The Way I Resist

As you might imagine, I've been thinking about politics a great deal lately. 

20 January was an interesting day, for America and for the world. Since that time, the word that's come to mind the most since then is shitshow. I won't even bother listing off the offenses committed by the executive and legislative branches of the government, because it's too depressing and many others have already offered their commentary.

But I will tell you a story about how these past seven months have affected me.

When I broke my book ban, I broke it hard, because my method of helping the world is through reading. Stick with me on this: educating myself about the past, present, and future seem to be the best way I can arm myself to fight the good fight.

During the week after Election Day, I was surrounded by people who were honestly, gut-wrenchingly terrified of what the future might hold for them and their loved ones. And I won't lie: I was scared, too. I remain trepidatious. My focus at that time, though, was on those others, most of whom weren't in a position to put up their dukes, as it were.

One night, I found myself at a bookstore. Though my aim was to find something my brother might like to read--I was in Christmas-shopping mode--I got angrier and angrier the more I saw headlines and magazine covers dissecting anything they could about the election. This was not the America I had been promised. At that moment, it wasn't even one I recognized.

So I marched myself to the history section, and that's where the rampage started.

By the time I was done, my pile of tomes was six high, and I practically dared the cashier to fight me when I rolled up to her register with a scowl on my face and flint in my gaze. She didn't make any comments, however; she simply did her job, and I rolled back into my apartment that night well over a hundred dollars poorer but--I hoped--soon to be richer for my pains.

Due to time constraints and my tendency to slack, I haven't made it through this cavalcade of books, and of course I've made more purchases since that night. Yet I haven't abandoned my self-set task. As often as possible, I make attempts to bring myself up-to-date with the latest disaster reports, and there have been many. And I spread my knowledge when and where I'm able.

Maybe I'm affecting people when I tell them some anecdote or other, or maybe I'm not. But at least I'm trying, and I will continue to resist.

-Cate-

MaWhitDonManNa, or Getting Your American On

Let's talk about Madonna and Walt Whitman for a minute.

Maybe it's an unorthodox pairing. But frankly, these two work well together: each taking in as much as they can, whipping it around in their personal brain-blenders, and then spitting something out and sharing it with the masses. Plus they're both uniquely American, albeit in different ways: Madonna the gregarious, outspoken, spotlight-seeking variety in the vein of Benjamin Franklin (don't fight me on this), Whitman the contemplative, wordsmithing, diplomatic type along the lines of Thomas Jefferson (I'm telling you: it's true).

The thing that really unites them, though, is their proclivity for tinkering. Madonna has been on 10 tours--9 of them worldwide--and many of her songs have been rejiggered along the way. "La Isla Bonita" seems to be one of her favorite tunes to reinvent, as she's introduced new versions of it on 5 separate tours, in addition to the album and radio cuts.

Does this sound like anyone we know? Perhaps--could it be--Uncle Walt? He of the multiple revised/expanded printings of his landmark work, Leaves of Grass? Why, yes it is.

And this is also a mark of their American nature: the constant need for improvement. Ours is not a nation that feels comfortable letting something stand if it needs to be fixed. We're at our best when we take what has been good about our past and bring it into the present. That way, we honor both history and progress; that's why the Constitution has had amendments added to it throughout the years.

So maybe let's look to the examples of Madonna and Whitman and try to forge ahead, better than we were yesterday.

-Cate-

Images via here and here.

Historical Preseveration

When I was in elementary school, our curriculum included educational role playing simulations, which is a fancy way of saying that we, unruly children that we were, pretended to be historical figures in the name of learning. One of these programs was about the American Revolution generally, and about the Continental Congress and other such important developments more specifically. The other was a slice of Michigan history featuring Père Marquette, Antoine Cadillac, and others. 

While these activities primed me to appreciate the intricacies of nation-building and the great American experiment, they didn't prepare me for the reality.

For example, no one told me that a man who essentially lied his way into respectability and power--Cadillac--could become such an essential figure in the development of North America as we now know it, and today, I'm facing down the fact that a charlatan holds the highest office in the land. Nor did they delve into the reasons why there were so few female roles for the girls to play; we just had to accept that the men ran the show.

This is part of why I'm so adamant about reading books and exploring historical topics as an adult: it's important for me to find the facts that were left out of the lessons I learned as a child. Especially in this uncertain and tumultuous age, I can't possibly stress the importance of this enough. Go out. Read a book. Learn something. 

It just might save us.

-Cate-

Election Year Lessons for Young Adults

It's taken me awhile to get to the point where I can respond to the results of this year's presidential election with anything other than revolutionary fervor, but I'm ready now. (Make no mistake: the anger is still very much alive in me, as I am one pissed off nasty woman.)

