Marching Against Endless War

On Boston Common this morning, about 10,000 people rallied and marched against the Iraq war and the possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran. A Gold Star step-mother spoke of the letters she received from her son in Iraq playfully complaining about the laziness of a fellow soldier. She reported that her step-son's death was followed 18 days later by the death of his "lazy" friend.

Several Iraq war veterans stood silently on stage as one of them spoke about the many costs of the war to themselves and the nation. Rappers, including Son of Nun, performed in a medium particularly well-suited to political invective. Several speakers reminded those assembled that rights were never so much granted from above as demanded from "below." Howard Zinn, the leftist historian, asserted that the mission of all governments is to maintain the position of the wealthy and powerful. Another speaker, an official from the Unitarian Universalist Association called for America to regain its position as a moral leader in the world. Not all were in agreement that America was ever a world leader morally. Zinn suggested that the last war the U.S. fought in genuine reaction to being attacked was in 1812. This seemed the great divide among the protesters: those who thought America had lost its way but could regain its moral footing and those who viewed America as a historical bully and provocateur.

Ever since that humid week in Philadelphia in 1776, America has wrapped itself in the lofty rhetoric of liberty and justice for all. The Founders were sincere in their love of liberty; they staked their lives on it. That sincerity created this nation and millions within the US and around the world continue to draw strength from those words. But when our leaders justify their ugly foreign policy with the use of that lofty rhetoric, we enter Orwell country -- at very much our own risk. It appears that President John Kennedy first introduced the nation to what later was called "double speak." The soldiers that JFK sent to Vietnam were to be called "advisers." The war was to be referred to as a "police action." (His many medical ailments were to be called "vigor.")

It took President Ronald Reagan of Hollywood, to attempt the greatest verbal flights of fancy while justifying his imperial adventures. The Contras of El Salvador were on par with our Founding Fathers, he once said in one take. The missiles he pushed on the world like a street corner dealer, were labeled "peace keepers." Reagan possessed the ability to thoroughly protect himself from reality. Perhaps it is fitting that the airport in Washington named for him is today an armed camp ringed with metal detectors allegedly protecting passengers as they board heavily delayed planes.

The true Reagan legacy may be that the sense of unreality he brought to the White House has now pervaded American life. Many feel it but cannot name it. War, global warming, looming federal budget problems of unprecedented scope are all left unmentioned on the 6 o'clock news as most of the coverage concerns a "star" captured on camera holding her baby upside down or forgetting to attach it correctly to a car seat. No matter, we are told the young aren't watching TV news anyway. And as for the rest of us --we are locked so tightly within our daily regimens of work, family and gym visits, gulping down gourmet coffee in a state of numbed perplexity, attempting to decipher the latest technological gadget we are told we need--that we have little time and less inclination to ask what happened to the size of our nation's dreams.

At the rally this morning, a sister of a U.S soldier serving his third deployment in Iraq said that the worst moment for her came recently when she went to the drug store to purchase ten containers of lip balm for her brother. When the clerk asked her what they were for, she said they were for her brother in the war.

"What war?" he asked.

Katherine Anne Porter: Where there is art there is hope (and there is always art).

"In the face of such shape and weight of present misfortune, the voice of the individual artist may seem perhaps of no more consequence than the whirring of a cricket in the grass, but the arts do live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their names and their shapes and their uses and their basic meanings survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect; they outlive governments and creeds and societies, even the very civilizations that produced them. (The arts) cannot be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away. And even the smallest and most incomplete offering at this time can be a proud act in defense of that faith."


1944

Welcome to Undertow

Jimmy Breslin once said that writers must be arrogant. For a writer to expect that people should take precious time from their chaotic lives to read your words takes real arrogance.

I prefer to call it faith.

It takes faith to believe these words will be read and if they are read, all I can say to you is greetings and thank you. This blog is dedicated to you. More than that, you are invited to participate by commenting and adding your own blogs.

What is Undertow?

Undertow is devoted to exploring and discussing ideas, books, places, people, and events that are not widely discussed or known but have shaped society. Taken together they form a current that changes everything, working its magic, unnoticed by the majority.

