Activism – The Miss O' Show (Teacher's Edition)

The Bouncing Balls of Eunuchs

Sex and the American Nazi

Ballsy. This is a product (one of a number of other such actual products in 2022 America) being hawked on television commercials for the shaving of men’s ball sacks. And the mechanism doesn’t leave a “ball smell.” Huh? “Save Your Sack from Summer.” (Whatever happened to, I don’t know, bathing?)

It’s not that I’m squeamish. A child of the 70s, I spent my youth being bombarded with ads for Massengill Disposable Douche (a useless product designed to dupe women into thinking they can simply rinse out semen to prevent pregnancy; as well as for men who fear the smell of menses) and Kotex (a very necessary product). But ads for Venus by Gillette, now showing women, quite graphically on television commercials, using a razor to shave their pubic hair (another purely cosmetic thing), is really troubling me. Oh, and Bush Balm. So I sat down to write to figure out why.

Here it is: It’s 2022 and a 10-year-old rape victim in the Midwest cannot legally obtain an abortion since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And child marriage is back on the table. Child labor, too. See also, the other extreme: The forcing of the aged back to work and the ending of retirement thanks to “Sen.” Rick Scott (R-FL).

Note to readers: It’s gonna get really ugly now.

Follow Middle Age Riot on Instagram and Twitter, if you want.

The end of Roe v. Wade is another “beginning of the end” situation in the U.S., sure. And the smoothest sacks and pubes in the world won’t change that. But that’s not totally what’s eating at me, not just the power over women and the hygiene distractors. There’s a larger, deeper sickness happening. The other week “Rep.” Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said that ugly women don’t have to worry about abortions. Hearing that brought up in me tears of rage—that level of open misogyny from a man accused of child rape who has yet to be indicted for it, though is wingman has taken a plea and gone to prison (and when called out on it the next day, he doubled down).

“Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, who is under federal investigation for alleged sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl, is under fire on social media after making fat-phobic and misogynist remarks about abortion rights activists to an audience of college students on Saturday, calling people protesting in support of abortion “disgusting.”

“’Have you watched these pro-abortion, pro-murder rallies?” the Florida congressman asked the teenagers gathered at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Tampa, Florida.

“’The people are just disgusting. Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb,” Gaetz commented.

“’These people are odious from the inside out. They’re like 5′ 2″, 350 pounds, and they’re like, “Give me my abortions or I’ll get up and march and protest.” And I’m thinking —march? You look like you got ankles weaker than the legal reasoning behind Roe v. Wade,’ he said to a cheering crowd.”

This is a U.S. Statesman of the Republican Party in 2022.
New motto: “Odious from the inside out.”

Speaking of insecure male U.S. Republican statesmen: Back in the spring, “Sen.” Josh “Runs with Fist” Hawley (R-MO) denounced child pornographers so vociferously and so weirdly out of context and proportion during the Judge Ketanji Brown hearings, that it caused Miss O’ to wonder when Anonymous will hack into Hawley’s home computer.

Shits with Bricks (seen on the internet)

Meanwhile, Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex trafficker, is moved to a cushy minimum-security prison with yoga. Because otherwise I guess she releases the names of all those powerful white, male johns.

New Republican Motto: Men gotta be MEN, and real men can only get it up for trafficked young girls, ammirite?

And all of this hateful humping hubbub is from a bunch of schoolyard bullies who don’t feel “manly.” Who see everything as a threat to their “masculinity,” from balls that aren’t smooth and tan, to erections they can’t hold, to games they never understood and couldn’t play.

But indoctrinating actual armies of white supremacists is not the actual problem.

And it only gets creepier every day.

Poke Her with the Soft Cushions

I awoke this morning remembering a summer day when my parents repurposed the feather-stuffed cushions on my mom’s fancy sofa—this light sort of champagne brocade-upholstered sleeper in the upstairs living room of our small split-level house with no real room for romping, so that room was sort of the place to do Play-Doh and draw on the walls (which we also had to help scrub), so naturally that fancy sofa from my mom’s days as a single naval officer got ruined in pretty short order; but rather than throw out the whole thing, my parents figured they could buy those zippered pillow cases made of striped ticking and stuff them (they went on to use these pillows for probably 20 years, by the way). I was a kid, maybe 9 or 10, when they laid out old sheets in the backyard, my dad split the cushions with a knife, and they tried to figure out how to transfer the feathers—millions of teeny tiny gray feathers—into the ticking. We kids chased the feathers that flew, but impressively most of them made it into stuffing, enough for four pillows, I think.

I don’t recall my dad wondering aloud if this activity—or for that matter, diapering his babies, cooking family meals, or reading the paper—supported and even glorified his “masculinity.” I feel confident, too, that my dad, who worked six days a week, sometimes two jobs, and yet always made time to make popcorn and play with his kids, had no time for shaving his balls or worrying about their smell. He’d have to wonder about men who had that kind of time on their hands.

That feather pillow stuff was around the time my mom got into decoupage, making all kinds of projects, burning edges of paper prints, gluing and varnishing them onto prepared painted and antiqued wood plaques or stools. It was really nice. And I remember a lot of felt crafts for Halloween, too, and making Christmas ornaments (at school and at home). My dad, a meat cutter (there’s your masculinity, Tucker), got into making his own sausage (!) and used to bring casings home from work (he could buy them wholesale), and we’d do that once a month or so.

So at age 10 I remember going to a lot of local carnivals, fort-building, making a treehouse; all us trying out being tough with toy cowboy guns and holsters; Malibu Barbie vans and building blocks, and Tonka trucks in the dirt, while my parents made food for cookouts in the backyard or a Prince William National Forest; neighbors coming over. Beer and soda. Good Humor Ice Cream treats.

I don’t remember getting raped, is what I’m saying. I don’t remember people getting shot all the time, and never entire classrooms full of children. Sex, rape, semi-automatic slayings—even when reported, none of this was remotely normalized for casual conversation among our elected leaders in the 1970s. I’m not saying bad things didn’t happen. I’m aware that my white parents worked hard to make the shift from working class to middle class in America and faced fewer obstacles doing it than their black and brown counterparts; and I’m also aware that plenty of my classmates grew up in trailer parks or in otherwise reduced circumstances. I was often shocked by white porcelains toilets the bowls of which were stained brown; layers of dust on the white oak floors, grease and grime on all the surfaces in the kitchen. And you heard about things, you know; you heard yelling, you had to wonder.

A girl relative of mine, who was white, was raped at the age of 9 back in the 1960s; being prepubescent, the perpetrator had to split her with a knife to enter her. She told her mom, “A man peed in me.” The police didn’t put much effort into looking for the man, who was most certainly a white school janitor, so no one was prosecuted; her family moved instead. Girls have never been valued much, unless their victimhood could serve as an excuse to lynch a Black man or shoot someone. (Men are so emotional, you know. Is that masculine? I think it’s shit.)

So I don’t want to sound absurdly naïve. When we look at the historical Republican Party (and forget Dixie-crats, who only went Democrat to veer away from Republican Lincoln), they totally and loudly advocated for the mass murder of Black children; the mass rape and murder of Black women; the mass lynching or incarceration of Black men to use as legalized slave labor.

See its present spokesman, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)

Lately, however, these same Republicans have upped the stakes. We now have an entire political party, on TV and in the newspapers in 2022, pushing for the normalization of child rape (er, marriage), child sex trafficking, child labor. I can’t recall an elected representative in my childhood defending child mass murder, but that’s the case now. It’s not as if I didn’t see violence on TV, but the violence was often righteous, however a news anchor framed it: Black people tired of being targets, being kept down or segregated into project housing, being kept out of power; hippies protesting the war in Viet Nam; workers striking for fair wages; women out in force demanding equal rights; gays demanding to be seen in Pride parades.

But here was a turning point: I remember when the “anti-abortion movement” started, ca. 1977 or so, and young Catholic school friends went to march on Washington, girls all, girls who’d never even been kissed. They’d cry abstractedly about unborn babies, these girls who were barely of age to babysit. I found it baffling.

Found on the internet; sorry I can’t credit the meme genius.

And that “pro-life” movement, I’ve come to believe, moved the idea of sexualized children (and not the prosecuting of Catholic priests for the molesting of boys; because it’s never been about what they did to the girls, even though the kids I knew who were molested by their priests were girls, but girls don’t count, see), rape, incest, and the oppression of women front and center in the news, and began normalizing the fucking of children and girls and women of childbearing years as both something of prurient interest and something to punish through forced birth; while simultaneously othering the sex of consenting adults of whatever gender.

So. Sick. Of. Male. “Leadership.” So over it.

When I was 10 years old, I played with dolls, acted out my own versions of I Dream of Jeannie and The Brady Bunch; had a crush on David Cassidy; ran barefoot all summer jumping off swings; when my arms and legs got sticky it was from melting popsicles rather than a man’s semen. And I know this kind of growing up is still possible. About the best parents I know are two gay men who limit their kids’ access to television, social media, video games, and sitting around. Their kids play. I texted them to say hi and see what was up. The boy, in middle school, was devastated because his favorite frozen treat, Choco Taco, had been discontinued. (Meanwhile Greta Thunberg gave up her childhood to protest the inaction of governments to stem global heating.) If it were up to Republicans, this sweet kid wouldn’t exist at all.

Full Frontal with Samantha Bee was CANCELLED suddenly
by TBS under new management.
That’s the price of being a popular woman with a strong voice in America.
WOMEN: Start your own networks. OTHER WOMEN: Support them.

Why do Republicans want our women to have no autonomy? Our kids to have no childhoods? Our citizens no vote? Our people no freedom? Why do they want America to be a hellscape of mass murder and rape; floods and wildfires? Why do Republicans mock the very real problems and those who wish to solve them? I think they are diseased. They need help. But first, like any addicts, they need to admit they have a problem. We all know that men who have to pay for sex most likely aren’t any good at it; they know nothing of love, of intimacy, of seduction. They want to “take” a woman, rape a woman, and it makes them feel “powerful.” (Matt Gaetz, an alleged predator of teen girls, seeks children, doesn’t he, because they won’t know how bad he is at sex? Do all these Republican men have to use Nazism to rule because they are really bad at leading?)

Fascists pretend and propagate their inflated, insane idea of “masculinity” because they have no idea of the work it takes to be fully human. It’s not about masculine and feminine, guys. It’s about being a connected human being. It’s about leaving eighth grade, about growing up.

It’s at times like this that I want, at the age of 58, to be able to cross my arms out in front of me, flick my head, and blink all the toxicity away. Instead, I’ll be seeing you out on the streets and at the polls. Because that’s what adults should be doing, when they aren’t, you know, too busy shaving their balls and pubes for the sex they aren’t having.

Word Clouds

A commercial for an orange tube-y snack food shows a hip hop artist waving his fingers across bricks in an urban landscape and a colorful mural appears; he passes a child playing plastic buckets and the boy is now sitting at a red and chrome full drum kit. The plain glass buildings all begin shimmering in color.

Because in America, at least, you can’t enjoy anything, not even a junk food treat, unless you are changing the world. And it’s not enough to have a tasty bite. You have to gorge on a whole fucking bloomin’ onion, loaded nachos, and whipped cream on the dessert, with a table filled with family or friends, or why did you bother to go out?

And it’s not enough to enjoy the 4^th of July with a sparkler; you need to listen to the incessant sounds of explosions all over Queens and watch the aftermath of a mass shooting of 30 spectators watching a parade in a small town in Illinois.

