the cassandra pages

Permutations of the Same Thing

It's been two months since I last wrote here, the longest break I think I've taken in the twenty-plus-year history of this blog. During the summer, we cleaned, packed, and sold my family home at the lake in central New York. Since coming back to Montreal, I've needed some time to rest from that labor, both physically and emotionally, and reconnect with my life here. I feel like I'm still doing that.

Just recently, I got out my oil paints and began working again on a small painting I started several months ago. I hadn't been happy with it, but put it aside for a while, not being sure what was wrong. When I looked at it again recently, I realized that there was too much going on in the foreground, which detracted from the main subject - the white cliffs - and that the composition wasn't working, and needed to be simplified. The finished painting is above, and the video below shows the process this piece went through. This view of dramatic cliffs and and olive trees is along the road from Patras to Corinth, Greece, and I must have taken some pictures out the window of the car as we sped along the highway. 

 

 

Even though personal affairs have been in the foreground of my own summer, I haven't been ignoring the political landscape. Like so many American voters, I was dismayed by Biden's performance in the debate, and relieved when he finally stepped aside because I was certain he could not win the election. I will vote for Kamala Harris, but unlike many Democratic voters, and, it seemed, almost everyone at the made-for-tv spectacle that was the Democratic Convention, I am not jumping up and down with enthusiasm. I wish I could be -- a woman president, at last, and of a younger generation? And a person of color as well -- these are very good things, which I welcome. However, the picture that we have all been looking at, throughout Biden's presidency, needs a radical reworking. Only Bernie Sanders named the elephant in the room, when he called for an end to the horrendous war in Gaza; there were no Palestinian voices at the convention, which was deliberate of course, in spite of the thousands of protesters outside. I understand and share the relief that many feel in having a viable ticket with Harris/Walz; the alternative is unthinkable. But the problems America faces are so deep and so entrenched now, and these candidates, I am sorry to say, do not represent real change. I wish them well, I hope they win, but militarism, rampant capitalism, and a belief in American exceptionalism are not going to solve the problems facing ordinary people, abroad or at home, or save this fragile planet. 

And the fight for rights continues...

It's a beautiful fall day here, and I went downtown with J., who had a dental appointment. Just as we exited the metro, we encountered this demonstration on St-Catherine Street. It was a counter-protest, in response to today’s anti-LGBTQ2S+ demonstrations by the far-right, taking place all across Canada. Hateful, strident, well-funded and well-organized far-right protests such as this are spreading across the US border and infiltrating Canada, and this makes me extremely sad and upset. So I was glad to be able to cheer the mostly-young people in the counter-protest from the sidewalk.

As the close friend of many people who do not identify as straight, and particularly having followed the journey of the trans son of a longtime friend, I am horrified for anyone whose life is being impacted negatively by the current wave of protest, legislation, and rhetoric ranging from misunderstanding to hatefulness. No one should have to live in this kind of fear, or have their basic human rights denied.

Today is also my 71st birthday, and I can't believe that not only are we still having to protest these issues, but in many cases society and governments are going backwards. Women's rights; LGBTQ2S+ rights; protection from discrimination because of one's race, ethnicity, or religion, or the language one speaks; the right of all people to have healthcare; the right to clean air and water; protection from police brutality and profiling; the freedom to read and teach the literature you want as a university professor...all are endangered, and I could go on and on.

Here in Canada we have been complacent, thinking that we generally have shared values, and that most rights such as these are enshrined and could never be repealed -- but we can't continue to think that way. I grew up with hope for a better world in the 1960s, and I don't want to live my remaining years watching as human rights are eroded rather than expanded, and the climate destroyed. We have to be vigilant, we have to speak out, we have to hold the institutions to which we belong accountable. But perhaps most important, we need to patiently and continually educate people who are afraid of difference that human beings are human beings. It seems to me that this is best done one-on-one or on a small scale, through the stories and examples of real people who we know and love as our children, brothers and sisters, friends and colleagues-- and it can create a lasting change of heart. That process has to happen alongside the legal struggle to gain human rights and equality. We have seen the fruits of this process, for example in society's greater acceptance and equality of gay and lesbian people over the past twenty years, and the rights and dignity that women have painfully won over the past fifty -- but the struggle is not even close to over, people's lives continue to be in danger, many rights have already been taken away, and we can never, ever sit back and think the work is done, even in countries like Canada and provinces such as Quebec.

