No Buzz

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Kathy

How do you choose which books to read and which movies to see?

All of us are probably somewhat susceptible to “buzz”–the blaring ads and TV talk-show promos and mentions on National Public Radio that make us think we have to see or read a particular work. My book group just read Wild, for example, the best-selling memoir by Cheryl Strayed, partly because of its buzz. Oprah liked it! It was okay, most of us thought, but maybe not deserving of hoopla. This sort of noise often drowns out the quiet music of smaller works, lacking big budgets and gargantuan publicity departments.

Paul Brannigan

I’m thinking specifically of The Angels’ Share, a new film by British director Ken Loach. We saw it last night at the Cedar-Lee Theater in Cleveland Heights, where it’s doing little business. Loach, born in 1936, is a venerable, celebrated director, but he usually makes small-ish movies, often with non-professional actors, like Paul Brannigan, the lead in this one, who does a remarkable job.

The Angels’ Share is a suspenseful heist movie and a broad, bawdy comedy. It’s full of coarse language (or “course” language, as the theater warned us) and has a leftish political slant, as does its director. It’s very entertaining. Unfortunately, though it will do okay worldwide, it won’t play here long. No buzz.

We saw it because my husband subscribes to the auteur theory of filmmaking, meaning, in plain English, that the director creates the film, so when a great director makes a movie, it’s worth seeing. Last week, we saw To the Wonder for similar reasons. We both love director Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, as well as his other films, and so we saw his new film with no hesitation. It’s arty and challenging, but also gorgeous and moving.

Similarly, I’d read any book by Annie Dillard, Phillip Lopate, Ann Patchett, or David Sedaris. If they unearthed an unpublished book by the late James Herndon, whose lovely How to Survive in Your Native Land I’m rereading for the nth time, I’d pick it up in a second. I want to read those writers, no matter the subject. Even though I might not like their new offerings, I’m interested in keeping up with them.

What about brand-new or unfamiliar directors and authors? you may ask. Well, then you have to rely on word-of-mouth and reviews. Enough people have told me, for example, that I would like Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, that I believe them and intend to get to it this summer. I just read my first Don DeLillo novel, White Noise, based on its stellar reputation, which I didn’t like at first but ended up admiring very much.

So, tell me. Do you read any and all mysteries, science fiction, or graphic novels? Are you attracted by book covers or blurbs on the back? Do you see any movie starring Vin Diesel, Meryl Streep, or Johnny Depp? How do you choose?

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Ordination, Irish Women, and the Pope

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Kathy

Pope Francis washing the feet of a woman

The Roman Catholic Church officially offers seven sacraments, but, as a friend of mine always says, men have seven sacraments, whereas women have only six, because ordination to the priesthood is not an option for Catholic women.

Lots of people who know I’m Catholic have asked me what I think of the new Pope. So far, he’s both likable and kind. I admire his humility, and I was moved that he washed women’s feet on Holy Thursday. It seems like a no-brainer, but the guys who love rules came out of the woodwork to complain.

To dispute the Pope’s actions, they used the same argument that keeps women out of the priesthood. At the Last Supper, they say, Jesus washed the feet of male disciples. Re-enacting that event on Holy Thursday, the priest should wash the feet of males only. Similarly, Jesus supposedly chose men as disciples, the progenitors of modern priests. Ergo (Latin’s the appropriate language here, no?), modern priests should also be male.

I’ve never heard anyone address the implications of this argument. Those male disciples were Jewish. They were fishermen. They were between the ages, probably, of 20 and 40. They spoke Aramaic. Why is gender the only trait we focus on when restricting access to one of the sacraments, and, of course, to power and influence in the Catholic Church? We should scour the world for youngish, Jewish, Aramaic-speaking fishermen to be priests, because, after all, that’s who Jesus chose.

In fact, though, the entire argument is specious, as many scholars have pointed out. Cleveland’s own FutureChurch has helped educate people about the real history of  Christianity. Jesus had women disciples, mentioned frequently in Scripture. Jesus appeared first to women after the Resurrection. The early Church had women deacons and was supported by wealthy women. Women have always played a critical role in the Church, but have been unable to follow a vocation to the priesthood.

