Carol Bergman

 

There are many who do not know they are fascists but will find it out when the time comes.

 

― Ernest Hemingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls"

 

 

My mother became a neo-Freudian psychoanalyst later in life, studying at the dining room table while my sister was still in her high chair and I was doing my homework. I remember the day she first mentioned Freudian slips. I thought she was talking about underwear, but no, it wasn't that. It took me a few years to understand that she thought she knew more than I knew about me because she could peer into my unconscious, via malaprops, which she called Freudian slips. What teenager wants an intrusive mother in her face? Rhetorical question. That said, I would have enjoyed her take on Tucker Carlson's obsession with testicles and testosterone. Let me try to understand: Because the All-American White Male is losing his potency, he has to air out his testicles on a beach in the Bahamas. Get some sun on them. Is that it? In one frame in Tucker's testosterone video, a  naked man on top of a pile of rocks exposes his genitals to a red light emanating from an air purifier to the sounds of a film score resembling  the 2001 Space Odyssey.

 

What say you Freudians among us?

 

Equally fascinating are the pundits who have not mentioned that this obsession is a wee bit weird, a wee bit idiotic. As the Roman Gladiator Decimus Maximus once said, "There is only one thing worse than an idiot: An idiot with a following."  Meaning that the idiot is a demagogue and like all demagogues, he is vulgar, racist, a whore among orators. Yet, when Tucker and/or Trump—and at times they seem interchangeable—spew their falsehoods, there is a flame inside them that attracts a huge following, even love letters from bereft women yet to be abused or raped. (Hitler was the recipient of many love letters.) These men live on spite and hate. They resemble mangy wolves scouring the dregs of society in the hinterland.  

 

America has a long tradition of demagogues on its air waves—radio before television, television before cable. I'm reminded of Father Charles Coughlin, who I studied in graduate school. I listened to his screeds at the Museum of Broadcasting as Philip Roth must have as he was writing The Plot Against America. Or, maybe Roth heard them live.  

 

Coughlin railed against the Jews as Hitler was murdering my family. Of the 120 million Americans alive at that time, 30 million listened to this demagogue on the radio. My family had just arrived in New York as refugees, and when they turned on the radio, they wondered if Hitler had arrived in America before them. Coughlin was finally shut down in 1942  by FDR's Attorney General, Francis Biddle, but it took America's entry into the war after Pearl Harbor to invoke the controversial 1917 Espionage Act to shut him down.

 

God Bless America and our First Amendment. The Europeans think we are nuts, that someone is shouting fire in the theater all the time, a loophole in our democracy, or a black hole?

 

You mean people pay you to do this to them? I thought you had captured these people and brought them here against their will! How do I become a dentist?"

 

― Michael Buckley, "Magic and Other Misdemeanors"

 

 

I remember the first time I met my dentist, not my long-ago dentist—actually, there have been several—but  my new dentist, the one I found through a friend of my daughter's after I moved upstate. His office in Kingston, NY is about a forty-minute drive from where I live, and I was in toothache agony until I got there, my husband driving, of course.  I'd already been to a dentist in my small town that day and all s/he wanted to do was take my blood pressure and insurance information.  I walked out, called round to friends and family to get referrals, and zipped up to Kingston. 

 

I am not a fluoride baby; no one in my generation is, and I lived in England for ten years. If memory serves, the Brits resisted fluoride in drinking water until--hard to believe--2021. And don't get me started about National Health British Dentistry. National Health everything else is okay, more than okay, but not dentistry. No instruction in preventive protocols. No regular cleanings. My husband and I have paid the price. Our mouths are pock-marked with fillings and implants and god knows what else. Not to mention that I have vivid memories of my long-ago pediatric dentist giving me a lollipop as I walked out the door because I had behaved myself in the dental chair. How sweet, no pun intended.

 

Enter Dr. Thomas Cingel DDS, a graduate of SUNY Buffalo, raised in a modest middle class family, an upstater, married to a mid-wife and raising two adorable children. His office is an oasis of competent health care and human connection, more so, if that is possible, during Covid. But it was before the PPEs and masks that I first took notice of Dr. Cingel as an exceptional person, as well as an exceptional high-tech artisanal dentist. He had told me a story about seeing a "live" painting for the first time in a museum.  I'm not even sure he'd remember this as he tells many stories to many patients every day, but I do. I'd never met anyone who had not been to a museum, because everyone I knew when I grew up in a big city, and then lived overseas in a big city, wouldn't think twice about going to a museum, or how special it is.   I wanted to respond, but I couldn't. My mouth was open as he was working on something—a sick molar probably—but I listened attentively and took it in.

