Red Letter Poem #189

 The Red Letters

 

 

In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.

To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.

 

––Steven Ratiner

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #189

 

 

 

 

Margin: Heroes 

 

 

Not Wonder Woman, Bat-whoever

 

iron-on emblems, masquerade masks,

capes flapping their chests like loose shutters—

 

but others

 

who yank alarms, bolt into fire, strip off fear’s

top layer of skin and dive from cliffs,

swim to the call, mount the sinking raft,

fuel their pacifist hearts with gasoline and strike a match,

scramble from teargas, lock arms before tanks,

shout, write, paint, sit, go limp

 

 

                              ––Denise Bergman

 

I am writing this on the first day of the new year; perhaps it’s in lieu of a more traditional resolution.  In recent days, I’ve found myself saying similar things over and over in notes to friends (and to more than a few Red Letter readers who’ve sent me e-mails in response to my last installment) anticipating this ordinary but somehow momentous milestone.  We are not unmindful of the choices we’re facing, and the magnitude of their consequence.  We leave 2023 saddened, exhausted, more than a little terrified by some of the possibilities on the rise.  But we are also searching for any shred of optimism that will help us marshal our energies.  Zora Neale Hurston wrote: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”  2024 may turn out to be both.   Reports about climate catastrophe have become something of the norm––whole communities undermined or even obliterated––and yet many governments still refuse to address this as a priority.  Authoritarianism seems to have spread around the planet like a new contagion.  And here, in a country that likes to think of itself as a ‘beacon for the world’, we’ve been flirting with a complete undermining of the Constitutional order, not to mention the social compact that has, for two-and-a-half centuries, bound our fates together.  It’s clear that a large segment of the American electorate is toying with the idea of selecting a fundamentally undemocratic individual to lead us––as if what democracy needed now was an Arsonist in Chief.  Will the American experiment burn like Rome, like the many great empires that vanished before us?

 

So, to counter these dark thoughts, I decided to bring you something of a change––in tone, if not in subject matter.  This new poem from Denise Bergman begins playfully but, even with its light touch, becomes something of a summons to our better selves.  In a sequence of poems called “Margin”, she casts her attention on a variety of lives that are too often marginalized in society today, offering them their well-deserved moment in the spotlight.  Here, in the litany of that final stanza, we recognize a host of actions that defy our mounting fears.  First responders, fiery activists, street protestors who try to bring the doom-machine to a screeching halt (even if that places their own welfare at risk.)  Anything but surrender to the reactionary forces that seem to prefer chaos, division, even destruction rather than dialog or compromise.  What’s called for in dire times are heroes; are you, am I the one we’ve been waiting for?   Denise has authored five poetry collections, the most recent being The Shape of the Keyhole (from Black Lawrence Press.)   One of her poetic approaches is to explore a single historical figure or situation so that we may better imagine the reality of that experience.  Keyhole centers on one week in1650 when her protagonist, an accused witch, is awaiting execution.  Sometimes even a clear-eyed perception can be a heroic act––especially if the verse is able to unshackle the heart.

 

Denise’s poem made me think of the final scene from the movie Jojo Rabbit––do you remember it?  In Taika Waititi’s surreal drama, a ten-year-old boy has been forced to serve in the Hitler Youth while all around him, it’s clear, the war is grinding to a close.  He’s like any child, trying to do what the world expects of him.  But, at the very same time, he’s been hiding a young Jewish girl in the attic of his house.  When Allied forces finally subdue the Nazis, and the two young people reemerge into the rubbled streets of their town, they are greeted (anachronistically, but joyfully) by David Bowie’s song Heroes on the soundtrack.  And they dance amid the destruction, determined to find joy in a world where such things have, for years, been banished.  “We can be heroes, just for one day. . .”.  Perhaps that is where we start: we rescue one moment from the encompassing darkness, choose one situation––close at hand or across the planet–– for which we can offer some relief.  Capes and spandex are, of course, optional.

 

 

 

 

Red Letters 3.0

 

* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:

steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner

Journalist Dan Kennedy talks about digital community newspapers and the end of the 'ink-stained' wretch

Interview with Doug Holder

Well, I have worked in the trenches of community journalism for about 23 years now. Physical newspapers have gone the way of digital media. But still-- I must admit --I get the physical New York Times and The Boston Globe at my favorite coffee shop. I must look like a historical reenactor to many of the younger folks out there. I remember my father, (an advertising Mad Man in New York)--brought home a host of newspapers, and I became a junkie at a young age. My father was even afraid I would become a Collier Brothers hermit--  like the very men who drowned in a sea of newspapers in their Harlem tenement building. There are no more ink-stained wretches working the presses; the clean and efficient internet have to a good degree replaced the slap of the paper on the pavement with its yelping headlines, as we saw in so many old movies. So I was interested to interview Dan Kennedy, a former journalist at the Boston Phoenix and Professor of Journalism at Northeastern University, (who along with his colleague Ellen Clegg) collaborated on a new book "What Works in Community News..." This study deals with community journalism, digital media, and how community newspapers can survive in this bottom line milieu we live in.

