I am on vacation this week, but want to share this wonderful picture of students on the stairs of the Mission of Hope school. Happy New Year to all.
For those of us who need more disco balls in our life, which is pretty much all of us, here is a terrific and easy way to add sparkle to your everyday life.
For our New Year’s Eve party last night I bought a pair of small disco balls to hang from the accent lights over our dining room table. We removed the table and raised the chandelier out of the way to create a dance floor. We attached the mirror balls to a series of elastic bands looped through one another, suspended on an axle (a small Allen wrench) directly over the aperture of our accent lights. The effect was dazzling.
Happy New Year!
Peter Ralph Lee died on Christmas morning, December 25, 2012 after suffering a heart attack and fall on December 14 that caused irreparable neurological damage.
The single word that describes Peter is community. He lived in community, he made his livelihood creating community, he thrived among community, he enveloped everyone he touched in community, and he died among community. One of his ICU nurses at Brigham & Women’s Hospital proclaimed, “I want to be part of this village!” as she witnessed the flow of caring visitors who sought Peter’s binding presence until the end.
Peter was born on March 27, 1945 in Terre Haute, Indiana, and adopted as a baby by Howard and Valerie Lee. He lived briefly in Midland, Michigan but spent most of his youth in Aiken South Carolina. Peter graduated with a BA in Biology / Chemistry and a Master of Public Health from the University of South Carolina and began his career in public health working for the State of South Carolina. Peter was founder and first director of the Healthy Communities Initiative at the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) as well as the founding director of the Ecumenical AIDS Ministries of the South Carolina Christian Action Council, which formed AIDS Care Teams in almost 100 churches across the state. Peter received the Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leadership award, in 1995 for this work.
In 1998 Peter moved to the Boston area where he became Program Development Specialist with the RWJ Community Health Leadership Program, Collaborative for Community Health. He became Director of Healthy Communities Massachusetts and Director of the Massachusetts Partnership for Healthy Communities before his retirement earlier this year.
Peter’s many civic contributions included serving on the Governing Council and Editorial Board of the national Coalition for Healthier Cities and Communities. Peter was co-guest editor (with Len Duhl, the “father” of the Healthy Cities movement) of a special supplement of the Public Health Reports on Healthy Communities in 2000. He served on the steering committee for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council’s long-range planning committee for Metro Boston, the steering committee for the Massachusetts Cardiovascular Health Plan, and the Boards of WalkBoston and Urban Edge. He was also active in his Roxbury neighborhood as co-chair of the Fort Hill Civic Association.
Peter was a lifelong activist, inspired by hearing Martin Luther King in a march on Washington, D.C. in the 1960s, as well as a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church. He studied at the Order of the Holy Cross but his vocation for action drew him to the public arena. He was an active member of Christ Church Cambridge throughout his years in Boston.
Peter had a lifelong interest in Cuba, where his parents met and lived before he was born. Though he never lived there, he was able to visit. He bore witness to the economic challenges facing that country but also to the beauty of its people, their culture and their tightly knit community.
Peter’s life cannot be measured by titles and achievements alone, for he touched as many through his generous spirit and equanimity as through his official actions. He coined the phrase, “A healthy community is a garden to grow people in” and he tended that garden with more vigor than anyone.
Peter understood that the strength of community lay not only in what we share in common, but also in capitalizing on the unique strengths of each individual. As his neighbor Sachielle Samedi wrote, “When we first met I was black, you were white; I was Haitian, you were American; I was 34 years old, you were 62; I was straight, you were gay; I was blunt, you were subtle; I had a northerner’s brashness, you had a southerner’s sensibility; I had an eight pound Yorkie, you had a sixty pound Boxer. Yet, despite these superficial differences, we were the best of friends.”
In retirement, Peter remained involved in community. This past fall Peter began a volunteer position as archivist in the archeology lab of the City of Boston. The work energized him with the same sense of purpose he savored throughout his life.
