Author: Bev

I’m not Native American and my husband is not African-American.  But 23 and Me has stated that hubby is 1% African and I am 1% Native American – both of us having respectively, a full-blooded African and Native American relative some generations back.  Move over Nelson Mandela and Elizabeth Warren, here we come.  Just kidding.

My husband taught Jazz at a traditional black, land grant university.  I taught a Sociology class called Contemporary Native Americans at a college steps away from the Navajo Reservation.

Were we illegitimate?  The schools that employed us certainly trusted that we had the expertise to carry out our jobs with professionalism.  My husband was well-respected for his development of the Jazz program, by students and teachers, administrators and the community.

As for me, the aforementioned Sociology course that I taught was already on the books when I was asked to teach it.  I considered the offer to teach the class, with trepidation.  But I really felt I could improve upon the extant lesson plans which focused on field trips to trading posts, pow-wows, fry bread festivals, and arts events – just a tad “fluff” as to the sociological nature of those plans, in my opinion.

Having taught quite a few Introduction to Sociology sections already and loving Sociological Theory, I restructured the course around such concepts as bias, racism, prejudice, and contemporary examples of these toward Native Americans, in our regional media (the Four Corners of NM, UT, CO, AZ).  The Hispanic Dean of Students sat in on one of my classes, apparently to check if the white girl teaching it was legitimate.  He shook my hand on the way out.

Like everything else I’ve ever taught, I learned more about the subject matter having organized the course material, than the students did hearing it.  But how does one teach something you haven’t experienced?  How I did it, was in a small way my educational preparation, but in large part, it was EMPATHY.

Sort of like walking in someone else’s shoes, and just short of psychic knowing, is an acute psychological and imaginative experiencing of a place or people, vicariously not literally.  It’s empathy.  By the way, have you ever tried to walk in someone else’s shoes?  This is especially evident with a worn pair of shoes and if your pattern of walking is opposed to theirs.  It is a striking experience if their weight is more on the outside of their foot (supination) and yours is pronation, which is when your weight is more on the inside of your foot.  It feels literally like you’re wearing the left shoe on the right foot and vice versa. Awkward, but you get a minuscule sense of how it is to be them.

I’ve been fascinated with Greece for years but I’ve not been there yet with my feet.  Acquaintances may think I’ve been there because I talk with such empathic familiarity about the culture.  I promise, it’s not a fake it ‘til you make it exercise.   It’s like faith, the conviction of things unseen and it’s as sure as what is observed with one’s eyes.  It’s empathy.  I intensely feel like I’ve been there, I know the place.

In fact, in my first demonstration speech in college, I explained how to make baklava.  It was student days and we were married students on a student budget so I cracked black walnuts from a tree on Uncle Vaughn’s property for my sample baklava for my teacher.

Have you ever cracked black walnuts?  Well first of all it was a miracle that we had any to crack since a whole team of squirrels confiscated nearly all that we gathered to dry on the driveway.

A hammer and a resistant surface are the tools I used to crack those hard-as-a-rock nuts.  I managed to retrieve enough nuts for the Greek nut and honey filled pastry.

The problem, I learned, with using those free black walnuts was, the nuts and the bits of shell look alike and my hammered nuts were the same size as the obliterated shells.  Uh-oh.  My teacher nearly had a dental emergency from my black walnut filled baklava.  But I got an A on the speech!

Before I’d been to England, I spoke with familiarity about the place having read so much English literature – empathy.  I loved Italy through the magic of television, primarily PBS travel shows – Rick Steves Italy, and food shows – The Frugal Gourmet, long before going there.  I read and loved A Room with a View, uniquely and wonderfully English and Italian, and Under the Tuscan Sun, until the books tattered.  I even managed the niceties of the language enough that the locals thought from our dialect that we were from Canada, at least it was the right continent – empathy.

I’ve traveled the world and in many an era, through books and films.  I feel like I’ve been there – empathy.  I’ve traveled so much more with my imagination than I have with my feet; but traveled, I have done nevertheless – empathy.

There is no excuse not to “feel” for another.  Everyone can “know” what it’s like to be in another person’s shoes, through empathy, if we only care to.  Take care, y’all.

Let’s get this straight, right off the bat.  My mountains can be your mole-hills and your mountains, my mole-hills.  But, both mountains and mole-hills pose some sort of obstacle, which we perceive as either something near-impossible to overcome, or something on which we stub our toe or trip over, causing temporary discomfort.

Either way, every obstacle is dealt with first, through perception.  My obstacle today was clearly a mole-hill, brought on by a frustration resulting in the statement, “I feel like I take one step forward and three steps back.”  My husband said, “that sounds like dance steps.  You’ll probably write a column about it.”

