don't eat alone

Ann Richards died yesterday of esophageal cancer. She was seventy-three.

Living in Texas during the seventies and eighties meant getting to hear and watch Ann Richards. She was, to me, the epitome of a Texas woman, brash and beautiful at the same time. I’m proud to say we share the same alma mater — Baylor University — though Baylor, who keeps hoping to land the George W. Bush Presidential Library (one trailer, two books), has never been quick to claim her, even though she ranks among the best they have helped produce.

She was a person who knew herself, flaws and all, and had no problem admitting hers and calling others to own up to theirs, which made her an unusual and refreshing addition to both the Texas and national political scene. She served one term as governor of Texas — the last Democrat to hold that position, losing her bid for reelection to none other than Dubya himself. When she was asked if she would have done anything different had she known she would only serve one term, she said, “Oh, I probably would have raised more hell.”

Her life story is an inspirational one. When she spoke, she had a way of drawing on her life experience to connect with others, rather than making it all about her. She was bright, sometimes bawdy, witty, and honest. No wonder she was happy to leave politics. Many of her words are worth remembering. One of my favorites comes from her Keynote Address at the 1988 Democratic Convention, where she described George Bush 1 by saying,”Poor George, he can’t help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”

The most poignant quote I found today was also from that speech.

I’m really glad that our young people missed the Depression, and missed the great big war. But I do regret that they missed the leaders I knew. Leaders who told us when things were tough, and that we would have to sacrifice, and these difficulties might last awhile. They didn’t tell us things were hard for us because we were different, or isolated, or special interests. They brought us together and they gave us a sense of national purpose.

I read those words and thought, here we are eighteen years later and the problem is still the same. We don’t have leaders as large as the problems we face. We are hard pressed to find folks who live, act, and speak by the courage of their convictions rather than the latest poll numbers or the directions of their handlers. My point is not to wax nostalgic, but to voice concern. We have done a lot of things well in America, but creating a society that fosters and develops capable people to lead it is not one of them.

Yesterday, our list of enchanting leaders was decreased by one.

So long, Ann — and thanks.

Peace,
Milton

Good news to report tonight: Rachel went home today, five days after her surgery. She is in good spirits and is feeling well, all things considered. Now the challenge is figuring out how life will look for her and Reuben, my father-in-law, who has some issues of his own. Thanks again for your prayers.

On the nights I have not been working, I’ve watched a couple of movies that I knew would not interest Ginger. The one that got me thinking the most was Albert Brooks’ lastest film, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World. The title was enough to make me pick up the movie, but I had also heard about it on NPR a while back. If you’ve never seen one of his movies, I will say he is an acquired taste, but a taste worth acquiring. As in his other movies, Brooks plays himself — this time as a comedian who is asked by the U. S. State Department to go to India and Pakistan for a month to find out what makes them laugh and then to write a five hundred page report. In return, they promise him the Medal of Freedom.

He goes to New Delhi, and when he can’t get anyone to respond on the street when he asks them what makes them laugh, and because he can’t find any comedy clubs in the city, he rents a school auditorium to put on a free comedy concert. He begins with this joke:

Why is there no Halloween in India?
Because they took away all the Ghandi.

He got nothing but crickets. They don’t have Halloween in India because it’s an American holiday. His search for humor reflects the way most Americans tend to ask questions about the rest of the world: why aren’t they more like us? His quest is painful, informative, poignant, and funny.

One of the things that struck me had to do with the original request from the State Department. They were asking about comedy as part of the war on terror: if they could learn what made the Muslims laugh, they would have another weapon in their arsenal. The shallowness of their understanding shows through when Brooks comments that India is a Hindu country. Rather than point out there are more Muslims in India than in any other country in the world, the response is, “When you learn what makes the Hindus laugh, you’ll know what makes the Muslims laugh.”

Right.

In the comedy concert, Brooks tells the audience he is going to show them what improvisation is. He brings out a blackboard and asks them for suggestions to help shape a character he will embody: nationality, occupation, married or single, kids or no kids, rich or poor. He takes their suggestions and, one by one, changes them until he gets to the character he wants to do, which is not at all what the audience gave him. They didn’t laugh. He was trying hard to connect, but he wasn’t listening; he wasn’t looking for what they thought was funny, he was looking for them to tell him he was funny.

