Reverie defined

From Dictionary.com

Word of the Day for Saturday, October 10, 2009

reverie \REV-uh-ree\, noun:

1. A state of dreamy meditation or fanciful musing.
2. A daydream.
3. A fantastic, visionary, or impractical idea.
4. Music. An instrumental composition of a vague and dreamy character.

Walking seems to have become Rousseau's chosen mode of being because within a walk he is able to live in thought and reverie, to be self-sufficient, and thus to survive the world he feels has betrayed him.
-- Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

He was pulled out of his reverie by the buzzing of his cell phone.
-- Robert O'Harrow, No Place to Hide

From reveries so airy, from the toil
Of dropping buckets into empty wells,
And growing old in drawing nothing up.
-- William Cowper, The Task. Book iii. The Garden. Line 188.

Reverie is from Middle English, revelry, from Old French, from rever, to dream.

My email letter to Max Baucus (D-MT) extended play version

The current state of the health care debate is unacceptable to me as a tax-paying, freedom-loving American. How could we have excluded a single-payer system? And now excluding a public option? We burden American businesses unduly by expecting them to be the funders of health insurance. It is absurd and it makes our country less competitive in the world economy. In addition it stifles entrepreneurship by small businesses who can ill-afford to figure the high costs into their plans for start-up or expansion. At root of the controversy is an understated acceptance of the "right" of wealthy medical industry corporations to continue to make exorbitant profits. If health care is a human right (which it is in the rest of the world) then how can we justify putting profits over people? And how can we justify burdening one sector of the free-market economy while padding the profits of another? Every time we justify the profits in the medical industry we squeeze the profits from another sector of the economy. How does this make sense to any capitalist?

Here ends the e-letter and this is what I really wanted to say:

I believe I have officially become a socialist. The arguments over the medical industry reforms (they are not about health care in any way that is recognizable to me) puzzle me as a humanitarian and thinking, compassionate person.
By deciding up front to eliminate the possibility of universal coverage in a single-payer system the Congress has made it clear that the only principle guiding the debate is this: money matters more than people. The money spread through Congress by medical industry lobbyists pad the politician's pockets and sway them away from any humanitarian concerns.
The rhetoric of freedom and responsibility and fear of lawsuits belie the fact that the medical sector of the economy is favored over all others. This is done even at the expense of basic capitalist tenets such as the right to be able to trade without undue fetters of government intrusion. The current regulations and haphazard system favors the profits of medical industry sectors over other industrial and information or service sectors. Thus the government has already decided that it will no longer support capitalism.
Instead it has quietly moved into oligarchic imperialism. The "rescue" of the mega-corporations last fall and winter should have adequately signaled this shift to anyone paying attention. By ignoring the financial crises of the poorer and middling classes and smaller business entities, to favor corporations "too big to fail" our government decided to shift away from capitalism. Now the government assumes the risk for corporate ventures into unwise and unsound business practices. The only people who do well in such circumstances are the already wealthy.
When the wealthy own the means of production (capitalism) AND control all regulations (fascism) by electing men and women they "own" to be guardians of their purses-- we have imperialism. The wealthy now control all relevant sectors of the society.
Under imperialism (nee feudalism) anything owned by "the public" is subjected to massive cuts in collective support giving us an astounding state of deteriorating infrastructure. Roads and bridges become increasingly unsound, public school buildings lack basic maintenance, public school students must buy their own school supplies (thus ending a free public education) and are fed barely edible low nutrient "food". Formerly public services are privatized- from trash collection to the military. All in the name of wealth production for the already wealthy couched as increasing "efficiencies". The next time you hear a capitalist or elected official speak of "efficiency," translate that as "private profit" and you'll understand the primary motivation of any proposed change from public ownership to contracted services and you'll understand the reluctance to move toward a publicly funded system of health care.
When my late grandmother put on a starched white uniform, sensible shoes and a hair-net to go to work each day as a "lunch lady" she left her home knowing that she would find crates of fresh fruits, vegetables and meat in the cafeteria larder that she and her co-workers would soon transform into nutritious and delicious meals for the youth at Norwin High School. She and her co-workers would wash every stainless steel pot, melamine tray, china dish and stainless fork after lunch and put these re-usable items back into service the next day. My grandmother knew she would be rewarded with a living wage and reasonable pension to sustain her when her body gave out from the hard work. As a young widow the cafeteria job helped her to finish raising her two youngest children and gave her the ability to save and invest. Now, contracted minimum-wage, no benefits, part-timers populate the cafeterias of our nation's public schools, serving up high fat, high sodium packaged re-heated "meals" from mass-production factories where other workers are paid unsustainable wages to transform agri-business commodities in something to feed kids. And it is all presented on "disposable" cardboard or styrofoam and eaten with plastic ware all of which go to privately owned and operated landfills also employing people at the lowest possible wage.
At every stage of the public school feeding game from field to cardboard serving tray to the dump, formerly lower middle class jobs have been eliminated in favor of poverty level part-time, no-benefits, at-will employment. This newly "efficient " system is efficient only at transferring dollars from the working men and women of society into the off-shore accounts of the super wealthy.
If wanting to go back to a day in America when working people could cover their basic needs by, well, working, then call me a socialist. If desiring to return to a time when people paid taxes knowing that government services would be made available in return, then go ahead and call me a socialist. If I wish for a time when Americans understood that the commons was commonly owned for the benefit for all (notwithstanding old traditions of racism and sexism) then please call me a socialist.
I will proudly wear the label socialist from now on because I care about the common good of this nation and every person on earth and I refuse to believe that the only way to care for all of us is to allow the wealthy to skim the profits from the top of the heap while leaving the dregs for the masses. If I am a socialist because I think providing health care for all MUST be the important driving factor in this debate and because I refuse to believe anyone should become extraordinarily wealthy by investing in systems which limit access to actual health care interventions for the ill, then so be it. I'll take the label. If refusing the believe profit-making companies of any size will put the well-being of patients before their own remuneration makes me a socialist, OK. If insisting that people paid using governmental taxation should work for the taxing authority and not for contracted corporations, then I guess the label socialist fits. If believing that some things should be provided by society as a basic human right supporting the common good, fine. I want A SOCIALIST HEALTH CARE SYSTEM AND I WANT IT NOW.

