My Life as a CNA #2: Strokes and Insights

 

This photo, from the mid-1960's, shows my maternal grandmother, Mary Urban Endrich, standing strong as ever in the magical flower and vegetable garden she kept between her house and ours -- the pink ranch in the background.

I know this is the mid-60's because Mary is already somewhat diminished here. A giant of a woman in both personality and form, she began to have a series of small strokes -- today we would call them TIA's (transient ischemic attack) -- when I was four and five years old. The big ones that finally took her from us were in 1970-72; she was only 74 when she died, and I, whom she had taught to read and write and garden and work a farm stand, only 11. 

Mary in 1961 at her full, pre-
stroke size, greeting my
arrival.

The big strokes caused her daughters, my mother and godmother, to move her in with us. Fifty percent of the time she was in NJ with my godmother and her family, 50% of the time with us. She and I shared a bedroom, so at an early age I got a good look at the damage strokes can cause to our beloved people. Her inability to speak, her permanently contracted hands, her rapid weight loss, her shuffling gait.

The majority of residents in today's nursing homes are those with some form of dementia or stroke victims. And the majority are women. Many of these can no longer independently perform their ADL's (activities of daily living) and require nursing assistants to feed, dress, toilet, and bathe them. A good many are confined to beds, unable to stand or walk on their own.

As a family, we cared for Mary until her body quit. The body is a tenacious thing and, 50 years later as we have extended life spans, even more so now than then. We were also there full time to tell her we loved her, and to remind her of the good life she had lived. 

In this way, we were also there to help her to die.

As CNA's, we're here to care for every resident just like family. In the absence of family members, we toilet, feed, dress and exercise people in the last portions of their lives. Yet it is different today. There are nearly six million patients with Alzheimer's in this country, and within 20 years this number is estimated to rise to 55 million. Alzheimer's and dementia break the connection between a body and its memories.

Can we know how to die when we cannot remember that we have lived?

As a culture, as we've become increasingly disconnected from the natural world around us, the cycles of living and dying can feel removed from us. Watching a flower bloom and die, we are reminded of how temporary life really is. We all die so that others can be born.

I still miss Mary every day. She is a huge part of who I am. Until her last breath she would point to me and say "the girl is good" no matter what I did or how impatient I was. Her love for and belief in me was no small thing to have. While I would have loved for her to live to see me go to high school and college as she wanted, I'm really glad we could all be there to help her die in love and dignity. And I hope that by caring lovingly for our many elderly residents who can no longer speak, or walk, or eat on their own that we are doing the same for them.

#NursingHomeLife

#CNALife

#LivingAndDying

The Beloved CommUNITY

 "Holy One, help us to truly become the Beloved Community."

Rev. Gerald "Jay" Williams, Ph.D., Union Church Boston

in his invocation for the 52nd MLK Day Breakfast

Every day is a good day to dance and sing in praise of, and to fight for, our common humanity. Especially as we annually honor the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

To truly become community requires UNITY. To build unity across our differences requires perseverance -- the type of stubborn, dogged relentless that can only be powered by our faith in and hope for a peaceful, just world in which all are perceived and treated with equal respect.

Building unity is hard: we are all so different! And there is richness and vibrancy in our diversity. Too often, however, we make the mistake of holding onto our individualism to the detriment of the common good.

Unity doesn't mean we all need to believe or say the same things: it simply means we have to believe enough in each other and our communities to let go a little bit of the individual selves to which we cling so tightly.

So today, in honor of MLK: what will I let go of in order to create unity and strengthen our beloved community?

#unity

#belovedcommunity

#MLKDay2022

My Life as a CNA #1: Swifts Premium Meats

My dad was a big guy.

I'm talking the broad-chested, big armed, big bellied kind of working guy. The kind of guy who literally, early in his working life, could heave several hundred pound sides of meat up into the Swifts Premium Meats truck he'd been hired to drive.

Then he got married.

He wanted to be home, not out driving. He wanted to make a good salary in order to build his own home on land given to him and my mom by his mother-in-law, and to adopt some kids.

My dad and his favorite "things" in the late
1950's: his mother, his wife, and his Chevy.

So he went to work as a machinist and sat at a work bench day in and day out with a loupe strapped to his forehead and machine oil covering his hands. By the time I came along in 1961 he'd got eczema, got fat, and dreamed of getting out. It took him another 10 years of drafting, research, and scheming about franchises and the great outdoors before he was able to invest his and a bit of money from his mother into the new development of a K.O.A. (Kampgrounds of America) campground in Mystic, CT, 25 miles away.

It was clear that being a factory machinist was making him unhealthy. Like almost everyone in those days, he was a heavy smoker. And the weight he was gaining just felt inexorable to us all.

My mother had a recurring nightmare, one she told me and my brother as little kids at the time, that as he was coming in the back door in the evening after work a murderer -- holding her hostage behind the door -- would shoot him. This was probably a lot more about her own fears than my dad's reality, but the message to her was that my dad was so big that death would not be able to miss him. She feared for his life, that his size would take him.

And it did.

I just had to confront my dad's life and death again, 20 years after he passed from complications of diabetes-caused amputations, in my first clinical shift as a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA).

I served three older, White male patients during my first shift. They all had diabetes, and all had circulation problems in their legs and feet -- just like my dad.

When I walked into the first room, I could hardly stop staring at those so-familiar legs. If you're a severe diabetic, the excess sugar in your blood stream impedes your immune system while simultaneously causing neuropathy, putting one at greater risk for an all-too common and dangerous bacterial skin infection of the legs known as cellulitis. 

