Finding America by Charlene Smith

The pen that destroys maps

2012-02-05T13:26:00.000-05:00

By Charlene Smith

The pen is mightier than the sword it cuts to the bone of arguments; it allows thoughts to bleed across continents and skewers hypocrites. The pen is a ladle that stirs human emotions, but it is also is a spoon that dishes bile.

The pen can create a bridge, a place of meeting for those who believed they could never agree. But the pen can harm, it can wound, it can be a tool of propaganda, and the closest confidante of the liar. Too rarely do we use these swords as ploughshares.

Pens litter my home, they’re in the desk, next to my bed, in my purse, in my car, they leak into pockets they have been forgotten in; the ink in the beautiful ones dry but I cannot bear to part with them, nor do I have the time to get replacement ink, they cluster in a drawer and stare accusingly at me every time I open it.

Writing is how I make sense of the world, it is how I wrestle with issues, argue with politicians, joust with business, soothe those harmed, try to persuade the stubborn, and in some small way try to make a difference. It is, of course, a significant arrogance to presume that anyone would ever care about what I have to say, but all writing presumes an audience.

And so after three decades of professional writing, this adult who was a child who used to write at her bedroom window while waiting for fairies to dance in the garden, writes because despite a life of witnessing evidence to the contrary she still believes in the inherent goodness and resilience of people.

I am astonished that so many trust writers enough to take us into their confidence, to reveal their most intimate letters, to speak candidly of aspects of their life that don’t reflect well on them. It is a privilege to write, and as a non-fiction writer, I write for history and am burdened by its demands of truth-telling and fairness. Writing has been my university, it is how I have learnt everything I know, how I have met the people (aside from my children) that I care most about, it is how I understand me and the world I live in.

Writing and the choice of words force me to reflect on meaning, on impact, on desire and denial, and access and closed spaces. Writing is my gateway and my magic carpet. Its influence is extraordinary. When I write I can be more than this woman in a chunky jersey typing as she stares at a flag fighting back as it is whipped by sleet; I can be a confessor and an interrogator, I can be an intellectual and a visionary, I hope I am never a propagandist, an immovable didact, a pompous preacher.

Today as we write, especially on the internet, our readers are now free to comment, sometimes we learn from them, often they lambast us – manners in debate seem to have gone the way of agreement in Congress. Hopefully it cautions us to argue with greater persuasion, to ponder all sides of an issue, but being human we may just hit delete.

I try to write simply. I want my words to be accessible to the most humble. I hope my words can have a positive impact on their lives, on yours, and mine.

I write because I agree with Michael Ondaatje when he writes these words in The English Patient, words that speak so clearly of what I believe that I want them as my epitaph:

We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies

we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed

into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves. I wish for all this to be marked on

my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography - to be marked by nature, not

just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings.

If I am reading this out loud, I will say, ‘this is the part I love the most’:

We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or

monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon

such an earth that had no maps.

Communal histories, communal books – I am the product of all I have ever met, all I

have interacted with, they have added to the parts of me that were already there and

given them greater meaning. Every experience, every person, good and bad. Or as

we say in South Africa, a person is a person because of other people.

Ondaatje writes of an earth with no maps: our divisions are artificial, it is our

commonality that pervades. This in no way detracts from our individuality; it

is a celebration of us as social creatures and emphasizes why I need to write;

to tell of those I meet, to give voice to their stories.

Knit one, purl two: revolutionaries and craft

2012-01-29T17:51:00.011-05:00

By Charlene Smith

I’ve taken up knitting. I’m even contemplating buying an antique Boston rocker I saw in Laconia, New Hampshire to give me the right sort of back support.

This afternoon, as sun coated Cambridge and wind chilled us, I sat in the sunlight, warm behind glass, and knitted with my bamboo needles and the American-produced merino wool (yep, even with knitting the trend is organic and buy local) I bought from the Knittin Kitten down the road. I saw the most glorious rich orange wool from Wales that I am coveting but first I will finish this Spring cardigan.

Knittin’ Kitten is next door to a quilting store, and yes, I’ve taken up quilting too, the stores are over the road from the Garden Center that is empty now as we hold our breath and wait for Spring.

I can’t stand American television, there are a zillion channels and most of them devoted to puerile junk, there seem to be an explosion of bitchy wives on ‘reality shows’ that are about as real as silicone breasts. There are other shows mostly with women behaving badly – huge amounts of drinking in a country where moderate or no alcohol consumption is the norm.
Here, where men fear touching you in the workplace because women scream ‘sexual harassment’ so loud and so often – real feminism is dead. We police the workplace and allow women to be demeaned and harmed everywhere else. It’s pathetic, we have so much education now, such great jobs, and yet there is no vigilance in what really matters in terms of making women’s rights sustainable. Which is why Republican presidential hopeful Rich Santorum can get away with saying – the day after the 40^th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade – that if one of his daughter’s was raped (heaven forbid), and fell pregnant he would oppose her getting an abortion. And instead of him being picketed and hissed at everywhere he went, women ignored it. Shame on us.

But I have digressed, I was telling you why I’ve taken up knitting … when I drag myself away from the computer after work I can read, or read, or go back to work, so I started quilting after visiting Amish and Mennonite country in Pennsylvania, and buying two beautiful quilts in New Holland some months ago. While many sew using machines I don’t want to make that sort of investment, besides which I love the artistry of quilting; first musing which pieces of fabric to use, and then stitching, row after row, neat little rows, then biting the thread with my teeth to cut it, pressing the folded pieces out and watching them form their own map.

Sheila Weinberg

And then my friend Claudia visited, she’s taken up knitting. I know how to knit but in my home country of South Africa winters are so short it always seemed pointless. In the Black Sash, an anti-apartheid group I belonged too, there was a core of some of the most radical women who would sit knitting. Sheila Weinberg was always knitting. Her parents were communists and legendary activists, so was Sheila and now her son Mark. I was more into painting banners and demonstrating on sidewalks and trying to stay out of jail.

But I did knit an item for each of my children; it was my pregnancy act of love to them. When I was pregnant with Leila, my daughter, I would sit in the sun my belly exposed to it’s rays, hopefully making her world pink and magical, while playing classical music which I’d read was good for babies, and knitting a chunky pink jacket with a hood. It took me a year and fortunately was big enough to fit her for the brief two months of winter.

By the time I fell pregnant with Matthew I felt disillusioned with knitting, and too apartheid was sinking its fangs into activists and shaking us. But still I did my self-imposed knitting duty by him and knitted him white bootees. I also bought him a beautiful pink jumper at a Black Sash Morning Market sale – which we held to try and raise funds for the Advice Offices for black South Africans victimized by apartheid.

My father was horrified that I would buy pink for my son, “You’ll make him a moffie (queer)!”

“No, I won’t,” I responded, “it’s just a color, he’ll be a tiny baby wearing this beautiful pink jersey; that can’t influence his sexuality, and later if he ever wants to be gay, that will be okay with me as long as he is happy.”

My father and I never did understand each other. And today Matt is serenely heterosexual with a preference for blue.

When Claudia visited I would make her tea in the morning and sprawl across the bed like a teenager, while she sat propped up by pillows knitting, and we would talk and talk of children and politics, she is running a political economics class at a prestigious New England university.

After she left I drove past Knittin Kitten and it was open, which it isn’t always; when the elderly owner travels – usually a cruise – she closes the store and wistful women drift by until she returns. I bought some thick brightly colored wool to knit a beanie for my granddaughter – it was my first time using circular needles and they twisted the wool and the hat around and around and inside out – it was unwearable. I pulled it out. Second time the same; the owner of Knittin Kitten said I need to cast on, then press all the stitches inward – somehow they know they need to behave after that and so a hat for Gabriella was born.

But there was some really lovely rough organic wool that I couldn’t get out of my head – and that’s what I’m knitting now.

Yesterday when I went into the store after loading up with organic fruit and veg at Lexington’s Wilson Farms, there were four women seated at a long table, all knitting. A radio was softly playing Second World War music favorites.

I bought seven skeins and while the owner, Meredith, I think her name is, spun two skeins into big balls. I sat at the table and cast on.

We began chatting. The woman next to me who is a teetotaler had become fascinated by some websites she had seen about home-made liqueurs. I don’t really like liqueurs, but I do love Limoncello, so gave her my recipe which is basically vodka, with an equal part of sugar, juice of a couple of lemons, zest of those lemons, and then I like to pop a whole lemon in with slits cut into it . I then leave the mix for about three weeks in a large glass jar to thicken and become syrupy before bottling it in small elegant bottles. It makes great gifts when visiting friends for dinner.

Two more women had now entered the store and were seated at the table, all of us knitting. They discussed cruises; Americans love them.

And as I sat in the sun today one inch complete of the 16 I need to finish for the back of the cardigan (after a two inch rib), I thought of how knitting is one of the crafts the environmentally sensitive need to return to. Not only is it a meditation, and a stress reliever, but if you use only organic, you encourage sheep farmers in Wales and Cornwall, Australia and Canada, Washington State, and South Africa to keep breeding their small creatures. China can’t compete, not yet, they understand pigs not sheep. And so as we knit, it becomes another form of activism. Aluta Continua.

Cambridge Missive: Discovering Brookline and thoughtful police

2012-01-05T03:22:00.004-05:00

by Charlene Smith

Today the wind chill is supposed to reduce the temperature to minus 4 Fahrenheit. We can’t complain really, Sunday, New Year’s day was blissful, it was 57F and a friend and I, wearing only light jackets strolled around Brookline near Coolidge Corner where it is so Jewish you feel as though you are in another country.
I bought a wonderful menorah made by a New England sculptor so that I can teach Gabriella about Hanukah. As some of you know I began celebrating, years ago, what I call the 3 Festivals of Light, Diwali, Hanukah and Christmas with my children, mostly because I feel that religious intolerance causes too much harm in the world. When we lived in Japan, Leila went to Buddhist and not Christian classes at school and for her wedding we had little Muslim gifts for guests blessed by the Palm Street mosque in Cape Town (it was a sign of respect to the kramats above Twelve Apostles hotel) and yes, I celebrate Eid too. Wish I had the willpower for Ramadan.

At Coolidge Corner we visited the rather ordinary house John F. Kennedy was born in and went for lunch at a restaurant called Rubins, which has been there for 75 years. A really lovely Yiddish family restaurant, we got chatting to the owner's wife - they've owned it for 15 years and bought it from the family who started it. She said they dare not change anything because people complain. They get the same people coming over and over, or coming in with their children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren, some in wheelchairs with oxygen tubes, and they will say, "it looks the same" and take joy in that.

She confessed she had changed the paintings - it has rather nice modern art and says it previously had that sort of Polish ghetto art, which she felt was too gloomy. As we were speaking two women walked in and she looked at them as they headed for the deli and said, "So those two as an example, chicken with matzo and pastrami on rye, once every week."

I am back in Cambridge. I love Cambridge. I got this apartment off the Internet and scored bigtime, it is open plan and very spacious, light-filled. I am in walking distance to the bus-stop – I love public transport and often use it, and when the snow comes will switch to it full-time. I am about 500 yards from Fresh Pond, where I often walk; alone or with my friend Judith, also a writer. I love the sparrows at nesting box 15, which have now migrated for winter; there is a family of tiny copper-colored bunnies that live beneath it. Slightly above it there is a bench in the midst of a grove of cypress with words from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando inscribed on it where one morning last Spring I walked past a woman sitting cross-legged on the bench singing an aria.
The last time I took a walk there was a tiny beautiful little screech owl, its tufted ears all fluffy, peering at me from a large tree. The Pond (the Cambridge Reservoir and the size of a lake) was filled with migrating ducks and geese of more types than I can list here. So many that I bought a bird book and binoculars. Red tailed hawks nest nearby in Spring too. In the 19^th century Fresh Pond saw a vigorous trade in ice, the mansion of one of the ice barons is now an old age home, and a rail line ran through it to the harbor. This would have been a very bad year for the ice barons, it is the second warmest winter in recorded history and the pond has yet to ice over. We may have snow at the weekend. I have a friend in New Hampshire, he is 65 and grew up in NH, he has now retired to a house on Lake Opechee and he says this is the first year in his memory that the lakes have not yet frozen over.

On a day just before Christmas and just after Thanksgiving I woke up one morning and four large turkeys were prancing around my garden – wild turkeys are unimaginably beautiful with multi-colored lustrous wings – they almost look like pheasants - and large, I did not go outside because they are almost as tall as me. I imagine they were emigrating because of the annual turkey slaughter that happens here around Thanksgiving – some 34-million turkeys get sold for that and then again Christmas although turkeys don’t predominate at Christmas, people will have anything from chili to lobster.

There are no feral cats in my community because coyotes and foxes come into the yards and occasionally deer and even the squirrels stay above ground.

I went with a friend to caroling at a nearby private school, Regis, and did not realize how many carols Americans penned. Did you know that, “Do you hear what I hear” was written as a protest against the U.S. reaction to the Cuban missile crisis?

I have another friend who lives near Concord and I’ve been to that very beautiful little town, where the American Revolutionary War began, a few times for delectable meals or just wandering its streets and museums. To Lexington too, equally famed for the ARW, where there is a fantastic farmers market.

In an early Cambridge Missive, my first perhaps, I wrote of the gardening club that gardens in the public parks, well I have got more involved with them and am doing a website for them. Gratis. Just before Christmas they had a potluck and I did not have time to make anything so stopped at one of my favorite little places in Huron Village to order pizza and dolmades. A woman came in and spoke to one of the guys behind the counter in French, I could hear she was saying something about North Africa. I asked him where he was from and he said Algeria, I was so thrilled, I said, 'Oh, you are from my continent, I am South African."

I asked if he liked Enrico Macias, an Algerian singer, and he did, which got him and his friend telling me the names of others,. Before I left he said, "wait" and clambered up a pillar in the restaurant to an old cd player. He got 3 cds for me and said, "Have these," Algerian singers. I said, no I cannot have them but I am copying them and will give them back to him with a cd of SA music. Isn't it wonderful how music brings people together?

The next day at around 11am there was a ring on my bell. I asked over the speakerphone who it was and the voice said, Cambridge Police. I thought I can’t be hearing right and asked again, no answer, but I could hear a police radio.

I immediately felt guilty.

For what, I don’t know but I can remember as a small child when someone stole an apple from another child and the teacher said, who did it, I blushed, even though I was innocent.

I went downstairs and there was a woman cop holding my numberplate.

She said someone must have reversed into me and it fell off, although frankly I was parked somewhere where no one could have reversed into me. Nonetheless someone left it next to the ATM at the bank, which, the next morning called the cops, and she looked up my name and address and brought it back! A distance of about 3 to 4 miles.

She said, “Do you have a mechanic?”

Me, “no, but I will take it up the road to the Honda dealers for them to put it back on.”

She, “Don’t do that, I’ll put it on. Give me a screwdriver.”

Me, “you can’t do that.”

“Why?”

“You’re a cop…”

“That’s what we’re here to do, to serve.”

And so she knelt on the driveway and began screwing my numberplate back on. Threw me into a tizz. I kept saying, “do you want tea/coffee/something to eat/a book..?” No to everything.

Afterward she said, “a hug will be fine” and after the hug she went. I asked her name and she simply said Katy.

My ever cynical friends laugh snidely when I tell the story, except for Bill of the gardening group who knows everyone in Cambridge, a former teacher and football coach he unsuccessfully ran for public office in November, one occasion where his powerful union connections weren’t enough. Although in fairness he wasn’t really focused, his 93-year-old dad was dying. (Amazing the amount of people in their 80s and 90s here, all still driving, many still active.) Bill knows Katy and says she is married to a fireman and is a good person – my feelings entirely.

Jim Dine's Two Hearts in a Forest

This year I want to enroll in American studies to deepen my understanding of this country and its people. At the end of January I go to see Yo Yo Ma (also a Cambridge resident, as is, Deepak Chopra and Matt Damon) with the Goat Rodeo sessions and on February 1 go to the Museum of Fine Arts to listen to Jim Dine talk about his work. I feel so privileged and blessed.

Burning the planet: Climate change and the hypocrisy of democracy

2011-12-09T10:39:00.001-05:00

by Charlene Smith

This week I smiled as a broadcaster castigated a foreign guest for his government’s repressive actions against protestors; yet across the country Occupy encampments were being shut down, often violently.

What hypocrites we are: we pontificate on global platforms and put the boot in at home. The United States has lost the moral courage to be a global leader, today we’re all hype and no substance.

On Sunday, in Oslo, three women will be honored with the Nobel Peace Prize, this will be for work they actually did, unlike Barack Obama who did nothing for his award and has done nothing since. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, and Tawakkol Karman of Liberia are being honored "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work."

