A Traveling Woman

    In Venice, resting.

Now our travels are over. Now the old stones and waterways, whether of the upper Thames or the Grand Canal, settle someplace deep inside of me, whether of the ancient Roman columns embedded in a building of the 20th century or the 15th century walls of old Oxford; the Jewish ghettos and expulsions I traced from the grand spires of Magdalene through the Roman once- pestilant ridden alloted land of the Jewish quarter to the Venetian old artisan Jewish ghetto tucked behind the railroad station, in blistering Florentian heat we stood before the house of Dante where I bowed my head to the poet who created a language, in a cooler Roman night I turned in the piazza and saw looming over me the hooded statue of Giodorno Bruno, heretic thinker who saw the possibilities of the vast reaches of space, his body set ablaze by the inquisitors for the travels of his mind. Oh the places we have been, the friends who traveled with us, the waters we crossed--Venice the last port of call, where I leaned against old walls and wondered at the beauty, the weight of marble on the shimmerings of the lagoon.

The weight of the present, a people trying to survive. Italy like Greece, who hold so much of the world's beauty, made fragile by monetary systems that do not stop to look. I am back and I have travelled with all my concerns, with all my knowledge of the privilege of free movement. How grateful I am for the beauty of this world.

"'For My Part, He/She Can Die...'"

How to pick up the threads of our talks, our wanderings together in this place where we meet with all the soundings of the human heart in our heads. I have traveled all these weeks with the names and faces of the Pussy Riot women in my line of sight; Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnika, their faces peering out between the bars of their cage. Their beauty, their youth bearing all the rage of Russian orthodoxy, their antic refusal of Putin's brutal masculinities, echoing women's rebellions from other times but now elemental hatreds and willed ignorances are riding high: "for my part, he can die, he's an Arab"/"If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down." Violent nations, nations of occupation and of assumed exceptionalisms, find their reflections in the harrowing choices of the young, in the narrow heartedness of the old.

So many lovely things are in terrible danger.


I have tried to download some photos of our travels but my server will not allow it. I will try to get help to fix this. Thank you all for being there. Joan

"Let There Be Wetness and Wilderness Yet..."

La Professoressa after a hard day's work, resting by the Isis, Oxford, 2012


As a summer heat falls over Oxford, for the first time in our four week stay here, the canal waters have fallen below the level of the weir, the overflow into its companion river now a gentle surge. Every day and sometimes two times a day, I make the walk along our canal road, emerge into Lower Fisherman Walk, meet the Hythe Bridge and join the foot traffic into the heart of the town. Traveling with La Professoressa has taught me the art of settling down for a month or two and sometimes six in new territories, where as the days go by, I find my own markers of daily life. The walk to the News Agency in Gloucester Green to get my daily Guardian, sitting in the square reading, thinking, watching the transit traffic. I have discovered I like the unpretentiousness of bus and coach stations, the open space of the "Green" where on Wednesdays and Thursdays, market stalls spring up, I join the students and old women who do their vegetable and bread shopping here and then on Thursdays, the old stuff market where Ross, a new old friend sells old tin toys, amidst his stock of tin soldiers I find his tray of solid tiny tin horses, cows, sheep, chooks, a few of which will come home with us, for my own imagined farm when we get home.

When La Professoressa gets home from work, puts down her satchel heavy with journal articles, our favorite place to go is to the watery wonders of Port Meadow which truly is a common green bordered by the Thames-Ises, a gentle clean river here, just beginning its life as a major world waterway. We park the car, and sometimes the cows, huge black and white animals that roam freely over the green, have chosen to take the shade under the full trees just a few steps away, some rubbing their massive heads on the handles of the bikes left leaning against the parking areas fence. We pass through the old weighted wooden gate, and there we are on the same green sward as the herd, as the huge flocks of geese and ducks, horses roaming free and walkers making their way to their favorite swimming paths into the old Ises. Halfway across the green, I just stand and take in the landscape, the big sky, the tree lines, the grazing animals, the river a shining border and feel as if I have entered a 17th century painted landscape. My favorite place in Oxford, Port Meadow, with its students, now free of the stone citadels of  learning, lounging in their bathing suits on small blankets or shouting their joy from the cold flow of the river, all up and down this side of Port Meadow, the river becomes a friend, still needing care as Nature's creations do, its currents flowing inexorably to the great city of the South. The freshness of it all, the comraderie of youth some freed for a short while from their burdens of fully adult life, others, workers from the town freed from their toil, the nearness of the free roaming animals, the swans quietly, the ducks and geese more loudly, proclaiming their final ownership of this shared green wet world.

