And, this year, so bountiful in its gifts and treasures. My flowers – peonies, roses wild and cultivated, lilac bushes, fox glove – you name it – are flourishing. And, even wild strawberries, generally not worth the trouble of finding and plucking, whatever their sweetness, are showing up all over in abundance.
I had these, below, with their stems etc. removed, with a little yogurt and walnuts for dinner last night. Perfection! Thank you, Mother Nature. Thank you.
*I’ve added a poem below about aging, the passage of time, love, poetry, and more that mentions strawberries by – of all people – Erica Jong. Enjoy!
To Whom It May Concern - Erica Jong In Autumn, as in Spring, the sap flows, the sap wishes to race against heartbeats before the winter, before the winter buries us in her usual shroud of ice.
I turn to you knowing that unrequited love is good for poetry, knowing that pain will nudge the muse as well as anything, knowing that you are afraid, fettered to a life you do not love, & so unfree that freedom seems more fearful even than the familiar business of being a grumbling slave.
I lived that way once, & I know that freedom is its own reward, that it propagates itself by means of runners,
that nobody gives it to you, not even me to you,
but that you must seize it with your own two quaking hands & pluck the strawberry it bears in the green ungrumbling
*from the archive and oh maybe the early 2000s? who knows at this point, but, in increments I will share and, knock wood, you will enjoy, this old-ish story. Mildred Jensen was an actual math teacher I had in middle school, she was tall and leggy, but everything else is entirely fictional here. I really liked her, a lot, even if – at the end of her career when I had her as an instructor – she was showing not only her age but the age of some of her ideas (boys are better at measuring things, for one).
Thanks for reading, and subscribing!!
So much to be thankful for, Mildred often thought. And when Bill Jr. met a girl through travel around the state, travel he took for 4-H, a girl whose interests in Holsteins and breeding pigs and chickens matched his and whose parents had a much bigger place in Chenango County, with four sisters and no brothers to work it, they gave him – and her – their blessing to marry and go there, if that’s what he desired. It might have been hoped for that he would stay, take over the Gray farm, but – his choice, and now, hers as well, his future bride. Their children, their children, were thriving, one and all, and all those fears about genetics and what not, well, here were four kids whose own parents hadn’t wanted them or couldn’t keep them, and you couldn’t tell, not one little bit, that they weren’t all Grays, born and bred. They congratulated themselves on doing a good job, one of the only jobs that really mattered, for bucking family disapproval, and thanked the good Lord for giving them such fine sons and daughters, for making a family possible through other than normal means. They thanked God.
Mildred made the decision to retire from teaching in 1972, after thirty-two years service, when it seemed the children she taught were no longer children, or children as she wanted to know them; they had no respect, it seemed, not just for her but for adults in general and, too often, she thought they might be right. The school administration was, unlike years ago, weak; going off to conferences and meetings at the drop of a hat. And as for the new teachers! So many of them were, in her opinion, nothing but longhaired, jeans clad lay-abouts. Not only that, the clothes they wore, what they called bell-bottoms – and a stupider style she had never seen, with all that wasted material flopping about the ankles and what had to be deliberate holes in other places in their ‘blue jeans’ she’d be embarrassed to wear the equivalent of around the farm. The whole lot of them were busy being teenagers still, clinging foolishly to their youth, as she put it, at length, to her husband at night.
In 1977 the Gray’s sold their milk cows; Mildred cried all day to see them go, and Bill was not much better. It made their life easier, which they had sought yet, too, they felt the absence keenly of their good friends and companions, and the chores related to caring for them. When a nearby farm, also a small dairy, as theirs had been, decided to sell up, Bill and Millie bought the herd, and brought them down the valley themselves, on foot. Their children understood, even while they thought they were mad. Jim had ideas for the old place, maybe a tree farm, something different, if they’d consider; a conservation easement. What’s that? Oh but they’d consider it, and giving up the cows, sooner rather than later. They sold him the place after Mildred’s stroke, at eighty-five.
