Epiphany Continues

Sunday Update:The plan now seems to be for the House to officially request that Pence invoke the 25th amendment within 24 hours, at which point the House will fast-track Impeachment, probably by midweek. But the Senate won’t meet until after Trump is constitutionally gone, and it can’t begin a trial until officially notified of the Impeachment by the Speaker. So Rep. Clyburn suggested that the Speaker might delay it for several months, while Congress plays its part in assisting President Biden in confronting the urgent issues he faces.

 On Sunday, more arrests were made, more calls for Trump’s removal, more details of how prepared some of the rioters were to stage a violent coup, and more finger pointing of who was responsible for the security failures. Meanwhile, one of the Capitol Police officers who dealt with the insurrection committed suicide. And millions watched this video by former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, speaking very personally about his memories from his Austrian childhood of the aftermath of the Nazi takeover, saying that Wednesday was the American equivalent of Kristallnacht, “the night of broken glass” perpetrated by Nazi youth (the equivalent, he said, of the Proud Boys) that initiated the rise of Nazism that consumed Europe and left a broken generation.   

“It has been an epiphany for the world to see that there are people in our country led by this president, for the moment, who have chosen their whiteness over democracy.”

 Speaker Nancy Pelosi

 As more information is reported and posted, an article on the CNN site Saturday observed: “it’s becoming clear that as heinous as the attack looked in real time, on live TV and in our social feeds, it was even worse than we knew then... It was even more violent. It was even more treacherous. And Trump’s behavior was even more disturbing.” 

 Evidence grows that some of the rioters were armed, some with explosives, and appeared to have goals and knew their way around the Capitol. Several were photographed carrying the kind of plastic ties that police use to restrain suspects. Kidnapping and holding hostages is a frequent theme in the web chatter of right wing extremists, including white supremacists (some known to be there) and neo-Nazis. 

Witnesses heard shouts of attackers inside the Capitol looking for Speaker Pelosi and others, including vice president Mike Pence. A Reuters photographer heard several people claiming to be intent on capturing Pence and hanging him. With top officials spirited away—and other Members hiding in the gallery, in fear of their lives—actual violence was limited to the Capitol Police, one of whom has since died of his injuries—reportedly beaten with a fire extinguisher.

 The gathering of the mob, reportedly financed by Trump campaign dark money, was organized on social media. In the past two days, Trump has been banned for life by Twitter and Facebook, and they have begun to police posts advocating violence more stringently. The extremist platform Parler has lost its ap status on Apple and Google, and Amazon will stop hosting it.

 Still, right wing extremists are making plans to gather in Washington and at state capitals, armed, on the 17th (to specifically carry weapons) and the 19th and Inauguration Day. Trump is their unifier—apparently he is sometimes referred to as GEOTUS: God Emperor of the United States. But even as some AlwaysTrumpers fall away, the most violent and extreme continue—because their cause is what the others have implied and tried to hide: white supremacy.

 But they have lost the element of surprise (if not collusion by law enforcement.) They will face the full array of security in Washington. There will be armed forces with riot training around them, snipers on buildings, helicopters and other aircraft above them. They will not get within a mile of the Capitol this time.  Their whiteness will not fully protect them again.

In the short term, federal law enforcement is identifying and charging miscreants from the Capitol.  Others being identified by Internet sleuths and reporters are being fired or resigning (including a now former state legislator from West Virginia, several local law enforcement and teachers.)

 But what happens in the longer term, after this still-building anger is superseded by other concerns, will depend on how committed the appropriate federal government agencies are or will be during the Biden administration to countering a white supremacist terrorist movement that has become a violent clear and present danger. Those agencies must systematically approach these groups as they would any terrorist organizations. Certainly in the past year and past week, these groups have left no doubt as to their terrorist capabilities and intentions. 

 Racism is a real and independent element in American life, and has always been. Race has also been the flashpoint even when class oppression is the operative cause of distress and injustice Racial injustice is partly the result of this error, exploited by the class and economic exploiters. Racism is how all kinds of fears are expressed. While societally these deep problems become questions of policy and politics, the danger of white supremacists is a matter of self-defense.

 Meanwhile in Washington the fervor for impeachment grows. Unless Speaker Pelosi comes up with a different plan, Trump will be impeached by the House this coming week. Reverting to form, Senate Majority Leader McConnell announced that the Senate will conveniently not begin the resulting trial until after Trump’s term is over at noon of January 20. Trump is said to have made clear to White House staff that he will not resign. 

 On Saturday, the vice president’s office leaked the information that VP Pence may still try to invoke the 25th amendment, if Trump does something else to warrant it. Whether this is a political smokescreen, or an indication that the groundwork has been laid to do this quickly, is anybody’s guess at this point. But State Department diplomats and career officials have twice urged invoking the 25th amendment in group cables to the Secretary of State. A Reuters poll shows 57% of respondents want Trump gone immediately. 

 Also over the weekend, two major Texas newspapers called for Senator Ted Cruz to resign (Houston Chronicle) or be expelled from the Senate (San Antonio Express.) Several Democratic Senators have also called for the expulsion of Cruz and Hawley. That also cannot happen until after January 20, when the Senate will be faced with the need to advise and consent on Biden cabinet nominees, pass emergency legislation, and possibly conduct the trial of Trump—if only to vote afterwards to ban him from federal office (or federal contracts) for life.

Epiphany: Second Day

The enormity of what happened at the Capitol on Wednesday became clearer on Thursday, which spread and deepened the epiphany.  Now eyewitness accounts begin to suggest the violence not seen in those absurd images, as the narrative timeline begins to take shape.  Though accounts still conflict, it seems clear that the entire US Congress--and the top three officials in direct line of succession for the presidency--were in danger for hours, while those in the federal government tasked with protecting them dithered and disappeared.

