July 6: ""House," History, Great Experiment

Billy Collins thinks about this old house . . . 

House

by: Billy Collins

I lie in a bedroom of a house

that was built in 1862, we were told--

the two windows still facing east

into the bright daily reveille of the sun.

The early birds are chirping,

and I think of those who have slept here before,

the family we bought the house from--

the five Critchlows--

and the engineer they told us about

who lived here alone before them,

the one who built onto the back

of the house a large glassy room with wood beams.

I have an old photograph of the house

in black and white, a few small trees,

and a curved dirt driveway,

but I do not know who lived here then.

So I go back to the Civil War

and to the farmer who built the house

and the rough stone walls

that encompass the house and run up into the woods,

he who mounted his thin wife in this room,

while the war raged to the south,

with the strength of a dairyman

or with the tenderness of a dairyman

or with both, alternating back and forth

so as to give his wife much pleasure

and to call down a son to earth

to take over the cows and the farm

when he no longer had the strength

after all the days and nights of toil and prayer--

the sun breaking over the same horizon

into these same windows,

lighting the same bed-space where I lie

having nothing to farm, and no son,

the dead farmer and his dead wife for company,

feeling better and worse by turns.

We celebrated Independence Day in my hometown today.  Parade this morning.  Community picnic and fireworks tonight.  I've been going to these events since I was a teenager.  (Translation:  a very, very long time.)  So I spent a good deal of time during the past 14 or 15 hours thinking about time and history.

I love the small town-ness of these celebrations, where you run into people you haven't seen in years, coupled with current friends and acquaintances.  Everyone know everyone else, or at least to whom you're related.

When my dad was alive, he marched with members of the local Elks club every year.  When my daughter was younger, she was on a float with the cheer team from her high school.  I, myself, have paraded many times for theater productions I've directed.  I've walked with roller-skating nuns, farm animals from Charlotte's Web, and an army of Oompa Loompas.  

And the community picnic, with its kettle corn and elephant ears and deep-fried everything, always fills me with nostalgia.  People like to think the times of their youths were simpler, easier.  That everyone got along, and nothing terrible ever happened.  A Lake Wobegon time

Of course, that's a load of crap.  We have institutional racism and political divisions and poverty today.  When I was a kid, I had Ronald Reagan's war on social welfare programs, the AIDS epidemic, and institutional racism (some things never change).  That's my history.  Our histories.  Full of struggle and homophobia and economic disparity.

So, when the fireworks started coloring the heavens tonight, I thought about all these things that fill me with shame for who we are right now.  However, the exploding mushrooms and cascading sparks also reminded me that the United States of America has been a great experiment since the time we defeated the Redcoats.  A grand, messy exercise in freedom.

Saint Marty just hopes we can defeat the red hats this November.

May 26: Old Saying, Carol Ann Duffy, "History"

There's an old saying that if you don't know history, you are bound to repeat it.  Something like that.

I believe that statement is true.  It's true for people, for countries, for the whole human race.  We need to learn from our mistakes.  Wars that we've fought.  Genocides.  Slavery.  Famine.  Drought.  Poverty.  Climate change.  We need to learn from all of the things that humanity has wrought on this little chunk of rock we call home.

If we don't learn, we will kill each other.

'Nuff said from Saint Marty tonight.

History

by:  Carol Ann Duffy

She woke up old at last, alone,
bones in a bed, not a tooth
in her head, half dead, shuffled
and limped downstairs
in the rag of her nightdress,
smelling of pee.

Slurped tea, stared
at her hand- twigs, stained gloves-
wheezed and coughed, pulled on
the coat that hung from a hook
on the door, lay on the sofa,
dozed, snored.

She was History.
She'd seen them ease him down
from the Cross, his mother gasping
for breath, as though his death
was a difficult birth, the soldiers spitting,
spears in the earth;

been there
when the fisherman swore he was back
from the dead; seen the basilicas rise
in Jerusalem, Constantinople, Sicily; watched
for a hundred years as the air of Rome
turned into stone;

witnessed the wars,
the bloody crusades, knew them by date
and by name, Bannockburn, Passchendaele,
Babi Yar, Vietnam. She'd heard the last words
of the martyrs burnt at the stake, the murderers
hung by the neck,

seen up-close
how the saint whistled and spat in the flames,
how the dictator strutting and stuttering film
blew out his brains, how the children waved
their little hands from the trains. She woke again,
cold, in the dark,

in the empty house.
Bricks through the window now, thieves
in the night. When they rang on her bell
there was nobody there; fresh graffiti sprayed
on her door, shit wrapped in a newspaper posted
onto the floor.

