JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

A sad goodbye for the Gormleys

Steve Gardner, editor of the Bainbridge Islander, one of our two local papers, emailed me to let me know that Michael and Carol Gormley have been ordered to leave the United States by June 18. I first wrote about the Gormleys more than a year ago, in March 2004, when their situation was highlighted by the Bainbridge Review paper. The Gormleys work at the Safeway store on the island: Carol has often helped us get our groceries to the van while Michael stocks the produce. I knew them by sight and in the past year I have started asking them how they are doing whenever I see them. When I read their story of life in South Africa, including how Michael helped build a stage for Nelson Mandela I was amazed by the life of theirs I never had known. My eyes were opened : how many others stories are around me, how many tales untold, adventures I don’t know? Going through a day, I interact with many, but how many of those do I know?

I’m sad but not surprised to hear of the Gormleys deportation. The store, friends and community members have rallied to the couple’s defense and raised money for them. However, last I heard, while walking through the checkout and inquiring about their situation, it sounded as if at least one of them might not be allowed to stay here. Michael Gormley has a heart condition and the couple had argued that if they had to return to South Africa, he would not be able to receive the same medicines. According to sources quoted in Steve Gardner’s piece the United States researched the opportunities and concluded that help will be available for him in South Africa. The Gormleys disagree, calling the deportation a death sentence. I can only hope they are wrong.

The Islander, bloggers and tech levy opinion

I’m grateful for Steve Gardner’s email. A comment he left on Chris Holmes blog a few weeks ago made me aware that he was reading local blogs, but I didn’t know he was also reading mine. I’m grateful for the Islander’s support of bloggers, including their report last fall.

The reporter and columnist Steve Gardner wrote a piece describing his insight into the technology levy which failed to pass last Tuesday. Apparently the majority of the absentee ballots were sent in the first week, when the opposition bolted out of the gate with strength, not at the last minute, when supporters had taken time to rebut arguments. I held onto mine for a while, hoping controversy would become clearer.

The Buzz at the Buzz

I agree with Cathy Nickum’s call to staying level-headed when discussing the tech levy in : School issues: Resisting polarization.

Who is vandalizing the trees? And what does this person or group of people want, besides attention?

Bridge jumping

A brief article in Saturday’s Bainbridge Review explained why the truck driver who delivered gravel to our home Friday morning complained about the traffic: someone jumped off of Agate Pass bridge and survived, landing 120 feet from shore and rescued by a resident with a boat.

Local resources:

A friend of a friend runs Bainbridge Vacation Rentals, which looks like a great way to find a place to stay or find renters for a home.

Bainbridge bloggers new to me:

via Voice of Bainbridge:

• Sarah van Gelder of Yes magazine
• Peter MacLeod

Also through Technorati, I discovered

• Death After Life, A work of fiction based on riding the ferry to Seattle, by Bill Branley

• In Other News by musician Emily Groff

One morning last week we took a break from our books and walked outside. In a patch of woods, we sampled salmon berries the color of sunrise and listened to the tree frogs sing.

The girls and I finished reading Pioneer Girl by Andrea Warren. Abigail has been interested in the Little House series and I figured that reading true stories of pioneer girls would be a good counterbalance for Laura Ingalls Wilder’s mostly-happy-slightly-fictionalized-early-American-fairy tales. The story of Grace McCance and her family settling in Nebraska near the end of the 19th century surprised me with its details. I didn’t know that pioneers used to live in sod houses. And I think taking care of my 2001-vintage cedar house requires work…

At least the McCances did not have the experience of one Kansas settler who awoke one morning to find the floor, ceilings, and walls covered with inch-long worms. She had to cover her hair and the water pail and sweep the worms outside. It was bad enough that the McCances had to put up with flies, mosquitoes and moths. They were as plentiful inside and outside because the family could not afford window screens and it was too warm in the soddy with the windows closed.

[snip]

Field mice and snakes burrowed through the ceiling and walls of the soddy, looking for warmth. Mama shuddered when she heard stories about snakes crawling into babies’ beds. Settlers told of snakes dropping down from the rafters, sometimes plopping onto the table during dinner. Before getting out of bed, most people first looked under it and then put their feet on the floor.

