Carol Bergman

 

A nationalist will say that "it can't happen here," which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it.

 

― Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny

 

 

Freedom is not just an absence of evil. Freedom is a presence of good. It is the value of values, the condition in which we choose and combine the good things, bringing them into the world, leaving our own unique trace. It is positive.

 

-Timothy Snyder, On Freedom

 

I took Timothy Snyder's advice and put my body in an unfamiliar place with unfamiliar people, the Justice Court in the small village where I live in Upstate New York.  Full disclosure, I went with a friend who was feeling trepidatious after receiving a speeding ticket, and asked for support. She had never been to court before and had asked if I'd find out more about this particular court. Then she asked if I'd call my Sheriff "friend" to put in a good word, or if I knew the judge. I had interviewed the Sheriff for the local paper, but he is not my friend; there's a firewall between my professional and personal life. But my friend was scared, and not thinking clearly. I told her the request was inappropriate, and she understood.

 

We decided we'd both wear suits and tame our wild hairstyles, out of respect for the court and the formality of its proceedings. Our politics dictate this posture: humility, no one above the law. Thus do we all stand when the judge enters the courtroom; he is the emblem of our 240-year-old imperfect judicial system.

 

There are almost 1,200 Justice Courts in New York State, and thousands more in small towns across the country. They deal with small-town matters: evictions, family troubles, small claims, traffic violations, and are considered the courts "closest to the people," according to a New York State brochure I just read.  But for all its modesty, the rituals of a Justice Court are impressive, even awe-inspiring. On the day my friend was scheduled to appear, there was a long line to pass through a rigorous security check. The usual impulse to chat to a neighbor had dissipated, the hallway utterly silent. Once inside the courtroom, we were directed to hard wooden pews, and settled in to what turned out to be a long night. The movement of the police officers in their bulky bullet-proof vests and pistols, the lawyers in their black and gray suits, and the clerks conducting the well-choreographed proceedings were mesmerizing in their apparent harmony and efficiency. The judge seemed far away, snuggled behind his elevated, portentous desk, speaking privately—no microphone—and  sotto voce to everyone.

 

Then it was my friend's turn to approach the bench. Time had run out and her case was postponed until the following week, which was deflating and also stressful. There was nothing to do but go out for a hearty meal and try to relax.

 

I couldn't stop thinking about that courtroom all week, how quiet it was, how well organized. Everyone knew their role and their place, everyone was polite, and everyone appearing in front of the judge was—not surprisingly—attentive . I wondered if Trump felt anything similar in the courtrooms he has been in of late: fear, for example, or wonder. Is he totally oblivious to the rigors and purpose of our judicial system? In the best of times, in the worst of times, this is a system that works, that can be made to work if we continue to attend to its flaws and correct them.  

 

Most local justices are elected officials. If we don't approve of what they do, we are free to take our objections to the ballot box. As for the political corruption of SCOTUS, that's a more complicated challenge, one of many we'll be facing in the days, months and years beyond November 5th.

 

This post is dedicated to all the young American citizens, and new American citizens, who will be voting for the first time in November.

 

 

It is a tale told by an idiot,

 full of sound and fury,

signifying nothing.

 

-from Macbeth by William Shakespeare

 

 

 

Another encounter with a stranger in a parking lot last week raised my spirits and reminded me that none of us need be strangers if we open ourselves to conversation and connection. The sound and fury all around us—social media, cable news, unending talk shows—is deafening, and we must shut it down to hear our own voices, those of others in our orbit and, even more importantly, out of our orbit. How do we feel? What are we thinking? What are our particular challenges right now? And what about all the innocent earthlings caught in the orbit of those who are disgraced?

 

The woman in the parking lot—her name was Estelle—had a dark blue Honda, younger than mine by ten years or so, but the paint is chipping, she complained. It was a cool autumn day and I was willing to linger for conversation.  My mantra at the end of a close-knit, trusting talk these days is always, "Are you registered to vote?" But within minutes,  Estelle and I established that we were both registered to vote, could not wait to vote, were both Democrats, and had migrated from the city  to upstate New York, she from Harlem and I from Washington Heights. And we have even more in common: We both have a grown daughter, and we both are educators. I was relieved. I could relax into the conversation and, by the end, had handed her my card. "Let's meet for a coffee some time," I said, whereupon she blessed me. The cadence of her New York accent soothed me, the blessing more so. My readers will know that I never refuse a blessing, or deflect it. "Thank you," I said. "I could use a blessing today."