We, as Americans, are not malicious or malevolent for the most part, but we do damage around the world because we take much the same approach: we don’t listen, we tell; we don’t investigate, we assume; we don’t cooperate, we lead; we don’t see ourselves as equals, we see ourselves as heroes. In the end, Brooks, for all his good intentions and earnest need for affirmation, didn’t understand what made Muslims laugh anymore than George Bush understands what’s going on in the minds of those he calls “evil doers.” Neither knows how to make sense of those who are different from them (though I think Brooks, as writer and director, understood that was the point he was making).

I remember my dad telling me a story of an American journalist who came to visit Zambia when we lived there. He was staying a month and was going to write a book on Africa. One of the Zambian pastors told him, “It is good you are only staying a month, because then you will leave with all the answers; if you stay longer, you will find you have none of the answers.” Whenever my dad told that story (we Cunninghams are good at repeating the stories we like), he always laughed. Now that was funny.

And sad.

My favorite joke is one I heard on Prairie Home Companion several years ago on the April Fools’ Show, which is always filled with jokes. It goes like this:

Two penguins are talking.
One says, “Some people think we look like we’re wearing tuxedos.”
The second one says, “Maybe I am.”

I love that joke. I can’t explain it. But then again, if you have to explain a joke, it’s no longer funny.

Peace,
Milton

I started my day, as I’m sure many did, being inundated by the various morning talk shows’ commemoration of the September 11 anniversary. By nine-thirty, I was on my way to the restaurant, having said goodbye to Ginger, who was on her way back to Birmingham. I didn’t get off work until 9:30 tonight, which meant I didn’t hear anything else about the anniversary; my world today consisted of the folks I saw at work.
Anniversaries can be strange things. When it comes to public events like 9/11, something pulls us to notice and remember, but I’m not sure we can articulate – or have articulated – what we want the moment to mean. Perhaps the meanings among us are so diverse that we struggle to find cohesion, or even understanding. We want it to make sense. Two planes full of people crashing into the Towers will never make sense. The talk shows seemed to think that pulling our emotional strings was a way of giving the day meaning. The teaser before one commercial break was they were going to talk to the children who had been in the schoolroom with Bush when he found out to see what they remembered about the day. They were six or seven; now they’re eleven or twelve. Do they really have something to add to the public conversation?

September marks the fifth anniversary of the onset of my depression. Though I think it lurked in me like a terrorist for many years, as I look back now, it was September of 2001 when it took me down and took me down hard. In past years, this has been a dark month. So far this year, it does not seem to be so. Other than feeling I have lived another year and learned some things about how to live with depression, I don’t know what to make of the anniversary. Next year I will say it has been six years, and then seven after that. Septembers will pass like mile markers giving me a sense of the distance I have traveled, but not much else.

My aunt died five years ago last spring. For the first couple of years, I called my cousin on the anniversary of her death to say I was thinking about her. After the second or third anniversary, I got an email asking me not to do that again. The day was not one to be marked for her. “Call me on my mom’s birthday,” she said; “ that’s a day to celebrate and remember.” Composers are remembered on their birthday rather than they day of their death. For most other historically significant figures, it’s the other way round. I like thinking of Pegi as a composer; she created quite a symphony in the way she lived.

I wish I could say all my rambling was leading to some incredibly insightful comment, but I don’t know how to make sense of the day any more than anyone else, other than to say I spent it well. Something in that is worth remembering.

Peace,
Milton

First, let me say a word of thanks for the prayers and words of encouragement. My mother-in-law is “ahead of schedule” according to her doctor: she was moved to a room Saturday morning and was up walking down the hall less than forty-eight hours after the surgery. She is weak but in good spirits. I’m really proud of her. Ginger came home Saturday night to be here for church today and goes back to Birmingham tomorrow to stay for the week. Keep praying as we try to figure out how life goes in the days and weeks to come.