Art by Rebecca Morgan, as seen on Instagram

And I don’t know about you, but this kind of “go big or go home” bullshit is starting to give Miss O’ more than hives.

What’s the Meaning of All This?

Back in 1964, philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously said:

“The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.”

Fifty-eight years ago, McLuhan also said, “Ours is a brand-new world of all-at-onceness.” Director Mike Nichols, in an interview in the 1990s, talks about how much McLuhan got right, though McLuhan seemed to be dropped from our consciousness. (I say “to be dropped” because we live in a disposable culture.) People used to receive information at different times, Nichols noted, and in different forms—newspapers, letters, magazines, telegraph, newsreels. News used to reach people weeks or months, or years, after an event occurred. The Emancipation Proclamation, signed in 1863, did not reach enslaved people in Texas until June 19, 1865, and deliberately so—the goal being to keep this from them for as long as possible so the farmers could get another harvest out of the enslaved for free.

With TV, we all saw the Kennedy assassination aftermath play out immediately, for example. Nichols, speaking of the challenges of directing new scripts, pointed out that because exciting real events—from assassinations to the moon landing to wars—come to us in real time, fiction just can’t measure up. And so now instead of deep, simple human stories to sell tickets, we reach for Superheroes and Armageddon for entertainment.

Nothing seems to be enough to sate us. The news media and its audience now hear of mass shootings and barely register an “oh, god,” just before the yawn; you see that it’s getting increasingly harder to satisfy our sensory desires. Overloading on porn and all its vulgar unrealism is why all those Incels (involuntary celibates) can get no pleasure from sex with women. The medium is the message: sex isn’t about intimacy, but rather gratification and power.

“We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us.”

~ Marshall McLuhan

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man 1964

Miss O’ Wonders

Query: What message are Americans told, by one another, is the message of America?

Response: Freedom.

Query: If your culture’s primary tools (or mediums) are guns, unmediated information highways, evangelical Christianity, and self-proclaimed “influencers,” what is the actual message?

Miss O’s Current Response: The message is that one ideology pushed by a lone individual’s power to kill or influence others is the single most valued aspect of the culture.

It’s a question of lenses.

A philosophy professor of mine once taught about hedonism. He said people misunderstand it, thinking a hedonist is someone who debauches and can’t get enough of pleasure. In fact, Prof. Smith said, “A hedonist is supposed to get an orgasm from bread and water.” Hedonists in fact set up a philosophy with forced, unsustainable expectations for actual humans. Bread and water will never be orgasmic, however nourishing, unless you are first dying of starvation and thirst.

In its latest attempt at a national philosophy, America has set up a forced, unsustainable set of messages for Americans through the medium of video, meaning we all see and hear these messages.

First, we are supposed to place the needs and desires of the individual above society, unless that individual is Black/brown, poor, and/or a woman.
Next, we must yield to the power of guns and ones who wield them over any individual’s freedom to speak, assemble, worship, or report news, unless that person is a white male with shit tons of money.

If the medium is an unmediated Medium, is the message that we are living in Babel?

I often spend whole mornings just deleting email junk so I can free up my email storage for more junk.

If the medium is an unstoppable garbage bin of random communications, is the message that there will be respite from the noise of humans and technology?

I have seen tweets of mine go mini-viral and had panic attacks.

I have tweeted, blogged, or posted on my wall things that I find vitally important and not one person agrees with me in even the form of a like.

I begin to value myself based on the mediums.

Which medium are we going to amplify? Which message will sound off and win in the end? Is there an end?

Is there anything duller and less surprising, however continually shocking, than American politics? Republicans can only stay on brand by grabbing power and rejecting anything democratic; the Democrats can only stay on brand by rejecting revolutionary progress and staying steady.

If the medium is the message, what is the proper medium for politics? What is the MESSAGE of our political life?

I keep getting stuck on these questions. “Stalemate” comes to mind. “Bartleby the Scrivener,” too.

Because a stable democracy is dull copy for our hundreds of 24-hour cycle “news” outlets, whether on a cable network, local television, or a newspaper, the Big Stories I see are almost never to do with public good so much as public titillation for ratings or sales. (And now this commercial message.)

The collective message is what exactly? Consume mass quantities and die already?

I awoke this morning, the Fourth of July, 2022, as I have every morning for months, in a pit of despair. Between the climate crisis-induced collapse of an Italian glacier and the invasion of Ukraine, along with the naked Republican attempt at every level of government over the past three years to end our constitutional democracy—and a press that does little more than pass the popcorn—it’s hard to write anything, create anything, feel there’s any point. And as I stood in my hallway after the coffee, half naked, holding a bra, vacillating between putting on real clothes to leave my apartment so as not to listen to the lone skateboarder on the asphalt playground who decided to practice his tricks right next to my little abutting porch (knowing that will also be in for an endless night of illegal fireworks); and falling into a ball of lonely weeping, as I do rather a lot these days; I mercifully remembered I have friends. I texted everyone I love and care about that piece of art by Rebecca Morgan, up there, because they all would instantly get it, and they did. And they answered.

My friends Carl and Mark, buddies of mine since 2^nd grade wrote back too. Both of them are gay. Carl lives in our home town; Mark lives in Delaware with this husband. In response to our group, Carl said, “Not feeling celebratory. Low key chill here. Cleaning and organizing.” Mark said, “America doesn’t deserve a birthday celebration this year 😤.” I said, “I’m writing a blog.” Carl said, “Excellent. I hope you include my disappointment.” Mark sent his love, calling us, “MY FAMILY.” And that just broke me up. You know? That sudden burst or wave of love. And if I hadn’t broken the grip of depression, pushed past the despair by becoming outer directed, I suppose I would have started drinking wine at 10:30 AM and not really looked back.

And wine is a lousy medium for any message. Here are some better ones:

Honeysuckle

Postcards to SCOTUS

Most of our important commentary anymore comes through in the medium of satire, including comics, cartoons, and Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and TBS’s Full Frontal. The medium is the message: We treat our existential truths like jokes. The “breaking news” of the NYT is often the equivalent of “What happens to Jolly Ranchers when they stay all day in a hot car?” The medium—the paper of record—is the message, and that message is “accentuate the trivial and don’t mess with existential truth in between.”

Like millions in the world, I write what’s on my mind and post these ideas for free for all to see. I have no mediators. No one, not a partner or friend and certainly not a paid editor, is around to read behind me, suggest where I might improve, strengthen, or refocus. Nor does any publisher or advertiser pay me for my thoughts.

And it’s still only one voice trying to mediate all the other voices and create a message that is coherent and true.

I still don’t know how to do it. Nevertheless I persist.

On Turbulent Flow — Part I

Turbulence, in science, is a chaotic fluid motion, unpredictable, as you see in the ocean surf or fast-running streams and rivers. My common sense tells me that all that wildlife in the water would help create that chaos, movements inside of the flow, but in any case, mathematically, there is no clear reason such a thing should occur. Why does turbulence exist?

I might well ask this question of life on Earth. Why are there psychotics? Why do some people create and believe in conspiracy theories that undermine forward motion and foment insanity in otherwise decent people?

Turbulence happens all the time, even in small ways. Every time a kid walked into my classroom, slamming books, grunting; or during class a kid called out, “this is a waste of my tax dollars,” the flow of the lesson was ruined.

A friendship flows along, and then one friend neglects another in time of need. Or grows jealous.

Turbulence.

Why is there turbulence?

A (now ex-) friend (a racist, homophobe, and xenophobe with no capacity to grow one inch over thirty years, so I have limits), used to complain, “Life should be gossamer!” I used to counter, “I think that’s heaven, right?” Life is brutish, nasty, and short, full of trials sent to test us, suck it up, etc. I accepted that.

So Why Can’t Everything Ever Just Calm the Fuck Down?

Now I’m stuck on this unsolvable mathematical problem, “Why turbulence?” Why is it that this one utterly unpredictable thing (as far as we know) cannot be solved or answered for?

No, Seriously, What in the Actual Fuck?

So I begin here with an admission: Despite the turbulence of continuing life in Covid-land, I enjoyed 2021. Well, the first part of it. Lockdown or no, once Biden was inaugurated and the American Rescue Plan was passed, and positive things were in MOTION, progress, repair, I could breathe. For the first time in five years I could breathe.

But.

It’s 2022.

Manchin and Sinema and the Barr and Pompeo Rehabilitation Tours.

Trump has announced his candidacy and is out on the rally circuit.

All these seemingly paid Russian agents, like Carlson and Gabbard, are getting a media pass. A DOJ pass.

And.

The left, so-called, is losing again.

Again.

The planet, the country, the voice.

And now Ukraine, a struggling and young democracy, is under assault by Russia out of Putin’s desire to recreate the Soviet Empire and to take its resources and thwart its democracy. As of this writing President Zelensky, a Jew, has asked to meet Putin in Jerusalem to try to broker peace. Putin does not want peace. He wants to rule the world. Putin is reportedly firing and arresting everyone around him, from ministers to generals, who has failed him, and he will doubtless have them all executed, er, report that they fell out of windows, with plenty more to take their places. You know, we all dream of a separate planet for all of them, while they dream of the annihilation of most of us, who are good, decent people. It’s the same old story. It’s Star Wars. Only now too many leaders of our planet root for Darth Vader without shame.

Jerusalem

Singer-songwriter Dan Bern opens his song “Jerusalem” (which you can listen to here):

When I tell you that I love you
Don’t test my love
Accept my love, don’t test my love
‘Cause maybe I don’t love you all that much

It’s such a charming and funny opening to a song, and it’s merely a hint of greater things to come. While the song dates to the ‘90s, it may as well be written now. After a bit of a journey (and I hope you listened to it), the speaker offers the Big Reveal:

Everybody’s waiting for the Messiah
The Jews are waiting
Christians are waiting
Also the Muslims
It’s like everybody’s waiting
They been waiting a long time
I know how I hate to wait
Like even for a bus or something
An important phone call
So I can just imagine
How darned impatient
Everybody must be getting
So I think it’s time now
Time to reveal myself
I am the Messiah
I am the Messiah

Trump’s supporters, as we witnessed, came all over themselves (and that’s not vulgar hyperbole, as I saw women on camera saying that they’d welcome being raped by Trump, which isn’t rape then, is it?) and continue to do so when they found their Messiah in Trump, which is beyond baffling to sentient people. (Not really is this the case for all-powerful Putin, because he’s not interested in being a Messiah so much as being Voldemort.)

*Oh, that Internet.* (Sub in Picture of Donald Trump. -ed.)

So here is where Trump channels Dan Bern’s speaker in the latest media tours and rallies:

Yes I think you heard me right
I am the Messiah

I was gonna wait til next year
Build up the suspense a little
Make it a really big surprise
But I could not resist
It’s like when you got a really big secret
You’re just bursting to tell someone
It was kinda like that with this
And now that I’ve told you
I feel this great weight lifted
Dr. Nusbaum was right
He’s my therapist
He said get it out in the open

Even the speaker of the lyrics has, like Trump, a fake doctor’s note of “all clear.” And, to make matters worse, Trump’s “message” is ever amplified by Right and Left alike, because everyone is, in fact, waiting for the Messiah. Everyone except those of us who just want to roll up our sleeves and for the love of fucking god do the WORK to SOLVE PROBLEMS.

What Is a Messiah?

