Category Archives: Current Events/Culture

Taking Cover

A Rant: The Trouble With Guns.

Columbine changed my relationship to America. 

Once upon a time, I was proud and unabashedly grateful to be a part of this remarkable experiment called the USA.  Then suddenly, in a blaze of terror, fifteen children were brutally assassinated, 24 more were wounded, and countless more left with interminable PTSD.  In the aftermath, our collective failure to heal the national addiction to guns murdered my faith in my country. Today, I feel like an orphan. The country that gave my family refuge, the place I felt comforted, safe, no longer feels like home. 

I began to feel betrayed.

Just weeks after the Colorado tragedy, as I prepared to teach my first period of the day at a Connecticut high school, a shooter invaded our premises. The principal commanded us to lock our doors, to stay on the floor where we could not be seen through the windows that faced the hallway, and to wait there for updates.  My students and I crouched against the wall of the room, terrified of what might happen. 

Nothing did. The gun-toting stranger never fired a shot and was caught.  But I decided then and there that I could not put myself in this kind of jeopardy anymore.  I wasn’t just afraid of being shot – though I definitely was! – I could not envision being forced to watch in terror as children were mutilated.  I didn’t have it in me.  I quit teaching, went on to other things. And I got involved in trying to make a difference.

I wrote letters, posted blog rants, called lawmakers, and spoke out wherever and whenever I had a platform.  Sent money to the groups promising to fight for regulations.

Guns proliferated. Every year brings a new array of tragedies wrought by angry teenagers or disgruntled postal workers or distraught fathers or rabid fundamentalists. . . all armed with guns.  And oh, Sandy Hook.

Surely, I told myself, the images from Sandy Hook must change everything.  Even if the men in our culture insist on suborning murder by clinging to their guns, surely Grandmothers, mothers, aunts, teachers, sisters. . . the women of America will rise up to ensure that our babies are not so easily jeopardized.  Sure there will be an outcry to eradicate the monstrous misuse of weaponry that inflicts such terror.

I was wrong.  Even as Alex Jones defamed the Sandy Hook victims, even as assault weapons continued to violate sanity, nothing changed.  The horror persists. Today, I a longtime friend, a woman I respect and admire, posted a plea on Facebook for concerned citizens to write to Congress and demand they defeat the assault weapons ban, that they protect our right to bear arms, that they stop the Democrats’ bill to curb the insanity.

How can anyone justify the stockpiling of semi-automatic pistols and rifles?  I empathize with those people who feel so threatened they might put their faith in a gun, but I reserve none for those who believe that our government should not – cannot –  regulate the way in which guns are bought, owned, operated. Without regulations, our children are never out of danger.

Never.

Since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999, nearly 300,000 students have been on a campus during a school shooting.  949 school shootings have taken place since the Sandy Hook Elementary School exploded in December 2012.  Just yesterday, February 13, four more people were shot to death at Michigan State University. So much carnage.  Not only the dead. . . . the wounded, the destroyed families, the traumatized children and teachers who bore witness.  Communities forever changed.

In January 2023, a six-year-old child walked into school with a 9 mm handgun in his little backpack.  He shot his teacher and was miraculously stopped before he turned the gun on his classmates.  The trauma of that day will live on in every one of those first-graders’ hearts and minds to their last breaths.  Yet “given the child’s age, no charges will be brought,” reported the local police chief.  Nor have charges been brought against the parents.

The absolute degeneracy that the case of the six-year-old shooter represents is stultifying.  We live in a time, in a country where a small child, who must be reminded to put shoes on his feet to walk out the door, can blithely pack a gun and shoot his teacher.  Ours is the only country in the world where this is possible.

I have a daughter and a grandchild living in Turkey. Every day someone asks me how I can stand knowing the dangerous conditions of their life there.  I am frequently asked, “Can’t you insist they come home?”  Danger?  Sure, there are difficulties for a western woman living there, and there is volatility.  But no one in Turkey, except the military police protecting the airports, carries an assault weapon.  No child would dream of going to school with a pistol in his pocket.  In Turkey, even earthquakes are more predictable than gun violence is in the US.

