Pole Dancing and other Rites of Spring

Posted on May 3, 2009 by Lucy Chambers

One of the reasons I so prefer writing over speaking is that even in this age of advanced technology, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have yet to create a delete button that can get my foot out of my mouth. I'll hear someone saying something and just start riffing off of it, a Tourette's like responsiveness, long before the whole concept of what they are saying sinks in.  My family's favorite example of this is the Pole Dancing Affair.

Since 1899, our church has had a party called May Fete. It harkens back to Anglican tradition, or perhaps more accurately, to Beltane and pagan fertility rites.  A king and queen are crowned, and all the other children sing and dance the May Pole to honor them. Dancing the May Pole is quite an art, somewhat akin to knowing all the steps of the Tango or the Cotton-eyed Joe and being able to pull it off with a dozen other people who may or may not have practiced.  Howard Hughes was once crowned King at this fete, and it is a delightfully old-fashioned, somewhat weird and fun event with a definite time out of time feeling.

My daughters have both danced the May Pole in earlier years.  One night, after a particularly rough day wrestling with submissions, I bustled in to the dining room late to hear them conversing with my husband about Pole Dancing. Well, what enlightened 21st century mother of adolescent young ladies hears a topic like this without taking the opportunity to attempt to plant a Kernel of Knowledge?

"Pole Dancing?" I cried. "Those women have no respect for their bodies..." I explained all the reasons that bodies are sacred and precious and should never be used as commerce, and everyone around the dinner table looked somewhat aghast.  That's right, I thought, this is serious.  Thank goodness I can set the record straight now, before it's too late. I finished my diatribe with a definitive nod.

Everyone was silent until my husband shook his head gently and said, "We were talking about May Pole Dancing."

Oh. I'd like to believe that I could have recovered gracefully from that one, but I'm still waiting on the technology to be developed to save me from myself.

Needless to say, the May Pole has become something of a behold-the foibles-of mom touchstone at our house. Rather than remaining choked up on shoe leather,  I love finding out more about Pole Dancing--the May kind. It's origins are interesting, and learning where these rites of May are still important, even as little salutes--respectful or tongue-in-cheek-- to olden times fills me with a not unpleasant wistfulness.  No one I know has the time to even consider wandering lonely as a cloud o-er vales and hills these days.

So, my earlier confusion aside, I still consider May Day and it's attendant rites gentle, pastoral, and bedecked with flowers.  When I edited a book last year called Radiant Girl, by Andrea White, I was reminded with surprise that far beyond the innocent simplicity of church pole dances, May Day is a significant day for political demonstrations, Labor agitating, and Communist revelry.

Radiant Girl tells the story of Katya Dubko, a young fictional Ukranian girl whose father works at the Chernobyl Nuclear Station.  He has thrown off the tradition and folklore of his people to embrace the power and prosperity that the station has brought to their village, and has repeated assured her that the station is so safe he would let a baby sleep there. On the night of her 11th birthday, one of the large reactors explodes. And life as Katya knew it--whether from the point of view of the wood sprites and legends of her grandmother or the allegedly safe and progressive technological advances of her father--explodes.

When you are living in a communist country, just as anywhere else, really, knowledge is power.  But it is much more tightly gripped by the leadership.  For Katya, it takes years to understand the degree to which her world--our world--was damaged in the explosion.  But the first thing she knows is that her opportunity to ride the ferris wheel on May Day with cute Sergei has  been stolen from her. The May Day parade and festivities are canceled as everyone is forced to evacuate.

May Day, Beltane, Labor Day, the Festival of Floralia: whatever name a society calls the festivity surrounding the spring solstice, it is about fertility, prosperity, growth.  It is not supposed to be about destruction.  So it is even more poignant that for Katya, to put her world together again in some workable way, she must find her way back to the May Day ferris wheel.

Pagan rituals, poles, trees, eggs, wheels: so symbolic and so transcendent. Writing offers such an opportunity to communicate clearly, to hit delete when necessary, and to make our stories say what we want them to say. Communicating is important, no doubt.  But, in my book these days, listening to other people's stories before jumping to conclude or comment has become even more important.

Reading about Katya as she emerged from Andrea's imagination, learning more about the Ukraine, understanding again the myriad ways that rituals from drastically different societies all come back to root desires we all share, is just another example of the gifts I receive from my work in publishing.

Thank you Katya, thank you Andrea, thank you Sam: I know a little more about the rites of May from listening to you.

A pause button might be as helpful as a delete.