If you, like me, ever found yourself in an Advanced Placement class or in some other Highly Challenging class, like Aristotelian Philosophy (which I, a theatre arts major, took in the hopes that we might talk about the Poetics, but if we ever did I was lost by then), you know the Boys Who Ruin Everything. They are the “smart,” or let’s say for the sake of accuracy, schmart boys, the boys obsessed with derailing every lecture, changing the subject to something they feel expert in (say, Plato, Pink Floyd, or Reagan), or comment derisively just because; and the teacher or professor of said course invariably proved incompetent to get the class back on anything like a sentient track. We see this behavior played out in today’s media in a frenzy, almost exclusively by the right-leaning Schmart Boys, whether it’s Cucker Tarlson on Fux or “Lincoln Republican/Never Trumper” Wick Rilson, have one thing in common: They have exactly zero ideas for how to make life better for anyone or for the planet. Zero! Nada! Ha, ha! Their joy—and it’s all over Twitter, all over Fux Nooze, is their GLEE at either supporting or amplifying via decrying the voices of hatred, doom, and Big Power. And also to knock down smart, capable women like Hillary Clinton (what larks! who does that skirt think she is?)—and maybe only Hillary Clinton—who are focused on solving actual problems, women who, as people in government, believe that government should identify and face a problem, discover the causes, and seek solutions that benefit the masses. How dull, these Schmart Boys shriek. (And yet if we need anything in government it’s more dull wonks who solve problems.) Let’s throw out “truth” bombs that make us look schmart!

*Thanks, Internet.* Because she really was.

And, right on cue once again, in 2022, despite the improvement in Covid numbers, the great jobs report, you name the success, the American news media are amplifying the voices of Trump, via Bill Barr and the American fascists via coverage of the trucker convoy and Russia’s Putin, and only criticizing Joe Biden and the Democrats.

Even Trevor Noah on The Daily Show joked (?) that the UAE wouldn’t ever have refused a call from Donald Trump, as they have from Biden, because Trump’s such a wild card, ha, ha! But now the Right is using this as a meme in their Twitter feeds (framed with a picture of the Black man back when he was “clean-cut”), further legitimizing Trump’s power and his right to take it back.

There are a few so-called “remorseful” Republicans, the faux-apologists (for not voting to impeach or convict, right, sure) like Rep. Adam Kitzinger (R-IL) who are only apologizing as they prepare for a run of their own, I suspect; and who still voted AGAINST the John Lewis Voting Advancement Act, the Violence Against Women Act, and who also are against a woman having control of her own body, and who have no problem with book banning.

So.

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say we are in the midst of a global nervous breakdown. Putin is behaving like Dr. Evil in an Austin Powers movie and the media legitimizes him by calling him “president,” a self-conferred title, and by using Putin’s objectives to frame all their headlines, rather than the pain being felt by the Ukrainian people.

Republicans and Fascists and Authoritarians preach the Gospel of the Messiah. Their followers drink it like wine, munch it like manna. They convoy around it. They fall prostrate before it, and all the while their Messiah screws them up the ass, they weep tears of gratitude.

You know who’s NOT a Messiah? President Zelensky. President Biden. President Obama. President Carter. Hillary Clinton. These are people ON THE GROUND, doing the work, fighting for right. So why aren’t our American Democrat politicians praised for their heart, focus, and hard work?

Because there’s a Messiah problem on the Left, too.

Democrats are ALSO looking for the Messiah. That’s how Obama got elected, and talented though he was, he wasn’t, SPOILER, a Messiah, and so many people were so disappointed! And who can forget the Bernie Bro cult that went on to derail Hillary Clinton’s election? Because if a candidate isn’t “likable” or “perfect,” which is to say “male,” and if the candidate isn’t anointed by the press and Dems alike, fuck her and let the world collapse. (Meanwhile Republicans get a total media free pass to thwart good work. It’s their accepted role as the Evil Nemesis to Good!)

Until we on the so-called “left,” which is almost “right-center” anymore, reckon with our own messianic desires and dispense with them, this absurd pattern of annoint-or-derail won’t change. Until we admit of and celebrate the humanity, fallibility, and glorious possibility of our talented Democratic candidates and move past the plea for perfect alignment, we destroy all hope.

At the close of Dan Bern’s “Jerusalem,” the speaker returns to the opening lines, but now he is speaking not as a man but as the Messiah:

When I tell you that I love you
Don’t test my love
Accept my love, don’t test my love
Cause maybe I don’t love you all that much

Anyone who calls himself a Messiah, is anything but. And maybe it’s the concept of a “messiah” that really is the greatest mind-fuck of all. Messiahs don’t have to accomplish anything; they just have to flatter to promote themselves. They don’t love anyone, really. Especially not you.

(Next time, Part II of Turbulent Flow will accentuate the positive. In the meantime:)

Selfishness: A Treatise on Me and You but Mostly for Me about You

April 18, 2020

“Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope for a cure.”
Jane Austen, Mansfield Park (1814)

Years ago, after a friend of mine had been married for several months, her relatives and friends began asking, “So when are you having a baby?” And the longer time went on without a pregnancy, the more her relatives began muttering, “Oh. Selfish.” My friend teared up as she told me about it. She wanted to scream, “No—we tried and we can’t. Go to hell.”

So who in that story is in truth being “selfish”? If you aren’t sure, we may need to have a talk.

When I think of humans who are “selfish,” inevitably a few names spring to mind.

(*Seen around the web.*) The bartenders are just expressing their freedom. Right?

Selfishness Unmasked

So here’s what I really want to talk about: Yesterday, over walks and talks and viewings of various programs, I found myself reflecting on the concept of selfishness in the time of pandemic. So I guess what I want, selfishly, is to talk about selfishness and have you, my reader, reflect on it, too.

Your Miss O’, like you and the rest of the world, is living into a new year of an old pandemic; millions of us have perished, or lost loved ones, or endured the illness, or have somehow managed to avoid it, ever-present though it remains. Some who were infected merely “tested positive” and had little more than a loss of taste and smell and maybe sniffles (as with my brother Pat and his family, as well as a few of my friends). More often, people have had high fever, aches, and their breathing almost lethally compromised for weeks (one of my dear cousins is currently hanging on day by day; others I know have recovered; a few friends were touch and go for months; one friend died); or experienced near-lethal dehydration as a result of severe diarrhea (two close friends); others, quite young, died suddenly after throwing a blood clot, including those who had been otherwise asymptomatic. The disease is utterly different in different bodies, and over different amounts of exposure. For nearly half of the United States, the view of the pandemic, whatever the human cost, has shifted from “hoax” to “who cares?” These same Americans view this pandemic in the same way that they excuse war or mass shootings, as nature’s way of “culling the herd.” And these same people don’t bother with masks or social distancing, and not only because of a cavalier attitude toward health. In their view, any restriction on their personal liberty is the greatest evil that any person can experience. Even more evil than a gun massacre, they insist, is the law that would prevent any individual from committing that massacre.

And so it goes. And don’t get us started on vaccinations!

This week, I am getting my second dose of Moderna. I mask up and live every day hoping against hope that I can remain virus free long enough to get fully vaccinated. To many, this is me being selfish. All I want is to see my parents again for the first time in a year and a half; and meet my new baby nephew James, who (if I can make it to the end of May), will be just over 6 months old when I meet him. Have I been selfish to wait this long? Or have I been responsible?

On my 6-sibling text thread, besides enjoying adorable baby pictures, we’ve been reporting our vaccination updates. My sister Sherry works in a retirement home, so she was the first of us to be fully vaccinated. My brother Craig, who is taking care of his and Sherry’s mom, Ann, who has Alzheimer’s, was next—he and Ann both have theirs now; I finally qualified and have one dose down; then brother Jeff, who will get his second dose April 30; and my youngest brother Mike, dad of wee James, had his second dose on Saturday, leaving just his wife to finish hers. There was, however, one notable silence on this thread: My brother Pat.

This does not surprise me.

When Pat texted on Friday that he was going to be visiting my brother Jeff and our parents, I flew into my usual hyper-responsible panic: I texted Jeff and called my parents to advise them to wear masks and keep their distance from Pat; don’t go out with him, etc. My mom called him to query this, and he declared that Covid was nothing (he and his family were hardly sick), that he’s pissed that his wife is getting their son vaccinated just because the school and his sports teams won’t take him back unless he is, that it’s his choice, hardly anyone has really died relative to the world population, etc. My mother told him not to visit if he wasn’t going to be responsible about it. My brother was furious and didn’t visit after all. (No one said who told them, but Pat knows that I know and have challenged his anti-vaxxer views.) Query: Is it selfish or simply freedom not to tell the people you love that you are not vaccinated and never intend to be vaccinated against a deadly virus?

“SELFISH, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.”
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)

First, is it in fact asking too much of one another to wear a mask in public, socially distance, and wash our hands regularly during a time when such actions could prevent mass death?

To me, such a question sounds absurd; even to ask it feels ridiculous. For at least half of America, these simple precautions, requested by leading epidemiologists, are in fact too much to ask. Why?

“It’s almost paradoxical that on the one hand they want to be relieved of the restrictions, but on the other hand they don’t want to get vaccinated. It just almost doesn’t make any sense.”
Dr. Anthony Fauci, discussing [the] vaccine hesitant

Second, is it too much to ask all eligible (that is to say, not allergic) Americans to get vaccinated against Covid? After all, polio and smallpox did not eradicate themselves. Children must be vaccinated by law to attend public school. As a society, I thought we had accepted this, and if we don’t, we move to a survivalist compound in Idaho or Texas and spend a life in hiding. Again, why is this request too bitter a pill to swallow?

On this same subject, people claim “reaction” as their reason for refusal; so if your personal child once had a bad reaction to a vaccine, does that mean we should not require vaccinations? Or, because I had a severe allergic reaction to penicillin as a child, should my family have lobbied to have penicillin banned from pharmacies? What if we had, and had won?

Third, is it fair or unfair of national or state governments to require a “vaccination passport” to travel? (My brother, for example, who loves Mexico, would, I think, get vaccinated if Mexico or the US required such a passport.) Or is this too much government in the name of preventing a virus from doing what it was born to do—kill as many of us as possible?

In other words—and not that environmentalism is on the minds of anti-vaxxers—are those of us who would prevent mass suffering and death, including our own—deaths that may in fact save the health of planet Earth—really the selfish ones?

What is the line between selfish and responsible, and what makes this line so difficult to navigate? I ask that because it seems to me this is the dilemma. Is denial easier to live with? If we don’t attend a church service or a wedding or a funeral or a birthday celebration due to Covid, are we being selfish (not making ourselves physically present to honor others), or are we, in fact, responsibly looking out for the greater good? Or is it both? If we deny them and ourselves a temporal pleasure with the idea of serving a greater longterm goal, is it worth the sacrifice? Or are we being fools?

Perhaps we should consult the healthcare professionals who haven’t seen their own families in a year. And the soldiers who go to war.

The Royal Treatment

Yesterday afternoon, I streamed the funeral of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, via the BBC, listening to interesting history but able to fast forward to the essential ceremony, which was beautifully done—intimate, restrained, yet also grand. (Robin Givhan of The Washington Post captures it perfectly. )

It might seem odd to talk about privileged royals at a royal funeral in an essay that concerns selfishness in the time of a pandemic, but the broad sweep of history and the roles of those in power are part of the big story. To be unselfish in the big moments means, for example, sharing your personal grief with the larger world, accepting the condolences and comforts and kindness of the many with grace and gratitude even if you might wish to weep alone. In addition, for those of us who might not understand why a royal relic of a colonial era is deserving of this globally seen ritual, we have to be unselfish enough to try to understand the full picture.

