Goodbye, tree.

The box elder is coming down.

After a series of storms that have left its limbs broken, hanging and scraggly, the 50 foot box elder tree that hides between our garage and the neighbor's fence is coming down.

Sure, last year it dropped thousands of seeds all over our yard and clogged the gutters. Ok, the summer before that, it drew thousands of box elder bugs to our yard, and an entire side of the house turned red and black, blanketed with their soft little bodies. And, all right, some of them snuck in the windows. Yeah, and the whole thing is probably a hazard, ready to clunk down on the garage in the next wild windstorm that races through town.

It's just that it's such a pity to cut down a tree, especially on the prairie.

As a friend said the other night: the best times to plant a tree are 40 years ago, and today. It's time to think about planting.

On Kim Kardashian, pregnancy and image

Well, I sent this in to the local paper tonight. Let's see if they print it...

An Open Letter to Local Grocery Stores:

Let me start by saying that I’m 8 ½ months pregnant, which means that like many women in this stage in their pregnancy, I bear a strong resemblance to a July watermelon.

Sunday evening I stopped by Dan’s Supermarket in Arrowhead shopping center to pick up a few things for dinner. As I waited in line to pay for my groceries, I passed the time by scanning the magazine covers stacked next to the gum and chocolate bars. That’s when I saw the cover of In Touch Weekly magazine. This particular magazine featured a photo of a pregnant Kim Kardashian, dressed in a tank top and unzipped jacket. There was a blown up detail of her armpit. To be more specific, there was a blown up detail of a skin fold in her semi-exposed armpit, labeled with a supposed quote from Kim herself: ‘even my armpits are fat!’ The cover’s main text reads: “I’ll never be sexy again. Desperate after gaining 6 lbs in a week, pregnant Kim eyes an extreme liquid diet & resorts to even more drastic measures. PLUS her obsession with her teen sister’s body.”

Well now. There’s an unexpected punch in the gut for a pregnant lady.  

Here are the messages anyone could take away just from that magazine cover alone, without even looking at the story inside: Looks always trump health. It’s ok to scrutinize and criticize women’s bodies, no matter what their circumstances may be. Gaining weight during pregnancy is not acceptable. Fat, or even enlarged breast tissue in the armpit area is not ok when the body is preparing to lactate. Liquid diets are something a pregnant woman could reasonably consider in order to avoid gaining weight, never mind the effect on her growing child. Pregnant adult women should want to resemble teenage girls. Bottom line: Pregnant women should be ashamed of their changing bodies.

One could argue that the magazine is taking more of a ‘look at this wacky celebrity’s approach to pregnancy’ but even so, those negative messages are still there, blaring out from the newsstand.

Of course, this is just a symptom of the wider problem: the media’s treatment of women’s bodies, pregnant or not. We are to look a certain way, and our health and happiness is secondary to our looks. We are disgusting if we don’t fit the media’s mold, even when our bodies are nourishing a baby.

Here’s what I have to ask the grocery stores in Bismarck: why on earth do you stock offensive and damaging material in almost every checkout aisle? By displaying materials like this week’s issue of In Touch Weekly, your businesses are actively helping to distort the general public’s view of women, women’s view of themselves, and little girls’ expectations of their future looks. Let’s not forget pubescent and teenage girls, with their constant self-scrutiny. Is it kind to push these messages on them when all they came in for is a bag of oranges? At the very least, surely encouraging body dysmorphia and the eating disorders that come with it are bad for the food business.

Wouldn’t a special checkout counter with these magazines be more appropriate? Just like the cigarette counter, people who want to expose themselves to such nincompoopery could go out of their way to do so, leaving the rest of us to peacefully contemplate what kind of gum we want.

Even better, why not stop participating completely? Why not refuse to stock magazines that feature such ridiculous covers? If not for me (after all, I'm perfectly happy with my current watermelon shape), then for the legions of little girls who go home from the grocery store check-out line questioning the value of their own round little bodies.

On Women's Little Christmas, and why it's a brilliant idea.

Today is January 6^th, Epiphany, Three Kings Day: the last day of Christmas. And the twelfth day of Christmas. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night? A play widely believed to have been written for tonight, the twelfth night of Christmas. Twelve drummers drumming? Today. We keep our Christmas tree, nativity scene, and decorations up until today is over… because it’s still Christmas and not, as the shops would have us believe, the start of the run-up to Valentine’s Day. Yes, I’m clinging, but what harm?

There’s a special aspect to today that I miss, which to my knowledge is only celebrated in the southwest of Ireland, especially in Cork and Kerry: Women’s Little Christmas (also known as Little Christmas, Little Women’s Christmas… you might get the idea). Today makes me think of the way women are celebrated on January 6^th in that part of the world: with free drinks and the teeniest of mince pies! What else could a girl want on a cold day?

