Once upon a time.
In a land far, far across the ocean.
There lived a prince.
That prince made headlines when he chose his bride.
All of America watched with shining, expectant eyes.
Their hearts shined too. They were so excited.
The prince and his lucky bride-to-be (I won’t mention them; too much ink has already been spilled) were featured on every morning television show and made the covers of all the glossy gossip rag magazines.
What will she wear? Gasp! Look at her ring! OMG! She’s so beautiful! He’s so dashing!
According to a CBS News/New York Times poll, nearly 3 in 10 Americans, or 28 percent, say they're very or somewhat wrapped up in the wedding.
A royal wedding is just the kind of positive event we need, right?
A royal joy?
More of a royal pain.
Why there is such an obsession with the English crown -- and this wedding -- is beyond me. The inbred royalty of Europe didn’t earn a damn thing in their lives.
It’s just for harmless fun you say.
Nonsense.
This fascination is a disturbing aspect of the American psyche. What we are interested in culturally -- celebrities, television shows, movies, books -- reflect our attitudes and beliefs. Those same attitudes and beliefs shape our political outlooks. They are what make our decisions.
You can’t separate these parts of yourself. We are only human.
And if you think royalty should be celebrated, that says something about you.
These people were born into wealth and privilege. This is exactly what the first Americans sought to topple. When they said “all men are created equal” we know they weren’t talking about slaves and women, they were talking about the difference between the white dudes that were born into nobility and the white dudes that were born commoners.
So what would the Founding White Dudes think about our fascination with a British royal wedding? What would the wife and child of a Revolutionary War soldier who died in battle think?
While it’s dispiriting to see the American media overtaken by the royal wedding, it’s not surprising. One percent of the population has amassed 40 percent of our wealth. We tacitly accept this and hope these American nobles make the right decisions for the 99 percent of us peasants who are sweating it day after day.
As an aside, just to let you know, their political party of choice isn’t the Green Party. Look for the elephant. If you don’t make more than a half million dollars a year, which still doesn’t bring you close to that 1 percent, you should run from the elephant. It will stomp you.
These well-connected elite run our country and I’m not sure they are an example of what Thomas Jefferson referred to as the “natural aristocracy,” the concept of a person rising to power based on talent and virtue, as opposed to birth or divine right, which was how monarchies justified their power.
Most of the fellas on Wall Street certainly aren’t rags to riches stories, (take a look at their backgrounds and I’m sure there are rich uncles, summers in the Hamptons and Ivy league degrees), yet they make the decisions that affect all of us as if they have the divine rights of kings. Look at the recent financial meltdown. Was that the fault of the middle class?
Why do we allow all this to happen?
Because somehow, these people have duped us into thinking they are naturally better than the masses. We think rich people are cool because they have all the nifty stuff we want. We respect them for that, even if the wealth is inherited, that because old grand-pappy Abner invested well in oil and railroads, the current generation deserves it, too.
Two words.
Paris Hilton.
I’m glad Prince Tom, Dick or Harry -- whatever his name is -- didn’t pick that strumpet to be his bride. That wouldn’t just be bad for England, but also America.
Even so, I won’t be watching the royal nuptials.
I happen to think that their royal money, estates, polo ponies and jewels should be taken away from them and distributed to the impoverished of Great Britain.
Does this make me a communist or a socialist?
I don’t think so.
I think it makes me something of a conservative, traditional American white dude.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Walking in Papa’s shadows: My Spring Break adventure visiting Hemingway’s six-toed cats
Growing up, Ernest ‘Papa’ Hemingway was required reading in my house.
I think my old man shoved “In Our Time,” Hemingway’s first collection of short stories, into my hands when I was twelve or thirteen.
Like Hemingway, my dad is a writer and newspaperman. Also like Papa, my old man likes to trout fish, hunt and partake in healthy cocktail hours.
Like my old man, I am a writer and newspaperman. I also like to trout fish, hunt and am no stranger to the joy juice.
As a youngster, I was enthralled with Hem’s stories like “Indian Camp” and, of course, “Big Two-Hearted River.” Not only were they great pieces of writing, but they took place in Northern Michigan settings I was familiar with. I probably read the “Big Two-Hearted River” sitting on the banks of the Fox River in the Upper Peninsula, the river Nick Adams is actually described fishing in the story. We fly-fished it often then. Hemingway changed the name to the other nearby river because it sounded more romantic.
I would have done the same.
I went on to read nearly all his books as I grew up. Now, I’m starting to re-read them.
Hemingway’s known as this big, macho manly man who blew his head off with a shotgun, which isn’t exactly being graceful under pressure. And, while I may not be as dazzled by his work now as I was when I was 12 (it doesn’t have much of a sense of humor), I can still read something like the novella “The Old Man and the Sea” and admire it for its slim aesthetic beauty and what it seems to say about strength and will.
While living in Chicago, I visited his childhood home in suburban Oak Park, but with the knowledge that he thought of it as a town with “wide lawns and narrow minds.”
It should come as no surprise that a trip to Hemingway’s house in Key West, where I was vacationing over Spring Break last week, was a pretty heady experience.
