Carol Bergman

 

 

One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leapt out -- single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world.

 

-C. S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew

 

 

On Sunday, the Sunday before the inauguration and/or coronation as some are calling it, I went for a  walk before the snow storm with my friend Helene, my Covid walking partner. We still meet once a week to walk and talk often picking up neighbors along the way. The pace varies depending on fitness and age, but we accommodate each other. When I returned home my husband mentioned that he had a plan to talk to his cousin in Ashkelon, on the border with Gaza. Three hostages and Palestinian prisoners were about to be released. The sensation of hope ascending in Israel and in the Gaza Strip where there has been so much death and so much suffering was good news, or good enough news on this snowy Monday morning as I write in the safe, quiet enclave where I live.

 

Before layering up to dig out our car, I checked my email only to find a confession in the form of a poem from a soldier I know. I had contacted him about the four-week "witness to history" writing workshop for Consequence Forum I'll be teaching beginning February 17. The soldier wishes to remain anonymous but has given me permission to publish his work here:

 

Confessions of a Soldier

 

If you are reading this it is because I may be dead

And if I am dead I can freely confess my sins:

 

They were cowering on the floor when I shot them

I wish I had died then too

I wish I had said: I am one with you

or

Walk with me out of  this hellscape

into the future

 

But I was afraid, I was a coward

Shooting shooting shooting

A panicked obedience

 

Never did I imagine myself in this place

A bombed-out city of rubble, rotting flesh, lacerated bones

 

In prayers for the dead

Rabbis, Priests and Imans

say

May there be peace

and reconciliation

Amen

 

 

Our ways of seeing are not yet adequate to our predicament.

 

-Teju Cole, "A City on Fire Can't be Photographed," The New Yorker  1/10/25

 

 

And out of this worldwide festival of death, this ugly rutting fever that inflames the rainy evening sky all round—will love someday rise up out of this, too?

        

-Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

 

Despite the ceasefire announced as I write, the historical animus that triggered the war in Gaza will not end quickly and not without a truth and reconciliation intervention. So I don't know where to begin talking about the war in Gaza, or the war on Gaza, or the war within Gaza. And we'd might as well include the war in the West Bank, on the West Bank and in The West Bank and the war on Israel and within Israel. The anguish of old wounds and hardened hearts floods the conversation, if there is a conversation. Even in the small town where I live there are raging rifts. On most Saturdays since October 7, "pro" Palestinians are on one side of the street in front of the library and "pro" Israelis on the other waving flags and shouting at each other.

 

After weeks of deep reading and rereading, listening and interviewing, I've decided that all I am able to write regarding the tragedy of Israel and Palestine are my own experiences, personal feelings, and considered observations. They may not be worth anything at all, and certainly I am not an influencer, but I am a descendant of the Holocaust—what  is known by those who are observant Jews as a secular Jew—an American who has never been to Israel, a journalist, a progressive in my politics and life choices. And though that doesn't sum me up, it's enough for the purposes of this blog post. Maybe there is one reader out there who will appreciate what I have to say and what I have already said. But even if there isn't, no matter, I will write what I feel compelled to write.

 

At the end of this blog post you will find definitions, codified in international law. I begin with those definitions in my thinking, some training I have had in mediation and conflict resolution, and the years I worked on an anthology of stories by humanitarian workers. The foreword to that book, Another Day in Paradise was written by John Le Carré, a great humanitarian. I use the lens of a humanitarian to consider war and war mongering, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The definitions of these atrocities are etched in my consciousness and their consequences clear to see within minutes in a digital world. There are extensive investigations before an atrocity is named, and legal action taken, but even before the investigations they are rarely in dispute.  

 

When I asked a sampling of more or less progressive American Jews whether their opinion/feelings/observations have changed since the Hamas atrocity of October 7th and the Israeli atrocity of the decimation of Gaza, to a person they said: "What would  you have done?"  Where did this script originate? None of the people I asked the question are diplomats, politicians, or military personnel so their knowledge of what could have been done, other than what has been done, is limited at best. Still, their response shocked me. To a person they never mentioned the suffering of the Palestinian people. To a person they said that there will never be a Palestinian state. Nor did the ceasefire announcement in Qatar and Washington mention Palestinian statehood or humanitarian aid entering the strip.

