Ann Nichols's Open Salon Blog

Consider the Bee......

Tue, 29 May 2012 10:05:04 -0400

There is much in this world that leads us to believe that as humans, we are superior to other life forms. We have opposable thumbs, and the kind of intellect and consciousness that allow us to build more than a hive or a dam and shape our future with intellect rather than instinct. We have religions that teach us that we are “stewards” of the earth, as if we had somehow been handed a title by an unseen force who we may actually have invented.

We do not, often, look at ants as they carry a fallen comrade across our bathroom floor and consider whether we would do the same. We worry about how they got into our house, and how best to kill them. No one is going to be bothered to carry every ant, spider and fly outside – they are, after all, encroaching in our homes with their dirty little feet. We particularly hate stinging creatures like bees, hornets, and wasps. We say things like “I see a purpose for bees, at least honey bees, but the other ones don’t do anything useful.”

We are irrational, sentimental and blind about the earth. We love our own pets, and Bambi, and national parks, the sight of an untrammeled field of Purple Vetch by the highway or a perfect ripe strawberry. We also develop land that is the habitat of creatures, mess up the food chain, pollute the air and water, cut down forests to make houses and paper, drive cars down the block, and encourage farmers to grow cattle feed and raise animals in tiny pens that make them better food sources for people. More meat, more eggs, more milk, because we are exercising stewardship and dominion over the land. Because the land belongs to us and it is our right. Right?

Still, we crave nature even as we continue to destroy it. We plant gardens, feed birds, travel to unspoiled places and marvel at the miracle of a naturally-occurring waterfall, a spider web glistening with dew, flowers that open only at night and seem to glow white in the moist darkness of a summer night. No matter how many Disney’s, Dollywood’s, Imax theaters, French restaurants and pristine golf courses we create, most of us still feel the pull of a giant Harvest moon, a meteor shower, or a story about the way that elephants mourn. We still feel small and insignificant as we look out on the ocean or up at a mountain range. We are not the boss of this earth, but participants in a cooperative venture, doing our part alongside the worms that turn the earth and the rivers that carry water. If anything, our ability to dream and plan makes us more responsible to protect and preserve our habitat rather than destroying it.

Which leads me to this video, made by a kind of remarkable person who I have never met, but who I believe to be a kindred spirit. I started the day reading about local farmers making a comeback growing not food, but corn and soy to feed Asian cattle, and I was sad. Then I read about legislation that would open the doors to wider use of genetically modified crops in my state and I was sadder. Then I saw this video, and I knew that there was still a balance in the world between those who would dominate and those who would coexist with respect, humility and compassion. Thank you, Algis Kemezys.

Summer: A Preview

Fri, 25 May 2012 09:05:40 -0400

Summer is my least favorite season. I am a ghostly pale person, I sweat easily, and I do not garden successfully. I am allergic to chlorine and can’t spend days by the pool without breaking out in hives, and I am not generally given to hiking, camping, kayaking or doing any of those other things that involve being outside, sweating, and getting burned. I complain a lot about the heat, which may explain why I often find myself alone in my air conditioned house drinking iced tea and reading.

Today, though, today it was 80 degrees after an interminable and bitterly cold winter. Stepping outside tentatively in my cotton skirt and flip flops, I was overwhelmed by sense memories, good ones, the kind that made me sit down on the peeling porch steps and savor them. As the hair at the back of my neck coiled inexorably into ringlets, and the warm air extended its seductive fingers to touch parts of me that have not been unwrapped in public for five months, it seemed that maybe I didn’t hate summer any more.

I remembered all of the Only Summer things, the Farmer’s Market on Sunday morning, bags full of vegetable love in the form of tiny Patty Pan squash, gritty zucchini, scallions with shining white bulbs, garlic scapes, baby eggplants, tiny and fiery Hmong peppers, and the tomatoes, oh Lord the tomatoes in their juicy, flashy glory. The fruit, too, cantaloupes, Honeydew, watermelons, and berries, nothing in a plastic box from California, strawberries that have a smell and can make strong men tremble as they offer up their sweet/tart essence. I think about cooking in my summer kitchen, window open, Janis and Jami through the speakers, a little buzzed, very happy, asking the world to “take another little piece of my heart, now baby” as I bless fresh mozzarella and heirloom tomatoes with a chiffonadeof basil and a drizzle of olive oil. I wonder why I love cooking most in summer, it seems backwards, I should cherish the heat and coziness when it’s cold outside but the truth, the truth is that I am happiest cooking the crispest, juiciest, most potent version of everything under the sun, in my flip flops, when the sun is heading out for the evening.

