Non-violence works

Posted on February 5, 2011 by sheilawill

I got caught up in the Egyptian struggle, first because of Ethan. But then it dawned on me — hundreds of thousands of people who want a say in their government are showing up in the streets. And they’re not going to leave until they get what they want.

I’m feeling the wave of change in the Arab/Muslim world. I’ve learned from Ethan that people are people wherever you go. Just like Newfoundlanders in the 1970s always asked if I was afraid to walk down the street in an American city, and if all Americans were zonked out on drugs most of the time, I understand that no culture perfectly fits any stereotype.

Wonderful Maine neighbors have said that Pakistan is the most lawless, violent country in the world, while a dear friend who traveled deep into the Pakistani mountains to head a school, said she met the friendliest, kindest people there.

It doesn’t do any good to assume we know what any country is like. I imagined that two older women from Tucson, who were caught in Egypt’s upheaval, would just talk about how frightened they were. They were both spunky and engaged in the politics of the Egyptian mass movement.

Maybe I’m the one who’s frightened. I’ve been to very few other countries. And if hundreds of thousands of people were willing to give up everything in their thirst for a voice, even when Mubarak dispersed his “thugs” into a reportedly  non-violent crowd, that’s inspiring.

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Happy mama, indeed

Posted on January 28, 2011 by sheilawill

They say that siblings experience the longest relationship in life. That’s true, but parents inhabit their children’s psyches, and their DNA, forever.

My dear son, Ethan, who turned 30 earlier this month, arrived in Tucson last night. He’s finishing a freelance Russian editing job this morning, and I’ve had the pleasure of replenishing his freshly squeezed grapefruit juice, catching as many glimpses of my handsome son as possible.

I’m a lucky mama. We’ve had our difficult moments, but my kids and I like each other a lot, enjoy each other’s company, have similar interests — such as writing and politics. Laughing together is the best.

Very soon Ethan and I will venture into the Tucson sunshine, probably not hiking today but sauntering over to the UA campus, see what’s happening with the college crowd. Should be entertaining for Ethan to see all the blond co-eds in their short shorts and UGG boots.

My parents are still with me, even though my father died in 1969 and my mother died in 1986. I like to think that my mother and I would have gotten along better now, that I wouldn’t have felt so pressured by her to do this or that — marry a Jewish man, become a teacher (which I finally did), cut my bangs and let my pretty ears show under all that hair (she actually did say that). I was often angry at her; I’ll bet I was angry with myself. I’m not sure why.

My father was a sweet man who often called me “sweetheart.” I was only 22 when he died, just getting started as my own person in the world.

I’d like to have a grandchild someday. It’s one of those life experiences that seems transcendental. Mostly, I want to see Brook and Ethan relaxed and happy in their own lives. They’re on their way. It sure took me a long time to stroll down that path, but they’re both way ahead of me, knowing who they are at a young age.

I’m eternally grateful that Brook and Ethan get along so well. I’m also grateful to have such amazing parent substitutes in my life, Dan’s folks, Jackie and Bill. They’re excellent role models as I get old(er), striving to be a menschette (female of mensch, or good person).

Even though I’m far from my east coast grown-up children. I clearly did the right thing by moving to Tucson eight years ago. Sunshine has a lot to do with my equilibrium, so let’s get out there Eth!

 

 

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A dancer’s art

Posted on January 27, 2011 by sheilawill

I had heard about Anna Halprin from my ex-husband, Henry. In his younger days he considered joining her dance troupe, leaping and cavorting on the California shore. That was in the 60s, before I knew him.

On Sunday I told the now 90-year-old iconic dancer about Henry. I couldn’t help myself. I don’t think she remembered him but she was gracious. I had just finished viewing “Breath Made Visible: Revolution in Dance,” a documentary spanning decades of her lifelong love affair with movement.