 

In addition to Israeli relatives and friends, I have educated, clear thinking, warm hearted Palestinian friends who have been so distraught that we have not seen each other since October 7th. They are living in exile from their promised land, which is also Israel's promised land. How these two related  peoples—Israelis and Palestinians—will ever live in peace is beyond my knowledge and skill to predict, or even my imagination as a writer to predict.  So, I will leave you, dear reader, with an open invitation to comment on this blog post. In the meantime, I offer definitions and a brief reading list. Please feel free to add to the reading list in your comments.

                                                                                                ***

   

Definitions

Source: Wikipedia, double-checked with UN sources

 

 Genocide: To destroy in whole or in part the group as such; physical obliteration; cultural annihilation  The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), also known as the Genocide Convention, is an international treaty that criminalizes genocide and obligates state parties to enforce its prohibition. It was adopted in 1948 in response to the atrocities committed during World War II. The Convention has been ratified by 153 states including Israel.

 

Ethnic Cleansing: A purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas, deliberate military attacks or threats of attacks on civilians and civilian areas, and wanton destruction of property. Those practices constitute crimes against humanity and  war crimes.

 

Crimes Against Humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians.[1] Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as foreign nationals.[1][2] Together with war crimes, genocide, and the crime of aggression, crimes against humanity are one of the core crimes of international criminal law[3] and, like other crimes against international law, have no temporal or jurisdictional limitations on prosecution.

 

The Rome Statute is the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). It was adopted in Rome, Italy in 1998 and entered into force in 2002. The statute defines the crimes under the ICC's jurisdiction, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and the crime of aggression.

 

Universal Jurisdiction: one of the oldest principles of international law, holds that certain crimes are so serious that any country in the world can bring a criminal case against the perpetrators. In the 18th century, that rule was used for crimes like piracy; in recent times, it has been used to prosecute genocide and war crimes.

 

The International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) 

 

ICJ cases involve countries, while the ICC handles prosecutions of individuals for war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The ICJ is an organ of the United Nations, while the ICC is legally independent of the UN.

The ICC is a court of last resort, intervening when a state's legal system collapses or when a government is the perpetrator of heinous international crimes.

The ICJ is a civil court.
 

A Brief Reading List

 

David Fromkin, The Peace to End All Peace

Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land

Edward D. Said, The Question of Palestine

Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine

Adam Kirsch, On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence and Justice

 

The medium is the message.

 

― Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

 

 

Before photography, before film, before AI, before the printing press, there were cave drawings and oral storytelling,  painting and sculpture. 23-year-old Risa Oshinsky's  three-dimensional ethereal Afterlife, resembles ancient artifacts. Hung from wires, it swings gently when the doors to the Dorsky Gallery open. And then its articulated parts settle and catch the light. What is this, I wondered, as I walked around it, mesmerized, and snapped a couple of photos with my iPhone, modern technology capturing something that felt primal. Up close, I deciphered bones. Were they human? I hoped not.

 

"I wanted to create a space for people to confront morbidity," Risa told me on the phone the other day. I caught her in California on vacation with her family before she heads back to New Paltz to finish her last term at SUNY.  Afterlife is her BFA thesis project.

 

"I suffered from panic disorders when I was young. Somehow the horror genre in movies and books  helped me cope. I worked in a Haunted House when I was in high school," she said.

 

Staged by professionals, Haunted Houses and Forests are an industry these days which says something about the fear level in our culture. School shootings, lockdown drills, pandemics, bullying—and that is a shortlist—are  all amplified by instantaneous news scrolls on social media. Catastrophe, and the threat of catastrophe, hits young people hard.

 

Talking to her empathetic sculpture professor, Michael Asbill, about anxiety as fuel for making art, he suggested that Risa attempt a sculptural project using bones. She would be in good company: Henry Moore, Damien Hirst and Orozco, all used bones in their work, as does Professor Asbill himself.

 

"I meet all my students where they are," he says, " but I suppose you could say that Risa and I found each other."

