Journey of Awakening – 50: The Paper Caper

I was fully intending to get back to Boston by spring in 1978—writing about it, that is. But another intrusion into my writing career had to do with the need to prepare my mother’s home for a summer repair project. Our son Eric and his lovely wife Tina had generously offered Eric’s services for a month this summer to do some much needed upgrades of the place. A bonus is that he is bringing our two granddaughters, Katy, 9 and Grace, 6 to spend the summer with Grandma and Grandpa. They will be staying in Mom’s cottage, which will also be known as “the job site.” Granddaughter Samantha, 7 is flying out from Iowa and will be staying in our newly remodeled guest room. We are pleased that these cousins will be able to meet for the first time.

That was the good news. When I mentioned preparing my mother’s home for the repair project, I didn’t say that a good part of the preparation entailed stripping 25-year-old decorative wallpaper from two bathrooms, a hallway, and an enormous vaulted-ceiling living and dining room. Linda and I researched “best practices” for removing old wallpaper and received a bazillion pieces of advice from Googlers and others, including products they swore by and simple home remedies. We finally decided to buy an inexpensive steamer contraption at Lowe’s after exploring renting a similar but larger one at Home Depot. I was soon to have a great deal of clarity on what all of our Google friends meant when they referred to “swearing by” their various recommended methods.

We had one asset that helped immensely—our Gang. I had also read Tom Sawyer. We enticed Frank, 78, Paul, 65, and Tomi, 67 to a “Beer-Pizza-Wallpaper Party” at Mom’s Place on a Saturday. This gave us a rolling start as Tomi and Linda worked in one bathroom and I in the other while we put Frank and Paul on the steamer in the dining room. We are grateful for friends who can turn work projects into fun. They even volunteered to put in a few extra hours in the week following the party.

Frank suggested that I go back to Home Depot and find out if their rented steamer, which was larger than the one I had purchased for fifty bucks but which rented for thirty dollars for four hours, would make the work go faster. The friendly HD guy just shook his head with the comment “It’s wallpaper, Dude!”

Today after writing class I will finish the last remaining patch of freakin’ flowered wallpaper. Can someone tell me why anyone thought putting paper on walls was a good idea?

Journey of Awakening – 49: My Last Town Meeting

I remember the day we left Pittsburgh, Suzanne Heilman and I, heading for the town of Snow Shoe, at the summit of I-80, before making the descent to Philadelphia. Suzanne, Burna Dunn and I had been assigned to travel from Richmond, Virginia to the Pittsburgh ICA House, which was Burna and David Dunn’s home base, to mop up the remaining towns in the western half of the state. We spent several days on phones scheduling Town Meetings, which our volunteers would then be assigned to show up and conduct, often on one day’s notice.

Finally, we were down to the last two or three counties. Once the dates were set and the teams assigned, there was just one small town left—Snow Shoe. It was decided that Suzanne and I would cover it on the way to our Washington, D.C. House where the rest of our set-up teams were gathering.

The light snowfall began about noon and then kept on falling. We were on I-80, too far to turn back, we concluded. Then the windshield wipers on the borrowed car stopped working. It was a wet snowfall. I ended up driving with the window down holding the wheel with my right hand and swishing the wiper blades across my side of the windshield with my left. It was slow going and we began to notice the highway becoming slick. At one point we were alongside a semi-trailer which began what looked like a jack-knifing motion. There was not much I could do except hope and pray so I just took my foot off the accelerator and let the huge truck swing sideways, hoping it would miss us. It did. We pushed on.

Around 6 o’clock we stopped at a roadside café for a bite. It was now snowing hard enough that we decided there was no way people were going to come out for a Town Meeting, even if we got there. So we phoned the Snow Shoe town hall before getting back on the road. The meeting was set for 7 p.m. and we were at least an hour away. The cheery voice of the mayor, who was hosting the meeting, answered and let us know they were used to weather like this. Most of the attendees were already there and they were looking forward to this meeting and would wait for us.

 

We arrived about an hour late and this little group of about a dozen Snow Shoers welcomed us warmly and stayed for two hours, gathered around a wood-burning stove for one of the more memorable events of the Town Meeting campaign. I don’t recall any of their issues or proposals, but the enthusiasm for their town and their active participation still finds a welcome niche in my memory bank.

We were lucky we needed neither chains nor snow shoes to get there. That Town Meeting in the late winter of 1978 was the last one I recall having participated in. I was looking forward to returning to the Boston House and Linda and Eric, and preparing for my last journey into Maine in the spring.

Journey of Awakening – 48: A Three Month Interlude

Life does not correspond to timelines—mine or anyone’s. I was intending to finish off writing about the Town Meeting campaign in Pennsylvania, winter of ’78. But on February 12 of this year Linda and I got a call that changed our lives: “This is the Redlands Police Department. Your mother has run her car into a tree and we are taking her to Redlands Community Hospital Emergency.”

