Pukaskwa

They say the wind screams here in the winter and the First People thus named it Old Woman Bay. It's lovely and remote, 200 miles north into Canada along Hwy 17 on Lake Superior. We used to go here every 2 or 3 years and stayed in old campgrounds or cabins that no longer exist. 

There are many walking trails one can take; my favorite leads straight up, looking down at the lake and the river that leads into it. There are deer and black bear but they are shy and I only saw evidence of their scats. 

Delicate lady slipper orchids are common and remind me of a story I read as a child of a fairy-type being, she had a hickory nut as a head, and she tied these flowers on for shoes. One day a squirrel ate her head and she, being an apple twig, found a nook in an old tree and gave it new growth.

It's a relatively easy 3 miles through dense pine forest with ferns and mossy rocks. Little squirrels would squawk at me from the trees and when I stopped I could at first hear nothing, not even the big logging trucks on the Trans-Can. If I kept silent I could hear insects buzzing, rustles in the undergrowth, tiny streams trickling and, occasionally, something bigger. The sense of peace was so complete I did not feel afraid.

After about 3 miles I would come to an ancient river bed, lined with stones. Here the Ojibwa people dug shallow pits in the dry bed and replaced the stones. They are called pukaskwas. These are about 1-2 thousand years old and are sacred places, places to sit and meditate, to go on vision quests. With reverence I removed my backpack and camera and carefully sat in one.

There are two versions to what happened next. In one version I was quickly beset by swarms of mosquitos as big as sparrows and my tender backside was gouged by the hard rocks and stones. I jumped up, slathered more bug spray on, and galloped back down the trail. Actually that is the true version of my first experience.

But the second time I was more ready. More open. A friendly breeze kept the bugs off me and the stones seemed to cushion rather than poke me. After awhile I was just there. There was no me that was separate from the forest, the sun, the lake. I breathed without realizing it. I was liquid. I was in the most profound peace I have ever experienced. I might never have left.

I know what distracted me and brought me out of my trance; it was seeing a piece of plastic left behind by a careless hiker. I was annoyed at that and it broke the spell. I got up and left. I did not have a vision or any great insight. I did not see my future. I just went somewhere else in those moments. But it was good. And I carried the plastic out.

This sort of experience has happened to me a very few times, the last being one time in Florida a year or two ago. I should practice meditation more often; I do sometimes but not on a regular basis. It's not the place that matters, it is the openness.

But still, it was a beautiful place. 

Movie review: Lincoln

The joke is that Lincoln didn't do well in theaters...

A friend of mine has as part of his profile that he stayed awake in class. By and large, I spent my time doodling or writing notes to my friends.  So I found suspense in this movie where there should not have been. I thought Lincoln freed the slaves in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation. But as he and everyone else knew (except me) this was a largely symbolic gesture and had little, if any, effect on the slaves being held in the "nation" of the Confederacy. 

Lincoln is a movie on several levels. It is the story of the 13th Amendment which did free the slaves in 1865 and it is also the story of Lincoln, the man, husband, father, national icon and master manipulator. And on a third level it is also the story of how white America regarded black America with implications for how race relations might be today.

To get the usual stuff out of the way, the acting was great, the direction great (with one exception I will get to), the writing fabulous.  Daniel Day-Lewis portrays a Lincoln beset by two goals: to end the bloody Civil war and to end slavery. The South has sent emissaries to sue for peace, but they want to keep their slaves.

Pushing for an end to slavery will prolong a war no one wants. Pushing for an end to the war will leave black Americans in slavery. Accomplishing both goals: an end to the war and an end to slavery will take an amendment to the Constitution, and to get this amendment through Congress will take negotiating, manipulating, horse-trading, and politicking on a grand and inglorious, even criminal, level.  The players in this fascinating drama, particularly Day-Lewis, Tommy Lee Jones, Hal Holbrook and James Spader, give bright sharp performances, finely nuanced, of real people struggling with complex issues and strong passions.

As well as family life. The thread of Lincoln the family man, with a loyal but over-wrought wife and 2 sons, is nicely woven through the political intrigues. As a father, Lincoln is stern, tender, autocratic, indulgent. The scenes of him waiting with his young son Tad for the result of the congressional vote on the amendment are among the movies most poignant. And of course, for me, who didn't know how the vote turned out, suspenseful.

So we all know how the war ends, how Lincoln meets his end, the triumph and tragedy of that era in US history.  My one quibble with Steven Spielberg, the director, is that he throws in a couple of sentimental scenes that are not needed and that detract from the ultimate true character of the man. Yes, he was noble, but he was also Blagojevichian. That's what makes him, and the movie, interesting.

There is another subtle theme woven through the movie. It is made clear that, except for the black Union soldiers, the war was not fought to free the slaves. The Republicans (republic-ans) were fighting for the Union, for the United States of America. While many were also Abolitionists, not all were. Many, if not most white Northerners, did not believe in the equality of the races, neither Democrat nor Republican. Racism ran deep and one of the major obstacles Lincoln faced in getting the anti-slavery amendment passed was the fears of white Northerners that, once freed, black Americans would want to vote. "In a hundred years" someone hollers. Knowing the history of the Civil Rights movement of the nineteen sixties, that seems a prophetic statement.

There were more casualties in the three days of fighting at Gettysburg than deaths in Vietnam. More men were killed in the Civil War than in all our other wars combined. This is a movie about a facet of this time and it is well worth seeing. 

Bread and Roses

 That's me, in the strong arms of my grandmothers.

Bread and Roses: The 1912 Lawrence textile Strike
By Joyce Kornbluh, edited for length and clarity

With some words by me in blue.

