the cassandra pages

"We Will Take America Without Firing a Shot" --Nikita Khrushchev

Like many of us, I watched Trump's performance in Europe, and then with Putin in Helsinki, with astonishment that quickly gave way to anger and revulsion. His spineless Republican defenders in Congress and the media did break ranks to a greater degree than usual, with remarks like "“The dam has broken,” from Senator Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee. After the backlash of criticism, Trump did his usual halfhearted backtracking, which only confused things more. Though a lot of critics hope otherwise, I doubt that even the extraordinary and shameful spectacle of an American president siding with a Russian dictator against his own intelligence community, and America's allies and friends, will bring about the downfall of this seemingly interminable nightmare of a presidency. What does that say about us?

At this point in life, as I watch what's going on, I wonder about the fleeting quality of collective memory. My childhood was shaped by two things in particular: the fact that WWII was still vivid for my parents' generation, and by the reality of the Cold War that became equally vivid for mine, as we hid under our desks or lined up against school corridors during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Eastern Europe fell under the so-called Iron Curtain, and China rose as a Communist power in the east.

My father, a tank driver in Patton's army in WWII Europe, had fought against fascism to keep Europe and the rest of the Western world free; he landed at Normandy the day after D-Day, was in the Battle of the Bulge, liberated concentration camps, spent long months in a hospital in Belgium, and was fortunate to survive. I wept when I visited the memorials in England's cathedrals to the Americans who had helped defend Britain, which would almost certainly have fallen to Hitler if our country had not entered the war, and to Britain's own astonishing courage in defense of their homeland.

Therefore it was perhaps not surprising that I was deeply offended by a photograph from last week of Trump sitting in Winston Churchill's leather chair, with a smug smile on his face, looking like a latter-day Napoleon. Neither Churchill nor Franklin Roosevelt, a man of great personal courage and the architect of compassionate American progressivism, would have anything but contempt for him.

But after insulting the European heads of states, and threatening the alliances and friendships that have endured to defend and support democracy since the end of WWII, Trump marched on to Helsinki, incredibly calling the European Union "our foes." His news conference with Putin, and his behavior during their completely opaque summit, convinced me that he is not only a dangerously erratic sycophant, but a puppet, carrying out -- wittingly or unwittingly -- Putin's careful and deliberate undermining of the western alliance, its governments, and its democratic institutions.

And so it was not surprising, either, that I was deeply offended, astonished, and grief-stricken by what happened in Helsinki. I remember the Civil Defense drills of my childhood, and being certain that a nuclear war with the Soviet Union was inevitable. I remember exactly where I was when I heard that Nikita Khrushchev had taken off his shoe and pounded it on the podium at the United Nations. This was the man who once said the chilling words, “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within....” In the 1950s, those words were met with outrage and defiance. Today, they sound not only prophetic but like a description of current reality.

My father's Civil Defense helmet, just like this, lived in our coat closet throughout the 50s and 60s - I doubt if today's young people can imagine town- and city-wide air raid drills in America, but they were normal for a number of years then.

Yes, there was glasnost, the Berlin Wall came down, Eastern Europe became free again -- but a great deal has happened since Putin came to power with his new cadre of thuggish oligarchs. How have we possibly moved in half a century to a point where millions of Americans, let alone elected American politicians, are defending and excusing the president for choosing someone like Putin as their friend while dismissing our own intelligence agencies, dismantling the State Department, and repudiating the country's most cherished values and the principles on which it was founded? The only answers are ignorance and gullibility, refusal to learn from history, racist fear of the latest version of "otherness", blatant self-interest, and subservience to power. None of those human characteristics can be blamed on the Russians -- but they are all being skillfully exploited by them.

Barack Obama gave a good speech in South Africa, but it was too long for most people to digest, and far too obscure - if he wants to really help, he's got to name names and say clearly and succinctly exactly what is happening without surrounding the uncomfortable truth with erudite words. Obama too often uses lofty rhetoric that sounds positive and makes us feel good, but doesn't address fully the historical sins and great flaws and hypocrisies of America itself. Tragically, what could be called hypocrisies during Obama's administration have become cornerstones of policy during Trump's.

Many people besides myself feel that Helsinki was a watershed event. But will it actually result in a final push toward ending this disgraceful presidency and turning around a ship that is about to crash onto the rocks, or will this episode too be glossed over and forgotten? Only John McCain, who no longer has anything to lose, was brutally honest about the grave danger and permanent damage that may result from Trump's actions. I urge you to read his whole statement:

“Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake.

“President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world.

