Some March

Imagine pitching this idea to a publisher nowadays: A book for kids, about a girl and a pig and a spider; and life and art and death.

Yeah, no.

Thumbs down

Get out of my office.

Give up writing altogether. Clearly, you have no idea how to make good CGI movies, I mean juvenile fiction.

These are among what I suppose would be the hypothetical responses to first hearing about a story that mostly takes place in a barnyard and hinges on one’s pig’s panicky journey toward accepting how life works. Namely, that it is enriched through creativity and ends for all who experience it.

This isn’t an E-I-E-I-O kind of kids’ farm story. It opens with

“Where’s Papa going with that ax?,’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast."

An innocent, awakening to death as an order of business, is sentence one. In a kids book.

There’s nothing villainous or evil in E.B. White’s portrayal of the fact that Fern’s father plans to cull the runt of his most recent litter of piglets. John Arable is just starting his day the way many farmers have started many days: humanely ending a young life. He is doing what is necessary to preserve the integrity and efficiency of his home, his legacy, his farm.  

The first chapter of Charlotte’s Web makes you reckon your romantic notions about country life with the reality that there are no freeloaders allowed at the farm. If you won’t fetch a fair price, provide healthy offspring, or make a good Christmas dinner, you will be swiftly removed from the gene pool as soon as you show up.

Yet, something stops him. Fern, doing what many farmers’ daughters have done on many cold spring mornings, empathizes with the piglet under the ax, and pleads with all her heart for his life to be spared. At that moment, John Arable sees and hears Fern differently, knowing that what she is proposing is no way to run a farm.

He decides that her passionate compassion is more important than business as usual. Face to face with true conviction, he recognizes it must be cultivated, unlike apathy which seems to grow like weeds. Rewarding Fern, who “...was up at daylight, trying to rid the world of injustice.” shows that, without fully agreeing with her, he places her right to change things above keeping things the way they are.

Consider this our “Why we marched,” post, because who really cares why we chose to participate in the Women's March, which turned out to be the largest worldwide public demonstration in recorded history?* Isn’t that what the signs are for?

*JKLOL free press, immigrant rights, all kinds of equality, black lives matter, public education, art, science, general civility

Much of the post-march blogtivity has criticized those who participated in that very vocal We Aren't With Him from every thinkable direction. Too idealistic, too safe, too inclusive, not inclusive enough, silly hats, you've probably read it all. As for this blog, why we marched is less important than respecting each other’s right to that very rudimentary expression of values- shouting slogans in the street with a bunch of strangers.

Even, no..especially if you don’t agree with the shouters, consider their noisy presence a vital sign of something so much more important than the farm.