“O, Felix Culpa!”

The loveliest Easter words

For me, the loveliest words in the whole Catholic Easter vigil service come in the long opening proclamation, the Exultet. Those words, in Latin, are “O, felix culpa.” They translate in English as “Oh, happy fault.” Crucifixion, happy?

The point is, without Adam’s sin, the “happy fault,” there would be no crucifixion. And without crucifixion, there would be no resurrection.

Instead of attending Easter service last night, sheltering-in-place, we watched a live staging of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar on YouTube (Andrew Lloyd Webber offered it free for forty-eight hours from Friday through Sunday.) I’d seen the much milder movie version in June 1973, but the stage play was stunning in its intensity and deeply moving in its message. I was swept away by the portrayal of Judas Iscariot, not as a coward and traitor, but as a loyal devotee and faithful adherent to Jesus’s original vision and mission. In the play, he gave Jesus up not because he did not love him, but because he did and could not bear seeing Jesus appear to lose his focus on the poor. During the scene in which Judas recognizes that he will forever bear the blame for Jesus’s death and therefore hangs himself, the words, “O, felix culpa,” came to me. Without betrayal, no death. Without death, no resurrection.

Healing our divisions

As we make our stumbling way through the pandemic, I wonder if someday the coronavirus will be remembered as a “felix culpa,” a happy fault. When we who survive look back, might we see the virus as having healed us of the divisive partisanship, the political and social viruses that beset us now?

If the “cheerleading” continues from the White House podium (Who is cheering? Why do we need a Cheerleader-in-Chief?), might the roughly 40% of us who click “Yes” on the pollster’s question “Do you support President Trump?” start clicking “No”? Might both the right and the left recognize that the fear we carry is common to us all, not a product of ideology? Might we wake to the realization that we value the life and civilization we share? Might we get it at last that being human is more precious than being conservative or liberal, than being White or of color, than being citizens of the U.S. or of Europe or China or Saudi Arabia or Iran?

“Oh, happy fault,” this coronavirus, if it were true. But probably it will not be true.

Our America

More likely, I’m afraid, we seem to be a perennially immature people, unable to put aside our ingrained beliefs and attitudes toward one another and learn the lessons of our catastrophes. Example: The Civil War killed more than 750,000 Americans from the North and the South. One decade later, when Reconstruction was demolished, it was replaced by the ruthless repression of African Americans and reduction of their freedom almost back to slavery status. Jim Crow remained the rule in the South (supported by both overt and covert racism in the North) until the 1960s, and in the last twelve years, White supremacy again rears its ugly and violent head: No lessons learned that could help us survive as one people.

In World War I, 116,708 Americans died and 204,000 were wounded. The surviving soldiers brought home the “Spanish flu,” the worst pandemic in world history. An estimated 675,000 Americans died in the pandemic. No sooner than we’d recovered from both catastrophes, our nation embarked on the Roaring Twenties, a decade-long orgy of conspicuous consumption, financial narcissism, and blindness to the unsustainability of the revelry. For all the fun, though, the plight of African Americans under Jim Crow remained as debilitating as ever, and income inequality was probably even worse in the 1920s than it is today. The Twenties delivered our country to the Crash of ’29 and the subsequent Great Depression: No survival-worthy lessons learned. 

My point is that national catastrophes do not seem to teach Americans much. 

“O happy fault”?

More likely, the combined damage of the coronavirus and the collateral devastation of the economy will likely leave us with a profoundly wounded and different country and world. If we refuse to learn the lesson that we are all in this together, unchecked naïve partisanship and blindfolded ideology will end our time as the great democracy we have sometimes shown we are capable of sustaining. Like Alexander’s Greek empire, like Nero’s Roman empire, like Ferdinand and Isabella’s Spanish empire, like Henry’s English empire, like Napoleon’s French empire—we will be diminished as a meaningful player on the world stage.

On the other hand, if the pandemic and the fragility of our economy shock us awake so we can see our common stake and our bond as citizens of a country founded upon a noble truth—that we are all equal—then it may be we’ll survive.

 If so, “O, felix culpa.”

Celebrating “Standing Our Ground” release day: Scene 3

Here we go . . .

