For those who have been reading Mouth of the River, whether following it or tuning in now and then or trying it for the first and/or last time, please know that your comments are welcome.
Except when they say nothing about the content of the blog.
Yesterday, my blog headlined “A Pair of 17-Year-Olds” commented on a meme that juxtaposed photos of Greta Thunberg with a megaphone at a rally and of Kyle Rittenhouse with an automatic rifle at a protest. The meme turned the two into emblems for left and right: “Our 17-year-old vs. their 17-year-old.”
Here, in its entirety, is the comment made this morning:
yours is trying to make the world a better place while ours already did.
The blog, very short by Mouth of the River standards, offers context for both, none of which was in the meme. Also worth noting that I dropped the pronouns, “our” and “their,” for the sake of a comparison that I’ve not heard anyone else make:
A Trumper could (post) this identical (meme) and expect–and get–agreement. Those who approve of the acquittal do so not in spite of violence, death threats, intimidation, and racism, but because of them.
No telling if the commenter chose to ignore that line or if he ever saw it. It is a habit of right-wingers–and, yes, many left-wingers and tail-enders–to react to a headline, a photo, and what little appears on the post before the link to the full article. That’s why the comments sections on many news sources’ websites are filled with superficial dismissiveness, platitudes and cliches, and personal attacks that have nothing to do with the subject.
There’s nothing in this morning’s comment that indicates any knowledge of what is in the post. Therefore, it will not be added to it.
However:
Thankful am I that this (non)reader has, albeit unwittingly, proved my point. Rather than let him get lost in the comments section of a past blog, I’ve chosen to make him the subject of this new one. As for the “better world,” numerous posts and comments by Rittenhouse supporters responding to comparisons of him to Greta Thunberg and to poet Amanda Gorman use the word “trying” for them and “already did” for the vigilante
What could they possibly have in mind but the National Rifle Association’s vision of a gun in every belt and pocketbook?
This morning’s commenter is invited to answer this question, but only if he can manage the 350 words leading up to it.
This weekend, supporters of Kyle Rittenhouse have been all over social media posting a litany of items beginning with “I didn’t know…” They appear to justify the 17-year-old’s taking of a friend’s step-father’s automatic rifle into a protest that was getting out of hand.
We are told that these are details that the “mainstream media” do not report or “do not want you to know.” But when we consider that those who make this claim are people who never read past headlines and captions on memes, we realize that these are details coincidental to the case.
In fact, they have been reported by news sources, but not emphasized as they are on media outlets that feed paranoia and cynicism.
The list–attached below–is a copy being pasted into many threads as well as posts on its own regarding the verdict. While it is carefully worded and cherry-picked, it works on the assumption that we accept something that has always been considered illegal and profoundly un-American:
A right to take the law into our own hands.
This is why Rittenhouse supporters waver between a claim of self-defense and a claim of defending a gas station. For the second claim, he had to actively impose himself onto the scene, all of which contradicts the first claim.
Though a very different subject, the verdict is like the recent ruling in Texas that offers bounties for anyone informing on women seeking an abortion or health clinics that might provide it–or even a friend who might give her a ride to the clinic.
There’s a word for what the two have in common: Vigilantism.
The pasted litany also assumes that we accept yet another profoundly un-American principle: That we can harm or kill people and, after the fact, look into their backgrounds and find—and, if needed, magnify–something that could justify violence against them.
Sure, the media makes mistakes, and the right is well-practiced in seizing technicalities to discredit the entirety of a report. Did he have the gun before or after crossing the state line? Who drove the car? But the case was about what happened that night, not about what any victims may have done in the past.
If I’m wrong about that last point, then why do these commenters and their news sources never mention the litany of unarmed African Americans that have been shot and killed by police over the years? Or in recent years? Or just the one in Kenosha who was shot in the back while getting into his car?
For that reason, it’s worth looking at the timelines of these, um, copycats to see what, if anything, they are capable of saying on their own. In a way, do onto them as they do unto the victims in Kenosha. The result is unsurprising.
Meanwhile, unless the Justice Dept. intervenes and wins cases before a Trump-stacked Supreme Court, we will watch vigilantism become the law of the land.
As it does, vigilantes bringing ARs to protests will recur. And the Second Amendment will nullify the First.
I didn’t know the gas station where it all started and where Kyle stayed up until they started attacking him, is owned by his grandparents. They came on to his property to attack him.
I didn’t know that Kyle put out a dumpster fire that was being rolled down to a gas station to blow up, with people all around.
I didn’t know that the Police were told to stand down as businesses were destroyed.I didn’t know that Kyles Dad, Grandma and Friends all lived in Kenosha, 20 minutes from where he resided with his Mom part time in Illinois.
I didn’t know that someone knocked Rittenhouse down twice and then attempted to kick him with lethal force to the head.
I didn’t know that Huber had hit him in the head 2x with a skateboard.
I didn’t know Gaige Grosskreutz, aimed his gun at Kyle first, as he admitted on the stand.
I also didn’t know that in the State of Wisconsin, it is legal for Kyle to have a gun, even at 17 (which was why the gun charge was dismissed).
I didn’t know that Kyle did not cross state lines with a gun he wasn’t supposed to have. The rightful gun owner did, as he was legally permitted to do.
