Lightning Strike
Lighting struck the ground
In Mary Ellen’s backyard
And we all went over,
Stood in a circle around
The big black spot
Where the lightning had burnt the grass.
The sycamore split, black, with its leaves
Still bright green.
The trunk jarred into jagged edges
With misshapen limbs.
Mary Ellen got out her baton.
Did a routine,
Tossing silver as high into the air
As the tree once was.
Only now she didn’t have the tree
To call attention to her great feat,
So when it came down,
Even after being maybe higher
Than the tree was before,
We couldn’t tell for sure.
The baton came tumbling and tumbling
In slow motion and Mary Ellen
Put out her arm, poised to catch it.
We held our breath.
And it came down.
Just as she was about to get
Her hand around it,
The baton did a little jump away.
One rubber end
Hit the ground and bounced up
And turned over and over,
Until it settled on the burnt spot.
Mary Ellen went over and picked it up,
Tossed her hair back
Over her shoulders
Laughed and threw it even higher,
And it came down, down, down,
And this time she caught it.
We clapped and let out our breath.
And spent the afternoon
Circled around the dead tree
With Mary Ellen practicing over and over,
Never missing her toss again that day.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
View from the Russian Front
By happenstance, we found ourselves in St Petersburg, Russia shortly before Thursday, May 9, 2013, in the celebration for Russians for the end of the Great Patriotic War and what we call the “Siege” of Leningrad" and the Russians called “the blockade”, carried out by the Nazis during World War II. Over a million people died, in the town designated then as Leningrad. Hitler, determined to starve the Russians, did not succeed, and the city survived and marched on. And, with the l989 revolution, retrieved its original name.
It was a time of ceremony, marches by the various military branches, including the veterans of World War II, and a time of the gathering of thousands on the streets.
We were there too, a day before, trying to find an entrance to the Hermitage among yellow barricades, set up to allow the military to practice in the magnificent square where a statue of Peter the Great towers from above. Young and old , military personnel in uniform stood in groups, waiting to march to designated positions.
And on the day of the parade on May 9th, we joined the ceremony and at first were a little apprehensive, many “what if’s” going through our heads, but then seeing families, children hoisted on shoulders to see over the crowds, couples, and an unobtrusive police presence, we relaxed in the event. Everyone likes a parade. Lots of music, lots of noise, and lots of good will. We too saluted those who fought, and were aware from a reprinted article in the St. Petersburg Times, that over 500,000 Jews served in the Russian Army during World War II. Who would have known that? We felt privileged to be able to honor all of those who served.
And when it was over, we walked with a huge crowd through a very narrow fence entrance into the park to leave, and again we felt hemmed in and thought “what if, so close to all these people,” but we all shuffled forward through the narrow opening, and out, and everyone as the Brits would say, behaved splendidly.
Fireworks at night over the river, at l0 pm, barely getting dark as white nights approached, crowned the evening. Men in their twenties feeling no pain, drank their way through the evening cheering each set of fireworks, with a loud hurrah, and made it even more fun for us. We were two of very few Americans in a crowd of thousands.
The fireworks over, we headed back to the Petro Palace, our hotel on Nevsky Prospect, enjoying the night air, and the feeling that we were a part of an important memory about the evils of the past, the loss of soldiers and those who died in the blockade, and the recognition of the survivors and the possibilities of goodness and good will in the present and future.
Thursday, September 1, 2016
A Letter from Panama City July 9, 1965
A LETTER FROM PANAMA CITY
July 9, l965
Dear Shirley,
You won't believe the turn
Our vacation has taken.
Out in the middle of nowhere,
Your sister Janet was her usual self.
Five-- Janet and I plus three men,
Rubbed sweaty shoulders,
Swayed and bounced on cracked leather
Across tree roots and over muddy hollows,
Hearing sloshing against the wheels
Feeling the car, leaving the road
(Such that it was).
Juan (who spoke Spanish) unshaven,
In a white t-shirt, old brown corduroys,
Drove us into the dark forest.
Around a tight turn was a Quonset hut,
Battered automobiles, vintage l950's
Parked. Not in rows.
Scattered over a clearing
With piles of debris shoved
Toward the edges.
I checked my gold watch.
Expedition time so far: Two hours.
The men (one of them also knew Spanish)
Handed Juan money.
Another paid more.
The cab sidled in next to other rusted heaps.
The driver led us inside. .
