A Better Mousetrap

See How They Run is a parody of a whodunit that’s as engaging a whodunit as Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap, the whodunit it parodies.

Patrons leaving the Screening Room rate the film with laughter punctuated with single words: hilarious, wild, entertaining. The word wacky is seconded by nodding heads across the lobby.

Several sight gags force me to laugh aloud in the back of the hall, something I try not to do for fear of a projectionist being a shill, but most of the audience is laughing just as quickly, so I likely go unnoticed.

Most credit for the comedy goes to a dead-pan cast, most memorably Saoirse Ronan as Constable Stalker. While her title role in Lady Bird (2017) and many of her supporting roles include comic moments, she’s best-known and regarded as the serious actor we’ve seen in Ammonite (2020), Brooklyn (2015), and Stockholm, Pennsylvania, directed by Newburyporter Nicole Beckwith in 2015. In See How They Run, Ronan is cast so far against type that you might wonder if it’s the same person–and if it is, how can she possibly do it?*

Adrien Brody, on the other hand, appears much as he does in Wes Anderson films, from The Grand Budapest Hotel to The French Dispatch, both as a sleazy director of a planned film adaptation of Mousetrap and as the jaded narrator of See How They Run. Both roles add to the laughs, and his narration, flippant as it is, makes the parody convincing no matter how whacky it gets.

Sam Rockwell’s “world-weary” detective is modeled more on A Prairie Home Companion‘s Guy Noir than on Sherlock Holmes or anyone from the film noir genre of the fifties. His unwanted pairing with the officious Stalker plays like a parody within a parody, as if Bogart and Bacall had sailed into Christie’s Mousetrap on the African Queen with a script from the Coen Brothers.

Worth noting here, before it is mistaken for a Wes Anderson or Coen Brothers film, that this is the directorial debut of Tom George, a veteran of British TV, who, as a Minneapolis reviewer best puts it, “nails the lighthearted tone and embraces verging-on-hokey jokes in the same way that Arrested Development used to.”

Examples abound: Of a possible murder weapon, Stalker says, “That’s the ski he took in the face and I’m afraid it was all downhill from there.”

There’s also the prissy playwright (David Oyelowo) who, during a flashback, rages against the suggestion he use flashbacks: “crass, lazy and they interrupt the flow of the story!” He then huffs, “What’s next? ‘Three weeks later’?” Cut to a subtitle: “Three Weeks Later.”

For all the zaniness, it’s the twists and turns of a plot loaded with suspects whose possible motives are as diverse as apples and oil-spills that keeps See How They Run running. Think of a jigsaw puzzle that changes its picture each time a new piece is added, and rather than you getting the picture, the picture gets you.

Like Stalker, we might jump to conclusions at each incriminating hint, but in the end the pieces all fall into place. As she finally gets to see the end of Mousetrap, we realize that all our laughter at crime implicates us in crime.

Near the end, there’s a sympathy-for-the-devil moment that raises a serious ethical question regarding art based on crime that may prompt debate when the laughter dies down.

This is not at all to say that we are guilty of or should atone for anything, but it does oblige us, as characters from both Mousetrap and See How They Run ask at the final curtain, not to reveal who dun it.

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If you are anywhere near Newburyport, Mass: https://www.newburyportmovies.com/

*About the name, Saoirse: She has been known to introduce herself as “SUR-sha, as in inertia.”

An Unusual Suspect

Like all good jig-saw puzzles, The Good Boss–a Spanish film that hardly needs subtitles to convey its American relevance–offers a variety of seemingly disparate pictures that overlap until we see it all fall into place near completion.

The full picture may be grim, but the various sub-plots with their surprising twists and turns are hilarious, especially the news that the factory owner’s wife keeps forgetting to tell her husband until it does more harm than good.

Blanco, played by Javier Bardem at his best, owns and operates a company that makes scales, thereby serving as the mother of all metaphors for a man who sees himself as a father figure promoting fairness and balance for his employees–and his company as a civic-leader both locally and nationally.

But there is fishing off the company dock, and The Good Boss keeps us guessing who is the fisher and who is the fish, not to mention which fish is on which line.

Add the rich and lavish sets, and Boss plays much like a film directed by Pedro Almodovar, as does the recent Spanish/Argentinian film with Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas, Official Competition. Both films attest to Almodovar’s influence on Spanish-language films.

Apart from inter-office affairs, Boss recalls The Usual Suspects if you pay close attention to how and when the word “favor” is used. As Blanco advises:

Sometimes you have to trick the scale to get the accurate weight.

The Good Boss is the only film I’ve ever seen and the only story I’ve ever heard in which no gun is ever fired, and yet a bullet drives home the point.

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https://www.newburyportmovies.com/starting-friday

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13066182/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

E Pluribus E

Got into the car yesterday to start home and heard a reporter on WBUR talking of the musical recordings of FC. Missed the opening of the story, which I assume included the identity of FC, and so the confusion I’m about to describe could be dismissed as my own fault.