Then, as thoughts can tumble, I thought about a local young man’s mountainous fight with lymphoma, whose family relies on a different dance, a Chinese proverb, “fall down 7 times, stand up 8.” 

This column could be subtitled – How to See a Mountain, but I avoid the phrase, “how to.”   Like a plague, I avoid it.  I’ve grown over the years to detest “how to – in 10 steps ….”

The “Mountain-dance,” is about perspective.  It’s about how one can see mountains, metaphorical ones, from different perspectives. Seeing from another perspective is perhaps a greater feat than climbing the most challenging mountain.

Mountains, from my long-held point-of-view were to be climbed.  How far up we are, marks our progress.  The mountaintop is the goal.  Having reached the top denotes success.  The pinnacle is the culmination of our journey and the view is the reward for our effort.

Mountaintop vistas are coveted the world over.  From the top, there are no more obstacles to obstruct one’s view.  You’ve made it when you’re at the top of the mountain.

We climb the ladder in our careers, for what?  To reach the highest point possible, where the view from the office with many windows is unimpeded.

For years I thought I wanted a chance to live uphill or on a mountaintop, having lived for years at the bottom of the hill where all the debris blows, the water drains, and the dirt settles.  I’ve thought it might be nice to dwell atop the mountain instead of just taking walks there to get a taste of its freshness, wildness, and peaceful views.

But then I had a dream.  It was one of those dreams where instead of a scenario with setting and action and such, it was a matter-of-fact statement:

Downhill skiing – grateful for the law of gravity –

                            We will always make it to the bottom of the mountain.

I have a documented fear of downhill skiing.  Part and parcel of that fear was that I would be unable to get back to the top of the mountain, having fallen somewhere mid-mountain.  “I’ve fallen, and can’t get up.”      

This dream suggests a different, even paradoxical perspective of mountains; namely, the bottom of them.  I’ve lived down here forever, adapted to the conditions and become acculturated to its challenges so much so, that I hadn’t considered, prior to the dream, that there’s another way to see living at the bottom of the hill.

It’s like getting driving directions from a local.  They don’t see distances accurately because they’re so accustomed to traveling those highways, that their perception is skewed by familiarity – “It’s a mile or two; turn right at the big oak tree.”  It turns out your destination is five miles and the oak tree no longer marks the spot where you should have turned.

When we were driving through the English countryside in 2008, we asked for directions and were told to turn on to “Bah-ole” road, which we first interpreted in American English, as “Battle” road.  Having found no such road on the map or otherwise, we found another road starting with B and ending with an L – “Bauxhall” road.  I don’t think it got us where we wanted to go, but we muddled our way.

That travel experience illustrated quite clearly that we don’t all share perceptions of direction.  We also probably should count it all joy when we share any perception with somebody because that might just be kind of rare.

Always having been preoccupied, and with my sight firmly focused on the long, hard climb uphill to reach my goals – I couldn’t see that perhaps my reward is located at the bottom of the hill.  The lovely law of gravity demands I make it to the bottom of every hill I descend, even if I get there sliding on my backside the whole journey.

This perspective is reminiscent of Jesus’ many paradoxical teachings like, the first will be last, etc.  I will have triumphed when I make it to the bottom of the mountain.  In another dream focusing on descending the mountain, we were triumphant in reaching the bottom of the mountain trail and sort-of pitied the people we shimmied past who were just starting the climb.

Might the conquest of some mountains be to raze them rather than to climb them?  One could see the bottom of the mountain not so much as a valley, but as the bottom of a shoe – overcome, conquered.

Life could be seen as razing said mountains rather than climbing them, about breaking down obstacles rather than overcoming them.  I can envision myself struggling for eons to climb up over big boulders on the mountain.  Then, I change my perception of the obstacle, dig a little trench around the boulder, put my weight against it, and presto, it rolls down the mountain.

A Scriptural piece of inspirational poetry, concerning the razing of mountain-obstacles is found in Zechariah 4:7, where an angel showed a ruler named Zerubbabel a new perspective of his obstacles.  “What are you, O great mountain [of human obstacles]?  You will become a plain, [a mere mole hill].”

My hope is that you will conquer your mountains and mole-hills.  Whether your dance is one step forward and three steps back, or seven steps forward, fall down, get up, and hit step eight, hard; it matters not whether you’re ascending or descending the mountain, start with step one, and let the dance begin.  This is how to see a mountain. 

A new chapter in life seems like it should be a subtle change; after all, it’s the same book.  However, “things are not always what they seem.”  For example, a change might not be a new chapter at all; it might be sort of like a new paragraph, but more than a paragraph.   Or, what you thought was change might really be the same thing, in disguise or with a twist.