This man's legs looked just like my dad's: swollen until they looked hard as newel posts, and a deep bluish red.

I wouldn't be exaggerating if I told you I wanted to cry: for this man, who had already lost a few toes so that his feet functioned in more of a club-like fashion; and for my dad, who died in 2002 after having his second below-knee leg amputation resulting from uncontrolled Type 2 diabetes. Obesity is one of the major factors in the onset of Type 2 diabetes as it causes insulin resistance. And obesity in the U.S. is a systemic social disease -- not a personal one alone. 

My next stop was to assist a very obese man with his toileting. Again like my dad, his weight-driven diabetes was creating infections and had made him unable to independently perform some of his key activities of daily living (ADL's in CNA jargon).

My nursing partner and I took care of him that day, as we said, "like a king." The duty nurses loved all these patients: they knew them well. The gentlemen, like my father, were in and out of the hospital regularly, living long term with the impacts of their life choices.

During my father's first hospital stay sometime in the 1990's, when they told him they were unable to heal the open wound on his foot that had been festering for months despite excellent care, he began to throw things at the nurses assigned to him. He was so angry that medicine was unable to fix a problem he knew would ultimately take his life.

But the only one who could have fixed it was him.

The Always Unfashionable Patriarchy

The author in first grade circa 1967.
As she grew older, she played football
but chose not to see herself as intimidating.

It's again unfashionable to talk about "patriarchy" -- if indeed it ever was, for a millisecond perhaps during the 1970's and 1980's, "in fashion."

But damn, as I become an older woman stepping out of the hierarchies of power, I experience daily its continued and oppressive dominance as a player in our White colonialist racist culture.

Patriarchy -- the hegemony of men over women -- is a cultural power structure and conjoined twin of capitalism because the hegemony of men over women has always, like capitalism, been about the power of property and power over the labor of those who create and cultivate it.

Who's got it, who's not.

What's annoying and frustrating to me these days are all the White men who conceive of themselves as "progressive" and talk-the-talk of diversity, equity, inclusion and change but whose actions still belie they are all about power and control. These defensive and offensive actions create a toxic environment of bullying, condescension, transactionality and ego-centeredness of the individual in which many of us know we no longer have to work, play, or live. 

Just one example: within the last year, when I was onboarding a White man to a new position in a company I founded, he made a point of telling me he was aware he was "intimidating" due to his size. He claimed to have been a football player. Obviously a small one -- maybe a running back? -- as he was barely taller than I and I in no way found his stature "intimidating." 

I laughed. I knew the goal of his passive aggressiveness: he wanted me to be intimidated. The same dude had rudely shut down another of the female founders during his orientation process.

THIS is what the "great resignation" is really about. The pandemic made a whole lot of workers and even volunteers, including in the nonprofit sector, aware we don't have to put up with this as "assumed normality" anymore. No being chided or lectured or "merely" condescended to by male staff or board members. No placating privileged and entitled donors of any gender. No being disrespected based on one's gender, the color of one's skin, or one's age. No being underpaid for same. No falsely attending to the transactional when we all know the relational is what matters. 

The pandemic, thankfully, forced many of us to break from the norms of White colonialist culture to belatedly realize that our families, friends, and relational personal lives are more important to which to attend than these priorities, values, and behaviors of a labor market constructed by White men to dominate, exploit, and justify their own inequitable gains. As one of the most important anti-racist documents in the arts stated it: we see you.

Imagine walking through the looking glass and into a different world. A world in which the values that have been ascribed to the feminine -- listening, questioning, collaborating, cooperating, respecting life, the planet, and the ancestors just to name a few -- govern our interactions: business, political, and social.

We can all, regardless of gender, walk through that mirror at any time. That's all feminism is: a choice. A choice of what world we want to live in, what values we want to promote, what behaviors we will tolerate. It's the courage and the privilege of saying "no" to terrible boyfriends, husbands, employers, boards and values. But we can't minimize the ramifications of saying no. They can be considerable: loss of income, loss of family, loss of prestige.

Let's wake up to unity. Too often we don't see that the values we ascribe to "all we have" overshadow the more important values we give up in order to have what we do.

#justsayno

#EndThePatriarchy

 

When Everything is Weaponized

Where shall we end, those of us wanting to live in peace in this weaponized world?

Let's not be fooled: weaponizing everything has another word when it is a strategy used by non-White people. 

That word is terrorism. And terrorism is the environment in which we are now living in the U.S. -- and not as a target from foreign entities.

Terrorism: ordinary individuals weaponizing their bodies, vehicles, or arms to achieve control and political aims.

The news from Wisconsin this week has not been good on this front.

Last night, a man drove his red SUV through barricades and into a holiday parade, killing, at last count, five people and injuring many more. Weaponizing his vehicle, as we've seen in Charlottesville and other incidents.

This was not a protest but significantly in many ways a Christmas parade: and even if it were a protest, the response should not be weaponized by either individuals or the government.

We allegedly have the right of peaceful protest in this nation. Of taking a knee whether on the football sidelines or the streets.

But wait: that brings us to the second piece of news from Wisconsin. The verdict in the Kyle Rittenhouse case.

If weaponizing our civic commons is legal -- i.e., everyone has the right to open carry deadly weapons in public -- then the only self defense is weaponized. As the jury found in Rittenhouse's case.

Gun rights activists are predominantly white and male and this is no accident given our nation's history. Pew survey after Pew survey have found that 60%+ of adults with guns in America today are white men, while this same demographic represents just one third of the U.S. population.