Fortunately, other Christian churches have become less restrictive. Protestant churches largely allow women to become full-fledged ministers. The Anglican/Episcopalian denomination ordains women as priests. My friend Meagen Farrell is undertaking a book project about the pioneering women who made this happen in Ireland. (You can learn more and sign up to support her here.) On Monday, April 8, at noon, you can see Meagen’s presentation on her projected book, including activities for kids, at the St. Malachi Center (2416 Superior Viaduct, Cleveland). If the Anglicans can do it in Ireland, maybe someday the Catholics will do it here, and in the Vatican.

Probably, however, not in the foreseeable future. Regarding how I feel about Pope Francis, he’s down-to-earth and devout and devoted to people who are poor—all very important virtues. But he’s unlikely to make other changes I would like to see: acceptance of homosexuality, married priests, a more rational attitude toward birth control, less hierarchical governance, and women’s ordination. With no prospect of change on these issues, I find it harder and harder, as time goes by, to call myself Catholic.

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Gun Control on Easter

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Kathy

Nothing says “holiday” like a family discussion about gun control. After the dishes were cleared  and relatives had made their cases, I came home to the Cleveland Plain Dealer and a sobering op-ed by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Pitts writes that since the December killings in Newtown, Connecticut, nearly 5000 kids in America have been shot by guns. Not 5000 people in the world. Not 5000 Americans. 5000 American kids.

Newtown was an aberration, some say. Nothing will stop a madman like Adam Lanza. Bad cases make bad law. And so on. The thing is, Newtown captures the headlines, in all its horror and bloodshed.  But those victims make up only a tiny fraction of a percent of the total deaths from guns.

A quick internet search shows that at least 2244 Americans have been killed by guns since the Sandy Hook massacre. The Huffington Post shows a chilling map, with deaths marked in red across the country.

Do people die from guns in other countries? Of course. But in the US, children are 13 times more likely to die from guns than in any other industrialized country. As I wrote in December, restricting the most dangerous weaponry works. In Australia, for example, when gun legislation was passed, murders from guns decreased by 40%.

In addition, regulating guns results in fewer suicides. Conventional wisdom says that if someone is intent on suicide, he or she will get it done whether a gun is at hand or not. But the facts say otherwise. In fact, if depressed people can’t get their hands on guns, they don’t kill themselves that day. When they don’t succeed that day, they most often never get around to it. Their lives improve a little, someone reaches out, they get some help, and they stay alive. Australia saw a 50% decline in gun-related suicides. Read Nicholas Kristof’s intelligent analysis here.

No one is saying that we’re going to take away everyone’s guns. We couldn’t do that if we tried. We’re asking for sensible gun control: thorough, required background checks and restrictions on high-capacity magazines.

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Bliss

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Kathy

Today’s episode of “Radiolab” on National Public Radio, replayed from December of last year, related to happiness and its definition. The show explored the idea of bliss, including a fascinating story about a man named Bliss. Here’s the show, well worth listening to. While I listened, I contemplated my own moments of bliss.

In June of 1982, I gave birth to Doug, our first child. I had a pretty easy labor and delivery, but suffered some nasty moments immediately after. I needed quite a bit of stitching, and unfortunately the novocaine didn’t take. Ouch. Because I needed some time to heal, I spent an extra day or two in the hospital. Back then, our Canton hospital was still a little resistant to “rooming in,” the reasonable and humane policy allowing mom and baby to sleep in the same room. For the first night or two, the hospital decreed that Doug spend the night in the nursery. Ironicallly, this separation created a favorite, fond memory that drifted into my mind as I listened to the radio today.

Night would fall, they’d remove Doug to the nursery, time would pass, and I would at last barely drift off to sleep. Then someone would rustle the curtain surrounding my bed, and a nurse’s soft voice would gently awaken me. For a second, I’d inwardly groan about my interrupted sleep. Then, as my eyes opened and I sat up, I’d gradually realize that I was receiving a great gift. The baby was here! I would have precious minutes alone with that warm, soft little package. Usually, he’d be too sleepy to nurse, but I’d be wide awake and completely focused. For those few minutes, blissful.

