“I’m going to pray daily that this will never happen again,” Sister Miriam said. She’s the Sister at St. Mary’s, Sewanee who makes rosaries “with prayer,” and I’m sure she’ll keep her promise to pray daily that the atrocities of the Holocaust of World War II won’t ever occur again. We were standing in the hot July sun, looking at the Children’s Holocaust Memorial, a German rail car that was used to take victims to concentration and death camps during WWII. The car was transported from Germany to Whitwell, TN Middle School for a memorial that was part of the Paper Clip Project launched in 1998 by Principal Linda Hooper. The old rail car houses 11 million paper clips (and other documents related to the Holocaust), one for each victim of the Holocaust. Eighteen beautiful butterflies inlaid with stained glass decorate the ground beside the car and signify hope for new life in the world –and a dedication to a life of compassion and understanding for other nations and cultures in the world.
I was glad to be standing in the park with four Sisters and a friend as the scene is profoundly moving. It was good to be among those who pray for the betterment of life and peace in the world. Although steps have not been put back in place because the railroad car has just been moved to the site of the new state-of-the-art Whitwell Middle School, two of the Sisters climbed up into the car to read the moving quotes by theologians and philosophers placed on the walls. While we stood there, Principal Hooper came out to bring us brochures about this project that she launched to teach students the value of tolerating different cultures. In 1998, she sent David Smith, 8th grade History teacher and Assistant Principal to a teaching course in Chattanooga, and he was joined by Language Arts teacher Sandra Roberts in teaching a group of students about the Holocaust. “We use a word to describe the initiation and involvement in this project,” Principal Hooper said. “It’s a Yiddish word, ‘beshert,’ which means ‘it was meant to be.’ Indeed, no one would guess that a project of such range and depth was a usual kind of class project at a small rural school in the Cumberland Valley of middle Tennessee.
The study about toleration of a different culture began in earnest when a student suggested that the group at Whitwell Middle School collect a paper clip for each victim of the Holocaust. The paper clip was a Norwegian symbol used by Europeans who expressed solidarity with the suffering of the Jews by wearing a paper clip during the Holocaust. In 1998, the students set up a web page asking for help in collecting the clips and encouraged people to share their feelings about the Holocaust. Today, they have collected 30,000 letters and documents, have become the subject of a movie entitled “Paper Clips,” collected over 30 million people clips from 50 U.S. states and 50 countries of the world, and have been visited by many survivors of the Holocaust. When the rail car is put back in place, it will include a suitcase sent from a middle school in Germany with tags which are notes of apology to Anne Frank. The principal of the German middle school is the father of a young German composer who wrote a piece of music called “Whitwell bells” when the Children’s Holocaust Memorial was dedicated.
Two White House correspondents for German newspapers, Peter Schroeder and Dagmar Schroeder Hildebrand, purchased a rail car (using their own and other donations from German citizens) used to transport prisoners during WWII that they found in Poland, and shipped it to Whitwell for the Paper Clip Project. The small rail car, 773 meters in length, 2.40 meters in height, and 3.00 meters in width, transported 75 to 150 Jews per trip to the camps, and we were shocked when we looked inside at the cramped space that held them – it was a “standing room only” experience within the “cattle car.” The Whitwell Middle School Memorial signifies to the school, to the community of Whitwell, and to the world that there will always be a need for perseverance, empathy, tolerance, and understanding for other cultures.
Coincidentally, Principal Hooper knew the name of the book that contained the poem I mentioned in the preceding blog. It’s entitled I NEVER SAW ANOTHER BUTTERFLY. She emphasized that the car is no longer a symbol of death but one of new life. If you haven’t seen “Paper Clips,” you can rent it from any video store. I’m fortunate to live only 45 minutes away from this memorial that the Whitwell Middle School Holocaust group says should remind us we change the world, one class at a time, and can really make a difference wherever we are.
For those of you who read my blogs regularly, I’ll be on vacation in the Smokies for a week.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
THE JOY OF WRITING?
I deeply appreciate the passion and talent of most of the authors who present their work at the Sewanee Writers Conference this year, but I’m also a bit troubled about the tone and content of a few of the short stories I’ve heard at public sessions. Now, I’ve written my share of “bleeding heart and rue” in poetry during my 73 years, so I don’t exclude myself from that which often seems to exude from some contemporary writers—the phenomenon called “profound angst.” However, two succeeding days, I’ve returned from readings feeling like a monstrous cloud hovered over my head – war, unsuccessful affairs of the heart, death, disease – I know they’re part of the human condition, but I was very glad when two poets, who seem to be able to look back and be accepting and even amused by ruptures of life and love, got up to read.