The Nobel peace prize committee has already made clear in their award to the late Wangari Maathai that peace building work includes environmental activism. This week at the global climate change conference in Durban, South Africa from November 28 to December 9. It ends the day before the Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded; a day that also commemorates International Human Rights Day, a date too often forgotten.

There will be no cause to celebrate after the climate change conference, the 53- nation African Group summed it up, before the conference began, when they declared that they were, “Deeply concerned that the inadequate mitigation pledges, notably by developed countries under the Cancun Outcomes, risk an increase in global average temperature of greater than 2°C - and possibly as much as 5°C. Such temperature increases will have catastrophic impacts worldwide … The mitigation pledges by developed countries amount to less than the voluntary mitigation pledges by developing countries.”

The world’s top three carbon emitters are China, India and the United States, and as part of Obama’s ongoing betrayal of campaign promises, he recently struck down new measures that would have seen the U.S. partially reform.

The Africa Group – nearly all of which have laws to enforce unleaded gas in vehicles, we don’t - want developed countries to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 40 percent by 2017 and by at least 95 percent by 2050, compared to 1990 levels.

Instead, the World Meteorological Organization this year reported that greenhouse gas concentrations have reached record levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that hot days have become hotter and occur more often, and that if emissions are not dealt with now, the frequency of hot days will increase by a factor of ten.

In Iowa, farmers are seeing longer growing seasons. In China, Heilongjiang Province, which used to have essentially no rice production, now accounts for 15 percent of China’s rice production.

But that is not good news, and I’ll tell you why. There’s been a one degree Celsius rise over the past 100 years. But the forecast is for a two degree Celsius increase by 2050. Gerald Nelson a senior fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute says, “The corn plant, for example, can do ok as long as the temperature is in the range of 30 to 31 degrees Celsius. But as the temperature increases get above 30 or 31 to 32 or 33, recent research has shown substantial drop-off in yields.

“For insects, as the temperatures rise then they reproduce more rapidly. So, instead of having three cycles of a pest per season you might end up with four or five. And that means more damage to the plants as they grow.” Regions may lose killing frosts, which help limit insect populations. And weeds are thriving in the richer carbon dioxide environment.

None of the news is good.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change foresees temperatures rising as much as 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, swelling the seas with melted glacial water and disrupting climates. Releasing millions of tons of sulfur dioxide in the upper atmosphere would mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption, lowering global temperature about 0.9 Fahrenheit, which can last for a year or two when it occurs naturally.

As the world staggers under the burdens created by greed – the worst financial crisis it has yet seen, and one that we all know will get much worse before it gets better – and at this time of year too, take time to reflect on Human Rights Day on what is needed to protect our planet, because by doing that, we protect ourselves and the future. And in this sacred season, regardless of your beliefs, take time to consider those who are sad, those who are lonely, the person who really needs your smile or kind word. It takes so little to change the world.

An American Christmas: Balancing history, balsam and Norwegian pines

2011-11-28T20:01:00.002-05:00

by Charlene Smith

The weekend before Thanksgiving I went with a friend to Wilson’s farm in the aptly named, Pleasant street, in Lexington, Massachusetts.

A bit of history first, Lexington was first called Cambridge Farms when it was established in 1642, it would have probably been about a two-hour buggy ride from where I live in West Cambridge and about a morning’s ride from Boston harbor. Today it is about a 15-minute drive on Route Two. The farmers, who brought produce or meat to Boston, or its harbor, may have stopped on the way back in Cambridge and bought ice from the ice merchants of Fresh Pond, close to the reservoir I will soon walk around, my bird book and binoculars at the ready.

When my children were small my ex-husband and I took them to Lexington common, a wide expanse of lawn and trees and small 18^th century houses that my husband had to lower his head to enter. We told my children of how on April 19, 1775, Lexington saw the first battle of the American Revolutionary War.

Wikipedia reminds us that: “A British military patrol made a forced march on Lexington and Concord on information from an informant that there was a large supply of weapons and gunpowder in the area. A force of Minutemen stood on Lexington Green to fight off the British. It is not clear where or who fired the first shot of the battle, but it is known as the "Shot heard 'round the world."”

I have been in Boston long enough now to say with no thought of correction from an historian that the person who fired the first shot was a classic Boston Irishman, with thick red hair and a copper beard – there are without a doubt more redheads in Boston than in all of Ireland. He would have watched the red coats going door–to-door and he would have turned, his temper high, and gone for his rifle where it was wrapped beneath the bed.

As we all know the Irish are only to keen to give it to the British, especially the Catholics, and Daniel, my name, not history’s, with his 14 children and another on the way would have been tired of British bullying. His wife would have been at the stove boiling some fiddleheads she’d just picked outside not an hour before. She would have seen him heading for the door. “Daniel, now don’t you be foolish…” but her words would have been too slow to stop his path. He would have stood not far from the doorway, barely pausing to take aim and would have fired a volley that would have inspired his fellow farmers to reach for their weapons and the surprised British to fall into formation and fire back.

My ex-father-in-law who lived in Newton was fond of talking about “the shot heard around the world,” he saw himself as Boston Irish, the dark haired sort, but thankfully not the sort that sing Danny Boy in pubs on the South Side and weep into their Guinness.

He’d thump his hand on the mantelpiece as he stood before the fire, while we sat on low chairs and deep sofas and listened. He’d launch into Longfellow’s Paul Revere’s Ride, or something similar from Robert Frost.

On this Sunday my friend, the writer, Judith Nies and I walked around Fresh Pond commenting on the wide variety of ducks that were congregated at the pond, resting as they migrated. She unsuccessfully looked for a screech owl she’d seen on a previous walk. (We saw it the following week, a beautiful fluffy owl with tufty ears standing in the fork of a tall pine.)

And then we went to Wilson’s farm, which I’d never been to before. Wilson, Judith told me had a farm that had been in the family for generations, one in Lexington and another about an hour’s drive away in New Hampshire. He had a farm stall, and then his boys grew up and went to Harvard, as Judith tells it, and applied the lessons they learned to the farm stall. Today Wilson’s has a parking lot for about 80 cars, and on the day we went it was packed. We waited for our parking.

The farm stall has become two or three barns linked together. Outside were various types of pine trees lining up for Christmas shoppers, swags of cypress, balsam (I came back after Thanksgiving and bought fragrant balsam for my mantelpiece), and bunches of bright red snow berries – some real and others manufactured in China.

Inside were huge pale turkeys and pink hams displayed on ice. Precooked containers of mash, cranberry relish and pumpkin and blueberry pies, everything to make a turkey emigrate. I wasn’t going to buy a turkey until at Judith’s urging I tried a small taster of turkey cooked in brine with mash and the great pale gravy made in the south and perfected in the north: a prejudiced observation which I guess makes me a real Yankee in the old sense of the term: an American of British English descent. Some, especially those from the south consider it a term of insult, needless to say, I don’t.

Long-story-short, I bought a turkey and some brine. The turkey, and a ham I bought this weekend are in the deep freeze waiting for my son’s arrival, and those of friends, at Christmas. Yesterday I went back to Wilson’s determined to get a Christmas tree, after another friend said she’d put up all her decorations two days after Thanksgiving. I’ve only ever put up decorations on the 12^th of December, but I’m trying to integrate into this new society, so heck, it’s early but if that’s what is done here… And already I’ve noticed in my community and especially in the villages surrounding Boston, houses are already groaning under Christmas lights of all colors, electric candles burn from some windows (I wonder how many Christians realize they have stolen this beautifully symbolic practice from Jews and Hanukah (which begins this year on December 20 and ends on the 28^th).

I wanted to buy a Christmas tree, and as I arrived a dear little Norwegian Spruce stood in front of me, and said, “Take me.”

I restrained myself and went indoors and bought some eggnog and cream poinsettias, and then came out for Nils (named after my great-grandfather who was a Norwegian seafarer.)

First I debated balsam swags over cypress with the elderly man serving those buying Christmas wreaths, mantelpiece swags and trees. Then I led him to my tree. “I would like this one please,” I said.

“Where are you going to keep it,” he asked.

“Inside,” I said.

“You can’t. If you take that tree inside now you’ll wake it up and around about Christmas it will start dying.”

Now telling me that I’d wake up the tree was a bit like what happened to Judith one year when she went to a Virginia farm famed for its roast lamb at Christmas. Her friends, the farmers would have huge Christmas dinners. Except Judith arrived a few days before and could hear the lamb’s pitiful bleats from the barn in the days before its slaughter. She went vegetarian that Christmas. Now I had a salesman telling me that my tree would first wake up and then die.

“These trees,” he said, “are from Oregon, where it’s cold, they’re asleep but if you make them warm you’ll wake them up. You have to dig a hole.”

“A hole?”

“Yep, you can only bring the tree in five days before Christmas and then the day after Christmas you have to take it outside and plant it in the hole.”

I had vivid images in my head of me dragging a prickly tree down the stairs and into thigh-high snow, and I don’t have much physical strength. I could see me, after a blizzard, wrestling it, while getting poked in the eye by boughs, into a rock-hard icy hole that I would have to first dig snow and ice out of.

“Can’t I just put it on the porch outside the kitchen,” I asked hopefully.

“Does it get wind?”

“Yes.”

“Then no. What you could do is take the tree today, go and dig a hole now and wait for Christmas.”

I think he could see me wilting. “Why don’t you get a nice bough, you don’t need a live tree,” he gestured to the grey boughs of Douglas firs that had neat round blade marks where they’d been removed from their parent.

“No, I can’t do that to a tree,” I said.

He looked at me; “tree-hugger” may have been a thought that came into his head.

“Listen, they’re grown for this, it’s like corn or carrots, they’re grown for this.”

And as he said that he sounded just like my father trying to explain why he’d killed the duck that went ‘quack-quack’ and danced under the garden spray, and why my mother had served it on a platter that after I burst into tears only he would eat.

So here I am at home in Cambridge; I have a tiny cream poinsettia next to me, a larger one is on the table. Boughs of balsam are grouped awkwardly around the television because I didn’t want to spend $28 on a swag and rather spent $3 on branches. I have three enormous bows, two gold and one red velvet, they are kitsch beyond belief, even I am surprised that they rest on the corners of my mantelpiece.

I’ll wait until December 12 to take out my Zimbabwean carved nativity scene and my children’s Christmas stockings. I don’t think I’ll have a tree this year, but to you and everyone you love I send warm greetings, you don’t have to believe in a higher power, but I do, and so I send you blessings and ask that in 2012 earthquakes only happen under parliamentary or congressional buildings. Something has to shake some sense into politicians.

Thanksgiving - The unseen guests at the table

2011-11-22T15:23:00.005-05:00

By Charlene Smith

At every Thanksgiving table are those we cannot see, but they are with us, in our hearts, in our thoughts, and sometimes on our lips as we say, “do you remember?”

A friend will make the potato stuffing her husband made every year for the two decades of their marriage, she is from New Jersey, he was an East European immigrant, but at Thanksgiving they were able to forge common traditions.

I scribbled his recipe in the margins of a magazine: boil peeled potatoes, cool then chop, add sliced celery and sautéed onion, drizzle butter over it, stuff the turkey. That simple. I’ll add a sprig of rosemary and salt as I boil the potato, perhaps some thyme as I stuff. But can you imagine what the potato tastes like as it plumps with the juices of the cooking bird?

And every year, of the four since he died, as Christine makes it and as her daughters spoon it on to their plates, they talk of him, he is at the table. “They say I make it as well as he did,” Christine says proudly.

I’ll try his recipe this year, and I will share the story, when I serve, of a good man and a loving marriage. Tradition is how memories are created, and families and communities are bonded.

In my Cambridge, Massachusetts street armadas of men emerged from homes on Sunday morning, even before we considered toasting bagels, and began blowing leaves; and as red and golden leaves spun and settled into neat piles, the aroma of coffee leaked down the street. Some unpacked flags and hung them from masts; others placed wreaths on doors.

Yesterday I went to a farmer’s market in Lexington with a friend and as we surveyed ice-filled stands with some of the 34-million turkeys slaughtered for this celebration; or what another friend calls, “the annual massacre,” a man was ladling turkey with mash into small tasters. I thought for the first time in years, of Bill, an Irish lawyer, and how he adds wasabi to mash. I thought of my son leaning over a pan, mashing for me, adding cream, a little butter...

I bought a pale turkey, and a thoughtful assistant packed in a bag for brine. As we loaded the car we looked across at greenhouses filled with red and cream poinsettias; we’ll be back soon for those, and the pines standing in lines.

As we drove home I told my friend of how after an appendectomy I was bed-ridden and bored. I read of a competition by a poultry association for the best recipe for turkey stuffing. And so I sat in bed and made one up. I had chopped apple as homage to Johnny Appleseed who planted apple trees across Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. A touch of ginger was for our Asian immigrants, two cloves of garlic for the Mediterranean settlers. Spiced pumpkin balls were a reminder of the pumpkins native Americans gave to the first settlers at Plimoth plantation to help prevent the scurvy many were dying of. But too the spices within the balls told of Zanzibar, the spice island, and the last island off the coast of east Africa to stop sending slaves to the Americas. A splash of sweet wine and just three dates spoke of the religions many brought to these shores. The recipe makes a spectacular and fragrant stuffing that makes the turkey flesh tender. It won the competition.

This morning as I filled a bowl with ruby cranberries and peeled apples for a sauce, I added a stick of cinnamon and thought of my ex-mother-in-law handing out eggnog with cinnamon stick stirrers. My ex-father-in-law would lean on the fireplace and quote Robert Frost. He loved Frost’s Mending Walls, I hear him still:

“…He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors',” here he would pause and laugh before continuing, “Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder /If I could put a notion in his head:  'Why do they make good neighbors?/ …Before I built a wall I'd ask to know  /What I was walling in or walling out,  /And to whom I was like to give offence…”

In our memories and legends, in our history and poetry, in the name of this day itself: "Thanksgiving", is what we need to get out of every difficulty.

The lessons of Thanksgiving tell us that when we co-operate we become powerful. When we show compassion, others make time for us. If we want riches tomorrow, we have to sacrifice today. Our destiny depends on each other. And too, every “thank-you” said, is a blessing extended.

A good neighbor needs no fences.

The snake that ate its tail

2011-11-11T23:20:00.001-05:00

By Charlene Smith

Since Nelson Mandela stepped down from the presidency 12 years ago, his party, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress has increasingly appeared corrupt and contemptuous of the nation it leads.

Just two months away from it’s centenary the ANC has seemed at risk of leading South Africa down the path to ruin of every post-democratic African nation before it. Until Thursday this week when Youth League leader, Julius Malema was suspended for five years for statements bringing the organization into disrepute, including a threat to overturn the stable democracy of Botswana to South Africa’s north-west.

Mandela’s leadership did not extend to those who followed him.

First his successor, Thabo Mbeki gained notoriety for being an AIDS-denialist, a devastating position to take in a country where around one in four are HIV-infected. Harvard University estimated that because of his refusal to extend treatment to the millions infected, around 365,000 people died needlessly on his watch.

Mbeki was ousted in a humiliating defeat orchestrated by Jacob Zuma, the present president, in 2007 at Polokwane, a small town situated between Johannesburg and the Zimbabwean-border.

Zuma had been plotting to become president since Mandela’s time in office drew to a close. His bid was not without controversy; the former head of ANC Intelligence in exile, he was found not guilty of rape in 2007. He admitted to unprotected sex with an HIV-positive young friend of his daughter. He privately claimed Mbeki had put her up to it.

Zuma is also a polygamist; he has five wives, 22 children and numerous girlfriends.

One of the men who helped him oust Mbeki was Julius Malema, who like Zuma had little education but is a populist and remarkably politically savvy for his 30 years.

Malema took the flagging African National Congress Youth League, which Mandela once led and revitalized it through a series of outrageous statements that the media lapped up, and a nation once united under Mandela, then divided under Mbeki, argued about.

While aiding Zuma to defeat Mbeki, Malema said young people would “kill for Zuma” – a worrying concept in a nation with an average of 49 murders a day, which already gives it a higher death toll than any war zone in the world. He also referred to Mbeki as a ”snake.”

After Zuma was acquitted of rape charges, Malema commented: "When a woman didn't enjoy it [sex], she leaves early in the morning. Those who had a nice time will wait until the sun comes out, request breakfast and ask for taxi money." That saw a gender rights organization, Sonke Gender Justice under a man, Mbuyiselo Botha, take Malema to the Equality Court for hate speech against women, most particularly rape survivors. Rape is a sensitive subject in South Africa; one in two women can expect to get raped in their life-time, and the country has an incidence of a rape every 26 seconds. Sonke Gender Justice won its case and Malema was ordered to apologize and pay around $8,000 to a rape shelter. Malema ignored the court ruling.

