Memorize this

Google has replaced the need to remember much of anything. “Who starred in that movie?” “Does ‘edited’ have one T or two?” “What’s the capital of Wisconsin?”

Can’t remember? Google it.

But Caroline Kennedy, whose latest book is “Poems to Learn by Heart,” suggests memorizing poetry helps us understand someone else’s emotions, put words to universal feelings and connects people.

“You share with someone and you have this bond that I think is very intense,” she told interviewer Neal Conan. “You know you have this poem — you gave them something that means something to you and those are the best kinds of gifts to give or to receive.”

I imagine if I ever was a hostage or POW, imprisoned without so much as a dial-up internet connection and left to the games of my mind, I’d be grateful for the poems and Bible verses I’d memorized throughout my life (why I imagine I’d ever be a POW is beyond me — this is how my strange mind operates).

As I listened to her interview on NPR this week, I thought of my maternal grandfather, who loved poetry and often recited lines and verses as I spent time with him as a child. He especially loved bawdy bits (to which my little brother attached himself fully), but the poem I remember my grandfather encouraged me to memorize (he quizzed me on my recall more than once) had a lesson in its rhyming words:

The Guy in the Glass
by Dave Wimbrow

When you get what you want in your struggle for self,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.

For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Whose judgment upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.

He’s the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he’s with you clear up to the end,
And you’ve passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum,
And think you’re a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum
If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you’ve cheated the guy in the glass.

Deep thinking on the ethics of compromise

Well, I’m not a great American thinker.

This year anyway.

The finalists for the Great American Think-off next month in New York Mills, Minn., have been announced and I’m not among them. Congratulations to those finalists, who will debate the following question on June 8:

Which is more ethical: sticking to your principles
or being willing to compromise?

I entered the competition with the following essay. Since I’m not a finalist, I’m making the most of my well intended effort by sharing it here and encouraging debate. Here’s to deep thinking on a Friday in May when snow is falling on my home state.

* * *

At 23, with a freshly pressed bachelor’s degree in hand, I was what society would consider well educated. After two marriage courses, I was what both a Lutheran pastor and a Catholic priest would consider prepared. After two and half years of dating the groom, I was informed. In a beautiful ceremony in front of 150 people, I promised, “For better and for worse. Until death do us part.”

And yet, 16 years later, the words coming out of my mouth were “I want a divorce.”

I could not stand by my publicly stated and privately held principle that marriage was forever. I compromised.

Now remarried (yes, I promised my commitment and fidelity until death do us part at a second, equally beautiful ceremony), I am most definitely happier. But compromise on this life principle does not make me more ethical.

It is always more ethical to stick to one’s principles. The very definition of compromise betrays its noble intent: A compromise is a settlement to a dispute in which both sides make concessions. If a principle is a fundamental truth and if ethics require upholding a fundamental truth, then yielding a point cannot be ethical.

Let’s consider my first marriage.

In principle, I married for better or for worse until death. In practice, though we promised our fidelity, we cheated. We compromised by remaining wedded only until multiple affairs rendered our emotional bond irredeemable.

Was this an ethical decision? No. It was a convenient decision, an act which permitted new pursuits of happiness. Was it the right decision? Yes. It was the right decision for me.

Note the important addition of the clause “for me.” Let’s consider how a personal principle should be applied to the community in which one lives.

Among tenets in my personal mission statement is the obligation that I seek to treat my body as a holy gift from God. I nourish it, rest sufficiently and eschew bad habits. Among other behaviors, this principle requires that I don’t drink soda pop. Pop is filled with sugar and chemicals that offer no nourishment and in fact may contribute to obesity. I, therefore, would have had no issue with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to limit the size of sugary drinks sold to no more than 16 ounces.

The proposal, recently struck down by the New York Supreme Court, is itself a compromise on a principle. Paragraphs of principled language relate details of the obesity epidemic, how sugary drinks are driving this epidemic and how oversize portions contribute to ever greater consumption of sugary drinks, yet the proposed health code did not outlaw said beverages, it only limited portion sizes.

