Where is Our Nation of Laws?

Posted on 10/06/2013 by paulefallon

usa-001John Adams, the hard-nosed framer of the Massachusetts Constitution, which became the model for the U.S. Constitution, once heralded our achievement as creating a nation of laws rather than a nation of men. He envisioned a republic released from the tyranny of brute strength and the cult of personality in favor of one that gives all men a voice to shape the affairs of state and them abide by them.

His ideal was tarnished in his own lifetime; after George Washington stepped down the country descended into a carnival of politics to which he was ill suited. After a single term as President, Adams lost to his politically savvy nemesis, Thomas Jefferson.

Still, the antics John Adams persevered are nothing compared to the wanton disregard for our nations principles now on display.  This morning’s NY Times had complementary headlines that each tarnished our nation’s principles, and together highlight the magnitude of our fall from reason.  Apparently a group of conservatives (read rich, old, white men) have plotted for months to shutdown the government if they could not get their way with Obamacare.  Forget that Obamacare is official law, forget that the Supreme Court upheld it’s major provisions, forget that the people reelected the President who made it the cornerstone of his first term.  Forget even that funding for Obamacare is independent of the budget that shut us down.  A bunch of rich old guys don’t like it and so 800,000 people get furloughed as a result.

The second headline is about two raids we made in foreign countries during a week when, in theory, we are out of business. This makes me realize that the definition of ‘essential personal’ is really, do you carry a gun. The people who provide social service, food, housing, and education are non-essential while pretty much everyone with a weapon is still roaming the earth, further diminishing our nation’s principles.

Every one of has to deal with laws we don’t like.  Many of us don’t like Obamacare. But like it or not it’s the law, and the way to change the law is not by shutting our government down.  Since Obamacare haters have been unable to overturn it through legislation, the courts, or an election cycle, they have taken the law into their own hands and shut us down. Shame on them.  And shame on any elected official who capitulates the their shenanigans. (Are you listening Mr. Boehner?) Open our government back up for business again.

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CorePower Yoga

Posted on 09/29/2013 by paulefallon

awkward_pose_3-001It turns out my addiction to yoga is fickle.  My annual membership to Bikram came to a close in early September.  After 1,046 classes I’d been feeling diminishing returns.  Some days the heat seemed as formidable a foe as on my first day, some days I lost focus, other days I simply didn’t have the energy to complete all the postures.

Coincidently a new CorePower Yoga studio opened a mile from my house. CorePower originated in Denver; I’d been to their studios when vacationing there.  They offered a free week of yoga and I figured I needed a change.

Bikram yoga has been belittled as McYoga because of its uniformity – the exact same sequence of the exact same postures every class regardless where you are in the world.  I can understand the logic behind the label, but it’s misleading. McDonald’s offers lame food while Bikram offers excellent yoga.  Not all yoga devotees are Bikram fans, but none deny its validity.

CorePower is the Whole Foods of yoga, a carefully conceived experience of health and goodness that disguises the corporate backbone beneath the surface.  CorePower has studios all over the United States; the one in my neighborhood is the first in Massachusetts. Unlike yoga studios that provide little more than a barren room with an attached toilet, or Bikram, which offers at least rudimentary shower and changing places, CorePower Yoga is a well-appointed spa.  The lobby is gracious and tall, littered with expensive accessories for sale. There are comfortable sofas arranged in front of the endlessly burning fireplace. The locker rooms are clean and large, the showers have custom heads, there’s soap and lotion galore.

CorePower plays music during class.  I had never done yoga to music and found it distracting.  In my first class Adele interfered with my concentration during sun salutations; Sting was annoying during my Warrior II. I thought I might not even finish out my free week. But CorePower’s forte’s – like Whole Foods – is variety and over the course of my week I attended two C2 intermediate yoga classes plus four Sculpt classes (aerobics with a yoga flair) and one Hot Power Fusion, a less intense version of Bikram. Although CorePower is full of amenities that don’t resonate with me – who wants a burning fireplace on a brilliant late summer day – I decided that CorePower had more to offer than flash and, needing a sustained break from Bikram, I signed on as a regular member.

