Russian Grandmothers Within

 

                When I was still in college, my garden was in my mother’s backyard. I would go home for Easter weekend to turn over the soil, arrived in the later afternoon on Friday. First, I tied a large handkerchief over my head to keep away the young and hungry mosquitoes, then I grabbed the pitchfork and headed out, digging far into the twilight. When it was too dark to see, I would come in for dinner. “You look,” my mother would say, “like an old Russian grandmother out there.” This was not a compliment. Years later, I lived next door to a real Russian grandmother who gardened extensively and we exchanged pantomimes of the wonders of cattle manure over the fence. My mother was right….

                And she may be even more right today… Last spring, during the lockdowns, I dug into the cozy room closet for last skeins of Christopher Sheep yarn, a dark grey untreated sheepy wool with lanolin and a bit of hay still in the weave. I found the pattern I had purchased the yarn for in my files: The Coup d’état Cardigan by Peace Fleece, designed to be knit from yarn from Moscow and Maine.  It is a complex pattern of seed stitch and cables, as well a v-shaped ….shield across the back.  This will occupy and calm my mind, I thought. And it did. When I finished, it was late spring, too late to wear wool sweaters. I tried it on. It was…big. Mark looked at it, head to one side, desperately trying to find the words to describe it. “It’s…a little big on you….” He hesitated. “”You did a nice job with the pattern, though.” I nodded. We agreed that thinking of it as a jacket helped.  A few days later, he commented that the back looked a little like a bug.

                I’ve been wearing the sweater a great deal this winter; the house is chilly and my classroom is cold (I sit in front of an open window, wrapped in a blanket). It is quite toasty, like being wrapped in a rug. The nooks and crannies of the stitches hold the heat and provide insulation under my raincoat for winter walks. It’s kind of pandemic perfect. But, this afternoon, I pulled on my old yellow garden boots and headed out to the parsnip bed with an ancient bent pitchfork. Under the leaves, I found the roots, white and muddy in the dark winter earth. I slogged back into the house, looking just like a Russian grandmother, once again.

Day of Service to the Garden

 

               On Martin Luther King Day, I often spend the day in service to my garden; if it is bright and sunny, especially, it is time to set myself up for the coming year.  Today was no exception. My day went something like this:

1.        Ordered seeds for the year and had a rather large worry about potatoes.

2.       Investigated the potatoes in the basement and pulled five pounds from the Kennebec bag that we were going to eat to save for seed.

3.       Spent some time cleaning off sprouting from the other bag of potatoes and wondered about planting a few now—would they grow?

4.       Thought—I really need a bed for experiments. No plans, just experiments. Like potatoes in January.

5.    

   Looked at the cold clouds coming in and the laurel hedge, which my new neighbor did a huge prune on yesterday.

6.       Found the ladder and tools and finished the job, whacking down all of the sprouts from my side, cleaning up as I went.

7.       Went to the other side of the hedge and cleared up the rest of the branches that he did not reach yesterday, climbing on the dead fridge and walking along the edge of his trailer to do so. (It was ok with him!)  Remembered how much I love a good whack at a laurel hedge. Although it looks hacked at now, it will fill out by spring, provide a good privacy screen, and still let the neighbor get into his garage. It may also reduce the rodent highway through the yard….

8.       Cleared up all of the brush.

9.       Put away all of the tools.

10.

   Checked on the hazelnuts to see if they are blooming yet—yes, they are!

11.   Came in for lunch. Made tea. Read in the sun for an hour, looking out the south windows.

12.   Considered planting the potatoes in the barrels on the south side of the house and then reminded myself that that space was for early spring greens, so NO potato experiments.

13.   Returned to the yard.

14.   Patted Mr Beezhold on the nose.

15.   Cleaned up the greenhouse—trimmed some house plants, moved some planters outside, swept the floor, put up a bunch of pots on the high shelves.

16.   Examined the greenhouse bed and spread the two buckets of compost that had been sitting in there for months on the bed. Could I plant those potatoes here?

17.  

Why not? Tucked ten potatoes into half of the bed and watered them in.

18.   Tossed over two garden beds that have been chicken tractored to break up the mat of straw,  poop, and leaves that forms on the surface and expose everything to soil so that it will break down by spring.

19.   Dumped a garbage barrel of street leaves onto the Winter bed, as I have harvested enough from it to create room for leaves. Put the barrel back in the compost area upside down for once so that it will not collect rainwater and breed mosquitoes this spring.

20.   Moved the rabbit in for the evening and gave him a carrot and some mustard leaves. Checked on the chickens food and water—they were fine.

21.   Considered tucking a few potatoes in with the parsnips, under the new leaves. Tomorrow, perhaps.

 

Let America Be America Again

 

            My ninth graders read “Let America Be America Again” by Langton Hughes today. We are working our way through the Autobiography of Malcolm X and there are common themes—but that’s not why I have them read it.  We read it for the dueling voices, for the underlying themes, and to learn that “make America great again” was a true populist cry 80 years ago, during the Great Depression.  Hughes wrote the poem as a young man struggling through a difficult time, but it speaks to all of us today, as well. We are also in a difficult time.

            The poem begins with a voice proclaiming the beauty of America, where all are free and equal. Then, a voice “mumbling in the dark” questions that proclamation. “It never was that way for me…” Who are you?! I am… and the author begins a catalog of the poor and oppressed throughout America in 1935—poor white farmers (think The Grapes of Wrath),  the Negro bearing slavery’s scars, the recent immigrants, the urban factory workers—ranging across the continent-- city and country. Everyone is struggling. It is a dark, hard time, fighting against graft and greed, poverty and discrimination. America is not the dream that we dreamed.  And Hughes could have stopped there, left us in the pit of despair, the death of the American Dream, which so many were feeling then—and now -- the failures of our country, but he does not. The voices rise again, remembering the dream, the dream so strong, the reason why they left their homelands and risked everything for the future. We must take back the dream, they say, and expand it so that we are all free. We must take our land back from the leeches upon or souls, upon our ideals, upon our freedoms.  This will not be easy work, but it is essential. If the people, the poor people, the ones struggling alone, come together, the dream will return and bloom, as will the country.

            So, read the poem aloud, let it build in intensity  and roll off of your tongue. This is a great poem.

Let America Be America Again

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

 

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

 

(America never was America to me.)

 

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

 

(It never was America to me.)

 

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

 

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

 

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

 

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

 

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!

 

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

 

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."

 

The free?

 

Who said the free?  Not me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that's almost dead today.

 

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

 

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

 

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

 

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!