Taking the Long View

Some days I do despair.

Yesterday a friend who has been on the front lines for peace and justice for a long time and has a better perspective than I do, reached out and placed her hand on my arm and said, “Take the long view.”

Take the long view. Keep on doing something every day to make this a better world, because there is always the feeling that the world is going to hell, and our situation is hopeless. Keep going. Have faith that eventually good will overcome evil.

Humans certainly challenge that sentiment.

It takes a long time to create change in attitudes and beliefs. Gradually, eventually, things change, we hope, for the better. It is hard to see that when it seems like we’re rolling downhill in an avalanche.

I have seen more than one elderly black man lately saying, “We’ve come a long way, but we have a long way to go.” There has been progress in civil rights, which the racist segment of our population would like to see rolled back. I believe that racists are as frightened and full of rage as the day Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

How could they not be? They go to violent lengths to sustain their beliefs. I doubt there’s a racist who would buy my theory that they are twisted, bitter, angry human beings because they have put so much energy over generations into convincing themselves and each other that their lies are true. That kind of contortionism makes you sick.

I was raised to be racist. There was no curriculum. It was the culture and the family I lived in. It was in the air we breathed and the language we spoke and the jokes we told.

In high school, watching the television coverage of the civil rights movement, I found racism ugly: Cops were beating people with clubs and blowing people down the street with fire hoses. Sending attack dogs after people. Tear gassing peaceful protesters. Shooting into crowds of college students, shooting activists in their beds. I saw the contorted faces of white people screaming and taunting and hitting black protesters, even children. I saw the bloody faces of protesters who had been beaten. I saw the smoking remains of the church that was bombed, killing four little girls.

If you go to the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center, there is a page listing what they call Civil Rights Martyrs. They are but a tiny fraction of the people killed for being black or standing with black people.

While this was going on, I was in high school on the coast of California. There was a talent contest one week, and my entry was my pallid imitation of Mary Travers singing, “The Cruel War.” As I waited my turn, two black girls got up to sing.

They did a duet on a Motown song, and that gym full of white kids went wild. I was so jealous. “It’s not fair,” I thought. “They have those black voices.”

They did, and they were good. They sounded like the hit music that we loved.

I was not aware until that day that there were any black students in my school.

What was it like for them, going to a school that was about two-thirds white, and one-third Hispanic? A large portion of our town’s population was Hispanic. Most of those people originally had come to labor in the fields and orchards. They were the underclass in that time and place. The descendants of the families who stayed now make up a lot of the middle class in that town.

I think of myself as a clueless liberal, but I also think racism is a cancer that has been killing this country since before it was a country, and I think we are under siege by fascism.

I am unable to communicate with people who call me a libtard. Know what I mean? There does not seem to be a common ground where we can meet each other as human beings. Yet.

Still, I write essays and I sing songs. I’m taking the long view.

Apostrophes, Commas, and Steller’s Jays

It is March 24, 2018 as I write, and all over our country and on Vashon Island people have come out for the March for Our Lives, a protest asking that we have sensible gun laws and regulations in our country, and that automatic weapons and assault rifles not be sold, and that politicians and people in general snap out of it and realize that the second amendment does not protect anyone’s right to own those guns.

This is important stuff, and there is a lot to be said about it, and a lot of people are saying it. I’m going to go for something much lighter in this essay, because, hey, we all need to inhale sometimes.

“Eats, Shoots, and Leaves,” a book by Lynne Truss, surfaced on my bookshelf recently. Ms. Truss describes herself as a “stickler,” and her book is about punctuation, and how important punctuation is to the flow of the written word. When it’s correct, you don’t notice it.

She lives in the United Kingdom, and her usage in the book adheres to UK rules. That’s why she uses quotation marks “thusly”.

In the US we use quotation marks “this way.” Take as much time as you need to see the difference.

There are epic battles between writers and editors over this issue. It’s simple: in the “States,” they go “here,” in the “UK”, they go “here”.

Shall we move on?

The humble apostrophe works hard, and Ms. Truss takes a lot of trouble to explain its correct usage. It’s not the apostrophe’s fault that it is left out where it ought to be and put in where it ought not. Perhaps you’ve heard of the guy who goes around London at night painting over apostrophes that don’t belong in signs?

Example: Big sale on orange’s!

Argh. You see these desecrations all the time. Sometimes they are done intentionally to bring annoyed people into stores, where they are then persuaded to buy the goods.

Commas: there are rules for commas, but don’t try to enforce them. I learned while editing that every writer has their own distinct Comma Code and will fight to the death defending it. I decided that unless a comma or lack of comma changed or confused the meaning of a sentence, I would let it stand. Choose your battles.

When I was a child, so long ago that when I looked it up online it wasn’t there, there was a comma mishap with far reaching effects. Consider this story hearsay, because no doubt I’m remembering it wrong.

Sometime in the fifties or sixties, there were taxes imposed on imported fruits. Unfortunately, in the legislation’s list of fruits, someone left out the comma between banana and apple, and the legislation passed without a tax on bananas or apples, but with a tax on the banana apple. Respect your commas, and your proofreaders.

