Fiction telling real tales

Last week with the 9th grade we looked at how what happens in dystopian fiction can also happen in our own world.

Of Windows and Doors illustration

This weekend's reading and viewing has reiterated the power of fiction/art to hold up a mirror to contemporary society.

First, the short story "Of Windows and Doors" provides a gently horrible episode in a (Syrian?) city under Islamist rule, and the efforts of a young couple to escape the city with the help of plentifully remunerated "agents". I learned more, through feeling and through imagery, of the experience of being under siege, from reading this story than I have through dozens of BBC news segments on contested cities in the Middle East.

There is a moment in the story when you think the plot line will delve decidedly into fiction (when the rumors of doors that lead to foreign places start to become real to the city's residents). As you read on, you realize that the story of the magical doors is true, but you also realize that the improbability of such doors is quite possible, and doesn't, in the end, strain credulity. It seems to me a masterful playing with the edge between make believe and real life, as if the story asks, "Doesn't make believe and the fantastical have a real role in our lives? Don't we live and die based on unreal narratives?"

The second tale was of Fannie Lou Hamer, a civil rights activist in Mississippi, born in 1917, the 20th child of a sharecropping family who was fired for registering to vote, and dedicated her public life to helping blacks register, despite fierce Jim Crow laws and discrimination that left so many dead.

This image, part of the Fannie Lou Hamer show, reminded me of the New
Yorker illustration of the blown-out door. This is the Freedom Rider Bus
that was bombed in 1961.

The retelling, a one-woman show and a fundraiser for Richmond's Townsend Community Center, was terrific, and introduced me, through a fictionalized account, to a remarkable woman, who confirms my theory that there are Jesuses in every era - those who lovingly and unquestioningly challenge injustice and face insult, injury and death with faith and courage.

Retelling history, and Aram Khatchaturian

In a recently explored passage of Fahrenheit 451, the protagonist questions his firefighting profession in front of his boss Beatty.

"Was-was it always like this? The firehouse, our work? I mean, well, once upon a time..."
"Once upon a time!" Beatty said. "What kind of talk is THAT?"
Fool, thought Montag to himself, you'll give it away. At the last fire, a book of fairy tales, he'd glanced at a single line. "I mean," he said, "in the old days, before homes were completely fireproofed " Suddenly it seemed a much younger voice was speaking for him. He opened his mouth and it was Clarisse McClellan saying, "Didn't firemen prevent fires rather than stoke them up and get them going?"
"That's rich!" Stoneman and Black drew forth their rulebooks, which also contained brief histories of the Firemen of America, and laid them out where Montag, though long familiar with them, might read:
"Established, 1790, to burn English-influenced books in the Colonies. First Fireman: Benjamin Franklin."


We reached the consensus that history had been rewritten. We asked why history might be rewritten. They said "To get people to follow you. To make yourself seem better than you are. To act as if what you're doing is the norm, something that's always been done."



Today, to follow up our discussion of a dystopian fictional world, we looked at rewriting of history in US history and the present: The story of Thanksgiving. They looked at textbook excerpts, bits of John Smith's journal, videos for school children, children's books (illustrated) youtube videos made by native folks, they listened to speeches by native folks

 - it was too many texts for one day, that I acknowledge - 

and they were asked to consider who the purpose and the audience for these texts were. They were asked to compare histories. These are some of the interesting questions that emerged:

- Why is the version told to school children so different?
(Because kids can't handle the violence and wouldn't understand the concepts of death and slavery).
- Is it all right that kids get the sugar coated version? 
(Yes, because they'll learn the right one when they grow up). 
- When are they old enough to learn the truth?
(Middle school)
- How will they learn the true story?
(Various answers, most being "Their parents. Their teachers. One person said "They'll look it up."
- If we only know one version of the story, how do we know to look it up to find out alternatives?
....silence.

Tomorrow I hope to reiterate with them that there is a shared responsibility to find out and preserve the truth. We need to have multiple voices in print (not just the fireman's manual of the story). We also need to accept our own responsibility - yes it's up to parents and teachers to tell us the truth, but we also need to be critical readers ourselves and demand multiple perspectives on an issue.

I was surprised how little they seemed to know about the true nature of relations between the native Americans and the pilgrims. Many of them, when asked at the beginning of the class for their understanding of the history of Thanksgiving, gave the sterile version - the two sides exchanged tricks on how to survive the winter, and celebrated with a harvest meal. I will find out tomorrow during the debrief how they felt the activity went.