Early in January 1912 a dramatic ten-week strike of 25,000 textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts became a widely publicized conflict, acquainting the nation with the plight of the unskilled, foreign-born worker. [Previous to this time, it was thought that unskilled, foreign workers, many of them young, could not be organized.]

My grandmothers grew up in the same small Italian village, played together as children, and probably listened as their fathers made plans to come to the new world to make a better life. 

Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912 was a great textile center; its principal mills were those of the American Woolen Company, a consolidation of thirty-four factories whose yearly output was valued at $45,000,000. The mills employed over 40,000 persons, about half of Lawrence's population. Most of them were unskilled workers of many nationalities, who had come from Europe and the middle east after 1900. 

The I.W.W. (International Workers of the World or "Wobblies") had been organizing among the foreign born in Lawrence since 1907 and claimed over a thousand members, but it had only about 300 paid up members on its rolls. 

Despite a heavy, government tariff protection of the woolen industry, the wages and living standards of textile operatives had declined steadily since 1905. Just like today, the companies were making money but the workers weren't. The introduction of the two-loom system in the woolen mills and a speed-up in the cotton industry had resulted in lay-offs, unemployment, and a drop in wages. For the week ending November 25, 1911, textile employees averaged about $8.76 for a full week's work.

In addition, the cost of living was high in Lawrence. Rents ranged from $1.00 to $6.00 a week for small tenement apartments in frame buildings which the Neil Report found "extra hazardous" in construction and potential firetraps.

My grandmothers, still girls about 14, went to work in the mills in Lawrence as soon as they arrived in America. Their families lived together and the girls shared a bed with their sisters. In addition, my grandmother Teresa, on the left, took her younger siblings to the railroad yards after work and they brought home coal that had fallen off the cars.

Bread, pasta, molasses, and beans were the staple diet of most mill workers. "When we eat meat it seems like a holiday, especially for the children," testified one weaver before the March 1912 congressional hearings.

Dr. Elizabeth Shapleigh, a Lawrence physician, wrote: "A considerable number of the boys and girls die within the first two or three years after beginning work . . . thirty-six out of every 100 of all the men and women who work in the mill die before or by the time they are twenty-five years of age. 

Responding in a small way to public pressure over the working conditions of textile employees, the Massachusetts state legislature passed a law, effective January 1, 1912, which reduced the weekly hours from fifty-six to fifty-four for working women and children. Workers feared that this would mean a corresponding wage cut; and they realized that a reduction of two-hours pay would mean three loaves of bread less each week.

Polish women weavers in the Everett Cotton Mills were the first to notice a shortage of thirty two cents in their pay envelopes on January 11. They stopped their looms and left the mill, shouting "short pay, short pay!" Other such outbursts took place throughout Lawrence. The next morning workers at the Washington and Wood mills joined the walkout. For the first time in the city's history, the bells of the Lawrence city ball rang the general riot alarm.

That afternoon a mass meeting was held at the Franco-Belgian Hall, and a telegram was sent to Joseph Ettor, an I.W.W. union board member, asking that he come from New York to assist and organize the strike. He was well known in the Italian community, could speak English, Italian, and Polish fluently and could understand Hungarian and Yiddish.

Mass picketing and arrests started the first week of the strike. It was the first time there had ever been mass picketing in any New England town. When crowds of workers demonstrated in front of the Atlantic and Pacific mills, they were drenched by water from fire hoses on adjoining roofs. The strikers retaliated by throwing chunks of ice. Thirty-six were arrested and most of them sentenced to a year in prison. As the judge stated, "The only way we can teach them is to deal out the severest sentences." 

The governor ordered out the state militia and state police. One officer remarked, "Our company of militia rather enjoyed going down there to have a fling at those people." Harry Emerson Fosdick quoted a Boston lawyer: "The strike should have been stopped in the first twenty-four hours. The militia should have been instructed to shoot. That is the way Napoleon did it."

My grandmothers marched arm-in-arm, singing or carrying banners with the rest of the girls. The banners said "We want bread and roses too." One day they heard screaming behind them and, looking, saw men on horseback, swinging clubs or poles. The men rode through the teenagers, swinging and hitting virtually everyone.  They were hurt but not badly. 

Lawrence was a new kind of strike, the first time such large numbers of unskilled, unorganized foreign-born workers had followed the leadership of the I.W.W.

"It was the spirit of the workers that was dangerous," wrote labor reporter Mary Heaton Vorse. "They are always marching and singing. The tired, gray crowds ebbing and flowing perpetually into the mills had waked and opened their months to sing." American Magazine reported:

It is not short of amazing, the power of a great idea to weld men and women together. . . . There was in it a peculiar, intense, vital spirit, a religious spirit if you will, that I have never felt before in any strike. . . . At first everyone predicted that it would be impossible to bold these divergent people together, but aside from the skilled men, some of whom belonged to craft unions comparatively few went back to the mills. And as a whole, the strike was conducted with little violence [on the part of the strikers].

One of the largest demonstrations of the strike took place on January 29 when Ettor addressed a mass meeting on the Lawrence Common, urged the strikers to be peaceful and orderly, and led them on a march through the business district. At one of the mills, a company of militiamen refused to let them pass. Ettor averted a conflict by waving the paraders up a side street. They followed, and cheered him for his good sense.

Two of the strike leaders were arrested and martial law was enforced. City officials declared all public meetings illegal, and Lawrence authorities called out more militia companies.

The arrests were aimed at disrupting the strike. However, the I.W.W. sent Bill Haywood to Lawrence. More than 15,000 strikers met Haywood at the railroad station and carried him down Essex Street to the Lawrence Common, where he addressed a group of 25,000.  Looking down from the speaker's stand and seeing the young strikers in the crowd, Haywood roared: "Those kids should be in school instead of slaving in the mills." Throughout the strike, Haywood urged strikers to maintain an attitude of passive resistance.

