EBOLA
OUTBREAK NOW IN U.S.
~~~
BLIZZARD
OF HISTORIC PROPORTIONS
BLANKETING
NORTHEASTERN UNITED STATES
~~~
THREE
MUSLIMS SHOT EXECUTION STYLE IN NORTH CAROLINA; SUSPECT HAD STOCKPILE OF
WEAPONS AND AMMO IN APARTMENT
~~~
MEASLES
RETURNS TO U.S.; MOVEMENT
AGAINST
VACCINATIONS SEEN AS CAUSE
~~~
ISIS
BEHEADS 21 EGYPTIAN CHRISTIANS
~~~
UKRAINE
CEASE FIRE ON THIN ICE
~~~
PRESIDENT
OBAMA ASKS CONGRESS TO APPROVE ISIS WAR
"The shadow of crisis has passed, and
the State of the Union is
strong." ~ U.S. President Barack Obama,
2015 State
of the Union Address.
Marie’s Crisis
There’s a piano bar in the West Village of New
York City called Marie’s Crisis Cafe. I’ve been a couple of times, years ago
now, with my friend Kathy, a voiceover artist. It’s fun. Sort of. If you like
that sort of thing.
“To walk downstairs into this old West Village bar is to step out of
time a bit. As an amicable regular might tell you, the room first opened in the
1850s as a prostitutes' den, became a boy bar by the 1890s, and lasted through
Prohibition, when it was known as Marie's (the ‘Crisis’ came from ‘The Crisis
Papers,’ by Thomas Paine, who died in the same house). For the past 35 years,
it's plowed through as a piano joint in which neighboring gay men and musical
theater performers gather round the keys nightly and sing solo—numbers like
‘Stranger in Paradise’ or ‘You're the Top’—to create a mood of both giddiness
and longing.” ~ Karen
Hudes, NY Mag
Miss O’ wants
to like Marie’s Crisis more than she tends to do. It’s about singing show
tunes, for heaven’s sake, and drinking a fine malt beverage in comradeship with
show queens, after all. But there’s a kind of competitiveness that sets in, as
well as a copious fumbling of lyrics, which, combined with (in my limited
experience) an out-of-tune piano and sticky floors, left this barfly more than
a little depressed.
Marie’s Crisis, as you see above, took part of
its name from none other than Thomas Paine, author of the famous federal
documents and essays now known as The
Crisis Papers. After hearing President Obama’s SOTU Address, as it’s known,
I began thinking about that word, crisis.
So I started thinking about crisis, and who better to help me along than Thomas Paine himself, who would have been 278 years young on February 9.
THESE are
the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot
will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that
stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like
hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the
harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap,
we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.
~ Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, December 23, 1776
What
exactly are “these” times, in the year of our (over)lord 2015?
On the
blog TruthOut.org recently was an excerpt of a larger work, called “The
Spectacle of Illiteracy and the Crisis of Democracy” by Henry Giroux. He
writes:
“C. Wright Mills argued 50
years ago that one important measure of the demise of vibrant democracy and the
corresponding impoverishment of political life can be found in the increasing
inability of a society to translate private troubles to broader public issues….
What this decline in civility, the emergence of mob behavior and the utter
blurring in the media between a truth and a lie suggest is that we have become
one of the most illiterate nations on the planet.”
by Henry Giroux.
Every year it seems that everyone I know is
living more and more in a state of crisis—whether with illness, finances,
longer working hours, or no work at all, everywhere we turn there is a crisis
looming. The deeper tragedy, which is the fallout of each horrible new thing,
is acted out in halls of power of the right wing of America’s political system,
a wing too many people vote for with the hope that in vilifying the victims of
crises and heaping larger burdens onto the most vulnerable, the crises will be
buried for good and all under those mounds. The people of the United States—we, the
People—have just that “inability” Mr. Giroux speaks of to recognize that
“private troubles” are in fact not private, but rather “public issues.”
Bankruptcies from health care costs—usually from crises such as cancer or other
life-threatening illnesses—should lead us powerfully to gratitude for President
Obama’s realization of the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s dream of health care
insurance for all Americans. But this is not the case. Miss O’s Republican
friends, who heatedly debated her on social media with abandon, claimed that if
you can’t afford insurance, you should simply die. They wouldn’t take the
argument, of course, to its logical conclusion, but felt that as long as they
personally had insurance, no one else should have it if it meant paying a
little more. The end. The result, of course—death—is nothing to do with them.
They got theirs.
Similarly, white right-wing (mostly) friends on Facebook denounced
the outcry over Mike Brown and Eric Garner, whose deaths at the hands of police
made international headlines. “They should have complied,” and besides, “now
these protests are ruining my commute.”