When Margaret was born a few years later, the powers-that-be hustled us home, out of the hospital, the day after her birth. I had similar blissful moments, though, as the first weeks and months passed. Like most babies, Margaret had a fussy period in the long evenings before bedtime. I paced in a circle around our living room with her–that warm tiny-baby package again–resting on my shoulder, tucked into my neck. My lullaby of choice was often James Taylor’s “Only a Dream in Rio,” from the album “That’s Why I’m Here.” Oddly enough, these difficult nights when it was hard to get her to sleep provided some of my sweetest mom memories.

One more memory popped into my head, this one from much further back. My dad was a paraplegic, and I always hoped he’d regain the use of his legs, even though I understood, intellectually, that this was impossible. Blowing out my birthday candles or throwing a penny in a fountain, I always wished that Dad would walk again. Then, when I was in 10th grade, my dad spent almost a year in a New York hospital having surgery for bedsores. During this time, I entertained the fantasy that his paraplegia would be healed while he was gone. I knew it couldn’t happen, but I prayed for it constantly.

One day when I got home from school, my mom said my dad was coming home, and we could pick him up at the airport. Maybe I actually knew he was coming home–that makes more sense–but in my memory I was surprised by the news. I remember sitting in the car as we pulled out of the driveway, realizing I should be sad. After all, my dad was returning prematurely. He wasn’t healed. He was coming home still in a wheelchair. But I wasn’t sad. I was so happy we were going to see him again. I was so happy he would be back home. I was conscious, sitting in the car, that I felt blissful, and I’ve never forgotten the feeling.

When have you been blissful? Describe the moment.

 

 

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Ann Patchett’s “Run”

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Kathy

Novelist Ann Patchett was here in Cleveland last week. She’s a polished, funny speaker, and the crowd loved her. I got to ask her a question about her novel Run and decided to rerun my review of that book from 2007, originally published (with some cuts) in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, below.

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Ann Patchett with friend

Eleven-year-old Kenya loves to run, and she’s fast. An observer marvels “not just at the speed but the utter effortlessness of it all, the way the toes of her shoes barely touched down before she set off again.” Kenya’s passion gives Ann Patchett’s new novel its title, but Kenya isn’t the only character who’s running. Some are running away from their pasts. Some want to run for office. Others just dream of running.

The novel begins on a snowy night in Boston, as Bernard Doyle, a sixtyish white man, and his two adopted African-American sons attend a speech by Jesse Jackson. As they leave the theater, an accident and an act of heroism set in motion a series of marvelous coincidences.

Kenya and her mother witness the accident, and more than that I hesitate to say for fear of spoiling the satisfying twists of Patchett’s plot. Suffice it to say, some connections are created, and others are revealed.

Though Doyle is a former Boston mayor and his interracial family quite privileged, they endure the usual parent-child clashes. Doyle expects his sons to follow in his political footsteps. “They should be leaders,” he thinks, “smart boys like these, boys with lives of such advantage. The call to service should be coded in their bones.”

But Doyle’s oldest son Sullivan dashed parental hopes in adolescence, when his reckless driving and the ensuing scandal ruined his father’s career and nearly wrecked his own life. He has spent the intervening years running from his past and parental expectations. The adopted younger sons, Tip, a biology student at Harvard, and Teddy, who’s considering the priesthood, are also running away from their dad’s ambitions.

Teddy’s role model, his uncle Father Sullivan, lies dying in a nearby nursing home. People flock to him because they believe he has a healing touch. (Father Sullivan, a clear-eyed skeptic, doesn’t buy it.) A final family member, Doyle’s deceased wife Bernadette, remains a focus of love and unity in the family.

Family, it seems, is a favorite theme. In Patchett’s first book, The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), young women bond like sisters in a home for unwed mothers. In the remarkable Bel Canto (2001), kidnappers and their victims form an exotic and loving extended family. Similarly, Run explores the nature of family itself. Parents want to mold their kids, and kids need to separate from their parents. Children resent their siblings. Family bonds, in the end, have little to do with blood relationships.