The ANC has allowed Malema to get away with outrageous statements, many of them racially divisive, because it suited the party leadership. He was the court jester to an administration under Zuma that appears corrupt – two police chiefs in a row had to resign for corruption, one had charges of drug smuggling, human trafficking, racketeering and murder to face too. The ANC has also failed to address poverty and joblessness.

The ruling elite lives lavishly. Zuma’s son and Mandela’s grandson own a multi-billion dollar gold mine, as an example, that consistently fails to pay workers and keeps them under slave conditions. Malema, whose official salary is around $3,000 a month, has close to $10 million in the bank, and bought five houses for cash. He dresses expensively and lives a lavish lifestyle but has presented himself as the savior of the poor.

Faced with elections next year Zuma needed to defuse Malema who has increasingly become contemptuous of the ANC leadership. Suspending Malema effectively puts him in the political wilderness.

He will appeal the decision and he will try to rally young people around him, but without a network of ANC support his actions will amount to little. Being linked to the ANC is a pathway to money for many; Malema will find some stop answering his calls.

The suspension is a warning from the ANC, and in a country where some political leaders have been murdered or ‘disappeared’; it is a warning he would do well to heed.

What does this mean for South Africa? Not much, Malema was a distraction, the ANC will have to find another or do what it has so far appeared incapable of doing: governing thoughtfully and rectifying the economic inequities that have deepened since apartheid’s end.

Thoughts from a silent retreat

2011-10-06T17:38:00.002-04:00

“He passes by me and I do not see him; he moves on his way undiscerned by me; if he hurries on, who can bring him back?”

Those words written by Job (9:11-12) I found at random on a weekend spiritual retreat in Germantown, Maryland, just 25 miles from Washington D.C.

The words spoke to me of opportunity, which presents itself constantly, but if we have trained ourselves to see it in one form, if we believe in limited potential, then opportunity will pass until someone just ahead, recognizes and grasps it.

Once lost, opportunity rarely returns, but if we train ourselves to broaden our vision and trust in our capacity, then opportunity presents itself again, in new forms. Sometimes we turn our face from opportunity because we fear disappointment, we stop trusting ourselves. Our challenge when faced with disappointment, those times when we receive no responses to our petitions or applications, our challenge is to believe in our ability to develop further and to know we have a destiny. Setbacks, hurtful though they are, these disappointments that appear to be an end to dreaming, an end to hope and ambition, urge us to persist – to believe, to reinvent ourselves again. Try to lift yourself above the weight of disappointment, restrategize, believe in yourself and move forward again.

Adapt to the lessons of failure, study the success of others and go forward knowing that opportunity will one day pause, smile at you, hold out its arms and embrace you.

I wrote those notes on the retreat. I was one of a group of 18 people, most of whom had never met before, at DaySpring Retreat http://www.dayspringretreat.org/, on a magnificent nature reserve bought half a century before by a Catholic order. We were an eclectic mix of Buddhists, Catholics, Anglicans, and an agnostic. Two women said they needed to get away from their children and relax; one was trying to decide whether to be ordained as an Episcopalian priest, and most of the rest of us were simply exhausted by our careers.

The retreat was silent, each morning we could take part in a brief meditation led by a facilitator who would speak for around 10 minutes, or we could walk, circle a labyrinth, sketch, write, read or sleep. Meals were vegetarian.

The facilitator encouraged us to open the bible or a book at random, choose some words and write about them. It’s amazing what emerged. I found this in Proverbs 20 – 21:

“Wisdom cries aloud in the open air, she raises her voice in public places.”

It continued at 32 -33:

“The simpleton turns a deaf ear and comes to grief, and the stupid are ruined by their own complacency. But whomever listens to me shall live without a care, undisturbed by fear of misfortune.”

Those words speak to each of us in a different way, but they caused me to muse: It is not enough to accept, and only fools let things be; engaged wisdom demands that we live life with awareness. It does not mean that we should strive for perfection, because a life well lived will mean that perfection is eternally beyond our reach. If all is perfect what is left to strive and live for?

Today’s dream once attained is not enough. The increase of wisdom alerts us to how little we know, how much is still to be done, and the need to improve, and so we continue. But how we continue is important too, it is better to be slow, deliberate and careful than to have high productivity and decreasing quality of output, and life, as we wear ourselves down chasing the illusion of perfection.

A multi-millionaire with no-one to call beloved, who has none eager for his or her return, whose children disdain him, that person is more pathetic than the lowliest beggar.

Every act today holds a consequence for tomorrow.

A love letter to Archbishop Desmond Tutu on his 80th birthday

2011-10-05T11:32:00.004-04:00

Darling Arch,

I have been trying to recall when first we met, but it has been so long I cannot. I do recall that it was when we were both skinny and idealistic. We remain the latter; I am no longer the former.

You were years older and yet you are so approachable, age is not a distancing factor with you.
You were still at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg and not yet a bishop. Not long after you became a bishop you christened my son – that was 26 years ago – so it is a long, long time.

I have so many memories. I remember meetings at Khotso House before the security police bombed the building, I used to volunteer at the Black Sash and Detainees Parents Support Committee offices in that building and no protest was possible without your wise input and active participation.
I once oversaw the collection of 14 tons of relief goods for people in Crossroads, Cape Town after apartheid bulldozers destroyed the shacks of hundreds of people. Journalists were forbidden from going into that devastated area. The only way we could get coverage was by drawing attention to the plight of those who suffered from the outside, through that I was able to get South African Airways to pay for those goods to go to Cape Town from Johannesburg. And you and Rabbi Ady Assabi, understanding the need to remind the world, gave willingly of your time and blessed those relief goods collected by ordinary, caring South Africans.

As a journalist, I worked with John Allen before he became your spokesperson. As a specialist in resistance politics and someone who covered conflict, I remember how when “the Arch” came onto the scene of any violent demonstration, you would wade in, not fearful of confronting anyone, eager to create peace, and often encountering the wrath of those who feared the power that peace brings.

Actively opposed to violence, you live Mahatma Gandhi’s belief of satygraha (truth or love as power) and his exhortation that one should not bend one’s knee before an oppressor.

You have are the conscience of South Africa, and its most tender heart. You have never feared speaking out against wrong, regardless of whom you need to reprimand. And because of that even-handedness, we respect you, and those with a conscience heed your words. To you, we are all the same, none more important than another. And because you laugh easily with us at our fallibility, we love you dearly.

During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings when you more than once put your head on the table and cried while listening to witness testimony, you did what many felt as we sat horrified before radios or among spectators and the media at those events, listening to the wickedness allowed to perpetuate the aberration that racial separateness was.

When those in the apartheid struggle also perpetrated atrocities you were perhaps doubly dismayed. I remember covering, as a journalist, the TRC hearings where Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was implicated in the deaths of young men harmed by the Mandela United Football Club, and I know how painful it was for you to listen to that testimony.

You have been honored with a justly awarded Nobel Peace Prize. There is no place in the world that does not respect you (except perhaps South Africa, where we have become cavalier about blessings and our heritage), and yet despite all of this, you carry neither airs nor graces. Managing your diary is a nightmare for your staff because you are always so willing, so friendly, and so thoughtless of what you need and so prepared to help others.

Last year when I met you, shortly before leaving South Africa, you were generous with your time, you’d just had students and their teachers, mostly from the United States, crowd your office for tea.

I arrived just as you and they did. There you were in a blue Toyota – no false pretenses for you – wearing your worker’s cap, with a tour bus behind you. Even now I laugh at the memory, how many people arrive at their workplace for tea with a tour bus following them? It was exactly the sort of group you love, people of all races and creeds, their clashing accents made a beautiful noise. One of your assistants showed a Muslim student into a quiet office where he could say his prayers.

Your librarian showed me around the archives filled with gifts to you and Leah, and through you to the people of South Africa. For no one can think of you without being sensitive to South Africa, and no one who knows you can imagine you without Leah close by. What a great marriage you have and what a blessing it is for those of us to experience the two of you together.

After the tour group left I was ushered into your office by a staff member who sternly told me of my time limits. We prayed and then I interviewed you briefly and then we spoke, person-to-person, heart to heart. It was after the public sector health strike and we discussed how nurses and doctors had left babies and patients to die while they went on strike. We both cried about the state of a nation we both love with all our hearts.

In Boston I met Katherine Stiles, a remarkable counselor and healer who is the best friend of your daughter Mpho, and through her I again learned of how valuable and close your friendship is with the Dalai Lama. Katherine has in her office below an Episcopalian chapel in Cambridge, a singing Buddhist bowl, on my wrist is an orange prayer bracelet from her, both blessed by the Dalai Lama.

In January, Katherine and Mpho braved two blizzards during one of the worst winters in living memory in the U.S. to travel to India to visit the Dalai Lama. Mpho is writing a book about you and your friendship with the Dalai Lama is such that it is impossible to write about you, without writing about him. Few understand the healing power of laughter as you and the Dalai Lama do.

Katherine told me of how that visit contributed to her own journey as a healer and believer, and of the touching ways in which the Dalai Lama spoke of you. I have seen some of the video footage she shot during that visit. I am sorry the government of South Africa dishonored you and the Dalai Lama by not allowing him to attend your birthday. It is a decision that shames and grieves many of us.

Dearest Arch, the world is a much better place because of you. Millions of South Africans now have opportunities because of you. Millions more globally are inspired by your example. And yes, the world is still flawed, but perfection does not come readily to humans; indeed I doubt we are meant to be perfect but merely to be way better than we believe we can be, and to persist in that effort every day.

You, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King leave spiritual maps for us. You teach us that when it comes to human rights “no” is never an acceptable answer. That when it comes to children, and family, love is the imperative. And that there is no occasion that cannot be improved by a sense of humor. You teach us that even though the change we want to see may not come in our lifetimes, we should never stop in our efforts to attain it.

Thank you for blessing our world with your presence.

Charlene

The need to be right often causes multiple wrongs

2011-09-19T14:52:00.000-04:00

By Charlene Smith

There was an indirect political debate on Sunday about the sniping politics of Capitol Hill, which, not unusually, saw no agreement. Former president, Bill Clinton told a journalist that conflict makes good politics, but bad policy. That evening, Wisconsin Republican Representative Paul Ryan told a television interviewer: “Class warfare may make for really good politics, but it makes for rotten economics.”

Both missed the point that conflict always creates losers. And while conflict may create headlines, it impedes the good sense needed for sound politics.

At this point the desire to be ‘right’ among politicians is creating a world filled with economic crisis, tens of millions without jobs and deepening poverty. This excerpt from Mandela and America looks at the challenge of failures in leadership:

“In America individualism is treasured, but in South Africa it was learned during the apartheid struggle that no challenge a nation faces can ever be won when the individual considers his personal interests to be of greater import than the interests of all. In South Africa, the principle of ubuntu – or, a person is a person because of other people – was powerful in efforts to end apartheid. But regrettably, in the years following the presidency of Nelson Mandela, personal entitlement has undercut many of the early gains of the new democracy.

“Those who put self-interest first are more likely to reject notions of accountability to society as a whole. Graham Robb, discussing the medieval French in his book The Discovery of France, gave us words to ponder today: “Categorical terms like ‘peasants’, ‘artisans,’ and ‘the poor’ reduce the majority of the population to smudges in a crowd scene that no degree of magnification could resolve into a group of faces. They suggest a large and luckless continent that filled in the background of important events and participated in the nation’s historical development by suffering and engaging in a semblance of economic activity. Even with a short-term view these categories turn out to be misleading. Rich people could fall into poverty and peasants could be rich and powerful.”

“Robb was arguing that often it is only accidents of place and opportunity that allow one to thrive, for a time, at the cost of another. Under aristocratic class divisions, France thrived for a while before engendering a popular revolt that overthrew it and has created a long period of more equitable prosperity for all. When the rich become too powerful, too arrogant, and neglectful of the interests of those who helped them build their wealth, history gives abundant examples of how such conduct always invites revolt.

“When he was still an Illinois senator, Barack Obama urged common values when he wrote: “I am obligated to try to see the world through [former Republican president] George Bush’s eyes, no matter how much I may disagree with him … empathy calls us all to task, the conservative and the liberal, the oppressed and the oppressor.… We are forced beyond our limited vision.”

“Certainly his own presidency challenged him with those words. Derrick Z. Jackson, writing in the Boston Globe to commemorate 20 years since Mandela walked free from jail, commented somewhat bitterly on Obama’s failure to live up to his presidential campaign promises: “The Mandela we should be thinking about in the United States is the one whose prescience remains unanswered by us. When Mandela came to Harvard University in 1998 to receive an honorary degree, he said, ‘The current world financial crisis also starkly reminds us that many of the concepts that guided our sense of how the world and its affairs are best ordered, have suddenly been shown to be wanting.’ He noted how economic theorists went ‘unchallenged in the day-to-day operations of a system that operated in the interests of the powerful.’”

“Jackson wryly observed : “We sure learned a lot in the decade since, didn't we? Not only are we back to hearing about millions in cash and stock bonuses to the heads of taxpayer-bailed-out banks, it appears that someone got to President Obama to tone down his populist outrage.

““As the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, Obama said, ‘It would be unacceptable for executives of these institutions to earn a windfall at a time when the U.S. Treasury has taken unprecedented steps to rescue these companies with taxpayer resources.…’

““But just this week Obama told Bloomberg Business Week that he does not ‘begrudge’ the $9 million in stock bonuses to Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and the $17 million bonus to JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. Obama said the bonuses indeed represented an ‘extraordinary amount of money’ to the average person but then brushed it off by adding ‘there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don't get to the World Series either, so I'm shocked by that as well.... I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen.’”

“Jackson, reflecting the dismay of the common man or women that three years into a severe financial crisis could see little light emerging, continued: “Obama needs to review the part of Mandela's Harvard speech that said the world financial crisis calls for a ‘fundamental rethinking and reconceptualization.’ The rest of us can revisit the part of the speech where Mandela said, ‘The greatest single challenge facing our globalized world is to combat and eradicate its disparities ... we constantly need to remind ourselves that the freedoms which democracy brings will remain empty shells if they are not accompanied by real and tangible improvements in the material lives of the millions of ordinary citizens of those countries....’

““While the media feasts on the problems of South Africa, which has the second-highest income disparities in the world, according to the CIA Factbook, we are not setting much of an example, despite our wealth and even after we put an African American in the White House. The income inequality of the United States is statistically worse than China, Nigeria, and Nicaragua. It is the 20th anniversary of the freedom of Nelson Mandela. But the evidence remains scant that we are serious about his dream of economic freedom for all.”

“Perhaps the true test of ideals is not in the words we speak or write before we have power, and when we are an opponent; it is when we have ascended to power and face the cacophony of dissent and jeers not only from those who conventionally oppose us, but more critically from those who once endorsed us.

“Expanded vision, of the sort Obama wrote about, impels us to look beyond that which is immediately apparent. It requires a marriage between heart and intellect that keeps the ego at bay if we are to thoughtfully consider the pleas and criticisms of opponents.

“Jay Naidoo, Minister of Post and Telecommunications in Mandela’s government and now a successful businessman, said, "Mandela had visionary leadership that emphasized reconciliation. When we were being criticized by militants [about] reconciliation, he said, 'What does it cost for us to reconcile?' And people had no answer."”

* To pre-order a discounted copy of Mandela and America please go to this link http://www.internationalpubmarket.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=296407

My story about September 11, 2001 - what is yours?

2011-09-10T17:14:00.006-04:00

by Charlene Smith

Please note this video is very difficult to watch. I place it for those who when reminded about September 11 say, 'well, look at the harm the U.S. has caused' - I ask you to remember the importance of compassion. These people were not soldiers, they simply went to work one day. Their terror is unimaginable, watch it, pray for their families and work harder to create a world of peace.

We all have a story about September 11, 2001. We all remember where we were, what we were doing when first we heard about, or saw the first aircraft hit the Twin Towers.

The World Trade Center was already an iconic twin landmark globally, a little like the Eiffel Tower, or Big Ben, we all knew where those Twin Towers were. I’d traveled to the top once and gone to the very top which was open to the elements, I was so frightened that I fell to my knees and crawled to the other side, to the embarrassment of my companion.

But I had also been up on other occasions to dine at the top and look at the astonishing views across New York and beyond.

On September 11, 2001, I was living in South Africa and had given a talk I was driving to my Johannesburg home where my son, who was ill was at home and away from school. The next day I was flying to give a talk in Cape Town, the city my daughter then lived in.

I heard a radio broadcast of the first plane hitting and somehow knew this was different to the earlier hit a few years before of a young man who flew a small plane into the WTC.

I called my son and said switch on CNN, he said he was already watching. I got home, ran inside and we saw the second plane. I said to my son, 'my God, that plane is also going to hit.’ He said, 'don't be silly mommy' and I said, 'look it is accelerating' and it hit.

