Pete Seeger Died Today

    Many of us woke up to someone saying “Pete Seeger died today” on the news.  So it becomes a day to mark on our calendars.  A day to sit and think of one of his many songs – “Turn, Turn, Turn,” “Where Have all the Flowers Gone,” or “If I Had a Hammer.”  Hum it.  Sing it.  How often were you touched by his songs, by his singing?  Take a moment out and reflect on what he brought to your life, to the lives of others. 

    Recall that our government almost put an end to his singing.  To his songs.  Virtually no one would book him after he refused to give information about his beliefs to the House Unamerican Activities Committee.  Remember Pete Seeger the next time someone needs your help to better your neighborhood, your town, our country, our world. 

    Sorry to see you go, fella.  You brought beauty, joy, and the possibility of meaningful political action to many of our citizens.  Thank you. 
   

Murphy’s Law or Elderly Parents Helping Their Children Move – Episode One

    I am not sure where the volunteering started.  But I can certainly recall that when one of our kids finally found a home that would comfortably house their expanded family someone volunteered my wife and I as helpers.  There was no coercion, no misunderstanding.  Just ignorance, stupidity, and lack of judgement.  That’s not fair.  What was lacking can easily be stated: the stamina of middle age.  The brawn of earlier athletic days.  The reflexes of youth.  And just a tad of the luck we all rely on to get by day to day.
  
    Let me relate some of the details in the story, and you, kind reader, be the judge. 

    Step one was driving to New Jersey.  Luckily we were going on Martin Luther King Day.  And what luck, the beautiful new Maryland House Rest Stop on I 95 just opened that weekend.  Check the pictures out.  Lots of glass.  See those doors? Step inside and there is about a ten foot vestibule and another set of doors.  Even on cold days cold air doesn’t come in.  And once you’re in, and done, it’s time to go out.  Unfortunately my wife didn’t notice that half of those interior set of doors weren’t doors or openings.  They were brand new big very clear glass frames.  After I said “I’ll meet you in the car,” she walked into one of those stationary tempered panes.  Embarrassed she went to the car and nursed her bleeding lip, and her banged up eyebrow (soon to become a full shiner). 

    She sat in the car and wondered, “How am I going to tell Joe that I walked into the (glass) wall?  It’s so embarrassing.”  In the meantime, I had bought my coffee, put in milk and sugar, stirred and covered it, and began walking toward the car.  I too saw the outside doors, but no inside glass pane.  I too marched into the rigid wall of glass.  Red blood mixed with hot coffee on the floor and the brand new, clean as a hospital syringe, piece of glass.  I had a bloody nose, cut on the bridge, bleeding from the interior.  I was down for the count.  Professional first aiders appeared from no where, eager to practice their ministrations in their new rest stop, so as to insure they were ready for the big time catastrophe.  I stood up.  I struggled to be free of their grip.  I failed.

    “Sit down here.”  I did.

    “I have to go, my wife is waiting for me in the car.”

    “Should we call an ambulance?”

    “I have to go, my wife is waiting for me in the car.”  I stood up.

    “Don’t get up, please.”


    “Get him some cold compresses, bandages”

    “I have to go, my wife is waiting for me in the car.”

    “Are you OK?”

    “Of course, I just have to go, my wife is waiting for me in the car.”

    “We’ll let her know you are in here.  What kind of car is she in?”  I tell them.  Mortified that I did something so idiotic as to walk into a building wall.  What will my new status be in the family?  Family clown.  I tell them the car.

    Finally, with an armful of medical supplies, I am freed, and walk out (still with a tiny bit of coffee in that crushed cup) to the car.  To my surprise, there is my lovely wife, being told not to stand up, that they will get medical attention to her in just a minute or two.  She looks at me.  I look at her.  I go into the car, speechless.  Up goes her window.  On goes the engine and if anyone left rubber peeling out of the Maryland House parking lot, it was my wife.  We laughed for a while, and then realized we had done some seriously visible damage to our faces. 

    Were we prepared to help our kids in their move 3 hours to the north?  More to come in the next episode of Murphy’s Law.

"Our Year in 2013" Wish List and Blues

    It’s the end of the year.  So I look to the miracle workers: the popes, the priests, the rabbis, the imams. 

(Note: neither I, nor anyone else I know, count the pushy entrepreneurial elites of Silicon Valley or Big Pharma as joining this crowd of miraclists – sisters of mercy, pounders of swords into plowshears, the answerers of our prayers.) 

    I ask why humans who communicate so directly with the deities never insure we get the answers we universally pray for?  Even more obvious, given their eternal connectivity, why don’t they think to ask for things we have not thought of, things that could serve as a substitute given that our dreams will not be fulfilled.  Not that I am a believer.  But certainly those high and mighty clergy must know the miracles we pray for, the outcomes we desire. 

