Author Archives: carlastockton

Looking for Poetry? How about 39 Poems, by Charles Butler!!

Walking is Believing in Charles Butler’s Powerful Collection 39 Poems

New York is a challenge on the best of days.  Summers are blisteringly hot. Winters numb the nose, freeze all digits. Every walk on a city street is an opportunity to engage with the world or let it stream by unnoticed.  Homeless folk sleeping on rat dung, playgrounds dotted with dog poop, crowded sidewalks teeming with angry people struggling to get where they need to be, pushing impediments both human and non aside with equal disregard.  And if you are paying attention, if you look life in the eye, you see what Charles Butler sees at every turn, the observations he makes in his very accessible collection of poems called simply 30 Poems.  Butler sees and describes the dark side as it blends with the light, he feels the life that refuses to be extinguished even as it fades.

“you almost miss it

almost

someone’s life bled out

at your feet

think on it

times you bled”

                                                                                                            ii legal pad poetry

Butler’s Brooklyn-twanged voice gives each poem its own resonance, singular presence. Each one is a story and a journey, part of the next story that is a journey that leads to the next all the way to the final stop.  All the poems lean on one another, leading us into hearts, minds, souls, beings that celebrate and suffer through to the end, where we see that the sum total is a stories lead to the same journey’s end.

Butler doesn’t pretend to offer answers.  His collection is a compendium of observations.  Deep as the message is, he’s not trying to be profound. 

“I leave

the big poems

t’the

assholes

y’know ‘em

ones who figure

they can change

the world

with a stanza

or a verb”

just poetry. . . man

Hey scatters the collection with human encounters, human experiences, human emotions, none of which will surprise the reader but will evoke a visceral response.  The joy and heartbreak of holding a newborn baby, black and female; the gratitude for friendship and the mourning of its loss; the taste of coffee and it likeness to young love; the shudder of knowledge as old age creeps in.  And so many more acknowledgements of the joys and sorrows, discoveries and disappointents that are the human condition. All observed in Butler”s “walkabouts at night” when he “was lucky and went this way instead of that way” (“Normal”).

At the end of the 39 Poems, his 39 Steps, walks through and around Brooklyn and America, Butler sums up in CODB:

“only. . .

joy, pain, hope, sadness

just the

cost of doin’ business

‘n livin’

Is bizness”

A powerful commitment to the vagaries that define the fragile confusion that is life.  A stimulating read.

How About A Book For the Holidays

My mother never converted to Christianity. She dutifully accompanied my dad to the Methodist Church every Sunday, and she sat proudly in the congregation when I sang my choir solos.  If she had any major discomfort at being there, we never knew. She was serenely and pleasantly present, and she was beloved of our fellow congregants and every minister of every church we belonged to.  Bit at home, she made one thing very clear.

“I am and always will be Jewish,” she often said.  “I believe in God, and I support your father’s belief in Jesus, but I shall remain a Jew as long as I live.”

What that meant — among the many things being an ecumenical household portended — was that we celebrated holidays of both religions. As a consequence, not one of my parents’ seven children ever looked down on anyone else’s religion, ever failed to acknowledge each person’s right to individual beliefs.  And Chanukah was the celebration of our enlightenment. 

Chanuka was never just an extension of our Christmas festivities.  We observed the symbolism of each, and Hanukkah was always a celebration of the intellect, a proud acknowledgement of our people’s survival, of the right of the few to have ideas different from the many.  And for Hanukkah, our parents gave us no fancy presents, no big-ticket items; we received a coin each night and a book. 

 “Because,” Mom reminded us. “Books are the windows to the world.  You get to go places, meet people, entertain new ideas, learn astonishing truths, uncover facts. . . . You learn to be sensitive to the world and the people who inhabit it. “

I grew up knowing that books are victories unto themselves.  Every book  is a miracle, even the books we don’t like, don’t understand, or don’t agree with. Creating a book is a major feat, and it is no less miraculous than a candle that burns for eight days when it only has wick enough for one.

As the end of Chanukah approaches, I suggest a book to give a loved one before the last candle has sputtered out.  A book can change a life.

Thankful for Home. . . .

One of Mayor-elect Mamdani’s promises is that he will rout out the evil landlords from NYC, and that worries me.  By whose estimation are landlords deemed as such?  To what measure do we hold them?  And who decides which landlords deserve to be punished?

