For 2010: Let's Decrease Our Specific Gravity

Photo credit: Liz Owen

A Christmas cactus, blooming just once a year. Here's my metaphor for how we blossom despite everything in the world that weighs us down.

This holiday season, I share with you two poems I first heard in the heat of summer, sweating in the stands at Cornell University. A dear friend of mine graduated with her Ph.D. that day. She visited me this past weekend, sparking my memory of these poems by A.R. Ammons.

That summer of 2001, Ammons, who taught at Cornell for many years, had recently died. A colleague of his read the poems at the graduation ceremony, and I've remembered them ever since.

Reflective

I found a
weed
that had a

mirror in it
and that
mirror

looked in at
a mirror
in

me that
had a
weed in it

Correction

The burdens of the world
on my back
lighten the world
not a whit while
removing them greatly
decreases my specific
gravity.

Let's drop that weight, if we can. Let's spread our wisdom yet reserve out strength for the battles that really matter—and, always, let's feel joy, fleeting as it may be. Joy, joy, joy.


The photo of the exuberant cactus comes courtesy of my yoga teacher Liz Owen at Lizowenyoga.com. I encourage all who live in the Boston area to take a class with Liz.

The poems are from A.R. Ammons, The Selected Poems (Expanded Edition), Norton, 1986.

Election Day: John Woolman and the True Meaning of Liberty

At my son's Quaker school, Tuesday mornings begin with Meeting for Worship. The school maintains silence from 8:30 to  9:00—no ringing phones or talk in the hallways, the children gathered in their classrooms in meditative circles.

This morning, Meeting was different, though. My son's second-grade teacher had invited parents to attend. He led the circle as John Woolman, an American Quaker from colonial times who spoke out against slavery.

The second-graders have been learning about Africa and the roots of Abolitionism, and I found this connection with Quaker history revelatory.

It's also Election Day in Massachusetts. The Democratic primary will likely determine who gets Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, even before the actual Special Election in January. Yet pundits say turnout will be low. Whatever you think of the man's foibles, Kennedy's long tenure as a Senator made a difference to working people. So what if it's cold outside? This is New England; it's not too cold to vote.

All right, I'm entering into pundit land myself, which brings me back to John Woolman—although not in the way you might expect. I now know that Woolman wasn't your average political loudmouth.

My son's teacher, Chris Hoeh, had asked parents to wear the simple garb of Quakers at the time, usually black clothing with a bit of homespun white. Some of us did, but it turns out he was wearing an off-white shirt, white pants, even a white hat.

The reason why became part of the lesson.

Chris began the Meeting with a few moments of silence, then spoke as John Woolman might have in 1772, during his last trip to England, where he died that same year. Woolman was born in New Jersey and lived there throughout his life, but he traveled widely, testifying at various Quaker Meetings about his beliefs. (Click here to find out more about Woolman.)

He not only opposed slavery—at a time when some Quakers in the American South still owned slaves—but he spoke out against the injustices suffered by the poor. Chris, speaking as Woolman, told us about his life and why he'd come to feel what he did.

He explained that although many Friends dress in dark garments so as not to glorify themselves, he had decided he could no longer wear any cloth that was dyed. The reason? The dark dye (indigo) was produced on plantations that used slaves. Chris later added in response to questions from the kids that Woolman probably wore no cotton either, only wool.

I had never realized consumer protests went back this far. Perhaps that only reveals my ignorance as a non-Quaker, but it seems few on the American protest scene—from anti-sweatshop activists to Teabaggers—know of Woolman or his quiet testimonies.

William James referred to him as a Quaker "saint." Regardless of my uneasiness with spiritual terms and hagiographies, this wintry morning I felt illuminated by a bit of sunshine.

As a magazine writer, I'm fascinated by another tidbit: Woolman's Journal (published after he died) is sometimes called one of the oldest American serial publications.

Once I'd headed home from the Meeting, I hit the Internet. Here's an excerpt from 1772, after Woolman's arrival in London, courtesy of the Street Corner Society's online version of John Woolman's Journal:

I have felt great distress of mind since I came on this island, on account of the members of our Society being mixed with the world in various sorts of traffic, carried on in impure channels. Great is the trade to Africa for slaves; and for the loading of these ships a great number of people are employed in their factories, among whom are many of our Society. Friends in early times refused on a religious principle to make or trade in superfluities, of which we have many testimonies on record; but for want of faithfulness, some, whose examples were of note in our Society, gave way...

I confess, I'm not a humble truth-seeker. But I feel moved to point out that this is another dangerous time for Americans, one in which it's far too easy to give way.

The freedom to speak out in public—to "quake" with the power of one's beliefs, even if others are opposed—is something Quakers hold dear. Woolman spoke up years before the Declaration of Independence was signed, but these days I wonder if children sometimes have a firmer grip on the truth than adults.