Three weeks later I am a CorePower convert.  I tune out the music whenever it bothers me, but there are times when it truly complements my effort, especially in Sculpt, where the beat sustains the aerobic speed. Sculpt has become my primary class, but after doing it for two or three days in a row, I intersperse a C2 or Hot Power Fusion and enjoy the changeup. CorePower is more energetic than Bikram, but less sustained. Each class provides plenty of physical challenge for me. I figured all the peripherals would obscure the mental bliss Bikram often provided, but to my pleasure, I captured some of that today. In the middle of Sculpt, between the cross-training antics of performing military presses from warrior pose and arm extensions from horse position, I became hyper aware of my surroundings. Every part of my body moved through space with a distinctive grace and ease.  It was exhilarating.

My shift from Bikram to CorePower has taught me a few things.  First I am a fickle lover. Not only did I go cold turkey from daily Bikram to daily CorePower, I did it without looking back for an instant.  Second, I realize that CorePower is not really yoga.  If you think about the name carefully, yoga is only about one third of the experience.  Every class has a core component, and every class has a power focus. Perhaps I needed to pull myself out of such a pure yoga pursuit.  Third, I realize how much I like the variety.  Within the three types of classes they offer, every instructor inserts his or her own modifications. I don’t now exactly what I am going to do each day and I like the balance between overall structure and internal variety.

My four years of Bikram contribute every class I do at CorePower.  Bikram has a culture of improvement – the teachers correct our postures and over time my poses have become very accurate.  CorePower is a culture of encouragement.  Teachers never offer anything but superlatives to individuals or the class; their hands-on corrections are simply gentle massages.  I am not sure whether CorePower’s approach can help people improve their form, but what I learned in Bikram apply.

Perhaps I will return to Bikram in time, perhaps I will wander in another direction.  For now I am content to sweat through CorePower’s offerings.  They make me feel healthy and fit with a more generous spirit than Bikram offers. And, at least for now, it’s a lot more fun.

corepower fireplace

Fireplace at CorePower Yoga

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Thomas L. Friedman and Me

Posted on 09/22/2013 by paulefallon

 usa-001Thomas L. Friedman and I are pretty much alike.  Okay, okay, he is Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times while I write a blog followed a handful of people. Farrar Straus Giroux publishes his oeuvre while they send me exquisite rejections. But besides that, we are very much alike. In our worldview; in our attempt to take complex realities and distill their essence; in our belief that no matter how labyrinthine a situation may appear, there is always some way to resolve it with dignity and respect for all parties.

The World is Flat is a seminal book; it frames the twenty-first century in a way that fundamentally changed my perspective. Not all of his writing is as good, not all of his vignettes so compelling, but Mr. Friedman consistently has important things to say, and says them well. Proportionate to our readership, I try to do the same.

Sometimes I am actually ahead of his curve.  In the NY Times Sunday Review of August 25, 2013 he wrote an incredible article, Foreign Policy by Whisper and Nudge that recast my understanding of why American foreign policy is so off track. He articulates the differences between cold war foreign policy (jockeying for external favors among nations) and our current challenges, which repeatedly get us entangled in the internal affairs of other countries. With regard to the Middle East he states a position that readers of The Awkward Pose may recall from my bicycle trip (Oklahoma: Energy for the Taking, 12/18/2011) that the United States cannot have a viable foreign policy in the Middle East until we become energy independent of that region.

The Awkward Pose recently surpassed 20,000 readers. Thank you to all my regular followers. I doubt Thomas Friedman is one of them, or that he got this ideas about energy independence from me, and it doesn’t matter.  It is still gratifying to know that things I am concerned about, and write about, enter the public conversation at the level that Thomas Friedman writes.  That is the way that change happens in today’s world.  People like me toss ideas out there, people like you read them, conversations start, discussions ensue, ideas evolve, and consensus builds. The democracy of the Internet is less straightforward than a dictatorship, less orderly than a bureaucracy. It’s messy and exciting, which is how sharing a planet with seven billion people ought to be.