Tonight we had our first meeting of Senior High Fellowship for the year. For me, it marks the beginning of the end of my time at Hanover. After today I have three more Sundays until I leave. We had ten or twelve kids show up and part of what we did as a way of introducing ourselves was name one of our favorite movies. I’m not sure what I was expecting to hear, but I was surprised. Here is a partial list:

• The Lord of the Rings
• Accepted
• American Graffiti
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• V for Vendetta
• Funny Farm
• Grease
• The Big Lebowski
• Fight Club
• Legends of the Fall
• The Brave Little Toaster

As each of us named our favorite film, others chimed in with favorite scenes or sayings. The discussion continued over ice cream and a few of us came to the conclusion that one of the things that makes a movie an enduring favorite is its quotability: the more lines that become a part of your conversation, the better the film. Robert, the head chef at the Red Lion claims he would not have a personality if were not for movie lines. In seminary, several of us who went to Baylor together moved up I-35 to Southwestern Seminary. We had all sat through multiple viewings of Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and Three Amigos, among others. One day, a new acquaintance to our group said to me, “I need you to give me a list of the ten movies I need to watch so I can be a part of your conversation.”

There is something powerful in the language of ritual. The shared memory we tap into in repeating the lines again and again is important work. This week marks thirty years since I met my friend Burt. I was a junior at Baylor when he entered as a freshman. We have been friends ever since. For a guy who moved around growing up and lost track of everyone pre-college (though I have found some of them again, thankfully), it is with a great sense of accomplishment that I say that Burt and I have been friends for thirty years. Ours is a friendship that has flourished and thrived on ritual, much of which came out of things we saw and heard together – the words of Barney Fife and Inspector Clousseau in particular.

There is the sense of shared experience, and there is something in the language – in the DNA of the words themselves – that becomes part of our beings; we are not just repeating words, we are inhabiting them together. One of the hymnals we use at church made a valiant attempt to be more meaningful and relevant by making the language of the hymns more inclusive, which means they had to quite radically alter some of the hymns that mean the most to me. Hymns in church are to me what movie lines are to friendships and I get tripped up by the word changes. I understand what they were trying to do, but I’m not sure they realized the consequences of their good intentions. I keep singing the original words because they are deep abiding connections to God for me. The ritual of singing the songs the way I learned them is one I’m not ready to let go.

Though Ginger and I can have a rather spirited discussion about the value of our hymnal, we share a growing collection of verbal rituals, thanks to many songs and movies, as well as a few of our own creation. I continue to be moved and amazed by the power of a familiar phrase to remind me of what I know is true. Just like Lola and Gracie know that when you come in from outside you get a cookie (which means you are loved), I know that the often repeated phrases carry with them the power and promise of a life lived together.

All of the movies that matter most to me matter because of who I was with when I saw them. The phrases we repeat to one another still make us laugh out loud and remember what matters most. All of this makes me want to stay up late watching movies and then makes lots of phone calls tomorrow to say the lines and tighten the bonds.

Peace,
Milton

Here’s the news: Rachel had triple-bypass surgery today. She was in surgery about four and a half hours and did very well. She had no complications during the procedure. She weathered the anesthesia well and is alert, but groggy tonight.

Thanks for all the prayers and words of support.

Peace,
Milton

The last forty-eight hours have been full of almost every emotion I can name. Though I’ve been here by myself, I’ve spent much of the day talking to Ginger in Birmingham, keeping up with what is going on there. Rachel goes in for her surgery early tomorrow morning. Ginger comes back home Saturday evening to be here on Sunday and will go back to Birmingham for the week on Monday night. One of the calls from Ginger was to process how Irondale is changing — even dying, thanks to the Super Wal-Mart going up in Trussville. Not long afterwards, she called to tell me of the conversation she had with the mother of one of her childhood friends. Ginger was walking through the neighborhood and the woman was sitting on her front porch journaling. They had a good visit and then Ginger walked up to the Irondale Cafe for a glass of sweet tea before she went back to her folk’s house.