 

“I listened, motionless and still; And, as I mounted up the hill, The music in my heart I bore, Long after it was heard no more”

~William Wordsworth

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Books Make the Strangest Bedfellows

Posted on January 10, 2009 by Lucy Chambers

Quick: What do Yao Ming, Winston Churchill and Jaclyn Smith all have in common?  Three guesses probably won’t suffice, so let’s cut to the chase.  Two summers ago I edited a book about a boy with cerebral palsy.  It is called Window Boy, and it is connecting not only these diverse and notable figures (Jaclyn probably more of a figure than the other gentlemen, although Yao has a pretty striking silhouette) but other notables also.  In fact, Window Boy is getting downright  Kevin Bacon-y.

If you plant good seeds in your life, good things grow.  The interesting thing is that they don’t always grow where you plant them. Window Boy is more like an aspen tree, sending out beautiful runners in every direction. Window Boy tells the story of Sam Davis, a fictional boy in 1968 who should be in sixth grade but has never been allowed to go to school.  Sam watches boys playing basketball out his window, and he longs to be like them. The lady who cleans his house reads to him about Winston Churchill, and Sam learns so much about him that Winnie comes to life in his head and starts encouraging him to go after his dreams of going to school like a regular boy and being involved in the basketball team. Yao, that tall Rocket, read Sam’s story. Now he’s donating copies of Window Boy to children in China who have suffered from the earthquake. Churchill’s message “Never surrender” resonates in many circumstances. Connect Yao.

But Jaclyn Smith?  It turns out that Joanne Herring, recently made re-famous by the movie Charlie Wilson’s War in which she was played by the lovely Julia Roberts, thinks Window Boy would make a great movie.  And, she thinks Jacklyn Smith would make a great mother for Sam. It’s perfect. But where has that angel gotten herself these days? Connect Jacklyn.

Window Boy is all about connection.  The story came about because the author, Andrea White, connected to Houston’s Mayor Bill White by marriage, has a son who loves basketball (like Sam, like Yao).  Andrea wanted to write about Winston Churchill so Middle Schoolers could learn how a stunningly poor student and unloved son could become the most powerful man in the world.  These elements—basketball and Churchill, both rather round-- bounced around in her brain until one Sunday when she was relaxing at home. Her husband was reading the book she wanted to read, so she snuggled in with the New York Times magazine until she could get her hands back on the book.  She read an article by Lisa Belkin about a little boy who had cerebral palsy and was in a mainstream kindergarten class.  Suddenly, this little boy brought Winnie and basketball together in Andrea’s fertile imagination. Connect Lisa Belkin, Winston Churchill and Bill White.

Since Andrea created Sam, she has made connections with other children who are like him, and they are out making connections of their own.  Andrea met a boy named Gary Lynn who also has cerebral palsy.  She met him through the Rockets.  Turns out that much like Sam, he is an avid sports fan.  As a highschooler, he has already chaired a celebrity golf tournament to raise money for cerebral palsy.  When his mother read Andrea’s story about Sam, she said it could have been written about Gary. Connect a real boy, who is out there being an advocate.

Literacy Advance honored Andrea as a Champion of Literacy, and they made the connection with Winston Churchill’s great grandson, Jonathan Sandys.  Jonathan, who looks a good bit like his sainted great grand, thinks that Window Boy gives the most accurate portrait of Churchill’s character that he has ever run across.  And since he runs Churchill’s Britian, an organization dedicated to keeping the memory of Churchill alive, he knows a good bit about the old chap. Jonathan had such fun in Houston, he’s relocated here.  He threw a birthday bash for his great grandfather in December at Downing Street. Connect an ex-pat Brit and a cigar bar.

Another brilliant young person who also happens to have cerebral palsy appeared on the scene in Houston. Jemma Leach won a poetry contest, and her poem was lovely.  She and Andrea were all set to be honored at a luncheon to raise money for the River, an arts organization that makes art experiences accessible to children who for a variety of reasons—physical conditions, economic conditions—might not be able to experience the wonders of creativity—and its ability to bring us out of our caves and into the sunlight together. Ike put the ki-bosh on the luncheon, but the connection was made.

Sam Davis, the window boy, is out there. Born of connection, he’s making new connections. And every time a new link is forged, we realize that, as Brene Brown says, “there is no us and them.  There is only us.”  Sam Davis, Yao Ming, Jacklyn Smith, Lisa Belkin, Gary Lynn, Joanne Herring, Andrea White, Jemma Leach, Jonathan Sandys, you and me and Kevin Bacon. Strange bedfellows. As the seeds of understanding planted by one middle school book’s inspiration blossom all around us, we’re shaving off the degrees of separation.

Only connect.
 

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