 

 

"People may disappoint us," she said, "but He never does."

 

I told her that I have no faith in a "higher power," but I would cherish her blessing nonetheless. I would put it in my jar of blessings and pull it out whenever I am disappointed by the hatred I sometimes receive on email in response to something I've written, for example.

 

Then I headed home, the radio tuned to one of several syndicated evangelical stations I can pick up in Ulster County. I land on them by accident because the music—country, folk, or pop—lures me. The music is followed by a bible reading or a sermon, suffused with sturm und drang, fear, sin and exhortation; it keeps me glued. One sermon this week was about abortion, how doctors are executing babies, one of the newest vicious tropes. It was upsetting to hear it spew out of the mouth of a young woman lay preacher who hopefully has never needed an abortion. She ended the screed with a call to the ballot box.  

 

How many of my neighbors are listening to these stations, I wonder? I have no idea. I only know that most of America is lost to me here in the mountains, among like-minded acquaintances, colleagues and friends. Beyond my day-to-day forays into my neighborhood, my digitalized, atomized world is secluded and circumscribed. I struggle not to turn away from troubling ideas, events and people into the comfort of my own certainties. That zone of safety is an illusion.

 

 

 

Ah, the women are nearly always right, all the same, he says. Do you know what the women have a gift for?

 

What?

 

Eventualities. A good woman can look far down the line and smell what's coming before a man even gets a sniff of it.

 

-Claire Keegan,  Foster

 

 

The Greek diner was empty when we pulled into the driveway near dinner time. We were down near Newburgh for an eye check appointment and after a long wait needed a culinary respite and some fun in preparation for The Big Debate. Most Greek diners date back to the 1950s when there was a wave of Greek immigration. Some are faux copies, but the Ikaros looked authentic. Its stainless steel art deco trim sparkled in the late day autumn sunshine, but the concrete steps leading to the entrance were broken, and we had to step over them, which might have been a warning, if we had been in the mood to heed such warnings. Despite their higher prices these days, we looked forward to the menu, which we knew would be voluminous, and include a spanakopita, my favorite.

 

There was only one other couple in a booth and a couple of waitresses, dressed in black with aprons tied around their waists. Charming, I thought. But the silence in the nearly empty room reverberated. If the diner wasn't doing well, what would the food be like? The waitress plunked down two glasses of water, her hand all over the top of the glasses. Not so charming. I dipped my paper napkin into the water and cleaned them. Don't make a fuss, I said to myself. We are here to relax. But my well-honed city "attitude" was already in gear. I would have sent those glasses back pronto in the city. 

 

Then came the menus and the waitress hovering behind me as we perused the gazillion choices, ordered, and thanked her. More waiting in a day of waiting. I figured the spanakopita was frozen and my husband's eggs benedict flown in from parts unknown. Something's wrong, I said to myself. We should have left before we stepped over the broken steps. Sometimes my intuition won't quit, or is it my writer's imagination? 

 

The food arrived, it was eatable, and we enjoyed our conversation. Then it was time for the check. I had decided to treat my husband and pulled out my credit card. Our waitress had disappeared, rush-hour traffic was building, and we wanted to get going. I took my credit card and headed for the restroom. There was our waitress, sitting on a stool at the counter, scrolling on her phone, it seemed. I handed her my card. She barely looked up at me, but I took a good long look at her for future reference: in her 40s maybe, hair salt and pepper, and disheveled, no makeup and close-together eyes. She was still on her phone when I surfaced from the restroom. What was she typing into her phone as she held onto my credit card,  and why wasn't our check ready? All those strange lingering- at- our- table moments, and now this. I was already writing the noir screenplay.

 

The obligatory scene at the table came next: The check with credit card plunked down, and the waitress at my shoulder. I was paralyzed with haut disdain, and  could not say anything as she watched me decide on a tip and sign the receipt. But that wasn't the end of it. The end of it was my conviction that she had stolen my credit card information. She was a thief and I would report her to the local constabulary.

