FRIDAY WITH RITA

FRIDAY WITH RITA

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© August 31, 2012

REFERENCE:

Rita W. is a person who qualifies as the “salt of the earth,” writing her thoughts and experiences periodically on Dr. Donald Farr’s Network, which is an e-mail community of mainly Iowa born citizens living in Iowa or across the world. 

In this particular instance, she makes reference to the last paragraph of my missive, “The Story of Shay…” (Published in these pages yesterday):

Life is a story, and this piece is part of my reaction to what I see and feel.  It is the lament of a philosopher, who is in his last innings, knowing that technology, which is celebrated as if it were a god, has put the technocrat on center stage with little sense of where technology will take us.  We have gone from a God-centered spiritual universe to a man-centered secular universe to an other world-centered universe, which I’m not sure has much room for man and therefore for empathy.

In her note, she mentions the nonfiction novel, “Tuesdays with Morrie,” which was a conversation between author Mitch Alborn and his former professor Morrie Schwartz, who was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS).  She also disputes my remark, “I’m in my last innings.”  In a way, she jarred me out of frustration in not finding a publisher for “A Green Island in a Black Sea,” which is a novel about South Africa during apartheid.  Now, two decades after apartheid ended (1991), and majority rule put in place, the African National Congress is showing signs of the draconian rule of the Afrikaner government.

*     *     *

RITA WRITES:

Dr. Fisher,

My son, Ben, said much the same as your last paragraph states.  His industry, Multi-Media, high tech, is the only area of the economy avoiding the pitfalls of unemployment. 

My other son decided his new job is not a good fit and is coming home for the winter to take some classes at Western Moline (Illinois) campus and do some artwork and photography.  He wants to find his bliss.  He always wanted to be an art teacher and only needs his student teaching. He has taught at the city colleges at night classes, Truman and Roosevelt. He is rethinking about the big bucks.

They are hiring in Chicago area.  I know the rest of the country is depressed in the teaching field. 

Your thoughts are always of interest.  I thought of you when the miners were shot in Africa.  Now I read of miners slaughtering the natives in the deeper parts of the rainforest in Venn.  Man's inhumanity to man. 

I heard a reading on NPR this a.m., “Visits With Tom.”  Very simple, it was along the lines of “Tuesdays with Morrie,” and enjoyable.  I could see every item in Tom's workshop as he made those old wooden wheels. 

Yesterday, I was reading “Down a Country Lane,” a gathering of columns from a gal who wrote for a small county paper in Iowa and also did a weekly radio show. 

She is now 93 finally putting out that book to join her 11 others, said she was going for a baker’s dozen. 

She keeps a poster of a rocking chair on the wall with a red slash thru it.  So lets not hear anymore about last innings. 

My brother, Frank, was a navy corpsman too, attached to Marines out of LeJeune during the Bay of Pigs.  But most of his time was spent as athletic trainer/medic at the Naval Academy. 

Frank got booted out for being too loud about the straight cut of the football helmets at the back of neck, and then a player got his neck fatally broken. 

In the days of Joe Bellino (Naval officer, 1960 Heisman Trophy winner, and former half back for the Boston Patriots American Football League team), Frank drove his Volkswagen Beetle back from there with one of the Olympic oars atop.  It was on display at Sportsman’s for years.  The guys gave it to him in appreciation of his concern for them.  He was sent off to Bay of Pigs from there.  Short note getting long.  Bless us all.

RW 

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Rita,

I enjoy your notes, and the many dimensions of your wonderings.  You are some writer in your own right.  Your sons epitomize what I think we are losing, that American spirit of individualism, moral integrity, and yes, bliss, for following our own lights as those lights are revealed to us, and going against the grain when the grain is suspect.  Bully for your brother!

We have reached the point where what separates us, personally, has more value than face-to-face relationships.  Education is moving to remote with on-line learning, while people are paying more attention to their electronic devices than to the world around them.  What now constitutes the real world is mainly surreal world of reality television where people flaunt their stuff forgetting intimacy is personal and private.

Like that 93-year-old author, my South Africa will complete a dozen published books for me, that is, if it ever gets published.

It is the story of a quite ordinary Iowa boy, who by the accident of his birth in a time of tremendous opportunity, coming of age after WWII, benefiting mightily from the support and wisdom of his mother, rises far above his station to rub shoulders and elbows with the movers and shakers of his time. 

He first enters this world through books and ideas, where he excels, only to find the world of reality not a match.  Everything falls apart when he takes on a major assignment in South Africa.  He comes to feel betrayed by his country, company, church and programming, descending into self-doubt, suspended in animation with no tether or anchor to his soul. 