By far the most dramatic episode of the strike involved sending the strikers' children to sympathetic families in other cities. About 120 children left Lawrence on February 10. Margaret Sanger, later famous for her work in birth control, was one of the nurses who accompanied the children. She testified before a congressional committee in March: "Out of the 119 children, only four had underwear on ... their outerwear was almost in rags . . . their coats were simply torn to shreds ... and it was the bitterest weather we have had this winter."

When the time came to depart, the children, arranged in a long line, two by two in an orderly procession with the parents near at hand, were about to make their way to the train when the police . . . closed in on us with their clubs, beating right and left with no thought of the children who then were in desperate danger of being trampled to death. The mothers and the children were thus hurled in a mass and bodily dragged to a military truck and even then clubbed, irrespective of the cries of the panic-stricken mothers and children. We can scarcely find words with which to describe this display of brutality.

This clash between the children and the police was the turning point of the Lawrence strike. Protests from every part of the country reached Congress as newspaper and magazine articles focused attention on the strike. Congressmen Victor Berger and William Wilson from Pennsylvania called for an investigation.

In early March, the House Committee on Rules heard testimony from a group of teenage Lawrence strikers. "As soon as I came home I had to go to sleep, I was so tired," the congressmen were told by a fifteen-year-old girl. The young workers testified that the textile companies held back a week of their wages, that they were often required to do unpaid clean-up work on Saturdays, and that in order to get decent drinking water in the mills some of them had to pay five or ten cents a week.

Concerned over the public reaction to the hearings, and the possible threat to their own tariff protection, the American Woolen Company acceded to the strikers' demands on March 12, 1912. By the end of March, the rest of the Lawrence textile companies fell in line. Wages were raised for textile workers throughout all of New England, an average of $1.30 more a week.

But the immediate effect of the Lawrence strike was to hearten textile workers in other Eastern areas. The strike also made a profound impression on the public and the rest of the labor movement by dramatizing the living and working conditions of unorganized, foreign-born workers in crowded industrial areas, and communicating the spirit of their rebellion.

Literary critic Kenneth McGowan wrote in Forum Magazine:

Whatever its future, the I.W.W. has accomplished one tremendously big thing, a thing that sweeps away all twaddle over red flags [they were supposedly communists] and violence and sabotage, and that is the individual awakening of "illiterates" and "scum" to an original, personal conception of society and the realization of the dignity and rights of their part in it. They have learned more than class consciousness; they have learned consciousness of Self . . . .

Most of this family history was reported to me by my parents. The two girls, who shared childhood games and terrible poverty, who were beaten by men on horseback, remained lifelong friends. They both married; one had a boy, one had a girl and these children became my father and mother. Respect for unions was a family tradition and early on I was not only taught to respect the part that my grandmothers played in unionism, but also the place that unionism played in making this country what it is.  

Right now in my state of Michigan, there is a move to weaken unions and I fear it will take hold. That is what is impelling me to write this.

I took my first union job when I was 20, and from 1978 to 2008 I was a member of the National Education Association as a school social worker. I am proud of my grandmothers (and great-aunts and uncles) for what they went through to earn a living in a new country, and what they went through to be paid enough not just for bread but also for roses: a little left-over to have some dignity and joy in life. 

The Twilight Zone

Kurt Vonnegut, I am told, said that every writer writes for one person; in his case it was his sister. I don't know who I write for, I suspect that it is a group of people pretty close to my Multiply contacts list. Some of you are here and I am grateful.

I am humbled by some of the writers I encounter on Blogger; I wonder if I have the discipline to write often enough, and edit myself, so that I reach that level. Probably not, I can't even stop using semi-colons, which Vonnegut said were worse than useless.

So I will tell you a story. Until I was about 8 and my brother was 6 we shared a room in a tiny apartment that unbelievably still exists. We moved when my father got a job teaching and landed in a house, still not large, but with 3 bedrooms. My mother was pregnant at the time so the larger bedroom with crib would go to me, if the baby was a girl, and to my brother if the baby was a boy. 

But having spent so long together, we often ended up in the same room, a practice my mother tried to discourage but failed. Our usual excuse was "bad dream" which my mother accepted, figuring the alternative was a crying child outside the master bedroom. The baby, a girl, was born and the big bedroom with the crib went to me and the sleeping infant was enough to quiet my fears in the night. 

All was well until "Twilight Zone". We were told not to watch "Twilight Zone", we were forbidden to watch "Twilight Zone", and every opportunity we got we watched "Twilight Zone". By that time we were 10 and 8 or 11 and 9 and my parents socialized with people across the street or next door and, times being what they were, they did not hire a sitter, but simply told us to go to bed at 8 and come get them if need be. They might not even have locked the door.

Clutching each other in an ecstasy of terror we watched the episode with the guy with 3 eyes, the episode with the bulging headed spacemen whose mission was To Serve Man, and the little girl who fell out of her bed into the 4th dimension. And so on. Afterwards, we turned off the TV so it wouldn't be warm when my parents came home, and went to bed.

To dream. In the end that ratted us out. Bad dreams every Thursday (I think) night. Or every Thursday night that my parents were playing bridge with the neighborhood group. So this time they meant it, really meant it, and Rod Serling was banished from our house for some time.

Funny thing is, the show is still scary. I've watched it on old time TV channels and those episodes, some of them, are scary. Rod Serling all by himself is scary. There are lots of scary things in the world, war, disease, loss, guilt, but they are scary in a different way. Or, in the alternative, maybe "The Twilight Zone" was scary because it captured the essence of human fears, real fears, in the form of stories that could be dismissed as "science fiction" except that the dark side of human nature that Serling exposed is still around. And still fairly terrifying.  