If today’s your first day at the blog, we’re celebrating tomorrow’s release of my fourth novel in the Monastery Valley series, Standing Our Ground. I’ve been sharing the opening scenes to give you a taste of the book. If you want to review scenes 1 & 2, they’re available in the previous two days’ posts.

You met Deputy Andi Pelton in scene 1, where she’s notified of “shots fired” in town. In scene 2, you watched Andi’s “step-girlfriend,” Grace Northrup (Ed’s adopted daughter), packing to leave for her first year of college. You saw a bit of Ed’s and Grace’s relationship. But now it’s time to meet the shooter. Here’s scene 3 from Standing Our Ground:

3

Andi pulled up at 206 East Cedar Street, lights flashing, siren screaming. Xavier’s squad sailed around the corner just behind. As her tires screeched, braking in front of the darkened house, she switched off her siren. Xavier pulled up fast, his own tires squealing. His siren died. Both flashers stayed on, spraying red and blue lights around the dark neighborhood. Scanning the shadows, she made sure her body armor was secure and, cautiously opening her door, stood behind it. Jefferson had never put streetlights in its neighborhoods, but the flashing lights illuminated a figure in the deep shadows near the house. No lights inside. She drew her weapon as Xavier climbed out of his squad, staying behind his door, gun drawn. 

“Identify yourself,” she demanded of the shadowed figure. 

Raising its hands to shoulder height, then higher, the figure replied, “I’m Daniel Essex.” His voice carried on the cooling air. “This is my home.”

“Did you hear shots?”

“Of course. I fired them.”

What the hell? she thought.

“Mr. Essex, I want you to keep your hands where they are. I’m going to approach, and my weapon is drawn. I will not shoot unless you move suddenly. My partner will come toward you from the side. Are you good with that?”

“Sure, Officers. Come on.”

She glanced at Xav. He nodded and moved off to the side, flanking her. 

As she approached Daniel Essex, she said, “Are you alone?”

“I am.” 

Coming closer, her eyes adjusted to the dark, and the red-and-blue flashes from the squad cars showed a bulge at Essex’s hip. “Mr. Essex, are you armed?”

“Of course, Officer.” He started to lower his hands.

“Freeze, sir.” Oh, man. Don’t make me shoot. She was ten feet from him. A few feet to her left and a bit behind, Xavier had his weapon trained on Daniel Essex, but that didn’t slow her racing heart. Essex froze, hands high. 

“Sir, please turn around slowly, keeping your hands in the air. Don’t do anything fast.”

“Sure. Whatever you say, Officer.” His tone was cool, almost friendly. When he turned, Andi approached, saying, “I’m going to disarm you, so please be still.” She patted him down, found the gun, and took it. She stepped back. “Do you have any other weapons on your person, sir?”

“Just that one.” His voice sounded less friendly. “And I want it back.”

She moved a step back, holding out the weapon grip-first to Xavier, who took custody of it. “One thing at a time, sir,” she said. “You’ll get it back once we straighten all this out.” Which could be a long time. “You can turn around, but please don’t make any sudden moves.”

“I won’t hurt you, Officer.”

“Glad to hear it. And please, call me ‘deputy.’” The guy must be new to the valley, she thought. Doesn’t know we’re deputies, not officers. “Sir, you fired the shots a few moments ago?”

“Like I said, yes.” 

Andi noted that his voice remained friendly, but his words were clipped, exact.

“Why did you fire, sir?”

He pointed toward the open garage. “He’s in there.”

“Who is?”

“The intruder who invaded my home. I stopped him.”

Andi’s chest tightened. She said, “Is he all right?”

“I doubt it, Officer. I’m a good shot.”

She moved toward the open garage. “Mr. Essex, Deputy Contrerez will wait with you while I look in the garage.” 

When Essex nodded, she glanced at Xavier. He nodded. “Go.”

She holstered her weapon and moved toward the garage.

She heard Essex say to Xavier, “Contrerez? Name like that, you must be Mexican.” He no longer sounded friendly.She smiled faintly as she heard Xavier say, politely, “No, sir. Born and raised in Billings.”

###

Did you like it?

I would deeply appreciate your letting me know your thoughts about these scenes. I realize that reading them on a blog is not the same as sitting in a comfortable chair and opening a new novel with the anticipation that fiction lovers feel as they begin. But perhaps you have some response–positive or negative–that can help me improve my writing for book 5 of the series.