“It is tempting to describe the press conference as a pathetic rout — as an illustration of the perils of under-preparation and inexperience. But these were not the errant tweets of a novice politician. These were the deliberate choices of a president who seems determined to realize his delusions of a warm relationship with Putin’s regime without any regard for the true nature of his rule, his violent disregard for the sovereignty of his neighbors, his complicity in the slaughter of the Syrian people, his violation of international treaties, and his assault on democratic institutions throughout the world.

“Coming close on the heels of President Trump’s bombastic and erratic conduct towards our closest friends and allies in Brussels and Britain, today’s press conference marks a recent low point in the history of the American Presidency. That the president was attended in Helsinki by a team of competent and patriotic advisors makes his blunders and capitulations all the more painful and inexplicable.

“No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are — a republic of free people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad. American presidents must be the champions of that cause if it is to succeed. Americans are waiting and hoping for President Trump to embrace that sacred responsibility. One can only hope they are not waiting totally in vain.”

Oil Pastels: Further Experiments, and a Temporary Refuge

View toward Palermo, from Segesta. Oil pastel on paper, 12" x 8.5".

This is a picture I started last week. Yesterday I worked on it quite a bit more, and am ready to call it finished. 

 

I'm finding oil pastel to be a strange medium and hard to get used to, but I rather like how it fits somewhere between painting and drawing. The technique is more like drawing, but the result more like painting. These details are a little larger than life-size, so you can see how the creamy, crayon-like pigment functions quite a lot like artist's oil paint. It sits up on the surface, can be applied quite thickly, but also blended with a finger or a rolled paper stomp. You can scratch through it to reveal lower layers, or rough it up with a contrasting color, applied quite lightly and dryly.

These days, I find the news has required concentration on something else, a different world of values, especially for us up in Canada. I must say, I'm not one for being very nationalistic (a common trait up here) but there's nothing like being insulted and threatened to bring us together. Listening to male bullies also makes me want to find refuge in something that's flexible, pliant, under my own control, and has a chance at being beautiful and reflective of a better world.

The Silencing of Thoughtfulness

Last night, I read an interview in El Pais with the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, who is now almost 89. It's well worth reading. I don't read a lot of pure philosophy, and I don't know Habermas' work, but I was interested in what he was saying about journalism, writing, reading, and the media. "There's a cacophony that fills me with despair," he said. Yes. Me too.

Lest we get off on the wrong foot here, Habermas doesn't dismiss contemporary media, or specifically the internet and social media. He brings up and praises many aspects of new media that have helped humankind already, from the ability to organize from the grassroots to creating connections for support and research among people with rare diseases, saying that there are "many niches where trustworthy information and sounds opinions are exchanged." He's not a Luddite, and he doesn't seem to have a fear of technology or change. What he's concerned about is the same trend that concerns me.

He states the problem succinctly: "You can't have committed intellectuals if you don't have the readers to address the ideas to."

This is exactly what bothers me, as a thoughtful person who likes to write seriously about various topics. For about a decade, there were writers like me -- I wouldn't go so far as to call myself "a committed intellectual," but you know what I mean -- who used blogging for this purpose, and found a wide community of like-minded readers and other writers. Because our attention wasn't nearly as fragmented as it is now, we also had time to read newspapers and journals, and to read longer pieces on the web.  Because the world didn't seem as frightening or chaotic, I think we didn't feel the need to escape into superficiality as much, and substantive conversations were welcomed. I still find this among certain groups of friends, but I'm dismayed by "the cacophony" which seems to drown out most everything, and has pretty much destroyed what we used to call journalism.

Habemas describes this in his own words: at base, you need to have an infrastructure of "alert journalism, with newspapers of reference and mass media capable of directing the interest of the majority toward topics that are relevant to the formation of public opinion, and also the existence of a reading population that is interested in politics, educated, accustomed to the conflictive process of forming opinions, and which takes the time to read quality, independent press."

"That infrastructure is no longer intact in most places," he says -- and of course we all know this. What he calls "the splintering effect of internet" has changed the role of traditional media and "triggered the disintegration of the public sphere." However, what he's even more concerned about is "a much more insidious model of commercialization in which the goal is not explicitly the consumer's attention, but the economic exploitation of the user's private profile."

But it's not just the top-down manipulation that worries him, it's what's happening to us.

"From the time the printed page was invented, turning everyone into a potential reader, it took centuries until the entire population could read. The Internet is turning us all into potential authors and it's only a couple of decades old. Perhaps with time we will learn to manage the social networks in a civilized manner...I am too old to judge the cultural impulse that the new media is giving birth to. But it annoys me that it's the first media revolution in the history mankind to first and foremost serve economic rather than cultural ends."