"How to Name Your Farm"

As promised, here is the reading I did at the Memoir Project kick-off at The Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, NY on 5/11/09
This essay also won first prize in 2005 from the Friends of the Tulsa Library.
And it was published in an anthology: In Time of Need, published by Meadville/Lombard Theological School

I wrote it to mourn my dog, and maybe some other things. I really miss my Oklahoma home when I re-visit it.

“How to Name Your Farm”
by Valerie Mapstone Ackerman

The big red dog is gone. He sat in the sun near me all day that final Monday, basking in the warmth, checking in with an occasional lick to my ear and then settling back into the turf. Young red dog Lydia scampered in the next field challenging the cattle to a dance in which they had no interest. If I had known it would be our last day together, I would have dropped the pecan gathering to spend the afternoon stroking Big Guy’s ears and scratching his chest just the way he liked.

As the sun set and the chill wind rattled the branches, I decided to pack up and head inside. Along the way I filled the dog bowls with cheap food and checked the water. If I had known this would be his last meal, I would have taken a moment to break an egg on top of Big Guy’s bowl. Makes a dog’s fur shine, I hear.

But I didn’t know. How could I know that his front porch straw-padded house would be empty the next morning? How could I know that I would spend Tuesday walking the fields then driving up and down the back-country roads searching for his familiar tail and baritone bark. “Maybe,” I thought, “He’s gone off to his previous home just down the road.” No sign of him there. Perhaps he was insulted and indignant after being teased with several nights spent indoors when the temperature plunged only to be locked out onto the front porch for the warming trend.

My husband assured me that he was fine. “He can take care of himself. He was a stray when he moved in. He probably went off with a pack of dogs to hunt,” Bill insisted.

It was true. There were packs of dogs roaming the hills. I’d seen them skirt the edges of the fields. Once a tangle of them tumbled into the front yard—beautiful white shaggy types and sleek yellow dogs with curled tails and black and tan mongrels. Big Guy and Lydia welcomed them, sharing favorite chew toys (empty soda bottles mostly). One white dog seemed especially tame. Tail wagging, almost grinning, he approached me near the farm gate. Out of nowhere Big Guy barreled in growling, shoulder fur standing up. He nipped lightly at the white dog’s front paws. “It’s OK Big Guy. He’s a sweet little fellow,” I said, patting Big Guy’s head. But that was it. Big Guy had established the parameters for further visits: play with my comrade, play with the toys, but no touching my human.

