The river in summer
In midstream
I look back
Japanese haiku
Matilda and daughter Iona, 1920
Eleanor Bailey wrote:
Recently while going
through some old postcards, I found one postmarked April 8, 1925, from Matilda
Cox to her five-year old grand-daughter, Hettie Bailey. The Cox and Bailey
families lived just a mile or two from each other. They didn’t have telephones,
so postcards were a common mode of communication be it near or far. It read: “Dear Grand Daughter you are invited to come
out Friday night or Saturday Morning and bring papa mama Charles Chester and
the twins and stay for Easter be Sure to come. grand Mo and Po to Hettie.” How
thrilled the five-year-old must have been when she received the card from her
grandmother.
I came across an article about queer activist Sarah Schulman, above, in New York magazine and realized I had
seen her speak at IU Northwest about “Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm,
Community responsibility, and the Duty of Repair.” She seemed particularly eager to hear
students’ opinions of her book and what, in their opinion, constituted
harassment. Author Molly Fischer
identified the book’s central insight:
People experiencing
the inevitable discomfort of human misunderstanding often overstate the harm
that has been done to them – they describe themselves as victims rather than as
participants in a shared situation.
The key distinction between conflict and abuse: the nature of
the power relationships. For example,
what might be simply a disagreement among colleagues or associates might
constitute harassment if a superior in a position of dominance is the source of
the discomfort. In the classroom Schulman has a “no censorship” rule and
students are encouraged to debate and critique one another in any language they
feel appropriate without the need for “trigger warnings” that the forthcoming
subject matter may be disturbing to some. Needless to say, Schulman believes
universities college campuses should be forums for open debate on controversial
subjects.
I knew about novelist David Foster Wallace’s
thousand-page tome “Infinite Jest” but little else until viewing “The End of
the Tour” (2015), about Rolling Stone
reporter David Lipsky spending a week with the troubled novelist who later
hanged himself. As portrayed by Segal, Wallace was a rather pathetic, albeit
talented, figure most comfortable with his dogs or, his one social outlet, dancing
at a Bloomington, Illinois, Baptist church.
Part of a “New Sincerity” school that regarded banality as truth,
Wallace during a Minneapolis stop admired the Mary Tyler Moore statue, visited
the Mall of America, and took in a “Die Hard” movie. Throughout Wallace is wary that Rolling Stone will portray him as
ambitious or a sell-out. When asked if
wearing a kerchief on his head were an affectation, he replied defensively that
it kept sweat out of his eyes. He didn’t want a TV in the house not because he
was a snob but out of fear he’d never turn it off. He wrote: “What TV is
extremely good at—and realize that this is "all it does"—is
discerning what large numbers of people think they want, and supplying it. TV’s
“real” agenda is to be “liked,” because if you like what you’re seeing, you’ll
stay tuned. TV is completely unabashed about this; it’s its sole raison.”
David Foster Wallace gave a memorable
commencement speech at Kenyon College titled “Thoughts on Living a
Compassionate Life.” It opened with a
parable about two young goldfish being asked, “How’s the water?” and replying, “What is water?” Wallace left us this introspective insight:
The so-called ‘psychotically depressed” person who tries to kill
herself doesn’t do so out of quote “hopelessness” or any abstract conviction
that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems
suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain
unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will
eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. The variable here is
the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling
to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring
the fall; it’s terror of the flames.
Alexandria Quinn wrote that Toni’s sister MaryAnn, who is
battling cancer, was the strongest women, with the biggest, most passionate
heart, that she’s ever known. She wrote:
I cannot begin to express how much her passion and heart has fed
my soul and the woman I have grown proud to be. She is unstoppable and
relentless, beautiful and educated, loving and driven, passionate and stubborn.
Times are hard: no one could deny that cancer is one hell of a battle. Even
being exhausted and in pain, I had to tell her not to make us breakfast this
week and to stop worrying about taking care of everyone else. She has still
been making jokes and laughing at herself instead of getting down on herself
and asking “why me,” blaming everyone and everything else. She’s a fighter and is proving that through
the toughest battle imaginable. I love her
to the moon and back. 
Lanes and Okomskis, 2019
Lanes and Okomskis, 2019
Toni’s older sister was a risk taker who eloped while a
senior at Little Flower High School and kept the marriage secret until she
graduated. She had four kids in quick
order before a doctor warned her to cease or risk dying. She waited a few years and then gave birth to
two more daughters. The first time I met
her while dating Toni MaryAnn’s daughter Andrea cut herself trying some
daredevil feat in the backyard; Sonny wasn’t home, so I drove them to the
ER. I was so freaked out by the bloody
wound that MaryAnn had to calm me down. MaryAnn’s
kids, no surprise, turned out passionate and opinionated. Family was everything to MaryAnn, and she
loved nothing better at the end of the day than to tell or listen to family
stories accompanied by much laughter. In
her sixties she roughed it in Thailand with her daughters. Two years ago, she participated in the Eagles
Superbowl celebration in downtown Philadelphia. Sonny, not one to give out
compliments, admitted not long before he died, that he had hit a grand slam
when he married MaryAnn.
This from Anne Koehler: “With
my 98-year-old friend Babe Poparad who is still a crossing guard in Porter. Has
a beautiful garden and shares her produce. We are both of German descent and know how to
milk cows but don't have any!!!!”