He agreed with the interviewer that the internet is being used aggressively to encourage a new kind of illiteracy, especially by Trump, and especially in America. Hebemas goes on to talk about his own politics, Europe, the migration crisis and economics, compassion, government, religion. It's well worth reading.

But I'm mainly concerned about the silencing effect this overall trend has on thoughtful people: myself, and many of my friends. Who wants to shout into a whirlwind? For that matter, who wants to shout at all?

On Guns, Men, and Fear

7,000 pairs of shoes were placed on the U.S. Capitol lawn on Tuesday to symbolize the number of children killed by gun violence in the United States since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012.

This week I've read three loosely related articles that I wanted to recommend to others who may be thinking, as I am, about the continued and unabated rise in U.S. gun violence, the factors that drive white male rage, and the rise of far-right political ideologies in the western world. These are all thoughtful pieces, well worth your time. I'm trying to educate myself about where these trends can actually go, if unchecked, but also to understand the forces that attract people to guns, violence, and far-right ideologies in the first place. Not all gun violence is the same: many of the school shooters have been male loners who have targeted white children, and have not subscribed to a particular political ideology, while other mass killers have been politically motivated. Most, however, seem to have felt powerless in current society, and turned to guns as the ultimate means of expressing themselves.

Why are White Men Stockpiling Guns? Scientific American (thanks to Lorianne DiSabato at Hoarded Ordinaries for the link.)

According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile. These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives. Taken together, these studies describe a population that is struggling to find a new story—one in which they are once again the heroes.

White Supremacists are Increasingly Using Public Banners to Spread their Message New York Times

From May 20, 2017, through this Monday, the A.D.L.’s Center on Extremism found, there were 72 such episodes. Before that period, the A.D.L. had not documented any white supremacist banners since Dec. 11, 2016...Most of those documented in Thursday’s report were racist or anti-immigrant in nature, with messages ranging from “America first: End immigration” to “‘Diversity’ is a code word for white genocide.” Others were anti-Muslim (a banner displayed on an overpass near Dearborn, Mich., home to one of the largest mosques in North America, read “DANGER: Sharia city ahead”), anti-Semitic (“UNjew HUMANITY”) or misogynistic (“Feminists deserve the rope”).

The Fascist Movement that Has Brought Mussolini back to the Mainstream The Guardian

"CasaPound presented itself as the house of the ideologically homeless too. Iannone said it offered “a space of liberty, where anyone who has something to say and can’t say it elsewhere will always find political asylum”. It adopted a pose of being not a part of the debate, but the receptacle of it. It reminded some of Mussolini’s line that “fascism is the church of all the heresies”.

 

A friend from a while ago, now an Episcopal priest, had a mantra I've never forgotten: "All anger is fear; all fear is fear of loss." While it's an oversimplification, it holds a lot of truth -- as I've found when asking myself, at times, what is the source of my own anger. And of course I'm angry when I look at the news of the world and, especially, in my former home of America. When I look deeper, I can see that this anger has its roots in a profound sense of fear that the entire fabric of American life is unraveling, and that the principles on which the country was founded have been irrevocably undermined. There has also been fear for individual people I know and love, including members of my own family, and myself by extension.

Of course, for a fairly large number of other Americans, the exact opposite fear is evoked: they feel that America was founded for, and should be run by, white men like themselves, and that immigration and racial diversity, as well as equality between men and women, and open acceptance of gender diversity, are all grave threats to their country and their own safety, security, and identity. Many liberals seem to believe the pendulum is going to swing back to some sort of tolerable middle, if we could just get rid of the current administration.

I think that's incredibly naive. The cat is out of the proverbial bag, and growing into a hungry, noisy, muscled tiger that can't be domesticated. Perhaps it will always stay on the fringes, growling and occasionally coming into the village under cover of darkness to claim some victims. You can believe that if you want to; history has often showed us otherwise. When human beings are afraid, they resort to behaviors that always blame, demonize, and eventually dehumanize "the other", allowing unacceptable acts. Those range from the establishment of police states (which can be overt or subtle) that excuse and allow the breakdown of privacy laws, to covert and open wars and genocide, to deportations and incarceration of people on ethnic or religious grounds, to forced interrogations and torture, and the rise of fascist political movements that make formerly illegal actions not only legal, but accepted as necessary.

