Please

This please is for the young eyes
that see more than you think.

This please is for the  young ears
that hear more than you suspect.

This please is for the young hearts that are just starting
to take root
with the

empathy
intelligence
respect
self-confidence
morals
character
strength
determination

that will be needed in full and vital growth
when today's children  are shoved ready or not into adulthood.

Please.

Please be the adults they need.

You've had your turns to be

a mindlessly self-centered 2 year old
a spontaneous 10 year old
an impulsive teen.

You are now the adults who must be more than you ever were.

The reins are in your hands,
the decisions are at your doorstep
and the pieces of our connected fates are  at your feet.

Please.

Greatness

Instead of my usual plan to go to work this morning, where I get to  swim in a vast and lovely ocean of children's and YA books, I found myself sitting front row center in the massive auditorium of Evanston Township High School, my friends and book colleagues on either side of me.

And in front of me...
a mere four or five feet in front of me,
standing on the stage
was U.S. Congressman John Lewis.


John Lewis is a formidable Civil Rights leader, a tireless peaceful warrior whose belief in the power of peace and love among all people has remained unchanged since he first joined the  Civil Rights movement as a very young man almost 60 years ago.

This morning he was speaking to an auditorium filled to bursting with high school freshmen.  Each of them had been given--and had been studying in class-- signed copies of "March", a graphic novel trilogy about the Civil Rights movement written by  John Lewis and Congressional Aide Andrew Aydin, illustrated by Nate Powell.

As I sat in the front row, well over 1000 students filled the seats behind me, each of them fully aware of the history and the power in the man on stage before them.

And it wasn't just due to the book.

Sometimes, if we are very lucky, we encounter greatness.  Not the transient greatness of money, power, fame or even necessarily skill.  I'm talking about the greatness of spirit.  Of inner strength. The greatness that is earned by keeping to a course and a path when pain, cruelty and misfortune tempt one to quit.

As John Lewis spoke today, I knew everyone in that room sensed that they were sitting before real greatness.  Congressman Lewis told that massive room of newly minted high school freshmen funny stories from his childhood that held hidden morals and foreshadowing of his own future.  He described being beaten bloody and arrested during peaceful protests and marches.   He  reminisced about his own encounters with greatness:  Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Malcom X, John F. Kennedy, Nelson Mandela...so many others.

But above all he kept asking, demanding, imploring the same thing (and I paraphrase from my hastily scribbled notes):

"When you see something that isn't right, that's not fair and not just, you have a moral obligation, a mandate, a mission to speak up and to act."  

He repeated this throughout his talk.  He repeated it as he answered the students who nervously took the microphone to ask him carefully considered questions.  

And he always followed it up with the same directives:  never give up. keep pushing, but do so with love and always in a non-violent, peaceful manner.  

In his talk Congressman Lewis alluded to the fact that right now we are seeing a repeat--or a variation--of the same kind of hate, the same slide into violence, the same intolerance and short-sightedness as there was during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's.   

His message, as simple and elegant as it is, is a message that has been repeated by people of vision, action and peace all my life.  And it is a message we desperately need to heed once again.

At the end of the event John Lewis waved  to the audience and thanked everyone, and then simply stood on stage as waves of students rushed down the aisles towards him .

I think this is the best picture of all--John Lewis surrounded --nearly swallowed up--by young students wanting--perhaps needing--to touch greatness. 

As do we all sometimes.

And I leave you with some homework, assigned by John Lewis and graded by whatever our shared future brings:



"When you see something that isn't right, that's not fair and not just, you have a moral obligation, a mandate, a mission to speak up and to speak out."  

The Battle of the Burkini

This is a burkini. 

It is a lightweight swimwear alternative for Muslim women who want to go swimming, but who don't want to swim in yards and yards of heavy, waterlogged fabric.

This seems straightforward to me.  The burkini is a modest swimwear alternative for Muslim women whose beliefs and religion include  clothing mandates for women that they choose to follow.  I am not a Muslim woman, so therefore I strongly feel that I have no business passing judgement upon them.  I similarly don't pass judgment on women who choose to wear microscopic swimwear, or who sunbathe topless, or who wear shorts and an old t-shirt for beach swimming.  

However it would seem that the burkini is now a hot-button issue, with the anti-burkini-ists shouting down the burkini as an insult to feminism and/or  a clear link to terrorism.  

A Lifestyle article from March 2016  in The Telegraph has recently resurfaced in which  Daily Telegraph journalist and columnist Allison Pearson (2) blasted the burkini  for sending women, women's rights and feminism back to the dark ages. (1).

