View from the turkey coop – a poem

Standing Outside Belwing Turkey Farm

I walked down to the bottom of the street
And across the road, ‘til I reached the fence
And stood there watching them, huddled
In the darkness of the night and the hutch

White bundles of breast, leg, gizzard, wing
Large footballs on stilts hunched to the cold
Unknowing and clueless to the fate awaiting
Them in the next forty eight hours

No more meaning given to this day than any other
No genetic memory, though properly earned
Over several hundred years of ritual feasting –
Each football the end of the genetic line

My son wants us to liberate them and I have
A picture of five hundred turkeys running across
Route 44, stopping on the yellow line, unsure
Just why they should cross the road

What would they do? Where would they go?
What other purpose do they have but the one
They were bred for, like another widget or bolt
Or jujubee made to be consumed by our gnawing hunger.

I am glad I have no purpose, or none discovered
No plan laid out for me by genetic splicing
No idea of where I should go, what I should do
Except that given to me by the gift of the day.

Don’t forget gang – enough is a feast.

Bill

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Taking Over a Space – Flashmob at Providence Place Mall

On Saturday, Debbie and I organized the second action for the Good Juju Team. Assembling over a hundred people at the Trinity Brew Pub in downtown Providence for a rehearsal, we rehearsed and then proceeded to the Providence Place Mall, where we handed out clown noses, shopped (well, some of us), and led a parade through three flights of stores.

Here we are at the brew pub (thanks to Josh Miller and staff):

It was a bit of a stretch for some of us – a little different from what we normally do. But people were game. We all walked over in small groups and reached the mall. At the appointed time, we put on our own noses and began to hand out the ones stuffed in our pockets. Here’s the beginning – the first sightings of clowns:

At the Apple Store

In the “esplanade”:

Suddenly, we seemed to be in the majority.

The shop owners particularly welcomed the change of scene.

By the end, everyone at least knew about the noses. It was amazing, and interesting to see people’s reactions to a clown nose being handed to them for free. It was, in a sense, a litmus test for how one approaches the world. Amazingly, and joyfully, most people were up to the task. A lot of people marched with us, even more at least put noses on, and many more put noses in their pockets to give to their children or grandchildren.

Or to wear when they got home.

Here’s the video of everything.

We learned a lot about doing these things. What struck me most of all about the day is that all the agents were willing to go a little out of their comfort zone (okay, some LIVE outside their comfort zone) – and when you take a step out of it, you discover that the world is a lot more available and open than you had considered before. After handing out noses, parading through the mall looking like an idiot, and playing “Three Blind Mice” on a kazoo for 15 minutes, a lot more things seem possible in the world. It is, at least, easier to look someone in the eye, smile, and say “Hello!”

Even without a red nose.

Hakim Bey, a sometimes dubious anarchist philosopher, introduced the notion of Temporary Autonomous Zones, or TAZ’s – “a mobile or transient location free of economic and social interference by the State,” (let’s include corporations, too, shall we?) Really, from my perspective, a TAZ is just a little bit of time and place where an open community happens. It could happen anywhere – at a concert, on the street, in a classroom – “wherever two or more are gathered…”. When they happen, it’s a liberating feeling – and that’s what happened when we handed out 1000 clown noses.

More videos up soon.

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The storyteller – from Frank Delaney

I’ve been spending a good amount of time in the car this fall, and listening to Ireland by Frank Delaney. It’s one of those big sprawling novels that gives you history (guess about what?) and makes you think. The overarching story is about a boy turning towards manhood who hears a traveling storyteller – the storyteller is the connecting tissue through the whole novel.

Midway through the novel, there’s a letter from the storyteller to the young man, explaining what he’s trying to do as a storyteller. Whatever else Delaney is doing, he gets oral narrative right. It’s a brilliant passage about storytelling, and in the middle of it he says (paraphrasing), “You should never underestimate the intelligence of the audience. But you should underestimate their knowledge.”

I think Delaney is right. I often backtrack in my stories, explaining things that I’m not sure everyone in the audience will understand. If a member of the audience does understand, then it’s a chance for them to nod and say “Yes, I know that!”. I see them nod. If they get it, it’s a chance for them to breathe and regroup in their listening which is absolutely essential for oral narrative. If it’s a bit of information they don’t know, then it signals to the audience that the storyteller is taking care of them because it’s absolutely essential that everyone present understands what is going on.