And, as the article about the resurgence of neo-fascism in Italy points out, the new alt-right is clever and astute, opening itself not just to a narrow political spectrum, but as a home for anyone who feels forgotten, voiceless, politically disenfranchised. The leaders are savvy about media and popular culture, using unlikely strategies to reach converts, as well as squishy messages -- drawn even from left-wing causes -- to popularize their groups and their message.

Canadians tend to look south across the border with a kind of well-meant, pitying bemusement, and we all tell ourselves, "that couldn't happen here." Maybe not - I certainly hope not - but there are far-right groups in Canada too. Until twenty years ago, I never thought I'd see what is happening in the U.S. happen there: I thought the people would never allow it. I was completely wrong. It's possible that #TurnThemOut will triumph in the U.S. mid-term election, but the power of groups like the NRA will continue, as will the spinelessness of most members of Congress who care more about being re-elected than about children's lives, and who refuse to stand up against hate crime, hate speech, privacy violations in the name of "security", and torture -- to name just a few of the actions that ought to be completely unacceptable and illegal in a modern democracy.

Regardless of what country we live in, we have to see clearly that western democracies are presently under a serious threat. This does not mean that those governments were formerly blameless, without major issues, blind spots, and ongoing grievous sins that that they have failed to address throughout their own histories. I think you know what I mean. But we have to open our eyes and stop fooling ourselves that the forces that threaten the very underling principles of freedom and equality will slink back into the darkness, as the world becomes more migrant and more brown: they won't.

We need to remember, over and over, that only pressure from the grassroots will ultimately change governmental policies. The far-right is, after all, a grassroots movement that has been emboldened by the likes of Trump and Bannon and the resurgence of neo-Nazi and fascist groups worldwide: they are angry and fearful people who are racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim, believe in white supremacy, and see their worldview threatened by immigration, black presidents, women in power, diversity in formerly white cities and towns that threatens to become diversity in one's own family. Why do progressives tend to trust in top-down solutions? Why do we think that a vote alone is enough to combat such an ideology? We had eight years of Obama's presidency and what we are seeing now is not an aberration, it is in part a backlash by people who absolutely hated seeing a black man in that office.

It's been proven that people who experience and live with diversity have the most positive attitudes toward those who are different from themselves. It's also true that we tend to form into groups and communities with those who are like us. This makes it obvious and imperative that diversity must be encouraged by individuals, and be brought by us to all our organizations and social structures -- families, churches, informal and formal civic groups, workplaces, institutions and organizations. Within these structures, we can bring awareness to the ways in which we ourselves fail to see with the eyes of the other. Some people have hidebound attitudes, but it is crucial to believe that fundamental changes of heart are possible -- the ability to change is one of humanity's greatest attributes. If talk doesn't get us anywhere, we must openly live within the spirit of our convictions, and by doing so, we can actually gradually effect lasting, long-term change: I've seen this over and over again in the greater acceptance of homosexuality and gender diversity over the past few decades.

So some questions for today are these: how many friends do you have who are of different religions, different ethnic origins, different genders or sexual orientations? How often are you in the position of being in the minority, of listening to and learning from others who are different from yourself? How do you bring your own changed and evolving views back to your family, your circle of friends, your workplace, and the organizations to which you belong?

All of Us, Together

Today and every day, until there's no need for such a day.

Thoughts on Travel

We've just come back to Montreal from an intense, eye-opening, two-week trip to Sicily. I'll be writing more about our experiences over the next couple of weeks, but first I wanted to say a few things about travel in general, because I've been thinking about that a lot during this trip.

I feel extremely fortunate to be able to travel. It was always a goal for J. and me, but with a few exceptions, we put it off: as self-employed people it was hard for us to get away for extended periods of time, and travel requiring airfare has always been expensive. We lived frugally for many years in order to be able to put money aside for later in life, and I'm grateful that we're still in good enough shape to be able to enjoy the kind of adventuresome travel we like to do. Nevertheless, I know I'm lucky, and that there are lots of reasons why many people never get to go far away, or choose not to.

Unlike my husband, who had traveled in Europe and the Middle East when he was young, I grew up in a family and among people who didn't travel much at all, and though I longed to go to faraway places, I was afraid. Not of flying, which I've always found exciting, but like my mother and other family members I had fears of getting sick or lost or being unable to sleep, and there was no one to give me the confidence to prepare well, then just go, see it as an adventure, and deal with whatever happens. You have to learn to travel, and it wasn't until I met J. that I had someone to trust and confide in who helped me overcome those fears. I loved big cities, but was nervous about them, especially getting round on my own, but eventually I got over that, too. I can still remember the thrill of accomplishment the first time I went off on my own in London, and found my way without trouble: it's given me a lifelong affection for that city. People who meet me now may see me as worldly, urban, confident and sophisticated, but there was a time when I certainly wasn't any of those things, and I have a lot of empathy for people who find travel daunting. Those fears still live inside me, and once in a while they still surface.

