I am pleased to share awkward pose duties this week with John Bringenberg, author, father, and concerned citizen who presides over an NGO focused on sustainable living.
Photo courtesy of Rosie Kerr on Unsplash
Dear Jill, Dear Barack,
I think you know that you have a vital role that is hugely important to the public and the institution of Democracy. Yet your larger role is even more important as a personal and trusted confidant of one of the best presidents and career public servants US history will document.
It is time for Joe to be a grandpa. It is time for Joe to be an esteemed former president working on legacy and his post presidency impact as a citizen. An excellent driver his entire adult life … it is time to take away the keys.
You know this to be true. You know this to be the best path forward. And, you know the manner in which you can reason and support the President in this difficult life decision and intersection.
The gravity of this change and also the handling of the steps that follow must be carefully architected. Joe has spent his entire adult life and career supporting his ideals and the truth of his party. His party now requires his retirement — with your help — to bring clarity, pride and resolve to this decision. Joe can and will go down in history as a “country first” old guard public servant, true to his conviction and with a career of legislation, policy making, cross-the-aisle relationship building and results brokering.
We witnessed the unfair and unreasonable, yet historic outcome of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s decision in her early ‘80’s to stay the course rather than retire and continue as a leading figure for progressive interpretation of the laws of the land. This, only to succumb to a SCOTUS scramble by the majority Senate party throwing the highest court into imbalance for possibly a generation or longer.
It is a grave error to expect November voting to follow reason,
common sense or to separate saints from sinners.
Such miscalculation can forfeit Democracy as we know it.
Further, those who would rally in support of Joe and dismiss his performance as a bad night, grossly miscalculate the dynamics and variables of today’s voters, Republican party and the rabid + blind following of Trumps’ well-honed mob-boss charisma. It is a grave error to expect November voting to follow reason, common sense or to separate saints from sinners. Such miscalculation can forfeit Democracy as we know it.
Consider this election amid the ever-reinforced mis-information, the echo chamber of social media, the reach of the Fox Network, 3rd party candidates. Ask yourself who was the more qualified, experienced choice for President in 2016? Ask yourself next, after 4 years of the most dysfunctional and corrupt administration, with a shattered record of resignations and terminations of team from cabinet to agency brain drain exodus … Ask yourself next, after dozens of indictments and conviction of rape and felony, how is Trump the one of two candidates with a higher approval rating? If you’re expecting common sense to lead to the rise of Biden and the fall of Trump, we could be under a dramatically different government set of rules beginning in 2025.
There can be zero reliance on good sense. What is needed is knockout charisma, command, experience, rebuttal and confidence. My shortlist is Gavin Newsome, and a distant second pick, JB Pritzker. The last time a governor from our most populous state ran for president, the Republican party was very happy.
Now is the moment to get this right, because there is no second guessing the peril if the democratic party does not field a unified party behind a strong and high-profile middle-aged candidate. A key covenant of a change now is party agreement for total unity behind a single strong candidate. A candidate up to the task of running the presidency and putting Trump in his place with energy, oratory, charisma, credibility, instant recognition, command of facts … all helping to bring the country back to a center of truth and decency.
The country and the democracies of the world are counting on your next step.
Recently, I’ve been reading Revolutionary War history, in particular Nathanial Philbrick’s Bunker Hill and Stacy Schiff’s The Revolutionary Samuel Adams. Both great reads by historians with a knack to turn past events into page turners.
In each book, one character keeps popping up again and again, always ahead of the crowd, always delivering urgent news just in the nick of time. Paul Revere.
Most of us are familiar with Longfellow’s classic opening:
Listen my children and you will hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere
The poem immortalizes a singular feat of night riding, run-ins with British scouts, near escapes, and ultimate success. Written 87 years after the event, the 1860 ode came at a time when, on the cusp of an even bloodier war, Americans were in dire need of a heroic tale.
What most of us don’t learn—either in school or from Longfellow—is that Paul Revere’s midnight ride was just another jaunt for a man who delivered revolutionary messages all over the place, all the time.
Paul Revere had a particular set of credentials for his undertakings. He was a solid Son of Liberty, though not a member of the Loyal Nine, the inner sanctum who orchestrated rebellious activity. Thus, he could be completely trusted, yet, if captured, the rebellion would not lose its leader.
Neither author claims Revere to be an outstanding horseman, but he must have been. In page after page from 1768 right up through 1776, the guy delivered intelligence on time, every time. A record that could make even Jeff Bezos blush.
