Art or not

"Well, I guess you can cut the arts as much as you want, Gene. Sooner or later, these kids aren't going to have anything to read or write about." From Mr. Holland's Opus This is what we are doing to our schools, and our future, when we cut the arts. It's like bread with no salt. A coat with no seams. Walls with no paint. A wedding with no music. Sports are so often trumpeted as the thing that can bring warring societies together. Everything from soccer games breaking out in the battlefield to the glory of the Olympics, there are plenty of inspiring stories of setting aside political ideologies and territorial disputes in the name of athletic engagement. But anyone who has learned to play an instrument, sing in a choir, throw a pot, write an essay, paint a landscape, or dance a reel, has felt that same exhilaration in executing a complex sequence of steps requiring that same practiced combination of physical acumen and mental skill. The absence of art is not simply boredom. It is war. And that is what we are setting ourselves up for, in spades, if we do not train our young minds in the abstract mental skills of the arts. Whether a child can draw or sing or act, even if it's not to marketable level, to develop both sides of the brain is to open it up to possibilities that can solve the world's problems. Art is more than pictures and songs. Art is medicine. Art is engineering. Art is space travel. Art is technology. Art is life. If we cannot afford to teach it to our children, then we cannot afford a future.

Open Season

(No, did I really go through all of 2011 without posting? Guess it was a busy year..)

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Leather gloves, goggles, hat, boots. I march to the garden shed.
"What are you going to do?" my husband asks.
"Damage!" I reply.
He laughs.
He knows where I am headed. Out back to liberate the poor cedar tree from the Himalayan blackberries.
I use the loppers first, to clear away the outer shoots and get my bearings. I work my way to the interior, where the canes are large enough to frame a house. The thorns could pierce an elephant’s hide. Or at least my leather gloves.
I hack and chop, and trace the first plant to its base. Next I deploy the shovel. The root ball is huge, but the soil is loose, and I am able to pry the evil thing from the ground.
It has obviously been here a long time. I have no illusions of making this our final battle. There are still runners in the ground, and seeds everywhere. I can’t get them all.
Long ago, some immigrant carried a seed from another land. Whether in his pocket or in his gut matters little. A blackberry seed sprouted, took root. A bird found the bush and made a meal. It then flew west, and pooped this monster out - into my back yard.
A descendant of that bird is scolding me now from a neighboring tree. I am destroying its Summer buffet. Sorry, my friend. This plant was not meant to be here. I whack farther into the thorny jungle, wreaking my revenge for the native vegetation it has usurped. Take this for the Mahonia you’ve choked out! And this for the huckleberry! Here's one for you, native blackberry! And this one is for the trillium, and the fern!
The canes have snaked their way into the lower branches of the cedar, up and over and into the tree farm on the other side of the property line. Oh, you think you can escape by going over the border? I scoff. Well, think again!
My husband comes to check my progress. "I need a hatchet," I say, as I uncover a particularly large and stubborn root. He shakes his head. "You’ll either dull the hatchet, or miss and hit your foot." Hmm, those are my choices? "I need a hatchet," I repeat, and he resigns himself to fetching what will certainly be the implement of my destruction. He’s good that way.
I excavate the root, and two more besides. The canes take their revenge by tearing holes in my clothes and my skin, and falling on my head as I pull them down from the tree. They reach out and trip my feet as I toss another one of their fellows upon what will be its funeral pyre.
Over the course of two hours, I have liberated the cedar’s trunk and its lower branches, and have hacked a path far into what this morning was a blackberries-only club. Jam? HA! You can keep your jam! Give me wide-open spaces! I sink my shovel into the base of another clump of canes when the bird’s screeching ceases, and I hear wings fluttering overhead. My hat deflects the attack, but I decide to retreat. I don’t want to risk disturbing a nest, even though I suspect these birds are collaborators in the invasion.
I stow the tools, and assure my husband that he will not have to take me to the ER. I still have both my feet, all my fingers, and most of my blood. And there is a serious dent in the Himalayan jungle in our back yard.
For now.

OK, I just want to get this on line before the closing ceremonies end: I haven't heard anyone mention yet that the first four notes of the Olympic theme are the same as the first four notes of "Oh, Canada!"

Tom McLarty's Hands

Monday morning, I woke up with the fragments of an "Irish ditty" in my brain, a leftover of the dream from which I had just emerged. For some reason, I was sufficiently amused by it that I wrote it down - and then kept writing. Once I had the ditty fleshed out, I called my friend Gordon, an Irish Lutheran minister (no, that's not a new synod - He's Irish and he's Lutheran). Gordon roared with laughter as I read him my poem, and concluded that I had probably been channeling a dead Irishman. I have to agree - because this is not my usual genre, to say the least.


Tom McLarty's Hands

Back home, I had a friend, and
Tom McLarty was his name.
He lost his job for liquor,
But he had one claim to fame.
His nose was red and ruddy,
And his hair stuck out in strands,
But the finest thing about him,
Was Tom McLarty's hands.

Ol' Tom he was a drunkard,
And a skallywag at best.
A thief, a rake, a liar,
And was always penniless.
But still he found great favor
With the girls throughout the land.
See, what they found amazin'
Was Tom McLarty's hands.

