history

Rants And Rages And Pages, Oh My

Deb Zuroski, , , , , , Leave a comment

I own a lovely letter written in cursive in the early 1900s, the spelling more phonetic than accurate. My daughter initially struggled to read it. She reads cursive just fine. The problem was the phonetic spelling. “Read it as though you’re from Oklahoma,” I told her, based on the postage cancellation stamp. She read it aloud then, with a mildly midwestern accent, and the metaphoric light bulb turned on. 

The letter itself, addressed to Will from his loving wife, tells about her finishing the “warshing” and starting the “peacin” for her quilt. She cautions Will to travel safely. He’s walking home but his location is unknown to us, obscured by damage to the envelope. She also encourages him to turn back if things become dangerous again. What things? Dangerous how? It’s unlikely that we’ll ever know. 

Beyond its delightful authenticity, its tenderness, it’s a reminder that all those old pictures–cabinet cards, daguerreotypes, tintypes–are real people who lived, loved, fought, and died, just as we do. The way we teach history is such a disservice to learning and understanding. Yes, I know 1066 was important and I even (sort of) know why but you know what else was important? Will and his journey back to his wife. Perhaps if we hadn’t lost the humanity of history, we’d understand it better. Would that help us not repeat it? I honestly don’t know. 

A couple weeks ago, I took a drive to Mount Pleasant, ate at a local diner (great server but overall a rather meh meal), and then headed to Blairsville before returning to Pittsburgh. The clouds were particularly puffy. I complimented them; but from their lofty perspective, I suspect they didn’t much care about my admiration. 

The trees appeared to be a monochromatic deep green. Perhaps this is an example of that saying, “Can’t see the forest for the trees” only in reverse. The view was of a broad swath of forest, oddly still, the trees indivisible from the whole. This is, unfortunately, a view the rest of the world has of us. More noise, less exhaustion, seems the answer but that’s hard, isn’t it? 

Will it encourage you to know that on my drive, I saw only two fascist symbols: first, a weirdly homoerotic image of the guy in the White House plastered to the back passenger window of a pickup truck. People around me were making the “interesting choice” face. I mean, it’s so cringy. Just why? I like Henry Cavill but you won’t find me putting a sticker of his face on any of my windows. SMH The second was an absolutely enormous sign attached to the side of a business. It’s been there for years now. I hope I get to see it come down, like the Nazi symbols burned by the Allies.

I have more napkins in my car and backpack than the combined inventories of all the local ice cream shops. (A friend who reads this has a similar napkin collection habit. YES, my friend (whose name I will not mention), I am talking about you. haha) There is a man at the coffee shop who outpaces even me. He’s looking for something in the reusable bag he always carries. After a few minutes of escalating rustling sounds, he begins taking things out of the bag. Napkins, numerous very tidy piles of napkins. There are other things in there–a plastic bag, some notes that he reads and discards, several newspaper sections. It’s the napkins that are remarkable. If you ever spill anything or need to sneeze, find this man. Or me.

I arrived at the coffee shop early one day a few weeks ago and was clearly deep in my thinks. I did not notice ANY of the vandalism on Walnut. The coffee shop door was propped open and entirely without glass. The tshirt store down the street had a huge glass bruise. One of the bookstores had similar damage. Since I entered a store with no glass in the door, entirely without noticing, I clearly am not the appropriate person to report on any other damaged stores. Lol The baristas and I gossiped for a bit about whether someone was mad or perhaps a college student was drunk. Hard to say around here.

There are two white poodles sitting with their owner at a table next to me. I swear I didn’t call to them. THEY came to me. Now, they keep walking over to lick me, particularly my sandal-clad feet. It’s quite tickly. They’re very naughty. I love them. 

An older man, dark hair and a heavily greying beard, is reading a large pile of magazines and weekly papers at a table nearby. I didn’t notice him until I heard the distinctive sound of paper ripping. I looked up and he was tearing a magazine through. He tidily deposited both halves into a bag and returned to reading. A bit later, I heard the same distinctive sound. Just that man, ripping another bit of reading material, and again depositing it into a bag.   

The sound flashed me immediately back to a job I had in the early ‘90s. I worked for a graphic, interior, industrial design firm. It was both the most boring job I’ve ever had and also the most frantic. I lasted two years before they laid me off/fired me. It is the best employment thing that has ever happened to me. And I really, actually mean that. For years after that, on my job-loss anniversary (July 6, 1992), I contemplated sending a thank you note to the CEO, though I never did. Anyway, my boss there liked to rip paper. We shared a ¾ wall. I could hear the shshsh of paper ripping all day. Where did she find all that paper to rip? Into the tiniest pieces, too. Crazy. Would it surprise you to know that we did not have a particularly good relationship?

