Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The National Book Festival


So there I was, standing with my friend Barbara amidst the crush of people on the National Mall. All of us straining to squeeze out of the rain and into the tents so we could hear authors speak of their craft, read from their work, and inspire with their words. Despite the rain, a light, straight-down kind of rain, and the long lines for food, toilets, and book sales, the National Book Festival of 2009 was a grand event.

The authors, too many to possibly see, represented every genre. We overheard snippets from Judy Blume, Lois Lowry, Walter Mosley, and Nicholas Sparks as we wove among the book-reading masses. We were charmed by Jeannette Walls’ claim that she wrote her book imagining how a rich kid would someday read it and understand her life. We were inspired by Julia Alvarez’s fight to keep a Virginia school from banning her book and moved by Azar Nafisi's passion for becoming an American citizen. But being writers, and therefore observers of life, we were often distracted by the antics of those around us.

Having dodged elbows and umbrellas to make it to the first row of SRO at the John Irving presentation, we found ourselves directly behind two women breastfeeding their tiny infants. Given that Irving was discussing fatherhood, perhaps it was appropriate, but the people coughing down our necks only made me think of one thing: swine flu. Why would any mother bring a new baby into such a crowd? She was desperate to hear good writing? Or she was desperate to get out of the house?

We found seats before Marilynne Robinson began to read, but it was hard to concentrate when the couple in front of us was entwined into a single, two headed creature. His head nestled against her neck, her mouth scoured his face, and they whispered incessantly. By the time Tim O’Brien began to read, I figured they would slink away. But no, suddenly they raised their heads, rapt, as O’Brien read his essay. The girl wept at every word, and the boyfriend offered comfort by kissing her shoulder.

I wondered about that weeping girl then, and I wonder about her now. Was she the child of an aging father, which was the subject of the essay? Had her father died? I guess I’ll never know. But I do know what I witnessed. The absolute power of writers to sweep us worshipful readers away. And I say Amen.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Having a Hallmark Moment

I'm a sucker for Hallmark Cards and Kodak moments. It's not a great trait in a woman who teaches courses entitled "Strategies for Subverting Sentimentality When Writing Poetry of Everyday Life." I tear up when I read the human interest stories in the "B" section of my paper. Maybe it's autumn, the beginning of the end of another year. Maybe it's the upcoming Jewish holy days, the beginning of a brand new year in the Jewish calendar. It is a time set aside to reflect back, recognize and acknowledge what went awry, a time to munch apples with honey in hopes for a sweet new year. I think, though, that this jag I've been on started with Ted Kennedy.


"He was the man who read with me. I didn't know he was famous." That was some child in Washington, D.C. I was on Cape Cod the week Ted Kennedy died, was glued to every bit of the coverage. The Cape Cod Times was filled with stories of Kennedy's life in Hyannis. "He waited for his turn in line." The man at the bakery. "He helped us when we were at risk of losing our house to the bank." A couple nearing retirement. "He remembered to call my family every September 11, ever since my boy died in the towers." A Massachusetts constituent. "He was father to 11 extra kids after our father and Uncle John died." One of the late Robert Kennedy's sons.


I was glued to the news coverage of Kennedy's funeral-- newspapers, television, radio. A child of the Sixties, I bathed in nostalgia. Outside, Hurricane Danny whipped the National Seashore lands the Kennedy family had fought to preserve. Two days before the senator was eulogized and buried, the sun had shone on Cape Cod, and people-- natives, wash ashores and first time visitors-- had lined the roadways, stood on the bridge to the mainland with placards. They waited for hours to see the entourage carrying his casket, his family, for a few seconds. They stood in the sun with children on their shoulders, with elderly and disabled relatives in wheelchairs, thousands of "regular people" wanting to bid a last farewell to a man from a family that the press dubbed "American royalty." At night, the senator laid in-state in the Kennedy Library in Boston, I followed his journey off Cape to pick my husband, Steve, up at the airport. Along all roads, construction signs were lit and read "From the People of Massachusetts: Thanks, Ted."

I arrived at the airport red-eyed and full of Kennedy stories to share, but when my husband jumped in the car, the first thing he told me was that he'd started the morning comforting our neighbor, Sue. Sue was pretty distraught, had to put her beloved cat, Sammy, down the night before. When Steve got to work, he stopped in the coffee shop next door to his office for his morning coffee, and saw his usual waitress weeping over the dog she'd lost the day before. "It was a day for comforting people, I guess," he said.

"He accomplished so much in his lifetime," my husband says as he reads the litany of legislation for which Ted Kennedy is given credit. "I'll never do what he did in his lifetime." I thought about all those kids who will remember the old guy who came to their school and read with them when no press corps was taking notes, the Ted Kennedy I've been mourning. I thought of those bereaved pet owners comforted by my busy lawyer husband who has always meant to change the world. "Sure you will," I say.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Feel Young Again


I did something good for myself the other day. I stood up for a cause. I am not going to extol the firmness of my belief in the cause. This is not a political forum.

But I almost didn’t go through with it. I saw the opposition, gathered with their signs and sneers, on the corner opposite the one I was headed for. I saw police. A woman of the opposition goaded me. “Are you honestly going to hold that sign up in public?” I told her I was. And then she told me she remembered the days when… You can flesh out the ellipsis. She held a sign that had a plastic bunch of bananas attached to it and said something disparaging about our President.

I heard someone yell, “Who bussed you people in? There can’t be that many of you.” But there were that many of us. We outnumbered our opponents 3 to 1. I marched on and took my place with the other members of the rally. I stayed out in the hot sun for two hours embracing my right to gather peaceably with likeminded countrywomen and men.

I recommend that you go out and rally for what you believe in. It could be in support of a candidate or of a traffic light at a problematic intersection. It could be in protest of a proposition or a news channel. It could be anything at all you feel must be brought to light and set right.

I felt like I was twenty again. You will, too.