The time it takes

That old saw that you can't teach an old dog new tricks?  It should not be taken too seriously.  At the age of 70 I went with my husband, Taku, to the Petfood Express on the corner of Telegraph and Alcatraz because he had learned they were having a dog adoption event.  We had been thinking of taking in a dog. We were not anticipating finding one quickly because we wanted to make sure to do it responsibly and we knew it would become a serious commitment.

Right off the bat, we came upon five little girl chihuahua-Jack Russell pups - born together in Manteca just weeks before - we later learned that many like to use the designation "Jack Cheese" (or Jack-Chi's) for this particular mixed breed little dog. My eyes went straight to Miki, Taku's to Bounce, and we were blown over by the reality that we were both experiencing love at first sight.

It took a couple weeks for the adoption to go through. They needed to be spayed and vaccinated and we needed to be cleared. But there we were, one day two guys looking to build a family, the next day honest-to-god daddies with two little creatures we were to nurture and love for the next thirteen (with Miki) or fourteen and a half (with Bounce) years.

And then feel as if we had been struck by lightening when they were taken from us by death.

I had been around dogs and cats all my life and was no stranger to human-animal friendships.  I once had a cat I loved dearly I had to give up when moving to Japan. I found her a good family with two kids that loved her but she died of leukemia two weeks after I left. I felt shock and terrible sadness, especially for the kids, but I managed in time to tuck the event away into the "that's life" drawer and move on. The loss of Miki and Bounce was of another order of magnitude.

When I spoke of old dogs learning of new tricks, what I was referring to was learning, at the age of 70, how important it was to find yourself in a place of responsibility for another living creature's life. Parents - the decent ones, which I take to mean nearly all of them - learn this and you don't have to look too far to find people who will tell you they would give their lives for their children. Something in the nature of creation inclines us to love those for whom we play a caretaker, life-or-death, role.  Taking those two helpless little creatures into our home and our hearts gave me new insight into the horror that is child abuse and child abandonment. How anyone could do such a thing is now virtually inconceivable to me.

I won't take on those who reject the thought that one can love an animal as one loves a child. Those of us who do don't need to convince those who don't; it's enough to know such love is widespread.  I've seen it often with dogs and cats and horses. I've seen it with birds, as well, and one of my favorite vlogs features a guy who calls himself Ruben Namibia. He grew up on a farm in Namibia with a baboon named Cindy he calls his sister.  Have a look and prepare to be delighted.

Miki came down with a disease called Cushing's Disease. We watched its progression carefully for several months before it became clear at some point that she was not going to make it.  When she went into critical distress I insisted on keeping her home with me.  I didn't want to risk letting her die among strangers by rushing her to emergency. Taku had gone to visit his mother in Japan, but our friend Bill was here when she went and his presence kept me from going off the deep end. The doubts nagged on and I had to face the possibility that I was projecting my very human fear of dying in a strange place alone, and in pain, and letting that fear drive my decision.

Her ashes were returned to us and they sit in a prominent space in our living room.  Neither Taku nor I felt the need for us to discuss the fact that we would now spoil Bounce rotten.  She would come to dictate, for the additional year and a half that she outlived her sister, almost every coming and going. We jumped to open the door when she decided she wanted out; we smiled, and never got annoyed when she would then change her mind mid-stream and not go out, only to come scratching again minutes later.  We loaded up on carpet cleaner for those moments when Bounce, now in a weakened state, would leave barf and pee stains on the carpet. We took her with us when we visited friends - and thanked the stars we had friends who showed no hesitance to welcome her in. 

Bounce had been on pain medication for arthritis for ten months, and I think one of those medications ended up doing damage to her kidneys. Taku left for Japan on the 12th of this month with considerable concern about the fact that Bounce was not feeling all that well.  She had not eaten in three days and I promised him I'd take her to the vet the next day. His mother suffers from his absence and he had to twist into knots to be given this time off, so I encouraged him to leave on schedule. I waited one more day and when our regular vet learned Bounce had not taken in any food in four days, he urged us to take her to a specialty vet for an ultrasound. That led to the revelation that she was dealing with a tumor, and the lack of desire to eat, it turns out, was from a pretty serious blockage.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I wish we could go over Taku's decision to travel. Bounce died two days after his departure. Twice, now, within eighteen months, Taku has gone to Japan to see his mother only to have one of his daughters die in his absence. I don't think I could conceive of a crueler irony no matter how hard I tried. The term "benefit of hindsight" is not a simple phrase having to do with the human condition; it sounds in these ears like the worst taunting of a bully I've ever known.

I want to use this space to think out loud about such things as coming to terms with the challenges of life and about the truism that grief is a mirror image of the amount of love you pour into a relationship, and about the fact that death comes to us all. I don't want to make this a pity-party for me and my doubts and the possibility that I might have made some colossally bad decisions - or the possibility that I might have made some good decisions it is still too early to recognize as such.

But I do want to acknowledge that this has been a week that strikes me as a series of events conceived, designed and produced in hell.  I am not a theist, but I do understand why so many of my fellow human creatures are able to personify good and evil as God and the Devil. I feel I've been through what in the Judeo-Christian tradition is known as "the valley of the shadow of death." It's not an exaggeration; it's a cry from the depths.

I've been a difficult person to deal with, having put several friends on hold while I nurture my pain alone, insisting on going through it, and not around it. My life experience suggests denial and wishful thinking are traps to be avoided at all costs. I've had talks with myself where I've asked myself how it is that I could face my responsibility to care for an all-loving all-vulnerable living creature by making the decision to take her life. Should I be listening to a doctor who suggests euthanasia is "the best gift you could give your loved one" that I have just met?  Should I not keep Bounce sedated and get a second opinion? Am I responding to some corner of my mind where the question of the cost of surgery lives? 

I have not yet resolved this dilemma. I am hoping the time comes - and that it comes sooner rather than later - when I can focus on my decision to avoid the risk of pain and isolation as a loving act that I should credit myself for instead of the allowing the doubt over whether I made the decision prematurely to rest at the top of my thoughts.

I am writing this with the dilemma raging full force. In time, and I think time cures all, this dilemma may be resolved. I am not inclined to accept blame and I need no pity.  I am blessed with many loving friends, many of whom are urging me to not stretch out this time of doubt.

What can I say?

I just need the time it's going to take.

Rest in Peace, Sweet Bounce

Bounce (left) & Miki (right)

 Bounce died tonight.

 I took her in earlier today because she had not eaten in  three days, left her at the clinic and waited nervously all day for the doctor to call me with a diagnosis.

 At about six o'clock tonight she called to tell me they had found a large tumor in her belly and the black in her stool was no doubt blood from that tumor. The doctor didn't hold back. I went in on her advice, called Taku on Facetime so we could both sit with Bounce for an hour, and be together, the three of us, when the doctor came in and put her to sleep. The reason for the speed was the possibility that pain and discomfort of hemorrhaging could come at any moment. I wanted her to die at home but decided not to risk it.

I thought the news of Trump's election was the worst news I could imagine. Today's event pushes that horror down to Number Two. I'm writing this still in shock and agony.

My heart goes out to Taku. Last time he went to Japan to visit his mother, a year and a half ago, Miki died. This time it was Bounce. I wish the gods had the decency not to play with irony like that. Their cruelty can be unspeakable. 

Taku and his mother were on the Shinkansen on their way to Kyoto but we were able to connect via Facetime, so he and I could spend some time with Bounce before she went and participate in the procedure of sedating her to sleep before stopping her heart. It was a time of silent screaming for both of us.

The gods would no doubt argue we should not forget that they gave us fourteen years with these creatures, who seemed to be put on earth for the purpose of drawing out every ounce of love we had in us to give. I've remarked before that I didn't know I had so much affection in me.

I can't put into words what these two little girls meant to me. I don't even want to try; any attempt would be at best a not-even-close approximation. At least we got to shower Bounce with affection for a year and a half of bonus time. And shower we did. Spoiled her rotten. Got up in the night to let her out, picked up after her accidents without a hint of complaint. Taku cooked her chicken and rice meals that we might have served at the table, but went to Bounce once she turned her nose up at canned dog food. Kibble has long been completely out of the question.

I used to ask myself all the time how is it possible to love a little four-legged creature this much.  And what on earth did we do in a previous life to deserve not just one, but two such objects of affection?

That was back in the day when I expected the world to make sense.

Now I simply celebrate the fact that life can be so good to me.

Through a Glass Darkly

The unthinkable has happened. The citizens of the United States of America, faced with the option of continuing to slog their way toward a more perfect democracy, chose to throw it away instead. They put a proven narcissistic liar back in charge of the country. Instead of struggle, they chose chaos.

It's not the first time in recent memory this has happened. Weimar is not ancient history. There are many still alive who can remind us of democracy's greatest weakness - that it can use the power of the voting booth to enable its own destruction.

