Quitting: Philosophical Musings

By Suzanne Danforth

February 28, 2008 6:00 AM

I need my bike.

Have you noticed the slow lengthening of the day, reader? The violet hour is inching ever forward and encroaching into the domain of night. At midday, the sun no longer hangs weakly along the horizon, agreeing to a brief appearance, mostly while we work. Pretty soon, we will put on fewer layers and look out the window in the morning for a robin red breast on the lawn. This means pedaling, people.

I learned to ride a bike on mid Broad Street with the help of Mr. F. Although my memories are faded washed impressions for the most part, I remember a few families on my block really well. One, the G's, were a red-headed freckled-faced blue-eyed bunch, punctuated in the middle by one tall gentle sister, Georgette, with dark hair and dark eyes. The other was the F's.

I'm sure the fierceness of my memories when it comes to these clans is due in no small part to the fact that each had a father who had never ever moved out. (Too bad it took so many years for me to figure out that the truly fascinating one is the one who stays.)

The day I hit that magic balanced place on two wheels was warm. My bike had a banana seat with flowers on it and big curvy handlebars. I remember nothing about how many tries it took, or even taking the training wheels off. But I do remember the one time it worked. Mr. F. was there along side me and then he wasn't. And I was riding.

He remained behind me, giving me tips, tricks and ways to keep it up and I could feel my accomplishment through him.

Lately, I have been in need of someone to run alongside me and tell me surely what to do. A childhood fantasy, I know, but it's nice to indulge. Which road will turn out for the best? Will one make me more peaceful? And while we're at it, what is going to happen? And when?

Thankfully, being Impulse Girl, I have only been faced with a handful of decisions that are difficult to make. And it's a good thing because I couldn't go through this torture over what kind of bagel to get, what color my hair should be or even whether to be as open as I am.

In August of 1986, I was in California, running out of seed money, without a job, lonely and in a culture I didn't understand. I remember talking to my mother from my apartment on Pacific Avenue. Despite the view in the distance of the Marin Headlands and the Golden Gate Bridge, I didn't know what I was doing or why.

On the telephone, I kept urging her to tell me what to do. Nope. I reminded her that she usually didn't have a problem directing my actions. No go. She lovingly wouldn't budge and said I alone had to make the decision to stay on the left coast or return to New England.

She came to visit not long after, all the way out to San Fran Cisco. That's how she said it, in three syllables with equal stress, just like that. I ended up staying for two years and am glad for it.

I realize now that the decision to stay ultimately chose me, I didn't choose it. It is strange the things you notice as you get older. Take the lengthening of the days for example. Of course I learned about trajectories, and the axis and tilting and rotations and solstices, but in my youth it was summer or winter, spring or fall.

Suddenly it was October and the air was crisp and the dry leaves scraped along the street on a blustery day. Poof, it was hot and humid and I was paying my quarter to get into Peirce Island pool, the old way. Whoosh, I had a nephew, then two.

Now, there is no suddenly. Now, I am aware of each increment of light we gain day by day. I am aware of the invisible push of the earth waking up the crocuses and preparing them for their imminent debut. I am painfully aware that I have to hold small print far away to read it and am glad I still can.

Timing has been on my mind too, lately. Like the seeming harmony between your blinker and that of the car in front of you, unless the clicks are perfectly timed, it will, eventually, become asynchronous.

And so I wait now for the right path to make itself known to me through the underbrush. It sure would be nice to be riding my bike in the meantime. Can someone deliver it?

More about school boards next week. But only if I can figure out fact from smoke and mirrors. suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: School board, press brouhahas and life in the shark tank

By Suzanne Danforth

February 21, 2008 6:00 AM

This one was just too good to pass up, reader. Portsmouth Juicy at its best.

I was born in City Hall when its corridors were peopled with caregivers and not politicos. I read the Portsmouth Herald when it reported nothing more interesting than grips and grins. I went to Peirce Island pool when it was a quarter and you entered through the building. I remember Jay Smith, Cal Canney, Eileen Foley and Joe Sawtelle.

As a native, I could easily stand here and recite a litany of bad local behavior, from accountants who bilked old ladies to boy cops who ganged up on girl cops. I could remind you of the questionable people who at one time ran the Chase Home to beloved teachers who invited girls into their office and initiated them into situations theretofore unknown to their innocent selves.