You read that right: There’s a book 5 in the works! Meanwhile, I’ll be exploring, in this blog, some of the challenges in writing a psychologist as the protagonist. There are plenty! Hope to see you back here soon . ..

Celebrating the release of “Standing Our Ground”: Scene 2

Here comes scene 2!

I sincerely hope you felt something at the end of scene 1—a question, a sense of something immanent, perhaps curiosity about Deputy Andi Pelton—and even a sense of something not so good about to make Andi’s evening anything but boring. If not, my goal for the first scene wasn’t met. 

But it’s short, and scene 2 introduces two of the other recurring main characters in this series: Ed Northrup, Andi’s life partner, and Grace Northrup, Ed’s adopted daughter who loves to call Andi her “step-girlfriend.” See what you think (and let me know, if you can!). Here’s Scene 2 from Standing Our Ground:

2

Ed pocketed his phone, uneasy. Shots fired? His worst fear was losing Andi in a violent confrontation. “Let it go,” he said to himself. “She’ll be okay.”

 Grace walked past him, carrying another box. “Who’ll be okay, Northrup?”

He picked up the box he’d set down to answer the phone, following her out. “Andi just got a call at work. Shots fired.”

“Shots? My God, where?”

“In town, I suppose. But I don’t know for sure. I’m just hoping she’ll be okay.”

“She will. Andi can take care of herself.”

“Right.” He carried the box of Grace’s things out to his pickup, still jumpy. The last shots fired in Jefferson were the ones that almost killed Andi four years ago. He tried to dredge up that reverend’s name, the one who’d started it all. 

Grace’s car, a used pink Volvo she’d immediately named the Pink Vulva, groaned with her belongings jammed into every corner. When Ed dropped the box onto the tailgate of his pickup, she called, “Careful with that, Northrup.” 

“How’d you accumulate all this junk in just four years?” He snugged the box into the last open spot in the bed of the truck and raised the tailgate.

She studied him for a moment, calculation in her eyes. “I’ve been yours only three years and eight months.”

“Then it’s even more amazing you have so much junk.”

“Jen’s folks rented a whole trailer for, as you call it, her junk.” She sniffed. “I prefer to think of all this—” She pointed at the PV and then at his pickup. “—as beloved possessions.” 

“Any more beloved possessions in the cabin?”

“Uh-uh. But would you consider letting me take a few bottles of that wine you and Andi drink so much of?”

“Ah. Would you consider first turning twenty-one?”

“Come on, Northrup. Please? I can’t buy wine for three more years. Having some in my dorm room would be a nice ice-breaker for those new friends I’m about to make.” She gave a coy smile. “Work with me here. I’m on the threshold of my new life.”

Ed took that in. Her new life. It felt too soon, after three years and eight months. “All right. One bottle for breaking the ice.”

“You’re grits and gravy, Northrup,” she sang as she dashed up the porch steps and into the house. 

Ed smiled to himself: free “dad points,” and no harm done—she’d never remember the corkscrew.

He followed Grace up the porch steps, wondering who, if anybody, had been shot. In his head, he listed his patients. None of them were likely to take up arms against their particular slings and arrows, or to invite someone else to do so. Even Beatrice John, as broken and wounded as she was, wouldn’t shoot anybody. Except maybe herself. He pushed the thought away and concentrated on Andi’s shooting four years ago and the reverend who’d caused it all. As he opened the screen door, the name rushed back to him, riding a jolt of anger: Crane. The. Reverend. Loyd. Crane.

###

The purpose of the opening has changed over the years

It used to be that the opening of a novel could be leisurely, expansive; could focus on backstory or on a panoramic conveyance of information on the setting, the times, or the characters–long before any action begins. Openings could resemble long panning shots, showing the landscape, then slowly narrowing, closing in, seeing the protagonist’s face only after a long establishing scene. Not any more, at least not in the kind of fiction I write. Now we’re urged to enter in media res (which, of course, Aristotle recommended for drama–twenty-three hundred years ago!), in the midst of action, and not to “waste” time with backstory, rambling narrative, “introductions.” We writers are warned that agents and editors–not to mention discriminating readers–will not read past the first scene or two unless something compels them: a story question (who fired the shots? why? did anyone get hurt? what’s going to happen?), something about the protagonist (who should be in the scene) that endears or confuses (in a good story-question way) or unlocks an emotional response (will Andi get hurt? what’s this about their “unofficial marriage?), something that makes the reader want to go on, if only for another page. It will be the task of that other page to re-compel the reader to stay with it.