Peter is survived by his gentle sister Pat, his beloved dog Dancer, and the thousands of souls he touched during his time on this earth. Memorial service plans, coordinated through Lawler Funeral Home, are not finalized. We thank Peter for a life so well lived, and for embracing us as part of his community.
The hope of Christmas lay in a tiny baby in a manger.
I am no fan of Christmas. The myth I learned as a child seems naïve in adulthood. I do not subscribe to the religious or commercial aspects of the season and the introvert in me balks at so much socializing. But Len Gengal asked me write a Christmas piece for Be Like Brit and my ambivalence for the holiday evaporates in the face of my respect for Len. He loved Christmas and the joy it brought his daughter until that joy got yanked away when the Hotel Montana collapsed. So once again Len pushes me beyond my comfort zone. I am thinking about Christmas and realizing a fresh perspective on the holiday gained through maturity and my experience in Haiti.
The hope of Christmas lay in a vulnerable baby in a manger.
Amidst the ‘stuff’ we brought to Haiti over the past two years; an orphanage and a school, a road and clean water; two significant changes happened to me. First, I got older, noticeably older. The travel, the sun, the rudimentary living took its toll. I have more age spots and wrinkles and my mental lapses are accelerating in number and severity. Second, death became a more visceral presence in my life. When my grandparents and parents died, the unfortunate events were tempered by their adherence to natural order. But death in Haiti ignores such logic; peers died, children died, death is both arbitrary and frequent; we inured ourselves against grief to avoid being consumed by it. This familiarity with death seems to have followed me back to the States. In the past week we pulled the plug on my friend Peter Lee after a brain injury left him in a coma without any prospects of neurological function, and the beautiful scientist Tanya Williams died at a mere forty-two. Death is no longer something I can observe at arm’s length; I am in the thick of it.
The hope of Christmas lay in an innocent baby in a manger.
Death cemented my commitment to Haiti; 250,000 deaths in general and one in particular. In life, Britney Gengel was a joy to her family and friends; in death she has rallied hundreds, thousands of people to step up for Haiti. More specifically, to step up for children in Haiti, to provide sustenance and shelter, education and opportunity. The story of Christ’s birth stopped being a quaint, primitive tale as I worked among children who lived in stys and slept on dirt; children who don’t even have the luxury of a manger.
The hope of Christmas lay in a pure baby in a manger.
Christmas is the ultimate celebration of hope over reason. It acknowledges that we have created a tragic mess of the beautiful world we have been given, that we adults are so entwined in its machinations we can never salvage it, that only something tiny and vulnerable, innocent and pure can lead us on the path we are too narrow minded to find ourselves. Be Like Brit is going to give six dozen children with manger-like backgrounds the chance to shine at their full potential. Though I doubt any will be the Messiah, there is a good chance they will eventually teach or fish or build with wood or lead others. Thanks to the Gengel’s tribute to Britney these children will all have the opportunity to transcend their origin.
The hope of Christmas lay in a perfect baby in a manger; a baby who saves us from our imperfect selves; a baby who transcends his surroundings to bring us the hope that one day all children will enter the world free from suffering.
I was riding along the Charles in the early evening when my phone buzzed. I saddled off my bike. Brett’s voice, subdued and halting, conveyed the timbre of tragedy in his hollow hello. Despite all the proliferating forms of communication, we still deliver bad news by telephone.
Tanya Williams died; 42 years old according to the calendar; forever 26 in my mind. She was the friend of a friend, Brett’s housemate in graduate school before he came to live at my place, but that description implies a distance that did not exist. If you met Tanya, if she engaged you and looked in your eyes, she was directly connected to you.
Tanya used to hang at our place with her boyfriend Dave and a lovable assortment of geeks. Brett and I had the best digs and the coolest deck; on hot summer afternoons a posse of MIT doctoral candidates browned their bodies while discussing arcane science, ripping through NY Times Crossword puzzles, and drinking beer. Other women flowed through from time to time but Tanya was the only one with an unlimited deck pass. A house of guys has to protect their reputation; only the most spectacular girls deserve unfettered access and nobody compared with Tanya.