I also didn’t realize that Rosenbaum was a 5 time convicted child rapist and that Huber was a 2 time convicted woman beater.
I didn’t know that Grosskreutz was a convicted Burglar with an assault on his record also. IF THE MEDIA DID THEIR JOB… we would ALL have known this and tax payers dollars would not be wasted and more division created!
You may have already seen a meme going viral, posted two weeks ago with over seven thousand shares, many of them these past 24 hours following The Verdict.
The poster–at least the one that reached my newsfeed, one Dale West whom I’ve never met but whom I can forgive for likely being a Buffalo Bills fan because so much written on his profile sounds like my own–added this intro:
When you are looking for the basic difference between the left and the right, look to the young.
On the meme itself:
Our 17-year-old vs. their 17-year-old.
The graphic is a pair of photographs: On the right, Greta Thunberg with a megaphone addressing a rally; on the left, Kyle Rittenhouse with an automatic rifle walking into a protest.
Those who have paid any attention to a world beyond their own small circle of friends know that the rally was to call attention to–and a call to action for–the environment. They also know that the protest was in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following yet another shooting and killing of an unarmed African-American by law officers.
Don’t know if West gave any thought to adding that background to the meme, but I’m glad he didn’t. If he does catch the attention of the inattentive, it might do some good, make some impression, feel somehow urgent if they look for it themselves.
So, kudos to West–both down the middle and wide left–for posting or reposting what is a fresh angle on the troubled picture of a divided nation. However, for all that, we might wonder if the angle wide left would be no different if kicked wide right.
A Trumper could make this identical post and expect–and get–agreement. Those who approve of the acquittal do so not in spite of violence, death threats, intimidation, and racism, but because of them. Same is true of supporting Trump, and now that he has control of the Republican Party, it’s true of anyone who votes for them.
We keep saying that we should heed and learn from history. On the other hand, we scold each other that nothing today can be compared to certain things in the past.
Which is it? With or without permission, I keep reading about Europe in the 1930s and one thing is glaringly clear: Calls for “bipartisanship” now are the American equivalent of calls for “appeasement” then.
Is it possible that only the 17-year-olds on both sides have that figured out?
Just in time for Christmas! A new video game that will allow your child or grandchild to join a team of arsonists!
What wonderful, exciting fun! The “A-Team” torches a building in the dead of night and then sticks around to fight off firefighters and police.
Not only do Little Billy and Sweet Suzie thrill in the delight of splashing gas and striking a match, they then develop language skills when residents nearby arrive to see the raging blaze.
Seems impossible, but they learn–without no dull thought of school–to call attention to flames reaching skyward to convince spectators that, if the firefighters were at all competent, the fire would be doused already.
At first it appears that residents are ready to support the men and women in uniform, but thanks to the increased language skills of your little loved ones, spectators begin to cheer and at times join the A-Team.
Not only that, but the arsonists boast that they oppose “official” incompetence. This, they contend, should compel the public to replace all their firefighters and police with the A-Team, including your cute little bundles of joy.
To increase their fun and excitement, the game allows for pasting their own faces on their avatars!
But more! You can also paste the faces of anyone they or you do not like–a strict teacher, a liberal senator, a New York Yankee–onto the firefighters they will battle!
So, this Christmas be sure to help your precious loved ones grow up, as one US Representative encouraged his followers this week, to “be armed, be dangerous, and be moral!”
As is true of all video games, this could never happen literally.
Allegorically?
For those who think that all the news they need is in memes–or in the headlines, photo captions, and opening lines that appear on a post before you get to the link–it may come as a surprise that Republican legislators who voted against the infrastructure bill are already taking credit for the funds and jobs that will soon flow into their districts.
Excuse, me. Let’s change “may” to “would” because they will never read deep enough into any account to find out, nor will their preferred “news” outlets ever tell them, nor will they believe anyone who tries to tell them.
If they stopped at all for this post, they either left it right away, or they are right now shopping for a video game called “Burn, Babies, Burn!” to put under the tree.
Those who already know of the trick–taking credit for what you oppose–also know that it is Republican MO. Anyone with an attention span will recall that most Republicans did this with first stimulus bill following the COVID shutdown last year.
Anyone over the age of 30 with a memory will recall it early in Obama’s first term when Republicans opposed the Affordable Care Act only to take credit for the benefits within their districts.
Arsonists charged with their crime can only hope that no witness had an attention span that connected their preparations to the act–like Kyle Rittenhouse–or no memory to recall what they may have said of their intent days before.
Republicans count on both.
And it has served them well. For decades, when in power, they have slashed taxes on the wealthy and regulations regarding occupational safety and environmental protection. When the public suffers from the consequences of their cuts, Republicans blame government.
When not in power, they delay and obstruct all attempts to undo their own damage. No matter the issue, the evidence, the truth, they repeat Reagan’s simple-minded line: “Government is not the solution. Government is the problem.”
Because most people see only results, or lack thereof, those who deliberately screw up self-government are rewarded. All they have to do is call it a screw up, and most will agree. Meanwhile, those who try to make government work are punished when most of the public sees only the failure and not the reason for it.