The novel’s action takes place in a twenty-four-hour period, but dialogue and characters’ reminiscences reveal the past events that have brought them to the present moment. Each character reflects on family love, race, poverty, religion and the afterlife. Here, for example, Father Sullivan ruminates on mortality and eternity. Bedridden now, he has stopped “running,” only to discover that life itself is the real gift.

How wrongheaded it seemed now to think that the thrill of heartbeat and breath were just a stepping stone to something greater. What could be greater than the armchair, the window, the snow? Life itself had been holy.

Like Anne Tyler, Ann Patchett explores big questions without pretentiousness. In a harsh world, filled with suffering, she shows the need for love, warmth, and charity. Her quirky characters speak offbeat but believable dialogue. Miraculously, despite the coincidences of the plot, Run rings true.

Reading Run this summer on a flight from New York City back to Cleveland, I experienced the strange miracle of good fiction. A writer translates her imagination into language and gets it printed up in paper binding. The bound pages arrive in your hands, the words enter your mind, where you recreate the writer’s story with your own unique spin. Patchett dreamed this intricate tale in her studio in Nashville, Tennessee, and then, a mile over Pennsylvania’s trees and fields, I saw it playing like a movie in my own head.

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The Kindness of Strangers

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Kathy

I just returned from a quick visit to Boston and New York City–not a vacation or a whirlwind shopping trip, but an effort to keep my daughter company as she underwent fairly serious surgery. I rarely travel on my own. When I do, my calm exterior masks an inner certainty that something terrible is going to happen. I’m going to lose my wallet, or my contact lenses are going to disappear down the hotel sink. I will head the wrong direction on a bus or subway and never be seen again, or the plane will crash, or my phone will be stolen. At the very least, people are going to be yelling at me. Add to these concerns the various misfortunes that could befall my daughter in the hospital. Instead of suffering any catastrophe, my daughter is doing well, and I’m safely back at home contemplating how kind people can be.

From the clerks at Coffee Central in Massachusetts General Hospital, to the uniformly caring nurses, to my daughter’s avuncular surgeon, to the various nice people in the elevators, to the numerous volunteers who guided us here and there–all, without exception, kind. No one yelled. No one even grimaced or spoke a sarcastic word.

I wasn’t surprised at my Boston friends’ kindness–Sarah and Sidney and Joel and Margaret–who gave me dinner and lunch, as well as good conversation. I was touched, of course, but not surprised. Nor was I surprised by the good humor of the daughter’s boyfriend, whom I just met but got to know pretty well. Not surprised, but gratified and impressed.

Returning to New York, where my daughter lives, I was comforted by the friendliness of my cab drivers, the patience of overworked pharmacists, the thoughtfulness of the roommate who drove me to the airport, and the advice and support of ordinary folks standing in line or sitting on the plane. How nice it was to be rereading one of my favorite recent books, Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding, on my return flight to Cleveland. I was immersed in the powerful ending of this warm, goodhearted novel, when the solicitous flight attendant, another kind stranger, interrupted to ask if I wanted a beverage. As it happened, I was dying for a cranberry juice.

Back in Cleveland, some elderly volunteers helped me navigate the buses and trains, whose lines are largely under construction this weekend. My neighbor went to some trouble to pick me up at a train stop. Since last Wednesday, I have been a kindness beneficiary.

 

 

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Eclectically Bleak

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Kathy

Part of the Turin horse

I own a tee shirt which proclaims, “I survived Satantango.” Given to me by a sympathetic friend, it refers to a seven-hour, black-and-white film by Hungarian director Bela Tarr. Its tone is called “miserablist.” Yes, not only seven hours, but seven miserable hours of bleakness.

I like to joke about it, but I’m actually glad I saw Satantango. It’s moody and mysterious, but also enjoyable. As I like to say, things happen in that movie now and then, and I’ve seen plenty of art films where nothing ever happens, where two or three hours seem endless—even longer than seven.

The Turin Horse, showing at the Cinematheque this weekend Friday at 9:00 pm and Sunday at 6:30, also by Bela Tarr, is similarly bleak and mysterious. But it’s much shorter! I actually like bleak works of art and liked The Turin Horse. If you do, too, or you’d like to try something different from the usual art-film fare, see this film.

