Dan Riley's Blog, page 12

Not Dark Yet

Exploring the caves beneath Osimo, Italy, Sept. 2018
Seventy-three is a most unremarkable age. It’s down there with 15 and 31 and 59 and all the other minions of birthdays that can only look up at the royal family of birthdays: 1, 16, 18, 21, 30, 40, 50, 60, 62, 65, 70, 75…100. As I’ve written here before I set my 75th birthday as somewhat of a morbid goal for myself after learning that my literary hero Mark Twain predicted he would die at 75…and, by God, he did. I’m not quite there as I turn 73 today, which seems a good time to reconsider that goal. At a certain age, you can’t help but think about mortality…that age for me was 70. Ever since, I’ve been noticing deaths just behind me and deaths just ahead. Oddly…and most unscientifically…and probably most improbably...people seem to die less at 73 than they do between 68 and 72 and 74 and beyond. As I peruse the obits the New York Times sticks in my email each morning, I’ve become somewhat aware that not many people die at 73…not many famous people at least. Seventy-three seems a bit like a log you land on temporarily as the River Styx rushes forward, carrying you along to your final destination. I could be wrong about this, but things happening to me leading up to my 73rd birthday make me feel that it’s not dark yet.The first of those things happened last June when Lorna and I discovered electric bikes…and suddenly out of nowhere I had something fast (14.5 mph!) and invigorating to replace my lifelong passion for softball and get me out of the house for some serious exercise. I knew it never was going to be golf…not unless they changed the rules to allow me to shag tee shots with my baseball mitt out on the fairway.  The next is this all there is rebuttal came from Monty Don’s televised garden tours of Italy. When we returned from our most recent trip to Italy for our 50th wedding anniversary celebration, Lorna and I both had the distinct feeling that as glorious a trip as it had been it was probably our last to our favorite foreign country. Between the airlines’ nickel and dime policies and TSA’s intrusiveness air travel has become unremittingly awful. Besides, we still owed my father’s ancestral homeland a visit and knew if we were to rally for another trip abroad, we would be Ireland bound. But then in four breathtaking, hour-long episodes, Monty Don opened our eyes to Italian sights we’d never even imagined, let alone seen. By the time the series was over we were at work on the itinerary for our next Italian journey.    The kubodai...not dark yet until the Mrs. becomes a Mr.Then a week ago we started watching Blue Planet ll on Netflix. It started with the tusk fish that goes hunting for crab. After finding one, it brings it back to its workshop and proceeds to crack open the shell against a rock to get at the meat inside. So, a tool-using fish! The amazement of that was immediately transcended by our introduction to the kobudai fish. When a female kobudai gets over 10 years old, certain of her enzymes stop working and male hormones start to develop. She goes into months' long isolation until she turns into a male kobudai and is ready to challenge the alpha male, her former mate, for dominance over his harem And so, a transgender fish! And finally an aggressive school of false killer whales (actually dolphins) is in hot pursuit of a school of bottlenose dolphins when the bottlenoses abruptly stop, turn on their hunters, and start to negotiate in those wacky dolphin voices. Before you know it, the two groups are cooperating and hunting together. It’s a deep sea Kumbaya! It gives me pause: how many other such wonders of the world still await my discovery? Finally, this past Saturday we were on Facetime with grandson Remy, who was celebrating his more momentous first birthday. In the midst of it…with Remy grabbing nonstop for the phone and Gillian trying to keep the call coherent…she called out for Remy’s two-year old brother, “Hey, Nico, wanna come say hi to gram and gramps?”“Not yet,” Nico hollered back.Ha! We all roared with laughter at the innocent irreverence of it...not yet. I get it. I can wait, Nico. It’s not dark yet.      Order here

