Sunday Afternoon with Kate
Kate Millett, pioneering voice about the interplay of sexism and women’s sexuality, died this week from cardiac arrest. Her landmark book, Sexual Politics, was published in 1969 to some rave reviews, some loud denunciations, and much thanks from women trying to figure out about our lives. Millett grew up in St. Paul, just across the Mississippi River from where I live, and attended and got her B.A. from the University of Minnesota, where I worked for 37 years. Of course I bought and devoured and taught her book and waited eagerly for the next one. She decided to write a memoir that must have upset her mother who read a draft of the manuscript. That’s where I come in.
In the middle of a week in the early 1970’s I received a telephone call from Ken Tilsen, well-known civil rights lawyer in St. Paul. Somehow my name had been given to him. He said he had taken Kate Millett’s case which involved trying to get her released from the psychiatric ward of the University of Minnesota hospital system where her mother had had her involuntarily committed. Mr. Tilsen told me she had done that in an attempt to keep Kate from publishing the memoir that said things about her that she didn’t want read by the general public. The reason Mr. Tilsen called me was the fact that he’d persuaded the hospital to release Kate for the weekend under his guardianship. He wanted to take her down the beautiful St. Croix River that Sunday afternoon and wondered if I’d agree to spend the afternoon with them. Admitting to his not really feeling comfortable about talking all that time with such an ardent feminist, Mr. Tilsen hoped I’d “rescue” him. Needless to say, I answered in the strongly affirmative.
At the appointed time, I drove to where the pontoon was docked, parked my car, found Ken and Kate, and we all boarded for our outing. The next three hours flew by for me. Millett and I talked about all sorts of things having to do with the current state of feminism inside and outside of academe. We also spoke about authors we both loved to read, never mind about their own sexual politics–Milton and Whitman and Wharton and Camus, among others. She seemed to relax and, though I would never have asked anything about her present situation, she ended up talking about how important it was for her to rescue the manuscript from her mother’s house before she destroyed it.
When we landed, Kate hurriedly spoke to Ken Tilsen who hurriedly spoke to me, asking if I felt able to drive Kate to her mother’s house off Cretin Avenue in St. Paul. He said he dare not do it because Mrs. Millett knew his car. It all seemed very cloak-and-dagger to me. I also know how complex it can be to have a mother with a short leash and definite views about what a daughter ought to do and say and be. So, without much thought about repercussions, I agreed. Kate and I got into my car and drove rather fast to her childhood home. I sat in my car while she went in. She thought there would be no one at home at that time on a Sunday afternoon, but there was always the possibility that her mother would materialize, be angry, and call the police who might not look kindly on my role in all this. But Kate hurried out undeterred and we drove even faster to where Ken Tilsen was waiting in his car. As Kate got out clutching her precious words, I wished her all good luck and made my way home.
Reliving that afternoon after reading the excellent obituary in The New York Times, I felt really glad I’d not hesitated or worried or felt “unworthy” to be the temporary companion to such an important feminist writer and person. And when the manuscript that had sat in my back seat appeared as Flying (1974), I of course snapped up a copy and read it in one sitting. And when I think of this pace-setter, I let myself see her smiling in the late afternoon sun while we glided down a quiet and beautiful river with no need to be changing the world just then.
Poetry
For many years, I’ve said, half in jest and entirely in earnest, “When I grow up, I want to write poetry.” And I’ve made attempts down through the years. There’s even a fairly good-sized blue file labeled “My Poems” that I look through periodically. I’ve managed to send off a few and two have even been published in women’s journals that no longer exist. Lately I’ve asked a friend who is a poet to help me think through one in particular that I wish could become a whole unit. But I’m 80 years old, so I need to stop fantasizing some future adult poetic self. So I thought a few days ago that I might try posting some lines here and see if that might help me be more serious about this wish. People who study our dream life insist that writing down dreams helps us have more of them because they feel taken seriously. So maybe I can help my incipient poems feel appreciated and taken more seriously by sending them out over this present-day medium. So here goes:
“Wettest June on record”
rain fell often, soaking rain for hours
days of thunder, nights of lightning, sheets of water–
all welcome in this summer of broken drought
one day it fell so long and hard I heard
my mother’s voice at home
“cats and dogs–it’s raining cats and dogs!”
what could that adage signify?
did Zeus indulge a fit of pique, fling down small furries
to amuse himself and vex his people?
A Glacier and Me
In 2004, I went with my then-partner on an Alaskan adventure. Our group numbered only about fourteen and the crew came to five, so we were in a boat, not a ship. Because of the small size of our vessel, we could go into secluded and special areas to watch black bears catch some of the hoards of salmon swimming upstream. One of the most memorable moments of this trip came the day we motored quite close to Dawes Glacier and dropped anchor. We’d been traveling in the huge glacier’s moraine for a day or so because 10,000 years ago it extended almost into the sound we left to go find it. The water in the moraine was that unique aqua blue green that is unmatched either in nature or art. We got closer, we began to see small land then larger icebergs floating by the boat, going in the opposite direction from us. When the entire glacier came into view, it reminded me of those wonderful dioramas of my childhood that had wrapped around corners and stretched as far as my eye could see. Because our boat was so small, we could go within half a mile of the actual glacier, so winds coming off it brought the temperatures down from the 60s into the 30s within seconds. Our naturalist proposed that anyone who wanted to could go in the skiff over to the shore and then hike closer to the “toe” of the glacier. The terrain was sheer rock and the path was indiscernible even with binoculars, and because the water was well below freezing and I do not know how to swim, and because I was sixty-seven at the time albeit it in fine physical shape, I decided not to go.