I have a close friend, a retired Distinguished Professor of English and writer, who says she once thought that profound angst was a mark of sophistication, but she believes the old “everything is too bad to be true” attitude doesn’t enrich her life. Today, in retirement, this friend studies music, sings in a choir, writes, works out, cooks, reads omnivorously, perfects her French, and says she’s grateful for a devoted beau who escorts her to functions that feed her soul. She doesn’t have time for angst. And the beautiful prose in her blogs reflects that absence of angst.
I have a box of unpublished manuscripts, many of which are so terrible in their recognition that “the end” is always imminent, the writings would probably qualify me for a diagnosis of depression. What is this “oh sorrowful me” song writers sing, at the expense of readers who want a little joy and resolution – or even inspiration – when they read a novel, a short story, or a poem? The expression, “provide a point of identification with universal suffering” has certainly become hackneyed enough when we narrate the sufferings of this world. Well, readers can identify and empathize, but at some place in the denouement of a story, they need a little redemption – hope – faith that the real world is not just a place where we’re wounded and keep sticking our hands into the wounds so often that we prevent them from scarring over…we need to help the readers move on toward their engagement with joy. Things are bad, yes, and Lucretius did write: “Hath God designed the world, it would not be/a world so frail and faulty as we see,” but we also experience many moments of real rapture…peace…and contentment during our lifetimes. And that doesn’t mean we’ve just become simple-minded or senile when we enjoy those moments of being.
For me, some of the feelings expressed in the stories I heard emphasize that man is alienated from what is good and holy, but I want to stand up and shout that the world is yet a place filled with innumerable wonders and with men whose good is more than gold, as C. S. Lewis described his mentor George McDonald. I think that readers yearn for a bit of “fantastical reading,” such as that of C. S. Lewis and George McDonald, and his Inklings friends Tolkien and Charles Williams, to name a few who carry us beyond our feelings of alienation and give us hope in both the magical realms of the world and the mystery of the beyond.
This morning as I sat before the altar at St. Mary’s I noted the orange and yellow butterflies, wings outspread, embroidered on the altar hangings. They reminded me of a poem contained in a book of writings by children of the Holocaust – a beautiful, throat-catching piece that described a butterfly which flitted by and delighted a young Jewish girl before her ultimate entry into the ovens. And she wrote about her engagement with the beautiful insect. It was all joy and all faith, a hymn of the fruits of the Spirit in which the child gave readers the idea that before she passed out of her short life and in the face of the cruel existence in the camps, God “blissed” her. Yes, he blessed her but he also blissed her.
I wish I could relocate the poem. I’d post it on my desk and send out copies to all my writing friends, exhorting them to come out of their profound angst and into the light, to allow readers to be “surprised by joy,” as C. S. Lewis wrote about his conversion from being an avowed atheist to becoming a person who believed in a Higher Being.
P.S. And then I walked down and heard Tony Earley from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN read from his novel in progress –and was “surprised by joy!”
I have a close friend, a retired Distinguished Professor of English and writer, who says she once thought that profound angst was a mark of sophistication, but she believes the old “everything is too bad to be true” attitude doesn’t enrich her life. Today, in retirement, this friend studies music, sings in a choir, writes, works out, cooks, reads omnivorously, perfects her French, and says she’s grateful for a devoted beau who escorts her to functions that feed her soul. She doesn’t have time for angst. And the beautiful prose in her blogs reflects that absence of angst.
I have a box of unpublished manuscripts, many of which are so terrible in their recognition that “the end” is always imminent, the writings would probably qualify me for a diagnosis of depression. What is this “oh sorrowful me” song writers sing, at the expense of readers who want a little joy and resolution – or even inspiration – when they read a novel, a short story, or a poem? The expression, “provide a point of identification with universal suffering” has certainly become hackneyed enough when we narrate the sufferings of this world. Well, readers can identify and empathize, but at some place in the denouement of a story, they need a little redemption – hope – faith that the real world is not just a place where we’re wounded and keep sticking our hands into the wounds so often that we prevent them from scarring over…we need to help the readers move on toward their engagement with joy. Things are bad, yes, and Lucretius did write: “Hath God designed the world, it would not be/a world so frail and faulty as we see,” but we also experience many moments of real rapture…peace…and contentment during our lifetimes. And that doesn’t mean we’ve just become simple-minded or senile when we enjoy those moments of being.
For me, some of the feelings expressed in the stories I heard emphasize that man is alienated from what is good and holy, but I want to stand up and shout that the world is yet a place filled with innumerable wonders and with men whose good is more than gold, as C. S. Lewis described his mentor George McDonald. I think that readers yearn for a bit of “fantastical reading,” such as that of C. S. Lewis and George McDonald, and his Inklings friends Tolkien and Charles Williams, to name a few who carry us beyond our feelings of alienation and give us hope in both the magical realms of the world and the mystery of the beyond.