Sheet Storm

No pun intended. The San Diego Union Tribune described the storm that is pummeling us as “sheets of wind and rain.” But don’t cry for us, Argentina...or anywhere else. We’ve been crying rivers of tears over the California drought for years now. A more religious interpretation of our recent onslaught of winter storms might be that our prayers have been answered. Surely you can’t deny the rosy outlook in this Union Trib headline: (Would that the Mogadishu Union Tribune greet the end of the Somali drought with such a headline.)I don’t mean to rain on our rain, but as I tossed and turned last night to the sound of those sheets buffeting our large, well-built, two-story home, I couldn’t help but think of the people living in the makeshift tents in the lowlands lining the bike path I ride from our gorgeous home to the beautiful Pacific most every day. The density of their sporadically spaced tent cities has fluctuated over the time I’ve been cruising on by. Sometimes they disappear all together. That’s when the local authorities come through in white pick-up trucks and orange vested crews to evict them and clean up after them. The disappearance doesn’t last long…in two or three weeks they’re back, doing their best to hide their hovels in the bush. What’s been most remarkable to me is that when I last rode by two days before the storm, their presence had expanded significantly. What made this shocking is that the last big rain just a week or so ago left many of them surrounded by water or completely washed away. The news of this current storm was certainly no surprise even if you don’t have access to Internet or cable TV…it’s been building for days. Which would lead one…like me…to assume these folks would be seeking out more formidable shelter. But when I awoke this Valentine’s Day morn, my heart drove me to do some research on what alternatives might be available to these folks. What I learned is that there are an estimated 15,000 homeless people in our area…and not nearly enough beds to accommodate them all. Long wait lists are typical. Most of the shelters are dedicated to families, which has become a more recent and urgent crisis. The people I see heading into the tents along the bike path mostly travel as singles or couples, ranging in age from mid 20s to late 30s…though the wear of the lifestyle makes them look older. The all too common reaction to their plight, I assume, is why don’t they get jobs? Without doing a full journalistic investigation here or sociological study, I’ll venture a few possible answers to the question:They have drug addictionsThey face mental or physical obstaclesThey’ve been thrown out of home due to conflict with a spouse, parent or other relativeThey have jobs but still can’t afford a proper shelter in one of the most expensive places to live They are modern day Thoreaus…philosophically committed to a simple, austere life They are itinerants on their way to their next destinationThey are indeed lazy and shiftless and expect…what? Mother Nature to take care of them.If it’s the latter, then Mother Nature should be reported to child and family services after what she put them through last night. I couldn’t sleep thinking about it…which was the extent of my suffering for them. Although at the darkest, wettest, windiest hour last night, my inner Jesus got a grip on me, and I imagined taking my Rav 4 out to those lowlands, loading the homeless into it, and bringing them home to put up in our garage until the deluge passed. It was a preposterous raising-the-dead level idea. The sheer impossibility of it brought on an enormous sense of inadequacy as I confronted the sorry options for my liberal impulses. I could donate to a homeless shelter, I could go work in a homeless shelter...I could write a blog post! I could vote. I could vote for caring and responsible leadership and against corrupt and bigoted leadership. But I already did that…I voted against Duncan Hunter Jr. who won his most recent election while under indictment for campaign finance violations and by smearing his opponent, a Christian, as an Islamist with ties to terrorists.   The Atlantic just ran an article on how individuals’ reactions to disgust may be telling in determining whether their politics are liberal or conservative. This congressional district of ours has long been a conservative stronghold (previously represented by Hunter’s father). Many ex-military from Camp Pendleton settle here after their service. Given their voting habits and attitudes in general, I daresay that most of Duncan Hunter’s supporters would look upon the squalor along the bike path with open disgust and respond with military gusto to bulldoze them all the hell out of there.I reserve my disgust for a society that consistently fails the least among us while constantly feathering the beds of the richest and most privileged. 

The Sheet Storm, filmed from the safety and comfort of our home...

For readers in North County San Diego, here are the results of my morning research. For readers elsewhere, I encourage you to do a Google search of your own and act accordingly.https://www.friendsoflaposada.org/why-we-help/http://solutionsforchange.org/https://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/mar/07/two-new-homeless-shelters-operating-north-county/https://www.homelessshelterdirectory.org/cgi-bin/id/city.cgi?city=Vista&state=CA

Enlighten Men...and Women

With the very real and inspiring biography of Frederick Douglass to draw upon,
purveyors of American culture preferred to put black face on white song and
dance minstrels, slapstick vaudevillians, and blatant caricatures of blackness
like Amos 'n Andy.With all these politicians getting busted for their past indulgences in racist behavior, imagine my shock when one of my own fictional characters got caught in the maw himself. My character’s name is Leo D’Aleo; he’s the manager of the movie theater where my historical fantasy Now Playing Black Panther primarily takes place. Kirkus Review described Leo thusly:

In 1954, the film—which racist Leo describes as “a bunch of half naked Coloreds flying through space and shooting up white people”—causes a significant stir, and white crowds flock to the uncanny spectacle.