Tanya was a babe with a brain, and her attributes aligned in that order. Since she had a PhD from MIT, a post-doc from Berkeley and worked with Nobel Prize winner Elizabeth Blackburn, her brain credentials are of the highest standard. But as a babe, she was without peer. Tanya was the Lauren Bacall of molecular biology, the Michelle Pfeiffer of DNA Transposition, her willowy body, her regal cheekbones, her easy smile and the toss of her auburn hair proclaimed her easy elegance. She moved like a cat. She always threw me a little off my guard, yet I never doubted that she had me pegged.
Tanya married Dave, as perfect in his own right as she in hers. They moved to California, had a son, life was rich, and then cancer began to eat away at it until, after battling for over five years, the mutated cells bested the babe.
Brett moved away too. We are still in touch from time to time as extended families are, our shared past is richer than what we hold in common at present. He was thoughtful to call when Tanya died; he knew I would want to know. I was not friends with Tanya well enough to book a flight and stand at her funeral; that’s not my style anyway. But she meant enough to me that I walked my bike along the river awed by the recollection of her brilliant heart, mind and body. After some time my eyes cleared, my breath drew regular again and I continued on my way, but my spirit was dampened. Although Tanya’s light was extinguished three thousand miles away, her absence made the December night even darker than usual.
I think about Tanya a lot these days. I could rail against the injustice of people dying before their time, of fate tripping up perfection, but I wasn’t there for the bad parts and they don’t cloud my memory. For me, Tanya will always be a babe in a bikini on our deck with a terrific tan and a sharp word for any guy who misunderstands that brains can come in very alluring packages. It is a testament to Tanya’s enduring presence that on a cold December night fifteen years later, even a guy like me can relish such a babe.
For the past decade I made an annual pilgrimage to Providence, RI on a summer evening to experience Waterfire, an art installation that sounds simplistic, setting fire to wood stacked in iron braziers anchored to the middle of the Providence River, yet oozes sensory satisfaction as the four primal elements mingle in close proximity. My first visit happened on a whim, a detour on the way home from a day at the beach. I was transfixed by how the fires reflected in the waters dappled surface, how they cackled against the new age music, how they filled the night not only with their light but with their pungent aroma.
Waterfire is a miracle of man’s domination. Less than two hundred years ago Providence, like many other industrial cities, burned to the ground regularly. But we developed masonry construction and fire departments and sprinkler systems and now fire is a threat we control. The arc of human development is always to encounter an adversary, study it, confront it, tame it, and, once we have achieved mastery, play with it. As children, every one of us was warned against playing with fire, and conquering that prohibition draws us to Waterfire.
Each summer I checked the Waterfire schedule, which grew to include most weekends, and journeyed to Providence to stroll along the riverside, low against the nearby buildings, tight to the water and flames and pungent air. The event remains singularly uncommercial despite growing more popular every year. Last summer the crowd was so thick my strolling was reduced to inching along shoulder to shoulder with the throng.
This summer I bailed. The group I planned to go with ballooned to a small crowd, they made reservations at an expensive Italian restaurant before taking in the fires. What had been a reverie of air and earth and fire and water had become an extravaganza; I do not enjoy such excess.
But 2012 refused to die away without a rejuvenating fire on water. Tonight, in the starry blackness of the Haitian night, I strolled down to the beach after an exhaustive day in Port-au-Prince and before me lay a string of ten dugout canoes stretched along a single line, a hundred or two hundred feet apart. The only marker of each canoe was the tiny flame flickering as it tread its position on the sea. I asked a passing native what they were doing off shore in the calm night. Fishing, he replied, pointing to the nets anchored on the beach and stretching out to each boat. The invisible fishermen bobbed peacefully in anticipation of the sea bounty sure to get entangled by the web of nets they cast.
