Happy
birthday America, land of contradictions
—and
of truths, still becoming
I have a bus pass for the month of June. It was an
impulse buy. As I bought it, the voice in my head suggested fervently Make this purchase. The cash is in your
pocket. The working premise in this self-talk: give yourself a financial
incentive to break free from your routine You
are in a rut.
I travel daily. It is most often in a family car,
designated as mine, but not owned by me. I rarely walk anywhere. When I do, I
fill my phone camera with images of what I notice along the way: nature and
human inspiration, painted on rocks. A couple mile trek, amidst beautiful
allergens, results in a full day headache. Google Maps estimates 30 minutes for
this hilly walk.
I have learned to calculate ‘taking in’ my
surroundings for any excursion outside of my routine. Anything that should take about 30 minutes is
easily an hour. Some might call this lack of focus AD(h)D. Others may view this
as experiencing what life has to offer, especially in retirement. I have
difficulty doing leisure activities, until I do. Then, I become absent-mindedly
absorbed in living. Deadlines, now of my own construction, skew my ‘maven-time’
choices.
Full circle, my daily travel is three miles. I leave
home for the TV station. I return six to twelve hours later. When I count the
years, my life has been in maven-time, I use both hands and all my fingers.
Maven is a very apt name for an Apache Software tool
that can build any number of projects into desired outputs from accumulated
knowledge. For me, it is an aspiration. I am driven, in the moment and for the
future, to bring people and ideas together in service of something greater. In
retirement, my work is optimizing and connecting to possibilities from years of
accumulated experience. It is work, until it isn’t. To achieve brain
collaboration—debunking my personal left-right brain myth—is one part ‘as life
allows’ and another, opening terrifying doors.
I am early-retired and on a limited income. Life’s
choices find me living on a hill in a suburb rather than in a walkable city.
Here everything except the public library, and where I spend my days, the
community TV station, has a price. I really cannot afford impulse purchases of
any size. I tell myself this will change when I start my Social Security
Benefits at 67. Even though I am not on any medication, as is the case with
most Medicare eligible people, healthcare insurance costs factor large in strategic
life decisions. I volunteer full-time. If I were to be paid what they would
strain to afford, every penny would ultimately pay for subsidized health
insurance. Obama Care is a benefit and a
box. My countdown to Social Security is now the fingers on one hand. Someday,
no more fingers to count and Medicare for all-at least in my family.
Time does move on. Soon it is late June. My bus pass
is to expire by weeks end. I’ve taken one ride. The impatient voice in my head
is now contradictory. Be less impulsive!
That is not the problem. Yes. Life deserves MORE life! Go to the city. You know
you can do free, freeing things there.
The urgency of liberation stalks my thoughts. Memories
break through the disparaging self-talk.
I am getting nothing accomplished anyway, so I yield. Where would I go
this time of year when I lived in the city? The answer pops through like sun at
the end of the Westville tunnel or the building itself: The Beinecke.
With an assist from Google, I confirm the bus and
Beinecke library schedules. In a fleeting moment, I remember the avid quilter
from the corporate IT help-desk.
Judy, an affable redhead, tapped me on the shoulder.
“Look. I have something super-incredible to show you. It will be a verb
someday.” She laughs. She deftly saves what I was working on. She enters
‘google’ into my computer’s browser. My eyes track her fingers. She points to
the word SEARCH displayed on my monitor besides a long empty rectangle. She
instructs: “Type anything.” “Type your name.” ‘My name’ always gives me pause.
I type “dandelion” A page of responses spew back: Plant. Wine. Health. Taraxacum.
I take a moment to marvel.
This rabbit hole of a game, and her enthusiasm,
attracts others. My tension escalates. Play.
Work. Work Play. I excuse myself, suggesting I need some water. When I
return to my desk, the distracted cadre is clustered a few cubicles away around
a co-worker.
I extricate myself from my memory. I re-engage with
year 2018. I Google. It is now without question a verb. With the words ‘coffee
wall street new haven’, I find the ‘Blue State Coffee Menu.’ I pocket enough
cash to buy lunch. But, I don’t.
I relish, with mounting anticipation, the reunion of
my city and our memories. My city is a bus ride away. Within an hour, I am on
the North Haven/Wallingford/Meriden bus. I will arrive, as I always do: Temple
at Center Green.
In this moment, I am grateful the exhibit is not
‘virtual’. There is a synchronicity of mystery and wonder that you subsume when
you step inside any museum. Today, I need such a step.
Stumbling
Off Main Streets
In 1974, the student ‘me’ literally stumbles on Wall St. I trip on the uneven sidewalk, distracted by the unexpected. I am walking toward Broadway. Suddenly, a bold geometric white-ish building glistens before me.