 

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All The Way

Posted on 09/15/2013 by paulefallon

usa-001The A.R.T. pulses this September with the electricity of a powerful hit. The energy of the full house crowd at last night’s preview of All the Way was palpable; it surged when the cast took their places on the stately set, hit a crescendo when Bryan Cranston strutted to his center spot on the oval carpet, and then kept right on climbing through three hours of complex, dense, fascinating historical drama.

The A.R.T. under Diane Paulus knows a few things about making a hit.  Two years ago her restaged Porgy and Bess starring Audra MacDonald captivated Cambridge and went on to Broadway and multiple Tony awards.  Ditto last year’s Pippin. All the Way is not cut from the same cloth – it is a drama rather than a musical, imported from the 2012 Oregon Shakespeare Festival – but the A.R.T production has the same excitement that flows from witnessing a Broadway blockbuster in the making.

It is fitting that the story of LBJ’s first year in office, with a focus on passing the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, premiered in a Shakespeare festival; Robert Schenkkan’s play is epic tragedy. Seventeen actors play forty-four roles; each one deeply human and ultimately flawed.   The play’s end, LBJ’s landslide victory over Goldwater in 1964, is clouded by LBJ’s understanding that the best of his presidency is already behind him and that in winning the nation he lost the South. The presentiment of disaster eclipses the momentary triumph.

The play is not perfect.  The bedside scene between LBJ and his long-time aide Walter rings false; the audience already has enough foreshadowing of how Walter will stumble; LBJ does not need to give him a bedside pat.  The subsequent banter between LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover is too broad; it buys a few laughs based on our contemporary understanding of Hoover’s twisted homosexuality at the expense of lifting the audience out of the story’s time and place. The beginning, with all the phone conversations, may be an unavoidable way to introduce the complex story, but it feels like a Washington D.C version of Bye Bye Birdie, while the final scene is simply too long.  The audience is already overwhelmed by the immensity of this effort; we don’t need to climb so many false peaks before applauding the final bows.

Those problems are, at most, fifteen minutes of the total endeavor. The other 165 minutes are riveting. As a subscriber I landed fourth row center seats. Watching Bryan Cranston face down every powerful person who populated the evening news during my youth with spitting vehemence, deep distrust, and a huge need for their love, is astounding.  Mr. Cranston is phenomenal. He is so hoarse by the end of the evening I fear for his voice over the long-term, but every inflection last night was perfect.  Equally impressive is his counterpart, Reed Birney, who is such milquetoast as Hubert Humphrey one is almost glad Humphrey never achieved the presidency (until you recall who beat him).  The cast is uniformly fine; Dan Butler as George Wallace and Betsy Aidern and Susannah Schulman as various political wives and D.C. accessories all bring depth to small roles.  One fascinating aspect of the multiple casting is how actor’s play across the political spectrum.  Birney is Strom Thurmond as well as Humphrey; Schulman is both Muriel Humphrey and Lurleen Wallace.

There are actually 47 characters in the play. John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy are often present in spirit, while Bobby Kennedy is a ubiquitous, unseen force. LBJ fears and loathes Bobby so much that he despairs Bobby winning the senate seat from New York, even as it consolidates LBJ’s majority in the Senate.

Walking home after the show my head swam in the permutations of intrigue, blackmail, and double-crossing LBJ and his contemporaries went through to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and launch The Great Society.  Lyndon relished the political game so much that his machinations supersede his purpose.  In the frantic, heady days after JFK’s assassination, the accidental president states a commitment to civil rights, but it is secondary to his passion for political chess.  The play jumps well beyond the old question of whether the end justifies the means. The end appears to be nothing more than a distant marker selected because it will ensure a convoluted means.  Almost fifty years later LBJ’s means are little more than historical footnotes and fodder for excellent theater, while the actual product of his effort transformed American society forever.

All the Way

 

All the Way plays at the A.R.T. in Cambridge, MA through October 12, 2013, but don’t bother trying to get tickets – it is sold out.

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With Less Aid, a Stronger Haiti will Emerge

Posted on 09/11/2013 by paulefallon

haiti-001This is an article by Tate Watkins that was originally published in The Globe and Mail on September 5, 2013

Earlier this year, Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck released Fatal Assistance, a documentary that eviscerated the international response to the January, 2010, earthquake that struck his home country. The gist of Mr. Peck´s argument is that most of the $11-billion in pledged aid went to foreign contractors who, along with international diplomats and celebrities, tripped over themselves to undermine local authority and capacity.

