Carol Bergman

 

There is no such thing as toxic masculinity. There is cruelty, there is criminal behavior, there's abuse of power. But if you do any of those things, you are not masculine. That is anti-masculine. The far right, just to be political, conflating masculinity with coarseness and cruelty, that could not be less masculine.

                                                                                 

-Scott Galloway, on The View 4/11/25

 

 

I don't think the guy who owns the Jeep spray painted  top to bottom with "patriotic" graffiti is a swimmer. If he is a swimmer, I might have noticed his "patriotic" tattoos in the sauna—I am sure he is covered with them—and  I would have talked to him. Probably. On the other hand, that Jeep looks a bit BOLD in a celebratory aggressive way. And, of course, I know who the guy voted for because the name of that PERSON is in BOLD letters woven into the "patriotic" symbols. All of it red, white and blue. God Bless. America.

 

 I've only had one unpleasant encounter in the pool with a buff and beautiful tattooed guy since Covid restrictions were relaxed and we began our laps two to a lane again. Sometimes the buff and beautiful guys with wide wingspans aren't as considerate as the formerly competitive women swimmers with wide wingspans, of which I am one. I try to reserve a lane for a time when women I know swim, thus no unpleasant encounters, but this is not always possible. I don't anticipate or assume trouble, I try to relax. And certainly, of late, the guys with big trucks and celebratory jeeps and wide buff wingspans are a bit friendlier, probably because they are feeling better about themselves—acknowledged , respected, and in power in DC. What's a feminist to make of all this? I will read Scott Galloway's book, Notes on Being a Man (November release) to clarify my ideas.  I think Galloway is "right on the money," as Joyce Vance would say, but he's a complex thinker—and an excellent speaker—and I want to make sure I understand him.

 

If you were around in 2003 during the Iraq war, you might have noticed all the Jeeps and Humvees on the roads in your 'hood blasting music. Were all the owners returning soldiers? I don't think so. I never noticed any women or trans women driving these vehicles, but I may be wrong. Let's say I am not wrong, let's say I'm right on the money. Why buy a Jeep or a Humvee for daily use, like taking the kids to school or going to the supermarket? I remember saying to my husband, "We're all at war now, which is what Pope Francis said, more or less. He said we were witnessing a Third World War "in small pieces." Wars can also be domestic, among our neighbors, between our neighbors, within ourselves.

 

And here we are, here I am, in the once-great United States of America where there is suddenly so much dis-unity, struggle and pain that graffiti on a jeep in the parking lot of my gym inspires a blog post. Please keep in mind that though I'm not a pundit, I'm just a person, I do know one thing for certain: none of us can remain innocent or detached  for long in this time of deep division and catastrophic cruelty. Every family, every person, will be impacted in some way.

 

I am afraid of being, on this shore,
  a branchless trunk, and what I most regret

is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair.

 

― Federico García-Lorca,  1898-1936

 

  

The 6-year-old twin boys are sitting on their parents' laps, their legs dangling to the wooden floor. They jump up whenever Anna Librada Georges asks them to follow the claps and stomps of a simplified flamenco routine. The 9-year-old girls sitting next to me are best friends; their parents have dropped them off.  Hands go up as soon as Anna asks a question.

 

"Did you know that we can listen with our eyes?"  she asks as she introduces her guitarist and explains that they communicate constantly, albeit nonverbally.

 

Anna, bi-lingual and bi-cultural, is also a psychotherapist. The daughter of an immigrant from Spain, she is tuned into children in an unusual way—through the language of the dance she has been studying for many years, both in Spain and the United States. It's an ancient improvisational art form based on lament, or jondo, a deep song. And today, it has a healing, unifying power as the adults in the room encourage their children to participate and try to relax themselves. I can feel the bands of worry and despair loosen.

 

"Let us ask for connection to our people," Anna continues as she repeats the simplified flamenco routine so we can all practice.  Now what we are doing feels like a deflection, or an escape, a strange thought, but a pleasant one. It is easy to forget what has transpired in the United States, to wake in the morning in momentary forgetfulness, at least, until reality crushes again. So here we are, and here is Anna, up from DC to revive our spirits, the adults on their feet next to the carefree children, and we are all clapping and stomping. My husband, is feeling very carefree. He has been a flamenco aficionado since  I met him, if not before. I wish we were dressed more flamboyantly for the occasion, but no matter, we are into it, connected through music and dance.

