Small Kindesses

Tags

Alan Paton, america, books, Cry the Beloved Country, human kindess, Jim Harrison, libraries, South Africa, Willa Cather

I’m a wanderer.  A library-stack-wanderer.  Though, occasionally, I’ve rambled around the non-fiction section — seeking guidance from ethicists or insight from astrophysicists, or revisiting the wonderful John McPhee — I am habitually a fiction-section-library-stack-wanderer.

I go without preconception and let impulse decide where in the alphabet to start.  I do try to give every author a fair look, though I’m pretty cursory with the bottom shelf (bad back).  Name-recognition can sway me (I was once in a fairly long-term relationship with Willa Cather), but I favor experiment.

That’s how I happened on Jim Harrison, a brilliant writer I had inexcusably never encountered before.  I read The English Major, then Legends of the Fall, and went eagerly back for more.

There weren’t any more.

My stacks are in a small branch library, part of a big system where a book borrowed at one branch can be returned to any other.  What may once have been a Harrison trove at my branch is probably now wandering separately, randomly, branch-to-branch (though, who’s to say that the two I brought home were not the first of his family to live at my branch?).

Sensible people will ask why I didn’t log-in and order delivery of other Harrisons, but why spoil an exciting adventure?  He’ll be back, I’m certain, and, in the meantime, I’m free to explore in different directions.

Just last week, I was at my local branch.  I decided to start near the end of the alphabet.  Working back from S, I got to P (don’t expect a facile joke here), and gave the bottom shelf my usual passing glance.  There, in the middle, was Alan Paton’s Cry the Beloved Country.

I hesitated.  Reading a work that had been famous and influential for over half a century didn’t seem to qualify as adventure.  Alan Paton was not a new name, even to me.  

But my smaller, sensible part reminded me of the power of famous books I had once neglected — O Pioneers; Madame Bovary; War and Peace.

I picked up Paton.  I knew the book was a passionate indictment of South
African apartheid.  But I didn’t anticipate how understated and persuasive that passion actually is — unpreachy in its tone, measured in its narrative, and subdued, even, at times, monotone and repetitive, in its dialogue, as if the country and its people — black and white — were being worn away one slow, inexorable drop after another.

It made me weep.

What we know of the evils of South Africa at the time Paton wrote, and what we know of the changes the book helped advance, are emotional enough.

But we can’t help reading through the lens of our own era and experience.

I was weeping at least as much for my own beloved country, reminded of the crassness and stupidity and outright evils we endure, one slow, inexorable drop after another, but also of the ultimate power of human reason and compassion and kindness.

I can’t think of a better way to start exploring what we’re about, and where we’re headed, than wandering through the library stacks for something good to read.  It doesn’t have to be limited to the fiction section.  Every book, just by being itself, is a small kindness.

 

Advertisements

Altered Boys

Tags

altar boys, Catholic Church, choir boys, pedophiles, Pope Francis, predators, priests

I escaped the predators.  Others may not have.

The sports I played as a kid, mainly baseball and hockey, didn’t lend themselves to closed-door conferences with coaches.  And dads were ever-present.

I gave Boy Scouts a try, but our leaders were idiots and I quit.     

Most important, I wasn’t an altar- or choir-boy.  Unitarians didn’t qualify.

But I wasn’t completely oblivious.  In our neighborhood-kids’ grapevine, vague allusions to priests and the boys who served them occasionally circulated.  We laughed unknowingly knowingly.

There were also rumors about what might happen if you rubbed a certain organ in a certain way.  But that was premature.  The possibility that, God forbid, someone else might help with the rubbing, or that you might help someone else, didn’t arise.

Whatever dark secrets were floating about, I was too busy to care.  There was too much else to do.  The neighborhood was filled with kids and we lived outdoors, in the cornfields across the street, in the creek up the street, in the swamp near the creek, in the woods up the hill, in the abandoned quarry at the top of the hill.