In my defense, it is the nature of radio to serve an audience, much of which is on the road, getting in and out of cars at random times. Why else do they measure ratings according to morning and afternoon “drive times”? Or brag about “driveway moments”?

Since I liked the snippets of music I was hearing, the report drew my interest, and there was something satisfying about hearing that FC is a student at Northeastern University in Boston where I once taught.

Then the reporter says that “they are from Dorchester,” and I’m wondering who “they” are. Now I’m thinking that FC is the name of a group, possibly “Eff Cee,” and the reference was to one member who, back during the Clinton Administration, might have landed in my writing class.

Or maybe all of them, as I keep hearing “they” and “them” while driving out of Bradford, through Groveland, and into Georgetown. Yet, when the reporter aired FC’s answers in a pre-recorded interview, it was always the same single, high-pitched voice.

Eventually, one of those answers included the word “non-binary,” and soon after the reporter added that FC stands for “Felicia Clarice.” So it’s all explained by what is lately called “a preferred pronoun.” FC, who is one person, prefers to be mentioned as “they” and “them.”

By now you’ve heard the reasons why plural pronouns–they, them, their— should or should not be used for individual people.

Plurals have long been commonly used when the speaker does not know the identity of a person. When we say, “they ran a red light,” it is understood that the driver of the car could be he or she. This is different. This is a request–at times a demand–to use a plural pronoun when we do know the identity of the one person of whom we speak. As a consequence, journalists are expected to do this while audiences unknown to them supposedly keep track of the plural-for-singular references.

In a free and open society, those who consider themselves neither male nor female should not have to hear themselves referred to as either. On the other hand, news sources should be committed first and foremost to clarity, not to any preferences held by those about whom they report.

Lost in that debate is a third party: The English Language.

When someone says “my preferred pronouns,” they presume that a part of speech belongs to them. The error is not in the phrase “preferred pronoun,” but in the possession inherent in the pronoun, “my.” If pronouns “belong” to individual people, then logically so do nouns, adjectives, and other parts of speech. This is why it was been so easy for the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson to ridicule it.

So, too, easy-going people who support all gender rights but are always ready to share a laugh, like my editor, Helen Highwater, who says my pronouns should be “nit, wit, and twit” no matter what I prefer.

Among the sayings you may see on t-shirts and elsewhere is “Ask Me About My Pronouns.” Something crucial will be missing from any possible answer. At the risk of putting this in an uncomfortable political context, most everyone who agrees with the sentiment–or who, like me, agrees with the intent, but not the expression–is right now engaged in a contest. Round one is just two months away, round two two years from that.

Whether or not we believe in or respect non-binary genders, American elections are inescapably binary. No way around it, like it or not. One side supports gender rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, environmental protection, occupational safety, affordable education and healthcare. The other side does not. That first side bases much of its (our) argument on truth and accuracy in science, in history, in language. The second insists on myths, manipulating science, whitewashing history, distorting language.

What does it do to the first side if the second side can point at the request–now available on t-shirts–to “Respect My Pronouns,” and demand, as they will, that we “Respect Our Language”? What does it say that, in such a debate, theirs will be the most inclusive pronoun, our vs. my?

More to the point, what impression will it make on those with no connection to either side as they look for the more reasonable and comfortable choices put in the most understandable and familiar terms come this November, come 2024?

Anyone’s mere use of pronouns is unlikely to influence moderates or independent voters, but the insistent requests for their acceptance and general use cannot help advance any urgent rights or causes.

Worse than that, we will make the other side seem more reasonable, if only because they will be more clear.

Regrettably, the English Language has no more say in America 2022 than it did in Orwell’s Oceania 1984. Ironically, non-binary people are forcing a binary debate: Those for them vs. those against them.

Neither side would ever accept the existing singular, neutral pronoun, it. Nor should they, for a reason too obvious to state. Rather than argue either side of the case, here’s a proposal to satisfy both, along with the logic by which I arrived at it:

What do the words she and he have in common? The letters HE. So far, no good because this leaves us with one of the two pronouns we want to avoid. So what is there in he that is part of both she and he without indicating either?

Answer: E. Why not? We already have a single-letter pronoun. And like I, a long E, pronounced EE, for as long as you want it.

Some wise-ass, like the guy in the supermarket last week wearing the shirt that says “I don’t care about your pronouns,” might demand, ” What about H?”

Either he missed the first-grade instruction that every word has to have a vowel, or he actually thinks that while writing about how we must protect one rule–the plural pronoun–I’m going to endorse breaking another.

Be that as it may, the better reason to use E is sound. Moreover, like the word you, it will sound fluid in all three cases:

E was in the supermarket.
I ran into e at the supermarket.
I ran into es car in the supermarket parking lot.

Well, that’s what bumpers are for, but there might be another bump in that last example. Vocally, the S sounds fine following the long E. In print, the tendency might be to put an apostrophe between the two.

But pronouns are purposefully free of apostrophes, and for clarity’s sake we should keep them that way. Just as plurals should be kept plural.

I’ll be interested to hear from those whose everyday language might be altered by what I propose. Unlike that guy in the supermarket, I do care about pronouns.

