Published
in November of 2004 in the newspaper, The Ocala Star-Banner
A Responsible, Collective Future Awaits
as
perceived by Ms. SuZi
Between baseline and 441, the smoke from the burning of broken trees rises
in the morning fog. The smoke has a blue cast and tumbles upward into
the air that is now still, now calm in the wake of recent devastation.
Along the roadways, other broken trees wither and wait to be taken to
the burning place.
We will remember this difficult summer. The storms came with a history-defying
frequency. Our landscape is ravaged, our homes are damaged; we endured
without amenities.
Our sufferings were obvious enough to provide film-clip fodder for news
reports flung to far-off communities. Then, aide came: aide came
in the form of battalions of trucks from electric companies logoed with
names hailing their New York or Tennessee state origins: tree-trimming
trucks came from Texas -- we were not alone in the aftermath.
Kindness does come as a surprise (an expected gift is a type of payment
for services psychic or physical), and the kindnesses provoked by our
experience of natural disaster took many forms: an unexpected offer of
a hot shower, the genial grins of an out-of-state crew congregated at
a convenience store. These acts of kindness caused the reinforcement of
an idea often touted, but infrequently demonstrated : we are a community,
a connected network of lives whose actions have an effect. In the case
of crews working far from their own homes, working past dusk sometimes,
their work caused our first comforts post-catastrophe. We were more than
grateful.
We, as individuals, are members -- whether active or passive in our membership--of
a spiral of communities : networks forged by family and love, by the bonds
of region, of similarity of life experience, of fellowship, of interactions
too numerous to list. We are a part of the web of life. Perhaps
now, we will look with new eyes at our colleagues, our region, our community.
We will repair what has been storm-torn, and in doing so, it is our task
to choose, perhaps, more kindly. In picking up our broken trees, we must
plant those that grow deeper roots and give them the space needed for
long life. We must rebuild responsibly, thinking forward to another storm
and how we and our neighbors -- our community -- will weather the future.
We are learning as a community to be a community : a network of life that
shares more than region, that shares in the building of a deeply-rooted
sense of the future. Building futures is also the task of educational
institutions, and our community college is also working with a mission
toward our collective tomorrow. Focusing its institutional mission statement
as a thematic element to unify events hosted for both the student community
and the community at large, the college offers itself as an available
resource in aiding wise choices as we build our tomorrow.
This year, CFCC's offerings to the student community include acts of charity,
such as blood and cell phone donation; offerings to the community as a
whole include film screenings and, this February, a lecture by nationally
renown author and philosopher bell hooks. Additionally, the college annually
selects texts and hosts book discussions in an effort to involve community
learning by community reading. We are not required to be enrolled students
to read, to think, to learn.
As a community, our future is enhanced by our careful thought. The very
nature of careful thought is summed up in CFCC's chosen theme for this
academic year : responsibility. Perhaps as never before, it is wisest
for us, as a community, to think most carefully about our common good.
We would be wise to think beyond the sound of chainsaws and the hammering
stress of repairs. The texts chosen for reading and thinking require us
to think beyond the agonies of the moment, as one text was written over
a century ago and the other challenges our perception of our economic
future : Samuel Clemens'(Mark Twain's) Huckleberry Finn and
Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed (which is also being performed
on stage by the Gainesville's Hippodrome, our community's neighbor
to the north).
Much ado has been made about both books; more about Huckleberry
Finn , because it has been around longer. Both texts require careful thought;
and therefore, careful reading, because of the challenges to our sense
or normalcy that these texts posit.
When it was written, during a time of domestic crises in our country,
Huckleberry Finn challenged the then-taken-for-normal idea that some people
were not as valid members of their communities as others. Along the course
of the physical journey taken by the protagonist, Huck, is the journey
of mind as well. In an American civil War-era road trip down the greatest
river of our continent, the Mississippi, Huck awakens to his sense of
responsibility for his friend, Jim; in doing so, Huck risks offending
both the legal system of that time and the social norm. Clemens' text
is thick with thought-provoking themes, including child abuse, human rights
issues and the seditious idea that we all have a place in our communities
regardless of our origin.
The text of Huckleberry Finn is acerbic in its criticism of social norms.
Historically considered a classic of American literature and lauded world-wide,
the novel was also considered a boy's adventure story for much of the
last century. In a time when it is easy to forget history, to be complacent
in our current social norms, the text of
Huckleberry Finn challenges us to think about how our past becomes
our present and to where it is we are working. Huck and Jim are on a quest
and that quest is for human dignity. It is our responsibility to read
carefully the travelogue of this most difficult voyage, if our quest as
a community, our quest for a storm-torn town to heal to a more whole tomorrow,
is to find success.
The quest for human dignity is also the theme of Barbara Ehrenreich's
Nickel and Dimed , except the journey Ehrenreich presents is that of survival
in the labor force. This text too travels: from Key West to Portland,
Maine to Minneapolis -- and Ehrenreich's overt quest was "to survive
the economy's lower depths" in an effort to "match income
to expenses." What Ehrenreaich discovered is as frightening to anyone
with a vested interest in social complacency as Clemens' text was and
is : That a lack of responsible caretaking of a community of all
of its members has ugly results. Ehrenreich, in her pose as a laborer,
encountered exhaustion, illness and stress and also -- memorably -- a
co-worker who was pregnant and starving, but working daily as a cleaning
person.
Ehrenreich's
text challenges us to think about the disparities between standard labor
or service wages and housing costs; and not only our behaviors while shopping,
but where
we shop, that while our clerks are our community members, our stores might
not be as responsible toward our communities as is preferable.
A book discussion of Ehrenreich's text, held at CFCC this September (
a discussion of the Clemens' text is planned), gave rise to notions of
community within a place of employ -- and who of us is foreign to this
notion? We all, as workers, have the sense of "constant struggle"
( as one discussion participant stated) -- especially as we stack broken
branches or battle still-flooded lands, only to face our source
of economic provision, stiff of muscle maybe, in the upcoming morning.
Our co-workers may be equally gray of face with exhaustion : we are struggling
together, we are struggling onward.
We would be wise then, as we slog onward to our collective future, to
think carefully, to think responsibly about our actions and the effect
it has upon us as a whole. Clemens and Ehrenreich teach us that what we
accept as normal is sometimes damaging, denigrating and indefensibly ignorant.
These two authors challenge us to act responsibly, to act with kindness,
to act with awareness of each other's humanity, to act with a sense of
connection to our wider communities. Our college of the community, Central
Florida Community College, is hosting these and other ideas -- of social
responsibility, personal responsibility, community responsibility - in
an effort to enact the words of its own mission. It is our challenge,
our responsibility, to consider the potentialities toward greater awareness
being offered as we go on with our work, our storm-wrought restoration
needs, our collective effort of community re-creation.