We felt horror and sat glued to our seats. CNN was filtering news through as fast as it could, then it came up on the screen that those first two planes were from Boston and going to Los Angeles. My son said to me, 'mommy, daddy is flying from Boston to LA this morning.' My ex-husband who is from Boston had been visiting family and was due to go back to LA, at the time he worked as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times.

I tried to call him. No answer. I said to my son, "I am sure he is fine, mommy is going to find him."

I kept going into my office and trying to phone the LA Times, no response, lines down. Family in Boston, no response, lines down. And I would dash back to the living room and see or hear of planes hitting the Pentagon, then Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

I felt panic stricken and struggled to remain calm. I began calling my daughter, I hated the distance between all of us.

Matthew became quieter and quieter, even writing this I can feel my stress levels rising.

My exhusband and I had been divorced for almost a decade, he was remarried and we had very little contact, but this was my son's father. It was unbearable watching my son becoming so quiet.

I started sending emails to everyone and anyone I could think of at the Los Angeles Times, Boston, my friends in the USA, friends elsewhere in the world. Someone had to know.

I kept dialing numbers in the States, finally someone at the Los Angeles Times answered, I asked if they had heard from my ex, they had not. As calmly as I could, I said, ‘we’re really concerned, if you speak with him, please ask him to call.’

Seven hours later he called. He had been booked on American Airlines Flight 11, he was in line to board when the LA Times called and said, "we need you to go to Atlanta, do you have time to switch?" He stepped out of the line.

His flight to Atlanta was the third on the runway behind Flight 11.

He said as they flew over New York they could see the smoke rising above the city. The pilot announced that there had been a hijacking.

At Atlanta he said it was crazy, a full airport, no one could leave, everyone panicking.

The next morning when I flew to Cape Town I have never been in a quieter air terminal. No one spoke. Everyone was anxious. I was so stressed that a kind South African Airways flight steward sat next to me for most of the flight and held my hand.

I am a trained trauma counselor and for three weeks after my ex would phone a couple of times a day just to talk.

Yesterday while my daughter was driving back from North Carolina after a glorious week-long beach holiday I read the account of someone on the 70th floor of the North Tower who began running down the stairs after the South Tower was hit.

She recounted how the whole building shuddered as the second plane hit, the stairs buckled and she said the smell of fuel was powerful.

As I read I became so sad at all the death, all the horror, I thought of those who jumped – the day before a friend who lives in New York sent a collage of photographs that showed a man in dark slacks and a white shirt, almost balletically graceful as he fell to his death. I began crying, and then sobbed.

I agree with E. J. Dionne writing in the Washington Post http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2016150068_dionne09.html that the U.S.A. must move on from September 11, that it is unhealthy to keep remembering. His point is that remembrance has created revenge that has harmed America more than it has benefitted it. I agree, the most powerful revenge against those who masterminded those attacks is for the U.S.A. to abandon fear, to commit itself to building this country, to respectful relations beginning in the workplace (many bosses in this country treat employees with scandalous disrespect) to tolerance of those whose views differ from ours.The misguided ‘endless wars’ as the Washington Post has called them have done more to damage the U.S.A. than heal it. They have created no noble lessons, 1,700 American soldiers have died and thousands of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. And it's squandered trillions of dollars. It’s too much. Enough now.

The insightful recommendations of the September 11 Commission have barely been implemented, instead the U.S. has veered on a course that removes freedoms at home. This democracy so hard won has been the greatest loser.

Tomorrow I will go to a commemoration to me September 11 is a sacred day, a day to remember, to give thanks and to recommit myself to, in small ways trying to help create a world where peace is honored. Where we listen to our enemies and try and show respect to those whose views we don't understand. And hope they extend the same respect to us. We save the world one person at a time.

- What is your story and your thoughts?

How Martin Luther King helped free Nelson Mandela

2011-08-30T15:08:00.001-04:00

by Charlene Smith

Sometimes small acts can have large consequences in the future, and so it was with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela.

Rev. King felt an affinity for the freedom struggle in Africa. In 1957, he travelled to Ghana to witness the first African nation achieve power from a colonial state, in this instance, Britain.

Inspired, he wrote: “The oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed … freedom only comes through persistent revolt.” Those words spoke to Nelson Mandela who had just weathered the first year of what would become a mammoth five-year treason trial in South Africa with 156 others (all were acquitted).

Albert Luthuli

Mandela told Albert Luthuli, who then headed the African National Congress, and who would become the first African in 1960 to win a Nobel Peace Prize, that he believed that South Africa’s apartheid would end only if military threat combined with economic pressure.

In 1961, Mandela formed a covert military wing of the ANC called Umkhonto we Sizwe or ‘spear of the nation.’ But Luthuli persisted in working with King by letter and telephone to find peaceful, means to end apartheid.

In March 1961, Mandela called for an international boycott of South Africa and urged a process “to make government impossible.” But in those years he had a voice none would heed and so Luthuli again turned to Dr. King. On International Human Rights Day, December 10, 1961, Luthuli and King issued a joint “Appeal for Action Against Apartheid,” urging economic sanctions against South Africa. It was heard. Three years later, the United States and many European nations adopted an arms embargo against South Africa.

Four years later the National Union of South African Students invited King to visit but his visa application was rejected by apartheid’s architect, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd. In response, King told Hunter College, New York on December 10, 1965 that the civil rights struggle and the battle against apartheid were linked: “The rape of Africa was conducted … to facilitate the growth of our nation and to enhance its commerce. The time has come to utilize non-violence through a massive international boycott [by] an international alliance of peoples of all nations against racism.”

He suggested Nusas invite Robert F. Kennedy, a former U.S. Attorney General and the junior senator from New York. His visit was one of the most important of any American during apartheid. Addressing students at the University of Cape Town in June, 1966, in a venue ringed by security policemen, Kennedy said: “I came here because of my deep interest and affection for a land settled by the Dutch in the mid-17th century, then taken over by the British, and at last independent; a land in which the native inhabitants were at first subdued, but relations with whom remain a problem to this day; a land which defined itself on a hostile frontier; a land which has tamed rich natural resources through the energetic application of modern technology; a land which once imported slaves, and now must struggle to wipe out the last traces of that former bondage.” It sounded like South Africa’s history, but as Kennedy reminded: “ I refer, of course, to the United States of America.”

His next words have resonated ever since: “Each time a man stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And, crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

That speech came exactly three months before Verwoerd was stabbed to death in parliament by a parliamentary messenger. Exactly two years after he visited South Africa, on June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy was shot dead in a California hotel kitchen. He was 42 years old. Two months previously, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King was 39. But others took up from King and Kennedy.

In 1976, Congressman Ron Dellums failed to bring comprehensive apartheid sanctions against South Africa, after police shootings saw 600 die in black townships. Ten years later, Senator Edward Kennedy and Senator Tom Harkin’s sponsorship of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA) of 1985 succeeded. Nothing succeeded as well in ending apartheid, secret discussions began almost immediately with Mandela.

Six years later, President Frederick de Klerk freed Mandela and began dismantling apartheid. Nine years after those sanctions, first called for in 1961 by King, South Africans voted in their first democratic election and Mandela became president.

Before the storm: Hurricane Irene's lessons

2011-08-26T23:53:00.002-04:00

By Charlene Smith

Friday night, 11.30pm - Irene is not the sort of girl who turns down dates on a Saturday night. She probably doesn’t get any which accounts for her temper and the way she is going to ruin Saturday night for 65-million people living along the east coast of the United States.

Already 2-million people have been forced to evacuate their homes.

She’s a big girl, some 700 miles across, with a messy hairdo; she’s not very attractive, which may account for her temper.

Ironically her name means 'peace' in Greek, maybe that is one of her hidden messages to America. Repair that which is broke at home before you fix the world.

When Irene opens her mouth she issues a 100 mile per hour blast of pure, “and didn’t I tell you’s” that leaves your hair standing on end and your car on its back.

No one messes with Irene, or the tornado lackeys that twirl alongside her and occasionally whirl off and go and smack a dingbat that refused to take them seriously.

When Irene rolls across our towns starting tomorrow afternoon she is going to bring nine to 11 foot waves and water surges that can travel far inland. In the 2005 hurricane off a flat part of the Texas coast, storm surges carried waves 50 miles inland destroying everything in their path. Irene is much bigger than that hurricane. In Taiwan such surges have turned placid rivers into raging torrents.

Irene is going to hit New York exactly 15 days before the 10^th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that brought down the World Trade Center twin towers and that by the end of a horrific two hours saw almost 3,000 dead.

Perhaps there is a message in all of this, Americans have become exceptionally divided in recent years into camps of liberals, libertarians, Republicans, Democrats, Tea Party-ers, anarchists and others. Today they forgot all this divisive tussling and got down to doing what they do best, when they do it: getting along together. Helping their neighbor and facing disaster with equanimity.
Low consumer spending that has been bedeviling economic regeneration was forgotten in a day that saw stores run out of flashlights, batteries, bottled water, sandbags, first aid kits, bleach, matches and foods that don’t need cooking.

Tomorrow the roads will be congested as people buy last minute goods, some will put duct tape over windows, as a New Jersey friend has. His home is right in the eye of the storm, tonight we spent two hours laughing and joking on the phone, but way in the back of our minds is fear about his situation.
I’ve placed mattresses and pillows in front of some windows. I have brought in garden furniture and placed them close to windows to cushion any glass spatter if the windows break. We’ve been advised to bring in trashcans and garden furniture because in 100-mile winds they become missiles.

I will put cardboard across other windows – they won’t be a whole lot of help if a 100-mile blast from Irene decides to propel part of someone’s roof through the window, but it makes me feel better.

Last night heavy rain saw a large bough fall off a tree in the garden. In this forested neighborhood the trees are my biggest concern. There is a tree near the kitchen that if it falls will demolish the house.

Bathrooms are the best places to be in earthquakes because the roof and floor are always reinforced, but because electricity and water shortages could last for three to five days, most baths will be full of water.

Today as I was driving to Falls Church just outside Washington D.C. bright sun was replaced at midday by voluminous, but not heavy clouds. Birds flew in erratic flocks across the sky. But still it was a gorgeous day.

Few people were in a Best Buy electronics store where I got a car cellphone charger (if there is no electricity I will use that, even though cellphone networks have warned that high call volumes will probably cause networks to crash as they did after the 5.9 earthquake in Virginia and D.C. earlier this week). I bought a solar torch from Amazon, space blankets and a first aid kit.

At a CVS pharmacy I bought bottled water and ice (for an alternative water supply). They were selling out of cooler bags fast.

Across the parking lot a Trader Joe grocery store was full with long lines. Shelf packers could not keep up as shoppers bought big volumes of non-perishable food, fruit, canned goods – there were no beans left, bread, toilet paper and water (only a few bottles of sparkling water were left).

Off New Mexico Avenue in Washington DC itself, close to where I live, a Farmers Market off a church parking lot was doing a brisk trade in fresh fruits and vegetables that don’t need to be cooked like tomatoes and salad greens. A woman selling breads and salamis – ‘you don’t have to cook them or freeze them,’ she counseled - sold out of everything fast.

Tomorrow my daughter and I will go and look at a potential apartment for rent across town. I have a hair appointment at noon. I hope to go to gym. I’m doing as much writing and work as I can while I have electricity and wireless allows Internet connectivity. Soon it will go.

As I sit here, close to a mist speckled window, my cat asleep on the couch, my feet on an ottoman, I hear cicadas outside the window, and a plane flying across the sky – from tomorrow more than 5,000 flights have been cancelled. From midday, for the first time ever, the New York subway system will stop and will probably not resume until Monday if the tunnels don’t get flooded.

Big bridges like that across Chesapeake Bay will be closed, so will some roads. All entertainment is off – Broadway shows, sports games, everything just about but for TV and that will disappear along with the electricity.

Our world will become silent of technological clatter, but loud with nature. Our homes will be dark, we'll cower away from windows for fear of flying glass. Everything we take for granted – electric light, water flowing from taps, telephone and cellphone communication, television, the ability to switch on the kettle for coffee or cook a meal will leave and with it our sense of assuredness. We won't be able to pick up the phone to call 9/11, the phones won't be working and even if they did it would be too dangerous for anyone to come to our aid. We'll be on our own.

I worry that my car will get damaged; very few cars are in covered garages. In New York some can’t leave because most New Yorkers, like my son, lack cars.

I will probably not know how my son is for a few days; it’s an agonizing thought. My daughter stays about 20 minutes away, but if we have 12 hours of hurricane wind – gusting at 85 to 100 miles an hour - as some projections suggest, no one will be travelling anywhere, electricity will be down and so will phones. Perhaps none of this will happen, Irene may change her mind at the last minute, it is after all, a woman's prerogative.

But if she does not we’ll all do something lots of us haven’t done in years – have faith, trust in God, in common sense, good luck, miracles and a country that has the most remarkable ability to do the impossible, to get things working again when it tries. Now if only we could do the same with the economy.

Below was Irene’s readings at 5pm, Friday from the U.S. National Hurricane Centre, click onto the link if you want to know where she is now.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

000

WTNT34 KNHC 262047

TCPAT4

BULLETIN

HURRICANE IRENE ADVISORY NUMBER 26

NWS NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL AL092011

500 PM EDT FRI AUG 26 2011

...LARGE HURRICANE IRENE HEADING TOWARD THE EAST COAST OF THE UNITED

STATES...HURRICANE WARNING EXTENDED NORTHWARD INTO SOUTHERN NEW

ENGLAND....

SUMMARY OF 500 PM EDT...2100 UTC...INFORMATION

----------------------------------------------

LOCATION...31.7N 77.4W

ABOUT 265 MI...425 KM SSW OF CAPE HATTERAS NORTH CAROLINA

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...100 MPH...160 KM/H

PRESENT MOVEMENT...N OR 360 DEGREES AT 14 MPH...22 KM/H

MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...951 MB...28.08 INCHES

WATCHES AND WARNINGS

--------------------

CHANGES IN WATCHES AND WARNINGS WITH THIS ADVISORY...

A HURRICANE WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM NORTH OF SANDY HOOK TO

SAGAMORE BEACH MASSACHUSETTS...INCLUDING NEW YORK CITY...LONG

ISLAND...LONG ISLAND SOUND...COASTAL CONNECTICUT AND RHODE ISLAND...

BLOCK ISLAND...MARTHAS VINEYARD AND NANTUCKET.

A TROPICAL STORM WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM NORTH OF SAGAMORE

BEACH TO THE MOUTH OF THE MERRIMACK RIVER.

A TROPICAL STORM WATCH HAS BEEN ISSUED FROM THE MOUTH OF THE

MERRIMACK RIVER TO EASTPORT MAINE.

SUMMARY OF WATCHES AND WARNINGS IN EFFECT...

A HURRICANE WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR...

* LITTLE RIVER INLET NORTH CAROLINA NORTHWARD TO SAGAMORE BEACH

MASSACHUSETTS...INCLUDING THE PAMLICO...ALBEMARLE...AND CURRITUCK

SOUNDS...DELAWARE BAY...CHESAPEAKE BAY SOUTH OF DRUM POINT...NEW

YORK CITY...LONG ISLAND...LONG ISLAND SOUND...COASTAL CONNECTICUT

AND RHODE ISLAND...BLOCK ISLAND...MARTHAS VINEYARD AND NANTUCKET.

A TROPICAL STORM WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR...

* NORTH OF EDISTO BEACH SOUTH CAROLINA TO LITTLE RIVER INLET

* CHESAPEAKE BAY FROM DRUM POINT NORTHWARD AND THE TIDAL POTOMAC

* NORTH OF SAGAMORE BEACH TO MERRIMACK RIVER

A TROPICAL STORM WATCH IS IN EFFECT FOR...

* MERRIMACK RIVER TO EASTPORT MAINE

INTERESTS IN SOUTHEASTERN CANADA SHOULD MONITOR THE PROGRESS OF

IRENE.

FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA...INCLUDING POSSIBLE

INLAND WATCHES AND WARNINGS...PLEASE MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUED BY

YOUR LOCAL NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE FORECAST OFFICE.

DISCUSSION AND 48-HOUR OUTLOOK

------------------------------

AT 500 PM EDT...2100 UTC...THE CENTER OF HURRICANE IRENE WAS LOCATED

NEAR LATITUDE 31.7 NORTH...LONGITUDE 77.4 WEST. IRENE IS MOVING

TOWARD THE NORTH NEAR 14 MPH...22 KM/H. A TURN TOWARD THE

NORTH-NORTHEAST IS EXPECTED TONIGHT OR EARLY SATURDAY. ON THE

FORECAST TRACK...THE CORE OF THE HURRICANE WILL APPROACH THE COAST

OF NORTH CAROLINA TONIGHT AND PASS NEAR OR OVER THE NORTH CAROLINA

COAST ON SATURDAY. THE HURRICANE IS FORECAST TO MOVE NEAR OR OVER

THE MID-ATLANTIC COAST SATURDAY NIGHT AND MOVE OVER SOUTHERN NEW

ENGLAND ON SUNDAY.