Broadway is several city
blocks from downtown. My usual route, walking in the opposite direction of
traffic from New Haven Public Library, is on Elm Street. Occasionally, I walk
down Grove Street past the brownstone wall and iron fence of the ‘city of the
dead’ to the roundabout where Whalley, Goffe and Dixwell Avenues converge. In
the four years I have walked about New Haven, I have always stayed its main
streets. But this day changed all that.
I would not let myself
imagine then, that I, a pedestrian, could actually go inside the pizza place,
coffee shop or, as it turns out, the library. However, not feeling welcomed was
more about my door phobia, then anything specific to the local establishments.
A few weeks later, a transit ad on
the inside of a bus heading downtown changes that. There is a picture of the
alien building. The details refer to a public celebration, a tenth anniversary.
I pull the calendar from my book bag. I scribble aside Saturday July 3rd:
yale. marble building. 12 - 4.
Years earlier, I would
have been admonished by a new resident of Liberation House—the ex-offender
halfway house where I served as a VISTA volunteer— had I crossed him on the
street. “You a crazy white lady. You best stay on the main streets. Never mind
no short cuts, else you be cut short. You hearin’ me Sista. I’d be happy to
escort ya. But, you know the rules. I am half-way locked up.”
He may have been right,
except for one thing. I was the alien that belonged in this neighborhood. No
one messed with the Halfway House residents, or me, the white lady the
residents protected in return for helping them learn to read, find jobs and
arrange visits with their children.
Community-centric Truths in the Bicentennial Year
On Yale University’s campus, at the corner of streets converted to walkways, is a principal repository for the world’s rare books. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, located at 121 Wall St., is entirely devoted to rare books and manuscripts. Rare means printed anywhere in the world before 1800, and books, newspapers and broadsides printed in the United States before 1851.After being deposited downtown by bus, I take campus walkways to reach the exhibit. From Elm St., Rose walk extends to Alexander Walk which ends at the mobile-like ‘Gallows and Lollipops’. It is an abstract sculpture by Alexander Calder installed in 1975. It stands rather than hangs. Painted in primary colors, its steel elements hover in constant motion, as if they are an invitation to play. Its geometry is an expressive counterpoint to the exacting symmetry of the observable library. For a few minutes in late afternoon, the sunlight refracts through the marble, spewing color bands of light onto Hewitt Quadrangle.
Without previously attending the anniversary Open House, I would
certainly have wondered How can rare
books be relevant to the community? Frankly, I could not fathom the
connection between dinosaurs and environmental justice either Whatever that was when the Peabody
Museum’s annual events began two decades later. The Peabody Museum’s
community-centric event would become an annual fixture of New Haven’s MLK Day
celebration.
Since 1976 was long before Google became a verb, I do not recall
exactly how I came to expect free refreshments. As a graduate student, I was no
longer on the college meal plan. This added enticement sealed the deal for me
to check out the writings of Thomas Jefferson, and more, for the second time.
Besides, another win in the battle with my door-phobia was always welcome.
Ironically, I never did partake in a cup of tea served, in a roped off area,
near the library guard.
My first visit inside Beinecke was kinesthetically memorable. The sunny
day gave new meaning to the allure of six-stories of translucent cathedral-like
walls of Vermont marble. Once inside, the rise of the glass tower of books
through the core of the building amplified my feelings of insignificance. The
stacks were reserved for permitted use. I mustered up the courage to walk
through the revolving doors into the mezzanine. In a sunken courtyard, visible
but not accessible from the plaza, is a pyramid, circle, and cube. Awareness of
the boundaries, more than gently, disrupted my sense of well-being and welcome.
It was Yale after all. I was a student from the public college down the street. Southern Connecticut State College was a public bus ride across the city, and then, a short walk into Yale campus, on streets comprised entirely of university properties.
The Bicentennial exhibit was awkwardly community centric. Once again,
the historic ‘Dunlap Broadside’ was carefully exhumed from a sub-basement
drawer for the nation's founding exhibit. Yale’s copy is one of 26 known to
survive. The first public printing of the ‘Dunlap Broadside’ version of the Declaration of
Independence is assumed to be 200. Within weeks, it would be printed in
newspapers. The library has copies from the July 15, 1776,
edition of The Connecticut Courant and Hartford Weekly Intelligencer. Like the tip of an iceberg, the role of
newspapers in democracy begins to take root in my conscience. Like a tip of an
iceberg, the landmark look of the library obfuscates its true presence—with three
underground levels extending under the plaza, most of the library is hidden.
While more ponderous than accessible, the initial step inside the
revolving glass doors was a transformative experience for me. Upon leaving, I
felt more whole than I had upon arrival. Maybe it was the title of the
sculpture that puzzled the pieces of my experience together. “Nowhere, yet
somehow familiar,” is how Isamu Noguchi describes his assemblage of the earth,
the sun and, most provocatively, the cube of chance. The senseless paradox of
my feelings of unworthiness dissipated. I was the community the curators had
hoped to reach.
