The Angsts and Poets of April

"April," 5 x 7 watercolor, 140 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press paper

How do you paint April?
Clouds or sunshine? Birth or death? Hope or despair? Beauty or beast?
There's the beauty of flowers and rain, and the terror of tornadoes. There was the birth of our Revolution, and the brutality of the OKC bombing. April is no fool
If you look for poets for advice, you find all those opposites, but more negative than positive.
This year, we're relieved to get through March, but face a longer April as the pandemic wreaks and wrecks havoc with every aspect of our lives all over the world.
Somebody suggested we keep journals of this disaster, for both our own mental health but also for future generations. I guess this blog and paintings approach that, though I'm more interested in bringing some color into these dark months, and recording facts. 
But such diaries are important, especially as we have no idea how long or really catastrophic this plague is going to be. 
Consider Samuel Pepys' 1665-1666 diary of the black death pandemic in London--it provides both the human and historical record that killed about 100,000 people in 18 months, a quarter of London's people. 
In our April, where there will be more deaths, more tragedies, back to the poets, who show us not much has changed over the years.
The first who came to my mind was T.S. Eliot, and particularly bleak, in The Waste Land:

   "April is the cruelest month, breeding

    Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

    Memory and desire, stirring

    Dull roots with spring rain."

Offset that with Shakespeare please:

   "April, dressed in all its trim, hath put a spirit of youth in everything."

But then there's Charles Lamb:"Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever—"

Go way back to 1367 to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, first in Middle English:

"Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote And bathed every veyne in swich licour, Of which vertu engendred is the flour;" Translation:  "When in April the sweet showers fall that pierce March's drought to the root and all, And bathed very vein in liquor that has power To generate therein and sire the flower." Edna St. Vincent Millay was somewhat more cynical, in two poems: "April this year, not otherwise Than April of a year ago Is full of whispers, full of sighs,..." "Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.” Though not a poet, George Orwell wrote a line in 1984 that really seems to fit the insanity of our current crisis: "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." The Angst of April indeed. I'll take clouds and colors thank you.

"Jour"nalism, words and flags of readers

Among the early readers of this blog are people in three countries I have strong language connections with, though I am certainly not fluent in their languages, nor even rudimentary in two of them.

  “Bon jour,” say the French when greeting someone in the mornings: “Good day.” The Latin-derived French word is closest to the original Latin “diurnum” for “day.”  In late Latin, “diurnalis” meant “journal,” a daily record. As the word migrated into late Middle English as “journal,” it meant a record for travelers of the daily stages of a trip, an itinerary of the “journey.” By the late 1500s, it evolved into any daily record and was applied to periodicals.  In the late 1600s, “journalist” described a person who earned a living by writing or editing for a newspaper or periodical. In the 20^th Century, it also described people working in broadcast news. All journalists provide a periodic record of events people want to, or need to, know.--Oxford English Dictionary

"Buon Giorno," say the Italians, same root words and meanings. Next door to them both, separated by the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees, the Spanish is "Buenos Dias," from the "diurnum." 
Spanish is  the language I can get by in, having grown up in New Mexico. Spanish has saved me in both France and Italy in those rare places were we found ourselves without any English speakers--once on a French train, and once in southern Rome trying to find a bus.

I won't bother you with histories of these countries, you know them. Readers of this blog in France rank sixth on the all time list of readers from 107 countries, behind the U.S., Germany, Russia, UK, and Ukraine. I usually have Italian and Spanish readers every week.

  The Spanish flag dates from 1785 with the coat of arms added later. A version of this flag's colors  flew over much of what is now the U.S. long before the Pilgrims landed, including Santa Fe. The Italian flag dates from 1797 before Italy was even unified, and became the official flag in 1946. It's hard to measure the huge Italian cultural and political influence in America. Where would we be without immigration of new blood and ideas?  The French flag dates from their revolution in the late 1700s up through 1830.
    We Americans should have a special connection with the French Tricolor, because we wouldn't have won our Revolution without the French. Yes, we get irritated at the maddening French independence and,  some say,  arrogance when the country refuses to follow our foreign policy demands. But I have little patience with those people who, ironically displaying the same self-centeredness and intolerance they criticize and demean the French for , as with the recent petty protests  by renaming something "American fries." They are as narrow-minded as they say the French are, just the opposite of what independence is supposed to be about.  Remember also that the tricolor flew over much of what is North America, including what is now Oklahoma, before Jefferson bought the Louisiana Purchase.
  It's no wonder one of my favorite paintings, which I just stood at and stared in the Louvre a few years ago, was Delacroix's 9-foot by 10-foot "La Liberté guidant le peuple," (Liberty leading the people). And now with a granddaughter named "Liberty," I love it even more.
"Bon jour," "grazie" "y saludos a sus todos."

