Sylvia's Journal

Last week we met a young couple film makers at the house of a friend in Rockport. I like these new encounters, especially with young people who are doing amazing things. We learned about the documentary they are currently filming about children with cancer in the developing world. And then they told us about their documentary about the Sikhs (under the turban) which was being screened 4 days later at MIT.

Axel was supposed to come but the train came at a different time, it rained, he was soaked, in a bad mood and stayed home to cook. I invited a friend. We had dinner at the Tibetan restaurant in Cambridge and then made our way, in the pouring rain (after months of draught) to MIT.

We learned much about the Sikhs, what the diaspora has in common and what not. I did not know that they are the world’s fifth largest religion (in terms of followers). The film started in response to a question from a 9 year old girl to her parents: what does it mean to be a Sikh? The parents had enough money to take the girl on an investigation that spanned five years and several continents, duly filmed by the film maker couple. They spoke to cheese making and Italian speaking Sikhs in Cremona Italy, and Spanish speaking Sikhs in Argentina. They followed from a helicopter the orange-turbaned members of a Vancouver motor cycle club through the awe-inspiring landscape of southwest Canada.

They filmed a gaggle of young men displaying the Singh Street fashion, wearing their turbans proudly in fashion statement ways. They spent days with the grieving members of a Sikh temple in Wisconsin where 6 of their community were gunned down by a white supremacist who may have thought that turbans=Arabs=terrorists. And then of course they visited the Golden Temple in Amritsar and family members India. I am currently trying to get a visa for India and had to fill in a form that made me swear my trip to India would not plan to be involved anything religious. I wondered how they got permission from the Indian government to film Sikhs. Apparently it was not easy. But the shots in Indian were magnificent.

Yesterday our friends had organized a gathering at their house to explore the poetry of Wallace Stevens.  I read his bio on Wikipedia and noticed that his life more or less coincided with that of Margaret Sanger. I wondered if he knew about her. They must have been walking on the streets of New York City about the same time.

I was not familiar with his poetry and might not have cared if I had read it by myself. And so this is what I learned about myself and poetry last night: I loved the community experience of poetry. We shared the poems with some 20 other people a good many of whom I did not know, but the poetry made this ‘not knowing’ irrelevant; better yet, it led to ‘knowing.’

When we arrived we had just read in the local newspaper that a friend of us had suddenly died in his early 60s. We read the notice too late to participate in a memorial service that was held practically around the corner. We were stunned and deeply saddened.  As we got ready to drive to the poetry evening we wondered, would poetry distract us? Would it soften the sharp edges of this realization that Tim would no longer be waving to us from across the cove? Leave his kayaks on our beach? Invite us to join him and his daughters as they were perched high on one of the Lobster Cove rocks on a summer evening at cocktail hour?

The poetry evening, the combination of the poems, our eminent poetry guide Paul and this community of poetry lovers, did distract us. Paul had done a fabulous job picking a few poems, wrote them in large letters on flipcharts and had us explore, feel, and even draw what we experienced. The poems were of the kind that I would have read and then shrugged my shoulders, thinking, what was that all about? But after hearing others share what they heard or saw, it was as if a door into the poem opened, revealing surprising vistas of meaning, associations, feelings.

I used to write poetry, dabbling I called it, but I stopped doing it a long time ago. I wrote them when I was feeling low, when things were not going well. This (this time, this poetry session) reminded me of the power of poetry and the power of being with others. I think I am going to write a poem about Trump: Dump Trump! Ha!

I had hoped that Trump would disappear from view and we could go on with our lives, but this is of course not happening. He shows up in most of my waking hours, causing distress. In the community around me I see the whole range of reactions: from catastrophic scenarios to ‘may be it won’t be so bad – there are after all checks and balances;’ from calls to jump into action, to protest, to contact one’s congressman/woman, senators to we should give him a chance, let’s wait and see.

