Carol Bergman

In the United States, as soon as several inhabitants have taken an opinion or an idea they wish to promote in society, they seek each other out and unite together once they have made contact. From that moment, they are no longer isolated but have become a power seen from afar whose activities serve as an example and whose words are heeded.

 

 

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835-1840

 

 

Praise be, the dandelions have popped on the SUNY New Paltz,  NY campus and the ponds have been restocked with fish. Students are preparing for their final days of the semester and the academic year, and I am walking towards The Terrace to meet with Beth Albright, one of the founders of Ulster Corps, a consortium of volunteer organizations gathered today to discuss affordable housing initiatives in the county. The loss of federal funding simmers below the conversations as I try to persuade Beth to agree to an interview for a profile. How did she get into this altruistic work? What is her backstory?  She is self-effacing and distracted so we agree to postpone a decision about an interview. She promises she'll think about it. An on-the-record interview is a gift to the journalist and must never be forced. In the meantime, I plan to study volunteerism, its history and purpose in 21st century beleaguered America. So I will begin here, today, with this blog post.

 

I moved to the Hudson Valley in 2018 and had been a city dweller all my life, an activist, but not a volunteer in the American sense of the word.  I had always associated the word "volunteerism" with  President George H.W. Bush's "thousand points of light," which I read as a Republican administration's abnegation of responsibility. In other words, if citizens work gratis, the government won't have to pay for services.  For example, in 1736, Benjamin Franklin founded the first volunteer firehouse. Most fire fighters in the Hudson Valley are still volunteers who are on 24-hour call and hold day jobs to support themselves and their families. I pose the question: Is it a good idea to have volunteer first responders, or government funded professional first responders?  Or both, as needed?

 

I supposes I am ambivalent about volunteerism, and a democratic socialist at heart, my hopes for a future America closer to those of Bernie Sanders and OAC, both of whom believe in taxpayer supported universal health care, for example. But I also have memories of my doctor mother's volunteerism in the Mt. Sinai Hospital's Adolescent Health Clinic and with the Margaret Sanger Clinic, before it was Planned Parenthood. She had a successful, lucrative private practice, and two growing children which kept her busy. Yet she made a decision to give back. She was a refugee, and grateful for the safe haven and opportunity of America, in its glory days.

 

After the tragedy of the September 11 attacks, the American Red Cross reported processing 15,570 new volunteers. In the co-op where we lived, everyone helped workers who could not get home, and comforted frightened residents who lived alone. We met in the lobby, an ad hoc committee formed, and we organized. We walked down Second Avenue to donate blood; sadly it was not needed. These communal actions connected us and gave us purpose as citizens, neighbors and survivors. We formed a corps of volunteers organically, poised to help others in need. We were fearful, but unbowed, our spirits strengthened, our hope for the future intact. In the midst of an unspeakable atrocity, we carried on.

 

This post is dedicated to all the federal workers who have been terminated, in celebration of their service and courage.

 

… even this,
these little gestures that can re-birth a nation,
reconcile not only colors like blue and red,
but reconcile us one to the other.

 

— Marc Harshman, Dispatch From the Mountain State

 

 

Marc Harshman, the poet laureate of West Virginia, was raised in rural Indiana, has an MA from Yale Divinity School, and is practiced in performing his poetry in front of an audience however scant and comatose, his delivery saturated with heartfelt rousing intention. He wants us to wake up, not only to the natural world, but to our brethren, the person sitting to our right and to our left, literally and figuratively.

 

A  primary school teacher for many years, poetry was always, and still is, his passion though he's also written many childrens' books. It was a pleasant surprise to find him at my local library one evening as a guest of Next Years Words, a monthly prose and poetry reading that welcomes both published and novice writers. It's been a feature of the library's programming since 2015 and is still going strong, thanks to Susan Chute, one of its founders.

 

How sweet it is to experience poetry during these hard times. "It makes the unbearable bearable," Mark mumbled a bit sotto voce, between one poem and another. I heard the aside loud and clear and wanted to rise up and sing, as though I was in church. In normal times, such an impulse would have felt out of place in a sedate library setting, but not this week, this month, this day.

 

At some point Marc uttered the word "Appalachia," a reference to his rural upbringing and the geographical locus of his work. I thought of our vice president who was raised in the same/or similar geographical locus, and has  a (well-written) book now offered as a free download for those who may be curious or adoring. But that begins and ends the comparison between these two men, as writers, so I'll leave it there.

