A kinder, gentler nation

Posted on May 5, 2011 by sheilawill

When someone I thought was a gentle, sensitive person sent me a gruesome photo of bin Liden’s face, with a link to a video of his demise, I was shocked.  That disgusting image has been popping up for me all day.

Why would I need to see this? I’m so glad President Obama has decided not to release photos of the corpse; maybe what I received was photo-shopped and not the real thing. I don’t want to see any of the graphic images whether they’re real or not.

One of my first reactions to bin Laden’s death, a patriotic or ethnocentric one at that, was that we wouldn’t behead him or desecrate his body. Although it was politically appropriate, I was surprised and heartened that before bin Laden’s burial at sea, pains were taken to wash his body according to Muslim ritual. Military personnel recited the proper words in Arabic. That was the right thing to do.

I liked Thomas Friedman’s NYT column today. He’s often too conservative for me, and he’s only one voice, but during this highly emotional time, he makes sense.

It’s ironic that bin Laden lived in a fine big house — by Pakistani standards — he who encouraged young Muslim men to give up everything to rid the world of “infidels.” No cave for him. I heard this morning that in his will he asked his own children to not continue his jihad.

Tomorrow President Obama is going to lower Manhattan to talk with family members of those killed on 9/11. He’s not going to yell about “gettin’ him.” He’s going to listen, give support to fellow human beings who have missed their loved ones for 10 years. That’s the right thing to do.

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Three funny stories, but not the funniest ever

Posted on April 26, 2011 by sheilawill

There I was, naked in the Jewish Community Center locker room post-Zumba class and shower. A young woman ran into the room announcing “Sheila Wilensky is writing a story on kids’ fitness for the Post.”

“Uh, that’s me,” I said sheepishly. The announcer and another woman started talking to me about the fitness program, but I insisted on getting dressed before the discussion went any further. That was a first.

I’m always running into folks from Maine in Tucson. A few months ago, I noticed a bumper sticker on my morning walk: “Got Maine lobsters.com.” The homeowner was watering her plants. I had to ask  if she had a Maine connection.

“Yes, my husband, Steve Wheaton, is from Bar Harbor, Maine,” she said. I blurted my usual reply: “No kidding!” We chatted a bit. Last week, I saw the woman and her husband walking their dog. “I was just thinking of you,” said Mary. She never did say why she was thinking about me but that’s okay (I don’t have to know everything).

It was her husband, Steve, who I wanted to talk to.  He had been in Tucson since 1970, taught math at the UA, and had graduated from the old Bar Harbor High School.

Did he know my good friend, Ellen Russell Gilmore, who also graduated from BHHS. “Oh sure, she was my sister Peggy’s best friend,” he said. “I had such a crush on her.”

I called Ellen yesterday to tell her. “Wow,” she said. “Nobody ever had a crush on me.” Hope I made her day.

I couldn’t help thinking that after all these years Steve still had a heavy duty Downeast accent and was wearing an L.L. Bean hat. Maine lobsters and all. How we cling to where we came from.

And here’s the strangest story. A few days ago on the windowsill in our shower I noticed a little blob that looked like part of a muffin or cookie. Some creature’s poop, said Dan. Too much, plus impossible to drop onto our windowsill from a locked window so nonchalantly.

I asked recent guests if they had brought a cookie into the shower. Why would anybody do that, I wondered, but you never know. Tomorrow I’m taking the mysterious blob to the UA extension office. Will they be able to identify it? Stay tuned.

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Genevieve Ferguson (1917-2011)

Posted on April 20, 2011 by sheilawill

“Oh sit by me dear. Tell me about Tucson and your life…”

Gen was elegant. She loved art. She loved music and beauty and surrounded herself with beautiful things. I’m sure they all meant something to her, and recalled her adventures or exotic places she’d visited all over the world.

I was relieved when Candice called a few days ago and told me Gen had died at home. Sometimes I stayed on the third floor of her lovely Southwest Harbor home if my house was rented to summer folks (like I am now myself).