In my building in Harlem, for example, there is much discussion about how we are neglected. There have been some dire problems, and we are without a full-time superintendent, without a maintenance man, without real support.  As frustrating as that is for us tenants, it is too easy to blame the landlords, too facile to call them negligent.

Running a building is an expensive, difficult operation.  Especially in a building that tries to accommodate those of us who truly NEED to be paying rents that are realistically affordable. Affordability is a word that has no real meaning in most of the city these days — directly across the street from my building is one that the NYC lottery has offered as “affordable,” a word defined by starting prices of $4400/month for a studio apartment. For whom is such a sum affordable? Not for most of us in my building.

Ours is a rent-stabilized building that houses 130 units, some of whose tenants are living on Section-8 vouchers and some who are unable to meet their monthly obligations, for which the landlords are merciful.  We have had our share of sink and tub drainage problems, and it is absolutely clear that the plumbing and disposal systems, built in 1984, might need replacing; but, for the most part, even without the full-time help, things usually right themselves in due time.  People complain there is no heat, but the city regulates landlords, and while I would prefer there were NO HEAT at night and a little more heat by day, I am sure our landlord is meeting their obligations. Occasionally, we face other problems endemic to the city, but within a reasonable amount of time, they are usually dispatched. If we are not treated like guests in a 5-star hotel, well, we’re not guests in a 5-star hotel. We are working folk who come home to a stable building protected by a security guard and maintained with enough care that we certainly never suffer the slings and arrows of the sort Mr. Mamdani refers to as evil landlording.

I would never want the responsibility of providing housing to so a disparate group as the group housed in our building comprises.  We come from all walks of life, all kinds of culture, and we can be a demanding lot, who, overall, get whatever we need.  The landlords have an incessantly huge task.  One I do not envy.

On this Thanksgiving, I am grateful for the roof over my head.  And for the management that keeps my building functioning. 

Thank you, Park Management. 

Fanfare for a Most UNcommon Woman

The world has lost a source of light this week. My friend Eleanor Sweeney has left the planet, and with her goes the last non-family link to my mother, a link that gave me permission to see my other as the whole woman she was.

Eleanor and my mother Charlotte became friends the year my baby brother John began Kindergarten, the end of 1966.  In those days, it was a rare Kindergartner’s mother who was nearing 50, which my mother was, and she felt out of place. 

“I feel like I did when I was working as an RA at UVM,” she told me that October.  “I’m the experienced older woman, and they all look to me for wisdom, and I can’t admit that  I’m still just flailing like everyone else.”

Eleanor made her feel normal. Their fourteen-year age difference was never uncomfortable for either of them.

They met through their sons. Within weeks of beginning school, John and Eleanor’s oldest boy were best friends, and they began visiting one another’s homes. Mom and Eleanor began to talk. It was easy to talk with Eleanor. She listened intently and answered astutely.  They began to share details of their lives as mothers of multiple, active children. Eleanor had three small boys; Mom had three girls and three boys, ranging in age from 6-14, still at home.  I had left for college in September.

Before Eleanor entered the picture, I remember mom going to College Club and PTA meetings, but she did not socialize with her cohorts or get close to anyone in particular.  With Eleanor, friendship quickly blossomed into a personal attachment. They talked on the phone, commiserated about kids and husbands, shared driving responsibilities, and nurtured a kind of surrogate sisterhood. 

Eleanor was the perfect confidante for my mom, whose European upbringing and old-world sensibilities were often misunderstood.  She had been an expert cellist and loved music, was a reader of all manner of literature, and grew up in a house where art was the center of everything.  Eleanor was a reader, loved books, music, and culture in general; moreover, Eleanor was an artist, a free-thinking photographer, with a keen eye for what made the natural world seem otherworldly.  They were both linguists who could converse about art or literature or current events in English or Russian; each was the center of life in her home and could equally prepare meals, do the laundry, analyze great ideas, and, when necessary, fix minor plumbing issues.  They were heroic women.

By the time I got to know Eleanor, I was the mother of grown children, and she was divorced and a grandmother.  My mother had told me I should get to know her friend, but I had had little opportunity. I liked her on the few occasions I met her, but we were not friends until the 1990s.  My mother died in 1999, and friendship with Eleanor became a kind of imperative for me, a force for which I shall be forever grateful.