Guns are means of violent control. Ask any woman. Every year, more than 600 women are shot to death by "intimate partners" -- roughly one every 14 hours. Ask any indigenous person, against whose ancestors White colonists used guns and fire to commit "total warfare" or genocide to take the land: killing women and children in multiple massacres, placing bounties on scalps, destroying food supplies. Some but not most of these massacres were conducted by the military; the rest by the "militias" or Rangers now so sacred to the conservative right wing. And these "militias" were fiercely defended by the government in the Second Amendment as they were the principle means for the control of enslaved peoples. Disarming militias was seen as equivalent to subverting the slave system.

We don't need to complete a jigsaw puzzle picture from the above to get that the White Colonialist history of the U.S. is based in large part on white male violence centered on the gun. 

The Second Amendment protects "well regulated militias" -- not individual terrorists. And the more our legal system and government seek to protect the rights of terrorists, the further away from democracy we move.

And finally: around "gun rights" as around so many issues, I have to laugh that this nation, and especially the conservative right, considers themselves proponents of Christianity. The Christian faith with which I grew up was quite clear: "All who take the sword will perish by the sword." (Matthew 26:52)

In times like these, I almost wish we really WERE a nation that truly followed the teachings of Christ: feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Visit the imprisoned. Put down your swords. Peace be with you. But that's a far cry from the deadly White Colonialist nationalism that is our historical legacy. Putting this behind us will take extraordinary acts of will, morals, and vision at every level of society. Where is our Martin Luther King, Jr.? our Dalai Lama? our Nelson Mandela?

#EndGunViolence

#AntiRacism

#AntiColonialism

Maple Syrup Pie

My maple syrup pie just out of the oven.

Last Friday, November 5 my birth mother, Jeanine Yvonne Deslandes Cook, would have turned 80 had she not passed away at the beginning of September.

Having "found her" only 15 years ago, Jeanine and I did not know each other well and the rich Quebecois heritage with which she grew up -- both of her French-Canadian parents had immigrated just across the border to northern Vermont, and Jeanine spoke only French until she was sent to school at age six -- is unfamiliar to me still.

This is especially true as for some reason, my adopted mother told me that the ONE THING she knew about my birth parents is that they were 100% Irish. She was obviously confusing French-Canadian with Irish as my birth father, it turns out, was an immigrant from Quebec as well. Nonetheless, as a middle schooler I fastidiously created an Irish identity for myself: reading and re-reading Leon Uris's novel "Trinity" and crafting a deep, rich, lusty Anglophobia that persists to this day. I truly do not understand the American fascination with all things British and royal, especially Masterpiece Theatre and movies. Really, rebels. Really.

Jeanine Yvonne Deslandes
Cook in 2016.

But one of the first things Jeanine gave to me was a photo album containing printed recipes from her and from her mother. Her death was quite unexpected, and I treasure this recipe book today as I have few family photos or stories.

On the first page of this recipe book there are TWO recipes for maple syrup pie.

Even with my faux-Irish, Anglophobic heritage I did grow up in New England, and maple syrup is one of my favorite things in all the world.

My Bohemian adopted-maternal grandmother, Mary Urban Endrich, used to treat me to tricolor, store-bought pound cake (harlequin! like the ice cream) soaked in maple syrup. The best part was at the end, when all the crumbs in the bottom of the bowl were saturated with syrup. Yum.

So when I stumbled upon these maple syrup pie recipes I was enchanted.

One of the cool things about both recipes is that it is so clear they were treats made by and for people with little in their larders. They are both made from very few ingredients, all of which would have been on their shelves nearly all the time: flour, butter, and maple syrup. You don't even need eggs, or cream -- although the latter is delicious on top. 

The difference between the two is primarily that one is double-crusted and baked, and the other is poured into a pre-baked pie shell and allowed to set. 

One has a shake of pepper in it. You bet I did that.

And of course I researched other recipes -- because truly, the recipes were so simple I wasn't sure how they held together! One of them sounded like a maple flavored roux in a crust, and I wasn't so sure about that...

I ultimately adapted Mom's recipe with this one from Florence Fabricant in the NYTimes in 1987 -- it has eggs, and I kept Mom or Grandma's shake of pepper, adding some salt flakes on the top just for good measure.

Fire Shut Up in Our Bones

Foreground: Char'es Baby, Billie, and adult Charles
in the new opera, "Fire Shut Up in My Bones."
Photo by Ken Howard

Yesterday afternoon, a warm and sunny fall Sunday, we treated ourselves to a Metropolitan Opera HD broadcast way down east here in Ellsworth, Maine.

We had multiple reasons for wanting to experience Terence Blanchard's milestone new work, "Fire Shut Up in My Bones," based on the book by the same name by Charles M. Blow. First opera by a Black composer at the Met -- and, as Blanchard himself said, not because there isn't a lot of truly great work by Black composers out there deserving of this stage. The book was edited, proudly, by a dear friend of ours.

And last but not least, as women and lesbians who have experienced poverty and abuse, we're all too familiar with the original saying of Jeremiah 20:9 from which Blow's tale takes its title: "But if I say, 'I will not remember Him or speak anymore in His name,' then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire shut up in my bones; And I am weary of holding it in, and I cannot endure it."

We know that the oppression we repress with our silences has been deadly for us. Silence = Death.

Blanchard and Blow's new work is opera on its grand, traditional scale with all it promises: will there be blood? Revenge? Murder? The libretto, by Kasi Lemmons, depicts Blow's choices and actions on setting his fire -- fire burning internally over his sexual abuse as a 7-year-old boy growing up in poverty in northwestern Louisiana -- openly upon the world. 