Some of us were Catholic, some were not.  We all knew who was what.  It didn’t make any difference when we were bashing through our pagan Eden, with its occasional perils (especially the quarry walls), but, at least, no predators.

It wouldn’t have occurred to us that some of our mates might be safer there than a mile away, at St. James, in God’s anointed sanctuary, in the hands of the priests.

This isn’t an attack on St. James.  I have no idea if anything bad happened there.  It’s not a call to substitute organized religion with some kind of youthful paganism (keep Lord of the Flies in mind).

And it’s not an attack on the Catholic Church.  It’s simply an appeal to human decency and common sense.

The Church is as capable of good as it is of evil.  It has the history and the horsepower to make a difference in human lives.  It also, now, has a Pope who seems genuinely to care as much about people’s physical and psychic needs as their spiritual well-being.

Please, Francis, be sensible.  Open the priesthood to married men and to women!  The notion of a celibate priesthood is a sick joke.  In a battle between Sex and God, Sex will usually win.

The change wouldn’t guarantee an end to scandals, but at least it might warn aspirants that the church is not their personal pick-up bar, and allow a growing number of priests to satisfy their urges within the bounds of church doctrine, the law, and sensible morality.

Perhaps, then, the Church might, with an easy conscience, allow its priests to lead its children among the fields, the swamps, the woods, and the hills where godliness also lives.

A Hypocrite’s Tale

Tags

ADA, African Americans, Democrats, discrimination, freedom of religion, gay rights, justice, LGBTQ, liberalism, Muslims, Sarah Huckabee Sanders

Once upon a time, in what one might have wished were a mythical land, a prominent official and her family went out for Sunday dinner at a local restaurant.

Shortly after they were seated, the owner, at the instigation of restaurant staff, asked their guest, and family, to leave:

Is it because I’m African-American? the official asked.

No, no at all, the owner responded.  I had no idea that was the case and, not only because of the law, but out of my own personal values, would never engage in or condone that kind of discrimination.

That is admirable, the official commented.  So, your request must be based on the fact that I am a Muslim!?

Oh no, never.  I believe that religious freedom and tolerance applies to all — Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus — and, even if that were not the case, there are laws that, as the owner of a business, open to the public, I must obey.

So, it must be that I’m a lesbian!?

Goodness no, I’m a strong supporter of LGBTQ rights.  I even marched in the Pride Parade this past weekend.  I would never …

So, the fact that my partner is a trans-gender former female has no bearing?

None at all.

Nor, presumably, our adopted daughter’s Asian ethnicity?

No, I celebrate ethnic diversity.  I have many Asian friends.

Nor our adopted son’s multiple sclerosis?

I empathize with him and, in fact, you’ll notice that our wheelchair ramp is fully ADA-compliant.

So, am I to conclude that your action — which you admit you would consider immoral, and which would, in fact, be illegal if based on any of the above conditions — is political?

Well, really, it’s my staff who object.

And they, rather than you, the owner, are the ones who establish restaurant policy?

Well, they would have refused to serve you, so I am simply trying to make the situation as bearable as possible.

So, you are a coward.  Are you also a Democrat?

I am.

And, as a Democrat, you presumably consider yourself a liberal.

I do.

And is it a tenet of liberals that those who do not share liberal values should be subjected to the same kind of treatment that blacks, other non-Caucasians, non-Christians, homosexuals, and the handicapped were once subjected to?

Well … but aren’t you and your policies based on the same kind of hatred?

At least we’re honest.  But, thank you for your admission.  And thank you, too, for saving us from any more of your delusional self-righteousness.

(The official and her family left without further incident.  The owner and staff took note of the fact that she did NOT leave a tip … the bitch!)

Across the Great Divide

Tags

abortion rights, balance-of-power, gun rights, NRA, Parkland, Planned Parenthood, right to life, school shootings, tribalism

If you’re pro-abortion, odds are you’re anti-gun. If you’re pro-gun, odds are you’re anti-abortion.