Artists, Moving On

The deadline is October 31 at midnight; that's when our studio lease is up.

We're almost done. After a month of steady work, the furniture and equipment are gone, the files emptied, the tools sorted, the negatives and prints and artwork moved. Two days ago I sprayed my large charcoal drawings with fixative and took them off the walls - those were the last piece of our work remaining. The recycling/junk guys came yesterday and took away all the leftover books and a large wooden shelving unit. We have a small load remaining to bring home, another to take to storage (it is a small storage locker!), and another group of things, mostly tools, are going to the lake, but we can begin to imagine ourselves sweeping and mopping the floor, and turning the key in the lock for the last time.

What a saga. This move has been so much harder than downsizing and moving our household. There was simply a greater accumulation of things that we hadn't dealt with, and had to go through in detail, separating them into "keep", "sell", "give away", "recycle" and "throw away" - and then those categories ended up with finer subsections --for instance, things that we could take ourselves to the EcoCentre, like metal recycling, or hazardous waste, or the thrift store, or other things that were too bulky or impossible to dispose of -- like the many books that our bookseller friend didn't want, and friends and family didn't want, and even the thrift places and used bookstores didn't want.

The real issue, of course, wasn't just the arduous, lengthy, physically-demanding process, which simply had to be gone through, but the emotional aspects of sifting through forty years of our working lives and personal history, and preparing ourselves for the next chapter, which will not include a large space for whatever projects we decide to embark upon. For years I'd occasionally suggest that we sort through the boxes and accumulated stuff that we didn't seem to be using, but when you have plenty of space, there is such a dis-incentive to actually do that -- and we didn't. But as the rent rose higher and higher, the day of reckoning approached. We did a lot of weeding last summer, but signed one more lease, knowing that it would probably be the last one, but with no concrete plan for what was next except that we wanted to bring living and work under one roof again. In March, when we found a new place to live, that set the inevitable process in motion -- and the studio closing was forced upon us. When my father became dependent on our care, and then died, the available time for the moving process was contracted and the pressure became much greater.

It's been enlightening to see what we actually did keep over the years, and why, and what has changed now to allow us to let much of that go. I think we've learned a lot about ourselves and each other in this process, and I'm more inclined to be gentle as I look back at the people we were, rather than judging ourselves too harshly. When we started out together, as partners in marriage and a fledgling business, we had nothing, and were determined to be self-sufficient -- so of course we gradually acquired tools and supplies for every conceivable task. We bought a house that needed a great deal of work, and we did almost all of it all ourselves, from the heating in the cellar to raking the roof in the winter to prevent ice dams; my husband sanded and painted every clapboard; I grew a lot of our food, made curtains and clothing, papered and painted and sanded; he took care of the car and built furniture for us in his small woodshop; he learned how to do plumbing and electricity and tiling. We bought and mastered each new generation of computer equipment to keep our design and publishing business going without needing employees or technical assistance. This was at first a necessity, but became our way of life, and during those energetic years, we enjoyed it and took pride in it.

When we moved from a small, relatively rural Vermont village to Montreal, we really had no idea of what we were getting into, and what we might need or not - so we brought most of those tools and equipment with us. And we kept far too much in the way of outmoded tools and supplies. Our big error was not dealing with all of that during the intervening years and having to do it all at once -- but now we've done it, and we've gone through the paralyzing uncertainties about what to do, the decisions, the leave-takings, the questions about identity and age, and the sorting and packing and letting-go -- and we've survived. When October 31 comes, we will feel lighter, happier, and more free.