The abuse, homophobia, sexism, poverty and toxic masculinity with which the opera portrays Blow wrestling is a constant for women, and particularly BIPOC women. As I sat in the dark watching the character of Blow struggle with his angels of Destiny and Loneliness (embodied by soprano Angel Blue), I could not but wonder: what would my friend, activist and playwright dee Clark, think? and would, or could, her story ever be validated and made visible on a world stage as large as the Met?

As many of my friends, colleagues, and readers are aware by now, dee passed away last Sunday, on All Hallow's Eve. The chronic health issues with which she struggled, including a genetic pulmonary disorder that demanded she be on oxygen 24/7, had spiraled downhill too quickly in just one week. She was only 64 but like many of opera's mythical female protagonists had lived lifetimes. It is a loss for all of us, for survivors everywhere and for our communities -- and tragic in that she did not live to see her memory-play, THE LAST GIRL, fully produced as she so dearly wanted.

Everything dee did with her life after surviving years of sexploitation and trafficking, including and perhaps especially writing THE LAST GIRL and creating a healing advocacy program for survivors around it titled Making the Last Girl First, was to support and amplify the voices and needs of other BIPOC girls surviving similar situations.

Like Blow, dee learned that telling her own story was healing, and encouraged others to tell their stories as well. Unlike Blow, dee's circumstances didn't support her in attending Grambling State or any university, nor did she have the male privilege and visibility to become a regular columnist at The New York Times. Last Girls too often become Forgotten Women. BIPOC girls are last precisely because it is their voices and lives that are viewed as disposable in U.S. culture; lives that remain invisible beneath the narratives and repression of this nation's dominant culture, forged as it is by racism, sexism, and poverty.

We will continue to develop and to share dee's story and play in tribute to her and to advance the legacy of her work. 

Would she have enjoyed "Fire Shut Up in My Bones"? I found its framing of homosexuality and women troubling: these oppressions are not just presented as Charles's crosses to bear, but in scenes, such as the top of Act 2 with beautiful gay male spirit dancers, that connote homosexuality more generally as punishment -- as a lower-level choice than his privileged relationships with women.

But dee said to me over and over she was an opportunist: she had learned to take advantage of those small gaps and windows and resources when they appeared. And she loved music, and the way Blanchard skillfully wove together jazz, gospel, and classical into the operatic form is stunning, as are the performances. I am hopeful that the success and visibility of "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" provides an opening for the voices of Black survivors of sexual abuse to be heard, recognized and supported. 

I imagined that if dee were sitting next to me she would have known this and, enjoying the spectacle, wanted it for her own story. "How do we get THE LAST GIRL at the Met?" she'd lean over to whisper, just as she did when we discussed sharing her memoir in book, cinematic, or dramatic form (she wanted to do all three).

I want this level of acknowledgement and visibility for THE LAST GIRL and for all forgotten women, too. Charles Blow and Terence Blanchard, are you listening?!

Sunday Morning Reflections: How We Make Meaning and Act Upon It

Continuing my ponderings on what we know, how we know it, what it all means and the choices we make as citizens based on this meaning.

Consider these statistics:

• unemployment was 6.3% when Pres Biden took office
• the Congressional Budget Office calculated it would take until the end of 2023 to get to 4.6%
• we hit 4.6% yesterday after adding 531,000 new jobs in October

Markets are man-made. They don't have a life of their own. Government policy steers them and, in the best nations, helps to protect its citizens from being chewed up by the greed of uncontrolled markets.

Thus my favorite quote from the past few days:

“Bold fiscal policy works,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen wrote on Twitter. “A rebound like this was never a foregone conclusion. When our administration took office back in January, there was a real risk that our economy was going to slip into a prolonged recession. Now our recovery is outpacing other wealthy nations’.”

Remember that when Republicans decry interventions such as the American Rescue Plan, the Build Back Better Plan, and vaccine mandates as "socialism" they are really saying: do not redistribute our wealth! We are entitled to being the 2% who control 16x as much wealth is 50% of all Americans!

Worse, Republicans' labeling of government interventions and protections on behalf of 98% of all Americans has racist roots. It began post reconstruction in the south as a way to deny that Black citizens and poor white workers should have the vote and create public services that would benefit them and all. (historical fact h/t Heather Cox Richardson)

The greatest eras of prosperity in this nation were created by Democrat AND Republican presidents in the period spanning FDR to Johnson. This broader-based prosperity was largely the result of government policies and programs.

Don't let the rich folx of any party fool you. Smart government fiscal, treasury, AND legislative policy is what builds prosperity beyond Wall Street (89% of whose stocks are owned by the 10% of wealthiest Americans, BTW). The stock market won't save us. But good government might.

And late breaking news related to this: check out this very cool "Cognitive Bias Codex"! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Cognitive_bias_codex_en.svg?utm_campaign=Recomendo&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter

And this! the economy is getting better, why do we think it is getting worse?! https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/06/upshot/inflation-psychology-economy.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20211107&instance_id=44834&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=63630&segment_id=73779&user_id=7abe35e910d636e32eee15d3dcaa3063

#protectvotingrights for all today.

#VoteSmart

#knowhistory

#LearnFacts 

The Amazing Life, Legacy, and Inspiration of dee Clarke

On Monday morning November 1, I received a call from a fellow member of the board of SurvivorSpeakUSA. I was in a meeting and the message was merely to call back.

By noon I'd learned that my artistic partner, friend, and mentor dee Clarke, the founder of SurvivorSpeak, had passed away the previous evening.