There, silhouettes, silent for seconds in the smoke
Hunched over a long bar.
Shirley, you know how Janet argues
About every little thing.
She's not known for sailing
Through the rough and tough times of traveling
Without a to-do about something.
So Janet decides she wants to sit "way over there,"
Way past all the men at the bar who then
Had the chance to give us
The once and twice over.
We crossed the squeaky wooden floor slowly.
Men, white teeth, high cheekbones, dark skin,
Older, maybe in their thirties, good-looking.
(You know how some Spanish men are).
But there were others--
Not the kind you'd want to come home to.
The three businessmen came after us.
We sat down at the first knife-gouged table.
Chairs swayed too easily. I am not that heavy,.
But before I knew it, I was on the floor
Being helped up by the three men
Who came with us and Juan.
My white linen suit was smudged with dirt
And when I sat in a different chair--
(I sat on the edge of the seat)
My sleeves picked up dirt from the table.
Ron, the Spanish-speaking Canadian, in our group,
Ordered five beers. The beer came in bottles,
Wet, with labels coming off,
Opened at the table. No glasses.
They were used to Americans.
The taxi cab driver hunched over,
Whispering to Billy Bob,
A thirty-five year old man from Texas cattle country.
Billy Bob laughed, pulled out a fifty dollar bill,
and said, "Let's go to the back."
The men pushed back their chairs. More squeaks.
An empty chair fell over. They weren't made that well.
Being agreeable, to the men I said, "OK," and Janet,
Being Janet, said, "I like it here. That's nice music."
It wasn't nice music. A scratchy record
Over a loudspeaker. You could hardly
Make out the words of "Mr. Sandman."
Not stereo. Hadn’t reached the jungle yet.
I dragged Janet, and we followed
The three men, (the other man was Sheldon
From New York, fabric business)
Down a long passageway.
Bits of dusty plaster covered a stained red carpet.
Walls had holes with chicken wire showing through.
From old fights, maybe.
Perfume floated through the hallway.
We walked past shut doors without doorknobs.
The three men stooped, then disappeared
Through a low doorway. Janet and I were
Close behind. One light, I mean light bulb,
Hung from a cord in the center of the room.
We sat down, up against a wall.
The words of Mr. Sandman muffled behind thin walls.
We were gathered together in a row.
Facing pink.
Pink walls met a pink carpeted floor.
The chairs, upholstered but soiled,
Had pink flowers embroidered over holes.
The door on the other side of the room
Glowed bright pink.
The most obvious and important pink
Was the round bed in the middle.
Pink sheets, pink pillowcases,
Pink satin blanket, (looked hot to me),
Ruffle pink. Overpinked.
Janet wasn't speaking. She had settled
Into a wobbly card table chair.
The men weren't making any conversation.
They sat. Quiet. We all sat. Quiet.
Mr. Sandman scratched on and on
I played with the zipper on my purse,
Running it back and forth.
A woman's voice laughed from behind a closed door.
That made me jump..
Janet still hadn't said anything to me.
She seemed content.
I whispered to Ron, sitting on my other side,
"What's going on?"
“We have about a few minutes to wait,
Then it will start,” he said.
I turned to Janet and whispered,.
"Don't you think we ought to wait in the bar?"
She sat there, ignoring me..
I leaned closer and touched her arm..
"Janet, I think we ought to wait in the bar."
"No, let's just stay here for a few more minutes," she said.
(Is Janet dense or what? She's your sister, Shirley.)
I said, "Janet, I'm going back to the bar,
And I think you should come with me."
Reluctantly, she began to listen to me.
Behind the door, the woman's voice
Was joined by a man's.
I pulled Janet up, mumbling to the men,
About hunting for a bathroom. I hauled Janet
Out. I heard the other door open.
Two voices, male and female, entered the pink room.
But we were down the hallway.
Janet, being Janet, yelled at me
For pulling her away from the show.
Back in the bar, we sat at the same table.
A man came up and pinched my arm.
Janet didn't see it. She was looking at a man
At the bar who was looking at her.
"The music is romantic, " Janet said.
"Janet, we're leaving," I said.
"Not without the men," she said.
“We can`t leave them out here
In the middle of nowhere."
Juan appeared from the passageway
And leaned over us. Obviously,
Having drunk more than beers.
He led us to the cab, put us in the back seat,
And, in very clear English, said,
"Stay put. Not safe."
