Carol Bergman

 

 

 

Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.

 

     -from "Happening," by Annie Ernaux, 2022 Nobel Laureate

 

 

I've had a lot of congratulations and some interesting responses to my new book, Becoming a Writer; A Memoir and Workbook. "Your book has arrived and I am reading it," a colleague wrote. I wonder if reading it from beginning to end was my intention. Books are usually read cover to cover, of course, but this book has slipped out of my psyche not from beginning to end, but incrementally over the years; it's a distillation, a compendium, a philosophy.

 

Forgive me, if I continue to ruminate about my effort to convey what I hold dear: staying present in the world through writing, whether it is my immediate surroundings, or the world beyond the circumscribed borders of my life. If I have not expressed this intention well, I must continue to write about it …intentionally. Indeed, I am reminded every day that the discipline of daily writing, as well as its satisfactions and joys, keeps the pen in my  hand and that "procrastination" a self-flagellating word I abhor, does not exist for me. If I hear a student voice that word, I stop him/her/they immediately. I also do not entertain the words "writers block." If we are not writing, we are mulching, and when the compost pail is full-up, we only have to sit down and start writing, even if what we are writing feels like nonsense, at first, or we fear that it is not good enough.

 

In a Sam Fragoso, "Talk Easy"  podcast interview with David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, the German word Sitzfleisch, was mentioned amidst laughter as a characteristic most successful writers possess or, I'd  prefer to say, cultivate. In short: keep your bottom in the chair, do not move, as I am doing right now so that I can lay down a draft of this blog post before I get onto a Zoom call. I did not mention Sitzfleisch in my book, but Becoming a Writer is not a finite entity, so I will mention it now. Becoming a writer is a fluid state, an evolution, ever expanding, like the universe.  Or, is that to grand a concept?
 

Lastly, some gratitude:  I wrote back to everyone who sent me congratulations or annotations about their own work. Recording our stories, either for pleasure, or for the historical record, is a worthy vocation or avocation for everyone. And a special thanks to those who took the time to read the book in PDF and write endorsements, as follows:

 

 

An engaging tour d'horizon, employing Bergman's varied experiences to render a compelling guide to writing as art and calling. Practical recommendations for thriving as a writer—both creatively and professionally—are rendered with clear examples from the author's long career; the book will appeal especially to those whose creative writing strengths are always open to change.

 

MacKay Wolff is an international humanitarian aid worker.

 

***

 

Carol Bergman offers a rich pathway into the writing world.  She shares a lifetime's cache of personal experiences spanning all aspects of the writing experience, as well as concrete steps for the aspiring writer. This is a book that will encourage as well guide all who are seeking a way in to writing.

 

Ellen Taussig

Co-founder, The Northwest School

Seattle, Washington

 ***

 

Carol Bergman provides helpful guidance to those wishing to become writers, or to enhance their writing skills. Based on her personal experiences as a writer and mentor, she covers many topics critical in developing writing skills. She includes specific exercises and suggestions for incorporating her advice into one's own work, a particularly practical and helpful feature of this book.

 

Sherry Deren 

Author of  Not Done Yet: The Humor of Aging

 

 ***

 

Carol's writing advice, in a creative nonfiction workshop and now in Becoming a Writer, has been invaluable to me as I tackle a difficult memoir. Through a combination of group critiques, written comments, astute questions, and reading discussions, Carol shared her wisdom with our intimate group, helping us to refine our perspectives as well as our sentences. Her book offers insights into many writing genres and the challenges they bring, extended through personal examples of her journey to become a writer. I need only open this generous book to regain my sense of direction when out of balance.

 

Betty Leigh Hutcheson, Grant Writer and Literary Enthusiast

 

 ***

 

In Becoming a Writer writing Carol Bergman shares a treasure trove of memories and a lifetime of experience as a writing mentor.This is a generous welcome to writing, a beckoning.

.

Nancy Caputi, retired ESL teacher

 

***

 

 As a professional writer and an educator of many decades, I thought I knew all the tricks. Happily, Bergman's book has proven me wrong. A deceptively chatty tone belies the formidable skills required of the craft, imparting a lifetime's worth of knowledge and experience. Old pros will learn new approaches and young writers will especially benefit from Bergman's emphasis on the psychological challenges of the trade. I will surely use entire sections from this book in the next writing course I teach.

