Political Trumpness? Political Correctness Reduct

Never thought of myself as "Politically Correct." Polite? Maybe ... but Political Correctness seemed to carry a different meaning ... though as I sit here and toy with finding a definition of Political Correctness, I don't find any obvious place to begin.

I was asked some years back to talk about diversity and multiculturalism to a school district .... maybe 500 people gathered together, fulfilling, I suppose, some district policy that Teachers and Staff would be exposed annually to a certain number of trainings or hours of training. The person planning it had invited me and, oddly enough, had been asked to leave their Diversity Committee for espousing a view that I was to espouse that day. Her view wasn't, apparently, consistent with the way the Committee saw Diversity and Multiculturalism. She was, by the way, the only Black Person working for the School District, as far as I knew.

The view she had represented was, I suppose, one she had developed while being my student in a post-professional training program. Simply put: I was against multi-culturalism as it was practiced. By that, I mean that the presumption that if you know some statistical identifiers about an individual 

-- say .. Place of Birth, Pigmentation of Skin, Religion of Birth, Gender -- you know a great deal about them. I gave myself as an example: I was born in Brooklyn, NY; I was pale in the Winter and quite dark in the Summer; my parents were both Jewish; and I was a long-time Heterosexual Male. I explained -- first to a break-out group and then to the whole audience -- that I had a colleague whom I had found out was Jewish. I had asked her what it meant to her to be Jewish and she explained that it meant that neither she nor her husband mowed the lawn or changed their own flat tires. I responded that I did both and changed toilets and electrical thiggamajigs, too. 

In any case, I argued, that day before the School District, that knowing still those few things about me couldn't begin to explain how growing up was in a home where other languages were spoken, where Sabbath was celebrated as it was, perhaps, in Colonial America, the Outer Hebrides and certain pockets of religious zealots about the World, and where hundreds of religious rituals dominated the changing of the Seasons. The little bits of information couldn't begin to explain what it was like to grow up under the influence of an ex-Soldier Boy from WW2, his Father-in-Law, a religious leader with a sizable following, and a Mom who was born in Hungary and was still mourning all her aunts and cousins who died under the programs of the Reich.

I went on to explain that the notion of politically correct language was difficult for me, as well. In the News, a Black School Principal had just been fired in a neighboring school district for using the so-articulated N-Word in a training about Racially Sensitive Speech. I had no problems -- I suggested rightly or wrongly -- with words. If some blonde talking head (Coulter) wants to call my people of origin "Fucking Jews," WTF do I care? I don't think well of her, anyhow, and her use of the expression Fucking Jew or Sale Juif? Really? What do I care? I'm actually far more troubled by what I perceive as her coldness and lack -- again, in my perception -- of her kindness. 

Kindness! That was it and that brings me back to folk who use the Truth as an excuse for being unkind. Maybe I prefer the expression "Verbal Sensitivity" to "Political Correctness." I remember attending Christmas Parties and people coming over to me (well, three people) on different occasions and saying:

This is a Christian Country. 

I don't have to wish you Happy Channukah or Holidays.

This is a Christian Country.

Merry Christmas.

I guess I coulda answered:

And a Merry F'n Christmas to you, too.

But it seemed pointless.

Lookee, here ... I'm a Last Quarter Guy ... Carrying 20 too-many-pounds ... Not enough grass growing on my head ... a CPU that just don't process as fast as it once did ... one eye that don't work so well, either ... ... I'm interested in -- even if maybe it's too late -- what Otis Reading suggested: "Try a Little Tenderness." Maybe it is too late to correct for all the hurts I've inflicted on others and others have inflicted on me in the First Three Quarters. Who knows? No one is anywhere near perfect. Certainly, not I.

But ... how do we live with the rampant unkindnesses that we hear in the cavalier and dismissive speech of one of our Presidential candidates:

Trivializing the experience of a POW ...

Singling out one group of immigrants as having a larger number of dangerous felons ...

Making fun of how people look ....

Playing the "Hormone Card" with Women ....

Allowing others to demonize Muslims 

as if they weren't Sons and Daughters of Mothers like the rest of us ...

Making fun of opponent's behaviors ...

... and maybe most difficult for me ...

Assuming people will accept his "Believe Me's" ... the last refuge of Teen-agers in trouble with their parents and scoundrels.