So, for instance, I tell a version of “Sody Salleratus”, a traditional Appalachian story. One of the recurring lines in this story that occurs in dozens of cultures is, “I ate me a bucket of beans and a barrel of lard, and now I’m gonna eat….”.

This story, to me, is the quintessential story for primary grades. But most kids don’t know what lard is. Did you? So when I say that – “bucket of lard” – I come to a screeching halt. I look at them. Right at them. “Do you know what lard is?” I ask. Some may say yes, but most shake their heads. What kid is close enough to a farm to know what “lard” is? Then I say, “It’s animal fat!”

“Eeeeeew!” the kids say.

“Right,” I say. Then launch back into the story. No judgment. Assumption of their intelligence. (Every kid has looked at some piece of animal fat they DO NOT WANT TO EAT – [except for children of you good vegetarians]). (Too many parentheses.) But they know what that means for someone who is eating animal fat. Not a healthy diet.

Anyway…

In that moment, I give them some information and acknowledge their ability to assimilate it. it is a great moment – really one of my favorite moments in that telling.

I have gone far astray from my points:

1) Ireland is a very interesting novel for storytellers.
2) Balancing knowledge (information) and narrative (forward movement) is what storytelling is all about.

Too arcane? Not for some of you. Take two and call me in the morning.

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Thinking about the humanities

Last week, the Rhode Island Committee on the Humanities gave me their Lifetime Achievement Award. I was deeply honored to receive it, and it also really gave me pause – it wasn’t something I expected, and like many people, I have a healthily developed impostor syndrome which immediately made itself known to me. Receiving the award made me think about what I was doing and what the humanities are. Below is the short acceptance speech I gave.

There is an active discussion now about the place of the humanities in society. Stanley Fish wrote a blog piece for the NY Times just about that this past week – it touches on many parts of what I said.

Here’s my talk:

Thanks very much. Thanks to all of you for coming. I give my thanks to the Committee on the Humanities for this honor – to Mary Kim Arnold, to Shea’la, to SueEllen, to Mary Lee Partington and the members of the board.
And of course, my thanks, most of all to my wife and work partner, Debbie Block –my anchor and compass. What I present as an artist is really a shared vision of the way we would like the world to be – those of you who know me, know that it is just not me up here. Who knows what I would be doing without her – certainly not this.

I am still a little concerned about what to do after I get a lifetime achievement award. Now what? I didn’t know that I was finished, nor that I was even eligible. What I am left with is to continue my work and try and show I deserved it. When I look out on this room, I see many out there who are at least as or even more deserving of this recognition – many others have had a deep and lasting effect on the culture of Rhode Island.

Getting this award – totally unexpected, and really a joy – has led me to think about boundaries and borders. People who study systems know that it is at the edges – the borders and boundaries – that the most interesting things occur. A border or boundary is where there is the greatest expression of life. Who would know more about borders and boundaries than Rhode Islanders? The whole state is a border. In giving me this award, the Committee has shown a willingness to extend borders and boundaries in at least three ways.

First – most obviously, to me at least – in giving the award to someone from Massachusetts, they have reached beyond the border of the state. Thirty years ago, Debbie and I moved to the Providence area, and didn’t pay attention to political districts. We still don’t – my car can drive itself to Providence and does so almost every day. And as many of you know, the history of Seekonk, where I live, is a little murky – were we part of Rhode Island once? Was East Providence part of Seekonk? We ourselves are not quite sure where we live. I offer my appreciation for your seeing beyond that political border.

Second – you have crossed the border and reached into the arts. I call myself an artist, although that is a name someone else gives – Martha Graham noted that it’s not our job to worry about whether we’re creating art, it’s our job to do our craft as well as we can and let someone else decide. I have never been able to distinguish my art from my vision of the way I think the world might be if we were to listen and act with greater intention and care. Much of my work is about the great question of how do free individuals live in community with each other. What underlies all of my work is the search for what we hold in common. As an artist, and a student of the humanities, it’s my job to try and make my audience look at the world in a different way. I am quite glad to use whatever tools I have to do that; story works for me, and so does song , but I see no real, solid boundary between the arts and the humanities. Apparently, the Committee is willing to cross that border, too.

