|
Journal of a Sabbatical |
||||||||
|
January 15, 2001 |
|
|
a grab bag of
topics |
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
|
Today's Reading: John Greenleaf Whittier: Life and Letters by Samuel T. Pickard 2001
Book List
|
|
|
Martin Luther King Day
I heard his widow, Coretta Scott King, on the news today in a sound bite reminding us that it is important now more than ever to live a nonviolent lifestyle. I heard a Bill Clinton sound bite on the news today urging us to be the one America that Dr. King dreamed of. Even President-elect Bush pointed out that all children can go to school today but now the question is is every child learning? Snatches of the I Have a Dream speech wafted out of my radio all day. It all made me feel terribly sad. Sad that America has not yet come together the way we all dreamed. Sad that the Beloved Community seems such a far-fetched goal. Sad that my faith that the universe is on the side of justice has been shaken to the core over and over again. It is truly a day for reflection not just on how far we've come, but how much further we have yet to go. Today's 24/7 work all the time lifestyle doesn't usually leave much time and space for reflection on big themes. I'm glad that Martin Luther King Day is still a time to reflect on Dr. King's legacy and on race relations in America, and not yet just an occasion for great deals on new cars like President's Day or barbecues like Memorial Day and Fourth of July. If the call to reflection stimulates a call to action, so much the better. Maybe we can build the America he dreamed of. Maybe we can build the America the founding fathers only glimpsed. Maybe we can build the Beloved Community. But we have to do it together. We have to take the American vision seriously. All of us. Black and white. Democrat and Republican. Believers and unbelievers. Gay and straight. Rich and poor. All of us. Some links for MLK day: Full text of the I Have a Dream speech Our 24/7 Lifestyle and Workaholism Nancy called me at 10:00 this morning to tell me Robert Reich is on The Connection. Why would I be interested in Robert Reich's topic today? He's talking about redefining success. He's talking about achieving balance in a workaholic world (that 24/7 lifestyle). Although he started the show by saying he's a recovered workaholic and by telling a moving personal story, what he had to say was more about the factors in society that pressure us into working too hard, neglecting family and community, defining ourselves as our jobs. Reich identified himself as a "recovered workaholic" but stopped short of actually describing himself as having been addicted to work. But that balance he talks about is exactly what I have been seeking. I don't talk as much as maybe I'd like to about work addiction in this journal, and I'm too tired to delve too deeply into my story tonight. I admit to being a recovering (not recovered) workaholic. I admit that my life had become unmanageable because of work. I was at the peak of my career and the peak of my work addiction when I read Working Ourselves to Death by Diane Fassel and learned that my problem with work had a name and that other people suffer with it. Fassel's book led me to Workaholics Anonymous, which has taught me a whole new way to live my life. I can't speak for Robert Reich, but I know I needed that to learn how to make a life. After The Connection, I went to Andover Bookstore and bought Reich's book The Future of Success. Another workaholism link: An Interview with Diane Fassel John Greenleaf Whittier Yesterday at Olde Port Book Shop I picked up a biography of John Greenleaf Whittier that I didn't know existed. I was just kind of browsing the poetry shelf and I automatically scan for Whittier unconsciously. I've loved Snowbound for years and got more into Whittier while trying to convince Nancy that Snowbound is a great poem and Whittier is a great poet. She was skeptical because the 4-beat line has been so out of fashion for so long it sounds silly to our modern ear. So anyway, I spotted this two volume set called John Greenleaf Whittier: Life and Letters by Samuel T. Pickard (who was a contemporary of Whittier's) on the poetry shelf. I started reading it when I got home and haven't been able to tear myself away from it. I've been holed up on this snowy Martin Luther King Day reading about the long fight to end slavery in these United States. Whittier was one of the leading abolitionists, lending his writing skills both poetry and prose to the cause as well as being heavily involved in politics. I had mainly thought of Whittier as sort of the poet of the abolitionists, not one of the movers and shakers, but he was right up there with William Lloyd Garrison. Pickard is generous with long excerpts from Whittier's letters and I feel like I've been thrown back in time to when even people from the North were talking about dissolving the Union (not Whittier - he resolutely believed in using legislative means - but his pal Garrison). I can really see how deeply divided American society was then, how far we've come, and how far we still have to go. Whittier was a Quaker and his antislavery beliefs came from his Quakerism. As a Quaker he also believed in nonviolence. So somehow my reading Whittier on Martin Luther King Day is very appropriate. And very American. Echoing my thoughts on Dr. King, we have a lot left to do to build the Beloved Community. We are lucky to have had such Americans as King and Whittier in their respective times. Whittier links: Disposable Camera Tour of Whittier House Clinton Farewell While checking out the Whittier House tour site I discovered that the same people had done a Disposable Camera Tour of Clinton's Farewell in Dover, NH. I guess even the Clinton farewell fits in with the theme of what I thought would be disparate topics today. A lot of Clinton's farewell speeches have talked about race and the need to talk about it, do something about it, build that one America. Ten Years Ago Today Ten years ago today a coalition of about 30 countries began a war to drive the Iraqi military out of Kuwait. The war was "over" very quickly but Saddam Hussein is still in power and Iraq is still under international sanctions. Something needs to change. (Even this thought fits in with today's theme, at least the nonviolence piece of it.) The monolith and the sphere
According to the weather forecasts I heard, we weren't supposed to get much accumulation and it was supposed to change to rain. It didn't change. We got well over two inches. The plow came by several times. The sanding truck just came by a few minutes ago now that it's night and the melt water is freezing. OK, I can't figure out how to fit the New England weather into the day's theme, but the New England weather has a mind of its own and injects itself into any and every thing no matter what the topic of the day is. |
|||||
|
|
|
Copyright © 2001, Janet I. Egan |
|||||
Martin
Luther King would have been 72 today had he lived. A year
younger than my mother, who is still working for the goal of
the Beloved Community. Sometimes lately it seems to me that
the races are farther apart, moving through separate but
overlapping Americas. Would America be more united if Dr.
King had not been assassinated? We'll never know and we
can't guess.
I
mentioned the other day that the children who use my front
door as a soccer goal were outside trying to move the snow
monolith they had made. Apparently they gave up on moving
the monolith and moved the sphere instead. I noticed this
last night but couldn't get a picture because the light is
still burned out and flash just washed out the shapes. This
morning it was snowing again quite heavily and new snow had
built up on the shapes. The monolith looks a little less
monolithic because they tried to carve it into some sort of
throne and then the hollowed out place filled up with snow.
The sphere and the monolith are a lot closer together now
too.