 

I have attempted poetry from time to time, have had a few published in literary journals, and collected them into a trilogy called Nomads.  Most of these poems are narrative, what a poet might call prosaic. I consider them prose poems or mini-stories.  I've performed them, and hosted an evening when actors performed them, but unlike Marc Harshman, ideas do not get laid out in my brain as poetry. I wouldn't presume to know what it feels like to write a poem that begins with an image, for example, and I'm admiring of poets who pierce our indifference and fear with words that fly off the page with a cadence and aliveness we cannot resist.

 

 

They say, as the gardener, so the garden.

 

― Aleksandar Hemon, The World and All That It Holds

 

 

It's April 11 as I begin this blog post, and it's snowing, the landscape transformed, the budding blossoms frozen in time. Though the storm was expected, the colder temperature was unexpected. Or maybe I wasn't paying attention to my weather apps. I have more than one, just to be certain…of the weather. It's an absurdity taken to its logical conclusion, as Gilbert and Sullivan might have said as they plotted one of their comic operas in a 19th century topsy turvy Victorian world where flirtation was considered reprehensible, woman to man that is. Ever so? Or flashes of light and enlightenment throughout the eons?

 

"Always the dominant male," my Canadian cousin, George, just told me on a FT call, if I heard his facetious tone correctly, "We have been living in a bubble in our lifetime." If I understand his implication, we evolve, and then we inevitably devolve. The trajectory towards enlightenment cannot strengthen or solidify; it constantly backslides. My historian husband describes these backslides as actions and reactions, political shifts, a  pendulum. But what happens when the pendulum gets stuck? How will it get unstuck? When, if ever, will evolution continue unobstructed?  That is my question today.

 

These past few weeks have all had a similar ambience—muddy, polluted--and a percussive beat—cruel, unforgiving, frightening. Maybe it is time to consult the I Ching. If we toss coins will we find some answers to our global strongman/strongmen dilemma, and its inevitable fervor for war? Shall we relinquish our futures to the fate of the toss?

 

Not a good idea.

 

Did I read somewhere that the White House rose garden has been obliterated with cement? If so, it's an evocative metaphor. In a recent dream I walked the perimeter of the cemented garden and wept. After this lamentation, I watered the roots of the dying roses on the mulch pile, and replanted them in Greenland.

 

We make things that we hope will be bigger than us, and then we're desolate when that's what they become.

 

- Richard Powers, Playground

 

 

 

I haven't been able to get into a Richard Powers book—audio or print—even though I know he is an author of the moment, and for the moment, so please excuse a quote from a review of  his most recent novel. It suits my cyber-luddite mood today. On Friday I either lost my phone, or it was stolen, probably the latter, troubling indeed, not to mention the trouble of restoring my mobile cyber life.  Two days later, the glitches continue. Most hilarious was a phone call I received from an unknown caller, followed by text messages:  

      

Don't you recognize my number?

       

No. Who are you?

       

Your daughter.

 

First glitch: My daughter's contact information was wiped. Second glitch, more serious: I did not have her phone number stored in my memory.  This is not good.

 

So I ask you, dear reader, how many phone numbers of those near and dear do you have stored in your personal neural pathways?

 

Technology evolves apace. Not that long ago I wondered about audio books and whether they are a good idea for writers. I have studied its effects on my students, and on me. Is listening the same as reading? If we do not have an auditory memory, how do we retain information, process an argument, or study how the book is made, what narrative devices are used, and so on.  I am still not persuaded that listening is truly reading and writers must read, and read deeply. Maybe a writer reading this will disabuse me of my skepticism. Maybe that writer is a musician with a strong auditory memory. Please post a comment if you are such a reader who listens to books.

 

And now we have AI which is quickly permeating the media landscape and our lives. My new phone is loaded with AI opportunities. Will our children ever be able to generate their own writing again? Will their spoken language suffer? Or will AI enhance their writing, their vocabulary, and their imaginations?  Once again, I am skeptical. Especially when I hear that adult friends have made use of the technology, already depend upon it, and are persuaded that it is miraculous. I have seen some of the samples of their AI generated  work. Most is awkward and shallow. But when I say, as gently as I can, "This needs revising," they are not pleased.  Nor am I that they are so smitten.

 

Not to mention the ethical issues, the disclaimer necessary when we are posting our writing, or publishing our writing.  Thus the banner I am introducing here to all my readers. My website is hosted by the Authors Guild, a venerable writers' organization, and this blog post is authored by me and me alone. I take responsibility for all its content, its point of view, and its skepticism.