 

He told her about a roadkill dump site at the top of a steep slope where carcasses are thrown by the police or roadworkers. Roadkill is a manifestation of humans encroaching on natural habitat; ours is not a thoughtful, shared environment and the dump is not a sacred burial site. Though it's legal to harvest meat and bones in New York State, not many can stomach the stench at the site or the vista of dead bodies.

 

It takes about two weeks for a carcass to decompose before the bones slide down towards the river. Risa collected a stash, soaked them in dish soap, scrubbed them with a toothbrush, bleached them with hydrogen peroxide, dried them, and sorted them into boxes, a painstaking process.

 

Not surprisingly, perhaps, she is a vegetarian. "I love animals. I'll stop to help a wounded animal on the side of the road," she told me. "Working with animal bones is calming, intimate and meditative."  The shape of the work, its meaning, surfaces as she cleans, handles, and sorts the bones. 

 

"Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment," Marshall McLuhan once said. Risa has seen beyond the boundary of her own still young life. Embedded in her work is the admonition to take care of the environment and each other.

 

Listening can make it possible for us finally to come to terms with one another.

      

-Walter Kempowski, All for Nothing

 

 

At the beginning of every academic year, and then at the beginning of every term, I reaffirm my dedication to teaching and learning. I talk to students whenever I encounter them—young, old, or in their maturity. And I remain a student myself, raising my knowledge base on a variety of subjects, and studying a foreign language. I try to have deliberate, extended—live—conversations daily, or conduct interviews for articles and this blog that challenge thinking, opinion and belief, my own included. I particularly make time and space for college students when I chance upon them, which I do frequently in the town where I live, home to a SUNY (State University of New York) campus. The students are baristas, servers, attendants at the pool where I swim, working long hours for minimum wage while they study and try to support themselves. They are attending a state university, not an elite school, and many do not come from wealthy families. Day to day life is a  challenge that most in my circle, and the privileged students at NYU where I was an Adjunct Professor until 2020, have never experienced. I write recommendations for graduate school, ask about majors, encourage them not to drop out or drop away from academe. I have a prejudice for the acquisition of knowledge that will not quit. Tragic events that interrupt children's lives and education, such as gun violence or war, are avoidable. But we must support the peacemakers, nationally and internationally, and we must listen, even in the circumscribed spheres of our lives—or  especially there—in the communities where we live.

 

 Recently, I met a young woman—I  will call Flo—at  a café I frequent regularly. She's a barista there and was just coming off duty. I was waiting for a friend and had some time. She told me she was a student, and I told her I had been a professor at NYU and still teach narrative nonfiction writing. She perked up. She wants to be a writer, she said, but feels thwarted by financial strain and disinterested professors. She was losing interest in getting her degree. I couldn't imagine that her professors were disinterested, but didn't question her experience. Still, I was heart sick. How can a young woman, already in college, be so discouraged? It really hurt me. What she needs is a mentor, I thought to myself, a mentor, if only for a few minutes, or just these few minutes, in passing. I asked what she likes to read and she said she didn't like to read and, by the way, did I have any tips to "get through" Beowulf and Chaucer. So I gave her some tips, not for "getting through," but to begin a relationship with these ancient works, and to get into the minds of the writers and oral story tellers who lived so long ago. "I write poetry," Flo then told me. "And I like Malcom Gladwell's books."

"I thought you told me you didn't like to read?"

"My teachers don't care what I have to say. I usually go off on tangents. "

"I would love you in my class," I said.  "Are you sure your professors don't care what you have to say?"

 

"That's the way it feels to me," she said.

 

"Ignore disinterested professors," I suggested. "Maintain interest in yourself and your education. You've paid your tuition, don't waste it."

 

I'm reading a biography of John Quincy Adams at the moment and reminded myself of Abigail, his mother, admonishing her already well-educated and accomplished diplomat son as he took his seat in the Senate. John Quincy did not shun his mother's advice, and he remained respectful to her in his letters. But that was then, this is now. I wondered how my direct advice was landing, if Flo would find it intrusive, or amusing. I gave her my card and encouraged her to stay in touch. I want to know how she does this spring, I told her. Like all children and young adults, throughout the world, she deserves mentors—parents, teachers, experienced adults—who care about her education, a safe environment in which to learn, and no student debt.  