The gun industry is a cartel.  It controls our lives in subtle and critical ways.  And we allow it to keep on keeping on.

In Just Spring. . .

Melancholia visits me in Springtime. Every year since I was a child. Without fail. March and April drown me in my rising anxiety. Summer approaches

My malaise sprouts from multiple roots. Daylight Savings for one. An extreme morning person, who functions best between the hours of 4 and 11 am, I am never able to get enough sleep. The extended daylight delays my night slumber so that being alert and productive when it’s most natural for me to be so is nearly impossible. I dreaded DST when it would descend in April. Now they foist it on me in March, even before the season has officially sprung.

Heat’s another. Especially in the time of global warming, I shudder each time I  try to envision what to wear as I slog through sweaty days of teaching and social engagements. Never well shaped for scanty suiting, my body is most comfortable disappearing into layers of winter wear. Summer terrifies us.

This year, however, my despondency is exacerbated by the relentlessly untenable political reality in which our country is enmired. I’m already exhausted from the interminable campaigning. The orange imposter and the bloated goons who give him power have robbed me of the homeland I used to trust. The Democrats have turned discourse into hate-mongering.

And women have once again been relegated to the back of the bus. That’s where Elizabeth Warren has gone. And I am bereft.

What is it about America that its ship of state inevitably seeks to keep a Great White Father at its helm? Despite the fact that every one of them finds ways to deceive us as he happily manipulates us into believing he is good for the country?

Why are we so averse to having a woman lead this nation?

In this primary race, the single candidate who was everything America used to stand for was a woman. Smart and sensitive, educated and empathetic, powerful and personable, Warren had a progressive agenda that was no mere demagoguery. She really did have a plan.

And yet. . . . The progressive wing of the party put their weight behind a blustering windbag whose sound and fury signifies less than nothing. All he really offers, as far as I can see, is a penis. And a loud voice. (At least his single standing opponent in the race has Warren-like decency.  At least there’s that.)

Warren’s bid for the Presidency is the victim of sexism for sure. More hideously, it is proof that ageism, ubiquitous for women over 60, is kinder to men. Both remaining candidates are far more doddering than Elizabeth Warren will ever be. Still, here we are.

All of which puts me in a sadder state than ever this spring. The birdsong outside my window reminds me that my granddaughters are growing up in a society that is no more mature than the one that bred me. The one that believed that a new, slender cigarette was a sign that we’d come a long way, baby.

My sadness knows no bottom.

Last Note From the Temporary Curmudgeon

I’m home. Glad to be here. I missed family, friends, New York. Now I miss my daughter, my grandson, the colors of Bangkok. It feels good to be cold, to see blue sky. To breathe air that doesn’t choke me.

the homecoming was relatively easy. My flight was on time, arriving early on a Wednesday morning. Amazingly, despite the predictions of horror in the immigration hall, the line moved quickly. I thanked the officer who checked me in, and he squeezed my hand.

“Thanks.” He said. “That’s good to hear. Let’s just hope it ends soon. . . ” Then he looked wistfully at me and said, “Welcome home.”

Qatar partially redeemed itself on the return flight. On the first leg, from Bangkok to Doha, I was fortunate enough to have sitting behind me a loud, drunken Russian lout. He and three of his cronies were shouting with one another, drinking and singing disruptively. It was 8 in the evening, and I planned to sleep as soon as the cabin lights were turned off. So I donned my best NY ignore’emall demeanor and settled down to pretend he wasn’t there.

After the meal was served and cleared, and darkness enveloped the cold space, I leaned my seat back and wrapped myself in my winter layers preparing to drift off. The Russian behind me leaned forward and said, “No, madame. No no.” His voice was threatening. I could hear the mob vibrating in his growl.

Still in ignore’emall mode, I paid him no heed.

He kicked the back of my chair. I failed to react. He called the flight attendant. Then he called five more flights. He insisted that I be reprimanded for insisting on reclining my seat. Each of them insisted their turns that I had the right to do just that. They offered to move him to a bulkhead (premium) seat with more legroom. He refused, insisting yet again it was their job to make me stop reclining into his space.

