Thistle Seed
 
Off the corner of the cabin,
a large stand of thistle has gone
to seed
 
and when the wind blows,
downy heads explode
in an exclamation of joy.
Oh, what can they say to a world
that browns a bit more each day?
 
And how will they pray?
Will their gossamer souls sing in first light,
their praise growing lighter and lighter
as filaments come together
into a single cloud of witnesses who cry
Now, Lord!

Could I join them?
My bones catching the wind
like silken threads,
like hundreds of hollow reeds thrust
into the updraft.
Would I find the air a kinder home,
the yoke of all my earthly expectations
released?
 
All summer long,
the happy flowers have opened themselves
to birds and bees, but today
they are colorless corpses.
 
I reach for a thistle seed,
but it will not be held.
Moment by moment, the dead rise
from the ash heap.

photo by Collyn Ware

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“Did you know that the Titanic had a sister ship?” my grandson, Griffin, asked. “Did you know that lots of the dads and grandfathers died because they let the moms and kids get on the lifeboats first? And did you know that there’s a Titanic museum in Branson?” He looked up at me in earnest, waiting for my response, eager to tell me all he’d learned about the Titanic. His curiosity about all-things-Titanic was simply too much for the confines of his morning of online schooling. It was foaming over the top of our prescribed daily lessons as if it were a carbonated beverage shaken up and finally upcapped. There was no stopping it.

But truthfully, who would want to stop the ardent curiosity of a 7-year-old? As Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, this raw curiosity is a most useful gift. From my experience as both student and teacher, it is certainly the foundation of most genuine learning. Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish philosopher wrote:

Learning is by nature curiosity… prying into everything, reluctant to leave anything, material or immaterial, unexplained.

I hated to tell Griffin that we had to turn our attention towards his online social studies lesson about maps because it was all too clear that he wasn’t at all interested in maps right now. Today, he could barely contain his insatiable curiosity about the Titanic. If I could have loaded him up in my car and driven him 6 hours south to Branson, Missouri, I would have earned the title of Best, Most Amazing Grandma in the World. I would have been golden and could have rested on these laurels for weeks–maybe years–after our visit to the Titanic museum. If I could have harnessed his curiosity towards learning, the world may have tilted on its axis! At the very least, the morning would have flown by.

Working with Griffin has made me painfully aware of how traditional schooling has failed students like him. In traditional schools, we are required to teach language arts, math, social studies, science, physical education, art, and music to 2nd grade students. As such, we could never afford to spend an entire morning studying the Titanic. No time for such single-subject luxuries! And we could never afford to spend too many days studying the Titanic. Too much to cover in a year!

For 40 years, I was a public school teacher. I understand–all too well–the curricular and instructional expectations and requirements of any given day of school. If your curiosity and interest is peaked by something, you probably have, at best, 40 minutes to satisfy it. Then the bell will ring, and you’ll be off to the next class. I understand the challenges of letting every student pursue those things about which he or she is most curious. That would mean, of course, that each of your 25 students could conceivably study something different. Juggling this many instructional balls would require more courage and stamina than I ever had. And so, I did the best I could to make a one-sized-fits-all curriculum as palatable and relevant as I could. As do many teachers.

Still, working with Griffin has made me really think about many things–things I’ve known for a long time and things I’m just beginning to understand. I’ve known that the vast majority of my high school and college students had lost most, if not all, of their passionate curiosity years before I ever had them as students. Most were compliant enough, anxious to know just what they had to do to pass. Some wanted better grades, but few were actually willing to do much thinking or investigating on their own. Their curiosity had died roughly about the same time they stopped playing on the playground equipment at recess. From this point on, their educational lives were more about figuring out what the teacher wants than passionately pursuing any natural course for their curiosity.

In Walden Two, psychologist B. F. Skinner writes:

No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn’t die out, it’s wiped out.

This tendency to explore, to take curiosity’s route to its glorious destination, is wiped out. Sadly, we are the restraining forces, those who wipe out the kind of curiosity that fuels Griffin’s days. We do it in the name of educational efficiency. We do it in the name of tradition and, paradoxically, in the name of progress. Perhaps most tragically, we do it because we can’t see any other way. Having lost our own curiosity, we can’t imagine educating our youth and young adults in new and different ways.

