Bunnies, Hawks and . . .Lions?

There are bunnies on the dirt road that runs directly to the cove. Lots of them. I see them every day. Not in bunches. Usually one at a time and, rather than spook the furry, sweet creatures, I stop and talk to them.

“Don’t worry,” I say, “I know that I frighten you but I’m not going to hurt you. You can stay there doing whatever it is you are doing and I’ll just stroll by toward the water.”

That does it, usually. They hear my voice and they scamper, but this morning the bunny on the path freezes; it remains absolutely still, facing the thick bushes toward where he or she was headed. So I keep talking, making my voice as soothing and reassuring as possible.

“I’m just going to walk past you to the cove,” I say. “Isn’t it a nice morning?” Stuff like that.

And, to my amazement, this bunny turns its head to look at me. I am pleased beyond measure. He is maybe a bit curious? Certainly he must have heard human voices before, but he turns his head toward me and I feel a rush of unexpected and gentle acceptance.

Two days later on my walk to the cove I am making time along the macadam when a fluttering motion in the sky slightly forward of me—not very high yet, but climbing-- catches my eye. A hawk. The light offers no shine on the feathers, so I am not sure what kind of hawk it is, but from its compact shape and tail configuration, I figure it is a red tailed hawk.

I admire hawks: their powerful wings, their laser sharp vision and their ability to soar high in the sky and then suddenly dive with astonishing accuracy toward their prey. I love seeing them resting, waiting on a tree branch turning their heads this way and that, taking in their surroundings and its possibilities for food.

This rising hawk catches my breath. It has a bunny gripped in its sharp talons, the bunny’s body neatly parallel to the body of the hawk. The hawk’s lift is not the least impeded by the weight of the rabbit; it flies smoothly and efficiently toward home. A nest of hungry baby hawks, I assume, will gorge on that bunny.

I know that in nature everything is something else’s food. That’s the way it is. But still. . . .

I imagine the bunny hopping through some low brush when suddenly it’s back is deeply pierced by clawed talons, it’s neck sliced by a razor shark beak and, perhaps not yet dead, it finds itself painfully lifted into the air. Does the bunny know its life is over, I wonder? I am hoping it is already dead by the time it becomes lunch cargo, but that may not be the case.

Humans are the only species who kill for the fun of it. Witness the recent outrageous kill of the male lion, Cecil. Cecil, a long time, favorite resident of Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, was lured off protected land by the scent of dead meat dragged along by a car. 

Once off the parkland, Cecil was shot with a bow and arrow and wounded, but not killed, by American dentist, Dr. Walter J. Palmer. Palmer paid $54,000 for the opportunity. They had to track Cecil for two days before Palmer could finally kill him with a gun. He then beheaded the lion.

Give me the hawk headed home with his dead rabbit any day.

In Nantucket: Allowing The Dust To Settle

Once again I am on the beautiful island of Nantucket. I walk early every morning from our cottage to the nearby cove. It’s a watery destination that I love and somehow each morning, weather depending, it looks different. This morning it is still, no bob or sway to the moored boats. The water is glassy, the air misty and heavy, the sky grayish. 

The cove has gone all misty

Whatever the weather, the cove always has some expectancy about it. I imagine people clambering into those moored boats, heaving over striped bags of picnic food for family outings or a day of fishing. People will come, boats will be readied, gear stowed and, on some, sails will be set and off they will go. But not usually when I am there, quiet and watching. It’s too early.

To begin this walk of mine I leave the cottage at the back,  scrambling sideways through a narrow slot in the hedge and over some bent-down, rolled, plastic chicken wire fencing designed to keep out rabbits, I expect. I do this rather carefully; the thought of catching my trailing foot in the wire is daunting to say the least.

Having successfully negotiated that move, I am on a narrow dirt road; the brown dirt is silky and fine, so fine that the soles of my sneakers leave perfect imprints. I walk maybe three hundred yards along this narrow dirt road to the asphalt road that will eventually take me close to the cove.

