Those Who Can Say, "Give Him A Chance."

Ida Fink's spare and powerful novel, The Journey, begins on a golden, gorgeous autumn morning, the day that typically, the author and her family would harvest apples from a tree that adjoins both properties.  

But on this morning, the father has left his girls in hiding, watching as their neighbors harvest all the apples. They are Jewish and their neighbors are not, and it's Poland in 1939, and the Nazis have just told every Jew in town to come to the town square to be shipped off to an "internment camp." So, the sisters, terrified, listen to the screams coming from the town square, while their neighbors move the ladder and pick bushels of apples from the tree.

I've been thinking about apple-picking as we enjoy these extraordinary, golden, unusually warm days of autumn and recover from the shock of the election. I keep thinking of those apples every time someone says to me, "I'm just going to trust it will be okay and enjoy this gorgeous day." Because those people, like the Ida Fink's neighbors, can do that. Not from any ill-will, not because they're evil, but because they can go on picking apples while others fear that they will be shot, or harassed or rounded up in the town square or shipped off to some unknown location, or go into hiding, their identities stripped from them as they scurry from place to place, terrified.

After all, I'm sure that on many days, during many raffles, (what the Germans called the roundup of Jews,) many decent people longed to hope for the best, to enjoy the beautiful weather, to pick those apples and try to believe that it would all be all right. Maybe it will be all right. As long you're not one of the targets and you're willing to pick apples while others are targeted.

The Allure of a Despot

The real fascination of a character like Henry VIII is that we all know him. We've all had a parent like him or a spouse or a boss. Someone who rules by terror, who likes to watch people hop, {who loves the freedom to grab women by the pussy} and who doesn't care whom he beheads.

The parallels reflect more than a liking for sumptuous decor and the habit of multiple wives. Like Henry VIII, Trump was raised with an abusive father who coupled rage, emotional neglect, and velvet gloves. Like Henry, Trump was the younger son, his older brother supposed to be the heir. As the darling of his father's empire, Henry VIII had a whipping boy, someone who was punished in his place whenever he misbehaved. Trump had a teacher who he punched in the face when he was only twelve--with no real consequences afterwards. 

Like Henry VII, Trump's father was a man so crooked it was probably hard for him to walk straight and he passed onto his son an empire where his word was law.  Roy Cohn was Trump's Cardinal Wolsey, a man behind the scenes who turned the scion of an empire into a unrepentantly immoral fighting bastard. With Cohn as his teacher, Trump, like Henry VIII, learned that it was perfectly acceptable to cheat the commoners who work for him, rage at them, cut their pay or stiff them completely--with everything based on a whim. 

I have always thought that watching the Tudors was a lot more fun than living among them must have been. And it wasn't just people at court whose heads rolled. Millions of commoners had their lives uprooted, destroyed or brutally ended simply because Henry wanted to divorce his wife and couldn't do it, and nobody--but nobody--could say no to the man. 

Now, with a Republican Congress and Senate willing to ignore all evidence of wrong-doing, and a Conservative Republican Supreme Court, Donald Trump is set to rule our Land. 

May God Save America. 

Wisdom of the Father's, transformed to include the Mothers.

In a time of great stress, we sometimes turn to older wisdom. So, I give you this, from a book of Jewish wisdom called the Pirkei Avot, (Words of the Fathers) modified slightly to make it words of the Mothers, too:

“In a place where no one is human, one should strive to be human.” – Pirkei Avot 2:5

And this: 

Rabbi Tarfon . . . used to say: It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.

(My apologies--I cannot find the artist to credit for this image.) 

John Steinbeck pegged it, back in 1952

John Steinbeck pegged it, back in, in East of Eden (1952)--discussing America's need for demagogues.

“It is argued that because they {Americans} believed thoroughly in a just, moral God they could put their faith there and let the smaller insecurities take care of themselves. 

But I think that because they trusted themselves and respected themselves as individuals, because they knew beyond doubt that they were valuable and potentially moral units -- because of this they could give God their own courage and dignity and then receive it back. Such things have disappeared perhaps because men do not trust themselves anymore, and when that happens there is nothing left except perhaps to find some strong sure man, even though he may be wrong, and to dangle from his coattails.”

Anybody notice that Cindy McCain was wearing a pantsuit when she voted? A white pantsuit, no less? Is this a secret signal about how she planned to vote? 

Perhaps she feared that her husband, too, would be trying to control her vote. . .

My Child Should Run for President

My oldest child should run for president--the kid knows the names of more foreign heads of state than one of our current candidates. My kid even knows the name of the guy currently bombing the crap out of the children of--what's the name of that joint in Syria again?--Help me out here, I'm having an Aleppo moment.
Johnson's VIP was finally able to haul up a name. But since he couldn't remember Merkle's first name (Angela, with a lovely hard g) Johnson could have been referring to silent film star Una, or to Ursula Merkle, the musical Bye Bye Birdie's hyperactive best friend of Kim, the teenaged second lead. 