Polish-born American writer and social scientist, Leo Rosen, claims that while many people use the term idle curiosity, [t]he one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle. Being curious is an active and interactive venture. There is a real sense of urgency about it, a compulsion to learn more, to solve problems, to discover how and why things work as they do or why things happened as they did. It requires that individuals invest themselves in the study of something, and that as they do, they shape and use the information they find to answer questions and draw conclusions. Curiosity requires this kind of give-and-take, which makes it utterly impossible to remain idle. For this reason alone, we should pay it more heed. Most of our students have grown flabby with mental inactivity. They have been idling too long.

Currently, Griffin’s synapses are firing wildly, ignited by curiosity. If he follows suit, in a few years these synapses will have burned out. I’d like to arrest time, to stoke the synaptic fires as long as possible, prolonging the innate curiosity that drives him and other children. I’d like us to find ways to ensure that our schools are not restraining forces that wipe out curiosity. I’d like us to imagine a society of more curious individuals, those who aren’t satisfied to idle through their lives, consuming only what they need to pass, to make it through each day.

If we are to do this and if we truly value the kind of thought and innovation that comes from this type of curiosity, then we are going to have to do better. I don’t have all the answers, but I can imagine a world in which there are more educational choices and more incentives to embrace curiosity in all areas of life. The very thought of a world like this is just about as exciting as it gets.

Somewhere over the rainbow, blue birds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow
Oh why, oh why can't I? 
--Harold Arlen, E. Y. Harburg

Over the rainbow, into the glorious field of sunflowers–somewhere, anywhere beyond. This is our collective dream: to leave the current fear and pain of Covid19, racial and economic struggle, violence, wild fires, hurricanes, and derecho winds, public and private shaming of all sorts from any and all sources. To transport ourselves to the Great Beyond, to the sunnier days of life after the virus, after the protests, after the destruction of lives, livelihoods, reputations, and after the horrors of natural disasters. Somewhere beyond all of this there must be something better. Right?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote that [w]e have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon. Like many, I remember thinking that beyond the challenges and sleepless nights of adolescence, I would finally reach adulthood, that shining city on the hill of life, that splendid destination that made all the angst and acne worth it. As a teacher, I remember clinging to the promise of summer, of days beyond school bells, beyond 20-minute lunches and piles of student papers that covered my desk and grew exponentially, eager to consume every inch and minute of my life. If I could just make it until Memorial Day, then I could sleep and read any book I wanted to read. Then I could bury my watch in the bottom of a drawer and take a 2-hour lunch–in a quiet place that serves adult food–with a good friend. The lure of beyond is the proverbial carrot in the great race of life. It’s just in front of you. It tempts you with rewards that have eluded you. It’s out there somewhere.

I’ve heard and read inspirational words that are intended to sustain us and pull us through these trials. This, too, shall pass. This can’t last forever, so keep your eyes on the prize. After we have a vaccine for this virus, everyone can return to work, to school, to life as we’ve known it. When we elect new leaders, they will solve all our problems. After we destroy the terrible systems of our past and establish better systems, the current pain and strife will disappear. These are battle cries of sorts, words of those like Scottish warrior William Wallace as he led his countrymen and women to rebel against the tyrannous King Edward I. Or the words of Winston Churchill who rallied the Brits to defend their country, to never, never surrender.

After reading a recent biography of Churchill, it struck me that Churchill’s voice, like Wallace’s, was largely a single, unifying voice. Times were desperate, and yet one rallying cry lifted the British people from devastating nightly bomb raids and paralyzing fear of burgeoning Nazi forces. Carried into homes through radio waves, one voice rallied the country to stay the course because the very future of what could–and must–lie beyond this horror was at stake.

I’ve thought a lot about the power of this kind of unifying voice. Churchill was brutally honest. He didn’t offer platitudes or sugar-coat the dire reality of Nazi power. He spoke to the British people as adults capable of hearing of the truth and then he asked them to think and act beyond what they believed they were capable of. He warned, he cajoled, he encouraged and inspired. In the end after much great sacrifice, Churchill’s vision and voice helped moved Britain–and the world–beyond the death and destruction of WWII.