If people in the 1930s had not merely skimmed Mein Kampf but taken it to heart, they would have seen the death and destruction of millions of scapegoats that was to come.  And anybody in 2024 who fact-checked the "eating the dogs and cats" story about the legal-immigrant Haitians of Springfield, Ohio, can see the parallel in scapegoating.  

Many supporters of the newly-reelected president insist we have guardrails that prevent such evil from taking root here. Only a conviction that one must never submit to despair keeps me going this morning as I worry about the ability of Ukraine to stand up to invasion, the possibility of wholesale deportation of millions of parents of American children, and the likely appointment of two more justices to the Supreme Court inclined to protect the Leader rather than the rule of law.

I worry about the possibility of installing a man who denies the effectiveness of vaccines to head our healthcare institutions, about the ongoing influence of Christian nationalists who insist non-Christians have no place at the American table, about the opponents of presidential policy who are being labeled scum and vermin.

Waiting for the results of the election was like waiting for the results of a biopsy. 

I went through that before being diagnosed with a fatal disease. I know that may have something to do with the fact that I see this election through a dark lens.

But I know, also, that I can't predict the future.

Things may turn out all right.

Secret of the River - a film review

One of the things about Trump's habit of trashing Mexicans that gets under my skin is not the obvious racism, which is disgusting enough, but the fact that it flies in the face of my personal history of encounters with Mexicans. I live in California and Mexicans are everywhere. Overall, I have not just a different view of Mexicans from Trump's "They're sending rapists and murderers..." horseshit, but a very positive one. I think of Mexicans as super hard-working people always looking for a chance to laugh. A colorful lot. Loud, much of the time, but more because of exuberance than annoying. Think of mariachi music. Trumpets, more than violins. Ai, yai yai yai! more than la la la. My bias, I'm trying to say, is a positive one.  My list of Mexican friends and acquaintances is broad enough to include artists and intellectuals, architects and doctors, as well as just plain folk who send their kids to bilingual schools like the one a block from my house, but along with Germans and Japanese and Brits and Canadians and Argentines, I list Mexicans among the folks I am essentially at home with.

So I was not surprised when a friend recommended a Netflix series to me that takes place in a small town in the State of Oaxaca and I immediately got carried away with the sweetness of a friendship between two young boys thrown together by tragic circumstances. 

Manuel is sent to his grandmother's when his mother gets sick, and meets Erik, a boy his age, who is tasked with showing him around and making him feel at home. A not particularly unusual place for a story to start.

But where the story goes from there is anything but usual. It turns out that the context for this story is the native Zapotec community of Oaxaca. In particular the Isthmus Zapotec community, and even more particularly the community of men whom the Zapotec folk consider a third gender. Suddenly, we're talking not about the kind of Mexicans who form cartels and become drug smugglers - Trump's view of Mexicans - nor of the "Cucaracha" singing Mexicans that I expressed a fondness for, but an unusual segment of the Mexican population associated with pre-Columbian Central America who have evolved a culture that makes space for a cross-dressing minority called Muxes.

Secret of the River is divided into two distinct four-episode parts, the first when the boys first meet at the age of nine or ten, and the second twenty years later, when Manuel returns to the village to try to repair broken relationships. I won't spoil the plot line; the story is engrossing and you should experience the twists and turns for yourself. Things get rough at times, the good guys are a bit too good and the bad guys a bit too bad at times, but in the end, I predict you'll be as charmed as I was by the child actors and the character of Solange, a Muxe, who becomes a mentor and protector to Manuel who, even before the age of ten, is showing tendencies of not being comfortable in his skin. 

The dark side of Mexico - intense machismo and homophobia, corrupt police, child-abuse and sex-trafficking - is also present. This is not a socialist realism fantasy. But if you are open to taking in a hitherto unfamiliar view of Mexico and another way of dealing with the  current challenge of what to do about the T in LGBT, this movie is for you.

I give it a 5 out of 5. It's probably a 4, but I'm a sucker for cute kids.

photo credit

Ajax and his friends

Taku and I have tickets to a play that my niece is in this Friday. It appears to be all about a homeless guy in Oakland who thinks he’s Ajax - the ancient Greek warrior, not the bathroom cleaner.

Time for a little review of the Trojan War. And that means a bit of theology.

It all began with the wedding of Peleus, the King of Phtheia, and his wife Thetis. They are the parents of Achilles, of vulnerable heel fame.  Well, not the wedding, exactly, but with Eris, the goddess of discord, who didn’t get an invitation to the wedding. Eris was a spiteful goddess and spread mischief by showing up anyway bearing a golden apple as a wedding present. The apple bore the inscription, “For the fairest in the land” and that set off a bitch-fight among three other goddesses. One of these was Hera, the jealous (with good reason) chief wife of Zeus, who also happened to be his sister, and goddess of women, marriage and the family and protector of women in childbirth. A second was Athena, who was in her mother’s womb when Zeus swallowed her whole, making it necessary for Athena to pop out of Zeus’ forehead at some point, which she did geared up for battle (at least in artistic depictions) in helmet and spear. The third goddess was Aphrodite, known to the Romans as Venus, the goddess of love, war and prostitutes.

To settle the question of which of these, Hera, Athena or Aphrodite, was most worthy of the “fairest beauty" title, they turned to a shepherd named Paris. Well, turns out he was actually a prince of Troy who apparently liked animals and being outside in the fresh air. (Or who was raised by shepherds and was doing what comes naturally, depending on which version of the story you read) All three goddesses offered Paris a bribe. Hera wanted to give him power, Athena, wisdom, and Aphrodite, love. Paris chose love and gave the prize to Aphrodite.

In gratitude, Hera made Helen, the real most beautiful woman in the land, fall in love with Paris. Hera either didn’t think this through very carefully, or didn’t have a very high sense of responsibility, because when Paris left Sparta to return home to Troy, Queen Helen was determined to follow him, to the chagrin of her husband, King Menelaus of Sparta.

There are other versions of this tale, and virtually all of the details are contested, but I’m trying to get back to Ajax, so this version will do, while I try to figure out where Ajax fits in.  Ajax was the son of King Telemon and nephew of Telemon’s brother, Peleus, whose marriage ceremony got this whole ball rolling when Eris messed everything up by creating such discord among the goddesses. That means Ajax is also Achilles’ cousin.

I've never read the Iliad but I understand that Ajax comes across as a superman, or at least as a guy with strength that goes on and on. Hence the name of the toilet cleanser, I think.

But the real story, I think, lies in the Latin phrase I chose to run under my picture in my high school yearbook, something the 15th Century cleric Thomas à Kempis is remembered for observing: Homo proponit, sed Deus disponit, Man proposes, God disposes. I was clearly indoctrinated into the belief that our every move is dictated by a deity. Maybe that’s why I get such a kick out of reading about how the gods mess with us. It absolves us of responsibility. Like making Helen fall in love with Paris so that the Greeks and Trojans slug it out for ten years. In the end, when Achilles gets it in the heel, Ajax claims his armor, but then Athena gives it to Odysseus instead because she likes the way he talks. And that pisses Ajax off so bad that he flies into a rage and wants to go after Agamemnon, Menelaus and Odysseus. Athena channels his rage into killing livestock under the delusion that he is getting his revenge. And when he awakes out of his hallucination he is so ashamed that he kills himself.

Homo proponit, sed deus disponit.

I dip into Greek mythology from time to time and always have a great romp.  It’s lovely to get back to the days when I first discovered Edith Hamilton and was faced with the need to try to explain why the theology I was raised in could arguably be seen to be making more sense than Greek or Chinese theology, say. When somebody first suggested that “virgin birth” was just another way of saying “parthenogenesis.”

Looking forward to Friday night and a story about a man who thinks he’s Ajax.

After some Chinese food.

 

Heartstopper - a Netflix series review in two parts

Part I: the sex and gender context of the series 

I grew up in a time when sex and gender were two easily distinguished concepts: sex was a biological term that assumed all mammals, including humans, fell into one of two separate categories: male or female. Males could be identified at birth by being born with a penis; females by being born with a vagina.  If anybody wanted to explore further, they could define male and female on the basis of hormones and/or chromosomal patterns. This distinction applied in 98.3% of births. In 1.7% of the cases, there was some ambiguity.

In contrast to sex, the biological category, there was gender, a sociological category. Gender was defined as the norms of behavior in any given society, and the roles males and females were expected to play. When I went to high school, for example, all the boys had a class called "shop" where we learned to operate machinery and use construction tools, and all the girls had a class where they learned to cook and sew. Things were neat and clean, in other words, in terms of sex and gender.

When it came to sexuality, and it became clear that some people had same-sex attractions, we began to hear more and more of the term homosexuality. My first encounter with the word was when somebody explained to me that "homos" - meaning male homosexuals - were men who wanted to be women. And that meant that there had to be another category - lesbians - or "women who wanted to be men."  Another word in common usage to refer to both male and female homosexuals was queer.

