The Ghost of Oscars Past

Astrologers tell us that birthdays are hard, usually a little depressing, because of the Solar Return, or some such nonsense, the planets all aligning the way they were at our birth, and not because we are getting older, as, in my opinion, older is a privilege to be able to become. For me the Oscars is a hard time, because for so much of my life I was in love with movies and movie stars, and at the time of my breakthrough success with 'The Pretenders,' I was invited to everything in Hollywood, because (I hope you're sitting down) the town is just a little bullshitty, and success is the currency. So it was that Don and I, still young and pretty and sure the world was fair, with our two beautiful little children, Robert, 2, in white jacket and black bow tie, and Madeleine 4, in a taffeta and velvet gown, gave a Black Tie party to watch the event on TV. We were the first to dare to mock, and it was in the words of the great journalist who covered it for Time Magazine, an 'anti-Oscar party.' And everybody came.

Sandra Burton was the one who covered it:she had heard through our mutual hairdresser, Dusty, that he was going to a great party, and she called me to ask if she could come. I of course was nearly overcome with rapture, as caught up as I was in my temporary fame, with a publicist who never stopped longing for more press, Time was at the time as close as you could get to publicity Valhalla. I had been cooking for days--caught up in ephemera though I was, I was still a Ballabusta, if that's how it's spelled, loving to feed friends and family with my own recipes. So I made wontons and those South American things I don't remember the name of,--oh, empanadas-- to be passed on trays, with a Sabrett stand(imported from New York) serving hot dogs in the back yard. We had a red carpet outside the walkway to our house, a klieg light at the curb, an usher's uniform from the Roxy on a friend's son who showed everyone in with a flashlight. Don tended bar and did a Jackie Gleason impression,wiping the bar and singing "My Wild Irish Rose'--(he was a GREAT bartender and did terrible impressions) The house had three rooms for watching: Orthodox(no talking, reverential) Conservative(Talking and watching) and Reformed (talktalktalk and yell back at the set.) It was 1970, and there was Vietnam, and everybody hated Bob Hope and John Wayne."Oh, shut up, John Wayne," yelled Shirley MacLaine, the only thing she said that night that Sandy actually quoted, which was truly generous of her as Shirley was stoned and never stopped spewing invective about Mike Frankovitch who was still, as I recall, the head of Columbia. Shirley was to attack me when the article came out, saying "I thought I was at a private party!" But Sandy had stood in front of her with conspicuous pad and pencil and thrice, as Tommy Thompson might have said, told her she was there for Time Magazine, as I did, too. I spent many years trying to make it up to Shirley who told me I had to make it up to her, but never did, except for offering her my musical, which she said she would do only five performances a week in and wanted to own. When the Awards broadcast was over, she sat staring at the TV on which Sandor Vanocur was, sound off, as she was at the time having an affair with Sandor VAnocur. I do not consider this a tale told out of school, as there are few interesting men whom Shirley has known with whom she did not have an affair. ('Did you know Rod Gurney?" I asked her once, speaking of the psychiatrist stepson of my mentor,Yip Harburg, who had collaborated with Jay Gorney on 'Brother Can You Spare a Dime,' and then made off with his wife. "I had an affair with him," Shirley said.}

That was the first time I met Sandy, who was to become a lifelong friend, though her life was not long enough, ending five years ago when, after a career of dangerous adventures, including being with Aquino on his return to Manila and recording his murder when they wouldn't let her follow him off the plane, Beijing during Tiannammen Square, an elephant stampede, a daring interview with the Nobel prize winner Shu under house arrest in Burma, she retired to the peace and quiet of Bali where she was brutally murdered in her bathroom. So this day sits heavy on my soul, as I loved her as much as any friend I ever had, she had more clarity than anyone I have ever known except for Jack my Jewru(it really amused her that my guru was named 'Jack,') and there are not a lot of people I can go to whom I admire that much and say 'What shall I do?' and trust that the answer will be the one I should listen to. I miss her all the time, and resent with a passion her life being so cruelly cut short, though I realize in my more rational moments that it was harder on her than me, Still, though, I wonder from time to time whether death isn't harder on those left behind.

