Smeared Type

Image by jeremy.wilburn via Flickr

by Nancy Werking Poling

author of  Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman

and Out of the Pumpkin Shell

So why am I not surprised when I read of legislators cutting funds to education?

It used to be that a well educated person was held in esteem. We believed the findings of science; we valued the informed opinions of –ologists. We wanted a populace capable of making informed decisions, leaders who were intelligent. Nowadays we hear, “Yeah, they say eating a lot of red meat is unhealthy, but my granddaddy ate beef his whole life, and he lived to be a hundred.” “Those scientists who warn about global warming—there are just as many saying there’s no crisis.” “Nobody will ever convince me that God didn’t create the earth and everything on it in seven days.” In the last presidential election I heard voters say they liked Sarah Palin because she was “just like you and me,” that is not smarter than most of us.

In the current cultural climate we see the extreme to which the power of the individual has been taken. It doesn’t matter what years of research have shown; if I don’t want to believe the theory of evolution, all I have to do is say it’s not true. If the coal industry, which contributed to my senator’s reelection campaign, says global warming is a myth, and I want to drive a Hummer and run my air conditioning, I maintain global warming hasn’t been proved. I want to believe that cutting federal spending will stimulate the economy, so don’t confuse me with facts that show otherwise. If a T.V. channel tells me what I want to hear, I repeat what I heard there and swear it to be the truth.

No wonder American children don’t do well in science: their parents don’t believe the scientific facts that are out there. Back in the early eighties, when I worked as an editor at a textbook company, Melvin and Norma Gabler, religious conservatives in Texas, held an inordinate influence over textbook publications. Our company’s biology books didn’t mention evolution; our junior high health books didn’t mention puberty. For decades many students have been inadvertently taught not to think scientifically and not to accept scientific evidence.

Yet, even for those of us who don’t intend to adopt science as a vocation, a sound scientific background is important. It informs our gathering of new knowledge. We try to approach a subject/problem—even if it’s related to economics, the environment, or forging strong communities—in an unbiased manner, gather evidence that can be measured and replicated by someone else, develop hypotheses, test them.

And now conservative legislators are cutting education. Who cares what educational research says about class size? What does it matter if “American students rank 21^st in science compared to students in 30 industrialized countries”? What does it matter if “more than 1.2 million students drop out of school every year”? What does it matter if “44 percent of dropouts under the age of 24 are jobless” (broadeducation.org/about/crisis_stats.html)?

Money is also being pulled from our public universities. That’s not surprising either, given a widely held opinion that colleges and universities harbor left-leaning, socialist faculties. My personal interpretation is that universities foster critical thinking. The more a person studies a problem, and thinks critically, the more complexity the learner sees. Issues are no longer clear-cut, no longer answered with simple solutions and platitudes. If one exiting the university questions commonly accepted practices, is that leftist thinking?

We used to say we wanted an informed citizenry. I’m convinced conservatives in our country, fueled by money from corporations, want individuals to believe that their own opinion, which has been manipulated, is more sound than science.

Withholding money from education is sure to result in a citizenry no longer influenced by careful, unbiased research. “Don’t confuse us with the facts,” might well become our national mantra.

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by Nancy Werking    Poling,

author of Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman

and Out of the Pumpkin Shell

I daresay that politicians making decisions about Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security are unfamiliar with the lives of those who daily provide them with services necessary for their comfortable life: the stock man at the grocery story, the woman who cleans their home, the Mexican dishwasher at their favorite restaurant, the Korean couple who washes and irons their shirts, the single mother who delivers The Washington Post to their door before she gets the children off to school and goes to a second job.

Maybe it’s living in the South where folks seem freer to tell you their story. Maybe in retirement I take more time to notice those whose work makes my life easier. It could be I’m more aware because small-town living doesn’t separate the classes the way urban living does.

Last winter a neighbor borrowed our snow shovel. She planned to buy one the next time she got paid. Tears welled in the eyes of the young man installing our kitchen cabinets, as he told me he had thirty-five dollars to his name when he got a refund on the double-wide trailer home that made his son sick. With the help of a neighbor out of work and the generosity of others, who gave him plumbing fixtures and kitchen cabinets, he was able to build a three-bedroom house for $25,000.