It was Bush I who used to speak of Kinder and Gentler Times. The Older I get? the more I wish for those times and the less do I believe that they will come. In the very end of Malachi, the depressed prophet described "The End of Days" when the hearts of the parents and children will be returned to each other and warns that if that doesn't occur, the peoples of the Earth are in Deep Shit! It's frankly embarrassing as an American to imagine that my country could be run by such people who pay no attention to how the Other feels about what is being said.

It's good to be invisible ... not one of the Coulter/Trump targets. Just a Citizen.

The Road Still Being Travelled

For some years, now, a swinging gate -- one that I had built and hung in 1982 -- has been doing more scraping on a wooden deck than swinging shut. I had the impulse to rehang it, yesterday. I did just that, in spite of the Mosquitoes, and M's quiet warning that my heart had been erratic for several hours. I had the impulse right after my youngest grand-spawn's Sixth Birthday. It is now well hung and exquisitely tensioned for just-so shutting ... and does. Just before I played at being a carpenter, M and I had come home from "the kid and the cake." Two other Grands were there and four of my "nexts." Three Grands were missing ... ... one at school and two at home somewhat far away. Tomorrow which has become today is a holiday in the States.

The kid and I had had a water fight just the day before. She shot me with a garden hose. I shot her back. I think water fights and the game of catch are the two best things in the World. I wish all the World's refugees the opportunity to play these games without having to be concerned about their kids being shot ... or manhandled. But that's another story.

Another Grandma -- not M but one the other two noted Grands share with M and I -- reported an urge to -- with her foot that had migrated (with her) from So. Africa to Texas -- kick me into the pool. She and I have been in-laws for some 20 years ... not quite as long as the Not-Quite-Swinging Gate has been scraping on the wooden deck. I remembered as she threatened me when our kids were planning to marry and we sat about a restaurant table talking things over. She had noted, thinking about them moving in together:

J: Someone could get hurt.

I thought for just a moment and noted to J:

H: I'd like to make it clear that if someone gets hurt, 

my preference would be that it be your Son and not my Daughter.

In those days, poor J and her Husband's mouths would following such quips  drop open ... So. African propriety coming up against Brooklyn pragmatics. Nowadays J and her Hubbie have grown accustomed to my witticisms. Proof? ... this proper Capetown transplant is now imagining throwing me into a pool! Good for you, J!

But that's it, Howard. Blame it all on growing up in Brooklyn. 

Yesterday was a strange and wonderful day, in general. I had taken a new Yoga class in the morning. The instructor had asked if I recognized her. I didn't. She explained that many years ago she had come to my office for consultation -- once or twice, I suppose. My office has seen many come for brief stints ... and then leave. I no longer remember each person. In the years that my gate has been scraping along ... in the years since the Yoga Instructor had visited me ... in the years since J's Son and M and my Daughter began raising their own ... and, certainly, in the 50 years since M and I began raising our brood and swinging open and closed our own gates ... a whole lot has occurred. 

The First Three Quarters were quite full. The Fourth Quarter continues on its own yet to be determined path.

Today is a holiday in the States ... Labor Day. Maybe, I'll get to shoot the Littlest One once more with a hose. 

Cheers!

Sharing a "Better Said"

I always wanted to go to Iceland ... and ride a Harley through the Black Hills ... Don't suspect that I will ... I've tried to say such things in this Old Man  Blog but the following piece in the New York Times hits the mark for me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/30/opinion/sunday/the-summer-that-never-was.html?emc=edit_bg_20150901&nl=booming&nlid=15432467&_r=0

A Doctor, One Funeral and a Party

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The Doctor

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Went to see my Neurologist ... Nice guy ... did thorough exam. After 40 minutes:

"Let's check your memory and stuff."

"OK!"

The Doc who is not much younger than me -- maybe on the cusp of the Last Quarter -- went to get an ipad explaining that his medical group had developed a test and it was pretty good at finding evidence of Mild Neurocognitive Deficits ... stuff like not being able to retrieve names ... overly slow processing ... forgetting to unzip your pants zipper when appropriate ... etc.

So, he got his ipad ... messed around with it a bit ... and then admitted that he couldn't remember the password to get into the program. He walked around the halls asking others; nobody seemed to know. What to say?

The neuro-impaired leading the neuro-impaired.