Like so many others before us, we make our way over the green on its well worn walker's footpath, cross steeply rising wooden bridges, through two old styles and end up in the Perch, a much loved pub tucked away from the waters, a small wooden sign attached to the final gate, a local saying, "first the church, then the Perch."

Our New York friend Leni is staying with us and while La Professoressa leads her New College students through the thickets of gender, sex and human rights, I show her my Oxford. To the south, the roar of the Olympics peters out as it reaches the narrow stone streets of the University town, but I who love the leap, the jump, the run of atheletes watch what I can. They two are moments of green. Most moved I was to see Castor, the South African runner who suffered so much for her suspected gender difference, leading the South African team into the Olympic arena. And now always, I am thinking of the book, of 13A and your voices, all needed.

Canal Thinking

The waters of canals run to their own soft lives. I just got back from a long walk along the Oxford canal path heading out to Jericho and the ever longed for Port Meadow gleaming so cool on these hot days. The barges and their inhabitants had come to life after the long rain weeks; resident dogs lounged on the grass banks with their water dishes within reach, two women sat at opposite ends of their shared home, reading their books on little seats fore and aft, paperback curled back in their hands for closer absorption; I thought how lovely it is to see people reading by a quiet canal, a waterway all hung in weeping willows  happy to have their feet so close to wetness; wild flowers sparkling along the banks, every one observing the barge dwellers right to privacy, even the ducks, cleaning themselves on the sunny banks, throwing off white puffs of down. For the first time, I saw the fish that make this waterway home--slim long fellows darting quickly, coming to the surface for something only they can understand. I wonder if sometimes they do not find themselves washed out through the weir into the stream that runs parallel, catching the canal's run off, wondering at a new kind of current.

New currents--this is what I thought. What matters now is what Oxford and its graduates do with their privilege, what new currents of equity will they bring into the world, what new currents of just and ethical economics will they make possible, what new scientific discoveries will they make and what ways will they find for making all in the world find their health in these wonders, not just drug companies. This is what saddens me about Israel--its people and others like myself know what it means to have one's history trod upon and yet, no new current flows through the Israeli state. I read of how the IDF are demolishing Palestinian towns so their troops have more room to train. Think of the pain of this displacement--the taunt inherent in this, your home is to be destroyed so we can train to destroy more of your homes. This national spitefulness, this cruel national heart for that is what it is is no new current. The graveyards of the past flow right into the graveyards of the present and the survivors of those who were washed away in the past now flood the histories of another people. Around and around goes Addison's Walk, and only stone will remain in the end.

"13A:The Story of an Apartment, a Community and an Idea"