A few weeks ago two veterans in their late fifties, who have temporary housing at the nearby Veterans facility, were grateful for the work when we hired them to build a stairway up the steep bank behind our house. Our neighbor’s decision to build a wooden fence employed two men whose construction business had gone bust. All around our community men and women will perform any odd job for meager pay.

And there are the immigrants. The young Vietnamese couple who run the local nail spa work six and a half days a week. The young Mexican man who keeps his tiny store open every day gets up at 3:00 a.m. three mornings a week to drive to Atlanta for fresh fruits and vegetables.

My financial future, as a retiree, feels uncertain right now, yet I can’t help but worry about these people who have not had extra money to put into a retirement plan, whose employers provide no benefits, who cannot afford health insurance. (Imagine the people I’ve described paying $680 a month for Medicare and supplemental health insurance, as my husband and I do.) I see sixty-year-old waitresses, sixty-year-old men doing strenuous manual labor. How will they survive when their bodies can no longer maintain this effort?

Entitlement programs, we call Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, often inferring that people who have worked hard feel unduly entitled to money they have not earned. Those who stand all day, carry heavy loads, and in other ways physically tax their bodies deserve no less than I the right to adequate housing, food, and medical care in their later years.

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by Nancy Werking Poling

author of OUT OF THE PUMPKIN SHELL

and HAD EVE COME FIRST AND JONAH BEEN A WOMAN

Writing the book was the easy part. Sure, there were those afternoons of staring at one paragraph, recognizing its lack of pizzazz but unable to get my fuzzy brain out of neutral, mornings when my characters seemed as flat as paper dolls. Yet what a difference the internet has made since I first worked on this project twenty years ago. In six months I was able to make revisions that otherwise would have taken me well over a year to research.

Thanks to the internet, Before it was Legal: a black-white marriage (1945-1987) is now richer in detail. What might Robert, a young black man, have worn on his first day at Earlham College in 1927? Perhaps a straw boater, tan and white spectator shoes, a waistcoat from the Sears Roebuck catalog. And Lois, a white woman—what would have been her attire on a train from Indiana to New York in 1938? I settled on a pale blue suit, the skirt straight, mid-calf in length, with a slit in the back; a jacket, broad shouldered, pulled in at the waist by a narrow belt. White gloves, a perky blue beret with a bow on the side, and open-toed white shoes would have completed her outfit.

A year later she drove her newly purchased (but used) car into a ditch on the way to her first job. Sure enough, Google located a picture of a ’36 Chevy coup. I mentioned the running board in telling how the farmer got her car back on the road. I thought the reader might appreciate a physical description of Dr. Dennis, the president of Earlham College who reprimanded Robert for walking alongside groups of white girls as he headed home. Based on an Earlham website showing pictures of past presidents, I described the intimidating man behind the giant oak desk as “in his early fifties, with a wide forehead and graying hair at the temples.” In the 1950s Robert was accused of being a communist after hearing Paul Robeson sing at a union convention in Chicago. Locating addition information about Paul Robeson was simple, even for this technophobe.

Several websites dealt with rationing during the war. Even though three women shared a house and combined their rations of sugar, coffee, etc., I’m guessing they still learned to drink their coffee black. But with gas rationed, how did Robert and Lois manage to drive a car from Richmond, Indiana, to Minneapolis in 1945? Websites led me to think that his employment in the defense industry might have qualified him for a green B sticker, which permitted the car owner to purchase eight gallons a week. And maybe he received a dispensation when transferring from one plant to another.

Convinced African Americans were intellectually incapable of operating machinery, International Harvester would only hire them as janitors. After Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, the company was forced to allow Robert, a college graduate, to work the machines. I found the executive order on the internet: “There shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin.”

Yes, the internet made revising Before it was Legal: a black-white marriage (1945-1987) much easier. Finding a publisher—now that’s the real challenge.

Note: While working on this book I’ve put blogging aside but hope to get back on board now. But don’t anyone hold me to this.

By Nancy Werking Poling,

Author of Out of the Pumpkin Shell and

Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman

Artists abound in Black Mountain, the lovely western North Carolina town where I live. Now published authors have  joined potters, painters, photographers, woodworkers, and jewelry makers in selling their creative works at the weekly Tailgate Market. Of course the primary attraction is the array of locally grown, mostly organic, vegetables and fruits.

