Remembering the passion

I’ve been a passionate person for most of my life. In high school I was passionate about people: my oldest friends, Ricky and Don, my senior year “crush” Artie, my girlfriend Tina. Freshman year at Notre Dame brought a non-stop parade of wonderful new friends I was passionate about, and during second semester my first political passion: the horrifying poverty that people endured in Chicago.

By sophomore year fighting poverty had become such a passion that I dropped out of school and joined VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), determined to save the world.

At the same time the anti-war movement engulfed America and I was passionate about stopping the killing in Vietnam. I was tear gassed at the demonstrations against the war during the Chicago Democratic National Convention of 1968 and, two years later I was ready to burn down Notre Dame’s ROTC building after the murders at Kent State.

After an intense winter in Vermont, where my passions ran to the hedonistic side of my personality, I moved back to Richmond and was soon involved in the gay rights struggle, passionately fighting Virginia Commonwealth University on behalf of the Gay Alliance of Students.

Since the culmination of that struggle my passions have been channeled less into “doing” and more into “writing,” as in, checks to groups I support. I don’t apologize for that; important causes need both foot soldiers and donors.

But there’s a person who, for longer than my tale, has been giving both of herself and of her resources. She has been on the front lines of the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement and has been fighting for the rights of the oppressed wherever they may be.

She has sung passionately for decades, adding countless classics to the library of protest music; I cherish her versions of There But for Fortune, The Story of Bangladesh, Joe Hill, The Altar Boy and the Thief, We Shall Overcome, Guantanamara, Heaven Help Us All and I Pity the Poor Immigrant to name a scant few.

I speak of course of the legendary and brilliant Joan Baez. It was my great pleasure to hear her in concert again last night. She inspired me, shamed me, warmed me and thrilled me; she of course made me cry too. She is a living legend, an American treasure who has truly remained Forever Young.

From Joan Baez’s website:

Like most of the people in the world, I am stunned and heartbroken by the merciless violence inflicted by ISIS in Paris, Baghdad, Beirut, and beyond. 

I've always considered France to be my second country, and I ache for the city of Paris. I also lived in Baghdad when I was young, and share equal sorrow for the beleaguered countries of the Middle East. 

The rampant violence erupting now is largely the result of a legacy handed down from the US led invasion of Iraq. Without this deadly move and its continuing path of destruction, there would be no ISIS. In the same way, without the US support of Mujahideen in Afghanistan and military presence in Saudi Arabia, there would have been no Al Qaeda. And let us not forget the fuel to the fire effect of our devastating drone war. 

Even when our governments engage in the tempting folly of revenge, we the people must remind them that the original enemies are not the population, but dreams of empire, greed, and religious extremism on all sides. If there are to be any remedies against escalating violence, we need to not shy away from understanding what has created the level of fanaticism and hatred we are seeing, taking responsibility for our own ignorance, and mourning the lives lost. 

The Holy Quran (5:32) says, "Whoever kills an innocent person is as if he killed all of humanity." In the Gospels, Jesus said, "Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Matthew 26 52-54), and Gandhi, who had successfully wielded nonviolence against the British Empire said, "an eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." There are seeds for peace in all religions, and avenging atrocities with atrocities serves no one. 

As Gandhi also said, "If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him...we need not wait to see what others do." 

So I am heartened to see, in contrast to the horror and bloodshed, the courage, compassion, and human kindness demonstrated by millions of people around the world who are in mourning, with flowers, prayers, candles and their own volunteered blood. 

Today, I am Paris, I am Beirut, I am Baghdad, and beyond… 

--Joan Baez

Fountain pens and the devil; letters and absurdity

I attended Catholic schools for a bit over four years. Some of third grade, all of fourth through sixth, and then tenth grade found me cowering in fear of various nuns and priests. For the most part it was bearable and, in fact, I lovingly remember the sixth grade nun who taught me all I’ve ever needed to know about English grammar. (I also remember my fifth grade teacher; I disliked her so much that I threw away the end-of-year gift my mother had wrapped for her – I’ll probably burn in hell for that.)

Another thing I remember is that we were not allowed to use ballpoint pens. Pencils were fine for math work but everything else, at least everything that was to be turned in, was to be written with a fountain pen. I never understood that. Were ballpoints somehow instruments of the devil? Would we not learn if we wrote with them? Was the road to heaven painted with liquid ink?

These questions, unlike those in the Baltimore Catechism that we copied out nightly, were unanswerable. We were told “no ballpoints,” so of course no ballpoints it was.

One result of this odd prohibition is that I have always since loved fountain pens and have always kept several. All of my journals are written with them; all serious letters are as well. I would never dream of writing a thank you note with anything other than a fountain pen.

I hope that's a pencil in her hand.

Last night in fact I wrote two brief thank you notes, both to friends who live in my town, Woodbridge, CT. According to Google maps, one lives 3.9 miles from my house, the other 3.7. I dropped the letters off at the Woodbridge Post Office this morning and decided to pop in and ask whether there was any chance they’d be delivered today – it was not quite 9am and I wondered if the trucks had already been loaded.

“Oh no, not today, not tomorrow either. These have to go to Hartford first, then get sent back here,” said the pleasant postal person.

[Pause a moment for jaw to drop.]

Hartford, according once again to Mr. Google, is 43.2 miles away. That’s an eighty-six mile round trip my letters must take, just to end up less than four miles away.

And we wonder why the USPS is hemorrhaging money? Absurd is the only applicable word. It might have been silly, or odd, that we had to use fountain pens in the fifties, but it was not absurd. And letters, whether written with ballpoints or fountain pens, got where they were going much more expediently.