As the Boston troublemakers sought to bring other colonies to their cause and eventually declare a new nation, Paul Revere’s rides got longer. More than once, he rode all the way to Philadelphia to deliver messages too timely or controversial for regular post. Despite all his hours in the saddle, Revere managed to father sixteen children, which pretty much squelches the notion that horseback riding causes infertility in men.
After mentioning messenger Revere again and again, Philbrick took a sidebar that I find both humorous and apt:
In an age when communication between the colonies could take days and even weeks, Revere provided the patriots with a decided advantage over the less nimble British. But the peripatetic silversmith was much more than the colonial equivalent of a Pony Express rider.
What was that advantage? Paul Revere was a messenger spurred on by deep belief in the missives he delivered.
Happy Independence Day to all!
Paul Rever’e’s most famous ride. Map courtesy of Wikipedia
The only way we are going to create a just, equitable, sustainable, and resilient society is by starting to live in ways that are just, equitable, sustainable and resilient. At a grand scale, this requires complete rethinking of our aggressive, consumptive society. But at the micro level, each of us can do our little part by pushing back against the flood of—junk—that crosses our path.
Twenty-five years ago I received a package in the mail from the Greater Boston Food Bank that contained a ceramic spoon holder in appreciation of a donation I made. I tossed the unwanted object, sent them a curt email questioning why money targeted to feed the hungry was spent on trinkets, and found another local food organization to support. GBFB has never gotten another dime.
Two decades ago I started passing up swag pushed at me at conferences. “But it’s free!” A huckster inevitably proclaimed. “So then, it’s probably not worth much.” I’d walk on to the next booth, happily empty-handed.
UMass Amherst, photo courtesy of UMass Amherst
Last week I received an unexpected package in the mail. I groaned at the return address: University of Massachusetts Foundation. Both of my children went to UMass, had a great time, and got solid educations. After they graduated, I rerouted annual donations from my well-endowed alma mater to UMass. Within a few years they assigned me a donor liaison; the poor guy persistently tried to meet with me as I invented new ways to say ‘no.’ To keep him at bay I told him my annual donations would continue and that UMass was in my will. Please don’t bother me anymore.
Yet, despite my desire to support higher education on the low-down, this package landed at my door.
A maroon folder with a handful of brochures ripe with photos of smiling graduates and catchy titles like, “12 Ways to Make a Meaningful Difference,” “A Tax-smart Way to Give through your IRA,” and “Personal Estate Planning Course Lesson Book.” Plus a letter from Joseph J. Kayne, Senior Director of Gift Planning, welcoming me to the William Smith Clark Society. In addition, there was the maroon blanket with UMass Amherst logo.
Why are they sending me a blanket? To keep me warm in the grave? Actually, the blanket wouldn’t keep anyone warm. According to the tag, it’s 50% polyester, made in Honduras. What is UMass thinking? Sending me this rag with thousands of miles of carbon footprint, and enough plastic fibers to choke a school of fish.
Without waiting the recommended cool down period, I spewed off an email to Mr. Jayne:
I received today in the mail a package from the UMass Foundation with a folder of pamphlets, a letter signed by you, and a blanket with your logo.
None of which did I ask for. None of which do I want.
I do not give money to UMass so you can give gifts to me. I give it to educate students.
I have no interest in the William Smith Society; please refrain from sending me any other materials, in any media.
I realize that I may be a minority in not wanting merch for my philanthropy, but I think it is important that you realize that some donors consider it a breach of purpose. You should not by default think that someone who gives money to UMass wants an unsolicited gift of a 50% plastic blanket. It is an unsavory use of resources at so many levels.
I prefer you focus on educating the future.
Paul E. Fallon
Within an hour I received a polite response from Mr. Jayne, apologizing for their overreach in thankfulness, and informing me that he will “make a note in my file.” His message implied that the note would be to leave me alone, though I could well imagine him writing, “This guy is a total crank. Contact him at your peril.”
I won’t cut UMass out of my will over a blanket, though the thought did cross my mind. I love the wonderful opportunities UMass provided my children and many others like them. Besides, I have no reason to believe that UMass spends more on development than comparable universities. Every school has whole staffs who spend all day every day flattering donors, soliciting money, sending out swag. A cost of doing charitable business which has nothing more to do with teaching students than a ceramic spoon holder does with feeding the hungry.
I don’t believe that anyone donates to charity because they want a spoon holder or a blanket. It’s ridiculous. Superfluous. If we all just stop accepting these pens and notepads and coffee mugs and T-shirts, the swag will disappear under the weight of its own uselessness. And in some small way the world, by every measure, will be a better place.
Summer is nigh, time to be light, even a bit silly.