Mom’s car after arguing with a tree

So began a three-plus month interruption in my life story. My mother, Opal, at age 95, had two broken legs at the knees and a fractured neck. She was transferred to Arrowhead Regional trauma center where she underwent five hours of surgery followed by a couple of weeks back at Redlands Community and then a transfer to Asistencia Villa for skilled nursing care and physical therapy rehab. She remains there, struggling with persistent bacterial infections that slow her recovery progress.

Easter Brunch at Asistencia Villa

Mother’s Day 2012 at Asistencia Villa

We have been introduced to the California Medi-Cal system in an entirely new way. Since Mom has very limited assets, she has no way of covering the hundreds of thousands of dollars that her care is costing. We have been fortunate to be referred to an advocate who is helping us work through the process of getting Mom qualified for Medi-Cal. Meanwhile, we have had to transfer all of Mom’s assets to me as part of the process. She was actually planning to stop driving at the end of May. Did I mention that life does not correspond to timelines?

I don’t want to make excuses for my lapse into the realm of non-writing, but this was not the only impediment I encountered. We had begun a complete renovation of our little apartment in early February, which required moving out for at least three weeks, storing all of our furniture and belongings on our neighbor’s patio, and living in a friend’s apartment. Neither did all go as planned with this project. Just as the last of the hardwood flooring was laid a leak was discovered in the wall adjoining the bathroom and our new guest room. The flooring had to be completely ripped up and replaced, adding an additional two weeks to the completion date.

A third and final distraction was my son Rob’s two trips to the emergency room with a still undiagnosed condition but one which it seems he has since recovered from.

My conclusion is that life seems to present itself to us in “3’s” but I cannot guarantee this.

I hope to get back to my Journey of Awakening saga next week. Sometimes awakening happens even without the journey, even without the story. It just happens. That’s amazing!

Journey of Awakening – 47: A Memorable Town

New Year week 1978. Somehow, call it Linda’s miraculous recovery or sheer determination, our family, me, Linda, Eric, and Troy who was in our Student House in Chicago, all were in one place for about a week in Boston. We decided to take a family one day trip to Cape Cod, stopping at Plymouth Rock on the way.

We drove all the way to Provincetown   Cape Cod from Above

January was definitely not the time to visit Cape Cod. And we were disappointed that we could not actually stand on Plymouth Rock which was several feet below us with a fence surrounding its enclosure. Troy’s only comment was “Is that it?”

That was the extent of our family holiday before I headed back out on the Town Meeting circuit.

By the time I joined the team we were moving our base of operations to Richmond, Virginia. Assignments were a little saner for the two weeks we were in Virginia. We had more volunteers so could go out in teams of two. We had a couple of us stay back in Richmond phoning to set up the meetings and appointments so the rest of us could concentrate on scheduling and conducting the forums.

My Colleague Burna Dunn in front of Richmond ICA House

I remember one foray I and another volunteer made all the way out to the point where Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee connect. A little town nestled in a valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The name is lost to memory. Let’s call it Jonesville.

Many of the small mountain towns in SW Virginia were “Company Towns”

The only issue that seemed to be on the mind of the town leaders as we discussed scheduling their Town Meeting was that they were really disappointed that they could not get the participation of the black folks in the community in town affairs. I am sure they were well-intentioned sentiments. I couldn’t help wondering whether they realized how deep were the scars of more than two hundred years of slavery and being treated as less than human. We knew that whatever issues a town expressed on the surface, it was most difficult for the citizens to see with clarity the underlying contradictions that kept them from addressing their real situations.

Of course, one Town Meeting would not resolve all of the community issues. But we were often amazed at how much could be accomplished when people came together, left their entrenched beliefs at the door, and used appropriate methods aimed at building consensus.

I sometimes wonder if that little Virginia mountain town ever got it together.

Journey of Awakening – 46: Snowed in – in Harrisburg, PA

December 1977 - Working my way toward western Pennsylvania on the Town Meeting circuit. Our team of ten volunteers was to meet up in Harrisburg, the capitol of Pennsylvania, at the home of Ellen and Dick Howie, who were expecting to put us up for a couple of nights.

The snow flurries began the week before Christmas. By the time we arrived in Harrisburg most of the highways east and north all the way to upstate New York and as far as Boston were closed. The blizzard of ’77 was upon the eastern states with all its fury.

             Harrisburg                            Boston

Linda and Eric were stuck in Boston and I was stuck in Harrisburg. Airports were closing and even the trains were not running. So our colleagues, the Howies, were stuck with ten of us, sleeping in their living and dining room for about a week. We made due, huddling around the fireplace, singing Town Meeting songs and Christmas carols, played lots of chess and card games, and tried not to wear out our welcome. A couple of days before the New Year I was able to get a train and made it back to Boston in time to greet 1978 and find Linda with a bad case of flu. As I remember I had to walk through the as yet unplowed streets from Copley Plaza station to our house, dragging my bag through the snow. But it was good to be home.

