Man of the Big Shoulders
Remembering Avi Poster
Avi Poster always seemed to me to be everywhere, so many were the honorable causes that drove him.
He was the kind of character you enjoyed meeting – and he made you feel better about our city. To me, he lived the welcoming spirit of most people I know across this city.
Just to name one of his many causes, this is why Avi in 2008 joined in with a diverse leadership group that rose up against the detestable ‘English Only’ referendum before it was soundly voted down the next January.
Our city lost this good man last Thursday. And on this morning, many of us – probably thousands of us – are reflecting on the scope of his influence on the life and spirit of Nashville.
Avi’s social passions were not of the meek or anxious type, but were muscular, assertive, and deeply felt. He was a leader in two “task forces” - Affordable Housing and Criminal Justice - of the Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH) as a representative of Congregation Micah, Mike Hodge told me this week.
I don’t know that Avi would have acknowledged having one “Best Friend” (other than Joie Scott, his musician wife) so numerous were his multitude of friends all over town. But one candidate for such a title surely was Tom Negri, who in his day job was a leading hotelier in the city. Avi and “Tommy” allies in many important causes, most of them in defense of underdogs across the city, across humanity. Both their immigrant families came from somewhere else – Avi’s from Israel, Tommy’s from Italy – so both knew the realities that confront new Americans.
I caught up with Negri on Sunday afternoon and learned that he and Avi met soon after Avi moved to Nashville from Chicago in 2001. (He will speak at Avi’s funeral on Wednesday at Micah.)
Soon, Avi was asked by the Nashville chamber of commerce to lead the city’s “Report Card” committee on the status of Metro Schools. He had been a teacher and principal in the Chicago schools. Then came a host of causes and campaigns that drew both men, so passionate was their zeal for defending marginal populations.
I saw this unfold in full flower in 2008 when the city was confronted with the question of what to do about an upcoming citywide referendum to make English the official language of Metropolitan Government. (The short-lived “English-only” push came from a mean dark place, actually part of a national hard-right campaign to make life harder for newcomers anywhere.) Poster and Negri put themselves actively the forefront of the opposition, together with Mayor Karl Dean and a host of other broad-minded civic leaders concerned about the city’s reputation as a welcoming place.
When the final vote came, in January 2009, the proposition went down overwhelmingly to a just defeat - and was a proud validating moment for Nashville as a welcoming city. Many of us, obviously, shared – then and now – that same spirit.
And it didn’t take me long after Avi’s death on Thursday to hear from others who feel what Avi felt about the city and the face we present to the world. My simple question (“When did you first meet Avi Poster?”) generated more than a dozen notable replies. Many cited that 2008-2009 English-only opposition campaign as the time when they met this broad-gauged man.
Demetria Kalodimos was one of these. She “can’t recall where we met but we had Chicago roots and routes in common. He was always fired up about something in the best way.”
Her mention of Chicago was noteworthy. Here’s a thing I learned about Chicago in my younger days, both from my own time there as a student, and from friends and relatives who have ever lived there: No matter how little or long you were there, the personality of that “City of the Big Shoulders” (as Carl Sandburg famously called it) will shape you. Surely that was true for Avi; certainly it was true for me. Maybe for me it was the background but ever-present influence of Lake Michigan or the blue horizon that it causes to the east. It all puts you in mind of great possibilities. Like the words of Nelson Algren, Gwendolyn Brooks, Studs Turkel, Bob Green or Mike Royko – all those struggles and possibilities of life are what Avi derived from thinking about his own ancestry that presaged his constant advocacy for the underdog.
Likewise, the Nashville labor leader Maura-Lee Albert told me: “Engaging in life with Avi involved equal parts joy and arguments all rolled up together. I will miss him deeply!”
My colleague, the columnist Alex Hubbard noted, “Avi admired many of my columns at The Tennessean and wrote me kinder notes than I deserved. What a gracious spirit.”
The songwriter Charles Alexander replied: “Avi was awesome. He was randomly at the Bluebird Café a night I was playing there. He was incredibly encouraging of my music. Got on my mailing list… We lost touch the last few years So said to hear of his passing.”
Indira Dammu said she met Avi when she worked at City Hall. “Avi and I met in 2018, when I first starting working for Mayor Briley. What was supposed to be an hour-long lunch turned into several hours at Midtown Café, talking about education issues. He was truly a one of a kind person – so genuine, kind, thoughtful.”
It was also at Midtown Café, that the owner Randy Rayburn remembers first meeting Avi in 2017: They chatted “until his guests arrived. (Avi) asked me to join him afterwards and soon thereafter became like an adopted older brother who was the epitome of a mensch who texted and emailed topics daily to friends and larger groups.”
The neurodevelopmental scientist Terry Jo Bichell replied: “I met him when I was running for Metro Council, at lunch at Midtown Cafe. And I admired him from the first bite. I got to know him well as a member of the board of OurPlaceNashville and admired him more. Avi moved through my life in a way that made me want to be a better person.”
Heather Cass met him “through his work on the Community Nashville board. He was so passionate but also so willing to encourage and inspire. He treated me like an equal in a space where I wasn’t but that simple act made me feel like I could be.”