So what’s the story? Well, you know that your mammy and your granny probably have always been in charge of the real Christmas goings-on every year, yes? The shopping, the wrapping, the hint-throwing, and the stocking stuffing, not to mention the cooking. All usually handled by a woman. What's more, they probably did something special (like feed you and everyone else within sight) for St Stephen’s Day, for New Years’ Eve, for New Years’ Day, etc etc etc.

Poor mammies, they’re probably exhausted by now with all the excitement of the Christmas season.

And so, the idea is to give the ladettes a day to put their feet up, have a day out, and get a few free drinks in.

I don’t need to convince you of what a fabulous idea this is.

Here was my experience of Women’s Little Christmas in years past: gaggles of women out on the streets, going from pub to pub. Inside, if there’s a fireplace, there is usually a fire roaring. The landlord pops over with some hot whiskeys, hot ports or hot brandies and a plate of mince pies for the gerruls – at no cost. It's a Little Christmas miracle! When you’ve finished, you either stay to have another one (which you have to pay for yourself, come on now) or abandon this lovely pub for another lovely pub, similarly full of women, firelight and warmth, and probably with a different beverage on offer.

And here’s what I say: like the Spanish siesta, the north islander eleven o’clock snack and four o’clock tea time, what a great idea. Why not bring it here? Americans could use more things to celebrate, and believe me, once you’re used to something (like elevenses, by golly) it’s hard to give it up completely.

So in an attempt to instate Women’s Little Christmas on the prairie, I’ll be swinging by the mammy’s with a bottle of port and a plate of cookies. Kettle on, oranges sliced, and we’ll be right as rain.

Happy Women's Christmas, laydeez. Go on, you'll have another one.

Salthill Prom, Seamus Heaney, and a poem.

It's only been an age since I last posted. Ah well.

Our city is wearing snow well this year, and just in time for Christmas, for everything resembles a Christmas card. The trees are coated in frost, the lawns are thick with white, and the moon shines brightly enough to illuminate a bedroom at night.

In between laundry and wrapping birthday presents and all the other things 'to do' this morning, I found a pocket sized notebook from my post-college days, when I was teaching in Galway. There are a few pages where I wrote about seeing Seamus Heaney do a reading on Salthill beach in 2006. It goes a little something like this:

Sun beating down, casting short shadows on the pavement. Jackets off, sweaters around the waist. A gathered crowd at Ladies' Beach. Schoolchildren form a sea of green uniforms.

A gentle breeze shifts the sands. An elderly man kicks a red football toward the brown seaweed scattered shore - his grandchild runs barefoot after it.

And Seamus Heaney, standing on the daisy studded verge between the strand and the street, began to speak of a poem written on the Salthill Prom: "the golden moment of 1965 when I saw them come out of the water, gleaming." Girls Bathing, Galway, 1965.

Wind blows strands of hair, strollers pause, hypnotized; dog leashes lay in the sand. Bicycles park along the wooden benches that run the length of the beach. Dogs lay on the sun-warmed pavement while some go on interrupted by poetry - by the poet. Schoolkids turn cartwheels in the grass, and photographers snap pictures.

Afterward, crowds gathered to get him to sign books, pages struggling in the Atlantic breeze. People wait patiently for his attention - a handshake, a scribble, a nod.

On being Pro-Life, all the way, in an election year.

Halloween has come and gone. Two trick or treaters, the only ones who came to our house, were given generous portions of candy. The rest... is mine. 

Meanwhile, we are counting down the days to the election. Some people are sick to the teeth of political ads, others can't get enough out of a good debate with friends and family, even more moan about the undecided voters, while some 'undecided' voters declare themselves independents who have long since decided, thank you very much.

Ah, polarity. It is usually strong, but right around now the strength that people feel their convictions is staggering, sometimes. It always comes as a surprise when friends open their mouths to chastise one another based on differing political opinion. 

This week the New York Times published an editorial called Why I'm Pro-Life, and it has been on my mind since I read it a few days ago. You may have seen it, it's made the rounds on Facebook, often posted by people who would not normally call themselves pro-life. 

Reading it was like a light turning on inside my head, a sunbeam splitting the clouds, a choir opening up into song. Thomas Friedman put into words what I have felt and thought since reaching the age where I could vote, but have been unable to articulate. He pinpointed the frustrations I feel as a voter, and a citizen. 

I suspect that I'm not alone in this.

In his article, Mr Friedman says:

"The term “pro-life” should be a shorthand for respect for the sanctity of life. But I will not let that label apply to people for whom sanctity for life begins at conception and ends at birth. What about the rest of life? Respect for the sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at birth. That radical narrowing of our concern for the sanctity of life is leading to terrible distortions in our society."