I do adore my flip flops, which I keep in a basket so that I can pick the right color and height for any occasion. I paint my toenails luscious colors in the summer: mango, azure, spring green, and the color of ripe strawberries. I wear skirts so light that they barely touch skin, tissue weight T-shirts, and sandals. It’s hot, and there’s a reason, I think, that “hot” is a synonym for “sexy;” it is totally sensual to be almost barrier-free in the warm, moist air, open to the universe without layers of coats, sweaters, boots and socks. There is a conspiracy of the elements to make me feel fully alive, to make my hair curl and grow wild and to give me a perpetual, dewy flush. Winter is about drawing inward and keeping warm, Fall is about brisk new beginnings, and spring is frail, pastel, and gentle. Summer is about opening out, pulsing with ripeness, full bloom, and the headiness of so many things alive at one time. It is intoxicating.

It’s not really summer; this was just a preview. Tomorrow it will cool down again, for a while, but it’s coming, another summer, in all it’s ripe and languid glory. Maybe this year, I’ll surrender, balance the discomfort of sweat against the ecstasy of a cool shower, and the mosquito bites against the thrill of sitting on the porch waiting for a thunderstorm to break the tension in the air. I think I’m going to like it, this time.

When Lax Parenting Ruins Nice Restaurants

Wed, 23 May 2012 09:05:28 -0400

Last night we went out to dinner at a low-key sports bar/restaurant. As we ordered, a family appeared: an extraordinarily pregnant mother, a father, grandparents and what appeared to be twins about three years old. One was wailing on the way in, and later there was whining, running around, jumping on the banquette seats, and a loud war over the crayons provided by the waitress. Their seating arrangement seemed odd to me, in terms of small-child wrangling; mom, dad and grandpa sat at one table leaving grandma and the kids in a booth. Mom’s back was to her progeny, and dad seemed to be surrounded by some manner of invisible barrier that prevented him from seeing, hearing, or jumping up to give grandma a much needed assist.

I love children. My niece and nephews believe that I am a child because I am not very grown up, and I count several people under the age of ten among my dearest friends. I have also been the mother of a young child, as the result of which I feel deep compassion for anyone whose infant decompensates in the middle of grocery shopping or whose toddler kicks and wails while boarding a plane. I have been that mother. Babies and toddlers are not yet responsible for their actions, and if a parent has made sure that no one is wet, hungry, or missing a nap they have done the best that they can. I do not cherish the idea of a peaceful, sanitized landscape in which children are banned because they bother people.

However, and this is a big however, children need to be taught manners, including restaurant manners, and three is old enough. (Actually, two is old enough to start). Sure, you can get takeout when you just need dinner in a hurry, but if you never take your child into a real, non-fast-food restaurant and talk about what’s expected, they tend to scream, cry and jump on seats if they are already so inclined. It is your job, as a parent, to teach them, even if it cuts into your dining pleasure.

I remember being expected to sit at restaurant tables for seemingly endless periods while the grownups drank coffee and talked; we learned early on to sit quietly, amuse ourselves and be civilized. Both my brother and I were, at least once, removed by a parent and taken to sit in the car because we were loud, hysterical or otherwise massively annoying. Note, here, that my parents realized the necessity of taking one for the team so that a restaurant full of innocent people could be saved.

I also remember teaching my son about restaurant dining. First, we made sure that he was well-rested, and that we had an ample supply of diapers, snacks and small diversions. If we knew he was teething, hadn’t napped or was otherwise incapable of being charming we stayed home. When he was good to go, we started lessons about staying in ones’ seat, not throwing things, and the necessity of going immediately outside if there was audible whining or complaining. As he got older we taught him to ask the waitperson politely for what he wanted to eat, and that if he made a mess of straw papers and crumbs that some nice person had to clean up after him. We also spoke often about the fact that whining, crying, screaming and other kinds of carrying on were very unkind to all of the other people who wanted to talk quietly and eat their food. The hardest times, actually, involved the lure of other children who were behaving badly. On those occasions we had to hold the line and explain that those weren’t “bad” kids, but that what they were doing was not what we chose to do, and that it was very sad that they were bothering people.

