Choosing a Definition

In August 1973, a Minnesota friend invited me to work on a reading curriculum. I lived in Stillwater while completing the project.

The St. Croix river flows past Stillwater, Minnesota,

a town of 11,000 when I moved there in 1973.

            Steeped in lumberjack lore, the oldest town in Minnesota sits contentedly next to the St. Croix. This river town has a charm I’d never met before, and it became my home for the next thirty-six years. Early on—in September 1981—I became a vegetarian. My reasoning, once again, was based on what I considered peace and justice issues. Here’s the story of how that happened.

            A convent friend visited, bearing a gift. The cover of Laurel’s Kitchen: A Handbook for Vegetarian Cookery and Nutrition proclaimed that it was “America’s first complete guide to cooking delicious natural foods.” Annette knew that I gardened and enjoyed trying new recipes. “The gift seems perfect for you,” she said.

My battered copy of Laurel’s Kitchen sits before me.

            She was right. Together, the two of us sat next to the river—she meditating on its lazy flow and I devouring the book’s introductory section: “Giving the Gift of Life.” Her gift lies open now on my computer desk so I can easily find the passage that changed my life. I began the paperback not knowing that the words printed on page 39 would touch some part of myself that had awaited definition.

As of mid-1975, world famine has intensified to the point that fifteen thousand human beings, most of them children, are dying of malnutrition each day. For the first time in its twenty-seven-year history UNICEF has declared an emergency situation. Meanwhile, for all our own anxieties over economic recession, the major health problems in the United States continue to be those related to overconsumption. Our consumption patterns are hurting us, and they are now jeopardizing life the world over.

            Our meat-based diet is perhaps the most obvious example. We now consume about twice the protein our bodies need, and beef is our hands-down favorite way of doing it. As Frances Moore Lappé has shown us, every pound of beef on our table represents sixteen pounds of grain and legumes removed from the total available to a hungry world. What we do not all realize is that this high-protein feed is administered to a steer during the last few weeks of its existence. The sole function of most of the soybeans and other feed crops we raise is to turn lean range-fed beef into the marbled fat beef that our doctors warn us against.

            The relationship between meat consumption and available grain is therefore more sensitive than we might think. If demand for meat goes down, the steer’s last-minute cram session does not take place. In 1974,when the market for meat did fall, the grain that was so unexpectedly released actually did find its way to poorer countries. (The italicized word is in the original.)  

            I responded wholeheartedly to these paragraphs. Here’s how my thinking ran: If my eating less beef would help the hungry of the world, then eating no beef would help even more. By doing this, I would be silently affirming my belief in the holiness of all life. Moreover, less consumption meant fewer steers raised and that meant fewer of these sentient creatures would die.

            The final statement of course had to be that I would also cease to consume chicken and fish. They, too, were sentient creatures, and chickens especially were being raised in abysmal conditions.

            “I’m a vegetarian now,” I announced to Annette.

             “What prompted this?” she asked.

            I read her the three paragraphs. She refrained from citing the counter arguments about one person being able to do little to feed the whole world. Knowing me well, she knew that for me life is holy. Sacred. And becoming a vegetarian would be a way of living that belief.

            We drove home. I emptied the freezer of chicken, beef, and fish; gave the trove to a friend; and settled down to learn how to cook as a vegetarian and what to order at restaurants. I’ve never regretted this decision.

            As Lao-tzu said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins beneath one’s feet.” Out of the stillness of my commitment arises the transformation.

            

Moving, Moving, Moving On

Toward the end of the school year in 1972, I felt the need to move on. Actually, this on-line memoir has shown me that I had a tendency during those first years out of the convent to move on often—to a new apartment, a new job, a new state. 

            This nomadic lifestyle began in the convent. I took first vows in January 1960. From that time until December 1966—six and a half years later—the Mother Superior sent me to five schools in two states.

            To use an analogy, by the time I left the convent, I’d become a sprinter, not a long-distance runner. That is, I didn’t stay long in any one place.