What I find most sobering is the plight of artists and craftspeople who still desperately need those large studio spaces, yet are being pushed out of one once-affordable but now-gentrified neighborhood after another. During the moving process, we've shared the freight elevator, loading dock and dumpster with many other tenants of this large former factory building, who can no longer afford the rent charged by the new landlords who are upgrading and changing the building into a place for small businesses, high-tech firms, and offices -- all of which can afford considerably higher rents. It is a business decision for the owners, and they have a right to do that; the building is much more attractive than when we moved in more than fifteen years ago. But as I've talked to others who are leaving, their anxiety and stress are palpable, and there are few good options for them in this city. And while a society without art is unbearable, and the governments everywhere tout their artists as intrinsic to the society's identity, very few actually give the necessary support. Relentless capitalism always wins.

Somehow, the arts and artists survive, but I ache for the people whose work and psychological health will suffer as a result of being forced into smaller, insufficient spaces. What do we care about and value, as human societies? Choosing art (and here I mean all the arts) as a way of life almost always means years of low income and precarity, but artists are not considered in the same breath as "the poor" - in fact, many people see them as somehow privileged, and governments tout them as shining examples of each culture. Except in rare circumstances, artists are not protected, and very few rise to acclaim or monetary success -- but just look at the people who use the work of artists, and their associations with them, to make themselves feel important and elite. Look at the system of grants and exhibitions and art sales, and who really profits from it -- a largely-closed system that has only been somewhat eroded by the freedom of the internet and artists taking control of their own distribution, marketing, and sales. When you look closely at the system, you see its unfairness and hypocrisy -- but the purity at the heart of art always remains, and can't be taken away. This is why, in spite of everything, it survives.

A Brief Comment on the Truck Convoy

First of all, I would like my US and international readers to know that the news about the truck convoy protest, as reported in Canada, is quite different than what I have heard is being reported through some other media, notably Fox News.

Second, a large majority of Canadians are appalled by the protesters and the support they have received from outside Canada, particularly the US far right. Many Canadians are baffled as to why it has taken so long for the police to clear the blockades.

The right to protest is enshrined in Canada, and especially in Quebec, where I live. In Montreal, there are protests and demonstrations all the time, and the city and police know how to handle them fairly peacefully. I'm sure that the initial hope was that the truckers would leave peacefully on their own. However, we should all realize that if this were a protest by Indigenous or other minorities/people of color who blocked city streets, transportation routes, or the supply chain for goods, action against them -- including arrests -- would have been much faster. And it is clearly true that, as in the January 6 2021 Capitol insurrection in D.C., some members of the police and military sympathize and identify with these mostly-white, mostly working-class, mostly-male protesters, some of whom were armed and ready for violent confrontation.

We must not close our eyes to this glaring example of inequality and preferential treatment, which is now typical of most nations in the West. And as Canadians, it's crucial that we see it and speak up swiftly against it, as well as condemning hate speech, far-right ideology, and the influence of foreign money in our domestic affairs.

 

Hermit Diary 58. My Companions the Books

Today, I learn, is #WorldBookDay. Who makes up these things? (And immediately hear a response in my head: "Publishers like you!") Be that as it may, in my life, every day is book day, and it's been so practically ever since I can remember. Last week the members of my book group started talking about when we had begun to be readers, and what form it took for each of us. We told stories about the books in our homes, local libraries in the small towns many of us had grown up in, how reading early made problems for us in school, happy hours spent reading in treehouses, or curled up on couches on rainy days, what those favorite books were and how they shaped us as the readers we are today. I've never been a solitary introvert, but I was definitely a bookworm whose parents often told me, "Come on, get your nose out of that book, and go outside!" This was a somewhat half-hearted admonition from my mother, who was pretty much of a bookworm herself. As an only child, I was alone a lot, and books always felt like my friends as well as boats and planes and magic carpets on which I could travel to other places and times.