The scene sums up a dilemma about foreign aid just as the Canadian
government considers significant cuts in funding to Haiti. Countries
deliver aid to meet pressing needs today, but they might be undercutting
chances for a recipient to stand on its own two feet tomorrow. In one scene,
Haitian officials complain to then-president René Préval about bottled
water donations that had come into the country and undercut local water
producers. Mr. Préval says that while he´d love to stand up to the
unenlightened foreigners who had descended upon the country, Haiti is a
weak state. Sometimes it has to sit by and let outsiders call the shots, he
says, or else it might scare them – and their funding – off for good.

Haitian officials have bemoaned its “Republic of NGOs” label for years, and
since his inauguration speech in May, 2011, President Michel Martelly has
preached “trade, not aid.” His administration´s mantra: “Haiti is open for
business.”

But the “open for business” cliché is openly mocked in a country with
exorbitant energy costs, a regulatory environment and judicial system
perceived as inefficient and corrupt, and one of the worst reputations for
ease of doing business in the world. And while the administration shouts
about its preference for trade, it hasn´t turned down the billions in
offered aid. As long as the aid flow remains on full blast, there´s little
incentive for the Haitian state to effect fundamental change required for
progress.

Foreign aid helps thousands of Haitians – especially funding that provides
access to health care – and cutting it would hurt in the short term. In
recent years, aid from Canada has focused on providing health care for
women and children, feeding schoolchildren and increasing economic
opportunities for Haitians through financial services such as microcredit.

But whether it´s from Canada or any other donor, aid hasn´t led to the kind
of economic development that would allow multitudes of poor Haitians to
help themselves. As economist Michael Clemens of the Center for Global
Development has noted, 82 per cent of Haitians who have escaped poverty
have done so not by receiving direct aid but by migrating to the United
States. And it´s conceivable that donors can curtail aid gradually and
prioritize cuts in ways that avoid disastrous shocks for the Haitian
families who, for better or worse, rely on aid for subsistence.

Because external funding remains more important than internal revenues –
foreign aid has accounted for more than half of the country´s budget in
recent years – Haitian officials continue to be more concerned with wining
and dining the likes of Bill Clinton than providing the institutions that
will help Haiti´s people flourish. One manifestation of the misguided
priorities is the manner in which the government raises the small amount of
revenue it does collect itself: Tax revenues come mainly from consumption,
not income, a regressive system that punishes low-income Haitians, who wind
up handing over much larger portions of their earnings than the well-off.

Haitian officials say that by 2030, they want the country to be known as an
emerging market, rather than as the hemisphere´s top aid recipient. If
Haiti truly wants to transform from the weak state Mr. Préval described
into one that has a strong and productive economy in 20 years, someone has
to take the first step in turning down the pressure from the aid hose.

 

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Uruguay Leads the Way

Posted on 09/08/2013 by paulefallon

vitruvian_man-001What do I know about Uruguay?  Very little.  But a short but glowing, article in August 25, 2013 NY Times Sunday Review described the South American country on the move with lots of foreign investment and progressive social attitudes.  They are about to ratchet that reputation up one notch as the first country in the world to take their pot trade, a $40 million per year illegal operation, and turn it into a government sanctioned and operated entity.

There is a lot of resistance; justifiable fears that a state-sponsored marijuana trade will boost drug use and a lot of hashing about the details. But the baseline argument, that drug use is here, that the illegal markets flourish, and the government has not been able to do anything to effectively counter them, resonates with President Jose Mujica, who is popular enough to try something new rather than let the corrupt status-quo continue.

What I loved about this article was how well it resonated with my own observations (published here 2/18/2013) of how we fail so miserably in the war on drugs because of drugs illegal status. We hold greater control over two much more serious threats to American health, alcohol and tobacco, by regulating them rather than banning them. Making drugs illegal does not take them out of society, it only diverts them from a world of criminal behavior to one we can influence directly (as well as one that supports society through taxes rather than drains it with enforcement expense).  People are going to take drugs, and even abuse them. We can control that reality much better if we acknowledge that and not pretend it away.