I have been unable to speak since then. While all life is temporary and I believe death is merely a passage of the soul between different forms -- it is still a blow to the gut when a dear friend and fiercely burning bright star has flown too soon.

As well documented in today's obituary, dee was not only righteous and fierce: she was a person of great great heart. Softness as well as steel.

She moved me, she changed me, she made me feel I had a compatriot in this world. With dee, our belief that we CAN intersect our work as artists and activists meaningfully, with purpose, to continuously make this world better for those with the least among us was made real and tangible.

dee knew in her bones and blood that the lives of BIPOC girls and women are still predominantly invisible to the great chewing engine of white dominant culture. She entered this fray and did not get spit out -- rather, she made a difference to many. Yes, through her legacy of legislation and her amazing personal story and memory-play, THE LAST GIRL: and perhaps most importantly with great kindness and love and caring for the immediate, real, too-often-dismissed needs of individual women and others experiencing poverty, sexual abuse, violence, trafficking, homelessness and mental illness. She worked every day to put the last girls first, so we end the chain of creating forgotten women. We can all join the nonprofit she founded and led, Survivor Speak USA, in putting The Last Girl First.

“She was a person who very powerfully put her love of survivors, of black and brown folks, of poor people into action. She did that more graciously and warmly than anyone I have ever met,” [Cait] Vaughan, [chair of the board of SSUSA] said. “Part of what drew some folks to her was that she was authentically herself. No matter how much she achieved since she became a recovered person and advocate, she was always able to stay very grounded in who her people were and where she came from. She spoke to everyone directly from the heart.”

Exactly one week before she died, we travelled down to Portland to attend, with dee, a wonderful play at Mad Horse Theatre Company. She had accepted my invitation, aligned with our work together on THE LAST GIRL, and while it was challenging for her to get around, with the able support of one of her caretakers, Amanda, we attended. When we got her and her oxygen settled in the front row, I bent over to show her my jacket. It is an old purple suede thing from my days in NYC long ago. Her eyes widened as she touched it. "I wore it for you," I said, referring to the role a shoplifted purple suede holds at the beginning of dee's play. She chuckled. "I like it," she said. And then she looked me right in the eye. "You and I would have been trouble makers together."

Yes, dee, yes. Making good trouble in the best sense of John Lewis's term -- plus some regular old fun and mischief as well. I will keep making trouble in your name. In peace, love, and strength -- fly on, sister. Fly on.

We Need An Education President, Part 1: Equitable Education and the $#%&^! Debt Ceiling

 A "debt ceiling" is exactly that: payments of PAST DEBT. During the four years of the Trump administration, the Republicans increased our national deficit by $7.8 TRILLION dollars. Now they don't want to raise the debt ceiling in order to pay for the debt they created. This has occurred with every Republican administration since Reagan, for 40 years, because you can't cut taxes and increase military spending. That's called "voodoo economics."

Yet people continue to vote for Republican policy that just doesn't make sense, in large part because we have a severe education/class gap in this country and, as many of our predecessors knew, excellent education is the foundation of a thriving democracy. We currently have neither.

We have unfortunately allowed an "excellent education" to be defined by attending college, and then not providing sufficient government support to do so -- thus the education/class gap.

But the truth is an "excellent education" doesn't require college. It does, however, require strong high school education in the foundations of citizenship: critical thinking, media literacy, history, civics, a passion for lifelong learning, creative and practical problem solving -- all of which can and should be taught in high schools.

Yet because we've allowed public education to be dictated by property taxes, we've created a class gap here as well, with students from wealthier districts graduating with more proficiencies than those from poorer districts and, in general, high schools forfeiting their educational mandate to colleges.

We need an education President and educational leadership. Education is the #1 requirement for strong economies, communities, and nations and to end disinformation campaigns and decrease partisanship.

The U.S. legacy is one of militancy: we spend 3.3% of our GDP, more than the total of the 11 next countries including China, Germany, Russia, Great Britain and South Korea, on our military.

It is past time to shift some of this money to where it will make a real difference to our national strength: to teachers, curricula, and equitable primary, secondary, and higher education options for all.

Desdemona, Othello, and the Vigilantes of Texas

The last two days of news from Texas have Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" on many a woman's minds.

First, restrict the vote, in particular to ensure the 3 million unregistered voters of color do not have access to the ballot.

Then pass a law encouraging citizens to turn women and health care providers (and Uber drivers!) in for abortion.

Finally, pass another law allowing same citizens to carry guns without permits.

Can you say "white male vigilantes" are in charge in Texas?!

With deep implications for democracy in the rest of this nation.

"The Handmaid's Tale" is, of course, not the only art work depicting the horrors of patriarchy out-of-control -- or the ways misogyny and racism intersect to maintain white male power structures.

Shakespeare had his eye on these dynamics 400 years ago when he wrote "Othello." Paula Vogel amplified this story and gave it even deeper meaning in her 1993 take on it from the women's perspective, "Desdemona, the story of a handkerchief." Most recently and certainly not least, in 2011 eminent author Toni Morrison took on Desdemona's relationship with the African nurse who raised her.

Opera House Arts in Stonington was therefore rather prescient, really, in booking a double bill of "Othello" and "Desdemona, a play about a handkerchief" as part of their 2021 outdoor/pandemic summer season.

Since "Othello" is read in many a high school English Language Arts class, I hope you are familiar with its story of an embittered, resentful White man, Iago, lying and scheming to bring down his heroic Moorish/Black general, Othello, by falsely enraging his jealousy to the point of murdering his own beloved wife, Desdemona.