The other day, riding my bike, this car passed me. Wow! First thing I noticed was the color, some kind of mango peach. Very tropical. Then of course, there was its relationship to the ground. Tight. As if the static earth and the moving vehicle were kissing cousins. The black accents. The spoiler. The articulated rear exhaust. Also the model: Camry. When did a Camry become hot?
Lucky me, the light ahead turned red and the car stopped. I rolled alongside and, in classic old white guy fashion, chatted up the driver.
“I love your car.” “Thanks.” A heavyset guy with dark skin and even darker sunglasses.
“Did you customize it yourself?” “Yeah.” A Dominican Republic tassel dangled from his rear-view mirror.
“You from the DR?” The guy flashed a wide smile “DR forever!”
The light turned green. “Enjoy your day.” “You too, man.”
The car lumbered off. Not too fast. Because really, it’s too low for speed. I pedaled behind, enjoying its sinuous contours and lush finish. Savoring our innocuous, pleasant interchange.
A few blocks ahead, the driver turned and parked. I detoured to take these pics. I just love this car.
Perhaps the most un-American thing about me is that I can like things—all sorts of things—without the slightest desire to possess them. A trip to Restoration Hardware triggers the same feelings as MFA’s Colonial furniture gallery. Cool stuff to see, but nothing I’d ever care to own. I certainly have no interest in owning the most American possession of all: an automobile. Yet I was smitten by this souped-up Camry gliding along a Cambridge Street. It brought me joy on a long, warm day. Joy I ricocheted back to its proud owner.
I’ve been on the receiving end of Father’s Day for thirty years now; my children were born in 1989 and 1990; my own father died in 1994. Dad’s been gone so long that weeks, months can pass and he doesn’t cross my mind. Until something jiggers a memory and there he is again: Jack Fallon, Black Irish to the core.
Molly McCloskey (left) with her father and siblings. Photo courtesy of The New Yorker
Molly McCloskey’s profile of her father, Jack McCloskey (The New Yorker, June 3, 2024) drew enough parallels to bring my own father back, rich in memory.
Jack McCloskey was the General Manger of the Detroit Pistons when the “Bad Boys” of the NBA edged out darlings like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson to win the Championship in 1989 and 1990. Jack Fallon never did anything quite so notable, though he was a founding fanatic that transformed Toms River, New Jersey into a Little League baseball powerhouse that eventually won multiple state titles and the Little League World Series.
Molly was the last of six children, a basketball striver with talent; always reaching for, though never quite attaining, her father’s affection. I was the fourth of five, with no athletic talent, also striving for my dad’s affection. Until I endured so many humiliating strike-outs and got hit by so many baseballs I swallowed my miscoordination and handed in my glove.
Jack McCloskey left his family; growing up, Molly barely saw him. Jack Fallon left his family after we kids were gone; then years went by without contact.
Molly and Jack had a rapprochement, of sorts, when her dad slid into dementia. As he fell away, she became more interested in what she’d missed, reached out to players he’d coached, and discovered a man she never knew. Warm. Concerned. Present.
My dad and I had no grand rapprochement; we’d never fallen that far apart. We did, however, have an affecting final meeting. One that Molly’s article brought clear back to me.
It was the fall of 1993. My father had returned to his native New Jersey, after hauling the entire family to Oklahoma twenty years earlier (that’s a whole other story). He was dying of pancreatic cancer. His second wife, better suited to him than our mother, took great care. I’d come out as a gay man that spring. Flew to Oklahoma in the summer to tell my mother and siblings in person. And decided that, even though my father might be quite content to go to his grave without this particular bit of news, I wanted to tell him, in person, as well. So I invited myself to his home and drove across four states to spend a few hours delivering my news.
“Well, that explains baseball,” was Dad’s first response to learning that I’m gay. Immediately followed by, “It’s God’s way of dealing with population control.” I had to give the guy credit for his unique take on my life, though I declined to counter with the fact that I’d fathered two children. Children whom, multiple invitations notwithstanding, he’d never seen.
About that moment, two paintings posted on the wall above a corner desk caught my eye. My father was a copyist. He recreates photos in acrylic: part caricature; part art. I’d seen his Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, Phyllis Diller. Entertainers he loved. But here were two fresh portraits, created from photos I’d sent. My children.
I was impressed that my father had spent hours creating likeness of his grandchildren, though heartbroken that he was incapable of actually seeing them in person. As if his brushstrokes tried to satisfy an intimacy he himself could not actualize.
That moment crystallized the limits of my father’s capacity to love. Somehow, these expressions of love, created at a distance, clarified the triangle of me and my father and baseball. How I’d witnessed him jostle his players, pat them on the head, spur them to victory, be present for them in ways he never was with me. They were his true kin, the apples of his eye. I was blood related, yet utterly different.
