Street Scenes

Yesterday evening we were walking to a nearby restaurant with our neighbors, when we were accosted by some seedy trench-coated ruffians. (Well, actually it was a perfectly ordinary-looking young woman and man.) "Do you want a cupcake?" the woman said. What? "No, seriously, we have a lot of cupcakes to give away. Do you want one?" They go around to the trunk of their car and pull out a big box of cupcakes. Not just any cupcakes, either. Gourmet cupcakes, with whipped cream frosting and flavors like mocha with real berries on top. As it turns out, they were in a local bakery at closing time, and the proprietors had a lot of leftover cupcakes that they didn't want to save until the next day so they gave them to the couple, who decided to share the largesse with the madding crowd. (Note to self: Go to Daisy Café at 4:55.)

It was a quintessential near-eastside Madison experience.

Reflections on Getting Older

From Britain Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice. This spoke to me today.

If we are getting older it will be harder to acknowledge that we have not been called to spectacular service, that we are unlikely now to make a stir in the world, that our former dreams of doing some great healing work had a great deal of personal ambition in them.

A great many men and women have had to learn this unpalatable lesson -- and then have discovered that magnificent opportunities lay all around them. We need not go to the ends of the earth to find them, we need not be young, clever, fit, beautiful, talented, trained, eloquent, or very wise. We shall find them among our neighbors as well as among strangers, in our own families as well as in unfamiliar circles -- magnificent opportunities to be kind and patient and understanding.

This is a vocation just as truly as some more obviously seen as such -- the vocation of ordinary men and women called to continual unspectacular acts of loving kindness in the ordinary setting of every day. They need no special medical boards before they embark on their service, need no inoculation against anything but indifference and lethargy and perhaps a self-indulgent shyness. How simple it sounds; how difficult it often is; how possible it might become by the grace of god.

-- Clifford Haigh, 1962

Forgiveness, Part 2

I guess the lesson for this week is forgiveness. Here's a sticky one that challenges me in a different way:

William Calley, the former Army lieutenant convicted on 22 counts of murder in the infamous My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, publicly apologized for the first time this week while speaking in Columbus.

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley told members of the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus on Wednesday. His voice started to break when he added, “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

Calley claims that he was following orders on that day, and I suspect that he was. In fact, I have read that the orders for the massacre and the cover-up go all the way up to a certain Maj. Colin Powell. War is hell on soldiers as well as civilians, and I often wonder how some -- like Hugh Thompson, Glenn Andreotta, and Lawrence Colburn -- find the moral strength to intervene when something is so terribly wrong, while others follow orders and perpetrate events such as the My Lai massacre.

I am moved by Calley's apology. I wonder if he could/would return to My Lai on a mission of peace and restorative justice. What would that be like for him, and for the survivors of the massacre and their families?

A Question of Justice Being Served -- or Not

My recent post about the release of the alleged "Lockerbie bomber" made me think of Leonard Peltier, and then this showed up on HuffPo today:

BISMARCK, N.D. — American Indian activist Leonard Peltier, imprisoned since 1977 for the deaths of two FBI agents, has been denied parole after authorities decided that releasing him would diminish the seriousness of his crime, a federal prosecutor said Friday.

Peltier, who claims the FBI framed him, will not be eligible for parole again until July 2024, when he will be 79 years old.

I ask, where is the justice or the mercy in continuing to hold Peltier? I suspect that releasing Peltier -- and there is some pretty compelling evidence that he did not pull the trigger on the weapon that killed the FBI agents -- would draw attention to other prisoners being held under questionable circumstances. In fact, Amnesty International considers him a political prisoner. So holding him prisoner serves a purpose beyond a question of justice and accountability for a crime he may or may not have committed. This underscores one of the great failures of our penal system.

Forgiveness

I recently read a book about the "real" teachings of Jesus. It was a scholarly book, whose author had read through the many texts attributed to Jesus, and pulled together the ones that were most likely in his own words, as opposed to the words of his disciples or later writers. When you get right down to it, Jesus's teachings were fairly simple: Love your enemies as you love yourself (which of course must be prefaced with loving yourself.) Share what you have with those poorer than you. And practice forgiveness.