I like when a place like Uruguay, hardly a dominant world power, explores ways to address challenges that all countries face, and at present, all fail at address with any logic.

130908 UruguayWay to go, Uruguay!

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End of Summer Travelogue

Posted on 09/02/2013 by paulefallon

0009997_Haiti_Diagram_Paul_Fallon_101103I ended my summer doing two of my favorite things – riding my bicycle and connecting with the friends I have made through my work in Haiti.  Len and Cheryl Ann Gengel invited me to their beach house in Wells, ME.  I had to say yes to the good people, good food, and good beach.  Then I decided to ride my bike, 95 miles each way, to experience New England at that turning point of summer to fall.  I biked through 26 towns in three states, eight hours each way.  Here is a bit of what I saw along the way.

Fresh Pond

Cambridge, MA – Fresh Pond was my start and end point.

Powder House

 

 

 

Somerville, MA – I crossed over Powderhouse Blvd, where I lived when my children were born.

Royall House

 

 

 

Medford, MA – The Royall Mansion

Salem Street

 

 

 

Malden, MA – Salem Street is full of aging commercial

fellswaymelrose middel school

 

 

Stoneham, MA – The Fellsway is a great bike route close to the city

 

 

Melrose, MA – Melrose has a smashing new Middle School

wakefield

 

 

Wakefield, MA – Lake Quannapowitt and the gazebo are this town’s landmarks

lynnfield

 

 

Lynnfield, MA – Beyond Route 128 everything spreads out.  Lynnfield has an extensive historic district.

peabody

 

 

Peabody, MA – Yikes!  The bike trail that was supposed to by-pass Route 1 is not paved so I have to navigate the spaghetti of highways as best I can.

sylvan street

 

 

Danvers, MA – Sylvan Street seems to be the best way to keep off the highways…

BeverlyBeverly, MA – …until I enter Beverly and realize I am way off track

 

horse crossingWenhem, MA – There are horse signs everywhere.

 

 

 

topsfield fairTopsfield, MA – I finally get back on track in Topsfield.

 

ipswich

 

Ipswich, MA – I have a long slog on Route 1, but there is little traffic and a wide shoulder and the view across the marshes is still spectacular.

barbeque Rowley

 

Rowley, MA – I skirt the highway to explore Rowley, where I find great barbeque for lunch on my return.

Rt 1 Newburyport

 

 

Newburyport, MA – This is the midway point. The worst stretch of the whole trip is the mile leading to the Merrimac River bridge.  A sudden cloud douses me with rain, there is no shoulder, I hit a pothole, and my front light goes flying.  It’s a minor inconvenience but it rattles.

salisbury

 

Salisbury, MA – Route 1A turns east and I finally get to the beach!

Seabrook

 

 

Seabrook, NH – The ride up the NH coast is incredible. Even the Seabrook nuclear plant cannot diminish the exhilaration of a perfect cycling day.  75 degrees and overcast; by now my legs rotate on their own accord.

Hampton Beach

 

Hampton Beach, NH – On my way up, I take a break to enjoy the honky-tonk and have a sausage and pepper sub along the beach.

North Hampton

 

 

North Hampton, NH – After climbing a cliff out of the strip, mansions surround me.

Rye Beach

 

 

Rye Beach, NH – I pass one beautiful beach after another…

Portsmouth

 

 

 

Portsmouth, NH – …and descend into the lovely city of Portsmouth, where all kinds of festivals spill into the street.

 

kitteryKittery, ME – I continue to hug the coast along Route 103.  I see my first tree that has turned to gold. Fort McCleary is a cool resting spot.

York Harbor

 

 

 

York Harbor, ME – Going north, the coastline gets more and more dramatic.

Fox's York Beach

 

 

York Beach, ME – I stop for a soft serve at Fox’s, right on the beach.

 

Front PorchOgunquit, ME – Back on Route 1 the traffic through Ogunquit is tough for cars, but easy for me gliding by on the right.  The Front Porch is packed, as always, on a nice summer day.