More accessible are Impromptu, a period piece about composer Frederic Chopin’s relationship with the (female) writer Georges Sand, and Marjoe, a pioneering, Academy-Award-winning, 1972 documentary about a very young, charismatic preacher and healer. Impromptu’s Saturday at 5:30, and Marjoe’s at 8:30.

Pickford in “Sparrows”

Sunday’s presentation, Sparrows, a 1926 silent melodrama starring Mary Pickford, features editor and scholar Kristel Schmidt to introduce the film. It screens at 3:30. It looks to be bleak, too, but uplifitingly and sentimentally so.

Ingmar Bergman’s The Silence (Thursday at 8:25 pm; Friday at 7:00 pm) probably won’t cheer you up either. It’s dark and cryptic, but at least it’s also erotic!

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Good Movies Galore

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Kathy

Emmanulle Beart as Manon

I have fond memories of Jean de Florette and its sequel, Manon of the Spring,which came out in 1986. The brilliant Yves Montand and Daniel Auteuil conspire against a thin, handsome (even with a hunchback!) Gerard Depardieu and, playing his daughter, the spectacularly beautiful Emmanuelle Beart, to acquire valuable land in gorgeous Provence in the 1920s. These films are suspenseful, funny, moving and lovely. (Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, Sat. 7:00 and 9:20;  Sun. 3:45 and 6:30.)

Riefenstahl and crew

Lovely also are Leni Riefenstahl’s documentaries about the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin. Part I, Festival of Nations (Thu. 6:45, Fri. 7:15), features Jesse Owens’ satisfying triumphs over his Aryan rivals in track and field. Part 2, Festival of Beauty (Thu. 9:00, Fri. 9:30), focuses on sailing, rowing, and, notably, diving. Riefenstahl was dubbed “Hitler’s propagandist” but always denied any knowledge of Nazi ideology or crimes. See her controversial movies for yourself.

The Cleveland Museum of Art also features some intriguing documentaries this week. Last year’s The Waiting Room focuses on one day in an Oakland, California, emergency room. Receiving stellar reviews, it made many top-ten lists. It plays Wed. at 6:30 and Fri. at 7:00. Wednesday’s show features a panel discussion after the film.

Hitler’s Children (2011) examines how grandchildren of some of Nazi Germany’s worst criminals have fared. It shows this Sunday at 1:30 and next Wednesday, March 20th, at 7:00.

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What We Talk about When We Talk about Education

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Kathy

 

John Holt (1923-1985)

For about seven years, I have taught a seminar at Case Western Reserve on progressive education and school reform. (Its formal title, believe it or not, is “Schoolhouse Rocked.”) At the beginning, I hoped to introduce my students to the liberal reformers of education I admired: John Dewey, Maria Montessori, John Holt, James Herndon, and Jonathan Kozol, for example. As time has passed, however, we’ve had to deal with other sorts of reform as they’ve arisen–first, No Child Left Behind, and, more recently, rigorous and highly disciplined charter schools.

A local Cleveland example is E Prep, an urban school which attempts to improve kids’ education with lots of structure. “Improving education,” in this context, means raising test scores. There’s some evidence that these schools do raise test scores, and thereby might provide city kids with a better chance at keeping up with their suburban peers and getting into college.

Here is a promotional video about the kindergarteners’ first days at Village Prep, the E-Prep school for younger children. My Case students–even after studying Montessori and “Trust the child,” after discussing the need for greater choices in high school, after writing about how hard it is to learn things you’re not interested in, and after debating the hazards of rewards and grades–almost universally approve of this video and this school’s approach. I don’t get it.

If this school helps urban kids have a better chance at life, then I have to agree. Some people insist that poor, urban kids require this kind of schooling. Even so, I feel like crying when I watch it. The rigid authoritarianism, lack of rationality (really, if you touch another kid in the hall, they’ll all fall down like dominoes?) and the assumption that you have to bribe kids (such a Byzantine system of stars, checks, and ice-cream scoops!) make me want to cry. This video always makes me sad, despite the kids’ undeniable charm.

Control. That’s what we’ve come to. Giving kids more freedom is not even on the table.