Anyway, back to the party: the 42nd Annual Academy Awards, so you know how Ago it was, tonight's being the 81st. The invitations were engraved, 'The Mitchell Academy of Arts and Games,' they read, and like I said, everybody came. Ruth Berle, wife of Milton, the dowager doyenne of Beverly Hills, a tough, dear woman who had been a sergeant in the army and did jiu-jitsu on a man nastily tryimg to cut into a line waiting to hear Sinatra, a special friend of hers,had accepted, so everyone else did, too.(Sandy called her the 'Bellweather of Beverly Hills society.') Lee Marvin was there, having won Best Actor the year before, with Michelle who was shortly to become semi-infamous for 'Palimony,' and most of the gifted and beautiful and funny and sometimes surprisingly bright celebs we knew. Everybody brought a prize, and the big winner of the evening for accurate picks was the super-talented and slick-haired Jack Cassidy, whose prize was what Ruth Berle had brought: an autographed picture of Ruth Roman. It was a glorious evening, with endless reverberations as everybody who hadn't been invited was mad about those who were, as,-- if you're still sitting down,-- there's a lot of jealousy and venom in that town. At least there was when there were, as Rex Reed noted in his terrific article about the Oscars in this week's Observer, REAL STARS.

So this night for me is especially painful, because Sandy is gone and her death is unavenged, and there is no justice in Bali if you have money to pay off the police. Also, they don't have too many really good movies anymore as a rule, I don't care how they pretend or market or raise the prices in a Depression because people are so desperate to be distracted, they will pay $12.50 for dross, to put it poetically. I really miss Cary Grant. I really miss Sandy.

Of Mice and Mimi

Saturday gave us a faux Spring day, the kind of impossible warmth that suddenly appears in midst of Winter, that in Paris, would send tens of thousands of Parisians into walking their glorious streets, crossing their wonderful bridges. But I am not in Paris. I am in New York. So I am given to exploring our own particular less-than wonders, checking out the neighborhood, after giving Mimi a footbath to clean off the slush. A few days ago, having joyfully accepted and frolicked in the snow, it was so cold that she stuck to the sidewalk. She looked up at me with a kind of ‘Huh?’ so I gently pried her pad loose. She is not so fond of ice now, but didn’t know that gentler weather meant another bath.
You wouldn’t know from the Barnes and Noble that the book business was in trouble. The store on Broadway was full, with a line of would-be buyers waiting their turn to spend what’s left of their money. There were fifteen magazines in the stand by the line with Obama covers, all the news mags, Vanity Fair and something called PT that said “Yes, he did, but can he?”
Whole Foods, aka Whole Paycheck, was likewise busy, with a line of potted Spring flowers, baby daffodils and primroses by the cash register, brightening the shelves, so I bought two red primroses and one sunshine yellow to replace the frozen, dead peppers that are on my balcony. I asked the clerk if a frost comes and kills them in the next few days, could I bring them back and get a refund.
But the days stay temperate, almost balmy, through to today, Tuesday. Still, iIt was blowy cold on the corner of Madison Avenue yesterday, walking home from the dentist, and a very frail, not very old man was hunched shivering in his wheelchair, holding out a cup, saying “I’m so cold, won’t somebody help me get a hot meal.” Most people can walk by that in this city, but I couldn’t, and gave him what I had. Then I walked up the avenue to Aveda to buy myself some shampoo and conditioner but the store wasn’t there anymore. Just darkness and a sign that offered Retail Space.
I had gone Saturday afternoon to see ‘Coraline’, trying for a transition to childrens’ books, but found it terrifying, not because of the 3D glasses but because of the darkness of the depiction of the other world Coraline goes into, with a seductive better mother who eventually morphs into a bony, sunken-eyed monster, though I was delighted that evil is depicted as too thin. Still, I sent out a warning alert so my son would not take Silas.
Caught as I am in the study and exercise of words and the feelings they give rise to, I must now make a small aside for ‘Scurrying’. I returned to my little atelier which it would be in Paris, here it’s a studio, and opened the door under the sink where the garbage can is and saw a mouse. There were mice in ‘Coraline,’ highly entertaining mice, but they, too, eventually morphed into the horrific and became rats. After the cliche shriek, I closed the mouse into the plastic bag that lines my garbage can and dropped it down the chute, which upset my tender-hearted friend Joie who worried on the phone over its slow death, but there is no incinerator below, only a pile of garbage, so it would have been a soft landing. Still she suffered over its suffering. I called down to the desk to ask for help, and they sent someone, but the family (four it turned out) endured till yesterday when the building closed up the hole. Last night, one little mouse came out looking for its relatives. I was reminded of the time I was working for the Journal, staying in a then moderately priced hotel in Paris, interviewing the genial manager in the bar, when a mouse came out and looked around with the same confusion. The manager turned to it and said “I thought I told you to stay in the kitchen.” I really liked that hotel.
Today the building sent an exterminator who couldn’t set traps because of Mimi, so under my red dragon=painted chest from Chang-Mai, a silver box that has a hole in it that will catch the mouse, as it will be attracted to the shine, be curious, and go inside. So it will not be the cat only that curiosity killed. Oh, dear. I really hate to think about it, but I don’t like thinking I am sharing quarters with something besides Mimi. Scurrying.
As for the demise of the mice family, I handle it by thinking of them as Republicans. I really can’t believe how stubbornly and stupidly and rodently they are behaving. What will it take to make them understand the country literally hangs in the balance? I thought Obama was clear and candid and brilliant last night, promising that he was saving the best answers for Geithner to give today. But the investment banker who lives next door told me Geithner said nothing in his half-hour talk, so the market fell three hundred points.
Oh, craven new world that has such creatures in it. So much to worry about. Did A=Rod use drugs to enhance his performance with Madonna?