The surprising thing for me, the author and creator of Leo, is that I never intended him to be a racist. Not that there aren’t racists in my book…it is after all a story of race in America, and though Supreme Court Justice John Roberts and other Pollyannas would like to deny it racism still plays a major role in American society. In my book, Leo’s daughter Rosemary chastises her boyfriend Shep for deploring the plight of Negroes. “Slaves and all,” he laments. “Oh, pshaw, slaves,” Rosemary tells him, “There haven’t been slaves in a hundred years.”  It’s no mere throwaway line. Having grown up in the town where my novella takes place, I think Rosemary accurately channels the prevailing attitude towards the nation’s chief racial minority in such towns…mostly white and on the right side of the Civil War. The belief was that with slavery ended the work for racial justice was done…and everyone should just get on with their pursuits of happiness. The fact that in many parts of the country the freed slaves and their descendants could not vote, own or rent in certain neighborhoods, and were systematically excluded from paths to political and economic power to achieve equality sunk beneath their wisdom like a stone (to appropriate from Leonard Cohen). Unlike other of my characters…Milo, an avowed racist…and J. Edgar Hoover, a documented racist…the D’Aleo family was meant to represent the unenlightened view of “Coloreds” by the adults that inhabited the world I grew up in. They were conscientious enough to use Colored or Negro when referring to dark-skinned people of African extraction (referring to them as “black” had not yet come into fashion and the designation African-American was still a few decades off). Practicing racists of course would use the word  Nigger . And I would’ve put that word in Leo’s mouth had I wanted him to be more of an odious fellow than an ordinary one. But I wanted Leo to be emblematic of those who inhabit the broad human landscape between Shep, my enlightened hero, and Milo, my rage-filled racist character. I can’t fault my book’s reviewer for misreading Leo’s ordinariness for racism because we live in a time when that broad landscape is rapidly shrinking to a no man’s land. Today you’re either enlightened on the subject of race or you’re a racist…and that view projects back to the past regardless of the context of the times. But I prefer to understand Leo’s character as unenlightened rather than racist. In that, he is a lot like those in our modern nonfiction world who are baffled in watching our sporadic eruptions of outrage over blackface. They are people whose entire experience with blackface is as entertainment or mere costuming. They lump it in with dressing in drag or donning a super hero outfit…a way to briefly assume another identity for amusement’s sake. 
They are so unenlightened as to not realize that for the better part of our nation’s existence, the dominant white culture has systematically sought to distort the identity of minority cultures…from the portrayal of Native Americans as savages to Anglo-sizing ethnic names at ports of entry to selling hair-straightener and skin lightener to blacks. What the unenlightened never seem to realize is that while getting up in blackface with big red lips and bug eyes may seem like harmless fun, it dehumanizes racism’s victims and paves the way for the hateful mission of real racists. This issue of blackface is not confined to the upper reaches of Virginia governance. It seems damn near epidemic. It cost Megyn Kelly her job when she said on TV: 

"What is racist? You get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on black face on Halloween, or a black person that puts on white face for Halloween. That was okay when I was a kid as long as you were dressing like a character." 

Not incidentally it cost NBC $69 million to buy out Kelly’s contract. So this is not a controversy to be taken lightly.But where to go from here? I’m tempted to declare Megyn Kelly the Queen of the Unenlightened, but she’d already been through one embarrassingly public racial controversy in her career. You would think she would’ve learned, but she didn’t... which makes her either truly racist or truly dumb. The saving feature of Unenlightenment is that you are teachable…you really are able to learn from your mistakes…or misperceptions. Had Megyn Kelly learned from her previous fuck-up, she would’ve conducted her show about Halloween and Political Correctness from a position of wisdom rather than wise-assery.Rather than taking an overtly anti-PC stand (clearly her agenda) and saying that getting up in blackface was OK when she was a kid, she would’ve asked her panel to explain why it seemed OK then, but really wasn't. She would’ve asked her show’s researchers to provide her with the history of blackface. She may have framed her discussion by quoting Frederick Douglass’ 1848, pre-PC assessment of whites in blackface:

[They are] "the filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow-citizens."

She could’ve set out to enlighten rather than enrage…as should anyone else addressing this subject online, on TV, or around the dinner table in the days and years to come. It's our only way out.Take it away Van the Man…Good or bad, babyYou can change it anyway you wantYou can rearrange itEnlightenment. Don't know what it isChop that wood and carry waterWhat's the sound of one hand clappingEnlightenment. Don't you know what it is
All around baby, you can seeYou're making your own reality everyday becauseEnlightenment. Don't know what it is
One more time
Enlightenment. Don't you know what it isIt's up to youEnlightenment. Don't know what it isIt's up to you, everyday