Complications quickly set in. What about people who were attracted to both sexes?  We called them bisexuals.  The English language had to adapt to the quickly changing terms in common use. Just as nigger became taboo and was replaced by Negro, or colored, and then black, and then Afro-American and then African-American, homo, the disparaging word at the level of colored, was replaced by gay - at least by people who defined themselves that way. After a time, women began to prefer the term lesbian, as opposed to gay and homo, terms that made people think first of males, and women were often invisible. In time, lesbians and gays developed a political consciousness, and the term LGBT came into being - for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexuals - sometimes augmented by Q for queer, once a synonym for homo, now drummed into service to cover the broad category of people who resisted being put into boxes of categories. For some, even queer was not enough and they wanted to add a plus sign, making the organization name:  LGBTQ+.  Queer has since even taken on a loftier essence, and can be found even in academia, where more and more schools now offer Queer Studies programs.

Without going into the details of historical development, many people in the trans community now find that transsexual carries the same onus as colored and homosexual, that it smacks of medicalization and is somehow demeaning. They prefer to use transgender (trans for short) exclusively as an umbrella term to cover what was previously understood by the separate terms transsexuals, cross-dressers, genderqueers, androgynous people, and gender non-conforming people.  I will follow that practice here.

One more term is necessary, though: cisgender (cis for short) refers to someone whose internal sense of gender corresponds with the sex the person was identified as having at birth.  And it's nice to be back when the world was simpler and we can work with either/or categories.

Part II: Heartstopper - a review with commentary

Heartstopper is a teenage romance written by Alice Oseman and brought to the screen by Netflix: Season 1 in April 2022, Season 2 in August 2023, and Season 3, just now, in October 2024. Despite a plot line that sometimes goes a bit over-the-top (more kisses per square inch and more I love you's) it's a sweet romance clearly written to make the LGBT community feel warm and welcomed and maybe proud.  It's an ensemble piece centered on sixteen year old Nick and fifteen-year-old Charlie and moves glacially slowly through three seasons of teenage angst starting with first attempts to come out, and ending with a mental health issue, specifically an eating disorder, in the third season, after passing through struggles with parental control, bullying, and whether to go to college and if so where. Mostly it's about kissing and partying and gossiping and self-doubt at an Olympic level.

I viewed the story through an old-man's eyes (these are the only eyes I have), stumbling at times over the extreme naiveté and having to remind myself these are just kids and what I'm calling naive can just as readily be called innocence - and sweetness. There isn't much "story" to the 24 episodes, 8 per season, exactly, other than the crushes and coming out tensions,  who's going to ask who to be their girlfriend/boyfriend and when are they going to be ready to take kissing to the next level. Not a lot of surprises. Just kissing and more kissing.

Back in the old days I used to squirm at social realism. I saw it as kitsch. Cliché. Lack of artistic imagination. But I have a soft spot for people trying to make life better for LGBT people, and particularly the trans community, what with the ugly politicization they have to face these days from people trying to turn back the clock. OK, so the smoochie-smoochie was in-your-face excessive and the stereotypes were stereotypes. When you reach the end of the third season, you are relieved that Charlie (spoiler alert) has finally gotten over his fear of taking his shirt off in front of Nick. And there is something quite appealing about a bunch of kids who do absolutely everything collectively and make a point of being each other's support system.

The characters are Charlie (gay), Nick (bi), Elle (trans), Darcy and Tara (non-binary), Isaac (asexual and a-romantic). Additional characters are the resident homophobe, Harry, the teacher combo, Mr. Farouk and Mr. Ajayi; there's another trans character, Naomi, and three adult characters, an aunt, a grandmother, and a therapist, who are all super supportive. Haven't seen anything this gay-friendly since that wonderful film, Big Eden, where the character leaves New York and finds love in his Alaskan home town.

In the end, I love it that we are finally making queer love stories and putting queer characters in the starring roles. Kit Connor, who plays Nick, was forced to declare himself as bi in real life a couple years ago - would prefer he had been allowed to do that in his own time, but given his role in making LGBT people more salonfähig (fit for the salon), maybe that's no longer such a big deal. Joe Locke, who is from the Isle of Man, plays Charlie, as an out-and-proud gay man, came out to his mother at the age of twelve and is apparently responsible for getting the British government to allow blood donations from gay men once more.

All things considered, despite my initial decision to pass this one up as being too much about teenage romance, i.e., not my farm; not my animals, I find myself hoping there will be a Season 4, hoping that Nick and Charlie are real and not just TV characters, and might actually get married. And will send me an invitation.

My suit is ready to go in for cleaning and pressing, my black shoes are polished and I am looking forward to a trip to London.

photo credit

Nobody Wants This - a TV comedy series review

Just out on Netflix is a first-class romantic comedy called Nobody Wants This. The thing nobody wants is supposed to be a marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew. In spades.  Between a rabbi and a blond Los Angeles shiksa so clueless about Judaism that she has apparently never heard the word "shalom" before - a bit of a stretch for anyone living in modern America.

The young couple who fall in love are Joanne, played by Kristen Bell and Noah, played by Adam Brody. Joanne makes a living working on a podcast called Nobody Wants This, hence the title, with her sister, Morgan. The two girls have an antagonistic rivalry which they let play out on the podcast and which makes their dialogue interesting. Noah is a cool with-it modern-day rabbi with ambitions to become head rabbi at a major synagogue. The two meet at a party and have an instant, totally convincing, attraction to each other.

The dialogue is hilarious. Really witty. The supporting characters really support the plot, moving it along by contributing additional incongruities: Bina, Noah's mother isn't quite the smothering Jewish mother type, although she plays out the stereotype by trying to pull this "shiksa" and her son apart. Sasha, Noah's brother, is a natural comedian and you can't wait to hear what he's going to say next.

It helps that the Noah character seems to have it all in spades. He's handsome. He is smart, generous and understanding to a fault, compassionate and never ever appears to lose his cool. You can't not like Noah. Joanne is, with her total cluelessness about Judaism, less appealing, but the pairing seems to work. The actors are friends in real life, and that no doubt helps make them believable as a couple.

Less believable is Noah's willingness to allow himself to let a non-Jewish girl into his life, given his lifelong ambition to have a successful career as a rabbi, and it is this existential struggle for Judaism to survive that is the elephant in the room nobody wants to pay attention to, except on the obvious superficial level.

It is unfair of me, and unrealistic, to expect a rom-com to confront the issue of anti-semitism on an existential level. Elise Foster, the author, herself a convert to Judaism, takes it as far as it can go without getting too far into the weeds and asking the real questions: can anybody in the modern world support a group that believes it cannot survive without closing the door to the outside world?  And can Jews survive as a people if they don't? Can one suggest that it's individuals who need help surviving and not ethnic or cultural groups without sounding - or being - anti-semitic?

I'll leave it there. To say more is to spoil the plot ending, and it's too good a production for me to risk doing that. Does Joanne get her man? Does Rabbi Noah fulfill his lifetime dream of becoming chief rabbi?

You'll need to watch the series to find out. 

You won't be sorry; it's a first-rate comedy with characters you're very likely to fall in love with.

Rewatching Six Feet Under

I have just finished binge-watching, for the second time in twenty years, Six Feet Under.

I waited twenty years, I realize, for the same reason I waited years before I could rewatch Brokeback Mountain: some works of fiction can be even more powerful than reality; they can grab you by the spine and make you stop whatever else you're doing and give it all your attention.

Six Feet Under first came out as a series in 2001 and ran through 2005. I was home on sabbatical during part of that time and used to gather with half a dozen friends once a week to watch it together. We recognized its power then, and I have to say that power has not diminished in the two decades since.

If you are not familiar with it, it is the story of three families, the Fishers, the Chenowiths and the Diazes. It takes place in a funeral home in Los Angeles and begins with the death of Nathaniel Fisher Sr., whose car is hit by a bus on Christmas Eve on his way to the airport to pick up Nate, Jr., a kind of prodigal son who ran away to live in Seattle to escape getting drawn into the family funeral home business. At home is Nate's younger brother, David, a "good little son" and closeted gay man; their sister, Claire, still in her late teens who feels very much like the "also ran" child of the family; and their mother, Ruth, who has perfected the art of turning herself into a doormat while at the same time never surrendering the right to lay expectations on everyone else in sight. 

While waiting for his father, Nate meets and has sex in a public restroom with Brenda Chenowith, who has a psychologically incestuous connection to her bipolar brother Billy.  Billy frequently causes real havoc when he stops taking his meds so that he can "feel again" from time to time. They are the children of two sexually-disturbed psychiatrists who have imprinted their kinks and hangups onto the souls of their children and seem not to know what they've done or care.