Did anything like that happen as you read? Was your curiosity piqued? Did you want to know more, even if at the moment that wanting was mild, just enough to go on to the next scene? I’d much appreciate knowing–good writers never stop learning, how to write better, of course, but also how readers engage with their work. You’re very welcome to help me learn by sending a comment.

See you tomorrow with scene 3!

Garbage–physical and spiritual–in Michael Hartnett’s “Generation Dementia”

Author Michael Hartnett’s Generation Dementia is an engaging, bittersweet, and ultimately affirming story about the garbage—physical and spiritual—that we produce in our lives.

Hartnett has given us the opposite of garbage: A gem of a story, finely cut and beautifully polished. But it’s a story about trash, or really, about lost kids—Generation Dementia—high school seniors whose lives are adrift toward emptiness and who must find some way to connect to each other and themselves. They do this in a wildly improbable way: By signing up to collect their town’s garbage every morning before school. It’s called Operation Pick-up Kids, devised by a crusty school psychologist on the verge of retirement who hopes somehow—though he doubts it’ll happen—to save as many kids as he can.

The narrator-protagonist is Hash O’Connell, newly orphaned and heading for a collapse after the death of his mother, whom he calls “the Joan.” Hash, depressed and an occasional hallucinator, signs up for Operation Pick-up Kids and slowly seeks answers to his desperate questions. For much of the book, Hash not only empties garbage pails into the truck, he also carefully selects odd pieces of trash to keep and he slowly becomes a hoarder. One of the first pieces he collects is a set of old floppy disks, one of which is labeled “the Answer,” from a deceased Pulitzer prize winning journalist who was somehow connected to “the Joan” before she died. The book follows Hash’s probing into the mysterious “answer,” which leads him deep into the secrets in his family and in his town.

Hash—we never learn how he came by that remarkable name—is a rich and fully drawn character. Michael Hartnett’s story and his writing reminded me of Michael Chabon or the early John Irving: deep emotion without a touch of sentimentality, strong plotting full of surprises and twists, and well crafted and memorable characters with wonderful evocative names. Louie Sacco, Hash’s partner on the truck, Lee Lee, a girl genius who plays violin on the truck, Grandpa Artie, Mayor Heine, Eva (who, despite chain-smoking and guzzling coffee constantly, begins to help Hash begin the long journey back to life), Big Bill Hannah, Rev. Alexander Burr (as in “under the saddle”?), Selena Omaha, the mysterious Mavellas, and of course Pulaski, the school psychologist. All these characters are vivid and true to life, and Hartnett keeps their unique voices pitch-perfect throughout.

Garbage, of course, is not only the literal stuff Hash and the kids must deal with, it’s also a profound metaphor for both the kind of society we seem to want (the town is named “Frick”) and the psychological and interpersonal mess that our dependence on smart phones and screens and our absorption in reality TV are creating. In a remarkable scene early in the book, Hash finds that he is forgetting all the passwords, locker combinations, phone numbers, ID numbers, and personal information about himself—all the information that binds him to others and to his world. He ends up standing at his locker, obsessively and futilely spinning the knob, seeking the combination for hours, and missing all his classes. It’s a heartbreaking moment— but one deftly lightened by Hartnett’s humor. When Pulaski writes an order for Hash to apply for Operation Pick-up Kids, Hash observes that he looked like a physician writing prescriptions, and thinks, “I’d rather he was handing out passwords.” Hash, despite his pain and alienation, is one of the keenest observers and genuinely funny characters I know. Remember Holden Caulfield? Hash has Holden’s edgy wit and his own broken heart.

You can read Generation Dementia simply for its enormously entertaining story, or for its engaging writing, sparkling images and similes, and wonderful characters. You can read it as a commentary on how trash is perhaps the most enduring and connecting thing human beings produce, or as a keen psychosocial exploration of the alienation and despair afflicting so many who are coming of age in a world full of garbage. But at whatever level you read it, I promise you this: The twist in the last two lines of the book will knock your socks off.