Ex-Catholic schoolgirl that I am, I want to make a happy ending. Hard to do with what is on the news. The only comfort I can offer is this: cherish the good dreams, let go of the bad dreams and hold each other tight.

Talking back to Thomas Peterffy

who should have stayed in Hungary

As many of you throughout the world have noticed, we are having an election in the US next week. And I am sure you are sick of hearing of it. I know I am. But here's a pernicious little twist: an immigrant from Hungary, a nice looking gray-haired little man, is spending millions to tell how how he is voting and why.

When he came here at age 12, he dreamt of being rich. That's ok, I dreamt of being a ballerina at that age. And Soviet oppression was - oppressive. So yay, he comes here and somehow, in about 20 years he's made enough money to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and now he has between 5 and 7 billion dollars, all gotten on the up-and-up I am sure.

He has made 2 commercials which you can find on YouTube, or in the US by watching CNN. He looks into the camera and speaks softly and earnestly, telling the story of his life and imploring us to avoid socialism, which he has seen first hand. Accompanied by grim black and white photos, he tells of the freedoms of the US capitalist system and how, if we discourage people who make money, we will become like his native Hungary, poorer and poorer. The wealthy, he tells us, take care of the needy, unless we discourage them, presumably by taxing or regulating them.

And Hungary is such a bleak place. It was socialist and became poorer and poorer. The pictures he shows prove it.

He doesn't mention a candidate, but tells us he is voting Republican. So rich people won't feel discouraged. As  they did in Hungary. Against another grainy b/w photo of people out of a refugee movie he says we must learn from the past. (One of my contacts on another site, a Danish woman, is puzzled. You don't have socialists running for office in the US, she said. I told her many people think Obama is a socialist. She was dumbfounded.)

So here is my rebuttal. I'll acknowledge that Hungary in the 50's was poor and under the thumb of Soviet Russia. But by the mid-1960's, it had begun to move toward a more open society. The years between the late 60's and early 90's saw a loosening of totalitarian shackles and the forming of a country that was able to balance commerce and social welfare.

A woman I know quite well went to visit Hungary in 1981 with her sister, both fluent in Magyar or Hungarian. They found and enjoyed an open, vibrant society, quite unlike the gray misery shown in Peterffy's ad. They were free to travel, speak with the people and even enjoy some nightlife. I am including three pictures she gave me to contrast with Thomas Peterffy's b/w pictures of poor discouraged hopeless Hungary.

What impressed her more was the fabric of society. Here was a modern nation which had an ethic of taking care of its people. Most women worked, but were given 2 years of paid child care leave and their job back at the end. Education, healthcare, care for the elderly and the infants were all part of society. The Hungarians were quite proud of themselves.

But the nation was still unhappy with Soviet influence, so in the early 90's, when the Russians withdrew, they rushed to do a U-turn and voted in many capitalists. They got a few Hungarian millionaires, but the standard of living fell under the capitalist system. Oops. In the elections of May 1994, the people voted the socialists back in. They remain a potent political force to this day.

So I say this to Thomas Peterffy: socialism works. Given a choice, the Hungarians voted socialists back in. In free elections. They liked it. Taking care of each other works. Totalitarian communism doesn't work, but there is a difference and you know it. You should have stuck around your native Hungary. Maybe you wouldn't be a billionaire, but really, how much money do you need? Why don't you just shut up, pay taxes, and let us find our own way without lying to the American people.

One last thing you cheapskate. You spent millions on this ad campaign, but you only gave $61,000 to the Republican party. Wanted control over the dough, didn't you? That's what it's all about, isn't it? Power and control. And you are trying to tell me the wealthy will take care of the needy? Pfft.

A place in the sun

If I wonder where my cat is, I don't need to look any farther than the nearest pool of sunlight. And there she is.

I am putting my house back together after the great bedbug massacre; mostly I was able to keep stuff that I really liked. I don't know where I got this crystal, it may have been a gift from a child. I caught it in the sun from the window. 

Another item I was able to keep is this sampler I made when I was five. I remember making it and not minding although it is not something I would have a five-year-old do. It's a puzzle to me and yet I treasure it. I was afraid it would have to be washed, which would have destroyed it, but all I had to do was put it by itself in an empty drawer when they heated the house. 

How I managed to hang on to it for 57 years is also a mystery. It probably was in my parents' house until my 30's when I took many of my old belongings to my own house. It would have been my mother who would have kept it when so many of my childhood things were thrown out.

The leaf rakers are here to get the leaves off the lawn, or at least some of the leaves off some of the lawn. They have their work cut out for them. They really need supervision so I guess I will go and see how they are carrying on. 

"We Won't Do That Here", Bullies pt. 2

On the first day of school with a new principal, all of us who work in the school (I was a social worker/counselor) are anxious to hear about the new boss and his/her philosophy. This usually includes  how they became interested in teaching, where they have taught before, how honored they are to be working here at Alfred E. Neuman School, and so forth. Helene was a bit different. Young, with a June Cleaver outfit and pearls, she told us that she had become pregnant early and was left to fend for herself and her child. During those difficult years she finished high school and went on to college, raising her son on a combination of ADFC (welfare) and foodstamps. Along the way she encountered some of the contempt and disdain many people have for "welfare moms", including from teachers at her child's school. In a very sweet but clear voice she let us know "We won't do that here."