The windows were open.
He locked the doors.
Expedition time: Four hours.
The men came out.
They didn't say anything
About anything. They made small talk
And joked about women always having
To go to the bathroom.
Janet said she wouldn't speak to me
For the rest of the cruise.
She said I ruined her
Trip. She's just not used to traveling,
Being ready for whatever happens.
Like I am.
If Janet doesn't talk to me
There are plenty of other people
To talk to. We have about six days
And three hours left on our cruise.
With or without Janet talking.
See you when I get back.
Love from south of many borders,
Eve
July 9, l965
Dear Shirley,
You won't believe the turn
Our vacation has taken.
Out in the middle of nowhere,
Your sister Janet was her usual self.
Five-- Janet and I plus three men,
Rubbed sweaty shoulders,
Swayed and bounced on cracked leather
Across tree roots and over muddy hollows,
Hearing sloshing against the wheels
Feeling the car, leaving the road
(Such that it was).
Juan (who spoke Spanish) unshaven,
In a white t-shirt, old brown corduroys,
Drove us into the dark forest.
Around a tight turn was a Quonset hut,
Battered automobiles, vintage l950's
Parked. Not in rows.
Scattered over a clearing
With piles of debris shoved
Toward the edges.
I checked my gold watch.
Expedition time so far: Two hours.
The men (one of them also knew Spanish)
Handed Juan money.
Another paid more.
The cab sidled in next to other rusted heaps.
The driver led us inside. .
There, silhouettes, silent for seconds in the smoke
Hunched over a long bar.
Shirley, you know how Janet argues
About every little thing.
She's not known for sailing
Through the rough and tough times of traveling
Without a to-do about something.
So Janet decides she wants to sit "way over there,"
Way past all the men at the bar who then
Had the chance to give us
The once and twice over.
We crossed the squeaky wooden floor slowly.
Men, white teeth, high cheekbones, dark skin,
Older, maybe in their thirties, good-looking.
(You know how some Spanish men are).
But there were others--
Not the kind you'd want to come home to.
The three businessmen came after us.
We sat down at the first knife-gouged table.
Chairs swayed too easily. I am not that heavy,.
But before I knew it, I was on the floor
Being helped up by the three men
Who came with us and Juan.
My white linen suit was smudged with dirt
And when I sat in a different chair--
(I sat on the edge of the seat)
My sleeves picked up dirt from the table.
Ron, the Spanish-speaking Canadian, in our group,
Ordered five beers. The beer came in bottles,
Wet, with labels coming off,
Opened at the table. No glasses.
They were used to Americans.
The taxi cab driver hunched over,
Whispering to Billy Bob,
A thirty-five year old man from Texas cattle country.
Billy Bob laughed, pulled out a fifty dollar bill,
and said, "Let's go to the back."
The men pushed back their chairs. More squeaks.
An empty chair fell over. They weren't made that well.
Being agreeable, to the men I said, "OK," and Janet,
Being Janet, said, "I like it here. That's nice music."
It wasn't nice music. A scratchy record
Over a loudspeaker. You could hardly
Make out the words of "Mr. Sandman."
Not stereo. Hadn’t reached the jungle yet.
I dragged Janet, and we followed
The three men, (the other man was Sheldon
From New York, fabric business)
Down a long passageway.
Bits of dusty plaster covered a stained red carpet.
Walls had holes with chicken wire showing through.
From old fights, maybe.
Perfume floated through the hallway.
We walked past shut doors without doorknobs.
The three men stooped, then disappeared
Through a low doorway. Janet and I were
Close behind. One light, I mean light bulb,
Hung from a cord in the center of the room.
We sat down, up against a wall.
The words of Mr. Sandman muffled behind thin walls.
We were gathered together in a row.
Facing pink.
Pink walls met a pink carpeted floor.
The chairs, upholstered but soiled,
Had pink flowers embroidered over holes.
The door on the other side of the room
Glowed bright pink.
The most obvious and important pink
Was the round bed in the middle.
Pink sheets, pink pillowcases,
Pink satin blanket, (looked hot to me),
Ruffle pink. Overpinked.
Janet wasn't speaking. She had settled
Into a wobbly card table chair.
The men weren't making any conversation.
They sat. Quiet. We all sat. Quiet.
Mr. Sandman scratched on and on
I played with the zipper on my purse,
Running it back and forth.
A woman's voice laughed from behind a closed door.