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 100 MPH...160 KM/H...WITH HIGHER

GUSTS. IRENE IS A CATEGORY TWO HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON

HURRICANE WIND SCALE. LITTLE CHANGE IN STRENGTH IS FORECAST BEFORE

IRENE REACHES THE COAST OF NORTH CAROLINA. SOME WEAKENING IS

EXPECTED AFTER THAT...BUT IRENE IS EXPECTED TO REMAIN A HURRICANE

AS IT MOVES ALONG THE MID-ATLANTIC COAST ON SUNDAY.

IRENE IS A LARGE TROPICAL CYCLONE. HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND

OUTWARD UP TO 90 MILES...150 KM...FROM THE CENTER...AND TROPICAL

STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 290 MILES...465 KM. NOAA

BUOY 41013 LOCATED ABOUT 40 MILES SOUTHEAST OF SOUTHPORT NORTH

CAROLINA RECENTLY REPORTED A SUSTAINED WIND OF 46 MPH...75 KM/H...

AND A GUST TO 60 MPH...96 KM/H.

THE ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE IS 951 MB...28.08 INCHES.

HAZARDS AFFECTING LAND

----------------------

WIND...TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS WILL SPREAD OVER THE SOUTHERN

PORTION OF THE WARNING AREA DURING THE NEXT FEW HOURS. HURRICANE

FORCE WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO FIRST REACH THE HURRICANE WARNING AREA

OVERNIGHT TONIGHT. TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO BEGIN

ALONG THE MID-ATLANTIC COAST OVERNIGHT WITH HURRICANE CONDITIONS

EXPECTED BY SATURDAY AFTERNOON. TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE

EXPECTED TO REACH SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND SATURDAY NIGHT WITH

HURRICANE CONDITIONS EXPECTED ON SUNDAY.

STORM SURGE...AN EXTREMELY DANGEROUS STORM SURGE WILL RAISE WATER

LEVELS BY AS MUCH AS 6 TO 11 FEET ABOVE GROUND LEVEL IN THE

HURRICANE WARNING AREA IN NORTH CAROLINA...INCLUDING THE ALBEMARLE

AND PAMLICO SOUNDS. STORM SURGE WILL RAISE WATER LEVELS BY AS MUCH

AS 4 TO 8 FEET ABOVE GROUND LEVEL WITHIN THE HURRICANE WARNING AREA

FROM THE NORTH CAROLINA/VIRGINIA BORDER NORTHWARD TO CAPE COD

INCLUDING SOUTHERN PORTIONS OF THE CHESAPEAKE BAY AND ITS

TRIBUTARIES. NEAR THE COAST...THE SURGE WILL BE ACCOMPANIED BY

LARGE...DESTRUCTIVE...AND LIFE-THREATENING WAVES. STORM SURGE

VALUES ARE VERY LOCATION-SPECIFIC...AND USERS ARE URGED TO CONSULT

PRODUCTS ISSUED BY THEIR LOCAL NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE OFFICES.

RAINFALL...IRENE IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE RAINFALL ACCUMULATIONS OF

6 TO 10 INCHES...WITH ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF 15 INCHES...FROM

EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA NORTHWARD THROUGH THE MID-ATLANTIC STATES

INTO NEW ENGLAND THROUGH MONDAY MORNING. THESE RAINS COULD

CAUSE WIDESPREAD FLOODING AND LIFE-THREATENING FLASH FLOODS.

SURF...LARGE SWELLS GENERATED BY IRENE ARE AFFECTING PORTIONS OF THE

COAST OF THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES. THESE SWELLS WILL CAUSE

LIFE-THREATENING SURF AND RIP CURRENT CONDITIONS.

TORNADOES...ISOLATED TORNADOES ARE POSSIBLE OVER EXTREME EASTERN

NORTH CAROLINA LATE TONIGHT AND SATURDAY.

Writers, writing and meeting ducks

2011-08-22T19:48:00.003-04:00

by Charlene Smith

Where I write

Margaret Atwood wrote: “Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like paté.”

She continued by saying “that’s a light enough comment upon the disappointments of encountering the famous, or even the moderately well known — they are always shorter and older and more ordinary than you expected …”

I know writers who can barely articulate when you meet them, who mumble and blush and battle to string together words. I’ve watched as their adoring fans look at them in befuddled astonishment — this is not The Great Author, they’re thinking; send back this inarticulate yob and give us the witty, the clever, the sublime …
Last year I was at a presentation of New England PEN and was impressed by Patrick Hemingway, not because he was like his dad Ernest, but because he was so different. While his dad has an image of being a liquor swilling womaniser, Patrick impressed by being shy and sweet and with an adoring wife.

The point is that writers write because we have to. It’s an addiction. It’s a spiritual imperative, and because of that all that accompanies being a writer often surprises us.

Writers often get asked about writing, everyone believes they have a book in them, very few have the dedication, the patience, the willingness to accept criticism, or the desire to spend a year or more alone to produce the book. My advice? Books need sacrifice, patience and commitment (a bit like relationships), take half an hour of your day, ignore social media (Freedom is a good device to switch it off), shut the door and write. Don't worry about perfection, that can come later, just write.

No author ever gets used to being published. We are always so astonished that we have produced a work that anyone might want to read that we veer from being screamingly happy to dumbstruck. When it actually comes out as an article, a book or a blog, and others are going to read it, we become apprehensive because we think no one will like it. Every flaw that we feel in ourselves and our writing becomes magnified within our heads.

Margaret Atwood

We think of every great author that ever lived (or rather those who, in the scope of our limited intelligence, we know of) and think, in loud, exaggerated tones: “I am crazy; whatever made me think I could write!?” But write we do because we have a message we need to share. Atwood says that writing is singular, but I disagree. The task is, but the motive is to be part of a community, to tell a tale, to caution, to provide lessons from our mistakes, our hurt, our complicated experience. It is how we make sense of our world. If writing was singular we would never write, because writing seeks an audience.

It is relatively easy for those of us in the media — writers, authors, television presenters, radio broadcasters and bloggers — to gain a modicum of name and even face recognition.

I hate the word fame because it implies the transitory success of being fleetingly trendy.

The gravest danger for anyone who experiences such recognition is to believe the exaggerated praise of the media or of those who like your work, because they can as quickly turn against you. That is why the pain and confusion of the Britney Spears’ of the world is so intense. Once they thought they were loved, and now those who showered adoration taunt them.

It’s seductive to believe the saccharine that journalists can dish, and hurtful to stomach the bile if popularity goes against you. Only fools buy into the passing shadow that is fame.

I’ve been in journalism long enough to have some name recognition and, regrettably, face recognition too.

A while ago, in South Africa, I phoned a company to make an enquiry. The person I spoke to asked if I was the Charlene Smith. I mumbled. Later I wrote to him: “I’m sorry if I sounded ungracious when you asked if I was the Charlene Smith, but I get phenomenally uncomfortable — stupidly I know, when people ask me that. I prefer to think I am invisible. Sort of old-school journalism where what we write is hopefully important, but not us. I even hate pics next to our writing; I think it scares away the readers. But I often get asked that question, so I need to find an answer — I suppose ‘yes’ might be a good one.”

People who have read my work or know me by reputation often say when they meet me, with some disappointment: “But you’re so small.”

I then say: “Yes, but my mouth is big.”

I met a French journalist recently who wanted to interview me. I sat at a restaurant reading the New York Review of Books. He did not recognize me. He chivalrously later said it was because I was reading. But it wasn’t that. I clearly did not look like his impression of me. My hair was in a bun and after a year without a holiday, very hard work and now tussling with a book I’m writing (always a time of little sleep) I have enormous bags under my eyes — so big that airports make me check them. But hey, I still look like me. I think.

People meet you and expect someone else. You almost want to apologize and say, sorry, she’s at home, she’s only let out at night.

Let me explain it in this way: the Japanese revere cracked porcelain and perhaps the pottery they respect the most is raku-yaki. To the untrained Western eye these tea-ceremony bowls look like something a kindergarten child threw together. They are rough; textures and colours collide. Raku looks flawed, imperfect, but the Japanese — knowing the skill and time involved — rate it highly. And that is a metaphor for life. It’s the flaws that make you interesting, especially if you seek to transform them and use them as the fuel for personal growth, an evolutionary process that is life long. Perfection is often fragile and fleeting, and sometimes deadly dull.

Those who think I am a pious rape survivor will be disappointed when they discover I am a notorious party animal who constantly interferes with the music because I so love to dance. Readers who believe I am a fierce lefty and will kneecap anyone with conservative views discover my circle of friends are a wildly eclectic mix of ultra-leftists, cops, filmmakers, students, game rangers, book-store clerks, billionaires, motor mechanics, some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the land and others who live in shacks. I have friends in their teens and others in their 80s.

Others who believe I’m a feminist (which I hope I am) are disconcerted when they meet me and I’m in full make-up with hair freshly blow-dried and nails manicured, and discover I have a passion for cooking and a home filled with flowers. I don’t need to be your fantasy or your prejudice; I need to be me.

Atwood, in her fabulous Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing, commented: “The writer and the reader communicate only through the page … Pay no attention to the facsimiles of the writer that appear on talk shows …” Blogs may give the appearance of writers and readers communicating, but it is a fallacy. It gives the reader greater power to say to the writer: “What a load of rubbish,” or “Well done.” But ultimately it is still a one-way relationship. We don’t, I don’t think, respond to some and say what we privately mutter: “Oh, get a life” — although I did once. If I am grateful for the response, I may write my thanks or beg for more information from the insightful. Mostly I am quietly grateful that you read this far.

Writers have promiscuous intellects. If you seem interesting, we want to know you better. I’ll scribble your great ideas on everything from receipts to newspaper margins or paper table napkins; I’ll save your great emailed quote and insert it later — attributable to you, in a book or article.

A writer that wants to fail will write for what he or she believes is his or her audience. Inspiration cannot be manufactured. I cannot write to please you. I write to express a range of ideas and experiences percolating through my mind — it’s entirely narcissistic.

I once went to a discussion forum and sat next to a fellow writer. I was fascinated by the discussion. She nudged me. “Stop writing,” she said.
“I’m not,” I lied because indeed physically I wasn’t.
But she’s a writer too.
“Yes, you are,” she said, “I can see it in your expression; you’re writing in your head.”

For those of you who know writers, you’ve seen the expression. You’ll say something to them and you can visibly see their brain switching track. They’ll look up to a corner past you, their responses will become vague or they’ll grab anything they can write on and furiously scribble — it may be just a word, but it is their prompt. An idea is being born.

To find life, experience death

2011-08-16T13:45:00.001-04:00

by Charlene Smith

This year three friends died and one was murdered.
The day after Keith died this week, a friend told me of a member of his congregation who had given up his battle at the same time as Keith, except that he had shot himself after shooting his wife, leaving their two sons. Thank God he never physically harmed the children, but their emotional scars will be deep.
I’ve just finished speaking with Steven, a mutual friend of Keith — and Glenn — the first friend who died this year. Steven’s wife has perhaps days, or even hours left. They’ve had an extraordinarily happy ten-year marriage. They never argued. Bridgette is the sort of person everyone loves. They have both come to terms with her death; she was sleeping peacefully as we spoke. She has needed no morphine and he and I believe she will simply pass on in her sleep. Bridgette is a heavy cigarette smoker and she has lung cancer.
At Glenn’s wake in January, two of the 10 people there were already dying. Neither they, nor we, knew it then.
We’ve all known each other since school days — Glenn, Keith and Steve were some years older than I. Glenn and Steve were very good looking, popular with the girls, charming and wonderful. Keith was a quiet support, someone solid and reliable.
Glenn sent me a Valentine’s card every year since I was 16. He would often include veld grasses or flowers stolen from someone’s pavement, balloons or a poem he had composed and scrawled on paper ripped from a notebook. We were never more than just friends, but it was his Valentine’s card or wishes I waited for every year. Nothing else compared.
Steve says that when he first met Bridgette he never introduced her to the guys for some months because she was overweight, “and then I thought, heck she’s such a nice person, what the hell, and everyone loved her. Now I sometimes put the phone on silent because I can’t deal with all the calls, everyone loves her.”
He speaks of her without sadness, there is simply love and the gentle happiness we accumulate with someone we have loved long and who knows everything about us and we know everything about them. And because we know everything, we love them more. In part, because they see every flaw and still think we are wonderful.

A person who is truly loved loves themselves more, because they experience their own life through the eyes and gentle tolerance of the one who loves them best.
Steve and Bridgette’s patient acceptance of death reminds me of another friend whose wife died two years ago, 72 days after being diagnosed with brain cancer. Together they chose her funeral spot and discussed the service. She approved the memorial he wrote for her tombstone and they spent the days of her dying in conversation, love, and quiet reflection and gratitude. They too accepted it; they had lived life, loved a lot and were grateful for what had been and what was to come.
This week I met a wonderful Irish woman who married her husband when she was in her early twenties. She is now in her late 60s. He died five years ago and when she speaks of him now her eyes light up and her voice becomes animated. Love doesn’t die, we may experience it differently, but it remains. The first real boyfriend I had, the first man I loved, died in a car accident when we were both in our teens.
Many, many years later I am closer than most daughters to his 83-year-old mother. I help pay for her care and, but for one other, am her primary source of love. Those we love live in our hearts and because of them we may extend the range of those we care for. There are times still, rare, but it happens, that when I speak of Mike with her, I weep. And in those intervening years I have married, had children and loved others.
These are the things I have learned anew with all these deaths this year and those of other close friends I have helped care for before they died. My experiences are not necessarily yours, so forgive me if what I write feels hurtful.
Those angriest about dying are often those who have failed to live. One friend was a person who always seemed to be there, when our group of friends got together, he was there, yet he wasn’t. He was physically present, but never really emotionally engaged.
When he became ill he at first said he wanted to die and then was overwhelmed by all the friends who contacted him. Because he had never expressed emotion to others, he had prevented them from showing it to him. He suddenly realised how much he was loved and now wanted to live, but already his body was betraying him.
He died angry that he wasn’t given another chance; yet all of us are given multiple chances. How many of us are squandering them even now?
Yet another friend was married for many years in a successful marriage. But his wife increasingly became insular and disliked having people visit. She disliked going out, even to the movies or for dinner. In the last few years of her life she developed a close bond with a neighbour, me, and a few weeks before she died she did what she hadn’t done in years, she came to tea with her hair done, lipstick on and a pretty blouse — she looked simply beautiful.
When I conducted a door to door petition among neighbours to ensure better security for our street, she egged me on and though ill, insisted on driving alongside me as I strode up and down the streets delivering pamphlets.
After she died, her husband mourned briefly, then blossomed. He began going to the theatre, ballet, the movies and he started travelling, and although he had loved her he looked happier and healthier. Four years after she died he developed prostate cancer and in the last 18 months as he became increasingly frail I helped care for him. He became increasingly angry, “I still had so much travelling to do, so much living …”
During the marriage he subordinated himself to his wife’s desires and surrendered his life. When he believed his time had come, time had already run out.

If you have read this far … please, sit back, take stock; this is your only life. There is no time for if, but, maybe … when the children are bigger, when I retire, when I have money … time is running out, do it. Take the chance. Face risk. Get on the plane. Tell that person you love them. Put your needs first.
Do what you fear doing, bugger what others say. This is your life, your only life.
Edith Piaf sang a song that has been my life subtext, Non, je ne regrette rien — I have no regrets.
What is the point of regret? We are human, we err. Our errors should point us in new directions, allow us to discover new parts of ourselves, learn new lessons. And so, I have no regrets, I have loved a lot, made plenty of mistakes, been hurt, learned from pain and tomorrow I am going to wake up and say, “what a totally fabulous day …” and find new ways to be happy.
I wish the same for you. Today may be the last day.

This is dedicated to the memory of Mike, Peter, Guy, my grandparents, Nomakwezi, Busi, Glenn, Manolis, Keith, Fran, Maggie and the people who love and loved them. And to those who show us the power of eternal love.

Ban prescription drug advertising to consumers (and save lives)

2011-08-15T22:02:00.003-04:00

By Charlene Smith

There is a quick way Congress can save billions of dollars and thousands of lives: ban direct to consumer prescription drug advertising. Little more than a decade ago the Food and Drug Administration allowed the broadcast of direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertisements.

The United States and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that allow such advertising. Today the United States with just over four percent of the world’s population consumes almost half its prescription drugs and 80 percent of the world’s opioid painkillers.