Travel, for me, is a privilege and a responsibility. If I'm lucky enough to go somewhere, I try to learn as much as I can, and to absorb that experience deeply so that I can share it in some way, do something with it that isn't just for myself. Some people travel inside their own bubble, like the loud, inconsiderate, demading tourists we all sometimes encounter. Some people seem like they aren't really seeing anything, just capturing each sight -- or themselves in front of it -- on their phone or iPad so they can show their friends they were there. I guess I see travel more as extra-ordinary time: an opportunity to leave normal comforts and routines aside, be vulnerable to experience, to suspend judgement, and to be open to the potential for internal change. I love the feeling of heightened sensory awareness, of having to figure complex things out and make quick decisions, of trying to communicate in unfamiliar languages and make connections simply as one human being to another. I like projecting myself less, and listening and seeing more.

J. and I have chosen not to stay in fancy hotels or eat out a lot. Because we are sometimes in locations where there is poverty, we keep a low profile, dress down, and try to blend in, even though it's obvious we aren't locals. Usually we stay in apartments or small b&bs where we can cook meals from food bought in local markets and do our own laundry; we try to bike or walk as much as we can, and to take care of ourselves rather than expecting to be served. I'm concerned about the carbon cost of air travel, but also realize that the money we spend in local economies like Mexico is helpful for the people there. I don't feel guilty about traveling, but I think we need to be aware of what we're doing and the impact it has.

I also realize that we are seen as immensely privileged by many of the people we meet: I am able to come into their place and go away again; I have money and freedom and opportunities that many people, both here and there, will never have. Being sensitive to these emotional complications is a significant part of travel for me, and I hope it informs what I write and what I draw or photograph -- or choose not to.

The more places I go, and the more our world becomes divided between haves and have-nots, the more I find myself thinking about these issues. Sicily is surrounded by the Mediterranean; its proximity to Africa and the Middle East has affected its entire history as well as the present. Refugees are not a theoretical concept to be debated, but an everyday reality. Mexico City has been hit by devastating earthquakes; its people live with corrupt government, injustice, grinding poverty, and constant violence.

I've been deeply affected and changed by what I've seen, not just as a witness to the present but to the layers of human history that travel reveals. I'm never sure what to do with it, but I don't want to merely collect beauty and ignore the awfulness. I need to find ways to hold and express both, because our world is, and has always been, made of both darkness and light.

Thinking with Merton about America's Predicament

The Orange Line has fancy new cars, and whenever I get on one of these shiny trains, I feel like I must be one of the first passengers. That's why when I sat down early yesterday morning, it was a surprise that the empty seat was warm. I hadn't seen anyone exit, so they must have gotten off at a previous station. Of course, I told myself, thousands of people have already taken this train, it is no longer brand new. But the strange feeling of someone else's presence persisted, along with my musings about the places our bodies temporarily occupy in an urban environment, only to be replaced by another anonymous body, and another.

When I am on the train, I'm often going downtown to sing, or returning from singing, and though I seldom wear earphones or use my phone, bits of music play repetitively in my head. Yesterday I was going to the cathedral to sing a complex modern Mass in the morning, and later, music by Orlando Lassus, and I have noticed that this awareness sometimes makes me feel special. But the warmth of the empty seat, and the presence of the other passengers, reminded me that no one is any more special than anyone else, or, rather, that we are all equally special, even though I may have been the only person on the train who was thinking that.

The Montreal metro platforms aren't crowded on Sunday mornings, but as the trains arrive, they make me think of Mexico City, where the opening and closing mouths of each train disgorge and swallow up vast quantities of human beings. There, too, I often remember Thomas Merton's words: "What if everyone knew that they were going around shining like the sun?"