Screw it up, then call it screwed up and get credit for saying its screwed up.
More often than not, the American public falls for this.
It’s as if we prefer arsonists over firefighters, which is why we might as well stop feeding our children and grandchildren lies like “Honesty is the best policy” and “Crime doesn’t pay,” along with farce-fantasy such as “Land of the free, home of the brave.”
Instead we should be giving them violent video games, maybe even encourage them to photoshop the faces of actual firefighters and police onto the characters they can kill while some unnamed city–always a city—goes up in flames.
There’s a Republican congressman who has already done that. The Democrats voted to censure him, but in truth, such as truth is in 2021 America, he should be held up as a role model.
Eventually, he will be. Just as Kyle Rittenhouse already is for treating his night out in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as a video game.
So be sure to get “Burn, Babies, Burn!” for Little Billy and Sweet Suzie this Christmas–and be sure it’s Christmas and none of that damned PC bullshit!
Not long ago, coincidental to my withdrawal pains from King Richard’s Faire, NPR’s 1A (as in First Amendment) aired an hour-long show on Renaissance festivals. Among the panelists was the author of a book titled Well Met, but I missed the show’s opening and did not catch her name.
Nor did I notice the description when I put a hold on Well Met later that day on the Newburyport library’s website. Eager to have it, I saw the title and hit send. Next day, thinking that I was about to spend the weekend with a history of Renaissance faires and their relationship to the American counterculture since the Sixties, I picked up a rom-com.
I might have left it there, listened again to the opening of the radio show (link below still available), caught the name, and returned to NPL for the book I wanted. But all the blurbs on the back cover were about the renfaire setting–always an E on that word when speaking of my people–and tell-tale words popped out from the pages I flipped through: pirates, roses, ladies-in-waiting, kilts, swords, face painting, tiaras, human chess game, pub sing, joust, patrons dressed as Jack Sparrow, and unavoidably, turkey legs.
All that led me to the ultimate test of a book’s worth, the opening line:
I didn’t choose the wench life. The wench life chose me.
How could I put that down? And so it was that I spent, not a weekend, but a long day into night with Jen DeLuca’s 2019 adult romance, alternately laughing at her non-stop wit and marveling at how close her descriptions of a fictional, small-town faire in Maryland come to the behind-the-scenes dynamics that I see eight weekends every year in Carver, Mass.
If nothing else, I gained a new appreciation for the effort many Rennie women make with their bodices, corsets, hoops, and whatever else is, um, under there. As narrator Emily tells us after Stacey, a veteran wench named “Beatrice,” helps her into garb on the first day:
I extricated my hands from my dress and made sure I was tucked in before taking a breath, but it stopped before halfway through. Deep breaths were apparently off the menu. I tried smaller sips of air… Much better. I gave her a thumbs-up before adjusting the chemise until it sat even in a ruffle over my breasts.
And damn, said breasts looked pretty good. The tight lacing of the bodice had sucked everything in and pushed it all up, and… damn. I should look into wearing these all the time. Well, maybe not all the time. Breathing once in a while would be nice.
As skeptical, snarky Emily arrives with her eager niece at faire for the first time and takes her first looks around, I wondered how long I might tolerate the guilty pleasure. At first I assumed it had to be juvenile fiction (or YA for Young Adult), specifically for teenage girls, but some of the observations of men in kilts soon disabused me of that notion. Later on are scenes that could put a film adaptation on the border of R and X ratings.
Tempting to cast King Richard’s performers, present and past, in the lead roles if there’s to be one. Suffice to say that I was seeing and hearing them as I read. Had the book been written 20 years ago, I’d swear that Queen Elizabeth–there is no king–was modelled on Bodge Burinski, queen of at least four festivals that took her from Arizona to Wisconsin to New York and King Richard’s where she reigned from its inception in 1982 to her passing in 2002. Although WellMet‘s queen stays in Willow Creek year-round, that she owns a bookstore named Read It and Weep makes the comparison irresistable.
I’ll leave a plot summary to “The Voyaging Bookworm,” link below, but I will add that, in addition to being a treat for Rennies, there’s plenty here for anyone who loves literature. Though Bookworm doesn’t mention it, Well Met‘s plot could well be a modern day twist on Much Ado About Nothing, and there’s plenty of nostalgia for anyone who has ever been in a Beatrice vs. Benedict relationship.
Shakespeare provides one of the most provocative scenes when Emily proposes that the faire add four bards all claiming to be him. This is what scholars and writers have for years called “the authorship controversy,” the idea that the farmer’s son from Avon was a front-man for Christopher Marlowe (PBS made a strong case a few years ago) or the Earl of Oxford (Mark Twain over a century ago) or Francis Bacon (me after a few bottles of IPA). If KRF wanted to add Dueling Bards, I might audition for one of those parts, preferably Marlowe, modelling the role on John Hurt’s turn as Shakespeare’s friend/rival in 2013’s Only Lovers Left Alive.
Curiously, the artistic director–an English teacher who serves as the Benedict to Emily’s Beatrice (not to be confused with Stacy’s character of the same name)–rejects the idea because he doesn’t want to fill the heads of young patrons with “kooky conspiracy theories” before they reach his class. That is as close to political commentary as Well Met comes.