In April, the White House told us that, “from 1997 to 2007, the milligram per person use of prescription opioids in the U.S. increased from 74 milligrams to 369 milligrams, an increase of 402 percent.” Prescription drug abuse is an epidemic of the educated, employed, white middle-class.

Teenagers are now more likely to experiment with the drugs in mom and dad’s medicine cabinet than to try marijuana. And the National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported in 2010, “a marked decrease in the use of some illegal drugs like cocaine.”

Dr. David Kloth, former president of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians which is lobbying government for tighter controls around the prescription of pain medication, says: “People who work 18 hour days are tired, they think a drug can help. Kids are not doing well at school and so they go to a doctor and say I can’t concentrate and the doctor gives them Ritalin or Aderall – I don’t believe Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is as great as prescriptions suggest.” Dr. Kloth is one of a growing number of physicians, who doubt it is a real disorder at all, yet American kids swallow two-thirds of the world’s prescriptions for Ritalin.

Similar issues complicate pain management. Dr. Kloth notes: “Of the people who are qualified to do intervention pain management, there are around 7,000 to 8,000 but hundreds of thousands of medical practitioners are allowed to prescribe pain medications. Eighty percent to 90 percent of physicians have no formal training in the use, monitoring, or proper prescribing of these controlled substances that are highly addictive.”

The Centers for Disease Control recently reported that by 2005 opioid abuse was costing the U.S. more than $8.6 billion a year, and $9.5 billion in lost productivity.

The FDA threw a bonanza of wealth to drug companies and a burden for consumers. A May 2011, summary from the Congressional Budget Office noted that, “the average number of prescriptions written for newly approved brand-name drugs with DTC advertising was nine times greater than the average number of prescriptions written for newly approved brand-name drugs without DTC advertising.” And in 2009, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “manufacturer spending on advertising [$6.6 billion] was over 1.5 times as much in 2009 ($10.9 billion). “

In 2010 when pharmaceutical companies earned $307.4 billion the top selling drug was hydrocodone/acetaminophen or Vicodin, a painkiller. It netted $131.2 million. The Drug Enforcement Administration says: “Hydrocodone [Vicodin] is the most frequently prescribed opiate in the United States with more than 139 million prescriptions for hydrocodone-containing products dispensed in 2010 and more than 36 million in the first quarter of 2011.”

Its toll is great. In Oklahoma, Montana and Arkansas, the CDC says the number of deaths due to accidental overdose of prescription drugs has nearly tripled in the past decade, West Virginia has seen a 500 percent increase. The Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s office says hydrocodone is most often involved, followed by the anti-anxiety drug alprazolam, and the painkillers: oxycodone and morphine.

The American Journal of Medicine observed: “Citizens of other nations pay 20 percent to 40 percent less for prescription drugs compared with what Americans pay… Some authorities have suggested that if we decrease the profits of drug companies they will stop developing new drugs. Given that drug companies spend more than twice as much for marketing and advertising as they do for research this is a very unlikely outcome.”

Pharma has now turned its attention to online ads. Research firm eMarketer says that in 2011, healthcare and pharma will boost web spending by 13 percent, to $1.17 billion. And this is where the next era of the problem emerges, high prescription prices for prescription drugs have seen consumers turn to the internet for cheap drugs. As one such site observes: “Buying Celebrex at a Mexican pharmacy could be approximately 483% cheaper than the same drug bought at an American pharmacy.” The sites look authentic, but few demand prescriptions and delivery is by courier within 24 hours. Legal and illicit sales become much harder for law enforcement officials to police.

In his lone dissent from the 1976 Supreme Court case that enabled drug companies to advertise, Justice William Rehnquist observed: “The societal interest against the promotion of drug use for every ill, real and imaginary, seems to me exceptionally strong.” Almost three decades later the truth of his words persist.

A great American dies

2011-07-14T14:45:00.000-04:00

To hear a South African you’d swear that we won liberation from apartheid oppression all by ourselves. It was us who suffered. We who conquered.

And when it comes to today’s failures, then there are a host of ‘them’ and ‘they’ and ‘others’ we can blame.

Triumph is a cloak we all wear; failure is the wretched garment we throw at others.

Today a dear friend died. Maggie Seiler was an American who came to South Africa not long after democracy; she was married to a political scientist who was intensely interested in this country. It fascinated and frustrated him, an emotion every South African shares.

But while he entered into South African debates with all the argumentative zeal of someone born here, Maggie was quiet, she watched, she listened and most of all she became concerned by the fear behind our bravado, the anger masked by determined happiness.

A gentle Christian with Quaker instincts she began working for the National Peace Accord Trust – do you remember that organisation created when Zulu fought township resident, when third force agents rode into townships in pickups like hunters going after kudu, and when rifles were placed into the hands of kitskonstabels (poorly trained municipal police, who were more likely to shoot journalists and each other than anyone else)?

I remember those days. I remember driving through Soweto with my jacket filling with blood from the wound of a young com laying in the arms of another on my back seat, while I and another leaned from front windows screaming at residents to remove burning barricades. He died.

I remember when there were no statesmen, when Mandela, De Klerk and Buthelezi sat on a platform convened by churchmen and where the Peace Accord was born. Neither would look at the other. Their folded arms and tight mouths showed their level of commitment to peace; to the accommodation that might save lives, it took many more to die before they sullenly did what we, the people, needed them to do.

Maggie, in the meantime, stood on no public platform, she wrote not a single angry word demanding reform, no one heard her but for the young comrades, brutalised from an early age by having AK-47’s thrust into their pre-adolescent hands. They were profoundly traumatised, and because of it, very dangerous.

Maggie took me to meet some in Katlehong. I remember one, Scott; he had been a ‘comrade’ since he was 12. He confessed he could not remember how many people he had killed or girls he had raped. Until his sister was raped and not long after killed herself. That partly woke him from the rage politicians exploited in him. He began having nightmares, in every nightmare those he had murdered came to spit on him, to taunt him.

But the worst was yet to come. Before 1991 and the unbanning of organisations these comrades were hailed as “Young Lions”, the heroes of the revolution, but after 1991, as negotiations efforts intensified they became an embarrassment. The closer we got to democratic elections and hopes of peace, the more politicians ignored them. Before, Scott boasted, he could directly call Hani, Zuma and others. Now others took messages for calls that were never returned.

He and his friends had been heroes; storekeepers paid them to protect their stores, they could walk into any and take what they liked: food, liquor, cigarettes … they could have almost any woman they wanted, and those that scorned them were made to pay.

But now with democracy so close, no one wanted them. They were an embarrassment. And so those scorned did what we should expect, but never do, they turned on society; they became criminal, they began robbing stores. They robbed and shot so many café-owners that the corner store that had been a feature of South Africa disappeared.

To listen to Scott and friends like him was profoundly depressing. It was easy to reject him and those like him. But Maggie couldn’t, she wouldn’t, she saw the humanity within them that they no longer believed in. And so she worked with them, with the aid of others at the Peace Accord Trust.

Scott, and others helped by Maggie, were hired by peacemakers in Rwanda and Burundi to assist them turn their brutalized young men and women back into dignified, law abiding, respectful citizens. Indeed, if you truly want to end war, it is the killers you need to first convert to evangelists for peace, they know better than the rest of us the savagery of war and why we need to keep it at bay.

After I was raped and stabbed Maggie was there. Just simply, gently there. She organised for a group of 12 rape survivors to climb a mountain. Our guides? Men like Scott. One 40-something year old white woman who had been gangraped by black housebreakers, with her husband tied up on the bed next to her, broke down and sobbed. We were about to climb a mountain and sleep in tents on the summit in the company of men, who looked to her, like those who had attacked her.

“I can’t do this,” she wailed.

The guides faces began crumpling. One went and sat next to her and said, “I will protect you.”

Such small words, so large the impact.

She calmed, and he did, he helped her over rocks and boulders, brought her water, carried her pack, he cared for her.

As we climbed the mountain another, raped by a security guard at work also began weeping, “I can’t do this, I can’t do this.” And it wasn’t that she could not, it was that her heart had been so broken, she no longer believed she could do anything. Certainly not without alcohol.

And so I said, “look at how the mountain is trying to help you.”

“How,” she asked.

“Look at those plants, hold onto them when you feel yourself slipping. Hold onto the saplings bending toward you, they are stretching toward you encouraging you, hold onto them to pull yourself up. The mountain wants to help you.”

And as we scrambled single file up the mountain, she was between Maggie and I. I would hear her mutter, “The mountain is helping me, helping me.”

And for me, for me it was Maggie helping me, by helping these people so wounded to believe in themselves again. Helping me discover my own strength.

A friend, Kathi Walther, said she met Maggie at Bikram Yoga, which Maggie took to with enthusiasm after her husband died. Kathi’s dog had died, she was heartbroken. She was sitting disconsolately on her own. Maggie who didn’t know her sensed something was wrong and went and quietly sat next to her. Such was the radiated warmth of Maggie’s spirit, that although she said nothing, Kathi began weeping and confided in her. As she said, “Maggie was just Maggie.”

Just over two months ago Maggie was diagnosed with liver cancer, 10 tumors. She had remarried, to Clive, not long before. They had found a new home to live, they had plans to travel South Africa, the adopted home she loved.

Three weeks ago she Skyped me to say goodbye. She was matter-of-fact and while I tried to be cheerful, to be strong for her, I failed, I sobbed, we both cried. Clive has written twice-weekly to her friends, giving us long updates as our friend, South Africa’s sister, began a path that would lead her away from us, for now.

I asked her what she wanted from me, she finally said, an inspirational book. What do you buy for someone who is dying? I refused to buy one of those awful books written for the dying, she would have hated it. And so I sent her my favourite book on love and loving, The Little Prince by St Antoine de Exupery. It arrived this week. I asked Clive, if he read nothing else to her that he read what the little fox says after the Little Prince has tamed him:

"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

I refused to say goodbye to Maggie. Au revoir Maggie, until we meet again. Siyabonga, sisi.

Democracy is always born in storms – the summer of discontent in Egypt, Tunisia and South Africa. And what it means for an American Spring

2011-07-14T07:28:00.001-04:00

By Charlene Smith (c)

The Arab Spring has turned into a summer of blazing discontent. In South Africa, dubbed the rainbow nation after the peaceful defeat of apartheid two decades ago, the pot of gold has been looted.

Political miracles today have all the value of the Greek drachma. And the only surprise is that we expected anything else.

The teargasing of 5,000 protestors by Egyptian police last week received an, almost embarrassed, footnote in newspapers. Egyptians want faster action on the prosecution of those responsible for 850 deaths in pro-democracy rallies this year.

In Tunisia where Arab Spring protests began, police arrested 26 Islamists after they clashed with lawyers demanding a secular state as the country debates it’s post-revolutionary future.

In South Africa, Zwelinzima Vavi, the head of the powerful two million-member Congress of South African Trade Unions, condemned a "powerful, corrupt, predatory elite combined with a conservative populist agenda [that had] harness[ed] the ANC [the ruling African National Congress] to advance their interests." He criticized growing poverty, and joblessness. A million jobs have been lost in the last three years – unemployment is officially around 26 percent and at least double that unofficially. But BMW’s and Mercedes are still the most common vehicles on the roads.

Vavi referred to, “wild zig-zagging in the political direction of the country.”

None of this would have surprised the remarkable documenter of Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville who more than two centuries ago observed that: “All revolutions enlarge the ambition of men… In [the] first burst of triumph nothing seems impossible to anyone: not only are desires boundless, but the power of satisfying them seems almost boundless, too…

“It must be recollected, moreover, that the people who destroy an aristocracy have lived under its laws; they have witnessed its splendor, and they have unconsciously imbibed the feelings and notions which it entertained. Thus at the moment when an aristocracy is dissolved, its spirit still pervades the mass of the community, and its tendencies are retained long after it has been defeated…

“A sense of instability remains … desires still remain extremely enlarged, when the means of satisfying them are diminished day by day.”

Perhaps we in the media are somewhat to blame for the foolish dreams the newly liberated hold. We celebrate Twitter revolutions, but forget to mention that government policies need more than 140 characters.

We extol Facebook group protests, but forget they have all the commitment of a crack addict’s promise to get off the junk.

Our coverage has become pathetic; this morning I watched vivid scenes of Greece rioters filmed from a hotel balcony, the correspondent in a blue business suit staring down. News has become instant and flash analyses are given with no sense of history, or precedent.

Skepticism is rare because that would require some intellectual content.

The Arab Spring was just that. A season. Now we can anticipate a winter of discontent, a long grey period of civilian despair, governments that come and go, military caretakers that ignore earlier promises and stay in power longer than they should. And yes it will threaten the fiction we call ‘global stability’.

We can anticipate anger toward the cheerleaders; we, who appeared to promise support, but at the end turn away and leave citizens to sort out the mess. As we must.

Nato’s efforts in Libya were too little, too late as members of the United Nations frittered away time in silly debates (a little like Congress thinking it can eternally play chicken with the economy – at some stage that bird will become roadkill if they’re not careful). Now there are increasingly desperate bombing raids as Nato tries to up the stakes so it can get out of Libya without losing face to an ugly dictator.

The United States has frittered away $1,3 trillion in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has cost 1,500 irreplaceable lives; now is the time to focus on home. We need to begin working on happy endings here, at home. Here where our heart is, where we belong.

We need to create jobs, eliminate despair and create an American Spring where none have to resort to the streets to be heard. But then again, it’s election season, no-one is listening to anyone but themselves and the ticking of polls.

* Charlene Smith is a multi-award winning South African-born journalist and U.S. citizen who has covered conflict on three continents.

July 4: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" – Thank you, Thomas Jefferson

2011-07-04T17:09:00.003-04:00

If you think of the United States what is the first thing that comes to mind? Is it the music that shaped your teenage years, the movies you cried in or laughed at, exasperating politicians, great inventions (Google, the computer, the internet, AZT…), Converse sneakers, Levi jeans, disco, hip hop, swing, pecan pie, hamburger…?

The first time I traveled to the U.S. I stayed in New York. Since then I have lost count of how many countries I have travelled to, probably well over 100 on every continent but for Antarctica. I have lived in Japan, Argentina, South Africa, Zambia and the U.S.A.

There are cities I adore – Rome, Paris, London, Tokyo, Florence, Goteborg, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Boston … but no city in the world has a patch on New York, not even vaguely close, for excitement.

I’m an eight hour a night sort of person when it comes to sleep, but in New York I can go for days with only two hours sleep a night, and even then I give in to my exhausted body only grudgingly, there’s so much to do, to see, to experience; can’t I sleep another time in a more boring place? There’s music on the street so good that in other centers those musicians would be playing in clubs and stadiums.

You really haven’t had breakfast until you’ve had lox on bagels in a deli, or pastrami on rye for lunch, or incredible pancakes with Vermont maple syrup and thin crispy bacon. Or lunch at one of the great restaurants at a U.S. museum (I particularly love the American cafe at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston); a glass of dry white wine with turkey on rye, a shrimp salad, crab cakes or Maine lobster.

And the deal is this, if I go to New York, three days is devoted to the Metropolitan Museum, no museum in the world, but for the Louvre perhaps, is finer and as long as I live I will never see all of it. It has entire street fronts, a complete pyramid, art so beautiful you can sit in front of it dazed for hours. It has exceptional Egyptology, Mediaeval art, oh wow, where do I begin?
And then of course there is the Guggenheim (where I saw my first Van Gogh and cried); MOMA where I saw my first Picasso's, and an incredible exhibition of Russian Impressionist collections (which many say, and I agree, that the three Russian collectors operating at the turn of the 20^th century amassed probably the finest collection anywhere of French Impressionists; the Matisse’s alone are breathtaking) and then great American artists like Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, Georgia O Keefe.

Marriage to an American saw me return every year, more than once a year. Now that I had children and coming from a land, South Africa, that was not democratic I wanted my children to learn of democracy. We visited beloved Lady Liberty, who has these stirring words written by Emma Lazarus at her base:

“…Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand / A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name/  Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand / Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command / The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she/  With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  /Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

We took our children to Concord – where the shot heard around the world was fired in 1775 starting the American Revolutionary War - and Lexington scene of another famous battle. We travelled to Philadelphia where they saw the Liberty Bell and learnt of the Underground Railroad that helped slaves escape. We traveled often to Washington D.C. which is filled with history from the Capitol to Arlington Cemetery to the Vietnam Memorial (and it would be a soulless person indeed who could walk past that memorial without crying) and then to Monticello in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson’s home.

Who can read the words of the drafter of the Declaration of Independence and not want to stand up and cheer?

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness…”

How blessed this land has been with an abundance of talent and passionate people.