 

All dentists love to talk, but not all of them are good storytellers, or have written amusing, illustrated books called Avid Flosser  about the importance of flossing, or are taking a class in stand-up comedy because they are hyper-aware of the absurdity of contemporary life and care, really care, about people. I lucked out with Dr. Cingel, and so did my aging teeth, whatever is left of them.

 

This post is dedicated to the front line workers in Dr. Cingel's office: Sharon, Karen, Jackie, Kayla and Dagny.

 

 

He had not gone to the West to study "the art of government." Although in Protestant Europe he was surrounded by evidence of the new civil and political rights of individual men embodied in constitutions, bills of rights and parliaments, he did not return to Russia determined to share power with his people.

 

=Robert K. Massie, Peter the Great; His Life and World

 

 

As soon as I started writing about  Peter Zalmayev. a broadcaster in Ukraine, a man I have met and admire, I realized how little I knew about Russian and Ukrainian history, or even that it is necessary to separate them. I had memories of my husband's shelf of books about Russia when we lived in London. He had studied Russian at the Holborn School of Languages, and then entered an MA program in International Relations at the London School of Economics. His books were left behind when we returned to New York, but Jim's insight and knowledge traveled with us back to America. I am therefore blessed with a live-in expert on Russian, Ukrainian and Polish history, not to mention family connections; his father was born in Poland, his grandmother in Kiev, now Kyiv, the name change a history lesson in itself. I remember his grandmother well, our struggles to communicate, her home-made yogurt.

 

As the horrendous shooting war on the European continent continues unabated, and without a ceasefire in sight, I decided to deepen my education beginning with the Robert K. Massie history of Peter the Great, a page turner. Emperor from 1682-1725, he understood that, compared to the Europeans, Russia was "backward." His goal was to bring it forward into what we now call "the enlightenment."  He spoke several languages, traveled incessantly, but he was also a warrior who defeated the Swedes and the Turks with his well-trained army, and many mercenaries in that army. (There were mercenaries in every army in those days and they shifted sides often.)

 

Are the seeds of the current war between Russia and Ukraine in these pages? And how, if at all, could it have been prevented? And how will it end? I have no definitive answers other than, yes, every past has a future, the fault lines are there as they are in every nation's history, including ours, but there are also rogues, despots and renegades who turn the rivers of change to their selfish advantage. Given the advances Russia made since the fall of the Soviet Union, we'd have to say that Putin is a rogue and a despot, a throwback to an era even before Peter the Great came to the throne, and that the Russian Federation is experiencing a steep and rapid devolution. I hope we cannot say the same for these United States.

 

Ever hopeful as I read, both backwards and forwards into the text, I search for interesting quotidian details to relieve the stress of endless battles, domestic mischief, and cruel punishments. Peter's peasant wife Catherine had twelve children, and traveled to meet him on the battlefield while pregnant. Their love letters are quoted in the book, and they are fascinating and beautifully written, albeit in translation. Peter loved ships and became a master shipbuilder. His sojourns in Holland, England, and Versailles, after the death of Louis XIV, were remarkable. Imagine what travel was like in those days: arduous. And one can feel the efflorescing culture of diplomacy in Peter's efforts, his fascination with the world beyond Russia's borders, his insatiable willingness to learn. Indeed, he was brilliant and forward thinking, though often misguided and ruthless. He also drank a lot, as did so many others in his entourage. And though weapons were cruder in those days, he understood that once they were launched, the damage was done and the battle begun.

 

Every act of war, then and now, has both deliberate and unintended consequences, consequences that reverberate and threaten to break us all beyond repair.

 

This post is dedicated to Daniel Ellsberg and his family. 

 

 

After all, the true seeing is within.

 

― George Eliot, "Middlemarch"

 

 

There have been complicated and painful estrangements in my life, but I have never been "ghosted" by a friend until recently. I'm a writer; communication is my middle name. Talking, writing, thinking about what I say or don't say, and how to say it, deep listening when I interview people, maintaining a civil discourse between combative parties using my certificate studies in mediation and conflict resolution—all of these tools have worked for me most of the time. Communication takes practice and it's never perfect; I am never perfect. But shunning a friend, especially an old friend, well, it's just not something I'd do, or even think of doing.  It's a calculated—albeit silent—act unworthy of civilized people.