Another laugh howling close to home, though I suspect others did this in preparation for their first year, was this advice to the novice villagers, most of them high schoolers: Watch Harry Potter movies. Harry was in print but not yet on film when I signed on in 1999. What I found, instead, was a cable station that was playing Shakespeare in Love on a loop. Kit Marlowe, played by Rupert Everett, had to be looking down–or maybe up–at me.
The lessons in dress, manners, and speech were all just in time for my first day, reminding me of something that is easy for Rennies to forget, if only because we become part of it: The sensation of sight and sound that envelopes patrons as they enter our gates. Author DeLuca may spend too much time lingering on the sight of Captain Ian Blackthorne’s leather pants or the sound of Emily’s heartbeat, but she nails a renfaire’s opening as surely as her own opening line.
Guilty or not, Well Met was a pleasure not by being about a renfaire, but by bringing one to life. For those who have more of a taste than I for the sentiment and repetition of romantic comedy, it is the first of a series. Well Played and Well Matched are also set at the Willow Creek Renaissance Festival, though the narrators change, and Played is told by Stacey. Turns out that the “date” with an undisclosed FWB she mentions to Emily in a late scene serves a tease for DeLuca’s next book. Well Played indeed!
Must admit it will be difficult not to pick one up before plowing into what appears to be a dry history already on my desk, no matter the opening chapter title, “Welcome to the Sixties!”
Judging from the reactions of Screening Room patrons, The French Dispatch is yet another wild, raucous ride with the always-animated Wes Anderson at the directorial wheel, or it’s a head-scratcher that still has them smiling as they look at the projectionist and say “interesting” as they leave.
When this projectionist was able to join them in the theater, I landed firmly on the wild side. Much like Anderson’s 2014 The Grand Budapest Hotel, this is so wild that a shoot-out barely covers audience laughter, so wild that a car chase near the end turns into animation–so reminiscent of Triplettes of Belleville (2003) that it had to be a tribute.
In each of its “sections,” the film is certainly a tribute–or a “love letter” as one reviewer calls it–to the golden age of American newspapers and editors such as the one played by Bill Murray back in the early 20th Century when they offered full-length essays in more sections than many of today’s papers have pages.
As for the not-in-Kansas-anymore setting in a “fictional” city, French Dispatch also recalls Woody Allen’s 2011 Midnight in Paris. For Allen, it was a celebration of the arts of American ex-pats; for Anderson, it’s all satire.
From start to finish, French Dispatch is a visual treat, as if every frame could have been the film’s poster, ranging from luscious color to black-and-white. It’s also full of laugh out loud moments, especially aimed at The Arts.
Maybe I was laughing so hard at Adrien Brody’s art-dealer and Frances McDormand’s correspondent in the opening sections, that I missed Benicio Del Toro’s faux-Pablo Picasso in the arts section. But the second half includes Jeffery Wright’s faux-James Baldwin who shares a worth-admission-all-by-itself exchange with “Nescaffier,” a gourmet chef played by Steve Park that has me craving a second look and listen–though I’ll pass on the radishes.
In a film that spoofs America’s strange historic, cultural, and emotional ties to Paris, that may have been Hemingway hit by Owen Wilson’s bike and I missed him.
With gratitude to military veterans in New England we honor this day:
If you enjoy sitting outside from mid-spring into mid-fall, or if you work a second shift, there’s a chance you may tune in to WEEI or one of its many affiliates throughout the six states for the first few innings of Red Sox baseball as the sun goes down.
Have you noticed that, at the end of the commercial break before the first pitch of each game, the play-by-play announcer tells us, “We just had a stirring rendition of the National Anthem by (the singer’s name). And the anthem was broughtto you by Mutual of America, financial services and retirement plans” (emphasis mine)?
This has been going on for years. Without even bothering to air it, WEEI turns our national anthem into an ad. Up until this year, I just shrugged as if to dismiss it as “the way of the world.” But when it started happening again this spring, I heard it in a larger context. Some might call it “fake news,” others a “big lie.” Without getting into right-left politics, let’s just say that, in the parlance of the day, I started “pushing back.”
This season, I have raised the objection with WEEI, the Boston Red Sox, the Boston Globe (part of the Sox ownership team), and WGBH (which claims to be “Boston Public Radio”). No answer.
I then petitioned the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. Patriotism aside, an ad that claims something is “brought to” us without being aired has to be a violation of any law requiring “truth in advertising,” if there is such a thing. If not, it is a clear violation of language, logic, and therefore, ethics—a word that appears in the title of an acclaimed PBS-distributed newsmagazine that Mutual of America itself funds, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. The response was a short form letter saying, in effect, thank you, but there’s no harm done.
All of what you have just read was in a letter that I sent on July 19 to the Mutual of America Life Insurance Company in Providence. Again, no answer.
Please note that I have not contacted any veterans’ organizations. My understanding of citizenship tells me that this is an issue that should be resolved by the public at large. The flag and the anthem belong to all of us, and should not require any segment of the population to protect them—any more than any private interest should cash in on them.
Moreover, my understanding of journalism and of “public” airwaves tells me–or at least told me–that news outlets and radio stations are obligated to act in the public interest. And shouldn’t a sports organization that takes the name of a city answer to its people?