This morning I started out on the dirt road and had to stop because a truck was coming toward me. Some workman on his way to mow, clip, weed, or whatever needs doing, a constant occupation, it seems, here on the Island. Every house is landscaped to a startling degree of perfection. The truck comes, not really slowly but does slow as the driver spots me. I freeze into the road’s edge while he passes. I am now walking into a fog of fine brown dust raised by his churning tires, which I can see through, but which I don’t really want to breathe. 

 Annoyed, I begin waving my arms in wide flapping circles trying to move the dust away from my face. To no avail. I stand looking into the cloud, watching, as it to hangs there unmoved by air motion. This is a sheltered little road and besides there is zero wind this morning. Zero.

And what do you know? Another pickup comes cruising along, stirring up yet another cloud of this sandy silt and again I am forced to the side of the road, engulfed in miniscule, floating dirt particles.

Wait a minute, I am thinking, as I brush at my clothes, this is my walk! You guys are messing me up here.

Then I just stand still and look. I can see that the brownish cloud is slowly dropping, that all I really need to do is STOP and WAIT. I need only to be still and allow all this dust to settle. I know that it will. It doesn’t need my help. In fact, there’s not a damn thing I can do to speed the process up.  It will happen entirely on its own. The dust will settle more quickly if I cease to flail my arms around trying to control it.

OK. So my walk is delayed? Big deal. I’m on vacation. Who cares? The cove will still be there.

And when the fine brown dirt settles around me, I walk along toward the cove musing about how often I have attempted to control or manipulate a stirred up situation in my life that I cannot effect.  How often I have been angry and frustrated at my lack of success, only to find later that some other, more natural or more creative solution arises instead. I could have saved all that energy and angst and just let the Universe, God’s astonishing choreography, handle the situation. 

So many times, just like this morning, I could have stopped and waited and with complete confidence, simply allowed the dust to settle on its own.

Truth and Integrity: We Need every Atticus Finch We Can Find

Never mind the hype. I will not read “Go Set A Watchman.”  Call me a narrow-minded, sentimental old lady. I still won’t read it.

The Sunday Times Book Review states, “Though it”—“Go Set A Watchman”—“does not represent Harper Lee’s best work, it does reveal more starkly the complexity of Atticus Finch, her most admired character." ( Do they forget that Harper lee made both characters up out of her head? We're not talking history here.) ‘“Go Set A Watchman”’ demands that its readers abandon the immature sentimentality ingrained by middle school lessons about the nobility of the white savior . . “

 “Immature sentimentality?” Mea culpa. Only I was no middle school kid reading that book when it came out in the 60s. The mother of three, I was up to my armpits in the civil rights movement in Toledo, O, where I lived. I needed to believe that at some time, somewhere in our messed up 60’s world, that an Atticus Finch, or, please, God, a whole bunch of Atticus Finches existed. Men with some power—women had so little then—who did the right thing regardless of personal cost.

I need to believe that still.

My father was an Atticus Finch. Different time: different circumstances. An attorney in Bridgeport, during the mid-1950s, he was appointed by a federal judge to be the lead defense in a federal trial against eleven card-carrying communists. This was the McCarthy/ Smith Act/hate communists era when being a card-carrying communist automatically meant that you were committed to the violent overthrow of the United States government, therefore subject to federal prosecution. My dad knew that accepting the appointment would mean losing many of his regular clients.

Family discussion ensued. I remember him saying, “Everyone has a right to a fair trial. I am willing to do the best I can to see to it that happens.” Labeled “pinko” in Fairfield County, his private practice dwindled.

Not a single review I have read has praised “Go Set The Watchman.” Not The Times, nor NPR, whose reviewer’s final words about the book were: “It’s a mess.” There may be good reviews out there somewhere, but based on what I’ve seen so far, I doubt it.

I ask: why was it published? Over the years Harper Lee has repeatedly insisted that she would never publish another book. Lee’s lawyer found the manuscript in a safety deposit box and took it to Harper Collins. According to Wikipedia, “Lee’s sister and protector from public scrutiny, who died in November 2014, wrote in 2011, that Lee ‘“can’t see and can’t hear and will sign anything put in front of her by anyone in whom she has confidence.”’

