Un-American Activity

Is the silence growing?

Plymouth residents Ted and Grace Curtin have been actively working for Peace for decades. They’ve been through some noisy times, but now they’ve taken a quieter path.
There was a time, not too long ago, when the word ‘peace’ itself was almost always followed by ‘demonstrations’: a time when hundreds of thousands of rowdy youth took over the streets of Washington D.C., blocking traffic, confronting the police.
It was a time of conflict, both between political foes, and philosophical concepts.
Is that changing?
Certainly there are those who still feel that the end to war, any war, will not come without action, without force, without conflict.
But there are also more and more people who believe that Peace can only be accomplished through peaceful means.
It certainly is a difficult, and an almost un-American approach: stay quiet, stand your ground, don’t argue.
The Curtins have helped to organize the local Plymouth Peace Vigil, and that group’s standing orders are to process in silence through downtown Plymouth, every Wednesday night.
Of course sometimes participants in the vigil do speak, spontaneously, forgetting themselves in the excitement of being with others who share the same perspective on the war.
Other times participants simply react to the comments –good and bad, from passerby.
Every week they are confronted by a group supporting the Iraq war, and who want nothing more than to ‘discuss’ the issues: the louder the better.
The local vigil organizers have gone out of their way to stay out of the way of those others.
As more and more people join in their vigil, it will become more and difficult to avoid clashes between those with opposing views; more difficult to hold their tongues, and to refrain from arguments.
And perhaps more and more important, that they do.

I have tried it myself; have participated in these weekly vigils. On those occasions the Curtins have always stressed the need to remain silent, and quietly scolded those who forget.
I have used the time, and the silence, to take a closer look around at my surroundings, at this historic part of town.
Ironically, where the vigil participants gather before processing -a small island between the Church of the Pilgrimage and the Court Museum, there is a stark reminder of our national inclinations: a plaque installed by Native Americans.
The plaque recounts how after an Indian insurrection was put down, its leader Metacomet –a son of Massasoit, was murdered, and his rotting head publicly displayed in Plymouth for over 20 years.
The vigil procession goes from the churches of Leyden Street, to the corner at Court, then slowly down the western side of the road until the intersection with North Street. There, on the eastern side of the street, the group takes up positions along the road.
It’s about 6:40 by then so, at this time of the year, it’s already dark: dark and quiet, save for the sound of street and the occasional heckler.
I find it relaxing: standing there, focusing on one simple if abstract thought.
It’s amazing how powerful the silence feels.
To those who oppose the vigil effort, even the silence is provocative. To those who are unsure where they stand, the silence is thought-provoking.
To those standing there, with their heads up, clutching signs or holding candles, the silence provides a kind of fleeting clarity.
You see the beauty of the area, the cobblestones, and the spreading limbs of the trees overhead. You note that almost every other driver going by has a cell phone stuck to their ear. You smell curry, and hoisin, and peanut oil-fried scrod. You hear the faint music of Ipods, the throbbing subwoofers of expensive car sound systems, the skitter and clack of skateboarders trying out new tricks and then, at 7, clock towers chiming the hour.
Time to move on, up the street.
“Ssssh!”: Grace Curtin reminds you.
By 7:15 back at Leyden again and the vigil is over, the quiet time ends.
Some move indoors for coffee, while others return to their homes and their usual noisy routine.
For those who stay for coffee the talk turns immediately to future actions, the next vigil, or the latest political news.
There is often a discussion of the reception that the vigil received that particular night: vague estimates of smiles, of upturned thumbs, peace signs flashed.
But it is impossible to gauge what effect this vigil, and others like it around the country, are having.
Peace is not something you can predict with a poll. Peace is a goal, an elusive, fluttering thing that seems to always remain just out of reach: something Ted and Grace have been chasing for nearly 40 years.
It’s frustrating for some: it feels, again, almost un-American.
We are a country that demands immediate results. We watch political conflicts like baseball standings: always checking to see who’s in first.
Is the silence growing?