 

So, I was perplexed, and also sad, when two women friends ghosted me. As there have been two such painful events, I've had to ask myself whether or not I did anything wrong, hurtful, or foolish. And the answer is: nothing that warrants such callous, hostile behavior. And ghosting is callous, totally unlike anything I have experienced before, contemporary in its provocative intensity, an expression of grievance, hate and rage. Is it possible that my two highly intelligent, well-educated, accomplished friends have caught this disease? That we all went a little insane during the pandemic? Is it possible that our reliance on electronic media to sustain connection during the pandemic has distorted our human connections?  

 

But then another thought crossed my troubled, feminist mind: Would any of my male friends do this to me? And, I'd have to say, I don't think so, though I'm not sure why not. I know that men ghost women in the online dating universe—so many horror stories, akin to emotional abuse. Are my women friends mirroring this behavior and feeling more powerful? Or, are they experiencing the frustrations and challenges of aging in an agist society and shedding relationships they find, what? Dear Reader, please fill in the blank.

 

I won't hypothesize further. My ghosting friends have my contact information and know that I will answer all missives and phone calls promptly, should they ever want to talk or write. And though I remain hopeful, and keep my heart open, I don't know how I would feel about a reconnection without apologies, self-examination on both sides,  and a slow renewal of trust—the essence of loving friendships and nations at peace.

 

 We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

 

-Abraham Lincoln, from the First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

 

 

Though I am profoundly secular, I cannot abstain entirely from the imperatives of what for so many in the world is a contemplative, holy week: Passover, Easter, Ramadan. I am not a student of religion, so perhaps the Hindus also have such a week; if so, please educate me.  

 

I have no plans to pray this holy week—prayer has always eluded me—though I will listen attentively as others pray, and if a person of the faith, any faith, blesses me at the end of a conversation or an encounter, I will  accept and cherish the blessing.

 

Thank you to all the believers out there for remaining hopeful that this worrisome world will right itself before the apocalypse, or that we will forestall an apocalypse—environmental, political, or both. Are we celebrating the first of several indictments? Not just yet.

 

Let us pray!!

 

Two of my doctors are observant Jews. They enter the office to examine me wearing yarmulkes and ask how is my family. If the family is healthy, we are well, one of them says, a faith based on modern medicine as well as religious tenets, I suppose. I recite the news of the wellness or medical challenges in my family and include myself in the dissertation. The examination proceeds apace as I continue,"This time of year, I think of my family murdered in the camps and my great-uncle Arnold, a doctor such as yourself, who tried to save people before their transport from Terezin to Auschwitz, or perhaps ease their passage." My observant and religiously observant physician probably did not expect such a long, pithy answer, but I can't get my lost family out of my mind, or disregard them, ever. Not to mention the recent atrocities in Ukraine, or the unexpected demise of so many lost to Covid, or at the hands of police, or the violence and demonstrations in Israel and Palestine, or the parched Salt Lake, and so on, all over the world.

 

Are we being tested, I wonder, and if so, by whom, or what? Have we inflicted all these afflictions upon ourselves?

 

My secular existence aside, the Talmud and the Mishnah are intriguing for a writer. These are commentaries, discussions, critiques of the text, a historic template for a writer's workshop. And written so long ago. Millenia.

 

Perhaps there are explanations of human cruelty in these tomes, and guidance for an altruistic path forward, such as this one: "Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief… Walk humbly now…You are not obligated to complete the work. But neither are you free to abandon it." Various riffs on this aphorism turned up on social media a lot during the pandemic, though there's an argument, religious in its intensity, whether it is from the Mishnah or the Talmud. What say you scholars? Does it matter? Is there a similar aphorism in the Quran? Or the Bible? Or the Bill of Rights? Are our foundational origin stories, myths, and beliefs, the beginning of an argument, a lifelong schism, a violent outburst, a war? Or will the better angels of our nature surface in the maelstrom as we pray for peace, or, at the very least, imagine it.