Me (left) in my Little League shirt, with my siblings and father
It would be too strong to say I felt unloved growing up. I didn’t feel much of anything. I was neither neglected nor abused. I was simply there. Unsatisfactory. Uncoordinated. Incomplete. A genetic fluke born into the wrong family. I always thought the deficiency was mine, until I gazed at the portraits of grandchildren he’d never see, and understood that my father lacked something fundamental. A man who’d severed ties with his own parents, his own brother, his own sister. Then severed ties with his own children and now his grandchildren.
In that moment, my heart opened up to him. I decided that he loved me, and my children, as much as he possibly could. It is not for me to begrudge how meagerly it manifested.
In Molly McCloskey’s essay, she comes to accept her father’s limited love; even as he’s able to better express abundant love to his players. Her profound words triggered emotions in me at an opportune time. My son and his wife are expecting; I hope to be a grandfather in September. I don’t plan to draw pictures of my grandson. I plan to break out of the constrictions that plagued me and my father and his parents. To be there for my son and grandson at the glorious event, and all the days after. Present.
A couple of months ago The Boston Globe ran an article about the Dartmouth College basketball team, which voted to form a union. I imagined the writer trying mightily not to pen the story as satire. Which got me wondering, what is the proper perspective from which to write about a bunch of privileged guys (they go to Dartmouth, after all) wanting to get paid for playing a sport they choose to play, but they’re not all that good at (they go to Dartmouth after all)? This is not a case of a basketball powerhouse taking advantage of hardscrabble yet incredibly tall kids for whom basketball is the key to their future. The NCAA needs to address abuses in that arena. These are guys attending an elite college that does not offer athletic scholarships, but does practice need-blind admission. Back in the day, I benefited from that policy and worked in the college library as part of my work study. It never occurred to me that I should be paid for my ballroom dance prowess, though I’m a damn good dancer.
In the fifty years since my work-in-the-library days, more and more people clamor to be paid for more and more tasks. Most of the claims come from the realm of personal care. Should parents be paid to care for their children? Should spouses get paid to care for incapacitated spouses? Should children get paid to care for elderly parents?
Unlike the Dartmouth basketball players, these requests aren’t frivolous. Parents, spouses, children who care for one another in youth, sickness, and old age provide important societal services, and deflect significant costs we would all have to bear if any government hand was involved. Don’t those folks deserve to get paid?
The answer is: probably. But the question is wrong.
Life is not fair. From beginning to end. It’s not fair that I had two parents who survived into reasonable old age and then died without much need of outside assistance, while Sara, a woman I know, endured five years of her mother battling acute cancer, followed her father descending into dementia for five more. Sara cared for her parents in their homes. It was an awful burden. No one would have blamed Sara for putting her parents in a home. But she chose not to. Thus, she derived the priceless satisfaction of doing what she thought was right. We owe Sara a collective debt of gratitude, and hopefully find inspiration in her service. But do we owe her money?
The answer is: probably. But the question is wrong.
Regardless of which came first, the family unit or the almighty dollar, our culture has traditionally held that dollars apply outside the home, but not within. Farm work was paid; domestic work was not. Industrial work was paid; caregiver work was not. The Industrial Revolution, which greatly increased wage-earning work, also sowed the seeds of family unit decay. Particularly over the last two generations, the line between domestic life and wage-earning life has blurred. More and more people are taking care of others, and getting paid little or nothing for their effort. Shouldn’t everyone caring for someone get paid? Even if they are in your own family?
The answer is: probably. But again, it’s the wrong question.
If we decide to pay parents to care for their children, or spouses to care for each other, or pay children to care for their parents, where will it stop? We will never find a way to properly value and allocate money to everyone who thinks they deserve it. Before we know it, we’ll be paying Dartmouth College basketball players to do something we used to think they did for enjoyment.
The correct question is not how much we should pay this or that person for this or that service. The correct question is, “What do we need to provide everyone—I mean everyone—the means to live their best possible life?” Realizing not all of us will achieve that, since, as stated above, life is not fair. The answer to that question is, of course, Universal Basic Income. Give everyone the rudimentary amount for daily living and let each individual decide how to allocate their life.
The beauty of UBI is that it could actually reduce the outsized role that money plays in our lives. If everyone had a modest ‘enough,’ we could place more value on other things. Like creativity or spirituality or ethics or caring for those we love, or any of the values that are being completely submerged by the chase of the almighty dollar.
If someone chose to stay home with their children, they might not live as lavishly as an employed worker, but they could make that choice without going hungry. If they preferred to work and send their child to paid care, UBI would give them a leg up on that. Same same for caring for an aging parent.