He also says: 

"You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children. You can call yourself a “pro-conception-to-birth, indifferent-to-life conservative.” I will never refer to someone who pickets Planned Parenthood but lobbies against common-sense gun laws as “pro-life.”"

Here, here, Mr Friedman. 

This is why I have such a hard time in election years - the fact that neither party espouses these values fully - and friends have expressed the same dismay. Many are pro-life in the thorough way that Mr Friedman demands in his editorial. Personally speaking, my trouble comes from my conscience, which has me in turmoil until a week after I step out of the polling booth. 

See,  I have yet to find a candidate who is, like me, pro-life, Friedman style. That is, I'm a strongly anti-abortion, pro-gun control, anti-war, anti-death penalty, pro-social justice, pro-insurance reform, environmentalist, pro-gay equality, Catholic feminist voter.

Now I ask, where is my candidate? 

Where is my party?

Who can I vote for that will stand up for everything I hold to be important? For human rights from conception until death,  for quality of life, for respect for our land? Who can I vote for without making an enormous moral compromise?


*crickets* 


But I'll still vote. Always do.

The book sale

Thursday morning:
Library sale, all weekend, starting today. Books $1 per pound.

Oh, yes.

Rang up the mammy, agreed on a meeting time, and hurried into my clothes in the icy morning air that filled the upstairs rooms of our house. The earlier post from this week was about right - yesterday, sleety rain came, covering the sidewalks, handrails, picnic tables,  leaf piles left too late, all in an glassy layer. The trees looked heavy by mid-afternoon The sky has been a low, slate gray since early this morning, and if not for the wide roads, you might think you were on the shores of the north Atlantic. 

So heavy socks it was, a sweater and wool coat bundled round me, scarf up to my nose, and I fairly ran out the door, down the street, hopping over the streams of wet leaves laying in the gutters. Nobody else raked, evidently.

Just a few streets over is the library, where many adult bookworms of today spent their precious summer hours as children, curled up in a beanbag chair with The Boxcar Children or Laura Ingalls Wilder. In the meeting rooms, downstairs, a line of middle aged women was coming out the door. I spotted a friend's mother and said a quick hello before heading in. It was after 11, which is the lunch hour, officially, in North Dakota, and is the time when many people 'get stuff done.' The bibliophilic crowds were there, all right, nosing through the boxes of books laid out on long banquet tables. I headed into the fiction and non-fiction room, buoyed by the thought of new books and a winter filled with long stories by the window.

Immediately, treasures surfaced. A book of American short stories. David Sedaris. Rebecca. Folk songs as played by Pete Seeger. Chocolat.  A Passage to India. Julia Child's My Life in France. A volunteer walking through the crowded room spotted the growing stack in my arms and offered me a blue cloth bag with a tree printed on it. As I walked about the room, the bag grew fuller and fuller. Jodie Picoult and Jacob Have I Loved joined the others in the blue bag, and I had to put it down from time to time to keep the handles from cutting into my arms.

The mammy wandered by, and we shared our finds, plotted a coffee for after we finished.

I found Germaine Greer's 'The Female Eunuch' and Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' in the fiction section. Might be an indication of the politics of whoever was in charge? Let's assume it was a second-thoughts buyer who left them there. 

One book stood out, with gilded page edges and gold lettering on the front. Magpie bait. I cracked open the cover, thumbed through the pages to see what it was, exactly. 1906, gorgeous illustrations, and pages framed in flowering vines. 

It had to be bought, if just for the beauty of it. 

We laid our purchases on the scale, and paid sweet little for them. $7.50 for ten books. That's a frobisch.

In the line, a dark haired woman heard my mother's accent and snagged her into a conversation. This lady had just come back from her father's foreign birthplace, and wanted to talk with another north islander. She was very pleasant until a moment before we said goodbye, when she launched into a critique of immigrants today... reminded me of an older person's 'kids today' speech. The current wave of immigrants into the United States made her heart hurt, she said, with their insistence on clinging to their language and traditions, those people who don't become citizens immediately, those people who come here on work visas and then go back home because they can. Yes folks, you read right - she was complaining about legal immigrants.

My mind went to the Nepalese and Bhutanese refugees I taught in Grand Forks, who are trying so hard to eke out a living in the northern Red River Valley, illiterate refugees in their later years who spent seventeen long winters in mountain refugee camps, ghosts in their own parents' country; who take buses back and forth across the towns each day in the bitter cold so that they can take basic English classes, so that they can improve their job prospects, so that they can feed their children and move their lives into modern America. Why shouldn't they hold fast to their language and traditions? It's all they have left of their old life. I thought of my mother, who waited twenty years before becoming an American citizen, because that - waiting - was her choice.  I could scarcely stop the glower from creeping into my eyes.  What can you say to a person who says things like that, publicly and proudly?

