Bring the Rain

by JoAnn Franklin

  Then I waited while they considered.

  “Susan, do you know what TED did to keep power and give it away at the same time?” Susan was my researcher, and I loved watching her think.

  “TED is bigger than ever, so they must be doing something right,” Lynn said.

  “They decided that real power was in ideas worth spreading,” Susan said. “I read something recently about that organization, but it’s slow coming back to me. Something about how TED started selling ideas and then switched to giving ideas away.”

  “That’s what you’ve been trying to tell us TRI can do,” Lynn said. She took a sip of her wine and considered what Susan had just said.

  “Ideas aren’t just for those who have privileged access to them. Ideas are as common and numerous as blades of grass in a yard.”

  “And if power becomes a current instead of a currency, ideas can be spread around,” Susan said. “We’re moving into what some call a maker culture. That’s what you’re doing with TRI, Dart, but the Raindrops have let you down.”

  “No, you haven’t let me down. We’ve been doing this for five years, and we’ve reached a T in the road.”

  “TED still has the conference model, the old power”—Susan indicated the folders in front of us—“but alongside is the new power structure. They cloned baby TEDs. TEDx are local franchises that have popped up all over, and because of that, TED’s reach expanded.”

  “You’re saying that’s what we need to do with TRI.” Mary Beth leaned forward, interested now.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Instead of shutting TRI down, or trying to keep TRI small and elite, we need to open the think tank up, set up a content structure that others can follow, and let the power flow.”

  “But how?” Lynn asked. “TRI isn’t TED.”

  “It could be more. The trick is in teaching women how to see around corners and to give them permission to do so in a culture that restricts their adventures.”

  “Trouble there,” Susan said. “No one has used this platform to solve complex messy problems. It’s been used to generate economic returns, but you’re not after that, and to spread ideas, but you’re not after that either. You want to start a movement and challenge the power structures that have kept poverty in place.”

  “Someone has to. They’re not paying attention.” The clock sounded loud in the living room. It startled me. My grandmother’s antique cuckoo clock. Somebody must have wound it. “Which one of you started the old clock?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “Do you think we have a ghost?” Lynn grinned.

  “Maybe . . . maybe not. Could be a spring let loose. Or could be that the old clock thinks this is a capital idea.”

  “That’s the problem,” Susan said. “It will mess with capital. That’s one thing this new power shift hasn’t figured out yet. When power as currency goes by the wayside, so do the dollars.”

  “Is TED in trouble?” Mary Beth asked.

  “No, baby TEDs have made TED more popular, and people continue to pay for those events.”

  “Baby TRIs can funnel interest into TRI, open a wider audience to our reach.”

  Once I had made that happen, I would feel as if I deserved my inheritance. This house, I thought, looking around me, this could be TRI’s headquarters. My mother would have liked that.

  “We need a way to train older women who are on the scene,” I said, “but I haven’t found how to make that happen.”

  “Difficult problem,” Susan mused. “What do all of those women who live in all those forgotten towns have in common? What do women who live in urban poverty have in common?”

  “We’ve been here before,” I said. “Next you’ll be asking me why we should focus on women.” Before Susan could ask that question, I said, “Women and children are the ones who suffer. We should give women opportunities to solve their own problems, not dictate our solutions.”

  “Churches?” Lynn offered. “They all have churches.”

  “Won’t work. Religion is a philosophy of powerlessness,” Susan said.

  “Lots of religious fundamentalism in the Old South. Exploded during the Reconstruction,” I added. “Too bad because we could reach older women through churches.”

  “If not churches, where?”

  “Schools?”

  “Grandparents come to the games and the open houses, but little else.” I was beginning to think this would be impossible.

  “Quilting clubs, knitting groups, library groups?” Lynn said.

  “Some of these little towns don’t have a library, but libraries have books and people who read books like to think, to discuss, to explore . . . what about book clubs?”

  Susan’s question caught me by surprise. “Maybe I should contact those clubs at Anchor’s Pointe”—one of the more populated communities between Southport and Wilmington—“and talk to a few of those groups. Get feedback from those women and see if it would work. It might just be what we need to take TRI to the next level.”

  That’s where we left the discussion. When the cuckoo clock chimed again at midnight, I was still up, but I hadn’t been working. I missed Classy. If she were here, she’d say if the clock chimed eleven times and I was still behind my desk in the living room, I was to go to bed. The clock had chimed twelve times, and time was running out. I hadn’t devised a plan to make baby TRIs, even though I’d been sitting here thinking about what needed to happen. Nor had I devised a plan to save Ellen.

  My mind wouldn’t cooperate. Working with Anchor’s Pointe book clubs would be too much work. Nothing would come of it, and I’d be wasting my time because those women wouldn’t want to solve other people’s problems. I went to bed, prepared to forget all about expanding TRI.

  “Again? You don’t have anything prepared again?” Lea was furious.

  “It’s inexcusable, but I didn’t have time this weekend.” That was a lie. I hadn’t felt like working, and so I didn’t. I hadn’t felt like working for a long time now. Nothing about my current behavior made sense to me. With everything on my mind, this MOOC lecture was not a high priority. More importantly, it had never been my priority. Putting my briefcase on the desktop inside the small room Lea and I used to film the MOOC lectures, I found myself not caring that she was upset.