When I choose to indulge in a sugary drink whatever the size, I am not making an ethical decision. I am compromising for convenience. Though I believe it is fundamentally wrong to manufacture, market and consume sugary beverages, my principle does not necessarily require me to slap Big Gulps out of the hands of every thirsty shopper in my neighborhood 7-Eleven. It requires me to limit my own consumption.

To compromise on my personal principle by allowing others to choose to drink pop is not compromise. It is required in order to coexist because not everyone holds the same principles.

Are there any principles so fundamental that all people can agree to them without compromise?

Consider “Thou shalt not kill,” a universally accepted tenet of ethical behavior.

Unless the victim is a blob of cells unable to exist outside of a woman’s womb.

Or the victim intended to kill first.

Or the victim is a cold-blooded killer on death row.

Or the victim is the diabolical head of an evil organization bent on the annihilation of all for which the United States of America stands.

Is legal abortion or lethal force used in defense of self or the death penalty or the killing of Osama Bin Laden ethical? No. They are acts that compromise a central tenet accepted by most fair-minded people. But these compromises in principle are necessary to ensure the safety of the populace.

Would I personally have an abortion, shoot back, earn my salary as an executioner or volunteer as a Navy Seal on a secret mission in Pakistan? Unlikely. These activities violate my ethical principles. But I concede their necessity.

Compromise may be convenient. It may be expedient. It may even be necessary in order to coexist or even to survive. But to compromise is never more ethical.

Sweet spring

Welcome May and your warmth that suggests opening the windows, cleaning the garage, walking the dog, spraying the weeds, changing into shorts and a T-shirt, and wiping my sweaty brow. I’ve waited too long.

The world’s favorite season is the spring.
All things seem possible in May.

~ Edwin Way Teale

Bilingual: Fluent in both English and Minnesotan

I’ve lived in da Land of Disgraced Governors (otherwise known as da Land of Lincoln for youse traditionalists) for abowt six years, and I still can’t figger owt da traffic reports donchano.

“Twenty-two minutes out on the Edens, and a crash on the Tri-State has that running 40 minutes,” cracks talk radio on any given afternoon.

Eh?

Oh ya, ya know, dis apparently makes sense to Illinoise drivers traveling 20 miles per over da limit and riding pretnear my bumper, but it’s a mystery to me. Uff-da.

My innerstate highways are named with numbers, as in I-94. Sometimes there’s a modifying letter — as in “35W goes to Dalut” — but dhat Illinoise penchant for naming dere roadways with famous (or infamous) names confuses me.

Who is Dan Ryan far as dhat goes anyway? (For the record, he is a former president of da Cook County Board of Commissioners who, unlike so many other Illinoise politicians, never served time in a federal pokey.)

My abode in Nortern Illinoise is just south of I-90 in this former Minnesotan’s way of tinking, but to everyone here, it’s just south of the Northwest Tollway and in serious danger of being south of I-88, which means da “rest of Illinois” dats not in “Da Loop.” And so.

Though I’ve come to appreciate the milder winners, cheering for perennial losers like da Cubs and deep-dish pizza as an alternative to hot dish, you betcha I’ll never get used-tuv the roadway naming convention.

This post is part of WordPress’ Weekly Writing Challenge: A Manner of Speaking. For more colloquialisms among the world’s bloggers, click here and follow some of the comments.

Martins welcome here

Providing shelter to martins is a hobby, I’ve learned, and thanks to my father, my Beloved is joining the throng.

Apparently, martins are a beautiful bird that are notoriously difficult to attract to one’s yard. I guess they’re to the birding world what supermodels are to the dating world.

My father is a woodworker who creates these marvelous creations in wood that are both artistic and functional. He once created floating bookshelves for me (alas, they stayed with the house I didn’t get in the divorce decree), and he made the vanity for my sister’s basement bathroom, for example.

So when he surprised my Beloved with this marvelous martin house at Christmas, we were impressed with the cedar shake roof …

and hammered copper architectural flourish … .

It seems almost a shame to put it outside, but of course, those picky martins demand lots of open space for their mansions. The experts spout such details as “must be 14 feet in the air” and “no closer than 40 feet to other outdoor structures.”

So my Beloved invested in a telescoping steel pole, and we erected his new martin house this afternoon. Despite my complete lack of upper body strength, we managed to place and raise the roughly 30-pound house without any crippling disasters.