Consequences have begun.  The House and Senate Sergeants-at-Arms were asked to resign and did, and under fire from his own rank and file, the chief of the Capitol Police resigned effective January 16.  Meanwhile the suspicion of collusion with the rioters grew.  More people pointed out the obvious racism that was a factor.  Attention presumably turns to the Defense Department, Homeland Security, FBI and Secret Service.  

Epiphany reveals the enormity of the sedition by Trump and others in his orbit, as well as the legislators whose seditious lies led to the violence--and then continued after it.  The metaphor of the day at the NY Times was the fever (David Brooks) or the spell (Michelle Goldberg) breaking.  So such previously synchophantic outlets as the Wall Street Journal joined the Times,  Washington Post and today's USA Today in calling for Trump's immediate ouster.  (The Journal begged for resignation, the others for the 25th amendment or impeachment.) Speaker of the House Pelosi and Senate minority Leader Schumer both called for the 25th amendment, but failing that, started the wheels in motion for impeachment.

Out of the long list of congressional co-conspirators, Thursday's fire was focused on the two most prominent: Ted Cruz, the Texas Opportunist, and especially Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, whose announced intention to dispute the integrity of the vote jumpstarted the sedition in Congress.  In one day, Hawley had one of his biggest supporters (former Senator Danforth) say that backing him had been the worst mistake of his long life, and one of his biggest funders call on the Senate to censure him for "provoking yesterday's riot."  His state's two largest and most influential newspapers--the Kansas City Star and St. Louis Post-Dispatch, called for his resignation.  "Trumpism must die before it morphs into Hitlerism," the Post-Dispatch wrote.  Plus Hawley lost his major New York publisher and book contract.  The Missouri newspapers echoed conservative columnist George Will who called for the political obliteration of Cruz and Hawley.  Together with Trump, Will wrote: "Each will wear a scarlet S as a seditionist."

Morning Joe's epic rant also called for the immediate arrest of Trump, Guliani and Trump, Jr. for inciting violence at the rally that directly preceded the terrorist invasion.  Meanwhile, another folk metaphor suggested itself--rats leaving a sinking ship--as two cabinet secretaries resigned in protest, and nobody cared.  Several national security officials who had let it be known they were considering quitting, let it be known that their retired counterparts begged them to stay, lest the national security of the United States fall into the hands of the equivalent of AlwaysTrump cabin boys, like the teenage appointees Trump installed elsewhere in the government as loyalty bots.

The list of formerly complicit Republicans jumping off the bandwagon and calling for accountability also grew--Peggy Noonan (calling for Trump's removal), Nikki Haley, John Kelly, Mike Mulveny, even Lindsey Graham.  

Trump awoke long enough to issue a hostage video in which he acknowledged a new administration (he couldn't say whose) would take office on January 20, and he would work for a peaceful transition.  This attempt to short circuit efforts to oust him didn't work as well as it did in confusing and angering his mob of true believers.

Besides ongoing questions about what really happened on Wednesday, two questions about the immediate future surfaced Thursday: first, will Trump try to pardon himself (probably yes), and will that stick (probably no)? The compelling constitutional argument--and current Justice Department guidance--says that he can't, because no one can be a judge in their own case.  A more thorough and practical analysis in the Atlantic is pretty persuasive that if Trump tries to use it to evade giving prosecutors information or to quash an indictment, it will be challenged and ultimately lose in the Supreme Court.  Yes, betrayed again!

The second question is can either the 25th amendment or, more likely now, impeachment be accomplished in time to matter?  That's what will be the topic of the day behind the scenes on Friday, with the core question: will impeachment and conviction at least legally prevent Trump from running again?

Meanwhile, more than 3800 Americans died as a result of the covid crisis on Wednesday, setting yet another new one day record.  And it was broken on Thursday, when officially more than 4,000 died. Vaccine supplies continue to be hung up by the federal government.  Here in Humboldt, our public health officer said that the county has the capacity to vaccinate many more people in a short time if more vaccine made its way here.  Getting through the next two weeks until the new administration takes dramatic action--and however long it takes for that action to result in more vaccine--is the task and the challenge we all face. 

 All of this will put to the test what Rep. Conor Lamb of Allegheny County PA said in his fiery speech on the House floor Wednesday night (in which he called out Republican lies, which so enraged one of the Republican liars that he was escorted off the floor): "We want this government to work more than they want it to fail."

Epiphany and Sedition at the Capitol

 Of the many cliches regularly abused in media reports, probably the worst is "wake-up call."  At once inappropriate and most often inaccurate, it supposes that the reason that something--or the importance of something--has not been acknowledged is that everyone has been asleep.  There have been so many wake-up calls about Trump and his Republican enablers over the years that it's a wonder anybody got even a catnap.

And yet here we are, deep in the same nightmare.  The storming of the Capitol, mobs roaming through the House and Senate chambers and offices, while forcing elected officials and their staffs to seek safety, with damage and death in their wake, is supposed to be the latest wake-up call from any illusion that the individual in the White House is not our Homegrown Hitler, who in that tradition, today publicly fomented violence and sent a violent mob to attack the elected legislature.

Another, better word for what "wake-up call" really means in this context is epiphany--the truth made manifest in a sudden blinding realization.  And as Speaker Pelosi noted when the Congress defied the violent mob and returned to their business, January 6 is the Feast of the Epiphany in the Christian calendar.

Unfortunately for some elected officials, that business was to continue an act of sedition, of attempting to nullify the votes of Americans in a legal election.  The day's violence deterred some, but not the many House Members who insisted on their pious windbag five minutes in the middle of the night.   Nevertheless, at around 3:30 a. Eastern, the Congress fulfilled its necessary but basically ceremonial duty to affirm finally that in two weeks Joseph R. Biden will be inaugurated President, and Kamala Harris Vice-President.

In the wake of this I scan the headlines with charges of sedition and "President Trump has committed treason" and many calls by current and former high officials and major organizations for Trump's immediate removal from office, either by invoking the 25th amendment (which is reportedly under discussion by at least aides to the Cabinet officials who must make that determination) or Impeachment and Conviction.

