On the Road with Mary Oliver

Helene Atwan began her career in publishing at Random House in 1976; she worked at A.A.Knopf, Viking Press, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Simon and Schuster, before being named director of Beacon Press in 1995. She served for eight years on the board of PEN-New England and is the Administrator of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.

Several weeks ago, in the midst of National Poetry Month, I made an impulsive decision to drive out from Boston to Syracuse, New York, for a poetry reading. Mary Oliver was scheduled to fly from Logan for that reading, but I thought if I offered to intercept her on the connection from Provincetown and drive, it would give us some precious hours to talk and allow me the rare treat of hearing Mary read—an opportunity one should never pass up. Mary graciously accepted the offer of a ride and, as luck almost never has it, it was a beautiful early spring day when we set out for our five hour road trip.

Photo by Helene Atwan.

As we approached the border of New York State, Mary interrupted our conversation to point out that we were coming up to the road to Austerlitz, a road she had driven so many times on her way to Steepletop, the home of Edna St. Vincent Millay for 25 years and then of her sister, Norma Millay Ellis. I knew that Mary had lived there too, on and off for more than half-a-dozen years after she finished high school and while she attended Vassar. The day was fine and we were making very good time, so I turned to her to ask if we should stop, and she instantly replied Yes!

Link Roundup: Immigration, High Food Prices, Loving Memorial

David Bacon, author of the forthcoming Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants , sent these pictures from Oakland in the wake of last week's raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) near schools in Oakland and Berkeley. You can read more about the impact the raids had on school children in Oakland at New American Media:

As word of the presence of ICE agents in the neighborhood spread, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums rushed over to Esperanza Elementary School, where a number of parents and community members had gathered.

Addressing them, the Mayor called the situation the "the ugly side of government."

Mayor Dellums, whose memoir Lying Down with the Lions: A Public Life from the Streets of Oakland to the Halls of Power chronicles a life of fighting for social justice, "labeled the ICE actions 'inappropriate and unnecessary' and reiterated that children needed education, not harassment. 'There should be no raids in Oakland,' he said."

The last picture here is from a rally last Friday in San Francisco to protest of the raids. For more on immigration in California, read Bacon's post from last week about immigrant farm workers in California, and also read his commentary at Truthout.org about the May Day rallies for immigrant rights.

Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap, posted on his blog about the effects of the rising cost of food on those who are already experiencing food insecurity:

For some, these events may mean that those weekly strolls down the tastefully lit aisles of Whole Foods now become monthly. For those who have naturally spurned such discount pariahs as Wal-Mart, second thoughts may be in order.  

But for another class of American shoppers, rising food prices, whether organic or conventional, is just another bump in the road on an already trying journey. I’m speaking of low-income families, and increasingly low-to-middle income families who now find themselves treading closer to the lower end of the income spectrum.

Also be sure to check out Mark Winne's post on our blog about the Food Gap, Poverty, and Income Disparity.

American Booksellers Foundation for Freedom of Expression (whose president Chris Finan has posted here about free speech) has joined the Media Coalition in a lawsuit challenging an Indiana law requiring bookstores to register with the state if they sell sexually explicit material. ABFFE has also joined Powell's Books, Dark Horse Comics, and others in Oregon to fight a law in that state making it a crime to allow a minor under 13 to view or purchase a “sexually explicit” work. An affidavit from Dark Horse explains why they feel the law is unconstitutionally vague:

“I believe the only way for Dark Horse to ensure compliance under the statute would be to refrain from publishing this material entirely,” He said. “Attempting to determine, book by book, what may fall under the purview of the satute, including whether there are any ‘sexually explicit’ portions and if so whether such portions ‘serve some purpose other than titillation’ (even if I knew what that meant) is totally impractical, unduly burdensome and surely would result in our over-inclusive self-censorship.”

The recent death of Mildred Loving, whose fight against a Virginia interracial marriage ban took her all the way to the Supreme Court, inspired this post on the Courting Equality blog about the ban on gay marriage in Virginia. On the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that ended racial discrimination in marriage, Loving issued a statement in support of gay marriage:

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry.  I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry.  Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

Who's Your Mama?