In conclusion, I told them that, unless Mutual of America acts, I will have run out of options and will ask veterans groups to intercede. To avoid any linkage of this with the Red Sox pennant race and playoffs, I have waited until the end of baseball’s season to approach you.
Joining with all Americans who honor you for you missions on our behalf, I ask that you accept one more.
When my daughter and son-in-law sprang for a destination wedding nine years ago, they thought to make and distribute a list of their 130 guests with basic info such as points of departure, times of arrival, where each of us was staying, and cellphone numbers.
Comparing the tally of guests from Massachusetts to those from Michigan and Florida was a treat because I felt like I was on the winning side (of what I have no idea), and I could patronize the very few from Colorado and Georgia. Arrival? I was among the first to land at LAX and was soon whisked north by the groom to San Luis Obispo. Staying? I was in the same B&B as the bride and groom and the rest of the head table.
Cellphone? While every one of the other guests had a ten-digit and two-hyphen number in that column, I had a single letter: X.
About twenty years before that, I wrote a column for the local paper that began with this:
If I could engage Congress in one piece of legislation, it would have nothing to do with the three Es—education, economy, environment—but with safety and sanity on our streets, roads, and highways:
Ban the automatic transmission.
Yes, it was hyperbolic, but it was aimed at the trend to make everything so easy and simple, so many “advances” that effectively tell people they can and should pay less attention to what they do. Without realizing it, we are forfeiting our ability to think:
We’ve made calculators more available to [children] and wonder why math skills decrease. We make video evermore available and wonder why language skills deteriorate. We shower them with all kinds of convenience and wonder why so many of them are difficult to motivate.
If I may put my case in neutral for one red light: It’s no mere coincidence that the favored hang-outs of trouble-prone youth are what we call “convenience stores,” always stocked with junk food, never fresh produce.
Banning the automatic transmission could be America’s first shift into reverse from the fateful wrong turn we took in 1980.
That, of course, coincides with the advent of Reaganism and the Zeitgeist of You can have it all! The headline for my impossible rant was “Calling for Clutch Legislation.” But instead of putting the brakes on our full tilt boogey into shuffling madness, we kept heavy pedal to the metal. Today, the cars drive themselves, park themselves, and let drivers yell, “Look Ma! No Hands!” as they speed down highways and sweep into parking lots in many prime time advertisements.
One car hits its own brakes for the pre-occupied driver who looks up to see a young man crossing in front of her. Back in the day, he would have followed the rule of “look before you cross,” crosswalk or not, and waited to make eye-contact with the driver. Today, he walks from sidewalk onto street without breaking stride, never looking up from his mobile device.
Capitalism’s ultimate triumph over any sense of citizenship has been to make obliviousness a selling point.
“Clutch Legislation” was written back when I still did not have a television.
When I left my native Lawrence in 1969 and moved into my first apartment in Salem, neither my equally eccentric roommate nor I had one. Nor did we want one, preferring instead to let the turntable spin as we, both of us nerds, devoured book after book by Hesse, Dostoyevsky, and Vonnegut–none of which were assigned in the various literature classes we presumed to take.
Yes, I was often in another friend’s apartment for Orr, Esposito, and Sanderson (aka Boston Bruins hockey), but all the news for this lifelong junkie came from newspapers and radio. This remained true during all of my seven years in the Dakotas and Colorado, and for another 14 here on Plum Island.
That’s over a quarter century of my adult life, during which it came up in conversation countless times. With few exceptions, every time I said it, stunned silence would follow for two or three, maybe five seconds before I would hear the jaw-dropped tone of disbelief:
“You. Don’t. Have. A. Television???”
That would change around 1996 after watching most of Ken Burns’ Civil War and Baseball on PBS at the homes of friends. When chided about giving in, I rationalized that such things would make good assignments in my writing classes, which they did. Never did I mention indulging in the guilty pleasures of watching baseball and football–although today I often urge people to tune into Boston Bruin broadcasts, not for the hockey but for a play-by-play announcer who turns the English language into an athletic event. Everybody named Campbell has the nickname “Soup”!
To be fair to myself, my TV is about the smallest and cheapest to be had. It sits on a windowsill until I unplug it and place it on the floor against a wall where it will remain until after dark the next day. May be psychological, but I can’t watch it if the sun is out. If the Red Sox have a day game, well, that’s what radio is for.
Last month, in case you missed it, Game Five of the World Series was likely the last major league game that will ever be played without a designated hitter. Ever since its inception in the American league in 1973, it has been yet another front in my futile war against modernity.
As with every other front, I am wildly outnumbered. Most fans state their preference for another hitter in lineups as if that’s all there is to it. No mention of the strategy that is lost, what in the National League these past 48 years has been called “small ball”: bunting, base-stealing, pinch-hitting, the double switch.
Like so much else in America today, we want it simple and loud. Complex and nuanced? That’s for nerds!
This nerd, however, did find some consolation in that last game played in Atlanta. In the fourth inning, it was baseball’s ultimate role reversal when the Houston Astros sent a pitcher to the plate to pinch hit. If the National League does adopt the DH next season, that plate appearance will qualify for the Irony (if not Baseball) Hall of Fame:
The pitcher lined a single to right.