Today, however, our nation has no Churchill or Wallace, no single unifying voice to lead us through the wilderness. In truth, we have many voices, and the chasm between these voices and visions of how to make our nation better is growing just as quickly and awfully as my piles of student essays to be graded. It’s a Grand Canyon division. With each passing day, it becomes more and more impossible to see the other side or to even begin to imagine a Great Beyond.

People are hunkering down and digging in. They may have once believed that a visionary warrior would ride his horse up and down the batttle lines, unifying our nation to responsible and right action. They may have hoped beyond hope that one such figure would emerge and that, one day, we’d all hold hands and sing Kum-Bah-Ya. They may have risen each day with the hope that life would return to normal as their mantra. But not so much these days. These days, more and more people find themselves in survival mode driven solely by what they need to do to get through this day. Their dreams may be smaller: eating indoors in a favorite restaurant or going to work or school in person, maskless. When you’re in survival mode, you drool over small pleasures and normalcies. When we get beyond the threat of the coronavirus, I’ll order the largest plate of appetizers at Applebees and eat them all with my best friend as we sit in a corner booth for hours and visit.

And all this begs the question of what life beyond our current pain and challenges offers. There are many who argue that there will be a new normal, one that is, at least, different than the old normal and at best, much better. They maintain that what lies beyond all of this is not a comfortable return to life-as-we-knew-it, but nonetheless, they offer hope for the Great Beyond. There are others who believe that what lies beyond is forbidding. The Great Beyond, they warn, will be a darker age. Systems will necessarily crash and burn, and we will muck around in the rubble for a long time.

I don’t want to be one who sticks her head in the sand or one who unnecessarily borrows trouble. I would be lying if I said that I don’t lie in bed at night and worry about what lies beyond. At times, I distract myself with over-the-rainbow fantasies. I imagine myself standing in a field of sunflowers, my face to the sun, the day stretching gloriously before me. At other times, I imagine myself in some kind of dystopian world, hoarding toilet paper and fearful to say or write anything that may get me canceled for good, the remants of my life being literally flushed away.

I realize the urgency of addressing those things that threaten to undo us–personally, nationally, and globally. If our Great Beyond is to be a place of health, unity, and general well-being, I understand that this will not come without a cost. The greatest leaders have always understood that the world is–and would always be–a troubled place in which all people would struggle in one way or another. Churchill knew and refused to ignore this. As their cities were nightly bombed, the British held fast to the knowledge that their leader truly saw their sacrifice and pain and that their fellow countrymen and women were also sacrificing and suffering. They were not alone.

More and more, I’ve realized that I, too, rest in the comfort and promise that I’m never alone and that, in the midst of trouble, I can find peace and joy. Jesus told his followers:

I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world. John 16:33.

The chasm between our current selves and our best selves may be great. Our troubles may seem insurmountable and our pain too chronic. We may not have a political or military leader whose voice can successfully rally and unify the people. Ultimately, though, a better beyond begins when, amidst all the trouble, those who’ve found genuine peace and joy reach across the chasm and work relentlessly to bring everyone to the table. And then, even if the food intolerable or the place settings mismatched, all will leave knowing that the fellowship was good, that the fellowship was everything, and that beyond this meal, an endless number of invitations and opportunities lies before them.

—for all teachers, past, present, and future

I’m standing at the door of my classroom on the first day of school. My hand is on the door handle, and my school bag is slung over my shoulder when I realize that I’m scantily clothed. Actually, I’ve come to school wearing only my underwear (and they’re not even professional-looking underwear at that). This is but one of the many pre-school nightmares that ravaged my sleep for 40 years in the weeks before school started. I’d wake up sweat-drenched. My heart would race until I’d remember that I didn’t have to go to school that day, that I had two precious weeks to prepare until school started. And then the next night, the nightmares would begin again.