Q: First off, why did you guys feel the need to write this book?

A: I’ve been working in this space for years—it’s actually my third book about the future of local news. Ellen Clegg wore a lot of hats at the The Boston Globe, and at one time ran the Sunday regional sections the paper used to have that covered local news. So the fate of community journalism is a real passion of ours.

About 2,900 papers, mostly weeklies, have closed since 2005, according to a study by Northwestern University, and corporate chain ownership is squeezing the life out of many of those that remain. What we wanted to do was shine a spotlight on independent projects that have risen up to fill the gap. Most of them are digital startups and most are nonprofits. But we also looked at for-profit newspapers, tiny radio stations and a large public television operation. What unites all of them is a passion to serve their communities with reliable news and information.

Q: You write that that community newspapers are essential for 'self-governing' democracies. How so?

A: Over the past couple of generations, we’ve lost our connection to civic life, and the decline of community journalism has a lot to do with that. How can you cast a meaningful ballot for mayor, city council, select board, school committee and the like if there’s no reliable source of news? Who is holding the police department accountable? How are you going to find out about the apartment building that’s being proposed for your neighborhood?

Ellen and I also believe that local news can help us overcome the intense political polarization that has come to define national issues. If we can relearn the art of cooperation at the local level, we may discover that we all have more in common than we thought.

Q: How important is it for the print newspaper to survive with all the digital opportunities we have now?

  A: It is not important at all. Most of the projects we look at are digital-only. In fact, Ellen is the co-founder of a startup nonprofit, Brookline.News, that is digital-only.

Q: I believe you started out in a community newspaper in the area. Are these good training grounds—a sort of minor league of journalism?

A: Yes, I worked at The Daily Times Chronicle in Woburn during the ’80s, and I’m happy to say that it’s still owned by the Haggerty family, who founded the paper in 1901.

I don’t think of community journalism as the minor leagues at all, and I wish more young people would build their careers around local news.

Q: Many fiction and poetry writers (Hemingway for one) have said that newspaper writing gave them good skills for their creative endeavors. What is your take on this?

A: Learning to write quickly and communicate clearly are essential skills for journalists, and I agree that those skills can be transferred to other forms of writing. I don’t write fiction or poetry, but I have written four books, and I rely heavily on what I learned in my 20s. This is Ellen’s third book. That’s a pretty high level of productivity, and our background as newspaper journalists has a lot to do with our ability to crank it out. I’ll leave it to others to judge the deathlessness of our prose.

Q: Many community newspapers are transforming into nonprofits. I know the paper I am arts editor for—The Somerville Times—didn't see the need to go nonprofit. Do you think non-profits are the way to go? 

A: Nonprofit is a business model, just like for-profit. There are hundreds of local news startups across the country, and most of them are technically for-profts—one- or two-person operations that are almost more passion projects than they are real businesses. Ellen and I found, though, that most of the larger projects with real reporting capacity are nonprofit, because in the current environment that’s where the money is. In fact, two of projects that we write about, The Colorado Sun and Santa Cruz Local, switched from for-profit to nonprofit after our deadline.

The problem with for-profit is that advertising brings in very little money compared to years past. A healthy nonprofit news organization is generally built on top of a three-legged stool: large gifts in the form of grants and donations from high-net-worth individuals, which I’ve learned is nonprofit-speak for “rich people”; voluntary membership fees from readers, sometimes in exchange for extra goodies like a newsletter or a T-shirt; and what is often referred to as “earned income” in the form of advertising—again, to use nonprofit-speak, “underwriting”—and, in some cases, an events business.

I also want to mention the hybrid model, by which a for-profit news site either works with a nonprofit or has a nonprofit arm of its own so that it can accept tax-deductible donations to support certain types of public interest reporting. That’s what The Colorado Sun was doing before it went fully nonprofit. It’s also a model that’s being used by a number of other news outlets such as the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Iowa, The Mendocino Voice in Northern California and, closer to home, The Provincetown Independent.

Q: Twenty years from now—do you think we will see a community newspaper void or a thriving landscape?

A: On the one hand, I think things are going to get worse before they get better because so many papers are still under the control of corporate chains and hedge funds. On the other hand, I do think things are eventually going to get better. Ellen and I are especially hopeful that our book will serve as a roadmap for folks across the country who’ll learn about these projects and say, “Hey, we can do this.”