August 22: Freshman Comp, Poet of the Week, Justin Runge, "History"

Tomorrow, my semester begins with a freshman composition night class.  Three-and-a-half hours of it.  We won't accomplish a whole lot.  Introductions.  Diagnostic essays.  And a poem.

Last winter semester, I taught an evening composition class, as well.  I started each class with a poem, used it as a jumping off point for the night.  I plan to do the same this semester.  I'm comfortable with poetry.  It relaxes me.  Excites me.  It eases me into teaching mode at the end of a long day.  And I think that relaxes and excites the students.

Justin Runge excites and relaxes me.  Until I found the poem below on the Internet, I'd never heard of him.  Now, I'm a little obsessed, enough to name him Poet of the Week and start my class with him tomorrow night.

Recollection.  History.  Love.  Saint Marty wishes he had written this poem.

History

by:  Justin Runge

Here is what I’ve collected: He set fire to the front lawn. She learned and then forgot the guitar. Like all daughters, she was a vegetarian. He was sent to school on the mountain. She would run through the mountain. Their siblings stood in the way. The mountain was beautiful but merciless. Its trees loomed like chaperones. He took to botany. She slept in the haunted room. After the growth spurt, he was a natural athlete. She worked at a fast food restaurant. Both left without diplomas. He sat in a bunker, catching moths. She would walk to a payphone in the center of town. They would solve crossword puzzles days late. He escaped on a motorcycle, as in his favorite songs. They married on her birthday. Her hair was never longer. She left a home imploding. He had a television and a frying pan. They made mistakes—pepper oil, poison ivy. They had one child, then me.

This is what my students will be doing tomorrow night.

March 12: The Egyptians, History, Saint Theophanes the Chronicler, Memoir

The Egyptians are extremely interesting to us today for various reasons.  Modern science would still like to know what the secret ingredients were that the Egyptians used when they wrapped up dead people so that their faces would not rot for innumerable centuries.  This interesting riddle is still quite a challenge to modern science in the twentieth century.

This paragraph from Holden's history exam proves a couple of things.  First, he knows very little about ancient Egyptians.  Second, he has a thing for mummies, which come up later in the novel when he goes to the Museum of Natural History in New York.  I think Holden likes the idea of something that doesn't change, remaining the same for "innumerable centuries."  Holden has lost his little brother to leukemia, and this loss has sent him on a downward spiral.

Holden doesn't really care about history.  He cares about girls and sex and bullies and his family.  He's a normal teenage boy.  Perhaps he's a little more sensitive than some, but what it all boils down to is hormones.  A lot of hormones.  Teenagers (and tweenagers) are so self-absorbed they wouldn't notice the burning of the Hindenburg unless it was posted on Facebook by one of their friends.

In some ways, The Catcher in the Rye reads like a memoir.  It's a slice of Holden Caulfield's life.  I have learned, since I started working on my memoir, that it's difficult to make yourself interesting.  Salinger creates a narrative voice for Holden that is authentic and entertaining.  It drives the entire book.  That's what I've been struggling with.  I write a fragment of memoir and then spend hours wondering if I'm being self-indulgent or boring.  Perhaps if I thought of myself as a fictional character, I would find composing a memoir a little easier.  Maybe I need to think of myself as Holden Caulfield.

Or Saint Theophanes the Chronicler, whose feast day is today.  Theophanes was born in Greece around 759 a.d. to a wealthy family.  Of course, being predisposed to saintliness, he soon divested himself of his wife (who joined a convent) and money.  Among Theophanes' many accomplishments is his attempt to write a history of the world.  I don't think he ever finished this project.  He ran afoul of Leo the Armenian who imprisoned him for his Christian faith.  Theophanes died in exile, away from his home and studies and history of the world.

Holden has a great story.  Saint Theophanes has a great story, too.

Saint Marty has a blog and a lot of insecurity.

Check out this cool picture I saw on Facebook