If I were to make a top-ten list of these nightmares, they’d include things like agreeing to teach a section of advanced music theory (I quit taking piano in 1967!) or trigonometry (I maxed out in geometry, 10th grade!); showing up to teach on the wrong day or in the wrong building/classroom (What? This isn’t Tuesday? This isn’t Room 159?); and wearing an awful pair of slippers I’d received as a gift and should’ve immediately donated to Goodwill (Shark slippers, Grandma? Really?)

Actually, I did once return from a break during a night class at the community college, inadvertently entered the classroom of a colleague, and began teaching a group of students who didn’t recognize me from Adam. And I did once teach an entire day with blue mimeograph ink streaked across the left side of my face. Not one student or colleague revealed this to me, and I had to discover this painful reality when I checked my rearview mirror to back out of the college parking lot at the end of the day. These experiences–and others–confirmed that my nightmares were real forces to be reckoned with and that they could (gasp!) come true.

Today’s teachers, however, may experience pre-school nightmares that I never once imagined. I could conjure up some attempts at humorous ones: sneezing violently onto your face shield and peering at your students through a smattering of your own snot; discovering that you have no fingerprints after weeks of using industrial-strength cleaning supplies to disinfect your classroom; struggling to make any real conversation unless it includes an in-depth discussion of social distancing. I could attempt to laugh at potential scenarios like this, but I won’t because these scenarios are more probable than possible. Sadly, face shields/masks, disinfectants, and social distancing guidelines will NOT be the stuff that foolish nightmares are made of; they will be the real stuff that makes up “ordinary” school life.

And so it goes without saying that the dread that ravages the nights and days of most teachers is legitimate dread. As if creating and delivering excellent, relevant lessons weren’t enough. As if developing and maintaining positive relationships weren’t enough. As if attending to the educational, social, emotional, and psychological needs of students weren’t enough. As if preparing a welcoming school environment (largely with your own funds) weren’t enough. As if mentoring new colleagues and collaborating with others weren’t enough. Now, add to this list a guarantee that you will protect your students from a virus that persists and shows no real signs of leaving.

In the past few months, I’ve listened to those who’ve argued passionately about the real need to reorganize law enforcement agencies, who’ve suggested that we might use other professionals to assist in addressing social, emotional, medical, and psychological issues. We often ask law enforcement officers to perform tasks and take responsbility for scenarios that most have never been trained to handle. So, too, our teachers. We ask them to be content, instructional, and assessment specialists. We ask them to be social workers and mental health experts. We ask them to be counselors, friends, custodians, leaders, team-players, fundraisers, make-doers, role models, mediators, and all-around upstanding citizens.

And now–the pièce de ré·sis·tance–they are essential workers on the pandemic front lines. The fact that most will assume this role with grace, conviction, and courage shouldn’t go unnoticed, but I fear that it will. Perhaps my greatest dread today is that this role will quietly and permanently join the burgeoning list of teacher responsibilities and that we won’t have a national conversation about what teachers should reasonably be responsible for and what they should not.

School will go on, as it must. Whether it’s in-person, five days a week, hybrid, or online, teachers will lead the charge. But I’d like all the teachers out there to know that there are those of us who understand that this season’s dread is real and that we can only reminisce about the good ol’ days when our worst nightmares were those of showing up to school in our skivvies.

photo by Collyn Ware

When the Moon is Your Muse
     --for Gracyn
 
You hold the moon in your hands.
Because at eleven, it all seems possible
when the moon is your muse,
when all the world’s wonder is just a lunar length away,
when all its golden honey spills down your arms
and spreads across the earth
with abandon.
 
When the moon is your muse,
you welcome the night
whose dark corners are flooded with light enough
to scare the goblins away.
 
When the moon is your muse,
dreams dot the sky like quicksilver,
like fireflies eager to take their place
among the stars.
 
Oh, there will be time enough
for fruitless hours of work and dread
that march in with hawkish bluster,
eclipsing all that’s dear and pure.
There will be time enough
for nights which settle upon you like shrouds,
lead-footed and cold.
 
But on moonlit nights
when your muse offers her best,
you open your heart in hallowed expectation,
as all the trees genuflect, tipping their moon-glazed tops
to earth.

Photo by Collyn Ware

Beneath the Willow
--for Collyn

Not much grows beneath the willow.
Its leafy umbrella keeps out the sun,
so that the earth beneath it is moist
and barren.
Even the fungi have turned up their noses
at this spot, where light is always
compromised.
 
