Angry Poodle
Thursday, June 11, 2009
TIMING IS EVERYTHING: It had to be one of the weirder cosmic coincidences to hit the South Coast in many moons. About two weeks ago, Hanne Sonquist — a major force in Santa Barbara educational circles as director of the Starr King Parent-Child Workshop for 20 years — died after a nasty 10-year battle with cancer. That same week, the bronze statue of Thomas Starr King — the five-foot-tall Unitarian ass-kicker after whom the preschool where Sonquist worked was named — was removed from its place of prominence in the Senate Capitol Rotunda, where it had represented California since 1913. In Starr King’s place went a seven-foot statue of former president Ronald Reagan, once a mere mortal, but who has since become so sanctified that the only thing not yet named after him is a professional sports franchise.
Angry Poodle
I understand that Republicans are especially desperate for heroes these days after what George W. Bush did to the country. But when a guy who sold weapons of mass destruction to Iran, then an official enemy of the United States, so he could raise the funds needed to wage a clandestine war in Central America — because Congress passed a law denying him access to public revenues — looks great by comparison, you’ve plumbed the depths of rock bottom. Reagan was the classic aloof-but-sunny loner type, whose personal lifestyle frequently was at odds with the family-values agenda his party publicly espoused. Running up staggering deficits while preaching thrift, Reagan proved that with a plucky enough personality, you could get away with anything. Above all else, Reagan embodied the American credo of having your cake and eating it, too. Certainly compared to Bush II’s ruthless incompetence and condescending stupidity, Reagan ranks as a global sage — minor impeachable offenses notwithstanding — after whom every new airport, freeway, post office, and detention facility should properly be named. Aside from homophobia, about the only thing currently unifying Republicans is the luster of Reagan’s legacy, which should not be confused with the legacy itself. I know Hanne enjoyed a sick joke as well as the next person, but she deserved better. Certainly Starr King did.
In a state perpetually intoxicated by George Jetson fantasy futures, California has always been quick to discard its past. Little wonder no one knows squat about Starr King, who, soaking wet, weighed 130 pounds, and on his tip-toes stood five feet tall. A Unitarian minister, King was a supernova on the New England lecture circuit — which passed for American Idol in the 19th century — before moving to San Francisco in 1859. Then as now, Unitarians were devout, if gentle, troublemakers, and King did much to foster that reputation. He spoke out against slavery at a time when all four of California’s congressional representatives supported slavery and when a pro-slavery state Supreme Court chief justice would shoot and kill an abolitionist politician in a duel. Hitting every mining camp, saloon, and spittoon, King wore himself to a frazzle campaigning for the election of Abraham Lincoln and against California forming a new pro-slavery Republic. Lincoln managed to take California by a hair, and King is credited for keeping the Land of Milk and Honey on the pro-union side. Utterly exhausted, King died in 1864.
By the time Hanne — a Quaker from Reagan’s home state of Illinois — moved to Santa Barbara in 1970, the Starr King Parent-Child Workshop already was up and operating. But from 1974-1994, she and co-conspirator Rachel Johansen made that place hum, spoiling children and parents alike with a quality of care that belied the low price. While others tend to talk endlessly of “community,” these two created it on a daily basis with no rhetorical fanfare. Parents could not just drop off their kids and go; we were expected to volunteer one morning a week. It also meant attending Monday night meetings, where — if you weren’t distracted by the screaming excruciation inflicted by the metal folding chairs — you might actually learn what you could, and could not, reasonably expect from your worrisome and mystifying offspring. For those of us who refuse to read owners’ manuals, this instruction proved reassuring in the extreme. As is the case when perfect strangers with similar interests are forced to occupy the same space at the same time — week after week — connections get made, friendships happen. Many last. Especially for those separated from their extended families, this cocoon of connection is invaluable. Throughout the years, thousands of Starr King kids would be dangerously inculcated with the happy delusion that they mattered, their parents similarly emboldened with high hopes and high expectations. In a universe ruled by fear, friction, gravity, and inertia, none of this just happens. Someone makes it happen. In my family’s universe, Hanne was that someone.
Then, of course, reality intrudes. Toddlers become teens, parents become fascists. Increasingly, I find myself remembering when Richard Nixon’s criminally disgraced Attorney General John Mitchell suggested that crime rates could be reduced by locking up young men between certain hormonally charged ages. The theory behind this policy — known as preventative detention — was that by jailing young people before they committed crimes, you could stop them from committing the crimes for which they would eventually be jailed. Naturally, I was horrified and appalled at the time. Now, I’m not so sure Mitchell had it that wrong. Maybe I need a refresher course.
Hanne retired from Starr King back in 1994. She remained very much plugged in and continued to walk her walk in her cheerfully brisk, no-nonsense fashion. Last week, after Thomas Starr King was removed from his perch in the Rotunda, his statue was shipped off to the Sacramento statehouse, where he can watch the self-destruction of the state he’s credited with saving. Hanne’s reaction, I’m guessing, would have been a short, dismissive laugh. But she wouldn’t break stride. She was too practical for symbolic outrage. In the meantime, Ronald Reagan can hold sway over the Capitol Rotunda. But in Santa Barbara, Starr King still is deluding generations of young children that they matter, still helping parents figure out their kids. Out of all this still comes a sense of connection, alive and kicking. So who needs a stinking statue anyway?