The Pen is Mightier Than the Riot

 

If you want to convince people that lives matter (black, brown, white, or whatever), you can demonstrate and you can riot. Or you can write a book.

I don’t usually plug books on this blog, but I just finished Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson, and her contribution to the conversation is as powerful and more compelling than any demonstration or riot.

Here is the description from Amazon:

Jacqueline Woodson’s first middle-grade novel since National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming celebrates the healing that can occur when a group of students share their stories.

It all starts when six kids have to meet for a weekly chat—by themselves, with no adults to listen in. There, in the room they soon dub the ARTT Room (short for “A Room to Talk”), they discover it’s safe to talk about what’s bothering them—everything from Esteban’s father’s deportation to Haley’s father’s incarceration to Amari’s fears of racial profiling and Ashton’s adjustment to his changing family fortunes. When the six are together, they can express the feelings and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world. And together, they can grow braver and more ready for the rest of their lives.

This isn’t just a story about the children we normally think of as minorities. The group includes a white boy who is bullied because he is the minority in that school. Woodson’s story shows you can’t judge any person by the color of his or her skin, but sometimes other people’s prejudices create negative experiences that children—and adults—must figure out how to handle.

Although the book is billed as a middle-grade novel, I would recomment it for adults, too.

With Harbor Me, Jacqueline Woodson proves that the pen is mightier than the riot.

A Covid-19 Story Idea

 

Earlier this year, I had begun planning a summer research trip to New England to visit lighthouses. Then Covid-19 closed everything down. I kept hoping I could get the trip in, but by now it’s pretty clear that I will have to wait until next year.

New England’s Covid restrictions are a big part of the problem. My plan was to visit lighthouses in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, with the largest number in Maine. But Maine’s Covid-19 travel restrictions—which are similar to those in other parts of New England—would make for a frustrating and futile trip.

Maine’s travel page states, “It is mandated that all out-of-state travelers coming into Maine, as well as Maine residents returning to Maine, complete a 14-day quarantine upon arrival.”  Quarantined individuals must stay at home or in their lodgings the entire time. They may not even leave to go to a grocery store, so unless they bring enough food for two weeks, everything must be delivered. Obviously, this also means no sightseeing.

There is an exemption for anyone who has had a negative Covid-19 PCR test no more than 72 hours before entering the state, but this has its own logistical nightmares. If you get the test done in your own state before leaving, will you have the results within 72 hours? And in the case of my lighthouse tour, which would go from one state to another, we would likely need to be tested more than once to meet their requirements.

The Maine instructions say that if you haven’t received the results by the time you arrive in the state, you can quarantine “in your lodging” until you receive the results, but in the unlikely event of a positive test, the entire trip will have been wasted. Or you can quarantine in your lodging for 14 days, but who is going to spend the bulk of their vacation cooped up in a hotel room just so they can get a little sightseeing in afterwards?

But, you ask, how will the authorities know? The Maine rules require hotels, campgrounds, Airbnb hosts, and so on to obtain a Certificate of Compliance signed by each guest. Cars with out-of-state license plates are probably targets for police checks. And I’m guessing that rental car companies are required to collect a Certificate of Compliance, too. A traveler who violates the travel restrictions can receive up to six months in jail, a $1000 fine, and an order requiring that person to pay the state’s expenses.  

So I was concerned when I learned that a good friend planned to travel to New England this week. She was going as companion to a friend who wanted to do some sightseeing there, and I’m guessing the woman was making the arrangements and hadn’t thought to check out any travel restrictions. My first reaction was to warn my friend—and I did.

But my second reaction was to imagine the story possibilities. What if a clueless family traveled to New England and discovered they couldn’t get a hotel room without signing a Certificate of Compliance? Would they lie, and what would happen if they did? Would they turn around and go home? Would they tell the truth and quarantine in a hotel room until they could get tested and receive the results or even for the entire 14 days? And what kind of craziness would result from being cooped up together in a tiny froom without even the chance to take their St. Bernard outside for a walk? Maybe the story would even be the basis for another blockbuster comedy movie like National Lampoon’s Vacation or Trains, Planes, and Automobiles.