If you have a taste for all that lies beneath the surface, welcome.

Early Evening in Provincetown

Last summer, on an afternoon walk down Commercial Street, I sat down on a bench in front of Town Hall. Soon, I was joined by a group of white-haired Portugese-American ladies in summer sweaters and light-colored shoes who took seats smoothing their skirts and chatting with each other. "Here she comes," the woman next to me said. Up walked a lady of similar age but with decidedly different style. She was tanned with brown hair and despite a cool sea breeze, wore a mini-skirt and sleeveless blouse. She set up a karioke-style sound system and began singing the kind of American standards written by fast-talking men in unairconditioned Broadway offices six decades ago. Now the words – sophisticated, curved and soft, bobbed along the harbor gusts and landed on the benches near the ladies, who had come to be serenaded at the end of the day. As I listened, the singer began handing out leaflets on which was written the story of her life. Until recently, she had lived as a man. She had married three times and had been a conservative Christian minister until she reached the age of 70, whereupon she left her wife and moved to Provincetown to do what she had wanted to do all her life: live as a woman and sing love songs. The ladies around me clapped at the end of "I’ve Got a Crush on You."

I wanted to stay for another number but I was late getting to the restaurant a few doors down that served real fishcakes made from saltcod.

Freedom at Water's Edge

Provincetown: From Pilgrim Landing to Gay Resort by Karen Christel Krahulik

(A book review by Mark Krone)

Sitting precariously on a spit of sand at the outermost edge of Cape Cod, Provincetown, is more than a fading fishing village turned seaside resort. There is an ephemeral, "Atlantis" quality to the town, having to do with its tilt toward individual freedom and a tropical light that burns itself onto the sides of buildings and boats at the end of warm afternoons. But it is also a New England town with a white Unitarian church and a good library. Yet on some summer nights, especially outside the Atlantic House, the most popular gay nightclub, a Rio sexiness inhabits the tops of the breezes from Cape Cod bay and all bets (and shirts) are off. The very name "Provincetown" elicits reactions political, historical, sensual, moral, recreational, and nautical, depending on who you are. It is a kind of seaside Rorschach test.

Apparently, Provincetown was always a summer place. Before the Europeans arrived, the Paomet Indians summered here, preferring to live in the nearby town of Truro the rest of the year. The Pilgrims (who landed here before Plymouth Rock) saw it as an answered prayer after many horrifying months on the high seas. Portugese fishermen who were probably first drawn to Provincetown while fishing the fertile waters of the Great Banks off New England, came for a steady livelihood. For several generations of gay people, artists, writers, and those who are drawn to them, Provincetown has been a refuge in which to work, make love and live life without being the object of shock or worse. In time, a prevailing sense of freedom arose despite occasional attempts to impose restrictions by officials or local toughs.

A place as colorful and historic as Provincetown is a natural for writers but surprisingly few books have been written about it and until now, no comprehensive history. Karen Christel Krahulik’s Provincetown: From Pilgrim Landing to Gay Resort (NYU Press, 2005) admirably provides an overdue record of the town’s history. She traces its transformations: from Yankee whaling stronghold to Portugese fishing village to artist retreat and gay resort and finally to exclusive enclave. Krahulik is careful to point out that these transformations were not easily catagorized (there were for example, gay Portugese fishermen, straight artists, Portugese men who did not fish, Yankees who married Portugese and so forth). For those who love the town, it is a comfort to know that someone has finally given it the scholarly attention it deserves. But one is left wondering, where are the stories? For most towns, a careful economic history as provided by Krahulik suffices, but not this one. Eccentricity, personal expression, and sexual liberation cannot be captured without stories. This is a book about one of the most colorful towns in the nation, yet it is written in black and white.