If you're anything like me, you were raised to be polite, not to discriminate, and to treat everyone with respect. But on 8 November, half of our country seems to have forgotten those lessons, and now we are facing institutionally-approved rudeness, bigotry, and disrespect from our neighbors or family members. This, undoubtedly, is a difficult upheaval to endure.

But sometimes, the world is going to disappoint you. It's better to learn this lesson as a teenager than an adult, because it comes at the best possible time, so I speak now to the youth of the nation.

The upcoming transfer of power is a scary prospect, yes. And yet. In a year or two, you young people will all be able to do something powerful, something American: you'll be able to vote. In this way, you can participate directly in our representative democracy. Until then, there are so many things you--and the adults in your life--can do to ameliorate the situation we're facing.

Volunteer your time, your enthusiasm. Find an organization you think will further your cause and ask them how you can help. Or if that proves to be difficult, given your busy and sometimes stressful lives as students with extracurricular activities and college applications to worry about, simply offer assistance to your classmates and peers and listen to them when they need to be heard. Hug them, tell them you love them, make sure they know how valued they are in the community.

At the same time, don't be afraid to reach out and ask for assistance. This is the moment when we need to come together, raise each other up, and prove that love is stronger than hate. That will sometimes seem impossible, but the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had some excellent advice on that front. He paraphrased a passage from Isaiah, saying, "If you can't fly, then run. If you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk, then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward."

We will accomplish our goals through doing good things for our countrymen, and in time, we will be able to fly like the bald eagles who symbolize our nation.

Stay cool. Stay safe. Stay awesome.

-Cate-

What's In a Name? Or, the Charlotte Hornets Debacle

I'm big on the meanings of names. Not in a hyper-Dickensian, Aged Parent kind of way, but in a practical, "Hey, that's interesting" sort of manner. You may recall that I wrote a two-part post about my own name back in 2014, for example. And so it should not come as a shock to anyone that I have very strong feelings about the history of the Charlotte Hornets, North Carolina's only NBA team.

Way back in the mid-1980s, construction began on a new arena in Charlotte that was to be called the Coliseum. The building was a sort of salmon pink, and it was elliptical in shape. Odell of Charlotte was responsible for its design. George Shinn used the Coliseum to convince the NBA to place a team in North Carolina, and that's when the Hornets were born. They went on to play their inaugural season in 1988.

Not so many years later, in 2002, the Hornets pulled out of Charlotte and moved to New Orleans without changing their name. It's not completely unheard of for a team to move; one need look no further than the NFL's Rams, who started in Cleveland, moved to Los Angeles, decamped to St. Louis, and have now returned to California. But in this case, the name change seemed imperative. 

Because the Hornets moniker didn't come from the mascot playbook, like a spartan or a warrior. The Hornets were part of North Carolina history, after a fashion.

Charlotte, which is in Mecklenburg County, was named for King George III's bride, a German princess called Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz at the time of her marriage and later Queen Charlotte. During the American Revolution, when colonists were busy rejecting the authority of King George all along the eastern seaboard, General Lord Charles Cornwallis declared that Charlotte the town was "a hornet's nest of rebellion." While in modern times Charlotte is referred to as the Queen City, North Carolinians clearly never forgot what Cornwallis had to say, and that is how the basketball team got its name.

New Orleans, of course, is a fine city with its own historical significance. But the team had no business parading around Louisiana with its original appellation intact. Meanwhile, Charlotte's replacement team was called the Bobcats. Not a bad mascot, as far as that goes, but lacking all of the character of its predecessor. Lucky for all of us history buffs out there, the Hornets returned to North Carolina in 2014 with their name and team history intact (alas, their bangin' original logo was replaced with something more modern and streamlined). The replacement team in New Orleans has a mascot more appropriate to that state: the pelican. 

I do hope that we have all learned our lesson from this arena-hopping time in Hornets history. Because names can be extremely important, and not just when you've chosen to take the stage name of Holden McGroin.

-Cate-

Mystical Places?

Recently, the Guardian (UK) published an article about the homes of a dozen famous authors and indicated that such destinations would be appropriate for writerly pilgrimages. It’s an interesting idea, one I had considered myself in the past.

But the older I get, the less mystical I find these places in and of themselves. So, Virginia Woolf lived here? That’s great, but a house is only a building to people who have never inhabited that space. Maybe the solution is to take a cue from places like the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and turn these structures into something less monumental and more instructive. Get people interpreting for visitors as they do at the Walt Whitman Birthplace. Have historical reenactors on hand à la Greenfield Village.

