Wyzga On Words

Here I Am In Santiago: 5 Weeks, 500 Miles.

Where *did* the time go?

I intended to post about my Camino as experienced year later.

I began writing last September with my arrival into Madrid.

And then Life Happened - as anyone who is shepherding eldercare parents knows full well.

Right now I want to savor this one moment in time and remember what it felt like to walk through the archway to the cathedral square with  bagpiper playing to herald our arrival (as is done 24 hours a day) and stand in the pilgrim-packed Cathedral de Santiago while the Botafumeiro swung back and forth over our heads

And then I want to go back and retrace those steps because ever since I became a peregrina I have not been the same woman who landed all fearful and uncertain in Madrid. 

What Does The Camino de Santiago Look Like A Year Later?

I'm a little behind my schedule.  The plan was to pick up my Camino de Santiago journal on Wednesday the 17th September 2014, a year from the day I boarded a plane at John Wayne Airport, flew to Newark International and then on to Madrid, Spain where I figured out where and how to get the Aeropuerto Express bus to travel across town to the RENFE station where I would board a train to Pamplona and then a bus to St. Jean Pied de Port arriving at my destination some 48 jet-lagged hours later. But I'm getting ahead of myself.  For those of you who know my family, you know that at least one character is himself in transition so plans being what the Goddess laughs at means I have to reconfigure this idea of mine.

Let's begin here by allowing Enya to set the stage with her lyrics to Pilgrim.  Each time I listen to this haunting music I am reminded that even after a year's time has passed this much I know is true: it's a long way to find out who you are. 

I want to use this time and this space to reflect on 500 miles trekked in 5 weeks.  What it felt like then and what it feels like now.

I can tell you that waking up to see Spain spread out below me as we descended was neither thrilling nor exciting.  I was petrified!  WTF was I thinking?  Estoy solo!  It would be easy enough to whip out my credit card, find the United Airlines counter and grab the first flight home.  You think I'm kidding?  Have Credit Card - Will Travel.  

What stopped me?  I fumbled in my backpack and pulled out a letter pressed into my hand a few hours before I was supposed to go to sleep on the last night in my own bed.  The letter began, "Dear Diane, Well done! As you read this thousands of feet above the earth, you may be wondering why I gave you a 'WELL DONE!' card to start your Camino de Santiago journey. But, in actuality, it is a great start.  Why?  Regardless of what does or doesn't happen from here on out, you will be forever changed simply because you showed up.  And that, my friend, is 'WELL DONE!'" 

How did Lorraine know?  I would return to her letter often over the miles.  The words of this storyteller encouraged me to get started on my adventure.  Was I still scared?  You bet!  As she pointed out (and I had no way of knowing how accurate her words would prove to be), some days it would be a trail and other days it would be a trial.  But if I agreed to show up (as I had promised I would) "step-by-step, moment-by-moment, heartbeat-by-heartbeat", I would show myself that this was "WELL DONE!"  

And so it begins.....

My Breasts Are Not For Scanning.

Like a good nurse and obedient weebus I have submitted to annual mammograms for a good long while.  As far as I know there is no history of breast cancer in my family. None whatsoever.  And yet I drank the Kool-aide that an annual mammogram was the way to be healthy; or at least to check on whether my breasts were healthy.  It's also a cop-out for those who *say* they do monthly breast exams (or have another to perform the breast touching service) but don't.  Let the machine catch it - more accurate, right?  Not necessarily so.  

I spent a good deal of time reading Jennifer Lunden's recent, lengthy and scientifically grounded article, Exposed, published in the September/October 2013 issue of ORION magazine.  A few highlights:

1. Not all radiologists are created equal.  Who reads the mammogram?  A radiologist.  Some catch tumors and others don't.  But the ones who score high to catch them also run women through the diagnostic testing mill when they have no cancer.
2. Mammograms catch slow-growing tumors. Those tumors may grow so slowly as to never be a problem.  Monthly breast checks can pick up the fast-growing tumors that appear in-between the annual mammogram.
3. Many tumors identified on a mammogram are not likely to develop into cancer.  And looking at a mammogram will not tell you which can be which.  So, doctors diagnose.  And diagnose with tests and other surgical procedures.
4. Breast cancer is responsible for less than 4% of female deaths.  This is not insignificant; but to show that breast cancer mortality risk is 0.05% for women who undergo a mammogram.
5. Radiation increases risk - mammograms over time accumulate radiation which translates to increased risk.
6. For years doctors recommended that women begin annual mammograms at age 40.  That recommendation has changed to every two years beginning at age 50.
7. Our environment with all its toxic ingredients plays a greater role in our health.  From nail polish to hair spray, bug killer, contraceptives and artificial hormones we are awash in carcinogens.  There are ways we can take control over what we eat and expose ourselves to.
8. There is a comprehensive complex of industries with deeply vested interests in breast cancer - not for the cure of it but for the money in it.
9. Chemicals cause cancer. Fix your environment.
10. Do your monthly breast exam & ask yourself: "Does this feel like this feel like this?"

Take a bit of time to read Lundens article.  Once you do, you may wish to click here for a link to a discussion about the article.  And decide for yourself.

As for me, my breasts are not for scanning.

Q&A Tuesday: How Do You Become A Writer? Read & Write.

Q:    How do you become a writer?

A:    You read books.  You act like a writer by writing.

One the one hand I am posting an article by and an interview with Molly Ringwald for my brother who found her then as now heart-thumpingly, breathtakingly stunning.

On the other hand I am writing this post because it has valuable tips on how to write.

Start here: click here to read John Williams interview with Ringwald on the subject of her newest novel, "When It Happens To You."  Highlights:

1. Writing and acting require an ability to understand a character.
2. Our human flaws make us human and create the good/evil duality.
3. Universal values speak to all of us.
4. While mothering may give a writer an edge on parenthood, note all the successful authors who never personally experienced their characters' lives.
5. Which writers have influenced you?

Then, click here to read Ringwald's Opinion piece, Act Like a Writer, with tips and exercises on finding and developing your character.  Excerpt.

"Our job, as the cast [of The Breakfast Club], was to find the humanity in the stereotypes that we had been assigned, to show that we were all suffering in our own way and searching for our way out. In the end, that way out is through connection, another lesson I’ve carried through my life and in what I have chosen to explore in fiction."

 

Women, Activism & The Vatican Don't Mix.

Until I read the public smack down by Cardinal William J. Levada, I was just a reader musing over the coincidence of two NYTimes articles about activist nuns published on the same day: one (Sister Megan Rice) who broke into the Oak Ridge nuclear reservation in Tennessee and the 900 nuns who met at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious this week in St. Louis, Missouri. 

Click here to read Sister Rice's story.  Excerpt:

"Now, Sister Megan Rice, 82, a Roman Catholic nun of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, and two male accomplices have carried out what nuclear experts call the biggest security breach in the history of the nation’s atomic complex, making their way to the inner sanctum of the site where the United States keeps crucial nuclear bomb parts and fuel.

“Deadly force is authorized,” signs there read. “Halt!” Images of skulls emphasize the lethal danger.

With flashlights and bolt cutters, the three pacifists defied barbed wire as well as armed guards, video cameras and motion sensors at the Oak Ridge nuclear reservation in Tennessee early on July 28, a Saturday. They splashed blood on the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility — a new windowless, half-billion-dollar plant encircled by enormous guard towers — and hung banners outside its walls."

Unable to locate any fact-neutral reports on the edict at the center of the conference meeting, click here to read a comprehensive albeit conservative view.  Click here to read the story of the conference of nuns' decision to use dialogue to resolve issues with the Vatican powers.  Excerpt.

"The decision to seek a dialogue came after more than 900 nuns spent four days doing what they call “listening to the Holy Spirit” inside a hotel ballroom. They represent about 80 percent of the 57,000 Catholic nuns in the United States. They were responding to an edict issued in April by Cardinal Levada’s office, which ordered three American bishops to rewrite the Leadership Conference’s statutes, evaluate its programs and publications, and revise its liturgies and rituals.

The Vatican accused the group of promoting “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith” and “corporate dissent” against church teachings, like those prohibiting the ordination of women to the priesthood, same-sex relationships and artificial birth control." [Emphasis added.]