Key West is where he chose to live from 1931 until 1939, when he was in his thirties, around the same age I am now.
The house is marvelous: two stories tall wrapped with green porches and shrouded in palm trees. It takes up a lot more ground than all of the surrounding houses.
There’s a swimming pool where movie stars swam and a brick fence surrounding the entire property because of the parties the Hemingways would throw. Legend has it a peephole was left in the brick fence in case anyone wanted to sneak a peek at potential skinny dippers.
There is the writing room where Hemingway wrote “A Farewell to Arms,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”
There is the urinal he copped from the local tavern he frequented, Sloppy Joe’s, and turned into a drinking fountain for his cats.
Six-toed cats. They were everywhere.
Hemingway was given one of the polydactyl cats by a ship captain. Currently, some of the sixty cats who prowl around Hemingway’s estate are direct descendants of that feline.
I know all this because I, of course, took the $13 tour.
My wife, her parents and I got there early. We were staying down the street and knew how busy Hemingway’s house got in the afternoon.
I wondered out loud, much to the annoyance of everyone I was with, about why all these people, hundreds of them, who had probably never read a sentence of Hemingway would want to see his digs.
I was trying to feel some sort of spiritual connection at just another stop on a list of tourist attractions for some of these other yahoos.
There was one guy in particular who stuck out during the tour. Literally. He must have been seven feet tall. Or I might be stretching it to make the story better. Maybe he was only six and a half feet tall.
Anyway, our tour group of about 20 went through the house with a guide. When we got to the bedroom, one of the six-toed cats came off the balcony and jumped onto the bed where Hemingway laid his haunted head at night. The bed was roped off and the guide joked that only the cats were allowed behind them.
“But, please,” he said, “do not try and pick up any of the cats. You can pet them, but do not pick them up.”
The cat laid on Hemingway’s bed and started licking himself.
The tall dude bent over and started petting it.
The cat did not like this. It showed its teeth and swiped its paw.
The tall dude giggled. He didn’t get the hint. He tried petting it again.
The cat hissed.
“Sir, I think it might be best to not touch the cat. He doesn’t like it,” the guide finally said.
I’m hoping it was Hemingway’s ghost.
I definitely felt Papa’s presence in the house and I’m glad I braved the tourists to feel it.
Afterward, I called my dad and told him all about it.
I think my old man shoved “In Our Time,” Hemingway’s first collection of short stories, into my hands when I was twelve or thirteen.
Like Hemingway, my dad is a writer and newspaperman. Also like Papa, my old man likes to trout fish, hunt and partake in healthy cocktail hours.
Like my old man, I am a writer and newspaperman. I also like to trout fish, hunt and am no stranger to the joy juice.
As a youngster, I was enthralled with Hem’s stories like “Indian Camp” and, of course, “Big Two-Hearted River.” Not only were they great pieces of writing, but they took place in Northern Michigan settings I was familiar with. I probably read the “Big Two-Hearted River” sitting on the banks of the Fox River in the Upper Peninsula, the river Nick Adams is actually described fishing in the story. We fly-fished it often then. Hemingway changed the name to the other nearby river because it sounded more romantic.
I would have done the same.
I went on to read nearly all his books as I grew up. Now, I’m starting to re-read them.
Hemingway’s known as this big, macho manly man who blew his head off with a shotgun, which isn’t exactly being graceful under pressure. And, while I may not be as dazzled by his work now as I was when I was 12 (it doesn’t have much of a sense of humor), I can still read something like the novella “The Old Man and the Sea” and admire it for its slim aesthetic beauty and what it seems to say about strength and will.
While living in Chicago, I visited his childhood home in suburban Oak Park, but with the knowledge that he thought of it as a town with “wide lawns and narrow minds.”
It should come as no surprise that a trip to Hemingway’s house in Key West, where I was vacationing over Spring Break last week, was a pretty heady experience.
Key West is where he chose to live from 1931 until 1939, when he was in his thirties, around the same age I am now.
The house is marvelous: two stories tall wrapped with green porches and shrouded in palm trees. It takes up a lot more ground than all of the surrounding houses.
There’s a swimming pool where movie stars swam and a brick fence surrounding the entire property because of the parties the Hemingways would throw. Legend has it a peephole was left in the brick fence in case anyone wanted to sneak a peek at potential skinny dippers.
There is the writing room where Hemingway wrote “A Farewell to Arms,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” and “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”
There is the urinal he copped from the local tavern he frequented, Sloppy Joe’s, and turned into a drinking fountain for his cats.
Six-toed cats. They were everywhere.
Hemingway was given one of the polydactyl cats by a ship captain. Currently, some of the sixty cats who prowl around Hemingway’s estate are direct descendants of that feline.
I know all this because I, of course, took the $13 tour.
My wife, her parents and I got there early. We were staying down the street and knew how busy Hemingway’s house got in the afternoon.
I wondered out loud, much to the annoyance of everyone I was with, about why all these people, hundreds of them, who had probably never read a sentence of Hemingway would want to see his digs.
I was trying to feel some sort of spiritual connection at just another stop on a list of tourist attractions for some of these other yahoos.
