Megan Stielstra's Blog

Yesterday I heard both Sandra Cisneros and Dave Eggers speak (how star-struck was I?) about the same thing: what can we DO? During these crazy times, what can we DO? To make it, I don't know ... better? This is a question my friends and I have been pounding around for a while. On September 11th, the immediate answer was give blood. Everybody wanted to do something, so everyone waited in line to give blood. Those who can give money ("but, to where?") and those who can give time ("but, to whom?"). For me, though, the whole "what can I do?" thing has become a bit more abstract.

I am a member of the First Year Seminar Academy at Columbia, a collaboration between cross-departmental faculty who are co-developing the curriculum for the New Millennium Studies Program, a first year seminar for freshman focusing on cultural and community awareness, personal identity and types of learning. One of the texts we'll be using is House on Mango Street by Cisneros, and yesterday she came to speak with us. It was a small, intimate talk: twenty people around a long table with Cisneros at its head (she had a red leather purse with the word WICKED air-brushed on it. How hot is THAT?), and she spoke for a couple of hours about what she'd been through as a person and an artist. We asked many questions: one was about finding the balance between your job and your art (a major concern for our students. And ourselves), and she said, "I never once thought I'd be able to support myself with my writing. I always thought I'd have a day job, I only hoped it would be keeping with my politics, my integrity, that I would feel like I was contributing with it just as much as with my stories." She talked about teaching kids in Pilsen, which led to her thoughts on elementary education ("What is this No Child Left Behind thing? Our kids just need to READ more! I don't know why he doesn't see that, his wife is a librarian!") and, from there, the war. "My college students and I wondered what to DO. What could we do? Could we walk to class to conserve oil? Could we march in the peace parade? No--people in the peace parade were yelling at the pro-war activists and that didn't seem very peaceful!" Then she told a story about giving a reading and there, in the audience, was her "nemesis." A man who'd wanted her teaching position and had been very threatening about it, and she hated him, and told someone that if he came near her she'd crack him over the head with a bottle of wine. He wouldn't hurt her again, she was ready for anything! Except for him coming up to her, extending his hand and telling her what a wonderful story she'd just read. She went back home and told her students, "I know what to do about the war! Be kind to people!" That's all, that's how you make peace! It's far easier to march around with a sign than be good to the people in your life, forgive people, let go of hate, don't push people's buttons and, "if you have a landmine, DON'T walk on it!"

Later, Dave Eggers read at the Metro. The place was jam-packed with five hundred people, mostly young, drinking and smoking and laughing and yelling. He read some of those letters he'd written from the point of view of a dog named Steven, and told a story about how, after accidentally leaving a notebook on an airplane, he was contacted by the State Department. Who had confiscated his stuff via the Patriot Act. Who wanted to Talk With Him (he's working on a bio of a Sudanese refugee, so the notebook had stuff in it about Bush, Colin Powell, et all). Primarily, though, he wanted to talk about 826 Valencia, a tutoring center he'd started in San Fransisco to help students aged 6-18 with their reading and writing. They'd opened one in LA this week and are now working on 826 Chicago. Listening to all this gave me the same feeling as when I gave blood after 9/11. Like: okay, THIS. This is what feels right. This is something I can do that's right for me. What's it called--serendipity? To come from Cisneros and all these thoughts of "What can I DO?" to hear Eggers offering a program where I knew I could be of service.

So, I signed up to volunteer. This is the article that started it, and if you want to help, you can do so here.

This is the clincher, though: when Eggers was done, my good friend Joe Meno read. He had a live behind behind him playing songs from Hairstyles of the Damned--The Clash, The Smiths, etc.--and the crowd LOVED it. First of all, Joe was wearing a TIE ("Yep," he'd said to me last week in the part-time faculty office. "I'm wearing a tie." I've known Joe Meno for years and I've only seen him in a tie at his wedding). Second, the whole band wore ties. Third, the music was loud, and Joe was loud and awesome and everybody danced and laughed and jumped around. I stood there watching it all and thinking, this is it, this is the bottom line. I can try to be good to those I don't ... necessarily feel goodness towards. I can give my time to 826 Chicago. I can do these things and they are a contribution, but at end of it all, people are brought together in one simple way: by a good story (or song or painting or whatever). So what I REALLY can do to be DOING something is simple: shut up and get to work.