Besides the tone of activism, having a voice, being visible, being heard, and the desire to use dialogue to resolve disputes, what unites these two stories with mine?  I am one of the kids who went to Catholic school where we were taught by nuns.  I'm also one of the kids who was taken to the church rectory and abused by the pastor.  No one believed me.  Years later I spoke publically to incest survivors about my experience and learned that they, too, were told to be quiet.

When it comes to the treatment and exclusion of women in the Catholic Church, Cardinal William J. Levada's dismissive retort says it all. He called the nuns’ approach a “dialogue of the deaf.”

Catholics and others are taking sides in the stand-off between the Vatican that wants to "reign in" the women religious and the nuns who want to be be “recognized as equal in the church,” to have their style of religious life “respected and affirmed,” and to help create a climate in which everyone in the church can talk about “issues that are very complicated.”

Why do they want this? The nuns expect that "open and honest dialogue may lead not only to increasing understanding between the church leadership and women religious but also to creating more possibilities for the laity, and particularly for women, to have a voice in the church.”

Who benefits?  How about society, for a start.

The Vatican certainly has its hands full if it believes that women will go away or turn a deaf ear to our common humanity.  If there is any "dialogue of the deaf," it's the Church that hasn't been listening.

It's way beyond the time that the Church fathers finally recognized "the times they are a-changing." 

 

Making Money Isn't So Hard.

 

“Making money isn’t hard in itself.  What’s hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one’s life to.”  [The Shadow of the Wind.]

I came across these lines written in a journal I've been keeping to track 365 days of small steps I am taking toward my next dream. They remind me that we must have whole-hearted affection for what we do; or our efforts at work will be exhausting.

To what are you devoting your life?  For what do you have affection? 

Books and language are my livelihood.  You never know what you will find when you turn the page.  Excerpt.

The Shadow of the Wind is a coming-of-age tale of a young boy who, through the magic of a single book, finds a purpose greater than himself and a hero in a man he's never met. With the passion of García Márquez, the irony of Dickens, and the necromancy of Poe, Carlos Ruiz Zafón spins a web of intrigue so thick that it ensnares the reader from the very first line. The Shadow of the Wind is an ode to the art of reading, but it is also the perfect example of the all-encompassing power of a well-told story.  Click here to read more.

Grimms' Fairy Tales Can Be Pretty Grim. What's The Lure Of The Fairy Tale?

Joan Acocella's book review article for The New Yorker, July 23, 2012, "Once Upon A Time - The Lure of the Fairy Tale," begins with a troubling Grimms tale called "The Stubborn Child."  Excerpt. 

"Once upon a time there was a stubborn child who never did what his mother told him to do. The dear Lord, therefore, did not look kindly upon him, and let him become sick. No doctor could cure him and in a short time he lay on his deathbed. After he was lowered into his grave and covered over with earth, one of his little arms suddenly emerged and reached up into the air. They pushed it back down and covered the earth with fresh earth, but that did not help. The little arm kept popping out. So the child’s mother had to go to the grave herself and smack the little arm with a switch. After she had done that, the arm withdrew, and then, for the first time, the child had peace beneath the earth."

With this grim opener Acocella takes us on a journey of deep, dark, cruel, violent, and downright frightening fairy tales as constructed by the Grimms' Brothers which, some might argue could actually be good for children and helpful to us.  Excerpt.

"This story, with its unvarnished prose, should be clear, but it isn’t. Was the child buried alive? The unconsenting arm looks more like a symbol. And what about the mother? Didn’t it trouble her to whip that arm? Then we are told that the youngster, after this beating, rested in peace. Really? When, before, he had seemed to beg for life? But the worst thing in the story is that, beyond disobedience, it gives us not a single piece of information about the child. No name, no age, no pretty or ugly. We don’t even know if it is a boy or a girl. (The Grimms used ein Kind, the neuter word for “child.” Zipes decided that the child was a boy.) And so the tale, without details to attach it to anything in particular, becomes universal. Whatever happened there, we all deserve it. A. S. Byatt has written that this is the real terror of the story: “It doesn’t feel like a warning to naughty infants. It feels like a glimpse of the dreadful side of the nature of things.” That is true of very many of the Grimms’ tales, even those with happy endings."