You know what? It worked. It was tough. My husband and I each missed out on some things, we picked up a lot of crumbs and wrappers, and we had to forego our own conversational whims in order to focus on the task of teaching good restaurant behavior, but it worked. By the time he was four or five Sam was regularly receiving compliments for ordering in an adult way and being polite to (sadly) astonished waitpersons. He was still a little boy, and there was no mistaking him for Lord Fauntleroy, but he was civilized and we were proud of him. I would add that I know many other children who are more than capable of behaving nicely in a restaurant, and in every case it is because someone made the effort to teach them that there are other people in the world and that it is necessary and kind to think of their welfare and happiness.

So in closing, I exhort the young parents of the world as follows: please bring your children out to restaurants so that we may all admire and be energized by their beauty and vitality. Also, please use the experience of dining in public as an opportunity to teach first lessons about self-control, consideration of others, and the swift reality of consequences for uncivilized behavior. If you bring your kids out when they are exhausted, cranky, or undisciplined, and you allow them to ruin dinner for thirty other people so that you can relax and have a burger while they scream and run wild, it is not your children who deserve the glares, whispers and head shakes. It’s you, and you can totally do better.

Forgiveness

Tue, 22 May 2012 09:05:48 -0400

It’s a familiar story: young men barely out of high school are horsing around with a car/loaded gun/case of grain alcohol/unsafe balcony or some combination thereof, and one of them ends up dead. In the local story it was two 20-year-old “men” fooling around with a loaded pellet gun and smoking synthetic marijuana four days before Christmas. One shot the other, who died of internal injuries. They were roommates, they were close friends, and I suspect that neither of them had any idea that you could actually kill someone with a pellet gun.

As the mother of a fifteen-year-old boy I read the original reports of this tragedy thinking that, given the inherent stupidity of most young men, I could easily be the mother of the shooter or the victim. My son is not of the “no thank you, Ned; if I have a drink my mum will be cross” variety. He is a full-tilt, incautious, heedless, energetic, juvenile embracer of dumb ideas, and also a person who has difficulty saying “no” if it disappoints a friend. When the death occurred, I read the news stories and imagined myself first as the mother of the shooter and then as the mother of the victim. It was not a stretch in either case. It made me weep, then, sitting on the couch in my pajamas. I wept for the family whose son was so foolishly lost, I wept for the boy sitting in jail having shot his best friend, and I wept because it is such a terrifying, uncertain thing to love a child growing up and away from the perceived shelter of home.

This morning there was a story about the sentencing in the case. The shooter was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to at least three years in prison plus thousands of dollars in restitution. This seemed fair, if somewhat sad; manslaughter encompasses causing the death of another without intention but while acting recklessly. A crime was committed, and the law of this jurisdiction requires that the guilty party be punished.

As it turns out, the shooter had a very difficult early life. He was placed in foster care at the age of 8, returned by the fostering family and then placed with a foster parent who was convicted of photographing minors and selling their pictures on the internet. This was a kid who never had much of a chance, and whose bond with the victim was probably the most sustaining and important relationship in his life. The judge, a wise woman with children of her own, gave the lightest possible sentence because in her opinion it was “what the victim would have wanted.” They were friends, they were both smoking the same stuff and playing with the same gun, and it could have gone either way.

Then there was the part of the story that stopped me cold. The victim’s mother was quoted as saying that the shooter should have received the maximum sentence, and that she had not wanted her son to move in with him because of his background. “He told me ‘he’s not that bad, mom’” she said. I got that part. I imagined my own son moving in with the kind of “sad case” friend he has been making since second grade. Would I try to stop him? I might, if I thought that there was something in the other young man’s baggage that was dangerous. If he had a record of violence, if I knew there was a substance abuse issue, or even if there was a high likelihood of appearances by sketchy family members I would try to dissuade him.