Soon after mom’s death, another friend from our hometown sighed, “I wish your mother had been mine. She was perfect.”  I could not respond.  My mother was certainly anything but perfect for me, and it took time for me to learn how to love her appropriately.  Before I could articulate any of that, Eleanor spoke up.  “Charlotte made me appreciate my mother precisely because she showed me how to love an IMperfect mother.” 

What an epiphany, I thought. That is just what Eleanor is doing for me!

Over the next 25 years, we saw each other through a number of life changes. I divorced, her grandchildren grew up, and mine were born; she suffered great losses, and then so did I, though never quite as great.  We didn’t talk all the time, but when we did, we connected deeply and spiritually.

 Eleanor and my mother taught me what an extraordinary gift an intergenerational friendship can be, and I have learned to nurture the same with younger women as I age.  I cherish the time I got to spend with Eleanor. I will miss her, but her presence is unextinguishable in my sense of self, my appreciation for life.  Perhaps someday a younger friend of mine will feel the same about me.  

I doubt Eleanor knew what a giant print she left on my heart. She was far too humble to have sought it out.

Eleanor was one of the founders of the Adirondack Artists Guild; she is pictured here in the Guild’s Gallery in downtown Saranac Lake, NY. The Guild will host a celebration of Eleanor’s life and work in January

Fanfare for the Common Woman

Audio podcasts are a wonderful innovation, especially for those of us with insomnia.  Nothing is more soothing for me than a gentle voice talking about interesting worlds.  I especially love science, history, and theater talk, film history podcasts, or literary discussions, and David Remnick.  It is comforting to feel myself relaxed out of anxiety into someone else’s knowledge and then to drift off to sleep.

I confess that there are many podcasts that irritate me.  The ones that make me sit up, desiring to scream into my device– though that is certainly not an option for a considerate apartment dweller in the middle of the night – those that frustrate me with their pontification or false modesty,  political rants or misinformation. 

The ones that most irritate me are the podcasts that pretend to offer hope and life modeling to women over 50. On podcasts such as unPaused, with Marie Claire Haver, or Wiser than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.  These offer advice from the megastars like Isabella Rosselini, Nancy Pelosi, Gloria Steinham, Michele Obama, Jane Fonda, et high-falutin al.

Inevitably, these admittedly wonderful, rightfully revered role models are women who have achieved great fame and fortune. They are most certainly noteworthy, and I deeply admire them and their accomplishments.  But they are women who have been receiving attention for a long time already and are rarely in positions to which any of us groundlings can reasonably aspire. 

All the while, everyday women who achieve less than phenomenal but still noteworthy successes are overlooked. Despite the fact that we, too, are pundits. We, too, offer stories that could be truly inspirational.

I have many friends who have lived lives worth sharing.  Women – mothers and wives — who have written books that may not have been bestsellers but still had audiences and made a difference for their readers.  For example, my dear friend, who nursed her husband through harrowing bouts of PTSD, raised her family, took care of her brothers, ran a lovely small business, and managed to paint some lovely watercolors?  She knows about survival and rising above adversity and setting goals, and attaining happiness. Another brave woman I know writes songs that aim to forge peace and understanding while curating a huge cache of legacy art, and another creates phonics videos to promote literacy among disadvantaged children. They love their work, and they are proud of what they do, as many everyday women do. Some nurture student artists — those who may not be the Oscar or book award winners spewing gratitude for their mentors — and help them to nurture dreams that lead to meaningful careers that improve the world in multiple ways, Even while schlepping personal children from pillar to post, attending extracurricular activities, keeping husband’s clothes cleaned and pressed, etc., myriad ordinary heroines persevere.  Women who work as nurses, physicians’ assistants. dental hygienists, bus drivers, etc., while providing care for elderly parents.  Those who act in plays on, off, and way off Broadway,  direct educational and community theaters, sing in and direct choirs, play music, and lead small-town orchestras.

You can see my point, I am sure.  The accomplishments of women are incalculable. 

Surely the multitude of women who have built modest successes are no less interesting than those who have made millions?  Is it not exemplary that real people keep plugging away, writing, painting, acting, teaching, serving the sick, and providing goods and services?  Aren’t the common variety supermoms/daughters/aunts/sisters/grands apt role models for younger generations?

Come on, social influencers, podcasters, you who want to inspire women, find those of us who fuel the world with its real power. Look for our books, our drawings, our songs, our stories. Ask us what we know. Let us show you how fascinating we can be.