In honor of Mother's Day, Beacon Broadside solicited different perspectives on the holiday. Today's post is from Harlyn Aizley. Aizley edited Confessions of the Other Mother: Nonbiological Lesbian Moms Tell All!  and is the author of Buying Dad: One Woman's Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor. (Cross-posted at her personal blog.)

You'd think Mother's Day among lesbian moms would be an awesome, Doublemint occasion – double your pleasure, double your fun. After all, Mother's Day is not even a Judeo-Christian/Hallmark creation. It actually was birthed in the US some 150 years ago by Appalachian mom Ann Jarvis, who wanted to raise awareness of the poor health conditions in her community. She called it "Mother's Work Day." So for those vernal equinox lesbians more inclined to celebrate the cycles of the moon than the Old or New Testament, Mother's Day is perfect.  It's pro-mom, pro-woman, pro-justice.

Then why the angst?  Why does this lesbian mom secretly dread Mother's Day?  Why do I sadden rather than rejoice when approaching this women fest (an event even bigger and more far-reaching than the Michigan's Women's Festival?)

Because in addition to amplifying the joy, Mother's Day in two-mom households also can shed light on just how complicated it is to share the role of "mother."

Never mind who gets to be called "mom", who gets to sleep in?

Who takes care of dinner and makes a cake?

Who gets the card made from glue and glitter in kindergarten?

The Porning of Miley Cyrus

Today's post is from Kevin M. Scott, co-author (with Carmine Sarracino) of The Porning of America: The Rise of Porn Culture, What It Means, and Where We Go from Here, forthcoming from Beacon Press in Fall 2008. Scott teaches courses in American literature and culture and directs the English education program at Elizabethtown College.

Talk about teachable moments. Two days before the "topless Miley" stories broke all over television and online, my class and I were discussing the young star of the Disney show, Hannah Montana.

My endlessly digressing American Studies class, fifteen young women and one lonely fellow, saw a connection between the subject and period we were studying—the representation of women in Cold War-era popular culture—and the current phenomenon of young female stars being offered up onto the altar of a lecherous public consumption.

Knowing, as they do, how easy I am to distract, they asked me what I thought of Miley Cyrus, who plays a normal high school kid who moonlights as a rock star. (Don't we all remember that kid from our own high school days? No?)

I said, roughly, "Well, the music makes my ears bleed, BUT, considering the options, if my daughter were to be a fan of the star, I would probably decide to shut up and let her have her fun."

A Global Perspective on Mother’s Day

In honor of Mother's Day, Beacon Broadside will feature a handful of posts on the holiday. Today, Sarah LeVine shares her experiences of mother's days around the world. LeVine grew up in England; she was educated at Oxford, the University of Chicago, and Harvard, where she received her Ph.D. and is now an associate in the department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies. Her most recent book, with David Gellner, is Rebuilding Buddhism, and a collection of stories, The Saint of Kathmandu and Other Tales of the Sacred in Distant Lands, is forthcoming from Beacon Press. 

When I came to the US from England in the 1960s, I suffered a good deal from culture shock. In the first place, in contrast with my British undergraduate classmates who rarely mentioned their parents, my Freud-indoctrinated American graduate school classmates, despite being older and, one might have assumed, already well out of the nest, were obsessed with theirs, especially with their mothers. Trading tales of psychological abuse was a favorite pastime. But for all this tension and ambivalence, they still celebrated Mother's Day. In England at that time we had Mothering Sunday on the fourth Sunday of Lent, an Anglican Church festival that was generally ignored. The four per cent of the population who went to church on that particular late winter Sunday thanked God for the care and attention they'd received from their mothers, who were only marginally involved in this thanksgiving. In contrast, Mother's Day in America was a federally-sanctified celebration, a deification of the internalized torturer/seductress, which even in the sixties was poised to out-strip the commercial excesses of Christmas.

I was astounded by the commotion. But then I married an American and had American children who, soon after they could toddle, were deifying me on the second Sunday in May. Almost before I knew it I was receiving cards (handmade in daycare center) and being pressed to stay in bed long after the hour when I was usually out jogging so that, with their father's help, my children could bring my breakfast on a tray.