 

 

 

Michael Hartnett’s “Fools in the Magic Kingdom”

Michael Hartnett’s Fools in the Magic Kingdom is a timely, complex, and entertaining novel, capturing both the bold outlines and the more subtle nuances of the contemporary anti-immigrant trend with a combination of biting social commentary and laugh-out-loud satire.

The story is set in the Magic Kingdom—Disney World in Florida—which is a perfect metaphor for the “American Dream”: A rosy illusory world built on a hidden underworld of racism and corporate manipulation. The bones of the story involve a crowd of “Dreamers,” the young Hispanics brought to the U.S.A. illegally when they were young children, who gather in Disney World on April Fools’ Day. They are enjoying the portrayal of the country in which they so much want to remain. Opposing them are various hate groups who want to “take back our World” (meaning both Disney World and the wider American society) from the Dreamers (and immigrants in general).

Hartnett deftly weaves together multiple story lines—I count at least seven! Without spoiling anything, I note that each of the seven could carry the weight of its own novel:

  1. A group of intellectuals tries to embarrass the Disney corporation by acts of humorous subversion of Disney’s perfect world;
  2. Groups of “patriotic” haters try to “take back our World” by violently attacking the Dreamers in the Magic Kingdom;
  3. The chief security officer of Disney World struggles to protect the Dreamers and to disrupt the plans of both the intellectuals in story #1 and the hate groups in #2;
  4. An aging actress manipulates a narcissistic movie director through a day in the Magic Kingdom laced with consumption—of toys, souvenirs, food, and alcohol—in order to reignite her career;
  5. Girl (from story #1) meets boy (from story #2), they fall for one another, until a tragedy strikes (perpetrated by a guy from stories #1 and #2);
  6. An elderly do-gooder (from story #1) falls for an elderly racist (from story #2, but also story #5), and both are changed in the process;
  7. The big corporation (Disney World itself) cons and manipulates everyone to line its own coffers.

 

Disney World might in fact be the main character in the book. It both helps and thwarts all the other characters as they pursue their goals. It offers the illusion of satisfaction to all, while relentlessly parting everyone from their money. A single illustration: On the positive side, the park provides Tucker, its chief security officer, a large, nimble, and effective security team who can take control of a disturbance almost instantly and nearly invisibly. But at the same time, the park’s vast size and enormous variety of rides, features, restaurants, and shops makes Tucker’s job almost impossible—there’s no way for him to know where the bad guys are and what they’re up to.

One of the most intriguing features of Fools in the Magic Kingdomis Hartnett’s almost gleeful violation of some of fiction’s cardinal norms. For instance, there is no single plot, as I already noted. Instead, Mike mashes stories and genres exuberantly. Is this a detective story? Yup. Is this a social satire? Yup. A critique of the current social and political situation in America? Yup. A coming of age story? Yup. A romance? Yup. Its all of them, and more. The mash-ups are strikingly like Disney World: They promise (and deliver) something for everybody.

Another way Mike breaches fictional conventions lies in his agility in switching points of view (POV), often within the same scene, even (at times) within the same paragraph. Yet, he’s so smooth a “head-jumper” that I never lost the thread or became confused. As an ardent “one POV per scene” kind of writer, I took guilty pleasure each time I “heard” the interior thinking of both Character A and Character B in the same moment. Mike pulled off his crimes as smoothly as Disney World makes the illusory “real.” His novel reminded me: No rule is too sacred to break—and if you want to break rules, do it with gusto!

I am left with deep admiration for this book. The intricacy of the plot(s), the dimensionality of the characters (every “good” character had some darker flaws, every “bad guy” had surprising virtues), the skillful—and wholly unexpected—way the multiple stories became one story at the end, the extensive descriptions of Disney World rides and hidden spaces, and the evidence that the author has done extensive research into all facets of the Magic Kingdom (did you know there are “hidden Mickey’s” scattered throughout the park?)—all tell me I was in the hands of a master story-teller. Mike Hartnett is an author after Walt Disney’s own heart.

Is Fiction Fake News?