I’m not sure if Gen finished the cookbook she had been working on when I first met her about 20 years ago. It doesn’t really matter; it was a project that kept her going, that challenged her. She wanted to do it right, as her exquisite cooking deserved.

Gen always liked to discuss ideas or a new book or TV program. “Dear, would you like to watch these videos of a PBS broadcast with Dr. Wayne Dyer?” She wanted me to have a happy, fulfilling life. I wished that she was my mother.

I liked to ask questions about her life, what she had learned. Gen was generous with her memories, was practical about life’s quandaries, and loved to laugh. She was 92 when I saw her last summer. She was wise beyond her years, and always gave the most sensible, clear-headed advice — only if I asked. And I never felt her sharpness had diminished.

Still driving last summer, she liked to go to Ellsworth and get her own groceries.

Sometimes she, Candice and I would have dinner or visit. It was easy to forget that Gen was so much older than us. There were no barriers between us, but she was probably the most dignified person I’ve ever known. She was also one of the girls.

The call girls was a group of Southwest Harbor women over 80 who had a phone tree to contact each other every morning, and “make sure we’re still alive,” Gen told me a few years ago, then chuckled.

There was nothing Gen enjoyed more than knowing the people she cared about were happy. “I’m glad Sheila isn’t selling her house,” she recently told Candice.

I hope I’m as “with it” as Gen when I’m old(er). I think she was in her 70s as part of the Oz writing group, jotting down her feelings about some trigger that Candice gave us and sharing her writing with a much younger group. She was always curious.

It’s hard for me to imagine Gen no longer in Southwest Harbor. I’ll always miss her. While walking and talking to Candice on the phone the other morning I stopped at a small stand of purple, pink and white wildflowers in front of someone’s house. OK, it’s woo woo, but a yellow butterfly flew by, dipping and swirling among the blossoms. I blurted to Candice, “It’s Gen!” What a dear, dear role model.

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People are so much nicer in NYC than they used to be

Posted on April 16, 2011 by sheilawill

I used to be afraid of going to THE CITY so everything seemed scary. But now people smile at each other on the subway. Guys give up their seats to old ladies (not talking about me here). People are generally quiet (you don’t want to know about pseudo-slutty girls from Hoboken). Maybe everybody’s too busy playing games on their iPhones. I was happy to see so many people still reading books, not as many newspapers though.

But there are still things about New York City that I don’t understand. How can so many people eat dinner at 11 p.m.? How do New Yorkers memorize zillions of subway routes? How come I had to swipe my Metro card repeatedly, but locals’ cards worked every time? How do city dwellers refrain from eating out nightly, going for broke on food? How do so many women walk so briskly in five-inch heels? What percentage of people get sick eating food cooked on tiny grills in food carts that look fairly unclean? Do the guys break-dancing and performing stunts like jumping over seven people at Union Square make enough money to buy food at Whole Foods across the street? Do people like making their way through the crowded streets, or do they feel lonely when hardly anybody’s around during a blizzard?

Shopkeepers say “Enjoy Your Day” when you buy contact lens solution. New Yorkers wait patiently in long lines at the new Trader Joe’s; at Whole Foods there’s a color-coded system to move shoppers through efficiently. Nobody looked enraged standing in line with their baskets of assorted greens, soy milk and goat cheese.

Then there were the girls from Hoboken. Okay, I can’t help telling you how they wore minuscule mini-skirts and seven-inch heels on the Path train back to Jersey from the city. They were swearing, talking loudly about what they did — or would do — to/or with guys. One man took offense and said something about what he would do if his daughter left the house looking as slutty as they did.

The girls (a la “Jersey Shore?” I’ve never seen the show but I’ve heard about it) admitted that they left home wearing sweat pants so their parents wouldn’t be suspicious. Then they called the irate father a pedophile. The conversation escalated. A few good-natured young men were making comments that I couldn’t hear. Ethan was laughing along with them. It became too much for me. I rolled my eyes a few times at the other mother sitting next to me and a quiet young man hugging the door. Many of us clapped when they left the train in Hoboken.