 

Wells BeachWells, ME – The beach at Wells is worth the trip, but even better is seeing Len and Cheryl Ann and about 20 of their friends for a surf and turf buffet and hours of good stories.

Len_Cheryl Ann_me

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Made in Detroit

Posted on 08/25/2013 by paulefallon

usa-001I love Detroit.  I loved it as a child hearing my father’s automotive tales of his home city.  I loved it through every era depicted in Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex, even the 1967 riots.  I’ve loved flying in and out of its airport so often over the past twenty years on my trips to Kalamazoo; monitoring the spread of urban abandonment from the air and marveling how easy the Interstates flow; rush hour is lite in Motor City. I loved Detroit this summer when, for the first time, I actually got to trod its hard surfaced streets, take in a Tigers game, and marvel at its fabulous 1930’s skyline, lumpy ziggurats unencumbered by late twentieth century boxy skyscrapers that despoil urban centers who have been unlucky enough to suffer economic growth.

I strolled along Woodward Avenue, one of the 1940’s great shopping streets.  Not every storefront was empty, not every shadow harbored a homeless person, but the proportion was high enough to nudge a pedestrian along.  Still, I stopped at the Made In Detroit window.  The store had great spirit, muscular and industrial, full of hard metal objects and T-shirts, as well as a chauvinistic streak, with an entire line of ‘Badass’ goods and a tribute to Detroit as ‘The Arsenal of Democracy’ during Word War II.  If it had been open I would have stepped inside, but these days Woodward Avenue rolls up well before summer sundown, so I contented myself with the sidewalk view.

Detroit declared bankruptcy on July 18, 2013, my father’s 89th birthday if he had lived that long. Since then our news has been full of the details of Detroit’s $18 billion debt, corruption, empty pension coffers, and abandoned streets.  The same week Shinola, a boutique manufacturing company specializing in watches, bicycles, leather goods, and journals manufactured in Detroit, opened a New York flagship store in TriBeCa.  Of course the headline of the New York Times’ Style Section tribute was ‘Made in Detroit’ and Shinola’s website features beefy looking Americans with their arms clenched across their chests reinforcing the notion that Detroit is tough and tough is good.

I am struck by a paradox.  If tough is so good and Detroit is so tough, why is it such mess?  The answer, of course, is that tough is no longer good, or even relevant.  The world is not about being tough, it is about being smart, and while the rest of the world grew a heck of a lot smarter since World War II, Detroit, with its too-slow changing automobile industry, its eight-mile race divide and its corruption, was anything but smart.  But not to worry, for now we can save Detroit by buying artisanal hard goods made there. Just as we buy handicrafts from Ten Thousand Villages to support third world enterprise and feel good about being global citizens, we can buy boutique bicycles to support Detroit’s manufacturing resurgence and feel good about supporting America’s first third world city.

But I don’t want to buy a bicycle from a boutique; I want to buy a bicycle at a bicycle shop, a place that offers a full range of choice.  And I don’t want to support Detroit because it is tough, or used to be tough and now prints ‘badass’ T-shirts to prove its toughness.  Detroit should celebrate its past, but Detroit’s most important contributions to the world came well before it 1940’s factories gave shape to the world’s greatest carnage; Detroit’s genius came at the turn of the last century when it incubated the automobile industry and developed phenomenal changes in manufacturing processes.  It is that innovation, not bulging biceps and big wrenches, that will make the city relevant for today and tomorrow.  I don’t want Detroit to boast of being tough, I want it to demonstrate that its smart. I want it to get its financial house in order, I want it to reach across Eight Mile Road and bridge the gap between the affluent suburbs and deserving urban core, I want it to optimize its immense infrastructure with worthwhile, sustainable development.

Detroit is not an anomaly; it is America’s leading example of how a vital civilization can decay from its core. It deserves bold action and wise investment. Not because of what it did in our past, but because of what it can offer our future.  Made in Detroit is all well and good.  But I want a T-shirt that says Inspired / Invented / Improved in Detroit.

Shinola 2

Shinola Boutique in TriBeCa – is this any way to buy a bike?