[ page 17-18]

I have no idea how easy I have it.

A chapter near the end of fhe book described deaths and illness : It was a rare family that never lost at least one child at birth or to accident or illness. [p. 68]

…Once in a while, Poppie and Mama would hear rumors that a death reported in the paper as accidental was actually a suicide. They knew settlers who despaired or even became insane. Overworked, lonely women were the most likely to suffer deep depression. Winter was the most difficult time. Men were outside every day and went to town for supplies whenever the weather allowed, so they were around people more than their wives. Women were often confined to the dark, cramped space of a soddy.

Some said the relentless mournful wind could drive women mad, knocking on the doors and rattling the windows and keeping everything dusty all the time. There was a special term, prairie women, to describe the wives and mothers brought into mental asylums for depression. [page 71]

Sometimes in my moments of exhaustion or frustration, I wonder about the pioneer women before me. They must have survived this lifestyle, I figure. Yet even more than a century ago, pioneer women struggled with their duties and depression. It’s sad to hear of their sufferings, to hear that there was even a term prairie women, to describe those in despair. But at the same time it’s comforting to know that what we feel at times as overworked lonely women at home is what women have felt for generations before us. No, the idyllic Little House on the Prairie (made-for-TV-before-TV-was-made) books are not the whole story.

Joann at the Song of the Azalea blog linked to three other reviews of the book:

• Simon World, an Australian living in Hong Kong who recommended:

Kenneth Ore retraces a living history of Hong Kong from the Japanese occupation through the troubles of the 1960s and to more recent times through the eyes of a reformed secret Communist. For anyone lover or student of this city and history it is a vital tool in understanding the mindset of those who have lived through such periods.

• Richard Eriksson, a Canadian who has lived in China noted that the book

fills in a blank about China’s desire to unite the middle kingdom under a red and yellow banner, Taiwan being the only major disputed area.

Women loom large in Ore’s world, especially his mother (whom he lovingly refers to as Mama).

[snip]

Kenneth Ore adds to my understanding of the Chinese Communist Revolution and of the Cultural Revolution by telling his story of his involvement with the Party in Hong Kong, and he adds to our understanding of Hong Kong not just as a British colony but as an island city inn turmoil during the 1960s.

• Other Lisa in California observed: Though the account of Kenneth’s life as a recruiter in Hong Kong lacks the overt suspense of his wartime childhood, it is involving nonetheless and carries its own dramatic weight – the individual tragedy of dedicating oneself to the pursuit of some abstract, “Greater Good” at the expense of ordinary human connections. In the case of the Chinese Communist Party, the object of Kenneth’s loyalty would seem to be not worthy of it, but the same tragedy can apply regardless of the cause’s worthiness. Abstract causes cannot love us back, and without the love and warmth of others, a life sacrificed to any Greater Good can feel hollow indeed.

My review is here. Of the four reviewers thus far, I have the least familiarity with the history, culture and country of China and I learned a lot, both by reading the book and by reading other’s critiques. It was the first time I’ve been asked to review a book and it was a fun experience to see what others observed.

Thanks, Joanne, for the opportunity and congratulations on your excellent book!

I thought of Accordion Guy Joey deVilla while reading a section in Song of the Azalea Memoir of a Chinese Son, the autobiography of Kenneth Ore. For many years, Kenneth Ore was a secret recruiter for the Communists in China, using a youth group to find potential new members for the party. Mr. Ore was also a dancer, organizing group performances which received police surveillance.

In one of our variety shows the previous year, we presented a dance drama consisting of Chinese classical dances accompanied by a Western orchestra. The police demanded to see our scripts beforehand, but because there was no dialogue and therefore no script, two plainclothes officers came to monitor our rehearsals to try to find out the meaning of the dance drama.

“Why do you use an accordion?” one of them asked. “Only Russians and Chinese Communists use accordions,” he said naively.

“It’s easy to carry and sounds better than a harmonica,” I had explained patiently. Accordions were used around the world: they didn’t carry a proletariat trademark.

[ Song of the Azalea, page 170]

I didn’t know that musical instruments could indicate one’s political leanings or that an accordion could be Communist! Watch out Joey…;-)

Now I’m wondering how someone might interpret the violin and guitar in our closet…