I’ve come a long way baby (1968 Virginia Slims cigarette campaign) but am keenly aware that I have miles to go before I sleep (Robert Frost poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening).  These contradictory quotes slightly explain the confusion many of us feel with the happenings of this Spring, 2020. It’s a surreal time with cultural and social change becoming the new normal (a twenty-first century adaptation to change).

Even subtle change can throw you off kilter a little bit.  When I think of off kilter, I see the image of a pin-ball machine and hear the ding-ding-ding of the little, metal ball going awry and throwing everything out of whack; off balance.  Or, when I’ve squeezed too many pairs of jeans into one load of laundry, and the machine takes on a life of its own, rocking the entire house – that’s off kilter and it applies to these “times they are a changing” (Bob Dylan).

It’s well known in social science that even good change, like marriage, birth of a child, a new job, or a positive move for a promotion or something similarly terrific, meets with a stress reaction in a person’s body and mind.  We have no control over this reaction; I guess you could say it’s autonomic – it just happens, like it or not.

It seems that sudden or long and dragged out; being prepared or unprepared, have little to do with the shocking emotional impact that change has on one’s life.  Change is jarring and inevitable.  We want to welcome it, receive it genially, but never really do.  I like to think I’m pulling off a Grace Kelly in changeable circumstances but what comes out of me is more like Lucille Ball.

A few years ago, our seventeen-year-old cat, Mikayla Jane (Mickey) passed.  I had been taking care of her 24/7 for several weeks, as she had slipped from dementia into deafness, blindness, and relative incontinence.  As every hospice or palliative caregiver knows, your life becomes fairly saturated with care.  You care for and you care about that one’s every need.  You’re alert to subtle signs and signals, and even to unexpressed, potential needs.  You’re there for them, all the time, hyper-vigilant.

When we lost Mickey, I grieved far deeper than I had expected to grieve.  Because we knew she was close to the end of her days, I expected to quietly mourn her loss, shed a few tears and move on in the peaceful knowledge that she would struggle no more.  I was surprised, however, at the emptiness I felt and the potent sense of loss I experienced in her absence.  In fact, I had a panic dream where I urgently had to get a blanket for her because she might be cold.

The change from presence to absence was palpable and disquieting.  Quietness, that I usually treasure, felt somehow alien.  Being by myself in the house, also a condition I generally cherish, felt lonely – a feeling I can say I’ve only rarely experienced.  I’m not sure one can ever be ready or prepared for the change associated with loss.

In the Gospel of Thomas, which is considered to be extra-biblical wisdom literature, I noticed a fascinating and critical expansion of Jesus’ familiar words from Matthew 7:7:

“Ask and it will be given to you,

Seek and you will find,

Knock and the door will be opened to you.”

The Gospel of Thomas version is:

“If you are searching,

You must not stop until you find.

When you find, however,

You will become troubled.

Your confusion will give way to wonder.

In wonder you will reign over all things.”

The surprise in Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Thomas, is that when we find what we’ve been searching for, it’s not instant joy and ecstasy.  Albeit temporary, it’s trouble and confusion.  That surprising outcome of seeking and finding is the thing that throws us off guard.

When we played hide-and-seek as children, finding was the end of the game.  So, as adults we feel disconcerted at the realization that when we find what we’ve been searching for, we’re not at our destination; we’re just at another intersection.  “Oh my,” said Dorothy at an intersection on the yellow brick road, or was it at the sight of lions, tigers, and bears, along the journey?

A conversation with my daughter reminded me that without discomfort we won’t change.  As long as we’re feeling good and nothing gets in the way of the status quo, we stay where we are, how we are.

Apparently, we need a prod to move us out of our comfort zone.  I think of the prod as a similar mechanism to the thorn in the Apostle Paul’s side (2 Cor 12:7).  His thorn was an ever-present reminder to him not to get too puffed-up at the abundance of revelations he received; to keep him balanced.  Paul’s thorn hurt, and, not a masochist, he asked God, three times, to remove it.  However, in that his thorn remained ensconced in his side, one can assume, Paul accepted it.  He effectively said, “it is what it is and I might as well let it serve its purpose.” 

Everything new is strange – change is strange.  The late David Bowie asked many years ago, (Changes 1971-2), are we ready to face the strange?  Shall we become chameleon’s, reinvent ourselves, and adapt to the rapid-fire changes confronting us as we circle this cultural carousel, jacked up on caffeine?  Or, shall we sit quietly and observe the merry-go-round and wait for what goes around to come back around?

In whatever style we choose to receive change, some of which may result from a national election, perceived racism, COVID19 ramifications, and general malaise or unrest, we can be certain “ch-ch-change,” and lots of it will come.  And, most assuredly there will be many births, maybe even baby-boom 2.0.  So, we can also look forward to burps, coos, giggles, and sleepless nights with a purpose as part of the changes that come before 2020 bids adieu.

