A tourist in your own town

You have to love the directness of the First Navy Jack that hangs from the USS Constitution in the Charlestown Naval Shipyard on Boston’s Freedom Trail. “Don’t tread on me” is as clear a message of boundaries as you’d ever want; the uncoiled rattlesnake only underscores the message. When it comes to clarity, few have this flag beat.

Although for years I used to live in and around Boston, before today I’d never seen much less set foot on the Constitution, “don’t tread on them” apparently describing my (along with many Bostonians’) attitude toward the usual tourist sites. For good or ill, when you live in a tourist destination, you often put off visiting the usual must-sees.

One of the photo challenges J and I have agreed upon is to make a point of visiting (and photographing) the usual tourist sites. Just because you live in a tourist destination doesn’t mean you have to act like an indifferent local. In one of her chapters in Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg urges writers to act like “A Tourist in Your Own Town,” arguing that “Writers write about things that other people don’t pay much attention to.” I like this philosophy of being a close-to-home rubbernecker. Whether you live in Boston, Keene, or a place far-flung or in between, there are probably things in your own backyard that are worth noticing. If nothing else, you’ll never know until you go out and look for them.

And so today J and I made our way via subway to and from Boston Harbor, sharing our first train with fans on their way to cheer the Red Sox and our next with fans on their way to see the Bruins. Near the World Trade Center, J & I toured an Argentinean tall ship whose Spanish-speaking cadets were toting brand-new computers and stereos aboard: the retail aftermath of a couple days’ shore leave. In Charlestown, we arrived too late for a guided tour of the Constitution, opting instead to board the ship, take some quick photos, and leave a proper tour to another day. As we boarded the Constitution, the security guards running the metal detectors were in good spirits, razzing one another (and me, because of my hat) over baseball rivalries. On the subway home, J & I encountered yet more Red Sox fans leaving the game. It was, after all, another typical Sunday in Boston: the kind of thing a tourist would travel miles to see.

UPDATE: Click here for a photo-set of images from La Libertad, the Argentinean tall ship J and I toured. Enjoy!

 

The sky’s the limit

Most folks love autumn for its colorful foliage, but I love fall as much for the deep blue skies it brings. The sky is blue all year, of course…but in autumn it looks bluer. On Sunday, J and I visited the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum in Boston, and as we approached the I.M.-Pei-designed building on foot, I remarked how aesthetically appropriate it seemed to view a stark white building arching angularly into a solid block of blue.

Neither J nor I had been born when JFK was assassinated in 1963; neither one of us was even a proverbial sparkle in our respective daddy’s eye. Still, growing up Catholic in middle America, we both were raised in the mythic aftermath of All Things Kennedy. In my family at least, Jackie Kennedy (and later Jackie O) was considered by my mother as the quintessential feminine ideal, a woman who was simultaneously glamorous, maternal, devoted, and cultured. JFK, for his part, was held up as a masculine ideal: a President who was youthful, virile, and idealistic, the way America and Americans should be.

Later revelations about Kennedy’s marital infidelities and sometimes-shady politics did little to diminish the power of his myth. Convinced that John and Jackie really were as perfect as the image of Camelot would have us believe, my parents largely ignored evidence to the contrary. When my parents stopped voting after Ted Kennedy’s mishap at Chappaquiddick, the brunt of their blame was placed on the presumably hypocritical priests who had instructed their parishioners from the pulpit to vote for those Kennedy boys. Politics, my parents suggested, was too dirty a business to mix with religion, and surely all politicians are scoundrels. But JFK, conveniently dead, somehow escaped my parents’ ire. Proof that my mother, at least, still adores JFK came years ago when I visited Washington, DC for the first time and my mom wanted to know only two things. Had I gone to see the Vietnam Memorial, and had I visited JFK’s grave at Arlington Cemetery?

During the 2000 Presidential primary when I was teaching at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH, several of my students were among the standing-room-only crowd that gathered to hear an on-campus campaign speech by Senator John McCain. Surprised that one of my more dry and cynical students had attended a stump speech, I asked her if she was a McCain supporter, registered Republican, or even intended to vote. “No,” she replied. “I’m not really into politics. But I admire McCain because unlike the other candidates, he really seems to stand for something.”

I’m sure every Presidential hopeful would have us believe that they stand for something…but in my student’s eyes, McCain was the only candidate in the 2000 election whose personal history was powerful enough to carry the hype of myth. “Let’s face it,” my student astutely observed. “Presidents are basically administrators. They oversee the government, but their real power is inspirational. Kids today are cynical about politics because none of our administrators is inspiring. If we had a leader who really believed in something, we’d believe in him, too.”