Then there’s that other thing. If something terrible, unimaginable happened and I lost my own boy in a similar accident would I want maximum retribution? Would it make me feel better for even a single second to know that some other boy was spending years in prison? I can’t know, but I’m pretty sure that retribution would not bring me a moment’s peace. I have never felt that impulse for revenge, even when I have been grievously wronged and had every right to wish for my pain to be felt by the wrongdoer. It’s not religious doctrine, or ethics that shapes my feelings; it’s a matter of hard wiring. I am a forgiver, always conscious of my own failings and transgressions. Often, in my experience, the person who harms me is driven by demons so insidious and cruel that refusing forgiveness would be both pointless and immoral. It would not hurt that person, and it would not help me to heal.

And so I can still look at this tragedy and say to myself “there but for the grace of God goes my family.” I have wept again, for the boy sitting in prison with nothing but time to think about the fact that he killed his best friend, and I have wept for the family that lost a son. I have faced again the reality that we cannot wrap our beloved children in bubble wrap and protect them from the dangers of this world. I have felt wrenching pity for a woman who genuinely believes that her sorrow would be assuaged by an eye for an eye, the lost life of another boy to compensate her for the hole in her own grieving heart. I have, I admit, judged her for failing to see that the shooter is also a victim in need of love and compassion.

It is impossible to imagine the savage pain that woman feels, or how blindly she grasps for anything that might give even a moment of relief. Perhaps, in time, she will see that there is still a boy, a living boy who has no family and whose life might be immeasurably improved by forgiveness. Maybe her heart will remain hard, and the scab of bitterness and anger will make her feel safe and righteous in a world she no longer recognizes.

I don’t understand her, but I forgive her.

Facebook: There's a Reason It's Called a "Social Network"

Fri, 11 May 2012 11:05:16 -0400

Earlier this week a Facebook friend posted both a status and a checklist indicating that various things are “Facebook Abuse.” These things include, but are not limited to, “overposting,” and “inspirational quotes.” This person objects, specifically, to the posting of quotations superimposed on a photo or drawing that is not created and written by the poster.

All week I have stewed about this. As I have said before, Facebook is my playground. I try to be somewhat careful not to get myself fired, unfriended, or added to lists of those plotting to overthrow the United States, but other than that…all bets are off. I suspect that everyone has things on Facebook that they like and things on Facebook that they hate. I don’t mind the inspirational or humorous quotes, and I am rarely concerned about the number of statuses someone else posts in a day. If I find the person annoying, I “hide” them as I have hidden game requests and horoscopes. My favorite things are updates that give me news or insight into the mental state of my “friends,” tips of various kinds, and articles on subjects of interest.

Although I read some political pieces, I mostly think that posters are preaching vigorously to the choir; no one I know has ever been led to change their mind on any serious political or social issue because 500 articles on the topic went through their feed. If anything, I have seen people become argumentative and more deeply entrenched. That’s fine as far as it goes, but let’s be honest about whether we are out to stir the pot or believe that we are changing hearts and minds. I have gained information and depth of perspective from a handful of extraordinarily well-written political posts, but I am under no illusion that posting them myself would convert or straighten out those among my family and friends on Facebook who are otherwise inclined. They would simply view me as self-righteous and (still) wrong.

Here’s the thing, the bottom line, the kernel of truth that drives me to write this post at breakneck speed before I take my mother to lunch: Facebook was created as a social network for college students to connect, hook up, and exchange banal, obscene or alcohol-fueled “thoughts.” It can be a lot of things, a way to crowd-source opinion, a political soapbox, a place to play games, or a way to find and stay in touch with far away loved ones. Its purpose, however, in “the mind of the maker,” was that it be used by people to entertain themselves while making money for the little men behind the curtain. End of story. No one is required to be on Facebook, no one using Facebook is required to read or look at anything they choose not to see (except for the ads), and there are no rules besides the site’s terms of use. There are things to worry about as a Facebook user, like privacy, and the selling of personal data, but being monitored, judged and dunned by ones’ “friends” because one is insufficiently high-minded or original is not a thing I’m willing to worry about.

Bottom line: If I want to post something totally uninteresting every five minutes all day long, you can hide me. If the things on my timeline do not suit your high standards for critical thinking, you needn’t look at them. If I whine, if I post inspirational quotes, if I post every day about what I made for dinner…you can “unfriend” me and be spared the acute and searing agony of my misuse of Facebook. I’m off to find some cute pictures of cats.