Southerners, I’ve found, are seldom in a hurry, especially on a summer weekend. Locals, most of them known by at least one of our group, stop by to visit the Authors’  Table. Tourists from all over the country, many of them grandparents, are first attracted to the two children’s books for sale (and the wooden dinosaur). They usually look at the rest of the display as well and buy a book from one of us.

So far six writers are part of this endeavor.

Loving Ruby is a true story about a baby female cardinal that author Lois Chazen rescued from the middle of a busy street. The book helps parents and children understand the skills needed to keep a baby bird alive.

Bone Dead, and Rising: Vincent van Gogh and the Self Before God is a recent publication by Charles Davidson. With the aid of van Gogh’s letters to his brother Theo, Davidson offers insight into the artist’s struggle to become his true self.

On the Road Home-an American Story: A Memoir of Triumph and Tragedy on a Forgotten Frontier, by John Russell (Rusty) Frank, follows the history of Frank’s family in the Philippians, beginning with his grandfather’s journey there from the U.S. during the Spanish-American War.

David Madden is author of eleven novels. At the Tailgate Market he’s selling Abducted by Circumstance, which explores the mental unraveling of a middle-aged woman when she learns she is the last person to have seen another woman alive.

In Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman I imagine heroes of Hebrew scripture as women who bring an extra portion of feminine wisdom, suffering, and courage to the biblical narrative. I’m also selling Out of the Pumpkin Shell, a laugh/cry novel about menopause and friendship.

Jerry Pope wears many hats: co-creator of Serpent Child Ensemble, leader and teacher of community-based theater, documentary film producer, illustrator and author. He’s author/illustrator of  Madeleine Claire and the Dinosaur, a children’s book.

I figure that even when I don’t make many sales, I’ve made a host of contacts. Women take information about my books to pass on to church retreat committees and book groups. Sometimes they’re out of cash and return the following week.

What a great way to spend a Saturday morning.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

By Nancy Werking Poling

Author of Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman

And Out of the Pumpkin Shell

I predict the world will NOT end this coming weekend. When it doesn’t, Reader, please remember to praise my prognostication skills.

As I was waiting in the grocery line (where we all get the news that really matters), The Sun reminded me that Harold Camping has figured out when God’s going to end it all: this Saturday. It’s there in the Bible if you do the math. In my mind I mocked the absurdity of it all, until I got in the car, and they were discussing Camping’s prediction on “Talk of the Nation,” on NPR.

While living in northern New York State, in what once was called the “burned over district,” I became familiar with the Millerites, a religious group convinced the world would end—hmm, within twenty-one years of 1822; no, make that between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844 (interestingly Harold Camping’s prediction also falls on a 21st); no, it really was going to happen on October 22, 1844. Now, we’re not talking about a small group of weirdoes. We’re talking about an international movement.

Obviously, October 22, 1844, didn’t mark the end of the world. Reactions varied among the Millerites: confusion, reinterpretation, disillusionment.

What will happen Sunday morning when Camping’s followers wake up to discover the planet Earth is still spinning in its orbit; that sure enough “wars and rumor of wars” continue; that their electric bill still has to be paid; and that their kids are Tweeting about their parents being fools? Some believers will, no doubt, change the date. “No, we meant May 21, 2014.” A few will be disillusioned. My guess is that most will find comfort in holding onto a conviction that the end is still imminent.

Seriously though, for many the world will indeed end on Saturday. Parents will cry because their child has been killed—in war, an accidental shooting, a car accident. A woman will tell a man she doesn’t love him anymore. A child will witness his father shooting his mother. All over the planet women and men, girls and boys, will experience a tragedy that will forever end the world they’ve known.

I cannot believe their trauma is God’s plan.

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By Nancy Werking Poling, author of

Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman; and Out of the Pumpkin Shell

Bones. Dogs gnaw on them. Archeologists study fossilized ones. Fishermen’s knives remove them. I put meat bones in the freezer so bears who roam our mountain town won’t be attracted to our trash can.