In the end, he gave me a paper and pencil test and confirmed to his satisfaction that I was no more impaired than he. I think that may have been reassuring ... I'm just not certain! 

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The Funeral

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I noted in our last dance that my friend Boris had died and M and I were going to the funeral. The Funeral? Actually, the Memorial Service; that is to say, Boris was not there. His wife and kids were greeting people as they arrived ... the deep sadness they felt was background ... perhaps to the thought that Boris hadn't suffered for long. "So good to see you!" His widow and kids spoke. His ex-doctoral students ... some 20 people received their PhD's under his direct guidance ... relatives, colleagues, friends. His wife, son and daughter kept it quite upbeat. The wife and a cousin filled in a bit of History ... one of those self-made cool histories.

Bori was born in Siberia in 1939. His Mom died when he was 8 months old and his Dad was killed fighting the invading Nazis when he was maybe 4. A cousin's family took him in and they and millions of others trapsed around Europe, until the war ended in 1945 when they bounced around in Displaced Persons Camps and finally arrived in the States (detroit) when Boris ... speaking neither English nor Russian ... was maybe 11 years old.

At that time, Boris was put in the First Grade ... taught himself English and managed to secure a PhD in Applied Statistics (I think) by the time he was 27 or something. The family talks were followed by Friends, Colleagues and especially his Students. Boris was a good friend, concerned guide, and rigorous Scholar. Lots of the people were obviously torn up by his sudden loss. His human impact on these people was right there ... tears ... expressions of deep loss.

M and I got into the roadster to drive to the family home for a short time; I needed to get back to the office. After some quiet and wiped tears, I suggested to M that I was not against her being devastated at my funeral ... lots of tears from her and the kids would be fine. There would be time for her to get back to life quickly. No "Burial at Ur," where the early anthropologist Wooley found that a great man had been buried with his wives and cattle. No. But in the days immediately following my death? lots of tears ... lots of tissues ... all that would be good.

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The Party

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That was Friday. Sunday was for us different. All but one of our Grandchildren would come to eat, be with each other and play in the pool, as many had done before ... 3 of their parents were there, too. Two of the parent-Gen were taking the sixth grandchild to school 300 miles off. She was missed by all. And my oldest son was rear-ended in his Porsche ... not a good day for him.

But the glee of the 5 grandchildren playing in the pool ... Grandpa tossing a number of them in.

Life is good.

Life is good. Sadness followed by glee followed by more sadness and glee. Crying and Laughing and Playing. Not holding back. Maybe the highpoint of the Sunny Day was the Littlest-of-the-Grandspawn's discovery of the Power of the Hose. Little Chloe, 6 years old next week, discovered that being the one with the hose gives you Power ... power over your big cousins and power over Grandpa. The look on a little kid's face when she has everybody's attention and her finger pressed against the trigger. Wow!

Hanging around for the Fourth Quarter has its advantages!

A Doctor, a Funeral and a Party! How much better can it get?

"A Fig to Thee, Oh, Death" (Edward Taylor?)

I can't rightly say whether I think Death and Loss, in general, have more of a presence in the Last Quarter than in earlier ones. By elementary school, kids get it: 

Shmen-the-Hamster dies ... 

Kazimierza the Pooch got very sick and did, too ... 

My friend's Grandma died, but she was very, very old .... 

Mommy and Daddy won't die for a long, long time ... and

I may not die, forever.

Perhaps, when Fourth Quarter types say that "It passed so quickly," they're referring to the surprise that Donne mentions ... when you hear the church bell toll, don't fret the name of who died, it's tolling for you ... and me ... and stars and heroes ... and young newscasters and camera-folk ... and kids who are at the wrong place or doing some wrong thing ... or police-folk doing their thing ... !

The note came ... they arrive as e-mails these days ... her husband had died ... Father of her two kids ... kids?! L's a Shrink out on the West Coast where they had just recently moved ... and their son's a Dentist. Boris was a Grandpa. Died Tuesday ... the Memorial Service is Today ... just a few blocks from the Atlantic Ocean. Boris had emigrated to the States from the Soviet Empire sometime in the 1950's ... -- as the expression goes -- without a pot to piss in. He learned English. He went to school. High School, College, Graduate School. He married a nice lady and spent his adult years living and parenting and being a researcher, teacher and Chair of a university department.

