Manners and Decorum et al

As the world enters a new stage of trying to cope with a pandemic, it obviously affects everyone in many ways. I am choosing to continue my mulling (here) and writing (on WORD) as before, even as non-virtual life is changing by the hour. This space is the COVID19-free space. In front of the computer screen, this particular contagion is not a factor.

So on that ^ Note, allow me to reflect as before on what someday (hopefully soon) will once again seem central to sharing our public space.

~~~

When I was five years old, my father tried to persuade me that it was fine to eat a chicken drumstick with one’s hands.

“Even the queen of England does it,” he said.

Well, if she does it then it must be okay. We all know the royals set the standard, at least for table manners. So for the next ten years or so, I felt just fine picking hard-to-cut food off the plate using my hands.

Turns out, he was wrong. My father might have been thinking of her Majesty’s ancestor, Henry VIII (as depicted by Charles Laughton in a movie made long before I was born) who ate drumsticks with much fanfare in a scene for the ages.

But the queen, heavens, does not do that. At least not in public. My father gave me the wrong advice.

“So,” you say, “What’s the big deal? You got to eat with less sweat, after all.”

As I reflect on the matter of manners, I realize it is a big deal. It seems more pertinent now than ever, with the significant deterioration in public life of polite decorum. Disrespect starts somewhere in the heart, and once it’s allowed to seep into the waters of public discourse, there’s no slowing this gusher. We’re flooded, and drowning in our own muck.

This is just one of the reasons I don’t use four-letter-words and avoid hotheads when I can.

Teach them well, starting by example. Keep fingers clean. Learning to use a knife and fork takes some time and effort, but the result is a slowing down and added deliberate thoughtfulness. It’s what civilizing is about. That goes for all conduct.

And you know what? Everybody will get to eat while digesting more slowly.

NINE / ELEVEN

This Day in History

Any day before a reader was born is history.

If you write stories for children, (which, to me, means young readers/listeners up to the age of fourteen) September the eleventh two-thousand and one is history.

There are already some good Kidlit books that either tell of that day, or have it in the background of a story. I wrote one such, and my agent wondered if it was too soon. Less than six months later, a whole slew of children’s books came out telling of that day. It was not too soon.

It was a seismic shock for the United States, one whose reverberations are operational today. We fear depicting the religion in whose name the perverted individuals chose to act, because many innocent adherents should not be implicated. But if we tippy-toe around that, we can’t tell the story of that day honestly.

And if we tell it honestly, how do we tell it to a child?

For my grandparents’ generation, there was another day that lived in infamy. It was the day where Pearl Harbor, where most of the United States navy was docked, another nation whom we did not provoke chose to decimate the American fleet in a few hours.  Listen to the then president of the United States speaking to the nation here. Franklin Roosevelt said it clearly: December seventh nineteen-forty-one, a date that shall live in infamy.

The country of Japan is an ally now, after we defeated it. Few kids know that date. But it would not be farfetched to say that the events of that day are still reverberating in all we think, feel and do today.

I don’t know what we should do about nine-eleven, except that I am sure we should write about it, and tell young readers what happened. Best to do it with riveting stories, preferably engrossing fiction where imagined characters live through real events, because these are the stories kids read out of school.

Someday, through the haze of the passing time, we will not fear naming the perpetrators. We’ll be breaking bread with their grandchildren, and together we’ll confront new challenges.

But for now, today, nine eleven is still a date that lives in infamy.

May 22nd in History

I stay away from politics on the Internet, because I have found that is makes good people behave and talk like bad people. Sometimes very bad people.

If you have followed any of my posts for any length of time, you know my fascination with “this day in history.” Lots of things happened on May 22^nd, this date in history. But the most interesting will bring out the venom of the politicos.

May 22^nd 1799, Napoleon declared Jerusalem for the Jews. Anyone who knows anything knows that it is central to the Jewish ancestral tradition in a way it is to no other tradition. But, whoa, don’t start me on that one.

May 22^nd 1942 The Steel Workers Organizing Committee disbands, and a new trade union, the United Steelworkers, is formed. Looky here; unions were both the best thing and what built the American middle class, or a cancer on our country— depending how your politics navigates your mind. Please don’t start.

May 22^nd 2015, Ireland declared Gay Marriage legal by popular vote. I like that this was done by popular vote and not by judicial decree, because legal marriage is a “communal acknowledgement” of status rather than a personal feeling. But, please, don’t start me on that one. (Well, I was the one who started— so woe on me.)

So here are some I hope we can celebrate together without bringing out the trolls and poisons that hatch in the mud:

760 14th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet

1819 1st steam propelled vessel to cross Atlantic (Savannah leaves Ga)

1842 Farmers Lester Howe and Henry Wetsel discover Howe Caverns in New York State when they stumble upon a large gaping hole in the ground

^All on May 22^nd.

But I saved my favorite for last:

                 May 22^nd, 1849 Abraham Lincoln receives a patent (only US President to do so) for a device to lift a boat over shoals and obstructions..

Oh, I forgot. There are some who are still mad about Lincoln. I’ll celebrate anyway.

A Sign of Our Times

Or

A Sign for Our Times

Some folks put declarative signs on their lawns or windows. Signs in support of a political initiative/sentiment, or a candidate, or their aunt Ida.