 

 

Lifelines

 

 

Must living in peace - so fervently wished for throughout human history and yet enjoyed in only a few parts of the world - inevitably result in refusing to share it with those seeking refuge, defending it instead so aggressively that it almost looks like war?

 

-Jenny Erpenbeck, "Go, Went, Gone"

 

 

The asylees and refugees arrived for a  CV clinic. I could imagine my refugee parents in that room pulling an old suitcase with all their belongings, speaking in a foreign tongue, all their valuable dog-eared, well-fingered documents neatly held in a small satchel, the sorrow of family and friends left behind visible in their gestures and facial expressions. I was there, and I am here, because the United States took them in, a lifeline.  

 

I had volunteered that day because I wanted to do something useful after the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, strengthened restrictions at our southern border, and the backlash against refugees and asylees in the EU, the US, and now Canada where migrants are pressing for entry. New York State shares a 5,525 mile border with Canada, the longest international border in the world; our problem becomes their problem. With this week's treaty signing, Biden and Trudeau are in concert: we will share firefighters during a wildfire season, as we did on the Minnewaska Ridge last summer, and we'll send illegal migrants back to their first port of entry into the United States.

 

I have two cousins who began their lives in Canada because the refugee agency placed them there, separating the family. This happens a lot, even today, or even more so today. My husband and I mentored Nathan, a young Tamil man from Sri Lanka. His family was displaced during the Civil War after his father was killed. Nathan and his mother and sister fled, eventually reaching a refugee camp in Tamil-speaking South India. Because he was young and fit, Nathan was sent to America to work and study by the UNHCR; his mother and sister were sponsored by relatives in Canada. But Nathan had been granted asylum in the United States, which meant that he could not request asylum in any other country. "At least we are close enough to visit," he told us during one of our last visits before we moved upstate. His mother's promise to find him a bride could be easily fulfilled from within the Tamil community in North America.

 

At the CV clinic, I was matched with a young man from the Arab-speaking world whose father and uncle had been killed in a civil war. His schooling had been interrupted, his family scattered, many killed; his mother was missing and assumed kidnapped. I didn't get the full story; that wasn't my job. I had to find a way to create a one-page CV quickly so that he could find an internship or volunteer position while awaiting asylum, which can take years. This meant using my interviewing and rewriting skills. The CV he presented needed a lot of work. It was challenging to figure out what experience might be applicable and how to present it.

 

The young man has to be nameless here—asylum is not guaranteed, and deportation is always a possibility—but suffice to say he was sophisticated, educated, a former competitive swimmer and marathon runner, easy to work with—eager like most young people are—to complete his education and remake his life. I enjoyed myself, enjoyed getting to know him, enjoyed helping him. I am a swimmer, too, so that was our first touching point. Many others followed. It takes a village and this young man has lost his through no fault of his own. Now, he was rebuilding connection, however fragile.

 

He is one of many. In 2022, 103 million people were displaced. Each and every one are protected by international law, protocols and conventions, a set of guidelines on the treatment of people fleeing natural disaster, war, or persecution. Migrants, refugees, asylees, all have varying definitions in law, but, in essence, all the labels describe people on the move, people who have had to flee their homes against their will. Alas, laws, even international laws, do not guarantee humane treatment.

 

Small, mostly privately funded community resettlement programs are working in the United States, and the Afghan Circle in the Mid-Hudson Valley is hosting seven families, for example, but without government funding, they are struggling to raise funds through donations, fund raisers, and micro-grants. 

 

No atrocity, war, or civil war and subsequent migration happens in isolation from the flow of world events, particularly colonialism in all its past and present iterations. No flood or famine occurs in isolation from global climate change. What is our responsibility and what isn't? Some people feel the world's woes keenly, some are insular and apathetic. The call to duty, donation, or volunteerism is for every person to answer individually according to their own conscience.

 

Note: In the United States, the major difference between refugees and asylees is the location of the person at the time of application. Refugees are usually outside of the United States when they are screened for resettlement, whereas asylum seekers submit their applications while they are physically present in the United States or at a U.S. port of entry. Refugees and asylees also differ in admissions process used and agencies responsible for reviewing their application.

 

 

Volunteer opportunities in my community are listed below. Please add yours in the comments:

 

https://www.afghancirclehudsonvalley.org/assist-us/

 

https://www.newpaltz4refugees.org/volunteer.html

 

https://ulsterimmigrantdefensenetwork.org/

 

 

 

 

When danger threatened him, he never got hurt. He knew just what to do.