This morning as I sat before the altar at St. Mary’s I noted the orange and yellow butterflies, wings outspread, embroidered on the altar hangings. They reminded me of a poem contained in a book of writings by children of the Holocaust – a beautiful, throat-catching piece that described a butterfly which flitted by and delighted a young Jewish girl before her ultimate entry into the ovens. And she wrote about her engagement with the beautiful insect. It was all joy and all faith, a hymn of the fruits of the Spirit in which the child gave readers the idea that before she passed out of her short life and in the face of the cruel existence in the camps, God “blissed” her. Yes, he blessed her but he also blissed her.
I wish I could relocate the poem. I’d post it on my desk and send out copies to all my writing friends, exhorting them to come out of their profound angst and into the light, to allow readers to be “surprised by joy,” as C. S. Lewis wrote about his conversion from being an avowed atheist to becoming a person who believed in a Higher Being.
P.S. And then I walked down and heard Tony Earley from Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN read from his novel in progress –and was “surprised by joy!”
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
RIP VAN WINKLE’S RETREAT –ANOTHER LOUISIANA STORY
One of the last social gatherings I attended before I left New Iberia, Louisiana, was a luncheon meeting of The New Iberia Fortnightly Literary Club, New Iberia’s oldest literary club. We met at Lagniappe Too’s Café on Main Street, where New Iberians love to meet and eat the wonderful dishes prepared by Elaine Landry, one of Louisiana’s superb chefs. Elaine cooks; and Al, her architect and artist husband, greets the many visitors, from hungry locals to international diners, who search for genuine Cajun cuisine.
Dianne Landry, one of my fellow Fortnightly members, sat next to me at this last-meeting-of-the-year luncheon and began discussing a book she was reading about Joseph Jefferson, a famous actor who spent many years in retreat at nearby Jefferson Island, Louisiana. Joe Jefferson is remembered for his role as “Rip Van Winkle” on stages throughout the U.S. and abroad. I told Dianne about a mini biography I wrote about Jefferson in a book entitled LIVE OAK GARDENS. Actually, I had considered writing a children’s book about Jefferson before I discovered that someone had preceded me.
To me, the fascinating aspect of Joe Jefferson’s life is that this Philadelphia-born actor chose to own a home near New Iberia in a remote place then called Orange Island, a land mass pushed up by a dome of salt, forming an island that rose above the marshlands surrounding it. The island was so named because of the grove of orange trees Jefferson first spied when he visited there in the late 1860’s. He eventually bought the island in 1870 for the sum of $28,000 at a time when this exotic place was inaccessible by road, and Jefferson traveled to his retreat from Algiers (near New Orleans) to the end of the railroad line, then boarded a sternwheeler to the island. Thirty six hundred acres of oaks, pecan trees, and an orange grove covered the island.
William Ballou, a reporter for “Cosmopolitan magazine,” writing of his visit to the island in 1889, described the retreat as an “immense grove of magnolias and live oaks.” He mentioned the Osage shrubs guarding the grounds from cattle and an arched corridor that led from the mansion to Lake Peigneur through a mesh of hanging vines, mistletoe, and other vegetation. Ballou wrote: “At the foot of the hill, toward the east, is a jungle, where the cypress reigns, together with the alligator which makes the night weird if not hideous with its unearthly baying” (If you’ve ever heard an alligator baying, you’ll understand Ballou’s description!).
Jefferson also owned cattle that grazed on a prairie nearby, and they yielded him a profit of $10,000 annually. Lake Peigneur was feeding ground for ducks, geese, snipe, and plover. Wildlife on the island included deer, turkey buzzards, boat-tailed grackles, and blackbirds, which Jefferson used as subjects for his paintings. Jefferson used the island as a place of respite from his theatrical work. At the island, he entertained writers, actors, artists, even President Grover Cleveland in 1892. In his leisure time he painted on the third level of his mansion beneath a fourth floor cupola that rose from the center of his home. By far, the grandest room in the house was the dining room with its Cathedral Gothic design, carved ceiling, and Moorish designs. A skylight in the mansion allowed Jefferson abundant light to paint landscapes, sheep, buzzards, and bayous, using his fingers, rag pieces, blotting paper, and feathers to achieve special effects. He said that the greatest landscapes were works of the imagination rather than transcripts of realities.