Here's a piece of true history, though there are no other witnesses for you to compare my story with. 

When I was in elementary and middle school, I took piano lessons with a marvelous teacher named Deb. I played a piece called (by the editor of my book, at least) "Ivan Sings" by Aram Khatchturian. I was obsessed with it, and after all these years it remains one of the two pieces I can still play by memory. It is slow, and sad, even mournful. I always slowed down the tempo, and drew out the phrases that tugged at heartstrings. My household must have felt like Marianne Dashwood's household when she continued playing a funeral soundtrack after her father had died.

Aram Khatchaturian in 1964.

Tonight I was listening to Performance Today, one of the greatest programs on Public Radio, for the life it breathes into classical music and its composers and context (if I could do for literature in my classroom what Fred Child does for classical music on the air, I would be happy). The first piece of the house was a lullaby by the same Khatchaturian, from his ballet Gayane. This link on youtube plays a slightly slower version than was on the episode, which can be found here.

I cannot believe how lucky I am that I get to come home and listen to music like this. 

Incidentally, Khatchaturian was once censured and banned as an unacceptable form of music in the Soviet Union, (he was Armenian). Here's the section from wikipedia:

Denunciation and restoration (1948)

In mid-December 1947, the Department for Agitation and Propaganda (better known as Agitprop) submitted to Andrei Zhdanov, the secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee, a document on the "shortcomings" in the development of Soviet music. On 10–13 January 1948, a conference was held at the Kremlin in the presence of seventy musicians, composers, conductors and others who were confronted by Zhdanov:^[39]

We will consider that if these comrades Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Myaskovsky, Khachaturian, Kabalevsky and Shebalin namely who are the principal and leading figures of the formalist direction in music. And that direction is fundamentally incorrect.

Thus, Khachaturian and other leading composers were denounced by the Communist Party as followers of the alleged formalism^[15] (i.e. "[a type of] music that was considered too advanced or difficult for the masses to enjoy")^[6] and their music was dubbed "anti-people".^[40] It was the Symphonic Poem (1947), later titled the Third Symphony, that officially earned Khachaturian the wrath of the Party.^[39][41] Ironically, he wrote the work as a tribute to the 30th anniversary of the October Revolution.^[42] He stated: "I wanted to write the kind of composition in which the public would feel my unwritten program without an announcement. I wanted this work to express the Soviet people's joy and pride in their great and mighty country."^[43]

Musicologist Blair Johnston believes that his "music contained few, if any, of the objectionable traits found in the music of some of his more adventuresome colleagues. In retrospect, it was most likely Khachaturian's administrative role in the Union [of Soviet Composers], perceived by the government as a bastion of politically incorrect music, and not his music as such, which earned him a place on the black list of 1948."^[44] In March 1948,^[25] Khachaturian "made a very full and humble apology for his artistic "errors" following the Zhdanov decree; his musical style, however, underwent no changes."^[44] He was sent to Armenia as a "punishment",^[15] and continued to be censured.^[25] By December 1948,^[25] he was "restored to favor later that year when he was praised for his film biography of Lenin.

He first performed at the Moscow Art Theater, which I walked past several times in Moscow last spring, and which had and still has a reputation for playing adventurous and avant garde art. 

The President's Power

When my mentor teacher and I opened the floor on Wednesday for people to share their thoughts and questions about the election and the president elect, one question that came up in every class was: What can the president do? Can he really build a wall? What can he do without the approval of Congress? 

I was at somewhat a loss of what to say. I don't know how far executive orders can go. I also don't know how much a Republican-controlled House and Senate will provide a significant "check" to presidential power. 

Kirk Johnson

I'd been thinking about this questions a good deal when I listened to this episode of This American Life, first broadcast in 2013, about a man, Kirk Johnson, who unwittingly found himself enmeshed in an effort to help Iraqis who has worked with the US in Iraq during the war, and who were now seeking an accelerated path to US citizenship to escape the threat that continuing to live amongst the US's enemies in Iraq posed. 

Johnson was at the same time successful and unsuccessful. He worked with senators, including Ted Kennedy, to pass a law that provided 25,000 immigrant slots to people employed by the US in Iraq. Bush administration officials made it almost impossible for these people to actually come to the US. Very few cases were processed, and Johnson's book details the frustrations of one man, alias Omar, trying to work with the bureaucracy that should have granted him asylum. 