A Golden Ticket

Have received what sounded like an affectionate complaint from a friend I admire who apparently enjoys these ramblings and noted there had not been a Report recently, which is because I have so much to report. First, there is the adjustment to the cold, something Mimi has been helping with, as she stays in bed as long as I do, not complaining, and, when pressed, or it is snowing, courageously goes out on my little balcony which would be a fire escape if it were not in such a high-toned building. Also there is not anywhere to escape to, it is just a little iron arc looking across at the rooftops, but it is enough for Mimi, who is beyond a good dog. Then there is the reality that I have gone back to actual work, abandoning my last career as novelist and going back to the first one I had which I imagined in my youth would be the real one, writing musical comedy. Those of you who are still alive who remember that time may recall my mentors were Yip Harburg, whom I recently got to see again in a dream when he helped me with a song, and Frank Loesser, who listened to my songs all those decades ago and said ‘Kid, you’re the biggest talent since me.’ So I am calling on them both in the ethers for help, and we will find out soon if there is an Aftersong.
Then, there was the Inauguration. I hope you were all as moved as I was. Mostly what touched me was Obama thanking those who ‘braved the cold’, as that brought up images in my mind of that crew crossing the Delaware, and it does feel so much like a Second Beginning, which is probably just a step below A Second Coming. Still, Paul Krugman was annoyed in today’s Times that Barack didn’t address health care in his speech and the Bush crowd was unhappy on the way home to Texas that the Prez had stuck it to W, but we do like Plainspeak. I received in the mail, forwarded from LA, what I think of as a golden ticket, very Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a gorgeously embossed and gilded with the presidential seal invitation to the inauguration itself, which I have no idea why I received, but was glad it came late or I would have gone and frozen. There were apologies today that the string geniuses, Itzhak and YoYo were pre-recorded, but they were afraid that a string might break in the cold. I was in the front row of Carnegie Hall after 9/11 when YoYo and Leontyne Price gave a free concert first come first sit, and as I arrived at 5 AM I was in the first row, and could hear YoYo breathing while he played, an intimacy that makes me feel I can call him YoYo. I wept then out of sadness, but found myself tearing up frequently during the events leading up to and during the inaugural event itself, out of joy and an excess of sentimentality and, here it is, back again, love of country. I hope he will be able to pull us out of this morass, and I think Rush Limbaugh should be tried for treason, along with stupidity, for actually saying he wants Obama to fail. A lawyer friend advises me that treason is applicable only in time of war, but what is this, after all?
A man collecting money for the homeless, who was himself freezing on the corner of Broadway and 64th Street as he stood by his inverted water bottle that was not too stuffed with bills and coins asked me why Bernie Madoff is in his penthouse and I have no answer. Nor can I answer those who want the bad guys tried for War Crimes, except that I know it would tear the country apart and the job is to pull it together, and save the system which has failed.
I wish there was a punishment for Greed, but as another lawyer once said to me when I asked him if I could countersue for Greed someone who was suing me for Libel, “Greed is a Given in a court of Law.” And of course it is a Given in Human Nature, at least many human natures, or it wouldn’t be high on the list of the Seven Deadlies.
Have been inching out little tentacles of longing as I re=connect with this great city where I cannot walk Mimi more than a block without having to give her a bath. If I were still a novelist, I would be tempted to go tonight to a workshop called ‘The Miracle List’ where you are supposed to come with a laptop or a journal to note times in your life when you have been touched by Grace, sub-titled ‘Writing, Telling, and Reliving God Moments’ because the group that shows up, edited, would certainly give rise to a good novel. But the day of the book is, I’m afraid, very over unless you’re Toni Morrison, whom we discussed last night at a meeting ot the Bryn Mawr Book Club(I am trying.) Selfsame friend who noted I hadn’t been blogging notes the rise of Hitler salutes in Germany, and I am reminded of the first novel I wrote to a changing market when I lived in Weinheim near the Bergstrasse in Germany after Don died, trying to conquer all my fears at once: being alone, the computer, and the German language, as hearing it immediately signaled to me that they were coming to get me. I was able to observe up close the Wiedervereinigung, the Reunification of both Germanys, where on the TV news every night there would be a map of Germany with little fires all over it, and those were the places where there had been attacks on foreigners. The joke in Munich then was ‘What’s the difference between the Turks and the Jews?’ Punchline: ‘The Jews are already dead.’ The novel was about neo-Naziism, and when my agent submitted it, the response was ‘There is no neo-Naziism in Germany.’ Right after that, most of the publishers were bought by Bertelsmann.
So it is for a long while now that the Fates, or the Muses, or Whoever They Are, have been indicating I should take a different path. So I embark on it like Dorothy, following my yellow brick road, to the lyrics of my mentor, Yip, with my own Toto. Hello, Broadway, Goodbye Borders. All the same, I might go tonight. I mean, you just never know where Grace will find you. Or you will find her.