We were a nice group of people, but with that one sentence, Helene let us know she was going to be working on the culture of our school. The following strategies are some that we used, at that school and at others I worked at, and strategies that have been used to combat bullies in schools in some areas of the US. These measures do not eliminate bullying, they are not magic bullets, but especially for kids 7 through 12, they have been studied (Department of Justice) to be effective.

The first part of the process has to start with the adults and raising awareness of what bullying is and what it is not. There is some controversy about whether bullying has increased or not in the years since I went to school. Part of that is due to the fact that statistics on bullying only recently have begun to be kept; the other part is that there are differing ways of describing bullying. Most definitions of bullying include a power differential. So I would not call two 10-year-olds fighting bullying each other if they are the same size and ability. I would call it bullying if a large 10-year-old is threatening smaller kids who are not likely to fight back. Or popular girls making fun of unpopular girls who aren't as well-dressed. The whole area is one for discussion, but consensus can be reached.

As a side note, a friend wonders whether the shooting of Trayvon Martin points to a change in our society's tolerance for violence. His killer may be able to be shown to have acted legally and that, in itself, is what has people upset because it could signal a possibly awful cultural shift towards the use of force. 

But I don't want to get side-tracked. The point is that to stop bullying, the adult culture needs to be one of cooperation and mutual respect. The adults need to treat each other decently and model non-coercive  behavior to the students. Then they need to come together and convey to the kids that they will work together to make school a safe place.

Think of a group of students witnessing a bully mocking a child who has just dropped all her papers. Or who has been shoved into a locker. You have the bully, you have the kid being bullied, and you have the onlookers. One study found that 85% of a school's population generally does not bully and generally does not feel bullied although they are aware of it.

So they are the onlookers, the 85%. They do one of 3 things. They laugh, so the bully thinks he's cool. They do nothing which enables the bully to continue. Or they walk away, feeling sorry for the victim but also powerless. They usually don't tell an adult because kids don't want to be thought of as "rats" or "snitches" and they have been told by their teachers not to be "tattletales". 

What we did at one of my schools was to have a school wide meeting and a series of smaller classroom meetings in which we defined bullying behavior, told the kids we were going to work with them to stop it, and that it would no longer be cool to make fun of kids or physically threaten them at our school. That telling on a bully was not "ratting" or "tattling". Anti-bullying programs give the 85% tools to use: Get an adult. Don't laugh at what a bully is doing. Befriend bullied kids. Say out loud "That's not cool." Say out loud "We don't do that here". 

The adults work to listen to what kids told them, to hold kids accountable for their behavior, to pull parents in, to raise awareness of cyber-bullying, and to increase supervision in places like the halls and bathrooms.

And I would love to say things changed overnight, but of course they did not. But at my schools (kids up to 12 years old) and at a number of schools using similar strategies and studied through a DoJ grant, kids reported feeling safer, and there were fewer reported incidents of bullying and related aggressive behaviors. 

In my head I have a picture of cute little Marissa P. saying in a loud voice to a somewhat aggressive and larger child "You must be new. We don't do that at our school." He stopped dead in his tracks and walked away.

Anti-bullying programs (described here with minimum detail) do not and should not turn kids into the kid police or put them in danger. They should teach kids how to stay out of harm's way. They should do is make it "uncool" to bully someone, because most bullies are performing for an audience. What they also should do is to raise kids' awareness of loner kids or kids who might be likely to be targets. And teach them pro-social skills. 

As I said, this is, in some ways, a very basic description of a complex program that can take a year or two to put into place. I almost want to say something like "Don't try this at home." You have to have school-wide buy-in. But the successes I saw has me hopeful that we can change things for kids, and, somewhere along the line, change things for society as a whole.

Afraid to Go to School: Bullies, part 1

A post or two ago, I made a statement that my high school may have been free of bullying because it was an all-girl school. I was wrong. Flat out. One of my readers pointed this out to me and I thank him because it led me back to consider my own experiences.  I was a school social worker with a Master's Degree who, over the years, worked in more than 15 schools, kindergarten through high school. I was also a student in one school where I experienced bullying and one where I did not. It led me to challenge what I experienced with research about bullying and anti-bullying efforts that are in place in some schools in the US. 

I want to do a post about what I believe to be true about bullying and how we can work to stop it. If it gets too long, I will split it up. I am doing this because I am reminded often how bullying can ruin a child's educational experience and, in fact, a significant part of childhood. For much of the last century, it was thought that not much could be done about bullying. It was poorly understood and measures taken against bullies were ineffective and, sometimes, counter-productive. Kids who "told" on a bully were bullied even more and considered snitches by classmates. Kids who didn't tell suffered silently or avoided school. Some kids dropped out, considered or committed suicide. Often nothing effective was done. Often that is still the case.

Bullying is a phenomenon of power differential, physical aggression and verbal humiliation. In a school system, the culture which encourages or discourages bullying starts with the adults; with those in power. Schools can have a culture of bullying that may start in the administrative offices or the principal's or headmaster's office or in the faculty lounge. If you look at how the adults in a school treat each other, if you look at what they feel is acceptable behavior, you will get a good idea how much bullying goes on by the students. There can be all sorts of reactions to a given incident, such as a teacher losing her lesson plans, and different cultures might define "kind" or "unkind" behavior differently. The more the adult culture values kind interpersonal behavior, the more likely it is that the kid culture can be led in that direction.

It's really not very hard; nasty mean-spirited adults aren't going to work too hard to prevent bullying. They might even enjoy it. I remember being in 7th grade art class when a kid knocked over a paint tray, wrecking his picture. Two of the girls at my table laughed at him; to my dismay the teacher was laughing with them. I didn't know what to do, so I didn't do anything. I've seen a fair amount of that as an adult working in schools and it is pretty typical. The bully laughs, the adult ignores the child's distress, and the onlookers just stand there.

