From Scary to Light

I receive an email per day from Writer Unboxed - you guessed it - on the topic of writing. Today's Halloween edition was composed by novelist Brunonia Barry and it deals with scary places. Barry writes that her agent challenged her to write a scary novel, and that she leaped at the challenge, only to find it more difficult than she originally anticipated. Here's her explanation:

"The first draft of my WIP [work in progress] started simply enough. The story was initially about fear of the dark, a universal taken to the extreme in a tale of isolation and disillusionment. But as my own disillusionment with society grew, that once simple idea became far darker. Instead of a universal genre story, it became far more personal. I realized that what I was writing about was the darkness inside myself.

Of course, that was where the narrative was always meant to go. I just didn’t know it when I started. I think our most poignant horror stories express the darkness inside all of us. But, to me, as a writer at this particular moment in history, I was having trouble going there. Everyday life was tough enough. More darkness was not something I craved." (Writing What Scares Us)

Barry's words hit home like one of the Red Sox baserunners in the recently concluded World Series. My blog entries have slowed to a trickle recently, and though I have excused myself to friends and family with the usual, "I'm too busy," and "I can't concentrate," the real reason is that my brain has gone dark. Though I have many tactics to protect my fragile positive outlook - don't watch news (ever), only skim headlines, limit Facebook, listen to NPR only til noon - election season and the proliferation of recent troubling events have moved into my mental space like the darkness creeping out of Sauron.

Sometimes my children are the bearers of the bad news, unwittingly bringing me to tears, such as William's evening announcement that some 60% of animal species are extinct or have moved toward extinction since 1970. I snapped at him to stop talking while trying not to burst into tears and had to wait several hours to explain how that broke my heart, and how I've been an environmental activist for twenty years trying to prevent such things.

Or Daniel asking me about the tragedy in Pittsburgh, or Aden reading the headlines from the IPCC report on climate change. My resolve to be hopeful quavers in these dark places, my bright vision of the kids' future dims. So on this day of All Hallow's Eve, where we typically scare and trick, I resolve to go the other direction. I've had enough of scares and darkness, and although Barry intends to challenge her fears and penetrate her dark spaces (a laudable and worthwhile goal), I plan to hand out candy and search for the light.  For the next few months I will be seeking out good news and hopeful headlines, positive sentiments and good examples. Not living in denial of the challenges we face, but welcoming the light that shines out of dark places like candles from the hollowed cores of orange pumpkins.

Take Me Home.... and Vote!

I had the most fantastic start to my morning driving our neighborhood carpool to Wednesday breakfast at Einstein's Bagels. After packing six teenage boys, four of whom over six feet tall, into an Acura MDX without legroom in the third row (sorry, C and R!), I cautiously drove out of the neighborhood as William plugged his playlist into the stereo. He started off with John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" and the boys belted out the chorus as we headed out of Willow Creek through the early morning darkness. They followed it up with Men at Work and Toto's ubiquitous "Africa," during which time I was sorely tempted to whip out my phone and start recording. Safety won out, and I am just grateful for the memory.

It's a time to hold onto merriment and gratitude wherever we find it. The barrage of negative campaign ads makes it impossible to watch TV, listen to the radio, or open my email. My well-informed seventeen-year-old wanders around the house rumbling darkly about how the Earth will not be salvageable by the time she turns thirty, and just this morning I heard about suspicious packages (bombs?, white powder?) turning up at the homes of the Obamas, the Clintons, George Soros and the offices of CNN. Hmmm. I wonder where someone is getting the idea to incite violence at the homes of Democrats and news organizations?

But we rational (well, mostly), moral adults have the responsibility to hope and to clean up our messes. We don't have the luxury of despair or negative thinking. Now is the time to vote, write letters to the editor, encourage and help friends, and re-imagine our future. A little bit of off-key singing and some humor go a long way to assist. For example, this statement "Do you suffer from electile dysfunction? Voting could be the cure for what ails you."

