How to Say Grace

“You pollute the air.”

~ the blind Hamm after blowing his whistle, greeting the entrance of his servant, Clov, Endgame by Samuel Beckett

The characters in Beckett’s Endgame, which I saw Saturday at Irish Arts Center here in New York, presented by Druid, a theater company based in Ireland, are in an apocalyptic waiting game in some kind of shelter, starving, without painkillers, waiting for death. Hamm’s blindness and lameness keep him confined to a lounge chair, while his parents, Nagg and Nell, are confined to separate rusty garbage cans, waiting for death like their son.

It’s a funny play, and compelling, and of course, sadly, perfectly appropriate for the American moment. I look at Trump of the shit-filled diapers, bloated and slurring, demented and wobbly, barking orders to tear down the East Wing and kill fisherman at sea and send $40 billion of our taxpayer dollars to bail out Argentina even as he bars the release of any of the $6 billion in reserve for SNAP in case of government shutdown and oversees the tripling of our health insurance premiums, causing millions to lose coverage. His spending so much waste, the Republicans so much garbage.

“You pollute the air,” says Trump of our nation’s workers and immigrants and women, as he orders the dumping of toxic East Wing waste onto a public park golf course outside D.C., to prevent regular people from golfing, and distracts from the Epstein files, so shocked was he that his best friend of 15 years, Jeffrey Epstein, kept files on his best friend Donald J. Trump.

SNAP benefits are set to expire November 1, and without a deal from the Republicans, all working Americans will struggle to afford not only food but also any health insurance at all. To provide help for this coming starvation and health apocalypse, your Miss O’ wants to encourage you to donate to your local food pantries, if you can, whatever you can afford. Here in New York City, where I can only hope Mamdani wins the mayoral race, I gave a bunch more bucks to the following organizations. You can check your local areas for similar opportunities, if you want. The worst thing you can do is nothing.

• City Harvest
• City Meals on Wheels
• Bowery Mission
• God’s Love We Deliver
• Sunnyside Community Center

While visiting my dad in Virginia a couple of weeks ago for the first time since my mom, Lynne, died, I gathered up all her clothes, shoes, and accessories in the closets and drawers, and Bernie (who was so sad looking at them) and I donated them. We do what we can, whatever our griefs.

I haven’t published on WordPress for some time—I haven’t been of a mind to play the role of teacher, each day being the next level of crazy in America. I’m sickened and lost most of the time. It’s hard to imagine Thanksgiving and Christmas, let alone my favorite, Halloween, what with ICE agents throwing teargas at children in a Halloween parade in Chicago. How is any of this happening? It appears that the Washington Post is this close to shuttering its print division, hastened along by owner Bezos, the slogan “Democracy dies in darkness” turning out to be a promise. After 60+ years as a subscriber, my dad sees his morning paper razor thin, formerly robust Metro, Sports, and Style sections combined into one slender one, few ads; his delivery lady has gone from dozens of deliveries, to ten, to two in our entire neighborhood since Bezos took over the paper. This seems to be intentional: Bezos’s lost 75,000 digital subscribers, too. It’s just a matter of time now, the owner ready to light his big cigar with the last of the masthead as he boards his newest yacht.

The billionaires are the 1% that are bringing our country, our world, down. Full stop. Blackout the system, give to your food banks, save all your pennies, tighten the belts, hunker down. It’s gonna be a long, hard winter.

But you know what? We can do this. Bernie and Lynne were born into the Great Depression. We always cut our toothpaste tubes in half to scrape the last of the paste onto brushes, had leftover night on Fridays, lived on peanut butter and jelly when we had to. You can do it too. And you can have laughs and play cards and read books rather than use power on devices. And say grace. The real kind.

Love your neighbors through this crazy Republican endgame.

And vote while you still can.