This seems so normal a part of our cultural/political wars that it’s easy to miss an apparent anomaly: in their opposition to each other, both sides are taking essentially the same position, that the protection of human life is paramount.

This seeming convergence of views is easily lost in the noise of each camp’s main slogan — a woman’s right to rule her own body; a citizen’s right to possess a gun.

But, in any rational definition of rights, these must be secondary to the right to life.

In other words, each camp is either lying about what it really believes or blind to the contradiction between its own (presumed unimpeachable) moral foundation and the (presumed indefensible) moral foundation of its opponent.

The two sides may not think of themselves as hypocrites, but they are. No semantic evasion can avoid the fact that abortions take lives and guns take lives.

But logic is one thing and reality is another. These are essentially two tribes, with different beliefs and rituals, even different territories. Expecting them to recognize their moral blindness and abandon fundamental doctrines, which others may regard as mere second-order principles, in favor of some distant higher-order principle like the sanctity of life, is unrealistic.

A thought-experiment might be helpful here. If you are pro-abortion, would you accept an end to, or at least a curtailment of, the legal right to abortions if it meant a corresponding end to, or curtailment of, the legal right to own guns? If you are pro-gun, would you accept this quid-pro-quo?

The answer, right now, is pretty obvious: the NRA is strong and very unlikely to accept detente. Planned Parenthood, in its weakness, would have no incentive to capitulate.

The key is a reasonable balance-of-power.

If anti-gun sentiment should grow, as it has especially in the wake of the recent Florida school shooting, you don’t have to be an anti-gun activist to think that a few bullet-holes in the NRA’s balloon might be a good thing if it re-balanced the equation and improved the chances for a serious discussion of a shared — higher — value.

Call it cautious optimism, with very heavy emphasis on the cautious.

We Too!

Tags

Gun Control, gun owners, gun violence, guns, Me Too!, murder, NRA, Parkland, safe schools, Second Amendment, students

The unspeakable tragedies of American gun violence regularly raise hopes that we can, at last, deal with this national cancer. And, just as regularly, these hopes are dashed.

The recent killing of seventeen souls — most of them students — at a Florida high school, and the angry, politically-focused response of many of the survivors, raise our hopes once again.

This time, there may be a slightly better chance for progress. These kids elicit powerful emotions. But they and their supporters need an organized political force, proven in battle, that could test an adversary as powerful and implacable as the NRA and its legion of American gun-owners.

Sadly, that force will not come from a political party. Certainly not from the Republicans and probably not from the Democrats. Politicians, understandably, follow before they lead and, so far, no force has come even remotely close to challenging the political influence of the NRA and its supporters.

Sensible gun policies need American women. For many decades, they have demonstrated the power of organization, most significantly voting rights, and, when political means have failed — the Equal Rights Amendment, for example — they have built on social activism and educational achievement to earn power and influence.

The Me Too movement has added an important element to women’s activist muscle, demonstrating that mass support can assuage individuals’ fears of retribution, and sexual menace and violence can be successfully challenged.

The menace and the violence that comes from guns is not that different. Behind a pinch in the ass or a lewd remark lies the serious possibility of rape. Behind a gun in the glove compartment or concealed under a jacket lies the serious possibility of death.

Most sexual predators are men. Most gun-owners, including NRA supporters, are men. Women are savvy enough to recognize that relative security from sexual predators means little if they, and their loved ones, might be victims of gun predators.

I’m not proposing a war of the sexes. But American men — already in free-fall, now reeling from the disgrace of icons of male power, and more divided than women over the gun issue — are simply not in a position to lead.

Men grieve just as profoundly as women at the loss of a child to gun violence. But there still is a symbolism in motherhood that would make an expanded Me Too movement, allied with the voices of the young, especially powerful.

There’s a name waiting for the movement. It’s at the top of the page. And I’m ready to follow.

Peace In Our Time?