Of the many things I’ve learned from students over the years, this one statement from one student at Saint Anselm College has probably rung the truest. Kids today are cynical about politics, and it’s largely because they (like my parents) see the hypocrisy of it all. But the fact that a figure such as the late John Paul II was widely adored by teenagers–even while he took unpopular stands against contraception, homosexuality, and other issues of interest to young people–suggests that teens are looking for heroes. “Teenagers are very idealistic if you give them something to be idealistic about,” that student of mine explained. “If a person like JFK ran today–you know, with all his ‘ask what you can do for your country’ stuff–college kids would vote for him.” My student seemed entirely convinced of this, and her conviction, like the hopeful idealism of a youthful candidate, was contagious.

And so on Sunday, it seemed entirely appropriate to contemplate JFK, Jackie, and the myth of Camelot inside a pristinely white building set like a gem before an ocean of blue. When it comes to youthful idealism and all-American potential, the sea, sky, and a certain dead President all seemed to suggest “the sky’s the limit.”

Click here for a photo-set of the outside of the JFK Library and here for a photo-set of indoor exhibits. Enjoy!

 

Eight is enough

Sometimes you need a tangible reminder to pull yourself out of self-absorbtion. Yesterday after needlessly fretting over my first day back to teaching, which of course went fine, I got such a tangible reminder in the form of eight pairs of combat boots, each commemorating the life of a New Hampshire serviceman killed in Iraq.

When I’d heard that the NH chapter of the American Friends Service Committee was staging a miniature version of the organization’s acclaimed Eyes Wide Open exhibit in Central Square here in Keene, I was initially surprised that there would be only eight pairs of boots. With the seemingly endless reports of U.S. casualties I hear in the news–and with the seemingly endless stream of New Hampshire troops going to and from Iraq–I’d expected there would have been more than eight New Hampshire natives who have died in the war. “Only eight?” asked the war-jaded voice in my head.

I immediately corrected myself. There is no “only” when it comes to human suffering. Each of these “only eight” left grieving friends and family; each was terribly too young to die, ranging in age from 20 to 45. If it’s your loved one who fails to come home from war–if it’s your children who ask every day after Daddy, your son who died before you–it doesn’t matter if seven or seventeen thousand other families share your grief. Grief cannot be calculated much less compared. Every grieving person–every grieving family–grieves alone, their individual loss neither shared nor minimized by other wounded souls.

These days, the news is filled with reports of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, testimony that seems to alternate between saying the storm wasn’t as bad as it could have been and the destruction is worse than expected. Without a working TV, I’ve been spared the most graphic visual proof of the aftermath, so I rely heavily upon such reports to understand the breadth of destruction: how bad was it, is it, really? Although it’s an understandable human impulse to want to understand disaster, to put suffering into some sort of quantitative category called “how much,” that impulse is patently absurd. Any suffering is untenable: too much. The heart staggers at the thought of lives lost in war and homes and hearts broken by natural disaster. Eight soldiers dead, two states swamped, and countless souls dead, injured, or homeless is enough: too much.

 

Flag City, USA

Claiming that Findlay, Ohio is a patriotic town would be a massive understatement.

Findlay’s nickname is “Flag City,” and even a cursory jaunt downtown proves that the locals take it as a solemn duty to live up to that moniker. There are flag banners, flag billboards, flag buntings and, yes, flag flags everywhere. In most towns, the flags come out for Independence Day, then they return to be moth-balled with last winter’s sweaters. In Findlay, the place looks like it’s the Fourth of July all year around.

While climbing Cardigan with my buddy Pavel several weeks ago, he mentioned a visiting relative’s surprise at the number of American flags she saw. In France, she explained, people waved the flag on nationalistic holidays or special occasions…but presumably the French don’t have flags hanging from every front porch. In recounting how he’d tried to explain to his guest why every small New England town seemed to be perpetually bedecked with red, white, and blue, Pavel remarked that the ideals the flag symbolizes are complex, but the flag itself is simple. Whether every flag-waver fully understands what her or his country “really” represents, waving a flag is an easy way to be part of the American crowd.