Now I’ve been made aware of my bones. “Like Swiss cheese,” is how the rheumatologist describes them after looking at the results of my bone density scan. “Your femoral neck score is   -2.8. Osteoporosis.” I keep telling her of my virtuous lifestyle—as if that might change her diagnosis. I’ve never smoked. I’ve exercised since I was thirty. My diet is a healthy one: whole grain rice, whole wheat bread, plenty of fresh fruits and green vegetables. Calcium supplements, vitamin D, and bisphosphonates have been part of my daily routine for years.

Still, she frowns as she studies the printout. “This also shows you have a fracture in your back,” she says. “Do you experience pain?”

What woman my age doesn’t have occasional back pain? “Not very often.”

“A spine fracture indicates 5X risk for subsequent fractures,” a note at the bottom of the printout states.

Her treatment recommendation is aggressive, a drug I haven’t seen any celebrity endorse: Forteo. I gasp when I learn the specifics. It’s administered through a daily injection. For two years. At a cost to me of $9,000. I lean toward trusting her judgment. She’s petite like me, in her mid-forties, I’m guessing, so she’s probably been thinking about her bones too. A pilot’s certificate and pictures of airplanes hang on the walls, which somehow add to her credibility.

She advises me to think about it, come back and see her in six-weeks. Before I leave, though, she orders an x-ray of my back.

I can’t help but consider what $9,000 will buy. A good amount toward replacing our eleven-year-old car. Two trips to Europe for my husband and me, with money left over. (Yes, we’re thrifty travelers.) New furniture. An art piece to hang over the mantel (not that we’d spend that much, but a lot of people do).

Meanwhile, I begin to notice our town is full of little old ladies. I talk with everyone about the decision I have to make. In the grocery line behind a gray-haired woman, I ask, “What are you doing about your bones?” I ask naked women in the locker room of the gym where I work out, “What are you doing about your bones?” In the church vestibule I collar older women. “What are you doing about your bones?” Some say they take Fosamax. Others Boniva. A few steer away from drugs and rely on special diets or vitamin supplements.

By the time I return to the doctor, I’ve spoken with at least thirty women and lost several nights’ sleep worrying. But the doctor says that because the x-ray shows no fracture, she’s changed her recommendation. She suggests three possibilities: Evista, Prolea, or Reclast (which I’ve taken for two years). Needless to say, I’m relieved. All my angst over a daily shot, spending $9,000, and taking a drug that has been around less than ten years has been wasted.

But maybe not. “What are you doing for your bones?” I’ve discovered, is a great conversation starter.

by Nancy Werking Poling

author of Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman

and Out of the Pumpkin Shell

She’s in tears. She’s just learned that her child has been kidnapped by a psychopath; her parents have been in a serious automobile accident and are in an intensive care unit in Ethiopia; her best friend has died in an avalanche while skiing. In sympathy he pulls her close. The next scene shows them in bed, the sheet pulled up to hide all but their bare shoulders.

I’ve long suspected such scenes in movies and on TV are men’s fantasies. Do they really think that sex helps a woman deal with her grief? Why haven’t actresses, tears running down their cheeks as they played these roles, not put their hand in front of the camera lens and advised the director, “Sex is not what a woman needs in this situation.” But then, their economic survival depends on compliance.

Reading yesterday’s New York Times (“In Women’s Tears, a Chemical That Says, ‘Not Tonight, Dear,’” Jan. 7, 2011) I discovered I may be on to something. “In several experiments, researchers found that men who sniffed drops of women’s emotional tears became less sexually aroused than when they sniffed a neutral saline solution that had been dribbled down women’s cheeks.” In the experiments male subjects didn’t know the women whose tears they were sniffing, so it wasn’t empathy that caused their testosterone to drop.

Leaving me to wonder why script writers, presumably men, would prescribe sex as a salve for a woman’s grief. (I want to believe, perhaps mistakenly, that women writers wouldn’t do this.) There are, of course, many explanations, sociological and psychological in nature, which I’m not qualified to expound on, but I’m pretty sure of this: men who truly care do not take advantage of a woman dealing with tragedy. Neither do I believe that a woman who’s just learned that her son committed suicide would at that moment crave sex.

