The No Nothing Freshmen Arrive in Washington

The U.S. House of Representatives changed overnight from a bastion of blue dog ambivalence led by a liberal true believer to a mosh pit of ideological arsonists led by an orange guy. Welcome to 2011.

The watchword for the 100 or so fresh faces on Capitol Hill this week seems to be, “Leave me alone!” That’s what they think voters told them on November 2nd, meaning: “Tell government to leave me alone.” It seems that Americans want government off their backs, or more to the point, out of their wallets.

That sentiment lets you know that not too many unemployed people voted for this wrecking crew, the most notable freshman class on the Hill since 1994. Truth is, no one really knows what the American voter said on November 2nd, other than “Throw the bums out!” But this crew thinks they have an inkling, which they refer to as a mandate.

Continue Reading Burning Down the House »

One afternoon last May, my brother and I took our father to visit two places where he might live. Dad leaned hard on his cane, following our instructions about where to step: one foot up, one foot down.

We drove along East Bay suburban streets, packed with ranch houses and bungalows and all the stucco pastel colors of my childhood, the mangy stands of palm trees, the ancient American cars in driveways up on blocks. We talked rationally about the good points of these caregivers, the nice windows and shutters at the other place, the yard, the roses.

Pros and cons: one foot up, one foot down. My dad tried so hard, ever the professor, even as he struggled to remember words.

I thought he’d want to head straight home, that he’d be exhausted. But as I navigated through the late-afternoon traffic, down streets that looked both familiar and utterly strange, he asked if we could stop for ice cream.

My brother leaned forward from his slump in the back seat. “Ice cream, Dad?”

Continue Reading Sweet Life »

The day before I left for Boston, my father and I sat together on his bed. It was January 2010, late afternoon in California, rainy outside, a good stretch for him. We were talking about his poems.

We looked through drafts that my mother or brother had transcribed for him on notebook paper. He held a page in his shaking hands, although he couldn’t read, his vision doubling, perhaps tripling, if you counted the hallucinations.

I read another in the small stack on the plastic table. The Great Gambler. “God the Gambler,” my father called it before we found the right page.

His hands and feet wove through the air. The table joggled, spilling my coffee into its saucer.

He was oblivious, sightless, his Parkinson’s-afflicted mind turned to whatever he thought he saw—or was trying so very hard to see—on the page in his hands. He was cold; I helped him put a scarf around his neck. Then he was sweaty, hot and cold at the same time, another Parkinsonian symptom.

Continue Reading Editing My Father’s Poems »

If life were fair…

Tofu would taste like chicken, chicken would taste like beef, and cows would fart pine-scented petroleum.

Assholes would never get ahead. They would never acquire massive amounts of wealth. They would never run multinational corporations, lead countries, or work at departments of motor vehicles. And they would never, ever serve me popcorn shrimp, fries and a diet coke in a crowded chain restaurant on a Saturday evening. (Yeah, I’m talking to you, waiter at Applebee’s).

Lies would cause your nose to grow longer and longer until you owned up to your lie. At which point, a fairy would turn you into a real boy, set you up in a fine home in Vermont, and marry you.

Hypocrisy would give you ass cancer. And if you persisted in it, fatal jock itch.

Fat would not = flavor. It would = a 35% increase in hotness.

Continue Reading If Life Were Fair »

I almost died the other day trying to replace the headlight in my car. Well, I could have almost died had I removed the bulb from its packaging and handled the potentially lethal (according to the owner’s manual) high-voltage portion of it improperly. In the end I did not take this risk, as I was not even able to figure out how to access the part of the car where the bulb goes, much less how to swap out the dangerous old bulb for a dangerous new one.

When it comes to the mechanics of daily life, I’m not completely helpless. I pump my own gas, occasionally check (and refill!) my own oil, and once even inflated my own tires. When the toilet runs, my hand is right there in the tank, jiggling the rod, untangling the chain, and making sure the rubber tube is spraying where it’s supposed to. I enjoy the feeling of mastery over the physical world as much as the next person—but, if we’re being honest here, sometimes I just want a man to do things for me.

I figure since women birth the world’s children, bring cookies to the world’s felons, and teach, wipe, cradle, and forgive the world’s masses, the least men can do is change the headlights of cars.

Continue Reading How Many Feminists »

Twenty years ago my husband and I got married at a courthouse in Maryland. We crossed the line from D.C. to do this but I can’t remember the original reason. I think it had to do with the fact that Maryland did not require a blood test. My husband hates needles.