Waterfire Haiti is just as spellbinding as Waterfire Providence; the odd juxtaposition of flames surrounded by the element that extinguishes them inspires reverie and awe. But if Providence speaks to mankind’s domination, Haiti speaks to our accommodation with nature. Waterfire Haiti is not art, it is survival. Launching onto the sea in the dark in order to obtain essential food is risky. I only hope the men in their boats feel serenity tethered to the shore by their nets and tethered to each other by their feeble light. Perhaps they even appreciate the splendor that their tiny beacons add to the starry night.
Lex and Renee invited me to speak at their church on the last Sunday of my regular visits to Haiti. We are planning to move classes into the new school in January. Even though I tried to use simple words for translation, Gama got tongue tied a few times; there are so many English words without Creole equivalents.
Bonjou, zami mwen.
I have asked Pastor Lex and Renee to inscribe this Bible verse on the wall of your new school. The Gospel according to Luke, Chapter 6, Verse 48:
He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock. When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built.
I have spent the past year living among you, working with you to create a house well built. It is a large house, with many rooms, and even though it is not complete, we have built enough that is strong and good and we can begin to use it. Over time we will finish this part, then add more rooms. The building will never be completely finished. It will change and grow old with us; for it is so sturdy it will outlive the youngest person here today.
Every person in this church today is a person with strong beliefs. We hold many beliefs in common. We believe in man’s ability to improve his lot here on earth. We believe that when we work together we can create something greater than when we labor alone. We believe in constructing our buildings strong.
Some of our beliefs are different. You believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. That is a powerful belief. It is a belief that brings you peace and brings you strength; it helps you face the difficulties in life and be strong in the face of adversity.
There are more than seven billion people in this world and there are thousands of ways people believe in god. Some practice religion, some do not. Some find peace in their faith, and make peace with people of other faiths. Some people insist their religion is the only true faith; and they use it as an excuse to go to war. I believe in every faith that celebrates peace and I reject every faith that champions war.
There are as many ways to worship god as there are different countries and different cultures and different personalities. There are Buddhists and Christians and Hindus and Muslims and Jews. And within each of these religions they are many sects. Among Christians alone there are Methodists and Baptists and Catholics and Fundamentalists and Evangelicals and Lutherans. And among evangelicals there are many, many churches, each with inspired leaders.
You are lucky here at Mission of Hope because you have Lex Edme, a truly inspired leader. He is a man of great faith as well as a man of great action. He is firm in what he believes, he is unwavering in his devotion to Jesus, and he guides this congregation with a clear vision.
But Lex is not just a man of faith; he is a man of wisdom. In his wisdom he knows that this congregation, this community, this Mission of Hope cannot reach its full potential by itself. In order to provide the church and the school and the opportunities the people of Grand Goave so deserve, Lex knows he must reach out to other evangelicals, he must reach out to other Christians, he must reach out to other religions, he must even reach out to those who practice no religion, because there is so much to be done here, and so much worth doing, and Lex knows the world is full of people with talent and energy who want to lend their hand here.
I have known Lex for many years now. I love him very much. I am thankful for the opportunity he gave me to come to Grand Goave and work among you. You are some of the finest people I have ever met and you have allowed me to do some of the finest work I have ever done. Not every pastor has the strength and courage to invite a non-believer into his fold but Lex is a man of strength and courage and Mission of Hope has a new school because of his vision.
I do not know when I will return to Grand Goave, but I will return. We will complete your building together. I hope it will be a place where your faith in Jesus Christ can grow stronger and stronger. I also hope you will remember it was built by people with many different ideas about god. I want your faith to turn solid as the foundation Luke tells us about in his gospel. I also want you to remember that the reason our foundation is so strong is that we all built it together.
Thank you very much. God bless you all.
