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Sheltering Walls

Bare Trees in Fog
Writer's picture: Marie LaureMarie Laure

Back home in my homeland, the place of my birth, may or may not in the end be my “home." Where is home? That question is burning in the minds of many like wildfire around the world. One does not choose the homeland, but, one may choose a home far away from the homeland. My grandparetns did so in the early 1900’s. I do not know how these two natives of Quebec City, Canada, came to decide to leave their homeland during the early years of their marriage with their then small family. Their new home became New England, which once upon a time had become a new home for those fleeing England in hope of a fresh beginning far from oppression. Upon making landfall, those immigrants soon found their new home had been "discovered" long before by peoples who had lived on the land for 14,000 years. The English had followed on the heels of the Spanish who had landed to the South where other Native peoples had lived for centuries with their own ways and beliefs.


My own grandparents left their homeland for myriad reasons and never went back. Their assimilation into the American lifestyle was only half-baked as they retained their foods, their language, their religion while sending their many children out into a different world. The label that they as French Canadians in America wore was: Franco-American as they settled into “Little Canada” within a mill city. On the periphery of their neighborhood lived the “Greek lady” and “those Irish," all immigrants from different homelands. Nobody mingled. The French had their schools and churches as did the others. Sometimes disparaging remarks were spoken behind closed doors because of some noticeable difference in the others’ way of life. Each of these ethnic groups suffered discrimination upon arriving from their homeland in the place they hoped to call home. Someone was always feeling unwelcome. And, so it goes.


By the time I was grown, it was the Cambodians and Vietnamese emigrating to escape war torn homelands. My older relatives, all immigrants themselves, seemed to forget the U.S. role in fighting those faraway wars and resented these immigrants for not speaking English, for opening stores with unpronouncable names and for selling food nobody (meaning themselves) had ever heard of let alone eaten. What had changed was that now they were no longer the “other” having risen to a different rung in the pecking order that established them as bonefide Americans. How soon they had forgotten that experience of being the outsider ostracized for customs that were uniquely their own: on Friday they still ate fish or pizza due to their faith practice; on Saturday they shopped at Cote’s for pork pies and beans; on Sundays they served up dinner at midday following Mass. Christmas, Easter, and birthdays had accompanying rituals they shared amongst themselves.

All of us have different heritages having come from many corners of the globe. Mostly we want to continue to wear this proudly while simultaneously calling America home. Is it possible under the oppressive weight of today's cancel culture? Heritage speaks of something different from home and homeland. Heritage is embedded in one’s soul and psyche. Heritage is one’s roots. When you embrace your heritage you not only learn to accept your own differences, but also those of others and through this, there's a heightened sense of all-around acceptance and ability to remain open-minded to other cultures, says Elizabeth Alvarado. If only it were so.


Today, as we witness a deluge of immigrants on an inhumane, semi-barricaded Southern border, we see “others” rather than ourselves in those worn out shoes. My own namesake, my grandmother, had traveled alone from Quebec City to Lowell, Massachusetts with two small children while pregnant. She had to disembark along the way to have her baby. She spoke no English and held in her hand a piece of paper with her new address where her husband waited for his family. She was no different than others choosing to come to “the land of the free” today. Clearly, this is true only for those who made a free choice but not for the ones who were captured and transported against their will. These human beings enslaved or brought here as migrants to work, do not share this story. Theirs is unique by comparison. If given the choice, many of them would have returned to their own homeland on another continent. They are still waiting for what my grandparents came to expect: their turn to become true Americans with all the implied rights and freedom. But before that can happen hard truths must be told.


“This land is my land, this land is your land,” is not being sung these days by every American. Instead, it is being claimed by some who believe this is true only for themselves. They resent others while forgetting they, too, arrived here in the same way as descendants from another homeland. The resentment reserved for anyone who does not look the same, dress the same, speak the same, believe the same, has stoked fear of being replaced and outnumbered by them. That perceived threat throws fuel on volatile culture wars spreading across OUR homeland like wildfires.


Nobody can claim this land as my land and not your land, without marginalizing someone.The first peoples, the indigenous, know this better than anyone. Those Franco Americans, Irish, Greek, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and all other descendants of immigrants eventually found their place one after the other, albeit, with a modicum of acceptance at first. Everyone else deserves nothing less.


We the people are the embodied homeland. It belongs to all, not some, not one over another. Nobody can truthfully claim the land of the free and the home of the brave as mine only, because we each belong like all the others who came before and will continue to come.