That made me jump..
Janet still hadn't said anything to me.
She seemed content.
I whispered to Ron, sitting on my other side,
"What's going on?"
“We have about a few minutes to wait,
Then it will start,” he said.
I turned to Janet and whispered,.
"Don't you think we ought to wait in the bar?"
She sat there, ignoring me..
I leaned closer and touched her arm..
"Janet, I think we ought to wait in the bar."
"No, let's just stay here for a few more minutes," she said.
(Is Janet dense or what? She's your sister, Shirley.)
I said, "Janet, I'm going back to the bar,
And I think you should come with me."
Reluctantly, she began to listen to me.
Behind the door, the woman's voice
Was joined by a man's.
I pulled Janet up, mumbling to the men,
About hunting for a bathroom. I hauled Janet
Out. I heard the other door open.
Two voices, male and female, entered the pink room.
But we were down the hallway.
Janet, being Janet, yelled at me
For pulling her away from the show.
Back in the bar, we sat at the same table.
A man came up and pinched my arm.
Janet didn't see it. She was looking at a man
At the bar who was looking at her.
"The music is romantic, " Janet said.
"Janet, we're leaving," I said.
"Not without the men," she said.
“We can`t leave them out here
In the middle of nowhere."
Juan appeared from the passageway
And leaned over us. Obviously,
Having drunk more than beers.
He led us to the cab, put us in the back seat,
And, in very clear English, said,
"Stay put. Not safe."
The windows were open.
He locked the doors.
Expedition time: Four hours.
The men came out.
They didn't say anything
About anything. They made small talk
And joked about women always having
To go to the bathroom.
Janet said she wouldn't speak to me
For the rest of the cruise.
She said I ruined her
Trip. She's just not used to traveling,
Being ready for whatever happens.
Like I am.
If Janet doesn't talk to me
There are plenty of other people
To talk to. We have about six days
And three hours left on our cruise.
With or without Janet talking.
See you when I get back.
Love from south of many borders,
Eve
Monday, July 4, 2016
JULY
Eleventh is a poem called "July," which first appeared in Mirabelle's Country Club for Cats & Other Poems (1986) through my Riverstone Press imprint.
JULY
In July,
Fireworks!
Independence Day
For the U.S.A.
Also Bastille Day.
We picnic beside the
Old, funny-shaped tree.
The shade keeping us cool.
The dog out-of-breath
From chasing a bumble bee.
And me,
With my fishing pole,
Wondering if
The fish
Are on holiday too.
JULY
In July,
Fireworks!
Independence Day
For the U.S.A.
Also Bastille Day.
We picnic beside the
Old, funny-shaped tree.
The shade keeping us cool.
The dog out-of-breath
From chasing a bumble bee.
And me,
With my fishing pole,
Wondering if
The fish
Are on holiday too.
Thursday, May 12, 2016
CHASING THE PAST
She knelt among the hillside flowers
And touched the bachelor buttons.
Quiet blues that stretched
To the mountains before her.
Above the mountains,
Low clouds hung
Out of balance
With the sky,
And drifted
Over pine forests,
To the camouflaged past
Of deer, elk, mountain lion and bear,
Where hunters, dressed in skins,
Crouched, waiting for the hunt to begin.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
FORBES FIELD: l960
It was the year
I left for California
That I lost interest
In Baseball.
I was in love
With Jack Spencer,
And we saw the
Pirates play
A double header
At Forbes Field.
Homeruns!
I wasn't
In love with
Baseball.
The romance was
Jack.
It couldn't have been
Love at sixteen,
The year the Pirates
Won the Series.
I moved West that fall.
Never saw Jack again.
Never went to another
Baseball game.
It was the year
I left for California
That I lost interest
In Baseball.
I was in love
With Jack Spencer,
And we saw the
Pirates play
A double header
At Forbes Field.
Homeruns!
I wasn't
In love with
Baseball.
The romance was
Jack.
It couldn't have been
Love at sixteen,
The year the Pirates
Won the Series.
I moved West that fall.
Never saw Jack again.
Never went to another
Baseball game.
Monday, August 17, 2015
THE CALLIGRAPHY LESSON
Charlie knew he wasn’t doing it right. He felt Mashiko’s presence behind him, and then she was guiding his hand, lifting it, till the brush was perpendicular to the paper. “Ichi, Ni, San,” she said, guiding his hand through the three main strokes. Those were the strokes, Charlie knew, that became a syllable with meaning.
