Monthly Archives: February 2007

 
New York
Commentary

One Piece at a Time

Stitching the past together.

By Rachel Van Thyn

QuiltFor Hanukkah this year I may have received the most meaningful gift I’ve ever been given. My family isn’t all that big on the gift-giving associated with that time of year. Like many people, it’s more about the time we spend together as a family than the price tags or the presents. We get simple things, like Dutch chocolate letters, an old tradition from my dad; or useful things, like teacups or socks or warm sweaters. And to be honest, this year I didn’t even want a gift. Everyone was happy and healthy, and that’s all that mattered.

However, my mom surprised me this year. When I was in high school she taught me how to knit, and I had spent many years slowly knitting colored squares with the intention of one day creating a quilt. She started making squares as well, and when I went away to university we stored the squares and the yarn in our guest room. Unbeknownst to me, my mom had taken on the task of sewing together not only squares that both she and I had made but added those to squares my dad’s mother had made as well: a three-generation quilt.

I was completely stunned. I knew that my mom must have spent countless hours painstakingly arranging all the squares and sewing them together. Her inclusion of pieces from my oma (“grandmother” in Dutch) gives the quilt an added meaning. My oma passed away when I was fourteen, just as I was beginning to know her. She and her husband, who died when I was three, were both Holocaust survivors. I feel as if I’ve spent the rest of my life searching for pieces of them, tying stories, pictures, and memories together in an attempt to hold on to her.

I know a few people who have their grandparent’s pocket watch or a piece of jewelry belonging to a great-great relative. Or maybe it’s an old photograph that they carry in their wallet. These objects remain almost invincible to time, preserving the memories of their past owners and keeping them alive.

Aside from objects, stories that are passed from generation to generation also keep memories from dying. Also, sometimes people name their children after those who have passed on as a way to give honor to their memory.

As for my grandmother, I try to weave the stories my family has told me about her with my own memories as well as physical objects. Before she died, a Holocaust museum in Florida interviewed my grandmother. I listened to the tapes, searching for answers into who she was. She described her experiences about being in a line that separated the people who will live from the people who will die, and about where they slept, ate, and cried. Her spirit and determination comes through on those tapes so vividly, it’s almost as if she’s next to me and we’re having this intimate conversation. I want and need to keep her memory alive for my children and their children too.

In the meantime, the quilt lays on my bed, protecting me from the unknown secrets in the night and keeping me warm. My squares, which are sometimes slightly misshapen or hampered by mistakes, intertwine with those of my mom, pieces that are uniform, brightly colored, and cheerful. My eyes follow the stitches to my oma’s squares, neat, tightly bound, and of deep, rich shades of brown and orange that were popular in the seventies. And maybe it sounds silly, but I know she’s there with me. It’s as if her soul shines through the yarn. Perhaps physical objects are our most powerful relics after all. Either way, they certainly keep our bodies and our hearts warm.

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Commentary

One piece at a time

Stitching the past together.


For Chanukkah this year I may have received the most meaningful gift I’ve ever been given. My family isn’t all that big on the gift-giving associated with that time of year. Like many people, it’s more about the time we spend together as a family than the price tags or the presents. We get simple things, like Dutch chocolate letters, an old tradition from my dad; or useful things, like teacups or socks or warm sweaters. And to be honest, this year I didn’t even want a gift. Everyone was happy and healthy, and that’s all that mattered.

However, my mom surprised me this year. When I was in high school she taught me how to knit, and I had spent many years slowly knitting colored squares with the intention of one day creating a quilt. She started making squares as well, and when I went away to university we stored the squares and the yarn in our guest room. Unbeknownst to me, my mom had taken on the task of sewing together not only squares that both she and I had made but added those to squares my dad’s mother had made as well: a three-generation quilt.

I was completely stunned. I knew that my mom must have spent countless hours painstakingly arranging all the squares and sewing them together. Her inclusion of pieces from my oma (“grandmother” in Dutch) gives the quilt an added meaning. My oma passed away when I was 14, just as I was beginning to know her. She and her husband, who died when I was 3, were both Holocaust survivors. I feel as if I’ve spent the rest of my life searching for pieces of them, tying stories, pictures, and memories together in an attempt to hold onto her.

I know a few people who have their grandparent’s pocket watch or a piece of jewelry belonging to a great-great relative. Or maybe it’s an old photograph that they carry in their wallet. These objects remain almost invincible to time, preserving the memories of their past owners and keeping them alive.