She couldn’t speak; she’d lost that part of her life forever, it seemed. Bill stayed by her side, softly smoothing the skin of her hand, reading to her in the twilight before turning on the old bedside lamp, while Rex the fifth or sixth panted at the foot of the bed. She didn’t mind this time of enforced rest; she let go and let go and let go. If she fretted she did so briefly, and only about her husband and the loss he was facing yet, knowing him, she let go some more, knowing he’d be fine; after all, he was built that way, designed for joy as well as sorrow, resilient and brave. Her children came to her side, and made each other laugh, fumbling around the small bedroom where their parents had slept all the nights of their married life, while she watched, her eyes still bright, yet fading, taking them all in, brimming with tears they misinterpreted until their father corrected them; he knew his girl, they were tears of joy, and of satisfaction. Some of her former students visited too, the oldest ones, mostly; this too was a fine tribute.
She made a good end to a good life, everyone agreed, slipping away early one morning when she was alone, for once, in the familiar room, when the family was all awake and either outside, doing chores, or beginning the farm-style breakfast they had always favored. Bill sat with her until the doctor came, and the grandchildren picked wildflowers, her favorites, for a cracked vase that sat on the kitchen table, filing the room with sweet scents as her sons and older grandsons carried her out.
*from 2009, because it’s that season, fully aware that this is very specific to my town, my life and much, much less brilliant than the Ursula Le Guin commencement speech I posted yesterday!! That said, hey, happy happy to all grads and their parental units everywhere. So much has changed since I gave this little speech. Sigh.
Hello and thank you. It is clear to me that the class of 2009, in inviting me to speak today – was looking for a serious speaker to speak seriously in a serious tone on matters of great serious-ity due to the serious nature of this very serious occasion, and as a reflection of their own depth and seriousness as serious young persons embarking upon the next great and very serious chapter of their lives.
And so, with great solemnity, let me begin with these timeless and fitting words from one of the greatest (if not the greatest) song poems of the 20th century: the Theme from Love Story – “Where do I begin – to tell the story of how great a love can be – a true love story that is older than the sea – the simple truth about the love you bring to me, where do I start? With your first hello you gave a meaning to this empty world of mine there’ll never be another class like 0-0-9 – you came into my life and made the living fine – you fill my heart, (sung) you fill my heart!!!”
But seriously folks this is a great day and I welcome the class of 2009 to the best club I ever joined: the alumni of M_______ Central School. I know it is appropriate and fashionable at your ages to begrudge any praise of and for your Alma Mater – your soul mother as translated from the Latin – but really, was it that bad? Did the 13 or 7 or 2 years you spent at MCS ruin your short little lives? I don’t think so – in fact I think you had fun here; you met your peers and classmates, you learned something and grew up comfortably cradled in a gorgeous setting doing what was asked and required of you to get you to your individual next best place. Congratulations – your lives as relatively carefree youngsters are over; student loans, rent, mortgages, insurance, credit card bills, utility bills, debt and hardy har har your own teenaged children await you! And you were in a rush to grow-up?! You fools – you fools!!!!!
Like every generation of students before you – you have been in a rush to get to your future and have forgotten this one absolute truth: this moment right now, this present reality is the only moment you – or anyone – has – so be here now. BE HERE NOW and be thankful for what you have learned and who you have encountered on the way to this moment because good, bad, or indifferent – this place and these people are what you are made of. This place is a part of you love it or not and the smart choice is to love it because it is a part of you, of your personal story, your personal history, and nothing will ever change that. Make the smart choice and love it, embrace it, celebrate it always, not just today at the finish line – for believe me the way you speak of and tell your story as you go forward in life will end up being the way you think and feel about yourself – so chose to see the good in all and feel good, no – chose to feel great about this place – your family, your peers, teachers, coaches and community.
And if someone asks you where you went to high school or grew up throw open your arms and announce – if you dare and I dare you – to say M-ville! F_____manns! A___ville! Or get romantic and say on the banks of the R___kill, or the bubbling M___brook –in dusky D____en, K_____ C____ers – H_________ Center – or – if you were very, very lucky you can say – I grew up in New K________! And help me as the newest members of the MCS alumni club in bringing back to the greater MCS community a more palpable sense of school spirit. That’s’ right, I said it, school spirit. It sounds old-fashioned, but it’s not – it’s about individual ownership of what is a fact – this is your school, this is your history – make the smart choice and love it. And if you think it’s not cool to have school spirit – think again. I have it – I have school spirit and I am very cool – therefore school spirit is cool – and let me call out to one or two of my fellow alums – J________ M_______! (are you here?) Sparky – do you have school spirit? And is he cool, why yes he is – therefore school spirit is cool – K______ B________? Do you have school spirit? K______ G_____, E______ H_________, C________ C__________ and J____ M_________ – do you have school spirit? Of course you do!
