Monthly Archives: August 2009

He’s a Dick

Posted on by
Reply

Forgive me for unleashing a flash of elegance here but five-deferment Dick Cheney should shut the fuck up. While his name, forgive me, provides all kinds of fuel for my comedic streak, for example, the man gives men’s genitalia a bad name, the damage he has done and continues to do about all that can be true and should be true about my country is so savage he ought to be jailed. He is, in short, a war criminal and ought to be tried and, if justice is served, jailed.

Dick races around making as many appearances on Fox  News (God help us all) as he can defending torture. If you are truly loyal to what my country, the United States of America, is supposed to be about, you should be sickened by this, not to mention angered. Not only does torture not work, it violates all we are about: morally, legally and ethically. To have government sponsored torture puts us on the same level as the very enemies we are now fighting.

I suspect some hear the words Geneva Convention and think weakness. Bullshit. The term Geneva Convention refers to the agreement reached in 1949 in the aftermath of World War II. Now pause here and think or a minute. No person or group in history could exceed the brutality of  Hitler and the Nazis. Yet the world responded, not in kind, but in a joined commitment to the sanctity of human life and the decency that is present people and countries who are strong in character, not cowardly murdering little wimps like Dick.

Here is an excerpt from the 1949 accord signed, by the way, by 194 countries.

“Protected persons are entitled, in all circumstances, to respect for their persons, their honor, their family rights, their religious convictions and practices, and their manners and customs. They shall at all times be humanely treated, and shall be protected especially against all acts of violence or threats thereof and against insults and public curiosity. Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honor, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault. Without prejudice to the provisions relating to their state of health, age and sex, all protected persons shall be treated with the same consideration by the Party to the conflict in whose power they are, without any adverse distinction based, in particular, on race, religion or political opinion. However, the Parties to the conflict may take such measures of control and security in regard to protected persons as may be necessary as a result of the war.”

Disagreeing with what you just read is abhorrent to all that America stands for, so, rather than being a Dick like the five-deferment coward, you might want to read the passage again and reconsider.

The Gift of Reading

Posted on by
1

Somewhere, damned if I know where given that on some fronts I have the organizational skills of a tree stump, I have a shirt that reads, So Many Books, So Little Time. So true.

Frankly, I can’t and don’t want to imagine life without books. I am utterly baffled by those who don’t read books. No doubt there are joys they have found in life that are foreign to me, or joys that I simply don’t understand. Car races for one. Millions get enormous joy from them so I am glad they are there; I like seeing people happy. But when I try to watch them, the cars going round and round  again and again and again and again…all I can do is shrug and think, Well, at least they won’t get lost.

When I am, as I like to say, without book, meaning I don’t have a book I’m reading in life (a rare thing), I really am like a fish out of water. My life is out of alignment. Hell, I’m out of alignment. On edge and physically uncomfortable throughout the day, I am swept up in a kind of anxiousness. When, finally, I find a book that I can develop a relationship with,  an enormous sense of relief sweeps over me.  Much the same kind of relief, my dopey mind imagines, that someone lost at sea feels when they finally reach the safety of land.

Reading has been my refuge for many, many years. When I was homeless as a teen, I would go into drugstores or five and dimes and steal a paperback off one of those wire racks that always screech when you turn them. This way, alone at night, or fighting for warmth or dealing with hunger, tucked away in a basement or abandoned building somewhere, I had a world other than my own I could visit.

It was my father who gave me the whole wide world of books, the never-ending always-present adventure of reading. He was in his room one day working at his desk. Behind him was a ceiling to floor bookshelf filled with books. I think a wall full of books is visually more beautiful than any painting I’ve ever seen.   “I’m not a reader like you and Mommy,” I announced.

He set his pencil down, leaned back in is chair, gently smiled, and said, “What makes you say that?”

“Well, every time I try and read one of these books I can’t finish them.”

And then he said the most remarkable thing. “What makes you think you have to finish them?”

I was floored. “Aren’t you supposed to finish them?”

“No. You’re thinking school assignment. We’re talking about reading. Let me ask you something, don’t you think the author has some responsibility to keep you interested?”

“Sure.”

“Okay then, here’s what you do,” he gestured at the books behind him. “Pick ten books that perk your interest and read them until you lose interest. Don’t look at page numbers and don’t worry about finishing them. One day you’ll look up and you’ll have finished a book.”

I was free! The world of books was mine! I grabbed ten books, even some I wasn’t sure I was interested in but wanted to see what was inside them anyway, and brought them to my room. To this day, if I lose interest in a book I put it back on the shelf and move on.

By the way, the first book I finished only weeks after my father’s advice was a novel called The Folded Leaf  by William Maxwell. It’s a great book. And there’s lots more.

 

Tears for a Lion

Posted on by
Reply

I was nine years old when Teddy Kennedy was first elected to the senate in 1962. I was one year into an all-too-brief time as a dancer, and my family was alive, including my beloved father.  The large majority of my family has passed away and now Teddy Kennedy has joined them, and when the news of his death came, the pain in my heart and the instant wetting of my eyes let me know I’d just lost another family member. All Americans did.