It’s not enough to put a picture of someone on the wall and claim it’s a sacred place. Explain to me why this location holds power. Because if you don’t, I’m simply standing there looking at a time capsule with no notes to impart the importance of the place upon me, and as someone who’s looking for answers, I need more than an old typewriter and a childhood portrait. 

-Cate-

The Problem with Caitlins, Part 2: Caitlín Ní Uallacháin, or, William Butler Yeats Ruins Everything

Although I go by Cate, my given name is Caitlin. Throughout the years, this has been a problematic thing for several reasons. In this series of two posts, I'll take you through the challenges of being a Caitlin.

For part 1, click here.

***

Unintentional legacies. We all have them, whether it’s your uncle’s collection of worthless Confederate money or something less tangible like a deep and abiding fear of attics because you were once locked in your grandmother’s for five hours. Mine came from a most unexpected personage: William Butler Yeats.

Y’all know WBY, right? Lived well into his 70s at a time when that was unusual, had a great deal to say about Ireland, wrote like a grillion poems? Well, Yeatsy had a soft spot for his home country, and by soft spot, I mean he was kind of the U2 of his era, writing about all of the oppression and war and political messiness. (I’m talking U2 circa War here, not How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.)

As a consequence of this nationalistic bent, Yeats spent some time discussing Caitlín Ní Uallacháin (pronounced Kathleen Ni Houlihan--no relation to Hot Lips, as far as I know), who is not an actual person but a personification of the spirit of Ireland. She’s like Uncle Sam, only less bombastic and more homeless.

Not Caitlín.

Yeats had some other obsessions, among them Maud Gonne, but she was flesh and blood, not his beloved homeland in (fictional) human form. In 1902, he teamed with Lady Augusta Gregory to write a play called Cathleen ni Houlihan, which was first performed in Dublin. It's possible that Yeats is responsible for making Caitlín known internationally, insomuch as she IS known; after all, he is one of the foundational writers for those of us who study English-language poetry. James Joyce, that other famous Irish scribe, also referenced her in some of his work, but I would argue that Yeats had the bigger influence.

The thing about Caitlín is that she requires young men to sacrifice themselves for her. It's not an awesome legacy to live up to. In fact, sharing a name with the symbol of Irish nationalism--which, to tell you the truth, I know nothing about--is a daunting task. Here is someone, however imaginary, who holds a great deal of power over some of the more patriotic writers of Ireland.

The very foxy Sargent portrait of Yeats.

The upshot of all this is that, in America, my name is not freighted with so much meaning. Still, I can't forget what I learned the fateful day in 2005 when a college professor first introduced me to Caitlín, my literary doppelgänger. Should I ever be lucky enough to visit Ireland, I intend to pay her--and Yeats--homage to the extent that I am able. But I'll stick to being plain old Caitlin for the most part.


-Cate-

Image of Loretta Swit as Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan via IMDb.
Sargent's Yeats portrait via Wikipedia.

Ghosts, Part 3: Henry Ford Museum

I've never been anywhere I thought was seriously haunted, and I hate scary movies. But I have been to some notable historic locations, and I can't help wondering if maybe--just maybe--something of the people who made these places famous remains. 

For Part 1 of the series, click here. For Part 2 of the series, click here.

III. Greenfield Village

I have a deep and abiding fear of hearses. This is not a recent development. It's been going on since I was very young, and it started at Henry Ford Museum.

HFM is easily one of the strangest places in the country. With the exception of the Smithsonian Institution, few museums have such an eclectic collection. Where else are you going to find a Wienermobile, a Dymaxion house, and the actual Rosa Parks bus all in one building?

But they're also weird enough to have a collection of carriage-type hearses, which is how I acquired a dislike for them. These are towering, black, scary things. They look like something out of a nightmare. I can't go anywhere near them or I'll suffer a minor anxiety attack.

And yet, these aren't the most morbid pieces in the museum.

Exhibit A: the Lincoln chair.

Nice rocker.

If you're wondering what I mean, exactly, by "the Lincoln Chair," I don't mean some chair Abraham Lincoln used in the White House. I mean the chair he was sitting in when John Wilkes Booth shot him at Ford's Theater. For the record, I've been told by reliable sources at the museum that the dark spot at the top of the rocker is not the President's blood but, in fact, discoloration from hair oil. But the fact remains that they own a piece of presidential assassination memorabilia.

But wait! That's not all.

Exhibit B: the Kennedy limousine.

See this picture, taken in Dallas right before JFK was shot? He's sitting in a 1961 Lincoln Continental SS-100-X.

Looking happy. Poor guy.