 

"It's a scary and unsettling time," Anna tells me in a phone interview after the event. "I tell my clients—some of whom have lost their jobs—that we need to stay connected, we have to listen to each other and we have to believe each other."

 

Anna's husband, Jack, a former United States Navy diver and photographer, now works as a Public Affairs Officer for the Navy. He's a federal worker who is witnessing first-hand the daily disruptions. When I ask if he works at the Pentagon, there is a beat before Anna says, "Not in the actual building. He's elsewhere."

 

"And will you be deployed again?"

 

"It's always possible."

 

I mention that my husband was in the Navy, though I was never a "Navy wife," and my husband was not a career officer; he was discharged before we moved to London. But Anna starts to chat more confidingly about the unsettled military life. Jack and Anna are raising two daughters, nearly 10 and 14 now; they are already world travelers.

 

Writing in my journal the day after my interview with Anna, I reflect on children dancing joyously, how they are our future, how we must continue to protect and nurture them, and to take care of ourselves during this trying time.

 

On 16 November 2010, UNESCO declared flamenco one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity

 

 

In the United States, as soon as several inhabitants have taken an opinion or an idea they wish to promote in society, they seek each other out and unite together once they have made contact. From that moment, they are no longer isolated but have become a power seen from afar whose activities serve as an example and whose words are heeded.

 

 

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835-1840

 

 

Praise be, the dandelions have popped on the SUNY New Paltz,  NY campus and the ponds have been restocked with fish. Students are preparing for their final days of the semester and the academic year, and I am walking towards The Terrace to meet with Beth Albright, one of the founders of Ulster Corps, a consortium of volunteer organizations gathered today to discuss affordable housing initiatives in the county. The loss of federal funding simmers below the conversations as I try to persuade Beth to agree to an interview for a profile. How did she get into this altruistic work? What is her backstory?  She is self-effacing and distracted so we agree to postpone a decision about an interview. She promises she'll think about it. An on-the-record interview is a gift to the journalist and must never be forced. In the meantime, I plan to study volunteerism, its history and purpose in 21st century beleaguered America. So I will begin here, today, with this blog post.

 

I moved to the Hudson Valley in 2018 and had been a city dweller all my life, an activist, but not a volunteer in the American sense of the word.  I had always associated the word "volunteerism" with  President George H.W. Bush's "thousand points of light," which I read as a Republican administration's abnegation of responsibility. In other words, if citizens work gratis, the government won't have to pay for services.  For example, in 1736, Benjamin Franklin founded the first volunteer firehouse. Most fire fighters in the Hudson Valley are still volunteers who are on 24-hour call and hold day jobs to support themselves and their families. I pose the question: Is it a good idea to have volunteer first responders, or government funded professional first responders?  Or both, as needed?

 

I supposes I am ambivalent about volunteerism, and a democratic socialist at heart, my hopes for a future America closer to those of Bernie Sanders and OAC, both of whom believe in taxpayer supported universal health care, for example. But I also have memories of my doctor mother's volunteerism in the Mt. Sinai Hospital's Adolescent Health Clinic and with the Margaret Sanger Clinic, before it was Planned Parenthood. She had a successful, lucrative private practice, and two growing children which kept her busy. Yet she made a decision to give back. She was a refugee, and grateful for the safe haven and opportunity of America, in its glory days.

 

After the tragedy of the September 11 attacks, the American Red Cross reported processing 15,570 new volunteers. In the co-op where we lived, everyone helped workers who could not get home, and comforted frightened residents who lived alone. We met in the lobby, an ad hoc committee formed, and we organized. We walked down Second Avenue to donate blood; sadly it was not needed. These communal actions connected us and gave us purpose as citizens, neighbors and survivors. We formed a corps of volunteers organically, poised to help others in need. We were fearful, but unbowed, our spirits strengthened, our hope for the future intact. In the midst of an unspeakable atrocity, we carried on.