There is so much that can be said and has been said about this truly singular human being. Again and again over these past few days  stories I’ve heard about Teddy Kennedy have moved me to tears, sometimes, to be sure, tears of laughter. One of the themes present in all shared memories of him was his very real kindness and compassion for people. Not just a kindness and compassion that showed, and it showed mightily, in his remarkable spate of achievements as a senator, but his kindness and compassion for people on the personal front, and he didn’t give a damn what your party affiliation was. If life wounded you and he knew you, he was there.

At times he was there if he didn’t know you. A father from Bedford Massachusetts who’d lost his son in Iraq, in part because the Humvee the young man was in lacked the proper armor, was moved to the core of his being when, at his son’s burial service in Arlington, he turned and saw Teddy Kennedy standing there. In case you’re wondering, the father was not a Democrat. 

I truly believe that if all the stories of Teddy Kennedy’s kindness and compassion were collected in one book, the book would be so great in size it would make War and Peace seem like a short story.

For those, and there are some, who inflict the knife-blade of hatred born of the poison of judgment when they speak of Teddy Kennedy, I would say this. How many people who had all three of their brothers killed, one in war, two murdered, whose nephew died in a plane crash, who himself suffered a broken back in a plane crash, would emerge demon free? Moreover, how many people would survive those tragedies, free themselves of their demons, and for nearly 50 years, engage in a lifetime of helping others?  Answer? Not many.

One story that touched me to the point I broke down and wept was this. Before Teddy Kennedy left for the funeral of the slain Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, he went to Arlington Cemetery. There he gently scooped up some soil from the graves of his brothers. After the service for Rabin was over, and after the media was gone, Teddy Kennedy gently and lovingly spread the soil from his brothers’ grave on Yitzhak Rabin’s grave.

I don’t have much more to say here. Like many I have cried over the loss and rejoiced over the life of Teddy Kennedy these past few days, and there is, I know, more of both to come. I know too that I am deeply blessed to have lived in the time of Teddy Kennedy. We have all lost a member of our family, of the American family. I suspect he fully understood all Americans are part of the extraordinary tapestry that is the American family. It would be nice if more understood that.

I will miss him.

Flame Throwers in the Night

Posted on by
Reply

*

Well rock me shiftin’ down streets long gone,

We wore Frye boots and beards and tossed cigarettes

Like flame throwers lighting paths in the night

Not caring nothing for the powers that be

 

Well she came striding proud sleek like Secretariat

Her hips shape shifting dreams by the dozens while

Harry shined his Nova and the 66th Street rhythms

Swirled with tongues dancing in the corner darkness

 

Well rock me tender as the night gets deep

And the kids go home where family lives

With dinners on and me now striding solo

Casting flame throwers in the night

 

_____________________________________

25 Years Later

Posted on by
2

Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the day two teenager held me up on a Brooklyn street. One put a gun to my head and fired. He and his accomplice, who was rifling through my pockets when the trigger was pulled, got $63 for their efforts. The bullet is still lodged in the brain and I take great pleasure in feigning disappointment that I do not set off  airport alarms (if you were hoping for a humor free essay you might as well stop reading now).

To this day there are occasions when, upon hearing about the shooting, a person will lean forward, their brow furrowed a bit, and say things like,  "Did it change you?", or, "Is life different?" or, "Do you understand life in a way you didn’t before?" Honest questions all, but I always get the impression that the asker believes being part of an extraordinary act of violence automatically results in a deeper understanding of life. It doesn’t. At least I don’t think it does.

The experience did give me a new appreciation for the importance of ducking. It certainly increased my awareness of the human capacity for cruelty. And, it has helped me to remember to live, not miss the moment I’m in,  and not miss the chance to tell people I love that I love them.

Much has changed in the last 25 years and there is nothing unique in that. Some wonderful things in life have happened as a result of the shooting. I have been given the gift of being able to work with survivors of brain injury, their families and people in the health care field.

The health care field itself exposes you to wonderful people and to people who have a capacity for cruelty that outdoes the cruelty of shooting an innocent person in the head. Health care providers who see and treat people with disabilities as sub-human beings that are on this earth so they can make a profit ought to be jailed. I know one owner of a community-based program who has run clinical meetings for people in the program and doesn’t have one iota of training as a clinician, yet his ego is so distorted and the lack of regulations so prominent, he gets away with it, to the detriment of those receiving services in the program. I know another director of a brain injury program who told the wife of a brain injury survivor, with her husband present, that there needed to be a funeral for her husband because he no longer exists and she and her husband needed to allow this director and his team of sycophants to re-create him. By comparison, the kid who shot me was simply having a bad day.

There is another thing the shooting gave me. An appreciation for having a bucket list, though it wasn’t until the movie came out that I became aware of the term bucket list. I was, however, aware of experiences I wanted  and want to have before my time is up. I want to meet Bruce Springsteen and thank him for the role his songs had in helping me stay alive during some dark times. I’d like to visit the Grand Canyon and spend a week or more exploring the canyon itself. I want to stand in a room that Beethoven was in, and in a room Tolstoy was in, and in a room Dickens was in. I’d even like to get married again some day, really share life with a soul mate. I’d like my daughter and I to have a relationship again before time’s up.  And, of course, I want to write and write and write. The list goes on.

One other thing, I’d like to thank God with all my heart and soul that I am alive 25 years later to even have a bucket list,  and write this essay for you.