 

Okay, I awoke to the dictionary.com word of the day, panivorous, subsisting on bread.  My mouth began instantly to water, triggered into imagining a crusty chunk of sourdough dripping with olive oil.  I again began to salivate at the hint of a French baguette, better yet with chocolate bits scattered throughout it.  Oh, and a buttery croissant needs nothing but a little heat to enhance its tear-apart, eat-it-plain texture….

Enough reverie.  One cannot forget the fragrance of home-baked bread.  Wait a minute, I’ve gone right back to bread reminiscing.

My daughter has been asking for my cardamom bread, since Christmas.  I really must dig my bread machine out of its semi-permanent ensconcement in the back of a bottom kitchen cupboard.

Those of us who struggle to maintain a healthy weight, and/or have a pesky genetic history of diabetes are warned away from the delectable enticements of bread.  Have you ever seen white bread turned to paste?  It’s my novel theory that bread turns not just to sugar throughout the process of digestion, but to heavy, thick, drywall-type plaster pasted to my interior walls, adding heft to what would surely otherwise be my featherweight visage.

We’re instructed by the Bible, not to live by bread alone (Matthew 4:4) even though it is also referred to as the “bread of life” (John 6).  So, bread of life represents spiritual food.  The counsel to not live by bread alone suggests we need more than the simple necessities to sustain life.  We need mental, spiritual, and aesthetic nourishment, to give life meaning.

“The need of the immaterial is the most deeply rooted of all needs.  One must have bread; but before bread, one must have the ideal.” – Victor Hugo

Back in the sixties, bread meant money.  “Do you have any bread, man?”  We all have to have it, to survive.

I came of age in the early 70s, listening to the inventors of soft rock, Bread, the band.  Amusingly, they named their band while stuck in traffic behind a Wonder bread truck.  Isn’t Wonder bread the epitome of white bread, the stuff that all the stores in rural Pennsylvania run out of when there’s a winter storm on the horizon?

The lyrics of Bread songs take me back quite literally to a time of teenage innocence when it was apropos to be in love with love.  It’s a scary feeling of vulnerability, though.  Even now, in the reverie of recollection, I’m on edge and jittery.

It seems like a growing segment of today’s young, up-and-coming women (Representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez comes to mind) seem to be fueled by a different kind of not so innocent love, but rather, a lust for power.  They’re achieving this power strangely through victim-hood, having been wronged, angered and hellbent on turning the tables for themselves via a kind of revenge-porn.

Could it be that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez represents not just her constituents in Bronx (and a bit of Queens), New York, but a body of the young who are bottom-line seeking love and appreciation, through power?  As Mother Teresa once said, “There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.”

However, power is addictive, so I’m told.  Once this segment of society’s revenge antics has a smidgen of success, the power they feel, maybe for the first time, sets off an addictive chain of events that is self-fulfilling.  Now, in a position of power, they perpetuate a policy of victim-hood as the route to success.

Back to some reminiscing about past history, “I like bread and butter.  I like toast and jam…” – Jay Turnbow, Larry Parks, writers; The Newbeats 1964.  My husband and I met and befriended Jay Turnbow and his then, lovely wife, Linda, while working and living in New Mexico.  They took care of our yellow tabby-cat, Simba when we ventured back East to visit family.  Jay was a “bread and butter,” kind of guy, so his lyrics were simple and genuine.

In the mid-fifties when I was born, “bread-winning,” and “this job is our bread and butter,” were common sayings about work and sustenance, making money or “making a living.”  Those were “crust of the earth” times, simpler in many ways.

These monikers were coined with bread as the centerpiece because bread has been seen as a food staple, if not a general term for food, for many humans throughout history.  Bread and butter were the absolute basics, after which one could buy more and live above the level of sustenance.

I have to admit I am among the old, in 2020.  That’s difficult to say because I don’t feel old.  I think I’ve “kept up,” pretty well with the times.  But the fact is I’m not young nor “up and coming.”

I still like bread.  The basics, for me are enough.  The things I live and breathe are God as my foundation, my husband as my partner, my beloved family and friends, my work, my home, and travel.  These are the things that fuel my existence.

Many Americans in 2020 want more.  I worry that the fuel for not a few of today’s ambitious youngsters, is well beyond the basics of “time, love, and tenderness,” (Michael Bolton, writer Diane Warren 1991) but victimization, anger, and rebellion.  The cultural extremes to which we have turned seem to have been spawned by a generation with many a pissed-off victim, railing at the wind with one complaint after another.