THOSE who
expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues
of supporting it. The event of yesterday was one of those kind of alarms which
is just sufficient to rouse us to duty, without being of consequence enough to
depress our fortitude. It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause,
that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by
degrees, the consequences will be the same.
~ Thomas Paine, The American Crisis: PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 12, 1777
Jon Stewart recently announced the end of his
15-year tenure on The Daily Show. America
is a nation that has come to rely on a Comedy Central cable entertainment program
for trustworthy news, because the writers of actual “news” programs fill the
airwaves with so much garbage. Puppy stories. Punditry. One of my favorite
segments on Stewart's program over the years was “Moments in Punditry, as Read by Children.” Out of
the mouths of babes, the inanities of these “writers” became powerfully comic,
revealing that their concerns were never about the betterment of mankind. But did we learn anything?
TO LORD HOWE.
"What's in the name of lord, that
I should fear
To bring my grievance to the public
ear?
UNIVERSAL empire is the prerogative of
a writer. His concerns are with all mankind, and though he cannot command their
obedience, he can assign them their duty. The Republic of Letters is more
ancient than monarchy, and of far higher character in the world than the vassal
court of Britain; he that rebels against reason is a real rebel, but he that in
defence of reason rebels against tyranny has a better title to "Defender
of the Faith," than George the Third.
~ Thomas Paine, The American Crisis: PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 13, 1777
Whom should we love? Whom should we care about? Whom should we write about? In Lorraine Hansberry’s classic
play about blacks coming face to face with the importance of the civil rights
movement, Walter Lee Younger makes a tragic decision about how to use the life
insurance money awarded at his father’s death. His sister, Beneatha, professes
her profound disgust, calling her brother "a toothless rat".
BENEATHA:
Love him? There is nothing left to love.
MAMA:
There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you
ain't learned nothing. Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for
yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him: what he
been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to
love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody?
Well then, you ain't through learning - because that ain't the time at all.
It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done
whipped him so! When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child,
measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys
he come through before he got to wherever he is.”
But Americans don’t like hills and valleys.
They like “a level playing field,” that mythical arena where every single human born gets to start playing the Game of Life with all the same money,
looks, health, family connection, resources, and support systems as every other
single human being in the world. It’s the greatest, most fantastical and
sickest story Americans tell their children and their fellow citizens, and
until the Myth of the Level Playing Field is debunked for good and all, nothing
like progress can occur.
But this is exactly why the right wing
embraces it. So why does the progressive wing trot it out, too? Because it’s
such a wonderful fantasy of “the great equality.”
In a recent
op-ed for the New York Times,
“Who Loves America?”, columnist Charles Blow had this to say:
"In a way, this is an ideological battle.
Conservatism is rooted in preservation; progressivism advances alteration.
These are different love languages. These languages turn on your view of change
itself: When you think of America, do you see a country struggling to be
maintained or one striving to be made better?"
Tom Paine reflected on progress and
what that means, and why stasis cannot be the goal of living, nor can it be
practical or useful in political life.
IN THE
progress of politics, as in the common occurrences of life, we are not only apt
to forget the ground we have travelled over, but frequently neglect to gather
up experience as we go. We expend, if I may so say, the knowledge of every day
on the circumstances that produce it, and journey on in search of new matter
and new refinements: but as it is pleasant and sometimes useful to look back,
even to the first periods of infancy, and trace the turns and windings through
which we have passed, so we may likewise derive many advantages by halting a
while in our political career, and taking a review of the wondrous complicated
labyrinth of little more than yesterday.
~ Thomas Paine, The American Crisis: PHILADELPHIA, April 19, 1777
Lately, though, Progressives have been using
their big voices in the halls of power, and why they have been afraid for so
long, who knows? Miss O’s personal hero this past week was retiring Senator
Barbara Boxer of California—and maybe it’s the knowledge of "no more campaigns to run" (as Obama remarked, adding after the Republican applause, "I know, because I won both of them") that is making her brave (and President Obama even braver). Of her
colleagues in the Senate who hold up every bill at every turn and have nothing
to offer in terms of actionable policy and so once again cry “GOVERNMENT
SHUTDOWN!” Sen.
Boxer had this to say in response to their refusal to vote on an
immigration bill:
So tell me, Republicans, how does it make sense to
deport people like Anna, split her up from her parents, when all they want to
do is contribute to the country that they love. How does it make sense?