Exactly one year ago today, Jonathan and I made a decision at 5:00 in the morning, half an hour before calling a taxi, to cancel our planned trip to Mexico City because a pandemic looked like it was actually going to happen. We figured we could get down there all right, but coming back on March 20 might not be easy, or safe. A number of people thought we were being over-cautious, but it proved to be the right decision. During this long year, one that I don't think any of us will be able to truly process until much more time has passed, life has changed a lot. In addition to the good developments, like becoming proficient at Zoom and finding new friends, communities, and artistic outlets through that medium, we've stopped seeing family and friends, moving freely from place to place even within the city, having a studio, singing with my choir and going to the cathedral, shopping in stores, having routine medical appointments or getting our hair cut, going to any kind of in-person event, or even having normal visits with our neighbors. Montreal has been hit very hard, and people over 65 have been asked, and at times required, to stay in their homes. Thank God none of us knew it would be this bad, or go on this long, or I think we would have been even more despairing. Although it's been a very hard year for us in a number of ways, I feel incredibly lucky that we're still here, and we have appointments for our first vaccinations next week. I'm immeasurably grateful to the scientists who have developed these life-saving, world-saving vaccines in record time. I just wish that they would be available equally and fairly to all human beings -- but, as this year has also shown, inequality and injustice are concentrated in minority populations, and there is no vaccine for that: we ourselves are the only solution.

Fortunately, during this time I've had three steady companions: my husband, my cat, and books. As always, books have transported me to other places and allowed me to glimpse other lives, and that has been both a saving grace and at times uncomfortable, as it should be. Walking with James Baldwin, Ibrahm X. Kendi, Toni Morrison or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have forced me to confront realities and histories that have not been my own. While I've already read a lot of Haruki Murakami and his rather peculiar world of male-female relationships, the experience of reading a previous generation of Japanese writers like Yukio Mishima and Yasunari Kawabata is disconcerting in a different way. They speak of a world where women's and men's lives were markedly stylized and fixed, often to the great detriment of women, but there is little sense of happiness or fulfillment on anyone's part. I've gone on this year to read some contemporary Japanese female authors like Banana Yoshimoto and, most recently, Mieko Kawakami, whose Breasts and Eggs depicts in graphic detail the lives and preoccupations of non-wealthy Japanese women seeking self-fulfillment in a rough life, mostly without men at all. Roberto Bolano's 2666 is a literary exploit that took me from academic literary Europe to the horrific world of Mexican drug cartels -- an undercurrent we have always felt and guarded against during our tips to Mexico City, but never experienced directly. Then there was the pre-revolutionary Russia of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamzov, where a sense of social morality and ethics based on tradition, culture and religion clashed with "new" nihilistic, atheistic ideologies espoused by young thinkers influenced by Europe, who insisted that free will is all, and "everything is permitted." The book list has been long and challenging, and probably isn't most peoples idea of escapist, but it's been a big part of what's kept me going while living in a two-room apartment, especially through this long winter.

Right now I'm re-reading Aeschylus' Agamemnon, written in the 5th century BC, which reminds me of how little human beings have actually changed. The immediacy and familiarity of the characters and their thought and language goes a long ways toward erasing the cultural and historical differences between us and 2500 years ago; it's what drew me with amazement to those myths and stories when I was young, and then to the original works of literature. Agamemnon was written when Athenian democracy was just beginning, and its author was critical of government and especially of tyrants who fought wars that cost thousands of lives -- he himself had fought at the famous battle of Marathon during the Persian Wars. Athenians were preoccupied with the questions of justice, the rule of law, and free will in a society where the tyrant and the fear of his wrath had been removed: a new form of justice had to be created and agreed upon by its members. At the time of Aeschylus, most people still believed in fate being determined by the will of the gods, and that the sins of the father were often visited through subsequent generations, but as the Greek plays and Athenian democracy evolved in the next hundred years, we see a change away from this sense of fate and divine retribution to a greater exercise of free will and human choice, and how that is reflected in the government.

Fast-forward to Russia in the waning years of the Tsar; and further still to our own time when large swaths of society believe that individual freedom is more important than the collective good. These seem to be fundamental human tensions, with which we still struggle, along with the fact that justice is never equally applied. Thinking these questions through and acting on them are a lifetime's work, and for me, that task is helped by reading what humans have written not just in our own time, but throughout the millennia. While justice struggles to advance and our understanding of difference is greatly enhanced and shaped by contemporary writing, the best and the worst aspects of human behavior have always existed; we are neither unique nor isolated from the past, and, frankly, we believe so at our peril -- as books and their authors have always tried to tell us.