 

This post is dedicated to all the federal workers who have been terminated, in celebration of their service and courage.

 

… even this,
these little gestures that can re-birth a nation,
reconcile not only colors like blue and red,
but reconcile us one to the other.

 

— Marc Harshman, Dispatch From the Mountain State

 

 

Marc Harshman, the poet laureate of West Virginia, was raised in rural Indiana, has an MA from Yale Divinity School, and is practiced in performing his poetry in front of an audience however scant and comatose, his delivery saturated with heartfelt rousing intention. He wants us to wake up, not only to the natural world, but to our brethren, the person sitting to our right and to our left, literally and figuratively.

 

A  primary school teacher for many years, poetry was always, and still is, his passion though he's also written many childrens' books. It was a pleasant surprise to find him at my local library one evening as a guest of Next Years Words, a monthly prose and poetry reading that welcomes both published and novice writers. It's been a feature of the library's programming since 2015 and is still going strong, thanks to Susan Chute, one of its founders.

 

How sweet it is to experience poetry during these hard times. "It makes the unbearable bearable," Mark mumbled a bit sotto voce, between one poem and another. I heard the aside loud and clear and wanted to rise up and sing, as though I was in church. In normal times, such an impulse would have felt out of place in a sedate library setting, but not this week, this month, this day.

 

At some point Marc uttered the word "Appalachia," a reference to his rural upbringing and the geographical locus of his work. I thought of our vice president who was raised in the same/or similar geographical locus, and has  a (well-written) book now offered as a free download for those who may be curious or adoring. But that begins and ends the comparison between these two men, as writers, so I'll leave it there.

 

I have attempted poetry from time to time, have had a few published in literary journals, and collected them into a trilogy called Nomads.  Most of these poems are narrative, what a poet might call prosaic. I consider them prose poems or mini-stories.  I've performed them, and hosted an evening when actors performed them, but unlike Marc Harshman, ideas do not get laid out in my brain as poetry. I wouldn't presume to know what it feels like to write a poem that begins with an image, for example, and I'm admiring of poets who pierce our indifference and fear with words that fly off the page with a cadence and aliveness we cannot resist.

 

 

They say, as the gardener, so the garden.

 

― Aleksandar Hemon, The World and All That It Holds

 

 

It's April 11 as I begin this blog post, and it's snowing, the landscape transformed, the budding blossoms frozen in time. Though the storm was expected, the colder temperature was unexpected. Or maybe I wasn't paying attention to my weather apps. I have more than one, just to be certain…of the weather. It's an absurdity taken to its logical conclusion, as Gilbert and Sullivan might have said as they plotted one of their comic operas in a 19th century topsy turvy Victorian world where flirtation was considered reprehensible, woman to man that is. Ever so? Or flashes of light and enlightenment throughout the eons?

 

"Always the dominant male," my Canadian cousin, George, just told me on a FT call, if I heard his facetious tone correctly, "We have been living in a bubble in our lifetime." If I understand his implication, we evolve, and then we inevitably devolve. The trajectory towards enlightenment cannot strengthen or solidify; it constantly backslides. My historian husband describes these backslides as actions and reactions, political shifts, a  pendulum. But what happens when the pendulum gets stuck? How will it get unstuck? When, if ever, will evolution continue unobstructed?  That is my question today.

 

These past few weeks have all had a similar ambience—muddy, polluted--and a percussive beat—cruel, unforgiving, frightening. Maybe it is time to consult the I Ching. If we toss coins will we find some answers to our global strongman/strongmen dilemma, and its inevitable fervor for war? Shall we relinquish our futures to the fate of the toss?

 

Not a good idea.

 

Did I read somewhere that the White House rose garden has been obliterated with cement? If so, it's an evocative metaphor. In a recent dream I walked the perimeter of the cemented garden and wept. After this lamentation, I watered the roots of the dying roses on the mulch pile, and replanted them in Greenland.

 

We make things that we hope will be bigger than us, and then we're desolate when that's what they become.