I can’t help but think of Robert De Niro’s character in Ronan who, when asked if he had ever killed anyone, replied: “I hurt someone’s feelings once.”  It seems like the progress we’ve made from our olden days, to these days, is mostly the bread of strife, hurt feelings, and offense, which has tenuously been equated with murder.  If you offend someone through disagreement or misunderstanding, you’re accused of murdering a chunk of their identity.

Rather than murdering one of my fellow Americans, Id much prefer murdering a piece of crusty French baguette, Middle Eastern flat bread, Native American fry bread, Greek pita, an Italian loaf of garlic bread, Chapati East African bread, or a thick, chewy bagel from our Hebrew brethren.  I’m never discriminating as to my preference for bread.  Let’s say we break some bread together, America.

 

 

 

 

My mental discography may not hold up forever, but here goes another song lyric: “Why do you build me up (build me up), buttercup baby, just to let me down (let me down), and mess me around.…” – Tom Macaulay & Mike d’Abo, 1968, The Foundations.

What I’m talkin’ (I’ll soon get away from lyric-speak and write in English, but I’m on a roll) about in this piece, is not another bad girlfriend, but antithetical celebrity.

We build up idols only to savor tearing them down; the very definition of antithetical (two aims, in opposition to one another).  How many statues of former idols have been torn down in recent years because we no longer feel comfortable with or like the history they represent?  As energetically as we generate fame, we just as abruptly replace celebrity-idols with new versions. 

Can you say Megxit from the U.K. to Canada and Megxit2 from Canada to Los Angeles, no less?  From the noble insularity of royalty to the base familiarity of celebrity.  It’s like moving from a castle to a theme park.  Shouldn’t we know their names for their greatness, not for their fame?

When I think of celebrity idols the most obvious reference, for me is the “reality television” series, American Idol.  The mechanism involving the audience to “vote out,” these entertainment wannabe’s, vested the public with the power to vehemently judge strangers, like we’re experts.  “We kicked out the right guy, he can’t sing for anything.”  “We don’t like her; she was such a bitch.”

Idols are objects.  Celebrity-idols are not born, they’re made.  “They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths” Psalm 135:15-17.

Although our celebrity-idols are human beings, living, breathing, seeing, hearing persons; we regular people who make them, treat them like nothing more than mannequins.  They just look like people.

We behave like we know celebrities because there’s such an overload of information, true or untrue, about them available to us, at the wave of a finger over a screen or a glance at a magazine in the grocery store checkout line.  But even though we know their names, we don’t know them.

Celebrities are well-crafted idols, familiar but unknown to us.  They’re not living, breathing human beings.  They’re a green screen over which someone speaks.  I’m a Weather World watcher (WPSU on PBS).  I’ve seen their behind-the-scenes making of a weather broadcast.   The maps we see on air, are projections, not unlike the Star Trek holodeck.  The forecaster is really standing in front of a blank, green screen.

Another example of the mirage of celebrity is in Advertising, ironically another media-driven concoction.  I used to show a film in my Introduction to Sociology classes about the manipulation of the public mind by Advertising.  It showed the elaborate make-up that is applied to that hot, juicy-looking fast-food burger that we’re enticed to consume.  The milk in cereal commercials is most-often glue because real milk looks blue on camera.  Roasted turkeys/chickens are minimally cooked and inedible, but they are painted brown and shellacked, to a delicious- “looking” shine.  You get the idea.

Just like painted-on abs, the media in all of its forms, tells us what to want.  We want those abs even though they aren’t real.  We want “that” hamburger even though the real ones don’t look like that – in fact, they look downright anemic, compared.  “Why isn’t my taco big like the one on TV?”

“I use the high-end hair conditioner and my hair doesn’t look like Jennifer Lopez’s.”  But what we don’t know is, Jennifer Lopez likely sat in a make-up chair for six hours before being shot by a professional photographer/filmmaker, for several more hours to produce that 30-second commercial, we so admire her in. In real life, she’s still “Jenny from the block.”

We want to be her, until we “learn” something real about her that doesn’t fit the image she projects.  Then, we accuse her of being fake.  This is antithetical.  We like the perfection of fake until some aspect of it is revealed to be painted or glued on.

Personally, I’m not enamored with celebrities.  Is any columnist?  There’s something about the analytics of celebrity that rankles the logic of an essayist.  This doesn’t mean I’m numb to their impact on popular culture.

I appreciate certain actors’ acting finesse in a select few films or television shows.  But I find it annoying when a celebrity actor, about whom I’ve “heard” something disturbing in their personal life, appears in a favorite film.  What used to be entertaining is now muddied, just a little bit.

Tidbits of extraneous personal information about actors is none of my concern.  I don’t care.  Furthermore, I didn’t want to know about their personal business in the first place, but one can’t avoid popups on news-feeds or the checkout-line-media at the store.