He never missed his calligraphy class even though he took some teasing from the guys at the news office, who couldn't understand his wanting to take a "handwriting" class. But for Charlie, those Wednesday afternoons became a way for his mind to play with the characters he formed. And he liked the nonstop English version of postwar Japan that chattered forth from Mashiko each time they got together for a lesson. Perhaps some day he'd write a book about her life.
Today, Mashiko was talking about the compensation that the government was going to pay to Japanese, who had been placed in internment camps during the war. Her husband, a U.S. citizen, had just received notification of possible reparations. Mashiko explained what she would do if the U.S. government gave her husband twenty thousand dollars.
“I would send some of it to my family in Japan, she said, “because of the hardship they went during the war and after it. It was the government that wanted war and territory. My father, an officer, lost everything in the war. Barely escaping execution, he was imprisoned for a long time. Back in our village, we had no food and the yen was worth nothing. What can you buy with nothing? We nearly starved. All we ate was sweet potatoes. My sister never married. Most of the men in our village were sent to the Philippines. They never came back.” Then she said, laughing quietly, “Maybe we should be getting the equivalent of twenty thousand dollars from Japan for putting up with the war.”
“Do those characters several times now,” Mashiko said. And Charlie did, listening.
“I was lucky,” she said, “I met Akira Yamada. His family had been out of the camps some years by then, and in l946, he traveled to Japan to start a pottery business. The ancient Shigaraki kiln was near our village. So one day, I was lining up our shoes outside, and he walked by. I wondered what he was doing there. I bowed, and he bowed, and we began talking. My mother came out then, and she invited him in for tea, and we kept talking, and finally, we got together. We married, stayed one year while his business got going, and came to the United States in 1947, and he brought his business with him. At first, all the pottery was marked “Occupied Japan.” Then each piece sold in the United States just had “Made in Japan” on it. Akira is happy, retired. And here in California, we have a good life – a family -- children and grandchildren.
Charlie couldn't listen to the rest of what she was saying. He had to concentrate on how to get his brain and hand to work together. He moved his brush, practicing strokes in the air before him. The power of the written word. But in Kanji. His downstroke looked like it was running away from the character. He focused on the strokes for “hito" or “person.” Thank Heavens he didn't have to learn all of the Japanese language to take calligraphy. He'd be in remedial Japanese for sure. This way he was holding his own, keeping up, practicing his characters every Thursday evening after he turned in his Saturday column. It was a relaxing reprieve from, what he called, his“heavy-duty” column. He knew his was an unusual job -- keeping the paper honest. Hard work. If there were a complaint that something wasn't true, say a person’s character was maligned, he'd get to the bottom of it, and not just write the retraction. He’d also get on his hobby horse of journalistic responsibility and deliver important, at least he thought them so, pieces on what makes responsible journalism and what makes it important for a reporter to have empathy for the person he writes about. That was his last column. His editor expected lots of flak over that one. Said it should generate lots of letters to the editor.
But Charlie was waiting for his major story to be printed. The one that would really blast the print media itself, and take it to task for altering people's lives, and actually creating reality instead of reporting it. Lots of reporters were quick to tout each headline as gospel truth, with a litany of facts to back them up, but by the way they structured headlines and articles, they actually created gossip and opinion that became real. But he was discovering the truth of it all.
University researchers had helped him scan hundreds of titles and newspaper articles. He had come to an alarming conclusion: that the media, like the government, fed on its own power, and could now be seen as a bulging carnivorous beast that devoured people's lives. The media thrived on telling half-truths to go with lurid headlines. Always something selectively missing of the total action and event. What had started as a feeling about the salaciousness of news reporting had become a jarring reality for him. It would be his piece de resistance, and in four weeks, it would come out in the national section.
Mashiko was asking him to do something. She repeated it. “Charlie, you are not holding your brush correctly, you need to hold it just so, then push down here." She pushed down.
"Then lift and turn." He lifted and turned with her hand helping him. "Then, downstroke to the end, san." She pulled his hand down, and lifted it as best she could, but his last stroke still ran on, instead of tapering at the correct angle.
“It should be a smooth rhythm,” she said.