 

-Bert the Turtle

 

 

In 1950 Mayor William O'Dwyer announced a plan to protect New York City school children, not from active shooters, but from the atomic bomb. The plan—which continued for a decade—included the use of the basements of school buildings as air raid and/or fall-out shelters. Teachers handed out a booklet: "STAY CALM," it said in big red letters. And it showed a picture of a little boy and a little girl smiling and staying calm.

 

A year later, the Federal Civil Defense Administration released a cartoon, a record album, and a book featuring Bert the Turtle, who ducked as soon as he saw a "flash of light" and then covered his head and neck with his arms, against a wall, or under a table. At least once a week at noon, an air raid siren would go off. This was the signal for students to slide under their desks and "duck and cover."  Sometimes, there were  "sneak attack drills." "Drop," the teacher would say, and students had to drop under their desks.

 

Dog tags were given out in the second week of October each year. "Just in time for Halloween," our teacher said, cheerily. "You can dress up as soldiers." Modeled after military dog tags, they were made of a lightweight aluminum, stamped with each child's name, address and phone number. With their long chains, they dangled right down to our belly buttons.

 

What fun! In the event of a catastrophe, we could be easily identified, just like on a battlefield.

 

Or could we? Wouldn't the aluminum be incinerated?

 

I rushed home in a panic on those sneak attack drill days, which my parents, who were refugees, said reminded them of war. My mother, a psychiatrist, went to speak to the principal. "These drills are not good for the children," she said. "America is at peace. Let the children live in peace."

 

Like all parents everywhere, and throughout time, a committee was formed. A minister's wife, Mrs. W.H. Melish, mother of two, formed the Parents' Committee to Safeguard Children From War Tension in the School. "Dear Parent," she wrote in a letter circulated widely and subsequently published in the New York Times. "Were you shocked when your children came home and reported that they had A-bomb air raid drills? Is your child one of those who is waking up in terror because of these drills?"

 

The newspaper of record then went on to report Mrs. Melish's address in Brooklyn, insuring harassment by irate citizens. Some accused her of being a communist.

 

I am sure the principal was polite when my mother was escorted into her office, but her admonitions, based on her professional assessment, went unheeded. The nonsensical, pointless drills were mandated by the government, a government that had unleashed an atomic bomb on a civilian population—the first and only time so far—and  knew full well what it could do: evaporate us. No wonder so many suburban families were building bomb shelters in their back yards. Magical thinking, we'd say today.

 

These memories came back to me recently when Putin threatened the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Well, just tactical, the pundits reassure us. This is not another Cold War, it is something else, perhaps worse: a geopolitical realignment. More damage is being done to Ukraine by the continuous pummeling of infrastructure with "conventional" weapons, so why worry about nukes? But the missiles cannot see the children down there, and even if they did, what would it matter? The war continues regardless, with no end in sight.

 

Because so many Ukrainians have evacuated and are living in exile, it's easy to forget that many remain, including children, who are forced into air raid shelters when a siren sounds, often in the middle of the school day. They sing, or continue with their lessons, they move quietly in well-disciplined lines, and sometimes they cry, the reporters on the ground tell us. They may emerge from their shelters unscathed, or they may not, as in Mariupol. Or their wounds may remain invisible for years to come. Their fathers are mostly soldiers now and will return with their own wounds, or in body bags. Their mothers are sustaining life away from the front lines as best they can until they, too, have to take shelter.

 

Grown-ups usually have well-intentioned plans, but they can't always protect their children. Survival in a war zone is day-to-day. Even in schools in a safe-enough country, such as the United States, there is a war mentality. With lockdown drills and school shootings, our schools have become war zones. The absolute safety of our children during the school day is an illusion.

 

There was a fallout shelter where my friend Diane lived. A yellow and black radiation sign was tacked to the front of her building. One day we persuaded the building superintendent to let us see it. Though these shelters had been de-commissioned, many were still intact. This one contained: dark gray metal cans without labels, jars of peanut butter, dried fruit, jugs of spring water, tinned candies, tinned cigarettes, cots and blankets, candles, a table and chairs, a radio, a gasoline lantern, a gasoline stove and a large medicine kit filled with Band-Aids and iodine.

 

Diane wanted to stay and play, but I said no. I was scared. The shelter was a tomb.