            After the convent, I stayed at home in Missouri for a month. Then I moved to Dayton, Ohio, to work. During the next two and a half years, I lived in six apartments before attending grad school in Minnesota for two years, living off-campus.

            Returning to Dayton, I lived in an apartment and taught at the dropout center for a year. Next, I moved to New Hampshire, where I lived in an apartment for three months before settling in an 1810 farmhouse with two roommates. A year later I returned to Missouri. Several weeks later, I drove north to Minnesota to work.

The autumn beauty of New Hampshire.

            So in the six and a half years between leaving the convent and moving back to Minnesota, I lived in eleven residences and four states.

            Add it up.

            In thirteen years—from January 1960 to August 1973—I lived in sixteen residences in six states.

            Once I moved back to Minnesota, I lived in two different places before I bought a home in May 1977 and ceased to roam—or, to use my analogy, to sprint. I abided in that welcoming 1870 lumberjack home for thirty-two years.

            During those thirteen years of wanderlust, I never thought of settling in one place. Strangely, I’d left the convent because I thought I wasn’t a good teacher and yet again and again I’d reentered classrooms. While at the dropout center in 1972, I’d even flown to Detroit for two job interviews to teach outside the United States.

            In a spacious hotel room in the Motor City, an urbane gentleman interviewed me for a job teaching at an American school in Turkey. He asked me to give him three, short definitions of myself.

            “I’m a human being seeking meaning. A teacher who values community. And an animal lover.”

            Next he asked me about my philosophy of education.

            Then he offered me the job for an enticing $10,000 a year. Since I’d been making $7,000, this tempted me. However, I had one question that would influence my decision.

             “Will I wear a veil when I go out of the school’s compound?” I asked.

            “Yes.”

            “I wore a veil for eight years. Long enough for me.”

            My next Detroit interview was for a job teaching in Aruba for a U.S. company that had established a school for its employee’s children. Afterward, I was offered the job—for $12,000 a year.

Oranjestad—the capital of Aruba.

            Before accepting, I again asked one question: “Do you facilitate meetings between the children who are citizens of Aruba and the visiting children of your employees?

            “No.”

            Once again, I turned down the job.

            On my return to Dayton, I began to look for a teaching position in New England. While getting a graduate degree in American Studies, I’d become intrigued with that area and its Yankee mentality.

            By this time, I’d learned to drive and bought my first car. So in August 1972, I headed northeast. I stayed in Claremont, New Hampshire, for only one year. You can read about my teaching there in the following postings:

·      Two Roads Diverged

·      Holy Ground

·      The Box Sprung Open

·      Thank You One and All

            Thanks for joining me on this peripatetic journey throughout my life. One of these fine posting days I’ll share with you my conclusions on why I kept moving on. And why I am now moving again—back to Minnesota. Hang in there with me!

Photographs from Wikipedia

Afterword #1: Throughout the remainder of May, I’ll post about the publication of a new book that is a companion to A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story as well as several other social justice issues that have impinged on my life since 1973 when I left Claremont, New Hampshire.

Afterword #2: At the Dayton dropout center, I participated in segregated education. If you’re interested in  reading an article in today’s New York Times about these schools in New York City, please click here.

Walking the Walk

The Dayton Dropout Center was an alternative high school for young people who’d dropped out of the public school system, but still wanted to work for a diploma. On Saturday, I explained that sixty of these sixty-one students were African Americans. Five of the seven teachers were also African American. Only Denny and I were Caucasian, and we two caused a brief uproar among the other teachers.

            Denny had been at Woodstock, and his view of the prevailing culture was even more jaded than mine. Both of us were somewhat aligned with the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s—he, much more than I. Denny never spoke of his background, but I assumed, because of things he said and his casual approach to money, that he was of the upper class. I’d come from a working-class background, and had little money, but I surely was part of the prevailing white culture.

Woodstock Poster for the 1969 gathering.

            I’d been involved in the Vietnam War protest; I wasn’t married, nor did I have children; and I’d been a Roman Catholic nun. So my concerns differed somewhat from many other women.