Merton wrote those words after having a spiritual experience -- a revelation of oneness -- on a street corner in Louisville, Kentucky, one day when he had left his monastery of Gethsemanii for a medical appointment or some similar reason. I had a similar revelation while waiting at a deli counter in a grocery store in Hanover, New Hampshire, nearly twenty-five years ago, and from that point on I have known that I am connected to every other being; that we all possess, at our core, the same divine spark (Merton called it "the eternal diamond"); and at the same time, that we are each entirely unique, special, precious, beloved. It's not explainable in words, and so I will not try; it's better (while still being impossible) to try to live out of that awareness in all of one's relationships. But it is also clear to me, as it was to Merton, that most of humanity goes around unaware of who they actually are, and of the potential for love, compassion, harmony, beauty and joy for which we are made. Babies come into the world open and trusting and full of potential -- but then other people and the world begin to impinge, and the separation, alienation, and undermining begin, accompanied by a gnawing hunger for love and for something ineffable that we sense is out there. All our lives, we remember the grandmother or father, the teacher, the friend who saw the spark within us when we were young, who saw us as we really were, who recognized and tried to nurture the best in us. And all our lives we suffer because of those who did, and do, the opposite. Under good circumstances, or sometimes against all odds, some people find their way and manage to live lovingly toward others and toward themselves, in spite of setbacks. Most struggle. And a few slip into the darkness and become capable of terrible things.

--

We can blame society, parents, religious institutions, educational and justice systems, the economic situation into which we were born, racism, homophobia, misogyny: all are part of the systems that maim and destroy people. Today I read a number or articles about guns in America that sought to prove that gun control was the answer to that country's epidemic of violence. But until a society looks beyond the gun to the hand that holds it, into the mind that picked it up and felt the need to buy it, and beyond that mind into the forces that not only made the gun easily available but created the desire to be prepared to shoot and kill, there is absolutely no hope for change.

Let's be clear. This is a country that fought a devastating, bloody, and still unresolved civil war war over the right of certain human beings to own and enslave other human beings. It is a country that committed genocide on the native peoples. It is a country that has treated all its "enemies" who were not white and European as sub-human and unequal, and still does -- and steadfastly refuses to discuss any of this history or to acknowledge the legacy of violence, injustice, and inequality that is interwoven and perpetuated in its national narrative. America definitely needs gun control. But what it needs more is a gigantic mirror.

Thomas Merton's life and thinking were profoundly influenced by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the nuclear arms race, which he saw as potentially the most terrible development in human history, not just because of its ability to create Armageddon, but because of what the existence of such weapons does to the human psyche. Merton was born in 1915 and died, accidentally, at age 53 in 1968. I was a teenager then, certainly influenced by growing up just after WWII, by the Cuban Missile crisis and the continuation of the nuclear arms race, then by the Vietnam War and the social upheaval of those times. My life has already been a decade longer than Merton's. I've seen the failure of the anti-war movement to significantly endure past the mid 1970s, and have been dismayed by the rise of corporate power, the increasing disparity of wealth and opportunity, the militarization of American society, the persistent threat of nuclear war, and the incredible lack of compassion for immigrants and anyone who is "other", as well as our own poor and disenfranchised. The wrong turn after 9/11 has plunged the world into much greater instability and fear, and gravely altered American society: much of what we are seeing today has felt predictable to me for a very long time.

And yet, the sense persists that humanity evolves on a time frame that I cannot see or comprehend. I've just been reading some ancient history, about Greek and Roman city-states in other parts of the Mediterranean. The cruelty of the tyrants and states in those days was on a scale that we can barely imagine. When a city was conquered, its entire population was often destroyed, or sold into slavery. And these were not uncivilized or unsophisticated people, they were often, as the writer put it, "educated people who spoke Greek and simply ran afoul of the massive inferiority complex of the Romans toward the Greek world." We don't physically enslave entire populations now, or crucify 6,000 slaves along the nation's most prominent highway, as the Romans did after a rebellion. We do other things that, on the surface, at least, seem less devastating and less cruel. 2,000 years of history have not taught a majority of human beings to share, or to lose, or to resolve difficulties without resorting to violence in our words or actions toward others, or by turning that energy against ourselves in destructive ways we don't even recognize.

--

So I am not particularly optimistic about humanity in general in the short term, but individuals can actually live differently if we are willing to keep our eyes and hearts open, and resist the temptation of following the herd. We can do a great deal for one another to make these times more bearable, especially if our relationships go deeper than the general discourse on social media. We can find strength as well as solace in the arts, in our work, in the natural world, in learning, in openness to difference and ways and people we do not know. We can learn to see and refuse the violence in our own selves, nipping it before it flowers into malevolence that affects our own spirit and those around us. We can try to be the people who see the best in each other, and encourage that, especially in the young.

There is so much work to do. Please, let's get on with it.