Made in Detroit FascistMade in Detroit

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Twenty Feet to Stardom

Posted on 08/18/2013 by paulefallon

vitruvian_man-001And the colored girls go “Doo do doo do doo do do doo…”

Thus Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side begins Twenty Feet from Stardom, a movie ostensibly about backup singers that is really about how we all endure, and perhaps find solace, in life beyond the spotlight.  The soundtracks, the visuals, the characters, all stimulate the marrow of Americans of a certain age. We grew up in the golden era of back-ups, when clean scrubbed white bread voices that simply bolstered their lead singers were eclipsed by gospel choir bred sisters who didn’t even pretend to read the music, they just sang from their soul.

The films main characters, Darlene Love, Judith Hill, Lisa Fischer, Merry Clayton, Claudia Lennear, Tata Vega, and the Waters family are hardly household names, yet they are the wall of sound behind Michael Jackson, Sting, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones, and many more.  Their talents are each on par with the stars they serve. Some yearn to claim their own spotlight but luck and fate never align in their direction, while others prefer life in the shadows, acknowledging that to be a star requires more than a great voice, it requires a fierce determination they lack.

The depth of the film comes from the wisdom, trials, and satisfactions these six women find in an industry where winners and losers are differentiated with even more cutthroat precision than in the wider world.  Their validation comes from the commentary by Mick Jagger, Bette Midler, Sting, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen, headliners who understand the solid foundation these women build for them to stand upon.

Darlene Love is both the most famous of the backup singers and the one whose story is most tragic.  Phil Spector simply issued her early recordings with The Blossoms under other names; other faces stole her starring voice.  Eventually she became so disillusioned she quit music, cleaned houses, but in her forties finally decided to grind out her own career.  For the past thirty years she has claimed her own center mic, and Bette Midler recently inducted her into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Though Merry Clayton still works it, stardom has remained elusive. Claudia Lennear gave up on Ike Turner and Mick Jagger to teach Spanish. Tata Vega admits that if she’d ever been a star she’d be gone by now; she’s been close enough to the pressure to understand it would have done her in. But Judith Hill, a generation younger than the other women, is awkwardly balanced between earning a livelihood doing back up vocals and stepping out as her own singer songwriter self.

The films greatest satisfaction resides in Lisa Fischer, a solid black woman with short knobs of hair and a twinkling diamond nose pierce.  Lisa’s voice is incomparable; the synthesis of Aretha Franklin, Audra McDonald, and Leontyne Price. My eyes and ears focused on her nuanced lips and ethereal sounds when she sang alone, yet in ensemble her voice merged completely with others.  Like the rest, Lisa dreamed of a solo career; she even won a Grammy for her first album’s hit, How Can I Ease the Pain.  But that second album never materialized, while her prowess as a session singer never faltered.  Since 1989 Lisa has toured with The Rolling Stones, and when she struts upstage during Gimme Shelter to rant the female counter “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away” (sung by Merry Clayton in the original recording) Mick Jagger has more than met his match.  Yet, of all the women in the film, Lisa seems most comfortable with her second fiddle role in life.  She carries the regret of a single, childless woman lightly. Her life is not perfection, but she acknowledges and appreciates her compensating satisfactions.

Back up singing is on the wane, the victim of tracking technology and reduced budgets. Perhaps the most remarkable scene of the film is Lisa Fischer, alone at a mic, scatting what could be an aria composed by dawn birds.  A second Lisa appears, adding harmony, a third, a fourth.  She is her own choir.  Until the aria softens, her duplicative images evaporate, and there is only one Lisa left at the mic.  All alone she made the wall of sound that used to require a quartet.

Twenty Feet from Stardom is the story of six women’s lives.  But it is also the story of yours and mine. Don’t we all contain a star within us? Don’t we all burn to demonstrate what we do best, and what nobody does better?  Aren’t we all hampered by the exigencies of luck and fate in claiming what we know should be ours?  I have written three books.  I could wallpaper a good-sized room with the praising rejections of agents, editors and publishers.  Last week an editor called me brilliant and then passed on my manuscript. I am unpublished, and likely to remain so for some time. Not so different from Merry Clayton or Tata Vega, or you.