A couple of times that week I spotted wild dogs in packs. My heart skipped a beat as I recognized Big Guy trailing with one pack, but as I slowed my chili pepper red Jeep and looked again, I found that the tail wasn’t right. Too curly. And what would I do exactly if it WAS Big Guy? I already knew he wouldn’t get into the Jeep. How many times I had tried to lure him in, shove him in, cajole, sweet-talk, or entice him with treats? He was too big and too independent to be forced. Usually I could reason with him, but never about the Jeep. Didn’t I know moving vehicles were the enemy? One shouts at them, occasionally chases them, definitely sprinkles the tires, but NEVER does one ride inside.

Many times I sat Big Guy down to have a discussion about his health and well-being. “See, if we put this purple flea collar on, you’ll scratch less.” Nothing doing. No sooner did I get it on than he ran away across the fields and stayed away the whole afternoon. He came back at dusk sans flea collar. OK, so no flea collar. Next I tried to talk him into spray-on treatment. He won that struggle by rubbing it all off on the grass in a frenzied wriggle. How about the veterinarian-recommended skin penetrating treatment for fleas and ticks? I won that battle the old-fashioned way—I made my husband do it.

When we brought Lydia home last Memorial Day Big Guy established his dominance with one big growl. Not that there was any question about top-dog status. We picked Lydia as an act of kindness; drove all the way to Poteau then up into a rutted holler road to find the breeder. Sleek champion-bred five month-old redbone coonhounds strutted and romped all over the yard. The lone little girl dog trembled slightly, holding back. I came there with no pre-conceived idea of which dog to pick. I didn’t even know if I wanted a male or female. But this little dog needed us. Her big brothers dominated her, pushed her around, cut her off from meeting the new humans. Having grown up the lone girl with five brothers, I immediately felt an affinity. Besides, no way was this frightened puppy ever going to be a good hunting dog. Clearly she needed to be our pampered pet. The ride home confirmed her delicate nature. She drooled and peed and even threw up for good measure. By the time we got home she had a name that came from my desire for an elegant historic name combined with Bill’s love of puns. “Lydia” for Ralph Waldo Emerson’s wife and “Lid-ea” for the fact that Bill first spotted her carrying a lid from an ice cream bucket.

Without a doubt Big Guy was top dog. Not just the boss-- he was Lydia’s teacher too and her disciplinarian. When I’d scold Lydia for pulling clothes off the laundry line, or chewing the porch furniture, Big Guy would rush in, put her down by the neck and bark ferociously. As long as Big Guy was around to reinforce the message, Lydia quickly learned the family rules. Sometimes we would translate Big Guy’s barks. “Hey you silly mutt, we’ve got a good thing going here, don’t blow it!” or “How many times does she need to tell you this?!” or “Listen bitch. Do NOT EAT the furniture!”

Big Guy came with the farm. He had moved in when the previous owners’ Weimaraner bitch had gone into heat. They told us that the folks down the way had begun feeding him about 5 years ago and then last fall he made his opportunistic relocation. Mr. Gray said he’d surely try to shoo him off if we liked, but by then I was already in love. And it was mutual. Big Guy and I bonded from the first moment our eyes met--maybe not quite the first moment. He always barked fiercely at any vehicle entering the property and he did intimidate me the first time our realtor brought us by to look at the land and house. Later, in the spring after the sale was set up and I came by to visit before the final exchange, Big Guy and I had a moment of mutual understanding in which I gave him permission to stay and he gave me permission to move in.

As bossy and scary as Big Guy might seem, he was also the most gentle and intelligent dog I have ever met. When our equally bossy and scary super-intelligent 6 year-old granddaughter came to visit for the whole summer, Big Guy sensed he had met his match. He both protected Keegan and gave her a wide berth. He even allowed Keegan to give him a special name: Clifford The Big Red Dog. She called him Clifford, or Red, or Big Guy. It didn’t matter. He would come when called and sit on command and let Keegan, whom he outweighed by at least 20 pounds, hug his neck and scratch his belly. Though she probably earned it a hundred times, never once did Big Guy growl or raise his hackles at her.