Third- the Committee has willingly crossed the border from the adult world to reach into the world of childhood, where I have most firmly placed my work. I was early on influenced by Gandhi and King, and have had it in mind to give my voice to the voiceless. Children and their caretakers are my constituents. Many of you here know that people who choose to work with children often have their work devalued by those who think adult work is more important and of more substance. I, too am often challenged by the choice I have made, and can, in weaker moments, devalue it myself. By giving me this award, all of you here recognize that what happens to a child determines what happens to the world. I thank you for that.

Being given this award has caused me to think a lot about the humanities. It brings me to near speechlessness – (near!)– that the humanities today seem endangered – even elements in higher education perceive the humanities as having a dwindling importance .
It’s not surprising this has happened, I guess – especially as I look at the debate in education. In the movement to measure learning through more and more testing I see a parallel discussion – the tendency to value technical knowledge and “hard” facts over a kind of knowledge more difficult, in fact, sometimes impossible, to quantify.

But for all their “squishiness”, their inability to provide hard data, the humanities – arts and letters, the history of our time here on earth, the strivings and failings of humans – is the proper locus for the study of questions that are increasingly crucial to our life on this planet. They are questions that are hard, perhaps impossible, to answer definitively. As a storyteller, I understand that we are, in the end, contextual beings, creatures of time – our acts, our thoughts, our dreams, bear no meaning without what came before, and what they imply for the world that will follow – this is what we, as humans, as storytellers, do – we live in a context, and make sense of the world through our narrative, the telling of our stories. It is the job of the humanities to listen to these stories and to ask the questions that, as Rilke said, “have no answers”.
Questions like:
“What is the value of a human life?”
“What does it mean to live in community?”
“What is beautiful and elegant and why?”
“What is required of us?”
“What is, what should be, what might be, our relationship with the rest of life on this planet?
And of course, in the end, there is the question of how we should live our lives, and what does it mean to live a good life.
These are questions that must be asked every day. This is our calling – this is our charge – this is what those of us who live in the world of the humanities, should strive to do.
We are better when we ask these questions, and when we reach beyond the boundaries of what we know and who we are to make the circle bigger.
Years ago, I was lucky enough to spend a couple of hours with Phillip and Phyllis Morrison in their house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Phillip Morrison was a Nobel Prize Physicist, at the center of the development of the atomic bomb. He gave the countdown at Los Alamos – an act, he told me, he had spent the rest of his life trying to make up for. He was completely delightful, quite clearly upon my first meeting with him a genius – a man of unending curiosity, who took delight in the workings of the world. At one point in the time we spent with each other, I proposed that the very nature of our understanding of time was changing and we were changing with it, as we divided it further and further, as things seemingly went faster and faster. I thought, in fact a scientist would understand and agree with me. He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Our measure of time will always have to do with seconds. A second is how we measure our lives, because a second is one beat of the human heart. That’s the prism through which we look at the world. Always.”
Time in the end, will always be human for us. And the study of it will be our work – the study of the beating of the human heart.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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Mystery

Okay – someone tell me why there have been a thousand visits to my post about the folk song about the Titanic….

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It really isn’t about me – not tonight

Not to worry – I’m not doing the four post a day thing.
But..
Just got a message from my producer at NPR that a news item bumped my piece (What’s that about? What do they think this is, a news show or something?) But so many people had already commented they’re leaving it up on the web. You can still see it there. So thanks for taking a look.
Maybe tomorrow.
Then again, maybe not.
Meanwhile, I have to turn this computer off.

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NPR piece tonight

Tonight on National Public Radio, All Things Considered is playing a story about my learning experience with the National Anthem at a minor league ball game (yay, McCoy Stadium and the Pawsox!). You can listen tonight during the show (not sure which segment, sorry..) or go here http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112484915. Please comment and spread it around – they need to know that these little stories add something to the broadcast. Some people hate ‘em. Some love ‘em. Like someone at NPR said to me years ago – “There’s two parties here – those that do the hard news and those that want to have fun – guess which one you belong to?”
Well, I want both, I guess, but I know my job.
Hope you listen.

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