"Liberty leading the people," with the French tricolor.

Arab Spring, democracy in America

Michael Slackman, the deputy foreign editor of the New York Times, was on our campus this week, part of the American Democracy Project, one of the great programs at UCO.

The Bronx native lived in Berlin and Moscow, and then Cairo for eight years before returning home this past year, and he spoke to our students and then an evening crowd. The ADP is a national effort at more than 250 public universities to build civic engagement in young people, and the Times is an essential partner. As a result, we have The Times on campus for students five days a week, and we get to bring journalists in about once a year to speak.

Slackman's visit with political science and journalism students were conversational. His evening speech to a crowd of more than 200 on the Arab Spring prompted a lot of thought on my part. You can read more about the speech from this article in The Oklahoman, written by a former student of mine, Vallery Brown.
http://newsok.com/arab-spring-issues-discussed-at-university-of-central-oklahoma-event/article/3667625 

Democracy and tribes
Most of all, Slackman is a storyteller, and his speech was full of anecdotes about individual people in the Arab world, showing how the "Arab Spring" a year ago had affected them.

I thought many of his comments had parallels here in this country. Quote: "I learned more about democracy in the Middle East, than growing up in the Bronx."

"In authoritarian states, people are not citizens, they're subjects. They become tribal for protection."

"If you ask them who they are, they answer  by their religion, then Arab, then nationality. It's their tribal identity first. "

"Police states have two speeds--patience and violence. To survive in a police state, you have to go along."

The need for dignity
"You can't underestimate how much people want dignity. What set the revolutions  into action were people who acted because they'd lost their dignity." It started with a Tunisian man who had lost everything because of the government and set himself on fire. Slackman said, referring to Syria and other areas, "The area's still burning."

Subjection of women
He said the way to understand what happened was the treatment of two groups--Christians and women. Female genital mutilation is common--90 percent are "circumcised" and the men consider this a way of controlling them.

• In terms of loss of dignity and individual rights,  I couldn't help but think of current efforts in this country to force women  to have invasive medical procedures--all pushed by white men in the name of religion. In Egypt, with 424 members of parliament, only eight are women.

Christian standoff
He said Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt's population and the mistrust between them and Muslims  was kept in check by a "social contract" between the dictator and the Catholic church. When that broke down with violence against churches, the Christians had nothing to lose.

"For 18 days, all of them put aside their tribal identities and became one people. The most remarkable thing was I saw Christians protecting Muslims praying. But after it was over, in a country with no rule of law, they reverted to their tribal identity," he said.

• I couldn't help but think of the religious intolerance in  this country--the mistrust of a Mormon candidate by evangelicals who say he's not a Christian, for instance.

What makes democracy
I was most taken by his comments on democracy.
"Democracy isn't voting. Voting is the result. Democracy is values--the values of diversity, the tolerance of that diversity and the willingness to compromise, without which nothing happens."

• How can you not apply that to America today, I thought? There seems to be a complete lack of tolerance of diverse views, and the willingness to compromise. Look at Congress, and political and religious extremists.

He praised UCO and the ADP for working to improve  America, for linking the press and democracy, telling a story of meeting with American military. "We both protect democracy, but in different ways. Our job is to help inform the electorate."

A favorite quote: "In the sweep of history, individual decisions are just as consequential as the big events. That's what the Arab Spring was, individual people making history."

Another note on diversity and tolerance. "Islam is not terrorism." He said in spite of anger at the US for its support of Israel and invading Iraq, he was always treated courteously in the Mideast, because people understand that governments and individuals are separate. He added that even if people didn't  like their governments, they didn't necessarily want a revolution.

"Revolutions take a long time to work out. One Iranian told me, 'Revolutions are the east part. What you build after that is the fundamental issue."

If you'd like to read some of his articles, click here:
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/s/michael_slackman/index.html