 

- Richard Powers, Playground

 

 

 

I haven't been able to get into a Richard Powers book—audio or print—even though I know he is an author of the moment, and for the moment, so please excuse a quote from a review of  his most recent novel. It suits my cyber-luddite mood today. On Friday I either lost my phone, or it was stolen, probably the latter, troubling indeed, not to mention the trouble of restoring my mobile cyber life.  Two days later, the glitches continue. Most hilarious was a phone call I received from an unknown caller, followed by text messages:  

      

Don't you recognize my number?

       

No. Who are you?

       

Your daughter.

 

First glitch: My daughter's contact information was wiped. Second glitch, more serious: I did not have her phone number stored in my memory.  This is not good.

 

So I ask you, dear reader, how many phone numbers of those near and dear do you have stored in your personal neural pathways?

 

Technology evolves apace. Not that long ago I wondered about audio books and whether they are a good idea for writers. I have studied its effects on my students, and on me. Is listening the same as reading? If we do not have an auditory memory, how do we retain information, process an argument, or study how the book is made, what narrative devices are used, and so on.  I am still not persuaded that listening is truly reading and writers must read, and read deeply. Maybe a writer reading this will disabuse me of my skepticism. Maybe that writer is a musician with a strong auditory memory. Please post a comment if you are such a reader who listens to books.

 

And now we have AI which is quickly permeating the media landscape and our lives. My new phone is loaded with AI opportunities. Will our children ever be able to generate their own writing again? Will their spoken language suffer? Or will AI enhance their writing, their vocabulary, and their imaginations?  Once again, I am skeptical. Especially when I hear that adult friends have made use of the technology, already depend upon it, and are persuaded that it is miraculous. I have seen some of the samples of their AI generated  work. Most is awkward and shallow. But when I say, as gently as I can, "This needs revising," they are not pleased.  Nor am I that they are so smitten.

 

Not to mention the ethical issues, the disclaimer necessary when we are posting our writing, or publishing our writing.  Thus the banner I am introducing here to all my readers. My website is hosted by the Authors Guild, a venerable writers' organization, and this blog post is authored by me and me alone. I take responsibility for all its content, its point of view, and its skepticism.

 

 

 

Suddenly, like a thing falling upon me from without, came fear.

 

― H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

 

          

 

Out of curiosity, I went onto the United States Department of Education site and found the message that became the title of this blog post. I tried to imagine what it felt like to the employees of that federal agency when they realized that their site had been scrubbed. Scrubbed clean. And that their ongoing projects had also been scrubbed, or expunged, as had the employment of some of their colleagues, or each other, or themselves. The offices must have been in trauma turmoil. Therefore expungement is a better word to explain what has happened—and  is happening—in Washington DC. 

 

In other words, the UFOs have landed.

 

A word, then, about UFOs. There is a woman I know—a  sweet, generous, educated woman—who  "believes" in UFOs, believes they exist and that they are the cause of much of our distress right now. I am at a loss to disabuse her. She reassures me that she voted "right," not right on the political spectrum, just sanely, shall we say, even though she was afraid to go to the polling station on the day of the election in the event of disturbance, or worse. I suggested she play it safe for her own wellbeing, which is fragile, and vote by mail. I obtained a mail-in ballot for  her. She filled it out in the privacy of her home, but it didn't work, the wrong people were elected, she said. Someone had obviously not counted her ballot. "Next time," I said, in an effort to reassure her, and myself. But she was not content with my reply. "There is the possibility that the results of the election were generated by AI," she continued. "What if the UFO's have departed and left their AIs behind? Have they already infiltrated at ground level?"

 

"Unlikely," I said, before saying goodbye, and taking a long walk in the sunshine to restore my equilibrium and emotional sobriety.

 

 

 

The reason you should care about this is not that it could happen to you but that it is already happening to others. It is happening to people who, we claim, have rights just because we are human. It is happening to me personally. 