From left, Ellis Greer as Desdemona, Imani Youngblood as Bianca,
and Esther Williamson as Emilia in  Opera House Arts' 2021
production of Paula Vogel's "Desdemona, a play
about a handkerchief," directed by Julia Sears.
Photo courtesy Opera House Arts.

It's an all-too-classic story, unfortunately, of how the power struggles between men often lead to domestic and sexual violence and the murder of women.

Vogel, an award-winning playwright, correctly determined 30 years ago that the female characters voices needed to be centered and heard: not only Desdemona's, but her servant Emilia's, wife to Iago; and Bianca's, the courtesan lover of competing soldier Cassio. As the play gives them place and power, I was unsurprised to find that play's white male reviewers pretty much universally loathed it.

Yet what Vogel achieves, with excellent direction at OHA by multidisciplinary feminist theater maker Julia Sears, is a searing, funny, and yes, painful expose of women's experiences, relationships, and conversations, unseen by the male gaze in the kitchens and laundry rooms that remain a far cry away from legislative halls.

Vogel portrays youthful love interest Desdemona (Ellis Greer) as the spoiled and entitled princess she historically most likely was -- but also an entrapped woman seeking rebellion by controlling her own sexuality. She is anchored by her working class servant, Emilia (Esther Williamson), who in Vogel's world is able to well and humorously articulate the patriarchal vise in which all three women find themselves. Williamson is particularly masterful in her delivery of her disgust with Desdemona's class-based entitlement, and her analysis of the danger her lady's behavior is creating for them both. As Bianca, Sears' choice of Imani Youngblood to return to OHA in this small but vital role also opened up live musical opportunities that deepened the overall emotional impact of the production.

Vogel, Sears, and these three women provided, for three weeks of August in the woods of Nervous Nellie's on Deer Isle, a sharp and too hidden window into women's experiences behind the scenes of the male dominant culture -- one we desperately need to experience, understand, and listen to if we hope to fight off the violent, controlling, and armed Texas rangers in their wish to remain ascendant.

#maine

#liveperformance

#shakespeare

#othello

#texas

#desdemona

#paulavogel

#abortionrights

The Many Mysteries of Mary

Mary Urban Endrich holding
Linda Louise Nelson
on her first day home.

I've spent a lot of time lately staring at family photos.

Many of these photos are more than 100 years old, taken at the turn of the 20th century. Some pre-date that and traveled here from Bohemia in the late 19th century, or were taken in New York City studios during that same period as boats landed from Bremen and other European ports.

I've started with my grandmother Mary Urban Endrich whom, as you may remember from previous posts, was of great import to me. My parents built their house next door to hers, on a portion of the 15+ acres of Endrich land purchased by her husband, Richard, in 1919 and which she deeded to them.

She was 63 years old in this photo on the day I was first brought to my adopted home from Catholic Charities. This photo, from October 1961, was taken on the back steps -- forever unfinished -- of the house my parents built.

Mary had a large garden that formed the buffer between our house and hers. In this second photo you can see her standing tall amongst zinnias and sunflowers with our 1950's pink ranch in the background. In addition to the flowers, bouquets of which she sold with my toddler "assistance" from a roadside table along the main route running up the Connecticut River between Old Saybrook and Middletown, where I was born; New Britain, where my dad was from; and Hartford, the state capital, Mary also grew squash, cucumbers, corn and tomatoes which fed us all summer and into the fall.

Mary in her garden, Old Saybrook, CT

I am trying to write the myth of who I am. Birthed by a French speaking, 18-year-old daughter of rural Quebecois immigrants, raised by Swedes and Bohemians.

Mary was my primary Bohemian.

"Send the little girl over!" she'd bellow to my mother in her everyday stage voice across the garden and away I'd go down the small hill and along the mowed path on my stubby legs. Especially after the arrival of my brother, also adopted, when I was two and a half, it seems I was at Mary's every day: learning to read, to write, to play her made up game of Stars with paper, pencils, and a breadcrumb, to explore the attic with her, to problem solve, learning to phone home and unlock the door when she went into one of her "states."

Her father, Frantisek, took work as a butcher in the East Village when they first landed in NYC in 1892 but between 1900 and 1910 he was able to buy a farm in Killingworth, CT, and was thereafter recorded in census documents as a self-employed farmer. Mary came by her gardening honestly. You can see that one of the early photos of her in the collage below is posed with two other girls in a cabbage patch!

I was unaware that cameras were popularly available beginning in 1900 when the first Brownie was invented. Every snapshot taken of us as kids was taken on my Mom's Eastman Kodak Brownie, a far cry in the 1960's from the humble box camera my grandmother's family obviously owned once they got to Connecticut.

A Brownie 2 Camera
circa 1910.

And still. These cardboard box cameras, which churned out photos of my young, beautiful, charismatic, energetic grandmother from age 18 through her marriage at 22, cost around $3, the equivalent of $82 today.

Not bad for farmers.

In addition to their existence, the photos expose a sense of prosperity one no longer assumes belongs to farmers at the beginning of the 20th century. In these photos, Mary is decked out in numerous stylish hats, dresses, and lace. Her brothers in high collars and ties, lace curtains as their backdrop.

Who is this Mary? I never saw her in all these hats, never saw her in anything more than simple farm house dresses. Where did the money come from for the Urban's to "buy the farm"? How did she meet my grandfather, Richard, who on his 1917 WWI draft registration card described himself as a ship fitter and seems to have come to Essex, CT from the Bronx to work at the Dauntless Shipyard? Who, in July of 1919, purchased the 15+ acres on the Essex/Old Saybrook town line on which my mother, aunt, and uncle were born and on which I grew up? They married the next year, on November 24, 1920. Richard was 31, 10 years older than Mary.