There was one guy in particular who stuck out during the tour. Literally. He must have been seven feet tall. Or I might be stretching it to make the story better. Maybe he was only six and a half feet tall.
Anyway, our tour group of about 20 went through the house with a guide. When we got to the bedroom, one of the six-toed cats came off the balcony and jumped onto the bed where Hemingway laid his haunted head at night. The bed was roped off and the guide joked that only the cats were allowed behind them.
“But, please,” he said, “do not try and pick up any of the cats. You can pet them, but do not pick them up.”
The cat laid on Hemingway’s bed and started licking himself.
The tall dude bent over and started petting it.
The cat did not like this. It showed its teeth and swiped its paw.
The tall dude giggled. He didn’t get the hint. He tried petting it again.
The cat hissed.
“Sir, I think it might be best to not touch the cat. He doesn’t like it,” the guide finally said.
I’m hoping it was Hemingway’s ghost.
I definitely felt Papa’s presence in the house and I’m glad I braved the tourists to feel it.
Afterward, I called my dad and told him all about it.
Days of doom: Are we living in end times?
It’s a biological fact: we’re all going to die.
We hope it’s after a long life filled with love and lollipops, but we sometimes fantasize about all of us biting the dust at once.
The end of the world as we know it. Poof. Gone.
Just glancing at the headlines, it seems some end-of-times prophesy is playing out. The world is erupting into mayhem. Japan has been torn asunder by an earthquake of enormous enormity, leaving nuclear clouds swirling among the wreckage. Our prez is dropping O’bomb’as on Libya, bringing us into our third major armed conflict in the past decade. The economy is still in the minor leagues; we could soon be transformed to the same poor, huddled masses we were when arriving on the shores of this brave new continent.
Tsunamis! Terrorists! Hurricanes!
War! Floods! Glenn Beck!
Behold a pale horse.
The end is nigh.
It is hard to digest all of these events, especially when they come in such rapid succession. Our only solace in the American Midwest is that they are only headlines. The biggest complaint around here these days is a spring snowstorm.
But the headlines are truly disturbing. My heart goes out to the Japanese earthquake victims, the Libyans fighting against the mad king Quaddafi (or however he’s spelling his name these days) and the growing numbers of unemployed who are having a hard time paying the mortgage (if they still have a house).
When bad events clump together like this, we can’t help but looking at them in the big picture. We get scared. We become paranoid. Is it starting? Doomsday? Armageddon? The Final Judgment?
Unfortunately, more people believe in this kind of garbage than you’d think. When I worked at bookstores for three or so years right after college, I directed too many honest, hardworking folks to the aisle where the insanely popular “Left Behind” series of books were shelved. The 16 books in the series, written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, deal with a Christian take on the end of the world. The Antichrist, and all that jazz. I don’t know anything else about them. I wouldn’t deign to read the plot summaries on the back covers, let alone crack their spines.
Just this past fall, a strange flyer began appearing on doorsteps in Manistee with the title “Prophetic Revelations” printed boldly at the top. There were drawings of several strange beasts on the cover: a giant, red dragon-serpent with spikes and horns, a fierce-looking bear with human bones in its mouth, a roaring lion with wings and a three-headed cheetah, also with wings.
At first, I thought it was advertising a “stoner art” drawing class, the kind that specialize in copying heavy metal album covers. It wasn’t. At the bottom of the flyer it read, “A Bible Seminar on the Beasts and Our Future.” There were six lectures about understanding revelation planned in the area.
Really?
I didn’t attend so I don’t know if we’ll have to contend with flying lions in the future or not. I hope so. It’s the kind of pet I dreamed of having when I was five.
The Manistee film industry is also in the mix. What you may not know about the movies that are being shot in and around town are that most of them are “faith-based,” which in America generally means Christian. At least one of the flicks, “Jerusalem Countdown,” has an end times aspect to it.
This begs the question: why are Christians so hot for total annihilation these days? Is the end of the world some new trend, like Pokemon? There are books, movies and seminars. Are “rapture” action figures far behind?
The truth is, thinking about the end of the world dates to the beginning of the world. Logically, everything that has a beginning has an end, right?
Every culture and religion has had its own end times mythologies. We know from umpteen History Channel specials that the Mayan calendar calls for the grand event in 2012, which is only nine months away. More contemporary religions (Christianity, Islam) have their intricacies, but it always comes down to being judged while hellfire rains from the sky. Secular liberals have their own science-based narrative, usually involving evil corporations denuding the world of trees, killing the whales and polluting the environment with carbon. The greenhouse gases will bake us, the oceans will swell and swallow up the coastlines and we’ll all be exterminated for our dirty deeds.
The end of the world is scary. It’s action-movie huge. It’s tidy. It’s complete. It’s final. It’s dramatic.
But the notion should be regarded as what it is: entertainment.
It’s strange that no scenarios really exist of the world dying naturally, peacefully, while asleep. The large, cataclysmic events feed our imaginations.
What’s actually going on in the world should never be looked at in the same lens. These are real people suffering real events, right there out their windows and on their streets.
It’s a concept best dealt with in Hollywood movies, not in real life.