 

I checked my credit card statement as soon as I returned home and for two days after. So far so good. It seems as though my imagination went wild, or I had momentarily lost trust in humankind. Why had it disappeared so suddenly? Was it the prospect of another assault from the guy who should be in an orange jump suit? None of the above, dear reader. I had mistaken, or misread, the waitress's boredom and eccentricity. Mea culpa.

 

 

 

This is my story. A story of how my determination to become a top professional table tennis competitor helped me overcome the stigma of being physically disabled and survive the obstacles of homelessness and petty crime.

 

 

-Tahl Leibovitz

The Book of Tahl; From Homelessness to Paralympic Gold

 

 

 

I was already a tennis player when I arrived at UC Berkeley, but my boyfriend, Jim, had never seen a tennis racket before, not a decent one anyway. We were in love so, naturally, I decided to teach him how to play. Never having had the opportunity, he had no idea he'd be good at racket sport, very good. I had always been a competitive athlete "for a girl," and I wasn't going to subsume my competitive spirit to a guy, even to a guy I was in love with. It was very frustrating because Jim was a hot shot the minute his racket touched the ball, and I never got a game off him once he learned how to play.

 

Fast forward to our decade-long sojourn in London where Jim became a squash player, and then in New York where he took up racquet ball. And then one day he got hit on the left ear with the dense, hard racquet ball and developed vertigo. He'd been in the navy on a ship for a couple of years so the swaying sensation was familiar, but every athlete loathes injury if it means lay-off , and Jim was miserable. Off he went one day for a swaying walk up 86th street between Second and Third Avenue where he found a pool hall. At the very back were several table tennis tables and a tall guy giving lessons. That was it, he was hooked. Here was a racquet sport he could play forever, and all over the world.

 

Years passed and Jim met Tahl Lebovitz, who became one of his coaches. Tahl had a back story that resonated with Jim. They both had similar hardships in childhood because of abusive parents: Tahl had been homeless, Jim spent some of his growing up years in foster care. But it wasn't only their rough childhoods that drew them into a trusting collaboration; they both have physical disabilities—Tahl has bone tumors and Jim had polio that left one side of his body smaller than the other, not as serious as Tahl's disability, but serious enough. Both are disciplined avid table tennis players though Jim will never be able to get a game off Tahl, which must be divine justice. Tahl also competes against able-bodied players and is a member of the US Paralympic Team; he's just home from Paris as I write and his memoir, completed before his departure, is now published and available online:  The Book of Tahl

 

There's always a story behind a story, and this is Jim's and Tahl's and his wife Dawn's, who loves to sing at church, and mine, too, as I have watched the relationship between these two remarkable men deepen over the months of working together on Tahl's book. Tahl's story, and the honor of publishing his memoir, has lifted our spirits, as I am sure it will lift yours.

 

 

All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard.       

       

- Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

 

We're not going back.

 

-Vice President Kamala Harris

 

 

 

After I float out of the bardo and re-incarnate somewhere in Upstate NY deep in the majestic mountains, I'd like to return undercover as a man with a badge, a horse, wives and daughters to serve me, as needed, and entitlement up the kazoo. Let's flip The Handmaid's Tale, a fascist dystopia, which I am watching now for the first time—it's brilliant—and create a Handsome Man's Tale. Like June Osborne, Margaret Atwood's protagonist in the original novel, and again in the Hulu adaptation, I'm trying to keep my feminist shit together in the midst of virulent misogyny.

 

The charged, sexist language spewing out of the Trump campaign did not surface in a void; it is embedded in our culture, in our history, and in our literature. Trump is particularly adept at improvising tropes: a woman is nasty, or she is a bedbug, or not his type. In Richard Ford's masterful (note the male referent) 1986 novel, The Sportswriter, the protagonist Frank Bascombe, is lovable and clueless. He has no idea why he's not married any more even as he fantasizes a woman's "surrender." He feels so lonely late in the day after work that he drives up to the train station and watches the "Jewish lawyers" who work in DC debark.  Apart from their suits and briefcases, how did Ford's protagonist know they were lawyers, much less Jewish lawyers? "Jewish lawyers," is an antisemitic trope. Might as well throw in one of those, too, into this otherwise wonderful novel. And, yes, of course, Richard Ford's novels are still on my shelves, but only because I perform a sleight of hand and brain: This is the character's voice, not the author's. Or, Ford is a man of his time. He was born in Mississippi, after all. And so on.

