Poplar Fruit

My friend Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made On wrote a post for me the other day answering a question I had for him - so here I am repaying th favor. He asked me if I would write a poem based on a Billie Holliday song, how can anyone resist a prompt like that? If I were a great poet, I would write a whole book of items on Billie songs! Well, I chose an obvious one, I didn't want to pick something obscure, and I remember on NPR hearing an interview with Norah Jones, where she was talking about in high school, one of hr teachers asked her to do a Billie song for a talent show of some sort. She figured shed end up singing something light hearts, I think her example was "What a Little Moonlight Can Do." Instead, er teacher picked Strange Fruit, one of the headiest, darkest songs on Billies repertoire, a song about racism - in particular Lynchings. I remember thinking how hard that would be, singing a song so bitter and angry and personal, about something ones own ancestors might have participated in. So, this week, i wrote "Poplar Fruit." Hope you weren't hoping for a HAPPY poem, Mr. Chris...

My thighs are plump and sturdy,
My face is butter fat,
My belly filled with poplar fruit
My grandfathers planted.

My children are both quick and pure,
Rich with education,
Their fingers stained by poplar fruit
My grandfathers planted.

My heart is sick and heavyset
My heart, she's over fed
With strange fruit hung from poplar trees
My grandfathers planted

I wear a dress of samite silk
Dyed black and white and red,
From flesh burned ash, from bone, from blood
From poplar fruit grown rich and sweet,
From growing on the poplar trees
My grandfathers planted

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Boy's Homework: B-17 Bombers, Week 1: The Memphis Belle

My youngest son, Laurene is a big history fan, so last year during school, he decided to borrow a US History textbook from school and start working through it. Right at the end of this school year, he finished it! So, we decided to take a break this summer and do something easier - so he decided he wanted to study World War II. This summer I will be posting some of the things we do together to learn about the War. If people don't find this COMPLETELY boring, I might even put up some notes about what its like trying to plan a WWII curriculum for a 3rd grader (hint: its an interestingly difficult process).

Well, the first topic he wanted to learn about was bomber planes - which was perfect, because I remembered a movie about bombers from when I was a kid: Memphis Belle. If you've never seen Memphis Belle, its a pic VERY loosely based on the real Memphis Belle, a B-17 bomber that was one of the first to complete a full tour of duty in the Daylight Bombing runs over Europe. It returned to the US and flew around the country, so the crew could stump for War Bonds, and generally buck up people's courage. The movie itself, though, while not a great introduction to this specific historical event, does help to lay out some of the bare bonnes of how a B-17 worked: what the jobs were in the crew, what the rhythm of a bombing run looked like, what the various difficulties involved were, etc.

So, for our first week, Laurence and watched the movie, first, and I talked it over with him to make sure he understood it. Then I gave him two activities to complete.

The first was to design his own B-17. I gave him a lesson on Nose Art (again, difficult with a third grader, as one attempts to avoid Nose Art featuring naked women), and we went over what the different positions on the bomber were, again. Then he designed his own nose art, and assigned people he knew to the different crew positions on his plane - interestingly he decided to use other kids from his class at school, and additionally interesting (although indicative of Laurence in some ways), he did not assign the pilot's seat to himself. He was also frustrated that he felt like he had to assign all the positions to boys, since, in World War II, only men were allowed to serve in the combat arm of the military (this is not a constraint I put on him, he just thought it would be unrealistic to do anything else). It was interesting to see how frustrating it was to him to not be able to put ALL his friends with him. If you're the interested, he named his plane "The Texas Tartar", and the nose art featured a horseman with a sword (yes, my son is a geek).

For his other assignment, I told him to write an essay about the dangers of flying a B-17 bomber. Here's what he learned this week, then, in his own words:

In Memphis Belle, there's a story where the pilot and co-pilot were sitting in the cockpit. Suddenly, flak (bits of metal exploding like grenades) hit some tomato soup on the counter. It splatted on the captain and co-captain and they kept yelling at each other because they thought that each other were bleeding. This is funny, but it also expresses how dangerous it was to be on a B17 Bomber in World War II. On a B17 bomber in World War II, there were a lot of dangers.

In the way, your bomber could get shot down by fighter planes, because they will shoot bullets at you until one of the planes dies or explodes. It could also get shot down with flak. Flak is an explosive covered in metal. When it's shot out of an anti-aircraft gun, it explodes in the air. When it explodes, it would have pieces of metal fly everywhere.

In a B17 bomober, it can get down to 30 degrees below zero. Thats because the planes fly above the clouds. If you weren't careful, your fingers could freeze onto the gun (if you had one). Your saliva could come out of your mouth and freeze in your headset. Then you wouldn't be able to hear what the other people were saying.

In a B17 bomber, there's a lot of different ways to blow up while trying to land safely. You could try to belly land and have your plane go too fast and have the friction explode your plane. Belly landing is when you land your plane without taking your wheels out. You would belly land because your wheels wouldn't come out. You could also put your wheels out and have only one wheel come out and make your plane go out of control and explode.

In a B17 bomber there's a lot of ways to run out of gas. Your plane will fall if it runs out of gas. It could have some of its engines blown off by bad fires or flak. It could have to go around the bomb run twice because they didn't see the target they were supposed to drop their bombs on.

Imagine how scared you would be if you were on a B17 bomber. I would be terrified! There were a lot of dangers one a B17 bomber in World War II.

