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NEW YORK UNEASY
"Back to the Big Uneasy"
Occasionally, correspondence between two like-minded souls stops and in this instance the reason was a happy one: I travelled to northern Minnesota to visit my sister and my father and their families. My daughter and our younger sister -- who objects to the title of this feature as implying her non-existence -- came here too.Our younger sister has already returned to Houston, and tomorrow my daughter and I will return to New York City. Neither my daughter nor I are happy about our impending departure. My daughter is facing another year in her highly competitive public high school; I have been called while on vacation to be informed that pressing work awaits me. The Big Uneasy has taken on the psychic dime nsions of a human pressure cooker. Perhaps
we could build some oversized statue in that shape to commemorate the mood -- in that way we could be more like Minnesotans and less like New Yorkers.
Minnesotans like oversized representational statues. Bemidji, Minnesota features a huge statue of Paul Bunyan; featured in the movie "Fargo" but
known to me since childhood when Bemidji was a popular destination due to a low tech but highly satisfying amusement park. When we were children, we used to visit Woman Lake every summer with our
parents. Woman Lake was attached by channels choked with water lilies to Boy Lake and Man Lake, which we would visit in a boat powered by a low horsepower Evinrude motor. Close to Woman Lake was Hackensack, Minnesota. The
people of Hackensack, looking for the tourist dollar, claimed that Hackensack was the home of Paul Bunyan's sweetheart, and built an oversized statue of a woman in
sunbonnet and full skirt, with a left hip strangely larger than the right. If you walked around to the rear of Paul Bunyan's sweetheart, you could see through a hole in her skirt
that she was sadly hollow: concrete plastered over a chicken wire base.
Up here in northern Minnesota, there is an oversized statue of a loon sitting in one
civic lake, and in another, an oversized statue of a fishing bob. A fishing bob is a flotation device attached to fishing line, and when the bob goes under water, it means a
fish is biting on your baited hook. Eveleth, Minnesota boasts the "World's Largest Hockey Stick," which looks pretty much like you would expect such a thing to look.
Close by the "World's Largest Hockey Stick" is a statue of an oversized hockey puck, which gets minor billing in the Eveleth scheme of things. This time, the "World's Largest
Hockey Stick" was lying on its side, needing repair. Rachel, our younger sister, and I discussed schemes to either purloin the "World's Largest Hockey Stick" while it was  down and out or to build another hockey stick on Rachel's property to make the Eveleth,
Minnesota hockey stick the "World's Second Largest Hockey Stick." Neither scheme got past the discussion stages.
I like the innocence of a region abundant
in natural beauty and also well-supplied with natural resources that nevertheless aspiring to something more: to something oversized and mythic.
Fall is already coming to northern Minnesota. Some of the wild strawberry leaves have turned red, as have a few leaves on the maple trees. Fisherman report that as
soon as the summer flees, as it does around August 31st, the bass stop biting. The nice thing is so do the mosquitoes.
Yesterday, the two younger generations of the family went paddling on a lake close to the Boundary Waters (a string of small lakes dividing Canada and the U.S., and now
a National Park) known as Twin Lake. Three of us went skimming across the water in Kevlar kayaks, the other two chose a canoe that had a sailing attachment. The kayaks
maneuvered with astounding ease, but disaster struck the sailing canoe once it had reached the far side of Twin Lake: the mast and sail blew off, and return to the pulling
out spot had to be achieved by arduous paddling.
Tonight Rachel and I sat in her treehouse overlooking the magnificent Saint Louis River. Both of us were in poor moods which gradually dissipated as we watched
the sun reach the top of the trees on the opposite shore and the unending variety of the patterns on the surface of the river. It was just last year that I lent my negligible skills to the building of the treehouse -- it
seems like yesterday. The passage of time is evident, though. One of the favorite dogs has lost her guard hair (which is black) and is grizzled all over; the planks of the tree house were a bright pine yellow
last year and now are a weathered gray.
New York City, I hope you have something to offer my humble soul to make up for my sad separation from this place and this time.
Your New York Uneasy Correspondent.
all photos and text © 2001 by Sarah Scott
MINNESOTA FOX TALES
Anno Domino 2001
Although, unlike Sarah, who lives in Brooklyn, and whose job it has been as a public
servant in New York City to serve the victims of the World Trade Center disaster, we who live thousands of miles away have not had to deal intimately with the terrible
day-to-day aftermath of the attack. Yet here, the signs of the emotional toll are everywhere. American flags have appeared overnight on the sides of most commercial
buildings, and are flown everywhere at half mast. By Saturday, in downtown Virginia, Minnesota, ACE Hardware ran out of American flags. I bought some red white and
blue flag bunting which I planned to hang in the windows of the clinic where I work.
Yesterday I felt I wanted to do contribute something to others who are mourning, so I
called Roger Weaver, our Episcopal minister, and volunteered to play my hammered dulcimer in the Sunday service. I did not feel at all ready to perform, but my need to do something overcame my misgivings.
Last night, I too, lit a candle, using a Colonial Williamsburg lantern that I hung outside. It was my remembrance candle, and served double duty, providing some needed light for
Dad and Dolly, who came over for dinner after their garage sale marathon yesterday. I practiced for several hours after dinner, and had picked "Simple Gifts," "Amazing
Grace," and "Battle Hymn of the Republic" to play at the church service. I just learned "Battle Hymn of the Republic" last night, so I felt fairly nervous about playing it.