The second-graders asked many questions during the Meeting. They were restless by the end, but they seemed unusually attentive. Other adults were there, including the Head of the School in a black Quaker-style hat; their teacher was acting the part of somebody else, riveting in its way. I wondered how much of this my son, part of the restless contingent, was really taking in.

But one story captivated them all. Chris described a childhood incident in which Woolman saw a mother bird and her babies in a nest. As Woolman told it, all he thought about at that moment was whether he could hit the bird with a rock. So he aimed and threw high into the tree, and down came the mother bird, who then lay dead at his feet.

"What happened to the babies?" one boy asked softly.

Their teacher shook his head. "They probably..."

"They died," the same boy said.

"Because their mother died," my son added, not looking at me.

For my restless child, an adoptee from Vietnam, this was not an idle remark. But it wasn't for any of the others either. In Woolman's story, he climbed the tree to kill the baby birds quickly, knowing they wouldn't survive without their mother, feeling terrible remorse.

No parent wants to make children feel such grief, but I welcomed this moment in a classroom of middle-class kids. This teacher was not scared of presenting the ambiguity. People can be cruel to one another, even Quakers who profess their own inner light, even children who like to throw rocks. And life itself is full of difficult-to-resolve questions.

"I have sometimes felt a necessity to stand up," Woolman wrote a few days before he died of smallpox. He was 51.

[B]ut that spirit which is of the world hath so much prevailed in many, and the pure life of truth hath been so pressed down, that I have gone forward, not as one travelling in a road cast up and well prepared, but as a man walking through a miry place in which are stones here and there safe to step on, but so situated that, one step being taken, time is necessary to see where to step next.

For more information on Quakerism, take a look at Quaker.org and Quakerinfo.com, as well as the link to the Friends General Conference from this post's title.

Post-election update: Martha Coakley won the Democratic primary.  Turnout was very low, as predicted. The Boston Globe's headline for one front-page story: "A lack of interest, time kept many away." [12/9/09] 

Is Cuteness Trendy? Sour Grapes from Vanity Fair

There I was on an airplane to California, stuck with the December 2009 print issue of Vanity Fair because I couldn't get my credit card to work for a video on-demand feature. (Julie & Julia, if you must know.)

OK, I can deal, I thought. VF is a guilty pleasure, anyway, and I might even read the cover profile about Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame. I noted the blurb at the bottom of the cover—"How Grandmas and 12-Year-Old Girls Are Corrupting American Culture"—thinking, huh, that sounds sexist, probably about Twilight, whatever, not what I'm in it for.

Turns out this piece by Jim Windolf was not about Twilight or that particular void of an interview; instead, Windolf's article about girl oldsters and youngsters is called "Addicted to Cute"—with a tag line of "America has been flooded by a tsunami of cute."

To which I put it to you right now: Really?

"Addicted to Cute" stoked my ire about trend stories. This one falls into the frothing-at-the mouth category. It's a mere reaction to something that may or may not be a trend, showcasing the writer's slick use of words and pandering to the audience by running all sorts of pictures of puppies and pandas. Read me! Read me! I hate this crap but READ ME.

I happened upon cuteness not by searching through VF's table of contents, which is always buried in a swath of ads, but by random page-flipping. When I started seeing Pikachu, puppy piles, and dogs in human clothing, I realized I'd found the grandma/12-year-old piece, although within the article itself there are only the slyest of references to this being a female phenomenon—a sexist warning flag.

I object to the idea that cuteness has now become a "broader cultural movement" for two reasons: (1) While we may indeed be awash in cute critters on the Internet, Smart Cars, and cupcake boutique bakeries, the love of cuteness doesn't seem like a new trend at all.

(2) Even if it is a trend, who cares? Why is it so bad that a sushi chef has crafted a creation out of colored seaweed showing President Obama's "cute" face? Or that the media gush about the Obama dog?

Windolf opens with the "Hahaha" baby video, which shows a baby laughing helplessly as his off-screen dad says "Bing!" and "Dong." He notes that at the time of writing, this was one of the most-watched YouTube clips at about 100 million views. Here's the video:

Here's the VF takeaway:

"Cootchie-coo behavior used to be reserved for private moments in the home. But now, with the Internet's help, people feel free to wallow in cuteness en masse, in the company of strangers."

Just who these "wallowing" people are remains an open question.

A page or so later, Windolf has trotted out the not-stunning news from experts that human beings are hardwired to go "awwww" when they see infant-like characteristics: big eyes, round head, chubby cheeks, cuddly puppy fat. He notes (via Stephen Jay Gould) that Walt Disney got the point decades ago, as Mickey Mouse morphed from a skinnier rodent to the rounder head and ears. (On VF's website, we even get Windolf discussing "the roots of cute.")