Fabian Bedne, the architect and former Metro Council member, said it was “at the chamber’s report card committee and my congregation” where he met Avi, and “I immediately wanted to be friends with him. It’s been hard accepting he is gone. It makes me angry and extremely sad.”
Lisa Wiltshire was an adviser to the Metro Schools Director Jesse Register when encountered Avi, in 2009. “Avi meant so much to me, like so many others he shepherded through life. What a beautiful man he was.” In a Facebook post, she had already written this:
“There is a tendency for humans to live centered in themselves. Not Avi. He was always lifting up the other, especially the generation who follows. Back in 2009 he was the first community person to greet me with a voluminous smile, embrace, and warm welcome. He listened and talked and encouraged. He did not brag about his accomplishments, which were many. He empowered me - and many others - to make our own mark. Whenever I was feeling insecure or hurt Avi was there empowering and encouraging. He was at every table pushing us to be child-centered, honest, fearless, and accountable to the community. He did not put up with any BS or laziness in thought. He was a true champion for children.”
My own statement to Avi now would be: “Thank you for being my friend.”
This morning, thinking about our city’s loss, it has the feel somehow of a boulder of one man’s large compassion that has pushed back against indifference has been pulled out of a stream TVA-like by some giant earth-mover. The boulder has, for not-enough years, been fending off the destructive indifference of some in the larger society. And this morning, all that’s left is the indifference. But then I feel Avi would quickly correct me.
“No, you must fight the indifference. It’s your turn now.”
Of course, I always found it hard to say “No” to this broad-shouldered man.
I only had two direct contacts with this great man, I wish there had been more. After I wrote a column against the English-only issue (I said if it were Correct English only than volumes of legislation would be diminished) and just a few months ago when I took my friend Congressman Steve Cohen to lunch at Midtown Cafe, Avi came over to thank Steve for some efforts on behalf of Israel and touched on a few other items related to Israel that left me in the dark, but knowing it was a good thing. Thank you Keel, for refreshing recollections about a force in our community.
I KNOW that this is not the venue for this. But I am a born and raised Nashville native. And I need to say something to the real Nashville. Those people who know it as many do not. I currently live in New Mexico and because of certain circumstances, I will probably die living here even though my heart still yearns for my Nashville home.
I know that Nashville has changed. A LOT. As everywhere has. But I also know that it is one of the most precious places in the world to me. Just be at peace and aware of what you have there for those of us who cannot get back. Thank you.
Tiny life savers
No, not the candy. The other tiny, not quite everyday lifesavers.
Moments when you stop and look at something that, seemingly, in other moments, to be just everyday wallpaper. But, then…there. You spot the way a shaft of sunlight is hitting the corner of the rug where it meets the smooth warm wood of the floor. The color. The warp and weft of the rug corner. The sun moves, and in five minutes it’s gone. But you stared at it and devoured the image like it were a first letter from a lovers heart.
Fireflies
I grew up with fireflies every summer of my life save for the past three summers. I am 65 now. Always watching them with differing levels of fascination mixed with a peripheral vagueness of their awareness. But a moment of stopping my car on a dirt road to look at a large fallow field magically alight with thousands of flickering greenish specks of light. Saved my soul. Fireflies again, in my grandmothers densely leafed privet hedge. Causing it to glow within. Lost my mind. And by that I mean that all other thoughts where gone from my mind save the wonder of what I was looking at. Wonder is the best of medicine.
Deciduous tree fall foliage.
One word. Incandescent.
Walking down the sidewalk of my neighborhood and passing all the bright colors of fall tree leaves alight in the sun. And then as you round a corner, there. A tree that is so lit up from within that It’s atoms are twitching madly. It’s atomic. There is no way a tree should be able to do that. No way to describe the color because it is a lamp glow in a dark night. It is an Aurora Borealis and scoops of cool lemon ice cream in a creamy green dish. All that.
It makes the dull, dark brick of the house with plain white shutters behind it look like art. Because of its glow casts a spell on that house. Yet you can feel it in you as natural as your heartbeat. Pulsing through you. Gooseflesh.
Leaf mould, honeysuckle and hummingbird moths.
Living where there are trees that loose their leaves. I’m talking trees Everywhere. Theres an ever present smell of leaf mould. And unlike any other organic matter decay, tree leaves in any state of decay smell good. Smells like home. When it is missing from your life, that smell. You don’t know what is wrong, but you feel like you never have a good breath of fresh air. That the earth just doesn’t smell right. You forget that earthy perfume is dear to you. So you ache for something so mundane and regular but you cannot know what it could be.
And honeysuckle, especially at night. So heady and intoxicating. But it doesn’t trail you home from your dog walk. It emotes in one spot. The same spot that you forget about passing every night until you are just close enough and then you are reminded that it’s summer and life is sweet. And that honeysuckle is a gift to all creatures.
One of my favorite nighttime honeysuckle creatures. Hummingbird moths. I use to have one reserve a table at my honeysuckle bush every July night at eight pm.
Sometimes he would bring a date. And be late for his reservation. The streetlight would pick out their bird sized flutter around the flower garden. And in the dark of the foliage hummingbird moth eyes would glow like little honey drops.
I miss my Tennessee home.
L. 2/4/23