No matter how much time I spend in Haiti, new adventures unfold in the most unexpected places. Today on a shopping trip to Port-au-Prince Lex stopped by the auto repair place to have them check his air conditioning. This was not routine maintenance; nothing gets attention in Haiti until it is broken. The air conditioner was kaput, which did not seem a problem until we got trapped in the snarl of Mariani Marketplace traffic and sat in sweat pools for the twelve mile, hour and a half trip to center city.
Conveniently (?) we had a bit of an mishap en route to the repair shop. A concrete truck clipped our rear driver’s side and smashed our brake light. Sure enough it was one of the Cemex drivers who poured the BLB roof back in July. So when we pulled into the auto repair yard we needed two fixes, and a quick call to Michel from Cemex took care of the cost of their damage. When you are with Lex, accidents are nothing more than cosmic opportunities to network with out-of-touch acquaintances.
The auto repair garage in Part-au-Prince has no garage. It is just a huge plane of oil-drenched earth behind a metal gate between the main road and the harbor, acres and acres of derelict cars that in any other country would be called a junk yard. There is a smattering of trees; each patch of shade represents the workshop where a particular mechanic and his associates toil. As we approach Lex’s guy the iconic Life Magazine photo of five guys hunched over the open hood of a car comes to life. A lot of eyes and arms wrangle with one engine. A pair peels away to assist Lex; he’s the kind of guy who gets immediate attention.
While we wait in the shade a vendor meanders by hawking floor mats, another has wiper blades. Hand held commerce thrives everywhere here. My favorite is the guy with a basket of 3-pack condoms and vials of energy boost. He sticks them in my face and pumps his arm with vigor, demonstrating the prowess he promises his customers. His excitement withers the moment I decline.
Among the wreckage is a battered station wagon with a vanity plate from the Haitian Association of Economists; no fiction writer would dare pen such obvious irony.
Like all workplaces in Haiti, the garage is a laconic place, repairs happen as they will, in and between casual conversations and loitering on bumpers. Welding sparks loop through the air, the occasional engine revs, it is a masculine preserve and the men within it are in no rush to venture beyond its gates to deal with a world far less rational than the internal combustion engine.
I have seventeen trips to Haiti. I have never been to the National Museum or Petionville or Labadi or the Plaine du Col de Sac or the Barancourt distillery. Actually, I’ve never been to any tourist attractions. But I’ve been to the garage in Port-au-Prince, which is not open to just anyone and is surely a more representative slice of Haitian male culture than any of the more famous sites offer.
The auto repair shop in Port-au-Prince
Anyone who subscribes to the quaint idea that it takes a village to raise a child need only consider what it takes to keep my little chum Dieunison and his older brother Jerry in school. A village exists in Grand Goave that should care for these boys. Although their mother and fathers are dead, they have a grandmother, an aunt and an uncle in town. But these so-called adults abandoned them; leaving the boys to fend for themselves and sleep in a dirt floored lean-to with a tin roof so low they could not stand up straight. When a village refuses to fulfill its responsibilities there are only two options: let Dieunison and Jerry become another pair of Haitian drifters or pump in an infusion of support.
Over the past three months we have built an extensive yet fragile network to give these boys a chance. Like so many endeavors in life I had no idea what was involved going in, but now that I am up my waist in social service muck, I have no choice but to see it through.
Gama sought a school that would accept an 11 and 13 year old who had completed first and second grade respectively. Huguener had contacts at L’ecole Maranatha; a Baptist missionary school that accepts problem children. Headmaster Maxi met with us and the boys’ teachers, Naomi and Harry. Harry agreed to tutor the boys every day after school and on Saturday mornings. Lex and Renee volunteered a two room building they constructed near the block factory where the boys could live. Huguener left the group house he shared with other guys, installed shutters and doors on the building, and took one room as his own in exchange for proctoring the two rascals. Gama bought the boys beds, sheets and blankets. Huguener drummed up a small table. Syltae, a woman with four children of her own, welcomed the part-time job of cooking meals and laundering for this household of very young men. As the American I cowboyed up; my desire to give two boys a chance morphed into directly supporting more than half a dozen people.