Not my pronouns, not his pronouns, not your pronouns, not anyone’s pronouns, not even es pronouns, but pronouns that, like every noun, every verb, every adjective, every preposition, every article, belong to the English Language, each and every one.

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Here’s a proposal made over a year ago. Certainly preferable to the use of plurals, but the sound is unnatural, like an affected foreign accent.

Hard to imagine a grown man wearing such a thing, but I saw one last week.

Once Upon Next Weekend

Once plays the Firehouse just one more weekend. Wish I had seen it sooner so that my endorsement here could give you more time for an experience that truly is beyond categories of “play” or “musical.”

More than any other theatrical event, including the film on which it was based (a huge hit at the Screening Room 15 years ago), it recalls this line from the introduction to a book published in 2008:

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is not a painting. It is an event.

Once at the Firehouse is an event. It begins before the program tells us it starts, and it continues after we leave the hall and make our way toward the stairs or elevators. In this sense, it recalls Renaissance faires–where I will be the next eight weekends*–that begin and end outside the gates before they open and after they close.

Between times at the Firehouse, the acting and music in Once could not be more entertaining or enjoyable. So, too, innovations in sound and lighting and the ingenious positioning and movement of at least a dozen characters and all kinds of musical props.

My reluctance to offer any specifics is only to avoid spoiling any of many surprises. Instead, I’ll just say that this production of Once will be as memorable as the lines of the great Celtic ballad that it evokes:

… a time to rise and a time to fall
Come fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be with you all
Good night and joy be with you all

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* A strolling piper at King Richard’s, Carver, Mass., weekends, Sept. 3 – Aug. 23, at the gate opening and closing.

https://www.firehouse.org/event/once/all/

First time I ever saw a cellist wear and walk with the instrument while playing. I’m at least thrice his age and have been around musicians all my adult life.

True Places Never Are

When the September issue of Harper’s appeared with the headline, “Gall-Peters Reflections,” it rang a bell.

A short entry in the monthly magazine’s “Readings” section, it was a whimsical label for seven tweets posted by a Kenyan journalist this spring to report what was happening in Western countries.

No doubt many Americans would find it insulting to hear the USA called a “banana-exporting republic… where many reject modern medicine due to Christianist superstitions.”

If it’s any consolation, America is but one of many nations north of the Tropic of Cancer in the Kenyan’s scathing sights. The “tribally-divided” United Kingdom; “disease-ridden, war-torn sub-Scandinavian Europe”; and the Russia of “Slav warlord” Vladimir Putin all combine to form what Patrick Gathara, said Kenyan, vilifies as the “Caucasian bloc.”

All of it, he tweets:

… observes holy weekend of Easter, when shopping festivities mark ancestors’ sacrificial murder of Jesus Christ, a radicalized preacher of Mideastern appearance.

A lot going on there. Holy shopping? Ancestors’ murder? Jesus a radical? Brown skin! No doubt many Americans who identify themselves as “Christian Nationalists” and the Republican Party that now panders to their paranoia would demand that such talk be cancelled–along with books that teach honest American history–all while they condemn “cancel culture.”

As many cable news and social media pundits have pointed out since the 2016 presidential campaign, this is called “projection,” accusing your perceived opponents of doing the very things you yourself do.

As a movie theater projectionist since 1998, I’m a bit leery of the term, and opt for other ways to describe defensive deceit. Whenever possible, I’ll let the matter speak for itself, as does Gathara with hard-to-argue observations such as:

Fifteen killed during traditional school shooting in separatist region of Texas, in violence-prone, far northwestern U.S. republic, where surviving school gun attacks is a rite of passage and seen as preparation for adult life in a country with more guns than people.

Even the most adamant advocates of gun-safety legislation must flinch at the word “traditional” in this context. Clearly hyperbolic, but the obvious grains of truth in it are as irrefutable as in this:

Baby-food shortage is latest blow to the troubled nation once considered a stable lynchpin in Caucasian bloc but which has now endured years of corrupt rule, political and ethnic violence, disputed polls, an attempted coup, deadly disease, and climate-related disasters.

Wait! No matter how valid, if exaggerated, we think the Kenyan’s assessment, there is one factual, geographical error: Texas is not in the northwestern US, but in the southwestern US. Or did he intend that word to mean the entire USA? Before we charge Gathara with an error, let’s consult Gall-Peters.

In 1855, cartographers James Gall and Arno Peters offered a correction of the distortion that enlarged the northern hemisphere and diminished the southern on the widely used–to this day–Mercator map.

Gerardus Mercator drew his projection in 1569 when there was good reason to allow more space for the known European countries and the about-to-be explored and settled New World, most of it on or north of the Equator. No matter what history has done to that reason, you can bet that it will remain the preferred–nay, insisted upon–map of those who have manufactured and those who believe in the “Critical Race Theory” scare tactic that helps elect and re-elect governors deep in the heartlessness of Dixie.

Put it this way: If they are going to distort and suppress history and literature, they pretty much have to insist on distorted geography. Little have we realized that the teaching of geography is itself just as gerrymandered as our congressional districts.

