Description:
Near the entrance to the Axiom Art Gallery of the MBTA's Orange Line Green Street station is a shiny, black three-sided granite slab. It is easy to spot and intriguing. On this monolith-like slab nearest the corner of Amory and Green Street, two literary texts are engraved. The words are easy to read and the shine makes reflections easily discernible.
A monolith, according to dictionary.com, is "a single piece of stone" (2) or "something having a uniform, massive, redoubtable, or inflexible quality or character" (3). If you have a chance to read the text engraved upon the stone, note the unspoken. The silence reflects the monolith's redoubtable character and is the story's most effective way of conveying this admirable attribute.
About the Author:
"In the first project of its kind in the country, Derby, VT resident Daria MonDesire has been named one of 18 New England poets and writers whose work will be inscribed in granite and permanently installed in the nine stations of Boston's new Orange Line Subway system" (Newport Daily Express, November 12, 1987).
Daria graduated from Bennington College with a B.A. in literature and received a M.S. from Simmons College. Her other literary accomplishments include Screams, a collection of poetry and short stories. Her most well-known work, an essay entitled Stripped of More than My Clothes, is about her experience getting strip-searched by US Customs agents. It is used extensively in college composition classes and appears in 75 Arguments, an anthology edited by Alan Ainsworth.
Daria, in addition to her literary accomplishments, has done journalistic work that reflects her aptitude for social critique. This work includes a condemnation of the fast-food industry and a questioning of US tourism practices. She is still active as a writer.
Response:
On the Green Street monolith is engraved the story of Miss Ida, the main character of a prose piece called Reflections by Daria MonDesire. MonDesire's narrator starts the story with a description of Miss Ida's eyes, "midnight bullets," then relates rumors of a young, intriguing, and beautiful Miss Ida singing in New Orleans while in love with a sailor. Yet at the time of the story, Miss Ida is much older.
With her friends, the youthful narrator watches cars vie for parking spaces every Saturday night so their drivers and passengers can attend the Sunset, a popular live-music venue in Roxbury. The normality of this tradition is interrupted when proposals to turn the venue into an all-night pool hall and gambling establishment are introduced. As she continues her parents involvement in speaking against unwanted developments, the narrator gets involved with protests to the new venue.
Miss Ida attends all the community action meetings, but she remains a silent observer throughout the process. The community efforts prove futile. Plans to open the all-night establishment remain. It is on the new venue's opening night when the 'redoubtable' and 'inflexible' character of the Green Street monument triumph in the as-yet silent Miss Ida.
With the following monologue, Miss Ida embodies the intrigue and beauty of her rumored past. She prevents the opening of the new venue when, standing firm and blocking the entrance with folded arms, she says emphatically:
"Anyone who thinks he's bad enough to walk into this pool room has got to go through me first. And I ain't movin'. You're not thinkin' right if you think you can come down here with that sleazy stuff. This ain't no dive, it's a neighborhood, full of decent, struggling people. Not one of you has time to be slouch' around here. Go home to your families. Go home and get yourselves together. Then come see me about hanging all day".
Wow, I thought, as goosebumps speckled my forearms and I started thinking how much good would ensue if each individual became more like Miss Ida. I shivered a bit in the late March dampness and said a silent "thank-you" to Miss Ida. Whether real or fictive, she dominates this story with an indomitable strength and uncompromising spirit. Without the allure of her past glitz and glamour, the magnetism of her character bespeaks a lasting presence that matters much more than any rumors of her past. MonDesire uses Miss Ida to exemplify that great strength of character that was and is living in the neighborhood around the monument.
Miss Ida is a good model for anyone that happens through the Green Street Station whether by train, foot or bike on the Southwest Corridor. Her story provides an opportunity for the compelling interaction between any fortunate reader who experiences their reflection in it at Green Street.
By Cassandra Nicholson.