I don’t know how many of you know B__ H__________, Casey’s grandfather, or my beloved pop Richard Mueller – they are in the alumni club, they attended MCS – and they did so in the days when term papers were written on deer hides they cleaned themselves by a roaring fire and the few books they had were written in Sanskrit only to be interpreted by teachers as old and decrepit as Methuselah! They had to fashion their pens from turkey quills they plucked at dawn behind the old MCS outhouse – and despite all that or perhaps because of it – B____ H________ is cool – my dad is cool – they have school spirit – school spirit is cool. And cool is a state of living in the present moment, of not apologizing for who you are and where you come from but being proud of it no matter what. And cool is not knowing exactly where you’re going but knowing it will be good because you have said so. Cool is keeping, no matter what happens to you and how strongly you feel about anything and everything, an open mind and open heart and resisting the pressure to be anything other than true to yourselves.
I think you all remember the legendary J_____ B_______ – you all know how cool he is – J____, my brother alum – do you have school spirit? – J________ B_________ is cool – school spirit is cool, class of 2009 and 2010 and 2011 and on and on……no one can resist the call of the aging cheerleader!! And why, class of 2009 would you want to – in fact, would all those alums who are here stand-up please for a sec – these are your parents, your sisters and brothers and cousins, uncles and aunts, grandparents, your local business owners, school board members, community leaders, aides, custodians and teachers – your community who love and support you and have watched you grow up – they are the club you have, in graduating today, joined. (You may be seated, fellow alums) And they are fabulous people.
How do I know? I know like I know like I know like I know – in part because I am one of them and I am fabulous – flawed, absolutely, sure, but doing my best which is all any of us can ever do. School spirit – it’s the smart choice and fun (you all know how I love fun). Loving where you are from and who you shared the journey with is a form of loving yourselves, and above all today, I wish you to go forth to love and nurture and treasure yourselves as you meet whatever challenges you will face. And never forget, class of 2009 – and here let me quote a truly great 20th century poet-philosopher, Olivia Newton-John, – never forget that, “ I love you, I honestly love you – I honestly…. love you.”
*It’s that time of year, and why not, therefore post a commencement address or two, including this one from the always brilliant, insightful Ursula Le Guin, who gave this address ins 1983 – 41 years ago – at Mills College in Northern California, now part of Northeastern University, which began in 1852 as a Young Ladies’ Seminary.
I want to thank the Mills College Class of ’83 for offering me a rare chance: to speak aloud in public in the language of women.
I know there are men graduating, and I don’t mean to exclude them, far from it. There is a Greek tragedy where the Greek says to the foreigner, “If you don’t understand Greek, please signify by nodding.” Anyhow, commencements are usually operated under the unspoken agreement that everybody graduating is either male or ought to be. That’s why we are all wearing these twelfth-century dresses that look so great on men and make women look either like a mushroom or a pregnant stork. Intellectual tradition is male. Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men’s language. Of course women learn it. We’re not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man’s world, so it talks a man’s language. The words are all words of power. You’ve come a long way, baby, but no way is long enough. You can’t even get there by selling yourself out: because there is theirs, not yours.
Maybe we’ve had enough words of power and talk about the battle of life. Maybe we need some words of weakness. Instead of saying now that I hope you will all go forth from this ivory tower of college into the Real World and forge a triumphant career or at least help your husband to and keep our country strong and be a success in everything – instead of talking about power, what if I talked like a woman right here in public? It won’t sound right. It’s going to sound terrible. What if I said what I hope for you is first, if — only if — you want kids, I hope you have them. Not hordes of them. A couple, enough. I hope they’re beautiful. I hope you and they have enough to eat, and a place to be warm and clean in, and friends, and work you like doing. Well, is that what you went to college for? Is that all? What about success?