The episode relates how it would have taken President Bush or Obama to issue an executive order to air-lift Iraqis to a secure military base outside the US where they could be screened. This is called the "Guam Option". It had been done before. Johnson's point is, the president has to act first, calling on the military to do the heavy lifting: getting the Iraqis out of Iraq. Then the bureaucracies can do their screening work. 

When the episode was published, it was just after the Boston Marathon bombings, and Johnson was concerned that efforts on a new Visa piece of legislation would be stymied by the anti-muslim backlash that promised to follow the bombings. 

This is one thing the president can do: make decisions that help us behave like neighbors of good integrity on the international stage. Britain, Australia, Denmark, he says, have all done the responsible thing and made sure that their allies from war time are safe outside the countries where they risked their lives to help the US forces. 

I cannot imagine our president elect making a decision to make immigration easier for any Muslim, regardless of whether he or she helped the US overseas. This is a small answer to the question of what the president can do, but it feels substantial in that it represents an area of governance that I've certainly never thought about. There must be hundreds of such areas. 

Lit, art, and music

I feel as though we live in a wonderful world. Sitting in my Richmond apartment, I can access world-class lit, art and music, all in one evening. 

Art: 

The other day my neighbor lent me a coffee table. I suddenly, and for the first time in my life, had the opportunity to have coffee table books. I love coffee table books. I didn't really want to buy expensive books that would just sit around and then have to be lugged to a new location next year. 

I went to Earlham's library and browsed the fine art books. I took down two that caught my eye: 

O'Keefe and Texas

This has simple, brightly colored paintings by O'Keefe during an evidently prolific and influential period that she spent in Texas. I've been leaving it open to a different page each day, which has been nice. I know nothing about O'Keefe's life or work and haven't read the essays yet. 






Women Impressionists is the other book. 


The first artist featured, Berthe Morisot, is one I've never heard of. Each page provides another work, housed in a different museum or gallery, which it would take years to visit, and yet here I am seeing them all in a few short minutes. 

"The young woman at a window in Summer" might
want to venture beyond the window pane today.

Her work is beautiful, but it renders me sad and physically uncomfortable because of its portrayals of women in the 19th century, which looks like a very uncomfortable century. The clothes they are wearing are not to be borne. Not only that, but the women look so intensely bored with lives of confinement and leisure. 

They remind me of what Elinor Dashwood says to Mr. Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility: 

"You talk of feeling idle and useless. Imagine how that is compounded when one has no hope and no choice of any occupation whatsoever." 

Thus seems to be the fate of the women in many of Berthe's paintings. What a relief it was to turn the page eventually and see a peasant woman in reasonable clothes, bearing a bowl of milk, ostensibly in the middle of some task. 

"The Milk Bowl" is a relief

Lit: 

Today we read Fahrenheit 451's opening passages. I'll just add here the passage we asked our final question about: 

They walked the rest of the way in silence, hers thoughtful, his a kind of clenching and uncomfortable silence in which he shot her accusing glances.

This is after Clarisse and Montag have had their opening conversation. I asked the students why the silence might be described like this. Sixth period rocked it. They said she was making him uncomfortable because he knew that everything she was saying was true, but he didn't want it to be true. He felt, they added, that she knew him too well, and could see through his facade too quickly. 

I worried this summer that there wouldn't be enough depth to mine with this book. That may be a concern with period six, because they are so clever (rather like 12e last year in Ramallah). But the other classes took much longer to come to much less profound conclusions about Clarisse's effect on Montag. This book may provide just the right amount of challenge for them. 

Music: 

Performance Today is a gift everyday, but today I particularly liked this hour for its feature by Max Bruch: Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola and Piano, Op. 83; No. 1 in a minor: Andante  

Here's the link to the episode. 

Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves

I've been listening to opera a good deal this weekend. The colder november weather calls for some vibrato. I was also put in the opera mind on Friday night at a concert where Danielle told me that the spring community chorus will sing opera choruses at its April concert. I thought of the chorus I enjoy most: the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves by Verdi, from the opera Nabucco (which I have never seen). 

This video shows the scene. The staging I find powerful, even though I don't know the opera well - the slaves' stillness during their chorus seems to represent their bondage; their exhaustion. And the oversize chains are evocative, whereas is someone had described them to me I might have thought they sounded tacky. I guess props need to be much larger than life if they're going to make an impact on the back row of the balcony section.