In contrast, consider how it was in 1971 when John Holt wrote the following passage in his book Freedom and Beyond.

“In a way this book marks the end of an argument. For some time I and others have been saying—some before I was born—that children are by nature smart, energetic, curious, eager to learn, and good at learning; that they do not need to be bribed and bullied to learn; that they learn best when they are happy, active, involved, and interested in what they are doing; that they learn least, or not at all, when they are bored, threatened, humiliated, frightened. Only a few years ago this was controversial, not to say radical talk. . . (O)n the whole these once radical and crazy ideas have become part of the conventional wisdom of education.”

Holt’s radical and crazy ideas have become radical and crazy once again, so much so you rarely even encounter them, and few educators I know have even heard of John Holt. That’s why I was thrilled and gratified to see this TED talk by Sugata Mitra, sent to me by a friend. He gave poor kids computers and then left them alone. Enjoy it, and think about the stunning implications of Mitra’s findings. Then let me know what you think.

 

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C’Est Finis

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Kathy

A period of my life has ended.

“You read so slowly! Pourquoi?”

At the beginning of Christmas break, around the second week of December, I began reading Les Miserables (1862), preparing to see the film (based on the musical, based on the book) over the holidays. I finished reading it about half an hour ago. I spent almost three months getting through Victor Hugo’s 1222 pages.

I’m a person who snaps her fingers at Moby-Dick. I recently reread Anna Karenina without breaking a sweat. I don’t mean to brag. I’m just saying that reading is what I do, and I can do it fast. I read books instead of washing floors, grading papers, and, alas, exercising.  I can’t sew or fix things or paint or solve quadratic equations. I can read.

So this three-month interval (notice I did not say slog) has humbled me. I read a couple of other books during this period, but Les Mis was always there, reproaching me from a living room table or crouching in my book bag, taunting me with all those pages, all those words. I counted them down. At one point, I told my husband with great satisfaction I had only five hundred pages to go. Then I realized what I had just said. After awhile, my husband commented he’d be so happy when my constant updates had ended.

The difficulty isn’t the length, per se. It’s the recurrent essays, apparent digressions that break up the story. Near the beginning, after the heart-rending death of Fantine, a section called “Cosette” begins. Not unreasonably, you expect to be reading about Fantine’s little daughter Cosette, but instead you confront 46 pages describing the Battle of Waterloo. Nevermind poor Napoleon–it almost broke my spirit, that section. Similarly, near the end, when Jean Valjean famously enters the sewers—just when you’re beginning to get page 1222 in your sights–there commences a 20-page discourse on the history and geography of the Paris sewers: directions, names of historical figures, windings and turnings, construction, Parisian streets unfamiliar to this American reader. Not to mention fetid rankness and noisome stenches.

Here’s the thing, though. It’s all worth it.

When you get to the good parts, they’re so very, very good that you’re glad you stuck with it. The relentless policeman Javert’s crisis near the end, for example, is a tour de force. In confronting ambiguity and paradox for the first time, Javert provides a parable for our polarized era. What? he says. Things are complicated? Morality is nuanced? His prey Jean Valjean is an impossible contradiction, a “beneficent malefactor.” A slave of simplistic rules, Javert can’t handle the complex truth.

But even in the taxing digressions, Hugo’s masterful writing eases the pain. “This madness, this terror, this falling to ruins of the highest bravery,” he writes of Waterloo, “which ever astonished history, can that be without cause? No. The shadow of an enormous right hand rests on Waterloo. It is the day of Destiny. A power above man controlled that day.” (From my translation by Charles E. Wilbour.) Hugo’s architectural, periodic sentences both flow and thrill.

Along the way, I admit to whining about Waterloo and the sewers. But throughout Les Miserables, I felt just as I was supposed to feel reading a book (or seeing a movie or listening to a symphony). I had placed myself in the hands of a great artist, with no need to second-guess or nit-pick or worry about loose ends. I trusted Victor Hugo’s genius and vision, and he proved me right, over and over again, straight to the bittersweet, exalted end.

I just read a masterpiece. Tell me about the last one you read (saw or heard)?

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