Mashiko talked on about the war. "My father used to tell us about how the news of the war was censored and manipulated, and how he didn't even know what was happening on different fronts or at home. Often, he had to guess. Most of the time he said he guessed correctly, but he said that some of the others didn't make the right decisions. They'd send people to fight a battle in a certain place, only to find that they were outnumbered and poorly equipped. Supplies were low in l944, but the papers never said anything. They kept haranguing people to contribute to the war effort by sacrificing their gold, and other metal goods to make into weapons. All of our precious heirlooms went to be melted down. Nothing was spared. Even our ancestral samurai swords from the sixteenth century disappeared.
She shook her head. “It was a crime for us not to know what was happening,” she said. “The war was going so badly. How could my father be an officer and not know that? Or maybe he knew and wasn’t allowed to tell us. Somebody should have said something to us. News coming by radio or telegraph wasn’t good enough.”
Making more ink, Mashiko rubbed the inkstick back and forth on the stone. Charlie could see that these letters today would not be winning any Japanese penmanship award. He took a sip of green tea.
"Mashiko, I am not doing well today. I must have too much on my mind. Let me ask you, do you think that a newspaper should have to print everything that happens during a war?”
She hesitated only a minute. Her head bobbed up and down, and she bowed at the same time. "Yes, everything must be there, there can be no secrets from the people."
"But do you mean that really? I mean, some things ought not to be printed, certainly if there is a war, you don’t want to give the enemy your strategies, but Charlie saw that he was pre-empted by the head still bobbing up and down, and the brush placed in his hand again.
"Now, one, two, three," she said. “Everything, Charlie, must be open, otherwise, how will the people know what is going on?” Charlie watched his hand make a character, the first, second and third stroke. At last he was getting this one.
"But what if people aren't honest in their reporting like in Japan and the stories aren't true, do you want this avalanche of information reported, and then misinterpreted?” he asked. “And if you have all this information tumbling over itself, who will kept the reporters honest?’
Charlie hoped to get Mashiko to give in a little to his point of view.
But she wouldn’t. "Yes,” she said, “it is important for all the news to be out there, but then" she smiled, and said, “there are people like you to keep the press honest, you are the ombudsman for the press, and it's up to you to keep other reporters honest."
Charlie sighed. The present was not the past, or maybe it was. Mashiko was starting another character. A new one for him.
"I am an experiment,” he said. “Not all newspapers have someone like me to keep the facts straight. I am a rarity."
His brush and hand were guided through this set of strokes. This one was more complicated. It was "na" for name.
"What is in a name?" Mashiko asked. "So very much, you know. If I hadn't had the same name as my father, I would have been all right after the war, but I did, it is a terrible legacy left to me, from an officer who lost the war.”
Charlie listened. This concern of one person like Mashiko for names and connections, part of anybody’s story. He’d start his next piece with a title like "Making Connections: Finishing the Story," and he'd talk about half-stories being half-truths and that without the whole story, reporters are nothing, just gossip mongers, never getting the story right, sending words from one person to another through print--miniature lies that eventually scatter across the page like Japanese characters being read horizontally instead of vertically. Totally incomprehensible.
His character for "na" looked about average he thought. Not like Mashiko's. He tried one character by himself while Mashiko made more tea. Then he looked down at his watch.
"Excuse me, I must be going." He picked up the brush, rinsed it carefully, made a point on it and wrapped it in his cloth holder, and placed the inkstick in a plastic bag. Then he picked up the inkstone and got up to wash it out in the kitchen, but Mashiko took it quickly from him and washed it and dried it before he could say anything.
"Mashiko, it’s the name that matters after all," he said. “It’s what we call something, the label, and how we describe that label is important. Maybe that’s the connection."
Mashiko bowed. "It is the person and the name, the “jin” and “na,” and it is how we are all interrelated."
They headed to the door, and Charlie put on his shoes. Mashiko had closed the door, and Charlie walked to his car. It’s not enough to be accurate in a story, it’s also important to be empathetic. First, the article on connections, then the article on feelings. He would have to spend a lot of time with each of them. He had to get it right. He couldn’t bang this one out in a few hours. His hand made the strokes for “jin” and “na” in the air, then he turned on the engine. As it started, he realized that he was sketching his article out in his mind. Now it would be a matter of making the writing precise. For some reason, he could never quite explain to the office folks, he felt relaxed, solving a puzzle as he drove home. Two characters in one hour. Not bad for a beginner.
