My Snafu Grace: A talk by Karen Armstrong on Compassion

Go to this link: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/234

Possum

My friend is raising his six-year-old granddaughter with his wife in their house in a Florida suburb. After many weeks of spying a dingy, not-quite- hairless possum sneaking by the side of his house every night, my friend had fashioned a plot to get the possum out of town and into the woods, safe but never- again- to- be- seen. My friend's sights were set on a trap just for varments of this kind, and he had even gotten an address for the place to buy said trap. Then the worst happend. His granddaughter -- though he had never told her of the possum he wanted to get rid of -- saw both the ugly possum and its smaller, more endearing relation very close by. In this way, my friend's plot was made to disappear into thin air, never to be thought of again, or at least not until he is a very old man.

In the meantime, my mother lives also in Florida, having a small house to herself. Recently, she walked into the utility room and there sat a little creature it took her several moments to discern as a baby possum. She is frustrated now that she has walked in on it three times, and it has always found a way to leave, even when she's only left it alone for a seconds, or even closed a door on it. My mother often leaves the front door to her house wide open when she goes out to get the mail or paper, and lizards have been known to make it inside. I have told her that she has to get someone to set a trap for the possum, with safe bait to attract it, so that she can release it near her house and it can go back to its home. My mother continues to look for the possum everywhere, though, thinking she's going to run into it and catch it in her hands. I have lost a few nights' sleep, and my mother has said she is worried about finding the possum in her bed. Finally, today, she was walking by the bathroom in the hallway, and saw the little thing moving from the corner of her eye. She darted into the room before it could get out and closed the door. She quickly closed the door again behind her as she ran and got a broom and bucket, came back into the bathroom, somehow getting the possum into the bucket using the broom, and took it out the back door, in the bucket, through the screened in porch. She tells me that she gently turned it out of the bucket halfway down a grassy hill, and it rolled on its back and lied there quite still, seeming not to know what to do. At this point my mother says she suddenly became worried that the animal was weak from its three, maybe four days in her house with no food or water. She ran into her house and got a cracker, and when she came back to where the baby had just been, it was gone.

I had never had experience with baby possum, only with the ferocious adults. I live in Chicago, and had a cat who was always escaping it's "indoor cat" existance for an outdoor adventure when the door was left carelessly open. One night he got out, and I was in a new apartment, in a new part of town, where there were some fair-sized trees. It was dark, and I thought my cat might have ventured into one of these trees, and that I'd see his red-glaring stare back at me in the beam of the flashlight. What I soon discovered could only be described as horrific. Tens of possum -- I probably saw several hundred -- were crowded in every tree in the several yards I walked around in, their eyes shining red-wild-ferrel glow that was marsupial, not feline. It was suddenly apperant that Chicago -- at least this part of it -- was teaming with possum, that they were a hiding creature of the night. I knew they got into garbage, and had heard they ate rats, and that this latter fact was the reason they were tolerated, encouraged, even, in the city.

My friend Gwain, who later died, would rush out the back door of her house, in that same neighborhood every morning, in the dark, to get to the garage and into her car to go to work. She tried not to look, but sometimes she would hazard a glance, she told me, and see a possum, looking white in the blackness, frightening her greatly. This was a part of her routine.

And Jeffrey, who lived out in the country, once opened a drawer built into the cabinet beside the kitchen sink, where a possum was in wait, jutting out its shocking silver head and open pink mouth with sharp teeth, hissing loudly at him. He shoved the door closed immediately with all the force he had, and proceeded to grab large, heavy nails and nail the drawer shut with a hammer. This struck me as something only someone who was miserably afraid would do to keep something away from them. But I don't know the story, or if there is a story, of the possum after that.

I used to go to clubs with a friend when I first moved to the city. Early in the morning, coming home in the dark, we'd see possum crossing the streets with little babies lined up across their backs, or then their dead bodies strewn across the pavement, having been struck by cars. I remember thinking that there must be a crew of some kind that goes all around picking up this urban roadkill so as not to make a terrible mess after lying around a while unattended. I guess if someone talked to enough people, they could write a book on possum. My mother tells me her mother made possum with sweet potatoes as a special dish. This is about it for me.

These Guatamalan Blouses from the 70s

I was in Best Buy the other day, finally purchasing my first air conditioner ever, when a lovely young woman approached me, an employee leaving the store for lunch. I was wearing my thrift store Guatamalan Blouse, though I told her I had had one as a young college student in the early 70s. She explained to me that she works with other women writing on the internet about women in developing countries and the work they do, and that she always notices colorful, handmade work of Guatamalans. I assured her that the personal attention and beauty in such a garment was not wasted on me. This young woman squeezed my hand and said my name so sweetly when we were introducing each other, I was struck by her, and had a sense that there must be many y0ung, active people like her out there out there engaged in important things, I just don't hear of them. I wish I were around them more. I loved it that she reached out to me. I think this is a lucky blouse. It makes up for the horrible heat.