 

Dr. William L Gibson is a writer, researcher and educator based in Southeast Asia

 

***

 

Carol Bergman has been all kinds of writer. She has produced texts sometimes elegant, sometimes necessary. She knows how to address many a reading audience and her new guide, Becoming a Writer, distills her knowledge, her wisdom and her cleverness for any who want to learn the many facets of this frustrating, satisfying business.

 

George Szanto, author of Bog Tender and Whatever Lola Wants

 

***

 

Becoming a Writer reminds me of an elegant set of Matryoshka nesting dolls—in tightly fitting sequences, Bergman shows (never tells) us how to both craft a meaningful life as a writer and how to shape the "armature" of that life into art. This book is a treasure, one doll opening our imaginations to the next, with generosity and kinship to those who follow.

 

—Martha Greenwald, Writer, Educator, Founder/Curator of The WhoWeLost Project, and editor of Who We Lost: A Portable COVID Memorial.

 

 

 

 

 

 

#82

...here I am! I will not tire you, my reader, by describing the hardships I encountered on my journey…

 

-Lev Rubinstein,  from one of  his  "Catalog Poems"

   

-Translated by Philip Metres and Tatiana Tulchinsky

 

 

I read a touching essay by Masha Gessen on the New Yorker feed about Lev Rubinstein's life and unexpected death, age 76, as I was headed to bed on Saturday night. Rubinstein was hit by a drunken driver on a Moscow street, which seems implausible, if not suspicious. The incident is "under investigation." By whom?

 

Gessen and Rubinstein were friends, colleagues and survivors of the Soviet and Putin regimes. Both were outspoken opponents of Putin's repression and the war in Ukraine. Masha lives in the US now, but Rubinstein, unlike other endangered artists and dissidents, did not leave Moscow. He was a supporter of Navalny and  eloquent in his antagonism to the "internal imperialism," of the Putin regime. Now he is dead. Masha is in New York. And so on and so on, as Kurt Vonnegut might have said.

 

Rubinstein  began his writing life working in a library in Moscow. Using discarded catalog cards, he wrote a sentence on each one and numbered them in an order that made narrative sense, such as #82 in the quotation above. Later he "performed" these prose poems to live audiences. His courage is a lesson for silenced writers in "free" societies, such as ours, silenced for fear of dunning, shunning, death threats, or cancellation. We corrode our moral center by remaining silent when we hear about censorship, or self-censorship, and do not object.

 

Authoritarian constraint creeps slowly in unyielding increments. Let us call it the "creeping disease." First a book banning, then the cancellation of a lecture at a university, police everywhere, arrests. Friendships ended, or compromised by "disagreements," about what "side" we are on, or not, as if atrocity, seen and acknowledged, had a "side."

 

Some of us are so profoundly implicated in the war in the Middle East, for example, either by ancestry or direct connection, that we do not have the luxury of not paying attention, of not discussing, of not being concerned about our loved ones and the future of Palestine and Israel.

 

Lev Rubinstein drew solace from history and all he had endured. For many years he was certain that Soviet "slime" would never dissipate, and then it did.  Glasnost, an opening into heart and light as a vigorous opposition surfaced in Russia, the Berlin Wall came down, and the arts and artists burst open. And then the clamp down, another round of trouble: Putin's repression and war mongering in Chechnya and Ukraine.

 

Though most of us are protected from its effects, America is not immune to slime. It is in our face and on our screens every day. We may live in privileged enclaves blind to troubles that impact others far away, or those near and dear, but the slime will eventually swallow us all if we do not resist. Indeed, we cannot take anything for granted this election year, including our very American sense of entitlement to a sense of safety, and prosperity.

 

 

Lev Rubinstein, Moscow, 1947-2024, RIP

 

 

I think the thing that is so special about folk music is that it is a reaffirmation of the celebration of the human spirit and human life.

 

-Mary Travers, in a 1983 NPR Interview

 

 

I was sitting in a public space reading The New York Times, my once-a-week paper paper treat. I read slowly, contemplatively, sometimes with a pen and paper to hand. I choose a different day each week to buy the paper paper and read electronically the rest of the time. I don't like to be interrupted. Slow reads, the hum of conversation around me, are my meditation. But the man sitting next to me turned and said, "Any good news today?" White haired, his glasses slipping off his nose, I was surprised by the friendly greeting.

