Art and Politics: Thoughts on Mark Twain and Bristol Palin . . .

NPR sends out a regular missive called "Scoop," which contains mostly shop talk about NPR programming. But occasionally the Scoops include some entertaining nugget that has absolutely nothing to do with NPR.

This week's entertaining nugget was culled from a short New Yorker article about Mark Twain by Macy Halford. In it, Halford relates how, in 1905, Mr. Twain asked the President to move Thanksgiving, because its date that year, November 30th, coincided with the famous author's 70th birthday.

Mark Twain's 70th Birthday Celebration

Twain, himself,  noted the incident in his modest, 2000-page autobiography (the excerpt below was lifted from The New Yorker. 

It [Twain's birthday] arrived on the 30th of November, but Colonel Harvey* was not able to celebrate it on that date because that date had been preempted by the President to be used as Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for—annually, not oftener—if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side, consequently it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments. The original reason for a Thanksgiving Day has long ago ceased to exist—the Indians have long ago been comprehensively and satisfactorily exterminated and the account closed with Heaven, with the thanks due. But, from old habit, Thanksgiving Day has remained with us, and every year the President of the United States and the Governors of all the several States and the territories set themselves the task, every November, to advertise for something to be thankful for, and then they put those thanks into a few crisp and reverent phrases, in the form of a Proclamation, and this is read from all the pulpits in the land, the national conscience is wiped clean with one swipe, and sin is resumed at the old stand.

Twain by this time (writes Macy Halford) had traveled a long way—from the banks of the Mississippi to a mansion on Fifth Avenue—and had become, as New Yorkers will, unrelenting in his agendas, and brilliantly so:

[Harvey] went to Washington to try to get the President to select another day for the national Thanksgiving, and I furnished him with arguments to use which I thought persuasive and convincing, arguments which ought to persude (sic) him even to put off Thanksgiving Day a whole year—on the ground that nothing had happened during the previous twelvemonth except several vicious and inexcusable wars, and King Leopold of Belgium's usual annual slaughters and robberies in the Congo State, together with the Insurance revelations in New York, which seemed to establish the fact that if there was an honest man left in the United States, there was only one, and we wanted to celebrate his seventieth birthday.

Hmmmm. Methinks Mark Twain did not approve of the direction in which his country was heading . . .

The President whom Mr. Harvey went to see was Theodore Roosevelt.  Mark Twain was famously not a fan of the President, disagreeing with him on many points of policy, such as whether or not invading the Philippines had been a good idea and the appropriateness of America shouldering the White Man's Burden.

Yet, amazingly, many people who voted for Theodore Roosevelt read Mark Twain.

What a concept! Imagine keeping one's personal politics from taking over one's entire life. But then think for a moment about what a loss it would have been to us all if Mr. Twain's anti-Imperialist politics had eroded his book sales to the point where Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn never made the literary big-time..

Zoom with me to the present, please: Thanksgiving Eve Day 2010

The Washington Post has been running front page coverage of Bristol Palin's appearance on Dancing with the Stars. I haven't watched the show, but I have followed the Post's coverage. Consensus appears to be that a lot of the folks who voted for or against Bristol in the competition were more focused on her mother's politics than her own dancing.

These paragraphs were drawn from Lisa de Moraes' regular Post TV column.

"Are you planning on hosting a Team Bristol Monday Night Dancing Watch party?" conservative blogger Kevin DuJan asked on his blog Hillbuzz.org before the Monday show. "You ... can actually vote together and send Bristol over the top ... while sending Leftist heads into meltdown."

On the other side of the political spectrum, the liberal Web site Network for Progress urged people to get out the vote for Jennifer.

"Fight back against the Tea Party ... because they may make our news and elections into a joke but we need to draw a line at our reality competitions!" the Web site said in an e-mail, with tongue planted firmly in cheek. "Join Network For Progress as we come together to raise awareness about one of the biggest threats America faces today ... Bristol Palin winning Dancing with the Stars...."

Bristol Palin placed third in Dancing with the Stars. We'll  never know whether it was her dancing or her mother that lost the competition.

Which, in my opinion, is a real shame. And kind of scary, as well.

Wonder how Mark Twain would have fared on Dancing with the Stars?