 

-M. Gessen in the NY Times 3/17/25

 

Bullying paralyzes all conversation, or obliterates it. Think Zelensky in the Oval office. How did he feel, or try not to feel? Ashamed? Humiliated? Angry? Frightened? Silenced?  A mature man, a President of a nation at war, Zelensky seemed frazzled, but maintained his dignity. Still, the semiotics were clear for all to see: Trump and JD Vance tried to break Zelensky in a public display. Some observers have noted that the encounter was saturated with antisemitic tropes.

 

Carolyn Mackler was in 7th grade when she experienced bullying for the first time. Her secular family—her father Jewish, her mother not Jewish--had migrated to upstate Brockport, NY from New York City where Carolyn had enjoyed feeling different—because of her height, because of her intermarried family, perhaps.  "I was a free spirit in elementary school," she says.

 

But then one day, a Brockport classmate drew a swastika on his notebook, showed it to friends, and the bullying began. Kids called her "loser,"  sang what they thought were Jewish songs, and dressed as Nazis at Halloween.

 

The teachers remained silent.

 

"Kids are sneaky," Carolyn says, "and even after my parents went to the school to complain, the bullying didn't stop. I shrunk into myself and started feeling insecure. Finally, when I got to high school I decided to pretend I wasn't Jewish. If someone said something, I told them they were making a mistake."

 

Now, at 51, and a successful Young Adult novelist, with two grown sons, Carolyn decided to tackle bullying, and her own experience, in a book for 5th, 6th and 7th graders, Right Back At You. An epistolary novel, letters appear in Talia and Mason's closets across time; Talia lives in 1987 and Mason in 2023. The narrative device works well and  will surely appeal to middle-schoolers. But I wonder how parents, or educators, will process an underlying message: bullying is too difficult for adult intervention to make much difference.  There are so many well developed approaches to tackle bullying these days that I find it hard to believe this is true. That said, prejudicial bullying—bullying because of race, gender or ethnicity—is so callous that it is particularly challenging.

 

Like so many other books for adults, children and teens, Carolyn Mackler's novels have been banned from schools, a badge of honor. Scholastic is the publisher of Right Back At You and it is to their credit that they are taking a chance on what some consider a controversial topic. When Carolyn told her editor, David Levithan, what she wanted to write about, he gave her the go ahead without reservation. "With over 10,000 titles being banned or challenged in the last school year (per PEN America's tracking), and with titles such as The Diary of Anne Frank and Beloved being banned, it's hard to imagine publishing books that won't be threatened by censors," he wrote in an email.

 

Now that the book is published, Carolyn has started an ambitious Pen Pal Project. She asked Scholastic to provide stationary and started contacting school districts throughout the United States. The Sylvan Park School in Nashville, TN and the Lopez Island School on San Juan Island off the coast of Washington State will be the first two participants. 6th and 7th graders will read Right Back At You before a virtual visit with Carolyn. After the discussion, they'll get paired up as Pen Pals. 

 

Will they be able to create community and empathy across a geographic divide? Will the bullying in their schools stop? Will they come away with a deeper understanding of antisemitism and other hatreds? 

 

Stay tuned.

 

If your local middle school is interested in participating in the Right Back At You Pen Pal Project, contact:   www.carolynmackler.com/contact

My Seattle cousin, Ellen—an educator and an activist—sent me a Guardian article yesterday about the Tesla Take Down Movement. I hadn't read much in the American press about it which, in itself, is interesting even though it's a movement.  My heart  soars as I write that word, worthy of a different, bold font.

 

I don't own a Tesla, but I have friends and family members who do own a Tesla. If I could have afforded one way back when, in the era before the American berserk—more later—I would have bought one, and bought stock in the company, too. Indeed, before Elon Musk started channeling apartheid fascism, or exposed his inner apartheid fascism for all to see, he was an a-WOKE environmentally conscious entrepreneur. So, it's sad and dangerous that the a-WOKE life-affirming impulse in him did not stick. He just couldn't control his arm at the Republican convention. Maybe it spasmed.

 

I think I have written here about a recent trip in a Tesla, if not my first, then one of my first. I was in the back seat of the car marveling at the technology and its intent—a cleaner, safer world. The car is a miracle of engineering. Even though there is a necessary reckoning at the moment, there should be no guilt among those who have purchased this miracle vehicle. After all, the fascist impulse was in hiding. I hope the boycotts and marches continue, though, and the movement builds and builds. Until what? Hard to say.