Please note that my baseball complaint has nothing to do with technology. Nor am I opposed to all technological advances. I’ll never peck at a typewriter again, and my handwriting, once lauded as clear and attractive, is now barely fit for grocery lists.
Nor will I trade “Stick-It,” my 2017 Nissan Versa, in for a horse and buggy, although I will pose for pictures in an old rig that might qualify as what we now call an “SUV.” And it would deserve the designation far more than most all of them made today. Another entry for the Irony (if not Automotive) Hall of Fame: Vehicles with automatic transmissions being called “Sport.”
Be that as it may, if Stick-It, despite its five-speed on the floor, doesn’t convince you that I am no neo-Luddite, there are dozens of Screening Room patrons who might tell you how I celebrated the new digital projectors seven years ago. More accurately, I was relieved to be rid of big, old projectors that kept breaking down, heavy reels of film I had to splice together (and then take apart), cues on screen I had to watch for, and endless issues of sound and focus. When I heard purists lament the loss of “real” film, I rolled my eyes but held my tongue. Now, I chuckle at the memory when I push a few buttons, and then sit down and write blogs with headlines like “Let the Turntable Spin” while I let the projector buzz.
You’ve likely heard that vinyl is making a comeback. Many music fans my age are passionate about it, and I share some of that passion, especially with memories of the artwork on album covers, a genre entirely lost with the advent of cassettes and CDs. Then again, that’s not vinyl, that’s cardboard, a “technology” that dates back to 1890.
When the recent documentary, Vinyl Nation, played at the Screening Room, I joined them. Had I been working that night, I could have pushed those buttons in the booth and taken a seat with them before the opening credits. But, unlike them, I would not need trouble myself with the reminder put on the screen before every film.
If you could call at all, I’d say call me X.
-30-
Car? Truck? Wagon? Pre-SUV? Not sure what category this 1927 Ford jalopy would have fallen into, but you can find it at The Desert of Maine, a contradiction in geographical terms not far north of Portland that is, to put it mildly, hard to describe. So I’ll leave it to the website: https://www.desertofmaine.com/ Photo by Carla Valentine.
When I finally went to a dermatologist at the insistence of friends, he took one look at the dark spot atop my abdomen from across the room and told me to return at 5:30 that winter evening.
Coming from a man a few years older than I and a few inches taller in a flowing white coat, the steely look and unhesitating command preempted any objection I might have made regarding plans for supper or night-time entertainment.
“Ah, yes. I’ll, I’ll be here.”
My alarm went unremarked, as he entered a notation on a clipboard while I buttoned up. Nor did he say anything, not even goodbye, as I walked out the door behind him.
A few hours later, he barely said hello as I walked toward the receptionist’s desk. She wasn’t there, nor was any nurse or any other patient. The doctor opened the door to the back rooms and motioned me into one of them. He did tell me to get up on the table and remove my shirt, although I was already doing both.
During the procedure, I don’t recall any words from him other than “This will sting a bit” and “Lean back.” As he applied the bandage, he said that he was sending the tissue to a lab in Cambridge, and that I’d hear from him in about five days.
“Should I do anything in the meantime.”
“Nothing you can do.”
Again, he said nothing more as I put the shirt back on and left. Trying to lighten my own mood, I chirped, “Well, talk to you soon,” as if we were drinking buddies with plans to watch football the coming weekend.
He voiced a flat “Good bye” as I left, his eyes fixed on his clipboard.
Medical verdicts are usually definite, pronounced in a single word. It is one of the great ironies of medicine, of language, of modern life such as it is, that we crave Negative and dread Positive.
As an English teacher who got mileage out of that grim joke 25 years ago, I did not laugh when the receptionist said “positive” over the phone. Good thing I didn’t faint and instead kept listening, as she quickly added, “but they think Dr. Swanson got it all. He wants you to come in soon for a second sample.”
“As soon as he wants.”
A few days later, taking the appointment of another patient’s cancellation, I was under his knife again. I joked about living on borrowed time and hoping that I was as “negative” as my employers thought. When he looked puzzled, I explained that I was on the faculty of a local college and had started asking aloud in department meetings whether we were supposed to be college teachers or nursing home attendants. He seemed to grimace.
“They call themselves ‘deans,’ but they’re really accountants,” I concluded, and I think I detected more of a grin. But there’s a chance I may have just imagined it in my giddiness. With the same no-nonsense focus and precision, he soon carved his sample, put it in a jar, and applied a bandage.
As I buttoned, I told him that if he was willing, I’d return each week for a cut, and we could call it a weight loss program. Unsmiling, he said merely, “No thanks.”
“But many thanks to you, Dr. Swanson!” The words were effortlessly sincere as I went out the door.
This time he said, “Good luck,” but with no emotion or smile, as he once again stared at his clipboard.
After the second verdict proved negative, I set up bi-annual checkups that soon became annual. None of them were eventful, just a few small cuts that did not require a Cambridge lab exam.
In January 2007, I quit smoking, and by April I had gained 35 pounds. When I saw Dr. Swanson in June, I told him he should increase his fee since there was so much more of me for him to look at.