  That too wasn’t like the old me. “We can tape this afternoon, Lea. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “The students expect your lecture to be online by noon today at the latest. This schedule with Stanford leaves very little room for error. You assured me that wouldn’t be a problem.” She paused for breath. If her hair hadn’t been so tightly braided, she’d have been tearing it out by the roots. That she wanted to showed in a quick touch to the braid and then a little moue of frustration.

  “Postdoc students exist to make full professors look good, Lea.” I was kidding, but I shouldn’t have because she wasn’t amused.

  “What do you suggest I do?” I could tell she thought both my hands raised in exasperation—that universal gesture that said I’d done my best, and if it wasn’t good enough, then too bad—to be an exaggeration.

  “This isn’t like you.” Lea narrowed her eyes.

  “Can’t be conscientious all the time.” I started to gather up my things.

  “You can’t go. This tape has to be on the website later this morning.”

  “Should I read my latest research?”

  “You can read mine if you like. That would make you look good.”

  What did she mean by that? “Isn’t that what you just told me? Postdoc students exist to publish research that makes their professor look good—”

  I held up one hand to stop the tirade. “You know I didn’t mean it. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Something. My guess—” I paused to consider then said, “Aha, Hendrix.”

  “She says you’re using me to make yourself look good.”

  “I chose the most competent person I knew
to make sure this MOOC was done right. We make each other look good.” Or we would if I could get past the reluctance to prepare for this class. This weekend illustrated a pattern I didn’t like to see.

  Maybe just tiredness.

  Maybe not.

  “She said—” I shook my head to stop her, and Lea stared at me, the words dying in her throat.

  “Let me guess. She wants you to work with her, not me.” If Hendrix could get Lea to desert me, she’d use that to make me look bad.

  “She said,” Lea exaggerated the words with great patience, “that you didn’t care about the graduate students, or any students,” and I winced because my behavior this morning substantiated that.

  “She implied that postdocs like me would be tainted if they worked with you.”

  Translation: they wouldn’t be able to find a job. Professors traded on status, reputation, and credibility to establish trust as an expert—social proof, if you will, that one’s expertise is of value and said value can then be marketed into power and currency. Lea knew what she was risking in telling me what had transpired between them. Students didn’t take sides in fights between professors. She’d risked her career to protect me.

  I should feel ashamed of myself, but I didn’t feel anything at all.

  “I’m not a hero, Dr. Sommers. But this course”—she waved her hand at the camera that stood silent in front of me—“can make a difference in people’s lives. You needed to know so you can stop her.”

  Although I had nothing, I opened my briefcase. With any kind of luck, those notes I’d made on some current research would still be there. I’d stuffed them into the briefcase for safekeeping when I did another interview like the Oprah one, and hadn’t removed them. That had been four months ago, and the notes were still there—another clue that I wasn’t tracking quite right—tucked behind the textbook, Kahneman’s classic work.

  I took the notes and the book out as well, as a prop for this impromptu lecture. Smoothing out the papers, I smiled at Lea. “Get behind the camera, Lea. Let’s do this,” I said and hoped my confidence hid my despair because this wasn’t me. I was always prepared. Conscientiousness had made me successful.

  When she cued me up, I pasted a smile on my face and began. “In today’s lecture, we’re going deeper into the issue of Southern poverty and some of the beliefs that have kept it alive. As you’ve learned, beliefs capture us, keep us frozen, keep us comfortable, but not safe. We believe that poverty is normal, especially poverty in the Deep South, as it has been persistent across generations. We think it’s part of the culture. We’re wrong.

  “Some believe the Civil War plunged the South into this abyss. Recent research points to something different.

  “The first demographic of what Southern poverty looks like includes the homeless, single moms, widows, Hispanics, and African-Americans. No surprise there, right? And by the way, those demographics pretty much inform pockets of poverty in the United States. Four of those five groups grab headlines. But one group, other than Caucasians which should also be on the list, is overlooked by media, politicians, and advocate groups.

  “Think for a minute. Take a guess.” I paused for the briefest time of silence. “Some of you are right. It’s a little-known fact that forty percent of older women, primarily widows, live in poverty. Odd, isn’t it, that older women don’t make the headlines. We hear about the homeless, about single moms, about Hispanics and African-Americans, but not older women. Says something about how we see older women in the South and across the USA.

  “What differentiates the South’s poor is the persistence of poverty here. Eight trends have kept poverty alive and well in the South.” My thoughts went to Hendrix. Hendrix had grown up poor, and that’s the tie she’d used to pull Lea closer. That she had talked to Lea made me so mad—who else had she invited to confide the least little indiscretion? At least I was trying to do something about the situation while she criticized others to protect herself.

  “Professor?”

  Lea’s inquiry brought me back to the task at hand. She’d stopped the camera because I’d stopped talking.

  “I’m sorry, Lea, I was thinking about something else. Start the camera. I’ll continue.”