A small sour woman read the words we were to repeat without emotion and without a smile. It was clear she didn’t like having to marry an interracial couple. She smiled at other couples. I saw her. She walked away without looking at us as she pronounced us husband and wife.

My mother ignored the letter I had written to say that even though you don’t approve, please think about attending. It’s an important day. The letter was presumably thrown in the trash and I never heard from my mother again.

My husband decided to keep the marriage a secret from his family until it was done. He was afraid of any negativity spilling onto our day.

Our two closest friends traveled a long way to be our witnesses.

Continue Reading Wedding Day »

He took mincing steps, his cane weaving, often missing the ground. He had double vision, and was almost blind in one eye. Yet when we were driving to his doctor’s office, my father could recite the turns I should make. The streets in the few square miles around his house were still imprinted in his head despite advanced Parkinson’s Disease.

At the same time, my son drew a map of Vietnam—his birth country—complete with illustrations of a compass and a ship. He was seven years old that November. He included very personal labels, based on a trip we’d taken the year before to Vietnam. Under “Hannoi,” he inserted “us + me”; under “Da nang” he put “didn’t go to”; and with “ho chi men city,” he wrote “I was born here” and “next time.”

I wonder if geography has far more to do with mapping inner worlds than the physical landscapes we walk through. But the land matters, too; it’s not just how we form it in our heads. Watching my child figure out how to map what he saw and felt—and my father’s continuing struggles to hold on to it—I’ve come to realize over the past year how much the physical world shapes our spirits as well.

Continue Reading My Father’s Last Map »

Bill O’Reilly is having a hell of a month. The professional muckraker and Fox News pugilist managed to manipulate his proffered vision of a tyrannically liberal media into a self-fulfilling prophecy on October 14th. That was the Thursday when, embroiled in a heated discussion with the ladies of “The View” over whether or not the “Ground Zero” mosque should ever see the light of day, O’Reilly caused co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar to walk offstage mid-broadcast with five little incendiary words: “Muslims killed us on 9/11.” When head diva Barbara Walters responded by saying “I love my colleagues, but that should not have happened,” I am sure old Bill had trouble containing his glee.

Over the course of O’Reilly’s long career, I have witnessed this pattern over and again, the consistency of a practiced bully: keep yelling and poking until you hit the right nerve, then stand back and act befuddled, telling your adoring audience, “See, you can’t even have a conversation with these guys!” But why fix what isn’t broken? If nothing else, I admire the man’s PR savvy. After “The View” confrontation, that evening’s broadcast of “The O’Reilly Factor” welcomed over four million viewers, easily trouncing the competition at CNN, MSNBC and Headline News.

Continue Reading NPR: National Public Ruckus »

For the second time in a 10-year professional career, I find myself in the position of having to collect government cheese. By that I mean I have joined the ranks of the approximately 11 million people who currently collect some type of unemployment benefit. Every other week, like so many of my fellow Americans, I call-in or go online to “certify” that I am not a complacent, louse of a person content to rake in $275 a week before taxes, instead of looking for a gainful occupation. It is truly a dehumanizing ordeal, as has pretty much always been the case.

However 2010 is no ordinary year. We are now a full 24 months into an economic collapse of epic proportions. Through the use of some magic formula that millions of suffering and out of work Americans (including me) don’t comprehend, the unemployment rate has remained steady at 9.6% for several months. I think I speak for a lot of us when I declare that more than 9.6% of my inner circle are either looking for work, or have taken a job with ludicrously bad pay, hours and/or benefits simply because they have to survive. Be that as it may, we’ll go with 9.6% for now. Even those with jobs have lost their homes by the truck load, or are in the process of doing so, less fortunate than those so far “underwater,” owing to the rapid decline in home prices, that they can reasonably expect to be stuck in place for a decade or longer.

Continue Reading Is This What We Were Sold? »

Several months ago, I was shaken up but not shocked by a study I had read that morning. It showed that today’s college students scored 40% less in empathy skills than their counterparts of 20 to 30 years ago.

40% less.

Growing up outside of New York City in the 60’s and 70’s, I was aware of the apathy of people. There were horror stories of people who were victims of assaults, witnessed by those who couldn’t be bothered to call for help. As a child, I had a reoccurring nightmare where a stranger would grab me in full public view as I was dragged kicking and screaming for help that never came from the ongoing stares of the crowds passing by.

But today’s younger generation is displaying an elevated level of apathy and inability to show compassion and empathy. I’ve talked to many who also read this study who were as equally disturbed as I. And everyone was asking, “Why?”

Continue Reading How Can People Be So Heartless? »