Curiosity about celebrity doesn’t just kill the cat, it kills our rationality too.  We get all worked up about nonsense.

Talented actors, musicians, athletes, artists, authors and entertainers make a valuable contribution to a culture.  Is it possible to appreciate the works of these individuals without knowing gossip about their personal lives or cluttering our minds with their opinions?  I prefer to imagine actors in character.  Celebrity fame, for me, gets in the way of their job performance.

I mean, how absurd is it that Gwyneth Paltrow made and marketed a personal body part-scented candle (the scent of HER personal body part), AND IT SOLD OUT!   Come on people.  I now have a bit of a problem watching her performance as Emma, in the Jane Austen film of the same name, with that v-scent loitering in the air!

The “halo-effect,” wherein we think that if a person is good at one thing, is successful at it, maybe acting, then they must be good at everything, say lifestyle-coaching, product-selection, or personal counseling, is utterly daft.  If we’re conned into thinking a celebrity’s knowledge about society is above the average individual, for example, in political, environmental, scientific, or social causes, then we need to do some research into their educational background and the experiential basis of their in-your-face opinions.

Because she is deemed by some to be a good actress, makes me want to buy Gwyneth Paltrow’s v-scented candle?  I think not, mon ami.  You can’t make this stuff up.

“Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities” (Daniel Boorstin, American historian & educator).  Might the new normal following our time in the throes of pandemic, include some dissolution of a few celebrities, and highlight a few heroes?  Hopefully so.

Those celebrities who’ve attempted to insert themselves publicly into the discourse of the pandemic have been mostly and embarrassingly cast aside, as irrelevant to the discussion.  How they shelter-at-home in their multi-million-dollar mansions, along with their household help, might impress one of their tribe, but just doesn’t hit home with most of us.

Because a real celebrity is typically an oxymoron, maybe the small circle of people who know who we really are, should be the ones to whom we look for advice, appreciation and acceptance.  It shouldn’t be necessary to fabricate who we are with glue and paints, all for the want of being celebrated, famous, wanted, appreciated, or placed on a pedestal to be admired. 

Maybe our handful of “you guys” who know our hearts, and not just our names, will do just fine.

“I’m not dumb but I can’t understand,” is from Lola, the 1970 song by The Kinks.  The song is about an ordinary guy attempting to sort out the ambivalent gender of a transvestite named Lola.

I’m not dumb because I’m from rural America.  It doesn’t mean I’m dumb if I’m trying to sort out stuff and occasionally get it wrong.  There’s so much to process through my little gray cells these days and it’s easy to be confused, fooled, duped, or harassed for what I believe.

Nor does it mean I’m dumb because I’m “older.”  My adult daughter had to keep me from assaulting a Sam’s Club cashier for telling her, with me invisibly standing there, fiddling with my membership/payment card that just wouldn’t work, “sometimes these older people get confused with technology.” 

I thought I was calm when, accompanied by “the look,” I said, “I’ve  successfully run a business for over twenty-five years and I daresay I may be adept at more technology than you are,” when I felt my daughter’s hand gently land on my shoulder, keeping me from leaping into that woman’s face.  She rolled her eyes, dismissing me as dumb, in spite of my cogent argument to the contrary.

We’ve all gotten words mixed up, believed an old wives’ tale, forwarded a hoax on social media, or been the victim of a prank.  Who hasn’t named the wrong name?  Have you ever been fooled once and then turned around and done it again?  You’re not dumb for having made mistakes.  You’re human.

You’ve got gumption, for trying.  Even if you failed, you had the moxie to make the attempt.  Sometimes the limb breaks when you step out onto it.  That doesn’t mean every limb, or even most of them, will break.

“They” point fingers and say, In the “fooled me once, fooled me twice tradition,” shame on you, shame on me.  We all seem to be walking around ashamed of ourselves for saying the wrong things, falling prey to a scam, or lately, we’re shamed for our racial identity.  Pay no mind to “this they,” says Hercule Poirot, of Agatha Christie’s imagination.

I’ve long-observed (commencing in the mid-eighties when my husband developed a jazz program at a traditionally black, land-grant university in Kentucky, and I supervised a reading lab in the developmental studies program), that African-Americans freely use the n-word among themselves and it is not considered pejorative.  But, if a white person uses the same word (I can’t even imagine doing so), it is highly debasing.

This isn’t a double standard.  It isn’t apartheid.  It’s two subcultures in contemporary America, living out their cultural mores (pronounced morays, as in the eel) in intersection.  I wonder if we could more simply, “live and let live” (1622 from Dutch trade policy).

 “Politically correct,” is a concept originating around the time the song Lola was released, and when at around twenty years old, Denise Bouch and I worked in D.C., she at Sharpe Electronics and I at Auto-Train.  She was invited to an African-American co-worker’s wedding in the south, and I was her plus one.  Long story short, we were the only white faces in the crowd, and were seated, quite literally in the back of the church, sort of segregated. 