As the indomitable Dolly Levi said, “Money is like manure. Put is in a big pile and it stinks to high heaven. Spread it around and everything grows better.” Let’s spread it around. Not to this person because their child is deemed sick or that person because their parent is doddering, or that basketball player, just because. Let’s give a bit to everyone so we all have a basic amount, just because we’re human, and we’re here.
David Sedaris is a well-known humorist; a go-to guy for wholesome satire with a touch of irony. He often writes about the joy and discovery of walking. In a recent article, he boasted of logging 40,000 steps and dreamed, one day, of clocking 100,000. I’m unaware of David Sedaris’ fitness-guru credentials. But that didn’t stop me from taking up his challenge.
“I could do 100,000 steps in a day,” rang in my head. “I already do 10,000. What’s another zero?”
I have a shallow gait. Walking 10,000 steps measures somewhere over four miles. Thus, a hundred thousand would require the far side of forty miles. My boyfriend Dave lives 44 miles away. Perfect! Some day, instead of cycling home from Dave’s, I’ll walk instead!
Wait a sec. I don’t walk fast. In fact, I walk slower than most anyyone I know. My daily 10,000 takes at least an hour and a half. Do the math. That’s fifteen hours of walking.
No problem, I decide. I’ll just leave early and walk late.
But…just…maybe…walking from Holden to Cambridge is a lousy route. All those hills. Few sidewalks. Better to plan a flat course with paved paths.
Proposed Walking Route
Eureka! I will circle the Charles River! Dedicated footpaths. Few intersections. A full loop from Charlestown to Waltham and back is about 40 miles. Besides, in the (highly) unlikely case that I can’t complete the journey, I’ll never be more than a mile from a train or bus to carry me home.
I don’t tell anyone of my plan. Probably because I know there’s a bit of crazy embedded in the idea, and I’m disinclined to confront reason.
A few weeks after the Sedaris Challenge germinates, the perfect day arrives: Monday May 13. Fair-weather forecast; no commitments. The night before I make a couple of peanut butter sandwiches and stuck them in the fridge along with some leftover egg casserole and a serious hunk of chocolate cake. I lay out a pair of shorts, shirts that layer, extra socks, and a windbreaker. Set the alarm for 5 a.m., and go to sleep.
A few hours solid sleep later, I snap up, bolt awake. Excited! Further rest is futile. I give in, get up, dress, load the backpack, throw in a couple of bananas, and am out the door at 3:18 a.m. Crazy, right? Just wait.
The streets of Cambridge are near empty. When I come upon a lone woman along Brattle Street, I hack a cough of friendly warning. She crosses to the other side. I arrive at the river at 4 a.m. 5,000 steps done. Only 95,000 to go!
4:45 a.m. Boston Skyline
My early departure enables serendipitous timing. The sky outline glows the skyline at 4:45. The sun illuminates the Longfellow Bridge arches at 5:07. Boats glimmer in Charlestown marina at 6:08.
At 6:16 I stride to the eastern-most point of my route, where the Mystic River flows into Boston Harbor. 20,000 steps down: making great time! At y turnaround, a man is enjoying the sunrise; an amputee in a wheelchair outside of Spaulding Rehab Hospital. A gregarious guy, ebullient as the new day. We chat a bit; I don’t reveal the scope of my journey. T’would be a cruel taunt to a legless man.
I eat my sandwiches in motion, but my stomach hankers for more, and so I take a break at harbor’s edge and chow down on chocolate cake. Never eaten anything so decadent so early in the day. If I wasn’t so committed to walking, I could run, or maybe even fly. So much chocolate courses through me.
6:08 a.m. Charlestown Marina
Back at the Museum of Science I shift to the Boston side of the river and head west. Again, perfect timing. The morning is cool, the breeze light, the flowers glorious. The Esplanade is full of eye-candy runners doing their before-work bridge circuits. How envious they would be to know that I’m undertaking the longest bridge circuit of all! The passing scene’s so fascinating I don’t feel a trace of fatigue until well past the BU Bridge.
7:40 a.m. Charles River Basin
The narrowest, ugliest portion of ambulating the Charles is from BU to Harvard. The sidewalk’s a mere four feet wide. Cars whiz by on Soldier’s Field Road. The Mass Pike looms overhead. I will away all distraction by singing Mary Chapin Carpenter. “What If We Went to Italy?” Definitely preferable to Allston.
Just after nine. I turn left on North Harvard Street; pick up bananas and chocolate at Trader Joes. 36,000 steps: already a personal best. I return to the river and continue west. The landscape opens up, but the number of passersby dwindles. My thighs are sore. My shins are taut. My feet begin to complain. Buckle up! I command my body parts. I croon Paul Simon against my irritations all the way to Watertown Square.