M and I will drive to the Ocean, today ... to say good-bye ... to be with others who knew Boris ... to be sad together and with his Wife, Kids and Grandkids. I woke not with memories of what Boris wrote or him chairing meetings in a University Statistics Department or with the happenstance of my meeting him ... I had been running a school for crazy inner city high school kids. A Diorector of the State Department of Education had visited our school and was humiliated by a student over a chess board. I was led to believe that our school with its emphasis on odd subjects would get no more student referrals if the guy with the strange -- even, if very successful -- programs stayed at the helm. I submitted my resignation and went home to tell M that at the end of that year monies would have to flow from elsewhere for us and our three kids ... 2, 9 and 10 years old, then.

Sitting at the table trying to answer: "So what ARE we gonna do, Howard" ... the phone rang and Boris was there ... heavy accent ... "You want to come teach in my Statistics Department, next year?"

Living in a serendipitous world ... pretty cool.

But the image I arose with, this morning, was not of Chairman Boris or anything he published but of Boris at the Beach. He would take off his shirt ... Boris wasn't a tall man ... solid body ... short legs. Then, Boris would take off ... in the direction of Iceland or something. He would run through the shallows, dive into the first wave and keep swimming. Was he running away from Stalin's Russia? or was he just grabbing a piece of life "by the balls" ... Who knows what's in another person's heart?

Boris, in the end, lost a battle to little rapidly multiplying clonal cells that colonized his Liver. But not before he swam through many-a-wave and lived the Good Life.

For quite sometime, my custom has been on hearing of a friend's death to read Alexander Woolcott's homage to G.K. Chesterton and his homage to Dickens. I can't recall -- sitting here with my friends in the front pew who wrote what part of it ... it don't matter ... memory in that first pew seems to be more than a bit foggy ... but here goes:

"We have a long way to travel before we get back to what Dickens meant ... 

and the passage is along a rambling English road, a twisting road such 

as Mr. Pickwick travelled. But this at least is part of what he meant; 

that comradeship and serious joy are not interludes in our travel 

but rather our travels are interludes in comradeship and joy 

which through god shall endure forever. The inn does not point to 

the road; the road points to the inn. And all roads point at last to an 

ultimate inn, where we shall meet Dickens and all his characters, and 

when we drink again it shall be from the great flagons in the tavern 

at the end of the world". 

"When it came Mr. Chesterton's own turn to die, it was my notion that 

if he was right there must have been great preparation afoot in that tavern. 

I seemed to see Mr. Dickens himself coming down to the desk and making 

a reservation. A good room with a fireplace in it, please. And polish up 

the flagons. We're expecting a chap named Chesterton" 

Hey, Boris: Y'did real good! 

"He Shot the Sheriff"

Still spending quiet moments reflecting on the assassination of Samuel the Squirrel. Reread an article that I've kept on Good Deaths by William T. Vollmann in Harper's ... maybe 2010. So much of the news, these days, is occupied with the Police's Just Kills and the Black Lives Matter movement that was birthed in the aftermath of St. Louis and Cleveland and Cincinnati and South Carolina and the murder in Florida. And, of course, of killings of police officers that is too common, as well. I know the accepted practice in Black Lives Matter is not to say that All Lives Matter, for me they do. Even Samuel's death matters to me.

Someone in the writing of the Sages of the Babylonian Exile, there is the comment that:

Show me a person who won't kill a spider and I'll show you a murderer.

Anna Freud in her work on Normal Development in Children argued, indeed, that Vegetarians are covering up their murderous impulses. I remember 40 years ago, doing a profile for a post=professional class on one of my kids ... a seven year old Vegetarian. Anna Freud's comment didn't do it for me -- at least, not completely. 

In my faith tradition, on the holiest day of the year, we read the book of Jonah during the very lengthy service and while we are not eating food or drinking liquids. Jonah had been asked by his God to travel to Mosul (Nineveh) to help those people to whom he was not related to atone for their sins. Not wanting it to look bad for his own sinning People (if the Ninevites mended their ways), Jonah hightailed it outa town heading towards another city. The childrens' part of the story follows with a Big Storm and a Big Fish that swallowed him and then vomited him up near where his God wanted him to be.