Her approach to dance was solely her own. Halprin recalled a stint in New York City as a young woman wanting to try the latest in modern dance, but the uniformity of style was not her thing. She noticed that everyone in Martha Graham’s company looked like Graham.Why wouldn’t they want to look like themselves?

“I will not bow down to a golden image,” Halprin said to herself and went west with her husband, Larry. That was in the 1960s. The next time she performed in NYC was in 2002, when she was 82.

I could see the little girl in her face as she bopped around the stage wearing sneakers on her feet, not telling, but energizing her life story.  I could do that, I thought to myself, intrigued.

“When I’m 100,” she said, “I’ll dance the essence of things and when I’m 110, I’ll dance the way things really are.” Halprin explained that when she was 40, “I danced for social justice and peace.” There she was with a huge Afro hairdo, rolling around on the floor attempting to break down barriers between black and white. Raw emotion was the only choreographer.

One of her two daughters admitted that it was hard growing up with a completely different set of rules for art and life. I imagine there was a lot of free-spirited sexuality among the grown-up dancers — and the Halprin daughters still had to do their homework.

Halprin is a cancer survivor. “Before I had cancer,” she said, “I lived for art. After I had cancer [I used] my art for my life.”

Watching the film, as Halprin spoke of “feeling a sense of reverence for my beautiful old body,” I began to feel proud of mine. Watching her, I pledged to move mine more consciously,  and with the ultimate kindness.

After watching “Breath Made Visible” I wanted to dance.

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Striving for Sanity

Posted on January 22, 2011 by sheilawill

Aren’t we all striving for sanity in a crazy world? To me, the prevalence of guns in American society is insane. I don’t get the gun crowd but here’s one instance where I understand what the guy is saying, although I disagree with his view that “gun control is a failed social experiment, and it’s time to move on.”

Art is often at the forefront of change, and in this case a long-scheduled — now timely — Tucson exhibit, “Stop the Violence,” depicts weapons made by arranging human bones. Will the wanton violence in our society ever stop? Can it be reduced?

In the aftermath of the Tucson shooting tragedy efforts for some sort of gun control will pick up, then probably fade. In Arizona, Gov. Jan Brewer and Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce see no reason to reduce the sale of extended ammunition clips. But according to today’s Arizona Daily Star, “on this date in history, in Tucson, the sale of votive candles outpaced the sale of Glocks and extended clips 7-to-1.” Yay!

We cannot ignore rampant rage and over-the-top rhetoric that’s run amok during the past few years. More emphasis on recognizing signs of severe mental illness is necessary, which I hope points to an increase in awareness — and compassion — not fear.

Lumping everyone with mental disorders into one category is not the answer. There’s a big difference between our highly functional neighbors, friends and family members who get support and receive treatment through medication and/or therapy and someone like Jared Loughner, who seemed to become more and more psychotic and isolated over time.

I’m excited about a local program to help increase awareness about serious mental illness. But let me be clear: I’m a firm believer in the First Amendment, so how do we act legally to thwart someone like Loughner?

Times have changed. When I was a grad student in the early 1970s, I taught a psychology class at Northampton Junior College in Massachusetts. Taking my students on a “field trip” to the state mental hospital was a big mistake: Staring at people with vacant eyes, so drugged up that they appeared catatonic, was so wrong.

Luckily, millions of people who have serious mental illness now live productive, happy lives. More effective medications with fewer side affects help, as does education. Consider books like “An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness” (bipolar disorder) by Kay Redfield Jamison, or “The Center Will Not Hold: My Journey through Madness” (schizophrenia) by Elyn R. Saks. Both women have successful careers in the medical world.

In my view, reducing the stigma of mental illness should be the next civil rights movement. That doesn’t mean that seriously ill people like Jared Loughner should be ignored, on the contrary.

Join me. Find out about the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) in your community. We really are all in this together.