Traveling to the Washington Mall today the Metro was filled with people wearing red, white and blue whether a man with blue painted toenails and his girlfriend with red toenails (their bodies were white); or children with flags, and almost everyone wearing something red or something blue or both. No country but for the United Kingdom, and Italy or Brazil when they win at football, is as fiercely patriotic.

Away from the United States it is easy to dislike this nation: it seems too brash, too self-important, too ready to tell others what to do and how to do it while at home it has the worst deficit in the world, an economy that is in serious trouble (and you don’t realize how bad until you live here) and an infrastructure that desperately needs attention (rutted roads, a rail system that may have been modern in the 1970s but now seems positively archaic to the world traveler and healthcare that is the costliest and most difficult to access in the world).

But to live here is to love Americans. Their sweetness, their patience, their sense of good neighborliness. It is also to be puzzled by them, they are the least curious nation on earth, if you meet them and tell them you are from a foreign country they may express surprise but never ask you about it, nor your opinions about anything but will spend inordinate time telling you pretty intimate details of their lives.

There is a sense of order here that is inviting. People seem insular but actually everyone is working together to make this nation work. If you eat at a restaurant (unless a fancy restaurant) you will most often clear away your tray or dishes. You don’t break the law, not only because the police are ever present and very good at their jobs, but most of all because no one else does (not the sort of people you and I want to know) and so we all conform. Peer pressure to be the best you can is pervasive, it’s never spoken but it is there and it is impossible not to imbibe it.

It’s safe; in cities people lock their doors, most of the time, but its not always essential. Packages delivered to your home can be left on the porch and no one would dream of removing them (unless it rained and a kind soul might push it under shelter).

And so I love it here, I love the people, I admire the country, and yes, I can see endless flaws, but aren’t flaws just aspects of life that provoke us to change, to grow, to improve?
And so on this 4^th of July I am grateful once again to Thomas Jefferson and those who died at Gettysburg and elsewhere for a chance at freedom.

While researching something else today I came across these words written about Thanksgiving, which is in November, but is an apt expression of love for this great nation. It was written by the governor of Connecticut, Wilbur L. Cross in 1936, in the 161^st year of American Independence and aptly describes the poetical love this country can engender:

“Time out of mind at this turn of the seasons when the hardy oak leaves rustle in the wind and the frost gives a tang to the air and the dusk falls early and the friendly evenings lengthen under the heel of Orion, it has seemed good to our people to join together in praising the Creator and Preserver, who has brought us by a way that we did not know to the end of another year. In observance of this custom, I appoint Thursday, the twenty-sixth of November, as a day of

Public Thanksgiving for the blessings that have been our common lot and have placed our beloved State with the favored regions of earth -- for all the creature comforts: the yield of the soil that has fed us and the richer yield from labor of every kind that has sustained our lives -- and for all those things, as dear as breath to the body, that quicken man's faith in his manhood, that nourish and strengthen his spirit to do the great work still before him: for the brotherly word and act; for honor held above price; for steadfast courage and zeal in the long, long search after truth; for liberty and for justice freely granted by each to his fellow and so as freely enjoyed; and for the crowning glory and mercy of peace upon our land; -- that we may humbly take heart of these blessings as we gather once again with solemn and festive rites to keep our Harvest Home.”

The mineworker's strike

2011-07-04T09:48:00.001-04:00

My grandfather came from Cornwall, the beautiful blustery southwest corner of England, about which Gilbert and Sullivan wrote operettas and where pirates would hide in coves.

A carpenter all his life, he was typically English working class, the sort of man who is a solid husband and father, who says little. The sort of man one doesn’t see as a hero, and certainly not one who would claim the title, but he was.

The people of Cornwall were Celts; they were a bit like the Afghanis. The Afghanis have repelled every invader for more than 2,000 years; even Alexander the Great, who conquered Iran in three days, was stuck in Afghanistan eight years later, it’s tribal chiefs surly, and the quiet nature of the people disguising their refusal to become subjects to new rulers.

And so it was with the Celts, neither the Romans nor the Saxons succeeded in conquering them. But in 1072 the Normans finally subjugated them – in part it had to do with the subtle subversion religion introduces, preceding the Normans was Catholicism and with it the seeds for division.

The Norman conqueror, Robert, Count of Mortain, now ruled the beautiful promontory. My grandfather was named after him, its ironic how conquerors can become those revered. And his middle name was taken from a man deeply loved, Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort.

Not long after Robert Albert was born in 1899, the bairn was wrapped in swaddling clothes and traveled with his parents on the long, difficult journey to South Africa where the world’s greatest gold rush had excited imaginations. Incredibly large diamonds were also being pulled from the earth. In the 15 years after a schoolboy first found a diamond on the banks of the Orange River in 1867, more diamonds were found than in 2,000 years in India, the country that then was the land of diamonds. South Africa plucked the jewel from India’s crown.

In South Africa his father bought a small farm near a town called Humansdorp, a day’s wagon ride from Port Elizabeth, the town where they had docked. Humansdorp is a place of lush hills and valleys, overlooking the clear sapphire that is the Indian Ocean. It has a wind that lingers, a lot like Cornwall.

These Celtic tribespeople had settled in a place where invaders were resisted. The Xhosa who had settled here some generations earlier had only recently surrendered after 100-years of war with the British. The Boers, the descendants of the earliest Dutch sailors and French Huguenots who had settled at the Cape a century and a half before, had declared a truce not many years earlier, but remained surly.

Even as my great-grandfather began tilling the land and acquiring a small dairy herd, the Boers were arming themselves, such riches as the land was yielding encouraged covetousness. And so, not long after my great-grandparents arrived the Boers went to war against the British. All British.

And so all British were called to defend the Empire. My great-grandfather left his heavily pregnant wife to take up arms.

At some stage during that four-year conflict Boers surrounded the small homestead where but three days before my great-grandmother had given birth to Robert Albert’s brother. They torched the homestead; my grandmother fled with her baby and my grandfather, who was but a toddler.

My grandfather, sitting in his chair, always the same chair in the sun, told me little of what happened next, and spoke even less of how he signed up to serve in the First World War at age 16. He was captured by the Germans and made to work in salt mines, the Germans would beat them and rub salt into their wounds. The captured soldiers saw it as cruelty, but the salt probably prevented infections.

What he did talk of was the 1922 Mineworkers strike; the Cornish were renowned miners, but my grandfather never chose to work in the mines. He was a carpenter, but he lived among mineworkers in Troyeville, a suburb of Johannesburg.

Mineworkers had been influenced by the Bolshevik revolution and the rise of workers in Russia; many belonged to an international socialist union called the International Workers of the World. Then, as now, those who owned the mines treated mineworkers like scum, they earned poor pay and worked under hazardous conditions. They would see the large houses of the Randlords rising along the forested ridge of Johannesburg. The mining bosses would drive past them as they trudged to work or caught trams. Anger ran deep and so in 1922 white and black mineworkers went on strike.

My grandfather as a carpenter took no part in this and so when word came that there was to be a police raid, mineworkers panicked, they had all stockpiled weapons for the revolution that was to come. But it’s one thing preparing for a revolution and it’s another dying for it, when confronted by harsh police action the miners hesitated.

Neither jail nor martyrdom was an option; the weapons had to be disposed of. The loudmouths in meetings said they could not do it because the police would stop them. “Without a doubt, they will stop someone like me, I’m a leader, I can’t be seen to do it.”

Those who tossed stones and punched police at the barricades said they couldn’t either, what might happen if they were caught? And so it fell to the silent carpenter. In the early hours of one morning when the city was quiet, the gas lamps doused and the few streets with electric light slumbered below puddles of amber light, my grandfather strapped a heavy load of rifles and a spade wrapped in a tarpaulin to his bicycle and began peddling out of the city.

He had to peddle far with his uneven load for Johannesburg has always sprawled, it’s arms out, face to the sun, back to the hard red earth of Africa. But he peddled; he kept going even as dawn began parting the leaves of trees to peek through. He stopped only when no sign of the town could be seen, he stopped far from where even sleeping cows had blinked as he cycled by.

It was a place, he recalled later, of marshland, easy to dig a deep hole, and so he dug and in the hole placed the rifles of a revolution that would be buried with the guns. But what none could see then is that they would give seed to a new revolution that would take generations to sprout.

My grandfather wiped his spade clean with the golden grasses that flank Johannesburg, wrapped it in tarpaulin and cycled back, reaching home in time to change and catch the 6am tram to work. He never spoke of any of this, not to his wife, nor his children, only to me as I sat with him, bringing him tea as my gran had done, and my poor imitations of her shortbread.

I would leave him and go home and research the history. My history. Mine bosses and government moved rapidly to create division among the miners, they gave benefits to white miners but not black workers, and too denied black people the right to unionize. And so they watered the seed. (Workers at War CNETU and the 1946 African Mineworkers' Strike)

My mother asked, “Why did he never tell any of us?” after I shared his story. But she lacked the curiosity to ask him more, by then too history had turned and participation in socialist revolutions was not something one wanted one’s parents to have been involved in. And so I would go and sit with him in the sun drinking tea talking of then.

Years later after the revolution those rifles had spawned, a leader of the successful revolution, the one that gave democracy to all told me of a humble woman who risked her life to shelter him for three months. She never knew him before; she believed only in the cause that she hoped would bring freedom and the capacity to share more than she could now.

My friend, the leader, said he had become aware that sometimes she would give him food and go without, she simply could not afford to feed two.

“What needs to happen,” I said, “is that the only statue that should ever be erected should be to honor the invisible people, the unsung heroes, the people who make revolutions happen for without their risks no victories are possible.”

He listened, nodded his head and finished his tea. In the years since a large statue of Nelson Mandela has been erected in a shopping mall with a strangely small head atop his large body. Airports and streets have been renamed after liberation heroes, the sort we read about in history books.

But for people like that humble woman her capacity to feed two has diminished. Liberation doesn’t always bring freedom, sometimes it brings new woes, but the humble remain silent, uncomplaining, they get up early to go to work or to sit in lines waiting for the chance of a job. They sit silently knowing their grandchildren will finish the revolution they began.

The weekend pigs try to fly and cows become Hindu

2011-07-01T13:40:00.002-04:00

by Charlene Smith

This is not a happy weekend for pigs in America, nor cows.

In the barnyard there is a loud moo-ing and anxious grunting as they debate how long it will take them to make it over the border to Mexico.

Those pigs who have listened to human colloquialisms are trying to negotiate the wings off geese: “Surely you would love ma lil’ curly tail? It would look so good on a goose…”

The cows on the other hand are desperately trying to create turbans of their blankets and to proclaim themselves Hindu (even though Sikhs are not Hindu, but such cultural niceties are lost on the average American).

It’s the July 4^th weekend in America where everyone but pigs and cows will celebrate independence and the freedoms it brings. Flags are already hanging from many homes; red, white and blue napkins have sold out at stores, fireworks are doing a brisk sale in some grocers and already last weekend the first dull booms filled the skies.

But for pigs and cows it’s a sorry time for July 4 is when every American: carnivorous, omnivorous or vegetarian heats up the barbecue.

In places southern, pits have already been dug to slow roast pigs to serve – truly delicious sweet and smoky pulled pork.

The health conscious will combine lentils, hazelnuts and chickpeas for vegetarian burgers.

The middle-aged and health-conscious-but-environmentally-clueless will sear salmon or tuna on the grill – it’s amazing there are any left in the sea the world consumes so much of these two fish in some of the most carbon-ugly fishing expeditions in the oceans.

And then of course, the whole nation, nearly all of the 307-million Americans that inhabit this vast nation will gorge on hamburgers, yes, some will have steak or ribs, but this weekend, it’s the national dish: hamburger.

Newsstands are laden with magazines that all have the same theme: hamburgers. Headlines extol Grilling. Cookout Classics. Farm dinners to remember. Fresh recipes. Seafood! The ultimate grill guide.

It is not a happy time at the farmyard.

And after they’re done grilling at the beach, in the mountains, on their porches and backyards they’ll head out somewhere to be with others and share the spirit of a nation where the politicians continually bicker but most everyone else gets along.

In Boston thousands will picnic on the banks of the beautiful Charles river, yachts will pirouette, their sails out like dancers skirts; rowers from Harvard and MIT will reveal bronzed muscles and jest with each other on the water, rose petals will abandon their branches and float past in the air like butterflies.

And then the Boston Pops will whip up the crowd in friendly humming and joyous singing before fireworks light up the sky just after it gets dark at 10pm.

In Washington, where the temperatures and humidity will be higher there will be a parade along Constitution Avenue ending with a spectacular display of fireworks over the Washington Monument. There will be free live music galore, the National Symphony will perform outdoors, and so will military bands and military jazz bands. Visitors will flock to Arlington and the Vietnam memorial to honor war dead. The National Archives have a special public celebration to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The American Legion has already been restoring the ribbons and red and blue silk flowers wrapped around plaques dotted across America’s towns and cities paying tribute to servicemen and women, whether soldiers or police officers who have died in the line of duty. This is a country that wears its heart on its sleeve and you’d have to be a hard person indeed not to be touched.

In West Virginia a state that last saw prosperity in the 1950s, Anne McGee director of Cabell County Substance Abuse program told me today, there will be a four-day celebration of crafts.

Anne noted: “The economic crisis never affected us, we’ve been poor all along.” But on the weekend of July 4 the mountain state (this is where Hillbillies come from) has a four day fair that shows the best of quilt-making, sheep-shearing and kite-making, along the way you may even find great old-timer whisky stills. If not, lemonade is the best drink for these hot summers.

I’ve ordered whoopee pies and shoofly pie from the heart of Amish country, New Holland in Pennsylvania and we too will fire up a grill under a spreading wisteria and make hamburgers while Miss Gabriella Ruby frolics in her whale (a portable swimming pool, you might even find me wallowing in the shallow waters).

These are recipes I liked from some of the newsstand mags that give pigs and cows a break:

The Best Veggie Burger from Gourmet

Half cup chopped onion

1 Tbsp. olive oil

Half cup bulgur wheat

1-cup water

1 cup canned pinto beans, rinsed and drained well

1 ½ Tbsp. soy sauce

¾ cup walnuts

2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped

½ cup cilantro sprigs

¾ tsp. ground cumin

¼ tsp. cayenne

¼ cup mayonnaise

¼ tsp. grated lime zest

½ tsp. fresh lime juice

4 slices multigrain bread, toasted

Cook half the onion with ¼ tsp. salt in oil in a small heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally until golden. Add bulgur and water and cook, covered, over low heat until water is absorbed 15 to 18 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and stir in beans and soy sauce.

Pulse bulgur mixture, walnuts, garlic, cilantro, cumin, cayenne, a rounded ¼ tsp. salt, ½ tsp. pepper and remaining onion in a food processor until finely chopped.

Create patties with half cups of the mixture. Chill 10 mins.

While patties chill mix mayonnaise, zest and juice.

Prepare gill for direct heat cooking. Brush patties with oil. Cook for about 4 mins each side. Serve burgers on toast with lime mayo.

And instead of coleslaw try New England Curried Cabbage with Cashews from Yankee

Quarter cup butter or olive oil

1/3 cup raw cashews

3 Tbsp. minced fresh ginger

1 Tbsp. cumin seed

1 small cabbage, thinly sliced

½ tsp. turmeric

1 tsp. salt

½ tsp. freshly ground black pepper

In a large frying pan over medium heat, melt butter or warm oil. Add cashews, ginger and cumin, cook, stirring often until cashews and ginger are golden and fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add cabbage and turmeric, cook, stirring often until tender, about 10 mins. Serves 6

And afterwards, how about a good ol' pie?

Souls in hell screaming to come out

2011-06-26T19:52:00.005-04:00

Lost soul by Ravi Porter

I’ve written so that the dead could live. To allow the shouts of the silenced.

It sounds noble when written like that, even pompous, when most often it was desperation. It was the flailing limbs of one drowning. I’d write of those shot, bombed, stabbed, hacked, mutilated in wars and conflict. In peacetime I wrote of those raped, and those denied medications. I would try and write with compassion and honesty so they were more than just statistics.

And I would try and write in ways that allowed the sainted to lose their haloes and walk among us. Their flaws worn like ribbons.

My gift was being born to rightwing bigots. They provided the barometer of what I didn’t want to be.

Writers George Orwell and Anne Lamott had fathers who influenced their writing, their sense of being ‘other.’ I was convinced I was adopted. As a child I would keep fledglings in boxes in my room and wake at odd hours to feed them with droppers. I’d cycle to the home for cerebral palsied children and help the nurses and their aides. I won the ‘good fellowship award’ so often at school, that I finally declined to be nominated so that others could have a chance.

The eldest of five children, I was pretty and petite, the rest of the family was large and stocky.

How could I belong to them? These people who hit, who hated, who roared? And so I resonate with Lamott when she writes in Bird by Bird: “All I ever wanted was to belong, to wear that hat of belonging.”