Offensive, yes, but not a scary situation. People were playing music in the subway stations: Blues, jazz, drums, Native American singers, and at one place couples were swing dancing. Ethan said he has never seen that before. I wasn’t one bit scared in the big city. Maybe I’ve grown up.

Posted in Family Matters, The Rest of the World | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Family: back east and in Tucson

Posted on April 7, 2011 by sheilawill

I’m going on a family vacation today — not to the Bahamas or Italy but to the heart of it all — hanging out with my kids in New York City. I’ll arrive at Brook’s new digs, which she and her boyfriend moved into last fall, at midnight EST.

“Mom, I know you’ll want to talk,” Brook told me, and made a lively gesture with her hands, but it’ll be late for them. All I have to do is see my lovely grown-up daughter and I’m on vacation.

The same goes for Ethan, whom I’ll see tomorrow. He’ll probably make that lively, wavy gesture too, and ask, “What do you want to do, mom?” And we’ll be off: I want to bicycle around that new Upper West Side bike path, walk that former train station hi-rise park, stroll through the giant exhibit on the human brain at the Museum of Natural History, maybe take in a fun off-Broadway play, engage in a Big Apple eatathon, but way more important, just gaze at the incredibly beautiful faces of my two children.

The rest of our small Wilensky family will join us over the weekend. My brother and his wife will come in from the Boston area. We’ll all get together with at least one of their daughters and my two adorable, super-sharp, smiley great-nieces. That’s it for my birth family.

I’ve vowed to myself to see my kids at least three times a year. I haven’t seen my brother in around two years, but he’s so funny. He calls me every week; once when I lamented not seeing him often enough, he said, “I have a picture of you in my office. I know what you look like.”

Here in Tucson, I have Dan and his family. I have a huge family of friends all around the country.

For those of you in Tucson, I recommend hearing UA President Emeritus Peter Likins talk about his unusual family at the UA Bookstore in the Student Union today from 5-6:30. I organized a  panel, “Parenting Memoirs: From Maine to California” at the recent Tucson Festival of Books, which Pete participated in. His story of adopting six children of various racial and ethnic backgrounds, with his wife, Pat, is as moving in person as it is in his new book, “A New American Family: A Love Story” (UA Press).

Wherever your family is, cherish it. I sure do.

Posted in Bopping Around Tucson, Family Matters | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Cornel West preaches, “Get Funky”

Posted on April 2, 2011 by sheilawill

It almost didn’t matter what Cornel West said, it was the cadence of his voice that grabbed me. A blues man, an intellectual chiding us to live the unsettled, or funky life. I identified with him.

“Greed has been running amok since Reaganism, for 30 or 40 years now,” West bellowed. We live in it’s-an-all-about-me society, in a”culture of mass distraction.” Instead, he insists, to be a more humane society we must help the poor and the vulnerable.

“Indifference to evil is more evil than evil itself,”  said West, quoting Rabbi Abraham Heschel.

Brother West — he calls everyone he speaks to or about “brother” or “sister” — spoke, no sang, to more than 2,500 brothers and sisters at the UA’s Centennial Hall last night. (Who knows how many people were turned away; security peopel had to lock the doors. It was a free event, but still, I’ve never seen so many people trying to get into the place.)

West kept reminding the largely student audience, “you come to the University of Arizona to learn how to die. Any time you give up a prejudice, a presupposition, it’s a form of death.” And I loved this, “Education is the moment you realize your worldview rests on pudding.”

I always wanted my students to be confused (funky?). Question dogma, i.e. history. So I definitely got down with Brother West.

“Who has the courage these days to wrestle with the truth?” he asked. “We have a mean-spirited political party on one side and a milquetoast party on the other.”