So what's the trend, if the tendency goes back to the dawn of human consciousness—or at least to savvy animators like Walt Disney?

Think of It's a Wonderful Life, which would surely qualify as a cuteness fest in Windolf's terms, with guardian angel Clarence and Christmas tree ornaments jingling when angels get their wings. Frank Capra knew the power of cute, just as surely as the website founder of Cute Overload and Hayao Miyazaki and other purveyors of Japanese cuteness (or kawaii) do.

Sure, sure, sure, Windolf grumps, long before Hello Kitty, there were the Monkees and the Osmonds and Bambi. But "the cute acts of today," he writes, "aren't controlled by a corporation or impresario looking to cash in; they're cute by choice."

This is a problem? Excuse the sarcasm, but I am not convinced that cuteness in the hands of corporations has less impact or that the appearance of "more than 150 other cute-animal sites catalogued by the recommendation engine StumbleUpon" proves there is a new and soul-killing trend on the loose.

There's more of everything on the Internet—foodie sites,  political ravings of every persuasion, fan clubs for every bit actor in Hollywood history. I could just as easily claim there's a trend in belief in the paranormal or wizards.

The "moreness" numbers of the Internet don't reveal anything except the very large trend of what it means to contend with so much cultural input in a virtual social setting. I'd like to see an analysis of that, or many cuts at this very big subject, but it isn't here.

Let me come clean and say that I share Windolf's loathing for Disney's Winnie the Pooh and pictures of cats in little arm casts. I've never been a girly girl, and I cringe at terms like "puppehs" (lingo from Cute Overload) and "cutegasm." When Windolf writes, "What is the antonym for 'cutegasm'? Because that's what I'm having right now," it gave me a vicarious thrill.

Yet that's about all this trend story amounts to—a vicarious thrill for hipsters and the cultural elite—and it's not enough to support its larger claims about this "tsunami" we're all suddenly being assaulted with.

Windolf does raise some interesting questions about the uneven power dynamic in a cute response—the baby being "dinged"  has no control over what the adult is doing, and we love to watch people doing pratfalls or otherwise losing control. But the inherent sadism in everything from stand-up comedy to parading bears in top hats is about more than cuteness.

The sour grapes of this article, with its longing for more "edge" in the cultural zeitgeist rather than everyone buying more candy bars (another dubious  contention) is really about girl stuff.

Windolf doesn't talk to any feminists about this issue, and I have to ask why a male writer is so "depressed" about the supposed triumph of the emotional and sentimental. The female sensibility that cuteness evokes is anything but monolithic.

Exhibit A: an actual twelve-year-old girl. A few mornings ago while in the Bay Area, my "niece" (her term; awwwww) gave me a tour of her bedroom. This included photos of lion cubs and seals and puppies taped to the wall beside her bed. She had sparkle pillows and stuffed butterflies amid the bookshelves and family photos. She loves cute—as we joked—but she's also very funny and very opinionated. She has a calendar of cute dogs, but on this month's selection, she had taped a piece of "CAUTION" yellow tape across the dogs' snouts.

Why? "It seemed like a warning against cuteness," she said.

This reality of strong girls who like emoticons but also LOL obviously worries the guys at VF. Windolf concludes: "I would not doubt the power of cuteness. It will bat its lashes and crinkle its nose, and it will smother its critics with its softness."

Funny thing about the smothering of opinion, though. Besides Windolf's anti-cuteness manifesto, this VF issue includes only one female feature writer. The editorial content is surrounded by high-fashion ads of poreless young faces. James Wolcott's diatribe about reality TV is called "I'm a Culture Critic...Get Me Out of Here!"

I'm with him in his disgust, but dissing reality TV isn't exactly cutting-edge commentary. When Wolcott says of the annoying Gosselins of Jon & Kate plus Eight that "We are now stuck with them for the foreseeable future," my response is that maybe Wolcott thinks he is but the rest of us can easily decide to flip channels or just turn off the TV.

The snarky bitterness emanates a whiff of something else: anxiety. All these male cultural critics are railing at the readers who have run away to the Internet, whether we're reading the Daily Kos or a wonderful blog about the literary scene called Ward Six  or Cute Overload.

That's a problem for VF, a glossy that surely counts on female readers. Based on the Audit Bureau of Circulations, VF's circulation numbers for the past five years can most charitably be described as flat—and that would be when viewed through a pair of Dolce & Gabbana rose-colored glasses. Without the grandmas and twelve-year-olds, magazines like Vanity Fair have to remake themselves or go under.

I submit that requires a major shift in conventional thinking and audience and culture. I can see why Wolcott and Windolf are worried. But their fears are masked by high-gloss condescension, because as we women know, anxiety is not cute at all.


This post originally appeared on Open Salon. The bunnies are from "This teacup is too big..." on Cute Overload.