This week, he is watching 'Twelve O'Clock High' and thinking about what officers had to do to be good leaders of their men, AND designing his own board game. Next week, notably will be on Stalingrad, so if anyone knows any good, appropriate sources on that, I'm THRILLED to hear suggestions. Or on the amphibious battles of the Pacific, which he wants to do next, after that.

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Anniversary

I don't write as eloquently or remember things as clearly as my wife, but if I didn't post SOMETHING, I'd feel like I was being unfair to my beautiful companion, that she wouldn't know how glad I am that she hasn't found anything better after so many years. Anniversaries are a time for arrogance, for feeling your love is so important that someone else can't do without it. The other day, I was putting together Amanda's anniversary present for this year - in classic Jason style, I then blushingly left it on her desk for her and went off to scrub the kitchen counter or something, never telling her why I gave it to her for her anniversary. This year, I found a card box, some Hallmark device in which you're supposed to store all of your treasured old Hallmark cards (presumably, if you try to slip in an American Greetings card, teh box looks at you in disgust...), down at Big Lots. It's not the nicest box, I in fact, had to use a bit of masking tape on it, but Amanda has, presumably since long before she met me had a little square box in her closet, an old battered cardboard recycled box. Inside, she had all her old letters from her best friend Natalie Tiftickjian, nee Salazar. To m e this box always had a sort of mystical quality to it, like, if I touched it, I'd mix something up and forever damage my wife's carefully orchestrated organization (in my defense, I've done this before, in other places, with that result, I think...). But I always felt sorry for those letters, all stuck in a box for something that looked like an Amway product, forever anonymous amongst the other knick-knacks in her chest. I've met Natalie a few times, and usually feel uncoomfortable during the meeting. There are a lot of very excellent reasons for this, historical issues that should cast absolutely no aspersion on Madame Oddstockings as I dubbed her in my brain a long time ago (I don't remember why, now). None of the excellent reasons were really the reason, though. When Amanda and I met, there was a peculiar fire to her, a powerful force that drew me to her, and in those halcyon early days, I basked in it, a funny, tired little thing, and for some reason, she let me bask, even liked me to bask there, to warm myself in her. I fell in love with that secret sun first - the rest of her I've fallen in love with since, in teh slow, quiet way that one falls in love with a beautiful, subtly discovered soul. Shortly into our marriage I, again in classic Jason style, mucked up this lovely light more than once. It's still there, I see it flash once in a while. I don't think I'm, in fact, sufficiently grand to douse a genius like hers. But, I think she has learned a reflexive care with it, now. Natalie is a sort of moon to that sun, something distant, and impassive towards me, but that when it passes through the sky (always, Amanda will attest, with an infrequency that fate seems to have, until recently ordained for their friendship..), it shines a soft reflection of that same halcyon beauty. I've always appeciated Natalie in Amanda's life, because it's a sort of reminder to me that Amanda is eternally precisely what she is, a sort of redemptive ignominy over any mistakes I might make toward my wife. It's hard to explain, and I'm probably botching it up wildly, but it struck me with a clarity the other day, because it was Susan Dickinson's birthday. Emily Dickinson is my one constant over the years. Since early high school, through all the myriad stupid, flighty attempts at various ways of living I've made, through the many transmutations of my identity, Emily Dickinson has been the only thing I've always loved (Amanda would be the one exception, and a stronger one at that, but I happened to meet Emily Dickinson before Amanda... ;) ). She's always been a sort of ideal to me. When she was alive, her best friend, her most frequent correspondent, and her oftimes poetic editor was her Sister-in-law and neighbor, Susan. The letters that she wrote Susan (almost none of the return correspondence survives) are some of the most beautiful examples of Dickinson's writing, and their relationship had a depth that spoke to the intensity of both souls. I've never been a crusader for the theory that the two were lovers (more or less, it's always struck as irrelevant and distracting from what really matters abotu the relationship), but the intensity of their friendship is such that I don't think you can really fully understand Emily Dickinson if you don't look at her relationship with her neighbor. It's the sort of relationship I've seen so seldom that it's difficult for me to really desribe it or comprehend it. Anyway, as I was thinking about this, I realized that, in my mind, Natalie is Amanda's Susan Dickinson. So, I really didn't mean this to be a long diatribe on Amanda's relationship with her best friend - honestly, I've not read there letters, or been privvy to most of there real conversations, and most of my thoughts here are probably pretty clumsy approximations anyway. What I really mean is that, this surprised me for a moment, because I realized,that I think of Amanda in the same way that I think of Emily Dickinson, someone who is beyond mere humanity, mere momentary affections, someone to large for the love of any one soul, but someone at the same time so intimate, honest, deep and soft that she can be preciously, intimately mine, someone whose dashed off words hardly considered for content, can speak volumes to me deeper than the thought out speeches of most souls, someone with the sort of beautiful humanity that at once fulfills one's understanding of the nature of divinity in man, and gently chides you for thinking you understood it at all. So I made this box, because I cannot imagine that someday, someone won't find her, and have the deep need to know who she was. I'm no historian, but I can at least have a little clasped box for her, to put these letters in, so that someday, some little soul who loves what she leaves the world behind can know her well enough to love who she was when she was here. Anyway, thumpedy-thump, blah blah blah. Here's hoping that doesn't sound too crazy. I love you, Amanda.

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