But when it does go down, I’ll be long gone, flying into the sunset on my three-headed cheetah.
Ice, ice baby: Post surgery treats include meatloaf, Twinkie’s in a blender
At the end of January, I went out on a very simple assignment. I should have been back to the office in ten minutes.
Instead, I didn’t get back for a month. And it’s all because of ice.
While usually I’m out covering the hard-edged cops and courts beat in Manistee County, a quick jaunt up to Sands Park to take pictures of first-graders from Jefferson Elementary ice skating seemed like a nice change of pace.
A Norman Rockwell painting come alive.
Everything was perfect. The forty-odd kids gliding across the ice, cries of joy and squeals of laughter. Proud parents clicking pictures. Snow gently falling.
Everything was great except the big goon with the camera around his neck, arms wheeling, legs kicking, landing flat on his back. Mostly on his right elbow.
That goon, of course, was me.
I had spent the last fifteen minutes snapping pictures of the kid skaters who would pop right back up after they fell. I used to be that limber too.
Not anymore.
We like to think we can control everything, that we are powerful enough to will accidents not to happen. Untrue. Anything can happen at any time. It’s the chaotic nature of the universe.
When I took my spill, I was just about off the surface of the ice into the safety of the parking lot. My right foot glided quickly across the ice and I lost all control. I fell. I fell hard. The contents of my pockets flew out. A pen skittered two dozen feet across the surface of the ice. My notepad ended up in a snow bank. Mothers gasped. The kids didn’t seem to notice. They kept right on skating and falling and laughing and getting up.
I’m very proud I didn’t cuss in front of the kiddies. I waited until I got into my car, turned up some punk rock music really loud and let the punishing gods have it. Every foul word I’ve ever learned (and I know them all) poured from my mouth. My elbow was screaming with pain. It felt like someone bored a hole at the tip and poured in a bucket of red hot razor blades.
My next stop was the emergency room at West Shore Medical Center where I was told I had cracked a small piece of bone off my elbow and tore the triceps muscle. It would require surgery to reattach it.
“What happened to the days of hopping up and dusting myself off?” I thought to myself.
Only 33 years old and I am having those insidious intimations of mortality. Next thing you know, I’ll be breaking a hip coming out of the Bingo Hall.
I haven’t had a surgery since I got my tonsils out when I was 5 years old. Back then, for treats, I was a Twinkie man. Sure, I ate all the broccoli and Brussels sprouts Mom heaped on my plate when I was a kid, but always with images of the cowboy mascot, Twinkie the Kid, dancing in my head while I waited for dessert time. During my recovery, I couldn’t have any because I wasn’t allowed solid food. Mom’s ingenious solution: put the Twinkie’s in the blender.
Delicious.
When you’re a kid and have faithful trust in grown-ups, going in for a medical procedure is no big deal. Now, with a big old adult head spinning with worries, it’s a different story.
But Dr. Robert Barry, the orthopedic surgeon who had the pleasure of slicing into me, is a cool character and allayed any fears. In fact, everyone I dealt with over at West Shore Medical Center was great throughout the whole ordeal, from the first emergency room visit to the surgery.
So they knifed my elbow, stitched it up and sent me home with all sorts of delicious painkillers and a note that said I didn’t have to go back to work for a nice long while.
My arm, in a hard splint I couldn’t take off, was more or less dead weight on the side of my body. I couldn’t drive or do any household chores, though I’m not the best at getting to those when I’m healthy. So, mostly I just lazed in my Vicodin haze watching cartoons for a month. For a treat, my wife, who is a vegetarian, made me a meatloaf, an adventure she chronicled here in the News Advocate. I was about to ask for a Twinkie smoothie for dessert but didn’t want to push it.
Alas, my Vicodin vacation was destined to come to an end. Now, I’m back to the harsh realities of life. I still can’t bend my elbow properly -- I can barely bring a fork to my mouth -- but the good rehabilitation folks down in the basement of the hospital are helping me along with that.
And even back in real life, there are treats to be had. Meatloaf and Twinkie smoothies are nice, but the weather has been lately too.
It’s been especially great watching all that slippery ice melt.
Instead, I didn’t get back for a month. And it’s all because of ice.
While usually I’m out covering the hard-edged cops and courts beat in Manistee County, a quick jaunt up to Sands Park to take pictures of first-graders from Jefferson Elementary ice skating seemed like a nice change of pace.
A Norman Rockwell painting come alive.
Everything was perfect. The forty-odd kids gliding across the ice, cries of joy and squeals of laughter. Proud parents clicking pictures. Snow gently falling.
Everything was great except the big goon with the camera around his neck, arms wheeling, legs kicking, landing flat on his back. Mostly on his right elbow.
That goon, of course, was me.
I had spent the last fifteen minutes snapping pictures of the kid skaters who would pop right back up after they fell. I used to be that limber too.
Not anymore.
We like to think we can control everything, that we are powerful enough to will accidents not to happen. Untrue. Anything can happen at any time. It’s the chaotic nature of the universe.