June 2018 -
Bus Pass Day #2 ‘We Hold These Truths’
The
promotional materials at the library entrance demonstrate that decades of
programming evolved the Annual Nation’s Founding Exhibit into a city-wide
experience. In the library mezzanine, the latest brochure announces a July 5th
reading. It details complimentary exhibits at other locations. The We Hold These Truth brochure features
John Trumbull’s painting, “The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.” at
Yale University Art Gallery. To invoke curiosity, it tells the reader: “The
painting bares a true likeness of all the founding fathers. Mr. Trumbull
traveled across America to meet them and sketch them in his miniature version
of the painting.”
On my previous June bus ride, I discovered a side entrance to
that gallery on High St. There is no signage. It appears to be for people who
know where they are going. It leads to an interior sculpture garden soon to be
the temporary home for ‘Gallows and Lollipops’. I also discover John Trumbull
is buried under the building That is
monumental.
The
promotion continues:
Actors, in costume, will read the Declaration of
Independence and Frederick Douglass’ 1852 oration, “What to the Slave is the
Fourth of July?”
Brochures of exhibits
from recent years are also on display in the entrance. Frederick Douglass had
been featured in several recent programs.
In 1935, The Franklin Papers, the
most extensive collection of materials by, about, and around Franklin and his
times to be found in a single collection anywhere in the world, was gifted to
be among the ‘rare’. In more recent history, The Fredrick Douglass Papers compiled by Yale University
Press in 2009 are added to the library’s rare holdings.
Curators
mingle rare into the ethos of current events by juxta positioning documents and
providing context with labels that introduce unknowns like ‘Nigger Heaven’, or
reexamine linguistic concepts like ‘Under God’, ‘equality’, and ‘freedom.’
History’s
callouses are brought to light with the purposeful side-by-side placement of
the “Declaration of Sentiments” Report from the 1848 Woman’s Rights Convention
and the Dunlap Broadside.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that
all men and women are created equal … ” is viewed aside the ‘all men’ of the Declaration of
Independence speaking volumes by virtue of presentation alone.
As I explore, I submit to cognitive sensations, both
bitter and sweet, child-like curiosity and adult incredulity. As I wander
from display to display, I realize that the primary sources we uphold as pure
and sacred are not immune to impurities. The issues of sources, timeliness, and
accuracy existed long before the invention of television.
As I read, I learn, or
relearn: The official printer of The Declaration of Independence is John Dunlap
of Philadelphia. The commentary labels explain…in the “Rough Journal of
Congress” is an order that there will be a “… committee appointed to prepare the
declaration, superintend & correct the press.” The story of this first
printing is put forth as: On the evening of July 4th, the broadside was brought
to Congress by Dunlap who had turned the handwritten text into ‘the equivalent
of a presidential proclamation.’ There is only speculation as to which members
of the drafting committee were present to proofread it in advance of the formal
presentation. And questions remain as to who read the proof. Thomas Jefferson? John
Adams? Benjamin Franklin?
The community-centric
exhibits evolved from portraying democracy’s male heroes to informing visitors
how these men were men of their times. Jefferson, who was simultaneously a
Founding Father and slave holder, was no longer presented as an irreproachable
all-knowing hero. He was a real man with serious flaws. Gone was the image of a
patriot brimming with confidence. What remained; a man who made choices while
struggling with self-doubt.
I was intrigued by the
contrasts, even polarity, of Jefferson’s writings. He constantly shifted
between utopian ideals and realist solutions. Jefferson, who owned and lived on
a plantation, had frequent urges to visit Philadelphia, then the cultural capital
of the country. Yet, he held the view that cities were powder kegs of chaos and
hothouses of epidemics. Writing helped him formulate his opinions and points of
view. The rare book library ultimately helped me value writing as, not only a
process and a legacy, but a means to formulate ourselves.
Red White and Bicentennial Blues
Revisiting the nation’s
founding exhibit is a memory trigger of a personal kind. My first visit ignited
a preoccupation with patriotic propaganda. The year following that visit, using
whatever time I could squirrel away to create, culminated in my writing
project: Red, White and Blues.
By osmosis rather than
conscious choice, the project transformed from a collection of poems and essays
into an album collaboration with my husband. Today, I am the only one who can
hear the related music, his contribution. I have no talent for music. The song
fragments are among the voices in my head. The collection’s physical pages were
destroyed in one of life’s natural disasters a.k.a. dysfunctional family, rage,
pyre of fire. The toxic memory is now a phantom smell of burnt plastic common
to household accidents. My 3-ring project binder, every scribble, every poem,
gone Not by accident in household full of
harm. I take a moment to marvel at my survival.