 

"You kids," the superintendent said affectionately as he escorted us back upstairs. "Get outside into the sunshine. Jump rope or something."

 

So that's what we did.

 

 

 

 

 

Playing It By Ear

 

  But to tolerate uncertainty is to  become buoyant, able to bob in the waves, no matter the tide.

 

Lydia Polgreen, NY Tines Opinion, 10/26/22

 

 

It's a strange idiom, one I rarely use—playing it by ear—but today, as I write, it is my birthday and I have been looking forward to driving up the mountain to have dinner with my daughter. She called last night when I was in the midst of a Zoom meeting. I excused myself and took the call; I always answer my daughter's calls. And we compared our weather apps. Snow is predicted on all of them, how much, whether the temperature will go up or down is all unpredictable, despite modern technology. Driving home would be all downhill, so best be cautious, we decided. We postponed our get-together until tomorrow after the dig out, plowing and sanding. But we'll still have to "play it by ear," just in case there's a shift in the wind, or the roads are still too slippery to travel.

 

That idiom—playing it by ear—has  stayed with me all morning.  I find it difficult to change plans and bob with the waves, to improvise, ad-lib or extemporize, which is strange because all writing—all  creative endeavor—is a form of improvisation. The page or canvas is blank, and we fill it with words or images that surface within us, often mysteriously.

 

I didn't know what I was going to write about this week, which is unusual for me, until my daughter said, "let's play it by ear." That set me to bobbing all day in the waves of life's exigencies.  I'm about to begin  another Young Adult novel, so I'm reading a lot and taking notes. I've written one page I think is viable, but I am not certain. And I'm slow-reading a biography of Peter the Great by Robert K. Massie, every sentence of which is fascinating and enjoyable to contemplate. The seeds of today's horrific war in Ukraine are in 17th century Russia. I will continue to write about that conflict until it ends, and we don't know how it will end. Uncertainty once again.

 

Slow-reading nonfiction big books began for me during lockdown. I'd always been a fast reader, goal-oriented, reading less for pleasure than information and as a writer studying what makes a book work, or not. But as life's activities suspended and there were more hours in each day to read, write, and think, I became more attentive to my eyes moving across the page, as though they were vehicles. The sensation of being transported into another time and place was almost surreal; it took me away from the sad reality of the pandemic. I have continued the practice. Massie's book is 800 pages, and it is the first of four in his Romanov series. Catherine the Great is already on the TBR stack.

 

Once a month I meet with what I have started calling my very special, advanced city writing workshop—Sherry, Ed, Betty Leigh, Eric and Max.  Much has transpired for all of us since we shifted to Zoom, and adapted to it, in the spring of 2020, including the tragic death from Covid of Ed's partner, Jody.  Yet, even after this terrible event, our get togethers remained focused, engaged, and supportive, full of warmth, humor, and improvised conversation. I dedicate this blog post to all of these particular, wonderful students, with gratitude.

 

Owls for Peace

 

 

The Lenape Indians believed that if they dreamt of an Owl it would become their guardian.

 

-The Owl Pages

 

 

The owl was sitting quietly on the branch of a tree as my photographer friend, Michael Gold, was on his way to the gym very early one morning. It was still deep winter, and cold, but he got out of his car and took pictures with his phone. Later that day, when he posted the image of the owl on his Facebook page, I unexpectedly felt both wonder and joy, a respite from the focus of most of my writing life. I hadn't read the paper yet, or listened to any podcasts. I didn't need any reports about whole towns destroyed in Ukraine, Syria and Turkey to know that whole towns had been destroyed in Ukraine, Syria and Turkey.

 

In our daily lives, we may not be at war, but we are not always wise, and we are very often unkind.  So eager are we for the restitution of warm connection since three years of masking and insurrection, that when a young man on line at the local bakery tells his girlfriend he loves her, everyone turns and smiles.

 

Often, then, if we are attentive, patient, perhaps too imaginative, something surprising happens that eases our worry: Polar bears are surviving, or there is a cease fire in Ukraine, or the end to a trade war with China, or release of a migrant from detention, or the demonstrations in Iran and Israel against despotic regimes succeed in toppling those regimes. Or, it could be something micro-cosmic, immediate and real: the moment love begins, the mountain air freshened by wind, or an owl sitting peacefully in a tree.