One of the gifts our friend Karin left me with was a push to redress a regret. One night over dinner, I said, one of the things I am most sorry about is that I did not keep a journal about the life of LHA in my apartment, 13A before it moved to its now permanent home in Brooklyn. So Joan, she said, in that forthright way, why don't you do a book and call it 13A. Karin is a social historian and always finds the most wonderful books about daily life in whatever country she is visiting us in--like the history of the flush toilet in Great Britain or the role of bars in the Soviet Union. I thought and thought and now, dear friends, old and new, I announce to you my perhaps final book project--"13A: The Story of an Apartment, a Community and an Idea." Karin exemplified her point to me by telling us stories she remembered from her years visiting and working at the archvies in the old apartment-- from the time Squinch the cat fell behind one of the filing cabinets--saved by Karin with a lowered basket and a bit of tuna--to how she witnessed women coming to visit the archives for a work or at home night, they came dressed in their work clothes, blouses and skirts, and how I would greet them and say, if you would like to change--and lead them to my bedroom. Karin acted out how transformed the women were as they changed from their proper work drag into their butch clothes. These were moments I had forgotten. And so I now turn to you; this will not be a book about me but about all that happened in that apartment as you remember it, all of you who ever worked there, visited, the stories of why you came, what kind of searches were you on, who you met there, did you come form Womanbooks on the corner to that stange apartment on the other corner? Were you a volunteer, a coordinator, Judith, I am thinking of you and Beth and so many more, Sabrina, Morgan--hundreds of you--this will be your story. And it will be the story of the apartment itself, its material reality, what was happening in New York housing culture that such a site became part of our communal life. If you have a story to tell of any sort, they don't have to be glowing, if you remember any details of your visit--please write to me, I have a facebook page as well--don't worry about the style of writing, scraps of thoughts, of details will be wonderful, taped memories will be wonderful--and tell friends--contributions in all language will be wonderful for so many of you visited from around the world--and all will be recogonized in the book--the years covered will be 1974 to 1992--and I can see in my mind's eye, the afternoon, the lesbian playwright, Jane Chambers came to visit, the archives just beginning in that back little room, all coffee cans and wooden planks, Jane's valient struggle to live marking her body as she gave us a copy of her play, Blue Fish Cove. All will be honored. Thank you, Joan

This Year, This Year

By the time the blackberries come to fruit along the canal, we will be gone. I am sure those who make their daily way out of these flats on the wrong side of town to their academic or town jobs, will, from time to time, stop to pluck a few. The other day I made my way down High Street with its tour groups, young people mostly, chattering in Chinese, French, Spanish, to the stone citadel known as Magdelene College with its famous alternate pronounciation, that sounds like Maudelin, knowing that at 2 :00 those heavy gates are thrown open for non affliated people like myself to get a chance to walk the College's immense grounds. Huge courtyards surrounded by 16th century stone buildings with their spires reaching high into the now blue skies, cloistered courtyards, their enclosed stone walks cool and close to empty, which when you take the  right turn into a narrow alley throws you out into another courtyard path that takes you to the famous gates of Addison's Walk, a lengthy circular walk over slightly graveled paths around a water meadow, followed for a while in its beginning stretches by the gentle river Chardwell and its resident swans.

And so I walked, past the deer park where the whiteness of distant flickering tails flashed in the sun, around and around, almost alone, thinking of where I walked, the wonder of how I found myself in such a place, hushed by hundreds of years of thinkers, working out their idea passions and perhaps other kinds, on this same walk, around and around. I had broken their silence with my womanness, my lesbianness, my working class self and one more self, that accompanied almost more then all the others as I took my not lithe 72 year old body around the borders of the water meadow--for I was walking on what had been the old Jewish cemetary, I was walking on the bones of history, on one people's exile from importance while another built its cherished and well preserved unto this day hold on history. The Jews who survived this take over had been offered, as I have told you, a "piece of wasteland" to bury their dead as the towers of Magdelene rose above them. I walked and walked, the gravel making its soft hard sound under my feet. Nothing slightly elegant about me, round and gray haired, tapping my way around the path where the greats of English literature enjoyed their leisure. I wonder if they thought too about what they had trod upon.

At the first turn in Addison's Walk, one comes to a circular wall plaque with a poem by C.S. Lewis, one of the important men who educated here. I found it moving in many unexpected ways, beyond, perhaps the cultural vision of its creator.

                                          What the Birds Said Early in the Year
I heard in Addison's Walk a bird sing clear:
This year the summer will come true.
This year, this year.

Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple tree,
This year nor want of rain destroy the peas.

This year time's nature will no more defeat you.
Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

This time they will not lead you round and back
To Autumn, one year older, by the well worn track.

This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,
We shall escape to circle and undo the spell.

Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,
Quick, quick, quick, quick, the gates are drawn apart.
                                                        C.S. Lewis, perhaps 1931, published after his death 

This year, this year La Professoressa walked every day down these Oxford streets to meet her students of New College, stirring up their thinking about gender, sexuality and human rights, retracing her steps in the afternoon, where I would await her return over Hythe Bridge, the green waters of the canal running under us, and escort her back, carrying her heavy bag when she would allow me,  back to our flat on Rewely Road. This year, this year again and again as I read Guardian and looked around me, as the Olympics took shape in the big city to the south, histories old and in the making, called for my attention. Friends have visited and left their gifts with us, gifts of projects and of touch, of dinners in quaint pubs and cream teas on the terraces of Palaces, never forgetting our friends back home, just adding to the pattina of affection that makes one truly lucky in life.

Karin, the Cotswolds, Palaces, Ponies and Libraries

Yesterday, I stood mid morning in the worn bus station looking up at the black windows of the large commuter bus that was carrying our friend Karin back to London so she could catch her plane on to Copenhagen. We had adventured together, the three of us, continuing our pledge to somehow be in each other's company at least every two years--with all of Europe and the Pacific endless sea between us. I know some time this pledge will be broken, but for these five days, it held.

Karin in a Cottswaldian moment, 2012

My friendship with Karin began when she made her way to 13A to work at the Lesbian Herstory Archives in 1982; New York City so beloved by Karin was usually the backdrop for our friendship with our traditional shopping trips to Chinatown for gold leaf papers, to the side streets of mid town so Karin could wonder into fabric and novelty stores, looking for material for her home made clothes and in the beginning I would wait for her to come home from her beloved operas and her beloved singer, Tatanya, for whom she waited like a stage door Johnny with a single red rose.  Now La Professoressa is part of this girl gang, the two academics chatting away as I shepherd them through the throngs of Broadway, Copenhagen, Melbourne, London and now Oxford.

These days we spent wandering through the narrow Oxford streets, where the difference in our physical abilities became clear, and soon I would give Karin the go ahead, we will met again back on Rewely Road. One day, we took a bus to Blenheim Palace, oh do I know what it is to be a commmoner now--a huge edifice dating unchanged from the 1700s, with grounds that are states, with lakes and waterfalls--and an 84 year old Duke and his fourth wife living behind closed doors in the East wing while we the public contributed to the upkeep of his massive inheritance. We began the tour of the red, green and writing rooms with their huge tapestries in smaller rooms filled with an exhibit on the life of Winston Churchill who was born here. I found myself overcome when his taped voice spoke those words that had held a nation together, all his privilege became something else when he promised no surrender to the Nazi forces. How sentimental I become in a place so antagonistic to all I know of class life. One small note next to a picture of a cute long curled boy said in neat typed words, Winston loved riding his ponies over the green fields of Blenheim, his home. Of course the world was his to save.

In the warming evenings, the three of us would take off in our hired car to out of Oxford pubs like The Trout along the rushing Ises, where we sat in the bar and ate our dinner under a low wooden roof, talking, talking, taking in as well the sheer beauty of our setting, the sun glinting off the greens of the Port Meadow. Three women, now two starting their 6th decade, and one in her 7th, still discovering things about why we are the women we are, still wondering how our life travels had brought us all together again. Another night found us in Burford, a stone 18th century town, typical of the Cottswolds, eating in the Golden Pheasant, but the most eccentric evening meal was had at the Black Prince, with its all dogs welcome sign, the Prince's suit of armor along side the fire place, the bar fronted by several older men with their working dogs and in the garden, a group of younger,strong armed men throwing thick pegs at a target attached to a pole, Knocking off Aunt Sally's Head, was the name of the game we were told by a good natured round faced man with thick glasses, a favorite pastime of Oxfordshire, not knowing he was speaking to three feminists from three different countries. And always, the river flowing past the wooden tables, the wild flowers growing rich, the hedge rows, a peaceful beauty.