A lot has been said about the self-esteem of bullies; self-esteem is a vague word and I'm going to try not to use it too much. But many bullies (not all) have relatively high (if not healthy) self-esteem. They think the world of themselves and have contempt for others. Often they are popular, well-off, physically attractive, and gifted in one way or another. They are often members of high status groups in the school. When they want to be, they can be charming as all get out. It depends on who they are dealing with and what they want.

Bullies can charm some teachers in the school setting. These teachers are the ones who say things like "He's not such a bad kid; I rather like him." Or, "She's just a kid with a quirky sense of humor. People take her too seriously." Sometimes one teacher will take a bully under his/her wing. Sometimes she feels she can reach the child where nobody else can and it might be a feather in her cap. If she (or he) is able to form a relationship with the child that causes the kid to change his behavior it is a laudable thing. More often, if the teacher is naive or unaware, she (or he) will be played by the savvy bully, and the victimizing behavior is reinforced. Think of the star athlete protected by the football coach.

Other adults feel helpless and bullied themselves, particularly smaller adults in secondary schools. If the adults feel helpless in the face of the bully, they will be unable to effectively intervene. As complaints against the bully mount, the victims start to be perceived as weak and whiney, as "setting themselves up" for being picked on. That is when bullied kids start to hear the following unhelpful pieces of advice: "Ignore them and they'll stop." "Learn how to stick up for yourself." "They're just trying to get under your skin." "He's teasing you because he likes you."

The facts are that they won't stop if you ignore them, they will try harder. It's good for kids to stick up for themselves, but they need help finding strategies. Bullies are damned good at getting under people's skins. They tease because they enjoy seeing distress.

Schools can find themselves in a situation in which neither the adults nor the children have effective ways of stopping the bullying. In the face of this helplessness, bullying was an ignored phenomenon for a long time, in the US and other countries. Being teased or picked on, or even beaten up, was seen as a normal part of childhood, something that people needed to just deal with. Suck it up. Stiff upper lip. It gets better.

I feel like I have written enough for one session. It really does get better though, because we have learned some real strategies that really do change things. I have seen them and they are documented to have worked. 

We cried so when she left us . . .

It like to broke my heart...

I have been told to write. Just do it. So I am doing it. The person who taught me to write was a wonderful woman who abhorred, above everything else, the sentimental. She also had no patience for the cliché or unnecessary punctuation. And yet, though her strong red script adorned my papers, I came to love her, because there was no meanness in how she corrected us, or at least I felt there was not.

She wasn't my favorite teacher, that honor went to Patricia Nemec, for whom I have searched in numerous data banks, websites, social networking sites and so forth. Nemec is a very common name. Miss (there were no Ms.'s at my all-girl Catholic school) Nemec came up from Texas driving a blue 1964 Mustang. We were 15, she might have been 21. She taught us history with the wit of Molly Ivins and the steely eyes of Ann Richards. Fifth hour American History, junior year, is one of my fondest memories.

The last week of school we learned, I forget how, that Miss Nemec of Texas was not going to be at our school anymore. She hadn't done anything wrong, it was just one of those things that happen and students aren't let in on adult decisions. Anyway, she was leaving. We wanted to do something, Mary and Mary and Molly and Ruby and I. It is really not much to tell. Someone left campus at lunch time and bought (what else) a dozen yellow roses and when she came in on the last day we sang "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and gave her the flowers. Really, we were all the same age, girls in pastel colored uniforms and a young teacher who drove a blue Mustang. We cried.

She wrote us all a letter or two and that was it. I never saw her again.

I saw my English teacher many more times and some of the nuns. The school was a very nurturing place, maybe unusual for an all-girl Catholic high school, but the rich girls were boarding students (I was not one) and maybe they realized we all needed some tenderness in our lives. I have my yearbooks; I should scan pictures in. The grounds of the school were the old Studebaker estate. I got to go there because my parents wanted me to be sheltered from the cultural changes of the 60's and they did not like the other Catholic high school which was run by the diocese. It was a good place. Life changing you might say.

Ok, I have written, as I was told to. I hope you like it. I will write more, I promise.

The Event of the Year

"Hey look at this", my husband said. He held up a green piece of jalapeno. "It's a jalapeno." Yes, it was a piece of jalapeno. So I agreed. I even embellished. "Wow, a big piece of jalapeno." Not too remarkable considering we were having really excellent Mexican food. But these are the moments that make a marriage. I did not say any of the several things that popped into my mind because we are a couple, a partnership, and if he thought it was important to point out to me that our Mexican food came with jalapenos, I was not going to trash the moment.   

Before the food came I was looking at a picture of an old friend and a few other people my age, sent to me by email, with no text but with the subject "The event of the year." There was a caption on the picture naming the people, a man, his wife, a magistrate of the State of Iowa, and my friend and her partner, whom she labeled "my legally married partner". 

I wondered why she had sent this to me, since they had had their union "blessed" in church about 15 years ago, in Minnesota where they lived. Then, thinking about it, after our Mexican dinner, I understood. They had gone and done it in Iowa, where it is legal for people who love people of the same gender to be married. Not just blessed, but married in the eyes of the State, til death does them part (whatever). 

And yes, she looked radiant. She had flowers and a sea green dress. I'm so proud of her. 

One of the real hassles of getting old is that you get tired early, like 10:22. I was going to tie this in with the jalapeno moment and I didn't. I am sure I could say more but I won't. Live long and prosper, Ruby and Jessica. You deserve it.

Four years ago

My mother-in-law was in the hospital and she wanted to hear Barack Obama's acceptance speech. She was excited about it all day and made me promise I would not let her go to sleep. But in the end the pain and morphine got to her and she fell asleep. 