The streets were not cleared for another eight days, which was fine because we were both recovering from sickness and Town Meeting travel. Eric, who was in fourth grade, had to take care of both of his parents. And he did so without complaining.

When I returned to Pennsylvania in the middle of January, the snow was no longer an impediment and the roads were clear. So back on the Town Meeting circuit.

The only additional memory I have of my time in Harrisburg was driving by these huge cooling towers of the Three Mile Island nuclear power generating station, unaware that in just one year this would be the scene of the worst nuclear disaster in our nation’s history and the occasion for major changes in the world’s nuclear power industry.

The Meltdown

It always amazes me how the day-to-day focus on what is in front of us as our particular piece of the human adventure allows us to go on in the midst of impending world-altering events. Another sign of how little control we actually have over the world—or over our own lives.

Journey of Awakening – 45: December Surprise

Thanksgiving 1977 was spent in the ICA’s New York Regional House on the lower east side of Manhattan preparing for the next phase of the Town Meeting campaign. Our campaign team, which we named our “Strike Force” (a term stolen from our reading of the famous Chinese general Sun Tzu), had the ominous task of completing community forums throughout the eastern states. We were intent on conquering the eastern seaboard before Spring. After a weekend of celebration and planning Linda and Eric, Nancy Trask, and Tom Reemtsma were all sent back to hold down the Boston House and Region. I was assigned to go with the 15 or 20 volunteers making up the Strike Force.

We headed for Philadelphia, which was our base for the first two weeks of December. I was immediately dispatched to cover southeastern Pennsylvania. So I began my next solitary journey on a cloudy December day with only a highway map and a story to tell. Highway 30 took me to Downington, Coatesville, Lancaster, York, New Oxford, Hanover, and on the second or third day out on my circuit, I came upon a highway sign that gave me a little shiver and caused me to pull the car over to the side of the road: “Gettysburg 10 miles.”

I had of course memorized Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, as most of my generation did, while still in grade school. And I had always felt this connection to Abraham Lincoln, the log cabin lawyer who rose to the highest office in the land and then was tragically taken down just as the war over which he presided to save the Union was finally over. Carl Sandberg’s Lincoln was my Lincoln. So I decided to take the afternoon off and spend it at the Gettysburg battlefield. It was an eerie experience for me. There was not a soul at the museum center. I literally was able to walk around the battleground undisturbed. I could almost hear the cannon and rifle fire and the yells of the soldiers as they charged up one hill after another and the screams of the wounded and dying men as they lay waiting to die or be picked up and taken to a field hospital. I stayed there until dusk, in a contemplative state, not wanting to leave.

I don’t recall much about how many towns were scheduled for Town Meetings during the two weeks working out of Philadelphia. But I will never forget the afternoon spent at Gettysburg.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Journey of Awakening – 44: Leaving Maine

Mainers have a saying that goes something like “no matter how many years you stay away you’ll always come back.” I think it has something to do with the sense of ‘place’, the feeling of ‘coming home.’ I’ve had that feeling about a few of the places I’ve lived. Occasionally I have a bit of nostalgia about the old North Side where I grew up in Minneapolis, a real neighborhood.

  Plymouth Avenue & Morgan Avenue Businesses             Home at 915 Morgan

Lincoln, Nebraska, where I lived for seven years and where our kids were in grade school holds fond memories of family and friends.

Me and Rob at home       Gordon & Claudine Scott                Trinity UCC

San Francisco represents a time of re-emerging as a human being after a period of spiritual aridity.

The San Francisco ICA House           No Caption Needed      Now Six Bucks to ride?

And Maine. It is difficult to capture in words the feeling of being at home I experienced while travelling from town to town in that state.

There is that nagging truism about not being able to go home again. And my experience bears that out. Each time I’ve returned to any of those places that saying comes to me not in word or emotion but as experiential fact. Nonetheless, the sense of ‘home’ comes up and I have to ask myself: “What is that?”

This week I had the urge to type Ellis Bliss’ name into the Google search box and the first post that came up was her obituary. Ellis died this past September and her memorial was held in October at her old UCC church in Portland. Memories came up: The time she dropped the lobster for dinner into the pot before the water was boiling and we watched the poor creature jump out on the floor; how she was always there to welcome me ‘home’ after a long cold drive; how she would beam as she talked about her kids; her devotion to Harry who was always a big dreamer and social activist; and welcoming me back after 20 years of no contact even though I had two colleagues with me for an overnight stay.

                 Me and Ellis in 1996                      34 Bay Road in South Portland, Maine

I left Maine behind that cold November in 1977. And it was true that nothing was the same when I returned years later. But I guess the lesson for me about coming home was that even though I left Maine, Maine never left me, just as all the places I mentioned earlier remain with me, though I left them long ago.

Whenever I forget that ‘home’ is just another concept that I can get hung up on, that sense of ‘being home’ comes up to remind me that I am never not at home.

Well, I thought I was through with Maine. Apparently Maine was not yet through with me but I would have wander around the eastern United States for a few months before that discovery.