How does it make sense? Because you're too
incompetent to hold a vote on your immigration plan? You want to kick people
out of the country? Put it to a vote! Let's go. You want to deport 11
million people? Put it to a vote. Don't hide behind the Homeland Security Bill,
holding the President's work hostage. You never did it to the other presidents.
Our national security is at stake, our family values are
at stake. And our economy is at stake here. So get over the fact that you don't
like the president. We get it. You couldn't beat him. Too bad for you. But
you're in charge here, in the Senate. Do your job!
Don't hold it hostage due to your hatred of this
president, and I use that word because that's what I think. That's what I
think….
So I say to my Republican friends. There's a
presidential race coming. Forget this last one. Get over it. Okay? Let's work
together. Listen, I served with five presidents. I'm a strong Democrat.
Everyone will tell you that. But I respect the office of the presidency. If I
didn't agree with Ronald Reagan, I came down here and said it. But we had the
respect back and forth. If we lost, we lost. And we moved on. And that worked
both ways. I know what it is not to like the policies of a president. I get it.
But don't overdo it and make it so personal. Get on with it. Grow up. Do your
job, you know? Do your job! Have respect for the office of the presidency.
Don't suddenly say
executive orders are bad when the president you don't like does it, but you
don't say one word when a Republican president does the same thing!
Middle school Student Government Associations are more effective. What will it take to get government going
again? Vote Progressive. Is America ready to get moving? Or does it merely want
to cry, “Give me liberty, and give me a great big fucking death”?
Tom Paine knew the price of idiots in power:
TO GENERAL SIR WILLIAM HOWE.
To argue
with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose
philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering
medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture. Enjoy,
sir, your insensibility of feeling and reflecting. It is the prerogative of
animals. And no man will envy you these honors, in which a savage only can be
your rival and a bear your master.
~ Thomas Paine, The American Crisis: LANCASTER, March 21, 1778
Speaking of men renouncing reason,
I give you the Anti-Vaxxers:
Dr. James Cherry, a specialist in pediatric
infectious diseases at the University of California-Los Angeles, told the New York Times the current outbreak is
"100 percent connected" to the anti-immunization movement.
"It wouldn't have
happened otherwise—it wouldn't have gone anywhere. There are some pretty dumb
people out there."
Here’s my truth, spoken for me by my friend
GEORGE on FACEBOOK:
Bad enough too many Americans feel the need to keep pumpin' out dem babies into an irresponsibly consumptive and wasteful society whose hubris sucks up 3/5 of the world's resources to keep us swimming in plastic crap—while elsewhere, millions of orphaned children are dying for some care... (I'm sure your children's and grandchildren's last thoughts of you will be >kind< as climate change & overpopulation end their lives in hunger, disaster, despair, and probably violence over the next half century.) But that's not enough... Nope. Now you're letting your unvaccinated spawn infect the rest of us. Nice. How... American of you. Those of you whose personal morality seems to be in conflict with a hormonal desire to leave a mark on the world through spawn: Adopt. And then please vaccinate the little crawling germ bags. Have a GFD, Omelas.
Then there’s The
Onion, which can’t even trump reality:
As a mother, I put my parenting decisions above all
else. Nobody knows my son better than me, and the choices I make about how to
care for him are no one’s business but my own. So, when other people tell me
how they think I should be raising my child, I simply can’t tolerate it.
Regardless of what anyone else thinks, I fully stand behind my choices as a
mom, including my choice not to vaccinate my son, because it is my fundamental
right as a parent to decide which eradicated diseases come roaring back.
TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
THERE are stages in the business of serious life in
which to amuse is cruel, but to deceive is to destroy; and it is of little
consequence, in the conclusion, whether men deceive themselves, or submit, by a
kind of mutual consent, to the impositions of each other. That England has long
been under the influence of delusion or mistake, needs no other proof than the
unexpected and wretched situation that she is now involved in: and so powerful
has been the influence, that no provision was ever made or thought of against
the misfortune, because the possibility of its happening was never conceived.
~ Thomas Paine, The American Crisis: PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 21, 1778
CrISIS: I personally think that most all violence/ unhappiness/ unrest comes down to wealth
inequality. When people feel they have nothing left either to lose or hope for,
the door is open for the (very few) power fanatics to begin the recruiting and
conversions of the hopeless…and, boom: ISIS, which is just the latest in a
series. I also suspect that too many rich people who cause this inequality love
war because it keeps the peasants busy killing each other.
HAD America pursued her advantages with half the
spirit that she resisted her misfortunes, she would, before now, have been a
conquering and a peaceful people; but lulled in the lap of soft tranquillity,
she rested on her hopes, and adversity only has convulsed her into action.
