A Personal History
Where Dwight came from
In 1943, at the height of the World War II, Akron, Ohio was producing the tires that kept Dwight Eisenhower's armies moving through Europe. There late in September in 1943, my father's grey blue Plymouth ran out of gas. He called a cab from the Toddle Pancake House which got my mother to the hospital in time for a breach birth, yielding a healthy boy child, soon smiling and rippling with baby fat, and blowing kisses to anyone passing his crib. Things change; things stay the same. Stories from parents are only one of the sources for knowing our origins but the truth of these recollections is born out by my contrarian independence which might be inadequate in planning, lead backwards into something without regards to impact, only to be headlong and obvious in my need for warmth and connection.
My earliest memories are of backyard fireflies, caught ones dieing in a jar, the warmth of motherhood mirrored behind the furnace in our home by a much loved dachsund, named Sparkle, who gave birth to enough puppies to give each of us lifelong patterns of dog love. I rode securely for a rare moment on my father's shoulders to see fireworks and a sudden rain storm that followed. I remember the confusion of being scolded for peeing outside in front of my sister after having been instructed how to do it the night before, the pick and not getting picked of going to school, then parental admonishments about friendship with the dark eyed girl who I walked home from school.
My father was a school teacher at the end of the depression, become industrialist as the war economy boomed with a wild manic depressive drive to tear down, and to dominate the world, not unlike my father. He came to the dinner table with a white shirt and a tie, but often with mud on his trousers and beads of sweat on his forehead, drinking heavily as soon as the "sun had crossed the yard arm." My mother came from grace, money and manners, which she left behind with the horse she'd taken to Europe because my father seemed the best route to wealth and to get away from it, an ambivalence that both tormented and enriched us. Childhood in this family held a mixture of messages, the discord of an energy and growth towards ideas of innocence all mixed up with money and prestige. An escaping imagination found refuge in the woods then in reading, first Wordsworth, then most importantly Dylan Thomas, as I found myself "tickled by the rub of love, the only rub that tickles."and grew to be a randy teen on the hunt with a quiver of poetry and weapons of intimate deception like music, the sunrise and kisses. I sought to join the voices of Under Milkwood, to dive into the darkness of the already sinning night.
In 1965 when I was a senior in college, my adult life began. It began not so much with the running from horses and men with clubs in Montgomery, Alabama nor even the freedom songs in the rain; It began more with the long time standing wet in the street, the fears and confusion, and the warmth of bath and bologna sandwiches shared in a small crowded house in the Negro part of town. It began with the welcome and persistent discord of the nights in the street and the bar, the repeated "what next" from the man who would not let me go away. It began with Sadie Hughes and her children out of control and her smile and her urging that I cast my bread upon the waters. The little Johnson girls and the sunshine on their brooding faces. These times feeling like the current of a stream, like a flood of light or a bird's movement through the air, more vital than anything I had known.
Back in Chicago,; I began to ride the el and watch the faces. I began to listen to voices
"I just know bagles", the woman said as I asked her about the price of bread.
The mother of 8 children, "I lay down for every child I had, so I got to love em" Milton from Union street home on parole, "oh I did a little bit of everything"
Then Eugene who everyone called cloud because of his light skin, "I couldn't fuck my way out of paper bag".
Then a girl friend, "I think maybe if I order you around that maybe you might care for me a little."
And my father in law, "you have to love the natura, otherwise it is too much work."and his instructions "if you don't put the brick on top then the pickles come swimming up to the top".
"for my freedom" said the man, and again inside my head, the persistent "what next" of the man who in the Montgomery bar would not let me go.
Generosity and want formed my continuing curriculum, as my first work mates fell asleep when it was time to pay for the pizza, my own bag of beers tucked away in the back of the fridge. "Your boys been fucking with my boys", a threatening man said on the corner, as he took the rings off his fingers. "I haven't got any boys." nor did I have any rings or know what he intended, like the time the dog charged, going full speed after me crossing Humboldt park in the early morning. I didn't feel anything but his beautiful movement across the grass and mine. The same park where my children learned to swim at the Puerto Rican beach and to sled on a card board box; where I let them stay with the children and the swingsets as long as they wanted and then carried them sleeping back to Logan Square; the same park where I found the perfect small hilltop for our family barbecue with a view of the lagoon while the sun was setting, all quiet and peaceful 'cept for some idiot ranting on about how God had assigned this park to his people not mine.