 

This post is dedicated to all my students, past and present, and to all the children in war zones.

 

At some point it became the tradition for a slave to stand behind him and whisper reminders that he was mortal.

-Goldsworthy, Pax Romana

 

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
― William Shakespeare, Hamlet

 

Why are we walking in the dark, let's go over there, where the flowers are blooming.
      ― Han Kang, Human Acts

 

 

Some days, since the election, since Ukraine and Syria and Sudan and October 7 and Gaza, I feel like a giant thresher has mowed us all down, scraping our innards to shreds and shards. "And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace," wrote Tacitus a very long time ago (ad 56—c. ad 20). I could have put this quote up top, but I'll use it here in the first paragraph of this blog post, a lamentation about the state of war mongering and impotent peacemaking in the world. I know there are some who prefer to look away to maintain equilibrium and joy, but I cannot. I am a child of war, and as Nikki Giovanni, a poet—who passed away this week—once said, our lives are not about us, not really, they are about our duty, our efforts to make this world a better place for future generations everywhere. This requires truth telling without obfuscation, a writer's mandate.

 

These wars, these horrible wars. When will they ever end?  I include in the inventory: wars within us and wars among us.

 

The landscape, usually a consolation, feels like an Arctic desert with its bitter temperatures and high winds. I walk into it layered like an Inuit. The sun creeps out only occasionally and this time of year it is not warming. Quotidian tasks: the compost container is full and must be emptied. The laundry awaits consideration. There's a shopping list to fulfill. And, despite the temperature, I'm going swimming today.

 

 Last week I wrote about a drawing workshop I attended, and making art as a life-affirming action even if it is just sketching a thought in a letter attached to an email, or indoor gardening. I will continue with that theme here, among others, as undoubtedly this will be my last blog post of 2024, thus a reckoning of sorts, albeit ephemeral. My mood will lift in the pool, the hot tub, the cold plunge and the sauna. How fortunate am I. How important to remind myself that I am fortunate.  My refugee family escaped a war zone and landed here in these United States of America. And were welcomed. How quaint that notion seems in this hiatus between one administration and another.

 

The German word schande comes to mind. I am studying German again and German words and phrases surface constantly. A linguist friend told me, "Well, it is you mother tongue," meaning it has been in my ear from birth, or even before birth. An odd and delightful realization considering there was a time when I could not tolerate the sound of German.

 

My choice of quotations today evinces the complexity and contradictions of my mood. At an art opening yesterday, the promise of renewal, windows of the gallery looking out on a sculpture garden, the sculptures in high relief against bared to the bone trees. Inside, warm lights and warm conversation. "I keep running into you," a neighbor says, meaning in this small town. "I am here today as a citizen, not a journalist," I explain, inside the circle rather than outside looking in, a journalist's obligation and burden.

 

After the opening, we head to The Bakery for a coffee, brought to life by a new owner who has two kids and a high tolerance for teen energy. Upstairs, a college jazz band is playing holiday tunes, and two crooners are trying to sing above the thrum of the instruments. We are surrounded by students bopping as they study for their final exams, laptops out on the tables. Their concentration is formidable. And though no one else is dancing, we get up to dance, which makes everyone smile. It's a lush scene and we are in the midst of it, laughing and dancing.

 

Peace does not mean an absence of conflicts; differences will always be there. Peace means solving these differences through peaceful means; through dialogue, education, knowledge; and through humane ways…Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.

 

-the Dalai Lama

 

 

I've been taking a cold plunge after I swim. I can only get in up to my waist and only for a minute or two. Occasionally I share the small well of water with others, some up to their necks. They cheer me on, start a conversation, a communal effort, our connection solidified without politics.

 

There's scientific evidence that cold plunges reduce inflammation and cortisol levels. If nothing else, the cold water is bracing, it forces attention away from the chatter in our heads, negative or positive. I recommend it as an amusing interlude, too, as I always exit the plunge laughing. It's a respite from the world's woes, my aching aging bones, and deadline journalism. This week I interviewed Peter Zalmayev, my Ukrainian American broadcast friend, in New Zealand where he's on a 25 nation tour of the Global South to bolster support for Ukraine as the Trump administration takes hold. I tried to stay positive as I was talking to Peter, but like so many friends, family and colleagues, I have never felt so worried about continuing support for Ukraine and the survival of the American Experiment. It's been a helluva week. So, on Saturday, I took another cold plunge, metaphorically speaking, and went to a "collaborative drawing workshop" at the Dorsky Museum on the SUNY New Paltz campus facilitated by Professor Andrea Kantrowitz who has written, and illustrated, a book called Drawing Thought.                  