9:52 a.m. A Pastoral Stretch of River
A stretch of river side I’ve never walked. The foot path is lush and shady. The day turns warm. I’m down to shirtsleeves. Early on, I’d pegged the McDonald’s on California Street in Nonantum as a place to caffeine-up. A short detour off the path. I order my Diet Coke, sit down, and check the pedometer: 50,031 steps at 11:23 a.m. What a roll!
When I stand up to get a refill I feel stiff. I sit some more. I get up again. Stiffer yet. I disregard my body’s signals and reason that I’ll loosen up on the trail. I return to the river and continue west.
Suddenly, there’s lots of folks along the path. All old. All speaking Russian. Their faces come at me: half-funny; half frightening. I press on.
12:07 p.m. Natural Path in Newton
The landscape becomes more natural. Asphalt devolves into dirt. Some stretches are so quiet I can’t hear any cars. The day turns hot; I’m thankful for shade. I reach Waltham Center at 60,000 steps. Ignore any distress my lower body proclaims. I plow on.
12:50 p.m. Waltham Waterfall
Beyond Waltham, the river path turns spotty. There are intermittent stretches of city street. I find an overlook bench, eat a few bananas, tell myself everything is fine. But take note that my pace is slowing. A lot.
I rise, stiff. I put one foot in front of the other. My feet rub in my shoes. I consider changing into my fresh socks. But I don’t. I’m not hungry or thirsty or dizzy. But I am feverish. And I keep losing the river. It’s a lot of effort to just keep walking. One foot, then another. My steps are so short, I’m hardly going anywhere. I check the time and realize, I’m not making any. Suddenly I’m back in Newton, in an industrial area, no less. I have lost the river. Nothing is recognizable. I am afraid to stop and rest; I might lack the will to get going again. I stand in the mid-day sun. Dazed. I admit to myself, “You have hit the wall.”
There’s a busy road ahead. Moody Street, leading back to Waltham Center. My spirit wants to ignore it. To turn away. To keep walking. To find the river. I can be foolish, but I am no fool. It’s time to quit. So I trundle back to Waltham Center in search of a bus or a train.
Lucky me. The commuter rail banner announces a train in two minutes. I hobble aboard and roll to Waverly, where I switch to the 73 bus, which deposits me a few blocks from my house. I baby step my tender feet, and arrive home at 3:18. Exactly twelve hours after I left.
When I tell my housemate what I’ve been up to, he rolls his eyes. For good reason. “It’s the first time you’ve tried it. Maybe, if you practice…”
“No way! I’m never doing this again.” Lactic acid throbs my legs. Blisters spear my every step. I crawl upstairs. Force myself into the tub to soak my feet. Lie flat on my bed for an hour.
Final pedometer reading: 30.6 miles; 67,096 steps.
4:06 p.m. Pedometer Reading
My mind filters back to college, when I completed the 20-mile Walk for Hunger in under five hours, then sauntered home afterward. Today, I feel like a loser. Thirty miles annihilated me. I know, intellectually, that its foolish to compare my 21- and 69-year-old selves. Still, physical decline is an ugly thing.
Next day I am sooo stiff and sooo sore. But I manage. Wednesday’s a bit better. By Thursday, the legs are fine; my blisters shrink. As my body regains confidence, the pain of my final 17,000 steps dissipates, and the joy of the first 50,000 lift my spirits. I stop feeling bad about only reaching 2/3 of my ludicrous goal. Instead, I celebrate that I walked twice as far, twice as many steps, as any single day in my pedometer era.
If David Sedaris ever follows his dream and walks 100,000 steps in a single day, I’m sure it will make for a humorous essay. As for me: I’m never trying to do that again.
Actual Route: Waking in Red, Public Transit in Green
This is a reprint of an essay from Memorial Day 2012. Unfortunately, it all needs to be said again, and again.
Memorial Day has always struck me as a holiday in desperate need of a root cause analysis. We honor our war dead, who deserve to be honored, but we fail to ask the deeper question, “Why are there so many of them, and why do we continue to have more?”
I have an idealist viewpoint on war—I am against it, without exception. If we suggest that this war is just or that war is necessary, we capitulate to the fantasy that war can accomplish some good. War occurs when all else fails, but as long as war is an option, we excuse ourselves from the work required to achieve peace.
As long as war is an option we can talk of justice but insist our point of view prevails.
As long as war is an option we can talk of respect but consider our own country superior.
As long as war is an option we can talk of communicating but we won’t have to take the difficult walk in another man’s shoes to understand his point of view.