We can gloat about his already being in disarray to form a cabinet or be deeply worried about what that means. We can slap him in his face with his already violated campaign promises (in one week!) or hope and pray that he gets it together as we are, after all, talking about our country, not the alt-right republican America.

The knot in my stomach has loosened a bit but it is still there. I go to bed exhausted from all the mental gymnastics I am engaged in to sort out my response, attitudes and courses of action. I am going to be more politically active, that is for sure. I congratulated Elizabeth Warren on her letter to Trump about the number of ‘swamp’ creatures on his transition team and appointments – she is a brave and principled woman (which of course makes her a bitch in the eye of many). I am going to call my congressman, a democrat, and urge him to follow Warren’s good example.

Against the backdrop of the Trump turmoil is also my current job which appears to be in danger as there is little work for me and planned trips are being canceled or at risk of being canceled. With the big unknowns of Trump’s foreign aid plans, the far future doesn’t look that bright either.

The only bright spot at the moment is my upcoming birthday, 65, which we will celebrate with the girls and the grandchildren somewhere in Maine. I only know that I have to reserve December 1 through 4 for this but not what will happen those days. I am excited about this. Tessa will join us the 2^nd, having just returned from her honeymoon after a punishing return flight that will have them experience the longest first of December ever.

Tessa and Steve’s trip is also marred by setbacks, like everything else these days: there was the earthquake and its many aftershocks on South Island, the tsunami warnings, and consistently bad weather on the North Island, Steve’s foot injury and Tessa’s  sinus infection. Mercury retrograde again?

We were so high, after Monday’s canvassing in Southern New Hampshire. We convinced some people to vote, even if they didn’t like the choices available to them – though all were fervently anti Trump. We talked ourselves into a Hillary landslide, a broken ceiling, the first female president.

After we had knocked on some 25 doors we travelled to Durham to stand in line for a few hours at the Whittemore Arena where Obama would be speaking later in the afternoon.

After getting inside the arena we were entertained by the university band, and then a series of rah-rah speeches, kicked op by Congress woman Gabby Gifford and her husband, and then, from the bottom up, the entire NH democratic ticket.

It was my first large election rally. It is a strange phenomenon: candidates preach to the converted. Obviously all the people there were going to vote, and vote for the right people. They had spent hours shuffling along in a line that snaked along for block after block in the hope to get a glimpse of Obama.  I was surprised none of the speakers said, “yeah, I know you are going to vote, but what about the other people on your street or in your apartment building; are there people who are not planning to vote for us, or vote at all? Go and talk with them!” The nice thing in NH is that you can vote and register at the same time.

Instead we applauded their every word, their campaign promises that we know are not that easy to realize, until Obama appeared. That was the real treat: he is a master story teller and the only one who actually engaged with the nearly ten thousand people in the arena. Many of us will miss him, what an inspiration.

And then election night arrived. I was stressed out. My gut told me tings were not going to go as we had hoped. We did not go to the Gloucester Democratic Party HQ. It was a school night and I couldn’t get rid of that bad feeling. I went to bed at 9PM when things still looked promising (with only a few percent of the votes in, eastern state by eastern state), but the running numbers all over the TV screen continued to feed my stress. I slept poorly. When I woke up after midnight I checked Twitter and the sinking feeling was no longer a feeling, but a full body sink. I slept poorly the remaining hours, got up very early and went to work.

At work everyone was in shock. It felt like a funeral – I don’t think there are any Trump voters in my workplace. One colleague wore a black armband as a sign of mourning.

We are all holding our breath to see what will happen to reproductive rights (here and overseas), foreign assistance and of course the Supreme Court (how conservative/fundamentalists will it get). Luckily Sita sent me a little video that said ‘breathe in, breathe out,’ the most sensible thing to do.

A virus invasion left me coughing and hacking, nearly unable to communicate with the rest of the world, for nearly two weeks. Last night was the acid test: could I sit through 1 hour and 40 minutes of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis without a single cough or gurgle?