After reading the article my first feeling was extreme  frustration because Allison equates a woman's choice in clothing with freedom.  She points out that "the burkini is woven from shame" (1).  So if a burkini is "woven from shame", then what is a string bikini woven from?   Exploitation?  One cannot call out one extreme without also looking at the other. The writer goes on to  cite her experiences in teacher training placements where little Muslim girls were rendered markedly different for their modest Muslim clothing and customs, and in some cases unable to take part in school activities such as swimming. (1).  

As if the teachers and  fellow students didn't also have the power--and responsibility-- to reach out, learn about their Muslim classmates and in doing so discover those things they had in common as well.   The author is a clear and firm supporter of full assimilation for all immigrants, stating that we (in the UK) "should have insisted  that the price of admission to Britain was learning to conform with its customs and social attitudes" (1).  She goes on to admire Germany for one of its  court rulings that mandated that a Muslim girl must participate in school swimming lessons because "the social reality of life in Germany came above her religious beliefs." (1).   

Um.  What???? Perhaps if the girl had been allowed to wear...oh, I don't know...a burkini...she could've participated in swimming lessons easily.

And thus we come full circle to a place where no matter what, Muslim women and girls cannot win. 

But beyond the issue of feminism denied or supported in the guise of the burkini, there was another deeper and perhaps more insidious issue.   Allison might be ranting on behalf of the UK but her argument is echoed here in the United States as well, both with roots in the same divisive, poisonous mind-set:

MY way is right because this is MY country.  I was born here.  

YOUR way is wrong because this is MY country and NOT YOURS.  Even if you WERE born here It will NEVER BE YOUR COUNTRY, because you are DIFFERENT. 

In a world that is increasingly integrated, where one never knows just which branch on their family tree could also be labeled "immigrant",  where one could travel to a different country and find THEMSELVES as the odd-person out, with blaringly different language, culture and beliefs, this is a particularly ignorant and nasty stance to take.

What's even more dangerous, and of which the United States is increasingly guilty, is conflating spiritual or religious beliefs with extremism.   Our media is slathered in variations of "Muslim = Terrorism",  and in spite of plenty of intelligent, open-minded everyday people yelling out into the void "Being Muslim DOES NOT immediately make a person a TERRORIST", the media circus easily drowns them out. 

Isn't it fortunate that the same isn't being done with Christianity?  Catholicism? Buddhism?  Judaism?  

But I digress.  Back to the burkini.

1

Look at the burkini. Swim pants.  Long sleeved swim shirt.  Head covering.   It seems pretty mild to me. I'm not sensing a particularly anti-feminist vibe coming from this, nor do I fear it.  But don't take my word for it.  I'm a freaky California liberal after all.  Let's put the burkini in context.

3

Well how about this?  This is swimwear designed to provide total UV protection.  Does this scream feminist scandal to you?  Does this holler "terrorism"?   Or is it acceptable because (a) it is form fitting so we can see the curves of the model's body, and somehow visible  curves=girl power  (?!?) and (b) her head is not covered up.

4

Or how about this?  China's "facekini". (4)  Remember this?  A nearly complete head covering designed to protect the skin from the sun--often also worn with long-sleeved swim shirts.   

Perhaps the controversial  issue with the burkini is the head covering, in which case, shouldn't we have totally freaked out about the "facekini"?   But no.  The world saw the facekini, chuckled a bit, and went on its merry way. 

5

Perhaps the complaint is that the burkini is connected with the Muslim faith and its assumed views towards women and women's bodies.  Perhaps religion and cultural and spiritual beliefs are the issues here.

In which case,  why aren't we all  coming unglued about  the periodic sighting of nuns at the beach?  A nun's habit is exactly as concealing as a burka--and far more so than a burkini.   And I would argue that if, as is occurring currently in France right now, the fear is of inherent terrorism (6), the burkini would make it much more difficult to hide dangerous items than the standard nun's habit.  (disclaimer:  I am NOT saying that nuns are concealing dangerous items beneath their habits.  This is an example, nothing more.)

My point in all this is simple:  it is extremely easy to make quick judgements about things of which we know very little, or even absolutely nothing.   We look through our British-tinted glasses, or our United States-tinted glasses and we slam and shame anything that screams "NOT ME".  

Is the burkini an insult to modern feminism?  Is it designed to hide and shame women's bodies, as Allison repeatedly and vehemently insisted in her article?  

I don't know.

And it is okay for me not to know because this is not about me.  

There are Muslim women who feel their clothing is a vital expression of their faith.   And there are Muslim women who may agree with Allison and want to cast off the Burka, the Hijab, the Niqab and/or the headscarf.  