*Mark Twain's editor at the North American Review

Neighbors

We did some modest traveling to reach our family celebration of Thanksgiving. I enjoyed myself there almost as much as I enjoyed getting home again.

Home to me is marked by a constellation of house, yard, cat and neighbors.

In my opinion, neighbors are underrated these days as an enrichment of our lives. So, in honor of all my neighbors, current, past and future, today I'm posting an essay I wrote about five years ago. It celebrates the first neighbors we got to know when Charlie and I moved to the Valley.

It's called "The Sisters."

The sisters were way up in their eighties if they were a day. During the two years I lived one farm down from them, I passed Marjory and Elizabeth most mornings on my way to work—Marjory, driving the tractor; Elizabeth, riding shotgun—heading out to tend the sheep, or plow a field, or mend a fence.

I’ve always been drawn to happy, unconventional, un-helpless people. A month after becoming their neighbor, I told the sisters I was a journalist and asked if I could record their story. Elizabeth is deaf, so Marjory shouts, and she shouted at me they'd have to think about that.

Six weeks later, there was a fortissimo message on my answering machine: "This is Margery. If Martha still wants to hear our story, tell her to come on."

Margery wasn't a particularly good storyteller—she's not at all interested in the past—perhaps the only eighty-year-old I’ve ever met who isn’t. "The past is over!” she bellowed into my microphone. "Who wants to think about the past?"

But she did play an old recording of her and Elizabeth singing hymns, and she showed me a lot of old photographs—two dark-haired sisters smiling in pretty hats and flowery frocks, Elizabeth drop-dead gorgeous, Margery handsome and obviously nobody's fool.

It struck me that these were the photographs of women who could have gone anywhere, done anything that women were allowed to do in the mid-part of the last century; yet here they were, and here they obviously wanted to be. Even when talking into a microphone, they felt no need to explain or justify their odd course to the rest of us.

"Did you ever think about marrying?” I asked. They were—after all—of a generation of women that usually did.

Margery hooted. "Awe, fellows asked us, but we didn't pay ’em no mind. One came around a couple of years ago crying how his girlfriend had died, and he was all alone and wouldn't one of us marry him. Elizabeth told him to get a dog.”

I’ve moved a lot and had a lot of neighbors. Most of them have come and gone without leaving anything permanently useful inside me. But my life is richer and steadier for having lived for a while one farm over from Marjory and Elizabeth. I simply haven’t met many other women—many people, really—who are living as they truly wish to, without worrying at all about the sideways glances of the rest of us.

The only bumper sticker I’ve ever put on a vehicle is one my daughter, Lizzie, sent me years before I met the sisters. It read “Uppity Women Unite,” and when I slapped it on my truck’s bumper, I thought, “There! That’s who I am!”

After meeting Marjory and Elizabeth, however, I realized I am a mere wannabe in the uppity woman department. That bumper sticker would have really belonged on their tractor.

Thanksgiving day professional sappiness . . .

I usually am repelled by anything sappy, but not today. Today I will wallow unashamedly in that which on most other days I would consider bathetic. Today, I am officially, happily, unabashedly sappily thankful for, among many other things, my job.

I think I only became intentionally thankful on Thanksgiving Day in my forties. Before that, I was just too frenzied with cooking. (By the way, if you are so frenzied and need some last-minute help, the NY Times has Sam Sifton on on-line duty until 3 p.m.).

The things in my personal life for which I'm thankful are not appropriate blog fodder--let's just say that I'm a happy camper and leave it at that. But one of my greatest blasts of personal gratitude gets bestowed on my job at WMRA--the big rush and mush of the hectic, absorbing days I get to spend there making radio; the creative freedom I'm allowed; the good company of my very funny and fun colleagues; the chance to meet and get to know people in the WMRA community of listeners; the chance to work directly with NPR editors.

Being pretty sure a lot of my colleagues felt the same, yesterday I sent a note out asking them to let me know what each of them is personally grateful for re WMRA and/or public radio in general. Here's what I got back (you'll note that I'm not the only person who waxes sappy on the subject!).

From Scott Lowe, host, Weekend Edition Sunday:  "I have been very thankful for the enthusiasm and appreciation loyal WMRA listeners express to me whenever they find out I work here. WMRA members are more passionate about their choice than any others I have encountered in a 25-year career."