 

Dedicated to my Palestinian cousins, still living under an increasingly violent occupation, and the brave Israelis demonstrating against their government.

Spare Me

 

 

I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again...

 

― Philip Roth, "The Ghost Writer"

 

Late last night, as the snow began to fall in upstate New York, and I was about to retire for the night, Libby informed me that Prince Harry's memoir, Spare, was off hold and ready to be borrowed. That was fast, I thought, the publisher must have a released a lot of library e-book copies. No surprise as it was the fastest selling nonfiction book of all time on the day of its' release--across all platforms: hardback, e-book, and audiobook.

 

I lived in London for a decade and confess that the royals either fascinate, disturb or bore me. I knew I'd read or skim Harry's memoir—we all call him Harry now—but would not buy it. And it's good bedtime reading, not too demanding, and written in a breezy style by Harry's ghostwriter, JR Moehringer, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist (feature writing, LA Times), ghost of Andre Agassi's memoir, and author of his own memoir, The Tender Bar, now a movie with George Clooney, a friend of Prince Harry's. Clooney introduced Harry to his "literary midwife."

 

Celebrity literary midwifery is a particularly lucrative occupation. But the ghost has to agree to terms in a contract: Will their name be on the cover, in the acknowledgments (the first sentence), or absent entirely, and though it's disappointing to readers, at times, to discover a book has been ghosted by either one person or a team of persons --Michelle Obama's books for example-- a skillful ghostwriter captures the voice of the "writer" with ease. Still, it's best not to judge a ghosted memoir on its literary merits, though some are written better than others.

 

My own experience as a ghost writer goes back a ways. At first, it was just articles for Woman's World magazine, still extant, it's  a German-owned tabloid, that specializes in "as-told-to" stories by women. The women related their stories to me and I then wrote them in the first person, as though I was the person, a slightly creepy sensation. My byline appeared after the words "as told to."  I did quite a few of those stories and enjoyed meeting not-so-privileged women with heart-breaking and/or life-affirming stories. I had never written for a tabloid before and the women I met opened my eyes to a different, forgotten America, the America Trump galvanized in 2016.

 

Then, one day, I was called into a meeting with my agent, an editor at Doubleday, and Bob Keeshan's agent. Keeshan had  created a character for children's television called Captain Kangaroo, and his program was losing ratings to Sesame Street.  He wanted to stay in the game so his agent suggested he write his memoir. He didn't want to do it, so they decided to hire a ghost. I was the third writer they had approached, and the only woman. Keeshan liked women; he was gallant in an old-fashioned way, which amused me. We were comfortable with each other, and I got the job.

 

I thought it would be a breeze to work with him, but like so many celebs who are forced to write their memoirs for career reasons, he resisted. He didn't really want to tell his life story, or not just yet.  I remember stomping into his office one day and saying, "If you don't start telling me about your childhood and how you are raising your disabled son, this book will be remaindered in Barnes & Noble in a week."

 

He laughed and made a weird comment about what I was wearing, which made me laugh. Patience and a sense of humor are essential in this business, I thought to myself. I'm here to serve him, get the book written. He was deflecting, obviously, changing the subject. How did I find out about his son? "I'm a journalist," I reminded him. Still, it was a no-go, off limits, like the rest of his family.

 

Spare me the frustration of this process ever again on behalf of a celebrity, or mini-celebrity, or a celebrity who is aging out and wants to stay in the game and is eager to preserve and/or enhance his reputation, or is forced by failing ratings to write a book.

 

Most of Keeshan's staff had been stolen by Children's Television Workshop, the producers of Sesame Street, and when I interviewed them, they did not hold back their opinions or resentments about old-fashioned Bob Keeshan, or their delight at working with puppets who could talk about their emotions, recite the alphabet, and count!

 

Most painful for me was to provide transcripts, or reports, of all my interviews with every person who had ever worked for Bob Keeshan. He had a contractual right to hear all of it, and he wasn't happy, of course not; he was hurt. About half-way through that difficult year, he lost heart in the book, so much so that I had to pad it with scripts from a radio series he had done, as well as numerous testimonies he'd given to Congress –on racism in cartoons, among other subjects. He was a good guy, I kept telling myself, as I sat down to write a draft. I wrote the best book I could write, in the circumstances, and it even went into paperback, but was remaindered soon after.