On the best days, the sun dapples a way
through branches which skim the earth
like a processional train.
 
But make no mistake:
there is an entire world here
beneath the willow.
You would know this if you push aside the green curtain
and enter.
Once there, your eyes—as eyes will—
struggle to adjust to the darkness of a summer afternoon.
 
But take the advice of one who has lived a thousand lifetimes there:
you do not need eyes to see what you have come to see.
So close your eyes.
It matters little—eyes open or closed—in this world
beneath the willow tree.
 
Outside, the sun shines as it must,
calling the blossoms and hours into sharp focus,
and the day inches on 
fraught with duty.
 
But beneath the willow tree,
you can try on different lives,
casting aside the rumpled remnants of one
in favor of another.
 
Here, you can do-over
and over.
 
Here, you can paint the sky apricot
and offer your heart, as open as a summer meadow,
to a world that always receives it
tenderly.
 
Here, the darkness is a feather bed
in which you can lay your weary worries,
and the oughts and musts have voices so small
that they are drowned in song.
 
Beneath the willow tree,
each day breaks in delirium,
a joy so generous that even the dirt
smiles.
 
So pass by if you will.
Give the willow a nod as you speed
towards somewhere.
 
As for me,
I will spend a thousand lifetimes here,
each one more splendid than the last.

The Summer Tanagers

live deep within the timber.
At dusk, they call to each other
warbling to welcome the night.
 
If you stand silently near the timber’s edge
you might see one:
 
a blood-orange jewel lying in the hollow
just at the base of summer’s throat.
 
Or you might follow their love songs into the tree tops—
blinking and refocusing,
scanning and rescanning,
 
to no avail.
 
Perhaps another time
when the sun is just beginning to set
and the last light floods a pocket in the upper story
where a single tanager sits.
 
Perhaps a moment when you forget
to try, when you simply look up
and there, on the limb of a young linden,
a summer tanager sits.
 
Or perhaps a dream
in which your lover calls to you,
his heart a blood-orange beacon
in the dark.
 
 

 Cancel Culture: the practice of withdrawing support for (or canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. [dictionary.com]

Talk of the Cancel Culture dominates much of what we hear and view these days. And although we’ve more recently given it an official name, it’s been around for a long, long time. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who isn’t intimately familiar with the act and art of cancellation. Talk to kids who’ve perfected the act of covering their ears and babbling nah, nah, nah. They’ve been doing this for years, selectively canceling their brothers and sisters, their neighborhood friends and classmates, their parents and teachers. If you press your hands tightly to your ears, squeeze your eyes shut, and babble loudly enough, you can get the job done, they’ll tell you. Annoying little brother who complains that you’re not playing fairly, canceled. Parents who command you to take out the trash, clean your room, eat your vegetables, canceled. The kid across the street who whines about getting a turn on your new bike, canceled. All you really need is two hands and a mouth, and you, my friend, can be in the cancellation business.

In a recent New York Post article, Brooke Kato cites Dr. Jill McCorkel, Villanova University professor of sociology and criminolgy, who argues that the roots of cancel culture have been present throughout human history. McCorkel said:

Cancel culture is an extension of or a contemporary evolution of a much bolder set of social processes that we can see in the form of banishment.

In a 2019 Vox article, Aja Romano quotes Anne Charity Hudley, chair of linguistics of African America for the University of California Santa Barbara:

While the terminology of cancel culture may be new and most applicable to social media through Black Twitter, in particular, the concept of being canceled is not new to black culture. . . [It is] a survival skill as old as the Southern black use of the boycott.

Charity Hudley maintains that canceling someone(s) is a means of acknowledging that you lack the power to change structural inequality, but as an individual you can still have power beyond measure.

Those of us who’ve used the hands-over-the-ears method of cancellation most likely had no intentions of banishing or boycotting anyone. We probably wouldn’t have even understood what banishing or boycotting meant. And our actions would’ve been less about survival and more about an immediate–albeit temporary–solution to the problem at hand. We didn’t really want to ruin the other person, to discredit or to remove them permanently from the family, the neighborhood, or the school. We just wanted them to shut their mouths, so that we didn’t have to listen to what they were saying. Even as we clapped our hands over our ears, we generally understood the childish nature of our actions and that the very words we were desperate to cancel would invariably be back again to chip away at our resolve.