The third family consists of Federico "Rico" Diaz, a restorative artist who works at the Fisher Funeral Home, his wife and two boys. They seem to have been included primarily to contrast how a supposedly "normal" family falls apart.  Just in case you missed the point that this show is about dysfunctionality.

This second-time around, Six Feet Under, no surprise, had a wholly different impact on me. The first time I zeroed in on the gay characters and the comic effect of the dysfunctionality of the Fisher and Chenowith families. This time, as an old man whose friends and acquaintances are dying faster than I can keep up with them, and whose own death, now that I've been diagnosed with a terminal disease, is, if not imminent, at least in sight, I naturally saw the 63-episode series as being more than anything else about how one contends with death.

It wasn't long before I began to feel the same impatience I feel with virtually all series-length productions. Eventually the time comes when you get annoyed with the failure of the characters to learn from their mistakes. Here, as in most soap operas, character flaws are all over the place: Nate is clueless, Billy is pathologically self-involved, Ruth is a textbook case of passive aggressivity, etc. It's hard to like these people; you find yourself wanting to slap some sense into them. But a moment's reflection makes clear that this response is evidence how good the writing is, and when I reached the 63rd and final episode, which is all about how the characters die in the future, an episode which has justifiably been called the finest ending ever written in a television series, I found myself mourning their passing, and sitting quietly for the longest time wishing I could bring them all back to life.

There are scenes along the way that are over-the-line heavy.  The one about sudden infant death syndrome - crib death - was one. But the one that wouldn't let go is the one in which David is car-jacked by a crazed psychopath pretending to have car trouble. David stops and offers to help when the guy pulls a gun on him and makes him dump the body David is transporting, then makes him get out of the van, pours gasoline on him and sticks a pistol in his mouth before laughing and driving off with the van, leaving his gasoline-soaked victim to find his way home. Keith too is living with a memory he can't shake of killing a man who points a gun at him in a struggle.  David and Keith both struggle to overcome shame and guilt over not being able to seize control in a moment of life-and-death consequence. and can't get themselves to recognize and accept how powerless they were to change the way things came down.

A major player in the plot line is the evolution of gay rights.  When the story begins, homophobia is still ever-present and Keith is frustrated with David for being so resistant to coming out. By the end of the series, five years later, David and Keith are married and adopting two abandoned boys.  They have come through the struggle to form a mixed-race family - Keith is black, as are the boys, and David is white - with two daddies, and it's David who is, if anything, the more progressive and enlightened of the two.  Alan Ball, the writer and producer of Six Feet Under is himself gay, and the story is a beautiful example of his activism. The warmth of the social realism - if that's what it is - contrasts with the starkness of all the death and dysfunctionality.

I don't know if I'd recommend the show to everyone. The language is coarse, the sex is kinky and often overwrought, and focusing on death is understandably not everyone's idea of a good time activity. But if you believe, as I do, that movies, whether made for the big screen or for television, are the art form of our day, you could do much worse than binge on Six Feet Under.

 photo credit

left to right in photo: David Fisher, (played by Michael C. Hall, of Dexter fame); Ruth Fisher (Frances Conroy); Claire (Lauren Ambrose), Nate (Peter Krause), Brenda (Rachel Griffiths), Keith (Mathew St. Patrick), Federico Diaz (Freddy Rodriguez)

Katty and the Mooch

After listening to the debate I'm now caught up in the commentary on the debate. It's a good exercise because it reminds me that I am just as susceptible as anybody to the temptation to believe what I want to believe and to choose sources of information to listen to that confim those beliefs.

I am an ardent supporter of Kamala Harris, not just, but largely, because I am convinced the reelection of the populist Liar-in-Chief would likely choke the last bit of oxygen out of our idealistic efforts to bring America ever closer to becoming a real functioning democracy.  I worry I'm just another Chicken Little crying "The sky is falling...the sky is falling," but I am persuaded that a Trump victory would provide evidence that Henny Penny, aka Chicken Little, was not an alarmist but a soothsayer.

Of all the commentary I've heard so far, the most insightful, in my opinion is the one I heard just now on Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci's podcast, The Rest is Politics.

I hope you can find the time to have a listen. If you don't, let me lay out three points they make, two I agree with and one I don't. The one I don't agree with is made by Katty. She wants Kamala to accept Trump's challenge to do the next debate on Fox with moderators of Trump's choosing. Katty thinks Kamala is a strong enough debater to go against what would be 3 to 1 odds, and it would reveal to the audience that she is an underdog with great chops. I have no idea, of course, whether Katty is right about this. On what feels like a common-sense level, I think it sounds like challenging a guillotine by putting your head under the blade and saying, "Go ahead. Give it your best shot!"

Now for the two points I agree with: One is that Kamala needs to take a crash course in economics, and particularly the American economic situation, and then demonstrate her knowledge in frequent and regular appearances before crowds on the campaign trail.

The other is Scaramucci's point that Trump is playing by the playbook of one of the most sinister characters in American political history: Roy Cohn.  Cohn was the lawyer supporting the work of Joseph McCarthy.  He figures large in the red scare and the lavender scare of the 1950s, essentially witch-hunts against communists and homosexuals, real or rumored. Cohn later became Trump Senior's lawyer and Fred Trump passed him on to his son. Roy Cohn's advice to Trump, his playbook, was:

1. Never apologize, never admit you were wrong;
2. Never admit defeat; continue to insist you won, even when you haven't;
3. Follow your instincts.

It's evident to all the world that Trump has internalized Cohn's playbook and followed it his entire political career.

This playbook fits, hand-in-glove, with the current populist movement that denies truth and insists things are whatever you claim they are, a fascist practice of putting power over truth and the will of an individual strongman over the rule of law.

What is missing in this podcast discussion is a serious discussion of how to negotiate one's way in a world of such overpowering deception. Does one continue to bang on with counter-argument when one makes the claim that argument is ineffective?  Does one counter with lies and hope the gullible can be persuaded to believe your lies and not the other guy's?

I'm still waiting to hear serious discussion on this topic.

If you've got suggestions on how to deal with liars please send them my way.

In the past I have listened over and over again to friends and others who say, "Why bother to engage; the MAGA folk are not going to listen to rational argument."  My own response is to assume that that's not true, or at least act as if it's not true and plough ahead with facts and corrections anyway, recognizing that in the absence of certainty, it's always better to err on the side of honesty and integrity.

But is that the best possible approach?  I really don't know.

Happy Birthday, Tante Frieda

Tomorrow is my Tante Frieda's birthday. Try as I may, I cannot locate her actual birth year, so I can only guess it must be somewhere in the vicinity of my grandmother's birth year, which was 1895.  That would put her at 129 today. Nice old age for someone who is still very much alive in your memory.

I've blogged before - probably several times; I tend to repeat myself a lot these days - about my time in Berlin and my connection with one of my favorite people of all time, my Aunt Frieda - so I won't go into detail here, except to repeat that some of my favorite family members are chosen, not birth family. My "great aunt" Frieda Müller, was the Lebensgefährte (life companion) of my mother's mother's second husband (i.e., not my mother's father)'s brother. Guess you can't get more non-biological than that.

For friends and family who want to read more, check out my blog entry from November 13, 1999, entitled "We Don't Care About the Berlin Wall Very Much." It's a reaction to the lack of interest my Japanese students were showing in the Second World War and the Cold War that followed it that made me kind of grouchy. I understand that it's a universal human truth that adults are going to wail over their kids' lack of shared interest in the things they think are important, but I also feel that some parts of history should be kept alive if, for no other reason, so that we can learn from mistakes and not repeat them.

There was an article in this week's Sunday New York Times about Cambodian efforts to teach their kids about the Pol Pot regime. I'm also acutely aware that the last of the Holocaust Survivors are now almost all gone and despite heroic efforts to keep those memories alive, they will eventually go too.

Each of us fights this battle on a personal level as we age. I'm now 84 and am aware that I'm the last German-speaking member of my mother's side of the family. Many of them never knew the grandparents I grew up with and practically none of them feel any connection with Germany. That saddens me, because that is still a living breathing part of my identity.

So for the next few days I'm going to be toasting my beloved Tante Frieda and talking my husband's ear off, ignoring his rolling eyes as I repeat something I've bored him with half a dozen times before. As long as I'm alive, she will be alive.

The photo above is one of several I managed to pull from her collection. It now hangs on the wall on a staircase and I see it every day (when I take time to notice it). I believe it was taken in about 1910 when she was about 15, give or take - I could be off by several years. In a world in which Germans are famous for their precision (think cameras, cars and trains running on time - in the old days, I mean, that's gone now too) I'm a lousy representative of the tribe.

In any case, Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag - Happy Birthday, Tante Frieda. Du bleibst unvergessen - you are not forgotten.