Will those voices grow louder, or will they fade tomorrow?  Was this an epiphany, or another wake-up call ignored?  Can a wake-up call break through social media hypnotism, or the functional hypnotism of craven political ambition?  Can an epiphany move to action?

Another epiphany of the day is how broken the Trump administration is.  On a day that the Capitol building was assaulted, overwhelming the unprepared Capitol Police (with some indication that some were even complicit), there was not an official word from the federal government: not from Justice, not from Homeland Security, the FBI, anyone.  Certainly not from the White House, where someone sought fit to leak their impression that Trump was pleased by the attack.

Instead there were a few almost comic resignations--the First Lady's chief of staff, the WH social secretary--and rumors of other more senior resignations to come--which will add to the chaos that has become the Trump administration.  

Otherwise, the media is full of opinion, which is perhaps all it can be filled with since so many reporters are working from home during the covid crisis, while we are very much short of facts.  Thursday may turn out to be even more dramatic,  stoked by whatever is happening behind the scenes.  Because in terms of public information we are in a dark void.   

Senate, Baby! (Ding Dong the Mitch is Dead)

 

I know I shouldn't because one of the races hasn't yet been called as I write this [update: except by Decision Desk as of 3:30 a. Pacific!]--but Ossoff is ahead by more than 12,000 votes (which is more than Biden's eventual margin) with an estimated 98% in, and predominately Dem areas still counting. [Update: now more than 16,000 votes ahead!]  Then there's military, overseas and challenged ballots, maybe mail-ins still.  And if his margin doesn't end up .5 there can be a mandatory recount.  But there's a lot of confidence in the media as well as politicians on both sides that this is a done deal.  These guys significantly overperformed Biden's votes everywhere, a lot of Democrats voted, and a lot of Republicans stayed home.  

And of course one of the races has been called, as of about 11 p. Pacific Tuesday--Democrat Rev. Raphael Warnock will replace Kelly Loeffler and become the first Black Senator from Georgia in history--the first Black Senator from anywhere in the deep South since Reconstruction.

That Warnock is pastor of the same church that Martin Luther King, Jr.--this call literally brought tears to my eyes.  I didn't allow myself to imagine an election night like this.

Now if Democrat Jon Ossoff continues to prevail over David Perdue as expected, the US Senate is 50-50, and VP Kamala Harris breaks the tie, effectively giving Democrats the majority.  Which above all means that Mitch McConnell will no longer be Majority Leader in charge of subverting President Biden--he'll be minority leader (if he doesn't step down) in charge of mooning around.  Majority Leader Schumer will set the Senate agenda and decide which bills get to the floor, not Mitch.

 Committee chairs go to the Dems, along with their agendas.  All of this is more important than the party line votes--that was always going to be more fluid.  But with an open split in the Republican party that is likely to become evident on the Senate floor today, President Biden's chances of crafting legislation that gets at least a handful of Republican votes gets stronger. 

So now Wednesday's madness in Washington suddenly seems comic tragedy rather than tragicomedy.  Let's laugh at the Fascists on the floor and the Nazanies in the streets.  Cause I'm singing Georgia, Georgia!  The Whole Day Through...

If You Can Keep It

I am writing on Monday night, the eve of the (latest) three days that will shake America. When they are over, things will be different. How different and in what direction is at issue. 

 First, it is election day in Georgia—the special election of two U.S. Senators, which will decide the Senate majority and greatly (though not wholly) determine the ability of the Biden administration to get legislation passed. The Republicans have the advantage of incumbency in a perennially red state in the deep South, where they have spent their campaign and media appealing to the state’s racist past.

 However, the Biden-Harris presidential ticket did win the state just months ago, and early voting numbers were very high and seem likely to be favorable to the Democratic candidates. Reporters for Slate and others suggest that Sunday’s revelation of Trump’s functionally treasonous phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State, strong-arming him to change votes, has been the overwhelmingly top news story in Georgia since, with unknown repercussions. If disenchantment with Trump suppresses Republican votes today, the Democrats have a chance, these reporters feel.

 What I haven’t seen anyone mention yet is how long it may be before Georgia has definitive results, if the elections are close, nor in what order the votes will be counted. In November, the Trump votes came in early, and Biden only gradually took the lead towards the end, several days later. How long will it be before we know the outcome, and what kind of uproar will there be depending on results? 

 Wherever the vote count is on Wednesday, attention will turn to the formerly ceremonial counting of the states’ electoral college votes in Congress. Thirteen Senators and more than a hundred House Members are likely to object to the results in one or more of the 6 “swing” states, forcing debates and votes. 

 These results were never going to be overturned in the House—so Republicans who care more about their privileged life in Washington than they do about American democracy can play to their AlwaysTrump base at home, without actually endangering the outcome. 

 But even a few weeks ago it was clear that the objections would also fail in the Senate. There were just enough Republican Senators on the record to deny a majority. But then one ambitious GOP Senator, eyeing a 2024 presidential run, announced he would object anyway. Then, probably alarmed by this appeal to AlwaysTrump voters, presidential hopeful Ted Cruz announced he would object, and went one better by organizing 11 others to join him.

 However by Monday there were many more than the original handful of Republican Senators who announced they would support the electoral results, including some Trump supporters up for reelection next time. Reporters (and perhaps Democratic Senators) expect the mandatory debate to at times pit Republican against Republican.

 My favorite response however was from an unlikely source in the House: a conservative Texas Rep named Chip Roy. In what is also usually a ceremonial vote, current Members vote to accept newly elected Members. But Roy objected to the seating of 67 Members elected in November, both Republicans and Democrats, from the swing states at issue in the AlwaysTrump attempt to overturn the election’s results. He did so using the same logic that I have on this blog: that if you object to the election for President in those states, then you object to the election of everybody in those states. They were all elected by the same rules and on the same ballot.