In the worst of times babies are born to parents who lack planning, insurance, job, home, and savings. The unborn babies are not aware that their father works overtime through the night and that their mother rises pregnant from her sister's sagging fold out couch to bring her husband home and feed him and send him off to work again. For our family, these were the best of times. In 1974 Larisa was born on a $385 fully paid plan for pre and post natal care and delivery, administered by rolling shifts of immigrant doctors, such that the unexpected length of labor, brought back the doctor who had started, for the completion. In December of 1976, a second blue morning glory openned in the south facing kitchen window of a 2nd story apartment, sprung from the seeds of the garden soil brought inside to reverse Persephone's downward journey, confirming for us that our next child would be a boy who, consistent with planless planning, remained No Name Eastman, until some mixture of family committee and inspiration, gave him Jason and Bluebird for his names.
So what is this all about and why is it worth the trouble? Often I have answered for the joy of it which is true but incomplete. The most poignant opportunity of this advanced age of 60 years for me is to continue in the growth of awareness. I have never lacked for beautiful teachers to whom I owe many thanks because I so desperately needed so many lessons, patiently taught so many, many times. I feel an embarassment of riches to have Angela as such a wonderful and beautiful partner, willing to put up with my slow learning and to offer again and again some opportunities for me to grow. She is generous and she seems to enjoy me too.
The genesis of the Logan Square Book Club
Somehow in the swirling contradictions and miraculous turmoil of having children, I stopped reading. Partly, an English major trying to convert himself into a Sears computer-programmer-father found little time to read, more than Dr. Zeus and Winnie the Pooh, but more to the point I became a Bears fan all the way to the sausage. In one of the Bobby Douglas losing seasons, I saw every game, meaning I drank bloody marys at Rothschild's on Chicago Avenue East of Ashland in order to catch closed circuit broadcasts in the days before cable, emerging after 3 hours of miserable football, clothes drenched with cigarette smoke.
Believe it or not, Hinduism from the Bhagavad Gita was the culprit. Hidden by the gray costumes I wore to work each day was the seeker, and tucked in the brown leather briefcase was my testament:
Krishna says: Worshiping the gods, men go / to the gods; worshiping spirits, / to the spirits; worshiping me, / they come to me in the end. / Any offering -- a leaf, / a flower or fruit, a cup / of water -- I will accept it / if given with a loving heart.
These lines from the important book 9 of the Bhagavad Gita, somehow meant to me that not in the holy tabernacles, nor in Thoreau's cathedral of the woods, nor even in the prescribed literature and classics of our best culture was their any better path to fulfillment than through watching the Bears at Rothschild's, while drinking shots of Hannah Hogg. Misguided as it may appear, it led to an absence of reading, a thirst for books and a determination to read again and to conversations in 1984 with Mary Delegado, Elvira, Theresa, Jose and a widening circle about doing a simple practice -- read a book a month and talk about it.
I think the first meeting was on Richmond at Roger and Lex's, an organizational meeting in which we listed books in areas ranging from fiction to history, to popular science and talked about guidelines like hosting and refreshments and drinks. We were reasonable, democratic in a consensus kind of way, and open to possibilities. Sophie's Choice was the first book, chosen I believe by me because it went so directly to the heart of loving your children and impossible decisions. I remember Mary Delgado with her ways of bringing people back to considering the wisdom and the insights of different voices within the group. Elvira with her patient and totally persuasive ability to draw us all back out of gossip and politics to one more round of looking at the questions of the book, the words and their issues, what we came for. A tradition of matching the libation to the book, took us to grappa, Russian tea laced with brandy, beer and wine from all over the world and most memorably Dick Wemstrom's treasures from Korea and Japan.