The Wailing Wall

Salvadore Dali

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Writer's picture: Marie LaureMarie Laure

It's so easy to stumble into a cafe on every corner in this place. I have done just that most days with journal in hand becoming a regular at the Kaffee KATHE named for famed neighborhood sculptor, Kathe Kollwitz. She lived on this street during the old days and ways. Her works represented the common folk who were poor both in means and in spirit. A huge self-portrait bronze sculpture overlooks the ping pong tables in the Kollwitzplatz park where children gather day and evening with their families who as most people in the neighborhood seem to be of upper middle class. Kathe would not recognize the place. It's easy to forget the troubles of the world when life is good.

Artists and writers are often the ones to draw us back to the issues that weigh on the shoulders of so many. We each have a share in that burden given the givens of our times: poverty/wealth disparity, climate crisis, political strife, to name but a few. It's easy to look the other way while downing a cappuccino on a lovely summer day (the past month has been spring-like). Kathe must have known this typical summertime weather even while she worked diligently to drive home a point for those who worked to merely survive. Tons of bronze vis a vis the lightness of being on today's breezy Kollwitzstrasse is a perfect metaphor for our times.


Looking the other way is an ancient story. The Greek myth tells of Atlas looking the other way while Zeus loaded the world onto his shoulders. From that moment Atlas had no choice, he was forever to bear the burden, literally, of carrying the world on his shoulders. When there is no escape, no exit ramp, looking the other way is not an option. We all know this instinctively, but, it's easy to look the other way, nevertheless.


When I decided to write this blog from Berlin to look at my place in the world from another place in the world, I didn't have any idea what might come of it. The weekly missives have given me a brief reflection before returning home. Now that I have completely emerged from my COVID cocoon, I know I cannot go back into its coziness. It took a lot to come out of the quiet safetiness I had found there during those three years. I had been reticent about embarking on a first international trip after so many months at home. It was a "now or never" moment. No regrets now as I say bye to Berlin.


It's easy to look away towards home. It's not so easy to look away from the people in the neighborhood whose lives I have intersected with daily. I see the women here working in their self-owned shops, like the two millennials who told me in perfect English that during COVID they made new choices to take their talents into the community as a seamstress and leather designer of the most beautiful bags this side of Italy! And, the unforgettable Lisa below, who added an extra apple strudel to my market bag as a gift when we said good-bye and took a photo standing outside her stall in a thunderstorm. Then, the cafe women who smiled at me with a friendly "Guten Tag" never seeming to mind how long I sat writing this blog. They are all part of the story that belongs to Berlin. Each of these women, around my daughter's age, carries a weight that Kathe would speak to if she were here today: It's not easy to be a woman in the world whether in Berlin or the US. It never has been easy.


My mother worked as a "mill girl" in harsh factory conditions at the weaving loom fifteen hours a day when she was a teen. Her mother, my name sake, Marie Laure, bore fifteen children, one of them on a train trip while emigrating from her homeland of Quebec. My 1960's life opened opportunities that neither had, yet, as I approach seventy years, I am witnessing those hard won rights fought over three generations disappearing for my granddaughters in their early twenties. It is not easy to look the other way when it comes close to home.


Returning home means more to me than changing location. I have changed, too. I am no longer the activist I once was, partly because there is too much violence in a country where guns outnumber people! But, as Kathe Kollwitz and many others knew, there is another way: "The pen is mightier than the sword". I'll not put down my blog pen when I return, and I expect to be a voice that speaks for those who feel weighed down by the world. This blog will have to go beyond the comfort of my website to speak truth to power. I'll take that risk. I hope that as a reader, you will add your comments to the blogs that will be shared in a larger community. It's easy not to, but please do.


Auf Weidersehen, for now.







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Writer's picture: Marie LaureMarie Laure

One of these days I will have to go back to the "state" of Florida where I will not only encounter the heat, but the hotbed of politics.


Whenever I have picked up an international newspaper here, it never fails that there is a story about the latest law imposed by the Governor. Today, three of my beloved New England states where immigrants live are no longer validated to drive in Florida since DeSantis slapped a new law on their licenses in HIS state. Meanwhile, another Florida resident, and DeSantis' only viable opponent in a run for the Presidency, faces state and federal law suits while simultaneously campaigning to consolidate powers of the presidency. He'll get away with it if we are not careful! (See NYT, July 17).


So now what? Where to live? The favored choices are either burning up or drowning under deluges of rising rivers. No place to run! To live as I have these past several weeks in a new place, requires accepting limitations in language, on connections with loved ones and abiding by those laws of leaders in the adopted country. An Englishman said to me: "America IS already Great! Always has been." Most of the Germans I have encountered in my multicultural neighborhood when learning that I am an American, smile and say, "Have a nice day!" I see a yellow smiley face behind their words. They do not say, America is Great. They know a thing or two that we Americans have yet to learn about power.