 

It was a joyful, peaceful experience. We sat in groups of three and worked on timed drawings together, passing the paper to our right at Andrea's direction. The results were remarkable, albeit weird, but the sensation of collaborative accomplishment was a model of humane, compassionate endeavor. One can only imagine what might happen if the Ukrainians and the Russians sat around their upcoming negotiating table drawing together. Admittedly, an insane thought, as bracing and enjoyable as a cold plunge.

 

 

Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.      

- Jon Batiste, musician

 

I have felt the requirement to show up, set an example, bear witness all my life…

  It feels like a spiritual requirement as much as a political one.   

-Jorie Graham, poet

 

 

 

And here on earth, walking elegantly and with confidence onto the stage, smiling, sitting down slowly, and then riffing on Beethoven's 5th Symphony, here is the talented young musician Jon Batiste. In both words and music, he has become a sage, an exemplar of what` an artist can do in hard times: continue making art. And he's only 38.

Why am I thinking about him today? I had planned on writing about my fingerprints, if that makes any sense, which it doesn't, but not much does these days. And in the midst of the fingerprint snafu—a  futile attempt to retrieve my fingerprints—I  asked Pandora to play Jon Batiste. That settled me. Music usually does. So, too, poetry. So, too, sitting down to write, however tentative the effort.

 

The fingerprint snafu surfaces. I had them "taken" in 2018, for the second or third time since returning from the EU, when I was hired by a New York State  educational institution. I had thought they "belonged" to me and I could retrieve them, as needed. But no. I must pay for new prints every time they are required. "Even the FBI has my prints," I say, to no avail.

 

Definition of bureaucracy, as follows: a system of administration marked by officialism and red tape. In other words, Catch 22 at every turn. I am sure my readers will agree that that such bureaucratic entanglements are commonplace. Consider how many hours we spend talking to health care insurers these days, for example.

 

"Those who are ignorant naturally consider everything possible," Kafka wrote in his authoritarian dreamscape, The Castle. Which is where we are this week with the nominated cabinet of horrors and the President-Elect's new committee to obliterate bureaucratic inefficiency. This "new" committee is a feint, it's a cover. According to Project 2025, the President-Elect intends to reintroduce Schedule F, an obscure executive order from his first term that allows presidents to fire, at will, any federal bureaucrat who is seen as disloyal or resistant to his will. 

 

To be absolutely clear—because I am an educated and accomplished woman who wears suits—I am annoyed by robotic and/or offshore bureaucracy, but I am not on the President-Elect's page, nor will I visit the Kafkaesque Castle he is building for himself in DC. Far from. And I have no solution other than to write and teach with compassion and insight based on knowledge, if this makes any sense in a week that has challenged common sense.

I want everybody to be smart. As smart as they can be. A world of ignorant people is too dangerous to live in.

 

― Paul to Billie in Garson Kanin's,  Born Yesterday

 

 

I've started a couple of winter projects this year. The first is what I call "slow re-reading" of novels I've kept on my shelves through more than twenty moves over the years, across the continent and across the Atlantic.

I wasn't born yesterday; I was born the day before yesterday. My book collection spans several decades and some of the pages are brown and brittle. Once re-read, I toss them into the recycle bin or donate them. But I won't do that until I have pulled some quotes and taken notes about the author's bio, narrative devices, and the armature of the book—the foundation that holds the book's "meaning" together.