With The Color Purple there was the first great Pensacola migration, bringing us Chuck and a passion that we all welcomed to have in our lives and Bob with his denunciation of "tracts" and the "purple lady" and his endorsements of the ordinary and the non linear, the return to the point of beginning. Some have thought that these Pensacola people (it seems there were a lot of them) had strong views and opinions but they had wit and party spirit and warmth, not in small measure because Barbara came with them, to be followed by Kris and Bill W.(for simplicity, the 2nd Pensacola migration). I feel sure we would be no where today without them.
Another leap forwards was the birth of the Holiday Bookclub which rightly or wrongly is associated in my mind with Jon and Meg, with their love of Christmas and the tree and large potlucks and Jon's masterpieces from the kitchen. Of course the genius of the holiday bookclub was the reading out loud, things designed to move the heart: Chuck and Kris doing dramatic dialogue, Jon's emotional reading of Royko's column on Jackie Robinson at Wrigley Field, which brings to mind another holiday bookclub when I sobbed my way through the 22nd Psalm, despite pressure from Susie's cronies to lighten it up a little. But the genius was that in a month where no one had time to read, we still kept our celebration focused on what brought us together, which was words and reading them.
I have some good memories of book clubs in my basement apartment on Estes, which I feel had an artistic, garrret, La Boheme feel; far from being a dungeon, it seemed to offer everyone a feeling of freedom. Thanks go to the sous-chefs and others who celebrated Babette's Feast and When I lay dieing.
So in this fast paced, cynical world where roots, truth, traditions and ideals are appropriated by an arrogant deceitful, right wing few to be manipulated, to be lied about, to be trumpeted and ignored, we the Eastman family had the privilege of putting down our anchor, spinning our web, planting our seeds and growing orchards with beautiful blossoms and even some fruit amongst friends who loved to read. Twenty years of reading books with lovely people is one of the treasures we found right under our hearth, to say nothing of the joys of play going, the witnessing births, deaths, separations, losses, new beginnings, darkness and celebrations in testimony to our affections for each other and our hopes for us all. I am grateful.
In 1943, at the height of the World War II, Akron, Ohio was producing the tires that kept Dwight Eisenhower's armies moving through Europe. There late in September in 1943, my father's grey blue Plymouth ran out of gas. He called a cab from the Toddle Pancake House which got my mother to the hospital in time for a breach birth, yielding a healthy boy child, soon smiling and rippling with baby fat, and blowing kisses to anyone passing his crib. Things change; things stay the same. Stories from parents are only one of the sources for knowing our origins but the truth of these recollections is born out by my contrarian independence which might be inadequate in planning, lead backwards into something without regards to impact, only to be headlong and obvious in my need for warmth and connection.
My earliest memories are of backyard fireflies, caught ones dieing in a jar, the warmth of motherhood mirrored behind the furnace in our home by a much loved dachsund, named Sparkle, who gave birth to enough puppies to give each of us lifelong patterns of dog love. I rode securely for a rare moment on my father's shoulders to see fireworks and a sudden rain storm that followed. I remember the confusion of being scolded for peeing outside in front of my sister after having been instructed how to do it the night before, the pick and not getting picked of going to school, then parental admonishments about friendship with the dark eyed girl who I walked home from school.
My father was a school teacher at the end of the depression, become industrialist as the war economy boomed with a wild manic depressive drive to tear down, and to dominate the world, not unlike my father. He came to the dinner table with a white shirt and a tie, but often with mud on his trousers and beads of sweat on his forehead, drinking heavily as soon as the "sun had crossed the yard arm." My mother came from grace, money and manners, which she left behind with the horse she'd taken to Europe because my father seemed the best route to wealth and to get away from it, an ambivalence that both tormented and enriched us. Childhood in this family held a mixture of messages, the discord of an energy and growth towards ideas of innocence all mixed up with money and prestige. An escaping imagination found refuge in the woods then in reading, first Wordsworth, then most importantly Dylan Thomas, as I found myself "tickled by the rub of love, the only rub that tickles."and grew to be a randy teen on the hunt with a quiver of poetry and weapons of intimate deception like music, the sunrise and kisses. I sought to join the voices of Under Milkwood, to dive into the darkness of the already sinning night.