His references to Washington and Jefferson — old white guys who strove to overthrow imperialist shackles but who owned slaves — raised another essential educational goal. If you’re anti-imperialist and anti-slavery, “how do you hold two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time and still be able to function?” Wrestle with the unsettled life?

“And don’t talk to me about the budget,” roared West, noting that “since 1975 we’ve spent 301 billion on a Marshall Plan — to incarcerate people in prisons. And we always have enough money for Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya.”

How do we deal with the poor and most vulnerable among us? Our priorities are warped. “In the Age of Obama,” he said, “I was break-dancing for a few days. But even with black folk in the White House it’s hard to keep track of black folk in public housing.”

West said he had hoped that Obama would provide a more humane vision for America, but choosing Larry Summers and Timothy Gauthier as economic advisers immediately showed him that the White House would be an “extension of investment bankers.”

Still, life must be about hope — not optimism — and that’s the blues, said West. “BB King still sings ‘Nobody loves me like my mama and she may be jivin’ too.’ That’s hope.”

Amen, Brother.

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It’s all about the brain

Posted on April 1, 2011 by sheilawill

If I were younger and smarter I’d study neuroscience. All those fascinating connections, how we’re actually wired for cooperation — not intra-species violence — but greed has taught us otherwise, at least us Americans. I don’t believe obsessive greed is part of “human nature,” as I often hear people dismissively say.

And you know, poor people are always taking advantage of the rich. Politicians complain about Mexican families trekking hundreds of miles across Arizona’s scorching Sonoran Desert so they can have “anchor babies” who become U.S. citizens.

Some of the wealthiest among us disapprove of a health care law that provides medical treatment for 50 million uninsured Americans. It’s that old let-them- work-for-it-that’s-what-my-grandfather-did mentality.

The brain is far more flexible than our outward characteristics allow us to believe.

Now we have scientific proof that the brain is responsible for our psychological makeup — and our physical health. An overweight, abused, listless teenager is more likely to suffer from medical problems her entire life.

In 2007, Dr. Nadine Burke at San Francsico’s Bayview Child Health Center, or “The Poverty Clinic,” found herself “thinking increasingly about the problems she couldn’t immunize her patients against.” Doctors aren’t supposed to be concerned about their patients’ real lives.

But one day in the fall of 2008, Whitney Clarke, a psychologist who had recently joined the clinic’s staff, handed Burke a six-year-old medical article that he had read online, ‘The Relationship of Adverse Childhood Experiences to Adult Health: Turning Gold into Lead,’ by Vincent J. Felitti. Everything changed for Burke.

“The Poverty Clinic” discusses more recent research, which has led Burke to evaluate what she sees in her clinic differently. “In many cases,” she says, “what looks like a social situation is actually a neurochemical situation.”

Read the article. This is great stuff.

 

 

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Wildcats Meet Huskies

Posted on March 29, 2011 by sheilawill

I’m a fair weather basketball fan. I like the most exciting games, which are usually played during the playoffs. Sometimes in the regular season I’ll turn on a Celtics game to see if I can find my brother, who’s had season’s tickets four rows behind the Celtics bench for many years. He’ll often call to tell me what he’s wearing, but I still can’t seem to locate him.

Guess I have odd reasons for watching basketball games. Besides the excitement — and the fact I can understand the game — I enjoy observing the jubilant winning team. Dan has pointed out that he’s never seen anyone be a sports fan for such a flimsy reason.

Guess I’ll also have to admit that I’m a UCONN alum. What could be cuter than a big white fluffy mascot?

On Saturday, when Tucson’s beloved University of Arizona Wildcats met the Huskies, I figured history would burst through and I would break into “Connecticut UCONN Huskies, Victory Again for the White and Blue…” But I didn’t. By the second half, I wanted the Wildcats to win. Why? Then everyone in Tucson would be happy. Hell, if that’s all it takes, why not?

Yesterday, we watched the Kentucky/North Carolina game. Those incredibly long shots, all those guys wanting so badly to win. But my favorite part was when Kentucky won and a young black player approached his white coach, who — as they both grinned broadly — grabbed the player in a bear hug and planted a kiss on his cheek.