And now he’s gone. Just gone-- as though he never existed. Since he wouldn’t wear one I can’t take his smelly collar and tuck it away in a box like some sentimental fool. I can’t bury his broken body with prayers and readings, singing and a special marker. He didn’t die of illness or old age. He didn’t just run away, I know it. Somewhere in these hills or valleys he intruded upon the wrong people, spooked the wrong livestock. How could they know his bark was (mostly) a big attitude earned the hard way? How could they know his dog-soul held secrets of love and affection.

I have my memories and a few snapshots. Lydia is still here, as sweet and graceful as ever and adjusting well to Molly the Manic Black Lab we adopted from a shelter on New Year’s Eve. Lydia showed us that she needed a companion by ripping off the front screen door then breaking into the house the night after Big Guy had disappeared. Bill can’t bring himself to admit Red (as he called Big Guy) is really gone. Our FedEx lady and I cried together the last time she came by, ready to hand out dog treats for Christmas.

For months we’ve been trying to figure out what to call our farm. A while ago Bill suggested “Red Dog Farm.” I thought it was just silly. Now though, that name feels fitting, like the memorial I never got to have. Red Dog Farm it is—for Big Guy.

Public reading: Memoir Project

Hello Friends-

I am pleased to announce that a piece I wrote about my dogs "How to Name Your Farm" was accepted for the Arts Center of the Capital District Memoir Project for their public reading series kick-off. It is a great opportunity to have local writers read from their work as a way to launch others into writing too.

If any of you are in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY area... Please attend!

May 11 at 7:00 pm at the Art Center on River Street in Troy.

"How to Name Your Farm" was published in an anthology of writing by Meadville Lombard Theological School: "In Time of Need" (available on Amazon) and I won a writing contest in Tulsa with this piece also. I'm pretty sure it is in this blog archive too, in case you want to read it and don't want to buy the book. I get no royalties from the sale of the book but my alma mater does get a few pennies for every book sold.

I hope I don't turn out to be a one-hit wonder. But so what if that's the best I ever produce?

babyrush

The Morning After the World Changed—for Real this Time

11/5/08

I cried myself to sleep last night. This is not a habit. Perhaps I’ve done it before, in the depths of grief over a personal loss, but never have I cried myself to sleep with tears of joy. Until last night.

Hope. Change. Faith in the power of the people. All of these mingled with utter disbelief that this could really happen. After two stolen presidential elections would I be a fool to believe that a black man-- let lone THIS black man-- could become President of the United States of America? I tried to keep my emotions soft and subtle throughout the election. And I am not known by anyone to harbor soft and subtle emotions. It’s just that the fragility of hoping for a better future for my country kept me cautious. Holding hope in my hand and grasping it too tight could smother it like a soft baby chick, its feathers tantalizingly tickling my skin. And yet, here we are glowing with the knowledge that we took our country back from the radical forces bent on robbing us of every last twinkle of hope.

The café where I sit is buzzing—not with words so much as pure joy. I am a stranger here, now, but once was a BWOC (Big Woman on Campus). I lived in Ann Arbor for 15 years and have visited regularly for ten more since moving away. I was a politician and activist and lecturer at the University—but that was a long time ago. So this new generation is walking, no--floating, through the café, grins showing teeth and contentment. Some of them are too young to fully realize what has happened-their joy is fresh and frolicky. Several of us weathered ones nod knowingly at each other as if to make this happiness seal the bonds born of efforts that failed too many times before. But I am basking in both kinds of joy; truly letting the collective glow bathe me this beautiful morning.

As soon as I thought she’d be waking, I sent a text message to my 11 year- old granddaughter to tell her the election results. She texted: “Oh Hi Grandma. What were the scores? At school Obama won 287 to 59.” She attends an “inner city” school in Schenectady, so she was a bit underwhelmed with the results of 51% to 48%. I texted: “Oprah cried at the rally in Chicago. So did I.” She texted, “Ha Ha Ha…that’s kind of funny.” What did I expect? My parents kept me up very late the night “man” landed on the moon so we could watch the live feed from Mission Control. I remember thinking it was cool but not all that novel, just mildly interesting. At 12 I had come to expect great scientific progress. So Keegan expects that men who look like her friends’ fathers and her family’s friends can indeed easily become President. This is the world I wanted for her-- a world where race simply doesn’t matter so much as does character and community and striving for a social context perfected by our greatest efforts merged with our greatest aspirations.