Aside from objects, stories that are passed from generation to generation also keep memories from dying. Also, sometimes people name their children after those who have passed on as a way to give honor to their memory.

As for my grandmother, I try to weave the stories my family has told me about her with my own memories as well as physical objects. Before she died, a Holocaust museum in Florida interviewed my grandmother. I listened to the tapes, searching for answers into who she was. She described her experiences about being in a line that separated the people who will live from the people who will die, and about where they slept, ate, and cried. Her spirit and determination comes through on those tapes so vividly, it’s almost as if she’s next to me and we’re having this intimate conversation. I want and need to keep her memory alive for my children and their children too.

In the meantime, the quilt lays on my bed, protecting me from the unknown secrets in the night and keeping me warm. My squares, which are sometimes slightly misshapen or hampered by mistakes, intertwine with those of my mom, pieces that are uniform, brightly colored, and cheerful. My eyes follow the stitches to my oma’s squares, neat, tightly bound, and of deep, rich shades of brown and orange that were popular in the ’70s. And maybe it sounds silly, but I know she’s there with me. It’s as if her soul shines through the yarn. Perhaps physical objects are our most powerful relics after all. Either way, they certainly keep our bodies and our hearts warm.

Dear Reader, In The Fray is a nonprofit staffed by volunteers. If you liked this piece, could you please donate $10? If you want to help, you can also:
 
Interviews

Easily angered

haydenth.jpgA conversation with Tom Hayden on being stirred by bullies and killers.


Tom Hayden is living proof that one person can make a tremendous difference in the course of a lifetime. Perhaps best known as a member of the Chicago Seven, Hayden helped organize street demonstrations against the Vietnam War at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. Hayden began his life in activism as a founding member of the widely influential group Students for a Democratic Society. Active on a host of issues in the early 1960s, he was arrested and beaten in rural Georgia and Mississippi as a Freedom Rider. He later became a community organizer in Newark where he helped create a national poor people’s campaign for jobs and empowerment. When the Vietnam War invaded American lives, Hayden became an increasingly vocal opponent through teach-ins, demonstrations, and writing. Due to his involvement in the 1968 protests, Hayden was indicted with seven others on charges of conspiracy and incitement. After five years of trials, appeals, and retrials, he was acquitted.

Hayden spent the 1970s organizing the grassroots Campaign for Economic Democracy in California. He was elected to the California state assembly in 1982, followed by the state senate ten years later. He served in public office for eighteen years until his retirement in 2000.After 40 years of activism, politics, and writing, Tom Hayden remains a leading voice for ending the war in Iraq, eradicating sweatshops, saving the environment, and reforming politics through greater citizen participation. Recently, InTheFray Travel Editor Michelle Caswell spoke with Tom Hayden via email and learned how those committed to reshaping America might put their ideas into action.

The interviewer: Michelle Caswell

The interviewee: Tom Hayden / Los Angeles

 

You have recently been working on behalf of No More Sweatshops!, a California-based workers’ rights organization that has been pressuring public agencies to end the practice of buying sweatshop-made products. Has the ‘no tax dollars for law-breakers’ campaign had any recent successes you would like to talk about?

After an interminable struggle and wait, the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco signed monitoring contracts with the independent and pro-worker Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), [in December 2006]. They should be able to do four site visits this year as well as obtain complete disclosure of factory sites and subcontractors.

How are all of the issues you advocate for — an end to sweatshop labor, conserving the environment, ending the war in Iraq — related?

I would say they are connected through Machiavellian power structures as well as … in the new populism we see. While organizations have their reasons to keep the issues separate, no one can deny that Iraq is about oil and that anyone concerned with global warming, for example, should be equally passionate about global suffering.

You devoted the early part of your career to fighting for civil rights as a Freedom Rider in the South. Four decades later, schools are segregated across the country and the economic gulf between blacks and whites is still astounding. In your opinion, was the civil rights movement a success? What went wrong?

Yes, the civil rights movement prevailed against the Machiavellians in achieving voting rights, civil rights, and the end of the Dixiecrat political coalition at the time. To a lesser extent, the movement’s energies were directed towards jobs, for example, in the demands of the March on Washington in 1963 and the War on Poverty of 1964. We ran into two walls. First, the war in Vietnam sapped any resources to confront the battles at home. Second, the end of segregation removed the incentive for the plantation economy, and there was no public sector jobs strategy to fill the void of employment. Had the assassinations not happened, the political energy might have been renewed successfully.