If rituals remind us of how small we are in the scope of history, they can also reassure us that despite all evidence to the contrary, none of us is alone.
So many people have been missing the reassuring powers of rituals these past 13 months — especially the spiritual ones. They have not been able to attend religious services, and when they have, they’ve been reconfigured for safety. Perhaps they’ve been held outdoors. Communion has been transformed into a drive-through event. It has been impossible to extend the hand of fellowship, and there have been so few people in attendance that it hasn’t felt like fellowship at all.
And so Philip’s funeral was a reminder of what these rituals can do. They don’t erase the flaws in the deceased but they afford the public an opportunity to make peace with them. They’re about endings, but also renewal. During a time of emotional upheaval, they’re guardrails to keep people from tumbling over.
~ Robin Givhan, The Washington Post

Learn One, Try One, Teach One (Repeat)

In the end, the events of the past year have reminded me of the importance of our teachers. To take one example: Last night on Turner Classic Movies I watched again (for the first time in years) William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker starring Anne Bancroft as Anne Sullivan and that prodigy Patty Duke as the prodigious Helen Keller. To help bring to heel the ungovernable and tantrum-prone Helen—who since an illness at 19 months (possibly meningitis) had been blind and deaf—her parents have sent for a teacher; and while wrestling Helen to gain control and be effective, this teacher is doubted and questioned continually by Helen’s parents, “Why can’t you show some pity?” At one point in the film, Helen’s older half-brother (who had been on Anne’s side but sees the whole business to teaching Helen as a hopeless cause) asks Anne, “Why do you care if Helen learns or not?”

Any reasonable person watching this madness, this wrestling match, might easily wonder both of those things: Why fight this poor, wretched creature? and, Why do you care to try?

And I can tell you, as a teacher, that any teacher watching this film will offer in answer to anyone posing those questions, “Well, it’s obvious you aren’t a teacher.” Anne herself says it, that where there is one closed mind that is never opened, that’s a loss to the world, and so of course she must work to open that mind. (She spells into Helen’s hand, T*E*A*C*H*E*R, not ANNE, to introduce herself.) So, how much learning is “enough”? When Helen learns to sit at the table and fold her napkin, for example, instead of roaming the room eating off of everyone’s plates, the family is satisfied. What more is needed? Isn’t it enough that she obeys? Anne, the teacher, knows that obedience is not enough: Where there is only obedience without the knowing why, that’s a loss not only to the person, but also to the world. (As you know, of course, because of Anne Sullivan’s teaching persistence, Helen Keller went on to be one of the most inspirational activists for good that the world has known.) Selfishness may be born of ignorance more than anything else, and that is why education is key.

I’m sometimes messaged by friends on social media, following one of my usual posts on racial injustice, for example, “Why do you care so much about other people?” I don’t know; I never really thought about it. I just always did. I guess that’s why I became a teacher in the first place. What I find odd is that so many people who do not have the vocation to educate or help others, want selfishly to throw up obstacles to prevent the success of those of us who do. See also: voter suppression and climate change denial.

Selfishness, then, causes loss—first for the closed or untapped mind of the “selfish” person, sure; but ultimately, it is that other and more insidious selfish desire for “calm” and “order” without sacrifice or struggle (obedience without knowing why one obeys, nor caring), that makes the world the biggest loser of all. Why should we, as individuals, care about the world? The teacher says, How can you not?

In sum, anyone who claims not to understand why he/ she/ they must “obey” an order to be vaccinated against a deadly and highly contagious disease, or openly rebels against the order fully knowing and denying the consequences, is acting not righteously but selfishly—selfishly because, even with all the information to explain the why, he /she /they has chosen personal and unfounded belief over the greater good. Morally, this is simply wrong. So judgeth Miss O’.

I look back to Ambrose Bierce up there, who hit the mark where too many people today live: the idea that my asking you not to be selfish, makes me the selfish one. Teachers especially are imbued with just that kind of selfishness—the selfish need to unlock closed minds so that all of us may experience life in all its richness and complexity, and grapple with all the points of view so that we ourselves may grow and be more fully of service to those we love.

Ain’t it awful.

What Is Your Fox News?

Predictions for the End of the World

Back in late October of 2000, my Grandma O’Hara died. After her funeral in Iowa, back at my cousin Candy’s house, Candy asked me, “Just between us, who do you think should be president?” And I replied, without hesitation, “Al Gore. He’s so much more intelligent and aware of the problems we face. There’s no question.” Candy then left the kitchen, entered the living room filled with her siblings, kids, and nieces and nephews, and announced, “Lisa says Bush is too stupid to be president.” And from then on, none of them has spoken to me, not really, even at their own mother’s funeral. This isn’t about politics, unless we can all understand that this divide in America, playing out symbolically in Iowa v. New York City, is that politics equals values.

And what has happened since that moment of Candy’s announcement heard ’round the world, of course, is that my concerns were beyond well founded; and despite this, too many of my Iowa cousins (to take one demographic) are determined for the world to end, if for no other reason than the annihilation of me and my kind, even if it means the destruction of their own children. It’s a point of pride with them, this annihilation of me, and my dreams of America; and at the very least the “fuck you” to my education and my empathy is worth the destruction of the Constitution. They would literally rather have Putin’s Russian army take us over than vote for Al Gore or Hillary Clinton.

It’s about, I gather, a celebration of their Christ; so how can I stop the end of days? They will, no doubt, sing at my execution, for they have not only inherited but also earned the scorched and lifeless Earth. Kisses.

Seriously, though (and I was serious back there): What does the future hold?

It’s in the Cards

Many years ago in college, at a party, someone I’d just met was doing Tarot card readings. At that time I was always made nervous by anything approaching religion let alone the occult, as I had been hurt by too many liars and hypocrites, but I sat in as a fellow young actress, Raine, had her cards read. Raine was a graduate student in architecture, but her heart was pulling her to theater. When it came time for Raine to pose a question to the Tarot, she asked, “Will I ever make a beautiful drawing?” What struck me about the question was the very nature of it, based as it was in art and not in material gain or comfort, as with questions such as “Will I find true love?” or “Will I be rich?” asked by others at the same party. Raine had asked about her capacity to put beauty into the world; I’d never wondered such a thing. (As for the answer, the cards were mixed; the reader, as I recall, suggested that there was something muddled in the motivation for subject’s question; the card reading would leave us hanging.) It struck me in that moment that I would never be an artist. I felt a slight pang of loss, but some of us are not artists but rather worker bees, and that’s what I was. We produce honey, sure, and the comb might be kind of cool, but ultimately I would never stand out from any other bee. I realized I was okay with that, though I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel. I decided that a path of uninterrupted self-loathing surely had to be penance enough for all the people in my life I would (and continue to) disappoint.

So why do we want to visit the future? On a visit to Scotland recently, I was in a pub one night when a psychic was visiting. It was an announced event, and the room was filled with about two-dozen women, all working class, aged 18 to 70. The psychic was a man about 60 years old, I’d say, very handsome, lithe, sexy, and he had his routine down pat: He’d cross his arms, rub his chin with his hand, wrinkle up his face, push his groin out a bit (a seductive posture made safe because of his arms wrapped in front of himself), and tell you what the spirits were saying, “Does the name James mean anything to you?” (the names he noted were safe bets, this being Scotland), or “I’m getting something here about being in trouble, does that sound right?” (To that one a subject declared, “Oh, no, I haven’t been back to prison for ten years—that’s all behind,” and everyone chuckled.) “So you knew that, yeh?” he said, nodding. His use of “yeh?” after his statements made the subject complicit; most were willing to go along. He’d hit the mark often enough to impress his audience; for myself, the great part was getting to know the lives and characters of so many working class Scottish women—where would I have had such a chance? More than that, here were a bunch of women looking to a phony psychic for guidance in life in the form of entertainment. Hmmm.

Where have I seen that recently?

Future Perfect

I remember reading one of Virginia Woolf’s diaries in which she said at one point that she’d like to flip ahead thirty pages in her own diary to find out how all this (whatever it was) would turn out. Wouldn’t we all? Then again, when someone asked Audrey Hepburn how she and her compatriots kept going in Holland those five years under Nazi occupation and near starvation, she said something to the effect, “I suppose had we known it would last five years, we would have killed ourselves.”

Maybe the card readings have to remain ambiguous. Maybe a psychic’s tricks are all we can handle. Still, this manufactured suspense and the ensuing chaos may be the end of us all. Maybe we are supposed to end. Maybe the best thing that could happen to the earth is our human annihilation. But it’s the suffering that pains me, and that means the suffering of all wild life, all of nature.

I feel very worn down by the chaos, the duplicity, the willful ignorance—and I don’t know how to fix this. I can no longer write—it’s hard and frustrating because I have absolutely nothing to say about anything. It seems it’s all been said—watching the impeachment hearings showed us all quite clearly that President Trump and the Republicans are actively destroying our democracy, and yet Trump’s base is more determined than ever. They would actually prefer the end of the Constitution and a Russian invasion to the liberals having power. It’s insane. My friend Rob has practically lost his entire family to Fox News, and even as a gay man they choose Fox over him every time, seem utterly incapable of separating out from their hatred of whomever and whatever Fox News tells them to hate.

As I talked about this the other morning with Amelie, a dancer friend staying with me between sublets, I said, “But then I think everyone has a Fox News,” a source or place from which only rage can emerge. I realized that for our mutual friend Rob, for example, it’s all things Shakespeare—Rob hates Shakespeare—you’ve never seen anyone so enraged over it as he was at the intermission of what to me was a most perfect version of Cymbeline as we were seeing in Central Park. Rob, who is ADHD, just doesn’t understand Shakespeare, feels excluded from it, and becomes angry over it, and thinks no one should be doing it ever because it’s old. Only NEW work, he says, matters. “Why isn’t there more new work? Who needs to see this?” And when you counter that you could say the same about opera, classical music, classic Hollywood movies, he agrees that all that, too, should go. But what if I love it? What if it feeds my soul? Presumably, I need a new soul, as do all the people who watch Fox News. So where does that leave us? I would say, here: People’s lives are happening now, in the present; to embrace the art of the past for the nourishment of the soul shouldn’t cause us to seek the death of Black people, for instance, but it got me wondering: Are these impulses to a “Fox News” reaction, however different in outcomes, tied together?

Accessibility to the Dream in One Image: Compare Trump’s notes and Obama’s.

Almost 40% of America would prefer the president on the Right, who is on the left in the photo below, to the Black president, who’s personal notes are seen in the photo on the right. Take that in. NOTE: The “no quid quo pro” was spoken to Ambassador Gordon Sondland by the president himself, which means that if an indicted or accused criminal says, “I didn’t do it,” if he or she is Republican, we have to set him or her free. It’s the new America.

White House photographer Pete Souza compares and contrasts.

Why does the right prefer the disabled in their leadership to the brilliant? In his short story “Harrison Bergeron,” Kurt Vonnegut saw this coming, the lowering of all the expectations in the nation so that all is “fair,” that everyone has equal access; therefore, a unique genius, exceptional athletic ability, and the like, are not to be borne; we will have be given handicaps to prevent us from being too good or to beautiful or too curious—the mind control is high-pitched sounds—the burden of thinking for oneself no longer to be borne. And the Right calls the Left “politically correct.” NOTE: Every time a Republican speaks, just cough out, “Projection,” and keep walking.

