Trees, Steve Loved

Steve's Words:

The driver, the
trees, the sun and the seasons.

Yesterday I named three favorite winter trees at 86th and 5th Ave -
"reaching, curling and spreading".

I've gotten so I love trees. When I first got my glasses in about the fifth grade, I came out of the
optometrist's to realize that I could actually see the individual leaves. I had come to see trees as little kids draw
them - circles of green on trunks of brown.

It was before disease stripped the Midwest of its American elms, which really did make cool arched boulevards of our
modest main streets. Old towns now look like denuded suburbs.

Before that only many decades or the big winds near tornados
could kill off a few of them.

In my backyard there was a huge one which took several kids
to touch hands around.

When we learned to get to its lower limbs with a rope, we
began to build a tree house in a very high crotch. My dad took over and built a
big, solid one, much lower down. For beams he used the varnished hardwood
pieces of a big old pipe organ, which had just been replaced in the next door
church where he was pastor. He did not view little kid helpers as actually
helpful or safe, which I understand, but also regret.

Today, in New York City, I often reverse "you can’t see the forest
for the trees". Here they stand
more isolated, individual.

In winter we can see the fabulous differences of their limb
structure. Since they've been cared for and pruned over their decades of life,
I sometimes wonder if an old arborist could say, "Now that's pruned in the
Mendelssohn manner. And you can see O'Neal's work in that one."

The isolation and care of our trees in Central and Riverside Park and around the Natural History museum may
explain why we enjoy some of the few stands of these magnificent trees which
remain in North America.

We all enjoy the first leaves in the spring. The green that
will later seem uniform at first has great various beauty, just as the fall
dying leaves draw bus tours to Vermont,
but may be less noticed in the midst of our city.

Then of course there are the many stages of a tree's cycle
of renewal that each species present to us as the days grow longer, and then
shorter.

If we look up close, we can see the wonderful little
structures that nature has constructed over ages to give each tree the best
chance to live on.

Horse Chestnuts are my favorites. Lindens are good too.

As well as the changes over the warmer months, each day
trees present many different views to us. At high noon, the shade of their
leaves cools us, but obscures the tree's details.

But as the sun lowers, its light cuts between the leaves and
lets us glimpse the structure that we love so much in winter.

These are things I've learned to see over time as I grew
older. Who says there’s nothing to look
forward to. Just like the little piece
of white paint that looks like a gold ring on the finger of a Rembrandt
portrait.
---------------------------

Sharings from Bernie Tuchman


TWO POEMS/MEDITATIONS FOR STEVE

1. Stella D'Oro

Steve
gallant warrior

weighing in

uneven battle

people
vs.
capital

Steve's weapons --
passion and imagination,
creative and applied intelligence
untiring work

a fighting chance
is all you get

daring
transgressive

seeing it all
in another way

that solid
confining wall

how things are done

perhaps a mirage

dissolving before
the indiscreet charm
of the
humanizing moment

subverting
the ordered
foundations
of institutions

spirit
released
mingling and renewed
in solidarity

knowing we are one
with each other
and ourselves
in that moment

unstoppable



 2.

  Steve inventing
new plans
and schemes

everything in play

discovering paths
intoxicating possibility

tethered
by comrades and friends
who are buoyed
by the rising





Bernie Tuchman February 2014   THOUGHTS ABOUT STEVE


From the one time I went with Steve to Iowa to visit his family, I remember wonderful cooking from his mother. I also remember his mother describing some of her rounds as a minister’s wife, like visiting the sick; and how dismissive Steve was of this, saying of course she’s a wonderful person but all that doesn’t do a damn bit of good. He told her that what she was doing was not enough, because it wasn’t addressing the root causes of people’s suffering; but he was having a hard time getting that message through to her, which was very vexing to him.

What a wonderful irony that Steve ended up as a self-identified Good Samaritan, whose endless individual acts of kindness for strangers define him as much as anything in his later life (as you see in his essay “Smile”).





His secret weapon: Steve’s key to getting into offices was his genuine sweet talk with secretaries, because he really was interested, and he really wanted them to feel good. And they could give him entry. That’s something that he used through his life in union organizing. How subversive he was of the silos of authority: people had their roles in structures, but Steve had an independent personal relationship with people that took them out of those roles. His power was that he made people feel valued.





After I left Chicago, I didn’t see Steve frequently, but I would hear about what he was doing; and now I am amazed when I re-read his powerful “eyewitness account” in Workers Power of a nationwide Teamster freight strike in 1976. Steve focuses on Detroit, and it is like battlefield reporting by a war correspondent. When the company tried to use non-union workers to break the strike, men came in from all over to stop that. “Nothing with more than four wheels came across the bridge from Canada. To protect their jobs from scab outfits at the airports, the rank and file kept up a continuous battle to shut the whole airport down.” This is vivid, concrete illustration of the solidarity that gives confidence to others and builds a movement. He was writing about it not just to portray it but to understand it, and at a level of detail that was not propaganda or gloss but a tool so that it could be replicated successfully. 
 HYPERLINK "https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/workerspower/WP-Teamster-Special-Supplement-undated.pdf" \t "_blank"
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/workerspower/WP-Teamster-Special-Supplement-undated.pdf
 HYPERLINK "https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/workerspower/wp166.pdf" \t "_blank" https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/workerspower/wp166.pdf




Steve didn’t “keep calm” but he did “carry on”…





Bernie Tuchman February 2014

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Thanks for your input to the Steve Blog. Learning about him through one another's stories is something we can continue to enjoy, beyond his passing. May his vision, work and passions live on through our paths, and be invigorated by our stories, sharings, and dialogues.
Thanks, from niece Audrey Kindred

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