Comfort and Discomfort in the Business of Art

Last month I had a pastel selected for an international juried exhibition here in Montreal, sponsored by the Pastel Society of Eastern Canada, an organization I joined earlier in the year. The opening was last night, and I had to do quite a bit of work to get ready for it. Framing the piece, of course, but also doing a number of tasks I've neglected because I have not exhibited at live exhibitions for a long time, in favor of sharing my work online here and on social media. For instance, I didn't have business cards for my studio, or a website specifically for my art to list on them, or on my artist's profile with this or other organizations.

Since closing my Etsy shop, I've been mulling over what I wanted to do about offering my work for sale, and decided that it was a question of respecting myself and my work: it should be priced properly, and presented and offered in a way that reflects me honestly and clearly.  That meant creating a new website from scratch. I completed it a few days ago, and it's ready to view on computers or phones.

 

It was an illuminating process: in choosing the work for the site, I realized for the first time, really, that I have actually created a cohesive body of work over the past several decades, even though I haven't been able to devote myself to it with sustained focus until recently -- which has been a frustration throughout my adult life. I think the person behind the work comes through, too, and that was a surprise and a happiness; I was also able to see new directions, which I think is often the result of various kinds of retrospectives or collections.

I do need to participate in exhibitions, and perhaps look for gallery representation, but I have mixed feelings about both, as many of us do who are online a lot. Exhibitions are still prestigious, but they're also expensive and time-consuming, and yield limited results. Sharing work online makes so much sense for me, not just because it is easy, but because the connections and the community are an integral part of what art-making means to me. Watching a body of work develop over time - your own and other people's - is rewarding, fascinating, and a privilege. I love being in touch with younger artists and encouraging them, while also being pushed into new places, and included where I would not otherwise be. And in turn, I'm encouraged by artists of my own age and especially by older friends who continue to do excellent work and challenge themselves: I want to be just like them, as long as I possibly can. I have found more kindred spirits online than I ever did in real life, even in a big city like this one, and it doesn't matter at all where we are.

Here in Quebec, language issues continue to be somewhat of an obstacle, or at least a stumbling-block, for me. There were very few anglophone artists represented in last night's exhibition, and when I went down to the Old City a few days ago to help with hanging the show, I was the only anglophone among a number of people not just from Montreal (where we are all used to dealing with not just two but many languages) but from provincial Quebec where French is spoken almost exclusively. I can manage in French, but my lack of complete fluency limits me; my name-tag gave me away as English before I even opened my mouth. So I felt awkward, the odd person out among many people who already knew each other well and had a cultural connection; I tried my best to be extroverted and friendly, but by the time I came home I was exhausted and a bit discouraged.

At last night's opening.

This is an ongoing issue of living in a bilingual culture that is not my own. In the choir, we are a mixed group of French and English speakers, but unified by sharing the common language of music, and working hard, like a team, toward a common goal. I have never felt excluded or unaccepted there in any way. But when joining mainly-French groups, I have sometimes felt a subtle sense of being on the outside, and even of exclusion. I'm not looking for that, as some people do, but I've been here long enough to know that prejudice does exist and that it has nothing to do with me, personally: like all racism, it stems from systems of superiority and power that are actually rooted in fear and insecurity. Here, they reflect a history of injustice and inferiority where the positions were once reversed. Many anglophones deal with these issues by living in English-speaking areas and joining English-language artist groups, but we live on the French side of the city, and have tried to find our way within it.

Being truly fluent in French would help, but it would not change the underlying dynamic: prejudice and closed doors are a fact of life here for almost all immigrants, except the French-from-France who are alternately resented and fawned over. It's particularly difficult for immigrants who speak French as a second language to find work. As an American, I am actually less subject to prejudice than the English Canadians who once ruled and dominated Quebec. Neither the French nor the Americans wanted to remain subjects of the British; we had our "revolutions" at different times, but I think we often feel we have more in common.

For the most part, I try to ignore the prejudice: to be friendly, and assume I will be liked and accepted for myself. For the most part, that's been true. It would have been a lot harder if I had come when younger and tried to find employment or start a business. As it is, I love Montreal for its multi-culturalism; I feel at home now. But when I come up against these subtle walls, it reminds me how vastly worse it is for so many, and confirms my empathy for immigrants and refugees, for people of color, for other women and LGBT people around the world. I actually have a lot of empathy for the Quebecois who were repressed by the Church and by the English. Of course they want and deserve their own language and culture -- but at what price? Prior to the upcoming elections, the Liberal provincial government passed a law banning face coverings for those in public jobs or receiving public services -- which includes using public transit. The law is aimed squarely at the tiny minority of Muslim women who wear the niqab or burka, and its purpose was to woo the most conservative, pro-separatist, racist voters who normally don't vote Liberal. It's a stupid, wrong-headed, misguided law that won't stand up in court, but it is an indication of the racism that persists, particularly outside Montreal. Fortunately, a majority of people strongly disagree, and will continue to fight for inclusion and fairness.