 

An interlude here to explain that extended conversation between strangers in the small upstate NY town where I live are rare. The mores here are different: people cherish their privacy and seem more wary of strangers. Urban for most of my life, I have never not had conversations in public spaces, so I welcome them. Indeed, I cherish them. Who was this friendly guy? "Good news. Not so much these days," I said, answering his initial question. Then I showed him a digital photo of a tree from the bottom up. The botanists are studying the survival mechanisms of trees, I told him. "The trees need this, and so do we."

 

"That's a Republican newspaper," he said.

 

I took a breath. "You must be very left of center to say that," I said. But his statement made me smile.  I wasn't sure if he was joking, or not.

 

"Are you wearing patchouli?" he asked, without missing a beat. "That scent brings me back to the 60s. We all wore patchouli."

 

This comment was a bit too personal, but I rolled with it. In fact, I was relieved. I wasn't up for defending the newspaper of record or its 1700 dedicated reporters all over the world, or its editorial stance, or anything else. The origins of patchouli were a diversion and I launched into them. I sounded like a wiki entry.

 

"I only read the paper electronically," he interrupted. "And the news is hard to take. These wars."

 

"Heartbreaking," I said, relieved that we had quickly found common ground.

 

"I'm 88-years-old, I remember WW II, I remember when there was no Thruway and it took three hours to get to the city. My family has been living here since 1638."

 

Just imagine. 1638. "What did you say your name was?" I asked, knowing that I was in the presence of a descendant of one of the colonial settler families, all of them slave owners.  But I didn't want to get into that, not right away.  

 

"Dewitt Jansen," he said. "There's a road named after us here."

 

"Dutch," I said, and that was enough for the moment.

 

Dewitt got up out of his seat, maybe to stretch, and I could see that he was very thin, almost emaciated. He looked like he'd surfaced from one of the old graves in town, a ghostly presence. The town is haunted with them. Then he sat down again and we talked some more.

 

"What did you do when you were working?" I asked.

 

"I was a pick-up jazz pianist, traveled all over the world, played with many bands. I once dated Mary Travers, remember her? Peter, Paul and Mary. She's dead now."

 

"She sang jazz before her folk music career?"

 

"She was an artist."

 

More than an artist, she devoted her musical career to social justice, I remembered. The group had 12 hit singles. One of them, If I Had A Hammer, became an anthem for the Civil Rights Movement. She died of leukemia in 1989.

 

"Do you still play?"

 

"Look at these fingers. All curled up," he said.

 

"But you've been blessed with an interesting life," I said. "I think the gods have smiled upon you."

 

"Not entirely," he said, facing me straight on now. "My youngest daughter is dying of cancer. They can't seem to stop the spread."

 

I thought he would burst into tears. I wanted to hug him. Instead, I gave him my card and said, "You're talking to a journalist. If you ever want to write or tell your story, give me a call."

 

"A lot on my plate right now," he said, disconsolately.

 

"I understand."

 

Retreating into my journalist's persona, I had needed distance to recover from his revelation, not about Mary Travers, but about his daughter.

 

 

 

 

Every past has a future.

 

-Anonymous

 

The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.

 

-The Dalai Lama

 

 

A humanitarian aid worker friend wrote to say he's looking forward to "moving through" 2024 with me. I knew what he meant, of course, as the challenges of the year we are entering are manifold and obvious, both nationally and internationally. Unspoken in the text is a worry about his colleagues still in the field. However well trained they are, the work they do is more dangerous than ever before, and hundreds will not return home, or return home in body bags, or as wounded as soldiers and innocent civilians in body and spirit.

 

The wars on Planet Earth will not quit, natural disasters abound, more so with climate change. A quake in Japan this morning, as I write. And I write about all of it for this blog, for the local paper when they have revenue to pay me, and in essays for various journals. Every writer has a subject, or more than one subject, and as a child of war myself, these are mine—war and social justice, mainly. My attempts to write more "light-heartedly," as one or two well-meaning friends have suggested, have failed. Even if an item in the paper makes me smile, that smile is Brechtian in its absurdity; it's a smile with clouds hovering. The other day, for example, I read that an opera singer lost her voice while she was pregnant. I don't know why I thought that was funny, because it really isn't, but I laughed anyway. Even more hilarious was the news that a drone has been invented to capture pathogens in the plumes of Orcas, diagnose their ailments, and treat them underwater. PS There are only about 75 Orcas left in the hemisphere where I reside. Or, the news that a man on death row who refused to die by lethal injection will now be executed by nitrogen gas and has asked his pastor to keep him company in the death chamber. His pastor has agreed to sacrifice his life, if necessary.

 

No writer can make any of this up.  Or maybe they can.