In 1965 when I was a senior in college, my adult life began. It began not so much with the running from horses and men with clubs in Montgomery, Alabama nor even the freedom songs in the rain; It began more with the long time standing wet in the street, the fears and confusion, and the warmth of bath and bologna sandwiches shared in a small crowded house in the Negro part of town. It began with the welcome and persistent discord of the nights in the street and the bar, the repeated "what next" from the man who would not let me go away. It began with Sadie Hughes and her children out of control and her smile and her urging that I cast my bread upon the waters. The little Johnson girls and the sunshine on their brooding faces. These times feeling like the current of a stream, like a flood of light or a bird's movement through the air, more vital than anything I had known.
Back in Chicago,; I began to ride the el and watch the faces. I began to listen to voices
"I just know bagles", the woman said as I asked her about the price of bread.
The mother of 8 children, "I lay down for every child I had, so I got to love em" Milton from Union street home on parole, "oh I did a little bit of everything"
Then Eugene who everyone called cloud because of his light skin, "I couldn't fuck my way out of paper bag".
Then a girl friend, "I think maybe if I order you around that maybe you might care for me a little."
And my father in law, "you have to love the natura, otherwise it is too much work."and his instructions "if you don't put the brick on top then the pickles come swimming up to the top".
"for my freedom" said the man, and again inside my head, the persistent "what next" of the man who in the Montgomery bar would not let me go.
Generosity and want formed my continuing curriculum, as my first work mates fell asleep when it was time to pay for the pizza, my own bag of beers tucked away in the back of the fridge. "Your boys been fucking with my boys", a threatening man said on the corner, as he took the rings off his fingers. "I haven't got any boys." nor did I have any rings or know what he intended, like the time the dog charged, going full speed after me crossing Humboldt park in the early morning. I didn't feel anything but his beautiful movement across the grass and mine. The same park where my children learned to swim at the Puerto Rican beach and to sled on a card board box; where I let them stay with the children and the swingsets as long as they wanted and then carried them sleeping back to Logan Square; the same park where I found the perfect small hilltop for our family barbecue with a view of the lagoon while the sun was setting, all quiet and peaceful 'cept for some idiot ranting on about how God had assigned this park to his people not mine.
In the worst of times babies are born to parents who lack planning, insurance, job, home, and savings. The unborn babies are not aware that their father works overtime through the night and that their mother rises pregnant from her sister's sagging fold out couch to bring her husband home and feed him and send him off to work again. For our family, these were the best of times. In 1974 Larisa was born on a $385 fully paid plan for pre and post natal care and delivery, administered by rolling shifts of immigrant doctors, such that the unexpected length of labor, brought back the doctor who had started, for the completion. In December of 1976, a second blue morning glory openned in the south facing kitchen window of a 2nd story apartment, sprung from the seeds of the garden soil brought inside to reverse Persephone's downward journey, confirming for us that our next child would be a boy who, consistent with planless planning, remained No Name Eastman, until some mixture of family committee and inspiration, gave him Jason and Bluebird for his names.
So what is this all about and why is it worth the trouble? Often I have answered for the joy of it which is true but incomplete. The most poignant opportunity of this advanced age of 60 years for me is to continue in the growth of awareness. I have never lacked for beautiful teachers to whom I owe many thanks because I so desperately needed so many lessons, patiently taught so many, many times. I feel an embarassment of riches to have Angela as such a wonderful and beautiful partner, willing to put up with my slow learning and to offer again and again some opportunities for me to grow. She is generous and she seems to enjoy me too.
The genesis of the Logan Square Book Club
Somehow in the swirling contradictions and miraculous turmoil of having children, I stopped reading. Partly, an English major trying to convert himself into a Sears computer-programmer-father found little time to read, more than Dr. Zeus and Winnie the Pooh, but more to the point I became a Bears fan all the way to the sausage. In one of the Bobby Douglas losing seasons, I saw every game, meaning I drank bloody marys at Rothschild's on Chicago Avenue East of Ashland in order to catch closed circuit broadcasts in the days before cable, emerging after 3 hours of miserable football, clothes drenched with cigarette smoke.