When I took my spill, I was just about off the surface of the ice into the safety of the parking lot. My right foot glided quickly across the ice and I lost all control. I fell. I fell hard. The contents of my pockets flew out. A pen skittered two dozen feet across the surface of the ice. My notepad ended up in a snow bank. Mothers gasped. The kids didn’t seem to notice. They kept right on skating and falling and laughing and getting up.
I’m very proud I didn’t cuss in front of the kiddies. I waited until I got into my car, turned up some punk rock music really loud and let the punishing gods have it. Every foul word I’ve ever learned (and I know them all) poured from my mouth. My elbow was screaming with pain. It felt like someone bored a hole at the tip and poured in a bucket of red hot razor blades.
My next stop was the emergency room at West Shore Medical Center where I was told I had cracked a small piece of bone off my elbow and tore the triceps muscle. It would require surgery to reattach it.
“What happened to the days of hopping up and dusting myself off?” I thought to myself.
Only 33 years old and I am having those insidious intimations of mortality. Next thing you know, I’ll be breaking a hip coming out of the Bingo Hall.
I haven’t had a surgery since I got my tonsils out when I was 5 years old. Back then, for treats, I was a Twinkie man. Sure, I ate all the broccoli and Brussels sprouts Mom heaped on my plate when I was a kid, but always with images of the cowboy mascot, Twinkie the Kid, dancing in my head while I waited for dessert time. During my recovery, I couldn’t have any because I wasn’t allowed solid food. Mom’s ingenious solution: put the Twinkie’s in the blender.
Delicious.
When you’re a kid and have faithful trust in grown-ups, going in for a medical procedure is no big deal. Now, with a big old adult head spinning with worries, it’s a different story.
But Dr. Robert Barry, the orthopedic surgeon who had the pleasure of slicing into me, is a cool character and allayed any fears. In fact, everyone I dealt with over at West Shore Medical Center was great throughout the whole ordeal, from the first emergency room visit to the surgery.
So they knifed my elbow, stitched it up and sent me home with all sorts of delicious painkillers and a note that said I didn’t have to go back to work for a nice long while.
My arm, in a hard splint I couldn’t take off, was more or less dead weight on the side of my body. I couldn’t drive or do any household chores, though I’m not the best at getting to those when I’m healthy. So, mostly I just lazed in my Vicodin haze watching cartoons for a month. For a treat, my wife, who is a vegetarian, made me a meatloaf, an adventure she chronicled here in the News Advocate. I was about to ask for a Twinkie smoothie for dessert but didn’t want to push it.
Alas, my Vicodin vacation was destined to come to an end. Now, I’m back to the harsh realities of life. I still can’t bend my elbow properly -- I can barely bring a fork to my mouth -- but the good rehabilitation folks down in the basement of the hospital are helping me along with that.
And even back in real life, there are treats to be had. Meatloaf and Twinkie smoothies are nice, but the weather has been lately too.
It’s been especially great watching all that slippery ice melt.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Jerry Darn hits the streets of Chicago
"Jerry Darn Nation," a story I wrote a few years ago in grad school, was featured in the Chicago Reader's Pure Fiction Issue this year.
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/jerry-darn-nation/Content?oid=2936718
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/jerry-darn-nation/Content?oid=2936718
The N-word: Huck Finn and “African-American Jim” float down the river?
To bowdlerize or not to bowdlerize, that is the question.
The word “bowdlerize” means to take out any material considered improper or offensive. It comes from Thomas Bowdler, who in the 19th Century went through Shakespeare and took out the naughty bits so he could read it to his family.
Or, as my wife puts it, he was the one who “neutered” The Bard.
This brings me to the most inflammatory word in our language, which a new edition of a classic American novel is seeking to bowdlerize.
It’s a slur so heavily laden with historical hatred and humiliation that it sinks to the very bottom of our American souls.
Nigger.
Test your response of seeing it printed here. Shocked? Surprised that it’s printed in your local newspaper?
You should be. Because it’s not just a word. It reflects an attitude that stinks like a bog in the back swamps of our nation’s racist history. Buried within the word is the brutal African-American narrative: slave ships, human beings bought and sold, back-breaking plantation work, whippings, lynchings and “white-only” water fountains.
While many of these are exclusive to the South, the word’s usage – and the power dynamic it invokes – are not.
Face it, white readers: many of the men and women we revere for founding our nation with other words like “freedom” and “liberty” were monstrous hypocrites.
White folks live the happy version of America. So, whitey, here’s a proposal: next time you’re driving around in your giant SUV chattering mindlessly on your cell phones, hurrying home to eat a Happy Meal in front of your favorite TV show, stop for a second to think about the millions of black folks whose version of America hasn’t been so easy.
Think about what it’s like to be completely powerless. Think about what it’s like to live in constant fear of violence. Think about how it feels to be, to use the great black novelist Ralph Ellison’s term, an “invisible man” in American society.
All these things are wound inside that hideous noun. The N-word is violent and humiliating. Its intention is to make a human being seem less human. The “peculiar institution” of slavery demanded such an attitude. How can you whip and subjugate people you think were “created equal?”
This brings me to “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Mark Twain’s masterpiece uses the N-word 219 times. According to the copy I recently checked out from the Manistee Public Library (just to be sure they had it), the first time it’s used is in the first paragraph of the second chapter.