While late to the “cash-in
on the bicentennial” party, the plan was to release a bicentennial album with
songs that explored our common history through the musical genres of our
country. The demo cassette tape of Red, White and Blues had mixed
reviews. Ultimately, prospective funders deemed it too controversial. I was not
willing to abandon my words a second time.
The
song that remains foremost in my memory speaks to the paradox that is America.
America
is both sides of the coin
We
come to make, that’s what makes her great
…the original poem reminisced about seeing the Statue
of Liberty for the first time. The “I” in that poem is me—a girl not yet sure
she had the standing to call herself a writer, or to claim the liberty Lady
Liberty promised. Women’s right to vote was barely fifty years old. My right to
my own credit card, not yet won. I did not struggle free of that in the
writing. But that struggle is mine.
Red, White and Blues
I
was looking up, at Lady Liberty,
in
the harbor of immigrant city,
when
an old man, cautions questioningly,
What
does this lady speak to me?
My
knotted thoughts they struggled free…
What
America means… What does America
mean?
To me?
Grandma
was an immigrant. Grandpa philosophized.
America
is both sides of the coin
we
come to make. That’s what makes her great.
So
he set his hands to working, until they ached.
Grandma
prayed for my Daddy’s sake.
I
believe that you, can show me too,
Red,
White and Blue.
Because
you’re part of me, and I am part of you.
Then
my dad inherited what they had done,
he
continued on, it was for his son.
Now
I’ve 16 years of schooling
where
in something lies, ‘bout what Grandpa philosophized.
America
it’s you I make, and when you ache,
I
am aching too. But I believe in me,
And
so you see, I believe in you.
My
knotted thoughts they struggled free…
That’s
what America means,
what
America means, to me.
Another song in the
collection, Never A Sunshine Patriot, embodied in stanzas the biography
of the inconvenient revolutionary, Thomas Paine. His ideas fueled the
revolution. His pamphlet, Common Sense advocated American independence.
These ideas were rearranged in the song that I cannot reclaim in memory.
The cause of America is in a great measure the
cause of all mankind…sunshine patriot …shrink from the service. Those who
expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of
supporting it. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem to lightly…These are the
times that try men's souls.
I do remember that my poem
changed all references to men to non-gender words like ‘our’ and ‘we’. And I
remember the last stanza referred to Paine’s death as a pauper, burial unknown.
Since cemeteries tout gravesites of luminaries as the “men of history”, the
conclusion of this revolutionary’s story held significance for me.
Roger Sherman is interred at
Grove St. Cemetery. He is the only man
to have signed all four documents of American sovereignty, including the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He was from a poor farming
family, a shoemaker who would become a lawyer, A Congressman and Senator. Yet,
it is an aide-de-camp to George Washington, Colonel David Humphrey, who is
graced with pomp, circumstance, and speeches on Independence Day celebrations
at the cemetery. Humphry, a Yale man, wielded such political power in his time
that the Paugussett Tribe’s reservation at the falls of the Naugatuck River was
turned over to him to construct his woolen mill. The stories we choose to
foster tell a lot about ourselves.
A similarly odd contrivance
of history is active in Wallingford today. The Center St. Cemetery in
Wallingford is across the street from the TV station. It is where Lyman Hall,
not buried there, is memorialized as a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
The orphaned Moses Y. Beach, Wallingford’s first philanthropist, is buried
there. His story, overshadowed by that of Lyman Hall, is muted by the
caretakers of local history. Caretaking of this property, the legacy, and its
stories, is rich with controversy. Burials and cemetery lore remind me of the
unburied Thomas Paine and the whitewashing of America.
Paine’s support of women’s
rights remained in the shadows of his prevailing need to ‘rally men to the
cause.’ After the American Revolution, Paine left to rally the men of the
French Revolution with the universal thesis within The Rights of Man.
However, his opposition to the death penalty—hundreds of revolutionaries sent
to the guillotine—and writing Age of Reason arrested his impact. The controversial
notion that God influences the immoral actions of people disturbed both the men
he aimed to muster and the powers they fought to dismantle.
It
is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and murder; for the
belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man.
The nation that had hailed
his ideas, in the pursuit of freedom, decried his opinions expressed after
Common Sense:
I
have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion,
however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this
right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes
himself the right of changing it.
One line from my poem
lingers in memory as sung. “Sunshine patriots we, have yet to
be,” with a refrain “Thomas Paine.” Oddly my brain goes to ‘Let the sunshine,
Let the sun shine in.’ by the 5th Dimension’s on their Age of Aquarius album each time I hear
it among the voices in my head.
Two hundred and fifty years on, the contradictions have not resolved. They have accumulated. Jefferson’s self-doubt and Paine’s inconvenient truths, the Dunlap Broadside and the Declaration of Sentiments, the man honored at the cemetery and the man erased from it—these are not footnotes to the founding. They are the founding, still unfinished. The bus pass expires. The voices stay. That, too, is America.