Honestly, in hindsight and as my own boss, I can acknowledge that I was not the best employee. First, I was terrible at “playing the game.” Absolutely terrible at it. Second, I said what I wanted to say and damn the consequences. And were there ever consequences. Even though I worked my ass off at all the jobs I ever had, I did not have the insight to realize that good work isn’t valued anywhere near as much as a penis. I was constantly judged for not dressing “feminine” enough. Even one woman I worked for – yeah, I’m looking at you NAME REDACTED – would say things like “more jewelry,” “you need to wear makeup,” etc.  I have a feeling “look more masculine” is not a performance recommendation many MEN have heard. 

Okay. Let’s talk pedestrians for a moment, in particular pedestrians crossing the street. Can we run them down? Honk at them? Bully them to hurry faster? NO. My friends, the answer is NO. We do not run over, threaten to run over, pressure, harass, or otherwise make pedestrians feel uncomfortable or unsafe in their shoes while we are in our multi-ton vehicles. EVEN if we’re desperately late for something excruciatingly important. 

Every once in a while, I hear someone start to say something about pedestrians not having the right of way and my answer always is, “So, you’re going to hit them?” Oh no, that person is jaywalking. Ten points for the pedestrian, right? NO. Let’s practice our empathy and humanity by being a little more zen in the car, my friends. But you’re late for that meeting, that doctor appointment, that interview, the Met Gala. Guess whose fault that isn’t? Yeah, exactly. It isn’t the pedestrian’s fault. And I promise, if you accidentally hit that pedestrian while you’re trying to hurry, you’re going to be a hell of a lot later for that ever-so-important thing.

Yes, this rant is the result of nearly getting killed while crossing the street at a crosswalk with a stop sign. 

Stay safe at there and look both ways before you step off the curb.

Much love.

Rants And Rages And Pages, Oh My

Enslavement Sucked, Even if the Museum No Longer Says So

Deb Zuroski, , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

The president says the Smithsonian Museum is too focused on “how bad slavery was.” I’m sure you all saw his comments. For the president to suggest that we shouldn’t stare into the darkness of our history is an urgent cry to do just that, to know it, to share it, to understand what this country officially chose to do to human beings. We cannot, we should not look away. The lie has gone on for far too long. 

You were probably not taught the extent of the unbearable truth of enslavement. It isn’t in the Smithsonian, at least, not to the degree that the president alludes. History is written by the winners, right? And yet, we lost the voice of the formerly enslaved. Theoretically, they won their freedom via the Civil War; but they didn’t get to tell their story in any national way, certainly not to school children. Hell, when I was a child, we were taught that many of the formerly enslaved stayed at the plantations where they’d previously been owned, presumably because they were happy there (it was their “home”); but that’s grossly, egregiously false. Sure, some stayed; as children we never learned WHY. Maybe, as adults, some of us still don’t know, still parrot the “they were happy at the plantation” falsehood. 

Most of what I’ve learned has come from active searches for the details that teachers didn’t provide. Believe me; I don’t want to know. Once you see an image of a human muzzled, there’s no promise that it will ever leave your mind. Nonetheless, choosing not to know is an indulgence I don’t feel comfortable with simply because I’m a privileged white woman who would never have been enslaved. When I read Beloved, I had to research some of the punishments Toni Morrison wrote about. I’d never been taught in school about speculum oris, tongue restraint, iron muzzles and bits. Maybe that’s a horror we don’t want children to know. And yet, many children literally experienced that horror, those punishments. Why is it okay for them to have endured it, for us to have DONE it, but not for us to teach about it? 

Books that will break your heart – Beloved by Toni Morrison; 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup; Never Caught by Erica Armstrong Dunbar; Slavery and Public History edited by James Horton and Lois Horton; Bullwhip Days edited by James Mellon. 

There’s a great quote from a fairly silly move, Ever After. In the movie, Dougray Scott’s character, Prince Henry, says, “I used to think if I cared about anything, I’d have to care about everything.” In times like these, it’s worth remembering that you get to choose how much you pay attention to. You get to choose what you care about. People, like me!, will shout at you from every platform that you are a monster if you don’t lie awake at night, thinking about…. Well, you name it: Gaza, Ukraine, voting rights, marriage equality, the Smithsonian, mail-in ballots, the unhoused in DC, ICE kidnappings, vaccinations, the Epstein files, climate change, and every other critical thing that has momentarily slipped from my short term memory but will wake me at 2AM. 

Rationally, you and I know that we can’t, we simply can’t put enough emotional energy into all of the things that matter. They all matter. That’s why we feel such rage and grief. And that’s why we have to give ourselves the grace to breathe. You don’t have to cry about marriage equality today to care about marriage equality. You don’t have to think TODAY about babies starving in Gaza to know that it’s wrong and to want it to stop. You can give yourself room to process the grief that you feel, the exhaustion. You personally will not stop what is happening but staying fighting fit will enable you to stand up when you are ready to.

And if you want to borrow a book, you let me know. 

Much love.