A New York Kindness(as opposed to a NY Minute)

I remember that the literary idol of my youth, Aldous Huxley, who started out as a smart mouth/hand, writing witty, sneeringly searing novels of social sabotage, had had a change of heart and mind as his life lengthened, doing LSD and espousing Vedanta, moving deeper and deeper into mysticism, and making a final pronunciamento that “in the end, what matters is to be kind.” Having arrived in NY in time to start my new life, whatever it will be, in the place where it is to be whatever it will be, I decided to spend my first full day here applying his dictum. Strangely it is easier to be kind in New York because you can talk to everyone, and run into a great many people, which it is difficult to do in LA except with a car.
I began the day—late of course, we are still on California time—walking Mimi in the park, where two young, pretty women leaned against the stone wall at the edge of a slightly frozen pond that I thought was freckled with snow balls, that they assured me was garbage. They were both from Pittsburgh, as are a great many people worth knowing, including all my relatives, Vicky King and me, so I asked them what their dreams were and why the prettiest of them was already disappointed and she said it was a long story but as I am a writer I told her I could hear it. It was of course about a man, but as she has just graduated from college she’ll get over it, and I promised to try and connect her with the career she wants when she moves to New York. The best thing about coming from Pittsburgh is the gumption to move someplace else.
Then I met a strikingly beautiful and lively blonde in the lobby of my building, which has no one strikingly beautiful unless they can no longer move their mouths or comfortably blink their eyes, and lively is not an operative word, and told her she should be in St. Moritz. As it turns out, she was on her way there. I suspect she will be my new best friend. Happily I have two old best friends, one of whom saw me out of LA and cleared out my apartment after my departure, the other one who prepared for my arrival here by making everything orderly in my apartment, plus the building housekeeper which she isn’t really, but kind of an organized marching band, who had plugged in all my Christmas lights that I keep up all year long, so the place would look fairy tale-ish and welcome me.
Then I went for a night stroll with Mimi and saw five little children in Tibetan wooly hats, the kind that has a point at the top with flaps down over their ears making them look even more vulnerable than children already are. They were half Dominican, half Puerto Rican according to their very young aunt and mother of one, who also had that kind of hat on, and peered out with liquid brown child’s eyes and a shinily innocent face looking much like my loved friend Betsy. The children were gazing with longing into the ice cream and candy store on Sixth, so I invited them all in for an ice cream. The auntie/mom said they couldn’t possibly, but I insisted. It reminded me of when I was living in Weinheim, in the Bergstrasse writing my German novel, and a class came through the Marktplatz of eight-year olds, and I picked them all up and took them, with their astonished teacher, to the ice cream parlor, and he all but wept and said in perfect English “Thank you for being kind to children.” I thought at the time his English was imperfect, and what he meant was “Thank you for being kind to these children.” But as it turned out, as he explained to me when we became friends and corresponded, that he had been exact: Germans in general, he said, don’t really enjoy children, and tolerate them until they grow up. They are unpredictable, you see, and Germans best like order, swaddling them in infancy in their carriages so they won’t touch their genitals. I understand this is a generalization and Peter Mandelson in Ireland told me I mustn’t generalize, but I think in this instance I can since a teacher told me, and there were signs in the railway stations in Weinheim saying “Be kind to children,” so I had to gather that might not be the rule. Anyway my little Tibetan-Hispanics were very happy, although the five year old who was her son was sorry he had taken the mint, so I threw it away and got him the chocolate, to match his eyes, though it was actually Rocky Road which I imagine is the one he will be on.
Late in the evening I went to the market, again with Mimi, and put a lot of groceries in the cart in which she sat in the child’s seat. The delivery boy had gone home, and there was too much to carry so I said I would come back in the morning. But a woman said “I’ll help you,” and she did, walking me home, carrying a few bags, telling me her story. She is a dental assistant and gave up her job to come to New York to help her sister, one of eleven siblings, children of farmers from Florida, who has a little girl, 3, she doesn’t like to have hired help for. She is very happy now, as she loves her little niece, and never had children of her own, but still misses the dentist.
I had a dentist in LA who follows a philosophy called ‘RAK’ which stands for Random Acts of Kindness. Apparently there are, and apparently whatever you give comes back to you. I mean, a stranger helping you with packages. In New York. All things are possible.
HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Shakespeare does it Again!