Fortress of Privilege

Isola BellaIn Monty Don’s breathtaking series on Italian Gardens, he informs viewers that something quite extraordinary happened around 1550 as regards European pissing contests. After centuries of trying to outdo each other with armies and castles and hard cold wealth, European monarchs, would-be monarchs, wannabe monarchs, popes, merchants, bankers and heirs to ridiculous, unearned fortunes turned their efforts to announcing their elevated status in the world through gardens. The Age of Aquarius be damned, the 16th  century was really when flower power came into full bloom.Given all the bloody wars on the continent that came before and all the bloody wars to come in succeeding centuries, it really is quite remarkable that for one brief, shining moment, the rich and powerful were content to make their mark on the world by growing things. Content, of course, may not be exactly the right word here. Mad ambition still allowed for corruption, betrayal, and bloodletting in the service of getting ahead, but the flourishing of gardens covered it all in greenscapes of wonder and beauty that exist for the most part to this day.  Among the gardens Monty Don visits is the Villa Farnese outside of Rome where Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, in an attempt to remind the church hierarchy that he was the grandson of a pope (sic!) and worthy of the papacy himself, commissioned the design and construction of one of the grandest gardens in all Europe. As Monty Don says, Farnese’s total intent was to announce to the world that I am a powerful man. But it was of no avail in securing for him the most powerful position, the papacy. The garden gambit proved even more frustrating for Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este, who tried in vain to become pope five times. Each time he was rejected, he came back to his estate in exile in Tivoli to tear up and expand his garden, which ultimately became a majestic array of waterworks. It’s somewhat fascinating to note that as a result of his serial demolitions of surrounding homes and businesses in pursuit of his ambition he was sued by local residents.  So even in the 1560s confiscation of private property in pursuit of a rich man’s fantasy was not a popular thing. In the 19thcentury famed military strategist, Carl von Clausewitz observed that war was politics by other means. Had von Clausewitz been Italian rather than Prussian he may have amended that to be gardening is politics by other means. On opposite sides of Lake Como, two wealthy and powerful political rivals, Giovanni Battista Sommariva and Duke Francesco Melzi d'Eril, played out their heated rivalry in their gardens. As their equally impressive villas were clearly visible to each other, these two strutting peacocks constantly tried to one-up the other by planting more and more exotic plants. As Monty Don describes it, virtually firing volleys of Japanese Rhododendron across the water at one another. And oh, for wars like that again. Speaking of war, this post’s title, a fortress of privilege, comes from Don’s description of Isola Bella where a ragged rock island was transformed by the powerful Borromeo family into a lavish, almost impossible, garden, seemingly afloat on Lake Maggiore. As Monty Don strides across the expansive terrace at the very top of the island garden, he notes that this is where the family threw extravagant parties so, “People can see you’re having a party, but they’re not invited, that’s the key thing.” Obnoxious, perhaps, but a far better use of riches than garish urban towers with your name on top or vanity presidential campaigns. 
Interestingly, the Borromeo family for all its clout…and they served as governors of Isola Bella and surrounding islands…could not buy out all the fishermen on the rock and ended up having to construct their sprawling garden in and around fishermen's cottages. It’s this fact among other populist details, I think, that allow Monty Don to declare Isola Bella a fortress of privilege without any sense of condemnation. He’s seen enough of these floral and verdured monuments to ego and privilege to appreciate the irony in them. Almost all of them now serve the common people, either as state run national treasures or non-profit living museums. The private wealth that once made them possible and the ambitions that once made them essential have passed and their ownership and enjoyment now virtually belong to everyone. 
Time is the un-sealable crack in a fortress of privilege.

Here We Go Again

Not here we go again the Patriots are back in the Super Bowl (though that, too). But here we go again turning the Super Bowl into political theater. It begins, as always, with The Nation’s Dave Zirin, who never saw a holding call he couldn’t turn into a jeremiad against social injustice. In a recent tweet he quickly lamented the upcoming Super Bowl this way: I understand how politics has permeated our existence like contaminates in the Flint, Michigan, water supply, but Jesus! Can’t we give the game a fighting chance to take a competitive, entertaining breath before smothering it in its crib with the plastic dry cleaning bag of our suffocating partisanship?

I think I can answer that--no we can’t. We’re just a tweet away from this Super Bowl becoming yet another proxy fight in the Resistance v. Trump War, with the Patriots standing in for Trump. Patriots’ owner Bob Kraft set his team up for being cast as the Trump stand-in by his giddy, mindless embrace of Trump’s candidacy and presidency. As a Patriot fan of long standing and a Trump hater in good standing, I’ve been pretty zealous in going after Kraft for his utter witlessness in this regard here, here and here. He dumbly burdened his team and his fanbase through his fanboy infatuation with an authoritarian mental case.  As Trump’s unfitness has become increasingly apparent to even his most dewy-eyed groupies, however, Kraft has acted to create some distance from the great Oval Office Underachiever and his own famously over-achieving football team. Just on the surface--without knowing what has gone on in the allegedly frequent calls between Kraft and Trump--we know the following:Kraft publicly stood by players during the height of the right to kneel protestsTom Brady called Trump “divisive”Brady’s wife has been an outspoken advocate for immigrantsWith Kraft’s blessing, Brady and a dozen of his teammates skipped the team visit to The White House after its shocking Super Bowl win over AtlantaTeam Captain Devin McCourty produced a powerful video on what a patriot really means with emphasis on the First AmendmentKraft lent the team plane to the Parkland students to fly to DC for their anti-NRA rallyClearly Kraft has grown uncomfortable with his Do Your Job football team playing the villain in trial-by-combat, like Game of Thrones' psychopathic King Joffrey’s murderous knight, The Mountain. Now if only the media--especially its more left leaning elements (looking at you, Chris Hayes)--would take Charles Pierce’s advice (above) from a tweet he sent before the Patriots-Falcons Super Bowl and just stop it! Let me count the reasons why:First, when you frame the game as Resistance v. Trump, you set yourself up to repeat the enormous pain and suffering of election night 2016 if the Patriots come back from, say, a 28-3 deficit.Second, with the Patriots always having at least an even chance of winning, you give Trump an even chance for claiming a faux win for himself. It really is like a Game of Thrones trial-by-combat…a true warrior faces great harm in the actual arena while some fat-ass sponsor stands safely on the sidelines waiting to do a touchdown dance.  Third, it’s goddamn football game...with over a hundred players and millions of fans on both sides from vastly different political, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. Good God, Dave Zirin and Charles Pierce are comrades in arms on most every social issue, but Zirin is on the record as a Patriots hater (“odious” he calls them) while Pierce is a loyal hometown rooter and Tom Brady biographer. How stupid is it to lump everyone that has anything to do with one team as a Trump supporter?Yes, I want to be free of the stigma of rooting for a team that’s so closely associated with Trump. Like most Pats fans I’ve lived with the stigma of Spygate for more than a decade now. But this is different. This is about depriving Trump of what he craves most…cheap and easy wins. Allowing Trump to freely bask in the glory of the Patriots is like allowing Hitler to bask in the glory of Mozart. Oh? Did I just break Godwin's Law? Fine me a first round draft choice. 

My Adventures in the Skin Trade

Note peace sign on hard hat--
Larry's greatest conceit was that Hustler was transcendental
In this earlier blog post I pretty much covered the bizarre circumstances in which my master's degree in religion from the Hartford Seminary led to my working for Larry Flynt. That only told half the story, and I made a note to myself to one day fill in the details of what it was like once I went to work for the world's foremost pornographer. I've recently been engaged in some pretty heavy pre-spring cleaning and have come across a file of notes, memos, and memorabilia from those days which have motivated me to make partial good on that promise with this post. I'll just let the actual documents speak for themselves as well as what was without doubt the wackiest part of my CV.

Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Uncritical Thinkers

Me & Nico...just a couple of critical thinkers
Someone recently posed this question on the Internet: If you had the power, what course would you introduce into American public schools? It took me a nanosecond to answer: Critical Thinking.The picture above of Grandson Nico and me reading from a book entitled An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments is from a recent visit with Daughter Gillian’s family. The book is from their home library, and when I first laid eyes on it I was excited at the thought that there was a children’s book for detecting logical fallacies, a key skill in critical thinking. As I started reading it to Nico (his knowing expression notwithstanding), I realized that it wasn’t a children’s book at all. There may be children’s books for teaching logical fallacies per se, but this is not one of them. As the book states on page 1, “…it is aimed at newcomers to the field of logical reasoning, particularly those who…are so made that they understand best through visuals.” In other words, the book is for adults who prefer to learn as children do, through illustration. And though the illustrations in this book may appeal to children, the text is really for adults. That would eliminate it as source material if I ever got my wish to have critical thinking added to the core curricula of schools everywhere.Not a problem. Source material for teaching critical thinking to children abounds. There is hardly a children’s story ever written that does not lend itself to a lesson in critical thinking. That is, if there are adults willing to take the time to teach the lessons. Take Snow White for instance. A parent/teacher can use it to discuss diversity in the workplace, taking things from strangers, waiting for a prince to come...all by simply asking questions. What do the names of the seven dwarves tell us about them? If people in your family had names that told us about them, what would they be? Would you rather go to a school where everyone was a "Happy", or would you rather go to a school where there were "Docs" and "Dopeys"? Should Snow White have taken the apple from the stranger? Why do strangers sometimes offer to give things to children? What should you do when a stranger gives you something? Can a prince really bring someone back to life with a kiss? What is make-believe? Is make-believe a good thing or a bad thing?  A questioning mind is the key weapon in defending against logical fallacies…and children are walking, talking question boxes. A young boy is the only one in the kingdom to question The Emperor’s New Clothes. A young girl is the only one in the land of Oz to question the wizard’s wizardry. These popular fictional heroes memorably exercise their critical thinking facilities as most children do—naturally by asking questions. No training required. In early childhood, children are full of wonder at how the world works. But that wonder often manifests itself in constant questioning and challenges to authority that get badly labeled as something like “the terrible twos.” Parents specifically and adults in general see the questioning stage as stage for their child to grow out of or be trained out of. This overwhelming need to “domesticate” children and turn them into docile vessels for received “wisdom” (aka the values, prejudices, and learning residue of their parents’ past) then becomes the operating mission of our public school system.We give lip service to the time-honored Socratic system of teaching through questioning, but we undercut it in practice by turning education into a mad scramble for “achievement”, which is just a euphemism for test results that show mastery of pre-packaged answers.  We do this for the sake of efficiency and homogeny. Encouraging children to raise unexpected questions rather than regurgitate force-fed answers creates an unpredictable curriculum that conflicts with the primary goal of adult society--orderliness.  Therein lies the fundamental contradiction in American education: should we place a higher value on critical thinking or uncritical acceptance of the thinking of others? Do we want to produce citizens who challenge authority, disrupt presumption, and resist bamboozelment? Or do we want citizens who respect authority, conform to established norms, and reject criticism? All the evidence from our child-rearing practices and educational methods points to the latter choice. Yet, there is ubiquitous evidence that this is the wrong choice. This is the choice that leads to our abysmally low voter turnout….the choice that leads to passive acceptance of forever wars…the choice that leads to a consumer culture that is constantly vulnerable to scams and exploitation.It is unlikely that American public schools will ever embrace a core curriculum that emphasizes critical thinking…even though it would enliven rather than anesthetize students and even though society would benefit from it in the end. But parents can send their children off to school armed with the skills and attitude required to asking good questions and thus effect change from below. The first and most crucial step would be to use their reading time with their kids to stir their children's minds rather than dull them to sleep. I understand the allure for harried parents to use bedtime reading to put their children to sleep, but the long-term harm of this habit seems severe. It’s positively Pavlovian…putting children to sleep at the sound of the written word creates a life-long response to reading as a soporific. Conscientious and visionary parents should be doing all they can to reverse this process by using reading time to stir their children’s imaginations and encourage their natural instinct for questioning.If they still need something to help get their kids to sleep, they can try sitting them in front of CSPAN or a nice recording of Tibetan bowls.  

Poor Little Rich Girl

I was aroused by Jane Fonda when I was 14-years old and saw her in her first movie, Long Tall Story, romancing Tony Perkins (who in that same year starred in Psycho as well where he butchered Janet Leigh…no typecasting that Tony!). Over the long length of her career, my favorite Fonda roles remain her rather coquettish ones (Long Tall Story, Barefoot in the Park, Cat Ballou) rather than her overtly sexual roles (Barbarella, Klute).    I also confess to being quite taken with her role as an anti-Vietnam War activist in the 1960s. Her trip to North Vietnam and posturing behind some Uncle Ho anti-aircraft artillery struck me as a singular act of bravery and spoke directly to the anger I and many other young people of the time felt about that war.I’ve become much less of a fan of hers in recent decades, but she’s been much on my mind since I watched the recent HBO documentary: Jane Fonda in Five Acts. It’s a pretty remarkable portrait as I’ve never seen any person…famous or not…so willingly and nakedly exposed before. The first four of her "five acts" are titled for the men who dominated her life in oppressive succession: her father, Henry; first husband, Roger Vadim; second husband, Tom Hayden; third husband, Ted Turner. When she was passing through those stages in real time, the dysfunction at work may have been a bit too intense and drenched in celebrity to notice, at least for her audience. But in the retrospective view of this documentary, it all comes so totally into erratic focus. She goes from being the daughter of the mythical Henry Fonda, all-American Lincoln and Tom Joad of the silver screen and the wastrel father and husband to his actual family; to Vadim, the continental playboy and poseur; to Hayden, the quintessential middle-class American as man of the people political radical; to Turner, the blowhard Dixie billionaire of excessively ego-filled charm. When you watch it unfold before your eyes in one sitting on TV, you ask yourself: How did one seemingly bright woman give herself over so completely to such a Whitman's sampler of men? From serving as the quite obvious sex object on Vadim’s arm to the radically chic comrade-in-arms to Hayden to the empress of Turner’s vast holdings of Montana buffalo-grazing land. At the risk of being overly facile, when you get to the last stage…presented as her own stage…where we’re to accept that she’s finally found her “narrative” if not actually herself, you realize that all that went before was a quite desperate attempt to resolve some very severe “daddy issues.” What is so striking about this documentary is how very much is revealed…and quite honestly so…and yet the conclusion is almost inescapable: Jane Fonda was…and is, no matter how much the doc tries to finesse it…quite a hollow person. For all her good intentions, her motivations throughout ring capricious. Although many lifelong friends step forward throughout the documentary to give testimony to her sincerity and devotion, in the end it’s her own words that reveal there's no there there.      Not long ago I got into gentlemanly exchange on Facebook about “Hanoi Jane” with Vic Smith, an old classmate of mine and proud Vietnam vet. He expressed the typical and understandable veteran’s contempt for Fonda. I told him I had just seen this documentary where she acknowledges deep regret about how far she went in her Vietnam War protests. I also learned that Hayden and other American anti-war leaders were against her making the trip to North Vietnam. And I must admit to delayed feelings of guilt myself for supporting her. Watching it in retrospect is an uncomfortable experience…and it made me wonder how much of the anger I feel and give expression to during this current time of national crisis will come back to haunt me in years to come. I told Vic that the doc makes clear that just about everything Fonda did during the rest of her life…for better and worse…was a reaction to her painful relationship with her father. To which Vic replied with sage equanimity that we’re all just products of our childhoods. Amen to that.   

Where Would I Be Without My Woman?