 

Today, the first day of 2024, I am back at my desk working. One of the three books I wrote during Covid is in galley and I have had to make corrections, which I do not enjoy. The process is pernickety as the Brits would say, though not a cause for complaint, or even a minor lamentation. And I'm waiting for a text from a friend. We're walking up into the Minnewaska Ridge to celebrate the New Year in a wintry sunshine.

 

This blog is dedicated to the Hand-in-Hand Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel, a utopian experiment now 2000 Arab and Jewish children strong.   This is their website:  https://www.handinhandk12.org/

 

 

 

 

Deep in our bones lies an intuition that we arrive here carrying a bundle of gifts to offer to the community.

 

-Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow

 

 

If you come again, don't throw a grenade, knock on the door.

 

-Chem Goldstein-Almog, a released Israeli hostage kidnapped by Hamas 10/7/23

 

 

We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace.

 

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

 

 

The persecuting spirit is running rampant this holiday season, boobytraps in the most innocent expression of an idea or point of view among friends, relations, or colleagues, and the presumed safety of a home, a campus and a homeland shattered. War overseas and warring among ourselves. We are all both witness and  unintended participant in this devolution of civilized society.

 

Where is it safe to reside these days without the menace of guns, famine, death threat, climate changed flooding, or bombs, cancellation or intimidation? A spectrum of catastrophe to be sure as I sit here safe, or safe enough, in my apartment. My musings are for next year, the immediate future, and beyond: How can we protect and sustain our children and educate them with depth and compassion? What tools will they require to protect and sustain themselves and their children? As I am an educator as well as a writer, I think about these questions often, more so when I am in the presence of educators and attempt to pry open their "apertures of compassion," as psychotherapist Francis Weller calls them.

 

There is work to be done—within ourselves, our communities, our body politic, our schools, and the world.  Do not tarry, do not rest. Is that how the saying goes? We must not shirk our responsibilities. The possibility of a fascist entering the White House is real, among many other horrors. What can we do from the limited space in which we reside?

 

Consider yourself a co-author of this blog post, dear reader, as I solicit your suggestions at the end of 2023. Please share your ideas in a comment in which you explain—or  summarize—your effort to staunch the tide of despair so many are feeling, and to remain active, and stay in balance. Concretely, what is your new year's resolution as a peace activist, a climate activist, a political activist, a hard working parent, a  voter, or an educator? What small action towards peace and stability—national or international—are  you taking?

 

 

 

The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self.

 

― Fred Rogers, "The World According to Fred Rogers"

 

 

 

I spent a couple of hours today delivering chocolates, cookies and cards to the workers in my small upstate New York town, workers who have eased my life immeasurably this past year with their kindness. I want them to know that they are appreciated, that I am grateful for them. New Paltz has a population of about 7,000, and apart from a more diverse State University of New York college population, they/we are mostly white and affluent. Not so the workers in the supermarket, my mechanics, the woman who takes care of the laundromat, the young employees at Spectrum in the mall, the men and women behind the desk at my gym. Most do not live in the town, they come here to work, to serve us, and they are easily forgotten once we are out the door, our business done. Indeed, in a town that is a monument to enslavement and Jim Crow, these contemporary demographics are hardly surprising. Yet, cosmopolitan and urban to the bone, I find myself here, and I observe, I ponder, and I write.

 

Gifting those who have been special to me, strangers who have entrusted me with their stories either as a reporter or a consumer in fleeting encounters, this gifting has become my own ecumenical holiday tradition: Julie, at the supermarket had a small stroke and had to return to work after her sick leave ran out, which was too soon. Stefan at Spectrum is starting school in September, and Pat at the car body shop has COPD and recommends his new doctor to anyone with COPD; the doctor saved his life. Dylan checks my tires and chats to me about his five-year-old daughter. Because of these soul warming micro-connections, separate and distinct from the friends I have made since arriving here in 2018, the town's smallness expands into a capacious home, the barriers of class and caste broken.

 

Maybe I learned this holiday tradition during my decade in London, a class conscious society top to bottom, so smitten with royalty in the modern age that Hilary Mantel once compared the kings and queens—even  in their contemporary iterations—to  precious pandas who are both hard to conserve and expensive to maintain.  But class and caste can break down there, too, especially if you are an American, or an irreverent artist, like a friend of mine who lived in Hackney in the East End of London.  Her home was in a row of small attached "terraced" houses, a working class neighborhood fast becoming gentrified, and every Christmas Eve this irreverent and courageous friend of mine wrote out a load of cards and went door to door to wish her neighbors a Happy Christmas. There is more crime in London now, but in those days—if Norma's neighbors were home—they all opened their doors at the first knock. I went with her on one or two occasions and what a treat it was to feel such surprise and joy in others, and in ourselves.