Joe Jefferson was an actor and connoisseur, painter, and naturalist who claimed that the recipe for a successful life included “hard labor, careful husbandry, and judicious speculation.” Today, Live Oak Gardens and his mansion are internationally renowned as places of peace and beauty, due to the efforts of this man who played the role of Rip Van Winkle on the American and international stages and who made exotic Jefferson Island his preferred home. As I wrote in the small book, LIVE OAK GARDENS, “today, the live oaks form ancient shelters, standing like patriarchs with their beards of moss trailing in the slight breeze. They arch high above the paths, unencumbering, but offering visitors respite from the sun…Sound is minimal. Sometimes all one hears is the drone of worker bees fussing in an open blossom or blue jays dipping and shrilling overhead, ready to steal a berry, a fruit, some forbidden object from the enchanted garden…”
The present owner of Live Oak Gardens is working on another book about the gardens, but I understand he often hands out complimentary copies of my book about Live Oak Gardens and Joseph Jefferson. If you’re interested in this Acadiana landmark and the man who first developed it, you might write Live Oak Gardens Ltd., 10106 Jefferson Island Rd., New Iberia, Louisiana 70560 and ask for a copy.
Dianne Landry, one of my fellow Fortnightly members, sat next to me at this last-meeting-of-the-year luncheon and began discussing a book she was reading about Joseph Jefferson, a famous actor who spent many years in retreat at nearby Jefferson Island, Louisiana. Joe Jefferson is remembered for his role as “Rip Van Winkle” on stages throughout the U.S. and abroad. I told Dianne about a mini biography I wrote about Jefferson in a book entitled LIVE OAK GARDENS. Actually, I had considered writing a children’s book about Jefferson before I discovered that someone had preceded me.
To me, the fascinating aspect of Joe Jefferson’s life is that this Philadelphia-born actor chose to own a home near New Iberia in a remote place then called Orange Island, a land mass pushed up by a dome of salt, forming an island that rose above the marshlands surrounding it. The island was so named because of the grove of orange trees Jefferson first spied when he visited there in the late 1860’s. He eventually bought the island in 1870 for the sum of $28,000 at a time when this exotic place was inaccessible by road, and Jefferson traveled to his retreat from Algiers (near New Orleans) to the end of the railroad line, then boarded a sternwheeler to the island. Thirty six hundred acres of oaks, pecan trees, and an orange grove covered the island.
William Ballou, a reporter for “Cosmopolitan magazine,” writing of his visit to the island in 1889, described the retreat as an “immense grove of magnolias and live oaks.” He mentioned the Osage shrubs guarding the grounds from cattle and an arched corridor that led from the mansion to Lake Peigneur through a mesh of hanging vines, mistletoe, and other vegetation. Ballou wrote: “At the foot of the hill, toward the east, is a jungle, where the cypress reigns, together with the alligator which makes the night weird if not hideous with its unearthly baying” (If you’ve ever heard an alligator baying, you’ll understand Ballou’s description!).
Jefferson also owned cattle that grazed on a prairie nearby, and they yielded him a profit of $10,000 annually. Lake Peigneur was feeding ground for ducks, geese, snipe, and plover. Wildlife on the island included deer, turkey buzzards, boat-tailed grackles, and blackbirds, which Jefferson used as subjects for his paintings. Jefferson used the island as a place of respite from his theatrical work. At the island, he entertained writers, actors, artists, even President Grover Cleveland in 1892. In his leisure time he painted on the third level of his mansion beneath a fourth floor cupola that rose from the center of his home. By far, the grandest room in the house was the dining room with its Cathedral Gothic design, carved ceiling, and Moorish designs. A skylight in the mansion allowed Jefferson abundant light to paint landscapes, sheep, buzzards, and bayous, using his fingers, rag pieces, blotting paper, and feathers to achieve special effects. He said that the greatest landscapes were works of the imagination rather than transcripts of realities.
Joe Jefferson was an actor and connoisseur, painter, and naturalist who claimed that the recipe for a successful life included “hard labor, careful husbandry, and judicious speculation.” Today, Live Oak Gardens and his mansion are internationally renowned as places of peace and beauty, due to the efforts of this man who played the role of Rip Van Winkle on the American and international stages and who made exotic Jefferson Island his preferred home. As I wrote in the small book, LIVE OAK GARDENS, “today, the live oaks form ancient shelters, standing like patriarchs with their beards of moss trailing in the slight breeze. They arch high above the paths, unencumbering, but offering visitors respite from the sun…Sound is minimal. Sometimes all one hears is the drone of worker bees fussing in an open blossom or blue jays dipping and shrilling overhead, ready to steal a berry, a fruit, some forbidden object from the enchanted garden…”
The present owner of Live Oak Gardens is working on another book about the gardens, but I understand he often hands out complimentary copies of my book about Live Oak Gardens and Joseph Jefferson. If you’re interested in this Acadiana landmark and the man who first developed it, you might write Live Oak Gardens Ltd., 10106 Jefferson Island Rd., New Iberia, Louisiana 70560 and ask for a copy.
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