Success is somebody else’s failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty. No, I do not wish you success. I don’t even want to talk about it. I want to talk about failure.
Because you are human beings you are going to meet failure. You are going to meet disappointment, injustice, betrayal, and irreparable loss. You will find you’re weak where you thought yourself strong. You’ll work for possessions and then find they possess you. You will find yourself — as I know you already have — in dark places, alone, and afraid.
What I hope for you, for all my sisters and daughters, brothers and sons, is that you will be able to live there, in the dark place. To live in the place that our rationalizing culture of success denies, calling it a place of exile, uninhabitable, foreign.
Well, we’re already foreigners. Women as women are largely excluded from, alien to, the self-declared male norms of this society, where human beings are called Man, the only respectable god is male, the only direction is up. So that’s their country; let’s explore our own. I’m not talking about sex; that’s a whole other universe, where every man and woman is on their own. I’m talking about society, the so-called man’s world of institutionalized competition, aggression, violence, authority, and power. If we want to live as women, some separatism is forced upon us: Mills College is a wise embodiment of that separatism. The war-games world wasn’t made by us or for us; we can’t even breathe the air there without masks. And if you put the mask on you’ll have a hard time getting it off. So how about going on doing things our own way, as to some extent you did here at Mills? Not for men and the male power hierarchy — that’s their game. Not against men, either — that’s still playing by their rules. But with any men who are with us: that’s our game. Why should a free woman with a college education either fight Machoman or serve him? Why should she live her life on his terms?
Machoman is afraid of our terms, which are not all rational, positive, competitive, etc. And so he has taught us to despise and deny them. In our society, women have lived, and have been despised for living, the whole side of life that includes and takes responsibility for helplessness, weakness, and illness, for the irrational and the irreparable, for all that is obscure, passive, uncontrolled, animal, unclean — the valley of the shadow, the deep, the depths of life. All that the Warrior denies and refuses is left to us and the men who share it with us and therefore, like us, can’t play doctor, only nurse, can’t be warriors, only civilians, can’t be chiefs, only indians. Well so that is our country. The night side of our country. If there is a day side to it, high sierras, prairies of bright grass, we only know pioneers’ tales about it, we haven’t got there yet. We’re never going to get there by imitating Machoman. We are only going to get there by going our own way, by living there, by living through the night in our own country.
So what I hope for you is that you live there not as prisoners, ashamed of being women, consenting captives of a psychopathic social system, but as natives. That you will be at home there, keep house there, be your own mistress, with a room of your own. That you will do your work there, whatever you’re good at, art or science or tech or running a company or sweeping under the beds, and when they tell you that it’s second-class work because a woman is doing it, I hope you tell them to go to hell and while they’re going to give you equal pay for equal time. I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.
*Her name is Chantal Miller (no relation, tho – I wish!!), and the following below is her victim impact statement, which she wrote and spoke at the trial of her rapist, the blond college boy/swimmer whose name I will not use, because that POS should have no mention here or anywhere else, rather living in shame, hiding out for an eternity. This statement, when it was published o line, ‘went viral’, as well it should have. Chantal’s book, Know My Name, was one of the best reads I have had in the last decade, along with Tara Westover’s memoir Educated. These young women and so many others give me hope; they’re brilliant, empathetic, insightful, brave, tough, frightened and – so much more. They’re human, and if you haven’t read one or both, do it. Chantal’s examination of her entire experience, of her socialization, of sexual violence in this country and elsewhere, of the way in which the justice system treats women and girls, and the process of going through a trial (worth noting that most rapists never get indicted, let alone tried) – is sweeping, broad, deeply researched, nuanced, painful, enlightening, and simply amazing. I cannot recommend it enough – and truly, the same goes for Westover’s book, which examines toxic patriarchy – and the complicity of her mother and many others – in the home like no other memoir or novel I have ever read. She got out, thank goodness.
Victim Impact Statement: Emily Doe, later know to be Chantal Miller, June 2, 2016, at the sentencing hearing for the man who raped her.