 

There are many kinds of giving, of course—donations, presents, food—and each of us have our particular "language of love" and "language of concern." Small tokens of appreciation are my personal contribution to the continuing effort to remain compassionate and attentive close to home.

 

This blog post is dedicated to all the children in countries at war,  and all the migrant children living in shelters and tent cities.

 

Why persist in the belief that "ordinary" people could not possibly sanction, let alone partake in wholesale human slaughter? The historical record, from ancient times to the present, amply testifies to the ease with which people can extinguish the lives of others, and even take joy in their deaths.

― Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust"

 

 

 

 

This week, the Jewish Community Center Safety Committee in New Paltz invited the Chief of Police to talk about the potential for antisemitic incidents at the synagogue. "What kind of situation would lead to stationing police at the Synagogue and Community Center?" the email invitation to the congregation asked. Though I am not a member of this congregation, I receive their emails, and this one gave me pause. Soon after the antisemitic terrorist attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018 in which eleven people were killed and six wounded, I received a phone call from a woman who lives and works in New Paltz. She knew I was a journalist and wanted to show me an antisemitic screed she had found in the wastepaper basket at the Town Hall. I asked if she had taken it to the police; she had not. Afraid to lose her job, she asked if I would "report" it. By this she meant report it in the local newspaper I write for occasionally. Instead, I made an appointment to see Chief Lucchesi and asked a member of the Jewish Community Center to come with me

 

The Chief was both knowledgeable and reassuring. He assigned a detective who determined that the screed had been faxed from an unknown location and was not local in origin. Soon after this visit the perpetrator of the Pittsburgh shootings was caught.

 

For most of my life, I have been spared the fear and rage that my Israeli cousins and Palestinian friends experience every day. Indeed, I always told my refugee parents that I was thankful they had landed in America rather than on a sliver of contested Biblical land inhabited by deranged warring societies. Edward Said, The Palestinian American academic, called the efforts  to "fix" the Israel/Palestine "problem" akin to "shaking peanuts in a jar," one peace "accord" after another broken by intractable hatreds.   

 

We are now witnessing a horrific, pulverizing, uncivilized war in the Middle East, instigated by Hamas, perpetrated by Hamas and its handlers, but continued with little respite by a vengeful, dangerous right wing Israeli government that has broken every international humanitarian law ever codified—in  its own "settlements," in the West Bank where there has been detention without trial for decades, and now in Gaza. It should be no surprise to any Jew in the American diaspora that some of the uptick in antisemitism—on social media, on the streets, and on the college campuses—is  a reaction to this war. As I write, it has only worsened, despite the release of hostages.

 

Years ago, I was asked by a German magazine to interview Daniel Goldhagen, a Harvard professor, who had just published Hitler's Willing Executioners; Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust which I have quoted above. Reading this quote again today, it seems more applicable to the Israeli government than to contemporary Germans who have worked ceaselessly to confront their history, and atone for it. So here's my prayer for this holiday season:  May the next Israeli and Palestinian generation feel secure enough to do the same. May the children of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank survive this war and live in peace. May they not dishonor their souls with hatred.

 

 

 

…I am a prayer of smoke wandering the broken houses, the littered ground looking for a white flag of reason…

 

-from "I Am a Prayer," by Joy Harjo,

 

23rd United States Poet Laureate

 

 

 

I hesitate to use the plural pronoun here, to extrapolate from my own experience; I'll just speak for myself as witness, participant, peripheral observer, narrator, protagonist. But I'm also a journalist and have gathered stories, not evidence, but stories. Therefore, I make no claim to knowledge beyond my own experience and reporting. I offer no solution. But the sense of loss, real and metaphoric, is profound. I had hoped, as have so many, that the world would be at peace in my lifetime.

 

Is there anyone you know, dear reader, who has not been touched by the conflagrations in Ukraine and the Middle East. Is there anyone you know who does not have an opinion about these wars, about what should and should not be done?