Another gift was my father refusing to pay for my university education, I was clever and graduated from school when I was 15; but girls, my parents believed, should have a simple job, something to tide them over until marriage. I left home with my budgie, and a radio my father collected three days later.

By divine fortune I was interviewed for a newspaper cadet (journalism training) course. There were 600 applicants for 13 positions.

Everything about me was wrong. I was too young, had no college degree, no experience. I asked a friend about the man who would conduct the interview. He’d just returned from Antarctica I was told.

I asked him: “I believe you’ve just returned from Antarctica, what was it like?” We spent the hour talking about his trip. And so I discovered the first important thing about journalists: they love to talk about themselves.

At the end he laughed, “You’ll make a very good journalist.” And I did.

Orwell has written that: “All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy.” My friend, Rian Malan, who wrote an international bestseller says writers are by-line junkies. We love seeing our name in print. It’s also extraordinary when we realize we have followers, people who have regard for our writing and our opinions. Sometimes I wonder about that Charlene: does she ever feels as anxious about her judgments as I?

It helps, as Orwell discovered, to have a cause. It makes writers less self-obsessed. He had the Spanish Civil War. I had apartheid, and then HIV and AIDS, and then sexual violence; and frankly I am now politicked out.

I look at the petty pointscoring in this nation that has so much potential but so many whiners and frankly I could just smack someone. I want to say, grow up, dammit. Stop frittering this away.

So I don’t want to write about politics anymore, yet I can’t help it, issues stand in front of me, their hands on their hips and say, ‘aren’t you simply outraged?’ And I am. And I find myself researching something else yet again that I know will get me into trouble, again, but I can’t help myself.

But more than anything I want to start doing real creative writing. Novels. Short stories. They’re burning in me. They’re like souls in hell screaming to come out.

They’d be about loss. About leaving. About idealism and disillusionment.

And yes, I agree with Orwell: “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.” I’ve always said it’s like having a child. The sex is always a great idea. Absolutely fabulous. (The book concept.)

I also enjoy pregnancy, I had an icky three months with my second one where I became addicted to toasted bacon and banana sandwiches and felt nauseous every time I looked at a computer monitor. (The book proposal) But for the rest of the pregnancy I wafted along in floaty garments feeling special (Proposal accepted, early research)

It’s the last month that gets to me, I call it the kicking-down-walls phase, you just want the baby out. NOW. (Realizing you have over-researched and now have to write the book).

I had two natural births; anyone who does this deserves a free pass to an insane asylum. (Organizing the research, writing, cutting, not sleeping, drinking too much coffee, writing, cutting, wondering how so much paper got onto the floor, drinking too much tea, writing, editing).

And then the baby is born and you’re overjoyed. (You give the final manuscript to the publisher)

But what you’ve forgotten is that for the first six weeks your body is going to be hammered by sleep deprivation and the cries of a colicky baby (negotiating with the editor).

And then the book comes out and you get good reviews. (It’s your infant’s first birthday and s/he takes his or her first steps. You lead the chorus of ‘isn’t s/he just perfect?’) Although I’ve never met a writer yet who ever thought they wrote the perfect book or article.

Like Lamott I write because I find life and people fascinating. I write because I am ordinary, but writing makes me feel like a person even I am interested in. But then again as Margaret Atwood wrote in Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing; ‘Wanting to meet a writer because you like their writing is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pate.’

I love ducks.

Learning how to quilt

2011-06-26T09:12:00.000-04:00

At this age I know I can vault a five-foot wall wearing a 50-pound armor-plated vest designed to stop automatic weapon fire.

At a much younger age, I would race through farmlands, loud rock music blaring, as a weekend rally driver. Now the D.C. beltway puts my nerves on edge, and the rutted interstates of Massachusetts have me flexing fingers that hold the steering wheel too tight.

As a little girl I used to sit at my bedroom window when the light was off and I was supposed to be dreaming; I’d look for fairies dancing in the garden. In the morning I would search for four-leafed clovers and mushroom rings.

Dragonflies whirred low over our swimming pool, their wings glittering pink, blue, green, silver and gold before suddenly darting off to shed their wings to carry children’s prayers. I knew it. I was sure of it.

As a journalist I discovered that truth was a lie. There are many truths, they are gilded or torn depending on who presently possesses it.

As a writer I discovered that freedom is the greatest gift life gives, it’s the one we desire the most, fear when we have it, and are most likely to abuse.

As a South African I learned that discrimination harms those who hate more than those despised. I learnt too that those once discriminated against, often, once free, wear their past as a shield to the injustices they now inflict.

As a dual citizen, an American too, I am learning how freedom from fear, the fifth freedom we spoke of as anti-apartheid activists, based on Roosevelt’s four freedoms – the fifth: Freedom from Fear, is the greatest of all.

I luxuriate in open doors, windows without bars, parcels unmolested upon patio floors. I walk through streets and crowds as anonymous as a ghost and want to laugh with love for Lady Liberty.

So here I am, starting again. And in the new I’m retrieving the scattered parts of me, and learning how to quilt.

I have found that in uncertainty creativity is born anew.

Drugged to their eyeballs – how over-use of medication is destroying the American dream

2011-06-19T08:09:00.000-04:00

by Charlene Smith (c)

Forget the Mexican drug lords and the Medellin Cartel; more Americans are addicted to prescription drugs, especially painkillers than cocaine, heroin or most other illicit drugs.

In fact, opioid painkillers are so heavily used and abused in the United States that they have all but killed the cocaine trade. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported in 2010, “a marked decrease in the use of some illegal drugs like cocaine.”[1] The quantity of cocaine seized in El Salvador and destined for the United States plummeted for the second consecutive year, from 4,074 kg in 2007 to 394 kg in 2009, according to the International Narcotics Control Board.

The entry drug for recreational abuse is no longer marijuana; it is prescription medications. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health reported in 2010[2], “nearly one third of people aged 12 and over who used drugs for the first time in 2009 began by using a prescription drug non-medically.” The White House added: “the latest Monitoring the Future study – the Nation’s largest study of drug use among young people – showed that prescription drugs are the second most-abused category of drugs after marijuana.”

In April, the White House issued a paper: “Epidemic: Responding to America’s Prescription Drug Crisis,” that noted: “Prescription drug abuse is the Nation’s fastest-growing drug problem.” It noted that the use of opioid painkillers had increased more than four fold over the 10 years to 2007.

It’s having a major impact on school performance (among the worst rates in the world), innovation (the U.S. now ranks bottom in the world), workplace productivity and the economic health of the nation. It has a major impact on childcare, in some hospitals in Florida 15 percent to 20 percent of all babies born are addicted to prescription drugs according to Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.

And if the child is not born an addict most parents will do their best to change that with constant supplies of headache pills, antihistamines in spring to prevent allergies, and Ritalin once the child goes to school. And parents don’t always have a say in this, Ritalin can be prescribed for children by teachers (who have no medical experience) and a parent that tries to buck the system could find social services begin investigating them for neglect.

One set of parents whose 14-year-old sign died after seven years on Ritalin complied when so threatened, and since their son’s death (Ritalin increased the size of his heart) they have become activist. http://www.ritalindeath.com/

Even the Drug Enforcement Administration has weighed in with warnings about Ritalin and similar drugs: “Methylphenidate, a Schedule II substance, has a high potential for abuse and produces many of the same effects as cocaine or the amphetamines... the primary legitimate medical use of methylphenidate (Ritalin®, Methylin®, Concerta®) is to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children. The increased use of this substance for the treatment of ADHD has paralleled an increase in its abuse among adolescents and young adults who crush these tablets and snort the powder to get high. Youngsters have little difficulty obtaining methylphenidate from classmates or friends who have been prescribed it. Greater efforts to safeguard this medication at home and school are needed.”[3]

And yet two-thirds more are spent on Ritalin and its companion drugs in the U.S.A. than the entire rest of the world combined - can American children really be that disruptive? So distracted? Go figure.

Prescription drug abuse tends to be most prevalent (about 80 percent) in white Americans, especially men, they tend to be educated, middle-class and to form the backbone of the economic muscle of this country. Which should be ringing warning bells louder than it has in the infighting halls of Congress.

Addicted parents will often put their children onto drugs, like Ritalin, because they can then claim disability for their children and pay for more drugs. It has long-term negative consequences for the children, but that requires an addict to think beyond the next fix and that is unlikely to happen.

And if doctors won’t give them the drugs – a rare event, but there is a growing coterie of very concerned medical professionals – they get them from pill mills – drug clinics – that predominate and happily dispense opioid painkillers for very minor reasons. Or they source them over the Internet where drugs are cheaper and are often dispensed without a prescription.

While pharmaceutical companies are becoming mega-rich - they average returns of nine percent a year and are the strongest sector in the U.S. economy, the health care system is buckling. It is predicted that within a decade Americans will spend a third of their income on health care. Sales at Johnson & Johnson rose 7,5 percent this year and at Swiss drug maker, Novartis rose 14 percent – most of its drug sales are in the United States. And yet, they have never invested less in new drug research – the situation is so serious with less research coming from Big Pharma, that the U.S. is spending more (money it doesn’t have) on medical research – and then guess who buys the patents and markets them at high costs to an American public that already paid for the drugs in research dollars.

Remember too that this is the only country in the world that does not negotiate drug prices; big Pharma can charge what it likes here. And the U.S. and New Zealand are the only countries in the world that allow prescription drug advertising and marketing to the general public – and so these ads saturate the media especially radio and television. If it was no longer allowed more than one media house would be in danger of collapse, but then again that’s what was said about tobacco ads.

Doctors who do not want to prescribe find themselves under pressure from patients and their peers. Academic research is corrupted as drug companies pay for research that benefits them – the controversial studies on bi-polar in infants from Harvard professors is a famous example. And yet a growing number of doctors and psychologists are questioning a society that insists on over-medicating.

Popular television shows like House make light of a doctor who abuses Vicodin, a painkiller that is among the most abused prescription drugs in America. Magazines like Vanity Fair dryly note that at New York parties’ attendees discuss and debate the virtues of the medications they take.

The New York Times runs regular articles of, as an example, psychiatrists who limit patients to 15-minute visits and refuse to discuss the patient’s condition but merely serve as drug dispensers. They have reported on worrying overuse in the military – 10 percent to 12 percent of active duty members are addicted to prescription medication according to the military - and a growing rate of suicides linked to this.

In Ohio, fatal overdoses more than quadrupled in the last decade, and by 2007 had surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of accidental death, according to the Department of Health.

There are many ways to solve the problem – if the U.S. government spent five percent of what drug companies do on advising consumers of the risks they are taking that could make a dent.

If the Federal Drug Administration and other research bodies disallowed any scientist who receives government funds from working as a consultant to Big Pharma that could make a dent (and from refusing to have on their boards or making decisions about new drugs those who received more than five percent of their income from Big Pharma).

The U.S. needs to finally cash in its chips in Iraq and Afghanistan and withdraw and start rehabilitating its troops, but too, the DEA needs to spend more time on resolving prescription drug abuse at home.

It will be a long road, but it’s absolutely necessary that it begin as a matter of considerable urgency.

[1] Results from the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings, SAMHSA, 2010 contained in Epidemic: Responding to America’s Prescription Drug Abuse Crisis, Office of the President of the United States, April, 2011 (and too, report of the International Narcotics Control Board, United Nations, 2010 – Section 346)

[2] Results from the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health: National Findings, SAMHSA, 2010 contained in Epidemic: Responding to America’s Prescription Drug Abuse Crisis, Office of the President of the United States, April, 2011

[3] U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Drug Information: M http://www.justice.gov/dea/concern/m.html

The racist in me

2011-06-12T12:33:00.000-04:00

By Charlene Smith

One of my many blessings was being born to parents who were bigots. My father hated black people, gays, communists, Catholics, Jews – women who didn’t know their place – and he never considered sparing the rod to spoil the child.

My mother concurred and would facilitate the regular beatings of his five children with belts, hands, and fists; she would weigh in with hairbrushes and vitriol. And no, we weren’t trailer trash; our family was nouveau riche with holiday homes, speedboats, ugly oil paintings and Persian carpets bought because they were status symbols.

A few things can happen to the children of such parents; they can become cowed and emulate the conduct that harmed them. They can become emotionally blunted and have difficulty sustaining relationships. Or they may rebel and become people who stop the circle of abuse and self-degradation, because no one who behaves as my parents did can truly like themselves.

Their gift to me was providing a barometer of what I did not want to be. I was a kind child with a bedroom full of shoe-boxes of fledglings that other children would bring me and that I would feed with droppers. I took refuge in books and writing. It was not hard to be different.

A child from such a family is also likely to become so dispirited they underachieve because they are convinced of their unworthiness; or they become a super-achiever, and although that child’s parents will never give them credit for their success, in the end it is not needed, a generous world does that.

Many such children, once they realize that it is necessary to abandon their parent or parents for their own survival, create families wherever they go. And so it has been with me, once journalism helped me shake my inherent shyness, I became friendly, and I’ve become friendlier as I have aged. Not caring about what others think has become more natural. Some call it confidence, I just think that everyone believes they are invisible, until someone notices them and when someone acknowledges us, we see them. Our world opens a little more.

And the more we say a kind word to someone, make a stranger laugh, encourage a child, the cracks in every door start splintering and we find ourselves facing a wide-open world, filled with happiness and opportunity.

I have been blessed to love those from the groups my father hated. And they have filled my life with joy. Of course, there has been sadness but none so wounding that my spirit has faltered. It has been a most remarkable life.

I began work after school. My father didn’t believe a girl deserved to go to university, not even a straight A student who graduated from high school a month after turning 16. I was fortunate enough to be accepted into a journalism cadet school run by a newspaper group. I was the youngest and the only one without a degree. It was the most fortunate event of my life, thank you John Pitt, the senior editor who interviewed and recommended me over the misgivings of others.

I became the first woman crime reporter in South Africa and the youngest ever; it was 1976, the year of the Soweto uprising. That event on June 16 changed my life. I could no longer be complicit to racism; the apartheid police were killing children, some my age, others far younger. I saw the first corpses of my life and discovered a rage and sadness at discrimination that would never leave me.

When my daughter was a baby I had a young black woman work for me, she had two children. The law said they could not stay with her. I believed the law was wrong. I had the children stay with her, they lived in a cottage next to my home. I instructed her that if the police came she was to lock herself and them in my house and call me.

A neighbor complained at black children playing in the yard. The police came. They arrested me. I asked my mother to care for my two-year-old and said I was going to jail. My mother was furious: “How can you be so irresponsible?” But in my view, I was being responsible, how could I do nothing if other mothers lacked the right to have their children with them? From the minute my daughter was born I believed that if I wanted her to live in a just world, then what I did, or failed to do, could influence her future. If I wanted her to be treated justly; I had to ensure I showed justice and compassion to others.

I went to court with a toothbrush, toothpaste, facecloth and spare panties. The magistrate wanted me to pay a fine. I refused. “I want to go to jail,” I said, “I have come prepared.” It threw the court into disarray; they didn’t want a pretty young blonde, the mother of a two-year-old to go to jail. They adjourned; the magistrate summonsed me to his office. “Do you know what you are doing?” he gruffly admonished.

“Yes,” I said, “I knowingly broke the law and I will do it again.” He reconvened court and acquitted me. Heaven forbid a white woman should go to jail at a time that courts were taking three minutes on average to send black people to jail for 28 days or more for failure to be in so-called ‘white areas’ – 87% of the country – without the requisite authority, which was almost impossible to attain.

You would have thought that with all of this that I was not a racist wouldn’t you?

But I was.

I realized it a few months later. I had opened a Center of Concern at my home on Saturday’s for black women. Most such Centers operated on Thursdays at church halls, but I worked weekdays and my housekeeper wanted to go to one, so I opened one at my home.

It was pandemonium on a Saturday, 50 or more women would be crammed into my tiny house – there were cooking classes in the kitchen, sewing in the living room, literacy in the dining room, knitting and talks in the garage.

One Saturday I was sitting next to a woman teaching her how to knit, we were chatting about this and that and suddenly a thought came into my head. I thought, “I have been speaking to this woman all this time and never once has it occurred to me that she is black.” And to my horror realized the residual racist within me.

And so I learned that discrimination is not just something we lose by using fine words or good deeds; working against discrimination is a daily commitment.

Prejudice is inherent in humans, it is how we try to measure ourselves against others and appear better. It may be little things, we could say we don’t like blondes because they tend to be dumb; we may aver that we don’t like Nigerians because they tend to be con artists … the minute we say ‘tend to be’ or ‘even’ (women even drive trains nowadays), we’re discriminating.

Listen to your words, pay attention to your thoughts, watch your actions.

Life is too short, with too many great people waiting to come into your life, to narrow it with prejudice.