 

I rarely buy new books these days. I belong to three libraries and borrow e books, though occasionally I buy an e book. In other words, once the novel is reread and I toss it or donate it, it's physical disappearance is final, like a death I suppose. Perhaps I am grappling with mortality or, at the very least, divestment of material possessions. That said, I think I get smarter every time I reread a book knowing that I won't keep it; it embeds in my heart, my psyche, and my brain. I hope this is not an illusion. At the very least, slow re-reading is a good discipline for a writer. And it's meditative, it forces me to linger, to take my time and disregard the fast moving social media world seducing me. Who needs that world?  Who really needs it? Why have we been persuaded that we need it? Distraction is not the same as education. Some of our citizens are so distracted by social media scrolls and trolls that they are not thinking clearly. They are befuddled. They do not know what a disruptive calculating fascist is, or how he—or  it—behaves. 

 

So the election has surfaced after all, much as I try to suppress it for a few hours a day.

 

My second winter project is to immerse in old movies, many of them free, albeit with occasional ads. My husband, is a screenwriter and movies are his thing. Indeed, he is an encyclopedia of movie history. I, on the other hand, am on a movie history learning curve, which is good for my brain and my spirit.

 

 

First up the other night: Born Yesterday. It was made in 1951 during the McCarthy HUAC hearings which do not feel that long ago given the insanity in Congress right now and the prospect of worse. Indeed the setting of the story is Washington DC. Strange, how the capitol always looks sublime in a photo, a film, or the faux backdrop on MSNBC as the pundits pundit about our faltering democracy.

 

Holliday plays Billie Dawn in the film, a reprise of her stage performance. Billie is  a "dumb blonde" hooked up with a mobster who is in DC to corrupt a politician. Holliday, the person, was not at all dumb. She  started her career in a group called the Revuers, a Saturday Night Live-style political sketch show based in Greenwich Village. And because she hung out with left leaning activists, she was  "called to testify" before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in 1952 chaired by Senator Pat McCarran who was trying to push anti-immigrant legislation through Congress and enjoyed targeting anyone of "Middle European" descent, Jews in particular. Plus ça change.

 

"Called to testify" isn't quite accurate; she had to defend herself against accusations of "communism."  Her lawyer told her to pretend she was Billie Dawn and  "play dumb," which she did, refusing to name names. But she still was black-listed and her career suffered, and so did she. She died at 43 from breast cancer. Her performance in Born Yesterday is her memorial and her legacy, an indictment of ignorance, and a celebration of a woman's acquisition of knowledge and emancipation.

 

We'll always have Paris.

-Rick to Ilsa in Casablanca

 

Screenplay credits: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch.

 

Based on Everybody Comes to Rick's by Joan Allison and Murray Burnett

 

 

My friend Liat, who lives in England, texted me from the Eurostar to say she was on her way to Paris to celebrate her birthday. Her husband surprised her. What a gift! Memories of my trips to Paris surged, and I wanted to be there, and stay there. It was because of the election and the decade I spent overseas away from America. I asked myself: What are you doing here?  Why did you come back? 

 

I was alone with this rhetorical question. My husband feels more American than European—he's a third generation American, whereas I am a first generation American raised in a European household. But feeling American, whatever that means, it was not the only reason we returned. We had a young child and we wanted her to have grandparents. I never had grandparents. So we returned to America, relinquishing our jobs and flat, many of our accumulated possessions, our friends, and our colleagues. But we were pleased that our daughter would have dual citizenship and grandparents. She is now married to a man with dual citizenship and she crosses borders with ease. "I'm relieved we live in New York State," I said  to her during our first post-election conversation, hoping this would provide some comfort to both of us. But then I channeled John Lennon and thought: Imagine if there were no countries and no religions and no terrorists and no soldiers and no bombs and no drones.

 

"We're worried about the tariffs," Jessica, another UK friend, wrote when I asked her about the British reaction to the election. "And also our new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, once compared Trump to Hitler."  Surprisingly, therefore, Starmer was one of the first leaders to congratulate Trump on his win: "I know that the UK-US special relationship will continue to prosper on both sides of the Atlantic for years to come," he said.

 

Blah blah, blah blah blah.

 

Well, we'll always have Paris, I thought to myself, or the image of Paris, or the metaphor of Paris, the city of light and the birthplace of the enlightenment. If the enlightenment returns to America, will she be a 18th century lady stripping her petticoats in public, or will she be a woman in a burgundy pant suit taking the oath of office? And does this choice spanning the centuries make any sense?