 

Years after reading the Bascombe novels, I spotted Richard Ford in a restaurant and decided I'd ask him about the antisemitic trope. I tried to hold myself back from approaching him knowing I might not be able to speak up. I told myself that the famous author was enjoying his meal and his privacy. Nice try; I was enraged. I walked up to his table, and told him how much I enjoyed his books, which is also true. And that freeze, that holding back, was more than politeness; it was abnegation. The moment passed, he mumbled, "thank you," and I walked away, abject, a consequence of abnegation. Then I went home and wrote to his agent: "Is Mr. Ford aware of the antisemitic trope 'Jewish lawyer'?" No reply.

 

Sometimes it's easier—and safer—to stay silent, but surrender hurts, too; we have to resist.

 

Which is what I am doing today by writing this blog post.

 

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts..

 

-Mark Twain

 

 

The van in the parking lot had Florida plates. It didn't look like any van I had ever seen. It was oversized, bulky and had a panel on the top that looked odd, like a tornado had dropped it there, which it might have done considering the tornado we had recently on the tail of Hurricane Debby. Compost dumped in the zero waste bin, and feeling righteous, I headed back to my car and spotted a woman surfacing from the side door. The van was mesmerizing and I kept on looking. The woman noticed my curiosity. "Want to have a look inside?" she asked. Then she slid the door completely open onto her living space, a miracle of engineering. It has everything—sleeping quarters, a cooking range, a compostable toilet, refrigerator, running water out of a tank—all of these accoutrements of living powered by the solar panels on the top. Solar panels! Even though the van uses gasoline to run @ 20 miles to the gallon, the solar panels power everything else. There are very few days that don't have enough sunshine to power-up apparently, Jan explained. That's good news for all of us in our climate-changed world, I thought. What a strange summer it has been—too much rain, not enough rain, early hurricanes, heat in June, too cool in August.

 

The woman was rosy-cheeked and and energetic for what turned out to be her 70 years, which she admitted to frankly in an unsolicited offering. I didn't share my age, never do, but she didn't seem to mind and kept on talking as she shook my hand and I shook hers. "Name's Jan Whitman," she said. "I travel up from Florida in the summer and visit friends and family all over the Hudson Valley." As the former Director of the Food Bank of the Hudson Valley and the Founder and Former Board President of the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Community Center in Kingston NY, Jan has many friends and former colleagues to see. And though she settled in Florida in retirement, the van keeps her moving, connecting and exploring in the spring and summer months. Though I have traveled a lot and lived on two continents, I was envious of the nomadic life, crossing state lines with ease, and attempting a regional dialect and outlook other than my own. How grand it would be for all of us to enlarge our worlds and learn more about our fascinating diverse country, not from an airplane, but from the ground. Our little corner of the earth would expand exponentially.

 

By definition, our homes and nation-states are circumscribed, our villages, and towns too insular and tribal these days. The village I live in, embedded in a town, was the site of Dutch, English and French Huguenot enslavers. It's still nearly all white. This was a shock when I first arrived here from the city in 2018. The signage in front of the historic houses didn't provide any clues. Much has changed recently, most notably the founding of the Margaret Wade Lewis Black Cultural Center. Slow but sure the board of the center presses onward with their programming and the renovation of a donated building.

 

I wondered if Jan was aware of the progress in New Paltz since she left for Florida. I didn't ask as I was already planning an article about her for the local paper. I knew they'd be interested in how she'd converted the van. "I had it done by a dedicated custom builder," she said. Sad to say, the last one in in my area, Vantastics, has gone out of business. But, for those interested, any local artisan who specializes in woodwork could do most of the interior work. Different contractors would be necessary to complete electrical wiring and  install the solar panels. Total cost: approximately $50,000. Considering the price tag on homes these days, conversion vans are a bargain. Many aficionados are doing the conversions themselves; there are several "how to" You Tube channels. And Facebook has numerous sites. "Van Life for Senior Women," for example, is replete with suggestions. It has 23k followers which leads to the conclusion that the itinerant life is more than a fad, it's a way of life, which is heartening indeed. Might local municipalities house their homeless in such vans, I wonder? Would that contribute to solving our affordable housing crisis?