    We boomers lived our dreams in the sixties, watched as our dreams were distilled into the sour mash of recipes of drinks, drugs, and delectations.  Now it is time to take lessons from the youngsters among us: the lettered generations.  It is the X’s, Y’s and Z’s that must now lead.  Enter the opposites of the angels – the pushy bastards of enterprise.  At the head of that parade appears Mark, or Mr. Zuckerberg as you may know him. 

    Santa Zuckerberg stuffed my stocking this year, as – according to the Washington Post – he has so many of the Boomers.  But the Post identified his gift being that of connectivity of the aged with our distant friends, our lost children, and our never to be found grandchildren.  This isn’t his main gift.  That was the great gift of instant history that he gave each of us. 

    Zuckerberg the great historian is writing more history every day than the entire tribe of academic historians has written since the time of the first agrarian settlements.  How does he accomplish this great power to redefine our days?  How has he indirectly coronated himself ‘Historian in Chief?’  It’s all done via hidden algorithms (i.e., a secret step by step recipe).

    Where does all this history get written?  If it’s Dr. Z, it must to be on your Facebook page.  But isn’t everything there written by you and your friends – not by Mr. Z?  Not quite.

    The great historian Zuckerberg gives you your history that is just a click away.  His option is “Seeing Your 2013 Year in Review.”  This review is derived via some algorithm that seems to harness Dale Carnegie’s idea To Win Friends Is to Earn Profits and to Influence People.  The algorithm appears to be informed by Norman Vincent Peale’s notion that one gets power from ‘thinking positively.’ 

    Or was it just my experience that clicking on the damn big and bold 2013 generated my year devoid of all the doldrums I experienced during the last 12 months? 

    And, “Is that bad?” I ask myself.  This is my official history, the one that I, and my friends and children, will go back to over and over again.  Doesn’t that make this history the right one?  The one I prayed for?  No illness.  No death. 

    Yes, the Zuckerbergs of industry have listened to us and delivered - answering our prayers.  They couldn’t rid us of the wars, the poverty, the injustices.  But they could edit it out.  Which leads me to my wish for you, my friends: may your actual New Year reflect that great dream you had for justice, health, wealth, peace and love.  May the algorithms of happiness have nothing to edit out when they summarize your experiences next December!

    Which leads me to my end of the year blues.  My cynicism leads me to forecast that we will have at least as many problems at the end of next year as we do now.  But may I be proven wrong - forever wrong.  If I am unfortunately not wrong, may the algorithm that Dr. Z uses continue to edit away the wrinkles and warts that the new year may come to hold so we may look back at next year with the rose colored lenses that he gives us.      

Finishing a novel

    Finished Flotsam a few minutes ago.  Nice way to end the year!

    What began with a kernel of an idea, while swinging my computer case into the baggage rack on a plane going from Moscow to London in 2009, is finally a novel – shaped and done. 

    The task of writing a novel is so much more than just writing.  Obviously, it begins before writing: in the imagination.  The construction of characters, relations, places, happenings.  Such an effort in imagining: so much and yet so far from a whole slice of the world.  It is rather an imagined reduction of a possible world.  What one leaves out is far more important than what one puts in.

    In any case, the creating of these elements begins the trip.  Then one writes it down.  But the characters talk back and take over.  They can’t be wrested passively from the mind to the page.  And as they take shape, these characters morph the plot, the stopping points, and perhaps even try to change the endpoint.  They are continually moving from those imagined things to points not previously conceived.

    But eventually one feels that the real creative work is done: the book’s spine and cadence is fixed.  The ‘story’ and characters seem to be quite complete.  One reads the pages.  But immediately shortcomings become seriously obvious.  And so reconstruction and manipulation began.

    Then the act of editing forces the writer to get out of the ‘big picture’ and into the nitty gritty.  I had to concentrate on particular sentences, words, tenses, descriptive elements.  For me, these were often such minor details as not to be previously imagined.  But of course at this point, the moment of initial creativity has passed.  I must make some choices.  But in making each of these choices one must get back ‘into’ each of the characters.  Is the word correct?  Have I changed the character for the better with this edited phrase?  If so, what does this imply for all of the character’s other appearances, relations, and utterances?  How do the implications of this word choice change the structure? 

    Soon it is apparent that there is always an undiscovered butterfly flapping her wings in a new manner chaotically creating an unforeseen storm half way around one’s imagined world.  Chaos is always happening; it can never be fully controlled.  Every reading reveals new shortcomings that were seriously obvious but not seen before.  And so reconstruction and manipulation begin, restarting the chaotic nature of editing.

