an educated man, with apparently sufficient income to leave his farm in other capable hands for long periods while he traveled. A visit farther south, to self-taught botanist John Bertram in Florida, soothed for a while the agitated feelings aroused by his painful encounters in South Carolina. 

But Time is marching on, inexorably, and both Crevecoeur’s scholarly social visits and his peaceful life at home will soon be violently interrupted. The Revolution is at hand! What hope is there now for a loyal subject of the king? 

Now danger has become personal and immediate — as it was already for the slaves on those Southern plantations — and the writer now fears for the lives of his wife and children, as well as himself. Though he declares himself ready to sacrifice his own life for that of his family, staying home on the farm and helplessly waiting “the end of this catastrophe” becomes more and more unbearable. And once again the feelings that agitate his soul find expression in larger questions about the human condition.

It is for the sake of the great leaders, on both sides, that so much blood must be spilt; that of the people is counted as nothing. Great events are not achieved for us, though it is by us that they are principally accomplished; by the arms, the sweat, the lives, of the people.

Resenting historical convulsions that disrupt and even destroy ordinary, peaceful lives, at the same time he knows that he must decide. 

What must I do? … Shall I discard all my antient [sic] principles, shall I renounce that name, that nation, which I once held so respectable? … Must I be called a parricide, a traitor, a villain; lose the esteem of all those whom I love to preserve my own; be shunned like a rattle-snake, or be pointed at like a bear? 

As much as he loves England, he also sees “the powerful attraction” of the call to revolution, and he cannot help blaming the king for pursuing a course that will guarantee the shedding of so much innocent blood. He is a man caught in the middle. 

I cannot count the multitude of orphans this war has made, nor ascertain the immensity of blood we have lost. Some have asked whether it was a crime to resist, to repel, some parts of this evil. Others have asserted, that a resistance so general makes pardon unattainable and repentance useless…. What one party calls meritorious, the other denominates flagitious [criminal]. … What can an insignificant man do in the midst of these jarring contradictions…?

It is, after all, not only coronavirus that hovers outside our doors these days. There is also the unsettling and continuing political discord and paranoia, amazingly and alarming not set aside in the midst of a life-threatening pandemic. If anything, it is exacerbated. And what one side calls necessary, another calls criminal, while millions of ordinary Americans, who want only to work and live in peace within their families and communities, are caught in the crossfire. 

What will Crevecoeur do as the clamor of strife comes nearer? Will he be a “traitor” to the king or a “traitor” to the revolution? Of course, his future then is now long past, so what was his ultimate fate and that of his family? 

Don’t look for spoilers here. If we are going to learn anything from history, it is important that we hear not only competing interpretations but also individual voices of real human beings, as they lived through and experienced those distant times. We are not that different from those colonists — or those slaves — in eighteenth-century America. As did they, we work and love and hope, feel joy and fear, and the questions we ask of ourselves and of the universe have been asked by every generation that came before us.

Song of the Curve-Billed Thrasher

(Photo from last spring)

Often, as the Artist and I are riding along in the car, a question arises that neither of us can immediately answer. The question may concern the geology of the passing scene, some plant or animal species, a question of history, or a writer or actor’s name temporarily just beyond our combined memories’ reach, to mention only a handful of examples out of the infinite number of inquiries that arise between us in conversation on the road. Either of us could, of course, “look it up” instantly (whatever “it” is) on one of our phones, and once in a while we do that — but more often we simply continue our conversation, speculating, critiquing each other’s speculations, and continuing to question each other and, when pertinent, our surroundings. Many would find these conversations of ours pointless and annoying. Well, that’s why we are with each other and neither of us with anyone else.

There are times when we are laughably wrong and only discover our error much, much later. I’m going to confess a truly idiotic belief we came to hold — and held for far too long — because it’s quite funny in retrospect. It has to do with the Kansas Settlement Gin Company, south of our winter home highway on the historically-and-oh-so-evocatively named Kansas Settlement Road.

During the early explorations of our first Cochise County winter, we were surprised to see the gin company there in the middle of the Sulphur Springs Valley. There didn’t seem to be much activity around it then, so we weren’t sure it was still in operation, but the question of operation was secondary. Gin? A company here in southeast Arizona distilling gin? When a visiting Michigan friend inquired, as we three were on our way down to Bisbee that day, we shrugged and told him, well, there are juniper trees in nearby mountains. Which is true….

Was it only this past December that we saw at last how wrong we’d been, or did light dawn in our addled brains the year before? Cotton is grown on land along the Kansas Settlement Road! The company is not distilling alcohol but ginning cotton! I think it was the name that led us astray: Kansas Settlement Cotton Gin would have been clearer. Please note, however, that we finally figured out the right answer all by our previously ignorant selves, chagrined over our earlier leap to a false conclusion but very satisfied to have landed, finally, on what is obviously the real story. And yes, we could have had the solution instantly, back in 2015 … but then we wouldn’t have had to think at all … and we certainly wouldn’t have had the satisfaction of solving the mystery ourselves … and I wouldn’t have any kind of story to tell you, either.