 His objections forced the 100 plus Republican Members who were going to object to the presidential election to nevertheless vote to seat Members from those disputed states elected at the same time, thus exposing one of the many elements of their hypocrisy.

 Like the ballot-counting in Georgia, the debates in Congress may continue for more than one day, though the outcome in Congress is assured. But meanwhile, our apprentice dictator has invited his most violent followers to Washington during these debates, and is allowing the idea that he might attend himself to be publicized in the news. The National Guard has already been called up, and the DC Police will be looking for guns. All guns in a DC demonstration, and in the federal area of Washington, are unlawful. 

 Meanwhile, political leaders and media writers were asserting in stark terms what is at stake this week, including the conservative columnist George Will, and even some at Fox. None said it more firmly than Tom Nichols in his Atlantic piece titled Worse Than Treason:

 "No amount of rationalizing can change the fact that the majority of the Republican Party is advocating for the overthrow of an American election. “Forget all the whispered denials and the off-the-record expressions of concern in private; ignore the knowing smirks on camera from GOP officials who are desperately trying to indicate that they’re in on the joke... This is sedition, plain and simple. No amount of playacting and rationalizing can change the fact that the majority of the Republican Party and its apologists are advocating for the overthrow of an American election and the continued rule of a sociopathic autocrat.”

 He concludes: 

 “The sedition caucus is worse than a treasonous conspiracy. At least real traitors believe in something. These people instead believe only in their own fortunes and thus will change flags and loyalties as circumstances require. They will always become what they pretend to be, and so they cannot—and must not—be trusted ever again with political power.”

 Other writers, including Jonathan Chiat, reiterate that Trump and his minions have been undemocratically inclined from the beginning. In other words: Homegrown Hitler, as I’ve been saying since 2016. 

 In fact, some former Washington officials are so worried that, if all else fails, Trump will attempt to use the military to retain power, that they engaged in a pre-emptive strike. Fred Kaplan’s report in Slate begins: 

" In an unprecedented critique of a sitting president, all of the 10 living former secretaries of defense—from five administrations, Democratic and Republican—have warned that the time for challenging the 2020 election results has passed, that ordering the U.S. armed forces to resolve disputes would be “dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional,” and that those who issue or execute such orders “would be accountable” and possibly face “criminal penalties” for “the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.” 

 Though Kaplan reports that none of the signatories (from the administrations of both Bushes, Clinton, Obama-- and Trump) believe a coup would succeed—military chiefs would refuse it an an unlawful order. This statement, published as a Washington Post oped, is to support them. Kaplan notes that according to an historian, that so many former Pentagon chiefs have never signed their names to anything. In yet another massive irony, it is said that the person who organized the oped is none other than the last proto-fascist in the White House, Dick Cheney.

 But Eliot Cohen (also in the Atlantic) suggests that while these are dark days, the future may be brighter, in his piece titled: Don’t Despair: Americans are equal to this moment. He also has been warning about Trumpism since the beginning, but sees resilience coming to the rescue.

 But he begins his piece with the best description of the habits we’ve been forced into since 2016, fully enabled by the Internet: 

" The most apt coinage of recent years is doomscrolling. Early in the morning or late at night, you can scan through an app on your handheld device for infection numbers, test-positivity rates, and news of vaccine shortages. If your interests range more widely, you can monitor domestic-abuse and murder rates, cases of depression and anxiety, crumbling small businesses, and the lonely snuffings-out of the flickering light of life for hundreds of thousands of the aged and the vulnerable. Or you can scrutinize the latest deranged claims and incitements of a mad and evil president; statements of support made by politicians faithless to the Constitution, intellectuals unimpeded by truth, lawless lawyers, and godless pastors; and the fears of the residents of one city or another swallowing hard at warnings of riots and wild-eyed Proud Boy desperadoes toting long guns. These are cruel facts, not exaggerated one whit.”

 But he is optimistic, though he takes a very long view. And we must allow for the possibilities of better news even this week: the Georgia Democrats win, maybe even handily with results just hours after the polls close. The presidential phone call to Georgia has also stymied the AlwaysTrumpers in Congress so perhaps their objections will turn out to be brief and pro forma, and quickly dealt with. And the demonstrations in Washington are relatively small (so Trump won’t show up), and relatively brief and devoid of serious violence.

 Which only frees us to monitor hugely ballooning Covid statistics and vaccine chaos, but at least gets us a little closer to January 20, and what must happen to end the mortal threat of this pandemic before even more sicken and die, and the rest of us get even crazier.

 Cohen also quotes Benjamin Franklin’s famous one-liner, which for the next three days is less a witticism than a warning. When asked what kind of government the Founders had finally come up with, Franklin is said to have responded: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

Poetry Monday: Keeping Our Small Boat Afloat

Keeping Our Small Boat Afloat

 So many blessings have been given to us

 During the first distribution of light, that we are

 Admired in a thousand galaxies for our grief.

 Don’t expect us to appreciate creation or to

 Avoid mistakes. Each of us is a latecomer

 To the earth, picking up wood for the fire.

 Every night another beam of light slips out

 From the oyster’s closed eye.

 So don’t give up hope that the door of mercy may still be open.

 Seth and Shem, tell me, are you still grieving 

Over the spark of light that descended with no 

Defender near into the Egypt of Mary’s womb?

 It’s hard to grasp how much generosity

 Is involved in letting us go on breathing, 

When we contribute nothing valuable but our grief.

 

Each of us deserves to be forgiven, if only for

 Our persistence in keeping our small boat afloat

 When so many have gone down in the storm.

Robert Bly

 At a meeting filmed for Bill Moyers’ “A Gathering of Men,” Robert Bly begins by addressing the younger members of his audience. He plays his bouzouki (string instrument resembling a mandolin) and recites his version of what’s become known as the beginning of a Breton fisherman’s prayer: “Lord help me/Because/My boat is so small/and your sea/ is so immense.” He says this is the feeling you might have if you decide to write poetry. In one sense perhaps, that’s the small boat he’s keeping afloat in this poem (written many years later), which otherwise could just be our lives, especially in a stormy year like 2020 and certainly as 2021 begins.  We might think of the persistence it takes to survive the Covid crisis.  But poets who continue writing and keep their boats afloat for many years (he says elsewhere), are happy that they have.