The Bee Gees ask the musical question.
Well, since late July I’ve been finding out where I’d be without the woman I’ve spent the last 52 years with…and all because of this guy: Remy FroelicherDaughter Gillian sent out an SOS to Lorna early in the year asking if she’d be willing to fill the Nanny gap from the end of summer vacation until the New Year when there’d be more peace of mind about dropping newborn Remy off at a baby factory where there was no guarantee that any infants would be any more cared for than they are in the hands of the US border patrol. Months of caring and feeding a new grandchild? Catnip for grandmas.Maybe not so much for Gramps. I opted out, having very much embraced the pace and habits of my retirement. The plan that unfolded would have Lorna leaving for her new duties in Savannah in late July. Then she and I would reconnect for two weeks for a long planned 50thwedding anniversary celebration in Italy. Then she would return to Savannah, and I would join her for two weeks prior to Thanksgiving before returning home to finish off the last month of this experiment in bachelorhood. The question I got asked most often during this extended period of solitude was a slight variation on the Bee Gee’s question: Where would you be without your woman? Over time I found it to be a bit of a trick question. The expected answer always seemed implied in the overly solicitous way it was asked. I always felt that when I answered honestly that I was doing just fine that I was disappointing an inquirer who was anticipating a tale of heartbreak…or worse I was provoking suspicion in an inquirer who assumed that if I was doing fine while Lorna was away then certainly our marriage was, as they used to say, on the rocks. The truth is that Lorna and I have pretty much always lived fairly independent lives, and the bond between us is so strong that we rarely need those constant reassurances so common to relationships that if not exactly on the rocks are nonetheless rocky. A further truth is that thanks to technology absence ain’t what it used to be. Face Time, texting, social media…all those things we deplore for disintegrating human community are really quite good, when used judiciously, at binding relationships.My days flew by…helped most definitely by my new passion for bike riding, which actually turned into kind of a part time job. Getting to and from the bike path takes about 40 minutes, and my usual round trip ride itself takes about two hours. So before you know it a good chunk of every day was taken up with physical activity…add to that recovery time and feeding the resultant hunger and it may just as well be a shift as a greeter at Wal-Mart. Then after my usual reading, writing and duties in the Resistance my day is ready to surrender to Netflix, which is where Lorna and I often connected at the end of the day anyway. And binge-watcher that she is, she left me with a long list of shows to catch up on. So her spirit, as George Harrison once so beautifully put it, is here, there and everywhere…and I don’t just mean in episodes of Helen Wheels and Riverdale. Lorna’s mark is practically on every inch of this house (except perhaps the corner I’ve carved out as my own office). By her mark I don’t just mean particular design choices and color palettes. This house of ours is such a reflection of her tastes, her passions and her soul that it is impossible to inhabit it without feeling you are inhabiting her. So while I may not have been with her over these many months, I was--in a profoundly metaphorical sense--of her. Never was that more apparent than when I had an epiphany while looking at our carpets. The carpets have been a bane to Lorna’s otherwise blissful existence for at least a decade. Whenever she would, in that indirect way of hers, suggest that maybe it was time for new carpets, I would develop a hearing problem. When she decided to become more direct about it early in 2018, I became equally direct by declaring it too far down our priority list of household improvements to discuss. And then she left. And I was left home alone with the carpets…and they began to haunt me. Each day they seemed to grow increasingly cruddy, and it seemed that every time I entered our once lovely home all I could notice were the stains on the 30-year old carpet. I was beginning to see them through Lorna’s eyes. That’s what I mean by inhabiting me. When I reconnected with Lorna in Savannah, Gillian took me aside and reminded me that on Christmas Day Lorna would be turning 70 and there’s probably nothing in the world that would make her happier than new carpets. The month between Thanksgiving and right now…today…December 29, 2018, thus became one of the most insane periods of my life. One would think that given the amount of time Lorna had been pining for new carpets, she would’ve had a pretty good idea what they would look like. But the search and back and forth that ensued was as if I had just sprung the idea of new carpets on her. At last she made her decision, and we got a measurement of all 3300 square feet, followed with an estimate attached to an expiration date, which was before Lorna was due to return home from Savannah. She wanted to be here for the big job, which was a bad idea for many reasons not the least of which was the damage the subsequent dust would have on her health. Finally I prevailed upon her to leave it all to me…and I entered the be-careful-for-what-you-wish-for part of the story... 
The carpet installers would move the big, heavy furniture…but it was left to me to empty closets and China cabinets. As happens our closets were full of bookshelves (& BOOKS!), credenzas, filing cabinets (& FILES!!!), exercise equipment, holiday decorations, shoe racks (& SHOES!!)…and enough China to host a dinner party for half of Beijing. Not only did it all have to be moved, but it had to be off the floor, which meant hauling things out to the deck, the balcony, and performing Festivus-worthy feats of strength to lift them up to higher ground. Managing it all put me in mind of those monkeys who are tasked with pulling a banana into their cages using only two sticks.

Alas! It’s done, and the new carpet looks glorious, and Lorna is winging her way home.  And as the old year draws to a close I know exactly where I’d be without my woman. I’d be without Meagan and Gillian and their families; I would be without a precious array of in-laws and their children and their children’s children; and I would be without an ineffable, yet undeniable sense of love and connection, which gives me the strength to easily endure quantum solitude. 
  
Happy New Year, Everyone! 