Modern medicine and traditional herbal medicine were called upon: a codeine-infused cough syrup and 20 herbal drops every 30 minutes, suggested by our herbal-wise daughter and confirmed by our local herbalists did the trick. From an experimental view it was a bad design since we don’t know which of the two contained the winning formula, or whether it was the combination of ‘something new and old.’

At any rate, it was the result that counted and I was able to enjoy Beethoven’s masterpiece, as some call it. It was performed by a chorus of 40 men and 60 women and 4 soloists, with a fairly large sized orchestra of hired hands in between them. The soloists sung the sacral music with great skill and heart. I wondered what it is like when your instrument is your voice and the virus finds you.

A cousin of our sings in the chorus, which is the reason we went. If every one of the 100 singers invites a few family members you can quickly fill up Jordan Hall. On the reservation screen we got just about the last seats. But once there we noticed many more empty seats than the seating chart had indicated. I am sure it was that same virus. It has been racing through New England like a tornado, leaving whole offices empty, schools cleared out and keeping doctors and pharmacists busy.

My Afghan/American friend Razia Jan has expanded her Afghan school for girls, graduated the first class, kept a few young women from being married off to men my age, and is now forging forward with a community college aimed at bringing Afghan women into the productive economy. You’d think it would be an obvious calculation: more family income, more employ, more taxes, more development and more happiness. But in Afghanistan nothing is simple.

Beth Murphy produced a new documentary about Razia’s school. It took her 6 years. Once you see it you can see why – it takes a tremendous amount of time to  build the kind of trust that is needed to be able to film very intimate scenes inside the homes of some of the students and teachers. The documentary has been airing on public television. I took advantage of Razia being in the area on one of her many successful fundraising sweeps through the US, by contributing to a fundraiser in Concord (MA). A certain level of contribution allowed me to spend some quality time with Razia jan over dinner and get to watch the documentary in a private screening.

The film gives one perspective: where else does the head teacher have to drink a cup of water from the well every morning to make sure the well is not poisoned? She comments, ‘better just me being poisoned than 400 girls.’ It gives a new meaning to passion and commitment. The constant threats and risks require enormous effort and patience to make sure that the elders in the community play their part in safeguarding the girls and the entire idea of the school.

There is a request for me from my colleagues in Afghanistan to come out and work with midwives. I am of two minds as the news coming out of Afghanistan is not very encouraging. But then again, it never has. I think of Razia jan and her girls, her teachers, and the daily acts of courage they display. They too have a choice. They choose the path less traveled. It is risky, everything in Afghanistan is risky.

It’s that time of the year again. A frost warning is expected any time now and since Axel is going to upstate NY for a week today, this migration could not be postponed. It is a big two-person job.

This morning, after their long summer vacation in the great outdoor of Lobster Cove, our house plants woke up snug and warm inside.

We had to dig the acorns out of their roots, so cleverly hidden by the squirrels. Oh how disappointed they will be when the return later to collect them. We cut off protruding roots, wiped off the dirt, spiderwebs and worms from the bottom of their  pots. Some of our houseplants have been with us since we moved from Senegal to Brooklyn in 1981. They had become small trees. We were unforgiving yesterday when we cut them down to size, and did not, as we used to do, start new plants from the cut off branches. Our house is too small. We are now on a trajectory of shrinking rather than expanding. Off with those branches! Over the edge!

Axel is going to co-facilitate an event with a nonprofit global venture organization that is bringing in all its global partners. It sounds so exciting. I looked at their website and if I was young and open to anything, that’s the team I would join if they’d have me.

I will once again be home alone. This time I don’t think I am going to clean out more closets and cellars, but rather catching up on reading and writing.

A lot has been churning in my head from the readings of Margaret Sanger, watching the movie Snowden – and reading how other companies have been teaching leadership. I keep looking for the essence, the few basic levers that one has put out there for people to learn to press. What are they? I sense that I am engaged in the mental equivalent of the creation of a nest, hollowing out the earth, collecting twigs and grasses to create the perfect place to bring that baby forth.