I think Pavel might be onto something…and I think here in Ohio, there’s something more. Although I’ve lived in various parts of New England for a dozen years now, I can’t say I understand the quintessential New England mindset. But being born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, I think I have an idea of what it might be like to have been born and raised in Findlay. When you hail from the Middle of Middle America, much of what you see in the media seems to have no relevance to who and where you are. Can single women in Smalltown America relate to Sex in the City? Can awkward teens in Podunk, USA see themselves in the glamorous celebrities on MTV? Do the local concerns of Findlay, OH have any apparent impact on the wheelings and dealings of the Big Wigs in Washington, DC? When you live in the great expansive Middle, those stereotypical Left Coast Wackos and Northeastern Liberals really do seem to be from another planet. Driving straight roads set amongst flat cornfields, you might not necessarily agree with the likes of Rush Limbaugh…but his popularity suggests that his down-home and simple interpretation of current events strikes a nerve with someone out here.

Judging from what the media portrays as “American reality,” ours is a society that subscribes to the cult of the exciting, glamorous, and spectacular…and everyday life in Ohio is everything but exciting, glamorous, and spectacular. If you were a down-home Nobody living and eventually dying in Nowhere, USA, wouldn’t you sometimes wonder about the Greater Meaning of it all? (I know I certainly did, and do.) If your day-to-day existence of going to work, paying bills, and raising a family seemed entirely divorced from anything that society defines as Exciting and Worthwhile, wouldn’t you need some sort of belief in something greater–something bigger than yourself–to give meaning to the mundane?

I don’t think it’s coincidental that both God and Country are wildly popular in the Middle of Middle America, for belief in either God or Country can be a powerful way of bringing meaning to an existence that feels mind-numbingly dull (and downright meaningless) much of the time. In Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, Kathleen Norris understands small town life in her own version of Nowhere, USA by defining as “sacred” our human need to belong to something: “I suspect that when modern Americans ask, ‘what is sacred?’ they are really asking ‘what place is mine? what community do I belong to?’” We all want to belong to something, and Team Red, White, and Blue works as well as any other motivator. The American flag is a simple symbol that stands for something very complex. When daily life seems far removed from all that is exciting and spectacular, it helps to imagine our endeavors as being inspired by larger-than-life ideals.

 

Homecoming

Yesterday I took a sunny Sunday drive around southern New Hampshire, and I saw several signs like this one welcoming troops home from overseas. The National Guard’s 210th Engineer Detachment returned to the States from Afghanistan on February 17th and were reunited with their families at the Peterborough armory on February 24th; they’d been deployed since January, 2004. That’s over a year they’d spent away from family, friends, and their “day jobs”: an entire year during which husbands kept in touch with wives and parents kept in touch with children via twice weekly telephone calls. Looking back over the past year, how much living and loving would you have missed if you’d been swept overseas by duty, honor, and country?

Longtime readers of Hoarded Ordinaries might remember when we welcomed Captain Chad Fisk home from Iraq back in August. On the same day that the 210th Engineer Detachment arrived at Fort Drum, NY on their way home to Peterborough, I got an email from Chad’s mom, Linda, thanking me (belatedly!) for welcoming her son home. According to his mom, Chad’s a Keene native who spent “a very long 15 months” serving in Iraq with the Second Armored Calvary, having been deployed in Iraq “while it was still officially a war.”

I certainly never imagined I’d hear from Chad Fisk’s mom when I posted that Welcome Home: whether I knew Chad or not, it seemed right and proper to say an anonymous “thanks” to the unknown (to me!) soldiers serving in places far-flung and sundry. What applied to Chad Fisk last August applies to the members of the 210th Engineer Detachment now in February. Whoever you are and wherever you served, thanks and welcome home. The rest of us homebodies are glad you’re back.

In other homecoming news, this week the chalkboard at the headquarters of Yankee Magazine in Dublin, NH announced the death and subsequent funeral service of Jessie Hale. (Click on the image for a larger version.) Some months ago, Kathleen posted a similar snapshot announcing the peaceful passing of another local citizen. Dublin is about 15 minutes from Keene and is a much smaller town, the kind of quintessential New England hamlet where, yes, everyone probably knows Jessie Hale as well as the entire Hale clan.

You have to love the citizens of those tiny towns who come out and post signs and banners when one of their own comes home, whether that homecoming be the return of a National Guard troop or the spiritual passing of a longtime citizen. I’d like to think that there are some signs, banners, and maybe even a chalkboard at the Pearly Gates to greet Jessie Hale: “Welcome home” and “Thanks for your faithful service.”