As it turned out, that was the right decision because when the glacier finally began to calve (break off huge chunks of itself into the water), I was hunkered down on deck dressed in every piece of outer clothing I’d brought, whereas those adventuresome hikers were situated laterally and so were waiting for the skiff to rescue them. They missed the drama. I sat in my little deck chair a long time, patiently waiting for a calving to begin. At one point I needed to go to the bathroom, so I said to Gary, the engineer who was the glacier’s surface with me “What it if calves whilst I’m below deck? Dear man that he was, he replied, “I won’t tell you.” When I returned in about two minutes, he assured me nothing had happened, so I took up my lookout at the very front of the boat. After two hours and fifteen bone-chilling minutes, the major event began. Huge slices of ice began cascading from the glacier’s face into the sea, producing tremendous thundering sounds followed by tall sprays of water displaced by the falling bergs. Then a wave began forming, visibly, and making its way towards us. When it reached the boat’s side, we rocked like a baby’s cradle for about three minutes. The calving had two phases, the longer initial one lasting about eight seconds followed by a brief second one of three seconds. I was told that is a very long display of reshaping–usually such cascadings last a split second only.
The newly exposed glacial face was a more intense version of the unique slightly ghostly blue associated with glaciers. The added intensity caused by our seeing the face not exposed to any air. The older color is a faded hue because of long and gradual exposure. The naturalist explained, when I asked her what caused the unique shade of blue, that the overpowering weight of the glacier presses on all new and old moisture, forcing every single oxygen molecule out of it. So it is no longer H2O but rather only H2 and H2 is that color.
Today, if I close my eyes and enter memories of my time at Dawes Glacier, I am overcome with sadness and fear. What I saw there literally took my breath away and seemed ultimately spiritual to me, especially as I was by myself on deck for most of the time of my vigil. I have never forgotten that color, that letting go of tons of old material, or that sound. There is an old hymn in the Episcopal church that declares that the voice of God is heard “through earthquake, wind and fire.” Well, I think “glacial calving” could be added, even if it lacks a certain poetic flare. The fact that Dawes and other glaciers are vanishing at a staggering rapid rate because of our failure to take global warming seriously enough is a powerful indictment of us humans as failed stewards of our precious earth. If we do not reverse course soon, there will be fewer and fewer calving moments and the old maxim about something’s moving at a “glacial pace” will no longer apply.
Uriah Heeps Everywhere
Anyone who’s read Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield remembers the oleaginous character Uriah Heep. Described by Dickens as unusually tall and wraithlike, Heep ingratiates himself into David’s world, wringing his hands in false supplication. His motives are transparent–a word much bandied about these days in political circles. He wants to feather his own nest, keep his job, and control through manipulation rather than direct action. Dickens has great contempt for individuals who survive through insincerity and Uriah personifies this noxious behavior for him–and for many of us who sometimes call a contemporary sycophant Uriah Heep.
As I struggle with the latest travesty and/or destructive action taken by the orange man in the White House, I keep seeing Uriahs. Let me just refresh your memory with a few choice examples: When the tape surfaced during the presidential campaign in which he spoke so degradingly about how he approached women, many Republicans spoke to national television cameras and social media outlets decrying such language. We heard from politicians who said they would be ashamed to face their own daughters if they supported such a candidate, yet in due time, they did support him. Ever since the election of someone who relished playing the television persona who got to say with satanic pleasure “You’re FIRED!” we have seen and heard a parade of Uriah Heeps fawning before the president in order to keep their heads above water or to get a position in his sphere or–most centrally–to keep their job and not get a presidential pink slip. One of my favorite examples of the latter was the televised cabinet meeting in which each cabinet member was given a few minutes to speak before their leader/boss. Rather than doing what I assumed they would, i.e., speak about what was happening under their leadership, each one metaphorically wrung their not overwhelmingly white male hands while praising the president in vaguely messianic terms. It was as I watched this degrading moment that I began to think about writing a blog with Uriah’s name in the title.
What makes Dickens’ character so disgusting is his utter insincerity and willingness to perpetuate the system that has treated him so badly when he was a child. He becomes the abuser, like so many after him, thereby perpetuating the noxious system that grinds people down rather than lifting them up. Sad to say, the present political climate in North America is fostering and promoting just such kinds of politicians–people willing to be appropriately outraged by the latest foul words or deeds tweeted by the orange man in the wee hours of the night or early morning. But this outrage is generally short lived because increasingly such people understand that if they stay morally outraged, they may find themselves out of work. This conundrum means we all might send active support to the few who maintain their sense of moral wrong-doing past the next news cycle, who resemble Dickens’ quietly heroic Mr. Micawber, who works and works until he finally defeats Uriah’s oily manipulations and uncovers Heep’s amoral shenanigans.