But, hey, writing a movie/TV script is entertaining a fantasy. A male fantasy, obviously, in which a vulnerable woman needs a man’s body more than anything.

by Nancy Werking Poling

author of Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman and Out of the Pumpkin Shell

I’m not an expert on beauty. When it comes to aesthetics, I have no definitions to contribute, no profound knowledge of the arts. But I recognize beauty when I see it. Right now I see it out my study window: leafless trees against a brilliant blue sky; snow clinging to the drooping leaves of rhododendron; tall pine trees across the street swaying in the wind.

Perhaps because I’m old, out of sync with contemporary practices, I find Christmastime depressing. Toy stores are full of cheap plastic things intended for racing or building or pretending, none of them beautiful. It has become a season of artificiality, from trees to clichéd carols in the malls to commercially baked cookies and candies.

Few manufactured items can compare with what nature offers. The view of a lake from the top of a mountain trail, flowering bulbs in early spring. The silence of snow falling, the song of a bird, the gurgle of a stream, the roar of a waterfall. The taste of fresh strawberries or corn on the cob that’s just been picked.

There’s beauty too in the ornament a child made for the tree, a musical composition, a poem, a coffee table created by a craftsman, a hand-made quilt, cookies fresh from the oven.

A new generation with its Toys-R-Us wish lists, its i-pads and game apps, who spends time looking at screens (even when travelling scenic routes)—what will their idea of beauty be? If they are not exposed to it, if they are programmed to prefer the artificial over the genuine, what is to become of beauty? Who will make sure the forests are preserved, waters kept clean, mountain tops kept intact? Who will protect pandas and tigers and other species?

Beauty is in danger. If our children grow up in a mall world, isolated from the natural beauty beyond the acres-wide parking lot, who will love the planet enough to protect it?

by Nancy Werking Poling

author of  HAD EVE COME FIRST AND JONAH BEEN A WOMAN and OUT OF THE PUMPKIN SHELL

Ah, now I remember why I don’t cook. Or bake. The cold, snowy conditions yesterday inspired me, for the first time in years, to bake holiday cookies. I wasn’t alone. Though few cars were on the road, six of us meandered up and down Bi-Lo’s baking aisle. I left with almonds, almond extract ($5.99!), and coconut.

Seems like every time I cook, I discover I’m missing an ingredient. I either decide to leave it out altogether or find a substitute. A recipe calls for cream; I substitute skim milk. It calls for butter, I use olive oil. (Before you culinary types gag, I’ll admit to a little exaggeration there.) Yesterday I wrongly assumed I had baking soda on hand. Not to be deterred, I took out the box I’d been using as a deodorizer in the refrigerator—probably for six months or so.

I also have a penchant for taking shortcuts. I didn’t do that yesterday; I just plain forgot to review the recipe. Early in the procedure, the baker was to put in a third of the sugar. Which I did. My negligence in later checking again resulted in my forgetting the remaining two-thirds. When I went to clean up, there was all that sugar in the measuring cup. Needless to say, the lemon cookies are on the sour side.

Is there any wonder why fifteen years into our marriage my husband took over the kitchen?

By the way, the coconut macaroons are delicious. A little on the dark side, but delicious.

by Nancy Werking Poling

author of Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman

and Out of the Pumpkin Shell

All around me were bins of fossils—ancient sea creatures, ferns. I was in Dave’s Rock Shop  (Evanston, IL) searching for Christmas gifts for my grandsons.

“We all’d like to go back to a younger age,” the woman beside me said into her cell phone.

I picked up and studied a 350 million-year-old orthoceras from Morocco. Glistening black, smooth to the touch.

“Sure, you’ve made mistakes. We all have,” she said. She too was rummaging through the specimens.

Would this shark’s tooth embedded in rock captivate a grandson’s imagination? I wondered.

“Yes, childhood was an innocent time. I’d like to be ten again too.”

Maybe one of the boys would prefer a 400 million-year-old ammonite. Did this chambered mollusk live at about the time of the dinosaurs?

“Sure, getting older is hard.”

I held a plant fossil from the early Pennsylvanian period. Chalky white fronds on a black background.

“Eric, you’ve got plenty of time to become the man you want to be. For God’s sake, you’re only twenty-five.”

And here I’d been thinking in terms of millions of years.