Yesterday I spent thirteen hours on my feet in front of a polling station in an economically depressed mixed neighborhood in Toledo, OH. My daughter Heather and I volunteered for the Election Protection coalition to inform voters of their rights to cast an unencumbered valid and counted ballot. Such a simple thing, one would hope, might not take Herculean efforts to accomplish. But this is an American electoral system built upon voter suppression. We had some small success climbing over a stupefyingly complex voter registration system that is the IMPROVED version Ohio adopted since the last presidential election was stolen from the people. We also failed miserably at times because the powers-that-be demanded that we stand so far away from the entrance that we practically had to chase voters to give them information. Sheer numbers trumped all of the cynical ploys to stop the people from having their way. Hurray for the human spirit of progress!

I am done with being subtle and soft in my emotions. Crusty from battles lost and so few won, I am inspired more than I ever thought I could be again. I feel that all of the dreams I have harbored then buried without appropriate mourning can come back to life now. Miracles are possible once again in MY America—of whom I am, for once, truly proud.

After Knoxville

July 28, 2008 after the killing in Knoxville TN

I wasn’t there. All I know is what I have read online and a little snippet here and there on broadcast media. I don’t pretend to know the thoughts or intentions of the people involved in responding to a violent intruder at the UU congregation in Knoxville, TN.

It is hard to grasp the horror of the events, it is tempting to stop paying attention, but to not pay attention would be to fail to honor the dead and the living too. Terror was intentionally inflicted on completely innocent people by a twisted and damaged suffering soul.

Still, I feel as though I witnessed something precious: compassion and love brought fully to life. A force of goodness stood up to and confronted a force of perversity.

The man with the gun wrote a four-page letter in which he admits that he planned a horrible murder/suicide like so many murder suicides we have seen before. But this time, the targeted people said, “No!” to the planned bloodbath. One man is said to have stood in the way of the gun and took a full blast from the shotgun. People acted quickly and calmly pulled loved ones to safety. Others confronted the man with the gun and stopped him from further killing. He did not succeed in committing suicide that day—he was not permitted to kill his body—though one wonders of the condition of his soul, his metaphorical heart, his very sense of self—these he lost some time ago it would seem.

Commentaries on news blogs immediately began to include messages calling for more armed citizens to be ready to respond violently to such attacks. Media coverage following the shooting in the Colorado Springs New Life Church last December lovingly fawned over an attractive volunteer armed security guard. On one occasion she stated, “It seemed like it was me, the gunman and God.” She claimed that god steadied her hand and helped her to shoot the gunman, who then shot himself to death. She praised god for helping her to shoot the gunman. She claimed that fasting and praying for three days just prior to the event led to her ability to do what god wanted her to do. In one news conference she even hinted that god would now find the perfect man for her to marry. I am not making this up. (google Jeanne Assam to learn more about this)

This, dear reader is the difference that liberal religion can make in the world: when confronted with violence, respond with nonviolence—a force greater than a gun, and more reliable than a bullet because you can take it everywhere you go and you never have to stop and reload.

Did the shooter deserve to be saved from suicide? Yes, he did, because he is a human being-- a human who has done a horrendous thing—he willfully and deliberately took two lives, wounded several other people and harmed hundreds psychologically. And yet, the loving thing to do, the compassionate thing to do, was to stop him as soon as possible. And there were men who did just that.

I marvel at the courage it took to accept the force of the blast, the cool wit to spring into action at the first moment, to put the gunman on the floor and hold him there. Was there a temptation to pummel him? To act out of rage and grief as raw as rage and grief can get? Perhaps. Or perhaps, “god” was truly present this time—as opposed to the pseudo-deity invoked when the desire to kill a killer is strong. If the word god can be invoked here at all, it is in the sense that each one of us has divinity inside of us, an absolute an inviolate piece of the wisdom that makes the universe vibrate with the force of life. The men of the TVUUC tapped into the life force and used it for good, for ending the violence, not for the continuation of suffering and misery brought to their sanctuary.

For this I honor and thank them. May we always remember that dignity and love prevailed that Sunday in July---and that hate cannot win when the force of fierce love is given full expression.

May your life be a testament and a blessing.
Valerie