Red Letter Poem #188

  

The Red Letters

 

 

In ancient Rome, feast days were indicated on the calendar by red letters.

To my mind, all poetry and art serves as a reminder that every day we wake together beneath the sun is a red-letter day.

 

––Steven Ratiner

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Letter Poem #188

 

 

 

 

Maybe

 

   for Craig

 

Maybe it was the billboards promising

paradise, maybe those fifty-nine miles

with your hand in mine, maybe my sexy

roadster, the top down, maybe the wind

fingering your hair, sun on your thighs

and bare chest, maybe it was just the ride

over the sea split in two by the highway

to Key Largo, or the idea of Key Largo.

Maybe I was finally in the right place

at the right time with the right person.

Maybe there’d finally be a house, a dog

named Chu, a lawn to mow, neighbors,

dinner parties, and you forever obsessed

with crossword puzzles and Carl Jung,

reading in the dark by the moonlight,

at my bedside every night.  Maybe.  Maybe

it was the clouds paused at the horizon,

the blinding fields of golden sawgrass,

the mangrove islands tangled, inseparable

as we might be. Maybe I should’ve said

something, promised you something,

asked you to stay a while, maybe.

 

 

                              ––Richard Blanco

 

 

 

“And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been.”

––Rainer Maria Rilke

 

If only.  Even a quick glance at today’s headlines––fulminating with news about: ongoing wars; intensified political division (not only in the US but globally); uncertain economic predictions; and a persistent sense of anxiety which the holidays could only momentarily assuage––will stand in stark contrast to such a hopeful attitude.  But this oft-quoted extract (from a letter the great German poet wrote to his wife Clara in 1907) is typical of the avalanche of bon mots and uplifting aphoristic lines that pop up in the media near the end of each year.  It’s a testament, perhaps, to how badly we wish to believe that we are always given a new chance––to change our own fate if not that of the beleaguered planet.  Here’s another quotation I believe I read in an op-ed last year, as pandemic-stressed 2022 dragged itself to a close: “What a wonderful thought it is that some of the best days of our lives haven't even happened yet.”  The uplifting intent of the commentator had to be tempered, of course, when we considered the source (Anne Frank) and the circumstance (penned in her diary while in hiding from the Nazis) behind this observation.  Still, I love that the teenaged girl believed in this idea, while all around her the world seemed hellbent on destruction.  Perhaps she was simply echoing Ralph Waldo Emerson ("Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year”), determined to make a glory of any day in which armed soldiers did not come crashing into her life.  There are many right now in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza who would understand that sentiment.

 

So, in hunting for a poem to help welcome 2024 for Red Letter readers, I wanted a piece in which hope as well as clear-eyed observation genuinely coexisted.  Fortunately for me, I was given permission to reprint a selection from Richard Blanco’s Homeland Of My Body: New & Selected Poems, recently issued by Beacon Press.  And I happily settled on one of my favorite love poems from this distinguished writer: author of a dozen award-winning books of poetry and memoir; the first-ever Poet Laureate of Miami-Dade County; and, uniquely, the youngest and  the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in the role of Presidential Inaugural Poet, chosen by Barack Obama in 2013.  More recently, President Biden said this of Richard in conferring upon him the National Humanities Medal: “An engineer, poet, Cuban American… his poetry bridges cultures and languages––a mosaic of our past, our present, and our future––reflecting a nation that is hectic, colorful, and still becoming.”

 

“Maybe” appears to be a blissful memory of falling in love, driving south into the Florida Keys, where the simplest elements of landscape and circumstance feel like nothing less than a benediction conferred.  But then there’s that litany of maybe’s. . .  And we realize that there are many ways of interpreting an individual situation, of assessing the accuracy of desire. “Maybe/ it was. . .the blinding fields of golden sawgrass,/ the mangrove islands tangled, inseparable/ as we might be.”  Every moment is conditional, depending on how much self-knowledge we bring to bear, and how much vulnerability we are willing to risk.  This could be the brink of a new year, a new life, a radical departure.  But love’s compass is, admittedly, not the easiest one to follow.  “No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.”  So said the Buddha who, I believe, never owned a convertible roadster but understood quite well what drives the human heart.

 

 

 

 

Red Letters 3.0

 

* If you would like to receive these poems every Friday in your own in-box – or would like to write in with comments or submissions – send correspondence to:

steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com

 

 

* To learn more about the origins of the Red Letter Project, check out an essay I wrote for Arrowsmith Magazine:

https://www.arrowsmithpress.com/community-of-voices

 

and the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

http://dougholder.blogspot.com

 

* For updates and announcements about Red Letter projects and poetry readings, please follow me on Twitter          

@StevenRatiner

 

Somerville: Mysteries of the Grand Union Flag

 

Somerville: Mysteries of the Grand Union Flag

BY J. L. Bell: Correspondent for Off the Shelf


The raising of the “Grand Union Flag” on Prospect Hill in January 1776 is a proud historic moment for Somerville. But a lot of mysteries still surround that event.