 

Speaking for myself, then, and only for myself, as a child of war, there's a sense that I've lost –not everything, but far too much. This loss, or confusion, surfaces in dreams which have intensified since I realized I knew someone—Peter Zalmayev—in  Kyiv and intensified again after the massacre in Israel on October 7. I have cousins in Israel and an acquaintance, a young artist—Malak  Mattar—from  Gaza. I follow her on Facebook and connect with her on FB Messenger. Meanwhile, here in the United States, I received a request from a once dear  Palestinian friend to remove him from my blog blast. I do not think he wrote it as it seemed to be copied and pasted from a printed document, but it is eloquent nonetheless:

 

How can you explain that you are no longer fit for superficial daily conversation, and that you are so drained that you need some solitude in order to repair what the war destroyed within you.

 

A simple reply from me: I understand.

 

An email to one of my Israeli cousins was answered almost immediately. He is in New York on sabbatical from Tel Aviv University, his son is in the IDF reserves and has been called up, and that was it. Two sentences. No plans to get together as yet, no reply to a follow-up email, no What's App conversation. Solitude heals. Solitude protects.

 

In the past, therapists have asked me, "What do you feel as you awaken from the dream? Describe the sensation, describe the emotion."  And if I were asked to reply this week, I'd say, "Incomparable loss, irrefutable loss, isn't it obvious?"

 

Lord Byron might have called this dream image of nothingness ahead, white as a sun-spattered cloud—death awaiting. There is no grounding in that image, no ledge on which to sit and watch the sky or sea. The only antidote to such a free fall dream is to weight myself in hiking boots and march full throttle into the mountains away from war, and then to stay connected to those in war zones with messages and interviews and articles, to give them voice in my blog posts and articles.

 

I'm reminded of the days following 9/11. I was in the city and had to force myself back onto the subway to teach after roaming for weeks on foot. Long past the Civil War, with no warfare in North America, most Americans can't imagine war, or famine or terrible contagious disease, or the kind of poverty that grinds and breaks a family open with fear. We—and I'll use the plural pronoun here—we Americans, are eager to let the good times roll. If the dreams become too portentous, we push them aside; we don't admit to having such dreams.

 

Even though I've got food, shelter, work, a significant other, and objectively can't complain, or mustn't complain, I sometimes judge a friend who's just been to Telluride on a skiing holiday, or another who's boarded a plane to run a marathon in Florida, or another who's been to Spain and toured around as though these wars never happened and life is as it was—for  them—joyous and everlasting.

 

This post is dedicated to the Israeli and Palestinian people. May they find a lasting way to peace and reconciliation.

 

 

     I realized it was about the section of the book that's about my mother's suicide, where she killed herself in a bathtub. ..There's nothing there that could possibly titillate. Even if you're a sadist, you wouldn't go to that one for the picture, to see a dead body. And so I was offended just like they were, but I was offended by describing a naked corpse as a nude woman.

 

-Art Spiegelman in conversation with Lisa Tolin, Editorial Director of PEN America after the banning of "Maus: A Survivor's Tale," his Pulitzer Prize winning graphic memoir.

 

 

 

I've been facilitating a Banned Book Club at a local library, one book a month since September, and though it has been poorly attended, it's been good for me, a reminder that books matter and so do writers in a free society.  And as I am a writer in this free society, I figure I matter too, as do all readers, and all three libraries I belong to in the Mid-Hudson Valley; I've taught writing workshops in two of them. A beacon of civilization, may all libraries everywhere on Planet Earth prosper forever. May we #standupforlibraries  and #standupforwriters no matter the pressures brought upon us.

 

I am a long-standing member of the Authors Guild, PEN America and International PEN, all organizations working to staunch the book banners disruptive rhetoric and fascistic actions, to protect the authors of the books thus banned, and internationally, to free incarcerated writers all over the world. I think of this struggle as both personal and political, and hope, dear reader, that you will also. As Joyce Vance so eloquently said in a recent Substack newsletter, we cannot rest, it is a moral imperative not to rest. She signs her newsletters "in this together."

 

I began the process of choosing the banned books for the club last summer and read about twenty of the 1,000 plus on American PEN's list. One book a month seemed a very small sampling, but it was an important gesture,  and Nicole Lane, the librarian at the Gardiner Library, agreed to put the Banned Book Club on the  library's calendar of events. She even published a "manifesto" that she distributed to the library's members. It reads, in part: "Individuals should be trusted to make their own decisions about what they read and believe. Further, parents should not be making decisions for other parents' children about what they read. We are united against book bans."