We got to the church an hour early, and I had a chance to set up the dulcimer in the balcony of the church, and to practice for at least 30 minutes before anyone started to
arrive. My husband, Jerry, of course was there, and Joy (the organist), as well as the deacon and altar boy, who went quietly about their duties prior to the start of the service.
By the time I was aware of activity below in the church, I had played "Battle Hymn" over about 30 times, and pretty much had gotten over making mistakes. I kept playing it until
time for the service to start, slowly.
During communion, it was planned, I would play background music. We had no service bulletin to guide us, but Joy said she would cue me. When the priest presented the
silver chalice and intoned the familiar words spoken by Jesus, at the Last Supper, I looked to Joy, sitting across from me at the organ, and she nodded to begin. I raised
my hammers, poised to strike a resounding beginning to "Simple Gifts," and hesitated just long enough to notice that the priest had begun reciting another prayer. The
organist clasped her hand to her mouth in an apology, and we both smiled at a blunder averted, and moments later, it really was time to play. I alternated between "Simple
Gifts" and "Amazing Grace," nearly flawlessly, for once, and then, by good fortune, I was able to stop at an appropriate time.
Roger was on vacation and had invited another Episcopal priest, Margaret Thomas, to perform the service. She had perhaps the toughest assignment of her career, in finding
something adequate to the occasion. She had the good common sense to avoid "comforting words" about God's mysterious ways, nor did she try to make sense of the
horror. She talked instead about her own experiences of the past week--of being so profoundly distracted that she forgot at her earlier service after serving the communion
wine, to hand out the wafers, or "body of Christ." Of how terrible this tragedy is that a host of clerics could not among them chose one Psalm appropriate, "terrible enough" to
fit the occasion. Her message was that at a time like this, we can but do our best, and draw comfort and love from one another, as well as from God's love for us.
Of course this is what we are all experiencing. Even telephone dunning agents have been kind and caring this week. I have thought myself to be functioning fairly well, yet
two nights this week I have forgotten to eat dinner. These incidents are unimportant, and sometimes amusing, but they are signs of a profound disturbance which has left us in an agony of mourning beyond  our own comprehension. Collectively, we can but gather and take comfort in our
family and friends. I do not ask much of myself, just now, but to put one step in front of the other, to breath in, breath out.
Yesterday, I was pleased with
my patriotic bunting. I felt one with the cause of American patriotism. I set my imagination to work as I wondered in what satisfying ways our military could blast terrorists and their Afghani
supporters BEYOND back to the stone age. It was my hope that they could be decimated to the point that not even DNA evidence would be left of their former existence.
Today I am very troubled with this plan. While my misgivings may be of little or no account in the grander scheme of things, and while this terrorism is a worse crime than
that of the worst mass murderer, now I am more fearful of the results we will see if we march forward, intent on revenge, planning in our usual straightforward American
military and, Biblically speaking, First Testament way in taking an "eye for an eye." Will we be doomed, then, to an everlasting future of attack and counter attack?
And how will we attack terrorists who are headquartered clandestinely in at least 38 separate countries? President Bush has thrown down the gauntlet and promised
reprisals backed by the full might of the American military. But we are not dealing with gentlemen warriors. They will not play our rules. And they have an advantage that we do
not, and do not seek. They do not value human life, even their own.
But mustn't we fight back? How do we, or COULD we, turn the other cheek? Not once
in this past week have I heard anyone ask for forgiveness and mercy for the terrorists or their sponsors. Candles have been lit for the firefighters, the police, the military, the
victims of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and of the airplane crashes. None have been lit for the terrorists.
I myself have felt no forgiveness for them, only rage, horror and bewilderment.
I do not know the right path, either pragmatically or morally. Yet I think it is not through
war and destruction. The example of the nonviolence which Gandhi practiced comes to my mind, somewhat to my own surprise, as I have never considered myself a pacifist
before. Here I become confused, though, because I know that nonviolence is not a protective stance. Those of us who stand for peace can die, and have, and will continue to, as surely as our warriors.
Suddenly another irreverent image comes to mind, a Far Side cartoon, with two grinning grizzly bears standing over the remains of a hiker; backpack, walking stick
and hat are strewn on the ground between them. One bear says to the other, "He kept yelling, 'But I'm a vegetarian!' Like we care!"
All of the Americans who died in this real-life inferno were strangers and innocents with no connection to the terrorists except that they all died together, yet they were targeted,
like the "Far Side" hiker, for no better reason, except that they were there.
This is a terrible puzzle to me. I am not in charge of coming up with the answers, but the
future concerns me as I'm sure it does everyone who reads this. I am also mindful that we seem to live in a time without strong leaders. And yet, in times of terrible need,
sometimes leaders emerge, of whom we never before knew, or needed. I pray that we will find that leadership now, and that we will find the right path.
Of one thing I am certain: we must continue to love and serve one another, for there is
our greatest strength.
As I wrote this last thought, I knew it had been said before, more eloquently, and here, while respecting those of other faiths, I quote the
words from The Holy Bible, King James version: The first epistle of Paul the apostle to the Corinthians, Chapter 13:
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of
angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have
all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
"Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity
envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but
rejoiceth in the truth;Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
"Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be
tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.For now we see through a glass,
darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
"AND NOW ABIDETH FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY, THESE THREE; BUT THE GREATEST OF THESE IS CHARITY."
Dot
your faithful correspondent,
© 2001 by Rachel Scott
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