I don't know if I have"electile dysfunction," but voting was a big upper, regardless. Rob and I both completed our ballots and sent them out, and we're apparently part of a record-breaking advance voter turnout. Let's break the bank, people, and make those election officials work overtime counting our ballots. It's time to turn the tide definitively, and show our young people that we can still get things done. In a few years they will be old enough to help us out, and that is the most encouraging thought imaginable.

A Dangerous Time in the Country

"Misogyny is when women finally start reporting sexual assaults and the country's response is to say we must protect our boys from the accusations."
- Feminist News, October 8, 2018

My cousin's wife posted this on Facebook yesterday. I've never met here but I think I would love her.  Prior to surfing FB for my allotted 15 minutes, I heard an interview on NPR with two men at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. I didn't hear the beginning of the piece so I don't know for sure the name of the organization, but it may be Men for Change (per quick Google search). Their purpose was to stand with women and protest violence against both genders, promoting a culture that values consent and the worth of each individual.

The interviewer posed this question: "What do you think of the president's statement that this is a dangerous time in the country for young men?"

The group's founder replied, "I find that to be an interesting premise.  There probably are dudes who are afraid, and there's probably a good reason for that. I think they should be afraid.  There are many other guys who have always respected women and their right to consent - or dissent - and they're not afraid.  We just need those good dudes to stand up and speak out against violence and sexual assault. It's not enough to be good on your own, you have to help change the culture."

Poignant words. The men also pointed out that false accusations only occur between 2 and 10% of the time, though it's impossible to tell because sexual assault is not thoroughly reported for many reasons (the listeners fail to believe, fail to act, fail period.)  Any incidence of false accusation is too high, because it can ruin a person's life and hurt the cause of many women who are legitimately reporting incidents, but we should remember that this is extremely rare.

I'm appalled and depressed that Brett Kavanaugh has a seat on the Supreme Court. The only actions now are to vote, speak up for what we believe in, rally our friends and neighbors (and relatives), VOTE,  and make the change that we want to see in the world, just like the men in Fort Collins, Dr. Ford, and women everywhere who come forward to speak their truth.

This Matters

Lunch roils in my stomach as I write, having just heard the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to move a decision on Brett Kavanaughto the full Senate.  Having listened to testimony on and off all day yesterday, from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's emotional recollection of (alleged) physical, sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh when she was fifteen, to Judge Kavanaugh's fiery rebuttal and denial, my emotions rise and fall like a tidal wave and my mind hovers in perpetual disbelief.

I don't know what happened at that house party in the 1980's, though I know Dr. Ford has far more to lose - and nothing to gain - by giving her testimony.  Judge Kavanaugh obviously feels that the best move is an offensive against the Democrats, against the media, against Dr. Ford.  He teared up yesterday over the pain this has caused his family, the damage that it's done to his reputation, the potential harm to his chances for a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the United States.

His outrage and bluster, as well as Senator Lindsay Graham's impassioned, angry speech, remind me of something: the rape trial of Brock Allen Turner, a Stanford student-athlete who was convicted of felony sexual assault. During the trial, witnesses for the defense stood up for Turner, admiring of his accomplishments and athletic prowess and bemoaning the fact that because of this one act, his name and his future would be ruined.  Because Turner was a Stanford student and a good swimmer, because Brett Kavanaugh went to Georgetown Prep, Yale undergrad and Yale Law school, do they get a free pass?  I don't think so, but some do.

Weighing a blow to the reputation against a blow to the psyche and body, thinking not of the accused but of the victim of violent sexual assault, whose future is appropriated by the biological response to trauma, I wonder why the rights of the victim seem to matter so little.  In a powerful letter written by the victim of the Stanford rape to her assailant, she said, "And then, at the bottom of the article, after I learned about the graphic details of my own sexual assault, the article listed his swimming times. 'She was found breathing, unresponsive with her underwear six inches away from her bare stomach curled in fetal position. By the way, he’s really good at swimming'. Throw in my mile time if that’s what we’re doing. I’m good at cooking, put that in there, I think the end is where you list your extracurriculars to cancel out all the sickening things that’ve happened."  (https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra)

Testimony by Dr. Ford contains echoes of those harrowing words. "I don't know you but you have been inside me," reads the letter. "When he put his hand over my mouth I couldn't breathe, and I thought Brett Kavanaugh might accidentally kill me," said Dr. Ford.  PTSD, chronic anxiety, phobias, damage to personal relationships, lives forever harmed. Do they not count because the women weren't Division 1 athletes or high court judges?  