We love war, even more than we love to say we are for peace. We are violent creatures, our capacity to destroy is incredible, fascinating really. We do not weigh war’s outcome realistically because we believe the virtue of our cause will tilt the outcome in our favor. Whether we are the rebel or the establishment, each side finds precedent to support his cause. War can smile on the light-footed and inspired, as it did when the Minutemen beat the Hessians in 1775 or the Vietnamese whooped us back nearly two hundred years later. Other times simple “might makes right” prevails. After we pummeled Dresden with thousands of bombs, and Hiroshima with just one, we brought our enemies to heel.
We also love war at a personal level. War is the ultimate adolescent activity, raging action, reckless and liberating. No one ever thinks they are going to die in a war; if they did they would not go. We always think we are invincible, the other guy will die. But sometimes the other guy kills us, and though it is tragic, we die heroes, our deaths count for something, we exit this earth at the height or our virtue, and are honored forever. We make an early, but glorious, exit.
As a child, Memorial Day included a ceremony at the high school stadium with a military procession, a twenty-one-gun salute, and tri-folded flags. It did not stir me. For years I did nothing, pretending Memorial Day was nothing more than a calendar glitch for a long weekend. Then a few years ago the City of Boston began a simple, stunning Memorial Day tribute that touches me deeply. On a rise in the Common, volunteers plant small American flags. There are over 33,000 this year, representing every Massachusetts soldier killed since the Civil War.
Every year I am discouraged because the number of flags keeps growing. But every year I also find hope in the sea of dense packed red, white and blue flags. The individual colors merge, like pointillist dots of an Impressionist painting. The flags lose their unique identity, the flags lose their national symbolism, and the hill becomes a graceful sea of purple.
I doubt the day will come when the people of this earth understand that our commonalties are more important than our differences, that nations and ethnicities and religions do more to separate us than to unite us, and that our best future is the one that makes a seat at the table for everyone. In the meantime I choose interpret Boston’s inspiring tribute to dead soldiers not as a collection of individuals lost to us in war’s folly, but as a beacon of what the world might look like when we lay down our arms and move forward together.
I can’t seem to get Alex Edelman’s Just for Us out of my head. I keep digging beneath the comic surface of his sometimes naïve, always humorous, wonderings about whether this fair skinned Orthodox Jewish man-child is actually white.
One particular bit, towards the end of the show, resonates strong. The day after Alex has been kicked out of the white supremacist meeting, in a bravado solo enactment of both sides of a telephone conversation, Alex’s friend calls him out. Of course Alex is white. The whole episode is the height of white privilege: to assume that you, a Jew, could walk into a meeting of white supremacists and think, “This will probably be fine.”
The line, delivered in a sing-song voice with a flip of the wrist, is hysterical. But the serious undertone lingers. That so often, privilege is more than simply having more of everything. It’s all that we take for granted. All the bennie’s we can’t even see.
I live at the top of the food chain: a healthy, affluent, educated, white male. I know, I know, officially I can claim membership in a minority. But I think being gay doesn’t quite count because, most often, I get to decide whether to play the gay card. So it doesn’t carry the same oppressive weight as being Black or Brown or female or disabled, or any other minority status that reveals itself before the first introduction is made.
I’m not about to crash a white supremacist meeting anytime soon. But I could. In fact, there are very few places I can’t go. For over twenty years I designed health care facilities all over the country. I went into emergency departments, ICUs, and operating suites to take photos or measurements or observe processes. Not once—never once—did anyone, in any hospital, ever question me or my purpose. I was polite; I’d introduce myself to the unit secretary, explain my mission. But dozens of other people saw this non-employee walking around supposedly secure areas without any idea of my purpose, yet no one ever bothered to question. Because I looked like I belonged. I did it for years before I realized: Wow! Not everyone gets this privilege.
Over time I became more aware of the privilege I cannot see. I was ‘woke’ before it was a thing, and I still find it usefully humbling to appreciate what’s easily taken for granted, even as ‘woke’ has been cancelled, or pronounced dead, or whatever.
Image Courtesy NBC Sports Boston
Last month my daughter—a huge Celtics fan—was all excited that the March 18 game had been televised by an all-female team of broadcasters as part of Female Empowerment Month. “That is so awesome. For girls to see these women doing the whole thing. I never saw anything like that.
I was floored by her intensity. Anyone who knows Abby knows she is a tornado of empowerment. I’ve never had the slightest doubt that she’s capable of anything—and she knows it. The whole, “children need to see themselves reflected in positions of influence” argument always rang hollow in me. Until I heard Abby explain how meaningful it was to her to see women broadcast a game she had always, always, seen delivered by men. Duh. Of course I never thought it was a big deal to see role models who looked like me. Because they always did.