Any trip to Birmingham is time travel in some sense for her. Every rock and tree, every small house, every smiling face is the top layer of an onion of memory that peels back to reveal a past that is not so far away. Here in New England, we have history all around us, but it is preserved and guarded, even revered. The South has never forgotten that the biggest part of the word history is story, which means the past is not preserved but participated in, not guarded but mined, not revered but relished. It’s a place to find comfort rather than pedigree.

As I have listened to Ginger and prayed for Rachel, I’ve also looked for words for tonight, since mine are lacking. I found them in Pierce Pettis, a son of the South, who has spoken to me deeply at different times over the years. As Friday dawns, here is a song for us all.

I’ve Got a Hope

Man is born to trouble
All the days of his life
As the sparks fly upward
From bonfires at night
They fill up the heavens
With pin points of light
And I’ve got a hope that is not in this world

Time, it is turning
Like a plow in the field
It roots up the earth
And what’s hidden is revealed
Sewing the future
While the past, it is sealed
I’ve got a hope
That is not in this world

Half of the battle
Is only with myself
While the other half
Is something I can’t help

Lest I should stumble
I try not to forget
That every hair is numbered
Every footstep, every breath
And this life that I’m living
It will not end in death
I’ve got a hope that is not in this world

I’ve got a hope that is not in this world

I will post something tomorrow night about the surgery.

Peace,
Milton

This is not a week like any other week.

Yesterday, Ginger flew to Birmingham to be with her mother who had a heart catherization today. When we found out about the procedure last week, Ginger called her mother’s doctor to ask what was going on. The physician’s assistant was compassionate and careful in her responses, which meant she did not give Ginger much clarity as to the severity of the situation. When Ginger articulated her struggle in trying to figure out whether or not to go to Alabama, the woman said, “If it were my mother, I’d come.”

The test showed blockage “in the worst possible place,” according to the doctor, and Rachel is to have open heart surgery on Friday morning. Both Ginger and I have family who have survived the same surgery and thrived following it. My dad is alive because of his quadruple bypass. We know this is not experimental stuff. And it’s Rachel: my wonderful, beautiful, crazy mother-in-law. We are both hopeful and concerned.

Beyond the surgery, we have several things to sort out. When you are an only child who lives a couple thousand miles away from your parents who both have health issues, how you think about the days to come becomes a multi-layered process. We are not in a panic, or in a place where we have to make big changes immediately or even contemplate them in the near future; we are aware that we are entering a new chapter in our lives together. This week is a pivot point from which life swings us in a new direction.

I’m not prepared to get much more philosophical than that this evening. I’m writing tonight to ask you to pray — for Rachel, for Reuben, for Ginger, and for me. Thanks.

Peace,
Milton

As I drove around running errands today, I met someone I did not know before: I. F. Stone. Though he died a few years back, he was the topic of Talk of the Nation with his biographer, Myra McPherson. Though the facts of his life are interesting, what made me wish I had known him sooner was the description of his work ethic. Victor Navasky described it this way in The Nation:

But in short order, although he never attended presidential press conferences, cultivated no highly placed inside sources and declined to attend off-the-record briefings, time and again he scooped the most powerful press corps in the world.

His method: To scour and devour public documents, bury himself in The Congressional Record, study obscure Congressional committee hearings, debates and reports, all the time prospecting for news nuggets (which would appear as boxed paragraphs in his paper), contradictions in the official line, examples of bureaucratic and political mendacity, documentation of incursions on civil rights and liberties. He lived in the public domain.

I thought about Stone again when I got home and happen to see clips of Bush speaking today, ratcheting up the fear as election season begins, and actually saying Osama bin Laden’s name, which has not been part of his vocabulary for some time. As I skipped around from channel to channel, no one made mention of his tactics, or called him on the carpet for such a blatant move; they just repeated what he had said. I guess I’ll have to wait for Jon Stewart to come back to work to see someone play these words alongside of other clips to show the inconsistencies and manipulation.