            Denny was a Jewish man of fierce intelligence who didn’t suffer fools gladly. Like myself, he felt that much of what happened in Washington, D.C., the Pentagon, and Vietnam was accomplished by foolish men whose value systems had gone astray. They’d lost their way.

The peace symbol created in Great Britain.

            The students valued Denny’s opinion because he seemed so confident in himself and his views. He seemed to simply know the answer to any problem a student presented. Moreover, his wit was dry and sometimes acerbic. The students, to use a word I seldom use, adored him.

            The dropout center opened its doors to students in late November 1971. By March, Denny and I both felt that the school’s goal was misguided. Its founder wanted to help African American students enter the middle class of the dominant culture. Denny and I both considered this white culture to be shallow and materialistic. Despite that, we’d done our part to fulfill the school’s goal. Yet both of us were beginning to balk.

            We wanted the students to embrace their own culture. Motown records had made people everywhere aware of the richness of the Black culture. Moreover, universities around the country were  establishing Black Studies programs that explored the contributions of black writers, musicians, athletes, scientists, and entrepreneurs to American society.

J. C. Penney, Jr., who established the J. C. Penney department stores in 1902.

            Denny and I wanted the students to reject the dominant culture, just as we’d rejected it—or so we thought. One afternoon we seven teachers sat down together in a spare classroom to discuss what seemed like a dilemma to Denny and me. The two of us explained where we were coming from. Then the conversation went something like this.

            “You’ve got it all wrong,” the teachers told the two of us.

            “Why should anyone want to be part of this culture? It stinks!” Denny and I countered.

            “The two of you are well intentioned. A bit idealistic, though. You’re part of the culture you’re putting down.”

            “We’re opting out.”

            “Just how are you doing that? You both live in white neighborhoods. You shop in any store you want. You don’t worry about the police following you down streets when you drive around town. You both have bank accounts. You’re both highly educated in predominately white universities. Tell us—just how have you dropped out?”

            “But we didn’t choose that. We were born into it. Now we’re rejecting it.”

            “Doesn’t look like that. You haven’t rented a room in the inner city and tried to shop at the grocery stores there. You don’t frequent the stores in this neighborhood. You drive away from this school each day and into your side of town—with its clean stores and advantages. You talk the talk. But you don’t walk the walk.

            Silence.

            “The truth is you’re asking these children to reject what they’ve never had.”

            Silence.

            “You can’t reject what you’ve never had. You need to have it first.”

            “But it’s not worth having.”

            “You say that because you have it. These students need to taste the good life. Only then will they know both lives and only then can they choose—with knowledge and experience—to reject one or the other. Or to somehow embrace both.”

            Silence and then, “That makes sense.”

            Denny and I returned to the classroom. We both continued to help the students prepare themselves to become part of white neighborhoods and businesses—to become welcomed additions to the dominant culture.

            What we also did was to teach them all we could about the richness of their own culture. I used black poetry, short stories, and novels and encouraged the students to use these to write about their own lives. Denny taught American history with an emphasis on the contributions of African Americans.

Zora Neale Hurston, a noted author of the Harlem Renaissance,

whose most famous work is Their Eyes Watching God.

            Today, I know that my fellow teachers were right in their assessment of Denny and me—two young, white idealists who tried to tell our fellow black teachers how to teach and what to value. Our hubris knew no bounds. Both of us were articulate; we could “talk the talk” with ease. As Mary Turpie, the professor at the University of Minnesota, said about people like us—we could “b---s---.”

            But I never “walked the walk.” I still live in an all-white neighborhood. All my friends are white. I feel no apprehension when I go into stores. No fear that the security guards will follow me around. I’ve even stopped protesting injustice. What happens to us? Do we just wear out? Or do we give up? And when I say “us,” I mean “me.”

            In a recent posting, Penny, of lifeonthecutoff, said she’d “lost her bounce.” I have, too, and I don’t know where to find it.

All photographs from Wikipedia.