Believe it or not, Hinduism from the Bhagavad Gita was the culprit. Hidden by the gray costumes I wore to work each day was the seeker, and tucked in the brown leather briefcase was my testament:
Krishna says: Worshiping the gods, men go / to the gods; worshiping spirits, / to the spirits; worshiping me, / they come to me in the end. / Any offering -- a leaf, / a flower or fruit, a cup / of water -- I will accept it / if given with a loving heart.
These lines from the important book 9 of the Bhagavad Gita, somehow meant to me that not in the holy tabernacles, nor in Thoreau's cathedral of the woods, nor even in the prescribed literature and classics of our best culture was their any better path to fulfillment than through watching the Bears at Rothschild's, while drinking shots of Hannah Hogg. Misguided as it may appear, it led to an absence of reading, a thirst for books and a determination to read again and to conversations in 1984 with Mary Delegado, Elvira, Theresa, Jose and a widening circle about doing a simple practice -- read a book a month and talk about it.
I think the first meeting was on Richmond at Roger and Lex's, an organizational meeting in which we listed books in areas ranging from fiction to history, to popular science and talked about guidelines like hosting and refreshments and drinks. We were reasonable, democratic in a consensus kind of way, and open to possibilities. Sophie's Choice was the first book, chosen I believe by me because it went so directly to the heart of loving your children and impossible decisions. I remember Mary Delgado with her ways of bringing people back to considering the wisdom and the insights of different voices within the group. Elvira with her patient and totally persuasive ability to draw us all back out of gossip and politics to one more round of looking at the questions of the book, the words and their issues, what we came for. A tradition of matching the libation to the book, took us to grappa, Russian tea laced with brandy, beer and wine from all over the world and most memorably Dick Wemstrom's treasures from Korea and Japan.
With The Color Purple there was the first great Pensacola migration, bringing us Chuck and a passion that we all welcomed to have in our lives and Bob with his denunciation of "tracts" and the "purple lady" and his endorsements of the ordinary and the non linear, the return to the point of beginning. Some have thought that these Pensacola people (it seems there were a lot of them) had strong views and opinions but they had wit and party spirit and warmth, not in small measure because Barbara came with them, to be followed by Kris and Bill W.(for simplicity, the 2nd Pensacola migration). I feel sure we would be no where today without them.
Another leap forwards was the birth of the Holiday Bookclub which rightly or wrongly is associated in my mind with Jon and Meg, with their love of Christmas and the tree and large potlucks and Jon's masterpieces from the kitchen. Of course the genius of the holiday bookclub was the reading out loud, things designed to move the heart: Chuck and Kris doing dramatic dialogue, Jon's emotional reading of Royko's column on Jackie Robinson at Wrigley Field, which brings to mind another holiday bookclub when I sobbed my way through the 22nd Psalm, despite pressure from Susie's cronies to lighten it up a little. But the genius was that in a month where no one had time to read, we still kept our celebration focused on what brought us together, which was words and reading them.
I have some good memories of book clubs in my basement apartment on Estes, which I feel had an artistic, garrret, La Boheme feel; far from being a dungeon, it seemed to offer everyone a feeling of freedom. Thanks go to the sous-chefs and others who celebrated Babette's Feast and When I lay dieing.
So in this fast paced, cynical world where roots, truth, traditions and ideals are appropriated by an arrogant deceitful, right wing few to be manipulated, to be lied about, to be trumpeted and ignored, we the Eastman family had the privilege of putting down our anchor, spinning our web, planting our seeds and growing orchards with beautiful blossoms and even some fruit amongst friends who loved to read. Twenty years of reading books with lovely people is one of the treasures we found right under our hearth, to say nothing of the joys of play going, the witnessing births, deaths, separations, losses, new beginnings, darkness and celebrations in testimony to our affections for each other and our hopes for us all. I am grateful.
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