 

Not long ago, I ran into a descendant of a Munsee-Esopus band of First Americans. He was driving a truck filled with farming gear and the paraphernalia of daily living, including a tent which he pitched in the fields of the farms where he had been hired to work. Not a migrant worker, an American, who continued to lead the nomadic life of his forbears, following the seasons or, in modern terms, seasonal work. His family was waiting for him back on the reservation. The dollars he accumulated through his labor would see them through the winter.

 

Enough counting.
You have no home
except this breeze.

 

-from "Breeze" by Najwan Darwish

Translated from Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

 

You look at the tree which grows,
without stopping, in the warmth
of your gaze

 

-from  "Four Poems"  by Israel Eliraz

Translated from Hebrew by Liat Simon

 

 

 

The books in translation discussion group at the Gardiner Library was tackling Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul; Memories of a City when I realized that I could not completely visualize the geography of the city despite Pamuk's vivid descriptions, nor could I grasp the cultural references or the particular familial traditions on a first reading. It was like roaming through a fun house, the mirrors distorted and the entrances and exits hidden. By all accounts the book is well translated by Maureen Freely who spent some of her childhood in Istanbul, has worked closely with Orhan over the years, and was supportive of him when he was persecuted and then put on trial for daring to suggest that the Turks committed genocide in Armenia. He was acquitted, but the experience unmoored his emotional connection to Istanbul; all the photos in the book are in black and white, bleached of color. Indeed, many translators remind us that translation is not only a matter of words, or even sentences, but of understanding a whole culture—its politics and history—and  immersing the reader in that culture, thus enlarging the concentric circles of our identity and encouraging curiosity of a larger world.

 

I first learned the theory of concentric circles in college when I read Gordon Allport's classic study in social psychology, The Nature of Prejudice. The outermost rim of the circle is "mankind," the smallest dot in the center is our solipsistic world. Beyond the domain of that comforting, small self-contained world, everyone is a foreigner or stranger. The challenge of education, its moral imperative, is to enlarge the concentric circles of our students. With book bans disrupting libraries and schools, and angry school board meetings, this is a formidable challenge. So, too, the proliferation of social media, tropes and bullying of school-aged children and beyond. It is one thing to encounter a stereotype in a Wharton or a Hemingway novel—the authors long dead and from a less self-aware era—quite  another to see sometimes nuanced statements, or blatant stereotypes about Jews,  Blacks and LGBTQ people on Facebook in 2024, or to hear "From the River to the Sea," from  the Palestinians, the Israelis, the demonstrators—and  their supporters—who, I would posit, barely understand its underlying crass hostility and ultimate uselessness. This is a nuclear-armed world where we must all live together in peace or self-destruct. The same holds true for Palestinians and Israelis; they must find a way to survive and thrive side by side.

 

As an academic by inclination and training, my heart swells with anticipation at the beginning of every school year.  I am hopeful that the November 5th election will both energize and calm our college campuses, our schools, our boards of education, the wars overseas, and ourselves. But we must continue to speak out when it is appropriate, or necessary, and not fear ignorant defamatory smears, tropes, or threats of violence. 

 

This post is dedicated to the innocent citizens of Israel and Palestine who have worked hand-in-hand for peace over the years. May all those who have been killed in the October 7 massacre and the genocidal bombing in Gaza RIP, and the peacemakers continue their efforts with even deeper intention.

 

 

We find ourselves in an unprecedented situation. Never before have so many witnessed an industrial-scale slaughter in real time.

 

- Pankaj Mishra,  London Review of Books, 3/21/24, "The Shoah After Gaza"

 

 

Reading or listening to the news most mornings—national or international—is a Gothic experience, Gothic as in Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart, his eye the eye of a vulture, bodies falling upon dead bodies and pulling them to pieces. Except that the eyes in the 21st century are the eyes of weaponry, man-made, and lethal, from the sky or on the ground as screeching protestors flee live bullets.

 

I am writing on August 5th and tomorrow is the anniversary of the American bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki on the 9th. As I have written before on this blog, I have a family connection to the after effects of these nuclear aerial bombardments. My husband's uncle, Norman Cousins, the founder and editor of The Saturday Review of Literature  brought 12 "Hiroshima Maidens" to New York for reconstructive surgery. He and his wife adopted one of them:

 

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/norman-cousins-peacemaker-atomic-age

 

As the American military brass descends on Israel, we await further escalations in the Middle East. Our beating hearts skip a beat. At least there's writing, a struggle for understanding, I tell myself. Writing as a form of activism. When we speak and when we speak out, when we speak civilly to one another, when we listen to suffering, our hearts settle, our pain eases.