Hermit Diary 53. Few Words for this Horror.

I'm thinking tonight of particular photographs of yesterday's storming of the U.S. Capitol: the image of the burly white guy carrying a confederate flag through the Capitol rotunda. The image of a blonde white woman and her friend, seated on the dais of the Speaker of the House, taking selfies. A line of Capital Police on the steps, two of them jostling each other and laughing as the mob ravaged the building and milled around below them. A video of the President of the United States and his family in a tent, keeping time to loud pop music, while watching the rally on large screens, like it was a party. And then inciting that mob to unprecedented actions in the history of the country, before retreating into the White House, behind the barricades.

A friend posted the phrase that this would go down as "one of the whitest moments in American history." Many of us are well aware what would have happened if the people storming the Capitol had been black.

The Italian newspaper, La Stampa, published its front-page story today with the headline, "Once Upon a Time, there was America."

I'm afraid that sums up how I'm feeling.

Is there a road back from this abyss? Perhaps, partially. But I think a line was crossed yesterday: the culmination of four years of permissibility and normalizing of hate speech, violence, lies, militarism, white supremacy, injustice and cruelty toward everyone who isn't white or male, and total lack of respect for law and democracy.

The saddest thing is that this enormous damage to American democracy was predictable, and preventable. The pandemic has shown us how selfish, self-serving, and irresponsible a great many people are. In politics too: Every one of the elected Republicans. The administration officials who agreed to serve, and are now deserting the ship like rats. Prominent former officials who've refused to speak out.

But all the ordinary people who voted for Trump and have made excuses for his behavior are the ones who are truly complicit in this. All the people who have refused to understand that Black Lives Matter, and do something about it. All the people who refuse to believe climate change is real, and work against the clock to reverse it. All the people who continue to support drone strikes that kill brown children, or turn their head the other way when migrants are put in indefinite detention in warehouses, or children put in cages on the southern border. All the people who think they deserve good health care, but poor people don't. The people who don't think women are equal, deserving of respect, safety, and autonomy, or, likewise, the people who refuse to accept those of different sexualities and genders. I don't know. I could go on...it's a long list.

Unfortunately that list includes vastly more people than those who subscribe to conspiracy theories. It comprises all the well-meaning people who have seen what was happening, and thought it was wrong, but did nothing because they had their own problems, or, more likely, because they weren't really being hurt directly -- or perhaps even benefiting. Because they were comfortable in their own privilege.

Tonight I just want to ask each of us to look in the mirror and ask, Where was I, and where am I going to be? Because if you think Joe Biden and the Democrats alone are going to fix this cancer that has been growing for decades, of which Trump is merely a symptom and a mouthpiece, you are very badly deluded.

 

 

 

Hermit Diary 40. Devoid.

Tonight I'm reeling with anger at the despicable remarks of the desperate and reckless narcissist who is president of the United States. Apparently, to him, people who have died of COVID are like those dead, maimed and captured soldiers he called "losers." And not only have his inaction and denial caused the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, he's now blatantly risking the lives of those who've been closest to him. We hear about the staff members who've been exposed and tested positive, but what about the White House chambermaids who clean up after his family, the janitors and handymen, the secretaries and mail clerks and security people, the cooks and servers, pilots and drivers, to only mention a few? What are their names? What kind of medical care will they receive?

For those of us who have known people who died of this virus or are suffering either because of its longterm or indirect effects -- loss of work and security, lack of healthcare or insurance, displacement, grief, loss, separation, prolonged and intense loneliness --  the president's words are utterly revolting. But you don't have to have a direct connection to the pandemic's victims be an empathetic person, to see what has happened in the world because of it, as well as in so many other areas of cruelty, neglect, violence and suffering that this administration has caused and encouraged. I've never witnessed a leader and band of syncophants so devoid of empathy and compassion; it sickens me.

I don't wish death or this virus on anyone, including any of them: I want to see the Republicans resoundingly defeated in November and for the present inhabitant of the White House to go to court and be convicted. I want to see them fail to confirm their Supreme Court nominee. Whether any of that will happen or not, none of us know. Let us not demean ourselves by wishing ill on others, but let's not delude ourselves either. They will stop at nothing until the bitter end, and I'm sure we haven't seen the last twist in this tortuous road.