I learned a lot working as an editor, both of the Loop and of manuscripts. Regular Loop writers were good writers. What I learned is that good writers are much easier to edit than not so good writers, who tend to think their work is holy writ. Psst: it’s not.

Also, all writers are insecure and need to be encouraged. We are, and we do, okay?

One thing I learned about while editing the Loop was the Steller’s Jay. Orca Annie wrote of a Steller jay in one of her columns, and ignoramus that I was, I changed it to stellar. Well, she got in touch and tore me a new one right smartly. That’s when I learned that the Steller’s Jay is named for Georg Wilhelm Steller (1709-1746), a German physician, botanist, and zoologist who explored Alaska under the auspices of Russia and was the first European to observe and record several species, some of whom were named for him, including the Steller’s Jay. I don’t know what the indigenous people called them. Anyone?

I also learned that the Steller’s Jay is a member of the family Corvidae. Yup, they are related to crows, which explains a lot – their voices, and their intelligence, for starters. They are not merely pretty faces.

The internet, texting, and messaging have made nonsense of spelling, grammar, and punctuation, and yet some sticklers are soldiering on. Granted, the spirit of communication is more important than the letter of the law, but grammar and punctuation are what allow us to read something without being jolted by some clanger.

I confess that since I stopped being an editor I’ve become something of a grammar and punctuation barbarian. Sentence fragments! I use prepositions to end sentences with! And I start sentences with “and” and “but!” I use exclamation points much more than is necessary or correct! I am a wild woman! Up the revolution!

Okay. Break’s over. Back to saving the world.

Tear Down the Walls

On November 10, 1989, we were driving south on I-5. “We” were Libbie Anthony, Velvet Neifert, and me. We sang together as Women, Women and Song, and we were on our way to Corvallis, Oregon, to do a concert that night.

We were in our usual configuration: Velvet driving, Libbie riding shotgun, me in the back seat.

Somewhere north of Portland Libbie asked Velvet, “Did you hear what’s happening in Berlin?”

“Yes!” Velvet said. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

“What’s happening in Berlin?” I asked.

They told me that the Berlin Wall was starting to come down.

Amazing. Astonishing. I was gobsmacked.

The Berlin Wall went up in August 1961, enclosing West Berlin, which was surrounded by East Germany.

My husband’s father was stationed in Kaiserslautern, Germany at the time and all the American military was on high alert at this perceived possible threat. What Rick remembered most vividly was that tanks were running down the autobahn, and he hitched rides to the swimming pool on the tanks that August. A kid’s perspective on world affairs.

As we drove along I-5 on that November day in 1989 my astonishment began to take shape as a lyric, and I got out my pen and notebook and began writing it down:

“For women and men to live in freedom, tear down the wall

For brothers and sisters to stand together, tear down the wall.”

The wall was built, first of barbed wire, then gradually of concrete almost twelve feet high, with a wide, empty “kill zone” on the East German side that troops guarded with machine guns. The official East German line was that the wall was to keep western fascists out.

Before the wall, West Berlin was the easiest place for East Germans to defect. The wall made it much harder, but people still tried to defect. Some succeeded. Some were killed in the attempt.

“We’ll stop and remember the ones who died, tear down the wall

Trying to reach the other side, tear down the wall.”

In June 1963, President John F. Kennedy went to West Berlin and gave his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, which inspired the people of West Berlin and annoyed the Soviets.

In 1989 there were revolutions in Eastern bloc countries, including Hungary and Poland. Civil unrest began to build in East Berlin. On November 9, 1989, the East German and East Berlin governments finally said, “Open the gates. People may pass freely between East and West Berlin.”

And the people went through the gates, and the news went around the world.

“Open the gates, let the flood tides roll, tear down the wall

East or west, we are all going home, tear down the wall.”

People from both sides were climbing on top of the wall, cheering. People were chipping away at the wall with chisels and hammers, breaking off chunks for souvenirs, opening holes in the wall.

One miraculous thing about the opening of the Berlin Wall was how quietly it happened. There were no battles fought.

“If the human heart will sing its song, tear down the wall

The music will right the ancient wrong, tear down the wall.”

This is the song’s chorus:

“Tear down the walls between us!

Brick by brick and stone by stone

If this winter is to end in springtime

Tear down the walls.”

I told Libbie and Velvet, “Hey, I have a song.” I wrote out the words, and we began singing the song and working out the harmonies as we drove down the Willamette Valley.

We got so involved in the song that we drove past the turnoff to Corvallis. At some point I saw a hill on our left and thought, uh oh. We’re getting close to Eugene. So, we took an off ramp around Brownsville, managed to get over to 99W, and drove up to Corvallis from the south, still singing.

That night we sang the song in our concert. The crowd went wild. After that we included the song in our repertoire for as long as we stayed together as a trio.

I thought “Tear Down the Wall” was a topical song about the Berlin Wall when I wrote it, but I have realized since that there is always someone wanting to put up a wall. It’s all about trying to control people, keeping someone in or keeping someone out.

Tearing down walls is always topical. So, I have started singing the song again.

Of course, once you’ve torn down a wall, you have won the right to tear down the next wall. So lively on up, people. We got some wall tearing down to do.