According to Ernest Hemingway, American Literature started with this novel. Before it, writers were working with more European concepts. For those of you who didn’t have it on a required reading list at some point in your educational career, the book -- published in 1884 but set sometime in the 1830s or 1840s -- follows the young (white) rapscallion Huck Finn and a runaway slave, Jim. They float down the Mississippi River on a raft, trying to escape the civilization that attempts to tame Huck and enslaves Jim.
A new version set for a Feb. 15 publication by New South Books will rid the book of the N-word. The edition’s editor, Alan Gribben, a Twain scholar and professor of English at Auburn University, hopes that by changing the high-octane noun to “slave,” more schools that have dropped the book from its curriculum will reconsider. His intentions to bring a great book to a wider audience are noble. But this begs the question: why change the book? Why not change the audience?
The only way to illuminate someone is to have them read the text in its original form. Twain wasn’t using the term with the unconscious ignorance of a racist. It’s used in a novel that attempts to illuminate the racial situation in America before and after the bloody Civil War.
Editing, excising and censoring out the unsavory parts of life in any form of communication doesn’t make these things go away. We haven’t always lived down on Sesame Street. Our literature should be honest about this.
Twain was trying to accurately render a world with nothing but language at his disposal, which is the aim of the literary arts. For instance, he uses dialect in dialogue. Here’s Jim speaking: “Dey ain’ no raf no mo’, she done broke loose en gone – en here we is!”
If we were watching a movie about drug dealers, how realistic would it be if they were sitting at a table drinking tea and one of them said, “Please, Mr. Smith, when you get a chance could you pass me the cocaine?”
“Why, yes, Mr. Jones. It is the most delightful cocaine I’ve ever had. Splendid!”
Does this ring true?
Of course not.
But it’s up to us. Do we want a culture that soothingly tells us the politically correct – but historically and emotionally incorrect – version, or a culture that explores the brutal truths of life on this earth?
We live in a great, awful, wonderful, criminal and majestic nation. It was forged on hard work, betrayals, imagination, lies and feats of strength. The good with the bad.
To lose the N-word in Huck Finn is just a sprinkle of the sweet stuff in a sugarcoated retelling of our past that skips over the uncomfortable parts. It is an insult to every black person who lived under slavery and makes our nation’s monstrous white ancestors seem more palatable.
It’s the beginning of forgetting a struggle that should never be forgotten.
The word “bowdlerize” means to take out any material considered improper or offensive. It comes from Thomas Bowdler, who in the 19th Century went through Shakespeare and took out the naughty bits so he could read it to his family.
Or, as my wife puts it, he was the one who “neutered” The Bard.
This brings me to the most inflammatory word in our language, which a new edition of a classic American novel is seeking to bowdlerize.
It’s a slur so heavily laden with historical hatred and humiliation that it sinks to the very bottom of our American souls.
Nigger.
Test your response of seeing it printed here. Shocked? Surprised that it’s printed in your local newspaper?
You should be. Because it’s not just a word. It reflects an attitude that stinks like a bog in the back swamps of our nation’s racist history. Buried within the word is the brutal African-American narrative: slave ships, human beings bought and sold, back-breaking plantation work, whippings, lynchings and “white-only” water fountains.
While many of these are exclusive to the South, the word’s usage – and the power dynamic it invokes – are not.
Face it, white readers: many of the men and women we revere for founding our nation with other words like “freedom” and “liberty” were monstrous hypocrites.
White folks live the happy version of America. So, whitey, here’s a proposal: next time you’re driving around in your giant SUV chattering mindlessly on your cell phones, hurrying home to eat a Happy Meal in front of your favorite TV show, stop for a second to think about the millions of black folks whose version of America hasn’t been so easy.
Think about what it’s like to be completely powerless. Think about what it’s like to live in constant fear of violence. Think about how it feels to be, to use the great black novelist Ralph Ellison’s term, an “invisible man” in American society.
All these things are wound inside that hideous noun. The N-word is violent and humiliating. Its intention is to make a human being seem less human. The “peculiar institution” of slavery demanded such an attitude. How can you whip and subjugate people you think were “created equal?”
This brings me to “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Mark Twain’s masterpiece uses the N-word 219 times. According to the copy I recently checked out from the Manistee Public Library (just to be sure they had it), the first time it’s used is in the first paragraph of the second chapter.
According to Ernest Hemingway, American Literature started with this novel. Before it, writers were working with more European concepts. For those of you who didn’t have it on a required reading list at some point in your educational career, the book -- published in 1884 but set sometime in the 1830s or 1840s -- follows the young (white) rapscallion Huck Finn and a runaway slave, Jim. They float down the Mississippi River on a raft, trying to escape the civilization that attempts to tame Huck and enslaves Jim.
A new version set for a Feb. 15 publication by New South Books will rid the book of the N-word. The edition’s editor, Alan Gribben, a Twain scholar and professor of English at Auburn University, hopes that by changing the high-octane noun to “slave,” more schools that have dropped the book from its curriculum will reconsider. His intentions to bring a great book to a wider audience are noble. But this begs the question: why change the book? Why not change the audience?