They would not budge. Neither would he. It got absurd, and his friends were beginning to be audibly agitated. The scolded him but clearly worried that he might explode.

I offered to move. The Qatar people gratefully put me in the bulkhead. No reclining seat there. I sat awake for the entire duration of the seven-hour flight. The flight attendants stopped by begging my forgiveness, offering me food, drink, et al. I told them again and again that it was not their fault. I was fine.

In Doha, the security check I endured from one flight to the other was humiliating. The body checks one is forced to endure once one has a prosthetic limb or joint are intolerable. We have no choice but to put up with them. There is no avoiding them. Each time they constitute a moment of awful, and then you move on. This was among the worst. But no more than a moment.

When I sat in my seat in the NY-bound aircraft, I saw a chance for total retribution. The flight was empty. I asked permission and then moved across the aisle, where I prepared to spread out. A few minutes before take-off, a lovely young attendant came and asked me would I move to the middle seat so that a woman in a seat a few rows ahead could sit here. I felt tears bubbling as I looked at the young woman and said, “Let me tell you my tale of woe. If, after you hear it, you need my seat, I will relinquish. . . .”

When I wrapped the tale of the Russian thug, the flight attendant was overcome with emotion. “You can stay here,” she said, patting me on the shoulder. “If anyone insists that you move, you tell them I said you are to keep these seats all the way to New York.”

And that is just what I did.

Notes From A Temporary Curmudgeon – Day 6

6. Complacency and the Government Shut-Down

The most depressing spectacle to watch from my faraway perch was way the orange-faced toddler masquerading as a potus made a mockery of our Constitution. It is far from surprising that he throws bigger and louder tantrums, that he engages in increasingly disturbing manipulations. It’s what two-year-olds do. We can’t expect any better from him.

But why do we put up with him? We stand by wringing our hands and calling him names, laughing with the comedians who mock his outrageous idiocy. But we don’t do anything to stop his actions.

He shut down the government, putting our national security and the livelihoods of millions of our compatriots in jeopardy. We did nothing.

He reopened the government and simultaneously threatened to shut it down again. We laughed.

He suggests that unpaid government workers, the Joe Schmoes who are forced to live without income until the baby gets his way, should ask their churches and grocers for help when they can’t afford to buy food. We shake our heads in dismay.

Why is the country not out on a general strike? Every union in America, every group in this country should be refusing to work, refusing to carry on until the government is reinstated in full. It’s not a simple matter of establishing solidarity with the workers being exploited. We all have much to lose.

Many public servants, from teachers to street cleaners, stand to be cut off in many states that depend on aid from the National government. Railroad, airline employees, dock workers, and all manner of public transportation people could be expected to accept pay cuts at very least. Medicaid and Medicare will eventually suffer, as will Social Security.

Once the government gets away with eliminating paychecks, there is no barrier to ending others, to shutting down the country in myriad financial ways. They have the control. They can do it. None of us is safe.

We have given the little whiner well more than an inch. Who knows what he will take?

 

If we let him.

Judgment Day

The Face of Heroism

I met my neighbor on the bus the other day. We began our conversation, as we are wont to do, by exchanging details about our various children and grandchildren before falling into the usual lamentations.

“Can you believe what. . . “

“No, I feel like I’m living in a cave reeking of batshit.”

“Right? Nothing makes any sense anymore. . . How can so much doubt remain when three women. . . .“

We nodded, shook our heads, tzikached profusely. Kavanaugh, his accusers, the tradition of blaming women. We shared mutual condolences.

Then I made the mistake of saying, “All this, and Bill Cosby gets only THREE years for drugging and raping –“

She jumped in.

“Well, it was only one woman. Three years seems reasonably punitive for an old man. Especially because we can only prove it happened once.”

What?

“Further,” she went on. “A young woman has the right to say no. You accept a dinner invitation from a Bill Cosby, you know what he wants. What are you doing going out with him at all?”