Meanwhile, it's even more imperative to take care of ourselves and each other.

Hermit Diary 38. The times are out of joint: Seamus Heaney, Ballymurphy, and Kenosha

Yesterday I was reminded by Teju Cole that it was the anniversary of the death of Seamus Heaney.

This morning, as I sat with the cat and the peaceful light, I took down my copy of Heaney's North (1975), which is both about the idea of North, and Northern Ireland. Opening the book at random, I read “Whatever You Say Say Nothing”

The poem begins:

I’m writing just after an encounter
With an English journalist in search of ‘views
On the Irish thing’. I’m back in winter
Quarters where bad news is no longer news,

Where media-men and stringers sniff and point,
Where zoom lenses, recorders and coiled leads
Litter the hotels. The times are out of joint
But I incline as much to rosary beads

As to the jottings and analyses
Of politicians and newspapermen
Who’ve scribbled down the long campaign from gas
And protest to gelignite and sten,

Who proved upon their pulses ‘escalate’,
‘Backlash’ and ‘crack down’, ‘the provisional wing’,
‘Polarization’ and ‘long-standing hate’.
Yet I live here, I live here too, I sing...

and it ends:

O land of password, handgrip, wink and nod,
Of open minds as open as a trap,

Where tongues lie coiled, as under flames lie wicks,
Where half of us, as in a wooden horse
Were cabin’d and confined like wily Greeks,
Besieged within the siege, whispering morse.

--

This morning from a dewy motorway
I saw the new camp for the internees:
A bomb had left a crater of fresh clay
In the roadside, and over in the trees

Machine-gun posts defined a real stockade.
There was that white mist you get on a low ground
And it was deja-vu, some film made
Of Stalag 17, a bad dream with no sound.

Is there life before death? That’s chalked up
In Ballymurphy. competence with pain,
Coherent miseries, a bite and sup,
We hug our little destiny again.

 

Then I opened the precious book to the page with Heaney's inscription (to the original owner, a man in Toronto), my left hand holding the curl of the facing page flat, and thought: his hand held this book just like that, before his pen touched the paper, on a day in March 1986 when he was still very much alive.

I hadn’t read the news yet; I wanted a few more minutes of the soft light on the oxalis and spirea, the seeping red of the begonia blooms, the slightly heavy lift of coffee to lips. Better, I thought, to listen to the poet speak of humanity’s endless appetite for conflict, while he manages, genius that he is, to work in Shakespeare and the Greeks, the Russian camps, the endless clamouring for news on the way to Ballymurphy or Kenosha, and have his company this morning as I “hug my little destiny.”

I copied out the poem and wrote this far. Then I looked up the details about “Ballymurphy.”

Eleven civilians were killed in the Ballymurphy massacre in August, 1971, by members of the Parachute Regiment of the British Army, which had already been in Northern Ireland since 1969. Britain had just launched “Operation Demetrius” which had the objective of interning without trial anyone suspected of being a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

Members of the regiment said that as they entered Ballymurphy, they were shot at and returned fire. An account by Mike Jackson, who later became head of the British Army, stated that those killed in the shootings were Republican gunmen. This account was emphatically denied by the Catholic families of the people killed, all of whom were civilians. They included a Catholic priest, Father Hugh Mullan, who was trying to aid a wounded man, reportedly waving a white flag as he did so, and a woman, Joan Connolly, who was standing near the army base and then was left lying in a field for hours without medical attention, where she died.

None of the soldiers were held accountable and there was no investigation at the time.

45 years later, in 2016, an inquest was requested by the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. Funding for the inquest was “deferred” by the ruling party, and hearings did not begin until 2018. The last witnesses were heard in March 2020 after 100 days of testimony. A report is expected “in the coming months.”

--

Now, I’ll summon the courage to turn to today's news.