The only way to illuminate someone is to have them read the text in its original form. Twain wasn’t using the term with the unconscious ignorance of a racist. It’s used in a novel that attempts to illuminate the racial situation in America before and after the bloody Civil War.
Editing, excising and censoring out the unsavory parts of life in any form of communication doesn’t make these things go away. We haven’t always lived down on Sesame Street. Our literature should be honest about this.
Twain was trying to accurately render a world with nothing but language at his disposal, which is the aim of the literary arts. For instance, he uses dialect in dialogue. Here’s Jim speaking: “Dey ain’ no raf no mo’, she done broke loose en gone – en here we is!”
If we were watching a movie about drug dealers, how realistic would it be if they were sitting at a table drinking tea and one of them said, “Please, Mr. Smith, when you get a chance could you pass me the cocaine?”
“Why, yes, Mr. Jones. It is the most delightful cocaine I’ve ever had. Splendid!”
Does this ring true?
Of course not.
But it’s up to us. Do we want a culture that soothingly tells us the politically correct – but historically and emotionally incorrect – version, or a culture that explores the brutal truths of life on this earth?
We live in a great, awful, wonderful, criminal and majestic nation. It was forged on hard work, betrayals, imagination, lies and feats of strength. The good with the bad.
To lose the N-word in Huck Finn is just a sprinkle of the sweet stuff in a sugarcoated retelling of our past that skips over the uncomfortable parts. It is an insult to every black person who lived under slavery and makes our nation’s monstrous white ancestors seem more palatable.
It’s the beginning of forgetting a struggle that should never be forgotten.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Deer camp diaries: Steaks and stories at ‘does’ only deer camp
Dear diary:
I’m a big buck so I’ll admit it: I was scared.
After smacking a deer on M-55 Sunday night before the Opener, getting to the steak dinner at a female deer camp was the last thing on my mind.
Instead, as I peered along the side of the road with a flashlight, trying to find the deer I collided with, I was thinking of fleeing, heading home where I could bury myself in a heap of blankets and watch “Sanford and Son” reruns until the feeling burned off and I could face the world again.
My fingers trembled. My thoughts darted. It’s always so strange to see the vehicle that was in perfect shape just moments before dented, cracked and broken.
The impact had the same effect on my nerves.
How did this happen? I thought. I’m a notoriously slow, cautious driver. My wife-to-be chides me because I’m a wimp about passing slow trucks and senior citizens in sedans. I have an impeccable driving record. I’ve never even hit a squirrel.
Yet, there I was, my car in a ditch.
Moments after the accident, two dudes in a Volkswagen pulled a U-turn and drove up next to me. They looked like they were about to stop and offer some sort of advice or soothing words of encouragement, but they didn’t. They slowed down on the shoulder, gave me a strange look, and then zipped away.
“Thanks for the help, guys,” I thought.
But, I had to press on. My car was still operational.
I was free to go on my way. But where would that be? Sitting in my car on the shoulder of the road, listening for any strange noises coming from the running engine, most of me wanted to turn back west towards town.
But, I had a job to do. There was an all-female deer camp out there that had a steak waiting for me. The ladies at the camp would nurse my nerves back to vigorous health with a fine dinner and a little understanding. Calling everything off just because I hit a critter along the way would be a blow to my bravado. So, I headed east into the woods. I gave the camp a call to let them know I’d be late.
Gene Smoter answered. He was the one who contacted me about the camp. The ladies who hunt from it are his daughters and granddaughters.
Gene, an ebullient man with a large heart and healthy sense of humor, said, “You’re not supposed to get them with your car, you know.”
I laughed and told him I’d see them about a half hour later than expected.
When I pulled into the driveway of the cabin, I could see a man who I guessed was Gene with a woman I figured was one of his daughters standing on a porch landing that led up to the cabin.
“I see you still got both of your headlights,” the woman said. “That’s a good sign.”
DOES BEFORE BROS
Girls get preference at this deer camp, plain and simple.
Since the ladies have married names there’s no easy camp appellation. I suppose, technically, it could be called the Schmidtke/Sonkiss/Hanusack/Smoter deer camp.
Let me quickly explain. Gene Smoter, a retired autoworker from Dearborn Heights, has three daughters: Debbie Schmidtke, Brenda Sonkiss and Shelly Hanusack. Debbie and her husband technically own the place near Irons, but, from the moment I walk in, it’s obvious this is an all-out family affair.
There’s Gene and seven ladies in the cozy cabin that resembles any other northern Michigan cabin. There’s only one bedroom, I’m told.
A close family, especially come Opening Day, when all the ladies come up. Their husbands have to wait until Thanksgiving to come up for dude deer camp.
“We have seniority,” Debbie said, who has been hunting with her dad since she was 12. “We always thought we would marry guys who did not hunt so they could watch the kids. And then, they all started hanging out with our dad and learning how to hunt.”
Debbie and Brenda are the main huntresses, but, this year, they are initiating Shelly’s girls, Jennifer, 15, and Becky, 12, who both recently finished hunter’s safety.
Debbie and Brenda also have sons, who were only allowed to hunt Opening Day until a certain age.