We finished our time together with a two day trip through the Northern Cottswolds, through the stone towns with their purple, red flowered baskets setting of the richness of the gray stone and then through the breaks in the hedges, those rolling green hills, those straight lined trees--we all had a different name for them, I called them yew, La Professoressa said laurel, Karin said poplar--marking boundaries, the sheep white moments of peace in the green and those little wooden signs along the old stys, announcing the wonders of public footpaths. How I wished we had more time to just get out and take off into those lush perspectives, walking we were told all the way to Bath if we so wished. At every pub, we saw groups of young men and women wearing thick socks and heavy soled walking boots, taking in sustenance before they stepped out again. Stow-on-the Wold, Chipping Camden, Ebbington, Shipston-on-Stour--Karin begged for cream tea stops, we spent the night in small stepped, low roofed old hotel, with creaking floors and drapped beds and always we talked, talked of events, of aging, of ideas and loves. Beautiful it all was--and the green vistas of rolling fields I will take with me--and then back home, a home for now, I say good-bye to my old friend, humbled by the thought I might not see Karin again in her wonderful body. I have her laugh, her cool and loving looks, her calm acceptness of life's complexities, and those times when she looks me straight in the eye and tells me where I need to think more carefully. An honest, brave woman who claims with great penache the category of spinister, giving it more self reliant and loving life, more glamour and physical joy then ever imagined.

In the hours after Karin's leaving, I sit in the coolness of our home here and read Zadie Smith's article, "North West London Blues," published in this month's New York Review of Books and gain a deeper focus on the world in which we now reside. Smith tells of a community's need for their local gathering places like the weekend market square, Willesden Green, in her mother's neighborhood of London and of the community library, a run down 1894 turreted building which gives so much focus to the neighborhood, which makes so many kinds of gatherings and knowledges possible, but because of greed, once again, not of the poor but those who already have so much, the library and an essential bookshop are planned to be demolished to make way for luxury housing. Smith writes, "minimal consultation, bully-boy tactics, secrecy, outright deceit" are the hall marks of how this decision and so many others are enforced on the economically powerless. The state, she goes on to say, "is complicit in this new, shared, global reality in which states deregulate to privatize gain and reregulate to nationalize loss." In disbelief, writing from her teaching time in New York, she writes, "I can't tell whether the news coming out of my home is really as bad as it appears to be, or whether objects perceived from three thousand from three thousands miles away are subject to to exaggerations of size and color. Did a labour-run council really send heavies into Kensal Rise Library, in a dawn raid, to strip the place of books and Mark Twain's wall plaque?" I continue reading, thinking how she has gotten it all so right, with the green fields of the idyllic Cottswolds still in my mind, and then come these words, "Kensal Rise Library is being closed not because it is unpopular but because it is unprofitable, this despite the fact that the friends of Kensal Rise Library are willing to run their library themselves (if All Souls College, Oxford, which owns the library, will let them) and I sit so still. On all the tour buses that constantly ring the walls of Oxford, we are told of the exclusiveness of All Souls College, off limits to all but the very best, only one or two new members picked every year, Old Souls which represents the pinnacle of Oxford traditions, one of the wealthiest colleges here amidst very wealthy colleges, its gates closed solidly against the passing throngs--and it holds in its cold hands the fate of a gathering place for the workers, the students, the mothers, the children, the tired laborers and aspiring smart young ones without family dynasties behind them, no ponies to ride on ocean wide green lawns, a simple every day library begging to be allowed to serve its community, but the bully boys and the empty eyes of the most powerful College in this stone place have determined otherwise. How even more beautiful then those small market towns on the their rivers would be another kind of heart in Oxford and in all our centers of power.