 

Sometimes my memories of Paris are tethered to my dreams. I am in a café wearing a black trench coat writing in my journal as the tourists stream by. I speak French fluently, of course, and know my way around the city without a map. I sit on a bench in the Luxembourg gardens and read. As an expat, I vote absentee, but hardly pay attention to American politics in between Presidential elections.  I have nothing to kill, argue, or die for, and I live my life in peace.

 

 

Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge.

 

-Horace Mann (1796-1859)

 

 

   

This is what I wrote early in the day yesterday:

 

Election Day, 2024, and I am sketching out a post-election blog post at 12:48 p.m. In other words, it's still early; we won't have a result for a few days the pundits tell us. I voted by mail-in ballot and feel relaxed today, though I am not sure why.  Or, perhaps I do know why.  Beyond what we have done to encourage those in our orbit to vote, the postcards we've written, the canvassing we've done, we are powerless to influence the outcome. For a few hours—or days—during this hiatus, suspended in a hammock of time, we can listen to music, enjoy the crisp autumn weather, enjoy our friends and family, and let go.  We all need the rest.

 

Early this morning, I went for a workout and then to my local supermarket where I had yet another interesting encounter while standing on line. The woman behind me was eager to talk about the election. This is how she began:  "I am so freaked out, my daughter is so freaked out, they are trying to take away our vote."

 

Where to begin? How to say all I needed to say as the line inched forward. How to maintain my cool and empathy for this hysterical uneducated—or  undereducated—woman ? In that moment of confusion, I made a silent decision to carry a copy of the Constitution with me from now on. I could have pulled it up on my phone, but that would have been too distracting. I remained silent, but also attentive.

 

"I know I need to relax, right?" she said.

"Best to calm down," I began, "for your daughter's sake, if not for your own."

"I believe in the women's right to choose."

"Excellent. That is good for your daughter, and for all women," I said.

"But they are trying to steal our votes?"

 

The "they" in her sentence gave me pause. I took a breath and asked, "Who is they? Women have been able to vote since 1920. Are you familiar with the 19th Amendment?"

 

She was not. Indeed, she had conflated Roe v Wade and a woman's right to choose with a woman's right to vote.

 

Once outside in the lot, unloading the apples and cider for my drop-by election party tonight, I thought to myself: This is a blessing. Now we know how undereducated even our "liberal" population is. We have to get to work.

 

And this is what I wrote this morning:

 

November 6, 2024, waking to the result that Trump has smoked the Democrats, that the Republicans have taken the Senate, and may take the House. Disbelief, shock, sadness.  Were we—the Democrats among us—misled or in denial? The sweep is difficult to compute. Our daughter calls for an early morning FT post mortem. Her dad is an historian, and she has incisive historical perspective: "It began with the backlash against Obama," she says. I manage to eke out one sentence: "I am glad we live in New York State."

 

Facebook has gone silent except for one friend who has set up a shrine and is sitting shiva for the United States. It does feel like a wake, but I can't relate to this response. A Black male friend writes: "Sadly all the dog whistles are turning into sirens." This does not explain the Black vote or the bonding between Black and White males. That has to be examined in the months to come.

 

Then there is the commiseration from friends overseas as though the result has nothing to do with them. Problem is, what happens here will affect the world, that's obvious: Ukraine, Israel, NATO, Gaza. All will be impacted as of January 20, 2025.

 

How is my day different? My life different? Is this now a fascist country? Important questions posed my my daughter.

 

"Off for a swim," I say as we end our FT call and go on with our lives, one day at a time.

 

In the pool, three ideas for stories surface as I count my laps, a meditation. This is solace. I imagine a conversation with myself: As I writer, it's my mandate to witness and document—if  I am able—as  I did with Covid in my Virus Without Borders blog posts. I will do something similar in the weeks and months ahead, taking detours into other subjects as they occur to me. And as an educator, I will devote myself to my students and to other educators struggling in the classroom. I will resist book bans, pressure from School Boards, and encourage the pursuit of knowledge, the completion of important projects, and through knowledge and achievement hope for a more educated and compassionate electorate. This is a radical project suffused with hope. It requires courage, activism and resistance to despair. I hope some of my readers will join me in similar endeavors.