Whether subtlety or sincerity at the close of the last year induced the enemy
to an appearance for peace, is a point not material to know; it is sufficient
that we see the effects it has had on our politics, and that we sternly rise to
resent the delusion.
~ Thomas Paine, The American Crisis: Philadelphia, Oct. 4, 1780
And then there’s ISIS. Typically
Facebook friends who never post political things expressed “outrage” that the
U.S. was not over with full troop support fighting ISIS only when “21
Christians” were executed. In the past, when it’s been the kidnapping of
African girls from a school, or the rape of Muslim detainees in the Syrian
refugee camps, the outrage expressed from these same “Christians” was
approximately zero.
Money. Freedom. I got mine: I try
to imagine a world where people get up in the morning, walk gently to the water
source, fill a kettle or a coffee pot, pour out the tea leaves or the coffee
grounds into a steeper, place the vessel of choice onto a heat source, and
slice the bread. Gather the eggs. Cook the breakfast. Eat it. Wash up. Wash
their faces and hands and dress. Tidy up the place. Walk out into the world and
amble to work. Greet neighbors and friends along the way. Notice the sky. Feel
the weather coming.
In that world, there is no HURRY.
Nature will give us, always, not only bounty and beauty but also real weeks of real crisis: drought, fire, snow,
ice, wind, torrents of rain, earthquakes, tornadoes. And more than the snippets we allow ourselves to see on Fox News …
NOW IN CABLEVISION! Do you REALLY want your life to be
lived like a Lifetime TV Movie? Melodrama, disease, betrayal, ruin,
humorlessness at every turn of the life dial?
A few years ago, one of my dear
friends died, suddenly, of congestive heart failure, the cause of which was a
years-long addiction to alcohol. It was not until near the end that any of us
even knew she drank. She was a closet alcoholic, a maintenance drinker, and she
also binged when alone with her kids. Her life had been, it turned out, one
long crisis, with breathers in between—loss of the custody of her daughter when
quite young; death of her second husband to cancer—and that’s just for
starters. But in the life, she lived with the greatest, best figurative heart,
full of love and art and excitement for doing new things, learning, reading,
running, and children. As I said at the end of my eulogy at her funeral, when
my own life was in crisis and decided to move to New York, she was my
strongest, best champion. When everyone around me was stage-whispering, “You
know she’s out of her mind,” or “she’ll never survive,” or “who does she think
she is?” it was this friend who said to me, “Lisa, don’t listen to them.
Everybody wishes they were you right now. Everybody wants to be YOU.” In
finally making the move, the shadow of the crisis passed. The state of my
(internal) union is strong. For my friend, the crisis of her inner life and
outer tragedies destroyed her. You see how easily—whatever your smarts,
talents, beauty, or spirit—anybody can break given the right terrible
circumstances.
The personal is political. The
personal ills that beset us affect the world around us, and the crises of the
world make our own healing almost impossible.
But who is really paying attention? President Obama gave a State of the
Union Address wherein he took on all the stupidity, and here was a post
for the ages: “I thought Michelle Obama stole the show. Forget about that
speech! Look at what she’s wearin’!”
DEAR GOD.
IF EVERYTHING IS A CRISIS, NOTHING IS A CRISIS, or, WE ARE SO FUCKING
TIRED
“Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb
emotional things all day, and as mere consequence we can never feel merely
content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and
those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid
relationship.”
~ Nick Hornby, from High
Fidelity
One of Miss O’s greatest challenges in
being a writer or a teacher or an editor or a citizen of the world, for that matter, is her hyper-awareness of
her failings and shortcomings. Her gold standards are high, her taste
exquisite, and it makes her all too aware of what she has not been able to
accomplish. Enter modern dance pioneer Martha Graham, just in the nick of time:
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a
quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is
only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world
will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor
how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your
business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”
~ Martha Graham to Agnes
DeMille
School says: If everything is special, nothing
is special.
Artist says: If nothing is special, everything is special.
WikiLeaks says: If everything is public, everything is
public.
NSA says: If nothing is private, nothing
is private.
If everything is a crisis, nothing
is a crisis?
No. Instead, when everything is a crisis, it becomes the mode in which we live. And die. EARLY.
169 million vacation days went
unused 2013. That figure speaks to the entire problem in this nation. Everybody
is working overtime for free (except Congress, who needs to), and taking no breaks to replenish (except Congress, who just shuts that whole thing down when they get the grumps). We are running
on empty—physically, intellectually, morally, ethically. We the People literally got
nothin’ to bring to our Game of Life, nothing to use to get over the hills or across
the valleys. The shadow of the crisis is past, and it’s the Valley of the
Shadow of Death.
