Carol Bergman

… 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.

When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.

― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom,  1941

In Shanghai during the extended Covid lockdown—as reported by Evan Osnos for The New Yorker—people  were singing on their balconies and also demanding supplies. Government drones hovered in the sky: CONTROL YOUR SOUL'S DESIRE FOR FREEDOM/DO NOT OPEN THE WINDOWS TO SING  they broadcast above the heart throbbing sound of resistance.

We are bloodied but unbowed I told an EU friend this morning when she called  and asked why we were not all on the streets protesting. Patience, dear friend, we are recovering from the trauma of the coup. Our soul's desire for freedom will not be eviscerated so easily.

I only speak to myself and for myself. I cannot answer for my neighbors, or the nation, or our politicians.  From my vantage, it's a calamity from close-up or far away, certainly. And it isn't the outcome I had hoped or planned for all my progressive life. "I will never believe my government again," a young person told me the other day as we discussed ICE raids nearby. "We were supposed to be the good guys. We weren't supposed to hurt civilians, men, women and children." 

Such cruelty is hard to witness. Yet many good people are working to help the detainees in my locale. As best they can.  And that is the most we can do right now,  as we still feel endangered.  In this chaotic moment, it is not difficult to imagine the worst.

Let's say, for example, that we own our home and the home is comfortable, capacious. We are affluent, comfortable. And one day an official in a uniform barges in and says, "This house is condemned. You have to evacuate."  So we evacuate. But there is no compensation, no assistance, and maybe there is nothing wrong with the house except that someone else covets the house. What do we do? Where do we go? How do we resist once we are homeless and incapacitated, weakened by our unexpected circumstance?  Or, an email arrives at our place of work and announces "termination," as though we were vermin infecting the office. In an instant, our  life has been hit with a wrecking ball.  How do we recover and move on? 

So, patience, dear EU friend. We are taking a breath, protesting as best we can in this moment. The citizens of these United States have faced many challenges over the years. This one is cataclysmic, worse than anything in my lifetime. But now that we fully understand what has happened, we will find the courage to open our windows and sing.

When does memory begin? What memory is it that I seek? And where, on the thin border between memory and history, can I remember myself?

-Viet Thanh Nguyen, A Man of Two Faces

I am writing this blog post as the results of the German election are tabulated. The ultra-right ADF did well; they and might have done well without the endorsement of America's ultra-right government. Even to use these words in relation to the American government is new, and it's a shock. Thankfully, the weather is warming, ever so slightly, but it is warming. Just to stand around in the sunshine with friends after a long walk and talk seems both healing and necessary. These prolonged conversations are essential for me right now and I must make time for them, not rush away, I tell myself. Reassurance surfaces: "Not every improvement made over the decades will be denounced or eviscerated," someone says. "How can it be when substantial changes are now so firmly embedded in our lives? We have changed, we cannot go back. So let us celebrate and consolidate what has been accomplished thus far," someone else says.

A portfolio of "progressive" accomplishment, what an interesting idea. 

My first contribution to the portfolio, an event in my neighborhood on Saturday, February 22:

It was still cold and icy underfoot, the sky clear and cloudless, as a small congregation of New Paltz citizens gathered to commemorate the lives of two slaves, Anthony and Susanna, who had lived in the cellar of a stone house, and "self-emancipated," meaning they had  tried to escape, and were recaptured. They had been purchased by the colonial settler, Louis DuBois in 1673, one of the first recorded purchase of slaves in Ulster County. Their spirits, and those of many other enslaved Africans, haunts Historic Huguenot Street, the surrounding village, and counties.  The descendants of the 12 "patentee" families still live here and have been slow to acknowledge that their wealth and status was built on the backs of slaves, or that the narrative of tours and signage should be updated. Changes have accrued slowly over the years, and then more rapidly  when the Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis Black Cultural Center, in partnership with Historic Huguenot Street, initiated a respectful collaboration sharing historical research and co-sponsoring some events.