Today, however, canceling a person may be truly tantamount to ruining them. Cancelers aim to get people fired, to destroy their reputations, and to discredit their life’s work. In The New York Times article, “High School Students and Alumni Are Using Social Media To Expose Racism,” writers Taylor Lorenz and Katherine Rosman explain that students have repurposed large meme accounts, set up Google Docs and anonymous pages on Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, and wielded their personal following to hold friends and classmates accountable for behavior they deem unacceptable. They quoted one young woman who reported that some students made a Google spreadsheet that identified names, school information, social media profiles and contact information of students who post racist comments on social media. Another student wrote, Someone rly started a Google doc of racists and their info for us to ruin their lives. i love Twitter. And yet another argued that if you prevent these young racists from advancing beyond high school, you’re helping to stop the spread of racist lawyers or doctors or people who make it harder for the black community. For these Google Doc creators and others who’ve harnessed the shaming power of social media, cancellation really does mean ruining someone–or at the very least making it extremely difficult for them to survive in their high schools, colleges, and communities.

Having taught high school and college students for 40 years, I have no doubt that there are those who hold biased, even bigotted views and who speak and act in morally reprehensible ways. I called one young man into my office after overhearing what he’d said about another student. I could’ve called him out in class, could’ve shamed him publicly in such a way as to make his life in our school extremely tough. But I chose to speak to him privately. After confronting him, we had a productive conversation that resulted in genuine remorse and an admission that what he’d said was hurtful and wrong. I’ve been thinking about what might have happened if either his classmates or I had tried to cancel rather than talk with him. Truthfully, it’s hard to imagine positive results.

Certainly, there are legitimate times for public criticism and exposure. If a person, group, institution or corporation has been confronted–individually, collectively, or legally–and continues to speak or act in ways that are generally agreed upon as harmful, then most people accept that public confrontation is necessary and morally responsible. But defining what is harmful and therefore deserving of this type of public exposure is dicey. What is harmful in one person’s eyes may not be in another’s. What some insist should be canceled, others do not. And the fact that cancellation has now evolved from largely targeting celebrities and high profile people, groups, or companies to targeting ordinary people should give us pause. The thought that someone may perceive my words or deeds as harmful and consequently might put all my contact information on their Google Doc/hit list is truly frightening. And the thought that someone may someday try to cancel my granddaughter or grandson is the stuff that nightmares are made of.

Dr. Jill McCorkel explains that cancellation creates a sense of shared solidarity, a sense that you are a part of something larger than yourself, but others like corporate diversity consultant Aaron Rose believe that it may give us little more than a short-term release of cathartic anger. For Rose, rejecting the cancel culture doesn’t mean that you have to reject social justice principles. For him and others who oppose the cancel culture, the real issue is whether or not you believe that people targeted for cancellation can change. Rather than being primarily concerned with expressing outrage and working collectively to destroy someone, he argues that we should adopt a more traditional approach, one that, according to Vox writer Aja Romano, includes apology, atonement, and forgiveness.

Still, we are as divided on the issue of cancel culture as we are on so many other issues. There are those like Aaron Rose who maintain that real and lasting change comes through helping people learn to genuinely communicate and to treat each other humanely; there are others who, as Vox writer Aja Romano argues, regard cancel culture as an extension of civil rights activists’ push for meaningful change.

After my attempts to cancel one of my siblings by covering my ears, most often I was promptly reported to my mom who asked me to apologize. And within moments, all was well. Our country needs a cosmic mom right now, a compassionate yet powerful mother to call us into the house, to lovingly confront us, and to ask us to atone. We need a mom to cry and vent to, to wisely rebuke and encourage us. Above all, we need a mom who truly expects us to change and to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves.

Actually, this job is much too big for one mom. We need a tsunami of moms who sweep over us, washing away all our desires and attempts to cancel each other. This would be a welcome storm, for in its wake, we might find opportunities for real and lasting change.

photo by Collyn Ware

Marmalade Moon

As the moon rises
it spreads marmalade across the treetops.
 