R.I.P. in 2020: The Write to Remember

 

  Just as day is done

 we exhale our perfumes

   into the night

      we’ve won

 --Michael McClure

 Every December I devote some time to seeking out the names of people who died during that year that I want to particularly remember and honor at year’s end. I go through the lists of the most prominent compiled by major media, plus a few specialized lists. And then I even scroll through Wikipedia’s day by day lists, which tend to be heavy with the names of European soccer stars. This year my eye stopped on at least 20 names that turned out to not be the person I remember, but someone else with that name. The person I remember usually had died years before. 

 But I also come across names I am dismayed to see: people I admire who didn’t make the big media lists, but who I regard as especially important.

 Most of the time, those names turn out to belong to writers. Not to surprise anyone, but writers aren’t valued much in this society, though what may surprise many is that this is very unusual in human history. Their storytelling counterparts in Indigenous societies were vital, and writers and artists were central to most cultures since. Their status even in America has been higher, including in my lifetime.

 These days writers are central to a largely self-selected segment of the population, but to these individual readers and listeners (for readings and audio books have revived the aural tradition), individual writers are very important. And though they may no longer be recognized for doing so, they may influence the culture and even the course of history. 

 

One writer who died this year and didn’t make most national media cuts but who clearly was a big time player in how American culture changed in the past sixty-five years was Michael McClure.

 McClure was one of the poets featuring in the San Francisco poetry reading in 1955 that exploded into the culture as the Beat movement. The event is famous for Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” but Gary Snyder also read for the first time that night, and Jack Kerouac was prowling the audience, passing jugs of wine and cheerleading. (McClure became a character in several Kerouac novels.)

 Steeped in the literature of the past, McClure was a fearless innovator. His first public writing was poetry, but he achieved more fame as a playwright, particularly for The Beard, which got its lead actor and actress arrested—twice-- for indecency, and went on to win awards in New York. 

 Mating poetry and theatre was only one of his many cross-fertilizing adventures. He became friends with Jim Morrison and Robbie Robertson, and wrote a song with Janis Joplin—her “Mercedes Benz” hit. In more recent years he performed his poetry many times accompanied by former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek.

 He was friends as well with avante garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage and actor/director Peter Fonda, and contributed to and appeared (sometimes as an actor) in several Fonda films. (He’s also in Scorcese’s The Last Waltz, a film of the last concert by the Band.)

 

He was passionately interested in painting in the 50s, and considered himself a naturalist, and so became a point of connection between literary artists and scientists like his friend, DNA-decoder Francis Krick. McClure consciously connected the vertical—the older literary gurus like Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer, and connected horizontally with literary contemporaries, like Ginsberg, Kerouac, Snyder and poet Diane DiPrima (who also died in 2020) but also Robert Creeley and his mentor, Charles Olson.

 He was an early and close friend to Richard Brautigan, who became the most famous of the San Francisco writers in the late 1960s. In the 60s McClure was an active facilitator, not only introducing Creeley to Jim Morrison, but literally introducing Marshall McLuhan to Bob Dylan.

 

I recall having this 
early 60s book, so
probably my first
dip into McClure's 
work.

He also wrote essays and newspaper journalism, eventually becoming a kind of elder statesman, an embodiment of recent history, as well as a teacher to later generations.

 Earlier this century I interviewed Michael McClure on the phone for a piece I did for the San Francisco Chronicle on Buddhism in the Bay Area. He explained how Asian a city San Francisco was in the 1950s, and so how naturally it became the first center for Buddhism in America. He mentioned his own meditation practice as part of his “Hummingbird Sangha,” a group that meditated together facing a garden where hummingbirds hummed. He was generous and personable, making sure I had good quotes for the piece. After it was published, he emailed me his delight, saying that the article had advanced or contributed to “the Dharma,” probably the greatest compliment I’ve ever received. 

 In recent years, McClure emphasized how different the 1950s were when the Beats emerged: how repressed and conformist and reactionary, with little tolerance for anything different. When asked by a young man where the Beat Generation spirit, the 60s spirit had gone, he answered: look at yourself. You’re wearing jeans and an organic cotton t-shirt, a hemp cap. You care about the environment, you’re aware of racism and you’re against war. Where has it gone? It’s you.

 Today in America there are occasionally groups of writers in the same place and a community that knows them. It doesn’t seem to happen a lot anymore but when it does, it owes something to the San Francisco that McClure saw over decades, and in large measure nurtured and helped to live. Michael McClure died in May at the age of 87. 

 William Kittredge died in December. He lived and taught in Montana for many years and wrote about that part of the country (and he was a co-producer of the movie A River Runs Through It), but the books of his I have and know are about the country in Oregon where he grew up: a book on the Klamath River to which he contributed text, and the books that evoke his youth.

 A Hole in the Sky is pretty much devoted to his experiences growing up on the ranch his father owned. I had never read anything quite like it: at once a braided memoir of exaltations and mistakes in dealing with the land, and a evocation of the landscape as eternally sacred, written in cadenced prose like crystal.

 The Nature of Generosity is more various and ambitious but the prose is just as mesmerizing. The introduction alone makes it an American classic. Language and story are themselves themes. “Narratives may well be our fundamental survival strategy, from which all the complex rest of our schemes follow.” His ecological vision is broad, deep and original. William Kittredge deserves to be read and remembered.

 I first encountered the work of Eric Bentley in the 1970s in connection with the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee—probably his 1972 play based on transcripts of hearings. But it was his writing on theatre that captivated me in the 1990s. I believe the first book of his essays or reviews I read was The Life of the Drama (1983.) If it wasn’t, it should have been because that’s what his writing did for me—it brought life to drama and dramatic criticism that motivated me to go deeper into the subject. All of which came in handy when I started writing regularly on theatre. 