Writing fiction, as I do now, has allowed me to experience first hand a curious paradox: Fictitious stories are simultaneously both untrue and true. They are news of a kind, but “fake” news (to borrow an odious phrase). We’ve always known this, of course. A delightful Goodreads page of quotes about fiction confirms this. For example, Albert Camus said, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”  Or this from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”

Contrast this paradox—that the lie of fiction can discover the deeper truth of reality—with the Trumpian and Fox-News-ian blather about “fake news.” Crying “fake news” about whatever one doesn’t like to know is a lie intended to obscure the truth. In the lie of fiction, on the other hand, I try to create a world, people, events, reactions that utterly imaginary, yet truer, perhaps, than many actual, historical places, people, events, and reactions.

And readers are the judges: They know when a place or a person or something that happens rings false, even in fantasy fiction. Readers love J.R.R. Tolkien or George R.R. Martin in part because their worlds are so palpably real, their characters so emotionally authentic.

And in reading successful fiction, by agreeing to accept the author’s lie, astute readers can have the life-affirming experience of opening to a deeper, broader, sharper truth—the truth of what it means to be human. Hiding the truth behind the whine of “fake news” steals from all of us the dignity of our human capacity to judge for ourselves what is true or false.

Hiding Behind the Mentally Ill

In my professional life, before I began writing novels, I was a psychologist. In the course of my work, I met hundreds of wonderful, courageous, loving, generous people. They all suffered some form of mental illness.

After each drumbeat of the tragic mass shootings in our beloved country, a chant arises from the right wing of the choir.

Like any chant, it follows its rubric carefully, meticulously. (Chants, you know, have no power if they are improvised, disorderly, undisciplined. Ask any monk, any member of any choir.) The chant goes like this:

We are outraged: This evil strikes again

 For the victims and their families, women, children, men:

We send our thoughts and prayers.

 

It is too soon to speak of guns,

We must honor our departed ones,

And offer them our thoughts and prayers.

 

The killer was mentally ill, an animal, deranged.

Not like us, not like those of us who exchange

Our thoughts and prayers.

 

This chant is an obscenity.

“Thoughts and prayers” are not the anti-dote to mental illness, treatment is. But what has the present administration given us regarding mental illness? A law expanding access to guns for the mentally ill!

As if to say, “We will arm your killers, and when you are dead, we will pray for you.”

Yes, outrageous. But an even deeper outrage, to me, is the way politicians hide their cowardice toward the NRA behind tough language about mentally ill persons. Their veiled (but only thinly veiled) implication is that every mentally ill person is a potential mass murderer. If “mental illness” causes mass shootings, then . . . This is not only nonsense, it is insidious, hateful nonsense. It casts a shadow on every law-abiding, loving, hard-working person who happens to suffer from a mental illness.

If I were to twist the truth in the same way about gun owners, I could write: “All mass shooters are gun owners. The problem here isn’t guns, it’s owning a gun.” (This is a variant on the NRA’s “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” It just takes it one logical step further—therefore, owning a gun is the problem.) But that would be nothing else than hateful, dishonest, and cruel nonsense, equal in depravity to “guns don’t kill people, mentally ill people kill people.”

Just as millions of gun owners are lawful, decent, caring human beings and the gun owners who kill are a vanishingly small number of them, so too millions of Americans who suffer from some form of mental illness are upright, caring, and decent people and the number of mass shooters with mental illness is infinitely small. To tar all those good people in either group with the cowards’ brush—“We don’t have a gun problem here, we have a mental illness problem”—is perhaps a more hateful and fateful evil than gun violence itself.

Why?

Because it is an evil perpetrated by those who do not need to do it, who commit it to divert attention from the real causes, the real problems, the real issues that make gun violence “as American as apple pie.” It is a vast smear against millions of decent people that further divides and weakens our country.

We don’t need to “make America great again”—it is already great.

We need to make America honest again.

Why Teach the Humanities?

In the Nov. 9, 2017 issue of the New York Review of Books, author Marilynne Robinson writes an impassioned and thoughtful defense of the humanities and liberal education in general (read it here). She reminds us that liberal education—under attack from many quarters in our rapidly deteriorating intellectual climate—is “an education worthy of a free people.” As she says, “[T]he object [of political attacks on public higher education in general and the teaching the humanities in particular] is clear—to create a virtual army out of the general population who will compete successfully against whomever for whatever into an endless future, at profound cost to themselves.” Education as boot camp for robot-like workers in the perfect capitalist economy.