There is a long through line in German history that started with the Prussian Empire and continues into the twenty-first century. It can be summarized succinctly in the the stories of Schonhausen Schloss ( The Beautiful Palace) in the photo. It was built as the summer palace for Frederick the Great's wife, Elizabeth Christine, as part of their arranged marriage. He lived in the City Palace in Berlin. The two were seen together there for official state gatherings, but never at the summer palace which Frederick did not frequent. It was, however, full of invited guests, mostly women, during the fifty years while Elizabeth was alive. Afterward, during the Nazi reign it became a store house for what was called "degenerate" art, or more factually, confiscated art from those people sent away by Hitler. After his suicide, the German people were separated by that infamous Wall between East and West until 1989. The Palace, like many of the great art museums, was in the East. At that time, it became the residence and office of the President of the German Democratic Republic. He continued to add to the palace's guest list. These names are on the short list of those who were invited and stayed in the guestroom: Brezhnev, Castro, Gaddafi, Arafat, Ceaucescu, and lastly in 1989 before the Wall was torn down, Gorbachev and his wife, unlike Frederick and his. With that the through line concludes and reunification begins.


I wandered the beautiful gardens wondering what might have been discussed in those rooms between the East German President and those terrorist dictators? It sends shivers just to imagine them meeting, let alone their conversations.


The palace is outside downtown Berlin far from public view. The surrounding buildings were offices for the GDR, and included many more guest rooms. None of these buildings or the palace were bombed in World War II because they were out of range, as were those nefarious characters who gathered there years later. No records exist, as far as I know, detailing those meetings, even as the current museum prominently displays a scroll of names dating back decades. The powerful prevailed throughout this long story line. Germans know what we Americans are coming to learn about power.


In the meantime, and it is a very "mean" time, back in Florida, power is on the front burner. When DeSantis won his first term as Governor, his earliest legislation was in favor of protecting the Everglades. I thought then, he deserved a chance. That was before the power of the presidency grabbed him and his wife, "Cruella" ( DeVille) DeSantis, one of Disney's most infamous female characters, by the throat. Speaking of the hand that feeds many, many people in HIS state, Disney threw down the gauntlet over another law DeSantis created restricting gay rights. That list of restrictive laws has grown to be as long as the list of dictators named on the scroll.


There seems to be no end when going down that road to power, that is until something unexpected shuts it down, like people tearing down a wall one night! Power looks indestructible, but there are always weaknesses to be found.


One sculpture that stood out to me in the vast museum collections owned by Germany, is of Achilles, the famed mythological warrior. We all know the story and refer to weaknesses in a person as their "Achilles heel" alluding to the hero's demise. I circled that perfectly built marble sculpture of Achilles holding his shield and wearing a helmet. I looked to see that heel at the end of his raised leg . . . the foot was gone! It didn't end well for Achilles and we can hold that thought as we move ahead in our own power struggles knowing everyone has a weakness.


For every threat barked out by powerful men du jour, there is a vulnerability waiting to be discovered. DeSantis' will be discovered most likely by his biggest nemesis, then HIS story will become just another footnote.


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© 2023 by Marie Laure

​Six Stages of Pilgrimage:

  • The Call:

  • The opening clarion of any spiritual journey. Often in the form of a feeling or some vague yearning, a fundamental human desire: finding meaning in an overscheduled world somehow requires leaving behind our daily obligations. Sameness is the enemy of spirituality.

  • The Separation:

  • Pilgrimage, by its very nature, undoes certainty. It rejects the safe and familiar. It asserts that one is freer when one frees oneself from daily obligations of family, work, and community, but also the obligations of science, reason, and technology.

  • The Journey:

  • The backbone of a sacred journey is the pain and sacrifice of the journey itself.  This personal sacrifice enhances the experience; it also elevates the sense of community one develops along the way.

  • The Contemplation:

  • Some pilgrimages go the direct route, right to the center of the holy of holies, directly to the heart of the matter. Others take a more indirect route, circling around the outside of the sacred place, transforming the physical journey into a spiritual path of contemplation like walking a labyrinth.

  • The Encounter:

  • After all the toil and trouble, after all the sunburn and swelling and blisters, after all the anticipation and expectation comes the approach, the sighting. The encounter is the climax of the journey, the moment when the traveler attempts to slide through a thin veil where humans live in concert with the Creator.

  • The Completion and Return:

  • At the culmination of the journey, the pilgrim returns home only to discover that meaning they sought lies in the familiar of one's own world. "Seeing the place for the first time . . ."

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