“After they’re fourteen, they’re kicked out,” Brenda said. “They can come up Thanksgiving.”
I feel lucky to have been allowed inside this all-female hunting sanctum. From the moment I walk in, the family makes me feel at home. I’m seated at the head of the dinner table and humored with stories and jokes for an hour and a half, forgetting all about my car/deer debacle. It’s especially nice to discover that a lot of the family now resides in Livonia, where I grew up. Debbie’s daughter, Danni, even attends the same middle school I went to.
I’m put at ease immediately.
“We do a lot of laughing when we’re hunting,” Debbie said at one point. “The guys get kind of ticked off that we’re always successful with our deer camps because whenever they hunt with us we’re always goofing around and joking.”
But, I learn, the ladies also slay deer. The mounts and hides in the cabin are mostly from the girls’ kills over the years. In fact, Debbie’s husband, Mike, has to sheepishly admit to his buddies during the guys’ deer camp that none of the evidence of success are due to his hunting prowess, but his wife’s.
Debbie told a story how she scheduled an inspection for the cabin at 9 a.m. on Opening Day one year. Gene questioned her reasoning.
“I’ll be done by then,” she told her dad then. “We all laughed about it. We went out early that morning. First daybreak I got a doe. We were laughing, partying it up, waiting for our truck to come pick up the doe, heard some noise, (my dad) and I sat down behind a tree and here comes this buck right around the corner. Got the buck, too. I was all done by the time of the inspection at 9 a.m. That was kind of nice.”
BUCK NAKED
Firearms deer season is generally considered a primarily male activity. A man leaves his wife at home and joins his pack of friends in the woods where they drink up and let loose. There are plenty of common traits found at these deer camps.
With the ladies, though, things are a little different.
“You won’t find this at a guy’s camp,” Gene said, smiling, before he launched into a story about Debbie.
You see, Gene and Brenda usually hunt together. They’ve sat side by side on Opening Day for 27 years. Debbie, on the other hand, likes her solitude.
“Debbie is a bon vivant on her own. She was hunting on the side of hill 200 or 300 hundred yards away,” Gene said. “We’re on top of a hill watching Debbie’s doghouse blind with a little orange cover on it. At about noon, it looks like a huge turtle. It gets up. And this big round thing moves. And there’s her chair and fanny pack and her Thermos and a flashlight and a gun. I ask, ‘Why did she move fifteen feet for?’ Then, the turtle lifts up, and backs up.”
The blind had basically lifted up, moved over for a few minutes, then moved back over the gear. Later, Gene asked her what happened.
“She said, ‘Dad, when a girls got to go a girl’s got to go. You don’t think I’m gonna go behind a tree on Opening Day with 500 guys in the woods, do ya?’” Gene said.
There’s also the drunken tom-foolery men partake in during deer season that needs to be taken into consideration.
“There’s this one place I like to hunt over by the Pine River,” Debbie said. “There’s this huge camp that goes way back there. We don’t go back there too often anymore. All of a sudden, I could hear something coming through the woods. I’m getting my gun ready because this is where I got my six-point one year. I’m sitting there ready. I could see this light brown. And I’m waiting and watching with anticipation and all of a sudden here’s this naked man walking down the two-track! I think he had a rough night. I’m not sure where he was going, but I think he was heading back to the big camp.”
THE BEAR DEN
But these ladies aren’t squeamish.
Both Debbie and Brenda clean their own deer. Brenda even likes deer hearts, which she pickles.
Debbie can only recall an instance two years ago when her dad wouldn’t let her clean her own deer. He told her to stay put until he got there after she shot a buck from 170 yards away at the top of a ridge. The deer was at the bottom of a ravine.
She was impatiently waiting, wanting to go down there and start gutting, but Gene kept telling her to not go down until he and Brenda got there.
“They came up. Man, we never walked so fast down that hill. He said, ‘Here, hold the gun.’ The next thing I know, he’s cleaning the deer. And I said, ‘Hey, I always clean my own deer.’”
But her dad insisted on telling Debbie to hold his gun so he could operate. Within a few moments, the deer was cleaned and dragged out of the ravine, but Debbie still didn’t understand the hurry.
“I said, ‘What the heck? I always get to clean my deer.’ My dad says, ‘Well, that spot where you shot a deer on that nice little hump was a bear den,’” Debbie said.
Gene had run into a Conservation Officer while hunting grouse earlier in the month near the same ravine. The CO said there was a sow and two cubs in the area. Gene didn’t think Debbie was in a position to even shoot a deer there.
“She took her 30 aught 6. Cranked it over to the seventh power. Saw a deer on the other side. Put a scope on it and goes ‘bang’ and kills the deer just about where these poor bears are hibernating. But we got the deer out and nobody got hurt,” Gene said.
Gene, Debbie and Brenda have plenty of other hunting stories, all of which they excitedly relay before and after dinner, which thoroughly entertain. By the time I’m back out in the dark, cold night, I barely even glance at the dented hood of my car. I never got a look at the deer that did it, to see if it had spikes or not.
But, on the drive back to town, I think there isn’t really much of a difference between bucks and does after all.
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