Sweet and Sour

The thing I most worried about when the Red Sox waltzed over the Cardinals in four straight to win the World Series last year, were the grapes.
Not those fancy, imported grapes they use to make the expensive champagne they pour all over each other in the clubhouse on such occasions. No, the cheap, uncultivated, tough-skinned red variety that had been ripening in the basement of our psyches for the past 86 years.
You know, the ‘Sour Grapes’.
Red Sox fans have, over the 86 years we were marooned on Loser Island, developed a remarkably sensitive palate when it comes to the taste of sour grapes: a talent that has allowed us to take a ridiculous amount of satisfaction from the misfortune of our enemies, long after the Sox were ‘out of it’.
That is no mean feat, and it has meant, in practical terms, sold out games, year after year, whatever the last season’s team’s record.
Has there ever been a more successful group of losers than the Boston Red Sox from 1919 to 2003?
Fenway Park too –in the blurred vision of a populace drunk on the wine of failure, has been transformed from a rusting relic with seats too small for the average 21st Century cheeks, to something regarded the way travelers view the Roman Coliseum.
Tourists (most likely disguised fans from the far reaches of New England who can’t afford tickets to a real game) actually pay to take guided walks through Fenway during the off-season.
If Rome had fallen short as many times as the Red Sox have over the last 87 years, their coliseum would have been reduced to a pile of sand. But Fenway Park, even before last year’s uncharacteristic string of successes, has been treated like a 300 year old Plymouth saltbox: reinvigorated with new technology, without tampering with its ‘historical’ design.
You know that if it is ever decided to build a new stadium, Fenway won’t be torn down: rather it will be disassembled and moved piece by piece –like London Bridge, to some tourist-starved city in the desert, or to a massive amusement park.
And all of this because Bostonians have been unwilling or unable to admit defeat, again and again and again, and again.
But now what, I wondered, before the fans had even left the field in St. Louis last October? Would this happy state of befuddlement, this appreciation for the fine taste of failure fade away as October turned to November, and November to a holiday season awash in World Series trinkets?
Nah!
Never fear: it will take a hundred more gentle springs, sultry summers, and bountiful Octobers to red-direct the gnarled and twisted trunk of our Red Sox tree. Last year was just an aberration, a lovely, giddy aberration; the exception that proves the rule.
I came to this conclusion only recently though, weeks after what some are still arguing was a successful season.
I had noted that the usual angst that descends at the conclusion of the baseball season did not seem to be present this year.
I had taken some satisfaction in the elimination of the Yankees from the playoffs, but not nearly as much as I had in the past.
In the past in fact, after the Red Sox had been eliminated, I often found it too painful to watch the playoffs. But there I was watching, with relative disinterest, the Houston Astros on the verge of going to their first-ever World Series.
“It looks like the Astros are going to their first World Series,” I remarked blandly to my wife.
If I had really cared, I might have noticed that the Astros might also be on the verge of something else, something especially familiar to Red Sox fans.
In a luxury box behind home plate, the cameras panned to former Astro great Nolan Ryan watching the game attentively.
In the bullpen in the outfield Astro relievers were jumping about, unable to contain themselves.
In the clubhouse Astro personnel were busy preparing the champagne, placing plastic wrap over the lockers to protect them from the bubbly, setting up the platform where the trophy presentation would take place.
There were none on, two out, and two strikes on the Cardinal’s David Eckstein.
If the Cardinals lost demolition teams were set to begin to level old Bush Stadium in St. Louis.
Then the Astros World Series hopes broke open like a Piñata, and their guts spilled all over the field.
When Cardinal’s slugger Albert Pujols three-run shot finally came to rest on beaches of the Gulf of Mexico, Mary and I looked at each other.
“Sweet”, we both said, in unison.
But what we really meant was ‘sour’.
The sweet taste of sour.
There’s nothing like it.