Our public spaces are covered with signs, too. Those tell us what to buy and how much fun we’ll have when we do.

It’s a free country, so put ‘em up if that’s your thing. But it decidedly isn’t mine.

Frankly, I feel inundated. Flooded. Practically choked.

So you will forgive my delight when, while walking with a friend, I spotted this one—

Make of it what you will. That’s part of its beauty.

January 30, This Day in HISTORY

There is something ominously grim when I look at January 30^th’s notable marks. On this calendar day in 1933, Hitler was sworn as chancellor of Germany. On this calendar day in 1948, Gandhi was assassinated. On this calendar date in 1956, African-American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.'s home is bombed in retaliation for the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

That’s just for starters. On this date, also---

·         1925 – The Government of Turkey expels Patriarch Constantine VI from Istanbul.

·         1930 – The Politburo of the Soviet Union orders the extermination of the Kulaks.

·         1969 – The Beatles' last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London. The police break up the impromptu concert.

·         1972 – The Troubles: Bloody Sunday: British paratroopers open fire on anti-internment marchers in Derry, Northern Ireland, killing 13 people; another person later dies of injuries sustained.

·         1979 – A Varig Boeing 707-323C freighter disappears over the Pacific Ocean 30 minutes after taking off from Tokyo.

And so much more.

If this is your birthday, I apologize. I hope you celebrate with gusto and do something wonderful so the cloud hovering over this date lightens a little. Many small and a few great actions can make the kettle less black. Let’s polish it into a beautiful reflective silver shine.

I don’t know what is set in stone, predestined, or guided by unseen patterns. What I am sure of is that what we do matters.

History was. Now let’s make some.

This Day in History

Many things happened on this day in recorded history, some good and many bad. But I choose to focus on something great that happened this date a century and a half ago. I’m only sorry I’m a year late to commemorate the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary.

 

 

1866 US House of Representatives passes 14th Amendment. (Civil rights)

 

 

It is this amendment that finally fulfilled America’s declarations of independence, which stated all men were created equal and endowed by the creator to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (It would take a few more years before this would come to stand for all men and women.) It is the fourteenth amendment that made former slaves into full citizens.

 

 

Here is what section one of this amendment is says:

 

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

 

 

Aspects of this important constitutional clarification are debated even to this day. But most Americans hold it as part of the fabric that is our nation, one that is based on an idea, not on a nationality or racial ancestry or a specific religion.

There’s what to celebrate.

 

{From the front page of the Cleveland Leader June 14 1866}



SENSITIVITY READERS

Many say that you should only write about what you know, and others say you should write about what you want to know. I’m in the latter group.  I do stick with what I know, and know intimately, when it comes to the main character. This is essential for me even more when the story is written in first person, and the narrator is the main character.

But there are other characters, and they often come from other places, other faiths, even other times. Seen through the main character’s eyes-- the narrative voice remains an authentic observation of their “otherness.” But as readers are diverse, I always felt I should run a story with such characters by Beta Readers who would have known them intimately. 

One of my novels, set in the South, has a narrator. The narrator is an outsider, lands in the American South, and marvels at the difference of her northern California mind-set and the people and place she finds herself in. I ran many of the southern dialogue lines by a native of the specific area, and, once the second draft was done, I had the whole story read by my first Beta reader, a native of the American South.

This turned out to be insufficient. Another reader objected to the way a character spoke and acted. I revised, again. This time with a reader who was not quite from the same place in the south, but of the same race as the secondary character.

I have done similar things with other stories. I did not know there was a name for such readers, but I’ve learned. They are now called Sensitivity Readers. They will check the authenticity of voices and manners, because they know from the inside. At the same time, they will point out anything that strikes them as pointlessly offensive.

A simple internet search using this term will show not only that it’s established, but there are sites that hire such readers, vet them, and for a fee will connect writers to a specific need. I was ignorant that this was recognized and monetized, and had turned to friends or other writers with an exchange of reading their work-in-progress. I know what I don’t know, which is plenty, and I know feedback is invaluable.

In search of authenticity, I try to remember not to sanitize what real life sounds like. This is not about the PC police waving their badges.  At the very least, it is a good idea to run work by people of a different background and weigh their feedback. In the end the process is enriching well beyond the mining of my own mind.

A House Divided

You won’t find me making many, or any, political statements. Once I passed my younger youth, I no longer found sustenance in that arena, nor much deep wisdom in political discourse.  I’d go as far as to say that I watched good people become unkind and even senseless when they took to the barricades.

Unless you count love of country, you won’t get me clicking on likes or re-tweeting statements from politicos. They’ll have to have their revolutions without me.

But this is the season here in the U.S.A. So my one forage into the minefields is to suggest the absurdity of a statement I keep hearing variation of from many directions: “The country had never been more divided.”

HEHHH? We had a civil war, people!

In the Civil War of the 1860s-- 2% of Americans died. That would be the equivalent of six and a half million people today. That’s not counting the maimed, or the homes destroyed and the fields burned.

 

And the vitriol that is hurled with regularity every election cycle has, even in recent times, been more pungent. I suffer from many things, but amnesia isn’t one of them.

My only antidote is, in my personal and public conduct, to affect and maybe effect calm thoughtfulness.

We may have to wait until December for the next wave to pass.