What It Means to Become American

 

Because the only other of her books I'm familiar with is "A Problem From Hell": America and the Age of Genocide, I picked up The Education of an Idealist, the memoir of former UN Ambassador and recently replaced USAID director Samantha Power, because anyone who could write about the things she has witnessed and still call herself an idealist is on a wavelength I want to invest time in. 

Early on, she describes her becoming an American citizen (she was born and raised in Ireland) and what that meant to her. 

During high school, I had failed the driver's test several times (hitting various cones), and I still felt the sting of humiliation...I was determined to avoid a similar embarrassment on my citizenship test, and wildly overprepared, using a Barron's citizenship guide to create flash cards with every conceivable question I might be asked about American government and civics. Unlike many of those applying, English was my first language, and I had the benefit of learning US history in school. Still, I felt relived when, in the fall of 1993, I learned I had passed. 

...I didn't think to invite [my mom and stepfather] to the courthouse in Brooklyn to see [my naturalization ceremony, as they had made no fuss about having been sworn in the year before.] However, the other new Americans participating treated the day like the momentous event that it was, donning their finest suits and dresses and surrounding themselves with family.

During our collective Oath of Allegiance, we pledged [to support and defend the Constitution and US laws.] Looking around the courtroom, seeing emotion ripple across the faces of those whose hands were raised, I was struck by what America meant as a refuge, and as an idea. All of gathered that morning had reached the modern Promised Land. We weren't giving up who we were or where we came from; we were making it American. I hugged an elderly woman from Central America on my left and a tall man from Russia to my right. We were all Americans now. 

Listen to what she says. She's not faking the emotion in her words or overstating those of the people around her. These are genuine sentiments from people for whom getting to the US has been an arduous and, in many cases, dangerous trek. To deny them the sanctity and sanctuary of their success, as the rethuglican administration has threatened to do and in some cases has done already, is to deny the dream and hope that citizenship holds for people. It is, plainly, wrong.

Nous Sommes les Lapins

 The first heavy casualties of the French Revolution were rabbits. On March 10 and 11, 1789, the villagers of Neuville formed themselves into platoons, armed with clubs and sickles, and searched meadows and woods for their prolific little enemies. What dogs they had accompanied them, and the shout of "Hou, hou" signified to the rest of the hunting party a satisfactory kill...Disregarding the game laws that had protected birds and animals, and the brutal "captaincies" that enforced them, hobnail boots trampled through forbidden forests or climbed over fences and stone walls. Grass was mown in grain fields to reveal the nests of partridge and pheasant, snipe and woodcock; eggs were smashed or fledglings left to the dogs. Warrens were staved in, hares rooted out from behind rocks. In daring villages, pit traps were even set for the most prized game, which was also the most voracious consumer of green shoots: roe deer. The most spectacular assaults were on those chateaux in miniature: dovecotes, from which the peasantry had seen aerial raiding parties launched against their seed, returning in absolute safety to their seigneurial compound. They were, said one cahier, "flying thieves."...It could hardly be called poaching since there was nothing furtive about the onslaught. In some cases, the slaughtered game was hung from poles like trophies and paraded about the village...[There] were simply too many determined peasants who, with their winter crop destroyed by the climate, were not prepared to see their spring crop turn into rabbit fodder. In some places...villagers simply ignored the laws and hunted at will. When they ran into gamekeepers...they shot them dead on the spot.

From Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama

Think carefully on this. At first, it is almost comical, the notion that the Revolution began in earnest with the killing of previously protected game. It may even seem justified, said game having been allegedly responsible for depleting the stores of the farmers. This description occurs on pages 322 and 323 after Schama has spent considerable time explaining the economics behind what became the bloodiest revolution in modern history, and it is not hard, after all that, to mentally cheer on the proto-citizens as they explode in violence after so long being oppressed. 

But it doesn't take long to see a problem here. After all, soon (Schama dates it to less than 3 weeks) the rampant killing moves from birds and game to the gamekeepers. These people were, after all, not only keeping the law but their families fed and cared for.

In little time one of the cahiers (meaning "a list of grievances" but better understood today as a broadsheet explaining actions to the general public and written by pamphleteers) "insisted that it was 'the general will of the Nation that game should be destroyed...and this is the intention of our good King who watches over the common good of his people and who loves them.'" 

Most of us think of the French Revolution as breaking the backs of the monarchy and nobility, and there's justification to it as they were the people who famously paid with their lives. The King referred to here as being the motivator of the uprising is the selfsame Louis XVI guillotined with his wife, Marie Antoinette, just a few years later. 