Tags

America and Israel, American Embassy, diplomacy, Israel, Jerusalem, Middle East peace, Palestinians, Trump, two-state solution, war

(Note: In the following, I refer to Israel as if it were an undifferentiated block of granite. It is not. Not all Israelis agree with Israel’s hard-line Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. And not all Israelis are Jewish. About 1.5 million (ca. 20% of the total population) are Arabs (Palestinians), the majority, Muslims, but with a significant Christian and Druze minority. Their political views are at least as varied as those of Israel’s Jewish majority.)    

For decades, America has refused to officially acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and has consequently kept its embassy in Tel Aviv.

The Trump administration’s decision to reverse that position is not necessarily wrong simply because it breaks with tradition. Tradition can be good or bad. It’s wrong because it makes a peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more difficult.

(And, incidentally, it ruins what was once a pretty good joke: Israeli: Why does America not move its embassy to Jerusalem? American: Because the road is uphill all the way and it’s much too heavy to push.)

If you look at the balance of power between Israel and the Palestinians, discounting the weight of allies on either side, Israel has a decided advantage: a powerful military; a strong economy; a fortress mentality.

The Palestinians have no military to speak of, though they can narrow the gap slightly with asymmetrical warfare, aka terrorism; their economy is weak and highly dependent on Israel; the only parity is their determination to have a homeland.

External factors skew the balance of power even more in Israel’s favor. America’s security guarantee to Israel, and its active security assistance, has long outweighed what the Arab and broader Muslim world could offer the Palestinians. Now, with the Middle East in turmoil, and the likelihood it will get worse, Israel’s enemies, who were once willing to go to war for the Palestinians, have much more pressing issues to deal with.

Under these circumstances, Israel has less reason than ever to negotiate a political settlement, which demands at least reasonable parity between the parties. Trump has given Israel all the more reason to say no.

(I respectfully disagree with commentary that suggests strengthening Israel’s hand, as Trump has done, would facilitate negotiations by allowing it to make concessions toward the Palestinians. That is not a negotiating position. It offers, at best, kinder, gentler terms of surrender.)

It has never been certain that a two-state solution is the answer. Among other issues, protecting the coastal center of Israel’s population from the nearby heights of a sovereign West Bank would be very difficult. Still, no one has come up with a better solution.

Trump may view his decision as assuring Israel’s security. It may be that Israel can go on for a decade or two or more shaking an iron fist, but the long term is not promising: a volatile Middle East could turn on Israel in any of a score of ways; the Palestinians will not go away and they will not forget — they have before them a perfect example of the power of memory, the eternal call of a sacred land, and the willingness to fight and die for it; and, perhaps most telling of all, they have reproductive power in a population race that an aging Israeli citizenry cannot match.

Trump may think he’s doing right by Israel. I think he’s dead wrong.

Bake Me a Cake as Unobjectionable as You Can

Tags

bakery, cake, constitution, fascism, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, gay marriage, morality, Supreme Court, swastikas

The Supreme Court is, today, hearing the case of a Denver baker who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding. He holds that his religious beliefs, which oppose gay marriage, are constitutionally protected, as is his cake-making, which, as an artistic expression, is a form of speech.

The gay couple sued on the grounds that his refusal violated anti-discrimination laws.

When I first heard about the case, I was struck dumb. I, too, was confronted with a very similar, painful, situation:

I was sitting quietly in my bake shop, watching the dough rise, when a strangely-dressed couple (male/female) came in. I am not a well-traveled person, but I judged by her outfit that she was a Hindu, and could see that the man was an Indian too.

They asked if I could make a cake for a celebration in honor of one of their deities, I forget who. I was initially concerned that they might want a design with ten or twenty arms, which would not demonstrate my skills in their best light.

But that wasn’t the case at all. They showed me a photo of the design they wanted and I just about croaked. It was a swastika!

I hesitated, trying to think how to approach this, but all I could come up with was, I’m sorry, but it’s too complicated.