Enslavement Sucked, Even if the Museum No Longer Says So

Still Coughing After All These Years

Deb Zuroski, , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Years ago, when a friend and I were discussing religion, my friend asked me, and I’m paraphrasing here: What’s the point? She was asking me what’s the point of life if one doesn’t believe in God. This, I told her, this moment is the point. This time that I spend here, each moment, is exactly the point. We all get these moments, whether we believe in an afterlife or not. Sometimes, though, we forget to appreciate them.

Recently, I’ve had quite a lot of time to reflect on that and a variety of other memories that have visited and then flown from my brain. It’s easy to find time for silence when you can’t, in fact, do much speaking. I’ve been sick for nearly two weeks now, bacterial pneumonia, again, to the chagrin of myself and my children. We’ll see if the treatment is effective this time. It hasn’t always been in the past, though I have a lengthy infection to thank for my quick cancer diagnosis and treatment. And for that reason alone, I would be loath to complain this time.

Coughing is the problem. I’ve got fairly broken lungs – as any CT scan will prove – and there’s nothing like a good lung infection to kick off an extended coughing journey, one that often lasts for several weeks. My mother-in-law, one of the nicest people you could ever hope to encounter, absolutely could not bear to hear me coughing. Her beloved older sister, Mary, died of tuberculosis when my MIL was just 10 or so. It was 1935-ish and their family of 10 lived in a tiny apartment in NYC. Mary was 19 and tuberculosis, although on the decline, was an epidemic in the poor, overcrowded neighborhoods of NYC. Treatments weren’t cheap. Margaret’s father, Giovanni, cooked in a restaurant kitchen for 12 hours a day to earn enough to pay for Mary’s treatment. Unfortunately, he put his trust in a shyster who took the money without treating the TB. Mary spent the last year of her life in the girls’ shared bedroom coughing herself to death and Margaret, my sweet MIL, sat at her bedside, powerless to have any impact. 

Of course, with that kind of experience in her formative years, it’s no surprise that my coughing – pleurisy as some of my friends jokingly call it – would send Margaret into a spiral of despair. She never, ever stopped grieving her beloved Mary and hearing me cough regularly made her cry. If she were alive today, she’d scold me even now, while I ingest cough medicine and antibiotics. “Bella,” she’d say, with a sigh. She called all of us bella. Most of her conversations were sprinkled with Italian phrases like scungilli or scocc (from scocciari), which Google would tell you are insults. Coming from Margaret, with a twinkle in her eye and her finger gently shaking at you, being called a sea snail or a pest was loving and we all knew it. 

Anyway, she’d say, “Bella” or “Bella girl. You work too hard.” It wouldn’t matter to her that I’ve been sitting in this darn bed for 10 miserable days now, leaving it only for two doctor appointments and one essential visit with friends. She’d still scold, tell me to eat – like Mrs. Claus scolding Santa on the days before Christmas, “Eat, Papa. Eat.” – and ask me to rest more. I can’t imagine what she must have experienced as a small child, listening to her sister cough until she wretched. 

My grandfather also had tuberculosis around the same time. He was, however, a well-educated man in his 40s, living in Erie, Pennsylvania, rather than a child of Italian immigrants whose knowledge of English was poor, at best. Grandpa – Charles Park, or just Park, to most of the world – was sent to a sanatorium, like the one in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, although Grandpa’s was definitely less mountainous. 

My grandmother, Marion, became a woman of business, definitely out of desperation but also with a surprising acumen. Two relatives – I believe a great-aunt and my grandmother’s grandmother – moved in with my grandmother and her four children and somehow they made ends meet. My grandmother continued to work after my grandfather returned from the sanatorium. They needed the money. He was trained for the church, not much use if you’re trying to feed four young children, but he knew everyone, was kind and competent in his own quiet way; and he eventually found work making prosthetics and durable medical equipment. Because of his TB, he was never able to get life insurance, which they all laughed about because he lived into his mid-80s, far outstripping the actuaries’ expectations. 

My mother and MIL tested positive for TB their entire lives, though neither ever had symptoms. Perhaps their physical health wasn’t impacted but both of them lived with the emotional consequences of their encounters with TB. How could it not be so? Because of my own family history, I’ve been planning to read John Green’s new book, Everything Is Tuberculosis, but now doesn’t seem the most apt time for me to pick up a book about coughing. 

In other news, one of my darling nieces introduced me to a new song, “Word to the Trees,” from which I fear I will never recover. It is an absolute delight of a song, by whatever mike (yes, that’s the band’s name), and now has an important position in this girl’s writing playlist, though, so far, I’ve stopped writing to sing every time it starts playing.

It occurs to me this Memorial Day weekend that Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address should hold renewed meaning for us all as we, in this country, stand more divided than anytime since the Civil War. Perhaps, as we honor those who “…gave the last full measure of devotion,” now is a time to remember the rest of Lincoln’s speech and consider whether “…government of the people, by the people, for the people” can survive this current test of our own devotion or whether it will, inevitably, “…perish from the earth.”

Much love.

Still Coughing After All These Years