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Big sigh of relief

Posted on January 19, 2011 by sheilawill

It’s been a busy and difficult week. Gabby has opened both eyes and even given her husband, Mark Kelly, a back rub or a neck rub, depending on whether you believe the New York Times or the Arizona Daily Star. Me, I’ll always go for the NYT. Either way, good news indeed.

I’ve written a tame Arizona Jewish Post editorial — condemning ammunition that sprays 33 shots and questioning the prevalence of guns — including photos that I took this past week. Not bad either. I’m proud of my work. Not only did I write the editorial on MLK day, which I had off, I gave a talk on “A Life of Words” to a group of retirees last night. Went to work today after oversleeping — must have overused my brain yesterday. And tonight I taught my “Commitment to Remember” class with high school students and Holocaust survivors.

AND I have a new assignment that I’m excited about: I’ll be writing a piece for Publishers Weekly about the heyday of children’s bookselling in the 1990s. Former children’s bookseller friends around the country, I’ll be calling soon. You know who you are.

Yup, I’m proud. I’m also tired.

But here’s something I’m wondering about in the aftermath of the horrific shooting on Jan. 8: the language that’s become part of our daily lives. I’m not talking about all the vitriol, a good word we hardly ever heard before last week.

Just regular words. In Trader Joe’s on Sunday I noticed the sign above the fresh veggies: “Killer Veggies.” OK, it may not mean anything,  and I get that “killer” means cool or terrific, but still. Then there’s the “soccer shootout.” Or the excellent website “Killing the Buddha.” What do you think?

I’m going to watch “House” and have a Trader Joe’s soy-mini ice cream sandwich. Oh, first I must watch Mark Kelly’s first interview since Gabby was shot, and find out which newspaper was correct.

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Obama Cares

Posted on January 14, 2011 by sheilawill

After attending last night’s “Together We Thrive: Tucson & America” event at the University of Arizona’s McKale Center, I’ve changed my mind about the president’s lack of “gumption.” That’s what I said in “Time to Take a Stand,” my blog post written on last week’s terrible Saturday.

I was devastated. I’m not a crier so I use words to convey my emotions. I was angry.  I stand by my view that targeting public officials is out of the American mainstream and is extremely harmful to our society.

Last night the president hit the perfect tone: “As he did in Philadelphia, on the subject of race [in March 2008], he embodied with his own rhetoric what a mature, measured, yet passionate political voice sounds like.”

Although I was at the McKale Center  as a member of the press — with nearly 14,000 people — I really felt like a Tucsonan. So I jumped up repeatedly, clapping loudly and even whooping occasionally because it was cathartic.
Reporters sitting in the row behind me were speaking Spanish and French to news bureaus in other places. I didn’t care if it was politically incorrect for a journalist to applaud.
I have decided to resist calling right-wing politicians loonies, sickos and wackos in my blog. It is my personal writing but as one of the most ethical and professional journalists I know, Ethan Wilensky-Lanford, recently told me, “it’s better to be understated.”
President Obama was a role model for me last night. “Part of our nature is to demand an explanation, make sense of what seems senseless,” he said, noting that the discussion has begun on gun safety laws and the adequacy of the mental health system. Both are concrete, essential goals.
More important, he said, “Let’s make sure that we’re talking with each other in ways that heal, not in ways that wound.”
There were so many affecting parts of his speech. Here’s a gem: “What we can’t do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other. That we cannot do. That we cannot do,” he said passionately.
“Let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imagination…sharpen our instincts for empathy, remind us of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.”
One of the most poignant moments in Obama’s talk came when he empathized with the parents of Christina-Taylor Green, saying that in her, “we see all our children.”
“I want to live up to her expectations,” said the president. “I want America to be as good as she imagined.”
It felt good to even contemplate a glimmer of that America again. And of this I’m certain: Last night I fell in love with Barack Obama again.
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Healing, bumper stickers and mental illness

Posted on January 10, 2011 by sheilawill

I’m still heartbroken. I’m also emotionally exhausted. I won’t talk too much.

