North of Sixty

Dunkirk, NY – I spent most of today attempting to consolidate my digital presence. It was not as onerous a task as I had expected. I was feeling way too scattered on the internet, and I no longer wanted to have to maintain so many different types and styles of site. As a result, I decided to bring as much as I possibly could into my original personal name domain, and make use of whatever tool I had available here to bring everything together.

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NB – This essay first appeared in the ezine The Rain, Party, and Other Disasters in 2016. It is re-printed here with permission of the editor. -twl

As with any of life’s notable “firsts,” I can remember vividly my very first experience of staged Shakespeare. It was a rollicking, no-holds-barred commedia dell’arte interpretation of The Taming of the Shrew, complete with slapstick comedy, rude sexual innuendo, innumerable physical shtick, and a cast that seemed to have inexhaustible energy. One unintended moment sticks out among them all. At one point during the famous Kate/Petruchio wooing scene, in what would now be called a “wardrobe malfunction,” one of Kate’s breasts came flouncing out of her low-cut Elizabethan dress. Completely undaunted and totally in character, the actress grabbed the exposed mammary and stuffed it defiantly back into its place, daring Petruchio and the audience to give even one scintilla of acknowledgement that they had seen what they had seen. I was hooked.

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Dunkirk NY – The last three weeks have been all about travel. First, a visit to my parents for a few days, and then, a trip through the Outer Banks down to Charleston SC. I was searching for some sunshine and warmer weather, as the weather here in western NY has been quite cold, grey, and depressing. Regrettably, I did not find much of the weather I was seeking, as it appears the whole east coast is experiencing a colder-than-normal spring. Only one day got up into the 70s, and I got to tour Fort Sumter in a driving rainstorm. I have historically had bad weather luck when I travel. Right now the best thing I could do would be to travel to Oklahoma, because if I went there, rain would start to fall, which would ease their current drought and wildfire situation. Four days in Charleston yielded only one rain-free day, on which the temperature reached a high of 52 degrees. Not exactly what I was hoping for.

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Dunkirk NY – The bird feeder in my back yard has seen a lot more action in these past two weeks. I’ve been more consistent in filling it with seed, so the birds are now aware of its presence. I don’t get many songbirds, like finches, at my feeder. Mostly it’s brown birds; sparrows, wrens, and the like. I like to think of them as “working class” birds, sort of in fitting with my neighborhood. Other species include blackbirds and mourning doves. They tend to feed on what falls to the ground, although the blackbirds try to eat directly from the feeder. They have a hard time of it because they can’t crane their necks around if they land on the perch, and their beaks are slightly too big to fit in the feed opening.

My challenge has been keeping the squirrels off the feeder. Squirrels are quite determined creatures. They know the seed is up there, and they will try any number of options to get at the feeder. I have placed the feeder in a location where there are no branches from which they can jump, and there is a domed baffle attached to the pole on which the feeders hang, so they can’t climb up the pole. They have tried leaping up and over the dome, and grabbing onto the pole above the dome, and have been successful at times. So I have had to find the right height to keep the dome higher than they can jump from the ground. I discovered with this last snowfall that they have gained 18″ in height, so another adjustment became necessary. Once they accept that they cannot get over the dome, they nibble away at the seeds that fall from the feeder as the birds above eat.

In recent days, though, I have thought about this intent of mine to keep the squirrels away from the feeder. Squirrels have to eat, just like the rest of us, so why do I find myself feeling resentful when they succeed at getting at the feeder? Why do I take the position that the feeder is only for the birds? Why have I taken deliberate action to keep the squirrels from stealing the seed? Birds and squirrels seem to have the same diet here, so what’s the big deal? And why is there a prejudice towards feeding birds and not squirrels? I don’t dislike squirrels (although my wife does, and wishes them all sorts of harm when they appear in the yard), yet I don’t feed them. They are very smart, persistent and clever, admirable qualities, and yet I take no steps whatsoever to make them feel welcome in my yard.

Exclusivity is a very interesting human trait, the idea that “this is mine and not yours.” In its most concentrated form we call it “discrimination,” when we believe the intent is based in a dislike or even hatred of someone or something else. Feeding birds and not feeding squirrels seems to me to be a form of that human urge to discriminate. I like birds, and I seem to believe they are fragile and helpless, so I feed them. Squirrels, however, seem more capable to fend for themselves, and sometimes can be destructive (squirrels, for example, gnawed away several holes on the plastic top of the gas tank for my lawnmower, making it difficult to operate, as the gas kept sloshing out the holes). So they don’t get fed.

I wonder whether or not I should re-think my position on squirrels. Probably the best solution is to give them a feeder of their own, which would really be no additional trouble, as they eat the same diet. I wouldn’t want too many squirrels to congregate, as they might become more destructive. I wouldn’t want them in my attic, thinking that would be a good place to live as it would be closer to a food source. It’s always a complex question, that balance between protecting what I consider to be mine while not impeding your attempt to get yours. Seems like nature, as it always does, mirrors our own human tendencies, for better or worse. -twl

Amherst NY – My life, it seems, has been one of resistance. From resisting the draft to resisting fried foods, I find I’ve spent a good portion of my life resisting this or that, standing opposed to one thing or another. These days, when I hear the call to “resist” the current president, I cannot help but ask why. What will come of more resistance?

I am sure there are many people out there who would be more than willing to offer me a whole host of reasons as to why. Good reasons, too. I would probably find myself nodding in agreement often as they went through their list. But at a deeper, more fundamental, more existential level, I would probably be thinking about the futility inherent in their positions.

I have been entertaining the notion that the path of resistance inevitably leads one to a gradual withdrawal from society. I have been puzzling over what to do with myself to fill the void left by retiring from my job, and more and more the answer I come up with is – nothing. Nothing at all. I have several options open to me, but none of them are, to me at this moment, very attractive. Part of it has to do with my sense of the futility of action, and part of it has to do with my sense that very little can, or will, change human behavior.

Perhaps it is because I have spent so long saying “no” to so many things that I am now incapable of saying “yes.” Perhaps I have said “yes” to too many things I should have said “no” to. Like a resistor in an electronic circuit, perhaps the very act of resistance can only lead to burnout.

I have been sitting in a grocery store cafe for about an hour now, killing time, having had a small meal in preparation for opening night for a show. For the past 25 minutes, I have been observing an older gentleman, perhaps in his mid-70s. His physicality and movements vaguely remind me of Art Carney. He has been fussing with a handle-less plastic coffee mug he has in his small shopping cart. He spent 15 minutes at a sink obsessively washing the mug. The past ten minutes have been spent meticulously arranging and re-arranging the elements of the mug: the plastic top, the foam pad insulator. He has inspected the mug upside-down and right-side up over three times. He has now filled it with water and is heating it, I suppose for tea. I am imagining that these are the type of moments that fill his life. I think he has nothing he needs to resist. He’s done.

And I envy him. -twl

Dunkirk NY – This blog post has gotten a lot of attention in academia in the past week. Dr. Erin Bartram, an underemployed PhD in history, wrote about her unsuccessful attempt to land a tenure track teaching/research position at a four-year college and her intent to quit looking for one. She received some media attention for it (Inside Higher Education, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Long Reads), got some pushback, and consequently wrote a defense of her piece in a subsequent post. I bought her the requested cup of coffee at the end of her first post; two, in fact. But there is a well-known saying among those who take meals at soup kitchens: if you want to drink the coffee, you have to listen to the sermon.

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