I realized talking to this woman, whose intelligence and empathy I generally trust, why we older women continue to be part of the disconnect in America. The rules have changed, and instead of embracing the new world order, our judgment remains crippled by old standards.

When my neighbor and I were young, the so-called Sexual Revolution was just getting underway. We got caught up in it, and as we did, we endured the disapproval and shame of the society that had not yet embraced its precepts. We were called sluts, easy women, weaklings without morals. Women were not supposed to explore options, to experiment with sex, to enjoy it. Their imperative was to comply with the wishes of the patriarchy.

We knew that if we spoke out about our experiences with assault, molestation, denigration – and believe me, I know NO one who has had those experiences – we would only besmirch our own good names. I was keenly aware that when I turned down s casting director’s demand for a blowjob, when I eschewed the opportunity to gratify an employer, I was ruining my chances to move forward professionally or personally. I would become the subject of gossip. I would be ostracized not only by the would-be usurper himself but by everyone he either supervised or collaborated with.

I was lucky in that way. I never felt like I had nowhere to go when things didn’t work out for me where I was. There was no driving compunction to give in to male impulses. There was always a refuge. My mother joked about the swinging door on the family home, and my grandmother kept the apartment in her basement stocked, furnished and ready for any time I might opt to leave where I was in order return and begin yet again.

I began many times. We did in those days. Marriage removed us from the fray. It gave us a comfortable hiding place, an awning to protect us from the inevitable detritus that would drop out of that man’s world. Marriage was admirable. No more shame. No more idiotic comments about single women from other women.

In my single days, a self-righteous matriarch told me my hips looked like they were spreading. That, she said, was a true sign I was sleeping around. “Easy virtue, spreading hips,” she sneered. In marriage, we could watch our hips spread with childbearing and be proud of our sexual activity.

We took it all in. In our hearts, however, we rejected the notion that the traditions must continue. We raised our daughters to push back, to stand up to the men who were holding them down. In the process, we taught our daughters to hate that we were not able to do that for ourselves. We forgot to teach our daughters what it was like to be entirely ruled by the parameters of the ruling penises, what it felt like to be unable to open a bank account, have a credit card, rent a car, buy a house without a man’s name attached to ours.

No matter how they judged us. We taught them to refuse to comply.

Now many of us look at them and feel a pang of regret. Maybe they are right about us. If they are successful in fighting back, why were we paralyzed? If they can achieve some kind of retribution, why did we succumb? What is wrong with us?

Nothing. We got our restraint from our own mothers, women who had survived the Great Depression, escaped the horrors of two world wars, fought for the right to work outside the home. Many of them were born before or shortly after the 19th Amendment allowed them to vote. We honored their achievement and initiated the Women’s Movement. We applauded our more brazen sisters who publically burned their bras. We hitchhiked through Europe singing protest songs and making the case for an ERA. And then we raised our daughters to say, “NO.”

But our self-doubt, our self-chastisement can lead to a lapse in judgment so that we say stupid things like, “There was only one. . . .”

Too many of my peers are willing to look the other way as Kavanaugh steamrolls toward confirmation. More shockingly, I learned this week that my 27 Freshman Comp students at a city university, 25 of whom are female, do not know who Anita Hill is. They are nearly as complacent as my cohorts in age about the fact that Rachel Mitchell, a hardline Republican, a friend of criminal Sherrif Arpaio, is conducting Dr. Ford’s hearings. Have our misgivings encouraged our daughters to teach our granddaughters to remain silent? I hope not.

We live in dangerous times. The patriarchy recognizes that women must be silenced. Again. That they are in danger of coming unhinged if we are not checked. It’s dangerous to defend Bill Cosby or to question Dr. Christine Ford Blasey’s veracity. Every time one of us does that, they are victorious.

We don’t have to let them win.

There are plenty of liberated women and men to take the legislature from the ruling, oligarchic party. There are enough enlightened women and their male allies to upend the system. Women need not be dismissed, abused, assaulted, denigrated. We have sat by and allowed the maltreatment to go on long enough. Women in my generation owe it to our country to take a firm stand against the fetid tide.

It’s time for us to remind our daughters what we are made of.