Or not. I have so many projects on my desk now that I may never get around to writing the story. I also won’t be traveling to New England anytime soon.

Because I’d rather experience it in fiction than in real life.

Writing the Storm

 

As I mentioned last week, I recently read finished re-reading David Copperfield. When I came to Chapter 55, titled “Tempest,” I was swept up in Dickens’ description of a powerful storm. The highest praise I can give him is to reproduce excerpts here for your reading enjoyment.

To set the stage, these first passages occur while David Copperfield is traveling from London to Yarmouth on the evening mail coach.

It was a murky confusion—here and there blotted with a colour like the colour of the smoke from damp fuel—of flying clouds, tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as it, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened. …

But, as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely over-spreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow, harder and harder. It still increased, until our horses could scarcely face the wind. Many times, in the dark part of the night (it was then late in September, when the nights were not short), the leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop; and we were often in serious apprehension that the coach would be blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain came up before this storm, like showers of steel; and, at those times, when there was any shelter of trees or lee walls to be got, we were fain to stop, in a sheer impossibility of continuing the struggle.

…

As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which this mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and more terrific. Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us. The water was out, over miles and miles of the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had it stress of little breakers setting heavily towards us. When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings.

Upon reaching Yarmouth, David took a room at an inn and went down to the shore for a closer look.

Coming near the beach, I saw, not only the boatmen, but half the people of the town, lurking behind buildings; some, now and then braving the fury of the storm to look away to sea, and blown sheer out of their course in trying to get zigzag back.

…

The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled back with a hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach, as if its purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white-headed billows thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with a solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a booming sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made, to change its shape and place, and beat another shape and place away; the ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and buildings, rose and fell; the clouds fell fast and thick; I seemed to see a rendering and upheaving of all nature.

I wish I could write like that.

__________

The painting of the storm at sea is by Robert Witherspoon, a 19th Century British artist. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Remembering High School English

 

I just finished reading David Copperfield for at least the second, and possibly the third or fourth, time. But it’s the first reading in high school that sticks out in my mind. I was particularly struck by these two passages describing David’s stepfather after David’s mother died.

Mr. Murdstone took no heed of me when I went into the parlour where he was, but sat by the fireside, weeping silently, and pondering in his elbow-chair.

. . .

[He] took a book sometimes, but never read it that I saw. He would open it and look at it as if he were reading, but would remain for a whole hour without turning the leaf, and then put it down and walk to and fro in the room.

The teacher asked us to write a character study about somebody in the story, and I chose Mr. Murdstone. Most readers consider him to be a mean, hard-hearted man, and he is, but my paper concluded that he had a soft side and deserved to be pitied because of the strength of his grief.

I don’t remember what grade I received on that paper, but it was probably an A since that was my normal achievement in Mr. Leemgraven’s junior and senior English classes. I remember another paper for the specific reason that I received only an A- on it. The assignment was to critique an article from The New Yorker. I don’t remember anything about the content except that it used exaggeration as a literary advice and I didn’t think it worked. My problem was that I used “exaggerated” or one of its other forms several times, always spelling it with one “g.” Mr. Leemgraven marked me down for the spelling, and I wasn’t happy. I argued that at least I had been consistent, but I still ended up with that A-.

By my senior year, I had decided I wanted to be a lawyer. So when Mr. Leemgraven assigned a research paper, I chose the case against Sacco and Vanzetti, two anarchists who were convicted of murdering a guard during a robbery. I especially enjoyed reading through the court transcripts. I didn’t know if they had done it, but I concluded that the guilty verdict was a miscarriage of justice because the state had not met it’s burden of proof.

Mr. Leemgraven was a good teacher, and I learned a lot from him. I don’t remember ever telling him how much I appreciated him as a teacher before he died in 1985.

But I wish I had.

__________

The image at the top of this page is from the original 1849 serial publication of David Copperfield and is in the public domain because of its age. I didn’t find a reference to the cover illustrator, but since the interior illustrations were done by Hablot Knight Browne (Phiz), I assume he did the cover as well.