As I recall, we thought, “okay, in this setting, this is probably where we belong.”  Were we comfortable? No.  Did we belong?  Not really.  Did we kind of want to retreat to the familiarity of home?  Probably.

If I were to compare how we felt at that southern wedding to some people of color all across this nation, being relegated metaphorically, if not literally, to the back seat in every building they enter and every institution they engage with, I might come close to describing Peggy McIntosh’s 1988 academic bandwagon of “white privilege.”  I don’t love the term, because it reads to many a white psyche, that it’s about individual privilege, which many individual whites do not enjoy, nor do all people of color suffer from it.

The term, instead, is about belonging, and who’s in control of the gathering.  Just because I’m invited to someone’s party doesn’t mean I’m made to feel welcome once I get there.  This may be the reality for some, if not many American people of color.

During the pandemic quarantine, a saying circulated on social media: “I miss people, places, and things.  I miss nouns, really.”  About nouns, we all sort them into mental boxes.  We organize our nouns into categories in order to keep track of the over-abundance of informative stimuli coming at us, to make sense of life.

This innocent sorting of nouns can run dangerously close to a bad sort of classification, called prejudice, bigotry, racism, stereotyping…. or not.  It either is or isn’t bad, based on intent.

“There’s only one race, the human race.” From my perspective, this is a kind, inclusive sentiment, acknowledging the value of every human being.

Unfortunately, there are some intentional, and mean-spirited racists and bigots among us.  It may not be realistic to think we will change their individual prejudices through education, protest, shame, or rioting.

Nudging a racist out of their comfort zone, literally, might help them see the light, or not.  Seeing other parts of the country and how “the other side” lives, might show, not tell a racist what it’s like to wear the shoes of another, or not.

I’m not an activist, called to fight systemic racism or join any other fight.  However, following Edward Hale’s example, “I am only one, but still I am one,” I can live the best, open-minded, life possible, expressing kindness to everyone I meet; and not be ashamed for the life I was given.  I can encourage others to do the same.  That’s what I can do.

Judging other’s categorizing, based on the intention of their heart is tricky business. Juries get it wrong all the time, maybe as often as they get it right.  And that’s the best system we’ve got.  Perhaps God, alone, knows the intentions of the heart.

Life is complicated and there are so many details and fine distinctions in these politically correct, hyper-sensitive times.  For example, those of us who’ve said, “we’re all in the same boat,” to mean, we’re in this viral contagion together, thus the term pandemic, have been corrected to say, “we’re all in the same storm, but in different boats.” I get it; not everybody’s experience is the same with the big issues we have in common.

But one could also see it as, toe-may-toe, toe-mah-toe, or, “same-difference.”  It’s so very easy to be misunderstood.

There’s often an optional section at the end of a survey, “for classification purposes,” where you indicate your race, age, gender, ethnicity, education, and income.  I wonder, since it’s optional, who opts in and who opts out?  What possible statistical purpose can this information serve if the population participating is optional?  Do only poor people answer surveys?  Do people of color answer surveys but opt out of the classification section?

Most of us acknowledge it’s a privilege to live in this bucolic, rural, geographic setting and we’re grateful.   But many of us know, here is not everywhere.  Some of us have been, not everywhere, but many a somewhere else, to have seen a thing or two.

I learned back in the 70s when I got my driver’s license, that along with privilege comes responsibility.  As to our diverse perspectives, identities, and beliefs, might we responsibly extend mercy as we have received it?  Can we please exercise the common courtesy of opening doors for one another, and mind our manners?

From Lola and me, “It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world,” that some of us are trying to understand. 

There’s so much to say on this subject, I’m not sure where to begin.  So, why not start with good ole’ Pennsylvanian, Mr. Rogers, Fred Rogers, that is.

Many of today’s young American adults grew up alongside the kindly Mr. Rogers from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, on PBS television.  His cardigan sweaters and gentle demeanor helped children feel safe and nurtured.  He was a helper.

Rogers said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.’”  There’s a boatload of scary news to navigate these days.  There are also many helpers, to combat it.

Primary for me, to the concept of helping, is the helpmate, originating with the word, helpmeet, from the Bible’s book of beginnings, Genesis.  The creation story has wo-man, fashioned from man’s rib, as an uber-companion/helper, “meet,” or created intentionally and precisely as his spouse, joined to him at the hip, almost.

We were created together, as a pair.  He was an unfinished work, without her.  One shoe, when you have two feet, doesn’t do you much good, but a pair will take you anywhere.  This sounds like Dr. Seuss, but alas it is Mrs. LeVan.