 

Who among us has the best solution? I do not. Who can turn away from the atrocities in Gaza? No one. Too many. All of us. None of us. Some of us some of the time. Not turning away, even that could be the beginning of an awareness of our culpability, how we arrived at conflagrations and invasions in 2024. To have empathy for the injured on the ground, for the innocent children, for the search through the rubble of pulverized bombed out homes, whether it's Ukraine, Sudan or Gaza, or Israel, that is something, too. To donate to relief organizations, also worthy. But to ask the question what is wrong with us? And where do we go from here? And how can we heal from the atrocities and inequities we have inflicted upon ourselves and others ? And to remind one another that it is our taxes that pay for the military-industrial complex and a variety of despots in the world.

 

I have known soldiers, drone pilots and relief workers who have returned from wars. Many cannot sleep, they cannot eat, they cannot ever make love again, they drink too much. Once upon a time  they were babies mewling and puking in their mother's arms, and then, suddenly, they were trained to be killing machines or doctors pouring blood into veins after a battle. Brave soldiers, heroic soldiers, patriotic soldiers, home from the seemingly unending wars, and suffering.

 

Though it's Monday, I'm writing a sermon, it seems, albeit an areligious one. Does it fly? Make sense? Heal your broken heart, and mine?

 

 

I ran for the presidency, despite hopeless odds, to demonstrate the sheer will and refusal to accept the status quo. The next time a woman runs, or a black, a Jew, or anyone from a group that the country is 'not ready' to elect to its highest office, I believe that he or she will be taken seriously from the start.

 

-Shirley Chisholm, 1972

 

After the euphoria about Kamala's nomination subsides, I told myself, I will upload all the American history on my Kindle to-be-read-stack and review and amplify, yet again, the history of this fascinating, fraught nation I call home. How did we get to where we are, fault lines and all? And what would I be teaching in a high school classroom come September, just weeks away from the election, if the righteous censors weren't sitting on my shoulder?

 

I minored in American history at UC Berkeley and entered a teacher training program after I graduated. During my second term of student teaching at Oakland Technical High School, I was assigned an English class and an American History class. The school had a large catchment area, but it was streamed, which meant that it was integrated in name only; within the school it was segregated. My history class was nearly all Black, young men and women from the ghetto, low achievers, truants, kids on parole, disaffected angry youth, my supervising teacher—a disaffected older white guy—explained to me, assuming I'd comply with his bigotry. Then he wished me luck. I needed it, but not because of my students, as it turned out.  True, it was a volatile, violent time—the Black Panthers were still ascendant in Oakland—and I was a young white teacher in a make-believe suit.

 

You're probably idealistic, my supervisor said, just be careful. I intend to teach, I told him. You are naïve, he said to me. Just keep control. The security guard will keep an eye on you, as will I.

 

Fair warning, but somehow, I wasn't afraid; I was determined. The Panthers were revolutionaries wielding huge weapons, there were shoot-outs with the police, but these same men and women were also opening schools and clinics. They cared about their children, students I was now facing in the classroom, shunted to the lowest "streams," in de facto segregated public schools, as many in our inner cities still are today.

 

I stood absolutely silent that first day as my students reluctantly entered the re-arranged, seminar-style room. The security guard lingered at the door waiting for his opportunity to rescue me. I have a mezzo voice, I am tall, and I was wearing a suit, my personal armor. I went up to tell him he wouldn't be needed, and invited him to sit down in the circle and join the proceedings. Back to basics, we were about to launch my own version of a Constitutional Convention, I told him. He didn't know what I was talking about, nor did my supervising teacher who was scrunched in the back taking notes.

 

Like all things political then and now, this plan of mine, hatched at 3 a.m. before my first day in this challenging classroom, was a performance. No clichés, euphemisms, platitudes or balloons allowed, however. Let's get started, I began. What's missing here? Who attended the Constitutional Convention and who didn't? Textbooks on every desk, I asked my rapt students to open to Howard Chandler Christy's painting. It depicts Independence Hall in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787. There isn't a woman or Black person in sight.