Attachments below show a difference in what, in recent years, has been a recurring controversy in both political and educational spheres. Do Americans and Europeans view the world with a diminished view of African and South American nations, or an inflated view of our own? Do we groom our own children with that view?

As we all know, opinions here are sharp, hot, and polarized, but no matter which side you’re on, you can see why a Kenyan could not possibly apply the word “south” to Texas and would feel fully justified calling it “north.” Geography sides with him.

Turns out that “polarization,” like “projection,” plays tricks with meanings. So I learned when I asked my editor, Helen Highwater, another Harper’s subscriber, to weigh in on “Gall-Peters Reflections”:

Calling herself “an amateur Fullerite,” she favors the Dymaxion projection of 1954 which puts the North Pole at the center. (For a pic of Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion along with Mercator and Gall-Peters, see below.)

As flat renditions of a round surface, all maps unavoidably have some degree of distortion of size and/or shape of land masses. Imagine carefully peeling an orange to keep the peel in a single piece and then trying to press it to a flat surface. Dymaxion mitigates this by carving out empty spaces in what would otherwise be overly vast oceans.

What would Herman Melville say of so much oceanic redaction of his “watery world”? Answer to that may be the line in Moby-Dick where Ishmael tells us of Kokovoko, a South Pacific island that “is not down in any map. True places never are.”

While Dymaxion is more true to size and shape than Gall-Peters and Mercator, it is wildly disorienting regarding direction. Ditto a comparison of it to projections favored by National Geographic–Robinson of 1963 and Winkle tripel of 1921–which curve all four corners and correct Mercator’s distortion at the Equator (both also below).

To plan a trip with Dymaxion, you would no longer draw lines, but curves. The words north, east, west, and south would have no bearing, although you could use “north” to mean “center,” and “south” to mean “perimeter.” How could that possibly be helpful?

Here’s how:

With the Arctic melting away and shipping lanes already starting to open, Dymaxion could prove the most practical of all, especially to oil companies. Environmental writer Rebecca Solnit nailed this about five years ago when she wrote in Harper’s that Putin’s main motive to interfere in our 2016 election was not so much to elect Trump as it was to elect any Republican who would ease the sanctions that followed the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Those sanctions limited where Gazprom, Novotek, and Rosneft could drill in the Arctic. Moreover, Russian oil companies would gain four years of American refusal to approve any United Nation attempts to protect the Arctic.

Anyone who has paid any attention to news from Moscow in the ten years since Putin became president knows that he and his oil industry executives form an oligarchy that controls the country. As the late Sen. John McCain told CNN in 2015:

Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country. It’s kleptocracy. It’s corruption. It’s a nation that’s really only dependent upon oil and gas for their economy, and so economic sanctions are important.

Since sanctions are based on an expected result, we turn from geographic to economic projections. With a chuckle at how Dymaxion in 1954 indicated mean low annual temperature with colors, Highwater writes:

I have not studied why that scheme was given priority. Is it conceivable that mean low annual temp is the glue that bound civilizations (and capitalism) together (up to and including 1954)? In 2022, we might be more interested in mean high annual temperature.

“Might be”? She’s a master of understatement:

Seems to me humans as trend-observers will default to extending whatever trend they perceive at the moment that seems to deviate from the norm, rather blindly projecting that that trend will continue, unstoppable. Economic trend analyses seem especially prone to this, with the result that inflation is almost a kind of self-fulfilling phenomenon. When these trends follow novel paths, the economists resort to inventing new terms (e.g., stagflation), as if there must be a limited number of scenarios, rather than admit that the models are all impossibly simplistic.

We, especially policy-makers, hate admitting that random events will have (unpredictable by definition) effects. We might have better policies some of the time if we designed them with the help of the I-Ching or a coin toss!

So much for projections. Whether economic or geographic, psychological or political, they are all in play. This is why a Kenyan journalist has as much credence as anyone else at projecting a vulnerable developing nation’s view on industrial superpowers and military might. And why he can write about America being “a stable lynchpin” in the past tense while putting “Caucasian bloc” in both past and present.

Me? I’ll keep my projections on the big screen. Maybe Gathara will show up someday, and we can talk about a rectangle that never changes any sizes or shapes on it no matter who the projectionist is.

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https://open.lib.umn.edu/mapping/chapter/7-lying-with-maps/

https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/170723246891/mercator-vs-gall-peters-projection

Dymaxion Map

https://www.worldatlas.com/geography/world-map-robinson-projection.html

https://desktop.arcgis.com/en/arcmap/latest/map/projections/winkel-tripel.htm

Dropping Bluebird’s Mic

When the sound check with the lights still up morphs into the opening act, you know you’re in for something memorable.

Don’t know if Joe LeBlanc does this every month at the Bluebird Invitational Mic Night in Georgetown, Mass., or if he even does it consciously, but it works wonders to put a collection of ten or twelve performers in this new and unique venue at ease. The transition was so detailed–with guitar used as percussion and momentarily put on a loop–that each member of the audience could decide just when the show did, in fact, start.