Richard was gone, of colon cancer, by the time of my arrival. But my uncle Richie, and several of Richard's siblings, all worked at the Pratt-Reed piano works in Ivoryton. No more shipyards.

The many mysteries continue.

The many mysteries of Mary.

First Principles: Do No Harm

Cute dog photo: the look of love.

Here is how we're living these days. Everywhere, in every village across the U.S.

In a public meeting and again in an OpEd to our local weekly newspaper, our neighbor Mr. Freeman felt justified in throwing the partisan term "cancel culture" at those who have asked him and elected officials to stop harming others with their public speech.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of such divisiveness. I want us to remember that to enter the polis, or public realm, we do so to find common ground amongst our differences, and to be kind toward and compassionate of our imperfect selves.

When we enter the public realm either as elected officials or participating citizens, we are required to be self-aware, to understand how our personal beliefs and the ways we express them cause harm to others, and to vow to reduce and limit that harm.

Participating in the public realm requires intentionality, welcome, listening, generosity, the ability to ask for as well as to give forgiveness, and, most importantly, a conscious understanding of how harm happens and the desire to do no harm. 

There can be no single holders of "truth" in the public realm: as the German-Jewish philosopher of the Holocaust Hannah Arendt noted, "truth" is something we build between each other and our differences.

Those who believe they are holders of a single "truth" are playing god in a way that lacks humility and causes harm to those not like themselves. It is no one's place to judge in a way that holds anyone else in a less equal place.

We are united and graced by the same animating spirit of this world. This shared spirit is the foundation on which our public speech and actions must rest. All humans, regardless of the color of their skin, their gender, or whom they love are sacred and worthy of sacrament and justice.

As a proud and lifelong queer person, I've personally experienced the deep and lasting harm caused by speech that dehumanizes me by saying I am not worthy of certain basic rights. For my survival, I've learned to question whether my and others' humanity is equitably served by those who proudly profess beliefs that discriminate against us.

Mr. Freeman wants the right to proclaim his own "Biblical truth" not just in his church or home but in the public square. Yet this highly personal reading of the Bible judges that I and others are not worthy of the human dignity of equal access to the rights, benefits and sacrament of marriage. This speech, repeated again in Mr. Freeman's OpEd, dehumanizes queer people and causes harm: harm he does not intend, but of which he must become aware.

Dehumanizing Black and Indigenous peoples as "animals" and "savages" unworthy of the rights of literacy, marriage, property ownership, etc. is how U.S. white culture has justified and implemented centuries of genocide, enslavement, and mass incarceration.

Dehumanizing speech includes that some are “sinners” to be saved by others, and leads to bullying, harassment, and sometimes death. Queer people are followed, bullied, beaten up, thrown off bridges, tied to fences. We've been kept from our sick and dying loved ones because we cannot marry. We've been kept from jobs or the health care we need because of how we look or who we love.

The division of church and state structured into our public realm is crucial in a world in which some religions encourage their participants to be the judge and jury over others, rather than to live in the fullness of a grace that unites the living world.

Public officials are asked to resign when the people they represent no longer trust they can uphold the common good.

Simply saying "I'm sorry" for patterns of behavior are not enough for those who have been harmed to believe we will not continue to be harmed. We must hear that the people representing us understand how harm is caused, and clearly state that not only will they discontinue such speech into the future but also evaluate their decisions to be sure they treat everyone equally. 

Requests for resignation could and should prompt opportunities for listening, meaningful dialogue and forgiveness. Unfortunately, too often such calls only generate defensiveness and partisan rhetoric, which in turn limit learning and understanding.

Asking for the resignation of a public official is not "cancelling" or condemning them. It is an action that speaks to the seriousness of the harm, all the past harm, and the potential for future harm; and is made to generate and make visible real understanding of what must be forgiven.

As a practicing Catholic I am fully aware of the serious limitations and imperfections of religious institutions. I am also aware of the power of grace to unite us beyond the individual readings of scripture and actions that are used to divide us.

It seems to me that rather than a single "Biblical truth" we are better served by acting on the larger values embodied by the Christ, Buddha, Allah, and other spiritual teachers.

Love everyone. Actively seek justice and mercy. Ask for forgiveness. Do no harm.

#truth

#religion

#sacraments

#donoharm

Look with the Heart

"One must look with the heart for the eyes are blind."

This is composer Maia Aprahamian's grand finale to her children's opera version of Saint-Exupery's classic novel, "The Little Prince." I hope you had the opportunity to read it in junior high school French class, as did I! This story with its small royalty from a tiny distant star, roses, snake, and endearingly knowing fennec fox is a magical tale that helps us to know there is much more to this world than the grim realities with which we are daily presented.

Bagaduce Music's concert of Maia's music from its archives Thursday night at Edgewood Farm vividly returned Maia's smile and joie de vivre to my heart and mind.

Composer Maia Aprahamian in 2009 in the
Deer Isle-Stonington School.

Her bright blue eyes twinkled as she created a new musical work, glittered in school as she rigorously supported students in crafting lyrics and musical motifs. It was my great pleasure to work with her, accompanying her into our schools for two years during the creation of Opera House Arts' commission of her chamber opera version of Robert McCloskey's island classic, "Burt Dow, Deep Water Man." 

Maia, an active member of the Greek Orthodox Church, exemplified this observation from the writer Julia Cameron:

"We are, each of us, more than we seem, more than the sum of our merely human components. There is a divine spark animating each of us, and that divine spark also animates our art."