 

My syllabus included a similar manifesto, which reads in part: "Book banning impacts the education of our children and the livelihoods and reputations of authors, illustrators, and other creators. It corrodes the trust, civility and freedoms we must sustain in a working democracy."

 

Four Thursdays @ 6:30 p.m.

 

September 14: Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

October 12: Ashley Hope Perez, Out of Darkness

November 9; Art Spiegelman, Maus

December 14: George Johnson, All Boys Aren't Blue

 

Of these four writers, three are living writers. I decided to write to all of them to bolster their courage and determination, and my own. I told them I'd assigned their books, that their books are worthy of assigning.

 

Writing to thank (living) writers I admire is a practice I began many years ago. I contact them through their website, publisher, agent, or Facebook page. More often than not, I receive a reply, sometimes formulaic, sometimes personal. And if a book has been banned this "right action," as the Buddhists  call it, has its own reward; it's a contribution to the struggle against the persecution of writers and their work.

                                                                      

 

The peoples of this world must unite or they will perish.

 

-J. Robert Oppenheimer

 

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."

 

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

Before unleashing the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Americans fire-bombed Tokyo. It was March 9-10, 1945 and my cousin, Fritzi Burger Nishikawa, was living just outside Tokyo with her husband, Shinichi and son, Yoshi, in what was considered a "safe" zone near the pearl farms of their Mikimoto relatives. In 1999 I outed her as a collaborator in my memoir, Searching for Fritzi. An Olympic silver medalist, she had entertained the German and Japanese High Command with her ice dancing throughout the war years, and had done nothing to save her family—my  family—most  of whom were killed in the Nazi death camps.

 

The images of bombed-out buildings and bodies in shrouds and body bags in Israel, Gaza and Ukraine, brought back a memory of those long-ago bombings, and the civilian deaths in Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When is such bombing "justified?" When is "collateral damage" acceptable? With or without a nuclear conflagration, body counts are high after bombing. A conservative estimate is 80,000 deaths in Tokyo alone.  It's a crude tool of warfare despite modern technology to improve "targeting." There are children down there. Think of  all the movies you've seen of London during the Blitz.

 

It is my hope that the moral questions raised by even targeted bombing will plague us after the current wars are over and inspire conferences, seminars, some sort of international détente. But I dream. Many of the IDF soldiers in "the strip," as it is so charmingly referred to now, will return to civilian life, maybe even to renewed and more vociferous demonstrations against the right-wing Israeli government. Many will have nightmares as well as memories of heroism and historical necessity.  Many will  undoubtedly have regrets. Many will have to serve in the occupation of Gaza; occupation never goes well long-term. Think of the West Bank. Remember the intifadas, tame compared to the massacre of October 7.  Vengeance, massacres, occupation, refugees, displaced persons, suffering morphed into rage.

 

Soon after I  published Searching for Fritzi, I received an email from Mike Ramsey, a soldier in General MacArthur's occupying army in Japan. He was sent to Tokyo about fifteen months after the occupation began, one of two thousand soldiers managing the day-to-day needs of the army and the rebirth of a "democratic" Japan. There wasn't much left of Tokyo and there won't be much left of Gaza when the Israelis are done either. As for the hostages, praying for them may make us feel righteous, but it won't save them. Wild guess: they are in the tunnels underneath the hospital that is under siege as I write.

 

Most Americans can only imagine what it must be like to try to survive in a pulverized landscape. Residents of New York during 9/11 may have some idea, but even this tragic event does not compare in most significant respects, including the scale of destruction. When Warrant Officer Mike Ramsey arrived in Tokyo there were  beggars everywhere and very little shelter. The American soldiers and their Japanese employees did not starve, however. Food was flown in and the American PX was well stocked at all times.

 

Mike's official title was Medical Inspector but like other soldiers in MacArthur's army, he had authority when he was out in the field, beyond his specified duties, and beyond his assigned rank. If MacArthur was the American emperor, Mike and his fellow officers were MacArthur's viceroys. Free-floating oversight was encouraged. If Mike didn't like something he saw, he made  a report to his commanding officer. He could even call the MP's to make an arrest. Few complained about this undemocratic arrangement  at the time, least of all Members of Congress, the defeated Japanese people, or the bankrupted Allied Powers who were relieved America was taking on the job of reconstructing Japan. Who will reconstruct Gaza after the war with Hamas is already under discussion, and it's a contentious one, less so the discussions about Ukraine. Wars and post-war reconstruction are economic windfalls.