Then, wryly, she adds, “All this differs from military engagement in one great particular. The generals [CEOs, in this case] are always assumed to be free to abandon their armies and go over to the other side, if there is profit in it.”

The attack on the humanities arises, she contends, out of an insistent belief that public education should be oriented only to “skills training” for the competitive economy. This article of faith is in turn driven by a world view  (dare I say “religion”?) that defines competition as the only meaningful criterion of value.

In defending the humanities and liberal education, Robinson notes that “literature had been made a kind of data to illustrate, supposedly, some graceless theory that stood apart from it, and that would be shed in a year or two and replaced by something post- or neo- and in any case as gracelessly irrelevant to a work of language as whatever it displaced.” We’re all familiar with “modernism,” “post-modernism,” “constructivism,” “post-constructivism,” “neo-post-constructivism,” and on and on. Trendy—and empty—when you set those theories side by side with Hamlet, For Whom the Bell Tolls, From Here to Eternity, or Ulysses.

But she ends on a hopeful note. “And yet, the beautiful persists,” she writes, “and so do eloquence and depth of thought, and they belong to all of us because they are the most pregnant evidence we can have of what is possible in us.”

“. . . the most pregnant evidence we can have of what is possible in us.” A call to grace in a graceless time.

“Taking a Knee”

Last weekend, we went to our grandson’s 7th grade football game. Midway through the game, after a hard tackle, he didn’t get up. His dad was a linesman, carrying the down marker; his mom was sitting beside my wife, her mother. Our breaths caught in our chests as the doctor rushed out, and knelt at the side of our grandson’s small body.

As she and the coaches were gathered round Aspen, the boys on the field were taking a knee. Sudden memory returned—when I was a boy, my football coaches trained us to take a knee when a player was down, perhaps injured. Taking a knee was a sign of respect, of concern and attention and almost of prayer.

Taking a knee, in football, symbolizes acknowledgement that an injury has occurred and that attention should be paid. We attended, watchful with worry, until Aspen stood up and we burst in applause.

And as that happened, I realized something.

Most of you, no doubt, have been aware of the controversy about the NFL players taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem. What I realized is that Colin Kaepernick—and now more than a hundred NFL players, and some MLB players—are taking a knee because there has been an injury to which they want to attend, to express concern, to show respect for the injured, perhaps to have a moment of prayer:

For the injury of racial injustice and the lingering sin of white supremacy in America, the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

Thinking of the poor after Harvey, Irma, and Katia

(This post is another in my ongoing experiment with writing for only ten minutes. Period. I do allow for an additional ten minutes for proofreading. Please let me know what you think.)

My friend, Lou Kavar (whose blog at http://blog.loukavar.com) is well worth following) posted a meaningful link that reminds us that it is all well and good for governors to order evacuations in the face of hurricanes, but that the story is more complicated than that.

The article in The Guardian tells the stories of “two Hurricane Irmas.” The first descends on the wealthy citizens of Miami Beach, many of whom have second homes elsewhere and can afford to travel there, or they have houses designed to withstand hurricanes like this, with hurricane-proof windows or built-in shutters and backup generators and plenty of fuel. Their pantries are stocked with many days’ worth of food and water—these are folks who can afford to leave OR to stay.

The second Hurricane Irma descends on the inner city of Liberty Beach, a few miles north of Miami Beach, whose residents either haven’t got cars to escape in or cash for enough gas to get safely away. Those who might be able to get out often can’t afford lodging if they can’t find a public shelter. Many, the article asserts, can barely buy enough groceries for today’s meals, much less three or four days’ stock of bottled water. These folks, like the wealthy of Miami Beach only a few miles away, will also ride out the storm, not because they are safe, but because they have little choice.

Farther south, in the Caribbean, some of the islands devastated by Irma are coming to grips with the reality that their communities have, effectively, been destroyed. 95% of the buildings on St. Maartin, for instance, have been damaged or destroyed. The devastation on the island of Anguilla (where my great-grandparents once lived), was worse. Across the path of Irma, countless families are homeless.

Last week, Harvey. This week, Irma. Next week, Jose?

Katia in Mexico.

These storms do not discriminate between the wealthy and the poor. But their impact does, and because you and I contribute to the recovery effort, let’s be sure we do not. Let’s not forget.

My ten minutes is up. See you next week!