    Some 10 months into the project and it was mid 2011.  About then my son Joshua and his husband, Shu, wondered if I would enjoy editing the drafts.  Fortunately I did: for I found that editing has taken much more time than the original writing.  Knowing the story and the characters doesn’t stop with the writing.  Proper editing required that I followed an idea espoused by Amin Ahmad: sit down with the character.  Interview her.  Discover the details that I did not know previously – details that now lead to this change.  How many sittings must your poor subject endure? Luckily the characters are fictitious and in this I could be their cruel master.  This back and forth could be endless, perhaps.  But it has a natural ending as the characters tire and reveal less and less, reflecting my own limited imagination.

    Indeed, it is this very limitation of self that allows the manuscript to be done - to satisfy me. 

   And then all that is left is to thank the many who helped me arrive at this point.  I begin with my main editor, wife and supporter, Bonnie.  She sat through so many readings, and questions that I begin to wonder why she didn’t run out of patience.  Others in my family also helped greatly.  Upon reading some early pages, Rob blessed me with two books on writing.  This was much better than just telling me that I needed to improve or call it quits.  My son-in-law Shusaku Harada’s ideas regarding structure, plot development, and relationship with my readers greatly improved early drafts of the manuscript.  His husband (who is also my son) Joshua’s comments determined a number of twists in the final structure of the novel.  My daughter, Sarah, made a few telling comments that I have certainly not properly addressed. 

   But then again, that must be true for the criticisms that others have given as well.  I can’t leave out thanking my excellent writing teacher, Amin Ahmad.  His many – always constructive, but not always subtle – criticisms included such telling phrases as “You mean I’ve been reading for all this time and all that happened is that your guy parked the car?”  Hopefully, he will continue to judge my work destructively.  Two other friends who have been particularly generously supportive and unsparing in their criticism must be named: Robert Bein and Barbara Cristy.  Numerous others including all the knowledgeable members of our neighborhood book group, have read and criticized one or another of the many previous drafts of this novel.  I thank them for their input. 

    Finally, I must mention the support I have received from the Washington Creative Writers Club – perhaps better known as A Table in the Back – the writers’ group that meets at Bread and Chocolate.  David Hutto, Tina Manousakis, Jerry Karn, Kat Tennermann, each, a member of the group, has been exceptionally helpful.  But all the members have been very supportive and collectively they formed a community that has given me confidence. 

    I could not have written it without this village of support.  I wish, however, that I could blame these wonderful companions for the shortcomings that are still contained in the manuscript.  

Progress in America:

(4) Guidelines for Citizens and Bike Riders

    Aren’t we lucky that we live in interesting times?  Who knows when our government will open? Who knows whether our bills will be paid?  Times when our pols shut down the government and scream that we must not close the very monuments they have just closed.  Times when we can watch the government’s shenanigans unsettle our faith in our Patria.  Times when some imagined cabal threatens Socialism / Communism / Bolshevism along with evolution to undermine the very ‘exceptional foundations’ of our country’s destiny.  Fortunately so much of this theater is a rerun.  But in this rerun, are we sure the actors haven’t changed the ending?

    Helen Epstein’s wonderful article in a recent NY Review of Books describing Sara Josephine Baker, a public health pioneer in New York City shows just how repetitive some of this is:

     “Articles about Baker’s lifesaving campaigns appeared in newspapers from Oklahoma to Michigan to California. In the late 1910s, she and other reformers drafted a bill to create a nationwide network of home-visiting programs and maternal and child health clinics modeled on the programs in New York. But the American Medical Association (AMA)—backed by powerful Republicans averse to spending money on social welfare—claimed the program was tantamount to Bolshevism. Baker was in Washington the day a young New England doctor explained the AMA’s position to a congressional committee:
            We oppose this bill because, if you are going to save the lives of all these women and children at public expense, what inducement will there be for young men to study medicine?” Senator Sheppard, the chairman, stiffened and leaned forward: “Perhaps I didn’t understand you correctly,” he said: “You surely don’t mean that you want women and children to die unnecessarily or live in constant danger of sickness so there will be something for young doctors to do?” “Why not?” said the New England doctor, who did at least have the courage to admit the issue: “That’s the will of God, isn’t it?”
    So Obamacare isn’t the first, or second, or even fifth or sixth sequel of this Republican repulsion to help the needy.  Rather it is all a class B rerun, so stale as even to being projected after the threat of Bolshevism has disappeared from the world scene. 

    If knee-jerk Republican opposition is formulaic, what is far more difficult to predict is how this shut down will play out in the end.  And as we citizens hang on for what could be a very rough ride, perhaps there are some lessons from experienced bike riders worth thinking about.  Here are some that come to mind:

1.    When you ride over rough roads, loosen the grip on the handlebars and raise yourself a bit off the saddle.  And we are being driven on very rough roads.  Americans hold onto the credo that we have the best democracy in the world.  We believe our constitution was given to our ‘wise founding fathers’ almost as the 10 commandments were to Moses.  We hold onto our constitution much as a religious fundamentalist grasps her bible.  Perhaps it is time to loosen one’s grip and think and raise up out of our saddles to think about designing a new constitution with institutions that serve us better.