In the argument of whether or not  burkas and similar garments reinforce or undermine the freedom of the women who wear them, it is for the women themselves to determine...and our job, as fellow human beings, to respect and support their choices and, if needed, fight  alongside them for their freedom to be and believe as they choose.  

Nothing more.  Nothing less.

Sources

1.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/the-ms-burkini-for-muslim-women-shows-britain-is-letting-sexism/

2.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/allison-pearson/

3.  http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/2015-Beach-UV-Protection-Pringting-women-full-body-swimear-wetsuit-anti-sun-rashguard-Snorkeling-swimming-Surf/1852700_32495481307.html

4. http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/facekini-china-terrifying-swimwear-trend-hit-beach-gallery-1.1910561?pmSlide=1.1910552

5. https://www.flickr.com/photos/radziecki/172916749

6. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/24/french-police-make-woman-remove-burkini-on-nice-beach

Where'd Ya Go Curly Jo?

1

A friend of ours enjoys festooning Facebook with  kitschy retro bits of ephemera from the distant/not so distant past.

Recently he posted this--what looks to be a newspaper ad from the 1970's (judging by the collar on the  shirt and hairstyle).

It's not a remarkable newspaper ad.  Simply a plug for a local or perhaps traveling entertainer at one of hundreds of Holiday Inn hotels that once upon a time dotted the U.S. highways at regular intervals.

The ad gives us the basics:  Curly Jo Russell.  Two week Holiday Inn hotel bar stint.  Cocktail Hour prices.  Hotel address (although  no city or state).

After our friend posted this, quite a few other people jumped in to share humorous imaginings about the identity of Curly Jo Russell.

Because imaginings are all we are left with.



The longer I looked at this ad, the more questions percolated uselessly into my idle mind.


Who was Curly Jo Russell?
What was his real name?  Surely his mother didn't name him "Curly Jo"...right?
Where was he from?  Did he have a job besides touring the Holiday Inn bar performance circuit?
Did he have a family?  A partner?  Children?   A cat?

I did a few quick google searches and came up with nothing.

I googled "Curly Jo Russell" and "1970's performer".  Nothing.
I googled "Joe Russell", "Joseph Russell"  and "1970" along with "performer", "musician", "magician", "comedian".

Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.


Meanwhile, someone else added a bit more information to the mystery.

2

The address listed on Curly Jo's original newspaper ad matched the address for  a former Holiday Inn in Grand Island, Nebraska.

I thusly renewed my search.

Nothing.

I searched the obituary archives for the long-time local newspaper, the "Grand Island Independent" (on the assumption he might have been a local) .  I read 15 to 20 obituaries that included the name "Russell" in any way.

I did some math and figured Curly Jo may have been born between 1940 and 1950, and then narrowed my obituary search.

Nothing.


Along the way I read the summarized newspaper life stories of cowboys and farmers, ministers and world travelers, soldiers and woodworkers and teachers.  Some of the stories were long and detailed. Others simply noted place of birth and place of death.

But no Curly Jo Russell.

Now, I am well aware that I'm not a professional researcher.   And I am also aware that the name "Curly Jo Russell" might be entirely a stage name.  Or perhaps in his later years Curly Jo decided to distance himself from his youthful Holiday Inn performer past, so it wouldn't even show up in his obituary.

However I know this much.  At one point in the 1970s,  only 40 years ago or so, there was a person who called himself (or herself.  One cannot assume) "Curly Jo Russell".  

At one point only 40 years ago Curly Jo Russell wanted to share his talents with the world.  Curly Jo might have been a comedian.  A musician.  A magician.   Who knows?  The what doesn't matter as much as the fact that Curly Jo Russell followed a dream to the microscopic stage of a nondescript Holiday Inn bar in Grand Island Nebraska.

What matters is that across everything that Curly Jo Russell might have been and done, who he might have loved and lost, the entirety of his life is immortalized in a random, now-amusing newspaper ad for a Holiday Inn bar performance where his audience could enjoy mixed drinks for 50 cents each.

Depending on your perspective,  the story-non-story of Curly Jo Russell could be wildly depressing...or it could be reassuring.

Most people want to make a lasting mark on the world--a touch of immortality (because for some reason the desire for immortality seems to be somehow genetically wired into our psyches, starting with the biological drive to have children and then just spiraling out from there in all the weird ways).

What we get from this touch of immortality is anyone's guess.  But we want it anyway.

The real story of Curly Jo Russell may be lost forever.