Eugene O’Neill first arrived in Provincetown in the summer of 1916 and returned for two succeeding summers. He wrote his early sea plays in the town and several of them were performed on Lewis Wharf in Provincetown harbor, marking the beginning of modern American drama. As America and the world slid toward World War I, Provincetown enjoyed one of its most storied summers in 1917. O’Neill was joined by journalist John Reed, playwrights Susan Glaspell, George "Jig" Cook (her husband), Neith Boyce, writer/poet Harry Kemp (who would remain in the town to become one of its most beloved literary and eccentric figures), artists, Marsden Hartley and Charles Demuth, scene designer Robert Edmond Jones, and socialite Mabel Dodge (who occasionally supported several of the artists and had an affair with John Reed). There are breathing, feeling people behind these august names but Krahulik does not show them to us. Their artistic output is cataloged but not interpreted.

Krahulik is at her most effective when explaining the role of class on the town’s transformations. This is noteworthy because it is unusual for American authors to touch, let alone tackle, class as a factor in American life, even as it becomes increasingly central to understanding our society. When Portugese women took in "bachelors" and "single ladies" as summer house guests while their husbands were at sea, they did so to pay the bills but ended up transforming the town. Indeed, Krahulik points to the acceptance of gay people by the town’s (Catholic) Portugese residents as a crucial element in the creation of modern Provincetown.

Though many seaside towns have displaced local fishing families in favor of tourists and "summer people," only a handful have transformed themselves into gay resorts. Krahulik, with the eye of an epidemiologist, bravely attempts to pinpoint the single causal agent that turned a trend into a tide, making Provincetown a gay resort. She zeroes in on artist Marsden Hartley. (Inexplicably, Hartley’s name does not appear in the book’s index.) When Hartley met his partner, Charles Demuth (also an artist) he brought him to Provincetown for a visit. Both soon decided to stay. By the late teens, they were year-round residents, well-known to the locals, who accepted them despite their openness as a couple. It did not hurt that they were financially able to patronize local stores and hire residents to work on their home. Though they were decidedly flamboyant in dress for their time, Hartley and Demuth became valued members of the community. It is significant that they entertained many gay people from out-of town frequently, thereby introducing others to the town’s relative openness. Soon, they were followed by other gay couples and singles.

Krahulik traces the beginnings of gay male and lesbian-owned guesthouses and shops. Here, she verges on telling a story! A lesbian-owned store began offering a 10% discount to lesbian customers. The effect on the women who were offered the "lesbian discount" was unexpected. Women interviewed years later mentioned that what might have seemed a small thing to others, the "lesbian discount" was the first time they were ever offered anything for being gay. Some women stated their sexual orientation at that store for the first time in their lives.
Krahulik’s careful description of methodology and use of academic language make clear long before she comes clean that the book began as a graduate dissertation. Of course, many important books have had such beginnings, but this does not require them to remain dissertations. Before a disertation can become a book, its dust must be beaten out like a rug after winter. Still, Provincetown: From Pilgrim Landing to Gay Resort is a valuable book that will forever record the economic and (to some extent) social history of one of the nation’s most interesting towns. Ms. Krahulik has written with care, precision and integrity. For this, readers should be grateful.

Autumn in Boston

Though little discussed around here, Boston has enjoyed its longest stretch of perfect weather in many years. Since late July on most days, the sky turns nearly purple by mid morning and the air is so dry that when the sea breeze arrives around dinner time, it is almost too cool. Most years, humid August days lounge and stretch, bumping into each other until a Tuesday becomes a Thursday and before you know it, people are talking about their weekend escapes from the city. All efficiency is lost to the heat until the afternoon bus arrives and you really have to hand it to the driver and to everyone else for working on a day like this.

The fragile warmth of autumn has failed to cause the annual dread of winter, common to Bostonians at this time of year. We're grateful for the weather we've had and also chastened by news reports that in the south an endless drought has caused water to run so low, it may run out.

Atlanta without drinking water makes Katrina look small.

In sub-Saharan Africa, climate change is not hypothetical either. A drought there exacerbates tensions between nations and makes life even more tenuous. Though the Bush administration has disgracefully blocked data from being reported, government scientists have agreed for years that global warming is man-made.

It is self-evident that we are obliged to fix it, if we can.

The skin and hair models who perform local TV news inform us the current stretch of favorable Boston weather is due to a stubborn high pressure system and is unrelated to global warming. In these anxious times, when every storm portends ominous climate change, the unexpected gift of this fall's weather is all the more welcome precisely because we had nothing to do with it.