I remember being a kid in the 1950s. My brother and mother were fierce Brooklyn Dodger fans. All the hoopla then was about Jackie Robinson, the first black baseball player in major league baseball.

If you’re unfamiliar with that highlight of Civil Rigths history, check out “Teammates” by Peter Golenbock, a children’s picture book that so perfectly tells the story of Robinson and Pee Wee Reese’s friendship. Reese, who was white, took a courageous stand and refused to stay in hotels where his teammate wasn’t welcome.

Who says nothing has changed in these United States of America?

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Geraldine Ferraro (1935-2011)

Posted on March 27, 2011 by sheilawill

It was 1984. How proud I was that a woman was finally nominated as vice president. How excited I was to hear Geraldine Ferraro speak at an authors’ breakfast at the American Booksellers Convention that year.

I was bad. She was eating a muffin but I went up to the three-term congresswoman from Queens with one of my OZ Books yellow and green postcards and asked her if she would please sign it for my seven-year-old daughter, Brook.

She was gracious. I think she understood how much her candidacy meant to women, to their daughters, to herstory. In “A Last Word” New York Times interview, Ferraro recalls an old woman coming up to her, whispering in her ear, “I never thought I would live to see this day.”

Ferraro also admits that if she had won two primaries in the 1990s and had become a U.S. senator, she probably would have run for president in 2000. She would have made a good one. She was tenacious. Ferraro started her lawyering career fighting for rape victims, abused women and children.

Geraldine Ferraro died today after a 12-year battle with blood cancer.

I don’t get why the New York Times didn’t recognize her death as the top online photo and news story of the day. Elizabeth Taylor’s death made it to the top headline. Taylor was an avid AIDS activist and in the public eye for seven decades. She deserves respect.

But in my mind, there’s no comparison to Geraldine Ferraro — she advanced the power of women forever.

 

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To speak or not to speak

Posted on March 25, 2011 by sheilawill

On my walk yesterday morning I passed a young man, probably an African immigrant, starting his day. He’s leaving his sleeping spot, carrying lots of blankets and a water bottle. We pass each other quietly. I wonder if he recognizes me from other walks, other cool Tucson mornings.

Should I speak to him? At least say good morning? I want to know his story, where he came from in his colorful cap, why he’s in Tucson. How did he come to be homeless?

I say nothing.

Recently, I read “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson. What a terrific YA novel (known as young adult but really for young teens)! Having been out of the children’s book loop since I closed Oz Books in 1997, “Speak” was a revelation.

It immediately took me back to high school — as a student, teacher and parent.

“I am outcast,” Melinda, the teen protagonist, tells readers. All because she called the police at a summer party. Kids got in trouble for drinking.

She was raped.

But Melinda couldn’t speak about it, even though all her friends summarily abandoned her for her ratty deed.

Were they so self-absorbed that they didn’t want to know her side of the story? Her  former friends played the blame game while she suffered alone.

She took art. Mr. Freeman has a “big old grasshopper body, like a stiltwalking circus guy. Nose like a credit card sunk between his eyes. But he smiles at us as we file into class…Welcome to the only class that will teach you how to survive, he says. Welcome to art.”

Mr. Freeman is the sanest person she knows, Melinda tells us.

Isn’t it wonderful when somebody, maybe the most unexpected person, steps forward to help? Melinda finally speaks about the rape because she wants to protect her former best friend who starts to date “Andy Beast.”

I feel a little guilty for not speaking to the homeless man who passes me on the streets of Tucson. I hope he’s okay.

 

 

Reading “Speak” I was whisked back to high school — both as a student and as a teacher. The dialogue, both inner and outer rang true. Anderson is a talented writer who’s able to convey the horror of her character’s experience, yet also give us plenty of kindness and even humor.

 

 

Posted in Bopping Around Tucson, Tucson Festival of Books/good books | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments