Paul E. Fallon's Blog, page 11

Human Evolution Begets Labor Day Travel

Humans are wanderers by nature. Our innate drive to explore—and conquer—has driven us to invade every corner of our earth, adapt to inhospitable environments, and now that we’ve run out of earth-bound frontiers, dive deep into the sea and reach out to the stars. The success of the human species, often referred to as ‘progress,’ is rooted in our curiosity. We’re always wanting to get away from where we are, and experience someplace new.

The dispiriting reality of the 21st century is that, so much of what used to be considered ‘good’ for us is now considered ‘bad.’ We realize that the highly-mobile, creature comfort driven culture we have created in the pursuit of so-called ‘progress’ will likely spell our doom. Maybe even soon.

But what’s a 21st century American, evolutionarily imprinted to explore, supposed to do on a glorious end-of-summer holiday weekend? We travel!

More than half of all Americans travelled over this past Labor Day Weekend. More than a third took car trips, fourteen percent of us travelled by plane; a measly three percent took public transportation. Most of us took day trips to visit the beach, relatives, or friends, but the number of longer trips increased beyond pre-pandemic years, evidenced by the bump-up in hotel reservations. Legions of TSA officers processed over 14 million people for this, our last summer fling. By the weary end of the weekend, our various travel modes had burned over 500,000,000 gallons of gasoline in our pursuit of leisure.

By and large our travel was successful. Hurricane Idalia petered out beyond urban areas. The National Safety Council figures on traffic fatalities over the weekend fell below 500. A degree of collateral damage we’ve long calculated into our comfort range. I couldn’t find any figures on how public transit fared during the holiday—who would bother to track that?

I don’t often think about travel statistics. As an unconventional traveler, the stats rarely apply to me. And they’re most often reported as estimates in advance rather than facts after the fact: on Tuesday after Labor Day the news cycle stokes new anxieties.

But this Labor Day I couldn’t help but think about the millions of Americans belted into their cars and planes, while my boyfriend Dave and I took a simple hike.

Holden is 44 miles from Cambridge, so I might have been counted as a travelling American. But everyone knows bicycles are just for fun and any who actually uses one to go from A to B is just loony. He doesn’t count.

On a clear and breezy day we set off from Dave’s house, on foot, and made a seven-mile trek. The first and last mile were through conventional, indistinguishable suburban landscape. But for five miles we trekked through the Wachusett Watershed on a variety of easy rail trails; forested winding paths, a few glorious meadows, past a lovely lake, and into a rocky ravine neither of us had ever seen before. I christened it Quinapoxet Canyon, after the tributary eating away at eons of granite.

The natural beauty that lies within a mile of my friend’s house is remarkable. But perhaps even more remarkable, on Labor Day Weekend, is that we saw a total of four other people on our entire journey. Just four. While newscasts highlighted the crowds at Cape Cod beaches and New Hampshire lakeshores; while people waited in line to be checked through TSA or sat in steaming traffic on the Southeast Expressway as that invigorating salt water tingle evaporated under the pressures of returning home, we two hiked alone through gorgeous nature. Then we walked home.

Modern technologies make our innate desire to explore easy, though I doubt any of the 14 million holiday flyers discovered any place that is not already well mapped. Ironically, those same technologies contribute to our increasingly hot, hot planet. So it’s likely that sometime soon: within the lives of our children or their children or at best, their children; our ability to travel so easily, so extensively, will burn itself out.

The drive to explore is an intrinsic human quality. I believe it is mostly a good one. But like so many aspects of contemporary life, it’s time for us to reevaluate how we satisfy that fundamental need. We have to realize that there’s no reason to always to drive and fly so far away, when there is so much we have not explored close at hand.

TURTLES

As the world revs up to back-to-work and back-to-school, I want to share this delightful—and sage—piece written by E.B White (author of Charlotte’s Web and other books). It was first published in The New Yorker on January 31, 1953.

We strolled up to Hunter College the other evening for a meeting of the New York Zoological Society. Saw movies of grizzly cubs, learned the four methods of locomotion of snakes, and were told that the Society has established a turtle blood bank. Medical men, it seems, are interested in turtle blood because turtles don’t suffer arteriosclerosis in old age. The doctors are wondering whether there is some special property of turtle blood that prevents the arteries from hardening. It could be, of course. But there is the other possibility that a turtle’s blood vessels stay in nice shape because of the way turtles conduct their lives. Turtles rarely pass up a chance to relax in the sun on a partly submerged log. No two turtles ever lunched together with the idea of promoting anything. No turtle ever went around complaining that there is no profit in book publishing except from subsidiary rights. Turtles do not work day and night to perfect explosive devices that wipe out Pacific islands and eventually render turtles sterile. Turtles never use the word “implementation” or the phrases “hard core” and “In the last analysis.” No turtle ever rang another turtle back on the phone. In the last analysis, a turtle, though lacking know-how, knows how to live. A turtle, by its admirable habits, gets to the hard core of life. That may be why its arteries are so soft.

Adventures in Gender-Free Bathrooms

It’s August! Let’s be silly!

After blogging for over a decade, I am humbled to admit that the most popular post I ever wrote was about squat toilets: Personal Hygeine Tips from the Developing World. Published in 2014—so long ago the accompanying photos no longer link.

Proof positive that potty humor is always in vogue.

A few weeks ago I enjoyed a completely opposite, yet notable experience with bathrooms. Forget the questionable sanitation of squatting over a hole along with others in Cambodia. The natives of Boston are equally amusing, cordoning themselves off in the brave new world of gender-free bathrooms.

Gender-free bathrooms are not new. I encountered them in virtually every restaurant in the Pacific Northwest back in 2015. Like most trends, the idea flew back East. Likely, it is seeping this very moment into Middle America, where new ideas grow old and comfy.

It’s all well and good to label a pair of restaurant bathrooms as gender-free, with a vanity and toilet in each room, and a privacy lock on the door. It’s quite another matter to turn large, multi-fixture bathrooms into gender free-for-alls.

I attend lots of live theater, establishments that have large bathrooms that are used by hordes of people all at once. Intermissions. A few years ago, the restrooms at the Calderwood became gender-free. No renovations, just a name change. Women who dared would go into the former men’s room, where the line is always shorter (unless the play is about male homosexuals). I, however, being a man of bashful bladder, started going into the former women’s room. All stalls!

Well!!! You should have the seen the looks, the snickers, the comments. As far as females were concerned the point was for them to be able to use our bathroom – most definitely not the other way around. “It works both ways!” I smiled as the women distracted themselves with unnecessary primping.

A.R.T. in Harvard Square switched over next. No biggy. Cantabrigians are so intrinsically cool that everyone just filed into whatever restroom they pleased without a thought.

This year, The Huntington underwent a tremendous renovation, which included completely renovated, completely gender-free bathrooms. The Huntington’s audience is, shall we say, a tad older, a tad more staid than A.R.T.’s. The Lehman Trilogy is a looooong play. Two intermissions. No geriatric patron, no matter how Brahmin, could avoid having to use the bathroom.

Enter the lower-level lobby and encounter a snaking line of men and women, all looking disturbed and wondering, “Am I in the right place?” Some figure it out and resign to new-fangled ways in silence. Others are less astute. “Where is the line for the women’s room? What do mean, there isn’t a women’s room?” The men are doubly discomforted because first: they never had to wait in line before (The Lehman Trilogy is about many things, but not male homosexuals); and second: they’re missing their accustomed respite from their wife, now standing awkwardly, making small talk, at their side.

Thankfully, the line moves fast. The renovation architects did a good job estimating restroom demand. When we enter the formerly separate restrooms, now combined into one Olympic-worthy stretch of floor-to-ceiling laminate stalls, occupancy lights flash red or green over each door. Each person hesitates, eyes a fresh green light, and makes the dash to their private space. Where they are greeted with a smiley-face sign admonishing you to put the seat down.

It’s all very functional and au courant, but not in the least elegant. I don’t get the sense that anyone likes the new arrangement. Which is irrelevant, since the point of gender free bathrooms is to give everyone, regardless of gender-state, the same experience.

Then I recall another hidden benefit of putting everyone’s bodily functions in the same space. Years ago, after a too-long though important meeting about a new project at Yale-New Haven Hospital, some outstanding issues filtered into the post-meeting chatter among the execs in the men’s room. The few females who had attended the actual meeting missed the finale. We can now all rest assured that won’t happen anymore.

No Way to Level the Playing Field

One for the first things an aspiring civil engineer learns how to do when seeking a flat surface upon which to construct a road or a building, is to balance cut and fill. Analyze the topography in three dimensions and determine where to cut down the hills and fill in the valleys. Anyone who’s walked a rail trail in New England will observe how cut and fill works in real time. In the 1800’s we dug away at our craggy hills and filled our steep slides in order to create gentle inclines so railroads could run smoothly at a negligible grade. In the physical world, cut and fill is the great leveler.

In the social world, leveling the playing field is not nearly so precise, nor do the results provide the kind of progress that nineteenth century railroads proclaimed. When we cut back the advantages afforded those at the privileged end of society, the resulting excess does not necessarily raise those at our lower rungs.

Mike Groll/AP

The Cambridge Public Schools have eliminated advanced math classes for middle school students. No algebra for eight graders. Superintendent Victoria Greers states, “We have a huge focus on addressing both the academic gaps and the opportunity gaps in our community.” That may be a noble sentiment, but it is playing out in ways that are disadvantaging all.

Students in advanced math classes tend to be affluent compared to the student body as a whole. Eighth grade algebra is not so important in itself, but students who complete it, can then track to advanced math classes in high school: classes that help boost SAT scores, enable AP exams, and embellish applications to top tier colleges. Therefore, parents with a long-view of their children’s opportunities are choosing to either provide additional math instruction outside of school, or pull their children out of the Cambridge Public Schools completely. After all, they tend to be affluent, so many can afford private school.

With the top-level math students creamed away, the students who remain are robbed of the opportunity to study with—and be challenged by—prime peers.

If the issue was simply, does Cambridge teach basic math to all or advanced math to some, the answer would be obvious: everyone deserves to be taught basic math. But that’s not the question in the City of Cambridge, where the average annual expenditure per pupil is over $35,000 (the highest in Massachusetts, by at least 20%). Cambridge has plenty of money to teach every student at their highest level. The public schools choose not to do that, under a mistaken notion of equality.

I had two children who graduated from the Cambridge Public Schools, about fifteen years ago. Way back, in elementary school, their classes were pretty much 50-50 mixed by race and socio-economic status. Their third-grade teacher had a big sign in front of the room that said, “Equity is not giving each child the same thing. It is giving each child what they need.”

My children went on to middle school, where they studied algebra. By the time they entered high school, the racial mix of the school was 80/20 non-white to white, yet by the time they were juniors and seniors, their advanced classes were 80/20 the other direction. This was not a desirable reality in a school system that strives to provide everyone the opportunity to excel, and fifteen years later, those proportions have hardly budged.

The beauty of the Cambridge Public Schools two decades ago was that every student could get a good education to prepare themselves for whatever future awaited, whether that be auto repair or Ivy League.

It’s terrible that, despite good intention and extravagant resources, we have still have such academic gaps in our community. But it is horrific that the way of dealing with that gap is by eliminating opportunities for academic achievement.

Everybody Loves…

A few weeks ago I watched Six by Sondheim an HBO (kind of) documentary, and (totally) kitsch love poem to the late, great Stephen Sondheim. The accolades to Mr. Sondheim’s talent were eclipsed only by the accolades—from everyone—for Stephen Sondheim the man. This is no case of revising a legend after death. Stephen Sondheim has long been considered the Mensch as well as the Master of Broadway.

I am hesitant to recommend the film to the general public, but to a theater geek like me, it was a sumptuous dive into the creative process; a master class in communicating the human condition through song.

The film also got me thinking about those people whom everyone loves. It’s awesome that everyone who knew Stephen Sondheim, loved Stephen Sondheim, but I must admit, the man is a bit of a niche celebrity. Broadway’s impact on America just ain’t what it used to be.

So, I started asking around: name someone who is both universally known and universally loved.

My exploration soon split into multiple threads.

First, there are the individuals that everyone likes, despite the big organizations they represent. We have the world’s best, friendliest, most conscientious mailman. Everyone in our neighborhood loves him. And I’ve heard many others love their mail carrier too. Which is not to say that any of us are big fans of the US Postal Service.

Second, there are the fabulous folks—the social glue—that bind families and friends. My boyfriend Dave is one of these. I can honestly say that everyone loves Dave. He’s easy going, funny, big-hearted, generous in an everyday way. You might think it’d bother me that he is universally liked (while I am most definitely not). But that’s part of Dave’s charm: no one is the least diminished by his glow.

Still, neither mailman nor boyfriend achieve the scale of affection required for my inquiry. A universally loved person needs both 100% favorability ratings and worldwide recognition. They have to be a celebrity!

Celebrities pretty much come in three flavors: politician, athlete, or entertainer. Given our ideological divide, no politician is universally loved. So that leaves athletes and entertainers.

Tom Brady? Too stand-offish. LeBron James? Too edgy. Tiger Woods? There was that cheating scandal. Michael Jordan comes close. Squawky clean, affable. (How come I don’t know any female athletes? That’s a whole ‘nother problem.)

The range for entertainers is wide. Movie stars, TV personalities, comedians, rock’n’rollers. Not to mention, ‘influencers,’ which I won’t since I don’t know any and therefore dismiss them categorically. Comedians are excluded because these days, if you’re not insulting somebody you’re not funny. Same for rock’n’rollers. Except maybe the Boss. Pretty much everyone likes George Clooney, right? Brad Pitt: the Angelina thing hovers. Tom Hanks, for sure. Denzel Washington: except for that brutal Training Day. On the female side, Meryl Streep is a tad elitist. Oprah’s sincerity is corporate bleached. Jane Fonda’s politics don’t fly, though Lily Tomlin gets a pass for hers. You can’t not like Viola Davis because, let’s face it, she’s soooo good. Barbara Streisand is too much of a diva. Ditto Cher, Adele, Bjork, and anyone with only one name. Except for Selena. Ya gotta love Selena. I am personally and forever in the thrall of Michelle Pfeiffer…but there I go getting niche again.

The entertainment category is definitely the ripest for finding someone whom everybody loves. Yet even there: is there any single person who transcends the divisiveness of our world?

Aha! I found her! The ultimate movie star, musician, goodwill ambassador, and commonsense hero that everyone—and I do believe everyone—loves. Dolly Parton!

How Oklahoma House Bill 1775 Could (Hopefully) Backfire

Victor Luckerson’s new book, Built from the Fire, a history of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and its reverberations through the last hundred years is unlikely to enjoy wide readership in any Oklahoma Public School.

Why? Because Governor Kevin Stitt recently signed Oklahoma House Bill 1775 into law. The general provisions of the law are as follows:

“No teacher, administrator or other school employee shall require or make part of any Course offered in a public school the following discriminatory principles:

(1) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex

(2) An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously

(3) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex

(4) Members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex

(5) An individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex

(6) An individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex

(7) Any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex

(8) Meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist or were created by members of a particular race to oppress members of another race”

Oklahoma Policy Institute

Taken at face value, the eight points describe desirable attributes of a colorblind world. However, the thin veil that cloaks this and other recent state laws is a misguided reaction to Critical Race Theory and folks of all colors clamoring to reexamine our nation’s history through a kaleidoscope of lenses. The point of the law is not so much to be colorblind as to keep the blinders on the dominant narrative of our nation’s history.

I learned about Mr. Luckerson’s book and Oklahoma House Bill 1775 on the same day that Supreme Court overturned affirmative action in higher education based on race. After sixty years, affirmative action was not rescinded because it’s promise had been attained. Rather, it was overturned because a group that will likely achieve more plum spots in elite colleges proclaimed that they had become the object of discrimination. It was an ingenious argument, so representative of these times when the privileged, comfortable, and complacent imagine themselves under siege.

I can imagine similarly upside-down arguments to overturn Oklahoma House Bill 1775. Will we be able to teach the original text of our Constitution if a person descended from slaves asserts that the 3/5 clause makes them feel that “one race is inherently superior to another?” Will we be able to teach the post WWII G.I Bill, in which veterans were uniformly discriminated against because of their race? And if a person is not supposed to feel, “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex,” does that mean that the Oklahoma Public Schools must embrace trans students?

The rarely acknowledged purpose of public education is not simply to impart necessary life skills, create productive workers, or nurture engaged citizens. It is to spread and reinforce the cultural norms of a society. That’s why pubic education was so valued a century ago, when a surge of immigrants prompted the powers-that-be to indoctrinate them, while the newcomers themselves wished to adopt American norms. That’s why public education is so embattled now, when our cultural norms are threadbare and we’re in the midst of a national argument over the facts of our own history.

The truth of our history is not fully described by the 1619 Project or the 1776 Project. Our history includes the 1619 Project and the 1776 Project, plus many other voices and perspectives. We don’t learn anything by legislating away discomfort. We learn by being made uncomfortable. By being challenged. By having to listen to others’ points of view, and acknowledge those that are valid.

America is a noble idea, often poorly executed. Particularly when it comes to race. Why are we unable to accept that dichotomy? We can celebrate our experiment in democracy while admitting all the ways we’ve fallen short. So long as we commit to continue to try to right the inequalities and injustices.

Reading Built from the Fire in an Oklahoma public school might well be a good place to start.

While the World Searched for the Titan Submersible..

For over three days in June, the world was mesmerized by the loss and implosion of the Titan Submersible launched by the private company OceanGate Expeditions, to explore the remains of the sunken cruise ship, Titanic. Five people died in this private adventure gone wrong. Canada, France, the United States, and private sources spent millions in a search and rescue mission. The US Coast Guard alone spend over a million dollars, which it cannot recoup because the federal agency is not allowed to charge for its rescue operations.

During this expensive, futile search and rescue for a billionaire and his well-heeled pals, a few other people died as well, though the world paid them little attention. While the 75-hour search operation was going on:

One million people died on this earth

10,000 of those souls died from vehicle accidents

5,000 others died from cancer

2,300 women died in childbirth

Meanwhile, in the USA alone…

2,300 Americans died from obesity-related conditions

330 died from gunshots

150 died from AIDS

132 died from opioid overdoes

18 died from alcoholism

Five wealthy adventurers—not explorers, not scientists, just folks on the journey because they were rich—consumed about a million times more social media and air time than the other million who died.

A pretty fair representation of the values of the world we live in.

Ten Million Cured…forever?

Fifty years ago, in 1973, the American Psychiatry Association (APA) made a diagnostic change at their annual conference, declaring that homosexuality is not a psychiatric disorder. Instantly, ten million Americans were cured of the disease our society had inflicted upon them. I was eighteen at the time, unaware of the change, or the impact the decision would have on my own life.

I am not a loud proponent of Gay Pride: never liked parades before I came out; don’t like them any more now. But when I hear how Gay Pride festivities have dampened this year, in response to restrictive laws about drag performance and other curbs to queer enthusiasm, I worry. If we could instantly cure ten million people in a more welcoming time past, might we instantly label them diseased again in our dark and fearful present?

When I consider “what might have been” versus “what is” in my own life, I like to acknowledge that people and institutions can change for the better, and (to paraphrase Martin Luther King Junior) that the arc of societal prejudice is long, but it bends toward acceptance.

The history of homosexuals in general, and me in particular, over recent decades is a series of self-fulfilled prophecies.

Prophecy #1: My forebears were criminals.

When I was born, in the hyper-normative 1950’s, homosexuality was both a criminal and psychiatric offense. We were drummed out of government because we were, ostensibly more easily blackmailed than ‘normal’ people. It is true that people who harbor secrets are more easily blackmailed than open books. However, the institutions forcing secrecy were the same ones that then pointed to us as security risks.

Prophecy #2: What has no name does not exist.

Homosexuality did not exist in my blue-collar Catholic youth. It was a sin beyond the pale of my Irish ancestry, never given so much as a name, unless you count the repeated times I was advised to become a priest.

Prophecy #3: We can fix this.

I was fourteen years old and a mere fifty miles away when the Stonewall Riot became the Boston Tea Party of the Gay Liberation Movement. Yet I had never heard of it, even when I hit my own literal stone wall, in 1974, freaked out at college, and went to my first shrink. The APA had “unlisted” homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder, but as any civil rights worker can tell you, just because the law has changed, doesn’t mean the culture has shifted accordingly. I was under the care of one kindly shrink after another, all of whom parroted the same line. “When you suffer depression, it manifests itself as inappropriate feelings about men.” I heard that logic so often I never considered its proper inverse: “When you can’t express your feelings about men, you get depressed.”

Prophecy #4: You must deal with it.

I don’t complain about the twenty years that followed my inverted therapy. I loved my career, my wife, my terrific children. But something was definitely wrong. Until some fresh therapist (I’ve lost count of how many over the years) used words I’d never heard. “You are a homosexual, that is integral in you. You are never going to get centered until you accept it and act on it.” Psychiatric whiplash.

I am not bold or independent by nature. I was lucky to come out in a time and a place that was receptive, even welcoming. Still, the truths that family, church and community drilled into us as youth do not unravel overnight. Thirty years after coming out, I still sometimes have to brace myself against a lingering residue of shame.

Today, I worry how that residue clings to others. How the hate of the Florida State Legislature and the Tennessee fear of drag queens might make other queer people stick to the shadows. How these repressive laws and attitudes will make those they target become invisible, which will only make more repressive laws easier to pass, and which could, one day, make the APA and other groups reassessed their views yet again.

I want to belief that the arc of societal prejudice bends toward acceptance. But I would be naïve to deny that it can arc back as well.

If ten million can be cured by an edict at a convention, damning those same ten million is possible again. Please, sane people, don’t let that happen. Let each individual live our own truth.

Brokeback Albany

In celebration of Pride month, I offer this glimpse of Gay America a mere eight years ago, in an essay I wrote in 2015. Next week, I will offer a view from today.

I drove out to Albany to see my friend Bertrand Fay perform his monologue of Annie Proulx’s short story, “Brokeback Mountain” at the Emeritus Center of the University at Albany. A dozen and half people in a narrow room witnessed a performance that would illuminate any Broadway theater.  Bert’s interpretation of Ms. Proulx’s prose was well worth the three-hour drive each way.

Returning along the Pike, cresting the Berkshires at night, I recalled the first time I read “Brokeback Mountain,” well before the movie made those inhospitable slopes a household name. I absorbed Ennis and Jack in one sitting, just before bed. Then didn’t sleep that night. The entire next day the two lousy sheep hands filled my mind. I reread the story, amazed how Annie Proulx managed to create these two guys, contemporary to me in age, utterly different in every other respect, except how Ennis and I were both uncomfortable in our skin.

The movie came and went with deserved splash. A copy of the story sat on my bed table for years. I read it whenever I needed to calibrate my emotional compass. Each reading revealed new insight. Over time, the satisfaction those boys shared superseded the tragedy that befell them. In another time, in another world, Ennis and Jack could have had more. But what they had was better than nothing.

We are moving toward that other time, that other world. It’s possible for some, though not yet all, to lead fulfilling lives without having to conform to the norms drilled into us in the 1950’s. My sexuality presents no real obstacles, save those remnants of fear still etched my head. Yet my residual homophobia lingers. I’m embarrassed to report that I still double take men holding hands. When I scrutinize wedding announcements in the Times. I ache to fathom what those guys possess that I lack. In theory, I could hold a man’s hand. I could marry. My conscious mind approves it all. But the indoctrination that because I am different I am unworthy lingers. The shame I absorbed so deep when I was so young never cleanses free.

Bertrand Faye is a remarkable raconteur, mining Annie Proulx’s fable with such finesse that he unearthed my own psyche in the process. His performance notes, included below, describe this short story’s contribution to our evolving attitudes and legal standing of homosexuals. But what resonated for me was how Bert brought Ennis and Jack to life in a new way. Specific characters from afar who came to life in Albany to help me, and so many others, grapple with our murky pasts.

On Brokeback Mountain

Bertrand Fay, 2015

Harold Bloom, America’s preeminent literary critic, describes imaginative literature, or literary fiction, as that writing which possesses the qualities of aesthetic splendor, cognitive power, and wisdom, a literature that, among other things, contributes significantly to the contemporary public discourse, prompting it, enlightening it, moving it to new depths of social understanding, the human way of being in the world, and to social practice. This is our experience, certainly, at the hands of such authors as Beecher Stowe; Whitman; Steinbeck; the Latin American writers, Borges and Marquez; and surely Toni Morrison, the 1993 Nobel laureate in literature, who was honored at the awards ceremony in Oslo with these words: “…she regards the African presence in her country as a vital but unarticulated prerequisite for the fulfillment of the American dream.”

In the United States, over the last decades of the 20th century and the years thus far of the 21st century, there have been extraordinary changes in our public attitudes towards homosexuality, its fact, its nature, its humanness. There have been changes in policy regarding the military service of homosexual persons; states have enacted same-sex marriage laws; and the U.S. Supreme Court rendered two landmark decisions regarding same-sex unions in June, 2013, a further Court decision pending this year. Many of us, relatives and friends, have welcomed such changes for those whom we hold dear. Others of us have been able to ritualize long-lived loves, their dignity and worth recognized at last in ceremonies the same as those that legitimized the unions of our parents.

As one considers the evolution that has thus taken place in our country, one surely cites Annie Proulx’s short story, “Brokeback Mountain,” as a contributor to our national discourse on the subject of same-sex relationships. “As a writer of fiction my interest has focused on social change,” states Ms. Proulx in her essay, “Getting Movied,” included in the publication Brokeback Mountain, Story to Screenplay (Scribner4, New York, 2005). The author writes that her narrative developed from a consideration of what it might be like for a gay man to grow up in homophobic rural Wyoming, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the United States. Thus, “Brokeback Mountain,” about two high school drop-out country boys, shaped “in their opinions and their self-knowledge by the world around them,” and finding themselves in heretofore uncharted emotional depths, is a story both of destructive fear, internal and external, and of the triumphant personal agon that is ever at the core of the human experience and endeavor. If the story, in its first appearance, spoke to a large readership, in its re-expression as an award-winning film by Ang Lee, it spoke to, and challenged, millions.

“Brokeback Mountain” is a story bracingly raw in its directness; disarmingly simple in its narrative, lyrically beautiful in its prose. A story of two young men attempting to come to terms with a shared truth, it is a powerful, wise, and trustworthy work of American literature offering us much as we continue to move towards the realization of a cherished democratic ideal.

My Non-Bucket List

Last week I met someone who seemed interested in my bicycle adventures. “Oh, you have to cycle in Italy,” she told me. “Put it on your bucket list. Tuscany is beautiful and there are wonderful tours that go from inn to inn.”

I smiled. “That sounds nice.” Which is not the same as saying I’ll cycle in Italy. Because I won’t. Especially not on a group tour that takes me from inn to inn. And I didn’t even bother to acknowledge that distasteful phrase: ‘bucket list.’

I’m at that stage of life where somewhere between one day and one-third of my earthly breathes remain. Done with formal education, done with child-rearing, done with working for a living. That point when the term ‘bucket list’ stops being conceptual and takes on measurable meaning. Yet, how can a bucket list ever satisfy? If you die before it’s complete, you’ve left the world a bucket laden with unfulfilled wishes. Even worse, if you empty your bucket, you’ve got nothing left to anticipate until your final end.

I do not have a bucket list. I cannot think of one concrete activity I must accomplish or geographic locale I must witness before I die. There’s lots of things I’d like to do: have one of my plays produced; help abolish our penal system; travel to a place where my skills are needed and valued; or simply apply them locally. All things that require cooperation with other people, and therefore beyond my self-control.

Nothing on my horizon requires seeking external beauty or physical excitement. I’ve seen plenty of the world, and if meaningful opportunities present to experience more of it directly, all good. Otherwise, I’m a fan of the internet’s most positive attribute: the ability to expand my horizons from the comfort of my own home.

What I do have is a non-bucket list. All of the things I will never do. My non-bucket list grows often, and every time I shed an obligation or expectation, I’m flooded with grateful relief.

In the third grade, I wanted to be President of the United States (back in the days when that was a noble ambition). Now I know: I will never be President. Or even Vice-President. Or even a Cambridge City Councilor. I am content to never be elected to anything ever again.

During my Gilbert and Sullivan phase of junior high school, I thought I’d be a singer, or at least an actor. Now, I never want to step on-stage again. Sticking to the audience provides great solace.

I was never a good athlete; my dreams of baseball glory were always bunk. But like so many boys, they were there, tantalizing in their glory. These days, I’m happy to simply walk my steps, huff my way through Pilates, and struggle to press the same weight at the gym that I managed last week. There’s joy to be found when you get physical euphoria from mere maintenance.

As per excitement, I don’t care if my feet ever leave the ground again. George Bush may have senior sky-dived, but I will never Tilt-A-Whirl or Roller Coaster or Ferris wheel again—unless someday I have grandkids. And since I have no control over creating them, I don’t pin any hope there.

Although I’m sure there are many nice places to visit in the world, there’s isn’t a single one I ‘must see.’ Yet there are many places I will consciously avoid. I have no business going to Patagonia, or Machu Pichu, or Antarctica, or any ecologically fragile locale. Let the scientists and the film crews record their beauty and deliver me the David Attenborough version. I don’t feel the need to witness the brutality of Russia, the arbitrariness of Saudi Arabia, or the protests of Macron’s France first hand; in the past year intrepid citizens from all those places have stayed under my roof and given me first-hand insights I could not have experienced as mere tourist.

Wisteria from my own backyard

As for cycling through Tuscany with a bunch of other non-Italians simply because it’s beautiful. I’ve already cycled through Tacoma and Tucson and Tulsa and Tallahassee and Toms River. So if the gods decree that I never again cycle further than Taunton, I will acquiesce to their wisdom. Taunton is not Tuscany, but the breeze rolling south along Route 138 is every bit as refreshing.