Not today, though, not today. Today we are quitting school, the school board, the city legal department and brouhahas in the press. What would we be reading if Kent LaPage had told the school board of Bob Lister's intention to retire? How is this for a different spin on the Lister story:

"The school board chair resigned today citing excessive legal costs and personal distress over the lawsuit leveled for the decision to disclose School Superintendent Robert Lister's retirement in advance of the timeline outlined in Lister's contract."

You can write the rest of that faux news story: fulfillment of Lister's contractual legal obligations would be summarized, and the outrage, perhaps, would be directed toward a different person of poor judgment, one dumb enough to violate a contract, a confidence or a personnel matter. Your choice. That might have cost the city even more money than Lister's accumulated sick time.

And a word about that sick time, taxpayer. It may be a lot of money over three years, but what it represents is a man who didn't call in sick on your dime. Ever.

Let's review some of the factoids, shall we?

The financial minutia of municipal employees is public information, as it should be. Long live freedom of information. It looks like Adam Leech did a good reportorial job in noticing the spike in Lister's salary, reading Lister's contract and giving him a call about it.

It looks like Bob Lister then uttered a comment to a scribe before thinking of its implications. This is puzzling, not quite audacious as charged by the editorialists, but most certainly puzzling. How can one spend so much time in a public position jockeying with reporters not to have learned to say "Good question. I'll get back to you." Or, at the very least, "No comment."

Lister's failure was not one of dishonesty, lack of integrity, withholding of vital information or even poor communication. It was a combination of being in the shark tank, being without a trusted assistant because of a nasty sudden death, and of taking Leech's phone call without red flags flying.

I used to be an investigative reporter and in all that time, only once did a public official properly go off the record. This was a highly placed person in state government and he asked if I would agree to go off the record before — not after — he disclosed information. He also waited for an answer before proceeding.

I was used to dude ranch style Portsmouth town, where off the record was tossed out cavalierly and only after the speaker had spilled guts. As if they had a right to dangle, give and retract. There are guidelines for these sorts of things and that alone may be the story here.

It's too bad Lister isn't as good at spin as Dick Cheney. And while we're at it, it's too bad Lister isn't the kind of person he is being made out to be. If he were, I assure you a full-scale and debasing war of words from that office would be under way and someone truly innocent would be caught in this very public crossfire. That is deflection, people. That is blatant, desperate and confession-worthy. This ain't that.

If no law was broken, skirted or massaged, then let the man be and change the laws, change the contracts. I have read enough about failures of communication and not enough about the letter versus the spirit of the law. We live in a democracy and if you don't like the way the letter of the law plays out in our dirty little culture, change it. Don't kill the messenger, it's a waste of ink and trees.

I re-quote here what veteran teacher and current board member Ann Walker was recorded as saying. "We have a lot of things going on that need Bob's experience and guidance."

Step back and let the man do his job, or come in and do it yourselves.

Suzanne is going to have a kid real soon so she can eventually collect on all those taxes she pays into local education. suzanne.danforth@gmailcom.

Quitting: All Kinds of Love

By Suzanne Danforth

February 14, 2008 6:00 AM

Was yours a meet cute, reader? A meet cute is a serendipitous coming together of two movie characters fated for love. And although we are in no movie, I suspect we will read a few such stories here today.

Manufactured holidays have never been high on my personal to-do list (except of course for my birthday). All I knew about Valentine's Day could fit on to the head of a conversation heart (Kiss Me!). Being the perpetual single girl never got me much in the way of flowers, chocolate or greeting cards.

Nonetheless, a little cyber research on our Saint Valentine revealed the following: there probably wasn't a Saint Valentine. (Because today's is a truncated column, I am forced to leave out my findings on martyrdom, avian mating rituals and Chaucer, all part of the history of today. Drat.)

No Saint Valentine? Why, Virginia, not to worry. Even without a fat cigar smoking patron to dispatch cupid on cue, there is such a thing as love. Modern love can take on many forms, but most of it boils down to Eros, Philia or Agape.

Eros, of course, is the typical focus of today's celebration. For the uninitiated, Eros burns, and antibiotics take care of that only sometimes. It is hurdy gurdy, fertility, rivened fields, vertical monuments, clefts, passion and the like. We may dress it up and call it a fine romance, but that old basic rhythm resides deep in each of us.