Even in New York City, “Harrison Bergeron” is becoming a new normal. I look at the plans for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden [yes, Botanic, not Botanical, so at not to confuse it with the NY ones in the Bronx] that demolished this gorgeous stone terraced gardens on slope so as to make the slope accessible for wheel chairs and walkers. So, too, was the only natural area of forest razed and smoothed, so as to eliminate those pesky roots someone might trip over. Hell, a developer is building a condo that will obscure sunlight for the largest part of the day so the whole Garden is going to die anyway. Venice is under water. But let’s enable quid pro quo come hell or high water.

Is annihilation of beauty our goal? Is that why we’ve allowed 60% of wildlife to die off in the past 45 years? Are we afraid of anything that soars beyond our understanding? Even Christians are terrified of the teachings of Christ, because living by those teachings is so hard, requires so much of them, that it’s easier to throw money at a huckster preacher like Joel Osteen than to read and study and meditate and try to become a better human. We live in exhausting times.

The quick message that is killing us is “Consume.” Consume goods and more goods. Let your hatred consume you. The other week I went to see Bella Bella, by and starring Harvey Fierstein, wherein I learned how as a young attorney and civil rights advocate, Bella Abzug traveled to Mississippi to defend a black man accused of rape for having a consensual affair with a married white woman. Because she could get no accommodations she slept in the bus station or the ladies room, hiding her feet on the toilet seat when the security guards came around, and this went on for two years, as she went to the Supreme Court to get the guilty verdict overturned, won, only to have Mississippi re-indict him; won again, re-indicted again, and without waiting for another appeal they simply executed him in the town square. Those whites in power rigged up an electric chair with a generator, and 200 white people came to watch, sitting with picnic lunches and cheering. I wanted every member of Congress sitting next to black colleagues to have to watch this play. There are members of Congress who would cheer to this day. So would those Iowa cousins up there.

In the face of all that, Bella Abzug was a model of all the best women I know and have seen and revere.

Fox News demonstrates that the worst qualities of human beings—hatred, greed, jealousy, and lack of curiosity—are the qualities most needed to the devil’s work to succeed, in the name of Christ and the Constitution. In the Bible, Eve is “punished” by the God of Wrath for being curious—but it’s not punishment, is it? It’s the natural order of things—we all have to leave the Garden if we are to become all we can be. Christians who are not Christians but followers of preachers are told over and over the Old Testament story of how a woman tempted a man out of paradise, how repentance is the only way, and that it must come in dollar donations. And to be clear, Adam and Eve were white; Jesus was white; anything “good” is “white,” and I’ve about done had it with WHITE is RIGHT. Fuck white.

Interpretations of Events

How do you justify evil? To what do you turn to so that you can live with an atrocity? Or, worse, when is an atrocity not an atrocity? I think of women and babies. When a woman is raped and made pregnant, the Right asks, “What was she wearing?” and demands she keep the baby. No harm, no foul, right, Right? If a woman dies as a result of a back alley abortion, she deserved it. If a woman if fleeing for her life, gives birth, and has the baby taken from her by authorities…it’s okay, as long a the baby is brown.

The other day one of my many cousins, whom I’ll call Pam, had an exchange on Facebook wherein she called out Donald J. Trump as a piece of shit, and I concurred. Another cousin from another aunt and uncle, whom I’ll call Bonnie, came in to announce that Trump had done everything his base wanted, such as building a wall, pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, moving the embassy to Jerusalem (after which Bonnie inserted a super happy emoji), and giving tax breaks to billionaires to “grow the economy.” All I could do was ask Bonnie, “Why do you think any of that is helpful?” to which she could only say, “I don’t have anything to prove, I’m just saying that’s why his base loves him.” Huh? My response, over several message bites, amounted to, “I hear you, but I’m telling you that none of the things you listed is useful to the nation or the planet; and how you can ignore all the destruction of his presidency is staggering to me, our loss of standing in the world as a global power not the least of it.” And…crickets.

When will I write something beautiful? How will I be of use before the end of times?

During the flight back from Scotland I watched a movie that resonated in a staggering way. Michael Shannon’s character in The Shape of Water, which won best picture of 2018, is, symbolically, rot. His body manifests the rot; his soul’s rot and mind’s rot are seen in his increasingly ruthless behavior, escalating in a quest for power no one above him will ever give him; when he fails to achieve the power he seeks, his only motive in continuing to live is revenge.

Sound familiar?

It has been ever thus: The Right is Rot. This is not to say that the Left is the Answer, only that the Left is not (yet) infected with rot. Possibly both sides will devolve into only Rot, with only the artists creating the beauty.

We all live a great tragedy.

Old Art in the Service of New Understanding

On Friday night after Thanksgiving, I went to the Public Theater to see a revival/reimagining of Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day (a title he decided on from a mishearing of “A Bridegroom Called Death”) a play from 1985 in reaction to Reagan, deeply prescient in its prediction of a Donald Trump in 2019, and updated by the playwright for that horror. The play chronicles the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis from the perspective of a group of friends in Berlin from 1932 to 1933, and what is clear now, given the clarity of the parallels, is that there is no way to stop the fascism of America and its new ownership by Putin’s Russia. We can’t stop it. It only takes around 40% of the population to help fascism succeed, and the Republicans have it.

Those of us who see the nation’s and world’s end with profound clarity can only do what Kushner’s surrogate does in the play, and that is scream that he had to write the play “because I didn’t know what else to fucking do! I had to fucking DO something!” And this is exactly how Miss O’ feels. Though as for the fellow middle-aged New Yorkers in the audience that night, they could only sigh and comment, “I don’t know if I liked this play,” thus missing the point, thus confirming why the left cannot win this.

The end of the planet is nigh. There’s no stopping it, just as there was no stopping Adolf Hitler and his 37% “majority.” The Third Reich functioned efficiently for 12 years. Earth doesn’t have 12 years, however many millions are slated to die. I’m sick and sorry about it, and yet I know I will continue to try, despite this inevitability, to make a livable world; I know I can only continue to try. I’m sorry that too many of us won’t, sorry for my nephews, who likely won’t see age 40. Neither will your children, but somehow you won’t admit this. Your kids will hate you more than love you, but somehow, again, you won’t admit this. Apparently this is somebody’s god’s will; apparently the “winning” of “Donald J. Trump,” liar, thief, scoundrel, motherfucker, is, inexplicably, more important than the future of the voters’ children. It’s weird, to me. I mean, isn’t it insane?

Philip Glass’s Akhnaten: Egypt of 1350 and America of 2020

At the close of this gorgeous and deeply moving opera, which I had the privilege of seeing at the Metropolitan Opera last night, a leader reforms Egypt, moving it away from polytheism and toward a monotheism that worships the Sun, the giver of life. The production features a master juggling troupe, whose skills of juggling the balls to the music end in the dropping of all of them as the pharaoh Akhnaten and his bride Nefertiti pay the ultimate price for not keeping a closer watch on the new world they have built, after spending 20 years in a bubble of their own love. The final scene of the play is the death, mummification, and ascension of Akhnaten and the continuation of a weary world in his wake. The jugglers crawl across the stage, pushing the dropped ball along, even as the curtain falls.

This opera left me reeling, with a burning question tied to Tony Kushner’s question of the night before: In the wake of the failings of leadership, who will pick up the ball, continue the work of the world, keep the music pulsing? Do you want to keep going?

You want that?

Okay.

So what are you going to fucking DO?

It’s NOT ENOUGH. It’s not. WE HAVE TO ACT.

WE HAVE TO THROW OUR BODIES AT IT.

To the death.

Love to all.

Miss O’

This Is the Real Story

Featured on my kitchen wall is a framed series of five photos, one under the other, that depict me and two other women rolling down a green grassy hill. My friend, Patty, a professional framer, matted and framed this series for me many years ago, though why I wanted it, no one understood. I knew why, so really that’s all that mattered. And though it’s framed nicely, each time I look at it, I get stuck at the last two pictures. To me they are in the wrong order. The second to last one in the frame shows me and Roller No. 2 sitting up, my fists raised in triumph, my legs up, ready to do it again. The last one in the frame shows the Rollers 1, 2, and 3, passed out blissfully on the grass. The trouble is, the action happened in reverse of the order: We were passed out blissfully, and then we popped up and went back for one more roll. However, as Patty pointed out, anyone looking at the series would be aesthetically unsatisfied with that—she insisted that the three of us collapsed at the bottom of the hill was the right feeling of “this is the end.” I didn’t agree, but she was a terrific artist and very sure, and I just wanted to hold the memory, so I let her tell the story her way. It’s a story that, if you weren’t there, maybe made more sense.

Here is the real story: They were middle aged, these three women, and I had just turned 30, and we were teachers in graduate school for the summer. Three of us were housed in a large mansion-style dorm atop a big hill, and I had remarked on the day of our arrival, “This is a perfect hill for rolling.” I was wistful. The two women on my floor whom I mentioned up there, Anna (the photographer) and Suzanne (Roller No. 3), had no idea what I was talking about. Anna had grown up in California where there were no green rolling hills, and the same was true for Suzanne, whose landscape was Midwestern, up northern way. That very same evening—our first of the summer—Annie from Mississippi came up to the house on the hill, and from upstairs I heard her say, “This is a perfect hill for rolling!”

I flew through the door to the upper porch, where my room was set, leaned over the balustrade, and called, “Annie! Will you roll with me?”

Anna, from across the hall, called, “Wait for me!” and came out of her room with her camera.

Suzanne, next door, said, “You mean I get to SEE this?”

I said, “You have to DO it,” and we three raced down the stairs with that child-like rush of feeling—as if, if you don’t hurry, your chance will be gone forever—and outside, where Annie and I taught Suzanne her options: either arms crossed over your chest, or arms outstretched over your head. We spread out. And…GO! Somehow in that flash of chaos, Anna had managed to capture, 1) me rolling alone; 2) a shot of Annie and Suzanne rolling; 3) all three of us from a crotch view, slightly blurred; 4) us three flopped on the ground, three pairs of jeans and shirts of pink (me), lavender (Annie) and purple tie-dye (Suzanne) all against that deep, luscious green; and 5) me bent in a V from my butt, arms and legs up, and Annie, sitting with arms back, her face in a smile, and we’re ready to go.

That is the real story, the real sequence, but because it doesn’t read as the usual narrative, or the most tightly constructed or aesthetically pleasing narrative, I’m the only one who would look at the series and be dissatisfied. Or would I? In truth, I don’t think anyone has really ever looked at it outside of me, because it’s not exactly a universal story, or even a “lovely” portrait of any person, or of nature.

So what does it mean to tell a story “the real” way? And does it even matter?

When I was in college studying to be a teacher—which is as antithetical as it sounds, for as every professor of “education” will acknowledge, nothing they are teaching will be useful for at least three years into teaching, when experience would make it make sense; and my own view is that what they should be teaching is how to write a bathroom pass and not lose your train of thought in an instructional moment—I was fortunate, and I mean beyond lucky, to have two guest professors when I took Psychology of Education I and II in summer school. I’ll call them Ms. Lettuce and Ms. Lovage (with apologies to Terrance McNally). Both teachers were invaluable to me, but Mrs. Lettuce was the person who got me thinking about the “real” story.

As a first-year teacher in a coal-mining town in West Virginia—a town and culture she’d never before encountered—and on her first day teaching first grade, Miss Lettuce decided to start off by reading to her students “The Story of the Three Little Pigs.” When she got to the first instance where the wolf “huffed and he puffed and blew the house down”—the house of straw—a little boy in the front row said, “That son of a bitch.”