His test, test, test as soundman was fascinating by itself, enabling him to jokingly hush the audience before strumming and singing Elton John’s “Rocket Man” as I’ve never heard it before, a soulful appeal to attend what comes next.

Making the familiar sound new introduced Bluebird’s co-hosts, Alyce Underhill and Lynne Deschenes, who initiated Bluebird’s monthly offerings in this second floor atop a small firehouse just north of Georgetown center.

All acts are local, and the first–John Hicks on guitar and Madeleine Downs shifting from violin to viola–got Bluebird off to a racy start with sets of Celtic jigs and reels. Hicks introduced one as “where I get to play my favorite instrument” and promptly sat in the audience where he tuned his ears to Downs’ endearing rendition of the traditional, “Down by the Salley Gardens,” named for William Butler Yeats’ love poem.

Composer Dianne Anderson followed on keyboards with “a piece from the Great American Songbook” that had the nostalgic feel of a Great Plains soundscape before playing her own “What to Wear” accompanying singer Anne Grant. The duo then torched Loren Allred’s “Never Enough,” a title that couldn’t be more American or up to date.

Underhill herself delivered a rapturous rendition of “The King of Rome,” a ballad by Dave Sudbury based on a true story about a carrier pigeon sent on an impossible journey that had us so enthralled we awaited the bird’s return through the Georgetown firehouse’s open windows.

Late in the show, Audi and Peter Souza evoked the working maritime days of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia with traditional songs that ranged from jolly-ho chanty to plaintive lamentation. Most moving was Cyril Tawney’s ballad, “The Oggy Man,” about food vendors selling oggies–something of a meat-pie shaped as a turnover–on the docks before the arrival of fast-food chains:

Well the rain’s softly falling and the oggy man’s no more
I can’t hear him calling like he used to before
As I pass through the gateway, I heard the sergeant say
The big boys are coming now, see their stand across the way
And the rain’s softly falling and the oggy man’s no more
The rain’s softly falling and the oggy man’s no more

Spaced among the musicians, two poets shared the mic, the first, Jac-Lynn Stark who ranged from wistful poems about love and aging to a blithe romp about gardening titled, “My Life as a Zucchini Sex Facilitator.” As one who never tended a garden, I found myself paying attention to the act for the first time in my life, only to wonder how long it will be before I plagiarize the line about sautéing.

Poet Lee Moss mixed an adamant resolution regarding Russia’s war on Ukraine with several ironic takes on everyday life, including his hilarious and equally stunning “Redial,” in which, out of pure curiosity, he dials–or punches in–his deceased Father’s cell-phone number. Whether you are hi-tech or neo-Luddite, you laugh at satire that cuts both ways.

Along with music and the spoken word, Bluebird features musicians playing instruments rarely seen or heard apart from period films. Filling that role were Adrienne Howard on hurdy-gurdy and Emily Peterson on concertina–both taking turns on fiddle. When they were done I tried to recruit them for King Richard’s Faire, but it’s too late for the season that opens Labor Day weekend. Keep your eye on listings of local coffee shops and perhaps an ear out at Beverly Depot where they sometimes perform.

And keep your eye and ear on all the venues for live performance throughout Essex County, from Newburyport to Lynn and from Lawrence to Gloucester. Coffee shops, bars, cafes, churches, schools, train depots, pedestrian malls are where you will find those who perform at The Bluebird Performance Venue in Georgetown.

There was one other act, but I should perhaps recuse myself from reviewing myself. So I tack this on as an optional sequel:

Had I any sense, I’d have begged off until the November show when I’d be fresh off the eight-weekend run of King Richard’s. But it was a great advantage to be scheduled next-to-last, and a patient and kind audience kept laughing at the good natured jokes I was able to poke at most everyone before me as a way to offset the rust.

Most were of the had-to-be-there variety, such as when I hinted at what the last lines of Lee Moss’ “Redial” implied about someone who never has and never will own a cell phone. That may have been the second-loudest laugh. He laughed, everyone laughed–except me.

Since I was asked to talk about my life as a street-performer–40 years ago this month I first played in downtowns Newburyport and Salem–I read a short piece from my book, Pay the Piper!, a street scene that captures both the joy and challenge of busking in America today titled, “Slip-Jig for Flute & SUV.”

I filled the back of the SUV with “zucchini awaiting sautéing.”

Bluebird’s September and October offerings are featured performances, full shows:

Sept. 10, 7pm — Unlaunch’d Voices: An Evening with Walt Whitman, a one-man play written by Michael Z. Keamy and performed by Stephen Collins.

Oct. 8, 7pm — Mark Mandeville & Raianne Richards, an eclectic duo with an eclectic assortment of instruments for songs both serious and humorous.

In November, Bluebird will resume its Invitational Mic.

http://thebluebirdperformancevenue.com/

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Cast cast in (approximate) order of appearance:

John Hicks & Madeleine Downs. Photo by Lee Moss.