At the same time, across town at the park, my husband was  in conversation with a woman from the Czech Republic, who was there exercising her dog.  Some of the other Americans who came into the park ignored his hello. She was glad to talk.

It makes me angry when people speak of immigrants disparagingly. I came to immigrate in a place of privilege. I am Irish American, which means that I'm a white, English speaking, educated, dual passport holder with an easily pronounced name. Those are the reasons that I'm accepted effortlessly when I go to Ireland, or when I'm in the United States. I know that I've had it very, very easy.

But it's so easy to throw less convenient immigrants under the bus, it's easy to imagine that your own foremothers adapted to the American way of life immediately, that they learned English quickly, and didn't bemoan anything whatsoever about this country. But that can't be the reality. They were not beyond the human tendency to hold fast to the comfort of familiar things.

Look at how immigrants moved in pockets: they settled together, in places where their language and culture could be supported and survive, where they could pass traditions on to their children. Just look at all the German speaking grandmothers in North Dakota. The Ingas and Arnes of the Red River Valley. Our state paints a portrait of bordered homogeneity. 

Of course they struggled, and they missed their homes with an ache that can't be understood without making the same permanent trip across the sea.  Their grandchildren still steadfastly cling to language and tradition and culture, remembering that they are of another country as well, one that they've never set foot in. This dark haired woman, neither German nor Norwegian, who spent eleven 'magical and charming' days (her words) in her father's country, who was so proud of his poverty and struggle as an immigrant, had sadly missed the irony of her prejudice. 

My mother and I, immigrants both, went upstairs for our coffee, and felt a little sad without really knowing why.

Autumn on the prairie

It’s autumn on the prairie. In the last few weeks, the cottonwoods, elms, maples, have all turned from green to yellow, orange, and red. It’s a short-lived burst of color out here, and the leaves soon drop to the ground, covering every browning lawn in a blanket of gold. Driving through Bismarck takes a little navigational know-how if you want to take full advantage of the season. The old neighborhoods have wide avenues lined with American Elms, their branches arching over the streets and interlacing far above the cars and bicycles, forming a cathedral ceiling for those passing below. Look up and you’ll see blue sky peeking through the gaps, and at the right time, the sun turning each translucent leaf into a tiny pane of stained glass. It’s like Harry Clarke designed it himself. If you take the right route, you can keep going through leafy tunnels much of the way across town.

The ever-present North Dakota wind is doing its part, too, gusting now and then, sending a swirl of leaves skittering over the roads, or prompting a shower of leaves to fall, snowfall-like, over the houses. Children jump into leaf piles, scattering, and parents moan that they’d only just finished raking the whole yard before a new layer fell to the ground.

This has been a dry September, and the leaves, once they've finished rustling in the wind, are satisfyingly crunchy underfoot. A fine dust blows through the air, a product of dry leaves ground into nothingness. The soil is sending up dust, too, and allergies have been predictably rampant.

Fall is the season of the church supper out here. Country churches unfailingly host a community meal, often served on picnic tables in the field outside, with mountains of roast beef, mashed potatoes, sweet yellow buns, seventeen different kinds of pie, and coffee that flows unceasingly from huge silver vats manned by elderly women. Bingo and horseshoes serve as entertainment, though be wary of trying to beat any man sporting a cowboy hat – he’ll know his way around a horseshoe throw. There’s almost always a thrift sale with a baked goods counter set up nearby: whatever you do, don’t pass up a slice of eggy, sweet, creamy kuchen, especially if it was made by someone’s grandmother. 

With all the beauty of autumn, there is the knowledge that at the end of these bright, colorful weeks, we will find winter. Winter here is often harsh, frigid, bitter, and by the time we’re in the dark depths of January, seemingly endless. Does anyone look forward to it? Best to enjoy the gorgeous days we have now, with the sun warming the leaves, raising up the smells unknown to any other season.

Percy Bysshe Shelley had the right idea, to approach the chilling of the year with an optimistic note: to remember that if winter comes, spring won’t be far behind. 

610. Ode to the West Wind

I O WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thou	5
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed
The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow
Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill	10
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill;
Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and preserver; hear, O hear!
II Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,	15
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning! there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head	20
Of some fierce Mænad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,	25
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: O hear!
III Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,	30
Lull'd by the coil of his crystàlline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers	35
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know	40
Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!
IV If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share	45
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O uncontrollable! if even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed	50
Scarce seem'd a vision—I would ne'er have striven
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
O! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd	55
One too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.
V Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own?
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep autumnal tone,	60
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,
Like wither'd leaves, to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse,	65
Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?	70

A big shout out to the publishers of Soundings, as well as Miss Harte and her Leaving Cert English class of 1998. We never covered Yeats in time, so some of us missed out on valuable points, possibly a place in medicine at UCC, but look at us all now - we're fine. Totally fine.