Mrs. Lettuce turned to the class, most of us either gasping or giggling, and asked, “What do you think I should have done?”

You know what’s great about her question? THIS moment is exactly the thing that university departments of education never teach you, the kind of thing that will happen to every new teacher in every new school on every single new first day of school in America, now and then and forever: the kind of moment that makes you quit by the end of the first year, after day after day of these moments, with no story to guide you.

Several of us teachers-in-potential raised our little hands, either pontificating on why he needed a stern punishment and a meeting with his parents, or gently suggesting that the teacher rephrase the remark to something more appropriate and speak to him in private later. Mrs. Lettuce said, “Why didn’t any of you ask how the other children reacted? Did you assume they laughed or gasped, too?” And it made me think: Why don’t we ever stop to ask something as basic as that, about context, to step back and look at the whole picture? She continued, “When that little boy said, ‘That son of a bitch,’ all the other children nodded,” and here she mimicked their very solemn nods. “Now what do I do?” No one in my class said anything. “Because you see what’s going on here, don’t you?” she asked. And we didn’t. “If he said that, and the children agreed and accepted it, that tells me that everyone in this community, in this culture, talks that way, that all their parents talk that way. I saw immediately that if I corrected him, I’d be correcting all these people I didn’t know. And I am the outsider, remember.”

So what did she do?

“I said, ‘Would you excuse me for a moment?’ and I went out into the hall, closed the door, and laughed. When I got myself together, I went back in, and I said, ‘I’m sorry I had to step out,’ and finished reading the story. That’s all.”

What Mrs. Lettuce realized was that the story of this culture was not her story, and so not her story to alter. It was her story to learn. And she passed that story onto us. (And this story helped me stay for three years in an alien rural school system where, in the view of many, I had no business to be.)

And as to the reaction that the child back there expressed about the wolf, “That son of a bitch,” was he wrong to feel that way? In fact, children have an innate sense of morality. Vivian Paley, a Chicago teacher and great researcher of children, relates in one of her books (I don’t remember which, and I think it was Paley, so I hope I’m not misremembering) a similar experience of reading “The Three Little Pigs” to four-year-olds.

First, let’s recall the original Grimm’s fairytale: three pig brothers have to build homes, and the first pig builds with straw, the second with sticks, and the third with bricks. The terrible wolf blows down the first two houses, and eats the pigs, but he cannot destroy the house of bricks. That last pig lives. The wolf goes away. The end. The lesson: You need to work hard and take the time to build a sturdy house to protect yourself, or you will DIE.

But that isn’t the story most people in America know, and here is what Paley discovered by telling the version of the story in which no pigs die. She read the children what I’d call the Disney-fied version, where the brothers sing, “Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf,” and when the wolf comes, the first brother runs to the house of sticks, and when the wolf comes again, the two brothers run to the house of bricks, and then the three brothers trick the wolf and boil him in a pot. Disney, who really wasn’t one to shy away from violence—I mean, who can forget the death of Bambi’s mother?—for some reason didn’t kill off the pigs. Without those deaths, what is the lesson? Go ahead and be a lazyass pig—your brother will save you. That is not a good lesson.

And Paley’s young students felt that. When Paley finished reading, the children looked dissatisfied. One child asked, a little fearfully, “Is that the real story?” Other children asked the same question. They’d heard another one, perhaps, but somehow this one just didn’t feel right. And Paley told them they were right, that there was another version. And they looked afraid, but they wanted to hear it; and she told them, and they cried when the first two pigs were eaten by the wolf, but they were satisfied with the story, because innately they knew that this was life, that this lesson mattered. They wanted to hear the real story.

I think that inside of these children, of all children, must be a hundred thousand years of genetic memory. No one taught those four-year-olds about narrative structure, or ethics, or what happens in “real life,” and yet instinctively they knew the real story, what the true story ought to be.

I think American adults in general have lost their way when it comes to our real story, our national story, and the reasons for this go back to the Puritans, as everything does, with a view of life as something to be dictated by religious patriarchy rather than lived and experienced deeply, connected to the natural world and our own intuitive, honest natures. And so, as there must be one narrative, one story, to publish in the history books (for humans are still in need of a story, whatever else happens), we pick and choose the pieces we want to include in our collective story, and by “we” I mean white men, the majority culture, in power. I don’t write this in acrimony. That is part of our real story.

But here is the shame: The American story is not just Founding Fathers with capital F’s, the colonists against the British; or the Wild West, with capital W’s, with wars of cowboys against Indians; or the Civil War—which in much of the white South is known still today as The War of Northern Aggression—or even only wars. These stories, too often, have been reduced, in the popular imagination (until most recently and blessedly, Hamilton), to vague tales about ragged coats and red coats, white hats and black hats, blue and grey: they’ve become bloodless, artificial. What gets lost in these acceptable history book narratives is the deep story of the People: the thrill of the exploration of the oceans and discovery of new worlds and also the savage destruction of native people and cultures and lands; the astonishing bravery and also the emotional brutality of the Puritans; the deep Christian convictions of early settlers and also the hypocrites who took advantage of those convictions for personal gain; the astonishing growth of agriculture to feed the world and also the enslavement of Africans to make that growth possible; the growth of industry and also the exploitation of immigrants and the earth to make that growth possible; westward expansion and also the utter destruction of the native way of life; and woven through all of this, the story of women taking part in and helping shape all of these stories, shoulder to shoulder with men, with nearly none of that story recorded. This story of America is one thing AND the other. The story is huge and vast and messy and complicated and fraught. It’s a continuing story.

If four-year-old American children aren’t afraid to hear “the real story,” why are the majority of grown American adults afraid to hear it? Why are certain hugely powerful media companies run by white men, for example, so afraid of “the real story,” the true story, of America that they feel they must create their own narratives, narratives in which there must be good guys and bad guys, and the only possible villains can be immigrants, Muslims, blacks, or women, and the only good is the continuation and protection of white male greed using repression and guns? All over the news, this is too often the only story, or the story that a few others try desperately to fight against. But it isn’t the real story, is it? We know that it’s not. What is the real story?

This sort of story manipulation doesn’t belong only to America, and it surely can’t be laid on Disney’s doorstep, or even at the threshold of the corporate headquarters of Fox News. This deliberate, inorganic story manipulation has only been possible in the last few thousand years out of many millennia, when because of agriculture and surplus, nomads began settling into villages, where, out of laziness, really, a few charismatic men began duping and robbing the workers and families of these villages, amassing wealth, and then hiring the men they’d robbed to make weapons and form armies, so they, the overlords, could take even more, scapegoating races of people and creating the massive military industrial complex—models of this dating back to the building of vast flotillas of all manner of ships, the breeding of horses for riding, and the forging of iron weaponry, all made for the sole purpose of carrying out large-scale warfare, among the men of Egypt and Greece and Rome; among Vikings and Saxons and the Angles and Normans; among tribes everywhere, really, when one goes deep into the stories.

That’s the real story of the People of Earth.

And the only way to change that story—because it simply isn’t sustainable, resources being what they are—is to shift the power dynamic, to decide, as a People, that the sociopathic-lazy man-warmonger narrative is not only wrong, it’s silly. We could be having so much real fun when we aren’t facing real, naturally occurring dangers. More to the point, we are, right now, for real, a People in Crisis, a climate crisis, brought on by global warming born of industrial ignorance and, of course, greed. You can trace most any problem to the grasping greed of a few bad men. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we turned our story—focused all our warrior energy—into working to salvage and heal and restore our Earth?

Here is the story:

Once there were three women, all teachers, two middle-aged and one just turned 30. The young woman, from the eastern plain, saw a deeply gray, dirty world that cried out to be cleaned, to be respected, to be enjoyed, and to be loved. She shared her vision with the woman from the western plain and the woman from the northern plain, who agreed, because they had been thinking the same thing. And from the southern plain came another woman teacher, middle-aged, who cried out, “This is a great world, and it needs cleaning!” And the youngest woman called out, “Will you clean it with me, Annie?” And so it was. Western Anna grabbed her camera, to tell the story of the Great Cleaning, and Northern Suzanne, who hadn’t cleaned before and wanted to learn, joined the women of the East and South, and together from all four directions the women grabbed their brooms and flew out into the world to clean it up and make it live, and to tell the story.

Here the storyteller shows the children the pictures that Anna had taken. The children notice that the person who framed the photos of the women in this story showed them flying out to clean the world, one by one, and the last photo is of them lying down, exhausted and finished with the work.

And here a child asks, a little fearfully, “Is that the real story?”

And here the storyteller pauses, and sees that she has to tell the truth.

“No. There is another version. Do you see that second to last picture? The one where they seem to be getting up to do it again? That comes last. You see, the work never ends. The story doesn’t end.”

And though the children were afraid at hearing this, and even cried, still they were satisfied. This was the real story.

Photos by Anna Citrino; framing by Wilkins Myrick Frames and Fine Art; wall located in Queens, NY.

Re: Public

“Eighty percent of life is showing up.”
~ Woody Allen

Public:
From the Middle English publique, from Anglo-French, from Latin publicus; akin to Latin populus people

First Known Use: 14th century

(Source: Merriam-Webster online)

Back when we the aspiring wrote our first serious essays for public view in high school, one of our classmates would have the novel idea (novel for a 15-year-old) of opening the essay with a dictionary definition of a key word, such as “stream” or “consciousness,” say, to start off the proceedings. Other eager writers, deeply impressed, would then copy this technique, and at some point during the year, after reading dozens of such openings, your teacher would write in red on your essay, “You might try another approach.” Deflated, for you were really excited to try out your brilliant classmate’s technique for yourself, you nonetheless pushed yourself to find a unique way into the next essay. The same happens when we in the theater direct classic plays: We can’t repeat the same old formulas when approaching a classic, because what was old needs to feel new again: Artists look at a work by, say, Shakespeare, and ask themselves, Why this play? Why now? What could we do to bring it to life in the modern age, make it contemporary and meaningful to today’s theater-goer? Sometimes it works, this novel approach, and sometimes not so much, but one of the best things about art, even if done without easy success, and maybe especially then, is that it gets us, the public, talking about it.

So with all that in mind, and given the current controversy over the Public Theater’s production of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar in Shakespeare in the Park in New York City (and can I get a “Hail, Caesar”?), it seems a definition is in order. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary online, here are the definitions of public:

Definition of public https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/public

1a: exposed to general view : open b : well-known, prominent c : perceptible, material
2a: of, relating to, or affecting all the people or the whole area of a nation or state public law b : of or relating to a government c : of, relating to, or being in the service of the community or nation
3a: of or relating to people in general : universal b : general, popular
4: of or relating to business or community interests as opposed to private affairs : social
5: devoted to the general or national welfare : humanitarian
6a: accessible to or shared by all members of the community b : capitalized in shares that can be freely traded on the open market —often used with go
7: supported by public funds and private contributions rather than by income from commercials public radio public television

Your Miss O’ here hasn’t seen the now internationally famous production (free and open to the public (see definition 3a) in Central Park, closing today as they prepare their next offering (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Melania as Titania; I kid! Ahem), but I did teach the play itself for all of my 15 years in public (see definitions 2a, 3a, 5, and 6a above) high schools, as an English teacher. The play has been taught nationally since the early 20^th century, I learned, as a replacement for what used to be called Rhetoric, when public speaking (see definition 3a above) began disappearing from the school curriculum. Julius Caesar the play is, as was the man himself, fabulously political, which is often unwelcome in America lately because too many Citizens (or Plebians, in Caesar) aren’t terribly educated on the whole about civics (a Greek and Roman idea with a Latin root in the word). Schools, as we know, are competing with lots of stimuli from the public arena (see definition 1a above), and teachers more often than not are having “to fight to teach,” as Miss O’s colleague of many years, Mrs. Little, was often heard to say in the years before she retired.