From Tom Graham, host, Virginia Insight: "I wake up every morning feeling grateful to be part of such a special public radio community. After many years, earlier in my career, of employment in profit-oriented, commercial television and radio news, it is such an honor to work for a non-profit whose overriding mission is public service. And I find myself giving thanks many times a day for the supportive listeners who make this type of dedication possible."

From Bob Leweke, host, Morning Edition, “In a world full of voices, I'm thankful for the unique, and constructive, voice that public radio provides in our democracy.”

From Tina Owens, host, Acoustic Cafe: "I am thankful that WMRA gives me the the opportunity to be a part of the local roots music community.  It is such a treat to spend each weekend presenting - and listening to - such wonderful acoustic music."

From Terry Ward, host, All Things Considered: "On WMRA, I will not be subjected to commercials with cheesy sound effects of Santa's belly laugh, as happens on certain ~other~ broadcast entities with increasing frequency from this date forward, til Xmas. For that, I am grateful."

From Matt Bingay, Program Director: "I am thankful for the fact that I work in an environment that encourages exploration, discovery, discussion and meaning. Before beginning my career in public radio, the world was small and trivial. Today, I see so much, and want to know so much more. Thank you NPR for helping me live outside of myself."

And finally, from Tom DuVal, General Manager: "Hmmm. It's easy to say I'm thankful for the thousands of listeners who support WMRA and WEMC financially. And James Madison University, and dozens of local businesses and organizations. And believe me, I most certainly am!

 "I think, though, at heart I'm most thankful for the many listeners who take the time to contact us with kudos and criticisms. They keep us honest and keep our spirits up.

"And I'm thankful every day for my professional and dedicated colleagues, here and at the national level, who dive into and complete the necessary work of keeping public radio coming out of the speakers all across the region."

Thought I'd leave you with one of my husband's, Charlie, photos (taken late last month) of where we live. For no other reason than to remind  myself and you of how beautiful it is here in WMRA Land.

Thoughts on a couple of rocks. . .

Four days from now all of us will give at least a passing thought to the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620. To be welcomed by this land's prior residents. Whom Europeans would shortly (in historical time) displace.

I think one of my ancestors was among those getting off the Mayflower. I say I think because it was not something my family ever made a big deal of. But as I like following the grand story that is history (and just in case my family's down-played myth was true), I once paid a visit to Plymouth, just to see what this famous rock looked like.

Not much, I decided.

I was to dig up bigger rocks putting in gardens on Charlie's and my 11.5 acres of land along Buffalo Ridge in Amherst County. And it's this land I want to write about, on this, the first working day of the short working week in which we celebrate Thanksgiving.

Charlie and I bought those 11.5 acres nigh onto two decades ago. They were down a rutted logging road, surrounded by thousands of acres of logging forest; home to bears, wild turkeys, deer, and very few other people. Having very little money ourselves, we lived on that land for the next six years in a couple of trailers. The first one was an ancient repo bought at a bank auction; the second was so comparatively palatial, we nicknamed it "The Palace."

But enough about Charlie and me. It's something simple that happened the day after we bought that land I want to write about; something that made me personally experience land ownership in a more complicated--and so more accurate--way.

It was around this time of year, actually. Charlie was off from work that day, so he took a lawn chair out to sit for a while on our 11.5 acres. He wanted to get to know it, to decide exactly where we should position our ancient repo. He sat his lawn chair down on a likely spot, idly reached his hand down and picked up the first rock he touched.

It was an arrowhead.

We were, of course, by no means the first to live on those 11.5 acres; just the first in a few decades, which in the context of history is a big fat nothing. That day, when Charlie showed me the arrowhead he'd found, I realized deep in my gut for the first time how people have moved other people--and peoples--around. And that we Americans, for all our national pride, are but a sentence in the larger story of our land.

On this Monday, back when I was in elementary school, we routinely made Pilgrim hats out of construction paper and congratulated ourselves mightily for being Americans. Now I realize that back then I had no idea what "being American" meant.

Even today, as glad as I am to be one, I'm still not quite sure what being American means. Whenever I think of that arrowhead, however, I do hope it means more than being able to push people around.