On the other hand, Donald knows the name of at least one--Benyamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, though Donald thinks he's "not a happy camper." And he used to know the name of the Mexican president, because he met with the guy. Probably, though, knowing the Donald, he's forgotten the name Enrique Pena Nieto already, but we're all sure Donald could tell us all about some beautiful--truly amazing-- property he owns there. 

For those of you who, unlike two of our presidential candidates.  who would like to learn more about heads of state, here's a lovely article: 

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/09/ranked-admirable-world-leaders-that-gary-johnson-forgot/502208/

The Romance of Food Poisoning

So, I woke up in the middle of the night tortured by gut pains like Alien was trying to bust out. No position could improve the pain. I had to get up, and wait it out for a couple of hours--let's not get explicit here, but they were not fun. 
I ran a hot bath, hoping that would help me relax and survive the gut explosions, and it did for a bit, until I had to lurch out and throw up. (Let's get explicit here.) 
Not only my throat, but the insides of my nostrils burned from stomach acid and I was pretty sure this was food poisoning and not a stomach flu. I didn't want to wake the kids. I grabbed a chair so I could be more comfortable--if that's at all possible. I hate throwing up. (As if someone could love it?) I get all shaky, cold and hot at the same time. Maybe King Henry V felt like this while he lay dying of dysentery on the battle field he loved so well. I just wanted to lay my head on the cool, floor, in our house, perpetually covered with dog hair. (Gotta love Hank Cinq's haircut--I think it's coming back in style.) 

Finally, I staggered up the hall and woke my poor husband, who is recovering from a cold and needs his sleep.  Hubby stayed with me while I moaned and urped and released poison from various orifices. I said, "Tell me a story about when you were little." He started to trot out all the ones I know. "No, about school. Tell me a story about when you were little in school." 

He was leaning against the counter. He thought a minute and then told me, "When I was four, there was a boy, he was bigger than me. I remember that. And I kicked him in the stomach. I got in big trouble. I had to write the proverbial lines on the board." 

"Wow," I said. "You could write when you were four?" 

"Wait. My papa was already in the states," he said. "So I was five. No, six. He was in the West. Yes, I was six. I was scared about my Oncle Maurice. I remember my Tante Marcelle making faces behind his back so that I wouldn't be scared."

"You were scared of Oncle Maurice?" In the stories, he's a kind man who makes people do the right thing. 

"Well, Marcel was the easy-going one." (Yes, there's an aunt Marcelle and an Oncle Marcel--the names sound the same, and I think they were married to one another, which means even they must have spent their lives confused. But maybe not. Maybe Marcelle married Maurice, so confusion was limited.) 

"What did you have to write?" (I figured if you're writing something a hundred times, you'll remember.) 

"I don't know, 'Je ne jamais livrer un coup de pied à l'estomac de Didier.'" (literally--I will never deliver a hit of foot in the stomach of Didier.) At least that's what I think he said--my French felt as shaky as I was at the moment.

"Tell me another story," I said. "About school." I'm not sure why I was fixated on school, but I know I sounded like our little one who loves these kind of tales.

"Well, there was a boy--this was in the states--at my school who was big and an athlete--I wasn't an athlete by any stretch of the imagination--and he was rough and kind of mean but I could do a sideways futball kick. So, with kickball, he figured out that we would run up the court, me with the ball, everybody chasing after him, and I would shoot him the ball and he would score every time. So he would always pick me first. I was the first kid picked by the best athlete of the school."

I had never heard these stories. That's amazing.

"Another," I said, still sounding like our youngest. By this time, I was done throwing up, so I was just waiting for the rest to pass through me. Spouse took my chair and told me another, after mentioning how sexy I looked (!) 

"I ran for Treasurer in High School," he said. "I have no idea why. And my papa drew for me these posters--'Don't Fight, Switch, vote for--' and he put my name. There was some cigarette commercial that used the slogan, 'I'd rather fight than Switch.'"

"What did the drawing look like?"

"It was a guy with a black eye, like in the cigarette ads."

I had no idea his father could draw--another of many talents of this man I never met. I love to draw, though I rarely get time for it, and our little one is turning out to be a gifted artist, while our oldest, when he tries, can also draw very well.

I was, by this time, exhausted. (Bed times stories are designed to be relaxing. These had worked.) I was ready to go back to bed, but not certain it was safe. 

Hubby took a towel and laid it on the sheets, just in case. I was still in pain, so we could only hold hands. I fell back to sleep right away. 

I don't think of Food Poisoning as romantic, or tales from elementary and high school as courtship, or a wife in the throes of earping, (etc,) as sexy. And yet, the Night of the Food Poisoning, was romantic in its own crazy way, with Hubby wooing and winning my heart all over again.