“There is a Destiny that shapes our ends,” the best of the poets said, and of course he was and is Right On. What has happened to our country, even though it looks just now like a disaster, I believe will be its salvation. Had the economy not caved, there was a good chance the election might have gone the other way, and the deep inhalation and release, the breath of fresh air that has come as the result, even with the bad times, might well restore us all. Or, at least, get us back to our starting principles, which were almost as good as if Shakespeare had written them.
The downside of course is the way it appears on the immediate surface: the men lined up in shifting disarray outside the 7-11 on Sawtelle and Santa Monica look like the shape-up in ‘On The Waterfront.’ But the sadness is strung with hope, like Christmas lights, and it is doubtless for the best that we’ve cut back on the tinsel.
The direct effect (or is it affect?) on me is that I am moving back full time to New York, to inhabit the studio apartment left me by my mother, that rescue effected(I’m sure there, anyway) by the smarts of my cousin Rodney who got her money back from Bernie Madoff. I am also looking forward to resurrecting my musical comedy, which the times have made completely believable, about my mother (raised to mythic proportion,) who, towards the end of her life, rather than grow old, crashed parties, looking for love and free hors d’oeuvres. I am sanctifying that bravado(see also chutzpah) by making the character a widow whose husband left her a co=op on Park Avenue, and just enough money to pay the maintenance, so crashing is not optional, but the only way she gets to eat. She will have given her portfolio to Bernie Madoff, so everybody will understand. To cut back on costs, since theater, too, is in the loo, it will take place on an empty stage with one chandelier dangling crookedly into what was once an elegant room, as she’s had to sell her furniture. But why not the theater? I mean, since it’s going to be uphill for everyone, why not take on a mountain. So I return to my first and most favorite career, that of songwriter(there’s a very uplifting score, and as ‘White Christmas,’ the saccharine adaptation of the sugary Bing Crosby movie of long ago,also starring Rosemary Clooney) had just outmoneyed ‘Wicked,’ which can only be explained by the fact that people want to hear real songs. And that I think is what I have, as sung on a demo by Rosemary Clooney, who, as you may know, liked the score so much she recorded it for me in exchange for sandwiches for the musicians. So though I may not be loaded for bear, I have, in my heart, ammunition to stave off creatively the wolf at the door.
Speaking of ‘Wicked,’ I took my grandboys to see the LA production so they would have a memory of their first musical theater with Granny. We were late and so had to watch the first twenty minutes on a monitor, but I decided that was probably a good things because they are TV addicts(mostly football,) so it was something they understood. Then, when the usher showed us in in the middle of the act—we had seats 2nd row center—it must have seemed to them as it seemed to us as children, when in The Wizard of Oz it suddenly turned into color. What had been for Lukas and Silas another TV experience, blazed into Stage (More-than) Presence. So it ended up being an okay thing, that we were late.
But I will try to be on time for my next act, hoping the plane lands all right next Monday night when I return to take New York on. There is a line in one of my novels, probably one of those not published in a world that suddenly closed its doors and a few fell off their hinges, where a funny, feisty heroine looks out at the lights beneath her windows, and shouts; “I’ll get you yet!” I don’t know that I can make that come to pass, but the truth is, you just never know. The original story I wrote when little more than a tot, that became the movie ‘What a Way to Go’ has been optioned (amazingly I kept the theater rights in my deal with Fox) and the man who has it, a clever music maker and producer, is making sounds like it’s really going to happen. So I might just have two musicals going at the same time.
Why not? There is a not only a Destiny that shapes our ends, but one that also shapes our Continuings.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Goodnight.