I have no talent for social service; I have never received much and am wary of a society over reliant on help from others. But my experience quilting this patchwork together helps me understand why providing social service is so expensive and why it so often fails. Trying to replicate what a family is supposed to do is an immense undertaking. One would be hard pressed to find two children anywhere more ‘at-risk’ than Dieunison and Jerry, yet I have had to marshal the resources and good will of so many people I have worked with over the past year to give them an opportunity.
That does not mean that the boys appreciate, or even want, what is offered. They have survived Port-au-Prince, they have lived on the streets; they are accustomed to doing whatever they please. Though they like having a house and a bed and steady meal, they struggle getting to school and tutoring; there is always a pick-up soccer game more appealing than learning French grammar. At least once every visit they wander off track we have a stern talk about the quid pro quo of receiving creature comforts in exchange for their education, though only in Haiti would a regular plate of rice and beans be considered a luxury. I am prepared for the very real chance that our efforts will come to naught and they will return to being street thugs. But since Dieunison captured my heart more than two years ago, I have not yet exhausted my will to try.
I wish there was a village to raise these boys; one that reared them well in a culture that values its children. But that village does not exist in Haiti, at least not for Dieunison and Jerry. Lacking that, I take the reins as best I can. I’ll continue to cobble this conglomerate together until either the boys fall into the listless life they see all around them or, hopefully, until we ignite their potential and they strive for more.
Huguener with Jerry and Dieunison outside their house
Thanksgiving was practically perfect. A long candle lit table of family and friends, a golden brown turkey, traditional oyster stuffing and wiggly cranberry sauce, a bevy of delicious side dishes. After we finished the main course and took a break to play pool and drink more wine we spread out the homemade pies with ice cream and chocolates. Midway through coffee my cousin Jen asked, “Where are the thin mints?” Jen knows, as do all my friends and family, that thin mints are as elemental to my Thanksgiving as turkey. But alas, this year we had none.
Ever since I was a child Haviland thin mints graced our Thanksgiving dessert table. They came in long narrow boxes, twenty white sugar wafers covered in dark chocolate. Nothing fancy like Andes or those pastel colored things. We craved only the 69 cent a box delicacies.
When I came to Cambridge in 1973 I was thrilled to learn that thin mints were made right here. Before MIT became the biggest landowner in town, Cambridge was a candy capital. As an undergraduate you could walk in any direction from campus, enticed by the candy laced air. The Haviland plant was in East Cambridge where the scent of thin mints in the fall escalated as they double shifted production.
Thin mints were available year round in the candy aisle of every supermarket, but before Thanksgiving they moved forward to dominate the seasonal displays. A few years ago they got booted from the year ‘round candy shelf; I figured most people were like me and ate them only at the holidays. I could still find them the week before Thanksgiving at any Star or CVS, 99 cents a box now. Last year I had to go to three stores to find them, and paid a whopping $1.19! But this year, I could not find them anywhere the week before Thanksgiving, at any price.
I discovered some today, online, where every product that crashes beneath the retail radar can sustain an afterlife as a specialty niche. I can order them by the case, $2.20 a box, still made by Haviland, although now that the only thing manufactured in East Cambridge are bioengineered genes, Haviland has moved upshore to Revere.
I weathered Thanksgiving pretty well without my beloved thin mints and now I have eleven months to decide whether to relegate them to a distant lobe of my permanent memory, or go online and order a case for next year. I might decide to move on from thin mints; the whole point of ‘cheap sweets’ is to be inexpensive, ephemeral, empty calories. Then again, I might decide, like so many irrational old geezers, that it is worth paying a premium to chase the taste of my youth one more time.
The Awkward Pose 