On January 17th, 2015, it was a quiet Saturday night at home. My dad made some dinner and I sat at the table with my younger sister who was visiting for the weekend. I was working full time and it was approaching my bed time. I planned to stay at home by myself, watch some TV and read, while she went to a party with her friends. Then, I decided it was my only night with her, I had nothing better to do, so why not, there’s a dumb party ten minutes from my house, I would go, dance like a fool, and embarrass my younger sister. On the way there, I joked that undergrad guys would have braces. My sister teased me for wearing a beige cardigan to a frat party like a librarian. I called myself “big mama,” because I knew I’d be the oldest one there. I made silly faces, let my guard down, and drank liquor too fast not factoring in that my tolerance had significantly lowered since college.
The next thing I remember I was in a gurney in a hallway. I had dried blood and bandages on the backs of my hands and elbow. I thought maybe I had fallen and was in an admin office on campus. I was very calm and wondering where my sister was. A deputy explained I had been assaulted. I still remained calm, assured he was speaking to the wrong person. I knew no one at this party. When I was finally allowed to use the restroom, I pulled down the hospital pants they had given me, went to pull down my underwear, and felt nothing. I still remember the feeling of my hands touching my skin and grabbing nothing. I looked down and there was nothing. The thin piece of fabric, the only thing between my vagina and anything else, was missing and everything inside me was silenced. I still don’t have words for that feeling. In order to keep breathing, I thought maybe the policemen used scissors to cut them off for evidence.
Then, I felt pine needles scratching the back of my neck and started pulling them out my hair. I thought maybe, the pine needles had fallen from a tree onto my head. My brain was talking my gut into not collapsing. Because my gut was saying, help me, help me.
I shuffled from room to room with a blanket wrapped around me, pine needles trailing behind me, I left a little pile in every room I sat in. I was asked to sign papers that said “Rape Victim” and I thought something has really happened. My clothes were confiscated and I stood naked while the nurses held a ruler to various abrasions on my body and photographed them. The three of us worked to comb the pine needles out of my hair, six hands to fill one paper bag. To calm me down, they said it’s just the flora and fauna, flora and fauna. I had multiple swabs inserted into my vagina and anus, needles for shots, pills, had a Nikon pointed right into my spread legs. I had long, pointed beaks inside me and had my vagina smeared with cold, blue paint to check for abrasions….
I thought there’s no way this is going to trial; there were witnesses, there was dirt in my body, he ran but was caught. He’s going to settle, formally apologize, and we will both move on. Instead, I was told he hired a powerful attorney, expert witnesses, private investigators who were going to try and find details about my personal life to use against me, find loopholes in my story to invalidate me and my sister, in order to show that this sexual assault was in fact a misunderstanding. That he was going to go to any length to convince the world he had simply been confused….
Instead of taking time to heal, I was taking time to recall the night in excruciating detail, in order to prepare for the attorney’s questions that would be invasive, aggressive, and designed to steer me off course, to contradict myself, my sister, phrased in ways to manipulate my answers.
My damage was internal, unseen, I carry it with me. You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today.
… I am no stranger to suffering. You made me a victim. In newspapers my name was “unconscious intoxicated woman”, ten syllables, and nothing more than that. For a while, I believed that that was all I was. I had to force myself to relearn my real name, my identity. To relearn that this is not all that I am. That I am not just a drunk victim at a frat party found behind a dumpster, while you are the All American swimmer at a top university, innocent until proven guilty, with so much at stake. I am a human being who has been irreversibly hurt, my life was put on hold for over a year, waiting to figure out if I was worth something….
… Finally, to girls everywhere, I am with you. On nights when you feel alone, I am with you. When people doubt you or dismiss you, I am with you. I fought everyday for you. So never stop fighting, I believe you. As the author Anne Lamott once wrote, “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.” Although I can’t save every boat, I hope that by speaking today, you absorbed a small amount of light, a small knowing that you can’t be silenced, a small satisfaction that justice was served, a small assurance that we are getting somewhere, and a big, big knowing that you are important, unquestionably, you are untouchable, you are beautiful, you are to be valued, respected, undeniably, every minute of every day, you are powerful and nobody can take that away from you. To girls everywhere, I am with you.