While there have been some major protests against the war in Iraq and public opposition to the war is growing, we haven’t seen nearly as big of an outcry as in the 1960s protests against Vietnam. Why is this, in your opinion?

Actually the 2002 and 2003 protests were larger and earlier, and the American public came to regard Iraq as a “mistake” faster than during Vietnam. But the comparative images do make the Sixties appear grander, if I can use such a word. As [for] reasons, in the Sixties it was necessary to be in the streets because there was no inclusion. As a result of the Sixties, much of the consciousness came “indoors,” to the classrooms and neighborhoods, so to speak. But also the end of the draft has been a big factor in subduing potential restlessness on the campuses.

Do you think young people are apathetic today? What can we do to instill a culture of activism among young people?

It’s up to each generation. We had no elders in the 1960s; the question for people like me is how to be an elder, not a leader, today.

Can you speak about your work advocating for U.S. Congressional hearings on exiting Iraq?

After the 2004 elections, I was terribly afraid that the Democrats who were anti-war were shell-shocked by defeat and in danger of retreating further away from an anti-war position. I became involved that year in helping stir some interest in the progressive Democrats taking an open interest in what is now the subject of the moment — not how stupid it was to invade Iraq, but how … the movement and its political allies [can] design or demand a blueprint for withdrawal. Since 2005, most of the Democrats and some Republicans have come around to the need for an exit plan including a withdrawal deadline. They won’t go much further unless really pushed during the upcoming presidential elections by activists on the ground.

Many young idealists from the 1960s gave up their activism as they got older. Why have you stuck with it? What motivates you?

My own story is connected to the story of these times, and I seem drawn to following the stories to their end. I also remain easily angered by bullies and killers, and don’t understand why anyone would get tired of holding them accountable.

What do you think is the future of the Democratic Party? Do you think it is possible to advocate for change within a two-party system? How can the left take back the Democratic Party? How have you managed to make the shift from protesting the Democratic Convention to being a delegate without compromising your ideals?

I believe in the creative power of independent social movements, but also that when those movements grow large enough they will [and should] flow into electoral politics like a tributary of a great river. I don’t think the Democrats can be “taken over” because at their core they are embedded in the Machiavellian elite. But the rank and file of the Democratic Party can and will propel very progressive candidates to certain offices where the movements are strong, and they can even challenge in the presidential primaries during crises like this one.

How can people get involved? What is something that someone can do right now to make a difference in his or her community?

I hope that people can connect their work on a personal level with larger strategies for change. An example, but only one, would be to get in the face of military recruiters at your local campuses. Not only will you save some kid’s life, but you will contribute to shutting off the military manpower (“cannon fodder,” we used to say) necessary to keep the Iraq War going. The war will end when enough people-power pressures the pillars of the policy, if you see what I mean.

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Commentary

Giants among us

200702_ttlg_th.jpgExplorations of history and heroism in London.


Before I arrived in London, a local friend supplied me with a list of must-sees: Buckingham Palace, Harrods, St. Paul’s Cathedral. I diligently check items off the list, impressed, but uninspired. The last sight on the list is noted with two stars — Postman’s Park. The trouble is, I can’t find it.

I study my map, scanning street by street as if playing a word-find jumble, without luck. The persistent drizzle is wearing down my patience, so I stop a cabbie for directions. He points to a green speck on my map only a few blocks away. Then he puts his finger to his lips and drives off, and I sense that I’m about to be let in on a special secret.

The park is empty save for a woman smoking a cigarette, a black bird with a bright orange beak, and me. The bird lands at my feet and hops toward me, holding one foot up as if injured. Here, next to the noisy, crowded streets of downtown London, I finally feel I can get acquainted with the city Shakespeare called “this other Eden.” Postman’s Park, tucked between looming office buildings and steps from the hoards of tourists at St. Paul’s, is as humble as a park could get — no life-size bronze statues, no Sound of Music hills, no majestic elms. What it has is this: tidy lawns, blooming perennials, a few koi in a small fountain, and a series of plaques.

The plaques make this rather unremarkable park remarkable. Under the eaves of a loggia where the woman and I are sitting, ceramic tiles commemorate ordinary people who died trying to save the lives of others. “Edmund Emery from Chelsea leaped from a Thames steamboat to rescue a child and drowned on July 31, 1874.”“Solomon Galaman aged 11 died of his injuries September 6, 1901, after saving his little brother from being run over in a commercial street.”