Here’s another example: Just the other day, in an interchange with a Mexican woman in a parking lot, my very rudimentary Spanish fled in the first moment of the encounter, leaving me blank and tongue-tied. The woman and a partner were selling tamales, and I wanted to ask how much they cost, but, as so often happens to me, the first language other than English that came to mind was French, and I grabbed at it desperately, trying to pronounce Combien with a Mexican accent. To me, it sounded good and made sense. But a blank, astonished look came over the woman’s face, and I knew I’d put my foot in my mouth. A language app on my phone would have eliminated any hesitation, but, except for weather and identifying plants, I don’t do apps. Then it came to me: Cuanto! I tried it, and it worked. All right! Embarrassing as my first attempt had been, I felt good about hitting on the right word on my second try. I think embarrassment can be part of a learning experience and does not have to be an occasion of shame. Next time I’m sure I will remember the right word immediately, prompted by my memory of the occasion of not remembering.

The first example, the gin company, is one of two people beginning in ignorance and thinking something through over time. The second has to do with my own memory. (I have a lot more Spanish words and phrases in memory than I can instantly recall, recognition being a much easier task than recall.) What the two  examples have in common is exercising brains instead of looking to a device for an instant answer. Many people prefer the instant answers. I prefer mental exercise.

Then there is the song of the curved-bill thrasher. Winter after winter we have been hearing a beautiful avian songster outside the cabin and trying to spot the bird to identify it. I kept wanting to say it must be a mockingbird. What else could sing so melodiously, produce that lovely, liquid song? And yet, complicated as the song was, it didn’t have the repetitions of a mockingbird. Finally, sitting out behind the cabin and watching birds in a scruffy little netleaf hackberry tree where I’ve hung a couple of suet feeders, I recognized once again the beautiful, mysterious song and could see the singer clearly. It was not the house finch and certainly not the ladderback woodpecker. It was the curved-bill thrasher! There he was, and the song was coming from him! 

Again, a birdsong app would have given me an instant answer, but, even with as long as it took me to connect bird and song, I have no regrets over lost time. What I gained, I feel, is the personal experience that will lock the identification much more solidly in my memory than the instant answer would have done. And time spent sitting and watching birds, like time spent sketching trees, is never “lost time.” It is all about being there, being taken out of myself and merging for a timeless while with bird or tree. And as I say, I do think I will remember the curved-bill thrasher’s song better and longer because I was sitting still, mountains off in peripheral vision, and seeing and hearing together so that everything around me formed a seamless and unitary context. 

The morning I began drafting this post, non-news came from the Iowa caucus: A reporting app had had issues, and the results that (some) people stayed up late to hear (glad we did not) were still not in the next morning. “We wanna know right away,” said one commentator, adding that the very desire for immediate results often drives failure or error. “We’d rather wait and have accurate results,” he said. 

Let me shift the scene here—

A mobility invention designed as an alternative, for some, to a wheelchair has been taken up by fully able-bodied persons using it for recreation. One stands on a platform and leans this way and that to propel oneself forward on a flat surface without having to walk. Why people who can walk want to avoid walking baffles me. They do not rejoice in their bodies’ movement? Don’t want to exercise physical independence and prolong it as long as possible? I don’t understand. But — sigh! — once again, “I am not the target audience.” 

There is a book on artificial intelligence (so-called) that I need to read. Human Compatible, by Stuart Russell (co-author of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach), argues that AI and how (if?) we control it in the future may be the most important question facing the human race. The author is concerned that AI would give governments unlimited surveillance and control capability. (What about corporations? I ask, but maybe that’s in the book, too.) If AI can come to match or surpass human intelligence, what will become of human freedom? 

But now— now I want to take all the ideas above and put them together, adding into the mix young people (not all, but too many) who exercise no muscles other than their thumbs (to text and post on social media). Will our body parts atrophy if we no longer need to use them? That’s one question, but I want to stretch to a further question: Will our very brains atrophy if we stop exercising them to think for ourselves, to sharpen and rely on memory? 

Recently I was trying to find (via online search) something about the split-second delay between any sensory impression and the brain’s receiving that impression, a margin that aids us in decision (or so I vaguely remember reading years ago), actually making choice and decision possible at all. I welcome anyone who can refer me to a helpful citation on the subject, but what alarmed me in my search was that, using the phrase “reaction time,” all I got were results calling fast reaction time good, slow reaction time bad, with lots of suggestions for improving, i.e., speeding up, reaction times. 

Of course, there are plenty of occasions where fast reaction time is crucial. Avoiding a road accident is an obvious example, and Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking gives many other examples. But quick reaction time plus lack of experience can lead to bad results, even in this simple case: To avoid a deer in the road, a driver quickly swerves and hits another vehicle, a tree, or turns over in a ditch. 

Take another example: A stranger knocks on a door, and the person opening the door and seeing a stranger, perhaps someone from a different ethnic group than his own, feels threatened and draws a weapon, killing the stranger — who, let’s say, only wanted directions. Fast reaction time leaves no time to think, to reflect, to question, or to examine a broader context. Experience helps, but what kinds of experience? Experience driving in different conditions is one thing; a human being living in a confusing, complex, and ever-changing world needs a much broader array of experiences to keep trigger-fast reactions from causing tragedy. 

What does reaction time have to do with thinking for ourselves, with working through problems and situations, with exercising memory? You tell me. Think about it. Or not. No one can force you.