 

***

 

Mike's assigned task was to make sure the water supply in the city was sanitary and the buildings habitable. Electricity and much else was on strict ration and when Mike went around in a jeep with his Japanese driver/translator he made sure no one was cheating. The translator, Chui, was a former officer in the Imperial Army, wearing a haisen fuku—a "defeat suit," stripped of its insignia.  

 

It was a beautiful late afternoon when the two men set out for a hospital. There had been reports that the building was collapsing, and Mike was instructed to verify and recommend. It was a desolate part of the city where they were headed, far away from General Headquarters which was in the once fashionable part of town. Many of the buildings there had been left standing after the bombings. Elsewhere, some construction was going on, but not much.  The infrastructure of the city had to be stabilized first.

Mike spotted a strange light up ahead. It seemed unnatural, almost surreal, so he detoured towards it. The translator pointed to a partially bombed-out brick structure but did not reply when Mike asked what it was. As they drew closer, the vista beyond the brick looked flat and white. Incredibly, it was a good-sized ice rink and swirling around at the center in a graceful pirouette, there was a lone figure in a dark ice-dancing dress, the bottom flared out in a spin just above her knees.

 

Mike was more than perplexed, he was dumbfounded. It was summer, temperature in the mid-70's and humid, the ice of questionable consistency, and the rink was not an "approved installation." That meant someone was using rationed electricity which gave Mike "probable cause" to ask some questions. Who was this woman for goodness sake? Even from a distance she didn't look Japanese. She was short, true, but her hair was blond. More importantly, she looked robust. Clearly, despite the famine, she was eating well. How else would she have had the energy to skate?

 

Mike and the translator alighted from the jeep, stood at the barrier looking into the oasis of ice and beckoned, then shouted, to the woman. Slowly, she drifted over.

Mike's first impression was not complimentary. With her blond hair, blue eyes, and European features, this woman could only be a "Fraulein," the wife or girlfriend of a soldier or engineer sent to Japan to share technology and weapons. Surely the soldier or engineer was already in custody, perhaps returned to Germany for war crimes interrogation. Or—hypothesis  again—he might have been hiding out and only recently arrested, his wife or girlfriend left to fare on her own. Recently, Mike and his buddies had liberated a holiday cabin on Mt. Fuji decorated with alpine scenes. A young Fraulein had appeared during their visit and asked to collect her belongings. They allowed her this privilege, but also questioned her before letting her go. There was enough to do without holding someone who would be of no use to them.

 

His mind clicking over with all the possibilities, Mike said, in English: "Fraulein, who the hell are you?"

 

He purposely did not speak in German at first, though this would have been easy for him. He wanted the message to be: I am a representative of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan and you must obey my orders.

 

The woman clearly understood what Mike had said, but remained mute. When he spoke in German, however, she looked alarmed. Then she turned towards the translator and stared knowingly at him, waiting for him to speak. What was going on? Mike had no idea but he asked the translator to tell him. "And that's an order," he said impatiently. Reluctantly, it seemed, the translator said, "Mikimoto," but that was all.

 

          "Mikimoto pearls?"

          "Yes. She's married to Nishikawa and Mikimoto is his grandfather."    

    

 The pearls were valuable commodities, easily transportable, and there was concern in the early days of the occupation that they would find their way onto the black market. Memorandums went out to all occupation personnel alerting then to this possibility. New regulations had made it clear that all pearls could only be bought and sold through the newly-established Army Exchange Service.  Proceeds of all sales were used as reparations.

 

"She's an Olympic ice skating champion," the translator continued and then, in Japanese, he asked the little Fraulein to identify herself to the American officer. Finally, she did so—in  fluent, impeccable Japanese.

 

Back at General Headquarters, Mike reported the incident to Lt. Colonel Schellenberger, his commanding officer, and was told to leave the matter alone, he knew who the woman was, and would take care of it. Mike was a bit annoyed. Why was this Fraulein on the loose ? He felt like a fool when he recalled what he had said to her: "You'll be hearing from us."  Obviously, this wasn't going to happen.

 

Fritzi Burger survived. She eventually divorced Nishikawa and married an American who worked for Citibank in Tokyo. They probably met at her tennis club. I found Fritzi living in Gorham, Me. with her new husband  as I was researching my book. When I asked her about the fire-bombing of Tokyo she was insouciant and said it hadn't changed her life at all.  

 

Dedicated to all veterans including my husband, Jim, who served in the 7th Fleet out of Treasure Island, SF.