Hermit Diary 27: A Summer Already Ablaze

At Barack Obama's inauguration, Washington D.C., January 2009

 

The year was 1968. On April 4, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Two months later, in June, Robert F. Kennedy, the U.S. senator and former attorney general who had campaigned for civil rights his entire career, was also killed by an assassin. The Vietnam War was raging; the country deeply divided, angry, and hopeless. After Dr. King died, riots erupted in all the major cities, and continued. Like 2020, 1968 was also an election year. The Democratic convention, held in Chicago in August, was the scene of a massive clash between 10,000 anti-war demonstrators and 23,000 National Guardsmen, called in by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Later, the independently-headed "Walker Report," appointed to study and report on what had happened, said:

"...(there was) unrestrained and indiscriminate police violence on many occasions, particularly at night. That violence was made all the more shocking by the fact that it was often inflicted upon persons who had broken no law, disobeyed no order, made no threat. These included peaceful demonstrators, onlookers, and large numbers of residents who were simply passing through, or happened to live in, the areas where confrontations were occurring."

“Individual policemen, and lots of them, committed violent acts far in excess of the requisite force for crowd dispersal or arrest. To read dispassionately the hundreds of statements describing at firsthand the events of Sunday and Monday nights is to become convinced of the presence of what can only be called a police riot.”

I was 16 then and already a committed activist; I remember it all very well. The summer of 1968 was when it all boiled over, but the violence continued right through 1970, when the Kent State Massacre -- in which four innocent students were shot and killed -- finally seemed to mark a turning point in the protests against the war. Those of us who were alive then cannot forget Richard Nixon's unpalatable policies, and how his rightwing, law-and-order rhetoric fueled these confrontations -- but Donald Trump is orders-of-magnitude worse.

In spite of all that has happened since, no period of time I've experienced has come close to matching the frustration, anger, tension, fear, suffering, and deep sadness of those years, until now. 2020 is going to go down in history too. And it's going to be a long, hot summer.

Fifty years, and it feels like white people have learned nothing. Nothing. When are we going to wake up and make not only the systemic changes that need to happen, but start to address the wrongs that have been done? Will there EVER be a Truth and Reconciliation process in the United States? I very much doubt it, not with governments like the present one, which encourage and promote hatred, seek to turn their own people against each other, and have empowered and emboldened right-wing white supremacists, fascists, and the most conservative elements within police, military, and border-control forces. But the roots of racism in America run so deep that not even a black president of impeccable character and eloquence could make significant inroads against it. Now, not only do we have police killing blacks on the streets, and a justice system stacked against them, we have black and ethnic minority people dying in hugely disproportionate numbers from the virus, while they also serve in a disproportionate number of low-paying and dangerous jobs in health care and the service sectors -- not to mention the countless other injustices to which they are subject.

Here in Canada, I've observed the Truth and Reconciliation process with the indigenous community. Although America has perpetrated even more injustices, including genocide, against its native people, this did not feel like "my" issue when I moved here; because of the time when I grew up, I was more concerned, more familiar, and more invested in the struggles for civil rights, women's rights, peace and nuclear disarmament, gender equality, and the rights of immigrants and religious and ethnic minorities -- all of which had been major issues in the United States during my lifetime.  But I have seen the painful steps toward truth-telling and reconciliation here, as well as in South Africa, and I believe that this is the ONLY way to begin to redress the wrongs that have been done, and to bring a society into greater understanding.

Yet in Canada, in spite of believing that we're better than our neighbors to the south, we have our share of racism and hatred, especially directed against Muslims and Jews. Just this week, in one of the worst attacks in recent memory, a synagogue here in Montreal was violently ransacked, its religious objects desecrated -- a Torah had been cut up and stuffed into a toilet -- the floors covered in red paint, and the walls with antisemitic graffiti.

Meanwhile, the poor, and people of color and of ethnic minorities are dying at higher rates of COVID-19, while they fill a greater number of poorly-paid service and health care jobs. The same Quebec government which recently threw out three years of immigrant applications just had the gall to start a new fast-track program for immigrants who are willing to come here and work in the deplorable care homes for the elderly, where the virus has spread like wildfire, resulting in 80% of the deaths in the province. The message is clear: we didn't want you before, but now we need you to take care of us, so we'll make you a deal.