But Curly Jo got his touch of immortality.  He surfaced improbably, 40 years after his Grand Island Nebraska performances, on a social media site where he managed to unintentionally amuse us and spark our silly imaginations.

Personally, I think there are far worse ways to touch the future.

Good for you Curly Jo.  We are entertained.






Sources

1. https://www.facebook.com/thekitschbitsch/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED&fref=nf

2.  https://www.google.com/search?q=holiday+inn+2503+s.+locust+grand+island
+ne&espv=2&biw=1248&bih=594&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi4y
JL7ttDOAhXLpR4KHYb_DAIQ_AUIBSgA&dpr=2

You Can Stop Hoping that Trump Won't Win--He Already Has

Tweets and Facebook posts, opinion pieces, essays, poems, signs, memes, heated discussions over our over-priced coffees, phone calls and tv spots have, for weeks, been roaring with one message:

Trump cannot become our next president.

This call seems to reverberate all around us.   And because we see it,  hear it and feel the vibrations from the voices that chant it, pray it, hope it, we think it must be so,  and that Trump won't win.

He can't win.

However this morning I woke up to find the internet once again swollen with tales of celebrated hate and intolerance from the Republican National Convention.

And I realized, with the cold, horrible stillness of certainty--

Trump has already won.

Even if he loses the election, he has won.

He has successfully achieved something that  slavery, wars, race riots, internment camps, fights for equality on all levels, corruption, depressions, recessions, gun violence, health care disasters, a slowly imploding educational system, racism, sexism, ageism, and prejudice and bigotry of all kinds  have not, separately quite managed to do:

He has brought the United States of America to the edge of collapse.  And right now, at this moment, as the Republican  National Convention spirals slowly out of control, we are watching our country's death throes.   It is ugly.  It is vicious.  It is terrifying.

Trump has become the glue for the worst of our country, bonding together a juggernaut of intolerance, ignorance and fear.

You may disagree with  me.  That is fine.  Disagreement is healthy.   Debate is vital.

But I ask you this:  no matter who becomes our next president, how can we heal from this?  How can we move on and put our country back together?  


Trump is the magnifying glass in the sun to our dry, brittle,  underlying ugliness, and the fire is burning before our eyes.

It is no coincidence that there are now innocent people being killed--mostly by guns--every day.

Every day.

And I'm not going to break it down into little packets of divisiveness--how many police officers were killed, how many black people were killed. How many liberals, how many conservatives.  It is enough that innocent people were killed needlessly.  Shouldn't this be enough to bring us together in our rage?

Evidently not.

Trump is the champion of a shockingly wide swath of primarily white Americans who have been the victims of a fractured, incomplete educational system,  a troubled economy and skewed guidance by their leaders in politics, church and school.

And as the champion, Trump has legitimized, endorsed and encouraged what has become an orgy of intolerance, hate, violence and division.

In a stunning bit of final irony, it was not--as Trump supporters would've predicted-- the immigrants, the liberals or the LGBTQ folks who are bringing the United States to its knees.

It is a swollen morass of fearful, frustrated and tunnel-visioned white folks.

Those of us watching the disaster unfold from the sidelines may comfort ourselves by believing Trump to be a singularly stupid man.

He is not stupid.

He knew precisely how to exploit the "art" of this "deal".  

And now we will all pay his price.

I Can't

I can't watch the video of
Alton Sterling
being shot by police.

I can't.

I can't join the masses who treat yet another needless death
like a reality show,
like an accident on the side of the road,
the firetrucks and ambulances somehow giving me somber permission
to stare as I pass uselessly by.

I can't hear the broken words
of Alton Sterling's wife,
the sobs of his son
and not see them as part of my own human family--
because they are mine and they are ours.

I can't pick sides
when the only sides to Alton Sterling's death
are power, privilege and fear.

Power, privilege and fear are roaring, speeding, screaming
at all of us
in infinite violent combinations
from all sides now.

From attacks on Muslims in Iraq, Bangladesh, Turkey and Saudi Arabia,
to a wild gunman in an Orlando nightclub.
From a child being accidentally shot by his parent on a gun range
to police shooting a  man selling CD's on the street.
I could go on,
and on,
and on.

Those of us who somehow think we've won the lottery
by virtue of having our power and privilege accidentally
laid upon our skin at birth...

we are fooling ourselves.

Power, privilege and fear
betray everyone in the end
and I can't believe
that my country, our world,
stands so idly by while the storm approaches
whispering "this kind of thing only happens to THEM."

Guess what?
We are all them.

So.

I can't watch the video of
Alton Sterling
being shot by police.

