Words for Wednesday

Spring

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –          

   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;          

   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush          

Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring          

The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; 

   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush          

   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush          

With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.          

What is all this juice and all this joy?          

   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning 

In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,          

   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,          

Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,          

   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.  

Picture found here.

Monday at the Movies

Episode One of the new PBS Series didn’t really grab me, but I’ll give it one more week. Did you see it? What did you think?

We Can So Do This

I may have told this story before, but after Trump got elected in 2016, Virginia had, as it always does, an election the next year. And people, especially women, were fired up. Maybe they’d never volunteered for a campaign before, but they were willing to volunteer now. I mean, a LOT of people were volunteering.

The Democratic Party in my county ran a couple of “hubs” in the weeks before the election. Generally, they were in someone’s large home and we were coordinating people who’d volunteered to do phone banking and people who’d volunteered to go door-to-door canvassing. I was sitting at the front table, checking people in, sending them to the right room, and then calling people who’d volunteered but hadn’t shown up.

One afternoon, a young woman came in. She was shaking, nearly in tears. She said she’d signed up to phone bank, and, yep, there she was on my list. But, she said, she’d been sitting in her car trying to talk herself into it and she just couldn’t. She couldn’t call strangers. She wanted to. She’d thought that maybe calling would be easier than canvassing. She believed the outcome of this election was crucial. But she couldn’t make herself do it. But, she told me, she’d decided that if she didn’t have the courage to phone bank, she was at least going to make herself come in and tell us that she couldn’t do it. By now, I think both of us were a bit teary-eyed.

My first reaction was to comfort her and I did begin saying that it was OK, we had others phone banking and I’d found that task scary myself the first few times I’d done it. (I’ve done it thousands of times since then, but I always have to talk myself into the first few calls. But you know, what are they going to do? Hang up on me? Start to argue or berate me before I hang up on them? Nah, I’ve dealt with lots worse than that from obnoxious judges, salesclerks, oncology docs.)

But suddenly, inspiration hit and I said to her, “Look, if you don’t want to, it’s OK, but in the kitchen, we have three women who are doing data entry. When canvassers come back with their address sheets, they’re updating the information to show who’s moved, etc. Which helps us out for the next election. You hardly have to interact with anyone at all. They’re really nice and pretty quiet. Can I just take you back and introduce you? If you want to leave, you can, no worries.”

She visibly relaxed. She took a breath. I saw her struggle for a minute, thinking about how much calmer she’s feel back in her car, but, then again, how much she wanted to turn her country around. “OK, I can do that,” she said. I took her back, introduced her to Dee, our “mother hen,” and said she’d like to help with data entry. They got her seated and started. About an hour later, I went back to get more coffee and she was typing away.

A few hours later, as we were winding up, she came out, smiling. She waved, I said, “thanks,” and she was on her way.

I don’t know if she ever volunteered for any campaign work again. But I know that, that afternoon, she screwed her courage to the sticking point and made a difference. I’d like to think it made it easier for her the next time.

And it taught me a lesson about meeting people where they are. I could have tried telling her how phone baking gets easier, how much we needed to reach voters for this election. But she’d already “used up her spoons” just coming in to let us know she wouldn’t be doing the shift she’d signed up for. She could have just turned her car around and been a no-show. She wouldn’t have been the only one. To this day, I remember the strength and courage she showed coming in to admit she couldn’t do what she’d wanted to do.

And today, I want to encourage you to do at least one thing that feels scary to you. Democracy is worth saving. Our environment is worth saving. Women’s rights are worth saving. Black lives are worth saving. Public education is worth saving. LGBTQ rights are worth saving. Libraries and books are worth saving. Pick your cause. Do one thing to save the world. It’s never been anything BUT us scared people walking each other home.

Also, please subscribe to Simon Rosenberg’s substack, Hopium Chronicles.

Picture by the blogger; if you copy, please link back.

Well . . .

Some of this is good advice. Some is dreck. How do you separate this stuff out?

Words for Wednesday

Good advice:

Monday at the Movies

Have you seen it? What did you think?

Words for Wednesday

Spring and All: III [The farmer in deep thought]

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

The farmer in deep thought

is pacing through the rain

among his blank fields, with

hands in pockets,

in his head

the harvest already planted.

A cold wind ruffles the water

among the browned weeds.

On all sides

the world rolls coldly away :

black orchards

darkened by the March clouds —

leaving room for thought.

Down past the brushwood

bristling by

the rainsluiced wagonroad

looms the artist figure of

the farmer — composing

— antagonist.

Picture found here.

Something Is Lost, But Something Is Found

Via Chas’ blog:

Athens has revived the Phallephoria, a festival of Dionysus. As the song says, “[He] will always carry on. . . . They will keep on speaking [his] name.”

Monday at the Movies

C’est vrai.

Some Writers Just Get Us

Theodora Goss has a delightful piece about Spring in Enchanted Living.

“[T]alking to inanimate objects is Witchcraft 101, and listening to them, really listening, is 102. . . . After all, being a witch isn’t just about knowing how to find significance in a deck of illustrated cards or how to heal a broken heart with a magical potion (alternatively, a cup of coffee and a good, long talk), or how to weave a spell out of spiderwebs and morning dew. It involves being in conversation with the whole of creation. . . . There you are, the witch in spring, walking through the woods with Archimedes or Jellylorum or Bob the Iguana on your shoulder.”

You’ll be glad to read the whole thing.

Picture found here.