 Bentley was a playwright and a singer, but most of that work was in New York when I wasn’t. But I could read his essays in a half dozen other collections, plus some specialized works, particularly on Brecht. Just as Michael McClure embodied ideals, accomplishments and change in American culture since the 1950s, Bentley embodied the ideals advanced in western theatre since the 1940s. He died in August at the age of 102.

Le Carre

 Other writers who died in 2020 include playwrights Terence McNally (of Covid), Israel Horovitz and Murray Schisgal, poets Ernesto Cardenal and Ann Stevenson, and another poet (besides McClure and DiPrima) associated with the San Francisco Beat era, Ruth Weiss.

 The premier novelist John Le Carre died in 2020, as did fictionists Alison Lurie, Tim O’Brien and the last of the science fiction magazine generation, Ben Bova. Two novelists whose stories achieved almost mythic status when transformed into films were Charles Webb (The Graduate) and Winston Groom (Forrest Gump.)

 Barry Lopez wrote about the natural environment, often as reports of his travels, as in his most famous book, Arctic Dreams. Michael Soule co-edited The Re-Invention of Nature to counter the devaluations of deconstructionists. 

Stanley Crouch

 Freeman Dyson was an esteemed physicist (with some blind spots on the environment) who also wrote well—I enjoyed several of his books. Stanley Crouch wrote about jazz and black culture; he was a poet and novelist and raconteur. On television he radiated charm and intelligence and originality—every time I saw him I wished I knew him so I could listen to him for hours more.

 

I first knew of Jan Morris when she was James, an acclaimed writer about people and places whose gender reassignment surgery was pioneering and therefore prominent news. While she remained a symbol for some, eventually her transformation was all but forgotten by many—I’ll bet some of her readers over these many decades didn’t even know.

 Pete Hamill was an exemplary New York journalist who bridged old school and new. Richard Reeves was a columnist I read and listened to, and subsequently the author of books on political history.

 

Gail Sheehy was a magazine journalist associated with the New Journalism of the 60s who became famous for her book Passages. Robert Sam Anson was a hot commodity as a magazine writer when I was prowling editors’ offices in New York in the 70s and 80s.

 Bruce Jay Friedman is another name associated with humor in the 60s, especially for his screenplays. George Steiner wrote fiction and literary criticism of breadth with an individual and moral point of view. A.E. Hotchner was a novelist and biographer best known for his books on Hemingway. 

 

And finally—because I am most familiar with her name after the end credits of PBS programs I loved—Rosalind P. Walter, known as a philanthropist especially in humanities and great PBS funder, who in her youth was the model for that World War II icon, Rosie the Riveter.

May they all rest in peace.  Their work lives on.

R.I.P. in 2020: Moments To Remember

We value those closest to us for their continuing presence, for their support and their surprises, their questions and comments and movement through our mutual world, their words (of wisdom or of hilarity or both), their particular physical presence, their expressions and the sound of their voices. But once the continuity is broken by death, what we eventually remember is mostly moments, when their lives intertwined with ours in some memorable way. If we have been close for a time and over time, it takes time to see those moments clearly, beyond the fog of grief. 

 The moments are easier to recall when they are people we value in some way but that we never knew personally, or only briefly. We may admire their achievements but we remember the moments that stay with us. In some way, or even at some moment, we have formed a personal relationship, so our memories have both of us in them, even if we weren’t there at all. I expect that’s true even of those who made a vast public impression, and changed many lives, like Rep. John Lewis and—in his brief moment—the young Chadwick Boseman.

 

But as much as I admire the achievements, principles and example of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, what I remember first is looking her in the eye as she marched to the Columbia University graduation ceremony I attended.

 

Railsback conferring with Chair Rodini

In a different way, the death of an otherwise obscure politician evoked distinct moments both in history and my experience.

 Tom Railsback was a Republican Member of Congress, representing a district in Illinois that I believe included Galesburg, where I went to college and otherwise lived for about 5 years. It was only about five years later that I was seeing him on TV in the epic Watergate committee hearings, which I watched obsessively every day. With his tremulous voice he was clearly agonized and reluctant to accept the mounting evidence, but eventually he became a key Republican in writing the two articles of impeachment that were finally adopted. I watched him writhe in one or another of those awful 1970s suits for weeks, but his journey from Nixon acolyte to defender of the Constitution was extraordinary, and riveting to watch. 

 The memories in moments is especially true of actors and other performing artists and entertainers, and part of their mystery: they may have lived long lives and performed many times, but may be remembered for only a few portrayals, or moments.

 

Shirley Knight in Petulia (1968)

So although Sean Connery was famous for other films, I’ll remember him as Indiana Jones’ father, and as Danny in The Man Who Would Be King. I’ll recall Shirley Knight for the impact of one short mesmerizing scene with George C. Scott in Richard Lester’s 1968 film Petulia. Or Pamela Tiffin with Paul Newman in Harper. I remember Wilford Brimley best in another Newman film: Absence of Malice, but also in a fairly obscure 1984 film called Country. Or Max von Sydow in those Bergman

 films, but also as a quietly methodical hit man opposite Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor.

 Perhaps we remember those most fondly who were characters in our childhood, or some specific part of our lives. Ken Osmond created the immortally awful Eddie Haskell in Leave It To Beaver, which was his only successful role, playing it in the 1950s and again in the 1980s and 90s, with a stint as an actual Los Angeles motorcycle cop in between.

 

Abby Dalton in Hennessey

Abby Dalton is better known for other television roles, but for me she was one of my first crushes playing opposite Jackie Cooper in a favorite late 1950s/early 1960s TV comedy: Hennessey. (I still remember the theme tune.) Ed Byrnes as Kookie was a kid’s delight in 77 Sunset Strip. 