I went to Harvard, and I did meet men there who felt entitled - to good grades, the best housing, Finals' club parties, a woman's body. Their entitlement came from wealth, from upbringing, from society's lack of resolve in taking them to task for aggression.  I also met men who would never think of violating the body of another human being. One of my closest male friends from Harvard posted on Facebook earlier this week, noting that his mother told him they (his parents) would support him in anything, get him through any failure, prop him up after any mistake, except if he committed a rape. Then he was on his own.

In  a close reading of recent events it seems that a woman's life is not valued as highly as a man's, with the possible exception of the #MeToo movement in Hollywood, though I suspect that many men were let go because they became financial (not moral) liabilities.  Some Americans believe that men can't help it, that this happens all the time and must be accepted as reality. Certainly it shouldn't interfere with big, important doings of rich, connected, well-educated males. After all, we can't see the scars on the women, and they seem to have gotten on with their lives, right?

I call BS on the assumption that men "can't help it." I call BS on the idea that a claim of sexual assault hurts the man named more than the actual assault hurts the female (or male) victim of violence. My husband has never - will never - lay claim to a woman's body in this way, and if my sons ever do, I will support their conviction and their sentencing. Rob and I both teach them that men can help it, must help it, must recognize they have no right to a woman's body no matter what she is wearing, where she goes, what she drinks. If they violate a woman, a human being with family and prospects and hopes and dreams, they must accept the penalty and pay the price. If Brett Kavanaugh did commit this act he should never be confirmed to the Supreme Court, and God help us if we put him there.

Writing Letters: the Privilege

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in Denver has a letter-writing ladder where people can sign up to occasionally write letters to the Editor of different newspapers in response to articles related to immigration. I've been on the ladder for years, and have been asked to write a letter a few times each year. It seems more frequent since 2016, but that could be because the months race by so quickly all events pass in a blur.

The most recent request landed in my inbox on Friday, asking me and a few others if we could write about the current administration's efforts to push back on high court rulings that stipulate immigrant children must be reconnected with their parents within a certain time frame. I pushed the task to the bottom of my to - do list for a few days, because I had excuses: writing blogs for work, acting as a single parent while Rob travels during the week, picking up the children constantly, etc.

But all the to-dos on my list, most of them related to my children, stuck in my craw as I reflected on why I needed to write the letter. Young children, many younger than five years old, have been taken from their parents by our Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This policy was created purposefully to deter families from coming to the United States, even though families on the run in Central America and Mexico have no way of getting the news about our policies, and even though the separations cause permanent psychological damage to the children. Do we think that parents from other countries love their children less? Suffer less? One immigrant father killed himself after ICE took his child away.  The national outcry is fading even as the damage remains.

So I wrote the letter. When a rep from the Denver Post called to say they wanted to print it this week, and ask if I still wanted that I said yes, though my insides churned a bit. In the past, I have received hate mail from published letters related to immigration, and though I was never in actual danger, I dislike conflict and I dislike hate mail.  The uncertain feeling, the sensation of standing on the brink of invited conflict, relates back to my privilege in this country.  I could sail along in blissful ignorance of the wrongs our government inflicts, and they would never touch me personally. That is a problem in the United States today.

Here's a passage that captures my feelings, and makes me continue to submit letters and say yes to publication. It's from Teaching Tolerance, Issue 60, Fall 2018, page 41:

"In that way, white privilege is not just the power to find what you need in a convenience store or to move through the world without your race defining your interactions. It's not just the subconscious comfort of seeing a world that serves you as normal. It's also the power to remain silent in the face of racial inequity. It's the power to weigh the need for protest or confrontation against the discomfort or inconvenience of speaking up. It's getting to choose when and where you want to take a stand. It's knowing that you and your humanity are safe.  And what a privilege that is."
(Cory Collins, "What is White Privilege, Really?").