Anne Grant and Dianne Anderson. Photo by Lee Moss.

Audi & Peter Souza. Photo by Lee Moss.
Catch them every other Monday, 5 to 8 pm, at Jalapenos in Gloucester with fellow singers known as Three Sheets to the Wind.
.

Lee Moss reading at the Walnut Street Coffee Cafe in Lynn. Photo by someone other than Lee Moss.
https://walnutstreet.cafe/

Some old guy playing a tenor recorder. Photo by Lee Moss.
An earlier (i.e. pre-zucchini) version of “Slip-Jig for Flute & SUV” appeared as a newspaper column on my 62nd birthday:
https://www.newburyportnews.com/opinion/slip-jig-for-flute-and-suv/article_96a8f274-a6b2-584c-bdf8-d10ca0378ebf.html

Adrienne Howard on hurdy-gurdy and Emily Peterson on concertina. Photo by Lee Moss.
Howard also joined the Souzas on a tune or two.

Call Me Mr. Alien

Today the two doors leading into Newburyport’s busiest supermarket were disgraced by tables nearby with the clipboard petitions of people soliciting signatures.

“Illegal aliens!”

A man at each repeated those two words as often as he could in a spiel about stopping a law that has to do with the issuance of drivers’ licenses in Massachusetts. The two men stepped toward approaching shoppers as they spoke while a woman seated at each table with more petitions, empty or full, cheered them on.

Those roles may have been reversed from time to time throughout the day for the sake of vocal chords if not feet. They were loud, and two words, repeated no less than every ten seconds, no matter the sense of the sentence, were emphatically loud:

“Illegal aliens!”

Took me by surprise. Newburyport?

The place wasn’t all that busy, and I was grateful that the few folks I saw go past them paid no attention. Me? Couldn’t resist:

“What would Jesus do?”

At first they didn’t know what to make of it, but when I kept walking with no move to sign, they must have realized that they had just “owned a lib” or “pissed off a libtard” or whatever their low-life expression is of late. And so they shared a laugh behind me.

On the way out, I was tempted to ask where they would be the next morning, a Sunday morning. Will they be at the doors of Catholic and Protestant churches filling the air before and after worship with “illegal aliens”? Are they so stupid that they’d take this crap to a synagogue? Would the contradiction even register on them? Or is there a separation of the Sermon on the Mount from their Sermon at the Mart?

No, I did not waste the time. And I left through the other door where the other couple was engaged with shoppers. One was signing. I looked over at the first table. A few shoppers there as well, one signing. A lot of talk, all of it punctuated by two words that rang aloud at both tables:

“Illegal aliens!”

Couldn’t help but note that everyone at both tables, shoppers and petitioners, was of Caucasian decent, as am I. Chances are that they all have grandparents or great-grandparents or ancestors further back, who arrived in America as immigrants, as did mine. By the definitions of their own slurs, their own ancestors were “aliens,” nor were they legally here until they had been processed through customs–a process that most everyone they call “illegal” has either been through or is going through.

But doesn’t “illegal aliens” sound so much more menacing than “undocumented immigrants awaiting naturalization”?

The sight of shoppers, mostly middle-aged, some elderly, signing those hate-sheets was demoralizing. No telling how many are well-intentioned folk fooled by the slur or how many are racists grateful for yet another excuse to express it without admitting it. Surely, none of them realize the implied denunciation of their own ancestors.

Don’t know what their deadline is to submit signatures, or if I’ll see them and hear their slurs again. But, if so, I will sign. They want a name? Oh, I’ll give them a name! Not going to give it away right now, but my initials will be IA.

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Apparently the bill has stalled for two years. This photo and story are from New Bedford, 2020:
https://www.newbedfordguide.com/massachusetts-immigrant-drivers-license-bill-stalls-in-house/2020/07/29

Convenience a la Mode

Somewhere in New Hampshire a friend wrenched his shoulder while unloading a truck. As men do, he tried to ignore the discomfort, believing it would go away.

Instead, it turned to pain. Before long, he didn’t think he could drive a car and had to ask his wife for a ride to the hospital.

Listening to this, not wanting to slow the story or inhibit the telling, I took no notes, but based on where I know they live, they went to either Portsmouth or Exeter. Whichever it was, as soon as they walked in, they saw a crowd and walked back out.

Somewhere else in Rockingham County they found one of those medical chains that have appeared everywhere in recent years. This one was Convenient MD, where they received a very nice, soothing welcome from a friendly receptionist, filled out some forms, including billing information of course, and were soon introduced to a nurse.

The nurse worked her fingers around my friend’s shoulder only to admit that there was nothing she could determine for certain without a x-ray, and that the staff’s radiologist had already gone home for the day. She referred them to a nearby medical center.

Third time’s a charm, and not long after they arrived at the center, my friend had some treatment, some pain-killers, and a sling he wore for barely a week.

All’s well that end’s well as whatshisname put it–except that the story doesn’t end there.