Is this the hook?  The universal message is both alluring and terrorizing.

Following along the wooded path of Acocella's work you will become engaged in folklore research, creative thought, versions of fairy tales, opposing viewpoints, reasoned proposals to revise the tales, and the ongoing mysteries of literary criticism.

It makes a great read; perhaps not just before you go to sleep.

"The Water Doesn't Know How Old You Are."

What does it take for a swimmer "of a certain age" to win an Olympic gold medal?  Dara Torres was profiled on June 29, 2008 in a NYTimes Magazine article, "Olympic Swimming."

Some would argue that Torres, a 5-time Olympic swimmer has had all the breaks.  And then some.  The naysayers might carp that she has syphoned luck from those of us too timid, poor, undecided, uncoachable, or not blond enough to make the grade. I say different.

Thumb-tacked on a wall in my closet is a tattered magazine clipping with a photo of Torres embracing some of her teammates after they won the silver medal in the 4x100 meter freestyle relay final in Beijing.  Torres' words reach out to me from the photo:

"I've been old before.  I was old when I was 27 and got divorced.  I was old when I was 35 and couldn't get pregnant.  I was really old when I was 39 and my father died.  But when I was 41 I woke up in a dorm in the Olympic Village in Beijing and I didn't feelold.  I felt merely - and yes, happily - middle-aged.  'The water doesn't know how old you are,' I'd been telling anyone who would listen for the prior two years."

Torres is now 45.  The big question is whether she will make her 6th Olympic team.  And why not?  The water doesn't know how old she is.

No matter who we are and no matter where we are, the [fill in the blank] doesn't know how old we are.   You ride, you run, you swim, you farm, you do whatever makes you grow from the inside out: what happies your Soul and makes the world a more joyful place for you in it.

To anyone who asks my (Midddle-Earth age) I say, "I'm old enough to know better and young enough not to care."  That and Torres' story keep me logging the dreams.

What We Will Miss With The Demise Of Written Letters. UVA Captures The Civil War Online.

I was going through a cardboard box the other day. It's one of many on the top shelf of a closet in my home.  It holds written notes and letters that date back 40 years.  Opening envelopes, visiting places and people, and reading long departed handwriting is more than a comfort.  The written word sets a moment in time.  I am reminded of who I was when, what I thought was important, who colored my life, and so on.

On February 20 2011, my friend and colleague Stephanie West Allen blogged about the importance of letter writing: Notes and letters - Long may they live!

She followed up that post with another on April 11, 2011, Writing Letters to the Future.

Ours are not frivolous gestures.  Or a nod to a quaint notion.  I wonder who will recall us, say 150 years from now just as we are able to recall the lives of those who lived life during the Civil War. 

Life During Wartime recounts the efforts of

"A team at U.Va.'s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library has been posting on "150 Years Ago Today," an online blog started in 2009 that features transcribed Civil War letters and diaries. Now that the nation is in the midst of the Civil War sesquicentennial, which runs until 2015, there's renewed interest in the bloody conflict. And reading the words of the participants themselves provides a new, more intimate level of understanding.

Accessible from the Special Collections home page and fully searchable by name or date, the blog features correspondence by such Confederate notables as Robert E. Lee and Gen. Elisha F. "Bull" Paxton, who briefly commanded the Stonewall Brigade. But it also includes the words of the everyday people who shouldered muskets on the battlefield, suffered deprivations on the homefront and struggled to grasp the equality promised them in the Declaration of Independence. By posting these primary source documents online, the Special Collections Library is presenting the war's daily triumphs and tragedies to the world.

This enormous project started fairly simply. "Twelve years ago, Mary Roy Edwards volunteered to start transcribing our Civil War letters and diaries," says Ann Southwell (Grad '73), a Special Collections' manuscript cataloger who heads the effort. "After a while we decided we should put them up on a blog. Then we got the idea that we could do the entire war day by day." Edwards, the wife of former U.Va. architecture professor Charles R. Edwards, eventually transliterated more than 3,000 pages from the items at Special Collections. Another volunteer, John P. Mann IV, has been diligently working on letters written by Col. Edward T. Warren of the 10th Virginia Infantry. Southwell herself works on the project every evening after work."