But while we think of the Revolution as being an anti-elite whirlwind force that swiftly swept up innocents and guilty alike, robbing all of them of their most basic rights, it began with people who thought they were doing the (unacknowledged) will of the King. When I began reading Schama's book I did not expect to identify the initiators of the Terror with the followers of trump; in fact, I assumed contemporary Neuville villagers would be the ones stamping out, not woodcocks and rabbits, but rethuglicans. 

But instead, as we often find, history doesn't quite repeat as it slant rhymes. The contemporary Neuvillier is likelier to see immigrants as the doves of today, the "aerial raiding parties launched against their seed" (metaphorical today, given the far right conspiracy of replacement both in citizenship and jobs) and more than happy to smash eggs, stave in warrens, set the dogs on fledglings because it is what their King expects them to do. In Schama's words, "It was as though...the people had produced the assumption that the King now licensed what had been unlawful...Killing game [and gamekeepers] was not only an act of desperation, it was, by the lights of 1789, Patriotic." 

Is it difficult to see that trump's blanket pardon of nearly every January 6th offender is in that same line of thinking, at least to those who follow him? Do I exaggerate? I hope so. But Schama's recitation of greater and greater chaos finally devolving into blood does not encourage me. But for the immediate future, I fear we are the rabbits.

 

 

Home

 About a week and a half ago the message at my church centered on one's return home, especially to a home town where one doesn't feel welcomed. That's had me thinking about it since. 

I've returned at different times to the area where I grew up, and sometimes it's been good and sometimes not. I think that's most people's experience. I'm a part of the estimated 25% of men who have moved far away from their hometown and I have been for a lot of years. There were periods when I stayed at my parents home or even lived in a cabin at the end of the road I grew up on. But I knew in each case I wouldn't remain there.

Which when I look back seems strange. I grew up thinking my area was a reasonably all right place and I would remain in its environs for life. I mean, it had access to nearly everything I wanted: a big city (NYC, where a lot of my friends moved to), lots of bookstores and schools (including my alma mater), deep woods and nearby mountains (the Berkshires and one end of the Appalachian Trail), good local music I could listen to for free when I wanted, even one of the best art collections in the country (the Clark Art). 

Still, I left early in my late teens, and I've stayed away as far as I can for what's probably the rest of my life. On occasion I imagine it's because of the potential me that might have been if I'd remained: a conservative rednecked mouth-breathing rethuglican. That image warms me for my decision to stay away.

But I really know that's not true. A lot of my friends who are still in the area are not that way at all (especially of course the ones who moved south to The City but even a fair number who stayed in nearby counties). I suspect the truth is it's not the environment that makes you but your reaction to it.

Besides, if stultifying right wingery is what I'd hoped to avoid, I wouldn't have spent the bulk of 30 years living in the central midwest and a few years ago having retired to the deep south. It should seem the opposite.

There's where a part of the paradox may lay, that having grown up in the bastion of red state behavior in one of the bluest states I find myself in adulthood more comfortable in the bluer segments of some of the reddest states. 

I'm well aware it's a privilege to live somewhere one is comfortable, not afforded to everyone. When I was younger and I found where I was staying didn't fulfill me, I'd leave. It was a comfort, knowing I was a step away from being gone if I wanted to be. That's how I disappeared from a lot of people's lives too and as I grow older I wonder where and how they are. The internet and Facebook have been great for catching up and I'm glad for that. But I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to watch the people I knew age and change, both for the better and worse. 

I Just Like It: Walk Humbly Together

 

Like many millions of you, I could not bring myself to watch trump's second inauguration, with its political overreach and underhandedness. But like also many millions of you, I have watched the now-famous inaugural prayer service from the following morning by The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, Bishop of Washington, DC, at the Washington National Cathedral. You should also watch it. It is inspiring. 

Her sermon, preached to the nation, gave voice to the hopes and fears so many of us face as we enter a second phase of rule by That Felon Guy, and her final words, delivered directly to him, resound with compassion. 

In a tone both measured yet commanding, she reminds us not only of the ideals of the American Experiment but of the best of our ideals that lead to unity, dignity, honesty, and humility. She asks for mercy. 

(I've heard some of my queer friends and others complain about her last word choice, that they would not ask for mercy from trump and it's a fair point; my own tradition might have used "compassion" rather than "mercy," but in her Episcopal tradition mercy is an important idea, reverberating as it does down the ages and translations, and I honor that). 

She is not strident, she is not placating, she does not harass, she does not deliver a Jeremiad denouncing the king before her. But she is a teacher and a shepherd, guiding the thoughts and behaviors of the faithful who would follow her. 

We would all do well to live by her words to trump. 

Where Are We Now?

I am looking for some direction and comfort like I think most of us are, and on days when it becomes very, very hard to keep track of how best to continue being human and not give in to anger, despair, and doom, it's good to remember music. 