I met a wonderful woman in Jackson, Mississippi a couple of years ago who had a bumper sticker on her refrigerator that said, “If you’re not appalled, you’re not paying attention.” We, as a rule, are not paying attention; we are getting what we deserve. We are allowing ourselves to be told what is going on rather than looking for the truth ourselves. Something is wrong when the best journalist I know is on a fake news show.

Though I do sport a “Bush’s Last Day” sticker on my guitar case, my point here is not that he is The Problem. Both sides of the aisle are filled with folks more consumed with power games than truth telling. When they talk about what is important to them, they talk about beating the other guys. Few of our leaders articulate anything other than what the polls show they should say or what will make their opponents look bad.

Navasky closed his article by quoting Stone’s own credo:

To write the truth as I see it; to defend the weak against the strong; to fight for justice; and to seek, as best I can, to bring healing perspectives to bear on the terrible hates and fears of mankind, in the hope of someday bringing about one world, in which men will enjoy the differences of the human garden instead of killing each other over them.

I drove home from a meeting at church tonight and heard a report saying the three gubernatorial candidates in my state each released attack ads today making sure we would be afraid of them all. Election season means those seeking office will act and speak on the assumption that we are stupid people with very little memory. They will make empty promises, speak in clichés, and keep telling us to “Be afraid; be very afraid.”

It’s worked before. We’ve given them no reason to believe it won’t work again. How I wish we would.

Peace,
Milton

My new schedule at the restaurant means I work forty hours in three and a half days: Monday I work twelve, Wednesday I work six, and then eleven each on Friday and Saturday. The long day on Monday makes it a challenge to write Sunday through Thursday, which is my goal. But here I am.

Mondays at the restaurant are fun and challenging because it is the day after the weekend, which means there have been no produce deliveries in Sunday and I get to take stock of what is left over and what had been left undone after the busiest days of our week. Last night about midnight, Robert, the head chef, called to tell me Sunday had been especially busy and I might need to come in a bit early. He’s never done that before. I went in at nine instead of ten.

Being the lunch chef means I have a lot of room for creativity because I’m the only one there and because it’s my job to turn the leftovers into the special of the day. Today that meant I made Uncle Milty’s Guinness and Chocolate Chili (better known as Red Lion Chili at the restaurant) for the soup du jour and a roasted statler chicken breast with caramelized onions and mushrooms in a Guinness demi-glaze (can you spot my favorite ingredient?) with roasted garlic mashed potato cakes and green beans. Though some folks tried my creations, most came in for a burger on a holiday afternoon. The funny thing was almost everyone had some change they wanted to make from the way things were listed on the menu: mixed greens instead of fries, onion rings on the side, and who knows what else. Today, the menu was only a suggestion to most, as if everyone had watched When Harry Met Sally and came into to do their best Meg Ryan impression and order everything on the side.

Two of the requests I remember in particular. One man was allergic to wheat, which meant he couldn’t eat the potato cakes (flour) or the demi-glaze (Guinness); the bartender wanted to know if I could figure something out so the man try the special. I had some potatoes that had not been made into cakes and I made a sauce for the chicken out of butter and roasted garlic. Not only did the man get to eat, but he thoroughly enjoyed his meal. The second request came from a woman who comes in regularly and has yet to order off the menu. A couple of weeks ago, she came in and asked if we could make Fettuccine Alfredo. The simple answer was yes. Last Monday night she was less specific – she just wanted something other than what was in print – so I made her a vegetable risotto. Tonight she came in and asked the bartender, “Is Milton cooking tonight?” When he said yes, she asked him to ask me what her options were. What I had was wild mushroom risotto (leftovers) that I doctored up a bit to give it a little more pizzazz. Her husband ordered the chicken special. When I went out to the pub to get some cranberry juice and check the Sox score, I had a chance to talk with them a bit. They were both quite happy. So was I.

I smile at myself because I get such a rush from being able to cook for people. I’m glad folks ask for food the way they want it. I love that someone knew if I was there I would fix a dinner just for them. I wish I had a place where I could talk to them while I was cooking. Who knows – maybe someday. For tonight, I’m just thankful I get to do what I love doing.

Peace,
Milton