So what is a public? What is a republic? And what do they have to do with a theater in New York City called The Public Theater? I read yesterday of all these protests attending the Public’s production, protests carried out by a public consisting of people who have probably not heard of the play outside of a vague memory of suffering through Mrs. Ayers’s triple-matching test one semester of their sophomore year of high school (I mean, what the hell?). Doubtless the protesters of the Public had never read the play with anything like understanding, let alone seen a live production, or even sat through the entire movie with Marlon Brando in the pivotal role of Marc Antony.

What they are missing—and what anyone up in arms (an idiom which was once quite literally about raising ones weapons) about this event is missing—is knowledge, both of the subject matter and the play. (One could say the same about most any public protest, for one should always know deeply the why of any protest.) It’s easy enough to Google both the man or the play in Wikipedia (and anyone reading this blog won’t need to, more than likely, which is the futility of writing blogs like this), but chances are that even still, most Americans probably know more lines from it than they realize:

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears…

…let slip the dogs of war…

Though last, not least in love… (“last but not least”)

Those might surprise you—these everyday things. Here are others, seen online:

Beware the ides of March.
(1.2.23), Soothsayer

Et tu, Brute? Then fall, Caesar!
(3.1.77), Cæsar

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Cæsar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.
(3.2.79-83), Antony

It was Greek to me.
(1.2.289), Casca

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
(2.2.34), Cæsar

This was the noblest Roman of them all.
(5.5.75), Antony

Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
(1.2.146-8), Cassius

This was the most unkindest cut of all.
(3.2.193), Antony

Let’s carve him as a dish fit for the gods. (“a dish fit for a king”)
(2.1.173), Brutus

Not that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome more.
(3.2.23), Brutus

What Julius Caesar is, though, beyond the quotes, is a fascinating study in the greed for power desired by a few men who would lay waste to the land, their institutions, and the people they would lead in order to attain more of it. It’s a study, too, in the use of language, of rhetoric, to not only persuade but also hoodwink a crowd with conspiracy theory, getting the crowd to do the looting, killing, and army work in order to feed the hunger of one man’s desire for power. In other words, it’s an instructive play, and it’s a hard play, and its themes are and remain universal across civilized societies everywhere. And it took me years to understand it and to love it. That is Shakespeare for you. That is life for you.

The Public and the Republic

Should you care to, there’s a solid Wikipedia article on the meaning of republic, and it’s worth a look at the history. At the time the play is set, and in real life, Julius Caesar was the head of the Roman Republic, which republic was an exercise in representative government that carries over to our American Democratic Republic today. At the time Shakespeare’s play begins, Caesar was about to be crowned emperor by the people, and the concern of the play is, and remains, our own concern today: Can we have representative government of the people with a king in charge, however idolized by the general populus? And is assassination (a word that first appears in print in Shakespeare) of the man who would be king ever the right choice? (Hint: No.) And why are crowds so easily manipulated and so goddamned fickle? The rise of Marc Antony is especially chilling. If you read nothing else, read Act III of the play: The assassination, the aftermath—ring leader (and yet noble) Brutus’s hasty act and unrehearsed speech, Antony’s vengeful use of that speech in his own rhetoric to turn the crowd to “mutiny”; and finally, the shocking turn of the grieving Antony into the gleeful victor as the crowds tear away on a killing spree: “Mischief thou art afoot. Take thou what course thou wilt.” In Act IV, he has his own nephew killed. And we and the people learn the hard way: Great a speaker as he is, devoted to Caesar as he is, Antony is really only loyal to Antony.

Coming Up Trumps

Yet another Shakespeare play resembles the present age of American politics: it’s Richard III, only with a president who is infinitely less intelligent if no less mentally unstable than Richard. But what the two have in common is a desperate need for power, accolades, and above all loyalty. Watch Al Pacino’s wonderful documentary and filmed version of scenes from the play, Looking for Richard, and you’ll see what I mean. And another Shakespeare play that comes to mind, in a painfully diminished form, is King Lear, where the old king divides his empire among his three children, demanding from each supplication and eternal devotion. And we all know how that turned out. Or we should—and it’s why education and the arts matter, matter, matter. Goddammit anyway. Because if you’d just read Shakespeare, you’d see that not only have we seen all this before, we saw it in language so far elevated above the National Tweet it makes your head do a Spicer spin. And yet Shakespeare might make some people feel, you know, stupid, or put down, because anyone can understand a tweet. And isn’t that all we need?

Going Public

**“Julius Caesar can be read as a warning parable to those who try to fight for democracy by undemocratic means.
To fight the tyrant does not mean imitating him.” – Oskar Eustis**

Photo by Miss O’ from the Staten Island Ferry, June 2017

The Public Theater (see definitions 1-7 above) is a terrific institution (https://www.publictheater.org), if hit-or-miss in terms of quality, so that the same theater that gives you Hamilton and Fun Home also gives you David Byrne’s (“not ready for prime time at ALL” according to friends) Joan of Arc and, according to some reviews, this production of Julius Caesar (Read Oskar Eustis’s statement here: https://www.publictheater.org/Julius-Caesar/). As to hit-or-miss: Who cares? Life is hit-or-miss (just ask our president and his two ex-wives, and probably his current wife, to say nothing of the business owners he screwed over), and unlike those folks who tell you “life is not a dress rehearsal,” Miss O’ would argue that life is ever that. It’s an experiment, and it requires engagement, adjustments, rethinking, and, sometimes, new costumes to keep up with the fashions of the times. It’s also worth remembering that, as Oscar Wilde said (pardon the cliché), “Fashion is a thing so hideous we are forced to change it every six months.” And most politicians, too, can and do become hideous—hence the need for term limits.

Speaking of term limits, most plays have a limited, and often terminal, run. Modern productions reinvent classic plays for a new age, and they, too, have a limited run. And this president, provided we don’t have an assassination attempt, a military coup, or war to end all wars, will also have a limited run. He’ll be sent packing, or will leave of his own accord to start up a TV network, or die of heart failure in office, or walk clumsily out after Inauguration in eight years, red necktie beating his face, as he heads to his gold-plated jet for rich living in his Tower till the end of his days. It’s a crapshoot, and yet we have to keep playing craps.

How many ages hence
Shall this our lofty scene be acted over
In states unborn and accents yet unknown?

~ Cassius to Brutus, Act III, scene i, Julius Caesar
Translation: Karma is a BITCH.

The personal is political, as the feminists say, and the political becomes personal, in the best and worst ways, depending on the will of a fickle public. I took a trip to Ireland in April and noticed that there really was a pub, or public house, on every corner, and it’s not hard to see why. We could use a drink. The Irish know that as well as anyone.

At Aggie’s Pub in Killea, Dunmore East, Ireland.

And a TRIP. Travel, for goodness sake. Travel. Get out of yourself. I can’t tell you how much better I felt about life, both during and after Ireland. Show up to life, sure, and then pay attention. And the more we, the people, can venture out and gather in public and LISTEN as well as protest, the better chance we’ll have to weather this latest political tempest. Ask Ireland about The Troubles, for crying out loud. This is nothing, I tell ya. And still we have to DO something about ours. So do that, and in a democratic way.

Sending love to all,

Miss O’

The Ring of Kerry, view, Ireland. It took the Irish 400 years to gain their independence from Britain, the empire that captured and subjugated everything and everyone, except the little island next door. These are my kind of people.

A Wing and a Prayer

Spy Planes

Outside my street-level bedroom window just now, I heard a man’s flat voice, and then a woman sobbing deeply, suddenly.

“Oh my God, I’m so scared,” she cried. I looked out the window. Do I get involved?

She was sitting in the passenger seat of an open-doored SUV, her chestnut hair thick and wavy, her skin smooth and olive; the man next to her only seen from the back, and barely, bobbing his grey-curled head, was fiddling around with something in the backseat, the backseat door open and between them. Her body was limp, heavy, head hanging. He said something, twice, about “the baby.” She turned to look toward him, and sobbed again.

Her sobs came in a rich voice, velvety and agonized, past which I heard his relentless, flat, hard words speaking over her cries in monotone, unemotional and relentless, without comfort or attention to her pain. Her sobs only deepened.

This, thought I to myself, is the near-complete story of Woman in the World of Man.

Collages in Progress, LO’H, NYC 2-18/19-17

“How the hell do I know why there were Nazis?
I don’t even know how the can opener works.”
~ Father of Woody Allen’s character Mickey Sacks, Hannah and Her Sisters

Family Trees

What makes women and men so different? An age old question.

Another age old question: What makes families so different? This sort of questioning is what happens when you reconnect to childhood memories on social media, and lately those connections have been made through politics almost exclusively.

Here’s yet a third age old question: What is the best way to be useful politically? Do you write a check, or do you throw your body at it?

I have several different memories of people around our neighborhood doing what was called “volunteering.” They led newspaper recycling drives, or, say, cleaned the litter from the corner acre lot with the wild stream and blackberry bushes where we kids played kickball and built forts and explored. I remember Mr. Scott from up the block stopping by our house one day during just such a clean-up effort, to ask for a jug of water, which my mom, Lynne, happily handed him—a glass container that had once held orange juice, a thing which people like my parents, who grew up during the Depression, saved for moments like this. Later, Mr. Scott stopped by to return it, with thanks. Because he grew up during the Depression, too.

As I brought the jug into the kitchen, which was a very short journey from the front door in our very small house, I asked my mom, “How come we never help with things like cleaning up or being on the PTA or doing newspaper drives?” And my mom regarded me through the blue haze of her ever-present Salem cigarette and said, “Honey, we don’t volunteer. We write checks.”

Knowing as I did how little money we had and how carefully my mom managed it, it seemed kind of crazy that we would “write checks,” but that’s what we did, five dollars here and there, when we had it. We carried old clothes and other items to the Salvation Army or the Good Will. But we didn’t get involved at the community level, not bodily. It just wasn’t us. I am still this way.

What the O’Haras did, though, was get to know new neighbors, person to person. White or black, poor or rich, a dozen kids from assorted fathers and mothers or a small traditional nuclear family, if you moved in within ten houses of us, we may not bring you a cake, exactly, but we waved from across the street. If we got a response, we—and I mean all of us, kids and parents, individually—would walk across the street and get to know you. We’d size you up, sure, while we told you the history of the house you were in. We welcomed you as one of our own, and this only stopped the first time you stole from us, and this happened often, and my mom would sit you down and explain to you, firmly but lovingly, that we could no longer trust you to be in our home, and she was deeply disappointed in you. “All you had to do was ask,” she’d remind you. And the door closed behind you forever. Though we still waved, asked how you were doing, and cared.

What the O’Haras also did, to borrow from poet Marge Piercy, was “dive into work head first.” Wherever we were—and I’m feeling a little Faulknerian narrating in the first person plural but it’s what I mean—and whoever you were, whether a stranger in the supermarket parking lot trying to put bags into your car, or a kid who dropped books in the hallway—we would, by instinct, reach out to help you. Many hands make light work. It’s no trouble. Glad to do it. Pay it forward. We do it with money, too. (My youngest brother, just last Christmas, bought a $25 gift card at Walmart after I’d checked out, and handed it to the harried-looking Hispanic woman behind us, laden with stuff, counting pennies. He simply said, “Merry Christmas,” and off we went.) It’s a way of being, is what I’m saying. When people ask us—and they do—why do you bother to help like that, we always ask, “How can you not?”