And here in Keene, tomorrow will see yet another sort of homecoming. After lamenting the retirement of my pet-sitter, Reggie and I took the plunge: I found a local kennel, and this weekend Reg went for an acclimation stay. Reggie’s nose was working overtime when I left him at “doggy camp,” and I’m sure he’s doing fine after his short attention span survived the initial shock of separation. At least Reg, I tell myself, has a new environment–different sounds, smells, and all those other dogs–to distract him from thoughts of me. I, on the other hand, keep expecting to find four legs underfoot: whenever I walk past the couch, I expect to see Reg there, and whenever I come home (like from a sunny Sunday drive, for instance), I’m disappointed to find no doggy welcome awaiting me.

So while I’m wiling the hours until I retrieve Reg, I’ve been solacing my Desperate and Dogless self by taking surreptitious pictures of other people’s dogs, like this pair of Australian sheepdogs guarding their master’s car in Dublin, NH. It seems to me that servicemen and dearly departed citizens aren’t the only ones who deserve thanks for faithful service.

And while we’re on the topic of happy homecomings, click on over to Ditch the Raft, where Andi is back from three months of retreat. Welcome home, Andi!

 

Decision time

No, this is not an official endorsement: although I’ll be casting my ballot in tomorrow’s election, Hoarded Ordinaries is a truly no-spin / no-comment zone. This is just a glimpse of what the Sunday morning before a Presidential election looks like in Downtown Keene, with Kerry supporters on one side of the street and Bush supporters on the other. With tomorrow’s election on the horizon, it’s Decision Time: which do you prefer?

My latest batch of online grades is due by noon today, so right now Decision Time means grading for Yours Truly. After I’ve finished my final calculations, signed my gradesheets, and faxed them off, I’ll be settling in for my first stint of NaNoWriMo insanity. My friend “A” (not her real initial) already wrote her first 1,032 words right after midnight, so she’s set a marvelous model for me to follow. In the meantime, I’ve decided on my first line, so when I sit before my laptop to write later today, I’ll be starting with the following sentence: “The first line, like the next step, is always the most difficult.”

We’ll see where exactly that leads me. For those who want to stay tuned to my novel-writing progress, I’ve added a sidebar snippet that will list my current word count as well as the last line I’ve written. (Thanks to Gary for the suggestion of featuring such an update on my sidebar rather than tainting my main entry section with bad prose.) So my Monday will be filled with grading, faxing, and writing…what’s your next step?

 

Countdown to the countdown

Last night we went to hear John Edwards speak before one of two packed houses here in Keene. I found Edwards to be articulate, sincere, and likable. His vision of citizens working together to bridge the gap betwen the “two Americas” was inspiring, a welcome change from the usual cynicism. In comparing his hope for America to the optimism of both FDR and JFK, Edwards didn’t sound arrogant: instead of boasting of his own accomplishments, he pointed time and again to the promise of the American people. Although he didn’t have time to answer formal questions, a crowd of people pressed forward at the end of his speech; as Chris and I left the building, Edwards was pressing the flesh and looking eminently presidential.

And need I say that Edwards is remarkably good-looking, too? Even Chris agrees, as did various women we overheard in last night’s crowd. Yep, that’s a fine looking man: this photo doesn’t do him justice.

 

What it means to live in Keene

Here’s a daytime photo to accompany last night’s blog entry. Notice the all-American juxtaposition of sign-toting campaign supporters, yellow “bring home the troops” lamp-post ribbons, and the town flagpole with American, New Hampshire, and POW flags. This morning the Square was crawling with Dean, Kerry, Kucinich, and Clark supporters along with one half-frozen dog-walker with camera in one hand and leash and doggy-doo bags in the other. (I am, after all, a model citizen even if I don’t stand on a street corner and wave a sign to that effect.)

The Kerry folks have rented a campaign office in an old factory down the street from my apartment; the abandoned lot next door was filled with parked cars from New York, Connecticut, and (of course) Massachusetts. Although I’ve never been the pep-rally, sign-waving type, preferring to remain aloof while humming a cynical rendition of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” even I have to admire the commitment of folks who would drive all the way to Keene, NH to stand outside and freeze their sign-gripping fingers off. As I overheard one Keenester remark to another, “This is the most excitement Keene’s seen since, well, four years ago!” Seeing people–especially young people–who are pumped up over politics is an encouraging thing. A tip of my fuzzy-with-fake-fur hat to all the sign-wavers; as my Gram D would have said, “God love ‘em!”