Jonah sits outside Nineveh in the oppressive heat and gets bummed out. God grows a gourd over his head to keep him cool. That night God sends a hot wind and a worm to destroy the story. Then the adult part of the story comes:

God: Jonah, you depressed?

Jonah: I'm fucking depressed.

God: Lookie here, Jo. You're depressed over the loss of a Kikayon (gourd) 

that you put no work into creating and 

I shouldn't be sorrowed 

over the thousands of my human and bovine creations within the City?

Three or more times a day, Jews recite the Credo: 

שמע ישראל הי אלוקינו הי אחד ... 

Listen up, Israel, God is your God ... God is One.

But it's in the second paragraph that follows in which God opines that:

I will give grasses to your cattle in the field an (only then) will you eat and be satisfied.

No taking care of yourself till the non-human creations are provided for.

I have great admiration for 4 of my next-generationals and 5 of my third-generationals who are Vegetarians ... or, maybe, as one who is well entrenched in the Last Quarter, I identify with the vulnerable and those who die unnecessarily.

I feel like saying a prayer for Samuel the Squirrel ... who lived as the best squirrel he* could be.

* ... Note that I apparently can't allow for the possibility that Sammy was Samantha.

The "Beheading" of Sam

I'm just back from a week's vacation. It was good ... a mixture of guests and family who came to visit and some alone-time with M. Some welcome work contacts, too. When M, I and our kids began vacationing on the Eastern Shore of Virginia in 1979, communication was via two pay phones that we knew about. Vacationers would line up in the darkness to call whomever they needed to contact ... How did "ET phone home?" Seems like a lifetime, ago.

Nowadays, it takes work to find places where one cannot make connections. If my oldest Son is in the Far East? We can Facetime. If my two younger (though by no means any longer young) kids or grandkids want to send me a scholarly paper that they've read? "Beep-Beep" and the Cyber-Roadrunner delivers it immediately. Megabytes get uploaded in seconds. 

Colleagues and visitors to my office, alike, send stuff, too, while I'm on holiday. I can now be standing in the Surf ... no land masses between me and the White Cliffs of Dover ... and I can receive a page or 1000 pages of notes in the blinking of an eye! I was notified last week that Arnie had posted a note about the beheading of an archaeology scholar for not sharing the location of the places where ancient artifacts were being hidden from the invading ISIS forces who find those relics perfidious. Arnie, by the way, is a kindhearted and brilliant psychoanalyst in New York; two people had already responded to his posting ... or whatever thingies are called on Facebook. I don't know how Facebook works but occasionally I do press the right sequence of buttons and read some things that appear there. The responses expressed what I suspect most all of us feel. "Shit! A guy doing what he deeply believed was the right thing to do ... protecting the relics of our distant past in Mesopotamia ... being the Good Steward that this 100 year old Science (Archaeology, that took over from the grave-robbers of the 19th C. and before) requires of its practitioners ... and at 80 years old or something is barbarically put to death."

I responded, saying what I, too, thought was pretty obvious (I don't know how to find things on Facebook but I think this is pretty close to what my response was):

True, it is barbaric. But not Beyond the Pleasure Principle that has allowed so 

many to dispel their own anxieties by objectifying The Other ... the other? religiously 

in more or less all people's sacred stories ... the other? nationalistically 

so that after a few brief weeks of Basic Training we can kill the other ... 

the other in the way we betimes treat those who theoretically differ from 

us as alien and worthy of contempt and disfellowshipping.

"What a piece of work is Man."

Some seek blessing in Abraham smashing his Father's idols ... others 

praise the message of the Inquisition's Maleus Maleficarum ... we label our 

conquering Generals and our own Fallen as heroes ... those who die on the 

other side we refer to as Cowards. As Dylan would have it:

Even the Germans had God on their side.

"What a piece of work is man ... how ignoble in reason.

When I read Freud's several discussions on women's conscience (the Superego 

or uber-Ich) ... never quite neatly split between Reason and Maternal Feeling and 

Emotion, I wish for all my Children and Grandchildren ... oh! and Yes ... for 

all the Generals) such an emotion-bound conscience.

We ... I ... all of us ... are prone to forms of Narcissism in which the personhood of the Other is diminished ... at least, compared to our own. Sad. But back to me.