Might as well have told him that I prefer boxers to briefs. “Doesn’t matter,” he said as if saying “ho hum,” and he continued to squint through his eyeglass within an inch of my neck.
And so it went. I figured that he was like a possessed musician or high-strung athlete, so focused on the task at hand that nothing else registers, and so I thought nothing of it. Until the morning that a small item in that day’s Boston Globe caught my eye, a notice of magazine article by a dermatologist claiming that Franklin Delano Roosevelt died of melanoma. Since FDR had many ailments, mostly associated with childhood polio, this was kept secret, even after his death. Hard to think of this now, but cancer, right into the 1960s, was considered shameful, somehow indicative of bad character.
Though the stigma is long gone, this revelation of FDR’s melanoma came as a surprise. I happened to be driving past Anna Jacques Hospital later that day, and brought the paper to Dr. Swanson’s office, figuring that I’d leave it with the receptionist. Behind her and past a nurse perusing a screen at another desk, the doctor was standing perfectly still, his hands up in front of him, holding nothing, as he appeared to be examining a plant hanging from the back wall.
Ah, the plants! All over and around that room and its three desks, they had to be, or so I thought, an attempt by the receptionist or a nurse to cheer the cheerless doctor up.
“Hello, Dr. Swanson!” I called out, but he did not move.
“Can I help you?” the receptionist called up, clearly intending to intercept whatever I had to say. I handed her the paper, pointed to the two paragraphs, and told her I thought the doctor would want to see it.
Not sure exactly why, but I think the words “written by a dermatologist” caught him. Whatever the case, he broke from his trance, walked over, snatched the Globe right out of the receptionist’s hand, and stared at it. And stared at it. Since it was so short, I awaited a “Wow!” or a “Thanks!” maybe an “I already know this” or an “I don’t believe it.” But no such declaration was forthcoming, as he continued to stare at the text.
I glanced down at the receptionist who motioned with her eyes for me to leave.
“Well, I gotta go. You can keep that!”
She nodded her head with a slight smile. He continued to stare at the paper.
Only once did I see him outside of his office. Wish I could recall the name of the film, but he arrived at the Screening Room one night when I was selling tickets before climbing into the projectionist’s booth to run the show. With him was a woman I presumed to be his wife who handed me a $20 bill before I handed her the change–yes, it was that long ago–and looked up at them for the first time.
Immediately struck me that his hair appeared brushed more evenly to the side rather than just matted back over his balding spot as I always saw it. He looked five or ten years younger, which I attributed to her.
“Well! Hello, Dr. Swanson!”
“Oh! Hello.”
So he did recognize me, but you’d have never known it from the lack of expression on his face or the flatness of “hello” after the initial surprise. His companion gave me a wide smile and a cheery “Thank You!” as they turned and went into the theater. Both smile and cheer seemed incongruous at the time. In retrospect, they seem knowing.
Four years ago, Dr. Charles Swanson succumbed to a three-year battle with cancer, during which he continued treating patients, including me just four months before he passed. His obituary dispelled my assumptions. No marriage or children were mentioned, but he had a lifelong passion for botany and gardening. So those plants were his! As is the custom of obituaries, the one in the local paper did not mention the cause of death, nor did it mention any medical condition, recent or lifelong.
Conversations, however, among his many patients, seemingly the entire population of Newburyport, all included the word “quirky,” and some included a word that would never have occurred to me. Eventually, due to his regional reputation as a diagnostician, the Boston Globe ran a more comprehensive obit confirming that diagnosis of him.
All of this comes back to me after reading NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, a controversial best-seller in 2015 that serves not just as a history of autism, but as yet another history of the intersections of politics and science around the world.
If you never heard of the eugenics movement in the USA a century ago, with no less an advocate than Pres. Woodrow Wilson, the opening chapters are a concise history of it. And if you think you already know enough about the subject of racial history kept out of our schools, you need to know that eugenics became an American export that propelled the Nazis–and that it lingers with today’s neo-Nazis now in the base of authoritarian movements on both continents.
But that was not the controversy in 2015. It was–and still is–over author Steve Silberman’s premise that autism is “a lifelong disability that deserves support, rather than… a disease of children that can be cured.” Much of the medical profession–not to mention the pharmaceutical industry–is heavily invested in cures. With support, however, autistic men and women have excelled in careers that require a focus and concentration beyond what we “neurotypical” folks have. From the monks who copied and decorated manuscripts before Gutenberg to the scientists in the race for space and Silicon Valley’s designers of cyberspace, their contributions to the arts and sciences are well-documented in NeuroTribes.
In that context, not only did Dr. Swanson cease to be a puzzle, but odd bits and pieces of my own life seemed to fall into place. Not that I–or my father, or a former employer, or a few professors, or a handful of close friends over the years–would ever qualify for the diagnosis, but autism is an umbrella term for a variety of quirks, odd habits, and mannerisms. In some cases, it’s debilitating, in others just another way of doing things. Hence, the word “spectrum.”
Stands to reason then, that anyone without the diagnosis may have a touch of it. As Silberman illustrates more than once, this applies to anyone told as child by other children that he or she is “just trying to be different” or “thinks you’re better than everyone else” because he or she doesn’t want to join them–or to any adult occasionally called “eccentric” for any behavioral reason.