As you are drawn into the entries that recount the lives of those who lived life during wartime, one thing is striking: not much has changed when we go to war.  What matters most is still faith, family, friends, and the girls we left behind.

My hope is that as more of us read about the terrors and losses of war, we may shed some of our "rock logic' that makes Us right and Them wrong. Perhaps we can adopt a more fluid frame of mind that allows for more commonality, understanding and grace under fire.

The article reports on the interest generated in other countries:

"Nonetheless, the blog is attracting attention—it's received more than 20,000 hits as of early May. "We're getting a lot of hits from people in Russia, Ukraine and India," says Southwell. "I hope they're not using these letters to learn English!"" 

I hope we and they are using the letters to learn peace in our time.

 

Do You Have The Right ID To Vote?

According to a recent article in the July/August issue of Sierra magazine, "Can I See Your ID?" readers are informed about new state laws that disenfranchise Latinos, African Americans and young people.

Of course, Sierra is reporting from the point of view of three groups of people who have traditionally leaned toward environmental issues and might be disenfranchised as a result of the new laws.  Excerpt.

"Say you're a large U.S. corporation with an interest in defeating pro-environmental candidates for public office. Which voters would you most want to keep away from the voting booth? At the top of your list would be Latinos, African Americans, and young people.

According to polls, all three groups strongly and consistently support environmental issues. A Pew poll in March, for example, found that 82 percent of 18- to 30-year-olds support increased federal funding for alternative energy, compared with just 54 percent of those over age 66. And when asked whether climate change is a "very serious" problem, 59 percent of Caucasians agree, while 69 percent of African Americans and 74 percent of Latinos do."

What is of greater global concern are the ways in which the new laws rob populations of the right to vote on any issue under the guise of preventing "voter fraud" by requiring proof of citizenship  and specific forms of photo IDs.  Excerpt.

"Now, just in time for November's general election, comes a coordinated plan to disenfranchise those green voters. Acting from cookie-cutter legislative templates furnished by the corporate-financed American Legislative Exchange Council, 176 bills to restrict voting rights have been introduced in 41 states since the beginning of 2011, and bills have passed—or are on the verge of passing—in 14. The ostensible reason for the legislation is to eliminate the threat of voter fraud—in the words of Kansas governor Sam Brownback, to "ensure the sanctity of the vote.""

What kind of voter fraud do we have here?  We are all familiar with the "Tale of Hanging Chads." Is voter fraud so prevalent that the laws must have such a long-arm reach?  Maybe blue inked fingers?  Excerpt.

"Efforts to solve this phony problem vary from state to state. Alabama, Kansas, and Tennessee require would-be voters to present proof of citizenship prior to registration. Florida makes voter registration so onerous that the League of Women Voters has ceased its registration efforts there. The most common suppression laws, however, require voters to show a specific form of photo ID at the polls. In Texas, licenses to carry concealed firearms are considered valid, while student IDs are not.

Twenty-one million American citizens, in fact, lack the kind of photo ID that would pass muster under these laws. Among that number are 18 percent of young eligible voters, nearly 11 percent of Latinos, and 25 percent of African Americans. Because of the laws' discriminatory effect, the Justice Department has been able to block voter ID laws in states with prior histories of discrimination—such as South Carolina and Texas—under the Voting Rights Act. Elsewhere, however, even though U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said that making it harder for people to vote "goes against the arc of history," the feds have declined to take action."

You know me well enough by now.  I say bring it home with a story.  Here's one:

"In Pennsylvania, for example, the ACLU and the NAACP are suing to overturn that state's voter ID law. Their lead plaintiff is Viviette Applewhite, a 93-year-old woman who marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Macomb, Georgia, and has voted regularly since casting her ballot for John F. Kennedy in 1960. She never learned to drive and lost her photo ID when her purse was stolen years ago. She's tried to obtain a new ID, but the state can't find her birth certificate and so won't issue one.

"I think it stinks," Applewhite says in an ACLU video. "It's the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. I got in line and marched with [King]. There was so many rights we did not have. The way they take them away, we'll be right back where we were before.""

Click here to listen to Applewhite in her own words.