Too often, the world is a wafer
broken easily by brittle words.
But tonight, we who live lean
stand dumb in the presence
of such decadence:
 
a light feast,
a banquet of lunar nectar.
 
In this month of marmalade moons
we remember how the world ripens;
how the sweet peach of summer swallows
all our pits and stones;
how we rest in the nectarine assurance that—
if even for a moment—
there is enough for all.

We had entered an era of limitlessness, or the illusion thereof, and this in itself is a sort of wonder. My grandfather lived a life of limits, both suffered and strictly observed, in a world of limits. I learned much of that world from him and others, and then I changed; I entered the world of labor-saving machines and of limitless cheap fossil fuel. It would take me years of reading, thought, and experience to learn again that in this world limits are not only inescapable but indispensable.
― Wendell Berry, Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food

I have some questions about limits that will undoubtedly bring the disapproval and dismissal of those who will argue that only one with privilege would dare to ask them. And I concede that, to a great degree, this is true. Those without privilege rarely ask that limits be established when they’ve been limited in one way or another, by one group or another, their entire lives. In this light, then, as a white woman of privilege with questions about limits, I am guilty. But I really want to know. Regarding works of art–statues, paintings, sculptures, even architecture–I want to know if limits identifying what should and should not be removed from public venues, are not only inescapable but indispensable, as Berry writes?

Most of my life, I’ve shouldered the helpful harness of limits: curfews and deadlines, defined duties and expectations, organizational structures of every shape, shape, and origin. Using The Shape A Writer Can Contain, a composition manual my father wrote in the 70s, I learned to write, and later teach, a coherent, organized, and focused essay. The parameters of its parts–the introduction, the body, and the conclusion–yoked my many-legged ideas which threatened to bolt for other pastures. The framework of a single paragraph trained me to look closely and dig deeply, exploring and expounding upon one good insight. The stricture of a thesis statement or topic sentence kept me honest and bound to the ideological contract I’d made with my readers.

It wasn’t until the 80s when I attended an English Language Arts conference that I was told that assigning my students a five-paragraph essay was a quick road to composition hell. This traditional structure didn’t even merit purgatory. No, force your students to write it, and you condemned them to the eternal and dreadful compliance of expository hell. Let them write organically, the presenters argued. Let their ideas grow freely and naturally as they will. As a relatively young teacher, I stewed and fretted all the way home from the conference, admonishing myself for such naivety. Maybe there were better ways to help students learn to write. Maybe I’d been simply unaware.

After two excruciating months of organic writing during which more students suffered and failed than not, I returned to the form which had proven itself over and over again, convicted that its limits were more helpful than harmful.

But most limits, even those that may be largely beneficial, are not without controversy. Laws regarding mandatory seatbelt use: personal limits for safety or an affront to civil liberty? Dress codes for restaurants (no shoes, no shirt, no service): reasonable public health restrictions or an infringement on personal freedom? By their very nature, limits are restrictive and exclusive; they define what is acceptable and what is not, what is in and what is out.

Certainly there are–and have always been–limits that privilege, please, and protect some groups and not others. In our country, we don’t have to go back too many decades to identify examples of these. The Jim Crow laws are some of the most aggregious examples. It goes without saying that limits may be helpful or destructive; they may serve the greater good or serve a privileged few. The best ones are always carefully considered, ethically examined, and clearly defined.

Even in rural Iowa, most people I know agree that we should limit the public display of Confederate statues that profile individuals known primarily for defending and promoting the pre-Civil War South, including and especially the institution of slavery. Although they may argue that it’s not acceptable to destroy or deface them, they will concede that these statues should be removed from the public positions they’ve held.

But the removal of other statues and pieces of art isn’t as clear cut. In a recent Boston Globe article, “Lincoln’s emancipation statue triggers debate on how the Black experience should be commemorated,” Meghan E. Irons writes:

But nearly 150 years after its debut here, the statue has become a flashpoint in the nation’s latest reckoning with public art portraying figures from the Civil War and its aftermath. What was intended as a depiction of liberation can look demeaning to 21st-century eyes: a submissive Black man bending at the feet of the president. Yet even as activists in Boston and Washington have urged the statues be torn down or repurposed, some argue against, saying the art, however challenging, is worth preserving.