It surely animated Maia's art.

Thursday evening's concert of Maia's "Little's" was a presentation of excerpts from three of her full-length works written with and/or for children and their families: The Little Prince, The Little Engine that Could, and The Little Match Girl.

Maia recognized the community power behind each of these three classic tales, from the hard-working optimism of the Little Engine who can do new things not previously tried to the critiques of oppressive adult society painted enchantingly and everlastingly by Saint-Exupery's and Anderson's fables.

A member of Stonington's Whitman family, Maia took back her original Armenian family name of Aprahamian. She, like we as founders of Opera House Arts (OHA), had a strong passion for presenting complex performances to be enjoyed by children alongside the adults in their families; i.e., music and theater and vaudeville and dance complicated enough to be enjoyed by all generations together. Together and with the Whitman family's enduring support, we created the Live for $5 Series at OHA to weekly fulfill this mission and to ensure that children as well as adults had access to the highest quality and most diverse performance forms. I remember the lunch at Lily's Cafe in which we talked through this concept of wanting to give young audiences something greater than the live performances to which they generally had access. Artists such as Avner the Eccentric or the playwright Mike Gorman's absurdist Biffing Mussels or Headlong Dance Theater were just a few of those who have graced the Live for $5 stage. 

Biffing Mussels in Live for $5 on stage at
the Stonington Opera House, featuring
community cast with Tommy Piper and
Melody Bates, seated.

Music can help us carry with us in perpetuity our visceral understanding that we are but tiny specks in a grand universe, the mystery of which only our imaginations can conceive and express through art. When we leave the theater humming, or singing together the final refrain, we have taken that mystery and magic into our hearts where, like the little prince's rose, they must be watered and cared for. For as the fox told the prince, "Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."

Or as Maia wrote, and the audience sang along with Thursday's wonderful singers under the direction of music director Peter Szep in full, four-part harmony to close the concert:

One must look with the heart, for the eyes are blind

One must seek with the heart, for the heart to find

For the eyes of the heart give vision to the reason

And the ears of the heart give music to the mind

One must look with the heart, for the eyes are blind.

Live Long and Prosper: the Power of Performance

Dr. Ruth E. Grauert -- otherwise known to her familiars as Reg -- was a choreographer, lighting designer, production stage manager, dance critic and, with her life partner Frances Reid, founder of Bearnstow, a camp on Parker Pond in Mt. Vernon, Maine.

Reg lived to be 101, passing away just a year ago on May 20, 2020.

You can watch and be inspired by her dancing at age 100 here.

Reg and her legacy bear strong witness to the power of performance in our lives.

I'm sad and embarrassed to admit that, despite our firm commitment to contemporary dance for 17 years at Opera House Arts, we were too busy to experience this place, and her, in Reg's lifetime.

Thanks, however, to an invitation from my Maine performing arts colleague Laura Faure, I had the amazing good fortune to visit Bearnstow a week ago. The camp had finished its sessions for area students in July, and was between workshops for adults with two dancers I much admire: Clair Porter on "Writing and Moving" and K.J. Holmes on "Combining Disciplines for Creative Performance."

Of the 17 people at the camp during my visit, several had been engaged with Bearnstow for many years. Two in particular captured my imagination: a woman, first brought to camp by her mother in the 1970's, on her annual stay with her own two kids; and the great human, dancer, and choreographer Bebe Miller, chair of the Bearnstow board -- who had also grown up there beginning in the late 1950's when her mother was the camp nurse from Red Hook, Brooklyn. 

I found the depth of the connections between these two, their families, and Reg and Bearnstow to be very moving. Like the long lives of the loons that proliferate on the camp's lake, the place's long history creates a rich humous, many layers of smells and vitality and creativity that hum with fertility through the buildings and the paths between them.

The place itself is, as one of the generational attendees noted, remarkable for its stillness. Like many traditional Maine sporting camps, as an example of which it is on the National Register of Historic Places, it is a congregation of small wooden cabins along a densely forested lake shore. From the water, the cabins are barely visible through the spruce woods that, as Bebe remembers, once mixed with many birch, the decaying white-skinned remnants of which line the pathways and litter the forest floor.

In contrast to this long steady stillness of purpose and being, the mainstream White U.S. culture that is my own heritage is so much about change, the "melting pot" that is Whiteness: about letting go of connections to one's past, one's language, and even one's ancestors. I've experienced this phenomenon as an adopted child working to piece together family histories of first generation grandparents and parents. So much is lost; the dirt beneath our feet unnecessarily thin.

But this land's native peoples, and those who were brought here as enslaved labor, know and acknowledge the power of ancestors. We gain depth when we know and love our roots, when we pay tribute to all those who made it possible for us to be here to create the newness we each create. We wouldn't be here without these ancestors and places, and how much more delightful to gratefully know and honor their stories and lives that we may, from the layers of accruing soil, create more complex and meaningful art and lives ourselves?

Reg's long life and the legacy she has left make all this visible -- she indeed lived long and prospered -- for those who wish to see with our hearts as well as our eyes.

Laura, Bebe, Molly, Alison, Peter and others are working to build on and to extend this legacy into the future, so we, too, as well as those who follow us may experience the deep, generous creativity that is Bearnstow Camp.

To learn more about Bearnstow and Reg, check out the Bearnstow Journal. Most recently, Maine journalist Bob Keyes wrote a great article on the camp in the Portland Press Herald.

#dance

#liveperformance

#bearnstow

#mainecamps