Rather to my surprise I began to look forward to the Mother's Day commotion.

Living Under the Trees: Indigenous Mexican Farm Workers in California

Today’s post is from award-winning photojournalist David Bacon. Bacon spent thirty years as a labor organizer and immigrant rights activist. His articles appear in The Nation, American Prospect, Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and he hosts a weekly radio show on KPFA-FM in Berkeley, California. Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants, will be published by Beacon Press this fall. The photos in this essay are from his photography project, Living Under the Trees, and are used here with the photographer’s permission.

In 2006, Mexico experienced profound social turmoil. Dramatic political and economic conflicts uprooted and displaced thousands of families, forcing many to consider leaving home. Teachers struck in Oaxaca, and after their demonstrations were tear-gassed, a virtual insurrection paralyzed the state capitol for months. Economic desperation lies at the root of these political and social movements — one major basis of the pressure on people to migrate north. But repression brought to bear on those movements also leads to migration.  It's no accident that Oaxaca is one of the main starting points for the current stream of Mexican migrants coming to the U.S.

About 30 million Mexicans survive on less than 30 pesos a day — not quite $3. The minimum wage is 53 pesos a day. The federal government estimates that 37.7% of Mexico’s 106 million citizens — 40 million people — live in poverty. Some 25 million, or 23.6%, live in extreme poverty. In rural Mexico, over ten million people have a daily income of less than 12 pesos — a little over a dollar. In the southern state of Oaxaca that category of extreme poverty encompasses 75% of its 3.4 million residents, according to EDUCA, an education and development organization. That makes Oaxaca the second-poorest state in Mexico, after Chiapas.

Monday Link Roundup: Fresh Food, Seeds, Bulbs and more

The Seattle-Post Intelligencer ran a feature last week about poor access to fresh, healthy food in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. The article quotes Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty: "Unless cities begin to realize they have a role to play in ensuring access to healthy food, then we're going to keep stumbling along." Parke Wilde at the U.S. Food Policy blog posted a more personal take on the issue, focusing on the definition of "food desert" and the focus on chain supermarket stores as a marker of access to food. (Parke also recently interviewed Mark Winne for USFPB.)

In the wake of the leaked email showing that the VA tried to downplay the suicide epidemic, Penny Coleman wrote this analysis of the DoD's annual suicide prevention conference at Alternet.

Gristmill posted an excellent review of Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds by Claire Hope Cummings. You can also read an excerpt of Uncertain Peril at Alternet.

Last Tuesday, USA Today columnist Laura Vanderkam discussed Seattle's novel approach to homelessness: give people a place to live. The piece features Rev. Craig Rennebohm, author of Souls in the Hands of a Tender God: Stories of the Search for Home and Healing on the Street.

The other "L" word: Stephen Ducat, author of The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity, offers Obama some advice on how to take back the liberal label. (Once he does that, can he take back arugula?)

There's some fantastic coverage of the PEN World Voices Festival over at MetaxuCafe. Nice redesign of that site!

Bookseller David Unowsky offers some advice on how to get your book on the shelves. The piece is aimed at self-pubbed authors, but has some good insights for any author.

And here's a great springtime parable from our friends at UUWorld.

A Tree Grows For Shirley

Beacon Broadside is pleased to introduce today's guest blogger, Kelly McMasters, the author of Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town, which was recently released by fellow independent publisher PublicAffairs. 

As my husband and I watched the Earth Day news coverage of schoolchildren packing soil around flowers and seedlings in dirt lots last week, we cringed at the rows of plastic planters left in their wake. So many well-intentioned moves toward sustainability or earth-friendly practices end up like this, it seems.

My first book, an environmental memoir about my blue-collar hometown on the east end of Long Island, was released on April 21, the day before Earth Day, which seemed fitting to me. And since my book, deals with environmental issues—in this case, the physical along with the psychological effects a federal nuclear facility has had on my hometown of Shirley, and the radioactive waste that will be sitting next door to the town for more than 300,000 years (longer than Long Island has even existed)—I realized I had an opportunity to see how I could inject some green into the often wasteful process of publication in an effort to not leave behind my own proverbial plastic planters.