I can't.

Just a Little Bit Dusty

We have a dog.

Bob awoke on Father's Day this year and declared that he has waited 36 years to have his own dog again and dagnabbit, he was not going to wait another year.

So Bob started scanning the available dogs at all the local shelters.

While he still has his heart set on someday having a boxer (and/or a shiba inu), we both knew that we'd probably need to have a substantially bigger house--with a fenced yard--to have either of these.

So he was open to the whims of fate.   And eventually fate did offer him a whim, in the form of a 2 year old weimaraner mix.   The dog was adorable, sporting a huge doggie grin and from the picture didn't look too large.

The next weekend Bob and I went to the ADOPT shelter in Naperville and told the shelter folks which dog we had our eye on.  They brought us back to the kennel areas where dogs of all sizes stood at the metal gates of their kennels, some barking uproariously, others asleep or staring at us dolefully.

The shelter volunteer stopped, not at a kennel but at a small room that was reverberating with booming barks and scrabbling dog claws.  I turned my head and found myself face-to-face with the dog of Bob's choice--not a medium sized dog at all but a huge frantic, barking, running, bouncing toddler-dog that, standing on his hind legs, was taller than me.

We had no choice but to demure from seriously considering the huge dog, although we knew a big part of his boisterous behavior was probably boredom.

We walked around the kennels again, looking more seriously at each of the inhabitants.
We walked around twice.

On the third pass we stopped at an end kennel in which a salt-and-pepper colored dog sat panting, gazing up at us calmly amid the cacophony of dog noises around her.

Dusty's photo for the shelter website (http://www.adoptpetshelter.org/)

The shelter volunteer informed us that this was "Dusty", a 12 year old Australian Cattle Dog mix who was relinquished when her owner was too ill to care for her.  

We asked if we could visit with her.

So we were escorted to a small meeting room and asked to wait so the volunteer could  bring Dusty to us.   A few minutes later Dusty was led in on a leash, eyes bright, step bouncy, not looking at all like a 12 year old dog.

It was a matter of a few seconds before Bob and I were both on the floor, letting Dusty sniff at us, chew on toys  and explore the myriad of interesting smells in the room.

Bob took a picture of Dusty and sent it to Aya with the text "What do you think?"

Aya texted back. "Get her now."

Of course, it wasn't that easy.  Before Dusty could become a Moorehead we had to actually bring Aya in to meet her to make sure there wouldn't be any unforeseen personality conflicts.  And we had to broach the subject with our landlord (who not only gave us his wholehearted permission, but, as a fellow dog lover, waived the pet deposit).  And Dusty had to have her final shots and physical exam.
We were informed we could pick Dusty up the next week.

Which gave us enough time to buy all the food, bowls, toys, beds and other accoutrements we would need to add a dog to our lives.

Dusty has been with us two weeks now, and we honestly couldn't ask for a better kinda-first dog.  It was obvious her previous owner had worked with her because she    came to us knowing how to sit, lay down, shake, stay and come when called, not to mention she walks precisely at our side on her leash, only falling out of step when a particularly enticing scent reaches her nose (or when a squirrel happens by).

Our only challenge is navigating the divide between Dusty and the cats.   The shelter assured us that Dusty is good with cats, and for the most part she is, but I'm sure she has never lived with cats, and her delighted, tail-wagging galloping each time she spots one has required Bob and I to engage in treat-laden "encounter sessions", where one of us holds a clearly displeased cat and the other holds Dusty on her leash and we just sit.  And sit.  And sit.  And as Dusty calms down she receives treats and we slowly narrow the gap between the two.

And it is slowly working.

Which brings me to the gist of all this.

We started our dog search looking for a younger dog.  Pretty much everyone seems to start out their dog searches looking for puppies and younger dogs.

And this is fine.  Puppies and younger dogs are  adorable and often more cat-sized (for the cat owners looking for a dog), and there is the benefit of training them as the owner sees fit.

But equally fine are the older dogs who wait at shelters, often ending their lives at the shelters. Certainly they are cared for and loved by the shelter staff, but this is not quite the same thing as having a family and a home of their own.

I'm not quite sure if we found Dusty or if Dusty found us.  And in the end it does not matter.  Our sweet, gentle, squirrel-loving, cat-enthusiast, well-mannered and newest furry family member gets to spend however many years she has left with us, receiving probably too many treats and being given probably too many toys.

Which is exactly what life should be when any of us reach the age of 69*,  right?

Welcome home Dusty.




*http://www.akc.org/learn/family-dog/how-to-calculate-dog-years-to-human-years/