 

And so began a very interesting semester. My students re-wrote the Constitution as though their enslaved ancestors had been attendance. It was, truly, an historical document.

 

But my supervising teacher wasn't happy. I had to explain why I veered away from the curriculum or he'd fail me. Worse, he promised I'd never get a job teaching in the Oakland School District, and might not even get my California State Teaching License. It was my second experience of threat to my livelihood, but it still perplexed me. I was too inexperienced to understand the political heft behind the intimidations; I had the insouciance and confidence of youth. Nice try, I told myself, and carried on. And, to my surprise, I did get my California State Teaching Certificate, issued "for life." I didn't even have to fight for it, or threaten my supervising teacher by reporting him, though I was prepared to do so. Maybe he knew this and backed off, like any bully. We know the type.

 

So here we are, umpteen years later, and Kamala, a California girl, is running for President of the United States. Of course, her backstory is nothing like the students I taught in Oakland; she was privileged. Still, she has felt discrimination and hatred in her life, plenty of it, and resisted it. I know and admire her type: fearless, determined, smart, competent, good-hearted. irreverent, hard-working, highly educated and ambitious. I could go on, but I'm over the moon.

 

 

 

Throughout the world, the more wrong a man does, the more indignant is he at the wrong done to him.  

 

-Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now

 

 

Until lately I was one of them. Strolling whistling through the slaughterhouse, averting my eyes from the carnage, able to laugh and dream and hope because it had not yet happened to me. To us."

 

-George Saunders,  Lincoln in the Bardo

 

 

 

And he blusters and he bloviates upon the stage, about the imagined and/or exaggerated slights and grievances, for the sky is falling upon the heads of the righteous, in  particular The Great Leader's now second-in-command reading from a teleprompter. And next to him, dressed in the most expensive fashion of the day. is his helpmate, silent as the lambs in Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, and even more obedient despite her elite education. For this is a gathering of the mighty, the beautiful, the elected and the selected, spinning fictions known as inspirational stories. And they will form a new congregation of the elected and selected and they will be fruitful and multiply for they will attempt a total abortion ban, and the Comstock restriction on birth control, catapulting all of us back to the mid-19th century, particularly women, the helpmates in this new Gilead.

 

So be it. A gathering of the righteous, a celebration of the backwardness and moral bankruptcy of what is still known as the "Republican Party." How Abe Lincoln must be curling in his grave. For, dear reader, it certainly feels as though we have been fighting a mostly bloodless civil war, which is to say, there has been plenty of violence and threat of violence, and rage and hatred, and now yet another assassination attempt in a county in a country saturated in the poison of gun culture. 

 

It has not yet happened to me, to us, as George Saunders wrote in his prize-winning book, Lincoln in the Bardo. Not yet. But everything has changed since Trump arrived, as those of us not of the congregation—or  "the movement," as he calls it—are mouthing platitudes about "democracy," or going on extended vacations from "the news."  There are echoes in our history, many of them, but never has such a fascist impulse been so close to realization as so many of us turn away in despair.

Are we too torn up, too paralyzed with fear to think straight? Are we so glued to the news cycle, our scrolling screens, and the safety of our homes to participate in voter registration  and/or protests?

 

About 158.4 million Americans voted in the 2020 election, according to the Pew Research Center, amounting to 62.8% of people of voting age. This may sound like a big-enough number, but it is not. The United States, a democracy, ranks 31st in voter turnout in the world. In the world, dear reader. And are we not, ostensibly, the designated and/or self-designated leaders of the free world? 

 

I record here, the one small action I performed last week after I read those pitiful statistics, for none of us alone can stop the juggernaut, but together, maybe there is hope. I got into my car and  picked up voter registration forms at the post office. There are a few 20-somethings in my orbit I talk with every day—at the gym, at the local café, in the health store. I put on my educator's hat and ask them about their issues—student loans, no medical insurance—acknowledging  their daily struggles as I struggle, patiently, to pierce their apathy and inertia with my heartfelt concern, and then ask if they intend to vote.

 

 

I challenge my readers to leave a comment here with their suggestions. Let us brainstorm together. I will give a prize to anyone who can identify the literary allusion in the title, though I am not sure what the prize will be.