I don't know if I would be able to forgive someone who took my child's life. Or a sibling's or my husband's or someone else's whom I love very much. I would like to think that I would try, even if it took the rest of my life.

I read this article with interest. Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, one of the men convicted in the downing of the Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland has been released from prison and allowed to return to Libya on "compassionate grounds." He has prostate cancer and has been given just a few more months to live. Under Scottish law, terminally ill prison inmates can be released to spend their final days with their families.

If you read the article, you will see that some of the family members of Lockerbie victims are upset and angry. The Obama administration has expressed their unhappiness with the decision. However, al-Megrahi has maintained his innocence from the start, and there are many in Britain as well as Libya who believe he was wrongfully convicted.

Isn't it interesting that the pleas for showing "no mercy" come from the U.S.?

As I said, I cannot say how I would feel about his release if my child had been on that plane. Still, questions of guilt or innocence aside, I find it very heartening that Scotland has this law. Isn't it in keeping with the essential teachings of Jesus? Yesterday I saw a bumper sticker with this quote from His Holiness, the Dalai Lama: "Compassion is the radicalism of our time."

Your thoughts?

Near and Dear To My Heart

My regular readers (all 7!) know that I am passionate about "buy local" initiatives. I firmly believe that every dollar one spends is a vote, and I try to spend my dollars at locally owned businesses most of the time. So when I read about the 3/50 Project in the newspaper, I was pretty excited. The concept is easy. Choose 3 independently-owned businesses in your local community that you would really miss if they went out of business, and pledge to spend $50/month at each of them.

Can you think of 3 favorite independently-owned stores in your community that you would like to support?

Blogger Meet-Up

Question: What do: Bill Clinton, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin and New Gingrich have in common?
Answer: They are Not in the Picture above!

Who are these 4 Mysterious Bloggers?

• First Prize: A Free Subscription to one of their blogs (you choose)!
• Second Prize: A Free Subscription to two of their blogs (you choose)!
• Third Prize: Enrollment (as soon as it's available) in the Republican Party's new National Healthcare Plan - at its Market Driven - Bargain Price!

And for extra credit:

• Which 2 of these bloggers are married to each other?
• Which one was not married when the picture was snapped (2 weeks ago) but is married now?
• Which one owns a poodle?
• Which one had the farthest to go to get home?
  
• What's in that little white carton?
  

Book Review: The Latehomecomer, a Hmong Family Memoir

I am often surprised when I talk to people from other parts of the U.S. who don't know about Hmong-Americans. The Hmong were mountain people living in Laos. During the Vietnam war, they were recruited by our CIA to wage a Secret War against the communist forces in Laos (a fact that was long-denied by the U.S.) When the Americans departed in 1975, the Communist government of Laos waged genocide on the Hmong people. Thousands were massacred, while others fled into the jungles of Laos to hide or to make their long way to the Mekong River, to cross to Thailand and life in a refugee camp. In the mid-eighties Thailand no longer wanted to be host to thousands of Hmong refugees, and many of them came to the U.S., settling primarily in southern California, central and southern Wisconsin, and the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. In the mid-nineties when Clinton "ended welfare as we know it", there was another large Hmong migration from California to Minnesota, which had kinder policies toward people in poverty.

The Latehomecomer was written by Kao Kalia Yang, a young woman who was born in the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand in 1980 and came to Minnesota with her parents and sister when she was 6 years old. They were eventually joined by many aunts and uncles, as well as her beloved paternal grandmother. She tells a story of hard work and abject poverty, the parents working long hours in mostly menial, low-paying jobs, always with the goal of their children getting ahead through education, but not losing their essential Hmong-ness. This is also very much a love story for Yang's grandmother, a woman whose strength and fortitude kept her family together through unimaginably trying circumstances.