M and I arrived home. Good time on holiday ... a few brief moments where I was confronted by the everyday inhumanities of an angry parent on the beach ... a rude diner acting dismissively to a waitress. But most everything was good. We unpacked the car ... took my 1974 Raleigh International off the car and quickly brought it into safety with GuntherDog who was racing to get back to his digs and the pleasure of his usual backyard toilet. 

We looked at mail. Nothing urgent. Then, I went into the living room to pass through towards my office. Like Gunther, I needed to get back to my own space. Dam! It was a Pagan-awful mess. Had a robber broken in? No. Windows were all locked and unbroken. Things smashed ... lamp shades torn. Indeed, the more I looked, the more damage I could find. A Hungarian piece of ceramic was shattered (my Mom was Hungarian-born and I occasionally have bought Hungarian art ... a way of staying in touch with a long-dead Mother) ... Oak bowling pins strewn on the floor. Some old Indian Corn was in pieces.

Shazzam! It became clear. The top of a very old quilt hanging on the wall was slightly torn. A rug near the entrance door was .. yes ... it was chewed on. The doors were scratched. Aha! An animal  must have climbed the 60 foot Willow and taken a wrong step, fallen into the chimney, and ended up terrified and in a room from which there was "No Exit." I don't know that I was angry at the squirrel I soon found hiding out on the back of a book shelf. There was no reason for bad blood between me and the bushy-tailed rat! I did have some history with squirrels. Some have "squirrelled" their way into my attic from time to time. And it was just maybe three years ago that my Son-in-Law called me upstairs to see Max the Squirrel in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It took two PhD's and a long-handled fishing net maybe three hours to convince Max to leave through a window. All was well, that day.

Any case? I went for the net. M was to be at-ready to open the door and I was committed to not sharing my living room with this guy. Alas! Squirrels are better than people -- even Football's greatest running backs -- at avoiding being caught and Sammy turned out to be among the best. He flew from place to place ... I mean that ... he would propel himself through the air ... "with the greatest of ease" ... squealing with, I presume, terror ... though, I suppose, had things ended differently, I could have thought "maybe Sammy was squealing with delight at his little victories." But realistically? The fellow couldn't have weighed more than a pound to my nearly 200 ... something like me being chased by King Kong.  

Long story short? Things didn't end well for Sammy. Grabbing for him with the net ... trying to pop the net over him as he landed on another hanging rug, the frame of the net hit poor Sam on the head. 

Hear how I put all that in the passive voice ... "the frame of the net did it! Not me!" The truth is simpler than all that. I murdered Sammy the Squirrel ... Must've broken his little neck. Even if not premeditated, I hadn't given him time to find the no-kill trap that I had already baited with peanut butter. I apparently had been unwilling to give Sam time ... I didn't even open a window as Al and I had done with Max ... I assassinated him. I cut him down in his prime. 

It should be said: Sam was doing absolutely nothing unsquirrel-like ... his ancestors had lived in this neighborhood for Lord-knows how many generations ... certainly, long before my home was built as the Protestant Widows' Home in 1904 ... before my family emigrated to the New World less than 100 years ago and ages before I and my little tribe of human marauders colonized Sam's turf ... Long before all of that, Sam's Mom and Dad must have wished him a long and prosperous life and taught him how to be the best squirrel that he could be ... Sammy was cut down in his prime ... by me!

I have no interest in arguing with myself or others as to whether there is any moral equivalence between, on the one hand, taking a squirrel's life to protect my things from damage and, on the other, taking another human's life for offending one's sense of what is and what isn't Godly. But I cannot help but wonder. One of the signs that a youngster is at risk of growing up into a life of sociopathic disinterest in the needs of Others ... of becoming an acting-out Pathological Narcissist ... is the presence of cruelty to animals. How confusing it must be for such kids to grow up in a World in which our heroes ... our best ... kill each other in Wars over oil, doctrine, honor or territory ... hell! in which we slaughter, skin, and package parts of Brown-eyed Bovines ... a World in which our police kill over their own anxieties in stopping unarmed people for traffic violations and in which some people gun down Police as if they weren't children of Mothers, either ... How confusing, indeed, it must be to grow up to believe that still and all it's wrong to torture the cat or kick the dog.

And if some get it, this Old Guilt-ridden Man sitting in his Last Quarter doesn't get it. 

Indeed ... "What a piece of work is man."

Just sayin'.