Minnesota author, Carol Bly died December 21, 2007 of complications from ovarian cancer. She was 77. A public memorial service has been set for her. She will be honored from 2 to 5 p.m. Feb. 10 at Hamline University‘s Sundin Music Hall, 1536 Hewitt Ave., St. Paul. A program will begin at 3 p.m.
I often am asked if I am related to Carol, sharing the same last name. I have to answer that, I may have family ties to her ex-husband, Robert, but I consider Carol a good friend. I first met Carol in the late seventies when I wandered over to their farm near Madison to visit Robert. In 1975, I started teaching English in neighboring Milan, Minnesota. We attended the same Episcopal Church in Appleton – Gethsemene. She had just begun writing her “Letters from the Country” and even gave brief mention of a sermon I gave to the small congregation when I passed out copies of Blake’s “Clod and Pebble” to read. Some day I’ll tell that story it is a wonderful memory of rural small town life.
When I bought a first edition of her book she inscribed, “David Bly, who has one of the best gifts of good luck there is – a real instinct for seriousness and a real curiosity about fairness and unfairness in human affairs. With love & admiration.” Carol Bly. No doubt Carol could have described herself in these words as well.
Carol was someone with a larger than life imagination who understood, that most evil in the world is caused by those, who have little or no aptitude for imagining. If they did they would find it difficult to perpetuate the violence against others who are people just like them.
What I admired about Carol was she believed that writing must have a purpose and moral consciousness that asks difficult questions and seeks to make our thinking and life better. She would tell me stories in great detail about heroes she admired who endured pain and hardship in the fight against oppression and cruelty. But she didn’t just talk or write about it she wanted to influence the society around her.
She believed that people could become gentler and more generous if they were taught empathy if they could see beauty in the everyday world around them. If the wisdom of psychology could be used not just to make the afflicted well – but to make the well people better – then perhaps there was hope we could teach people to see a better world. It was in part seeing education as something far beyond tests and regimented learning but a way of enlightening us, feeding our souls. Opening the world of beauty that exists all around us. As she describes in a public television interview remarking that she could see beauty in dry grass against the snow because it reminded her of how Durer drew a blade of grass he had seen. Seeing that beauty allows us to see that we are also beautiful and so are those around us and so must be those who live far away on the other side of the world – and perhaps we will be less likely to think of dropping bombs on them if we can imagine them possessing the same kind of beauty all about them.
When I knew her best she was reading Chekhov and said if I could just write one story as well as Chekhov I would feel my life had been well lived. I am sure it was the way that Chekhov could describe the people and life around him in a moral context that she loved. Carol is some one who touched and challenged almost every one she encountered in my mind that is the mark of a great teacher. She was a doer who walked the talk. Most things she said she wanted to do she did. Years ago we talked about creating an anthology of stories and poems that could teach others her ideas about fairness, empathy and ethics. The result was “Changing The Bully Who Rules The World.”
Carol believed the world could be changed but she also believed it would be very hard work. So she did not waste time getting started on it. She described herself as a pessimist but she was driven by hope and the good she saw in the world as she is quoted in this comment I recently read:
“How can I take the dent in the lid of a canning jar well-sealed, or the plain look of surprise on the face of a cow, when you meet it on the highway and it will not turn aside, or the way snow, when it first falls in the mountains, is so fragile you are afraid to touch it, at all – and turn these things through my writing into something clear enough, and passionate enough, that teen-age boys in America will not have to go do a war somewhere in order to feel alive.”
– Carol Bly, as remembered by writer Kim Stafford, of Portland, Ore., from a talk Bly gave in Casper, Wyo., in the 1980s. It was a sentence he memorized in one pass and later confirmed by letter with her. “Dear Carol, may I use this sentence of yours?” he wrote. “Tell everyone,” she replied.
In my own busy work I lost contact with her. I did not know she had cancer. I wish I had had a chance to let her know how much I admired her work. Earlier last year my brother passed away and Carol’s passing reminds me how easy it is to let things get in the way of true friendship.
If you want to read more about her you can visit her website
or the many obituaries that have appeared. StarTribune. MPR. WCCO.
The Loft.
There are even a couple of videos you can download:
She was a courageous woman with a wild imagination and a joyful belief in the possible, as captured by this comment from friend, Greg Booth:
On a bright summer day when I was a teenager, Carol and her family arrived at my family’s place in a VW microbus. Carol brought out a strange, layered contraption from the depths of the van. “Well, you see, it’s a pie rack,” she explained. “It allows one to carry a stack of pies without crushing any of them, and it saves space.” She had built it, probably while the pies cooled, from scrap wood. In the next few minutes, we were discussing how to check the points on the VW, which wasn’t running well, and we devised a way to hook up a 12 volt bulb with some wires to do the testing. In another few minutes, we were designing, in our heads, a submarine to explore the depths of Kabekona Lake. All these things seemed equally achievable with Carol, with her energy and enthusiasm, and it didn’t quite matter that we never built the sub.
Good travels Carol, I already miss you. With love and admiration.