  I gathered my thoughts and went on. “Poverty damages the psyche, and that’s helped to keep the South’s poor entrenched in poverty. Add the lack of a minimum wage in five of the states, a lack of organized labor, low household incomes, lowest per capita spending by state and local governments, and a deficiency in preventative health care, and it’s hard to climb out of this situation.

  “I’ve been in the South now for a little over ten years, and I’ve grown to love Southern cooking. Hush puppies are my favorite.” I smiled at Lea’s expression. She didn’t consider my taste in Southern cooking to be pertinent. “I’ve eaten that gourmet delight at numerous restaurants across the Carolinas. You see, hush puppies are comfort food. Popping those little balls of fried dough in their mouths helps people cope with the challenges of being poor. It doesn’t take much money to whip up a batch of hush puppies, and the fat content alone satisfies, although there’s very little nutrition in that food item. But go to any restaurant on the coast, and you can’t help yourself when they put that basket of hot, melt-in-your-mouth goodness on the table. And if you add the honey butter—”

  “Dr. Sommers, stop,” Lea mouthed from behind the camera.

  “—it doesn’t matter what the research says, hush puppies have to be good for you.” I laughed as she meant me to, and said, “And the crew filming this lecture are going to abandon me and find hush puppies if I don’t move on.”

  That got a smile from Lea. I consulted my notes and said, “Southern food is a belief system that keeps Southerners content with their way of life. The research indicates that in their efforts to cope with the challenges of being poor, Southerners soothe themselves with food, cigarettes, guns, and religion, specifically the idea that Paradise awaits elsewhere but not here.”

  Lea’s eyes grew rounder with the mention of religion and her hand movements urged me to be careful. Religion was fundamental to Southerners’ psyches. I took ten minutes to point out how many of the South’s poor pray for the strength to endure until they can return to the Promised Land.

  “My brother, David, who lives on the family farm in southern Illinois and is not poor, is a very religious man. When I talk to him, he’s always in a hurry to get to Paradise. He believes Paradise awaits him in the hereafter. It’s that looking backward—or is it forward?—to the Garden of Eden, seeking a return to plenty, that keeps the poor unwilling to do something about their circumstances. Praying for the strength to endure anchors the poor to their life here on earth. If all one has the energy for is to endure, then the status quo psychological trap kicks in to keep you comfortable.”

  Halfway into that explanation I realized that Brown Bear wasn’t staring at me. I’d left him in the office.

  Maybe I was getting better.

  Maybe worse things are happening to you than Brown Bear.

  I hadn’t thought of Ellen for a while, the apathy, avoiding work, none of that was like who I was. Maybe Hendrix had worn me down. If so, I should do something about that. As the cuckoo clock chimed last night, time was running out.

  Lea’s frantic motions meant I should talk . . . not think.

  “Beliefs are tricky things. Each of the four culprits I’ve mentioned—food, guns, cigarettes, and religion—provides the comfort needed to dampen awareness of how close the poor live to chaos. Research has identified all of them as crutches that keep people comfortable. Although comfortable is the wrong word. These four things make it bearable to be poor in the South.”

  Ten minutes later, I wrapped up the lecture with Nuland’s concept of the human spirit as an evolutionary enrichment. “For too long, we’ve allowed social class to differentiate them from us, but the poor are no different than you or me,” I said. “Social class is a constructed, accounting device that cannot diminish the psy
chosexual universality that makes all of us human, nor does it dampen our need for mutuality. Some of you in this class grew up in poverty. Some of you are still impoverished. We’ve provided fee waivers for those in financial need because of generous donors who believe in what equality can be. We know poverty is not contagious. We believe poverty can be eradicated.

  “The first misbelief we must address in our search for a solution to this persistent, messy problem of poverty in the South is the belief that the poor are different. Poverty could happen to any one of us. Once that misbelief is gone, we can harness insight to address the underlying problem and not the symptoms most of us focus on.”

  I smiled into the camera and paused to let them know that I was about to wind up the class. “For this week, Lea and her crew have set up chat rooms to monitor your discussions about today’s lecture, the eight trends that keep persistent poverty alive and well in the South and the belief that the poor are different from you and me. Read Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow and listen to any and all interviews that you can find with Sherwin Nuland. His thoughts on the human spirit—which is not to be confused with the soul or consciousness—as an evolutionary enrichment, a biological underpinning that maintains equilibrium, will jumpstart your thinking down paths that might lead to insight about poverty.

  “I look forward to reading your thoughts from today’s lecture, and I’ll see you online.”

  Lea twisted some knobs, backed the camera away from me, and stepped out from behind it to hug me before I could stop her. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You nailed it, Dr. Sommers.” She released me but didn’t stop grinning. “That lecture was totally awesome. I don’t care what Dr. Hendrix says about you, she’s wrong. Sincerity like yours can’t be faked.”

  I backed out of her embrace to conceal the awkwardness I felt. For a lesson I hadn’t prepared, I’d hit upon some insights, and I felt good about that. I’d always believed that science forced people to examine accepted beliefs, and that’s where leaps of insight could originate, in the thinking and questioning, using both logic and emotion to provoke new thoughts toward solutions. It sure as heck beat paddling around the same whirlpool of accepted biases.