Tom and I tried to tape it for her so she could watch it the next day but we couldn't get the DVD set up in time. She was too tired the next day anyway. She asked if he was well received and I said that he was. She smiled. She knew she didn't have much longer. It was August 28th I think.  

A song in the night

Last night I found this: "I have been of the belief that in song I have found God. Maybe I am not alone after all."

It was written as a comment on a blog I did about the earthquake in Haiti and the people there singing to get through the nights. I am not writing now about god, however, I am writing about seeking. People seeking ... well we often do not know what we are seeking and often settle for a warm bed and silky words.

I am not a terribly good writer about philosophy, but I do write about people. Elsewhere you can read about Kierkegaard and the leap of faith or leap to faith, blind or otherwise.  I'm not going to write that blog.  But listen:

Late one night, very late, going through friends of friends of friends' blogs, I found a series of blogs written by a young woman named Lonny. All of her blogs were posted late at night. She wrote about her baby who had died and her husband who had left and her children who had been taken by the State. She wrote about too much alcohol and too many drugs and then a battle to free herself. No one had commented because she had no friends. She was apparently writing for herself. It was an outpouring of ordinary yet poignant misery, a search, perhaps, a hope. She wrote that she didn't think anyone would ever read.

So, I commented and we went on to be friends, but then lost each other shortly thereafter. I commented because I have been alone at night, or during the day, lost, miserable. To one extent or another we are all alone.

(I dabbled in Buddhism for awhile; they assure me that loneliness is an illusion, I assure them it is not.)

We are alone, but we seek connection, and there is a great joy when we discover that we have found another seeker. Someone else who has struggled.  Someone else who has yearned. Someone else who has found God in song. (I am using the term "God" very loosely here. I'm not doing that blog either, yet.)

To find a kindred spirit is such a good feeling. Perhaps that is why some of us blog. We are like the creatures in Kurt Vonnegut's book "The Sirens of Titan" called Harmoniums. All day long the harmoniums sing to each other. Some sing, "Here I am, here I am." And the others sing back, "So glad you are, so glad you are."

I need to end now and I hope I have not gotten too sentimental because my writing teacher in high school would attack sentimental writing like a pit bull mauling a jogger. But, in a sense, it is a sentimental subject.

"We all need someone we can lean on." ~ Mick Jagger and Keith Richards

Test blog for pictures

Winter

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Florida

Florida gets a season all unto itself.

I would like to note that while I was selecting these pictures, I was also sweeping the kitchen and found not one but two small spiders. And I will need to help them outside by myself as my husband is not into doing this although he is hell on ants. The cat is hell on moths. I guess we are a quirky family.

Paint your wagon

Ok, now I am at Facebook, Live Journal, Blogster, Blogspot, Yuku, Ipernity and Opera. I am slowly trudging through this process of finding a new space to write and show my pictures. If you are on any of those sites and want me to join you send me a PM or put your new address here. What I am going to try to do is to post this in as many places as I can as a sort of experiment to see you is where as I cannot keep so many sites open.

I feel like I am going at a snail's pace, or a turtle's if you prefer. Above it all is sadness that this is happening. When 360 closed down, 7 - 8 friends were with me at MP from the beginning. Maybe more. As I have deleted and archived my blogs I have read the comments and they are very touching. It seemed there was a mass migration pretty much all to the same place. I wasn't as sad because I only lost a couple of friends and I have been able to keep up with them on (the much hated) Facebook.

I know I can still keep up with people on FB, but it is just not the same. People can write there, but more often they post links to articles or their blogs on other sites, or post funny pictures. 

I can't ask you to tell my where you will be, because I am not sure myself which sites I will keep active and which I will allow to languish, like a forgotten houseplant in a dusty corner.

But I will be somewhere, probably a couple of somewheres, and will get into the blogging mode sooner or later. Forgive me that I have rarely commented on your blogs elsewhere - I will get back to that as well.

Food stamps

The other day I was shopping at a large market and I saw the woman ahead of me pull out her "Bridge Card", which, in my state, is a card (looks like a credit card) which gives you access to the government program called "food stamps", or SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It is our government's program to help feed those whose income falls below a certain level. It is not a generous program, I think the average per person is $134 a month. Many get less.

The woman with the food stamp card was wearing her work uniform, light blue hospital "scrubs", with her name and the name of the clinic she worked at. She had a wedding ring (no diamond). Her cart consisted of chicken wings, cheap hamburger, bulk peanut butter, cheap bread, store brand tomato soup and stuff like that. A little girl was by her side.

She is the face of American food stamps. Married, working, with children. White, if it matters, and I think it does, because many people think mostly black people get food stamps.

I'm going to guess she worked as hard as I did when I was working, and harder physically. The hardest work I ever did was play basketball with my kids (I was a school social worker). The working poor generally work on their feet, washing floors, scrubbing toilets, carrying things and so forth. "If there's time to lean, there's time to clean" said a poster at McDonald's when my friend Don worked there.

More people, per capita, get food stamps in Idaho than they do in California.

More people, per capita, get food stamps in the rural south than in the urban north.

Food stamp recipients tend to be people who are older, or disabled, or are children.

And these are the people that Paul Ryan, the possible next Vice-President of the US, wants to take food away from.

I don't know how this seems to people from other countries. I don't know if it is comprehensible to people from other countries. And I am starting to feel like I am blathering. Which I am.

Please let this not be, that a country where people can pay $22.95 a pound for beef tenderloin steaks will not give assistance to people who work all day and need help buying hotdogs at $1.99 a pound.