Complicated?! the man protested, it is simplicity itself; just a cross, with right-angle extensions; perfectly symmetrical.

True, true, I said, it would be easy to fashion. The complication is a moral one. A swastika is a symbol of hatred and murder — anti-Semitic, anti-non-white, probably even anti-Hindu if it had come to that. My conscience wouldn’t allow my hands to fashion such an abomination.

But you don’t understand, the woman interjected, the swastika is an ancient symbol of goodness and auspiciousness, revered by Hindus, Buddhists and others, even westerners. It was stolen by the Nazis and made a symbol of hate, but they could not erase its real meaning. It is still, to us, a sacred symbol of peace and love.

I really didn’t know that, I said, but, even so, if somebody — one of my assistants, or worse, another customer — saw it, they wouldn’t know its real meaning and intent, and they’d assume it was for some racist or fascist rally. And even if I denied it and explained its true meaning and intent, they’d assume that was just a cover-up.

So, the man said, it’s not really a question of morality, but simply of protecting your reputation and your business.

No … and yes. If I’m thought to be advocating fascism, it certainly doesn’t help me make the case for fighting against it. And, yes, of course, I want to protect my business, which is my living, but also a means for doing good things for people. For example, I’m working on a cake for a gay wedding.

A gay wedding? the woman cried, that’s disgusting!

With that, I knew I couldn’t do business with them, and assumed the feeling was mutual. I thought the problem was solved. But the husband saw his opening.

Look, he said, you’re a businessman. You know you’ll lose some customers if we decided to spread the word you do gay weddings. At the same time, you know you’ll lose other customers if it gets out that you do swastikas. Do this one for us, and we won’t say anything about it or your gay cakes.

I thought seriously about it, but decided I couldn’t compromise my principles — gay marriage was right and a swastika, even if its origins were positive, was now as wrong as wrong could be. Furthermore, I reminded myself, I am an artist. Art that isn’t a genuine expression of the artist’s beliefs and feelings is simply dishonesty.

No deal, I told them, and they stormed out, muttering something about a lawyer.

That was a few years ago. Today, my bake shop is just a memory, but not because of the lawsuit. That got dropped. No, it was the icing on the cake, literally. I must have used a spoiled batch. Everybody got sick, including the groom and the groom. The health authorities shut me down.

I’m selling shoes now. A nice shoe with a good fit is artistic expression enough. Shoes are neutral, neither gay nor straight, neither progressive nor fascist. If the Indian couple should come in, I’m sure I could make a sale, as long as we keep the talk away from cakes.

The South May Rise Again

Tags

Civil War monuments, FEMA, floods, Florida, Houston, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Irma, Mar a Lago, recovery, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Texas

I have no particular fondness for the American South — not for its history, nor its politics, nor its religious leanings. But, when the President asked me to report on the situation in Texas in the midst of Hurricane Harvey, then in Florida during Hurricane Irma, I could not say no.

In and around Houston and the Gulf Coast, the suffering of so many — the loss of lives, the destruction of homes and livelihoods — diverted me from my fury at the stupidity of environmentally destructive zoning and construction policies.

In Florida, the situation was similar. In the Keys, houses utterly demolished; in Jacksonville, widespread flooding; throughout the entire state, millions of people without power or communications.

But not everything suffered loss.  Reports from the Everglades noted that the python population was flourishing, what with all the abandoned dogs and cats on the loose.

And, as I discovered, Mar a Lago had been completely spared while everything around it had been utterly destroyed.  (The parallel with the pythons and the pets struck me forcefully, but I kept my mouth shut.)

The immediate experience of the devastation and suffering was so overwhelming that, initially at least, I could not process the riot of images with sufficient clarity to give the President a coherent sense of the situation.