Soaking up the DNC Infomercial

Count me among those who would vote for a box of rocks before supporting Donald Trump's attempt to get back into the White House. I gave up listing the reasons why I loathe this guy years ago when it dawned on me that nobody would get as far as he has gotten without a good number of enablers. Since then I've tired of the many well-intentioned folk who work full-time generating outrage over his latest show of ignorance, cruelty or insensitivity. Stop beating a dead horse, I want to say. Put your energy where it can do some good. Forget the meanness, get out of the dark side, focus on the decency and integrity that still exists all around us.

I had not been much of a Kamala Harris fan before it became clear that Biden was likely to lose to Trump in the November election and it was time for drastic measures. I was all set to send my widow's mite to whoever the Democratic Party would pick to replace him. Kamala has managed to bring in half a billion dollars in what, one month? since she took over, so I'm feeling like a tightwad, but my inbox fills with a hundred requests for cash every day, so I want some indication that my contribution will be more than a good luck token, divided fifty ways. I'm real cynical about the American way of running elections, and the fact that in the U.S. it's the rich who call all the shots. I am also tempted to simply jump on the bandwagon to eliminate the Electoral College but have to admit I don't have a tight grasp on the difference between FPTP (first past the post) arguments, which support it, and the PR (proportional representation) arguments, which are agin it. At least I'm less ambivalent about the fight to get big money out of politics. I lost all respect for the Supreme Court way before they threw out Roe v. Wade, back when they gave us Citizen United, giving legal weight to the notion that rich people are more important in America than poor people.

All of this as a way of saying that until a week ago I was pretty cynical about national politics and followed it only casually. I am not particularly knowledgeable, and have been more anti-Trump than pro-anybody in particular.

But then came the Democratic Convention. At the risk of exposing my belly to the wolves, I am going to admit that I have become an enthusiastic supporter of the Harris/Walz ticket. More than a little. I'm ready to beat the drum. I am too old to travel to Nevada or Arizona to knock on doors, and remain grouchy about the belief that my ability to contribute to political campaigns can make a dent, but I am now ready at least to bore the socks off of anybody in a crowd who might want to hear what I think about American politics. I'm happy to share my views about the choice between somebody way more than decent and somebody way less so. Between somebody who will support the Ukrainian effort to push the Russian invaders out of their country and somebody who thinks the Russians should be able to "do whatever the hell they want." Between somebody who believes a person's right to determine what they do with their body and somebody who believes the government has a duty to punish doctors who aid women in distress who have been raped by a parent or sibling or who have learned they are carrying a nonviable fetus.

Richard Reich has a clear explanation for what a party convention is these days. Originally it was a conference to bring attention to the many candidates vying for the job and make a case for each. It was  an actual contest, not unlike a beauty or talent contest. In recent times, and especially this year, it has evolved into a giant "infomercial," an occasion for "selling" the candidate chosen by insiders to the public. When leading democrats were able to convince Biden that the signs were clear that he couldn't win in November, he was persuaded to step aside. The fact that he did so is evidence that he has the strength of character to put country ahead of party and self. Gainsayers are trying to cast shade on this, claiming he was "pushed." But Biden himself has never even hinted that that was the case. On the contrary, he still holds the leadership of the Democratic Party. I think he is rightly celebrated by the party as a hero, and not a victim here.

The party then had to face a second important decision: who to replace him with. Biden's choice was Kamala Harris. This made sense because technically that would have her do what she was elected to do: step in if Biden could no longer do the job. It also made sense pragmatically; given how close the polls show the election is likely to be, for Democrats to scrabble over a successor would surely have not been in their best interest.

Republicans have lost the decency and integrity they once had, exchanged their souls for power and wealth to a proto-fascist Pied Piper with little to no regard for truth or traditional American values. He appeals to the unfortunately large number of Americans who are convinced we need to tear down government and start over.  Democrats, in contrast, tend to  believe it is in the nature of democracy to tinker endlessly at the machine, replacing worn parts and discarding dysfunctional ones. Traditional Republicans are still to be found, but they occupy back seats and no longer have a voice in what goes on. The mainstream of the party are not remotely conservative any more, but rather ideological enablers of a self-serving power structure which has put their political organization on a path dangerously close to the path taken by the Germans in the last days of the Weimar Republic. My father was a proud Republican. For him Republican stood for standing on your own two feet, accepting personal responsibility, for honesty, integrity and for putting in a good day's work. I can only imagine what he'd say if he saw his party now in the hands of Christian nationalists and oligarchs whose hold on power depends on misinformation, swallows outright brazen lies by their leader, voter suppression, gerrymandering and minority control in all three branches of a government maintained and manipulated by fear and anger.

The contrast between the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention couldn't have been more stark and the split today between the mindsets of the two parties couldn't be more extreme. The RNC coasted along on fear and anger, the DNC on a sense of possibility. The purpose of the infomercial was to convince Americans they not only could but should allow themselves to shake off the long period of dread and bring out of the closet the concept of joy. Trump was upset by Harris's laugh. I doubt he was aware of what he was accomplishing by this attempt to detract; his remarks only served to underline the sense of relief - to the point of euphoria - that extended right to the top of the ticket. Democrats love her contagious laugh.

I don't know who deserves the credit for putting on this fantastic show. They pulled out all the stops. Partied from start to finish. Music, dance, hand-clapping and joyous speechifying. I remember how I used to cringe at the hokiness of a political convention. This time I looked at the candidates from Wisconsin wearing hats shaped like cheddar cheese and saw it not as dumb but as playful. The drawn-out roll calls where each state got to give a shout-out to its best-known native sons and daughters didn't come across as chauvinistic but as a well-deserved display of pride. And the accompaniment by a DJ and by rapper Lil Jon to help it along didn't hurt. The cumulative effect, when it was over, was to feel a sense of national unity and comfort in diversity.

Several highlights still remain in my mind: Adam Kinzinger telling Republicans that they needed to vote with Democrats until their party could be regained; Michelle Obama getting back at Trump for his insensitivity in calling the jobs illegal aliens are commonly limited to "black jobs" with one of the best come-back slap-downs of all time. "Who's going to tell him," she asked, "that the job he's currently seeking might just be one of those 'black' jobs?"

Then there was the rapturous welcome the crowd gave to President Biden; Barack Obama showed he could keep up with his wife in slapping the Donald down. "There's the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes," he said, mimicking Trump's habit of moving his hands in an out as if playing an accordion to show size. By now the audience is familiar with all the talk about Trump's small hands and the allegation that it signals a small penis. At least that's what late-night comedians have made of the habit, and nobody missed the reference. Remember, we're talking not about a "may the best man win" contest but a Hollywood style entertainment program where foul language and sex references are now very much part of the scene.

Elizabeth Warren said of Trump and Vance, "I wouldn't trust those guys to move my couch." Melania Trump's aide, Stephanie Grisham, came out for Harris because, she said, Trump has "no empathy, no morals, and no fidelity to the truth." Vice President Pence's one-time aide, Olivia Troye, told her fellow Republicans, "You're not voting for a Democrat. You're voting for democracy....You're not betraying our party. You're standing up for our country."

The primary purpose of the infomercial was to stress the character of the new and unfamiliar party leaders, and here's where the script writers more than earned their pay. Kamala's speech was a textbook model for public speaking, perfectly constructed, and perfectly delivered. In contrast to her black-suit-no-pearls self-presentation, her husband, Doug Emhoff came across as warm and fuzzy, a husband and father to make anyone proud. I resonated personally with his description of their family as a blend of cultures and traditions. He goes with her to church; she makes a mean brisket dinner on Passover, he tells us.

But the pièce de résistance, the four-handkerchief moment of the final session was when Tim Walz got up to speak and began by telling the audience that his wife and daughter and son were his whole life. Gus, his seventeen-year-old son rose to his feet, tears streaming down his cheeks, and he could be heard to shout out, "That's my Dad!"

The moment turned out to be a Rorschach Test. Anybody who loves love could spot it as a spontaneous expression of affection for a father by a boy with learning limitations. A handful of loveless creatures like the stone-faced, stone-hearted and unloveable Ann Coulter made fun of the kid. When condemnation came down on them like the wrath of God, they withdrew their statements. It was too late; their character has been revealed and will be part of their legacy. One guy - I don't want to take the time to look up his name - made some remark about the kid not being manly. "Remember, Republicans," he was saying, "real men don't cry."

Sorry, jerk. People who are overcome with emotion and affection sometimes do. How many of us, if presented with a father telling the world he loves you in front of a combined television and live audience of 30 million people, plus those who watched it on YouTube and cable, that you are his whole world, would not cry, I ask you. I think it would take an Ann Coulter heart not to.

The show's over. I can now get back to Netflix and Amazon Prime binge-watching. Maybe do some postcard writing for Kamala and Tim Walz.

