Revisiting a Rant: The Reading Police

reading,

I have always been a reader. I have written about reading often on this blog. My primary message is that reading is in the eye of the reader: you should feel comfortable reading what you want, when you want and how much you want. And, just in case that’s not incendiary enough, here’s more fuel for the fire: you are welcome to count audio books as reading.

I am poking the bears that are what I have taken to calling the reading police. Similar to the craft police, these social media monitors set themselves up as judge and jury for other readers. One of their main tenets is that those of us who often read 100 books or more a year aren’t really reading in the way we should be.

Here’s my rant from December 2023 where I confronted the reading police for the first team and wrote my own manifesto for readers.

Dwelling in the Mystery

art, poetry,
Farms and Fields and Clouds

My husband told a friend that I have been in a foul mood these days. I did not disagree. Is it any wonder why?

As a balm to my overwrought soul, I was fortunate to spend more time with my parents and their friends a few weeks ago. I heard the new chaplain speak, and her message echoed that of the one I heard from the Bible study during the previous visit. Using the metaphor of a cup filled with water, she suggested that we do ourselves an injustice when we try to fit God into our cup. Instead, she emptied the cup and dropped it into a bucket of water. God is all around us just like the cup in water. We should dwell in the mystery of being surrounded by something much larger than ourselves, larger than our own imaginations.

That same message is the theme of Denise Levertov’s poem, “Primary Wonder.” She gets straight to the point in the first sentence: “Days pass when I forget the mystery.” She goes on to describe all the ways life gets in our way of experiencing the mystery that “there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory.” While some may be put off by the Christian imagery, I think the poem speaks to anyone who has had an experience of getting beyond the day-to-day diversions to a deeper connection with the mystery.

Levertov’s spiritual journey is fascinating: born to a Hasidic Jewish scholar and Welsh mother, she was an agnostic for much of her life, converting to Catholicism in the 1980s.

You can read the complete poem here.

It Happened in Virginia

history, human rights,

Virginia has a very complicated history. Home to 8 presidents, all of whom owned slaves themselves or, in the case of Woodrow Wilson, came from slave-owning families. Hotbed of segregation following Board v Board, in some cases choosing to close public schools rather than integrate.

Through my book group’s September book selection, I have learned of Virginia’s leadership in another infamous chapter in US history: the eugenics movement.

The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman is a powerful and disturbing novel. Wiseman focuses on the eugenics movement in the United States in the years between the world wars. She does so through the story of Lena, a German immigrant who arrives in Ellis Island in 1928 with her mother, brother and young daughter. We follow Lena through the often humiliating process of being admitted to the country on Ellis Island and learn more about those who are turned back from our shores.

From there, the story moves to the hollows of Virginia’s Blue Ridge. Plans for Shenandoah National Park include removing the families whose ties to the mountains go back for generations. Eugenics plays a large role as outsiders use dubious science and deceptive tactics to label the people inbred and feebleminded, institutionalizing and in many cases sterilizing them.

What makes this novel so powerful is the way Wiseman brings horrific history down to human level. The mountain people understand the injustices being done to them but are trapped in a system beyond their control, some literally imprisoned against their wills for decades. Sections of this novel were tough to read. Wiseman does not spare the reader the horror of the treatment of people who were deemed not quite human. And now, some 100 years later, we are seeing a resurgence of these repugnant ideas.

I am sad that Virginia was a leader in this movement.

Dolly & Gloria

advocacy, books, politics, reading, thinking out loud, ,

Gloria Steinem’s death came just a few days after that of Dolly Parton. They seemed to be two women who spun in very different orbits. However, their lives intertwined in a way that shows that feminism is more complex than the anti-woke crowd would have us believe.

Ms. Magazine republished Steinem’s 1987 tribute to Parton, the year the latter was named of the magazine’s Women of the Year. (Days later, the same magazine published a tribute to its founder.)

I encourage you to read both articles. For me, the most powerful statement is Steinem’s simple but powerful definition of feminism: “If feminism means each of us finding our unique power, and helping other women do the same, Dolly Parton certainly has done both.”

I think Steinem gets it right and it is simple. Everyone gets to discover and embody their unique power. Create a life that makes sense for them as individuals. Define themselves in ways that make them feel whole. That’s it: no one is forcing anyone to live as a trad wife or a childless cat woman. Have babies, don’t have babies; get married, don’t get married; work outside the home, don’t work outside the home. You get to choose.

If early feminists were evangelical in their quest to get women out of the home and into the world, it was because of the context of the times. Women were ruled by men in their personal, professional and financial lives. Opportunities to work outside the home were limited and often ended upon pregnancy. Even as late as 2008, I had a man tell me that, if he was able to provide continuing grant support for a project, he would probably only be able to keep on my male colleague since he had a family to support. I was married without children at the time so I suppose he thought I was working for fun even though I was actively consulting and finishing up a doctorate.

I was born on the cusp of the first and second waves of feminism. One of the best books I’ve read that shares the experiences of my mother’s generation is The Book Club for Troublesome Women. Here’s my review from LibraryThing:

“The Book Club for Troublesome Women showed up in my Hoopla recommendations. Four women in the new suburbs of Northern Virginia come together to read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique even as the world and their lives are changing irrevocably in the early 1960s. Bostwick’s story was heart wrenching in many ways as we see women belittled by the world, and in many cases, their own husbands. But Bostwick also explores ideas about how the enforced roles of women required enforced roles for men who may not find bread winning to be their real desire. Of course, there are pretty petty men as well, and I found myself shouting “a*****e” a few times along the way.

She weaves history into the story as the women in Concordia, Virginia, were right on the doorstep of the March on Washington and lived through the assassination of Kennedy. We see them grappling with their changing roles, coming to understand the importance not just of friendship but also mentorship. And, I am a huge fan of Katherine Graham who shows up as herself and provides some support for one of the characters in the novel. It felt a little “Forrest Gumpy” but helped underline the turmoil of those years.”

We grieve the loss of these women. We watch in horror as their work is belittled and dismantled. So, we do what people have always done: we pick up the mantle and march on. Labor Day is a great day to write a letter to your legislator to let them know where you stand on the issues.

Sigh

advocacy, poetry, thinking out loud

Writer, farmer, and activist Wendell Berry died yesterday, aged 92. He told the stories of his people in quiet prose and reflective, if sometimes combative, poetry. I have read a few of his novels, but it is his poetry that speaks to me most strongly. He is my favorite poet as I resonate with his love for rural life along with his anger at environmental destruction. I have written about him often on this blog. I suspect “The Peace of Wild Things” is his most beloved poem as we all find ourselves longing to escape to a place of quiet tranquility.

Berry, however, was much more than just a rural bard rambling through the fields. He was an environmental activist who used his poetry to lament the loss of nature and with it the diminishment of our own lives. Look & See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry documents the challenges of being a farmer in the 21st century through the eyes of Berry, his family and his neighbors and friends. It is not so much a biography of the man as a portrayal of a disappearing way of life. In the trailer, Berry recites a poem written in 1997 from his collection of Sabbath poems titled A Timbered Choir.