Philia is a kind of friendship love. Although I could find no etymological link to the root word, I think of this love as affiliative. This love is a picnic at noon with friends in Prescott Park followed by a snooze on the grass. Biblical scholars treasure each mention of Philia because it takes a far back seat to its oft more cited cousin, Agape.

Ah, Agape, selfless, unconditional, sacrificial love. Like Eros, Agape can be given to one not worthy of it, but unlike Eros, Agape is purely of the heart and not the nether regions. Agape, I suspect, is what is left after the long unraveling of the years. Surely, it is the kind of love responsible for Sandra Day O'Connor's acceptance of the nursing home love of her husband, simply because it brings him comfort.

Whatever the kind of big love in your life today, enjoy.

XO. Google O'Connor and dementia. It'll make ya cry. suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.

Quitting: Action

By Suzanne Danforth

February 07, 2008 6:00 AM

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

— Zora Neale Hurston

Several years ago, when my mom was in the middle throes of her long passage, one of my first supervisors in speech pathology and an eventual friend sent me a T-shirt. It is a wearable piece of art, really, by one Sue Handman.

The plain black shirt is embellished with fabrics and an old-fashioned picture. Under the picture is a quote; the one by Hurston at the head of this piece. At the time I received it, the shirt alternatively brought me great comfort or despair. On a good day it was a reminder that things go in cycles and that pendulums inevitably swing. On a not so good day, it was a plea.

Overall it is a hopeful message, one that holds the promise that the world will yield answers at some point, for the apparently pointless. The thing I am having trouble understanding right now, however, is that there seem to be many more years that beg questions than there are years that give answers.

You know by now that I am impulse girl, a grand schemer. It is my strength and my weakness. But since Nov. 30, I find that I am learning, finally, to wait.

Not waiting has given up a good yield in my life. I didn't wait as a child for my grandmother to ask me to sleep over; I just showed up with my bags and engendered much head shaking in my family because of it. My grandmother was quite different from her own daughter, my mother. Nanny was the picture of patrician reserve. She spent day after predictable day to my childhood eyes. Church on Saturday. Beano on Friday. News at 11. Winters in Fort Lauderdale, summers in North Hampton. A new Caddy every year whether she needed one or not (usually not).

I didn't get to know my grandfather, he died when I was 2, but all signs point to him as the one responsible for my tendency to act first, ask questions later. My vision of him is of a larger-than-life kind of guy. There are his friendships with Johnny Pesky and Ted Williams. There is the letter to him from John F. Kennedy. There is the company he built, and the stories of my grandmother telling him, Larry, you come home now or else.

And there is his final night with us, my brother and sister and myself, in the house I was born in on South and Broad streets. The story goes that he taught us to jump on the bed that night. Sounds about right.

Without his joie de vivre as model, I sometimes ended up feeling the fool. But, call me foolish, I got to go to Florida every year to visit my grandmother. Because I asked. I got to spend summer weeks on end at her house on Chapel Road, walking to the beach, rolling down the hill or wandering through Fuller Gardens. I think my solitary love of reading was born in the gazebo across the street from her house.

As I aged, not waiting got me into a good school, a very good graduate school and a wonderful job in Boston. It got me to California and back. It got me to start writing. And it got me to start writing again, just this past August.

For all I gained by plunging ahead, though, there were the inevitable losses. They ranged from opportunities to people (some better lost, some not). The important people, though, I have realized, have waited for me. They waited for me to come around, to change my mind or my actions. They waited for me to shed my cocoon and try to be a butterfly. They waited for me to learn ... to wait.

My friend and I were on a meadow walk in Western Massachusetts this week when we hooked up with another dog owner for a while. Since I could talk to a stump and get it to talk back, we eventually got around to the question of why I moved to Northampton.

I waited before answering. What I told him, eventually, was that I had always wanted to live in Northampton (true). I said that I was between jobs (also true) and that it seemed like the thing to do (most certainly true).

What I didn't say hung in the air between my friend, this man and myself, like bits of snow blown off the trees on a sunny day, glinting. But, because I waited, he was unaware of why, at midday in late January, I had the pleasure taking a long walk in the woods and along a river with three dogs and my best girl.

Wait wait! Don't hit that send button yet. suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.