This morning I attended a healing service at Congregation Chaverim for Gabby Giffords and the other shooting victims. More than 150 people were there, around eight police cars full of police people, and around 20 news media folks. Since I’m one myself, I’m pleased to report that they were appropriately respectful.

Driving away from Chaverim I found myself behind a pick-up truck sporting this bumper sticker: “Keep the change. I’ll keep my freedom, guns, and money.” Pretty weird on this day of all days, don’t you think?

Later, I started thinking about yesterday’s horrific rampage becoming another opportunity to malign people with mental disorders. To me, killing innocent people is the height of craziness. People who want to be compassionate and contributing members of society don’t qualify.

Then I read today’s Whatever blog by John Scalzi, which is well worth considering. One of his friends raised the same concern: “Maybe you could remind folks that the people with mental disorders are around them, right now, being mentally disordered? Also, being lawyers, parents, farmers, soldiers, nurses, truck-drivers, teachers, college students, judges, 5th graders, fishermen, mechanics, martial arts instructors, writers, and general good folks. Just like them,” his friend wrote.

They are usually not your violent criminals. I recently interviewed Ray Lederman, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, for a story about reducing the stigma of mental illness.

“People with mental illness are more likely to be victimized by violence than being the perpetrators of violence,” Lederman told me.

I’m not sure how the topics in my headline meld. You can figure it out. Or if I do, I’ll let you know. Good night.

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Time to take a stand

Posted on January 9, 2011 by sheilawill

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is alive after being shot in the head this morning outside of the Safeway at Ina and Oracle in northwest Tucson. Gabby, as anyone who’s met the Congresswoman calls her, had made her weekly trip from Washington, D.C. to meet with local constituents.

I’ve interviewed Gabby many times. Even though I personally don’t always agree with her, she’s smart, personable and I trust her. During the recent  mid-term election campaign, with all its nasty lies, she consistently took the high ground.

Others did not. It’s time to take a stand. The truth is — with all the yapping about Second Amendment rights — per capita ownership of guns is way higher than it was when our forefathers were conducting the American Revolution. That particular jabbering is just an excuse for the condonation of violence, or more specifically, the supposed “rights of the individual” in American society.

When Sarah Palin literally targeted Democratic members of Congress prior to the election, a gun sight appeared over Giffords’ district on a map that appeared on Palin’s website sarahpac.com. Today her home page offers condolences to Giffords and other victims of the shooting and wishes for “peace and justice.”

Back in March, after Giffords voted for the health-care bill, she was asked about Palin targeting her. Sarah Palin has got to realize there are “consequences” to encouraging violence, said Giffords.

Jesse Kelly, Giffords’ recent opponent in the November mid-term election, followed Palin’s advice with his own outrageous targeting of Giffords.

On his Myspace page, shooting suspect Jared Loughner’s latest post was “Good-bye friends.” For a young man to carry out such a violent act — with a legally concealed weapon in wacky Arizona — he’s clearly mentally unsound.  Inflammatory political rhetoric only feeds his instability.

“You don’t have to accept the federalist laws,” the suspect said on his Youtube page. Oh you don’t, why not? Not when you have powerful people with unlimited access to the media espousing violence.

Where will this craziness end? I was disappointed that President Obama didn’t have the gumption to take a stand in his statement today.

Gabby Giffords read the First Amendment on the floor of the House of Representatives just a few days ago. As an old social studies teacher, I staunchly support the First Amendment.

For the sake of America’s sanity, let’s urge our political leaders to practice self-censorship. If they’re mad as hell and they can’t take it anymore, let them talk among themselves. If you’re angry, paranoid or terribly unhappy please seek help (although funding for behavioral health has been severely cut in Arizona).

A nine-year-old child and a federal judge were wantonly killed on a sunny Saturday morning when folks just wanted to buy groceries or say a few words to their  Congresswoman.