Further along in Wikipedia: “A court investigation in February 2015 found that claims of coercion and elder abuse—toward Lee--were unfounded.” Why were there claims at all? On what grounds? Who brought them?

After winning in court, “according to Lee’s lawyer, Lee is ‘“happy as hell”’ with the publication.”

I don’t normally have a suspicious mind. But the lawyer finds the early manuscript in a safety deposit box and takes it to the publisher? Lee, who is entirely on record as saying she was never going to publish again, is now both blind, deaf and elderly but, presumably, according to the court findings, competent to agree to publication of this much earlier rejected work?

 I can’t help but think that someone, perhaps several someones, are taking a nice trip to the bank. A trip paid for by a book by Harper Lee that isn’t very well written, but attacks the mega-hero Atticus  and that, just that icon-smashing controversy alone, will sell this book by the millions.

Do we think Harper Collins and Lee’s lawyer didn’t know this?

Where is Atticus when we need him?

Winning Is Off The Table

Four of us, beginners from our recent bridge class, are meeting Monday afternoons and playing contract bridge. At the outset we made a decision: we would not keep score. We would play both our offensive hands and defensive hands with all the skill we could muster, indeed, we would play competitively, but after the hand was over we would share our views of the bidding and the game. We would analyze together what we did right and what we did wrong, each of us offering our opinions.

We have so much fun! In a striking move, winning has been taken off the table.

When I mentioned this decision of ours to a long-time, very competitive bridge player, she was horrified. “You’re not keeping score? How deadly!” Another friend remarked, “It’s just a matter of time. You’ll all be in there trying to win the money!”

Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been thinking a lot about this and what I do know is that removing winning from the table can work magic in all kinds of interpersonal situations.

 Imagine, for example, if we could surrender winning an argument with our spouses.  By that I don’t mean walking away mad. Instead, what if we used an argument for the single purpose of discovering how each one truly feels about a subject? What if each one actually listened, making a sincere attempt to understand the other’s point of view? Wouldn’t that be amazing? Not to be wrung out by the urgent need to win, to be right? Let’s say that, instead, each spouse was committed to clarity and developing an expanded understanding of the other. What might that be like?

And, to carry this a bit further, as we do after we’ve played our bridge hands, that we--friend, spouse, partner--- might choose to reflect and explore together why we feel the way we do, said what we said, and the results of the discussion. Together, being the operative word here. What if spouses, friends, partners, also elected to take a look at how they said what they did, and how each was affected by the other’s choice of words and tone of voice? Wouldn’t that be amazing, to say nothing of fruitful, as well?

Karen Armstrong in her excellent book, Twelve Steps to A Compassionate Life, writes, “Our discourse tends to be aggressive.” Like the ancient Greeks, we “debate in order to win.” Plato, she says, “offered that no “’transcendent insight was possible unless questions and answers are exchanged in good faith and without malice.’”

“Questions and answers?” That implies that I actually ask you a question as to why you think the way you do, instead of busily preparing my own clever response while you are speaking. I can be so preoccupied with assembling my own viewpoint that I am barely listening to you. After all, I am out to win this argument, aren’t I?

Armstrong suggests that we learn something of “compassionate discourse,” which means that during our argument I seek not to defeat you, but to know you better, to understand more clearly what makes you tick, what your underlying values might be. Whether or not I share those values is unimportant. That I listen to your side with all the compassion I can manage, is. That does not mean I have to agree with you or believe what you believe, but it does mean that I respect your right to see the situation as you do and your right to hold the beliefs that you hold.

Winning is off the table when we seek truth. “Do we want to win the argument or seek the truth?” Armstrong writes. We begin that process by discovering “where people are, not where we think they ought to be.”

At our Monday bridge games I am learning more than how to play bridge. For the first time in my life I am playing a game where winning is not an issue. Playing as well as we can, certainly, but understanding and helping each other are the values that dominate this card table. My eyes are being opened to our collective vulnerability and insecurity: our talent for the game and where it sometimes eludes us: all of the above.