I don’t buy that the way to accept all we cannot see is by trying to experience others’ realities. I’m never going to know what it feels like to be transgender or disabled, to be obese, or addicted, or date-raped. It would be disingenuous of me to pretend. What I can do is to hear people’s stories, and give credence to the challenges they encounter. And if a person says they’ve been discriminated against, or that they feel oppressed, or they feel blessed, I must take them at their word.
Which brings me to an odd paradox of bias in my personal empathy. The more divergent a person is from me, by whatever psycho-social-economic profile, the greater understanding I offer, the more I accept their difficulties as described. I would never contest the tale of a transgender Native American or a Haitian immigrant. I accept their stories as their truth. But the more a person mirrors my own life and experience, the less compassion I extend. I know a healthy, college-educated, middle-aged, white, gay guy who stopped working at age fifty, miscalculated his retirement needs, and has ended up in public housing. Certainly not the first—or last—person to ever do such a thing. Yet, I don’t feel empathy for him. Rather, I feel anger. Because, hell, if I managed to hold my nose to the grindstone long enough to keep off the dole, why can’t he? It’s cruel of me, I know. I don’t enjoy being righteous and unforgiving. But for a guy with so many of my same privileges to be—lazy—sticks in my craw. The label ‘freeloader’ festers on my lips.
Perhaps I’ve overshot the mark, holding more empathy for lives I cannot fathom over those I can easily compare. Alas, such is the ongoing challenge of our world, whether writ large or small. For our society, to get to the point that having an all-female broadcast team is no big deal; to actually get to the point that we don’t even need to have ‘Female Empowerment Month.’ For me personally, to bring all the privilege I cannot see into the light, to question constantly what and how I think of others, and to squelch the instinct to judge, in the spiral pursuit of trying to be a more generous human.
All images taken from Theatrical Program and MAX trailer
You haven’t seen comedian Alex Edelman’s MAX special, Just for Us? You must.
I first read about Alex a few years ago, in a profile of the Brookline-born comedian, so when his special appeared in my MAX queue, I hit play. For ninety minutes, I howled. Next night, I watched it again, and I laughed tears. This weekend, I watched it a third time, and roared all over again. He is simply the funniest stand-up comedian I’ve ever seen.
Technically, Alex doesn’t do stand-up. It’s more run-around-in-circles. The guy is one nervous nebbish, who rates the Guinness Book of World Records for most miles of anxious pacing across a single stage. He’s disorienting at first, but once you get lulled into his motion, you’re entranced.
In this moment, with the Middle East more fraught than ever, it’s tough to imagine how a comedy skit whose overarching scenario is a Jew crashing a meeting of white supremacists could land well. Yet somehow it does. Part of the charm, for me, is the exquisite structure of the piece. Something that becomes clearer on second and third viewings. Yes, Alex Edelman does go to a meeting of white supremacists in Queens. Yes, he infiltrates them with naïve bravado. Yes, he gets outed as a Jew. And yes, his rom-com fantasy with an alluring neo-Nazi woman goes down in flames. But in between these bizarre plot points, he touches on gorillas who use sign language, Prince Harry’s cocaine habit, the ridiculous Olympic sport ‘skeleton,’ and Donny Osmond’s star turn on Broadway. There are so many detours, so deliciously woven, that we simply waft over the improbability of the main event. Alex triumphs in creating something completely Jewish that transcends the ugly politics of our moment. And also manages to tie all the inane elements into a satisfying, still humorous, ending.
Just for Us includes plenty of silly trivia; the man tells us straight out his affection for bad jokes and then revels in how much he gets us to laugh at them. Still, like all good comedians these days, Alex manages to infuse his jokes with social commentary. But unlike Hannah Gadsby or Mark Moran, or the uber-relevant Trevor Noah, Alex Edelman never lets his politics overshadow his primary objective: to land the joke.
Underlying the structure of the show is the fundamental question: is a Jewish person white? My first reaction is, of course. And yet, Alex clarifies that Jews are certainly not as white as, say, Boston Brahmins (who get their call-out during the monologue). Certainly, white supremacists don’t consider Jews to be white. The Nazi’s despised Brown and Black people; they killed homosexuals and gypsies simply for existing; but the genocide they leveled against Jews has earned its own name in history: The Holocaust.
Ouch! That last sentence is much too heavy for a puff piece on Alex Edelman. And yet, that truth exists beneath his buoyant hysterics.
Watch Just For Us. It is so much funnier than I am.
The Awkward Pose 