2.    Though a bike in motion is quite stable, standing still while on the saddle requires serious skill. This is something to consider in your own planning when our government’s stops are so crazy. 

3.    The bike rider, like the individual citizen needs to be defensive.  A good defense is essential because you are rarely the biggest moving structure on the block.  So it is with the citizen - faced by the juggernaut of the state.  

4.    Appearance has little or nothing to do with performance.  All those fancy cyclist uniforms that cost a pretty penny have little to do with success on a bike ride.  No ride is successful without staying power: grit.  Similarly all those slick political ads our candidates and parties run.  Don’t trust the cyclist by the shirt, or the politician by their promises.

5.    Finally, it is becoming clear, that just like the biker, it is imperative for the citizen to have a strategy for the breakdowns.  No long term  ride can protect one from the unpredictable glass shard or sharp edge to a crack in the pavement.  Apparently we citizens must expect our political system to breakdown.  This requires a two prong strategy: plan your trips with that in mind, and think about redesigned, better gear.

Two Cries while Serving Tea in an 18th Century Miniature

    I.  To My Master

Caught, I am, in servitude
Miniaturized as one
in Orient’s multitude
I am your slave to serve tea.

“Tread quietly!  Do not disturb!”
So you command.
Color given only to my shoes.
Only my outline given form,
My self to disappear into the paper

You have had me framed
in colors gay and floral
But your heavy black vines
are placed to imprison me.

I shall protest once more.

II. To my Creator

You, with the power to create a universe

as God have drawn me into servitude

yet pretending to art’s neutrality.

Giving color to the flowers and even

the lowly shoes on my feet

you drew me caught and bland,

to blend as ochre

into the paper as if I, a woman

am to disappear, becoming wall paper

for life’s passings by.  What have you

caught with the heavy vines,

if not man’s oppression?

Progress in America:

(3) A Book, A Movie and A Beautiful Day

    Ben Fountain sharply criticizes the militaristic, commercial patriotism of American society in his novel Billy Lynn’s Long Half Time Walk.  Echoing the tones of gonzo journalist Hunter Thompson’s mining of the absurdist vein of America’s celebration of its military, Fountain’s novel takes place during the halftime of a Thanksgiving Day Cowboys-Bears game in Dallas.
    Billy Lynn and his ‘Bravo Company’ had fought with great heroics in Iraq.  The battle was caught on camera and televised on FOX news.  The Bravo Marines form an over the top collection of heroic and skeptical warriors flown home for a short cross country tour to boost support for Bush’s Great Fiasco.  Wherever their tour brings them, they hear the same patriotic and religious drivel: They are ‘protecting our civilization’ by ‘fighting the terrorists,’ by their ‘honor,’ ‘great sacrifice,’ and ‘Christianity.’  They are doing ‘God’s work’ and bringing ‘civilization’ to Iraq.  They however have a much finer grid of experience and these words don’t have much purchase in their experience. 
    Having lost his best friend in the action caught by the cameras, Billy Lynn is a 19 year old virgin Marine.  The author tells the story from Billy’s point of view: utilizing a third person stream of consciousness.  Coming from a hard scrabble American family, Billy remains philosophically detached from the celebrations of American Militarism, Materialism and Patriotism.  Events cascade both in his mind and in the stadium as the NFL’s celebration of the Bravo Company escalates.
    Strangely, the criticism of American militarism echoes the action in Aida.  I saw a fabulous filmed performance of the opera by La Scala.  This performance is directed the great Franco Zeffirelli and captures the drama of Verdi's great opera on the big screen.  In the first two acts, Verdi portrays a heady celebration of war and warriors in ancient Egypt.  The celebration involves the same basic ingredients (religion, sex, and patriotism) that Fountain employs.  And the warriors’ concerns, at the center of both dramas are, though verbally supported, are abandoned by the civilian authorities and spectators.  Both end up using the warriors for their own purposes. 
    And how strange it was to exit the movie on a beautiful day to enter a car where war was still the central topic on the news.  The disbelief was only heightened by the publication of a column by Eliot Cohen in the Washington Post.  Cohen, a great neo-con renowned for his support of Bush’s crazy venture into Iraq, admonishes America and it’s President, ‘you have no cause to be war-weary.’  The war is distant for you.  You aren’t overseas fighting.  And Mr. President you must be able to lead the country to war, not celebrating the weariness of its population for war. 
    People have long had art to reflect on these all too human horrors.  But, hey, we humans have come along way.  We’ve got the internal combustion engine, unmanned remote control bombers and we’re even all connected.  Now let us try to invent institutions fit for the future - allowing us to have a chance to solve our shared problems as we share their consequences.  Only that way are we likely to survive this tumultuous century without great costs.