Tom Glenn's Blog, page 105

Coming to Terms Synopsis

At the request of the Palette and the Page, an art gallery, bookstore, and gift shop in Elkton, Maryland, I drafted a synopsis for my new book, Coming to Terms. It reads:

“Coming to Terms is a collection of ten short stories. As the ‘Foreword’ explains, the stories are of men and women confronted with pain as a consequence of love and hate, goodness and evil. Each finds a way to go on living, however imperfectly. None is left unscathed. All these tales come from the life of the author, as a husband, father, soldier, and caregiver to the dying. Each major character is drawn from people he’s known. His hope is that both he and the reader can learn from the choices these people made.”

I commend the Palette and the Page to my readers. It’s located at 120 E Main St, Elkton, MD 21921; (410) 398-3636. The shop features my books and those of other local authors. These days its sales are mostly mail order and curb pickup.

Further on Guns

According to the New York Times, “Gun deaths in Britain, while still rare, have risen over the last few years. One reason, British authorities say, is an influx of firearms being smuggled from the United States.

 


“At least 782 American guns have been discovered by British police since 2017, data obtained by The Times shows. Some of them can be traced to loosely regulated gun fairs in states like Florida.

“‘Weapons that don’t matter in the United States, because America deals in millions, routinely have an enormous impact in the U.K., because of the extraordinary scarcity of handguns,’ one expert said.”

As I noted in my blog post on “The U.S. and Firearms,” the number of gun deaths in a country is driven by the number of firearms in that country.

The U.S and Firearms

Every year, between 36,000 and 40,175 Americans are killed by guns (depending on which statistics one accepts), an average of at least one hundred a day. Thirty-seven percent of U.S households own one or more firearms. Among western democracies, we lead the world in gun ownership and deaths per capita.

I compared us to our northern neighbor, Canada, and our ally, the UK in rates of gun ownership and deaths. The estimated number of civilian firearms per 100 people for the UK is 8.3. The number for Canada is 34.7. For the U.S., it’s 120.5—in the U.S., we have more guns than people. Guns deaths per 100,000 people in the UK is .23. In Canada, it’s 2.00. The U.S.? 12.21.

The consistent ratio between gun ownership and gun deaths holds throughout the world—the more guns, the more people who die by guns. To reduce the number of gun deaths in our country, we must reduce the number of guns.

Defenders of the U.S. gun culture argue that the Second Amendment to the Constitution enshrines the right of Americans to own firearms. That amendment reads: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” My reading of that text is that the right to keep and bear arms is contingent on the needs for a militia. I don’t believe the original drafters intended to grant gun ownership to any and all with no limits.

Gun culture supporters argue that firearms have always been part of American daily life, ever since we required them on our own frontier in pioneer days. My answer is that it’s time we change our culture. Better that than losing 40,000 lives every year to gunfire.

Newest Book Out

My sixth and most recent book, a collection of short stories called Coming to Terms, is published and available for purchase. The Amazon announcement is at https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Terms-Stories-Tom-Glenn/dp/1952570948/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Coming+to+Terms+by+Tom+Glenn&qid=1597275758&s=books&sr=1-1

If you buy it and read it, please let me know your reaction.

The U.S. Incarceration Rate

I am increasingly concerned about the U.S incarceration rate. I just gathered the following statistics: our country has 2.3 million people in jail. That’s 698 per 100,000. Compare that to the ratio per 100,000 of the UK and Canada:, 139 and 114 respectively.  Less than 5 percent of the world’s population is in the United States, but 20 percent of the world’s incarcerated people are here. Put differently, one out of every five prisoners in the world is in the U.S. Close to six million children in America have experienced losing a parent to incarceration. And many in jail have never been convicted of anything. To regain their freedom, they are required to pay a fee or fine, and they have no money. One of the reasons they have no money is that they have lost their jobs because they are in jail.

Why does this situation prevail in the land of the free? One reason is the U.S. devotion to “law and order,” as currently being pursued by President Trump. And yet incarceration rates have no demonstrated effect on violent crime and in some instances may increase crime. As one study concluded, “between 75 and 100 percent of the drop in crime rates since the 1990s is explained by other factors, including the aging population, increased wages, increased employment, increased graduation rates, increased consumer confidence, increased law enforcement personnel, and changes in policing strategies.”

In other words, the most important factor in crime reduction is increased prosperity. I conclude that the biggest impetus for crime is poverty.

The available evidence suggests to me that our motivation in sending so many people to prison is not to discourage crime put to wreak vengeance. When will we learn that our thirst for punishing wrongdoers is making things worse?

Wearing Masks

It feels shameful to me that wearing a protective mask during the pandemic has been politicized. The mask protects me from infection but primarily protects others from being inflected by me. Conservative Republicans and Trump supporters have labelled the wearing of a mask as a statement of opposition to Trump. They believe that being required to wear a mask to protect others from sickness and death is a violation of their constitutional rights.

What kind of craziness is this? Since when is it a constitutional right to endanger the health of others? Where in our constitution, laws, traditions, or rights is there a rule that puts free expression above public health?

The politicization of mask wearing during a pandemic is a new low for the U.S. Trump and the Republicans have led us here. It looks as though it will be up to Biden and the Democrats to restore both health and sanity to the U.S.

The Bleak Future

“America has failed to protect its people, leaving them with illness and financial ruin. It has lost its status as a global leader. It has careened between inaction and ineptitude. The breadth and magnitude of its errors are difficult, in the moment, to truly fathom.” Thus begins Ed Yong’s article titled “Anatomy of an American Failure” in the September 2020 edition of Atlantic magazine. As the threat of the pandemic continues unabated, financial collapse sets in across the nation, and the outcry against institutionalized racism grows, President Trump won’t say if he will give up the White House if he is defeated in November.

Months ago, I looked forward to the end of the pandemic lockdown by the end of the year. I reckoned that Trump would lose the election and a new administration would begin repairing the damage Trump and his Republicans supporters had inflicted on the nation. I foresaw movement on issues that I care the most about, climate change and gun control.

Now it clear to me that the U.S. has not managed to combat the coronavirus or take any meaningful steps toward correcting the financial collapse. The pandemic lockdown will not end until we have a vaccine to protect people from the virus. The recession will get worse and take literally years to overcome.

The future, as far as I can see it, is indeed bleak. We Americans have only ourselves to blame. And it will be up to us to work together to bring our country and the world back from disaster. I trust the American can-do spirit. I know we can do it. But I’m not sure I’ll live long enough to see it happen.

Fascism and Antifascism

These days I’m hearing a lot about Trump’s progress toward fascism. I hear Trump and his supporters denouncing “antifa,” apparently an organized group of violent Trump opponents. So I did some research.

Merriam-Webster online defines fascism as “a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.” That does sound an awful lot like the direction the Trump administration is going.

Merriam-Webster online defines “antifa” as “a person or group actively opposing fascism.” Wikipedia says that “Antifa (/ænˈtiːfə, ˈæntiˌfɑː/) is an anti-fascist political movement in the United States comprising a diverse array of autonomous groups that aim to achieve their objectives through the use of both non-violent and violent direct action rather than through policy reform. Antifa political activists engage in protest tactics such as digital activism and militancy against fascists and racists such as neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other far-right extremists whom they seek to combat. This may sometimes involve property damage, physical violence and harassment against those whom they identify as belonging to the far-right.”

There is certainly no question that I am strongly opposed to Trump’s slide toward fascism, but I am equally opposed to political violence. Trump on numerous occasions has encouraged his followers to use violence again the opposition. Biden, in contrast, has consistently decried violence.

So what does that make me? A pro-Biden anti-Trump nonviolent antifa practitioner who doesn’t belong to any organized group.

As it becomes clearer that Trump will lose the election in November, maybe by historical proportions, Trump shocked me by refusing to commit to abiding by the election’s outcome and leave the White House if he is defeated. That’s fascism writ large. It amounts to a coup d’etat. I am equally shocked that the Republicans have maintained their silence—and therefore their complicity—in the face of Trump’s stance.

These are the seeds of civil war.

Christmas in Hong Kong and Snow and Ashes

On to the last two stories in Coming to Terms:

The principal character in “Christmas in Hong Kong” is again an older man and a father—and a grandfather—named Ferdie. Others in his life, especially his wife, discount him as living past his time and being essentially of no use to anybody. When a neighbor’s dog attacks his grandson, Mikey, he drives the dog off and demands that the dog be destroyed.

Ferdie’s child is his daughter, Mattie, Mikey’s mother. She is devoted to Ferdie and distressed to see him dismissed by his wife (not her mother) and others. In passing, she mentions how funky it would be to go to Hong Kong at Christmas. He takes her up on it.

“Snow and Ashes,” the last story in Coming to Terms, is set in a house I rented a room in during my poverty years following the breakup of my first marriage. The same house appears again in my novel Secretocracy. I’ve already described the house in this blog (see the post titled “The Secretocracy House”).

The story is about a man dying of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. He inherited the house and wants to assure that after his death it will continue to be used as a home for mentally and physically disabled men. He rents a room to a professional man down on his luck in hopes that he will be the man to take over the running of the house.

Writing about the stories in Coming to Terms has brought home to me the important issues in my life. So much of my writing deals with fatherhood. Music appears repeatedly. Nearly all my protagonists are men.

One oddity is that homosexuality is so prominent in my stories. The reason is that I spent five years volunteering to care for men dying of AIDS. I started out with the usual biases about gay men and learned that sexual preference does not shape character or personality. I was so moved by the experience that I wrote a novel about a straight man caring for a gay man dying of AIDS, No-Accounts.

I’m reminded of a saying from an author (now I’ve forgotten who). It very much applies to me: “To know me, know my books.”

Wolf Rock

I am struck again by how much of my writing deals with fathers and sons. Three of my novels, The Trion Syndrome, Last of the Annamese, and Secretocracy, tell of the relationship between a man and his son. So many of my short stories are about filial ties. Readers might well ask: why the preoccupation?

I’m not very good at self-psychoanalysis, but one fact about my life stands out: I had a terrible father. Through most of my childhood, he was in prison. When I was in college, he forged checks against my bank account. He later died in a bar brawl. Because my mother was an alcoholic, I became self-reliant at age six. The ability to depend on myself has seen me through many trials in my life.

I have a son, now long since a grown man with a son of his own. My love for him knows no bounds. I promised myself as a young man that if I ever had children, I’d learn by my father’s example and nurture them with love and attention. My four children are all now thriving adults. I believe I served them well.

“Wolf Rock” is the story of a camping trip for a father, Charlie, and his two adult sons, Steve, the strong one, and Boyd, the beautiful one. Steve needs no help or guidance. Boyd insists on being an artist at the cost of his marriage and his credit rating. He asks his father once again to bail him out.

An aspect of the story is Charlie’s sensitivity to music. Blessed with perfect pitch, sounds come to him in musical form. Charlie’s musicality is based on my own. I lack perfect pitch, but like Charlie, I hear music in the sounds around me. I tried to become a musician, even took a BA in music, but finally gave in to my vocation, writing.

So Charlie is, in many respects, me in disguise.