Walking

Today, the April breezes and skies and trees were so stirring that I took no fewer than TWO long walks, though the first one was better than the second for reasons (among others) of increased wind velocity and decreased interest in the enterprise the second time around. But I did want to note that walking in Madison, especially during three out of the four seasons, is just about the best thing you can do here. I mean, people love the lakes and I admit that if your life is all about sailing and ice-fishing, you’re going to be magnetically drawn to these great bodies of water.

If, on the other hand, your only lake associations are either with 1. the Union Terrace on a late summer afternoon, 2. the view from your office, if you’re lucky, 3. the unfortunate death of Otis Redding, or 4. the very real possibility of increased mosquito activity, then you have to look elsewhere for outdoor diversion. Forgetting about State Street (which has greater commercial and people-watching value than outdoor-amusement ), there are still any number of non-mosquitoed walking places, including bike paths, interesting neighborhoods, and, of course, places like conservation parks, or the Arboretum.

When I am reminded that this month marks the beginning of all these trekking possibilities, I positively soar with energy and joy.

[photo: Owen Woods]

A Blockbuster in hell

I hate being wasteful –spending money on things that prove to be completely worthless, too horribly bad for even the garbage can.

Last month I bought a DVD, thinking it would rest easily on the shelf of “DVDs that are fun to watch when you want to do the ironing or pay the bills and don’t want to exert yourself much but wouldn’t mind a sweet moment with the silver screen or at least a good laugh.” That shelf has a number of movies on it that I consider completely entertaining – Possesion, Chariots of Fire, Tortilla Soup, Moonstruck – all fun stuff, nothing too taxing, a pick-me-up-when-I-am not-too-chipper-kind of shelf. To this I thought I’d add “Intolerable Cruelty.” Why? Because anything with Catherine Zeta-Jones was bound to be easily digestible and not terribly challenging in the cerebral way, and although it only had a “US Weekly” recommendation on the back (“Huge Laughs!” it reads, which I now think has hidden subversive meanings, sort of an inside joke among reviewers: “what a HUGE LAUGH it is that some people will actually spend more than a quarter to see this!”), I though it would be okay.

It was not okay. In fact, I have played it several times just to demonstrate to various people passing through this house how BAD a movie can be, because no one quite believes my blasphemous comments uttered in a not altogether sane manner about it.

So what do I do now that I wasted what suddenly seems like huge sums of money on this worthless piece of trash? I can’t toss it, but I also can’t possibly display it – I can’t stand to even look at it, let alone be reminded that I actually brought it into the house. What now?

There ought to be a special delivery service collecting movies of this nature for rental in hell. This particular film could make life miserable for any number of people who need to be tortured in a systematic and continuous way. Consider it a charitable contribution, just from me.

But does he care about you and me?

A Washington Post poll shows a decline in people’s perceptions about how compassionate GWB really is. Here’s one set of responses:

Bush has frequently described himself as a 'compassionate conservative.' Do you think Bush has -- or has not -- governed in a way that is compassionate?

Has 49% (now) 64% (2/2/2003)
Has not 45% (now) 34% (2/2/2003)
No opinion 5% (now) 2% (2/2/2003)

I’ve never fully understood what the term “compassionate conservative” really means, and what its opposite may be (“spitefully conservative?” “indifferent-to-the-lot-of-others conservative?”) and who would subscribe to that opposite given that it’s bound to then have pejorative meanings or associations.

But it’s interesting to wonder what exactly happened in the last year that would cause the change in public opinion. People sometimes ascribe great meaning to smaller things and not enough meaning to big ticket items, so it remains a mystery why numbers on compassion where as high as they were a year ago (and, conversely, why they dropped).

The most touching story…

…appears in the NYT today (here). It is about an old (perhaps 84 yrs?) Kenyan man who took advantage of the government’s decision to make elementary education free and enrolled in first grade (he had never before gone to school and could not read, write, or count). If you passed over the article, do at least read these snippets for a real feel-good start to the day:

On the first day of school, he put on some gray knee socks and blue trousers that he had cut off above the knee to resemble the short pants worn by schoolchildren all over the country. With his school uniform in place, he limped his way from his mud hut to the office of the headmistress, Jane Obinchu.

She thought Mr. Maruge was joking when he said he was there to enroll in the first grade. But Mr. Maruge was insistent, and Mrs. Obinchu decided to give him a chance - a spot right up front where he could hear her.

The other students, most of them 78 years younger than Mr. Maruge, were amused at first by the old man's presence. But over time they grew used to having a "Mzee," the Swahili honorific given to elders, as a classmate.

After all, Mr. Maruge practiced writing the A B C's just as they did. He worked on basic math problems right alongside them. Slowly, the entire class, Mr. Maruge included, began to learn to read.

Kenyan officials were stunned that Mr. Maruge and others well beyond school age had sought to take advantage of free primary education. "We never knew that such people would come," said S. K. Karaba, senior deputy director in the Department of Education. "They still want to be taught. There is an urge."….

At Kapkenduiywa Primary, Mr. Maruge is now a fixture. He is frequently the first student to arrive in the morning, sometimes an hour early. During the school day, he plays the role of both student and teacher. He feels free to give advice to his classmates, reminding them frequently to study hard and listen to their parents.

When the school day is over, Mr. Maruge walks back to the home he shares with his sister. He tends his small herd of sheep and his goats and chickens. Later, he pulls out his books to study a bit before dinner. He is the only student at the school who asks his teacher for homework.

The story does remind me of my grandmother who, though basically literate (in the way that you would be if you completed only three years of schooling), had never read a book in her life until she was about 70. From then on, she read with a vengeance, going straight to the Polish classics that we’d bring to the village from the Warsaw library. She worked her way slowly, very slowly through the great epics and tragedies belonging to the past. She never talked about what she read, but I used to like to watch her, sitting at the kitchen table, turning the pages slowly, following each line, sometimes mouthing the words. It was so quiet in the village (no paved roads, no traffic, just one store a mile away). During the years that she lived there alone, books must have literally kept her sane against all that quiet.
[photo credits: "Kenyan first grader" is from the NYT, countryside around my grandmother's village is from Ekoland.pl]