Charlie knew he wasn’t doing it right. He felt Mashiko’s presence behind him, and then she was guiding his hand, lifting it, till the brush was perpendicular to the paper. “Ichi, Ni, San,” she said, guiding his hand through the three main strokes. Those were the strokes, Charlie knew, that became a syllable with meaning.
He never missed his calligraphy class even though he took some teasing from the guys at the news office, who couldn't understand his wanting to take a "handwriting" class. But for Charlie, those Wednesday afternoons became a way for his mind to play with the characters he formed. And he liked the nonstop English version of postwar Japan that chattered forth from Mashiko each time they got together for a lesson. Perhaps some day he'd write a book about her life.
Today, Mashiko was talking about the compensation that the government was going to pay to Japanese, who had been placed in internment camps during the war. Her husband, a U.S. citizen, had just received notification of possible reparations. Mashiko explained what she would do if the U.S. government gave her husband twenty thousand dollars.
“I would send some of it to my family in Japan, she said, “because of the hardship they went during the war and after it. It was the government that wanted war and territory. My father, an officer, lost everything in the war. Barely escaping execution, he was imprisoned for a long time. Back in our village, we had no food and the yen was worth nothing. What can you buy with nothing? We nearly starved. All we ate was sweet potatoes. My sister never married. Most of the men in our village were sent to the Philippines. They never came back.” Then she said, laughing quietly, “Maybe we should be getting the equivalent of twenty thousand dollars from Japan for putting up with the war.”
“Do those characters several times now,” Mashiko said. And Charlie did, listening.
“I was lucky,” she said, “I met Akira Yamada. His family had been out of the camps some years by then, and in l946, he traveled to Japan to start a pottery business. The ancient Shigaraki kiln was near our village. So one day, I was lining up our shoes outside, and he walked by. I wondered what he was doing there. I bowed, and he bowed, and we began talking. My mother came out then, and she invited him in for tea, and we kept talking, and finally, we got together. We married, stayed one year while his business got going, and came to the United States in 1947, and he brought his business with him. At first, all the pottery was marked “Occupied Japan.” Then each piece sold in the United States just had “Made in Japan” on it. Akira is happy, retired. And here in California, we have a good life – a family -- children and grandchildren.
Charlie couldn't listen to the rest of what she was saying. He had to concentrate on how to get his brain and hand to work together. He moved his brush, practicing strokes in the air before him. The power of the written word. But in Kanji. His downstroke looked like it was running away from the character. He focused on the strokes for “hito" or “person.” Thank Heavens he didn't have to learn all of the Japanese language to take calligraphy. He'd be in remedial Japanese for sure. This way he was holding his own, keeping up, practicing his characters every Thursday evening after he turned in his Saturday column. It was a relaxing reprieve from, what he called, his“heavy-duty” column. He knew his was an unusual job -- keeping the paper honest. Hard work. If there were a complaint that something wasn't true, say a person’s character was maligned, he'd get to the bottom of it, and not just write the retraction. He’d also get on his hobby horse of journalistic responsibility and deliver important, at least he thought them so, pieces on what makes responsible journalism and what makes it important for a reporter to have empathy for the person he writes about. That was his last column. His editor expected lots of flak over that one. Said it should generate lots of letters to the editor.
But Charlie was waiting for his major story to be printed. The one that would really blast the print media itself, and take it to task for altering people's lives, and actually creating reality instead of reporting it. Lots of reporters were quick to tout each headline as gospel truth, with a litany of facts to back them up, but by the way they structured headlines and articles, they actually created gossip and opinion that became real. But he was discovering the truth of it all.
University researchers had helped him scan hundreds of titles and newspaper articles. He had come to an alarming conclusion: that the media, like the government, fed on its own power, and could now be seen as a bulging carnivorous beast that devoured people's lives. The media thrived on telling half-truths to go with lurid headlines. Always something selectively missing of the total action and event. What had started as a feeling about the salaciousness of news reporting had become a jarring reality for him. It would be his piece de resistance, and in four weeks, it would come out in the national section.
Mashiko was asking him to do something. She repeated it. “Charlie, you are not holding your brush correctly, you need to hold it just so, then push down here." She pushed down.
"Then lift and turn." He lifted and turned with her hand helping him. "Then, downstroke to the end, san." She pulled his hand down, and lifted it as best she could, but his last stroke still ran on, instead of tapering at the correct angle.
“It should be a smooth rhythm,” she said.