Mimi's Personality Disorder

Almost everyone having tired of the election, wishing it were over already yet, I have allowed more petty things to capture my attention. Since if the economy doesn’t improve, I will have to give up things along with everyone else, and may have to surrender my bi-coastal status and headquarter in New York. That means this studio must be eminently livable, so, symbolically I will need a new toilet, as that is the thing most in need of replacing, fitting since it is also what we are in.
So I hied me with Mimi to E. 62nd Street, and Kraft Hardware that features a most reasonable line of toidies, called TOTO, not after Dorothy’s dog, though it could be, but the brand of a Japanese firm (out-thought even about that, Gott.) Mimi immediately attracted the attention of a genial salesman, who said he had considered getting a Bichon Frisee(she has a website, BICOASTAL BICHON which I suppose we will also have to give up) and so had researched it completely. Apparently the breed goes back to Roman times, though the temps most publicized is the French Revolution, when it was the chien of Marie Antoinette, who got her wig’s hairstyle from her dog. Once they offed with her head, the people did not like to be reminded, so killed all the Bichons. A few were saved, and emigrated to Italy, where the Italians recognized at once how clever they were and taught them to dance and be circus dogs. Once the French saw they were gifted, they of course took them back and marked them French. But back to the genial salesman.
He told me that this breed had a gene that made it impossible for them to be alone—that they had to be with people, that if left by them(dog)selves they went crazy. They were the first lap dogs, and even now, are desperate in their affection and need to cuddle. The days grow chilly here, and since, along with everything else, one has to watch grooming fees($81 for a cut) I have let her grow long, so she now truly resembles a sheep. I never had a teddy bear when I was a little girl, (Aawwwwwwwwwww) so I have enjoyed her warmth and what turns out now, according to the salesman, to be a personality disorder. She needs me. She is a co-dependent.
Speaking of which I have had my first stalker, a pleasant(I thought she was) Norwegian, who, as I already wrote you, had unexpectedly inherited a fortune from her aunt, a dentist who invented fluoride(or maybe discovered it, science is not my frield.) I had had dinner with her and her sister and counseled her to get rid of her traveling companion, an alcoholic who finished up everything in the minibar—not the same one as Eliot Spitzer’s—and then threw up all over the room. She sent me many e-mails telling me how I had saved her life, but apparently decided I was to replace him, so barraged me and finally called me day before yesterday at 4:30 AM, so I have had to tell her in no uncertain terms to leave me alone. My dermatologist said the woman is a co-dependent and crazy, the reason why she, my dermatologist, has an unlisted home number, as apparently when you fill in someone’s wrinkles they think they belong to you, and she has to hide from recently upholstered patients. Anyway, it’s all back to just me and Mimi, with her lovely long hair, which is like having a fur throw on the bed at night.
I look into her highly intelligent black eyes, sing to her “My fuzzy Valentine,” and no longer grieve that there is no man in my life. I mean, no matter how much they love you, they do not crawl on top of you and leave it at that, and too hirsute are less than appealing. So I am sort of at peace, though I, too, wish the election were over.