            

Black vs. Standardized English

Let’s return today to how peace and justice issues impinged on my life in the early years after I left the convent. Between January and April, I shared my becoming aware of racism within myself and society, my attending grad school in Minnesota to learn about Black English, my encountering violence there in the classroom and on the street, my protesting the Vietnam War, and my returning to Dayton only to discover that I had an FBI file that kept employers from hiring me. Finally, I landed a job in a department store warehouse where I tried to unionize the female workers and got fired.            

            That happened in November 1971. Rather quickly I returned to teaching. A dedicated immigrant from South Africa had gotten the funds to begin a dropout center for teenagers—sixty African American students and one Caucasian. As I remember, the students ranged in age from fifteen to twenty-one. The faculty consisted of five African Americans and two Caucasians: Denny, a young Jew, and myself, an ex-nun.

            Denny taught American history; I, composition, grammar, and literature. Quickly I discovered that only a few students believed in their ability to learn. My job was clear: I needed to help them appreciate the knowledge within themselves.

            Several had been in the reformatory and that was rich fodder for writing. We began by sharing their life stories, some of which were acutely poignant while others had us all laughing.            

            We spent days sharing stories, then we began to write. I didn’t want spelling to get in the way of their writing so we began with their calling out words they’d need for their compositions. I printed these on the chalkboard.

            Next they wrote. Then came the reading of their stories. By this time, a community was forming in each of the classes—freshman through senior. The students now felt bound to one another within this community, so they supported one another’s efforts in finding the “telling” word; forming alliteration, analogy, simile, metaphor; and developing the story arc. We discussed sustaining suspense and preparing for the denouement.

            Once we trusted one another, the students shared their dreams about what they’d like to do with their lives. Clearly, they needed to be prepared for work that would earn the necessary funds to fulfill their dreams. And yet their spoken English was non-standardized. Who would hire them?

            The day came when I said, “ You know all of you are so smart.”

            “What makes you say that, Ms. Ready?” they asked.

            “Well, I can speak only one language but all of you speak two. That’s smart.”

            The statement astounded them. Two languages? What did I mean?

            To illustrate, I asked one student to pretend to be in a downtown Dayton office for a job interview with a white personnel director. “What questions do you think that man or woman will ask you?” I inquired.

            The students reeled off a list of things they’d heard asked before: What job experience do you have? How old are you? What are your skills? What was your attendance like in high school? How about your grades?

            As the students asked the questions, I printed them on the chalkboard, just as the students said them—in Black English. Beneath each question I printed how I—a speaker of standardized English—would ask it. “Notice any difference?” I asked.

            Yes. They saw that how they spoke and how I spoke were different. “If you want to get work out there in that big white world, you need to speak what’s known as Standardized English,” I explained.

            “So what are we speaking?” one student asked, “Dayton English?”

            “You’re speaking Black English.”

            “Bad English?”

            “No. Black English. It’s a real language. Just like French or Spanish. Or any other language. It has rules and something called syntax. You speak it. So you speak two languages. When you’re with one another you speak Black English.”

            “But white people don’t seem to understand me when I talk,” one young man complained. “They say I speak ‘broken English.’”

            “Not broken. Black. But you’ve put your finger on the problem. We’ve got to practice speaking what is known as ‘standardized English’ if you’re going to get past that first job interview.”

            So we began. They asked questions in Black English. I printed these queries on the chalkboard. Beneath them, I’d print standardized English. We’d practice saying this second set of questions. I wanted them to get used to the questions they’d be asked.

            Then we practiced answers in Black and standardized English.

            Slowly, as the weeks passed, the students became adept at switching from Black to standardized. I participated in countless mythical interviews as the personnel manager or the boss of a Dayton business. The students participated as Black English speakers and as standardized English speakers.

            Time passed and they beamed at their growing expertise to shift from Black to standardized English. “Just look at us,” their smiles declared. “We speak two languages! We’re downright educated!”

            I agreed. “Yes. The cat’s meow!”

            Next Tuesday I’ll continue the story of my work at the dropout center with these students, who were so eager to learn.