And you'll have to forgive me if my chauvinism shows through now and again. If you are not familiar with San Francisco Bay Area geography you may not know that Berkeley and Oakland are, in effect, a single East Bay entity, so when she tells the world she was born in Oakland, I get to grin from ear to ear. I live in Berkeley, six blocks from the Oakland line and spend more time in Oakland than I do in Berkeley, to shop, to see a doctor, to go out to eat, to visit friends. Kamala was born in Oakland and lived in the flats in Berkeley and started school at Thousand Oaks, just north of Solano Avenue in Berkeley. I was there not too long ago to attend a performance by the son of the woman who used to clean my house. Very local. Very familiar. Very much home folk.

The kind of thing that makes me smile.

Some perspective on military valor

I grew up during the Cold War and graduated from college in 1962, just in time to be drafted into the army to fight the commies who we believed were about to start a Third World War, this time with nuclear weapons. Everybody knew everybody in my small town in Connecticut and I was able to wrangle the information out of the local draft board (there was a draft in effect) that my number was coming up sometime in the fall, possibly as early as late September.

I was too pain-averse to smash my instep and running off to Canada required more pluck than I had at the time, so my ears perked up when I learned that if I enlisted I had a decent chance of getting into the Army Language School in Monterey, California. It would mean an extra year - three, instead of two - of military service and I would still have to carry a gun, and go through basic training.  

I dodged the Cuban Missile Crisis only to be faced with the new war in Vietnam. I no longer saw a choice, so it was sign on the dotted line, take the bus to New Haven, learn that my heart murmur was benign and start my days at Fort Dix, New Jersey where I crawled under barbed wire on the ground.  When my superior would scream in my face, "What's the spirit of the bayonet? I would scream back: "Kill, kill, kill!"

But at least I didn't have to go to war.

Over my college years, which included a junior year in Munich, I had developed a facility for and fascination with language learning and the field of linguistics. Getting to go to the Army Language School seemed too good to be true. I ended up studying Russian and was sent to Berlin, initially to listen in on Russian soldiers in the field in East Germany. Eventually, though, my knowledge of German got me transferred to the political section to listen in on the cadre that was paired with East German officials who really ran the show. Not a bad way, all told, to spend the extra year it cost me to avoid the draft.

I've written much elsewhere about the importance to my life of that year - which became closer to two years in the end - in Berlin. I formed not only a passionate love for the city, established a close bond with a favorite aunt - my Tante Frieda - and formed friendships with guys I came to define as "chosen family."  Watching the wheels go round up close in the American military, I also developed a political consciousness that I would carry with me for decades. It included a seething loathing for what I saw as American bullying. When I left the army and came to live in Berkeley, California, I was a walking stereotype of a leftie pinko banging on about American imperialism and the cruel folly of America's role as world policeman. I saw so much stupidity and corruption in the army that I could barely see straight. At one point my mother wrote me that she was proud that all three of the McCornick boys - me and my two cousins - were wearing a uniform and serving their country, Billy in the Marines, Brian in the Air Force, and me in the Army. I wrote back to my mother that if she mentioned that fact again I would tear up the letter and never read anything she wrote again.

That wasn't me at my worst. That came later, when I was at a Chinese New Year's parade in San Francisco, where I settled after I got out of the army. A military band came by and I found myself shouting "PAID KILLERS!  PAID KILLERS!" at the top of my lungs.   A woman standing next to me began shaking with rage.  "My son's in the army. And he is not a paid killer!" she said.

I've spent the last fifty plus years wishing I could find that woman and apologize to her. I was 26 at the time and convinced that America was not just on the wrong track, but an actual force for evil in the world. And I made no distinction between national policy as established by people at the top and the people in the trenches whose only option was carrying out the orders from above. I've had a lifetime to modify the convictions I held so fiercely in the 1960s.

And I have modified them. I came in time to distinguish between people with the power to call their own shots and those who appear to have been born to be cannon fodder.  No great feat, actually, especially because I grew up in a half-German household during and just following the Second World War. In time I came to see Germans not just as perpetrators but as victims of the war, in part because of Tante Frieda, who had lost her hearing crawling from one bomb shelter to another. I took that same perspective toward the Russian soldiers invading Ukraine when I read that Putin was drafting both prisoners and people from non-Slavic minority areas. 50,000 of them have died so far and counting, in addition to the 30,000 Ukrainians who have lost their lives trying to keep their country whole. I have a profound respect for military valor, and really do regret being so naive in my twenties.

So here I sit, now an old fogey in front of a computer screen hoping my country can escape the folly of putting back into the White House a man with so little character that he refuses to have his picture taken with soldiers with missing limbs. He sneered at war hero John McCain for spending much of his time as prisoner in a cage in North Vietnam  ("I like people who don't get caught") and just today joked that the rich Republican donor he's giving a Medal of Freedom to is much better off than recipients of the military Medal of Honor, because the latter are riddled with bullets.  I assume the guy was trying to make a joke. Either way, the insensitivity is stunning.

I know many worry about handing him the code to nuclear weapons.  I worry more about giving this lowlife the power to send young people to war.

Embracing both politics and religion

When I first went into teaching the "common wisdom" I would get from all my teacher-trainers was to avoid at all costs the topics of politics and religion. I followed that advice for a while, but I soon realized it wasn't wisdom at all, but a way to cut the heart out of any real person-to-person interaction between learners. 

Note that I didn't say "teacher" and "learner." Except when filling out income tax or other forms where I am asked to list my occupation, I gave up making that distinction years ago.  And I should say I'm talking about teaching mature students, not young kids,  I think a teacher's best occupational strategy is to "teach" something they want to "learn" so they can jump into the fray as a co-learner.

This way of going about sharing yourself with the world has its risks.  I lost a friend a few years ago when suddenly, and without explanation, he started ghosting me. I made several attempts to get him to respond to my pleas for an explanation, but I kept drawing a blank. It saddens me no end, because I liked and admired the guy.

It's possible I said or did something stupid or harmful. I don't know what that might be, but the possibility remains open. Until I get an explanation - and hopefully a chance to repair, if repair is possible - I am left to speculate.

This erstwhile friend - I'll call him Wolfgang - has an intense dislike for politicians. For him there's no good politician but a dead politician. In contrast, I have a whole bunch of politicians I admire. I could go way back, but let me start, arbitrarily, with Harvey Milk. I think what he accomplished for LGBT people has been generally recognized, and when my husband and I got married at San Francisco City Hall the happy occasion became a thrilling occasion when I learned that the woman who was marrying us was the daughter of the woman who swore Harvey Milk in when he became San Francisco Supervisor. And - there's more! - we got married right next to a bust of Harvey Milk in the space at the top of the stairs overlooking the Rotunda.

A second gay politician who had my highest admiration was Barney Frank, chiefly but by no means only because of his work on demolishing the closet that LGBT people lived in.  Today, these two gay men I tend to view in heroic terms are slipping into history, but we have an up-and-comer in Pete Buttigieg, who matches his gay predecessors in smarts and articulateness. Frank slipped up and got tangled in a couple of scandals, but he more than made up for it, in my view, by the work he accomplished over the years since.

I got into a discussion the other day about the surprising number of democratic politicians I find it easy to say good things about, starting, of course, with Pete Buttigieg: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Beto O'Rourke, Joaquin Castro and his one-minute older brother Julian,  Katie Porter,  Amy Klobuchar, my own California representatives Barbara Lee and Barbara Boxer, and the representative from the neighboring (14th) congressional district, Eric Swalwell, and many many more, right up to Tim Walz and Kamala Harris.  The Harris/Walz ticket has brought me, like so many others, out of the political doldrums and given me reason to shed the fear that Americans were almost certain to cast into the toilet this marvelous project we've got going to build a democracy.

Today I found another one - a democratic politician to admire - and another Texan to boot. This guy's name is James Talarico.  My friend Bill just phoned to put me on to him. If you know Bill and me and our atheist history, this may come as a surprise.

Talarico grew up just north of Austin in a religious (Presbyterian) home. For years I was so anti-organized religion that I wouldn't have given him a moment's thought. But I've traveled the long path to reconciliation with people whose faith strikes me as sincere and indicative of a search for meaning - not to say truth and justice - rather than political power and tribal identity. Talarico decided at some point that it was better, to use his words, to devote his energies to eliminating the need for charity rather than to Christian charity itself. He became a Texas state representative in one district, until the Republicans gerrymandered him out and he then went to another. Obviously a smart guy, he's the youngest member of the Texas State Legislature. He seems to be getting his stride in both politics and religion by exposing the true nature of America's Christian Nationalism movement, which he equates with the older term: christo-fascism.

Give him a listen. You won't be sorry. Here he is giving a sermon on his views in a Baptist Church. And here he is talking about his path to both religion and politics in a TV interview.