Even the distant relatives of Archer Alexander, the black man used as the model for the statue’s kneeling figure, disagree over whether or not the emancipation statue should be removed. One of Alexander’s distant relatives, Keith Winstead, contends that the statue is a tribute to a critical period in Black history and to an American hero who risked his life to help Union soldiers during the Civil War. Another descendant, Cedric Turner believes that taking down the statue is akin to wiping out the story of freed slaves who donated money for the statue, and of Alexander himself, who helped his country during the Civil War.

But there is also distant relative, Maryum Ali, who argues that it is degrading and offensive and said that she was certain that her great-great-great-great grandfather would not want to be viewed as bowing down to anyone — Lincoln or anybody else. Like Ali, Raul Fernandez, a lecturer and associate dean at Boston University who has extensively researched the statue, claims that it is clearly a tribute to white supremacy. 

So how do we proceed? What stays and what goes? What is acceptable and what is not? What celebrates and what offends?

I began to seriously consider these questions when I thought about the bronze statue of my father that stands outside of the university classroom building where he taught for much of his life. The statue is a beautiful piece of artwork, lovingly crafted by sculptor Martha Pettigrew. But it is a statue of a white male teacher/poet flanking a building that has also housed a black teacher/poet. So, some would consider my father’s statue a microinvalidation, a piece of art that excludes, negates, or nullifies the psychological thoughts, feelings, or experiential reality of a minority person. Has the bronzed Don Welch invalidated and excluded the minority person who, instead, should stand as an affirmation of teaching excellence on the University of Nebraska Kearney campus? And if so, should my father’s statue be removed because it’s yet another symbol of the systemic racism that privileges whites over blacks?

My father was a man of the truest integrity and one of the finest teachers, thinkers and writers I have known. I believe that the statue his friends and colleagues commissioned is a worthy testament to my father’s legacy as an excellent teacher. Still, I’m not naive enough to assume that a majority would vote to keep his statue if a national poll was taken today. For there really are no clear parameters that identify what we should keep and what we should remove. And without these, what specific criteria–if any–do we use? And who decides upon this criteria?

I know there will be some who consider me foolish for worrying about my father’s statue. After all, it’s not like my dad was a Confederate officer or former slave owner, and it’s not like he has a history of racist speech and actions. And yet, there will be others who would argue that, because my father was a white man, his statue should removed and replaced with one that validates and celebrates the reality of minority persons.

Like Keith Winstead and Cedric Turner who prefer that the emancipation statue remain, I prefer that the statue of my father remain. There will be others who prefer that both statues be removed and forgotten. But preferences are not carefully considered, ethically examined, clearly defined limits. They are simply personal predilictions, individual desires. And as such, they leave us in a quagmire. There are as many preferences as there are people who hold them, so whose preference should prevail?

I’ve read that my desire for clear limits regarding public art is yet another symptom of my white privilege. Perhaps it is. But even so, is this desire wrong? Would such limits cause more harm than good to most people? And might not the discussion of such limits be a progressive step forward?

These statues weren’t intended to be idols before which we worship. Rather, most of them were created as public pieces of art intended to commemorate imperfect human beings whose prevailing legacies are honorable and good. In the end, someone or some group will decide if a public statue stays or goes. I would like to think that their decisions will be carefully considered, ethically examined, and clearly defined so that the criteria used to make these decisions may be applied consistently–or at least more consistently.

Before we remove or destroy them, then, I’d like to know if we might come to a consensus regarding the criteria we will use to determine what stays and what goes. I’d like to know if there will be any limits beyond preference to guide our decisions. I’m painfully aware of the challenges that establishing such limits will pose. This is messy stuff–perhaps the messiest. Done well, however, it should take us beyond politics and preferences to sound, ethical guidelines that we can collectively agree upon. Done well, it should be part of the solution rather than exacerbating the problem. Done well, it should result in limits that are truly indispensable.