The universe is endless and there are billions of stars.  But between each star is yet more immense space.  Most of us dwell in that huge void.  We look to the stars to give us light, and they need us to hold them up. Twenty Feet from Stardom gives a greater sense of place to us supporting players everywhere.

20 feet

Darlene Hall, Jo Lawry, Judith Hill and Lisa Fischer in Twenty Feet from Stardom.

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Is Obesity a Disease?

Posted on 08/11/2013 by paulefallon

usa-001The American Medical Association has decided by an overwhelming majority that obesity is a disease.  I wish I could share their certainty. Obesity is a personal and public health hazard, a risk factor for many conditions, and an indicator for premature death.  Obesity enables disease, but does that make it a disease?

My friends at Merriam-Webster define disease as “a condition of the living animal… that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms.”  By this definition, I concur that obesity is a disease, as is epilepsy and smoking, cancer and heroin addiction, spina bifida and AIDS. Yet not all of these conditions are considered diseases. Epilepsy, cancer and spina bifida are diseases; AIDS is called a disease though it’s actually a welcome mat for multiple diseases, while smoking and heroin addiction remain scorned as dirty habits.  The discrepancy is not whether these conditions impair normal functioning; they all do. Rather the discrepancy arises from an individual’s ability to influence whether they develop the condition, and society’s attitudes of acceptable behavior.

People with spina bifida and epilepsy are born with their condition; they are blameless in their suffering and we universally offer care and compassion to them because there but for the grace of god we go.  Cancer is increasingly linked to our environment and diet, yet it develops so randomly that no one condemns cancer patients of drinking too many Diet Cokes or breathing too much industrial air.  The increase in cancer is modern life’s collateral damage, and we extend compassion without blame to all who suffer it.

AIDS is dicier. It strikes randomly among a subgroup of people with particular behaviors. From the onset, people with AIDS were simultaneously labeled ‘sinners’ by people with a particular moral bent and ‘victims’ by those who considered the HIV virus an extreme side effect of the actions that transmit it. I find compassion easy towards the men and women who contracted HIV/AIDS before means of transmission were understood, but my empathy weakens for people who contract it these days when transmission is well understood and precautions easily available.  There are random cases of ‘oops, the condom broke’ and a disturbing subgroup of mentally ill known as bug chasers, but most of the recent uptick in HIV infections in this country is due to a casual attitude that HIV is a just another chronic condition treatable with drugs. Compassion is hard to muster for people so cavalier with their own life and health.

Obesity is the result of physiology and personal behavior in an even more complex way.  It is not a condition triggered by a single point of conversion; obesity evolves incrementally as a person eats, time and again, more food than their body needs. And, unlike HIV/AIDS, obesity is reversible.  True, there are people with metabolic dysfunction who are clinically obese, but far more people claim such conditions than actually possess them. Unfortunately our obesity epidemic has as much, or more, to do with cultural dysfunction than nutrition. Although a person with a thyroid disorder may be obese through no fault of their own, how culpable is the food stamp mom who can buy more processed food than fresh fruit for the same dollar, or the chronically depressed person who uses food as a palliative, or the twelve year old living in a dangerous and nutritionally deprived neighborhood whose mother has determined it isn’t safe to play outdoors?  These people do not have a fair shot at a fit and healthy life.

My biggest concern about calling obesity a disease is not that it doesn’t meet the criteria, but that in bestowing the condition with the imprimatur of disease we condone it. If we label obesity a disease, obesity will increase because whenever we assign something a label we deflect individual responsibility. In a world of overabundant, unhealthy food, individual responsibility is the strongest deterrent to being overweight.  If a person with epilepsy is not responsible for their disease, why should a person with obesity feel responsible for theirs, despite the fundamental difference that an epileptic is consumed by an external force beyond their control, while an obese person enflames their condition with every bite.

The prevalent American response to any disease is to take a pill. But the only meaningful response to obesity is for our society to make better nutrition available and for each individual to do the hard work of maintaining healthy weight.  I can’t see how designating obesity a disease can help either of these conditions come to pass while it is easy to see how an obesity ‘diagnosis’ will simply provide overweight people an excuse for their condition rather than the motivation to control it.

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