That, and of course, “President Obama
Doesn’t Love America.”
(I’d like to note, here, President Obama's Hate-Filled
Agenda: Access to affordable health care for all Americans, access to quality
affordable education, sustainable and renewable energy, protections for the
last big wild places, economic growth, deficit reduction, a society free from
gun violence--and all presented with intelligence, wit, diplomacy, respect, and
without showing any hatred for others. And he took out Bin Laden. Yep--he's a
dick, all right. You know who really doesn't love America? The narcissists like
Rudy Giuliani who have no relevancy but say whatever it takes to cash a
speaking engagement paycheck telling fat cats who care only about themselves
exactly what they want to hear to justify their personal agendas. And what is
President Obama's response? Class. All the way.)
The End of Crisis
But the president tells me “the
shadow of the crisis is past,” and I’d like to believe him. Surely Tom Paine
thought the victory of 1783 meant just that.
ADVANTAGES THEREOF. THESE are times that tried men's
souls, and they are over- and the greatest and completest revolution the world
ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished. But to pass from the extremes
of danger to safety — from the tumult of war to the tranquillity of peace,
though sweet in contemplation, requires a gradual composure of the senses to
receive it. Even calmness has the power of stunning, when it opens too instantly
upon us. The long and raging hurricane that should cease in a moment, would
leave us in a state rather of wonder than enjoyment; and some moments of
recollection must pass, before we could be capable of tasting the felicity of
repose. There are but few instances, in which the mind is fitted for sudden
transitions: it takes in its pleasures by reflection and comparison and those
must have time to act, before the relish for new scenes is complete.
~ Thomas Paine, The American Crisis: Philadelphia, April 19, 1783
And yet.
We carry crisis in the body. We
carry trauma in the body. Lately I’ve been reading about the work of Moshe Feldenkrais and his revolutionary
work on pain and the way we human beings have lost touch with our own basic body
movements as a result. And we need to take that in. If a twinge of arthritis
can destroy our body’s understanding of what it means to move freely, imagine
what night after night of ISIS crisis and gun violence and disease epidemics and
torture chambers and drone strikes and pictures of that drunken sod John
Boehner and that walking robot of tyranny Dick “I will never die” Cheney are
doing to our very cores.
A crisis passes. There is great
rejoicing and a national holiday gets named for it.
But if everything is a crisis, is
anything a crisis?
Is “crisis” the new normal? No
biggie?
Calm
the fuck down already? Miss O’ thinks not.
You know what is a REAL CRISIS?
SEA LEVELS HAVE RISEN AN
UNPRECENTED 4” IN TWO YEARS
That
is a crisis. (If you live in the middle of the country and think, “This doesn’t
apply to ME,” you are doubtless the same people who want to rescue persecuted
Christians in parts unknown, but not anyone else, and not anyone in your own
country. THAT is the REASON for this crisis. This climate crisis is, in fact,
YOUR FAULT. Tell that to your children with a smile.)
Miss O’ has had about enough of
crises as a lifestyle. The world has been, is, and will ever be, too much with
us, and it’s time for this little blogger, on whose shoulders this too-much-world has been sitting, to bid you, faithful readers, farewell.
I have in me but a very finite few years left on Earth, and while Miss O’ would
never say never, she suspects strongly that it’s time to get off this Blogger
horse and ride a different pony, one with a few more tricks, one that leads to
a creative end that feels a little more hopeful than crisis analysis.
Will keep you posted. Maybe.
In the meantime, one could do worse
than turn to Turner Classic Movies. May
I recommend it? We could all use a breather.
In a New York Times piece this weekend by Leon Weiseltier, “Letter
of Recommendation: Turner Classic Movies,” the author writes, hopefully:
When disappointment has brought you low, or sadness has
colonized you, or fear has conquered your imagination, you experience a
contraction of your horizon. Your sense of possibility is damaged and even
abolished. Pain is a monopolist. The most urgent thing, therefore, is to
restore a more various understanding of what life holds, of its true abundance,
so that the bleakness in which you find yourself is not all you know. The way
to break the grip of sorrow and dread is to introduce another claimant on
consciousness, to crowd it out with other stimulations from the world. Sadness
can never be retired completely, because there is always a basis in reality for
it. But you can impede its progress by diversifying your mind.
So do that. Diversify your mind. See the hills
and the valleys for what they really are. Solve a crisis. Make progress.
Will do same.
As ever, with love and deep
gratitude for your goodness in reading along these four years, I remain,
Yours &ct,
Miss O’