I hope that whatever next controversy arises for you, you will dare to take winning off the table.
                                             ***
Consider this: The New York Times this morning quotes Roger Federer's sagacious remark after losing the Wimbledon title to Novak Djokovic yesterday."You can have a good tournament without winning."

Go For It!

On Tuesday a friend asked me, “Are you going to watch the Women’s World Cup Soccer tonight? It’s the semi-finals against Germany. Germany is ranked # 1 and we are ranked # 2.”

I had never occurred to me. As those of you who read this blog with any frequency know, when it comes to Men’s World Cup soccer and the Final Four, I’m there. But I confess that I rarely watch women’s basketball; I just don’t find it that exciting. I have never watched women’s soccer.

But OMG! The women’s World Cup USA soccer team? I was blown away Tuesday night by the flat out, determined, skillful, rough and tumble battle against Germany: that we won: 2-0. One penalty shoot out and one cross-over shot that a perfectly located teammate kicked into the goal, passing Germany’s excellent goalie, Nadine Angerer.

Just watching the goalies in this game was worth the hour. Our goalie, Hope Solo, is a two time Olympic gold medalist and considered to be one of the best goalies in women’s soccer. Pretty, dark- eyed and dark- haired, her long pony tail flies as she dives, leaps and masters the space she guards so skillfully for the American team.

Nadine Angerer, for Germany is broad-shouldered, formidable in size and shape and very competent. Awesome players, both of them.

I was struck by the sheer force of the women’s play. I’ve never seen women blast out like that as a team. I have watched Serena Williams play tennis with the ferocity of a warrior in battle, but a whole team of women, each one giving 100% of herself to a game with so much skill? I’ve never seen that before. My loss.

The NY Times headline read: World Cup: Against Top Foe, US Brings Its ‘A’ Game. Right!

And then, in the first paragraph, the article described Julie Johnston “trying to hold back tears” when, the score being 0-0, Johnston fouled Alexandra Popp, and the referee signaled for a penalty kick. “Seconds later,” the Times article went on to say, “her—Johnston’s-- emotions swerved again as German striker, Celia Sasic, shanked her shot wide of the post.”

Johnston’s emotions are the topic of the first three paragraphs of the Times coverage of an amazing game. Good grief!

Do they write that stuff about World Cup level men’s emotions when they cause penalty shots in crucial moments of a game? Do they write about football or soccer players’ tantrums on the field, the pushing and shoving, the swearing? I don’t think so! So what if Julie Johnston was close to tears? She’s a great player. What does that have to do with anything?

Unlike the men, who play on grass, these women play on artificial turf laid over cement. I pause to wonder why this is so? Nonetheless, the female players throw themselves into every mix, striving to get a foot on the ball, tumbling over each other’s backs and landing repeatedly on that unforgiving surface. This is no tea party.

Once again I am in awe: in awe of the commitment to the game of soccer, their commitment to each other and to playing for their country. The hours, days, months, years of practice, the aches and pains and bone breaks it has taken to arrive at the stunning victory Tuesday night. These women have set the bar very high and are keeping it there.

Our goals, yours and mine, may seem paltry by comparison, but we can commit to something, anything, and follow through with everything we’ve got. Not coming close to World Cup measure, perhaps, but to maximize whatever our gifts may be.

Do I always want to write this blog? As the days of each week pass, have I got a single idea in my head? Sometimes I don’t. I feel a bit panicky for a while and then, behold! Something shows up and I sit down and do it. I’m not winning games for the USA or anything commensurate and neither are you, I suspect, but each time that we decide to do something that matters to us and we stick to it, we have won. Not a game. Something incredibly valuable inside ourselves: a fortification of character.

I am posting this on Friday in hopes that some of you may read it and be moved to watch the finals Sunday evening. Women’s World Cup: U S A against Japan on Sunday, July 5 at 7:00 PM.

***

While we are at it, applause and kudos to Misty Copeland who, on Tuesday, was named the first African American principal dancer in the 75 year history of the American Ballet Theater. Copeland did not begin her studying until she was 13—late for a ballet student. Then she was told she had “the wrong body” for dance. She knew she was born to dance and so she grit her teeth and danced!