The standard story is that after the Continental Congress established a navy in October 1775, it also approved a flag for that navy. Under the rules of war, a ship had to fly its country’s flag as it went into battle (though it could maneuver under a “false flag” until that moment). Some American warships were sailing under banners produced by individual states, but the Congress’s fleet needed its own ensign.




The design provided for the Continental Navy had the Union Jack in the upper left corner with thirteen red and white stripes below. Ships in the Chesapeake Bay flew this emblem by December. Britain’s Royal Navy fought under a similar flag: a Union Jack over a solid red field.




Meanwhile, up in Massachusetts, most Continental Army soldiers’ enlistments were running out. The New England men who had begun the siege of Boston in April 1775 had promised to serve only through December. Working from his headquarters in Cambridge, General George Washington oversaw a tense process of convincing some troops to reenlist, recruiting more, and reorganizing the regiments that remained.




To celebrate the relaunch of the Continental Army, Washington wrote, “we had hoisted the Union Flag in compliment to the United Colonies.” This banner appeared above Prospect Hill, center of one of the besieging army’s largest camps. A couple of days later, the general heard that British officials in Boston had interpreted this new flag, so like their own, “as a signal of Submission.” But they soon learned the Continentals would fight on.




Here are questions about this event with no definite answers in the surviving historical records.




Who designed the new Continental Navy flag? The Congress’s papers don’t say. We therefore don’t know what the delegates meant by authorizing a flag so similar to the British navy’s banner. We can guess it symbolized how they weren’t yet ready for a complete break with Britain. The thirteen stripes surely represented the thirteen colonies at that Congress, though delegates hoped to add Canada to the mix.




Was the Continental Navy flag the same as Washington’s “Union Flag”? For decades, the phrase “Union flag” had referred to the British flag, symbolizing the union of England and Scotland. Washington saw his “Union Flag” as honoring the thirteen united colonies. Two British witnesses inside Boston, a ship captain and a marine officer, wrote of seeing a new “Union flag” over the Americans’ camp, but they left no clear description of that banner. Most historians, but not all, conclude that this was the Continental Navy flag.




How did Washington receive the new flag? The Congress never voted to send its naval flag to its army commander. No document shows a flag being transported from Philadelphia to Cambridge. The most likely candidate for sending the banner is Joseph Reed, a Philadelphia lawyer who had been Washington’s military secretary in the summer and early fall. Washington wrote to Reed on January 4 describing how the army had flown the new flag. Unfortunately, Reed’s letters to Washington in this period went missing after the two men had a falling-out in late 1776.




Who reported on the new flag in the January 15 Pennsylvania Packet newspaper? A compilation of news from the Continental Army camp described how “the great Union flag was hoisted on Prospect-Hill.” This is the evidence locating the flag at that site since Washington’s letter and the British observations did not specify a place. However, that article also stated that event occurred on January 2, not January 1. Again, Reed seems like the best candidate for writing this report since he adapted some of the general’s other letters for the newspapers. But he should have known the right date.




Did British officials really think the flag meant the rebels were ready to surrender? No source from inside Boston suggests that. Instead, the ship captain and marine officer both described the new flag as a signal of defiance. Washington said he heard about the expectations of surrender from “a person out of Boston last Night.” Also on January 4, the general reported information he had recently received from “a very Intelligent Gentleman, a Mr Hutchinson from Boston”—perhaps merchant Shrimpton Hutchinson. He may have told a different story about reactions to the flag.




Where did the label “Grand Union Flag” come from? Washington called the new banner “the Union Flag.” The Pennsylvania Packet called it “the great Union flag,” as did other newspapers reprinting the same article. So where did the present term come from? In 1852 the Philadelphia journalist Thompson Westcott wrote to the London magazine Notes and Queries with information about early American flags. Among other things, he quoted the Pennsylvania Gazette as reporting, “The grand union flag was raised on the 2nd.” This was an error for the phrase that had appeared in newspapers in 1776, but the word “grand” was repeated by other magazines and eventually the flag historian George Henry Preble.




Thus, we probably owe the resonant phrase “Grand Union Flag” to a transcription error seventy-six years later.

J. L. Bell is the author of The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War (Westholme, 2016). He maintains the Boston1775.net website, dedicated to history, analysis, and unabashed gossip about the start of the American Revolution in New England