It is a psychosexual novel blatant in its intimacy and honesty that has taken me a lifetime to write.  The theatre of the novel is a family being torn to sheds in a foreign land as that family’s America is having the same experience.  It is 1968.  It is a novel of the fragility of the human soul, and how all the artificial social constructs prove of little support in crisis.  

This poor Iowa boy, who makes more in a year than his da made in a lifetime, feels he has no option but to fire the company, and he is not yet in his mid-thirties.  The book begins and ends as it begins with the protagonist in the confessional in a downtown Chicago Roman Catholic Church.

*     *     *

Like you, I was devastated by the news of the 34 miners killed by police in a gold mine outside Johannesburg, a mine I write about in my novel that I visited when I first came to South Africa.  In fact, the novel begins with that visit of a Sunday when the miners dance for the white executives and their families. 

This recent event reminds me of another terrible day in South Africa’s history.

Josiah, the gardener, is murdered on Dirk Devlin’s estate, Devlin being the protagonist of the novel.  Josiah was a man Devlin liked and respected and grew to cherish as a friend, although Josiah said he could never be his friend because he was a Bantu (black). 

The police treat the gardener’s death as if a dog had been killed: “Bantu are always killing each other.”  Devlin (he prefers being addressed by his surname) and his driver, Daniel, are in conversation as Devlin is trying to get his mind around this tragedy.  What follows is taken from the novel.

*     *     *

Daniel stopped at the curb and turned his head to look at Devlin in the back seat.  “So, when you say you want to get involved in the murder of Josiah, this is the political mountain you have to climb, and if you decide to climb it I am almost certain you will be deported.”

Devlin didn’t know what to say.  He was in a draconian system, structured, detail specific, to exceed any he had ever encountered.  “What about the police?”

“What do you mean?”

“The system is severe but are the police ..”

“Cruel?  Is that what you wonder?  They can be if you step out of line.  They don’t like us and we don’t like them.  The South African Police Force is a national police organization.  It is an army that rules like an occupational force in a country where the minority rule, and are out numbered by the majority five to one.”

“Isn’t that putting it a little harsh?”

“A little harsh?  Is that how you see it?”

“Daniel, I don’t see it any way.  I’m just trying to work out what is what.  Calling the police an occupation army, well, that seems a little over the top.”

“Have you heard of the Sharpeville Massacre?”

“Yes, some kind of an uprising, wasn’t it?  Polychem gave me little cultural orientation for this assignment.”

“You call it an uprising?”  Daniel looked at Devlin with a measure of disgust.

“Well, wasn’t it?”

Daniel’s lean taut face looked as if the skin would split, his eyes downcast as he pulled back out into traffic.  “On the twenty-first day of March, 1960, the South African Police set up Saracen armored vehicles in a line facing the black protesters, and fired upon the crowd, killing 69 unarmed men, women and children.” 

There was a lull until Daniel got out in the flow of traffic again.  “After twelve years of passbook humiliation, being incarcerated for no crime other than a passbook violation and imprisoned for up to 90 days without formal charges, the people of Sharpeville had had enough.  Some 7,000 men, women and children marched to the local police station, and offered themselves to be arrested for not carrying passbooks, and instead were greeted with a barrage of gun fire.”

“Why would the police fire on peaceful demonstrators?”

“Because they could.  They killed 51 black men, 8 black women, and ten black children, and wounded 130 black men, 31 black women, and 19 black children.”

Devlin flinched every time Daniel said ‘black,’ feeling the pain and the dread of his words and loss.  What could he say?  Finally, he asked, “Daniel, are you all right?”

“Yes,” Daniel replied.  He didn’t look at Devlin but added, “I thought you should know.  I don’t expect you to understand.”

“I don’t understand. I don’t understand at all.”

“The police fear us because we have the numbers but they have the weapons.  We’re not allowed to have weapons.  You do know that two years ago the architect of apartheid was assassinated?”

“Yes,” he answered.  How could he tell Daniel that the prime minister was a friend of Nina’s mother?  “I know his name was Verwoerd,” he spelled it out. 

“Yes, Hendrik Verwoerd.”

“Were you happy about that?”

“Happy?  No, why should I be happy?”  Devlin felt stupid for asking.  “It didn’t help the Bantu or change the apartheid policy if that’s what you mean.”

“Daniel, how insensitive you must think I am.  I’m sorry.”  He looked at his watch.  “Please bear with me, I still must make a routine call on the police station for no other reason than to satisfy my curiosity.  It is to honor Josiah, and to work toward closure.”  Daniel turned to look at him.  “No, Daniel, I promise I won’t make matters worse.”

*     *     *

 But of course Devlin did as the novel moves towards its denouement.  Thank you for taking me out of my doldrums.

Be always well,

Jim