One month later, my friend received a bill for $15 from Convenient MD. Well, alright, the nurse did spend some time with him and gave the referral. And it is a pittance. He did raise his eyebrows at the amount, there on his bill, that Convenient MD charged Medicare–just over $200 as I recall–but, hey, if this is what America wants as a healthcare system, ain’t nothin’ we can do about it.

Except the story doesn’t end there either.

Weeks later, Convenient MD sent him another bill, this time for over $160, and the charge to Medicare was proportionally higher. My friend was soon on the phone.

After calls to both Medicare and Convenient MD, not only was he able to rip up the bill in front of him, he was told he’d be reimbursed for the bill he already paid. When he told them that he’d “have no choice but to contact Medicare” (even though he already had), he was assured that it, too, would be “fully reimbursed.” Days later, a $15 check arrived in the mail.

“Hush money!” I yelled.

“Yes!” he laughed.

“And it was your own $15!”

He laughed again, but he wasn’t hushed. He made a second call to Medicare to report what happened, giving them all they need to pursue reimbursement if Convenient MD reneged on what they told him. Put another way: The ball is in Medicare’s court.

We can only wonder about how widespread this is. In our privatized healthcare system, the elderly on Medicare must appear as low hanging fruit. They (we) are less prone to question bureaucratic details, as when my friend simply paid the first bill–even though he noticed the $200 charge to Medicare for a thirty-second shoulder massage.

The second bill was either a mistake, such as confusing him with another patient that day, or Convenient MD, for whatever reason (or haywire algorithm), thought it could bilk him for more–and in the process, Medicare for a lot more.

It’s an old trick, and on the internet it’s called phishing. Nor is it confined to the private sector.

Back in the ’90s, the city of Boston put cameras over busy intersections to photograph plates of cars at the end of those lines that cross as the light turns from yellow to red. Tickets would be sent out automatically.

This was already ruled illegal by courts across the country, but the higher-ups knew that most people would pay the fine rather than take a Tuesday afternoon off work to find their way into a downtown courtroom to contest the ticket.

Those who did show up in court had the ticket repealed. Every. Single. One.

If enough of us keep an eye on the bills we receive and are willing to drop a dime and raise a voice, Medicare’s court should work just as well.

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https://cahealthadvocates.org/have-your-new-medicare-card-beware-of-new-scams/

Ain’t Over Even When It’s Over

A friend tells me that he was recently on the phone with a relative who, while climbing a corporate ladder, was transferred to Charlestown, South Carolina.

Most memorable was a statement screamed into my friend’s ear. He wanted to convey the emotion he heard, but tried to muffle it so as not to attract the attention of other diners at Newburyport’s Park Lunch, as loud as the din in that place can be:

These people still think the war isn’t over! The Civil War! They call it the War of Northern–they say Nawthun–Aggression or War between the States! Whatever, they don’t know they lost!

Before his attempt to muffle himself expired, I tried to calm him down: “And we expect them to know that an election two years ago is over?”

“Yahhhhh!” he bellowed. That caught some attention from nearby, but it was easy to deflect in a sports bar.

“Damned Yankees!” I shouted just as loud.

The two of us then smiled and nodded in agreement with all those around us who had no idea what they were agreeing to. All of it went unquestioned likely because the Boston Red Sox just took two out of three games from the New York Yankees in a series that ended Sunday night. Had I been sitting at another table, I’d have made the assumption myself.

Reminds me of how geographically, culturally, psychologically, and politically telescopic the name “Yankee” is.

Most historians think the word evolved from Native American attempts to say “English” throughout the colonies, and was then applied to all European settlers, including the Dutch in what was first named New Amsterdam. This may be why, to this day, every American from any state is a Yankee overseas.

Come back here, and it is just us in the North and Midwest who are Yankees in the suspicious South. To Mid-Westerners, the name is not for them, but just for New Yorkers and New Englanders, maybe New Jerseyans and Eastern Penners. Up in Northern New England, they embrace the name as their own, but in Southern New England, Yankees are a detestable baseball team with deplorable fans that we would not root for if they played Al Qaeda.

Even in New York City, many residents of its five burrows place “Yankees” specifically in the Bronx, a name not to be used for anyone or anything in Queens, home of a rival team named New York Mets–and certainly not Manhattan where the Giants played or Brooklyn where the Dodgers played before both teams moved west. No word on Staten Island’s preferred proper noun.

From the sound of it, many elderly fans in Brooklyn think the Dodgers are still there, dodging trolleys that aren’t there either. Like my friend’s relative in Charlestown, they prove that Yogi Berra was wrong. It ain’t over even when it’s over.

Both cases remind me of the chasm between what Americans like to know and what we need to know. Unless you are employed by one of the 30 major league teams, baseball has no direct impact on your life. What happens at the polls in November of every even-numbered year in all fifty states does, no matter how far you want to think you are removed from it–no matter how far above you think you are from it.

As it is, Republican nominees for the US Congress and for statewide offices all over the country have won primaries by declaring that the 2020 election was stolen, and will do what they can to undo that result–state by battleground state where, if they win this November, they will be the ones to certify electoral ballots in 2024. In effect, 2020 ain’t over any more than 1860. The Confederacy did rise again, flags and all.