For a moment I wanted to get in my car and drive back to Maine, flee this loony state. I’m heartbroken.

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Ethan’s 30!

Posted on January 6, 2011 by sheilawill

I remember everything about Jan. 6, 1981. It was -20 degrees at 11:47 a.m. Someone was revving a motorcycle engine beneath the window of the Ellsworth Hospital birthing room. I had the flu the night before with a temperature of 101.

Driving by sea smoke rising over iced-up Southwest Harbor, we arrived at the hospital around 8 a.m. We started walking up and down the hallway, me wearing a brick-colored corduroy jumper that my friends passed around as a shared pregnant outfit, heavy long underwear underneath.

Ethan was fast, sort of like a freight train, understandably tired after his ordeal. So was I but I asked for a brownie. Wearing a tiny yellow cap, he kept falling asleep instead of nursing.

When he was a few hours old, our friends Claire and Jay brought big sister Brook in, and I’ll never forget her sitting on the bed where he was born, holding him, looking into his eyes.

Siblings have the longest relationships. Who knows what Brook was thinking? She was excited about having a steak dinner with pumpkin pie and hot chocolate before we were sent home to avoid a blizzard.

Thirty years later, Ethan spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas with Brook and her boyfriend, Gianmarco. This makes me very happy.

People often say that parents sacrifice so much having children. I used to think about how Brook would be 8 when Ethan was 5; she would be 18 when he was 15, and so on. I wondered what they would be like. But I’ve always felt that they have given me so much more than I’ve ever “sacrificed.”

So this is a little mushy, but what can I say? Happy Birthday Ethan, and thank you Brook for being the best big sister ever.

Posted in Mount Desert Island/Maine | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

To use or not to use

Posted on December 30, 2010 by sheilawill

I’m not talking about drugs. “Doesn’t Twitter, Facebook, and blogging sound like bad sex?” my friend in Maine asked on the phone the other day. “Do you want to blog? No, I don’t want to blog with you!” would be her consistent response.

She went on to tell me about someone who lives in Chicago, who has hooked up her phone or computer to sound like a crackling fire. “Why would anybody want to do that?” My friend is outraged about the virtual experience, why anyone would bother.

I can’t answer her question. I’m betwixt and between my own Gemini self blogging — gee, it gets me to write — and becoming a Facebook addict. But there’s so many interesting articles that people post, movies they’re seeing, political rants. And I genuinely like hearing what folks I like but may not ordinarily be touch with are doing.

I gave up on Twitter. Too many people and it takes too much time to read. Too much nonsense. Do I really care if someone I don’t know in Belgium has a baby who won’t take a nap? Do you care if I just got up to get another piece of chipotle chili dark chocolate that Dan gave me for Christmas?

I’m told by people I respect that to be with it you have be in tune with social media. So I have a website, a blog, which may or may not help me get more freelance writing/editing jobs.

Around 10 years ago, Chicago academic friends showed me how to access the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris online. They were so excited. “Can you believe it? We’ll be able to view works of art anywhere in the world on our computer screens,” they said.

“Oh, I’ll never do that,” I told them. “That’s too high-tech for me.” Now it seems like another lifetime when I went to a library to do research. I even want a tiny MacBook Air or at least an iPad to carry in my purse.

I’m addicted to e-mail. I don’t think I could have moved to Tucson eight years ago without being in constant and immediate contact with my dearest friends on Mount Desert Island.

My friend back on MDI only engages in absolutely essential e-mailing to publishers and such (guess I don’t have to be concerned about her reading this).

I understand a certain reluctance to dive headfirst into the techno abyss. I used to refer to myself as a techno-peasant. I’d now call myself a recovering techno-peasant.

Then there’s my brother. He refuses to clink on a link, although he uses e-mail. When I recently told him how much fun I’m having playing lexulous (online Scrabble) with my kids, he blurted, “Play games online! I’d rather watch an ant crossing the street.”

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