The music is beautiful; the lyrics are poignant to read because they so aptly describe the Palestinian situation today. Here is the original Italian and an English translation:

“Va pensiero” in Original Italian Va', pensiero, sull'ali dorate; Va, ti posa sui clivi, sui colli, ove olezzano tepide e molli l'aure dolci del suolo natal! Del Giordano le rive saluta, di Sionne le torri atterrate… Oh mia Patria sì bella e perduta! O membranza sì cara e fatal! Arpa d'or dei fatidici vati, perché muta dal salice pendi? Le memorie nel petto raccendi, ci favella del tempo che fu! O simile di Solima ai fati, traggi un suono di crudo lamento; o t'ispiri il Signore un concento che ne infonda al patire virtù!

“Va pensiero” English Translation Hasten thoughts on golden wings. Hasten and rest on the densely wooded hills, where warm and fragrant and soft are the gentle breezes of our native land! The banks of the Jordan we greet and the towers of Zion. O, my homeland, so beautiful and lost! O memories, so dear and yet so deadly! Golden harp of our prophets, why do you hang silently on the willow? Rekindle the memories of our hearts, and speak of the times gone by! Or, like the fateful Solomon, draw a lament of raw sound; or permit the Lord to inspire us to endure our suffering!

The invocation of the Golden harp of our prophets which hangs silently on the willows, is beautiful. Indeed the silence on the Palestinian issue is painful, where songs might be sung of a homeland, so beautiful and so lost; of memories, so dear and yet so deadly. 

Palestinians try to draw out a lament of raw sound, but the consumerism bought by the Oslo accords rather tamps down the protests, so those who are willing to resist for justice are left to ask the Lord to inspire them to endure their suffering. 

Knowing, and being known

My grandmother sent me a copy of The Fruit of the Vine in the mail this week. For years when I was a child I listened to her stand up during announcements at the end of Meeting and say "I have copies of Fruit of the Vine if someone would like one." And I never asked what it was. I thought it was like another Quaker Life, which was the most boring-looking periodical around the house (it seemed to have pictures of farm animals on the cover strikingly often - I never read it). 


I called her from Richmond a few months ago and asked what version of the Bible she liked reading for daily study. I'd been trying with various devotionals written by people of different faiths, but I didn't agree with most of the interpretations that I was reading, so I figured I had better read the book itself. 

She said she read something traditional like the New Revised Standard Edition. In characteristic thoroughness, she followed-up by sending me this copy of Fruit of the Vine. It is a daily devotional written by Friends. Living Friends. The one for yesterday was actually written by a Friend who works for Reid Health in Richmond! One of the perks of living in the Quaker Mecca of the Midwest. 

Today's scripture was 1 Corinthians 13:11-12

11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

I am finding becoming a man, and putting away childish things, is a process which takes many years, and which indeed I suspect will last my whole life. 

Today bell hooks spoke at Earlham, and I left the high school early to hear her. She spoke about the white supremacist capitalist patriachy, which is the subject, at least in part, of her writing. Her writing is also about being fundamentally opposed to violence and promoting love. 

The most powerful part of her talk, for me, was when she spoke about Black Lives Matter. She said, in fact, police brutality, while a grave issue, is not the essential issue facing black men. "If all the police brutality stopped, would the plight of the black man be overcome?" No, she said, because police brutality is not the same thing as, or even the cause of, mass incarceration. That social ill starts elsewhere, and largely in the classroom, with a lack of literacy. Black men are the group with the fastest growing rate of illiteracy in the nation, she said. Without literacy these men can't get jobs, they can't think critically, and they certainly can't fight the system. 

I felt her words so keenly. As she spoke about the difficulties facing young black men in our society, I thought of J, of K, of D, of J, of I, most of whom I'd seen earlier today. It fired me up about being part of a process of showing these young men that they are valuable, that they are smart, of helping them learn to think critically and to question those in power in a smart way. 

This summer I wasn't too excited about reading Fahrenheit 451 with the 9th grade, but now I'm very keen to. It's been my lens through which I've experienced much other literature and many other events this fall. This piece which came up in my bell hooks research is one that makes me keen to ask the students whether they think literature has any value worth defending.

http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/reach-for-the-bookit-is-a-weapon