But that warning will be heeded only by those who seek what they need to know.

Those content with only what they like to know may want to consider, at least, what the chant, “Yankees Suck!” actually means in the real world.

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Boston? No. Massachusetts? No. New England? No. The Carolinas? No.
Caracas, Venezuela.
http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/latinam/la01a.html

https://simple-movie.com/movie/yankee_doodle_dandy/

Of Abolition & Abortion

A new book provocatively titled The Color of Abolition offers a look at William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass that few have ever seen and that many may rather not see.

Any quick description of it would be enough for those who regard everything in absolutes to either dismiss it as “bashing” or revel in having yet two more progressive heroes brought low–no matter that no one on either side of that divide will ever read the book.

As one who has read it, I’ll offer that, while it reveals shortcomings of Garrison and Douglass, allies-turned-rivals, it does far more to highlight the work of both as vital to bringing about the Emancipation Proclamation.

As well as highlighting the mostly unknown work of one Maria Weston Chapman of Weymouth who gets equal billing in a book subtitled, How a Printer, a Poet, and a Contessa Moved a Nation. Born of the manor–and with five sisters “all single and all devoted to the movement” serving as her staff–Weston Chapman helped underwrite the Underground Railroad and raise legal fees to protect those caught in the North after escaping the South.

Here’s where the surprise regarding Garrison begins. Weston Chapman didn’t just keep The Liberator afloat. She became its de facto business manager, and often its editor, filling in for Garrison during his speaking tours and more-than-occasional medical leaves. Like Garrison, she also wrote much of the copy.

If that wasn’t enough, she arranged Douglass’ speaking tours and gave him introductions to influential patrons in both America and England–all while organizing auctions of pricey European donations held by a network of women throughout New England and New York.

This triumvirate worked well enough to force the issue of slavery onto the floors of Congress following years of a gag order imposed by the South. Among the highlights of The Color of Abolition is its treatment of the debate–still maddeningly relevant today–over whether the Constitution is a pro-slavery document.

This is where Garrison and Douglass parted ways. Garrison held that it was, and therefore there could be no political solution, only disunion. Douglass saw potential in the document for a political solution. He negotiated with Whigs, Northern Democrats, and the short-lived Liberty and Free Soil parties before befriending Abraham Lincoln who, two months before the assassination, told him that there was no one in America whose opinion he valued more.

On the surface, it was a meeting of two true Americans while the uncompromising, humorless (due to chronic ill-health?) Garrison and the intense, “privileged” Weston Chapman fade into oblivion–except that author Linda Hirshman doesn’t let us forget that it was Garrison’s (and Weston Chapman’s) Liberator that moved the earth in ways that would put Lincoln in the White House, and made it possible for Douglass to get anywhere near it.

We can also credit Hirshman for filling us in on this unknown role of women–and a leading role of one woman, not to mention her own literal sisterhood–in the Abolitionist movement. As she says in her introduction, “no social movement in American history matters more.” As the author of Reckoning: The Epic Battle against Sexual Abuse and Harassment (2019) as well as Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Changed the World (2015), she should know.

My hunch is that she undertook a history of Abolition for its parallels to what is unfolding today regarding abortion. Seemed clear to everyone with the exception of senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska that all three Trump appointments to the Supreme Court were intended to overturn Roe v. Wade.* Just as clear as when the Fugitive Slave Act was intended to impose Southern oppression in Northern states, no matter the South’s own claims of “states’ rights” and the euphemistic “popular sovereignty.”

Hirshman describes the anguish of Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice Lemuel Shaw in upholding the hated law. Prior to that he was legally able to rule in favor of those who escaped enslavement. She notes that Shaw was the father-in-law of Herman Melville who turned him into a model for the anguished Capt. Vere in his last novel, Billy Budd.

Today, Shaw and Vere may both serve as models for judges across the nation faced with state laws that place bounties on women who cross state lines, with severe penalties for family, friends, nurses, and doctors who assist and care for them. Hirshman’s description of the Fugitive Slave Act makes it easy, if chilling, to see how it will serve as a model for a national law to outlaw abortion should the Republicans regain control of Congress and the White House.

But Hirshman’s ultimate verdict is not entirely bleak. Speaking of her three leading characters:

Their relationship raises all the questions of whether an alliance across race, sex, and class can survive. The answer is unsurprisingly yes. And no. Their paths to abolition reflected the rise of the movement. Their alliance fueled a crucial decade. And their breakup, sending Douglass to the politicos, perversely led to its triumph.

What if the Republican breakup of Roe v. Wade sends women and men who never before voted–as well as young people who have just reached voting age–en mass to the polls?

Could it be that Trump’s three cynical appointments to the Supreme Court will perversely lead to America’s way out of today’s Dark Ages?

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https://www.harvard.com/book/the_color_of_abolition/

*If you wonder why I name just two Republican women when every Republican senator voted in favor of Trump’s three appointments, it’s only because the rest of them, including a few women, were–and still are–in on the scam.