 

We are in the midst of a profound sundering, the "indigenous American berserk" as Philip Roth dubbed it in his masterpiece, American Pastoral. I recommend the trilogy—American Pastoral, I Married a Communist and The Human Stain, and the more recent, The Plot Against America, all prescient.

 

In the meantime I rest easy, without guilt, in the driver's seat of my 2003 nearly vintage Honda lovingly maintained by an honest mechanic in my hood. And though I don't have to make any immediate divestment decisions, I will reflect with enthusiasm on the Take Down Tesla Movement, and write about it.

 

                                              

 

 

 

 

The appetite grows in the eating.  

 

-Stephen Kotkin to David Remnick, The New Yorker Radio Hour 3/7/25

  

I have two Canadian cousins, one in Toronto, the other on Gabriola Island off the coast of Vancouver. Sherry, my Toronto cousin wrote to ask why I haven't written about Canada yet on my blog. Of course, I can't write about everything, but I was smitten; I hadn't been paying enough attention. Sherry had crossed the border to join us for "American" Thanksgiving in 2024 after the October "Canadian" Thanksgiving, and I wondered if she'd be traveling to New York in 2025. "The only time I'm going to America is to get on and off a cruise ship," she said definitively during a recent WhatsApp conversation. 

 

My Gabriola Island cousin, George, said something similar. He's not going to "step foot." Unlike Sherry, he has a US passport and a Canadian passport. Happily dual. But he is not going to step foot.

 

I am bereft that my cousins have, for the moment, given up on America, that they are postponing their visits.  I understand, but I am bereft. Even worse, #47 signed an Executive Order on January 20 targeting Canadians. They now have to register as "aliens" if they stay in the US for more than three months. This particular "order" slipped under my radar. 

 

I come from an Alpine skiing family and when I was a kid I had the good fortune to go skiing every winter holiday. If there wasn't enough snow in the US, we headed for the Canadian Laurentians, a 617 mile 17 plus hour car trip from New York City. My stepfather was an endurance driver but at about 2 or 3 a.m. we pulled over to rest in a motel. The next morning we "crossed over" into Canada.  I have no recollection of a border, a border patrol, or a presentation of passports. Either I was sleeping or the border was seamless, one country segueing into another. But, of course, this is an illusion. Canada has its own culture, history, languages, politics, mores and border control.  Indeed, there is much to learn and admire about our neighbors and allies to the north-- the settler population, the immigrants and migrants, Quebec, and the First Peoples of Canada.

 

Talking to Sherry I realized I don't know enough about Canadian history. I asked her to recommend a good book, and I asked my cousin George the same. They are researching, and if I hear from them before I post this blog, I'll include their recommendations here.

 

Sherry mentioned that the patriotic fervor among Canadians across the political spectrum, inspired by the threat of annexation, has taken everyone by surprise. It has not surprised me. I remember a summer I spent in Canada at Manitou-Wabing Camp of Fine Arts as a swim instructor. I was asked to model my sculptural face in the art studio when I wasn't at the waterfront, and because I had to sit still was able to listen intently to conversations among the teen artists. They knew I was an American and were careful not to insult me with their banter, but it was evident that what I had thought was an inferiority complex was thoughtfulness, manners, and Canadian chauvinism tempered by  an altruistic, internationalist spirit.  After all, Canada is still a member of the British Commonwealth. They never seceded from that union or fomented a revolution. In sum, we may speak the same language and enjoy a shared border, but we are not the same people. Canadians are distinct. Their nation is sovereign.

 

 

Stephen Kotkin (quoted above) is realistic about aging autocrats. They always become infected with a desire for territorial expansion, he says. Nice to know but not comforting for Canada, Panama, or Greenland. Indeed, such belligerent expunging of treaties threatens all of us.

 

And that's just the tip of the melting icebergs this week.

 

A Canadian historian recommends these basic texts:  Canadian History for Dummies by Will Ferguson [new edition 2005!], still viable in 2025 and Lower's Colony to Nation.