100 Words about Distance

(This bit of short fiction was written as part of a blog for the FastCupid dating site on April 21, 2008) They sat a foot apart, their hands almost touching on the tabletop, but not quite. He looked out the window, she at an invisible spot on her sleeve. They had little time left and only enough room for silence. Once they’d been one: he’d slip into bed and she’d put her arms around him without waking. They knew each others’ thoughts. They’d make love for hours, amazing even themselves. He once said he didn’t want an atom of separation between their bodies; she said that made her love him even more. Now an infinite, unbridgeable distance lay between them, forever.

Patriotism and ghosts

(This was written on April 22, 2008 (Election Day in Pennsylvania)

I live in New Jersey and this was the first Presidential primary in which my vote mattered - in the sense that it was cast prior to the nomination having already been decided. Before this year it was always a done deal by the time NJ rolled around.

That said, I always vote, always, even when there are no challengers. I don't always vote for all of the candidates (I've been known to bullet vote a bit, leaving some positions unvoted), but I've never, ever cast a vote for a Republican...I'm not proud of that, but it is important to me - it's where the Leninist in me comes out - I believe that true progress is achieved by groups of people acting in concert, not by lone wolves pushing through changes that will simply be rolled back after the excitement of their "personality" fades - which it always does.
















But as I said, I always vote. This may sound negative but I don't see it negatively: I usually have an image of Omaha Beach in my mind when I walk into the polling place - or of Antietam, or of Breeds Hill in Boston...the fact that men and women actually offered their lives so I could do this simple thing - it would be a slur against their sacrifice and memory if I didn't redeem their honor with this simple act - particularly since it is so painless for me to do so.

I'm not "patriotic" in the standard sense, maybe. But I do believe that the ideals of America - while rarely achieved - still inspire people to search for the "angels of our better nature." And lives offered up to those dreams deserve to be remembered, not only in Memorial Day parades but more importantly at the ballot box. It's the least we can do.

It never happens that all my wishes for America come true because I go out to vote - but none of them will if I don't, I know that.

SO...get out and vote, you sons and daughters of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania!

Bitter Pennsylvanians

(This was written on April 16, 2008)

The flap over what Barack Obama did or didn’t mean when he spoke of “bitter” working-class people in Pennsylvania has me both excited and depressed. Here’s why:

But first, full-disclosure: I have an Obama bumper sticker on my car…I’ve never given money to him, I’ve never volunteered for him, I’ve never attended a rally, speech or coffee given by him or in his behalf. Having been a professional Democrat for a large part of my adult life, I reflexively avoid getting involved in primaries unless paid to. It can be like choosing who’s the most attractive among friends: way more downside than up.

Having said that, I have been overall cautiously surprised by Obama’s willingness to reset the agenda – particularly about his tendency not to give in to the hoary old rules about what is and isn’t to be discussed in public. I like that about him; it’s a big part of why I like him. I don’t like his health care reform plan, and I don’t really know much else about his other “plans” in detail; but he seems ready, willing, and (most importantly) able to discuss important issues like a mature adult.

About twenty-five years ago there was a movie called “The Deer Hunter.” For those who didn’t see: it told the story of a circle of working-class friends in Western Pennsylvania (focusing on two or three of them who went to Vietnam) and how they all were changed – not for the better – by their experiences in life, and particularly about the differences in the ways they’d been changed: but all of them had become bitter.

At the end of the movie is a scene of harrowing sadness and some mystery (to me, at least…I saw the movie twice in one day – it was three and half hours long – to understand the last five minutes). It shows the surviving members of the circle sitting at a kitchen table, drinking beer in silence – until they spontaneously begin singing a patriotic song (The Star-Spangled Banner, I think).

Despite the ways in which they’d been damaged by their faith in their country, in the final extremity – when all dreams had been taken from them, they turned to a few “eternals”: camaraderie, numbness, and patriotism. These “truths” got their parents’ generation through the tough times, and their grandparents', too. It is all these people (in the movie) know…it’s what they cling to in their “bitterness.”

As inelegantly as he said it, and the tone he may have said it in notwithstanding, it seems to me that Obama was simply making a similar observation; that we cannot simply sneer at and ignore those people who – against their own best interests, maybe, at least as we see it – have turned toward what they see as anchors (guns, religion, cultural isolation) in a stormy world…a world that seems less predictable each day - a world that marginalizes what they value most in favor of glitz and “reality.” If we simply call them “reactionaries” or pin-headed “right-wingers” without even attempting to understand the motivations they have, we fall into the behavior we say we most dislike in “the other side.”