We don’t hear that word, helpmate, used so much in today’s parlance for marriage partner, spouse, husband, wife, girlfriend, or boyfriend.  I wonder why the word fell into disuse?  Perhaps because we’ve grown an attitude of “I never needed anybody’s help in any way.”  (Note: stay alert, lyrics from the Beatles song, Help! will be interspersed throughout this piece.)

We Americans are an independent lot.  Way back when, Frank Sinatra proudly sang the other American anthem, “I did it my way.”  We were a nation fully ensconced in the “look out for number one” mentality by Sinatra’s time.  Trained to think primarily about ourselves and do what helps “one” the most, we shunned helpers, turning them away when they offered help.

It’s too remarkable not to mention a prophecy from the Bible’s, 2 Timothy, chapter 3, about the self-centered character of this age we live in.  Is it smack dab on target or what?

“People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, ungrateful, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, conceited….” (paraphrased and abridged).  What can I say?  Help!

“When I was younger, so much younger than today.  I never needed anybody’s help in any way.”  I think it begins around the age of two, or maybe three.  “I’ll do it myself.”  With my child, it was with storybooks.  Having memorized her favorites, she no longer needed mom or dad to read them, she took book in hand, turned pages willy-nilly, and recited the story herself.

Help.  It’s not an utterance reserved just for crying out in a crisis.  But we often feel ashamed to ask for it.  I shouldn’t need help, should I?  If my parents raised me right, shouldn’t I be prepared to do stuff by myself?

“But now those days are gone, I’m not so self-assured…. Help me if you can I’m feelin’ down.  And I do appreciate you being ‘round…”.  Then we grow up a little bit and moments creep into our lives when we find that we need a little help.

Suddenly, it seems, we need a helper.  But not all the time.  Helpers.  How many Human Resource professionals have heard the phrase, “I just want to help people?”

Back when handicaps became disabilities, we were told that some people don’t want our help, even if they appear to need it.  How does one know when to help others?  It’s unclear, unless you ask.  And even then, they may respond, “I don’t need any help,” when clearly, they do.  Oh well.

Just the other day, at the grocery store checkout, I couldn’t resist helping the conveyor belt move my stuff toward the cashier.  I reorganized the stuff as it too quickly passed toward her, fruit with fruit, deli stuff together, veggies with veggies; oh no, the blueberries were with the canned beans!  I laughed but sort of panicked as I nearly threw the blueberries (“clean up aisle 3”) at the scanner, and said, “I’m sorry.  You probably hate it when we try to help.”  She was gracious but almost certainly agreed, likely muttering in her head, “crazy lady.”

My husband is an awesome helpmate.  The Beatles sentiment, “I do appreciate you being ‘round”-thing, fits us to a T.  He’s there with me in the ups and downs, through thick and thin, sickness and health, all of it.  But sometimes his “help” just isn’t necessary.

For example, after he says, “I was just trying to help,” I’ve been known to say, after cleaning up a mess related to too many cooks in the kitchen, “I didn’t need your help with this.”

Again, at the Everett Foodliner – is everybody this brutally transparent in the grocery store – when we shop together, my spouse likes to help with the bagging.  If a bagger is not immediately at the ready, he asks if he can do the task.  The cashier usually lets him have at it because he’s so willing, but there is a reluctance, in that it’s not his job.  Cashier calls “number 3” or some such code for “get a bagger here now.  Some guy is trying to help us bag.”  His help isn’t needed after all.

As I grow older, I agree more and more with the Beatles in saying, “And now my life has changed in oh so many ways.  My independence seems to vanish in the haze.  But every now and then I feel so insecure.  I know that I just need you like I’ve never done before.”  John Lennon and Paul McCartney were in their early 20s when they penned these words in 1965.

We still should ask others if they want us to help.  Our good intentions can backfire and our offer to help can seem spurned, if they want to muddle forward by themselves, in their own way.  Also, the help we offer might not be the kind of help they want.  Again, oh well.

Helplessness is a feeling most Americans with a traditional work ethic find hard to stomach.  We want to do something about it, “it” being anything that needs attended to, fixing, or helped forward.

We can’t help it.  We grew up in a broadly, working-class system.  We were born into an ideology known originally as the Protestant Work Ethic.  In this ethic, hard work, discipline, and frugality result from values espoused by Puritanical Protestant faith.

Helplessness and hard work are two concepts that do not correlate.  So, if we find ourselves in a truly helpless situation, where our efforts are useless, oh my.  “Now I find I’ve changed my mind and opened up the doors.”  And, I’ll “get by with a little help from my friends” (With a Little Help from My Friends, The Beatles, 1967, Lennon-McCartney).

“I need somebody     (Help!) not just anybody     (Help!) you know I need someone     Help!”