Madison has a sizable Hmong community and I have had a handful of Hmong students over the years, but I still know very little about the culture and would like to know more. The Latehomecomer was a beautifully written and fascinating book, and certainly provides food for thought as a teacher. It was also interesting to compare it with the only other book about the Hmong I've read: The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman.

I highly recommend The Latehomecomer. The author, Kao Kalia Yang, has also produced a documentary about Hmong American refugees, The Place Where We Were Born.

Book Review: Up In the Old Hotel

Up In the Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell is a collection of articles that Mitchell wrote for The New Yorker over a period of time spanning from the early 1930s to the mid-1960s. They were originally collected and published in 4 separate books, long out of print. McSorley's Wonderful Saloon profiles characters Mitchell met in and around the Bowery in his early days in New York City. These include saloon-owners, a self-described Gypsy king, a colorful street preacher, the "Don't Swear Man", a freak show bearded lady, and many others, as well as several works of fiction. Old Mr. Flood describes one elderly man living around the Fulton Fish Market. The Bottom of the Harbor is about the fish market, and the fishermen -- the bay men and the river men -- who kept it supplied. The book ends with Joe Gould's Secret, a follow-up to one of Mitchell's earlier profiles (which my brother informs me was made into a movie a few years ago.)

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It paints a picture of a New York city that is mostly long gone, a fact that is echoed in places all around the country and is to be mourned. It was dense reading, like a well-aged fruitcake. I read with a dictionary close at hand to look up unknown words, which is always fun.

If you enjoy the kind of books that explore one subject in depth -- in the vein of John McPhee or Mark Kurlansky -- check out Up In the Old Hotel. It was a treat.

What's the trouble with Harry?

We watched Alfred Hitchcock's 1955 comedy The Trouble With Harry last night. It was a favorite of my parents, and the first time I saw it as a kid, it scared the dickens out of me. Very funny black comedy. Recommended.

Why Oh Why Isn't Paul Krugman Our Treasury Secretary?

Oh. Yeah. 'Cause he wasn't ever a mucky-muck at Goldman-Sachs. This was in the NYT yesterday:

Americans are angry at Wall Street, and rightly so. First the financial industry plunged us into economic crisis, then it was bailed out at taxpayer expense. And now, with the economy still deeply depressed, the industry is paying itself gigantic bonuses. If you aren’t outraged, you haven’t been paying attention. (Read the rest here.)

I am outraged, but feel impotent to do much. When it comes to money, I don't have a lot in the first place to use as any kind of leverage, and I'm already trying my hardest to do socially responsible things with it. I guess the best I can do is attempt to educate people.

To Facebook Or Not To Facebook -- That Is the Question

But actually, there's no question about it. Yes, it is a time vacuum, yes it is frequently fairly shallow contact, but some really cool things can be facilitated by Facebook. Here's what happened:

Yesterday a young (F)friend's status update stated that he was going out to check the neighborhood garage sales for a bike. Reading that, I sent him a message telling him that we had some salvaged, but stalwart bicycles sitting in our garage if his shopping proved fruitless. Sometime in the afternoon he popped up in a chat window on Facebook, asking about the bikes. I invited him to come check them out. He came over yesterday evening while we were out, selected a bike and took it home.

This morning he showed up after Meeting, hands covered in grease and grime, to settle up on a price. He said he had been attending Meeting for Worship with Attention to Bicycle Repair, and had happily ridden his new bicycle over to the Meetinghouse. It's probably a pretty decent bike -- an older American-made (which in all likelihood means Wisconsin-made) 10-speed Trek touring bike. I'm happy to see it go to a good home, after rescuing it from a trip to a landfill.

As you might expect, I drive a hard bargain. "It's a graduation gift, Martin!" I said, and then added that if he wanted to donate some money to AFSC (American Friends' Service Committee) or another worthy cause, he could do so. I was rewarded with a very sweet smile. It makes me smile just to think of it.

So there you have it. Sure, it could have happened without Facebook, but that would have required Martin or his mom to come to Meeting and announce that he was looking for a bicycle or submit it to the weekly announcements, etc. etc. This way it was all so serendipitous. Community at work, facilitated by Facebook. Cool.