Tested by Toads and Frogs

I feel sympathetic toward children, with the multitude of tests they have to endure.  Not just those academic standard tests that have been so much in the news in recent years, but also the tests that come in the form of taunts and insults from other children.  Name-calling is the quickest way to insult.  And among the animal epithets one child can lay on another is, "You toad!"  How the toad got into the childhood lexicon is not hard to discern.  After all, what child would want their face to look like a lumpy, bug-eyed, warty animal?

There were other ways that toads were part of the tests of my childhood.  When one child did catch a toad, it could be a challenge to pass it from one pair of cupped hands to another without the toad escaping -- especially when the animal's strange, leathery skin could feel distasteful ("yucky," to use a child's word).

illustration for
"The Frog Prince"

Whether or not toads or their near look-alikes frogs were more prevalent in your childhood would have probably depended upon the dryness or wetness of the habitat that surrounded you.  (The categories "toad" and "frog" almost blend one into the other in the great variety worldwide, especially when tree-toads and tree-frogs are included.)  The similarity of shape and appearance between toads and frogs has meant that both entered folklore and fairy tales as a distasteful test to be overcome.  Would you want to kiss a frog?  Even if it might turn into a prince, thus fulfilling your heart's desires?

The fact that some frogs and most toads do have a toxic, protective liquid in the bulging sacks behind their eyes could make putting one's face too close to the animal a real fear.  People could be wary of approaching toads even if they believed the legend that a toad's body might hold the wondrous toadstone that could grant magical powers.  Shakespeare captured the tension about toads in these lines from As You Like It:

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head."

The ways toads and frogs test us extend beyond childhood and even beyond the pages of fiction. Today, the populations of frogs are truly in perilous decline.  Their permeable skins mean that they are early indicators of the spread of our human-made chemicals, especially when compounded by viruses and habitat loss.

When frogs are plentiful, it can also be a challenge for us humans to put up with the loud choruses of frogs finding mates in springtime.  One story from the Christian tradition, however, might inspire us to tolerance.  The story tells how St. Benno, searching outdoors for a place for prayer, was at first tempted to bid the frogs to be silent.  But then, Benno recalled a Bible passage expressing how animals too praise God.  And so, the saint commanded the frogs to "praise God in their accustomed fashion; and soon the air and fields were vehement with their conversation."

~~~

Do you have any childhood memories of toads or frogs?  Adult memories?

(The Shakespeare quote is from As You Like It, II, i.)

(The quote about the St. Benno story is from Beasts and Saints by Helen Waddell, © 1995, p. 66.)

Softening a City's Hard Edge... and Ours

He received the Pulitzer Prize more than once, compiled folk songs, wrote an acclaimed biography of Lincoln, and was a poet. His name is Carl Sandburg. He is pretty much forgotten now. Three of his poems, however, have retained some recognition for their enduring evocativeness, and one of them for its perceptiveness.  And two of those three poems have to do with the healing power of Nature.

In "Chicago," Sandburg portrays that city as it was a century ago. He describes it as a "City of Big Shoulders," but this is not necessarily an attractive bulked-up city.  Along with references to gunmen, whores, and hunger, the poet says to the city, "They tell me you are wicked and I believe them...."  The only way Sandburg is able to defend this city is to admire its brashness as being "the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth."

A quite different atmosphere is evoked by the very brief poem "Fog."  In the center line of this poem, a city is again referred to, with the simple phrase "harbor and city."  But there is no roughness experienced this time.  That is because that line of the poem -- and the city itself -- become surrounded by softening fog.  That gift from Nature is so quiet and gentle that it "comes on little cat feet."

A third poem (and one with greater depth of thought than the other two) is Sandburg's "Grass." Here, the healing power of Nature is made explicit.  It is a power that can not only soften visibly the sharp edges of a city but also heal human grief.  Published in 1918, the opening lines of "Grass" mention cities that were the sites of large battles in the just-ended World War I, in the Civil War, and in the Napoleonic Wars.  The poet knows what was the shared consequence of all those wars, because before each place-name, the instructions are given:

"Pile the bodies high....

Shovel them under...."

However, there is also that element of Nature -- the element not created by those human hands that made war.  That other element speaks:

"... let me work --

I am the grass; I cover all."

The poem predicts that in ten years, when the train passes by, the passengers will no longer be able to recognize the spot, because the grass will have done its healing work, covering all.

From our vantage point today, we know that the brash, adolescent Chicago of Sandburg's 1914 poem "Chicago" did not grow into a model of beauty.  About a half-century later, it had become devastated by the legacy of racism, white flight, massive decaying ghettos, and riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Nevertheless, in recent years, a new generation of city leadership has led the way in the creation of rooftop gardens on the top of city hall and downtown buildings.  Those people apparently knew -- as did the poet Carl Sandburg almost a century before -- that plants can have a healing touch for body and soul.

~~~

Have you experienced a way that Nature eases a city or human roughness?

(Sandburg's poems can be found in various anthologies.  I took them from

 The Harper American Literature,  ed. Donald McQuade, et al.  © 1987.

  You can read them on-line at Selected Poems of Carl Sandburg [1926].)