Zs and Apostrophes

I doubt anybody gave much thought to the fact that when Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race that linguists and English teachers were about to be called on to explain a couple mysteries of the English language as she is written. Let me try to get ahead of the game.

Vice-presidential candidate-to-be is Tim Walz, from Minnesota.  By some counts, nearly a third of Minnesotans have German ancestry, so it's not surprising the state's current governor should have a German family name.  It is apparently the most common ancestry in the state and according to the World Population Review website, more than ten percent of Minnesotans over the age of five actually speak German at home, which I find really hard to believe in this day and age. But moving on...

Everybody knows what a waltz is - it's a dance where you go one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two three and people immediately think of Johann Strauss and the (beautiful) Blue Danube. So even though Tim Walz leaves the t out of his name, most people will want to pronounce it like the dance. But don't. His name got Americanized at some point and it is now pronounced walls, as in a room has a ceiling, a floor and four walls.

It's not that we can't say waltz. We may not have a letter for the sound of t and s (or t and z) put together like Hebrew does with the 18th letter of its alphabet צ, which the website "Hebrew for Christians" is happy to inform you is pronounced "like ts in nuts." Or the 21st letter of the Cyrillic alphabet ц, which does likewise.  Japanese also has っ, but enough of this tangent.   My point is Walz uses the English spelling pronunciation of z as in zebra and not the ts sound of the tse-tse fly.

And, for my fellow Germanophiles (für meine deutschbegeisterten Kollegen), let me acknowledge in passing that the German word for Waltz is not Waltz, but Walzer.  The Beautiful Blue Danube Waltz is simply Der Donauwalzer. And note that the addition of a t wouldn't change the pronunciation. It's not there in German probably because it would be redundant. I have no idea why one got added in the English word waltz (assuming, perhaps mistakenly, that the German word came first), but because it was, we can now draw a distinction between waltz and Tim Walz that can't be made in German.

OK.  Now for the second issue, where to put the apostrophe.

Historically, the apostrophe in English was used either to show a place in a word where a letter has been omitted, as in contractions such as don't for do not and couldn't for could not, or to mark the so-called "Saxon genitive," more commonly known as the possessive case of nouns as in Mary's lamb as opposed to the phrase the lamb of Mary, which is suggestive of a higher register such as biblical language. (Ever wonder why we say the Lamb of God and not God's Lamb?)  There are two more usages of the single apostrophe, to mark a quotation within a quotation, or as an alternate to double quotation marks around a single word, but that's not relevant to the discussion here.

Where the plot thickens is where spoken English and written English part ways. The apostrophe-s flows freely in both written and spoken English in the sentence: "Mary had a little lamb, and oh look there's Mary's lamb right there!"

But what happens when the possessive comes on a word ending in an s or z or sh or ch (a "sibilant") sound? Mary has a little lamb and so does James. I see Mary's lamb but I don't see James's.

In this case, there is no problem. We have a name for this. It's called the epenthic schwa. A schwa is the sound we make when we're looking for a word and can't quite come up with it, a sound commonly written as "uh".  "I'd like to, uh, maybe, uh, kind of, uh, get your permission to spend the night with your daughter." James's lamb is pronounced "James-zus lamb," 

Lost in the sands of time is the explanation for why we have an alternative in which we are all left to wonder how the wee little apostrophe got to not only play its stand-in role as an epenthic schwa but actually create another s-sound on the word as well: We can write this without the second s: James' lamb.

Here's where people go running to dictionaries and books on style, hoping to find an authority to tell them how to do this properly.

I'm not going to do that because my linguistics training has made me a descriptive linguist, and not a prescriptivist. I consider telling people what to do is not science; describing what people do is.

Problem is I'm also trained as an English teacher (i.e., as a "prescriptivist") and am a bit of a fussy queen to boot. I cringe whenever I see people confuse it's with its. All my linguistic training is for naught when I see a student composition with a sentence like, "The cherry tree in my front yard is so beautiful in the spring before it starts to lose it's blossoms." Or when I see an apostrophe used with plurals, as in, "This parking lot has room for fifty car's."

But back to James's lamb.

Consider the sentences "Henry James and his brother William live next door.  I've known the James brothers all their lives." They pose no problem. But what about if the two brothers own a car in common?  Is it the James car? The James' car? The James's car?  Many will want to write this as the James' car and cite the grammatical rule that an  apostrophe is used to mark plural possession. 

I can't tell you what's right. I can't even tell you what most people do, although I'm sure somebody can, since we now have the ability to count no end of trivia to the last jot and tittle.

There. How nice to get back to fussing over language and language usage.

I'm looking forward to the Democratic Convention in Chicago when the Harrises come out (one of whom kept his bachelor name, Emhoff) with the Walzes (Walz'?) (Walz's) to the roar of the crowds.

It feels so good not to have to fight the depression that trumpism has spread across the land and to feel a bit of hope again. And freedom to turn my attention to things like punctuation instead of a possible loss of democracy.

P.S. (added Aug. 13) - I apologize for leaving the impression that the English word for waltz and the surname Walz both come from the same German origin. That is not the case.  The surname is apparently a derivative from the name Walter, and the verb to waltz comes from the proto-germanic word walt- meaning to turn, revolve and only in the 18th century became applied to "that riotous and indecent German dance."

The Boyfriend - a review

A gay reality show?  From Japan?  You've got to be kidding.  Could Japan's essentially conservative nature really have undergone this dramatic - not to say unbelievable - transformation in recent years?  I thought Japanese society was an inherently homophobic society.  Not of the thuggish Islamicist sort where gays are thrown off of tall buildings, or even of the gay-basher sort common to many parts of Europe and America, but of a kinder gentler sort, where gays are simply shunned for being just a bit too far over the line from "normal" behavior.

That's one possible reaction many will likely have after watching the Netflix production just out called The Boyfriend. And it was my first reaction, as someone who has spent twenty-four years of his life in Japan in two segments, one from 1970 to 1974 and a second one, after a hiatus of fifteen years, from 1989 to 2006, plus several shorter stays in between. I was an out gay man from San Francisco, but I determined it was in my best interest when I took a job as a professor at a Japanese university to go back in the closet. True, that may have been an unduly fearful decision on my part - and I did come out again in time - but I had plenty of confirmation from other LGBT men and women that I was doing the smart thing.

But - to return to the topic of the Netflix ten-episode series The Boyfriend, there are at least a couple of much simpler, more straightforward explanations for why a reality show with gay characters should suddenly appear on Japanese television. One is that gay liberation is finally catching up with Japan. It's not ready yet to allow same-sex marriages, but five months ago, in March of this year, both a Tokyo district court and a Sapporo high court challenged the ban on same-sex marriage, and it would appear it's only a matter of time. Netflix is probably seizing the moment.  Whether for cynical reasons (gays are still an entertaining curiosity) or profit-motive reasons (romance sells and the general population is now ready for LGBT love stories) I leave for others to figure out.

Another explanation is that it's not a particularly remarkable event in the first place. Japan has traditionally allowed parallel worlds to exist between people in the everyday world and people in the arts. Japan is the land of the geisha, after all, and men in drag appear regularly on modern-day television, especially in talk shows dominated by people known as "talents" - people who dress in unusual costumes selected to push the envelope into shock, outrage or simply silliness. These folk assume the role of soothsayers, supposedly insightful social commentators, although their contributions sometimes get so sophomoric and inane that you find yourself thankful people don't wear shoes inside the house or you'd be flinging them at your TV screen. 

The presence of such a group in this show - call them the Japanese version of a Greek chorus - begs the question of what exactly a so-called reality show is anyway.  And invites the observation that it is anything but real, but rather nothing more than a form of performance art designed to stimulate and titillate a bored audience looking for ever new and original entertainment. The group includes Otake Masaki, who goes by the stage name Durian ("the king of the fruits") Lollobrigida, who comes out in normal male dress at the start but gets more and more into his drag personalities as the show goes on.

The set-up is a simple one: nine unattached gay men, raging in age from 22 to 34, gather together at a resort by the sea for a month, allegedly to find friendship and love - with a camera following their every remark and facial expression.  Believe that's "reality" and I've got a bridge to sell you.  To build a closer bond between them, they are assigned the job of driving off to the beach each morning to sell coffee and cookies to the general public, although "general" isn't the right word, since the number of customers is small enough for the focus to remain on the personalities of the two gay characters in the coffee truck as they interact with customers one at a time, even bringing cups of coffee to their table. Camera running, of course.

An obvious question is why anybody would think you can simply throw people together and expect them to fall in love with each other, or, at minimum, form lasting meaningful relationships. That question is addressed directly by a member of the Greek chorus who makes the observation, "Anybody can fall in love with anybody."