Bringing in the Sheaves

Unaccustomed as I am to public service, yesterday was a lift to the heart, a jolt to the spirit, and an illuminating journey. Went with two other women, a New York Good Person—very involved in selfless deeds for the betterment of her community, and a teacher of theatre at Hofstra, the first at the wheel, the second sitting behind me chatting amiably on our journey to Bristol, Pa., to canvass for Barack. We were the first to arrive at the meeting place, at ten o’clock as prescribed, but were sent to the hall of the Boilermaker’s Union, across from which was a flower stall, hanging baskets and Halloween ornaments, where we went while waiting for others to arrive before we were sent on our assigned rounds and squares. The seeming diversion was the first in what felt like the stations of the cross, the pockets of ignorance that less than grace this once great nation. The young woman, a mother of three who was its proprietor, doesn’t trust Obama because of “his background,” didn’t want to discuss it at length(we have been forewarned not to try and argue too forcibly at this late stage of the game) but said they were carrying signs for him in Pakistan. “Why would they want him to win in Pakistan?” she asked me. Back in the shelter of the Boilermaker’s Union, Local 13, I suggested that if it were true, it might be because they wanted to live, and were hoping he had the savvy to keep India from making it all go BOOM! But by this time the rest of the out-of-town cast had assembled, and as we were richer by several hanging baskets, a witch, and a calico turkey for Thanksgiving, we did not dwell, but moved on, as Kevin, the African-American who was gently in charge, advised us to do.
The trio of women was joined by a tall young man from Guiana, who had come to this country so disapproving of the political mayhem and injustice of his land that he immediately involved himself in the politics of ours. He paired up with the tiny Hofstra person, while the doer of good and I worked our streets, courtyards, low-lying apartment complexes, only knocking on the doors that had been pre-checked by the Bristol Obama people, so we were just to encourage, reassure, ask those we knew to be friendly to make sure they voted. More people were absent than present, and those who were present were often watching football, but as Kevin was to tell me the people in charge had already decided we were so close to the election that we couldn’t be put off by the fact that we were probably intruding, and just forge on, not getting into protracted conversations or certainly not trying to convert, and just leave the print-out of how flawed McCain was from the pen of a Philadelphia Inquirer writer who had been a Republican. Alissa, my cohort, and I encountered one probable serial killer who looked like Raymond Burr in ‘Rear Window,’ had all the same nervous mannerisms and several pots on his front porch that we ventured likely contained the chopped-up remains of the gay couple who had been living there, who were our committed Democrats. Another man rolled his eyes, was obviously mad in the sanity sense, not just angry at our intrustion, would not give his name, didn’t want to know ours, and ignored our extended hand and obvious fine humor. On the whole it felt more frustrating than fulfilling, but we had done our job and seen many red-leafed trees, which cannot help but fill the heart as they warm the eyes.
There had been few doors that were locked in that working-class neighborhood, the exception being one of an African-American who seemed very anxious and uncomfortable at our knocking, but was going to vote for Barack, and one other black family who also seemed unsettled. One black sailor, on his way back to Virginia said he would vote absentee for Obama but did not talk politics with his fellows. I understand why.
What I didn’t understand was how unsettled the black locals seemed, though Cindy, our cohort who was with Jerry, the Guianan(?) did better, having actually managed a few genuine interchanges. When I got back to base I talked to Kevin, and here’s where it all becomes a sad, dark poem. He told me the reason for the dis- ease (not the sickness, the anxiety) could be traced back to the 60s, when JFK, Dr. King were assassinated, and finally Bobby. He said when the train went through carrying Bobby’s body, the blacks stood on one side of the track, the whites on the other, and all put their hands over their hearts and saluted as that carriage rolled by., And when it was gone, the blacks turned around one way, the whites another, and all went home. Since that time there has been a total disconnect in the Civil Rights movement, the reason why this is such a seminal moment in our history.
But all I could think of was that train rolling through, and the train that rolled through the country after Lincoln’s murder. And I wonder why the hatred goes so deep, and the people are so empty. Anyway, I hope he wins, and we get back what’s left of the country. Still, it felt really good to be doing something that mattered.