Hairless in Westeros

Melisandre, aka, the Red Woman, the Red Priestess, the Red Witch...
in other words the saucy redhead
I tend to judge the status of my life by the amount of discretionary time I have as opposed to discretionary dollars. By that standard, these are flush times for me indeed. There’s no better indicator of that than the fact that I am currently re-watching all 7 prior seasons of Game of Thrones in earnest preparation for the arrival of the final season in April. So far, the most surprising result of this utter indulgence is watching GoT leap frog over some of my long-time personal favorite TV shows with each passing episode. I always found GoT highly entertaining…as generous helpings of sex, violence and intrigue tend to be. But on this second time around, I find myself considerably impressed with the creative layering of plot and theme that have gone into the show. On first viewing, the cascade of names and places was rather daunting, and I was sometimes left with the impression that the primary aim of the producers was mainly to shock and awe the audience. This is why, as much as I enjoyed it, I never thought to rank it with some of the more artful TV productions of the Peak TV Era. But now that I see more clearly how brilliantly and patiently the creators have drawn out character arcs, story thru-lines, motifs and themes, I’m quite ready to push it above The Sopranos and Breaking Bad in my personal top ten list…and place it nip and tuck with The Wire . (The Simpsons remains in a class of its own.)  My re-viewing of GoT has been so luxuriant that I’ve not only been able to pay deep attention to its artistic qualities, but to some of its more peripheral aspects as well, namely female body hair. If you haven’t heard, Game of Thrones is abundant in nudity…of both sexes…but it’s the female variety that inspires this post. After hundreds of hours of watching hundreds of these lovely, naked women parade, cavort, seduce, and suffer through my living room, I was suddenly struck by the total absence of leg and underarm hair and the notable inconsistency in the appearance of pubic hair. It was like that moment when you’re watching a romantic comedy and the two movie lovers wake up and start kissing and you think, "Eww! Bad morning breath!" You totally lose that suspension of disbelief that’s so necessary for vicarious enjoyment. Thus, one minute I’m totally mesmerized by Melisandre, the Red Priestess, and wondering what magic she'll be up to next, and then I’m pulled out of it by the sight of her beautiful, yet hairless armpits and wondering what gives?Game of Thrones takes place at an indefinite time period, so it’s not a simple matter of attributing Melisandre’s clean shaven pits to one of those anachronisms that commonly show up in popular entertainment. Plus she’s a sorceress who’s actually over 100 years old, so hairless armpits may just go with the territory. But this doesn’t explain the other clean shaven damsels of GoT (nor does it explain the whores and frontierswomen of Deadwood and Hell on Wheels, two gritty Western dramas I’ve also recently watched, who seem to have stepped out of the pages of Vogue...at least in regards to body hair). Leisure time scholar that I am, this conundrum sent me to The Google to learn what I could about the history of women’s body hair.I was shocked to learn that the habit of women shaving their body hair goes back at least as far as the Ancient Egyptians. I was even more shocked that until very recently in the grand sweep of historical time, women tended to this business by applying such rough-hewn methods as pumice stone, flint razors, and beeswax pastes in what was a time consuming and painful undertaking. That raises the Darwinian question as to why women, already yoked to the twin natural discomforts of menstruation and birth, would voluntarily submit themselves to this totally optional agony. The most obvious and politically correct answer is that men made them do it. And there seems to be a good deal of evidence to support that. But there’s also some suggestion that notions about hygiene, keeping cool in warmer climes, and establishing class structure were also factors. Shaved women were ranked higher up the social pecking order, mainly because what woman raising kids while working the homestead from dawn to dusk had time to take a pumice stone to her pubis? In this regard, however, Game of Thrones seems all over the map. In her famous naked march of shame through the streets of King’s Landing, Cersei, the Queen Regent of the Seven Kingdoms, shows off full bush. Yet, of the beaucoup bevies of prostitutes who inhabit the Seven Kingdoms, some are shaved, others not. So the producers don’t seems to be making any social statement, but rather simply giving in to the preferences of individual actresses. Which seems to be a good thing.In recent Western history the culture has made an overt attempt to impose the hairless look on women. The electric razor was marketed as the salvation of women’s proper feminine identity. Playboy introduced airbrushed nether regions as the ideal of pulchritude. Then came the Brazilian, a water boarding-like torture regime, sold to women as a necessary complement to mud baths and facials. That was all met by the inevitable and not at all unreasonable backlash from feminists who raised the question about 6000 years after it probably should have been raised: Why are we putting ourselves through this?In this time of controversy overload, it’s not too surprising that this one got by me. When Wonder Woman was released in 2017, there was an uproar over the clean shaven armpits of Gal Gadot. After all, the protestors argued, she was raised on an island totally inhabited by women and is supposed to be a feminist icon, what could possibly be her motivation for shaving under her armpits? That would be another case of getting pulled out of your suspension of disbelief, wouldn't it? When you start thinking about why she shaved her armpits, you stop thinking about how she’s going to defeat the Nazis with her magic lasso. Sophia Loren’s long and illustrious career did not come to an abrupt end before it even began when she flashed hair under her arms. Penelope Cruz remains one of the sexiest women alive with or without hairy armpits. Women achieve the truest level of freedom when they get to do what they want with their own body hair. Different strokes
Have a Very Hairy Christmas, everyone.