I've spoken before of what David Bowie's music meant for me growing up and how it influenced my outlook on life. I don't play his music as often as I did when he was alive, although I don't there's anything wrong with doing that--did anyone only play Beethoven when he was alive? But on reflection today I realized one song that gives me hope.

It's probably fitting that, as important as his early work was for me when I was a pup, his final works hold some resonance for me as I age. I recall that Bowie had sort of disappeared from the public when "Where Are We Now?" dropped into rotation. Here is a history of that period, mostly per Tony Visconti. I heard about the song before I heard it, and I had to look for it online. 

There's much I can say about the song and its haunting refrain, but others have said it better. I want to focus for a moment on why it gives me hope. 

This is from Bowie's penultimate album, when he knew he had cancer and he only had so much time left. He looked back to when he was, he said, probably happiest up to then, during his Berlin period when he produced Low, Heroes, and Lodger. In doing so he also notes in the song the incredible image of "twenty thousand people cross[ing] Bosebrucke."  What makes this an indelible image is that it is the moment in history when an error in communication between authorities and the boots on the ground allowed for the crossing of so many from East to West Berlin, leading to the destruction of the Wall itself. Why it resonates with me? The following lyric: "[their] fingers are crossed just in case." They were afraid they would be cut down (and perhaps any other day they might have) but they bundled their dignity and crossed not only their fingers but the bridge too. We should have as much courage.

Another reason? The hope suggested in the lines "As long as there's sun.../As long as there's rain.../As long as there's fire.../As long as there's me/As long as there's you." As long as there's a world and an us there's life. And as long as there's life there's hope. 

Nixon/trump

I recall, although not very well, the presidential election of 1972, when Nixon, despite having been implicated in Watergate, was the clear winner over George McGovern. Less than two years after the vote, he removed himself from office after it became clear he was going to be made to leave.

Donald trump doesn't even have the few blessings of Nixon's first administration. In his first year of office, Nixon oversaw passage of the National Environmental Policy Act and created the Environmental Protection Agency; he instigated the peaceful desegregation of southern schools, lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, and ended the draft. He was the first US president to visit the People's Republic of China. 

Nixon was a popular president, and I admit, as a 12 year old proto-conservative in 1972, I made sure my parents were voting for him. But as the country improved socially over the decades, I also improved, seeing Nixon and what he represented for what it was: Greed. For money, for power, I'm too small a person to see high enough to work that out. But it was to our everlasting pride as a nation that, when it came to punishing a criminal executive, we did so. 

Which is why so much of why the return of trump and his rethuglican party to power hurts. We had achieved so much--abortion safety, protections for voters and the marginalized among us, more consistent employment--and in the years of his reign and after, saw so much of them eroded. There was more work to do, of course, harder work. But does anyone think a trump administration will prioritize anything but the dismantling of what remains?

What did we trade marginal improvement for? What did trump do in his four years that suggest he has any clue, beyond thoughts of vengeance against his enemies, what he wants to accomplish? Is this why he received slightly better than 50% of the vote, so his followers can watch the spectacle he promises to make of the political landscape? Are they hoping that somehow watching their behemoth battle whatever false enemies he has trumped up will somehow benefit them? That promises to be at best a pyrrhic victory for rethuglican voters, because in any fight between King Kong and Godzilla the losers are always the people who are on the same island. 

Poem Toward an Aroma Map of New York City

[After a recent trip to New York City, I tried to recall the odors I experienced as I walked from Grand Central Station east to Junior’s Restaurant in Brooklyn. In looking up previous attempts to do such things, I’m struck by the omnipresent dismay at the odors New Yorkers, especially Manhattanites, seem to experience. Notably, the effort has not been made in poetry. For myself, having been away from the City for decades, the scents were almost uniformly comforting. I walked the four mile route at least partly because I felt at home and wanted to reconnect with my home base of many years ago.]

 

Grand Central Terminal:

Diesel, oil, steam, human piss, perfumery scent

Park Avenue:

Carrot cake, hot pretzels, ditchweed, spiced halal meat

Union Square:

Ditchweed, roast lamb, hot coffee

Bowery:

Better cannabis, piss, coffee, damp wool, hot pork

Chinatown:

Vinegar, sweet coffee, steaming rice, strong herbs

Manhattan Bridge:

Wildfire Smoke, salty water, cannabis, coffee

Dumbo:

Coffee, cannabis, spiced meat, mixed Chinese herbs

Jay Street:

Exhaust, dust, piss

Walt Whitman Park:

Take out coffee, cannabis, yew pines

Tillary Street:

Hidden beer, coffee, dogs, scent

Flatbush Avenue:

Hot pretzels, cannabis, exhaust

Juniors Restaurant:

Percolating coffee, good beer, warmth, fresh Cole slaw, hot beef