Now, as it sways gently in the breeze (trees sway, too, I’m wagering), it awaits springtime residents.

Welcome to the new martin house!

Keeping the faith

Some people listen to music with exactly 180 beats per minute while they run.

Some people listen to the sound of their breathing and the sound of their footsteps.

I listen to National Public Radio.

Which may explain why I’m among the world’s slowest runners.

In any case, as I ran to the highest point in Hampshire this morning, I was mesmerized by Krista Tippett’s interview of poet and author Marie Howe who talked about words and writing with depth and magic. On Being’s Tippett recites part of one of Howe’s poems, “The Meadow”:

Bedeviled,
human, your plight, in waking, is to choose from the
words
that even now sleep on your tongue, and to know
that tangled
among them and terribly new is the sentence that
could change your life

Tangled on my tongue — or between my brain and my typing fingers — is the sentence that could change my life. Said Howe, “Language is almost all we have left of action in the modern world. I mean unless we’re in Syria, you know, or we’re in Iraq. But for many of us, action has become what we say. The moral life is lived out in what we say more often than what we do.”

A writer, of course, worships at the altar of Words Are Action.

“It’s easy to attack and destroy an act of creation.
It’s a lot more difficult to perform one.”

~ Chuck Palahniuk

The seamy side of the suburbia’s American dream: Spring cleaning

“I think the message to, uh, psychos, fanatics, murderers, nutcases all over the world is, uh, ‘do not mess with suburbanites.’ Because, uh, frankly we’re just not gonna take it any more. Ya know, we’re not gonna be content to look after our lawns and wax our cars, paint our houses. We’re out to get them, Don, we are out to get them.”

~ Art Wiengartner in “The ‘Burbs”

The suburbs of the American Midwest have a culture all their own, usually involving the worship of All Things Big: Walmart, SUVs, economy-sized ketchup and long commutes.

We live in oversize cardboard houses with distinctive design features like three-car garages and mailboxes acquired at Home Depot. We weed-and-feed the grass to make it grow and then we mow it down. The houses are close enough together that we can look into each other’s windows, but unless someone is playing Judas Priest at top volume, we can pull the shades and pretend we have the privacy of a Greek island.

We suburbanites in the Midwest have been holed up since Christmas, grinding out the snow and cold of the Winter That Will Never End (well, some of us have been holed up since Christmas; some of us have been cowering in the natural-gas-heated corner since returning from South Padre Island on March 1).

Today, spring arrived. Sunshine reigned, the air was warm enough to wear shorts and the wind was pleasantly breezy instead of oppressively monsoon-like.

Suburbanites all over my neighborhood practiced a tradition as old as the municipal sewer system: Spring yard work. The American dream of home ownership comes with the nightmare of constant housekeeping, indoors and out.

Sure, some folks took advantage of the nice weather today by going for a bike ride or watching an outdoor baseball game, maybe visiting an ice cream store. But if you own a home with 3.5 bathrooms and no-maintenance vinyl siding, you  spent the day attending to your abode.

The back yard, in all its spring cleaning glory.

We stained the deck.

And power washed the patio furniture that’s been stored all winter in the utility shed.

And changed the oil in the lawnmower.

OK, I didn’t do any of those things. My Beloved did. But I did help. Mostly, I was errand girl (“get this,” “bring me that,” “put this away”). But I also stained the tops of the fence posts (no, I don’t know what difference it makes either, but I’m married to a Virgo — I don’t ask questions). I’m guessing my neighbors wondered who was the lady wearing shorts and cursing the 40-foot-wide blue plastic tarp as she attempted to fold it for storage.

Despite being a suburbanite, I generally avoid yard work. The neighbors like my friendly talkative husband and speculate about his mystery wife who is rarely seen and only heard from when she’s yelling at the dog to quit barking in the back yard.

“I’ve been watching that house ever since they moved in. No one goes in. No one comes out.
No visitors. No deliveries.
What do you think they’re eatin’, Ray?”

~ Art Wiengartner in “The ‘Burbs”

For other pictures that capture culture around the world, check out this week’s WordPress photo challenge.