Mashiko talked on about the war. "My father used to tell us about how the news of the war was censored and manipulated, and how he didn't even know what was happening on different fronts or at home. Often, he had to guess. Most of the time he said he guessed correctly, but he said that some of the others didn't make the right decisions. They'd send people to fight a battle in a certain place, only to find that they were outnumbered and poorly equipped. Supplies were low in l944, but the papers never said anything. They kept haranguing people to contribute to the war effort by sacrificing their gold, and other metal goods to make into weapons. All of our precious heirlooms went to be melted down. Nothing was spared. Even our ancestral samurai swords from the sixteenth century disappeared.
She shook her head. “It was a crime for us not to know what was happening,” she said. “The war was going so badly. How could my father be an officer and not know that? Or maybe he knew and wasn’t allowed to tell us. Somebody should have said something to us. News coming by radio or telegraph wasn’t good enough.”
Making more ink, Mashiko rubbed the inkstick back and forth on the stone. Charlie could see that these letters today would not be winning any Japanese penmanship award. He took a sip of green tea.
"Mashiko, I am not doing well today. I must have too much on my mind. Let me ask you, do you think that a newspaper should have to print everything that happens during a war?”
She hesitated only a minute. Her head bobbed up and down, and she bowed at the same time. "Yes, everything must be there, there can be no secrets from the people."
"But do you mean that really? I mean, some things ought not to be printed, certainly if there is a war, you don’t want to give the enemy your strategies, but Charlie saw that he was pre-empted by the head still bobbing up and down, and the brush placed in his hand again.
"Now, one, two, three," she said. “Everything, Charlie, must be open, otherwise, how will the people know what is going on?” Charlie watched his hand make a character, the first, second and third stroke. At last he was getting this one.
"But what if people aren't honest in their reporting like in Japan and the stories aren't true, do you want this avalanche of information reported, and then misinterpreted?” he asked. “And if you have all this information tumbling over itself, who will kept the reporters honest?’
Charlie hoped to get Mashiko to give in a little to his point of view.
But she wouldn’t. "Yes,” she said, “it is important for all the news to be out there, but then" she smiled, and said, “there are people like you to keep the press honest, you are the ombudsman for the press, and it's up to you to keep other reporters honest."
Charlie sighed. The present was not the past, or maybe it was. Mashiko was starting another character. A new one for him.
"I am an experiment,” he said. “Not all newspapers have someone like me to keep the facts straight. I am a rarity."
His brush and hand were guided through this set of strokes. This one was more complicated. It was "na" for name.
"What is in a name?" Mashiko asked. "So very much, you know. If I hadn't had the same name as my father, I would have been all right after the war, but I did, it is a terrible legacy left to me, from an officer who lost the war.”
Charlie listened. This concern of one person like Mashiko for names and connections, part of anybody’s story. He’d start his next piece with a title like "Making Connections: Finishing the Story," and he'd talk about half-stories being half-truths and that without the whole story, reporters are nothing, just gossip mongers, never getting the story right, sending words from one person to another through print--miniature lies that eventually scatter across the page like Japanese characters being read horizontally instead of vertically. Totally incomprehensible.
His character for "na" looked about average he thought. Not like Mashiko's. He tried one character by himself while Mashiko made more tea. Then he looked down at his watch.
"Excuse me, I must be going." He picked up the brush, rinsed it carefully, made a point on it and wrapped it in his cloth holder, and placed the inkstick in a plastic bag. Then he picked up the inkstone and got up to wash it out in the kitchen, but Mashiko took it quickly from him and washed it and dried it before he could say anything.
"Mashiko, it’s the name that matters after all," he said. “It’s what we call something, the label, and how we describe that label is important. Maybe that’s the connection."
Mashiko bowed. "It is the person and the name, the “jin” and “na,” and it is how we are all interrelated."
They headed to the door, and Charlie put on his shoes. Mashiko had closed the door, and Charlie walked to his car. It’s not enough to be accurate in a story, it’s also important to be empathetic. First, the article on connections, then the article on feelings. He would have to spend a lot of time with each of them. He had to get it right. He couldn’t bang this one out in a few hours. His hand made the strokes for “jin” and “na” in the air, then he turned on the engine. As it started, he realized that he was sketching his article out in his mind. Now it would be a matter of making the writing precise. For some reason, he could never quite explain to the office folks, he felt relaxed, solving a puzzle as he drove home. Two characters in one hour. Not bad for a beginner.
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