My Muses for hard times

I have had many Muses for Hard Times including hundreds of my adult English as a Second Language students from around the world who came here as refugees, asylees, and immigrants.  The stories they shared of their experiences of famine, war, genocide, disaster, dehydration, disease, and loss inform me to this day. 


One moment in 2000 stands out.  I was working at Turck, an amazing manufacturing company in Plymouth, training their immigrant employees in the English that they needed to do their jobs.  As is my tradition every November I teach, I was telling them the First Thanksgiving story- how the pilgrims came as religious refugees, how more than half died, how Squanto saved their lives by teaching them to survive, how they celebrated harvest with thanksgiving, and how my husband wouldn't be here if his ancestor, William Bradford, hadn't been taught.  Mid-powerpoint, after the pilgrims have landed in the New World in late fall with no housing and no food stores with winter on the way, I turned from my slide show and asked the students what kinds of problems the pilgrims are going to have.  A man in the back originally from Africa answers soberly, "Sanitation issues.  Water supply.  Hygiene."  I had never once thought of any of those things and the look on his face when he said it haunts me.  Other dear students answered from experience- food and heat and clothing and diseases spreading and children dying.  I clicked to the next slide, a tombstone-like memorial listing the names of the half who died that first winter.  This is how my people began in this land, too, and not so very long ago, either.


 

All of these folks are my Muses for hard times.

On a less serious note, Ruth England of Man, Woman, Wild is another of my Muses for Hard Times.  She and her survival expert husband spend several days with minimal supplies in various locations.  Watching her transformation from pretty soccer mom into someone willing to eat bugs is memorable.  Granted, she's being paid to entertain us, and granted, she's a really good sport to begin with to take on this challenge, but still, there's a core of truth about what desperate people will do in there, too.  

 

Whenever I start whining to myself about liking Zone 5 peaches better than the Zone 3 apricots we can grow or wishing that romaine was as hardy as purslane or feeling odd because other people won't try some strange thing I've grown myself or criticizing myself when my corn cobs are only 4 inches long or lamenting 'having to' plant asparagus when I don't even like asparagus- I picture Ruth and say, "Well, two days into hard times, anything previously cultivated as edible is going to be better than bugs.  Way better than bugs."  

And I go back to trying.