I have been reading everything I could get my hands on about Margaret Sanger. We named one of our conference rooms after her and I am telling her story in a few weeks to colleagues who don’t or barely know who she was. As one of her biographers wrote, she led 13 lives at the same time. Her birth control  legacy is astonishing; the things young woman now take for granted, such as being able to make choices rather than being shackled to one’s biology, were only known and practiced by a small group of generally well off women, who could get the services they needed.

It was exactly 100 years ago that Margaret Sanger and her sister Ethyl and a young Lithuanian translator, Fania Mindell, opened the first Birth Control Clinic in Brooklyn. Women lined up around the block to get advice on how not to be constantly pregnant. Margaret Sanger’s mother had 18 pregnancies in 25 years and then she died. That 10 of her children survived into adulthood is a miracle.

But the clinic, barely started was raided and its staff prosecuted. Sanger’s life was full of arrests, jail terms, fines, exhortations, yet she continued to provoke in order to test the laws against logic. In the end she won but it took decades.

And then I hear Trump talk about making change and I wonder what he has in mind. His kind of making change is turning a paper dollar bill into 4 quarters. It’s easy, anyone can do it.

But when I study the people who actually changed things, the inventors, the discoverers but especially the activists who got challenged the laws of the land in order to get them scrutinized and overturned, their change was all but small change. They were demonized, pursued, lost things dear to them, sacrificed personal comfort and their family life. Now that is real courage.  We saw the movie about Snowden this weekend and there it was again, this same pattern of giving everything up for this one cause, risking life, liberty and happiness for this one goal.

In my job we teach about leadership with a lower case ‘l’ because it is more accessible to the many whose leadership we need to make the small changes, the incremental changes that can happen in a year, making things better on a small scale; but Sanger, Snowden and so many others are in a different league, their vision is way out there and their courage and perseverance commensurate with it. They have earned the right to be called Leaders rather than leaders.

By the way, don’t forget to register to vote if you are an American citizen!

The Japanese ladies have gone home with plenty of ideas in their heads; Axel and Sita returned from Norway, excited about their first foray into Scandinavia. The wedding set up has been taken down in the Pembroke woods and life is returning to the usual rhythm of fall, with its countless chores and accompanying sense of loss.

While I was alone I went on a fall cleaning spree – removing everything out of one part of the cellar, cleaning the cobwebs and mouse droppings and then being very selective about what to put back. As I get older I am less and less attached to stuff I brought back from my travels, or, to go even further back, from my student years.  Everything was put in bags and sacks and boxes and carted off to Beverly’s Bootstraps thrift store. BB is a great organization that helps people do what their name says.

Some stuff went to MSH, African artifacts I once wanted so badly but which have been relegated to the basement over the years, having lost their initial attraction, accumulating dust and mildew for nothing.

Then came this closet, then that one, then clothes, more kitchen stuff and tchotchkes – oh how liberating this de-acquisitioning.

I was left with two piles of things that will go elsewhere. One bag I filled with my pilot gear. I wrote to the director of the flight center that I was hanging up my pilot headphones – which I actually had done a long time ago, and he figured as much. The bag full of headphones, knee boards, airport maps and Beverly Flight Center T-shirts are for new student pilots who cannot afford all the gear. The other pile consists of various post-orthopedic surgery gear: several boots, slings, and braces – I need to figure out how to get these to my rehab center colleagues elsewhere in the world who have none of this stuff. The clean up of all this was also liberating, the closing of a chapter of my life.

When Axel came back from Norway he found one entire car full of boxes and bags I had not been able to drop off at the donation center. I told him if he was going to take anything out it would have to live in his office. That tempered his drive to salvage stuff and in the end he only took out a few items. I am sure in a month or so they will find their way to Beverly.