To read NeuroTribes with such memories intact is to play a pinball machine that lights up with ah-ha! moments, making it a page-turner despite all the scientific lingo.
If I had to pick a single line to represent the book, it wouldn’t be from it, but from an essay Silberman wrote for Vox four years later about a Swedish teenager and environmental activist:
(T)he idea that people like Greta Thunberg have valuable insights not in spite of their autism but because of it is gaining ground as part of a global movement to honor neurodiversity, a word based on the concept of biodiversity — the notion that in communities of living things, diversity and difference means strength and resilience.
The line that follows measures the worth of NeuroTribe‘s relevance to current events:
Great minds, in other words, don’t always think alike. It’s not surprising that people who feel an intuitive love for nature and an instinctive disdain for dishonesty are now taking leadership positions in the global fight against climate change.
If just one autistic person could save me from my own negligence, imagine what the whole much-larger-than-anyone-thinks Tribe might do.
NeuroTribes has a chapter on Rain Man that reads like the recent book, Shooting Midnight Cowboy, regarding how Dustin Hoffman created the role and shaped the film. Rain Man when it appeared in 1988 was a huge breakthrough for autistic people and their families, although the battles–between support and “cure,” between tolerance for diversity and a push for conformity–continue to this day. For all that, I must confess that my only reaction to that film was to pull my copy of “Bartleby the Scrivener” out of a box and refresh myself with details I had just seen on screen–the rocking motion, the lack of eye contact, the expressionless stare, the flat voice. Herman Melville had heard and written of an autistic man some 80 years before Dr. Hans Asperger first diagnosed the condition in his Vienna clinic. Two years ago, before I saw Dr. Swanson’s obit or read Silberman’s book, most everyone on my Christmas gift list received a t-shirt with Bartleby’s signature line: “I would prefer not to.” I thought it a nice joke at the time. Only now do I realize the undeniable touch of truth to it.
Making the rounds in art cinemas if not at the cineplexes of interstate interchanges is The Velvet Underground, a film unlike anything this art cinema projectionist has ever seen.
Many split-screen scenes, mostly two, at times a dozen, challenge viewers to decide where to put our eyes, much like Woodstock (1970). Unlike that concert film, much of this documentary is archival, scenes of the American 50s and 60s, from the stability of suburban neighborhoods to the volatility of protests, from the assurance of Brillo pads to the trauma of Dallas, Texas.
While Underground is as chaotic as the era, it sustains focus on the ethos of Andy Warhol from whose cameras much of the footage comes. All part of the Greenwich Village scene, Warhol invited Lou Reed, John Cale, and the band they founded into his warehouses repurposed as concert venues for avant-garde multi-media events. Trendy? Immediately, it was the place to be seen, and before long Jackie Kennedy and Walter Cronkite were among the celebrities seen there.
However, Director Todd Haynes, whose previous films include a quirky, imaginary biography of characters in Bob Dylan songs titled I’m Not There (2007) and a 1987 cult-classic that uses Barbie Dolls to chronicle the tragedy of Karen Carpenter titled Superstar, does not stop at the band’s presentation and packaging. When the film delves into the music, we learn just why it had a mesmerizing quality that would leave audiences in stunned silence at the end of a song–and then into wild applause exactly five seconds later.
We learn just how and why Nico fit in as a vocalist, and how and why she no longer did. And we learn of the increasing riff between Reed and Cale, yet another version of that between Lennon and McCartney, John Sebastian and Zal Yanovsky, Ian Anderson and Martin Barre, the Davies Brothers. No wonder the Stones keep on rolling.
For all of the odd comparisons, Underground offers a sharp contrast to Lambert & Stamp, the 2015 documentary about the two film students who set out to document London’s fledgling rock scene and wound up managing a rough-neck band that had no real following. First thing they did was change the band’s name from The High Numbers to The Who, and it was all tour de force after that.
But Kit Lambert and Christopher Stamp stayed out of sight. When the Velvet Underground was on stage in New York, Andy Warhol was main attraction just by being in the audience. What they all had in common was stage presentation and music that, to paraphrase Peter Townsend, did not market to the audience, but marketed the audience itself.
For The Who it was “Go to the Mirror, Boy.” For the Underground it was “I’ll Be Your Mirror.” Mirrors and reflections are recurring themes in the music of both. The title Who Are You has no question mark at the end of it. The Underground often performed in silouhette with backlighting aimed at the audience. Lambert and Stamp fashioned it from Townsend’s lyrics. Warhol put his stamp on it by being in that brightly lit audience.
For all of this, Underground is enlightening for sure, but some things made no sense, such as drummer Mo Tucker talking about Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention as if they were Herman’s Hermits. Perhaps this is what happens an avant-garde band out of NYC lands in California?
While it has run its course at the Newburyport Screening Room, you can still catch The Velvet Underground in Boston and Cambridge. Don’t count on it, but it may play the big screen awhile due to all the talk of and scenes at the Boston Tea Party in the last half hour.
And you’ll want a big screen to do all of Haynes/Warhol’s split screens justice.
Mouth of the River 