These “bitter” people – assuming they exist, wherever and whoever they are – are our fellow countrymen and women. More than that, they are our class-mates (in socio-economic terms, not educational!). They are worthy of our consideration, our assistance, and – if we think they’re wrong about something – our best reasons as to why we think that. Too often, instead, we find ourselves jeering at others, or “imposing” changes on people who haven’t been in on the discussions about why the change is necessary or preferable.

Obama didn’t say he had answers about this bitterness, he simply said he has an understanding of its root causes. He also seemed to be saying that to dismiss the bitterness because they who are embittered have turned to symbols we don’t fully agree with is not in our own best interests. He seemed to me to be saying that such people are our allies, whose needs and wants and dreams are closer to our own that we recognize. That they aren’t to be dismissed as “gun nuts” and “Jesus freaks.” That’s what it seemed to me he was trying to say.

What’s made all of the debate in the country over this most painful has been the reaction of the news media. It seems that they relish the unspoken rule that race and class are never to be discussed – or that if one does raise those issues it has been a “mistake,” a “stumble,” a failure to stay “on-message.” They seem gleeful in their race rip his words from their context and doing so to join in the smugness of the "gotcha," eager to belittle the intellectual courage it takes to actually discuss such topics in public. And not one of them has taken a single moment (not PBS, not NPR, not CNN and certainly not Fox News – not one of them) to investigate what he actually seemed to be talking about.

It isn’t – of course – for the media to decide whether he’s right or wrong about what he said: that’s for us out here to decide (and we’re allowed to take our time doing it…it doesn’t have to translate into overnight tracking polls). But it IS their job to look a little deeper into the subject and to illuminate what they find; to hear what other people are saying about the issue (not about the controversy); to give us some perspective on the questions Obama’s speech raised. Instead they seem to be salivating over the sizzle, while the steak goes untouched (sorry for all you vegetarians out there in blogland).

Triangle in Washington Square

(This was written Thursday, April 17, 2008)

It was an ineffably beautiful day in New York City last Thursday. I’d come in from suburban New Jersey to conduct some research in a library devoted to Jewish culture and history, located in the East Village. I finished my work there by 2pm and walked a few blocks to Washington Square Park; I just read a book about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and learned that the building which housed Triangle still stands, though it’s been renamed and now contains classrooms and offices for NYU.

For those who don’t know of it: the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, March 25, 1911, was the greatest single workplace loss of life in a New York City...until September 11, 2001. Crammed into lofts filled with extremely flammable cloth and other materials, seamstresses, cutters and other workers toiled 12-15 hours a day six or seven days a week in the swiftly growing NYC garment industry. Conditions were bad, but they were worse elsewhere, and people were glad to have a job at Triangle.

No one knows how the fire started, but the minute-by-minute account makes it clear that after 60 to 90 seconds, anyone still in the building was doomed to death by smoke or by fire. Actually, some people chose a third option: jumping to certain (if not always immediate or merciful) death from the ninth and tenth story windows.

146 (mostly) women and men died; hundreds of people lined up for days to view the burnt and crushed corpses, to claim a sister or mother or child. In many cases the face was unidentifiable; only a lock of hair, a scrap of lace, a certain shoe brand, could give the victim a name. The tragedy sparked a near-revolt in the immigrant quarters of the city, leading to large-scale changes in workplace safety, treatment of immigrants, and the balance of political power in New York. The factory’s owners were acquitted of wrongdoing.

It was eerie to stand beneath the building at the northwest corner of Greene Street and Washington Place – it had become so iconic in my mind. It was like standing next to the Titanic. I looked around me and tried to imagine what it was like that March day almost 100 years ago: bodies sprawled on the pavement; firemen shouting – knowing that their firehoses couldn’t reach the fire on the ninth floor, running into the blazing building that others were running and jumping from; the slick streets covered with water, reflecting the blaze luridly in the setting sun; people on the ground shouting to those at the windows not to jump, that help was coming! It came too late.

Thursday must’ve been a visiting day for incoming or prospective NYU students, because the narrow streets were packed with smiling young people and their parents. Many had name tags stuck to their shirts. I stepped around them and past them to take pictures; they didn’t seem to notice the dead, mangled women at their feet.