Buck

A good story, and I hope this is one, can be told more than once, should be told more than once. The best stories are told regularly, and even though even the smallest child has it memorized, there is still delight in hearing it.  Anyway, I hope so.

This is a true story. It happened in Canada, 2 hours drive north of the "Soo", deep in the pine woods northeast of Lake Superior. Tom and I were staying in a group of small cabins on the shore of the Lake on the edge of the Wood. It was deep wood, not logged in decades, and there was a series of beaver dams with marshes behind each one.

Buck, shown above, lived outside the main lodge, hanging around or disappearing for a day or so into the woods.  He had stumbled out of those woods, beaten, torn and mangy, half dead, and was healed by the handyman, Tim, who gained his trust through patience and the deep understanding that some beings have for others who have been mistreated. 

Somehow Buck came to like me, and liked to follow me on my trips hiking through the pines. So I took him once when I decided to make a day of it. Tom was feeling tired and not up for an hours long hike, but I told him where I was going, the edge of the beaver marshes, and then back again.

Another thing I should say is that the ground there is mostly iron ore; compasses (and I had a good one) can be thrown off by the iron and mislead you.

I had a wonderful two hours walking around the edge of the marshes, taking pictures, writing in my journal, having lunch and so forth.  Playing with Buck, who would disappear and then come back to find me and let me pet him. After sometime, when I was just starting to feel tired, I started to head back.  I'd seen all the pitcher plants and horse grass and wild orchids that I wanted to see. I just wanted to be home. Buck followed.

Bored with the marshes, I decided to head back through the woods. They are very thick and deep and seemed romantic. One can't see the sky through the branches and the air is still and dark.  It was wonderful.  I ate wild berries and carefully drank my water. I followed my trusty compass unaware of the iron beneath me that was betraying my every step.

Soon I was lost. I knew I was lost, but I trudged on still counting on the compass and the fact that I just couldn't be that far away from the Lake and the Queen's Hwy. Sometimes I would come to a clearing where the breeze blew the bugs away and the bracken was waist high.  Sometimes I could see Buck, sometimes I couldn't, but he always came when I called.

Finally, after having tripped over a hidden root, torn my jeans, and stepped in a water hole, I came to a spot where it wasn't such a great adventure. I sat on a tree stump and looked at my scratched hands and my wet feet and despaired. I was lost. I had gotten myself lost. I knew I had been wandering in circles and was exhausted. Almost all my water was gone. I was a pathetic lump and felt right sorry for myself.

Worst yet, I thought, I had gotten Buck lost with me.

Hmm. There was a thought. There was the thin shining trail of a thought. The stupid human was lost. How about the dog? Buck the dog, who had grown up in these woods. Maybe Buck was not lost.

"Hey, Buck" I called. "Hey, Buck." He was there in a flash. "Hey, Buck" I said, "wanna go home?" "Rowf" he said. "Yes!" I said, much louder. "Home, Buck, home!"  He barked with enthusiasm again and jumped with his front paws off the ground. "Take me home," I said, and he did.

Of course he took me straight home, which meant I had to climb over dead trees, through thorny brush and boggy little patches, but he took me home to the clearing where the cabins and the main lodge was. So relieved was I to be there. I got him some icy well water right away, and some for myself, and we shared a piece of leftover steak.

Buck is my hero, and someone I call up in my mind whenever I feel lost and hopeless. I used to tell this story to my children. Never overlook hidden resources. Your hero might be a holler away. For those people who are reading this story for the second time, my apologies. If you are reading it for the first time, I hope you enjoyed it.

The last time I saw Buck, he was riding in the back of a pick-up truck. Jill and Ron, who owned the cabins had to sell. They bought a house in a small town and took Buck with them, and Tim too.

Thanks for reading.

Open the Pod bay doors, please, Hal (with update)

There are a number of people who I would like to be in touch with as they blog BUT I am not able to follow their blogs.  Some people are on Google+ and I am in some of your circles. I can do that.

But I cannot "follow" people's blogs on Blogger/Blogspot. If I go to your blog, e.g. Belita's, and attempt to follow her, I get one of two messages. One is that I am blocked by the owner from the site (which I don't believe that it's by the owner), or I am told they are having trouble processing my request.

I went to Google help and apparently a number of people are having this same trouble and have been for some time.

Soooooo......I will be running around, trying to find people's blogs that I might want to read. If you know one of my old MP friends who is blogging here now, please point them in the direction of my blog. Maybe if they are following me, I will have a way to connect.

I don't see myself using Google+ much; maybe I will surprise myself, we'll see.

If anyone finds a way to contact tech support, let me know.  Thanks so much. For now I will be on Multiply.

Update: Cinnamon rocks the house!!!!  I now can follow people.  Forget everything here. 

New name

I changed my title. Actually I changed it a bunch of times. Some of the rejects were
**Open the pod bay doors, please, HAL
**If I could save time in a bottle
**5 pomegranate seeds

And so forth. I chose this one to remind myself that sometimes it is good to play it safe but sometimes it is no better to be safe than sorry. A few risks are necessary. Because being sorry when you didn't go for it is a bad feeling.

Or as Kellen Winslow might have said, Leave it all on the field.

Or as Don McLean said "I knew if I had my chance, that I could make those people dance, and maybe they'd be happy - for awhile."

Music is on my mind tonight. Can music save your mortal soul? Music winds through my heart and I am so tone deaf.

Every picture tells a story
Every story lights a star
Every star is someone dreaming
Every dream is who you are.

Be kind. We are all we have until we rest in the arms of our Mother.

Took me awhile

It has taken me awhile to be able to manage here. I will work more tomorrow, but for now I am tired.  I am not sure if I will keep this blog or this title, and I will need some time to figure out how to connect with people.  We'll see.