We white people of conscience have no choice: we have to stand for justice and against racism in all of its forms, against violence, against oppression, and for equality for all people regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexual preference. And you know what? It is not the job of black people, or Muslims, or Jewish people, Asians, Arabs, or any other minority group, to educate us about why their lives matter, and what needs to be done. It's our job, and we had damn well better get on with it.

A Black Letter Day

Antikyra, Greece.

I just skimmed through the Guardian and the New York Times – I can only spend 15-30 minutes on the Times, in particular, or I get too depressed – and my husband asked, from the kitchen, “what are all those sighs?” It’s unbelievable, what’s going on, and the place that both the U.S. and the U.K. have come to, not to mention the world and climate change. And it’s difficult for me, sometimes, to understand my own life in this context. Everything I've based my life on and care about deeply feels irrelevant, and, at the same time, endangered.

I think it’s imperative that we try to talk about this aspect of being alive now, not just the issues that we’re all so concerned about and which are affecting us nearly every minute of every day.  So many of us are living with grief, pain, and helplessness, plus we’re being fed a steady diet of anxiety, but the message given by capitalism, advertising, entertainment, and even many of our spiritual and educational institutions, is to carry on as usual: don’t talk too much about it, do your work, shore up your own future, play with your friends and family, pretend this isn’t happening as long as you possibly can. Unfortunately, most people in leadership positions have little idea how to talk about such a dire psychological crisis. And in the U.S., the denial of interconnection of all the major issues in the world has reached epic proportions. Today we read that Greece is building a floating migrant barrier. It’s horrible, but far more understandable to me than a wall on the southern U.S. border. Greece and Italy have borne the brunt of the refugee crisis for all of Europe and the rest of the world, while the richer countries have set quotas and washed their hands. And America has the gall to criticize Greece? Or refuse to acknowledge whose policies have caused the terrorism and refugee crises in the first place? How can people be capable of such hypocrisy and poor thinking? And that’s just one part of the whole interconnected mess.

So we have a probable impeachment acquittal and Brexit coming on the same day. An American who I love very much recently said to me, “This country is really booming!” They meant it, and believe it. It's as if what that person sees, and what I see, are two entirely different views of reality.

As friends who share similar views, however, we have to find ways to talk to each other, and help each other not to be crushed by the weight of grief and anxiety about the future, our sense of the sheer wrongness of what is going on, and our utter fatigue at the rigidity of the current moral divisions in society. It’s extremely difficult. If you focus on your own personal life, or on pursuits like art, for instance, it can feel like putting your head in the sand even though those pursuits are vitally important for lifting the spirit. Writing about what is wrong can be cathartic, and make us feel like we’re doing something, but does it actually do any good when no one is willing to change their mind? Is there anything truly useful that any of us can do against these sorts of forces, other than doing our best to try to change the political leadership?

I think of people in concentration camps, or civilians caught up in wars. We in the privileged West are not being literally bombarded by explosive weapons, but we are being bombarded emotionally and psychologically every single day. We are not literally imprisoned in concentration camps, but we are actually imprisoned in a situation that is doing violence to innocent people and to the earth as we watch, and this situation of being a constant witness is draining and depleting to the point of paralysis, no matter how secure we are, how much money we give, or how many changes we make in our own lifestyles.

So I also remember the importance of people who have kept hope alive in the past, and who kept LIFE alive, by living as fully, joyfully, lovingly, non-violently, and wisely as possible while being absolutely clear about what was, in fact, happening. As Thomas Merton wrote, we need to become people who can hold the darkness and the light in our hands simultaneously. This is only possible through contemplation and a great deal of thought and inner work, but that is part of the work we are being called to do.

The other part of the work is to band together to take collective action -- together we can accomplish much more than as individuals, and we can do more to help one another through this extremely challenging period of time. Do something. Help build a house for someone who can't afford it. Work collectively to force institutions to divest of fossil fuels. Sponsor a refugee family. Send aid to imprisoned Hispanic children. Teach. Bring art and music into other people's lives. Start a group where thinking, caring people like you can discuss the challenge of being alive right now. Turn your own despair into someone else's hope.