Up first on the stage, Kara Augustine, Director of Public Programming at Historic Huguenot Street. In the past, she said, if you walked from one end of the street to the other, you would not have known that slaves lived here. It was an inaccurate depiction of New Paltz history that required correction.  

I could hear a gasp as one or two onlookers seemed taken by surprise at the depth of acknowledgement in this admission. In and of itself, it was an historic moment, an amplification of the  brass "stepping stone" memorial  to Susanna and Anthony.

Up next, Kate Hymes, Ulster County's 2023 Poet Laureate and the Vice President of The Margaret Wade-Lewis Center, performed a "libation," and a Bishop offered a Christian prayer.

A man beside me mumbled, "It was all so long ago. What does it matter now?" and turned away.  But most of  the audience was moved and lined up to place cowrie shells on the stones, a silent gesture of goodwill.

The memorial was inspired by the Stolpersteine Project, initiated by the German artist Gunter Denig in 1992  to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust—Jews, homosexuals, the physically and mentally disabled, and others—denoting where they lived and worked. As of June 2023, 100,000 Stolpersteine have been laid in Germany.  These stones are literally called "stumbling stones," and are placed directly in the way of traffic as a reminder of the Nazi past and the individuals who were murdered.  There's a stone in front of my father's childhood home in Wiener Neustadt outside Vienna with the names of my murdered relatives. Though it's a strange sensation to know it is there, I am grateful to have a sensation, to be a living descendant of a genocide. Let others stumble onto this stone and ask, "What happened here?" 

Anthony and Susanna's memorial is not directly underfoot; it is off to the side. But the docents at Historic Huguenot Street  will undoubtedly point then out on their tours. a significant gesture of reconciliation. As research continues apace, and descendants of the Huguenot Street slaves are identified, it is hoped that they will gather in this sacred space to honor their forbears.

What serveth a man if he gain the whole world and lose his immortal soul.

-New Testament, Mark 8:36

I woke up this morning in a fugue state. I was channeling conceptual artist Jenny Holzer in my dreams. Like her textual projections onto buildings, the words expelled from my mouth were in capital letters. I was screaming with an urgency I had not experienced since I participated in the now historic 2017 demonstration in front of Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. Then, as now, the news reports were distorted by commentators sanitizing the purpose and  portent of the demonstration. We already knew that Trump was a gangster, that he would try to wreck our democracy, and leave INDESCRIBABLE SUFFERING  in his wake, but the mainstream broadcasters in our midst obfuscated the historical turning point with happy talk and highlighted the counter-demonstration by Antifa, the cameras turned to the drama of the possibility of violent encounter.

American market-driven newscasting is, for the most part what my professors in grad school called "Happy Talk News," and its unseriousness—remember that word from the recent campaign in a different context—is a reflection of an assumption that Americans prefer to be entertained rather than informed. This is a deceptive cover for the market-driven media environment; we are all unwittingly delivered to the advertisers. Sustained in depth conversation is available if we opt for it.  But we must  opt for it.

Even before #47, I made a decision to begin each day listening to British podcasts: BBC, The Guardian, The Economist. I admit I am an Anglophile having lived in London for a decade where I worked occasionally for the BBC as a reporter and wrote articles for The Times Educational Supplement. During those years away from America, my outraged voice muted, my interviewing deepened and became less confrontational, my geopolitical perspective expanded, my writing matured, and so did I. America was no longer the center of my world.

Perhaps my glasses are tinting rose at the moment as I look back at this period of my life. I miss London and my EU friends more than ever. It hurts when they say that they never want to step on American shores again. Like many others, I'm shattered by the consequences of the election, but also determined not to despair. As the news becomes more and more INDESCRIBABLE my morning routine continues: I cut the fruit, make important choices: yogurt or cottage cheese? I add nuts, I write in my journal, I recite a secular prayer: MAY WE CONTINUE TO WORK TOGETHER FOR PEACE, FREEDOM, AND THE RULE OF LAW AT HOME AND ABROAD. AMEN.