Afterword #1: Thanks for all your comments on my posting this past Tuesday and for the suggestions about how to keep the newly cleaned shower stall pristine. I’ve now taken a shower and “ah, my foes, and oh, my friends” the wiped stall “gives a lovely light”—with an acknowledgement to the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. I just got a call that tomorrow—Sunday at 10 am—I'll have my first "showing" of this house. Send those good wishes winging this way! I'm on Central Daylight Time!!!

Afterword #2: For my postings from January through March, a number of you commented on my “courage.” I thank you for that, and I’d like to introduce you today to a storyteller whose courage and fortitude I greatly admire. Some of you read Rita’s blog Soul Comfort’s Corner, so you’ve met this extraordinarily talented woman who lives daily with the aches and pangs of fibromyalgia and fills those days with painting, journaling and creating exquisite note cards. However, fewer of you know her second blog: Soul Comfort’s Stories.

            During April, Rita posted a two-part story on this second blog about her youth during the Vietnam War. I urge you to read Installment 1, which is entitled “The Helpful Hooker: Running Away to Canada” and Installment 2, “Innocents on the Road: Running Away to Canada.” Once you read her stories, you’ll go back for more. Her latest is “Uniform.”  

The Decision Is Made

Dear Blogging Friends, Readers, Commentators, 

                   and You Who Fit All Three Categories,

Hello again.

            Today marks my blogging re-entry. In April, life became too complicated for me to write new postings. So I reposted eight stories from 2011. I didn’t respond to comments on these because I was pursuing a dream.

            Many of you thought I spent April working on a memoir. I didn’t. I began the month by getting ready for a trip to Minnesota. On April 6th, I journeyed forth from my Independence home and headed north. For eleven days, I cavorted with friends of thirty-eight years—friends I’d left behind when I moved to Missouri three years ago.

At the Good Earth Restaurant with a friend.

            In addition, I looked at a unit in a cooperative, three units in condos, a townhouse, and two refurbished houses. You see, this journey was a fact-finding one in which I sought answers to three questions: Could I financially afford to move back to Minnesota? Could I find a condo that would allow three cats? And . . .  Had I romanticized my years in Minnesota? The answers, in order, are yes, yes, and definitely no.

            A fourth question also presented itself: Did Meniere’s Disease still have a firm grip on my life? So much so that I wouldn’t have the psychic and physical energy to make a move?

            As I met with friends, almost all of them commented on my vitality. My vim and vigor. The answer was swift and sure: Meniere’s has relinquished its control. Healing has taken place here in Missouri. That is one of the great gifts of my being here. I have come home to health.

            Missouri has helped me come home in other ways. Part of that coming home is the acknowledgement that during those thirty-eight years I spent in Minnesota, the apricot sunsets, the multitudinous lakes, the acres of parks, the blustery winters, and the ever-changing political scenes rooted themselves within me. It is there I wish to spend my final years.

            And so this past Thursday, a realtor placed my Missouri home on the market. I so wish I could move it to Minnesota and settle it gently on a plot of ground in some wooded area. But I’ve never learned the art of levitation, and so must find a new home for the cats and myself. Financially I must consider only what I really need, not what I simply want.

            And what I need in a home is a bed in which to sleep, a kitchen in which to cook, an office in which to write my manuscripts and postings, and a space in which to place kitty litters for Ellie, Maggie, and Matthew.

            During the last full week of April, a cousin from Seattle visited me for six days. Within her I met a wholeness that touched my life while she was here. Perhaps she knows the art of levitation. I didn’t ask because I needed a more immediate gift from her: cleaning the walk-in shower to make it presentable to a buyer.

            She applied her considerable skills to this task. That bathroom is now pristine. So much so that I hesitate to take any more showers. It’s the other bathroom for me—the one with the tub. I know how to keep a tub clean as I did that in Minnesota. But perhaps you can suggest a product that will enable me to use the walk-in shower while keeping it looking factory new. If so, HELP!

            So that’s the month of April. If you have any unassigned prayers, vibes, visualizations, good wishes, thoughts, energy, please send them my way. In this lifelong questioning of “Where and what is home?” I’ve lived in expectation of goodness. It just keeps rolling in, inundating me with the mystery of what being human means.

             Peace ever and always to you.