Last weekend, we were in the U.S. visiting friends and family, and my heart broke for the difficulties many of them are facing -- from fear of nuclear missiles to soaring healthcare premiums -- and the daily political climate in which they're forced to exist. Coming up against this darkness in daily life reinforces the openness and diversity of my online life, and how much it matters to me. I have friends all over the world, united by shared humanistic values, and by the desire to express ourselves artistically through various media. I often have no idea, nor do I care, about my friends' color, sexual orientation, or religion. I care about their lives; I care that they are open to me and in turn I try to be open to them.

Art, seen in this way, is much more a language than a business. And so I've reached this conclusion: that my art feels right when it is priced to fairly reflect the work that has gone into it -- and also when it is given away.

#MeToo, no disclaimer needed

Last night, a phenomenon unfolded on Facebook and Twitter, as one woman after another changed her status to "Me Too" or #MeToo, announcing publicly that she had at one time been sexually harassed or assaulted. I posted my own "Me Too" around 8:00 pm, and watched as friend after friend followed suit. Dave Bonta called it "a harrowing evening." Yes, but I was not as surprised as some of the few men to comment have been. Neither were the other women. Why? Because we've all known, or at least suspected, how endemic this is, and how difficult and futile it has been to speak out about it in our own lives. Even so, as I saw the status updates from women I've known and cared about, online or in person, my primary emotion was sorrow. I could handle the fact that it had happened to me, not once but several times. But seeing that it had also happened to so many dear female friends made me weep. "It's practically all of us," I wrote to a friend in Nova Scotia. "I am so sorry. Me too," I wrote to many others, and many wrote the same to me.

It has been painful, but freeing, to see this groundswell of courage and solidarity. If the revelations about Harvey Weinstein and the American Groper-in-Chief have contributed to women's solidarity on this issue, that is at least one good thing.

Then came the predictable push-backs: that we need to point out that most men are good, or that really the hash tag should be "all of us" because many men have been abused too, or that feminism has caused a lot of anger which has been directed at men and is a form of harassment.

One writer who thinks hard about these things said she was uncomfortable because "this puts the onus of speaking out / creating change on the women who've experienced harassment or assault instead of on the men who did the harassing or assaulting."

On the first points, yes, of course most men are not perpetrators. I've always had good men in my life who have loved and treated me gently. But we don't need to say that right now, and we don't need to apologize or add disclaimers: this is not about them. Why can't we hear people speaking out about a specific abuse or oppression and simply put ourselves aside for a moment and empathize with the victim and what she is saying, at significant cost to herself, and the effect it has had on her life?" Black Lives do Matter. Indigenous Lives Matter. Women's Lives Matter. Each of these should be a very simple concept. It is not about "Your Life Matters" or "All Lives Matter;" it is about acknowledging racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia and other abuses for what they are, and sitting with that, and with those who have suffered. Period. I don't expect black or indigenous people to offer me a disclaimer, nor should they. I will write a post about empathy in the future, it's something I've been wanting to do.

But for now, I want to address just the last point. As for being uncomfortable with placing women in the position of speaking out, I think we don't need to worry. Women have already shown how strong and resilient we are; we have survived millennia of being treated as property, used, harassed, and assaulted -- and then shamed and blamed. We have endured unequal opportunity, unequal pay, unequal education, glass ceilings -- and verbal abuse for being strong, smart, accomplished, and capable. We have borne children, kept food on the table and home life together while also working jobs; we've nursed the sick and dying, and cared for the elderly and the weak in the face of wars and famines and refugee crises. I think we can handle speaking out, and furthermore, we have to seize this moment and do so.

It is a delusion to expect the people, whether male or female, who hold, benefit from, and use sexual power to be the ones to correct the system: that has never worked in the history of the world. What works is when sufficient numbers of an oppressed or victimized group finally have enough courage to speak out about what has happened to them, and to stand up together for openness, transparency, and change.

In this moment of revelation, courage, and solidarity among ordinary women -- like me, and like your own sister, wife, mother, daughter, colleagues and friends --  there are just a few appropriate responses for men and women alike: "I am so sorry that happened to you. I applaud your courage. We need to do better as we raise our children." Down the road, we need to change a great deal about our society, but it starts with telling the truth about what has happened to us so that the magnitude of the problem can be revealed.

Eclipse