Yeah. That car is also at Henry Ford Museum.

So apparently their thing is collecting bits of the past that are scary, violent, and depressing. It didn't occur to me until about five years ago that growing up seeing these things during family visits and field trips can really mess with your mind. I still haven't recovered.

And yet I wouldn't trade these experiences. Being able to examine such objects gives one a powerful sense of history and serves as a warning about what can happen--how quickly life can go from normal to horrifying. These are pieces of memento mori for people raised in an age when no one even knows what a memento mori is. And they certainly do remind us of our mortality.

-Cate-

Lincoln chair image via here, apparently.

Kennedy image via Wikipedia.

Ghosts, Part 2: Antietam

I've never been anywhere I thought was seriously haunted, and I hate scary movies. But I have been to some notable historic locations, and I can't help wondering if maybe--just maybe--something of the people who made these places famous remains. 

For Part 1 of the series, click here.

II. Antietam

When I was in elementary school, my brother was searching for the right college. My parents took him--us--all over for campus visits. We went to Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, other places I can't remember. On the way home from one of these trips, we took a detour in Maryland to visit Antietam.

Gettysburg gets a lot of play, and rightly so; it was the single bloodiest battle in American military history. But to this day, over 150 years later, the Battle of Antietam stands as the single bloodiest day in American military history. More than 3,600 soldiers died outside of Sharpsburg that September morning, with a combined casualty count in excess of 22,000 (dead, wounded, captured, or missing).

A map showing the locations of Union and Confederate forces at Antietam.

Like other battlefields, Antietam is now an open, green space occasionally interrupted by a memorial or fence. It's not much to look at. But once you've learned a little bit about the site and the battle, it becomes haunted.

These fields have seen so much blood. It's in the soil now, and in the grass. In the trees. In the water.

Modern warfare, being mechanized the way it is, seems almost civilized by comparison. Because when you look at Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner's photographs of the dead lined up at what is now called Bloody Lane, the horses fallen on the field, the shocked expressions of the survivors, you know that something extraordinarily violent happened there. These soldiers fought face-to-face, hand-to-hand, in such a proximity that they could smell each other's coppery blood leaking from wounds.

For me, Antietam crystallizes in my mind the price we pay when we take up arms against our fellow humans, and I hope that everyone can learn a lesson from the pages it occupies in our history textbooks.

-Cate-

Image via the Civil War Trust.

For Part 3: Henry Ford Museum, come back next Wednesday.

Ghosts, Part 1: Anne Frank

I've never been anywhere I thought was seriously haunted, and I hate scary movies. But I have been to some notable historic locations, and I can't help wondering if maybe--just maybe--something of the people who made these places famous remains. 

I. Anne Frank

The most well-known place I've visited is the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. I went alone, late on a weekday afternoon. The crowd was thin, and I was about to walk through the bedroom of a girl long deceased.

Anne Frank

For those of you who have never been, the "Secret Annex" is accessed through the space that used to be a warehouse for Opekta, the company Otto Frank ran before his family went into hiding. The floor there is unevenly paved with brick. It's a large, empty space, and it instilled in me a sense of foreboding. This was nothing compared to what would come.

The entrance to the Secret Annex is behind a reproduction of the bookcase used to hide it during the war. Before you get to the bookcase, you must ascend a flight of stairs. Even by Dutch standards, this staircase is steep; I had to move sideways up them, like a crab. The danger the Franks and their compatriots faced became palpable to me at that point, because I started to wonder how they kept from tripping, falling, alerting others to their presence.

Upstairs, you must pass through the bedroom used by Mr. and Mrs. Frank and Anne's elder sister Margot before you can get to Anne's bedroom. In Anne's time, it was cramped and uncomfortable. Today, it is empty. Only the wallpaper and some of Anne's clippings of movie stars--painstakingly preserved--remain. This is the worst part of the Secret Annex, and the best, because it doesn't take much to realize how young Anne was and how much she lost; just look at these photos and illustrations and you'll realize that Anne, like you, was a teenager. She was a dreamer. She was a human.

As I waited outside for my ride after I finished my tour, I stared and stared at the bell tower on Westerkerk, which Anne mentioned in her diary. How many times did she hear those bells toll, and how many times did she wonder if they were signaling death?

I have a postcard from that trip with an image of the red plaid diary Anne used. It's part of my collection now, a reminder that no matter how bad things get, I have to keep writing and hoping. This, then, is the power of being a little bit haunted by Anne Frank.

-Cate-

Image via the Anne Frank Museum.

For Part 2: Antietam, come back next Wednesday.

For Part 3: Henry Ford Museum, come back in two weeks.