Well, Tommy came to me one night,
Asking for a game.
He needed funds for women
Whom he sought to entertain.
I asked him for his ante,
As I dealt the final hand.
But all ol' Tommy had to bet
Was Tom McLarty's hands.

I dealt the cards with vigor,
And I had a royal set.
I slammed the cards down right away,
And called him on his bet.
A two of spades, a three of clubs,
And nothing that was grand:
A losin' deal if 'ere you saw,
Was Tom McLarty's hand.

"That's not the way the game is played"
Said Tommy with a cry.
"Ya' take my hands away from me,
I swear that I will die!"
"Ya' made a deal, ya' pay the bet,"
I said, as off we ran,
To see the doc, so I could get
Tom McLarty's hands.

The doctor sewed 'em on just fine,
And handed me the bill.
I pulled my wallet out to pay,
But had an empty till.
I lied and said I'd pay next week,
Collateral be damned.
We sealed the deal with but a shake
Of Tom McLarty's hand.

Ol' Tom had hands that loved to roam,
And soon my woes increased.
The hands would steal from night til noon,
And then, with no relief,
They'd spend the evenings lookin' for
Some drink and contraband.
I wish'd I'd never taken on
Tom McLarty's hands.

The hands they took me to a house,
They knocked upon the door.
In answer came a woman fair,
I'd never seen before.
"My husband, he's away for now,
Come in and have a dram."
I did, and soon she found herself
In Tom McLarty's hands.

Her husband, he came home just then,
And saw me with his wife.
He had a pistol at his side,
And with it took my life.
He called the undertaker, who
Came quick at his command,
And folded neat upon my chest
Tom McLarty's hands.

And so the Devil came to get me
For the trip below.
I begged him to be kind, and begged him
Please to let me go.
He said he'd hear my offer,
And the dickering began.
All because I'd coveted
Tom McLarty's hands.

"I'll let you go back home," said he,
"I'll let you go away.
But you must give me somethin' for
My troubles here today."
I told the Devil I don't lie,
And that I understand,
As I crossed the crooked fingers of
Tom McLarty's hands.

I tol' Satan I had for him

Quite a treasure trove:

The best of everything on Earth

And from that place above.

He was not fooled, for who can pay

The ransom he demands?

He roared to see that all I had

Was Tom McLarty's hands.

And so the Devil made a deal
To keep or cut me loose.
"We'll play a round of poker,
And let the winner choose."
I prayed to get a royal flush,
Or something just as grand.
Alas, the cards he dealt me
Was Tom McLarty's hand.

So now I sit in Hell all day,
And give Satan his due.
I swear that this is but the truth.
I swear it through and through.
I'd swear it on the Bible, but
That book down here is banned,
So I swear to you by raisin' up
Tom McLarty's hands.

Goodbye, Nushie Girl

On Monday, we rushed back from vacation to find that our 19-year-old kitty, Nushie, had obviously had a stroke. She seemed a bit wobbly and confused, but mostly content to have me back home and snuggling with her. So I decided against a midnight run to the strange, noisy ER. I knew there was not much there they would offer, besides supportive care, and I could do that at home without the stress of the trip. So we opted to wait until we could have our own vet look at her in the morning. But as daylight approached, she deteriorated. That morning - yesterday - it became obvious that we had to let her go. It all unfolded very quickly. She had been in my life longer than my husband. She and I had been through a lot together. And although she was relatively healthy for an old cat, she was obviously not completely comfortable, always seemingly teetering on the brink of a medical crisis. So last night, I was reflecting on my feelings, and trying to decide how much of what I was feeling was sadness, and how much was relief. I am sad, but that isn’t the whole of it. The following is what I was thinking last night, as I was picking up the pieces:

I’m putting things away tonight, putting them where they belong. Your microwave rice pad goes in your box in the laundry room. Your sheepskin goes on top of the dryer. Your special renal food goes in the cupboard. It’s not that I’m in denial. It’s just that tonight I am too tired to make new places for these things. So they go back where they have always been. I ask myself: If you are no longer here, do they belong anywhere? But Petey is looking for you, so I can say that I am leaving those things in place for him. He can smell where you were, and tonight he is doing some time in each of those places where he finds an echo of your presence.

And yet, some things I am allowing to change. I am no longer on the lookout for the other cats’ unfinished food, so you won’t be tempted to cheat on your renal diet. I no longer have to split your pills in half. I no longer need to leave bowls in eight or nine places, to make sure you drink enough water. And yet, I haven’t quite realized that you’re gone. So it’s as though this morning, we did nothing more than cure you of your ailments. The only thing that seems to have changed so far is that I can relax, and not constantly guard you anymore.

In the bathroom this evening, out of habit, I reached over to splash some water into the tub, because that was one of the places I knew you would always go for a drink. I stopped myself, thinking how silly that was.

And then I reach over and did it anyway, and decided that it was okay.

I no longer need to attend to those things - the pills, the food, the hovering - that defined you as old and infirm. But for a while, I will probably continue to splash some water in the tub, and heat up your rice pad, and put the sheepskin on the dryer. For a while, I will allow myself to indulge in doing those things that made you happy. And in that way, more than saying goodbye, I can celebrate with you your new wellness, and your new peace.