In addition to the nine love-seekers and the "talents" (Greek chorus) there is another important but unseen character: from time to time a laptop dings and somebody opens it and reads a message from on high. This godlike character determines their daily activities, chiefly who will take the coffee truck out on any given day. He (it is a masculine voice) also has them do such things as write anonymous notes as a secret admirer and drop them in the mailbox each one has on their door. On several occasions, the boss-man decides they will have an overnight with a person of their choice who agrees to the arrangement.

As simplistic as the notion is expressed by the authority in the machine (the laptop) that "We hope you will find an irreplaceable partner," the reality performers play along. Rather than understanding that friendships take years to form and depend on observing the other in all kinds of character-revealing situations, they seem willing to believe the observation of a simple act of kindness, or generosity, or even politeness, is sufficient to make one fall in love. It marks them as astonishingly superficial.

At the same time, because the filmed interactions are so sanitized, we only get to see these guys on their best behavior. There is no cruelty, no harshness, no violence, no meanness. If anything, they display the stereotypical Japanese feature of being other-oriented to such an extreme that you need a Greek chorus to speculate over what's going on behind the masks of politeness they are all wearing.

At the same time, they do reveal markedly different character differences over time, giving some credibility to the producer who claims he selected the characters for their diversity of type. Two of the more extreme differences show up in the connection established by the two youngest participants, Dai and Shun, who do (spoiler alert) actually become a couple by the end of the series. Dai is outgoing and assertive (he sends Shun a dick-pic at one point); Shun is pathologically shy and suffers from an obvious inferiority complex. Shun is the kind of guy you'd expect to say, "I couldn't possibly fall in love with somebody stupid enough to fall in love with me."

Kazuto is everybody's first choice of a best-friend type. He comes in on Day One with food and continues to prepare meals for his colleagues - he is a cook and restaurant owner in real life. Another stand-out is Usak, a nationally well-known go-go boy who enters in Episode 2 and leaves early in Episode 5. He has a handsome face and is built like a brick shithouse. He lacks articulateness initially, but manages to bring everybody to tears when he leaves, and clearly has what it takes to break down the cool of Chef Kazuto, who otherwise plays his cards close to his chest.

And I trust my remarks in the previous paragraph reveal what I think the show has going for it, despite the charge of superficiality and banality: the characters may be not all you'd like them to be, but they are by and large sympathetic characters you come to root for. If this program is in fact staged, which Durian Lolobrigida claims it is not but I nonetheless suspect it is, it is well-staged with a well-composed plot line.  And that makes it worth watching. I've heard many non-Japanese comment over the years that they find Japanese too anodyne to actively like or dislike, and that was my first take on Japanese too until I made Japan my home and came to understand that its rich and complex culture makes it a world-class civilization, which contains the full range of human personality differences, unlike the manicured personalities in The Boyfriend.

Watching "gay boys" as they go about looking for love will not be everybody's cup of tea, even if this so-called reality show does turn out to be real. But in notable contrast to all the violence, blood, gore and duplicity in the shows Netflix brings to market, this one is refreshing, uplifting, and in the end, immensely sympathetic. I am not sure I share the Rotten Tomatoes rating of 100%. It moves slowly and youthful indecisiveness isn't at the top of my list of fun things to spend your time on. But if you have the patience, I think you will find it is worth the watch.

The characters are, in order of introduction:

1. Dai, age 22, a college student

2. Taeheon, age 34, a designer originally from South Korea, notably not out to his parents as a gay man

3. Ryota, 28, a model, a barista - considers himself a bisexual

4. Gensei, 34, a hair and make-up artist

5. Shun Nakanishi, 23, musician

6. Kаzuto, 27, cook and manager of an izakaya-type restaurant, everybody's favorite among the group 

7. Usak, 36, a nationally known go-go dancer

8. Alan, 28, a mixed-race (Brazilian/Japanese) guy who grew up in Japan, works for an IT company

9. Ikuo, 22, the late-comer, works in the food industry

Giving up on the Two-State Solution

Good news: With Biden agreeing to sacrifice his personal goals for the good of the country and his party, we can stop with the dread and allow ourselves to hope once again that the United States of America might regain the place it once held, rightly or wrongly, as a beacon of democracy for the world.

Bad news: Kamala has to choose a vice-presidential candidate to run with and soon. Well, that's not really bad news so much as it is discomfort-making news, because although she has a pretty good selection of democratic politicians to choose from, the fact that she can choose only one of them is going to piss a bunch of people off.

My favorite human being among the candidates is Pete Buttigieg. How could I not love this guy?  A fellow gay, he has done more to further a positive image of LGBT people than anybody else I can think of. I just love the guy to pieces. Love his husband, Chastain, love his cute kids, swell with pride when I observe how articulate he can be in talking back to the trumpist me-me-me crowd.

I hope Pete isn't selected, though, because I'm among those who worry the country isn't ready for a gay man a heart-beat away from the Oval Office. There are others with more experience; Pete can wait four or eight more years and continue to build his resume. He appears to be doing a bang-up job building bridges and making trains run on time.

My favorite among the candidates who I think would make a great companion party leader is Tim Walz of Minnesota. He comes across as warm and caring, and when you dig into his record, he's clearly been walking the walk and not just saying nice things as governor of a very civilized state.

If I were putting money on her choice, I'd go with Josh Shapiro. Also articulate.  And I understand that people like him for his potential for carrying Pennsylvania and its large number of electoral votes.

And, by the way, back to Pete Buttigieg for a minute, can't we more of us get on the bandwagon he's driving to rid the country of this undemocratic idiocy of allowing a minority of rural voters more say in the direction of the country than the rest of us?

But let me get back to my intended point of this morning's ramble: choosing Josh Shapiro as VP candidate. While he's got so much going for him, looks, smarts, political creds, he's also got his Jewishness going against him. Just as I fear the country might not be ready for a gay man, I fear Shapiro's pro-Israel remarks might lead too many Americans pissed off at our lockstep support of Israel, right or wrong, to pull the lever for the other party - or maybe for the current political buzz-kill, Robert Kennedy's child wandering in the no-vaccinations wilderness.

Talk about being between a rock and a hard place... Hamas gets it all wrong. They start with a legitimate cause: the fight against Israeli injustice vis-a-vis its Palestinian minority and fuck it up with its policy of kidnapping, rape and murder on October 7th.  And what does Israel do?  Come back with a policy Israelis can be proud of?  Not on your life. They fall into the trap Hamas sets for them by using its own people as shields, and mows them down. The nation formed to provide a refuge for a people victimized by thuggish fascists now drops bombs on Gazan civilians and has already killed more children there than the number of Ukrainian victims of the Russian invasion of their country - just to get some perspective here.

Kamala Harris has to tread the thin line between showing support for Israel as a nation of Jewish people like her husband without losing the support of not just Arab-American voters who worry about what they see as an unjustifiable "Israel right or wrong" approach to American diplomacy. With or without Josh Shapiro next to her in the front seat.

Since this is a blog, and not an academic article where expository writing rules ought to apply, allow me to spin off on an update in my views on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which I just sent off to a friend of mine:

Two comments come to mind each time the conflict grabs my attention. One is the Abba Eban observation, "the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" and the other is Golda Meir's insight: "Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us." 

My focus on these two remarks reveals the fact that I am drawn emotionally to the culture of Ashkenazi Jewishness but feel neutral, at best, toward Sephardic Jews and Palestinians. Back in the day when Leon Uris published Exodus, I had total sympathy with the Zionist project of building a Jewish homeland after the Holocaust. And ever since then I've felt that unbalanced enthusiasm for one side over the other slip away as I watched the Israelis use their material (and intellectual) superiority and organizational skills over the Palestinians to grind them into the dust - all with the dubious justification that Jewish survival as a people depended on it.

It doesn't. Jews live well in the United States and Canada and many other countries as well, whether being Jewish means lighting candles on shabbat or simply preferring lox and bagels to fried rice; they are no longer in danger of extinction. And if the project of trying to out-birth their Palestinian neighbors (on the part of the ultra-orthodox among them) flops as a means of achieving their ends, you won't see a tear in this eye.

The nationalist goals of the 19th century are no longer valid, in my view.  I have serious doubts they ever were, although I won't take a stand on that.  In any case, they seem to have screwed the pooch by (apparently) ruining any chance of a two-state solution and must now deal with a one-state solution or endless war. So be it.

Long live Israel, I say.

Home of Jews and Palestinians and anybody else who is ready to do what it takes to make it their home.

I would prefer to say "not my farm; not my animals" except for the fact that my country insists on spending billions of U.S. tax dollars to maintain an only-Jews-as-first-class-citizens state and to prop up sleazeballs like Bibi Netanyahu simply because he has managed to get control of the reins of power.  (And because using a metaphor which will no doubt lead people to call me an anti-semite for allegedly referring to Jews and Palestinians as animals is something one ought not do in such a humorless day and age.)

A.