As, finally, I was able to organize my mental images of houses and buildings collapsing, baby carriages floating out to sea, trees keeling over, but also to focus on what was not damaged or swept away, I realized that the only things left absolutely untouched (besides Mar a Lago, of course) were Civil War monuments — plaques, obelisks, statues — most of them dedicated to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

I was stunned. Could this be more than pure chance? I asked myself. Perhaps it was simply that these things were solid and heavy — stone and bronze, not glass and aluminum. But other things that seemed equally grounded — fire hydrants and public toilets — had suffered far more.  And I knew that, in the chaos, no special efforts had been made to protect these monuments.

I could scarcely bring myself to ask the question: Did some power intervene to protect them and yet allow innocent people to lose their homes, their possessions, their lives?

Or, more to the point, Will the people who regard these monuments as virtual religious shrines conclude that Their God had intervened to protect and console Them, just as he abandoned and punished the rest?

I debated whether to include this statistical aberration in my report, but finally decided that, since it was bound to come to light, with all its explosive potential, it was best to prepare the President.

I needn’t have fretted. When I told him of all the dogs and cats that had perished in the coils of Everglades pythons, he got misty-eyed. When I confirmed that Mar a Lago had been spared, he wept.

By the end of my report, he was in such emotional turmoil and confusion that he seemed to think Lee and Jackson were among the first responders, and had ridden their horses into the maelstrom to rescue victims. He instructed his staff to contact them and arrange a photo op when he visited. I kept my mouth shut.

 

Presidents’ Day

Tags

FDR, Ike, JFK, Lincoln, Obama, Putin, Reagan, TRoosevelt, Trump, Washington

We Lost It, But Let’s Not Completely Lose It!

Tags

elections, Electoral College, Hillary Clinton, immigration, popular vote, Presidency, States Rights, the South, Trump

Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat is laudable. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is lamentable. Snatching defeat from the jaws of defeat is laughable, but a few of us liberals apparently want to give it a try.

One way to do it is to urge Trump’s Presidential Electors to vote their conscience. Conscience!? Our whole campaign was based on the premise that Trump and his acolytes have no conscience. Why would they be different now, after they’ve won? (Perhaps we want to make them die laughing?)

Even if there might be a few who would forsake the darkness for the light, who’s to say that the call of conscience might not persuade as many Hillary supporters, drawn by the aroma of victory, to cross in the other direction? We liberals may think of ourselves as angels, but we shouldn’t forget that Lucifer was simply an angel who saw an attractive job-opening.

There’s something more serious in this spasm of mindlessness. One of the pillars of our opponents‘ temple is States Rights, a philosophy that, though grounded in the Constitution, has reeked of bigotry, injustice, and violence since the Civil War.

The Electoral College is, in a way, a protector of States Rights, designed originally to keep the Union intact by giving the less populous states of the South greater political weight than their raw popular vote would have warranted. In this election, States Rights states, in the South and beyond, were, by and large, Trump states.

To a liberal, for whom the Federal Government is usually a better guarantor of consistency, fairness and justice than is the theology of States Rights (remember civil rights legislation), it might seem nonsensical to favor the Electoral College over the popular vote. The alternative, however, would radicalize these angry states, drive them further to the right, and into the arms of the Voldemort also known as Texas.

Another good way to discredit our liberal principles would be to support the stated intent of some city and state political leaders not to cooperate with, possibly even to stymie, Federal immigration efforts now that Trump is to be President. It was only a couple years ago that we were blasting Arizona, and the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio, for interfering in immigration policies which, we argued, were the prerogative of the Federal Government.

Have these policies suddenly devolved to the individual states, each with its own policy and border control? Have liberals become States Righters? Just because there are fundamental moral issues involved doesn’t mean we should change our strategic position that, over the course of time, the Federal Government is the best bet for giving moral principles the force of law.

If you lose the game, you don’t change the rules so that they favor your particular weaknesses. You remedy the weaknesses. The Cubs got a new front office, a new manager, new players, a new attitude. They didn’t pout, at least not for long.

OK, so the Presidency isn’t as important as the World Series. But pretend it is. Otherwise, it could be 108 years before we get back to the White House. That’s a long time to pout.