My first impression is to fill in the blanks in my mind. I see a cobblestone road filled with horse-drawn carriages traveling in all directions and the Galaman boy darting after a ball. Solomon pushes his brother out of the way just as a carriage overtakes him. But then I feel a little cheated because I don’t really know if that was how the event transpired. There isn’t enough information. I want to know more — like how Solomon’s mother handled the news and if Mrs. Emery was proud of her husband’s bravery. Most of all, I want to know why. Why did Robert Wright of Croydon enter a burning house on April 30, 1893, to save a woman even though he knew there was petroleum stored in the cellar? Did he recognize the woman, or did he just hear cries for help and decide to act? But I will never get more than the paltry details written here.

These tiles were the brainchild of painter and sculptor George F. Watts, a socially conscious Victorian rebel of sorts who disliked the upper classes. During his own time, he was very successful and was called “the English Michelangelo.” In 1887, the Queen’s jubilee year, Watts wrote to The Times requesting a memorial be built to record examples of everyday heroism and self-sacrifice. Nothing came of the letter, so he decided to go it alone. He paid for the first 13 plaques to be built on this wall in the former churchyard of St. Botolph’s, still located at the west end of the park. After Watts’ death in 1904, his widow continued working to bring the total to 53. The most recent date I can find is 1927.

The black bird flies away, maybe to find someone willing to share his lunch. Then the woman stubs out her cigarette and leaves too, and I am alone. Her heels clicking on the stone path get fainter and fainter. I have that illusive feeling of being sealed and protected from the outside world — the sounds of the double-decker buses and salesmen hawking souvenirs cannot permeate the gates of the park.

It’s not hard to imagine Mark Tomlinson and Ellen Donovan and Herbert Maconoghu, each dead about 125 years from some heroic act, sitting along side of me. Theirs is an invisible weightiness, a presence here in Postman’s Park that forces me to wonder if I would come to the aid of another, no questions asked. Would I have what it takes to run into a burning building to save three children like Alice Ayers did? Could I jump into a river for a boy entangled in weeds like William Donald? Without the pressure of my life on the line, it’s easy to say yes, I would do the right thing. But I don’t know for sure.

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Blog

Global warming caused by humans


It's official. The question mark has been removed. A panel of scientists for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released their report on global warming and states unequivocally that "human activity" is the major cause for this plight.

And the report predicts dire consequences for the earth. Droughts, rising sea levels, rising average temperatures, heat waves, stronger tropical storms, basically more of what we've been experiencing lately. For Americans that means more Hurricane Katrinas, more stifling hot and longer summers, as well as warmer winters. Retirees may not have to move to Florida or California anymore; besides, those places might be flooded. Global warming has already been predicted in Europe with the consequences being that the northern countries will benefit while the southern ones will languish. The excellent article in the Financial Times says that rising temperatures will let northerners vacation closer by thereby leaving typical warm getaways such as Greece to deal with their hotter temperatures and related problems themselves.

So what good is the report? In it, governments are urged to do something about this problem. In an interview with Reuters, French President Jacques Chirac said, "Faced with this emergency, now is not the time for half measures. It is the time for a revolution, in the true sense of the term. We are in truth on the historical doorstep of the irreversible." On Thursday night before the report was released, several European monuments turned off their lights as a symbolic gesture showing concern for climate change.

The United States government has tried a few times to be more active in controlling its impact in global warming. The benchmark for greenhouse gas emissions controls is the Kyoto protocol, which the Bush administration pulled out of for lack of proof that global warming is man-made. Now that the proof is here, perhaps Mr. Bush will take a more active role in reducing greenhouse gases for which the United States is the worst offender. In 2003, Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman co-sponsored their self-named Climate Stewardship Act only to have it shot down by the Senate. Perhaps now this important bill will be welcomed and put into use rather than kicked so easily to the curb.

It is also interesting to note that the IPCC report was released one day after former Vice President Al Gore was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring about awareness of global warming. If global warming is the new "it" thing of the year, then let it be and let us start changing for the better.

Global warming is a serious problem, and the world is slowly beginning to realize the consequences of individual as well as big business contributions to it. It took 2,500 scientists organized by a United Nations special panel to realize that global warming is caused by human activity. Now it will take the 6.5 billion-plus people on the planet to take the threat seriously and drastically change their habits in order to keep the world habitable.

keeping the earth ever green

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