 

Honor Blackman

And of course, Diana Rigg as Mrs. Peel. I knew she was sexy even if I was too naive to get the joke of her character’s name. Then she was replaced on The Avengers by the very fit and sexy Honor Blackman, who went on to a long and varied career which included the ultimate Bond girl as well as musicals, a Tom Stoppard stage play and television, including classic Doctor Who. And speaking of sexy, there was Ann Reinking in the amazing 1979 film All That Jazz.

 Later on TV there was Kevin Dobson as Kojack’s second, a peculiar contributor to a hometown exile in the 1970s, and James Lipton, whose BRAVO Actors’ Studio interviews were among the presentations that momentarily justified the claims of cable TV, though that sure didn’t last. 

 

When I was first going to the movies with my friends as a kid, among the big male stars were Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas. Of course Douglas is indelible for Spartacus, but I remember him also in Disney’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and his very different roles opposite Curtis in The Vikings and Lancaster in Seven Days in May. 

 I was always drawn to comedy, and certain practitioners helped define their eras. I remember Carl Reiner best as Sid Caesar’s second banana on his 50s TV shows (where he was also in that fabled writers room), which along with Steve Allen and Ernie Kovaks was 50s comedy to me. In a different way, Buck Henry was characteristically 1960s, Terry Jones with Monty Python bridged the early 70s, as Fred Williard did the late 70s and 80s. 

 

Ian Holm

Then there were the character actors who I always recognized and valued: Brian Dennehy (whose greatest moment may have been one I didn’t see: playing Willy Loman on Broadway in a production of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in 1999 that made grown men cry) and especially Ian Holm. 

 There was no role Holm couldn’t play and elevate it in the process, so he was memorable in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, and The Day After Tomorrow, for instance, as well as his more famous roles in the Lord of the Rings films. Though he had mostly supporting turns in movies, he played the big parts in UK theatre, including one I did see—on film at least—namely, King Lear. 

 

And then this year, just as I was getting deeply into a DVD of Tom Hanks’-directed 1996 movie about the rise and fall of an Erie, PA one hit wonder band in the early 60s, and ecstatic about its title tune, “That Thing You Do!”, I saw in the news that the principal writer of that song, Adam Schlesinger, was an early fatality of Covid-19. 

 

Then there are those with whom I shared a moment or two in person. My first professional interview with a rock star was with Bill Withers in the first flush of his fame. He immediately calmed my nervousness, as we sat on the steps of his trailer near where he would be performing on the Boston Commons. When I asked him about a thematic thread I detected on his new album, he said softly he didn’t think anyone would notice that.

 Later I interviewed Hugh Downs, when he was a familiar presence alongside Barbara Walters on 20/20. But I remembered him from the 50s when he was almost everywhere as an announcer: on the first Today show alongside Dave Garroway, then Jack Paar’s stint at Tonight and part of Johnny Carson’s. He was even the announcer on a year of Sid Caesar. He struck me as a gentle, modest man with real intellectual enthusiasms, but someone who also was guarded and wary.

 Sports figures have their claim on our memories, sometimes over a long period: I followed Kobe Bryant for much of his career and have a number of his great playing moments on tape. But his death reminds us that one of the usually unseen and perhaps few noble traditions of pro sports is the mentoring of younger players. (In his case that included very young players like his daughter Gigi, who died with him.) The little retirement time he got before his shocking death in a helicopter crash showed unique promise. He was his generation’s Michael Jordan, but he had more ability to communicate through writing and other forms. 

 

Whitey Ford

Others sports figures who died this year were magic names in my childhood: Whitey Ford, ace Yankees pitcher (who I once saw pitch in the 1960 World Series at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, though at that point I was desperately rooting against him) who I revered also because he was a southpaw like me. Other pitchers of the era also died this year: Johnny Antonelli, Don Larsen and Bob Gibson, as well as later star Tom Seaver. Al Kaline was another familiar face on my baseball cards, and I remember football running backs Paul Hornung and Gale Sayers.

 Of course there are also those who provided their moments to me as a reader, some of whom I will remember in a post to follow.

It's Not Over

 

We’re coming to the end of a terrible 2020, with the New Year in sight.  I’ve seen at least one article emphasizing that it won’t always be like this, and we can look forward to a better 2021.

 Perhaps.  But we’re still living in 2020, and we’re going to be for some time after the calendar flips to 2021. In fact, if we are not careful and if we are not lucky, the worst of 2020 will be in the first months of the new year. 

Yes, we’re getting rid of Trump—but not just yet, and he’s currently sowing more destructive chaos.  And yes, the first million Americans have gotten the first jab of the vaccines that may give us the possibility of ending this pandemic, but not anytime soon.  Meanwhile we may still be busily making that happy ending harder.  Partly because we’re not truly facing the import of 2020. 

“This is the deadliest year in U.S. history,” the AP reported.  Preliminary data suggests that by year’s end some 3.2 million Americans will have died in 2020, almost half a million more than in 2019.  In absolute numbers, American deaths have never exceeded 3 million in one year.  

It appears that the difference between last year and this year is almost entirely due to the Covid crisis.  The current official death toll is moving towards 350,000.   The death rate accelerated in December, exceeding 3,000 for several days in a row, and sometimes edging close to 3500.  This represents the “Thanksgiving surge,” or deaths resulting from covid infections traced back to Thanksgiving travel and gatherings.  

So in December the New York Times featured an essay on the meaning of death, and the Washington Post published a story puzzling why Americans aren’t paying more attention or taking more precautions, theorizing that it is harder for people to respond to large numbers than it is to individual deaths.  This theory seems an incomplete and possibly dubious explanation.  At worst, it’s an inexcusable excuse. Not just morally, but in terms of societal survival.

 There was no moral excuse for allowing travel and gatherings at Thanksgiving—for not shutting down the airlines and the trains, and monitoring the highways. And there was less moral excuse for allowing it at Christmas. 