That said, as I said, we don’t volunteer to do community work. That’s where the Rachovs come in. The Rachov family (as I’ll call them) lived two streets over, five kids, one for every one of the O’Haras plus one, and we went to school with them all our lives, even into college. But while we knew them, and they were really nice, and Mrs. Rachov was easy to spot for her great height, her big smile, and her ever-present bandana covering her hair as she knocked on the door to collect newspapers for the annual drive, I remember them not being exactly approachable. As a family, they seemed sort of in love with each other, and we O’s were raised to be independent.

What got me thinking about them at all was that recently, by accident really, I reconnected with the oldest of the Rachov children on Facebook, a friend of a friend, a woman named Martina Benson. “I used to be Tina Rachov,” she wrote me. When I realized who she was, I admitted, “Your younger brother un-friended me a few years back.” In fact, that “friendship” with Kurt lasted about a week, his right-wing politics outraged by my crusade for voting rights (which outrage never ceases to amaze me in a democracy). Tina remarked, “Yeah, I have him blocked. And his oldest son. And my parents.” I wrote her what I remembered about her helpful family, and she said, sarcastically (as it turned out), “We were so warm and inclusive.” And it was then that I recalled that her mom’s ever-present smile was sort of dead-eyed when not directed toward her kids.

And that’s how all this got me thinking about the O’Haras, who, whatever our failings in terms of community involvement, always voted and always took in stray people who just didn’t know where to go. Until they stole from us, which they almost always did. The Rachovs, by contrast, gave to the community as a whole, but were not only insular but it turns out repelled by the individual people who made up their community. Growing up, Tina was always described by her brother Kurt as “the crazy one,” and he’d shake his head and smile sadly as we passed her walking alone down the road. Now I realize that however much the Rachovs modeled civic duty, it was crazy Tina, the oldest and a girl, who had an actual heart as well as awareness of and real kindness toward those who were different from her. Go know.

And yet, looking at what the O’s and R’s both accomplished, don’t we need both sorts of families, however crazy-making?

Right Wing Meets Left Wing

Don’t we need both a right wing and a left wing if a bird is to fly?

Politically speaking, what makes the right wing and the left wing so different? Shouldn’t we want the same things, to fly in the same direction, toward food, warmth, safety?

What I really wanted to write about today was the three beliefs/qualities/ethos that separate the right wing from the left wing on this big-ass bird we call The Republic. It’s pretty basic.

Private vs. Public

a. The Right Wing: The right wing believes in legislating private morality, such as sexuality, reproductive rights, and the freedom to act on one’s personal biases based on race and sex, for example; and leaving the policing of public works and rights, such as air and water quality, land use, food supplies, and basic rights of citizenship, up to private corporate entities. The right believes that limited, exclusive, and private access to personal wealth is the only path to true freedom, and that there is no such thing as a social contract. Only by blocking social progress, limiting access to public help, and inhibiting the personal freedom of the lowest of society can man be truly free, and very rich.

b. The Left Wing: The left wing believes in legislating policies over things we all share, such as air, water, health care, and food supplies, as well as basic rights of citizenship and equality that allow us to have the freedom to pursue our happiness and not hold back the happiness of others. The left above all wants to make sure we all have equal access to all public works, including things as seemingly disparate as clean water and the arts. Public is public, and the left believes it is protecting the social contract that keeps all of us not only functioning but also aspiring to greater heights. The left wants everyone to feel they are invested in the society, money be damned.

2. The Myth of the Level Playing Field vs. Sharing the Wealth

a. The Right Wing: The right knows that it’s a level playing field, that all humans are born with the same rights, wealth, opportunities, and living situations, and that it’s up to each of us to make the most of what God has given us. Someone on the right will never, ever be okay with lowering his or her standard of living even a little tiny bit (unless it’s by spontaneous personal giving) in order to help the less fortunate, because there is no such thing. Therefore, whatever God sees fit to deliver to you—whether it’s extreme poverty or huge wealth, disasters or benefits of weather or health, an abusive home or nurturing environment—it’s all one and the same. One man’s suffering is no one else’s business, and certainly not the government’s. And the wealthier you are, the more God has blessed you, and so the easier you should have it in terms of rules and regulations.

b. The Left Wing: The left knows that it’s never been a level playing field, and that whatever you have been handed was nothing you asked for. Therefore, if you were born into extreme poverty, abuse, neglect, or other extenuating circumstances, there’s no reason in a country as vastly wealthy as the United States for citizens not to give someone a little help, at our collective taxpayer expense. A person on the left is always willing to lower his or her standard of living a little bit to help the least fortunate among us, because we know that at any moment, we could be in the same situation. God has nothing to do with it.

3. Secular Government vs. Religious Government

a. The Right Wing: The right places personal religious belief at the center of their governed lives and policies. That religion may be Christianity or Corporate Capitalism, but it is never Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, or Other. In keeping with this placement of religion in their lives, the right believes it has the right to Play God, choosing who should live or die and how, whether at the hands of weapons, a lethal injection, or inside a woman’s womb. The right is very comfortable assuming the role and judgment of God.

b. The Left Wing: The left places empirical knowledge, including science, history, journalism, arts, and debate, at the center of their governed lives and policies. This placement does not preclude religious belief, but religion does not play a role in governing beyond belief in the freedom to practice that religion. The left, caught in that curious mix of human limitation, human responsibility, and openness to the unknowable, does not feel it has the right to assume the role of God, and does not feel comfortable choosing for others who has the right to live and who should die, and therefore wishes to prevent, through legislation, those would do violence to others via weapons, lethal injection, or preventing a woman from owning her own womb and body (any decision about which is between a woman and her god and her doctor), and those who would carry out private violence.

So you see the problem. Ain’t no way this bird can fly.

Straighten Up and Fly Right

The buzzard took the monkey for a ride in the air,
The monkey thought that ev’rything was on the square,
The buzzard tried to throw the monkey off his back,
The monkey grabbed his neck and said, “Now, listen, Jack,
Straighten up and fly right, straighten up and fly right,
Straighten up and fly right, cool down papa, don’t you blow your top.
Ain’t no use in divin’. What’s the use of jivin’?
Straighten up and fly right, cool down papa, don’t you blow your top.”
The buzzard told the monkey, “You’re choking me.
Release your hold and I’ll set you free.”
The monkey looked the buzzard right dead in the eye and said,
“Your story’s touching, but is sounds like a lie.”
Straighten up and fly right, straighten up and stay right,
Straighten up and fly right, cool down papa, don’t you blow your top.
~ Nat King Cole, “Straighten Up and Fly Right”

Different though the right wing is from the left wing, we are stuck to the body of one bird—this earth, this nation—and if the screaming eagle crashes into a glass ceiling or the rising sea or the shiny grill of an oncoming SUV, it’s because the right wing willfully denies and obstructs the talents and directional role of the left wing.

There used to be a time when you could say, “Hey, it’s BOTH wings,” but those days are gone. They began ending when Newt Gingrich took out a contract on America, and when the entire Republican Party made it its business to shut that whole thing down, that “thing” being government of, by, and for the People, and culminated in the election of Donald J. Trump, a president right out of Mad Magazine or a Marx Brothers movie.

There’s no denying the interrelationships among the right’s treatment of women, treatment of blacks, treatment of indigenous people, immigrants, and those of faiths beyond Christianity, treatment of the poor, and its treatment of the Constitution. The struggle toward a more perfect union is, for the right, answered in dissolution and apocalypse—an annihilation of their own creation. The ultimate Endgame. They cultivate the ignorant, whip them into a frenzy around a cult of personality, and set about “winning” through the destruction of such basic rights as access to free speech, access to voting, access to citizenship, equal rights for all citizens regardless of race or gender or religion, access to economic opportunity, and the right to an unpolluted natural world.

The left wants you to have equal access to affordable healthcare, jobs, citizenship rights, clean air and water, and education in a safe, secure, and inclusive nation. That’s about it.

Seriously. There’s no comparison between the two wings. Sure, the left wing is dull as ditchwater, but that ditchwater is potable, and if you need a ditch dug, they’ll help you dig that ditch.

All the feathers that cover the body of a bird make flight possible. When, say, a virus causes the bird to shed feathers of one entire wing, the bird goes nowhere but down. How far do you want me to stretch this analogy?

Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

The other week on the 7 Train here in Queens, where I live, I got on a car and sat next to an old man with a large head, shoulders bent over as his fingers, with deeply dirty nails, who reached into a cellophane bag for sunflower seeds in the shells. He’d crack, open, extract, chew the seed, and discard the shells under his seat. I judged this. A glance at his parka and pants and shoes suggested he was not probably homeless, and tufts of hair in her ears notwithstanding, his thick grey hair was washed and he was clean, except for the nails. A laborer. His eyes, when his head turned in a shell-crack moment, were large and crinkly and kind looking. I returned to my book. So the ride went. Then halfway in the tunnel, he began to sing quite happily, openly, in a language I didn’t recognize—somewhere between Greek and Italian or Polish—and his singing was so rich and gentle and natural, one let it go, the way people do in New York. But still, you wonder. Then a young woman who was standing opposite him came over to stand next to him and said, “Are you Armenian?”

He stopped singing, and looked up, “Yes! Are you?”

She said, “My parents are. I recognized the language. I think I’ve heard that song.”

He said, “It’s my birthday.”

“Happy birthday,” the young woman said.

I turned toward him for the first time and said, “Happy birthday!” Then, “It’s my mother’s birthday, too.”

“It is?” the old man said. “Happy birthday to your mom!”

Just then we approached Grand Central Station, and he stood up with his bag and looked sheepishly under his seat. “I make a mess. But it’s my birthday.”

The young woman reassured him, “Don’t worry, they sweep it out at 34^th Street.”

And off he went, smiling. I stood up to await the next stop. As the train moved on, I caught the eye of the young woman and told her, “Thanks for that. This is why I live in New York.”

She nodded, smiled. “That’s why I moved here.”

There is no greater freedom than having the freedom to move toward the pursuit of happiness.

If your personal happiness depends upon the destruction of other people who have never wished you harm, you are a problem.

But now, in an ironic twist, my personal happiness depends upon the destruction of an entire political party whose sole purpose is to destroy my happiness.

But we come at this impasse from different angles: The right wing thinks they have the right to stop the old Armenian man from eating sunflower seeds and singing on the 7 Train because it’s fucking annoying, and also he should be deported; whereas the left wing recognizes the old Armenian man as a person with eccentricities who, when not merely tolerated but engaged, turns out to be a delightful human to know, his deeply dirty nails revealing, with some imagination, his history of laboring to live in and serve this country.

It used to be I only got involved with people on a personal level, as on the train back there, and that I didn’t get involved at the community level, at least not bodily. It just wasn’t me. I am still this way. Except on January 21, when I did the Women’s March in New York City. It felt good. I’ve done it several times since.

Miss O’ (right) with activist friend Colleen at the Women’s March, NYC, 1-21-17

What I’m saying is, people can change. If Miss O’ can change, the world can change.

So America: Make an effort. Talk to your neighbor AND throw your body at the problems. Mend these broken wings so we can take off like a big-ass bird.

And don’t be afraid if the pilots turn out to be a couple of women and an old Armenian man riding a train in New York. Indeed, the world should be so lucky.

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