But obviously that didn’t happen, and travel did.  The evidence on how much travel there was (and is) is mixed.  Airlines saw the highest numbers since March, though half or less than last Christmas.  I have to believe that many people took precautions, even if they were in fact insufficient.  But maybe people just gave up, or gave into their fatigue, or don’t care.  Because in my very limited purview, I’ve seen less mask wearing and distancing, not more.

 Whatever aspects of human nature, politics and societal behavior are involved, another surge—the Christmas surge—is now expected.  As a country we are barely making it through the Thanksgiving surge in hospitalizations, and some places it’s worse than that. 

 Another surge on top of this one—beginning in a couple of weeks and rising in intensity and numbers through January into February-- could cause catastrophic failures in hospitals and the medical systems of entire cities or regions.  Shortages of equipment are already showing up again.  I can’t even imagine what it is like to be a front line medical worker, working feverishly in a relentless nightmare, while knowing that people outside are blithely ignoring simple precautions that might slow this thing down instead of accelerate it. 

Meanwhile the political system has failed those who need it the most, leaving them frantic and hopeless, if not actually hungry and homeless.  But the covid crisis may be coming for even more of us, because we are failing each other. 

It’s true that in terms of the smooth running of society, especially for the currently better off, the deaths of a lot of old people don’t much matter, or the deaths of minority and other hourly workers, as long as it’s not more of them that can be easily replaced. But hospitals in crisis can be a crisis for almost everyone, and frayed or broken supply lines eventually take their toll on society as a whole. 

The high number of infections means the next surge will very likely be worse, resulting in larger numbers of hospitalizations and deaths. Add to that the likelihood of new and more infectious strains appearing in the US in the next month or so. That we’ve gotten through even the Christmas frenzy of buying and sending with supply lines intact is no guarantee that the system won’t break under further strain.  And once it breaks, the chaos could spread.  

We’re left to do what we can as individuals and on a personal level with family and friends, even if it’s not much.  Many are doing so, and they are the eventual source of hope.  Others are doing their best, at times their heroic best, to keep societal systems working, amidst fallibility and folly.  Hope rests with them as well.

But personally I’m keeping my metaphorical champagne cold for a couple of months after New Years before it’s safe to celebrate.

Dreaming Up Daily Quote: 12/25/2020

As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake; 

The centre moved, a circle strait succeeds,

 Another still, and still another spreads; 

Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace;

 His country next; and next all human race." 

 Alexander Pope

Happy Holidays, Everyone.

Dreaming Up Daily Quote 12/24/2020

“Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confused:

 Still by himself abused, or disabused; 

Created half to rise, and half to fall;

 Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;

 Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl’d:

 The glory, jest and riddle of the world.”

 Alexander Pope

Poetry Monday: Dream of Koa Returning

Dream of Koa Returning

 Sitting on the steps of that cabin

 that I had always known

 with its porch and gray-painted floorboards

 I looked out to the river

 flowing beyond the big trees

 and all at once you

 were just behind me

 lying watching me

 as you did years ago

 and not stirring at all

 when I reached back slowly

 hoping to touch your long amber fur

 and there we stayed without moving

 listening to the river

 and I wondered whether

 it might be a dream 

whether you might be a dream

 whether we both were a dream

 in which neither of us moved

--W.S. Merwin

This poem concerning a dog companion (but also about time and other things) comes from a section of poems concerning the dogs of his lifetime in Merwin's Pulitzer Prize winning 2009 book The Shadow of Sirius (Sirius is known as the dog star.)  Nevertheless the photo at the top is of a cat, also with amber fur.  We have a dog now, Howdy, to help us celebrate the Christmas season.  But before him was Pema the cat, of Christmases past, not forgotten nor undreamed about. 

This Land Is Her Land

 On another day of accelerating carnage, consternation and confusion, a brilliant moment of light, of more than historic impact.  I can't begin to explore the possible dimensions of it, which in any case will become clearer in time, for I can't remember when I've been so emotional about a cabinet appointment.  Probably never.  So I cede the floor to the admirable compression of the New York Times lead to begin the explanation, and the celebration.

"In a historic decision, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has chosen Deb Haaland, a congressional representative from New Mexico and a Native American, to lead the Interior Department, an agency that for much of the nation’s history played a central role in the dislocation and abuse of Indigenous communities from coast to coast.

 Mr. Biden’s transition team announced the decision Thursday. If confirmed by the Senate, Ms. Haaland would be the first Native American to lead a cabinet-level agency. She would oversee a sprawling department responsible for some 500 million acres of public lands, including national parks, oil and gas drilling sites and endangered species habitat.

 

Ms. Haaland would play a major role in implementing Mr. Biden’s promised climate change agenda. She would further be responsible for working to strengthen federal protections for vast swaths of territory that the Trump administration has opened up to drilling, mining, logging and construction. Historians and tribal leaders said that her selection represented a watershed moment in the United States’ scarred history with its Native people.

 “It’s momentous to see an Indian promoted out of the shadows of American history to a seat at the table in the White House,” said Elizabeth Kronk Warner, dean and professor of law at the University of Utah, and a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie tribe of Chippewa Indians. “Tribes and the federal government have a relationship that goes back to the 18th century — but despite that relationship, we have never had an American Indian at this level of government.”

Ms. Haaland, a citizen of Laguna Pueblo, one of the country’s 574 federally recognized tribes, would helm the federal agency most responsible for the well-being of the nation’s 1.9 million Indigenous people."

The Times story also noted that her nomination was supported by more than 120 tribal leaders.  Rep. Haaland is politically skilled as past leader of the New Mexico Democratic Party, where she helped turn the state blue.  She was elected to the House in 2018, one of the first two American Indian women in Congress.  She became a forceful opponent of Trump policies to open public land to destructive fossil fuel exploitation.

  With a compelling personal story, she describes herself as a 35th generation American.  Now she will be the cabinet officer overseeing American lands and waters, and their public voice.